Chapter 9: Part 2

- Shiroe -

The entire field was silent.

No one expected the duel to be….this anticlimactic.

Arthas stepped back and started walking out of the field. Dwain also got a chance to stand up and as soon as he did, he pointed a finger at Arthas and began shouting accusations of cheating.

He quickly went into the ground to meet Arthas.

"I am telling you this bastard cheated somehow!" Dwain shouted at the Knights who were taking him to the stage.

"There has been no cheating. The entire duel was monitored by Knights of the Kingdom. Accusing Arthas of cheating would also be accusing the judgement of the Knights incharge of judging the whole duel so I suggest that you choose your words carefully." Kenneth warned.

"Fuck you! You are all in the same team. This bastard is also a Knight like you people. You all must have fixed the match."

Kenneth looked at the guy with a stone-like face. "Are you accusing the Knights of the Kingdom of fraudry?"

"Damn right, I am. Everyone saw how none of my attacks affected him. Not even his HP went down a bit and all his attacks….his barehanded attacks were hitting me more than sword attacks from other players. He is cheating for sure and you bastards are covering up for him."

"Knight! Take this fool away for insulting the dignity of the Knights of Llyne. He shall remain in prison for one year."

Shiroe didn't expect the Knights to immediately get on work as they dragged the guy away.

Kenneth then turned towards the rest. "Arthas used a Skill to nullify the damage a moment from when Dwain launched the attack. The Skill lasted over four seconds in which he had already disarmed his opponent and never gave him another chance to attack." He looked at Arthas who gave him a nod.

"As for the details of the Skill, I do not know. I cannot and will not force anyone to reveal their skills against their will. Skills are a very personal matter and unless the other party is a criminal, he cannot be forced to reveal his skills. I hope you all will keep this in mind as doing so is a criminal offence."

Shiroe reached Arthas by then. "Really? You got an Invulnerability Skill?"

"One of the Skills, yes." He smiled.

"You ass….no wonder you weren't worried about him from the start." He punched Arthas' shoulder jokingly. "You have got to tell me the details later. I need to add them to my plans."

"Damn it, I was planning to scare you during a hunt."

Shiroe rolled his eyes.

"No joking during hunts. Not even for these. Someone can get hurt." He scolded.

Arthas just smiled.

Shiroe had noticed that Arthas was showing more emotions and the more he did, the more he noticed that his friend had a mischievous side to him.

"Anyways, let's collect the reward. We still need to hold the meeting."

"Hmm." They walked towards the Knights while Star and Veena came there too.

"That was quite brutal….exactly what that bastard needed." Star laughed. "Well done."

"Ah, about that….I wasn't sure if he would survive hits from my sword due to the difference between our stats so I used fists instead." Arthas said, scratching his head.

….

….

….

….

Kenneth handed over the items and gold coins to Arthas and left.

"You should go and address the crowd before they get any rowdier."

"Right."

Shiroe took charge of the crowd at this moment.

- Arthas -

I stepped back to the rest of my team while Shiroe went and gathered the crowd in one place.

"That was one heck of a trump card you were hiding." Star fistbumped me.

Veena didn't say anything. She was just smiling and waited till Star was done after which he came forward and gave me a light hug. "I knew you could do it."

"Thank you."

"Let's go. We need to address the people. They have already waited more than they had to. Let's not make them wait anymore."

"Alright."

We gathered behind Shiroe who was talking to the crowd.

"I am sorry for the delay. As you all already saw, there had been a situation we needed to address first. Now, I know you all have questions about the World Quest so let me give everyone a basic outline of what happened in the whole quest from our point of view."

Shiroe then went on to explain how we had been the first party to get a T4 Ranked player, me.

This was easily verifiable as many people had seen me going into the Knight's Academy back then. It was when some people had started stalking us so there were already rumours around the place.

"In that quest, we rescued some hostages from the Goblins and Arthas became the first player from this town to become a Knight….however, that wasn't the only thing that happened. During the quest, he unlocked another Class. A Unique Class was unlocked due to some kind of achievement. This Class is called Goblin Slayer and is also a T4 Class."

Murmurs ran through the crowd.

We had discussed and decided to reveal the Class and some of the Skills of this Class to assuage the other players.

"I won't disclose all the Skills or even the Stats of the Class as it is Arthas' personal information but I will tell you all about two of his Skill, which he has allowed me to. These two Skills were also the ones which played the most important role in our scores being so high."

"The first Skill is called 'Fated Enemy'. This Skill allows him 50% more damage against Goblins….even in the damage of usable items. This means, he can increase the damage of attacks, even traps against them, if he just touches them."

"Seriously, there is a skill like that? That's broken." Star commented softly to us.

"Just wait for the second one." I replied and he looked forward towards Shiroe.

"The second Skill is called 'Sweet Revenge'. This Skill gives him 25% more experience when killing Goblins…..even with traps. Yes, that was one of the reasons behind our insane scores. Arthas' Unique Class was tailor made for this occasion." He gave them some time to grasp the situation for themselves then continued.

"Apart from this, the hostages we had saved and Arthas' connection to the Knight's Academy gave us a chance to get an audience with the City Lord. There we explained our plans to protect three of the gates with minimal soldiers. It wasn't easy as Arthas had to put his life on line. Had we failed….he would have been executed by the City Lord. Thankfully, despite facing up against several thousand goblins, we were still able to defend the three gates with our well placed traps and plans. This was a result of several factors coming together. While we are sure that even without these factors, we could have scored in the top three due to our levels and Skills, our scores might not have been this high then." He finished.

We looked around the people and several people looked like they wanted to ask questions.

Shiroe pointed towards one of them. "Yes."

"You said Arthas was a T4 over a week or so before this whole raid. How did he level up so fast?"

Shiroe looked at me and I nodded.

"When this whole….game started and everyone locked themselves inside their own houses….I was out there, hunting alone….in the middle of the forests. I stayed inside entire weeks and camped on trees to kill as many animals as I could. You all on the other hand started hunting at best a week after that bit most of you at least two weeks later when you all ran out of money and even then you were only hunting on the outskirts of the village. This involved hundreds of players jumping on a single rabbit or piglet and then waiting for them to respawn. I totally avoided such problems."

People were listening intently at my words so I continued.

"Then I met my teammate, Veena. As some of you might know, she was a Herbalist. She started helping me with baits and different types of poisons, further increasing the speed of our levelling. By the time I left the beginner's village, I had already completed the task to become a T3 and we have been hunting here since then."

I looked at the guy who had asked me the question. "It's not like I magically became the highest level player around. I have been continuously risking my life for it. So if you are expecting some kind of shortcut method….I will have to disappoint you. Any more questions?"

"Can you share the information about different class trees?" Someone asked.

"No. Those types of information are sold for money and we had to use lots of gold to buy them too. Sorry, but we are not running a charity for anyone." I directly denied.

There were several complaints raised due to this but no one came out and said anything overtly so we didn't care either.

Some morons think they are owed everything, even things which others have worked and risked their lives for.

It's better to ignore such idiots.