by John Gold
Sagie was between her and the portal cube. The welcoming group from other civilizations hadn’t been scratched, and the keeper was absorbing everything Sagie threw at him without responding in kind. When Sagie hurled a spear of darkness, the flesh on his arm started to rot away from the weapon’s aura. Even the demon Femida was fighting felt the strength behind the attack. She felt as like she was going to faint when the spear took off toward the keeper, and many of the creatures nearby fell down dead from the mental damage. But Tser’Kareni just kept floating around in the sky, quietly taking Sagie’s attcks.
Suddenly, an unfamiliar opponent jumped into the battle. A boney ball of needles hung over Sagie and started attacking him with Space Magic. Its aura was green, and it was fully capable of standing up to Sagie, each attack accompanied by a roar and a quiver running through the ground. A gravitational impulse compactor practically smushed Sagie into the ground.
The first attack ripped off Sagie’s arms and legs, though the next just hit his magic shield. The response came quickly in the form of lightning bolts. Thunder pealed and killed everything still living within forty meters, with even Femida taking near-maximum damage at seventy meters away. Her bones buzzed, her teeth ached, and messages about stun buffs started popping up in the chat.
Gravitational magic, mental spears, and physical force blade attacks didn’t work on the boney sphere. Fire just singed its outer layers of armor. At some point, red sparks started hopping back and forth between the players, and a red bolt of lightning shot right through the magic barrier and buried itself in Sagie. He took damage, his health started to slowly drop, and it looked like the lightning bolt was actually sapping Sagie’s health and giving it to his opponent. The boney sphere was sucking his life away. Still, Sagie’s health popped back up to the maximum. There wasn’t anyone on earth who could do more damage than he could heal. Under his tree, he was more or less invincible. The only thing that could kill him was an arrow to the eye or heart, an attack that could do instant mortal damage. His opponent wasn’t aware of that, so his continued attempts to batter away at the shield and drain Sagie’s life force were ineffective.
Reiji pulled himself out of the rubble that remained from Airis Castle. His voice thundered across the space, being heard by everyone still alive.
“Aurin, stay out of this!”
A man’s voice came from the boney sphere.
“You don’t understand. What he’s doing paints humankind in a bad light. We have to finish the battle before it gets any worse.”
But Reiji disagreed. He’d spent enough time with Sagie to know that his behavior was out of the ordinary, that something was wrong.
“Stay out of this! I’ll take care of it.”
The boney sphere stopped attacking and dissolved into thin air. Femida wasn’t sure why, as she was looking for a quick end to the fight, too. The portal was almost open, and there was less than a minute left before the welcoming ceremony began.
“Sagie, please, stop! This is only going to make things worse.”
Sagie looked as though someone had stripped him of his skin. The bone mask turned toward Femida, and she felt a chill run through her.
“You’re with them? But…”
He interrupted himself when he sensed an enemy behind him.
∞ ∞ ∞
Miridia was the patron goddess of artifactors, so she knew plenty about weapons. She’d made herself a non-level blade back when she was still an artifactor goddess in Ferengar. After coming back as a wanderer, she became a mage swordsman and the blade helped her quickly pick up new levels. And where could you find the world’s best masters for armor, potions, maps, and training? She’d gotten all that set up for herself in the first year after Bernard was reborn.
A thousand years had gone by, and the wanderers still hadn’t shown up. That’s when she decided to make her own portal. She developed a theory and built a test model, but something she forgot to take into account led to a catastrophe that changed an entire continent forever. Miridia took full responsibility for what happened and set off for voluntary exile in Ferengar. A year later, however, she was back to her experiments and discoveries.
The items she made in the epicenter of the blast had unique traits that didn’t show up in the attributes. And the closer the forge was to the epicenter, the stronger those traits became. That’s when she got the idea to make a pair of swords for when the wanderers came back and she could be reborn.
But Miridia couldn’t wait ten or twenty years for a master to show up and reach the pinnacle of smithing and artifactory. They disappeared as soon as they maxed out their skills, and Miridia wasn’t about to develop one in her own smithy, keeping an eye on the craftsman with no guarantee that the end result would be worth it or that he would be willing to sacrifice himself.
Chimerology was the second way to create a non-level weapon. The goddess just guessed as much, though she didn’t see any reason why her idea wouldn’t work, and indeed it did.
Her first experiments working with animals pushed her skill up to the level she needed. She used dwarves to make the weapons, teleporting them to her temple as needed. Waiting for her victims to be alone, she would send them over and hide them in a prison cell. Meridia made an artifact that blocked the chat the day she came up with her plan for the weapons. The weapons themselves turned out to be not very difficult to make, and that was how a pair of unique, non-level blades with effects not reflected in their attributes were born: Heaven and Earth.
The key wasn’t even the damage the swords did; it was the fact that they were both longswords. She held Earth with both hands, Heaven floating over her head and attacking at will, often in the most unpredictable manner possible. She needed a familiar to wield the latter.
After creating the swords, Miridia lost interest in them, though she later saw Sagie with a similar weapon. Knowing their peculiarities, Miridia decided to pick up her swords and keep them for use only in the worst-case scenario.
That moment arrived when Miridia saw what Sagie, the boy she’d cursed eleven years before, had turned into. Fear that he may attack first and do irreparable damage spurred her into action.
When the boney sphere left the battlefield, and Femida decided to head over and try to calm Sagie down, she saw her opening. Her opponent had let his guard down; his back was toward her. Miridia used an acceleration potion to get over to him in two quick bounds, but he was able to react. The last thing she did was mutter the key words.
“The sword that soars higher than all. The sword that soars lower than all!”
