The past few days had been, understandably, the most insane experience of Wyatt’s life. He had fought a troll, and giant man-eating snakes. He was even a mage and could cast spells.

But somehow, none of that compared to seeing actual elves.

He gaped in awe at the beings who seemed to come straight out of a fantasy movie, not knowing what to say or do. It was Marlene who broke the silence.

“Please, sir,” she said weakly, “My son has been poisoned.” She motioned to her child, showing the elf the obvious signs of poison. “You have to help him.”

The elf leader seemed to hesitate, looking for several long seconds at the boy in Marlene’s arms. Finally, as if making a decision, he looked to his side and briefly spoke with another rider. Then he turned back to the humans and motioned them to follow. With a wave of his hand, most of the riders set off towards the canyon, leaving only ten elves to escort the humans towards the woods.

While they walked, with nothing else to do now that they seemed relatively safe, Wyatt opened his notifications.

Combat Report

Your party has slain:

Shadowscale Python

Your party has escaped:

Shadowscale Python x2

Rewards:

Experience earned

Your class has leveled up: Mage – Level 4

You have gained Attribute Points

Your skills have leveled up:

Earth Magic – Level 4

Air Magic – Level 2

Perception – Level 3

You have gained a new skill:

Squad Tactics – Level 1

Tactics. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Wanting something to keep his mind occupied, Wyatt opened his stat page to read more into the new skill, and to take a look at his Subtle Manipulation ability he had earned previously.

Skill:

Squad Tactics

Level:

1

Attribute:

Charisma

Description:

You are adept at leading a squad sized unit in combat. Provides a small boost to all stats for your party when fighting together based on your Charisma score. When multiple party members have access to this skill, only the highest level applies.

Ability:

Subtle Manipulation

Base Cost:

25 MP

Skill:

Enchantment Magic

Cast Time:

Instant

Duration:

Instant

Description:

Use this ability just as a target is about to act, when the mind is weakest. Causes the target’s action to change slightly. Multiple casts on the same target have decreased chance of success.

These can be useful, he thought absently. His mind had been wandering again, and he lost track of time. If he had thought more into this, he probably would have realized this was a defensive tactic to keep his mind off of the horrors of the last few days, especially their recent loss.

It didn’t take them long to reach the tree line, and the mage looked around him as they did so. It seemed slightly brighter outside, and Wyatt realized the sun had started coming up over the horizon.

The elves spent the time scanning the surrounding trees or staring ahead as they rode, almost refusing to look at the humans. None of them spoke, and they seemed to be on edge. Wyatt didn’t know what was wrong, but he started getting a bad feeling in his stomach. Maybe it’s just nerves from everything that has happened.

He looked at the others to gauge how they were feeling. Cecilia and Marlene seemed focused entirely on the kid, alternating between reassuring him, and attempting to cure him with her magic.

Brad and Angela seemed almost lost. It was clear their thoughts were on Chuck, and their dour faces brought Wyatt’s own emotions back to the forefront of his mind. He pushed them back down, intent on keeping a level head until he knew they were safe.

Lastly, he looked to Margie, hoping her ever-present smile would reassure him.

She was gone.

Wyatt looked around, trying to hide the rising panic he felt. He knew she had been with them when the elves had surrounded them, but he couldn’t remember when she had disappeared. He wasn’t that close to the old lady, but she was still one of them, and he didn’t want to lose another member of their party.

Then he saw her. She was in the trees about 50 feet ahead and to the right of the front most rider. She was looking directly at the mage, and he saw clarity in her eyes. Her smile was gone, and she looked gravely at him. This was not the look of a senile old lady. She motioned for him to join her.

I must be going crazy.

Still, Wyatt looked around at the elves. He had a feeling they wouldn’t just let him walk off into the trees, and they were grouped too tightly for him to sneak off.

Before he could come up with a plan, he saw Margie wave her hand. The rider immediately to Wyatt’s right turned his mount and rode back down where they had come. Wyatt saw his opportunity, and he quickly ducked behind a tree. Surprisingly, none of the other elves noticed him as they passed.

He turned towards Margie’s position, intent on joining her. Before he could even take a step, she was directly in front of him, only feet away. It startled him, and he stifled a yell as he stood to full height. How did she do that?

“We need to be careful,” she whispered to him.

“I know,” he responded, “Or I assumed as much. Something is wrong.”

The two snuck through the trees, Wyatt following Margie as she seemed to know where she was going. They seemed to be moving parallel with the others, and it wasn’t long before Wyatt could smell a campfire ahead.

Then he saw the elven camp. It was huge, with identical green tents everywhere that reminded Wyatt of some kind of military mobilization. Hundreds of elves could be seen walking between them in various forms of near identical armor. Campfires, dozens of them he realized, were just now being put out as the sun rose in the morning sky. It looked impressive, but Wyatt still felt uneasy, and he had no idea why.

That’s when he saw the cages.

There were at least a hundred of them, all of various shapes and sizes. They were all empty, which confused the mage. Maybe they were here to capture some of the monsters that seemed to be prevalent here.

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The monsters!

