Occultist

by Oliver Mayes

  By the time it started to balance, Aetherius’s account had dropped to 165,000 votes. A serious blow.

  Damien’s own rise eclipsed Aetherius’s meagre fall. His votes had been steadily accumulating throughout the day, sitting at a cool 50k by the time they had logged out of the game.

  A short time after their raid stream had been posted, it was already having a visible effect. The extra videos and his reply to Shankyou stoked the fervor even further, unhalted even when Shankyou removed his original comment. Once the stream commentators got their hands on it and confirmed he was the player who’d fought Toutatis, the entire community was beset with Daemien fever.

  People were making parody videos of him arguing about killing the pegasus, cosplaying as him online, and as had happened with Scorpius, all variations on his in-game name were swiftly taken. By the time the dust settled and the voting was slowing down at 10pm, he’d amassed 125,000 votes. His target was in sight.

  The only complaint he was getting, besides those leveled at him by Aetherius’s supporters, was that nobody knew how he’d obtained the occultist class. Damien had sensibly remained silent on that score. He couldn’t tell them how to do it without half the world descending on The Downward Spiral, at which point he’d have to find a new base. That would have to wait until after Bartholomew threw him out, and by then his mother’s fate would already have been decided.

  It was a lot to take in.

  So, at 22:30, with Saturday morning looming large and the online community waning, he told Lillian he was heading to bed. She didn’t remove her headset but paused whatever she was doing to address him directly.

  “I can’t come home early tomorrow. I’ve had the whole week off after what Aetherius did, then today I cried off as well. Don’t die while I’m gone. Got it?”

  “I won’t do anything stupid. Cross my heart. See you tomorrow evening.”

  She nodded, her lips pursing as she tried to look serious, then it broke and she beamed at him earnestly.

  “You’re poised to win this thing now. We’ll have some work to do tomorrow evening: I’ll take you on a little tour, we’ll meet some of your fans in the game, you’ll kiss some babies and sign some autographs, then we’ll see where we are. Sleep well!”

  She gave him a blind wave, which Damien returned before wondering why as he headed back to his room. At least now he had clean clothes to sleep in. It had been a relatively short day, but it had been busy, and tomorrow was going to be important. Every day until the competition ended was important.

  Only the weekend was left. He’d made huge strides toward accomplishing his goal, but he was still tens of thousands of votes away from realizing his objective. That was a problem for tomorrow.

  32

  Dragonslayer

  He woke up feeling much fresher than usual. It was the first time that week he’d gone to bed without needing to catch up on sleep. He put on some fresh clothes and headed into the open plan living room. Lillian was already there, dashing around with a piece of toast in her mouth as she gathered her things to leave.

  “Hey, you’re up,” she said, mumbling through the bread.

  Damien stood in the doorway, feeling a bit awkward for interrupting her morning routine.

  “There’s another piece of toast going if you want it?”

  Damien wasn’t hungry just yet, but he didn’t want to be a bad guest. He plucked up the second piece of toast and took a seat while she continued her preparations. After a few more minutes running back and forth in what looked like a frequent key-card finding ritual, she retrieved it from the bathroom and was ready to go.

  She slung the kit bag over her back and patted down her pockets before her eyes finally unglazed and focused on him.

  “I was thinking. You said your mom’s waiting on a new heart, right? If you like, I can do a little digging, find out how she is. Do you know which hospital she’s at?”

  Damien might not have been sleep deprived anymore, but he certainly wasn’t awake enough to deal with this revelation. She could do that?

  He’d abandoned all hope of checking up on his mom right after the CU agents had come for him, so much so that he’d had a med student right in front of him for the last two days and hadn’t even thought to ask.

  “Yes! She’s at St. Mary’s. Do you really think you can find her?”

  Lillian shouldered her bag and checked her wristband.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’ll do my best. See you tonight. Oh, and don't die!”

  She regarded him severely for a few moments before popping the last corner of toast into her mouth and making for the door.

