by Felix Craft
I was eating it up.
Knowing what the crowd wanted, I thrust the golden sword into the air. The crowd went wild, the cheers pounding down even harder than before. Then Leesha came up next to me, and I grabbed her hand and lifted it as well. The cheers were unreal.
It felt like we’d won the tournament already.
The celebrations after our victory melded into a blur of intoxicated high. Never before had I felt so exhausted and elated at once, nor been so drunk. Even though it was all in a game, the whirl felt every bit as real as a boozer after a game. I let myself flow away on the chants surrounding me.
“Death-less! Death-less! Death-less!”
People cheered me at every tavern and inn we visited. They couldn’t believe how I and Leesha had beaten people twice our level. And I soaked in every bit of it. At one point, they even hoisted me onto their shoulders and walked me through the streets. I thought my face would split open from my grin.
Eventually, long into the night, I found my way back to my bed at Jonathan’s Place and collapsed. With dueling statuses of Intoxicated and Exhausted, I was quickly fading. I didn’t even realize I was alone in the room as I drifted off to sleep.
29
Game Time
I woke with another pounding headache, this one worse than the morning before. Groaning, I could barely open my eyes for the hangover that had seized hold of me. “Damn you, Danny.”
After half an hour of being as helpless on my back as an overturned turtle, I managed to make myself sit up. Leesha wasn’t on the bed next to me, and I strained to remember if she’d been there at all. Maybe she’d been enjoying our victory in her own way, in some other person’s bed. I shook the thought from my head. More likely, she was down at breakfast.
I didn’t equip my armor quite yet, but just went down in my underclothes. In the main living room downstairs, Leesha did indeed wait in her own full regalia, shoveling a full plate of meat, eggs, and bread into her mouth. She gave a small wave at my approach, her mouth too full for words, then went back to her meal. I sat heavily and ordered a similar plate, though my gut protested and I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep down anything.
But like usual, it took little more than a hardy meal to settle my belly. By the end of the meal, I was almost feeling myself again, if a bit more tired than usual. But that was something I could live with. All I had was one more day in MythRune. One more day, then I was back to real life. Again, the first thoughts of real life were the bad things — the bum knee, the bummer job, and the boring life Danny had interrupted. But I knew I had to go back, so I put the thoughts from my mind and resolved to enjoy what things I liked about MythRune while I could. The rest would sort itself out.
Leesha and I were surprisingly silent the whole meal. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but companionable, like an old couple sitting next to each other on a park bench. Just imagine that. We were the last two people I’d have thought would act like that around each other.
Still, no matter how comfortable we were, there were a few things that hung between us, so I said, “Sorry again about that whole thing before.”
Leesha didn’t look up from her food. “What thing?”
“Oh, you know.” I gestured vaguely with my fork before diving into another bite of meat — ham, I thought it was. “With doubting your loyalty and all that. I don’t know why, but I just got sort of paranoid before the last round there. But I’m feeling a lot better now. I know we have a whole round to go still, and maybe our toughest fight yet. I just wanted you to know that as far as we go, I’m good.”
“You’re good,” she echoed. She didn’t sound nearly as warm as I was hoping for.
I wasn’t all that into touchy-feely stuff, but I could tell she needed something from me. “Are you okay?”
“Okay?” She snapped out of whatever spell she’d been under and looked up and smiled. “Yeah. Totally okay.” But her smile didn’t have the same enthusiasm as before. Still, I wasn’t going to let the old paranoia return. Just because she wasn’t enthusiastic didn’t mean something was going on. She could feel tired without me accusing her of colluding with her faction somehow, couldn’t she? Besides, she wouldn’t plot anything with her faction that wouldn’t help us. They wanted to win as much as we did. No doubt Leesha would have to give up a portion of her winnings. Maybe that’s what was bothering her.
I shoved my plate away, all done with it. “Good. You ready to go to the training yard, get warmed up for later?”
