Chapter 12

I Am…

Loni was stomping the ground with frustration. She was having a bad day. As she and her group headed for the Walled City of Aarun, in this forest path, her party members were looking at her wearing smiles.

“Stop it, Loni. It can‘t be helped.” Said his party’s leader, Thorn, a Sword Mage. “No one knew that it‘d turn out that way.”

“In any case,” Henna, a female ranger, butted in. “we still got a few useful loot. It‘s still not a wasted effort.”

Loni dragged her eyes on her teammates. “I just hate it when we put so much effort and the target escapes!”

“You‘re not the only one.” Said Fuma, a pure Mage.

This group of four, very few for a hunting party, are composed of people who’s been playing the game since its first release. Loni was the newest addition to their party but with her talent in archery, sword, and magic, it did not take long before her party members accepted her. It could also be blamed with her beautiful features.

Loni entered this game with the sole purpose of just looking for inspiration. She was a writer in real life. In her works, compassion, wisdom, friendship, and love can be seen. But she herself does not have all of those qualities. In truth, she could be considered a secretive and cold hearted person. It could be said that with the way she grew up alone, she developed a barrier that can reject anyone’s effort to get close to her.

Maybe, the only person to ever succeed on breaching that barrier was her grandfather who had a personality she had never encountered before.

Ever since she played Terroa, she had learned how to talk to people. She enjoyed these three’s company and she slowly learned how to talk to them naturally. But in real life, her inner sense to put up the defense towards the people still overpowers her desire to have a bond.

In short, this here, right now, is what she’d call her life and these people are what she could call her friends.

Also, the Loni with them was the real her.

“Aaaahh…Thorn, why did we even took that B-rank mission? If it was just to kill it, it would have been easy but to catch it…”

“I told you Loni, that mission was just a tool for us to get into that A-rank quest.”

Then Henna put an arm over her shoulders. “Loni, you little thing, stop sulking and cheer up. We will be in the city soon, if we sell these stuff, we can still get a lot of money.”

“And then we can buy our own house!” Fuma cried out joyfully. He was a Maven. And to emphasize the fact that he was a Mage, he even chose to wore an eye glass accessory that adds 2% manna regeneration. But in fact, it was just to copy a protagonist of that one book that became a famous movie.

Loni could only pout and to let go of her frustration, she shot an arrow towards a random direction inside the forest. The arrow landed somewhere far off and a loud roar followed its sound.

“Stop!” Thorn spread his arm.

“What was that?!” Henna stopped and they followed.

“Don‘t tell me you actually hit something?”

“Stop kidding.” Loni nudged Fuma’s arm. “It‘s not possible. It‘s just a random…”

And then a second roar followed by an explosive sound echoed in the surroundings and the four of them exchanged looks. Nodding to each other, they sneaked up on the direction of the sounds and saw a hunter fighting with a D-class monster, on his own.

“You‘ve got to be kidding me!” Loni shouted and she gritted her teeth. “Is he serious?!”

Henna shook her arm, saying, “We got to save him!”

Fuma, readying his runes, nodded at her suggestion but Thorn stopped them before they even launched the thought they all agreed.

“Wait. Let‘s just watch him.” He said.

“But he‘s just a beginner!”

“I can see that Henna. But look.”

On his words, they all watched how he fought. The man already took down one D-ranked monster but he himself was badly injured. He was using no weapon and that’s what made Loni and others wonder how he defeated the fallen one.

D-ranked monster: Grinder.

These beasts have magical scales attributed to Land element. They are a tough opponent even for a hunting group since magic don’t usually affect them that much.

That was one of the game system’s feats.

Monsters have immunity to magic but weak to any physical attacks. Aliens are weak to magic but they have superior and almost impenetrable shields and body armors.

And so thinking about this, they concluded the fact that the man somehow defeated the fallen one by using some sort of physical attacks.

But then, at that moment, Loni gasped as she saw the blood on the man’s fists.

“Thorn!”

“I can‘t believe it!”

“Is he for real?!”

“This is definitely something unique.”

The four of them let out expressions of surprises. Usually, Grinders go in packs but there are also times a few of them would tend to move away from the group and so ends up lost and targets for hunting parties.

