A group of 10 goblins surrounded the figures of three adventurers, two boys and a girl.

“We should have brought Morgan with us!” Said the taller boy, readying his longsword.

“He was on duty today!” Said the shorter boy. “Has any of you seen my daggers? One of the fuckers made me drop it!”

“I know is not the best time but, I’m running out of mana…” Said the girl. “I should have enough for two, maybe three more attacks before I’m out…”

“Fuck it then…” Said the shorter boy, smiling. “We’ll have to finish it quickly…”

He tensed his legs and flexed his arms.

“What are you thinking Anton?” Said the tall boy.

“I’m thinking, John, that we should… Blitz them!” He yelled. “Electro Blitz!”

Electrical energy flowed through his body, enhancing his physical abilities.

Anton ran, his muscles shivering with power, electric arcs flew out of his legs scorching the ground were they connected.

One of the goblins jumped towards him in response, his crudely made sword high, but didn’t manage to foresee Anton’s intentions. He stretched his right arm and slapped the monster on its chest.

“Electro Flow!” he yelled and released some of his energy directly onto the goblins heart, sending it into cardiac arrest and sending it flying into a second gobbling behind it, knocking the second one out of his stance.

That small distraction gave Anton enough time to grab the second one’s head and send another electrical flow into the goblin’s brain, killing it instantly.

“Two down!” Yelled Anton. He had moved so fast that some of the goblins hadn’t even reacted.

But two others that were close enough to see his movements clearly, were already on their way to Anton’s open right side.

One especially big goblin carrying a wood axe jumped towards him, ready to plant his axe inside Anton’s side.

“You are always so fucking reckless! Aqua Cut!” Yelled John as he swung his sword.

A crescent of highly compressed water flew out of the sword’s edge and towards the big goblin’s body. It collided against its leather armour and pushed it off course, just to then cut through it and right through the soft parts of the goblin, dividing it into two parts.

The body fell to the ground, still twitching and with half of its innards in the ground.

“Sir! I would like you to at least tell us what you planning on doing!” Yelled the red eyed girl, Anna. “Burning Fangs!”

She stretched her right arm towards the other running goblin and two snakes made out of fire flew out of her palm, twirling through the air drawing a burning helix. One of them found its way into the goblins neck and the other flew past it, landing right in the arm of a sneaky goblin that was trying to get a free attack from within the shadows of a bush.

The snakes’ fangs burned their way right through the thick goblin’s skin and injected their boiling venom into the monster’s bloodstream, making it boil and filling their skin with huge blisters.

The first goblin died almost instantly as its boiling blood cooked its brain from the inside out, but the second one wasn’t so lucky, as the boiling blood went throughout all of its body, filling it with blisters and burning its nerves, but it wasn’t enough to kill it, it just left it in the ground screaming in pain.

John ran towards it and used his sword to cut its head of, releasing it from its suffering.

Anna turned to Anton and saw him running towards her at an incredible speed. He stopped right in front of her, creating a small cloud of dust.

Anton stretched his arms and each one to each one of Anna’s sides, as if to embrace her.

She blushed when she felt his face close to her ear.

“Excuse me…” He whispered. “This way’s faster… Double Barrelled Lightening Shot!”

Anna turned her face around just in time two see his two fingers pointing towards two goblins dangerously close to her back that had tried to use the distraction at the other side of the clearance to attack her with their wooden clubs.

Two beams of electricity flew from Anton’s fingers and landed right into the goblins’ chests, burning their skin and shocking their hearts. The goblins fell to the ground, frothing from the mouth as their bodies stopped working.

Anton stepped away from Anna and looked at her, smiling.

“Sorry for that… it was faster…” He said.

“Three left!” Yelled John as he put his right hand against his heart. “Give me the strength to fight these chaotic monsters… Faith Boost!”

His armour and weapon began shinning with a multi-coloured light as divine energy began flowing through his body.

He closed the distance between himself and the closest pair of goblins with what looked one step and swung his sword horizontally, cutting both of them with one big swing and spurting blood everywhere.

