Chapter 8
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We had broth and dry bread for breakfast. It was edible and I was getting used to the simple local food. There was no reason to pretend that you were an aristocrat. Even Fox realized that, although, initially she frowned and pushed the food around her plate, as if trying to make herself taste the brew which was pretty good, actually. Finally, hunger took over, and the girl could do nothing but eat it.
About thirty minutes later, once everyone had eaten, Andrei and Suren gathered us at the clearing by the rock. Alexander whispered to me that these outdoor meetings happened rarely. Today was, apparently, was some special day. Or maybe the weather was good.
"I hope that you don't think that you can relax after yesterday's outing," Suren started. "You are still too weak, and any intelligent enemy could defeat you. So, you will be training every day," he pronounced the last words particularly clearly.
"Enemy?" Olga asked. "Do you mean monsters or other units?"
Suren gave her a look and replied, "Both. I won't lie to you, some units are not always friendly to others, so be ready for the unpredictable."
"Nonsense," the Major muttered. "Everyone wants to get out of here, so why kill each other?"
The former club-goer was right. Sort of. As far as we were explained, there were no special rules in this regard. However, some units were made out of thugs like our Baldy. To them, killing a man was as easy as killing a cockroach. What was the point, though? Would they get bonuses from their mentors? If only. Still, something wasn't adding up. Were they hiding something from us?
"For valuables, for example," Andrei, meanwhile, answered the Major's question. "Armor, weapons, medicine..."
"You get more experience for killing other players, too," Petrovich added.
Things were falling into place and, judging by how Andrei and Suren looked at Valentin Petrovich, this was what they had hidden from us.
"Valentin Petrovich," Andrei said, tone ice-cold, "who gave you the permission to open your mouth?"
As if on command, everyone looked at our leader. He was usually calm and measured so this came as a surprise. Even the Lancer was taken aback and turned his head, looking confused.
"I'm talking to you, Valentin Petrovich!" Andrei raised his voice, although he did not have to—the silence was deafening.
"Andrei, I'm sorry," the man muttered, sinking his head between his shoulders. "Sorry, it's the stress, I guess..."
"What stress?" Baldy asked in disgust. "Is this your first day here? You bastard, who asked you…?"
"Enough, Igor," Andrei interrupted him. "You would've found out sooner or later," he was talking to the newbies now. "You get more experience for killing other players, which is why some detachments attack people."
"I see," Olga was the first one to collect herself. "I hope nobody here had the bright idea to level-up at the expense of others."
Honestly, I was very frightened with this idea, but unlike Olga, I didn't dare to say anything.
"It wouldn't do them any good," Suren said. "You don't get any experience for killing the members of your own detachment. So don't even try."
"And if someone tries it, I will personally split your tombstone," Baldy promised.
"And no one will stop him," Andrei added. "Any questions?"
Everyone shook their heads, someone said "no", and Andrei continued.
"The newcomers will go out to train again. Igor and Valentin Petrovich will lead you," Andrei looked at the Lancer so intently that the man averted his gaze.
"Get up!" Baldy commanded. "Today we are going to a different place, the cemetery isn't safe yet."
I realized that he was talking about my friend, the snake. True, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to deal with a monster of that level. I wondered where they would send us then.
"Today we are leveling-up with Fishmen," Baldy answered as if reading my thoughts. "Extremely unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous creatures. Follow me!"
Igor seemed to have selected the most uncomfortable way on purpose—we moved along the trail that looked like nobody had walked it in a very long time. Stones were constantly hitting our feet, and, sometimes, we even had to jump over the trees that fell onto the road. After a while, just when I was beginning to lose my breath, the trail widened, the forest thinned, and we found ourselves on a wide river bank. As far as I could tell, it was the same river that flowed near our base, only now we were downstream.
"Do not get close to the water. They'll drag you in," Baldy warned. "Try to lure them ashore, they are weaker there."
"And how do we do that?" the cop was confused.
"Think of it," Baldy grinned.
Olga, without saying a word, shot into the water. She hesitated for a while, and then fired two more shots. The water bubbled, and an unusual sound, akin to a very loud and low frog croaking, came out of it. Ugly fish heads emerged onto the surface—one… two… four… six… nine of them. The creatures began to move toward the shore, gradually getting out of the water. Igor was right, they were very unpleasant. They had fish heads, bodies of upright lizards or frogs, skin covered with brown spots, membranes between their fingers, and fins sticking out of their backs.
