Lightiningbolt pointed his hands at the golden apple. Perhaps he fired a spell, for the next moment, the surrounding leaves were hit by a strong blast of air. The golden apple swung, but it never fell. We had earlier ensured that no spell should work on the apple.

Lightning bolt made a second attempt, perhaps thinking that it was his aim that was lacking, but he couldn’t even bring down leaves.

He kept shooting his spell a few more times, getting frustrated with each try. He picked up a stone from the ground and threw it. His stone hit the tree trunk and bounced back at him, threatening to hit his own head.

His frustration peaked. With his hands on his hips, Lightningbolt glared at the apple. He aimed his hands at the tree and made complex gestures. Some kind of force hit the tree hard. Was he trying to uproot it?

I chuckled lightly, giving Kiara a nod who was hidden in the bushes just beside me.

It was Kiara’s idea to make the tree impossible to uproot. All that Lightningbolt’s efforts uprooted were small innocent plants growing beside the main tree.

Once Lightningbolt realized that what he was doing was in vain, he stopped and shook his head. His face gleamed with perspiration. Was he giving up?

But giving up was not an option. The quest could simply not be exited halfway. If Lightningbolt moved only a few meters away from the radius of the tree, then he would find himself in Pook’s world, where certain death awaited him.

But Lightning bolt did not quit.

What he did next made my heart race, for it was not anticipated, especially from a low level player like him. He pointed his hands at the ground and shot his spell. The result was that he shot up, right for the golden apple!

But his spell was not a proper flying spell. He lost steam which altered his angle and he slammed into the tree.

This activated a trigger spot.

It was enough.

Everything changed. Now there was no difference between Pook’s world and the game world. The tree exploded in size, rocketing to the height of a skyscraper. Lightningbolt fell on a massive tree branch, his mouth open in shock.

I gave the signal to the monsters. It was time to end the quest. It was time for Lightningbolt to die.

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My monsters ran up the massive tree. It was easy for them. Thanks to Pook. When the hairy feet of the monsters touched the tree, it attracted them towards itself, mimicking gravitational force so that moving up the tree was as easy as running on the ground.

The monsters reached Lightningbolt. He was frantic and trembling. His sweaty scalp gleaming twice as before. He tried his wind spell. A couple of Skhites and Hornie fell. But no harm came to them. Thanks to Pook’s manipulation, the ground behaved like a soft cushion for the monsters.

Lightningbolt was beaten to death. My monsters were ferocious. For a long time I had restricted them from killing players. Today they quenched their blood thirst.

Lightningbolt’s lifeless body was flung from the tree. By the time it hit ground, the tree had shrunk to its original size even as Pook withdrew his powers, re-establishing the barrier between the game world and his own world.

“It’s done,” Pook said.

For a few moments I kept gazing at Lightningbolt’s corpse. His nose was crushed and dripping blood. His skull had cracked and his spine had snapped so that he lay in a very crooked position. The ground beneath him slowly turned red. If an older version of Vicky had witness something like that, he would have become mentally scarred for the rest of his life. I, however, gazed at Lightningbolt’s dismal fate hardly flinching.

Kiara patted me on the shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asked me.

I nodded, without looking away from the dead man.

“Don’t be sorry for him,” Kiara said, “this is a game world after all, isn’t it? He has probably already respawned.”

“Yes,” I said. I sighed, “Humans are funny aren’t they? In the real world they talk about peace. Then they invent games where you kill for entertainment.”

“I guess they are,” Kiara said. Then she added with a darker undertone. “But we mustn’t forget, we are humans too.”

***

Lightningbolt was only our first victim. In the week that followed we were able to lure five more players into the same quest involving the golden fruit. After that, we raised the bar. Now we would trap groups of players.

We selected the same less-used route. We set our quest and waited. Hours passed by. We rejected several groups of players. Some had very low level players whom we deemed not worth the effort, while others consisted of extremely skilled individuals, and we didn’t want to run the extra risk of biting more than we could chew. Mid-range players were what we were looking for.

Our wait proved fruitful. A middling group sauntered into the scene. A three member group of a barrel-chest barbarian with hands like hams, flanked by a lean warrior with zero facial hair, and an archer with a caduceus mark on her forehead which made me suspect she possessed healing abilities too.

“Do you think we can deal with them all?” Kiara whispered. We were at our vantage spot a number of meters away from the main path, sprawled on the dusty forest floor. Kiara was supporting her head by pushing her thumbs against her cheekbones, distorting her face severely.

“We are a hundred, and they are five,” I said, “What are the odds?”

“Of what levels are they?” Kiara asked.

“Mid-range, just what we were looking for.”

I turned towards Pook. “Offer them the quest. Be careful though, we are making the leap from single low level players to a group of five mid-range players.”

Pook nodded.

“Do not worry,” he said, “It’s next to impossible for them to win, or for any one of the monsters to be injured.”

Pook set to work.

“Please help me!” a shrill female voice reverberated all about. “I have been trapped! I beg of you!”