Unbound Deathlord_Obliteration

by Edward Castle

  Melkier said and logged off.

  Bear faded away.

  Only Daggers and I were left. She looked at me. "How are you?" She spoke aloud.

  It was a simple question.

  It hit me like a truck.

  I felt a mix of warmth and terror at the same time and held back tears. I didn't understand it one bit.

  What the hell? Am I turning into an emo?

  "I'm okay. Not great, but okay." I said sincerely.

  I was okay. I had lived for so long believing that I had murdered my parents that the shit I was going through was very bearable. The crying on the phone had been an isolated incident.

  "Good." That's all she said before logging off, respecting my space.

  Best friend ever.

  Before allowing myself to think too much about what having a best friend could mean, I logged off and focused on watching the news instead.

  * * *

  I woke up to my phone ringing. Looking at the digital clock by my table, I saw it was eight AM. Whoever was calling me that early in the morning better have a great reason.

  'Bear' was written in the caller ID field. I considered ignoring the call, but maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't be prank calling me.

  "Hello?" My voice was still groggy.

  "Ambush! I need your healing! Call Daggers!" He hung up.

  Ambush. Who? How?

  Adrenaline instantly shot through my body and I quickly got up.

  "Phone, call Daggers," I said as I went to the living room where my VirBridge was.

  "Calling Daggers," the robotic voice of the phone said. Unlike people who customized their home AIs, I liked robots to speak to me as proper robots. It felt creepy when a human voice came from a machine.

  Except while in games, obviously.

  "Jack?" Daggers answered. She was gasping for air. Wait, was she having sex?

  "Alice," I called her by her real name, "tell whoever is with you that I'm sorry for interrupting. Bear called me. He was ambushed. I know nothing more. I'm logging in right now."

  "Wait! Let me go first," she said. "I know where you logged in and I'll protect the place."

  "I can't wait, Bear said he needed healing!" I said.

  "Don't be stupid." She said matter-of-factly. "You have our items and most of our gold. It's better for all of us to die and lose our items, than you dying and chance losing your ring." She had a point. "I'm putting the VirBridge on, right now. I'll call you from inside the game." She hung up.

  Yup. If she was that close to the VirBridge, she was breathless inside her own house; definitely having sex.

  Now that I thought about it, it had been a long time since I had had some carnal fun.

  No time to think about that!

  Shaking my head, I sat and put my own VirBridge on.

  "Initializing... Jack identified. Welcome back," another robotic voice said.

  A few seconds later, I received a new call. It was Daggers.

  "Sir," she said now with her in-game tone. "Come in! Quickly!" She also hung up on me. Whatever was happening sounded chaotic.

  Launch Valia Online, I thought with urgency.

  "Launching Valia Online in five. Four. Three. Two. One."

  Connecting to Valia Online servers… OK

  Checking latency… 0 ms

  Logging in… OK

  Do you want to continue your journey as Jack Thorn?

  Yes! Quickly!

  Welcome back!

  The game and V-Soft's logo were a slow torture to endure. When I was finally back in my character's body, the first thing I felt was something big hitting my upper body and throwing me to the ground.

  Parties kept going as long as the leader was online. Since I had logged off, there was no party for us.

  "Sir, deathballs, now!" Daggers yelled right next to my ear, almost deafening me. She had been the one to push me on the ground.

  I did as told. In the three seconds it took for the death morb to form, I looked around.

  There were people in plate armor, people with bows and crossbows, and people with morbs floating above their heads. Not many, about ten of them. They had the brown cloaks of Margs Market troops.

  The assholes had followed us and waited for everybody to log off to ambush us! That's why I hated smart AIs!

  Bear and two other zombies were glowing red, a signal of the Rage skill, fighting with all they had. There were two zombies' corpses on the floor and a new one logging in.

  The enemy didn't have us surrounded as the White Tree had done. Instead, they formed a line with five plate-armored people with huge shields defending the ranged attackers. One of the mages behind was focusing solely on healing and things didn't look good for the zombies.

  Daggers was protecting my body with hers, crouched in a defensive position and using her blades to destroy magic, arrows, and bolts that came our way. A living shield.

  As soon as my death morb formed, I sent it to Bear. Two enemy spells tried to destroy mine but I had been expecting it and changed my deathball's path midway.

  You healed Bear for 128 HP

  With the kind of fight he was having, one hundred HP every three seconds was nothing. I immediately decided against taking the role of a healer and started creating a firebomb morb instead.

  Meanwhile, the plate-armored dudes were using a well-coordinated shield-wall to deal with the zombies. It didn't matter that the zombies were Enraged; they couldn't eat their enemies and therefore they couldn't heal themselves.

  "We need numbers! Where are the others?" I yelled at Bear but got no response.

  "He cannot speak when using the Rage skill, sir!" Daggers told me just as another zombie, who wasn't wearing armor, got his leg cut off and fell on the ground yelling.

  Shit.

  The fire morb was completed after two seconds and I sent it flying.

