 Wind Empress? No. Putting aside the noise caused when casting the spell, destroying even three skeletons was considered to be the best outcome possible. How about the remaining three skeletons?
Brendel kept on reminding to calm himself down even though every hair on him seemed to be standing. He questioned himself what he would have done in the game. Indeed, he would go through every skill and stat points to try and survive from certain death.
He only needed to use his imagination to do so.
He instantly thought of an idea but the madness of it frightened even him.
[This is not a game, Brendel, can you afford to do this?!] He could not help but ask himself.
But the skeleton soldiers were getting closer and closer, and he had to make a choice.
And plunged his long sword into his stomach.
Agonizing pain spread throughout his body from his stomach. The feedback from it was ten thousand more intense than it was in the game. Brendel cried out once and nearly fell over. He felt he was just too crazy; the perspiration had started to gather and rain down from his forehead.
Right at the same time, the skeleton soldiers’ clacking footsteps also stopped.
The ‘Unyielding’ skill had activated and deceived the skeletons that were void of intelligence.
Brendel did not dare to waste any more time. He endured the waves of dizziness as he pulled out the sword. Even though he intentionally avoided the fatal areas, his blood still sprayed out and pooled onto the ground. The youth was not brave enough to look at it, and continued to pry the slab of stone out of the ground with his sword. He finally tore it out and started towards the slope and slid downwards.
He only had five minutes to save himself, a gambit between the fine line of life and death.
The ‘Soul Fire’ that was activated by the ‘Unyielding’ skill supported him the entire way towards the village. He was momentarily startled when he saw countless skeletons everywhere from the ruined buildings. They were the work of the necromancers. They crawled out of the graves or even tore themselves out from the bloody corpses when their souls were summoned.
The night that had fallen seemed to give the skeletons a frightening aura. It was fortunate that Brendel had seen enough of them in the game, or he would have been frightened to the point of collapsing.
He quickly soothed his feelings and did a rough count. He saw there was over fifty of them. It was certainly not a small number and would mean that Madara’s invading forces were increasing with every step they take. The only thing that made him feel a little easier was how these makeshift skeleton soldiers’ combat prowess was much lesser compared to the other undead skeletons.
They were even weaker than an average adult male.
Brendel advanced while he looked at them. His destination was a small shrine within the village and recalled that it was somewhere in the north. These undead soldiers saw him as an undead, and even if Brendel knocked into them, they merely adjusted their postures and continued forward.
It was good news to Brendel.
With this advantage at hand, he merely used three minutes to find the shrine of Kaldas. The undead did not respect the God of Pottery and had already destroyed a section of the shrine’s wall. He remembered that this shrine was later rebuilt.
He entered the building and felt his way into it. It was pitch black inside, but after searching inside for a while, he quickly found the way towards the ‘Room of Solitude’.
What he did not expect was a wandering skeleton in it, which gave Brendel a huge jump scare. It was fortunate his nerves were tough enough to endure it, and he quickly calmed down with the thought that it was merely a puppet that had no intelligence.
He felt it was getting harder and harder to breathe, and his vision was starting to become a blur.
He had only one minute left.
After searching through his memory a little, he searched behind the podium and discovered a four-sided depression there. At this moment he thanked the gods and put the slab into it with trembling fingers. He was afraid that a cruel joke would be played on him again.
Fortunately, no such event like that happened here.
At first, it was an unlocking sound in the darkness, then a second low rumbling sound from beneath, and finally a third sound that seemed to indicate something was opening. He felt a slight breeze blowing him from his back. When Brendel turned around, he saw light coming from within the passageway of the tomb.
There were purple colored crystals that decorated the walls. These were not worth anything due to the light being too weak, and thus they were not used.
He shook his head as he nearly collapsed from the giddiness. The game’s version was completely different from this world. Players did not experience what Brendel was experiencing right now, and in fact, they were completely unaffected for five minutes. However, once the time was up, no matter how fine they felt, they would immediately collapse onto the ground.
Brendel was completely relying on his own willpower and the desperate resolution to survive. He tried to keep himself awake by recalling the details about the person who was buried here. The NPC who was buried here was famous, and his name was Gerald, born in this village. He had participated in Aouine’s battle for Independence, and he acted honorably for his whole life and requested to be buried in his hometown when he died.
It was said that this location used to be part of the forest which was later cleared, and a shrine was built on it. The Holy Cathedral of Fire created a pathway inside the shrine to make a tomb for this holy knight, allowing him to forever sleep in peace. Brendel wanted to get this knight’s weapon that he used in the past, which was the ‘Thorn of light’. He did not wish to interrupt the knight’s eternal sleep, but even the knight was probably unwilling to desecrate this village.
The youth panted as he struggled forward against the wall another twenty or thirty meters. He knew that he had gradually reached the end of the passageway when it started to brighten from the effects of high-grade crystals that adorned the walls. He tried to wake himself up, but he did not have the time to relax, as a black figure suddenly dropped down on him.
Two steely claws hooked onto his shoulders and lifted him upwards into the air.
Brendel felt the immense strength penetrating his shoulders. He could not move at all from the vice-like claws, and he recognized there was an absolute difference in strength between them. In his great shock, his mind started rattling, and he realized that it was a gargoyle. It had at least the strength of 4 OZ.
A gargoyle was the great work of an artisan wizard from Bucce. It was a level 23 monster, and a low ranking necromancer was like a gentle puppy compared to it.
Before Brendel finished thinking, he felt himself hurtling through the air and smashed against the icy wall. His bones creaked and groaned as if every single one of them shattered.
He did not have any time to worry about it, as the gargoyle started to attack him again. He got up and shook his head to clear his mind.
Ah.. right.. there’s usually a countermeasure for the exploitable locations.The TN Group mission is to devise novel solutions and architectures for networks, and the systems using those networks. Starting from traditional technological problems, such as those of Quality of Service (QoS), Mobility, Multihoming, Ad-Hoc and intermittent connections, Multicast, or Network Management aspects, the TN Group has evolved into more holistic approaches, taking in consideration the increasingly interwoven aspects of modern communication systems. Currently, teh TN Group is addressing the areas of Future Internet and Mobile Networks Architectures, Machine-to-Machine Communications, Security and Identification, Novel Service Infrastructures, Virtualization of large infrastructures with Software Defined Networking, as well as Traffic Analysis, or Storage and Mining of large data volumes.
In their specific areas of actuation, the experienced senior researchers composing the TN Group have created a strong record of contributions to the advance of the state of the art, in the form of works published in important journals and events, or directly to important research bodies such as IETF, IRTF or 5G-PPP. The TN Group has also made continuous efforts to collaborate with multiple international and national industries, providing consulting and participating in joint projects, which resulted in the innovation of key products in their area of actuation.When you are doing the rounds enquiring about getting an ADSL2+ broadband internet connection, it is not uncommon for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to say, ‘Sorry, there are no ports available at your local telephone exchange.’ What does this mean? Will you be able to get ADSL2+ at all?
Fortunately, the truth of the matter is just because one provider doesn’t have ADSL2+ ports available from their DSLAM equipment in your local phone exchange, it doesn’t mean all providers won’t be able to offer a service. Whether or not an ISP has enabled a phone exchange is arbitrary. It’s an expensive investment, so you’ll find different companies have enabled some exchanges and not others in order to make their investment back as soon as possible.
If a provider doesn’t have ports available it means they have enabled the exchange for ADSL2+, but all of the ports on their specific DSLAM equipment are currently being rented out