Hunter walked over to the small hole that the imp had dug in the ground. He told some of the dirt aside and found a small wooden box a few inches under the earth. The young man crouched down to take a closer look and couldn’t help the thrill of greed that ran through his heart. He hoped that he would find something worth his while. Killing imps had been fun, but they didn’t carry any valuable material outside of their weapons.

His mind was salivating over imagined treasures as he pried the top off of the box. It took a few careful tugs, but he finally dislodged it with a creaking sound of old wood. When he threw the cover to the side, he frowned at the contents of the box. 

Laying inside was the skeletal form of a family cat. It had died long ago. The flesh was pulled back from its bones, and it looked like it had collapsed in on itself. There was an old piece of construction paper lying over the top of the corpse.

With a grimace, he picked up the paper and unfurled it with both hands. On it, a child had drawn simple figures. There was a man, a woman, a little girl, and a small orange cat. The kid had labeled each one, and Hunter felt himself choking up. There was Mommy, Daddy, “me,” and Crooker. Drawn behind the family in purple and blue was a poorly drawn house and a fair approximation of Snodgrass.

Hunter dropped the small piece of paper back into the grave and stood up. 

How far does greed have to go when an imp is willing to dig up some poor cat’s grave? 

The teenager didn’t like to think about the answer to his question. He was already on the path to greed, and he felt sick when he remembered the glee Hunter felt when he imagined what kind of treasure he could find. He didn’t like that the Archivist had dropped him in this Rift, but he didn’t want to lose himself to such a degree that he would start pilfering graves in search of treasure.

He took a deep breath to steady himself before walking a couple of paces from the hole. When he felt like he was far enough away, he sat down cross-legged on the ground. He laid his sword down in his lap and then painfully removed his hand from its grip. Finger by finger, he strained against the influence of the blade. When he was finally able to remove it from his grasp, he sighed in relief. 

It’s probably only letting me let go because it’s still in my lap. I wonder if I found a scabbard if it would allow me to release it so long as it was still on my body? 

The thought was an interesting one. There were going to be times when he needed to put down his sword. Otherwise, it would become more of a hindrance than a help. With those thoughts in mind, he activated his cleanse skill.

At first, he wasn’t sure that it was accomplishing anything. He still felt the hungry sensation coming from his bracer and blade. It didn’t help that he was also physically famished. The two feelings seemed to intertwine with each other and become indistinguishable from one another. After he had almost drained his entire pool of mana, he started to feel a cooling sensation in his body.

The feeling was slight, but it was like a burden was lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t realized how tired the two objects were making him. It was only after he had channeled cleanse for long enough that he realized the toll. It was like when he was a kid and had started losing his vision. He wasn’t sure what age he had been, his early years tended to run together, but he had started losing his eyesight over the course of a few years until one of his elementary school teachers had noticed. 

When his mom took him to get an eye test, and they had told him that he needed glasses that he realized he couldn’t see as well as other people. When he finally got his new pair of cheap plastic glasses and put them on, it was like the whole world had been revealed. He still remembered that sensation of regaining something that he had never known he’d lost. 

Demonic influence seemed to work the same way. It was a slow, insidious process and you only realized it happened when you looked at the alternative. 

Hunter picked up his sword and rose to his feet. He could still feel the taint from his equipment, but he hoped that periodically cleansing himself would slow the spread of demonic influence. Maybe the Sentinel at the Sanctuary would be able to give him a better answer.

He once again set off for the Sanctuary, and he noticed that the golden mote of light on his mini-map was steadily growing larger. His mini-map was now slightly larger than it was before he added points to Perception, but Hunter realized that he would still be able to see the Sanctuary with his own two eyes before it appeared on the map.

After another hour of traveling, he was ambushed by two imps. The fight went much better than he expected. Although he had been hit by a couple of blasts of fire, they didn’t do nearly enough damage to stop him. He had been able to kill both imps and absorb his equipment. The only real casualty was his clothing. His navy blue long-sleeve shirt had been reduced to shreds, and his already ratty jeans looked like they had been chewed on by a bear. 

In exchange, more of that odd curling script had traced its way through his equipment, and he earned two levels in both pain and fire resistance. When he checked his path points, he realized that leveling in resistances didn’t contribute to his Path points.

Well, there goes my chance to throw myself into a bonfire and see what happens, he groused. 

When he finished the fight, he sat down to cycle cleanse once more and then switched over to meditation. When he had replenished his mana, he checked his number of Path points. Since he had last checked, he earned one level in dodge, sword mastery, meditation, and cleanse. That brought his total number of points to sixteen. He still had nine more to go until he could pick between the Acolyte or Greed II paths. He still wasn’t sure which one he wanted to take. Greed gave him quick power, while the archive path focused on utility and longevity. It made him wonder if that’s how the infernal and holy powers like to wage their wars. It made a certain sort of sense.

Dismissing his screen, he wearily trudged toward the marker on his mini-map. It looked closer than ever, but his feet hurt and the muscles in his back were spasming. He had never walked this much in his entire life. Basketball games were a world removed from fighting Rift demons.

When the golden dot finally appeared in his immediate map, he perked up. The last few hours had been a strange mix of boredom and terror. He hadn’t run into any more demons, but just the chance of fighting more of them was enough to make his heartbeat race. 

He broke into a job to crest the small rise between him and the Sanctuary. As soon as he reached the top, his eyes drank in his surroundings. His jog faltered to an awkward walk as he got his first glimpse of the Sanctuary.

It had been attacked.