The sky was black with the bodies of hundreds of Vampire Bats, level 4 monsters with only 12 health but a necrotic bite. All around Darren, the screams of injured sailors melded with the horrific, high-pitched sonic attack of the bats.

  Darren fired a fully charged swivel gun into the mass, dropping another half dozen bats as he cast Twist of Fate on himself and set the gun charging again.

  The world slowed as his four stacks of the skill reduced the speed of everything around him by 40 percent. At level 1, the skill only gave him two seconds of slowed time.

  He made every moment count.

  Cutlass in hand, he swung at the nearest bat, its normally swift, jerky movements reduced to a glacial flitting.

  The sword sliced the bat in half, cleaving through one next to it, the two corpses drifting to the ground in the slowed time of Darren’s accelerated perception. A spray of blood floated through the air, splattering against Darren’s already salt-coated skin, he grimaced then sidestepped a divebomb from another bat and swung up, cutting it in two.

  The world sped back up. Darren swore. Two seconds was pathetically little time.

  A bat smacked into the side of his head, bouncing off his skull as it careened through the air, colliding with another. Darren’s health bar dipped by a single point, but he didn’t receive a notification of special damage so he continued to swing.

  Bats dropped around him as he ducked and wove his way through the cloud, taking a swing at anything that came close. Which was frequently.

  The air was dense with bats, he could only make out glimpses of the sailors through the flittering mass. He fired his swivel gun again and set it to charge.

  Then from the centre of the bay came the thunder of cannons.

  “What the hell!” he said, ducking, hands over his head—as if that’d help—as cannonballs blasted through the swarm above him. Firing toward their own crew? Captain Montague was insane, he could just as easily kill his own men!

  But the cannonballs came nowhere near the ground crew.

  A burning body of a bat thudded to the sand next to Darren. “Huh.”

  He swung at another bat, clipping its wing, sending it tumbling down, still alive but crippled. It’s grating screech now tinged with pain. More flaming bats rained down, and the glint of flames cast their eerie glow through the darkened sky.

  There was some kind of burn effect on those cannonballs.

  A bat slammed into Darren’s back and he grunted as fangs punctured his jacket and skin.

  <<<<>>>>

  Necrosis

  Vampire Bat has inflicted you with necrosis. Your skin around the wound will rot until you succumb to the necrosis or you’re cleansed.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  -1 health per minute.

  <<<<>>>>

  “Son of a motherless sea goat!” He reached behind him and gripped the furry body, ripping it off his shoulder and throwing it to the ground before stomping on it. The creature’s head popped under his heel, and he grimaced.

  He cast Twist of Fate on a bat just about to hit him, and it froze as he took a swing at it, ending its life in one swing.

  Kill notifications were piling up, but he ignored them as he fired off his swivel gun again and set it charging.

  More bats landed on him, stacking the necrosis.

  He flailed the back of his sword, knocking a bat out of the air but not killing it.

  He ripped off one that had latched on his arm, tearing his new jacket. The 9 percent reduction in damage from his clothes was helping. It sure beat wearing clothes so thin he’d felt naked half the time.

  Another round of thunder from the Sea Dagger.

  More flaming corpses rained down, one bouncing off Darren’s hair, the smell of burning hair and flesh melding with gunpowder.

  Darren glanced at his stats. His health was down a quarter already, and the cloud of bats still felt just as large. Though he couldn’t take a step without slipping on the corpse of one now, making the battlefield a treacherous place. Who knew how the sailors fared?

  “Keep fighting!” Eric’s voice cut through the cacophony of bats. “Captain’s sending reinforcements!”

  Sword never stopping, Darren repositioned himself until he could just see through the bats to the Sea Dagger. Sure enough, another longboat had been lowered into the water beside the ship. All twenty people in the boat wore red coats. Marines.

  It’d be about a minute until they arrived, bringing doubtless a suite of area of effect, AOE, skills.

  With renewed determination, Darren refocused on the bats, hissing in pain as claws sliced across his head.

  They just had to hold out…

  Darren fell into a rhythm, dodging bats he could see, taking a swipe at all in range. They continued to fall to his deadly strikes, but just as steadily, his health inched down. His back was aflame with lacerations and necrosis.

  Every six seconds he fired his swivel gun into the sky, bringing more bats down. Each time Twist of Fate came off cooldown, he cast it on another bat.

  He hit four stacks on Twist of Fate and cast the skill on himself. Giving himself a couple of seconds to breath and take down several more bats—as well as dodging one dive bombing his head.

  Then the marines arrived.

  He heard orders being yelled behind him as sand crunched beneath running boots.

  The sky went from the black cloud of bats to a bright pyrotechnic display of death.

  Within seconds, the tide turned.

  What had been a life-and-death struggle turned to a mop up as the twenty odd marines poured forth destruction from dozens of levelled up skills.

  Chained lightning. Breathes of flame. Mass paralysis. Explosions.

  The sky grew lighter as the swarm blocking the sun was whittled away. The ear-bleeding screech of enraged bats morphed into one of terror as the creatures tried to flee the onslaught.

  Darren, alongside the sailors and marines, continued to send ranged attacks after the bats as they rose into the sky and retreated.

  Finally they were gone, the last one vanishing beyond the trees.

  Darren sagged, his bloody sword hanging limp in his fingers. The beach was a sea of corpses, countless bats and too many sailors, their lifeless, shredded limbs barely visible in the mountain of black bodies.

  Combat over, his adrenaline ran out, leaving his hands shaking and his teeth chattering. He glanced at his health, down over half. The fight hadn’t even lasted five minutes, so his swivel gun was even still summoned. Yet it felt like he’d spent the whole day fighting.

  He surveyed the battlefield. Weary sailors rumaged through the sea of death, searching for those alive but on the brink. Every now and then, one would call out, and another sailor would hurry over, laying hands on the injured as a soft golden light flowed down their arms and wrapped around the body of the wounded.

  Darren was about to join them when a triumphant trumpet fanfare sounded in his mind. He froze.

  His eyes went wide.

  He hadn’t heard that sound since he’d died.

  That was the sound of a level up.

  Aiden lives in Wonderwind, the world’s biggest VRMMO. He dropped out of college, ditched real life, and invested everything into a career as a cold, calculated virtual assassin targeting the richest players in the top-500 leaderboard—every kill executed to perfection.

  Until his headset glitches mid-mission.

  One flicker, one lag spike, and suddenly rent’s due, and his landlord’s about to kick him to the curb. Aiden realizes his next job might be his last. He logs into a high level area, Ray Dragon Falls, severely underleveled, equipped with utter trash gear, and prepares one final assassination.

  He just didn’t expect to fall for his target.