They're living manifestations of two sides of fate. Klaren and Priam. One was unlucky in real life and fights for the game, while the other was lucky and fights against the game.
Me and you? We are right in the middle of the two sides. Ordinary, average guys who had a boring life outside. We don't have a particularly large desire to flee this game, nor to stay either, at least I don't.
-Livno Lojanović, fifth-ranked player.
***
"What..." Priam stared at the devastation. White fire in his eyes and all around his body.
The heat was felt by the two players accompanying him. Their health was actually decreasing slowly as they stood only a few meters from him.
Then, he bolted across the two hundred meter distance in two seconds.
Paul and Alex followed after him with opened mouths.
Priam stopped abruptly at the camp's entrance and the red sand beneath his feet turned black.
"No..." he said, his two fists clenched.
"Who? Valenti? No...it can't be him," Paul said.
"Definitely not. We're competing as rivals, not warring against each other. We share the same goal," Priam replied.
"But you only informed him," Alex added.
"And Lavonte. But it can't be him either. Not possible."
"How are you so sure?" Paul asked with a frown.
Priam was silent as the trio walked through the devastated camp. Mounts, pet monsters, tents, buildings, people all turned to scrap.
Knights lay dead with their white armors of the Valiants destroyed on them.
Priam looked around with a white glow in his eyes.
And all he could see...
Were his own knights, dead. No one else.
"It's only our own!" Alex yelled.
"I know," said Priam, quietly.
"The enemy could have taken the bodies of their allies...But it could also be the work of a top 100 who also had an army." Said Paul.
"Thus making Valenti and Lavonte more suspicious," said Priam. "But no, it's definitely Salvation. They might have gotten a powerful ally."
"We can't be sure. We need your sister. Her lie detection. Summon both of them, both Valenti and Lavonte," Paul added.
"Of course," said the king.
"Guys!" Alex called out from a few dozen meters away.
He stood above rocks. Rocks that looked like a dismembered human. It was a rock human who was dismembered.
Priam and Paul rushed over.
"This ability...it's Klaren's," Priam said with a drop of sweat going down his left side of the face. His mouth open in disbelief.
They couldn't even lift the helmet off the head since the two blended together as stone. They would never know who this was.
"There's no way it'll work on you," Alex said with a frown, looking at the first ranked player.
The man being looked at was silent. Staring at the rock corpse.
After a few moments, he turned towards what used to be the expedition captain's tent.
He walked slowly towards it.
The trio stood over the destruction.
"Fuck," Alex said. "What will we do with the bodies?"
The other two were silent.
Looking around. Walking tent to tent. Nothing to find. No clues. No information. About the main boss or the enemy. Everything was destroyed and razed.
The silence was broken by Priam.
"We can't have graves and tombstones in this place. It'll lower the morale of everyone. I'll burn them. It's my responsibility."
The other two nodded.
"Another stone body over there." Alex pointed towards a decapitated stone statue.
"A fearsome ability," said Priam. "It'll be best to avoid getting touched by unknown people. I think it works like that. I remember one guy had a similar ability. His required physical touch."
Nothing in the area was left standing. Everything crumpled, crushed and destroyed. A complete wasteland.
Weapons of the dead were nowhere to be found. Taken to be sold or used. Only ruined armor pieces left on the victims.
"There's nothing for us here...We need to go back and have a meeting. Contact Valenti and Lavonte," said Paul.
Priam nodded.
"Brothers, get away from here. I'll burn this place to the ground, and have a statue be made with every good man and woman's name written on it who died here, back at base."
Alex and Paul nodded, taking their leave quickly.
Four hundred meters away from Priam, they stared at the first ranked from a cliff top.
The man in white armor with a large red cape on his back started glowing. His whole body was getting enveloped in white fire.
Then, the fire spread rapidly. In seconds a full field of fire was around him in a hundred meter diameter.
Everything burned. The fire rose up twenty meters. The king was in the middle of it.
Enhancing it further, the fire became so bright the two watching had to strongly squint their eyes.
The heat was felt from the distance they stood at. Alex took a few steps back and so did Paul to reduce their discomfort.
And then from the white fire that raged high and bright ascended a glowing winged form.
The form stood there a moment, hovering above the small sun below it.
Then in a second, a large ring appeared behind his back and the figure then at the same time bolted and crossed the four hundred meter distance in three seconds.
Paul and Alex looked up at the player who hovered above them, the glow on him disappearing.
Priam landed softly on the ground.
"We've got a lot of work to do. Sorry boys," the king said.
Alex noticed tears on his cheek and in his eyes. Tears which were unaffected by the hottest fire ever.
"We'll go through the Death Zone again?" Alex asked.
Priam nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, we'll be sneaky, avoid boss monsters. It's the fastest way back to base."
"Shit man, I'm sorry this happened. How many people did we lose, sixty?" asked Paul
"Fifty five," said Priam exactly.
"Fucking hell, let's make sure this never happens again. Contact other guilds, make alliances. It's not about who kills the boss. What matters is killing the boss," Paul said.
"Of course," said Priam as they walked away from the artificial sun burning behind them.
He soon stopped.
"If only I had been there..."
"Don't blame yourself. We couldn't have expected them to know the camp location. They must have an insider. Maybe one of our guild members," Alex said as he put a hand on Priam's shoulder.
Priam inhaled deeply through his nose, then exhaled slow through his mouth. "They will never be able to pull something like this again."