  Damien retrieved his headset from the table where it had been charging and logged into his profile page to behold it in all its glory. It was beautiful. He’d scrolled through many a cool SO profile but never had he assumed that one day he’d have an equally polished profile of his own. It had only been there for a couple of days, but there was enough content to make him seem like a full-blown veteran.

  His votes had increased ever so slightly since he logged off, another two thousand on top of his 125k windfall. But worryingly, Aetherius’s vote count was recovering, pushing back up to 170k.

  The gap between them was widening as the furor surrounding the waiting room attack died down. On top of that, people were voicing their appreciation of the forty-man raid he and his guild had provided.

  Damien opened the video and settled in to watch the two and a half hour long event.

  The raid had been recorded from the perspective of a mana wisp, which Aetherius had set to hover behind him at a distance. This was one of the reasons his broadcasts were so popular: the perspective this tactic offered was far clearer than viewing directly from his eyes, reminiscent of the camera angles employed in the third-person video games many of his viewers enjoyed.

  On the downside, it meant his HUD didn’t show, hiding his health, stamina and mana bars.

  While most streamers were open about their stat allocations, explaining how many points they’d put where and why, Aetherius kept his build secret. There was a lot of debate about what he’d done with his stats, but everyone agreed a lot of it had gone into intelligence. Even considering the stats on his gear, his damage was outrageous. However, he also must have pumped a lot into wisdom as he had a seemingly unlimited mana pool. He had never been seen running out of mana in any of his streams.

  While a ten-strong wall of tanks kept the enemy mobs at bay, he joined his ranged units in raining death upon the clustered hordes. In Aetherius’s case, that consisted of wave upon wave of Arcane Missiles. The damage numbers were hidden as well, preventing anyone from mathing out his stat allocation, but the power was undeniable.

  It was efficient experience points for everyone involved. No wonder his guild remained so loyal. He could throw a bag of puppies in a wood chipper and they’d still rush to defend him, as long as he got them through elite dungeons with minimum fuss.

  Damien skipped his way to the final boss fight.

  He watched in awe as it swooped down from the ceiling and crashed to the floor, his heart pounding as if he were in the room with them. It was a dragon. A dragon. A giant, golden, living and breathing, killing and flaming dragon. A dragon.

  He’d only been joking when he told Lillian they could find one; he hadn’t even known they existed in the game. Yet here one was, and Rising Tide had already killed it. Knowing the outcome didn’t make it any less exciting.

  Damien found himself rooting for Rising Tide and had to pause the video for a few seconds so he could focus on being disgusted with himself.

  He could only imagine how angry Aetherius must be to have accomplished such a feat, only to lose 30,000 votes and create an arch-rival immediately after. Nevertheless, his votes were recovering. The dragon video had been eclipsed by Lillian’s superb timing, but it was too big to be completely erased.

  Unlike the dragon itself, apparently.

  Damien’s train of thought was interrupted twe
nty minutes into the epic boss fight when the dragon twisted its neck round and unhinged its maw, pointing directly at Aetherius. The final phase of boss fights was always more intense, and this was no exception. The mana wisp was in just the right position to peer down the open gullet as dragonfire gathered, getting brighter and brighter. It was akin to standing at the mouth of a tunnel with a freight train roaring toward you, the survival prospects of being hit by either identical.

  All the players around Aetherius, from the tankiest tank to the squishiest squishy, threw discipline to the wind and ran headlong for cover. Aetherius remained exactly where he was, his arms folded and his foot tapping against the stone. Even from behind, his body language was crystal clear: boredom.

  The dragon declined to track the moving targets, remaining trained on the arrogant individual who’d decided not to run. More likely than not, Saga Online had assessed the party’s damage and designated him as the primary target. A scorching, churning, white-hot orb lodged itself at the furthest point in the dragon’s throat and spun there as it accumulated power.

