38 Chapter 34: Fight!

The desert sucked. That was the nice way of putting it. We took what cover we could during the day and walked through the night. There were some plants, rocks, and small creatures but nothing worthwhile to go after. There were no monsters or anything else either. A true wasteland.

It was a never ending trail of painful walking. We were both too exhausted, mentally and physically to speak. We needed to conserve all our energy to focus on moving south. I was tempted to let my mind wander, but we needed to focus very clearly on the path ahead of us so we

After six days had passed I began to get worried since we did not see any mountains in the distance. Based upon my calculations we should be able to see the mountains from about hundred miles away. There was no way were going to make it as we stopped as the sun cleared the horizon to our left, the only indication that we were heading in the right direction.

"Tor, I don't think we can make it." She turned and gave me a look. "We are managing about twenty five miles per night. There should only be seventy miles left, but we still can't see the mountains to our south."

She was silent for over a minute. "I don't have any idea, unless you want to try and ride a worm." That was never happening after what I had seen and experienced.

"No, no worms."

"Then we have to keep going and hope for the best." I nodded and we napped out there in the desert for the rest of the day. We split open the empty satchels to lay them on top of our heads and part of our bodies. We made sure there was no piece of skin directly exposed to the sun.

The sand was everywhere. It was up my nose, in my butt crack, and in between my toes. If this was the last time I ever saw a desert it would be too soon. As the sun touched the horizon we both got up and enjoyed some of the fruits we had taken from the tower. My mouth was sticky and they made me light headed. I was never coming out here again, I kept repeating in my head as a mantra.

Once we were done, we set off again across the endless sands. I had thought about using my flame sword to lure monsters, but that was asking for trouble. Everything in the desert was insanely high level and the rumors on the forums supported that fact. No one had seen the nomads at all, but there was rampant speculation after my last video.

The best news I had received was a request for the cube and the offer of one million dollars for both it and a complete visual copy of the book from the tower. Paid in full if the cube was to be delivered to the city of Angal, which was north east of Breckley across the Sea of Salmir.

I was tempted, but it was clearly a trap. While the funds had been verified there was the requirement that I had to deliver it personally and not entrust a third party like Solid Steel.

Definitely a trap to lure me there and kill me.

I had a lot of time to debate my next move as I trudged across the desert. The main issue was that I was not powerful enough. I was a rouge, not a battle mage, nor a warrior. My chance of going head to head with anything truly powerful and coming out a winner was very low. I needed cheat code. I hadn't really pushed my active skills that much, and they would be worth some consideration once we got someplace that wasn't a desert.

I had been using monsters to help bridge that gap in skill, but unless I tamed a dragon, that gap was going to keep increasing. The Mystery Man was definitely more powerful than me. Also the last notification on player rank still put in the top one thousand, not the top fifty.

When I had seen that I cursed internally. I needed to find some easy to kill high level mobs and farm the hell out of them. That morning as the sun came up we saw the mountains. That brought a smile to both our faces.

Three days later we reached the foot of the mountains at dawn and found a small stream. It was glorious water. We both washed the horrid sticky taste out of our mouths and then drank our fill. After that was washing off the soot, dust, and sand that we were coated in and take a bath.

While the small stream wasn't very deep, it was deep enough. I felt alive again. "That was refreshing."

"Yeah, we made it. Don't know where exactly, but we made it."

"The nearest city is Yaxel to our south west. Then there is Telerith to the south east. Both are along

the coast, but Telerith is probably twice as far and we have to cross these mountains in either case."

"Well we need food, hopefully there is something edible we can kill out here."

"True, but any opinion on what we should do. I am planning to go back to Breckley to complete my quest."

"That wedding is going to be locked up so tight. You won't have a chance."

"It would be epic."

"An epic disaster. After all the stunts you have pulled, they will be on high alert."

"Probably. But crashing the wedding would be legendary."

"Kenji…Blood Rain. You need to slow down."

"I am weak…."

"You mean the ranking notification."

"Yeah, only in the top thousand."

"Better than me."

"But not good enough."

"Well I should give you a heads up. Once we hit a city, I plan to head to the Ulrin Empire. Alone." The words cut into me. Tor, my friend, my companion.

"Really? Why?"

"You are fun and I enjoy it, but you are a disaster magnet. I mean worms, dragons, goddesses. I didn't start playing this game to win. I want to enjoy the time I have here."

"I could go with you."

