Ian looted the horker before storing his spear. The last few hours had consisted of him jogging in circles around the city to quickly kill each worker he found. Other than a small party of adventurers he had seen from a distance, the morning had become fairly easy after defeating the rare spawn.

  Upon reaching level 480, the levels had stopped coming with every kill, which had been a huge disappointment, even if Ian had known it was coming. Most of the monsters were now close enough to his level that he no longer received the additional bonus experience outside of his own inherent skill. He was still leveling every few fights, but the monsters were few and far between as he found himself missing the increased spawns that showed up during the night phase of the zone.

  Reaching his hand up, he ran his fingers along the necklace’s chain. With all the monsters falling in the first couple of attacks, he still hadn’t gotten the opportunity to see how well the item augmented his fighting style. Combined with not knowing how much mana he had or how much of a toll the skill took on his mana pool, made him genuinely nervous.

  He saw another horker no more than a stone’s throw away from the village entrance. Not seeing any of the guards around the gate, he began working his way over to it.

  “Kill it quick, and get away from the village death trap,” Ian murmured to himself as his spear appeared in his hand.

  Quickly advancing on the creature, Ian moved in a calculated and practiced way. The worker turned as it heard the noise of Ian’s approach and tried to get itself into a defensive position. Ian knew exactly how it would move and quickly pushed the enhanced blade into the creature’s chest. Just like the last dozen times, the blade from Magic Soul cut straight into the creature’s heart, killing it instantly.

  Congratulations! You have achieved level 489. You have been awarded 20 skill points!

  He looked around the fields as he looted the monster, but didn’t see any other workers to go after. He seemed to be killing them faster than they reappeared.

  Knowing he shouldn’t, Ian’s curiosity wouldn’t let him get away without glancing over at the gates to the large horker village, and what he saw made him frown. There was a single guard, but instead of guarding the gate from intruders, it was fully focused on something happening inside the village. The last few times he was close to the gate, there had been two guards, and they had always been completely focused on external threats.

  Analyze Results - Horker Guard

  LVL:     651

  Ian waffled for a minute before deciding to take a chance. He broke into a controlled jog and worked his way towards the guard. As he got closer, he could hear the sounds of lots of horkers grunting and squealing, as well as what sounded like human voices.

  Realizing the noise was concealing his approach, Ian increased his speed to close the gap between himself and the guard. Pushing into a full sprint for the last ten yards, he activated Magic Soul and jammed the spear straight through the creature’s neck from behind. It hadn’t even bothered to turn towards him.

  Pulling back his spear, Ian watched as the creature crumbled to the ground, the noise not heard over the sounds coming from within the village.

  Congratulations! You have defeated an enemy more than 100 levels higher than you. Experience rewards are quadrupled. You have earned 5 levels. You have achieved level 494. You have been awarded 100 skill points!

  Before Ian could even react in excitement, he could clearly make out the situation in front and perfectly understood what had drawn the creature’s attention.

  Ahead of him were well over two dozen horkers crowded around the entrance to one of the mud and stone huts that lined the main road. He began to leave as he heard angry screams coming from the building that the monsters were surrounding. He couldn’t make out words, but the voice sounded female and was definitely human. The crowd shifted, and he could make out the door to the house and quietly groaned.

  “Fuck…” Ian said through clenched teeth.

  The door had five horker bodies wedged in it. From the sounds coming from within, Ian knew that the party he had seen earlier was trapped inside and was probably in a bad way. Unless they could get clear of the village, the monsters would stay focused on them until one side was completely defeated. If they were using the bodies as a makeshift barricade, it would need to be refilled every half hour when the corpses disappeared.

  He needed to help; he just wasn’t sure if he could be effective enough to do it without getting himself killed. This group was trapped, and more monsters would continue to respawn faster than they could kill them if they were only dealing with five at a time. They must be injured or desperate to have chosen such a strategy, because there was no way they weren’t aware of the respawn mechanics of monsters at this point in their adventuring careers.

  Ian finished looking around as he came up with a plan. Similar to how the party was utilizing the dungeon mechanics to block the door, he was going to see if he could lower their numbers without fighting them all.

  He slowly crept forward, looking between the houses to ensure there weren’t extra horkers wandering around as he closed on the back of the milling crowd of monsters. Steeling himself, he stood six feet behind the guard at the back of the crowd and activated magic soul as he thrust his spear at the creature’s undefended back.

