by Max Jager
Ultimately, Mendelen decided that Estellese's wings wouldn't help as much after finding the survivors, since she'd need to walk with them to protect them anyways. So he went to the mountains, and he sent Estellese to the forest. Jess, not wanting to wait in the valley alone, followed Estellese.
With that decided, Estellese and Jess headed off into the forest. The first place she checked was the clearing where they had found the werewolves back in the beginning of this so called game, and where they recently found Jess. It seemed like the clearing drew people in so she figured it was a good place to check.
Sure enough, as she approached she heard screams and howling. The women ran to the edge of the clearing and saw another group of survivors being attacked by werewolves.
"Hide in a tree Jess, you can't help with this." Estellese instructed.
"Don't have to tell me twice" Jess was already starting to climb the nearest tree.
Estellese looked out at the four werewolves and the people they were attacking, wondering if these were the same four beasts from the beginning of their journey. As she focused a clear, almost see-through bubble appeared around her body. She reached out and a staff made purely of magically durable diamonds appeared in her hand. Then, suddenly, she disappeared in a bright flash of light.
The werewolves all yelped and recoiled as there was a blindingly bright flash of light right in front of their faces. As soon as their vision returned they saw a winged woman with bright pink hair standing between them and the humans they were trying to kill. They saw that she was swinging a sword that was made entirely out of intense flames at the closest werewolf and tried to evade. But it was already too late. The flames that made up the sword were so hot they burnt clean through the werewolf's neck, decapitating the beast as if it had been a real blade. The beast's body hit the ground, and it did not regenerate from that blow. It was dead.
The other three wolves were able to evade the flames in time, and the humans behind Estellese were even more shocked and afraid now that they had witnessed that. They began to panic, and were trying to drag their wounded away.
Estellese made her flame-sword disappear, it took so much stamina to keep that much heat contained in a sword shape like that. She didn't want to waste all her energy on just holding a flashy weapon, and they now knew to be weary of her sword, so it was no longer needed. She held her staff at the ready and took a defensive stance for now, focusing on making some stone walls rise up from the ground around the other humans, walling them into a small stone box where the werewolves couldn't reach them, and they couldn't run away.
The three remaining werewolves split up and began surrounding her, one stood in front of her while the other two moved around to her sides, making sure only one of them remained in her field of view at any given moment. This bought her the time she needed to finish the box around the other humans, but as soon as she finished putting a roof on it they rushed in from all three sides. They attacked from her left, right, and front while using that very box to ensure that she couldn't back up to get out of the way. With their superhuman speed and strength, they moved way too fast, and were much stronger than she was, but she had more than just brute strength to fight back with this time.
The werewolf attacking from her front stood up on its hind legs as if it was going to attack her, but immediately pulled back once it saw her trying to swing her staff at it. It was faking her out, as soon as she tried to take a swing at the front one, the two on her sides lunged in to attack. They lashed out with their claws, trying to maul and grab her but both of their attacks collided with that bubble that was surrounding her. The bubble stopped their attacks, but shattered like glass afterwards.
Estellese, noticing that the other two attackers getting pushed back by her barrier, stomped her foot and sent a powerful quake through the ground. This made her two attackers, who were already off balance, fall to the ground while the one in front of her lost balance and stumbled. As soon as they fell stone ropes sprang out of the dirt. With the beast's necks so close to the ground the stone ropes were able to quickly reach over their necks and go back into the ground on the other side, effectively tying them down by their necks.
Both of the pinned werewolves immediately began trying to break free of the stone. Estellese focused and sharpened the side of the stone ropes that were touching the creature's necks. But as she was focusing the one werewolf that was still standing noticed what she was doing and rushed in to stop her. Turning stone sharp like that required attention to such finite details in the stone that there was no way she could focus on two things at once, and the werewolf had the experience to know that.
It lunged at Estellese and slashed its claws for her face. Acting quickly Estellese blocked its attack with her staff, but the sheer brute strength of the blow threw her backwards. She slammed into the stone wall behind her with a grunt of pain, taking a heavy blow to her back and head. It disorientated her for a split second, and with the werewolf's incredible speed that was all it took for it to close the distance and pounce on her, pinning her to the ground. But as soon as it was on top of her she spat a fireball into the beast's face.
The beast tried to resist recoiling and just take the hit, but the small recoil it couldn't hold back caused it to delay the next slash of its claws by a fraction of a second. It slashed its claws for her throat, and hit the dirt. As the burns on its face regenerated and it opened its eyes again, it saw that she was gone. It quickly looked around for the woman, but couldn't find her anywhere.
One of the pinned werewolves managed to break the stone rope and freed itself, but moments after the rope around the other one's neck turned into a sharp stone guillotine, and then the blade was yanked down into the ground, taking the beast's head off. Two down.
