Thirty minutes earlier…

JohnWillStab and ♛ followed the particles emitted by the death of the first arch-cowards to find Bonifacius, they were being followed by XxFoxlyxX who still didn’t realize the scarecrow wasn’t following him anymore.

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius! So, you were the first to kill that thing!” John exclaimed with a satisfied expression as if he was somehow part of his success.

“Bonifacius: Greetings! I see thou managed to join forces!”

“♛: Yeah, I’m glad you figured out that you have to kill the NPC…” she said glaring at JohnWillStab.

“JohnWillStab: Yeah, I mean it’s not that complicated…” he shrugged.

♛ shook her head.

“♛: But they could be a DISGUISED … NPC!” she continued.

Both John and Bonifacius nodded.

“♛: HIDING AMNONGST US!” she continued.

JohnWillStab and Bonifacius exchanged a confused look.

“Bonifacius: Crown… I think I understand what thou are implying…” he began.

His expression was grave.

“Bonifacius: Are thou certain?”

“♛: Yes.” She nodded.

JohnWillStab glanced over to Bonifacius and nodded, confusing ♛.

“Hold on… that seemed oddly… human…” she thought.

JohnWillStab and Bonifacius charged forward, past ♛ and towards the bushes from which XxFoxlyxX’s hat stuck out.

“JohnWillStab: I had a feeling we were being followed… ♛ was acting really weird the whole way here, so I thought something like this was happening!” he exclaimed holding the now tied-up and gagged Foxly.

He writhed wildly in an attempt to regain his ability to speak.

JohnWillStab shook Foxly before throwing him down to the floor and kicking him.

“JohnWillStab: WHERE IS THE REAL XXFOXLYXX?!” he demanded.

“HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ANSWER WHILE GAGGED?!” XxFoxlyxX demanded internally.

Every time XxFoxlyxX tried to talk the same message would appear instead of his intended words, “XxFoxlyxX mumbles something incoherent.”.

Instead of telling them that a real arch-coward would have dropped the disguise and fled already, ♛ was stuck thinking about the possibility that JohnWillStab was not an NPC.

In other words, that entire, long, awkward walk was one-hundred percent real.

♛ stared off into the forest with an expression of utter terror as JohnWillStab continued to interrogate Foxly.

“JohnWillStab: ANSWER ME COWARD!” he demanded.

“JohnWillStab: Even if we get every last one of you, we won’t leave without our friend!” JohnWillStab exclaimed bashing Foxly’s head into the ground below.

“YOU’RE ALL WONDERFUL FRIENDS, PLEASE STOP BEATING ME!” Foxly thought as the beatings continued.

Not wanting to see any more of the brutal, yet necessary act than needed, Bonifacius approached ♛ who was still looking off into the distance in horror.

“Bonifacius: Are thou alright?” he asked, doing his best to ignore the disturbing sounds of torture taking place behind him.

♛ didn’t reply, she only pointed into the distance in complete silence.

Before them stood JohnWillStab, he wore a wide smile and walked with a far jollier animation.

Seeing this, Bonifacius looked back and saw JohnWillStab was in the middle of choking XxFoxlyxX.

“JohnWillStab: SPEAK, DAMN YOU!”

He looked back to the second JohnWillStab.

“Bonifacius: Hello?”

In an instant, the second John’s head snapped towards Bonifacius.

“(not)JohnWillStab: Hello party member, (%name_target)!” he exclaimed with an enthusiastic wave.

♛ and Bonifacius looked at the poor disguise with a look of wordless pity.

Taking a break from his pain-assisted interrogation, JohnWillStab turned to face the NPC.

“JohnWillStab: Woah! Who’s the edgelord?” he asked shooting the other John a look of pity.

Suddenly, the other John began to trembled as he burst into purple light.

“(not)JohnWillStab: NOOO! THE ORIGINAL!” it cried.

