Infinite Realm

"You…!" The lady swore at Sato.

Ignoring her comment, Sato approached her and swung his sword at her. He had already wasted a lot of time here so why would he still entertain her comments.

"Fine. Die!" The lady pointed her staff at Sato. Unlike the average mage staffs that was usually associated with an elemental mana, her's had a gloomy aura surrounding it. It was black in color with a little peach sized gray orb atop it. If one focused carefully, they would be able to see a fleeting shadow within the orb. 

Grey coloured gas gushed out from the orb and formed a black dreary orb that darted towards Sato at a quick pace.

[Spectral Blast] 

Immediately the gas left her staff, the girl turned around and fled, hoping to widen up the gap between her and Sato.

'What a strange ability.'

Seeing the approaching projectile Sato narrowed his eyes at the sight before sidestepping to his right while still moving forward. As a result, he not only effectively escaped the orb's trajectory but he also lessened the gap between himself and the girl. 

As a mage class player, the girl's abilities in the physical department obviously couldn't be compared with a physical class player of the same level, much less with a wide gap of 1 or 2 levels. As such, within a second, Sato had already reached her.

'Already?!' The girl was a bit surprised but she still kept her cool. 

Turning back to face Sato, she waved her staff at him as if swatting a fly. Almost immediately, 4 gray pole-like crystals[1] took form and darted at Sato. Due to the swift speed the shards moved at together with the close distance between them and Sato, it looked like a sure-hit at that moment.

'[Parry]!' 

Sato hurriedly halted his movements and swung his sword at the approaching objects from a strange angle. This resulted in him blocking the 4 grey poles while only being forced 2 steps backwards and almost falling off his feet.

"Impressive. I must say, but it's over."

Right before the voice ended, another grey ball dashed towards Sato. Having just blocked 4 shards that had manged to offset his balance, Sato was in no condition to block the grey ball this time. Upon thinking this, he realised that all his movements had been expected or even predicted by the girl. Such a fearsome opponent could by no means be your average player. 

The attack looked to be unavoidable as Sato had yet to balance himself properly and it was too quick to be blocked. Though with his superior [Agility] and [Dexterity] he might be able to block it, Sato knew that it would most likely worsen things for him and create an opportunity for her to launch a sure-hit. That was not something Sato wanted to see happen. As such, this girl's attack, which seemed to be simple was actually well-timed and filled with so many conspiracies.

'But it isn't enough.' 

Sato moved his body's centre to his back as if completing the motions of falling down on the ground. As his body bent backwards, he applied force on his two feet and launched himself backwards. This resulted in Sato producing a scene that looked like he was jumping backwards while falling down and indeed, he was. Surprisingly though, such a quirky action had managed to save him from being blasted by the orb as when he launched himself away like that, the orb had exploded on his original spot and the rubble from the explosion, that darted away, had missed by a fraction. To complete his acrobatic display, Sato placed one hand on the ground, right as he was about to fall, and propelled himself upwards, completing one aerial rotation before landing on his two feet.

Seeing how Sato had dodged her almost sure-kill attack in a crazy fashion that she had never expected, the girl was stunned and stared agape at him. 

"You're good, better than I imagined." She said. "But you will still die."

The girl tapped the bottom of her staff and the ground while circulating her mana through it. A black and greyish wormhole that looked to lead to no where, appeared beside her. From it, a white hand extended from it and grabbed the boundaries of the wormhole. It isn't really apt to call it a hand as it was more of a skeletal one but a hand is still a hand even without flesh. 

With force applied through the hand, a humanoid skeletal frame slowly exited from the other side and stared at Sato. It had a slightly massive head; a bit bigger than normal. In it's eye sockets where two bouncing little green flames that seemed to be emotionless, further verifying the entity as an emotionless being. Its white bones weren't all that white as little gray patches were scattered at some certain spots from which oozed grey lifeless gas. The skeleton held a bone sword in its right hand as it completely excavated its existence from the blackish grey wormhole, revealing a 2 metre tall frame. It suffused a lifeless aura around itself and the little green grass beside it had suddenly began to wilt, as if experiencing its remaining years of existence within seconds.

'As expected. She's a [Necromancer].'

