Path of Light

by A P Gore

  No, exploding himself with corrupt blood would be better. That would spread the disease among all. All the best luck finding a light mage, then.

  Jon wanted to laugh wickedly, but he restrained himself.

  Yes, that sounded like a good idea.

  “Good catch.” Jon crossed one leg over another and relaxed his shoulders. Nothing to worry about. Pulling a bottle of false contaminated corrupt blood from his bag, he mixed a little with the wine Rob had brought out.

  Rob watched his actions carefully as Jon drank the wine, none the wiser. Why would he be? The water Jon mixed looked harmless from the outside, and he surely had people surrounding Jon.

  System: Warning, you have been affected by corrupt blood. You lose 2% life per 2 days and your darkness resistance is reduced by 40%.

  It worked.

  “Now what? Kill me? Or torture me?”

  Rob chuckled. “Nothing like that. First...” His index finger moved, and a group of four players waved their hands, and a net appeared around Jon. “I’ll lock your Mana and Stamina, so you can’t cast any spells. Then...” He scratched his butt and another player brought a coffin forward. Plated in steel and an unknown black metal, the coffin looked terrifying. “I’ll tie you and stuff you inside this coffin until you’re ready to give me the ring, your gold, and everything else you have to me.”

  “Nice plan, but you’ve underestimated me.” Jon activated his God’s Garden, ready to jump inside it at any moment.

  “Oh, that stealth ability of yours won’t work here.”

  “Is that so?” Jon vanished inside his God’s Garden.

  System: Warning, a player has cast Soul Recall on you. You’ll be pulled out in 10 seconds. 10... 9... 8... 7... 6...

  ROB CHUCKLED AS JONATHAN was pulled out of his stealth method. Even if he had teleported, he would have appeared back. Soul Recall was a level 45 tier 3 scroll that he had bought for this purpose only. He would have loved it if he didn’t have to use it, as it had cost five hundred gold, but what could he do when the order came from the guild leader himself? He had to use it to apply his first lesson in his punishment art.

  Crushing the morale of the opponent. It was more important than killing.

  In his hundred years as a prison punisher in real life, he had learned a few things. First, he had to crush the morale of the prisoner and then crush their hope. Once they lost hope, they were subdued easily.

  Now he had to show a disparity between them to this Jonathan.

  Scratching his butt, Rob lifted his wine glass and drank from it. This special water Jonathan brought was so tasty. If he wasn’t here for dungeon hunting, he would have spent a few days drinking this divine mixture. Too bad, he needed to clear this dungeon as fast as possible.

  “Alexis, go and fetch water from the lake. Fetch as much as you can.”

  Alexis nodded and moved toward his horse.

  Now for the second part in subduing. Show your opponent that you’ve got all the cards in your hand and they have no escape route.

  Waving his finger, he called one of his priests. With a flick of his hand, the priest performed a spell on Jonathan.

  “That spell bound your respawn point to my guild house in Chinari. Once you die, you’ll respawn between hundreds of players.”

  Jonathan bit his lower lip as Rob slowly sipped more wine.

  “So, do you want to spit out all the things you owe me, or do you want to go inside the coffin and die starving?” Rob scratched his butt. It always happened like this. When things came to a head, his butt itched like a hundred ants had latched on to it simultaneously. “Otherwise, you can log out and delete your character. If you come back, we will meet in my guild hall.”

  Jonathan’s brows twitched.

  Not there yet. The third step. Push the opponent toward desperation.

  “Now, let’s talk about your village. As we speak, one hundred players from my elite team are heading toward your village, ready to destroy it.

  Fear flashed through Jonathan’s deep black eyes. This was it. His village.

  Rob smirked. His method was working. Soon, Jonathan would kneel and start begging. It always went like this. When he’d joined the guild, he wanted to be a crusader, but his expertise lay in torture and interaction, so ultimately, he ended up leading the punishment division of the guild.

  “My friend, Jon. Why are you here?” A lady dressed in a green gown dropped from the sky.

