End Online: Volume 3 (2 page)

“It’s easy enough to jump
across, I would think having a trap means that there is something to protect
behind it.”

Fen easily clears the gap
as well, but the brothers seem a little nervous about the distance.
Reluctantly, they give in and decide to make the leap.

Mason is up first. Taking
a running start he leaps off the edge of the hole. Barely landing on his feet
at the other end, his momentum causing him to fall and roll down the path for a
few meters.

“Matrix,” He calls back to
his brother, “Take off your armour. You won’t make it with it on, it’s too
heavy.”

The person in question
operates an invisible menu and changes his appearance to wearing just a grey
tunic and equally loose pants.

Taking an even bigger run
up than his brother, Matrix launches off from the same spot as Mason did. Only,
his agility wasn’t as high as the other man. At the parabola of his jump
peaking before half way, Mason suddenly panicked.

As if by pure chance,
Matrix’s jump had just enough power to allow him to cling to the other edge of
the pit.

Saddling his bow over his
shoulder, Mason grabs the swordsman’s hands and pulls him up to safety.

With all of us past the
trap, low groans echo from down the corridor. A large group of fourteen rotting
zombies come storming at us. Following up behind them are a group of skeletons
just as big, their cracked bones clattering between the zombie’s grunts.

With a large mob of
enemies in front of us, and a bottomless pit behind us, we are in a rather
delicate situation.

Mason takes the initiative
first. Standing in the centre of the path, he draws his bow. I cannot quite
understand what he is doing, considering there is no arrow in the bow.

“Wind Piercer.”

The weapon in question
glows with a blue hue, similar to the clear sky. In between the taut string and
the handle, a thin arrow made of compressed air takes form. Both the zombies
and skeletons are only fifteen meters away when he releases the string. The
almost see through arrow launches with it, only to disappear moments after
releasing it.

A sonic boom blasts its
way past me. Where the arrow had vanished, a large cylindrical cyclone of wind
comes to life, blasting its way down the corridor at the speed of sound. The
violent winds tear up the mob in front of us, blades of wind leaving nothing untouched.
With no exception, even the floor and walls are carved into as the blast
travels past them.

“W-what was that!? Y-you
can use magic too!?” I stammer at Mason, completely dumbfounded.

“Tch, I didn’t want to
have to use that.” He ignores my question, and just mutters to himself.

“What the heck was that!?”
Repeating my question, Mason finally looked at me.

“It’s a sacred art.” He
looks rather grumpy, “But I don’t like using it. It uses 248 stamina just to
use once. Right now, I’m completely out.”

“Are you sure you should
be telling me that?”

I personally wouldn’t tell
somebody else that I can only use it once. It leaves room for people to take
advantage of that fact when it involves being attacked by another player.

Mason only shrugs his
shoulders.

“It’s okay, I trust you
enough. I will be editing all this out of my video anyway, I don’t want
everyone else to see it after all. By the way, some of them survived.”

Turning my head, I see
four of the skeletons slowly standing up. They appear to be incredibly damaged,
from missing limbs to bones that crack further from just moving them.

They are clearly all
nearly dead.

Slipping my hand inside my
cloak, I draw a four of the five throwing knives holstered on the outside of my
leg. My wrist technique has improved a lot with my practice in throwing the
blades. Although, that could just be the system assist. It is incredibly
difficult to tell if it was assisting you sometimes, it’s more like it directly
affected your mind to correct your moves more so than forcing your avatar to
perform the techniques.

It is great how the
attacks feel like you are naturally doing them, even though by some form of
compulsion you are forced to complete them once started.

All four of the daggers
quickly fly at the skeletons. Three fatally hit their targets in the head,
while the fourth narrowly misses. Clicking my tongue, I draw the last throwing
knife and successfully kill the last skeleton.

My level finally rises by
one at the last kill.

From that point on we walk
through nothing but endless corridors that all look the same. Each and every
single path is lined with the exact same stone bricks, enough of which I have
seen to make my head ache. Every path also has the fog that prevents the
eyesight from passing about twenty meters.

Turning left, turning
right, go straight ahead, pick one of five different paths. This is the worst
kind of dungeon, a labyrinth.

I am completely lost.

Each battle came and went
quite quickly, I even gained about ten levels so far. Although, no matter how
hard I look, I could not find any stairs down. I doubt I could even find my way
back if I tried.

Fen has gained six levels
since we entered, and that is with me holding her back from slaughtering all
the enemies before anyone else even gets a chance to fight.

For a change, the tunnel
in front of us does not break off into multiple paths, but a large dome shaped
cavern. In the centre of this cavern is what seems like a circular tower
fifteen meters in diameter, and thirty high. It is made of the exact same stone
bricks as the rest of the labyrinth.

There are a few windows
near the top of the tower. Although, they all seem not only unreachable but
also too small to fit through. Not to mention, between us and the tower is
swarming with ‘Imprisoned Zombies’ and ‘Murderous Skeletons’.

“Mason,” I speak in a
polite voice, “Can you use that attack again? You know, that magic arrow?”

“I can,” He let’s out a
sigh, “But it will be severely weakened, the space here is simply too large.”

Huh, what does he mean by
the space is too large?

Nevertheless, he draws his
bow and creates another ‘Wind Piercer’ while his bow reflects the clear blue
light of the sacred art. Releasing the arrow which shortly disappears into
nothingness, only to be replaced by another concussion of wind and sound.

