Whoa, that was a close one.

I barely made it through that. But if you think about it, it’s already pretty surprising that I managed to survive that ambush. There were five of them in total; they even had the class advantage because of their long ranged classes. Not only that, but they also had a terrain advantage, which they fully used against us.

I think that the only reason we were able to kill an opponent for every ally they killed is that they severely underestimated us.

And why wouldn’t they? We’re a group with four users under level 10!

Aside from that, the only reason I’m alive is without a shred of doubt the one who introduced himself as ‘Khalmog’.

After his introduction, I take the time to evaluate him.

He’s clearly a warrior, he’s wearing full armour, while wielding a two handed sword. He’s a little shorter than me, but he has a completely opposite build; broad shoulders and thick arms and legs. Surprisingly, his waist wasn’t as thick and was pretty narrow, showing that he’s a warrior instead of just someone fat.

Looking at his face, which was viewable because he wasn’t wearing a helmet, I could see two eyes brightly staring at me. He had short, blonde hair, nothing out of ordinary. He was smiling at me with an honest look, raising his chin.

For a second I’m not really sure what to say to him… He saved my life more or less, but I don’t really have anything to offer in return. I guess he didn’t kill her to save my life, but more because he wanted revenge or something, but that doesn’t change what happened.

Probably because he noticed my discomfort, Khalmog shrugged and spoke up: “Well… Yeah… I waited a pretty long time to be able to finish her off. So I feel pretty great at the moment.”

Ah, he threw me a life line; I guess he doesn’t expect anything in return and just wants to converse. I sent Enza a pm in the meantime, he hasn’t turned grey in my friend list yet, so that means they aren’t restricted in logging in for a short period of time. It’s probably because it’s their first death while being low leveled.  Maybe the PKing has something to do with it too.

“Sounds like you had a pretty big grudge against her. What happened, did you guys get tricked too?”

The only thing I can come up with is that they encountered the same situation as us more or less, but he managed to survive somehow, waiting for his opportunity to strike back.

“Well… not really, but that’s pretty close. Right now I’m level 13, so I was hunting with my party out here, fighting against higher leveled monsters. This is a dungeon with a recommended level of 20, but because we had a pretty large party, we still took the risk to come and hunt here. We managed to gain mad XP this way! We were able to hunt those skeletons with a lot of trouble, but the rewards were definitely worth the risk!” Khalmog grinned while he readjusted his sword –which had been hanging down, resting in his hand. He raised it so that he could rest it on his shoulder, before continuing: “But the down side of this way of hunting was something no one of us expected. When we were hunting the skeletons, we…”

Ah, those cheeky bastards!

Before he could continue, I interrupted him; “Let me guess, you guys had fairly low health during each fight because of the level gap, which made it very easy for a certain group of PKers to wipe out your party.”

Normally I wouldn’t interrupt someone like that, but after I had that sudden realization I couldn’t contain myself.

“Yeah, that’s what happened more or less. But there were only five higher leveled users more than us, so with the size of my previous party we probably would’ve been able to handle them.  Except, that the PKers only started fighting with us the moment we were still fighting with the skeletons. No one suspected them at first, thinking that they were just some other random players clearing the dungeon.” Before he continued his face turned grim. Which makes a lot of sense, considering what happened. “They attacked us from behind, wiping out a lot of our backline allies. The backline consisted out of the squishiest classes we had in our party, so the blow we took by instantly losing our priests and clerics was pretty tough, especially because the skeletons were still fighting with us too. I was at the front line, tanking the skeletons’ attacks, so I couldn’t even help out my allies who were fighting the PKers.”

He scratched his head with his left hand, while shrugging about what was to come: “But eventually the skeletons managed to safe my life… even while they were trying to kill me. Because I was on the frontlines fighting against the skeletons, I was one of the last they tried to PK. I managed to slip between the skeletons and fled behind them. I have guts, but I won’t allow myself to be stupidly Player Killed by them. They couldn’t be bothered with chasing me through the skeletons after they finished off my thirteen allies.”

A lot more details than I asked for… but at least I can fully trust him now. He doesn’t really come off as a mastermind liar to me, so I doubt that he could’ve come up with that whole story, just to trick me.

Right when I was about to reply to Khalmog, I received a reply from Enza.

3 new messages, do you wish to view them?

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“Sorry, one sec, I just got an answer from one of my friends who just died.”

Khalmog grinned and muttered: “My condolences…”

Sender: Enza Entreri             

Hmm, good thing we didn’t lose anything because it was our first death. We weren’t forcibly logged out too. You should move out of that cave asap; the PKers might come back, they’re probably pissed off right now, LOL.

