MaxDamage24 shoved with one hand at a cavefang as it pinned him to the ground. The beast’s jaws scraped against the underside of the pistol he gripped in his other hand. He would have shot the thing, but the angle was bad, and the muzzle stuck out the side of its mouth like a cigar. Oh well. At least, it wasn’t biting him. There had been a second cavefang, but he’d pushed that jerk off the ledge. Granted, he’d also dropped his other gun in the process. Now it lay on the ground just out of reach.

He shoved again at the beast above him, its over muscled neck holding steady as it pushed back in attempt to eat his face. A droplet of drool fell from its tongue. It would have landed in his mouth if Max’s scarf hadn’t slipped up over his chin a moment before. He blew a puff of air at the fabric with a frustrated grunt to clear it away from his face. Then another drop of drool fell.

“Blah! Right in my mouth.” Max spat right back at the creature.

The cavefang didn’t seem to care.

“Get off me, you damn lizard thing!” he growled through his teeth. He was glad Kira wasn’t around. She’d never let him live down such a bland insult, or for that matter, the fact that he had been caught off guard a minute after he’d jabbed her for not paying attention to her surroundings. Thinking of her, he glanced at his party readout roasting in the tattooed flames on his wrist. She didn’t have time to wait for him.

Max wasn’t any stronger than he was in the real world. Sure, his stats were high enough but that only affected his weapon damage. He reached for his other gun, fingertips falling just short. He groaned. He almost would rather it be further away, as if it was teasing him by being so close, yet so far. In the end, he ignored it and opted to punch the cavefang in the neck. It let out a growl, but his bare fists couldn’t do much more than chip damage. He cursed Noctem’s developers for prioritizing the game’s realism over giving players enhanced physical capabilities to match their character build. Although, it could be worse. He could be Kira. She’d hit him more than enough times to know how limited a fairy’s physical strength was.

He punched the beast again hoping to make it flinch. Then he got a brilliant idea. He shoved his wrist into the creature’s mouth and held it in place while he yanked his pistol free. Teeth clamped down, illuminating his arm in a glow of crimson puncture marks. “Bite me.” He shoved the gun into the thing’s side and fired.

The cavefang reeled backward, letting Max roll out from under its weight. He snatched his other pistol from the ground and fired twice to put down the threat.

Max stood as the red glow faded from his wrist, and he spat out his scarf which had somehow gotten back in his mouth during the struggle. The light scrap of fabric hung halfway off his shoulder, leaving him looking disheveled. He pulled the accessory off and stuffed it down the front of his leather armor to keep the bump to his dexterity that it provided. He could equip it properly later. Right now, he had to get moving.

Max raced down the canyons zigzagging path, catching a glimpse of the party below. Kira was at its center, dodging cavefangs and casting every spell she could to stay alive. He still had some way to go when she took a hit. He checked his stat-sleeve for her health, hoping she still had a bone charm equipped to take the damage for her. He exhaled when he saw her meager fifty points, right where they belonged. But, even with that, he couldn’t slow down. No, worse. He had to move faster. The next attack would kill her.

He examined the path, finding a place where it doubled back further down. He was still over thirty feet above the canyon floor, but the ledge below was halfway in the middle. It sparked an idea. He glanced at his own health and ran the numbers, estimating the fall damage against his defense and remaining health. He nodded to himself, then took a running leap.

His boots hit the ledge with a crunch of crumbling rock, and he lost track of which direction was up for a moment. Then it was obvious. The ground met his feet with a sudden jolt of simulated pain that faded as he tucked his body into a ball. From there, damage registered all over. He rolled, working with the momentum until he found his footing and slid to a stop on one knee between Kira and a few hungry mouths. He drew his pistols in the same motion and opened fire.

A cacophony of sound and smoke erupted from his hands, his eyes darting between enemies to make each bullet count. It was his turn to catch the cavefangs by surprise. Swirls of smoke trailed around him until his magazines ran dry, the slides of his pistols locking back empty. The first wave of The Culling was finished, lifeless reptilian bodies littered the ground around him. He stood motionless for a moment, still aiming his guns in opposite directions. A satisfied smirk grew on his face while his dumbfounded audience took in the scene. He gave Kira his most annoying wink. “Sorry, I had to do my class justice. Wouldn’t be much of a fury if I didn’t know how to make an entrance.”

She narrowed her eyes back at him.

He responded with a bow, twirling the tip of one empty gun as if it were a top hat. Having made the right impression, he stood back up and tossed one pistol into his other hand to hold it next to its twin and ejected their magazines. He shoved in a fresh pair just as the next group of cavefangs got into position.

