I yanked my sword free and left him for dead.
Junior closed the distance between us quickly, his sword sliced down towards my neck. I caught his strike on the edge of my blade; his inferior common-tier sword chipped as it landed. With a push kick, I sent him reeling back. Before he could recover, I thrust at him, keeping him from getting his balance and edging him toward my target.
With one last thrust, he backpedaled, right over the corpse of Duel-Wielder.
Junior fell to the ground and shrieked as he landed in his friend’s warm blood. He tried to stand, but panic had taken hold, and he only caused himself to slip and fall right back down. I stepped forward and put him out of his misery; my sword pinned his body to his fallen friend. He struggled in the throes of death to free himself to no avail and died looking into the lifeless eyes of his comrade.
With his death, I’d killed all the commander's guards.
The commander knelt by the body of Duel-Wielder, oblivious to the deaths of the others. I could’ve killed her on the spot if I’d wanted, but that would’ve been too quick.
I knelt and stared into the broken gaze of my opponent. I held no remorse for my actions, nor the one I was about to commit.
She refused to look at me, and I lashed out. My fist slammed into her jaw, sending her to the dirt amid a cloud of dust. Her look of sadness turned to black hatred as she stood.
“Tell me your name,” I demanded.
“My name is Elizabeth.” She spoke through clenched teeth. The fury in her voice rivaled what was in my heart. “You will pay for what you’ve done, you monster!”
Monster? I suppose I am. I smiled. “That may be true, but you and yours are the ones to blame. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
I bowed low, keeping my eyes on her. “Well, Elizabeth, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Duran, and I challenge you to a duel.”
Chapter 6 - Dance of Death
As with most duels, ours started slow; only fools rushed headlong into one. I kept my distance, sizing up my opponent, while she did the same. Which surprised me. I half expected Elizabeth's rage to cloud her judgment as it had for her friends. I figured she would charge me with no plan of attack, but she impressed me by remaining calm.
I had my sword at the ready and could have attacked her before she’d even drawn hers, but I held off. I wanted to see how good of a fighter she was. Even with my history, I still loved duels. They were the ultimate test of skill.
She drew a gleaming one-handed sword; it bore a silver, sapphire-encrusted hilt. The large gemstone set in the pommel matched her eyes, and while beautiful, it was a piece of art rather than a weapon. To display such extravagance on a sword, a tool designed to kill, was bordering on the ridiculous. The length of the sword was also unusual. It was quite short, just above a shortsword but thicker than a longsword.
Elizabeth unstrapped a small kite shield from her back. I hadn’t noticed it before; her cape had hidden it well. Having a shield explained her shorter weapon. It would allow the full operation of her blade while also being able to defend with herself.
The shield was a mixture of rich, dark wood with metal for its center. The tell-tell silver-white sheen coming from the metal told me it was good quality Aldrustian steel. Vastly cheaper than the dwarves’ shadowsteel, but still more expensive than regular steel.
Neither of us had made an opening move yet, both of us playing it cautious. I thought I knew what kind of person Elizabeth was considering her choice of armaments and current profession, but it would have been reckless of me to charge in based on what I thought I knew.
I glanced at the timer for my auras in the bottom corner of my interface. I had a little over two minutes remaining before they timed out. Which meant I had to hurry.
I circled Elizabeth for a few moments longer, studying her stance and footwork, an often-overlooked aspect of a duel. Players tended to put faith in their abilities and didn’t bother to practice proper form or technique. Even now, they didn’t realize how unforgiving this world could be.
Elizabeth, however, had decent form. A bit too conforming for my tastes, but it wasn’t awful. She followed the military-style close to the letter, and I detected hesitation in her movements when I suddenly shifted or moved in a way she didn’t expect. A weakness I would use to my advantage later, but I kept circling, waiting for the opportune moment.
