That Wasn't the Plan

by Jason Cheek

  “Should I ask Lora to pull the video of us teaching our people how to trigger the Perception skill?” I asked, debating if that would be worth the hurt to our channel’s reputation or not.

  We’d been basically marketing our channel as a Twitch stream that shared the secrets on how we’d figured out various techniques, skills, and dungeons in the games we played. It was always a juggling act trying to figure out what we had to share and what we could get away with hiding. Mike probably understood this better than anyone in the guild. Just because you saw how something was done, it didn’t mean that you could easily learn to replicate it yourself. While we played for fun, at the end of the day, it was also about making a living and getting that check for our fans watching the channel.

  “Leave it,” Mike said, letting out an explosive breath. “We’ll get the discovery of the skill attached to our name and people will come to watch our video streams to figure out how we did it.” He gave me a head nod. “And then they’ll stay for the crazy bullshit we’re always doing.”

  “So follow our normal model,” I said, recognizing what he meant. “And use it for marketing for our channel.”

  “Might as well,” he agreed, not looking away from the field of players below. “Because, those guys will figure it out easily enough once they know it’s a possibility. It’ll be out to the entire player base in a week’s time. Not that coming up with that much spirit is going to be easy for most people.”

  As we talked, the team had made it down the wall and were now in position with Helgath and Neristhana at the lead. Mike didn’t look back at Sub-Leader Chuzedros. Instead his voice just took on his gaming persona as he spoke in raid chat.

  “I’ll hit the rogue with the blood-red cloak in the center and Chuzedros will take the big guy next to her.”

  To my surprise, Mike whipped out his blades and dived off the top of the wall. While it was only six-yards up on the inside of the wall, that was still nothing to sneeze at. My mouth was still hanging open in shock, when Sub-Leader Chuzedros dove after him. Both of their lanky Dark-Elf bodies disappeared into a swirl of shadows about halfway down. My mind was still silently arguing with itself as to whether or not the velocity of their fall would still be in effect or not, when they both appeared a yard above their targets.

  I’m not sure whether I was more disappointed that their velocity from the fall had been nullified from the magic or not. Though, I learned quickly enough why they’d chosen that distance above their targets’ heads, as they plunged their blades deep in their victims’ backs with the added velocity of their three-yard drop. Both of their targets died upon the triggering of their Sneak Attacks.

  Before the raid of ten even knew what was going on, Helgath and Neristhana dropped out of Stealth striking with their own Sneak Attacks. These didn’t take out their targets, but they didn’t need to. Because as they turned to Backstab the nearest player between them, Zhou and Darkhorse popped out of stealth to finish off their previous targets as Kenzie joined in with her own Sneak Attack.

  In the blink of an eye, half the raid dropped dead before the other half knew what was going on. Before any of them could get in a counter attack, Helgath, Neristhana, Kenzie, Zhou, and Darkhorse triggered their Slip Into Shadows, while Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros Shadow Stepped behind the shocked PKers. They’d barely had a second to look at each other in horror, when the Dark Elves Sneak Attacked from behind.

  In less than thirty seconds, they’d taken out a raid group of ten players without taking any damage in return. It was a scary level of damage and skill that they’d just displayed. No wonder Mike’s small guild had been causing so much damage to such a massive enemy. Which was why they had been forced to use so many troops to counteract their attacks. The scary part of all of this was that he hadn’t mentioned was how much the Perception skill was going to hurt him and his guild. Yet, nonetheless, he accepted that loss in power without a complaint. As he said, we might as well use it while we could.

  It also made me wonder what other unknown skills were out there in The World waiting to be discovered. How devastating would they be if the enemy figured them out first? I made a mental note to talk to my people about keeping an eye out for such abilities and making sure to pass them around to everyone once they were discovered. While I contemplated that, my teammates took out another raid of ten players.

  The excitement didn’t start until Mike led the team against the third group of PKers. These were a group of Chaos Storm players with their own Lightning Shields in place. Luckily, the Mage Armor and Holy Shield did their job and stopped my people from taking any damage, however, a third of their Sneak Attacks were used up in breaking through the enemy’s shields. This gave the targets the chance to respond with Lightning Strikes against the team, but before they could do more than that, Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros took out their targets. While the rest of the team were struggling with their targets, the Dark Elves went on the offensive.

  Faded illusions of Shadow Assassins began appearing out of stealth around the other half of the Chaos Storm raid. Popping out of thin air with their blades flashing, they came after the players who threw themselves out of the way of the vicious Sneak Attacks. While the illusions looked slightly faded to me, I innately understood that the enemy saw them as real. It was a similar ability like the Bard’s illusion spell that Zinn had used to trick the Gull Hawks on the docks. To keep it believable, Mike and his subordinate began blinking around the newfar and hitting them with their devastating Sneak Attacks, before slipping back into the shadows.

  At the same time, I was forced to keep the rest of the team alive. With a thought, I refreshed everyone’s Mage Armor after a spectacular blast of Chain Lightning lit up my friends and companions like Christmas trees. Kenzie distracted the older man that had cast the spell by hitting him with a Sneak Attack that took him down to two-thirds health and blew his Lightning Shield away, while the rest of the team fought for their lives. Once again, Regeneration kept everyone’s Hit Points topped out as I struggled to get everyone’s Holy Shields back into place.

