The tunnels were neither bright nor dark. It was just dark enough to see almost nothing, but too bright to let the eyes adjust to the darkness. The group, and Aren also, was all too aware of the devious schemes of the goblinoids — as if they had a Fang of their own on their side. Possibly, his title was the One-Eyed King.

Aren idly wondered what the One-Eyed King was. He imagined a large bolg-orc, a veteran of some cataclysmic war in which he lost an eye. Or perhaps it was one of the trolls, or an ogre, or even one of the mythical Muspelheim Giants that is considered a distant ancestor, if not the progenitor, of the fierce orkin horde.

Aren knew a bit of this world’s history. Before the latest Darkling Crusade, there was the Orkin Horde Invasion. It was such a large invasion that many remnants of that war still litter the world and, thanks to their fast procreation, still manage to pose a threat, albeit nowhere as dangerous as they once were. It was said that the Giants of Muspelheim, a country far, far away from the mainland, on another continent even, created the orkin for war and sent them across the oceans. Catastrophic magical events, and some even blame magical experiments, then went on to mutate the orkin and create what every Light-fearing denizen and adventurer called goblinoid — a slang term, more or less. Orcs, even goblins, still considered themselves proud orkin, weapons of war — infantry of the future — even though that was factually wrong. Aren just never heard anyone call them by a new, more proper name. Perhaps no one really cared anymore. So they officially became goblinoids — definition and slang.

Even now, the goblinoids were terrifying opponents. Their tactics and strategy, with a proper leader, was fearsome enough to allow them to hold Rakab for who knows how many years. Countless adventurers fell to their traps, ambushes and head-on engagements. Aren experienced their cruelty and ferocity first-hand, when the Scar of Rakab used two lowly goblins to distract Aren, and then secure a mortal wound on him by not caring about such sentiments like friendly fire. They were relentless, and to them, dying in battle, and for the cause, was a great honor. And though they may fear death, none of them would refuse to die when it was necessary.

Rumor had it that those who lost their fortunes in the Orkin Horde Invasion even launched class action lawsuits against the Commonwealth Department of AI Development — the Department that oversaw Singularity — claiming that the Horde’s unreasonable advantages, surprise attack, and some nebulous backroom scheming, was against the spirit of the game and meant to weaken the alliances of the time. After all, the Horde destroyed a large number of cities — some governed by players — and caused dozens of player-led alliances to go bankrupt and disband. However, nothing ever came of these rumored lawsuits. The Department of AI Development once commented, publicly, that events like the Orkin Horde Invasion were part of the gameplay.

Damien was decidedly in the lead of their two-man team, using his superior perception to scout ahead. Every now and then, at the edge of Aren’s vision, the silent human gave hand-signals that beckoned Aren forward. They did not encounter any resistance in the tunnels, although they occasionally heard heavy footsteps and rattling armor from the adjoining tunnels. The sound carried through with such clarity that it was clear from the beginning that any fighting in the tunnels would alert the rest of the underground inhabitants.

At one point, they came to a crossroads in the underground tunnels, and Damien pressed his ear to the ground and listened for a whole minute, before standing up, and pointing to the left tunnel.

What Damien heard, or his reasons for choosing that tunnel, Aren could not divine. Aren figured the assassin didn’t hear anything, and just chose at random.

That is when they encountered their first obstacle. Well, ‘obstacle’ might be putting it a bit optimistically. It was a couple of orcs. They sat underneath one of the torches, around a table with some tiny colored pebbles, fast asleep. Several gold trinkets were laid out onto the table, next to the board with the pebbles. They were clearly playing some kind of game, and seemingly betting on the outcome, when they fell asleep.

Neither one of them would win that game. Or wake up. Damien brutally slit their throats before they even had a chance to wake up. Searching their belongings, Damien obtained a small, handheld crossbow — much smaller than even the one the goblins used — and a decorated, expensive-looking rapier. Spoils of war the orcs obtained, it seemed like.

The usefulness of an assassin could not be overstated. If Aren had to use his abilities, he would be outnumbered by now, boxed in, and mercilessly slaughtered.

Aren became unsettled as he began to apply what he learned of the underground tunnels, and the ten or so minutes he spent wandering with Damien, to the potential duration of this entire mission. It seemed more and more likely that the moment would come when Aren would have no choice but to use the flashy and loud Lightning Blade techniques. Any moment now, a group of orcs would cross their paths and Aren would have no choice.

But then what? Could Aren escape with his life? Should he push forward and try to finish the mission — were they even following the correct path for that? Damien didn’t seem bothered at all, and he had no reason to be. Earlier, in their first botched battle, Damien happily died. Failing meant learning and succeeding later. But for Aren, death was not a simple matter.

And as if thinking of it invited bad luck, Damien froze as he entered a large underground chamber and made a hand signal that Aren did not understand. Was Damien telling him to come closer or run away?

The usefulness of a person that communicated with words — preferably verbally — could not be overstated.

Erring on the side of caution, Aren turned around to head back the way the two came, and then spotted, very briefly, shadows dissolving in the darkness behind him. Movement. For a split second, Aren wondered if it was his imagination, or if they were truly trapped already. He turned around again, to warn Damien, only to see the assassin fire a bolt from his crossbow and then dissolve into shadows.

Terrifying roars caused dirt and tiny pebbles to fall from the ceiling, just as loud as Aren’s lightning-charged abilities would have been, and Aren realized that the infiltration part of the mission was now truly and profoundly screwed.

