The wolves dragged Christine to the ground by her throat and tore chunks out of her. Mel kicked one so hard it actually flew about 10 feet into the air before it wrapped around a tree trunk with a wet thunk.

Mitch selflessly dived on to Christine's body, reaching out and wrapping his glowing hands around her neck as blood streamed from her wounds. The second wolf turned and snapped at Mitch but Tim tackled it to the ground and wrapped his legs around it. He then put it in a choke from behind and began to strangle the wolf.

Being this close they could see it’s health bar and name: Level 2: Murk Wolf

The clearing went quiet and all the group could hear was Christine struggling to breathe as her health bar steadily declined, spiking up every few seconds as Mitch’s healing spell went off.

“Where’s the big one?” Craig asked, pointing his spear in random directions as if another wolf was about to spring out from the dense jungle.

Mel’s eyes widened and she pointed ahead on the path - the group flicked their heads around to see the last wolf.

It was a two headed monstrosity, easily the size of a Clydesdale horse. To make things worse it looked pissed off about them taking out the smaller wolves. It was snarling and stalking up to them slowly with its hackles raised. The sound it made reverberated throughout the teens chests.

Once it got closer they saw the worst news of all: Level 4: Murk Wolf

“Do we run?” Craig asked.

“We can’t leave Christine!” Mel responded.

“I’ll try to keep her alive but you guys need to cover us! Now!” Mitch said, straining with the effort to keep Christine’s health bar out of the red. She just kept on bleeding.

Tim stepped forward and Mitch noticed that he was now level 2, he took his rifle from his shoulder and fired once at the wolf. The gunshot cracked out and rang in their ears in the dense scrub. Tim gazed lovingly down at his rifle with a look of pleasant surprise.

“Oh baby, now THAT’s a 30/30!” he exclaimed.

The wolf had flinched at the shot and its health bar had fallen slightly. Blood trickled out of one of the eyes of the two wolf heads. Tim reloaded and started slowly walking at the Wolf, firing rapidly from his hip.

The Wolf heads roared and lunged at him, Tim rolled nimbly to his right and sprang back up to his feet whipping the rifle back on target and continuing to fire as it snapped at him. The Wolf wasn’t close to dead but he’d turned it around. Mel took advantage of this and grabbed the wolf by the tail, anchoring it in place so it couldn’t reach Tim who seemed to have endless ammunition as he continued to shoot at the creature.

Craig appeared in the air above the Wolf and with a mighty roar he brought down his spear on the back of its neck, impaling it into the ground and killing it. Tim frowned as Craig ticked over to level 3.

“Hey man, I had that. No need to take all the experience.” He complained.

Nobody noticed his grumbling though because Christine was dead. Mitch sat next to her lifeless body with blood all over his hands looking traumatized. Mel was on her knees reaching out to the air above Christine and pulling her hand back to her chest, gasping.

Craig looked at Tim pointedly and Tim relented, moving to put a hand on Mel's shoulder as Craig offered Mitch a hand up.

“What do we do?” Mitch asked softly.

Christine’s body faded away like it had never been there. The blood disappeared from Mitch’s hands. Mel fist pumped the air.

“Yes! I think this means she’s going to respawn.” she said.

The rest of the group looked less convinced but Mitch backed her hesitantly.

“Sure. If the game is mostly the same she should revive but it might be a lot longer than normal because of the stretched out game time.” he said.

“So… Do we keep farming?” Craig asked.

The group looked guiltily at the spot where Christine’s body had been moments before.

“Let’s keep farming, hopefully she’s back soon.” Mel had said and the group had moved on deeper into the jungle.

Eventually they came to a shallow river that flowed away to their east. It was bordered by thick green reeds and everyone paused thinking of what could be hiding in the dense foliage.

“Ok, so I’m pretty sure we can follow that to get to a lane but minions haven’t spawned yet and we might be hard to find for Christine that way.” Mitch said.

“Let’s double back to the base and see if we run into her… If we don’t then let’s head to a lane.” Mel said and they set off.

They were all level 3 now and they were starting to look less like teenagers and more like athletes.

It took them at least half an hour to trek back to the base from the river but they moved faster having already cleared out the monsters on the path. If only they had a recall spell, Mitch thought to himself.

When they arrived back at base, to their relief they found Christine - level 3 and practicing with her shadow magic. It looked like she could attack with her dress now. Whipping the train of the dress forward and striking the cobblestones like a scorpion's tail.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Hey guys!” she said as Mel ran to her and embraced her.

“Turns out dying isn’t so bad. Everything went black and grey like an old movie and I was watching everything you guys did from above. I respawned after about an hour.” she said.

She explained that she’d farmed a bit on the other side of the jungle and then waited in the base hoping they came back to access the shop.

“You used the shop?” Mitch asked.

“Yeah check it out, I bought a mana crystal.” Christine said, fishing into her pocket and pulling out a small blue sapphire.

“To be honest I’d completely forgotten about it.” Mitch said, staring at the crystal with awe.

Christine jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

“Get at it, team.” she said.

Mitch walked up to the long oak slab bar that he hadn’t seen in their first time in the base. There were dirty mugs stretched out across it and a fat balding old man stumbled out from a doorway looking half drunk. Mitch guessed he was an NPC.

