Infinite Realm

"Lu Zhen?" Fudo said the name out. He felt it was quite familiar but he recalled that he barely associated with anyone from the Chinese Independent State [1] much less someone with the name Lu Zhen.

[[ System notification :

Player ID : Sky Blade invites you join his party.

Agree/Decline ]]

"Let's go then." Sato sent the party invitation to Lu Zhen before walking ahead, not bothering to wait for him to reply.

"...tch. Can't you wait for your teammate, brother?" Lu Zhen quickly agreed to the request and then shamelessly shouted at the duo while chasing after them.

"How the heck did we become brothers?" While Sato was inclined to keep ignoring Lu Zhen's nonsensical behaviour, Fudo felt that Lu Zhen had the potential to become his chatting buddy.

"How you ask? Well, back in the days, there was the belief that once two people fight together in a life-and-death battle, they develop a bond. Going to Black Grill's Cave, with just the three of us, is the same as sending ourselves into the jaws of death." Lu Zhen then puffed his chest up before continuing "Thanks to my presence, we will survive this predicament. Surviving it will therefore make us trio, brothers."

"Whoa. I admit I'm shameless but you're on another level." Fudo exclaimed.

Sato, on the other hand, felt that he might have made a mistake picking Lu Zhen but he quickly wiped the thought out of his head. If Lu Zhen was true to his character, then picking him would be the right thing to do as a straightforward person like him would be much better than a calculative and scheming player. But this was only on the condition that Lu Zhen's attitude now was his real character. Since Sato couldn't verify that yet, he still kept his guard up. Unless an opportunity showed itself, this was the only thing he could do. As for Fudo, Sato wasn't worried about him as he believed that Fudo must have thought of the same thing as he did and is probably trying to find a loophole in Lu Zhen's disguise, if he is indeed faking his behaviour.

Upon passing through the mouth of the cave that resembled the mouth of a monster, the trio ventured in a little deeper. Though they were inside the cave, it wasn't as dark as they had expected as a few green light gems were lodged on the walls of the cave.

Black Grill's Cave was a cave filled with earthen class monsters and a few species that prefer to dwell underground. The cave extended all the way from the middle part of the mountain, down below going as far as at least a 50 metres or so beneath sea level. It was quite huge as even though plenty different players had entered in, they still hadn't explored everywhere. Based on estimation with the distance travelled so far, the players believed that Black Grill's Cave should be larger than even a Primary Town! One has to remember that Primary Towns are very huge. If comparing with reality, they are capable of rivalling some of the big cities.

According to Lu Zhen, the first people who discovered the cave had a found a map about it; though it wasn't a complete one. They had went in thinking they had found an ancient civilization's abandoned grounds with hidden treasures. Sadly, most of them died in the trip with only two remaining. One of them, who was a business-minded kinda fellow, decided to copy the map and sell it to other players rather than keeping it to themselves. When a few big guilds caught a whiff of this, they tracked down the player and silenced him because they wanted to seize the place for themselves. Sadly for these guilds, the map had proliferated a bit and it eventually became know to a lot of players. The guilds in command then blocked the place off and tried to explore it first before other players. To their surprise, it turned out not to be an forgotten grounds but a resource map. Of course they found this out the hard way after losing a bunch of their players. In the end the place was opened to the public, as the guilds themselves couldn't really horde it for themselves, but very few players dared to venture here as it was high levelled for them back then. Now however, most of those who participated in the large scale goblin battle event and a few other pro players from other towns, use this place as a levelling holy ground. This was even more so for the mages, as they were the most important factor in defeating the Rock Golems, which were the monsters with the highest population down here.

They had walked for about 2 minutes without discovering any living creature and as Fudo was about to complain, they heard a sound.

*Growl*

"What was that?" Fudo asked hurriedly.

"Should be a golem. You know, big guys with rocky bodies..."

"Let's hide." Sato suddenly spoke.

"Ok." Fudo replied.

"... alright." Though Lu Zhen hesitated a bit, he still did as he was told.

*Dong* *Ding* *Dong*

Heavy footsteps sounded as a huge 'rock' appeared from another path. It was coloured caramel, seemingly looking like an average Boulder. Upon closer inspection however, one would discover that it had red colored gems where it's eyes were supposed to be. Apart from this, there was no other facial features this 'rock' had. It's arms were actually a conglomeration of rocks and small boulders to form arms. The abomination was 2.3 metres in height at least and looked to be able to bulldozer through an human being.

"So that's a Rock Golem?" Fudo studied the creature.

"Yes. From what I know, Rock Golems are a lesser version of Earth golem. They have very good defensive capabilities and high strength though their only weak-points is their speed; they are very slow and also have slow reaction time." Lu When stated. He had been to Black Grill's Cave a couple of times before. As such, he knew most of the mobs that dwelt[2] here, together with their strengths and weaknesses.

"Looking at it's height, I guess it's a level 5; probably a common rank. A good bombardment of explosive spells would be more than enough to handle it. Here is the stats it has." Lu Zhen had a copy of the monster's stats from his previous battles and so sent it to the duo in the party.

"Huh? You guys are level 8?!" Lu Zhen suddenly yelled but with a low voice, so as not to attract the Rock Golem.

When players join up in a party system, their levels and rank are usually shown to everyone in the party through the party system on the system interface. When Lu Zhen was about to send the data on the Rock Golem's stat to them, he noticed that their levels were level 8. He didn't see this earlier before when he accepted their party invite because he didn't bother to. But now he did, Lu Zhen was quite surprised since most players were still at level 5 or 6 and only the best of the best were level 7.

