A New World (Gamer, Book 1) (15 page)

He looks back to the desert and sees the
hundreds, if not close to a thousand mobs approaching. Normally,
creatures at this levels they wouldn’t be enough to do any real
damage to Harry, but when you multiply that many low levels by the
obscene numbers, the math gets very interesting.

He grips his sword and waits for the assault
to begin. It takes a full ten minutes of rather anticlimactic
movement, for the first of them to come within range of Harry and
from there the fight is on.

Harry ducks and weaves and slips under stone
arms and legs being thrown his way. His attacks are a bit
inconsistent, but almost every strike has a flame behind it. It is
a desperate defense and one that can't last long with the crush
that is coming at him.

Dozens of creatures attack at once and Harry
spins and cuts out as quickly as he can. He is forced to fight at
his absolute limit and he is thankful for the dexterity he has
gained over the last few days as it is definitely needed to avoid
and defend against the creatures that are attacking him from all
angles.

Eventually, the press becomes too much for him
and he is forced to the ground; however, after hours and hours of
practice on his back, he is more than proficient in this position
and is doing a fair job of defending himself. That is until the
larger creatures start appearing.

Harry takes a hit from one and notes his
health slip down a chunk. He looks up in shock at the slightly off
color looking creature that is only distinguishable as different by
its slightly larger body.

Josh appears beside him in a whoosh of air and
cuts one in half with his laser fingers. The two halves of the
creature manage to rejoin and it works its way back to its
feet.

"Get us out of here!" Harry yells.

Josh shakes his head.

"I can't do it. You are attached to the
grinding stone and it’s too heavy to transport through a portal.
The only way out of this is to survival – or die.”

Harry jumps to his feet and starts swinging
about himself like a madman. There is no way he can escape and he
can’t afford to lose any gold. He is going to die fighting or die
trying, but he’s not giving in. His life literally depends on
it.

He slips through the masses and begins to run.
His slashing and slicing become a non-stop frenzied melee as he
continues to fight through the group, seeking the weaker monsters
to destroy. His flame is becoming stronger and stronger as he
focuses more and more on his sword and its movements in a desperate
fight to stay alive and dozens fall from it.

Seconds pass and turn into minutes as he
continues to cut with no end in sight to the madness of the massive
press of low level monsters that are assaulting him and Josh.
Eventually, his visualization disappears and his mind works on
instinct alone. The flame that follows his sword becomes one
continuous stream that connects to the end of his blade as if it
was always meant to be there.

The creatures back away as he slips between
them, slashing and taking lives by the dozen. There is no
experience gain from this, but the items that they will give will
hopefully score him enough gold to pay for his death if all goes
wrong here today.

Sprinting as fast as he can, he reaches the
edge of the enemy and something yanks him backwards. He looks down
and realizes that the chain is strangely stretched out in a very
pixilated way.
That looks like a rubber band,
Harry
thinks.

“
Oh…”

The chain detracts and Harry is dragged
backwards through the sand. He slams into one of the big creatures
that are attacking Josh when he arrives at the stone again and uses
the opportunity to slice through it with his weapon, which lets off
a small burst of flame as he cuts off its head and lets it drop to
the ground to die.

He spins in a circle, no longer really
concentrating on what he is doing. His attacks are the attacks of a
cornered animal: One that has nothing to lose and everything to
gain from fighting.

Spinning around once more, he comes down low
and takes the legs off the largest of the stronger creatures. It
drops to the ground and Josh stands looking at him in
shock.

"Are you sure that your stats are what you say
they are? These things are much stronger than us,” he asks, cutting
out at one.

Harry shrugs and then spins to the remaining
creatures that are advancing behind him. There are about 200 in a
long line stumbling their way.

"We don’t have time to worry about it. These
things might be low level, but they're pretty dangerous at the same
time. We either fight or we die."

Harry charges the creatures and Josh watches
him go. He shakes his head in amusement and then turns back to the
higher level monsters.

Harry surges into a large group of twenty and
cuts and hacks into them with pretty decent speed. His technique is
not anywhere near what one might consider professional, yet it does
the job.

It’s getting hot,
Harry notes before
realizing that his red hot sword has been conducting heat through
his steel gauntlet. He cries out when he sees that glowing red
length of steel in his hand and has to resist the urge to throw his
only weapon aside. The flame coming from the weapon has been
getting bigger and stronger as Harry fights more and more. It’s
nearly a few meters in length and has a stability that wasn’t there
earlier.

Setting himself with his weapon to the rear,
he instinctively brings the weapon around in a long cut that brings
his rear foot all the way around to the front. A blast of flame
covers his vision and spurts from the weapon to be released on the
creatures in a wave of fire of that annihilates them by the
dozen.

Harry stares in shock. This is not part of the
spell he has been learning and the sword didn’t do anything weird
this time. What he is seeing is something brand new. A spell of his
own that he learned by himself.

“
Nice,” he says before spinning to
run a creature through.

With only a hundred creatures left the
remaining work doesn’t require so much effort to get done. In the
end, Josh throws something round and large into the air and yellow
beams to fire hail down on the last fifty creatures. Devastating
them and turning them into dust. It's not long before Harry and
Josh are standing alone with the dust so strong that it almost
chokes them in its thickness.