How about you start walking towards the capital, then we’ll meet you halfway. That way we can continue our hunt in the forest too.

Oh and thank the guy who saved you in my place too, even though he just took advantage of the situation, he still helped you out, I guess. Anyways, I’ll PM you again when we’ve reached the beginning of the forest. Also, invite him if you want, he looked pretty strong.

With a wave of my arm I dismissed the messages from Enza and focused on Khalmog again.

He was patiently waiting for me to finish reading my messages, leaving a pretty good impression. ‘Patience is a virtue’ are words to live by after all.

“I’m sorry that most of your party members died… were you in a party for a long time with them?”

I slowly started walking towards the exit, showing my intent to leave. With the previous sentence I had laid the groundwork for him joining our party too.

Khalmog picked up my intent to leave the cave, so he just shrugged and started walking beside me.

Looks like a laid back guy.

He replied to my question while we were walking towards the cave’s exit: “Nah, not really. It was just a random party I joined; they invited me because they needed a tank. At first I was just going to solo hunt, but I figured VR is more fun if you’re playing with others. The party had some pretty hot girls too.” He grinned when he said the last sentence.

Laughing at his reply, I started to converse with him about how their party had gone to work, hunting in a higher leveled dungeon. It looked like Khalmog knew a lot of things about the game mechanics and tactics, which made the conversation pretty fun.

We reached the exit of the cave quite fast, luckily without encountering any skeletons.

After finally setting a step out of the cave I noticed that Khalmog looked at me, apparently waiting for something.

I took the hint and answered his gaze: “Well, considering that you don’t have a party anymore, do you want to travel with me to the edge of the forest? I agreed with my friends to meet up there, so that we can continue hunting again. If you don’t mind you can even join the party and hunt alongside us for a while. Honestly speaking, our party’s configuration is lacking a tank…”

Khalmog’s eyes shined while he replied: “Sure! I was waiting for you to invite me already, if you guys could manage to fight those PKers head on, then that must mean that your party is quite strong. I was planning to hunt for a while longer anyways, but going solo here might be a bit too hard.”

I smiled in return and we started walking towards the edge of the forest. We conversed for a while, but I ran out of subjects to talk about, so we marched on in silence after our conversation.

After continuing to walk for a while, an unexpected situation occurred.

We encountered a bear.

We heard it coming from a fairly large distance, giving us enough time to prepare. I stepped behind Khalmog, putting him and the bear in one line. I started out by buffing Khalmog with Empowerment. After that I chanted the lines to prepare a heal; it’s possible to ready your heal for a period of time, making it possible to immediately heal someone a first time without first having to chant the whole spell.

My class can be called a double-edged sword. It isn’t really suited for solo combat, or small parties. One of my passive skills is that the more people there are in my party and direct surroundings, the stronger all my spells become. This means that my Empowerment and heal won’t be as effective as when I casted them before, but the base value is still pretty high.

The bear finally reached us, and began to stand on two feet. When it ran towards us, it was using all four of his limbs, but now that the bear is finally standing upright the real might is shown. The bear towered above Khalmog and snarled. Its eyes were blood shot, looking for any weakness that may result in him mowing down his prey.

I checked the ID of the mob and it turned out to be a level 17 ‘Brown forest bear’.

When I asked Khalmog for his level, which is normally considered rude, he answered that he was only level 14. The bear is level 17, which means that it should be killable by us. My Empowerment buffed two stats with 8 points and another with 3 points. If you divide that total by 5 –the amount of stat points you gain per level, then that would almost result in the stats someone has while being 4 levels higher. Khalmog should be able to deal with the bear this way, because he has the stats of someone of level 18. His health and mana value haven’t changed though, but because of my heals he’ll be able to live as long as he doesn’t get instantly defeated.

The bear swiped at Khalmog with his right paw, seemingly trying to end the confrontation as sudden as it had begun.

Khalmog managed to dodge the attack by ducking under it at the right time. He proceeded to bash the shield he was wearing in his left hand against the bear to create some space.

He must’ve taken the shield out when I was focusing on chanting, because he had replaced his two handed sword with a shorter one too.

After bashing the bear away, Khalmog stepped towards the right side of the bear, using the momentum of the dash to power his counter attack at the bear’s knee.

Groaning in pain, the bear lost its balance for a moment, but still managed to use its heavy weight to strike with its sharp claws at Khalmog’s shoulder.

Khalmog must have expected the strike, because he flawlessly managed to raise the shield in his left hand, shielding himself from most of the impact.

His health only dropped by a small margin, so I won’t act for now. If I were to heal him now, then I have to rechant the heal spell again, which could cost him his life if something unexpected were to happen.  It kind of sucks though, because I’m 10 levels lower than the bear, I won’t risk coming close to help Khalmog out with my mace. Guess I’m stuck using heals at the moment.

