Seven was weaving her way through the crowd of knights and enemy players as she was chased. The assassin that was chasing after her swiped his dagger at her as he drew closer.

“Stone shift.”

“Magic blast.”

She had fought close combat classes enough to easily dodge the swipe and land a magic blast.

-72

She could see the player's eyes glimmer with doubt as she took almost all of his health.

‘This is nothing to worry about?’ He thought to himself.

She was a lot more skilled than Colt had made her out to be.

“Stone shift.”

She dodged another one of his attacks easily and he saw that he was in her firing range. He wouldn’t be able to dodge.

“You’re hella good.” The dagger-wielding player suddenly spoke as he saw that he wasn’t going to win the fight, “My name’s Troy. We should duel together sometime after this.”

“Seven, and sure.” She smiled and fired a final magic blast.

Troy’s body fell to the ground and Seven turned in time to see Colt split into two people and slash at TidalWave.

Then she saw his skill that let him headshot TidalWave for a critical hit.

‘Damn it.’ She wouldn’t reach TidalWave in time.

In those few seconds she had memorised the movements the assassin had used.

Now she was going to avenge her friend.

But then Colt jumped away from TidalWave and returned to Attracting, fighting off the knights that were nearby. He was joined by three of his remaining crew members that had survived despite being outnumbered. Each was an incredibly skilled player that could hold off their enemies with the help of the boss. They stood guard beside it but were helpless to stop Archy’s arrows.

She began firing at the boss again.

Seven saw TidalWave stand back cautiously and try to drink a potion. She also saw Roxxy running towards Third and Archy with a few knights in tow. Then she turned her attention to the main enemy in front of her. She slowly made her way to Third and Archy as well as they all fired at the boss together. With a few more shots it would be dead and it couldn’t even control its tentacles with any semblance of accuracy as its eyes had been destroyed.

“TidalWave… Archy… Third… Neostayin... Roxxy…”

Seven could see Attracting muttering the names of players as he gazed across the field.

She hadn’t noticed but the entire fight he had been channeling a spell uninterrupted. Dark Horse and Colt’s Crew had been holding anyone that could interrupt him at bay. Now that only Colt’s Crew was left they were still skilled enough to fight off the remaining players for the crucial few seconds Attracting needed.

“SHADOW GROUP HEAL.” Attracting’s voice boomed across the cavern.

A flash of purple came out of his wand as he stood up and suddenly Seven saw her remaining teammate’s bodies glow purple. It was the same undodgeable type of attack that Attractings auto attacks were. Except that it didn’t kill anyone or damage them.

She turned to the only player she thought could work out what was happening, “Third?”

A number had appeared above all of the glowing player’s heads.

5

“Crap.” Third looked at her and saw she wasn't glowing, and his eyes glimmered with hope, “A targeted attack that can hit multiple people, no doubt it will kill us all. But he did not target you.”

4

“Why?” She was confused.

She could see the purple glow spreading to almost every player around her.

3

“I don’t know.” Then Third third looked around and snorted, he saw that every player on the field that had been targeted was the most skilled of the remaining players, “The man is an idiot. He constantly underestimates you.”

2

“Now make him pay for it.”

1

-148

-148

-148

-148

-148

-148

A series of numbers floated into the air around Seven as she saw her remaining teammates and most of the surviving knights of Magnolia instantly killed. No single player had enough health left to defend against the massively damaging spell.

There were around ten knights remaining and each one had been hiding from the fighting due to their lack of skill. They had recognised that they weren’t good enough to fight against the enemies that Attracting had gathered to conquer this mission whilst also dodging tentacles.

“Kill them.” Attracting ordered Colt.

Seven noted with interest that the man himself didn’t launch a single attack. He simply sat down on the creature’s head and began to heal it intermittently.

‘He’s out of mana.’ Seven realised.

She knew the spell he had just cast wouldn’t come without a huge mana cost. The person in question was using any mana that regenerated to try and heal the gravely injured Corruptor.

Colt began to attack the remaining knights as they lay scattered on the battlefield. The ten players banded together to take on the assassin and he laughed as they swiped their swords at him.

