A mana shield appeared before a terrified robed woman and an overwhelming hail of attacks shredding it apart along with her. A leather clad rogue turned and fled only for an arrow to pierce his skull. Another brutish warrior cleaved through an attacker with his great axe out of desperation and vanished to safety. People fled, fought, and froze as fear took them but nothing turned the tide. The horde tore through the unfortunate players nearest to them with mad abandon. For every mindless player that vanished ten more rounded the corner in their place.
Shin focused and a dense narrow ward spread across the hallway right in front of the nearest madman, and a flurry of martial and magic skills shattered it to pieces in mere seconds. White wings bloomed from Kamala’s back and Yen rose into the air, the party fleeing at high speed with no need for words.
They raced past the other players, Donny bringing up the rear and Shin in front, his eyes prismatic and vigilant. A passage between hallways appeared on their left and Shin took it without hesitation. He glanced in the direction they were fleeing and darted the other way, the rest of the party seeing the bounding zombie like players down this hallway as well.
Through the arcade halls they fled and fled, unable to stop the horde and prohibited from fighting back. They weaved through the corridors of the festival grounds as more and more paths closed around them by new groups of hordes. Shin cut through another passage and found a rock and a hard place. From the right came a barrelling horde and to the left a crowd stood mindless around a door swirling with the portal of a dungeon entrance, marked with words above.
‘Safe Room’
Shin darted left without hesitation and the party followed.
“It might be a trap!” Yen yelled.
“Not much choice.” Donny responded and Yen couldn’t disagree.
As the mindless players started to turn back towards them, Shin pushed them aside, forming a path to the door. The listless players spurned into a rage in an instant and attacked the ward as the party soared through. The blue walls of the ward shattered and another one formed around the party, smaller and denser, cracking and breaking through just as they passed through the portal.
Shin looked back, finding all the party well and glanced at the mindless players standing eerily just outside the portal, transparent on their side, before turning his attention to the safe room. Spacious and empty aside from the players taking refuge inside, easily numbering in the hundreds.
Among them there were a few recognizable faces. The glaive wielding leader from the standoff in the hall of the second dungeon of what he presumed was a Lu party. A familiar old woman who he now knew to be the Abbess of the Hua clan. A party of brown skinned players chief among them a towering young man of imposing build and stern resolve, Saba, he suspected.
And lastly a party from his country who seemed protective of a boy eleven or twelve, uninterested in the world around him as he calmly played with magic. Kamo, by their behavior and classes most likely, Shin guessed. As he gave the rest of the room a quick scan, he caught notice of tan blonde haired boy wearing a silk mask hiding half his face and waved, who promptly ignored him with a vitriolic click of his tongue.
“What now?” Yen looked back at the entrance before asking. “We can’t waste this bonus stage staying inside here…”
“Exactly.” An energetic stranger’s voice responded in front and the party turned towards him, Shin already aware. A young man with dark brown skin and thick dreads tied behind. The baggy silk pants of a rogue and traditional shoes of a martial artist, shirtless revealing a lean muscular physique ideal for fighting, his tall height obvious even from the casual crouch he adopted before them. His demeanor one of unconcerned measured confidence with a strange endearing gravitas.
[???]
“Relax.” He brushed aside the party’s hostility and suspicion at an approaching stranger with a composed smile. “No one can die in this room. No point in fighting. But… as you can see, nothing to gain here either.”
The stranger raised a finger as he spoke. “Only one way to get back to the games. A wall the zombies can’t break. Any of you have the ward skill?”
“Yeah.” Shin answered and the stranger turned his attention to him, formerly directed towards Kamala and Yen as mage types.
“Then we have what we need. Listen. There’s two others with the skill, the bandage guy over there has Greater Ward.” He motioned to a member of the Kamo, a epic tier Warder at Greater Lord, dressed partially in bandages and good tier equipment. “He’s got it maxed but it’s still not enough to block attacks on both sides reliably. Tested already. So we need someone else to upgrade and max the skill as well, then two can seal off the hallway on both sides.”
“So why haven’t you done that already?” Yen questioned.
“We only have two. So they’d need to work full time, and one doesn’t want to.” Shin felt the rooms attention shift slightly to a young woman of the Saba who scowled it away. “But if we have three, the warders can rotate duties. Problem solved.”
“Okay.” Shin agreed on the spot.
The unidentifiable stranger seemed slightly caught off guard by Shin’s instant and complete acceptance but moved on immediately. “Great. We can get started right away. One of you upgrade the skill while the rest of us stop the horde with whatever we have. Then the other one switches in and we’re safe.”
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“Better than staying in here.” Donny voiced.
The stranger smiled at them. “You can call me Dante.”
“Shin.” A far too casual revelation of a most important name. Yen expressed some annoyance at Shin’s lack of caution but said nothing. As expected, the room’s attention fell squarely on them, the number one ranked player and his party.
Even Dante’s interest seemed to grow, rising to his feet with renewed interest, a shade taller than Donny. “Let’s get started, then.”
“Wait.” A scornful tone came from the Kamo Warder. “Why should we support everyone? Leave the worthless behind. Murim and people who are useful. We don’t need anyone else.”
None among the Kamo spoke up in opposition, even the older ones, nor did anyone from the murim parties. Discontent emanated from the rest but no one brought themselves to protest out of fear, few seemingly unconcerned.
“Hey, now. It’s not right to reject anyone.” Dante spoke with a subtly imposing casualness.
