Four Elijahs looked down upon Tom. They had the high-ground but that would mean little against an opponent who was much more powerful than they were. He’d only ever seen Tom’s Dervish skill, and was cautious of any tricks the man might have up his sleeve.

  The sound of the whirlwind echoed through the empty pit, bouncing off every wall. There was no front or back to it, but Elijah could sense the Flesh Reaver staring up at him.

  “We just have to stall him until his skill times out.” Elijah shouted to his copies. He wasn’t sure which was which, but that was the point; each was a perfect copy of his player model.

  “Boss think he have limit?” the copy to his left asked.

  Elijah shook his head. “I don’t know, but we have to hope. We can’t touch him when he’s like this.”

  Elijah had nearly screwed up, in coordinating with the others, he’d revealed which one of the four was the real him. Sharp shards of metal came flying out of the whirlwind, aimed straight at Elijah. The copy on his left, the one who had asked the question, pushed Elijah out of the way and formed a wooden shield to take the brunt of the damage.

  “Scatter.” His words weren’t rushed or frightened; they came out like the commanding presence he was trying to imitate. Bats sprang up again, whisking him away at the same time the other three did the same.

  Tom lifted into the air, crashing through the stonework of the pit where they had been moments before. Rubble launched high into the air as the wind from the skill whipped around the Reaver.

  He felt more than saw Bitter Bat get clipped by one of these chunks of stone. The damage would have halved the creature’s health if it weren’t for having Elijah’s increased constitution. It wasn’t good to take that kind of damage this early in the fight, but they’d recover. After a minute of playing cat and mouse with Tom using their teleports, the man’s timer finally ran out. The dervish slowly spun down, depositing the man onto the ground. He laughed menacingly as Elijah jumped down, Batwing Blade in hand, and tried to land a strike. Enchanted steel met inky night as the Flesh Reaver pulled his scythe out to parry the attack.

  “You've got yourself a nice weapon. I’ll be sure to hang it in the bathroom of the new Reaper Lair, Elijah,” he laughed, as he tried to disarm his opponent. The Blade went flying, and Tom dug the scythe into Elijah’s sternum.

  Elijah laughed right back at him, seemingly immune to the pain. “Me not Boss, me Bitter Root and me hungry.” Bitter Root, as Elijah, bit hard into Tom’s unprotected shoulder.

  Meanwhile, several stories up, Elijah was pulling open all three familiars’ debug menus. He was glad he hadn’t raised his own Intelligence stat up into the Journeyman-tier. When he’d converted his familiars into clones of himself, they’d gained his stats and appeared like a player, but the game still considered them NPCs by the only piece of game logic that mattered—his debug menu.

  He refilled their pools with the menus, refreshing their mana and health to full, including Bitter Root’s health, which had dropped to a dangerous level. Tom would struggle to comprehend how his opponent, who was currently taking chunks of health and skin out of the man, could heal so quickly with no visible spells being cast.

  ‘Good, let him wonder.’ Elijah thought before turning to Bitter Bat and Dryad. “Swords out, go give Bitter Root some help,” he instructed them. They teleported down to the ground as Elijah began running up the ramp. He could have teleported, but his own mana was now below half, and he couldn’t refill it easily. He still had two mana potions in his inventory, but as soon as he drank one, he’d be unable to for another hour. That meant that effectively he had only ninety mana remaining, assuming he drained himself completely dry before drinking it. Something he wasn’t looking forward to as it meant the effects of Mana Drain would hinder him for a few seconds.

  He could hear the Bitters cackling and laughing like maniacs as they fought against Tom. He was cursing at them and threatening to do unspeakable things to Elijah. Elijah had to give it to the man; he had quite the command of the English language when it came to vile, nasty threats. He looked down as he neared the top. He could sense the Necrosis debuff affecting Tom now, even if he couldn’t see it from up where he was. It wasn’t much, just thirty damage every minute, but it lasted for five minutes and the timer reset every time a strike with a Batwing Blade landed.

  [Player]

  Name: Tom

  Class: Flesh Reaver | Level: 71

  HP: 112 / 155

  He did the math quickly in his mind. Even glancing blows with the blades would have left him with much less health than that. He must have some kind of healing effect available to him. That meant that Elijah couldn’t just wait until the clock ran out on the debuff. This was going to be a scrappy, wild fight.

  As he was watching, Tom’s health points halved. Elijah didn’t understand it; none of his familiars had come anywhere close to landing a blow.

  His body glowed blood red, and Elijah knew it had to be an ability. He was going to call out, but it was already too late. Tom’s flesh exploded outward in every direction. Flashes of grey steel glimmered in the wet red of the gore. Razorblades that sliced through the Bitter Brothers like paper. When the dust settled, all three of the copies had vanished in bursts of blue particles, and Tom’s skeleton stood amid an ocean of red.

  He wasn’t dead; his health still read fifty-six, but he was just a skeleton. A shudder rippled through Elijah at the sight. He could only imagine what that felt like to Tom, to have all his skin and muscles stripped off piece by piece. Even if the game dulled the sensation in this one instance, the pain must be excruciating.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But the madman was laughing. How he was laughing Elijah wasn’t sure, but it had the same insane tone that haunted Elijah’s nightmares. It made too much sense to Elijah that a close associate of the once-Necromancer Arturus would have an undead state. Assuming that’s what this was. It really made him miss Sasha and her ‘Turn Undead’ spell.

  Clearing his mind of thoughts of his White Mage, Elijah would not wait around until Tom noticed where he was. He had no idea how long it would be until he could activate his Dervish again, or even if he could while in this skeletal state. Elijah pulled on the connection to his familiars. There was enough mana to re-summon them, and he could pull the same Reality Warp trick to duplicate himself again.