“There’s one here.” The remaining three members spotted Seven and lunged towards her together.

They had no doubt that their leader would easily kill the remaining knights without trouble.

“Swift feet.”

The lead crew member sped up ahead of his allies and soon was on top of Seven, stabbing at her with his weapon.

“Stone shift.”

“Magic blast.”

She dodged out of the way and smashed her attack into him, killing her opponent instantly.

Each one of the enemies had been fighting a long battle before Attracting’s attack wiped out her allies. So each one had taken enough hits that a single one of her attacks would instantly kill them no matter how skilled they were.

The last two quickened their pace as they saw their ally go down. Instead of charging at her blindly they chose to coordinate their attack, one on each side.

“Magic blast.” She didn’t wait for them to come to her, and instead, her first attack smashed into an enemy player the moment he came a few meters closer to her. He dropped dead with a surprised expression on his face.

With her accuracy, he would have to be as skilled as TidalWave to dodge her attacks without having any prior experience fighting her.

“Stone shift.”

“Magic blast.”

She dodged the final player’s attacks and watched him drop to the ground dead as well. Both of them had left white lights as they dropped items. But she ignored it like she did the hundreds of other item lights spread across the battlefield.

She could see Colt finishing the last of the knights and turning to face her. He had a surprised expression on his face as he saw that his teammates had failed to kill her.

“Oh.” Attracting seemed to notice her for the first time, “You were here. But it’s a little too late now, there’s nothing you can do alone.”

Attracting looked at the heavily bleeding creature he lay on top of, he needed to concentrate on healing it, “Kill her.”

Colt turned towards Seven and charged. His blades glistened as he activated their magic. She knew what he was going to do. He was going to use the move that even TidalWave couldn’t dodge. Colt had no doubt that if he could destroy that monster then this girl wouldn’t even be a challenge.

But unlike TidalWave she had seen this attack before.

He lunged at her as his figure blurred, shifting and splitting into two different Colt’s flying in mid-air towards her. Four blades lancing through the air to hit her at every angle. She dodged the first blade, but she only had a split second to dodge the next two. She moved backwards to try and buy herself a second with which to maneuver.

“Wind blast.”

“Stone shift.”

She smashed her attack against the first Colt, causing it to blur and disappear. She had succeeded in eliminating the first one. But now the real Colt was right beside her.

He was at his preferred distance to make sure the kill was secured.

“Dagger’s end.”

“Stone shift.”

Colt’s weapons suddenly appeared in front of her, grazing past her eyes. If she had been a second slower it would have been a one-shot kill. He seemed to slow down as she aimed her wand at his head. He was so close that she couldn’t miss it.

“Magic blast.”

-172 (Critical hit!)

The moment he forced himself into the killing move was the moment he was most vulnerable. He couldn’t do anything but move in the predetermined path of the skill. So he also couldn’t dodge her attack once she’d escaped his. It had all gone according to her plan.

She had seen all his moves before. She wouldn’t allow herself to let them land after TidalWave had given her this opportunity. Colt’s eyes widened in surprise and his body slumped to the ground. It disappeared, leaving an item's blue light gleaming on the ground.

“What? What did you do.” Attracting blinked as though he couldn’t register what he was seeing, “How the hell could someone like you defeat Colt?” He shook his head, trying to find a different answer, “No, that’s not possible.”

“Yeah. You keep saying that.” Seven sidestepped a tentacle and then jumped back to avoid another, “But I don’t see why you’re denying the stuff happening right in front of you.”

Now that the main threat was out of the way it was time to end this. She watched the monster carefully and began to move from side to side. It would start to fight back with black bolts the moment it was hit. Its tentacles weren’t that difficult to dodge any more but there were now a lot more of them around her because she was the only enemy present.

She fired attack after attack, hitting the creature’s regenerating eyes perfectly. Nearly every magic blast triggered a critical hit. But she dodged all of the retaliation attacks sent out by the Corruptor. Seven could see Attracting was helpless. He had used the entirety of his mana in that last attack and was focusing the rest on trying to keep the boss monster’s health barely constant. It tried to smash her with its tentacles, from the roof of the cave to the walls that lay thick with smog.