"Yeah, what about it?" Fudo said with a smug smile. "I tell you this, call me 'Ancestor Emperor' and if you ever get into any mess, I will help you."

"Tch. I thought I was shameless but you're on a whole different level." Lu Zhen twitched his lips.

"Hehe. What's your level even? 5? No. You see to be a bit better than that so 6?" Fudo asked with a smug smile as if mocking Lu Zhen.

"Hehe. 7."

"..." Fudo was stunned.

"..." Sato was also stunned.

One should remember that the reason why the two were level 8 was because they not only beat a few trolls but also the elite rank One-Horned Trolls and finally the mini boss of the event, Sygrart. As the two were in a party system then, the experience points they gained was shared amongst themselves but it was still quite large and gave them a huge boost ahead of the mainstream players.

Lu Zhen, on the other hand, didn't have the liberties to enjoy all these. Even if he participated in the goblin raid, to achieve a level of 7, he had to have defeated not only a lot of goblins but also a few trolls too. It should be recalled that Yukino and the other members of Emperor's Might who participated in the boss raid were still level 7. This stranger they just met was actually on par with them, if measuring by level of course.

"It isn't comparable to you guys but I'm still proud of it." Lu Zhen puffed his chest and chuckled.

"Tch. You're still lower than us. Go kill that golem." Fudo pointed at the golem.

"Huh? Why?" Lu Zhen asked with surprise. It wasn't that he couldn't defeat the monster but it will still be difficult after all Rock Golems had high resistance to physical attacks.

"We're both level 8. We wouldn't gain any but of experience points from bullying a little rock. You're still level 7 so you can gain a bit." Sato explained with a sigh.

"Oh. You guys will still help me right?"

"Help you? Unless you want to gain less experience points, you should go handle that on your own." Fudo said with a wicked smile.

"...fine."

Truth be told, the reason why they sent Lu Zhen to battle the Rock golem wasn't because they couldn't gain any experience points but because they wanted to see his ability. There's a popular saying in the gaming industry that goes "Fear not a god-like opponent but a pig-like teammate". Even though Lu Zhen was a level 7, they wanted to be sure that he got that level through his own ability and not kill-stealing monsters during the raid.

Also they hadn't really discovered his class yet. Lu Zhen only wore a leather type equipment with no visible weapon or sheath. Basing things on his dressing, his class would either be an assassin or a ranger. Sato and Fudo wanted to verify both his class and his fighting prowess as this would aid them in their raid since they don't want to be held back or perhaps, lose their lives because of misinformation or ignorance of their partner's abilities.

. . . . .

Deep in Black Grill's Cave a battle was going on between two different parties.

*Clang*

*Clang*

*Puchii* (AN : Piercing sound)

"Arghh." One player was suddenly stabbed from behind by an assassin who just exited stealth mode.

"Rhino!" A teammate noticed this and yelled before rushing over to the injured player. The assassin had however, retreated away from the man.

"Fall back. These dark players are too strong." The injured man replied to his colleague and the other two in their team. They were actually a party of 7 but in the end, 3 of them died at the hands of their opponents due to an ambush. Though their opponents also numbered 4, they were running low on HP and stamina, since they were previously fighting a few Rock Golems, but their opponents were still in form. To make things worse, the injury that the man had sustained wasn't a simple one as he was constantly bleeding and losing HP.

"Retreat? Hahaha. What do you take us for? You think you can retreat once we've marked you as our targets? Just empty your bags and give us all you have and we can let a few of you go." The leader of the opposing team, who happened to be the assassin that attacked earlier, grinned at the group in front of him.

"Hmph. What do you take us for Rolo? You think we're stupid? We'd rather die here than give you out belongings. At the very least, killing us would only make us lose one equipment or so and a few experience points. But surrendering our resources and expecting you to let us go isn't the style of the Rhino Squad." The injured player spoke.

"You can't keep hiding in here. You will eventually have to leave and when you do, the big guilds will still hunt you down someday."

"Hahaha. You really are a stubborn fool old Rhino. Fine then, let me end your miserable suffering. Kill them all."

"Kill."

Another round of hacking and slashing began again but this time, things were destined to end differently. With most of them injured and tired, the members of the Rhino Squad couldn't keep up with Rolo and his gang. In the end, they all died and dropped at least one equipment it weapon behind.

"Tch. They could have made things a little easier from us but that old Rhino really is a muscle head." Rolo complained. During the battle, Rhino and his teammates had sacrificed themselves yo take down one of his teammates. They were successful in their attack and hence brought down the initial 4 opponents to 3. They however still died.

"What now boss?" One of the players in Rolo's team asked.

"We wait for Drake. After that, we look for a new target. This time around you guys should try and eliminate more players during the ambush."

"Okay boss."

"It would be better if we can find a team with 4-5 players at most."

AN :

[1] I had quite a problem trying to figure out a name. I originally came up with the Republic of China but I recalled that a ROC already existed and using it here might make people misunderstand me. So I decided to go almost the same path as the ISJ but made it CIS rather than ISC. Same thing though ISC sounds way cooler right?

[2] Dwelled and dwelt. I usually went with 'dwelled'(thanks to watching too many America movies) but I recently discovered that the British version should be 'dwelt'.. In order to make my work flow, I went with 'dwelt' since everything I should have written was done in British English.