by Charles Dean
Way to take charge, Sampson. Locke admired the Minotaur’s uncharacteristic leadership. The normally-goofy fighter had stepped up to take control of the situation even as Tubal seemed to break down, his face showing timidity. It's natural, I guess. His arrows didn’t even make the thing flinch.
“I got it,” Reginald affirmed, and the familiar yellow-highlighted shield showed up in front of Sparky right before the Dragon-Wing charged head first into the much, much larger Hippo. His wings extended out, and he shield-slammed the boss with way more force than Locke had ever seen. Unfortunately for Sparky, he just bounced off like a marshmallow ricocheting off the side door of a car.
It looked like the Hippo was finally going to do something other than saunter across the swamp when Sampson thrashed out and unleashed a fiery axe into the Hippo’s side. The results were less than dramatic and nothing nearly as spectacular as anyone had hoped for. The axe had worked--it had cleaved into the monster’s side, and blood was definitely spilling out of the Bishopotamus--but the beast didn’t seem to mind at all. It just looked back and forth between Sparky and Sampson, and then, as Katherine and Bianca started to come closer, it finally attacked.
In what looked like a blur, the giant, open, gaping mouth of the Hippo seemed to instantaneously teleport from where it was in front of the two barbaric melee fighters to Katherine’s position in the air. The movement was so sudden that no one was able catch the attack before its large teeth sank into Katherine’s waistline. The monstrous maw worked back and forth, slowly ripping her in half as waves from its lightning dash rolled out through the swamp water and struck the rest of the group in the chest. It was impossible to ignore the sounds of her screams, and the sheer terror conveyed in them spurred the group on as they frantically tried to kill the brute as fast as they could. But it didn’t matter. Her wailing never stopped.
“I’m almost dead! Help!” Katherine pleaded with them to work faster as her hit points reached bottom, and the Bishop finally managed to snap through her abdomen. The Succubus was split in half and the Bishopotamus chomped down the bottom half of her body like it was a piece of popcorn at the movie theater. When it was done, the brute reared its head back and tossed Katherine’s top half into the swamp, where it fell lifelessly from the air before disappearing beneath the thick cloud of blood-soaked water.
Holy crap, we’re going to die. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. What do I do? Locke panicked. Wait, I have the vitality poisons . . . This guy is clearly relying on his high vitality to mitigate damage. Maybe I can help out. Locke reached into his inventory, pulled out twenty of his freshest batch and chucked one after another into the Bishop’s mouth while it was chewing Katherine’s lower half. Thankfully, you have no manners. If you ate with your mouth closed, I wouldn’t be able to do this, Locke thought, and the third attempt successfully landed a bottle in the bishop’s mouth.
“Oh, God! That’s one already. He’s too quick!” Reginald screamed, and he managed to draw the ire of the Bishopotamus as it turned towards him. The brute’s mad dash slammed into him so hard that Reginald was knocked up into the air before bouncing off the back of a tree behind him with a loud snapping sound that was reminiscent of twigs shattering under the boots of a heavy-set man.
Locke managed to land another Fragility Poison in the Hippo’s mouth on his fifth try. This isn’t fast enough. It won’t help. “Reginald! Take these!” he called out to the staggering Satyr as he did his best to stand back up and regain his footing. When Reginald looked over, Locke tossed him a bag with twenty Fragility Poisons inside. Reginald instinctively caught it, but the look on his face told Locke that he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do with them.
Fortunately, knowing what he had to do didn’t end up being required. The Hippo rushed forward again, opened its man-sized jaws and slammed them shut on top of Reginald. Only the Satyr’s feet were visible, dangling from the massive jaws, as the Bishopotamus lifted his new snack into the air, bag and all.
God, I must be a horrible person for doing that. Locke cringed as he listened to the muffled wails from the Satyr as the Hippo slowly ate away at his ally’s health bar. I’m going to hell for this, but that beast just ingested two hundred points of vitality debuff. Everyone else should be able to kill him now. Locke looked at the rest of the Blue Phoenix Brigade, and defeat was visible on each face as they watched their colleague be consumed.
