Chapter 1: One Armed Guardian.

“My name is Reiji Narudo, I’m 19 years old I have no permanent address but I’m currently living in Jouri staying at Chourin’s Inn. I don’t have much experience but please let me join your guild! I’ll do the cleaning and I can cook too!”

-says the young man with copper hair color wearing dull clothes of a country bum as his forehead touches the unmaintained floor.

As the old man pushes Reiji out he yelled: “Get your ass out of here! We don’t need a scrawny boy like you!”

---***---

Walking down a busy street while surveying the signs, the young man was feeling blue when he thought

“Ahhgh, the world sure is a harsh place for someone like me. Only 30 silvers left (‘>_

Then he yelled in the middle of the streets:

“Please give me a joooooooob!!!” While clutching his purse in his right hand.

The young man was far too naïve and noticed too late that his coin purse was snatched by a little kid that was running like the wind.

“Oiii!! You bastard give me back my purse!!!” Rei shouted as he ran after the little thief.

The little kid ran as if his life depended on it, while Rei ran because his life depended on it; he was almost out of breath he couldn’t catch up to the kid because of his heavy bagpack.

Rei lost his sight of the kid and was extremely tired from running around town, he didn’t notice that it was already nightfall and he has no money to stay at an inn.

---***---

A cold midnight breeze brushed through his ears, he shivers while curling up trying to fit his body in the old newspaper that he was using as a blanket. His neck cracking for he was using a can of sardines as a pillow. Our pitiful main character can’t help but cry himself to sleep.

As dawn came and noises woke Rei up, he thought to himself : “I should just live in my dreams, I never want to wake up to this pitiful reality, calling this living would be an insult to rats at least rats have homes.”

After his episode of self-pity, Rei convinced his pitiful self to try again once more and find a job and said “I don’t want to die worse than a rat! When I die I want the world to mourn for me!”

Strolling around town Rei is looking for a job, even after being turned down by a lot of guilds his determination did not falter.

Passing through a store, he saw in the screen a rerun of a 1 versus 1 battle in Alctuz between a Shield & Mace user against a dual-sword user.

Rei couldn’t take his eyes off the screen as he witnesses a battle between two great warriors.

The shield user’s in game name was Gran he has a short blond hair and is wearing heavy-looking armor with a triangular shaped shield on his left hand that is as big as his upper-body and had an image of a lion carved on it and on his right hand a mace with a cube-like head but with its corners edged like a sword.

The sword user’s name was Krul he had a long wavy hair that was red as blood and is wearing light armor with red & black lines on it and both in his right and left waist sides are the two swords’ sheathe, he had both his swords drawn, the swords’ blade is dark black and durable-looking.

The map they were fighting on was “Plains” where there are almost no place to hide and nothing to obstruct the battle.

-*In Alctuz, there are different maps the players can choose to fight on, some maps are tricky and some have almost nothing in it. It depends on what was decided on by the players or the organizers of the battle.

You can use any skill you’ve learned in real life in Alctuz and that includes magical powers.

Gran was standing like an immovable fortress as he waits for Krul to start attacking first. As a shield user this is a common style but it is also very effective for countering attacks.

Krul doesn’t take Gran’s bait as he knows that he will be prone to counter attacks.

Gran notices that Krul has no intensions of attacking first; He proceeds to go on the initiative and hit first and hit hard.

“!” Gran shouted as he focused his mana onto his shield and dashed forwards like a stampeding elephant.

: Dashing towards the enemy with a shield that has focused mana power on it. It is hard to stop and can drag enemies that are hit. (Average per hit: 2% Full damage average: 14% )

“Haaaaa!!” screams Gran as he dashes towards Krul.

Surprised by Gran’s sudden charge, Krul dashes forward as if he intends to collide with the rampaging shield user.

Just before they’ve crash against each other Gran poured mana onto his feet and just before jumping he said “Got you!”

Grand leaped and faced his shield and body downwards and shouted “!” he uses the mana from his feet to create a stepping platform in the sky and used it as a boost to crash against Krul like a meteorite.

Krul was surprised but with his fast reflexes he strengthened his swords using mana as he intends to block .

*Crash*

Krul was able to block some of the damage of but still took 12% damage to his health bar and was sent flying in quite a distance; nonetheless is not without its risks, Gran receives 4% damage when lands even without hitting an opponent.

: The user will leap up in the air then face his body and shield downward and using solidified mana as a platform he will boost himself to the target at incredible speed. This causes a great deal of damage but will also damage the user 4% of his hp even if the attack did not hit an opponent. (Average damage: 20%)

-*In Alctuz there is an HP (Health points) system where you will only be considered as dead if it reaches 0. HP is constant to all players (150,000HP). Only defense and attack powers are different. A player can buy virtual equipment in Alctuz which he will then use for his battles.

In game the players can only feel a quarter of the pain felt by his avatar. An avatar in Alctuz will look like the players true form in real life except when the players uses disguises such as costumes or full armors covering distinctive parts.

