The audience jeered Mogwai, laughed at him, hurled insults. Nobody suspected that his Resilience had by then reached the sandbox cap, and alongside Stoneskin, it allowed him not only to survive, but to win: he beat the thug and all the opponents after him.
Some even began to suspect that Mogwai was a Threat, and tried to assassinate him the next day, but couldn’t defeat him. Then the whole sandbox got together to hunt the strange noob, but, after killing him, they couldn’t banish the Threat. They wanted to try again, but didn’t get the chance. In Disgardium, Mogwai brooked no bullying; he began to hunt down all those who hurt him. He caught them one by one and in groups, quickly and methodically killing them.
That victory in the mini-tournament was probably where Mogwai’s rapid rise began. Immediately after it, another finalist, the archer Criterror, invited him to celebrate the success over a drink. For a few days, Criterror ran through the sandbox with him, helping him complete instances, and once he knew him well, he invited him to the clan, which was a subdivision of Azure Dragons.
A year later, the two won the global Junior Arena. The names Fen Xiaoguang and Ignatius Scariolo echoed throughout the world.
* * *
The same wicked thought kept spinning in his head: “That little bastard took us all down three times! Eight legates of the Destroying Plague!” Fen seethed as he realized that Scyth had cut him off from Dis for twelve hours.
A couple of minutes later, everyone was gathered in the hall of the Elites’ clan base. Ignatius-Criterror shouted, swore, all but stamped his feet. Once his anger passed, he declared:
“I said we shouldn’t have attacked him! We should have summoned him right to the castle! We could have taken him out then! No way he would have got away!”
Everyone nodded apart from Liam Driscoll, sitting on the couch next to Mogwai. In Fen’s view, Liam was overly cautious, even cowardly, and only got into conflicts when he was absolutely sure it would work out best for him. Or, like now, when he was sure he was right.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “If we’d revealed our castle, we’d have lost it, like the Widowmakers.”
“Bullshit,” Bianca said, walking back and forth across the hall. “We’d have banished the Threat and been done with it.”
“We need to build a new castle either way,” Mogwai said, putting his feet up. “On Holdest. But Crit is right, we’ve lost our chance. And the element of surprise. We should have prepared, brought in some living clanmates, then pulled Scyth out. Right now we’d be celebrating the elimination of a class-A Threat!”
That last he said bitterly. This mistake meant the clan would miss the battle at the temple of the Sleeping Gods. And they could have done well as an unexpected element in the fight, a third side. They would have cleaned out the Alliance, and, if they’d gathered a troop of undead, they might have destroyed the temple and gotten a reward as well as the loot from dead players. Now they’d miss all the fun.
“Let’s think logically,” Liam said, interlacing his fingers and leaning forward. “Last night, while on Accelerator, Tissa let slip that she has the same skill as all the other Awoken, Depths Teleportation. She also admitted that she’d been to the clan fort. It was somewhere on an archipelago to the west of Latteria.”
“Where?” Fen jumped up in surprise. “And why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Because we logged into Dis right after the Amazons returned from the island, Fen! It was two hours ago, remember? You were hurrying us, and for good reason! We became legates!”
“Alright, go on, what about the girl?” Lan Lin asked, who played for the elf girl Laneiran. After a moment’s consideration, she took Fen’s place on the sofa.
“Theoretically, she can take us there.”
“Theoretically indeed,” Criterror snorted. “We can’t get into the sandbox.”
“And even if we could, we’d die from the ‘junior’ debuff in half a minute,” Bianca added.
“Wait a sec…” Fen opened up a map of Latteria, zoomed in and pointed at Tristad. “She’s in this sandbox, right? We keep thinking like we’re still alive. We’re immortal now, we don’t have to worry about debuffs. That changes everything! Look, we can go through the Mire and approach from the south, from Tuaf.”
“There are royal guards there, they won’t let us pass…” Bianca said.
“Idiot!” Fen snapped. “We’re undead now! We don’t care about the guardians of the Commonwealth! We’ll kill them. The sandbox debuff won’t kill me. We can also cross the ocean to get around the Nameless Mountains if we drink Waterwalking Potion.
“Exhaustion…”
“Won’t kill me either!”
“All the same, if a level thousand shark swallows you, you’ll lose time,” Liam noted. “I like the option of taking the Tuaf road. It’s the shortest way. There’s a guard tower there, a small garrison — Fen will handle it alone easily.”
“I’ll handle it, have no fear. But where do I find the girl?”
“I’ll fly to her,” Liam answered. “I’ll give her the works, ask her to go to… Here, let’s say. The Olton Quarries. Not far from the road to Tuaf.”
“Think she’ll give up her friends that easily?” Bianca asked doubtfully. “Mogwai, you’re an authoritative druid, of course, but the girl has too many hangups about friendship and betrayal. Especially since she feels
