Rohan's Calling Online

by A. J. Chaudhury

  “Could you transport us to the place in Dinoland where the statue of Ravana is?” I asked him.

  The deer nodded.

  He sat down near the edge of the river bang and closed his eyes, as if going to sleep. There was a very bright flash of light then, so that Lovebird and I had to close our eyes and the next moment when we opened them again we saw that the deer had gone and instead of him there was a circle of stone slabs.

  Lovebird and I entered the circle of the stones. Soon we felt ourselves being pulled down the surface and we emerged in the very place in Dinoland where we had left Ravana earlier. It didn’t come as a surprise when we saw that there were quite a few members of the Kartoshi gang stationed near the statue.

  The moment they saw us appear they threw themselves at us. But this time we had astronomical amounts of Karma with us which helped greatly. I found myself capable of extremely fast movement and so did Lovebird. We wrenched swords from the hands of the gang members and hacked and slashed until all the gang members who had been stationed at the spot were dead.

  Then we approached the statue. I took out the puzzle from my bag which had been solved by Reptilio. The image that the solved puzzle formed was that of the face of a Rak. Reptilio had successfully solved the part of the face of the Rak that Grimguy had failed at.

  I held out the puzzle for Ravana to see and to awaken. His awakening wasn’t fast. A finger moved here, an eyelid twitched there. Lovebird and I took some steps backwards as we watched the statue come to life. This Ravana looked significantly different than the Ravana I had killed and taken the sword from so many days ago during the time when I had been new to the game world.

  Even as body parts of the statue began to move, the colour of the statue went from black to a shade of brown, very much like human flesh. Even some facial hairs appeared in the statue which hadn’t been there previously.

  Ravana opened his eyes. He was no more a statue.

  For a moment he just looked at me and Lovebird with a blank expression. And then his eyes went wide, even as a deep frown etched itself on his forehead and his cheeks began to shudder with extreme fury. My heart began to race.

  One of Ravana’s hands shot out. I had acquired Karma and had become rather fast as far as my senses were concerned. But Ravana was faster. He grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me closer to him. Lovebird gasped.

  “I do not like you,” Ravana said to me. His voice contained hatred. The like that would make your blood turn to ice.

  “But why?” Lovebird said before I could think of speaking anything, “We awakened you.”

  Ravana raised his brow.

  “Awakened me?” Ravana said.

  With a nervy hand I showed him the solved puzzle that I was still holding.

  “Yes, by showing you this,” I managed to say.

  Ravana took the puzzle away from me, even as he let my shirt go. Lovebird placed a hand on my shoulder. Ravana stared at the puzzle for a while. The anger was still on his face, but an expression of recognition also seemed to have come over it.

  “I- I,” Ravana said, “then why do I hate you so much?”

  “It is not me that you hate,” I said to Ravana, deciding to use the situation to my advantage, “there is someone called Death13 who is the real cause behind the anger runs in your veins.”

  “Death13,” Ravana said, looking at me like he didn’t trust me at all, “Death13… hmmm… I do not remember having heard that name.”

  “You don’t?” I said to him with a look of utter concern. My acting skills were limited, but it seemed to have worked… at least a tad, for he looked more like he was confused and less like he had no trust over me.

  “What did he do to me?” Ravana asked. I hadn’t been expecting the question. Ravana looked directly into my eyes and I felt at a complete loss of words. Thankfully Lovebird came to the rescue. Heck, she couldn’t have come with a better response.

  “He threw a charm on you,” she said to him, “one that was meant to force you to go to permanent sleep. But it seems the charm also messed up your memory.”

  For a moment Ravana seemed to believe it. But then he suddenly shook his head. He squatted down, and he began to shake with rage.

  “No,” he said, “I do not think anyone can harm me. Nobody is so powerful that they can just throw a charm on me and it would actually turn me into a statue. No, I do not believe you at all.” He let out a roar and I thought for a moment that Ravana was going to do something to harm the two of us. Instead, he hit the ground with his fist. His fist sank into the ground which quaked with the intensity of a small earthquake. I wondered if Ravana actually believed our story even though he was trying to fight against the idea of what we were saying.

