Origin ARS 5 (10 page)

The gun fighter was hit with a strong
follow-up attack that cleaved through his leather rain coat and
tore into his chest. A fountain of blood showered out as the
monster fell back, knocked to the ground by the blow. The axe
hellion wasted no time in chopping downward with brutal efficiency.
Meat was back on the menu tonight!

While the axe fighter finished off its
friend, and thus won the conversation, Scott quietly rose to his
feet. The axe hellion laughed maniacally as he chopped at the gun
hellion and soon the other monster was no more.

"Show you who gotz more class, meat." said
the beast with another laugh.

He turned back to the other white meat. The
tender morsel should have been lying dead on the ground, but
instead of seeing his dinner, the beast only saw a powerful fist
rocketing toward his face. The hellion's nose broke cleanly this
time. It was no longer able to withstand the force of the blow
after having been weakened by a similar strike before.

The hellion cried out in agony before he was
swept to the ground with a strong, confident spinning hook kick to
back of his knees. Scott leapt atop it, snatched a hunk of its hair
and started to bash the monster's face into the ground with brutal
efficiency. When he felt that the hellion was properly dazed, the
sorcerer began to unleash a series of hard punches to the back of
the thing's head. It was not long before it went limp.

Scott panted a little. That battle had worn
him out a great deal. The girls had not been kidding when they had
each warned him that fights on the classic server were much more
difficult. This had been like fighting real people. Real
stupid
people, but still real people.

He sighed loudly, then stood up and started
to collect his loot. He took the guns and the axe and stuck them in
the bag. The axe took up a good bit of room as it was a large item
and only shrunk down to about the length of his palm.

The monster's pockets were searched and he
found eighteen copper coins, each about the size of an American
quarter if he had to guess. There were also a few of those little
glowing spheres that the gunner had tried to use before, and two
doses of a health restoring potion if the label of the bottle was
to be believed.

There was more to take, however. Scott
stripped the corpses down and stuffed everything that they wore
into his bag. That alone took up a lot of space. If he had to
guess, he might be able to store the equipment of perhaps a dozen
of these monsters. He would have to pick and choose then hope for
the best.

He left the naked corpses where they lay,
there wasn't any way to hide them other than to drag them around
the corner. There was no way to clean the blood splatter and gore
at the moment, either.

Scott considered moving on, but after a
moment he decided against it. He went to go take a look at the
salvation mirror and to rest for a while. If more monsters came out
in search of these two, he would die if they saw him. He did not
want to risk losing whatever experience he had gained or his
items.

Back in the safe room, Scott checked the
salvation mirror then sighed. He had not increased his level. Truth
be told, he was not surprised. He had not done particularly well in
that fight. Still, his information was saved for later. Whatever
combat experience he had gained would not be lost if he died.

He hopped on the cot and closed his eyes. The
battles to come would be fierce, he could tell. He needed to be as
healthy as possible when dealing with them, and for now he would
try to fight them one at a time if possible. Without the element of
surprise, perhaps even with it, he would not be able to win even a
one-on-one battle with these monsters easily.

Chapter 3

Time was a funny little thing. It was not quite Danny
DeVito, but still it was a funny little thing. It became even more
humorous when it was experienced by a race of immortal beings that
could exist on multiple time-axis at the same time and actively
engage in those timelines without causing a paradox. For instance,
Aria Ardent could simultaneously exist on the mortal frame of
reference that Scott Jacobs was normally part of, even while he
existed in a timeless space outside of both time and normal
space.

In short, even though time did not pass in
relation to Scott, Aria could still exist in a timeline that did
not currently include his presence though it still held reference
to his existence and his future presence would still be relative
from the moment of his re-insertion. The concept was simple, but it
could be quite confusing to the mortal mind. It is a rare mind that
can accept that one thing can simultaneously be two opposing things
and rationalize how said thing can exist without falling prey to
the need to cite logic and consistency.

It was in some ways like the old grandfather
paradox. It is said by mortals that if a man goes back in time and
kills his grandfather, he himself would cease to exist. However, if
he ceased to exist then he could not go back in time to kill his
grandfather and thus would exist. This is used as a thought
experiment and as a means of trying to explain why time-travel is
impossible without citing poorly understood physics.

That paradox seems logical, but only from the
limited perspective of a mortal understanding of time. For most
mortal minds time flows in a distinct line. One event leads into
another. However, for those who became known as the gods time did
not flow that way. Linear time did not actually exist for them
unless they chose to experience it. There were events and a flow of
awareness, but they were omni-existent. If such a thing as a point
could exist in time and space, then all points existed
simultaneously for the gods if they were in their natural
state.

The gods of the divine city chose to
continually experience the concept of a mostly linear time
progression for the sake of being authentically human-ish. It was
sometimes as hard for them to experience linear time as it was for
a normal human mind to experience the true nature of time and
space. It was a bizarre, alien, concept that took a lot of effort
to comprehend properly.

Currently, the goddess Origin had split her
consciousness into six separate instances. Four of them currently
existed in the four servers of ARS as the local planetary goddess
who was also known as Origin. The fifth was her core persona that
resided in the divine city. The sixth was currently driving down a
busy street at the wheel of a pink Cadillac. Though her fiancé was
outside of time and space, she chose to exist in his original space
in order to handle some of his business. Any paradoxes that
occurred during the process would be cleaned up later.

