The Ultimate Regressor System

They moved deeper into the forest after the Golem fight, and within the hour, two more beasts crossed their path. An Avallion that Mark dispatched with a well-timed enhanced strike from a branch, and a wandering Bora that Sera finished off with her sword.

"See, this is what I mean," Mark said, watching the Bora collapse and moving to cut it open. "Two beasts, barely broke a sweat. Compare that to me nearly drowning an hour ago. There’s a lesson in there somewhere about teamwork."

"The lesson is that you’re bad at fighting without backup," Sera said.

"The fuck did you expect. I’m a tank, Sera. You don’t see tanks running into battle.."

"They kinda do..."

"I’m just saying," Mark said after a sigh, rolling his shoulder as they walked, "I’m really, genuinely glad you’re here."

"This isn’t the time for jokes." Sera said, not looking at him.

"I’m not joking though...."

"I don’t believe you."

"That’s fair," He shrugged, "Doesn’t make it less true, though."

They found a small clearing as dusk settled in, covered by a ring of dense brush, and agreed without much discussion to make camp there for the night, the day’s fighting finally catching up to both of them in a wave they could no longer ignore.

"Can I ask you something?" Sera said, once the fire was going and the beast meat sizzling.

"Shoot."

"How exactly are you planning to find Lucas? You don’t know where he is. You don’t even know if he’s in this Edgewalk at all."

Mark considered the question longer than usual. "Honestly? I don’t have a plan. Not a real one." He checked the meat before putting it in the fire again.

"But if I know Lucas even a little bit as I think I do, when things go bad enough, badly enough that people need help, he’s going to show up. Doesn’t matter how far away he started. Bro’s got some kind of instinct for finding the worst possible moment to walk in and fix everything."

"That’s not a plan."

"I know," he admitted. "Sounds more like faith... But sometimes that’s all you’ve got," Mark said, quieter now. "So I’ll take it."

Sera stared into the fire for a long moment, something troubled settling across her expression.

"To be honest, I’m scared," she admitted finally, and Mark looked up in shock— meat hanging from his mouth.

Her voice smaller than Mark had ever heard before. "Of dying here, I mean. I didn’t ask for any of this. I just wanted... I don’t know. A normal life. Finish whatever career I was supposed to have, and grow old somewhere boring."

Without much thought, Mark reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. You’re not going to die out here. Not on my watch."

Sera blinked at him, visibly caught off guard by the sudden gentleness, something in her expression softening.

"You don’t know that," she said.

"No," Mark admitted, shifting away and biting his meat again. "I don’t. But I’ve decided, and I’ve found that stubbornness works surprisingly well as a survival strategy in this world. Ask Lucas. Man’s basically built out of it."

He looked at her. "You’re not going to die here Sera. I won’t let that happen... Count on it..."

Something in her expression eased further at that, the corner of her mouth twitching in a warm smile.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Don’t get used to it," Mark said, already easing back into his familiar humor. "Sincerity’s a limited resource for me. Gotta ration it, you see..." he bit his meat and finished whatever piece of meat was left on his meat.

"Damn, this is good. The fact that we don’t even need seasoning is crazy."

She huffed something close to a laugh, and the tension in her shoulders eased visibly. "Get some sleep. I’ll wake you if anything happens."

"Actually, I’ll take first watch," Mark said, tossing the stick aside. "You need it more than I do tonight."

She didn’t argue. She just nodded and lay down, eyeing Mark one last time...

"Be careful Mark. If something happens, wake me up."

"If I don’t handle it myself you mean," Mark added, feeling proud.

She laughed. "Good night Mark."

Saying that she closed her eyes, and within minutes her breathing had evened into sleep.

Mark sat alone by the dying fire watching her—her black hair falling over her face in a way that he couldn’t resist looking at.

He looked at the treeline, his mind drifting between Lucas, Eleanor, and the low, worry as he hoped to find the others soon.

Lucas especially...

Hours passed, or whatever seemed like it and Mark was still up, still vigilant as he just couldn’t bring himself to wake Sera up.

He looked so beautiful in her sleep...

A few minutes later, a faint rustle was heard from the treeline.

He would have passed it as a small beast, but ever since they started coming into this hell, he had never seen a beast that was smaller that a hut.

On top of that, the rustle sounded wrong. Nothing like wind at all.

Soon, the sound drew nearer and nearer, and he knew something was about to happen...

"Oh no... that can’t be good."

He moved to Sera and woke her up "Sera." He shook her shoulder gently but urgent. "Sera, wake up. Something’s coming."

***

Miles away, Lucas sat amid a wide field littered with fallen carcasses, roasting the last of his kills over low flame, and found himself, for the first time in longer than he could properly remember, actually satisfied with how a fight had gone.

’Didn’t even need the Mask that time either.’ He thought, his mind wandering towards his last encounter with Nyra.

It had been unused for the past several encounters.

For an artifact that was supposed to help him control his glitch, he was doing pretty well without it.

’Getting better at reading these golem variants. Maybe I don’t need it as much as I thought I would.’

That was true. Throughout this fight, he had dealt nothing but decisive blows.

His skill still glitched. But when it did, he was able to survive long enough for it to pass over...

Small progress, but it was progress nonetheless, and he allowed himself a moment of pride before pulling up his map to check the Gateway’s position.

The fights had gotten easier the more of them he survived — not because the beasts themselves had weakened, but because he was reaping the benefits of hard won pattern reading he had gained form countless deaths before now...

It was like his mind was a library, cataloguing new information each time he died or almost died...

The dot that indicated the gateway was still a way’s off, farther that it looked.

He sighed, rubbing his face tiredly. ’Still a long way to go, huh...’

He gathered what he could carry, extinguished the fire, and pressed on into the night, his boots carrying him steadily forward through terrain that grew rockier and colder the further he walked.

By the time exhaustion really threatened to overtake him, a strange, shimmering distortion appeared ahead in the darkness — the same ripple he recognized from the tear that had once dropped him and Pyra and Mark out of the Blazing Sands.

The memory of how he died there surfaced and he visibly shuddered.

Hew pushed the thought aside.

’Anrift.... Has to lead somewhere. Might as well be closer to the Gateway. What’s wrong with having a little bit of faith?’

He didn’t hesitate and he walked straight through.

The world churned around him, cold slamming into his senses so hard it stole his breath momentarily, and when his vision cleared, Lucas found himself standing amid a vast, snow covered place,

The wind howling in a way that stretched toward a horizon lost entirely to a blanket of snow.

Ice grew out along jagged rock formations jutting from the snow at irregular intervals, the whole place looking like a new world entirely.

[Ding!]

[New Zone Detected: Frost Valley.]

Lucas pulled his arms tight around himself, his breath fogging thick in air so cold that he could feel it through his clothes.

He exhaled, the breath misting in front of him. "Of course," he muttered, teeth already beginning to chatter. "Of course it’s a frozen wasteland now."

"Nothing this hell won’t throw at you at this point..."

He forced himself to move anyway, his boots crunching against snow that swallowed his steps almost to his shins.

[Ding!]

[You have activated skill Ignition]

He tried to use the fire to warm himself up, but the fire was flaring weak around his hands in a desperate attempt to stave off the worst of the cold.

"Wow." He grimaced. "The skill isn’t mine, but I still face the same weaknesses as if it was..."

He clicked his tongue and kept moving. Whatever waited out here, standing still wasn’t going to make finding the Gateway any easier.

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