November 3, 2022
Day 14
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A hundred arrows soared toward the fallen rogue, but only a fraction flew true, the rest colliding with each other and scattering harmlessly.
Daniel saw the dozen or so projectiles that hit the rogue fail to leave so much as a scratch on his cloak, and realized that no number of arrows would have made a difference.
That's okay, this is just the appetizer.
He thought, nonplussed.
From his vantage, he could see the second, less numerous but significantly more powerful rain of attacks coming in hot on the heels of the decoy attack.
"The moment I see an opening, I will order my archer sentinels to attack. That will be your signal. Behind the cover of the attack, the strongest among you should cast spells and fire arrows."
These were his directions to the archers and mages that were interspersed between the sentinels on the walls. Although Daniel was a stranger to most of them, they all followed the instructions to the letter.
In times of panic, who wouldn't want to defer the decision-making to someone else?
Daniel thought, the burden of responsibility heavy on his shoulders, and looked at the concerted attack executed by the most powerful archers and mages on the walls.
To his disappointment, the rogue disappeared before even a single one of the arrows and spells could hit him.
How the hell did he go directly from a fallen prone position to running away? Had he noticed the second volley of attacks coming all along?
Daniel was so lost in his despair that he almost missed the reappearance of the rogue.
Not at a safe distance from the attack, but right in front of it, standing with his arms spread out.
An invitation. A challenge.
Daniel realized as he watched the attacks land all over the rogue, hiding his figure behind a cloud of fiery explosions, ice bursts, electric crackles, poisonous clouds, and a multitude of other effects that the spells and arrows were imbibed with.
The retreating forms of Rahul, Ivan, and Matt were impacted by the shockwave that emanated from that cocktail of explosions and flung into the air.
Lines of worry creased Daniel's forehead. Not for the three rogues of his team. Losing a few hitpoints was the worst that they would suffer. Something else was gnawing at him.
That confidence. He showed us that he could get away from the attack if he wished, and now he wants to demonstrate how little he fears our strongest attacks.
As Daniel had dreaded, when the smoke cleared, the rogue was standing right there, unmoved and unfazed. As opposed to the earlier arrows, this attack had left his cloak slightly worse for wear. That did nothing to ease the dread in Daniel's heart.
Still, having anticipated this outcome the moment the rogue stood invitingly in the path of the attacks, Daniel was the first to overcome the shock of seeing this overwhelming display of strength. Even as his body shivered with fear, Daniel mentally ordered the sentinels to fire another volley.
The twang of bows shook everyone free of their stupor, and this time, with no risk of friendly fire and no need for subtlety, every single mage and archer on the walls started attacking en masse.
The rogue just stood, letting the attacks come and do nothing more than ruffle his cloak.
This went on, seconds turning into minutes, until something changed yet again.
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Maya had been delighted to find a high-level Elemental Mage among the group on the wall, and considering the high stakes, had overcome her shyness and immediately struck up a conversation with her.
When Kelly, the mage, told her that she knew the fireball spell and had upgraded it all the way to Weak Fireball III, Maya was over the moon.
Unfortunately, that excitement was nipped in the bud when Kelly told her that she knew nothing about mana particles and that upgrading the skill simply required practice in pouring more and more mana into each fireball.
Maya still held on to a thin strand of hope that she could gain something out of the seemingly trivial exercise of pouring more mana into the spell, all the while observing the flow of the battle.
Relatively speaking, things were rather quiet and stable now, affording her a chance to seek out a mage and talk to her.
But that's not how things had started.
Maya's heart had threatened to explode out of her chest when the strange man had abruptly and brutally assaulted Rahul, moving so fast that it seemed to her that he had phased out of this plane of existence.
For the long seconds that Rahul flew threw the air toward the castle wall, she had been terrified that the hooded man would catch up and finish him off mid-air before anyone could react.
Maya had only managed to reach level 12 in the beast battle earlier today, so while she had been able to perceive how much faster the alpha had been compared to Rahul last night, she couldn't even begin to guess the extent to which the hooded man outclassed Rahul today.
What she could see was that Rahul had been completely defenseless against the rogue's attack, something that wasn't the case with the alpha.
This man was impossibly fast, and recalling how the alpha had managed to press the advantage so decisively after pinning Rahul to the ground, Maya was sure the hooded man could do worse.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
But he hadn't.
When she saw other people getting thrown about the courtyard, sporting similar injuries, clutching their abdomens, Maya knew that her intuition was correct.
In the few seconds it took for Rahul to crash against the wall, for Daniel to shout orders and for everyone to get a hold of the situation, the rogue had dropped three others.
He had more than enough time to kill Rahul if he followed up his attack with a more deadly one. But he didn't.
Maya thought morosely, absentmindedly running with the group going to the top of the castle walls, dreading what came next.
The hooded figure will come back and finish the job.
He never did.
Rahul stayed out of the fight and observed things from a safe distance, and the rogue let him, seemingly content with playing a violent but non-lethal game of tag with everyone who had stayed back and surrounded him.
Now at the top of the castle walls, Maya had more time to think, and her unease grew as she waited for a switch to flip and for the fight to escalate to lethal force and killing blows.
The switch never flipped, but the dread lingered.
Maya recalled her conversation with Rahul in the dungeon, after all that crying, when she had told him about the feeling of directionlessness she was feeling ever since the integration. She told him how she felt no interest in going down this violent path that the system brought with it, and how she was being shoved into fights due to the world throwing one life-threatening challenge after another at them.
Rahul had tried to be reassuring, but she had cut that short and asked him to be blunt.
He respected her enough to not coddle her with platitudes after that, telling her simply that until they rejoined civilization, everyone would have to pull their weight, or they might all die.
