A/N: Just posting the rest of this story (since it is discontinued) for any fans who want to read it. - Scykra

Chapter 3: Sand Beach

Sand Beach. It was a calming place, I suppose, if you didn't mind the monsters attacking you and the King Crabs trying to kill you and adventurers leaving corpses and useless item drops everywhere.

It was also a nice place to release my temporary rage against Blue Crabs. I had lost count of how many I had slain, but judging from my new experience points and the items in my pack, it was a pretty high number for only having arrived in the area ten minutes ago. And it wasn't like the monsters could reproduce instantly either. There were always a few hiding away and creating new monsters, but at most times of day, adventurers outnumbered monsters and then the creatures were scarce.

With a frustrated sigh, I crouched down on a sand dune and surveyed the beach. It was littered with Blue Crab corpses and crawling with adventurers picking through the items I had left behind, searching in vain for something useful I could have missed. I had made sure to pick up everything of value, though I saw a few newer adventurers pick up a few of the useless items.

My thirst for the blood of Blue Crabs was satisfied for the moment and I began combing the beach, hoping for a King Crab or something high leveled enough to give me a good handful of experience points. I was still a ways off from reaching level 11, and remembering how Roumenus had denied me entry into Elderine still angered me beyond reason.

Like a mirage in the heat, a King Crab materialized into view, headed straight for me with threatening, clacking claws. I readied my own, prepared to attack or defend depending on which one of us was faster.

It was me. I slashed at it with a Claw Swipe, dodging one of its deadly claws with a back flip. I landed lightly on my feet, slipping and landing in a crouching position because of the sand. I rolled away to avoid another attack and jabbed at the crab with my Lacerate skill, collecting a second soul. I leaped back twice to avoid the King Crab's continuous attacks, waiting impatiently...

The Claw Swipe skill finally cooled down, and I rushed in to activate it again. With three souls collected, my claws began to ooze poison as it glowed a malicious black. I jabbed, using the Claw Lunge skill, and the King Crab was no more.

I nudged the dead body with a toe, shifting it aside to see if it had dropped anything useful.

"Yo. Pretty impressive, Zorark."

I turned around with an unamused glare, scowling at the violet-haired girl perched on a enormous shell. She grinned and gave a small wave.

"What are you doing here?" I growled.

"Your face is going to stick like that if you scowl so much," she answered, leaping down and jabbing a finger in front of my face. I refused to flinch, instead continuing to glower at her.

"How do you know my name?"

"You already know mine, so it's not like it's a big fucking deal or anything," she shrugged, pacing in a circle around me with her hands clasped behind her back. "And I'm here to see you fight. You're really good, you know."

"You're not level 5 yet," I pointed out. The minimum level for entry to Sand Beach was level 5. As far as I knew, she was only level 3, and barely at that.

"Nope."

I waited impatiently for her to elaborate. When she only stared back at me, I continued.

"How did you get here," I intoned.

"Through the portal," Silva said matter-of-factly, hopping back onto the shell and facing the crashing waves of the sea.

"The portal."

"Yes. The portal." She turned to face me.

"Through the portal."

"Through the fucking portal," she agreed. "I walked through and it did its magic and here I am. It's not that hard. On my part, at least." She planted her feet in the sand, careful to retrace her own footsteps. My eyes followed her until I had turned around completely.

"You might want to move."

I raised an eyebrow.

Seeing a bad ass Trickster getting taken down by an ocean wave is pretty funny.

I reduced the bubbling giggles that threatened to overtake me to a tight lipped smirk that didn't go away even as he resurfaced from the water, sputtering and coughing and looking like a drowned, indignant cat.

"I warned you. If you're on the beach, you gotta be aware of the ocean," I told him, the smirk spreading into a grin. "She's a fucking PMSing bitch that can never control her mood swings, I'll tell you that much. Though I guess you wouldn't know shit about that, seeing as you have two moods and two moods only."

"Really." He tugged at his shirt and squeezed as much salt water as he could out of it, still sputtering and sopping wet.

"Yup." I skipped over and ruffled his hair until it mostly dried up, standing up in even messier spikes than usual. "Apathetic or really pissed off. So which one are you right now?"

"Take an educated guess," he spat, smacking my hand away. "Adventurers under level 5 aren't allowed in Sand Beach. How did you get here?"

"Would you like me to go through the entire fucking 'the portal' conversation again?" I answered wryly. "Because as fascinating as that was, I'm sure that you have more important things to be doing."

"I do. And I will ask this only once. Why are you here?"

"Long version, really, really, really, really long version, or short version?"

He looked about as disgusted as I get when I see mushrooms. I smiled as wide a I could go.

"Okay! The really, really, really, really fucking long version it is!"

He walked away.

How long was she going to keep following me? She wasn't even trying to be stealthy about it, making snarky little side comments as I hacked away at my thirteenth Hungry Wolf. Its corpse left behind Beast Leather (Low Quality) and Beast Dogtooth (Low Quality). I did my best to ignore her ("Thirteen is a goddamned unlucky number, didn't you know that!? Quick, go kill another Hungry Wolf!") and picked up the items, stowing them away for later.