  For a moment, Damien thought he understood why Aetherius hadn’t moved. Mages had a powerful short-range teleportation spell, available as a trait at level 20. Blink. Aetherius was showboating, waiting for the dragon to release the payload before narrowly escaping the danger. The recording’s viewpoint transferred to a Rising Tide player off to one side. They had a great view of the scene in front of them, the beam of white fire searing a trench into the floor all the way up to Aetherius and beyond. It hit the wall and dug a sizzling hole into the bedrock before finally dissipating. When the beam faded, there was a clear view of absolutely nothing where Rising Tide’s guild leader had stood just moments ago.

  Damien’s lips parted. If Aetherius had blinked he would’ve shown up wherever he’d blinked to immediately, yet there was no sign of him anywhere. Had he died? Really? Just standing there, tapping his foot like an idiot?

  The camera panned sideways as the player looked from where Aetherius had been to the dragon’s head. It was resetting its dislocated jaw, leaving it vulnerable to attack, but no one was in position to take advantage.

  Except… now the camera was focused on the dragon, Damien could make out someone standing underneath it. They were in the safest and yet the most dangerous place imaginable: directly under the dragon’s head, tenuously obscured from its line of sight.

  It was Aetherius. Still looking bored.

  He raised his hands while the dragon reorganized its bone structure, the grating clicks and clacks loud enough to reverberate off the walls as the jaw rotated from side to side. The absurdly overpowered attack was accompanied by an absurdly long recovery period.

  Aetherius responded in kind. His hands glowed red and pulsed, forcing the beast’s head upward on a roiling wave of energy. It was the spell Lillian had been subjected to during the attack on the waiting room: a channeled Arcane Beam. At least, Damien assumed it was. It was the same deep shade of red and it behaved the same way. That’s where the similarity ended. This thing was immense. Lillian’s ‘Repent’ skill had doubled the power and dimensions of her foe’s spell before reflecting it back at them. This was still bigger.

  The dragon’s jaw was knocked loose before it could reset. There was a crunch and a roar as bones cracked and ligaments severed. Aetherius stopped channeling and Blinked away, just as the car-sized head crashed back to the floor where he’d been standing. The mighty enemy had been reduced to a broken creature, splayed out on the floor with its jaw hanging loosely off to one side.

  Damien had seen enough. He paused the video and scrolled into the comments, hoping to find out what spell Aetherius had used to avoid being incinerated. It couldn’t be a Blink. The range was too short to have covered the distance to the dragon’s head in one jump. Even if that wasn’t the case, it had a cooldown. If Aetherius had Blinked in, he wouldn’t have been able to Blink away. Unfortunately, everyone in the comments section was equally adrift.

  Vegetus: 2:17:46 Huh? What did he do? ELI5 pls.

  MadMarx: The dragon was very angry. Then he hit it with his sleep ray and it went beddie bye-bye.

  Vegetus: Ha-ha, I mean how did he get from way out in front of it to right underneath it so fast?

  Kira-ai: deleted

  Vegetus: It’s not blink. Blink Read the skill description.

  Kira-ai: deleted

  Vegetus: Read. The. Skill. Description.

  RedDeadPrevention: I knew it! It’s a two-man job! There’s another player who looks just like Aetherius, and the real Aetherius stays invisible until the first one dies! That’s how he keeps doing these last second saves!

  OccumsAxe: Ha. Hahaha. Haha, HAHAHAHA! No.

  RedDeadPrevention: Do you have a better idea?

  I-CC-U: That just doesn’t work. There’s a list of all forty people in the raid. None are Aetherius look-alikes. Sorry to disappoint you.

  Walrusface: BUSTED!

  Ice-T: Wish he’d show us the level 40 traits. Maybe there’s an improved blink? That might explain what he did during the fight.

  Vegetus: Okay, maybe there’s an improved Blink at level 40. MAYBE. But he’s been pulling stuff like this for weeks and he only hit level 40 a few days ago. IT’S NOT BLINK PEOPLE, LET’S MOVE ON.

