Chương 82: Chapter 83: Slaying the Lords

One of the archers lets loose an arrow. I can tell that it's an ability-infused shot. Probably Sniper Shot. It doesn't matter; I catch the arrow in my open hand before it can hit. I then drop the arrow, holding my unwounded hand up both to display that I caught it without hurting myself and to try to keep the peace just a little bit longer. The scout who shot me doesn't seem the least bit embarrassed, and already has another arrow nocked and ready to shoot.

"Look," I say, sweeping my eyes around them. Seems like the last group has shown up too, though they're trying to be stealthy.

"I understand that you guys have us outnumbered five to one. And I promise, I'm not going to use the spell that just kills you all. But we're not going to give you our money. We came to this campsite and there was no one here. So we used the embers of the fire to cook a meal. We can just leave, no harm no foul."

"No," Carlos says, emboldened by the return of the rest of his forces.

"It's too late for that. You've now insulted us and our guild. Give me one reason not to just kill you now."

"How about 'you won't be able to, even if you try'?" I offer.

"We have you out numbered, out leveled, out gunned, and surrounded," he says.

"What makes you think you stand any chance against us?"

"We're stronger than you," El says.

"Even put together." I don't know if that's true. We might be too cocky. Fifteen level thirty might be beyond us. But if it is, it won't be for long. We'll keep going, keep getting stronger and stronger. We have already made up for the deficit of points from the last death penalty. We may not have gotten much progress this time around, but we haven't lost anything. We'll just get stronger.

"Fifty gold," Sherry says.

"Each. That and an apology for hunting in our territory. Then you can slink back to Elmspire with the levels you've managed to gain. Otherwise, get ready for resurrection." It's only fair. He shot at me, so I shoot back at the scout who tried to Sniper Shot me. But I don't use Sniper Shot. I use Power Shot. It does 1330 damage. He reaches up to the shaft of the arrow, coughs once, and then dies. I want to make some kind of quip, but no one waits for me. They all just rush into the attack.

I get hit with five arrows, and take 126 damage from a Rapid Shot. I fire back at the other scout, using my own Rapid Shot. It deals 1690 damage, killing the other scout. Magic splashes against me, an Ice Spike dealing 26 damage and a Magical Dart dealing 4. I hear El roar in challenge and charge towards one of the groups coming out of the forest, and see that Ash has already engaged with Carlos. I draw my sword and turn towards the sword saint. I want to see what she can do.

Her blades are a blur as she comes towards me, slashing and stabbing so fast that I can barely dodge. But I can dodge all of her attacks. I dodge her attacks while I unstring my bow and push it into my spatial bag. I keep dodging as she tries to pick up the pace. She's got a high agility, but it's nowhere near mine. I wonder what the qualifications are for that class. Maybe I'll figure it out after I defeat her. I draw my own sword and start deflecting attacks instead of just dodging them.

The loud clangs fill the clearing as we dance around each other. Sherry has an angry look on her face, a sneer of determination as we fight. I don't think she's ever fought someone with similar skill with a sword before. But my sword skill is currently 32, and my agility is much higher than hers. Even if she has higher skill, I've got more speed. Much more. She does manage to cut me. It does 33 damage. With my defense where it is, that means her base attack does three hundred. That's pretty impressive.

I slide around her defenses to see how much damage I can do to her. My Bleeding Strike does 400 damage to her. That's good for 797 with the bleed. She breaks off our engagement and steps back, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes.

"How did you do that?" she asks as the bleed drains her health away. I don't know how much health she has to begin with, but it looks like I took a little more than half of it away with my attack.

"I'm strong," I say, shrugging.

"But how?" I shake my head. I wince as a couple more spells slam into me for single digits of damage.

"That's a secret," I say. Then I step forward and engage with her again. When we're up close like that, the spellcasters are forced to use things like Magic Dart to avoid hitting her, and those do a lot less damage. I haven't taken enough to even begin to worry about my Shell going down, but I don't want to get in the habit of just ignoring every attack made against me. That's how El fights, and I don't have the damage capacity that she has. Or the regeneration.

