That Wasn't the Plan

by Jason Cheek

  I couldn’t even think as the assaults came non-stop while my vision seemed to darken. My shoulder broke and my ribcage snapped with a horrible sound that stopped me from being able to breathe. My hit points were in the low hundreds and falling quickly, when new life suddenly began filling my body.

  At first, I thought it was a joke as blood ran from my lips and eyes from the terrible onslaught. That was, until I heard the sounds of battle around me. As another wave of healing washed over my abused body instantly filling my hit points up to eight hundred health, I had enough awareness to cast Light Word of Censor on top of me. Immediately, the torturous attacks suddenly stopped as the horse-sized lizards fell on top of me withering in agony.

  The weight was too much for my weakened body to take as I began suffocating to death. Where their horrendous attacks had failed to kill me, their combined mass was succeeding. If not for the constant heals washing over my body, I would have been dead. Although it felt like an eternity, the crushing weight seemed to be lessening as ferocious growls filled my ears. A second later, I was drenched in blood as the last oversized lizard was lifted from me.

  Rough hands dragged me to my feet as saw the familiar furry face of Lyeneru in her Werebear form urgently looking me over. I couldn’t hear the words she was saying over the blood rushing in my ears from the agony of my body. While the Healing Breeze had healed parts of my damaged body, it hadn’t been able to fully heal my shattered bones as I whimpered in agony. She urgently shouted something at me, before I was unceremoniously dumped to the ground as new sounds of battle broke out around me.

  My hoarse breath wheezed in my ears as I focused enough to cast Minor Mend Bones. Immediately, the pain in my legs, chest, and shoulder began to subside like a bad dream as I hit myself with another Regeneration. It wasn’t that the Healing Breeze didn’t heal bones, it just wasn’t as good at it as my Light magic spells. As my senses came back to me, I climbed to my hands and knees. My shield was still strapped tightly to my arm, but I had to search the frozen tundra for my Vicious Executioner's Axe of Cruelty. As my hand wrapped around the weapon’s smooth shaft, I felt a familiar presence next to me as a pair of green hands helped me to my feet.

  ‘Thank you, Helgath,’ I mentally said, breathing a sigh of relief as I saw that she was okay. Like me, she was covered in blood and viscera, but had been fully healed up. Although most of her black armor had been ripped to shreds, it still covered enough to not let anything important hang out. Seeing her yellow cat-eyes anxiously looking me over, I gave her a one-armed hug as I scanned the ongoing battle going on around us, while I checked my HUD’s raid interface to see who was dead.

  Somehow, the Uten Syn guild had turned the tide of battle. Everywhere I looked, I saw the newfar fighting for their lives in Werewolf and Werebear forms while groups of Guardians cast Healing Breeze. Between the constant group heals, the rest of the Guardians assisted where they could with their low-level weapons. They seemed to be backing up my companions who were holding the front lines.

  I realized that the comment of “front line” wasn’t exactly correct. Our raid had packs of predators on each side trying to take us down. The battle my eyes had focused on was happening near the ridge where it looked like several groups had aggro’d onto the raid from the far side of the hill. In the middle of it all, I could see Neristhana’s Leeching Hand-Axe of Severing leading the way. Her slim body twisted and leaped into the air in impressive spinning attacks with Ulia and Rayne nearby wielding their swords as the players in Werebear and Werewolf forms fought beside them with a savagery that had to be seen to be believed. Seeing that their portion of the fight was under control, my eyes searched for the rest of my friends.

  The raid interface reported that Yun, Tinyr, and Unalia were the only ones down. Quickly, I selected Yun from the menu and began casting resurrection as my eyes searched for the rest of my friends. I found them a moment later. Well, Sarka and Fylreh at least. They were both fighting a pack of Elite Large Rock Wolves from atop a pile of lizard corpses with a bunch of Uten Syn guildmates at their backs. I recognized Krishna and Gaelin standing along with them, but no one else as the wolf pack was slowly whittled down.

