A Warlock's Ascent

It was a very terrible experience for Dave, being carried on the shoulders of that woman, as she ran, he started feeling bumps on his stomach, agitating his rib cage, which ultimately made him squirm in pain. Although it was too painful to remain in this state, he was still happy, these people were rescuing him from that crazy woman, even when he was a dead weight, after all, he was very badly injured.

After running for a while, the woman stopped and put him down, under a tree. She started catching her breath, and soon Jurgen also joined them.

While catching his breath, that man put his hand on his shoulder. "That was unbelievable, I didn't think that you would be able to pull it off." He came and then sat beside him, then continued on. "But you did it, you crazy son of a bitch!."

It was very hard for him to speak, still while groaning he replied. "No… Problem".

"What should we do now Jurgen, he is heavily injured," the woman asked.

The blond man smiled at her concern, he then fished a normal black color pouch from his pocket. "Dont worry, in the chaos, I grabbed Gibbon's spatial pouch. We can heal him."

Then he put his hand in the pouch and fished out a red vial full of Healing Potion. He gave it him, who was more than happy to drink it. The potion was very powerful and potent, it started taking effect as soon as he finished the last drop.

In a minute or two, he got better. Till then both of them also had rested enough, and Jurgen got up. "We should keep moving. It is still very dangerous to stay here."

Hearing his concern he got up, and with him, the woman as well got up. It is then he saw a very glaring mistake in their plan, he didn't know whether these two could see in the dark or not, but he sure could not. Before he could voice out his thoughts, the woman tugged his shirt and showed him a fist-size lamp in her hands, which was attached to a chain.

"Do you have one of these or do you want one?" she asked.

"What is that?"

Rather than replying to his query, she just shoved the thing toward him. "Here you could have this one… Just tie it around your waist, it consumes some of your mana and acts like a torch."

He copied the way that those guys wore that artifact, and sure enough after he wore it, he started feeling a connection with it. It was a weird experience for him, the connection felt as if that lamp had always been part of his body, but he had somehow lost connection to it a long time ago, but now the connection is back online.

As he tapped into the connection, the lamp lit up, surprisingly, considering its short length, it did illuminate the surrounding around him as if he was carrying a real size lamp. And thus started their journey in the darkness of the forest…

After walking silently for a few minutes, the woman moved her hand toward him. "I never had the chance to introduce myself, I am Hillary."

"Davy."

"Thanks for saving us, Davy, if it weren't for you, we would have been still puppets of that bitch." She said.

"Yeah. Thanks a lot." Jurgen also chimed in.

"It's alright… Also, I could use some context now. I still dont fully understand what happened back there. What happened back there?"

Hillary sighed at her faith and started telling him about that camp. "Well, all the people in the camp were Earthians. Angela, that red-haired woman used her magic to make us her slaves. We couldn't disobey any of her orders and had to follow whatever she says. The crystal that you destroyed was the artifact controlling that spell. When you broke it, it dispelled the magic as well as giving her a big backlash, which bought us some time to run away."

He shuddered at the thought that these guys were slaves at one point. "That's fucked up."

Jurgen spits a ball of saliva on his side. "Yeah, it was… But that is still nothing compared to what that bitch did to Cloudhold."

Hearing the name of a major city, got him interested in what that vicious woman did there. "Cloudhold? What did she do?"

Hillary then turned towards him. "That red hair woman was Angela Stross. Do you know about her?"

He was surprised to hear that name. "That was her?" Their reaction was enough to answer his question. "She is City Lord of Cloudhold right?"

Jurgen then chimed in. "Correction. She was the City Lord of Cloudhold. For her own greed, she left her post as the City Lord and took us with her. As one of the strongest warriors of the city left its post, the whole city fell."

"So all the people in Cloudhold are dead?" Now he was concerned about Ricardo, Grump only send him to the city as he thought that the city is not destroyed. If the city is destroyed, how would he get that potion?

"It seems like it. We dont know for sure. But as Tier-2 monsters have started to appear, I guess the city would have fallen by now." Hillary said.

"Tier-2?"

"Ah, you dont know… Monsters in this world are capable of going through an evolution, you know that right?" Hillary asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, most of the monsters could go through 3 levels of evolution. Higher the form of evolution, the more dangerous the monster becomes."

He nodded his head. "Oh, I get it now. I fought with a Tribal Chief not too long ago, but other than the name of the monster, it was quite identical to a normal Kong. Before that, I fought a very big fucking gorilla, with a cleaver. They were evolutionized Kongs right?"

While Hillary nodded her head, Jurgen had a different reaction altogether. "Wait, you fought with the colony of Kongs and with a Tribal Chief? And you are still alive? That is very impressive. From what I have heard, Tribal Chief is a Tier-2 evolutionized monster. Not many people go fool that thing and get away. That is might impressive." Jurgen said.

"Thanks…" he didn't dare to say that he killed it. Still, he continued on. "By the way what about you guys, from what I understand you are the old generation of players right? How has your life been till now?"

"It was worse than hell," Hillary commented.

Jurgen also nodded at her remark. "Yeah, after we were caught some of us were brutally interrogated. When the people of Midgard realized that we were indeed from another world, they started capturing us, made us stand a stage and we were sold to the highest bidder like a slave." Jurgen said.

"That must have been a terrible experience."

"It was not as terrible as what was about to come. They wanted to breed us, trying to raise an army of people with similar potential as us. But they soon realize that it was not possible. As it turns out, we cannot impregnate or get impregnated by Midgardians. We are basically impotent for them..."

What started as normal talk soon took a dark turn, making him uncomfortable. But he realized what kind of hell these guys must have been through, he wanted to sympathize with them, and show them empathy but didn't know how, he didn't know what to say when he heard about the tragedies that these guys have been through.

They talked about little things, their experience in this new world. Eventually came a point when all three of them lost all topics of conversation, and they started walking quietly side by side with each other…

AAAAWWWWWOOOOO

The sudden howl made all of them stop in their tracks. "Werewolf." Both Hillary and Jurgen said together.

All of them then took their respective weapons and got into fighting stances, covering each other's backs. As he heard that they will be fighting a 'Werewolf', he couldn't help but ask "Do we need silver to fight that monster?"

Both of them gave him a look as if he was an idiot. It is then Hillary started telling him about the monster. "A werewolf is a tier-3 evolutionized kobold. It is a ferocious fucker, which is faster than the normal Kobold."

"Alright."

"Hillary, be a doll and use your skill. Dave, cover her." Jurgen said.

It is then he saw Hillary get between them, she then sat down on the ground in a lotus position and closed her eyes. Before he could ask, what she was trying to do, a transparent figure of an owl flew out of her, into the sky

The light blue shade of the owl was making it shine like a firefly in the night, it flew up and started circling them. "I see it. It is circling around us, current position, around 200m due north." Hillary proclaimed while sitting.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he couldn't help but ask.

"She is telling us the location of Werewolf." Jurgen said and then he looked at her and continued. "And which north are you talking about? Mine or his?"

"Yours! And never mind, that thing is closing in on us… it is here!" she yelled.

Soon a figure landed before them, breaking branches in the process. It was like a typical werewolf from the movies, it shared the grey fur and all the other features of the kobolds, but its head actually looked like a wolf.

GRRRRR

It growled at them, it got on its four, ready to pounce at them. But before it could do so, Jurgen one of his hands in the air. "THUNDER STRIKE!"

In a cloudless sky, out of nowhere, a thunderbolt manifested itself, striking down the Werewolf, and killing it instantly. While he, on the other hand, stood there, with his mouth and eyes wide open, in disbelief at what he had just witnessed.