The four of them hopped out of the back of the Caravan wagon as it arrived in the Forgotten sands. It was exactly as Darith remembered it, sand blowing in all directions, blocking their vision completely so that they could barely see their hands in front of their faces.

“This place is gonna be sucky to fight in.” Jacob commented.

“Well, knowing lowbie killers, we won’t have to look far, usually they attack instantly to catch you buy surpri-” Darith was interrupted as an arrow hit him in his shoulder, dealing 50 damage.

“Ni hao!” A voice shouted out to them followed by several voices laughing, though they couldn’t make out the direction.

“Only 50 damage?” Darith said confidently.

“Darith, look, our levels!” Liana said worriedly, prompting Darith to look at his interface.

Level 20(29(?))

“What? It says I’m 20!” Darith said, noticing his HP was much lower than it was normally. He quickly clicked the question mark, as did Liana.

“It downscaled it because we are only in a level 10-19 area, it says. We’re only allowed to be level 20 here! Our skills are all downscaled too!” Liana said.

“How far for the skills?” Darith asked as he opened his menu to see all of his skills downscaled to level 50.

“So what? That means those guys are stuck at that level too. Game is trying to keep the PvP balanced.” Ryan said.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a fair fight?” Jacob said jokingly, making Darith grin. As he did, a second arrow came flying at Darith from somewhere in the desert, but this time before it could connect it was blocked by a wooden shield. Darith looked to see a white skeleton holding the shield in one hand and a sword in the other, glowing slightly purple.

“What the heck!?” Darith said startled.

“Dark summoner, I started with summon skills. Meet my pal, bones.” Ryan grinned ear to ear. More arrows began to fly at them, then waterbolts as well, and Ryan responded by summoning two more skeletons to run around them with their shields blocking the projectiles. “Three’s my max right now though, and they’re really only good for taking hits."

“I’m no good unless I’m in melee. You guys got a way to find them in this storm?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah, Liana?” Darith turned to her and she nodded, raising her hand into the air.

“Time Warp!” She shouted, and a large purple dome formed around them slowing the sand blowing into it to a near stop.

“Whoa, what kind of spell is this?” Ryan said in amazement.

“It slows all moving things, use it to see where their attacks are coming from.” Darith replied. Jacob nodded and glanced around the outside of the dome until he spotted an arrow flying into it and stopping. Then, with incredible speed he dashed forward in that direction into the sands with his sword drawn.

“Sun strike!” Jacob shouted after he disappeared from their sight, and there was a bright flash of light in the distance. Before they could ask what happened, Darith spotted the Waterbolt enter the time warp and looked in that direction.

“My turn. Firestorm!” Darith shouted, and suddenly a large number of red circles appeared in front of him, not nearly as many as he had used on the ice wraith, but still nearly fifty.

“Holy cow!” Ryan commented as the firebolts shot in the direction of the waterbolt after a 1.5 second delay. The cast time had gone up from the level reduction, but luckily his spell mastery level 50 still allowed him to move while casting. “Did you get him?”

“I'll go check. Don't let anything happen to Liana, okay?” Darith said, and he excitedly ran out of the dome towards where his bolts hit.

"Got it." Ryan nodded as the dome vanished.

“It only lasts 30 seconds.” Liana commented.

“No problem, stay here with me until those guys get back, the skeletons can protect us from anything unexp- watch out!” Ryan shouted as he pushed Liana out of the way. A nemothyne dropped from the sky above them wielding a spear aiming it directly at Liana, but luckily he missed and the spear went into the sand. He then rotated his spear in a full circle to hit them but they both jumped backward while the three skeletons ran forward towards him with their swords out, swinging at him from all sides. He moved impressively to deflect the swords and moved his spear incredibly fast around their shields to jab at them, dropping the health of the skeletons quickly.

“Group Heal!” Liana quickly shouted, and after a short delay and a green circle, light surrounded the skeletons and restored their health to full.

“Nice.” Ryan gave her a thumbs up.

“Tch.” The spear nemothyne sucked his teeth, then jumped into the air incredibly high again.