  The main raid picked up on the stealth attacks at their backs this time around. Partly that was due to the Lightning Strikes that were blasting into the nearest groups, but, the other half, I was sure, was due to the targets living long enough to scream that they were under attack in raid chat. Although, that was quickly cut off to nothing but agonized screams when Helgath’s Dark-Water Shamanism spell kicked in.

  Dark-purplish corruption began eating the five Chaos Storm rogues under attack as they staggered under the magical assault. Black-goo began streaming out of their eyes as their movements slowed, while the spell wracked their bodies with damage and pain. Not that they particularly noticed the pain, since they were a mixture of Basic and Advance start players. Nonetheless, the decreased mobility and lowering health took their toll on the players as my friends landed Backstabs and blade combos that finished them off within short order. Luckily, they were able to use their spell Slip into Shadows before the response came from the players around them.

  Fire Blasts, Lightning Strikes, Blade Tornados, Poison Rain, and odd water arc-blades blasted the area around the downed corpses where my friends had been fighting a few seconds earlier. If not for the double magic shields around them, they would have been pulled out of stealth and open to attack. Luckily enough, my teammates were able to scramble out of the way of the worst damaging attacks as they skittered away in different directions to regroup.

  Honestly, that was the only thing that saved them from the incoming storm of offensive fire. The weight of the attacks even forced Mike and his subordinate to exit the area. Even so, they still kept their illusions in play as the rest of the raid began attacking their own people. Within seconds, the five remaining players were nothing but corpses lying on the battle field.

  At first, I didn’t understand what was going on. Why were the stealth group willing to annihilate their own people? It came to me a second later. They were freaking ou
t over the fact that my teammates were able to attack them while they were still in stealth. That wasn’t the only reason. For nearly twenty-four hours, Mike and his guild of Shadow Assassins had terrorized the Chaos Storm Alliance players by unmercifully hunting them down and killing them wherever they respawned. When they’d realized that stealth wasn’t safe, they’d completely freaked out. Even the most hardcore veterans began attacking anything that looked like the enemy.

  Mike had immediately picked up on this fact too. As I continued to buff everyone’s double shields and Regeneration spells, he sent in his two Shadow Assassin illusions to attack a new group of players, while having Sub-Leader Chuzedros do the same to another. He did this by a means of something like a hunter’s mark that his subordinate could use to target off of. Only this one was named, Marked for Death. No idea why he hadn’t used this earlier, but maybe it was something he’d just figured out himself after gaining the Perception skill.

  As soon as the rogues began screaming that they were under attack, the groups around them began blasting the entire area with AOEs in the hopes of taking out the enemy. Their spastic reactions reminded me of watching old Vietnam War movies. You know, the ones like Full Metal Jacket or Platoon where the soldiers would freak out and mow down everything around them to try and kill the handful of enemy sniping at them from cover. As if to prove my point, two minutes later there was nothing left alive in the area where the two mini-raids had been standing.

  “That almost makes this too easy,” Mike said with a chuckle, as he circled around one side of the raid, while Sub-Leader Chuzedros headed around the other. “Besides, we don’t dare attack in person until they’re not so trigger happy.”

  “You do realize there are no guns in this fantasy game, right?” Kenzie sarcastically said, from where she huddled with the rest of the team watching the action.

  “Does the peanut gallery want to offer up a better term?” Mike said, with an unconcerned laugh at the Devil Dog officer’s annoyed face as he targeted the next two groups.

  “Sheesh, man!” I said, as another two groups were obliterated by a hail of fire. “What did you do to get these guys so wound up?”

  Now, the craziness seemed to be affecting the whole raid as the defenders sent in another wave of elementals which crashed into the alarmed survivors. Between us and the defenders, the stealth raid was being steadily cut down and only had a little bit more than a hundred players left. At least, that’s what I was roughly able to count amongst the mixture of players actively fighting and still in Stealth down below.

  “No rogue likes to find out their main trick is useless against another Stealther,” Mike barked with a laugh in team chat. “And, like I said earlier, my people have been terrorizing the lot of them since we showed up.”

  With Mike assigning targets, he was able to get Sub-Leader Chuzedros to start carrying out her own attacks. As the two Dark Elves began sending their illusions to attack separate groups, Neristhana, Helgath, and the rest of the team started focusing their attacks to take out two or three players at a time. Usually, they did this to the groups that were busy blasting their friends as they tried their best to take out the illusions. By the time those groups realized they were under attack, my friends and companions had already moved on to attack another raid.

  In the middle of all of this, a mass of a hundred defenders and two hundred elementals suddenly flanked the enemy’s formation. They crashed into the stealthers like gangbusters coming out of nowhere. It was somewhat funny. Mostly, that’s because everyone was focused on the current battle going on and not on the lookout for a new force sweeping across the base of the wall.