She’d been picking at her food, and even though her platter was still half-full, she nodded.
We ran through our usual warm-ups in the training yard. About halfway through, I realized I had leveled up again. Good thing I’d happened to check my stats. I must have dismissed the notification somewhere last night during the long boozer of a celebration. It must have been something for me to have totally forgotten it. Calling to Leesha for a break, she grudgingly relented, and I stepped to the side of the training yard to look at my stats.
Name: Zane_SD21
Level: 11
Profession: —
Faction: —
Runecoins: 1226
- HP: 160/160
- SP: 130/130
- MP: —/100
Affinities:
- Battle-axe: Level 8 - 78%
- Sneak: Level 4 - 6%
- Javelin: Level 1 - 78%
- Heavy Armor: Level 5 - 1%
- Tracking: Level 1 - 30%
Ability Trees:
- Combat
- Tier 1
Battle-axe: Damage +20% (4)
Battle-axe: Swing Speed +20% (4)
Battle-axe: Block +10% (2)
Heavy Armor: Defense +20% (4)
Heavy Armor: Weight -5% (1)
- Tier 2
Battle-axe: Hook & Hack +5% (1)
Heavy Armor: Shell +5% (1)
Javelin: Steady Shot +5% (1)
General: Flurry Blow +5% (1)
Battle-axe: Lock & Twist +5% (1)
General: Counterattack +5% (1)
- Tier 3
Heavy Armor: Juggernaut +5% (1)
- Calisthenics
- Tier 1
Dodge +10% (2)
Agility +5% (1)
- Tier 2
Disarm +5% (1)
- Survival
- Industry
- Civil (available at level 20)
- Magic (available at level 20)
I added 10 to my HP. Stamina was good and all, but HP is what kept me around longer as the linebacker of our team. As for my AP, I scanned the Tier 3 skills available, but only one really caught my eye. Execution — now there was a trait I could use! It left me completely vulnerable for attack, sort of like Counterattack, but instead of relying on the damage dealt to me, it was a one-hit KO if it succeeded. It did start at a very low level of success — instead of adding 5% to a decent baseline success rate like the other skills, Execution started at 5% success. Still, a move like that could make the difference between winning a fight or losing, and I didn’t see a single AP anywhere else doing the same. Seeing that, I put my point into the trait and hoped it would pan out. As for my lower tier points, I invested in heavy armor weight reduction and battle-axe swing speed, as speed was still super important. For Tier 2, rather than grabbing new skills and expanding my already hefty repertoire, I decided to better two of my most relied-upon skills — Hook and Hack and Shell.
I saw Leesha observing my stats. Seeing what I’d done, she shook her head. “I wish you’d ask me. I would have told you how much you just wasted your AP.”
“I guess we’ll see.” I walked back onto the training yard and lifted my battle-axe. “Ready to go again?”
After we were thoroughly warmed up, we made the trip back to Mikam’s smithy for our repaired armor. Once again, he’d been forced to stay up through most of the night to get the repairs done. He must have logged off sometime in there, but when, I didn’t know. Still, the smith looked happy enough, as he was st
ill making stacks off us. “The odds aren’t quite as long now,” he admitted, “but I’ve still got plenty invested in you. Don’t let me down today, Deathless!”
I shrugged, trying not to show how pleased I was. In my football days, I would have strutted coolly about with all the praise I was getting. But I’d seen some stuff since then, more than enough to humble me, at least a bit.
Besides, as Leesha and I walked over to the Coliseum, I was reminded again of how much I was in over my head. Just because I felt on top of the world now didn’t mean we weren’t still in trouble. It was just one-on-one this round, if things went as they were supposed to. Maybe there would be terrain or other environmental things to help us out, but maybe not. I had to keep my head screwed on straight if I wanted to come through this. And I desperately did — this was my one good chance to get out of MythRune. Hopefully, it wasn’t coming too late as it was.