Estellese suddenly burst out of the ground a few feet in front of one of the remaining two wolves, as soon as she appeared she sent a torrent of flames at the beast. The werewolf was not afraid of fire though, they could recover from any burns they received. It bit through the pain and ignored the flames, lunging through the fire at Estellese. But it was struck in the knee by a large stone that Estellese had hidden in the flamethrower-like burst. The stone struck the beast's knee with enough force to shatter its knee, and the werewolf immediately dropped to the ground.
"That's what you get for copying my trick." Estellese hissed.
As soon as the words left her mouth the second werewolf lunged at her from behind again, but this time she knew it was coming. She used her windstorm spell to send a powerful gust at that werewolf, blowing it several feet backwards.
The werewolf on the ground was rapidly healing and was already getting back up. Before its knee could completely heal, Estellese quickly pointed at the beast and used her Bolt spell, sending an incredibly powerful bolt of electricity from her fingertips straight into the beast's head, It was not killed, but was knocked out and dropped back to the ground. As soon as the beast hit the ground again, Estellese felt the sharp claws of the other one sink into her back. They still moved far too fast, it had already gotten up, closed the distance, and attacked again.
Estellese shouted out in pain, her wings absorbed most of the blow but the claws dug into her back too. She was lucky it was just a hasty, grazing blow. The beast was trying to quickly stop her from finishing off its friend with whatever spell she was casting, but was a moment too late. But even at that, the grazing blow badly tore up her wings and back.
Estellese wanted to teleport, but the blink spell she had used to start the fight wasn't ready to be used again yet. Neither was her barrier spell. The downside to spells, they weren't as reliable as her main elements, and strategically planning when to use which spell so they were always ready when needed was Mendelen's job. Strategy wasn't her thing.
As the searing pain shot through her body, she dropped her staff and reached behind herself, grabbing the werewolf by its upper arms. With a scream of pain she used all her strength to yank the beast off the ground, over her head, and sla
mmed it onto the ground in front of her right as she made a large stone spike spring out of the ground. As the spike stabbed through the beast's chest, causing the werewolf to howl out loudly in pain, Estellese grabbed her diamond staff and stabbed the pointed end down into the beast's head. She knocked out the werewolf with that blow, but it was not dead.
Not that it mattered at this point, with both of the remaining werewolves knocked out, she had plenty of time to remove their heads and ensure that they wouldn't bother any other new players passing through. Once that was done she got to work on healing her wounds. Her healing spell made it quick and simple to recover from most injuries, and when she was healed and back in good health she would walk through one of the stone walls she had made to address the players.
Once inside she found six players, most of them were badly injured but the two that weren't were standing in a defensive stance, with their sword and dagger at the ready. Seeing the stone wall bend and mould itself around her body to allow her to seamlessly pass through caused them to panic and take a step back.
Estellese held her free hand up and put her staff down. "I'm here to help."
"What the hell are you?" One of the humans shouted back.
"Don't worry, I'm just another human. I'm here to help. This isn't a game." Estellese answered.
"Nice try lady, you're not human." One of them countered.
"What do you mean I'm not human? Of course I am." Estellese argued, but then paused as she remembered. "Right. The wings. Just trust me, I am human. The wings were something I got after being in this world for a while. Either way I'm here to help you, just trust me."
Everyone lowered their weapons, everyone except one guy who was moving around her side. As soon as he was in her blind spot he lunged forward and attempted to stab her from the side with his sword.
With a quick swipe of her arm a stone shot out of the wall beside them and struck the man's hand with such force it broke his bones and knocked the sword out of his hand. The man fluidly shifted and threw a jab at her head as he stepped in closer. Estellese quickly grabbed his fist, using her own slightly enhanced strength to stop his punch. But the man was quick on his feet, as soon as he realized he couldn't overpower her he yanked her arm back, throwing his full body-weight into it and pulling her off her feet.
The man twisted them as they fell so that he would land on top of her and pin her down, but Estellese was not having that. She quickly used her wings to add an extra spin and grabbed his head with her free hand. She slammed his head into the wall as they fell, and then slammed his head into the ground once they landed. As soon as they hit the ground she yanked her hand out of his grip and slammed her fist into his nose.
"Dear god you make Kaden look smart, that's just bad." Estellese chided. She wiped the blood on her hand off on the man's shirt, then she stood up and brushed herself off, leaving the man barely conscious and bloody on the ground. "Anyone else wanna try for the dumbass of the day award? I was gentle with this guy, I won't be to the next person to try that."
"Stand down you guys, violence isn't the answer." One of the men called out to the others. He was a very tall and burly man, standing about 6'5" with a very strong and muscular build. He was older than the others, he seemed to be in his forties, with short brown hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. Despite the conditions he was found in, his clothes were very neat, clean, and proper, he even had his shirt tucked in. Although what stood out about his attire was his necklace with a cross on it. He was carrying a big and heavy branch as a weapon, and was badly wounded from the werewolves. "My name is Charles, you?"
