Fiction

Since we had arrived in the early evening I spend the night practicing with the plan to explore the city the next day.

When that day came my first order of business was the Adventurer’s Guild. From what Herbert has said they had a small office in the city. It was for recruitment and to organize with the Merchant’s Guild for supply delivers to Dungeoncity.

With them reaching close range I switched over to using Fireball to attack the goblins. Herbert took the front line fighting off the goblins with his sword while I peppered them with fireballs and keeping him protected using gust. Still it was impossible for him to contain that many goblins by himself and one of them got past him and engaged me in melee.

If I had to describe it then it would be a quintessential fantasy rpg town. A blacksmith hammering away only a few shops down. A large tavern inn, children playing in the streets.

Honestly it felt weird and surreal, like it couldn’t possibly be a real town. Each of them had status information above their head. Most of them were low level like me, between 3 and 6 the only one who wasn’t was somebody who look liked a guard and he was level 10. They also had their name and what must be a profession.

I looked over the statistics trying to get a feel for them. I had 56 max hp, 83 max mana, and I was 17% toward gaining my next level. My general sense was that I wasn’t a very balanced character, that would make soloing rather hard so I would need to get a party. Assuming that things here worked like a video game, maybe I was the only person who worked like that. I would need to find somebody else to find out.

She kept crawling through his crystals drawing in more and more. Then she felt the barrier. The barrier she had been waiting to feel. Those were the crystals that he was already using, the crystals full with the spells she planned on breaking.

It was difficult for her to displace that spell. Pushing at it. Little by little she forced her way in.

Then it was over. Cockatrice breathed a long sigh and Demon of Forgotten Soot transformed back into a crystal.

The problem with this plan was that for creatures of their size they moved very rapidly. Its long legs let it cross over to them very quickly and the strength in its arms let it swing the sword as fast as any regular swordsman.

The first swing was the easiest to dodge because of them had been in a good position to dodge it. The second swing was harder because it was already engaged with them and because it was harder to gauge their movement just because it was so big.

He could not turn around in time to avoid her sword entering through his back. Then with some increase weight she was able to bring the sword down then up, cutting him into two pieces. He fell to the ground with a scream. There was a moment while his regeneration tried to recover him but it was not enough and he returned to a card.

The attack had been a full weight power attack from above him. What could that attack do that the current attacks they were doing could not? It was a question that a swordmaster could answer. The first attack would have skewered him, the later attacks would just cut him. Skewered from behind, that made things easy to understand. If she had done that he wouldn’t be able to move freely and he wouldn’t have been able to easily attack her.

The fires engulfed him and she could see the bones blacken and then burn, crumbling to ash from the heat of the fires. Then he was gone, consumed in the fires. When the light died his card began to flutter to the ground.

Rose turned to join the battle that was surely happening inside the battle. Then her leg gave way again. All her energy began to evaporate as the lost control over the burning red crystals which vanished one by one. She needed to go in there and help but this time she couldn’t muster the energy.