"You are a trouble magnet." As if to prove her right there was the sound of things approaching. I took out my blades and readied myself. Seven players were slowly advancing down the mountainside. Two archers, two casters, and three swordsmen if there outfits and weapons were any clue. A well balanced group and well armed from what I could tell. They all had weapons drawn and were spread out quite a bit.

"Run or fight?" I asked.

"Run, no way we can win. East along the mountains." I nodded and we set off at a brisk walk carefully watching our SP. The players behind us quickly picked up pace moving to a light jog.

We increased our speed and they increased their speed in turn.

"Stay at my speed, we will make them burn out. Drop everything you have." The in game mechanics caused a massive jump in SP consumption every 10 mile per hour increase in speed. I had practiced enough to put my speed right below that at 9.9 miles per hour.

It made a huge difference. SP consumption went from 0.165 every second to 3.333 every second. That was with being under our carry weight. The player's chasing us were weighed down twice if not three times as much if their armor was anything to go by. While they probably had high strength to compensate, I could only hope. My SP regen was 1.59 per minute and I knew that the player's chasing us couldn't be that much higher in terms of SP if they had invested in strength.

With a maximum SP of around 2090 I could keep up this pace for around 200 minutes. Since we had been walking a good portion of the night we had used up quite a bit of SP, I had about two thirds of that. If they went up to 19.9 miles per hour they would have about 60 seconds at that speed, hopefully.

With the distance between us it would be close, but even if they caught up they would be out of SP and be slaughtered. With the numbers view able for the stats I had taken quite a bit of my down time to check exactly how the game mechanics worked. While things were very real, this world was governed by status points not by individual talent.

The main issue was that despite all of this Tor only had around 200 SP at the moment if I had to guess. She dropped her spare satchels as we ran and handed me her bow and quiver. Since she was under her max carry weight once I took her bow and quiver she would only burn 0.165 SP every second, which meant 20 minutes of running.

The group chasing us began to close on us which meant that they had to be burning SP like mad. It was tempting to speed up, but I maintained the same pace. Running out of SP was a death sentence in combat. All movement required SP, once it hit zero you were only limited to your regen which would be nowhere near enough. This meant one could literally not move with zero SP.

Tor looked worried as she glanced back. "Don't panic, stay at this pace no matter what." She gave me a quick nod. I was counting off the seconds in my head. After fifteen seconds of running I heard them shouting at each other but couldn't make out what they were saying. I slowed down a bit to give them hope to keep chasing us.

A quick glance showed they kept up the pursuit but the swordsmen and casters had fallen back to a slower pace. Smart, the archers would pressure us while the fighters conserved SP. I went back up to 9.9 miles per hour and they kept up the chase already locked into a course of action. That was the bad part about groups like theirs with no clear leader, no snap decisions to adjust to a clever opponent quickly.

The two archers were literally twenty feet behind us. I looked at Tor and gave a small nod and tossed her weapons back. She caught them and kept going while I drew my flame blade and turned around. "Flame on. Fear aura, five minutes." I sprinted at near my maximum speed, just under 30 mph.

That was the thing about being in a game that seemed real, it could suck you in and convince you that things were similar to how the real world worked. The fastest human could do about 28 mph and I had blown past that.

I crossed the twenty feet in half a second and decapitated one of the archers. His companion was notching an arrow when I closed in on him and slashed through his bow and across his chest. His leather armor took the brunt of the attack but it was still crippling as he let out a scream and collapsed.

I kept moving immediately after the attack towards Tor. "Flame off." I sheathed Nus' Awakening and came up next to Tor. The people chasing us had stopped at the bodies of their comrades and we proceeded in a stare off. Despite killing one and disabling another, I didn't hold much hope against the rest.

With three fighters they could easily cover the two casters, who were the biggest threat. "I could probably get one of the casters." Tor said.

"True, but if they have buff magic they could easily blow past me and get to you. We can't wait them out either since they were probably sleeping all last night." We were not in a good position. "There could also be other groups out here hoping to intercept us. They also could have tracking skills or magic. We are screwed." We stood still to conserve our SP while keeping an eye on the other group.

"We have to fight. You go for the female caster, I got the guy."

"Should I be jelly?"

"He is the bigger target and yes." The archer that had been burned was healed by the female caster.

"Go." I began a run forward. Tor was going slower, with an arrow nocked. The swordsmen spread out. "Flame on." My blade burst into flame. I kept my pace steady and at ten feet out I burst forward. The swordsmen moved his shield to block me while jabbing out.

