Aside from wielding an ancient weapon worthy of a former King, it quickly became apparent that this was no ordinary foot soldier. Rather than the usual blue and white garb and shapeless plate armour, this guard had elegant swathes of purple embroidered in thick lines down his arms and front. His armour was decorated profusely and had been crafted specifically to his large frame and wiry muscle.

I was in for a fight. This was either a Commander, or something higher.

“Hi, um, just wondering if I can go inside that pl—”

“SILENCE!”

He made his declaration, then launched at me with literal fire in his eyes. I could’ve done without yet another scrap against a [Mage], but today wasn’t my lucky day.

I threw myself to the side to dodge his attack. Even if I caught a hit on my armour, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive. I recalled that {Ayari’s Bliss} could do somewhere around 600-800 damage, entirely capable of slicing through my breastplate like butter, and doing something rather unpleasant to the body inside it.

“Caustic Inferno!” he yelled.

By themselves, each of those words was tolerable. But combined? Horrifying.

A circus-ring of flame floated toward me, green ooze spattering from inside. I evaded again, almost falling victim to the guard’s follow-up flurry of attacks. It was pointless to try and catch them on my {Wooden Shield} because {Ayari’s Bliss} would carve straight through it.

“RELENT!” he demanded. “FALL TO THE KINGDOM OF ASTEROTH!”

This guy was serious. I ditched the shield, pulling my javelin from its scabbard. It felt awkward in my left hand, so I switched with my spear, which felt worse.

[Arc Strike]

I cast the javelin, unable to miss from such close range.

“Incinerate!”

An explosion emanated from his palm, blasting the javelin back over my head and into the dirt. I rushed in behind the cover of flames, dodging to the side at the last moment.

It was my first chance to strike back since the fight began, and I made it count. {The Glass Cannon} travelled in a direct line to his side, right where his armour finished and flesh began.

[Spear Charge]

He beat it away with a closed fist, sending the spear high into his shoulder. It wasn’t debilitating, though it would’ve been if I’d chosen {The Sentinel Spear}. He winced, then blasted me back with an ability akin to [Shield Wall], just without the shield. I stayed on my feet, waiting for his next move.

He was a worthy foe. If I’d known it would go like this, I would’ve retreated before I sprinted out onto the street like a dumbass. Annette would chastise me for being so careless, but nothing could send me back in time. I had to face down whoever this was and gain access to the shop, if only to find it completely empty.

A jet of flame careened towards me once again, and I darted to the left.

[Dash]

I had to get to close quarters if I wanted to avoid his magic. He was good with the spear, but taking away half his arsenal was my best bet. With my javelin resting in the dirt at least twenty meters away, this was all I could do.

Parrying a spear is ridiculously difficult, and I didn’t have the confidence to bat one away with a closed fist like he had done. He came at me constantly with underhand thrusts, jumping back to give himself room.

I closed in, manoeuvring like we were dancing a waltz. He’d step back, I’d step in. He’d jump left, I’d mirror, stopping him from gaining enough room to properly thrust at me.

Then an idea came to mind. I switched to an overhand stance, gripping {The Glass Cannon} close to the tip. It was unbalanced, but I could counteract that with my Strength.

[Shield Wall]

I sent him flailing, then leapt in for the kill. He looked down, steadying himself and preparing some kind of magic attack, but I beat him to it. I plunged the spear into his neck, piercing the small gap of flesh beneath the helmet.

His roar quickly turned to a gurgle as he clutched his throat. A final ball of fire escaped his palm, narrowly missing my head and dissipating into the atmosphere.

{You have defeated a Level 22 Asterian Sentinel.}{+1127 EXP}

LEVEL UP! Your new Level is: Level 20!

Attributable Stat Points: (2)

Attributable Skill Tokens: (1)

Access the ‘Stats’ screen to boost your potential!

A Sentinel. Only Level 22, but still a Sentinel.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

I grabbed {Ayari’s Bliss} and bolted inside before anyone else could leap from the rafters and blow fire from their palms. The [Mages] were tough to deal with initially, but getting in close seemed to do the trick, provided they couldn’t match my Agility.

The store was blank, all the weapons pulled from the walls before the conflagration began. Soot gathered on my fingers as I swept the counter, looking up to see a charred hole in the ceiling. It was big enough for me to have slipped through, avoiding the Sentinel.

Meh. Hindsight is 20/20.

I walked past where I’d been scammed into paying double for my first set of items. It had seemed like an insane amount of money then, but with my courier services taking off, I’d paid back the store in days. The money had been good, but the way things were going, it would be a while before the town was healthy enough to start exporting goods again.

Potentially never, unless I got my act into gear and mowed down a couple thousand Asterians.

A familiar voice called out to me.

“Oliver? Oh, Flaming Jukta, I’m glad it’s you.”

Flaming junk-tar?

“Tren? Where are you?”

There was no one in the store, but I could hear him like he stood in front of me.

“Inside the secret room. Come here.”

I obliged, stepping over to the general area. Despite having used the entrance once before, the wall was so seamless that I couldn’t be sure I was in the right place.

Sure enough, a panel slid away from a couple meters to my left, and Tren stood there with a floppy grey hat and a face like a wounded rabbit. His right leg wasn’t in great shape, either.

