“Hiiiiiiiiiii” Alice screamed and frantically turned towards the direction of the voice, but couldn’t see anyone there through the darkness. She put her fists up and tried to look intimidating.

“Sorry, my bad. Didn’t mean to scare you” the voice said again to her. She lowered her fists to show that she wasn't hostile. Not that she could put up much of a fight in her state.

“What do you want from me?” Alice said towards the voice in a slightly defeated tone. She had finally escaped from the merchants just to run into another person, must be some criminal or runaway slave looking to use her body. Although the fact the voice referred to her as a little human was against that theory. Maybe it's a Demon? What rotten luck she thought to herself.

“Let's be friends, it's quite lonely out here and I'm sure you don’t have anyone to depend on around here?” The voice was correct, she was all alone out here. This stranger seemed to be the only way out of this mess. Even if he mistreated her at least she might have a chance to make it out alive and escape at a later date.

“Sure let's form a party then” Alice replied. The voice went quiet for a second, is he having second thoughts? “You can see your status?” he asked her “Yes? Everyone can?”. “Oh that’s such a neat feature, how do we make a party?”. Alice thought he genuinely sounded like a child who had found a new sweet shop with excitement in his voice.

“If we hold hands I can make one”. Alice put out her hand towards the direction the voice was coming from.

A huge black arm with razor-sharp metallic claws that shined under the moonlight emerged out of the darkness and grabbed her hand carefully. Each one of those claws was almost the size of her. For all 5 of them to hold her hand was quite the nerve-racking experience for poor Alice.

[Form party] she said with her voice shaking.

[Party formed of 2 members, Alice(Leader) + Xia]

[Name: Alice] (Leader)
[Race: Human]
[Level: 12]
[STR: 30 (Weakened), DEX:42, CON: 12 (Weakened), INT: 72, WIS: 56]
(Extreme Hunger) (Extreme Fatigue) (Bleeding) (Weakened) (Freezing) (Slave)

[Name: Xia]
[Race: Nightwalker]
[Level: 281]
[STR: 259200, DEX: 259200, CON: 259200, INT: 259200, WIS: 259200]
(Life Force Unstable)

Both Xia and Alice inspected their new party members' status. Alice was in total shock. She had heard of the legendary Nightwalkers but never of one capable of speech like Xia seemed to be. From what she knew they were bloodthirsty creatures that craved only death. Also, his stats were easily higher than dragons. This must be the monster she was following.

Xia was shocked at how weak Alice was. Not just her stats but all the status effects. How was she even still standing?

“Hi Alice, you seem to be in a really bad state haha. I'm sorry I don't have any food on hand for you nor do I know any healing magic.”

Alice seemed to think for a second with her chin resting on her hand. “The merchants should still be waiting at the edge of the forest, they have supplies we could take.” She said this while straining her neck to look into Xia’s many eyes.

She was only 1 and a half meters tall after all. He was easily 4 times her height. The colossal being simply nodded and turned towards the corpses. [Rise] he said and the dead bodies started shaking. Their flesh turned to dust and fell to the floor. The 5 merchants stood tall now as skeletons wearing armor.
“Go” he simply said. All the skeletons saluted him and turned around to run back to the poor merchants waiting outside.

Xia then recovered the candle from the floor and started a little campfire to help with Alice’s (Freezing) status. He personally couldn’t even tell that it was cold but seeing her shuddering told him all he needed to know.

After Alice got over the initial shock of sharing a campfire with a 6-meter tall shadow that was now lying on the floor and poking the fire with his sinister claw that was covered in blood. “So while we wait for the skeletons what’s your story?” Xia inquired.

Alice sighed and started her story, not like she could say no to such a dangerous monster. How she was once a merchant said to be a prodigy among her peers to her fall to being a lowly slave. While telling her story Xia reached across the campfire and put one of his claws against the collar.

“Shadows heed my call, break all cursed items before me, [Shadow Break]”. The heavy metal collar fell to the ground with a clunk and the (Slave) disappeared from Alice’s status.

She was genuinely surprised, breaking slave collars was thought to be almost impossible. Alice started to relax after that and said her story with less stuttering. After that act of kindness, she knew Xia wasn’t evil like the other Nightwalkers. She had thought he was just tormenting her for entertainment at first to reduce its boredom but now she had hope.

“Guess it's my turn next,” Xia said after Alice finished her story. She went wide-eyed. He was really willing to share his tale with a lowly ex-slave like her?

“I used to be a human just like you, but from another world. We spoke differently and have different views to the humans you’re used to. For example, we don’t believe in slavery anymore.”
“I arrived here about a week ago…” and Xia continued not leaving out a single detail. Alice just listened without questioning anything. I could see some doubt in her eyes but she listened anyway.

During his story, the skeletons returned with 3 more bodies and a few boxes of food. Alice thanked the skeleton that handed her some dried meat and she chewed on it while listening to Xia.

After finishing his story Xia used [Rise] on the bodies to get 3 more human servants. “What you need to find is a dungeon,” Alice said. Now that was a bombshell for Xia. He had no way to know dungeons existed but now he did there was hope.

An infinite monster spawner, where the monsters are trapped in a small area… What a genius idea, why hadn’t he thought of that.