While mentally marking each of the enemy goblin locations, I bolted towards the edge of the forest. The only good thing about goblins was that they were easy to kill. The bad thing was that when you killed one there could be ten more to take its place.

A goblin hid behind a thick tree trunk but one of its long pointed ears stuck out, thoroughly betraying it. I lowered my stance, stepped around the tree, and stabbed my swords deep into its chest. Blood spurted onto my armor. It tried to stab at me with its jagged knife even as it growled its last. I easily sidestepped the weak attempt.

A shit quality arrow brushed past my braid and embedded into the thick tree bark. Fuck! Keep moving!

I continued to run and dashed behind a tree. Soft goblin footsteps approach.

Silently, I blew Add Air onto my blades then cast invisibility. I darted towards him and buried my swords into his chest. He died immediately. I kept moving. Another goblin ran out from behind a tree and I dispatched him as well.

Several yards in front of me, a few more dropped from the canopy above.

Sharp bludgeoning pain. My sight turned bright white for a second. My back curved from the weight on top of my head. I choked on the stench of goblin body odor. The motherfucker landed on my head!

I bowed and twisted. The goblin fell down with a soft thump and I quickly stabbed it, dropping its bar down to zero. Then I stabbed it a couple more times just to be sure the stinky fucker was dead.

Since that wasn’t satisfying enough, I went and butchered the last few goblins.

When I was certain that I’d off’d all them in the nearby area, I trotted back to Lore only to find him in deep shit. But not from Goblins. Fellow players had surrounded our carriage and had dragged Lore out. A chill ran down my spine. Had he suspected something like this might happen and had me leave for my own protection? Naw, that wasn’t Lore’s style.

But I recognized these people. One was that lady in white from the party, another was Rion Cho, of all people, but it was the last one, who was the most worrying. I used my Observe on him just to be absolutely sure.

[Endorin Mossthorn. Level 13. ?? Health. ?? Mana.]

Fuck. Exactly how powerful was a level 13 anyway? Let’s see. That’s a 6 level difference. At 4 to a person’s main attributes and 2 to their minor attributes each level, and considering my current stats that would be... at least twice as strong. Fuck. So maybe use diplomacy... Then again, with a 5 in my Charisma stat...

Well, players weren’t NPCs so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? Hah! As if I’d believe that.

“Hey there! Could you let my partner go and we’ll talk it out?”

“Ah, there you are,” Mossthorn said.

I slowly walked up to Lore so I could grab him and bolt, but before I could get more than ten feet from them, Mossthorn threw a motherfucking lightning bolt at my feet. I backed up a bit.

“I’ve done my research,” his voice sounded a bit nasally and a bit monotone. “You have a teleport spell and Lore here has an item that allows you to teleport him with you.” He rubbed his fingers together and grinned creepily.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing much, nothing much. Just here to give you both a light warning. From the Ravenborn clan. You know them. They’re big into warnings.”

“Warning? But you’re a famous player killer.”

He grinned. “Oh, I am. And these two are here to make sure you’re not trying to do something stupid.”

Wait, what?

That was when I saw the flash of light and my whole body convulsed with mind-numbing pain. Was that copper I tasted? Maybe steel?

The world went black.

I opened my eyes again to greet the delicately carved carriage ceiling. My body felt clean and I no longer experienced any pain.

Warning! You have died at the hands of Endorin Mossthorn. Because your level difference is so high your Death Penalty has been reduced from Fairly Inconvenient to Very Annoying. Your current death penalty is: Ms. Linda will come to know of your existence.

A chill ran down my spine. Well, even if she knows I exist, it wasn’t like she’d come and kill me. Especially since she doesn’t know where I am. At most, she’d try to use me against my uncle.

Attention! The person who killed you is currently near your respawn point. To prevent spawn camping, you cannot be killed by him for the next 5 minutes, and for the next 20 minutes, you will not incur another Death Penalty.

I drew my swords and stepped out of the carriage.

“This death is just a light warning,” Mossthorn said. “I’ll be off now. Because that’s all the clan hired me to do... for the time being, but, just know, that I won’t be that far from you. In case they hire me to do more than just... give you a light death.”

He started walking off, passing the carriage that had been following us. That was when I noticed the one behind that. It was black and much more heavily guarded than our own.

“Oh,” He turned around and jauntily walked backward, “They told me to tell you that, ‘The Ravenborn clan sends their regards.’”

I laughed sarcastically then turned to the girl in white and Rion Cho.

“We were just hired to make sure you were finding Jethia’s birthday present and not going off on some random adventure,” the girl said nervously while staring up at Lore with big watery eyes.

I really did not like the way she looked at my bard partner.

Lore chuckled while glaring down at her. “I’m sure.”

“I also convinced him to kill the halfling instead of you.” She bit her bottom lip cutely. “You’ve already experienced too many deaths.”

I really wanted to grab this girl’s hair and pull. How dare she try to get close to my... bard... work partner. Okay, so we were just gaming partners but... still.

I Observed her.

[Silvanas Whitedove. Level 9. 104 Health. 247 Mana.]

Right. She was high enough level that it would cause us problems if we attacked her, especially since she looked like the type of two-faced bitch who would hold a grudge.

I scowled at the bitch, but, just like at the party, she ignored my existence. So I turned to Rion Cho

[Rion Cho. Level 3. 72 Health. 33 Mana.]

“Why’d they hire you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously because I come from the same planet as you. They want someone who knows how a fellow human thinks to be part of this weird little procession.”

“Don’t you have, I don’t know. Shit you gotta do in real life? We’re going to be in this shit game for a long ass time.”

He grinned. “At home, I was a shut-in. Now, I’m a badass.”

“Since I’m a higher level than you, does that mean I’m better than a badass?”

He chuckled. “If you’d had a proper teacher, maybe. Everyone knows how shitty Crimea is.”

I sighed. That level 30 really needed to watch her back or she’d get spawn camped one of these days.

“Maybe,’ I said, “but I have more hands-on experience than you.”

“I’ve played more games.”

“I feel like this is getting out of hand. Aren’t you, our enemy?”

“Actually, we’re more like spies working for the government. If you don’t do anything wrong then we’ll just have a nice quiet journey.”

“So, where are you from? China, India, USA?”

“Are you just naming the countries with the highest populations?”

“Last name of Cho. So, Maybe Korea?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Mia, we’re leaving. We can’t keep holding up the carriages or we’ll miss reaching our stop for the night.” Lore had already entered the carriage.

“Fine.” I walked towards our transportation and turned back to look at Rion who pointed two fingers at his eyes then pointed them back at me in the classic, “I’m watching you” gesture.

I sighed and sat down in my spot.

“So, what are we going to do about those spies?”

“Tell them some of the truth. On our way to find the Artificer we’re doing a mission for the Rogue’s guild.”

I nodded. “And that we have no plans to go to a dangerous taint infected prison.”

“We’re not even going to mention the prison. I managed to convince Whitedove that we don’t know why the Ravenborns are sending this warning other than a vague message that could be for anything.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

“And now that we’re on our way,” Lore began, “it’s about time you started talking about your issues with Fire.”

This fucker...