A single arrow hit the Cleric in the left eye.
The arrow’s tip exited the back of their head and pushed out gore that rained to the dirt path. The Cleric fell over backward, and his HP gauged displayed why.
Land-elf (Cleric) | HP: 0%
Laughter erupted from the trees.
“You fucking one-shotted him, mate!”
And it prompted the guards to draw their swords and step closer to the laughter. “Everyone, back to the town at once!” The guard looked at Nijana, who stood watching. “You too,” he said to her, gesturing with his armored glove for her to retreat. “Do not go into the woods!”
“Why?” Nijana asked.
The woods were where she needed to go to escape from Guy and his friends, and they were probably going to kill her once they found out she lied and stole from them.
The guard gave her a baffled glare. “Is that a serious question?”
“Calm down,” said the second village guard. “She is a fae and not from our world.”
“Well,” the first guard said and collected the right words to use. “You see—”
A rain of arrows fell upon the guards, making them yelp in pain.
She watched as their HP fell to zero in seconds, their bodies covered in a dozen arrows as they fell to their deaths. Three men lay dead near Nijana—
Five arrows landed near her feet.
Another four hit the tree to her right.
Nijana was the assailants’ new target. She reached for her Recruit’s Rapier, yanking it free, and scurried into the woods, swerved to the right, and put her body behind a tree. The sounds of six arrows hitting that tree echoed. The attacker was behind her, not in front. She just had to keep running. Staying meant Guy and his friends would find her, discover the stuff she had stolen, and learn the truth that she wasn’t Averyl. Then she’d feel Guy’s rage. Then there were the dead she left behind. Someone might blame her for it, and it wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Nijana was no stranger to killing men and no stranger to nearly losing her life because a man caught her stealing.
Nijana ran through the woods, keeping her ears open for the sound of arrows hitting the trees. She heard nothing. The attacker gave up. She kept an eye out for anyone lurking behind trees and bushes. There was no movement. Perhaps they directed their anger to the elves, not the lone fae Bard. Still, she opted to run and resisted the temptation to fly as that’d only make her an easier target once she cleared the treetops, and that was assuming the branches wouldn’t smack her face—
Rustling noises reverberated from the bushes up ahead.
Nijana slowed down and aimed her Recruit’s Rapier forward, allowing her sore legs to get the rest they yearned for. A petite woman crawled out from the bushes with platinum wavy hair wearing a hair hoop with bunny ears on its top. She was short too. Nijana almost thought it was some teenage girl until she saw developed womanly curves nearly pop out from the spell caster’s dress that she wore. Then there was the heavy makeup on the petite woman’s face, giving her the allure of a sultry 4’11 vixen.
The woman’s information appeared above her head.
Land-druid (Mage) | LVL: 21 | Rank: B
And druids were never known for their height—
“Hey, watch this!” the druid woman yelled, then open her tome, its pages flipping toward the end of the book as it glowed red with flames. The Mage idled as she began a three-second cast.
Nijana ran. The spell the druid cast was for her.
The Mage finished her cast, and a Fireball larger than her fist propelled to Nijana and exploded against her back. It engulfed her wings with rippling flames that spread to her dress. Nijana was on fire. She panicked and desperately tried to put out the raging fires sending searing hot pain across her body.
Nijana collapsed to her knees and fell over face first as words in her vision delivered unwelcomed news.
You died.
Chapter Seven
“What’s happening?”
Rachael had lowered from the skies after making a brief flight to Guy’s location. Her buzzing wings slowed their flap as she landed and reached for her Oak Staff.
“I don’t know,” Guy said. “But Tempeste here says we’re going to need a healer.”
He gave Rachael and Tempeste party invitations. The Party screen updated as the two accepted it.
Guy | HP: 886/886 | MP: 216/216 | AP: 0/100
Rachael | HP: 344/344 | MP: 248/248 | AP: 0/100
Tempeste | HP: 990/990 | MP: 300/300 | AP: 50/100
Guy and Rachael followed Tempeste and hurried to the village’s gate, pushing past the fleeing elves. Some were drenched with blood; others had multiple arrows stuck in their backs and limped to Clerics. Their wounds faded after a bright burst of green and blue light.