Aren put his hand on the shadowblade and his mind eagerly opened to the profound macros and aliases within its sub-buffer. His own buffer opened in turn, but it was not the same sensation as he had in those fights and battles before the last time. He didn’t feel any inspiration, or the existence of that thing he came to perceive as the path, similar but not the same as the death line.

Even his motions, when he threw the lightning-charged knife into the darkness ahead did not have that reflexive but conscious nature to it, like it was part of his muscle memory. It was similar, but not quite. Potent, but not as good.

As the throwing dagger traversed the distance, Aren could feel the channel forming between himself and the dagger. He imagined the way leader channels formed between the clouds and the ground in real lightning strikes, and wondered if this was similar, if not the same thing. It probably wasn’t, because that would imply that Aren truly does become a lightning bolt. There was simply no way he’d survive such a thing.

No, Lightning Blade was all about lightning-charged speed. The causality between a charged object creating a path was relevant only to the mechanics of how the Plane of Lightning worked. If anything, his throwing blade was just a beacon, of sorts, for what would become near-instantaneous movement with the [Current] technique.

Lightning discharged from the throwing knife, the heat completely obliterating the metal object, as Aren appeared in its spot. The tongues of lightning carved into the dirt below, melting stone and debris, and the flash was bright enough to momentarily enlighten Aren to the situation.

Nine orcs, two of which were bolg-orcs, and four or five goblins. Their weapons were not as uniform and role-specific as those that belonged to the goblinoids outside. There were a few spear wielders in this chamber — about ten meters in all directions from the center — and more suited for close-quarter fighting. Handaxes, short swords, knives and daggers. One particular orc even had a butcher’s meat cleaver.

Near one of the four pillars of the chamber, an orc was dead with a bolt in his throat — Damien’s victim, no doubt. Of Damien, there was no sign, but Aren thought that at any moment now, a formless shadow would savagely reap another creature from life. Especially now that the enemy’s attention was on the flashy and bright Aren.

Aren took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The fear of dying dawned on his mind, and the realization that he would probably lose his goal forever intercepted every signal from his nerves.

He froze. He was only human after all. All it took was one errant thought to derail his confidence and to initiate a crippling feedback loop of doubt.

Fear was like lightning crawling up his spine, discharging with its forked tongue between his synapses. The revelation of fear came like the myriad needles of a crystal bursting into infinite fragments within his mind, and each needle of fear and doubt burned with the heat of a million suns.

Time slowed down to a crawl.

Three orcs closed in on Aren, now within striking distance. The first one reared back his arm, meat cleaver gleaming in the faint torch light.

An outside observer might see the flash of lightning that burst through Aren’s form, but none of them would understand its effect. Aren suddenly felt calm — ruthlessly cold even. The shock dispelled all fear from his mind, even normalized his breathing and heartbeat.

His movement was unerring, explosive and with machine-like precision. His shadowblade carved a clear path upwards with [Rising Moon], the black blade reflecting no light, and the red-alloy reinforcements glowing with a malevolent, red light.

[Injury inflicted. Severity: Mortal wound.]

The orc’s blood splashed up on the ceiling, armor and skin bursting open right down the middle of his torso, and up through his chin, and as the orc fell backwards, Aren had already jumped on top of the falling orc’s shoulders, and delivered a powerful unarmed attack on the orc’s neck.

[Injury inflicted. Severity: Fatal.]

Aren kicked off the lifeless orc’s body, which caused the orc’s cleaver to come loose and fly into the darkness of the room. Aren’s arc through the air seemed to defy gravity as he floated in the air for longer than it intuitively seemed possible — likely caused by the way he flipped in mid-air, launching a throwing knife into the nearest orc’s eye-socket.

[Injury inflicted. Severity: Serious. Left eye destroyed.]

Once again, Aren felt the path to victory open for him. He didn’t see any death lines, but the way his body moved was unnatural. He felt like that time when he was trapped under the ice of opium, himself but not quite himself. He moved on killer instinct.

A crossbow bolt went flying for him while he was in mid-air, and at that precise moment when escape seemed impossible, the new construct in his buffer collapsed, and lightning surged around him.

[Flash]

The trajectory of his shadowblade left a purple stigmata in the eyes of each observer as it carved through two orcs simultaneously, and culminated in a fatal stab against the crossbow-wielding goblin, hammering the smaller creature into the cave-like wall and causing a blood-eagle to splash on the wall behind it.

The goblin choked on blood, and within seconds died of blood-loss due to a destroyed heart. Of the two orcs that were caught in the path of [Flash], only charred, carved up corpses remained, their burning stench filling the unventilated chamber and biting at the eyes.

Damien, from the shadows, had been silently assassinating those who failed to join the battle, or were too distracted with Aren to defend themselves properly. His victims died without anyone noticing — not even Aren.

So when Aren turned, expecting the beginning of an all-out battle, only three orcs and one lonely goblin remained.

Damien’s crossbow bolt finished off the goblin, running the green-skinned creature through the heart, while the assassin simultaneously stabbed one of the remaining orcs in the neck with his curved dagger.

The two remaining orcs charged at Aren, roaring loudly enough to wake up the all the dead of Rakab from their eternal sleep of death, and quickly realized that Aren, to them, was an unassailable and unreachable ideal of power — everything the orkin once were and strived to be was enshrined in that dark-haired boy.

Aren’s [Halo] ended them on the spot, and two heads rolled at Aren’s feet.

[Group] Damien: This way.

Aren looked at Damien, saw him standing at the entrance of a cave-like tunnel, unlike the ones they’ve been in up until now, and moved to follow. Aren could hear the bellow of orcs and the shrill cries of goblins behind him, rousing the guards and calling others to the defense of their home.

There was no turning back now and no escape. They could only move forward.