  Jannaaaaaa: Y’all are super excited about his trick, but everyone’s missing the BIG question: what’s going on with his mana? That video was two and a half hours long and Aetherius didn’t pop a mana potion once. How much mana does he have?!?

  Ohmnipotent: Noooooooooobody knows. Current consensus is it’s infinite. Here’s a link to the discussion board.

  BlackArrow: Why don’t you get your friend Ohmniscient to help out? We’ll have the answer in no time.

  Ohmniscient: I’m focusing on easier problems, like world peace.

  Damien minimized the window to check Aetherius’s profile. While he’d been watching, Aetherius had received almost 2000 more competition votes. Almost one vote every second, and it wasn’t even peak streaming time.

  If it continued like this, Lillian’s hard work would be undone. Damien couldn’t sit there waiting for her to return; it would be too late by then. Something needed to be done now.

  He re-opened the window to the comments section. Rising Tide’s members had put plenty of criticism on his videos, even if they’d been largely ignored.

  Shankyou’s comment was the only one that had taken off, and that had backfired dramatically. Damien felt he could do better.

  Daemien: Aetherius, hi! How’s it going? Listen, since we’ve both killed mythical creatures now, I was thinking we could get together and trade notes. If you like, when we meet, you can take off your gear and I’ll give you a boost. Or you can keep it on, I’m good either way. In return, you can share your stats and skills with everyone instead of being a big edgelord and keeping it to yourself. How about it?

  He’d linked Aetherius’s name in so he’d get the notification and posted it. It went straight to the bottom of the list, where it would have no visibility. Damien had learned a thing or two from Lillian over the last couple of days. This was an easy fix. He took a screenshot of the comment and saved it on his own profile for posterity. Then he made a new comment and pinned it to the top of his very first video.

  Daemien: Hi everyone, thanks for your interest in my videos! Sorry I haven’t been replying, the last few days were very busy. I’ve just sent Aetherius a message asking him to share his stats and skills! Exciting! If you’d like him to share his build, please head over and let him know.

  He let out a long breath as the second message was sent. All he could do now was wait to see how it was received. The messages had been short, but tinkering with them had taken the better part of an hour.

  He minimized the window and pondered what to do next. Inspiration struck almost immediately. Some of the comments on Aetherius’s video had contained links to player-made databases comprising the known skills of Saga Online. Damien had been surprised by the more outl
andish abilities he’d seen over the last few days. It could only help to brush up on his knowledge.

  Damien worked his way through the lists, swapping between different databases if the one he was using had gaps. Whenever his attention span waned, he’d watch a stream hosted by whichever class he was currently examining to see the skills put into practice.

  He was so invested he didn’t move from his place on the sofa until the door slammed shut. Damien snapped the visor upward and brought his eyes back into focus on Lillian as she wrenched off her bag.

  “Hey,” Damien greeted her. “How wa—”

  Lillian bolted the door and set her back to it, hands covering her face. Something was wrong. Damien took off the headset and stood up, but Lillian still didn’t move. She was just standing there, her chest rising and falling as one deep breath rolled into another.

  He had no idea what to do in this situation. He was stepping around the table when Lillian looked up from her hands. Damien stopped, his lips parting. She was harrowed. Her wristband was producing a blip every few seconds.

  “Lillian, what’s going on? Are you OK?”

  She nodded weakly, then finally turned to face him.

  “Those CU agents you told me about. The ones that were chasing you. What did they look like again?”

  Now Damien was starting to get the picture. He stammered out what he could remember.

  “There was a big guy. Bald and maybe middle-aged? He was wearing sports clothes last time I saw him. Then there was another one, smaller, still bigger than me though. He seemed a bit older, and he had a bea—”

  “—a beard, a pair of V-Tec glasses and a cheap suit? Yeah. They had a chat with me at the front gate.”

  Damien swallowed. Welp. That was the end of that. It had been real nice while it lasted. He went straight into his room and started throwing clothes into his bag.