Ibro again displayed the prompt and read it carefully for an unknown number of times. This was real. The game had set a trap and he fell in it like a fool. Now he had no time to waste. Previously he was afraid to lose one use of his legendary scroll, but now he was about to lose it all.
He was no longer thinking of destroying any other strongholds. He moved on the shortest road back to the novice village. As soon as he approached the outer border of the leveling areas, he was completely amazed by the sight that awaited him. As far as his eye could see, there were dense clusters of monsters.
This horrible sight made him feel hopeless. How should he cross these monsters to reach the village? He now stood near an area that was once filled with ninth and tenth level monsters. This meant that the entire surrounding of the village was filled with these invaders.
He looked at his remaining time of this crazy quest. Almost a quarter of an hour had passed since he heard the prompt. If he continued to wait in his place like this, he would lose more time. He looked at his Inventory again to find that, apart from that legendary scroll, he had absolutely nothing to help him get past these monsters.
He gnashed his teeth in anger and decided he would never lose this scroll due to this plot against him! He always heard about players, NPCs or even legendary monsters setting traps for players. This was his first time ever hearing a game conspire against a player!
He looked at the monsters around him and used his skill to know their levels.
Their levels were from 10 to 13. He moved slowly, taking the trees as his cover until he penetrated a long distance in the sea of monsters. He began to carefully note the movements of the monsters.
Monsters in the game usually moved in a fixed pattern, and he tried to discover that pattern. After ten minutes, he finally discovered the pattern for each type of monster.
He picked out the highest monster in the level from those surrounding him. It was the Rosar monster of the fourteenth level. He used his skill to flip him and made him be his ally for 20 seconds.
The Rosar coup caused a fuss among the monsters around it. Most of the monsters in the area focused on it, trying to kill it. Ibro took advantage of this opportunity to quickly run past the tenth and ninth level maps to reach the eighth and seventh level maps.
He waited for a minute, until he could use his skill again. Then he repeated it more than once. He was not successful every time. Sometimes he was obstructed in his path by a group of monsters.
After about an hour had passed, he was finally able to approach the village. He was able to see its walls in front of his sight. This time, he stopped using his skill.
The number of monsters in front of him made him unable to use this skill effectively. He pauses for a while, trying to figure out a way to get through this huge crowd of monsters.
What worried him most was the presence of more monsters inside the village. These monsters were the cream of the crop. Their levels and grades should exceed all those he met so far.
This made him believe that he wouldn’t be able to pass one step from the gate before being killed. If he failed to reach the Village Centre, he would not be able to free it from the grip of the monsters.
‘What if I crossed them and liberated the village, and then they attacked again? I won’t be able to protect this novice village against this fierce attack from all those monsters on my own.
This is a brutal scheme of the game, how can one player defend an entire novice village?! Did I make this game very angry because I got that legendary scroll? But wasn’t it the same game that gave this scroll to me in the first place? What is going on?’
This was his thoughts during his fight with the monsters. This was a hell level scheme and this scheme was succeeding till now.
Its first success was to reduce his high level, which had previously reached the twelfth level. Now he was at the eleventh level. Soon he will be at the zero level if he didn’t complete that impossible mission.
He believed that the game was putting him in a difficult test, either to lose his legendary scroll or to lose everything.
He grabbed the legendary scroll and looked at its stats. The info he read made him regret losing this scroll, but he had no other choice but to use it.
Before his hands moved to open it, an idea popped up in his mind. He looked at the crowded monsters surrounding the novice village wall. He then slowly moved in a direction parallel to this wall. He didn’t take a few minutes until he found himself opposite to the village gate.
The gate was wide open as its two big doors were broken. He looked seriously at this opened gate thinking hard about his new idea. An idea was developed to a good plan, a plan that would not make him lose his scroll.
Then he tried to get as close as possible to the gate, taking advantage of a group of tall trees scattered near the wall.
He tried to evade the monster herds as much as he could. After his attempts, he only managed to travel two hundred meters only. This put him about 600 meters away from the village gate.
He began to climb a big tree. As soon as he rose for ten meters, he found a strong branch that could bear his weight. It was a perfect hiding spot as it carried a large number of thinner branches covered with thick green leaves.