His disguise shattered; the arch-coward emerged from the violet flames before being launched into the sky like a firework.

“Arch-Coward: CURSE YOU, MORTALS!” those were its final word before popping like a firecracker.

Realising the fake party members were easy to distinguish, Bonifacius and ♛ turned towards John and Foxly.

“JohnWillStab: ALRIGHT! YOU JUST LOST KNEECAP PRIVILAGE!” he exclaimed grabbing his daggers just as ♛ and Bonifacius charged in to stop him.

“Bonifacius: WAIT, JOHNWILLSTAB!” he called out, realizing XxFoxlyxX was in fact the real XxFoxlyxX.

A message appeared in the chat, “XxFoxlyxX mumbles something vulgar.”

That was when they noticed the violet light that radiated from a comet-like object in the sky.

It was as if someone turned the lights on in a pitch-black room, except even brighter and more painful for their eyes.

The nauseous greys and reds making up the colours of the grotesque forest became the same uniform purple for no more than a second before the tidal wave of fire spread out across the entire island.

Everyone watched the tsunami of flames, a “hi no nami” if you will, approach the group, charring the trees and the other critters which were unfortunate enough to be spawned in this dungeon.

As the flames drew close enough to singe off Foxly’s eyebrows, Bonifacius jumped in to shield him from the flames.

“XxFoxlyxX mumbles something incoherent frantically.”

♛ was already behind them, the flames were more than just a thin wall, the wave was several meters thick.

Seeing Bonifacius’ health slowly dropping and his shield beginning to heat to the point it glowed a brilliant red, ♛ cast a healing spell onto him.

The wilting grass which only continued to exist thanks to Bonifacius’ protection began to grow and flourish once again thanks to ♛’s magic.

Flower sprouted from within the blades of green, as less nightmarish insects began to spawn.

Butterflies and ladybugs appeared only to fly a little too far from ♛ and Bonifacius, inadvertently becoming ash.

The green light reached Bonifacius as his burns began to heal and his health began to increase; in the tug-of-war between the flames and the healer, ♛ was slowly winning.

With a swoosh of wind, the flames finally dispersed, revealing a charred landscape, during the blinding fight against the flames, the group was discretely moved to another, identical island except burned.

A trick used by game-designers to optimize large-scale landscape changes.

The trees were either gone or turned into blazing stumps of charcoal, the ground was scorched beyond recognition, the sky was a blistering orange colour as white ash began to rain down onto the group.

“Bonifacius: Is everyone alright?” he asked, turning back to see ♛ gasping for air without any mana, she nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX mumbles something in a relieved tone.” He also nodded.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: I’ve been better…” they turned to the charred husk that was JohnWillStab, his body remained in the position it died in, namely a forward roll, his foot was caught in a now burned root sticking out of the ground.

♛ breathed a sigh.

“♛: That’s what you get for trying to show off, should have just walked like a normal person…” she said with a wry expression.

“Bonifacius: Fear not, friend! Thou shall respawn soon!” he exclaimed grabbing JohnWillStab and carrying his crispy corpse over his shoulder.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Can’t ♛ like… resurrect me or something?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“♛: Yeah, no… resurrection is a super rare spell, druids are one of five classes that have access to it, plus you have to do a long-a$$ quest that incudes like a million raids…”

Bonifacius nodded.

“Bonifacius: Indeed, tis quite rare! In my past guild, only two players had the ability to revive players!” he exclaimed.

“XxFoxlyxX: Two?!”

Bonifacius nodded again.

“Bonifacius: A druid by the name of Bromy as well as a player with light as their secondary class, they were called Kurtodumb!” he exclaimed with a smile upon being reminded of the nostalgic days of his long-gone guild.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Oh, the moss guy!” John remarked.

“Bonifacius: Indeed!” Bonifacius laughed.

Not long later, the group was running towards the centre of the crater that appeared in the centre of the island.