  It got larger as it flew forward. Seeing that I could control my morbs, and afraid that I might influence the outcome of the battle, the enemy had stopped using ranged attacks on the zombies and attacked my flying spell instead.

  An arrow, a bolt, and two spells — wind and fire — tried to take my firebomb down but I evaded them as well as possible. I could only change my spells' path by a total of a little over three hundred degrees, and each time I changed the path even a little, it was deduced from the maximum allowed.

  The firebomb spell, which by now was the size of a head, dodged the arrow by going up. The bolt also corrected its path slightly and I changed my spell to the right just enough for it to not be destroyed. Then, came the enemy spells.

  My firebomb dropped hard to the ground and the spells came behind. It was too late. My spell shot ahead and flew between Bear's and his opponent's legs. A final turn upwards and I exploded it.

  106 fire + 15 burn damage dealt to Bear's Opponent (131 total)

  54 fire + 2 burn damage dealt to Random Zombie #1's Opponent (56 total)

  22 fire damage dealt to Random Zombie #2's Opponent

  Instead of healing people for a hundred and thirty HP every three seconds, I could instead deal almost two hundred damage every two seconds!

  Better yet, the explosion was big. It made Bear's opponent lose his balance and Bear jumped on the guy. Both fell on the ground and I bet it wouldn't take long for my zombie friend to chew the guy to death.

  I was already creating another morb. Daggers had been hit by a few arrows but didn't look that bad.

  The remaining four armored men quickly closed the gap. Bear rolled on the floor with the armored guy to make it difficult for the enemy to target him, and they had no choice but to abandon the dude to his fate. My firebomb morb was ready to fire when I felt something in my nape. Pain. A lot of it.

  1300 piercing damage received

  HP: 825 / 2125

  A sneak attack with a critical hit! I screamed in pain, turned quickly, and saw five other armored guys with five ranged fighters behind them.

  "Dammit!" Be
fore I could even think about it another shot hit my fire morb and extinguished it. "Daggers, run to Bear!" I got up from the ground and ran too.

  Daggers used her Shadow Walk skill — I had checked the name online — and protected me as well as she could, moving like a shadow to my front, deflecting as many attacks as she could, and then doing the same to my back.

  That shadow skill didn't last long, only five seconds — which was still much longer than it lasted against the gabats — but it was enough for me to get to where the zombies were fighting, losing only about five hundred more HP.

  Three hundred HP to go.

  "Let's do like we did against the gabats!" I yelled to Daggers, then stopped running and crouched.

  She understood my meaning and stepped on me to jump over the armored dudes and get behind them.

  "Get the mages and bowmen!" I yelled, clumsily took my shield from my back, and started to run perpendicular to both groups of attackers.

  With Daggers creating havoc amongst half the ranged attackers, I only had to be worried about the other half. We were outnumbered so it was more important to survive now than to counter-attack. If I could get far enough from the remaining attacks to heal myself a couple times, I could get back to the fight.

  More zombies logged in but we had already lost three, and had been missing four to begin with. Three zombies from the Zombies 4 Life clan, Bear, Daggers and I were all that was left. Six against ten.

  No, wait, against nine. Bear had finished killing the dude on the floor. He got up in a bloody mess and tried to jump on the shield wall only to be rebuked. In his Enraged state, he had to attack the closest available target, but the shield wall was enough of an obstacle for him to be able to turn back and run at the other group of attackers.

  Of the four ranged attackers from the second group — they had a dedicated healer too —, three turned on Bear and one kept attacking me. When I saw the black morbs floating above my attacker's head, I smiled widely, stopped running, and began to summon death morbs.

  His spells came at me and I didn't even try to dodge.

  No damage received from darkness element (Immunity)

  I'm a Dark Archmage, bitch!

  This wasn't the first time the immunity had kicked in but it was the first time it was truly useful.

  My death morb formed and I healed myself once, then began to run again.

  The guy was just close enough that I could see the angry expression on his face as he changed from darkness morbs to water, but it was too late; I had run enough that I was out of range of his spells.

  Daggers had killed the first group's healer and was now pinned down by two armored attackers and some slowing spells, while the other two armored dudes maintained the shield wall against the three zombies. It was an impressive display of defensive skill.

  Bear was looking worse for wear, but kept attacking the other group, bashing uselessly on their shield wall. If he wasn't relieved soon, he would die. With group one too busy with Daggers and group two too far, I took four seconds to create a life morb and and slammed the orb into myself as I activated the Lifelock spell.

  The spell was very expensive mana-wise, one hundred MP per second plus any damage I took multiplied by five. I couldn't heal Bear enough for him to keep taking the beating he was taking though, and had to help him as soon as possible.

  I ran to the second group. I was almost there when one of the people on their backline yelled in pain. An arrow had just struck his head.

  I couldn't see the attacker, but I saw a second arrow come from the invisible walls of the Catacombs. It must be Ted!

  When I finally managed to join Bear, my MP had already decreased by five hundred. I had little more than twenty seconds of Lifelock remaining if I wasn't attacked. It sucked that I had had to waste the MP by running there but I couldn't chance having the life morb destroyed as I got closer.

