Defeated: Human(Level: 27, Fire mage - Level: 26)
+315 EXP
*Ding* You have leveled up!
*Ding* You have leveled up!
*Ding* You have leveled up!
Holy shit, he just did that. This dude just killed his own teammate, and judging from the horrified look on his face it wasn’t intentional. Oh my god, I’m the one who dragged Alex in front of the knife. I guess kill credit is shared, I didn’t deliver the killing blow but I did fuck Alex up alot. I wonder if Exp is shared equally or proportionally. My thoughts are drawn off by Shara.
“Alex? Alex, say something!” Shara says frantically.
I just carefully lay the corpse down on the ground. Durin is just standing there staring at the corpse with a dagger still in its chest. I just look at Durin and call him out.
“Dude, thats fucked, even by my standards.” I say.
He immediately gets pissed off, rage overtaking his face as he lunges at me screaming.
“I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Kill him!” I say while pointing to the lunging Durin.
His attempt to grab me is intercepted by the screeching twigling. With no weapon to defend himself he’s at the twigling’s non existent mercy as it tackles him to the ground and proceeds to start tearing him apart with its claws. I turn and bolt into the hedge, leaving the idiots to deal with their own problems. Behind me I hear Grant screaming for Durin and Shara screaming for Alex to get up. I feel a little bit of sadness hearing their cries but play stupid games win stupid prizes, shouldn’t have tried to kill me. As I break through the hedge I see my pod in the final stages of packing up, the roots are starting to intertwine into the little backpack straps. A loud screech from the twingling followed by silence from the bundle of sticks lets me know that Grant finally took it out, I can only hope it did enough damage to keep them from following. I grab my pod and throw it onto my back, fitting it just above the sack I got from Shara. As I finish and turn to leave I hear a familiar booming voice come from where I left the three remaining stooges.
“What the hell is going on here!?” Bardin screams.
“The dryad, Nina was the dryad! Please, we need healing items!” Grant says frantically.
“What! Where did she go!?” Bardin demands.
I bolt out the opposite way and run like hell.
“Get after it! Now!” Bardin screams.
And with that shout I double down and run as fast as I can to put distance between me and the gold hungry horde of murder hobos no doubt close on my tail. I’m running so fast I’m not even bothering to lessen my trail, trampled bushes and snapped branches riddle the straight path behind me. It’s going to be easy for them to follow me, but I’m betting on being fast enough that they can’t catch me. Once I get enough distance I’ll swap to trying to sneak through the woods and change direction, hopefully they will be so used to following my trail by that point they will overshoot and run off the wrong way. That notion is cut short as an arrow flies over my head and lands in a tree a fair way in front of me. I look over my shoulder to see close to half a dozen people storming up the trail after me, an archer in front firing arrows that mostly fly wide, but I guess the occasional one gets close enough to hitting for me to notice. Bloody hell, they are keeping up even if barely. Take a hard right and keep running for about fifteen more seconds, then I make a hard left and continue parallel to the route I was running before.
That little stunt at least buys me some time away from the archer’s line of sight. That group is about thirty seconds of running behind me, I can’t see their levels but I suspect they were the ones following Bardin around. Not a fight I want to take, so I keep running. Eventually I come across another clearing area. This one is large, maybe double the size of the glade I woke up in. The thing is this area has two giant trees in the middle, surrounded by the empty space of the clearing. This gives me an idea, a stupid idea that would get me off almost scott free if it works.
I bolt straight across from where I entered and reenter the forest. I don’t go very far, just far enough to make it look like I ran this way. After trampling the grass and bushes a fair bit, I run back out into the clearing and over to the trees. I’m almost out of time, I quickly climb the closest tree which is the smaller of the two trees. About half way up I can hear the noise of the hunters tailing me, they aren't yelling and screaming, but that many people moving that quickly still makes a lot of noise. Just as I finish climbing up into the tree and hiding myself behind a solid portion of trunk, the trailers burst into the clearing. I’m still and quiet as a church mouse during mass as they run through and take the bait trail, running off into the forest. Holy shit that actually worked. I start climbing down from my perch, careful to make as little noise as possible. Now I just need to sneak off in another direction, I’m going to head off in a forty five degree angle from my original path. That should give me enough distance from both the town and the chasing hooligans to not get caught again, hopefully.
As I reach the lowest branches of the tree and hop down to the ground, a feeling of something being off hits me. It’s dark here, too much for the shade thrown by the tree. I look around and notice that everything is darker, almost like it’s in a giant shadow. I quickly poke my head out from under the tree and look up, and what I see above me chills me to my core. Flying maybe only a hundred feet over the tops of the trees is what I can only describe as a giant flying boat. The armored underside of which is dotted with three large, multi barrel cannons. Attached in four places, one at each corner, are four giant crystals encased by thick armor casings. Only the tops and bottoms of the crystals can be seen, so I’m just assuming it’s solid all the way through. This thing is close to at least six hundred feet long, five fifty at minimum. Oh damn, how many troops can that thing hold if it's a troop transport? And I’ll bet my pod that all of them are here to kill me, assuming it’s not a combat warship. If it’s ment for fighting they might just start fucking blasting every square inch of forest for miles around where I was last seen. Yea time for me to take the hint and fuck off to somewhere far away. At this point I’m debating just fucking living in the forest alone and avoiding people. All anyone wants to do is kill me, and for no good fucking reason either! Just thinking about it pisses me off! I’ll deal with that train of thought properly later, right now I need to get out of here before, wait what's that in the air falling from the airship? Oh Shit!
