8 The Trial by Fire

"So what is it?"

"What is what?"

"THE TRIAL BY FIRE!" I slammed my fist against the table of the guild hall.

"After you said that, you didn't even wait for my answer. You just started running off to the guild hall."

"Oh, right. The trial by fire. There's a quest that I tried to undergo, but I've been having difficulties with it. Long story short, there's a manor in the upper reach that has a ghost problem. It's a classic poltergeist. Anyone that ventures into the east wing of the manor gets killed. It was a level three quest at first, but more and more heroes died, so the recommended level got upgraded to eleven. That's when I got my hands on it. On my first try, the ghost took the weapons off of me and the unit I was working with. Thankfully, no one died that time, but I lost my shield. It was a red item."

"I've been meaning to ask, how do items work in this game? How do you know what items are better than others?"

"I'm not your fairy. Now wait here. I have to go recruit a proper unit for this quest." Aegis walked off to go upstairs.

You were so eager to tell me about frontiers but not about items? Whatever. I'll just ask Faye about it.

I called out Faye's name and she popped into the room right in front of me. "Heya!"

"Hey Faye. Do you mind telling me how ranking items in this game works?" I asked the fairy.

Faye then began to break down items. Each item has a tier that's color-coded. From lowest to highest, they go like this: blue, green, purple, red, and yellow. Potenshia and Aegis's shield are both red tier items, so that should go to show how good they are. Apparently, yellow items are so rare, only one player has one at the moment. My axe however is a blue tier item-

"MY AXE!"

I opened my items and still saw that it was equipped. It had not only the "E" which represented that it was equipped, it had an "X" next to it as well. My poor axe that I got from the two wolves...

During the fight with Anarchy, They took my own axe and used it against me for a moment. But here my UI magic was, claiming that I had it equipped...But I don't have it!

Faye noticed my confusion and commented "Think of items as things you summon into existence once you add them into your inventory for use later. Your axe is still equipped but its completely broken. You can tell by the E and X. As for getting it back, all you have to do is unequip it and equip it again."

I pushed a couple of buttons to unequip it and equip it again and what appeared before my eyes wasn't the axe I went into battle with...

A collection of pieces of wood and two halves of the blade of my axe appeared before my eyes and dropped to the floor.

"Oh no. It looks like Anarchy got mad that they lost you and took it out on your axe." Faye frowned.

My knees dropped to the floor.

THIS is my axe? They literally split the damn blade in half. HOW DID THEY SPLIT THE BLADE IN HALF? WHYYYYYYY WOULD THEY SPLIT THE BLADE IN HALF?!?!

"I'll kill them all..."

"Don't worry about it, Matthew! We can get a new one or even fix this one!"

"You won't need a weapon where we're going, Matthew." Aegis returned with two other people.

One was a rogue and the other was a priestess. Both of them were level nine.

I could tell by their body language that they were dating. Is every offense player dating every support player or something? Do girls like offense players? Does Lucia like offense players? The rogue then sent me an invite to his party. I looked at Aegis for some help.

"These two are guildmates that have agreed to help with the quest. say hi to Box and Rose."

"Nice to meet you! I'm Box." The rogue ran up to me and shook my hand. I'm getting a really friendly aura from him. It's kind of off-putting how nice he seems to be.

"Rose." The priestess kept it short. The aura I was getting from her was...the exact opposite.

"Alright then. Now with introductions out of the way, let's get moving."

The trip to the manor was...interesting to say the least. Turns out that Box is a complete doormat to his girlfriend. He's a doormat, but apparently he has been standing up for himself lately and that has been leading them to clash more. Almost every five minutes, a new conversation would be brought up about their IRL fights and one of them would bring up something terrible that the other did that would spiral the argument into a whole new tangent. I now know more about these two than the average player and that makes me very angry. While they argued a few paces behind Aegis and I, I asked him about the kingdom of Jericho.

"So earlier you called this richer area the upper reach? Wanna elaborate?"

