Xyla clenched her fists even tighter, ready to unleash her martial fury in Frost’s face, bruising him beyond recognition. Instead of punching him, however, she dropped her fists and sighed deeply, forcing down the disappointment that threatened to spill out from her.
“Fine,” she muttered angrily.
Meanwhile, several feet away, Dusk was in his own world of darkness. The same words kept replaying in his mind over and over.
Murderer. You’re fucking dead!
You’re much worse than I am.
The scene of him stabbing Menos was replaying over and over. The miserable swordsman lost the strength to go on any further. He dropped his sword, no longer having the strength to hold it, and fell onto his knees, trembling violently. His hands grabbed the earth below to support himself. The shaking wouldn’t stop. The contents of the garlic chicken that Stacy had put so much effort into earlier were vomited onto the grass below. Two days ago he briefly lamented over the loss of an “innocent rabbit” even though it was a virtual entity—a make believe creation just like a character in a fairy tale—but now this. How was he supposed to justify this? How was he supposed to make peace with this? This wasn’t some imaginary rabbit he killed, or even an NPC. No, this was a real flesh and blood human whose dreams he just ended with his own two hands. In the movies he used to watch, the characters that killed one another did so without a second thought, like it was some sort of game, suffering no guilt over their actions. Why then, could he not do the same in a world that actually was a game? But his opponent's death was no game. This wasn't glorious or heroic, this was cold hard reality.
What have I done? Oh God, what have I done?
Stacy, seeing the immense mental torment her anguished friend was going through, rushed to his side. She put her arm around him and leaned in, pressing her forehead against his as she looked deep into his blood-torn eyes.
“Drake, are you okay? Drake? Drake?”
No response. Dusk could not hear any words in this virtual world any longer. His spirit did not exist in this plane or the next, or the real world. Instead it resided in the abyss of despair. Stacy couldn’t take seeing him suffer like this. Tears of woe ran down her face, seeing her friend a shell of his former self.
“Drake? Drake! Talk to me please.”
Nothing she tried was working. She embraced her friend tightly, hoping to drive his demons away. This emotional scene was suddenly interrupted by Xyla.
“Let me try,” she said coldly.
Stacy turned to look at the violent natured Monk, wary of her intentions.
“Try what?”
“Don’t worry about it; just let me have a moment with him. I’ll get him back down to earth.”
“O...kay,” Stacy murmured, letting go of her friend and slowly walking away. She craned her head to glance back, worried by what this ill-tempered Monk might do.
Xyla put her hands on her hips and looked down contemplatively at the broken man before her.
“Hmm,” she mumbled curiously.
All the wrath that she had wanted to unleash on those repugnant bandits was redirected into a beam of flesh that struck Dusk in the face with amazing force.
“Snap out of it!” she shouted angrily.
Both Stacy and Frost stood there with their mouths wide open, unable to peel their eyes away from this jarring scene.
All of Dusk’s inner thoughts were interrupted when he felt a tremendous impact of pain rock his world. Xyla was staring down at him, ready to serve him another knuckle sandwich.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Stacy screamed at her. Seeing her best friend being abused had her fuming.
“Have you snapped out of it?” Xyla asked Dusk as she raised her fist once more. “Or do you need another one?”
Dusk stared at her blankly. His eyes had lost all light, replaced with a dull zombielike emptiness.
“Do it,” he murmured in an expressionless voice. His eyes remained transfixed on her, waiting expectantly for another hit. When the hit didn’t come, he was visibly disappointed.
“Do it,” he stated once more as he scrunched his hands into spheres which now shook in an uncontrollable masochistic desire; a result of his sense of self-worth being utterly obliterated by his perceived heinous act.
“Fucking do it I deserve it!” Dusk demanded loudly.
“As you wish,” she said before punching him in the face again with all the strength she could muster.
“Stop it already you crazy bitch!” Stacy admonished as she grabbed Xyla by the arm.
At the same time, Frost jumped between Xyla and Dusk, once again placing himself as a barrier to stop further violence.
“That’s enough,” he stated sternly.
Xyla shook Stacy off of her and walked away a few feet.
“Get off me,” she said coldly, with her back concealing the disgust in her countenance.
It was all Stacy could do to not throw down with this woman. The only thing that stopped her was she knew she wouldn’t win. Stacy was a healer, made for support, whereas Xyla’s class excelled in one on one combat.
“I thought you said you were going to try to help him! You call that helping him?” Stacy scolded the aggressive martial artist as she threw a
“You guys really don’t get it do you?” Xyla scoffed. “I was helping him.”
“By punching him in the face?” Frost interjected.
“That’s right,” Xyla stated. Her voice emanated the cold chill of ice. “Your hugs, rainbows, and pretty words won’t help him now. If I hadn’t punched him, he’d still be in a daze. The only thing that will help him now is the truth.”
“What is the truth?” Dusk asked weakly, desperately seeking an answer which might give him the slightest bit of solace in the darkness in which he now found himself.
