Afterlife Dream

The palms of my hands went sweaty from dread. I believed that I knew what HinoKun wanted to say.

"What, exactly, are you trying to say?" ArrowRain asked with a clearly irritated tone.

HinoKun's face darkened.

"Do I need to spell it out?" he asked in no less irritated tone.

"What is going on here?" Ingenious' voice was heard. The crowd of players parted one more time to let him, Aurendiria, and Cecilia pass.

"Our guild's Suzuran, MaiseyChi, and Rankichi have disappeared from the game after visiting the Lava County map with Twelve's Antares and DragonTalon. It is rather eerie that of eight people, only two of them returned safely."

"Eerie how?" Ingenious asked with a raised eyebrow.

SakuraChan shot me and DragonTalon a sharp look, then she said what I had been dreading to hear and at the same time what had been going on in everyone's minds.

"Eerie because exactly the disappearance of these three players has allowed both Antares and DragonTalon to move up the Dark Fairy raid's looting list."

DragonTalon's jaw dropped open. Widening his eyes, he shouted, "Are you assuming that we killed them???"

The crowd went silent. They clearly believed that it was the case.

"Isn't it too convenient for you two?" PrecisionShot asked. "I remember that DragonTalon was very upset about the looting list.

"Just because he was upset it doesn't mean that he is responsible for anything that happens to Suzuran and the others," I replied. "The both of us were facing the same amount of danger. Why would we even risk our own safety?"

Ninja stepped forward. He crossed his arms before his chest and countered my argument. "No one is saying that you plot this before you even go to Lava County. You likely saw your chance when you are in danger. Is it not possible that you somehow refused to help Suzuran and the others when they were being overwhelmed by this... fiery creature you talked about?"

"BULLSHIT!" DragonTalon roared in anger. Fiery sparks flew off the end of his staff when he stabbed it into the ground. "Don't you dare make a baseless accusation! When we heard your guildmates scream, we went there automatically!"

"It's just that we saw no one so what was the point of staying in Lava County? The map was fucking disappearing! Just because your guildmates disappeared it doesn't mean that we too must die together with them!"

I put a hand on DragonTalon's shoulder in an attempt to placate him.

"We did nothing wrong," I said loud and clear. "We barely managed to escape the monsters. We never even thought of harming Suzuran and the others just to be able to loot the Dark Fairy Gloves!"

HinoKun turned to Ingenious.

"What are you going to do, Ingenious?"

"What do you mean?" Ingenious asked in return.

"Killing players in itself was a crime in this game, but completely erasing them from the game is way overboard, don't you think? What are you going to do about it?"

"Did you not hear DragonTalon and Antares, Hino?" ArrowRain asked. "They did nothing to your guildmates. Stop pinning your guildmates' disappearance on them."

HinoKun's eyes blazed dangerously.

"Twelve guild has always been critical with the Dominion guild on a lot of occasions. You refuse cooperation for the greater good because Ninja stole Aurendiria's cloak and whatnot. Now your own guildmates have committed a serious offense but you not only refuse to acknowledge it but also protect them!"

Ingenious gritted his teeth.

"You have no incriminating evidence against them," he pointed out, nodding at me and DragonTalon. "You are just making a baseless accusation here."

"Heh."

"Who can even provide the evidence?"

"All those who went with them disappeared mysteriously!"

"We should be asking them to provide evidence that they did nothing wrong!"

The crowd was getting more and more aggressive.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Ingenious shouted. "I am not going to punish any of them just because of some unproven theory!"

Realizing that there was no way out of this argument, HinoKun simply scoffed. "That's it," he announced. "No more cooperation between Dominion and Twelve. We will each go back to our own guild runs."

"How convenient," Aurendiria spoke up. "Just now three of your guildmates got to loot three sets of gloves in a combined raid."