  Rob almost stumbled back as she appeared next to Jon. What the heck? An NPC with flying ability? Was she a level—

  Without pausing to finish guessing, he used another tier 2 stored skill. Tier 55 perception.

  It failed.

  Fuck! The woman was definitely a level 70+ NPC. There was no way his level 55 perception skill would fail otherwise.

  But why the fuck had she come here? And how did she know Jonathan?

  Chapter 54

  A few minutes before Miraha arrived.

  Jon teleported inside the God’s Garden.

  In the nick of time, the God’s Garden had saved him once again. Quickly, he rushed to the Spring of Polarization and splashed some cold water on his face. That was close.

  Taking a deep breath, he accessed his notifications.

  System: Warning, you have been hit with Malegaro’s Debuff. Mana/Spirit sealed for the next five minutes.

  Warning, a player has cast Soul Recall on you. You’ll be pulled out in 10 seconds. 10... 9... 8... 7...

  Damn! Perspiration built around his neck and lower back. Rob had blocked all his options; he couldn’t even kill himself without a spell, and now his life was too high to kill himself with the shovel.

  Dark Clone, yes. It used his life, so he could cast it even with no resources.

  “Dark Clone.”

  An idea flashed inside his mind, and he pulled out the bottle of false contaminated corrupt blood from the bag, but in his haste, he fumbled the bottle and dropped it in the Spring of Polarization.

  Damn! Snatching it up, he emptied it inside the clone’s mouth.

  3... 2...1.

  His body vanished from the God’s Garden and reappeared on the chair.

  Rob chuckled. “I told you, it won’t work.”

  Smiling wickedly inside his mind, Jon vanished and his clone reappeared in a split second. Rob tilted his head, but Jon’s clone sat in front of him, so he didn’t seem to suspect much.

  In that moment of crisis, Jon had thought up a risky plan, but it had finally paid off. He was safe inside the God’s Garden, and his expendable clone sat in front of Rob. The best thing? His clone could explode.

  Now, once the players try to put his clone inside the coffin, he would explode it and then step out of the God’s Garden once they vanished. Rob would think Jon somehow self-detonated himself and leave in disappointment, but he wouldn’t know he would be infected by the corrupt blood.

  However, then Rob said something that made spiders crawl on his spine.

  “Now, let’s talk about your village. As we speak, one hundred players from my elite team are heading toward your village, ready to destroy it.”

  This f-ing bastard. Jon clenched his fist inside the God’s Garden. Right now, he wanted to explode his clone and kill that bastard.

  He couldn’t go back to the village. He had to finish these players off today and teach them a lesson. But how?

  Wait, didn’t he slip some corrupt blood inside his clone? Quickly, he accessed his notification screen. Indeed, a notification had popped up when he fed the water to the clone.

  System: Warning, your clone has drunk Polarized False Contaminated Blood.

  Polarized False Contaminated Corrupt Blood

  Hard to detect with common perception skill.

  90% chance for the debuff warning not to occur after consumption.

  Tastes bitter.

  Reduces life by 2% every two days

  Reduces light resistance by 40%

  Target has 20% chance to explode when its life drops 1
0% below and 10% chance and spread corrupt blood.

  What? How did the resistance change to light resistance?

  His gaze jumped to the Spring of Polarization.

  Spring of Polarization

  A Unique quality water from 1000 Springs Mountain.

  10% chance to change polarization of elements when added to another substance.

  Doesn’t affect humans or plants.

  What a strange effect. So, if his clone exploded, it would corrupt the blood of the targets and reduce their light resistance.

  A familiar voice pulled him out of his ruminations.

  “My friend, Jon. Why are you here?” Lady Miraha dropped from the sky and stood next to his clone.

  What the heck was she doing here? Her arrival changed everything.

  “Jon, my friend. Why are you silent?” Miraha asked, her beautiful eyes full of worry.

  The real Jon sighed inside the God’s Garden. Unfortunately, his clone couldn’t reply or do anything other than run and explode.