“♛: Alright, the arch-lich dude will be inside of that crater, we won’t be able to kill him unless we find and kill the other two arch-cowards though!” she explained.

“♛: If I remember correctly, he’ll point us to the next arch-coward, the devs added that feature since players would get stuck here for days without ever finding the cowards that keep moving around the map…” she explained.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Oh yeah, ♛ already was in this dungeon!” he remarked passively.

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah! Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t an NPC!?” he demanded, remembering his interrogation session with John.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Yeah, sorry about that, dude!”

“XxFoxlyxX: YOU’RE FORGIVEN! SHE ISN’T!”

“♛: Look! I said I’ve been to this dungeon before, I haven’t ever been a guide before!”

“Bonifacius: And thou are doing great!” he exclaimed shooting ♛ a thumbs up.

“♛: Yeah, I don’t need your thumbs-up of pity…” she remarked sourly.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Hold on, pity? I’ve been getting thumbs-up from him since chapter 1!” he exclaimed in complete shock.

“♛: Put two-and-two together, genius…” she said with a smug look of pity.

“Bonifacius: MY THUMBS CARRY ONLY THE PUREST INTENTIONS AND THE MOST ENOURAGING-ENGOURAGEMENT!” he exclaimed shooting JohnWillStab a pace-sign.

Paranoia started to reach its way into John’s mind “Was he pitying me this entire time?!” he thought back to all the time he received thumbs-up from his first in-game friend.

“In the prologue, outside Grimwood… THE THUMBS! THEY WERE EVERYWHERE!”

As the group made it to the rim of the crater, they spotted the arch-lich, he sat anxiously in the centre of the crater with an orb of light around him, it was evident to everyone that he was under the protection of a magic shield.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Has the fear reached your souls yet?” the lich asked as its porcelain mask began to twitch with the same ticking noise as before, almost like a clockwork machine.

Moments later it answered its own question.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: No… not yet…” it said with a displeased sigh.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Fine then… I am rather… impatient…” its head snapped away from the group.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Go that way… that is where you will find your next nightmare…” it said, facing the area that was once the beach XxFoxlyxX started off on.

“(Dead)JohnWillStab: Sweet! It gave us directions!” he said excitedly.

“♛: Yeah, but what is the next arch-coward?” she asked.

“♛: Back when I ran this dungeon there were five of us, one arch-coward disguised itself as our teammate…”

John and XxFoxlyxX nodded.

“♛: Another caused havoc in a town until it was defeated…”

Bonifacius nodded remembering the mass destruction.

“♛: One that stalks you and can only be defeated with a magic charm somewhere on this island.”

“♛: One will make your screen glitch out, screw around with the game’s interface and even mess-up your controls.”

“♛: The last will just run from you, it’s probably the easiest to kill as long as you have some sort of ranged weapon, the others can’t even be killed with normal weapons…” she explained.

“Bonifacius: I have defeated one using simply my weapons, perhaps only some are immune!” he speculated.

A few minutes later, JohnWillStab respawned and was promptly put back down by Bonifacius.

“JohnWillStab: Thanks for carrying my corpse!”

“Bonifacius: Thou are welcome!” he exclaimed with a thumbs-up.

A look of smug pity spread across ♛’s face as she observed JohnWillStab get another thumbs-up of pity.

Seeing this, JohnWillStab immediately performed a one-eighty mood-wise, he looked to Bonifacius with a look of shock as if he was just betrayed.

“JohnWillStab: Et tu, Bonifacius?!”

♛ squinted.

“♛: So, you can quote Caesar but not figure out the square-root of twenty-five?” she questioned.

John raised an eyebrow.

“JohnWillStab: A square root of 25? That’s easy.” He shrugged.

♛ raised an eyebrow.

“♛: Yes, it is, care to tell me the answer then?” she continued.

“JohnWillStab: Sure, give me a second,” he said giving ♛ a pre-emptive smile of victory.

A full minute later, he returned.

