by D. Rus
A Wild Basilisk hit the ground. They’d managed to break his legs and force his HP down into the red. Thousands of warriors clung to the struggling body like ants, attacking it with steel and magic.
Of course, had this happened in the real world, no one would have cut through a basilisk’s scales with their tiny toothpicks of swords. Every scale was the size and strength of a tank’s armored hatch.
But AlterWorld could hardly overcome the algorithms imposed on it, forced to cater to the greedy little humans. Weapon damage got multiplied by the strength modifiers, while the armor and physical resistance values of the target decreased, changing the chances of crits and injuries.
Whack! Ordinary steel busted through sixteen inches of chitin, making the astonished monster’s HP drop even lower.
Not far from me, the remaining two basilisks were backing up; the King and the Wild Basilisk who was shielding the former with his body. Even though they were losing, the beasts were still impressive given their size, strength and noble grandeur.
The King swatted his tail. Like a giant scythe it cut down a thousand warriors trying to clamber up the giant body. It seemed as though the King could just keep doing that one move to win. But…the game, the damn game…Every weapon and special ability had a well-balanced attack or recharge speed. A rollback timer must have popped up somewhere in the basilisk’s interface, preventing him from using his deadly tail several times in a row.
The path of the retreating basilisks was paved with gravestones. But no amount of savage fury could outweigh hundreds of crossbow bolts fired in one volley. Swarms of tiny beings equipped with sharp magic steel hung on the scaly hides and dealt blow after blow…
The monsters’ greenish skin would have already turned scarlet if the basilisks hadn’t been covered with soot and weren’t on fire in several spots.
Thousands of casters pumped out entire sequences of spells that got mixed up with each other, then brought them down on the bodies of the basilisks who had overestimated their own strength. This whirlwind of magic gave rise to many new spells, but most of them went unnoticed, except for those moments when a wizard got torn apart by a poorly-devised incantation.
Giant asteroids fell from the sky, tearing chunks of scales right off the monsters’ bodies. Some wizards burned up all of their mana in one go, casting very potent spells. It was a wise move given the current stage of battle.
The fallen Wild Basilisk was getting finished off. He lifted up his bloody head with difficulty and gave a sorrowful howl, saying goodbye to his fellow monsters. One of them replied with a desperate cry and wanted to run to the rescue, but his sense of duty and the King’s stern growl made him change his mind.
The giant lizards were retreating again, proving one simple truth; tanks without an infantry cover are nothing more than a future mass grave.
The crown-bearing basilisk looked back and noticed me standing on top of the hill. His giant eye lit up with hope.
Having learned my lesson through bitter experiences with the gods, I decided not to make the King indebted to me. Influential beings couldn’t tolerate owing somebody. To avoid this sticky situation, I strained my mind and asked him telepathically: "Allow me to join you in battle. The blades of my warriors have grown rusty and need to be oiled with blood."
The King blinked in astonishment. He must have been expecting me to start pressing him with all sorts of demands before I’d rescue his royal hide.
"I allow you to join me," came his hoarse and not so arrogant reply. "Thank…you…"
I nodded, then selected the Wild Basilisk in his death throes as he continued to fight for his life, and activated "Help of the Fallen One."
Yanked back from beyond the grave, the basilisk gave a triumphant roar. He jumped to his feet and shook himself off like a wet dog, throwing off hundreds of angry ants.
His ability timers had reached zero very opportunely. The Wild Basilisk now fought at maximum capacity as he employed all the combos he knew, avenging his minutes of weakness and slaughtering everyone within his reach.
Meanwhile, the skies groaned in protest, sounding awfully like the distorted voice of the Fallen One. The world flickered. The Fallen One, doubled over in pain, tumbled out of a spatial fold.
Catching my stare, he signaled to me that he did not want help. The god looked with both irritation and respect upon the Wild lizard he had restored with his own power. He then disappeared in the astral world, slamming the virtual door behind him.
