Zevron ran for all he was worth. His body moved between the thick trunks of trees. His pace only slowed when he had to change direction to keep from running directly into one of the thick trunks. He breathed raggedly as sweat poured from his brow. His heart hammered from the exertion and... fear. He took a brief moment to look behind himself to check if his pursuers were still chasing him. He regretted it immediately. Bushes were shaking, thick indomitable trees were falling, and an unearthly howl rippled through the air.

Why was he running? He was a player after all so it wasn't like death was really all that big of a deal. That's what the rest of his, now dead, party had thought when they took this quest. They'd been tasked with scouting out rumors of demonic beasts becoming more common in the area. Well, given the cacophony of roars, yelps, howls, and sheer rage chasing him, they had found them.

When his party had first found the small army of monsters they'd had no fear. They'd even decided to take out as many of them as they could before they died. When they revived they would be back at the city and could report their findings and complete the quest. Since the death penalty was so light just killing a single one of the monsters would have put them in the green. Laughing to themselves they had all charged into battle and slaughtered a dozen of the demonic creatures. They all had at least one attribute at King class so they were pretty strong. They were having the time of their life and raking in lots of experience for each kill until the first of them finally fell. That's when they realized they had been wrong. Very, very wrong.

Normally, when a player died their body would fall to the ground for a few minutes. This was when another player could use magic to revive them. If the combat was too intense then the healer could just hit the body with a healing spell to preserve it a little longer. Doing so let the corpse hang around until the fight was over to be revived. Since none of them planned to survive the fight, quite the opposite, no one bothered to pay that much attention to the person who died. They simply noted it and continued to fight to gain more experience before their death since they didn't expect anything different.

They were therefore shocked when their companion didn't simply fall to the ground. No. His body was ripped limb from limb and consumed by the monsters he had been fighting. It was wickedly brutal and a change from the norm but as gamers, the change just made them curious and a bit excited. Until they saw a small pile of their friend's equipment on the ground, destroyed. That was far more horrifying to them than the brutal animations of their friend's death. Losing a couple of hundred experience for dying was nothing. Losing expensive equipment? That hurt.

The group decided that perhaps death wasn't a good idea anymore and began to fight defensively to escape. The angered monsters had no intention of letting them go. Before they could make any progress in their retreat, another member of the group was defeated. His death was far more brutal than the first. One of the monsters, a giant lizard-looking creature that walked on two legs, punched the party member in the chest. Immediately after the body of the player exploded in a cloud of flames and gore. Whatever the monster had done had blown the player up from the inside out.

The more horrifying aspect of the attack came a few seconds later as scraps of armor and shards of the player's weapon started to rain down from the sky. The fighting became more intense as the remaining players did their best to retreat while fighting. The forest-covered terrain made it a difficult task to retreat rapidly. It took several more minutes but another member met their grizzly end with scraps of their equipment scattered about. It was shortly after that death that more bad news found the group. The first member of the party to die had finally resurrected at the graveyard and had horrifying news.

There was no such thing as chat boxes for anything within AoG but that did not mean that there were not forms of long-range communication. In the case of their group, they'd found an item called a Communication Stone. When gathered together and synchronized the stones became similar to a voice chat group. When someone spoke into one of the stones, everyone that had a stone synchronized with it could hear what was being said. And the message the living members of the group received was, "Guys! Don't die! RUN! I lost half of my gear, a hundred thousand experience, and I'm now in a weakened state for the next twelve hours!"

All the survivors grimaced. Losing gear was always a risk though as long as you had no bounty on your head the chances were minimal. Losing half of your gear was goddamned painful. Normally the death penalty was really light. The more often you died within a certain amount of time the bigger the penalty got but none of them had died recently so they should have only lost a hundred experience. The penalty was a thousand times higher! Lastly, the weakened state lowered all attributes by seventy-five percent but it normally only did so for half an hour! Twelve hours was brutal.

The remaining members of the party fought even harder but there were far too many demonic beasts. One by one the party members fell until only Zevron remained. As the final survivor, he turned tail and ran as fast as he could. In his party, he took on the classic rogue, thief, or assassin role. He focused primarily on his Agility attribute and it was his only King class attribute. It made him the fastest member of the party and allowed him to dish out debilitating attacks. Not that it had helped the others survive. He was certain that if he wasn't in a forest, dodging trees as much as monsters, he could have easily outrun his pursuers.

He'd been running for a while now but the monsters hadn't given up chasing him down and murdering him. Unlike older games, AoG had no real aggro or territory system. Monsters didn't stop chasing people after moving far enough from their spawn points. Most of the non-animal monsters would chase their target until one of them died or the target managed to completely lose the monster. Unfortunately for Zevron, none of his usual evasion tricks seemed to be working. There were too many different demonic monsters with unusual abilities for him to evade them all. So here he was, in the forest, running for his life.

As he ran he saw a sign of hope, he could see a clearing in front of him and it was rather large. If he could make it there he could move at his maximum speed and put some real distance between himself and the monsters. He looked behind again and could see glowing eyes and dark hulking forms bounding through the bushes and crushing trees under their paws, claws, and feet. The menagerie of monsters chasing him was truly shocking. Normally monsters of just one kind would be found in groups. Groups of kobolds, groups of goblins, groups of orcs, and groups of wolves. Like that. But the sheer diversity of monsters chasing him was mind-boggling. He didn't even know how to describe most of them.

Finally! He finally made it to the edge of the clearing. With a cry of joy, he poured on his speed. His legs churned and his arms pumped. Even his meager mana kicked in and created a wedge of wind in front of him to reduce his wind resistance. With over five-hundred points in his Agility, he was approaching the speed of sound and wind resistance was becoming a problem. Magic solved all problems.

With the sudden massive spike in his speed, he rapidly crossed the majority of the open space before the monsters chasing him had even reached the clearing. He was nearly home free. Once such a large gap opened between him and the monsters he would be able to easily lose them. Less than ten meters from the edge of the clearing he felt something solid impact against his back. The impact caused him to lose his balance. He tumbled head over heels at high speed until he violently slammed into a large tree and came to a sudden and painful halt.

He barely had time to register the damage to his body before a small, sleek, cat-like monster covered in slick scales literally burst out of his chest and hissed at him. It was the last disturbing sight he saw before his vision went black.