“Nice work!” Van said as he slipped out of the Siren Queen’s clutches and threw a few darts at the beast. “I think you disabled the regeneration for a few seconds, so kill it quick!”
Sang grabbed one of the little pouches containing white phosphorous powder. Phosphorous was flammable, wasn’t it? She couldn’t remember where she had heard that, but was confident that she could use the powder to increase the damage of her flaming arrows. Pouring the white powder atop an arrowhead, she aimed her bow and released. The arrow immediately ignited, burning far brighter than usual and then crashing into the Siren Queen. The words CRITICAL 200 damage appeared above the Siren as she screamed. Between Sang’s phosphorous arrows and Van’s darts, it wasn’t long before the creature was slain.
“Whew, that was crazy!” Van said as the Siren Queen fell to the ground, motionless.
“Tell me about it!” Sang replied as she walked up to the corpse and kicked it. The body was slowly melting into the ground. She opened up the loot interface to see what was available.
Siren’s Scales: Grants player ability to regenerate 5 health per second when swallowed.
Crown of Seaweed: When worn, makes player immune to hypnotic magics.
Gold: 500
The rumbling all around them had stopped at the moment when the Siren Queen was killed. As Sang and Van looted the corpses of the monsters, thin beams of moonlight pressed through the ceiling of the cavern.
“Hey, I think the shaking was probably strong enough to weaken the ceiling,” Van remarked. “I bet, if you give me a boost, we can just pull the ground apart and climb out.”
“Alright, let’s give it a try,” Sang replied as she knelt down and helped boost Van up. He fumbled with the stones that were by the lower area of the cavern, but was then able to pry them apart with a great level of ease.
“Perfect!” Van said as he climbed through the small hole he had made. A few seconds later, a rope dropped down for Sang and she hoisted herself up.
“Well, that was a fun adventure!” Van said as he dusted himself off.
“I don’t know, I could have done without the part where you got abducted and almost killed,” Sang replied.
“Just goes to show you how much is in this game,” Van replied as he stretched his arms out wide. Sang could see that his health was pretty low; distracting the enemy monster must have resulted in him taking far too many wounds. “There’s so much, it’s impossible to know it all!”
Sang glanced at her UI to see the experience bar filling up halfway to the next level. That diversion had been well worth it, given that amount of points.
“Well, I hope that spell you learned was worth it,” Sang said as she looked around for Jet. He was nowhere to be found. She had assumed that he would have followed her into the cavern, but apparently, he had not.
“It certainly was,” Van said, grinning ear to ear. “With a spell like this, I don’t have to rely on scrolls to prevent my enemies from attacking me! Easily worth fighting dozens of bandits and almost drowning.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that it was worth it,” Sang said. “Have you seen Jet anywhere? Last time I saw him, he was by my satchel.”
“Hmmm,” Van said as he searched around the area. The bright moonlight made it easy to survey the area, but finding a dragon that was pitch black wouldn’t be an easy task, no matter how bright the moon was.
“There he is!” Sang said, pointing to one of the trees. Nestled up in the tree was little Jet, gently snoozing on one of the branches. Something was dripping from his face, though... Sang climbed up the tree and scooped the dragon up.
“What is all over your face?” she mumbled as she lifted the sleeping dragon up high. The moonlight illuminated the dragon enough for her to realize that the dragon was covered in blood. “Eugh,” she groaned as she noticed a squirrel tail hanging out of the black dragon’s mouth. Apparently, it liked to hunt.
Chapter Three
The wind whipped around Van, causing him to shiver a little. He felt most comfortable being in the mountains, though; they were his home. The mountainous realms had always been a preferred place of adventure for Sivlander. There was a lot of action and excitement to be had within the tunnels beneath the Mountains of Craggy Doom, or within the towers of the mad wizards who preferred high places so that they could perform their weird experiments. The mountains were his element, and with the cold wind came a sense of excitement.
Sivlander’s own village, Silver Peak, rested at the base of the Aern Mountain Range. It was where he had chosen to set up shop—in the hopes that he would be able to operate large-scale operations. His plan, before getting wrapped up in all of this alien CIA stuff, had been to start his own guild and turn Silver Peak into a formidable city that would wage war against other nations that didn’t play fair during the war seasons. His hopes had been that Draco would hire him as a pro and he’d be able to use his status to recruit the top talent in the region so that his forces would have a crack team of commandos.
There were a lot of people within the Aern Mountain Range, as it was the largest mountain range in the game, spanning nearly four thousand miles across the landscape. Many players took up residence in the area and it was easy for a player to spend his entire career without ever having to leave the mountain range.
Van sighed as he felt a snowflake land on his cheek. He could see that his town wasn’t too far off in the distance, and he felt a strange, nostalgic longing. He remembered the long nights of playing the game, working to fight against enemy NPCs or players. The raids, the battles. For all of this talk about Draco being composed of evil aliens, they sure knew how to make one hell of a game. While he was convinced that there was something screwy going on with the game, the more time he spent in Dragon Kings of the New World, the more inclined he was to forget about the whole chaos of what Draco was planning.
A snowy owl sounded out from nearby, hooting as it took flight to search for food. Van couldn’t help but grin at the majesty of the creature’s wingspan. How crazy was it that everything inside of this game was programmed? Every molecule, every fiber of being within this game, had been designed by a team of programmers who understood exactly how to create ecosystems, feelings, emotions, and sensations. Draco might have some crazed plans, but didn’t all of this beauty prove that they knew something about humanity? While Van would never be okay with the idea of earth’s population being reduced for Draco’s purposes, he still had to wonder what exactly their plans were. Why would they create something of such beauty, only to then kill off the majority of humanity? Something wasn’t adding up to him. He just wasn’t fully convinced that things were so cut and dry. They were aliens, right? Perhaps they didn’t understand conventional morality. Perhaps a lack of Judeo-Christian values in these alien creatures could have prevented them from realizing that mass extermination of mankind was a bad thing. Maybe. Van simply didn’t know what to think. The only thing he knew was the he was happy to be back in the game.
“Is that it?” Sang asked as she stopped to point at the large guard tower a few hundred feet away.
Van smiled as he recognized the first thing he had built with his own two hands when founding the town. That guard tower had been designed to withstand just about any kind of assault, and it made him proud to think of the many battles the town had survived.
“We’re home! Welcome to Silver Peak. You’ll find that, while it’s not the biggest of towns, it has the highest caliber of NPCs. I spent years going on quests to add the best people to my town.”
“Looks… decrepit,” Sang said as she examined the rotting wooden beam that was supporting the guard tower.
Van frowned once he realized that the guard tower was empty. It looked as if it had been long abandoned. “That’s not good,” he mumbled as he rushed down the snowy path to reach the rest of the town. Much to his dismay, the entire town was in a state of disrepair. Buildings were falling apart; market stalls had been overturned and trash littered the streets.