The Meaning Behind A Name

Jerald looked backwards as his son’s form was slowly swallowed up by the trees with a worried expression on his face, he wasn’t worried that Kyle couldn’t win he was just worried about what Kyle might have to do to achieve that win.

Digby glance backwards at his companion before returning to watching where he was going as he continued to chase after the guards that had managed to remain on their horses.

“He’ll be fine boss,” Digby gasped as he dodged around a tree, this extended run was taking a lot out of him, but he knew that if he was struggling to continue, then the horses who were also contending with their fear of the Zone had to be worse off.

“Besides we have our own fight to worry about,” he continued. Denzel was the biggest threat that remained, but that didn’t mean that the other guards were pushovers, the one that remained were the elite guards chosen by Denzel to become officers in the guard. All of them had a Tier 3 Class like Denzel but were a lower Level than Denzel was himself.

Jerald chuckled, “Do you really think that a few Tier 3’s can defeat me Dig?”

Jerald had a Tier 4 Class known as Construct Tyrant which revolved around the use of weapon Skills and his specialised Conjuration Magic which allowed him to conjure a small army of constructs made from combining several Conjuration spells. Classes that can summon large numbers of minions were rare and usually limited to those who used Summoning Magic, or the Necromantic powers given to those who served Kellor the god of the dead. The largest difference between the minions summoned by these Classes and the constructs that Jerald could conjure was that the undead were stupid and summoned beings had minds of their own which meant that they were unlikely to listen if their summoner wanted them to do something that was sure to get them killed. Jerald’s constructs were hollow suits of armour made and controlled by his magic, he could either control them directly or give them a set of orders to follow. The number that he could control directly was limited but they also had access to all his Skills meaning that they were much more powerful than the constructs he just gave orders to which only had access to the main parts of his Heavy Armour and Weapon Skills but none of the sub-skills for them or his other Skills.

“Heh, that’s true I suppose,” Digby admitted as he swerved around yet another tree.

“Oh? Well, would you look at that boss! They finally decided that they’d had enough of running,” Digby joked, not bothering to look back at the wide grin that he already knew was creeping across Jerald’s face.

“Well isn’t that nice of them!” replied Jerald who leapt forward over Digby’s head as he skidded to a halt.

Jerald’s armour, which he hadn’t been wearing because of the added weight appeared on him as he landed on the ground in front of the guards with a crash, raising his head he saw that the guards were pale-faced, the sort of skill required for Digby to equip Jerald’s armour onto him directly while he was flying through the air was enough to tell the guards and their companions that neither Jerald or Digby were opponents that they could defeat.

Digby trotted up beside Jerald and glared at the guards’ companions, who all flinched back, the body of Denzel’s companion Ernst rippled as he padded forwards growing from a small winged cat to a winged tiger whose claws crackled with electricity as he snarled in defiance.

Jerald raised his mace and pointed it at the guards, “So, I’ve been sent here by the mayor to arrest all of you, by force if necessary, but, if you throw down your weapons and remove your armour, I won’t be forced to hurt you, any takers?” Jerald asked, but there was no reply from the guards who glanced at Denzel with fear in their eyes.

“No? Well, it’s your funeral then!” Jerald roared conjuring five of his constructs matching the number of guards he would have to fight and launching himself, as well as the constructs forward, the mace gripped in his right hand glowed and he suddenly accelerated even faster as he activated his Meteor Buster Skill an action which was again mimicked by his constructs.

They collided with their targets with a loud crashing sound, two of the guards were thrown backwards with shattered arms from the powerful attack and slammed into trees before falling to the ground in a heap.

Denzel gritted his teeth as he felt every bone in his body rattle from the impact against his shield, thankful that he had managed to activate a Skill of his own that had negated some of the damage before countering with a slash from his sword which was easily deflected by Jerald who gestured at the two fallen guards causing the constructs that had attacked them to break apart and reassemble themselves around the men, trapping them where they had fallen.

Only one of the other guards had actually taken the first attack from the constructs and had barely remained standing, the shield that he had managed to put between the mace and his body was now ruined as was his arm but he still struck out with his own mace which glowed and crashed into the helmet that served as the constructs head without any visible affect causing the guard’s face to pale as the constructs own mace then mirrored his attack smashing into the side of his helmeted head, putting him out of the fight.

Denzel snarled as he saw yet another of his men fall, these were his strongest men and yet Jerald was taking them down without even breaking a sweat while fighting him! And he still had that infuriating grin on his face!

The other two guards had somehow managed to dodge the first attack from the constructs, one was wearing leather armour and had rolled out of harms way, while the other had used a slide made of conjured ice to escape the attack, however the attack had caused slivers of ice to shred his robe when it had impacted the impromptu escape technique.

The ice mage hastily conjured several walls of ice in the hopes that this would slow down the inexorable suit of armour before shouting, “Denzel! What the hell!? I thought this guy was just a tank! Even these conjured suits of armour are ridiculously strong!”

Jerald smirked at the man’s panicked words, “Well ‘captain’ you going to answer that?” he asked a crushing blow from his mace sending spikes of pain lancing up Denzel’s shield arm.

