Crushing through the village Makron, dust clouds kick as Sayooshi battles out with the rest of the bandits inside the village.

Bashing of shields and shouting fill the air. The villagers all hide in their homes.

Krafty uses his ‘fire missile’ ability to empower his arrows with flames that hit and burn the enemy, dealing damage over time.

Niki makes sure to heal Sayooshi constantly as he gets hit back by axe slashes and charges from new combatants.

Remixhorizon spots the chief bandit in the village, he is surrounded by goons. She throws a smoke bomb to catch their attention, she throws rope at them which they eventually cut through. As expected! They focus their efforts to catch the sprinting and jumping ninja.

Then an unexpected explosion occurs in the center of the village, blowing some low HP bandit mobs out of the way, causing them to lose the last remain slivers of health they had and die.

The NPC bandit chief notices the actions of a new player who entered the battle scene. It seems that the bandit chief was an advanced AI who was in a battle-dialogue conversation with this new player. A Himenian man covered from neck to toe with ebony armor, wielding a classic sword and shield combo. However, his sword is flaming with fire.

He shouts into his mic through local voice chat “You shits ruined my quest!”

“Eh, who are you dude?” Sayooshi asked out loud as he was macroing his abilities while facing three bandit with shields.

“I’m from the freakin Knights of the Rising Phoenix, that’s who NERD!”

Me a nerd? Maybe, but, bro you almost certainly are as well!

“I don’t see how we’re bothering your quest!” Remixhorizon shouts from the other side

“I spent day and night farming reputation with these NPCs… and you guys just needed to randomly show up and drag all these guys into the fight… I need the chief alive!”

“But it’s too late, we’re going to finish this fight.” Sayooshi said resolutely

“Plus, there was no way we could’ve started a conversation with them, they were automatically hostile” Remixhorizon added

“Ahahaha… shut up. SHUT UP. You think I’m stupid or what? Bullsh*t they were auto hostile, you started the freaking the fight or whatever”

“There’s on way, I wasn’t alerted by a “Are you sure you want to fight this neutral character” message thingy” Krafty said from far away

Meanwhile, Niki disappeared somewhere yet nobody noticed

“I said SHUT UP. There’s not point… I’m gonna have to kill you guys to end this event. So just stand there nicely so I can cut you all down!”

The ebony knight Player character from the Rising Pheoenix guild bashed his sword on his shield. This alerted and gathered every single bandit in the area, including the village chief. They formed a circle around him. Somehow, this Player became something like a mini-raid boss.

By now Sayooshi, Krafty, and Remixhorizon were aware that Niki wasn’t anywhere to be found. She was still in their party, but wasn’t responding to their Party voice chat messages. Anyways, they had no time because there were now engaged in world pvp. And certainly none of them wanted to bother with respawning and meeting up again at this place, so now the fight became even more serious.

“What’s your name guy?”

“DukeDerek, tell me yours too”

“Sayooshi”

“You may call me Krafty, tis a shame, but you are our enemy now!” Krafty added while trying out his new roleplaying voice, high up sounding and confident, unlike his usual character

Jeez Krafty

“Hah, f**kin hell, looks like you’d fit in my guild… Ahem, Because you foul and selfish people interrupt the official business of the Knights of the Rising Pheonix, I’m gonna… FREAKING KILL YOU!”

DukeDerek instantly charges past his group of bandits and skips past Sayooshi, before Sayooshi could react. Aiming straight at Krafty, landing a smacking blow. Krafty’s character get’s knocked away, his fat body bounces a little before finding himself stunned for a few seconds. Relentlessly DukeDerek continues following Krafty and continues auto striking him.

“That guy is using tab targeting to fight! He probably isn’t playing in VR either!” Remixhorizon cried out a helpful tip while she was dealing with half of the bandit forces aiming to kill her.

