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

The walk back to the Miller apartment building took almost forty minutes.

Dante walked slowly, planting the entire sole of his shoe flat with each step to avoid straining his abdominal muscles. His left hand stayed shoved in his pants pocket, but his forearm pressed Maria’s brother’s baggy shirt firmly against the rib wraps with every jolt of cracked asphalt. Maria walked beside him, matching his short stride, her fingers winding through the empty yellow plastic bag to make it look like they were returning together from an errand at the market.

They stopped at the foot of the external stairwell of the three-story building. The facade’s yellow paint peeled away in massive flakes, revealing the gray plaster beneath.

”Stay here,” Dante said, halting on the first concrete step. He was breathing through his mouth, his skin glistening with cold sweat dripping from his hairline. ”If my mom sees you with me, she will start asking questions we don’t need to answer.”

Maria looked up toward the top of the stairs.

”Can you handle three flights without falling on your back?”

”I can.” He gripped the rusted iron railing until his knuckles turned white. ”She will yell for five minutes over the shredded clothes and dirt. After that, she will shut my bedroom door and turn on the living room television. I know the drill.”

”If you die in bed, I fail my quest,” she reminded him in a stern voice. ”Just warning you.”

Dante gave a brief scoff through his nose, which twisted into a wince from the pain in his flank.

”I am not going to die on an old spring mattress. Monday at noon, go to the pump house. I will have gathered things we are going to need.”

He turned his body slowly and began ascending the first flight, dragging his left leg every two steps.

Maria stayed standing on the sidewalk, leaning against the concrete utility pole supporting the street’s tangled web of black wires. She waited.

Three minutes later, the third-floor window opened with the rattle of a loose latch.

Kayla Miller’s voice drifted clearly down into the quiet street, laced with that mechanical irritation that needed no real reason to surface.

”Dante! Where did you get that old man’s shirt? Look at the hem of your pants coated in red clay, boy! I spent all yesterday afternoon scrubbing the kitchen floor and you walk in looking like you slept in a pigpen!”

Dante’s voice answered from within, muffled by the glass.

”I tripped along the embankment near the train tracks. Fell into the rubble trench.”

”Rubble trench! Of course it was a rubble trench! You are ten years old and walk around with your head in the clouds! Get into the bathroom right now and don’t you dare touch that grime to the living room couch! And you are staying locked in your room until dinner so you learn to take care of things that cost money!”

A door slammed deep in the apartment. The window was shut in one swift motion.

The silence of midday settled over the sidewalk once more.

Maria pushed off the pole, wiped her hands on her dress skirt, and turned back toward her own street.

He said it would happen exactly like that.

She kicked a bottle cap into the gutter. There was something cold about how Dante dealt with his own parents, but she understood it. Things were not much different at her house. When her mother got home from work with legs swollen from the sewing machine, the last thing she wanted to hear was complaints from the kids. Everyone took care of their own patch of ground.

Maria’s house was steeped in the warm gloom of one in the afternoon.

The living room’s heavy fabric curtains were drawn shut to block the sunlight. From the master bedroom came the deep breathing of her mother, sleeping the heavy slumber of someone who spent all night threading needles on an industrial machine. Her older brother was gone, his sneakers missing from by the front door, which meant he had left to play soccer on the dirt field before eleven.

Maria went to the bathroom, slipped off the red dress stained with volcanic ash, and buried it at the bottom of the laundry hamper. She pulled on a pair of black elastic shorts and a faded tank top. She washed her arms and face in the sink, rinsing away the dust caked into the sweat from the walk, and entered the small bedroom situated behind the kitchen.

Her room contained only a narrow cot pressed against the brick wall and a two-door wardrobe.

She closed the thin wooden door, slid the latch, and lay on her back across the firm mattress, staring up at the exposed rafters of the ceiling.

The air in the room shifted suddenly.

There was no sound of a lock turning, nor any draft slipping through the closed hopper window. Only the bedroom’s scent of mold and dust was shoved into the corners, replaced by that clean aroma of morning breeze and dry leaves.

”You have a knack for this, kiddo.”

The voice came from the dark corner between the wardrobe and the wall.

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Maria whipped her head around instantly, sitting bolt upright on the bed with her back pressed against the rough plaster.

The guy in the white jacket was there.

He was sitting backward on an old wooden stool she used to reach the wardrobe’s top shelves, his arms folded across the backrest and his chin resting on his rolled-up sleeves. The wooden toothpick rolled from one side of his teeth to the other, and his light eyes, with that thin glowing rim that shone even in the dark of the closed room, looked straight at her.

”You again.” Maria pulled the thin blanket up to her knees without breaking eye contact. ”My mom is sleeping in the next room. If she wakes up and catches you in here, she will grab the broomstick.”

The man let out a short laugh, tilting his head back for a moment before looking at her again.

”Your old lady wouldn’t wake up right now if the roof fell on her head, you know that. The exhaustion from that factory weighs like lead on her shoulders.” He unfolded his arms, stretching out his long legs clad in pristine white sneakers. ”Just came to check on the job. Have to admit, I thought you would chicken out once you saw that brat’s meat sliced open in three trenches.”

