She raised her hand and began chanting a spell of revealing, but before she could finish, a spot, in open space about ten yards away, rippled like a liquid surface, and a single player appeared with a splash.
It was a man. His skin was so pale it was nearly blue, and his long hair was the same, marking him clearly as belonging to the undine race. He wore gray leather armor tooled with a fish-scale pattern, and had a small bow slung over his shoulder.
His scoutlike appearance told Leafa his role was reconnaissance, but the high quality of his equipment and his confident, supple grace told her this was a very high-ranking player.
The sharp-eyed scout cast her a steely glance, took a loud step in the snow, and then asked what Leafa was most afraid of hearing: “Are you going to hunt that Deviant God or not?” He was, of course, referring to Tonky, curled up next to them.
When she did not immediately respond, the man’s eyes narrowed. “If you are, then get on with it. If you’re not, step away. We don’t want you caught in our crossfire.”
Before he finished speaking, a number of crunching footsteps sounded behind his back. The rest of the party had caught up to them.
If they’re a mixed-race party based in a neutral zone, there might still be hope, Leafa prayed.
Her hopes were immediately dashed when she saw that the twenty-odd players cresting the snowy ridge had the same pale skin and bluish hair. This Deviant God raiding party was made up entirely of undines from Crescent Bay, far to the east.
If they’d been renegades of different races, perhaps they would have overlooked the sylph-spriggan duo. But these were representatives, the best and brightest of the undine players. If anything, they could gain honor points for killing Kirito and Leafa, who were of a different race, while the two of them couldn’t possibly match up against twenty. They were lucky to have even gotten the warning that they did.
But we have to stand up and do the impossible now. Tonky treated us like a friend—we can’t leave it to die, Leafa told herself. She stood between the blue-haired scout and the monster, and issued a gravelly warning.
“I know this is against in-game manners, but I beg your indulgence. Leave this Deviant God to us.”
The man and his cohorts behind him chuckled uneasily. “It would be one thing to hear someone say that in a lesser hunting ground, but this is Jotunheim. You must have been playing long enough to know that claiming an area or a monster is ‘yours’ doesn’t fly around here.”
He was absolutely correct. In any other case, Leafa’s reaction to someone else claiming ownership of a region or monster would have been the exact same as his. If the monster was currently engaged in fighting someone, that person or party had priority, but Tonky was simply curled up into a ball. Leafa and Kirito had no intention to fight with it, so they had no right to prevent the undines from doing so.
She bit her lip and looked down to the ground, unsure of what to do, when a shadow stepped forward—Kirito.
Leafa held her breath. He wasn’t going to attempt to bluff them the way he had with General Eugene and the salamanders—or even worse, fight them, was he? He couldn’t draw his sword against such a huge party.
It was insanity. They were hunting in Jotunheim, which assured that the twenty-four undines before them were among the best of the best. They were far tougher than the salamander party that ambushed the pair outside of Lugru; the gleaming heavy armor and sparkling wizard staffs alone told her that much.
But she was not at all prepared for what Kirito actually did.
The black-clad spriggan made no move toward the greatsword on his back. Instead, he folded at the waist and bowed deeply.
“Please,” he croaked, deadly serious. “Its cursor might be yellow, but this Deviant God is our companion…our friend. It brought us here, even when it was at death’s door. Please let it rest here as it wishes.”
He bowed even deeper toward the blue-haired scout, whose eyes were wide with surprise. That was quickly followed by the largest expression of exasperation yet. The fighters behind him were openly laughing now.
“Come…come now. You’re human players, right? Not NPCs?”
Hands wide, the scout stifled his laughter and shook his head. He took the beautifully ornate bow off his shoulder, drew a silver arrow from his quiver, and nocked.
“Sorry, but we’re not here to lollygag around. The party was nearly wiped out by one of the larger beasts a few minutes ago. It took a lot of work to revive all the Remain Lights and regroup. We need to bag something to make this trip worth it. We’ll count to ten so you can take your distance. Once the count is up, we’ll pretend you aren’t here…Mages, lay down buffs.”