"Is that everything?" Harry asks.

Josh looks down at Harry’s foot. The gold
chain is still there and the purple glowing stone is still
glowing.

“
I don’t know. We already defeated
nearly 1000 of those creatures, but the chain hasn’t disappeared
yet. That means there must be one or two left alive somewhere and
still on their way.”

Something rumbles under their feet and Harry
looks down. Josh glances at him and gets down on his knees to press
his head to the sand.

"That can't be good..." Harry says, wondering
what else this lowbie area has to throw at them.

The sand stirs in front of them and something
very big shifts underneath.

Congratulations, Player. Rare
Monster Discovered.

“
Harry, would you blame me if I
left you here to die?” Josh asks, his voice breaking
slightly.

Harry looks at him and reaches over to grab a
hold of his robes.

“
You got me into this; you get me
out of this.”

Josh steadies himself and gives Harry a firm
nod.

“
I guess it’s time to get serious.
You can take off your armor now.”

Harry grins and opens up a screen to perform
the changes. He has been wearing the heavy training armor all this
time because the weight helped him improve his strength, when he’s
finished swapping his gear, he feels a hundred percent
lighter.

He turns back to Josh to find him wearing the
craziest battle outfit he’s ever seen.

“
Are you trying to be some kind of
robot?”

Josh lifts the front face of his helm, which
is red and gold.

“
It was popular a long, long time
ago. I think the design allows for some modifications that you’re
going to like.”

Harry sighs and is about to say something
about getting with the times, when their opponent tears upwards
through the sand to appear in front of them.

“
That’s big.”

Josh just stares.

“
Josh, do you have a
plan.”

He shakes his head.

“
Do you know anything about this
creature?”

He shakes his head.

“
Are you going to be able to
fight?”

Josh looks at him and nods his
head.

“
Alrighty.”

They turn back to the monster that has just
spotted them.

“
Alright…” Harry draws back his
sword and a stream of yellow flame flares from it. "Give me a few
seconds and I’ll see what we can do about destroying this
thing.”

Josh gives him a salute in his funny red and
yellow suit and begins firing laser beams at the
creature.

Harry concentrates on his sword, allowing the
heat to build up on the weapon. It slowly reaches the point where
his blade is red hot and his hands are aching from the
heat.

Josh leaps aside as the creature jumps the
distance between them and lands in front of Harry.

"Take some of this!" Harry yells as he swings
the hot steel with all of his might.

The flame that appears behind his weapon is
huge and flows straight across the creature. However, when the
flame dies down, both Harry and Josh realize that there is not even
the smallest of scratches on the enemy and it appears that Harry’s
strongest attack has done nothing at all to the beast.

“
Got to take this to the skies,”
Josh says.

He leaps into the air and glows a bright red.
Josh flies upwards until he’s above the creature, firing down on it
with his laser fingers and throwing the occasional yellow orb at
the beast.

Harry races past the monster on the ground and
slashes out at its legs. It's not much different from the lower
level creatures in appearance, except the fact that the size of the
thing is absolutely huge and its skin is much tougher. Harry’s
blade barely scratches it and he finds himself hard pressed to do
any damage at all.

Penetration Mode
Activated.

Harry looks down at his sword in hope, but the
message doesn't apply to him. The creature’s body suddenly starts
to warp and spikes appear on the outside of its skin.

The monster stops moving for a second and both
Harry and Josh stare at it waiting to see what will happen next.
Seconds later all of the spikes explode from the creature’s body
and its outer shell virtually disappears. Harry is cut and ripped a
dozen times over as the spear like spikes pierce his skin and
skewer him in a half dozen places.

He slides over as the world dims a little and
sees Josh receiving similar treatment as he falls to the ground and
moans in pain.

Harry tries to move, but the spikes have
slammed through him, so he is stuck in midair, waiting for the
spikes that have done quite a nasty amount of damage to slowly
disappear.

A minute later he gets to his feet and finds
the creature already moving towards him.

He notes that its skin is slow in repairing
and realizes that this might be the chance he so desperately
needs.

Josh flies past and slams into the creature.
His lasers burn the beast’s skin and it cries out in agony, finally
feeling the hurt inflicted on it.

Harry streaks past the monster and strikes out
as quickly as he can time and time again. He utilizes the Cap of
Speed and his health starts to burn down quickly. He only has a
quarter left, and can only afford to use this tool for a short
time.

With his speed increased a dozen times over,
his slashes become a blur. The creature cries out in pain and a new
message appears on his screen.

Walled Garden
Activated
.

Harry strikes out as hard as he can, sensing
the end, and hits a hard wall of stone that has appeared around the
creature's body. It is strong enough to rattle the bones in his
arms and he realizes that the fight is over. If they can’t hurt the
monster then there is no chance of success. Neither of them have
the health for an extended fight.

Josh flies back to Harry and they jog away
from the creature.

Harry deactivates his cap and they both stare
at the monster, which is standing stock still.

"Do you think we can hurt it now?"

“
Doubtful.”

“
How long before it casts that
spike spell again?”

“
I’m not sure. Monsters have
timers, but the AI can usually adjust as time goes by in the fight.
It could cast it any second for all we know.”

Harry looks back at the creature.