Failariél stood up. Everything was still a mess inside her head. She was surrounded by weird looking shadows, which embraced the heaven. A bright light full of warmth and brightness.

Her head hurt badly. She didn’t know here she were or what she was doing around here. At first she didn’t even know who she was but after solving the puzzle inside her head she knew her name at least. But still not where she was.

Wherever she was, she knew something bad happened. One hand held her head and the other pushed the ground so that she could stand up. The first try didn’t work out as she thought and she fell. She hit her head against a shadow and everything went black again.

The next time she woke up it was already dark. The bright light wasn’t there behind the shadows anymore. The ground had to be soft or at least the thing on which she was laying. She turned on her back and tried to think. She had a big bruise at her forehead. She ran her hand over it.

Slowly the shadows began to form to big black trees and she saw that the ground was covered with moss. She wanted to check which time it was but saw that she had dozen mails. Where I knocked out that long? Only then did she saw that days had passed. Days? At least one week.

She panicked. She wanted to log out instantly but to her surprise the button wasn’t where it was. She tried it by voice but nothing happened. What’s wrong? She didn’t know the answer.

She didn’t remember the names from the people who sent her the mails. She deleted them and stamped them as trash.

She stood up or at least that was what she attempted to do.

His legs trembled under her weight. She hadn’t eaten for days, neither had she drunk anything. Her status bars were inside the red zone. She didn’t know how she had survived until now but if she wanted to live she had to eat something fast.

She grabbed inside her backpack but her hand found nothing. Where was my backpack? She looked around. Where is my backpack!

She began to panic. She screamed out for help. After no one aided to her help she slowly lowered her voice. She focused. But nothing came to her mind. The panic attack consumed almost the last bits of her energy and she didn’t had much power left.

No food was around and she didn’t find any water. She began to walk down the forest slowly.

---------

The sword sliced the air from left to right. You could hear the katana penetrating the air. THe scarecrow cracked loudly after each hit. The owner of the katana made critical hits with each slash.

“That is the way you do it.” The fully concentrated instructor said to him. He whirled around wildly at first glance but if you watched carefully you could see that he had an exact order of movement. I saw the rhythm even though I didn’t watch my master. My thoughts were elsewhere. Failarièl hadn’t answered on my calls for the last week, albeit she was online.

“Do you understand Jawal? You have to concentrate on your attacks and watch the movements of your enemies to anticipate his next attack. If you see the attack coming you can counter it, and counters give additional damage and a critical hit. It’s exaggerating but you people from the other continent seem to be bad at this calculations which is why most of you die against stronger enemies or unknown foes.” He stopped his attacks and spoke with me. “Are you even listening?”

“Yeah, yeah I am. But why repeat everything you want to teach me so often? you know that i can do it. You even saw me do it.” My thoughts wandered to the present again. “Should I show it to you?” He wasn’t going on my nerves but my tone could have hinted that I had other things to take care of right now.

He grunted.

“If you are so strong as you think why don’t we go deeper? My training cellar is big. Even monsters roam at lower levels. Strong monsters!”

That was my chance to prove that I am ready to go to the next stage. We trained already for almost one week. The second stage was almost completed but the instructor didn’t saw me fit to proceed to the next stage at my current level. I went through many ordeals to get here but he just doesn’t understand that I am ready. Well, I don’t know what awaits me in the third stage but still. I want to pass.

“Then why don’t go down? I want to train against real monsters. I was caged inside this huge town all the time and all I wanted was to explore the vast world, encounter exotic animals and make an adventure for my own.” he looked suspicious at first and spied me carefully. He looked into my eyes deeply. Maybe he saw something different. He asked me this questions for a felt hundred times but he always said that it was not time to go deeper.

Maybe the sparkle in my eyes changed his expression. Maybe it was the quest which allowed him to go down at the 7th day. Maybe it was something else. But one of these maybes changed my life entirely.

“Excellent. Follow me.” As he said something weird flashed through my mind. where was the staircase. We still trained inside the huge hall. But I have never seen another staircase which lead down. Still I followed him.

“By the way where are we going down. I never saw another way down.”

He turned his head around but kept his pace.

“Ah, you finally noticed that as well. You will see soon. The place where we are going is secret. You will be the first outsider to enter it.”

“Outsider?” I was suspicious. Outsider of what? Of a certain guild? A faction? A group of monster killing huge barbarians who stay the entire day in a training center, do nothing and are still so powerful?

----------------

“Hey, you still alive?” She heard a man speak with a soft voice. He poked her. “If you are make a sound.”

“Ahuuh.”

The man stood up.

“Guys come over here. You have to see this. I found a survivor. And it seems she’s a player. At least her equipment looks that way.”

She heard footsteps. Her vision was still only a small line. She didn’t know where she were. She had walked down the forest but from some point on her memories are missing. From the earlier conversation she put together that she had been caught in an attack? There must have been other people as well.

“Over here.” He said to his friends. And while he said that he held over a water bottle.

