With my trusty phantom mirage in hand, I quickly made my way over and took up position as I began my attack. “Guh! Hard!” My sword only left a small scratch on its right leg. I had been expecting this, but just the feeling in my hand as it hit such a hard surface did not feel all that good.

Nonetheless, I still continued to attack. If I did not work hard on trying to get that one percent, then I would be doing this for nothing. I could also tell that the pink-haired thing was working hard as well. I am starting to think that maybe I should call her by her name. How I knew she was working hard was because between all the large spell casts, I could see her small fireballs shooting through the air. Up in my peripheral vision, I could also see her mana slowly going down. 

She was probably doing more damage than I was at this point. So maybe with the two of us combined, we could get that one percent damage. “I need to step up my game….” I mumbled as I continued my attack. 

That battle continued for almost ten minutes before a change in the monster’s attack pattern began to appear. Its large tail suddenly slammed down behind it, making me and everyone else move out of the way as fast as we could. Luckily, I was on the lookout for these kinds of things and had already moved as soon as the tail rose in the air. I even shouted out to those next to me to move as well.

As for those who did not listen, I could only say that I tried. A few people were smashed directly, while quite a few got caught up in the attack and either had half their bodies squished into the ground or were sent flying from the shockwave that happened as the tail hit the ground.

“Thanks! You saved my hide.” One of the guards thanked me before returning to battle. I looked at the men still stuck to the ground and gritted my teeth. It reminded me of my dream when we were fighting that massive monster. The injured were left to rot while we continued fighting. If we stopped for even a second, we could lose everything. 

I took a look at the others rushing back to continue attacking and bit my lip. After taking a deep breath I rushed over to the guard that was still alive and picked him up. “I can’t heal you directly, but I can at least get you away from the battle. Do you have potions on you?”

“Y-Yes….” The guard could barely answer, but it did seem he had something to heal himself with. I nodded and pulled him along. His crushed legs dragged through the dirt. The battle was much more intense than I could have ever imagined it would be.

I quickly made my way outside the battle zone, placed the guard down, took out a potion from his pouch, and fed it to him. “This is the best I can do. I need to help the others.” 

“Thanks… this is enough. If you can get the others over, I should be able to help them. So just leave them here, and I will take care of the rest.” The guard could hardly move, but it seemed he was okay enough to at least try to help out. 

I nodded and smiled from behind my mask. He could not see it, but I am sure my smile was getting across to him. “Then I will leave it to you.”

With that, I set out to help those who were injured and bring them away from the battle. To be honest, I feel kind of sorry for the pink-haired thing since I was not doing any damage, but at this point, I do not think it mattered. My little scrapes were doing, at best, one damage. Magic was more likely to do at least five to ten.

So, I decided to take up the task of helping the injured. The thing about this game was that if an NPC died. It was dead. NPCs did not respawn in this game. While quests were looped until taken, like the unique quests lines, actual death was another thing. Like Mary would have been taken if I did not stop the thugs, but if I had not shown up, she would not have appeared there. At least, this is how I have come to understand it from my dreams. A kind of Schrodinger’s cat in a box theory. We do not know the state of any living being unless we physically see it. There must be an observer for events to happen. Without an observer, there would be no such events. 

It’s a kind of paradox-type question, but there was no other way for me to explain it in simpler terms since the main answer is I do not know. After all, Mary’s quest was not picked up for almost three weeks into the game. I picked it up on the first day. So how many times did Mary suffer under the hands of those thugs if she were to be taken every day? So I can only think that Mary would not appear there unless you did. In other words, the player was responsible for Mary getting cornered by thugs.

Anyway, I was still working hard at pulling the other injured guards to the side. The monster kept flailing its tail about, causing more and more destruction behind it while trying to fight its way through the tanks in the front. But from what I could see, it was only a matter of time before the monster was defeated. I could see that Sir Cliene was about to take action as well.