Chapter 5: The Cost of Sanctuary
The air in the courtyard was thick with the sounds of trauma. The initial, deafening silence after the gates slammed shut had shattered into a cacophony of sobs, pained moans, and the frantic calls of players searching for friends who would never answer. The metallic stench of blood and the foul, coppery odor of the Rust was now baked into the place, a permanent perfume of their new reality.
Ryley pushed himself off the wall, his body aching. He ignored the emotional turmoil around him. Grief was a luxury. It drained energy and clouded judgment. His eyes, cold and analytical, scanned the survivors. He was taking inventory.
There were maybe two thousand of them left, perhaps less. They were a sorry lot—armor torn, faces smeared with grime and fear. He saw the Guardian and the Healer a short distance away, already forming a small nucleus of order. The Healer was moving among the wounded, her hands emitting a soft, golden light that knit flesh and eased pain. A small crowd of grateful players was already gathering around them, looking to the Tank—whose name, Ryley overheard, was Borin—for direction.
Good. Let them gather the sheep, Ryley thought. A large, organized group would draw attention, both from monsters and hostile players. They would be a bulwark, a perfect distraction. His place was not in the center of the herd, but on its edges, where he could observe and adapt.
His immediate goal was clear: information and resources. The beta knowledge in his head was a map of a world that no longer fully existed. He needed to know what had changed, where the safe zones within this "safe haven" actually were, and where the resources spawned.
He moved through the crowd like a ghost, his ears filtering out the cries and tuning into snippets of useful conversation.
"...my brother, he was right behind me..."
"The gate just crushed someone,I saw it..."
"Does anyone have any water?My canteen is empty..."
Water. Of course. The game had survival mechanics. Thirst, hunger, fatigue. They weren't just concepts in a menu anymore. They were a slow, creeping death sentence.
He made his way towards the inner part of the courtyard, where the architecture rose into dilapidated buildings and crumbling plazas. This was the fabled Sanctum of Rust, but up close, it was a corpse of a city. The stone was pockmarked and scarred, and everything was covered in a layer of fine, reddish-brown dust. Veins of the actual Gloom-Rust crept up the walls like malevolent ivy, pulsing with a faint, sickly light.
A commotion near a collapsed fountain drew his attention. Two players were arguing over a small, glowing mushroom growing from a crack in the stone.
"I saw it first!" a thin man snarled, brandishing a dagger.
"It's on my side of the fountain!"a woman shot back, her hands crackling with weak magical energy.
Before they could come to blows, Ryley spoke, his voice flat and loud enough to cut through their anger. "It's a Blightcap."
They both turned to him, startled.
"What?" the man with the dagger asked.
"It's a Blightcap," Ryley repeated, pointing at the mushroom. "Common in starting zones. Eat it, and it'll paralyze you for an hour. You'll lie here, conscious, while your body slowly dehydrates or something finds you."
The woman recoiled, her magical energy fizzling out. The man looked from the mushroom to Ryley, suspicion and fear warring on his face.
"How do you know?" he demanded.
Ryley didn't bother to explain his beta knowledge. "Try it and find out," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He turned and walked away, leaving them staring warily at the deadly fungus. He hadn't helped them out of kindness. He had prevented a stupid, wasteful death that would have drawn more monsters and thinned the herd unnecessarily. A stable, if terrified, population was better for his own survival than a panicked, dying one.
As he moved deeper, he saw evidence that they were not the first. A skeleton, picked clean and still clad in the tatters of leather armor that was a different style from the starter gear, lay slumped in an alcove. A rusted sword was still clutched in its bony grip. The Forsaken. The players from previous cycles. The sight confirmed his deepest suspicion: this was a cycle of harvest and slaughter. They were just the latest crop.
He needed to find one of them. Someone who had survived more than a single Tide. They would have the real information, the knowledge that wasn't in the beta. They would know where the real threats were, where the clean water could be found, and perhaps, how the class evolution truly worked.
A voice, raspy and laced with dark amusement, spoke from a shadowed doorway to his right.
"Not a bad start, new blood. Identifying a Blightcap. Most of your lot would have already poisoned themselves by now."
Ryley stopped, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He turned slowly to see a man leaning against the doorframe. His armor was a patchwork of scavenged parts, stained deep with rust and something darker. A long, nasty scar ran from his temple down to his jaw. His eyes held no fear, only a deep, bottomless weariness.
This was one of the Forsaken.
"Looks like you've been here a while," Ryley said, his voice carefully neutral.
The man gave a grim, toothy smile. "Long enough to know that the first day is the easy part. The real test comes when the sun goes down. The Rust... it gets louder in the dark."
He pushed himself off the doorframe.
"The name's Kaelen.You seem like you might last more than a week. If you're looking to last two, you should know where the real monsters in this city hide. It'll cost you, though."
Ryley met the man's gaze. This was the first real opportunity he'd encountered since arriving. It wasn't about good or evil. It was a transaction. And he was ready to deal.