He sat on it quietly, hiding behind a clump of green leaves watching the place around him. He took his time to calculate and revise his plan as he had only one chance. If he lost this chance he would be forced to follow the game scheme.
He chose a place 50 meters away from him, and then he whispered:
“Basic black blow skill”
His staff glowed and emitted a black ray towards the spot he had chosen. He did not direct his skill towards a particular monster, but rather he chose a place that was somewhat empty of monsters.
Once the dark ball was formed, the chaos started to happen. Because he chose a spot opposite to the gate of the village, the eyes of those inside began to focus on this ball.
Seconds of extreme anxiety passed slowly on Ibro. He kept moving his eyesight from place to place rapidly observing the effect of his skill. He noticed a big crowd of monsters moving from inside the village towards the ball outside the village.
The black ball only lasted for 10 seconds, but as soon as it ended, Ibro was ready so he whispered:
“Basic confusing skill”
This time, he picked a monster outside the village gate heading towards the black ball that had just disappeared. As soon as he was affected by Ibro skill, he began to attack those around him. Due to its presence near the village gate, this monster created bigger chaos than Ibro’s first skill.
Ibro heard a loud noise coming from the depths of the village to finally feel relieved. His plan started to show signs of success.
This game wanted to set a trap for him, but now he would get out of it with the least possible losses.
He waited for about two minutes. During which he used his first skill two times and his second skill many times. He aimed to increase the number of monsters crowded around the village gate.
The majority of the new addition of monsters came from inside the village and a small part came from the adjacent leveling zone. After he felt satisfied by the number of monsters around him, he took out the scroll of the Land of Fire.
Even with his own plan, he had to use this scroll two to three times at least. It was an acceptable price to pay, though. He opened it and then read the chants of the scroll.
Ten seconds later, he found a large red dot appearing at his eyesight. He felt a connection between him and this dot. He tried to move it to find it followed his mental instructions.
He moved it as far as possible until it successfully crossed the village wall, then he lost his control. All magicians had a unique ability to feel any subtle changes to MANA.
As soon as he lost control over the dot, it disappeared from his sight. Ibro felt a huge rise in MANA concentration in the area around him. He felt that he could touch MANA with his bare hands.
Suddenly, he felt a tremble of the branch that he was sitting on. The whole area around him transformed into a sea of roaring fire as far as his eye can see.
The sudden appearance of the angry sea of flames came to completely paralyze all monsters inside and outside the village.
All those affected by the flames showed large numbers of damage rising crazily from their heads. Within seconds, many monsters were lying on the raging fiery ground.
The duration of the scroll was two minutes. Ibro witnessed a huge number of monsters get burned. This was accompanied by a series of annoying sounds of alarms about their deaths.
Ibro did not know how many monsters out there. This fire was like a beacon that shone in the horizon to attract every monster to it.
After the end of the destructive scroll, the flames disappeared gradually. Ibro looked around in disbelief to see the effects of this magnificent scroll.
He was now more determined about not losing this scroll. Except for the bodies of the dead monsters, the whole area was covered in black charcoal. There was no sign of any monster in his eyesight.
This was a scroll of mass destruction. Although there was no monster in his eyesight, he did not move a finger.
A quarter of an hour passed until the area started to bustle again with monsters. This time it was a strange mix between monsters of the tenth level and the others from the fourteenth and fifteenth levels.
He remained in his place patiently, observing the movement of monsters. They began to examine the bodies of their fallen comrades with full concentration.
These monsters weren’t like dump monsters at any other VR games. This was Rioneed and here everything was different. This time he relied on their intelligence to be able to reduce his losses.
He kept a close watch on their movements and did nothing. A group of them returned quickly inside the village.
Ibro did not need to guess what they would do inside, as that was part of his plan. They would go to bring up the rest of their commanders and their armies as reinforcements.
After a while, a huge number of monsters appeared at the village gate. Ibro waited a little bit to make sure all the monsters inside the village had become under his scroll scope.
He looked again around this battle zone to find the monsters were still flowing from the remote areas outside the village. He didn’t rush to use his scroll and decided to wait a few minutes.
He waited patiently as he aimed to use this scroll for the last time in this difficult quest. He looked at his watch and found that there was less than half an hour until the quest ended. Despite that, he waited patiently and did not move.