"Nice of you to show up. Did you log out and use the bathroom on your way down?" Kira spouted in an obvious attempt to hide how relieved she must have been as she took up her position at his side.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I did, you jackass," he replied through a thick layer of sarcasm.

"That's good. I'd hate to repeat that night you ate all those tacos before logging on," she added with a musical laugh at the end that was entirely out of place in such a tense situation.

"God, you're never gonna let me live that down, are you?"

She laughed again. "Nope, it was hilarious. I’m just glad I don’t have to do your laundry."

Noticing the party's unease at their banter, Max got serious again. "You ready for this?"

"It's what we came for." She turned back to the party. "We're gonna need some space for this. Before I landed, I released enough pixie dust to give you all a few minutes of flight. You should have a little left, use it to get clear."

The group did a double take at their stat-sleeves to find a tiny feather icon next to each of their names. Before Max could say good luck, they were already gone. He let out a low whistle. "Damn, they cleared out fast.”

"Yeah, I’m kinda glad I didn't mention the effects of my pixie dust earlier."

Max brushed a lock of dirty blond hair off his cheek with a thumb. "Did you ever think you would use the words ‘pixie dust’ in a serious conversation?"

Kira snorted. "No. No, I did not."

Then, almost on cue, the next wave of cavefangs began to close in, now outnumbering them ten to two. Kira and Max turned to face each other and stepped in close, their backs to the creatures.

He gave her a smirk. "May I have this dance?"

She rolled her eyes as hard as possible and swiped her hands up to open her spell-craft menu for both casters at once, surrounding herself with glowing glyphs on either side.

Both Max and Kira were level one hundred and fourteen, but that didn't mean they were strong enough to survive with only the two of them. They could win if they had a party of five or six, but alone it would take some strategy.

Max held his guns up in front of his forehead and breathed the words, Custom Rounds, followed by, Low Velocity. He didn’t need much range for what was coming, but the fifteen bullets in each magazine weren’t enough to kill a wave of cavefangs before being overtaken. There was no margin for error and reducing the recoil on his guns would help him land his hits. Of course, he could have used the same skill to add an element to his bullets, but he couldn’t change them a second time, and besides, that wasn’t his job.

Kira spun the rows of glyphs without needing to look, skipping past the one that started Infusion. That spell would have worked to buff Max’s hits, but it was too slow, and the cavefangs’ ability to change their affinity made them versatile. She needed to be, too. Her fingers aligned three low-level spells instead, Flame Touch, Spark Touch and Wind Touch. Most players forgot about this little group of spells as soon as they got new ones because they required the caster to actually touch a player’s weapon. She dropped two of each into her queue and finished off with a Guidance spell, which let her see the elemental weakness of each target as a colored aura around them.

Max swept the scene with his eyes as the feathered lizards closed off any possible route of escape. He took a breath and raised his pistols to a pre-planned height to allow the fairy to reach them with her short stature.

Kira turned to face the creatures and reached back over her shoulders, tapping each gun with her fingertips. Then it started.

A cavefang lunged as the pair darted in opposite directions, causing it to stumble between them. Then turning in unison, Kira pointed at it with her right hand, telling Max to use his right gun. He fired a single round, ending the creature. He looked back to his partner. She had already selected two more targets for elimination before the ejected bullet casing hit the ground.

The cavefangs swarmed, leaping two and three at a time as Max dodged and ducked attacks. Kira matched him, weaving past without ever getting in the way. She pointed. He fired. Together they took out the closest threats to make some room. They left alive the ones that didn't match their current set up. Kira ducked past him, close to his side. He responded by lowering one pistol for her to touch on her way by and she spun across his back like a dancer to update his other weapon. With both guns set to spark, he cleaned up the last of the wave, electricity arching off each kill.

Max ejected his near-empty magazines as a new wave of enemies moved into position. Normally he would keep firing until they were spent, but he had to make efficient use of the moment available. He didn’t bother reloading; there wasn’t time to get a new mag from his pouch. Instead, he held both pistols sideways so that the openings at the base of their grips faced the same direction. He didn’t even have to wait, Kira was already sliding in two fresh magazines from the stock she carried as a backup.

From there, Max continued to fight while Kira pranced around him, speeding up as his confidence grew, which led to an almost cocky attitude. “Hey, scaly dumbass,” he called as he took out another.

“Oh, if you’re doing wisecracks you can do better than that.” Kira pointed out a new target.

He fired. “I think that one had a reptile dysfunction.”

“Really? A dick joke?” Kira slapped one hand to her face and pointed to another cavefang with her other.

“Toothy handbag?” Max fired.

That one got a snort out of her.

“Feathers McBiteface?” he offered, pulling a trigger.