  Sarka’s Defensive Warrior build allowed her to mitigate a massive amount of damage, besides allowing her to protect against multiple incoming attacks. Up until now, I’d never had a chance to watch her in action. Unsurprisingly enough, she was impressive as hell throwing back the feral beasts with blood encrusted hair whipping behind her with every strike. While her attacks weren’t devastating like a DPS Warrior’s build, in a group battle like this, she was the rock that held the line together.

  The filly wasn’t any slacker either. Fylreh’s scimitars flashed with brutal efficiency as she sliced the enemies’ hit points away with each strike, while her hooves lashed out to crush the skulls of the fallen. They were a force to be reckoned with as they held the line while the Uten Syn guild backed them up so they couldn’t be surrounded again.

  As my spell for Yun completed, I hit him with a Regeneration and started on resurrecting Unalia next just as Neysa padded up next to me. The Silver Dire Wolf looked like hell as she leaned her shoulder against me. Her coat was covered in gore and blood. Although the Healing Breeze had healed her wounds and replaced her hair, one look at her enraged, golden eyes told me she’d been through a shit storm and survived like the rest of us.

  With our soulbound connection, we didn’t need to talk to settle our nerves. Just being near my soulmates helped to settle the turmoil in my mind from the near death experience. This battle was like the attacks from Large Forest Wolves from my first night in the game … but on steroids. Pushing the fear from my thoughts, I focused on doing what was necessary to save my friends from having to suffer a similar experience.

  I’m sure some people wondered why gamers would put themselves through such horrors, but, in many ways, it was like watching the best horror movie of your life. Sometimes you laughed, sometimes you cried, and sometimes you wanted to piss your pants in fear, but that was the draw of The World. It was like living another life, or being pulled into a magical world and living the life of a hero … or a villain. It grabbed you by the throat and pulled you in.

  It didn’t matter that the game sometimes made you feel like you were dying, the truth of the matter was that there was no way your in real life body could be injured within the egg. It made me wonder if this was a public concern when silent films first came out. Don’t laugh, I remember reading somewhere that when the first automobiles were sold that people in general believed that the human body couldn’t take moving at such speeds without being damaged. At the end of the day, no matter how scared or good you felt inside the game, the World itself was just a mind-trip of epic proportions that gamers chose to play for fun.

  I couldn’t help the bemused smile that came to my lips as I shook my head. Even though my hands were shaking as I went through the motions of casting my spell, in that second I couldn’t have been any more addicted to playing The World. Those were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I brought Unalia back to life. Hitting her with a Regeneration, I hurriedly selected Tinyr from the raid interface and mentally crossed my fingers for luck.

  There was no doubt in my mind that many of the younger fans watching my Twitch stream of this fight tomorrow would think my use of the raid interface for casting spells to be somewhat odd. Especially since I’d never seen any of the other pro players using this method on their Twitch channels. Everyone seemed to accept that visually selecting one’s targets or a preprogrammed script was the fastest way to cast heal and other support spells. While that worked fine in the small teams that most modern games used, it was next to useless in a large raid such as this.

  Honestly, having the raid interface available in The World was a pleasant surprise. I’d picked up the technique from playing old school MMOs when I was still in grade school. They were free to play in comparison to the new and expensive MMOs that were popular with the other kids whe
n I was growing up. In those games, the technique was a must have in forty-person boss raids. In those battles, there was no way for a healer to visually select all their teammates amongst so many friends and enemies during the middle of a boss fight, but, as long as you were in range of your target, you could easily select them with the raid interface to cast your spells.

  The start of the Enhanced Resurrection spell stopped my wandering thoughts as I breathed a sigh of relief. So much for being laughed at for playing outdated games, I thought with a grin, as I went through the motions of the spell. This meant that I’d managed to resurrect all three of my friends within the five minute deadline of their deaths. Thankfully, the rest of us wouldn’t have to make the trek to the nearest graveyard to pick up anyone and we could continue on our mission to meet the Aussie players without any issues.

  By the time I was hitting the tiny Rogue with a Regeneration, no one else had died and the rest of the fight seemed to be mostly over. Not that we were out of danger. Another five large packs of predators were making their way through the now empty valley looking for prey. A little bad luck and we could be back in the same spot we were in just a few minutes ago.

