Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!

I’m having fun with this story, but I don't know how I feel about this chapter. Something feels...off. Thanks for your support everyone.

I started to proofread and tried to get this up hours ago but...oh well. This chapter is longer than usual.

Thanks for reading. Please enjoy.

Chapter 8: An Unexpected Reckoning

“I accept”

‘Hahahaa.’ The silvery spirit wolf’s voice rang out inside his mind, full of excitement. ‘Good. I expect you will find this a challenging task but I have faith in you, young one. I give you this mask, but be warned. If you lose it or it is removed in front of another human, they will know all that you have done. The mask can only protect your identity while you wear it.’ The wolf faded away, turning into mist from the feet up, joining the rest of the fog in the area, which also faded. The only thing left in the area was a silver wolf mask, shaped like a wolf’s face, with red stripes from temple to nose, passing through the eyeholes. Frost picked it up with a smirk.

Quest: The Wolf Spirit's AngerYou have been given the right to judge those who have slain wolves. Bring them retribution. Teach them fear.

Enemies Slain: 0/100

Frost was only slightly surprised that he had to kill a hundred people for this quest. Dying would be dangerous because they would be able to take off his mask and see his name. There didn’t seem to be any restrictions so as long as he killed the required number of people the mission would be completed no problem. Frost started running off into the forest, chuckling to himself. He had been planning to avoid people until he was level five, but now that he was level five, he was on a mission to kill them. He slipped on the mask, which changed its shape to fit his face as all magical equipment in this game did.

“Status” He had to check what he had to work with, as he hadn’t actually paid much attention to status in a while. What he saw made him realize just how amazing his training menu combined with leveling and other bonuses was.

Frost Winterstorm Lvl 5Health 320/320Mana 176/176Stamina 296/310Strength47Vitality36Dexterity31Stamina44Wisdom21Intelligence29Agility54Luck28Health Regeneration0.46/sMana Regeneration0.31/s

It’s not as though he was the only one who gained stats from fighting and other bonuses, but he put real effort into training and building up his stats. Frost was trying to play the game seriously, but also tried to have fun while playing. He chose not to kill the wolves, chose not to join a party, and did what he felt like doing. It was a game after all, and if he wasn’t having fun he was probably doing something wrong.

If he was going to go through with this, he needed to plan carefully how he would go about eliminating players. First, he would have to do it within twenty-four hours in game or he risked players coming back to seek revenge, likely as a gathered mob of angry players. They might also pull concerned NPCs and guards into their little hunting party. Second, if he attacked a group, he couldn’t let any of them escape and survive to warn everyone else or he faced the same problem of an angry mob. Third, he could not die or let himself be revealed no matter what. If he did and then continued with the quest, they would know he was a player and not an NPC. He didn’t know how much the mask actually hid, but he hoped it hid the fact that he was a player. Also if they could kill him, they wouldn’t be afraid of him, and he was supposed to make them fear him.

Preferably, he could kill solo players, but it wouldn’t be very easy to find that many and kill them in 24 hours, not to mention that solo players would be better fighters than the average member of a group. Most of his enemies would have to be groups of enemies like that guy Dorian and his party of weaklings. He wasn’t sure if he could manage to kill one hundred people before twenty-four hours were up, but he should be able to finish the quest before they could organize a resistance and stop him.

He stood up and started jogging into the forest, figuring there was no point in over thinking it. He just had to go out and kill them, making them afraid of ever killing wolves again. There was nothing specific he could do to them, like gathering them and killing them all at once. That would just be suicide. He had to hope that he was lucky enough to succeed.

He soon ran into a small group of adventurers and decided to speak with them. He walked up to them and nearly started talking when one of them spotted him. “Woah, what’s an NPC like that doing out here? I’ve never seen an adventurer NPC before.”

‘They think I’m an NPC? That could be useful.’ “Fellow adventurers, have you seen any wolves around?” The group was only four young warriors and he was fairly confident that he could take them on considering they were only level six. ‘They must be playing casually if they’re this low of a level.’

“Um…sure. We killed some a little ways back. Why?”

At this point, the warriors were only a few feet away, their guards lowered. Bandit NPCs were rare in the North and were always in groups. These players thought they had just found an event NPC and were excited. When their leader found a sword piercing his heart they were all surprised as the masked man said, “Then you will pay for your crimes against the wolves.” They had seen the man draw and thrust his sword, but hadn’t been able to react to his speed.

Frost punched the boy off of his sword as he pulled it out and attacked the group. They were under equipped and not yet used to combat so he was able to easily defeat them. He normally ignored any drops that weren’t dunari or things he could use so he was about to walk away when he saw a sleeved cloak in the pile of drops. He picked it up and put it on, leaving the front open so it wouldn’t get in his way very much. It would help keep his identity hidden in case people were able to recognize him from his gear.