Tempeste stopped near the exit, peeked out into the leafy forest beyond, scanning the bushes and trees in the distance. She spun back to Guy and Rachael as they neared, brushed away a lock of her blonde hair that had fallen over the left half of her face, and sighed.
“As I had feared,” Tempeste said. “It is the people killers.”
Guy paused and contorted his face. “The what?”
“Fellow elves afflicted by the corruption and given a combat class,” Tempeste explained. “They kill innocent people for sport, hence the name ‘people killers.’”
The trio moved past the gate with weapons drawn and their senses on edge, searching for hostile threats lurking in the woods.
“‘People killers,’” Guy said, shaking his head. “That’s a terrible name.”
“You have a better one?” Tempeste asked.
“Well, game rules are changing everything,” Guy said. “So that makes everyone afflicted players kinda. So, we should call them ‘player killers.’”
Tempeste looked at Guy, grimacing as they continued. “Player . . . killers?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Tempeste held the expression. “That is terrible.”
“I agree,” Rachael said while laughing.
“What the fuck?” Guy walked backward while looking at Rachael. “Way to have my back!”
“‘People killers’ make sense, Guy,” Rachael said. “This isn’t a game. It’s real.”
“I’m going with ‘player killers.’” Guy rotated to walk normally.
“How about just ‘PKers?’” Rachael offered.
“Hmm, that works,” Guy said. He scratched his chin while lost in thought. “Still ‘player killers’ in my head, though—”
“Quiet!” Tempeste said, and lifted her sword forward, the Spellsword Saber from what Guy could examine. She ambled toward something that caught her attention.
Guy and Rachael followed Tempeste and stopped when the elven woman lowered herself to dead armored guards, their gore-soaked armor full of arrows. Come to think of it, Guy noticed that someone had littered the ground and nearby trees with dozens of arrows. There was a Ranger close, maybe two or three, he didn’t know. Guy held Asteria’s Sword with both hands and stopped ahead to use his body as a shield to protect Tempeste and Rachael. He reminisced about his battle with Emeraldal a month ago, an imperial Ranger who nearly got the best of him and his friends.
If arrows start flying, then I gotta swat them away.
Tempeste stood among the dead and glanced at Rachael. “Have you learned the Revive spell?”
Rachael shook her head, an uneasy no. “I haven’t.”
“Acquire the sigils for it when you get the chance,” Tempeste said. “The sigil combination of Triage, Heart, Life, Light, and Target will teach you Revive. It is a spell similar to the Cleric spell, Resurrection. With it, you can restore life to the dead, provided they still have LP—”
Two elven men leaped down from the treetops behind Rachael, grinning and waving their weapons. Guy dashed to them, shouting to Rachael. “Get down!”
“It is them!” Tempeste roared while raising her weapon.
Rachael held her Oak Staff out to the new t
hreat. The PKers had arrived. As Guy and Rachael assessed their opponents, a second group jumped down from the trees behind Tempeste. The PKers surrounded them, a mixture of Rangers, Mages, and Medics.
“Lady L’Aignelet!” a voice called.
Guy’s party saw three guards from the village approach, weapons ready, and pointed at the PKers. “Let us handle this!” one guard said.
Tempeste shook her head at them. “No, their level is much too high for you!”
But the guards didn’t listen and sprinted to the PKers anyway, blades raised high to swing. The PKer Mage just laughed, flipped open her tome, and chain cast Fireball after Fireball. The guards’ armor burst into flames, staggering them enough for the Rangers to take aim with their bows and release a torrent of arrows. Arrow tips exited through the guards. The battle had taken no longer than twenty seconds.
A woman screamed, drawing the PKers’ murdering eyes. An elven man and woman had stopped. They looked like travelers who were about to enter the city, not realizing there was violence brewing at the gates. The Ranger laughed, fired three arrows into the woman’s chest, turning her gown red. Her HP was zero before she hit the ground. Her male companion tried to run, tripped over his feet, and fell.
