Hail to you, who are of strong will. Hail to you, a man of faith. Hail to your strength, your courage and your life. Deliver us, from this terrible end. Deliver us, from these wretched demons. Twelve men, with twelve goals, stood together, side by side, hand in hand, against the unholy wave. Shall you take up your weapon, Shall you be our saviour? Armageddon Chapter 2 By Shinieris

"Sis, I need a heal."

"Okay," I said as I dropped my pen and grabbed the gamepad. I held button 10 then pressed button 1 to use the equipped artifact, the Glove of Lesser Recovery.

"Sis, you just healed that monster!"

I did? I lowered the VR goggle and looked through the screen. "Oh crap!" I said as I nudged the right analog a little to the left. My fingers must've nudged the pointer at some point.

"Shit, I died!" my brother whined when his HP bar went down to zero.

I held button 10 and pressed button 2 to use Ankh of Minor Revive. Then I shot 4 pieces of lead to the zombie's limbs to weaken it before my brother finished it for the XP.

"Why is it that you still need aid against a zombie?" I asked as he picked up his loot.

"Well, because sword skills are hard to use," he said with his big butt and big breasts swinging everytime he bent over to pick up the scattered loot.

"Nobody told you to pick Neet."

"It's because I can't pick Sniper that I pick Neet."

"You could've just picked Soldier, you can advance to Gunman."

"Gunman sucks. My friend said he fired 8 times with his dual guns and the shots went everywhere but the target!"

"Well, dual wielding does have accuracy issues."

"And Sniper is impossible!"

Let me explain a little. Being a sniper is NOT impossible at all. The only problem is for some reason, players whose avatar have big breasts suffer accuracy issues with all kinds of rifles, including sniper rifle. Now go back a little bit in time and notice that I say his character has big butt and big breasts. See the problem? Yeap, my brother is a breast man. I suppose he's an ass man too.

His character's breast size are even twice bigger than mine in real life. Does he think that the value of girls are only in their breasts? If that's what he really thinks, I'll tell mom.

Still, my value as a girl is in neither breasts nor ass. It's my brain. And my gorgeous long legs. Oh, I have a pretty face too, if I may add. I know men made a double take when I walk past them on the street in my casual clothes, even the men who was walking with their girlfriends. Oh my, I'm blushing.

"Sis."

"Yes?"

"How much do you think this is worth?"

I pushed down the visor part of my headset and saw him pointing to a rusty magic sword.

"Were you fighting a [zombie knight]?" Since [zombie knights] were about the only low level zombie that dropped magic items.

"Didn't you see earlier?"

"No, I was studying."

"So how much can I make with this?"

I looked at the unidentified rusty magic sword. Then I tried to search my memory for an average price for rusty magic swords. I knew I came across a few in the past few years in the auction houses, but since I had always been a rifle-wielder, I didn't take much notice of the swords. I can use it of course, since the nature of the game allows every character to wield every weapon in the game, as long as the stats allow it. But what would be the point in me wielding a sword? It would be like giving a man a bow and telling him to go fishing.

"I think you can get between 20-40 Euro in the auction houses."

"No, not the auction houses, how much will I get with dollars for example?"

"Stop there! It is against game rules to sell game items for real world money. You will get banned and your headset ID blacklisted. Heck, even I will probably be banned since we're playing using the same VRPwr2 unit."

"What? I can't sell this for real money? God damned! There goes my perfect plan!" He swung his sword against a tree repeatedly as if trying to vent his frustration.

"You planned to sell game items for real world money?"

"Of course! That's why I invested in the headset in the first place. My perfect plan is in ruins..."

So buying the headset wasn't actually a boy's short-sighted quest for fun? He actually considered recouping the money spent by making money from the game itself? That was unexpected. I didn't know my pest of a brother actually thought ahead. He should still read the terms of use in the first place, though.

I sighed, thinking I should help him a little in this. If he did well, surely he could pitch in with the game's monthly fees or something. "If you want to make money from the game, I can probably help you in a way."

"Really?" He stopped swinging his sword at the tree.

"Yup, but not through item selling. Once you can kill an [elder necromancer] on your own, talk to me about making money."

"But [elder necromancer] is a D level monster!"

"If you want to make money, you need to be able to beat up at least D level monsters, better if you can beat C, but that may take too long for you."

"What level can you defeat now, sis?"

"Remember the monster rampage in London last week? That was upper level B. I won because its HP was already depleted from being attacked by other players."

Suddenly I heard the sound of a bell in the real world.