“JohnWillStab: There… is a problem…” he began.

“♛: ?”

“JohnWillStab: My calculator doesn’t accept words, only numbers work.” he shrugged.

“JohnWillStab: Guess we’ll call this a tie,”

“♛: …”

“♛: Dude…”

“♛: Square root of 25… just do it in your head…”

“JohnWillStab: I’ll pass, maths is not my strong suit, I’m more of a strategist… or a tactician…”

Nobody spoke for a few seconds as ♛ pulled her staff out.

“♛: John… I swear to f#*k…”

“♛: I refuse to exist in the same party – no, the same WORLD… with somebody who can’t figure out the square root of twenty-f#*king-five!”

JohnWillStab breathed a sigh.

“JohnWillStab: Who cares, it’s just maths…”

“♛: NO, I WANT TO MAKE SURE I’M PLAYING WITH A HUMAN, NOT A BELOW-AVERAGE AMOEBA!”

Bonifacius stepped in between the two.

“Bonifacius: Please, friends! Calm down! Threats and insults won’t get us anywhere!” he pleaded.

“JohnWillStab: Fine! ‘Square root’ of 25!”

“JohnWillStab: So, the 25 is a square, and we need to find the root of the square…” he began.

“JohnWillStab: And the root is the deepest part, so just the bottom line of the square!”

“JohnWillStab: So, it’s a quarter of twenty-five!” he exclaimed confidently.

JohnWillStab awaited praise from anyone in his party, they just looked at him in complete and utter silence.

“Bonifacius: Thy method certainly is imaginative!” he said with a smile.

“♛: John… I will… actually remove your spine and use it like a bat to beat you to death…” she threatened.

“XxFoxlyxX: You sure care about math…”

Utterly shocked, JohnWillStab gasped.

“JohnWillStab: Wait, I was wrong!?”

“♛: ‘I WaS wRoNg?’ YES, YOU F#*KING WERE, JOHN!”

“XxFoxlyxX: GUYS!” XxFoxlyxX pointed in the same direction the lich, revealing the form of an arch-coward, staring at the group from within the woods.

“JohnWillStab: AHA! A DISCTRACTION!” he exclaimed, breaking into a sprint in pursuit of the creature.

Seeing this, the spectre turned away and began to flee.

This one had a green cloak; in its hand, it carried a small bird in a metal birdcage.

“Arch-Coward: Stay back!” exclaimed the third arch-coward as ♛ unleased a magic attack upon the panicked creature.

A swarm of neon, buzzing flies flew from her palm and toward the spectre.

She monitored its health and noticed that her attacks were actually dealing damage.

“♛: This one is killable!" she exclaimed.

JohnWillStab reached for his daggers and tossed them at the foe, the blade passed right through its ghost-like body.

“♛: Looks like non-magical attacks don’t work on this one!"

“JohnWillStab: THIS GAME IS VERY INCONSISTENT ABOUT GHOST-MECHANICS!” John exclaimed as his dagger quickly reappeared in his hands.

“Bonifacius: Tis unfortunate, I possess no damage-dealing spells!” he said glancing over to the equally powerless JohnWillStab.

Suddenly, a green light came over the creature as the arch-coward’s health returned to one-hundred percent.

“♛: S#*t! It can heal itself!”

“Bonifacius: So we must defeat the creature with as few attacks as possible… and they need to be magical as well…”

“XxFoxlyxX: I could probably kill it in one hit if I got close enough!” he offered looking at one of his special card spells.

Players playing as one of the many seal class kinds specialise in creating a “deck” of cards before the battle and supplementing it mid-combat.

For a card-type seal user like XxFoxlyxX, this mean having to purchase card-paper, a cheap reagent sold in just about every town and city.

Different cards require different inks as well as different types of paper, some rare cards require valuable gems or even boss drops from raids.

