by Brent Roth
Emily and Barik falling in behind, they finished the ones I dismembered as Ethan continued to pelt with fire blasts without breaking his stride. And then as if she didn’t have enough, Emily jumped and rolled from one target to the next, kneeing and elbowing necks and faces as she went. Only stopping to clutch and clinch for a second as she finished another blind victim, unsatisfied with the maimed targets that I left behind.
Shaking my head as I turned to face the swath of destruction left behind in our wake, the crowd control effects had fully worn off and hundreds of pairs of eyes returned my gaze. Motioning for the crew to continue the push, I resumed my work and eyed the friendly armbands nearly twenty yards away. Surrounded and outnumbered, we fought without care to our positioning so long as we could continue to move. Not stopping for a second, the entire northern flank had begun to shift as players were turning in reaction to the surprise attack of a few.
Then as the man in front of me was hacked to pieces, split down the middle as I pulled my axe back, the five of us found ourselves back to back as the enemy cleared a space and formed a circle around us. Slipping behind Barik as he kept his shield raised and with the other three covering me, Valerie decided to cast a heal on us and in that moment of distraction as the golden light engulfed Barik, my chant had finished and my cast was nearly complete. Glancing at the ground where death and salvation would be found, I confirmed my target as I released the spell.
Another dark cloud forming above the enemies’ heads to the west, my mana was spent. This would be our last opportunity to push and make it through to our forces on the other side. Waiting as a few hands began to glow all around us, I whispered to the men and women around me, “On two, run straight to the lightning strike, keep your eyes low.”
“One,” I said quickly.
“Two,” I said loudly as I broke into a sprint with the other four following.
All five of us running into the crowd with weapons raised and eyes staring at the ground, magic shot forth from every direction as I tumbled and rolled along the ground, only to hear the distinct crack of thunder and catch the blinding white light of lightning landing twenty feet in front of me.
Picking my head up as I jumped back to my feet with all four behind me doing the same, a few of us had been hit by spells but most had crisscrossed and impacted their allies as the land before us was now vacant and charred. A heat wave left behind hit me as my nose reacted to the smell of burnt bodies as nearly thirty players struggled to get back to their feet. Breaking off from the pack and executing those that I could as I ran by, I altered my pace and entered into a skip and hop with a chop here and a kick and hack there.
To my right Barik simply ran by and sliced at exposed throats while Ethan melted defenseless faces with glee. Emily had no such luck as she resorted to kicking heads as if they were balls, while Valerie continued to watch and run. Pushing through and cutting through where appropriate, we made it back to our side of the field as we dispersed into the crowd and made it to the outskirts safe and sound.
Taking up position off to the side, we traveled down to the southern forest this time and stopped to take a break, out of breath from all the sprinting and fighting and needing to let our minds catch up. Letting out one big exhale as my heart pounded in my chest, I pulled the earplugs out and began to relax.
“That was kind of close,” I said as I sat down and began to check the Leaderboards, curious to see how the battle was going and if our impact was as severe as it appeared.
“Fun though,” replied Ethan with a smile as he stretched out and lay down on his back, with chest and stomach rising and falling rapidly.
“Hah. Yeh,” Barik muttered with a laugh, a comical reply in its own right as he struggled to breath.
“Damn man, that’s so unfair,” stated Emily as she grabbed her knees and began to huff and puff, straining for air.
“Mm. I’ve got participation now,” mumbled Valerie.
“Haha, yeah, yeah you do,” I said, laughing at her.
Watching as three of the five struggled to breath, Valerie and I appeared to have the most stamina by far. It was surprising at first but then it made sense to me, as she played a lot and spent a lot of time traveling by foot. She had built up her Endurance through hours of exercise in-game. Emily put all of her points into her Strength, and Barik split them up with most going to Vitality for health. Ethan… well, he was all into Intelligence, to increase his damage as his mana pool was quite insufficient.
“You passed me up,” cried Emily as she kicked me lightheartedly. “I had twenty-seven to start the battle and was clearly number one, you had what, twelve? Ugh so unfair.”
Looking at the Leaderboards, my name was now number one on our side, with forty-nine kills and twenty-eight assists. I was now an Exceptional Threat, though so too was Emily as she had thirty-eight kills to her name but no assists still.
“Hey mate,” called out Ethan while still lying on his back. “I noticed this before but didn’t have anything to compare to back then, why is your lightning different from the others? It’s brighter, louder, stuns ‘em every time, and I swear it does more damage too.”
“Yeah!” shouted Emily as she sat down and rested her head on her closed knees. “He casts one spell and poof, ten kills and fifteen assists. Casts one more, bam, double!”
Staring up at the canopy, I was mulling over how to best explain this but couldn’t come up with a good excuse. If I lied then my secret was safe for now and no one would know of relics for a little while yet… but that was a road that shouldn’t be traveled when it came to friends, even if they were only friends in a game.
To lie would set a precedent and create issues of trust later on, there was no need for that. If anything, Emily already knew of the Relics and probably had her suspicions to boot. It wasn’t worth lying and I would probably be caught if I did. So that left the truth… or a shade of the truth.
