[PLAINS 1 - STRUGGLE]

“Ride to me, and be measured,” the rider commands, raising its lance to the ready for a charge.

The woman takes a shot with her rifle, missing their attacker just as Masaru barely leaps out of the way to avoid its heavy black steel lance.

They both sprint for the treeline as the mounted foe pulls back on the reins and pulls the horse around for another pass.

“Who the hell is that guy?!” Masaru screams. “Is there PKing in this world?!”

“P-What!?” she shouts back, swinging her rifle back and forth in her exhausted rush forward.

“Player killing!” Masaru says as the mounted warrior resets its charge, only a moment away from its second pass. “He’s a player, right?!” he asks as he looks behind himself to see the galloping horse and its rider.

He slows down a little as the girl releases a stress-filled laugh. “What are you talking about!? Idiot! That’s The Knight. It’ll kill you if you… sir? Hey! Idiot!” She swings around to get Masaru back to pace, but he’s frozen in place.

“It’s…” he takes a moment to realize the rest of his words. “It’s him.”

“Idiot!” she shouts as the lance punches through Masaru. “Idiooooot!”

Masaru never once conceptualized what “impalement upon a medieval-style jousting lance” might have felt like, but now his body understands better than his mind ever could.

All of him shakes from the impact, his organs jostled from the force that struck a massive hole at the base of his collarbone, diagonally across the lung, and out the other side.

It feels like he’s soaring across the field!

Amazing, first a MMORPG, and now a flying sim! The instant gray numbness subsides just enough for him to realize that The Knight’s carrying him along the slope some distance on his lance. Is this the bastard’s way of proclaiming victory?

With a herculean toss, The Knight sends the lance, and Masaru with it, arcing up into the air, and slamming down into the soft green earth.

As the graying aurora of death overtakes him once again, he focuses his gaze toward The Knight, who has already turned away to head back to the rocks.

It’s the same feeling— the same spirit. It’s him. It was always him… or is it even a person that just killed him?

“No… run cute girl… run…” Masaru muses to himself as his lungs fill up with blood and he drifts away with the same, horrible drowning sensation from before.

He does all he can to fight it, but steeling his spirit is no help to the constant flow of his life out from the two critical wounds in his chest.

“What have I gotten myself into?” he ponders as his last good thought floats up into the blood-tinted air of the field at sunset.