He raised a hand, and the mages at the back of the party began chanting spells. With each burst of colored light, the warriors at the front were enveloped in status-enhancing magic, in preparation for the battle ahead.
“Ten…nine…eight,” the archer’s countdown rang out through the sound of the spell. With her hands clenched so tight she could hear the bones creaking, Leafa shuddered and called out to her partner.
“Let’s go, Kirito.”
“…All right,” he murmured and turned on his heel, walking to the west along the bottomless shaft. Leafa took to his side. The scout’s countdown continued behind them.
“Three…two…one. Commence attack,” he chanted mechanically.
They heard the piercing sound of fierce attack spells and the metallic clanking of heavy armor bursting into motion. Explosion after explosion sounded right behind them, and the ground rumbled beneath their feet. Leafa’s ponytail was sent waving by the blast of hot air that hit her back.
After about thirty steps, Leafa and Kirito finally turned around to look.
The warriors had just started thrusting their swords, axes, and spears into Tonky’s unmoving body. There were bright flashes and heavy shock waves from the impacts. The God’s defense was formidable, but their expensive equipment struck right through it and took chunks of its HP bar down.
After several seconds of attacking, the eight warriors pulled back to a distance. A second round of attack spells went off, accompanied by arrows from the archers in the group.
The powerful explosions covered Tonky’s trunk, which was over twelve feet tall even in its shrunken state. Pillars of fire burst from its skin, charring the silky short hair. Its HP continued falling, already 10 percent down from the maximum.
Between the rumbling blasts, they could hear a whistling, whirling sound.
It was Tonky. The Deviant God was warbling miserably, even weaker than it had when the three-faced giant was going in for the kill. Leafa turned her face away, unable to watch any longer…but what she saw tore at her heart even more.
Kirito stood with his fists clenched, and, peeking out of his front pocket, Yui was gripping the seam with both hands, her delicate knuckles white with force.
Her sweet little face was crumpled with agony. Large, round tears streamed out of her big black eyes. The sight of the tiny pixie, shoulders trembling, desperately trying to stifle her sobs, brought a hot sensation to the corners of Leafa’s eyes.
If only this squad of undines had been a merciless PK gang!
Then Leafa could have hated them for what they were doing. She could have promised the dying Tonky that they would avenge its death.
But the undines were only performing the right of any MMO player. Ever since the development of the first tabletop RPGs in the last century, one goal was front and center in every game: killing monsters to earn gold and experience. Decades later, in the immersive full-dive format, that standard had not changed. The rules and manners of playing in ALfheim Online said that Leafa could not force these undines to stop.
In which case, what did it say about the existence of “manners” if they couldn’t stand up to protect something, monster or not, that had traveled with them and shared their sentiments, even if only for a time? What was the point of rules if they couldn’t even say, Don’t kill him, he’s ou
r friend?
Leafa believed that in this world, the soul was free. She believed that emotions that could not be expressed in the real world were fair game in Alfheim. But it was as though the stronger players got, the better equipment they gained, the more they weighed down their own set of wings. She felt certain that even these undines, when they were brand-new to the game and unfamiliar with its ways, saw the frolicking, nonaggressive monsters in the wilderness and didn’t wish to kill such sweet creatures.
Angst sat heavy in her stomach, not unlike a bar of lead. The increasingly frantic sounds of attack were accompanied by ever-weaker cries from Tonky, who was wailing on and on. Its HP must be under halfway by now. It would take two minutes at the most—no, sixty seconds.
“…Kirito.”
“Leafa.”
They spoke together. She looked directly into the spriggan’s black eyes. “I have to go save it.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She was about to tell him to leave and head for Alne, but thought better of it. Once they charged into the fight, they’d be dead within ten seconds. There was nothing to be gained from it.