Every single attack was perfectly dodged.

She was already far beyond the skill needed to win this fight.

“This is impossible.” Attracting’s voice rose as he watched Seven, “You’re A NOBODY.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean.” Seven responded coldly.

She could already see the end of this fight. She had enough mana regeneration to continuously fire for a while. The monster’s health slowly grew lower from the small percentage it had already been left with after her team’s attack.

“STOP.” Attracting lifted himself up from the creature’s scalp and waved his wand towards her.

A blue glow started to form around his body and then it floated through the air towards her.

“There it is.” She smiled.

His trump card. The one he used to win every fight he was going to lose. She had seen this attack used against the most skilled players she had met because the person using it had no other way to win the fight. Now it was finally being used against her.

And she was ready for it.

The light moved slowly but surely towards her. She knew it would be an instant kill that was unmoveable by the abilities she had available. If she used stone shift she would only avoid it for a few more seconds. It was going to target her until she died.

She knew that every single person Attracting had fought had come up with a countermeasure to this move.

She was no different.

The light was almost halfway towards her before she started her final attack.

“Magic blast.”

She sent magic flying towards Attracting but the shadow priest dodged them all. He was too far from her to get a sure-hit shot through to him. She slowly moved towards him while dodging the Corruptor’s tentacles and she eyed the blue light flying towards her.

“You overestimate yourself.” Attracting’s voice grew cold as he realised her attacks were suddenly arriving too quickly to dodge without using all of his concentration, “You were nothing before and you will always continue to be nothing.”

“You and I,” Seven uttered under breath, “have a lot to talk about after this.”

Attracting was panicking as he moved aside for each blast. His magic was the only thing keeping the monster alive. If he left the creature’s head then it would be taken down by Seven easily. He had no mana and he had neither the class skills or the actual skill to continue dodging Seven’s attacks as she drew nearer. He was not TidalWave or Archy. Eventually, he would slip up and then he would die.

He was trapped.

Then he smiled, “Checkmate.”

The blue light was already only a couple of meters away from Seven. His attack was a surefire guarantee to kill the magi. Even if she had regenerated some health he was sure that even with full health she’d die. He breathed a sigh of relief as it drew closer.

He had won.

‘Focus.’

Seven saw the blue light drawing near and did the only thing she could. She walked straight into it.

‘Focus.’ She breathed in deeply.

The blue light moved towards her head.

In less than a second, it would kill her.

And then it moved away from her body and began to circle around her.

“What the hell?” Attracting’s eyes widened.

Seven sent him a tired grin in response, and continued to draw closer while firing her magic missiles. The blue light was circling around her body, drifting harmlessly in a constant ring.

Her plan had worked.

She knew couldn’t run from the attack, not without giving Attracting time to regenerate his mana, and she knew couldn’t make the attack disappear. So she had to come up with a way to stall for time.

She eyed her solution, her creation, carefully. Invisible to everyone except her were four focus points, small transparent balls that she was using to shift the blue light across her body. But instead of changing the direction of her own attack she was using them on Attracting’s trump card. She was using the entirety of her concentration to make sure that the moment the blue light hit one of the focus points that she would shift its direction towards the next one. Then with all four focus points sitting so close around her body, she could make adjustments in direction small enough that the attack would constantly circle around her instead of hitting her.

It wasn’t perfect, and she could only concentrate on a small area or else all the focus points would disappear, but all she needed to do was buy herself seconds of time to kill her enemies.

“Magic blast.”

-83

Attracing’s eyes began to show panic as he realised that Seven had managed to somehow escape his inescapable attack.

“No, no, no.” He began to dodge the attacks again but now Seven was already too close to him, “You’ve ruined everything. Weeks of work and planning.”

“You know what Andrew,” She looked up at him panicking on top of the Corruptor and fired a magic blast directly at him, she knew he wouldn’t be able to dodge this one, “You’ve been a real jackass lately. Just shut up and come talk to me when you’ve got an apology ready.”