I guessed that this ability was no freebie. It was really tied to Fall and drew HP straight from his divine might. I decided to be more careful so as not to run the Head of the Pantheon off his feet at the most crucial moment.
I turned to the portal caster accompanying me and forwarded him the file containing the coordinates of the hatches of Basilisk eggs. "Take some mules to these spots! Collect all eggs, then come back!" I told him, then turned to the King, yelling telepathically: "Form a ring! Get into a ring! Minimize your area of physical contact with the enemy! Retreat to the top of the dune!"
The King of Kings heard me, although probably didn’t understand the purpose of the suggested maneuver. Nevertheless, he took my advice. The three terrestrial battleships positioned themselves closer together, backing up toward the dune.
The game conventions could be exploited in many ways. Whose fault was it that crossbows dealt damage only within fifty steps, while most spells had a range of only thirty-forty steps?
How many enemies would fit inside a circle with a 150-foot radius? Pi ‘r’ squared? Where Pi was more like ‘Die’ because the monster lizard could certainly reach anyone within that range.
Anyway, whatever that number came out to be, it was certainly less than 20,000. Or even 15,000 at that point; the runway studded with gravestones sure was impressive.
Damn, how do we win this?!
The battlefield froze in a brief maintenance pause. The enemy licked their wounds, hurriedly resurrected their fallen warriors and tried to figure out how in the world had the dissected basilisk suddenly come back to life. Some even insisted that they had seen a dozen artifacts glowing in its guts.
Huge Lightsider detachments patrolled the front, swiftly forming covering forces whenever they saw dwarves and demons approaching.
We clearly couldn’t cover all of our weak points from the enemy stealthers. The bastards hid by burying themselves in the sand and counted our warriors.
On the other hand, the invasion forces had been pulled apart. They had used up several abilities along with mana, and postmortal debuffs were rampant among the resurrected warriors.
The dune shook, making sand trickle down its slopes. The dwarf detachment was in the homestretch.
I adjusted their course on the tactical map, redirecting them to help the basilisks get away from enemy formations. To trap the enemy between the hammer and the anvil was as ancient of a method as female cunningess. And just as effective.
Boom! The clatter and splatter of crushed flesh drowned out other noises for an instant. A frontal attack by a dwarf formation is a fearsome weapon. Well over a million pounds of steel and flesh hit our foe like one gigantic fist.
All of the more valuable yet helpless classes of fighters in the enemy’s front line got trampled into the ground: archers, clerics, and fragile casters.
The dwarves kept their positions, synchronously swinging their pole axes, then stepping forward and lifting up their shields. It was a cycle; a thousand axes would glimmer in the sun, and…Hit! Shields up, step forward, hit!
Their beards were tucked into their belts. Their eyes shone with joy. Ancient family hymns erupted from their armored throats. Their lives have not been in vain; now they will all have something to tell their children as they sit at their fireplaces with a mug of dark beer.
Behind them, healers ran to and fro and cussed; these unlucky guys happened to be two heads taller than their wards and caught all the arrows as they drew the attention of enemy archers.
The basilisks also picked up their pace as they took heart after sighting unexpected reinforcements. Our blood boiled as we watched hundreds of ceramic statues cover the dune. Some enemies were a bit luckier; they fell under the breath of the King himself. Instead of the trivial red clay, their bodies turned into royal marble.
But the lizards didn’t get carried away this time. They were less aggressive, limiting their attacks to brief lunges. One Wild Basilisk stayed behind the others; his HP had dropped into the orange sector once again, and the ancient monster did what had to be done; he was watching his own ass as well as covering the King’s.
We could get comfortable for about a minute. After that, the thousands of enemies that had been left behind would recover, get new orders, and hit the dwarves from the rear, turning the highly maneuverable formations into a messy sandwich of clashing forces. Tactics would no longer matter; numerical superiority would decide the winner.
Aw, screw it! I decided. We’ll be the top bun on this hotdog! We’d throw on layer after layer of mustard, trapping the enemy between two fires.