“Meet back at the bar across the street from the Lion Fountain when you die! You know the drill!” Tubal said, practically putting down his bow.
Does he not want to waste the arrows? I just wasted so many of my potions, and you’re giving up already?! Locke wanted to scream at him. “Don’t just give up! Fight!” he yelled, but he wasn’t exactly a beacon of leadership. Seeing that no one was moving, only watching in horror as their friend was slowly chomped to pieces, he decided that he had to risk it himself. He coated his blade with his best Deadly Poison and dashed at the Hippo from behind. “I gave up so much for this. Don’t let me down!” He was torn between his urge to stay out of harm’s way and make sure that his account was never at risk of being deleted and his unshakable need to make sure that he hadn’t just wasted all that potential gold inside of the Hippo’s belly. The latter won out. If I spend my money, I’m not going home without anything to show for it! He rallied himself and stabbed his puny rat-tanged sword into the hippo’s backside. Much like Sampson’s initial swing, it didn’t penetrate very deeply, but it did draw a small amount of blood.
Sampson and Sparky proved that they were the only two who were still going to try. Bianca and Tubal had both been reduced to a state of slack-jawed wonder as they sat on the sidelines of the battle with cowardice written across their faces.
“Well, if the flower-picking Human can fight, why can't we?” Sampson yelled as he rushed out, axe in hand.
“You won’t steal my vengeance!” Sparky yelled back. “I will have my retribution!” The two both struck out, one with a fiery axe and the other with a sword attack and fire breath as they slammed into the Bishopotamus. This time, though, their attacks were effective. The Fragility Poisons had done their job, and the Hippo’s flesh was brutalized as he roared in pain.
Locke’s instincts flared. Rat’s backed into a corner! Get out, Locke! The dying always try to take someone with them! He panicked again, and he sprinted backward as the hippo spun around. Its teeth sank into the fully-plated Dragon-Wing and swallowed him up in one bite too. Traces of Reginald were still visible when it opened its jaw to consume its new victim.
“For Hon--” Sparky’s voice cut off as the Hippo began to chew on him in earnest. “He--” Despite being partially devoured and stuffed down a monster’s gullet, Sparky was still alive. Locke could hear the muffled sounds of his voice as he desperately tried to convey something, but it was impossible to make out anything other than a few strangled grunts as they came out of the hippo’s mouth.
Sampson hacked away again and again, and eventually even Locke jumped back into the fray, repeatedly stabbing the Bishopotamus’s backside. He could feel his fury building with each stab. Curse you! Curse your stupid-tough skin! Curse your eating of my leveling crew, and curse you for making me waste money on you! Curse everything about you! he mentally raged as his dagger went in and out of the fat swamp boss.
“He’s dead, Shy,” Sampson said, falling back onto his butt. “We did it.”
Locke, having just lost so many of his potion bottles and the liquid gold they contained to that fiend, finally broke down. His face turned red, and he started sniffling as he thought about what the fight had cost him.
“I didn’t realize you cared about us so much.” Sampson reached over and nudged him. “You don’t have to worry, man. They’re going to reappear back in town. We’ll meet up with them there. It’s nothing we weren’t prepared for when we went chasing a boss.”
“Yeah, we’ve died before, Locke. It’s just a game. It’s touching that you’re almost crying over us, but
it’s not a big deal. It just means we’re going to lose a little time as we regroup.”
Locke looked up at Tubal and Sampson. Both had managed to put a hand on each of one of his shoulders as they tried to comfort him. You idiots. I know they’ll respawn, but each and every time I use one of those potions it puts me one step further away from my goal! He sniffled once more and wiped his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t actually crying. When he was finished, he took a deep breath.
“I can’t believe anyone would fight that hard for Reginald,” Bianca said, joining the group of misinterpreting friends. “He barely has any friends in real life with how much time he spends messing with everyone.”
