“We’re sure this will work? Why don’t we have John join their team?” I sighed even as Arthur began to explain the reason for our team’s distribution to his… uh… girlfriend?

Still wasn’t sure what Emilia was to him, but we all assumed it was significant other, Michael and Alice agreed with me, and I know John made fun of the two of them for it occasionally.

“Emilia, you need to understand that they can handle themselves. Matt has the highest Endurance stat I’ve seen or heard of, Michael is an excellent archer who does really high damage and as for Alice, we both know that if we take critical hits out of the equation she does more damage than both of us.” Arthur pointed out and Emilia frowned, still not getting what he was saying… so I stepped in to explain.

“Emilia, we’re going after a Demon Lord, not normal enemies. Against normal enemies, a healer would be necessary, but a Demon Lord is different. They hit way harder and take longer to kill.” I tried to explain to Emilia, and judging by the look in her eyes, she got the idea.

I’m glad, because I’m not normally the voice of reason. If anything, I’m the voice screaming ‘suck my balls!’ when the fight goes down…

Yet in spite of that, I’m the leader this time around apparently… It’s weird, that I was chosen to be the leader of this team… but I guess that just shows how Camelot is growing as a unit.

When we are a group of six, Arthur is our undisputed leader, we know this, we’re all fighting for our own reasons but his will to fight is what gathered us.

There were also our new high school teammates, but they’d only join after the Demon Lord, and Arthur was still the leader.

Michael, on the other hand, is an excellent second-in-command, conveying what Arthur truly means to us by some of his orders… his orders could, at times, be a bit confusing… but Michael would ‘translate’ them for us, which was really helpful.

But when it came to splitting up the team, it could vary. Arthur would remain leader of whatever team he was on, but this separation also stopped us from being all-rounders as a team and instead forced us to specialize.

For instance, a team comprising of me, John and Michael would be a sort of attrition team, with me blocking everything, John healing me, and Michael attacking from the back.

So it really depended on who was on the team, which would determine the other aspects and our specializations. With me, Michael and Alice on a team, we ignored recovery in exchange for high damage output.

And against a Demon Lord, who could likely kill any of us in two or three hits, a healer was a nice back up, but if one was needed then everything was already messed up.

So we were playing a game of chicken with this Demon Lord, seeing who’d die first… and I was the one who had to make sure Michael and Alice didn’t die while they killed the thing.

Oh joy.

Still, it was our best option at this point, and if Arthur was to be believed, the next Demon Lord we would be facing would be a water focused one…

That sucked, because Arthur would have been a brilliant addition to a three man team against a water-type Demon Lord. We’d just have to hope that it was something we could attack physically like the first Demon Lord or the third.

Not that anyone wanted to touch that thing. The Dark was an adequate name for the lizard, as we fought it, it would slowly begin to rot and… well it was disgusting.

And if we couldn’t, well, according to Arthur fire was still an acceptable element against the water, it just didn’t work well.

Metal would have little to no effect, and Darkness was something Alice disliked using for how tired it made her when she used it.

“Alright then, let’s go kill a Demon Lord.” Arthur’s statement was with such surety that I hid a double take when I witnessed his eyes flash violet.

He wasn’t aware of it, and most of the other members in the team thought it was a trick of the light at times, but I knew it wasn’t…

I’m a very observing person, and I know that his eyes flashing weren’t just light hitting them, it was that skill of his.

Soul Reader, I think he called it… there were moments when he gained a sense of surety, that he would never lose, that he would find a way, much like what happened during the second Demon Lord’s fight.

He wouldn’t know it as he had never seen his reflection when these things happened, and I was the only one who seemed to notice the flashes of purple as he stated his convictions.

And once more no one saw it, and I just sighed, exhaling after a deep breath.

Right, time to go fight a Demon Lord…

A hour later, we were on floor thirty seven, moving faster and faster through the Dungeon as our stats increased.

Granted, the Dungeon floors got larger and larger with each floor, but we got faster and faster with each floor just as easily.

It was confusing admittedly, when Arthur admitted that we would eventually be bullet proof (he estimated that I was already bullet proof actually. I refused to check) or being able to run almost at the speed of sound.

