Ashes of the Fallen

"Ah you get it, yeah?" the archer said, laughing nervously.

Of course, it was all a lie.

I could see him grasping for an arrow but he had run empty.

He had shot all of his arrows during the two fights and didn't have any time to collect them since he was too busy running his mouth, now he was unarmed and helpless. Now, he wanted to buy time, maybe even lie his way out of the situation. He didn't apologize, of course, it was "just a joke."

Drawing my bow, I released a shot into his shoulder.

"AHH WHAT THE FUCK MAN!" he screamed at me.

His face told me all I needed to know; he wasn't used to pain.

I drew the string back once more, lining up my elbow and bringing my right thumb near my face. Aiming at his ribs, I inhaled and as my chest rose, I let the sinew-string slip off my finger-tips as a thwack could be heard.

A thud followed, as the man in front of me cried out and screamed profanities at me once more. The arrow lodged solidly in his ribs, and he was now grasping both spots as he hesitated to move. He was panicking, but he couldn't go anywhere.

I let another arrow fly, this time into his thigh.

He collapsed to the ground, writhing and screaming bloody murder.

Now, he tried to crawl away from me.

So, I put an arrow into his back as he yelped once more.

Well, he had hit me with his arrows, five times, in the same spots. The only thing left was the neck, which would be the finishing blow. I had no reason to go easy on the guy, but I figured I had tortured him enough. I wasn't even sure if we were allowed to do this in the game, it was possible I could be reported for slowly inflicting pain on a player.

Of course, there were pain settings though.

Mine were at the maximum allowable pain-threshold, since it was tied into the Ultra-Realism program. He probably had his somewhere around the middle, in order to brag that he was tough. It didn't really matter though, even at the lowest pain setting, it still hurt to get shot and stabbed. The whole point was to represent a virtual reality anyhow, a pain free game wouldn't make much sense.

The developers wanted people to experience reality.

Most people were somewhat oblivious to the extremes of the world, anyhow.

I nocked my final arrow and steadily drew the bow back, then released with an elegance befitting an archer. As I watched the arrow sail through the ash filled air and straight through the man's neck, a pleasure washed over me, both from the satisfaction of a well-placed arrow and the knowledge that the fight was over.

A clean hit, and the man was now in a critical state with only seven-percent of his health remaining. He would bleed out in fourteen seconds unless he was healed to over twenty-percent. There were no heals here though.

I walked over to the man and crouched down beside him, whispering to him.

"You might want to practice your archery before joining another group. Also, if I ever see you or your buddies in the North, I will kill you without a moment's hesitation. Consider yourselves lucky, I'm only going to kill you once today."

Having finished saying what I wanted, I stood up as he stared at me with rage-filled eyes. He wanted to say something, but his vocal chords were damaged by the arrow sticking through them as blood poured out of his neck.

"Enjoy the death, punk," I said as he finally died.

Grabbing the coins he dropped, my total loot amounted to nearly three silver plus the drops from the five goblins I basically killed by myself. It wasn't much, but five trash swords added up to at least fifty copper coins.

I wasn't going to argue with free money after all.

Heading out through the dungeon portal, I quickly found myself amongst a crowd of players on the other side, staring at me, eyes filled with intent. And then it clicked, my name was red. I had killed four players in PvP and was branded a player killer.

I was free game right now for all of these players to kill with impunity.

"Eh, quite the crowd today," I muttered to myself as I met the eyes of the players in the crowd. I was free experience and money, to all of these players.

I watched as a few started to grasp at their weapons, preparing to attack me.

It was a dire situation, since there was no way I could take more than a couple people out in the open… not yet, not with such limited skills and weaponry.

Like a standoff between duelists, I matched the gaze of the select few people who were preparing to attack me as the other bystanders stepped back to get out of the way. It was one versus eight in this situation and I was most definitely the prey. No one wanted to make the first move, in case they were somehow cut down which gave me a bit of time to think over a possible strategy. The only thing they knew, was that I came out of a dungeon with a red name alone, without anyone else behind me.

That meant four were potentially dead.

The lack of information played in my favor, since they didn't know how strong I was.