“Yeh, ye can teleport too, can’t ya?” asked Barik.
Ah, that’s right… Alan saw me teleport during the fifth boss fight, when I needed to grab a weapon to kill the goblin chief. They didn’t mention it so I thought they had somehow missed it, much to my surprise and peace of mind at the time.
“Uh, yeah,” I replied hesitantly. “I can teleport too.”
“WHAT?!” shouted Emily as she jumped up and kicked me in the shin with her shin.
“Ah! Hey what’s with you and your abuse woman,” I yelled back as I sat up and grabbed my shin, rubbing it as the pain spread throughout my leg. “Fuck you’ve got a hard kick, calm yourself alright?”
“You can teleport and you didn’t tell us?!” she said, angry for some reason even though she saw me use it when we met in the North.
“Why would I need to mention it?” I countered, gritting my teeth while confused with her reaction and trying to deal with the spreading pain. “You already saw me use it anyways damn! It’s not new check your memory, shit.”
“You’ve got a Relic don’t you,” she spat out immediately.
“Oi, what’s that?” asked Ethan right away. “You’ve got a what mate?”
And that was the end of my secrecy, as my suspicion was right on the money. She was well aware of the game’s secrets… which made me question her, if she happened to have one as well to supplement her inordinate amount of strength. She wasn’t that high of a level but her punches, kicks, elbows, and knee strikes were vicious. As evidenced by her recent kick that left me reeling in pain… especially when aided by equipment.
“Do you have a Relic Emily?” I asked angrily, ignoring her question.
“Of course not, they’re impossible to find,” she said curtly. “You’ve got one don’t you, you lucky bastard, where did you find it?”
“I climbed a mountain and found it at the top,” I said through clenched teeth, still rubbing my shin that appeared to be shattered as the pain that was registering was incredibly intense. Gritting my teeth, I looked at her once and shook my head. “Nice of you to
fracture my tibia Emily, appreciate it.”
“Uh… I didn’t kick you that hard,” she said somewhat curiously. “Serious?”
“Don’t you have iron-splinted leather greaves on?” I questioned while casting a holy light on myself, mostly to relieve the pain as the broken bone would need the care of a higher level priest. “Damn, think before you do stupid shit.”
“Uh… I guess I do?” she mumbled quietly as she lightly kicked the snow and looked down at her feet. “Sorry, got caught up in the moment.”
“Hey so what’s the real story?” asked Ethan in an attempt to restart the conversation as the mood became awkward. “Climbed a mountain and found it at the top? That sounds totally bogus. No secrets needed here.”
“It’s the truth,” I said while testing my leg to see if I could put pressure on it. Silence filling the air once more, my leg was definitely broken but I could still walk on it with a limp. Running was out of the question but as my mana had recovered and the battle was still being waged, it was about time I reentered the fight.
“What’s a Relic?” asked Barik.
“It’s a legendary item in the game,” replied Emily as she sat down and leaned against a tree with arms wrapped around her legs. “There aren’t that many of them and if he can teleport plus everything else you mentioned, he’s got one of the best in the game.”
“Whoa, nice going Sigurd,” said Ethan with a thumb’s up.
“Man, I’ve been looking all over for one and he’s already got a top ten power,” she mumbled with a depressed atmosphere clouding over her. “And here he’s already got one… so early too….”
Letting out a sigh as she moped in the corner, I began walking towards the field of battle as the other three stared curiously at my back. Not bothering to answer them, I flash stepped through the forest and out to the edge. Looking around, no one was nearby and the fighting was only about four-hundred yards from our current location. Resuming my walk, I could hear footsteps behind me as Barik and Ethan came running up.
“Ey wait up,” said Ethan as Barik ran up next to him.
“Yeh, what’s the hurry?” asked Barik.
“We were losing the battle until we scared that entire flank of theirs,” I explained as I struggled with every other step from my broken leg. “Now look, that little change caused them to panic and hundreds of people shifted and collapsed, out of six-thousand or so players, that’s still around five percent.”
“Yeh, so some of them died,” said Barik quickly. “Still losin’ the battle.”
“Yeah, well if I can bombard them safely from a distance, they’ll start to falter again,” I said plainly. The truth was that I could only kill or wound up to around thirty with a single strike as they remained extremely clustered, shoulder to shoulder. That alone wouldn’t change a battle if I could only do it twice every five minutes… but if a hundred people were blinded and lost their hearing simultaneously and in reaction they tried to retreat, it might open holes large enough for our forces to swing in and counter.
It wasn’t much of a plan but Emily was right, I had the strongest magic on the field by far… other area of effect spells would maybe kill a handful of players and wound a handful more. I could affect dozens outright, and potentially many more.
“Need a shoulder?” asked Ethan as they walked on either side of me.
“Nah, we’re almost there… need to be about thirty to fifty yards out for this,” I explained as I surveyed the field. “Only another hundred to go.”
After three hours had passed us by and night had fallen, I found myself back at the staging grounds being attended to by a high-level priest. My status as an Exceptional Threat had been retained as I used my artillery magic to lay waste to the clustered enemies every time it was up. One cast, then a brief period for the cooldown to pass, then another cast and a trip to the backline to recover my mana.
