Bloodlines Online

Within the time it took for him to learn the mana guard skill Layla had completed a run in the dungeon.

Well she got to the boss door and died but still got the experience points or a run.

Since it was now his turn to go and attempt his own dungeon crawl he was on his way but the demoness stopped him with a hand.

"When you get in there you aren't allowed to use your normal spells, train your unique spell and train your defensive abilities."

She pushed him forward while she turned back to Layla.

"A mage without any physical damage defense skills, this is just hilarious."

While heading into the field to deal with the dungeon he would wear his robe with the hood up and his wings hidden to stay out of easy recognition for players.

The days within the game were bleeding together but he hoped his mother was enjoying herself in the real world.

As he got to the dungeon again he decided he would stream his run again.

~

Hours after the first stream had finished she was still looking through the feeds to find anything like it again.

The journalist had already uploaded her report about the stream so she was just watching and praying for another.

She was refreshing the page again when she got a call from her editor.

"Jaydaaaa my favorite girl, I saw that upload about the mage doing a solo dungeon crawl!"

She suddenly got worried, her boss only ever sounded this happy when he was about to drop something on a worker.

"Alright babe I've got good news and bad news."

"The good news is that you got the attention of the creators of BLO and they way to talk to you."

This made her heart flutter with excitement, BLO liked to hired journalists so if they were looking at her because of her work they might want to buy her article!

"Now for the bad news, you're fired. I can't have them circling around my studio or my talent understand babe?"

'...'

'Please tell me i just misheard him.'

"Are you serious?"

"Completely, your credentials are already being removed so good luck out there."

As she got ready to hang up she saw an email from a very well known group by now.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Jayda Stone.

We hope this email finds you well, we saw your work on the stream from the player known as Belial and we would like to buy the rights to it from you.

We contacted your company to discuss it but they were unwilling to part with it so qe would like to offer you a chance to leave and join our own journalism team instead.

We will offer your current wage +50% to work for our team, please take time to consider it.

Sincerely: Yggdrasil.

~~~~~~~~~~

'Did they get me fired on purpose? Dammit don't tell me the company is scummy like those old bastards that were ruining the gaming industry.'

She still had the original copy of her article from the stream and she would just send a reply to accept their offer, she would find out more about what they did when she arrived.

While she was doing this she suddenly recieved a notification from her computer.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bloodlines Online Streaming-

Belial is now live.

~~~~~~~~~~

She quickly went into the stream after sending her response.

She saw that the player was in the nightmare mode this time, she would have made a huge achievement for her company if they hadn't just removed her.

The changes to the dungeon were intense for nightmare mode.

The stream made everything feel as if it were seen in daylight but she could still see the black smog kn the ground.

Green crystals appearing like emeralds lined the cave walls and moss was everywhere.

Occasionally she saw the player cast a spell that tore through the moss, this same spell seemed to always be his fallback plan when a horde of skeletons attacked.

Unlike what one would expect from an army of skeletons these were not the shambling mess of rotten bones and rusty armor.

They had shining metal armor and weapons, bows made of a deep brown wood that pulsed with green energy.

The skeletons themselves seemed to be missing pieces of armor in some cases but in their place was a shimmering green piece of armor that resembled glass.

As the skeletons were damaged the ones with any form of green armor or shields would end up losing thise green bits which seemed to heal the skeletons as well!

She was typing rapidly about what she saw and even ignored the ding of an email from her phone.

She gasped as she saw the mage get surrounded by well armed skeletons who all went to strike at once.

She saw the mage stand there unafraid and a glow surrounded his wings, then he moved them in a strange way.

He had them closed but used the thickest portion where the wing joints connectes to slap away the weapons.

She expected he would be losing one or both of his wings because of this reckless move but to her shock the glow around his wings flashed and he seemed unharmed.

The skeletons even appeared to be pushed back by this move.

She saw him take out a strange object that looked like a sharp wand and begin to stab at the skeletons creating strange, delayed bursts of damage.

While he stabbed and slashed the skeletons his wings were once again covered in those strange needles he had been firing from them.

When he was about to be attacked from behind he would slap the enemy aside with his wing leaving those needles in their body which would burst again in a delayed damage just like the knife strikes.

The battle looked clumsy from the perspective of someone who had seen many skilled players but she could tell he had practiced a few of his moves very often.

She could even tell that he was heavily relying on his guard ability as each time he would get attacked he either slapped the enemy away or guarded.

Between battles she also saw him sit in one place for a few minutes, she didn't really know what was going on but she did see the smog on the ground vanishing.

When she saw him reach the end of the dungeon he seemed to be studying the door to the boss room.

The door which he had previously forced open.

Now she saw him carefully examine the door like it was a puzzle.

He raised one hand to touch the door in a weird place at the top and then everything went black.

He returned from the dungeon and she gasped when she saw him flap his wings to start getting airborne.

A group of players appeared to be trying to approach him and one even attempted to grab at his wing but Belial simply shoved them away as he took flight.

It was slow and painful to look at as he struggled to get higher off the ground but he eventually soared over the trees.

He saw that the players were still chasing him so he banked to the right to take a strange path, he then turned sharply left and flew lower by the tree tops which she assumed was to make him harder to see.

Eventually he must have felt he lost them because he hit the ground running in a clearing where she saw two incredible looking women with deep red skin and brutal horns.

She recognized one of them as War God but the other was unfamiliar.

That was when the stream ended.

~

"For some reason some punks were trying to keep me from leaving, are there some players that don't like your clan Layla?"

She looked him in the eye for a moment before laughing hysterically.

"Zeke you can't be serious! You do realize that you beat a field boss right? They wanted to be the clan to beat it and you got it instead."

She was laughing louldy and looking at him.

"Not only did you kill the boss and took their experience but you also took the body somehow, they probably want to kill you."

'Kill me? For the body? I don't have the boss... hell the only thing I got from the boss was a bonus to my vitality from consuming it.'

The fact that he was now in more danger because of not just the npcs but the players made him want to hurry up with beating this dungeon.

"I noticed something about the door, I think the runes on the door do something. They glow brighter than the rest of the spell circle so it must be something."

Layla heard this explanation and she went into thought over it.

"Some games have a mechanic that you have to do before fighting a boss, maybe we have to find the key?"

"Or a password."