  “Are you all right, Jon?” Miraha placed her hand on Jon’s shoulder.

  Jon wanted to go out and talk with her, but that would mess up everything.

  Miraha turned toward Rob, her beautiful green eyes shooting fireballs at him. Rob shifted under her gaze and scratched his butt anxiously.

  “You, what did you do with Jon?”

  “Me?” Rob pointed a finger at himself. Sweat formed around his neck, which he tried to wipe with his bare hands.

  “Yes, you. Why isn’t he talking? Answer me or die.” Miraha raised her carved wooden staff above her head, and lightning fell from the skies. Chains of lightnings swirled around the top of her staff and started forming a dense lightning ball.

  “Miraha...” Jon couldn’t watch it anymore. He called her using the communication stone. If Miraha killed Rob, his plan would be ruined. He needed to infect as many people as possible from that group and force them to enter the dungeon.

  “Jon?” Her face softened, and so did the lightning around her staff.

  “Don’t be shocked, but the one in front of you is my clone. Can you lift him in the air and throw him into the crowd of people around you?”

  “What?”

  “Please help me, friend. I’ll owe you one.”

  Without reply, Miraha grabbed Jon’s clone and rose in the air. Looking around, she tossed Jon’s clone into a dense group of Rob’s men.

  Boom!

  Jon’s body exploded, spraying blood and flesh everywhere, painting nearby players in red. Suddenly, hundreds of players shouted in pain.

  “Damn, that blood infected us with some curse!”

  “Who the heck applied a curse on me? Come forward, or I’ll kill you...”

  “What kind of curse is this? Why did it reduce my light resistance?”

  A few players shouted in pain while others only stared at their clothes, faces covered with blood.

  “DAMN YOU, JONATHAN!” Rob roared in anger as he stared at the place where the explosion occurred. He wanted to pull that NPC lady down and rip her into a hundred pieces, but her level surpassed him by a huge margin. Yet, he couldn’t keep the anger from his voice. “Lady goddess, may I ask why you did that?”

  The lady snorted and flew away without responding.

  Rob could only curse in his heart and chuckle on the surface. “It’s fine. I guess you wanted to kill that bastard too. Fine with us.” At least he didn’t see any casualties in his group.

  When the NPC vanished from his sight, he turned and called out to the group affected by Jonathan’s explosion. “What curse did you receive?”

  One lady player walked forward. Her hair was a mess, and blood painted her white armor. “Team leader, it’s a corrupt blood curse. It decreased our light resistance by forty percent and will eat away two percent life every two days.”

  Rob scratched his butt. A curse that reduced life could get troublesome if not treated, but right now it wouldn’t affect their performance. Half of the players would die anyway, and once they died they would be rid of the curse. Gaining darkness resistance items from the dungeon took precedence, so he had to enter the dungeon. And the monsters inside dealt darkness damage, so they didn’t have to worry about light resistance.

  “Do we have any casualties?”

  “No. All players are at full life.”

  “That’s good,” Rob said. “Let’s conquer the dungeon.” As for Jonathan, he would take care of him later. Anyway, the small army he sent should have reached Jon’s village by now, ready to mess it up.

  Chapter 55

  One after another, workers put the stones on the tower, slowly building it to completion.

  Everything seemed to go on smoothly, but suddenly a strong gust of wind arrived and a worker lost his balance, dropping from the tall tower.

  Maggie’s heart slumped to the bottom of her stomach.

  Thank God, the net she had spread around the middle of the tower saved the worker. When Maggie worked on anything, she placed safety measures around the construction site. Though the game assisted workers and players in building the buildings, they had to put every single thing in place with their hands, no shortcuts. Aside from insta-build off course. When workers were involved, accidents happened—quite frequently ending in unnecessary deaths. For such matters, the game behaved like real life, making people work for most things. Until a player used special magic or skills.

  Focusing, Maggie assessed the tower’s progress.