Guard Fishman
Level 5
"They look like the drowned!" the Major muttered. I wondered where he had gotten this information from.
"Calm down!" Baldy answered. "Stop admiring, and hit them."
Olga fired at the croaking Fishmen moving toward us. The distance was quite big, so most of the bullets went nowhere, but at least a couple of them reached their goal. One of the Fishmen screamed, jumped up, grabbed its knee with its hands, and continued to hobble toward us, dragging its wounded leg. Our business lady made a mistake starting off so early; she might have had a good supply of ammunition, but it wasn't infinite. Sooner or later, she'll run out. Our opponents' level promised that this battle would go on for a while.
It seemed that our mentors also thought that we couldn't cope on our own; Baldy lazily pulled out his sword and prepared to fight. Petrovich put forward a huge lance, bending under its weight.
"Vasily, come on!" Igor commanded.
I stared at Baldy, bewildered.
"Come on! You can weaken them, go!" He seemed happy. Most likely, one of the undeclared goals of today's campaign was to get us to work together and prepare for teamwork.
In my mind I raved at the fact that I could not act straightforwardly. If I could, I would have used magic at a distance. Alas, I had to play along and pretend that it was my war scythe that cast curses. To do that, I had to get into the midst of it.
Crouching, I ran toward the Fishmen, who had already come out from the water. One of them was ahead the others so I decided to start with it. I jumped at the freak, which smelled like rotten seaweed, and swung the scythe, trying to hit it. A war scythe, being a scythe, was better suited for long distance combat. On the other hand, it was not easy avoiding attacks, hitting and casting spells at the same time. There was nothing surprising in the fact that the Fishman blocked my attack with its webbed feet and rushed forward, teeth bared. I smelled an even more disgusting stench, and almost fainted. Sharp small teeth dug into my shoulder. Yelling more out of surprise than pain, I swung and punched the stinky monster right in the face. It staggered back, and I, gathering all my strength, struck it a few more times, simultaneously casting curses. It worked! The freak slowed down. I jumped to the side and ran to another monster, and did the same thing to it. The second time was much easier—I even got myself wounded so that no one would wonder where I had lost the health that I had spent on curses.
The Fishmen were generally clumsy. They were bad at quick and abrupt moves. The one I attacked first was the luckiest out of the bunch. I easily slowed down all nine monsters, although I spent almost half of my health points doing it. Most of the points, of course, went into spells. However, once three monsters surrounded me I started to lose my health, and barely managed to fight back. Stone Skin was very helpful. I would've been digging my way out of another grave were it not for that spell. In fact, there was a great difference between how many health points I lost in comparison with the other newcomers. Judging by the steep fall of their health bars, each hit cost them twenty or thirty points. I lost ten at most.
But, despite having different methods, we won. Olga shot one Fishman, and Petrovich impaled another. He disemboweled the monster so artfully that I felt like my breakfast was about to leave my stomach. Baldy, seeing that we were managing, stepped aside. Having in mind that he didn't want to rise above level five, the fact that he even considered helping us was amazing. We did it, but everyone's health was in the red zone, and although we tried to behave like winners, it was obvious that we would not survive another fight.
"Break!" Baldy shouted. Still, there was something human about him. "Collect the trophies!"
A sudden shot caught us by surprise. I knew that it wasn't Olga as she was in my sight and looting one of the Fishman. All of a sudden, spurts of fire hit the cop and the Major.
"Retreat!" Igor commanded. "Damn it, move, move, move!"
Semyon was killed immediately as he had received most of the bullets. The Major moved and tried to stand, but someone blew half of his head off with one accurate shot. Fox vomited, but quickly recovered, ducked down and ran into the woods. Olga ran after her, occasionally turning around and firing at random in the general direction of the shots.
"Get down!" Petrovich screamed and fell, receiving the next hail of bullets. Given his level and the speed of the carnage, the attackers were anything but simple.
I threw myself onto the ground and into the mud. I didn't care; surviving was my main goal. I looked into the direction of the riverbank and saw five or six people, who constantly hiding and moving from side to side. Two of them were armed with something that looked like machine guns.