Cackling like a witch, the druid Mage finished her spell cast and summoned a lightning bolt from the sky to zap the fallen elven man. He didn’t have enough HP to survive the blast and lay on the ground with black smoke rising from his unmoving body.
Rachael backed up to Guy. “What do we do?”
Guy looked at the dead—the guards Tempeste had examined, the three who dashed in and died instantly, and the man and woman who had just gone out for a walk in the forest and were returning home. Innocent men and women had lost their lives before his eyes.
Rage boiled Guy’s blood, and he squeezed the hilt of Asteria’s Sword hard enough to turn his hands red.
“Let’s teach them a lesson, Rachael.” Guy led the charge and targeted the druid Mage. Low defense, cloth armor—she shouldn’t be too tough to take down.
The druid angled her gaze to Guy and saw him running to her with his blade aimed at her face. She laughed and held out her tome, its self-flipping pages flashed as a casting circle glowed and rotated below her feet. Waves of astral energy caused her purple gown, curly platinum hair, and bunny ears to flutter mysteriously, as if she were in the ocean. She was probably casting Fireball. Guy leaped to the right, hoping to escape from the blast when she completed her cast—
Lightning fried his ass and brought his HP to 559.
A surge of electricity locked up Guy’s muscles, and he dropped his sword. The new notification appearing near his name on the Party screen explained why.
Shocked
Temporarily paralyzed while lightning electrocutes you.
The Mage needed three seconds to cast Fireball. Guy was a sitting duck one moment, then a roasting one the next.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god!”
Guy flailed his arms about, his body rippling in flames. At least the stun’s effect wore off. Now the burning effect was lowering his HP. It was at 222, then a second later 217, and a second after that, 212—
Regeneration soothed his wounds as its healing over time forced his HP to tick upward and counter the effect of burning. Rachael had arrived, finishing her quick cast spell. Guy recovered Asteria’s Sword, ran, dove, and rolled across the ground, evading a second Fireball, to come up just in time to receive Medica from Rachael, granting him another 56 HP.
“Okay,” Guy growled as the flames that burned him faded. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Tempeste’s HP dipped from 990 to 791.
Guy saw why when he turned around. Tempeste had the Ranger on the run, if you could call it that. Like Guy earlier, electrical energy had zapped the Ranger, a stunning effect from a lightning elemental spell. The Ranger struggled to keep their bow stable correctly. Their twitching hands prevented it. The best they could do was hit an arrow or two at Tempeste for minor damage.
Rachael cast Regeneration on Guy again. With her at his side, Guy brandished Asteria’s Sword once again and spotted the druid Mage. The Mage ran up a hill to chase an elven civilian who walked into the battle.
“Not this time,” Guy muttered, as he and Rachael darted to the Mage—
A PKer Medic stepped out from their hiding spot behind a tree and clocked Guy.
Shrugging off the pain, Guy saw that Regeneration brought his HP to 609. He cleaved the Medic up and down, cutting red lines into their chain mail and not removing a lot of HP.
He looked at the Medic’s information.
Land-elf (Medic) | LVL: 22 | Rank: B | HP: 98%
Well, shit.
Rachael threw another Regeneration on Guy, ran to the druid and bashed their head before they could cast another spell. The fleeing civilian was still vertical and ran. Rachael saved him by interrupting the Mage’s spell casting.
Guy shifted his focus back to the Medic, slashing Asteria’s Sword furiously. His AP was rising at a steady rate. Too bad the Medic’s HP wasn’t dropping at a steady rate. Their level and the Regeneration buff were preventing it.
A red-orange explosion brightened the forest. Rachael had narrowly avoided the wrath of the now angry Mage as they finished casting Firestorm. Rachael healed herself with Regeneration, threw down a Recovery Orb as a precaution, and returned to bash the Mage, interrupting its spell casting and lowering its HP.
“Heal me, you dolt!” The Mage cried.
The Medic dove from Guy’s slash, came up and cast Regeneration on the Mage, making her HP slowly rise and undoing the damage Rachael had done. The Medic ran from Guy and then charged to Rachael with his staff aimed for her. Guy countered by casting Blinding Flash. A surge of white light blinded everyone who wasn’t in his party. Blind Medics couldn’t use their weapons correctly, and blind Mages couldn’t aim their Fireball spells.