"Are you going to keep following me?" I asked bluntly, trekking through the forest in search of another monster to kill. I was still only three-fourths of the way to level 11, to my frustration. If this girl hadn't been following me...

"Zorark, why do you pick up these weird looking items?" she said, either ignoring or not having heard my question. I turned around to see that she had nicked my Beast Leather (Low Quality) from my pack and was now examining it, holding it high between her thumb and forefinger.

"Give that back," I growled, snatching it away and shoving it back into my bag. "I'll ask you again. How do you know my name?"

"What kind of shitty stalker would I be if I didn't even know your name?" she answered dryly. She constantly had this little smug smile on her face, which was infuriating when coupled with her lazy, half-lidded eyes. I scowled and continued walking.

There was a peaceful moment of silence, for once. I concentrated on the chattering of the birds, the forest sounds uninterrupted by human voices...

"So why are you picking up useless items?"

I bit my tongue, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a furious outburst.

"Scroll production," I answered tersely. There was another silence, and then:

"... What?"

I took a deep breath, stopping to turn around and face her. My brown eyes met her gray ones, unblinking.

"I feel sorry for whatever adventurer ends up partying with you in the future," I told her honestly. "Because they will have to put up with your ignorance."

When I turned around, I caught from the corner of my eye her face, blinking furiously, and I continued to walk, finally spotting two more Hungry Wolves, flanking an Angry Wolf.

"Hey, that was uncalled for!" she yelled after me, finally processing my words.

"Stay back, you fool!" I hissed, blocking her with an arm. "You're going to die! These monsters are far too high leveled for you."

"Uh huh," she drawled, sarcasm dripping from her words. "Then I'll just go sit on this tree and watch you fucking battle to your heart's content, 'kay?" True to her word, she scrambled up a pine and perched on a branch, legs dangling off the edge.

"You better stay there," I growled in a low voice. The Angry Wolf had caught sight of me and began charging towards me, followed closely by the two Hungry Wolves.

I leaped high into the air and slashed at the nearest Hungry Wolf, activating Lacerate and obtaining a soul. In a movement, I was surrounded by the three wolves. I pivoted on the heel of my foot and scratched at the next Hungry Wolf, adding another soul to my collection with Claw Swipe. I dodged a blow from the first wolf and moved to use Lacerate again to finish it off, but froze when I realized the skill still hadn't finished cooling off. I was scratched on the cheek because of my hesitation, and I finally slew the Hungry Wolf with Lacerate.

It was no use though. The two remaining wolves were already drawing back their claws to attack me, and though I raised my own to defend myself, I knew that I was going to die again, lose all my hard work for a second time. But then-

"Hey, you pair of fur-faced freaks! The moon shines on the corpses of your fellows! The Slimes take their severed heads to feast upon!"

I turned around, horrified as I recognized the voice. Silva stood there, a wild grin on her face and beckoning for the wolves to come.

"Come and fight like men, eh?" she taunted. "Two against one is hardly fair! The youngest child of my town could take the both of you on with one hand tied behind his back!"

The wolves howled in fury and ran past me to attack her. I was still frozen with shock and horror, and when I finally forced myself to run after them, they were already picking at the girl's corpse.

I woke up to find myself choking on smoke and teary eyed from half suffocating. My entire body was filled with molten lava, electric sparks jolting through my veins. It wasn't like I could writhe properly either: my body was paralyzed and I couldn't bring myself to move other than a few twitches.

When the smoke began to dissipate and I stopped crying, I choked and coughed out deep breaths, concentrating on the simple objective of in, out, in, out, in, out... Eventually, the task became easier and my lungs were no longer on fire, and the voltage had been reduced drastically and contained only on a diagonal, jagged line on my stomach and arms.

Grimacing, whimpering, and swearing all the while, I slowly picked myself up from off the ground and forced myself into a kneeling position. My legs couldn't take the weight, though, and I fell on all fours, my arms and legs trembling. The faintness and light-headedness I felt blocked all coherent thought; otherwise, I would have been disgusted with how pathetic I felt at the moment.

And as if all that torture wasn't enough, shivers went down my back as I sensed an icy presence groping through my mind, like a frozen hand searching for a light switch in the dark. I gasped, choked, and felt myself tearing up again when the hand found what it was looking for and clenched it, forcefully tearing it away. With a sob, I collapsed back onto the ground, a whimpering, trembling mess.

I felt like I had just lost a part of myself and found that I kept patting myself as if to make sure that I still had all my body parts. I ended up biting down on my tongue until it bled and focused on that pain until everything else faded away to a low tingle.

It could have taken thirty seconds or several hours, but I finally crawled back onto my feet and spat out the mouthful of blood. My tongue swept around my mouth until the metallic taste was gone, and I stared at shaking hands, counting my fingers over and over again until I was sure I had all ten digits attached.

I looked up and saw that the sun had just finished setting, faint glimmers of sunlight barely seen over the horizon. I must've been with Zorark longer than I thought, or otherwise the torture had lasted exactly as long as it had felt.

