“I think it’s best that we part ways.” Pepper messaged me.

`Pepper Flame has removed you as a friend’

I was once again dead with the ever so wonderful reminder that I was now back to lvl 1.

~~~World announcement:

Manditory Quest: Kobold Invasion(A): FAILURE

RESULT: Permanent destruction of New Hope Village.~~~

Message from Zisban: “Thanks for ruining everything!”

Message from Salber: “**ck you!”

Message from Total Taco: “Eat **it!”

Message from Zuroo “I will find you and eat your first born child!”

Unread messages in inbox: 405

…

Unread messages in inbox: 560

…

Unread messages in inbox: 719

…

I logged off.

I still had an hour left of game time, but instead I think I’m going to crawl into a hole and die. Before I was hated, but also kinda like a weirdly infamous anti-hero sort of way. But now, I was strait-up hated.

````

I lay in bed with my eyes wide open. WTF just happened?

When I saw the Kobold King

This is what I saw:

Lvl 9 Elite

Attack: ???

Defense: ???

Health: ???

Rage: ?

Skills: [Rally], [Charge], [Throw], [Leap], [Whirlwind]

But because Pepper Flame was within 4 levels of him, this is what she saw:

Lvl 9 Elite

Attack: 200

Defense: 150

Health: 8000

Rage: 100

Skills: [Rally], [Charge], [Throw], [Leap], [Whirlwind]

Comparatively:

Lvl 5

Attack: 10-20

Defense: 14

Health: 100

Rage: 100

Skills: [Mining]

Unsurprisingly, we weren’t ready for it. Not that you could really expect 2000 complete strangers to fight an army of monsters in any sort of organized fashion.

Not that you could really expect a bunch of under-leveled players to fight a fucking army in anyway shape or form. But you know, it’s cool, I see you dreamscape, I see you.

I see you over there, ruining my life, causing haters to blow up my inbox, completely annihilating any form of self esteem that I was ever hoping to have. It’s cool.

…

Fucking video games

…

Anyway, back on the memory train.

The Kobold King, rode in on a glistening throne carried on the backs of his underlings. His army swarmed towards him like a colony of ants. This came as a great relief to the players who finally had a chance to regroup for the first time in hours.

Not only that, but things were looking damn hopeful. That is, until all hell broke loose.

When the king was approximately 100 meters away from our ragtag group of players his caravan stopped. Lazily, as if he had nothing better to do that destroy the pesky humans who build a tiny village while he was asleep, he open his eyes and slouched out of his throne.

Silence. Complete and utter silence. The deafening roar of absolute nothingness. The thought of breathing and cutting the spider’s web while stumbling forward into the darkness, felt overwhelming.

The King stood up, and then vanished.

Not like the sun is in your eye and can’t see clearly kind of vanish.

The kind of vanish where you are looking at something and you think to yourself, “did I just blink?” Because there was a thing, and now there’s not a thing.

And you instinctively know that you didn’t blink, but you’re secretly hoping that you did in fact blink, because the alternative is that a giant-ass kobold just ninja disappeared in front of you.

And that is precisely when the shit hit the fan.

In the ensuing hours that denote my fall into social exile, there will be dozens of online forums that relay the events of what happened. Let me summarize all of them, “… and then I just died…”

Because of my meager amounts of agility, I was able to see a little bit more than the average sorcerer would have been able to see.

Let me tell you exactly what I saw….

There was a huge explosion of debris to my left. Followed immediately by a sudden gust of wind blowing hundreds of players into the air, killing all of them.

I suspect that the king used [leap] followed by [whirlwind] which isn’t crazy I guess considering that he is an elite.

But what is crazy, is that he did the same thing 15 more times until there was no one left standing!

How come no one used [mana shield], you ask?

They did.

I think Pepper was the only one to survive a [whirlwind]. Which was cool and all, until she immediately got hit by another [leap] and then [whirlwind] in the span of 5 seconds.

Ya, feels bad doesn’t it.

Anyhow, the resulting slaughter-fest that no one saw coming (literally) resulted in the complete and utter destruction of our starting area. So I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

But quite frankly, I need to buy a shovel first so I can go dig that hole I talked about earlier.