World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (16 page)

Chop! The axe blade
embeds itself on the counter top at the bar, where the human stood
just a moment earlier.

The adventurer backs
away further from his hunter, and moves around so that he is standing
behind the reptilian's back, but a good distance away.

The former barkeeper
snarls in frustration as he tries to remove the axe blade from the
formerly smooth counter top at the bar.

While his adversary is
busy trying to free his weapon, Conrad looks around the room, seeking
something sharp to set up a trap. He sees a broken leg from a dining
table on the floor, and quickly grabs it by the dull end rather than
the sharp, jagged end. He sets two chairs against the wall behind
him, and wedges the broken table leg between the chairs. He admires
the make-shift spike trap for a moment and quickly stands in front of
it, shielding the trap from view by lowering his tower shield until
it is on the ground. The player checks his stamina bar, and notes
that it is now 40% full. “Time to rock and roll!” Conrad says as
he hooks his ivory club to his belt loop.

The reptilian snarls
again once the double-edged war axe is free, and quickly turns around
in search of his prey. His eyes quickly pinpoint the location of his
human prey, standing on the far side of the room near the wall.

“Hello there!”
Conrad says while waving his right hand in a friendly manner. “Did
you forget about me already?”

The former barkeeper
grabs the axe in both hands and bull rushes across the room!

The adventurer pretends
to yawn, and covers his mouth with his free hand. With his eyes on
the approaching reptilian, he waits for just the right moment to step
away.
Wait, wait, now,
he thinks to himself. His feet moving with the grace of a ballroom
dancer, Conrad spins to his right, putting himself in the corner.

The adversary cannot
stop his forward momentum, and bull rushes right into the trap! The
spike impales itself into the monster's right leg, below the knee. He
roars in pain, and hobbles towards the human despite the excruciating
pain in his leg.

“I admire your
spirit, sir. But it's time to end this. If I show up at the
rendezvous point last, I won't hear the end of it from Lucious,”
Conrad says as he approaches the injured enemy.

Maddened by the
overwhelming pain, the massive reptilian raises his war axe high in
the air, and chops down on the human adventurer with all his might!

The barbarian raises
his shield to block the blow. CRACK! Conrad looks up in surprise as
he sees a crack in the underside of the shield where the axe blade
has broken through the shield and embedded itself. Ignoring the sting
in his left hand as the blow sucks another 20% of his health, the
stunned man is seething with rage. Conrad yells at the monster, “YOU
BROKE MY SHIELD!” He turns berserk and launches a series of vicious
blows on the reptilian's skull! Thud-thud-thud-thud!

The monster tries to
pull his weapon out of the shield with both hands, but the axe is
firmly stuck in the shield. In the meantime, the reptilian is unable
to defend itself from the vicious, hard blows to his head. Under this
barrage of hits caving in its massive skull, the former barkeeper
rapidly loses his strength to stand, and slowly slides down to the
ground. With his dying breath, the monster tugs on his prized axe one
last time, and finally collapses on the floor before the crazed
barbarian.

Unaware that his
adversary has fallen, Conrad continues to pound on the lifeless body
with his ivory club, until his stamina bar is fully exhausted and the
biofeedback loop sends a wave of blinding lights into the player's
eyes. Dropping the now useless club, the victorious fighter sits
cross legged on the ground besides the dead body. He stares as the
body slowly dissipates back into bits of code, leaving behind the
double-edged war axe still embedded in his now ruined tower shield.

On the stone wall in
front of him, the outline of a door starts to form as a trace of red
light appears at the top and works its way clockwise. Ignoring the
forming portal in the wall, the exhausted warrior stares at his
broken tower shield, with the war axe still embedded within the
shield. Conrad slowly removes the broken shield from his forearm.
With his hands holding the edge of the shield on both sides, he
grunts as he uses his extraordinary strength to turn and snap the
shield in two! With the two separate pieces of the great shield still
bound together by the straps, the barbarian reverently places his
former equipment on the ground. Taking the now free double-edged war
axe, he turns it upside down and sets the blade side of the axe on
the ground. Leaning on the axe, Conrad slowly rises to his feet.

