CHAPTER 3

  Save The Villagers

  Flaming arrows arched overhead, setting roofs alight, turning the village into a furnace. At the far end, guards fought with what looked like raiders near a broken barricade, hacking at each other in the smoke.

  What the hell could he even do here? No weapon, or even any goddamn pants. Just some dumbass nudist dropped into a massacre.

  Alarm suddenly smacked into Bash, and he threw himself to the ground. An arrow streaked past overhead, followed closely by another.

  "Holy SHIT!" Bash spluttered, spitting out dirt and small pebbles. "What was that?!"

  Something had told him to dodge. A skill maybe? It was like he… felt the future.

  Prediction! Bash realized. Not cryptic at all, literal.

  Would have been nice before I tried petting the local wildlife.

  On a hunch, Bash triggered Investigator, and the world shifted. It was way better than he’d hoped. The two skills fed into each other, amplified, became more than the sum of their parts. Dotted lines came to life, marking danger zones. Percentages hovered at each decision point like a goddamn strategy game overlay.

  “Hell yeah,” he whispered.

  Okay, wow. Passive-aggressive much? Terrible design.

  Forcing the point, boots crunched on loose gravel and debris as a large raider charged up from the village toward him. The beast of a man was nearly twice Bash’s size, leather armor slick with red blood, axe raised.

  Bash crab walked backwards panicked, stumbling to his feet. Turning, he ran back the way he came, bare feet slipping on dirt as he tumbled back down into the forest below. The raider's boots pounded after him right on his heels, getting closer. And closer.

  At the base of the slope, Bash ran straight through that same shimmering line in the air that triggered this whole damn mess. And as if he’d just closed a window, the roar of battle in the village became muted, replaced with bird song and the peaceful noise of the forest.

  Hell, even the sound of pursuit all but vanished with the change in scenery. Bash skid to a halt, spinning to face his adversary, with fist raised.

  The raider stood ten feet away, axe still raised, frozen at the edge of an invisible line. His face twisted with an uncanny rage, but his legs wouldn't carry him further. The raider took a step back and started to pace, eyes locked onto Bash with a dangerous gleam.

  “Quest boundaries? Ha!” Bash waved. “Hey! Hey, asshole! Come get me!”

  The raider tried to take another step forward. But just like before, his foot stopped mid-air, before planting itself back behind the line.

  “Oh, COME ON!” Bash threw his hands up. “You really want me to fight this guy with what? Harsh language?”

  The raider wasn't leaving. He stood at the boundary, snarling, waiting.

  As the time ticked down, Bash seriously considered letting it expire. But another thought. Would that mean the raider would disappear? Or just the quest boundary?

  If he had to guess, it wouldn’t be the nice option.

  Fine! Bash jumped back into the quest area, right before the timer ran out. The raider lunged after him, axe sweeping downward. Prediction screamed, and lines exploded across his vision. One bright path showed him stepping left.

  Bash followed it, sidestepping. The axe smacked the dirt where he'd been standing. The raider stumbled forward from his own momentum, and the weapon slipped from his grip, skidding across the ground.

  Bash dove for it. His hand closed around the hilt, and he knew immediately something was wrong. Heavy. Way too heavy. His muscles strained just lifting it, the blade wobbling uselessly.

  “Are you KIDDING me?!” Thinking quickly and with a massive effort, he hurled the axe back across out of quest area. “Fuck you, game! I didn't want a cool axe anyway!”

  The now unarmed raider tried bull rushing him next, and Bash barely dodged out of the way despite the early warning. Shit! Even if I can see what to do. I can't react nearly fast enough.

  Pulling open his menu mid-dodge, Bash dumped his free stat points into Dexterity. The change hit like an espresso shot. His limbs went from sluggish to electric. And he began to kite the raider more easily, as they weaved their way back up the hill.

  The raider swung a fist. This time, Bash's body followed the skill more easily. He stepped cleanly.

  Bash threw a punch of his own, his fist connecting awkwardly with the man's jaw. The impact jolted up his arm, and the raider's head snapped sideways. But the man didn't go down. He turned back with even more murder in his eyes.

  The next exchange was messy. Bash dodged two more haymakers and a lethal-looking elbow strike, the prediction lines getting clearer each time, his body learning to trust what his mind was seeing. He took a glancing blow to the forearm that numbed his fingers.