Tab targeting isn’t the best combat method in Divine Mortality because it lacks the flexibility, reach, and dynamic abilities that Players who use virtual reality controllers or action combat mechanics to fight. However, in this case, DukeDerek is also uses a mouse and keyboard like RemixHorizon. A traditional PC player, he is very efficient with micromanaging his actions, which makes up for his blind spots. With a static PC monitor to look at, the it’s easier to play with the limited third person perspective, unlike VR headset Players who almost always play with the first person perspective.

Yet, in this case, DukeDerek is able to see just beyond his shoulder as Sayooshi charges at him with his lance. Before the lance reaches the ebony knight’s body, Derekduke backs off away from striking as Krafty.

Sayooshi and DukeDerek fight it out in close combat, which is not preferable for Sayooshi since he’s better off in a medium ranged position. And DukeDerek was a higher level than Sayooshi’s character, so a one versus one fight was obviously going to be an eventual loss for Sayooshi.

In the Party voice chat Sayooshi tells Krafty to not bother helping him just yet, instead secure a higher ground and a better position. Heal himself, and quickly help Remixhorizon deal with the bandit NPCs. And if possible, defeat the bandit chief. Sayooshi promises to be able to hold this guy off for long enough. Krafty was about to disagree but realized this was a better plan.

Chaos reigns in the village. The flames from the ebony knight extend as he uses a Spell ability to bolster his Weapons art ability. Now, when Sayooshi tries to roll back and poke DukeDerek with the end of his lance, it fails to be advantageous since a flaming sword is constantly grazing Sayooshi and lowering his HP. Unlike before, Niki was still nowhere to be found, she wasn’t healing him anymore and Remixhorizon and Krafty also confirmed they didn’t see any sign of her.

Sayooshi was beginning to lose faith and trust in Niki. Maybe she needed to go to the bathroom, or more likely, she betrayed the team? She was a suspicious person after all, who randomly decided to join the slightly tight-knit friend group.

Sayooshi was now playing defensive, barley able to perry and deal damage back to the quick button pressing DukeDerek. It was a matter of time before Sayooshi was going to die or his friends will finish dealing with the bandits and come to his rescue.

The entire battle was loud in ingame sound effects, the clashing of weapons or the bursts of fire or the sounds of Remixhorizon’s shuriken’s landing into the enemy’s flesh. But everyone was too busy to speak out loud in chat, they were focused on the game.

When Sayooshi temporarily stunned DukeDerek, he tried to make a run for it closer to Remixhorizon in the center, and Krafty who was on a rooftop of a village house. But DukeDerek once again used his charge ability, tackling Sayooshi with a shield like how Krafty bounced away a couple minutes ago. Sayooshi fell down on the ground and was facing up as DukeDerek pointed his sword downwards and began thrusting it towards Sayooshi’s vision. Seeing his vision muddied by repeated incoming stabbing motions, Sayooshi was legitimately shaky and nervous, trying to get out of the situation. Adrenaline rush also muddied Sayooshi’s gameplay, he was beginning to mash abilities. But it was too no avail be DukeDerek carefully pinned Sayooshi down like hunted prey.

Sayooshi felt embarrassed but he needed to cry out for immediate help. Remixhorizon and Krafty wanted to respond but they were inconveniently stuck with either incoming attacks or with the wrong choice of trying to finish a low-HP enemy before moving to help Sayooshi. Problem was, Sayooshi asked for help far too late. His two pals just couldn’t act quick enough.

What should have been a definite defeat for Sayooshi, ended miraculously as Niki suddenly appeared behind DukeDerek. A few more stabs in, and Sayooshi would’ve died. But instead, the cleric-bard had her character smiling as she dealt EXTREME critical damage bonus due to landing a sneak attack AND because she aimed her wand’s missile damage to DukeDerek’s back of the head.

DukeDerek immediately jumped away as he saw his Health Points lower significantly from above average to almost depleted. He realized too late that there was a fourth Party member.

He screamed into the mic “This is dumb! You guys ruined my hard-earned quest… I was just about to finish it!!!”

