A/N: Poor Howlsword. His own stupidity, sexist arrogance have cost him his life in Warlords Wrath Online. Bet you guys never thought Lightning would do something so devious, huh? And get away with it at that. Not even the anti-criminal system would stop her.
JUNE 16, 2023. FLOOR 21, UNDERGROUND TUNNEL.
I've managed to slip away from being punished or attacked in any way. I have not a single shred of guilt killing Howlsword. He deserves death. What a complete jerk in criticizing us women like that. He's a hundred times then Snow. Nobody's asked or wondered who Howlsword is or where is he. I can't say it's a surprise, he's a total jerk.
The next day, I go on a quest with Leafa. We are to find the quest givers missing brother, in the western dungeon. We both fight against the horde of skeleton warriors and ghouls. Fighting them is hard, even after spending a whole day farming and doing quests, all for better weapons and armor.
I've only gotten new bracers and rings. Only made my stamina and strength slightly higher. But every little bit helps I guess.
"Yeesh. The Undead here is tough...and scary." Leafa says.
"They're pretty damn annoying all right. I think I rather face the Cie'th back in the real world." I say.
"Well, the bright side is that this quest will offer a huge reward." I don't know what the reward is for Leafa, but for me, it's a new chest piece. It May not improve my damage, but can greatly raise my defense. I'll have a better chance at surviving in this undead arc.
"Let's keep going. The sooner we get done, the better." I say.
Leafa and I make our way through this dungeon. It's a single floor, but still crawling with undead. We focus on fighting single instead of groups. If only we have a Crusader or a Dark Knight to hold them off. I'm not going back to using a shield. It certainly interferes with using my sword skills in Gunblade.
In half an hour, we finally reach our destination. All alone in a large room is a man, in rugged clothing and bleeding. "You think that's him?" Leafa asks.
"The quest leads us to here," I say. "Let's find out."
We approach the man. The strangest thing is the closer we get, he shouts at us. "Getaway! Stand back! Please don't come any closer!" It's like he's afraid of us. By the time I realize what's going on, it's too late. The second Leafa approaches, a large sword impales right through the man. Killing him.
The sword is very strange. Just looking at it and my temperature drops dramatically fast. There are strange runes engraved on the blade. And right between the hilt and the sword is a grim skull. Looking at its eyes and I feel chilled like I'm facing fear itself.
"How foolish for brave warriors to fall so easily into my trap."
Leafa and I both lookup. On the ledge on high ground is some man, covered in black leather and plate armor, with a horn black helmet and large blue eyes of magic flame. I focus my sight on the creature to analyze its data. All I get is 'UNKNOWN'. Somehow, I feel like this is the 'Death King' Kirito told us when we arrived on the 21st floor.
"Champions of the light! Your bravery is admirable but futile. You stand upon the blackest land of unholy ground! You will all serve the Scourage in death!"
Like magic, the sword comes to life. It shakes and shoots itself directly at the Death King. The Death King unleashes bolts of purple lightning, it strikes down on the ground. Where the lightning stroke, undead creates raises from the ground. Skeletons. Ghouls. Crypts. Soon enough, we are surrounded by over fifty of these creatures.
"Kill them all! And bring me their corpses!"
The Death King turns into shadowy mists. He vanished.
"There are too many of them!" Leafa says.
"We have to fight. Our lives depend on it!" I say.
In a furry shout, I charge into the large horde of undead and cut them down to sizes.
Even with my Sword Skills and Leafa's magic, fighting the undead here is dangerous. I can't even get a single one into the yellow zone before my HP gets that low. Leafa is not doing too hot either. By the time our HP's become red, the ghouls leap onto us and start devouring our bodies.
It hurts like hell. Like our actual bodies are being eaten. I scream in agony. There's no one around to hear our cries of pain. Our HP's are not dropping. If this is some kind of sub-event, I'm going to be really pissed off. It's one thing to suffer pain from black magic, but being devoured?
