Pride Online

Chapter 27: The battle’s consequence Part I

13.25 p.m.

A hot wind was blowing the heat up with the dust. The flat ground was a broken mess, leaving the large cracks spread throughout the area, making this ruined place look even more wrecked and ruined. The abandoned prison dungeon now felt creepier in an unexplainable way.

The inhabited buildings that used to look like unfinished construction were now gone. Moreover, there was a hole like a crater in the middle of the clearing ground. Its diameter was taken in many kilometers as the size of the demon of fire that was now lying still there, looking all defeated.

The mess drew a lot of attention from the other players who were crowded around the area, feeling curious and amazed. As well as the NPC reporters from many channels, who were carrying cameras out to the scene to cover the hot issue, dying to know about the ones who trashed up this whole place!

In the meantime, the game staff members were surveying the damage to the area to fix it later. There were yellow barricade tapes with the words 'Keep Out' on them to block the noncombatants, looking like a crime scene in a movie somehow.

“What a mess. I can’t believe this was caused by a battle of three players against one monster.” A soft voice of a woman said with a plain expression on her face. The pair of pretty eyes were looking around before they met with the tall figure of the young GM, who was standing next to her with his arms crossed, looking pleased.

“Yes, you must believe this, Anne. You already saw the video I sent you,” Thada said with a delighted tone, pointing at the other GMs who were now watching the video, too.

“Yeah, I did. That's why it’s harder to believe my own eyes. What kind of psycho would be able to blow up the whole dungeon in just one hit.”

“Well, that hit did 125 million damage points, though,” Thada replied casually as he shrugged, making the woman next to him sigh.

The woman was not quite tall. Her long black hair was pulled up in a tight ponytail. Her face looked young and calm, as well as the pair of her big brown eyes. She was wearing a white suit jacket with an arm band that embroidered the big letters GM on it and a black tight short skirt.

If someone had spent enough time in this game, they would have known at one glance that she was GM Anne, or Rattana, the popular former player of Pride World who was well known as the first-ranked ice archmage of the game.

“Did you check that OP damage, yet Da?” The GM girl asked.

“Yeah. That wasn’t cheating. I can confirm that. All the damage was done by the game's conditions.”

“All that 125 million, really?” Rattana raised her eyebrows. “How many skill advantages does it take to cause that much damage?”

She said as she was looking at the game staff who were busy walking around to survey the damage, all looking grumpily. She then sighed again.

“This is a lot of damage. I guess that we’d have to close for a couple of days for the system maintenance to fix all this. I also think that we’ll find an immense number of bugs, too. The administrators were wicked for holding this event just to find the bugs in the system. It worked well, but at what cost? A whole dungeon.”

“You’re right.”

Thada added. When he came to think about the job that was waiting for them, he then sighed, too.

“And how about the guy who did the damage, where’s he now?”

“Gone.”

“What?” Rattana persisted, eyebrows raised a little. “He died with this boss?”

“No, he didn’t,” Thada said in a monotone. “In the last attack, his HP was low because he was hurt by friction and heat, but he was healed right away by Magtiria potion.”

She nodded, understanding his explanation. Because not only was the Magtiria potion used to increase attack damage, but it also had the effect of dispelling all kinds of debuffs and increasing the HP by 50 points per second.

Not sure if it was just luck, or if he actually planned all that.

And if it was the latter case, that guy would be like a devil among men!

“If he’s not dead, then where did he go?” The monotone voice continued to ask.

“He flew away.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me right. He was running to get his friend, and then they flew off,” Thada answered with a moderate smile, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

“They flew off without the prize from you? Didn't they know that they’d get 5 pieces of S-ranked items for defeating this boss?” The GM guy did not respond. He shrugged then shook his head to say that he did not understand them either.

However, the woman next to him seemed to be as surprised. Rattana had never thought that there would be this kind of weirdos on earth, too!

They killed the boss just to run off.

They did not even care about the prize. Then what exactly did this guy want, then? Did he just want to farm the EXP? No. If it was only for the EXP, it would be a lot easier to farm from another monster.

Or could it be that he wanted some reputation? This could be it because he got that now.

As she was thinking about all the possibilities about the man, her eyes were glancing at the crowd outside the barricade. They were discussing with each other excitedly. Other than that, the reporters started broadcasting live as well.

“The guy’s gonna be a celeb now,” Rattana concluded. “He has defeated Lord Inferno and hit the new damage record with 125 million points, huh, totally destroying the previous one that the jerk Marcus did with 60 million points. The guy will be losing his mind when he hears the news.”

“The jerk? Anne, he’s one of the four gods of Pride? How did you call him that?”

“So? The guy is just a foul-mouthed jerk to me!”

“Is that so? I thought you were just annoyed that he kept on trying to win your heart,” Thada teased his friend as he was trying so hard to hold back a smile that his face strangely twitched.

“Please don’t say something that makes me want to throw up my meal, mister Thada. We’re working.” Hearing her scolding with a cold voice made the long-haired GM guy slip out a laugh, before he changed his mood back to normal as soon as she sent him a deadly gaze.

“Oh, hey, Anne, one of his friends is still here, the boss killer’s teammate.”

“Really? Where?” The sharp face curled up into a smile at her words before he pointed to the other side. Rattana’s eyes followed his finger and saw a pretty girl who was sitting weakly by the ruins not very far from where the GMs were standing. She was taken care of by her two friends.

“She said her name was Warunya. She’s not friends with the flying man though, just a temporary party member.” The pair of dark eyes were staring at the girl over there for a few moments, before she let out a chuckle, sounding like ‘Huh’.

“So, they are an ad hoc party as well. I don’t want to believe that these three could beat Lord Inferno that took us more than half an hour to do so!”

Thada listened to his friend with a soft smile, patting on her shoulder slightly.

“It’s a big world, Anne. There'll always be someone stronger than us.”

“So strong that they’re not applied to the level’s differences rule?” Rattana retorted.

“This is why I love Pride, Anne.” A pretty face of him appeared with a big smile, then he turned, looking like he was ready to leave. “We can have the others estimate the damage, then we make the report to the administrators later. Now we need to make a press release to other players first.”

He was heading out to the crowd outside immediately, but Rattana’s hand stopped him by grabbing his shirt. She asked.

“Da, did you ask the girl for the boss killer’s name?” She made a gesture with her face in the direction of Warunya.

“I did.”

“And?”

“It’s Vincent or something like that.”

----------------

BOOM!!!

A loud boom came from an edge of the forest not far from Tritan with the two who fell from the sky, crashing on the ground hardly like their brake had failed. Many animals around were scared away by them, screeching and crying as they ran chaotically.

“Ow, ow, ow! Why can’t you just land properly for once, moron!” Maysa snapped with irritation.

“What were you expecting? Did you forget that I just learned how to fly just a few minutes ago?!” The other voice replied, irritated just as much.

The buddies were now lying on the soft green grass, worn out. Wisana could not get up since he had Maysa lying on top of him, so he took the bizarre white mask off his sweating face instead, gasping for air.

“I don’t understand why you had to run from there. We won, you know? And which one of your manuals says that the winner has to run?!” The treble voice of her kept snapping as she could finally get up.

“Because there was an unexpected event that was beyond my capabilities to deal with, so I chose to escape,” Wisana replied, still lying on the grass.

“Damn it, man.” Maysa shook her head slightly. “Lucky that I could grab the item dropped from the Inferno before you dragged me out like that, or everything we did would go to waste!”