Dust rose. Dust fell. Dust settled. Corpses turned ashen grey sprawled upon the ground. Dispassionate, the beast stood awaiting more fighting, but none came. One was missing. Two lay dead. It stared at their bodies as they faded from sight. Regeneration elsewhere. They would not be foolish enough to return.
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"Hellooooo~?"
"Would you be quiet? There's no one here."
Useless. Sora wove his way through hallways and empty chambers, deceptively reckless in his ways. Like the level above, this one had been cleared of all magic portals. Theoretically, that would mean all the monsters had been taken care of but...
"I know you're around here soooomewheeeeere~!"
"Oh, you're hopeless!" Mimiru grouchily crossed her arms and proceeded to glare sharply at what was supposed to be a wall, but Sora's face suddenly popped up in front of her out of nowhere. Needless to say, Mimiru was more than spooked. She jumped, promptly tripped over her own feet, and fell hard onto her rear in a clatter of armor and sword.
"Ssh!" he hissed, raising a finger before his lips. "You'll wake it up!" The smile he wore did not speak well for the player killer's sanity. The feel of battle held fast to the very walls of the cavern, and it did nothing less than set him into a very good mood. Not to mention the chance to see first hand what the latest rumors had spoken of...
"You're making more noise than I am!" she shouted. Monster or not, she was really starting to get annoyed.
This looked to take him genuinely by surprise. His face reverted to an expression of empty thoughtfulness as he blinked up at the ceiling. "Oh...? Guess you're right."
Mimiru was not amused; quite the opposite of Sora. He shrugged and darted off again, dissapearing down a gloomy hallway (as if any of them were anything other than gloomy) with giggles in his wake. The World had it's loonies, and it wouldn't have surprised her one bit of Sora just happened to reign supreme over the lot of them. Growling, she ambled up to her feet, and began to wander towards a corridor yet to be invaded by her noisy companion. If there was some terrible monster there, it was being awfully quiet...
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Box. Four walls, ceiling, floor. Lit by grim firelight, dominated by a single presence. Blind eyes (mindlessness pervades; maddening) watch the single doorway, the door through which those three had come. Something else approaches.
The one that fled? A dull groan filled the room. Soon.
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Footsteps, rapid and loud, had been the only sound other than his own laughter that had accompanied him through the dungeon. That is until something else had come, and in its departure Sora halted. So something was around... A final doorway stood at the end of a branching hall, framing the faint glow of torchlight. A quick glance behind him revealed that Mimiru had been left behind somewhere. A pity, really; she might've enjoyed taking out some aggrivation on the monster. "First come, first serve," he sang to himself, and slowly he walked forward.
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Mimiru froze. Widened eyes searched all around her, yet nothing could be found. But... she had heard something, right? "Sora...?" No, it couldn't have been him... could it? He had run off somewhere else, leaving her alone...
What nerve that guy had!
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At first glance, it might have been something utterly unremarkable. Such is true of many things: Sora himself, for instance. A foolish looking young man with just an equally foolish (to some) desire to simply enjoy an immensely popular net game. Things are different if you just consider them at face value.
In the center of the room sat a goblin.
Sora blinked a good number of times before he was content that his vision was not playing strange tricks on him. Indeed, the thing he was looking at was... a goblin. A small one. Greenish, too. Within its little goblin hand it carried a little goblin knife, and on its little goblin face it smiled a goblin smile.
A goblin.
"You've got to be kidding," he groaned. "Don't tell me you're the thing that the Blademaster was running from?"
As per request, the goblin said nothing. It did not move, either, except for the occasional twitch here and there - now that was odd, are monsters supposed to do that? Sora squinted a little at the creature. Its shoulders jerked from time to time in an almost painful looking manner. Something was odd about it's skin, too... It almost looked like it was shimmering, though without light. Vague violet shapes danced across its body.
How... interesting.
"You're not just another run-of-the-mill goblin, are you?" he asked the beast, stepping closer. Again, it did little - twitch, twitch! went digital muscle - save glower at the man before it. Dumb beast. (Slave.) Goblins had an annoying habit of being fast runners, always chasing after whoever dared open up their magic portals... This one just stood there. Perhaps because the ones who awoke it had already gone?
In any case, it wouldn't do him much good to dispose of the little beastie. Mimiru might benefit more from the experience, if at all... Such was the trouble with Theta Server: experience gains would only benefit those in the lower half of the level spectrum, and only for a certain amount of levels. "You wait right here," he told the goblin, who seemed completely indifferent to pretty much everything. And then, spinning about upon a heel, he walked back towards the doorway. "Mimiruuuuuuuuu~?"
