Light Bringer: New World[LitRPG, Fantasy, a very crazy idea]

The slab of basilisk bone measured the exact size of an open palm.

Dante spent the entire morning seated on the timber floor of the living room, a fine steel scribe in his left hand, etching the grooves of twelve containment runes across the off-white surface of the bone. His right arm was still bound to his chest by the elastic wrap, but his collarbone was no longer throbbing so fiercely. His health bar had reached twenty-six points, reducing the sharp bite of injury to a manageable burn.

Once the grooves were carved deep enough, he took a stiff-bristled brush, dipped it into the ash paste prepared in the brass mortar, and worked the mixture of primordial iron filings, copper dust, and green sap into every etched line.

The paste dried almost the instant it made contact with the bone.

The dark iron leached moisture from the surrounding air, and the twelve runes rose in matte relief, giving off neither glimmer nor heat.

Dante flipped the plate over. He had fastened two thin rawhide straps along its flanks to secure it against his body.

”Maria,” he called out without lifting his head. ”Come tie off these straps.”

Maria emerged from the kitchen carrying a bowl of chilled grapes in her left hand.

She wore running shorts and a baggy black t-shirt. The purple contusions along her ribs had faded to a dull yellowish hue, and the split on her lip had knitted shut without leaving a thick scab. With ninety-eight hit points restored, the girl walked with her usual grounded, heavy carriage.

She hooked the hem of Dante’s shirt and yanked it up his back, laying bare the pale skin where two thin lines marked the roots of his shoulder blades.

”Center it right in the middle,” Dante instructed. ”The bottom tip needs to rest against the seventh vertebra, right where the ether conduit splits the load between both wings.”

Maria positioned the bone plate on the exact spot indicated.

She threaded the two leather straps under his armpits, crossed the tails over his chest, and cinched down the knots with the leverage of someone tying down freight on a flatbed.

”Ouch! Ease up, Maria!” Dante wheezed, feeling his chest crushed flat against his ribcage. ”This is a harness strap, not a field tourniquet.”

”If it’s loose, the plate will slip the second you start sweating,” she replied evenly, tying off a second square knot without easing an ounce of pressure. ”Done. It’s snug. Now test the damn thing.”

Dante closed his eyes and channeled his mental intent into his soul core.

The command matched the one that had first drawn the wings forth on the Plain of Iron Souls.

Deploy Winged Vestige.

The two skeletal structures parted from his back with the familiar snap of stretching cartilage.

Yet no light followed.

The exact moment the golden radiance attempted to seep through his pores, the twelve runes on the bone plate drew the emission straight into the dark ore. The Primordial Iron Core functioned like a sinkhole: the concentrated ash swallowed every trace of etheric glow, routing the energy directly into the structure of the pinions.

The wings fanned out into the spacious living room across their five-foot span.

They bore none of the spotless ivory that had previously lit up the room. Their shade was now a matte leaden gray, nearly identical to weathered cemetery headstones. When the room’s draft touched the plumage, there was no golden shimmer, only a cold, dead weight that bled zero magical signature into the surroundings.

The silver screen unfolded before them both, pulsing pale green.

[Runic Containment Matrix [Ash Veil] consolidated.]

[Etheric emission reduced to 0.02% (Within ambient noise thresholds).]

[Trait [Winged Vestige] successfully camouflaged as Organic Ash Mutation.]

[Shared Quest: Forging the Ash Veil - Completed!]

[Rewards distributed to Dante and Maria.]

This narrative has been purloined without the author’s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Dante retracted the wings with a passing thought.

The structure of ashen feathers dissolved back beneath his skin in under a second, without a twinge of heat or muscular resistance. The bone plate remained cool against his spine, seamlessly harmonized with his Mana circulation.

”It worked,” Dante touched the leather harness over his chest, verifying the stable internal flow. ”Not even a Third Ring tracking hound will sniff this out from six feet away.”

”Terrific,” Maria popped a grape into her mouth, chewing slowly. ”Now plant your rear on the rug. We’re playing.”

”Playing what?”

Maria strolled down the hall and returned carrying a battered rectangular cardboard box she had rescued from the tool cupboard during the move: an ancient Monopoly set that had belonged to her brother.

She dumped the contents of the box across the middle of the rug without a shred of ceremony.