  With a thought, I began buffing myself up in case the shit hit the fan again as I cast my normal set of buffs: Holy Shield, Light’s Blessing, Bone Shield, Bone Fangs, and Enhanced Mage Armor. Yeah, I know I could have joined the fight, but the raid was finishing up the last of the monsters without any problems. I figured that I might as well get ready to move on out, when I noticed something that made my blood run cold.

  Chapter One.Twenty-Two

  (Wednesday, May 7th / Day 17 of The World.)

  There was a small lizard the size of a colt running away from the raid as fast as its little legs could carry it. While that in and of itself wasn’t a problem, that it was going to be picked up by the rest of the monster packs were. If a runner was picked up by any predators in any other MMO I’d ever played, those groups would aggro on the players that had attacked the creature’s pack.

  The only spell I had that gave me an option to cast at this distance was my Nature Magic’s Homing Zap. Unlike the sixty yards distance limitation that all of my other magic had, Homing Zap went up to a hundred yards. Even then, the option kept to cast the spell kept blipping in and out as the small lizard ran on a mostly parallel path to the raid.

  Holding my hand out, I mentally activated the spell repeatedly keeping my focus on the monster’s stumbling path, when three glowing balls of energy suddenly flared from my fingers. They crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. I unfortunately didn’t get another shot off, since the small lizard immediately went back out of range. As the creature pitched to the ground with a piercing cry of pain on the far side of a pile of rocks, I swore in consternation.

  “We’re so fucked!” I screamed, launching myself into action. Even as I began trying to push through the mass of Uten Syn players, I knew there was nothing I could do to reach the mob before the approaching predators found it.

  The problem itself was simple. While the Nature magic attack spells moved at light speed and had greater range, they sadly didn’t have the punch of other magic. The level 30 Homing Zap spell was a good example of this difference, since it did three hundred percent less damage than my level 15 Enhanced Shadow Bolt spell. At the same time, it was a decent tradeoff for guaranteed hit and nearly doubled the range.

  Everyone around us was focused on their current battles. The press of bodies from everyone trying to support the players fighting on the front lines left no room for someone to pass through the ranks. Neysa, Helgath, and I were still doing our best to break free of the scrum, when I saw Sarka take down her last mob. Growling in frustration, I switched to team chat while urgently shouting.

  “Sarka, you’ve got to kill that mob before it aggro’s those predator packs in the valley!”

  “What mob is that?” Sarka shouted back, as she looked around in confusion. She finally saw me stuck in the middle of the massed Uten Syn players.

  “See that pill of rocks down in the valley?” I shouted, as I jumped up trying to point over everyone’s heads. “I was able to wound it, but it’s still alive on the other side of those rocks!”

  “So what,” Sarka shouted back, not understanding the problem. “The other monsters are going to eat it. What’s the big deal?”

  “The game mechanics will make the rest of the mobs aggro our group as soon as they get into its range!” I hollered back. “For all intent and purpose, The World still considers us in a fight with the mob!”

  “You’re shitting me!” Sarka swore, spinning around. Her face turned bone white as soon as she saw the five packs of monsters making their way towards the spot I’d just pointed out. With a growl of frustration, she triggered her new skill, Intercept and took off down the slope at an incredible speed, swearing the entire way. “Fffuuuccckkk mmmyyy llliiifffeee!”

  Although I’d never seen the new ability in use, Sarka had told me about the new ability she’d picked up the last time she’d taken training called Intercept. It was a part of her Defensive Warrior build. At the time, she wasn’t sure what all she could use it for, so I’d explained to her some of the ways I’d use the ability in the other games I’d played. It was a good way for Warriors to catch up to an enemy. Still, even I was surprised at the super sprint that she’d taken off with.

  “What the hell is going on, Star?” Yun unhappily yelled at me in group chat, as soon as he saw his wife taking off. “She’s going to get slaughtered down there by herself!”

  “Not if she kills the mob first and gets the fuck out of there,” I snapped back irritably. Not that I blamed him for being upset, but there wasn’t exactly any other option available. It was about then that the Uten Syn players began to cheer wildly as a Werebear that looked like Angie took down the last of the Elite Large Rock Wolves pack that they’d all been fighting.

