Broken

Chapter 44

"I don't see why you are calling them over..." I heard the dark haired man of the Northern Paladins mutter as Alex and I approached, causing me to glare at the man. He was average height, with muddy brown eyes, and a bald head.

"You are considered a trainee too, you know?" Eric snapped, glaring right back at the man.

"Tch! I am just hear to raise my star level, not because I'm new. I have years of instance experience!"

I sighed, annoyed to be called over, only to be insulted and ridiculed. Why was it that I had to encounter bastards like this everywhere I went? I trained irritated eyes on my vice guild master, willing him to just get to the point so I could get away from this mess.

"Aoife also has years of experience." Bryce explained, looking none too pleased with the other man. "She might be new to four-stared instances, but she is uniquely experienced in- ah- strange happenings." Bryce explained, shooting me an apologetic look.

"Ha! You mean those rumors about her being 'bad luck'? Were they true all along then?" Grinned the man, as if he had just won some non-existent argument.

"Enough Liam." Jamie sighed, also looking at me with pity. The man named Liam hissed under his breath, but didn't comment further.

Bryce sighed, and urged me forward. Confused, I leaned in and the vice guild master started to whisper in my ear, getting a surprised and curious look from Jamie. "I don't suppose <Broken> is acting up again?" he asked.

Surprised, I shook my head. "No." Still, I used my nifty little item from Yejun to check my skills all the same. No new changes; I still had the low-grade skill I had had when entering the instance. "Though... it is due to change within the next day or so..." I said.

"Hmm..." contemplated Bryce, his hair looking almost silver in the moon light.

"Why, what's happening?" I asked, looking from one man to the other. They were all looking at me, no doubt curious as to why we needed to whisper; at least that is what I assumed the Paladins were thinking.

Returning to his previous hushed- but audible- tones, Bryce explained the situation. "Cat is working on the trap, and though it is tricky, its not the main issue."

"Then what is?" Alex asked, still glaring at the man named Liam.

"Beyond this next corridor is a large open area..."

"We can't be at the boss already?" Asked Alex, confused.

Large open areas in an instance- especially in ones where you were usually confined to small spaces- tended to mean a boss fight. But mazes were usually very long, and so getting to the boss this soon was uncommon. I could see why Bryce was asking about <Broken> now. It would be just my crap luck to have more than one boss pop up in an instance. But all the guild members had been getting used to the ups and downs of <Broken> by now, and knew that with the level of bad karma I had going into this maze, there shouldn't have been something as bad as this happening.

To be honest, we made sure that I had a sensibly low enough skill before coming here. None of us wanted the unexpected to happen while in a high level instance with strangers after all. Still, I had been suspiciously been given rather low leveled skills all this last month. Low level and not very useful either... Hence why I hadn't saved any of them.

"It must be a sub boss." Jamie stated, looking over his shoulder to where Cat was hard at work. "That, or an event..."

"An event in a four-stared instance?" Asked Bryce, eyebrow raised.

'Events' were the term used for unexpected changes in the instance formula. Like waves of monster spawning in, or- using the sealed instance as an example- the appearance of a unique sub-boss. These things were somewhat common in five-star instances, but very uncommon other wise. But, given I had come across one in a sealed three-star I really had no room to say that it was impossible.