“DIE YOU FUCKING NOOB!” He screams, his voice reverberating over the microphones of his party of killers- apparently they’re playing from inside the same room.

As the other raiders rush in, all laughing and joking and spitting insults at their victims, Hero draws the Dragon Scythe.

In an instant, the party leader is eviscerated utterly with a single strike, the scythe not simply drawing through its target, but ushering out its internal organs with complete, dis-embodying force.

The other raiders fail to believe such an enormous damage annotation can be made in the game, but sure enough, -OVERKILL- jumps over the leader’s head before he’s practically sprayed onto the grass to the right of the crowd.

All of the players stop moving, but they don’t stop talking. Two of the five kneel onto the ground outright to begin logging from the server, as over each of their voices, the horrific, damaged screaming of a young man can be heard over their microphones.

“IT REALLY HURTS! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! HELP!” Each of the raiders scream out with the same voice of the raider Hero just wasted.

Hero wastes no time in slinging his scythe forward at a speed that surpasses even Bright-Solemn’s ranged attack. In the next second, three of the four remaining player killers are strewn through with almost comedic ease. Each of them give him zero exp, for there is no more exp Hero can contain. The last raider’s mic output fills with the screams of four other young men as he kneels to log out. Hero looms over the last player, entirely motionless, as he must in order to log out and then properly disconnect the headset.

“Never come back here. You’re not welcome,” Hero says, the same moment the player logs out, removes his headset, and immediately goes to call an ambulance. His character disappears into thin air.

Hero replaces his scythe, and notices for the first time, he has updates in his “Player versus Player” tab.

“I’m no player,” he mutters to himself, “I belong here.”

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After a moment, Hero looks back to his party, a shocked-speechless Gulrin and a wide-eyed Bright-Solemn, totally dumbfounded by his speed and force.

“Aye… Well thats… quite the speed you have there, young man,” the stout dwarf says with a sunken, awkward expression as he considers whether he should be horrified, impressed, or both.

Hero smiles back as he returns to the road. “Thank you. We can’t waste time with their kind.”

Gulrin clears his throat. “Clearly not.”

The three reach the treeline, where the birds no longer chirp and the large animals no longer dwell our of fear. Hero can already feel himself invited in by the mystical gestalt of the evil wood, drawing him in with the lure of the austere unknown.

“Keep your wits about you, lad. The ones in here will attack in the dark.”

Hero casts the thief skill Eyes of the Cat before heading forward. “I got it.”

Gulrin lights his small, pack-bound lantern, and the three set off into the depths of the dark forest.

At first, the wood is almost pleasant. It has a certain quiet, complex quality that’s easy to appreciate in the eerie sort of way; like a place that is at once peaceful and fraught with danger.

The treelines close in steadily behind them, and the canopy of pinebranches thickens inch by inch. Before long they can hear the quiet chirping of insects, all chaotic and loose in their timing and rhythms.

“Aye,” Gulrin says. “Their kind is close. Be on guard, lad.”

Hero does not arm himself, but he does focus, holding his breath to a needle-point for minutes-on-end as they pass through the twisted wood.

Gradually, the light from above the pines is snuffed out, and they are inside the godless twilight of the wood’s throat.

Conversation halts as the three watch and listen for movement from any direction. The chirping of the insects becomes louder, denser, and more in-time. No more than a hundred meters more into the wood, the cacophony of insects are in perfect unison, screeching out an orchestra of blood-lusting noise.

Each of them feels the closeness of the horde, just seconds away, and just out of sight. Shimmying out from behind the trees and weaved between the pines; webs and webs and webs spanning on as even Hero’s eyes can see.

Finally, they reach a clearing in the dark, lit only by a sheer, razor-thin line of light from the trees above. At the other side they see a huge, amorphous black creature spill off from the ground. It takes them a moment to realize that it’s not one creature, but a whole swarm of voracious spiders covering a single mother of hideous size. As the millions of spiders fan out to the sides of the clearing to form a protected boundary, the mother opens her jaws. The sound of ancient teeth sealed from age, hewn apart like metal on metal, fills the ears of the three adventurers. The flavor text spirits upon the screen as a terrified track of violins and horns blare out:

-HELOB: DEVOURER OF HEARTS-