I crawled slowly to my feet, getting my bearings as I leaned heavily on a tree. There was a portal nearby, but there was not way of telling where it led to. My surroundings looked familiar, though, and I guessed that I was at the Roumen portal.

"Are you finished?"

The surprise from hearing the voice caused my knees to buckle, and I found myself sitting on the ground again. I looked up and saw Zorark leap down from the tree I had been using for support.

I tried to answer, but the effort took too much energy, and nodding my head would've turned the light-headed feeling into a headache, so I simply blinked at him.

"Dying is fun, isn't it?" he asked wryly, crouching down so that we were eye level. "What did you go and do that for, you bloody fool? In both senses of the word."

I looked down at myself, and sure enough, I felt dried blood crack across my skin when I shifted. My clothes were in perfect condition, though, and even the bottom of my shoes were as good as new, although they had been completely worn out just this morning.

The tingle faded at last and I felt warmth seep back into my limbs, and I sighed with relief at the feeling.

I opened my mouth to ask why the hell he hadn't told me that dying would hurt so fucking much, the bastard, because if I hadn't decided to follow him, I'd be going through this pain over and over and over, but what came out instead was: "Hungry."

It was then that I realized that I hadn't eaten breakfast (since I had been travelling), lunch, or dinner (because I had been stalking Zorark).

With an exasperated sigh, he shrugged off his bag and dug through it, pulling out an apple and tossing it to me. Without enough strength left in me to even lift an arm, it fell into my lap. I stared at it, then looked up at him questioningly.

"In return for the HP Potion earlier," was his reply.

I stared at him, trying to implant the thought into his mind that I was too tired to even breathe right now, let alone gather up the energy to eat.

Slapping his hand to his forehead with a final groan, he plucked the apple out of my lap and slipped one of his claws onto a hand. He sliced the fruit into tiny pieces, grumbling to himself as juice got all over his weapons. He shoved a piece in front of my face with one command:

"Open."

My jaw dropped open immediately and he popped the fruit in. I snapped my mouth shut again and he stared at me expectantly.

"Do I have to chew for you too, or can you do that yourself?" he finally asked when I did nothing. If I had strength, I would've told him that I liked to let my food sit in my mouth before chewing and swallowing. As it was, I merely chewed obediently and forced the food down. Despite being absolutely starving, I found the fruit nearly impossible to stomach.

Zorark stared at me with his brow furrowed, as if trying to figure me out.

"Try this instead," he ordered, handing me a strip of dried meat. I didn't know what it was and it didn't look particularly appetizing, but I obeyed and sucked on it, enjoying the savory taste. I chewed it carefully and swallowed it, finding it much easier to keep down than the apple.

He fed me tiny bits of meat like this until I regained my strength and could take the apple into my own hands and eat it without feeling like I had to puke. He only gave me a bottle of water to wash the food down and nothing else, for which I was thankful. I didn't want to be owing him too much.

Well, food I could pay back, but time and experience I couldn't. But before I got to apologizing for that, I had something else to tell him.

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me dying would hurt so fucking much?!"

"I thought you knew," he answered smugly, examining his claws for any damage. "Adventurers kill people, sometimes, you know. We're going to Hell, so if they're reviving us, it will at least hurt like it."

"And how can you stand that torture without fainting?" I asked slowly, remembering how he had gotten back on his feet immediately after reviving. He gave me a sharp look.

"You get used to it."

I sighed but didn't pry deeper, instead asking another question that had been nagging me.

"Did you at least kill the wolves?"

"With a Razor Claw, yes," he murmured, flicking off a speck of dust from a claw. "Your death may or may not have been useless."

"Oh, well you're very kind," I grumbled. "Just admit it, me sacrificing myself helped you win. You were cornered. I saw you."

"Think what you will," he answered with a shrug. He stood up and brushed himself off. "Anything else you would like to interrogate me for?"

"Let me see something," I said, holding out a hand. Rolling his eyes, he pulled me up and I feigned weakness, collapsing on him. He grumbled and pushed me off of him and I grinned triumphantly, holding up his targeting stone.

As his eyes widened and he patted his pockets as if not believing that I had taken it from him, I checked his level.

Good. He had reached level 11. Now he could go to Elderine, whatever he needed to go to there for.

"Give that back," he snarled, swiping the stone from me and shoving it back into his pocket. I shrugged and stuck my tongue out at him.

"Just checking to make sure that I really hadn't died for nothing," I smiled. "Have you gone back to Roumen yet?"

He shook his head, and I blinked in confusion.

"Then...?"

"I came back here as soon as I killed the wolves to check on you," he explained nonchalantly. "Since you were so ignorant of basic adventurers' knowledge, I thought you wouldn't know how to set up your house to heal. Seems I was right."

"Tell me about the house thing later," I mumbled, feeling exhaustion wash over me. "I just need to go back to Roumen and sleep right now."

Not waiting for his reply, I staggered towards the portal, nearly slipping and hitting my head on one of the floating stones. Zorark grabbed my arm at the last moment, though, and shoved me through the portal before leaping in after me.