The Battle

by D. Rus

  He froze for a second, then opened his eyes wide in alarm. "Attention! Code Red! A High Circle spell has been cast: Astral Mana Dispersal! Time left until shield failure: 90 seconds!"

  The Grand Prince bared his teeth in anger. "Mobilize the NPCs! Send the Ci-Ba detachment! Squeeze the Maoist castles! More hostages! They will pay with pain for their insolence!"

  "Understood. Orders have been passed on to the corresponding subdivisions."

  The Grand Prince smiled with satisfaction and leaned back in his armchair. He loved luxury and comfort, but no one was bold enough to reproach him for it. Those with guts were quickly sent to the dungeons of mental torture.

  The twenty analysts in their trance jumped simultaneously. "Portals opening: castles Shui Fong-2, 9, 16, 4, 12. Attackers are Russians and Vietnamese."

  "Attention! Guard groups under attack: Silver Mines and Kimberlite Bonanza! Assailants are Tanglang raiders and a detachment of the Maoists’ allies!"

  "Alchemist Town is no longer safe! Indian combat elephants have been spotted! Sire, it’s the elite of one of our top neighboring clans!"

  "The Jade Pillar fortress is under siege by the Japanese clan Sho!"

  "The capital’s Summer Palace is under attack. Guards are fighting off the Korean Seungli clan!"

  The clan leader’s face froze. His brain absorbed the incoming info and sought the optimal solution. At last, he interrupted the continuous reports,

  "All forces: abandon current missions! Assume defensive positions, PvP-scheme buffs and gear. Stop and await redeployment orders! Alliance-wide Code Red! Mobilize NPCs on all perimeters! Guild hiring: gather everyone in status Zero! Request assistance from all clans and allies. I demand reinforcements per our agreement!"

  As he spoke, repeat reports of his orders were being rattled off. "Missions abandoned - complete! Terminating battle activity: seven percent manpower! In progress " twenty percent! Temporarily unavailable: all the rest!"

  "NPCs mobilized. Time: 15 minutes, daily cost: 240,000 gold."

  "Mercenary Guild, 1,700 fighters available in status Zero. Hired, time: 10 minutes. Cost: 3,500,000 gold."

  "Locating portals by Shui Fong-1, 6, 8, 10. Attention, all castles under siege except in the capital! Commandants ask permission to use operating reserve."

  "All key production facilities and mining spots are being attacked! Approximate attacking force: 50,000 from six different clusters!"

  The Grand Prince's eyes glazed over. He began to drool. His well-trained body fell into a controlled trance, speeding up his brain at the expense of other organs.

  He was absorbing information from ten different channels, perceiving and analyzing a great wave of reports, but had no resources left to come up with solutions.

  That was the downside of total dictatorship and one-man rule. The efficient system functioned like clockwork. The on-site reports were fast and clear, while responses to them arrived with more and more delays. They could not keep up with the constantly changing environment of a hundred trouble spots. Initiative among officers of lower ranks was suppressed to the point that they couldn’t make decisions independently.

  The Grand Prince had always appointed executives, not leaders. He had plenty of smart sergeants and lieutenants, but only one general.

  "The Alliance permits a 19,000 warrior reinforcement! Correction: 12,000! The Zhao clan withdraws its warriors for self-defense! ... Correction: 9,000! 5,000!... Sir, reinforcements are not available; all castles are under siege. Allies resorted to a wait-and-see approach, delaying their response. They are scared and don’t wish to interfere! We await your orders, Sire! We await your orders!... Current reserve – 4,300 warriors – awaiting orders!"

  The Grand Prince barely moved his lips raw from biting. "Divide the forces among castles with no domes."

  His voice could barely be heard over the analysts’ cries, " Shui Fong-3 requesting permission to evacuate the treasury and all A-list items!"

  "Shui Fong-9: the enemy has occupied the Control Room, the capture timer’s ticking!"

  "Unrest in slave pens, the guards can’t control it!"

  "Commandants of nine citadels are begging for reinforcements!"

