proofread by: Daylius and Vikingstad

"How did this happen?" Shiv could not understand the turn of events. All his plannings backfired and most of his comrades were now hugging the ground lifeless. Those who remained were already on the verge of death. Despair clouded their eyes and fear ran amok in them.

Everything had been going well until a certain somebody appeared thwarting all the effort the team had put into hunting down the alpha. Shiv stood frozen at the sight in front of him. Unable to act unable to think unable to respond his heart welled up with emotions he had long forgotten, despair and hopelessness. But among all those emotions another emotion was spiraling its way up. Anger and hatred was now dominating the seventeen year old gamer. Anger towards the guy who had caused the deaths of his team mates. Hatred towards the guy who had betrayed him. Shiv glared at the alpha which was being engaged by Kate, Agon, Vrolis, Grohl and Gist.

With anger fueling his mind and body Shiv stepped forward.His cold eyes focused on the alpha which was causing havoc and terror in his comrades hearts. Without even the slightest hint of fear the boy ran forward with his beloved black sword, emanating a blood red aura!

---***---

An hour or so earlier.

"Rehan! What is going on at your end?" Shiv had initiated a voice chat with the recon team. Rehan, Maya and Gist had been sent earlier to scout the area where the alpha was believed to enter the capital city. The team had been on standby for almost two hours and yet there were no signs of its appearance.

Shiv had still asked them to continue their work. He did not want the alpha roaming free just because they did not have the patience to wait for it. All the preparations have been done. The ballistas were fixed at their respective positions and the traps were set. Except for the three who were scouting the remaining were manning their respective positions. Marcos, Agon and Nadia were behind the ballista while Shiv and Kate guarded the three. Grohl had been made to hide in the nearby building which was now vacant while Vrolis was tailing the recon team and acting as their support without their knowledge.

"Nothing yet Shiv. We are currently on top of a tree a little away from the breach in the wall. Two hours have already passed. I do not think that the alpha will make its entrance today. I think it is best if we postpone.....wait! I hear something"

"Roarrrrrrr"

A sudden roar echoed throughout Shiv's ears, startling him for a second.

"Gist lure it towards here. Do not engage. Do you hear me?"

"I heard you. What is that thing? Why is such a monster here?" Shiv could clearly make out the panic and distress in Gist's voice.

"Gist. Don’t panic. Just bring it here somehow. I need all three of you here alive or everything will fall apart. The alpha can outrun you if you stay on the ground. Always remain on a higher platform and use ranged attacks if you have one. This way you can attack as well as make it chase you"

"Ranged attacks? But the three of us have swordsman type classes. How the hell can we use a ranged attack? Who the hell are you?" The last question was directed at a foreign figure. Shiv understood that Vrolis had come in contact with the recon team. Shiv knew that the three could not use any ranged attacks and so had already informed Vrolis about his first duty.

"Gist! That is my backup plan. His name is Vrolis and he is a top level assassin NPC. He will deal with the ranged attacks. Just get back here safely."

"So you did have hidden pawns. Not that i complain. Very well. We will do as you say. Rendezvous in ETA 5 minutes. Gist out"

'Does he a have military fetish or something' Shiv thought involuntarily but the unwanted thought was soon replaced with the thought process of a gamer.

"Everyone, they have made contact with the alpha. Prepare your weapons! Its party time"

Shiv used dragons roar to boost the morale and attack power of his team mates. The ballistas were loaded, weapons were drawn and senses sharpened. Cold sweat trickled down the faces of the players as their heart pumped blood vigorously.

"Approaching rendezvous point" Gist informed all the teammates through chat. "Target is following Vrolis and will come into your view now"

And just like Gist had told Vrolis came in running from the only path that was open. The alpha beast was right behind him chasing vigorously with its mouth ready to bite off anything that it could. The assassin was barely escaping the clutches of the alpha, obviously using some sort of assassin related acceleration skill.

SLAY THE NIGHT: QUEST UPDATEYou have identified the mysterious beast. Just as you had presumed the mysterious beast turns out to be an alpha dralve, a ferocious and terrifying demi wolf. The alpha dralve is still in its starting growth phase and so is what can be considered an infant compared to a fully grown adult apha dralve. Being a child, the alpha dralve has not yet fully awakened it's full power. It currently possesses only half the power(only Lvl 140) but is still a great threat. The alpha dralve seems to have been searching for a suitable layer to establish it's domain and so has decided that the capital city is the best choice.

Players that are remaining: 11

Difficulty : B

Rewards

Unknown?????

