Online Game: I Returned From Death With An Unbeatable Summon Class!

A single iron chain ran from the wall to the restraint at Marcus’s wrist, just long enough to let him sit against the opposite wall . He looked at it for a moment.

Then at the cell around him.

Then at the old man still meditating in the corner with the serene expression of someone who had transcended the concept of inconvenient circumstances entirely.

Marcus leaned his head back against the stone wall.

[HP: 34 / 100]

Thirty four percent. He looked at the number. Beaten, chained to a prison floor, and Corvan might not even be in the city anymore.

The young man on the floor made a sound in his sleep that wasn’t quite a word and rolled onto his side.

The old man breathed in.

Breathed out.

Marcus closed his eyes soliloquising .

That man looked like he knew me. The skull mask. The staff. The way the attack had been positioned and timed and executed with the particular precision of preparation rather than impulse. Does it have to do with being a Drauven. If it does then this is more serious than I thought. He turned it over slowly. At this point I feel like a living bounty.

More reason to get stronger. Scenarios like this will come again and they might not be a second chance.

The old man spoke.

"You look bothered, young lad."

Marcus opened his eyes.

The old man had opened his for the first time since Marcus arrived. They were black, deeply black, with one eyelid carrying a mark that ran through it like an old scar, thin and deliberate, the kind that had been there long enough to become part of the face rather than a story on top of it.

His posture had not changed from the meditation position but his attention had shifted fully to Marcus.

"The name’s Theseus." He said in a Polite Unhurried tone. "What’s yours."

"Marcus." He looked at the old man’s eyes for a moment. "I ended up here because of an attack I got caught in the middle of....Wrong place."

"Unfortunate." Theseus nodded slowly. "These things happen in cities. Especially this one lately."

He was quiet for a moment and then something shifted in his expression, the particular quality of someone turning toward a memory they had been keeping at a managed distance. "My eyes have seen much across a long life. I had almost forgotten how suddenly minor scenarios could turn." He coughed once, dry and brief. "I was caught up in something considerably less minor myself."

Marcus looked at him.

"The Ashveil war." Theseus said it simply, the way people said the names of things that had already finished being the worst thing that ever happened to them. "I was taken during the raid. Abducted and brought here as what they called compliance." A pause. "What can an innocent old man with no influence say against that. Nothing useful."

Marcus went still.

"Ashveil?". He turned the name over. Liz’s city.

"Tell me about the attack," he said asking inquisitively.

Theseus looked at him for a moment with the assessing quality of someone deciding how much of a thing to give to a stranger.

"We were raided without warning," he said finally.

"A horde of creatures, the likes of which most of us had never encountered. Fast and coordinated in a way that natural creatures are not. We had no answer for them. The strongest among us could only stall long enough to get the children out." He looked at the chain on Marcus’s wrist without really seeing it. "Many died. The few who survived the initial attack were rounded up. I was found in the outskirts and brought here."

"You alright granddad telling your war stories again."

GRRHH!!

The third occupant made a stiff sound as he woke up.

He sat up from the floor with the easy energy of someone who had slept on worse surfaces and found this one acceptable, running one hand across his face. Broad chest on a short frame, stocky in the way of someone built close to the ground, with a thick beard that had opinions about grooming and had won the argument.

He looked at Marcus with the direct assessment of someone who sized people up quickly and trusted the result.

"New intake." He nodded once. "The names John. Don’t let the old man fill your head with ghost stories, he tells them to everyone."

"They are not ghost stories," Theseus said mildly. "They are my life."

"Same thing at your age." John said as he looked at Marcus. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"What did they get you for."

"Wrong place at the wrong time ," Marcus said. He looked back at Theseus. "The attack. Do you know why they came or What they were after."

Theseus was quiet for a moment.

"Til this day I do not know the true reason." He folded his hands in his lap. "What I know is this.

Those creatures did not behave like hungry things or territorial things. They moved with direction. With purpose. The attack was planned by something or someone with a specific intention." He met Marcus’s eyes. "They were not there to raid. They were there to clear."

"Clear?". The word landed exactly where Marcus had already suspected it would.

CLANG!!.

The cell gate took a hit from outside, metal on metal, and a guard appeared on the other side with the flat expression of someone executing a schedule.

"Marcus." He looked through the bars. "You’re up for questioning. On your feet."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Marcus looked at the chain on his wrist. The guard produced a key and released it without ceremony and two soldiers flanked him as he stood.

Theseus watched him go with those black eyes that had seen Ashveil fall and had kept going anyway.

"Good luck young lad," he said quietly.

Marcus said nothing and walked out.

****

They moved him down a narrow corridor, stone walls close on both sides, torches mounted at intervals that did more for atmosphere than visibility, until they reached a small rectangular room at the end of it. A single table. Two chairs. A window too high and too narrow to mean anything.

A man in city official clothing sitting on the far side with a document in front of him and the expression of someone who had done a lot of these and had stopped finding them interesting.

"Sit down," the official said. "Let’s begin."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​