Yowo knew it was a small country, but its capital impressed her. "Ramenna, the Jungle Port."
The salty smell of the sea reached her nose as she moved atop the white tiger.
After wandering the streets for a while, she found a mount house among the wooden bazaars to leave the animal behind. It wouldn’t be of much use in the place she was heading to. Her contact was supposed to be at the capital’s dock by now, so she made her way there with quick steps, her hands always close to her sword.
This time, it wasn’t the mysterious merman she had seen in Rava but a blonde elf she was set to embark with toward the border waters.
She waited in a sardine-smelling tavern while reflecting on her skills. Most of the dexterity points she had obtained in recent days had been allocated to melee combat skills, but she couldn’t neglect her magical abilities.
There were very few characters like her, created with three distinct class branches. And while she enjoyed finishing off monsters and enemies with her sword, she needed to be practical: spells caused significant area damage, and she didn’t even have to get close to her rivals, allowing her to eliminate mobs within seconds. Even so, sword fighting was her passion, and she was reluctant to invest points in her magical skills, especially now with her new level-three chainmail, which not only enhanced her melee protection but also dealt magic damage to opponents per second during combat.
The contact didn’t take long to arrive, drawing the attention of orcs and other scoundrels gathered in the tavern. She was a light elf with blonde hair and wide hips, a sharp short saber hanging from her belt. Yowo had contacted her through the interface via an announcement from the elf’s guild, which was recruiting members for an anti-pirate expedition. Apparently, fewer and fewer players were logging into the server, and guilds were the most affected when it came to organizing raids.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Yowo,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She wore light leather armor and had her hair tied back in a ponytail.
"She’s very beautiful. She should be in some royal court delighting a king and his courtiers, not in a dingy tavern," was the only thought that crossed the warrior’s mind as she shook the elf’s hand gently.
“The ship is about to depart. I’ll tell you the details of the expedition there.”
The vessel that would take them to the open sea didn’t stand out among the others, though it wasn’t bad. It was a two-deck galleon with white sails proudly bearing Ixtul’s unofficial symbol: a green eagle with its wings spread wide.
Its crew was a plague of misfits, mostly humans, although she spotted a few dark elves—much less attractive than her companion—and a handful of tritons in their terrestrial form.
“What a charming crew.”
“We’ve gathered what we could, sister. Most of them are seasoned sailors, though they lack your exceptional powers,” the elf replied, flashing a smile that could hypnotize the fiercest beast. “Even though the guild summoned us for a raid against corsairs and illegal fishermen, the High Chieftain is offering handsome sums of gold to reinforce the borders at sea.” Her blue eyes glimmered with concern against the ocean’s surface. “We’re heading to defend against a full-scale invasion.”
"Perfect," Yowo thought, feigning concern. "Everything is going according to plan. I just hope this heap of junk doesn’t sink before I get to swing my sword at my countrymen. This crew’s level is laughable. Only this beauty might be of any use, even if just to distract the enemies."
She analyzed her companion’s level by activating the bluish interface in front of her eyes. She was a melee fighter like Yowo, with a second branch specializing in healing abilities. But her rank was pitiful.
As the ship sailed the ocean alongside another dozen galleons over the gentle waves, Yowo thought about the massacre she had committed just hours earlier.
She had encountered the remaining members of Orec’s squad outside a mid-tier portal. She was supposedly there to help them but arrived half an hour late and had killed them from behind while they were battling the dungeon boss—a massive level-180 chimera.
Many fought fiercely for their lives, but they were already worn out, and Yowo had used her illusion spell to create fake copies of herself, confusing them. In the end, she slit the throat of Vark, the group’s most powerful tank, feeding on all his experience. She then finished off the chimera herself, though she had taken a couple of scratches on her bare arms during the fight. Watching the experience points climb steadily on her interface, accompanied by the addictive sound of notifications, she thought it was a fair price.
"My little contribution to that ungrateful rocky egg in the jungle. I’m still deciding whether to let it die and take that experience for myself. I am the true core. Now I need to sabotage my countrymen’s invasion if I want the whole cake for myself."