The fairy laughed and twirled past him, becoming more excessive with her movements for added style. She leapt backward and materialized her wings to float over his head. At the same time, he raised his guns for her to update. Shimmering particles fell from her wings, mixing with the swirls of smoke that drifted around him. It was impressive, but her landing put her in the path of a lunging cavefang, which forced Max to dash between them to take the hit.

He grunted with the impact and lost his balance, going down on one knee hard enough to take damage to his leg. He took a few more hits before regaining his stance. His health plummeted. Kira cast a frantic mid-level heal in an attempt to fill him back up without drawing too much attention. He recovered, but the near loss reminded him of what they were up against. From there, he quit screwing around and pushed on with renewed focus, leaving few openings for the rest of the beasts.

The whole fight, which seemed to last forever, only took about a minute. After which, he was left standing with her at his back in the middle of a circle of corpses. There was no blood, as that would have been more graphic than what the game intended for its audience, but the sheer number of bodies still gave the scene a macabre feeling.

Max took a moment to catch his breath as the same deep growl that signaled the start of the event echoed from the largest cave in the canyon. They both looked in its direction, making contact with a single massive green eye that glowed in the dark of the shadowed entrance. A glance at the shifting ink on his wrist showed him the boss's health bar as it appeared, running down the edge of his forearms to the side of his party status.

One-eye stalked into the bright light of the moon, his size being several times that of the cavefangs that they had finished off, his feathered mane fanned out like razor blades. Despite being nothing more than a construct of the system, his low growl seemed full of contempt and rage for the ones that had put his brothers to death. He charged. Max and Kira did the same.

The fairy darted into the air, casting a pulse with both casters. White puffs of energy hit the beast in the face and neck, bursting on impact. His massive scaled body faltered for a moment. He recovered and spun his head to face the fairy for a killing blow as she landed on the ground in front of him within reach. It would only take seconds for him to end her. Then, the sound of a bullet being chambered came from beside the huge cavefang.

The boss hadn't seen Max approach since Kira's distraction had kept the beast's blind spot turned towards him. There was no time for it to turn or run. Instead, it just froze. And for a moment, Max almost pitied the artificial beast. But only for a moment. He unloaded one pistol into the scarred indent where the creature's missing eye should've been, landing several critical hits before switching hands and emptying his other gun for good measure. Max ejected the magazines while saying one line as the beast fell. He kept his voice low as he quoted a bad action movie. "Rest in Pieces."

Kira hopped over to him, grinning like a goon. There was a sharp contrast to the intensity she had carried just seconds before.

Max chuckled at the sudden cheerfulness. It suited her better. Although, he would never actually tell her that.

"That was quick. Didn't have to wait around at all," she stated, drawing a small doodle on the dusty ground with her foot.

Max's heart lifted, excitement rushing into him. "That's true. We still have a few hours before logout. We could do something else . . . something that’s actually fun."

Kira navigated through her stat-sleeve's options again, this time selecting the word, loot. It redrew itself into a list of the items gained by the fight.

Five cavefang scales

Twelve cavefang teeth

One large claw

Fifteen bones of predatory beasts

"Nice! This should cover me for a couple of weeks at least." Kira bounced on the balls of her feet as she tapped ‘collect all’. The bodies faded to bones, which would disappear as well over the next hour, erasing the evidence of the last few minutes of cavefang murder from the landscape.

Max checked his progress bar in his journal, finding his level hovering at 95 percent, even after the 51,634 experience points gained from the fight. Most of the time, he didn’t bother looking because the bar took so long to fill at his level. But he had been close to advancing for the last few days, and he needed the upgrade points to rank up his custom rounds skill. His attention was drawn away when he noticed a blade class player standing behind them. It was the leader of the party that they’d rescued.

“Umm, thanks.” The blade seemed to be making an effort to stand tall.

Kira returned to drawing on the ground, so Max did the talking as usual. “No problem, we were here anyways.”

The blade’s eyes shifted from Max to Kira, then down to her drawing. “Oh.”

“Why were you here with The Culling overdue like that?” Max asked as he pulled his scarf out from the place he had shoved it earlier and held it out straight, so he could fold it back into a triangle.

The blade’s eyes snapped back to him, and he scratched at the back of his head. “A friend told me that it had already happened, so we were trying to get a level.” He gestured towards the rest of his party hiding up on one of the ledges.”

“I’d probably have a chat with that friend. I think they just tried to get you killed.” Max wrapped his scarf around his neck and tied it back on.

The blade’s eye widened. “Oh, damn; you might be right. Anyways, my name is DarkAssassin. Thanks for the rescue.”