But the thing is, even if we would become capable of such things, we would not negatively affect the world around us.

My Endurance, for example, results in tough skin and a dense body, I weighed much more than my appearance would suggest… but I could still be lifted by a normal person and if a person touched my skin it would still feel like skin.

Arthur had this belief that our Souls were affecting the physical world as we levelled up, and that was the source of our powers.

The Soul grew in strength, and so we gain stat points. Following us gaining stat points, we would begin to affect the physical world in strange ways.

Normally I wouldn’t care. I have the things I care about, and that’s usually enough for me, but this was actually kind of interesting.

I could get fast enough that I could run as fast as a jet that can break the sound barrier, but unlike the jet, I wouldn’t break the sound barrier even at that speed.

Basically, stat points and skills give physics the middle finger.

See, I remembered Arthur’s explanation, but this felt much more appropriate.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we were moving through floor thirty seven. We, as in the whole of team Caliburn.

We were split into the three man teams, but we travelled together, there was no rule against that in that Sheikh guy’s challenge anyway.

Arthur’s team, consisting of him, Emilia and John, assisted us, but made sure to keep the last hit for our team, allowing us to gain two times the experience we normally gained from a fight as getting the last hit got us all the experience points.

Due to this, our three man team finally broke through to level seventy as we reached floor thirty nine.

Arthur’s team had given us most of the experience points, but they all were level seventy just like us… well, Arthur was level seventy one, but he levelled up faster than us.

That Dagger of his was bullshit. Nothing else in the world allowed someone to level up faster, at least nothing that we knew of, but he claimed that there would be a limit to it as well.

I believed him on that part, but I did have the feeling that other ‘level up faster’ things existed, they just weren’t commonly known.

Of course, the Nameless Dagger of Bullshit had a drawback, it was pitifully weak compared to Arthur’s own ability, and the only reason it still worked as a weapon was because of Arthur’s own strength being great enough that the weakness of the Dagger didn’t matter.

Yet… it might be an issue later on.

“Alright then, so floor thirty nine should be… here.” Arthur said as we walked past our final enemies on the thirty ninth floor, Murloc’s.

Once more, Arthur reminded us that Chronos probably was aware of WoW and if he wasn’t an inter-dimensional terrorist he probably would have been sued.

…No wonder Arthur and the others think I’m not sane… I’m not sure a sentence like that has ever been thought before.

Murloc’s were frog people, to those in the know, they were tiny and spindly… to me they seemed like what would happen if Goblins lived underwater.

But in spite of their weak appearance they were definitely stronger than any other standard enemy we had faced before, and trust Arthur to come up with a strange explanation for it.

“You know, maybe its pressure? If they live deep under water, where pressure is higher, they would need to have tougher bodies to survive that deep. So despite looking weak, they’re strong because of where they live?”

Arthur asked this much as we watched a murloc fade away, leaving behind the soul stone…

Murloc’s often left behind scales instead of any other items, and Arthur figured he could make chainmail using it. But it took a lot of effort to make chainmail so he refused, and just sold them.

Well, no one would want to wear clothes made from murloc skin so yeah…

Anyway, we found the stairs, and Arthur and the others walked with my half of the team downstairs, where we encountered the wall.

Not sure what to call it really, but it explains the name of the Demon Lord we’re about to face, kind of nice of Chronos really.

Arthur and the others just nodded to us as they walked back up the stairs, and Michael, Alice and I stared at the wall.

[Welcome, challengers, to the Dome, home of the fourth Demon Lord, Siren the Witch of the Waters. The allure of the witch of the sea may addle your mind, remain aware, and slay your foe.]

I always found the font to be interesting. See, it’s another thing I’m not sure if the rest noticed, but the font wasn’t something the same to each of us.

Arthur once mentioned in a conversation with me that his view of the font showed something almost cursive, but for me it was in print form, albeit slanted a bit.

It was similar to how languages were automatically translated within this place, it was different for everyone, like how Emilia heard us all speaking Russian, but the only one of us who actually spoke the language was Arthur.

Who was still hiding that fact from Emilia, which got me laughing because I figured out what he was doing with that knowledge, listening into her Russian conversations without her knowing he understood every word.

Sly was what Arthur was, and it was impressive.

