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World: MSS - Loading...

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“Coum!”

Tanya’s voice reached me a moment before a flash of white and blue slammed into me, sending me into a rolling mess of tangled limbs with the former Coum. Even during the mess, I tried to keep my hold on Coum’s neck, leaving long red scratches as my fingers were forced off from the momentum. I rolled and got to my feet, seeing Tanya grab Coum’s body and hold up her shield as Arrosh came blazing in, literally gliding across the ground like it was made of ice and holding his sword parallel to the ground across his body and in line with his shoulder.

｢Arrosh Bloodedge casts [Heavenly Strike] ｣

The dwarf shielder raised her shield to block but screamed as Arrosh’s entire body became clad in black lightning, transforming the Crow Guardian wrapped around him into the same element. His sword sheared straight through her shield, shaving the top clean off and leaving a glowing red edge in its stead. The technique also left a two feet long gash across her shoulders.

｢ [Heavenly Strike] has dealt more than 10% of the opponent’s HP ｣

｢ [Heavenly Strike] can be cast again at no cost! ｣

Arrosh spun around in place, his flesh literally being burnt off from the recoil of his technique. His feet glided across the ground again, no doubt a Core ability that got rid of friction –most likely [Grease].

But Tanya was a [Player] and she had figured him out.

She waved her harpoon over her head in three full circles and in conjunction with her movements, the ground began to churn with her as the focal point.

When I said ground, I meant the floor of the entire fucking room.

Finally, they were starting to become serious.

Everytime the ground churned, curved stone ridges in the shape of shark teeth rose out and remained. The following spin summoned up another ring of stone-shark-teeth as tall as I was, threatening to slice and dice us like a blender. One of the stone-hence knockoffs rose so fast that it left a long gash along my ribs and I began to bleed profusely.

Seeing the technique, Arrosh leapt up into the air and I followed suit, my head empty all the while. I reached the walls and ran about ten paces up, then leapt for a small hold and held onto it with one arm. On the other side of the room, I saw that Arrosh had done the same, albeit by stabbing his sword into the wall. Below, I saw the churning stop and tried to see what Tanya was doing.

She uncorked a health potion with her teeth and shoved it in the elven’s mage’s corpse.

A health potion can’t bring someone back from the dead. I had strangled him to death. Sure, it might cure the broken windpipe but it wouldn’t make his heart beating again. One of the fast rules of MSS, dead people stay dead.

Then she began pounding on his chest with one fist. Short small bursts.

Yeah, potions can’t bring someone back from cardiac arrest. But CPR could. And if the potion healed his broken windpipe…

Anger began rising up in a torrential tide. It felt wrong that I had killed him only to have him stolen at the last moment. I had won that kill, I deserved justice. Coum had wronged me and I had to kill him to-

Then with her other hand, Tanya drew out a small item I had seen often enough when I was still on the other side of the screen.

A small tube looking item that fits in the palm of one’s hand, looking like a flashlight evenly weighted on both ends. The tips were engraved with gold but the body itself was a bright cobalt blue. The opening of the tube had lines that curved inwards like a turbine opening.

[Portal Worm].

Not caring about the consequences, I leapt towards them.

I landed on the stone edge and it cut into the center of my foot. But at that moment, I didn’t care about the pain. I didn’t care that her skill had enough [Attack] stat to bust through my armor. Screaming livid fury I began to run on top of the blades, hearing a mixture of metal being torn and the squelching of my feet being cut into pieces. Without thinking, I held out a hand and Arrosh threw his cane-sword into my fingers.

Grabbing it and fusing the enchanted shadow electricity with Aura, I charged Tanya while running on top of the maw of a beast.

“You fucking monster!” She complimented me.

Yet, it didn't matter how determined I was. There are some things that determination cannot overcome. Running on top of knife-thin blades doesn’t make for good footing no matter who tells you differently.

Without waiting to check to see if Coum began to breathe again, Tanya opened up a portal and slipped inside.

But not before I stabbed her through the lower back, trying to stab through her torso and into Coum’s soft unconscious head.

“AAAAAAGGGGHHHH!” She screamed and half spun, striking me in the face with an elbow with her short dwarf arms. That’s how deeply I had stabbed her, hoping to reach Coum.

I flew backwards into another stone blade, feeling the sickening wet crunch as it sunk through my armor and into my own back.

The portal closed.

They had gotten away.

They had gotten away.

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Just when I was about to start screaming in sheer frustration, someone placed a hand on my shoulder. I turned in place, facing said person with a snarl on my face. I stopped in the middle of trying to shake the person off, realizing it was Arrosh. Slowly, I lowered my arm which had been… been about to do something I would regret forever.

“It is over, Crow.” Arrosh whispered.

