The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (11 page)

“I certainly never did before now,” Mclean said. “This is really the first time I’ve tried food for the sake of taste since I got here. I mean, I had some of the meat at the party after the big fight, but it was more to join in the celebration with the NPCs than it was to actually try out the delicacies.” Mclean had an odd, almost contemplative look on her face that Darwin didn’t recognize.

“Yeah, eating delicious stuff in the game is good and all, but I still don’t understand why you didn’t just take some of the red and blue ones to eat on the way home. Why are you eating the ones we need?” Daniel’s complaint picked right back up where he had left off.

“Oh, I have plenty of those. These just taste better.” Mclean beamed happily in a way that made Darwin think Minx was rubbing off on her.
Is Minx’s silly personality contagious to the point that even the gruff ‘kill first ask questions later’ Mclean could be infected?

“So you are saving the best for last?” Daniel asked.

Darwin remembered the reasoning he had used as a kid when picking out the order of awful stuff at a school cafeteria to eat. After all, no one wanted those gross, pickle-infested hamburgers to be the only taste in your mouth for four hours until you got home to a toothbrush.

“Nah, I’m saving them for Alex and the group. We should have just enough for everyone to get one.” Mclean showed a surprising amount of generosity, and it made everyone’s mouth hang a little open from shock. Even Daniel, who had been complaining about her eating the yellow ones earlier, had no complaints after that reason came to light.

“I bet they’ll love it!” Minx blurted out. “Alex the ninja general will probably steal and eat his before anyone even sees him!” She loved the idea, and, given that she was actually eating a yellow one too, it was clear she had been in on the plan from the start.

Darwin had to admit that he was impressed. He had been second guessing what his teammates thought of NPCs for a while, but they had gone and done this thoughtful act of kindness without anyone even noticing. It was kind of touching.

“And I’ll bet we’ll get tons of EXP for it if we turn them in directly to Alex!” Mclean’s face lit up even more than Minx’s. “We’ll be a higher level than the old farts!”

Darwin found himself just shaking his head.
For a moment, I let myself believe there were no ulterior motives.
He sighed. It didn’t matter though. The net result was the same: the NPCs would get to eat a bunch of delicious treats instead of having to stick to a strictly meat diet.
I can probably even get them to set up a farm in that other dungeon, and we could sell some of the excess snowballs to the town for gold.
He realized that this might be a really good money-making scheme.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Kitchens stopped, extending his arm and stopping Minx too. “Lawlheima should be up ahead, right?”

“Yeah, it should be. What do you hear?” Darwin asked, more confused than anything. Kitchens wasn’t the type to make a big deal of small things, but he and Minx were both Felines, and as a result, they probably had much better hearing than the rest of them.

“I don’t know. It sounds like . . . It sounds like fighting!” He pulled out his sword and began to charge towards the cave in his usual tank-top-samurai fashion, leaning forward with his arms held motionless and ready for action with one hand on his sword hilt and the other on the scabbard.

“I hope we make it in time.” Darwin panicked, immediately dashing after Kitchens with the rest of the group towards Lawlheima as soon as Kitchens had finished speaking. He realized what was probably going on.
It’s a raid! A group has come to do the dungeon, and they’re probably going to think the StormGuard Alliance members are just regular dungeon mobs to be farmed!

Mclean dropped her sugary treat and took to the skies with Daniel, flying ahead of the group and moving at a much faster pace than Darwin, Kitchens, Minx and Fuzzy Wuzzy could keep up with.

“It’s not looking good! There are almost thirty players up ahead!” Daniel shouted back to them, his voice trailing off as the distance between them grew greater.

Crap, crap, crap.
Darwin’s panic started to freeze up his ability to think, and he struggled to come up with an idea.
What do I do? What do I do?
He was grasping for the reins of his runaway thoughts even as his feet propelled him forward with every ounce of speed his legs could muster.
I won’t let them die again,
he swore to himself as he burst out of the woods to finally see the fight up ahead.