As we are suffering, arrows rain down from the skies, killing off most of the ghouls on us and a few of the undead that surrounds us. A small group of archers, elf creatures with pale gray skin and in black hoods, jumps out of the sky. "DEATH TO THE SCOURGE!" The one in the center is in dark pink and purple mail armor with feather and skull shoulder pads and her eyes are glowing bloody red.
These rangers fight off against the undead. Out of nowhere, female ghosts, the Banshee's, fly down. They merge with the undead and those undead turn against the others. They're being possessed.
What's going on? Who or what are these things?
The last of the undead are defeated, by those archers. "That's the last of them." The leaders' voice is distorted.
"Airdash. What about the survivors?" An archer asks her.
"Bring them to our stronghold. They'll make quite use to our battle against the Scourge."
FLOOR 21, GRIMSITE
I want up, my body feeling numb.
I don't really remember what happened. The last thing I remember was Leafa and I were on a quest. Then we were surrounded by countless undead. After that, everything is a blur. Nothing but darkness.
I sit up. Leafa is still knocked out right next to me. I look around. We're still on the 21st floor. But the area we are in is pretty suspicious. The base is nothing like any other bases or towns. Black metal. Spikes and large lightning rods. I feel like I've walked into some grimy laboratory run by a mad scientist.
Leafa now regains consciousness. "Oh...man..." Leafa looks around. "What happened? Where are we?"
"I don't know...I remember we were fighting off the undead...then nothing." I say.
Leafa stands up. "Well...we're both still alive. That's good, right?"
I suppose so. But we don't know where we are. For all we know, we could be in enemy territory. "You are all very lucky we arrived." Leafa and I are both startled. We and see the person is the dark ranger that leads our rescue. Leafa and I take out our weapons to attack. "No need for hostilities, young ones. I am Sylvanas Airdash. Leader of the Forgotten."
"The Forgotten?" I ask.
Leafa and I did not let our guard down as Sylvanas explains to us everything.
The Forgotten is a group of undead team who once served the Death King in the Scourge. But they broke away from the Death King's control.
Sylvanas was once a ranger general of the elven raise. But when Arthur, who was a Dark Knight before he became the Death King, invaded the elven kingdom, he slays her and risen her from the death as his Banshee Queen. At one point, the Death King's power starts depleting, and many of the undead broke from his control, including Sylvanas. Now she seeks revenge to make Arthur suffer the torment and loss as he once did to her.
"My, my. That's pretty intense." Leafa says. "I don't think I can even go through such suffering."
"Being trapped in virtual reality while our real bodies are rotting away is torment enough," I mutter.
"It is indeed a horrible event," Sylvanas says. "I tried to kill Arthur before he became the Death King, but his loyal servant, the Lich Lord Kel'Thuzad, defeated my forces. I was forced to retreat into the woods. I formed together with the Undead that broke away from the Death King and formed the Forgotten."
"How are we gonna defeat this Death King?" Leafa asks.
I give her an obvious look. The only way to defeat the Death King is to reach the 30th floor and face him in the labyrinth. It's pretty obvious. It's how we defeated Garrosh Hailroar and Chaos. Leaders of the Inflamed Legion and the Metal Horde.
"We must head for the Icecrown Kingdom. That's where his fortress is." Sylvanas says. "The journey of getting there is long and hard. We have to fight through armies of the Scourge." Sylvanas says. "Right now, we are trying to fight our way through the armies and regroup in Dragonflight."
"Perhaps we can help out," Leafa says.
I for one do not trust the Forgotten. They are still undead. Facing the Scourge and their leader the Death King alongside with the Forgotten will probably end badly.
FLOOR 21, RUINS OF TALRAMAS.
After being rescued by the Forgotten, they offered us some new quests. I still don't trust them, but I'll accept their offer of helping us players become stronger in this game of death.
Before we went on our quest hunting, we turn in the previous quest where we have to find the giver's brother. Even after her brother died, she rewarded us without any second thoughts. It's weird but I get we get paid for our troubles. I'll take it since it nearly cost me my life and a lot of suffering.
We now take care of the quests the Forgotten have given us. We are to kill a horde of undead at the fallen Necropolis. Talramas. I have no idea what a Necropolis is, but it sure does sound deadly. No pun intended.