  "Guard forces in subsidiary locations have been forced out of their positions and are losing strength in pointless counterattacks!"

  One freshly hired analyst was bold enough to abandon the expected laconic wording and threw in some words of his own,

  "I dare suggest that we withdraw troops from secondary locations and unite them to defend the castles... Sire?"

  The Grand Prince was silent. His pupils were bouncing like crazy beneath his eyelids. His mouth would open occasionally to snap an order. But another hailstorm of updates would change everything yet again.

  "Attention! Shui Fong-0 is under attack! It’s the Russians. The First Priest’s with them!"

  Finally, the Grand Prince beat his stupor and came out of the trance. Jumping up, he clenched his shaking hands into fists and commanded loudly,

  "Staff ops are to develop opposition! They are now in charge of the operating reserve! Find backup troops, get the allies involved! We’ll easily crush these insolent upstarts! I will personally head the guards to defend the familial Nova, and have that arrogant Russian’s head! The enemy will be defeated!"

  The Grand Prince teleported out, abandoning command of his troops.

  The analysts kept spitting out reports, while the staff officers stared at each other helplessly.

  Cao Cao was the first to get it together. "Send two thousand from the reserve to defend my citadel! And... mmm... a thousand mercs too! Like the Grand Prince, I too will lead the defense myself to protect the second most important spot after the capital!"

  The shrewd vassal teleported away just like the Grand Prince.

  The rest instantly jumped to their feet and began rattling off orders, overtaxing the meager reinforcements and ignoring the analysts’ monotonous reports.

  The Colossus of Shui Fong turned out to have feet of clay.

  We raced toward the broken gates under a hail of stones, squelching through dismembered remains. Some warriors were deafened. The reddish fog formed by the damage numbers popping up over our heads clouded our vision. The heavy bombing was taking its toll.

  But for a 500K GP bomb, fifteen hundred feet is a joke: only a part of its lethal range.

  A few NPCs on the walls who had somehow survived the massive explosion kept shooting at us half-heartedly. Most of the guards had been thrown off the bulwarks by the shock wave. It was their minced meat that now rained on my warriors, discouraging them.

  The aerial bomb turned out to have surprisingly many levels of damage, which had been so conveniently amplified by AlterWorld’s physics.

  The fiery flash had finished off many. The mithril shards had got the survivors.

  The blast wave had picked up the remains, mixed them with everything it managed to tear out of the ground, and scattered them far and wide.

  Some had been unlucky enough to have been smeared over the ruins of the wall. Others had flown five hundred feet and hit the ground, pointlessly losing XP as a result of a death due to carelessness.

  Aha, and here are the breached gates, scowling their dislodged stones at me like a toothless old man.

  The construction gang dwarves had already set up their narrow Jacob’s ladders over the spiked moat and even added safety ropes. Nobody was eager to fall into a fifteen-foot ditch studded with rusty lances, but few had a 100+ agility. Without it, the chances of stumbling increased according to the narrowness and difficulty of the surface.

  Boots rumbled over the tight planks. My officers made it to the spacious inner yard. The sight of which was shocking.

  It was a graveyard, a morgue subsidiary and a field hospital all in one. Hundreds of gravestones, heaps of rotting bodies and over a thousand wounded warriors, their HP down to yellow or red.

  Many were still bleeding, having open wounds and broken bones, which the game mechan
ics had turned into long-lasting DoTs. Injuries were countless. Plenty were blind, shell-shocked, bent double, or in various limbless disarray.

  Bloodless bodies were falling left and right, continuing to increase our kamikaze’s frag counter. He had left the ground a lieutenant and landed a major. The best thing was that the loot kept pouring in. The overloaded officer moaned and cussed in the service corps chat.

  A small crowd of reinforcements scurried out of the portals, as well as shirtless warriors who wanted to return to the scenes of their demise and retrieve their equipment from their graves.

  Our golems fought against the flow, approaching the open portals. The golem that reached the target first began kicking the enemy warriors back into the gates like a soccer player. What a sight!

