The Bathrobe Knight (25 page)

Hmph. Dragging me all this way just so he can go off and check out the cheerleader’s treasure chest. This feels just like highschool all over again. I thought after college I’d be done with this.

“So, about my sister, did she ha . . .” she heard Darwin start to ask as he faded out of sight in front of her.

Kass sighed.
I guess I’ve got some time to kill,
she thought, and she opened up her skill menu to see how her spells were progressing. She was so close to Level 40 that she could almost taste it. She would definitely hit 40 by the time she got back to Darwin’s cave--if she actually went back to Darwin’s cave. Darwin was supposed to just be an EXP bot for her, but the whole situation with him was somehow getting more and more complicated. Those complications were something that Kass had to decide if she was comfortable dealing with . . . if she was comfortable with how fast he was advancing in the game without her.

Chapter 6: A Hop, Skip and a Pan Away!

Valerie
:

              
Valerie took a deep breath. This was starting to rack her nerves. Each kill made her more nervous of their discovery. They had already gone so far into the ant-hill-like maze of the Fire-Walkers, and there was still no end in sight. Whereas the sky-city felt like an actual city, sprawled out with all of its parts connected, the Fire-Walker domain did not. It was chambered and segregated. Each chamber connected to several halls that connected to more chambers. The chambers typically had at most ten buildings, and each was dedicated to a specific task. Right now, the group had entered a blacksmithing chamber containing forges for the glass weapons they would make.

Valerie was trying her best to steady her nerves as Daniel and Mclean dispatched the seven Fire-Walkers still inside the chamber.
We’ve come this far, and there hasn’t been a problem yet,
Valerie told herself, looking around the room for anything they could use.
We’re not just mindless murderers; we’re looking for evidence. I know we’ve got those three documents hinting at the plan, but if we don’t get something hard and concrete fast, then it’s likely we’ll be dismissed.

“Got anything in that stack of scrolls?” Mclean asked.

“No, nothing. It’s just more weapon designs and junk, like every other blacksmithing section we find.”

“Why couldn’t the documents be as plentiful as their yapping mouths. At this rate, we’ll have killed every Fire-Walker in the damn town before we find enough hard evidence to condemn them,” Daniel complained.

“I don't’ see what’s wrong with that. Might be for the best after all: if there aren’t any of them left, then they won’t be attacking while we lay siege to the White-Horns,” Mclean posited.

“Yeah, but don’t you think the Sun God Emperor will be angry if he found out we took out half of the Empire because we had suspicions it was going to attack the other half?” Valerie asked rhetorically.
I’ve seen way too many dramas on TV to not know how this will turn out without evidence
.

“Suspicions?! We heard them confess, Valerie! It’s not just suspicions; it’s fact!”

“Yeah, but, Mclean, you still have to prove it to the Sun God Emperor. He won’t know what we heard. They’ll just think we made up some stupid excuse to go murder a bunch of Fire-Walkers,” Daniel reminded her.

“It would be our word against theirs; I’m guessing our word isn’t good enough?” Mclean sighed.

“Yeah, probably not.” Daniel patted her on the wing. “It’s okay though. I’d still believe you over those hot-headed Fire-Walkers.”

“Daniel, that’s kind of racist,” Valerie said, hoping the joke would break the ice like her sister’s jokes always did when her family was about to break into an argument.
We need the evidence, but we also need to stay calm and clear headed.   

“Be careful with comments about race, Valerie, you might start a flame war,” Daniel replied, making them all chuckle.

They hadn’t realized what a divide there was between the White-Wings and the Fire-Walkers until they got here. In the city in the clouds, there wasn’t talk of Fire-Walkers at all, but down here the White-Wings were the subject of a thousand slurs and insults. They couldn’t sneak into a single chamber without hearing about how the White-Wings deserved to die.

“Well, shall we go to the next chamber and ‘investigate’ some more?” Mclean asked, already heading towards the nearest tunnel.

“Maybe, but at this point I think we need to start making a map. Do any of you know how to get out of here?” Valerie pointed out, causing them both to shrug.

“Of course I do. I’ll have you know I’m a pro gamer. We’ve been sticking to the left wall, so all we have to do to get back is turn around and stick to the right wall. Didn’t your dad teach you anything about mazes and video games?” Daniel said, clearly feeling smug.

“Actually, I didn’t even know that. Does that always work?” Mclean said.

“Mostly. Unless you happen to be playing Portal, you’re probably gonna be fine using the trick. Some games will complicate it though with circular dungeons or one way doors, but I don’t think this is one of those.”

“Neato, so all we have to do is turn around and stick to the right wall?” Valerie double checked.

“Yes ma’am,” Daniel answered. “Or you can just log out for the night when there aren’t enemies around and your login tomorrow morning will be back in the city.”

“So, I’m being paranoid thinking we need to draw a map and figure out where we are going?”

“Yeah, probably. Though I don’t know why the game doesn’t do it for us. It maps out every other dungeon for us.”

“It likely has to do with the fact we’re hostiles in a player town, so the town won’t show up on our radar.”

“Hostiles in a player town . . . how come we haven’t run into any of the players yet?”

“DUN DUN DUN!” Daniel said in a booming dramatic voice. “THE PLOT THICKENS!”