"Hey, go play somewhere. Take this," I tossed him the [glove of lesser recovery], the same one I used to heal his HP.

"You're really giving this to me, sis?" he or she, the character in the game, looked at me in awe. At least I assumed that was 'awe', VR games hadn't advanced far enough yet to be able to create facial expressions through a person's emotions. There were in-game emoticons that could show emotions, but most people just used it to play around.

As for why he could possibly be in awe, it was because recovery equipments, as opposed to food and potions are very rare in Armageddon. People who wanted to heal without using potions or food would normally sit somewhere safe and heal through passive healing, use a doctor or priest for quick healing, or pay a hospital or clinic for full healing.

"Yes, it's no longer as useful to me anymore," I said, since the glove healed only 20 HP per use. My HP was already 600 in total. If I used the the glove to heal myself, I wouldn't be able to fight.

"Thanks!" he said as his avatar ran along a side street, probably looking for more zombies.

I logged out of the game and took off the headset. Then I looked at the computer screen in front of me, bringing up the corresponding gahoo chat message. It was from Sara aka Nutcase, the suicide bomber.

"Hey Ria, how's it going?"

"You have a reason for disturbing my study time, Sara?"

"Oh you were studying? Haha, sorry. It's just that something came up."

"And what would that be? If you tell me your laundry flew off again, I will snipe you next time I see you."

"Oh poo! That was a real distress, if you don't know. Who knows what kind of evil a pervert would do if he got his hands on my well-worn lacy bra."

"You're the biggest pervert around. I'm busy."

"Wait wait."

"Waiting."

"Don't you want to take part in liberating Athens?"

"Athens fell?"

"Yeah, 6 hours ago. It was broadcasted throughout the world, just like that time when they lost Rome."

"I was at school, sorry."

"So you wanna join?"

"I got exams coming up."

"It's a paid job."

My ears perked up, despite this being a text conversation. "Details?"

"We got two employers to choose from. One's the Crimean Alliance, they pay in real world money, but only hires high level players. The other's Graeco-Roman Initiative, they pay in in-game currency and in-game bonus for high contribution."

"Tell me more about Crimean Alliance," I typed before going back to my math homework.

"Crimean Alliance is a guild of salary workers and self-employed players who are based in Athens. They're generally mid-level players but they regularly use real world money to pay players to stop demon excursions around Athens. This time they were too late, so their home city got invaded. Right now they supposedly have a budget of almost 800 Euro to hire mercenaries. They can't log in because the central warp crystal is crawling with demons and they need to wait 60 hours from the time of the invasion before they can change spawn location."

"Any problem with the admins?" I wouldn't want to be banned after working on my character for so long.

"Some accusations, but since money and items didn't change hands through their system and negotiations were done using outside softwares, they had no proof."

"Will there be any problem?"

"Minimal, the Crimean Alliance had done this many times. There is no risk."

"Payment?"

"There's 5 of us. 10 Euro each."

"Are you freaking joking with me? Ask for more, my bullets aren't cheap."

"But you can get bullets from the Sanctuary Warehouse daily."

"Normal bullets. I use armour-piercing, high-explosive, acid, poison and holy bullets. Those are expensive and not available everywhere. The only place that sold holy bullets was in Rome."

"It will be hard to ask for more. They won't be very generous with their real world money."

"Tell them to contact me themselves then. Weren't I the hero who killed the Monster of Trafalgar Square?"

"Fine. You okay with me giving him your Gahoo ID?"

"Yea-wait. Make sure he's not a stalker pervert or a network hacker before you give him my ID."

"Still got a phobia, huh?"

"Don't you know it." I shivered recalling the memory of being stalked by a computer hacker a year ago.

I was chatting like normal when this guy came out of nowhere and asked to chat. I humoured him. We chatted about many things until he offered to do cam-to-cam and voice chat. I agreed and there came the face of a caucasian man probably in his early twenties. To tell the truth, I had a little crush on him the first time I saw his face. He wasn't ugly at all, for start, and his voice was quite dreamy. The level of our chat raised a little since then, going from the subject of favourite food and daily complains to being alone at home and the colour of my panties and the kind of bra I wore at any given day.

I flirted back good-naturedly, since it felt nice doing dirty chats a bit on the net. He managed to make me hot often that I... maybe I shouldn't say that. Anyway, my face was clearly transmitted to the other side and he definitely seemed to like it. Then I stopped chatting for a few days to concentrate on my studies.

