I swung my black long sword with a full double handed sweep cutting in half the rotting, half missing, brainless zombie making it explode into a hundred of dark green particles giving off a slight glow in the dark forest shadowed by the rising labyrinth tower of of the 49th floor. That was the last of the zombie group that had been wandering through the area near to me. Cautiously, with a tight grip on my silken sword grip, I did a full visual sweep of the dark and foreboding forest looking out for any more monsters that may ambush me again. Once I thought it to be clear I kept towards the tower which stood quietly not to far in front of me, my mission being the same as the rest of the front liners, attempt to find the labyrinth entrance and map out as much of it as possible to continue the push for floor 100.
As I powered through the forest I could hear the groans and hideous noises that were coming from the surrounding forest, but I ignored them and kept concentrating on getting over to the tower as fast as I could without running right into a horde of flesh hungry zombies. As I got closer to the tower it gradually got darker and darker, until it was getting close to being pitch black. However this didn't really bother me as I had never really been afraid of the dark and my eye sight was generally good in the darkness. What started to worry me however, was the weird and changing noises that were coming from the section of forest in front of me, only slightly human sounding and definitely something big.
I slow my pace as the noise gets close and seemingly in my approximate area. I suddenly saw a huge shadow looming in front of me reaching up to the tree tops and as wide as a 3 tree trunks. I stop so abruptly that I fall over flat on my face causing several twigs to snap loudly and a large number of dry leaves to crumple and rustle under my weight in the silent and dark forest. I slowly look up and fully see the monster that stood in front of me. It was a huge humanoid shaped monster with its skin green and falling off in a lot of places with hole sections of dark red festering flesh missing, its body was muscular and tensed seemingly close to ripping the skin, its hands were lined with sharp spikes of bone which ran along the fingers and top of the hand. As it heard the noise that I had made it turned its head towards me to reveal a half burnt face revealing blackened bones with the other half almost human, dark blue eyes, pinkish skin, slightly puffy lips and dark brown, messy and singed hair.
I froze in shock and fright at this sight and tried to blend into the ground, hoping that it wouldn't see me and move on. But it obviously had enhanced vision as it soon spotted me on the ground and brought its huge arms plummeting down at me. I quickly rolled out of the way and scrambled to my feet before being launched at least 20 meters into a tree by a powerful punch from the monster. I slid down the tree and crash to the ground with a thud. As I begin to hear my heavy breathing and my vision clears up from the blurriness the impact created I see that the monster is slowly moving its way over to me to finish off its kill. I try to push myself onto my feet but my arms have lost all their energy and my body flares up in sharp pain from the slightest of movements.
Suddenly a huge explosion erupts on the side of the monster's head creating a huge white flame and a loud echoing sound. As the flash went off I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light. The monster gives out a large shriek of pain as the blast obliterated its whole left shoulder and completely ripped apart the more human part of its face with shrapnel making dark green blood gush out of its wounds. As my eyes readjust to the light once more I see the monster staggering to its side before a figure in dark blue armour jumping on its back and ramming a blue metal blade into its spinal chord. When the blade destroys the monster's spine the warrior jumps off the monster and lets it fall on its side, dead, before they retrieve their sword and rush over to me.
"Can you walk?" I hear the hooded warrior say with a worried girl's voice. I nod quickly before, with great effort, pushing myself painfully to my feet, but I have to lean on my sword to get my breath back and to let the pain pass. "Good enough." I hear the voice again before I feel a strong hand on my arm supporting me and then dragged forward as she began to move ahead at speed. I'm only able to keep up with her because of her supporting hand and with sheer the stubbornness I possessed. A few seconds after we began to move I could hear a lot of noises coming from behind, obviously the explosion had attracted a huge amount of attention from nearby monsters who could be heard swarming round the area we had just run from.
After a few minutes of hard running we came out into a clearing in the forest which was out of the way of the tower and so was in the direct view of the burning sun which hung high in the sky. As soon as the supporting hand left my arm I fell face forward onto the floor in exhaustion breathed heavily trying to hold back the dull pain which was rising within my chest and legs. When I had recovered a little I raised my head and looked up at the figure that stood above me leaning on her sword with eyebrows raised in an accusatory way.
"What?! I'm tired." I say defensively. She had cold blue eyes and long bright blonde hair which fell down her back in a plait which was tied back with a simple white cloth strip. She was tall and quite bulky and strong with an authoritative air about her. Her armour was painted dark blue and seemed to be made from refined and tempered iron, under her armour was a long midnight blue and golden battle robe which was covered in dry mud and torn in some places. She stood there with a European looking longsword which had an enscripted golden inner section surrounded by a sharp and shining white blade. I recognised her as one of the new and determined players to have made her way up the ranks into the main fronliners.
"And I'm the one who just dragged your arse over here after saving you from the mutant, the name's Sky nice to meet you." She says in disbelief at the fact I was still on the floor relaxing.
"Yeah well... why did you do it anyway?" I ask curiously not truly knowing why she saved me as up until now we hadn't really come into contact with each other, I didn't even know her name.
"Well for one we can't have one of the good natured and skilled warriors dying before we even hit halfway and honestly I want you to help me with training." She says calmly as she reaches down with her hand to help pull me to my feet. Slowly I accept the helping hand and get back to my feet, when on my feet she is only slightly taller than me and around my age.
"Why do you want me to help though? I mean there's a good number of frontliners that would do the job well enough." I ask still curious at why she had chosen me out of the many front line players who would gladly take on a player for training.
"Jesus Christ, I knew you were stubborn but come on now. You have a fighting style similar to me, your generally a good person and Aurora recommended you." She says with exasperation.
"If Aurora's involved. Do I really have any choice." I say in defeat and surprise that Aurora had gone and recommended me as a trainer. I look at her smug face and shake my head while I picked up my midnight black sword from the green grass and sheathed it. Suddenly, out of the blue, I hear the high pitched beep of an incoming voice message. I quickly swipe open my menu and pick the call up to see Andrew on the other side.
"Steven, could you get over here as soon as you can, there's something going on tonight and tomorrow that I want to talk about" He says hurriedly.
"Bit vague, but okay I can get down there in around 20 minutes." I say slowly with my brows furrowed worried that something bad was happening with Andrew. He promptly nods his head and hangs up the call. I close my menu and look back up to Sky and ask. "You free for the rest of today?"
"Yer I guess I am now." She says quickly deciding on the spot to join me in what ever was going on.
"Well we better get moving to the portal then." I say before turning and running back towards the forest which lay between us and the floor portal.