Earlier, the reunions, the presence of so many high-level fighters, and the return of what was a semblance of civilization to the island made Maya begin to hope.
But that unprovoked attack by the hooded man crushed those hopes and she felt it again.
The impetus to fight to protect herself, to protect everyone and everything she held precious.
To protect him.
To fight and grow stronger, not because she wanted to, but because she had to.
A shabby justification for doing something, as far as these things went, but it was all she had.
So, as the fight dragged on, Maya had looked around and found Kelly, in the hope of getting advice on Mana manipulation, preparing for the worst.
Now, with that approach turning out to be a dead end, Maya once again immersed herself in observing the battle and found her fear from earlier slowly fading.
You're not going to kill anyone, are you?
She thought as she looked on.
Not at the rogue, she hadn't been able to spot him even once since the first bout of motion. She looked instead at the effects of his passing. People stumbling, moaning in pain, some falling while others surprisingly being able to block the attacks.
The rogue was content to let the fight drag on, and despite the continued presence of the threat of an incomprehensibly powerful enemy, Maya's sense of impending doom and fear of imminent death all but disappeared.
Why?
Perhaps it was the fact that Maya stood far from the action, surrounded by sentinels, mages, and archers, most of whose levels were higher than hers and therefore hidden.
But Maya felt there was something else.
If the rogue had wanted to, she had no doubt he would have managed to kill a few of the defenders by now.
Instead, he fought in a way that Maya, despite not being able to see him, could only describe as leisurely.
There was an itch in the analytical, problem-solving part of her brain that was screaming at her that things didn't add up. Finally, she could no longer wait and got out of her own head to ask for help.
She might not have been able to answer my questions related to magic, but perhaps this is something Kelly can help with.
Maya thought and realized that the events surrounding the world congress could hold some key information that she was missing. More pieces of this puzzle would help her see the big picture, instead of seeing this attack in isolation.
Maya turned to walk toward Kelly and had taken only a few steps when a cold wave of killing intent froze her in her steps. She looked toward the courtyard and saw Rahul standing face to face with the rogue, his hand holding a knife that he had stabbed into the rogue's neck.
The knife hadn't penetrated too deep, but the fact that Rahul would go for such a deadly attack.
Maya shivered, afraid of the possibility that the killing intent had emanated from Rahul and not the rogue.
Then she saw the rogue's eyes, and even at this distance, could tell where the rage had come from.
Rahul, who had borne the brunt of that fury, lost hold of his knife and stumbled back.
He's going to kill him.
The panic from the start of the battle returned to Maya tenfold, and she felt herself gasping for breaths, hyperventilating.
Instead of targeting Rahul, the rogue went around stabbing others, but Maya had felt that intent.
This belongs to a killer. A cold-blooded murderer.
As she labored for breaths, waiting for the death of Rahul and of everyone on the island, Maya couldn't help but wish that she had done something about her crush on Rahul.
Things were going so well in Japan, but with everything that came with this system...
Maya thought to herself, aware that she was only making excuses.
As unrelenting as her fear was that people would start dying anytime now, things refused to change. The rogue had upped the ante, using the knife to do more damage, and the number of defenders kept going down due to injury and exhaustion.
But still, no one was killed or seriously injured.
Slowly, Maya's breathing eased, and Kelly, who had been keeping an eye on her, spoke.
"Are you okay?"
Maya responded.
"Yes. That scary wave of intent got me."
Kelly replied.
"It didn't affect me as much, but you are still only level 12. It must have hit you hard."
Maya just nodded.
Much more than advancing her fireball spell, she now wanted to understand the disturbing enigma that was this masked man. It would be easy to attribute his inefficient and rather stupid tactics to overconfidence, incompetence, sadism, or just plain lunacy. But when the rogue had stood face to face with Rahul, Maya had looked into his eyes and seen sharp intelligence and cold calculation.
It was hidden behind a hot rage and a dangerous glint that spoke of horrors she could not imagine, but the intelligence was there, and it told Maya that while the man may be a brutal, merciless, and sadistic psychopath, he was not a mindless lunatic.
Brushing away her inner thoughts, Maya decided to take advantage of Kelly's presence and ask the questions on her mind.
"What happened in the world congress? How did you guys come here? And who is this man and why isn't he killing anyone?"
Kelly seemed surprised, but soon recovered and answered.
"In the world congress, it was decided that the first wave would be friendly and no one was to kill the residents of Laysan in this wave. That is the reason why the man is not using lethal weapons, the fear of consequences. The decision to make the first wave friendly, however, is an unofficial one made by the humans and stewards, not a choice given by the system. As such, the penalties are also enacted by the stewards. What they can do is anyone's guess, but I don't believe crossing them is something one would do lightly."
Maya nodded, having received the answers to her first and last question, but not quite satisfied. Kelly went on.
"As to how we came here, the system gave everyone who had attended the world congress a chance to participate in any of the waves by paying 1 million settlement points. I and about twenty others are here as ambassadors of the big tech alliance, which also sponsored the world congress token and then the teleportation token of all the family members they could locate."
There was some fuss below, which the two girls ignored and Kelly went on speaking.
"The system had unfortunately not given information about the residents of the settlement with the tiered dungeon. High-level diviners were able to locate the rough coordinates of the dungeon, and paper copies of flight schedules and paths were dug up by many governments and organizations. Before long, several candidate flights that were in that region were found, and the stewards did their own search. Finally, the prince admitted to being the steward of the dungeon settlement, and gave the names and descriptions of the surviving members on the flight."
The sentinels around them suddenly strung their bows and started to fire.
Maya had a lot of questions, particularly about this prince, but the duo could no longer ignore what was happening, and as one of the highest-level mages here, Kelly scrambled to follow the instructions Daniel had left.