  Bash, for his part, landed a couple more sloppy strikes to the man’s chest and throat, which surprisingly sent the raider staggering backwards, choking.

  Pressing the advantage, Bash got a clean hit for once. His fist hammered the side of the man’s temple with everything he had. The raider's eyes rolled back, and he dropped.

  Bash stood there, panting, knuckles throbbing as the new skill settled into him. His stance shifted with newly injected muscle memory. Feet wider, weight lower, his fist now correctly angled.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  With more confidence, Bash finished the short jog to the top of the hill and looked back down at the village with a fresh set of eyes. The scene below was now covered in overlays that painted a grim scene. Every line said the same thing: terrible odds, no matter what.

  The clarity it gave him was akin to a superpower. Attack from the left along the ridgeline? A nearly fifty percent chance of getting cut down by arrows. Charge around and through the main gate? A significant risk of getting surrounded. There were other options as well, too many to count, most of them far worse.

  Terrible odds no matter what, he thought. Screw it, I’ll just wing it until something works. Predict, move, act. Repeat.

  Body trembling, still filled with adrenaline, he started sprinting towards the edge of the village.

  What had once been a market square was now a graveyard in progress. Stalls lay overturned, animals bolted in blind panic, villagers shrieked as fire swallowed their homes.

  Being this close, he could now feel the heat, and the smoke stung his eyes. The noise of raiders shouting, villagers screaming, merged into chaos.

  Bash noticed the villagers themselves. NPCs, nominally static quest-givers or fillers. Some were moving with uncanny timing, reacting to the chaos almost intelligently. Not the same scripted movements of the raider he just fought. They had way too many deviations. Too much panic… or maybe awareness.

  Trying to sneak closer, Bash stubbed his toe on a loose rock, and he swore. “DAMNIT,” he screamed. His mind drifted back to the perfectly good boots the unconscious raider was still wearing on the other side of the hill.

  Shaking his head in disgust at the oversight, he refocused. There was no time to play dress up. Three raiders, apparently hearing his yell, began to charge with their weapons raised. Probabilities crowded his vision, each showing the next few seconds.

  With no time left to think, Bash put all of his trust in these newfound skills. He sidestepped the first raider as the axe swept by, close enough to ruffle his hair. He countered by grabbing and swinging a nearby crate, sending the raider off balance and tripping over a pile of burning debris.

  His heart began to hammer, and everything balanced on a knife’s edge. To survive this, Bash would need perfect timing and a lot of nerve.

  Another raider was two steps from a villager nearby, a split second from striking them in the back. No time for hesitation. Bash threw the crate, catching his target off guard. The raider staggered with a yelp and dropped his sword, allowing the villager to escape behind a flaming cart.

  He spun as Prediction flared, intuition screaming danger. An arrow whistled past, striking the wall right next to his head. Bash ducked behind a building, lungs burning, already nearly spent after just seconds of engagement.

  “Holy shit!” he yelped. “Video games make this look way easier.” He was panting now, sweat pouring down his face, and he had barely done anything. Focusing so intently on his skills was draining him fast, and the thought of dying pantsless was, honestly, peak cringe.

  Peering around the corner, he could see the glow around the next raider closing in, the branching pathways of movement in his mind. If he dodged left, the odds were decent but not great; if he dodged right, the raider would overshoot and leave himself wide open.

  Rolling out of cover to the right, Bash barely dodged a wild swing. With a quick shove, he knocked the man off balance, sending him windmilling into a burning building. “Ha! I got another one! Natural twenty, bitches!”

  The raider he just pushed caught fire and began to holler, arms flailing as he stumbled deeper into the flames instead of out. The celebration died in Bash’s throat.

  He couldn’t look away. The man collapsed, still thrashing, still burning, still screaming, until he wasn’t. The silence that came after was somehow worse.

  Bash swallowed past a lump. “I should’ve read the terms of service.” The joke fell flat. Definitely not his best work, but it kept the horror from taking over.

  Dragging his eyes down, Bash looked at his trembling hands. Balled them into fists. You wanted to be a hero your whole life. Here’s your chance, asshole.

  Choice made, he turned and continued towards the center of the village. All around him the invisible threads danced, giving their little glimpses into the future. If he could only pick the right ones, the village might yet survive.

  ***

  Smoke rolled across his path, thick and oily, scratching at his throat. Heat licked his face as a roof beam cracked, spraying sparks into the morning air.

