A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

Elizabeth and the others were currently running, an elite group of orc warriors having caught them with their pants down.

Half the players had already died, and the rest were trying their best to escape with their lives. Scattering in all directions as they followed familiar roads to unknown destinations.

Out of breath and nearly stumbling from blood loss, Elizabeth almost lost her life thanks to the sudden message notification having robbed her focus for a split second. She cursed the sender as she stabbed her staff into the orc's stomach.

This bought her just enough time for Judith to swing Gray with all her might. Yet, even that was not enough to behead the naked orc warrior. However, it caused it to stumble. And as it stumbled, an arrow pierced its heart. Again, this was not enough to bring down the orc.

What finally ended it was a lighting strike from Ilmadia, roasting the orc but costing a huge chunk of her mana.

"Quick! Before more come!" Judith grabbed Elizabeth's arm and pulled her into a random building.

Ilmadia immediately started adding rune in the dust. She couldn't keep focus and she needed to rest. In this way, the rune would be ready. She just needed to focus on it, fill it with mana, and activate it. But she did not need to maintain her focus to keep it in existence, allowing her to meditate to increase her mana regeneration.

During the shuffle to hide, Elizabeth thanked her friends through messages and looked towards the fool who nearly caused her death. Of course, it was Eldrian.

Seeing the request for support, Elizabeth momentarily wondered if she really was the guild master. Perhaps all those rumors among the players were right. By all rights, Eldrian should be the one helping her.

'He'll just leave if I pressure him...' Elizabeth groaned, pained by this awful truth. The request also seemed ridiculous, but Eldrian promised to organize everything so they could even accept it as a quest for some extra rewards.

'Must be awful to have lost the ability to use quests for level ups.' Honestly, after reaching level 40, gaining XP through killing enemies was no longer a valid method. It was just a drop in the bucket.

Elizabeth was curious why this had happened to Eldrian. She knew of most of Eldrian's circumstances, but of course there were some things he simply forgot to tell her or didn't know himself. 'Must be one of those things he forgot to mention...'

'But what a pain. What is he thinking? Taking on a fort filled with undead, just with players and a few NPCs he has on his side. That should be insane, but considering Eldrian... yeah, sounds just about crazy enough.'

Elizabeth sighed. 'If he would just offer us his help, his strength would make such a massive difference.' She knew this wouldn't happen, and not even because Eldrian himself didn't want to. He had bigger things on his plate.

She understood this, this was one of those things. But the undead...

Elizabeth clearly remembered what a pain the undead were to fight. In those fights, not only was she the healer, she was also the damage dealer. Everyone elses damage would be heavily nerfed unless they had effective fire spells or skills targeted against undead. And even those skills paled compared to hers.

What sucked was that those specialized skills and spells were less than effective, or even did nothing, against living enemies. This meant you had to invest to get the skill and to learn it, only to deal with one type of enemy.

However, most in the guild had done just that. After all, they had fought in Kynigo against the undead for months. Only the newly recruited members had little to no skills to deal with the undead. But that already made up over half the current guild.

That wasn't really what bothered Elizabeth, though. She knew Kynigo and Pelaros (the mayor). Going there, they would be gifted the skills and spells, perhaps even an upgrade in their weapons and armor.

The true problem was abandoning Pediades and all those still in the city under the orcs' rule.

The kingdom was focusing on reclaiming Livadi to form a barrier for the western underbelly. This made sense considering the larger picture, but it meant almost no one would come to rescue those in Pediades.

Amrough and Herglem had been completely abandoned and the orcs have already taken most of the captured citizens to their homeland. The kingdom would not attempt to recapture these cities, at least not in the near future.

Their focus was on creating a new front line to protect the western underbelly. A front line stretching from the Vol Mountains to Vlisia. For which Livadi would act as the midpoint. It would no longer serve as a city, but rather a military ghost city.

Currently, diplomatic talks were being held with the Volvren dwarves and Taurus. And to Elizabeth, things were moving far too slowly.

Reclaiming the city, she could understand that it will take time after the heavy losses the kingdom had suffered. But the building of fortifications should already be underway. Sadly, it seems the kingdom could not field enough people. Or rather, the people refused to be fielded.

'Which is, of course, bull. I think they are being too soft, only placing requests and with such little compensation. Of course, no one will pick them up while the posts for reclaiming the cities remain...' Elizabeth sighed.

She had noticed that the central heart of Taurus was not willing to mobilize. These reclamation quests also didn't offer good pay, but being allowed to keep all treasures you found pulled all the greedy adventurers.

Sadly, the kingdom couldn't remove it. If they tried, no one would be willing to risk their lives. Which Elizabeth again felt was just beyond stupid.

There were likely other factors like the nobles complaining and making noise, perhaps even some being on the side of the devils or under their influence. Honestly, Elizabeth felt military law should be declared and all outcry should be silenced. It might sound insane and barbaric, but she truly felt this was necessary if the kingdom wanted to survive.

The king should be far more politically powerful than what she was seeing. She could not fathom why the king was acting as he was. 'Perhaps he is preparing to deal with everything, or perhaps he is just incompetent...'  Elizabeth couldn't decide which.

The defense of Vlisia hadn't given her a grand image of the king, but it also hadn't been a terrible one. It simply seemed like he was still inexperienced, which in times of war was not a great trait to have.

Regardless, currently only adventurers have gone to Pediades to help, or rather, to search for riches. Military action was focused on Livadi. Hopefully Livadi's circumstances would improve faster than Pediades's and then more help could come. But by then it might already be too late.

The situation of those who had survived the siege and ended up captured, they survived. But no one could call it living. Their existence couldn't be said to be anything but hellish.

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