A [Necromancer]. The second dark class in existence and the second summoning type class. When IR(Infinite Realm)'s release was announced, the information on the major classes was released alongside it. Of course this information was minor ones like a few class novice skill and so on. Nonetheless, the information was a bit vital to players. On this note, the data on the the [Necromancer] and [Cursemancer] classes had attracted a bit of popularity from a majority of gamers. This was because the two classes were dark classes. Dark classes were classes that were said to be unorthodox as they usually had a few dealings with dark forces in various games. Though there was no such information released by the producers of IR that stated that dark classes are shunned by NPC forces, players created various speculations about it from their experience in other games. In most such games, dark classes end up having a hard time either in a majority of NPC cities or with a majority of NPC forces. These forces are usually the ones associated with religion and they are the ones that react in the most manner, when encountering dark class players. They would usually kill the players for no reason other than the fact that their classes are aligned with dark forces; whether the said player is aligned with such forces or not, the NPCs do not care. With such past experience in a majority of other games, most of the players went for the more 'orthodox' classes, evading the choice of [Necromancer] and [Cursemancer]. This was why quite a few such players existed as choosing such classes would be equivalent to losing out on a few potential gains[2]. Hence, Sato was surprised to see one. 

Sato had originally guessed that she might have been a [Necromancer] but changed it to [Cursemancer], as compared to [Necromancers], the [Cursemancer] class wasn't so tight with the dark forces as all they deal in is curses. Pus he guessed that a girl wouldn't want to associate herself with undead creatures, even if they were fake. However seeing her summon a skeleton, Sato realised that his original opinion was correct.

"You're worthy of me using my summon. Sadly, you will die here." The girl smiled at him.

Sato narrowed his eye as he stared at the summon. The most annoying thing about [Necromancers] and [Summoners] was the fact that they could summon a creature to handle the aggro while they attack from behind. It was like facing two people instead of one. Even worse was the fact that as they got stronger, their summons would increase in number. Sato didn't know whether IR operated the same way but he was sure that at later levels, [Summoners] and [Necromancers] would have at least 2-3 summons in their hands. As for now, it should be one.

"Are you sure about that?"

Sato wasn't worried facing the skeleton monster. As it was still the early stages of the game, he guessed that player's summons would at most be a level above them and on average on par with them or even one level lower. Since she was a level 6 [Necromancer], the skeleton would be a level 7 at best but most likely a level 6 or 5. Facing such a creature alongside it's master, Sato didn't feel it was much of a task. Even if he found it difficult, he just needed to hold on for Seiichi and Fudo to finish the last of Reeves' men and that would take just 3 seconds. In other words, the battle was already over.

"Argghh!!!" 

With that scream, the last of Reeves' men died under the onslaught of Xue Yan, Fudo, Seiichi and Lu Zhen.

"Now." Fudo exhaled before glancing over at the girl. "How would you like to die?"

There was a massive grin on his face as Fudo stared at the girl. She had always been acting so high and mighty ever since she came that he couldn't wait to slap her mouth just once. With her surrounded and outnumbered, her death was at least 70% confirmed; the remaining 30% having to dal with whether she had any special trump card or something. On this note, Fudo was on full alert and didn't let his guard down.

It wasn't only Fudo who reached this conclusion; the others had also guessed so, especially with the way Reeves had earlier treated her.

"A bunch of useless men." The girl cursed as she saw Reeves' last man collapse into starlight.

Glancing at Fudo's gloating face together with the Sato's other teammates that slowly locked down all her routes of escape, the girl in black gritted her teeth before she faced Sato.

"We shall meet again and at that time, it would be a one-on-one where you die."

Saying so, the girl hurriedly withdrew a scroll from her pouch.

"Stop her." Sato yelled as he dashed over at her.

Seiichi, Xue Yan and Fudo immediately attacked from a distance, firing different projectiles at her, a majority of them being fire-based.

"Graaaahhhh!" 

The huge skeleton roared before standing in front of the girl, acting as a shield against the incoming attacks. It swung its blade at the attacks, warding them off, but creating an explosion that injured it, forcing it back by one step.

At this time, Sato approached the skeleton and wanted to follow from the sides to reach the girl. Sadly, the skeleton noticed this and slashed down its sword at him.

Surprisingly, the attack was fast, forcing Sato to either retreat backwards or block it. No matter which one he chose, he would be too late. 

"Damn it." 

Sato retreated backwards as it would be pointless to waste his effort to block the attack.

*Boom.*

A small boom resounded as the bone sword struck the floor, forming a little crater of 2 metres in diameter. Seeing this, Sato frowned a bit as he realised that his decision of retreating backwards was a wise choice.

"Well then, see you later." The girl chuckled. 

While the skeleton held them back, she had already torn the scroll into two and completed the chants. A black gas, almost like miasma, had already surrounded her and slowly began to spread apart. Immediately she had finished her words, the gas had completely covered her and dragged her into the wormhole that the skeleton had arrived from. With the escape of its master, the skeleton also disappeared into a grey light that entered the wormhole.. Following that, the wormhole quickly collapsed inwards and disappeared.