I twisted to the side to avoid the blade and kept going. "Arula!" The swordsmen cried out as I closed on the female caster. She brought both her hands up. Spells were like lasers. Very fast, straight forward, and lost power as distance increased. I kicked off to the side as her hands flashed. There was a blast of dirt behind me and I noted two of the swordsmen closing in quickly.

I couldn't keep up this speed for long and rushed at the mage. She didn't have time to get another spell off as my blade slashed across her breast and side. I stopped and spun around behind her. She collapsed to her knees and I grabbed her hair with my left hand.

The swordsmen didn't hesitate but kept moving forward to either side. No hostage negotiation apparently. Tor had managed to hit the other caster in the heart and was currently running away from the last swordsmen, her bow and arrows discarded to conserve SP.

I jerked up and yanked the woman into the path of swordsman on my left. He slowed down so as to not run into her. The swordsman on the right jabbed at my chest. I moved to the side and let his attack go forward, our blades sliding along each other. I then pushed myself right up to him with the flame blade between us. My clothes caught on fire and so did the padding for his armor.

I was 90% resistant to flames, he wasn't He let out a scream and collapsed to the ground and began rolling about. I barreled over his trashing body as I felt the tip of a blade cut across my back leaving a shallow wound. I began running after Tor.

She had looped out towards the desert and was now returning, the third swordsman was right on her heels. It was agonizing moving slowly towards her, but my SP was down to around 300. I had two good bursts of speed left.

Tor was heading for her bow and arrows and I was coming in at an angle. The swordsman had fallen into tunnel vision and missed as I put on a burst of speed the last couple of feet and drove my flame blade straight into the side of his neck. The blade was pulled from my grip as he collapsed.

I looked behind me and the swordsman I had retreated from earlier had been chasing me the entire time. He jabbed out with his blade. I wasn't able to move out of the way in time as it cut along the side of my skull and took off the tip of my left ear.

I kicked out with my right foot. The prong from my tri-foot pierced the metal cup the man was wearing and went into his groin. He let out a yell as he slammed his shield into my face. I collapsed on the ground, unable to think clearly.

He brought his sword up above his head and reversed his grip. "Die!" He yelled out. An arrow hit him in the shoulder bounced off his armor. It caused him to stumble forward and he drove the sword above my right shoulder and next to my head instead of my heart.

I kicked out with both my legs at his knees. They didn't shatter but he was knocked backwards onto his back. We both slowly got back up to our feet. I used my last burst of speed to lariat him. My arm was definitely going to have a bruise the next day but the attack worked. It was a good thing he was short as I was.

I then drove the prong of my right foot into the side of his head. I did it two more times just to be sure he was dead. I looked over at Tor. She was trading shots with the archer while the female caster worked on the burnt swordsman. I took my flame blade and a fallen sword from one of the corpses and began to walk slowly towards the injured group.

The swordsman got to his feet but he was unsteady. When I lit up my flame blade again, I could see the fear in his eyes. I gave a wild grin and shouted, "I do love fresh meat." The caster and the archer both drew daggers as I closed in. I stopped forty feet away and we stared at each other. "So who are you ass holes?" I asked.

"Red Dawn." The archer said. I guess it made sense since the clothing I could see was dyed red.

"Well at least you aren't the She-Hulks."

"Indeed. We are both almost out of SP, so what now?" The swordsman asked.

"Maybe you are, but I am still going." I grinned despite lying. I could see the worry in their faces. I began to advance.

"Observe." The swordsman said. I could see his eyes flickering over my status. "Guys we just need-" I cut him off by swinging my flame sword at him forcing him to back away. I pivoted and rushed the archer. He dodged the flame blade but I was able to drive my other sword into his leg.

During my attack Tor had managed to hit the caster in the head with a well-aimed shot, killing her instantly. That left the swordsman. He charged me using his shield as a battering ram. I braced myself and allowed the wood shield to push me back while leaning on it.

He stopped pushing and jerked the shield back. I pushed right into him and tackled him to the ground. I held the flame sword close while making sure his blade didn't connect with me. He tried bashing his head on mine, but I was much shorter and my head came up to his chest.

With the pain from the flame blade it was easy to keep rolling across the ground so he didn't crush me underneath him. His armor was growing hot. While I was immune to flames, I was not immune to burning metal. I pushed him away and rolled the other direction.

