Chapter 2 - The Minotaur

Main Quest 1:

Area: London – Canary Wharf Tube Station

Time limit: 30 minutes

Conditions: ??? or Survive

My thoughts raced as I read the quest pop-up. Looking around I could see everyone else had it too. I was wrapped in the silence that had befallen London. No one made a sound. No one dared move. No one did until the tidal wave of people began.

It was sudden, and in union, when the screams first started. They were briefly without a physical form before we saw the wave crash into the corridor below. Dozens of people fled the platform back into the station. I watched from the top of the escalator. I watched as the carnage and panicked overflowed on the escalator and people fell over, people stepped over the fallen, and the slow were pushed aside. Soon the first runners were around us and passed by. It felt like those who had not been at the platform were still held in place. We had not yet processed what was occurring.

Splat

The sound came from below.

Boom

Not an explosion but a giant footstep. It rung out. As the screams passed by and headed to the exit of the station, I could hear these more and more.

I had still yet to see what made all these people afraid. But after the initial wave there was a single man. He backed up into my vision, rounding the corner. He was a weedy man, thin and gaunt. He was swallowed by the tracksuit he was wearing. I thought "He's the type of guy to have a knife." I was right but God do I wish I was wrong. "Surely it must be a gunman that had him so scared." I had still had my sense of rationality intact at this point. But that drained from me, as did all the warmth in my body, when I saw what he and everyone else had fled from.

That hulking creature. The small blade I suspected the man to have had indeed once been his but now it belonged to the thing in which it has found itself buried within. A bare torso showing muscles cultivated by an otherworldly force. A stature that towered over anyone in its way. A chestnut fur covered its head going all the way to its snout about which dripped with a wet and viscous mucus. The legs were much the same – where the abdominals stopped the fur began and went down to thick hairy legs. Half man. Half Bull. The Minotaur appeared before us. It carried a golden battle axe that was drenched and stained with the deep crimson life force of those who had not been able to run. A stream of blood leaked from the beast's right forearm, where a knife stuck out.

With one motion it raised the golden weapon and then with another effortless one it swung.

Splat

I watched as that man stopped being. I had no idea who he was in life, but I saw his body dissected and his blood gushed out of both halves of the torso. The top half stayed where it was whilst the bottom one was sent adrift into the wall, sliding on the once polished floors. As both came to a stop it took my body a moment to react to what I had seen, still recoiling from the monster of myth I was seeing before me. Not once, not for even a hesitant moment, did I question if that was a real beast or a costume. I knew it was real.

My blood ran cold. All that separated me from death was an escalator. I watched as it exhaled a hot breath from his nose and that guttural grunt it made as it tried to find its next victim; we were not prey; this was for sport. I could see as its face twisted into a satisfied smile. The smile that came with spotting me. Spotting us.

When our bodies had come unfrozen after the death of that man Matt cried out in disbelief and Sara dropped to the floor in fear. I stayed put. I met its gaze.

One thing Thesus' great slaying of the beast never mentioned was its eyes. Cows and bulls have big doe like eyes, those cute black orbs that stare at your soul and warm it, as if there is not a thought behind them. But these, these belonged to a hunter. Looking into those eyes I met the circle of life for the time and knew my death had come to visit me unless I could change fate.

It was then, as if my brain just acclimatised to the situation, that I realised what I had to do. This was a game, that pop-up box, the fact there was such a thing as a quest. That was a mythical creature, one who had been defeated before. And whoever was giving this quest wanted what every MMO wants their players to be: Heroes. "So, let's give it what it wants or die trying." I thought.

"Matt you good?" I said, not taking my eyes off the creature.

"Are you for real? Of course, not?" He sounded wounded but it was just fear.

"Remember a few months ago you said you could take a cow with your bare hands? Wanna try?"

"You can't be serious man! Whatever this is wants us to survive and that thing is down there. We have no reason to fight it!" He was getting angry, and he looked like he'd rather hit me than it.

"It's a game, right? You get XP from killing things. And plus, there's that mystery condition." I turned to look at him, finally breaking the mental fight I'd had with the myth. "There's only an escalator between us and him. Plus, it's our first mob, it might be a boss but if we both fight it, I'm sure we can win." I stared at him, every bone in my body was filled with sincerity. At that moment fear had left my body.

"Jin listen to me, for a minute. If we go down, there it'll kill us. We can turn, run, and live."

"Do you trust me?" I asked. Not breaking eye contact.

"As far as I can throw you." He was desperate.

"Good thing you're strong then." He sighed at that and then joined me by my side. Our enemy, our hunter looked up at us.

"Are we taking the escalator down to death?" Matt asked, with the innocence of a puppy. I threw him a look as if he was dumb.

"Meeting our death and you don't want to slide down the middle column?" He cracked a smile at that. "Ride or die?" I held up my fist.

"Ride or die." He said and fist bumped me. We jumped onto the middle column and slid down on our backs. As we did, I undid my tie.

Our attacker slammed his axe down in the middle of us, trying to catch both of us. We rolled off to the side and landed on our feet. Sparks flew and metal bent under the weight of blade. It came out easy enough, too easy. It looked at both of us, we stood either side of him. Readied.

"What's the plan?" Matt asked me, he didn't take his eye off the behemoth in front of us. Up close it was easy to see it was about eight foot tall.

"Attack it. Try and get that knife out of him. Don't get hit."

"Okay so no plan then?"

"No."