“Okay, so the Siren… any info on that?” I asked, knowing a bit but wanting to check if anyone else could say something about it, which got Alice to speak up.

“A siren is basically a mermaid that sings to lure victims to her, where she would then drown them and eat their corpse. So a humanitarian mermaid.” Michael and I both just looked at her for that last sentence.

That was not a funny joke when we’re fighting things that might kill us.

“Okay, so basically we’ll have to fight while deaf? We got any way to do that besides self-mutilation?” I asked as I looked to my cousins for anything they might have.

Alice easily produced a few noise cancelling headphones and I just raised an eyebrow in question.

“Don’t give me that look, you already know I like peace and quiet.” Point, I did know that.

Wearing the headphones, I cursed as loud as I could. I couldn’t hear anything beyond that vague feeling one got when they spoke. Even if you couldn’t hear anything else, one would hear what they are doing.

Alice and Michael both staring at me let me know that they did not hear what I said. They both knew I said something obviously, given by me shaking my arms and stomping one of my feet.

For the record, I screamed the word shit as loud as I could. It was therapeutic.

When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.

Thank you, whoever said that. I’m pretty sure Arthur knew who it was as that was one of his favourite authors, but I didn’t know the guy’s name except that he had an awesome moustache.

I then signalled for them to remove the headphones and they followed my command.

“Alright, so these will protect us from the siren song. We’re going to need hand-signs or something though… let’s use these ones.” I said, pointing one finger up as I explained.

Following my explanation, we had four hand signs.

The first was the upward pointing finger, that was to say an opening appeared in the enemies defence.

Then there was the Bazinga hand sign, created by the hilarious Sheldon Cooper. This was to say that someone needed defending, and thanks to my Spatial Understanding skill, I could see it from just about anywhere.

Then there was the closed fist, to say ‘stop, she’s catching on shit’. Michael and Alice just rolled their eyes at my inclusion of the swear word… what, I swear, a lot. It wasn’t because I was being rude, but because it calmed me down, it’s not my fault people don’t understand that.

And the final hand sign was the universal sign for shut up, miming chopping the neck while shaking the head. This was to signal a retreat.

“Do we really need these though?” Alice asked and I just shrugged.

“No clue, better to have them than not right?” With that, our conversations ended and we walked into the room past the wall.

Well, it really was a dome. To be precise, it was like a fishbowl.

And inside the fishbowl, which seemed to be floating underwater, was a donut shape, with the hole in the centre being full of water and a lone rock in the middle of the water.

We stood on the ring surrounding the water, looking to the centre island where the Siren sat.

She was hot, but there was no hole so I just shrugged.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Alice whacked me on the arm knowing exactly what I just thought, and I just gave her a look that said ‘sue me, I was curious’.

The Siren noticed us, and tilted her head before she began to open her mouth. I interrupted her, obviously.

“WE CAN’T FUCKING HEAR YOU, YOU VAGINA-LESS, NO LEGS, MAN EATING SMELLING LIKE ROTTEN FISH AND MAGGOTS BITCH!”

Thank every deity that might exist that Alice could not hear exactly what I said. There was a fifty-fifty chance she would hurt me for what I said, or she’d say something worse to upstage me.

The joy of having cousins that understood you.

The Siren’s face changed as she registered my words, pulling into a scowl, showing off the fangs in her mouth as she probably began screaming or singing at us.

Again, we couldn’t hear her. So I figured I had a plan.

Firstly, I proved that she had greater intelligence than the third Demon Lord. This was expected since she could sing, but I confirmed it.

Second, I confirmed once more that Taunt was an awesomely underrated skill. It activated by thought, but I had to say something that actually worked.

With animals I could just scream at them, but I took it as a personal challenge to never use the same insult twice.

The perfect skill for someone who speaks like I do.

And third, I managed to get aggro. That was the whole point of a ‘tank’ I had to take the hits, I had to be there to get attacked. Which sucked, but rather I take the hit than my squishy teammates.

Look at Arthur, he healed quickly but he bled more than normal, poor squishy human.

 So yeah, this fight was off to an excellent start.

Or so I thought until she began screaming some more and the water around her moved. Then about ten Murlocs appeared, and I palmed my face.