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Khalmog was forced to make a few steps backward because of the bear’s impact, which caused the bear to neatly advance upon Khalmog.

Khalmog tried to forcibly reestablish himself, exploiting his strength / vitality class build, but the bear’s massive figure was too big, causing Khalmog to receive a blow to his shoulder.

Khalmog was just about to retreat some more after looking at the huge amount damage that heavy blow inflicted, but his body lighted up immediately after, healing him almost back to full health. He was able to regain his footing, planting his feet firmly within the ground.

I had been waiting for something like that to happen.

After sending out that heal I immediately started chanting for another one.

My class right now still feels a little boring; I can only empower my party members while healing at the right moment. But if I carefully think about it, I should be able to participate in fighting too, and if they lower my health I can just heal myself back up. The mobs we encountered were just of a level too high for me to fight just yet.

Khalmog smiled savagely before once again preparing his shield in front of him, proceeding to dash at the bear and bash at him with the shield.

This time, the momentum was reversed, and Khalmog managed to actually force the bear back. If you think about the innate strength stat a bear should have, this shouldn’t be possible. But a heavy strength class, buffed by me, seemingly managed to do it anyway.

After the bear was being forced to retreat backwards, a lot of openings were created. The bear was already standing on all four of his limbs again, using only his mouth to sometimes bite at Khalmog.

But Khalmog used the shield very efficiently; he started out by showing an opening himself by lowering his sword, showing his right side. The bear would then take that opportunity to lash out with his mouth, probably confident in tearing through armour, trying to bite through Khalmog’s right shoulder. But Khalmog used that opportunity to slam his shield into the bear’s face.

Bears in general feel more confident to finish off their prey with their mouths, so the bear was successfully baited a few times to try and attack with its mouth. Every time the bear received a critical hit because his full force bite was returned with a full forced shield.

Normally, this wouldn’t result in a critical attack, but the combination of hitting a vulnerable spot and the huge amount of force that backfires from the bear’s biting attempt, made this possible.

After a few times, the bear caught on quite quickly so it started to use its front paws more and more. This caused Khalmog to receive damage a few times, especially when he couldn’t block or dodge the blows after trying to bash his shield at the bear. But with the assistance of my heals, he managed to continue his steady advance upon the bear. Every time the bear would try to meet with Khalmog’s shoulder, he was instead forced to become an acquaintance of the shield.

This way, the bear’s health was whittled down quite efficiently, while Khalmog was able to keep his health above 50% most of the fight because of my heals.

When the bear finally reached his last 10% of health, it went crazy. The bloodshot eyes had fully become red now while they gave off a hint of vicious madness. The bear stopped his retreat entirely and stood back up on his two feet. Then it proceeded to madly swing its paws at Khalmog, trying to end this fight with every blow. Khalmog’s savage grin had already disappeared; making way for a savage battle cry from the depths of Khalmog’s fighting spirit.

Khalmog had already stopped using his shield when the bear started attacking like crazy. He dropped his shield on the ground so that he could more carefully evade the bear’s blows.

That’s the correct decision.

The bear is showing a lot more openings, while his attacks have gotten slower too. But the power behind them could destroy someone at once.

Khalmog was successfully using the short sword, using small attacks whenever possible to finish the bear off.

After the bear advanced for a few seconds while madly swinging, it abruptly fell to the ground, as Khalmog’s sword entered and left its chest.

The fight ended a bit anti-climatically, but the XP is the only climax that was needed for me.

A Brown Forest Bear has been killed by your party.

+470 EXP

I walked towards Khalmog, who had finished looting the bear, and patted him on the shoulder.

“That was pretty close, you’re not easily scared, aren’t you? It’s a real experience, to have a bear savagely attacking you.”

Khalmog wiped the sweat from his brow and chuckled before speaking up. “Yeah, I didn’t expect that I’d be able to handle a special mob a few levels higher than me this way. I’m lucky that your wimpy class was able to help me out a little.”

The hell?!

He’s attacking me verbally immediately after I saved his ass?!

“Wimpy class?! That certain wimpy class just saved your ass you know? Without me you would’ve died long ago to his attacks. You wouldn’t have been able to damage him effective either.”

Khalmog stared at me blankly for a second before he noticed that I took him seriously, he then erupted into loud laughter.

***

I hold out my hand while seizing up the guy before me. He had introduced himself as Khalmog for the second time, but this was the first time I could return the favor. I quickly evaluated him for a second time, because the first time my senses were already fading because of my death.