He continued searching, able to kill two more groups and even found a rusty sword from a grein drop along the way. Usually he ignored those kinds of drops but this time they He still killed any monsters he came across if he could easily take them out without wasting much time. He told them why he was killing them, that it was vengeance for the deaths of the peaceful wolves, but he killed everyone because every single one of them had participated in a wolf hunt. They were all guilty.

When he found the next group, they saw him and ran, screaming about something or other. He chased them down, told them of their crimes, and killed all but one, whom he tackled to the ground. The person he had tackled to the ground was a beastman of the dog tribe. He had floppy ears and was furry, looking like a cross between a dog and a human. He decided that speaking differently would at least help him to hide his identity.

“Thou dost know of myself and why I have come to slay thee?” He also whispered so his voice wouldn’t easily be distinguished.

The dog man was shaking, clearly afraid. “I’m sorry, I thought the wolves were just monsters and so did my friends. We were just playing the game.” He was on the verge of crying.

“How dost thou know of me?” 'This is dumb. I immediately regret doing this.'

The first people you killed called their friends and put up posts on forums. Then the news spread through Dead World by windspeak or word of mouth and now most people in the area know about you.” Windspeak was technically a spell that anyone could use, costing no mana or cast time. It was effectively a way for people to talk at long distances in game without ruining immersion and could be sent to anyone you had met, even if you didn’t know their name. You merely had to picture the person as you cast the spell or if you knew a persons name, you could send a message to them. The man weakly tried to wiggle out of Frost’s grip. “Please let me go!”

Frost had to think for a brief moment so that he wouldn’t mess up the line. “Thou hast taken the lives of innocents. Face the punishment thou dost deserve.” The man started screaming as Frost drew his dagger and repeatedly stabbed the man in the heart until he was dead. ‘No mercy for the merciless.’ Frost stared at the corpses, his deep blue eyes as cold as the snow on which he stood. They had learned about him too quickly. It hadn’t even been two hours since he had killed the first group and they were already wary of him.

He started dashing through the forest ignoring any monsters he saw, desperate to find and as many wolf killers as possible before they gathered to take him down. He managed to get the kill count to twenty-seven before he could no longer find groups in the forest very easily. There were some groups of a higher level that he found after a while of searching, killing them as well. He had to use both of his stamina consuming skills and only barely managed to win those fights. None of them were very skilled fighters so he was able to take them down, even though each fight was fairly tough. He fought them all the same way, sneaking up on them with stalking skills and taking out any mages or clerics before eliminating the rest of the group while angrily growling their crimes at them. He no longer had to tell them the reason he killed them. They knew what they were guilty of.

Level eight and a total of fourty-two kills later, Frost could no longer find any groups of people in the forest, even after hours of searching. It appeared he had killed just about everyone who disregarded or didn’t know about the wolf-masked man running through the forest, hunting players. He knew this quest had just become ten times harder and the players were probably already organizing a group to take him down. He could disappear now and play as Frost for a while, waiting for the commotion to die down, or he could try to finish it by fighting the group and probably dying in the process.

Only one of those options really appealed to him and that was the laying low option, training while he waited for them to give up searching for him. It was the option that made the most sense for survival, for making sure that they did not discover who he was. He still needed to kill fifty-eight and how could he do that when they were all in a group chasing after him. If he faced them head on, he would fail, and how else could he deal with them? He just wasn’t strong enough yet.

He reached for the mask to take it off and his hand stopped an inch from his face. ‘Am I just going to give up again when things get hard. That’s what I’m doing; just running away again, being a coward, giving up. Not this time.’ He moved his hand away and started planning. ‘I’ll fight them even like this, even with all of them against me as one. I will show them that I can’t be defeated, can’t be killed, not by them. I will make them despair at how helpless they are.’

Hunter POV

A large group of people was gathered in front of Doel, listening to some NPC who called herself Danna, Captain of the city guard. She was in the middle of talking about a new danger in the forest, in the form of a mask-wearing murderer who claimed to be a guardian spirit of vengeance. For now, they would call him Wolf Mask and everyone was to be cautious when entering the forest. The guard was forming an emergency response unit to take care of the danger immediately.

“Anyone who doesn’t want to join in the hunt is welcome to leave now. Not everyone is strong enough or equipped to handle this person, but we need everyone we can get who’s brave enough. Take up arms and fight, or live in fear of a man who fights for the seek of mere wolves.”