“Sky drop.” He called out, then his spear surrounded itself in blue light and he flew like a missile towards Liana, but she saw it coming and dashed out of the way so that he only hit sand.

“You’re smart enough to go for the healer, but not smart enough to know you’re outmatched!” Ryan smirked as the spearman charged at Liana. “Shadow bind!” he casted, and a black spell circle appeared in front of him, seconds later a ball shot out at the Spearman's legs and wrapped itself around his ankles, causing him to fall face forward mid-charge into the sand. Without hesitation, Ryan ordered his skeletons to charge at him and drive their swords downward into him, but a sudden flash of white light around the spearman removed the shadow bind, and he quickly jumped up and out of the way of the skeletons.

“They’ve got a healer somewhere!” Ryan shouted, trying to let Darith and Jacob know, though he wasn’t sure what they were up to.

“Got it.” Darith called back.

“So do you!” The spearman shouted in heavily accented english. He charged at Liana again, but a wall of skeletons jumped in front to stop them.

“Behind you!” Jacob suddenly called out, causing Liana to turn but too late, a barrage of arrows collided with her and did 700 damage, knocking her health really low. She quickly healed herself back up, then noticed Jacob’s health at half and healed him too.

“They’ll have an easier time healing because they’re in a group, but Liana can’t see our health bars so we should stay close.” Ryan noted.

“You two should stay close to me then, let Darith find the healer, I can still see his health bar at full.” Liana said.

“Got it, let me deal with spear boy then, send your skellies out to find the healer. They’re using some weird stealth skill that hides them in the sand.” Jacob said, trying to talk loud enough for Darith to hear, not worried about the enemies listening in.

Jacob charged past the skeletons and clashed the blade of his sword with the spearman.

“Now this is what I call an MMO!” Jacob grinned, deflecting the spear away as the spearman jumped back. Ryan, meanwhile, sent the skeletons out in different directions, beyond their vision and into the heavy sandstorm around them.

“They’re all going for Liana now! I lost track of the caster, be careful!” Darith shouted through the storm. Just then a waterbolt flew towards Liana’s head but she ducked around it.

“I kinda expected this, shouldn’t have picked the healer.” She sighed.

“Don’t worry, we’ll protect you.” Ryan said.

“Okay.” She replied nervously, she couldn’t help but shake a bit, she wasn’t used to the amount of adrenaline rushing through her, but at the same time it felt amazing. She felt more alive then she ever had in the wheelchair, and the threat of losing it to these enemy players only made the feeling more exciting.

“They’ve been fighting here for days, they have a huge environmental advantage with their skills.” Ryan said worriedly, spotting a barrage of waterbolts flying at them from somewhere in the storm and dodging away from them.

“Maybe.” Darith called back. “But like all lowbie killers, they don’t know how to deal with people that know how to fight back. I just thought of a new spell.” Darith grinned.

“Really? What kinda spell?” Jacob called back, though he was much more focused on defending himself against the spearman than he was letting on.

“Fire Nova!” Darith shouted from within the sandstorm, and there was a sudden huge flash of red light from the ground and a large torrent of wind. Darith had formed 8 fireballs around himself and shot them outward in a spiraling circle to create his first real area of effect spell. It drained his mana quickly as he maintained the fireballs, allowing them to fly further and further away from him at incredible speed, burning up and clearing out the sand in the area for a few seconds, making it possible to see, until finally the circle reached a figure hiding in the sand.

“There! Found the healer!” Darith pointed.

“On it!” Ryan shouted, motioning his three skeletons to collapse on the healer wearing a large brown sand covered cloak. Just as the skeletons surrounded the healer holding an orb, arrows shot down from above and knocked all the skeletons down into the sand.

“Pinning Shot!” The bow wielder shouted as he jumped through the air above his healer.

“Can you keep him still?” Jacob asked Ryan.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll need to take him out in one hit so he can’t heal himself, say when!” Darith shouted to Jacob as both of them ran towards the healer, just then the magic user appeared in front of Darith between him and the healer and started casting a barrage of waterbolts.