The thick cardboard board slapped open against the floor, flanked by dozens of dog-eared deed cards, a pair of white dice with worn pips, and disheveled heaps of pastel-colored play money.

”Are you serious?” Dante looked at the pile of painted paper with open disdain. ”This is a game of random chance designed to entertain eight-year-olds.”

”Eight-year-olds who aren’t chicken about losing their cash to me,” she sat cross-legged on the rug, resting her elbows on her knees, and hauled the stack of blue five-thousand bills to her side. ”I’m the banker.”

”The bank is bound to distribution charts and regulated interest tables.”

”I am the bank and the rules are whatever I say they are.” She tossed a meager wad of yellow thousand-scrip bills at him. ”Take your change and pick a token before I buy up every railroad.”

Dante sighed, reaching for the little black plastic shoe token.

He took his seat before the board, gingerly adjusting his bound arm against his chest.

Thirty Intelligence against ten.

This shouldn’t even qualify as a contest.

Forty minutes later, the living room felt like a loan shark backroom downtown.

Dante had locked down a total monopoly across the south side of the board. He owned every red and yellow property, plastic houses stacked to the absolute limit of the rules, with the statistical probabilities of every dice outcome tracked on a sheet of parchment beside the board.

”You landed on Boardwalk for the third time in a row,” Dante pointed his left index finger at Maria’s token, an iron racecar. ”With four red houses built, rent is seven hundred and fifty thousand play dollars.”

Maria glared at the board through narrowed eyes.

She sat with only three crumpled ten-thousand bills left and two mortgaged green properties.

”These dice are loaded,” she said, her voice dropping dangerously low.

”The dice are standard injection-molded plastic, Maria. The probability of rolling a seven on two six-sided dice is sixteen point six percent. You advanced twenty-one squares over the past four turns, placing the odds of landing on this title at seventy-two percent certainty.”

”Shut up with the percentages.” She reached for the steel bar leaning against the sofa frame and planted its rounded blunt end against the hardwood floor, exactly two inches from the cardboard board.

Dante stared at the metal bar, then looked up into her face.

”You are not threatening your creditor with a bar of carbon steel.”

”I’m not threatening,” she offered a crooked grin that lacked any shred of warmth. ”I’m requesting an amicable restructuring of my Boardwalk debt. My proposal is: you waive the rent this turn, and I don’t snap that little black plastic shoe in two with the tip of this bar.”

”That is a gross breach of commercial contract!”

”That’s what happens when the debtor has twenty-six Strength and the banker can barely lift a glass of water with his right hand.”

Dante looked at his neat stack of colorful money, then at the heavy steel rod that would crush straight through the apartment’s hardwood floorboards with a single tap.

He swallowed dry, snatched Maria’s crumpled bills from the board, and tossed them back to her side.

”Temporary relief granted under force majeure,” he grumbled through clenched teeth, scratching out the loss on his parchment with a furious slash of his pencil.

”See how well diplomacy works?” She scooped up the play money with a loud laugh and scooped the dice back up. ”Now hand those bones over, I’m buying the water works.”

The match dragged on until five in the afternoon, concluding only when Maria threw the dice with such force that one bounced off the baseboard and vanished under Dante’s heavy bookshelf.

They abandoned the board spread across the floor, littered with pastel cash and empty cups of apple juice.

The late-afternoon amber light streamed through the balcony glass, casting long orange shadows across the room.

Dante touched the basilisk bone plate through his shirt, feeling the cool, steady seal against his back. For the first time in weeks, his mental interface carried no red countdowns or looming deadlines pulsing on his retina.

They had survived the Black Smelter, secured the ore required to keep their secrets buried, and now possessed ample time to prepare before taking their next plunge toward the deeper continents.

”Are we going back to school tomorrow?” Maria called from the kitchen, prying open the freezer to grab a tub of chocolate-chip ice cream.

Dante looked at the plastic board on the rug, resting his head back against the bookshelf with a resigned sigh.

”Mr. Rogério has a chemistry exam scheduled tomorrow,” he answered. ”And if you try breaking your desk again to stretch your legs, I’m personally handing your wrong answers to the front office.”

”I’d love to see you try with that pinned-up arm, bighead,” her voice echoed, punctuated by the clink of a metal spoon scraping the bottom of the ice cream tub.