[Fan Fiction] Survival in the Sceptre of God

The Ranger quickly moved behind the pillar.She checked her flasks....all empty.There were several cuts on her body.She was bleeding, shivering and felt a strange sensation.She felt despair yet hope, exhilarated yet exhausted, greedy yet content.Her vision dimmed, blurring more and more every time she blinked, and turned into a shade of nightmarish red as if someone had just pulled a very thin red veil over her eyes.

"This can only mean one thing",she thought to herself.She knew this sensation intimately.She had seen this same sensation in the eyes of every being that she had killed, whether it be the eyes of a severely wounded blood monkey who was running on for dear life after seeing his kin get slaughtered, or the eyes of one of those pesky undying freaks in the sewers that realized a bit too late that whirling head first into the wrong side of an arrow was a terrible idea.

Hell, she could have sworn that she felt the same even when killing one of those lifeless metallic constructs.Speaking of which......she moved slowly out from her hiding position to check if the area was safe now.4 Frigid arrows, 3 balls of ice that looked like skulls and an innumerable number of spines came her way and crashed into the pillar behind her(she had rapidly taken cover again) making the most unnatural and terrifying noises, as if to say "Not Yet".

She sighed in relief.Even if there were a thousand attacks instead of a handful, the pillar would still not get even a single scratch.Thats the way the Glorious Gods of Generosity had designed them.But a foul croaking sound, that actually sounded more like a dozen frogs being tortured simultaneously, quickly brought back her attention to the matter at hand.

She cursed Dominus and his abominations, and started to think of an exit plan when her mind suddenly froze in terror."Wait a second...that croak....those 3 skulls.......croaked chimerals?!?", she wondered.She put her head out from the hiding spot, just enough for her to see them, but not enough for them to see her(this was one of her staple survival tricks from her time back in the jungle, that was actually still functional in Wraeclast).She saw 4 Aurate archers, several Plumed Chimerals, and one single Croaking Chimeral in the middle of the room.

The croaking chimerals meant doom for her. Those ice skull like things that they spit out could send her into a fever upon contact, severely slowing her down and making her an easy prey, that is if she could somehow avoid getting outright frozen.But that was not the thing that terrified her.It was the fast and deadly leap.In one perfect motion, they would quickly leap into the air with the might of a lion, swoop down on your throat with the accuracy of an eagle, and hurt like several hours worth of a bear hug crammed into one single moment.

Getting hit with the leap would mean certain death, and the fact the she had modified her stance to better trade blows with other archers at the cost of less manoeuverability room against enemies that got up close and personal, were definitely not helping her chances("Arrow Dancing" she had called it, "Poor Thing" they would call her corpse).But how did one single croaking chimeral shoot 3 skulls at once?? She peeked again, and noticed his larger frame and the piss like yellowish glow on his body.

"He is one of the augmented breeds", she realized.These "Augmented Breeds" as she liked to call them, would sometimes pop up alongside the regular adversaries they fought, no matter whether they be human, undead, animals, or constructs.They were far more tougher and vicious than their "Normal" counterparts for no reason at all, as if the Glorious Gods of Generosity wanted to spice things up. She looked again to try and determine what his augmentations were.

"He can shoot multiple skulls, and whats that?? His skin looks as if it has been torn from his flesh, forged into a platemail of some kind and grafted back onto him again.So he is more armoured than an entire Blackguard Division. And beneath his legs....a descry....oh no kill me....." she exclaimed(She could also see the name of the creature for some reason, perhaps another mystery related to the Glorious Gods of Generosity).She did not care much for stealth this time because of 2 reasons.


The first being the "Descry" symbol spinning him and other nearby abominations meant she would have to kill him first to take down the others.The problem with this was that the constructs and abominations of Wraeclast did not follow human rules, they did not get weaker or tired as they drew closed to death, they could still keep hurting you as if they were bursting with vitality.And they would not just sit there while she fought the chimeral.The second reason being that this time, upon peeking, the Croaked Chimeral had looked her back squarely in the eye.The game was up.

As much as she wanted to go out like a cornered fox, she would have to settle with dying like a cornered rabbit.

Suddenly an old man entered the room.He was wearing nothing but a huge long sleeved shirt and sandals.No pants.

Hope and memory rushed back into the Ranger's mind, because he was her friend the Templar!! They had both come here to kill Dominus together, and she had only gotten into this predicament because he had left her to fend for herself when he went to town for "One Minute".

The monsters in the room set upon the templar, who just casually raised his arms to form a huge explosion around him that roasted all the monsters in the room.

The ranger finally crawled out from her hiding place, looked upon the templar with eyes that were holding back tears, a result of experiencing both near death despair and the joy of life within a very short time, and asked the templar,"Where were you?? I was about to die!! Everything that i have worked for up until this moment would have gone to waste!! WHERE WERE YOU??"

She could no longer hold back the tears now, and they started snaking their way across her face like a small river.

The templar looked at her with reassuring eyes, cleared his throat, and paused for a moment as if gathering his near infinite wisdom for the words that were going to follow, and said in a firm voice.......


"Sorry AFK LUL"

The rest of their journey to Dominus, including killing him, mostly took 10-15 seconds, since the templar was following one of those Dank new "Meta" guides.