Chapter 42: Trickery (1/2)

Rotten Bones did not have a base in Wickidor, but had the overwhelming advantage of numbers compared to Leah’s party of six, especially after their coadjutor arrived as reinforcement.

Having received a sign from the evil god called Rotten Bones, they immediately went up in force and set up ambush points by every gate in Wickidor.

Leah, who never expected that her value to Rotten Bones had suddenly become so important, was planning to lead her guards out of Wickidor from an alley in the east when they all ran headlong into cultists who each had a black corpsefly with them.

Although the guardsmen managed to unleash their might and repel the cultists thanks to their Systems, they never caught on that the cultists were just buying time. The moment they had caught sight of Leah, they released their black corspefly which led the coadjutor of Rotten Bones to them!

And the instant the coadjutor the other cultists addressed as the venerable one appeared, Leah and her group were caught in a disadvantage.

Unlike Carlo, the coadjutor possessed a divine power granted directly from Rotten Bones to summon hordes of zombies to fight, even commanding a deadly atmosphere and skeletons to help him fight. He cast his spells swiftly and attacked viciously, Leah and the guards whose level just reached two digits simply could not stand against them.

As her guards were killed one after another, Leah, who had been enraged by their deaths (but was not sad because she knew they would be revived) and would avenge them even if she would die, she suddenly received quest instructions from the God of Games.

[Ding! Main Quest started: Vengeance Dawn]

The quest kept her from squandering the time her guards bought her with their leaves and left the fight immediately, and make haste to the small town outside the Valley of the Tragic Dead.

The instructions indicated that the guards who died for her would be revived at once when she accomplished that quest with a more lenient penalty than usual for dying. Then, when she reached the town, she would also begin a chain mission to exact her revenge upon Rotten Bones!

Hence, as the cultists watched in astonishment, Leah, raging and teeth-gritted suddenly spaced out and stared at thin air just before she was about to charge towards them. Moments later, she was already calm, and actually abandoned her stubbornly fighting guards to turn and flee.

Even the cultists themselves were jeering inwardly, ‘Wow, the girl our boss told us to catch actually abandoned the guards who would protect her with their lives? Is she really so toxic? No wonder even our god would choose her and demand her as a living sacrifice…’

Meanwhile, the abandoned guards were neither angered or disappointed that they were left behind even until the end. All of them simply died right then just so that the girl could have a chance to escape!

Even the Rotten Bones coadjutor who barely had any humanity left in him sung a psalm of loyalty in their honor.

They were simply unaware that the guardsmen had also received a quest that matched Leah’s: the longer they could delay the cultists, the more rewards they gain after they were revived. Although the guardsmen had not been affected by the dimwittedness typical of the other Players, their deaths remained fated.

Still, with rewards being at stake, they fought as hard as they could since they could earn more by buying more time.

Later, Leah ran into her fellow God of Games believer Marni outside the Silver Chime merchant guild’s Wickidor branch.

“That’s about what happened. I’ll reward you handsomely if you could take me there!” Leah whispered to Marni from inside the carriage.

“What a coincidence, I’m returning there soon as well…” Marni slapped his chest heartily upon learning that the girl was heading for the starter village as well. “But I have something else to do before that.”

“Something else?”

“I have my own quest as well: I’ll be recruiting new believers for our God of Games amongst the refugees.” Marni did not keep the quest for himself since Leah did tell him everything about herself—not that she could steal it since his quest was simply his own.