Valerie wanted to facepalm, but he was right. The plot had thickened. They had spent three hours cleaving their way through the heart of what should be the Fire-Walker player’s capital town, only to find that there weren’t any players. There were only NPCs plotting to overthrow the White-Wings, a fact that surely would have slipped onto the boards if the players knew.

“I don’t like this at all, but if there aren’t players, then that means one thing,” Mclean said, as if something just hit her.

“What? That no one here besides us had pizza or ramen for dinner?” Daniel couldn’t help himself.

“No, that we’re probably the strongest things in this dungeon. Most NPCs barely scrape past 20 or 25, and we’re almost 40. I think that means we can be a little less cautious and a little more murdery.”

Daniel shuddered. “You weren’t murdery enough already?” he asked.

Mclean only laughed, did her evil smile, and dashed so fast at one of the corridors she might as well have been flying again.

“Ladies first,” Daniel said, bowing as Valerie followed after Mclean. “It’s a front row seat to genocide.”

Yeah, genocide . . .because every Fire-Walker in this cave is going to die tonight if we keep going like this,
Valerie thought, trying to prep herself for what lay ahead
We don’t have anything to worry about down here . . . Yeah. We’re going to be fine against them.

They tore through the NPCs one after the other. The dungeon-like design of the whole town made it easy for them to clear out the Fire-Walkers unnoticed. They never had to engage more than ten or twenty at a time, and for the most part it was just a handful here and a handful there. That’s when it finally happened. They entered into the large chamber that let them know this was a Boss fight. It was a grand room twenty times the size of the largest one they had come across before, and in the middle sat a Fire-Walker on a burning throne surrounded by twenty other Fire-Walkers. Fire skitted and shot out from his throne in all directions. This was their secret Emperor, this was their ruler, and if a normal Fire-Walker let off a few flames, this one exuded torrents of fire.

“Who dares enter my throneroom and challenge the will of the Sun God,” the enthroned Fire-Walker spoke as soon as their first foot entered the room. Its voice was deeper than any voice Valerie had heard before and echoed ominously off the walls of the chamber. “Who beckons death?”  

“I’m honestly a little scared right now,” Daniel admitted, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his Daggers. “That dude looks like he could mess us up.”

“Yeah, he’s giving even me the shivers,” Mclean said. “Not sure if we can take him.”

The Fire-Walker stood up. He was over 8 feet tall with black skin, which glowed with an array of red and orange lines, and the ground where he walked left patches of fire burning. He looked at them again and his voice boomed out, “You have defied the will of the Sun God for the last time!” as he raised his hands and sent scorching fireballs at them, disintegrating everything in their path.

All three of them had managed to dodge in time, but it was only thanks to the distance between them and the Boss that they were still alive. The fireballs had come within inches of scorching them to death.

“Do you think we can actually kill this guy?” Mclean asked, making Valerie’s hope sink even further.

“No, probably not,” Daniel answered. “But, I think I know what we need to do.”

“What’s that?” Valerie asked.

“They don’t respawn do they? The NPCs, if we kill them, they won’t just respawn? I don’t know what the respawn mechanism is for NPCs, but I know that if we kill them, it often takes weeks or sometimes even months to repopulate a town. It’s no nine months, but it sure as heck isn’t instant,” Daniel started a line of questioning, clearly trying to get a basis for a plan.

“Where are you going with this?” Mclean asked.

“I’m saying, we can’t kill him, but how much you wanna bet every one of the Fire-Walkers in here is either a general or a leader of some sort? This is his creme de la creme, cream of the crop. If we die, we respawn back in town, no harm no foul. We don’t even lose experience, just the items we haven’t really gotten along the way. If they die, this guy could be crippled,” Daniel explained.

“I like it.” Valerie smiled.
It’s a plan, and it’s a plan that doesn’t require us to just give up after we’ve come so far,
she thought, glad that even in the face of an impossible task they weren’t quitting.

“So you’re saying, admit we’re going to die, and beat the mini-bosses while he tries to kill us?” Mclean asked, dodging another fireball. The flames didn’t fade after they hit the wall where she stood, they just kept burning as if to remind the three of what they were up against.

“So, see you guys in the next life?” Daniel asked, making sure everyone was on board with the plan. They could still turn around, really. They could run as fast as they could down the hall and out the path they had come. They didn’t have to die. It was just that pang of pride that stopped them.

“Yeah, there isn’t hope of winning, but I’ll be damned if I go out losing,” Valerie decided, grabbing her Daggers and flying as fast as she could at the nearest Fire-Walker. It drew the attention of the boss, and she felt the heat from a fireball chase her back, letting her know how close to death she was before her Daggers sank into the Fire-Walker’s chest.
One down, Nineteen to go.
She planted her feet into the ground and pulled the Fire-Walker corpse up like a shield to block the next fireball as it soared at her. The shield worked, somewhat. Even with the body blocking most of the fire, she still lost over 10% of her health.
What the hell am I thinking?

She caught a glimpse of Mclean taking out two Fire-Walkers while the boss was distracted with her, and decided she wasn’t about to let the other girl beat her on kills. She threw the body at her next victim and used it as a distraction to hide behind as she closed the distance and jammed her Daggers into his temples.
Two down.
This time the boss wasn’t just shooting out fireballs; he was leaping at her. He jumped in the air using his flaming feet as propulsion and landed fist first right where she was standing two seconds ago, unleashing a fiery nova.