Jay inspected the glowing red tracks as if they might somehow alter themselves on his watch. There was no actual proof they were from the Assassin, but he felt they were. Lurian, wherever he was, still wandered somewhere out in the jungle.
Jay stored the three pieces of food in his inventory and called out to Sarah, who sat fifteen feet away at the Alchemy table. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Yeah, we do,” Sarah yelled back, forgetting that she was ignoring him. “All these years, and you’re still bullying your little sister.”
Jay took one of the crocodile meals from his inventory and started munching on it. Walking over to Sarah, he offered one to her. She started eating as soon as she expected it.
“Is that potion ready yet?” Jay asked. “The new Assassin’s Balm one. I think we might need it.”
He lowered his voice, suddenly profoundly aware of how much noise he was creating. He didn’t really want the Demon player to overhear him. “That Assassin has been around the camp recently. She’s probably stalking us now.”
Jay eyed the timer on all his potion buffs, each with ten remaining minutes. That was plenty of time if T turned out to be in the area. He was well-pleased that they would only need to face one Demon player. The odds weren’t exactly in the duo’s favor, even in a two-on-one, but if she could be defeated, she would be destroyed.
“It’s not going to be ready for another three or four minutes,” Sarah said, eyeballs jumping around camp as she searched for the enemy. She was too loud for Jay’s liking, but it wasn’t the time to have that argument.
The thing that had Jay most on edge was the sealing of his Synthesization ability. He quickly checked the menu, and the blockage on the core skill disabled all the derived skills, too. Although it wasn’t the time, he needed to have an intensive argument with Mr. Georges about this blockage. That was an impossibility until they dealt with T. He couldn’t log out since that would leave Sarah to get her character data deleted, potentially causing worse problems.
Jay followed the tracks by sight, keeping close to Sarah and her table. The tracks seemed to disappear behind a tree on the outskirts of the campsite. T might have been lurking behind that tree, but the prints could also be a tactic to lure him into the woods. He had no idea if she was aware of his Survival skill or not.
He wasn’t interested in taking the risk of getting caught with a dagger in his throat. Instead, Jay sent a mental command to Cuddles to follow the prints. The Strogian Death squirrel seemed capable of spotting the prints since he had no trouble following them.
Cuddles hopped from Jay’s shoulder and followed the print pathway. When the squirrel was about to pass out of sight, he stopped. Cuddles shuffled his head around, nostrils flaring, clearly checking the scents in the air. He was clearly disturbed by something.
The squirrel cocked his head to the side, which was oddly human. He was completely unaware as the dagger struck down at his head.
T the Demon Assassin stepped into view along with the downward thrust of the dagger. She had just a moment to glance up at Jay and grin in victory at her success in slaughtering his bonded companion. Her blade missed entirely, phasing through Cuddles.
Jay grinned right back, raising his crossbow. It was loaded with trap bolts, which would form muck pools. The Assassin would find it difficult to hide with her body dripping in swamp mud. She had no time to worry about Cuddles, so the squirrel bounded away from her, scurrying up a tree.
The minuscule but effective swamp expanded underneath the enemy as she disappeared from view. She didn’t really have anywhere to go. It was the perfect time for Jay to capitalize on firing torrents of bolts into the sludge. He could still follow her movements from the ripples in the trap.
But he didn’t.
Sarah moved into a defensive position, covering his tactical retreat as he hid behind a jungle tree. T taunted from within the muck, realizing she wasn’t adequately hidden. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Jay wanted to taunt back about her knock-off horror movie lines but was focused on his current assignment. Hiding behind the jungle tree and out of the Demon player’s line of sight, he opened his game menus to enact the party’s plan.
“Hurry it up!” Sarah called from the other side of the tree.
Finishing his task in the game menus, Jay dismissed them and rejoined the coming fray. As he jumped from behind the tree, he swung his crossbow into a firing position. Letting loose a blast of more traps, he layered them around the current swamp in a circular pattern. The traps created an amalgamated swamp, further trapping the Assassin.
Completing his task of expanding the swamp, Jay deftly released the current crossbow clip and replaced it with necrotic bolts.
As the partially invisible Assassin struggled to wade through the muck, laser beams descended on her from the tree. Cuddles couldn’t find an exact target, so he launched beams around the swampy region. The heat fizzled as it struck the watery surface.
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Sarah could not take her typical role in leading a direct melee confrontation. Stepping to the left side to avoid crossing Jay’s line of fire, she began an attack type she hadn’t used before. Holy energy concentrated across the length of her blade, which she aimed directly into the swamp. Her mp drained as she fired a thin lance of white-hot radiant energy from the tip of her sword.
The first strike missed, so she continued searching for the invisible Assassin. T materialized into being when the holy light struck, pushing through the swamp in a slight zig-zag pattern to avoid attacks. The Demon player’s body started to shimmer again.
The process was interrupted by Jay. Now that he had a proper target again, he riddled the enemy with a stream of necrotic-charged bolts. Before T could disappear, the impact of the bolts brought her back into sight. Her subsequent attempts to disappear created a strange intermittent flash.