Quest: Wolf HuntA man wearing a mask that resembles a wolf has been seen in the forest. This man claims to fight for the wolves as a spirit of vengeance. His goal is to slay those who have slain wolves. You must destroy him before he destroys you.

“Now who’s with me?”

The gathered players and NPCs cheered, raising their weapons into the sky as they accepted the quest. It was only one man after all. What could he do against almost 200 people who were out to get him? Dorian

“Good. Form groups of five. We’re going to kill this bastard.”

The players all thought this would be a simple extermination quest for beginners as a way to get them accustomed to event quests and how they worked in Dead World Online. The players understood so little about how the game truly worked. This was more than a game: It was reality for the NPCs and the ones who made the game. Dead World was just that. It was a different world.

Frost

The first thing he needed to do was to find a place that would be most advantageous to him. He went North through the forest until he found what he was looking for. It was a pine forest strewn with stones and fallen trees, perfect for setting ambushes and making escapes from heavily armored opponents. First, he set about familiarizing himself with the area, killing anything that he met along the way as he started to get the feel of fighting in the pine forest. Second, he started to plan how to deal with the small army that was probably coming to kill him. He hadn’t had much time to plan when he received a message.

Windspeak from Dorian Where are you? Are you participating in the Wolf Mask Hunt? I didn’t see you.

“Windspeak Dorian.”

“I’m around. I have my own reasons for dealing with him.” He couldn’t have anyone suspicious of him, couldn’t risk having anyone think that he was the one responsible for all of this. Even one slip up could cause him misery for the rest of the game, potentially even after the beta. He began to train his stalking skill as he thought about what his enemies would do to defeat him.

Frost suspected that they would be in small groups, spread out over a wide distance in an attempt to capture him within a wide net. Each group would likely be within shouting distance of the next. The first group to see him would be responsible for slowing him down while the other groups arrived to outnumber him and defeat him. They knew he was strong and that he would probably be able to take out a single group given enough time. That meant, they would attempt to equip each group with something or someone that could slow him down. That also meant they would probably break up parties to form identically sized groups, thereby decreasing the coordination within each group because the players would not be used to each other.

This was all speculation, of course, as Frost had no way of actually knowing what they would be planning, but it’s what he would expect others to do. It was what he would do. Most slowing crowd control effects were ice or earth based magics such as the freezing and mud spells. With his high resistance to cold, he wouldn’t be too affected by freezing spells and with the low temperature of the north, spells that turned the ground to mud would quickly freeze up. If possible, he had to find a way to avoid these spells and anything else they threw at him.

After some time thinking, he couldn’t find any solution and sat down, cooking a grein steak over a fire that took a while to get started. Fire was out of the question in a forest that was frozen, he didn’t have time or the knowledge to make traps and pitfalls. He had a few hours at best before they found him. It was noon now and they were probably already on their way. He sighed and went to take a bite of the steak, but stopped with it halfway to his lips. He had forgotten something that would only be possible in this world. There was a chance for him to succeed where before he had thought there was none.

He walked quickly until he found a pair of grein, which didn’t take long because the creatures were everywhere. He took an item out of his pack and threw it at one of them. It hit the creature square in the chest, bouncing off and falling to the ground. It hadn’t done even a single point of damage, but he wasn’t really expecting it to. As he had hoped, the beast picked up and sniffed it. The beast stopped for a moment, then turned to face the direction the object had come from. The monster stared directly at Frost who could see the hatred in its eyes as it bared its teeth, seething with rage. He had attacked them with a chunk of meat, grein meat, and it looked like they were pissed. They howled, a deep, primal growl like nothing he had heard before and he knew that he succeeded.

He was trying to make them mad enough that they would chase him and not let up until he was dead. In a normal game, this wouldn’t work because the mobs would lose interest or only follow him so far. That’s why he hadn’t thought about this idea before. He was falling into the mentality that this was just another game, and that line of thought was a dangerous thing. Frost couldn’t afford to continue thinking of this as just a game.

Grein started coming out of the forest until there was over a dozen of them. He ran past them, throwing the meat at them as he dodged their furious swings. They roared again, repeating that strange howl as he ran just ahead of them, staying in sight to make certain that they continued to follow him in a blind rage. Within half an hour, he had learned the taunt skill, and within an hour he had an entire army of monsters following him. He was headed for the edge of the forest, straight towards town with his buddies in tow, still throwing meat at them to keep them enraged.

Frost saw the hunters straight ahead, exactly as he had expected them to be. They were in groups of five, forming a wide net so he couldn’t escape. He increased his speed so that he was further ahead of the monsters chasing him but still in sight. The group directly ahead of him noticed him and started shouting and sending messages. Frost could see the some of the other groups heading in his direction and smiled. He couldn’t hold back his laughter as he saw the faces of the hunters change from excited to dumbfounded. He dodged around them taking a couple hits as he went through the group but it wasn’t enough to even make him flinch.