He crouched to dodge the monster’s claw. Grinders are monsters that looked like oversized rats without the annoying tail. They have powerful hind legs, their front legs are made to dig the ground, and their fangs are all too sharp you would think they’re shark jaws crawling on the ground.

Aside from their physical appearances, their attack patterns are almost the same. But, that didn’t mean they don’t learn.

Actually, the reason why he was in a bloody state and are almost in the edge of his rope was the fact that the monsters have learned how to deal with him.

He doesn’t have a weapon except for his fists. It was exploited by the monsters and so they teamed up on him. That would explain why the monster’s movements seemed to be calculated as reaction to the man’s effort to dodge.

Loni thought of this and he readied her bow. She was a mage but she prefers a bow more than a sword.

Watching the man, he knew he would be dead any minute now if his concentration were to deter. A silence came to them as they watched him fight.

He jumped and dodged, then grabbed the monster’s arm and used his knee to dislocate its tiny joint. Since it was an arm used for digging, the end part was just a sharp three clawed hand connected to jointed arm. And from the elbow to that hand, a good 15cm length bone was the subject of his attack.

The man directly attacked where that bone and the muscled limb connects and it snapped with a sound that can put anyone’s stomach to hurl.

One proof of its effectiveness was henna’s reaction.

A loud painful roar echoed as the monsters held his broken arm with the other. The man then dived towards the creature, holding a sharp stone he picked up from out of nowhere.

“RAAAAAA….”

The man’s scream bellowed on and he hit the pain driven monster on its left temple. Blood flowed out on its head and it fell down on the ground with a loud thud.

The monster’s body shook, its eyes looking up, and the four people hiding somewhere high couldn’t believe what they just saw. The man wasn’t contented, to make sure that the monster was dead, he picked up a big rock from the side and smashed the head multiple times.

“Brutal.”

Loni and the others all agreed to Fuma’s response to his actions and they al felt a sense of shaking from the inner parts of their body.

Who knows where the shaking came from, they never felt this kind of feeling before.

Not even when they are facing strong monsters.

The man kicked the monster’s head then he went to the other whose already fallen from before.

There, he checked if it was also dead and when he was sure enough, he looked around wearing bloodshot eyes as if looking for more.

Loni’s first reaction was to hide and the three others all did the same.

But her, she was looking at the man’s eyes. Not only any emotion were absent, his eyes spoke something else that she can’t help but to stare at his face. Desperation, cruelty, justice, love, passion, choice, no…what is it? A sense of wariness broke in her chest. She can’t seem to pick the right word to explain how she interpreted the look in his eyes.

As the man walked towards the darker side of the forest, the four of them were surprised yet again to see him dragging two more dead monster bodies.

“Four?!” This time, the loud reaction came as a party voice chat over their communicator. Fuma’s voice was as loud as it was in real time and they had to lower down the volume just to be able to listen clearly to the other’s voices.

“A whole pack.” Henna corrected.

Loni faced her and then dragged her eyes towards the direction where she was looking. Since she was a pure archer, her choice of skills were set to enhancing her sniping skills.

At the start of a user’s career, he is given a 100 points stat bonus that he can use whatever and wherever he wants. And then, after a player had used all of it, he is also given an initial skill that he can choose from a large list depending on where he had put those 100 stat points.

For example, if a player decided to become a Mage since the very beginning of his career, he can distribute those points to MNA and INT. That would increase the damage of his magic and also increases his maximum MNA points. And he can choose what kind of magic he can use as a starting ability.

For swordsmen, that would be a skill or an ability that can improve his maneuverability or damage output. In some cases, there are those kind of swordsmen that choose a skill that improves defenses, relying on their skills for inventing weapons to deal damage instead.

For archers, that would be sight enhancement or accuracy improvement skills. But there are also hybrid players like Sword Mages or Elves that was a slang for those that chose a stat allocation which uses magic and archery together.

And so to where Henna was staring at, towards the darker side of the forest, Loni could only imagine what kind of scene she was seeing as she felt the trembling on her body.

“Thorn…” Henna called out to him.

“What?”

“Let‘s get out of here.”

“Why?” Fuma asked.

“Henna, what‘s wrong? What can you see?”

Thorn got anxious. Henna, though usually a kind and passionate girl, never once backed down when facing a monster. Right now, contrary to her usual brave face, she was displaying a rare sight where her body was shaking due to some unknown feeling.