There was a note of finality to the way Arrosh said it. Like the last breath someone takes on their deathbed and everyone knows they’re in a better place like. Like the epilogue of a good series. Arrosh had that kind of character. Not just as a swordsman but almost a poetic side to him.

He was the one who told me that all good swordsmen needed to be artisans.

I turned my head away, a hurricane of emotions settling into nothingness.

I tried to look at nothing, feeling a strange emptiness inside.

“...You gave into your fear, Crow. To your anger.”

“What gave it away?” My voice sounded hollow to my ears.

“In the eye of the storm lies the truth. Only in calmness can we see clearly.”

“I’m…” I stopped myself, drawing the anger out of myself. Arrosh didn’t deserve that.

Arrosh placed his hand on my shoulder again. “Crow. Did the clouds of your heart that holds sway over you like a shaking guillotine, did the skies clear once you saw the life-light fade from your enemy’s eyes?”

I closed my eyes, searching deep within. I felt bitter in my mouth as I said it. “Yes.”

It was a lie.

I didn’t feel any better than I had before.

The way I had killed Coum, I had never killed anyone like that before. Hell, I never wanted to make anyone suffer so badly before. Even Arione, whom I thought I hated with all my being, I realized I didn’t even rank them in the same league. They weren’t in the same ballpark. I wanted to do to Coum what he did to me and make him watch as I did it.

“Anger is a weapon.” Arrosh whispered, as if he could read my mind.

“It’s over.” I spat. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Even with Arrosh. “I won’t use it again.”

“Is it?” He asked. “They broke you, young Crow. Wingless. Flightless. Without a nest. They broke the heart and chained up your feet so that you could never rest. Has the ending truly descended on this Crow?”

I gritted my teeth. Why was he doing this? Why was he talking to me like I was a child? I had just been tortured by Coum for a day and-

How long had Arrosh been here? Suddenly, I felt very small. Very, very small.

So I told him the truth. “I don’t know what to do.” My voice sounded small too. “All I want to do right now is chase after him. There’s nothing else.”

The orc lifted his palm from my shoulder, sitting down next to me on a patch of ground where there was no blade. “You do, my disciple Crow and you have. Just as a seed faces towards the sun without knowing, it simply does.”

What I always do? What do I do besides delving into dungeons and forming a party? For the whole time I’ve been here, I’ve been just working on getting stronger. Getting stronger enough to protect myself.

…and somewhere along the way, that goal changed. Strong enough to protect the ones near me. Strong enough to stay near them. Strong enough to help them grow, so that I could keep them with me and help them grow stronger. So that no one could do to them what was done to me.

It wasn’t just about me anymore. There was no point in surviving through this alone. That’s why I had saved Skaris back in the Fracture. That’s why I went out on a limb to get Stole into the party and risked having Aurora, the bastard of a Great House in my party. It didn’t matter that Kyrian used to work for the Akka Xaluds.

They were my comrades.

I missed them.

“The clouds lifts.” Arrosh said quietly. “The star must return to the sky, leaving the ground to which it fell.”

I think I smiled. “They’re waiting for me.”

“Yes.”

“...I want to protect them.” I said.

“You will.”

“I’m afraid.”

He did not reply.

I closed my eyes again. “They mustn't know.”

“Such is the burden of the Protector.”

“Will the lie hold? Won’t they find out?”

“Sometimes, the beginning of truth is a lie, Sword Crow.” Arrosh took his hand off of my shoulder, taking his cane-sword from the ground and cleaning the blood off of it in the bend of his arm. He sheathed it. “A coward lies to himself to be brave, and does things that only a brave man can.”

I scoffed and smiled at the same time. The smile faded.

He hadn’t said the words but it was there. This whole time, Arrosh had been telling me the same thing over and over again: to let go of my fear and anger. That it was poison and would rot me from the inside out. And intellectually I agreed. It’s just that my heart roared that this was injustice, that I deserved something in exchange. My Cores cried out for blood and I agreed with them.

Yet…

What was I going to do, chase the [Player’s Guild] down? Chase Coum halfway across the MSS world which could take years?

This battle hadn’t ended with a fanfare. It hadn’t ended with a dramatic beheading. There was no cool one-liner to finish this with. It simply… was the way things were. I had been angry and tried to get back at Coum. I killed him, I think. Tanya took the corpse with her and who knows, maybe she’ll get him to breath again. Briefly, I wondered if priests could heal brain damage in this world. Maybe they can. Maybe they can’t.

I think that was the big thing. This wasn’t a cartoon I was watching with a neat nice ending wrapped up in a bow. It was my life and my story. And as much as I want to be all-knowing and be nosy, the fact is that there’re thousands of stories and lives out there. All of them just as self-important and nosy as I was. There are infinitely more stories that go untold than the ones that are shared. That’s the world I live in.

