VOLUME 1
- CHAPTER 7 -
ARCANE ASSASSIN
With one mental activation, the black smoke bursts out from within my cloak.
“Seriously… no tanks, disablers, or a combat healer?”
I step back, disappearing within the cloud of darkness. Mark and Elay’s silhouettes highlight in yellow as they charge forward and miss their attacks in the smoke. Just like in the game, only I can see them here.
“That’s a rookie mistake for a party. If I die for this… I would have to kill myself.”
They look around, waiting for me to appear in front of them at any moment. But instead of attacking, I sheathe one of my daggers and drop the one I’m holding, sliding its end ribbon in my hand.
It didn’t take long for a sound to start resonating within the smoke, the whistling of a knife cutting the air at high speed, an unstoppable cycle of it going up and down ferociously.
“… I think I got it.”
In a strong swing, a dagger slices Mark’s arm.
Mark: “He’s here!”
He strikes blindly with his axe, dispersing the smoke and showing that nothing was there to be hit, and soon after, the black cloud sinks everything again. Then another dagger comes, hitting Elay in the back.
Elay: “No, here!”
Then, again and again, the dagger flies and cuts the smoke as it descends, slicing and piercing them, most hitting Mark as he angrily swings his axe effortlessly. Mark even tries to leap back trying to predict an attack but it hits Elay instead, then more come swinging.
The smoke disperses after a couple of dozen slashes and clears the view for them to see me holding the dagger by its ribbon, spinning it in a diagonal circle and releasing to propel it, all I do is loose my grip until it was in the right range and, after it hits, I quickly wrap the cloth around my arms and pull my weapon back to repeat the cycle.
“That’s the problem with a weak composed group, all I need to do is deal damage over time and you guys are going to die.”
I throw my dagger once more and it slashes Mark on the shoulder.
“And since all of us are melee, this will be all about who has more mobility. And look at that, that’s the only thing my scout has.”
Mark: “Typing shit, this boss likes talking, doesn’t he,” – he says charging forward with his axe.
“No good equipment, a lower level, and in numerical disadvantage. And yet here I am, how does it feel to be stomped? Well, at least you can blame the fact that I am a slimy arcane assassin, then cry all~ you like afterward.”
Mark swings his heavy axe to attack, but I jump back with the power of my speed boots which just refreshed. He lifts his axe and quickly strikes the ground. When his blade sinks into the stone, a wave of purple electricity scatters in a cone and hits the wall to my side.
“All I need to do is work around my skill cooldowns while being aware of what abilities you have,” – I say lecturing myself. – “Easy does it, there’s no way I lose this.”
I throw one more dagger at Mark, controlling it almost like a whip.
Mark: “Now!”
A magic yellow barrier surrounds Mark, blocking my blade before it could land with a clanking sound.
But besides that, I was left reactionless, I didn’t understand the Why he screamed. I knew he had that barrier and I was sure he was going to use it after the smoke ended, but that wasn’t near enough for me to worry about, what could a shield that only lasts for a second and a half even do? And yet, the word “Now” echoes in my head like a loop with no solution.
Then, in my peripheral vision, something shines bright and comes in speed. When I realize that it is Elay’s electric hammer spinning right at me, it’s too late. Before I can lift a foot, it explodes in my chest and pushes me against the hard wall. Like thunder, the loud sound of electric cracklings travels throughout my entire body, burning me from the tip of my head to toes.
Mark: “Nice shot, Elay!”
My vision darkens and becomes blurry, the ringing in my eardrums deafens me, and the smell of burnt flesh fumes out from my own skin, the only thing I manage to focus on is my own health bar going down violently.
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I almost blackout, sliding my back on the wall and falling to the ground. Everything screams at me to the point I don’t know if I’m alive anymore. I can’t see, I can’t move, I can’t hear anything, until:
Mark: “DIE!”
I wake up with his axe coming in slow motion from above. I look at Elay running behind him.
That was the same move she used to save me before, her ultimate ability not only transforms her weapon into energy but also changes the item’s skills… Damn ultimate abilities, I always forget a detail about them.