By the time we arrived, the fallen building is pretty large. I am indeed surprised by it. But it's mostly destroyed. If it's scary looking this way, I can only imagine how it'll look if it was fully built and operating.
"So...this is Talramas?" Leafa asks.
"It appears so," I say. "Let's complete these quests and head back into town." It's been a long day for me and I just want it to be over already.
For our quests here, we are to kill a certain number of Ghouls and Necromancers. Disabling the Ner'zhul Crystals and stealing a Lich's Phylactery. Sounds like a lot of work, even since we are not as strong as we use to.
Leafa and I both work hard facing against the Scourge. I fight in the front lines while she heals me, and attacks, when there are, is just one enemy in, please. I mainly focus on Vanguard cause my defenses have raised greatly from the new chest piece I got from the previous quest. Not to mention Leafa is a Dreamer. They're spellcasters, not really meant for Vanguard.
By evening, we're already halfway through completing the quests. Disabled and killed more than half of the crystals and the mindless undead. We are almost done with these quests. The hardest part is finding the Lich's Phylactery. We have to go to the rooftop of this fallen building of the grave. It's pretty unstable and hard to climb on.
Once we reach the top, we find a single Lich taking command. "Faster you imbeciles! We must have this please fixed up before the Death King finds out!"
The Lich's name is Amnennar the Coldbringer.
"That thing is creepy," Leafa says.
"Just wait until you met a Cie'th," I say. "You'll be wishing you would face this Lich instead."
Taking out our weapons, Leafa and I attack Amnennar. "What is this? Intruders? I will slay you in the name of the Death King!"
Facing the Lich is even harder than facing normal undead on these floors. Feels like a mini-boss. The Lich shoots bolts of ice, summons skeleton minions, and freezes us in place with Cold Nova. the annoying part about Cold Nova is that it's hard to break the ice, even with our weapons. And we can't even use Sword Skills on them. Just normal attacks.
Leaf focuses her magic on healing. The minions the creature summons are no trouble at all. I can kill them fast and easily with my AOE Sword Skills.
In five minutes, we defeated the Lich. By then, Leafa is out of mana and I'm down to less than half of my HP. "Damn! That thing is hard." I say.
"No kidding...How are we gonna survive on this floor?" Leafa asks.
Leafa has a point. But what concerns me is what is going to happen on the 31st and 41 floors? The 11th was pretty hard for us to survive in. And the 21st floor here is even worse. What awaits us on the next first ten floors?
FLOOR 21, PATH OF THE DAMNED.
Leafa and I return to Grimsite to turn in our quests. What surprises me is that Sylvanas is no around here. After turning in the last quest, we received a new one. We received a quest to meet Sylvanas on Path of the Damned.
Now we are on our way to meet the Banshee Queen. During the whole trip, I can't relax. My soldier instincts are full-on. I can't trust the dark lady. She's undead. She may say she's no longer a part of the Scourge, but that doesn't mean it's true.
We arrive at our destination. Sylvanas stands by with her large army of undead. The Forgotten fights against the Scourge. What surprises me most is that the Forgotten has catapults that shoot plague barrels. That seems...suspicious.
We turn in the quest. "Excellent. With Amnennar defeated, the Scourge will have no choice but to drawback." Sylvanas turns to her armies. "Open fire! Wipe them all out!"
All the catapults launch plague barrels, all at once, and it wiped out the whole Forgotten and Scourge army. She would really kill her own army to get her vengeance? That's just wrong. Nonetheless. Defeating the armies clears a path to the Labyrinth.
"This is only the small fry of the whole army in Borden Tundra. But will wipe them all out." Sylvanas says. "Dark Rangers, hold the line here. The rest of you, search the entire area for the remaining forces of the Scourge."
"Well. Looks like the path is clear." Leafa says.
"So it is," I say. "Let's head back into town."
We both walk back to the town Valiance Keep. I don't know why Sylvanas is planning. But I don't like it. Around the Forgotten, I'll have to keep my mind clear, eyes open, and guard up.