“Tren! What are you doing? Here, drink this.”

I produced one of the HP potions Otto had given me. I really couldn’t afford to waste them, but looking at Tren, it was far from wasteful.

He looked at the potion sceptically then drank it. His face screwed up as it went down, undoubtedly not as pleasant as the ones Claire had procured. Within moments, the leg righted itself and colour returned to his cheeks.

“Woo! That’s much better. Come in, come in.”

He guided me into a ransacked room. The armour sets and all the spears were gone, leaving behind the spiderwebs that were anchored to them. I paced through the room, investigating. They’d even taken the roll of velvet that Tren placed the weapons on when I’d purchased {The Glass Cannon}.

“Far out. Tren, where’d they take everything? The guard outside had {Ayari’s Bliss}, but what about the armour sets? You can have this back, by the way.”

He eagerly accepted {Ayari’s Bliss}, analysing each part of it with reverence.

“They took them back to Asteroth, I suppose. The armour sets were far too valuable to remain here, but {The Sentinel Spear} might still be around. And thank you for this, Paul will be ever so pleased, he might even pay me.”

“Paul? Is that the guy with all the chest hair?”

Tren looked left and right before answering, as though he were afraid of the great and mighty ‘Paul’ materialising from the stone brick walls surrounding us.

“Not chest hair. He prefers ‘man tufts.’”

I almost gagged at the phrase. Either he didn’t know how awful it sounded, or he did, which was even worse.

“Okay, well you can tell Paul that I expect a nice discount for returning that one. I’m not sure about getting the armour sets back, but we’ll see about {The Sentinel Spear}. The guy who had {Ayari’s Bliss} was a Sentinel — haven’t seen too many like him around the place.”

“Oh no, you won’t. Nuh uh. I might’ve expected a few commanders, but definitely only one Sentinel, that’s for sure.”

His knowledge of the Asterian Army interested me.

“Any reason why you’d expect that? No one else seems to know much at all about how the army works — except for Marge’s kid.”

His eyes darted around once again, and he adjusted his hat so that it flopped to the other side.

“Well…I…I spent some time in Asteroth, you see. There’s a reason Paul barely pays me — he thinks of me as something called a, uh, ‘refugee’, you see.”

“Right. Well you can tell him you found {Ayari’s Bliss} all by yourself, then. That should give you some leverage.”

We spoke for a few more minutes before I decided I’d been in enemy territory for too long. There were bound to be search parties trawling through town, and if they found my most recent opponent before he deteriorated, all evidence pointed to the weapons store.

I hopped onto the counter and floundered my way up to the rooftop, assessing the town. I considered disconnecting then and there, but if the roof caved in overnight, my re-entry into the world the next day would not be so stealthy. I’d either spawn in open space or be placed out on the street into waiting Asterian arms.

The Safe House was the way to go.

My work that day had shown me something important. I’d beaten down hundreds of Asterians, churning through EXP and levelling up as though I was an Elthen Fields player. But this quest, this invasion was meant to be dealt with by a hundred united players. I could stab, jab and conquer to my heart’s content, but I couldn’t do the work of all those people.

My task was impossible.

If I were to beat the Asterians, I needed to win the final battle. It was the natural choice. I’d taken down a Sentinel, beaten back mountains of strong players and Captains, pretty much cementing myself as the strongest player in Bill’s Yard.

Who could beat me?

I pondered that thought all the way back to Otto’s Pub. Whoever I was pitted against, they’d know exactly how to fight me. They’d know that my spear is my only useful weapon, and that my shield is only a vessel for me to use [Shield Wall] and not much more. Same with my javelin, for [Arc Strike].

I’d know nothing, unable to prepare in any way except for getting generally stronger.

Luckily, I had a plan for how I’d do just that, and it didn’t involve bolstering my stats through the mass-murder of Asterians.

That was getting rather old.

I checked in on Otto. He told me that good art takes time, and I should not rush his process, so I set myself down in the corner of the first basement and disconnected, out of the way of things.

--Disconnecting, please wait—

Once again, I’d managed to skip lunch, but hunger was running close second to something else. I rushed downstairs and found Mom and Dale sitting on the couch, absorbed by the Olympics. Dale was spending his weekend just the way he liked it — drunk as a skunk.

“Hey Ma. Anything interesting going on?”

She glanced at the TV, where a pink-haired [Necromancer] was swarming her two opponents with equally flamboyant undead creations.

“This lady’s pretty cool, but everyone else is just stabbing each other.”

“Who knew. Is he awake?” I poked at Dale, prompting an ugly snore and something that could’ve been a hiccup.

“Either that or he’s ignoring you. Unlikely for his protégé.”

I shook him a little harder and clinked two bottles together near his ear. That did the trick.

“Dawwwww. Ollie? Isn’t there a town that needs saving?”

He rolled over and slid down the couch like a cat flopping down a flight of stairs.

“There is, but I need your help to save it.”

“Me? Last time I got in a Pod while drunk, I lost thirty-six hundred krad.”

I was desperate to hear more about that story, but I didn’t let it derail me.

“I don’t need you to get in a Pod, I need you to call Esko.”

Mom grumbled, and Dale looked up at me with hazy eyes.

“Esko? What’s ‘e gunna do for ya?”

“He’s going to train me. Right until the final battle.”