"Vasily, who are they?" asked Fox in a loud whisper. She fell right next to me.
"I don't know," I snapped. "Crawl away."
"Where?" the girl asked.
"There!" I hissed. "To the forest, where we came from."
I liked this less and less with every passing minute. Only Olga had a gun in our group, the others were armed with swords, a pike and, like a middle-aged peasant, a goddamn war scythe. Our attackers had firearms, and our forces were obviously unequal.
"Crawl!" I hissed to Fox again.
I couldn't see if she took my advice, but I had no doubt that she had. Lera the Fox was too fond of life. Just like all of us. We could resurrect, but no one really wanted to get shot. Baldy crept past me pretty fast, gave me a brief glance and nodded approvingly. Olga was somewhere out there, but I could not see or hear her. I could, however, hear our attackers. They were talking loudly, feeling happy about something. It seemed that the Fishmen, despite their level, dropped something really valuable. Those bastards! No doubt they were going to examine our friends' corpses and get their clothes and stuff.
Baldy was now crawling ahead of me, making gestures that I could not understand. When he realized that I had no idea what he wanted from us, he just waved his hand and crawled on. Fox was panting beside me, and Olga was, hopefully, behind her. Fortunately, the unknown shooters didn't follow us. This might have not been their initial plan, but I did not want to check. We crawled for a very long time. Just when my legs and arms stopped obeying me, we finally hid in the forest.
Baldy cautiously rose to his feet and looked around. The voices faded away, so we couldn't hear them anymore. Igor made gestured to us to get up. I did it with great relief. Good, Olga was behind us.
"Head to the base," Baldy said quietly. "Don't talk, don't scream, don't sob and don't groan. Clear?"
We nodded silently, showing that it could not be clearer.
"Try to follow the trail and leave no traces," Igor added and dived into the bushes first.
I jumped after him, the branches cracked treacherously, but he did not pay attention to it. Fox and Olga followed us and, unlike me, carefully made their way through the thick branches. I even felt envious for a moment.
Baldy led us down some secret paths, which were constantly winding, and I could have sworn that we passed one place twice, maybe even three times. We reached the base pretty soon. Andrei, Suren and others were waiting for us, absolutely disturbed.
"You came!" Redhead exclaimed.
"Petrovich told us everything," Andrei said sullenly, looking at Baldy. "You're lucky you managed to leave."
"Pretty bad luck," said Igor.
"I see," Suren nodded. "You did a good job getting all of them out."
Andrei turned and looked at his friend, but said nothing. "Have you killed any of those assholes?" Semyon, the cop, was visibly angry.
"I might have hit someone, but I'm not sure," Olga replied.
"You didn't hit anyone," Baldy snapped.
The business lady wanted to object, but Fox stopped her with a gesture.
"Well, my dear friends," Baldy gave us a gloomy look. "Congratulations, there's an assassins squad near us.''
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We had broth and dry bread for breakfast. It was edible and I was getting used to the simple local food. There was no reason to pretend that you were an aristocrat. Even Fox realized that, although, initially she frowned and pushed the food around her plate, as if trying to make herself taste the brew which was pretty good, actually. Finally, hunger took over, and the girl could do nothing but eat it.
About thirty minutes later, once everyone had eaten, Andrei and Suren gathered us at the clearing by the rock. Alexander whispered to me that these outdoor meetings happened rarely. Today was, apparently, was some special day. Or maybe the weather was good.
"I hope that you don't think that you can relax after yesterday's outing," Suren started. "You are still too weak, and any intelligent enemy could defeat you. So, you will be training every day," he pronounced the last words particularly clearly.
"Enemy?" Olga asked. "Do you mean monsters or other units?"
Suren gave her a look and replied, "Both. I won't lie to you, some units are not always friendly to others, so be ready for the unpredictable."
"Nonsense," the Major muttered. "Everyone wants to get out of here, so why kill each other?"
The former club-goer was right. Sort of. As far as we were explained, there were no special rules in this regard. However, some units were made out of thugs like our Baldy. To them, killing a man was as easy as killing a cockroach. What was the point, though? Would they get bonuses from their mentors? If only. Still, something wasn't adding up. Were they hiding something from us?
