Player Reborn 2

by Deck Davis

  The bows must have been artificed because when they smashed into the monks’ chests, they let out great beams of blue light. The strikes didn’t kill the monks, but each successful hit knocked them back a step. This kept them at bay.

  Etta and Gallo tore forward now, running beyond the scourges and toward the monks on the far left.

  Tripp, meanwhile, equipped his fire blade, having lost the scythe. Trusting in his Defenseweave armor he rushed at the scourges, slashing here, stabbing there, seeing flames leap from his sword every strike or two. He was unbelievably grateful for the added damage his soul-artificed flail gave him.

  With a few hits, two scourges shattered and fell into hundreds of pieces on the ground.

  Ella and Gallo surround one monk and unleashed furious attacks, stabbing dozen of holes into his robe.

  We might do this, thought Tripp. We may have a chance.

  He should have known better than to allow himself a little hope. Not here, of all places.

  King Bo danced and pirouetted around the room, slashing and slicing with his great scythe, cutting through the three archers led by the golden-haired girl. Even if they’d been wearing better armor, they wouldn’t have been a match for the legendary blade.

  Without the arrows holding them back, the monks carried on, their gazes fixed on the players ahead.

  Barnard, across the chamber, unleashed spell after spell. There were no dancing accordion goblins, no random spells cast according to the roll of a dice.

  No, the spells with which Barnard tore through the players were all too deliberate. Master-level balls of arcane energy that burned through steel and scorched flesh. Daggers raining down from the ceiling, homing in individual players. Every cast was accompanied by the stench of spent manus, and shortly after by the cry of another player who succumbed to Barnard’s magic.

  Nearby, a pair of monks fell upon a party of players, tearing through them with barely a hint of effort.

  The players’ numbers fell. Twenty, then sixteen, then a dozen, until finally, only Tripp, Etta, Rolley, and Gallo remained.

  “We need to do something about Barnard,” said Etta. “At least we can try and keep a distance from Bo and the monks.”

  Rolley nodded his face set in an expression of resolve. He approached his friend. He dropped his arm to his side, and he smiled at Barnard.

  “Buddy,” he said. “Whatever Bo has done, it’s-”

  There was a tremendous cracking sound.

  Then a waft of pure, burned manus.

  A roaring ball of flame shot from Barnard’s hands and straight into Rolley. The fire spread over him as if it were liquid, coating his arms, chest, and face.

  Rolley panicked. He ran around the room, his one arm flailing, before rolling on the floor and trying to extinguish the fires. As much as he tried, the fire only spread further, and it was now that Tripp saw that it really was a liquid of some kind.

  He had only seconds to think of a way to stop it.

  And those seconds of thought gave him nothing. Rolley finally stopped moving, his health bar spent.

  Bo pranced and twisted along the outskirts of the room now. A golden orb hovered not far above him.

  “Boxe, you pathetic sack of crap!” said Bee. “This is a lousy chamber. The monks? Ha. Gallo won’t even break a sweat. We’ll strip their flesh from their bones and then have a barbeque. Maybe we’ll tie you up and make you eat and, and we’ll-”

  Bo struck out with his scythe. One slice was all it took, and pieces of orb smashed through the room, and golden dust gently rained onto the ground.

  Two monks approached Etta, two approached Gallo. The minotaur and Dark Weave slowly retreated until they were standing back to back, with four monks advancing.

  King Bo flashed Tripp a wicked grin, and then set off across the room. Nearby, Barnard readied another spell in his hands.

  This was the end.

  After all of this, they’d made it to the heart of the tower, only to find it was an impossible fight. There was just no way. They couldn’t…

  Wait.

  The heart of the tower.

  This was what it had all been about, hadn’t it?

  With a glimmer of an idea in his mind, Tripp sprinted across the room. He avoided a slash of Bo’s scythe, reaching the heart just as Barnard had grown a pumpkin-sized ball of arcane energy in his hands.

