The Lone Ninja
Intro
Disclaimer: I do not own Maple Story nor any other copyrighted items or names.
Rated Teen (as far as I know)
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Thud "another golem down," I thought. A stupid eyeball had not remembered the fact that I had my soft-looking Ice Queen Set equipped and it earned a bruise on its head, but was soon relieved of its pain after it was cut in half barely a second later. I went through some portals killing other golems just as easily and headed to Sleepy-wood to refill my dangerously low potions. I sat just outside the entrance of the dungeon around where Luke the sleepy Security Guy was standing, and decided to make camp for today. After making a fire with the wood from wood monsters called "Stumps", I sat down on my "relaxer" to cook dinner. As I eating warm bacon, I saw a dark blob coming this way. I immediately stood up and faced it, looking around to see if there were anything else around, but the plains where empty.
I yelled, "Are you a friend or a foe?" hearing nothing I stood more ready than ever, thinking about what that shadowed creature was. Suddenly it dropped to the ground, so I ran right at it with strides that could help me defend myself if it was dangerous. Once I got close, the blob was a sword warrior carrying an unconscious sin. It took an easy 15 mins to drag them both back to camp. I took off the sleeping bag pack from the top of their backpacks, unzipped them, set them both in their respected insulated sleeping bags, and re-zipped them to keep the two warm. Weird thing was, they were wearing some mixed 3rd job equipment. "I was lucky to find them around a no-monster zone" I thought before I retired to my own sleeping bag.
I fell into a dark hole in my conscious "Oh no…" I thought, "A nightmare!" I quickly tried to keep flexing and releasing my fingers to make sure I don't fall in all the way. I began to try to sit up so I can fully escape this new nightmare's grasp. "Darn, I'm too tired." I realized as I was pulled completely under a dark empty area in my mind.
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In Dream
I looked around, but there was nothing I could recognize at that moment. I turned right at the corner and saw blood, red human blood with bodies lying on the open road, a familiar road with Henesys cobblestones. I looked up and saw a big frightening monster at the end of the road. It had blood red eyes filled with blood-lust, a body of a gigantic skeleton's, and skeletal claws like a dead barlog's (which I had seen in the sanctuary after a party killed one). On its head sat the helmet and mask of a crimson barlog with added features to make it look more brutal, but in one bony claw it held a weird and old looking staff with a red orb at the end.
I was unable to move nor look away from the thing that was going to pop up everywhere and scare the living daylights out of me during the nights of the next few days. It said, "Join my army of soldiers and help me take over the world with the extreme amount of power I am willing grant you." I sputtered, "Who-what are you?"
It answered, "I am the chief of all barlogs and I have been reawakened from my slumber of 1000 years by some of my subjects who hungered for more power. You may call me… Death."
I stood stock still not knowing what to think, what to know, what to say. He looked down at me and barely said, "I'll give you some time, mortal, to think about joining me, but I will need to…" It grabbed me like a rag doll and drew a claw on my left forearm. I screamed from the ripping pain as if he took a ragged dagger and savagely sliced my arm. It gently laid me down onto the bloody road and flew away, but I didn't feel any wind from the flight of a gigantic beast.
End Dream
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I sat up as quickly as possible, I even pinched myself to see if I was still sleeping or not, but somehow my left arm didn't respond. "I probably slept on it or trained for too long yesterday." I thought, so I waited and looked at the sky. The sky was beginning to light up signaling that it was dawn soon, so I got out of my sleeping bag carefully to not wake up the couple.
I tried again to move my left arm, but it screamed its agony so I grabbed it with my right to look at it. There was a HUGE black scar on it. It seemed to start to close up on its' own and a weird bruise started to create a shape in the middle of it. I didn't want anyone to worry so I wrapped thin strips of leather around it to help it heal, and I even slipped on my thin sweater so its' not an obvious bandaged wound. I carefully tried to use it again, and it worked just as easily as the day before. I started the morning fire to cook breakfast and packed up most of the other stuff. During the small amount of time, I created some fast plans.
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"No… NO!!" The Warrior from last night yelled, and he sat up immediately looking around nervous with beads of sweat covering him. He spun around and saw the sin and hugged her. The sin, seeming to regain consciousness, groaned and woke up. I really disliked giving explanations so I left the fire going with some extra breakfast kept warmed by the fire. I used Dark Sight to get away in case they asked me what happened. The Warrior looked surprised, and asked the Sin if he saw that face that vanished. She had just opened her eyes after he asked, so I was relieved. I immediately started for Henesys to talk to Athena about the dream.
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Later on that day…
"You seem troubled, what do you wish to ask, Ninja?" I used the codename 'Ninja' to avoid people tracking me down. I explained to her about the nightmare and what my left arm was like. So she just said, "Wait here." She came back with an old leather book. She told me a brief plan and we went outside as two cloaked figures. She called to two little birds and attached a small silver band on each, and they took off as soon as she lifted her fingers higher. Athena chanted some words and summoned a big golden bird known as, "Golden Eagle." We rode on the enormous eagle to Grendal.
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The flight was awkwardly serious and boring other than the drops and climbs which I thought I might've fallen off (think about a really scary roller coaster without railings or straps to hold on to). We dove right into a mass of green leaves that were treetops, but there was not any impact. Athena explained through big complicated words and formulas summarizing the fact: some trees where images to everyone who has not passed 4th job yet and most of have passed 4th job could not see the natural energy anyways.
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Re-edited in February 2008 and June 2008, I somehow skipped over the re-editing of this chapter…
People can't take things from INSIDE others' backpacks which everyone had received at the beginning of their careers as a "Beginner". The small packs, that people can strap on, have the same concept, because of some sort of spell that were enchanted by the past and present Mage Leader, Grendal the Really Old.