Chapter 48: Old "Friends"

Mason landed just in front of the Town gates. Still invisible, he stored the stone disk away and moved quickly towards the fight.

Gael was here. She had given him an entire year but had come back. Barely a few weeks later. He didn’t think he was slightly ready to face her again. He had gotten stronger, but he had no doubts that Gael had picked up just as many new abilities as he had.

Suddenly he felt the ground beneath him shake.

Hunter Class Rank up

New Rank - 24/52

New Hunter Skill - Gather Intel

Gather Intel

Watching a creature fight will allow you to form better instincts while fighting that creature yourself.

24/52? The last time he had bothered to check, he had been ranked 50/87. Had Gael killed 35 Hunters already? How long had she been here? He needed to hurry before the psycho bitch killed anyone else.

The Gather Intel skill might be useful if the system considered Gael a creature, but he was unsure as to whether he had seen her fight enough for it to count.

As he ran through the Town gates, he checked his notifications.

Notification 1/2

Mandatory Quest. Get to Town as fast as you can.

Objective: Your presence is needed in Town. Get there in the next 30 Minutes. - Quest completed in 7 minutes and 42 seconds.

Reward: Experience Boost. Gain 100% more XP for your next kill.

In the unlikely that he could actually kill Gael, that XP boosts would be insane! He hadn’t been able to get a good read on her level the last time they had fought, but it had been far above the level 12 he had been at the time.

Notification 2/2

Quest updated! Kill an Other

Quest Objective - Not all others are as strong as the one you faced. Some are stronger, some are weaker. I suggest finding a weaker one to kill.

Update: Gael has come back stronger than ever. She gave you a year but has come back weeks later. Find out what she wants and kill her before she destroys the entire Town.

Reward -

1. A new ability to absorb.

2. She probably has some sweet loot on her.

The first thing he needed to do was get close enough to watch her fight. He didn’t think he was ready for this, so he was going to need every advantage he could get. He needed a few moments to prepare something, then he was going to head in and find Gael and do everything he could to kill her. Mason had no doubt in his mind that Mayry would be involved in that fight. He hadn’t seen her, his attention had been immediately drawn to Gael. He could only hope she wasn’t already dead.

Happy with the little surprise he had prepared for the upcoming fight, he ran towards the fight. From the air, he had seen the Hunters surrounding Gael in the guard’s training yard, where Mason had been training with Lyvan every morning for the past few days. He raced through the Town, trying to get there before anyone else was killed.

He hid and watched the ongoing battle. He knew Lyvan was good, but wow, the Gnoll moved like lightning, always at least three steps ahead of his opponent. Gael could barely keep up. They were both moving far faster than any normal human could make sense of, but Mason was able to follow along just fine. He relaxed slightly, maybe he wouldn’t need to fight at all. As long as the Gnoll ended it quickly and didn’t give Gael any opportunity to use her other abilities, Lyvan was clearly going to be the victor.

As he watched the two fight, he felt something in the back of his mind. It was as if he was memorising and analysing every second of the fight. After a few minutes of this analysis, he instinctively knew that if he were to fight Gael using only hand-to-hand combat, he would win 6 times out of 10.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

When Lyvan finally pinned Gael, Mason thought it was over, but no, the two of them spoke briefly, then enrages Lyvan swung the sword at Gael’s throat and from there, everything went wrong. A barrier appeared, and before Mason could react, Gael was wrist-deep in Lyvans chest, pulling out the man’s heart.

Mason was too shocked to react, he had been winning. Then out of nowhere, he had been brutally killed, his body desecrated by the psychopath.

She raised her head and looked directly at his invisible form. She stared for a moment and cocked her head to the side. “Did you enjoy the show?” she asked him with a mad smile.

Mason reached deep inside himself and pulled out every morsel of courage and confidence he could. He removed his invisibility and stepped forward.

Within seconds Mayry was at his side. Her eyes were puffy and red. She and Lyvan had been close, and she had just watched him die in a truly horrific way.

She swallowed, took a breath and punched him hard in his shoulder. “Took you long enough!” She whispered.

He smirked and whispered back, “Yeah, I got pinned down on a contract….”

“Excuse me!” Gael demanded. “I am standing here waiting to kill you, and you’re both being very rude!”

Mason looked at Gael and blinked several times as if only now remembering she was there. “Oh yeah, you. What do you want? You said I had a year! I do not know how time works on Babybel or wherever it is you are from, but here a year is 365 days!” Mason frowned and shot a sideways glance at Mayry, whispering, “That’s right… isn’t it?”