She was one of those bosses. You know the ones.

The mook-summoning boss. These bosses were so pitifully weak by themselves that they fought you with an army.

Pitiful, and looking at Alice and Michael, who looked to me with dead-expressions, they realized it too.

Sure, Murlocs were actually dangerous. Sure, this was a Demon Lord, they weren’t weak.

But… um… we were over-levelled to be fighting the frog people.

Granted, we had only fought groups of five at most, but if Arthur could kill five alone without injury, we could kill then just as easily.

And so the fight began with the frog people running for us, likely screaming in that strange warble they did, but to my team, it was silent.

That actually pissed me off; the screams of the Murloc’s were hilarious, it sounded like someone gargling water only to find out it was piss.

Anyway, I signalled Michael, requesting him to start attacking the Siren. While he did that, I would be getting the aggro for the Murloc’s and helping Alice kill them.

Keep them from our long range attacker, who was our only method of harming the Demon Lord. It was a simple plan, but hey…

Simplicity kills. There are many things that kill, but I like that one most.

Anytime the Murloc’s got close enough to be in my range, I punished them with either a smash of my shield, or a swing of the hammer Arthur made me…

Got to thank him for that at some point, Hammers are good weapons for keeping people back, especially for a shield user like me.

The Murloc’s were a bit tougher than the usual ones, but Alice hit hard as hell, and I felt no pain practically. So we rushed the mob and it was glorious.

It was a blur honestly, between green blood and guts and the occasional mimed out screaming of the Siren, and then I’d respond with whatever insult I could think of, as long as I didn’t repeat it then it was good.

But after killing about… thirty? Probably thirty Murloc’s, the Siren leapt into the water, charging at us as I signalled a block, getting nods as I got into her path.

She flew out of the water, a spear of all things in her hand as I pushed forward with my shield while activating my Metal Skin Skill.

It did exactly what you think it does. I moved really slowly while it was in use, but it did as advertised really.

The reason I only activated it now, instead of using it for the Murloc’s was because it was tiring.

Imagine flexing every muscle in your body at the same time, even the ones you don’t even realize you have.

Using Metal Skin was like that, and even though it only worked for five seconds those five seconds always made me feel like I had done a full body workout for too long.

It wasn’t as bad now that I was of a higher level, but damn if it didn’t tire me out before I began to add more points to my other stats.

The strength of the skill was based on my magic and endurance. My endurance was over two hundred.

Bullets would bounce off me as I was (this I checked), and even if the Siren hit harder than a bullet, it didn’t matter because I was blocking, she was going to hit my shield.

I felt like a prophet the moment her strike landed on the shield, surprising her at my sudden appearance in front of Matt as Alice appeared… good, she followed me.

“EAT ANAL LEAKAGE!” I don’t even understand what I was thinking as the Siren tried screaming at me when Alice swung her sword into the thing’s arm… the cut was shallow, probably because the Siren was similar to the Murloc’s body system, condensed after time spent in heavy pressure.

But Alice was strong, she had the highest strength stat at around one fifty compared to her closest competitor who was her brother Michael at one twenty.

She had double my strength stat, and even Arthur said that her overall strength stat was good. She did well when it came to damaging the Siren.

But then the Demon Lord Privilege kicked in.

It was something Arthur named obviously, but it was that strange habit for Demon Lords to be harder to kill than they should be. Sure, Blade died in one good hit because he was a glass-cannon, and the glowing ball of fire that the second Demon Lord was took a while to die because there weren’t a lot of water based magicians around.

But for the Dark and this thing, and even Ignus after we fought him again with just Camelot, we found that as they neared death, Demon Lords began pulling bullshit out of their asses.

Aka Rage Mode that all powerful bosses had in video games.

It worked a bit differently in real life, because fighting angry usually got you killed, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying to fight someone like that.

The Siren screamed once more, twirling its spear in the uninjured arm as it tried to raise the injured arm, chanting something going by how her mouth was moving.

I was really… really… really tempted to dig into my repertoire of vile curses to taunt her again. I really wanted to…

But even I felt filthy saying some of that sometimes and I only used it when an opponent wasn’t reacting to my normal taunts. She reacted to those, so I left her alone as she finished what she was saying.

