Into the fire

Instant Barrier

There really was no waiting. John's arms jerked up the moment he used his new ability as if to point up at something in the sky before the people outside his hiding place suddenly just...disappeared.

Actually, everything outside of John's hiding place just vanished. Everything from the hallway, to the group of homicidal psychopaths, to the very school itself, it all just disappeared and dropped out of existence like it hadn't even been there to begin with. Even when he tried looking through the slits of the locker he was hiding in and the brand new hole smashed into the center of the locker's door...all John found was just a simple brick wall waiting and staring right back at him. There was nothing else on the other side of the locker door now. The rest of the world as he knew it was just gone, and he was stuck in a cramped little storage cubby.

"W-what the fuck?!" John audibly gasped out under the awkward bend of one of his bent, twisted arms. A chilly, malformed atmosphere came rushing coldly into his lungs as he spoke. An air different from the one he was used to. "Hey!" One of his fists slammed hard against the metal locker door, and it opened only a few inches into a smaller, enclosed cubby made up of strange, twisted, red bricks. The metal door bounced against the far, misshapen wall, cracking little crumbs off the bricks from the impact, and then swung back into place. "HEY!" There wasn't really much else for him to say. The spell had said nothing about John winding up trapped and stuck in a place with no air or no escape! As far as he could see, he couldn't really do anything but try to wait and outlast the people hunting him from outside the barrier! He was still just as fucked as he had been mere seconds ago!

If he left the barrier too earlier, then there was nothing saying that they couldn't have just killed him regardless of his timely escape. They could have just been standing out there, waiting for another chance for him to come back and gut or crush him with their wicked weapons. At the same time though, if he didn't leave soon enough, then he was going to suffocate! The locker barely had enough room in it for John to stand around in it, much less hold enough air for him to wait out a bunch of people with guns!

"Come on!" One of his fists slammed uselessly against the locker door again and again. It rattled, and shook, with every heavy beat, audibly groaning each time his new strength put another dent in the door. Was he really just supposed to stand in there and choose the best way for something to kill him? It didn't make sense! It... He wasn't one to complain normally, but it really wasn't fair! The best thing he could see himself doing was just meditating to regather his health and mana, but that didn't fix anything! They were a bunch of people with guns! Growling, John shoved once more against the front of the locker as hard as he could and glared daggers into its front before he tripped suddenly, from the **** of his own push, and fell out of the back wall of the locker.

He stumbled and tripped with a grunt, where there should have been no more room for him to trip at all, and when he landed, John was left staring at the massive expanse of a large, rocky cliff side, going up hundreds of feet above him with a single creaky locker swinging open at the bottom of it. The cubby, and its solid metal door, clacked loudly in the open, fresh air as it slowly banged shut again while John sat on his butt and stared. It was like looking at some kind of simple portal, or just a piece from a story about an entrance to some mystical, ridiculous land. Something that he would have expected to find in a children's tale... After all, he had just stepped through a locker to get to another world.

He didn't get time to adjust to it either.

You have entered an Illusion Barrier. You must Kill or Defeat all enemies inside to be able to leave.

He had no health. No mana to save himself. Had Cassandra and the Psychopaths just followed him in?

A short look back into the locker wiped that possibility from John's mind. He considered that it might have been possible for them to enter through somewhere else, but what would have been the point for his spell to leave the locker there then anyways?

Luckily, there were no other people immediately around John. There wasn't actually much of anything. Looking around, John couldn't see anything other than empty plains spanning out in nearly every direction but the one he just came from. There were no trees, no more rocky outcroppings... it was just fields, as far as the eye could see, with little bunches of plants of white cotton sticking up from the barren ground. There were no breaks or stops in the patterns of hills and rustling plant fibers, save for one.

One place that seemed just ever so slightly different from the rest.

Directly across from the spot where John stood at the bottom of the cliff with his magical locker at his back was a small, teal blue opening in the land. A little hole in the environment where a sparse pool of water sat and stirred with the light, sluggish winds. The air was heavier than what John was used to, and as he breathed in more of it, it had an almost strangely... calming and giddy effect that became more and more pronounced over time... like he was getting high off of it.