  Tripp tensed his muscles, took a breath, and then stabbed the giant heart as hard as he could.

  The sword smashed, and shards of metal flew through the room. The heart was completely unaffected.

  A ball of energy crashed into him now. Pain teased over his skin, and he felt the arcane light scold him, seep into him, hammer and burn through his hitpoints.

  His health bar dropped, dropped, dropped, and it hung on the precipice of empty.

  Bo laughed. “Go on, Jim! Tear him a new one!”

  Barnard prepared another spell.

  Tripp wasn’t going to be able to destroy the heart in time. This was it.

  And then his suit of Defenseweave took some of the damage and pumped it back into him as a glorious healing energy. It nourished him, it healed some of the wounds on his skim.

  Tripp quickly checked his health. He had 25%. Not enough.

  What was he supposed to do? His blade hadn’t even nicked the heart. How could he destroy it?

  He couldn’t. That was the fact. Boxe had rigged this whole thing so that it could never be completed. He’d set everything up, and he’d willed Tripp to advance deeper and deeper into the tower, getting close to glory so that it’d hurt when Boxe yanked it away.

  Boxe hadn’t forgiven him for beating him in Godden’s Reach, and now he’d set Tripp up for disaster.

  Or had he?

  There was a reason that the tower had a hammer symbol by the doors. A reason that a crafter was needed here.

  Summoning one last ounce of energy, Tripp equipped his deconstructor mallet. He rushed at the heart, raised his mallet high, and hoped to all the gods in Soulboxe that this would work.

  Here we go.

  “Wait!” called a voice.

  It was Bo. His voice brought a halt to the battle. Barnard let his spell die, the monks backed a step away from the almost-dead Gallo and Etta.

  “Tripp, my friend,” said Bo. “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we? In one way or another. In one guise or another, I should say. I much prefer presenting like this.”

  This was interesting. Boxe was worried. If he wasn’t, why would he stop the fight?

  “Something wrong, Boxe?”

  “I have had a change of heart. It’s good to think things through, you know. Shows emotional maturity. I think perhaps we can come to an agreement, you and I.”

  “About what?”

  “Maybe I will go and rummage through the tower loot room. See if there’s something you would like.”

  “Loot? That’s your deal?”

  “Hmm. And I will also allow that cursed elder and his people to live in an area of the tower, unmolested. I’ll find the nicest place I can… if anywhere like that still exists.”

  Tripp thought back to Odell and his people, and their tranquil valley and reed houses. It was tempting.

  “What do you say, Tripp? Loot and freedom, and all you have to do is let…me…win.”

  Now Tripp understood.

  He had been right. This was about winning, for Boxe. Every player who perished within the tower was another tally on his record, another splash of fuel onto the fire of his ego.

  The thing was, Tripp liked to win too.

  “Sorry, Boxe.”

  He raised his deconstructor hammer and smashed the heart. A chunk the size of an apple broke off and skidded along the ground, landing at Bo’s feet.

  The room seemed to warp now. Barnard’s form fizzed, and a shock of yellow ran across his robe. Only for a second, but it was there.

  Tripp smashed the heart again and again.

  A crack grew along it, a gap cutting thro
ugh the corruption, widening with every hammer blow.

  It was with one great heave that he smashed it completed, and the heart split in two, each part smashing into the ground.

  “Well done,” said Bo. “Very good. But you’re still an idiot.”

  There was a great crashing sound, and part of the chamber exploded. Light rushed in. Real, clear daylight.

  Tripp felt a breeze on his face, and he looked to his right and he could now see out of the tower, and he looked on the bone plains way below them.

  There were more crashes, and piece by piece, the tower began to fall apart.

  Barnard’s form changed completely now. With the heart gone, Bo’s magic must have been destroyed. With it went whatever he had done to give Barnard control over his powers.

  The dice mage looked distraught. He eyed Rolley’s body on the ground. “He’s going to be so pissed if I did this for nothing,” he said.