"For valuables, for example," Andrei, meanwhile, answered the Major's question. "Armor, weapons, medicine..."
"You get more experience for killing other players, too," Petrovich added.
Things were falling into place and, judging by how Andrei and Suren looked at Valentin Petrovich, this was what they had hidden from us.
"Valentin Petrovich," Andrei said, tone ice-cold, "who gave you the permission to open your mouth?"
As if on command, everyone looked at our leader. He was usually calm and measured so this came as a surprise. Even the Lancer was taken aback and turned his head, looking confused.
"I'm talking to you, Valentin Petrovich!" Andrei raised his voice, although he did not have to—the silence was deafening.
"Andrei, I'm sorry," the man muttered, sinking his head between his shoulders. "Sorry, it's the stress, I guess..."
"What stress?" Baldy asked in disgust. "Is this your first day here? You bastard, who asked you…?"
"Enough, Igor," Andrei interrupted him. "You would've found out sooner or later," he was talking to the newbies now. "You get more experience for killing other players, which is why some detachments attack people."
"I see," Olga was the first one to collect herself. "I hope nobody here had the bright idea to level-up at the expense of others."
Honestly, I was very frightened with this idea, but unlike Olga, I didn't dare to say anything.
"It wouldn't do them any good," Suren said. "You don't get any experience for killing the members of your own detachment. So don't even try."
"And if someone tries it, I will personally split your tombstone," Baldy promised.
"And no one will stop him," Andrei added. "Any questions?"
Everyone shook their heads, someone said "no", and Andrei continued.
"The newcomers will go out to train again. Igor and Valentin Petrovich will lead you," Andrei looked at the Lancer so intently that the man averted his gaze.
"Get up!" Baldy commanded. "Today we are going to a different place, the cemetery isn't safe yet."
I realized that he was talking about my friend, the snake. True, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to deal with a monster of that level. I wondered where they would send us then.
"Today we are leveling-up with Fishmen," Baldy answered as if reading my thoughts. "Extremely unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous creatures. Follow me!"
Igor seemed to have selected the most uncomfortable way on purpose—we moved along the trail that looked like nobody had walked it in a very long time. Stones were constantly hitting our feet, and, sometimes, we even had to jump over the trees that fell onto the road. After a while, just when I was beginning to lose my breath, the trail widened, the forest thinned, and we found ourselves on a wide river bank. As far as I could tell, it was the same river that flowed near our base, only now we were downstream.
"Do not get close to the water. They'll drag you in," Baldy warned. "Try to lure them ashore, they are weaker there."
"And how do we do that?" the cop was confused.
"Think of it," Baldy grinned.
Olga, without saying a word, shot into the water. She hesitated for a while, and then fired two more shots. The water bubbled, and an unusual sound, akin to a very loud and low frog croaking, came out of it. Ugly fish heads emerged onto the surface—one… two… four… six… nine of them. The creatures began to move toward the shore, gradually getting out of the water. Igor was right, they were very unpleasant. They had fish heads, bodies of upright lizards or frogs, skin covered with brown spots, membranes between their fingers, and fins sticking out of their backs.
Guard Fishman
Level 5
"They look like the drowned!" the Major muttered. I wondered where he had gotten this information from.
"Calm down!" Baldy answered. "Stop admiring, and hit them."
Olga fired at the croaking Fishmen moving toward us. The distance was quite big, so most of the bullets went nowhere, but at least a couple of them reached their goal. One of the Fishmen screamed, jumped up, grabbed its knee with its hands, and continued to hobble toward us, dragging its wounded leg. Our business lady made a mistake starting off so early; she might have had a good supply of ammunition, but it wasn't infinite. Sooner or later, she'll run out. Our opponents' level promised that this battle would go on for a while.
It seemed that our mentors also thought that we couldn't cope on our own; Baldy lazily pulled out his sword and prepared to fight. Petrovich put forward a huge lance, bending under its weight.
"Vasily, come on!" Igor commanded.
I stared at Baldy, bewildered.
"Come on! You can weaken them, go!" He seemed happy. Most likely, one of the undeclared goals of today's campaign was to get us to work together and prepare for teamwork.