I found it a few moments later, when I decided to change the speed of my footwork. Elizabeth shifted to face me head-on and dropped her shield an inch off-center as she raised her steel. Giving me my opening. I lunged forward, activating Twice Critical, and thrust into the opportunity.
My sword struck the spot just above her heart and stopped cold. A semi-translucent silver outline appeared just off her skin and shattered like glass, cracking and falling to the ground before vanishing. Damn, that’s Full Defense, a passive ability in the defender class. An automatic extra bit of armor that lasted until it absorbed too much damage.
Having been caught off guard, I quickly backed out of reach, though I was a half-second slow. Her sword pierced through my armor, scoring a shallow wound across my side.
Damn! That was sloppy of me.
Elizabeth impressed me yet again. She fought with clear skill, had the mind of a tactician, and was also talented enough to be given command over an army. If we’d met under any other circumstances, I’d have liked to offer her a place within our guild.
She was a member of the Alliance, just a puppet for them. A simple piece to move on a chessboard, but a piece of them nonetheless, and I refused ever to allow those bastards to get that close to us.
Damn shame.
Elizabeth having abilities from the defender class and sporting a heavy shield told me everything I needed to know about her fighting style. While I couldn’t begin to guess at the others in her arsenal, she was a purely defensive fighter. Prone to reacting rather than making the first move. It would give me the upper hand while I dictated the pace of battle.
A flash in the corner of my vision told me I was out of time. Sixty seconds left. If I’m going to end this fight, it needs to be now.
I was reluctant to use so many abilities back to back, but I had little choice. If the timer wore down before I killed her, it wouldn’t matter how many I kept in reserve. I activated Holy Blade in tandem with Rush Strike. My sword took on a golden hue as light spilled down its silver blade, and the scent of summer filled the air.
No matter what defensive abilities she has, Holy Blade will negate them all.
Time seemed to slow as Rush Strike kicked in, and the wind enhanced my movements; before she could blink, I was on her.
My golden blade speared straight through her shield and chest plate like they weren’t even there, but there was resistance as my sword cut through tissue and bone. As the radiant light faded from my weapon, Elizabeth slumped over into me, my sword protruding from her back.
When I pulled my sword from her, she crumpled to the earth, blood spilling from her wound to soak into the dirt. A fit of coughs wracked her, and blood dripped slowly from her mouth.
My fury, having been satiated by my victory, left me feeling weary. I knelt by her on the ground. I‘d done some awful things in the name of my guild, things I’d do again in a heartbeat, but they left a sour taste in my mouth. I wasn’t sorry for my actions, but the weight of them settled around me.
“Just so you know, you fought well,” I told her.
I was never one for disregarding my enemy’s talent. She looked up at me with pain-filled eyes, but they were missing the hatred that had consumed them previously. She, too, seemed to find peace with her inner rage.
“If you and the Alliance hadn’t been so greedy, this needless death could have been avoided,” I said softly, my voice little more than a whisper on the wind.
Fire filled her eyes for a brief second. She reached up to grab the back of my head and pulled me down to whisper into my ear, “It’s not what you think. You need to be
careful…he’s coming.”
I didn’t understand, so I leaned closer to her to ask her what she meant, but it was pointless. Elizabeth was dead, her glassy eyes staring absently into mine.
I never liked killing other players; taking decades of work from someone else over whatever petty reason presented itself didn’t seem right. I’d still do it, but I never liked to.
Standing up, I wiped the small pool of blood she'd dripped on my legs. Which was the exact moment my auras timed out. Absolute bone-deep exhaustion filled me as my battle fatigue skyrocketed, and I couldn’t control my body any longer. My legs buckled, and I crashed into the ground, motionless.
I stayed in that position for five minutes as my fatigue slowly returned to zero. When it finally receded completely, I shakily picked myself off the ground. I’m lucky none of the soldiers I’d left alive stuck around. They likely fled back to the main force when I engaged Elizabeth and her guards.