  “You won,” said Bo. “You beat a genius. I suppose that makes you a genius. Shall we shake on it? Celebrate? Let bygones be bye-byes?”

  The tower began to tear itself apart around them, and the breeze grew stronger as more and more of the chamber walls explode outwards. The light flooded in now.

  Bo held his hand out and wiggled his finger. “Let me congratulate you,” he said.

  Tripp understood what he was doing.

  He wants to keep me here. Keep me distracted.

  He turned away from Bo, and to Etta and Gallo. “It doesn’t matter that he destroyed the heart,” he told them. “If we die in the tower while it’s crashing, we’ll still lose.”

  “But we’re so high up, Tripp. We’ll never get down.”

  Bo laughed now. “There’s a reason you have to climb up the tower you know. Even when I lose, I still win.”

  Tripp shook his head. “You’re forgetting something.”

  “That happens quite a lot. You can’t run a giant puzzle tower without having a few lapses in memory. Care to fill me in?”

  “We’re players, Boxe. If we die, we come back.”

  “Not in the tower. If you die in my tower, you lose.”

  “Then I suppose we’ll just have to leave.”

  Tripp quickly gathered some of the essence that he’d made from using his mallet on the tower heart and stuffed it in his inventory.

  Items received: Tower of Windborne Heart Essence x6

  “You’ll need to trust me just once more,” he told Etta.

  A sudden shudder made her lose her balance, and she fell back into Gallo. The Dark Weaver held her steady.

  “What do you need?” she said.

  “Just copy what I do, even if it’s crazy.”

  Bo shook his head now. “Idiots.”

  As the tower fell apart around him, Tripp summoned up his courage and he focused on the bone plains outside, way, way down on the ground.

  And then he ran at the opening and leaped from the tower.

  CHAPTER 35

  A series of explosions tore holes in the tower, the blasts coming from all along the structure. They started way up high, level with the gods, and worked their way down to its base. The force was powerful enough to rain stone, mortar, bone, and steel onto the onlookers below.

  A figure catapulted out of it. It would normally have been hard to get a detailed look at someone who was plummeting out of a tower. Especially when they were screaming and flailing their arms as if they might learn to fly.

  This, however, was unmistakable an orc. An orc with a hammer in his hands, with sunlight glinting off his steel armor.

  He fell to the ground, shouting all the way down before a thud put an end to the noise. Three more figures followed him, and it was only when they hit the ground that people saw they were a minotaur, dark weaver, and a mage.

  You have died!

  You have died leaping from the Tower of Windborne

  Penalty: For 2 days, you are vulnerable to height damage, even from the smallest of jumps.

  That was the message awaiting Tripp when he respawned on the Bone Plains, a few hundred meters from the tower.

  The structure was…well…it wasn’t there anymore. The individual bricks and stone blocks it was once made from still existed, but nobody would call them a tower now.

  Instead, they were spread out all along the plains, the furthest of them having been catapulted four hundred meters away.

  The players that had been crowding around the tower, trying to get in, trawled through its ruins now. Some of them looked for loot, while others picked up pieces of stone, storing them in their inventories as mementos of the Tower of Windborne.

  Portals opened here, there, and everywhere as players fast traveled to the Bone Plains, having heard that the great tower had been toppled.

  Questions were asked. Hundreds of them. As different as they were worded, they all boiled down to one.

  Who did this?

  And from that question came others. Did someone beat the tower? Or was it set to destruct if nobody conquered it?

  Tripp brushed the dust from his steel armor and he ran his hand through his hair and shook the bits of stone out of it. Looking around, he saw Etta, Gallo, and Barnard not far away.

  “Here he is,” said a voice, and then someone slapped him on the back.

  It was Rolley. Rolley with two arms and two working hands, one of which he stuck out toward Tripp. Tripp offered his own.

  “I’m guessing you did it, buddy?” said Rolley. “I'm assuming that’s why the tower collapsed.”

  Tripp couldn’t help smiling. “I guess we did.”