Gran thought to himself “I won’t let him regain his balance.”

Not giving Krul a chance to retaliate, Gran dashed at an incredible speed as he used ; but with Krul’s fast reflexes he used to dodge and deal a counter attack against Gran.

: A skill learned by many sword users for its usefulness against aggressive opponents. The user will take a step back and turn spin whilst at the same time using his sword(s) to counter attack.

Unfortunately for Krul, a shield user like Gran is capable of blocking his strike. (Not all shield users are capable of blocking a slash at unbelievable speed)

But even if Gran blocked the slash completely, it was still a successful evasion by Krul and it gave him a breather to regain his footing.

“You’re pretty tough, you move fast for a guy with heavy armor.” Krul said with a confident grin.

Wanting reprisal for the damage he took from Gran’s Krul then took a hostile turn and charged his swords with mana then ran towards Gran with intention of melee combat.

“Let’s see how fast you are!”Krul said as he charges towards Gran.

A high-speed close-ranged combat has erupted wherein neither fighter is giving the other an Achilles' heel; both giving their all to the intense battle, Gran tried to make distance between them for he had nearly exhausted his fatigue for he was consecutively using skills and fighting melee while wearing heavy armor.

~*In Alctuz there is a fatigue bar in a player’s interface this bar is based on the player’s real life aptitude, once this bar reaches its max the player will feel tired and will move a certain percent slower than normal, the percentage increases as the player continuously fight without breathers to recover fatigue. (The starting percentage is 10% and increases by 5% every 15 seconds.)

But knowing this fact, Krul didn’t give Gran a chance to flee and continued to strike without end.

“Eh? Getting tired already? We haven’t even finished out little warm up!” Krul confidently shouted as he continued striking.

Gran has reached max in his fatigue, and moved a little bit slower than normal; but in their extreme battle, being a moment too late will lead to harm. Exploiting Gran’s moment of weakness, Krul took a stance where he faced Gran sideward facing right and made a cross symbol using both of his sword where his left hand was near his chest pointing the word upward and his right sword pointing at Gran he shouted “!”

: Deals a huge amount of damage by continuously slashing a enemy/enemies for 5 seconds at different locations whilst moving at astonishing speed using mana power. Once the stance was made, if the enemy is in the user’s direct field of vision or in the pointing swords’ linear position the attack will is extremely hard to dodge. (Average damage per hit: 3% Average full hit damage: 32%)

Gran attempted to dodge but since he was directly at the pointing sword’s line of attack he wasn’t able to dodge. Slash after slash after slash, Gran was receiving severe damage and his HP bar has decreased by 45% even thou he has blocked quite a number of slashes.

~*In Alctuz the amount of hits that a skill can inflict is directly proportional to the user’s abilities.

In this scenario, ’s average full hit damage was 32% with 3%/hit average but Gran received damage that surpasses that because of Krul’s personal abilities; it means that Krul either has attack power that exceeds the average or Krul was fast enough to land more hits in 5 seconds than the average.

[HP Watch]: Gran: 50%HP

Krul: 88%HP

You may ask why Gran’s HP was 50% instead of 51%, that is because the damage received by Gran was 49%of max HP + several hundreds of damage but doesn’t reach 1% of total HP which was 1,500HP of 150,000HP and leaves Gran with 50% of max HP + several hundreds of HP.

Gran lost his right arm and the battle was in Krul’s favor

~*In Alctuz losing a limb cannot be healed, the said limb will disappear in the arena but if there are weapons held or carried by that limb it will stay in the arena for anyone to use. But after the battle those said weapons lost in the arena will not come back to the owner’s inventory if it is either picked up by other players or will disappear to oblivion if the owner is dead and nobody picks the weapon up this rule also applies to thrown weapons (such as arrows, kunai , etc…). This makes losing a limb and dying in game even more unacceptable.

“Now that you’ve lost your right arm, you’re no threat to me now you should just give up!” said in an insulting manner by Krul as he looks down on Gran that was on his knees feeling a quarter of the pain of truly losing an arm.

Having lost his right arm which holds his mace, the people viewing the battle was thinking that he has lost his will to fight. They may not be mistaken; the oppressing situation of fighting a very skilled opponent with only his left arm and shield was too overwhelming for Gran.

Gran glared at Krul more seriously than ever with hints of anger and desperation; you could see rage in his eyes, the eyes of a man that has never given up anything and a man who has never even thought of giving up at all.

Gran lifted his shield whilst looking like he was about to unleash his wrath and shouted: “Morph!!!”

Gran’s thick and heavy armor transformed into a white knight’s armor with lines of gold in all its edges; his huge shield morphed into a broad sword and like his armor it had golden lines in its blade and a golden lion’s head was at its hilt.

After his grand transformation Gran replied in a calm and confident manner:

“Give up? Yeah, you should”