"Where the hell is Kylian?" Van asked as he turned around, only to see that Kylian was nowhere to be found. Van would have appreciated the back-up during a fight, but much to his chagrin, Kylian hadn't jumped in.
"Maybe he's looking for Sang?" Sahara suggested as she unclasped the dead man's armor. "I cannot believe the damage rating on this thing! I'm taking it!"
"Yeah," Van muttered. "You'd probably be better off wearing it." With her having some kind of damage reduction, he would feel a lot better about her running into battle.
"Over here!" called the voice of Kylian from a distance. "Guys, over here!"
Van followed the direction of the voice and soon came across a group of dead bodies. He could count nearly five people on the ground.
"Holy crap," Van said. "Did you do that?"
"Yeah, my bow is really good at this kind of thing," Kylian replied curtly. "No, I heard some kind of commotion behind us and thought you guys had the big guy handled, so I went to check it out. Look at all of these people!"
"They've been looted, too," Van commented as he examined the corpses. There were two women and three men. There were dozens of stab wounds in their bodies, and one man's head had been smashed in entirely.
"We need to be careful," Kylian said. "They could still be around."
"You didn't see anyone?" Van asked. "No one at all?"
"Negative, sir," Kylian replied. He turned around to look at Sahara then, who was busy inspecting more footprints on the ground. "How many do you count?"
"Hard to tell… I think they were walking in single file lines," Sahara replied. "That's going to hide their numbers."
"Great, so they're tactically minded, too," Van said. A bright number flashed across his screen, the words 15 players remaining appearing on his UI. Assuming that his team was all still alive, that meant they'd have to fight against 10 more people to win this thing.
"Heads up!" Kylian shouted as he pointed up at one of the trees. There was a woman's face sticking out of the woods. She aimed her bow at them.
"Don't move!" the woman shouted. "Don't move or I'll shoot and I won't miss!"
"Screw you!" Sahara shouted as she darted off into the woods. Kylian ran, as well; they went in opposite directions of each other, and the woman snapped off an arrow, hitting neither of them.
Before Van could react, he felt a sharp stab in the back of his leg. The words Injury! You are immobile appeared in front of him as he fell to the ground, clutching his leg. An arrow was sticking out of the thick of his thigh and he felt blood pouring from his wound.
He wheezed and grabbed his warhammer, but no one was around. He felt a strange sensation begin to pulse through his leg then – it was a coldness he wasn't familiar with. The coldness began to creep up through the rest of his body and his UI began to flash, informing him that he was extremely poisoned.
"Oh… great," Van wheezed as the poison caused him to fall unconscious.
Sang continued leaping from tree to tree, being extremely careful to keep as quiet as she could. She had heard some voices up ahead, but had no idea who they belonged to. It definitely wasn't Van or the rest of the team, meaning that if they spotted her, they'd try to kill her. The voices were hushed, though, and she didn't have the listening skill to pick up on what they were talking about at this distance. All she knew was that there were at least three of them.
As she moved from tree to tree, she paused to catch her bearings. It had been unfortunate, but she had gotten lost on her way back to the water. Running from the man with the club had gotten her turned around, and she hadn't been able to find her own footprints to lead her back. Her class feature allowed her to walk without a trace, which was useful for avoiding being followed, but that was a double-edged sword in this kind of a situation. Now, she was just wandering around, looking for her friends and hoping to avoid anyone dangerous.
She reached a branch that curved upwards and was rather long – long enough for her to get a better view of the surroundings. So Sang scurried across the branch and climbed up to the better vantage point. She could see that there were three people standing around another player. The player was on the ground, wounded and gasping for air. Sang could see that this man was one of the people who had been in Peterson's group. The other three, two men and a woman, were unrecognizable, but they were all carrying leather armor and had swords hanging from their belts.
They appeared to be interrogating the injured player. She wondered if she should step in and help, but remembered that there would only be five winners in this game. Even if she did help this guy out, he'd just be fighting against her later. She leaned her head in as far as she could to listen to what they were saying, but was still unable to hear them.
Sang glanced at the dagger resting on her belt. She could follow these guys and get the drop on them at some point, but it would be a risky strategy. Would it be better to just keep looking for Van and the others? She wasn't sure. As she watched the four people interact, one of them – the woman – suddenly leaned up and pointed north. The others all nodded and rushed off, leaving the injured player to his lonesomeness. Before Sang could determine what to do, however, the injured player slumped over and the words Succumbed to Injuries floated above his head.
Sang dropped down from the tree and crept over to investigate the dead man. He wasn't wearing anything of value, and he had no weapons on him. As she looked for anything that could help her, she realized that he had something in between his palms. She moved his hand over to find a small ring.
As Sang held the golden ring up to the light, she brought up its stats on the UI.
Ring of Speed: When activated, grants a player a 50% boost to their speed.
That would come in extremely handy. She glanced at the poor dead guy in front of her. How ironic was it that the very item he'd been hiding could have saved him, had he used it. She shrugged and slipped the ring onto her own finger, feeling the burst of magical energy surge through her body. Activating it was easy, and it appeared to be usable three times per day.
As she examined the surrounding area, she heard a shout in the distance, opposite of where the other players had run off to. It had been a female's shout, and it had sounded an awful lot like Sahara. Sang gritted her teeth and began to move toward the source of the sound, holding the small dagger tightly. The ring of speed would help her dart into her foes and stab them, and then retreat, making for the perfect hit and run weapon.
As Sang made her way forward, she saw Sahara running right toward her.
"Ambush!" Sahara shouted as she ran up to Sang. "We walked right into an ambush! Some lady tried shooting at us from the trees and Kylian and I dodged but Van got hit! We wanted to run to get him, but more arrows were coming for us. I counted at least three people in the trees – we gotta regroup and get back in there!"
"Where's Kylian?" Sang asked.
Sahara shrugged. "He ran off opposite of me. I don't know if they hit him or not, but I'm worried about Van!"
Sang growled and shook her head. "We can't just run back in there without thinking straight. You said they were in the trees?"
"Yeah, archers," Sahara said.
"Then we're going to need to get the drop on them," Sang said. She pointed at Sahara's sword. "Give that here."
Sahara complied and handed the weapon to Sang. Sang swung it around. Her character wasn't the most proficient with a longsword, but she had enough points in it to be able to use it to fight against her foes well enough.
"Great," Sang said as she began to climb up the nearest tree. "Here's the plan… you've got that armor, meaning that you're gonna be way harder to damage. So go back to where you were and distract the archers. I'll kill them."