Elijah stood front and center, Nicholas to his left, Benjamin to his right, and Sasha behind the three of them. He tried to calm his breathing, to appear more certain about the fight to come than he felt. He knew the Reapers could capture him and that Arturus could become the unrivaled god of this game world by drifting his powers, but he had to believe in himself and his friends. Had to believe that they stood a chance.

  Bob finally came into view. He was alone, but his class-specific spell protected him against most of their long-range attacks. To say nothing of his significantly higher level.

  “Arturus wishes to parlay with you, Reality Warper. There is no reason to put your friends through the suffering that is going to befall them if the army has to come down and get you. Or worse, if he does.”

  Elijah stepped forward, summoning his Batwing Blade. He was lucky it didn’t cost mana to summon, and the hefty feel of the weapon made him feel safer. “You all need to leave. This glade is under the protection of Nicholas, the Heartwood Sovereign. It’s a protected city.”

  Bob scoffed. “Protected? There are no safe zones anymore. There’s only Reaper territory. No, this whole area is going to become a graveyard if you don’t come with us.”

  Sasha and Benjamin shifted to the side. Sasha raised her staff at the same time that Benjamin and Elijah raised their hands. They were bluffing, hoping to get the Mana Mage to deactivate his siphon, but they’d follow through with trying to pop him if he didn’t. All three of them began casting. Dragontooth Teleport, Dark Blast, and Magical Bunker. Their three highest mana usage spells. Immediately they felt the icy chill of his mana being drained. Then, there was a snapping sensation as the siphon was switched off. They’d scared the man just enough to cause him to forcefully cancel the spell.

  Benjamin let loose with a real ‘Dark Blast’. Dark purple lightning shot forth from his hand directly at the mana mage. Bob reacted immediately. He threw his arms in front of him. The spell struck but didn’t hit him. Instead, it went in through one outstretched hand, and out through the other. Redirected right back at Elijah and his party.

  They dodged out of the way, and Elijah immediately sensed more Reapers coming through the eyes of one of his scouts. He rolled out of the way as Bob sent a bolt of glimmering mana at him. “Go! Get to the trial!” he shouted at the others and then teleported in a funnel of bats behind the mana mage. He sent a ‘Dragontooth Swarm’ at the man. Bob tried to use his redirection ability again, but the bats of the swarm were more than a mindless weapon. They braked hard and turned back as soon as Bob sent them back toward Elijah. Bob’s screams filled the air of the antechamber as they descended on him.

  Elijah was about to gloat when his whole world shifted. He went flying sideways through the air as a large hammer slammed into his side. Pain flared up, brutally sharp, around his ribs where the hammer had struck, and he landed in a pile of limbs against the far wall. He had flown what had to be a hundred feet. Looking up, he saw a man about Nicholas’ size staring at him. Decked out in plate armor, he was carrying an oversized battle hammer. The head had to be at least three feet in diameter. Nicholas saw the man and turned to intercept, but Elijah yelled at him to go. His friends had to get within one of the trials as fast as possible.

  He got to his feet and rushed the large man, even as more reapers flooded into the room. A group of them veered off to join the fight against Elijah, but most of them took off racing after the rest of the party. Spells were being slung from both directions as Reaper mages tried to stop them, and Benjamin countered with his own selection of magic.

  The air crackled with the fury of the magic being cast about. That was good at least. This much magic meant that Bob wouldn’t be able to use his siphon ability. The party composition had to be specifically set up to use such a powerful spell, and large enemy engagements weren’t conducive to that.

  Elijah teleported behind the man with the hammer, swinging his blade at the man’s unprotected arms and inflicting the Necrosis debuff on him. Another teleport and he was deep in the fray of mages who had been trying to pepper his teammates from afar. He was all too familiar with how weak mages could be when grouped together like this and an enemy gets within stabbing distance.

  Nicholas > Almost through. No sign of Arturus yet?

  Elijah was just about to respond when he felt the man’s presence. Like the game was warning him that his arch-nemesis was nearby.

  Elijah > He’s here. I can sense him. Be careful.

  He quickly sent the message as he took care of the last of the mages. Most of them couldn’t tank a single strike from his Celestial-tier weapon, and the few who managed it were having to deal with the damage over time of the Necrosis. All around him, enemy mages were disappearing in flashes of green as they were sent for a respawn. None of them appeared to have any healing magic. Either healers weren’t likely to join a player killing group, or Arturus hadn’t deemed it necessary to include any in this force.

  Either way, Elijah was going to make the most of that fact. Elijah teleported again, landing a few feet away from Bob, his legs pumped as he sprinted at the mage. Bob saw him coming and turned to intercept with a spell.

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  Elijah threw his sword into the air, sure to telegraph that it would miss Bob.

  Then, he teleported behind the man and caught the sword. The weapon sliced through the air, lopping off the man’s arm at the elbow. Bob roared in pain. His Siphon sprang up out of instinct, and the other mage’s spells fizzled out. The mana mage glowed as he absorbed all the mana being spent in the area. Elijah looked on in shock that it hadn’t overloaded him immediately and popped him like Mara had done back in Raystown.

