“So it’s true,” Van whispered hoarsely.
“I’m afraid so. Look, we’ll just kill this Dragon really quick and then we can hide. Once the CIA kicks down Trefor’s door in real life, we’ll be safe,” Sang said. Her head darted up suddenly. “It’s here. Crap, let’s go!”
“We can’t kill that thing!” Van said as he chased after his companion. “It’s a high-level Dragon!”
“Well, what do you want us to do, then? Get cooked by it?” Sang demanded. She pointed to the surrounding trees, many of which were on fire—the implication was clear enough. The burning smell of smoke made Van gag as he tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes.
“We gotta run, or at least find something that can kill that thing,” Van replied. “We’re too low-level to just kill it. We need a weapon or some kind of item.”
“Like what?” Sang asked.
Van wracked his brains. He knew that there were ways to kill higher-level players and creatures. It wasn’t easy, but there were methods. “Wait! I’ve got it!” he shouted triumphantly. “The Guardians of Graver Point! It’s not too far from here—it’s an old temple that has a couple of quests, but the Guardians themselves are these high-level statues that go Aggro on anyone who gets close. They’re programmed to be completely hostile, and the best part is, with the right kind of magic item, you can actually control them.”
“Who needs magic when you can cheat?” Sang replied as she threw her bow onto her back. “Sounds good, so let’s go! If we’re quick, we can get out of here without it noticing us.”
“They can probably track us,” Van replied. “Trefor seemed to have eyes everywhere.”
“Use your Potion of Invisibility,” Sang said, “I’ll use my Stealth!”
Van nodded as he popped the cork and drank his last remaining potion. If the Dragon followed the game rules, he would be able to lose it, at least for a little while.
And with that, the two ran as fast as they could to escape the burning forest. Van felt his heart rate increasing quite a bit; he wasn’t a warrior in real life. Never before had he been locked in a life or death struggle.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sang huffed and wheezed a little as they made their way up the steps of the massive temple. The temple itself had been built into the side of the mountain and the steps themselves were carved out of the very mountain. She was feeling a little jittery with all of the exertion, and felt nearly woozy. Her heartbeat had been almost audible at several points during the adventure, and now she was starting to recognize the fact that she could very well be killed while inside of these pods. It wasn’t a good thing to worry about, however, because Van was still in serious trouble. She couldn’t let him die out here, and if she hadn’t plugged back in, Trefor would most likely have killed Van already for refusing to join Draco.
The whole thing was crazy—and while she would have loved to disbelieve the whole “Draco is actually an alien organization” thing, the reality was that she didn’t particularly have a choice of whether or not to believe it at this point. Something had happened when she’d connected to the Others, and while she didn’t know what it all meant, she knew deep down that Draco was very bad news. So, simply, she now had a new job—to get Van out alive. Herself? While she wouldn’t mind surviving, she’d already made the choice when she’d climbed into her pod. She probably wouldn’t make it out alive unless there was some kind of a miracle, but there was no point in worrying about it. For once in her whole adult life, she actually felt herself caring about someone else, and it felt incredible. She would fight for Van and help him, even if it killed her.
“There!” Van said excitedly as he pointed at a massive golden statue. The statue had a large blade for its right arm and a fist on its left. The statue looked kind of like a human, but with the head of a fox. “They don’t move at all, but the moment you get too close, they’re going to go berserk.”
Sang saw the words Guardian of Graver Point Level 90 hanging over its head. She quickly pulled up the stats.
HP: 5,000
Strength: 155
Weapon: Blade Arm, 300 damage + poison
Weapon Fist: 350 damage
She grinned when she saw those numbers. It was going to be far stronger than even Trefor. All she needed to do was hack into it and take control, and they’d be good to fight. She brought up the console menu and accessed the menu.
She fiddled with the tables and managed to get it to change.
The statue immediately came to life and began to walk straight towards Sang. She grinned widely when she realized that it wasn’t going to attack either of them.
“Nice work!” Van cried out as he pointed to the other three statues. “Activate those ones, too! We’ll have ourselves a whole army to fight against them!”
Sang nodded and did the same for the other three statues, causing them all to activate and march up to Sang. They wouldn’t follow just any orders, but they would follow her around until there was something to attack. And it was only a matter of time before Trefor found them. Sang had done a little bit of work to try and conceal their tracks, but she didn’t have enough time to figure out a work-around. The more she had learned about the game system, though, the easier it was to manipulate things... and yet, for right now, there was little she could do in the way of hiding for the long term. If she could have hidden their position permanently, she’d just have suggested that they duck out until O’Hara and Neil found Trefor in meat space. If they could find him, that was. Sang didn’t want to give Van a false sense of hope, but the chances of them finding Trefor this quickly were pretty low, unless the man lived locally. Her actual plan was to try and convince Trefor to give up. These statues would help motivate him immensely. If she could get Trefor to surrender and come into CIA custody, they’d have a lot more information on Draco. It would be ten times better than anything Van could explain to them.
“I see him!” Van said, pointing up to the clouds. The yellow Dragon swooped down at full speed, an armor-clad paladin riding atop its back. Sang grabbed her bow and started firing arrows. The words DODGE DODGE DODGE appeared over the Dragon as the arrows whistled past it. The Dragon then did a strafing run, flying by and unleashing a blast of flames. Sang and Van ducked behind the statues as the fire barely missed them both. Sang could feel the heat of the flames, though, and it felt a little bit more real than it had before.
The statues were quick to move toward the Dragon to attack, but in a split second they all fell apart, leaving Van and Sang without cover.
“Nice try!” Trefor called from atop the Dragon. “I must say I can respect the effort! But tricks like that aren’t going to work here! You might be able to mess around on our servers, but my people are focusing on counter-hacking techniques at this moment. You won’t be able to do anything here.”
“Crap!” Sang said as she tried to shoot a few more arrows at Trefor, but the words DODGE greeted her once again. She gritted her teeth and couldn’t believe what she was dealing with here. It seemed so arbitrary that her arrows were missing even though she was positive that her aim was on point, but when he was at such a high level, it seemed that it didn’t particularly matter. He was going to kill them with ease.
“Van! Get into the temple! Run!” Sang cried out as she dashed sideways to narrowly avoid the flames from the Dragon.
“Oh, come on!” Trefor taunted. “Don’t run! I’m your friend!
Sang ignored him and continued moving up the stairs and into the stone temple. The temple’s inside was a large square room with steps leading up to an altar of some kind. There were no other places to go. Sang glanced around, desperate to find some kind of hidden door or secret room, but there was none.