Spiteful Healer

“Round ‘em up quick!” Mikael shouted to his guildmates as they ran around him frantically within a large dark cavern. The stalagmites and stalactites of the cavern were shimmering with electrical energy. They constantly shot off random streaks of lighting between one another, illuminating the cave and outlining the players and monsters running about.

All of his guildmates wore the same symbol of a simple, sad face emoji embroidered onto their cloaks, but apart from this, they wore various armor types and were wielding different weapons. Mikael himself had a gigantic greatsword in the shape of a jagged lightning bolt that, too, was giving off light sparks of static electricity from its edges.

What he was telling his group to round up were strange enemy NPCs in the shape of small furry light blue balls floating around with puffy green and purple eyes visible beneath their fluff - no bigger than basketballs. Their levitation method was the continuous pulses of electricity they were releasing, which also propelled them in random directions at incredible speeds. They were darting around through the air of the cavern, attempting to ram their bodies into Mikael’s guild mates.

After hearing his instruction, each party member worked to lure the dozens of creatures, with [Bolt Lindarei - Level 89] floating above their heads (Levels varying),into a central section of the cavern. Seeing one of the other clerics get hit by a stray bolt from the cavern’s natural lightning, Mikael quickly ran to them and cast a heal to mend up their wounds. This allowed the cleric, [Mightymira - Level 80], to focus her healing magic on their other guildmates who were taking damage from the Lindarei. Eventually, they successfully rounded up the many monsters in a singular area.

“Alright, Melee, form a line and hold them in the area. Everyone else, start attacks on my call!” Mikael shouted, charging forward alongside other monk, rogue, and fighter class players. Shields, mauls, swords, daggers, and fists were raised and swung out at the creatures, gaining their attention despite the rapid movements of the creatures. Through great effort, they were able to get the creatures under control. “Now!” Mikael shouted, and following this, blasts of magic and barrages of arrows were unleashed, combined with broad cleaving melee attacks from the weapons the close-range fighters were wielding.

Clerics continued to heal up any damage taken, and eventually, the red damage numbers from Mikael and his guildmates were enough to dispatch all of the Lindarei.

Level Up! You’ve reached Level 86!

The message popped up for him as small loot orbs began to roll out of the many dying Lindaraei.

“Nice. Great work, guys.” Mikael cheered as the others began resting, some grabbing their knees to catch their breath. “This should be enough Lindarei sparks to complete the quest for everyone. Jeremax, you handle the harvesting.” Mikael motioned to an exhausted-looking Ranger.

“Are we pulling anymore tonight?” Mightymira asked as she pulled out a toasted bread from her inventory and ate it.

“Nope, that’s it for tonight. A few people said they needed to head out. But we’ll pick up again tomorrow. At 15:00 server time. We want to take advantage of this cave before others figure out how to grind here.” Mikael replied. From these words, he got a few nods of acknowledgment.

“I’ll open up a portal to Stormtop.” A wizard player declared, dusting himself off and beginning the spell cast.

“Please keep it open until I’m done creature harvesting. Don’t leave me behind like last time.” Jeremax groaned at him.

“I told you, my dad was rushing me out of my Simbox. It wasn’t on purpose.” The wizard replied apologetically during his cast as others began to gather around him.

“Yeah, right,” Jeremax grumbled back at him.

“I would have done it on purpose.” Mightymira teased, causing a few others to laugh.

“I’ll stay behind with you to ensure you’re fine.” Mikael reassured him. “I’ll sort out the quest items to divide them up for everyone before the next grind session.” He added as he began picking up all the items the creatures dropped, and no one in the guild seemed to mind this - as if it was the usual procedure.

Once the portal from Jeremax finished casting, the small blue magical doorway revealed the portal altar of Stormtop, built into the city's town square and surrounded by other players who were curiously looking into the portal in an attempt to catch a glimpse at who’d be stepping through.

A few of the players started walking through, including Mightymira, but after a few moments, she pushed her way back into the portal to stand in the lightning cavern once more.