The result of her chant was that water rose from the donut shaped lake to wrap around her arm, becoming something like a cast as she forced her arm to move, a circular shield coming out from the wrist.

Great, she was being all ‘gladiator’ on us.

“SPARTA!” It wasn’t even an insult but she seemed to take offence as she charged at me once more, ignoring that Alice did way more damage to her than I did, or that Michael had been turning her into a porcupine since the beginning of this fight.

It meant I was doing my job right, so I took pride in it.

She swung, and I readied my block as she slashed twice at my shield before stabbing, causing me to stumble back ever so slightly to my surprise.

Remember what I was mentioning earlier, about how stat points result in strange things happening?

Well I also mentioned density and weight? My weight, with around two hundred points of endurance should be about two tons metric, give or take.

To lift me would require an equal amount of stat points in strength. If I was trying to not be lifted, then it would be more required, and if I was letting someone carry me then my real weight of about one eighty kilograms.

I’m actually underweight according to BMI (Body Mass Index) apparently.

Anyway, the fact that this Siren pushed me back a bit shows that her strength stat (if she had one) would be similar to about two hundred.

Demon Lords all had bullshit stats, I tell you.

My observation meant little as Alice focused on her sword, having swapped to a larger two-handed sword.

Fun-fact, if great-swords were made like they were in games, it would be impossible for a human to carry them.

Key word: human.

We Adventurers left that designation behind the moment we reached level two.

Alice’s weapon, according to Arthur:

This is an insult to smith’s everywhere, and I’m appalled that I even created it… but I also had to make it because the LOL’s.

Is it any wonder we thought he wasn’t quite sane?

The most accurate descriptor for Alice’s newfound sword would be guts.

As in Berserk Gutts.

It was the greatest reference to manliness I’ve ever seen, wielded in the hands of a tiny female who was shorter than the actual sword.

The ‘original’ apparently weighed almost 0.2 metric tons.

This one weighed 0.7 after Arthur messed with it.

The Siren barely managed to turn for a moment, and I smirked seeing the ‘oh shit!’ face on the Demon Lord, before it was smashed flying with all the grace of a cow getting run over by a train.

And then having a Jumbo Jet dropped on it.

“SPLAT GOES THE DEMON LORD!” My scream was more of a ‘in case she’s alive, I’ll have taunted her’ thing, but even if she was alive I know there’s a limit to how many times I could take the mind of an intelligent being off of what nearly killed them.

I tried taunt on a few other humans before, and they described it as if having tunnel vision for trying to kill me.

I never tried it on Alice, Arthur or Emilia for that reason. Alice because she can hit things so hard they go splat, Emilia because the longer we know her the more it seems she might have been trained by the KGB or something, and Arthur because he’s scary.

Really, really scary, and he sometimes doesn’t realize it. Good friend, but scary.

Kind of like what they say about me, crazy, but friendly… I like that.

Michael, after blinking for a moment in surprise, aimed at the Demon Lord(‘s body) and shot at it a few times with elemental arrows, just to be sure.

It’s body only began to fade after the third shot, so it was just barely alive it seems… and it dropped some items.

And we’re all level seventy one. HAH, take that Arthur!

“Is it just me or was this Demon Lord ridiculously weak?” Alice asked, taking her earmuffs off as I took of mine with a shrug.

“We’re technically over-levelled remember? I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be around floor one hundred at level one hundred, and here we are on floor forty with levels over seventy.” I reminded and Alice considered it before shrugging.

Personal Information

Name:

Matt Jacobson

Level:

71

17 343 EXP

Rank:

J

Class:

Defender

Kingdom:

Camelot

Knight

Anima:

The Protector’s Shield

Stats:

Strength: 75

Dexterity: 41

Intelligence: 26

Wisdom: 26

Vitality: 82

      Constitution: 130 (234)

Skills:

Stand Strong (SSS), Shield Bearer (SS), Knight Stance (A), Spatial Understanding (B)

Class Skills:

Metal Skin* (J), Sacrifice (J), Taunt (J)

Bitchin.

I can kind of understand why Arthur goes on about numbers whenever I see my constitution stat. it’s just… beautiful…

I put one hundred and twenty five points in, and I got two hundred and twenty nine points out.

