Starting from Zero

When everyone’s done admiring the beautiful view, we began to descend the volcano. I bet our target is just hidden somewhere upon the gra.s.sland. 　　

It"s a long way down so I summoned Night Shade to go faster. Haven’t seen him in a while. I’ve been on the seas in the past few days, I can’t fight on a horse.

Red Moon and Coin hopped onto Skyfire with Zirai, Blue Wind and Razor took Lucky, while Merciless summoned his flying panther.

We rushed all the way to the edge of the lake. Man the water is so clear. Many colorful fishes would jump out of the surface now and then. Coin suggested that we should try catch some fish, but the voice of j.a.panese players interrupted the fun.

"Ho, you"re pretty fast!"

It"s the ninja leader again. Their team only contains somewhere near 100+ players now so...I guess they ran into some other trouble after leaving our sight?

The enemies approached us slowly, while we backed off closer and closer to the lake.

A giant water splash suddenly startled everyone, then an extremely disgusting snake head appeared from the water. We watched in horror as the two-meter wide b.l.o.o.d.y maw filled with sharp fangs swept past the waterside and disappeared under the water as fast as it came. The whole display only took less than 3 seconds, and... three j.a.panese players with it.

I, and the ninja leader, slowly moved our heads to look at each other again, then we took our own teams to run away from the lake as fast as we can. Now I know this lake"s not peaceful in the least!

Just as we went far enough, another snake head reached out of the water, looked at us for a second and went back down.

We kept moving just to be safe, until we reached the edge of some woods.

"You, Chinese?" The ninja asked.

"Heh. Obviously."

We"re enemies, there"s no point for manners now.

"My men were killed by someone without receiving any PvP alarm, this only means one thing, that the opponent came from another country. Also, Mr. Razor is with you, so let me guess, you’re not only from China, but also the very people from the ship that attacked the Black Dragon Marine."

"How did you figure out we"re from that ship?"

"Ha! Our coastal defenses are supreme. Your ship is the only one by far to penetrate our defense line and went so deep. I"m curious, yes. What kind of ship is faster than us, more powerful than us, and caused us such great loss merely by hit-and-run? Frankly speaking, I’d like to buy that ship."

"And you think we’d sell it?"

r.e.t.a.r.d. What kind of fool sells his greatest weapon to the enemy who"s about to use it against himself?

"Actually I do."

"Really? That’s the worst joke I"ve heard."

"Oh, no no no. This is entirely possible. There is nothing in this world you can’t buy with money. Of course, I"m not really talking about money here. Say...will you exchange your ship for the life of your friend?"

"Did you b.u.mp your head in the morning or something?"　　

"I see. Let"s try another approach then." The ninja signaled his men. "Get them!"

I"m already prepared. I turned to run while yelling to my teammates: "Run with me!"

My team are all experienced people. Everyone followed my lead in the next second. It"s definitely not a good idea to take on over 100 enemies up close.

A running compet.i.tion is now live on the gra.s.sland. All of us seven are fast enough to gradually gain more distance from the j.a.panese players. When we think it"s far enough we stopped briefly to summon our companions, which made it even easier for us to escape.

Finally, we managed to completely left their sight. But the problem is...we lost our way!

"Hey what’s that?" We just had time to catch some breath when we saw smoke on the horizon.

"They are here again." I looked through my Star Gaze.

Those people are running so fast that they are causing all the smoke and dust as if a pack of wild oxen are running. There"s another problem: it seems that they"re faster than us now!

"No choice then." Merciless took out his dagger.

We all followed his action and readied our weapons. A fight till death doesn"t sound so bad.

We can now clearly see the looks on their faces. We all braced ourselves for the incoming a.s.sault but...they kept running, pa.s.sing our sides, and left. No one did anything, as if they didn’t notice our existence at all.

We turned around and looked at the leaving enemies in puzzle.

"Okay...What are they doing?" Coin scratched her head.

"Not a clue. Maybe the system told them the location of the target so they went there first?" Razor said.

"I don’t think so." Even if that"s the case surely they’ll have time to kill us first.

"Besides, we"re also partic.i.p.ants in this quest. Why isn’t the system telling us then?"

"So why are they running like their a.s.ses are on fire?" Zirai asked while putting away her weapon.