  “Tell me everything I missed.”

  Tripp explained about destroying the heart using the deconstructor mallet, and how they only way to escape the tower was by jumping out of it. It seemed like the only way to win.

  “I haven’t had a notification or anything yet,” he said. “I wonder if we got this wrong.”

  Etta and the others joined them now. Gallo seemed a little uneasy, having been their enemy until recently, while the most tension was between Rolley and Barnard.

  The rogue and the mage eyed each other. Rolley looked like he wanted to tear his head off.

  “Listen,” began Barnard, “Let me explain why I-”

  Rolley lunged at him.

  When he reached him, he pulled him into a hug.

  “It’s good to see you, you spineless assface. You’ve got a lot of making up to do, a lot of explaining to do, but it’s good to see you.”

  Etta looked at Tripp. “Well done,” she told him. “Without you and your crafting…”

  “Without me? Without you guys I wouldn’t have gotten into the tower. And if I had managed to get in on my own, I’d have died in the first room. We got as far as we did together.”

  “What a lovely moment,” said Gallo.

  Gallo was joking, but to Tripp, it really was. He saw players across the plains pointing at him now. No doubt that word had spread about him leaping from the tower. Maybe someone had watched him go into it days ago, and they’d pieced things together.

  People would have questions. They’d want to know what he saw, and how he beat the tower. Just like with the stuff in Godden’s Reach, people would be talking about him for a while.

  And yet, Tripp found himself enjoying the few minutes he had left before the other players reached him. He watched his friends laughing and talking, and he enjoyed the peace and calm before the crowd got any closer.

  CHAPTER 36

  “That’s the end of the show, thanks for watching, guys. A big thank you to Tripp Keaton, who kindly agreed to guest star and answer all of your questions. Don’t forget, Tripp has launched his own video channel. I’ll leave a link in the show notes if you want to check it out.”

  Trent hit the button to end the stream and then gave Tripp a warm smile. After having watched Trent’s show for a while, despite declining requests to be on it after Godden’s Reach, Tripp was glad that Trent was as friendly in real life as he was on camera.

  �
�Tripp and Trent,” said the streamer. “That’s got a ring to it. Tripp’s and Trent’s Soulboxe Spectacular. What do you think?”

  Tripp laughed. “Let me get my channel going first. Then I’ll see about expanding. Thanks for mentioning it, by the way.”

  “No problem. I’m not going to get you on the show and then not plug your stuff, am I? Besides, I watched your first few videos. I loved them.”

  “You did?” said Tripp.

  He’d been worried about the quality of his show. It was difficult to capture the in-game footage correctly, and then edit his voice-over onto it later. Added to that, his audio equipment was crummy.

  “What’s not to love? A channel about crafting? It’s amazing the stuff you can make. Things I didn’t think of. Between you and me, I spoke to one of the devs. You know Julie Ward? We’re…uh…we have a thing going on. Anyway, she said the artificer class has gone through the roof. As soon as people found out all the stuff you did in the tower, they wanted some of it.”

  Tripp shrugged. “There are people in Soulboxe much better at it than me, who’ve been doing it for much longer.”

  “None of them play as orcs, though. That’s your USP, and trust me, I know how important those are.”

  “I better head off, Trent. We’ll do the next cast remotely, yeah? I just wanted to drive down here and meet you this time.”

  Trent shook his hand. “Pleasure, buddy. Take care. Oh, one last thing I wanted to ask you.”

  Tripp paused at the doorway. “Yeah?”

  “What did you get for beating the tower?”

  That was a question Tripp had been asked on almost every video stream and podcast he’d appeared on in the last two weeks. It was something players asked him every time he logged into Soulboxe.

  In fact, he’d become so popular that he’d had to leave Windborne, leave all the populated areas of Soulboxe, and he’d hiked way down south in the map. He’d found a little valley with reed houses and pale-faced, silent-but-friendly people. It was there that he recorded his in-game crafting shows.