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A voice, stray syllables bounding her way. Her name mashed somewhat ("Irrrruuuuuu?"), but the voice who spoke it unmistakable: Sora. Did he find something? Mimiru picked up her pace, winding through empty rooms until she came upon a length of hallway, which branched off into many smaller halls each with darkened doors at their ends. All except one, in which she could see the silhouette of the green-haired fool.
"So that's where you are!" she called out to him as she began a slight jog closer. "Did you get the monster?"
"There's not much of a monster to be gotten," he confessed, gesturing rather disdainfully to the room behind him. "I figured you'd be low enough in level to appreciate the EXP so I left it alone."
"Gee, thanks." Behind him something moved, brief flicker of shadow appearing and dissapearing so quickly that it went more or less unnoticed. (Outside, a white moon reached the height of its routine climb and began the long trek back down to the horizon.) When she reached him, she hopped upon her tippy-toes to peer over his shoulders. A rather bland looking room waited, practically indistinguisable from the others with sole exception to it's size. "So where is it?"
"Eh? What do you mean?" Perplexion zipped through his face. He turned slightly, enough to give a good scan of the room. The goblin had abandoned its post in the very center, but a faint glint caught his attention and pulled it down. It stared up at him from right beside his feet. Blank eyes, cold eyes...
Mimiru studied the goblin for a few long, silent moments before she had decided that it had to be a joke. Who would run from such a thing, after all? "Umm... Is this it?"
"Yah-huh," replied Sora. "You want to get it, or should I?"
Sighing, Mimiru unslung her massive sword and held it before her with both hands. Sora backed off accordingly, leaving her with the goblin standing in the doorway. "Guess those guys must have been real newbies, huh?"
Twitch. Its face turned upwards, attracted to the flicker of light off a silver edge. Glimmer of light, flash of hot white that burned sightless eyes. A shiver it could not feel shook its body.
"Must have been," he agreed. He took a place off to Mimiru's side, and contented himself with watching the goblin. Something didn't make sense, or maybe it did? Either someone was excessively weak or someone was excessively strong, and neither added up. How could newbies clear out a dungeon and finally lose to a goblin?
Slowly the blade rose like some hand held guillotine, its weilder much preferring that its victum be cleanly sliced in two rather than simply decapitated. "Here's to the end of our dungeon adventure," Mimiru said, sounding much more enthusiastic than she had intended.
Sora lifted an imaginary glass, tipped an imaginary hat. "Here, here."
Swish. Air - or at least the impression of air (useless) - split around the falling blade, cold metal swooping down to make acquaintance with its skull and its body. At the moment of contact, it did not consider what should have been a searing pain running through all its senses (sensation?). Even when the blade ran its due course, making a neat cut straight down through its middle until it landed with a loud scritchy-squeal of steel upon stone, it stared up. A counter that should have run down to zero did not; a creature that should have died did not.
Faint light shone through the heavy wound, splitting it into two halves by a band of white. Mimiru smiled smugly as she gathered her sword back up, returning it to its place upon her back. "Nothing to it!"
As characters gain levels, they gain status bonuses as well. For Heavy Blades, strength and attack power are qualities that are always on the rise. Naturally, as one grows stronger, the weaker monsters that once plagued them become easy hunting, and slaying such monsters in single hits becomes possible. Such is what, by all means, should have happened. Sora knew this, as did Mimiru, but when the goblin failed to dissapate as monsters normally do when they have been defeated...
Little by little, the light grew darker. Violet rays streamed from the goblin's body, and the markings that washed over it brightened: 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0...
Mimiru began to back away from the creature, and just as she did it groaned a low, hollow groan. Around its body, greenish forms flickered into existance like lights; flat shapes, rectangles, squares, triangles, lit up one by one, encasing the creature like flimsy luminescent armor. The twitching that had been centralized solely in its shoulders grew stronger to the point of glitching out from time to time; its head found itself separate from the rest of its body from time to time, held in place solely by bindings of swirling violet and crimson... nothingness. (Mend.)
Sora smiled a wolfish smile. "Why, hello there..."
"What happened?" Mimiru asked. "Monsters aren't supposed to do that, are they?"
"No, probably not. Looks like we've found a bug." In a single fluid motion, Sora held his katars at the ready and glanced sidelong at Mimiru. "Well, shall we?"
"We," he had said. Mimiru blinked slowly at the player killer... It was well known through tales told on the BBS and by the frantic rantings of the recently respawned that Sora was not one to be easily trusted. Who's to say that after they've finished with this monster that he won't turn on her? I guess that's all part of the adventure, isn't it...?
She returned a smile to him as she brought her sword to bear once more, holding it low infront of her. Its edges sparkled brightly despite the gloom that surrounded them, wrapping the caves in murky gray shades, and found itself aimed towards the distorted face of the goblin.
"Let's go!"