"Crap!" one of the players shouted, "A wizard!"
This was the perfect moment, Van realized, and so while Fredlin distracted them, he rushed the three with his hammer at the ready. Two of the other players, the men, decided to run after Fredlin, leaving their companion behind. Van was much larger than the woman wielding a Morningstar, however, and she was already severely damaged from all of the fighting. She tried to stand her ground and fight against him, but she didn't have a chance. With a single blow, Van was able to drop her.
"Take that, fiend!" Fredlin yelled as he cast his flash spell, causing bright lights to emit from his fingers. The flash of light struck both of the advancing fighters and they paused, screaming in agony as they dropped their weapons.
While it had been no fireball spell, it would do. Van rushed up behind them and began to attack them with his hammer, smashing the largest one in the back of his head and dealing 200 damage. This dropped him to his knees, but he was still alive. Unable to see, the other player spun around towards Van and fumbled about, grabbing a hold of the haft of Van's weapon. At that exact moment, the words Your Rage Has Worn Off and You are Exhausted appeared in Van's field of vision, and he felt his muscles grow tired and weak. He could barely hold onto his own weapon as he tried to wrestle for control.
"Need help!" Van shouted to Fredlin.
"What am I supposed to do? I used my strongest spell!" Fredlin shouted back.
"Why do wizards suck so much?" Van yelled in exasperation as he pulled back as hard as he could on his warhammer. The motion pushed the other player to pull back, too, and at the last moment, Van let go of the hammer, causing his foe to fall backwards. He drew his hand axe that he kept on his side and charged to finish off his foe, but felt a surge of pain run through his leg. The injury wouldn't let him move forward at anything like a fast pace.
The player that Van had nailed in the back of the head stood up and shook himself. "Arrrrgh!" he screamed as the word Enraged popped up above his head.
"Ah, great," Van muttered as the berserker charged him and began savagely punching him with his bare hands. Van tried to block the blows, but the fatigue from losing his own Berserk state was slowing him down too much. The words Nonlethal damage incurred: 200 appeared above his head and he fell to the ground, unable to move. Fortunately, a player attacking without martial arts training only dealt nonlethal damage, meaning that he wouldn't be killed no matter how much damage he took. However, he had been knocked down and would now be unable to move until the nonlethal damage healed, over time.
"Kill the wizard – this guy's out!" the berserker said as he grabbed the warhammer from the other player.
"Stay back!" Fredlin shouted as he raised his hands and slowly backed away from the two. "I am a highly trained wizard with amazing powers! Powers you have never heretofore seen!"
"Yeah, sure," the berserker said as he raised his hammer high and charged at Fredlin. In the midst of rushing forward, though, he suddenly stopped moving and grabbed his stomach, gasping for air. Van could see a long blade sticking out of his back.
"Ha!" Sahara shouted triumphantly as she shoved the berserker off of her weapon. "Now that was one well-used invisibility spell!" She looked over at Van. "I told your dumb ass to hide."
"My bad," Van chuckled, genuinely surprised at Sahara's ingenuity. He hadn't expected this at all.
The single remaining player took one look at Sahara's health bar and shook his head. "Aw, man, I'm not winning this one." And with that, he logged out.
"Did we really win this one?" Van groaned. He couldn't believe it. They'd actually managed to pull it off and win the game.
"Congratulations, players!" said an ethereal voice. "You have won the challenge! Your team gets to move on to the next round! At this time, we are suspending the tournament until tomorrow, as Sleep Time is upon us. Log back in at 8:00 am EST sharp."
"I can't wait for tomorrow!" Sahara said.
"I can't either," Van muttered as he closed his eyes. "Hopefully, we'll be able to finish everything tomorrow. For good."
Sang sat in the silence of her bedroom. A plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes was in front of her, but she didn't particularly feel like eating. Instead, she just sat at her desk and stared forward. That tournament had been exciting, but when she had been killed, she'd felt a real panic. For a moment, she'd thought that they would lose and it would all have been for nothing. Yet, somehow Van had chosen the right people for the job. Time and time again, he had proven his ability to manage and recruit the best talent. They'd survived to move on to the next challenge.
There was a thumping at her door, causing her to jump to her feet. The thumping was frantic.
"Coming!" Sang said as she grabbed the door and swung it open. Neil was sitting in a wheelchair in front of her, a scowl on his face.
"Normally, I just kick the door open and announce I'm here," he grumbled, "but as you can see, I'm a little less than mobile right now."
"Neil?" Sang gasped. "You're alive?"
"Of course, I'm alive," Neil said. "There's no way in hell I'm dying before that nerd of yours does his job."
"I thought you were in critical condition!" Sang said, shaking her head.
"That's what I made the orderly tell everyone," Neil replied as he wheeled himself into her room. He groaned and stood up then, staggering over to Sang's bed, where he plopped down. "Look here," he said as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Something's bugging me and I can't quite put my finger on it."
"So you weren't in critical condition?" Sang asked, still unsure if Neil should be out and about. He still looked pretty injured to her.
"Well, I was at one point, but I've got things to handle," Neil said as he took a drag of his cigarette. "Mainly, that guy who shot himself. Been driving me crazy. Why? Why the hell would Draco use an operative, only to have him just kill himself in front of us?"
"Don't make me think about it," Sang said as she sat on the chair across from her bed. "That was too horrible."
"Well, I start digging on this guy, right? Started looking up some information… and you'll never guess what I found," Neil said with a wicked grin.
"What?"
"This lunatic had no prior military service aside from working as an MP here," Neil said. "Someone set him up with a ton of false credentials. I did some searches and found out this fellow was actually in prison for an aggravated assault. His lawyer tried to prove him bonkers, but the court wasn't feeling it, so they sentenced him anyway. But from everything that I've read, it seems he had a history of mental illness. Severe hallucinations, schizophrenia, etc."
"Someone gave him false military credentials?" Sang asked. "Who in the hell would do that? Why?"
"It's gotta be a leak," Neil said as he leaned forward. "There's someone in this place that's been leaking information to the higher-ups at Draco. It's gotta be. When we, uh, politely questioned the senator, all of the information that he gave us had nothing to do with our operations. He didn't know anything about the specifics that we were planning, but he had been given orders to stop this at all costs."
"Hmmm," Sang said as she ran her hand through her hair. A leak? "That would make some level of sense, but who could it be?"
"No idea, but then a thought occurred to me," Neil continued as he finished his cigarette and flicked the butt onto her pristine floor. She wanted to yell at him for it, but didn’t have the heart. She was just glad to see that he was still alive. "What if we could lure this mole into revealing himself?"
"How?" Sang asked.
"Well, I gotta ask the question – why the hell would Draco shoot me and not you?"