But standing there and watching the scene unfold went against Leafa’s beliefs—and likely Kirito’s, too. They’d saved Tonky from the three-faced giant, and Tonky had saved them in return. Perhaps the Deviant God was nothing more than a few lines of code tucked into a corner of the massive game server, following its simple instructions. But if she was going to stand and watch the murder of something she’d labeled a friend and given a name, there was no point to playing a VRMMO.
“Later today, I’ll help you travel from Swilvane to Alne again,” she said quickly. Kirito nodded, his hand on his sword hilt.
“Thanks…Stay out of sight, Yui.”
“I will. Papa, Leafa, um…good luck.” The pixie hid her teary face inside the pocket, and the two fighters drew their blades. One of the mages at the edge of the undine troop turned a suspicious eye at the sound.
They’d start with the low-defense mages, they told each other with a silent glance, and burst forward together. The snow at their feet shot high in the air, and the air around them shook with the force of their movement.
In a single breath, Leafa closed the distance and brought her long green katana down in a mighty, double-handed swing.
“Seyyy!!”
Her piercing cry was joined by the crisp swoop of her slashing sword. The green bolt of lightning that was her blade rocketed into the shoulder of the leftmost rear mage.
It was an unbelievably powerful blow, but the pale blue robe the undine was wearing was indeed an excellent piece of gear—the strike only took 30 percent of his HP. However, even as he tried to raise his staff to counter, a pitch-black light cut him straight across the chest. A split-second later, there was a heavy wham! as Kirito’s greatsword took down another 40 percent of the mage’s health.
The undine was tossed into the air without so much as a word, and Leafa’s relentless combo finished the job. Gauntlet, gauntlet, helmet: The kendo strikes each took an additional 10 percent, reducing him to zero.
The mage’s avatar vanished with a plume of blue water. Leafa brushed away the Remain Light and turned to the next foe.
Only now were the other mages, so consumed with their long-range attacks on Tonky, noticing that something was wrong. One of them screamed, his face aghast. “A-are you insane?!”
“You tell me!!” Leafa shot back, leaping through the snow.
Once the assault was obvious, the undine elites were predictably quick to react. They canceled the long-term heavy spellcasts and switched to short-range ones that were quicker to chant. But Leafa and Kirito’s rampage was just a bit faster. They shielded themselves behind a second mage and alternated powerful strikes. The closer mages unleashed what spells they could, but they were all direct-fire missiles that Leafa and Kirito were able to dodge, getting nothing more than singed clothes.
Leafa dispatched a second foe with a heavy thrust, grimacing as she took one or two direct shots from homing spells. Kirito was already off and running toward his next target. He hoisted the sword that was almost his own height on his shoulder, held it for a second, then prepared to unleash an earth-splitting blast—
—when a silver arrow thudded into his left shoulder.
He turned with a start to see the leader of the scouts at medium range, already loading his next arrow with grim determination. The scout barked out a powerful order.
“Swordsmen, back! The mages are under attack!”
The second arrow roared through the air directly at Leafa’s breast. The comet-tailed projectile was so fast, she could do nothing more than take the arrow to her left arm. With a heavy thud, she lost over 10 percent of her health. As she was tottering from the impact, a laser stream of high-pressure water magic pierced her right leg. It didn’t hurt, but the unpleasant dullness caused her to grimace.
Kirito had just finished halving his third target’s HP when he was swallowed up by an unavoidable whirlwind of ice. Leafa was racing over to cast a healing chant when she caught sight of a line of mages preparing a large-scale attack spell. Not only that, the heavy warriors who’d been surrounding Tonky were now bearing down on them at full speed.
So this is it.
Nearly fifty seconds had passed since they opened their assault. They’d put up an excellent fight against a group of this size, all things considered. Tonky would surely forgive them, knowing how hard they’d tried.
Crouched down and eyes closed, Leafa buried her face into Kirito’s shoulder and waited for the final blow, whether by spell, arrow, or blade.