“They are responsible for the monsters in the caves.” He turned towards the bard, who was staring at him as if waiting for him to come to this realization. “They must have put the monsters into the caves and sealed them up. But why? What did we do to deserve that?” His anger was rising, and it was a struggle for him to keep his voice from rising in kind.

The old lady was silent, only staring at him with sad eyes as his mind raced.

“We have to get the others out, they’re in danger.”

He turned in time to see the human-elf procession enter the camp. His friends were ushered to a group of benches not far from where he hid, and the elf riders hitched their mounts near another group of the bird-horse creatures. Wyatt noticed they remained armored, indicating the rider’s preparedness to mount at a moment’s notice, and he cursed at the misfortune.

He didn’t have long to formulate a plan, however, as yelling at the center of the camp stole his attention. Turning, he saw the elf that had led the riders talking to another. This one had armor that was much more elaborately decorated, most likely denoting a higher rank, Wyatt surmised, as he was visibly berating the other.

Their language was strange, made even worse by the fact that it had no relation to any language spoken on Earth given its obvious origins in another world, and the mage had no idea what was going on.

When the elf commander drew his sword and shouted for others to follow him to the humans, Wyatt knew his time was up.

“Run!” he shouted to his friends, coming out of the tree line to cast Rock Spike and send a large rock at the closest of the elven mounts, causing it to panic. This caused a cascade effect, as the others, trained though they seemed to be, reacted how any other animal would, and began frantically pulling at their ropes. It didn’t take long for them to tear free, and they began a stampede through the camp.

The resulting confusion would have bought the humans enough time to escape unscathed, if they, too, hadn’t been startled by the sudden flurry of activity.

The elf commander looked around at the panicked animals and began shouted orders to his subordinates. Chaos was brought to relative order as the elves started assembling into squads.

“RUN!” Wyatt repeated, his voice cracking at the urgency of it. The others, finally noticing the angry commander, realized the danger they were in. Brad ushered the scared mother, son still in her arms, toward the mage. The others moved to follow, but the hostile elves were closing in on them.

Wyatt looked at the distance they would have to traverse to get to the safety of the tree line. They were too far, and the fast-approaching elves, even without their mounts, would catch them before they reached safety.

Wyatt looked back at the others. He locked eyes with Angela, who had stopped moments before, having already made the same realization herself.

In a moment that seemed to last forever, and yet not nearly long enough, she stared at Wyatt. Her face was serene, and she even smiled at him in a way that reminded him of the first time he saw her at the gas station a lifetime ago. The smile she wished she had given him then.

She drew her rapier as Brad, Marlene, and Cecilia sprinted across the open ground towards the two waiting humans. Wyatt was frozen in place and watched in scared awe as the skirmisher suddenly turned and lunged at one of the elf soldiers, taking him by surprise and stabbing him in the neck. She fought with everything she had, without the slightest hint of fear or regret. She stayed on the defensive, attacking only to keep the attention of as many as she could on her.

But she could only hold them off for so long, as the elf commander, his curved blade still drawn, swiftly ended the fight.

She fell as the others reached the safety of the trees.

Wyatt, his attention now fully on the body of the woman who had become his friend, heard nothing of the others as they shouted at him to move. He did not hear the elves as they renewed their own run to the trees. He simply stared at Angela, now another corpse to feed this perpetual nightmare.

It was with a powerful pull that the mage was finally roused from his stupor, and he turned to look at Brad’s face, cheeks streaked with tears as he, too, felt the loss of another of their party.

With renewed urgency, Wyatt and the others turned and sprinted as fast as they could into the trees.

The party ran with reckless abandon for what felt like hours, the sun now well above the horizon as morning turned to noon. The added light helped them navigate the roots and rocks of the forest as the party followed Margie.

The bard had kept up her song though all of this, her breath seeming to be unaffected by the joint effort of sprinting and singing. Wyatt was glad for her newfound vigor, as the increase to their stamina recovery seemed to be the only thing that kept the party ahead of their pursuers.

Twice now, the humans stopped to catch their breath, thinking they were safe. After only a few short minutes, they could hear the loud armor of soldiers gaining on them, their trail easy to follow in the underbrush. They pushed on immediately, Margie dead set on running in one direction, though none of the others would risk questioning where that was. They did not care where they were going, so long as they went as fast as they could.

Wyatt, in an attempt to keep the speed up as fast as he could, cast Haste at every opportunity on everyone in the party. He waited for his mana to regenerate to an acceptable level, then sped the party up with his spell, keeping enough mana in reserve in case the pursuers caught up.

When the party was sufficiently ahead of the elves, they would slow down to a fast walk. The slower speed, coupled with the increased stamina recovery from Margie, allowed them to regain what precious little stamina they could. The respite never seemed to last long enough, and they would always hear shouting soon after as the elves came back into earshot.

They must be much higher levels than us, Wyatt thought. Constantly, his mind raced for some way to outpace their pursuers, but any plan he could come up with ended with them being caught. The elves numbered in the hundreds, able to cover a large area as they moved through the woods. Turning from their current path would only shorten the distance to being caught.