I nodded at the clerk as we walked through the archway and grinned at her expression once we’d passed by. She’d looked at me like I was Liam Neeson or something. Leesha just rolled her eyes and dragged me into the room we were supposed to be in.
Unlike yesterday, we weren’t put in a holding area with the other competitors. We were by ourselves, like before the first round. Closed up now, nervousness began to settle back in, and I started pacing.
“Again?” Leesha observed with some amusement. She still wasn’t quite herself, but then, maybe it was just because she was nervous, too. She wanted that money badly, and she had to be feeling the pressure right about now.
The thought brought me out of my own head for a second. “Hey. We’re going to win this. You know that, right?”
“Oh, is that right?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because you and I make a good team. And we both want to win more than they do.”
She started to smile, then stopped. “Probably. But what if it just doesn’t happen, Z? What if we can’t do it?”
I hadn’t looked that possibility in the face yet, and I didn’t want to start now. “We will. We just will.”
Leesha didn’t answer, but dropped her eyes to stare at her feet.
I resumed pacing and tried not to let her uncertainty unnerve me.
A few minutes later, a projection appeared from the middle of the floor, showing the cowled figure from the first round. “Contestants!” he addressed us in his dramatic movie voice. “Congratulations on making it to the third and final round of Lord MythRune’s XVI Quarterly Tournament! It is a great achievement, and one to be proud of. But now comes your hardest challenge.”
The figure took a long pause, while music with a lot of bass drum thrummed up around us, making my heart race no matter how cheesy it sounded. “Now, there will be nowhere to hide from your foe,” the narrator continued. Replacing his projection was a view of an arena emphasizing his words. It was little more than a dusty patch from what I could see. “Teams will face off against each other in this arena for five rounds. First team to knockout the other each round will win. And the first pair to win three rounds wins the tournament.”
The cowled figure returned in place of the arena. “Simple? Perhaps. But it will not be easy to achieve. To do so, you must call on every ounce of skill and mettle you possess. Do you have what it takes to win?” With a last bang of drums, the narrator disappeared, and the lights in the room flickered back on.
I shared a look with Leesha, and she rolled her eyes. Danny and his developers had a flair for the dramatic, to be sure. At least this round they had been more informational than most. As long as it stayed true to what it said, we knew what was coming for us. And we had time to prepare ourselves.
Not much time, apparently. A digital clock suddenly appeared before the door, counting down from a minute. When it reached zero, I assumed we’d be teleported into the arena, whether we were ready or not.
“Last minute pow-wow.” I put my hand forward. “Win on three?”
“Hell, no.” Leesha stood and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s just get this over with.”
I withdrew my hand, eyeing her. “Make sure your head’s in the game.” Maybe not the right thing to say, but her negative attitude was starting to grate on me.
She just gave me the death glare and drew out her knives. “Have your axe out. We may have to fight as soon as we’re out there.”
Now she was talking game. I nodded and drew out my battle-axe, gripping it tight and nervous. The countdown went to 10… 9… 8…
“Good luck, Leesha.”
“You too, Z,” she whispered.
3… 2… 1.
Everything went dark. Game time.
30
Throwing
We spawned more gradually than in Round 2, so I saw the arena built by shards of the digital world flying in and gluing together. As promised, it was plain — flat, filled with nothing but dust, and shaped in a circle with a diameter the length of about one and a half football fields. A dome enclosed us, ensuring we wouldn’t have anywhere to flee. It didn’t, however, insulate us from the sound of the crowd. Upon our entrance, a roar rolled up to greet us, with various chants melding and blending together. They could have been chanting my name or the other team’s, I couldn't tell.
Opposite us, the other team spawned, and though while eating breakfast I’d heard who’d made it, my stomach still dropped. Thunder and Sparrow stared back from across the arena, cutting a fine pair in his shining armor and her dark robes. Certainly finer than Leesha and I in our scrappy steel stuff. But looks didn’t matter. Quality did. And levels, and magic.