“Hey, Mikael! Apparently, there’s a new airship that just docked at the Skyport. No sails, player-owned. From that Jungle island.” She called out to him, drawing his attention away from picking up items around Jeremax as he worked on using his knife to harvest the monsters' bodies. Mikael immediately jerked his head to look at her with sparkling wide eyes. He then glanced at Jeremax and the wizard, who rolled their eyes at him.

“Just go, I got this.” Jeremax sighed, seeing the eager, childlike expression on his guild leader’s face.

“Thanks!” Mikael patted Jeremax on the shoulder, then the wizard as he ran past him to get through the portal. The moment he was through and in the city of Stormtop, he took off at top speed towards the western walls where he knew the Skyport to be. Mightymira rushed to keep up with him as they pushed through the crowds of NPCs and Players that filled the streets of the old medieval city.

Many quadrupedal beasts were pulling along carts and wagons that were not present in Kalmoore. Some resembled fluffy dogs with big floppy ears, others like sheep with hardened wool shells instead of wool. The city guards wore Iron armor with bright yellow and deep blue capes hanging off their backs, wielding large spears as their weapons. Racial diversity was not as present here as in Kordas, as almost all of the guards were stout dwarves with long bears of varying colors sticking out of the bottom of their helmets.

It wasn’t long before Mikael and Mightymira made it to the large open gates leading out of the city on the west end, opening up immediately into the Skyport built into the side of the mountain, overlooking a huge drop down to the ground below. This day provided much clearer weather, allowing them to look at the sea of mountaintops across the landscape in front of them, all much shorter than the mountain the city was built atop.

They were not interested in taking in the view, though. Instead, they glanced around the various piers where airships were docked, spotting out the new ship they had never seen before. Immediately after spotting it, Mikael calmly power-walked toward the dock, trying to look as presentable as possible and hide his excitement. He spotted the Captain standing awkwardly at the end of the dock, talking with a player.

The Captain, [Ryner - Level 30], looked disinterested in the player talking to him and instead kept looking over his shoulder at the other players and NPCs moving about the Stormtop Skyport. The moment he spotted Mikael approaching, he suddenly got highly nervous.

“Are you even listening to me?” The player in front of him groaned as he spotted Ryner looking away.

“Huh? Uh, sorry, I missed that.” Ryner replied awkwardly as Mikael and Mightymira stepped onto the pier and approached slowly, pretending to be interested in the NPCs carrying various crates past them.

“I said, this city is under the control of the Karnage Guild. As your ship is not currently registered to any Kingdom that Olympiod is in an alliance with, you’ll need to sign a few documents if you wish to do trade here.” The player sighed as he pulled out several parchments from his inventory.

“Oh. Right. Sure.” Ryner awkwardly took the items.

“Once you’ve filled them out, deliver them to the Karnage Guildhall. Any guard will be able to give you directions.”

“Okay. Got it. Will do.” Ryner nodded. The player let out an annoyed huff of air before turning and marching away, passing Mikael in the process.

“Don’t even think about it. This guy’s gonna lose this airship within a week. You board him. You’ll end up losing all your gear.” The leaving player shook his head at Mikael with wide eyes of disbelief. “Stupid rich kids.” He added in a whisper to himself. Mikael did not heed this warning and eagerly approached Ryner.

“Hi there.” Mikael waved.

“Hello.” Ryner cleared his throat and replied awkwardly.

“So, you’re an Airship Pilot?”

“Yup.” Ryner nodded.

“How’d you afford an Airship? Are you some old billionaire investor? Or some rich kid who’s using daddy’s credit card?” Mightymira asked jokingly.

“Huh? Well, uh, definitely not an old billionaire investor.” Ryner laughed awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with them.

“So, you’re a rich kid then?” She raised her eyebrows at him, noting his strange response.

“Uh-huh. Yup. I’m that one. Definitely, I’m a rich kid. Daddy bought me an airship.” Ryner replied hastily.