-83

Attracting’s corpse was blown back by the magic blast and the Corruptor bellowed in anger as the body fell off of it and hit the ground, slowly disappearing into the air. Now that it was out of his control the murderous aura of a true boss monster appeared, wild and untamed.

The blue light circling Seven disappeared as Attracting died.

‘That was close.’ She sighed in relief.

She doubted that she could keep that up for more than a couple of seconds.

She dodged the renewed attacks of the Corruptor and within a few minutes, she had already brought its health down to the final sliver. With one last magic blast the creature was destroyed and a shining yellow light appeared.

“Oho.” Seven looked at the rarity of the items dropped by the boss.

This was the first time she had seen a yellow light.

First, she picked up the items dropped by Colt and Attracting. She knew that these would make suitable compensation for her team’s lost things. Then she picked up the loot dropped by the boss.

[Dragon’s Bane.]

It was a sword. It looked powerful considering it was an item with a yellow rarity. She turned to the cavern and slowly began to make her way through every item dropped onto the ground. She was done in a matter of minutes. She would definitely check the sword out and show the team afterward, but she had one last thing to do before she left.

She turned to face the last section of the boss chamber.

The door that had been covered by the Corruptor’s tentacles was immaculately carved with dragon symbols. She didn’t know if it had been created by the dragon itself or by the wilders that worshipped it, but she knew that the dragon’s treasure lay beyond it.

The doors opened up as she moved towards them bathing her in light.

“Oh. My. God.” Seven let out a squeak as she walked inside the final chamber

It was filled with gold.

Lots and lots of gold.

‘Holy crap.’

That had summed up the general feelings Seven had as she went through the spoils of war. The moment she stepped through the grand doors she was confronted with a shimmering gold light.

The source of the light was thousands upon thousands of coins. Enough to give to everyone to repay them for any items they lost on death and still have plenty of gold leftover. She immediately went from pile to pile to put her hands on them and put them into her inventory. Luckily the piles came in all at once or else she’d have to take hours picking up each individual coin. Each pile had ten thousand gold coins.

There were twenty piles.

This was the reward to the people that managed to cross the inner ring’s challenges, fight off the horde of drakes and defeat the Corruptor. It was a treasure fit for hundreds of people. Behind the gleaming piles of gold were five items shimmering atop pedestals. They floated in the air as if by magic.

A bow, a wand, a shield, a staff, and a sword.

Each one was a yellow ranked item that looked like it was on the same level as the Dragon’s Bane sword she had just picked up.

The truth was she intended to give every participant part of the gold. Even Dark Horse and Colt’s Crew would get a few pieces since she felt her team had technically interrupted them and taken their prize. But these five items would be for her and her team.

They were definitely too precious to give away.

She picked up the items in one swoop and quickly ran out of the cave. She knew that the players wouldn’t be able to reach the area from Lum so quickly after dying and reviving but she couldn’t risk any of the high-level NPCs that had been in the expedition force coming in and seeing her. They had been fighting and running from the behemoth and thousands of monsters but she felt that would only slow them down.

She left the cave entrance and ran across the empty but withered forest. The smog had been completely dispersed and even the purple shade seemed to have disappeared. The forest was free from the corruption and would probably slowly return to normal soon.

She only stopped running when she arrived at the entrance of Lum and met up with her teammates and the Knights of Magnolia.

She had so much to give them.

****

“Lum, then Lux. Seems like there’s still a lot to do.” Seven smiled as the team relaxed.

They’d had an exciting day. There were four hundred and eighty members of the Knights of Magnolia and Attracting had offered them one hundred gold coins each. Seven and the team decided to provide them two hundred gold each. It was an incredible sum for the short amount of work they’d done. Seven also gave them back their items that she had picked up. Luckily each one had the former owner listed on the item due to it dropping from a natural death and not a duel.

Then Seven gave the Dark Horse members and Colt’s Crew players two hundred gold each as well. They had left on good terms since they were mainly there for the adventure. Two hundred gold could still be used suitably if they played their cards right.