Denzel’s strong façade faded briefly, he knew what his opponent was referring to. Even these guards had spent their lives in and around Farholt, so they didn’t know what Denzel who had spent a lot of time travelling around the kingdom as a soldier had heard about Jerald.

Jerald’s true nature wasn’t that of his party’s tank, he had simply chosen to become that since his skills would allow him to protect people far easier than the rest of his team. If he was only a tank then the Adventurers Guild would’ve given him a different name that that of The Phantom Warlord, they would’ve given him a more fitting name. Denzel had heard how Jerald had gotten his title, while the rest of his party had been protecting a certain important individual Jerald had waited alone while a platoon of Imperial Soldiers had charged towards him, his constructs prevented them from chasing after his friends while Jerald wreaked havoc in their ranks, conjured spears taking out the Imperial back-liners while Jerald had pummelled the others into submission. There had been a few survivors of this incident but none of them had made it back to the empire having found themselves trapped in the same unmoving suits of armour that Jerald was using to capture the guards now. When these unlucky soldiers had been forcibly marched back to the capital in these suits of armour it quickly became clear that though they had survived the experience their minds had been well and truly broken by what had happened to their comrades.

The ice mage’s face paled further when the construct wasn’t even slowed down by the first wall of ice, simply walking through it as though it wasn’t even there, the man was really starting to regret his decision to follow Denzel after the events that had occurred back in Farholt.

Just then his only remaining comrade crashed into him having been thrown by the construct that he had been fighting, which had a large number of arrows sticking out of the gaps between the armour pieces that it was made of causing the mage to shriek in shock, unfortunately for the archer the construct that he had been fighting hadn’t quite held back enough and the blow that had finished him had caved his chest in causing the man to spew copious amounts of blood over his ally before expiring.

“I surrender!” screamed the terrified mage throwing down his crystal-tipped staff.

Jerald glanced briefly at the trembling man, he regretted accidentally killing the man’s comrade and gratefully accepted his surrender instructing the construct to trap the man within its cold interior.

“So, you’re all alone now Denzel, what do you say? Want to surrender?” taunted Jerald who knew full well that Denzel’s massive ego would never allow him to do so.

Denzel screamed in wordless rage, his once pristine armour now covered in dents and mud, glaring at his still grinning enemy with maddened, bloodshot eyes. Brandishing his sword streamers of flame quickly covered its blade causing a blast of flame to hurtle towards Jerald who shouted an oath as he deflected it aside with his shield.

“Are you insane!?” he roared. “You can’t use that sort of magic here, you’ll set the whole forest on fire!”

Denzel paused and stared at him with maddened eyes a large grin making its way across his face more fire appearing around him as he prepared a new spell, one that would set the entire forest ablaze and take Jerald and the others down with him.

“Oh shit,” cursed Jerald who was just realising how far the man had fallen.

Digby was in the middle of his own fight with Ernst and he was starting to worry that it wasn’t just Denzel who was becoming unhinged as he deflected a massive lightning bolt with a hastily raised wall of earth.

Ernst snarled at Digby, foam leaking from the corners of his mouth as he slashed at the other companion’s tough hide with his dagger-like claws, before spewing another lightning bolt that seared Digby’s flesh as it passed smashing into a nearby tree and setting it on fire.

Digby cringed at both the pain in his side and the smell of his own burning fur as he backed away sending several large shards of rock hurtling at his agile opponent who took to the sky, “Oi! You lot!” he shouted at the remaining Soul Companions, the dead man’s one having disappeared with the death of its partner. “If you don’t want your partners to die I suggest that you do something before that fire begins to spread while I deal with Fluffy here!”

The companions glanced at each other, they had surrendered when their partners had either been taken out or surrendered to Jerald, one of the companions which was shaped like a very large rabbit shook its head, “Sorry but I don’t really have any way to help with that, but if you let me go talk with my master I may be able to convince him to help with his ice magic.”

Another stepped forward, this one was shaped like a brown dog with three eyes, “I’ll start by sucking the air away from the fire then,” he growled with a nod.

“Do what you want, but just remember that your partners are currently trapped in magical suits of armour that are completely under Jerald’s control, you do not want to see what he will do to them if you make the wrong move,” Digby warned them as he smashed Ernst out of the air as he swooped down at him breaking one of his fragile wings.

The companions flinched as they remembered the look of horror on their friends’ face as his partner was killed that changed to a rictus of pain as the companion had faded out of existence.

“Right,” replied the dog weakly before running over to one of the burning trees and inhaling powerfully creating a suction force that soon had the fire out and rushing to the next one.

The rabbit’s whiskers twitched as it watched the dog start putting out fires before glancing warily at Digby who finally had Ernst on the ropes now that his mobility advantage was all but gone before hopping over to the suit of armour that his partner was imprisoned in.

Meanwhile Jerald was chasing after Denzel as the crazed man sent blasts of fire at anything nearby that looked like it would burn, cursing as he did so.