But before the sound of that blow, she heard a high, powerful whistle, like a recorder amplified a hundred thousand times. The chill air shook powerfully as the sound echoed off distant mountains and reverberated back. It could only be Tonky’s voice, but this was nothing like the pitiful moans it was making moments ago.
So it’s finally dead, Leafa thought, looking to the hill.
She saw its elliptical body gashed with countless deep furrows. They grew longer and longer, connecting before her eyes.
“Ah…”
She braced herself for the sight of that black blood spurting from the multitude of punctures. However, it was not blood that issued forth, but brilliant white light.
A resonant, high-pitched wail erupted with the circular explosion of light, enveloping the undine warriors, archers, and mages. Instantly, the auras of support magic and partially cast attack spells surrounding them evaporated into smoke.
A field dispel!
Only a small subset of very powerful monsters had that ability. It was much too strong for a wandering, low-level Deviant God. Unsure of what had just happened, Leafa, Kirito, and the twenty-two undines froze where they were.
As everyone watched, Tonky’s trunk filled with a white radiance and then blew apart in a silent explosion. No, that wasn’t quite right—it was only the hard, bulky shell that was disintegrated, because the growing mass of light was still attached, rising into a towering spiral.
The light spun higher and higher over their heads until it gently spiraled out and dispersed. The pattern resolved into what was clearly four sets of massive wings, glowing brightly.
“Tonky…” Leafa murmured in wonder. As though it had heard her, that same old elephantine face rose at the base of the wings. Tonky held its long nose high and flapped its wide ears.
With another high-pitched, whirling cry, the no-longer-jellyfish shape beat its eight wing lobes and rose into the air.
The round body was shifting, growing streamlined. The twenty appendages were still hanging from its belly, but now they were more like vines than the clawed legs from before. Leafa suddenly noticed that the tiny sliver of HP left was now blooming back toward full health.
Tonky’s wings, held motionless about ten yards off the ground, suddenly turned a brilliant blue.
“Uh-oh,” Kirito muttered. He covered Leafa’s body and laid flat against t
he snow.
The next moment, terrifyingly thick bolts of lightning rained upon the ground from each of Tonky’s tentacles. The undines were blasted by the tremendous lightning before they could so much as scream. The warriors at least seemed to weather the storm, but some of the archers and mages died in one hit.
“Retreat to the bottom of the hill! Group up for healing and rebuffs!” the scout leader ordered, taking quick stock of the situation. The survivors, now fewer than twenty, raced down the slope. The heavy soldiers formed a clanking wall of defense as the mages began casting behind them.
But Tonky’s wings seemed to slide through the air after them, now glowing pure white.
The wailing sound erupted again, and another ring of light descended, nullifying all magic. Several spells in progress poofed into harmless dust.
“Damn!” the scout screamed in frustration, his facade of control slipping away. He tilted his bow upward and let an arrow loose. It left a trail of pitch-black smoke that settled heavily along the ground, cloaking his troop. “Retreat, retreat!!”
From Leafa’s vantage point, she could see the undines peeling off to run pell-mell in the other direction. Once in full escape, their speed was impressive, and the blue fairies had soon vanished beyond the mounds of snow.
Now that Tonky had the power of flight, it could easily track the land-bound players if it so desired, but the Deviant God merely trumpeted in triumph. As the sound echoed away, it rippled all four wings on one side, facilitating a slow pivot in midair.
Tonky steadily flapped toward Leafa and Kirito until it stopped right over their heads. The elephant head was pale now, and the six eyeballs looked down on the humans.
“So…what do we do now?” Kirito asked. Leafa felt a moment of déjà vu.
It was the extended elephant trunk that answered his question, scooping them both up off the ground. Before she could even recognize that her suspicions were confirmed, Tonky tossed Leafa and Kirito onto its back. They landed hard on their bottoms.
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