Xyla turned to face him, her arms crossed, her eyes unflinching, staring him down. “The truth is that you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop throwing a fucking pity party. You had to do what you did. They were going to kill us. In the real world it’s dog eat dog; here it’s even more so. It was either them or us. It may have been accidental, but you made the right choice.”
“If it was up to me...” Xyla paused for a moment as she let herself be psyched up by her brutal impulses, “I would’ve killed them all. That is if this blue haired bastard would’ve helped me instead of getting in my way.”
The noble Knight gasped in disturbance at this vicious woman. He was beginning to think she was just as bad as the bandits they had defeated.
“I had to. Just because they’re murderers doesn’t mean we have to sink to their level.”
“Murderers,” Dusk whispered grimly as the realization hit him again like a truck. “I’m a murderer.”
Frost looked down at the ground as he caught his blunder.
“Sorry,” he muttered weakly.
Xyla closed her eyes and smacked her open palm onto her forehead. “You see what you’ve done now, idiot?”
“Stop it already!” Stacy pleaded desperately. “Just stop...”
Stacy’s words seemed to reach them, creating a tense silence in the air. Xyla sighed, breaking the awkward silence.
“Anyway... there are a few things I still need to say to you guys. You guys didn’t know about the existence of the bounty board in this game, did you?”
Stacy suddenly remembered what Menos had said earlier.
“No, what is that?”
“It’s a database of all players who have committed what the game considers to be a crime. It ranks them by a combination of the amount of stars they possess, and their corresponding color.”
“What do you mean?”
“You guys noticed it too, right? Those Hand of Blood members had an orange colored star over their heads. The l
eader had two orange stars over his head. You guys only saw green stars over everyone’s head until now, and you probably weren’t sure what they meant. Look at the star over Dusk’s head, what color is it?”
“A single red star,” Stacy whispered wearily, not sure what that meant.
“What does that mean?” Dusk was almost afraid to find out.
“Well... it means you’ve killed a green or orange star player,” Xyla stated matter-of-factly.
“And what does that mean?”
“Check the bounty board on your menu.”
All of them opened it, and before them was a list of bounties. There were three other red star players besides Dusk. The one at the top of the list was named Shark. The only portrait of their face was a hooded figure concealed beneath blood red hues. Their face was entirely shrouded in darkness. They possessed two red stars with a three million crylla bounty.
“Whoa, this person has already killed six people in three days...” Frost mumbled, astonished and repulsed at the same time that such a wicked person existed in this game. The disturbed Knight imagined a hideous monster lurked beneath that cowl of mystery. Worse than those military dictators who drowned their own people in noxious gases for the sake of testing their bio product. Worse than the demons who dwelled in the deepest suffering filled depths of hell, where the constant music of anguish and suffering played like a cursed requiem that erodes the spirit, piece by piece over millennia of soul-crushing torture. For as evil as these figures were, they were abstract in the grand scheme of things. For in their cushy nation in the real world, military dictators were a thing of news, but not of personal experience. Demon kings and succubi were figures of legend, not reality. But here now, in this world, a real demon lurked somewhere, most likely imagining they were a shark devouring their victims—lurking, swimming beneath the waves, just waiting to swallow up their prey.
“They’re not someone we want to come across. To kill that many already, they are most likely extremely strong and dangerous.” Xyla stated.
“If I see them... I’ll bring them to justice.” Frost’s face etched resolve, though cold shivers of fear made his hair stand on end. He knew that vanquishing such a great evil would make him even stronger and prove his heroic nature once and for all.
“Anyway, as you can see there are three other red star players here: Buckshot, Mack, and Dusk; all with a five hundred thousand crylla bounty. Which means...”
“I’ll have players hunting me for the bounty,” Dusk interrupted. His pain was resonating with his dear friend Stacy. She could see it—his descent into the bottomless pit of despair that knew no exit, no joy, no light. She wished for nothing more than to lift him up out of that black chasm, but his hand was beyond her reach.
“That’s right,” Xyla continued. “But they can’t harm you if you’re inside the towns, even as a red star.”
Stacy desperately sought out comfort in this desolation.
“Is there any way to remove the red star? You know, become a green star again?”
“I don’t know. This game’s only been out three days, after all. But people’s crimes aren’t absolved in the real world unless they go to prison. I haven’t heard of any prison in this game, so I don’t think it’s possible, I’m sorry.”
Despite how Xyla had punched Dusk earlier, pangs of guilt had struck her. She really was trying to help him in her own way. Life wasn’t going to be easy for the Phantom from here on in, she knew that. He would be fighting for his life, putting everything he had into just trying to keep his head above murderous waters. Not only monsters wanted him dead, but so would other players, all to bolster the size of their crylla wallets. She wanted to toughen him up, to prepare him for the bumpy road ahead, lest he be drowned in his own weakness.
“What about the Hand of Blood? Do you know anything about them?”
“Not much more than what I told you earlier. They’re a guild who will probably be a prominent presence in PvP. It sounded like there were a lot of them from the way the thugs were talking. They probably came from a previous MMO. It seems they have no problem killing people for real.”