Some of it fell into John’s own eyes, blinding him temporarily. His divine light began to fade.

“Shit!” He yelled. “Can’t see!”

Anton saw the last goblin taking his opportunity and jumping towards John, ready to swing his sword down onto his head. He tried to run towards him but lost his footing and fell to the ground as the effects of Electro Blitz faded away.

“Not a chance!” Yelled Anna stretching both of her arms towards the lone goblin. “Scalding Space!”

A cone of two meters of diameter and four in length formed before her and cutting the way between the goblin and John. It was filled with trembling, scalding air that scorched the grass and ground within its reach.

The goblin, that hadn’t had time to notice the change in the air in front of him, fell right into the space and felt his skin boiling. The shock forced it to breath, unknowingly inhaling and searing all the skin from its mouth to his lungs.

It fell to the hot ground grasping for cold air as its skin boiled and filled with blisters. It whimpered a few times before the shock and internal damage shut its brain down.

“That’s ten down…” Said Anton getting up from the ground. “We did it guys! Another day! Another hunt!”

John, who had managed to clean the blood from his eyes, looked at the scorched body in front of him.

“Your abilities are fucking scary…” He said. “Both of yours… Anton kills anything he touches and Anna leaves blistered bodies all over the place…”

“But! But!” Said Anna. “I-I don’t kill that much!”

Anton looked at her, smiling.

“That much?” He said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Anna just gave him a dangerous look.

“A-Anyway!” Said Anton, looking away. “You can go and tell that to those poor bastards down there.” He pointed at the two dismembered bodies in front of John. “You fucking crushed them! At least mine are not bloody!”

John looked down and then back towards Anton and Anna. They looked at each other and began laughing.

It had been a month since John and Anton had arrived to Cliffend and they had been training ever since in order to survive in that dangerous land.

Given the fact that it had been a month without any sing of someone getting them out of the simulation, it had seemed like a wise decision to just adapt and try to live in the world putting as much effort as they could in order to survive long enough to be rescued.

It had been quite the shock when Anna used her fire powers in front of Anton and John for the first time, especially after thinking that she was just a normal maid that ha the job of taking care of the injured John, and with some pleading and some sweet talking, they had managed to get her into their makeshift party.

After a few days, they had settled into a stable training schedule. During the week, they trained either with the guards-in-training or with Morgan when he was available to use different weapons and with Anna to practice different ways of using their magic.

And, during weekends, they would go out into the forest to complete different elimination quests that were available to adventurers accompanied by the always trusty soldier, Morgan, and the surprisingly capable magical maid, Anna.

“We are getting pretty good at this.” Said John, with a mixture of feeling in his voice, as he sat on a rock and began cleaning his sword.

“Yeah, Electro Blitz is fucking amazing, I don’t regret training it, now I can use if for over a minute…” Said Anton, leaning against a tree as he felt his body getting heavier. “Fuck I’m tired…”

“Even I have learned a few new tricks.” Said Anna. “They are kind of unsightly thought… I would prefer something a little bit cuter…”

John had begun to laugh, when he heard a thump to his left. He turned around and saw something that erased his smile from his face.

Anton was lying inert on the ground.

“Hey!” He yelled as he stood up. He dropped his sword and ran towards Anton. “Anton! What’s happening! Say something!”

John shook Anton’s limp body, trying to get a reaction, but he could see no light within Anton’s light, it was as if the strings had been cut from a puppet.

Anna ran towards them, placed her hands on Anton’s chest and, thinking that it must have been an effect from the battle, began pumping heat into Anton’s body in order to try and keep his body warm, a trick she had learned helped people recover faster from injuries.

But it wasn’t working, she wasn’t feeling any heartbeat, and without her noticing, tears had begun to roll down her cheeks.

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Anton found himself on a dark and empty space, but he soon noticed that it wasn’t just darkness as in lack of light, if was dark because there was just nothing apart from him.