“Here, drink something.” He heaved her up and lay her down against a tree. “You okay?”

She tried to lift my finger to point at the bottle. But she couldn’t move, let alone make a sound.

But somehow he understood her gesture and filled her mouth with water. Gulping was hard but she tried at least. Water ran down her chin and soaked her clothes.

“Yeah, drink as much as you like. Just get up fast.” She let her some time for herself to gather her thoughts again. The bottle emptied quickly.

The man spoke during that time with his friends.

“So, what are we going to do with her?” One of them questioned the others..

“Markus, you have to decide. You found her, you have to care for her.” The third man said. But the fourth man knew the answer for the moment at least.

“Let’s speak with her first.”

They came over to her.

“Better?” She could look better than before and saw that he had black hair. His armor was blue and heavy plate mail. It shone like a sapphire. He looked strong. He held his helmet with his left hand and held out his right hand to her.

She grabbed it and let herself be pulled up by him. Her legs shaked terribly but somehow she managed to stand.

“So, I am Markus.”

“Failariél. Thanks for helping me.” She really was grateful.

“Ah, about that. You don’t have to thank me. It’s standard for the Sapphire brigade to help people in need. Do you know what happened here?” He spoke slow and loudly as if she was still not hearing right. But she liked the tone of his voice so she didn’t say anything about it.

“Sorry, but I don’t know anything.” She looked around for the first time. The scene was cruel. Body parts lay around and blood was everywhere. Entrails hang from branches and the once beautiful carriage was demolished, which add to the carnage just perfectly. Shock flashed in my eyes. The two horses which had pulled the carriage lay in front of it. Stomachs blown up and contains spilled. Or were they blown up? It looked more like they were eaten.

She gasped. She trembled. What had happened here?

She threw up. The accumulated stress and this scene were just too much for her.

The man patted her on the back.

“It seems you really don’t know anything. Well, to keep you on the newest level, we are bounty hunters and are hunting the group which has done this. We don’t have any information regarding them, even though we are hunting them for a long time already. The track lead us through the entire continent.”

“I don’t have many memories left. I only know that I woke up inside some strange forest where I couldn’t send any mails or logout. Additionally I haven’t eaten for days, neither did I log out.”

As she said that she remembered that she had to log out fast. She opened her options screen and scrolled down. But to her surprise the button was still missing.

The guys wondered what she was doing.

Markus spoke up.

“What’s wrong?”

“The button is still not there.” She checked again. But to her misery the field where the button had to be was still blank.

“Maybe it’s an error? “ Markus said skeptically.

“Can we help you in some way?” One of the other men said. It was the second man from before. She saw that all of them wore the same kind of armor as Markus. The only difference were their faces, their weapons and their races. Markus was a human who wielded a greatsword.

The second man who just spoke was an orc with two shining tuskars, a battlehammer on his back and the other ones were elves. Twins. Both of them wore two honed short swords and one big oakheart bow. Feathers could be seen over the light blue armor. most likely from their arrows.

“Markus, we don’t have time for this. We found a fresh hint here and we have to track it.” One of the twins mentioned. But the other twin didn’t agree.

“Have you seen any tracks leading away from here? I haven’t. It’s just like all the times before. the only clue we have is that woman over there.” It was the same man who spoke intelligent as before.

“Your right. I haven’t seen any footprints leading away, neither are branches cracked or anything.” Markus agreed with him.

Now all eyes were fixed on her.

“So, what do we do with her.”

“We move on and take her with us for now. She can’t look out and she has lost her memories, I think it’s the best choice we have. For her as well.” Markus said.

“Ah, and before we forget. The twins are Gloerdel and Gloardel. The orc is named Karthos, but we mostly call him “The Bull” or just bull.”

It seemed they followed their leaders order without complain. Failariél didn’t have anything against it so she accepted the offer.

“Nice to make an acquaintance with you.”

“Same here.”

The group moved on. A new member in their ranks.

------------

As I reached the lower level, I absolved the second stage and earned the rewards for it.

By absolving the second stage you showed

courage and proved your power of endurance.

Endurance and Stamina + 5

Agility + 10

New skill mastery: Sword Mastery

Sword mastery affects your ability to use swords efficiently.

The higher the skill level, the easier it will become to perform powerful and elaborate techniques.

Level 1: Attack Power +5%

New skill mastery: Long Sword Mastery

Long Sword Mastery affects your ability to wield longer swords than usual.

The higher the skill level, the easier it will become to wield them freely and

to use stronger attacks.

Level 1: Attack Speed +5%

Attack Power +5%

I was eager to improve my skills even more and started to hasten up. I couldn’t await what was beyond the huge door in front of me. Behind the stairs was nothing but darkness. To the left and to the right were the dusty but mighty stone walls and a huge metal door blocked the way to the training room.

“Are you ready to embrace the darkness? From now on you can’t back out!” The master was excited as much as I was. You could the fire in his eyes burning.

“Yeah, I am ready. I waited for this moment the entire time!”