Also wanting to drown out the couple's quarrel behind us, he humored me. "A couple hundred years ago, the kingdom of Jericho wasn't really a kingdom, but a small town. When the demons started to gain the upper hand, more and more people began to migrate to be as far away from the demons as possible. Jericho was the furthest town from the demons, so it was only natural that people would come here. It was also just as natural that people would take advantage of that. The original townspeople began to call themselves 'chosen nobles' and started taxing the newcomers. Not soon after, they built an entire castle with manors and villas surrounding it and called it the upper reach. Anywhere in the kingdom that isn't in the upper reach is separated by these steps and considered the lower reach."

That would explain why it's taking so long for us to get there. These steps were designed to tire out commoners. They're apparently called "the thousand steps."

When we finally got into the upper reach and to the manor, a butler was there waiting for us. He yawned and began to walk us over to the east wing.

"Give it your best shot." He opened the door to reveal a large ballroom that hasn't seen any attention for a while. Cobwebs and dust riddled the venue. But the most trouble thing was the specter that stood at the center of the dancefloor, the bodies of dead adventurers surrounding it. I looked at its stats to find out that its a level 10 monster! I'm getting excited already.

"Well then!" Aegis grabbed a seat and began to watch us.

"This is your trial by fire, Matthew. Let's see how you tank when you have lives that aren't your own on the line."

So wait, he's not gonna help? Whatever. I'll do my best to protect the these two!

Box and I dashed towards the ghost that stood before us. The ghost whispered "I don't want to work anymoreeeeee." Although it was a whisper, we heard it clearly resound throughout the ballroom. It lifted one of its hands and levitated multiple weapons that belonged to the dead adventurers in the air. The ghost sent three weapons flying to me and I just barely dodged them.

"Ha! Too easy!" I yelled out.

Box took a different approach. He wielded a shortsword, so he was confident in his ability to deflect the weapons that were coming his way. The problem was that there were three weapons, but he only saw two because because a knife was being hidden behind another weapon. When he deflected the second weapon, he didn't see the knife. He had no time to dodge it.

"Hnngh!" I let out a whimper in pain as I used my arm to block the knife.

I looked at my HP and noticed it was down by quite a bit. I felt even better when Rose used her healing skill on me. I took the knife out of my arm and continued my charge with Box. Once we got into melee range, I made sure to use undead's beckon beforehand to get its attention.

I saw the visual cue and knew that that ghost was interested in me and only me. With that knowledge, I prepared to claw at the ghost, but I noticed that Box has lost his weapon while trying to attack the apparition and had to shield him once more but this time from his own sword. Really?! It's that easy to lose your weapon?!

I then noticed that forks and spoons that were littered on the floor began to glow near Rose. Damn it! We can't attack him because he's a ghost, so how do we kill him?

"WE NEED TO LEAVE! THERE'S NO WAY WE CAN TAKE THIS THING-"

"The ghost locks the door for ten minutes. It progressively controls more and more things as it does so, by the way." Aegis says while helping himself to a book.

We're in a situation where only the tank can do damage, but I obviously can't do enough damage with my fists alone. We need to just survive the ten minutes. Box and I dashed to Rose and she immediately understood what to do. She pushed a table onto its side to use as a shield to brace. Box and I vaulted over the table and as soon as we did, weapons hit the table. Not even moments later, the table started to give a faint glow and I instinctually grabbed the two and shielded them with my body.

The table floated into the air and revealed my back to the ghost. It sent yet another volley of weapons to attack me and they all pierced my back. The constant influx of weapons piercing my body was rapidly decreasing my HP and Rose could see that, so she casted multiple healing skills.

"Lesser healing! Greater healing! Heal! Heal! Heal!" Rose desperately casted skill after skill, but my health wasn't showing any signs of improvement.

This sucks. I'm gonna die here without doing a damn thing. This is what being a normal tank gets me? This is what being selfless gets me? In that case, I wanna be selfish-

hehehehehehehehe

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

"You're smiling...We're about to die...and you're smiling!" Box said in disbelief as he noticed my wide grin.

It's time to turn the tables.