Rachael laughed, gripped her staff, smacked the druid Mage in the face with it, and once more in her chest. Guy joined Rachael, and together they struck the Mage with repeated strikes, bringing their HP down.
Land-druid (Mage) | HP: 72%
Very slowly. Rachael was level 9, and Guy 15—
The Medic erupted with a rippling wave of blue and green energy, causing his body and the Mage to sparkle. They looked at Guy and Rachael. The Medic could see again. Whatever it was the Medic cast, not only did it restore their HP but removed the blind debuff from Guy’s Blinding Flash. Guy recast Blinding Flash—
The Medic’s staff struck him in the face, interrupting the cast, gave the battlestaff a spin, and swept out Rachael’s legs, sending her to the ground on her back. Medics were a lot more powerful than Guy thought. It made him wonder what Rachael could do in the future. The Medic stood above Rachael, raising his staff high to smash her. Guy checked his AP; he was at 90.
One more hit, so he delivered it to the Medic with an upward stroke and used Storm Slash. Guy twirled with Asteria’s Sword out and sent the Medic flying into a tree, hitting it so hard its trunk cracked. The Medic struggled to get up—
“Guy!”
Rachael leaped and pushed Guy away.
A bolt of lightning zapped the space he’d been standing in. The Mage was still in play. Guy and Rachael were on the ground, her left hand holding his chest. The two looked at the Mage as she adjusted her bunny ear head accessory, then put the tome away.
“What is wrong, Paladin?” The Mage taunted. “Afraid of a girl?” The druid Mage turned around and repeatedly slapped her ass in a mocking gesture. “Come and get me!”
Guy faced Rachael with a nod, and she did the same. They both agreed the Mage had to go—
And if it wasn’t for a Berserker, dual-wielding axes, and charging into the fray out of nowhere, then Guy and Rachael might have been able to take down the Mage. Instead, Guy took a massive cleave to the face and lost 90 HP from the hit as the blow hurled him away from Rachael. He got up and used Lay on Hands to mend his wounds and recover 53 H
P. He opted to save his MP for that rather than Blinding Flash. Guy was down to 86 MP now and had no MP hyposprays to restore it. Lay on Hands cost 55 MP per cast, and Blinding Flash 75.
He brought a glow of light to his palms to cast Lay on Hands once more. Rachael parried one axe swing from the Berserker, twirled to his side, and hit him with all her might. Rachael gasped, and Guy saw why.
Land-elf (Berserker) | LVL: 21 | Rank: B | HP: 99%
Its HP bar barely moved; the Berserker was at a higher level. Same with the Medic who returned to strike Rachael, and the Mage. The PKers were all at a higher level. Guy got to his feet as Rachael ran toward one of her Recovery Orbs. She was seconds away from reaching out to touch it.
Watching and hoping Rachael made it to the orb in time had cost him.
The Berserker and Medic both struck Guy with their weapons. He lost nearly a quarter of his HP with that attack, then another 20 percent with the next. His blood coated the grass below. The duo brought Guy down to 194 HP, below the dreaded 25 percent mark where death loomed. He felt pain and a lot of blood soak his face and arms. A second left-to-right slash put a clean slice through Guy’s neck, separating his head from his body.
Guy’s head tumbled off to the side, and his body slumped over backward as a fountain of red gushed from the stump on his neck.
You died.
Chapter Eight
Guy | HP: 0/886
Tempeste’s weapon lost its lightning might. She went to recast her enchantment spell.
Elemental Weapon: Lightning
Imbues a weapon with lightning elemental magic, causing it to deal additional elemental damage.
Cast Time: 1 Second
Duration: 2 Minutes
Cost: 15 MP
She clenched her Spellsword Saber, now overflowing with lightning magic, her teeth gritting. The Berserker roared and raised his twin axes triumphantly with his Medic partner after cleaving off Guy’s head. Guy’s death had yielded them a lot of experience points.
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