She fights with a lot more desperation than she had before, working more on the defensive, trying to avoid me hitting her more than she is trying to hit me back. Her confidence is shot. I bet she'd run if I gave her the chance. Or if she was the last one standing. There's someone sneaking up on me. I can hear them moving through the woods, right on the edge of the trees. Their footfalls are almost silent, but I can hear them. And I can smell them coming.

When they dart out of the trees and try to stab me in the back, I whirl on them and use Chop. I see that they're an assassin, level 31, and their dagger is poised to do a massive attack on me. But they weren't expecting me to see them, and they hesitate for just half a second. Long enough for me to hit them. I deal 387 damage to them, and follow it up with another 277 as I push them back. Sherry does another 33 damage to me, but I ignore her as I deal with the assassin.

I spotted him once, but I can't be sure I'll spot him again. And based on the green gleam on his blade, he's playing with poison. And I don't want to risk being poisoned. So I Chop again, for another 387. Then I fire a Fire Bolt him. The bolt hits him right in the chest, and he goes down and doesn't get back up. I apparently did 642 damage with the Fire Bolt, which means his magic resistance was only barely higher than my spellcraft. I spin back to Sherry as she hits me for 41 damage.

I smile at her and then point over my head with my free hand.

"See my health bar?" I ask her.

"It isn't going any lower. You guys should run." Stolen story; please report.

"How is it not going any lower?" she demands. Then she looks around. I've already killed her two companions and the assassin who tried to sneak up on me. I glance around and see that El has already wiped out one group and is well on her way to finishing up a second group. Ash has killed Carlos and his two companions, and is currently fighting with someone else that has a sword and shield.

She blocks his strike and then slams her mace into his shield, denting it heavily and pushing him back several feet from the impact.

"Because you guys aren't a threat to us," I say.

"You should really run away, while you still can."

"Who are you?"

"Just your friendly neighborhood solo players," I say. I feint towards her.

"Last chance to run away. I don't think any of your companions are going to get the same offer." She looks around again. There were fifteen of them to start with. I've killed three, Ash has killed four, and El has killed four so far. That's already eleven. Ash is still dealing with one more, El with two. That's fourteen. Sherry makes fifteen. And if I get one more good hit on her with Bleeding Strike, that'll kill her. And my Bleeding Strike is almost off cooldown.

She doesn't throw down her swords, but she does back off to the edge of the clearing. When she sees that I'm not chasing her, she does turn and runs away, swords in hand. She looks over her shoulder to see if I'm chasing her or if I'm going to shoot her. I debate it. I could probably kill her with a Flame Bolt or two. It's not like her death would be permanent. But that's not my style. I'm fine with her running away. It still counts as defeating her.

And maybe she'll be a bit grateful, or careful, next time we run into one another. I turn around just in time to see El decapitate one of her opponents and slam her axe into the chest of the other one. I look over at Ash, but she's already defeated her last opponent. Neither of them have taken enough damage to go through their Shells. You have defeated 15 members of the Sylvan Lords. Level difference multiplier engaged. You gain (45, 000/3) 15, 000 experience. That's enough for me to level up, just barely.

I put two points each into strength, agility, vigor, and charisma. That boosts my hit points 6532, still below Ash. My MP is 2415 and my stamina is 2645. I shake my head at the massive power difference between us and the people we just fought.

"That time with Wrax really made a difference," Ash says as she looks over the body. Statistically, there should be some treasure. And there is. There are three swords, one bow, and one suit of armor. All of them are of rare quality, none of them are better than what we have. Ash takes the armor, El takes two of the swords, and I take one sword and one bow. The sword isn't even as good as my backup weapon. There's no money. But I guess we can take the camp if we want to, now.

"Could you imagine if they set their respawn point for this camp?" Ash asks.

"They'd be respawning at level one, with no equipment, right here, among us."

"Maybe we should move on, just in case that's true," I say.

"I don't want to slaughter the helpless."

"Yeah, there'd be no challenge in that," El agrees.

"Do we have any other tracks we can follow?"

"We can always follow the tracks they made and see what they found while they were out adventuring today," Ash says.