  “Yes,” I said, as an idea came to my mind, “you are powerful. But Death13 is as powerful as you. And unlike you, he cheats. He is your one true nemesis in this world, and let me tell you, he was an accidental product of your own creation.”

  “He was my creation?” Death13 asked, looking up.

  I nodded.

  “You had grown so powerful that one day Death13 just formed out of you,” I said, “you had no more foes with whom you could fight and defeat. Hence now you were left to fight with yourself. Can you still not remember all that occurred?”

  Ravana looked at the ground.

  “I… I think I can recall bits and pieces,” he said. Wow, I thought, I was actually making him recall things that had never really occurred! “But who are you two? I feel like I have seen you two in a different life altogether, but I cannot remember if you are my servants or some foe.”

  “We are your most loyal servants,” I said to Ravana. “It is for this reason that we never gave up on our quest to awaken you despite all the difficulties that we had to face. Now that we have succeeded, we can finally hope that Death13 shall fall. Do not ever let the rage in you go away, for you must kill Death13.”

  “But why would I ever want to do such a thing? Didn’t you say Death13 is a part of me?”

  “The same reason why Death13 wants to destroy you. He is all the things that are bad about you. Death13 consists of all your weaknesses. Your weaknesses want to destroy you. Death13 never killed you because he requires you to exist and so he just turned you into a statue for all this time. But you, you can survive without your weaknesses. You must kill him. You must conquer yourself.”

  The words did the trick. Ravana stood up again. There was still the rage in him, but it was not for me. And there was a fiery determination in him now.

  “Then it shall be done,” Ravana said, “Nobody can ever defeat me. Not even myself.”

  “You make us proud that we are servants of someone as great as you,” I said. I knelt down. Lovebird took my lead and she too bowed to Ravana. This gesture of ours seemed to hammer the final nail. Ravana trusted us. It was clear in his eyes.

  Chapter 37

  “Rise, my servants,” Ravana said to us, “where is Death13? Take me to him—”

  At that very moment, a great roar filled the air. I turned around. Mere metres away from us emerging from the trees was a great dinosaur. A T. Rex judging from the tiny forearms of the monster. There had been a time when I had eaten meat of T. Rex in a restaurant, but from the look on the face of the monster, it was the monster that was hungry this time.

  The monster lunged towards us, intending to grab the three of us at once with its jaw. Ravana threw a ball of fire at the beast. However, before the ball of fire could hit the beast, the beast slipped on some wet mud. It lost its balance and by sheer luck the ball of fire missed the animal. Instead the fire ball went and hit the orb of light marking the portal that was hovering a few metres behind the beast. There was a great explosion. One that was powerful enough to set the surrounding bushes on fire and the force of the wave even made the great monster fall. But once I could get rid of the great flash of the fire ball from my eyes, I saw that the orb of light which was the portal had disappeared. The ball of fire seemed to have destroyed it!


  The T. Rex scrambled up. It was angered now even more and it snapped our jaws at us. I was fast. I grabbed Lovebird’s arms and pulled her and myself away from the way of the dagger like teeth of the monster. In the process, I forgot Ravana. The monster snapped shut its mouth around Ravana.

  There was a great cracking sound.

  The T. Rex opened its jaws with a great cry of pain. Its mouth was filled with blood, not of Ravana, but its own. Ravana had pulled out one of the teeth of the monster and had pierced its tongue with the tooth. Now Ravana jumped out of the mouth of the monster. As the monster tried to flee, Ravana grabbed it by the tail. He spun the monster thrice like it was a mere stone and flung it away. The monster went hundred of metres flying and landed in a spot far away. It twitched on the ground for a second or two and then it ceased all movements. It was dead.

  Ravana turned at us.

  “So where did you say is my nemesis?”

