A New World (Gamer, Book 1) (9 page)

She pulls forth her bow and nocks an
arrow.

"I don't know about you, but I'm getting a
little tired of this place. Shall we get this over and done
with?"

Harry smiles and gestures for her to go
ahead.

She brings her bow up and fires a single arrow
at the man above. He knocks it out of the air with a blast of
silver light that carries past the weapon and knocks both players
to the ground.

"Well, that didn't work as expected," Harry
says as he scuttles to his feet.

They dodge to the side as a ball of fire slams
into the ground and incinerates the floor where they were standing.
It's so hot that the floor of the cave is left red hot and melting
from that one single strike.

The man skips about and raises both hands. He
begins to chant loudly and more silver light slaps down onto both
of them. Harry finds himself blinded by the intense light and
stumbles around, barely avoiding getting hit by the fireball that
erupts next to him.

There is a scream from his right and he turns
his head as his vision clears to see Axel slapping away at her arm,
which has nearly completely disintegrated, leaving a blackened
stump where once there was her forearm.

She looks to Harry and he sees fear on her
face. Harry can see that her health gauge is nearly completely gone
and it is slowly ticking away as the game mimics blood
loss.

He looks up to the man above and realizes
that, if they don't get up there or get the wizard down here, both
of them are going to die.

He runs in her direction, dodging two more
balls of fire, while she does her best to stay alive. When he
reaches her, he grabs hold of her bow and pulls an arrow from her
quiver.

He takes a shot. It's a horrible miss. The
arrow doesn't even get close to the enemy and the magic user stops
firing fireballs at them to laugh loudly at the weakness of Harry's
bow skills.

He looks back at Axel who is beginning to fade
slightly as she nears death.

Harry grabs hold of her and shakes her as her
eyes begin to glaze over. He can see that shock is already setting
in from the intense pain that she is experiencing. She won't last
much longer like this.

Axel blinks twice and tries to gain control of
herself. The slow loss of life comes to a halt as her concentration
knocks away the damage causing effect of the blood loss and
shock.

"Give me the sling," Harry says.

Axel nods and passes him the weapon. She hands
over the stones and he walks into the middle of the room to look up
at the wizard, who is still looking amused.

"I am about done with this place," he says to
the man above him, who cocks his head in what looks to be
interest.

He pulls forth a stone and loads it. This time
his shot is perfect and knocks the hood from the man
above.

There's a look of shock on the relatively
normal looking face underneath and the man's expression twists
angrily as he raises both hands above his head and begins to scream
out a spell.

Harry doesn't give him a chance to cast it. He
fires a stone directly at the man's groin and it’s a perfect
hit.

The wizard grabs hold of his 'man parts' after
the stone collides and slips off the side of the rocky outcrop
above. He falls with a loud scream and lands on the ground with a
nasty crunch.

Harry and Axel stumble over to him and look
down at the man for a second. He slowly raises his hand still
trying to fight, even though it is clear that he is dead, but Harry
smashes his Pig Sticker 2000 into the mage's face and Axel is not
too slow in using her short sword to stab directly into the enemy's
heart.

The mage tries to sit up one moment then
slumps down to the ground. His face relaxes and, with a puff of
smoke, he disappears.

"I think we did it," Axel says in pained
excitement.

Her words are answered by a loud thunderclap
above and a piece of paper slowly flitters down from the sky above
them.

Harry grabs it out of the air and cries out in
rage as Axel snatches it away and crushes it in half.

"You have to be kidding me? Quest accepted?"
Harry says.

They both pull out their quest books and open
them up.

There's a new quest sitting at the very top
and they both stare at the details in shock.

"30 gold," Harry says.

"It's a huge amount of money for something
like this," Axel agrees.

They both look back to the exit behind them
and start to run. 400 tentacles, slimes and blobs await them.
They've just managed to get themselves a timed kill quest and they
only have 5 hours and 59 minutes remaining.

Blob Killer Amateur

Level 7, 6 Gold, 3 Copper. 2 hours
remaining. 67 blobs, 43 tentacles and 89 slimes dead.

“
200!” Harry screams, hacking down
another slime with sweat pouring down his face.

“
Half way,” Axel wheezes as she
fires another arrow half heartedly at a blob before falling to her
knees to vomit from the severity of her exhaustion. Harry holds her
hair, while she does and pulls her to her feet afterwards. They are
both exhausted beyond the limit of their in-game bodies. Both have
more aches and pains than they would care to admit and have died a
few times already (Harry: 8; Axel: 2), which has thankfully been
offset by a reasonable drop rate of coin. The situation is getting
desperate and they have no choice but to keep on fighting if they
want to win the prize.

"We are never going to make it at this rate,"
Harry mumbles as he leans up against Axel, who can barely hold
herself up.

"I know," she mutters. "It's just too many at
our level. We can't kill them fast enough."

They look to the advancing blobs, slimes and
tentacles with a look of worry on their faces. Even if they don't
complete the quest, they will still have made a reasonable amount
off grinding away at these mobs, yet to succeed would net them
thirty gold split two ways. It is a very nice payday and both of
them desperately need it.

"We can't stop," Harry says, pushing himself
back up, but stumbling slightly as he does.

He grabs hold of his Pig Sticker, which is
already melted from the sheer amount of damage it has sustained and
stumbles forward to whack out at a slime. It wraps itself around
his weapon and the extra weight forces him to drop it to the
ground.