As such the “skills” of a seal user are more akin to way of using cards, where JohnWillStab can, well, stab someone, Foxly can throw, attach, hide, activate or destroy a card.

He looked into his inventory, seeing a rare card made from custom-crafted paper, part of the recipe requires the blood of a demon as well as ten-thousand gold coins; the quality of the card could be seen by the golden outline it had.

While typically, even Foxly wouldn’t consider using a card like this on a mere undead, he really wanted to see how it looked, and showing off to his party would also be a nice bonus.

For comparison, XxFoxlyxX’s water-orb ability had an over-all value of fifty gold and the average flame seal costs about ten silver.

JohnWillStab turned towards Bonifacius.

“JohnWillStab: I have a plan!”

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius can carry Foxly over to the boss, then he can attach the seal to the ghost!” John suggested.

“♛: That won’t work! The seal isn’t magical in and of itself, so it would just pass thorough it!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Not to mention nobody, except maybe Bonifacius would survive that!”

“I think… I don’t actually know anything about this spell other than its price and the fact it’s an AOE, fire-type spell…” he thought.

“XxFoxlyxX: It’s a custom card I had designed by a scribe, she called it ‘Dragon’s Carnival’ – from what she told me it should be a massive AOE explosion!” he explained.

“JohnWillStab: Alright, plan B!”

“JohnWillStab: What if Bonifacius casts all his defensive abilities, ♛ keeps healing him and then you slap the card onto his shield – he charges the enemy and we let it experience the joys of 1945 Hiroshima!” he suggested.

“Bonifacius: That might work… although thou shouldn’t joke about such things, JohnWillStab!” Bonifacius remarked with a slightly disappointed expression.

John felt bad for disappointing Bonifacius, he took ten points of mental damage.

“♛: The explosion is a quick burst of damage; I can’t really heal him if the blast itself kills him instantly…” she explained.

“Bonifacius: Then I simply cannot die to the blast, is that correct?”

“♛: You make it sound so easy…”

Bonifacius smiled, “Bonifacius: Alright, XxFoxlyxX! Whenever thou are ready!” he said, shooting him a thumbs up.

XxFoxlyxX wasn’t sure about the plan, he had no idea of how powerful this ability could be.

“XxFoxlyxX: Ehh… Fine!” he exclaimed, uncertainly as he selected his card and attached it to Bonifacius’ shield.

Confidently, Bonifacius cheered as he enabled no less than three different spells, blue neon shields appeared around him, [Defensive Stance].

Then his armour began to grow larger and shinier as it became even harder than before, [Reinforce Armour].

Lastly his skin turned into literal steel as he cast, [Titan Flesh].

Like a bullet, Bonifacius flew forward, shattering the ground he stood on moments earlier.

It was like witnessing a tank-shell being launched, Bonifacius ploughed through the ground at an incredible speed as the distance between himself and the green-cloaked spectre neared zero.

XxFoxlyxX hovered his mouse over the [Activate Card] spell, waiting for the perfect time to attack.

“If I cast it too early, the arch-lich might move out of the blast radius before taking any real damage…” he thought.

“XxFoxlyxX: HERE GOES NOTHING!” he exclaimed, detonating the card, it disappeared with a poof of smoke doing no actual damage to anything.

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“♛: …”

“JohnWillStab: …”

“Bonifacius: …”

“Bonifacius: T-thou almost had it!” he said with a reassuring smile.

“XxFoxlyxX: STOP PITYING ME!”

“♛: I’m not pitying you… I just feel really sad when I look at you…” she replied with an expression of pity.

“JohnWillStab: Maybe the spell just had a delay of some sort?” John speculated.

♛ turned to face John and breathed a sigh, he didn’t see the point of being so optimistic in the face of an obvious failure.

“♛: What gives you that idea?”

“JohnWillStab: That…” he said pointing into sky where a massive vortex of black clouds and fire began to manifest.

Within the ash clouds of the sky above roared crimson thunder.

