Chapter 5

Jack has no idea what is going on back at town, he's still running for dear life. After roughly 10 minutes he slows down as he cannot hear anyone chasing them and Jessica proceeds to trip over forcing them both to stop.

Looking down at Jessica on the ground, Jack has no idea how he should start to process what happened. He woke up in bed with a strange woman who says he rescued her and before he could work out anything, he was chased by far too many guards that seemingly wanted to kill him or at least seriously injure.

He lets out a frustrated roar, causing many of the birds close by to take flight. Jessica also looks at him somewhat scared about what will happen next, she has no idea why any of this happened either as she just wanted to find somewhere to work and continue on with her life.

"Jack…" she says his name quietly causing Jack to look at her in the eyes, this is the first time she has said his name and he can feel the concern in her voice. Her expressive eyes showing that she cares about him, even if they've only known each other for a few hours and she was the cause of this situation he can't help but let go of his frustrations.

"It's fine, I'm fine, can't change what has happened. What about you? Are you hurt?" he asks her.

She shakes her head indicating that she's fine, clearly exhausted but otherwise fine. He takes a deep breath to calm himself down and starts to think about the future.

They are clearly near multiple towns; Jessica was able to get to Feather Town from her village that was destroyed recently so perhaps there is an area close by that will be suitable to place his city creation stone down.

Jack is standing there ruminating in silence, considering his future plans while he's worried about the fallout from what just happened he feels that his only option is to ask Jessica about the local area as she should have grown up nearby.

Jessica quickly explains the region to him, the region is called Fields of Sorrow. There are 5 system cities within the region but she has never been to any of them as it was too far for her to walk. Her village was called Dragon Peach Village, they produced a specialty peach that was said to contain traces of Dragon blood.

No one could ever prove that the peaches contain any Dragon Blood but that didn't stop people from enjoying the taste of it. The village was always under the protection of the nearest large town but two weeks ago, bandits raided the town and killed 90% of the inhabitants while digging up the peach groves and taking them away.

Jessica wasn't at home when the bandits attacked but as her family had long since perished, she had no reason to rush back to help protect the town. When she arrived back, the bandits had long left with their loot and all the dead bodies were scattered around the town. The man that had been courting her since childhood and she was starting to warm up to, was also killed.

Heartbroken she joined the survivors in heading to the nearest town to find out why they didn't protect Dragon Peach Village but when they got there, they discovered the bandits carrying the peach trees through the town walls. Many people tried to question the Mayor but they were quickly arrested or killed.

Jessica snuck away from the group of villagers and joined a merchant travelling to Feather Town and that's where she met Jack. The local area has a few villages and 8 towns of 5,000 to 10,000 but she doesn't know where exactly they are.

There is a large area of plains to the south where it's rumoured that a previous empire had their capital city. There's even a legend that is spread around but no one can prove which goes:

To the South of the Mountain of Hope, to the East of the Sea of Dreams, to the West of Ocean of Tears and to the north of the valley of death, there lay an empire slumbering beneath the surface.

The Empress has been awaiting her emperor to relieve the curse afflicting the empire but that Emperor has never appeared so in sadness, she ordered the Empire to dig beneath the surface to never see the light of day until the promised Emperor appears to cure the curse and lead them to the stars.

The legend is passed down as a tale to scare women into finding an appropriate husband to follow. The legend is called: The story of the Stone Phoenix Empress. People believe that she turned into a stone statue of a Phoenix that is located at the very centre of that old Empire capital but no one has been able to find it.

Jack is largely uninterested in the legend, it's not something that he needs to worry about right now. The large field of plains might be the location that he dug that big hole so he asks her a few questions about the fields.

"Field of Sorrows does indeed have a plains area that is full of a few small hills and nothing around it for a long time, any village or city that is built there never lasts more than a year so it's mostly empty. A few strong monsters can be seen around the area and people believe the lake is poisoned, why?" Jessica bluntly replies, clearly the area is well known for her to know anything about it considering her small village.

"Oh, earlier today when I was with the Merchants I heard them saying that there might be a Dragon that appeared near the field as everyone heard a loud roar coming from that direction" she added.

This greatly surprises Jack as he remembers what sounded like a Dragon roar resounding when the city creation stone absorbed that glowing white line. Not really knowing how to explain it to Jessica, he drops the subject.