Elizabeth's body was gone, deleted from the world. Though her equipment was transported automatically to our loot room, since this was our territory and we were under siege.
With Elizabeth dead, the rest of the troops will have lost all the buffs she provided them and will be even easier to kill. The rest of the guild should be playing clean up duty right now. It’d been half an hour since I jumped down from the castle. There shouldn’t be that many left.
I started my walk back towards the castle. In my aura-induced state, I hadn’t realized how far I’d traveled from home. I was a good mile or so from Gloom-Harbor. Still incredibly weak from the battle fatigue, I couldn’t have fought off a one-armed rabbitman in my current state.
The mile-long trek back to the fields was excruciating. Every step was shaky, and I thought I’d topple to the ground at any moment. I came around over the green hill that led to the front gate. The dark gray stone of the castle wavered and shrank under the glaring light of the sun peeked out from the white clouds.
It was a rather beautiful day for a massacre.
I stood staring over the fields of Gloom-Harbor; it was bloody in every sense of the word. The rancid tang of iron and rust coated my tongue and clung to the back of my throat with every breath.
I looked down at the troops left alive. I’d taken out dozens of the men myself, which still left a few hundred soldiers for the rest of the guild. There wasn’t even half that number left; the Gloom Knights were running them ragged.
Gil took out four men with a single swing of his axe. They couldn’t even get close to him. The ebony berserker was a sight to behold in battle.
Searching for the rest of the guild, I wanted to see how they were faring in the battle.
Harper was nowhere to be seen, but Yumiko was stationed on a nearby hill, dressed in her forest greens, firing arrow after arrow into the crowd. In ten seconds, she’d dropped at least fifteen men. It was damn impressive. Yumiko was undoubtedly a hand with the bow, but she didn’t hold a candle to Harper. She kept firing, pulling caches of arrows from her inventory as she continuously ran dry.
Wilson seemed to materialize from the shadows, and wherever he appeared, someone died. He Shadow-Walked through nearly fifty men himself. I forgot that sometimes, behind his strict, rule-obsessed personality, lurked a truly terrifying man.
I didn’t see Adam in the mass of bodies, but I saw several of his creatures meandering about, taking out men without a care in the world. He’d summoned a couple of bane wolves to herd the troops and lead them directly to a lava golem. It sloughed off pieces of its own skin and threw chunks of molten rock and lava on the men, boiling them alive.
Evelyn was around somewhere, I assumed. Though I never saw her, I’d found where she’d been. All I had to do was look for the biggest pile of corpses. There were at least a hundred bodies, dead in a disorganized circle. You could’ve filled a swimming pool with the blood she’d spilled today, and I chuckled at my dark joke. A rare sight to see her let loose.
The clang of a gong rang loudly through the battlefield, and I looked until I found the source. Several men took turns hammering their swords against Levi and Behemoth’s greatshields and having absolutely no luck getting through. Levi and Behemoth stood back to back, fending off troops en masse; no one could get past those two with their massive shields. They truly epitomized the phrase “immovable objects.”
All in all, the guild was kicking serious ass. I was half tempted to pull up a chair and relax my weary bones while watching the rest of the fight with a cold drink in my hand. We’ve got this in the bag. Chuckling to myself, I dragged myself back to the castle, considering I’d be nothing but a hindrance to the team if I even attempted to join in with how weak I was.
I kept the battlefield in the corner of my vision as I walked. After a few minutes, the majority of the troops were dead or dying. The last few stragglers would be picked off with minimal effort. I was proud of my family.
Another victory for the Gloom Knights.
I was about to send a congratulatory message to everyone, but fate had other plans. As if the gods themselves were listening to my inner thoughts and decided to punish me for my arrogance, I received a notification on my interface. I opened it up to find it was a message from Harper.
Boss, we got problems, call me now!
I immediately pulled up his contact card and sent a call request. He picked up the second I sent it.
“D, we got more trouble inbound.”