He looks at it in disgust and stomps down on
the slime, so it falls off. He grabs up his Pig Sticker and slaps a
tentacle away that is reaching for his leg.

Axel joins him and they hack and slash and
chop their enemies to death. Time is slowly trickling away and it's
not long before another hour has passed. With one hour left on the
clock, which is ticking away in both of their visions, they are
running low on options.

"How many are we up to?"

Harry checks his display and groans
loudly.

"280. 120 more to go."

Axel groans and falls to her knees and it
seems like she is almost wilting. Her arm, thankfully, grew back
after her first death, yet her skin, much like Harry's, is
pockmarked with dozens of little painful burns. It seems that after
awhile the healing rate gets so low that the injuries they
experience actually begin to appear on their bodies. Both of them
are dripping pixilated blood and have strange brownish looking
marks on them that could be burns if looked at from the right
angle.

Harry stumbles forward and falls to the ground
as a tentacle whacks out and knocks him from his feet. It strikes
down on his back once, ripping away a good chunk of health, before
he can spin around to force his Pig Sticker in the way of the next
strike. Several blobs jump on top of him and he tries to force them
back, yet he is so exhausted that it is too heavy for
him.

Axel tries to reach out to him, but she is
just too weak and falls limp to the ground. She tries to move her
body, yet it's so weakened that she can barely move.

Harry looks back at her in concern and then
stabs straight up into the top most blob. It doesn't do much and
even more jump on top of him. Soon a dozen blobs are weighing down
on his body and crushing him to death.

Tentacles whack out at the outside of the
blobs, trying to get at him, and slimes slip in underneath to stick
like concrete to his body. He is in a chamber of certain death made
up of gooey reddish blob flesh. Harry can already feel the loss of
gold coming on with the accompanying electrical shock that hails
death in this world.

He moves his hands about in the blobs and
starts tearing at their insides. His Pig Sticker lies beside him,
but it's too heavy to lift within the soft resistance of these
creatures. He punches and tears inside the goo over top of him and
the beasts explode as they die. His last strike is one that smashes
a blob above him to pieces, burning several others in the process.
There is a great squirt of acid and then he dies. It’s incredibly
painful and electricity burns through his body so harshly that he
feels like his mind will succumb to a real death, instead of a fake
one because of it.

He appears just down the road next to a small
building that is vacant. He gets to his feet without a word and
stumbles towards where Axel is still lying defenseless. He makes it
to the field to find her sitting up against a tree staring at the
scene that is erupting in front of her.

"You just killed fifteen blobs, twelve slimes
and three tentacles in one go," she says in shock.

He looks to the mess of creatures lying dead
on the ground and a new expression comes over his face. They share
a look of hope, the first hope they have felt since they realized
the difficulty of the quest.

"It is your turn," he says to her. "I'm
running low on gold and I don't like dying."

She shrugs as if to say 'fair enough' and he
helps her to her feet. He holds her up for long enough for her to
get close to the slimes and then retreats.

The creatures immediately race over to her and
grab hold of her body. She allows them to drag her to the dirt and
immediately other slimes race in her directions, perhaps sensing an
easy kill.

Harry watches as blobs and tentacles jump on
top of her. The limbed creatures don't fit well and slip off to the
side, leaving only the blobs.

Soon her health is nearing zero as the acid
does its work; However, she is punching out with everything she has
and Harry can see a chain reaction starting to happen. She hasn't
quite got enough strength to defeat enough of them to cause a
massive explosion, but there's enough acid being thrown around to
really do some damage.

Harry recognizes what must be done as Axel
dies and surges forward. He races inside the blobby mess and kicks
and punches in every direction. The added force of him barging in
and attacking damages even more blobs and knocks his health down to
near zero in moments. He sustains his assault for as long as he
can, but he doesn't last long.

With a smile, he throws one last punch and
then disappears. The damage has already been done. They are nearly
there.

They both appear down the road and lie on the
ground breathing hard for a moment. It is hard to get up, but they
still manage it.

"How many?" A severely burnt Harry
asks.

"Five more," Axel replies.

They rushed back to the field with only four
minutes left on the clock and kill anything they can.

With one minute left, they manage to kill
their very last mob. It's been a feat of incredible endurance, yet
they have made it.

They stumble back to the woods and lean up
against two of the trees. They draw out some food and ravenously
consume it as the opportunity to stop and rest is
provided.

"Shouldn't we be getting a completed screen?"
Harry asks after a few minutes.

They both open their quest books and Harry
goes so far as to try and tear his quest book in half.

They both stumbled to their feet and rush
through the woods. It's an exhausting movement and they barely make
it to the small path that leads towards the area were they have
been respawning.

When they get to the small hut a translucent
woman is waiting for them.

"Where do we have to go?" Harry demands,
tiredly.

The NPC silently hands them a map and
disappears. They stare at it and then look towards the path. A
marathon run back to the starting area is on the books and it's
timed too.

Harry looks to Axel and then slowly starts to
jog along the path. It is going to be a very long run.

*****

The first attack from the wolves came only 100
meters down the road. Harry saw them step out of a dark black
portal and rush towards them. It was a lucky thing as Axel was able
to nock an arrow and take down the lead wolf, allowing them a few
more meters before the beasts got their footing. From there it
became a non-stop war. The wolves continued their chasing and the
humans continued running. It wasn't long before one of them died
and was sent straight back to the respawn site. The timer ticked
away during that time and now with only two hours left to make a
one in a half-hour run, the two players stand looking at the forest
in worry.