  After a minute, our golems blocked the portal slab entirely, cutting off the enemy flow.

  I figured it’d be best to bring a cage next time, to set it up around the arrival zone to create an obstruction and trap securely the incoming foes.

  As I ran by, I took a few stun grenades of various colors from my belt and added to the chaos by throwing them into the portals. Catch!

  No one heard the explosion, but the next group of Chinese arrived shell-shocked, staring blindly and shaking their heads like old men.

  Well, looks like our bros can handle this. Golems, archers, rogues for target illumination, and a few smart officers were enough to keep the portals covered.

  I glanced around, analyzing the situation.

  The ear-choppers cleaned up the walls, doing what they were made to do: slaughtering the NPC casters and archers in their leather armor.

  The boys from the captured crew and the gunners were also up there at the top, checking out the ballistas and arrow launchers.

  The rogues zigzagged around, combing the section of the yard where there were no visible enemies left to find the ones hiding in stealth. Close fights broke out everywhere because of this, and our side didn't win every time.

  There were some pretty impressive folks among the Chinese, some far beyond level 300. And even if one of them was missing an arm or had been shot through the head, a rogue level 150 didn’t stand a chance against him. Calling for help in a fight like that wasn’t at all disgraceful, and was not indicative of any weakness. The rogue’s clanmates would rush to help, weighing down on the enemy like a band of mice on a wounded cobra.

  The crazy quartermasters would appear among the mop-up groups. They tore the locks off storehouses and marked the buildings with different color seals to signify loot priority.

  The biggest fight happened beneath the donjon’s walls as the surviving Chinese backed up into it. We lost warriors as we closed in on them, shedding fresh blood and adding more gravestones to the shrapnel-pocked yard.

  The exchange was routine: about one-on-one, a hundred warriors per minute. Our guys got resurrected and came back to the battlefield. The enemies, on the other hand, lost their high-end gear and got thrown off the castle territory. Their chances of getting back in were slim.

  At last, everything was going according to plan!

  All of the above led me to one conclusion: it was important to have a few backup teleport points. One Portal Hall was obviously not enough. The forces couldn’t be moved around. Chances of getting blocked off were high.

  I wrote this down in my planner, then quickly skimmed the chat-log. The Analyst highlighted the most important messages and passed them on through my first-priority channel.

  The current situation was: the temporary alliance had managed to smash the dome shields of eighty-seven castles the first time around. Six more castles were rendered defenseless at the second attempt, with the help of backup scrolls.

  The others, who had missed their chance and had somehow lost their AMA wizards, were forced to settle for the second echelon’s targets.

  Assailants had managed to reach the Control Rooms in half the castles. The rest, like us, were still fighting amidst the compact planning. Five of the attacks had become bogged down; our warriors had been zeroed out or forced back beyond the walls. Looks like the Guards of the First Temple weren’t the only ones with quick-acting allies.

  Twenty more troops requested reinforcements as they had run into something really tough or simply underestimated their strength. But we’d determined each clan’s reserve availability prior to the operation. I didn’t want to lose both the precious scroll and my goal because of someone’s greed.

  "Sir, we’ve broke through the donjon wall. Assault troops are inside. We can follow them!"

  The aide-de-camp was anxious to go into battle and perform some heroic feat. Too bad, I’ll have to replace the guy, I thought, he’s obviously in the wrong place. Too young, plus madly in love with someone's soulful eyes and seductive body. This makes him ashamed of his low rank and eager to prove that he’s better than the others.

  Glancing over the massive donjon, I noticed a fresh gap in the brickwork. The Children of the Night warriors were pouring through it.

  The way the donjon was laid out allowed us to breach it anywhere we wanted. Our warriors took advantage of this. With much heroic effort, they broke through the 1,500,000 HP wall with incredible speed. I was sure that Snowie's mithril gun must have had something to do with it.

  I dove into the gap, cautiously looking up at the vaulted ceiling. Might they make the whole thing collapse on our heads, just like Fuckyall did while defending the Cursed Castle?

  But it looked sturdy...