When I came back online, he had sent all kinds of creepy messages. Such as, "What are you doing in just your underwear on the bed, sweety?" or "I know the colour of your panties today," or "I want to touch your pretty butt," or "Don't ignore me, bitch. I know you're at your desk."

That scared me so much that I didn't turn my computer on for days. When I did, he sent me a download link for a movie. When I downloaded it and watched it, it was a video of me changing clothes naked in my room. From the viewpoint, it was from my own webcam. I was very scared and didn't know what to do. I sat alone in my room for hours until I ripped out the USB cable for my webcam and called Sara for help. Sara was my neighbour a little further down the street back then, and left for Germany a few months later. I didn't know what I would've done without her.

She came over right away and comforted me as best as she could, pulling my face into her very prominent bosom. She asked me if anyone else knew. I told her no, as if I would tell my family about this in the first place. She told me that it was pointless calling the police, since the problem still wouldn't be solved and once my family found out they will just take away my computer. There was also the issue of my spycam video, the police could ask the site admins to take down the video, but the stalker still had the original video, and probably a whole lot more videos than the one he showed me.

So Sara told me to reattach the webcam and contact that stalker. He looked happy to see me, but then his expression changed when he saw my crying face. Sara then pulled me off my chair and chatted with that guy, telling him that she was my big sister. Despite Sara having bigger breasts and a mature beauty, he didn't seem attracted to her at all and kept asking to chat with me.

Sara, blessed her, managed to talk him down. Sara told him to destroy the videos, but he refused, saying that he loved me so much he wouldn't be able to sleep without seeing me. Eventually, he agreed to keep my naked videos locked and that he wouldn't hack into my PC anymore. His conditions was that I continued to chat with him daily and that I set aside a few days upon my 18th birthday to meet him for a date. Maybe I was just a masochist, but I agreed. I was 15 back then.

Now, a year after, I feel a little lonely. Sure, he was a creep, but he was a handsome creep. And even after the compromise, he genuinely cared for me and my complains. He was sort of like 'a creepy best friend who has an abnormal carnal crush on a schoolgirl' kind of person. Sometimes I would ask his help to hack some youtube asshole's computer as a prank. After about half a year though, our daily conversations became something like bland greetings, asking what's new, and then being quiet for a long time until one of us logged off. Sometimes I complained and he would listen, but it was obvious he was bored. When I pointed it out to him, he admitted it. He said he still loved me but he wished he didn't agree with our compromise back then. I told him to watch my naked videos again whenever he felt horny, and he laughed good-naturedly, but he said he wanted something fresh. Now we hardly chatted with each other anymore.

Of course, since that compromise, I ensured the webcam's cable was pulled out whenever I wasn't using it. I wouldn't let him take nude videos of me anymore. But anyway, that incident was in the past.

At night, I received a message on my gahoo. No, it wasn't the stalker, it was apparently the leader of the Crimean Alliance.

"Good evening, are you Doomgunner?"

"Yes, who are you?"

"I am Alexander Nikolaidis. I go by the same name in the game Armageddon. I am the co-leader of the Crimean Alliance."

Same name in-game and in real-life? This guy is weird.

"My name is Ria. Yes, I am Doomgunner. How can I help you?"

"Are you aware of the fact that Athens fell some hours ago?"

"I am aware of that."

"We, the Crimean Alliance are hiring mercenaries to retake Athens. We offer real world money of the currency of your choice in exchange for your services in the liberation of Athens."

"Any currency?"

"Yes, it will be transferred to your bank once the objective is achieved. As for your fee, I have been cleared to pay you 30 Euro upon the completion of the mission."

30 Euro is quite something. That can feed me for like five days, if for some reason mom wouldn't feed me. From the looks she gave me everytime she saw me playing with VrPwr though, I don't doubt that it will happen one day.

"Can you state clearly the objective of the mission?"

"There are 5 objectives. Primary objective is the annihilation of all demonic entities inside the municipality of Athens. Secondary objectives are: Destruction of the demon's recall crystal; Death of all 10 demon summoners; Construction of 5 watch towers around Athens; Destruction of the closest Hellgate to Athens."

"That's pretty hard. Hellgates are very well protected. Even if you have 100 players together, assaulting Hellgates will mean extremely heavy losses."

"Of course we are aware of the dangers, the mission is considered complete once Athens is liberated. The secondary objectives are not necessary, but welcomed. The parties that successfully completed the objectives will receive bonus pay."

"How much are we talking about?"