“Hey, I’m his friend,” Tubal said, shooting her a glance, “and we’re his guild. So, we’re all supposed to be friends, right?”
“That’s why I said ‘barely’ and not ‘none,’” Bianca said and laughed. Sampson also chuckled at the joke.
“Yeah, but if we tell him that Shy got all misty eyed over Katherine and him dying, he’ll probably rag on poor Shy till the day he dies,” Sampson said. “That guy can’t help but mess with people.”
Tubal shook his head and said, “He needs to know better. It’s almost impossible to recruit people to the Blue Phoenix Brigade when he screws with every new member. We’re not big enough to get away with hazing.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You see how much Shy cares about us? Come on, Shy, you know you want to join us too.” Bianca gave Locke a look he had only seen on kids at the grocery store as they passed the candy aisle.
“Umm . . . Well . . .” Locke didn’t know how to excuse himself from this. “I was hoping to just level and focus on alchemy. This is all a bit too much for me,” he said, trying to weasel his way out of the situation politely. Please don’t be like Anthony.
“Don’t worry. There’s no pressure at all,” Tubal said as he started feeling around the Hippo’s body. “And what you described . . . That’s how every member of the guild starts off: just playing and having fun. Do what makes you happy. We’ll be here if you want a group to do it in. If you ever want to join, though, feel free to let us know. Heck, we may even start power-leveling you without the potion requirement. You wouldn’t believe it from this fight, but we’re actually a pretty good mercenary guild. We’ve been contracted out by an army commander from Sine Nomine a few times and even the Holy Alliance once or twice. Heck, it’s where I got this bathrobe. Managed to take it off of one of the Demons we killed in a large battle. Took most of our group to bring him down, but it was worth it. We earned a good rapport with the Holy Alliance.”
Locke clenched his fist as soon as the words ‘Holy Alliance’ left Tubal’s mouth. “Thanks for the offer. We’ll see how things pan out.” He decided that leaving it up in the air was probably for the best. There was no reason to reject them right away, but if they took a mission from the Holy Alliance, he would back out from the group in a heartbeat. At his level now, he could easily find his way back to the flowery area Ash had started him off in and make Deadly Poisons to his heart’s content.
“So what’s the boss loot, boss?” Bianca pestered as Tubal finished raiding the boss’s corpse. “Anything good drop?”
“Yeah. There is a two-handed scythe. I think you might like it, Sampson, since it’s pretty close in shape to an axe . . . and a shield that I think Sparky will love. The properties on both of these are really great. Oh, and there’s this,” Tubal tossed Locke a bracelet. “I’d probably keep it myself, but you put in work with those potions on that boss. Way to rally us back to the fight.”
Locke glanced at the item, and he had to control his instinct to drool as he read out its properties.
Band of the Faithful: +10 to Spirit, +10 to Concentration, 5% reduction in damage from the elements.
This. Is. Gold, he said to himself, staring at it. That 5% reduction in damage from the elements would sell for such a pretty penny he’d have trouble finding a big enough bag to hold all the gold. Well, at least the inventory does that for me. He snapped back to reality. “Are you . . . Are you sure I can take this?” He felt somewhat guilty. Sure, he had invested a lot of money in the kill, but they had lost three members of their group. He could get those potions back in no time, but that suffering they went through while being eaten . . . It definitely felt real. This item would have been great for anyone in their group, especially Reginald.
“Yeah, you earned it, man. I’d probably have given you the scythe, but I like to mess with Reginald, and I figured I’d give you the item that best suits him,” Tubal said, laughing.
“Thanks.” Locke felt his throat tighten up a bit as he stared at the bracelet. Did he really just give this to me with no expectation of anything back? “Thanks a lot.”
“If you really wanted to show your appreciation to the group, you could toss me a few more of those Deadly Poisons,” Bianca said as she moved in closer. “I mean, I think I’d really like that.”