  The elementals were in the lead of the advancing force. With almost robotic-like movements, they advanced across the courtyard in four zigzagging lines of fifty. Whenever one of the water or earth elementals came close enough to a stealthed enemy unit to register their presence, they would suddenly rush forward to attack with whatever elementals were nearest to them.

  Water blades and stone fists from three or four level 30 elementals made short work of the lightly armored rogues. Especially, those PKers who were caught completely unaware by the new force. Any individuals that were able to withstand the initial assault were quickly hacked to death by the armored humanoids and Gnolls following close behind the elementals’ heels. Within a minute, half of the remaining Chaos Storm Alliance’s stealth force had been cut down.

  Without a second thought, the surviving members of the stealth raid began fleeing back towards the wall. Two of the raids held their formations, but the rest just took off at a blind run. It was basically every player for themselves. My team didn’t let them go without paying. Everywhere I looked, Neristhana and Helgath were popping out of stealth with the rest of the team slaughtering the players with ease, while Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros continued to cherry-pick targets of interest.

  There were cries of confused outrage when the Chaos Storm Alliance players made it to the base of the wall and discovered the ropes they’d used to descend into the courtyard were missing. Shouts for the guards that were left at the top of the wall to let down the ropes rang out as I ducked out of sight. Those ropes had been pulled up by yours truly once I saw what was going down. Hurriedly, the anxious players that had their own grapples began digging out their equipment, while the force of defenders plowed into the PKers’ rear like a sledgehammer.

  The PKers’ situation turned dire as they sought to escape the death ground they were in. It became a free-for-all as some players ran for their lives while others formed up planning to go down fighting. While I could understand the players not wanting to lose any of their gear or money, the best call was to take out as many defenders as possible before dying to weaken the fortress so it could be taken over that much quicker. As a player, they could always throw their gear into their inventory to keep it safe and fight with the last of their mana to great effect. I expected it had more to do with their pride than any logic as grappling hooks began being hooked into the stone at my feet.

  Quickly digging into my backpack, I pulled out my Pickaxe of Earth and unhooked my Vicious Executioner's Axe of Cruelty from my belt and got to work. My goal was to either slice through the rope or remove the iron-tipped hook from the battlements. Racing up to the first grapple, my weapons flailed until the edge crumbled away and the players climbing up tumbled back to the ground.

  The next hook, I got a lucky hit on and the rope was cut away leaving the hook. At first, it was only a few grapples coming up at once, but that quickly changed as more and more rogues got their climbing gear out and in play. Before I knew it, I was racing back and forth on the top of the battlement sweating up a storm as I tried to keep the PKers in the trap. It got so bad that Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros were forced to give me a hand in keeping the battlements clear. As the battle raged around me from the handful of players that made it up top, I silently crossed my fingers and hoped that no one would identify me popping out of stealth.

  It was about four minutes into the defense of the battlements, when the shit completely hit the fan. Some of the PKers who reached the top just flung themselves over the opposite side, while others tried to take the Dark Elves out. I didn’t know if the rogue class had something special to break their fall or not, but I didn’t bother worrying about them while I concentrated on taking out as many grapples as possible. Nonetheless, it got crazy real fast.

  The handful that went after Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros found the death they were looking for quicker than they ever expected. The two Shadow Assassins would either Slip Into Shadows or Shadow Step in a dance that alternated the opponents they were fighting. It was so confusing that it became nearly impossible to keep up with who they were fighting. I swear that strategy was the only thing keeping the two of them alive against the various magic area of effect attacks that were being unleashed. Well, that and the magic shields I kept re-casting to keep them mostly protected.

  If it had just been melee attacks they were d
ealing with, the rogues would have been completely outclassed by the two higher-level Dark Elves. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. As the AOE attacks continued to increase with the number of rogues that made it up to the top of the wall, it become nearly impossible to find a free spot to dodge the incoming damage and survive even with my support. It was just getting to the point where I was just wondering if they were going to be cut down no matter what I did, when the battle was suddenly over.

  In the blink of an eye, we went from fighting for our lives to looking around the empty battlements in surprise. The remaining eight players had suddenly turned around and leapt over the edge of the battlement to escape, instead of fighting it out until the end. Walking up to the edge of the battlement, I didn’t see any dead bodies lying at the base of the wall. Though, that would have been funny. I momentarily wondered if there was a suicide slash accidental death debuff in The World or not, until I caught the outlines of the rogues racing away in the open field below. They were heading for the PKers’ defensive position at the other end of the field as fast as their legs could carry them.

  “Do you guys want to chase them down?” I asked, as Mike and Sub-Leader Chuzedros walked up behind me.

  “Naw,” Mike said, with an unconcerned shrug. “I think we etched enough fear for the House of Tuin’Dyrr into their souls for one night. Besides, weren’t you the one saying you wanted to hurry up and get this done so you could log out to get some sleep?”

  “Basically,” I said, checking the time in my HUD. “By the way, good job taking those asshats out.”

  “It was a good run,” Mike agreed, before giving me a knowing look. “Are you trying to dodge your talk with Dom, or what?”

  “That too,” I replied, as a frown came to my lips. Turning around, I headed towards the other side of the battlement. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”