The barbarians fanned out along the shore, so cautiously approaching the water’s edge, others scanning the surrounding trees for threats. They were a rugged group: tall, broad-shouldered, and built like granite statues, with weathered faces and hardened expressions that told stories of survival in the harsh mountain wilderness. One of the younger warriors, with his beard barely grown in, pointed at a strange armor stuck to a log.
“Looks like sothing got chewed up and spat out again.”
He said, kicking the remnants of a log with a strange-looking armor stuck to it. An older man with a gray beard and a heavy axe slung over his back knelt beside the strange armor’s fra. He prodded it with a thick, calloused finger and then started talking.
“Enchanted Steel. Can use it, but it’s mostly wrecked.”
‘They don’t seem to have noticed yet…’
As an ugly face leaned in to inspect his head, he tried to appear like nothing more than an ordinary helt. He did have a monster core, but he had planned for that back in the soul forge. A layer of armor separated the core from the rest of the helt, concealing it in case of close inspection. Unless a skilled craftsman took a closer look, it was unlikely anyone would notice sothing unusual. Fortunately, these barbarians did not seem particularly clever as they did not notice that they were holding a living armor.
The older barbarian grunted and stood, satisfied that the armor held no traps or lingering curses. He picked up Rusty’s helt, turning it over, sniffing at the scorched tal and the faint green residue still clinging to its surface.
“Burn marks. Wyvern fire. This thing’s seen so trouble.”
Rusty remained perfectly still. His guides were not with him, as their light or mana could easily alert even these brutes. It was deeply uncomfortable to feel the man's hands moving over his helt. His fingers pressed against the hidden core compartnt, and for a mont, Rusty considered activating one of his skills. He could summon a burst of darkness to try to disable them, or detonate his nearby chestplate. But from what he could see, neither option was ideal. These people appeared to outlevel him, and the mont he revealed his true nature, he would likely be dead within seconds.
“Just toss it.”
Another voice said from behind him.
“The log’s worth more than that scrap. That’s mountainheart wood, we don’t get many of those floatin’ downstream.”
The warrior with the helt glanced at the shattered log. A large, splintered piece of it had pierced through Rusty’s torso like a spear. The wood shimred faintly, threaded with veins of tallic bark and bits of glowing moss.
“This stuff’ll punch through steel if you shave it right, that pathetic armor stood no chance.”
Rusty wanted to protest at being called pathetic, or even worse, compared to a shattered piece of wood. He had co a long way, and his durability was on par with a D-rank item. But to these barbarians, he seed unremarkable. They wore little armor themselves, so perhaps to them, a piece of wood that could be carved into arrows was more valuable than a chunk of bent steel.
“Armor’s hollow… No bones. No blood. This wasn’t worn by a man.”
His nonexistent tallic heart skipped a beat. The barbarian was not as ignorant as he had hoped. He had correctly identified Rusty's body as one belonging to a monster. Rusty had been using his standard form, not the one that closely resembled human armor. Without internal organs, the inside of his body was completely bare: no skin, no blood, not even stray hairs that would normally get caught inside over ti.
"Magic junk, then. Maybe a golem or a cursed suit. Either way, it's dead now."
Fortunately, they still believed he was just the remains of so monster, which was exactly what he had hoped for. As far as they were concerned, dead ant harmless. That also ant they would stop trying to pry him open. Even better, they seed to be searching for other pieces of his body.
"I think I saw a gauntlet float over there. The rest might have drifted farther down!"
The older barbarian gave the helt one last sniff, then tucked it under his arm like a foraged mushroom. This was one of the monts that Rusty was glad that he did not have a nose or sense of sll.
“Keep it for scrap. Maybe the witch doctor can lt it down or sothing?”
Rusty resisted the urge to sigh. lt? Scrap? He was a powerful living armor monster that would put his mark on the world soon and these brutes thought that he was worth less than so tree bark. He wanted to activate his shadow magic at this very mont but needed to wait for a better opportunity to arise.
