"She’s playing the victim," Don said finally.

"Completely," Kira agreed.

Little Chili had stopped hammering. She was just staring.

The trick actually worked.

When the advancing players caught sight of the slender, beautiful, apparently terrified girl sprinting toward them with a monster in pursuit, their eyes went wide and their instincts kicked in before their brains could ask questions.

A seemingly upright high-ranking mage raised his staff and bellowed, "Brothers, this is the boss we’ve been looking for!"

In an instant, azure ice arrows, blazing fireballs, and a hail of crossbow bolts hurtled toward Nightmare Wings, striking it in rapid succession. The boss shuddered, and its aggro locked onto a notorious ID floating above one of the charging players.

Debtborn.

The team pouring out of the village was War Fire.

Vera’s performance wasn’t quite finished. She ran past the incoming players and into the village, then, deliberately, let her foot catch the ground. She went down in a graceful tumble, rolled with the momentum, and ended up in a heap near the teleporter, looking for all the world like a girl who had barely escaped with her life.

The War Fire players who caught it out of the corner of their eyes were practically fighting each other for a better angle.

Vera, apparently oblivious to all of this, scrambled to her feet, pressed herself against the teleporter console with trembling hands, fed it a coin with visible relief, and vanished.

At the same moment, Little Chili’s pickaxe landed one final time. The deposit fractured cleanly, and a small collection of glittering ore tumbled into her palm.

She looked at it with shining eyes. "I got ten pieces. Should be enough for at least one upgrade attempt."

Kira exhaled slowly, wiping actual sweat from her forehead. "We got out completely unscathed. Let’s go back."

Don’s lips curved in a way that didn’t quite match the words "go back." "Let’s head back first. And come back shortly after."

In the team channel, quiet laughter rippled through almost everyone. Almost.

Bernita’s voice came through, plaintive and genuinely confused. "What are you all laughing about? Tell me, please?"

Quinn smiled in a way that was particularly insufferable. "Sister Bernita, you’re too kind. I feel a little ashamed of my own shamelessness just watching you."

Don said, with what he felt was appropriate dignity, "Stop picking on Bernita. She’s good-hearted, unlike the rest of you." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Vera’s voice cut back in immediately. "Don’t even start. You’re the most despicable one here. You started all of this."

Don cleared his throat. "Fine. I’ll explain. Bernita, Nightmare Wings’ enrage timer runs for fifteen minutes, right?"

"Yes."

"We held its attention for just over a minute. So it still has plenty of rampage time left when War Fire showed up."

A pause. Then Bernita’s voice brightened with sudden comprehension. "Oh! Brother Don, I understand! If War Fire can’t handle it and gets wiped out, we can swoop in and take all the loot!"

"Not bad. It seems spending time with Cappuccino has done you some good."

"Hehe. Brother Cappuccino can be a little naughty sometimes too."

Whether the plan was entirely ethical was a matter of personal interpretation. Don had a reasonable working relationship with Debtborn on an individual level, but that didn’t extend to any particular affection for War Fire as an organization. His friendships with the three Sword Song leaders pulled his loyalties in a different direction. His decision was therefore perfectly reasonable. He saw no need to explain it further to anyone.

They tore return scrolls and materialized in Yiersa Village. Little Chili immediately transferred the ten Magic Essence Stones to Butler, who examined them and advised against attempting the forge during peak activity hours. The success rate for high-quality crafting dropped significantly during those windows. He recommended waiting until between three and five in the morning, a long-standing unspoken rule among serious crafters in online games.

With that settled, the group made their way to the teleporter with expressions that could generously be described as innocent, paid the fee, and transported back to Fies Village.

The village itself was deserted. From a distance outside the walls, they could already hear the clash, the deafening sounds of a battle being fought at full intensity, or more accurately, the sounds of a battle being thoroughly lost on one side.

A quick calculation told Don that Nightmare Wings’ rampage timer had roughly five minutes remaining. They needed to be outside and visible before the boss’s regeneration could kick in. If no targets were present within range, it would recover health, and that would ruin everything.

