Zephyr wiped a drop of blood off his cheek and stared at the blue screen floating right in front of his face.
He just beat a guard to death with an iron shovel, and the system decided to reward him for his hard work.
A new message popped up to tell him he levelled up, so he opened his status window to see what changed.
Every single stat had gone up by two points.
[Name: Zephyr Valerius]
[Level: 3]
[Strength: 10]
[Durability: 10]
[Stamina: 11]
[Mana: 2]
[Luck: 7]
'Okay, so killing things makes me stronger,' Zephyr thought to himself.
'That is a pretty simple rule to live by.'
He turned around and looked at the rest of the cave.
The entire place was dead silent.
All two hundred slaves just stood there staring at him in complete awe and terror because they had never seen anyone fight back against the old man before.
They looked at the dead, old man on the ground and then looked back at Zephyr like he was a completely crazy person.
"What are you going to do?" Zeno asked, his voice shaking.
"I am going to escape, obviously," Zephyr replied as he kicked the bloody shovel out of the way.
He knew he couldn't stay here since he was only level three and had practically zero mana to his name.
'I cannot fight Aurelia at this stage,' he thought in his mind.
'She would kill me in a second with that whip, and I am definitely not ready to die twice in one day.'
"Wait, if you leave, she would kill all the slaves here to make an example out of them," Zeno said, pointing his dirty finger at the terrified crowd.
Zephyr stopped walking and looked at Zeno a little longer.
He looked at the kid's face, and then he looked at the grown men holding heavy iron shovels who were too afraid to actually use them.
"You can come with me if you want," Zephyr said flatly.
"But I am not going to risk myself to save these people. There are two hundred of them and only a few guards in this entire camp. They could have done what I just did a long time ago, but they decided it was their fate to be treated like animals. I refuse to accept what's mine."
Zeno looked at the surrounding slaves who were still doing absolutely nothing to help themselves.
The kid finally realised Zephyr was telling the truth, so he turned around and ran deeper into the dark cave.
A few minutes later, Zeno came back, picking up two small, rusty knives he probably stole from a supply crate and handed one of the knives to Zephyr and gave a firm nod.
"Let's go," the kid said.
Zephyr nodded back, and they started walking toward the exit.
There were no other guards in the cave except the dead old man because the people running this camp knew no one was stupid enough to run into the dead forest outside.
Well, no one except Zephyr.
"So where are we right now?" Zephyr asked as they walked through the rocky tunnel.
"We are at the very edge of the human continent," Zeno replied, keeping his voice low and looking over his shoulder.
"It is the last place you should ever be. A normal, safe city is at least a hundred kilometres from here."
'That long?' Zephyr thought.
His stamina was barely an eleven, so walking a hundred kilometres through a hostile fantasy world in this weak body was going to be a complete nightmare.
"What about the forest out there?" Zephyr asked.
"The forest at night is a totally different species," Zeno warned him.
"The paths automatically change to get you lost, and mutated beasts will smell you and attack without any warning."
"We have no choice," Zephyr said.
"Let's go."
They reached the mouth of the cave, and Zephyr stopped for a second.
He looked back one last time at the miserable mining camp, promising himself he would come back here one day to rip that silver-haired bitch apart piece by piece, and then he walked forward into the cold night air.
Within a few meters, they had already reached the tree line of the forest.
Zeno was carefully looking at the twisted trees, making sure the dark shadows didn't swallow him whole.
Meanwhile, Zephyr was busy studying his new system ability called Wrath.
He had unlocked a sin for now, but he had absolutely no idea how these powers actually worked in this world.
Did he just need to get really angry to trigger them, or was there some kind of magic button in his head he had to press?
The screen shifted, and the word [Wrath] suddenly split into five separate lines of text.
[You have unlocked five skills for now.]
[Blood Surge]
[Killing Intent]
[Rage Accumulation]
[Wrath Strike]
[Berserker]
'Oh,' Zephyr thought, feeling genuinely surprised.
'So each sin has different abilities attached to it, and there are probably way more to unlock later. Sweet.'
He was grinning to himself because this felt exactly like the video games he used to play when he skipped school.
He figured [Blood Surge] probably pumped his heart faster to give him an adrenaline boost so he could hit harder.
[Killing Intent] sounded like a way to scare people just by looking at them, which he already knew how to do from his days as a street thug.
[Rage Accumulation] probably meant the more he got hit, the stronger he became.
And [Wrath Strike] sounded like a really solid, heavy punch.
He didn't even want to guess what [Berserker] did, but he assumed it meant losing his mind and destroying everything in his path.
But before he could test anything out, his old street instincts alerted him.
He reached out and pulled Zeno back by his dirty shirt.
"Wait," Zephyr whispered.
The forest was creepy and completely silent, except for the sound of the wind blowing through the dead branches.
It was way too quiet for a forest full of monsters.
"What happened?" the kid asked nervously.
Before Zephyr could even explain, something shot out from the dark leaves of a tree right above them.
Zephyr moved quickly and dodged backwards, but Zeno wasn't lucky at all.
A white spider web slammed into the kid's chest, pulled him off the ground, and started dragging him up toward the branches.
"Fuck," Zephyr cursed out loud.