"I'm Estellese. An Alpha tester of this game." Estellese replied.
"God has gifted us with your presence today Estellese, we wouldn't have survived without your intervention. So thank you. You are an Alpha tester, do you know what is going on?"
"I do. This isn't a game, we've been sent to some other world that we can't get back out of. Death in this world is no different from death in our own world, we assume, since none of us Alpha testers have died." Estellese replied.
"I wish I could say the same for us. Been here a little over a day and I've seen three people die. Became pretty clear that this wasn't a game after that." Charles replied, then sighed. "Look, I came here to play a game with my son, and now he's in danger. I just want to know what I can do to keep him safe. I'll figure everything else out after that." He gestured to the small boy hiding behind his legs.
"We are trying to build a village, not far from here. With the magic we have we should have the bare-bones of a village finished in a couple days. Until then, we'll at least have a basic shelter and there will be four, or at least three, people just as powerful as I am guarding the place. That's your best bet for survival, and I came to bring you there. I can also heal everyone's wounds." Estellese answered.
Charles nodded and smiled a little. "I'm leading this group, but as a heads up, not everyone here is from my group. Case in point, the man who attacked you. My group and another group kinda bumped into each other, and the monsters, in the woods here. I'm traveling with the twins Katy and Kathryn, spiky haired guy named Drake, Ashley the girl with glasses, and of course my son Charles Jr."
Estellese quickly skimmed over the group. The twins looked to be in their late teens, Drake appeared to be in his early thirties, Ashley in her early twenties, and Jr was no older then ten. The game was pulling in all sorts of people. It looked like the twins, Charles, and Drake were all capable of fighting to some extent, they all carried weapons, and they all had combat injuries. Ashley didn't even have any blood on her raincoat, she didn't have a weapon and was hiding in the back with Jr.
"Alright, let me just heal your wounds so that we can travel, and fight if we need to. The town we are setting up isn't far from here." Estellese replied. "Both groups are welcome to come with me. What you do once you're there is up to you." She added as she started healing everyone except the man who attacked her.
The twins only had some sharp sticks as weapons, so once they realized that Estellese was not healing her attacker, Kathryn started to eye the sword the man had dropped. Out of the two of them, Kathryn looked to be much more confident than her twin. She was slightly taller and had long black hair, while Katy was a little shorter with short black hair.
"What are you thinking? That isn't ours." Katy whispered.
"That guy attacked the girl who saved us, do we really want him to have it back?" Kathryn questioned.
"He was a really good fighter though, he could use it better then we could." Katy suggested.
"But will he use it to help us? Or will he just attack someone again?" Kathryn looped it right back to the original concern. She walked over to it and picked up the sword, then walked back to her sister. "I'm not happy about taking it either, but if what this lady says is true, and we have seen enough to know it probably is, we can't take any risks. I can protect people with this, he might not. So let's do our part to keep everyone safe."
"Alright, I got your back then." Katy replied uneasily.
"You always do. And I got yours. As long as we are together we'll make it through whatever comes our way." Kathryn reassured her sister. "And don't worry, we'll find our friends as soon as we have our feet on the ground and can go search for them. We know they escaped and are somewhere in the woods."
Katy smiled a little and nodded. "Thanks, I was worried about them."
"Well I still am worried about them, but Courtney is tough like us, and she has the guys with her. They will be okay." Kathryn replied.
Estellese made her way around both groups, once everyone except for her attacker was healed she removed the stone box that was surrounding them. Everyone in the group but Drake cringed when they saw the headless bodies of the wolves for the first time.
"They are werewolves, you must either kill them with silver or decapitate them to kill them. They regenerate from everything else in seconds." Estellese explained.
Ashley took her glasses off and looked
like she was going to be sick, but it passed after a moment and she put her glasses back on.
"It's just, a lot to take in." Charles replied. He was carrying his son and covering the boy's eyes. "Everyone is fine."
As they walked back Jess climbed down from the tree to join them, "Estell you're all bloody." She commented.
"Yeah, my blood this time." Estellese chuckled.
"What?" The expression of shock and fear on Jess's face was the only answer Estellese needed before she realized Jess didn't get the joke.
"Uh, right. Inside joke, you wouldn't get that. Been two years of traveling and being around only people who know me. I'm the front line of my team, I tend to always be covered in blood after a battle." Estellese explained.
"I don't know a lot about games, but don't mages typically hide in the back lines?" Jess asked.
"Yeah, probably, but that's just not me." Estellese replied. "By studying the right spells and magic, and training yourself the right ways, you can do just about anything you want to do. So, I'm a front line mage, because that's where I want to be."