10000 Gold

+100 intimacy with the kingdom

+100 intimacy with guards

+100 intimacy with church

+100 intimacy with nobles

+5000 contribution points

Failure

The quest will fail

1. If you die

2. More than half the population dies

3. The king dies

4. All the noble dies

Failure will result in the fall of the Bredon kingdom. The alpha dralve will give birth to more dralves and thus lay waste to the entire kingdom. You will be scorned by the entire continent and everybody will shun you. Your alignment with the gods will fall and you will be considered as minions of the fallen dark gods.

For a moment Shiv was stupefied. Every one of the remaining candidate too were.

'What the hell? Fall of the entire kingdom? And a B level quest? This is too big to fail. But the only good thing is that the level of the beast is much lower than what I had expected. But again Lvl 140 is still an impossible thing for me. Good thing i got 4 candidates above Lvl 100. Now all we need is to limit its movement and slowly eat away its health'

A smile broke out on Shiv's face. Things were looking good for him. Not only did the alpha have a much lower level than he had calculated, he also had four high ranking players to counter the alpha. Gist had a world ranking of 9, with a lvl of 121 he was the ninth strongest player according to the ranking system. Rehan and Maya were level 110 and 109 respectively while Maria was level 105. Shiv himself could be considered an equivalent of a level 100 player. With Vrolis who was a skilled assassin of Level 125 the team was unbelievably strong. Not forgetting Grohl who even though was a trainee priest had an amazing level of 115 himself. And thus among the 10 among the team six were above level 100. Including Shiv it totaled to seven.

"Ballistae fire on my mark. Do not fire now. Let it come closer. Kate get inside the building. We can win this if you do as i say. Its only level 140. With the ballista and traps and our team a win is possible"

Shiv gave orders to everyone. He waited till the beast was closer. This was not only to increase the chance of ballista spikes hitting the beast but was also to let the recon team join the main forces.

When the alpha had appeared Shiv had used identify to check its status and when he did he was shocked. Even though all other stats were hidden the alpha's HP which was 12000 was now 10800. That is a decrease of 10% was shown.

"Gist why is the HP of the alpha down by 10%? How did you guys bring it down?" Asked a surprised Shiv hoping he could use the same attack to easily kill of the beast. But the answer was shocking and unbelievable.

"I don't know. It was already like that when the beast came. The assassin friend of yours inflicted a damage of 2% or so. I am guessing that the alpha has poor regeneration and it had not completely healed after being injured the last time it was attacked. If that is the case then our chances of winning increases too as most boss level monsters have high regeneration."

"Might be as you say. Any way get here soon. The beast has gone offensive and we have to engage it as soon as possible. The ballista team will fire as soon as you guys makes your entry"

"Affirmative. We will be there soon"

Shiv then signaled the ballista team to get ready to shoot. While signalling his mind was trying to organize the new information he had got and trying to improve their current strategy.

Once the three had joined with Shiv's group Shiv once again used dragons roar.

"Ballistae fire"

Unlike the previous time which boosted the moral and attack power of the teammates, dragon roar was used to reduce the defense of the alpha and if possible to paralyze it. But Shiv knew that the dragon roar being only beginner lvl 4 would not paralyze the lvl 140 beast. Shiv used the skill hoping that the skill would at least affect the beast speed and it did.

Shiv was greeted with a notification which read as,

Due to the use of dragon's roar the enemy's defense has been decreased by 10% for 5min

Due to the use of dragon's roar the enemy's agility has been decreased by 50% for 5min

The ballista team who had also received the notification immediately sprung into action. The ballista spikes were fired and of the three two were on target while Marcos who was an archer had missed and his spike had slightly grazed Gist who was the nearest to the beast. Gist glared at Marcos but kept quiet. As soon as the spikes found its target Shiv had signaled them to keep firing till they ran out of spikes. And so the firing continued but before the team could even fire the sixth spike the beast with a sudden roar sprang towards the ballista team.

Each high speed spike had cut off a good amount of HP per attack and of the total fifteen that were fired ten had found its target.

Agon had aimed for the legs of the beast trying to cripple it if possible and thus had hit the two front legs of the beast there by reducing its agility and balance. Nadia had randomly fired without any thought and so had missed two of the five she fired. Of the remaining three, one had hit directly on the head thus earning a critical hit and also blinding it partially. While the other two were trying their best to inflict maximum damage Marcos did not live up to the expectation of others. He had missed two shots while the other three shots had inflicted only small damages.

In total the three had manages to bring down the HP of the alpha from 12000 to 6800. What was left was a little more than 55%.

Had the monster been a normal one the team would have felt joyous for bringing down the HP to almost half in minutes. But what they were facing was an enemy which was of a different level than the monsters they had so far faced. Terrorizing, cruel and monstrous, an alpha dralve was the embodiment of everything bad in the universe and it brought fear into every living being that existed.

