Today was just not their day. No one had time to prepare themselves before their punishment was assigned to them. The knights watched helplessly from the sidelines, as there was nothing they could do for them. They hadn't even known the system was enacting the penalty until the party had frozen in place before falling to the ground like their strings were cut.
The knights hesitated before approaching the fallen heroes to see if they were still alive. They confirmed that they were still breathing and were only unconscious. It was similar to what happened to a previous party, except they hadn't collapsed from pain. With no idea on how to handle the situation, the knights did the only thing they could do, which was to gather the heroes up and try to find a safe place.
['Luke Hellwalker' will relive a dark memory and have his stats temporarily reduced.]
[You're a fool to think the system will let you do something like that.]"Weren't you the one who said you would help me get my revenge?" asked Luke as he manage to break through and cut down several people.[That's right. I suppose there's no helping it.]"What can you tell me about this punishment?" Luke asked as he made his way past his fallen enemies to find another place to rest.[Other than what you already know, not much, as I'm not completely sure how similar the two systems work. You already know the way for the punishment to end.]Yes, he knew. The most obvious way for the punishment to end was for him to go through the same exact events and let things play out like they had last time. However, he wasn't going to go through with it. He had already experienced the pain of dyi
Luke waited for the system to bring him back to everyone else. His real body should still be back where he left it, along with everyone else, since it was only his mind that the system had grabbed. That was unless the system thought to assign the others a different punishment that would physically send them away. If that were the case, then they would have a serious issue.That would mean they would be short on people when they were attacked by the demons and prophets, because he didn't doubt for a second that they would be attacked. However, that wouldn't be the only problem. Sometimes the system wouldn't return them back to where it originally grabbed them from. It was part of the punishment to find their way back. Hopefully, this wasn't the case for them this time if the system did decide to remove one or more members from the group.When the system finally returned him to his group, he saw several things that told him that things had gone wrong. One was that he was the first perso
Unfortunately, Luke wasn't sure how to accomplish this task under these circumstances. He didn't exactly have a skill that would allow him to break illusions. Warriors didn't normally have any skills or abilities that would allow them to deal with anything that involved magic. There were some exceptions, but they were just those rare exceptions.In this case, they would need a mage or an assassin to handle this, which were the classes they didn't have in their group. He shouldn't have allowed Grace to convince him to let Theodore into the group. However, there was nothing he could do about it now. All he could do was try to come up with a solution so they could get out of the mess they were in.A grunt drew his attention, and he was relieved to see Theodore sitting up. At least there was one less person to worry about protecting. If it was only Bobby and Chris that were unconscious, they
Luke got help from someone unexpected, as Boyd said, "We don't need to rely on them to search for Grace. We can find her without their help."The last person Luke had expected to speak up was Boyd, considering his background. Out of the five knights, Luke considered him to be the least reliable because of his womanizing ways and how he hadn't shown any commendable behavior thus far. He had also shown that he was quick to abandon people if he thought it wasn't worth it, so why was he acting so confident they could do it without their archers?"How do you suggest we do that?" asked Santiago. "This forest is huge. She could be anywhere.""They couldn't have gone far. The goblins wouldn't be able to carry her unless they had a huge group. It would also have drawn attention," Boyd said.That wasn't true, which was what Luke
However, Luke didn't get a chance to interrogate Boyd when Felipe shouted. This drew everyone's attention, and they walked over to see what he found. The group stared down at what he was pointing at and saw that it was drag marks. It looked like they were heading in the right direction. If they kept going in this direction, they should be able to find her.Now that they were certain on which path to take, they reorganized their formation. Clayton and Santiago were placed in the middle since we couldn't fight with Bobby and Chris on their backs. Felipe took the lead, as he had been the one to find the tracks and was likely the best person they had for tracking Grace down with Bobby and Chris unconscious. The last two knights took the rear while Theodore and Luke took the sides.The group proceeded as quickly as they could while keeping an eye out for any more demons. While they wanted to track her down as soon as possible, they couldn't run carelessly into danger. They
Bobby pushed forward, resting his entire weight against Luke's back as he said, "We rescued you from a bunch of goblins.""What?" Grace managed to say after staring at them in disbelief.Luke shoved Bobby away as he said, "It's a long story."Then he proceeded to provide a summarized version of what happened while she was unconscious. It was quite short, contrary to what everyone experienced, but it was supposed to be a summary. As he recapped what had happened, his eyes studied her form again to make sure he hadn't missed anything. Nothing seemed out of place, and any scrapes she had were from being dragged.Once he finished, she said, "I'm sorry for being so much trouble. I ended up causing trouble for everyone.""It's not your fault," Bobby said. "It's not like you asked to be kidn
After much arguing and shouting, the group was finally able to come to a consensus. They would make their way to the town while looking for the caravan. That was the best they could come up with that would satisfy both sides. It helped that Chris finally woke up after being unconscious for so long and agreed that they should at least try to find the caravan."I can't believe I was the last one to wake up," Chris said as he crossed his arms."Your punishment must have been really long. What did you have to go through?" Grace asked.Chris gave her a weird look as he said, "What do you mean? Didn't we all get the same punishment?"Theodore and Bobby were looking in their direction as Bobby asked, "What are you guys talking about?""Grace was wondering what my punishment was, as if we did
It was goblins. Of course it was goblins. Luke wasn't sure what he was expecting when he heard the footsteps approaching them. There weren't many options for who it could be. He had momentarily considered whether it was the citizens or the prophets, but he discarded them after thinking about it. If there hadn't been a layer of dust coating the furniture, then he would have really considered them as a possibility.He discarded the possibility that it was the prophets, as they had shown no signs of confronting them face to face. It simply wasn't their style based on everything Luke had seen so far. They had only used magic to capture them in an illusion and allowed the goblins to do the fighting. There was also another reason for it, but he wasn't going to bring it up just yet.Their group was able to easily defeat the small group of five goblins without any difficulty. IT would have been