’I was so close... so close... after such a good start, even though I had a Common Race of a Glass Beetle, my Epic Race of Matriarch helped me level up extremely fast, take the previous queen’s nest for myself, and control an army of Level 10 monsters while other Players were still struggling to get out of the beginner villages...’ Brynn thought, frustrated and enraged by what was happening.
She was sure that getting an Epic Class in Elysium would be the perfect path to her greatness, elevating her family from an ordinary family among the population of the High Zone in the Human Federation to the level of one of the greatest families!
When she entered Elysium, Brynn thought she was unlucky to have become an ordinary Glass Beetle, but with the luck of being part of a nest that dominated a small dungeon, she was able to abuse the advantages of this group to level up quickly.
Using Elysium’s Leveling and Skill system, she developed much faster than other beetles, using the Spiritual Attack Skill to control other beetles and take the power of the previous queen, becoming the next queen of that nest.
With no other queen to compete for resources, Brynn developed even faster.
With human intelligence at her disposal, she commanded the beetles to capture as many monsters as possible for her to kill, gain experience, and extract their life energy to further nourish her army.
At this point, Brynn was sure it would only be a matter of time before she dominated the world of Elysium.
Too bad that after only two weeks in the game, a pair of monsters invaded her nest and began decimating her army!
-xXx-
[Brynn POV]
At first, on the first floor, I saw only a white figure and a blue mass through the alert from one of my soldiers.
I thought they were just "snacks" that had the misfortune of entering my territory, so I sent my regular soldiers to deal with them, but strangely, the mental connection with my children was cut off one by one.
They moved with a stealthiness that should not belong to wild monsters, using shadows and smoke to climb through my tunnels.
When I realized the threat was real, I stopped playing around.
I used my absolute authority to coordinate an organized ambush on the second floor. I sent my Level 10 Beetles, protected by shells that I myself had hardened with my Matriarch skills.
I controlled them like puppets to ensure they wouldn’t screw up as I dictated their every bite and flanking maneuver. But to my horror, my soldiers were slaughtered!
That Slime... it was very strange... using webs that drained my children’s mana and creating clones that acted with frightening independence.
Seeing their power, I began a sweep of my base, but with each attempt I made, more and more of my soldiers died!
Somehow, these two little creatures were even killing my Elite Soldiers!
Fortunately, after a while they fled from the tree, as the fox had accumulated too many wounds...
Taking advantage of this, I decided to use my trump card.
Without worrying about wasting energy, I extracted everything I could from the monsters my soldiers had captured and began to strengthen myself, strengthen my soldiers, and generate more soldiers again.
But suddenly I felt a mental signal inside my throne room!
Looking in that direction, I saw them... instead of running away, these two audacious little creatures actually came back to try to kill me!
Desperate, I tried a direct attack on their minds.
I projected my will as I tried to destroy their consciousness... at that point, any ordinary creature would have had its soul crushed, but the Slime used some kind of ability to protect his mind like an impenetrable shield, blocking my intrusion as he began to attack me with the fox!
The most surprising thing is that somehow the fox was in perfect condition, as if that vision of her all wounded was just an illusion to deceive me!
Bringing my beetles to help me, I thought the battle was won, and for a moment, the advantage was mine! But every time I thought I was winning the battle, they would come up with some different shit and reverse the roles!
My last card up my sleeve was the little fairy I had been nurturing with vital essence for weeks, transforming that lazy fairy into a loyal, lethal, and speedy infiltration soldier.
When I released him, I thought his speed would finally finish off the fox. But not only did they manage to defend themselves and trap my fairy, they used a throwing tactic that no monster I’ve ever known would think of!
The fox threw the Slime directly at my unprotected abdomen.
-xXx-
Brynn felt the acid burn spread through her insides, a pain that none of her [Matriarch] skills could suppress, and a pain so great that nothing she had ever felt in this world, or in the real world, came close to it.
As the blue mass of Slime expanded under her shell, devouring her organs and Mana channels at a speed that defied the biological logic she knew, her human mind, shaped by the competitiveness and Elite education of the Upper Zone, tried to process the impossible she was witnessing.
’It can’t be... this isn’t the instinct of just any animal or monster! She screamed inside her, as she saw from another angle, through the eyes of her last beetles, the absolute coordination between the fox and the slime.
She watched as the fox, even wounded and exhausted again, kept the fairy isolated from the Slime. The way it used a strange dash ability to flank and flames to create barriers was not the behavior of an NPC monster in this game.
It was like the movement of someone trained, someone who understood spacing and timing... concepts that Brynn only saw in elite fighters from the Human Federation.
But what terrified her most was that fox’s "armor."
She saw the moment when the slime merged with the fox, creating an obsidian [Symbiotic Armor] that absorbed Level 10 impacts as if they were insect bites.
Brynn knew that in Elysium, the fusion of skills and the creation of combined tactics were the pinnacle of the system, something that even she, who had a class focused on it, had a hard time creating.
But did these two coincidentally do that too? And most absurd of all, a silly creature like a Slime?!
She had already killed slimes, and not only was the experience they granted almost nil, but even their life energy that she digested was very low compared to other monsters.
’You mean that I, with an Epic Class, with the potential to become one of the dictators of the rules of this new world, am going to fall like this? To a damn slime and a useless fire-breathing fox?!’
In her final moments, as she felt her consciousness dissipate and her life essence being refined into mana by the Slime, a bitter suspicion blossomed.
’They are not inhabitants of this world...’ Brynn realized, feeling even greater fury! ’They’re like me... I’m going to die for Players?!.’
With one last mental scream that echoed throughout the fossilized tree, the Glass Bark Queen succumbed, becoming nothing more than 4,000 units of biomass and the foundation for Elysium’s first official guild, which she didn’t even know she could found.
[You Killed the Player: Brynnear]
[Congratulations on killing the First Player in the Open World of Elysium!]