The alpha had recognized the ballistae as a threat that should be taken down without any delay. The alpha ran towards the ballistae growling and bearing its sharp fangs but before it could initiate an attack the beast was flanked from both of its sides by Gist and Shiv. The female berserker and elemental swordsman had already positioned themselves in front of the ballistae team to guard them from the oncoming attack.

Shiv had already used Kaze and Hono had already his attack from the left side of the beast while Gist used his strongest skill hell dance. The alpha being more than 50 levels higher than Shiv, his attack could only cut off 100 or so with every time his attack hit that too because Hono was negating the alpha's defense. But Gist's attacks were much more efficient and was dealing a damage of 300 per attack.

The continuous attacks from the two had caused the alpha to turn its attention to them. The alpha turned towards Gist swiftly causing the sword dancer to stumble. It took him a few seconds to steady himself and jumped back but the few seconds delay was already a huge flaw. The alpha had brought its hand down which hit Gist on its shoulder eating away half of his health.

All those who saw this were shocked. Among all those who were there Gist had the highest level as well as defense. A single hit from the beast had caused a huge drop. Two hits from the beast and you die, such a situation was a burden that caused the team to shudder. Yet even in that chaos, Nadia did not forget her job.

"Oh goddess as pure as the whitest flower, let your love cure the world of its pain, restore"

One of the highest level healing spell, restore was a spell which returned the player to the status he was just before being victim to an attack. It was a skill that was of the highest tier, a skill which could instantly rejuvenate the health from 1% to 100% in seconds. Thus the skill was something all healers wanted but only few achieved. Nadia was one of the few who had attained this level.

Once Gist was fully healed he jumped back a few times to increase his distance between him and the alpha. The alpha was staring at Gist, growling with it's red eyes glowing in the dark.

While its attention was on Gist, Shiv had already moved towards the beast before his skills ran out. Using all his might Shiv drove his new dagger into the beast neck.

The dagger drove deep into its neck causing the alpha to writhe in pain. The beast began to growl violently and turned its neck towards to Shiv. Before Shiv could draw back his hand and dagger, he was bitten by the alpha reducing his health to 100 in an instant. The bite had caused Shiv to fall back and thus the dagger remained on the beast's neck. Shiv fell to the ground with a thud and lay on the ground. The sudden attack had caused his body to be paralyzed. The beast then kept towards Shiv to finish him of when an iron spike crashed in to it causing the beast to tumble on to the ground.

Rehan who had been on guard till then approached the beast and began attacking the beast. Gist used his sword to keep the alpha busy thus letting Rehan slowly eat off the health of the alpha. The alpha who was being cornered by the two began to activate some kind of skill. But another spike rammed into the beast once again interrupting its attack.

Shiv looked at the direction of the ballistae and found Agon loading his next spike. Agon shot the next spike before the beast could get up. The second spike impaled the beast's leg to the ground pinning it down. Using this opportunity Maya and Kate jumped into the scene unleashing a flurry of attacks. Slowly the pinned down beast began losing its health at a tremendous rate.

They used all their might to hack off the beast's health. Its health bar dropped from 55% to 30% in a few minutes. While the four were busy with the beast, the ballistae team was looking for chances to fire the remaining spikes. Agon and Nadia was so busy with the scene before them that they did not notice Marcos skipping away nor did they notice the danger that was lurking in the dark.

---***---

While the others were busy fighting the alpha, Vrolis was hiding on the rooftop of a building on watch. Shiv had asked him to not engage the alpha and to stay hidden till he was called for and so Vrolis who had been asked to stand down was now keeping an eye on the surrounding.

For some reason he had been getting a bad vibe. His instincts told him that something was amiss and so he was closely scanning the area. Even after the hundredth scan his heart wouldn't calm down and so he would re-scan the area. And during one such scan his senses picked up the presence of an outsider. The aura the outsider had was powerful and felt similar to that of a priest. But the normally calm and serene aura of a priest was not what Vrolis had sensed. The presence had a sinister dark touch to it. Vrolis could feel killing intent and intense hatred emanating from the outsider.

Without wasting a single second he began leaping from one rooftop to another. The outsider was approaching the ballistae team from behind and what alarmed him the most was the disappearance of Marcos. The last time he scanned he could distinctively tell the presence of the three who manned the ballistae. But now, even though there were three presences, the one of Marcos was missing and a new presence had entered the locality.

Vrolis rushed forward hoping his intuitions were wrong. But before he could arrive at the scene, calamity had already struck.

---***---

ARMAGEDDON: THE NEW WORLD

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