Not knowing what to do and having nowhere to go, he just looks up in the sky and notices the Sun in all its glory hanging in the sky. He can feel his motivation returning to him, as though some clouds that were hanging in his mind were blown away by the bright sunlight.

He makes a decision to head back to where he was, near where he dug the hole, Jessica just said there should be a lake near the hill which even if it's poisonous, there should be a solution. He can place down his city creation stone there and that'll give him a couple of years to develop before he might need to move it due to the curse or whatever causes cities unable to stay for longer than a year.

Jack starts to tell Jessica about his plans to go to the plains and look for the lake, she looks at him like he's stupid. 'How can anyone think it's a good idea to start a city there?' she curses inwardly that she got Jack mixed up in everything and feels responsible for part of what is happening to him. They both talk for a few minutes and decide to find a village close by, rent or buy some horses and go travel there.

They're still near Feather Town and with all the commotion going on there, they need to quickly leave the area so after resting up a few more minutes they start walking in a random direction. Jack feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest with this move, as though this plan will really give him a solid base for his future in 'The World' which is truly a revolutionary gaming experience that they advertised it as.

Jack and Jessica continue on foot through a rather dense forest, chatting now and then but mostly keeping silent so that they don't alert anyone to their presence or worse, a monster. Jack has very little combat experience, especially with a sword and Jessica has no skills outside tending to a grove of Dragon Peaches.

*AWOO*

As they're walking they hear some howling in the distance, followed by more howling further away in response. Jack and Jessica both look at each other, worry in their eyes but they can't see anything around them and they should be upwind from where the noise came from. Jack's curiosity gets the better of him and he signals for Jessica to follow closely behind him and keep silent as they creep up to where the noise came from.

They reach an opening in the forest, it's a small field that has roughly 10 wolves that are circling and attacking a group of horses. The wolves look like your standard wolf from Earth, except their teeth look much sharper. The horses look quite different from Earthly ones, they're rather large and coloured purple with some armour plating over their backs and a single horn coming out of the biggest horse.

*Snarl* *snap*

A wolf proceeds to take down one of the smaller horses, piercing its neck and quickly collapsing to the ground powerlessly. Jessica sees the scene in front of her and shuts her eyes, tugging at Jack to say she wants to go. Jack just ignores her, keeping his eyes on the two leaders of the animals. He can see intelligence in both of them.

A wolf attempts to jump at the leader Horse trying to bring it down, but it just rears up and gives it a solid kick with its hind legs causing the wolf to just crumple on the ground. Two other wolves attack from another direction, while one brings down another smaller Horse while the large one is distracted.

Upon seeing that there's only two horses left and 4 wolves, Jack decides that this is over and he doesn't want to be here when the wolves finish dealing with the group and signals to Jessica for them to leave.

She takes a step, *SNAP* a stick on the ground is loudly snapped in half causing all the animals attention to shift to where the noise was. Their positions now exposed, Jack steps forward and draws out his sword.

The wolf sensing how weak Jack is, ignores him as they will be able to easily deal with them later. They continue to attack the Horse, but something strange starts to happen. The Horse starts to glow purple; one could almost hear some lightning crackle as the purple gets deeper in colour.

The sky quickly starts to gather clouds, dark clouds as though there will be a massive storm. Jack can clearly see what's happening but he has no idea what it is, he's just standing there like an idiot.

"Get behind the rock!" Jessica loudly shouts, pulling Jack while she dives behind the rock.

The wolf can see what's going on in the sky and sends out a command telling all the others to run away but it's too late. The crackling sound starts to get more intense and then suddenly a bright light shines down from the heavens and lands directly on the Horse.

*BOOM* a huge explosion sounds out, the Horse standing at the epicentre of the explosion falls down on the ground along with the others next to it. The wolves are worse, they're all burnt to a crisp apart from the leader who is now laying powerlessly on the ground whimpering.

Jack crawls out from behind the rock and looks at the destruction caused by the lightning, the 300m surrounding the horse is entirely barely with a somewhat large pit where the lightning landed. The large Horse looks like it's passed out.

The destruction caused by the lightning is intense, the trees were all turned into splinters with several fires on the outskirts of the damage. Jack tries to take it all in, his forehead covered in cold sweat, if Jessica didn't warn him would he even have a body to recover?

