"Hey there! Going back to town?" The Repeller asked me.
"Oh yeah. Just did a bunch of fighting. I'm really liking the game so far!"
"That's great to hear! Hey, have you seen a pair of wolves that happened to have blue markings all over their bodies?"
So these guys were hunting those wolves, huh? They probably did their research
"Oh, yeah! I'm wearing the loot from the crystal it dropped! It's reaaaaally good. Lucky me, huh?"
"Yeah, lucky you!"
That's when the Repeller walked into my personal space and gave me a death glare. He towered over me and gave an eerie smile. "Now give us the armor."
"Oh? You want the armor? I don't know…I worked pretty hard for this. What if I don't want to hand it to you on a silver platter-" My line of questioning was met with a punch to the face. I went flying through the air and landed on the floor with a hard thud. I glanced over at my health bar and noticed that I already lost a quarter of my HP.
"You're a new player so I'll break this down so you understand the situation you're in: We're both level ten heroes. We'll kill you if you don't give us what we want. This isn't a game. This might as well be considered a real place we're transported to when we put on the headset. When all of your HP is gone, you die."
I started to laugh uncontrollably. Like a child being tickled by their parents, like a patient at a hospital that had a tad bit too much laugh gas, I laughed.
"But that's what's so fun about the game! Every time my HP gets close to zero, I get more and more excited. I'm so close yet so far! And now, you both are threatening my life!" I stood up and grinned from ear to ear.
"Ugh, this guy is weird." The Repeller recoiled in disgust and the priest stepped in and tried to give me a slash, but I just barely escaped it. Regardless, a good chunk of my HP was taken from me. Talk about a difference in strength!
"I'll take care of this guy. He's obviously just trying to scare us off."
The goal was simple: I had to deal as much damage as possible without getting hit. In a normal fight, I would wipe the floor with him, but there's a huge level gap between us. I have to be careful.
I began my dash towards him and attempted a swing at his chest. As soon as he tried to heave his sword at me, I reacted just in time to dodge and counterattack with a strike to the knee. This all happened with one fluid motion so at a glance, it would look like I knew what he was going to do all along and prepared for it.
"Pretty weird…That's the movement for 'feint' which is a rogue skill. But there weren't any visual or audio cues. He's not using any skills. So he just naturally moves like that?" The Repeller commented.
As the priest turned around I activated my claw move and sent him flying. With all the damage I just did, I recovered most of my HP thanks to my class's ability.
"Tch you think you're some hotshot?!" He touched his sword and said "lesser buff!" Once he did so, the outline of his sword gave off a faint red glow.
He went for another wide swing at me that I just barely dodged. The very tip of the sword hit me and did a surprising amount of damage! With the rate that my health bar was going down, I thought I was gonna die in one shot! But I more or less got his fighting style down. To sum it up, he doesn't use the sword as much, so he's inexperienced with it. He only knows how to do wide swings and nothing else. I just have to look for the swing and attack as soon as he misses.
Once I knew what to do, it was all a matter of execution. I waited for him to swing, dodged the attack, and landed blow after blow. The more I did so, the more health I got. I examined the health bar above him and found that his health bar was at 50 percent.
"Not bad. However..." The priest healed all of the HP that he lost. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty discouraged seeing that health bar go up.
Not only that, but once he snapped his fingers, I started to hear movement from the bushes around us. Figures then started to come out. I'm counting ten, no not ten, eleven more people! Most of them look like offense and tank classes. I'm good at fighting, but this is a losing game for sure. As I sized up the enemies all around me, I noticed that it began to rain.
"Do you understand now? I'm not going to lie, you're pretty good, but all it takes is one good swing at my sword, and you're dead. Do you really think Potenshia is worth this much trouble-"
"I don't think you understand where I'm coming from. I want. To die."
The words that were coming out of my mouth shocked even myself. Regardless, I continued.
"YOU THREATENED MY LIFE SO DON'T HALF ASS IT! COMMIT OR GET CUT DOWN HERE!" I readied my axe and started charging towards my enemies.
Now that I think about it, I am certain that it was never that I wanted a challenge or anything like that. I was simply suicidal. I wanted to die and getting into this game was the vehicle I wanted to take for doing that. For some reason, the thought "I deserve to die" surfaced every once in a while. But why do I feel this way?
That's when I remembered something that I kept locked away in the depths of my mind until now. Something that I wanted to forget. I killed my own parents. I murdered them and have regretted it ever since. Ever since that day, I didn't want to remember it so I locked it up behind a door. Regardless of that, my suicidal tendencies have shown and I've been subconsciously trying to take my own life. I finally figured it out. Why I'm like this...
"Haaaaaaah!" I made my swing and my axe was about to connect to his head, but a paladin got in the way and shielded the priest. My axe ricocheted and I used the redirected momentum to cut a rogue that was flanking me from behind. As the shock from the pain he was experiencing took over him, I used my claw skill to push him back and halt a couple of heroes that were pushing me. I was then hit directly with a fireball. As I burned, I gritted my teeth and ran stumbling out of the fire.
"GRAHHHHHH!"
I went charging at a priestess that was surprised by my death charge and went for a killer swing to her neck. That's when I was instead met with a Repeller taking the blade straight to the chest. The Repeller's gem had a faint glow as he used inhuman speeds to grab my axe and hit me with it.
A couple more paladins came at me, but I wasn't gonna back down! Things were just starting to get fun!
"Gaze of Pity!" One of the paladins said. As he said that, he started to glow faintly and I couldn't look away from him. So naturally, I ran to him with nothing but my fists.
"Shield Bash!" That's when I was hit with the second paladin's ability. I was immediately stopped in my tracks and forced to the ground. I was completely sluggish as I regained my footing.
I looked at my health bar and saw that I didn't even have ten percent of it left. As I looked around me, the people I attacked were completely fine and recovered from any miniscule damage I did. The close ranged fighters started to surround me while the ranged fighters kept a bit ways from the circle.
This is it! I'm finally going to die!