In my mind I raved at the fact that I could not act straightforwardly. If I could, I would have used magic at a distance. Alas, I had to play along and pretend that it was my war scythe that cast curses. To do that, I had to get into the midst of it.
Crouching, I ran toward the Fishmen, who had already come out from the water. One of them was ahead the others so I decided to start with it. I jumped at the freak, which smelled like rotten seaweed, and swung the scythe, trying to hit it. A war scythe, being a scythe, was better suited for long distance combat. On the other hand, it was not easy avoiding attacks, hitting and casting spells at the same time. There was nothing surprising in the fact that the Fishman blocked my attack with its webbed feet and rushed forward, teeth bared. I smelled an even more disgusting stench, and almost fainted. Sharp small teeth dug into my shoulder. Yelling more out of surprise than pain, I swung and punched the stinky monster right in the face. It staggered back, and I, gathering all my strength, struck it a few more times, simultaneously casting curses. It worked! The freak slowed down. I jumped to the side and ran to another monster, and did the same thing to it. The second time was much easier—I even got myself wounded so that no one would wonder where I had lost the health that I had spent on curses.
The Fishmen were generally clumsy. They were bad at quick and abrupt moves. The one I attacked first was the luckiest out of the bunch. I easily slowed down all nine monsters, although I spent almost half of my health points doing it. Most of the points, of course, went into spells. However, once three monsters surrounded me I started to lose my health, and barely managed to fight back. Stone Skin was very helpful. I would've been digging my way out of another grave were it not for that spell. In fact, there was a great difference between how many health points I lost in comparison with the other newcomers. Judging by the steep fall of their health bars, each hit cost them twenty or thirty points. I lost ten at most.
But, despite having different methods, we won. Olga shot one Fishman, and Petrovich impaled another. He disemboweled the monster so artfully that I felt like my breakfast was about to leave my stomach. Baldy, seeing that we were managing, stepped aside. Having in mind that he didn't want to rise above level five, the fact that he even considered helping us was amazing. We did it, but everyone's health was in the red zone, and although we tried to behave like winners, it was obvious that we would not survive another fight.
"Break!" Baldy shouted. Still, there was something human about him. "Collect the trophies!"
A sudden shot caught us by surprise. I knew that it wasn't Olga as she was in my sight and looting one of the Fishman. All of a sudden, spurts of fire hit the cop and the Major.
"Retreat!" Igor commanded. "Damn it, move, move, move!"
Semyon was killed immediately as he had received most of the bullets. The Major moved and tried to stand, but someone blew half of his head off with one accurate shot. Fox vomited, but quickly recovered, ducked down and ran into the woods. Olga ran after her, occasionally turning around and firing at random in the general direction of the shots.
"Get down!" Petrovich screamed and fell, receiving the next hail of bullets. Given his level and the speed of the carnage, the attackers were anything but simple.
I threw myself onto the ground and into the mud. I didn't care; surviving was my main goal. I looked into the direction of the riverbank and saw five or six people, who constantly hiding and moving from side to side. Two of them were armed with something that looked like machine guns.
"Vasily, who are they?" asked Fox in a loud whisper. She fell right next to me.
"I don't know," I snapped. "Crawl away."
"Where?" the girl asked.
"There!" I hissed. "To the forest, where we came from."
I liked this less and less with every passing minute. Only Olga had a gun in our group, the others were armed with swords, a pike and, like a middle-aged peasant, a goddamn war scythe. Our attackers had firearms, and our forces were obviously unequal.
"Crawl!" I hissed to Fox again.
I couldn't see if she took my advice, but I had no doubt that she had. Lera the Fox was too fond of life. Just like all of us. We could resurrect, but no one really wanted to get shot. Baldy crept past me pretty fast, gave me a brief glance and nodded approvingly. Olga was somewhere out there, but I could not see or hear her. I could, however, hear our attackers. They were talking loudly, feeling happy about something. It seemed that the Fishmen, despite their level, dropped something really valuable. Those bastards! No doubt they were going to examine our friends' corpses and get their clothes and stuff.
Baldy was now crawling ahead of me, making gestures that I could not understand. When he realized that I had no idea what he wanted from us, he just waved his hand and crawled on. Fox was panting beside me, and Olga was, hopefully, behind her. Fortunately, the unknown shooters didn't follow us. This might have not been their initial plan, but I did not want to check. We crawled for a very long time. Just when my legs and arms stopped obeying me, we finally hid in the forest.