Wyatt switched from casting Haste on the entire party to casting it on one or two of them. This allowed the recipient to slow down to a walk, which allowed some stamina recovery instead of draining while still keeping up with the others as they ran. Still, this tactic only seemed to delay the inevitable, as they seemed to have less and less opportunity to recover.

The flight had lasted hours already, and Wyatt knew they were at their limit. Isaac’s condition seemed to worsen with each passing second, and Marlene had to carry him throughout the entire ordeal. She never once let anyone else carry him, somehow finding the strength to continue running with her added weight while the others struggled unburdened.

The humans, already tired from the constant struggle they had been in before the appearance of the elves, had precious little energy in their reserves. All too soon their mad flight through the woods slowed and they were forced to stop again.

In the corner of his vision, Wyatt saw a symbol had appeared. He spared a glance at it

Status: Fatigued – Level 1

You have begun to reach the physical limits of your body. Rest and recover, or risk temporary penalties.

Wyatt closed the prompt. He knew they had not made enough ground on the elves, but there was nothing they could do.

“We need to hide,” he wheezed, trying to catch his breath in what he knew would be a very short rest.

No one answered, the last of their hope hanging by a thread. Already they could hear the sound of their pursuers, who made no attempt to hide their approach. They had numbers and, most likely, levels on their side. The fight with the humans would be a short one.

Arrows began to rain down on them from the direction of the elves. First it was only one, then more as other archers joined the assault. Isaac was the only thing that saved their lives, as he had been looking upwards while they rested, held as he was in his mother’s arms. He raised his hand in the air, using what precious little energy he had left, and created a shield, stopping the arrows and giving the others enough time to duck behind the trees.

But the venom in his body sapped even that energy from him, and his shield failed as an arrow struck Brad in the shoulder, too large to completely hide behind the smaller trees.

Wyatt saw the barbarian’s face turn to one of utter rage. Rage he had never seen on another human. Rage at more than just the elves, but the monsters they had faced, the loss of their friends and allies, and rage at this entire world.

As the soldiers came into view, he screamed a vicious, feral scream. His voice echoed across the woods, sent by a massive influx of his mana and even his soul, to reach the ears of everything that meant the party harm.

The elves flinched at the unexpected fight in their prey, which gave the barbarian enough time to heft his axe, and leap into the air in an inhuman feat of strength. He landed amongst them, sending a shock wave that knocked the closest to the ground.

His axe fell.

Over and over, blow after blow the barbarian’s rage fueled strikes fell onto the unsuspecting soldiers, killing one and injuring others before they could regain their footing.

“Go,” shouted Wyatt, seeing the act for what it was.

Another sacrifice. Another comrade to be lost in an attempt to save the rest.

The last five survivors; Wyatt, Margie, Marlene, Isaac, and Cecilia, left the barbarian behind to his fate. Wyatt said a silent thank you to him, as they renewed their flight.

The war cries of the barbarian were tragically short, and Wyatt spared a second to remember the time he spent with the man. Not the past few days, but the time before that, before the integration. It was only a few minutes, but the man’s personality was so great that a few minutes was all it took for anyone to feel like they knew him.

Cecilia, the youngest still on her feet, began to waver. With all the strength granted to her by the system, she was still a child, and Wyatt stopped just long enough to let her jump on his back, then caste Haste on himself to catch up to the others. His mana and stamina were dangerously low, but he knew if they were caught, “battle” would be the wrong word for what would happen.

“I got her,” he shouted to a scared Marlene, who had slowed when she noticed her daughter trailing behind her.

The Fatigued status symbol changed, and Wyatt looked at it again.

Status: Fatigued – Level 2

You have exerted your body beyond its limits, your stats suffer a temporary penalty. Rest and recover, or risk increased penalties.

Wyatt disregarded the message. He needed to push himself, every extra step he could push out of his failing body was one step further away from their enemy.

“Almost there,” said Margie finally.

As they crested a hill, Wyatt could see what looked like a castle tower, barely a few hundred yards away.

“We’ll be safe in there,” the bard said with a finality that made the others believe her. With renewed hope, they redoubled their efforts.

An arrow landed on the ground in front of him, and he looked back in time to see a group of archers had crested the hill they had just been standing on.

He turned his attention to their destination. It was close, not a hundred yards. They were going to make it.

Then, he felt pressure from behind him that almost caused him to stumble. He regained his footing and ignored the pain in his leg as an arrow struck it.

Finally, they reached the tower. There was a door at its base, and Margie, somehow farther ahead than she had been, was standing in front of it. When Wyatt and Marlene touched it, a prompt appeared.

Dungeon of the Earth Lord

Dungeon Type:

Unique

Maximum Party Size:

None

Recommended Party Level:

10

Do you wish to enter the Dungeon of the Earth Lord?

Yes or No

With no other choice, Wyatt selected Yes.

Wyatt’s vision went white as he was teleported into the dungeon. He briefly saw what looked to be a room inside of a castle, but almost as soon as his feet hit the ground, the status symbol in the corner of his vision changed, and everything went black.