Daniel’s count had been off. There weren’t just thirty players: there were closer to fifty in view as Darwin charged towards the fight. The soldiers, being led by Alex, were mimicking the same formation and tactics that they had used when they battled the Panda King but on a much smaller scale. The problem was that the attacking players weren’t all physical-type damage dealers. If everyone had just been standard melee fighters like before, the Demons’ strategy would have worked just as well as it had against the Panda King’s troops. It may even have worked even better since there were far fewer opponents on the field this time around. The problem, however, was the number of enemies taking part in this fight with ranged attacks and magic. As if right on cue to confirm Darwin’s fears, a giant fireball erupted on three of the front shields, burning the middle victim alive and knocking the entire formation out of order, rendering it vulnerable.

Darwin watched in horror as he raced towards the fight. Even a single missing member of the shield wall would render the entire formation useless. Thankfully, a group of Blue-Drakes circled around and blasted the ground between the shield wall and the enemies, buying precious time. Two fire mages in the attacking band shot additional waves of fire at the passing fliers, but the scorching blasts just helplessly fizzled out against the Blue-Drakes’ fireproof scales. Daniel and Mclean, taking advantage of the fact that the opposing force was focused on the fight in front of them, used the opportunity to quickly take out the two mages with a sneak attack from the rear. Their attack into the enemy’s rear flank only lasted seconds before they were already darting off into the skies again, the mages’ allies unable to enact vengeance.

“Get back in formation!” Alex yelled loudly enough for even Darwin, still a good thirty second run from the fight, to hear. The shieldwall immediately tightened back up. “Archers! I need a unit of you to shoot square 382 before that mage gets a second chance! The rest of you spread fire! Give us a spread four squares deep!” Within a moment, dozens of arrows flew out from behind the wall and covered the first fire mage’s body, turning him into what looked like a human porcupine. The warriors in the front, despite also being bombarded, remained almost unharmed as their shields absorbed most of the damage with only a few arrows getting through and wounding some.

“What the hell is this? The loot has to be crazy in there!” one of the attackers, a man with craggy, rock-covered skin shouted at his comrades. “Come on, guys! You gonna let a bunch of filthy, low-level mobs stop us from taking our cash?” He rallied the melee fighters, which amounted to well over half their numbers, and pushed forward. At last, their charge finally slammed into the shield wall. Most of them bounced off, but the phalanx was still knocked back half a foot. “Kill them all!” he shouted again and punched the ground, causing an earthen spike to shoot up from the ground and knock the soldier in front of him back.

What in the heck did he just do?
Darwin wondered for a moment, but then shook his head free of distracting thoughts as he finally managed to close in on the archers. His sword cut through one of them before the man even had a chance to turn around. Kitchens, only a bit slower, managed to chop the one on his right in half before even enough time had passed to take a breath. The archer screamed as the top half of his torso separated from the bottom and slid off to the ground, leaving the player with only a moment of life before the game system notified him of his death.

As soon as Kitchens’ kill screamed, the twelve remaining ranged fighters turned around to see what had happened. They already knew that they had to watch out for Daniel and Mclean in the air. Even though they had been looking up, waiting to dodge their winged assailants--both Daniel and Mclean as well as the Blue-Drakes--they had failed to notice much of anything at ground level.

“Crap!” another craggy-skinned fighter in the pack yelled as he turned around just in time to watch Kitchens split another one of his friends in half. “Kevin! We got PKs eating us up back here! These jerks are trying to steal our quest!”

The fighter who had been shouting earlier turned and looked. Then, after saying something to the others that Darwin couldn't make out, he and three other rocky-skinned warriors slammed their hands into the ground. Their allies automatically backed away from the phalanx, and a giant earthen wall shot up between their group and the NPCs guarding the dungeon. “Alright, men! About face. We have some dirty, loot-thieving PKs to handle!” he shouted, and then they all turned around and charged towards Darwin’s team.