Aria swayed her head from side to side and
sang along with the song on the radio. It was Michael Jackson's
song
Smooth Criminal
. "Ba da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da,
da-da-da-da
duhn.
"

She carefully performed a one hundred eighty
degree turn that made her tires squeal and people screech in terror
before she gunned the engine and tore down the highway once more.
Her phone buzzed and she looked down. The goddess of love and bad
driving checked her messages while driving down the busy North
Carolina highway at speeds in excess of one hundred miles per
hour.

Aria snorted then leaned back and casually
repositioned one of her legs so she could steer with her foot while
she returned a text from Mid. What she lacked in common sense, she
made up for in flexibility. "She really sent him
there
, huh?
What's wrong with that girl?" asked Aria as she used her knee to
help absent-mindedly steer her Cadillac around a truck that was
hauling propane.

There was a short lag period between the
divine city and Earth due to the need to use Earth-based technology
to communicate back and forth properly. It would not do to use menu
screens for every little thing. That factor had caused her not to
receive updates concerning Scott since she had the run-in with
Sarah.

Aria wove between the cars on the road using
her foot while not bothering to look to see where she was going.
The cars moved so slowly that it was easy to avoid running into
anyone. That would not keep someone else from having an accident,
of course. More than one car swerved off the road onto the grassy
embankment, their drivers fearful for their mortal lives.

She sent a text to Mid asking her to stop
being cruel to Scott. It was not long before Mid replied.

"Hang in there baby?" asked Aria. It was a
photo of a cat hanging on a clothes line with those words captioned
beneath it. "Cute, but what does she mean?"

Aria rotated her steering wheel hard with her
steering foot and pressed the brake pedal. Her Cadillac spun
sideways and drifted a few dozen feet before she punched the gas
with her brake foot. She took off again down the road she had just
turned onto.

She acquired a thoughtful look. "I wonder
what he's doing right now?" she sighed. "Bet it's more exciting
than what I'm going to be doing with my day." She shook her head
then pouted in a way similar to how a little girl might look if
someone had asked her to eat her Brussels sprouts. "Meetings"
*Blergh*
. "Stupid military."

In the background the sound of dozens of
police sirens could be heard. She was a little sad to hear them.
There were a lot of bad drivers and criminals in the world. Even
the police seemed to be having an exciting day. She briefly
wondered who they were after to need to bring in so many officers,
but then she sighed again. Why couldn't she be doing something more
exciting right now? "You better show me your appreciation later,
Scott." she said. A slowly spread smile arose on her lips. She bit
her lip a little as she started to envision just how much he would
appreciate her.

While eight of North Carolina's finest state
troopers chased after her, Aria continued to daydream about how
much Scott would appreciate her, and the depths of said
appreciation. A slight hint of drool began to dribble from the
corner of her lips and she giggled like a moron. "Oh Scott! You're
so
appreciative
."

~*~

The confines of the safe room were something
Scott had become intimately familiar with. He had awakened there
after several of his most recent deaths. He sighed then stood up.
"What is that now? Six. Seven?"

He shook his head then went to look at the
salvation mirror. Little had changed since the first time that he
had looked at him. The problem was that he had died too often. He
had not even made it to class level two, yet.

"I need to try another tactic." he said.
Throughout his many deaths, Scott had managed to defeat only one
more hellion. The monsters in this dungeon would forget about his
existence whenever he entered the safe room. If he died they forgot
him and then their locations would be randomized the moment he
stepped out of the door.

The main issue was that their skills roughly
matched their stats. His skills only matched his level. They were
clearly more skilled even if they were on similar footing
stat-wise.

"Direct confrontation doesn't work that well.
Beating the things takes too long" muttered Scott. By the time he
was nearly done with one monster he was normally beaten all to
hell. The worst part was that the noise from the battle drew the
attention of the others. They would often show up to see what was
going on and then he would die.

The problem was the length of the battle.
Scott had tried everything that he could think of to shorten it. He
had even attempted to use the pistols that he had found. That had
proved slightly useful, but only in drawing a monster away. For
some reason, the damage from the weapons was low. His lack of a
firearms skill was possibly the cause, or perhaps they were just
low-level weapons due to the fact that he was in a tutorial
dungeon.

As he sat on the cot thinking about his
current issue, a useful thought occurred. "Maybe..."

He nodded. There was no reason not to try and
change things up a little. Scott put his new thought into action
and slipped out of the room. The corridor at the end of the hall
was empty, so he moved forward carefully. He sensed for the life
around the corner even though it hurt his head slightly to do
so.

A life force that he had become familiar with
was detected around the next corner. Scott only sensed one monster.
He took out his pistol and leaned his head around quickly in order
to see where the monster was at. The hulking brute was leaning
against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He too wore
the raincoat looking thing that the others wore. Scott would not
know what weapons it wielded till it drew them forth.

Scott fired off a round to get the monster's
attention. He managed to hit the wall just beyond the beast. It
stood up straight and looked around in surprise.

"Hey, you hungry?" whispered Scott loudly
before waving at the monster.

The hellion exclaimed. "Meats!" before
whipping out a greatsword. Scott hissed loudly then turned and
fled. The monster quickly chased after him. Scott managed to make
it back to the corridor that led to the safe room before it caught
up.

Scott twisted out of the way of a hard
overhand strike that slammed into the floor with great force, and
leveraged it into a hard spinning sweep to the monster's ankles. It
was knocked off its feet and landed with a heavy
*whuffing*
sound. The air had been knocked from its lungs.

The sorcerer immediately capitalized on the
opening presented. Scott launched a hard downward heel-stomp that
slammed into the monster's face. He kicked it a few times, but it
soon recovered and lashed out wildly to try and drive Scott
back.