  Taking my black sword from the scabbard, I jumped on one of the armored guys' shield, trying to make him lose his balance, but he didn't move an inch.

  Daggers finally shadowed again and got past her two opponents, going for the kill against one of the armored dudes who was defending against the zombies. She stuck her daggers into the openings at the back of his knees and he fell with a scream. One zombie immediately jumped on him. The other two zombies grabbed the remaining armored guy's shield and pulled him off balance enough for them to drop him on the ground and pin him down.

  Group one was taken care of. The zombies were regenerating their HP by eating their enemies and if Daggers stamina held, she could kill everyone there eventually.

  My fight wasn't looking so good. I tried to defend with my shield as well as I could, but arrows, bolts, and spells came non-stop. After less than five seconds my MP was gone and I began to lose HP again.

  If Bear wasn't Enraged we could try a retreating tactic, but as things were, we could only hope Ted did enough damage to them that they chose to run. It didn't look likely though; the healer had eight life morbs at the ready and was healing himself after Ted's arrows.

  She was too weak to make a difference; she had been level nine last time I saw her. Her attacks were only enough to prevent the healer from creating more morbs but, if required, one of the other mages could become a meat shield for the healer. The fact that they hadn't yet was proof that they held her in no regard at all.

  I had less than three hundred HP remaining. My sword did almost no damage to my armored opponents and I simply didn't have time to create morbs. The HP kept going down.

  As a last hope, I tried to contact Manhart but he didn't even answer my call.

  Two hundred HP.

  I hastily put my legendary circlet and legendary ring in my purse.

  One hundred and fifty HP.

  I put the spatial ring in the purse, as it had a lower drop chance.

  One hundred HP.

  I can kill them all! I just need to put the spider ring on!

  The alien thought invaded my mind with my own inner voice. It was so strong and I was so desperate that I actually moved my hand back to the purse, intent on taking the spider ring out.

  Shit! I thought and yelled to myself. Shut up!

  I realized I had been played by the ring and stopped my hand.

  Fifty HP.

  Power. So close to my fingertips... If I only dared...

  That scared the hell out of me; I couldn't be sure if those thoughts were mine or not.

  Ten HP.

  "Daggers, grab my items!" I yelled.

  If only I dared...

  You are dead.

  Everything turned black and all the pain and adrenaline instantly faded. Only the white message was visible in front of me.

  13. Metamorphosis

  It was too sudden. The lack of adrenaline made me feel empty.

  I wanted to get angry. I wanted to explode in misery. Instead, I only felt way too collected and disappointed.

  A calm background music started and I began to think about what I had done wrong. I could have sacrificed Bear and kept close to Daggers and group one. I could have kept running away. I could have kept my distance and thrown magic from afar.

  Instead, I had killed myself for Bear.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  Not only that, I should've also seen that type of ambush coming, and have created a watch rotation for when everyone went to sleep. Instead, I had been caught off guard.

  Frustration defined me.

  Why was I acting like that? It couldn't be the murders in V-Soft, could it?

  During the Challenge, I had acted stupidly but never like this. My dumbest action back then had been throwing my items away to save Daggers, but there was no danger then, and the consequences of my actions had been in my head att all times, even when using Marbareus' name without his permission.

  This time, however, I had ignored my mind.

  My logical mind, the best asset I had, had been put to sleep in a critical moment, and I didn't even care that much a
bout Bear.

  The death message faded away and a countdown replaced it. Nineteen hours and seventeen minutes until I could log back in the game.

  I took the VirBridge off and lit a cigarette, still thinking about my actions.

  Things couldn't keep going like that. And there was only one person I could talk about it. I steeled myself and called him.

  "Hello?" Grandfather's voice said on the phone.

  "You win, old man." My vision suddenly became blurred and I closed my eyes. "Killing those people did something to me. I'm not thinking straight."

  Before, I wasn't just running away from his anger for what I had done. I was also running away from his concern. If he did care about me, it meant some of the things he had told me were true. That he actually did put family above all else.

  How could I accept that from him?

  He had sent me an email with the names of the family members who had cut all ties with the family. Supposedly, they were faring well. I never checked.

  If grandfather really cared about me in his own twisted away... I don't know why, but it would hurt more than anything.

  "You little shit. I warned you about it. Where are you, boy?" His voice was a mix of anger, pity, and understanding.

  "Hiding," I replied simply.

  "It won't work. I covered for that V-Soft employee for you, but what you did is too big to be covered. If it was in another time, I could protect you. Not in the middle of this mess. Some of the senators and congressmen grew a conscience, can you believe that? It's harder to deal with their guilt than with the public."

  I didn't say anything, just kept smoking.

  Grandfather sighed. "Are you ready to come out of hiding?" His voice was now tired. Even more than when I had seen him after leaving Valia for the first time.

  "No."

  "Then even if I send you to a trusted psychologist, you won't go," he wisely concluded. "Call me when the police get to you and I'll at least keep you away from the death penalty."