“Elaborate. And while I’m at it, where the hell are you?”
He sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a hurry, his usually flippant attitude disappearing for a moment. “I count thirteen riders inbound from the east. They kept to the hills, so I only spotted them once they got to the plains. We have at most, ten minutes before they are in range.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Thirteen people could only mean one thing: a rival guild was coming to join in on the siege.
A pit of fear filled my stomach in a way that a couple hundred NPCs couldn’t manage. I’d been confident that we could repel the soldiers without much trouble, and I’d have bet my fight with the elite bodyguards and Elizabeth had been the most taxing, but combat with actual players was an entirely different beast.
A full guild terrified me.
“All right, Harper. Lie low. Work your way around them. Drop out of the siege party. You know what to do.”
“Roger,” he replied.
I dropped the call and immediately pulled up the guild chat, speaking aloud to the interface, which transferred my speech to text.
“Message to all members. We have what looks like another guild coming to fight. Harper counted thirteen riders, so it’s a full guild. Ten minutes out, coming in fast. Heal what injuries you have, and if you need a recovery potion, take one. We’ll worry about the consequences later. Prepare a defensive formation. I’m on my way.”
Taking my own advice, I pulled out a recovery potion and chugged the contents. A crisp, minty flavor filled my mouth, washing out the lingering taste of battle from my throat. The drink went down smooth with only the barest hint of bite. However delicious it was as it went down, it wouldn’t make up for the pain that would come later.
The rush that filled me was nearly indescribable, as Atlas would have felt if he’d stopped carrying the weight of the world.
All of the aches plaguing my body washed away instantly, and the timer for all my abilities lowered to zero and then faded from my vision, a new one appearing in their place.
I had three hours until the timer zeroed out, and potion sickness set in. It usually took an overdose of many different potions in a short period to cause it, but with how powerful recovery potion was, the cost had to be equally severe.
By the time I met up with the frontline a short jog later, I was back to my usual self. Everyone looked in peak condition, so I was sure more than a few had followed my example. All right, time to form a plan.
“Gil,” I hollered.
He turned at my call. His bright green ey
es lit up with humor at my approach, and he smiled widely at me, despite the situation, I couldn’t help but return his infectious grin; it was hard not to smile around him.
“Fancy seeing you here, D,” he responded as I walked up. After the obligatory fist bump between us, we got down to business.
“How bad is it?” I asked him, looking at growing silhouettes in the distance.
“Not good, but it’s also not as bad as it seems,” Gil said. “Everyone else was pretty conservative with their abilities during the fight with the soldiers, so most of us aren’t nearly as bad off as you.” He gave me a knowing look. “You’re going to regret that recovery potion when this is over.”
I laughed but couldn’t deny it; he knew me inside and out and didn’t even have to ask if I wiped myself out fighting. “Most definitely, but we’ve all dealt with potion sickness before. It’s godsdamned miserable but survivable.”
“True enough,” Gil said. “So, what’s the plan of attack?”
I paced back and forth for a moment, kicking up a small cloud of dust as I worked through the rest of my thoughts.
We’d faced other guilds in the past, but those had been organized duels, either in a small group or one-on-one fights. They were meant to settle disputes, not wipe us out entirely. We’d never had an all-out free-for-all with the entire guild before, and with one seat empty and Alistair gone, we were outnumbered. I can’t know how this is going to play out, but anything I come up with is going to have to be simple. Once the fight starts, everything is going to go to hell anyway.
“Stay on the defensive till we figure out our enemy’s weaknesses and then goad them to waste their abilities. Don’t let any of them overwhelm us, and take them down one by one,” I told him.
Gil thought on my words for a moment, rubbing the back of his bald head as he tried to add any other ideas. “Yeah, that sounds like the best plan we’ve got,” Gil agreed. ”I can’t see a way to improve it without knowing more. If we don’t jump the gun on anything, we should be able to handle it.”
Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Page 8
