We turned a corner and saw a group of Diluvians crowded in a group and feasting upon a pile of corpses. They were about a hundred feet away when we saw them. Carlos and I were able to quietly backtrack and return to cover before any of them could spot us. Luckily for us, they didn’t seem to have superhuman senses.
“One last thing, Vince,” Carlos whispered. “What name did you put into the System?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I want to send you a [Party] request, and I can only do that if I know your name.”
I sighed, not wanting to tell Carlos that I had entered the name of my Dungeon King character. His request was rational, so I answered him truthfully. “Vinzadir.”
Carlos covered his mouth with his hand to stifle a laugh. Though Liz did a better job of controlling herself, I could tell that she was also on the verge of laughing.
“Yeah, what’s so funny, jackass?”
“No, no,” Carlos said, trying his hardest not to laugh at my statement. “I’m not making fun of you. It’s just that we all had the exact same idea.” He gestured to himself and Liz.
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll see in a second.”
Carlos made a few quick gestures in the space in front of his face, and two new notifications popped up in front of my eyes.
[NEW FRIEND REQUEST: SLADER]
[NEW PARTY REQUEST: SEN’S COMPANY]
NEW PARTY REQUEST: SEN'S COMPANY
[NEW FRIEND REQUEST: ELSTINE]
The slight annoyance rumbling in my chest suddenly transformed into surprise and pleasure. It filled me with an embarrassing amount of happiness that Liz and Carlos valued our campaign enough to set their names within the Revelation System to their character names. Even the [Party] name was taken from our campaign.
With a big smile on my face, I pressed the accept button on all three requests.
[YOU HAVE JOINED THE PARTY: SEN’S COMPANY]
I swiftly navigated to the [Friend List], which was located in the [Journal], and checked the names located therein.
Elstine: Priestess, Lvl. 3
Slader: Knight, Lvl. 3
Elstine Priestess, Lvl. 3 Slader Knight, Lvl. 3
I noted with great interest that the [Friend List] showed me Liz and Carlos’s levels. A dark thought surfaced in my mind, and I wondered if players were erased from others’ friend lists when they died.
“Good,” Carlos said. “Now we’ll share EXP from any kill equally.”
“That’s for the best. Otherwise, you guys wouldn’t get any EXP at all,” I said, lightly needling Liz and Carlos.
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“We’ll see about that,” Carlos said with a smile as he rose to his feet. “Come on.”
The three of us turned the corner once more and began to approach the Diluvians. Carlos stood in the front while Liz and I stood about a dozen feet back.
Before the Diluvians noticed our approach, I moved to a position where I could shoot without potentially hitting Carlos and started firing at them with my laser pistol.
The Diluvians were grouped up in a small area, so I sacrificed accuracy for rate of fire and dumped the remaining half of my battery pack into the crouched monsters. A violent stream of high-powered energy crashed into the Diluvians.
A few of the red lances missed and struck the building about a hundred feet behind them, burrowing foot-wide holes of molten lava into it. The missed shots only stopped after striking several dozen feet of solid stone or metal.
The shots that hit scored deep craters into the flesh of the Diluvians, and several of them fell to the ground dead before I had to reload. By my count, three were killed, and one more was injured.
[DILUVIANS (3) KILLED! +60 EXP, +60 CREDITS]
[EXP TO NEXT LEVEL: 80]
[TOTAL CREDITS: 290₪]
Though I had killed three of them in a matter of seconds, half a dozen still remained. Carlos unsheathed his sword as six Diluvians charged toward him.
“[Light Arrow]!”
Liz shouted out the name of a first level [Priest] spell from Dungeon King, and a bright bolt of light shot out of her hand. The spell struck one of the Diluvians hard in the chest, and its skin instantly charred down to the bone. I could feel the heat emanating from the attack, and the faint silver outline of my shield appeared for a moment to block the worst of the heat.
Carlos stepped slowly toward the five remaining Diluvians and began to engage them in melee. I was done reloading my laser pistol a moment after they began to fight. When I finally leveled my gun once more toward the monsters, I dared not fire. Carlos was moving too much for me to risk firing a shot. I had seen the laser pistol’s collateral damage when it was used correctly, and I certainly didn’t want to see what would happen if I used it incorrectly.
Carlos blocked the first rending claw with the flat of his blade. He dodged the second strike, and his counterstroke caught a Diluvian in the neck.
Liz clasped her hands together, and I could hear a muttered prayer come from her direction. “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”
With greater speed than a moment before, Carlos stabbed his sword forward and impaled one of the Diluvians through the heart. Before he managed to withdraw his sword, however, two clawing hands struck his body, causing him to lurch in pain and falter back a step.
“[Magic Arrow]!” I shouted, holding out my hand.
Three bolts of energy flew out of my palm and struck three of the surviving Diluvians. One of the arrows struck a Diluvian’s skull, killing it instantly, while the other two were wounding blows.
Carlos used the opening bought by my attack to strike. He swiftly dispatched one of the wounded monsters before turning to the others. Without warning, one of the two surviving monsters turned toward Liz and me. It began sprinting toward us with the speed of a charging bull.
This was a mistake on the Diluvian’s part. Now that it was separated from Carlos, I could shoot without risking any friendly-fire. With two well-aimed shots to the chest, I put the monster on the ground.
I turned back to the fight between Carlos and the surviving Diluvian, but it was already dead. The moment I spent dispatching the charging monster was all Carlos needed to take out its partner.
With the danger dispatched, I returned my pistol to my holster and ran to check on Carlos.
[DILUVIANS (9) KILLED! +180 EXP, +180 CREDITS]
DILUVIANS (9) KILLED! +180 EXP, +180 CREDITS
[TOTAL CREDITS: 410₪]
TOTAL CREDITS: 410₪
[LEVEL UP!]
LEVEL UP!
[EXP TO NEXT LEVEL: 460]