An inner voice told her she needed to keep the jungle country intact from invasions, as it would make her more powerful over time. But it was no easy task. With each passing day, more guilds and adventurers from the northern country and neighboring regions set their sights on raiding Ixtul and its monster portals.
The ship moved swiftly, aided by the wind, as if the gods themselves wanted to hasten the battles in the border waters.
After her last trip to the dungeon deep in the jungle, where she had “met” Nava’rel, she had hurriedly traversed the country on her white tiger, handing out bags of gold to as many informants as she could to learn the war’s true state.
“If you really want to mess with the Aneitas, cut off their supply line,” a shaman from a border town had told her. “You won’t achieve anything by directly facing their swords: for every head of the hydra you cut off, three more will appear. Instead, starve it. Most of their troops rely on fish from the ports they’ve already captured since the deep jungle offers few crops to plunder.”
After gazing at the turquoise sea from one of the balconies, pondering how else she could sabotage the Aneita invasion, she headed to the dining hall to speak with Xyrna. The elf was elegantly nibbling on magic biscuits, ignoring the lascivious stares thrown her way by the guild warriors and the crew from other tables.
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“You’re not from around here,” Yowo said between bites of her trout.
“Indeed. I’m from the Quiviel woods, but I lived there for so many centuries that I grew bored.”
Yowo’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You’re quite far from home. What brought you to this continent? You don’t see many fair-skinned elves around here.”
“I’ve always loved the sea. Even though I was as old as the rain the first time I boarded a ship, I haven’t been able to leave one since, except to restock. Being in this region is more of a random circumstance. You know, one goes where the gold is. But tell me about yourself. You’re from Anen.”
Yowo detected the coldness in her voice when mentioning the imperial country, no matter how much she tried to hide it.
“Isn’t it curious that you’d want to fight your own people in an almost accomplished invasion?”
"She’s smarter than she looks. Old demons know more from age than from being demons. I hope I don’t have to kill her. She’s so lovely..."
"Yes, I’m from Anen. But my people betrayed me, so I’ll repay them in kind. I feel like I can atone for my sins in some way by helping the defenseless."
The lie rolled off her tongue naturally, though Yowo wasn’t sure Xyrna fully bought it.
"Well, it seems you have quite the challenge ahead. The last I heard, the troops are swallowing up the eastern coastal cities with the speed of a collapsing house of cards. Qilari, the second most important coastal city in Ixtul after Ramenna, has fallen, something that hasn’t happened in at least two hundred years. They say it boasted more treasures than even the capital itself. That’s a deadly blow to your aspirations."
It was true. As soon as Yowo heard the news, she had ridden her tiger to the outskirts of the fortress city, only to confirm with horror that the banners bearing Anen’s proud wolf already flew over the battlements. According to reports from a peasant spy, the general newly appointed by the emperor, Hunn, had used the cunning of a merman to infiltrate the main troops through the lake west of the city, its only vulnerable point.
"And here I thought he was a brainless fool. He surely is, but he knows how to surround himself."
From the distance, she had spotted several burly crossbowmen patrolling the walls.
"That siege was supposed to hold them off for at least fifteen days. Now it’s just a matter of time before they fall upon the capital with its laughable defenses. And from there, they’ll only be a few leagues away from the dungeon of Leye. Even though it’s growing like wildfire, I don’t think it can withstand an assault by thousands of Anenite warriors who will pierce through the jungle like a spear."
Yowo knew there would come a time when the dungeon of Leye would grow strong enough to defend itself against any invasion, even one from the mighty empire itself. But that time was still far off. While the serpentine core’s terrain had numerous buildings capable of creating warrior creatures and mana wells sufficient to sustain them, it lacked efficient heroes and solid defenses.
"We need people. But that’s precisely what’s missing on this dying server. NPCs aren’t enough; we need reborn souls from the outside world..."
After a while, the ship’s captain approached them on the deck while the rest of the crew worked on the masts and rails, and the warriors played dice and cards with jokes that resounded in a jumble of languages.
"It seems beauty can also be fierce," he said, handing each of them an ebony bow and quivers brimming with arrows.