  Congratulations! You have defeated an enemy more than 100 levels higher than you. Experience rewards are quadrupled. You have earned 4 levels. You have achieved level 498. You have been awarded 80 skill points!

  Ian grimaced and mentally dismissed the skill as he quickly struck out two more times—garnering two more notifications. He went to stab the fourth one as the third collapsed onto the monster in front of it. His thrust ended up hitting the creature off center and puncturing a lung instead of its heart. The grunts and squeals of pain the creature let out caused half of the monsters to turn to view the new threat.

  Instead of sticking around, Ian was already sprinting as fast as he could towards the gate. If he could make it out of the village, they should stop following him after a moment and turn back. It was a commonly used plan to clear out safe areas when entering new floors in the low and mid-tiers. The smarter creatures in the higher-level dungeons made kiting monsters to different zones within them extremely difficult, if not downright impossible.

  Ian was only a couple of buildings away from the gate when a patrol of guards marched into his path directly between the last house and the gate. Swearing and making a snap decision, Ian turned and shouldered his way inside the building to his left. The impact knocked the wooden door onto the floor as he nearly lost his footing.

  Catching himself, he scanned the inside. It was just a hut with a fireplace, a bed, and a small chair. There were no horkers inside, which probably saved Ian’s life as he turned around and jammed his spear into the chest of the guard coming through the now open entry.

  Ian was greeted by another prompt as the creature died. He had no time to read the message as the creature was pushed to the ground by the monsters behind it as another took its place. Ian left his skill active as he began to strike out in a fervor. Every time he killed one, another took its place.

  What seemed like an eternity, but was realistically only 45 seconds, Ian ran his spear blade through the eye of a horker that had shoved its head into the last gap in the door as it tried forcing itself through. He was panting as he ripped it back out, and the entire world seemed to teeter for a moment as he deactivated his attack skill.

  Eight horkers were dead, their bodies either just inside the door or forming the barricade that now protected him from the small crowd outside. He knew his mana wasn’t in a great place, but the dizziness that came with low mana reserves was beginning to subside as his breathing began to even out.

  He looked back around the room and was thankful for the lack of windows and a back door. Instead of just standing there, he sat down in the chair for a moment. As he caught his breath, he began to laugh. He had decided to help that group, but instead ended up in the same situation that they were in.

  After a couple of minutes, Ian stood up and stretched his arms and shoulders. His dizziness had eased, and he didn’t have a headache, so he knew he wasn’t too low on mana. He also knew that most monsters would respawn after a while, so he was going to need to be able to kill them efficiently. He couldn’t afford to take on that many again without having serious mana drain.

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  Walking over to the door, he reached out and looted the last creature he’d killed, opening the small gap at the top. He stood back far enough that nothing could stab him, but he saw there were at least five more standing outside.

  He smiled to himself as the closest one quickly came forward and tried to shove itself through the opening headfirst. Without turning on magic soul, he brought the spear forward into the creature’s face. After two stabs, the creature tried to pull itself back out. Thrusting forward, Ian killed the creature before it could free itself.

  “Wow, Magic Soul is amazing to the point I feel kind of weak without it,” Ian muttered as he reached out to loot his fresh kill.

  After repeating his actions for the next five minutes, Ian found himself staring out into the village through the hole. He poked his spear out and quickly pulled it back in. He didn’t see any more monsters, but he also didn’t completely trust his ability to detect enemies within the alleyways either.

  Looting a couple of the corpses on top of the pile, Ian moved both to the left and right to ensure there were no monsters waiting right outside for him. He quickly shoved his head through before pulling it back. There were only about five monsters down in front of the other building now, and the rest of the street seemed clear.

  Ian scoffed at that idea. The streets had looked clear the last time, and he had nearly gotten himself killed. However, if he could get behind that group and do what he did the first time, he could probably kill them all. He would leave the remaining corpses here just in case he needed them, as they still had over a quarter of an hour until they disappeared.

  Moving quickly, he climbed out of the building and moved towards the monsters still milling around the other door. He checked the couple of alleyways and looked behind him to ensure everything else was clear before closing the last twenty feet. Activating his skill, he decided to go all out.

  Quickly dismissing the prompts that began to appear, he dropped the first two before stabbing the third with the spear and pushing it into the other one in front of it. His sword appeared in his hand as he let go of the spear and aggressively tore into the horker that was turning towards him. He used magic soul to sever its forearm and quickly slashed its neck while it was in shock. As he turned, the last one was just beginning to untangle itself from the dead horker that was on top of it. Ian stored his sword and grabbed the spear sticking up from the body on top of the monster. With a quick thrust, the creature’s squealing came to a sudden halt.

