Terrar entered a tournament as a mercenary for a guild from the Markwell Empire. With his access to military grade gear and high-rank skills, he had been an advantageous asset for the team. The money required to rent the gear, however, came from them. In the end, they formed a team of fourteen mid-one-hundred front line rankers with complete epic gear-sets.
As a magic knight that combined the powers of an earth magic user and a warrior-bandit, his defense was impressive, not to mention that the Markwell officer training he had suffered for weeks increased his skills and tricks. For starters, he knew that the GCGSP, Green Corporation Gamer Support Program, the team would come after their flag if he set up a base right beside them. He had specifically laid a trap for Asgaber, and she had completely fallen for it. Instead of killing her, the plan was to use her as bait in negotiations. The real bonus was that the GCGSP had already acquired one more flag and rapidly built a base for him to take and use for themselves. To Terrar, the plan was progressing far better than expected. However, he was still worried about enemy plots, namely, the dragon4dragonspecies. He remembered his days at Jork Fortress after it had first been occupied when a rogue dragon had sensed and attacked him and the other imperial forces there. That dragon had naturally been the one from whom he had stolen an egg a few months before. Although they had known that after a dragon rampaged, it would be weakened and forced to rest, he couldn’t even imagine that back then they had dared to send a mere few hundred soldiers to a near level six-hundred dragon’s den to die. It was fortunate that Terrar had not met Astrid7Astridcharacter during this tournament, or things would have gone much differently.
KMega6KMegacharacter examined the map on the table that displayed the NPC units roving their area. With the vast bonuses his team brought to their allies, it took on average three full waves of enemy NPCs to take down two waves of their own. After the recon, KMega planned to focus on a temple so that priests would spawn for them then came support facilities: butchery, hunter’s cottage, merchant shop, and stable, which would quickly spawn calvary. Just as KMega was getting comfortable with the progression of the battle and imagine his future plans, their soldiers attacking the nearest base, the one that they planned to occupy and expand to, stopped as a unit breakthrough without any more fierce combat. This halted the waves attacking that base.
Berry saw the flag of neutrality and landed to meet the NPC messenger before it withdrew back into the fort. She delivered the received message to KMega because he was, after all, in charge of the base. After reading it, he angrily lit it up, watching the cinders fall to the floor. His eyes flickered, revealing dragon pupils, as he looked at Berry.
“I’ve got to go out. They captured Asgaber.” (KMega)
After a moment, she realized what they implicitly wanted to gain from Asgaber’s life.
“Is the extra flag we’ve captured worth a life?” (Berry)
KMega shook his head.
“Logically, no, but abandoning my friends is not in my character.” (KMega)
If it had been a day before, he would not have considered Asgaber or any of his other housemates a friend, but after last night, he had done a lot of thinking and recognized a subconscious decision. He trusted these people enough to call them his friends, his first IRL friends, and whether it was IRL or a game, he would never abandon his friends. For KMega, that had been the moment he cast off a lonely past of befriending NPCs and seriously considered the people around him as genuine.
Tied and gagged by magical restraints, Asgaber could only watch what was happening around her. Her strength stat was not enough to break free, and this magic was specialized for nimble opponents. The person who had created the plan to capture her and remove one of the top teams from the tournament in one go was a player called Terrar. He was a specialist earth-magic axman who focused on defense and endurance. Even worse, he had left no openings for her to act, revealing his expansive commanding skills. All she could do was to futilely struggle against her bonds and bite into her gag till either her team logically abandoned her or walked- into an ambush.