—No.

Loni finally realized. “Thorn, let‘s get out of here.”

“What‘s wrong with you two?” This time, Thorn’s expression told irritation.

“I‘m scared. I‘m scared of him.”

On Henna’s words, Fuma started to sneak out of his position away from the edge they were watching.

The four of them could only look back to the man’s direction before they actually went their way towards the city.

And when they were finally made their distance, Loni asked the shaking Henna with anxious eyes.

“What did you see?”

“Slaughter.” Henna answered and tears fell on her eyes. “He‘s too strong. He‘s like a monster himself.”

At those words, Thorn narrowed his eyes and looked back towards the direction of the forest. “Is there really such kind of person?”

“He not part of the masked organization, right?”

On Fuma’s words, Loni pursed her lips. She hugged Henna and continued with their pace. But still, at the back of her mind, she can’t put those pair of eyes away even if she tried. For some reason, she felt some kind of familiarity with those pair of eyes.

No.

What she sensed familiar was the life in those eyes.

She knew she had felt the same kind of air before, somewhere close, somewhere recent.

“Ah!”

At that moment, Henna looked at her as she paused to let out that short reaction.

“Loni?”

Loni looked at her and shook her head. “Sorry. I just remembered something.”

“I‘m sorry I got scared earlier.”

“No it‘s alright.” She hugged her tightly. “I kind of remembered someone who had the same air like that guy earlier.”

“Oh! Who was it, Loni?” Henna’s face lighted up. Somehow, Loni speaking of someone cheered her up.

“Naa…” Loni shook her head and the three are now looking at her with anxious stares. “I don‘t even know the guy. I just know his name.”

“What‘s his name? You never know, we might meet him one day.” On Thorn’s question, Loni felt uneasy.

But they still urged on and the silence and the pause made a sweat drop from her temple.

Loni finally said with wariness. “His name is Rex.”

***

In Terroa, HP bars doesn‘t exist. It was determined by percentage, with numbers on the player’s vision. A death of a player is determined by his will and actual bodily and mental state. There are even times that even if the HP percentage had reached 0%, the players were still saved from dying in the game.

That is because death in the game, as it was explained, is determined by the mental state of the player. If he accepts death by reaching 0% of HP, then he really dies but if he strongly desires that he won’t die in the game, then the 0% HP is ignored and Janus recognize that brain wave as the will. But reaching 0% HP doesn’t mean large consequences. In exchange for not dying, the player must endure extreme pain.

If he loses an arm or any part of his body, he can still fight on if he chooses to. After all, it can still be healed by a 2nd tier Healing Magic called Regenerate. Or, in the city, for a price, on the Medical Center somewhere near every entrance gate.

A person can wield a sword, but not every sword, since it depends on the person’s strength. Going back to the stat points allocation, a normal user has a default amount of 100 points on every stat. And from there, the clothes, equipment, weapons, all the gears on his body are subject to weight management in units called we.

So in short, if a user from the Maven Race were to wield a 50 weight points Buster Weapon, he will have to sacrifice wearing upper body clothes. So for him to still be able to become a good Mage and use that large weapon, he would either have to choose to be a Gonn or an Atlas, or actually spend some of the free 100 points allocation to power up his strength. But then again, that would only make him an average Mage who can wield a giant sword.

This is how the system works. From this kind of system, the players will vary and the difference between them would drop to 800:1000, 800 people every 1000 users are players with different styles and builds.

In this case, Siva belonged to the other bracket.

Unique Build.

100% of all his stat points were allocated in the SPR stat. In his search for the answer to his question of what kind of difference does it make, he landed on a place where his wits were tested to its limit.

No weapons, no equipments, only his experience in fighting other people and his confidence that he can at least dodge majority of any kind of attack. It was a huge mistake. Because he failed to consider that monsters in the game can also learn and adapt to his movements, he was pushed into a corner where he had no choice but to fight for his life.

At first, he panicked.

He was still unaware of the difference on the ranking of the monsters and how difficult they actually were. He only knows how to fight and that’s what he used against them.

He defeated the first two that grouped over him, then the next one became a challenge, the fourth became a bit hard, and when he came to the fifth and sixth ones who attacked at the same time, he started to receive a few damage.

