Origin ARS 4 (12 page)

The fat bandit, El Guano, was hit three times for a total of over two hundred damage, while the furthest bandit, Cincinnati Slim, did something ridiculous. He was hit twice but then a ring on his hand began to glow with a bright light. Several bright green numbers flared above the heads of his party members and their health was restored by five hundred points! A soft glow settled about the men and after another second passed several much smaller green numbers rose up again.

Harelip Pete rose up from the floor; his status effects removed, and called out. “Where is that bastard mage?”

“Right here.” called out Rhea before she rushed in and took the fight to the bandits directly. Scott had elected to try and offer her support since even his strongest direct attack had not one-shotted his foes. He held back and slipped around to the side of the battle while trying to find a proper way to deal damage.

“Get that elf-bitch!” snapped Cincinnati, before he drew out his sword.

El Guano and Harelip Pete ran toward her, and Rhea simply waited for their arrival. Then, when they had moved around the boxes and presented a clear and straight line of attack, she blurred forward and struck out at them with two clean and precise strikes that appeared to cleave straight through their bodies.

The numbers four hundred eighty and three hundred sixty rose up above them and then their bodies started to slide apart in a sickening display. However, two tiny green numbers flared above their heads. Their bodies slid back together in an even more disturbing display and they started to move again.

“Dammit!” snapped Rhea. “Angel’s Blessing of Eternal Renewal...”

“That’s right bitch. No matter how many times you kill us, we’ll just regenerate as long as this ring is on my finger!” called Cincinnati before he reared back to throw his blade at Rhea. He was greatly surprised when a boomerang raced out of the darkness and smacked him in the side of the head causing him to drop his blade.

“Scott!” called Rhea happily before she casually leapt back to avoid the attack of El Guano. She then slid to the side again to avoid Harelip Pete. Her blade flashed out and Harelip Pete’s head was neatly separated from his body. However, a mere second later his body and head shimmered and they reappeared intact once more.

“You damned... The hell? Seriously? Who uses a boomerang?” snarled Cincinnati, before he wheeled around to take a good look at his heavily armored attacker.

Scott flashed a feral grin at him then said, “So, you have a fancy ring...”

The bandit batted Scott’s next boomerang throw out of the air but that only left him open to the swift moving man’s real purpose. Scott ran in before his opponent could regain his blade and grappled with him directly.

Cincinnati spit at Scott and to the sorcerer’s surprise he lost twelve hit points and a bit of his personal sense of dignity! The sorcerer did his best to ignore the rage building inside and continued to struggle with the man. The bandit player was physically powerful and quite agile, Scott suspected that he had reincarnated a few times. However, in the end it did not matter.

Scott slipped his hip forward and whirled his body around with great force. Cincinnati went flying over Scott’s shoulder and slammed down onto the ground. The sorcerer then dropped down atop him and held the man in place while he tightly gripped his wrist.

“No matter what you do, you bastard... I’m coming back from this and killing your boomerang throwing ass.” snapped Cincinnati.

Scott laughed darkly then began to cast his weakest ice spell. “Freeze!”

The power of synchronicity was a wonderful thing. He had learned long ago that his spells held special utility when used in specific ways. Freeze worked as a cone of effect spell, but if you gripped something or used the spell underwater it put all of the power into a single area. Underwater it created a block or boulder of ice. When he gripped one of his opponents it froze limbs.

Cincinnati screamed and struggled to get free as agonizing pain lanced through his body. Scott tormented the poor murderous bastard by continually casting his weakest spell until his wrist froze through completely. Even his higher level and innate resistance to magic could not stop Scott from slowly freezing him. There was a chance that using his higher level spells could have just cost him more mana for similar effect, so why waste the resources? Slow and steady freezes the rabbit to death, after all.

Scott raised his free hand and one of his boomerangs raced toward him. He caught it then laughed; “Boomerangs are wonderful, man. You just don’t know!” before he slammed it down and broke the man’s hand cleanly off at the wrist. A bright red eighty-seven flared above his head.

The thing that Scott had hoped for happened the instant that the hand came free. The ring on the bandit’s finger stopped glowing. The gemstone cracked down the center and turned grey. The healing effect ended immediately.

“Fuck you!” screamed Cincinnati.

“Sorry, you’re not my type.” quipped Scott before he set about punching the man in the back of the head repeatedly. Why waste mana when he could just pummel the man. The damage numbers that flew up ranged from the teens to the late twenties, but it did not matter. Scott was in a superior position and the man he fought wore no head gear. It took about twenty hard punches to finish the man off.

“You done, yet?” asked Rhea cheerfully. She had killed her opponents in two swift strikes once the regenerative effect ended. Meanwhile Scott had taken quite a bit longer.

“Yep!” called out the sorcerer before he rolled off of the dead man’s body. “Looks like the ring broke, though.”

“You wanted it, huh?” asked Rhea with a smile as she casually looted the bodies of the fallen.

“Who wouldn’t? Get out of death free card as long as it lasts? Sign me up!” said Scott.

Rhea laughed then nodded while she pulled a few Fayth out of the fat bandit player’s hip pouch. “It doubles death penalties for a day and only lasts ten minutes.”

“I’d still take it.... Just glad my idea worked. If his hand had just hopped back on, I would have been annoyed.” said Scott.

While they worked at stripping the player corpses of everything they had, the battle report appeared.

[Battle Report]

You have defeated three known murderers during a government sponsored bandit subjugation mission! Your intimacy with the kingdom of Eizen has grown.