"Destruction of recall crystal - 10 Euro, death of all 10 summoners - 10 Euro, construction of 5 watch towers - 15 Euro, destruction of Hellgate - 50 Euro."

"For each person?"

"No, it's group bonus. For example, if 20 players participate in destruction of recall crystal, each will be paid additional 0.5 Euro. I doubt you would need more than 10 players to destroy a recall crystal, though."

"What about reinforcements?"

"None during the battle except for other mercenaries. Upon completion of the main objective, Crimean Alliance members will spawn in Athens and take over sentry duties."

"When will the mission start?"

"9 PM Saturday, your time. Do you accept this mission?"

"Yes, who do I report to?"

"You will be part of the First Support Squad, your Squad leader is Olson Welles. Please go to this link for your group chat. Do you have any further questions?"

"No."

"Very well. We look forward to your success. Good day."

Hoooo, 30 Euro, for just a few hours work. That's way more than what my sister make as a Sugar Beats employee. If only these kinds of jobs come everyday. I'm definitely going to take those secondary objectives, alone if possible. 65 Euro within a single day, that's nice. I won't bother with the Hellgate mission, since it needs a few hundred players together to destroy it. The amount of demons protecting Hellgates are simply massive.

Seeing as I would be fighting a large scale battle in two days, I decided to practice. Unlike other games, the cities of Armageddon are faithfully modeled following its real world self. In other words, the city of Athens would be huge. If one were to spend their time exploring the Armageddon version, they would be as familiar to the city just like a local. I aced a few of my geography tests because of that.

I put my pen down and put away my books before picking up my headset and wireless gamepad. I kicked my brother to the other side of the bed as I plopped down on the bed, put on the headset and started the game. I went through the usual game start screen and emerged at the central warp crystal of the city of London. I touched the warp crystal and chose a location I previously registered to, Milltown Malbay, in Ireland. It was time to start killing the boss monsters of Hy-Brasil.

It was part of a chain quest that I acquired after taking on a quest of clearing out the entire library of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin of demons. I don't want to brag, but I did it all alone. Armed with my trusty assault rifle, I took on hundreds of level C demons within a manner of hours. The fight against the boss demon itself took almost an hour and hundreds of bullets. It was a tough fight. For my troubles, the boss demon dropped the Unique item The Book of Hy Brasil as well as other more regular drops.

Maybe I need to give a short explanation about item quality in Armageddon. The quality of items, whether equipments, potions, artifacts and the like range from Poor up to Ancient. The order would be Poor being the lowest, followed by Inferior, Common, Uncommon, Magic, Rare, Epic and Ancient. Out of all these, each quality had their own ups and downs, mostly in the form of power and price. Needless to say, the higher the quality of an item is, the pricier it becomes. The power of the higher quality items are also generally better than those with lower quality, whether in terms of damage, bonuses or special attacks. Items with Ancient quality are always more powerful, but also more brittle. The hero of Paris, Christophe Arceneau destroyed the Hellgate near Paris within hours of its appearance, alone. He was decked in ancient armour, ancient axe, ancient arquebus and ancient amulets. He succeeded in destroying the Hellgate, but lost his ancient equipments due to low durability and was killed by the mass of the remaining demons.

As for Unique items, they're different. Equivalently, they range from Common to Ancient, with varrying powers and bonuses. The only different is that they're limited in number. For example, there is only one Spear of Longinus, a Unique item at Ancient quality, currently owned by a member of the Knights of Rome. Similarly, there are only two Book of Hy Brasil. From the bonuses, I assume it is simply the equivalent of Rare.

I looked up the story of the book on the internet and it was true. The book was real. I'm going to spare you the details and simply say that the book not only started the next leg of the chain quest, but also granted a permanent Intelligence score of 20, 5HP per second passive healing and 2000HP active healing that could be activated every three hours. I also got an ability labelled 'Beacon of Hy Brasil', which from the description, allowed me to summon the island of Hy Brasil no matter where in the Atlantic Ocean I was. It was a fantastic drop, even if it didn't give the quest. Regrettably, this particular drop disappeared after I used it, so I couldn't resell it to others. But I got the permanent Intelligence, passive healing and active healing ability. So everything's fine.

Still, since I got the book, I could go to the Island of Hy Brasil, the first ever player to have ever set foot on that mythical island surrounded by mist in the middle of nowhere. As for why I was going to Milltown Malbay, that town was the only place in western coast Ireland that had a warp crystal. I didn't want to spend hours riding from Limerick. Unlike the rest of Europe, the British Isles are pretty safe from the demon apocalypse, with new Hellgates quickly brought down by the combined strength of the local guilds. Therefore, there was not much need for the Order of Divine Mercy to construct warp crystals in the British Isles, preferring to divert their logistical and military resources to the European mainland.

