The hobgoblin was about to strike Rae but dropped her suddenly when it received a large impact to the back of its head. Jason saw what saved his sister and nodded towards Locke in thanks. Locke was able to find an opening to support Rae by casting a max capacity ice spear to stop its movements. He had hoped it would kill it, but clearly these monsters attributes were focused heavily into strength, endurance, and vitality. Very strong and bulky.

However at the same time Locke saved Rae a male scream could be heard in the other direction drawing the parties attention. Thomas was holding a severely broken left arm after the enemy activated an axe skill towards his head. He was forced to block the attack with his shield which shattered on collision leaving the force of the impact to flow straight into his arm. The hobgoblin wasted no time and swung his axe horizontally to sever Thomas's head clean off.

Locke didn't have anytime to intervene to save Thomas as he was disabled and finished off within seconds. His mana was at a little over half and the enemies were still fairly healthy leaving him no other choice. He launched a weak spell at his enemy to force it to guard and allow him to disengage to get to the others. Locke dashed towards the hobgoblin that was fighting Rae previously who just picked up it's weapon and was preparing to fight again.

“You two get out of here now, I will hold them off for a bit and regroup with you later!” Locke yelled while running.

“but we can't just lea...” Jason was interrupted by Rae grabbing his hand and dragging him away.

“We have to go....NOW!” Rae scolded him while pulling. Jason didn't resist any longer as they made their escape.

The hobgoblin stumbled forward like it was about to pursue but Locke slashed it's back just in time. He was surprised it didn't see the attack coming because he didn't exactly try to sneak up on it and announced his presence clearly. Maybe the damage to the back of its head caused some sort of disorientation? The way it began to defend itself afterwards definitely indicated that was the case, the movements were extremely sloppy.

Locke was finally starting to understand why the 80 mana ice spear didn't visually appear to do any damage, especially when it hit a vital area. It is entirely possible that the game won't visually represent the amount out damage taken in places like the head unless they are lethal. The main indicator will be it's reaction from those attacks like the disorientation the hobgoblin seemed to be experiencing.

To give a wild example to what he was thinking. Let's say a railgun shot you in the heart but your HP remained barely above 0. The game cannot visually put a giant hole in your chest because you would clearly be dead in the realistic measures that this game has put in place. That same railgun aimed in a non vital area on the body would put a hole in it like normal.

That can only mean my spell actually did cause a lot of damage, it might be on it's last legs for all I know.

The other two Hobgoblins decided not to pursue Rae and Jason which was what he wanted but having to fight all three might be a problem. He needed to fight in a way to keep them from surrounding him, luckily fighting for only thirty seconds or so was all that was required.

I should be able to manage this much, these creatures are slow.

Locke continued to swiftly dodge their attacks, some light wounds were received but nothing outside of what he expected. There were no openings for him to attack safely causing him to be completely on the defensive. He focused on dodging and sidestepping in a way to only be in the attack range of two of them. Everything was proceeding smoothly until the hobgoblin with the greatsword stepped back and got into an odd stance which put Locke on high alert.

With extreme speed the hobgoblin launched itself forward towards him, the speed at which it moved was almost triple compared to before. Locke attempted to dodge out of harms way but couldn't in time. The greatsword cleanly cut off his left arm slightly above the elbow. With no time to think about what just happened Locke took his sword and tossed it towards the axe user that was attempting to finish him off and begun to cast a spell.

Throwing the sword only bought him a brief amount of time, but that small moment was all that was required. He was thankful that the skill the greatsword hobgoblin used seemed to have a drawback as it was just sitting there wide open. With an electrified hand Locke grasped the back of its head and slammed it into the ground. The electricity transferred into his head roasting it completely. After finishing off the monster it was time to leave. The amount of mana used in that attack was not small and he only had about a minute left before the agility buff drained the rest of it.

For the next thirty seconds he ran full sprint through the forest without looking back. A few obstacles got in his way slightly slowing him down, but nothing too serious. He slowed his pace slightly, enough to be able to quickly look behind him without smashing into something and found that there was nobody following him. He jumped into a nearby bush to hide and deactivated his agility buff so he could start regenerating mana.

