Evolution: A Warlock’s Rise To Power

Lucan stepped through the green portal to find a city floating in the clouds before him.  This was Zephyr city of the wind quadrant in the elemental plane.

Spirits and elementals floated past him as they moved to enter the city.

Lucan took a scroll out of his bag and checked its contents again.  It was portrait of the NPC that Gilbuzz wanted sent back to the nine hells.  The warlock didn't consider the mission too hard.  The only difficult part was finding the person, but with Super's help he was already on the trail.  Once he found the person it was only a matter of opening a portal and letting the person fall through.

He quickly got in line to enter the city and prepared to buy the information he needed.  Super had given him the name of an inn where the person was spotted a day ago, that is where he would start.

A few hours later, after handing out over a hundred pieces of gold, three different people had told him that Gildo Robbins was out hunting west of the city in Windy Pass.

With a general location, he boarded his flying carpet and set off towards his new destination.  Now Lucan only needed to lay eyes on him.  He just hopped that the ninja wasn't the type to remain in stealth the entire time.  That would make things more difficult.

***

PapaSmurf watched as the demonic forces activated the formation from the other side.  The people trapped in the central square were quickly withering as every essence of their being was sucked out and used a catalyst to summon Gahzan from the Abyss.

He was very pleased with himself.  He had accomplished his mission.  Everything was now out of his hands, now he only needed to sit back and reap the benefits.  The demons would take care of the drow for him and then he would be the king of his own country.

One by one the people trapped in the central square began to fall and turn to dust.  Dark clouds began to gather overhead at an unnatural speed.

The members of Dark Web began to grow excited.  They were anticipating the moment when the demon prince stepped into the material realm.

But there was one who wasn't excited. As a loud crack of thunder rang out, PapaSmurf frowned.  He had summoned demons from the Abyss before, but never had the summoning been accompanied by changes in the weather.

Before he could alert his companions a large bolt of lightning struck a building at the far end of the central square followed by another loud clap of thunder.

The building remained standing but caught on fire.  On its top stood a clocked figure.

"Get ready to fight!"  PapaSmurf called out while pulling his longsword out of its sheath.

"He, he, he."  The cloaked figure laughed.  "What do we have here?"

"Who are you?  This isn't a place you should interfere."  PapaSmurf yelled towards the person on top of the burning building.

"Oh me?  I was just passing by and thought I would pick up some spoils.  My, my, look at all these red names.  What a fortune waiting to be claimed."

"Don't push your luck."  PapaSmurf said.  With a wave of his hand, he signaled the rooftop archers to take down the intruder.

The archers that had been replaced by shadow illusions ignored his commands and continued to lookout out over the square.

"Rebo."  PapaSmurf called out to an archer that was standing a few feet away from him and instructed him to act.

The player pulled out his bow and grabbed an arrow.  He was ready to pull back the bowstring when the crack of a rifle echoed through the square.

*Bang*

***

Tracker92 watched as the head in his scope jerked.  His shot had taken away two thirds of the players health.  When his saw DarkX_XAssassin appear behind the player, he knew that the archer wouldn't survive.

He dropped the butt of his rifle from his shoulder and began to pour black powder down the barrel. Next, he stuffed a piece of wadding in followed by a small spherical ball before he used a long rod to tamp it down.  He re-shouldered the rifle and replaced the blasting cap on the end of the hammer.

Putting the scope back up to his eye he scanned the square again.

***

"It is an ambush!  Find the sniper."  PapaSmurf shouted as an assassin sprinted away from him after Rebo turned gray and disappeared.  "Kill them all."

*Bang*

The crack of a rifle echoed again.  This time PapaSmurf lost half his health.

"In the bell tower!  The sniper is in the bell tower."  He yelled out while diving for cover.

The casters and archers looked towards the bell tower that was eight hundred meters away.  The range of their spells and arrows made it so that they would have to leave the square and get closer to the tower if they wanted to damage the sniper.

Three players broke off from the central square and started running towards the bell tower while staying close to the buildings so the sniper couldn't get a clean shot off against them.

"I will come too."  Said a fourth person who joined up with them.

"Thanks Merc513.  Watch our backs as we go up the tower."

*Bang*

PapaSmurf cursed as he saw another one of his teammates lose half of his health to the sniper.

A group of five on the other side of the square moved towards the burning building when their two spellcasters finished chanting their spells.

Barrage of fireballs and stone bullets decimated the structure causing it to crumble.  The melee fighters rushed in from multiple directions to try and take advantage of the moment when the cloaked figure would be buried in the rubble.  Before they could get near shadows began to swirl as the figure materialized in front of the collapsed store.

"ARE YOU ALL USELESS!  KILL THEM!  KILL THEM NOW!"  PapaSmurf was starting ot get a little frazzled as the cloaked figure never took his eyes off of him even while his men charged towards him.

There was no stopping the demon summoning at this point but there was a big difference between welcome Gahzan with his guild and welcoming the demon prince with his dead body.  If the demons though he was weak or unreliable, they would not hesitate to abandon him.

As three melee fighters charged towards the man who never broke eye contact with PapaSmurf reached into his cloak and pulled out two double barrel hand crossbows and pointed them in opposite directions.  He fired both bolts without bothering to aim.

SuperSleuth was an elementalist and a hunter.  He was loved and favored by nature.  As the crossbow bolts veered a little wide, a gust of wind blew and pushed them back on track. Two of the melee fighters each received two crossbow bolts to the chest, all while Super kept staring at PapaSmurf while walking towards the guild leader.

*Bang*

The sniper fired again.  Landing a head shot on one of the injured melee fighters, causing him ot fall to the ground, turn gray and disappear.

Super dropped the two hand crossbow without bothering to store them away and reached into his cloak again, this time drawing two scimitars.

*Rumble* *Boom*

Rain started to fall on the central square.