Baldy cautiously rose to his feet and looked around. The voices faded away, so we couldn't hear them anymore. Igor made gestured to us to get up. I did it with great relief. Good, Olga was behind us.
"Head to the base," Baldy said quietly. "Don't talk, don't scream, don't sob and don't groan. Clear?"
We nodded silently, showing that it could not be clearer.
"Try to follow the trail and leave no traces," Igor added and dived into the bushes first.
I jumped after him, the branches cracked treacherously, but he did not pay attention to it. Fox and Olga followed us and, unlike me, carefully made their way through the thick branches. I even felt envious for a moment.
Baldy led us down some secret paths, which were constantly winding, and I could have sworn that we passed one place twice, maybe even three times. We reached the base pretty soon. Andrei, Suren and others were waiting for us, absolutely disturbed.
"You came!" Redhead exclaimed.
"Petrovich told us everything," Andrei said sullenly, looking at Baldy. "You're lucky you managed to leave."
"Pretty bad luck," said Igor.
"I see," Suren nodded. "You did a good job getting all of them out."
Andrei turned and looked at his friend, but said nothing. "Have you killed any of those assholes?" Semyon, the cop, was visibly angry.
"I might have hit someone, but I'm not sure," Olga replied.
"You didn't hit anyone," Baldy snapped.
The business lady wanted to object, but Fox stopped her with a gesture.
"Well, my dear friends," Baldy gave us a gloomy look. "Congratulations, there's an assassins squad near us.''
We had broth and dry bread for breakfast. It was edible and I was getting used to the simple local food. There was no reason to pretend that you were an aristocrat. Even Fox realized that, although, initially she frowned and pushed the food around her plate, as if trying to make herself taste the brew which was pretty good, actually. Finally, hunger took over, and the girl could do nothing but eat it.About thirty minutes later, once everyone had eaten, Andrei and Suren gathered us at the clearing by the rock. Alexander whispered to me that these outdoor meetings happened rarely. Today was, apparently, was some special day. Or maybe the weather was good."I hope that you don't think that you can relax after yesterday's outing," Suren started. "You are still too weak, and any intelligent enemy could defeat you. So, you will be training every day," he pronounced the last words particularly clearly."Enemy?" Olga asked. "Do you mean monsters or other units?"Suren gave her a look and replied, "Both. I won't lie to you, some units are not always friendly to others, so be ready for the unpredictable.""Nonsense," the Major muttered. "Everyone wants to get out of here, so why kill each other?"The former club-goer was right. Sort of. As far as we were explained, there were no special rules in this regard. However, some units were made out of thugs like our Baldy. To them, killing a man was as easy as killing a cockroach. What was the point, though? Would they get bonuses from their mentors? If only. Still, something wasn't adding up. Were they hiding something from us?"For valuables, for example," Andrei, meanwhile, answered the Major's question. "Armor, weapons, medicine...""You get more experience for killing other players, too," Petrovich added.Things were falling into place and, judging by how Andrei and Suren looked at Valentin Petrovich, this was what they had hidden from us."Valentin Petrovich," Andrei said, tone ice-cold, "who gave you the permission to open your mouth?"As if on command, everyone looked at our leader. He was usually calm and measured so this came as a surprise. Even the Lancer was taken aback and turned his head, looking confused."I'm talking to you, Valentin Petrovich!" Andrei raised his voice, although he did not have tothe silence was deafening."Andrei, I'm sorry," the man muttered, sinking his head between his shoulders. "Sorry, it's the stress, I guess...""What stress?" Baldy asked in disgust. "Is this your first day here? You bastard, who asked you?""Enough, Igor," Andrei interrupted him. "You would've found out sooner or later," he was talking to the newbies now. "You get more experience for killing other players, which is why some detachments attack people.""I see," Olga was the first one to collect herself. "I hope nobody here had the bright idea to level-up at the expense of others."Honestly, I was very frightened with this idea, but unlike Olga, I didn't dare to say anything."It wouldn't do them any good," Suren said. "You don't get any experience for killing the members of your own detachment. So don't even try.""And if someone tries it, I will personally split your tombstone," Baldy promised."And no one will stop him," Andrei added. "Any questions?"Everyone shook their heads, someone said "no", and Andrei continued."The newcomers will go out to train again. Igor