That sounded like a brilliant investment or something, not a character’s stat points in a game, let alone in real life.

We soon heard some steps by the stairs as Arthur and the others came down…

With Arthur level seventy two and the others all level seventy one.

“Mother-” my curse was cut off as Michael walked over to Arthur, showing him the loot.

Namely the Soul Stone and the spear the fish-lady used, making Arthur look at the spear before shrugging and letting Alice take it.

We were really just dumping any weapons we don’t use to her… she didn’t mind, given her Anima let her use anything as a weapon.

Eternal Arms Mastery is real man…

“So we have completed their challenge… by the way, Matt, want to report on the Demon Lord? From how Michael seems tired and Alice only has a few scratches, I’m guessing it was weak?” Arthur asked and I felt the sigh coming on.

“It was, pitifully. It was a mook-boss, it summoned Murloc’s to fight us while sending the occasional water spell at us. I blocked those, easily, and Alice got hurt only when I was blocking the spells.” I admitted, it wasn’t a failing.

I’m a good tank, I know I am. It’s just that there are limits beyond what I can do at current, I can’t be everywhere at once, and I probably never would be.

“I was treating it as a weakling, I’ll admit, but it was difficult in the sense of mistakes. If Alice tripped or anything like that, she would have died by crowd death.” Arthur nodded with a grim face, getting what I was trying to say.

It didn’t matter how strong we got, if we had no weapon, were injured and tired, and surrounded by enemies, we’d die, as long as the enemies could hurt us even a little bit, in such a situation we’d die.

“We also couldn’t communicate freely during the fight because it was a Siren.” Arthur’s eyes widened as he cupped his chin, looking to the door to the arena.

“That… makes very little sense, Siren’s are rare, sure, but they aren’t supposed to be boss class monsters in most RPG’s… I guess the only reason this one was considered a Demon Lord was because she controlled Murloc’s.” I agreed with his assessment.

Arthur was a mythology buff at times, and combined with his gaming skills, he got the idea quickly from little information.

“Any other information you can give me?” I also appreciated the fact that I just said ‘she was a Siren’ and Arthur immediately understood why we couldn’t hear one another. Sure, Siren’s were kind of common these days, but you do get people who’d be like ‘what is that?’ and I’m glad we all got it.

“Similar to the Murloc’s, her strength didn’t match her physique and she managed to push me back with one of her hits.” Arthur nodded, immediately understanding.

“Right, so she has a strength stat around two hundred, she’d be can’t be blocked unless it’s you doing the blocking. How did you kill her?” Arthur’s question made me look to Alice and Michael. Alice was smiling but Michael looked a bit awkward.

“Michael was turning her into a pincushion whenever he could, and I was taunting her. Then she focused on me for a bit too long. That’s when Alice pulled out that monstrosity you made.” Arthur paled a bit, looking to Alice who was still smiling at having gotten a chance to use the dangerous weapon.

She wasn’t allowed to use it near us normally, because if any of us got hit by it they weren’t getting up, and even I would be injured by it… not by as much as she thinks, but the damage would pile up.

The only saving grace was that there was a limit to how often she could swing it due to her own Endurance stat not being high enough to act as a counter-weight.

So she gets flung around by the weight of the sword when she uses it, so she has a time period after attacking where she would stumble slightly and try to reorient herself. Basically, she took a lot of time between swings.

“I feel ashamed for re-creating the Dragon-slayer. It pulped the Demon Lord, didn’t it?” I had the decency to look a bit confused here.

“Well it did… but only because the Siren was already injured and was hit by a practical sneak attack. And then shot with a few arrows before she could get back up.” Michael grinned.

Arthur sighed and nodded.

“Okay then, strong, but it’s a battle of attrition easily won thanks to the fact that our tank is immortal at our current levels and our warrior swings around a giant metal slab when the enemy isn’t looking.” Arthur’s words pretty much summed that up I think.

“So do we teleport back and announce our victory, or do we wait for that Sheikh guy to pop up?” I had to ask, and it was a genuine question for me.

See, the six Chosen, including Arthur, all seemed to take up a role in combat. The Loyiso guy from South Africa was a Healer, like John.