My eyes shift up to the axe’s blade coming at my forehead, but it warps into nothingness. I fall from a few inches up in the air and hit the ground near another wall, while Mark’s axe smashes the empty floor far to my left. I teleported away just in the nick of time.
“That won’t work twice,” – I say getting up, leaning on the wall and coughing blood.
My speed boots fade away.
That broke my entire plan, using two movement skills at once left me without any following moves. Ideally, I should go invisible and reassert a new plan, but it’s on cooldown, I need sixteen more seconds to use that skill, it’s faster to wait for the Blink or the Speed Boots that I just used to refresh, but I doubt they are going to wait.
Both of them charge at me.
If I still had my parrying skill instead of this useless area buff I switched to escape from the Ogres--
I step to the side, my entire leg explodes in pain and I almost fall, but I slide my shoulder on the wall to keep standing.
If I had planned to kill the three of them from the start… Damn it, I should have escaped alone and left them to die, what a fucking pain in the ass.
I rest my back on the wall, slowly drawing a dagger and pulling the one that was on the ground by its ribbon.
Blink was just used and needs eleven seconds to refresh. Speed Boots, fourteen seconds. Flaming blades and Freezing blades are ready, but they’re useless. The two Dagger Sling Shots need ten seconds. Shadow Cloud, forty-six seconds. And Arcane Clone, two minutes.
Both of them take a better grip on their weapons to ready an attack.
There’s nothing.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I cough, splattering blood on the ground as I feel the metallic taste all over my mouth. I clean my lips with the back of my hand and my eyes shine yellow, the grey wave reaches Mark and shows his heath bar roughly at sixty percent, then Elay’s at seventy.
The entire world slows like being submerged in tar, my mind going full thrust and beyond to give me time to think.
Fuck, what do I do? I attack him first? Her? I can’t get hit, one more mistake and I die. Maybe if I spin around one to negate the other’s attacks… no, that wouldn’t work. I can’t run. Use Freezing blades to slow them, then? I can’t throw daggers like this, I would have to be in melee range, but what slowing them would matter at that point? Besides, if I do that, I don’t know if I would have enough damage to finish them. I need to manage my energy too, I’m fighting against two people, I need to think of a plan that uses energy twice more efficiently compared to them. How? I need mobility, but I can’t walk. A potion? Do I have time to open my inventory at this point? No. There’s no time. Something else, there needs to be something else I can do.
My eyelids get heavy, it’s hard to keep them open. All I want is to rest a little, let my legs fold and my back slide on the wall so I can sleep a bit. But obviously, that’s not an option at this moment, it can’t be.
A multitude of strategies assembles and are discarded inside my head. Some I need a skill that would be in cooldown, others I fail to evade an attack and have my neck ripped off, or I would be pressed against a corner and left without moves, or I would need to play so perfectly that it was humanly impossible.
Mark and Elay increase their speed, both already powering their weapons to swing, just a few steps away from me.
One strategy came, then gone, and then another, and another, and another and another. There is no true good strategy. The ones that can work are way too risky, while the ones that aren’t risky… don’t exist.
But then… I hear something above me, something completely out of my calculations and field of view, something I only notice because my two attackers stopped and gazed at it. My eyes are the only ones fast enough to catch what’s going on.
Something is poking out of the wall, quickly passing through the stone bricks and descending towards my head, so fast that it looks like a truck is about to run me over.
I instinctively push the wall to propel myself away, my arms and legs burst in pain as I fly in the air.
The wall explodes in a strike, bricks and pieces of stone scatter everywhere. For an instant, nothing happens, I’m on the ground, Mark and Elay stand still, and the wreckage ceases. Only the oversized club moves, going back inside.
A giant hand clings out of the hole, pushing the wall to open wider until the heads of the beast come to spy on what is inside the arena.
[21st War Ogre, Shadow Army (Level 90+)]
The same type of greenish Ogre as the ones before: three heads, six pulsating red eyes, and a giant tree log in its right fat hand.
