Rikardi sucked in a deep breath and let it out. Being a half-orc meant he wasn’t as brutish as his full-blood brethren, but what he lacked in strength, he made up for in stamina. The timer had just run out on his Relentless Endurance buff, and he felt every bit of the fight.

He leaned against his sword, the great two-handed weapon point down in the hard ground. Tired was an understatement. Muscles sore, his arms quaked. Some wounds still oozed blood.

But he was victorious.

Before him lay a gray dragon, easily thirty feet long, with a wingspan almost twice that. The spiked tail alone must have been twenty feet long.

His Health teetered on empty.

Swiftwood Plains Dragon Slain

+2000 Experience

Congratulations!

You have reached Level 47!

By now, the level up notification had lost its charm. But the item required to complete the quest, a gleaming piece of dragon’s scale, was in his inventory, as were the other items he’d pilfered from the corpse. There’d been gold—a lot of it—a couple high-end magical weapons, two jewels, and a metric-crap-ton of dragonhide. An excellent haul.

As it should be.

The gray dragon was part of a quest chain with a suggestion of at least three players of the minimum level. Rikardi had done it with one. Granted, he was five levels higher than the minimum, but that wouldn’t have made much of a difference. He was still a lower level than the dragon itself. Slaying the gray dragon solo was a great accomplishment.

You have received a new title: Dragon’s Doom

Against all odds, you have defeated a mighty elder dragon that was many times your better. For this, all dragons will come to fear your name.

Seeing his Health and Mana meters restore, Rikardi stored his sword and exited the dragon’s cave. He wished he could’ve used the Recall Stone, but inside the dungeon, it was grayed-out in his inventory. The trek upslope had him huffing. After what felt like days later, he finally exited the cave into bright, blinding sunlight.

Kind of fitting after such a great win—like the sun itself provided a nice spotlight for his victorious emergence.

Rikardi cut an impressive figure. Nearly seven feet tall, with two hundred pounds of muscle, his skin was a dark green, lined with cosmetic scars. Little dark spots blotched his bald pate. His bright yellow eyes were sunken deep into his angular face, and small, browning tusks stuck up from his mouth. He had the look of an orc but the height of a human, wearing a combination of plate and scale armor. Heavy black boots, the toes sharp. Scale-mail pants and chest armor, plate pauldrons with a single foot-long spike on each. Thick and strong plate gloves. He had a helmet, but had selected the option to not have it visible. This would allow the armor benefits, but his avatar would retain his desired appearance.

Lastly, the gilded hilt of his great sword stuck up over his left shoulder. Standing in the armor, the sun glinting off it, he looked every bit the Dragon’s Doom.

Too bad there was no one around to see it.

They would, though. Later, after some quick editing of the video footage, he’d have it up on the forums. It would be the first of its kind, he was sure. No one had single-handedly killed a gray. At least, not that he knew of.

Opening his inventory, he selected the Recall Stone and activated it.

Nothing happened.

“What the hell?” Rikardi cursed under his breath.

He tried again. Still nothing.

This time, he furrowed his brow at the stone and gave it a smack. Like that would do anything.

After a third failed attempt, he stowed it. Without the stone, he would have to hike to the nearest town and hitch a ride back to Culver Port or one of the other cities with an auction house. Cliff’s Edge was the closest, but not nearly as many people would be bidding there. Even so, “close” was relative. He might as well walk to Culver Port if he was going to walk to Cliff’s Edge.

Either one would take too long.

Grumbling, just about to open a GM ticket, Rikardi heard a rustle in the bushes just beyond the mouth of the cave. He stumbled back when a small white rabbit leaped out. It glanced up at him, small head tilted, little pink nose sniffing constantly.

He laughed. After slaying a giant gray, this tiny little rabbit had him jumping.

An ordinary rabbit. One of thousands of small woodland creatures that roamed the forests and the plains of Infinite Worlds. All with no true purpose, just put there for the immersion factor. Killing and skinning them would garner nothing, not even for a Level One newb.

But this one was acting strangely, chomping at the air, spasmodically kicking its hind legs.

And it was glowing.

Rikardi took another step forward and bent. A strange shade of orange radiated from its edges. Other than that, it was a plain, old, white bunny.

He examined it further, wondering if it might somehow be related to the quest. After all, why else would it be glowing?