  Except when he activated his spell, nothing happened. He got the gut feeling that his Bitter Dominion spell was on cooldown. Not something he’d ever felt from ‘Summon Familiar’, he supposed that was the game’s way of balancing the increased strength and reduced mana cost. Even though the system AI was rooting for him, it still had to maintain some balance.

  He’d have to finish this on his own. He took out a mana potion and popped the cork off the top.

  He spent five mana to refresh his scouts back up to three.

  He leapt over the edge, falling down into the pit.

  ‘Dragontooth Swarm’, which cost him ten mana.

  Nausea and vertigo hit him at the same time, causing him to nearly puke as he brought the potion to his lips. He got it down, but he could taste the bile in his throat.

  Ten more mana; his teleport spell.

  Bats swarmed up from the small shadow he cast upon the ground from so far up. A massive cyclone of bats wrapped him in a bubble. The bats for his teleport were separate from the ones for his swarm. That was an interesting piece of information, even if it wasn’t exactly helpful at this point in time.

  His level eighteen, versus Tom’s seventy-one. One-hundred health points versus Tom’s forty-nine. His health had stopped regenerating, but the Necrosis debuff couldn’t affect bone and steel. As the teleport spell delivered him to the ground, he could see the shards of metal protruding from the man’s bones.

  ‘No wonder he’s insane; he must be in pain all the time.’ Elijah thought as he summoned his Batwing Blade and held it out in front of him.

  “I gotta admit, Elijah; it’s been a long time since I had to use that ability,” he chuckled. He made no move to attack; he was gloating now. Happy to intimidate Elijah with his presence, but Elijah wasn’t having it.

  “You’re insane.” Elijah said softly. His mind raced at the hare-brained plan he had concocted. His scouts circled lazily, quietly, a few feet behind Tom.

  Tom just cackled at him. “I’m not insane. I’m just having fun, isn’t that what this is about? We’re in a game; it’s about having fun.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a fucking game!” Elijah roared. He threw his blade at Tom. He moved quickly, slapping the weapon out of the air and lunging at Elijah. Elijah followed up with another ‘Dragontooth Swarm’. They were too close, so the bats couldn’t get enough speed to really damage him.

  Tom grabbed Elijah by his neck and threw him to the ground. His finger bones felt like knife blades against his skin; he saw his health draining quickly.

  His plan had worked; he wasn’t the threat; he was the distraction. All three of his Dragontooth Scouts dropped out of the sky and landed on Tom’s back. They were capable of dealing devastating necrosis debuffs on command, something that Elijah inherently knew but was never described in the menus. Necrosis couldn’t affect Tom in his current state, but Elijah didn’t have to rely on game mechanics being exactly as described.

  “Go fuck yourself, Tom,” Elijah croaked out through a crushed throat.

  Elijah’s connection to the scouts snapped as incredibly bright, white light bloomed from them, washing over both Tom and himself. There was a pressure wave followed by relief as the hands around his neck loosened their grip.

  Elijah had changed their necrosis effect to a low-powered ‘Turn Undead’ spell. He’d specifically left the power low so that he could channel it through the creatures.

  Elijah pulled his dagger from his inventory. He still couldn’t see, but he could feel the skeleton of a man on top of him. With a thrust, he slammed the knife into the man’s skull. His vision slowly came back before being dazzled again by a bright flash of blue particles as Tom died.

  Elijah shut his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. He couldn’t believe his absolutely insane plan had worked. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually defeated a player over fifty levels above him.

  “You did well.” The deep baritone voice of the Pit Boss resonated through the air. “You have overcome great adversity and proven yourself ready to cleanse the Blood Oath Throne.”

  Elijah sat up and groaned. The pressure wave from the blast hadn’t been as kind to him as he’d hoped. His whole body was hurting, and he knew it was only going to get worse. He wanted so badly to just lay back down on the floor and rest, but that would not be an option.

  Tom had dropped several items after Elijah killed him. Most of it was worthless junk that Elijah put into his inventory without a second thought. The two most notable items were the ‘Scythe’ and ‘Reaper Mask’. The scythe was a legendary-tier item but required a minimum of fifty points in dexterity to wield. When Elijah warped it to lower that requirement down to ten, the stats vanished for a moment before the menu jittered and reset itself.

  That was no good. He wouldn’t be able to take the item with him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to either. The weapon was synonymous with the Reaper Guild at this point. The last thing he needed was to be lumped into the same category as them in people’s minds.

  The other item—the mask—wasn’t a piece of equipment at all. It was listed in his menu as a standard item, just like his long-gone Stewpot of the Dungeon Connoisseur.

  [Item]

  Reaper Mask (Minion)

  Rank: Basic

  Description: Linked to the master mask. The wielder of the master mask may choose to grant this minion mask properties from the original, or share a single stat with the wielder of this mask.

  His ‘Reality Warp’ skill had opened the menu for his Stewpot, even if it was just mostly useless garbage code he couldn’t read, but with the Mask it treated it like a piece of scenery. No menu appeared, no lines of code, nothing. With a shrug, he put the item into his inventory and turned towards the Pit Boss.

  “Can you offer me a full heal like the Beast Master did?”

  The Pit Boss gave a quick smile, and Elijah felt the healing energy restore his health and mana. “You are ready. You know how to proceed.”

  His bats were hungry again; he could feel them battering at him, wishing to open the portal to the final trial. He was going to let them down. Let the Pit Boss, Beast Master, and Armorer down. He wasn’t going to the Blood Oath Throne. He had a duty to his friends.

  Elijah stood and opened his pool up to the bats and watched as the bats formed their portal. It took several tries, but the little he had gleaned from touching the core of the Dryad Glade assisted him in finding the right location tag. With a heavy breath, he stepped through.