I had to be OK with this. OK with the uncertainty and OK with not knowing or being able to control everything. That’s what it meant to let go. It meant moving on with my life and not dwelling on it.

Even if I still felt angry just at the thought of Coum.

…Therapists would make a killing in this world.

“I’d never killed like that before.” I blurted out.

“With hate?” Arrosh ventured.

I nodded.

“It is poison.” Arrosh rasped. “Poison that festers and claws itself from the inside out. A butcher does not hate the livestock he slaughters. Nor the hunter that puts down a maddened beast. Do what must be done, Crow. But do not let them use Anger and Fear and Hate as weapons against you.”

“That’s what you meant by weapons. I thought I was the one using them but-”

“The Evil Ones wield it against you.” Arrosh snapped. He sounded pained. “Break you.”

“Arrosh?” I looked at him clearly for the first time.

Bits of his skin were flaking off and there was a huge stab wound near his hips, right above his thigh. It looked like something entered and tore itself out, ripping open the wound. Besides which, there were small nicks and cuts. It was the recoil from being clad in lightning for so long. Those without enough Lightning Resistance often suffered from this. That’s why beastmen made the best elemental bladers –due to their racial heritage.

“We need to get out of here.” I hooked my arm beneath Arrosh’s arm and stood up, urgency overtaking contemplation.

It only took a couple of steps for me to realize that his foot wasn’t moving right. The nerves must be fried. Bending low, I put him on my back, tucking his cane-sword in my armpit. The stone blades were crumbling now and I ran through them, leaving the arena and soon traveling downwards.

“Goddamit.” I panted. “Wayfinders should not be using moves with recoil. They don’t absorb enough Cores to strengthen your body or stave off the damage.”

Arrosh didn’t reply, which was worrying.

“Master, I saw that you healed yourself back there.” I had to keep him talking. A deep pit began to form in the bottom of my stomach. “You have [Kudan] for Wayfinding. Then you have some form of Healing. Were you really a swordsman? You seem more like a Wayfinder that should stay behind everyone.”

“Even… a Wayfinder… can walk the sword-path…” Arrosh grunted.

“Yeah, well then I can think of two other Cores for you that’ll help you be a Wayfinder and still be a swordsman.” I took big steps, trying my best not to fall.

“Master… chose these Cores… memories… of my other disciples, my adventures.”

I closed my mouth. In this world, Cores weren’t just something that made you stronger.

Sometimes, they were the mementos of your friends long gone. Proof that they had once walked this worth. In a world like MSS where gods spoke to their chosen and death by monster was the number one cause of being in a coffin, of course there was sentimental value in everything that had to do with the dead. So I didn’t want to talk about the Cores any longer.

“You said I can start the second stage of my training.” I muttered. “What’s the second stage?”

“From Master to Disciple… tradition. Master… passed onto me… his Core…”

“You got a Core from Nearnigh?!” I yelled. Of course, in the game Arrosh didn’t use black lightning. That was Nearnigh’s move. Which meant that-

“The other disciples. What did they get?” I asked.

“Master’s… Cloak. His [Aura]...” Arrosh’s voice was faint. “But I stole… eavesdropped… stole the… [Aura]... teaching…”

“Once a thief, always a thief? Something like that?” I quipped.

I wasn’t worried that Arrosh would die. He was too high leveled for that. But I also didn’t know what the hell would happen if he went unconscious while his brain was fried extra crispy either. One of the bad things about being in the reality patch of MSS was that there was no instant healing and everyone’s fine. Permanent damage was permanent.

God, I hoped priests could heal brain damage.

“So what’re you planning to pass down to me?” I said after a while.

“...Crow…” He called me.

“I’m here, Master.” I answered.

“...Crow… -ve you… Crow…”

Why was he repeating that?

Regardless, I had to slow down.

At the end of this particular tunnel, standing in front of the only entrance were five figures covered in cloaks. Cloaks that I had seen before. One of the cloaked figures stood at the front, waiting for me, a distinct feminine figure lying underneath. But I couldn’t see their faces, it was obscured through some kind of spell.

Cloaks that I had seen in the Colosseum. And at the Church.

I’m not the brightest light bulb but I’m not that stupid either. Flash enough clues and I begin to catch on.

The one at the front showed a flash of pink locks.

I stopped.

Then deliberately, without ever taking my eyes off of them, I laid Arrosh down on the floor. He was shivering now.

“Master, wait here.” I took the cane-sword from his grasp. “I’ll be right back.”

Then I stepped in front of the five figures.

“I’m going to say this once. Move.”

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