  Deactivating his skill, he checked to ensure there were no more patrols moving about before smiling at the now-empty street.

  “Thank the curator,” Ian whispered before turning towards the door and saying, “Whoever is in there, hurry up and loot the bodies. We gotta get out of here before this shit gets real again.”

  He reached down and looted his kills as the arguing kicked up again inside. After a moment, the top horker corpse blocking the door vanished in a black wisp of smoke.

  “Who’s out there?” came a deeper voice than he had heard screaming earlier.

  Ian couldn’t see into the building, so he quickly looked up and down the street again to make sure there weren’t any more patrols. The longer this took, the more likely it was that everything would suddenly go sideways…again.

  “Call me Zero. But my alias isn’t important right now. We need to move before we get swarmed again. Is anyone in there injured?”

  “Zero?” came a voice that made Ian freeze. A shiver ran up his back as he turned towards the door to see his ex’s face staring back at him from just inside the gap.

  At that moment, Ian wanted to walk away. Just turn on his heels and run out of the village. He wanted to be anywhere other than right there. She didn’t deserve his help; she didn’t deserve him putting his life on the line by nearly getting pincered by giant pig people and killed in a dingy mud hunt in the middle of a god’s forsaken—

  Then he took a deep breath and shook himself. His anger wasn’t useful, and he knew he couldn’t leave another adventurer to die—even if it was his ex and her party.

  “This is going to be a pain in the ass,” Ian muttered before looking back at the hole. He made a beckoning motion before saying, “Seriously, let’s go!”

  Avra looked at him for a second before she opened her mouth to speak, “We were simply—"

  “Listen, lady,” Ian cut her off. “If you can’t walk and talk at the same time, keep your mouth closed. Hey Kanbis, you in there?”

  Suddenly Kanbis’s head was staring out at him and giving him a smile. “Well met, Zero. I am very excited you have deci—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Please tell me there at least one person in there whose head isn’t so far up their ass they won’t stop role-playing in the middle of a crazy, coked out version of animal farm, or are you all going to die spouting off stupid shit?”

  “For fuck’s sake,” came a quiet female voice as their archer stuck her head completely out of the hole to look down the street. Satisfied, she looted the corpses before looking up at Zero’s shadowy face. “One of our party members is unconscious, and Avra is too low on mana to properly heal him. Honestly, I’m not sure she has the capability to properly heal him anyways.”

  Ian walked into the room and saw the fourth member of their party lying on the floor with his helmet removed. Noticing the swelling on his forehead, it was obvious he had at least a concussion. Ian walked over and began to channel a small amount of healing to confirm it was just his head. Even that small amount of mana usage left him on the edge of dizziness.

  Stopping the flow, Ian looked over at the two casters and archer, “I’m guessing that none of you can actually move this guy?”

  “We can’t even move the armor he’s wearing,” the black haired woman said. “He probably weighs a good five hundred pounds in all that stuff. It’s so heavy he puts it on in the dungeon every time we dive.”

  “Lana,” Avra hissed at her.

  Ian looked over to see Avra staring angrily at the smaller woman who just rolled her eyes at the glare. Kambis seemed to pretend none of it was happening.

  “Knock it off,” he said after a moment. “Lana here is being helpful. Being intentionally dense for entertainment purposes isn’t worth your life or that of your friend. Your fans can’t enjoy your make-believe shows if you’re all dead. Now give me a second, and I’ll see if I can move him.”

  Ian reached down and grabbed the man by an arm and a leg and flexed his strength. After a moment of effort, he had the man settled on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  “Alright, Lana was it?” Ian said, looking at the archer, who nodded. “Please lead us out. Make sure to watch the alleyways. Let me know if you see anyone, and we will deal with them together.

  “You two,” Ian said, looking at his ex and Kambis, “No loud or flashy spells inside the village, or you could kick over this anthill. It’s like a caster’s worst nightmare in here.”

  Ian looked back at Lana, receiving a nod before she led them out the door. He followed her as quickly as he could, but carrying the man on his back wasn’t making things easy. It was difficult to maneuver his large frame out the door, especially when the plates of the man’s armor were digging into Ian’s leather armor and pushing into his shoulders. Avra and Kambis came out last and walked behind him with their heads on a swivel.