“You’re going to have to do better than that!” Darith grinned, then used his rank 50 dash skill to vanish completely from the casters sight, making him completely lose track of Darith. “Firestorm!” Darith shouted a few feet away from the healer.

“Shadow Bind!” Ryan called out, hitting the healers feet and preventing him from moving, to guarantee Darith’s barrage of Fireballs while Jacob continued to guard Liana with the help of the skeletons. The attack did massive damage, taking the healers health to 0 instantly. The healers tall human form vanished in a flash of light and was replaced by the body of a young boy, who then also disappeared with the message ‘Game Over’ above him, his items all falling to the ground around him.

“Now the rest.” Ryan said as his skeletons were finally able to move again, and he sent them straight at the archer. The archer dashed away and fired at them several times but eventually Ryan landed a shadow bind on him. The archer lost his balance and Liana watched as the 3 skeletons caught up to him, driving their swords into him. From that she could only see the Game Over message appear above him. Distracted by this, the spearman charged at her from behind, but she could react just in time to move out of the way and pull out her orb, throwing it at him. It did some damage, but not enough to discourage him and he continued charging until Jacob appeared and knocked his spear to the side, then slashed his sword past him doing massive damage.

Meanwhile Darith had enchanted his staff and began dashing around the slower enemy caster, avoiding his bolts and hitting him with his burning weapon until the game over message appeared. After Liana and Jacob landed a few more hits on the spearman, he also got a game over.

“Whew! First PvP battle over!” Ryan cheered as the four gathered closer to each other.

“Man this is on a completely different level. What a rush yo.” Jacob said with a smile.

“I feel a bit bad, they were all just little kids.”

“They were.” Darith said calmly. “But we’re in a game, and in a game, everyone is a player, it’s the great equalizer. A place where people can be whatever they want.” He said as he reached his hand up towards the dimly lit sky. “And players who try to ruin that for others are players we can’t forgive.” Darith grinned.

“Isn’t that our old guild motto from when we played that MMO?” Jacob asked.

“It is.” Ryan said with a smirk.

“I thought I was nerdy like you guys, but your speech takes it to a whole other level.” Liana rolled her eyes, and the four started laughing, partly because it was funny, partly to calm their nerves down.

“So what do we do with the items they dropped?” Ryan asked.

“Well, there were four of them, so...” Darith commented.

“Dibs on the spear dudes stuff.” Jacob said, running back to where he gave him game over to find his items on the ground, but before he could pick anything up, they all got messages in front of their faces.

“Bounty Claimed: 1022 gold awarded.” Ryan said as he read the message out loud.

“Seems like if you kill too many players you get a bounty put on your head.”

“That’s good news, we can become somethin’ like bounty hunters then, right?” Jacob suggested.

“That’d be cool.” Liana smiled as she walked towards where the healer had fallen and picked up some items. Though none of it seemed really good.

“Seems like all these guys did was steal loot from low level players, most of this is junk, they have these sand cloaks though.” Ryan said as he and the others picked them up and equipped them.

Cloak of Shifting Sands

+1 Armor

Effect: Improves your stealth related abilities while within any desert environment.

“So this is how they were sneaking around. Only when you’re in a desert though.” Darith commented.

“Better than nothing?” Ryan shrugged.

“So, what next, should we send word back to the oasis that the way is clear?” Jacob asked.

“Probably, but there’s no way to prevent more PvPers from showing up.” Ryan replied.

“We need to get to the ruins as fast as possible to find a remove curse spell.” Liana said.

“It’d probably be faster if all those players weren’t fighting over our monsters.” Darith said. “We’ll have to do the quests to get to the next area, I’m thinking.”

“Looks like the cat is already out of the bag.” Jacob said as he pointed towards the caravan through the heavy sands. Players began arriving in large numbers already.

“You guys really did it! You’re awesome!” Different people cheered.

“Just remember! If you attack other players, the Knights of Justice will come for you!” Jacob shouted at them.

“Whoa, so cool.”

“That guy is awesome!”

“Knights of justice huh? I kind of want to join!” Different people shouted.

“Less showing off, more doing quests. Grab the first three and let’s get through this area as fast as possible.” Darith said, Liana smiling at him.