I turned the demons around. They’d strike the enemy infantry whose steel was reaching for the defenseless backs of my dwarves. Unfortunately, I could not make the dwarves look both ways at once. They could move only in one direction; forward. Such was the way of this shaft-sinking and tunnelling force…
I looked at the battlefield. The geometry of our formations was ruined; the enemy finally saw the real threat. The seven-thousand-strong horde charged at us with loud cries, intent on overwhelming and crushing us. They could already see themselves happily splitting up the artifacts from the basilisk’s guts and finally raiding the First Temple.
The demons were already fighting, sealing off the multi-layered hamburger of warrior ranks. The 300-level creatures of hell took many lives. I remembered that we usually needed fifty warriors per every Inferno fighter. Therefore, sending two hundred demons to deal with a thousand Lightsies was in no way an act of despair, but a good decision.
The two armies were successfully slaughtering each other. The enemy lost XP, leaving graves on foreign territory and losing about five warriors per every one of ours they killed. We could count on a pyrrhic victory.
But how could we deflect the second wave? I thought. The portals were supplying the enemy with fresh batches of cannon fodder non-stop…
I said into the staff chat: "Get three thousand warriors off Tianlong’s walls and send them over to me!"
I had to wait for an answer way too long, but it finally came: "Sir! The Lightsiders are preparing an attack on Tianlong! At least 30-40k! Please confirm your order. If we send you warriors, we’ll likely lose the castle."
That sucked…It was exactly as I feared; we now had more than one sector to defend. But we didn’t have the resources to fight on two fronts at once.
"As you were! Hang in there, boys. We’ll try to handle this without outside help. The Fallen One’s with us!"
What a disaster…Now we needed to win more time until the messenger I had sent to get the rest of the basilisk eggs came back. If my NPCs get slaughtered, how would I look Asmodeus or the dwarf elders in the eye ever again? To lose a whole army in the first battle was not an option.
I twirled the summoning ring in my fingers, wondering if this was indeed X-Hour. I felt so nervous I got hiccups. I was wary of inviting Asmodeus into our reality.
We can do this without demonic help! I was raised by greedy pigs and I had fifty secrets. I decided to scrape the bottom of the barrel and turned to plan “Micro-disaster.” It involved a twofold reduction of the number of guards, the observation post staff, and external watchmen. I called back the diversion groups and told the second rank warriors (levels 100 and up) to get ready.
In ten minutes I would have a detachment of a so-so fighting efficiency, two thousand sentient beings total. Citizen soldiers, to put things bluntly. Little more than greasing for enemy blades. Clearly this wasn’t enough…
I sighed and opened another secret moneybox. I had to pay for this one. I pulled up the First Temple hire interface through my amulet, then chose the Dark Paladin profile created long ago.
It was an explosive mixture of a warrior and a healer. It had no mana though. All of its pseudo magic acts were tied to abilities. Most of its healing came from damage dealt to enemies. The paladin could also take on someone else’s damage, or, what was even more hardcore, he could give his HP to cure an ally. Or even his life, thus resurrecting his comrade and taking his place in the Great Nothingess. The darksiders are a diverse people…
Four hundred warriors, level 210. That’s all the First Temple could allot us. That and a double price for leaving the walls.
My greedy pig was in tears, Durin was loading wheelbarrows with gold, and I was grinding my teeth.
The fifteen-minute summoning timer started ticking. I switched to the Super Nova interface. Things there were pretty bad there; too many hire points were allotted for staff, ear-choppers, artillery, and outpost defense trolls.
Most of the girls from the House of Pleasures, the charismatic janitor goblins, and the inconspicuous servants were probably perma. Most of my clan mates had already learned the basic behavioral rules that led to NPC digitizing. Nobody was squeamish about drinking with a simpleton loader-ogre, shaking hands with a gardener and asking him about his day, or giving a quiet guardsman a throwing knife as a present.