A blinding flash of red
light envelops the room, forcing the warrior to turn his face aside.
When the light is finally gone. a shimmering red portal appears on
the stone wall, beckoning him to enter.

Conrad stares at the
portal, his mind swirling over the price that he had just paid to
make this magical portal appear – his reflective tower shield, and
more importantly his loss of temper. Keenly aware of the fact that
his actions in this nondescript dining room is streamed to a live
audience around the world, he wonders how his peers will react to the
way he had just gone berserk on his enemy.
Will
I be cast out of The Strangers? Will they not dare look at me in the
eye again, for fear of angering me?
He sighs. Things were
a lot simpler when he was just a Class A minor league player with
middling talents for baseball
.
It's time to stop dawdling, and face the music,
he thinks
to himself.

The barbarian walks
over to retrieve his ivory club from the ground, and places the
weapon back in its customary spot on his belt. Holding his precious
spoil of war with both hands, Conrad boldly walks through the red
portal.

Lucious stares at the
golden door before him on the East wall. It has been a LONG time
since he went solo, probably the first few weeks of the game when he
stuck around the starter areas of the game. As a mage, he has
tremendous power compared to the other player classes. Indeed,
magicians are in tune with the digital coding that makes up this
virtual world of Eternia, with the ability to bend the digital ones
and zeroes to their will via the magic screen view. However, the
price of this power is vulnerability, including a smaller health bar
and the inability to cast spells while wearing armor. Additionally,
the mage’s repertoire of spells specifically excludes the Divine
Sphere, the province of the Clergy. Thus, Lucious cannot magically
heal himself, and he carries a stash of healing potions inside his
Bag of Holding. Given these disadvantages, mages don't normally go
solo unless they are reckless and seeking a quick death. Nonetheless,
the dungeon designers decided to split the party, and Lucious must
rise to the occasion. Standing taller, he calmly walks through the
doorway.

SLAM! Resisting the
urge to turn around when the door is slammed shut behind his back,
the battle mage stands his ground and allows his eyes to adjust to
the dark. “Boy, it sure is dark here,” he comments aloud as he
taps his staff lightly on the ground. He is about to command his
staff orb to glow when he remembers that he is solo now.
I
can't create a light and announce my presence to whatever is in this
tunnel,
he realizes.
Boy,
I‘m getting too soft
, the spell caster admonishes
himself. Instead, he decides to cast a Cat's Eye spell to allow his
eyes to see in the dark. Holding his staff tightly with both hands,
the battle mage closes his eyes and chants the arcane words of the
spell: “oqty-bkip-mkxg-lsjv.”

The spell caster slowly
opens his eyes, and peers at his surroundings from under the hood of
his purple cloak. The world is now visible to him, albeit in shades
of gray. He cannot distinguish by color at all. It is as if the world
is in a perpetual state of twilight, or at least reverting back to
the old days of black and white television. Nonetheless, Lucious sees
that the passageway is empty, and that is the most important part
anyway. He starts to take small, light steps forward, making a
conscious effort to make as little sound as possible. He visualizes
Conrad lumbering his big, athletic body lightly along the ground, and
Lucious tries to imitate the barbarian’s movements.

After ten minutes or so
of quietly walking through the winding passageway, Lucious finally
stumbles upon an opening out of the dark passageway. He silently ends
his Cat's Eye spell, allowing his vision to return to normal once
more. As he leaves the now dark tunnel, he blinks his eyes several
times, unable to believe his eyes. Before him is a lush, vibrant
forest full of green color, with no trace of man. Lucious turns
around, and sees that the tunnel has disappeared, trapping him inside
this forest.

The spell caster slowly
turns his head, taking in the surroundings, and wondering what
enemies will appear to test his mettle. Given his current
environment, the monsters are most likely nature-based. He wait is
short, as the forest begins to stir and the giant trees begin to pull
their roots out of the ground. The animated trees cause leaves to
fall on the ground, and birds to chirp in alarm as they take flight
and circle the sky above. Soon, half dozen trees, with branches for
arms and humanoid in shape, begin to approach him.