“Silence, commoner.” Venom and disparagement laced the warder’s words.
Dante raised his arms out unbothered. “I’m just trying to help. Maybe when you leave, you might be sabotaged by the dissatisfied left behind.”
“You…” Red veins started to line the Kamo scion at Dante’s implied threat, but quickly, he realized the growing atmosphere in the room from the commoners that greatly outnumbered him. “...fine. But we leave him behind.” He looked towards a young man standing off to the side by himself, a carefree smile and a blue bandana covering his eyes.
“No exceptions.” Dante said.
“He is a threat! A demon that curses the ground he stands on!”
“I don’t mind.” Shin spoke up and Dante smiled.
“You fools don’t understand!”
“I am tired of this room and your time wasting.” The Greater Lord Soothsayer woman from the Saba spoke up, as she looked to the party. “I’ll support everyone joining if I am the one to use the challenges first.”
“Okay.”
“Then let us move on from this.” She stepped forward and the rest of the Saba followed.
“Okay.” Dante brought the attention of the room back to him. “We need to break through the horde first. The strongest warder secures the back and the other two moving forward to make a path to open space. Then we find a spot with all the types of challenges and block the horde while the soothsayer gets greater ward.”
“Who gave you-”
“Agreed.”
“About time.”
“The plan is sound.”
The soothsayer, Lu Kang, and the Abbess all voice approval of the plan, speaking for their parties. The young scion of the Kamo stood to his feet as well, walking to the entrance without word or care, and Kamo warder could do nothing but follow after, shooting Dante a glare as they passed towards the doorway. Most of the room followed after them, all but those too shaken by the dangers outside.
A member of the Saba leapt outside without warning and glanced in all three possible directions before darting back. “Right.”
The Kamo Warder stepped through next, a ward extending out from the wall around the doorway and turning right. The mindless players swept into a frenzy at once but none of their attacks could penetrate the defenses of the greater ward. The young scion left and the rest followed. Shin sped ahead along with the rest of the party, moving in tandem with the growing ward.
A hole opened up and Shin created a tunnel of his own stretching as far as it could go. It shattered as the Saba ran passed to their alert but reformed in an instant. The soothsayer woman did the same as Shin, hers extending beyond the borders of the horde. Players poured out and began restraining, blocking, and pushing back the zombies breaking off from the pack towards them.
Mere moments was all it took for those who wished to leave the room to pass. Shin and the party finally began to move as the Kamo brought up the rear, their ward the only one that could hold up against the assault, and soon, they were all truly outside.
But there was no time to pause. The zombies swarmed over their incapacitated brethren and charged. The crowd of players raced through the connected halls with the Saba at the head, the soothsayer guiding them with blank eyes. “Here.” She ordered and the Saba came to a stop in the middle of a long hallway.
Kamo Warder erected a third ward in an instant, this one spanning the width of the corridor, trapping the horde behind. Before the group could settle, another swarm bounded towards them from a distance, this one far smaller. Shields and obstacles of all kinds shot out towards them, chief among a wall of weaving vines that snatched at and wrapped around the limbs of the attacking zombies.
The Saba warder had already entered a challenge, guarded by her kinsmen. The group needed only hold long enough for her to return with an improved skill. Barrier after all manner of barrier cast out towards the zombies, reforming just as they broke, other skills pushing or stalling the mindless back, allowing none to take advantage of any gaps.
Seconds seemed to pass like minutes as they resisted wave after wave of the horde’s erratic attacks. Gradually, more and more players ran out of mana or stamina and started to fall back closer to the Kamo. Nerves started to fray as those in the front saw the allies that bolstered their confidence fall back one after the other, and the threat of the horde breaking through inched closer and closer. Fewer and fewer barriers reformed and finally, the weaker willed lost their nerves.
“Ahhh!”
“This is crazy!”
“Take us back to the safe room!”
Cowards turned and fled in droves as zombies started to break through, but through the routing chaos, one of the Saba flickered to the front, eyes closed beneath the shade of a bamboo hat. His mouth swelled before spitting yellow fog at high speed across the horde. The fog cleared unnaturally in a mere moment, revealing the mindless players stuck in place foaming at the mouth as if paralyzed.
He stood calmly before the zombies as they spasmed against the paralyzing poison, quickly regaining their ability to move. Veins bulged as they pushed themselves recklessly, some starting to spit blood, others even thrashing to their own demise. But soon they started to step forward in large numbers and then sprint.
A sword appeared in the Saba’s hand as he took a drawing stance, intensity emanating from his body before the surge. He grabbed hilt of the sword and a dense ward appeared right in front. The zombies hurled weapons and spells but the ward held firm. The greater lord samurai relaxed his posture with a matching smile as he walked back to his party.
Their soothsayer crossed her hands in wait, looking to Shin. “Hurry up.”
“It would be best if we all waited until Shin returns.” Kamala spoke up, making no effort to conceal the implication of her words.
“Yeah.” Yen glanced to the Hua in particular. “Don’t be long.”
“Okay.” Shin hopped over to one console in particular and found himself in the graveyard of a battlefield. A full moon hung over the night and before him rose a four armed golden skeleton, seven feet tall and bearing a large sword in each hand.
The skeleton shot forth like an arrow and brought down a mighty slash from four directions. Light shattered from Shin’s body and the four swords clanged against a dense blue barrier. He would not be long.