By the way, the Order of Divine Mercy is also known as 'gamemaster'. It is a guild of gamemasters, who are also players paid by the developers of Armageddon with weekly resources in order to help players push back the demon hordes. Right now, 5 out of 6 gamemasters were focused on European mainland. 2 of them were focused on liberating Rome. They conduct events regularly to gain players' assistance in pushing the battle lines. They also have their own AI armies, but are not allowed to use them except as part of an event. Any guilds who want to aid in the liberation events often have to submit a proposal to the gamemasters to get in-game funding.

I warped into the the town of Milltown Malbay from London. It was a small thriving town, filled with NPCs and players who hunted demons in the surrounding countryside. The level of demons in this vicinity was rather low, mostly of the rank E and D, so it was a good place for beginner players. As I materialized, I immediately became the center of attention, probably because of my gear. Unlike the new players, I was wearing an Ancient Breastplate of St. Dunstan as well as one sniper rifle and one assault rifle on my back. On my belt, I had one Sig Sauer P226 firmly in its holster, with four magazines also strapped to the belt.

I am one of the opinion that you only need one magazine to kill anything. If you need to use all four magazines at any given event, you would be better of just running away. If four magazines couldn't kill a target, there's a very slim chance that six magazines would make a difference. Either way, if you need more than four magazines to down something, it isn't the weapon's problem, it's the user's problem. I have seen many who fired full spreads of assault rifle bullets on a single demon. I am not one of those idiots.

"Never thought I'd see a Pulsed Plasma Sniper Rifle. They only give that as event rewards."

Correct. It was an event reward.

"I'd like to have his breastplate. That's obviously an Rare Unique at least."

It's Ancient Unique, you noob. There's only 4 of these in the whole world.

"I think I've seen him before."

Really? If there's someone as handsome and as caddish as my character in real life, I'd like to marry him.

"Hey, isn't that the Hero of Trafalgar Square?"

Oh, that's what she meant.

"Come to think of it, he does look familiar."

Well, duh! If you watched the video I uploaded to the Armageddon Hall of Scenes, you'd know. I made over $200 from the 700,000 viewership royalty for the past week alone. Money, best colour in the world.

"It's him! I watched the video on bootube!"

Wait, somebody uploaded it on bootube? Who the fuck cheated me of my income? I'm definitely gonna report this. I wonder if I got 'cheers' or 'boos', though.

"Umm, hello. I'm a fan of your videos. Would you sign my sniper rifle?" a young girl character came up to me and presented me her sniper rifle, a Hans-Wesley Coil-action Sniper Rifle. This thing is rare, must've costed her a fortune.

"Sure," I said as I opened the signature window and wrote my real world signature, Ruria, onto the side of the weapon using the touchpad. I just couldn't be bothered with designing a totally different signature for my in-game character.

In Armageddon, since there's no such thing as levels, most people end up suffering from having powerful weapons, but low attributes and stats to use them. Therefore, most people use lower level weapons to compensate. However, this means that their attack power are weak. To overcome this, Armageddon uses a system called 'Signature' which allows players to enchant their equipment so it become a living item. The weapon or equipment receives 50% bonus stats from the person signing it. As the person who signed it grows, so will the weapon grow together. There are several restrictions, though. An equipment can only have one signature. An equipment can only be signed by the classes that use them as primary weapons (snipers can't sign a sword, axes and pikes can't be signed). The equipment can't be either Epic, Ancient or Unique.

"Thanks, can we be friends?" the girl asked.

"Sure," I said as I friendlisted her. Her name was Felixia. Cute name.

I should mention that in Armageddon, one could only send whispers to people they had friendlisted.

"Where are you heading to now?"

"I'm going on a quest west of Ireland."

"Can I come along? I'm a pretty good sniper."

"What level can you defeat?"

"I can kill several D level monsters now in less than 3 minutes."

"Unless you have a strong party, no. The place I'm going is crawling with B level monsters. You'll die in seconds."

"I have a party, together we can kill lower B monsters," the girl said, looking excited.

To her, this was probably a good place to farm skill experience.