Nicholas, tuning in to Mikael’s livestream to watch the meeting unfold, couldn’t help but slap his palm to his forehead.

“You’d think someone trained in dealing with social engineering would have some social skills,” Nicholas grumbled.

“Eh, we don’t train that part.” Mike shrugged, watching the same live stream over Nicholas’ shoulder as they sat inside Nicholas’ office simulation.

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Ryner’s response caused Mikael and Mightymira to give each other strange looks before turning their attention back to him.

“So, we’ve been looking for a pilot to take us on an adventure. The leading guild keeps refusing us bec-”

“I’m in! Let’s do it!” Ryner cheered excitedly, clapping his hands together and hopping on his feet slightly.

“We didn’t even tell you where we wanted to go yet.” Mightymira tilted her head to look at him as a curious dog would.

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Ryner laughed to himself awkwardly. “It’s just, you know, I love adventure. That’s, well… My dad, he said, son, you take this airship, you go into the Shattered World Online, and you have some great adventures. So, I’m just, you know, I’m looking for that.” Ryner lost enthusiasm slowly as Mikael’s looks of confusion began to bore into his soul.

“Right, but, where we want to go is ver-” Mightymira began to explain, but Mikael quickly slapped his hand over her mouth to stop her from talking.

“Very exciting. Tons of adventures. I actually have a quest to go there. A few people on this island do.” Mikael spoke over her.

“Great. Sounds great. Perfect. When should we leave?”

“We still didn’t say where we’re going.” Mightymira squinted at him.

“Puagas, right?” Ryner asked.

“Yeah… How’d you guess that?” Mikael asked him curiously.

“It’s, you know… ’s just the most exciting island I could think of.”

“Right. You’re okay with that? I mean, you must know that island’s being called the PvP island, right?”

“Uh uh. No problem.” Ryner gave him a thumbs up. “I love PvP. Action, adventure, excitement. Let’s do it.”

“Really?” Mikael asked, still not quite believing his ears.

“Hell yeah!” Ryner cheered awkwardly.

“Okay…” Mikael turned to look at Mightymira once more and saw the skepticism on her face, but just shrugged at her. “Well, we won’t have everyone ready to go until tomorrow. You think you could wait for us to make some preparations?”

“Yahuh. Absolutely!” Ryner smiled.

“Okay. We’ll be here tomorrow at 15:00, in-game time. Sound good?”

“Perfect. I’ll have the ship and crew ready for you.”

“Great… then… see you tomorrow.” Mikael smiled and shook his hand.

“See you!” Ryner replied, keeping his forced smile and shaking Mikael’s hand a bit too long. Eventually, Mikael pulled away and left the pier with Mightymira at his side. The two waited until they were out of earshot of Ryner before speaking though.

“That dude is creeping me out. Acting super weird.” Mightymira said.

“Who cares, he’s going to take us to Puagas! We can finally get that crusader quest done!” Mikael whispered under his breath, barely able to prevent himself from squeaking with excitement.

5 In-game days later…

The large merchant vessel soared above the sea of black mist in the open air, its mast and wing sails catching the wind as Ryner stood at the stern holding the wheel. The upper deck and lower deck were jam-packed with players chatting with one another, some having pulled out dice or cards and gambling gold coins.

Many of the players aboard the vessel were members of Mikael’s guild, which Ryner now knew to be named Schadenfreude. Still, many players from various other groups had joined the journey once word had gotten around Stormtop that an Airship was heading to Puagas. This also resulted in Ryner’s ship being banned from ever landing at the Stormtop Skyport, but he didn’t mind.

There were also several NPCs, mostly ranging between levels 30 and 50, that Ryner had hired to help him protect and take care of the ship. Some were deckhands, busy scrubbing the deck carefully around the player passengers without disturbing them. Others were guards, making sure no problems arose and no theft occurred. He also brought along two chef NPCs who’d become elite due to the interactions with other players on the journey and managing their hectic, constant orders.