  A torrent of blue light sprang forth from the man’s severed stump, blasting a deep hole in the ground. He twisted his whole body, aiming the stump at Elijah, who barely dodged and got in a teleport in time. From his vantage point above the battle, he watched the beam of mana tear through several Reapers. His own face and arm felt burnt from the proximity to the beam.

  A scythe appeared, sticking through the Mana Mage’s head. At the other end of it stood Arturus. Surprisingly, even with a long blade sticking through his head, the man wasn’t dead yet.

  Arturus’ voice echoed through the air. “Pathetic. I have had enough of your inability to control yourself.” He pulled the weapon free, and with a slash across the mage’s throat, he finished the screaming man off.

  Arturus turned slowly, glancing around at the battlefield. His eyes glanced over his army, then at the retreating forms of Sasha’s Babysitting Service, then up to where Elijah knelt. Elijah’s heart skipped as the man continued to glare around the room. He had to get his attention and eventually get the man into the trial.

  Elijah jumped down, Batwing blade outstretched. It was risky and stupid, but Elijah never claimed to be an intelligent man.

  Arturus noticed him immediately, stepping just far enough out of the way that Elijah was bound to miss. Another teleport got him out of the way of Arturus’ counter. He was burning through his mana at a prodigious rate and wouldn’t be able to sustain this fighting style indefinitely.

  He had fifteen mana left and had to conserve it all for the next stage of what he had planned. “I saw what you did to Nethy, Arturus,” Elijah snarled. “How could you? Are you really that evil?”

  Arturus stopped and looked Elijah up and down before responding. “Heh, every story needs a villain, Elijah. You don’t get to have your big heroic arcs without the villain winning from time to time.”

  Elijah’s blood felt like it was boiling at the man’s casual answer. It was time. His friends had made it through the door to the trial chamber. The only one they had left during their redesign of the dungeon with the core.

  “You aren’t going to win ever again. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Arturus lunged for him, but Elijah teleported again. A moment later, Elijah was in the midst of the army struggling to get through the door in an orderly manner that wouldn’t leave them exposed on the opposite side. His blade flashed through them as he pushed forward. The damage to the side of his chest and hip burned now. He was pushing his body past the limits of his own endurance. His health would hold out, but that didn’t mean his mind would be able to handle the pain indefinitely. This was a game, yes, but with everything feeling so real, the pain was still trauma.

  He finally reached the door, sliding the edge of his weapon against the forearm of an unarmed fighter class before he reached out himself and touched the door.

  On the other side, there was confusion, and he tried to slip away from the group of enemies that had arrived so far. Inside the trial chamber was an almost perfect reconstruction of the Temple of Fate in Nethy. A large, ham-sized fist caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back. Cries rang out through the crowd; they’d caught the Reality Warper. Fists grabbed him as he struggled to free himself.

  He lashed out with everything he had. The mass of bodies around him pushed harder, adrenaline mixed with the primal fear as the threat of being crushed by the bodies of those already here and those coming in became overbearing. The teleport effect that was linked to the door had a small range; it could only do so much to prevent people from being trampled, especially with this many people coming in. People started to spawn in the air and fall down onto the mob.

  Elijah was being crushed alive. His fear of large crowds sent spikes of panic as the very reality of the situation became apparent. There was no escape for him. No way to wrench himself free from the monsters who held him now.

  He felt for his shadow. The bloodlust of the bats, ever present and terrifying in most contexts, became the balm to his mind.

  They hungered, not just for his mana, but for the blood of those around him. And his own.

  He opened the gates fully. Not the trickle that had allowed them to form the portals within the fort, but full access. They fed, and his shadow grew over the crowd.

  It was as if he had cast his ‘Dragontooth Swarm’ spell, but this time omnidirectional and more ferocious. The bats filled every inch of space between the bodies, clawing and tearing and ripping at the Reapers.

  And at Elijah himself. He was already low on health, first from the giant hammer smacking into him, then by catching the edge of the Mana Mage’s blast, and finally from the gripping and punching hands of the crowd. The bats turned on him, tearing into his skin.

  [DEATH]

  You have died!

  Time to respawn: 120 seconds.

  Two minutes.

  Two long, excruciating minutes in the black void that was the death screen. He waited, unable to affect the death timer with his warping skill.

  Finally he spawned in, lying on a rough wooden bed that looked like it should be more comfortable than it was. One of the side effects of growing everything from wood. He hadn’t respawned in Mara’s Bastion, or Raystown, or any major city. He had respawned inside of the trial within the Dryad Glade.

  This was the start of his plan. Now he just needed to manage to execute the rest of it.

  He could already hear the voices around him. The yelling and hollering of the men and women who were still making their way through the portal, and the coughing and choking of the Reapers who had died so far.

  The ones who had died outside this trial would respawn elsewhere, but the vast majority of them were already here, and would continue to respawn on this side of the portal. The one-way portal. It was time to end the Reaper threat, once and for all.