I wondered if we were supposed to start fighting yet, but before either of us pairs moved toward each other, a gigantic projection grew up from the ground before us. It was Lord MythRune once again, this time towering all the way to the top of our dome. He looked at Lord Loki’s team, then at us, seeming more than a recording this time.
“Welcome, finalists!” he boomed, his voice echoing through the whole of the Coliseum. “And welcome all to the final round of my tournament!”
The crowd roared again. I shifted from foot to foot, not exactly eager to start the fight, but impatient not to be left waiting any longer. I'd have to wait at least a bit more it seemed.
“It has been an interesting competition thus far. When I hold tournaments for lower-level players, I do not typically expect as much of them. But this has been exciting, hasn’t it?”
As the crowd responded with cheers, I was struck again with how Lord MythRune’s commanding tone didn’t seem to match the way he spoke. It reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Suddenly the giant held a hand as large as my avatar out to me. “And one player has certainly showed himself as remarkable. He finally earned himself a proper name. What do you call him?”
“Death-less! Death-less! Death-less!” the crowd chanted.
But I barely paid them mind, as I was wondering what our host meant when he said I “finally” earned myself a name. What was that supposed to mean?
“Not as good as Destroyer, mind, but we can't all be that.” The giant Lord MythRune turned his towering head down at me and winked, one glowing eye momentarily extinguished.
I gaped. Destroyer… I thought to the name printed on my dice, and of Danny's childhood name. Obviously Danny had written some private jokes into this character. But for his own amusement, or for my benefit?
Lord MythRune turned away, then announced each of us one by one. That done, he straightened and threw up his arms. His projection moved toward the roof. “Without further ado, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.”
I shook my head and shared a look with Leesha. This was it. I gripped my battle-axe hard and hoped I was ready.
“Let the game begin!”
As Lord MythRune disappeared, both teams started across the arena. I didn't jog fast, not wanting to drain my SP unnecessarily. Leesha had the same idea, and ke
pt close next to me.
“Any idea how we beat them?” I eyed the approaching pair.
“No good ones.”
“Great.”
“You?”
“Same.” I wiped my suddenly sweaty brow. “I guess we're screwed.”
Leesha shrugged, far too nonchalant. “I guess so.”
No time to wonder what was going on with her. Big Thunder had approached faster than us, and as he neared, he sprang and swung that huge hammer of his down at us. I dodged and barely moved out of the way, but he swept his hammer to the side and knocked me off balance. Loki’s champion hit like a truck, and the wind was knocked out of me along with a bit of my HP.
Leesha hadn't let the opportunity go to waste. While Thunder had turned to finish me off, Leesha had turned on him, knives leading. However, Thunder wasn't alone. Before Leesha's knives could do much damage, the mage opposite us froze her. My companion had become an impromptu statue, her furious eyes the only thing still moving.
They weren’t for long. Thunder spun around and, leading with his huge-headed hammer, splattered Leesha’s head.
I was only stunned a moment at the gore before I leaped at the big man with a roar. Trying out Execution, I held the axe at the apex of the blow for a heart-pounding second, then was just about to bring it down when suddenly, I couldn't move. I grunted in frustration, the noise about all I could manage. I wasn’t left in limbo for long. Turning slowly, Thunder grinned at me. “Not a chance, buddy,” he sneered, then hefted his axe and slammed it into my chest.
The world went black with the blow, and I lost consciousness. The next I was aware, I was sitting up, dazed, to a cacophony of boos and some interspersed cheers. My head felt woozy, but I knew I had to get up and fight. I rose, wobbled, then fell to my knees. I tried swiping ahead of me to ward off an attack from Thunder that I expected, but it never came. My vision cleared, and I realized what I thought had been the enemy was the booted foot of Lord MythRune’s projection. Also, I had lost my battle-axe, and had been holding nothing but air.