He turned around and stood on the other side of the hunters to ensure that the monsters would have to go right through them. For the first time since he had started gathering the monsters, he saw very clearly just how many he had gathered and even he had to raise an eyebrow. ‘Holy shit that’s a lot of grein. Maybe too many?’ The two groups collided as more and more of the warriors showed up in a constant stream. Frost wanted to use his staff as enemies suddenly surrounded him, but he couldn’t in case it somehow gave him away. Frost didn’t try to control the chaos around him, instead slipping into a pine tree to wait.

He calmed himself, taking deep breaths and recovering his depleted stamina that had been greatly reduced by an hour of constantly running. He let the battle continue to the point where the players were about to start dying. He left his shelter and stabbed a player in the back, whispering in the girl’s ear as he felt his sword pierce through her gut. “Pay with death for your crimes against the wolves.” She died, falling off of his sword and into the snow. He moved calmly through the battlefield, executing anything that was low enough, sometimes fighting when needed. Grein, player, and NPC all died, cut or pierced by his blade as he jogged through the battlefield.

He targeted anything that had low health, ending its life with a flick of the wrist, his sword flashing with a dull gleam. Surprisingly the humanoids were already beginning to drive back the grein. He hadn’t counted on them giving up so easily after having chased him so far. Maybe it was because he had been absent for a significant part of the battle and only appeared to finish off his enemies. They were too weak and frustrated to want to take him on now, so they began to leave, scattering into the forest. Frost had killed a lot of enemies and was close to leveling up again.

The only problem was that he still had ten more people to kill and he was surrounded by humanoids that wanted to kill him. ‘Shit. Time to leave.’ He started to casually walk away while trying to hide his face but was quickly noticed. They tried to surround him but he danced out of the way of their blades and other weapons. Arrows and spells chased him through the forest, whizzing by him as he ducked behind a tree and into the forest. An arrow stuck in his leg, tripping him up right when he thought he had gotten away.

The players began to chase him down, trying to cut him off so that he couldn’t escape again. He pulled out the arrow, scrambling to his feet as he slipped in the snow. They were closing on him, surrounding him as they pushed him towards the edge of the pine forest. He was fast and gaining ground but they were wary of him now and wouldn’t be caught with their guard down again. One of the groups had managed to get up ahead of him, probably getting an early start or showing up late to the fight. He had an idea that was crazy and decided to act on it in the same moment.

He sprinted at full speed towards the group activating Lightning Blade and Furious Strength as he approached, swinging at full strength to activate Heavy Blow. He took hits from his opponents intentionally, using the chance to strike back at them. He ignored spells, axes, and blades for the most part, only blocking or dodging the most dangerous attacks. He had to kill them as fast as possible, before anyone else arrived to see what he was trying to do. He had too much to do and too little time to do it.

The mage tried to slow him down with a Freezing spell but Frost’s ice dragon blood protected him from the cold and any spells designed to freeze someone. Ice spells of such a low level were not strong enough to affect him very much at all. He was too strong, too fast for them to stop him as he cut them down mercilessly. They tried to tackle and hold him, but only ended up in a worse position when he flipped them onto their backs or tripped them. He finished them off and realized that there was an enormous flaw in his plan.

He threw his cloak, mask, and sword into his pack, pulling out the rusty iron sword he had found earlier. His original plan was pretend to be a member of the group but it would be extremely obvious if there were six people in the group. That was probably part of the reason there were five people in a group but it was also the reason he could make this plan work. He had noticed during and just before the battle that the groups were all five people.

Most likely, not everyone knew everyone else so the groups of five were comprised of random people who didn’t necessarily know one another. That was what he was counting on. He could pretend that he was the only one in the group that had survived the attack. He quickly threw one of the fighter’s bodies over his shoulder and ducked into a large pine tree, pushing aside the branches. He climbed halfway up the tree, depositing a body on a thick branch. He jumped down, rolling as he hit the ground to soften the blow.

Falling has reached beginner level 3

‘Is this a joke? Fuck you,’ he thought as he stumbled out of the tree and onto his knees. Just as he looked up, he saw players begin to arrive on the scene from multiple directions, some of them rushing over to where he was. He punched the ground and shouted in anger and frustration as he looked off into the distance in the direction he would have been running.

“What happened?” One of the players had run up to him and asked. A few other groups arrived in time to hear Frost’s response.

