“What I wouldn’t give for the ultimate technology in regards to infiltration…” Vaile muttered inside his head as he pined for a mystical cardboard box for him to use to make his sneaking that much more fun. “Still, it’s probably not something I actually need, considering these assholes seem utterly unaware that I am here.”

Yes, being a max level Player had its perks. One of which was the fact that said Players all had at least one way to avoid being seen by low-leveled Players. The in-game explanation was that the lowly fools who were just barely starting on their path to glory would be unable to comprehend the power that they were witnessing strut about around them. The out of game explanation was that, in order to avoid griefers targeting low-leveled Players and NPCs, there was a barrier put in place to make sure that the noobs could have fun without having their shit wrecked by more powerful Players.

Basically, what it boiled down to was that high-level Players could not target anything that was not actively hostile or marked as an enemy by the game when it was severely beneath their level, and this included NPCs. Thankfully, it seemed that in this New World, the rules regarding High/Low Level interactions were… slightly altered. Vaile had, only recently, noticed that the tab to switch himself from visible to all to only being visible to allies and other high-level entities was set to show him to everyone, and this infiltration would have been a lot more violent had he not flipped that switch earlier.

He had to admit, it felt weird as fuck to have other people and animals just walk through him like he was some kind of ghost that no one could see, and the sight of people’s insides being visible for just a brief moment as they passed through him was certainly enough to cause him some discomfort.

Still, despite these things, the fact remained that he was almost into the clearing that housed the large, utterly foreign object that seemed to be the root cause of Zahra’s influence being pushed back. Once he set his eyes on it up close, he felt something he had not felt in quite a while.

Fear.

Not the normal kind of fear either. No, this was a kind of fear that caused grown men who had seen the worst shit the universe had to offer shit themselves and run screaming. It was exuding a kind of existential dread that Vaile had only experienced a handful of times before. Once was when he had first dived into VR Gaming and witnessed how the entire whole of what he had thought reality was could effectively have been a masterful simulation that he had no idea if he was in or not. The second was when he played the Full-Dive Virtual Reality version of the old TTRPG ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and ended up facing down a Lovecraftian deity, ultimately having his character die then and there out of madness and fear.

And then there was that time he saw Chuu devour a whole metric fuckton of Rattan souls like she was chugging beer from a tube at a party…

Yeah, those were bad, but this… thing… trumped them all. It looked to be a twisted mixture of modern Earth technology and stuff from the game, but Vaile could not pin down what belonged from where and where each piece of the horrifying object actually was. The whole thing reeked of malicious interference from some otherworldly (by the New World’s standards) powers beyond the capabilities of anything Vaile could think to fathom.

Half expecting to find his task impossible, Vaile hesitantly checked the HP and Level of the object. The name of the device was utterly incomprehensible, appearing as a mish-mash of various letters, symbols, numerals, shapes and other random stuff all overlapping to form something that would give a cryptographer a migraine, but at least its level and HP were dismally low.

Vaile took a few steps back, passing through the body of a guard and then made a running jump towards the object. Both of his feet made contact at the same time, and the object shattered like glass before its components glitched out and vanished from reality. It was at the same time that the object shattered that a deafening screech similar to nails on a chalkboard combined with metal shearing echoed out across the dunes, emanating from the now destroyed device.

Vaile’s ears were still ringing as he picked himself up and looked around, only to see the Desert/Sand Elves that he had snuck past were writhing on the sand with blood trickling out of their eyes, ears and noses. That wasn’t all, however, as a short bit later, one of them rose to his feet and charged at Vaile, pointing his spear directly at the Player’s left side.

Vaile was at first going to just move aside and kill the bastard, but he had an idea that was rather dangerous that he wanted to try out. Call it a risky experiment, but Vaile wanted to see just how much damage he would take from such an attack. He had not experienced the danger of a low-leveled entity since that Dwarf tried to stab him to death, and he needed to remember exactly how it felt. Being completely uninjured and untouchable for so long made him question how durable he was, and this was a perfect opportunity to-.

The sharp feeling of pain flooded him from the rear of his right shoulder. He quickly wheeled around and leveled a fist straight into the face of… something. It took him a while to comprehend what he had just punched his hand through, but he then realized that this was the same kind of creature that had tried to stop him from investigating the death, or possible deletion, of the former prince of the Bestiral Kingdom. Cursing himself for his carelessness, Vaile decided that it may not be the best idea to stick around and tried to bolt for it.

Before he could, however, the dunes began to shake and the sand beneath his feet began to shift.

“What the flying god damned fuck is it now?!” Vaile exclaimed, only to have his feel slip out from under him as a massive creature formed of stone and metal emerged from beneath his feet and begin attacking the Desert/Sand Elves.

It appeared as though the cavalry had arrived, all at the will of the being whose returned influence over the area now guided the formerly sleeping stone and metal monstrosities in their pursuit of the enemies of their master.