That is absolutely wicked.
Darwin actually paused right in the middle of stabbing someone to watch the earth shoot upwards and create a barrier between the two groups. Not wanting to waste time, however, he went to strike another one of the range attackers, but he was repelled by a now all-too-familiar yellow shield. He knew just from looking at it that this one wasn’t as strong as the ones he had dealt with back in the winter-themed dungeon.
Crack, you flimsy thing, h
e urged as his sword crashed down on the barrier two more times. The axe-throwing trollish creature whom he was attacking threw his projectiles, which somehow appeared back in his hands after each throw at Darwin, but Darwin’s own protective shield blocked them perfectly.

“Darwin, I can’t find the shielders or healers or whatever they are that are stopping us now!” Daniel shouted from the air. “We need to find them before the melee fighters get back here and put us in a bind!”

“These thieves! They want to kill us? We’ve already killed seven of the guards for this dungeon. The loot is ours!” the leader shouted again, picking up a clump of dirt as he ran and throwing it at Darwin. Mid-flight, it transformed into a giant spike and shattered against Darwin’s yellow shield.

Darwin stopped swinging his sword altogether. Those words spun around in his head a hundred times in a short moment. ‘We’ve already killed seven’ just kept playing on repeat.
They’ve . . . Seven are . . . Seven are dead? Seven are dead, and they are bragging about it?
His breathing started to shorten.

“Did you stun him?” the axe thrower asked the guy next to him. “What’s going on with that one?”

“He just knows what’s best! Look, give us your gold and leave, and we’ll overlook this insolence, you filthy PK!” The leader shouted at Darwin, but Darwin only partially heard it. The words being shouted around him didn’t really reach him. It was as if the screams were far away echoes bouncing back and forth in the back of his head.

“Darwin! Snap out of it!” Kitchens said from Darwin’s side, finally having broken through his victim’s shield and diced him up like vegetables on a cutting board. “We need to come up with a game plan quick, or we’re going to be outnumbered, and back up won't show until Alex gets that wall down.”

Seven people . . . and they think I’m the killer?
Darwin’s head throbbed, and his grip on his sword tightened.
They killed my people, and they accuse me of being nothing but a low-life, PK thief?

Darwin’s vision flashed the same red with which it often burned when Hunger flared up, but it didn’t make sense. He had the maximum 70 possible souls allowed. Much like it had been the first time Hunger had taken over during a fight, he found himself watching the ensuing carnage. His sword struck the yellow shield in front of him over and over again with as much strength and ferocity as he could summon until the shield cracked and shattered beneath his blows. The little weapon chucker inside futilely tried one more time to hit him with his magical, reappearing axe, but Darwin somehow reached out and grabbed it before his own barrier could block it. He mercilessly stabbed it into the man’s chest. The man screamed for a moment, and the noise must have irritated the new pilot of Darwin’s body. As soon as the cry rang out, Darwin plunged his sword into the man’s stomach, grabbed him by his hair, yanked his head back and then ripped the beast’s throat out with his teeth before pulling out his blade and letting the soon-to-be corpse fall to the ground.

“Not cool! What the heck kind of move did that guy just use to kill Erwin?” an ugly, ogrish creature that stood two feet taller than any normal human shouted. He was, for all intents and purposes, rather fiendish looking with overly-hairy, dirt-covered skin and an abdomen three times longer than it should have been. His elongated torso was resting on disproportionately small legs, and the creature had arms even longer than the abdomen. His hands were bigger than most people’s feet.

“Darwin?” Kitchens’ concern was written all over his face as he continued to hack at his own prey’s shield, clearly still trying to break through before it could be recast. He seemed set on killing one more enemy himself before reinforcements arrived.

Darwin’s next action shocked everyone--including himself. He watched it all happen as if he were in the passenger seat of a car driving on autopilot: he took his giant sword and stabbed himself right through his own heart. The critical hit to his heart rendered him dead almost instantly, and he didn’t have time to fully register his suicide before the lights went out and he slumped over on top of his zweihander, the fall pushing the blade further through his chest.