Dreamland

The Lynx gave me a surprised look.

Seemingly confirming his unspoken thoughts, a bullet hit my shoulder with a thud, bouncing off the bone and striking the ground between us, sending dust flying.

A pained grunt followed by a curse escaped my lips while I ducked and scrambled for my long daggers. This had been a hunter's shot with a skill.

The precision of the raids improved as they neared, but in response, Alice started shooting occasional 'smoking arrows,' essentially smoke bombs, to provide us with some visual cover.

As the seconds passed, the Lynx questioned my tactic of fighting the enemy with just our gazes, to which I responded.

"Just give me a few more seconds. We need to let them get closer."

I opted to forego the search and fitting of my katars and instead rely on my daggers.

At the opportune moment, I cast a <> to ensnare the mastodont closer to us, effectively obstructing their line of sight.

When I determined that it was the ideal moment to take action, I cast the spell <>.

Suddenly, the area within an eighty to one-hundred-meter radius around me was engulfed in a thick, dark fog.

As my hand rested over his paw, I healed him and said: “Fifty-five seconds free kill, healers first!”

I would have spelled darkness earlier if we had decided to run, but as I chose to fight them, I had to wait until most of the raids came inside the spell area.

I was angry. Well, yeah, this is Mephi. Fifteen seconds ago, I was sitting there, dreaming peacefully and eating my lunch by the fire, for a bunch of idiots to start 'shooting first, ask questions later' and transform my beautiful china dishes into shingles. Yet I probed first to check if they had any high levels with them.

Angry, but I did not lose it completely.

Juicy thing: I could send probes in all directions at once with the 'fairy on my skin.' I did not have the problem of having to choose which way. That was a nice extra mana bonus I did not expect.

<>

High levels would have made things more complicated; however, I was happy to find out that there were none around. Well, except for the Lynx.

An additional bonus: they all felt me. It must be a nice psychological bonus one can achieve simply by unleashing their aura.

My time to act; I've already lost 5 seconds of darkness.

The screams and shots were now muffled by the dark fog. A lot fewer shots and spells, as they were blind.

One of the mastodonts mooed loudly somewhere to the right, trying to provoke us. Yeah, nice try! Keep on trying, buddy!

Short-range fighters appeared, coming for the kill. Much too early. I kicked hard left and right, mostly hunters' pets, like the wolf I just sent yowling, flying to the side.

Unfortunately, I had not scanned the area properly, as I should have done, before spelling darkness, but I had a raw guess of the directions they were coming from. In addition, they were noisy: shouting, screaming, and calling each other.

Whilst we also could not see much, the raids were utterly lost at concentrating their firepower. I heard screams and curses as the Lynx was ravaging the lines of the long-range fighters and, from time to time, the characteristic agonizing scream of an elf dying. He is on the healers now, and the best healers are druids and elves.

I chose a different direction.

I said my <> spell and ran towards the noisiest area.

I love this spell. It allows me to move at more than double the normal speed, and in a way, I think it even encourages my brain to work faster. When under this spell, I can analyze and make decisions instantly.

I hit a rogue in the darkness that I instinctively threw back with a hit of my shoulder. However, in the last fraction of a second, it was that sudden movement I was able to make with the hand that skewered his belly with the dagger. This is what I mean: my brain working faster, making decisions instantly, and my muscles reacting with lightning speed. Now, as I think about it, it must speed up the flow in my nervous system, too!

Then suddenly, I met an archer. Our eyes met, and I hesitated a moment, as she looked so much like Alice, but the next moment, as she stepped backward, preparing to shoot an arrow at me, I kept close, hit her hard with the left elbow, breaking her jaw then planted my right dagger into her belly.

Dark liquid erupted over my hand, and a warm gelatinous mass covered it while a wave of bad smells hit my nostrils: shit, bile, and blood. Hell, do they have to make it so realistic? I do not remember, in any version before, effectively getting the bowels splashing like this. It was just blood and muscles or so. Even the blood splash was now much more realistic. Maybe too much.