  The next couple of minutes were tense, with everyone staying silent and hoping not to run into any more horkers. Ian thought they were going to be lucky until Lana held up her hand to signal a stop before rushing back to Ian.

  “One of the guards at the gate is back,” Lana whispered. “It’s staring straight out at the fields, but I don’t think I can pick it off without drawing a crowd. I can hit it, but my strength and agility aren’t high enough to punch through their skulls with my current gear.”

  Ian nodded before moving to the edge of the last couple of buildings. He looked up and down the road, seeing nobody there. He crouched and put down the man he was carrying before standing a stretching.

  “I’ll hit it with my spear, then you hit it with arrows until it dies. Sound good?” Ian asked her.

  “Do you want us to use any spells or keep a lookout?” Kambis asked nearly too quietly to hear.

  Ian reached out and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder, “Just keep a lookout for now. If we accidentally kick over this anthill, I want you to nuke the first patrol you see. I’ll need the time to put this guy on my shoulder before we can run out of the zone.”

  As Kambis nodded, Ian looked back at his ex, who was looking at him with a strange expression. It looked somewhere between annoyance, interest, and fear…and a whole lot of not his problem. Every time he looked at her, he had to fight the urge to just leave them there.

  Shuddering as another chill ran up his spine, Ian summoned his spear to his hand. The guard was a couple dozen yards away, but he was partially hidden by the edge of the gate. Ian checked again for patrols before he followed Lana up to the point where they had a clear view of the creature. Pulling his arm back and taking aim, Ian took two steps forward and launched his spear, hitting the creature right in the upper back before sprinting back to grab the injured man.

  The creature let out a surprised grunt but was hit with three arrows in quick succession. It looked down at the arrows protruding from its chest as a fourth took it in the throat. It collapsed just as Ian got the man back in a fireman’s carry and made for the gate. He saw Kambis grab his spear as they ran out and began to make their way down the road towards the portal.

  Once they had gone far enough from the village to feel safe, Ian gently put the man down on the soft grass and began to channel the mana he had regenerated into the man’s skull. His concussion wasn’t nearly as bad as Ivy’s wound had been. After a few minutes of healing and once again suffering from a dizzy spell, Ian reached out and shook the man’s shoulders.

  The man’s eyes snapped open as he struggled to push himself up.

  “Walking bacon will never take me alive!” came his gruff voice. The man looked around confused before turning to look at Ian. “Did you know your face…isn’t a face? Like, it kinda is…but it’s also kinda not?”

  Ian began to chuckle. “My name’s Zero. How are you feeling?”

  “Like I drank too much and then got hit by a truck. Did you know your name isn’t a name but a number?”

  Ian snorted before turning to Lana. “He okay?”

  “Seems like normal Tram to me,” she replied with a smirk.

  The man, Tram, seemed shocked as his eyes got wide as he stared at the petite archer, “Woah! I gotta be dreaming if you’re talking during our dungeon run.”

  “Today’s a special day,” said the woman as she came up and hugged him. “I’m glad you are alright, but let’s get you out of here. I’ll only feel better when you’ve been fully checked out.”

  Ian stood and helped the man up. Tram was a bit unsteady, so Ian steadied him from one side as Lana helped from the other. They walked in silence for a few moments before Tram looked over at Ian.

  “Too bad you won’t be joining us,” he said quietly. “I’ve heard you’re powerful, but if you fought your way through the crowd that had us pinned down, I’m sure you will surpass us pretty quickly.”

  A scoff sounded behind Ian, though he could tell it came from Avra without even turning around.

  Ian pulled up his status screen as they walked and began to chuckle. His ex was in for a treat the next time she looked at the leaderboards, and the thought made his status all the sweeter.

  Name: Ian Spelling (Hidden)

  Alias: Zero

  LVL:     518

  Status:

  STR:    4428

  END:    4096

  AGI:     4017

  WIL:    3230

  INT:     3318

  Skills: Prestige Mode (Awakened), Prestige Leader (Inherent), Statistical Synchronization 2/3 (Inherent), Enhanced Body 10/10, Enhanced Mind 10/10, Conceal Identity, Analyze 1/5, Poison Resistance 1/5, Basic Item Storage 3/5, Strength 1/10, Agility 1/10, Endurance 1/10, Soothing Touch 1/5, Magic Soul

  Available SP: 1820