The seventh to ninth monster had him cornered and he was already feeling fatigue hugging his body. His vision started to get blurry and the pain in his temple is making him loose concentration every other second.

As the attack came from the tenth after defeating the last three with great difficulty, he had no choice but to change his mental state.

He admitted his mistake and clenched his fist harder.

He started to use whatever he can from the things in his immediate surroundings, mushrooms, rocks, bushes, and even his own blood flowing from the wound on his left shoulder, he used it all. He blinded a monster and used his own hands to pluck its eyes. He used a rock on one monster’s mouth to prevent it from closing in as he pulled of its tongue and tonsil, killing it slowly from severe pain and loss of blood.

And then, from out of nowhere, just when a monster was going to attack him from behind, an arrow hit its foot that made it miss Siva’s head.

Siva used the opening to use his earlier victim’s claw to stab the attacker in the throat and actually slit it as he also plucked out its eyes that made him bath in blood. In all aspects of a fight, Siva’s literally lacked elegance.

He never knew where it came from but that one arrow saved his life. From then on, he learned. In his two last enemies, the wariness they had of Siva became so great they started to back away. But Siva did not let them. His mind had been poisoned. All he thought was to kill them.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill….

He craved the deaths of the enemies in front of him.

A sense of satisfaction he had never felt before had surged on his chest and he felt anger, rage, no! Wrath! It was wrath that hugged his aching chest. Though it was not seen by the secret spectators that watched him, his eyes were filled with the tears of his regrets. His mind were filled with the painful memories of seeing his beloved parents dead on that car.

While he dodged the first one’s attacks like a zombie swaying his drunk body, Siva saw that monster as the man who put him to this bind.

Augustus.

He felt a surge of emotion, hate, and he momentarily forgot the excruciating pain of his mortal wounds.

Never knowing where it came from, he used the one arrow to stab the monster’s throat in exchange for a stab on his left flank. The monster died and he glared for the next one.

“RAAAAA…”

They met, the monster died.

His heart was crying for the memory that pushed him for that one last attack. It was the most painful memory he had ever remembered. It made him lose himself to the bloodbath. Actually, every part of this fight made him remember all those. At some point, it became his outlet to finally release all the accumulated hate and pain that he had.

But the most painful part that made him lose his self awareness was the sight, and the thought, of his brother in that hospital bed without so much assurance that he would wake up.

The thought of not hearing him yawn when he’s all sleepy, the smile he always had when he’s telling him his fight stories, the lively Baron who loves piggy back ride when going home from playing…these all made him angry that he was weak and powerless to help his little brother.

And at the moment he realized that he had killed all of his enemies, a sense of emptiness occurred.

He looked around to search for more enemies but he only saw nothing and it frustrated him. He walked on the deeper part of the forest, he gathered all of the monsters he defeated. It reached a total count of 18 and it made him angry that despite this numbers, he still felt hungry. He was hungry for violence.

And from the moment he woke up from a whole night inside Terroa, 16 hours had already passed and a total of 97 dead monsters gathered in one place.

It was so long he felt hungry and tired.

But the emptiness was still there, lingering, crawling on his skin like a large insect. It would seem that he had somehow got attached to that world in a different way than the other users.

He felt that something had changed in him.

But he nudged the thought off and stood up. He felt his leg with the metallic robot ache. He need exercise.

It was half passed afternoon. After he prepared food, he sat down on the sala and opened the holo TV. He put the channel on the news about Terroa, the 24/7 version of the TV Segment Terroa Day Today.

In there, the host was talking about the news about the war that was about to erupt between the Sylphiadora Guild and Titan Goliath Guild.

Then there were also news about current quests, the happenings on a Guild War currently taking place far off in the lands in the North Continent, a controversial video of a hunting mission, talks about rumors of some organizations, newest designs of weapons and armors, and there are many more that the show talked about.

An hour had passed, he finally felt sleepy.

But before he went upstairs, he locked everything, the doors, the windows, and even fortified the firewall he had set up on the vid-phone package.

Finally, when he was already satisfied, he opened up the browser and went to the web address he received from Graham. In there, a smile drew on his lips as he saw what the site was offering.

“I see.”

He closed the browser and went upstairs. In his mind is only the thoughts of his next actions. Terroa is a big world with peace loving people. And from an angle outside that box, a thought entered his mind.

I am The Destroyer.