“What is life? This question plagued the masses of the old world day and night. We can say that it’s what separates us from the inanimate, or how it’s what makes us human. But why? Why is life a thing? Was it created on a whim? Or was it a random chance? Perhaps the old world may never know.
But the new world knows.
And it is beautiful.”
“Excerpts of the Old World to the New, a Reminiscence, Circa 2034” by Izz’n’than the Willful
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Clang! Shikk! Shing!
After a brief exchange of blows, the orc’s head falls to the ground as Tim sheathes his blade in wait for the next one charging towards him. In a swift Iaido strike, another head rolls with a spray of blood. He looks over to his comrades– a Chanter and a Ranger. “You okay back there, guys?” Without missing a beat, he sends another orc’s sword to the ground, spins around, and cuts out the chest. Another kill.
The ranger stabs into an orc with her shortsword. A grunt escapes the orc before he falls to the ground, holding his wound. A second stab to the head ends the suffering. “Doing just fine over here, Tim! Just gotta–” She gets interrupted by an orc taking a swing at her with his saber. He gets rewarded with a kick to the groin and a stab through the heart. “Just gotta get these guys offa me and I can put in the real work.” She gestures to the bow and quiver on her back, unusable in close combat like this. The ranger takes another stab against a charging orc right through the forehead. “How’re you holding up, Lyari?” she calls.
The chanter, similarly, is having a hard but simple time. With quick mutterings of incantations, he sends a charred orc toppling to the ground with a Shocking Grasp cantrip. Before a different orc can get revenge for his fallen comrade, Lyari spins back around with a blade of force cutting through the orc’s middle, splitting him in half. The blade dissipates into the aether. “Doing fine, Natsuki. You two mind if I use up a spell slot for this?” Lyari is met with agreement from both sides. “Coolio.” He slams his palm into the forehead of an orc, paralyzing it and using it as cover. Lyari clasps his hands together as a circle of dark green Nature magic glows beneath him. He chants in a strange language– Elvish, befitting his ears. Natsuki and Tim do one more kill before shielding their eyes with their arms.
“Medusa’s Gaze!” Lyari calls out. The battle raging screams of the orcs are suddenly silenced as, in but a single moment, they all turn to stone statues. Some fall and break with a crumble! because of their terrible pose unfit for staying upright. Tim and Natsuki unshield their eyes, sheathing their blades as the battle has ended.
“Well. That was, certainly, an experience,” Natsuki says to the two. “I just wish we coulda gotten better loot. You just had to use MG, huh, Lyari?”
“It isn’t my fault that the equipment gets turned to stone too, Natsuki. Plus, if they had anything worthwhile, it wouldn’t have been affected. You know magic items are immune to magic of an inferior level, right?”
“Yeah, but you could’ve at least used something that could’ve, maybe, not turned what was only kinda useful to stone? We’re low on funds, dimwit!”
Tim simply kept the two out of his mind. Instead, he focused intently on what just went down and analyzed. This isn’t orc territory they were in– just a plain field with grass as far as the eye can see. A welcome sight in the Netherworld for the more recent arrivals. But something just didn’t add up– plains aren’t an area for orcs to control, those would be forests. Yet there are no trees around here…
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“Keep your guard up, you two,” he called to his companions. “Something is wro–” Shikk! “Gahh!” He gets cut off, literally, by a black blur that speeds past him and behind the standing statues. Lyari belts out a swear as he unsheathes his blade in spite of the dagger in his hip. “It’s an ambush!”
Natsuki and Lyari get into attention, looking between the statues to try and catch the assassin as they each take out their weapons– a bow and a staff, respectively. Lyari gets a glimpse at the ambusher and prepares to cast a spell, chanting only a single word before hearing a Clang! go off next to his ear. A quick dart to the side, he sees a kunai aimed for him getting shot out of the air by an arrow. The ambusher quickly uses this opportunity to stab Natsuki who, even in an attempt to parry the blow, only ends up having her shortsword sliced in half by the magic knife. She screams as the knife lands into her chest and falls to the ground, clutching her open wound as the shadowy ambusher dashes away before Tim can swing his blade.
Tim checks Natsuki, muttering a swear to himself as a quick inspection shows a green fluid leaking out. “Nats is poisoned, Lyari!”
“Shit, really?! We’re screwed– I can’t cast magic if he’s just gonna flank me every time I try to chant!”
Tim picks up Natsuki and slings her arm over his shoulder, holding his katana with a one-handed stance. “What now? We’re sitting ducks!”
“You don’t think I know that?!” Lyari exclaims.
In this momentary distraction, the assassin aims a stab of the knife right into the forehead of Lyari– but is stopped short, frozen in place by an unseeable force. He speaks in a sort of gruff voice. “H-hey… Hey, when’d you cast—”
“So you’re the little snake I’ve heard going around killing the newbies. Don’t you know that’s a taboo in my domain?”
The assassin shuts his mouth quicker than you can blink when he hears the voice. That disgusting voice that demands respect. The owner of this domain and the guy he feared the most.
The Pied Piper. The Commander of the Conquest of the One and One Thousand. That psycho that keeps even the greatest of generals in his level awake at night if they hear his name.
“B-b-but, wouldn’t y-you be too b-busy working to check the f-fields like this…?” The assassin struggles to turn his head to meet with his captor face to face, but can’t move an inch. A prison inside his own body.
The group watches in awe as a man in simple purple robes and lightly-tinted purple skin floats down from seemingly nowhere in the sky. He hovers behind the ninja. “Silly Billy little bug… I am working! Haven’t you ever heard of advertisements?” He laughs to himself like he just told the greatest joke in the world– a bellowing laugh that makes the ground tremble as he tumbles through the air in place like a careless leaf.
“N-n-no, I-I haven’t, but–”
Splkk! Blood splatters to the ground and through the air as the body falls to the ground, completely headless. It’s hard for the head to fall when it explodes into bloody gore and gibs. Tim and his friends stand there, gawking, fearing for their lives in this instant.
“Shut up. Oh, and as for you two, consider what I’ve just done a favor.” He looks to the group of three and, with a wave of his hand, the knife shoots out of Natsuki with a green fluid flowing out of it into an invisible river in the air, floating on the wind as it swirls in place and simply vanishes. “Now, if you wanna talk business…” He points his finger behind the group. “Southeast of here, you’ll find a nice little store that I run. I’ve got goodies galore at such great prices, you’ll think you’re dreaming! Perhaps you’d like to take a gander at Dennis’ Depository! How about it? 20% discount?”
Tim slugs Natsuki over his shoulders in a piggyback carry. He and Lyari scream at the top of their lungs and run away as far as they can from the floating freak. Said freak does not give chase.
“Sheesh… Everyone’s a critic…”