Pendragoon - lvl 1
“My God—he’s at 3 HP!”
A lanky young man sheathing a greatsword. Purple tunic under his armor.
Rainmaker - lvl 2
“Son of a gun. Loot and then let’s form a wall around him, guys.”
Looks like he’s in his thirties, pulling his hammer out of a goblin’s mashed face. Stout.
Xenophone - lvl 2
“Come on up, my friend—we don’t have a second to spare.”
Smiling with sad gray eyes. Late twenties. Slight accent. Offering a hand clad in a fingerless suede glove—which I use to hoist myself up.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I say. My fallen nemesis, the goblin watchman, lies before me with anguished twitching eyes and a mitt twisted around my gnoll pelt, which still lists me as its owner and which I fasten back around my shoulders. I am also able to loot a *spiral warhorn*.
“Kid, you’re only up to 5 god-damned HP, so let’s move it,” Rainmaker says. “Passive healing won't be up long, and these goblins don’t yield much loot.”
He shoves me forward while Xenophone keeps me from falling, leading me with an arm looped under my right and around my shoulder. In his right hand, his sword is brandished. “We’re headed for the hill, Feefi-...”
“Phil is fine,” I say with a hoarse breath. “You three . . . thank you.”
“Phil,” Pendragoon glances at me as we move in this tight impromptu formation, “it may seem like we’re in the clear, but this valley is crawling with monsters. We’ve been looking for loners and bringing them to the hill, and soon, we’ll all go back to town together. Sound good?”
“Good, okay,” I say. “Thank you so much. I . . .”
“Wooooo-eeee!” an archer, SageofStorms, shouts as we approach the two who sniped a handful of the goblins. He looks younger than me and has a pouch at his waist that’s brimming with flowers and a clump of skinny mushrooms. The other, Crawdaddy, with a feathered cap and a ragged brown cloak billowing around him, scratches his stubbled chin and shakes his head in disbelief.
“Okay, team,” Xenophone says, “looks like we found the last loner in the zone. Sage, give him a potion, and let’s head.”
“Sure, sure, sure,” Sage says, his eyes rolling and fluttering through his intuitive menu before some of the things in his pouch disappear and a red potion like I drank earlier materializes in his hand. “Can’t believe we’re already running a charity.” His grip is tight as I clasp the potion in my hand to draw it to my mouth, and he stares at me, motionless. “Say, you have any trouble logging out?”
My panic surges, and I wonder again whether I'm actually unable to log out of this game.
“Sage,” Rainmaker says, seizing the potion from his hand with a forceful swipe and dumping it into my mouth for 30 HP. “Shut the hell up.”
“What? I don’t know why we’re so worried about these stragglers when we should be worrying about ourselves.” He fastens his bow to his back and sighs. “Anyway, you’re welcome, feefeefifofofu.”
Crawdaddy is silent, and while we continue to move toward a large hill near the middle of the valley surmounted by a long, undulating red flag, I notice his bow is back in his hands, and he looses a few more arrows into the forest behind us. “More spawning. Better keep on.”
In a blur of whorls of windswept lime-green grass and muddied boots and bickering and strategizing, we make it about halfway to the hill. I feel my pulse ease toward homeostasis, but the resultant mental clarity brings with it a debilitating wave of fatigue. Still, I’m able to retrieve my top priority from my scattered thoughts.
“H-hey,” I say, “guys—have you seen anyone that looks like me? Brown hair like mine, but a girl, nineteen?” I look desperately side to side for a semblance of recognition in their virtual faces.
Rainmaker replies, “Buddy, there’s a lotta people online—we’ve seen more faces than we can remember.” He spots something in our path, nudges Pendragoon, and they break formation to charge at a shivering clump of ooze, which writhes and stretches upward into a fragile humanoid shape and lets out a growl like a belch. It doesn’t take them long to kill the Mudman, lvl 2.
Xenophone looks at me with the same bittersweet expression as earlier. “Do you know her character name?”
“No, no—but her name’s Adelaide.”
This piques his interest and he exhales in relief or surprise—I can’t tell which. “Phil, there’s an Adelaide on the hill that fits your description. You’ll see.”
Ad! She must have wandered out here and been saved like me. “Is she hurt? She’s my sister—I need to find her. She’s doing okay? She's not a gamer.”
“Pfftahaha,” Sage chuckles, “she’ll be alright. I can’t believe you’re related.”
Closer to our destination, I can see there are sandbags piled up to create a barrier that stretches around most of the hill and behind which a number of archers wait with their arrows trained on monsters in the field. Barrels and crates fill in the makeshift wall intermittently, and a huge mass of players produce a cacophony of cries and shouts, scattered throughout the valley by the wind, which whips at the long, tattered crimson flag atop a tall black pole amid the mob. Nearer, in our path, a group of five players is retreating from the field toward a narrow opening in the barrier. They’re trailed by another group of goblins, similar in composition and size to the one I encountered—and something galloping, gaining on both groups, swiping at even the goblins with an oxidized bronze polearm and painting the field with their gore. Goblins and players alike shout and run to the choke point as this
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Centaur - lvl 7
mows down a line of goblins and passes by the barrier entrance just after the players enter, prodding inside with a swift jab and skewering a goblin, with which it knocks over a player in one last graceful motion in the combo. Simultaneously, a symphony of shouts of “Fire!!” falls from the hilltop, and a salvo of arrows strikes down some straggling goblins and peppers the back of the centaur, where
5- 2- 5- 6- 6 dmg
4 dmg
2- 4- 5- 5- 1 dmg
6 dmg
15- 6- 2 dmg
3 dmg
damage values explode into the air. But the centaur is not downed. He curves in his gallop and arcs around, winding closer to us and, when his pupilless yellow eyes flash at mine, charging straight for us while arrows fly over or into his back.
