Written by Revna Ulfhild
Location: Arean, Jormungandr
“Sure, it was a simple idea, when I heard it.” Revna thought to herself as she stared down at the map of the digital world. “they call this a game, right? Odd it looks and feels like the real thing but as if I was an Aeronaut...no wait Astronaut, the people that get to leave the planet.” She proudly corrected and reminded herself, it was a world she had recently learned, but English was a whole language that was new to her. She went over the basic abilities and skills she had selected as she was given this account as a trail run as part of a study on how a ‘true warriors’ skills would transfer into the game. It was true Revna had fought in a few skirmishes and a major battle before she ended up in this world, or this time, despite the fact that she had been here for over three months, she still had no idea if this was the same world she grew up in. However, only one thing mattered to her right now, the people wanting to test her said that she could experience battle again in this game, and laid her in a bed and put a screen over her head, though it had to be modified because of her horns. She wondered briefly if any others had specialized monitors for their eyes, she closed her menu. “was that what they called it?” she thought before brushing the thought aside and focusing, this was qualifier round, and not a team function so there would only be two-hundred players in the field, and only the winner would be taken to the next step. Suddenly the announcement was given, unlike some of the other games where you selected where you wanted to land, this game generated the players on the field in a random position, there were a few resources on the map such as health and skill potions but really nothing else, that could help the player. That said in addition to the other players, there were also monsters that may spawn randomly, though fighting it would open your defenses to enemy attacks. But, none of that mattered to Revna, she grinned finding her self in a most joyous mood as she moved her avatar, it felt real, she wondered how attacking an enemy would feel as her screen flashed red and a countdown timer appeared stating thirty seconds until start. Her enthusiasm built up with each tick and then when the counter hit ten every player around her burst out in a cheerful chorus “TEN!” this caught Revna off guard and she looked around, several of no most of the players held their weapons in a hand and counted Revna joined them mere seconds counting “five, then four, three . . . two . . . one!” there was no zero nor any sound or words as the round began.
The screen flicked to black and then illuminated showing Revna a grassy plain, covered in shades of greens and browns, but only for a second before she felt a breeze come over her skin, and she could smell salt in the air, she was near the sea, it was a smell she thought she had forgotten despite being near the largest river in Northern America. Everything in this game felt so real, she opened her menu just to make sure it was not real that this was a game. Before she crouched and moved through the tall grass, the pelt of her outfit blending in and camouflaging her to the browner parts of the land, but making her stick out if she entered a green part which, she did once or twice to see if anyone was around her, she had an axe and a shield and as she had real knowledge on how to use them she felt safe and secure with what she had, but no enemies took shots at her, nor could she see any standing on the large rocks around her, even though they looked climbable. Suddenly Revna felt the ground shake beneath her feet, it terrified her reminding her of the feeling of a ship hitting a beach at full sail. She stood to her feet quickly shield in frond and axe at the ready, prepared for whatever was coming, but even then, she was surprised by what she saw. The ground in front of her burst open and the creature with a body and head of a man, looked down at her as the dust settled, leathery wings on his back and the lower half of a serpent, once the dust settled Revna saw the beast tower over her almost by two meters, and that didn’t include the tail that was wrapped around itself. She had never seen nor heard of any such creature but thankfully the game, gave it a name. Typhon and it appeared at the top of her visor, with three very large health bars, at least in the comparison of hers. “The rocks!” her mind jolted out, as her body moved in response and moved getting behind the large rock that was taller than wider, a shortcoming on Revna’s part as the beasts tail whipped out and slammed against the unguarded and prepared Revna knocking her into the open the grass folding underneath her as she looked up to see the creatures large hand barreling down at her. Thankfully, she moved and made it miss but it brought down its other fist and attempted the hit her again. Revna moved and reacted or blocked most of her attacks, though blocking did not negate all the damage and soon her health bar dropped into the yellow, or below 60% as it had been quickly explained to her. It didn’t seem to matter if she moved behind a rock or not, the creature always seemed to know where she was and soon her health bar was in the red, and Typhon’s was still at a quarter of the third bar. “why are there rocks here if I can’t hide behind them?” she yelled, as she rolled to the side no longer caring about being quiet Revna took off in a sprint and moved behind the largest rock, one that looked like it would block Typhons tail attack, and force it to climb over the top to attack her, she would use that moment to strike, she wanted to damage it, to get it back for treating her like a doll to be thrown around, and as she moved she avoid a one-two punch that flung dirt and grass up, the