“Fan out, search the banks. If the rest of it’s out there, we’ll find it.”
The group dispersed, feet crunching over sand and roots. The one carrying Rusty trudged up the shore, muttering to himself. From this new angle, Rusty could see more: a crude camp nestled just beyond the treeline, with hide tents, drying racks strung with fish, and a fire pit still smoldering from the night before.
Suddenly, he sensed one of his body parts nearby. The barbarians were unknowingly doing him a favor by gathering them together without him lifting a finger. His SP was slowly recharging, but it was always more efficient to repair or make use of parts that were already deployed. With them close, he also had more potential explosives to trigger if he needed to cover his escape. However, just as he was beginning to enjoy the progress, his head was abruptly shoved into a canvas sack.
The barbarian slung the sack over his back and continued walking. From ti to ti, another of Rusty's body parts was tossed into the sack. Things seed to be going his way for the mont, so he decided to wait. Once his full body was recovered, he could reassemble and possibly make a run for it.
He still could transform into light and escape, just as he had done before, but the sun energy he needed would not stay while he was sealed inside the sack. Like during his encounter with the Orcs, he would need a few minutes of exposure to gather enough energy. For now, he had no choice but to bide his ti and wait.
The canvas sack wasn’t empty. It was filled with old scraps of leather and various bits of junk the barbarian had scavenged from the river. Rusty was being hauled around like trash, and he couldn’t protest. His scattered body parts knocked against each other with every step, but at least they were being returned to him.
Eventually, the roar of the waterfall faded, replaced by the sound of voices. He could hear cheerful chatter, even the laughter of children playing nearby. It was not the behavior he expected from people often described as savages. While their size was noticeably greater than that of regular humans, their actions felt surprisingly ordinary. Rusty began to wonder if there had been so mistake. These people didn’t seem like the bloodthirsty monsters he had been told about.
As he was trying to listen to these people the sack he was in was dropped down on the ground in a rather violent way. The jolt rattled Rusty’s helt, and the rest of his collected pieces shifted loudly inside the sack. He remained still. He had gotten this far by being patient, and he wasn’t about to break cover now.
A mont later, the sack was dragged again, but this ti across rough ground and then opened abruptly, flooding his helt’s visor with daylight. He saw firelight flickering inside a wide tent and caught the sll of at cooking over a nearby hearth. His “collector” grunted and dumped the entire sack onto a hide-strewn floor.
“Got more junk for the bone woman.”
The barbarian called out as he turned to leave. Footsteps shuffled closer, and a new voice spoke, one that sounded older and female.
“Let see it.”
A woman appeared, draped in layers of dyed fur and adorned with necklaces made from bones and feathers. Her long, silvery hair was braided with bits of stone and wood, giving her an almost ritualistic presence. Her eyes narrowed as she inspected Rusty’s helt, and it quickly beca clear that she was not as blind to magic as the others. There was sothing in her gaze, as if she could sense the presence of the monster hiding within the tal. Just as she seed ready to cast so kind of detection spell, soone abruptly barged into her tent.
“Witch Doctor!”
The entrance flap burst open as a young girl stumbled into the tent, breathless and flushed, her voice trembling.
“What is it?”
“The warriors are back, three of them injured! One’s not breathing right, they need help now!”
The Witch Doctor’s expression shifted instantly, her hand lowering from Rusty's helt. Whatever spell she had been preparing was abandoned mid-cast. She spun without a word and rushed toward the exit, grabbing a bundle of herbs and vials from a low shelf as she passed.
Rusty lay motionless as he was dropped to the ground. He rolled briefly and ca to a stop in the corner of the witch doctor’s tent. He could sense his body parts scattered throughout the space, but before he had a chance to reassemble himself, the barbarians burst back inside. They were carrying an injured man covered in deep slashing wounds, with three arrows still lodged in his body.