The swirling heavens of smoke and ash began to reach for the earth below, their shape slowly beginning to resemble that of a pillar or maybe a tornado.

“♛: JESUS CHRIST, FOXLY! TRY NOT TO SINK THE F#*KING ISLAND!” she cried as from within that pillar came a massive arm, it was green and covered in massive scales.

“XxFoxlyxX: BIT LATE NOW!”

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS EDELYN THINKING WITH THIS SPELL!?” Foxly thought as a voice began to speak from within the column of black.

“Great Green Dragon Emrelax: Your request was heard, XxFoxlyxX.”

“Bonifacius: Whoever created this spell must truly know their lore! The green dragon was, in fact, called Emrelax!” Bonifacius nodded in approval.

JohnWillStab turned to face Foxly with a look of shock.

“JohnWillStab: Are you telling me a player designed that!?”

Foxly nodded.

“Bonifacius: They must be quite the talented scribe to be able to create a card as complex as this!” he remarked.

The massive dragon arm opened its palm as within it manifested a sun surrounded by magic circles and small balls of fire orbiting the biggest one.

Effortlessly, the dragon threw the orbs into the sky before pulling its arm back into the pillar of smoke which dispersed into nothingness seconds later.

Above the group now hung the seconds sun which quickly began to glow brighter and brighter until it became so bright everybody’s screen looked solid white when they looked into the sky.

From the massive orb of light flew down several dozen glowing projectiles, they screeched through the air as they coiled and twisted their way towards every enemy on the map.

Both the green-cloaked and the as of then undiscovered violet-cloaked arch-cowards were killed.

“JohnWillStab: IT GOT BOTH! Awesome!”

“Bonifacius: Indeed! A very impressive ability, friend!” he exclaimed, turning to face Foxly.

A deep guttural laugh came from the distant crater.

“♛: Looks like the boss is up next.”

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Finally! You’re ready!” this message was immediately followed by a massive explosion located in the crater.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Not bad! But you cannot scare the embodiment of fear!” it laughed.

Another explosion.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: Y-you are tougher… than you seem… Yet fear will persist! You cannot defeat it!”

And another.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: No… How could this-?! Stay back!”

And another.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: GET AWAY FROM ME!”

And another.

“Melthazar the Arch-Lich of Nightmares: D-damn… it… looks… like I was… defeated at last…”

The group silently walked to the centre of the crater where the charred body of the boss lay unmoving.

JohnWillStab became enveloped in golden light as his level increased by two thanks to the ‘swift-defeat’ buff given to players who kill any dungeon boss in under five-minutes, as well as the loads of XP he gained killing the minions in the dungeon.

“JohnWillStab: NICE! Two levels!” he remarked.

“♛: That was… anticlimactic…”

“♛: It’d make less sense if the boss survived that…”

“♛: But still, it was anticlimactic…” she said wryly.

The boss died as another dozen or so projectiles rained down from the sky onto the corpse of the boss.

“XxFoxlyxX: Welp, I’d say that was pretty good for 10k gold!” he said looking to his group members for some sort of reaction.

“JohnWillStab: IT WAS HOW MUCH!?” JohnWillStab would probably never see, let alone own that much money in the game, and Foxly just blew it on a boss and its two minions.

“XxFoxlyxX: What’s the point of money if you don’t spend it, y’know?” he asked with a smile.

JohnWillStab grabbed the frogman by his collar and began to shake him again.

“JohnWillStab: I’VE BEEN LIVING OFF INSTANT NOODLES FOR LIKE 7 YEARS! DON’T WASTE MONEY! EVEN VIRTUAL MONEY!”

“Bonifacius: Seven years? Tis quite long to survive of salted carbohydrates…”

“♛: …how are you still alive?” she questioned, more surprised than anything.

“XxFoxlyxX: Get a job or something!” he exclaimed wriggling free from John’s clutches.