Vorpal Rabbit

“What the hell is a Vorpal Rabbit?” he whispered. He’d never heard of such a creature.

He rose and scared the thing. With a quick hop, it was gone. Rikardi watched the spot it had exited with rapt attention. When nothing happened, he let out a nervous chuckle and returned his attention to the unsent GM ticket.

A shiver rolled down his back. A gust of wind breezed by as if something zipped past. He turned, saw nothing, shook his head. It happened again. This time, he looked down and saw a glowing orange streak. Come and gone before he could blink. Then it was back, from another direction.

He’d never seen anything move so fast.

Without warning, it came to a stop, dust kicking up like an old cartoon character.

It glared up at him, kicked its leg like it was flicking off water. Rikardi half-expected to hear, “What’s up, doc?”

He smiled down at it. It was kind of cute. Rikardi squatted, thinking to pet it, when suddenly, it jumped.

Two pounds of fluffy white fur slammed into him. Tiny claws dug into the seams of his armor. It grabbed hold and held on while Rikardi watched in shock. The rabbit tore into his leg with razor-sharp fangs somehow getting through the armor. Pain coruscated through him, and he slapped futilely. A second later, a dialogue box popped up in his vision.

Vorpal Rabbit’s bite does 30 damage. You are inflicted with Sharp Bite. The Vorpal Rabbit’s sharp teeth have torn a section of your flesh and muscle away, tearing at the wound and making it bleed.

Sharp Bite does 5 damage every second for 50 seconds.

“What the hell?” Rikardi said for the third time in as many minutes.

Those numbers were crazy. He had a high physical resistance and still had some potion buffs active after his battle with the gray dragon. With that, along with his defensive abilities, there should have been no way a rabbit—vorpal or not—could do such ludicrous damage.

Rikardi managed to tear the beast free using the heel of his armored boot. It landed on the dirt, scurrying, clearly eager for another taste of his blood. Rikardi may have been a warrior, but started growling like a rage-filled barbarian. His two-handed great sword, Grovar’s Glacial Wrath, slid free of its sheath with a rasp.

“Come on, you fluffy little bastard,” he said, his voice deep and powerful.

The weapon had attacked the gray dragon for maximum damage, despite the enormous reptile’s high resistances and armor value. Shifting his feet and wincing at the fresh leg wound, Rikardi readied a strike. It would be overkill on the rabbit.

The Vorpal Rabbit unhinged its tiny mouth, revealing the small but sharp-looking teeth which had done so much damage. With a growl Rikardi didn’t think possible from a bunny, it jumped, too quick for Rikardi to react.

His sword came down. An embarrassing miss. The rabbit, however, landed on his shoulder. Rikardi tried to shake it off, but again, the rabbit was too swift. It lunged at his head and sank its teeth into Rikardi’s neck. Blood spurted out, coating the white fur, making everything slippery. Still, it held on.

Vorpal Rabbit’s bite does 50 damage. You are inflicted with Sharp Bite. The Vorpal Rabbit’s sharp teeth have torn a section of your flesh and muscle away, tearing at the wound and making it bleed.

Sharp Bite does 5 damage every second for 50 seconds.

Sharp Bite stacks with currently active Sharp Bite.

Screaming, Rikardi grasped at the creature, but it was too small and slick. But now, it had a new target and latched onto his wrist, tearing through the armor like it was cloth.

Vorpal Rabbit’s bite does 50 damage. You are inflicted with Sharp Bite. The Vorpal Rabbit’s sharp teeth have ripped a section of your flesh and muscle away, tearing at the wound and making it bleed.

Sharp Bite does 5 damage every second for 50 seconds.

Sharp Bite stacks with currently active Sharp Bite and currently active Sharp Bite.

Rikardi’s knees cracked against the hard ground. His Stamina was dropping. He was losing Health, bleeding out, pain gnawing at him from a third bite, and then a fourth. Notifications flashed across his vision each time the Vorpal Rabbit bit him with the Sharp Bite debuff, and the damage kept stacking.

Agony.

The small rabbit biting.

And biting.

Sharp claws digging.

Rikardi watched his Health bar plummet, debuff icons filling his vision. The constant pain from multiple bite wounds was greater than anything he’d ever felt in Infinite Worlds. It felt real. Too real.

It was all he felt until he felt nothing at all.