“What-”
The one the Ogre stares at is the closest to him, me. His angry eyes are enough to force my body to try standing, but my leg bursts in pain and I fall to my back on the ground. I can only crawl back in fear, blood drenching my left eye and painting half my vision red.
It’s hopeless.
No matter how much I think, there is no way out of it. I’m tired, weak, and out of position. There’s nothing I can do to get out of this.
I’m completely powerless.
My mind had given up on thinking about a plan even before that thing appeared, it was impossible as it was, but now… there is an ogre too? One so strong that even if the three of us were to join forces, we wouldn’t be able to defeat. And for some reason, the only one who that thing is after is me, or better, after the Orb. For some damn reason, I became their target the moment that NPC gave it to me.
That guy even left me to rot dead when he saw they were coming, he knew what was going on, I was trapped from the beginning.
Independently of what I do, there’s no way I can win this. All I can do is hope that some miracle is going to happen, maybe someone will come and save me like the first time, or I would magically teleport out of the dungeon, or I would wake up and see that this was all but a bad dream.
Anything would be better than this.
What’s going on? Why is this happening to me? How any of this is real? Can I go back home already? I don’t want to be here anymore.
My head throbs in pain and my forehead doesn’t stop oozing blood into my eye.
That’s when I stop.
I touch my forehead, surprised to see blood on my fingers. For some reason, all my focus was sucked into that liquid.
Uh…?
The Ogre goes a step forward, kicking the wall to get in. But instead of paying attention to that, I touch my forehead once more.
I’m bleeding? Did the Ogre do this…? or that hammer?
I slide my fingers on the straight cut above my left eye.
No, it’s too clean, it- it was a blade.
DArkstrider’s eyes are focusless, paying attention to anything but the problems in front of him.
The axe did it before I blinked?
With one more heavy step, the Ogre gets completely into the squared arena.
You can’t blink if you receive damage, not with my blink at least, it should add a two-second cooldown. So, how did I?
Strangely enough, DArkstrider was at ease. He wasn’t there anymore, he was back to be a third person observing the game in his bedroom, seeing the cloaked virtual adventurer on his monitor.
“Ah, I know this,” – he mumbles with a smile, his focusless eyes looking forward. – “It’s when the damage doesn’t deactivate the skill in time… it happened almost instantly, so it couldn’t.”
The pains, the doubts, the worries, everything was gone, even the Ogre’s eyes were staring at his character, not at him.
“Ha-hah-, I remember being angry at it before. After someone I should’ve killed ran away because of it, I spent a whole day searching on the internet to see if it was a bug or a hacker…”
His smile gradually closes.
“A whole day…”
The Ogre stops and raises its club to the ceiling, having DArkstrider right below striking range.
“I’ve spent… so much time with this game…” – he says seated on his gaming chair, the only light in the room coming from his monitor. – “I’m so damn tired of it.”
He looks down.
“… why I’m even playing this?... Why did I spend so much time on this...? My life-- was it worth it?”
The images of his hurt younger self seated on the ground come to his mind, first when he was just a small kid, then as a teenager, going all the way to his current self transforming into his game character, all of them in the same position: their legs slightly crossed, his hands over his thighs, blood on his face, and his sharp eyes looking forward.
As he grew up, the only thing that truly changed was his eyes becoming more and more tired.
The Ogre’s club strikes down.
I jump back like a spring.
“What am I thinking?”
The heavy club explodes on the ground and a stray pebble knocks my forehead before I land on my feet.
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My entire body burns with pain and anger, black smoke fuming out around me.
“That’s not it.”
I straighten myself. Even more blood oozes down my face. My head is heavy like a bowling ball, my legs are stiff like weak wooden branches, and I feel dizzy from all the bleeding. The warm blood covers the majority of my body now, it’s hard to tell which is mine or not.
But my eyes don’t stop looking up.
Mark and Elay say something in the background but the only thing I can focus on is the Ogre in front, who is lifting its club and glaring at me, preparing for another swing.
“How did I forget? I play to survive, I always did.”