"It's better than nothing." I move around the camp, looking for the other tracks. And I see it again. Elf tracks that don't quite make sense, that aren't quite the movement style of the players or of the elves of Elmspire. I'm able to match up the tracks of every one of the dead to the tracks that crisscross camp, but I can't find a match for that one set of elf tracks.

"There's more going on," I say.

"Someone else was here too. Not one of the Sylvan Lords."

"I can't believe we've beaten twenty five of them," El says. Then she nudges me with her shoulder.

"And of course you had to let one of them go, you big softy."

"I don't like fights that are so one sided," I say.

"She couldn't have killed me if I was fighting left handed. I only had to hit her one more time to kill her. She needed to hit me, like, fifty times. It was like if we wanted to fight Wrax."

"Not really worth fighting?" Ash asks. She nods.

"I understand that. Still, it's kind of mean for you not to kill her."

"What do you mean? She was level 31. She'd have lost fifteen in every attribute and had to start over."

"Yeah, but she'd recover from that loss before she got back to her level. You robbed her of getting stronger."

"I doubt she sees it that way," I say. We start to follow the strange elf track out of camp. I'm following where it went after it came through the camp, not before. We're trying to catch up to the elf, not see where else it's gone. The trail leads in the wrong direction. Not towards Elmspire, but away from it. Towards the mountains. Back the way we came. The tracks are careful, almost hard to follow. Hard enough that my tracking goes up to 27 as we follow the trail.

Whoever left them was moving carefully and sneakily, probably trying to avoid not just the players we just killed, but also the monsters it would run across in this area. The tracks definitely belong to some kind of scout, and he was moving carefully through the forest. Moving carefully through the encampment of fifteen members of the Sylvan Lords, the same way we did, only without drawing their attention. We keep following the trail, and I start to wonder what we're going to find.

I'm getting a bad feeling, and it just keeps getting worse the longer we follow his trail. When the path crosses over itself, and the footsteps are going in both directions, I tell the girls to wait and I cast Blur. At this level, Blur allows me to move at 85% of my maximum speed. Which is not that slow, considering that I have the 20% boost of speed from my boots. Which means I'm still going at 102% of what a normal person can move. Blur also doubles my sneak, which puts it at 80 while I'm moving.

I don't think that the assassin who tried to sneak up on me in battle had that high of a sneak score, but I'm forced to wonder if someone would be able to see me if they had a higher awareness than 80. Is the formula so simple? Subtract your sneak from my awareness to determine whether or not I see you? No, I don't think that's how it works. I've been sneaky from things with higher awareness than my sneak many times. Especially back in the tutorial, where I was first learning to sneak at all.

No, I don't think that's how it works. I keep moving forward. The tracks are getting fresher and fresher, and I feel like it's just a matter of time. Then I get to the edge of the forest, and I see why the tracks are so fresh. Right outside of the forest, spread out over several hundred feet, there's an encampment. An army encampment. I climb up a tree, getting a climb skill increase in the process, and take a look at the army. From what I can see of them, they are a mix of human, elf, and dwarf.

But the elves aren't green. They're grey. Their skin is grey like a stone. I get a view of some of them that are within the range of my Observation skill. It seems like the effect that stops me from seeing the levels and hit points of players higher level than me doesn't apply here. Maybe because they're an enemy faction? Theon Rockbiter. Rare elite mountain elf soldier, level 50. HP: 12, 500/12, 500. Elwin Stonearm. Rare elite dwarf soldier, level 50. HP: 12, 500/12, 500. Walter. Human knight, level 43.

HP: 5, 160/5, 160. Okay. So there are soldiers and there are players. This is a legitimate army. Are they here to invade the forest? That seems like the obvious answer. They don't have any siege equipment that I can see, but just a quick count of the tents shows me that there are at least four hundred people in the camp. The camp goes up a hill, and there is what seems to be a command tent at the top of the hill. Which means that there may be another four hundred soldiers on the other side.

Or possibly many, many more. I don't know how far it spreads out. But this is more than an encampment. This is an army.