  I looked at the portal that was no more. Then I looked at Ravana. He had just flung away a monster dinosaur like it was some toy. What was the possibility that Ravana couldn’t fly?’

  “Can you still take to the air?” I asked him. I was careful to pretend that he had the ability earlier although he might not have it now. Otherwise he would know that Lovebird and I had been lying all along.

  As if to answer me, Ravana began to hover in the air.

  I turned at Lovebird.

  “If you want you can stay here,” I whispered to her.

  “Two players would be required, I have to go,” she answered me.

  Ravana placed the two of us on his shoulders. It was a strange feeling to go up to the clouds in that manner. It was like sitting on the very edge of the top of some sky scraper that was continuously on the move. Of course, Ravana grabbed our clothes so that we would not fall.

  I looked at the birds even as we went faster than them. With the speed that Ravana was flying, I was sure that we would reach Kapilpura in a few hours. Still, I wished that the portal orb hadn’t been destroyed. Things would have been so much faster with it.

  It was after about half an hour when suddenly at some distance behind us I spotted some dots. At first I thought that they were birds. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that those weren’t birds. They were pterodactyls, and really big ones at that. They were at least five times the size of Pero. What more the pterodactyls seemed to be carrying players. The pterodactyls were flapping their wings really fast in an attempt to match their speed with that of Ravana.

  I focussed on one of the players. Level 300. Shit, that must be one accomplished player. But why were they coming after us?

  Ravana suddenly stopped in the air, so that Lovebird and I almost fell from his shoulder from the inertia. He turned and looked at the players. The pterodactyls reached us.

  “Do you know them?” Ravana asked me. “Are they servants of me?”

  “I don’t think they are,” I said, observing the players, who were in turn observing us intently. There were six players in total. Three of them were men and the other three were women. All of them had sharp features, and they wore shiny clothes and carried some bad-ass looking swords. All of them were elves.

  “Who are you?” Ravana said to the players. “If you are my servants then come with me, if not then prepare to be annihilated.”

  One of the men turned at the rest of the players with a grin.

  “Yeah, he sounds like a quest. Most powerful monster that my ring has detected since the “No Logging Out” quest started. Let the action begin, eh?”

  Wait, these players thought that being unable to log out from the game world was actually part of some stupid quest?

  The players kicked their pterodactyls and they surrounded us from different sides. A sense of dread overcame me. We had to get to Death13 and now we had to deal with some stupid players thinking everything was just a quest? I did not want to harm them, though I knew Ravana would. I decided to speak up.

  “Wait,” I said. “This is not some quest.”

  The first player who had spoken frowned at me. And then his eyes went wide.

  “You have… one billion Karma!” He gasped.

  “It’s not just him,” one of the female players said, her wide eyes fixed on Lovebird, “the chick’s got a billion Karma as well!”

  “Is this like some kind of an ultimate quest?” another player who had the most pointy ears of the lot said.

  “With that much Karma involved it can only be,” a female said, “NPCs that seem to be players but aren’t. Shit, why don’t they put up quests like these in the newspaper?”

  As if matters weren’t bad already now the idiots thought Lovebird and I were NPCs and were part of the quest. Great.

  “This is not going to be easy guys,” the leader of the lot said, “be careful.”

  All of the players drew out their swords.

  “I am assuming that is a gesture of offense,” Ravana said, his voice unusually calm like a sea before a tsunami.

  Ravana made an abrupt movement towards the player who had the pointiest ears of all. Both Lovebird and I lost our balance and we fell from Ravana’s shoulder. The latter was too occupied in going for the pointy-eared player and the two of us fell.

  I grabbed Lovebird’s arm even as we fell though that wouldn’t really do anything to stop our fall.

  “Catch those two!” I heard the leader yell. “Can’t afford not killing them ourselves!”

  Even as we fell, the wind hitting us all about, I saw one of the pterodactyls dive to get us. The beast came closer and closer to us. Death was on either side. Either the beast would kill us or Lovebird and I would hit the ground hard and die.