Tor stabbed him in the neck after I got to my feet. It was over. Oh my god it was over. I was tempted to collapse back on the ground, but we needed to get to work. I killed off the archer and began to burn the bodies. Tor went around checking them for gear and stripping the cleaner clothes off one of the archers for me to wear since my shirt and pants were just about gone.

None of them had packs with them, they probably had a camp back near the spring. Loaded down with four swords and a bunch of arrows we made our way to find their campsite. My SP was hovering at around fifteen, which meant that I needed a lot of rest.

Experience

+108 4 -3 LvL

I noted that the ones I killed were only three levels below me, which meant they were at level 83. No wonder why they weren't affected by my Fear Aura. Ahhh, I really needed to be a lot stronger if I wanted to survive. Stupid experience curve made leveling near impossible.

PvP Winner-3

To the death!

+3 Fate

+1% Constitution per LvL

Well at least something good came from this disaster. We stopped at the spring and washed off. Once I was clean Tor bandaged up my wounds. I was down to 3231 out of 11906 HP. With a regen of around 9 HP per hour, that meant a thousand hours to heal back up or little over a month and a half. I had also lost the tip of my left ear and would have a nasty scar across my face. At least I still had my eye and most of my ear.

I put on the archer's clothes. The collar was a bit singed, but thankfully my flame blade had cauterized most of the wound when I had cut off his head. A bit of work with a dagger and I managed to make the pants and sleeves short enough. It was still a bit breezy due to the larger size.

A look at my flame blade showed that it had two nicks along the edge. That weapon was literally the greatest thing I had come across in game. I couldn't afford to lose it. I looked over the rest of the blades in my possession. I kept the remaining three since they all appeared to be in good condition. I also kept two daggers. They weren't throwing daggers but they would do in a pinch hopefully.

I had lost my leather harness and throwing knives in the balloon crash. I had taken them off for whatever reason and they had gone up with everything else along with my pieces of armor. The armor the swordsman wore was plate, not just arm and leg guards. I also didn't want to take the leather the archers wore since that was just asking for trouble. I would think it would block a blow, but it wouldn't, and then I would lose a limb.

We then headed back the way the group had come. Their camp was set up on a ridge over looking the spring and a good chunk of the desert. A perfect look out point. Thankfully they had stale bread and slabs of mystery meat. I got to work on cooking the mystery meat while Tor began looting everything.

Once the meat was cooked and made into sandwiches we ate and rested. Once we were full we put out the fire and went to sleep despite it being around noon. Neither of us had the energy to stand watch. Thankfully nothing attacked during the night. The players had probably cleared out the surrounding area of any monsters.

I woke up to the sound of Tor moving about outside the tent I was in. I got up and looked out and saw her over in the bushes. I went back in tent and got dressed and started to work on breakfast.

"I think we should split up now." Tor said when she came back to the campfire.

I didn't say anything for half a minute. "Alright, then lets split up the supplies." There was no point in starting in argument when she had already made up her mind.

We had more mystery meat in the morning and went over our supplies we had looted. Twenty seven silver, and eight nine copper. We split the money between ourselves. I was tempted to ask Tor to stay with me again, but after yesterday I wasn't hopeful.

We each took a pack with a tent, striker to start a fire, canteens of water, spare set of clothes, and all the bread. "You sure you want to leave now?"

"Yes, I don't stand out like you do. I will let my hair grow out a bit and the new outfit I took should disguise me well enough. You heard the rumors, high fate is a death sentence." She gave me a look and I gazed off at the desert to the side.

"Yeah. We make a kick ass team though."

"Maybe we will meet up again."

"Maybe. So west?"

"Yeah, going to catch a ship at Yaxel and get away from this hell hole of a desert."

"I don't blame you. Probably make my way east towards Galmore and Breckley. Got a wedding to crash."

"Good luck with that. I expect something epic."

"Yeah, good luck to you too. Stay in touch through the atrium."

"Of course." We both stared at each other for a moment unsure what to say. Tor then turned and walked off. I let out a long sigh.

I turned and headed off in the opposite direction. I was all alone in the wilderness which was never good. No one was there to cover my back. It just reinforced my opinion on either having good minions or good allies, but one could never have both in the same person.

I had three months until the wedding with Lady Breckley and her husband to be. I needed that time to heal up and work on developing my active skills.