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I barely have time to jump out of the way as something small but fast drops in from above and slams into the ground at high speed. The resulting blast and shock wave sending me tumbling into the clearing and left disoriented.
Health: 641/650
They found me already, how?! Thankfully that bomb didn’t do much damage, but shit that's going to be the first of many. I shakely stand up and reorient myself, then notice something out of the corner of my eye where the bomb landed. You’ve got to be kidding me, it wasn’t a bomb, oh no no no it’s much worse.
Drazin (Kobold, Level 255 Battle Fiend Barbarian, Level 55 Berserker)
As the dust clears a giant of a lizard man comes into view, this dude has to be almost eight feet tall. A mix of green and blue scales cover his body, a short snout on his face. He stares at me through the remaining dust with a pair of yellow eyes with slit irises, like a cat’s. He cracks a smile, showing off his canines. Then he reaches down to his sides and grabs two fairly large and shiny axes and screams.
“Found you! Fight me!”
Oh hell to the fuck no! That’s it, I am so done with this bullshit! What the fuck is wrong with these people!? This crazy, jacked up, lizard man thing just dropped well over a hundred feet and he wants me to fight him! OK, calm down, I don’t need to fight him. I just need to distract him long enough to run away, but all that I have on me is my pod and the empty sack. The tree isn’t useful either, too far away. All that's around me is the dirt he blasted everywhere when he landed and some grass. Wait, dirt…. I wonder if I can blind him. It might be my only chance to get out of this alive. I cautiously reach down and pick up a hand full of dirt, the lizard man staring at me expectantly all the while. Actual sand would work a lot better here but work with what you got.
I throw the dirt at his eyes then turn around and run as fast as I can towards the forest. Behind me I hear a confused “huh?” from the lizard man but I don’t stop to check if my little stunt was actually effective or not. Just as I hit the tree line I hear the voice of a woman calling out to the lizard man from above.
“Gods damn it Drazin, if you're going to go jumping off the airship to catch the monster, don’t just stand there while it runs away!”
Then I hear Drazin start to chase after me, charging me with such speed that I barely have time to turn around and register that he’s moved, much less dodge the giant hand reaching out to grab me. I dive to the side trying to avoid the grab, only to get grabbed in the hair instead of the neck. I screamed in pain as I was yanked backwards and lifted off the ground by my hair. Oh god this hurts so much. If I get out of this I am going to apologize to my sister for everything I ever did to her hair as a child. He spins me around to face him, a bored look on his face.
“That’s it? This is the monster they hyped up so much? I was expecting more tree tricks and what not.” Drazin says.
Wait, that’s it! We’re in the trees now, but no way I can do any damage to this walking tank of a lizard man. Well, as my friend Fred used to say, when you're in a fight, go for the eyes. I activate Plant Forming and use the skill to manipulate a tree on my right. Just then the lady from before calls out to Drazin again, she’s a lot closer but still somewhere I can’t see her above the trees.
“Drazin, quit playing with it and kill it. You can have all the fun you want killing normal monsters but this is serious.”
A thin branch on a nearby tree starts to slowly curl upward and lengthen so as to have a better chance of hitting my intended target. I have it bending back into a curl, making sure to reinforce the branch so it can survive the tension being pressed upon it. This is eating my mana like crazy so once he looks back at me I’ll try to make it whip out and hit him in his eye.
Mana: 1032/2958
My little dirt trick didn’t work, but hopefully this will. Afterall who’s crazy enough to try something that didn't work once a second time, someone who’s hair feels like it's about to rip out of her scalp, that's who.
“Alright fine, I’ll just smash it and be done, it’s boring anyways.” Drazin says.
As he starts to turn his head back I prepare to release the branch, but at the last second she calls out to him again. I almost release the branch but manage to hold off as he looks back to bicker with the woman above the trees.
“Don’t literally smash it, clean cut Drazin, they want the body for research and all that jazz. Extra hundred gold for us if you can just refrain from pointlessly smashing.” The lady says.
“Why would I care about a measly hundred gold, I can make double that by going and killing a dragon.” Drazin says.
“Not all of us can casually slay a dragon Drazin, so please just make it clean so the rest of us can get paid.” The lady says.
Stop bickering and hurry the fuck up! I’m running out of mana!
Mana: 461/2958
“Ugh fine! I’ll slit its throat, but next time I get to fight all the monsters by myself!” Drazin says
Oh shit it’s now or never. Drazin puts his right ax up to my neck and looks back into my eyes. At Least he has the decency to look me in the eye when he kills me, please fucking work! I release the branch, trying to aim it for his left eye with my limited perception. With a loud crack it hits home, striking him right in the eye like a whip. As I hoped, he shouts in surprise and reflexively tries to cover his eye, and in doing so uses the closest hand, aka the one he was holding me with. The moment I hit the ground I scramble away and bolt, just in time to feel the shock wave pass me when the now very angry lizard man decided to swing at where I had landed.
I take off running through the woods, the sound of trees being literally shattered not far behind me as I try to make my escape. I hate this damn place.