Before she fell, my other hand came up and severed her head with a swipe. I saw her eyes blinking as her neck was torn at an impossible angle whilst the heal spell that was already working on her broke.

Only forty seconds of darkness left, and all I killed was an archer merc! The rogue was probably healed. Lucky me, I've just met the healers' group. This is the Achilles tendon of any raid. Thirty-seven seconds left, seven healers in front of me.

My eyes lit: long daggers time!

With both daggers, I started cutting left and right in fast strokes, cutting throats in a frenzy. Fountains of blood splashed around me; it was outright sinister to see with what violence the blood was swashing out of those severed neck arteries. The strong iron smell invaded my nostrils as my hands moved in a blur.

In five seconds, five were lying dead around, while only two of the seven had been fast enough to try to run away. One managed to disappear in the fog, but I got the other one and hacked him down in two strokes.

Fifty seconds is a long time, notably so when one acts at double speed.

I ran towards the next noisiest group, cutting through everything that appeared suddenly out of the fog. My only fear was about meeting Spartacius accidentally. Hopefully, he stays put there where I sent him.

I slashed again left and right in a frenzy. Shadows materialized from the dark fog to become players, beasts, or mercenaries. I got glimpses of their surprised and shocked faces as my daggers cut necks or plunged deep into their bowels. Low-level armor and low-level meat, the daggers cut as through cheese: blood, guts, and gore danced a slow macabre waltz in the air around me, the space blotted by pained faces and contorted bodies.

I don't remember having ever seen such a realistic and macabre light show in the game before, everything moving in slow motion around me. Just a kick from me was enough to break bones, their heads and members swinging wildly in the opposite direction from the force of the hit.

Fury and some fear were guiding me. Fury for the unprovoked attack and fear that we will not do enough damage, the darkness ends, and the raids can again focus on us. How many will remain? One hundred? One hundred twenty?

If we do not do enough damage, we might have to run and hope to escape the fury of one hundred enraged hunters.

I heard one mastodont coming from the left and jumped to the side, avoiding its charge in extremis. At the same time, I pushed as hard as I could, the right blade cutting through its belie as it ran beside me. Its intestines splashed over the field. As the beast fell, I managed to roll and jump back on my feet.

The beast screamed in agony as I continued my chase through the darkness.

Another two seconds of darkness, another kill. I stood on my feet unmoved, listening, concentrated on hearing their steps, whilst a strange silence was now covering the field. The fog slowly dissipated. All the noises were far away from me. Where were those hundred feet trampling the earth? Are they re-grouping somewhere? Even the dying mastodont stopped its high-pitched screaming, only a heavy breath sounding like a gurgle was coming from its place.

My heart was pumping crazily whilst my body was trying to recover after the speed spell. There was always a bit of a harsh transition after the spell, but I do not remember it being so… dramatic? I breathed heavily whilst rivulets of sweat ran over my forehead, dropping over my nose, between my breasts, mixing with the blood, their blood, splashed all over me.

The body of my last victim accelerated its fall, landing with a thud on the ground whilst blood droplets fell from my dagger. I heard my lungs filling with air. I took a long, deep breath and fell to my knees.

The sudden tiredness and the nauseating iron, shit, urine, and guts smell made me puke. I rested on my hands, churning out my pixelated food.

Is this supposed to be so? Sweat droplets aligned over my nose and fell over the mix of grass and puke. Sweat ran along my arms. Gosh, I must be stinking.

How do they do this? How can I see everything at double speed when, for every other player, it is running normally? It is true that not everybody can use the speed spell, even its quality is very much player-dependent, as many spells in Mephisto are, but what does this mean then? Can it be that the fairy bonus has also accelerated my speed spell?

I threw out another batch of freshly chewed food on the ground. Fuck.