“Yah?” he said in a thick Scottish accent.

“I’d like to use the shop please.” Mitch said.

The man nodded and waved his hand bringing up a holographic display of wares that looked identical to the shop in League of Legends. Unfortunately he only had 280 gold, not enough for a mana crystal. Instead he bought a Faerie Charm and a control ward. Thinking it might come in handy at the river later. The control ward looked suspiciously like another ‘toy’ that Mitch had encountered that was disguised as a flashlight. He quickly stashed it in one of the pockets of his robe before the others saw it.

The rest of the team made their purchases, Craig bought a longsword which surprisingly he could actually use. Mitch wrote it off as another variation of the game. Tim got a dagger which he too could wield. Mel bought a ruby health crystal that was absorbed by her body the second it came into contact with her skin. Her maximum HP expanded by +150 health.

The countdown timer for minions ticked down to zero.

000:01

000:00

Minions have spawned

They watched as a portal opened on the cobbled floor of their base, right in front of their nexus. A line of minions marched steadily out. Six of them in blue robes, some carrying wizard staffs and some carrying swords and shields. They were kind of cute, and stood about four feet tall. Mitch couldn’t imagine they’d be hard to take out in a battle judging by how slow they moved.

The team hadn’t figured out a lot of the game, but made the decision to head to lane and get some intelligence on who their opponents were.

They followed the steady march of their minions and soon arrived in the midlane, there were again statues of mighty warriors wearing blue ribbons on their side. They watched an enemy Viking brawler with a long sword and shield destroying their minions with ease, leveling to 4 right in front of them. His level glowed red.

“Ok I think we should go as a team on him now.” Mitch said.

“You don’t think we should scout and see if he’s got teammates around?” Tim asked.

“Look Tim, I hate to do this to you but I’m going to have to pull rank here. I’m Platinum at League of Legends. That puts me in the top ten percent of the game. I’m telling you if the opponents are NPC’s they’ll be following the meta strategy, which means playing a single person in the midlane.” Mitch said with an air of superiority.

“If we die, I’m going to kick your ass.” Tim grumbled.

The team got ready and sprang from the bushes running at the Viking warrior, they were all level 3.

He had completely killed their wave of minions and he simply stood amongst his own, beckoning the team forward.

Mel ran ahead of the pack and launched a massive overhand right at the Viking who took the hit on his shield, completely negating the blow and reflecting the damage back at Mel who was shot backwards with momentum, crashing into Tim and effectively taking them out of the fight.

This was the moment the enemy team was waiting for and from their left and right in the river, two more enemies ran towards them cutting their retreat off from both sides. One enemy was a large human male in a speedo - his body was shaved and oiled up and he looked exactly like a typical pro wrestler. The other was a woman carrying a huge leather and steel bound book that was chained shut.

Mitch quickly assessed the situation, anticipating that the lady with the book would be the easiest way out as she looked to be a mage.

“Everyone attack her!” he called.

Craig listened to his call and rushed at the woman, Christine ran in after him with Mitch in the rear. The other enemies were quickly closing in.

Craig launched a savage thrust with his spear at the woman who at full sprint bent back like she was doing the limbo, launched herself into a knee slide, then pirouetted as she swung the huge book around her body and then hit Craig so hard in the head he dropped to the floor unconscious. There was a loud CLUNK sound as the book hit his head.

She turned and ran at Christine who cast her protective shell, only to discover that it did nothing against physical attacks as the woman beat her senseless with the iron bound tome. She turned on the stunned Mitch just as a pair of hands wrapped around his waist from behind. He felt himself being lifted up into the air and then he was rotated and the ground whipped up to smash him. He was semi-conscious as he saw a large book hurtling towards his face.

***

The world went grey and black for Mitch and he realized he was dead. He was looking down on the midlane as the enemy champions used a wave of minions to smash half of the health of his team's tower. His team must have also been dead as they were nowhere to be found.

After a while, he wasn’t sure how long - he respawned. It was just like before when he had first loaded into the game. He woke up on the grass just behind his nexus.

Once he got back to the base he found his team waiting for him with none too thrilled expressions.

“Platinum? You’re a support main aren’t you?” Christine asked, she looked grumpy.

Mitch nodded, Tim’s eyes were drilling holes through his skull.

“Well Mel’s Diamond and I’m Emerald, we didn’t want to say anything before but now we’ll make it clear. You are not the shot caller, let the Tank engage Mitch!” she said with a stomp of her foot. Her shadow dress flared up around her in response to her high emotion.

“I’m sorry, I’ll just be super supportive from now on.” Mitch muttered.

“Let’s split up.” Mel said and the group collectively dropped their jaws, even Christine.

“What?” Christine said meekly.

“What we need to start doing is actually playing this game. Mitch and Craig are going botlane. Christine, you're in the midlane. Just farm minions under tower and stay safe. Tim you’re with me, we’re going topside.” Mel said.

The team hesitated for a moment but the look on the Amazonian's face said don’t argue. Grumbling as they did so they split up and departed to their lanes, promising to meet back at the base to shop in a few hours so they could all check in.

“That should give us all enough time to get some gold together and hit level 6. Once we know what our ultimate abilities are we might try team fighting again.” Mel had said.