He was a burly man with a graying beard and gorilla-like shoulders.
"It’s a pleasure to have fighters of your caliber defending our waters. Though things don’t look good, it’s we who steer the destiny of our country. As they say, wars are won on the battlefield. For every enemy you take down with this bow, you’ll gain a twenty percent experience bonus. Good luck!"
It took only two more nights of sailing into deep waters before they engaged in their first conflict. Two dozen skiffs with black sails charged a group of fishermen near the area their galleon was patrolling.
Yowo was an excellent swordswoman and just as skilled at casting spells with her bare hands, but archery wasn’t her specialty. Even so, she managed to take down several pirate enemies while evading every arrow shot at her.
She remembered afternoons in the vast garden of the castle on the outskirts of Dalux, where she had grown up, practicing archery—first on targets, then on deer, and finally on eagles.
"You’re much better than the rabble," Dulus, her weapons master, used to say repeatedly—a man who later turned out to be a scoundrel, though as a teacher, he was the best. "But talent alone isn’t enough. Only practice will set you apart. If you’ve been granted more skills than other NPCs, it’s because the system needs predators of your caliber to maintain the game’s balance."
However, he was a chauvinist and soon confined her to a dungeon in the castle to violate her at will for days until he was foolish enough to turn his back on her, leaving the knife in its sheath.
"Never turn your back on a repressed soul." Since then, Yowo had learned that surprise attacks were the most effective.
After a couple of hours of crossfire, the deterrent strategy worked. Although the pirates charged at the guild’s galleys in chaotic formations they knew all too well, the loss of warriors eventually made them retreat. The height advantage provided by the galley’s deck was highly effective in repelling the smaller enemy vessels, and the only ship that ventured close enough was engulfed by a rain of incendiary arrows before it could ram them, sinking beneath the rough waves.
"Excellent work, warriors!" the captain said during that night’s feast. "We’ve suffered barely any losses. But don’t get complacent—this is just an appetizer. The boldest pirates will come as soon as they hear what we’ve done to their protégés. Sharpen your weapons!"
****
"My lord, I’ve been tracking the woman, but she is as elusive as mist and refuses to be caught."
Hunn was reclining at that moment atop the golden dome of Quilari. He was eating shrimp with deliberate slowness, dipping them into tomato sauce served in a silver chalice.
"Heagg, I think you’re outdoing yourself in incompetence, something I never expected from you. How hard can it be to catch a treacherous wench? Do I really have to take charge of this myself?"
The mage looked distressed as he gazed at the city below, a southern beauty full of marble walls and scantily clad people walking through streets teeming with carts loaded with food. He had contacted as many informants as he could, and one of them had nearly provided the exact location of the woman, right under his nose. Yet, when he sent his riders, she had already vanished, as if somehow aware of his plans.
"Of course not, my lord. It’s only a matter of time before I capture her."
"That’s what you told me the last time I asked about her. Now it turns out she was spotted just a few leagues from here, and still, she slips through your fingers. You’re trying my patience, old man."
"I almost caught her, my lord, I swear by the gods... but she boarded a ship. It seems she joined a maritime raid with the Emerald Veil guild. I assure you, as soon as she sets foot on the continent, I’ll go after her myself, even if I have to descend into hell to get her."
"Why wait for that? Why not board a ship yourself already?"
"There’s little a fire mage can do surrounded by so much water. She won’t last long out there, my lord. Those excursions rarely last more than a month. Sooner or later, the ships will need to resupply. Then I’ll bring her bound at your feet."
Hunn sighed. The mage was right. While he longed to have that woman chained in his dungeons alongside the merman who had helped him conquer the previously impregnable city, he had to press forward with the invasion. Eventually, she would be his.
"Fine, but this is the last time I’ll tolerate your excuses, old man. The moment the girl steps foot on the continent, I want to be the first to know, and I’ll go with you myself to drag her here. For now, I want you in charge of the assault on the capital. I want to see if the years haven’t completely dulled your skills. By now, the men are more than ready, and you have plenty of mana. No more excuses."