  A raider lunged at him with an overhead swing, telegraphed and wild, but deadly if it landed. Bash slipped sideways into the highlighted safe zone, body flowing into the move as if he’d rehearsed it a thousand times. A stark contrast to the unbalanced fool just moments ago.

  His fist snapped up, guided by instinct, and cracked the man across the side of his head, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. He ducked again as more arrows streaked overhead. Investigator and Prediction painted lines of incoming fire before they were let loose.

  Ahead, guards clashed with a dozen raiders, their formation already breaking.

  In the chaos, another of his skills pulsed at the edge of his awareness, Tactical. It gave Bash the resolve and know-how to bark out commands, the right words coming before his brain could catch up.

  Running up on the formation, he started screaming out orders. “Shields! Cut right, guard the flank!”

  One of the guards stared at him, eyes wide. For a second, Bash couldn’t tell if they were stunned by his sudden leadership… or by the fact that he was a mostly naked screaming lunatic.

  An older guard broke the stalemate. “I saw him take down three raiders! Follow his direction!”

  The hesitation shattered. The line tightened, shields locking with a clang.

  Any humor he may have felt about leading WoW raids in the afterlife was short-lived as the clash turned savage. The raiders hit the guards hard. Steel tore through light armor and flesh, the sound something Bash would never quite get out of his head.

  Guards grunted and screamed as axes split shields, spears rammed into bodies. Men bled from wounds that a respawn timer would never heal. This wasn’t the choreograph of an MMO. It was raw, ugly, human.

  A young guard beside Bash, who couldn’t have been older than twenty, failed a parry, and the raider’s blade bit deep into his shoulder. The guard howled, dropping to his knees, blood spraying across the dirt. He was calling for his mother when two more raiders surged forward to finish him, features warped by evil glee.

  Bash moved and lunged low, sweeping a raider’s legs from under him. The man fell into his companion, both sprawling. A surviving guard drove his spear through the pile, silencing them both.

  Arrows hissed from the tree line. One flew past Bash’s cheek, another buried itself in a woman’s back as she crawled to safety. She was still reaching forward, fingers clawing at the dirt, trying to drag herself those last few feet to cover. She didn’t make it.

  Bash’s gut twisted. He wasn’t supposed to care; these people were just code. But the sound of her choking breath made him itch. He was starting to see red.

  Another volley. Red dotted lines crisscrossed the street, screaming probabilities. Bash ducked one, shoved a guard out of the path of another, grabbed a raider, and pulled him into the path of a third.

  Tactical continued to guide his commands. “Two of you!” Bash snapped, pointing to the tree line. “Cut wide, circle around, hit those archers!

  The guards followed his orders without hesitation and sprinted up toward the smoke and trees.

  Another spear lunged at Bash. He twisted to the left, let the tip slide past, then grabbed and yanked the shaft sideways, pulling the raider into a guard’s blade. Blood sprayed across his arms, warm and sticky as the man fell, twitching.

  Bash tried to catch his breath, but all too soon, the next wave of raiders arrived.

  Bash moved before the axe came down, his fist snapping forward along glowing arcs only he could see. Bare knuckles, angled perfectly, cracked into the man’s neck, sending him reeling.

  A crooked grin broke through the tension. Guess I picked all the best skills after all.

  The enemy archers on the ridge were dropping now, their lines collapsing as the two guards he sent earlier chopped into their flanks. Fewer arrows flew, and fewer raiders stood. Hope tried to take root, but Bash could feel it in his gut that the village’s odds were still terrible. They were losing slower, but they were still losing.

  A sound cut through the chaos, and three huge raiders stepped into view. The first dragged a cleaver wide as a barn door. The second swung a spiked maul, its head still crusted with dried blood and worse. The third carried a war axe meant for breaking walls, not people. They waded into the villagers and left bodies behind them.

  Then a fourth figure revealed himself, taking his time. He was almost as big as the other three combined, his massive shoulders wrapped in mismatched armor plates. A mask shaped like a skull hid his face. In his hands, a two-handed greatsword glowed red-hot. The fighting around him seemed to slow; everyone’s attention dragged toward this one giant figure.

  Guards backed up. Villagers started crying. Bash felt the hairs stand up on his neck. He didn’t need a tooltip to know that this was the Raid Boss and his top lieutenants.

  The nightmare that developers saved for when the player started to get too cocky.