The draconic beast, covered in smoke and flame, kept flapping his wings above the prison yard illuminated by a newly made pond of lava.
“You mortals, I, the elder wyrm Vesuvius will give you the opportunity of your life. You fought my enemies and proved yourself as being worthy of becoming my minions. Follow me or go and leave. The decision is on you!” the cold voice caused the group of players to start murmur between themself, igniting flames of excitement in their hearts.
However, a cold voice brought them out of their discussion, “Fools, now is not time for this. Think about it after you leave the city if you don’t want to get caught again. Follow my three loyal minions to safety.”
The dragon flapped his wings, and the flames covering his whole body suddenly vanished. He started to accelerate, quickly vanishing in the dark night sky. He didn’t fly far but remained close to the town to observe the players and ensure they would not get attacked by a too strong force during their escape.
‘I can’t do everything for them. They are players. They want to fight by themself.’, he thought as he watched the players fighting against a smaller regrouped unit of soldiers trying to stop their escape.
After getting out of prison, the system allowed them to access their weapons, giving them the ability to fight.
It was one of the precautions used by the system to prevent players from committing crimes without consequences. So if the player got caught or killed by the guards, it fixed players respawn point to their cells and prevented them from using most of their equipment. It was the only way as players couldn’t lose their equipment outside of PVP. It only kept losing its durability.
A brawl erupted between the players and soldiers in the middle of a street.
“Form the wall!” the soldiers quickly formed one long line blocking the street and pointed their weapons forwards toward the incoming players.
Then a small swarm of attack spells and arrows launched from the group of players, hitting the formation of the soldiers, creating small explosions and causing the soldiers to disperse.
The players immediately rushed forward, piercing through the dispersed soldiers, heading straight towards a town gate.
Most eye-catching was the player in the red that kept launching fireballs all around him, hitting buildings and causing fires to spread throughout the town. There was empty space around him as the players avoided him while giving him weird looks.
‘That idiot, he will destroy all reputation with the civil population. Is he alright in his head?’
Vesuvius remembered one of the hot topics from his past life about the hyperrealism of LOMM and other similar games making people more violent in “real life”.
The players quickly reached a town wall. It wasn’t high nor thick. It even had cracks on its old surface. However, it was more than enough for the needs of the small town.
Five soldiers with crossbows took positions on top of a gatehouse and unleashed their bolts toward the incoming players. The bolts swished through the air flying towards the players. Then a player with a staff raised it high into the air and air before the players suddenly crystallised, turning into a wall of pure ice. The bolts hit the wall, getting stuck in it. Immediately after that, the wall broke down into a pile of shards, letting the bolts fall harmlessly towards the ground. The players immediately retaliated, sending a barrage of arrows and magical projectiles.
“Burn!!!” the player in red summoned a fireball in his hand, throwing it towards one of the soldiers.
“Ahhh!” fire engulfed the soldiers, making them jump down from the wall as the fire kept burning them.
The players quickly approached the gate and moved massive wood securing the gate. Then they pushed both wings of the gate wide open and ran straight to the forest on the horizon.
The dragon kept flapping his wings, watching the whole ordeal and assessing the players. Of course, he wasn’t planning to tell them that he was a true dragon, ‘I will let them think that I am just an elder wyrm for the time to prevent leak of information. Later I will filter out these trustworthy to enter the inner circle to learn my true identity as the dragon and become a dragonkin. Also, I need to set up ranks for my faction to give players something to strife for.’
Later the same day:
The group of players, covered in sweat from their depleted stamina, sat on the ash-covered ground surrounded by blackened, burned trees and remnants of wooden structures.
Suddenly ash rose from the ground and formed massive clouds as the terrifying form of the dragon appeared above the blackened and leafless branches.
“Mortals, join me and help me to establish my rightful dominion above this forest and protect it against the intruders.”
Each flap of the wyrm’s wings kept creating new gusts of ash.
“If you refuse, leave now, but don’t think you will get my help again. You are fugitives now, and I am offering you shelter.”
The players already had a long time to make their decisions, so they quickly split up into two separate groups.
“We are sorry, but we have to refuse your generous offer…” of course, there were players that just wanted to play it causally, not wanting to join any faction or were too busy outside of the game that they had no time to regularly log in.
Then there was the second and larger group with fourteen players, not counting the original trio. All of them had excited looks on their faces, especially one in the red robes.
“Your draconic highness, we will follow you, and we will fight for you!” Their leader with the weird punk haircut walked forward as if representing the whole group while others held the player in red to prevent him from doing something stupid.