creatures fists and tail had basically tilled the land at this point. After avoiding a tail attack again, she made it and waited behind the stone. And surely Typhons tail flung around on each side trying to strike the Nordic girl as she waited and activated a skill that made lightning run over her axe’s blade as she waited for the creature to climb over the top. But it never did, in fact she had been standing still prepared for a while and even the tail had stopped appearing around the rock, even though she could still see its health had not changed. She relaxed and took a step and suddenly the tail swung back and almost her Revna in the face, causing her to gasp and shout as she fell down, but stayed there knowing there was no need to move as even if the creature attacked from the other way, something was strange about this, the creature suddenly attacked when she moved, yet didn’t want to climb over the rock to attack her. Now that she thought about it the creature had not moved passed the rocks other than its tail and emerged in the circle of rocks. “wait a minute, this thing is blind” she said as another attack from the creature’s tail came around the rock and missed as if it didn’t like being mocked, but Revna needed to test something and quickly. She stood and climbed up on the rock that had been protecting her from the attacks and stayed on the back clinging to it, as the attacks came to a halt once more. She then climbed to the top and emerged in the creature’s face. And looked at its eyes that were almost pure white. Sure, enough it was blind and thankfully to as Revna would have been killed at that very moment, all she had to do now was reduce its health to zero, but now she could hide from the attacks. Revna looked at her skills, some of them were good for distance attacking, and thankfully her axe did have a returning rune on it so she could throw it. She smiled for the first time since running into the creature, as she now saw a small chance at winning, but knew that she could do it. Skill could be used so long as you had skill points, but each skill had a reset timer that had to recharge before they could be used again, in a tournament setting like this one skill points actually recharged slower, she remembered as she thought how best to use her abilities to her advantage. Revna didn’t have to think long before she charged her axe with lightning again seeing a two appear on the skill meaning the weapon had the same skill on it twice and it stacked, but not wanting to waste her points she didn’t want to keep doing it and not gain a stack. And she threw the axe at Typhons face, the handle sticking out over the nose as the blade of the axe was buried in the creatures eye, a stream of red blood gushed out from around the blade and down the creatures face, as Revna was already moving along the rock as the creatures fists impacted where she was standing, making the large object shake as she held out her hand and the axe returned to it, the blade covered in red, and even dripping from the blood, she noticed two things that Typhon was now at three-fourths health on its second bar and that there was a tear drop next to the name. She did not know what it meant but noticed that Typhon was losing its health little by little now. She waited, soon the tear drop vanished, and the creature only had one and a half bar left, however she should only do that attack once more as her skill points were just above half, and even returning the axe required some points. She decided it was a good idea to do it again, and charged her axe with the skill, and then stacked it and waited, sure enough Typhon turned its head to her and the threw the axe once more, aiming at the creatures other eye, but it flew low, as if she had misjudged the distance and as Typhon’s mouth was ajar the axe flew in, and the blade sank in somewhere inside as she watched its health drop to one bar. However, Revna was in such a state of disbelief that she had forgotten to move and Typhon’s fist clashed into the stone under her causing her to fall forward, she grabbed the nearest thing she could, which was in her own head, now the dumbest thing she could do, as she was now in midair after the large creature had flung her rather high up her thoughts raced she needed to do something or else she would likely die from fall damage, she reached her hand out to pull the axe back but it didn’t return to her head instead Typhon lost more health. Panicking Revna knew only two things she could do, and one would not do anything. Having only her ultimate ability left she decided to use it despite the fact she did not know what it would do, as she wasn’t planning on using it, now she just wanted to beat this creature. She held her hand out as she felt the wind rushing against her body as gravity took its course and activated it. “I bridge the Earth to the Heaven’s and open the gate of light, Bifröst!” she chanted against her will as a pillar or light crashed into Typhon, though it also acted as a beacon to Revna’s location as the pillar did exactly as the chant said, yet it wasn’t enough, Typhon hung on by a sliver of health and Revna was falling right to its head, her own health bar in read around the twenty percent area, still she braced for the impact and held her shield between herself and Typhon as she crashed into it, her health dropping down to ten percent and Typhons body glowed yellow, and then exploded into thousands of particles of light, before Revna who was held up by the particles fell yet again leaving her now with a sting of her own health left as she laid next to a large chest. “that was something, maybe I’ll get into theses video games.” She said standing up and touching the chest as her screen suddenly flickered to black.
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