Jade, the Chosen of the United Kingdoms was a Rogue like Emilia, that Japanese kid Ichiro was a Swordsman like Alice and Sheikh was similar to me in that we were both tanks.

The odd ones out were Albert who was a Wizard and Arthur. We didn’t have a Wizard on our side, mostly because Arthur didn’t pick the Class, and there was no Archer Chosen.

It was the sad truth, but if the person’s Anima was a bow then they couldn’t equip secondary weapons like daggers to defend themselves at close range.

Michael was capable of defending himself at that range, using his bow as a blunt weapon, but it was a limitation.

He didn’t care though, which made me proud of my cousin.

Anyway, I got a bit lost in thought there… that normally happens to Arthur.

But Sheikh, that guy who challenged Arthur, was a tank like I was. It was a challenge from someone similar in fighting style to me and so Arthur felt the need to put me up instead of facing the man himself.

I was thankful for that.

“We can wait for him to pop up, sure, though I’d like to be fighting more…” Arthur said, looking to the staircase with longing as he looked back to his wrist.

Yeah, he wasn’t satisfied with his own strength, despite his power… it was inspiring, and knowing that the strongest of our group was not satisfied and wanted to improve drove us all to improve along with him.

We ended up waiting a whole hour before Sheikh appeared, walking with two people as he saw our group, and he pointed at Arthur with a glare.

“I see you are here with your entire team Arthur Clive. Have you failed our bet?” Sheikh asked and Arthur smirked… ooh… this was going to be one of those things where he pisses off someone, isn’t it?

“Actually no. What you see before you is two teams, split into three each and we entered from the same entrance… and seeing as we had the same destination, we figured we’d travel together.” Arthur’s ability to spout sarcastic truths was inspiring… I should use some of that for Taunt.

“Ah… a loophole in my challenge that I did not expect. Well played. So I take it you have fought the Demon Lord and won?” he asked, looking at Arthur’s group with interest before Arthur pointed over to me.

“Nope. I haven’t even seen the Demon Lord. However the other team over there seems to have killed it before me.” Sheikh looked over to Michael, Alice and I with interest, looking to Michael for a moment.

“Michael Grave yes? Your team defeated the Demon Lord?” Sheikh asked and then Michael smiled, pointing to me… tossing me under the bus you asshole?

“I’m the leader of this team. And yes, we killed the Demon Lord Siren.” Sheikh looked over to me, interest in his eyes when he internalized what I just said.

“You… the tank, Matt Jacobson correct? We are of similar roles…” Sheikh then looked to Arthur, who was really the mastermind behind this situation…

Made sense, in one fell swoop Arthur managed to ‘defeat’ Sheikh and level up all his teammates to the point of being over level seventy.

We were all equal to Albert and Ichiro’s teams now.

“Clive. You let your tank complete the challenge as a message… why?” Sheikh asked as I looked to Arthur… I think I got it now. It made a bit of sense actually as I chuckled.

“Well Sheikh, to answer your question… I wanted to prove that I am not the strongest.” Sheikh seemed confused by Arthur’s statement before he spread his arms.

“We are the strongest. This is a declaration of war.” You know, it was funny…

Arthur was pretty shy most of the time, but as we got stronger, he began to speak up more and more…

The only problem was that he had a love for the theatrical when he got going, and it seems he was saying something insane again.

No wonder he got along with that George guy and Ichiro.

“My team, Caliburn, will be the strongest in the world, and every single one of our members will be of the level of a Chosen.” Sheikh looked over to me and I smirked, hitting my shield as I made it appear.

“I am the tank, the defender of Caliburn. And I do so better than you.” Sheikh’s teammates glared at me for that but Sheikh smiled, his eyes wide as he walked over… and then extended a hand.

“It seems I was right to be worried about you, Jacobson. I accept my defeat at your hands… and someday I will defeat you and then, I will challenge your leader.” I smirked at his words, taking his hand in a handshake.

“You can try. I’m a Defender. I am meant to be the first and last to fall.” I said, my eyes glaring at Sheikh who recognized my feelings…

He would, as a fellow tank.

“I wasn’t able to defend my teammates once. Never again.” So I declare, so it will be.