The truth was that Colt’s Crew had definitely wanted a bit more gold from the outing, but to Seven’s surprise instead of getting angry, they were extremely apologetic. Colt and Troy had a long talk with her and Colt had gotten her to promise to several practice duels for cashing in at a later date after she insisted on making it up to them somehow. He reasoned that fighting an experienced player at any time was more than worth its weight in gold. If he could get the rest of Sevens team to follow then they would have gained priceless practice partners.

Then she gave a little over two thousand gold to IEatTortillas who came up to her and was extremely apologetic. Apparently TidalWave had told her everything Attracting had said and she had immediately separated from him and left his team.

Attracting had disappeared shortly afterward and none of them knew where he’d gone.

That left one hundred thousand gold for the team.

Initially, the team was extremely excited. But it turned out that they would still need to go to the main capital of Lux to find truly good items to buy. Of course, the best items could only be found by undertaking quests and fighting monsters. So now they were relaxing and taking it easy.

Soon the Zodiac Online creators would announce the second class advancements as players reached the required levels. The competitive scene was also going to be created and the presence of Zodiac Online among gamers was quickly spreading.

All they had to do was wait and the game would soon become a flurry of activity.

“Hey.” TidalWave gestured to her, “Let’s duel. One on one.”

Seven lifted her wand in response, “Do you think I’ll be able to win?”

She already knew she was going to do it.

“Only one way to find out.”

Seven and TidalWave smiled.

They knew that this was only the beginning.

****

Inside a small room, a man paced up and down while another sat at a computer typing furiously.

“Has it ever done something like this before?” The pacing man was agitated.

He was Hein Haster, the man credited with creating Zodiac Online. His companion at the computer ignored his question as the screen flashed with text and images every few seconds.

“What’s happening?” At this moment he was staring at the computer that contained his very first creation.

It was the entity responsible for making Zodiac Online possible. The only way that he could make a full interactive and virtual world. The only being capable of running the program that adjusted itself with every action, gesture and movement made by both players and NPCs. A master controller of everything inside the game.

The A.I, Zodiac.

“I think it’s thinking about something.” His companion was equally confused as large movements were made across the world inside the game.

“This kind of processing power doesn’t constitute thinking.” Hein frowned, “What is it trying to do?”

They had given Zodiac full control over the world inside the game but they still monitored it carefully. If only so that nothing went wrong and caused the game to glitch or shut down. Of course, the A.I couldn’t harm any of the players or access anything outside of the game itself. Hein had made sure of that from the moment he began creating it.

“It looks like it’s become curious about a player. They’ve done something that’s caused it to start asking around about them through the NPCs.” The man sounded surprised.

A single-player was like a drop in the ocean. There were already two million players and many more slated to arrive soon. For a single player to attract Zodiac’s attention to this extent was unprecedented.

“Which player?” Hein’s expression turned curious.

Zodiac wasn’t only in charge of administering the game. It was also in charge of finding players that could influence the world within the game. After all, Hein intended for the game to be a world that players could change on their own, with the assistance of Zodiac who would adapt to their actions. If Zodiac was already interested in this person then it appeared that this player had a very bright future ahead of them.

“Their name is…” Hein’s companion worked through the information Zodiac provided them, “Attracting.”

****

In a small house Attracting exited the game with a frown on his face. Then he shook his head and smiled. His failure to get the dragon’s treasure was annoying but he had many more opportunities to make money from the game. He had already purchased the prime properties in Lum. It was sooner than he thought but he would have to travel away from Zhalnor and uncover the secrets of the Underground.

Soon he would move his parents out of this crap hole and bring them the comfort and happiness they had always deserved.

Then he would move onto helping Ana.

The moment he logged off his phone blared and he checked the number of the caller.

“Ana.” Andrew smiled happily, “What’s up?”

“Nothing you say can convince me you’re not an asshole.” Ana replied crossly, “how could you say that kind of stuff to Milly?”

“Oh really? Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you too. You see… let me tell you a story about a very lonely man who died.” Andrew sat down as he spoke and leaned back in his chair with a smile. “But then he opened his eyes and woke up ten years in the past.”