The group walked out along the path, IDs suppressed, equipment glow hidden, the lot of them looking like an unremarkable band of travelers. They found a large rock near the edge of the combat zone, pressed against it, and peered out.

What Don saw exceeded his expectations.

Nightmare Wings was significantly more dangerous than he’d calculated. Not only was its attack speed exceptional, but, like Poison Blade Gray from the Anya Mine, it was dual-wielding, both scythes moving independently at a pace that made tracking it genuinely difficult. Elias Finch was currently behind it, running hard, his armor bright silver under the open sky, his health bar sitting at roughly one-third and falling.

The ground around the combat zone told a story in blood. Patches of crimson marked where players had died, not recently, but in the minutes before Don’s group arrived. The massacre hadn’t been interrupted. It had simply continued.

The War Fire team’s damage output was genuinely impressive. In less than ten minutes, Nightmare Wings had shed more than half its total health. But the cost had been staggering. A Level 29 well-equipped werewolf berserker stepped forward, and before he could raise his axe, Nightmare Wings turned with cold mechanical efficiency. Its two scythes crossed at his midsection in a single motion. The berserker’s upper body slid sideways. Half of him remained standing for a moment, blood erupting outward in a high-pressure arc that spattered across the surrounding grass, before the whole thing collapsed.

[9,869!]

A group of knights surged in next, shields raised to protect their chests, roaring their defiance. Nightmare Wings didn’t even change its posture. Its body spun in place, both scythes sweeping in a full horizontal arc. Iron shields split as if they were parchment. The knights who carried them came apart at the same time, blood blooming outward in a radius around it like a grotesque flower opening in fast-forward.

Don watched this with a very still expression.

Nightmare Wings’ aggro had gone completely chaotic at this point. Elias Finch could no longer hold it on himself. All he could do was follow its path and attack its rear whenever it turned away. And even Finch’s attacks, delivered by the highest-level swordsman in the American region at Level 36, were barely making a dent. Only a critical hit managed to strip around 5,000 HP from it. For a boss of this caliber, that was nothing.

Debtborn and War Fire Snow Fox were both soaked in sweat, their weapons never stopping. Debtborn’s fireballs, the highest magic output in the War Fire team, were shaving off approximately 2,000 HP per cast. Snow Fox had abandoned any pretense of healing anyone except Elias Finch. The rest were simply too fragile to survive a direct hit regardless of how much healing arrived.

Quinn lowered her voice to an uncharacteristic murmur. "Old scoundrel. When do we move?"

Don gently pinched her smooth cheek. "Not yet. Wait until they’re all down. And stop talking. Don’t let them hear you."

She pressed her lips together and nodded once.

The five remaining minutes felt different depending on which side you were watching from. For the players fighting Nightmare Wings, every second was an eternity of noise and blood and desperation. For Don’s group behind the rock, it moved almost too quickly, punctuated by the regular percussion of deaths.

War Fire had fewer active players than their reputation suggested. The era of hundreds of thousands of players flooding a new release on launch day was over. The industry had matured into something more contractual, more cautious. Most players who had been close to a team leader in a previous game now waited to see how a new title developed before committing. The War Fire players in the field were the true believers, and there weren’t many of them.

Nightmare Wings turned again. Elias Finch intercepted it, absorbing the aggro back onto himself. The boss’s two scythes came down simultaneously in a skill it had used before, Double Scythe Strike, both blades driving into Finch’s shoulders with tremendous force.

[7,847!]

Finch still had health remaining. About a fifth of his bar.

Don’s eyebrows rose slightly. Logically, a Swordsman shouldn’t have that much health. Constitution growth for the class was only tier nine. Given Finch’s extreme attack investment, he’d have had to dump substantial points elsewhere as well, which meant equipment of a quality Don genuinely hadn’t anticipated. The online trading boards and equipment rankings weren’t officially opening until noon. Until then, nobody outside his team knew exactly what Finch was carrying.