Dead Man Walking (D&D/DanMachi)

[Stimpak Medic]

Prologue: One Of The Fallen

I opened my eyes. Everything was blurry, and my mind could barely form a coherent thought. Around me lay the bodies of five humans other than myself. They were messed up pretty badly. Throats slit, disemboweled, and one was even decapitated. I could immediately see that this wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter. Whoever had killed these people was incredibly skilled, and from the pressure, I knew I was underground.

"Aaagh!" I screamed as a searing pain tore through my head. Thinking too much was out of the question. Only then did I feel something that shouldn't be in my head sticking through the bone of my skull.

I tried my hardest to look up, raising my eyes, only to have another jolt of searing pain flash through my head. Slowly, from my position on my back, I reached to my forehead and felt it. A thin blade, barely larger than a kitchen knife, was stuck in my skull. It seemed that the bones of my skull had stopped it from hitting my brain.

"Arrrgh!" I screamed as soon as I touched the knife's handle; a searing pain several times more intense and burning flared through my head. I quickly released the knife, and my head jerked back, slamming into the rocky dirt floor I lay upon. I almost blacked out from the pain.

I was not in good shape.

I knew I had to pull the knife out, but I couldn't do it. It hurt so much. Just touching the blade almost knocked me unconscious from the pain.

I was one step from death, and I knew I didn't have long.

Any moment now.

I looked up again, forcing my slowly becoming unresponsive eyes up. As I did that, I unconsciously slid backwards on a pool of something slippery and sticky.

Thud.

My head smacked into the dirt wall.

I screamed again, but I barely registered it.

'I don't want to die.'

The thought passed through my hazy mind. I felt warm, as if a soft blanket covered me. Everything went quiet.

"Some...bod..y..He.." I couldn't even finish my plea for help before everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, I felt cold, as if it were a chilly late autumn day. The knife lay next to my head, and I could see the bodies of the humans that died near me. They had begun to decompose slightly. They were pallid and white as ghosts. I forced myself to sit up, which was harder than I had first thought. However, it was not like I had felt the strain of my muscles, as that was absent, but it was that my body did not respond well to me.

"Move!" My voice came out as a strange guttural growling hiss.

Wait...That wasn't my voice. In fact, this body feels different than the one I knew on Earth. Aside from coming back from what I assumed was death, of course.

I looked down at my body.

My shirt was slashed open, and a long, deep, and rotting gash went from my chest down the side of my left ribs, to my lower back.

It was something I would not survive, yet I wasn't bleeding. Nor did I feel the wound, but I should seriously get that checked out if I wanted to live long in wherever this was.

"Haaaaggghhgggh" My breathing, which I did by habit to no effect, came out like I was gurgling phlegm from the back of my throat.

Was this what I thought it was? Had I become...an Undead?

I tried to shudder on reflex from this revelation, but I found I could not do so.

I thought I would be panicking right now, but I simply could not find it within me to do so, like my brain had shut off the panic option.

"What do I do?" I managed to force out. My voice seemed to come from somewhere other than my throat, as those muscles no longer responded to my call.

I stood up and looked around. Those people I died with, they looked nice. I wanted to get closer to them.

I didn't remember who they were, but they drew me to them. I walked forward to one and knelt next to him.

His neck was slit, and his flesh was cold. A sword was sticking through his right arm. His dulled green eyes were open wide in the confused terror he felt upon his death. What a nice arm. So white. So plump. So delicious...

"No!" I shouted, recoiling with a groaned-out shout.

I would not. I could not eat a Human. I was Human. I wasn't a cannibal, and never had the urge to eat someone else in my life.

This confirmed it. I was an undead of some form.

That was something that should have been terrifying. I should have felt terrified, but I simply couldn't muster such emotions, no matter how hard I wished to. It was just a very tiny part of myself that felt that fear, replaced by the deafening hunger.

I stepped backwards, and the hunger died down somewhat, but still began to gnaw at my mind.