Power Slash-4 <Active Skill>

My sword is better

6x Attack damage for a single attack with a cutting weapon

Cost: 500 SP

Conceal Presence-4 <Active Skill>

...

No one can sense your presence while you are unmoving

Cost: 1 MP per Second

Fear Aura-4 <Active Skill>

Run for the hills!

LvL 1: All LvL -50 will feel uncomfortable around you

LvL 2: All LvL -10 will feel uncomfortable around you

LvL 3: All LvL -50 will flee from you

LvL 4: All LvL -10 will flee from you

Cost: 1 MP per Minute, 1 SP per Minute

Meditate-5 MAX <Active Skill>

You are on the path to enlightenment

LvL 1: +100% MP Regen

LvL 2: +200% MP Regen

LvL 3: +400% MP Regen

LvL 4: +600% MP Regen

LvL 5: +800% MP Regen, +1% Wisdom

Cost: Cannot move

Mental Defense-4 <Active Skill>

Make sure you file everything correctly

LvL 1: +20 AP to mental defense, can recognize a mental attack

LvL 2: +40 AP to mental defense

LvL 3: +60 AP to mental defense, +1% MP

LvL 4: +80 AP to mental defense, +2% MP

Cost: 10 MP per Minute

I looked over the active skills. Mental Defense had come from Meditate which probably meant more active skills when those hit the max level of five. I ignored Observe and Identify. While useful, they didn't provide the combat potential I needed. I could work on Conceal Presence while using Meditate to recover MP to use for Mental Defense.

I had no idea what AP stood for, but I definitely wanted more of it around my mind. Mental attacks were the most dangerous and I wanted to avoid those at all costs. Fear Aura was another technique I would work on. It was fairly cheap and a good area of effect to force a noob swarm back.

Meditate would put my MP regen around 1.6 per hour. So about 15 MP per day with a lot of meditating. The MP regen was brutal, which was why I stayed away from active skills for the most part. I could work on Power Slash since SP would fill up every day but I needed a monster to use it on.

Looking at my map in my atrium I had worked out that it was around 750 miles to Helsinn in the west, following the mountain range. I wasn't even going to try the cities south of me after the most recent ambush. At 20 miles per day, that would be a journey of a bit less than forty days. Enough time for me to heal up and a slow enough pace for me to meditate and hunt for food every day.

I went south for a bit and would put that at the end of my recording of the fight to hopefully throw pursuers off. Even scaling things back to a delay of an in game month it clearly hadn't worked at throwing people off.

Someone had actually set up a site specifically to track my location along with other players of interest. With all the programs out there it was simple enough to take screen shots of the shadows and position of the sun to estimate the time of day. While I could blur some things, it was impossible to block out all of this background information and still have a decent video.

The one good thing was that people didn't mind the delay with all the craziness going on around me. I had capitalized on the most recent video. Despite being pay to watch, the video of the dragon and worm attack was pulling in a lot of money. With the privacy filters in place, people were not able to record the video and re-publish it. At a cost of ten dollars to watch it a single time with no pause or screen shots it was incredible how much I was making. Thank you copyright protections and broadcaster license.

I had passed the million dollar mark and was feeling very good about getting enough money for my mom. The player battle would go up under my normal ad revenue scheme so as not to turn people off. It was tempting to hire someone to manage my publicity, but I needed to save every cent.

That was why I needed to crash the wedding. Normally I would have waited a year in game so they let their guard down, but now the anticipation was building. Regardless of what happened, that video would secure my financial future. Surviving would be the hard part. A video to top Rain of Blood. I would need every trick and then some to pull this off. If I didn't run into trouble and managed to get a half decent ship, it would take two months and change to reach Breckley. Ten days to get supplies and another ten days to set up.

Getting a ship to Breckley would be tough, but if the rumors online were correct Galmore would be interested in messing things up to prevent an alliance between Breckley and Therdossa. Well I had a lot of time to plan during my trek to the east.

***

UltimataSecret: Everyone converge!

MindMeld: I seeeeeeeeeeeeee you

GODHAXLOL: You need.....AIRSHIPY

PowerOfFaith: Curse you demon spawn

RoidBeaast1: Note, bug foot is bad ass

Envy: Those players sucked

6996: Small scale ambushes are tricky, and their prey trickier

UltimataSecret: Everyone go craft

Worm: I am so becoming a worm rider, yee haw

Tafe: Respect my authority!

Envy: Run!

***