Due to food supplies beginning to dwindle much faster than Ryner had anticipated, he was greatly relieved when the giant landmass floating above the abyss came into view that morning, appearing with the rising sun.

“Land ho!” Ryner called out excitedly the moment he spotted it. This stirred up the players aboard the ship and got them all talking, ceasing their current activities. In addition, many of the players who’d logged out aboard his ship began logging back in as they got word that Puagas was finally near.

The closer the Airship got to the island, the more mundane it looked. From the side of the large land, they could see it was covered to its very edge with gigantic pine and fir trees, towering high up into the sky. The only thing odd about it was the sheer size of the trees—they were massive and made Ryner’s Airship look like a toy boat.

There were no signs of fires or burning villages, as Ryner had anticipated. The chaotic nature of Puagas, ‘the PvP island,’ was, at the very least, not visible from this distance.

Ryner began angling the sails to soar closer to a location where the trees looked less dense as all other players eagerly awaited their arrival above land, equipping their weapons and stretching their bodies out. All but one, that is, as Mikael noticed Ryner’s ship not slowing down and quickly turned towards him, pushing through the crowds of other players aboard the merchant vessel.

“Halt!” He shouted at Ryner in German before quickly correcting himself to English. “Stop! Do not fly any closer to the island!” Mikael ordered him, much to the annoyance of the other players surrounding him.

“Why not? I thought you wanted to land here?” Ryner asked him, confused.

“If you bring your Airship any closer, you will lose it. The Skyport of Puagas is not friendly. The only players who remain on this island are thieves and murderers.” Mikael explained.

“What’re we supposed to do, then?”

“Yeah? We didn’t come all this way for sightseeing.” The players around him began to complain.

“Do not worry. My guild has several wizards who will gladly fly you all to the island from here. It is only a few hundred meters. It will be slower, but you will be glad I did it when it comes time that you wish to leave, and we still have a friendly airship in the air.” Mikael replied to them, getting a few annoyed shrugs of compliance from the nearby players.

“My Airship will need supplies, though,” Ryner answered skeptically.

“Don’t worry. We’ll procure some to repay you for your kindness before we head inland for our quest.” Mightymira smiled.

“Alright.” Ryner nodded hesitantly as he began waving his fingers, yellow glows surrounding the tips. Within seconds, the wing sails folded in, and the mast sail rolled itself up, slowing the Airship to a crawl and eventually stopping approximately 200 meters from the edge of Puagas.

Keeping his word, Mikael organized the wizards in his guilds to help fly each passenger off the ship individually. By the time they’d finished, the first ones to be ferried had already begun setting up a small basecamp at the island's edge, complete with a campfire and tents. Ryner could feel the sense of adventure filling the air as the last few players spoke in excitement about what sort of creatures would be in the forest ahead of them and how far away the nearest civilization would be. Various passengers who had been traveling separately began organizing groups to travel together through the forest, and Ryner felt an overwhelming urge to join them but resisted it.

Eventually, he was left on his own as the sole player remaining aboard his Airship. The NPCs continued to go about their jobs, but they couldn’t distract him from the longing to explore Puagas with the others. He watched from a distance as the small campsite at the landing location was emptied of players - they packed up their things until all that remained was the remnants of the campfire they set up. No player was in sight.

A full day went by with Ryner by himself, pacing around the ship idly and striking up conversations with the only elite NPCs aboard - the two cooks. They only cared to talk about Shattered World cuisine, though, which Ryner knew very little of. During one of these conversations below deck, he was startled by a loud thud on the upper deck above.

“Ryner!?” An unfamiliar voice shouted out to him from above. Ryner quickly rushed to the upper deck to see a short, distraught player looking exhausted and out of breath. Above his head, he quickly saw the name [Renault - Level 60] - an unfamiliar gnome wielding a staff and wearing tattered blue robes.

“Y-yeah?” Ryner looked at him in confusion.

“Prepare to sail away from the island. Fast. All soldiers, ready your bows and crossbows!” Renault ordered Ryner’s NPC guards, who replied quickly to his commands.