and Valentin Petrovich will lead you," Andrei looked at the Lancer so intently that the man averted his gaze."Get up!" Baldy commanded. "Today we are going to a different place, the cemetery isn't safe yet."I realized that he was talking about my friend, the snake. True, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to deal with a monster of that level. I wondered where they would send us then."Today we are leveling-up with Fishmen," Baldy answered as if reading my thoughts. "Extremely unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous creatures. Follow me!"Igor seemed to have selected the most uncomfortable way on purposewe moved along the trail that looked like nobody had walked it in a very long time. Stones were constantly hitting our feet, and, sometimes, we even had to jump over the trees that fell onto the road. After a while, just when I was beginning to lose my breath, the trail widened, the forest thinned, and we found ourselves on a wide river bank. As far as I could tell, it was the same river that flowed near our base, only now we were downstream."Do not get close to the water. They'll drag you in," Baldy warned. "Try to lure them ashore, they are weaker there.""And how do we do that?" the cop was confused."Think of it," Baldy grinned.Olga, without saying a word, shot into the water. She hesitated for a while, and then fired two more shots. The water bubbled, and an unusual sound, akin to a very loud and low frog croaking, came out of it. Ugly fish heads emerged onto the surfaceone two four six nine of them. The creatures began to move toward the shore, gradually getting out of the water. Igor was right, they were very unpleasant. They had fish heads, bodies of upright lizards or frogs, skin covered with brown spots, membranes between their fingers, and fins sticking out of their backs.Guard FishmanLevel 5"They look like the drowned!" the Major muttered. I wondered where he had gotten this information from."Calm down!" Baldy answered. "Stop admiring, and hit them."Olga fired at the croaking Fishmen moving toward us. The distance was quite big, so most of the bullets went nowhere, but at least a couple of them reached their goal. One of the Fishmen screamed, jumped up, grabbed its knee with its hands, and continued to hobble toward us, dragging its wounded leg. Our business lady made a mistake starting off so early; she might have had a good supply of ammunition, but it wasn't infinite. Sooner or later, she'll run out. Our opponents' level promised that this battle would go on for a while.It seemed that our mentors also thought that we couldn't cope on our own; Baldy lazily pulled out his sword and prepared to fight. Petrovich put forward a huge lance, bending under its weight."Vasily, come on!" Igor commanded.I stared at Baldy, bewildered."Come on! You can weaken them, go!" He seemed happy. Most likely, one of the undeclared goals of today's campaign was to get us to work together and prepare for teamwork.In my mind I raved at the fact that I could not act straightforwardly. If I could, I would have used magic at a distance. Alas, I had to play along and pretend that it was my war scythe that cast curses. To do that, I had to get into the midst of it.Crouching, I ran toward the Fishmen, who had already come out from the water. One of them was ahead the others so I decided to start with it. I jumped at the freak, which smelled like rotten seaweed, and swung the scythe, trying to hit it. A war scythe, being a scythe, was better suited for long distance combat. On the other hand, it was not easy avoiding attacks, hitting and casting spells at the same time. There was nothing surprising in the fact that the Fishman blocked my attack with its webbed feet and rushed forward, teeth bared. I smelled an even more disgusting stench, and almost fainted. Sharp small teeth dug into my shoulder. Yelling more out of surprise than pain, I swung and punched the stinky monster right in the face. It staggered back, and I, gathering all my strength, struck it a few more times, simultaneously casting curses. It worked! The freak slowed down. I jumped to the side and ran to another monster, and did the same thing to it. The second time was much easierI even got myself wounded so that no one would wonder where I had lost the health that I had spent on curses.The Fishmen were generally clumsy. They were bad at quick and abrupt moves. The one I attacked first was the luckiest out of the bunch. I easily slowed down all nine monsters, although I spent almost half of my health points doing it. Most of the points, of course, went into spells. However, once three monsters surrounded me I started to lose my health, and barely managed to fight back. Stone Skin was very helpful. I would've been digging my way out of another grave were it not for that spell. In fact, there was a great difference between how many health points I lost in