  Ninety-two percent. Time to use her special skill on the second Demolishing Tower.

  “Builder’s Boom.”

  The completion jumped to ninety-seven percent. Builder’s Boom allowed her to speed up construction by five percent every twelve hours.

  Stones lifted in the air and flew like bullets to lock themselves into the tower.

  When the stones stopped flying around, the basic workers continued their tasks.

  Two hours later, the tower was complete. It was too bad she’d lacked 220 BP, otherwise she would have used her Insta-Build scroll to complete the tower by eighty percent.

  BP for the village accumulated too slowly. Lord Jon should increase his BP production. She had access to many defense buildings, but without BP her hands were tied behind her back.

  Accessing the town management menu, she glanced at the tower properties.

  Demolition Tower

  Tier: 2

  HP: 2000/2000

  Damage: 200/arrow. (150 physical, 50 fire)

  Target Range: 1000 yards.

  Degree of Attack: 180 degree.

  Demolition towers specialize in defending against ground attacks. It uses fire arrows to attack the enemy.

  Fires 100 arrows per second.

  Requirement: 6 Iron blocks, 30 wood blocks for each hour of operation.

  This was no magic tower, but it worked like a rapid-fire space beam from the real world. Firing ten arrows every second, it could dash out six hundred arrows per minute. In BlackFlame Online, a tier 1 and tier 2 village could build five different archer towers to dish out huge damage, and the Rapid Fire tower dealt the most damage. Three hundred damage per arrow.

  But it had a major flaw. It only fired in a 45-degree arc. While the Demolition Tower dealt average damage, it fired in a 180-degree arc and even had the ability to focus on a single target. Though it could be anyone, it required two people to manage the continuous operation and feed iron and wood to the core of the tower. So, it was a famous defense tower for low level villages. With 200*10 damage per second, it could handle a couple hundred level 25+ players easily.

  With the size of Epic village, if she had three towers, she wouldn’t worry about any attack.

  Roth, one of the farmers, rushed to her. “Vice-lord, Maggie. The enemy count has increased.”

  Maggie calmed her expression. “Have you set up the lock flags per our plan?” She had seen the lock formation in action when Lord Jon fought against the beast tide. It’d worked marvelously. The best thing
about that formation? It could even lock a level 25 player for a few seconds.

  “Yes, Vice-lord. Also, I’ve set up five players in each demolition tower and put one hundred iron blocks and two hundred wooden blocks in each tower. They have done their practice and are okay with the operation.”

  Maggie’s face relaxed a little. With practice and the game’s help, these players shouldn’t have any issue targeting enemies.

  “Let’s go to the north gate then.” Sprinting toward the north gate, she consolidated her emotions. For a commander, stability mattered most. Even when your base is falling, you have to remain strong and carry out your plan. In her career as a space fighter, she hadn’t led a team, but she worked closely with her team leader and picked up many good attributes from her. If wasn’t for her infection, she would have been promoted to a team lead by now.

  She sighed, pushing away the memories. Right now, she had to focus on the upcoming battle. For her and for Lord Jon.

  “Did you see any guards?” She asked as she dashed up the stairs leading to the top of the north gate.

  Roth shook his head.

  “Okay...” Her words died inside her mouth as she spotted two hundred players gathered around the north side of the wall. She wasn’t afraid of the players as much as the wild rhinos behind them. Wild rhinos were level 10 heavy monsters that specialized in breaking walls.

  God! Where did they find one hundred wild rhinos?

  Chapter 56

  Jon stepped out of the God’s Garden as the final batch of Rob’s group vanished inside the dungeon. Thanks to Miraha watching from the skies, he’d received a perfect commentary of their actions.

  Miraha welcomed him through the air, a beautiful smile covering her face. It was only the second time were meeting in person, but she looked more beautiful and charming.

  “Jon, my friend.” Miraha slapped her thin eyebrows together. “Why were you hiding?” She floated in the air. “And who were those immortals? What business did they have with you that would compel you to explode your clone in their group?”