Almost casually, John reached over and dismissed the first pop-up about the illusion barrier. His eyes narrowed and he blinked hard to try and push through the effervescent haze he kept breathing in. He had to get to that pool. It didn't matter if it was just as **** as the rest of the place had been so far, it was water. Anything could have helped to increase his regeneration by that point. He just had to pull himself together and get out of there befo-

A loud and sudden feral screech tore through the air above John as he took his first step. A scream-no... A roar of pure adrenal power that shook the very wind itself as it echoed painfully loud down the side of the cliff face. It started out as one. A singular shout that pervaded John's senses and shook him down to his bones. One shout that sent him into a run for the pool before that shout could get any louder.

Then it grew. It was voiced and re-voiced, spoken again and again, as other creatures of the same race began to roar and shout after him with that same horrible power until John finally was scared enough to look back to try and see what it was that had been chasing after him with that noise. That was a mistake, one that quickly had his breath catching in his throat as he ran.

The first Orc he saw was a deep emerald green color. He could tell it was tall, even at such an incredible height and distance, John could make that much out. They had dark colored, dreaded, and matted hair, mostly of varying shades of blues, browns, and blacks, and they stood dauntingly over the mouth of the rocky wall he had just been hiding under. At first, John only saw one. A single Orc that stood broadly and seemingly masculine at the head of the pack before it was joined by another after a couple seconds, and then another, and another, and another, and another... until finally John could make out the sight of dozens of burly, green orcs staring firmly down after him.

Thankfully, for a couple of seconds, they just stood there. They didn't have much to possess. Every little bit of cloth or hide that the Orcs had actually managed to strap around themselves was tribal in nature. It hung loosely, for what little bits of skin that it did actually cover, and then it was mostly just over just their genitals as they moved, like simple loincloths. Most of their chests were just left bare and open. They were largely just careless about what actually showed for the most part, regardless of their genders. Decency didn't seem to matter with them. They didn't bother with boots or shoes, pasties or bras. They just wore what was comfortable and easy to move around in.

It also made it easier for them when they started physically scaling down the side of the cliff.

John almost slid into the far pool of water with a weak little squeak. His feet and legs splashed and submerged beneath the surface as John, without a moment's worth of hesitation, began throwing handfuls of water up into his mouth. It was slow, right from the beginning. The boost in regen that John got was small enough that it almost didn't matter or make sense for him to be doing it in the first place. They were already moving their tribe down the cliff, some by climbing down the rocks on the side, others by rope.

The seconds between seriously regenerating devolved faster than John could have ever prepared himself for. The more time he spent drinking and stuffing his face, the more John could see them... but those 'moments' when he could see and watch them run at him... Frankly, they were better than the ones when John used Meditation and couldn't see them. Unfortunately, the boost from the water didn't last very long, and while it put one too many pauses on his Meditation, he was slightly grateful for the fact that he got a moment to check on the Orcs since he couldn't meditate with his eyes open.

It only made it that much more terrifying.

After only a couple seconds, John started to hear and feel his heart pounding in his chest as he closed his eyes... and then opened them again and saw how much closer the Orcs had gotten to him. He watched and listened for each heart-pounding interval as they scaled down the cliff in large, unbelievable portions... First it was only a third of it... then they were halfway... then they were abruptly on the ground with him.

He watched as his health ticked up and up, passing fifty... sixty... and seventy points while they bounded at him like a pack of hungry wolves. He knew he couldn't make it to full health in time and, even if he did, there was no way for John to completely wipe out all of those Orcs. There were too many! He had to run!

Finally, when they got close enough for John to hear them growling and make out the sound of their heavy, falling footsteps, he gave up. Eighty-four points, that was the amount of health he had time to get. A part of him knew he was lucky to get even that much, but after dealing with a homicidal book, its homicidal owners, and a magical, body-crushing locker, he still wasn't happy with the fact that he didn't have enough.

He just had to make do, so John opened his eyes just in time to see an Orc's arched body flying at his face with a spear in hand.

Dodged!

John barely had enough time to tuck and roll to the side as the spear scraped along the front of John's chest and shirt. His shirt gripped and shredded along the tip of the jagged, serrated blade at the end of the Orc's weapon, and as John rolled, the Orc flew on past him, stumbling and falling into the pool of water with a loud splash.

In a flash, John was up on his feet again and into his stance. It was too late to run.

"Waitwaitwait-!" he started, stammering out the words as fast as he could and raising his hands up in peace. The second his arms moved, another Orc stepped in to swing at him, it's heavy, giant wooden club actually whistled through the air just from how hard he swung the weapon, and John nearly had to fall backwards into the pool too to try to step out of its range.