“Godsdammit Denzel! You’ve really lost it haven’t you!” Jerald shouted as he ducked under another blast of flame that barely passed over his head and struck a tree causing burning branches to fly through the air spreading the flames even further. If he really wanted to he could end this with a single lethal blow but he had promised to bring Denzel back alive so that he could be punished properly for his crimes meaning that he wasn’t really able to use his more powerful Skills to defeat the mad man that Denzel had become.

Jerald noticed that some of the guards’ companions were trying to do something about the fires that were threatening to engulf them and hoped that Digby knew what he was doing, he really didn’t want to use his Iron Maiden Skill on the captives. Iron Maiden was a Skill that created spikes inside the suits of armour impaling anyone unlucky enough to be inside, Jerald hated using it, but it was better to have a Skill like that and not need it than to need it and not have it as he had learned on bounty hunting missions in the past.

Denzel noticed Jerald’s sudden loss of focus and sent a lance of flame hurtling towards the man which slammed into Jerald’s armour causing him to stumble and Denzel leapt on him in a flash swinging his sword down at Jerald’s face.

Jerald instinctively summoned a shield above his head that appeared just in time causing the sword to rebound off it with a loud clang, kicking out he felt his foot impact against something hard and was rewarded with a coughing sound as the wind was knocked from Denzel’s lungs.

Jerald flipped to his feet in an impressive display of agility for a man in full plate mail using the momentum provided by the movement to swing his mace down with punishing force on Denzel’s shoulder causing the other man to shout in pain as his armour finally gave way leaving his left arm dangling limply at his side as his heavy shield dragged it downwards.

Denzel glared hatefully up at Jerald as the other man pulled back his mace conjuring a large number of maces which all combined creating a superimposed image over the one in his hand. This was a combination of his Mace Fighting Skill and Conjuring magic that allowed him to deliver the power of over a hundred mace blows with a single swing, the aptly named Hundred Strikes in One.

But Jerald’s target wasn’t his downed and seemingly defeated enemy but a particularly large blaze behind him. Swinging the massive weapon down Jerald created a shockwave that blasted the trees to splinters, putting out the blaze but spreading embers over a large area.

Luckily when it came to fires as far as the dogs suction power was concerned smaller was better, as the dog wasn’t actually inhaling the air when he was putting out the larger fires but using a form of spatial magic similar to the Inventory Skill that all Companions shared meaning that if they were small enough he could simply inhale the embers altogether which was exactly what he did causing the other companions to breath a sigh of relief.

Denzel’s face twisted even further when Jerald’s attack failed to finish him off, in his now thoroughly diseased mind this told Denzel that Jerald wasn’t taking him seriously and he struck upwards with his sword attempting disembowel Jerald but stopped when he saw Jerald looking down at him with a sad look in his eye.

“So, this is how far you’ve fallen is it Denzel?” Jerald asked quietly as he looked down at the man who had frozen as he realised that one of Jerald’s constructs was holding a sword to his throat. It had turned out that Jerald hadn’t let his guard down after all.

Denzel’s’ sword fell from his trembling hands as tears began rolling down his face.

“It’s all your fault,” the once proud knight sobbed. “If you and your family hadn’t come here I would still be respected, things wouldn’t have turned out like this!”

The sadness in Jerald’s eyes deepened, “That might be true Denzel,” he admitted. “But we all gave you many chances over the years to try and accept the changes we brought with us and you refused.”

“You wouldn’t even help us fight when lives were in danger,” he continued referring to the night of the Barghest attack.

“They weren’t my problem to deal with!” Denzel shouted angrily. “Those wretched merchants brought them to our gates, expecting us to risk our lives to help them!”

The look of sorrow on Jerald’s face turned to anger at Denzel’s words, “You’re supposed to be the Guard Captain!” he roared. “It doesn’t matter who they are, you’re supposed to help people!”

The surviving guards felt knots form within their chests at Jerald’s words, they knew that he was right, that it was the guards’ job to save people from monsters. That was the main reason that the guards existed. After the collapse of society when the System came thousands had died daily and the groups that once protected the people were among the first to be killed by the hordes of ravaging monsters. It took years for society to recover but eventually those who survived had formed several groups. One was the Adventurers Guild which took on dangerous jobs that normal people couldn’t ranging from killing a group of powerful monsters, to capturing wanted criminals. Another of these groups were simply known as the Guards, the Guards had been formed to replace the law enforcement agencies of old with the surviving members of these groups becoming the founding members as well as provide protection to the various settlements that had sprung up in the years since the System had come, the guards of Farholt were all members of this group which while well-known had never reached the level of fame that the Adventurers Guild had.

Denzel cowered from the rage in Jerald’s words, he didn’t care that Jerald was right, there was no way that his men would have been able to kill all the Barghest without help anyway, the best they could have done was keep them out of Farholt until help arrived but even that would’ve been dangerous. Denzel would never admit it, but he had been grateful when Jerald and the others had defeated the Barghests for them.

Jerald snorted in disgust one last time before snapping his fingers causing the suit of conjured armour that was still holding a sword to Denzel’s throat to encase the man before he could react.

“Finish the clean-up,” he ordered the companions including Digby who was currently holding Ernst in his powerful jaws. “My son’s waiting for us.”