“I guess these tree
elementals are my welcoming committee,” Lucious notes. “How
disappointing,” he adds as he begins to chant the arcane words of a
Fire Storm spell: “dkmn-urwk-otyh-vfil-cmwe-myqd-kazd-wgji.” He
grasps his magical staff tightly as he feels his mana reserve drained
to power the fiery storm slowly appearing above the humanoid trees.
Switching over to magic screen view on his virtual reality visor, the
player drops a line above the animated trees, to designate the
location for the clouds to appear. The player flips the camera angle
from left to right and from top to bottom to ensure that Lucious has
covered all the tree elementals that has appeared before the player.
Satisfied with his designation, Lucious clicks “Enter” to allow
the spell to take effect in-game. He returns to normal player view,
and watch his spell being executed. Droplets of fire rain down from
the fiery clouds and hungrily devour the wood, quickly turning the
six tree elementals to ash.

As if angered by the
deaths of these elementals, the very earth itself starts to rumble
and shake uncontrollably!

Lucious is not
surprised by this, as he realizes that the dungeon designers are not
going to make this mission easy for him.
Too
bad the designers didn’t give me a chance to recover some mana
first,
he thinks with disappointment
.
It is quite possible that their goal is to make me use up my mana
pool, and see how I would handle the remaining mobs without the full
use of my spell book,
he anticipates.

The spell caster
touches the encrusted purple colored stone of the earring on his left
ear, and whispers a command word, “Levitate.” He slowly rises off
the ground until he is exactly five feet above the moving earth. In a
show of confidence, he starts spinning his staff behind his back like
a Shaolin monk, and then twirls the staff around his waist. Finally,
he grabs the staff with both hands and holds it out in front of him,
ready to cast another deadly spell.

Suddenly, a large
shadow flies over his head! Lucious looks up, and sees that the
shadow belongs to a large boulder that had been tossed into the air.
The stone, easily bigger than the player character, lands on the
ground a few yards behind him. Splat!

Another boulder appears
high in the sky, and Lucious quickly moves forward toward the trees,
which are blocking the view of whatever is throwing those boulders at
him.

While Lucious is moving
among the trees, a boulder strikes a tree directly in front of him,
causing branches to break off, and covering the adventurer's cloak
with tree leaves. There goes my plan to use the trees to hide, he
thinks with annoyance.
Whatever
is throwing those boulders at me must have good eyesight to find me
within these trees.

Maybe
I'm going about this the wrong way
, the mage thinks to
himself as he stops moving and an idea pops into his head.
What
will the stone thrower do when he CAN’T see me?
Closing
his eyes, the spell caster chants the arcane words to unleash the
Invisibility spell: “iiko-bako-wglm-qydm.”
I
have to move quickly since the spell drains one mana per second,
he reminds himself. The mage touches his stone earring to levitate
again, to avoid making noise by walking on the ground. He carefully
avoids the branches, and soon the forest is behind him.

Standing a good twenty
feet in front of him is a thirty foot tall giant with one eye in the
middle of his forehead – a Cyclops! The Cyclops is staring intently
at the trees, trying to locate the human who had just disappeared. A
giant boulder is being palmed in the monster's right hand like a
basketball. The monster tosses it lightly in the air and it lands
squarely back in his palm. Suddenly, the Cyclops throws the boulder
into the forest in frustration, not caring where it goes but hoping
to spook his prey into revealing his location.

Lucious is lurking
behind a big oak tree near the edge of the forest, crouching down
next to some shrubs on the ground. Having dropped his invisibility
spell and relieving himself of the point of mana per second drain,
the spell caster is patiently waiting for his mana pool to fill up
completely while studying the tactics of the Cyclops. It is the first
time that Lucious has encountered a Cyclops, and he wonders if the
mob has any sort of vulnerability, aside from the one eye.