Mayry whispered back, “Yep.”

“Exactly and here I find you came back early to kill half the Town’s Hunters and most of its guards! What the heck!?”

Gael had the decency to look slightly ashamed, she avoided making eye contact with him, staring mostly at her feet. “I was going to give you a year to train and get stronger, so killing you would be more fun and more rewarding… but I got bored, so here I am. It’s not my fault you weren’t here when I arrived! I had to do something, I wasn’t just going to wait for you patiently!” Gael looked into Mason’s eyes. For a moment, he felt vulnerable, as if she were looking into his soul. Her demeanour suddenly changed; she became more serious, dropping her mock playful attitude. “You seem more confident than last time. What is it… ah, you have something planned, don’t you?”

Crap. Oh well, Allons-y. “Now!” He shouted. At his words, a giant creature lumbered forward, barrelling into Gael at high speed.

Beast – Level 45 - Adult Giant Drake – This Giant Drake has reached adulthood and is fiercely loyal. Hopefully, this one doesn’t try to eat you.

After his last encounter with a Giant Drake, Mason had done some reading on the species. The adult grew to be far larger and far more powerful. The baby had been the size of a small car, and the adult he had summoned was the size of a Monster truck. Its scales were also thicker, and its rows of teeth looked more like a shark than any lizard Mason had ever seen. The last physical difference was a small curved horn that protruded from just above the creature’s nose.

As Drakes got older, they developed racial skills that made them especially formidable in a fight. This specific breed could breathe fire and, despite its size, was very skilled in stealth.

Gael, taken by surprise, was impaled by the creature’s horn. Although it did not penetrate deep, it did manage to get through whatever barrier Gael had been using while fighting Lyvan. The Drake didn’t stop its charge until it slammed Gael into the wall of the guard’s barracks. The woman barely grunted as the horn was pushed deeper into her chest.

She grabbed a hold of the side of the Drake’s head and started to slowly push it back. It was working until the beast opened its jaw and blew a jet of blue fire on her. She screamed in pain furiously, punching the Drake in its face in an attempt to force it to release her. The beast took the hits without much of a reaction apart from the blue flame turning purple.

While this was going on, Mason, who was quite pleased with how the fight was going so far, withdrew a sword and used his ballistic touch on it, shooting towards the ‘Other’. The blade pierced through the woman’s skull. Her struggles ceased.

There was silence. He had just managed to kill the woman who had single-handedly massacred some of the best fighters the Town had to offer.

Mayry opened her mouth to speak, but Mason held up a hand forestalling her.

“Somethings wrong. That was far too easy.” He said whispered, only loud enough that Mayry could hear.

He pulled up his menu and saw that he had received no new notifications. By now, he should of at least gotten the ‘you have slayed blah blah blah’ notification as well as the ‘quest complete’ one.

Mayry’s head shot towards Gael’s dead body. “There is a crap load of magic coming off her corpse.”

Oh shit. “It’s a bomb. Get away from the body!” Mason shouted.

Two particularly brave Hunters had crept closer to the body, either in an attempt to loot it or just take a look at the body of a legendary ‘Other’. One of them looked up at Mason, “What’s a bomb?”

The body erupted in a blaze of white energy that scorched everything it touched, It killed the two Hunters, the Giant Drake and left a huge hole in the building Gael had been pinned to when she died.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

As the dust cleared. Gael was standing there plain as day with an intrigued look on her face. “I must say, you did far better than I have expected.” She bowed her head slightly and continued. “I was certain my clone would be more than enough to deal with you, but you, Mason, kill it with hardly any effort at all. I am impressed. You have come a long way.”

“I was starting to think that you weren’t as strong as I had thought. Are you the original or just another clone?” Mason used his Mana Control ability to shoot a spear of pure Magic at Gael. It bounced harmlessly off of Gael as she laughed, “I can assure you I am the real deal. I can only make the one clone until I get my Intelligence stat to 50. That was a nice attack, and the summoned Drake was not what I was expecting. What else do you have, I wonder.”

“You killed my friend. You won’t have to wonder for much longer.” Mason said his temper starting to boil over.

Gael chuckled, “Oh, I am absolutely terrified, Why don’t you give me your best shot.”

Mason didn’t hesitate. She was mocking him, Terrified was she? She would be soon. He activated his Mental Manipulation skill and projected Terror into Gael’s Mind. He couldn’t help but wonder how different this fight would go if he had selected Lust instead of Terror for his skill upgrade.