I walked over to a different person. A young lady who looked to be barely past twenty. She wore chainmail and plate armor that covered her chest and arms, but her helmet lay next to her as a knife stuck completely through her neck. Confusion was on her face. Her open-face helm must have come off as she fell.

Her mace and shield lay next to her open hands, having been dropped when taken by complete surprise.

"Huh, so you survived?" The sound of a young man's voice came from behind me.

"I knew listening to my instincts to come back and make sure the job was done was the right decision." The voice leisurely mused, and I felt several things strike my body. I looked down to see several knife blades poking through my shoulders and neck.

I turned to look at my attacker, utterly unfazed by the knives sticking through me.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to be angry. I tried to channel rage, but it just didn't come.

"Oh my, is this some special power from your Falna?" The voice said, and in front of me, I noticed a hooded man in a black, thinly armored body-covering suit. His face was covered by a cowl with a faceguard. It was clear that he didn't want his identity discovered.

"Well, regardless, you're going to have to die even more now. " He said, ignoring my question. He pulled back his leg, and then, like a bullet, with a loud bang, he kicked forward.

Crunch! Splat!

My body was blown apart.

---

When I opened my eyes again, I felt a now semi-familiar cold. Around me lay the bodies of five humans other than myself. They were messed up pretty badly. Throats slit, disemboweled, and one was even decapitated. The young man with the delicious arm, the young lady with the mace and armor.

No traces of my destructive end of being kicked and blown apart could be seen.

I sat up and looked down at myself. Sure enough, the deep gash, but my body was easier to use, as if I was getting used to it.

Was that all a dream, or vision, or whatever undead see?

I sat there for who knows how long before I heard the same voice again.

"Oh. One of them survived? Fascinating. I was right to come back." The black-garbed man said, walking leisurely towards me and stopping before my sitting form. Seeing me do nothing, he squatted down.

"So, you're not going to try to run? Not that you'd get far." He chuckled, then sniffed the air.

"Y'know, for someone dying, you really stink. More than the corpses of your friends." He pinched his nose, standing up.

"Wait!" I tried to shout, but he cut me off.

"If you want someone to blame for this, blame your captain for talking back to me at the bar yesterday. Goodbye."

Crack!

My body was splattered. I didn't even see the kick coming.

---

I opened my eyes to the quickly becoming familiar scene of dead bodies.

I had a goal now. Survive. Then try to make sense of what was happening. If one thing was good about my inability to feel strong emotions, it was that I had a clear mind.

Fighting this guy was out of the question, and running away wasn't an option either. I would surely be caught in these strange tunnels of dirt and rock.

No mercy for the dead, eh?

Well, I guess I'd have to play the part.

I lay still and unmoving, holding my breath in my imaginary lungs.

I didn't close my eyes, as that would be an obvious tell that I was faking it. I kept my eyes wide open in a shocked look.

Shortly after, the man walked into the small cavernous hallway we lay in.

He stopped, looked around, and sniffed the air.

"Smells funny." He said before shaking his head.

"I guess my instincts were wrong this time. That rarely happens." He grumbled.

Then, he turned and left down the hallway he came from, leaving me alone with the corpses. I lay still, not moving for what felt like forever. Then, when I was sure he was gone. Well, as sure as I could be, my right leg twitched. Nothing.

Okay, so he wasn't just in hiding, waiting for me to get up.

I stood up, letting out a long breath I had convinced myself that I was holding in. It took more than a few minutes as an undead to get used to not breathing. Certain things would need to be beaten out of me.

All that was with me now was the deafening silence and my own raspy breathing.

As an undead, what was I supposed to do?

Then it hit me. The man mentioned something I recognized. A very special word.

Falna.

It was a word originating in a novel I had once partially read. A word that I so did not want to hear.

It meant one thing. I was in the world of Danmachi, but not as an Elf, a Human, or a Dwarf. No, I had become an undead in the story where Gods and Adventurers ruled the world.

Was there even a meaning to all of this?

If there was, I knew it not.