  The pterodactyl didn’t grab us with its claws. Instead it dived below us, and we fell onto its back. It was a softer landing than I had anticipated. The player who was on the back of the pterodactyl threw some kind of a handcuff spell on Lovebird and me. Handcuffs of smoke appeared around our wrists.

  The player however forgot about our legs. It was risky, but I was able to kick the player on the stomach with my boot. He winced in pain. Next, I threw myself on top of him. I couldn’t separate my hands due to the cuffs; however I was able to grab the player by the neck by throwing my arms around him. He croaked, and gasped for air as I tightened my grip on him. Maybe it was my additional Karma that was the reason, but I felt very strong, almost invincible. The health of the player began to fall.

  In a desperate attempt to save himself, the player tried to drive his sword into the side of my stomach. I totally missed the sword. Lovebird, however didn’t. She held the blade of the sword with her bare palms, even though her hands were cuffed together, and deflected the sword enough that it missed the side of my stomach and instead pierced thin air.

  I hit the head of the player with my own head. Elves were usually taller than humans, but this one was rather short and very much my own height, which enabled me to hit his head harder. Had I done this in a different time I would have felt an explosion of pain in my head, however fuelled with the Karma I barely felt any pain with the impact. The other player however cried out, his health falling steeply.

  I hit him again with my head, and again and again. Meanwhile, taking advantage, Lovebird was able to pull the sword away from his grasp, even though the blade of the sword did make a surface cut in her palm in the process making it bleed. Lovebird held up the sword with her cuffed hands.

  “Make way,” she told me.

  I tilted my head sideways, giving her enough space. With brute force Lovebird drove the sword into the neck of the player. The player cried out as his health drained. My own clothes were drenched with his blood. But soon the body of the player had disappeared and so did his blood on my clothes. The handcuffs disappeared.

  The pterodactyl at that moment made a sudden turn. The two of us grabbed the neck of the beast, refusing to fall off. The pterodactyl took crazy turns in an attempt to throw us from its back. My stomach felt odd like I was about to throw up.


  I heard a sound behind of coughing and realised Lovebird had already thrown up. Ravana meanwhile was battling the players in the sky above us.

  Only three remained. Ravana was fighting with one of the female players, who seemed to have survived till then only because of her agile pterodactyl that was quick to evade any of Ravana’s attack. This was infuriating Ravana. He made a movement in the direction of another of the players, but he made a sudden flip in the air and went for the pterodactyl of the female player. The pterodactyl failed to evade this time. Ravana grabbed the flying reptile by the head. The reptile tried to bite him but to no avail. And the next thing I knew was that the head of the pterodactyl burst into a thousand pieces such that the sky was filled with gore.

  The player however was quick to abandon her dead pet, even as the beast stopped flapping its head and went down. She leapt.

  She fell onto the wing of the pterodactyl we were on. The pterodactyl recognised the player as a friend of its previous master and became very steady.

  “Don’t worry,” Lovebird said, although her face looked pale, “I will deal with her.”

  Lovebird made her way to the wing of the pterodactyl. The female player looked at Lovebird with a face of hatred. Lovebird threw a kick at the hand of the female player with which she was holding onto the wing of the pterodactyl.

  Lovebird missed.

  Instead, the female player grabbed her leg and gave her a strong yank, so that Lovebird nearly fell off the pterodactyl.

  “No!” I cried.

  Chapter 38

  Lovebird still had the sword in her hand. Even as she lost balance, she drove the sword into the wing of the pterodactyl and was able to regain her balance. The pterodactyl cried out in pain, even as blood leaked from its wing.

  Lovebird pulled out the sword and threw repeated attacks at the female player. Lovebird was merciless and she chopped off the hands of the female player with a swift motion of the sharp blade of the sword. The female player’s eyes went wide. With no hands to hold onto the pterodactyl, the rushing wind took her away and down she went.