And give up my bottles? “I’ll keep trading you for the empty bottles when the timers run down,” Locke said. The touchy-feely sensation was gone. Now he just needed to protect his loot. He was already low on his precious cash-generating potions, and he couldn’t afford to just throw them around willy-nilly.
A splashing sound interrupted whatever campfire mirth they were experiencing. “Someone’s coming,” Sampson said. He swung his new scythe into position, and the blue fire he often used for power attacks was already dancing across the blade. “It sounds like a person, and it’s getting closer.”
“I hope it’s just some random person. If it’s another boss, then we’re in real trouble,” Tubal said while he readied his bow, preparing for the worst. “Locke, we’re counting on you if it’s another one of those hip-hop-bishop-apottomo-whatevers. I know that whatever you had in that bag is the only reason we’re alive right now.”
Counting on me? Can we not? He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. He actually liked the group, and seeing them die in such a gruesome way had actually impacted him more than he had thought it would. “Of course, I’ll do what I can.” He feigned more enthusiasm than he actually felt. Even if it meant saving lives, he was never going to feel good about pouring money down the drain. Please, please don’t be a big enemy. I can stomach losing one or two more potions, but don’t make me lose another sack! All I have left are the upgraded +6 versions of the poison, and I don’t even know how expensive these bottles are yet! He took a deep breath to calm himself down and glanced around.
Just as soon as they all readied for combat, though, the sound of the approaching footsteps stopped entirely. “Where did it go?” Sampson looked around trying to find anything that would indicate the source of the noise. “Did it stop? Did it sense us?”
“I don’t know, but right now, I think we need to get out of here,” Tubal said. He appeared to be as lost as everyone else as he peered into the dense fog that hid the source of the noise. “Bianca, can you fly up and check for anything?”
“I would, but it’s too dark. I can’t see anything more than a few feet away. I say we just book it north. We’re not more than a fifteen-minute walk out of here, and if we sprint, we can do it in less than ten,” Bianca said as she flew into the air. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Grab everything that boss might have dropped and run. We can come back out here later to get the rest of the loot.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Sampson said and bolted. Locke tried to keep up, but the discrepancy between the movement speed of a Human and that of a Minotaur out of combat was considerable and was compounded by the large bull-man’s strides.
“Don’t leave me behind!” Locke wanted to shout out to Bianca and Sampson, but they were already so far ahead that their bodies had begun to disappear into the mist. He was afraid that calling out so loudly would attract whatever it was that was coming and draw it closer to them. Then he heard the splashing footsteps again. They were louder and crisper than they had been before, and Locke could actually tell tha
t the source of the noise was directly in front of them. It was a little bit to the right of the dead north they were running, but it was definitely coming towards them fast.
“She’s here!” Sampson yelled. “It’s just a player. No need for alarm!”
Sampson and Bianca both slowed down but kept their weapons drawn. “Hey, I’m Sampson. You gave us a start. We thought you were a boss. What brings you out here?” Locke and Tubal could hear Sampson talking to someone, but they were still too far ahead for either of them to make out who it was. They came into view just in time to see a figure turn blurry and a thrown weapon pierce through Bianca’s wing.
“Crap, she’s a Player Killer!” Sampson swung his axe at the figure as Bianca reeled from the assault.
“Help!” Bianca was spun around and thrown backward by the force of the attack, quickly losing all of her altitude and splashing down into the water.
Sampson’s axe narrowly missed the assailant and instead made a giant splash as the heaving metal blade sank into the thick layer of mud underneath the swamp’s water.
Locke couldn’t make out many of the player’s features other than that it was a dual-sword wielder with pitch-black hair and a dark outfit. He watched helplessly as the shadowy figure sprinted to where Bianca had landed and shoved both of her swords into the Succubus’s back, eliciting a spew of bubbles from Bianca’s submerged face. The player killer pulled both of her weapons from her skewered victim and then plunged them back in two more times in rapid succession. Bianca flailed about in the water, trying in vain to stand up, but each time she managed to get even the smallest bit of leverage, she was forced back down again by another series of blows from behind.
