Portal Game - Chapter 8 - Danger

James knew that things might not have gone to plan, but this was not what he had imagined a screw up would look like. He'd thought he was prepared. He'd thought that if anything too bad came for them, the Glock would have solved all their problems. These were his thoughts. He was wrong in so many ways.

Problem one: Someone could have discovered the portal. This thought terrified James. Earth was his and Elise's safe space. If somebody found a way to follow them back… It would be like with the wolf but so much worse. He imagined that people would be a lot more difficult to deal with than a Level 4 wolf cub. What if they came in a group? This wasn't an issue he could just shoot in the face.

Problem two: The situation in which he found himself now.

In retrospect, he should have levelled up his skills first. Get [Mana Bolt] to the stage where it was actually usable. He'd been overconfident.

The Mage Acolyte and his sister had barely been running for three minutes when not one but two giant wolves stood in their path, thirty meters ahead. The wolves were much like the first the James had encountered, but a little smaller. Thank god for that! They snarled at them, baring their dagger-like teeth while they slowly approached. The young adult almost shot at the wolves out of instinct but he calmed himself before he could do so. He needed to know his options. James took a deep breath and surveyed his surroundings.

The sun had only just set and the sky was still bright orange, basking the trees in an ethereal glow. James and Elise still stood on the dirt trail that led to the city. If they turned around, it would only take a few minutes to reach the grass plains past the top of the hill. If they pushed forward, they were still twenty minutes away from the portal. The correct escape route was obvious really, but first they had to deal with the two nuisances in front of them, if they could be called that. The more accurate term perhaps would be something like “bringers of inevitable doom”. Fuck.

Elise was standing behind him, holding out her katana in front of her. She was trembling again. It seemed that all that talk about killing monsters was just that. Talk. He didn't blame her. In the apartment the siblings had the advantage in a sense. The corridors were narrow, and it was their home turf. Even then they almost died. Here they were out in the open, in the wolves natural habitat. If this was their habit? Where did these two beasts even come from?

James blinked away his thoughts. He was being distracted, and the wolves were getting closer. He needed a way to distract one of them while he shot down the other. Using the only spare tool he had, James began channeling his mana with his [Mana Bolt] skill.

"Elise," James whispered. Talking quietly probably didn't make a difference, but the Mage Acolyte did it instinctively. "Watch my back for a bit."

The ethereal energy moved with his body painfully slowly, just like before. A marble sized ball of blue light appeared in his palm, which he attempted to hide behind his back. He only managed to obscure the magical glow of his skill for about 2 seconds before the wolves noticed. Where before, they were carefully approaching and sizing up their prey, now they were just plain aggressive. They both pounced, fully ready to devour James and any hope he had at surviving. James pulled the trigger.

BANG!

The sound was deafening. The howling of the beasts of the forest stopped as the monsters listened to the foreign noise. James barely noticed. He had to focus on the present.

Blood splattered across the forest floor, dying the scenery in red. James had fired at the wolf on the right, but he wasn’t sure where he had hit it and he didn't have time to find out. Before he had even pulled the trigger the Mage Acolyte had already started moving. He pushed out his other hand and fired his magic at the other wolf, all the while continuing to fire at the first predator. It was still moving towards him despite its injury although much slower than before. He had to make sure the damn thing was dead, or at least crippled.

'[Mana Bolt]!'

BANG! BANG!

The marble sized projectile hurtled towards the second wolf as the first dropped dead.

{Dire Wolf Cub (Lvl 2) slain - Experience gained}

{Experience threshold reached! Level Up!}

{You have reached Level 6! All stats increased by +1. One free point gained!}

{Proficiency threshold reached! [Mana Bolt] has reached level 3! Class experience gained!}

James acknowledged the notifications and turned his attention fully to the remaining foe. The mana bolt collided. It did almost nothing. The orb exploded against the wolf's face, although it wasn't really an explosion. It was more like a balloon popping than anything else. It didn't even draw blood. What the spell did manage to do however, was make the monster slow down for a second. It shook its head to clear its vision of the magical energies before leaping at James with intent to destroy, angered by his audacity to resist. By then James had repositioned and adjusted his aim. He took his shot.

