Deck of Souls: Fateseal [SAMPLE]

Chapter One: End of an Era

'Where the fuck is everyone?' I looked around the clearing with a scowl.

Hundreds of players waited along the wall of trees, spamming spells and AoE abilities. The spawn window for one of Bengllor Online's world bosses was up and for the past eight months my guild had dominated it. We'd gotten the world first kill and proceeded to kill it every three days since then. On our server, no one but us knew how to kill the damned thing—let alone how to claim it.

Of course, our schemes played a role in that. We'd spread rumors that the boss wouldn't appear unless aggro'd by magic and everyone had taken the bait. The top guilds on other servers had followed suit, leaving the player base none the wiser. In actuality, the boss wouldn't drop its invisibility buff unless a player who owned both a specific title and the item associated with it was present. The item was a gray-quality "trash" item you could get anywhere—most people had likely gotten dozens of them this far after launch.

But who the hell ever reads item tool tips? Not these fools, apparently, because we hadn't even been at risk of losing the battle to claim the boss in the past eight months. The second strongest guild on the server, Orztastrophe, had declared they'd figured it out but for the past two weeks—nothing.

Now, though, it looked like their luck was about to change. My guild mates were supposed to log in an hour before the spawn window opened yet I was the only person online. I'd messaged them on social media, our guild site, and even texted a few. Hell, I'd even logged out for a few minutes to call my vice leader.

Nothing. Not a peep.

'I can claim it by myself easy...but what after?' I gnawed on my lip and searched the clearing for familiar faces.

Easily a dozen Orz members stood within twenty meters of me, their eyes refusing to leave me. Across the clearing, the rest of their members were spamming low-cost spells and skills. The rest of the players in range of me were from smaller, weaker guilds who were hoping to catch a break. I had a file on almost all of them—none of them were a threat. Hell, I could've given up the boss to them every window for a year and they wouldn't have posed a threat to my guild. Almost all of us were fully geared by now and we had the skill to back it up.

"Hey, what's the leader of Ebonwing doing here by himself?" The whispers of players around me drew an amused smirk to my face. "Do you think they're finally done camping it?"

"Shhh, careful. I heard 'he' is actually a chick IRL," someone whispered. "If it's true, I bet she's a cow. There's no other reason for her to disguise herself as a male character and turn down streaming contracts—"

"Say another word and your friend there will be plucking the pieces of your corpse off the floor." I glanced over at the gossiping players and smirked when the released a collective squeak. 'Now then, about Lysandros' spawn...'

I pulled up my character profile and skimmed the section that tracked boss spawns. According to the blinking numbers, we had less than five minutes before Lysandros, the Great Wolf, would appear. Pursing my lips, I flicked away my character page and opened up my inbox to check if my guild mates had messaged me back yet.