comparison with the other newcomers. Judging by the steep fall of their health bars, each hit cost them twenty or thirty points. I lost ten at most.But, despite having different methods, we won. Olga shot one Fishman, and Petrovich impaled another. He disemboweled the monster so artfully that I felt like my breakfast was about to leave my stomach. Baldy, seeing that we were managing, stepped aside. Having in mind that he didn't want to rise above level five, the fact that he even considered helping us was amazing. We did it, but everyone's health was in the red zone, and although we tried to behave like winners, it was obvious that we would not survive another fight."Break!" Baldy shouted. Still, there was something human about him. "Collect the trophies!"A sudden shot caught us by surprise. I knew that it wasn't Olga as she was in my sight and looting one of the Fishman. All of a sudden, spurts of fire hit the cop and the Major."Retreat!" Igor commanded. "Damn it, move, move, move!"Semyon was killed immediately as he had received most of the bullets. The Major moved and tried to stand, but someone blew half of his head off with one accurate shot. Fox vomited, but quickly recovered, ducked down and ran into the woods. Olga ran after her, occasionally turning around and firing at random in the general direction of the shots."Get down!" Petrovich screamed and fell, receiving the next hail of bullets. Given his level and the speed of the carnage, the attackers were anything but simple.I threw myself onto the ground and into the mud. I didn't care; surviving was my main goal. I looked into the direction of the riverbank and saw five or six people, who constantly hiding and moving from side to side. Two of them were armed with something that looked like machine guns."Vasily, who are they?" asked Fox in a loud whisper. She fell right next to me."I don't know," I snapped. "Crawl away.""Where?" the girl asked."There!" I hissed. "To the forest, where we came from."I liked this less and less with every passing minute. Only Olga had a gun in our group, the others were armed with swords, a pike and, like a middle-aged peasant, a goddamn war scythe. Our attackers had firearms, and our forces were obviously unequal."Crawl!" I hissed to Fox again.I couldn't see if she took my advice, but I had no doubt that she had. Lera the Fox was too fond of life. Just like all of us. We could resurrect, but no one really wanted to get shot. Baldy crept past me pretty fast, gave me a brief glance and nodded approvingly. Olga was somewhere out there, but I could not see or hear her. I could, however, hear our attackers. They were talking loudly, feeling happy about something. It seemed that the Fishmen, despite their level, dropped something really valuable. Those bastards! No doubt they were going to examine our friends' corpses and get their clothes and stuff.Baldy was now crawling ahead of me, making gestures that I could not understand. When he realized that I had no idea what he wanted from us, he just waved his hand and crawled on. Fox was panting beside me, and Olga was, hopefully, behind her. Fortunately, the unknown shooters didn't follow us. This might have not been their initial plan, but I did not want to check. We crawled for a very long time. Just when my legs and arms stopped obeying me, we finally hid in the forest.Baldy cautiously rose to his feet and looked around. The voices faded away, so we couldn't hear them anymore. Igor made gestured to us to get up. I did it with great relief. Good, Olga was behind us."Head to the base," Baldy said quietly. "Don't talk, don't scream, don't sob and don't groan. Clear?"We nodded silently, showing that it could not be clearer."Try to follow the trail and leave no traces," Igor added and dived into the bushes first.I jumped after him, the branches cracked treacherously, but he did not pay attention to it. Fox and Olga followed us and, unlike me, carefully made their way through the thick branches. I even felt envious for a moment.Baldy led us down some secret paths, which were constantly winding, and I could have sworn that we passed one place twice, maybe even three times. We reached the base pretty soon. Andrei, Suren and others were waiting for us, absolutely disturbed."You came!" Redhead exclaimed."Petrovich told us everything," Andrei said sullenly, looking at Baldy. "You're lucky you managed to leave.""Pretty bad luck," said Igor."I see," Suren nodded. "You did a good job getting all of them out."Andrei turned and looked at his friend, but said nothing. "Have you killed any of those assholes?" Semyon, the cop, was visibly angry."I might have hit someone, but I'm not sure," Olga replied."You didn't hit anyone," Baldy snapped.The business lady wanted to object, but Fox stopped her with a gesture."Well, my dear friends," Baldy gave us a gloomy look. "Congratulations, there's an assassins squad near us.''