  The Control Room operator must have fallen asleep. Or the commandant didn’t have a mutual understanding with the Controlling Artifact. The artifact was only semi-sentient, a captive soul of a mighty entity at its core. You only needed to show respect and overcome your xenophobia to make contact with it. Of course, having the Creator’s Spark was also a must, no doubt.

  The scouts sent updated donjon maps into the chat as they went far ahead. Logistics specialists figured out the shortest routes and sent the speedy goblins down the hallways. The goblins marked the walls on their left with fluorescent lines.

  We were heading to the Control Room, so we followed the purple line.

  The red led to the main battle scene. It was a giant hall in which we had trapped around three hundred Shui Fong warriors. They were mostly medium-level meat, plus ordinary castle inhabitants.

  The Shui Fong elite broke away. They were backing up slowly, reaching for the defensive barriers that had been prepared beforehand, and prolonged the fight in the hope of getting help.

  The polygonal passageway was studded with graves. Most of the gravestones had an amusing smooth form with laconic inscriptions in Chinese.

  We dragged all the Slavic obelisks to the neighboring hall which had been temporarily designated as a reincarnation zone. Full service was provided: resurrection, plus an obelisk at your feet. A quick rebuff as you got dressed, fine-tuning of your on-line information, field repairs for your gear, and finally an encouraging slap on the back, "To battle!"

  We had cover forces at the junctions already with a rogue constantly keeping watch, and some fortifications like machine gun rings, a light golem or some NPCs. Services of the rear had done great. They deserved rewards.

  The fight still continued, yet the looting was picking up speed. We seized armories and storerooms, taking luxury items. We sometimes took hostages, escorting them like prisoners to the execution block – in double time, their arms over their heads as they bent over.

  We dove into another gap in the closing slab of an entrance. Our legs banged against all the gravestones obstructing the long straight hallway. Its far end was set against a dead wall with several gun slits for stationary arrow launchers.

  Wow, a whole bunch of us got killed here. Despite potential immortality, it bothered me to see my friends’ names on the gravestones.

  We reached the end, then turned. The sounds of a serious battle reached our ears. I glanced at the casualty counter and frowned. Fuck me, did the clan just fall into a giant meat gr
inder?

  A breathless messenger appeared in my way. "Sir, we’ve tracked them down and trapped them in the Control Room!"

  I looked at the spinning counter again. "I see. Who is ‘them’ exactly?"

  "All of ‘em! The Shui Fong badasses! The Grand Prince and his guard!"

  I nodded understandingly. "You trapped them, but handling them is another question, right?"

  The young warrior allowed himself a smile. "Yessir! They’re all level 350-plus, and the clan leader’s almost at 500! Of course, they’re all a bit clumsy. Musta stolen slave XP to level up. They make such stupid mistakes! Still, we could use some help. We’re getting slaughtered... Some can’t even walk after the postmortal debuffs. All stats are below zero..."

  "Lead the way!" I commanded, gesturing my guard to follow.

  It was hot in the Control Room. It looked like a fuel depot on fire under a heavy artillery attack.

  The flames were all over. The ground burned. Homing Spark and Fireball missiles were zooming by. Waves of Fire moved from wall to wall, avoiding their own but greedily consuming their foes. Thunderclouds swelled up beneath the ceiling, disgorging lava rains, lightning lashing everything.

  Colorful clouds of smoke tore at the warriors' lungs, ate away their eyes and seared their skin with sores; auras of Dust, Rot, and Fear completing the dark setting.

  Control Spells played their part: the warriors went blind and froze up as they became paralyzed or attacked their comrades from behind. It was a regular gaming process, a battle in a tight space.

  It helped that we’d prepared for the raid. The PvP buffs and our gear increased our resistance to all types of magical damage, allowing us to run through fire, breathe in toxic fumes and swim through acid. We sustained damage nonetheless. Sensations varied from player to player, determined by their respective imagination and perceptivity. But we held up.

  We’d really caught Shui Fong with their pants down. Their gear was pitiful, their buffs... let’s just say each had seen a different caster.