“Hey Khalmog, nice to meet you. Thank you for saving Warrific back there and for exacting revenge on her. I would’ve done it myself… but she got me first.”

He shrugged while saying: “You aren’t the best fighter then probably.”

He immediately flamed me, what the?!

“At least I was able to take down a lot of their party with me… instead of appearing at the last moment. Guess that makes me a better fighter than you.”

He laughed while a dangerous glint appeared in his eyes: “What, want to test me?”

I sense some nice rivalry coming from this guy, finally someone who doesn’t let others fuck with him.

I smile at him and deescalate the situation: “Nah, I’m good. You know what they say, ‘a fight not fought, is a fight won’. Anyways, welcome to the party Khalmog. You’ll probably fit along well with these other scrubs.”

The reason I deescalated the situation isn’t because I don’t want to fight him, but because my need for a reliable tank is greater. Friendly bouts can turn into vicious fights very fast, and then you suddenly lose a potential companion, for only some small matter sprouted from one’s ego.

Maybe different standards should be used for situations within Virtual Reality but sometimes living by the old ones can’t hurt.

“You’re a scrub yourself Enza.”

I just flash a smile a smile at Helius, the one who made that remark.

After Glinc, Helius and I were killed and forcibly respawned in the capital, we started walking towards the forest again. After some walking, we met up with Warrific again, who is now 2 levels higher than us instead of one.

Damn him for constantly getting opportunities to increase the gap. Although I know for sure that he isn’t doing it on purpose.

The one accompanying Warrific was the one who saved him and brutally finished off Fenila, Khalmog. We introduced ourselves and invited him to our party. He said he was willing to be the tank of our party. The only thing he wanted in return was a small share of the money we would loot and any potential tank items useful for his class.

We didn’t have a heavy armor class among our party anyway, so it’s a pretty good deal for us.

“So, where should we head first? Now that we have a good tank, finishing off wolves shouldn’t be a problem anymore; except for very large packs maybe. Obviously, we can’t return to that dungeon, I want to settle the debt between us and those PKers, but the level gap is still too high.”

“Yeah, I hope we’ll meet those bastards when I’m a higher level, then I’ll beat them all on my own.” Glinc said with a determined smile.

Warrific grinned and replied to Glinc’s remark: “Well, if you don’t improve you’ll just die like the previous fight. You were the one who died first, remember?”

Glinc didn’t really have anything witty to say in return, so he just faked being sulky and continued walking.

“Well, I’m not sure if you guys are interested, but I have the location of a dungeon with level 15 monsters. In my previous party they said that the mobs were pretty difficult to deal with though, but sounds like a nice challenge to me.”

“Now that we have a good tank, with our skills and party configuration we should be easily able to deal with most dungeons under level 20. So I’d say, let’s go for it.”

Yeah, he exactly said what I was thinking about.

I nod, showing my agreement with Warrific, before speaking up: “I’m game, let’s go clear us a dungeon.”

Helius had been silent for a while, but he finally spoke up, directing a question at Khalmog: “What did your acquaintance say about how the monsters were weird?”

Khalmog laughed and spoke up: “Well, he wasn’t one of the most intelligent guys I’ve met, so maybe he himself was the weird element. But he didn’t mention anything concrete.”

“I see.” Helius nodded and continued walking.

We continued to walk while conversing, we speculated about what kind of mobs the dungeon would house and how we would deal with the various kinds of mobs.

The dungeon was located in another part of the forest than the ‘Cave of the fallen’ dungeon. Cave of the fallen was located near the center of the upper right side of the forest. This time we had to head left while entering the forest.

The sole wolves we encountered were easily dealt with, while the packs were a little harder. It was tough to get the aggro  from the mobs all on Khalmog every time, so that we could fluently attack them.

That’s the thing with Virtual Reality, they aren’t very simple programs anymore, but they have an AI that causes the mobs and NPCs to act nearly identical to their real life duplicates.

After having encountered a few packs of wolves and marching on for 3 hours, we finally reached the location of the dungeon.

“Okay guys, we’re here. We’re at the exact coordinates my acquaintance gave me.”

“I don’t see an entrance at all though… I swear, if we got tricked again, then I’ll really go mad. You should prepare yourself Khalmog; I hope you haven’t lied to us.”

“Whoa, Helius, calm down! Just because you don’t see an entrance doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Look, over there, there seems to be some kind of fissure in the ground.”

I look at the location Glinc had pointed, and indeed, there is a fissure there.

It’s immensely big too; you almost can’t see the end of the fissure. You have to look closely to spot it though, we were quite some distance away from it.

Helius frowned and looked at Glinc dubiously. “Do you really think that’s the entrance to the dungeon?”