He focused and tried to remember what had happened. He remembered feeling very tired and like he was having trouble breathing, which was weird because not even in the real world had he ever had that problem.

He had rested against a tree and was listening to Anna talk about cute things and what not, when he felt that his legs where trembling and that his vision was going dark.

Next thing he knew, he was there, in the dark place, with no clue of where exactly he was.

He noticed that, if he focused on the apparent silence, he could hear two sets of voices, one was… John… calling for him, he sounded scared, and he could hear someone crying.

The other one was… a voice that he remembered but wasn’t able to quite recognize.

“M-Mom?” He asked out loud. “No… it’s not mom… Karen?”

He could hear the faint voice of his sister, who was talking to him from what it seemed like a million kilometres away.

“Common little bro, hang on just a little longer. I promise I’ll take you out of there, but for now we need this, we need to know where you are…” Said his sister’s voice.

He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, similar to the time the connections had stopped working, and her voice started to fade away while John and Anna’s became clearer.

“Karen! No! I’m here!” He yelled into the darkness. “Don’t leave! Don’t leave me here!”

But it was too late, he stopped hearing her and the world around him gained colours once more.

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“Karen!”

Anton’s body julted upwards as he screamed, but stopped when he hit his head against something very hard.

“Kaah!” He yelled.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Anton!” Yelled someone else with a strangely nasal voice.

Anton looked around, his mind cleared by the pain he felt on his forehead. He was back at the forest with Anna and John. He noted that the first had an amazed loo on her face and that she had been crying, whole the second, who also looked like he had been crying, was holding his nose with his left hand and was looking at him with an angered expression.

“What the fuck man!” Said John. “You lay there, inert, scaring the living shit out of us, and then you just wake up and the first thing you do is fucking head-butt me in the nose!?”

“S-Sorry…” Said Anton, who could see that John was, indeed, in pain. “What happened exactly?”

Anna and John looked at each other and then at Anton.

“That’s what I would like to know!” Started saying John, but Anna interrupted him.

“I’m so glad you are alive!” Said Anna.

“W-what? W-why exactly?” Said Anton, blushing slightly.

“I thought you were dead! You know what Lady Clara could have done to me if you died on me!?”

Anton’s face lost its reddish coloration and he looked down, slightly disappointed.

“Just for that, huh…” He said.

“So…” Said John, trying to break the tension. “What do you remember?”

Anton looked at him, reminded of what they were talking about.

“Ah, yeah. I’m not… too… sure about what happened exactly… but I think I heard Karen’s voice…”

“Karen?” Asked Anna. “Who’s Karen?”

“Karen’s his older sister,” Said John, exited, it was the first contact they had had since the beginning. “And what did she say? Did you understand anything?”

“Not… much to be honest…” Answered Anton. “Something about not giving up and holding up for a while longer, she also said something about needing to know where we are…”

“You think they are closer to bringing us back?”

“Don’t know, I wasn’t able to hear anything else, and I don’t think they actually knew I could hear them, but…”

The two boys looked at each other.

“But I would guess that they are trying to track our location and to do that they had to cut the connection for a few seconds, I would say that that’s the reason I blacked out here and was able to hear them, but I would guess that put me in danger in some way, my sister sounded very nervous.”

“Connection?” Said Anna, interrupting the boys’ dialogue. “I don’t understand, what are you talking about?”

John looked at her, suddenly remembering that they shouldn’t talk too much about the real reason they were there in case the truth may have some negative effect on the people from the simulation that could end up affecting him and Anton.

“I-I don’t understand much either…” He said. “But I do understand that our families back in our world are trying something to bring us back, am I right?”

“Exactly,” Said Anton. “So we absolutely can’t die now John.”

“And we need to find the others, they might need help or they might have abilities that could help us.”

“Yeah, we’ll have a lot of work to do.”

Anna looked at them.

“So you guys are leaving?” She asked, pressing her hands against her chest.

Silence fell in the group as they looked at each other, filled with mixed feelings.

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End of the “Brave New World” Saga