"Fine, call them. I'll wait for 5 minutes," I said, thinking that even if they would die, at least they would be able to buy me enough time as distraction while I enter the Ruined Temple of Breasal, to slaughter the Irish god Breasal, who'd be minding his own business until I come along and kill him.

Please forgive me, Breasal, a quest is a quest after all.

"Can we join too?" the bystanders came and asked.

There were twelve of them, not including Felixia's party. I shrugged. I wanted to rent a small rowing boat but from the looks of it, I'd have to rent a charter boat instead.

"Fine, but space is limited. The highest level ones gets to go," I said as I head to the pier to search charter boats for rent.

I got one that could take all of us. At my prompting, the players all pitched in with their own money for the rent fees, seeing as this place would be a great place to increase their skills. It was a great day, I double-charged everyone. Because of that, I got to rent a boat without having to pay the boat owner with my own money and still make a lot of profit. Money, the best colour in the world, even if it's digital currency.

Once we boarded the boat, I activated the Beacon of Hy-Brasil and chanted the words using the microphone attached to my headset.

Iarraim ar an Rí na Gheimhridh,
An té a fuil a chroí sioc,
An té a anáil a scaoileadh amachs ceo,
An té a seithí dóibh siúd ar mian leo a bheith i bhfolach,
Impigh mé leat,
Oscail an mbealach seo,
Is mian liom chos a chéim
ar an Oileán Hy-Brasil.

Nothing happened. I chanted again. Nothing happened again. That was until one of the players, who happened to be Irish, said that he recognized some of the words and asked me to allow him to give it a go. I shared with him the chants and he pronounced it in sounds that didn't match the spelling at all. How the heck did the creator of the quest even expect people to finish the quest if it had to be spoken in Irish tongue?

Anyway, mist then appeared out of nowhere and inside the mist, we could see the silhuette of an island. I instructed the boat driver NPC to navigate towards the island. As we entered together, each of us received the Explorer of Hy-Brasil achievement, signifying that we were the first to enter the island. Which meant that each of us would get double the skill experience over a period of 3 days. Perfect!

******

"Alright guys, I have to go do my quest now. See you at the boat later. By the way, do not even dare to leave without me."

"Can I go with you?" a guy in swordsman outfit stepped closer. He was one of those who could barely kill a C level monster even with his entire party helping.

"No, this is a B level quest, you won't survive."

"I can be the tank. My swordskill is great!"

I doubt it. From what I could see, you were just as noobish as my brother.

"No, there's no need. I'll be fine on my own."

"Come on, you can't beat a B level quest on your own."

Why is this guy so annoying? Can't he take a hint?

"For your information, I already beat a B level quest on my own. That's how I got to come here," I said as I unslung my sniper rifle. I climbed a big rock and then pointed my pulsed plasma sniper rifle at the ground.

This is going to hurt, greatly.

"No way, stop acting tough. I can help," the noob swordsman arrogantly offered his help, as if he would be able to actually do something.

"No thanks, I don't need you," I said as I fired the pulsed plasma sniper rifle at the ground at EXCEED power. The shockwave reduced my HP by almost 200 and gave critical damage to my feet, but it propelled me up the sky and got me away from that annoying noob in the blink of an eye.

Of course, landing would be another matter altogether. Not to mention that this place was crawling with lower B level monsters. I would need to do some quick massacre the moment I landed. Then it would be time for my trusty 'Ambush' skill to show its usefulness again.

******

"Great god, how many of them are here?" I asked myself after killing about a hundred [beast elves] and [unicorns] inside the Ruined Temple of Breasal.

At first, it was easy, snipe a few of the monsters, and then use the Ambush skill as camouflage. Once the cooldown timer ended, I would snipe again and then hide again. Unfortunately, as I proceeded deeper into the underground temple, the overhead crystal light became many and brighter and the hallways became longer and straighter. It came to a point where it was impossible to hide, even with the Ambush skill. I had to shoot some of the overhead crystal lights on the ceiling a few times to make myself some hiding spots.

Unfortunately the darkness inside the temple also made it possible to encounter [wraiths] who were attracted to the darkness beyond light. Even the dark spots that I had cleared earlier would be no use. The [wraiths] could teleport. Whether they teleported from somewhere else or materialized out of thin air I had no idea. [Wraiths] are upper C level monsters, so it wasn't an easy creature to beat. Plus, unlike the [beast elves], [wraiths] could only be harmed by holy, blessed or light bullets. I hated fighting [wraiths] because they were about the most expensive non-demon monsters to fight and dropped no loot.