The witch doctor returned with haste, her arms full of salves and leaves. The injured warrior was gently lowered onto a woven mat near the fire pit, where she imdiately began her examination. It was a striking scene, a completely different approach to healing. Instead of using holy magic or recovery potions, she applied strange and unfamiliar concoctions.
The witch doctor sared salve over the man’s wounds, which began to smoke and slowly nd before their eyes. Although effective, the process was noticeably slower than the thods Rusty had seen before. Blood trickled from the injuries, and the warrior groaned in pain as they tried to remove the arrows.
"Hold him!"
The old woman shouted, and the barbarians obeyed without hesitation, pinning the man's limbs to keep him from thrashing. The treatnt continued. The witch doctor ground fresh herbs between two stones, then packed a moss-like plant into the arrow wounds. She muttered strange chants in a language Rusty did not understand, completely unlike the magical incantations he had witnessed in the past. After about fifteen minutes, the warrior's condition stabilized. It seed he would survive.
“What happened? Why were the warriors attacked?”
Once the treatnt was over, the Witch Doctor finally asked. The expressions of the barbarian’s gave it away, they looked like young children caught after doing sothing a parent forbade them to do.
“…They were trying to free the captives.”
One of the younger warriors said at last, his voice low with sha.
“From the puny armored ones…”
The air in the tent grew heavy. Even the fire seed to crackle more softly, as if it too sensed the shift. The witch doctor slowly straightened, wiping blood and crushed herbs from her hands onto a cloth. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were cold.
"How many?"
"We found seven... alive."
The young warrior hesitated.
"Three more didn’t make it. They had them in chains. Branded like livestock."
‘Captives? What is this about?’
Rusty was puzzled by the conversation. From everything he knew, the barbarians were supposed to be the villains—raiding cities and attacking rchant caravans transporting goods. But the way they spoke now suggested sothing else entirely. It seed their true targets were slavers. Ones that seed to be capturing their kin.
The barbarians weren’t just wild marauders; they were fighting for their people, rescuing the captured, and retaliating against oppression. It seed that Ferndale, a place he once considered civilized, was using slave labor… and not just any slaves. Barbarian captives.
‘Humanoids are strange…’
He wasn’t sure how to feel about this revelation. As a monster once bound to the will of the dungeon heart, he knew all too well what it ant to be stripped of choice. He wouldn’t wish that kind of fate on anyone. Now that he was free, able to act on his own terms, he valued that freedom deeply. Still, he understood the harsh truth of this world as it operated on a hierarchy of power. Until he or anyone else reached a certain level of strength, true freedom would remain out of reach.
The witch doctor stood silently for a mont after the young warrior’s confession. The firelight danced in her eyes, but her face remained unreadable. Then, without looking back, she said simply.
“Take him, he will be fine now, just use the regular herbs to treat the others. Now leave.”
The warriors obeyed, lifting their injured comrade with surprising care before carrying him out of the tent. The flap fell shut behind them, leaving only the soft crackle of the fire and the slow drip of an herbal concoction brewing in a clay pot. Rusty lay where he had fallen, still motionless, surrounded by the dim amber glow.
His plan was simple: wait for nightfall, reassemble himself, and slip away under cover of darkness. But sothing felt off.
The old woman turned and fixed her sharp gaze on his helt. Her fingers moved with haste as she lifted his head from the ground and placed it on a strange stone slab, etched with sigils painted in animal blood. Whatever she was planning, it felt dangerous, sothing that could threaten his core.
If that were the case, he would have no choice but to activate one of his detached limbs, even if it ant injuring the barbarians and the witch doctor in the process. But just as he prepared to act, sothing unexpected happened. The old woman spoke directly to him.
"A spirit of light and dark... Can you speak, oh spirit? Tell , do you occupy this vessel of steel?"
“She wants to speak?”
“The spirit speaks!”
Her eyes glowed faintly with magic as he answered, not expecting anyone to hear him. He had no vocal cords, no breath, just the hollow space of his helt, yet sohow the old woman heard him. She knew he was alive. But how? And more importantly, what did she want from him?
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