“That wolf bastard took us out so fast, like we were a joke. We couldn’t even slow him down and magic didn’t even affect him. What the fuck is that guy? This is bullshit!” He was trying to seem as angry as possible while his heart raced, trying to burst from his chest. He hoped his acting was good enough to fool them. The fact that his strategy was working made it even harder to frown and look angry.

“Woah, man. Calm down. We’ll get him soon. It’s just a game, don’t take it so seriously.” The man put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him.

“Yeah dude. Chill out.” A few of the players spoke out, trying to make him feel better.

“Which way did he go?” A somewhat familiar voice asked.

“He went...” ‘Wait. I’ve heard that voice before.’ His head snapped towards the source of the voice and he sneered in hatred. “You!” It was one of the PKer brothers he had met not too long ago in the forest. Frost could see his name above his head and saw that he had named his character Tiger. Tiger was no longer a dark player, but he had seen his name before so he would always know it. It wasn’t that hard to get rid of dark player status, especially when you had only killed one or two people. All you had to do was not kill people or do good things for a little while. The darker the character, the harder it was for them to become neutral or good again.

Frost picked up his sword, hopping to his feet as he pointed the weapon at Tiger. Most of the other players, along with Tiger drew their own weapons in response as Frost growled, “Tiger you PKing asshole. What are you doing here?”

“What are you talking about?” Tiger responded mockingly. “I’m a good player. You’re the suspicious one here. I saw you using the same sword as the wolf guy. It pisses me off, but I admit that you’re fast and skilled just like the wolf guy. I’ll bet you switched out your gear and somehow took the place of someone on this team. Or maybe this team was working with you and you betrayed them.” He stepped on one of the bodies for emphasis, an evil look in his eyes and a small grin on his face.

“Maybe we should kill you just to be sure.”

“You’d like to kill more people, wouldn’t you, murderer.” He could see that the group of people didn’t really believe him and they were really considering killing him. ‘I can’t die now, not when I’m so close.’ He started thinking frantically of a way he could escape his situation, but every option looked like it would end up with them killing him. He was at a loss of what to do so he angrily sheathed his sword and glared at them. “I’m not the wolf guy. He stole my sword when he killed me the first time I met him. That’s why I joined this fucking hunt in the first place.” Some of them looked like they were convinced, but they still didn’t put their weapons away. If he really was the man in the wolf mask, this opportunity was just too good to pass up. They had him injured and surrounded, with no way out. It was looking hopeless for him.

“Frost, is that you?” A voice called from somewhere in the back of the group. Someone pushed forward to the front and he could see who it was that had called out his name. It was Dorian, someone Frost had forgotten about until then.

Dorian stepped into the middle of the circle surrounding Frost and held out his arms protectively. “You can’t kill Frost just because you think he’s suspicious. Frost isn’t the type of person to kill people at all. He saved my friends and me when we were going to die and he could have easily killed our weakened party. He might not be the friendliest guy but he’s a good guy and definitely more trustworthy than this Tiger douche. Besides, everyone knows that the killer is an NPC.”

‘Dorian, you wonderful idiot, I could hug you right now.’ Frost kept his face impassive for only a moment before his lips cracked a smile. The group of players and guards began to lower their weapons, realizing they were about to kill someone just because someone else had accused him of being the wolf mask. That’s just how afraid they were of the man in the wolf mask, and just how much they wanted him dead.

Tiger was the last one to put his sword away, him and most of his group glaring at Frost in hatred. Frost had to turn away from them and look at the ground to hide a smile. He had only four people left to kill and it wouldn’t be his fault if the wolf mask happened to run into Tiger and his group. Frost walked over to Dorian and the two exchanged friend requests while he thanked Dorian for saving him. The hunting party continued to search until nightfall, but couldn’t find the wolf mask anywhere in the forest.

The next day, the search continued but Frost and some of the other players gave up on the search, claiming they would be useless even if they did run into the man they were hunting. Of course, no one found him that day either, leaving the players discontent and annoyed. Others started leaving to go back to training or whatever else they might have been doing before the hunt began. No one could afford to waste so much time on a hopeless quest when everyone in the game was competing to be the best.

Since leaving the group, Frost trained for a day and a half, finally reaching level nine after exercising and grinding. He supposed it was once again time to put on the wolf mask and finish what he started. Making sure that no one was around, he switched out his swords, threw on the cloak, and equipped the mask. Today would be the day he would finish his quest, and hopefully take down Tiger as well. As he headed out from the deeper parts of the forest, it began to snow, large, heavy flakes falling from the sky.

Frost frowned, determined as he stared into the distance. “I’m coming for you, Tiger!” Advertisement Previous

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