My lips parted in surprise. The 10 AM raid just now dropped three sets of gloves. Kratos, SakuraChan, and Gwency looted their gloves. My eyes wandered to SakuraChan's hands. Indeed, she was wearing a pair of Dark Fairy Gloves, no mistake about it.

"And we lost three other guildmates thanks to your guildmates, whether or not you acknowledge it," HinoKun said.

The Dominion players left the train station right afterward.

Just like that, the cooperation between Twelve and Dominion was over again within a run.

The Twelve guild members gathered in Oakstone Tavern right after to discuss what happened. I suddenly remembered something else.

"Did we not have a group of players who went to check out the Summer Rainforest?" I asked.

"Oh yes, I believe so," HellWitch said with a frown. She started to scroll the world chat up. "TerryWalker, 7eetMage, and GoldenBow."

"No news yet?" Livina asked.

"Nope. Let's just ask, shall we?"

ZhaoYun typed into the world chat and asked, "Hey, how is it going at the Summer Rainforest? TerryWalker, 7eetMage, and Goldenbow, can you guys give us some updates?"

After ZhaoYun posed the question, many others started to ask as well. Unfortunately, no one had an answer. I switched on my user interface screen and started to send a private message over to TerryWalker. Just as I thought, he too had disappeared.

"The player is currently inaccessible."

Not only TerryWalker. 7eetMage and GoldenBow too were not reachable.

"Oh, God."

DragonTalon raked his fingers through his hair. "What the hell is happening in here?"

"It seems that once the maps have been sealed away, they start to behave abnormally," I offered. "It happened to Fairy Forest, and now to the deactivated raid maps."

"Lava County is going to be submerged in a pool of lava soon, but what about Summer Rainforest?" DragonTalon asked. "Altogether we already have 10 people gone from the game with the same error message."

"Guys, not that I do not believe you," Ingenious said with a painful expression. "but can you go into details about what you see back then? How exactly did Suzuran, MaiseyChi, and Rankichi disappear?"

I heaved a sigh.

"There was this mysterious bubbling in the lava river," I answered. "Previously when it bubbled, this fiery monster jumped out of it and started to attack us. After running away in the opposite direction and finding that the other side was completely deserted, I also saw a similar bubbling in the lava river. Only that..."

"Only what?" ArrowRain leaned in with big eyes.

"Only that the bubbling slowly disappeared. It was almost as if... the fiery monster was returning into the lava river."

Everyone shared puzzled glances with each other.

"I saw that too. The first thing that came to my mind was that maybe, just maybe, the monster had dragged the three Dominion players into the lava river," DragonTalon supported my story.

A deafening silence settled inside the tavern as everyone tried to digest this piece of news. Did that really happen? The thing was that players were not immune to elements. No player could hope to survive when being thrown into a pool of scorching lava. Not even the Fire Immortals or even the Ice Immortals, the fourth job designations for Fire Elemental Mages and Ice Elemental Mages.

Death was as painful as it could be, but players could always resurrect at the safe area.

"Wait," I realized in horror. "They might have resurrected and we did not look for them!"

DragonTalon shook his head.

"No, Antares, don't you remember? We saw the error message before we even went back to the train station. They did not die. Or if they did, they died in an unconventional way that did not allow for resurrection."

Pretty much the same thing could be said about BlackPuma.

"Um," Cecilia cleared her throat. "Time for the next raid is approaching. We still have the 16.00 time slot so why don't we go for it?"

"..."

"Oh. Right."

Although we were all still shaken from what happened in the morning, the Dark Fairy raid was not going to wait for us. Only three raid slots were left, one belonging to the Dominion guild.

Cecilia made haste with the raid preparation and we all made our way to the Cursed Temple. When we arrived at the fourth floor of the said temple, though, a bunch of Dominion players already waited for us. Including HinoKun and all the high-level players of Dominion. They had their weapons out in an attack mode.

"So sorry, guys," HinoKun said while leaning close to his spear. "You can still do the Dark Fairy raid as usual but Antares and DragonTalon must not join the raid."