Each word that was coming out of Xyla’s mouth made Stacy’s gut twist tighter and tighter with every word spoken. There was no comfort in her words, only despair. The worst part was she said all of it so matter-of-factly, like it was just business, just another day at the office.
Stacy turned to look at Dusk, her eyes overflowing with compassion for her unfortunate friend.
“I’ll protect you, Drake, don’t worry.”
Protect him? No one could protect him now. He was doomed. After a long pause, Dusk muttered one word, albeit unconvincingly. “Thanks.”
“Now...,” Xyla continued, “there’s one more thing I need to ask you guys.”
“What’s that?” Frost wondered.
“There is a PvP tournament coming up in two weeks. The minimum level requirement is 20. It’s five versus five combat. Right now I have no one to help me but...” The group knew where this was going.
“You want us to fight in this tournament with you?”
“If we won you wouldn’t be going away empty handed. You’d obtain weapons that are almost twice as strong as what you can normally get at level 20. It would help you a lot in your process of leveling up.”
Stacy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. PvP combat had just ripped everything away from them, turned her best friend into a lifeless husk, and now Xyla was asking them to participate in a PvP tournament with her. Did this woman have no shame?
“Are you crazy? Look at the state Drake is in. That was from your precious PvP! We want no part of it. We’ll leave it to bloodthirsty bitches like you!”
Xyla and Stacy glared at one another intensely. If looks could kill, both of these women would be dead.
“What did you just say to me?”
“You heard me.”
Frost stepped in between both of them and bellowed with urgency.
“All right, stop! Xyla, we’ll think about your offer.”
Frost brought up the menu and sent Xyla a friend request, which she promptly and silently accepted.
“I’ll let you know if we’re interested.”
“That’s all I ask. Dusk...” Xyla stopped for a moment as she pondered what to say to this living zombie. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, that’s what they always say, right? Would this Phantom before her overcome his limitations and become truly strong, or would weakness turn him into an invalid?
“You had to do what you did, don’t think otherwise for a second. And Frost... If you hadn’t jumped in, I might be dead right now. Thank you.”
The nerve of that woman! I thought Drake was insensitive to people’s feelings but she’s in a league of her own, Stacy grumbled to herself.
“Why did you request her as a friend, Mike? What were you thinking?”
“Hey, she’s not a bad person; just a little blunt is all.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Guys...” Dusk spoke quietly. “I need to go back home, to the city.”
“Ah, right, I think we’ve had enough for today. Let’s go, Drake.”
“No. I want to be alone. I need time to think. Sorry.”
With that, Dusk was gone.
Stacy looked pleadingly to Frost, trickles of tears leaking down her eyes. Even though they were in the tropical jungles, humid and moist, Stacy felt like she was in a dark dank hole, with not even a sliver of light to peek in. Warmth—she needed reassurance, she needed an answer, and she needed her ray of light.
“Mike, tell me, what should we do? What should I do? How can we help him?”
“I don’t know, Stacy, I wish I did. I think for now, all we can do for him is to let him be alone like he asked.”
Frost walked up to her and hugged her closely.
“Hey, don’t worry, he’ll come around. I
promise.”
“I hope so.”
Dusk sat in his new inn room, his mind racing a mile a minute. He had purchased a separate room for the time being. He didn’t want to be near anyone right now. He couldn’t bear to look his friends in the eye, not after what he had done. Never in his wildest dreams did he ever imagine taking the life of another human being. He literally felt like his entire existence—everything that made him, was being torn apart. He couldn’t hold it anymore, he howled at the midday sun, a tormented and pathetic cry, hoping it would release the flood of pain inside of him that was ready to burst open in a tsunami. But relief didn’t come. The emotions continued to flood in, his ship was sinking with the immense weight; he couldn’t bail out the ship fast enough.
Afflicted with an overbearing pressure, he trudged his way into the bathroom. The shower always helped him clear his mind and take his stress away, maybe it would work. He turned the shower nozzle, waiting for the water to warm. He stepped inside and sat down in the tub, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
When he opened his eyes, he saw it. The showerhead was raining down blood upon him—Menos’s blood. The bathtub was filled with it. The entire room looked akin to a slaughterhouse. The petrifying sting of fear restrained him, froze him, and shackled him to the ground.
Dusk screamed over and over in terror, scrambling to his feet. He stumbled over the bathtub, landing with a smack on his side before running away from the bloody scene as if he were fleeing away from a brain-eating zombie in one of those horror movies.
He ignored the throbbing pain in his right elbow and hip and reached for a towel to dry off the 'blood' as quickly as he could. His body immediately became warm. His breath came out in panicked heaves of horror. A shower wouldn’t work this time. Now that he had joined the ranks of killers, blood was his new water. He ran to the bed and curled himself under the blankets, gripping them hard to his chest.
After several hours of tossing and turning, he managed to lull himself into a disturbed, nightmarish sleep.
The Virtual Realm (War Of The Elements Book 1) Page 12