BANG! BANG!

The enemy slumped to the ground, unable to move any further. James sighed in relief. The thing had made it to the five meter mark before it went down. Had James done things differently, they could have died for real. The wolf still wasn't dead yet. It was lying there sprawled out on the ground, breathing heavily and bleeding everywhere. All it would take was one more shot and the kill notification would come rolling in.

James looked at Elise. Useless as she normally was, she'd done what he'd asked her to this time. She was shaking all over, obviously terrified, but she'd kept watching his back the entire time. She was still doing so now, holding that blunt sword with both her hands.

"Finish this one off quickly," said James. "We need to yeet out of here before the rest of them become a problem."

The girl turned around dazedly and before turning her gaze to the half dead wolf. Elise had a troubled expression on her face, not very surprising considering everything. She quickly regained herself and did what she needed to do.

Elise walked briskly over to the dying wolf, katana in hand. She held it pointed downwards over the fallen beast's head and pushed down.

SHINK!

{Dire Wolf Cub (Lvl 3) slain - Experience gained! Experience shared with all participants.}

The katana, no matter how blunt the edge was, was sharp enough to pierce through the monster's skull. That didn't mean that Elise did so easily however. The girl had to physically strain herself to do the deed, but she succeeded in the end.

'No level up for me this time' James noticed, although he imagined that Elise had levelled quite a few times. She'd probably reached Level 4 from that.

"This is good," said Elise. She took a deep breath and got her trembling under control. "It's different than how I imagined, but that's fine. We've got this!"

"What are you talking about?" James asked, perplexed.

"Oh, you know," Elise responded. "Power levelling? The plan? You remember. Let's go and kill another one!"

"Are you out of your mind?!" James somehow screamed and whispered at the same time. What was his sister thinking?! "We almost died! Again! That's ignoring the fact that someone could have discovered the portal! We gotta get back and level up our skills before we try this shit again! You got a kill, so you can get a class now! This is enough!"

"It'll never be enough!" She scream-whispered back. "You can fuck about with your skills and magic all you like, this crap will just happen again and again every time! Bloody hell James! We're never going to be fully prepared to explore another world!

I was with you before, but now we've found what we came for! If we want to help Mother, we need to just go with it and handle things as they come! These wolves are a great example. They came, we killed them! Now we need to kill some more!"

"I killed them! You did nothing! You were shitting yourself the entire time!"

"What was I supposed to do with no way to defend myself?! You have the fucking gun! Maybe you should hand it over and watch how I do everything while you do fuck-all next time."

At some point Elise had gotten right up in James' personal space. Her face was written with fury and she looked this close to slapping him. The feeling was mutual. James had no idea how things had escalated so quickly, but he knew this wasn't the time to screw around with the monsters from this world. The wolves had resumed howling and they were a lot closer now. They didn't have time for this.

"We'll pick this up later!" James turned around. "For now we need to go back to the hill. The portal's too far away from here. The last thing we want is getting surrounded. At least there we can fight in an open space if we need to. Worst case scenario, we seek refuge in the city."

Elise seemed to accept that, somewhat begrudgingly. No further words were exchanged as they ran back the way they

came. The sky was really starting to get dark now. The sun had long since set and the daylight was escaping from the night.

Three minutes later another, bigger wolf jumped into the path, but James was quick to react. The beast was alone and had its mouth wide open, ready to prey on the two wandering travellers. James greeted it with two bullets. He always fired twice just in case he missed the first one.

BANG! BANG!

Both the shots hit. The wolf fell to the earth but didn't die and James didn’t bother finishing it. That would slow him down and would waste a bullet, neither of which he wanted to do.

