The Amber Sword

“Brendel, Brendel?”

Romain poked his arm at his side while Sophie was immersed in checking his stats.

Only 1.0 Energy Level in strength? He could not resist cursing the NPC’s uselessness. Even a skeleton has 1.5 strength!

All the representation units for the stats are in OZ, the simplification for the ancient word Oauth, also known as Energy Level. 1 OZ in strength would allow one to raise about 50 KG worth of weight, and the punching strength will not surpass 150 KG. This was roughly the equivalent of an adult’s strength.

Even the players’ basic stats in the game are 2 OZ in Strength, Agility and Physique, while Intelligence, Will and Perception were 1.5 OZ. They were about two times the stats of a normal person, and the Overall power rating was 5 which meant that they would have no problems facing off against 5 normal people. (TL: Science weeps over your logic there…)

Brendel was even a civilian soldier who trained several months. Even if the players had the ‘Hero’ stats, it should not as ridiculous as this where the stats are this far apart right?

To think he even mocked the players’ titles as ‘Heroes’ for having the combat strength of two skeletons. But when he switched to Brendel’s point of view, he realized that the players were really the main characters molded in the hero form.

When he thought about how he was not able to even beat a skeleton, he fell into a state of sadness.

Apprehension struck at Sophie’s heart, and he peered outside again, and quickly discovered the sources under a tree’s shadow. Over there, a figure wearing a broad black robe was talking to his necromancer underlings.

Sophie’s eyes quickly cast his eyes on his sleeves, and faintly saw a greyish white bone insignia. This proved that he was an undead acolyte wizard.

His guess was not wrong.

“…… Know this, I do not need your opinions. All of you merely need to follow my orders.” The robed wizard suddenly stopped and raised his head to the Sophie’s direction.

Sophie’s heart pulsed with dread and immediately let go of the curtains. Damn it, he still thought he was a veteran warrior with 130 levels for a moment. He completely forgot that the enemy’s Perception was many times higher than his stealth skills.

Even though he was not immediately discovered, he must have raised the enemy’s suspicions.

Just as he had expected, that figure outside said: “That’s enough. Quickly carry out my orders. I feel that there is someone alive in this house. All of you better search carefully, I have the suspicion that our plans have already been discovered.”

This was the end of things. If they discovered Brendel’s ‘corpse’ disappeared, they would immediately act upon it. Sophie’s mind spun quickly. His immediate thought was the kitchen’s back door, but Elsengran was a farmland and there was no place to hide in the open.

There was a small forest at the bottom of the hill, but there were at least a hundred meters of uncovered ground, what could he do in this situation?

“Brendel?” The girl queried him with her eyes.

“Come with me.” Sophie gritted his teeth. One step at a time, there was no choice to it. (TL: If you want to live! Lulz.)

He opened the door, and saw a necromancer and two skeletons entering from the door. The necromancer that wore a long robe swiftly raised the bone wand when it discovered Romain and him.

But Sophie’s reaction was faster and he had no hesitation in raising in his right hand. He pointed his ring on his forefinger at it.

“Oss!”

He prayed for the ring to work. And it answered his prayers with a slight warmth, and the air in front expanded violently with a loud bang!

It was as a hurricane swept past in the house, and the necromancer with the two skeletons and front of the entire building exploded in a fury. Countless splinters and pebbles along with bone debris were hurled outside, and fell raining down onto the ground like countless butterflies dancing in the air.

The instant when the explosion happened, five golden colored orbs flew respectively from the necromancer and skeletons’ bodies and dissolved in Sophie’s chest. Everything happened in the blink of an eye, and the youth did not even realize that himself.

Even after the explosive wind ended, the ground was left with the evidence of a colossal aftereffect of something firing from within.

After everything fell to a silent still, Sophie showed an expression of utter shock. In the game it was 30 wind damage, and certainly more than enough to kill a lower rank necromancer and the skeletons, but the effect was not that exaggerated right?

Although it was a gaping hole in this whole building that was left behind by his grandfather, Sophie did not think twice about it and immediately promptly turned around and ran.

“Brendel, you’re a wizard!” Romain exclaimed behind his back.

“No, I’ll explain this to you later.” He took a deep breath, pulled her and rushed down the stairs to head towards the kitchen. He needed to reach there before the enemies reacted.

“Wait, Brendel, I can’t catch up with you…..”

“Careful, we’re moving down the stairs”

“Ah!”

The sudden explosion made the skeletons turn their heads, but they lacked the intelligence to comprehend things and only reacted to the noise. Thus they still waited at the same spot and waited for the necromancers to give the orders.

The necromancers’ green flaming pupils flared up, and they raised their bone wands with embers forming at the tips.

“Don’t use fire, you bloody fools!” The black robed wizard pushed their bone wands down and rebuked them loudly. The explosion had most likely incurred the attention of Bucce’s citizens. If there was a fire it would have merely sent a warning to them.

He immediately turned back to point to the house: “Soldiers, catch those two bastards!”

The sounds of swords flourishing echoed out as the soldiers drew out their swords together and rushed inside to the house.

Sophie had already dashed down to the bottom of the steps and he saw waves of skeletons rushing towards him. Uncountable red lights flickered in the darkness, and he felt goosebumps crawling all over his skins. He was not a veteran soldier with hundred of levels, and the ring on his finger was still in the recharging mode. He could only braced himself as to what would come next.

Once the skeletons caught up with him, he would most likely become minced meat from being hacked by their swords…….

“One woe doth tread upon another’s heel!” Sophie felt helpless upon seeing this situation.

His injury in his chest hurt terribly, but they still managed to reach the kitchen before the skeleton soldiers, and closed the door behind him. Before he could even relax, multiple swords immediately stabbed into the door.

Fortunately he withdrew his hand quickly, otherwise he would have pinned down.

“That was too close for comfort!” Sophie’s heart raced quickly. He looked around, and although at the other end of the kitchen was the exit, he knew he needed to find a way to warn Bucce. That was the only way to save their lives.

Furthermore, fire could be used to repel the low level undead.

“Brendel?” The merchant girl bent her waist and panted. She could not help but raise her head to look at him. He had greatly surprised her with his decisive bravery.

“Miss Romain, please guard the door.” Sophie quickly said. He needed to spend every second to think.

“Kssh, kssh, kssh!”

The soldiers started to break the kitchen wooden door. It was never meant to be used for a defence and very soon there were several opened holes on it

“Me?”. She blinked.

“Yes, give me a little bit of time.”

“What are you going to do?” The merchant girl asked curiously.

“I’m going to try to think of a way to warn the people inside the village. This is Madara’s undead grand army, we need to warn them.” Sophie tried to hard to calm down, and replied while he searched for flints.

Where was that thing that he recalled?

“Okay, sure, I’ll do that.” Romain immediately went over to the door to defend Sophie.

“Will you be fine?”

“Of course.” The young girl shook the masonry hammer in her hands and replied confidently: “I’ll do my best, since I’ll become a great merchant in the future!”

Sophie stopped and looked at her, nodding.

“You certainly will, Miss Romain.”

“Yup, Brendel.”

TL: Bone butterflies…. cool but…. barf.