“The item will be mine!” the deranged magician shouted again. He cast Earth Spike at the last remaining party member, the Fighter, and a large sprout of rock shot up from the floor and impaled the man through his stomach. He flailed back and forth for a moment, wobbling around like a flag at half-mast.

“MINE!” the caster shouted, unleashing a blast of fire to finish off the last remaining guard.

“Not today,” the last guard said, having barely escaped the scorching attack. He struck out with his halberd and lopped the caster’s head clean off.

“Much better,” Dickus said as Lucas re-entered the main game, once more standing in front of Xun Guan and the three educators. “You don’t have to say much, but simple ideas when planted can blossom into traitorous thoughts. If you do not have enough time to seduce them, then you must think on your feet. I’ve taught you all that you need to know for now, so enjoy your new gear. Come back when you have truly proven yourself, and I shall teach you more in the ways of enchanting.”

“It will suffice,” Xun Guan said, shrugging slightly. “At least it’s an improvement. Are you going to try for round three?”

Lucas nodded, brought up the menu, and hit the button without any further prompting. He kept his previous speech and made a mental note to improve it in the future if anything happened to come to him.

The prompt faded, and the enemies appeared. This time, however, there were an additional four enemies that hadn’t been there before. They were all demi-Humans like the ones that Lucas had met in the bar when he had managed to generate the first part of his quest to kill Kegan.

What the heck? Lucas grumbled and cursed as he saw the numbers. So, at Level 3, the players will get to bring NPCs.

Thankfully, there was only a single caster out of all eight combatants. Lucas began channeling Meddling Minds as soon as he saw the Mage, but his opponent was quicker. A blast of fire soared in his direction before he could even complete channeling his own spell, forcing him to dodge away to the side. By the time he collected himself and was prepared to begin casting again, his guards had already been turned to shish kabobs by arrows and then hacked apart by a combination of daggers and swords. Only one of his defenders had succeeded in attacking someone, striking with his halberd before being gutted, but even that small injury was healed by one of the Healers as soon as it was inflicted.

I should have started with Chain Lightning and been faster about it. Lucas cursed as he finished casting Meddling Minds. He managed to get it off right before another Firebolt spell was cast at him, and this time, the flaming orb crashed into three of his foes from behind.