They surrounded him in seconds after that, cutting off John's escape from every side as each of them took up their weapons and got nice and close. They didn't look as horrible as John would have expected them to. Their skin was still green, and their visages were still bunched up and growling like a bunch of animals, but aside from that, the growl was still very... human-like. They were a little louder and had stronger lungs to shout with but... they weren't actually animals. The women had breasts, the men had their cocks, and they all had pointy, sharpened tusks but...

They still looked like a bunch of people... with deadly weapons.

After the first two attacks, the group didn't swing much. Some tried to move closer, tried to get in to hit him, but he immediately adjusted his stance for them, and they seemed to back off... It was like he was staring them down. He had a moment, at the very least, to try and use Observe.

The spell didn't tell him much at first. For the most part, all of the Orcs were either level five or level four and had tremendous levels of strength or endurance, like him! They weren't weak, or squishy. They were all actually like a bunch of walking, talking tanks!

Observe has leveled up!
Observe is now level 5!
Observe now reveals more information about the target!

Urga Shelor
Level 4 Ranger
<Squall>
54/54 HP
RP: -184
Effects: Pack Mentality, Heart Of The Beast.

Even the weakest Orc in the group had a relationship score so low with him that she hated him from the very beginning. She also may have been the only one there using a bow, but they all had the same status effects. They hunted together like wolves and fought like monsters. They respected each other's strength, and as John looked at them, he realized even Urga herself was looking for an opening to put an arrow into his threatening stance.

They were low leveled but experienced and dangerous in a group. They even actually seemed to recognize the danger that came from how he was standing, and none of them came to test out the hardiness of his fighting while he held it up.

They all just stood there, waiting for the other to make the next move.

The silent standstill was eventually broken by the sound of a loud splash as another female Orc stepped forward and tossed a large iron collar into the water at John's feet. The group paused, waiting while John glanced back and forth at the collar and the orc who tossed it. She was grinning at him, he realized with a furrow of his brow. She was grinning at him and rubbing her meaty thighs together in anticipation.

"****." Her voice was rough and throaty when she spoke, like it had been ground up between two different stones before she was allowed to speak with it. He watched as one hand pointed at him and then at the collar and after a moment John realized what she wanted.

She was telling him to surrender.

"Fuck that!" John shook his head, and the pack bristled. A low growl escaped and echoed from the negotiator as she glared at him with bright, blue eyes. The group moved to slowly step in closer, and John was **** to move with them, slowly pushing further back into the water. "How about..." he paused and watched as they all stopped too. The second woman stared at him for a couple seconds before John continued. "...a one-on-one?" Her brow furrowed slightly at his words. She barely even understood him.

"A small fight?" They growled as he tried to explain further, and he had to stop them before they all jumped on him again. "Just me! A standoff. A battle. A...uh...duel!" The last word seemed to reach one of them, and John watched as the group began loudly barking and growling at each other in another language made of visceral and throaty sounds before the negotiator stepped forward. It was slow at first. Both sides were equally hesitant and cautious of the other, but eventually, she managed to get close enough to touch John... and touch him she did.

"Prove?" The first thing she did was grab his throat when she spoke. She latched onto him with a growling ferocity that made his neck feel like it was creaking in her brutal grip, threatening to just snap with the slightest of squeezes. She held him there and glared for small handful of seconds... and then she let him go. Her hands patted against his shoulders, shoving him around, side to side before she pushed against his chest, his abdomen, and his legs. She felt around and experienced just how sturdy he had become over the past few days, and when she reached down and grabbed a whole handful of his groin, he surprised her with the other parts that had filled out with his new abilities. Her lips slowly pursed shut as her hand pumped almost painfully along his entire length only once. He let out a gasp and she smiled at him, grinning lewdly as he took in the wafting scents of her salty, sweat-slick skin, her smoky, ale-tainted breath, and the thick fumes of her own arousal as it crept up from her thighs like a wave of pheromones. He surged to full hardness in her grasp, and as she held him, he could have sworn he heard the first ever high pitched noise to ever come from an Orc slip out past her jade-colored lips in the form of a suppressed moan.

"Who?" she asked after one more hungry stroke to his rigid length and stepped away from John. Her eyes burned into John's own lusty gaze with a familiar kind of hunger as he stood there... but he didn't answer her. Her question didn't make much sense to him on its own.

Thankfully, his powers were there to help.

You have successfully issued a duel! Who do you want to fight?