I remember it took a long time before any of us moved. Matt was the first one to break the deadlock. He charged forward with his huge shoulders he slammed into the beast.

It stumbled back slightly with a grunt. I don't remember my body moving but I was behind it now, and I kicked at the back of what I thought were knees. Which made the animal cry out with a pained moo.

It really became a blur for me; we took turns beating on The Minotaur. We tried to keep a distance between us and it, the axe was terrifying to us still. Every swing it took for it was just part of it's life but for us it was the end of ours. We worked together as if we had practiced this before but not only had we never worked like this before, but I didn't even know Matt could fight at all. What we did was instinctual. But without a plan instincts could only get us so far.

Matt had his back against the wall of the tube station. A poster for a musical at the west end was soon going to be where his blood laid.

It took a sick pleasure in approaching him. It was so close I know that Matt would have felt it's hot breath, what a horrible feeling right before death. For moments I could only watch. Thinking about what I could do.

I slipped my tie off and put it in my hand.

The creatures raised the axe.

Matt tried to protect his head with his arms.

At the moment of the swing, I took a leaf out of Matt's book. I ran. I jumped. I slammed every bit of mass my body had into the back of that monster.

Rip. Rip. Rip.

Three tears could be heard, and Matt opened his eyes to see the hunter's eyes staring down at him filled with aggression. It was hunched over, its face now just above his. The axe had broken the poster and into the wall. But its horns had also pierced the poster and wall. Where the axe had a large surface area and blade, so it created a book for itself to exist within the horns of the bull were so sharp and such a focused point of pressure that it had gotten stuck.

It tried to pull itself out and with each yank of the head it got closer. So, I ripped the knife out of its forearm, causing a momentary cease on the freeing as it cried out and blindly swung a bleeding arm to try and get me.

I jumped on the chiselled back, avoiding the once more flailing arm. I was a bug that needed swatting. In a swift motion I had wrapped my tie around the neck of The Minotaur and strained with all my might to wrench the beast away from Matt. Matt, a man who I'd rarely seen angry did something unexpected, he reached up and grabbed the golden ring that adorned the nose of The Minotaur. With every ounce of strength, he had cultivated from his various athletic endeavours, combined with my pulling away, he yanked the ring out. A pained bellow released from the villainous creature. It felt, for the first time since ancient myth, fear. Blood erupted from the cavity created from the lack of septum Matt had forced into existence. Relinquishing the stubbornness, it mustered all its strength to remove its horns from the wall that held it in place and fled backwards; not only did it lose its grip on the axe, but it fell, with me still on top of it.

I jumped and rolled off of it landing in the pool of blood that was both fresh and stale. The blood of that man I saw before stained my trousers and the blood of the creature stained my white shirt. It was then the ridicouslyness of our situation hit me and I felt genuinely disgusted and nearly threw up at the fact that what used to be a person was now on me. I gagged slightly, doing so allowed me to see the golden axe the creature once wielded against us now fallen upon the floor. As it had stumbled back the axe had managed to come loose from the wall. "Matt, grab the axe!" I shouted. He knew what to do and he grabbed it as I stood up.

The strength differential between us and it had not been as clear as when Matt tried to raise that weapon from the bloody floor. He was straining the entire time, whatever swing he took he would be relying on gravity for most of it. During the scuffle, the knife that had once adorned the creature's forearm had found its way in front of me. I picked up the small blade, it had been died a murky brown colour from the dried blood. As I got to my feet, I held it out in front of me, watching the once menacing creature rolling on the floor in pain.

I do not remember exactly what went next as we both just saw red. I do remember the pop up though.

Main Quest 1: Completed

Clear Condition: Defeat The Minotaur (Boss Level 1)

Main Contributors: Jin Han and Matt Crawford

Rewards: 1 D-Class Skill

Matt and I however got an additional reward for defeating the boss.

Level Up: 1 -> 2

Additional Reward: 1 C-Class Skill

Badge Earned: Team Player

Before everyone in that accursed tube station appeared a list of three skills. These were D-Class skills. There were many who were still in shock and just clicked the ones that they recognised the words for first. This couldn't be real to most of them, those that had lost friends and loved ones or those who had just witnessed the horrors first hand had a hard time believing it was real. But for myself and Matt who had fought against that thing, spilled its blood over us, we knew it was real. I knew this pop-up was real.

My options were as follows:

Martial Student (Level 1): +5% damage to unarmed strikes

Melee Student (Level 1): +5% damage to melee weapon strikes

Magically Attuned (Level 1): +5% damage to magic attacks

It seemed that all D-Class were passive buffs. I did have to ponder for a moment, if I didn't find a weapon or gain a magical skill anytime soon the Martial Student skill would probably be for the best. But I was more excited than anything, I could learn magic, I could be a wizard. But if we were being practical, I needed to survive that long first. So, my first skill was Martial Student.

Then came my C-Class skills:

Magic Bolt (Level 1): Fire a bolt of magic

Fire Up (Level 1): Increase your physical stats for a time

Double Tap (Level 1): 5% chance to deal double damage to your enemy

As much as I'd love to be a wizard, my rationality got the better of my enjoyment. If I wanted to live, I needed to choose the correct option. So Double Tap was my second skill.

I looked over at Matt, he was just drenched in blood. He looked over at me, he looked deflated but happy we'd won. A small smile crept over him, but his eyes looked pained.

"Hey, I just remembered." I said, he looked confused, waiting for me to continue. "I left my bag back at work." To that we both laughed and got on the escalator to meet up with the rest of our colleagues.