The bolts wouldn’t allow T to remain hidden. At the same time, the necrotic energy attacked her, but her ability activated faster than each tick of minuscule damage.
After a couple more attempts, the Assassin abandoned the plan, likely due to some constraint of the ability. Mp drain could often wear out the use of powers, even if they didn’t have a cooldown. This left her vulnerable to the eye beams, holy lances, and bolts.
T did her best to dodge the string of projectiles from three sources. She took the opportunity to seize the upper hand as she neared the swamp’s edge. She stepped onto firm, untrapped ground in a flash, leaving an after-image behind her in the swamp.
Quickly drawing from two pouches at her side, T flung a set of throwing knives at each of the siblings. Sarah took some damage from one knife, though the damage started to repair itself as she activated a self-healing ability in response. The remaining knives jarred her but didn’t inflict injury as they slammed against her shield.
Jay managed to dodge most of the blades meant for him, but one slammed into his leg. The single weapon left him in a critical health condition. He quickly ducked behind a tree to slam a potion.
The tide changed when he stepped out from the tree. Carlos, Casey, Jenny, and Ken logged in throughout the camp. Taylor Lynn wasn’t present since her job had been to relay the rallying call to everyone else in the real world when Jay messaged her. He’d taken that step earlier in the fight when he ducked into his game menus. She would be returning to camp now but had fulfilled her role in the plan away from the others, adding to the attractiveness of the ambush lure.
The battle was now six against one.
Casey and Carlos unleashed a torrent of magic against the Assassin. Jenny activated her instant tag generation ability, which sent a flood of buffs across the battlefield. Ken made his move.
The Scoundrel stabbed his dagger into T’s left shoulder, which wasn’t an optimal target for dealing damage. He didn’t need to deal piles of damage—it wasn’t necessary. Ken activated the mark he’d discussed with the party previously. The debuff popped into T’s nameplate information, showing she was being actively tracked.
Due to her higher level, the mass of attacks only caused moderate damage. The party had still accomplished the crux of their plan. T was heavily outnumbered, and her ability to run away was severely constrained.
That didn’t mean that the Assassin was a pushover. Jay saw clear evidence of her awareness in player-versus-player combat. He was certain this wasn’t her first time playing a character focused on that kind of combat.
Leaving behind another after-image, she reappeared next to Jenny. The Rune Cleric was dispatching buffs to her entire team, so she wasn’t prepared to defend herself. T slashed out with a dagger, catching her target in the ribs. Jenny unconsciously took a step back as the second strike came.
The impact of the second strike was absorbed by Sarah’s shimmering curtain of divine energy protection. The force of the impact rippled the energy, but it was impenetrable. The whole design of the ability was to take someone out of a fight for their own protection. Jenny refocused her efforts on healing herself using potions.
Without missing a beat, T disappeared in another flash. This time, she appeared next to Carlos. The party reoriented their attacks at her new location.
Carlos was protected by a shield of his own. Unfortunately, the protection was far from the invulnerability of Sarah’s own spell. T crashed through the shield with her first strike. Showing no signs of holding back, she unleashed her rapid deployment of slashing strikes. It was the same ability that had killed Lester.
A short, squat creature interposed itself in front of the blade. The form was similar to a volcanic in that it looked like an elemental, but the figure had clear physicality to it. The holy creature immediately self-destructed from the damage of T’s flurry.
The explosion of divine energy had a palpable force to it. Jay could feel it where he stood, trying to get a proper shot to fire on his enemy. That physical force pushed the Assassin backward, interrupting her repeated slashes and giving Carlos a second of breathing room.
He cast another spell, causing a dull holy glow to envelop him. The light immediately disappeared, showing on his nameplate as a buff called “Persist.”
A moment later, the Assassin was back on Carlos. She struck out with a weaker attack ability. The devastating attack slammed home, obliterating his health on the first strike. When the second strike landed, it should have killed him.
Instead, the “Persist” buff disappeared, leaving him with a single health point. That was exactly enough time for Sarah to reach T now that the short-range teleportations had paused. The sound of a gong reverberated through the jungle.
Above Sarah, a gleaming hammer of prismatic energy formed. The hammer was twice the size of her, creating an imposing figure. When she swung her sword at T, the hammer descended in lockstep with her blade.
The hammer slammed into the Assassin, rendered unable to dodge by the size and speed of the hammer. This prismatic hammer crushed the higher-leveled player. The ability did not kill her immediately, but it may as well have.
The blow stunned T, locking her from movement and ability usage. The party descended with renewed vigor. With the Assassin’s defenses lowered, each strike dealt substantial damage. Spells, bolts, and blades descended on the helpless, immobile enemy.
Before the Assassin could recover mobility, the flood of abilities overwhelmed her. T froze, dying in place, still immobile from the stun attack. Something like fear was in her expression, like she had known what was coming the moment before it happened. Her character avatar disappeared, exploding into airborne dust. A stream of messages came into Jay’s game screen.
The Demon player was dead and deleted, leaving the party free to roam the island.