Unless if one counts the [darkness fragments] which is useless, as a loot. It's only used to craft darkness bullets and darkness weapons, which is equally useless since it doesn't harm demons. Darkness weapons can only harm angels and since angels aren't hostile, it's pointless. So [wraiths] is often called, [useless demons].

Finally, after fighting three dozens more monsters, I arrived at the Hall of Breasal, which looked like a meadow despite being underground. The god of the wilds, the giant Breasal, held a pike in his hand as he spoke of something in Irish, which I couldn't understand a single word of, so I didn't bother. Without letting him finish his words, I fired my sniper rifle as a greeting. That initiated combat.

Breasal charged forward, brandishing his pike as if it was as light as wood. With my high Agility score though, I managed to avoid it easily. Unlike other idiots, I didn't spend time developing my other stats. A sniper wasn't supposed to be seen, heard nor attacked. A sniper hid and fired from the most convenient places.

Breasal, seeing me evade his first attack, swung his pike left at my direction. This time I couldn't evade in time and suffered a graze on my chest. That pike must be at least an Epic, to be able to cut through the Ancient Breastplate of St. Dunstan as if through paper.

"Poison!" I cried as my HP dropped steadily with each second in addition to the damage from the attack.

The god of the wilds attacked again, slicing the air left and right. Barely avoiding it, I put away my sniper rifle and took out the Sig Sauer. I emptied the whole magazine of [curse bullets] onto Breasal. I looked in satisfaction as his movements slowed and eventually stopped. Not only that, he also suffered the 'amplify damage' curse, which randomly activated with 12% chance upon using curse bullets.

I reloaded the ammunition of the pistol with [poison bullets] before I unslung my sniper rifle again. I took aim at his heart and fired an [HE bullet], causing an explosion around his chest. It didn't make much of an impact, as Breasal seemed to have some kind of barrier around him.

"So... holy bullets?" I asked myself as I took out my holy bullets clip to replace the HE bullets. Then I pressed the trigger and bingo, the bullet went past the barrier. It shattered Breasal's chest and exposed his beating heart to the air.

Unexpectedly, Breasal made a loud roar, which increased his strength and dispelled all the cursed. He came at me with twice the speed he had before and I just barely managed to avoid it. At that point, all thoughts of attacking went out the window. I was already too busy avoiding his attacks to worry about counter-attacking. If I was a swordsman, this would be a different matter.

A rifle couldn't block a pike, especially a divine pike. If I blocked it with my rifle, my rifle would break in two. I would rather die than let it happen. Besides, his [roar] halved all my skills. Even blocking would be affected. I'd be better off just running.

It took me about 6 minutes of running and evading, but eventually his enchantment wore off and his speed slowed down to its original level. I took this chance to mute my headset and drop a contact-sensitive flashbang to the ground in front of me before jumping over it just as the flashbang went off. With the flashbang behind me and the sound muted, the flashbang hand minimal effect on me. I hid behind a tree, took out my sniper rifle and fired another holy bullet, dealing a headshot in his moment of confusion. Then I activated the 'Ambush' skill.

I waited for him to walk past my hiding place, remaining silent all through it. Then once he was far enough, I dealt another headshot from the back, this time, with the ambush bonus damage applied. I quickly changed place and reactivated the Ambush skill. I repeated this eight more times until he wised up and used his power to cast [grass bind]. It wasn't a particularly powerful magic, as it only bound people and the binding could be easily broken. The only problem was, he now knew where I was.

I had no time to cut down the grass. So I fired the sniper rifle and got myself a chest shot twice more as Breasal charged towards me. I put away the sniper rifle and threw several grenades in his way, dealing area effect damage despite his divine protection. Then I took out my assault rifle, which I had earlier switched into using holy bullets and fired controlled burst. As he got closer, I panicked and fired full burst instead.

In the real world, I cried a river for throwing my precious holy bullets down the crapper.

When Breasal got within a few metres from me, I knew I was done for. With my legs bound by the [grass bind] spell and my assault rifle out of ammo, there wasn't a lot I could do. So I put away my assault rifle and grabbed my Sig instead, along with a [holy grenade]. It was my last holy grenade, made only in Rome. Unless Rome was liberated, this may be the last holy grenade in the world. Nevertheless, I primed the grenade.

As he approached, I fired my pistol with poison bullets blindly. It wouldn't matter where it hit, as long as the poison entered his body. It would be better if it hit his head or heart, but I couldn't be choosy. My only hope would be to get enough DoT (damage over time) and stall time long enough for the poison to take effect.