  “Sorry Yun, I didn’t mean it like that.” I apologized, taking a deep breath to force myself to calm down. “Let’s get to the front of the formation so we can get everyone moving in case this shit goes sideways on us again.”

  “As long as we don’t get ripped to shreds like last time,” Unalia said, her voice cracking as she spoke.

  “Yeah, that was an experience I could definitely have gone without,” Tinyr agreed, giving an uncomfortable cough.

  “That’s definitely the down side to fifty percent realism,” Yun agreed somewhat sourly, before adding. “At least, I managed to keep Sarka alive. No way did I want to hear her bitching about dying for the rest of the week.”

  “You do realize I can still hear you all, right?” Sarka asked, breathing heavy from her sprint. “I’m almost there, Star!”

  “It doesn’t make it any less true,” Yun muttered under his breath, as I uncontrollably gave a bark of laughter, while Unalia and Tinyr openly laughed. I don’t know if my friend had made the joke on purpose or not, but his comment seemed to break the pall that had come over the rest of us. “How the hell did you manage to survive that anyway, Star?”

  “Well, the boost from my Nightmare stats didn’t hurt,” I said, as my friends booed at me. Ignoring the peanut gallery, I continued my explanation while pushing through the cheering Uten Syn players on the lower part of the slope. “Mainly though, I cast an Amplify Damage spell and then followed it up by channeling an Ice Barrage AOE.”

  “Wait, you attacked yourself?” Unalia asked in surprise.

  “Damn, that’s pretty smart,” Yun said, in a thoughtful tone. “With your elemental resistance, you would have easily out damaged them.”

  “Yeah, not that it was an issue at the bottom of the dogpile of lizards that were trying to eat me alive,” I snarled a little bit more than I’d intended, as everyone turned silent. Seeing me purposefully striding through the crowd towards her, Fylreh’s eyes turned wide as saucers as she saw the serious look on my face. Instead of answering, I switched to raid chat.

  “Listen up, Uten Syn guild!”
My voice boomed out as everyone turned silent in surprise. “You did an excellent job keeping everyone alive, but we’re not out of the woods yet!“ As I waited for the cheering to die down, I heard Sarka’s sharp exclamation.

  “Star, you didn’t say this thing was a baby!” Sarka accusingly said, as she came to a stop.

  “What is there to say? It’s a baby monster. Kill it and get the fuck out of there before you aggro the entire valley on top of us!” I irritably snapped, after switching chats.

  “It’s so adorable!” Sarka exclaimed, in a high pitched squeal of excitement.

  “Ah, shit!” I muttered to myself, as I saw the incredulous look plastered to her face. Her expression was clearly visible due to the golden glow that had suddenly appeared on the ground at her feet as she cast a heal on the small monster.

  “It imprinted on me!” Sarka exclaimed happily, as she gathered up the small lizard monster into her arms. “I’m going to name her, Freya!”

  “You’re doing that now?” I unhappily swore at my friend. “I don’t care what the fuck you call it, just get your ass out of there!”

  “Don’t even start with me, Star!” Sarka turned to look up at me angrily. “The last time a combat pet came up, you took it for yourself. This one’s all mine!”

  “Not if you get it killed first!” I snapped back in the same tone. As if my words were a trigger, Elite Large Rock Wolf howls and Elite Fanged Tarpan Strider chuffing coughs suddenly rang out of the valley as they suddenly aggro’d on Sarka. The challenging calls came from a hundred different throats as the five packs I’d been watching began charging directly for my friend. With my Darkvision, I could just make out the look of fear that suddenly came to Sarka’s face as Tinyr cried out in team chat. “Run, Forest, Run!”

  “Fuck my life!” I muttered under my breath as I saw my friends stepping out of the suddenly fearful crowd of Uten Syn players. Almost without thought, I began casting buffs on my friends, companions, and the Werewolves and Werebears standing near the front of the formation. Immediately, my mana noticeably began to drop as I switched back to raid chat.