Locke began to cast healing touch on his severed arm which was bleeding quite heavily. His HP dropped to 19/150 which was dangerously low. It was unclear what caused more damage, the lost arm, or the heavy bleeding while running. Either way it wasn't a situation to where he couldn't test it out even if he wanted to. On a side note he was approaching full hp but his arm showed no signs of regrowing. The wound did close up and stop bleeding which was all he needed for now.

“Shit, of course it wouldn't be that easy.” Locke whispered to himself while keeping his eyes peeled on his surroundings.

It looks like they are not following me anymore....but why? They should have been able to catch up to me by now. Did they lose my trail? No that can't be it, I basically ran in a straight line. This means they decided to not follow me at all. Were they too weakened and decided to not pursue? Or were they only defending that area? Doesn't really matter I guess, the result is good for me. Those hobgoblins were definitely intelligent as they adapted to my fighting style in the middle of combat. If the enemies this early on are like this, what will the later enemies we fight be like? I can't wait to experience it.

He opened up his chat interface to see if he could get a hold of Rae to meet back up, hopefully they made it out safely. It looked like she already tried to get a hold of him, notifications were turned off while in combat so he didn't know until now. It was a toggle able setting that prevented notifications from bothering you during what the system deemed a tense situation.

Locke saw no messages from Thomas or Sheila and they were showing offline. The death penalty was quite harsh as it locked you out of the game for a full day real life day, or two weeks in game. The developers stated they wanted death to have meaning, but also didn't want you to lose all your items. It appeared that this is what they settled on for a penalty. Locke felt this was too harsh though, he was curious what systems they had in place to prevent griefing between players.

After a short while he sent a message to Rae with the following contents “I was able to get away, where should we meet up?”

A few more messages were sent back and forth while they narrowed down where each person was and the best place to meet up quickly. It didn't take took long to find each other as they ran away from the hobgoblins in similar directions.

Locke was the first to arrive at the location and made sure to scout a bit to see if anything dangerous was nearby. When there wasn't he found a broken tree nearby and sat down while doing his normal routine of turning on and off his physical attribute boost.

“Locke!, you crazy bastard I can't believe you pulled it off!” Rae called out while running up to Locke.

“How did you get so fast? Were you holding back or som.....” Her voice trailed off as she was staring at his left arm, “Your arm? Are you alright, you didn't need to...”

“Oh this?” Locke replied while holding up and staring at his severed arm, “It doesn't hurt or anything there is nothing for you to worry about it.”

“but......painful or not isn't it ...uhhh how do I put this....weird feeling” She stammered while trying to put her thoughts into words.

“Na, you get used to it. Besides there is most likely a way to fix it, if not it will probably come back when my avatar dies and respawns. If that is not the case Thomas will have a hard time playing the game without a head.” Locke laughed.

Rae had a horrified look on her face when she turned to see Jason's reaction. Her brothers face just looked grim. Locke wasn't sure if it was the joke or just a reaction on everything that has happened.

“That is not funny, how can you be so calm about all this?” Rae groaned.

“It's pretty simple actually, I know how to differentiate between a game and real life. No matter how realistic this game is it will still be one in the end..... and if you can't do that,” Locke looked straight at Jason. “Then there is no way you will remain the same person after playing a game as advanced as this.” He shrugged. “Well it's hard to say if that would be a bad thing or not in some cases.”

Locke received a shocked look from Jason but no response.

“I know what your saying.....but sometimes it isn't easy you know? I am still curious though how did you make it out? I never seen you move that fast before.” She said while changing the subject. Realizing a bit too late that changing to this specific subject wasn't much different or better.

“How about we make our way back to the dungeon entrance while we talk. I am sure you want to figure out what happened to Sheila and were not really in any position to finish this dungeon,” Locke said while walking in the direction of the dungeon entrance. It was pretty far from here but they could make it in half a day if they moved quickly.

Locke wondered why they didn't just log out to check on Sheila but wasn't going to suggest it. Maybe they figured he wouldn't stick around and wait for them? If they were to log out now their characters would be frozen in place and because of the time dialation they could be gone for quite a while.

The three agreed that there was no longer a point in staying here and to go back after some rest. Granted Locke's reasoning for doing so was completely different than theirs.