However, this attack
didn’t come anywhere close to tearing a hole through a whole horde of strong
monsters like I thought it would. Instead, the wind blade ran wild in every
direction. A few zombies are slain, but most remain unharmed as the air blades
disperse in the large open area.

“I see… You’re an archer
strong in confined spaces aren’t you?”

“S-shut up!”

A small part of me lights
up at thinking this guy’s fighting strength is unusually out of balance, just
like how I am. He is the opposite of me, who is stronger in large, open spaces.

“Well anyway, let’s go.” I
would be lying if I said I’m not nervous, but I am confident in most of our
strengths. The two brothers are the only ones that concern me, even if it
appears they are stronger than what they first appeared to be.

Fen and I take the lead.
Her ice bolts rain down from the skies while my blades gouge zombies and
skeletons alike.

A few arrows fly around
and I hear Matrix chanting his spells in arduously long phrases. They seem to
be holding their own against the enemies, but we are killing them much faster.

“Come on Fen. We can’t
lose!” This is no time to hold her back and get the experience myself.
Naturally, I urge her to fight harder.

“Unn…” She nods her head,
eyes lighting up with new life.

The barrage of Ice
intensifies. Not only that, but strange Ice Flowers bloom randomly amongst the
enemies, mercilessly tearing them apart.

I start using my sacred
arts more as well. Any enemies that get close to attacking me are taken down by
‘Backstab’. While my sacred arts which multiply the images of my body are
useless against such a larger number of opponents, I am currently in my
preferred environment with an abundance of space to move around within.

My afterimages are
possibly my greatest weapon. Misleading enemies to attack places where I am
not, it also prevents them from reacting to an attack that has not yet seemed
to reach them.

Ten minutes passed by and
the number of enemy forces had reduced by three quarters. I was completely out
of stamina and everyone else had also been worn down.

Out of magic, Fen starts
launching high speed attacks, chopping the enemies with her hands like blades.

I dance through the crowd
with afterimages, swinging my blades with a steady rhythm. I have lost a
considerable amount of health so far, but that is only from Fen’s careless rain
of ice bolts. Not even I can avoid hundreds of small shards of ice attacking
everything in a large vicinity, nor can she aim away from me when she can’t
actually see me.

Mason and Matrix appear to
have taken a bit of damage. Glancing across the cavern, Matrix is releasing
some incredible feats of swordsmanship. I admit I was a little concerned at
first as to what he could do with a sword but no shield. However, he is using
it to successfully block the incoming attacks from the skeleton’s weapons.

Killing another zombie and
gaining a further level, I stop moving in front of a skeleton. I want to know
if I will be able to block an attack with my blades too.

It swings down a one
handed hatchet, the perfect weapon for me to test blocking on.

The hand axe comes down as
my two shortswords cross over my head to catch it. As the hatchet came down on
the blades, a sudden force vibrated down my arms. The skeleton drove the weapon
straight through my defence and carved a big wound from my shoulder to hip.

A full three hundred and
fifty health points are taken off from the critical hit. The weight of the blow
adds to my body as I feel incredibly weary from my lack of health left.

Making some distance in
between me and the remaining enemies, I pull out two vile looking health
potions. Losing my confidence to consume the horrid looking things, I put them
back in my inventory and instead eat a bunch of green medicinal herbs to start
recovering my health.

As my health begins to
recover, I feel the weariness in my body slowly fading.

In a short few minutes, I
am ready to enter the battle again. Except, all the enemies are finally dead.

Fen and I converge with
the brothers, each taking out their own recovery potions. In front of us stands
the stone brick tower like a giant pole stuck in the ground. Being directly in
front of it, the construct is quite menacing. A faint foreboding emits from it,
raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I place my hand on the
metal plate door. Trying to force the door open, I release a sigh at
discovering it is locked.

“I don’t suppose anyone
has a key by chance? I don’t think we could break this iron door.”

I look at the others who
shake their head.

“Uh, if you would excuse
me for a moment.”

The person that scantily
talk, Matrix, speaks up. A little shocked, I move aside to allow him through.

Matrix goes down on one
knee in front of the door. Pulling out two small metal needles, he places them
in the lock.

A minute of rattling the
picks in the lock and a dull click echoes through the metal. With a high pitch
screeching, the iron door slowly swings open on rusted hinges.

Inside the tower is
hollow, with a staircase spiralling downwards along the wall into this
dungeon’s signature mist. The ceiling is comparatively low, only five meters
above me. There is a trapdoor directly above us, but I have no method to get that
high without risking falling to my death from the ledge I am currently on.

With torches lining the
walls, we stroll down the staircase in a single file. There is enough room to
walk two abreast. However, nobody wishes to walk that close the edge, considering
the depth of the drop seems endless.

Just like in the
corridors, the mist also retreats from us the closer we get to it, maintaining
its distance. We reach a small platform similar to the one we entered from.
From under the ledge we are on, the ground is still obscured beneath an
insurmountable amount of fog.

There is another iron
plate door in front of us, also locked. Matrix quietly steps up to it and
unlocks it.

“Hah,” I laugh to myself,
“The magic swordsman has magic fingers.”

Fen doesn’t seem to
understand the joke very well, but Mason lets out a chuckle.