Max shot Kira a look, hoping she’d refrain from snorting or making a joke about the kid’s name. As it was, he was pretty sure her mind was already shortening it down to DarkAss. “No problem, I’m MaxDamage24, and this thing here is Kirabell.”

She waved and went back to drawing.

Assassin gave her an awkward wave back. “I have to ask. How the hell did you do that?” He looked past them at the bones on the ground.

“It’s a farming spot for us. We come here a lot.”

“Sure, but I mean, the fury class isn’t really known for being that strong, and there’s no aim assist or anything, so how did you learn all the…” Assassin finished the question by making finger guns and shooting them in all directions.

Max laughed at the gesture. It had been a while since he’d had a chance to brag, so he decided to give the guy a lesson. “It’s true that fury isn’t a popular class, but it is versatile, and it can deal respectable damage, provided you can hit your targets. That’s the part that’s easier said than done. I mean, stats like strength and dexterity matter for damage output, but if you want to run, jump, aim or dodge, the system can’t help you there. That would mean the game would have to control your movement somehow, and honestly, I don’t think the technology has come that far. So, you have to do all that on your own, like in the real world.”

“Yeah?” Assassin raised his eyebrows, clearly expecting some kind of sage advice to come next.

“Now the higher your level gets, the harder the enemies get. Which, means that the only way to play at higher levels is to learn to fight. In short, git-gud.”

Assassin’s eyebrows fell back down. “Oh.”

Max rested his hands on his guns. “Sorry. Wish I had something better to tell you. Just keep playing. Eventually, things will just click into place.”

Kira stepped in, now finished with her drawing - which looked like a cartoon purse with a mouth. She’d written the words ‘toothy handbag’ beside it. "Tell your shield thanks for protecting me while we waited for this ass to take his sweet time getting down here."

"Hey! I ran as fast as I could," Max said before realizing something important. "Actually, why the hell didn't you just dust me up before jumping down here? I could have just flown down with you."

"Ahhhh…" she started to say, but then she closed her mouth and shrugged while making a sound that suggested the words ‘I don't know.’

DarkAssassin gave her a look that seemed to ask the same question, but he said nothing.

After that, they said their goodbyes and sent him on his way, getting a friend request from the player almost as soon as he was out of view.

Kira groaned as soon as she opened it. The kid had replaced each S in his name with the number 5, making him DarkA55a55in. “I hate it when people use numbers in the place of letters."

"Oh, God. Not this again," Max sighed.

"I mean, it's so hard to read." She held her journal close to re-read the friend request. "The only thing worse is when they alternate between upper and lower case, cause that's completely illegible."

Max rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers as if he had a headache. "I know. I've heard this rant so many times."

"Well, it merits repeating. Is it too much to ask to just come up with something original enough not to require alternate spellings and numbers?" She walked backward in front of him.

Max sighed again. "Anyways, what you want to do next?"

She shrugged, falling back into sidekick mode. "I don't care. You pick."

He opened his journal and held it so they both could see as she slid up to his side. "Let's see if that guy still needs help with the Fire Temple."

"Tomb," she corrected.

"What?"

"I thought it was the Fire Tomb that he needed help with."

"Temple, Tomb, what's the difference?" Max argued.

Kira leaned her head to one side. "Well, one is a place of worship, and the other is a place to lay the dead to rest."

He groaned. "Thank you, Miss Dictionary."

"Hey, you got a new message." She leaned in close, so their shoulders touched and pointed to a line of text at the top of the page.

"That's odd; I must have missed the system chime during the fight," he said, looking at the page.

The subject column read one word: Important. If that wasn't enough to encourage him to open the message, it was also written in red ink to signify that the sender had marked the contents as urgent.

"That's odd. The sender's unknown," Max commented.

Kira scrunched up her nose as if smelling something. "That's fishy."

"Better not be spam." Max selected the red text and read aloud. "Meet me in the back room of the Hanging Frederick tavern in the city of Valain. Bring the fairy. Cannot wait until tomorrow. Must be before logout. I have a mission for you. I repeat, come ASAP!"

"I hate when people say ASAP. It makes me feel like I'm at work reading emails. Also, I do have a name." Kira squinted her eyes as if somehow glaring at the unknown sender of the message.

Max tapped a finger on the back of his journal. "Might be interesting though. I mean, it's piqued my curiosity."

She chuckled. “What's that they say about cats?” She drew in a breath then frowned. “Oh, yeah. Curiosity kills them."

Max snapped his journal shut. "True, but I don't think I've heard anything about it killing fairies."

"I guess so." She opened her spell-craft menu and set up a teleport. "I didn't wanna do the Fire Tomb again anyways. It's too easy."