He wants to leave the area because other creatures will surely catch up, perhaps even people from Feather Town and they certainly don't want to be hanging around when they catch up. He starts to leave but the familiar yet unfamiliar voice resounds in his head.

"User, king bloodlines detected recommend subduing creatures" it says without any further information.

Jack pauses his steps and takes another look at the creatures on the ground, the horses are still passed out but the wolf is slowly trying to stand up rather pitifully. He looks at Jessica, she seems worried and upon looking closely, sees her ears are bleeding.

"Wait here for a while, I have to do something" he says while tearing a few bits of cloth from his shirt, balling them up and placing them over her ears, her face blushes as she takes over holding the cloth on her ears from Jack. She has never had anyone care for her like this before, she doesn't know how to handle her feelings or her heart that feels like it's beating faster when she thinks about those feelings.

Jack just slowly makes his way over to the animals and decides to give subduing the wolf a try first, if it's left any longer then it's likely that it'll run away. Jack slowly approaches the Wolf, step by step he's getting closer, the wolf can clearly see him getting closer and starts to growl and snarl but is ultimately powerless.

He appears infront of the wolf, his hand on his sword as he speaks to the Wolf.

"Submit to me, I will treat you well and will not harm you" he says in a calm voice.

The wolf starts to growl even deeper with a crazed look in its eyes, as though it wants to lunge at Jack and rip out his throat this moment. Jack can see that it isn't working and he's unsure what to do.

Jack randomly decides that maybe touching it will prove to the wolf that he has no malicious intentions, so he reaches out his hand at the vicious wolf that is still snarling and sometimes snapping with its large mouth full of sharp teeth.

His hand almost reaches the wolf's head but instead the wolf manages to get a bite on Jack's hand as it's being pulled away to safety. A large gash appears on the back of Jack's hand that stings but some blood manages to drop into the wolf's mouth.

Pissed off at the wolf, Jack punches it in the head and it's knocked out cold. Luckily it's still breathing or it would've been entirely pointless. The wolf is now passed out so Jack makes his way over to the horses while wrapping his hand in another piece of cloth.

He's not sure how to make a passed out animal submit to him so he reaches out and touches the horse's forehead and feels the horn. It feels rather smooth instead of coarse and rough like a rhino horn. A couple of drops of blood drip from Jack's hand onto the horn which causes a lightning crackle to happen.

This startles Jack but ultimately he is still stuck, these animals are all unconscious and he really doesn't want to stay around here much longer. He starts to shake the leader Horses head trying to wake it up, he tries to slap it but nothing works.

A few minutes later there is a stirring noise next to him, one of the smaller horses are waking up. Jack walks over to it and says in a calm tone, "Submit to me and I'll look after you".

The horse quickly tries to stand up but falls down and makes a loud whinny, causing the other 2 horses to also stir awake who then proceed to make the same whinny noise. The sounds quickly cause the leader Horse to wake up and look at Jack.

Jack looks at the leader horse in its eyes and repeats in a calm tone, "Submit to me, I'll look after you all" as he holds out his hand and slowly approaches the leader horse. The horse raises its head and then lowers it causing the horn on its head to pass through Jack's hand.

Jack lets out a wince while Jessica can be heard screaming in the background causing the wolf to stir awake too, the horse just looks at Jack in his eyes as Jack repeats his line.

"Submit to me!" he loudly shouts as he punches the horses head getting it to pull its horn from his hand. The horse closes its eyes as though it's thinking, the other horses around it are also making some neighing noises.

Suddenly prompts appears;

'Lightning Scaled Horse King submits to you, do you accept?'

'Grey Wolf King submits to you, do you accept?'

Jack has no idea what caused the change but he quickly accepts the prompts and collapses on the ground, holding his hand as he lets out a few loud yells of pain. This lasts a few moments as Jessica quickly runs over to Jack not caring about the animals.

"What happened?" she asks him, slathering some grasses on to the wound and wrapping it in a bandage.

"They submitted to me, now we don't have to look for some horses" Jack replies with a smile, wincing from the pain but trying to hide it from Jessica.

"Oh" Jessica says while still wrapping up his hand not paying much attention to his words.