But I did not risk cancelling the contracts. Per the general agreement, we could terminate contracts only once a year, on May 6th, on St. George’s Day.
So I couldn’t get much from the Super Nova; two hundred she-elves only. The boys would like that, if the newly hired Drow beauties survived the upcoming battle, that is…
In fifteen minutes, the group of paladins and wizard slayers would appear on the battlefield, to become yet another bloody dressing on the salad of gore. But we had to survive till then on our own…
By the way, the e-guide How to Train the Ideal Girl was already circulating in the clan. Oddly enough, its technique worked. The goal was to change the childishly naïve NPC by making it go through routine situations until it reacted the way you wanted it to. Home meant comfort. Hubsand meant leader. Yelling was not allowed. Sex was not to be refused.
It was easy to guess what most men had in mind. The guide quickly grew into something more than a down-to-earth collection of rules and recommendations. The complex questionnaire tried to make the user reveal the ideal reactions of his future bride; What do you want? An obedient housewife that turns into a sex machine in bed? We have taken your order, please wait while the analyzer works on it.
Based on the answers provided, the guide returned a long list of movies, music, books, and places, all of which could shape an NPC.
I wrinkled my nose, but stayed away from the educational work process for now. On one hand, programming a character felt kinda rotten. Something just wasn’t right about it…
On the other hand, to reform the character of a Drow by making her watch a hundred movies? Hm…Didn’t seem feasible. It seemed to me like the girls were just toying around with their boyfriends like some re-recruited spies. Hell knows whose side they were really on…
The girls would get into groups to have a laugh about something as they polished their nails with their blades. Then the proud husband would show up, showing off his freebie biceps and broad shoulders, saying: "Honey, time to go home! I got new bedsheets trimmed with lace from the best seamstress. FYI, the thread is made from Passion Flowers, and the Indefatigability and Heightened Sensitivity spells have been applied to it."
His ear-chopper girlfriend would give him an admiring glance, drop her eyes modestly, and, with a secret wink to her girlfriends, would follow her hero.
"Air!" came the hysterical yet happy cry, distracting me from irrelevant thoughts.
My reflexes failed me; instead of diving into the nearest trench for cover, I blinked and looked around. I was lucky that time; three dragons went into a power dive fro
m the East side, aiming for the approaching enemy lines. It was Vertebra along with Draky and Craky, who had grown to be the size of trucks.
I missed the moment when the dragons opened the containers they were carrying. But the steel rain of heavy faceted arrows was impossible to miss. For the first time since World War One, flechettes were back on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, they were amateurish, randomly built crossbow bolts. They did not deal a lot of damage. On the contrary, because they were too heavy, their stats were low, which surely made their creators pull faces. We hoped their numbers would make up for the low stats and that the sudden attack from the sky would shock the enemy.
We hit good, but not without some losses. Five to seven percent of damage turned out to be friendly fire. Some of ours just happened to be in the way.
Sadly, the dragons were not part of the raid, so everyone got their share; both the innocent and the guilty. The bolts lashed against the staff officers’ armor, then hammered on the dwarves with a ringing sound, then poured over the approaching enemy hordes.
Very few got killed, but at least a third got injured. In theory, a flechette would pierce a rider along with a horse. But in our reality, the survivability of the top warriors rivaled that of the famous cat from Tom & Jerry. You had to hit them hard, repeatedly, and be remarkably creative with your attacks too.
Before my very eyes a sharp bolt pierced an enemy werebear, entering the back of its head, coming out of its lower jaw and sinking into its sharp-clawed paw.
You’d expect it to drop dead. But no way! Minus 6 percent HP, a slight limp and nothing more…
I wondered what the survivability of such a player might be in the real world? A gun wouldn’t work; it would probably just pump the bear’s fat full of lead at best. A machine gun? Hm…In kilojoules, a flechette dealt more damage than a bullet. That meant that it would take a whole magazine to bring down a bear like this. And it was crucial to hit vulnerable areas. Wow…