Emily felt guilty and later came over to help but remained depressed for the rest of the battle as she couldn’t believe I had already beat her to finding a Relic. If she knew I had the location of a second Relic, she probably would smash my face in. She also threw in the towel saying my Relic gave me too many advantages and it wasn’t fair to compete for kills any longer, as if we were actually competing before.
She moved up to a solid fifty-seven kills though as she fell to number four on the list. Two other casters passed her up as they latched on to my spells and dropped their artillery-styled spells on top of mine. Recognizing the dark cloud, by the end of the battle my lightning strikes were nearly useless save to split the enemy force apart and send them running in fear. Five seconds of cloud cover was plenty of time for them to run so long as one person saw it.
The other lightning strikes weren’t nearly as powerful as mine but they learned the differences as my cloud was larger, darker, and had brighter lightning streaks dancing about. Watching the battle unfold as I recuperated mana, my strikes were almost three times as powerful… all thanks to a little Relic. Unfortunately, my trick didn’t work anymore and my influence wasn’t enough. I wasn’t strong enough to sway the battle, even if I was still the number one threat by far with two-hundred and eleven kills to name.
No one was really close. The problem was that we still lost the battle. We suffered far more casualties again and the widening gap between our player numbers was beginning to present an insurmountable task.
The five of us… could only do so much.
I, could only do so much.
Staring at the purple armband poking out of my pocket, I pushed it back in as I kept it a secret. Interestingly enough, I had found the armband lying out in the field. It appeared to have been slashed and left behind with either the player dying a distance away where it was no longer leashed to him or he discarded it of his own free will. I didn’t have a use for it but I wanted to hold onto it for now. An armband was the only thing that signified your allegiance out on the battlefield… and if a player died with theirs on them or nearby, it stayed bound to the player the same way their gear and select items would.
If a use ever came for it, it would be nice to have.
Looking out at the staging camp that surrounded me, the size of it all was hard to take in. Nearly as far as the eye could see were hundreds if not thousands of makeshift tents and campfires as inhabitants sat back and relaxed without a care to the situation on hand. Nearly a thousand NPCs and slightly more players remained here but it certainly felt empty compared to hours before when there were three times as many bodies.
Finding people in the crowd was actually possible now.
Yet that was a sad reality.
Having finished my treatment, I was making my way through the camp when someone spoke out to me, grabbing my attention.
“How are you feeling?” asked a familiar voice as I turned to face her.
“Ah, I’m fine,” I replied with a faint smile. “Staying on for a bit?”
“Mm. Not sleepy,” she answered with a nod while sitting down
Joining her in the open space, there wasn’t a whole lot to do in between battles but the break was necessary. Players kept going for hours without paying attention to the time, fighting an endless battle that truly appeared to have no end in sight. It was taxing on the mind and if it went for far too long, I worried about the physical and mental trauma in real life.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” I questioned while looking her in the eyes. “Do you dislike PvP in general, is that why you only watch?”
“Mm… it seems interesting,” she replied with a slight pause, taking her time to think it over as she put a finger to her lips.
“Then why not join in? You’ve had the opportunity.”
“I’m a priest, I heal.”
“You hardly heal though,” I countered with as soft of a delivery as possible, not wanting to offend her.
“Oh, that’s because there’s too many health bars on the screen so I turned them all off except for ours,” she explained rather quickly while giggl
ing. “I suppose that is funny, isn’t it. I’ve only been watching the whole time.”
“You have offensive spells too, don’t you?” I asked, wanting to follow up.
“They are rather tame,” she said. “Quite tame, really.”
Thinking over her situation, I found it interesting that she had been so fearless in combat but restrained herself from participating because she felt her spells weren’t of much use. Perhaps compared to my lightning and Ethan’s fire magic, her holy spells didn’t measure up but they could still do quite a bit of damage and could help sway a single duel one way or the other.
Katherine was evidence of that.
“Want me to teach you lightning magic?” I asked somewhat off-handedly, not really expecting her to say yes but willing to do so if she did.
“Thanks for the offer but I must decline,” she said sternly, catching me off guard. “You see, I’m far more interested in Dark Magic, if I was to learn another type. I… find it, intriguing at times. Perhaps because it’s familiar to me. To be able to wield the darkness and the powers of the void, the thought is rather exhilarating.”
“Empowering?” I asked as I leaned back.
“Yes.”
A thought occurred to me but it wasn’t something I was willing to do yet. She was a nice girl and so far seemed friendly but in a week, there was no telling if I would ever run into her or Emily again. For now we were friends through motive… and I wasn’t sure we were much more than that. It wasn’t long ago that she disliked me.
Maybe another time.
For now, I wanted to rest. After looking at the Leaderboards, the original army of four-thousand something on our side had been reduced to one-thousand, one-hundred and eight players while the enemy force was happily standing at one-thousand plus however many were left that couldn’t be seen.
Their numbers had fallen significantly but they now outnumbered us nearly three-to-one by the visual gauge and the reality was that this next battle could very well be the last. Everyone realized that players would be respawning soon and unless they wanted a stalemate, both sides wanted to end it with one last fight.