“JohnWillStab: IT’S OK! I LIKE NOODLES, BUT STILL!” he yelled back.

“♛: Is your caps lock broken again?”

JOHN NODDED.

♛ and Foxly breathed a sigh as JohnWillStab smacked his keyboard a few times in hopes of fixing whatever was wrong with it.

As ♛ continued to question John’s financial situation, XxFoxlyxX moved over towards the boss, he knelt down and began to collect its loot.

“♛: Did it at least drop anything good?” she asked, seeing that Foxly was already taking the loot.

“XxFoxlyxX: Let’s see…”

“XxFoxlyxX: That’s a ring of agility, a cape of fire absorption and a pet!” he exclaimed.

Pets were very rare, it was quite common for the average player to have no more than one or two pets, especially since the chance of obtaining a pet gradually decreases with the number of pets you own.

The highest number of pets owned by a player was seven, although there is nothing stopping you from buying pets on the auction house.

“♛: I don’t really want any of that stuff, count me out.” She said, looking at the visibly excited XxFoxlyxX.

“XxFoxlyxX: I call dibs on the pet!” he exclaimed with a grin.

“JohnWillStab: WELL, YOU DID SINGLE-HANDIDLY KILL THE BOSS!” John remarked with an approving nod.

“Bonifacius: Indeed! I already possess a cape of fire absorption, an old friend crafted it for me for a raid, so thou may count me out as well!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, I’m good! The ring and cape are yours, John!” he said grabbing the pet.

As soon as he right-clicked the item in his inventory, the pet was added to his pet-storage, a separate menu from which pets could be summoned.

Eagerly, Foxly selected the pet and clicked “summon”, causing the rickety, wooden form of a scarecrow to manifest with a face painted on its sack-head.

“:D”

JohnWillStab grabbed the two items and equipped them.

[Ring of Agility]

“The ring of agility grants a +3 to both Dexterity and Athletics stats when worn.”

JohnWillStab equipped the silver ring, in it was a shining blue gem.

[Cape of Fire-Absorption]

“The cape of fire-absorption grants the wearer a +1 to their Magic and Charisma stats, the cape will block one fire-based magic attack and convert its damage to a shield equal in durability to the spell’s intended damage. The protective effect will last 10 seconds, in addition, for every level you gain under level 20, the time the shield will remain active will increase by 1.”

He also equipped the cape which appeared on his back as a dark crimson cape with a bright-red trim designed to look like flames.

JohnWillStab glanced down to his stats, he was now level nine.

“Strength: 18”

“Athletics: 14 (+3 Ring)”

“Dexterity: 14 (+3 Ring)”

“Magic: 3 (+1 Cape)”

“Intelligence: 7”

“Luck: 8”

“Stamina: 7”

“Perception: 9”

“Charisma: 5 (+1 Cape)”

“Weapon Skills: 14”

“Nice!” John thought as the nightmarish landscape around them began to fade away, leaving only the corpse of the arch-lich laying on the cold floor of his chamber, dead.

The group breathed a collective sigh of relief upon returning to the boss room.

“♛: Alright, lads. Let’s get moving! We have two more bosses to kill!” she exclaimed.

“JohnWillStab: Don’t you mean three?” John question.

“♛: Ah, yes, I forgot!” she laughed uncertainly.

XxFoxlyxX raised an eyebrow at this.

“JohnWillStab: Pfft! And you said I’m bad maths!” he laughed.

“♛: …speaking of which…” she began with a malicious smile.

John realized he just dive-bombed into a field of cacti.

“JohnWillStab: OH GOD NO!”

“XxFoxlyxX: You said it yourself, we should get moving.” He said with a hint of suspicion in his voice.

“NICE SAVE!” John thought, shooting XxFoxlyxX a discrete thumbs up.

♛ breathed a sigh.

“♛: Fine, let’s go.”

They opened the massive door which became unlocked upon the boss’ death and continued moving into the long tunnel leading to the second boss.