+ 18350 EXP

+ 2237 Fayth

+ 30 Ability Points

Item(s) Acquired:

N/A

[--]

“Sweet, but what’s with the lack of items?” asked Scott. He remembered getting a lot of stuff during the time that he had fought Karsh.

“We killed players. Normally they only drop one or two items and the rest are locked. We can take whatever we find on these guys since they’re flagged as murderers. It only shows up on the report if it is something special and you already picked it up.” said Rhea.

“So, the stuff I got from Karsh... was mostly just a reminder of what I had already picked up?” asked Scott.

“Probably.... Let’s finish looting these guys and keep going. Someone might have heard all of this ruckus.” said Rhea.

Scott nodded. That was a good idea. He continued to strip Cincinnati down to his birthday suit while looking for fun things to sell back in town. As he did so, he sent a thought to Ero to see why she was being so quiet, but she did not answer. He began to feel a little concerned about that after a while, and called out to her more insistently inside his mind.

Ero finally answered. “Hmm? What is it, Scott?”

“You were so quiet... Are you alright?” he asked.

“Huh? Oh, I was just... Well, you know.” said Ero.

“No. What?” asked Scott.

Ero’s embarrassment was sensed with great ease. “I realized that the battle had turned without you needing me so I decided to relive what we did together the other night.”

“So, while I was donkey punching a guy to death, you were having a little special fairy time all to yourself?” asked Scott.

“Mmmm. It was fairy fun... It can get a little boring in here at times since you rarely need me to help you.” she said softly.

“Ero... Would you like to fight more often?” he asked her.

“Yes! Can I Scott? Can I?” she asked with a great deal of excitement.

“Of course! I’d love to fight beside you more often. We can save the inner fairy guardian stuff for like boss monsters or something in case we need it.” said Scott.

“I could kiss you!” exclaimed Ero excitedly.

“I dunno. Have you eaten all your vegetables lately?” asked Scott in a goofy manner while he pulled off Cincinnati’s boots. He turned them upside down and shook them soundly. Several Fayth fell out.

“I don’t like those fairy much...” said Ero cutely.

“Big, strong, sexy fairies eat their carrots.” said Scott lightly, before he tossed the former bandit’s boots into a pile then continued on with the looting.

“Yeah we do!” said Ero enthusiastically.

Scott nearly fell over as the implication set in. “Oh Ero...”

A soft little giggle was her only response. Suddenly, eating her vegetables sounded like something fairy interesting.

The trio finished cleaning up the bandits in the area and searched through the various odds and ends that they had found. Nothing particularly interesting was discovered. They moved on and entered a short corridor that led to the next room. A surprising thing was revealed to them upon looking inside.

“Are you serious?” asked Scott softly, while he looked at the unconscious bandits in the room up ahead.

“Yes. They are obviously logged-off.” said Rhea.

“Wow, so they are not even able to wake up? You can’t wake up when you’re like that.” said Ero.

“They could at any moment. It depends on when they log-in again.” said Rhea.

Scott looked to his beautiful elven companion. “Why not just leave completely like you do sometimes?”

“You get a well-rested bonus if you leave your body in a safe place. This would count as a camp or a town for them, though they aren’t protected as much because of their status.” said Rhea.

Scott’s eyes darted back to the sleeping murderers. They were in a place where they felt extremely confident and safe. It would be their undoing. “So, is there a penalty if we just kill these asshats while they’re AFK?”

“Nope, murderers aren’t given such a protection.” said Rhea. A slight smile crossed her lips.

Scott grinned at her then started to move forward. Free experience and loot, here they come!

The scent of alcohol and the stench of unwashed bodies was quite potent in the room as Scott slipped through the shadows. Rhea opted to circle the room from a different direction.

Ero rubbed her chin then flew upward toward the ceiling so that she could get a better view of the corridor up ahead. She would act as the early warning system just in case someone came toward the room. The grisly business at hand needed to be complete before others came, or their attempt at a stealthy invasion would be useless any longer.

In this small room there were eight unconscious players, murderers all. Some people might balk at the idea of killing someone in their sleep. It might be unseemly, or make some people feel uncomfortable. There would be morality issues rattling around within the minds of many who might contemplate such an action.

Scott merely looked at the scarred face of a man named Asswhooper76 then shook his head. He had not realized that players in this world would be allowed such stupid names, or that there were possibly at least seventy-five other gods who had decided that Asswhooper was a good name to go by as a character choice.

Oh well, it did not matter. He reared back then punched Asswhooper76 in the face. When he did not wake up, Scott grinned. He punched the helpless murderer several more times. Each blow took off dozens of the bandit’s health points, but he kept snoring away. Rhea was right, he was obviously logged out. That was the nature of this room. The bandits could not sleep in a town inn, so they had rooms like this for their avatar bodies while they slept.

Scott finished murder-punching Asswhooper76 then glanced over to see Rhea neatly decapitate a slutty looking bandit woman named Secret Whisper. She had once been fairly pretty, and looked like she was probably popular among this bandit sect given the rest of her feminine architecture. The fact that she was wearing some sort of lacey lingerie added to that possibility.

Was he morbid for noticing that sort of thing? Perhaps, but since he was currently killing people in their sleep, he chose to disregard that kind of thinking. What use was morality to a temporary assassin?

They moved on and continued their grisly work. None of the bandits awoke, and soon they added eight more dead bandit players to their kill roster.

They started to loot the room and the corpses not long after, while Ero continued to watch ahead. A battle report arose that caught their attention.

[Battle Report]

You have defeated eight known murderers during a government sponsored bandit subjugation mission! Your intimacy with the kingdom of Eizen has grown.