Afterlife Dream

"It's the Fire Golem!!!" DragonTalon shrieked.

I thought the same thing until the thing that jumped out of the lava lake unrolled itself and stood tall and mighty before us.

"..."

It was not the muscular, bulky Fire Golem at all. The creature before us was lanky and humanoid, its body made of dark rocks with bright red veins spreading from his heart to every part of its body. His eyes were glowing like molten lava and he was slowly shifting his fiery gaze from DragonTalon to me, and then back at DragonTalon.

When it opened its mouth, a rattling hoarse voice came out.

"What is..."

I began to ask, but never brought my question to the end. That fiery creature started to run toward us! A fiery fist punched between us and forced us to scatter.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

I jumped to the left while DragonTalon jumped to the right.

As soon as I threw myself to the ground, the fine hairs on my back stood up. I rolled on the ground just in time to dodge a fiery punch from the foreign creature. It hissed in displeasure when I managed to get away.

"Fire Dragons!!!"

It did not take long for the creature to shift its attention to DragonTalon, who then cursed loudly because his fiery attacks did not affect the monster.

This was not normal, because we were supposed to be able to kill any monster anywhere. DragonTalon's fire dragons might be less effective than an Ice Elemental Mage's ice dragons, but they were supposed to still reduce HP.

Just as I thought that, I realized that something was utterly wrong.

The fiery monster had no HP bar at all.

If there was no HP bar, how were we supposed to kill? The monster could very well kill us!!!

"RUN!!!" I shouted with a hoarse voice as I jumped from the ground and grabbed DragonTalon by his upper arm.

DragonTalon stopped fighting and ran next to me toward the opposite side of the map.

More bubbling sounds were heard. I snapped my head in the direction of the lake.

"More are coming!" I shouted.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

"What's that?"

"Suzuran and friends!"

DragonTalon cursed out loud again. We disliked Dominion members but we could not just leave them alone, could we?

We ran in the direction of the distressed call, but we were not fast enough. By the time we arrived, no one was around. The only thing left was some bubbling that came from the lake. Instead of growing more and more intense to indicate something coming out, it soon died down. The monsters behind us also no longer chased us. The map was completely empty. No monsters no players other than us.

"Um..."

"Where are the others?"

I had a very bad feeling about the whole thing. Where did everyone go? And where did Suzuran and her guildmates go off to?

I opened my user interface screen and sent a message on party chat.

"Everyone, where are you?"

There was no answer from them even after we wait for a while. DragonTalon and I exchanged glances. He shook his head.

I then went on to message Witcheria.

"Witcheria, where are you?"

When the screen lit up, I almost breathed out of relief. Unfortunately what came up was not a reply from Witcheria. To my greatest horror, I received the same dreadful notification that I had not seen for quite some time.

"The player is currently inaccessible."

Both of us stared at the words across my screen numbly. What was happening? Why was it happening? What were we supposed to do? A bunch of questions, one by one, popped up in my mind but no answers were available.

DragonTalon grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of my trance.

"Antares, something wrong is happening over here. Let's retreat for now and consult our guild mates, alright?" he said with a trembling voice.

I quickly nodded in agreement. We ran toward the train station as fast as we could. Just then, a loud cracking sound was heard and the ground before our eyes started to split. I grabbed DragonTalon by his wrist and threw him to the other side where the train station was.

"AAAAAAHHHH!!!" he screamed as he hit the ground.

Meanwhile, the crack became larger and larger. I spread my wings and flew over to DragonTalon just in time before the ground under my feet gave away. After I landed, I turned around and we watched in horror how the split-off portion slowly toppled backward and crumbled into the lake of lava.

"Oh my God. I thought we were going to die," DragonTalon whispered. Our faces were pale from fear and we were both drenched in cold sweat despite the hot surrounding.

Behind us, the NPC that guarded the entrance of the train station cheerfully said, "Dear passengers, the train is arriving. Please pay attention to safety."

The train could not come fast enough. It barely skidded into a halt before we both scrambled to get on board.

The usual five minutes wait until the train was ready to depart again was the longest five minutes in both of our lives. We were only able to suck in a deep breath after the train got to move again. As the train left the fiery map behind, we were shrouded in darkness. Only the sparse lighting inside the train allowed us to look at each other's petrified faces.

"What the fuck was that?" DragonTalon asked with a hollow voice.

"The Lava County map is no more," I gave him a basic answer. There was nothing else I could offer as an explanation as to what the foreign monster with no HP bar was or where it came from. We spent the remaining time of the trip in silence, pondering about things that we knew nothing about. I was extremely relieved when the mechanical sound announced that we had arrived at Paradise Island.

"Dear passengers, welcome to Paradise Island."

We stumbled out of the train on our weak feet and literally fell to our knees as soon as we got off the train. We were both so relieved to be back on Paradise Island again. A lot of players had gathered at the train station, and they were shocked to see us.

"Antares! DragonTalon!"

ArrowRain broke through the crowd and pulled us both to our feet.

"You... are you alright? What happened???"

I let DragonTalon do all the talking while I took in the weird looks that the surrounding players gave us. It was not until one Dominion player spoke up that I understood why they were staring at us like that.

"Um..." a girl opened her mouth in hesitation at the end of DragonTalon's story. "So what happened to... the other players?"

I exchanged glances with DragonTalon.

"We don't know," I said.

More Dominion players stepped forward and gave us scrutinizing looks.

"How can you not know?"

"Yeah, were Suzuran, MaiseyChi, and Rankichi not with you guys?"

"They were, but then we split into two groups to investigate the map," I explained. "We went to the left side while the three of them went to the right side."

"What about the three low-level players who went with you guys?"

Witcheria and her two friends.

"Honestly, I don't know," I said. I knew that it was a weak answer but I truly did not know. Judging from the fact that all of them disappeared, it was more than likely that they went to help Suzuran and her friends when they heard the first screams. We were busy with our own problem on the left side of the map. We of course failed to hear anything happening on the right side until we started to run away from the fiery monster.

The girl frowned at me.

"Eight players went to Lava County but only the two of you come back."

ArrowRain rose to her feet and pinned the girl with a glare. "What are you trying to say? Should we not be happy that Antares and DragonTalon made it out safely from Lava County?"

"I am not so sure," a cold voice was heard coming from the back of the crowd.

Players turned around and split into two sides to let HinoKun, SakuraChan, and a few more high-level players from Dominion through.

HinoKun had his user interface screen open.

"I want to know why Suzuran, MaiseyChi, and Rankichi completely disappeared from the game. We receive an error message on the screen when we try to message them. Just like when we try to message BlackPuma," he added as he nodded at ArrowRain.

Incredulous, everyone tried to send messages to the missing players. It all ended with the same error message.

"The player is currently inaccessible."

HinoKun's gaze moved between me and DragonTalon. There was a slight crease between his brows.

"You two were the last people who saw them around. How did you two make it back relatively safely while the other six people disappeared just like that?"