“What the hell is this!?” Rainmaker says, fumbling his hammer as we all attempt to sprint out of the centaur’s path.
“Split up!” Xenophone shouts. “We are like bowling pins here. Sage, run left—Craw, run right—pincushion him while we flank. He’s weak.”
The centaur is in fact at 75/250 HP, but we have no choice but to fight. At this point I’ve recovered nearly half of mine, but with Second Wind down, I’m still vulnerable.
“Roger,” Crawdaddy says, running into a quick, long roll that must be an active skill and drawing his bow and a clutch of arrows from his quiver.
“See!? We’ve fucked ourselves,” Sage whines, darting where Xenophone directed and drawing his own bow.
The centaur has reached us. Xenophone equips a shield immediately into his hand, something I didn't think possible, and masterfully parries a swipe of the polearm, which might’ve knocked him over if I weren’t spotting him with my Buffer. While we reel from the impact, the polearm ricochets and arcs over to Rainmaker, who has sidestepped the centaur and lifted his hammer to the sky. The polearm decks him for 20 dmg as the centaur weaves between us, swinging its weapon back into the air and juking around to spear Pendragoon, whose massive swordswing barely missed from the side opposite Rainmaker.
“Ohhhfff,” Pendragoon exhales, blood bursting from his lips as the centaur sails past us while skewering him. The initial 40 dmg is followed by a trail of 4- 3- 3- 4- 3- 3- 4- 3 dmg as his blood leaves a trail in the grass.
“Pen!!!” Xenophone cries, his brows knotting wrathfully and his soft eyes hardening so they glint like silver daggers.
“Heeeey!!!” he yells. His voice echoes supernaturally in the open air and immediately draws the aggro of the centaur back to us. The monster grunts and flings Pendragoon off of its weapon as it slows and turns to charge at us. “Phil, get away,” Xenophone says softly, elbowing me hard. “Run.”
To abandon my savior strikes me as a torturously cowardly act, let alone ungrateful—but nonetheless, instinct drives me to sprint away toward the opening of the barrier. Thank you—I’m sorry—thank you!
“Fuck him up!” Sage shouts. He and Crawdaddy use the lull in the centaur’s gallop caused by Xenophone’s shout to loose a volley of arrows from either direction.
5- 7- 5 dmg
4- 4- 15 dmg
“Haaarrrrrrgghhhhhh,” the centaur grunts, accelerating more slowly on its way to Xenophone, who tauntingly clangs his sword against his shield. Foul breath emanates from between the monster’s sallow fangs.
It telegraphs that spearing move again.
( Inventory ) <=
. . .
-Spiral Warhorn (3/10) <=
(Use) <= (Place) (Info)
Clmp.
Hhhhhhh,
BAWOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Mere feet away from skewering Xenophone, the centaur twists its neck around and its eyes flash to look at me.
Ha!
And Xenophone ducks and drives—grrrrrrshhhhkt—and twists his sword, lit lavender, into the beast's breast for
24 dmg.
“Hhrrrrkh.” Its eyes darken like dying lanterns, but it shakily lifts its weapon again.
And 30 dmg appears right between its brows after a glowing arrow from Crawdaddy’s direction pierces the spot.
Centaur - lvl 7
0/100 HP
Status - Undying (5 sec . . .)
Alert! This mob’s Death Throes is active!
“What?” Rainmaker chokes out.
The centaur kicks Xenophone with its front hooves and swipes at him mechanically, hitting his shield and sending him flying backward. Its jaws gnash and snap as it fixes its empty eyes on me. Rainmaker swings vainly at its unyielding legs. The barrier is so close, and I can hear a rush of cheers and shouts from above including—maybe it’s my imagination—a familiar tone within the cacophony—
“Phil!?”
I bound between the sandbags, some of which tumble into the gap as the ground tremors, and once I’m through, a sickening series of cracks and the sound of sandbags and goblin corpses skidding toward me forces me to turn to face my destruction head-first, hammer readied.
Centaur - lvl 7
0/100 HP
Status - Undying (1 sec . . .)
Alert! This mob’s Death Throes is active!
“Hkktthhhhck . . .”
Petrifying before my eyes, the centaur halts. Its Death Throes deactivates mid-polearm-sweep, and frozen with its weight on its hind hooves in a kind of pounce, it quivers, its bones and joints crackle and snap, and its bared fangs grind together until they shatter. I watch its equine physique collapse into the barrier’s opening to seal it. Its polearm falls and thuds against my head.