RUN BOY, RUN!

"Thief." Cassandra didn't even bother with the pretense of subtlety upon seeing John. The second he was in her sights, one of her eyes began to glisten again with a familiar red glow. The woman standing beside her paled as the hallway around them was slowly bathed in the baleful atmosphere it wrought, and with a slight pivot, John immediately turned on his heels and ran.

"You stupid-" John heard the redhead call out behind him before she was interrupted. Her voice cracked slightly, and then the sound completely vanished as all of the lights around John suddenly dimmed. Actually... the only thing he could hear was Cassandra's as she called out after him. Even the sound of his own heavy panting became all but silent as the school walls distorted around them. His voice, his own words, seemed to slip away from him as Cassandra's grew louder and louder. She spoke, and her voice echoed so strongly throughout the building that he could hear the noise rebounding off the walls on the other side of the school.

You have been pulled into a Trap Barrier! Defeat everything inside to escape!

"Get back here!" The hallway boomed with the sound of Cassandra's voice. "Now!" She shouted again, and then, as if her deafening shouts needed any emphasis, the air directly above John's head suddenly split apart. A giant wave of icy blue energy ripped through the empty space in the top of the hallway before it slammed against the open ceiling and exploded. The walls and the roof all around John were simply severed wherever the wave touched, like pieces of paper falling prey to scissors. The school building, despite it's modern construction, groaned from the impact as one entire section was reduced to scrap, and the blast alone, somehow, knocked John off of his feet.

-48 HP

John's whole world turned upside down as the **** of the blast suddenly lifted John off his feet and took him from one hallway before it threw him down another one. The entire intersection that his body all but bounced off of simply crumpled into a large, concrete mess behind him as the explosion dissipated and white hot pain shot up through his back, his sides, his-

New Quest! Survive!

• Escape the people who are hunting you.

Reward:

• 400 Experience

This quest has automatically been accepted for your own convenience!

The pain was everywhere. He blinked, and his whole body felt like it was burning up all over again while layers of frost gathered on his forearms even after the fact. He spat and coughed in an attempt to fill his lungs back up with air again, but he didn't get up. He couldn't. Gamer's Body kept John healthy enough to recover from the attack unbelievably fast, and he was grateful for the fact that he somehow hadn't irreparably broken his back because of it, but it didn't help his legs move.

He was worried for a moment that Gamer's Body hadn't worked or that he could have still temporarily lost the ability to use his legs from that much damage, but worrying didn't help him. If he needed time to heal, then he was screwed. Cassandra had almost ten whole levels on John; fighting back wasn't an option for him. He just had to pray and hope that the use of his legs came back to him and-

That train of thought stopped as soon as he saw how his legs were literally frozen to the floor.

"Are you crazy?!" The sound of the redhead's voice cut through the air suddenly as John struggled to free himself. He couldn't flip around or bring himself to face his own legs while he was stuck on his stomach. He had to break out, even if the only option he had came from just busting through the floor.

"He's a thief," Cassandra said, and he heard the other girl reply, but when the redhead spoke, it came out as a murmur. Her words were somehow muffled by the sheer power of Cassandra's voice in the area, and in the end, he only caught the tail end of what the redhead said. Instead of focusing on what she said specifically, he was distracted by the sudden shifting of metal and rubble as a long, shiny, familiar katana slipped in and out of the debris that blocked off the hallway that he had come from. The pile that had been blocking John off from the others suddenly moved as a familiar leather boot slipped through the wreckage and Cassandra stepped on through.

"-ion. You can't do this!" the redhead cried and followed Cassandra through the rubble into John's line of sight. It was hard to make out specific details at a distance, but as far as he could tell, she seemed to be covered in large and thick pieces of shiny metal armor now. The two girls turned to stare back at John as he leaned as far back as he could while frozen to the ground and hefted one of his fists up.

"Then go and do your job, Warden. Go ahead. You can bring the thief to me," Cassandra said. John's fists smashed against the hard marble floors beneath him, shattering the ground and ice just enough with his Infused Strikes for him to pull his legs free. He rushed to his feet as the redhead glared hard at Cassandra for a moment... and then hefted a large, heavy hammer up from her side.

"What the actual fuck?!" John groaned.

"In the Lady's name!" the redhead shouted... and her hammer began to glow.

Lady Moira Brighton
Level 18 Paladin
<Warden Of The Golden Rose>
748/748 HP
RP: -50
Effects: ??????

John didn't give her the chance to use it. He just ran away again, chanting a little reminder to himself to bob and weave his way down the hallway as if that might help him to escape from another explosion. As fast as John was, he wasn't fast enough to escape the sound of heavy, metallic footfalls running after him. The sound of her armor clanging against the marble ground grew louder and louder as John darted down another way and ran straight for the exit.

He didn't get very far before he could hear her crashing almost right on top of him. The sound of her armor clanking was nothing compared to her war cry as she called out in her lady's name again just as John stepped out of the school and slammed face first into an invisible wall.

He didn't even get three feet outside before he bounced backwards onto his ass again. The area around the outside of the school shimmered slightly as John's body seemed to ricochet off the air itself. The colors of a blurred landscape beyond the wall seemed to waver for a moment as it slowly settled from it's most recent disturbance and then began to clear up again before Moira stepped out right after he did.

"Yaaaaaaagh!" the redhead screamed from behind John and the door he came through burst open again as she ran through it swinging. It may have been the most recent hit that John took when he ran into the invisible wall, but for him, it was almost like her hammer sung as it fell down towards John's head. The glowing light of the hammer's head exploded as it collided with the spot where he should have been, and the barrier it struck against cracked. The area around the impact split, like one large fracture spreading outwards in a web of glowing damage that floated in the middle of the air... and the both of them stared at it. It shrunk an inch after a single second... but the message was there for John. It was just like the Beacon of Ruin.

He could break it! He could escape! He just needed a distraction.

"ACID BOTTLE!" John cried out, and like he was trying to cast one of his abilities, he pulled two of the volatile chemical bottles in his bag and threw them in the general direction of the two girls behind him. His voice cracked as he said it, but... he did manage to attack in time before they could try to rip him in half again. Unfortunately, Moira was the only one close enough to actually get hit, and she screamed as soon as the bottle hit her, but it gave him the time he needed to hit the barrier one more time with his Infused Strike.

The last thing he heard before the barrier opened was the sound of Moira screaming 'No!' as his glowing fist smashed against the invisible wall. The air distorted around the spot where he struck the wall... and then it screamed. The barrier physically tore back over the two of them, ripping open from one end of what seemed to be a large, invisible dome to the other. The barrier screeched and howled as it broke, like sheets of metal plating being ripped in half into a megaphone directed right at their ears... before they were both spat out onto the actual front lawn of Ashcroft's school grounds. They stopped and groaned as the barrier vanished, but, somehow, nobody saw them. They were, once again, put out into an area where nobody noticed the way they left the barrier, with Moira standing in a dissolving suit of armor and John lying on the ground in a puddle of mud.

She looked up to glare at him, her eyes burning with rage as her armor dripped away. One of her large, heaving breasts shook as it was partially exposed, only visible for a moment beneath the chain mail shirt she had on underneath before John abruptly shook his head.

"Nope," he said and teleported back to his kingdom.