“H-how?” Ryner mumbled to himself as Renault ignored the question and leaped off the deck once more using a fly spell, and quickly soared back towards the Island of Puagas. Ryner didn’t need the question answered, he knew enough about the game to figure out why this Renault player could immediately give orders to the NPCs - it meant his leadership skill was very high level.

Ryner was hesitant to comply with the stranger’s requests until he spotted a strange flood of darkness mixing in with the canopy of the Pine and Fir trees on the island. Simultaneously, he spotted several frantic players at the edge of the island where Renault landed. He recognized them from this distance only by their tabards, bearing the symbol of Mikael’s guild. The moment Renault landed, he cast several spells behind and on the players, creating a transparent dome covering their backs and enabling several of them to fly alongside him.

Once all 6 of the players were airborne, they began soaring towards Ryner’s vessel, and the shell that Renault had cast behind them began to make crackling and slamming noises due to a mass of Abyssal Reapers soaring out of the forest and crashing into it, screeching furiously.

“Oh shit,” Ryner said anxiously as he stopped observing and quickly rushed to the stern, anxiously casting his pilot skills to get the aircraft ready to sail. The mast lowered, and the wing sails spread, and the ship began to turn to face away from Puagas.

“GO GO GO GO!” Mikael shouted as he landed on the deck alongside the others.

“Get us the fuck out of here!” Mightymira yelled amongst the players who’d been flown over.

“You can’t let him get this ship. The sword lets him control the reapers! He wants the ship!” Renault shouted as well. It was a jumble of words as all three players started yelling at him simultaneously. In the distance, the shell that Renault had created to block the swarm of reapers shattered, and they all began flooding through the air towards them.

Ryner hurriedly sped up the ship's rotation as the Reapers swarmed closer. The guards he had hired didn’t hesitate to begin unleashing barrages of attacks on the incoming swarm alongside the Schadenfreude members and Renault, who used the little resources they had left to help out.

They didn’t need to fend them off for very long, though. Once Ryner had the ship angled properly, he used the Airburst skill to launch it forward and send it barreling through the open air a great distance from Puagas. It took a few moments for everyone to realize that they were out of harm's way and finally safe.

“What happened?” Ryner asked the players worriedly, watching as they collapsed on their bottoms or grabbed their knees to catch their breath.

“They knew we were coming. Musta been because of my livestream.” Mikael sighed in frustration.

“Barely got half a kilometer into the forest before Seraxus showed up. We tried to take him on, all the players worked together. It was a slaughter.”

“Lost my damn Thunderblade,” Mikael shouted in annoyance, to which Ryner noticed he no longer had his two-handed sword strapped on his back.

“You’re lucky that’s all you lost.” Renault sighed at them.

“What happened to everyone else?” Ryner asked.

“Well, we respawned 24 hours later. Only Seraxus and his buddies were waiting for us at the respawn location, surrounded by reapers. We were safe in the respawn area but basically trapped until…” Mightymira motioned to Renault.

“This guy helped us get through. There were more of us, but everyone else scattered or got killed during the escape. They’ll be respawning somewhere else on the island.” Mikael explained as he stood up. “This quest will be a lot harder than I thought.” He began cracking his knuckles and glaring in the direction that Puagas had been.

“You shouldn’t go back. In the best case, you get stuck being corpse-camped again. Worse, you lose more gear, and Seraxus steals this Airship.” Renault explained to them. “It took me a lot of work to destroy all the Airships on Puagas to ensure he couldn’t leave. All he wants to do is consume souls and strengthen his sword - if you let him off the island, he’s just gonna go on a Rampage somewhere else.”

“Yeah, well… I’m not leaving my guildmates behind. I’ll stop streaming…” Mikael turned off his livestream. “I don’t care about that right now. We’re getting everyone back aboard this ship. If that’s alright with you, Captain?” Mikael turned to Ryner, who glanced nervously at Renault and Mikael.

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