There was a fine line between being cautious and being wasteful. He now had 10 rounds left before he needed to reload. James was confident he could do so in less than a minute; all he had to do was change magazines. However, that was a minute that both him and Elise would be completely defenseless, so James wanted to delay that moment as much as possible. For now they needed to find a safe space and fast.

Elise didn’t share James' sense of urgency. She stopped and impaled the collapsed wolf with her sword, doing so a little faster than time.

{Dire Wolf Cub (Lvl 4) slain - Experience gained! Experience shared with all participants.}

{Experience threshold reached! Level Up!}

{You have reached Level 7! All stats increased by +1. One free point gained!}

James glared at her as he waited. Elise had gotten her way in the end, and there was nothing he could do about it. He didn't yell at her. That would serve him nothing. She knew what he thought, and she didn't give a shit. At least he'd gained a level this time. The increased stats hadn't helped him much yet, but perhaps they'd be useful later.

Elise's clothes were stained with blood. The red liquid had gushed out of the fallen beast's neck and sprayed. She wasn't quite covered in the stuff, but her clothes were most likely ruined forever. She spotted his glare and gave James the finger.

James kept moving and shot down another three wolves along the way. One of them died instantly and Elise stopped to finish off the other two. These two wolves had only appeared within 30 seconds of one another. They were appearing more frequently now.

The forest ended before them and James ran into the opening at the top of the hill. The scene was slightly different than before. Farmers were herding the strange cows into barnhouses hurriedly and other stragglers rushed to enter the great city in a panic. Groups of armed men and women left the city and passed by those frantically trying to enter, many of them heading towards the forest.

"Shit!" James cursed under his breath. Behind them were monsters, potentially too many to deal with. In front of them were Svilenian combatants, potentially not friendly. James did not want to meet the locals yet, not like this anyway. He spotted one particular group of men wearing heavy armour and carrying axes and maces. They did not look friendly. He'd rather just go to the city now and take shelter for the night than talk to these guys.

The last of the daylight disappeared as this thought brewed in his mind and then reality conspired to destroy his hopes. A beacon golden light coming from one of the pillars of the blue castle pierced the sky. The blue castle from the city. Once the beacon had reached a certain point, it stopped rising and the light spread out instead to form a sealed, shimmering transparent dome around the city walls. Smaller domes of different colours appeared around the various barnhouses of the farmlands after all the cattle had been gathered, each created from smaller beacons of light fired from those respective locations.

At first James had thought that these domes were barriers, but he saw that groups of people were still leaving the city unobstructed, passing through the golden dome as if it weren't there. Yet those that hadn't entered the city weren't able to pass through the dome like their peers. They banged their fists against the magical construct, yelling and begging to be let in. James couldn’t actually hear them at all, but the little he could see from the distance told him the full story.

'It's a one-way city shield' James concluded.

After a while the stragglers gave up and fell to their knees. Some sat down and leant back against the dome. Some went and pleaded to the armed parties instead. The reactions were varied, but James got the message. He wouldn't be able to take shelter in the city even if he wanted to.

"We should go back into the forest and take our chances with the wolves." Elise said.

James got angry really fast at that, but cooled himself off just as quickly. His idea was to fight any attacking enemies on open ground, but he couldn’t use the Glock with local Svilenians watching. If those that had discovered the portal were watching, the gun would be a dead giveaway. It would be a dead giveaway even if nobody had seen the portal… Elise had a point.

"Fine!" James said with venom in his voice. He needed to think of a plan to survive the trip back to the portal, or a way to hunker down somewhere until it was safe. Whatever was more convenient.

They had barely taken a few steps back into the forest when James regretted listening to Elise.

There was another wolf standing in front of them, but it was different. This one had grey fur instead of black and not one but two snarling heads. It was also a lot, lot bigger than any animal James had ever seen. The wolf sized up the siblings with a shimmer in its eyes. It almost seemed to smile.