”I don’t chicken out,” she retorted, lifting her chin. ”I cleaned the ash and stopped the bleeding just like the screen told me to.”

”I saw.” The fellow made a lazy gesture with his index finger in the air. ”And you hauled the kid back in a wheelbarrow. Resourceful. Most girls your age would sit on the sidewalk and bawl until a cop showed up to complicate everyone’s lives.”

A silver window opened in the middle of the small room, hovering just above Maria’s legs.

[Special Quest: Protect the Light.]

[Phase 1: Target Stabilization and Preservation Complete.]

[Registered Progress: 50%.]

[Class Requirements met with distinction.]

[Permanent Unlock Authorized: Primary Class [Rearguard Sentinel].]

[Structural Attribute Adjustment in progress...]

A warm pressure settled across Maria’s shoulders, as if someone had draped a heavy cloak over her body. The muscles in her thighs and back gave a sharp twitch, a rapid contraction that made the joints in her feet pop. Her hands felt firmer, more solid against the bedsheet.

The screen updated its lines of text before her eyes.

[Class Consolidated: Rearguard Sentinel (Level 1).]

[Hit Points increased: 26/26.]

[Strength: 12 (+1)]

[Dexterity: 13 (+1)]

[Constitution: 14 (+1)]

[Passive Skill Acquired: [Unshakable Stance] - Increases natural resistance to physical impacts and direct knockbacks. Reduces concussive damage by 10%.]

[Active Skill Acquired: [Rapid Intervention] - Grants a short dash at double speed toward a linked ally under imminent attack.]

Maria looked down at her hands. Her skin looked unchanged, still bearing the tiny scratches from picking blackberries by the hedge a few days ago, but when she closed her fingers, the feeling was different. There was a new density beneath the flesh, a firmness in the bones she had never felt before.

”Like the new toy?” The man in the white jacket leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ”You aren’t throwing magic sparks like that know-it-all kid, but nobody is knocking you down easily from this day on.”

Maria stared at him with a furrowed brow.

”Why are you doing this?”

”Doing what?”

”Giving this screen to me.” She pointed at the silver lettering. ”And looking out for that boy. You called him the Light Bearer in the quest, but he just looks like a stubborn brat who lives in a crumbling building and nearly died against the first monster he found.”

The man took the toothpick from his mouth, twirling it between long fingers. For a second, the sloppy demeanor vanished from his face, replaced by a somber shadow that made the room feel colder.

”That kid is stubborn because he does not remember who he used to be,” the man said softly, his words carrying a clarity that echoed right into Maria’s bones. ”His soul has an old debt to collect. An ugly fight left hanging on the other side. Only the husk they handed him in this life was born with a weak engine. A paper body that can barely support its own breath.”

He looked into her eyes, locking the golden rim of his irises onto the girl.

”If he steps into that hell alone again, he will die before clearing the second ring of the minor continents. And the story cannot end with him chewed up by a blind mutt on the side of the road.”

”And where do I come into this?”

”You are the bumper, kiddo.” He popped the toothpick back into the corner of his mouth, and that easygoing grin reappeared on his face as though the earlier gravity had never existed. ”He thinks fast, studies the old books, and throws stones from afar. But when the beast leaps for his throat, you are the one kicking the monster in the chest and holding the line.”

Maria looked at the screen where the skill [Rapid Intervention] glowed in pale gray lettering.

”He is annoying,” she remarked, folding her arms. ”Always wanting to give orders like he runs the neighborhood.”

”I know he is annoying.” The fellow chuckled again, rising from the wooden stool without making a single sound on the old floorboards. ”His ego was always bigger than his decency. But you have a firm grip. Clip him across the ears whenever he starts barking loud, and he will sit down and listen.”

He walked over to the closed hopper window, stopping with his back to the girl. His white jacket seemed devoid of visible seams, draping over broad shoulders with an uncanny lightness.

”He will ask you to go into that pit with him,” the man warned without turning his head. ”The kid hungers for that place. He won’t be able to spend much time staring at his bedroom walls. When he opens that rift again, do not let him go alone.”

”I have school in the afternoon,” she countered. ”And I have to help my mom hem pants.”

”Figure it out, Maria.” The fellow turned his head slightly, giving her a wink with one light eye. ”You aren’t just a girl running barefoot on hot asphalt anymore. You are on the board now. Look after your husk, break in these new bones, and when the black smoke rises again... do your job.”

He took a step toward the closed window.

The sunlight streaming through the frosted glass flared slightly brighter for a full second. When Maria blinked to clear her vision, the wooden stool was empty.

The clean scent of cool breeze was gone, leaving behind only the close air of the suburban room and the distant drone of an electric saw cutting boards in the carpentry shop down the block.

Maria looked at the screen that hovered persistently before her, displaying twenty-six hit points and physical attributes surpassing the standards of any adult on her street.

She clenched her fists tightly, feeling the wood of the bed’s headboard creak faintly under the pressure of her fingers.

”Monday...” she muttered to the empty wall. ”That boy is paying me back for double the juice.”