“My my my… care to tell us about this quest of yours?” Niki said calmly

Eager to release his rage, DukeDerek started talking without thinking “The last thing I needed to do was escort the chief to Kurejar so the nobility faction rewards my guild so we could get mor-“

DukeDerek realized he said too much unnecessary stuff, so he immediately went silent

But Niki, as a high level Player and an addict to the game knows what he was going to finish saying.

“So your guild could get more guildhalls around the server?”

“… Yeah basically…DAMMIT. Just get it over with!”

“I thought you’d never ask!” Niki chuckled as she dealt the final blow to DukeDerek. His character’s body was killed, and soon it relaxed. The divine spirit (soul of a Player in the game) floated up into the sky, while the body slowly turned into a skeleton. As the character model turned into a skeleton, it also began to gradually become transparent along with his equipment on. Before long, it would vanish into dust.

Since Niki killed another Player in open world PVP, it meant a random item or piece of equipment from DukeDerek’s inventory was dropped. Niki’s character model reached down and picked up a small percentage of his money and a banner. She then equipped the banner on her left hand, it was the banner of his guild. The Knights of the Rising Phoenix, aptly named because their guild’s banner was crimson red with an orange phoenix flying high.

Even though this was a game, Sayooshi felt his adrenaline rush slow down.

“Thanks for saving me Niki… but where did you go?”

“I purposefully hid and waited”

“Seriously!?”

“You won’t believe how much you can get away with mind-games in a game like this… teehee” Niki casually said something scary

“I’m glad you’re on our side then… aha”

“I’m glad that you are glad that I’m on your side!” Niki immediately latched back onto Sayooshi’s arms. He of course couldn’t feel it yet seeing it in virtual reality (or even on a computer monitor) was still beyond embarrassing. And it didn’t help that Krafty and Remixhorizon were listening in and staring from the distance.

“Stop flirting you two! Come over here instead” Krafty chuckled while Remixhorizon remained silently brewing.

Oh god, who the hell is this lady… how can you even act like this without feeling super awkward??

The battle was over. The bandits and the bandit chief were dead. They looted their bodies, mostly gold but also more letters that they chose to read a little later.

“You know, one of my best friends in this game would be saying some super philosophical stuff right now…” Krafty said something out of the blue as the party explored the village before talking to the villagers

“Oh? Like what!” Niki asked curiously, hard to tell whether it was genuine or not

“Are you talking about May?” Remixhorizon asked, since Krafty mentioned her ‘old sister’ type friend earlier before

“No no no. She doesn’t care too much about that stuff… I mean she would if it was true, but she is a skeptical type person. Anyways, my friend would say something mournful about how dangerously weird it is to be killing these mobs. Even though it’s clearly a game, he believes it can get blurry sometimes. Something about how ‘even if they are 100% AI, they are still programmed with emotions’ and so on. And then he sometimes turns around and says “oh but don’t worry about it Krafty, I’m also pretty sure it’s just a game. Only crazy people don’t think so.” But then I’m like… IT’S KINDA HARD TO SLEEP AFTER YOU AND ME GO KILLING MOBS… and then he turns around again (180 degrees!) and says “Yeah it is, because even though we generally kill evil mobs, it’s too cruel to justify it just because they are evil” … basically he goes on and on about lore in the game and the “deep” aspects of a game… ugh I like the guy but I feel like he’s too obsessed with this ‘overworld’.”

I didn’t know Krafty could ramble like this too… not that I hate it, it’s pretty funny hehe

“Sounds like your friend might need some help…” Remixhorizon gently said

“Hmm… yeah maybe. But y’know, don’t get the wrong idea. He’s actually not too bad when he goes all philosophical because his enthusiasm is sometimes contagious, in a good way. Yknow?”

“If you say so. Though, you always seem charismatic to me Krafty” Remixhorizon said in an audible smile

Hey hey hey, his friend sounds a bit like me… apparently this guy also goes philosophical on people, but… somehow actually charismatic too?!?