NPC into Player: Let's Wreck This Game

Bloom moved like an arrow, clearing everything in his path while many players were trying to run after him. He could have easily shaken them by using his swords, but he didn't.

He knew their aim quite well. "These flies… I was played, outsmarted by that young man. Or was it Dockrey's fingerprints here?" he muttered to himself while leaning over his horse to make it run faster.

"It must be Dockrey," he reached this conclusion, as this smart move seemed odd over such an impulsive kid like Panty. "I should be extra careful then, Dockrey isn't the push over I thought him to be."

He was fascinated by how he was outplayed here. "My desire, that's what blew everything in front of my face," he mumbled while his mind couldn't find any other weakness to his assault.

He wrongly assumed that Panty would depend entirely on the large number of players and NPCs he hired. Yet that also pointed out towards something else. "He knows I have a spy in Panty's ranks… does he suspect Muna already or Nara?"

He was hesitant about sacrificing Muna, as she was his only eye inside his enemies. "I need more eyes," he sighed before hurriedly sending a brief message for Muna. 'Run when others do, don't act like you are one of us.'

'Are you sure?' she sent back, 'Panty is considered finished after this defeat.'

'Just stick there and let's see what happens later,' he simply sent this back to her and didn't explain any of his worries to her.

He opened his map when he went far away from the fight raging on behind. "Last time I left him was there," he marked a place with the tip of his finger before recalling the previous course Muna was heading towards. "She should have met him here, and then there is a long road ahead before branching into three more."

He then made the map smaller and started to see the entire region on a wider scope. "This road leads to a small village, another player's village," he muttered after quite some time of following one branch to a small dot on the map with rough details about it.

He then returned his gaze towards the other two roads. "This one ends in the middle of nowhere… oh wait, it returns again after reaching this desolate unmarked place," he found that the second road was interestingly having a part cut out of the map before returning again to appear out of nowhere.

"This gap… what it hides?" he muttered to himself before he followed the road and finally it ended up in a large city after branching for so many times where it ended in towns and villages.

"This… it looks like an important road," he thought before returning to the third road. "It's linking here with many towns and villages, ending up into a battlefield," he followed the road patiently until it ended in a large open map which had the big 'Battlefield' name above it.

"A shrine is moving an important quest item, probably a sacred relic or something, and after their success in escaping here the system will announce shortly the start of the prosperity era… hmm… interesting…"

The more he thought about it, he found that road was the most likely to be the one. "This empty zone… it must have something related to the shrine of life."

Once reached this conclusion, he started to ignore the other two roads and focused entirely upon it. "The distance from the branching point to there might take roughly six hours on horses, a day on foot," he thought before returning to check the road ahead.

He magnified the map and started to check the distance carefully. "I'm now roughly ten minutes away from the place I left him, and he had run about an hour's distance on foot."

He thought about this for a moment before shaking off his head, "no, this is wrong," he glanced upon the spot he left Panty there before, "he shouldn't be a burden over the caravan, meaning they started travelling by horse speed and he is now on the back of one of them."

This was the most logical conclusion he reached. "The speed of the caravan can't match my horse, but that doesn't mean they are slow either," he muttered before finally deciding, "they have less than half an hour to reach the road branching point, and I have more than that to catch them. Damn!"

The more he thought about it the more he became angrier that he didn't go ahead and killed Panty when he had the chance. "Just a tiny carelessness of me and I'm almost about to lose everything I worked hard to achieve," he helplessly shook his head while lamenting his moment of negligence.

"But the good news is that I won't let him run away with this," Bloom sharpened his gaze as he closed the map and stood slightly on top of his horse back and greatly arched his back to mirror the horse back. "Wait for me bastard, I already figured out where you'll go."

After forty minutes he finally saw the branching point up ahead. "As I expected," he wasn't demoted by not seeing Panty's tail anywhere here.

He hurriedly opened the map just to rashly check the roads ahead. "Go that way, c'mon," he gave his horse a small kick and leaned his head towards the direction he wanted.

Bloom had once a beloved white and majestic looking horse back in his prime days. It was somehow similar to this horse he was using, but his new horse was slightly smaller and much slower.

With his direction, the horse moved towards the road he selected. He didn't decrease his speed by a little, while he received the news back from Muna a couple of minutes ago. 'We did it, all the caravans are seized but they have these treasure chests that we can't open.'

He knew she did as he asked, ran with other players who had their fear overcome their loyalty. She was now with them, and according to her not a single main member of panty's main team or shrine of life and death NPCs remained alive.

But the loss was big. In this fight, he lost almost eighty percent of his forces combined, leaving only less than twenty of his dolls, and almost a hundred of his fallen agents.

"Not that bad," he muttered as he checked the loot he had so far. All the gear obtained from the battle was sent directly to his inventory. "I need to find a way to expand my inventory. I believe there was an expansion pack to buy from the village."

He shifted all these thoughts to the side when he entered the road. In the next half an hour he spotted nothing in front of him, but he noticed something else.

"These are wheel marks," he recognized some deep indentations left on the wet ground and long grass in some spots. "They just passed from here," he jumped to this conclusion and this made him more eager and much excited.

Just as he pushed further to the front, he started to hear a muffled sound coming from the distance. "They are near, c'mon Mark, we can do it," he said to his horse which he named after his past horse.

The more Mark galloped the ground, the louder the noise became. He didn't need more than ten minutes to catch up to them, and from far he spotted the three caravans he once saw, and on the back of one Panty stood there.

"Hey there, I've missed you," Bloom shouted from far behind. From his distance he couldn't see clearly the face of his sworn enemy, but he pictured him very frustrated in his mind.

His appearance, coupled with his shout made those in front startled. As Bloom expected, they were dragging the caravans with the horses, leaving only a handful number of fifty riders to guard the caravans on each side, and a number of less than thirty players on the back of each caravan.

"It seems you arranged for a separate party to wait for you at the road branching point," Bloom muttered as this was slightly over what he initially expected.

Yet he wasn't fazed with these odds. He was very confident in his ability to handle them all. "But I must be sure not to give him a chance to widen the gap again.

As he went nearer, he noticed half of the NPCs and players all left the caravans and headed towards him. Some players when jumped couldn't stabilize themselves, and got themselves killed in the end.

"Morons," Bloom sneered before taking out one sword while not changing much of his position over the horse. "Keep going on mark, smash anything that stands in your way," he excitedly said while waving the sword high in the air. "It has been a while since I fought on horseback… sigh, this brings back memories."