It happened as I managed to put the 7th bullet into his chest, that his pike hit the shoulder guard of my Ancient Breastplate of St. Dunstan, and was stopped short of damaging my flesh. Sure, I got myself another poison damage stacked on top of the previous one, but at least it wasn't the one hit kill that I was expecting.

Breasal then raised his pike as I took that opportunity to empty the rest of the pistol's bullets into his open heart. At this distance, even with crappy pistol skill, even the most inept couldn't possibly miss that target. Then as he swung down the blade of his pike, I threw the holy grenade into his open chest. Then I activated the active healing, filling my HP gauge as the holy grenade went off inside the open cavity of Breasal's chest.

I flew away from the impact of the holy grenade, which also threw Breasal back a few steps. I refilled my Sig's clip with holy bullets and with tears in my eyes, fired the last of my holy bullets at his heart and head. He staggered and he became a lot slower, but he still came closer, wielding his pike as a walking stick. There was no time to reload any of my weapons, and he was still faster than my running speed. So I took out my bowie knife, crossed the single step needed to reach him, and stabbed the knife into his heart.

I stabbed and stabbed, not even caring about anything else. It was either him or me. I'd rather that I was the one remaining alive.

Suddenly a dialogue box opened. That was weird, I had killed many bosses before, but this was the first time that I received a choice of something. I couldn't tell what the choices were supposed to be, as both the question and the answers were written in gaelic. So I chose the one with bonus Purity reward. High Purity was always good.

In Armageddon, high Purity helps NPC interactions because they think that you're the good guys.

You have decided to spare Breasal's life. Although Breasal was a pagan god, God would never ask his people to kill indiscriminately. Your willingness to grant forgiveness is an example to all who follow the way of the light. For this act of compassion, you have been granted 10 Purity.

"Are you freaking kidding me? What the hell did I waste my holy bullets for if I let him go now?!" I shouted at the game. Breasal said something in Irish again.

For your mercy, Breasal has granted you the power of nature. You can now enchant any bullets with poison damage on top of its original enchantments. The effectiveness of this skill improves with practice. You have acquired [Breasal's Bloodpact].

"Ah, that's better. So even if I use blessed bullets, it can also have poison enchantment," I said as the usual money rewards flowed in with the sound of coins being poured into a metal container.

Oh, the beautiful sound of money.

I left Breasal to recover on his own. Along the way to the boat, the [beast elves], [dire bears] and [unicorns] stayed out of my way, not even once challenging me. When I arrived at the boat, only Felixia and two of her party members were waiting. I asked her where the rest were and what happened to the others. She told me that they were all slaughtered within a couple of hours. She and her friends were all that remained. Still, she said her skills improved a lot in the past two hours. She seemed to think that she would be able to beat up C level monsters on her own now. We'll see.

So seeing as there was nobody else to wait for, we headed back to Ireland. As we left the mist, the hidden island of Hy-Brasil faded and disappeared. When we look back, it was like there was never anything there.

Back at the pier of Milltown Malbay, we said our goodbyes and parted ways. I think she had a little crush on me, but unfortunately for her, I'm straight. I wouldn't date a girl, ever.

She then greeted a group of people who waited at the town's warp crystal. It seemed like her party members who died during the Hy-Brasil excursion had already respawned and was waiting for her. Instead of friends, I was greeted by a monster instead.

In front of me, was The Monster. Yup, that same monster I killed in Trafalgar Square. That same monster that was so damned hard to kill, it required hundreds of players to weaken it before I managed to kill it with critical hits. Was this another event? Why haven't I heard of this? Or did it come to take revenge? Was there a 'revenge' event or something?

The Monster was definitely stronger and tougher than Breasal, the boss that took me an hour and a lot of holy bullets to kill. It was probably the strongest monster I had fought, probably even stronger than Asmodeus, which took the combined effort of 80 high level players to bring down. I stole a glance at the warp crystal behind me. If I started to run, I could possibly warp away before the monster could reach me. Last time I only won because a lot of players had already weakened it. No chance of that in this town filled with noobs.

I took a step back, which was copied by The Monster. I took another step, which was also copied by The Monster. But The Monster was twice my size and height. Its single step was bigger than three of my steps. With sweat pouring down my face in real life, I turned around and ran full speed towards the town's warp crystal as the townsfolk and low level players scattered in all directions.

*As always, comments and feedbacks are greatly appreciated. Praises help me write faster. Constructive criticisms helps me to write better.