Sagie caught the floating blade easily and counterattacked. Heaven came crashing down on his chimeric shield, Earth clashed with his bone blade. The chimeric shield split in half; the bone blade shattered at the handle. Sagie threw his head back to avoid a deadly blow. Heaven whistled past, while Earth nicked his eyes and blinded him.
A second later, Miridia was dead, her body disintegrating under the force of the raw strength released by the blow.
∞ ∞ ∞
Critical mental body injury from layers one through ten!
Energy channels critically injured! Your mental body’s magic space component was destroyed, and your stamina dropped 75% in line with the changes to your body’s energy-channel balance.
Class lost: Mage
New class: No class (demigod)
Ability lost: Chimeric parasite shield
Ability lost: Astral bone sword
Weaker healing [blocked]
Telekinesis [blocked]
…[blocked]
Ow, ow, ow! Why aren’t my eyes healing? Greater healing works, but it’s doing nothing for my eyes. What injury is this? It hurts so bad I feel like my eyes were jabbed out after all.
“Ah-h-h! I hate you all! You think I’m going to give up? I’ll kill you!”
∞ ∞ ∞
Femida could see Sagie’s face. Even through the red haze, the wound in his bone mask was clearly visible. Both eyes were gone, though
there was barely any blood despite the serious wound. Sagie was howling from the pain. Why wasn’t he healing himself?
He got up and clasped his hands as if in prayer. Then, placing both of them against his forehead, he whispered something. The red aura started compressing into a thick cocoon around him.
After killing the demon attacking her, Femida looked over to see the ground around Sagie settle and collapse. The only thing that remained intact in the vicinity was the portal slab. She was standing right at the edge when Sagie threw a hand out in the direction of the keeper, still blind, but knowing exactly where his opponent was from the strength he radiated. The latter threw up a local magic shield and prepared for the attack.
All the light in the sky focused into a single drop hanging right above Sagie. The keeper knew exactly how much damage he needed to do to win, and Femida shouted at Sagie when she realized that the pair was about to exchange blows. But he was too focused on the source of his hatred to hear her. As soon as he spent all his pent-up strength on the attack, he would lose the protection of the condensed aura; the keeper would cast his spell and her chosen one would be killed.
No matter how loudly she yelled, Sagie didn’t hear her. And when she decided to dash over, three opponents jumped her at the same time. There was almost no time left before Sagie would make his decision to attack. Femida knew the keeper was going to fire back instantly, so she leaped away from two of her assailants, buried her sword in the third, and pulled the trident Sagie had given her out of the inventory. She was just in time. Sagie attacked; the keeper intensified his shield and let go of the drop of light. Femida used all her strength, abilities, and throwing skills to hurl the trident. Of course, she didn’t pour her power into it, as the goal was just to knock Sagie out from under the keeper’s attack.
The trident pierced Sagie’s left side and sent him flopping right to the cube. It wasn’t anything near to being a deadly blow, so she knew he would be fine. In the meantime, the drop of light fell right where he’d been standing a second before and melted into the air. Nothing else happened. Sagie’s aura strike hit its target, though the keeper blocked it completely, regardless of the colossal amount of strength that had been invested in the attack.
Femida saw a boney sphere appear above the keeper’s head, unroll, and take human form. The cloak lined with needles transformed into a white spear in the person’s hand, and when the keeper noticed his new opponent, it was too late. The latter was already too close for him to throw up his shield. One stroke to the head killed the keeper. The snake-like body plummeted to the ground, the attacker still astride the head of his conquered foe. The white spear started to spread, enveloping Tser’Kareni’s body in a white film before swallowing it completely and returning to its original shape.
Femida was so stunned that she didn’t notice the three tall men appear next to her, Idzumi, death, and one other. The keeper’s unknown killer did notice them though; he took two long leaps and dove into the portal.
But Sagie, what about Sagie?
He was sitting with his back to the cube, his head just about touching the portal window. A bloody foam dripped from his lips, a lung was punctured, and he had broken ribs, but he wasn’t dead. His eyes still hadn’t healed. Grabbing the shaft of the trident, he yanked it out of himself, though he didn’t toss it aside. Even though he knew the keeper was dead, he didn’t know how he’d died. And why wasn’t he throwing the trident away? The thorns on the shaft. He felt it over, coughed heavily, and spat blood before speaking wearily.
“Even you betrayed me, my goddess of justice. How I hate you all.”
“No! I didn’t!”
But Sagie wasn’t about to listen to her. Again, the world descended into tones of red. Tearing aside the tattered remains of his clothing, he pressed a hand against the enormous seal on his chest.
“How I hate you all.”
Sagie’s last words were spoken with tears of frustration running down his face.
The players looked like they were just waking up from a deep sleep. A normal albeit badly wounded guy was sitting there in front of them, covered in blood, his eyes gone, and with a deep wound in his chest. He wept in pain. Tears mixed with dried blood as they trickled down his cheeks, the pain of hurt, betrayal, and hatred breaking out into the world around him. What hurt the most, however, was what Femida had done.
As the world was bathed in bright red tones, Sagie arched his back and howled in pain. His hand was activating a seal. Femida knew that the recoil did enormous amounts of damage to him, but she had no idea what he might have up his sleeve that could be so incredibly painful.
Suddenly, it stopped. Sagie was again sitting against the cube, the portal hole already at shoulder level. Just a slight lean backwards, and it would suck him in. But what had he just done?
In silence, the players watched Sagie, the mystery man who turned out to be no different from anyone else you might meet on the street. He was wounded, battered, stripped of his equipment, and indistinguishable from any other player.
Yellow leaves began to rain down from the sky. The Tree of Worlds was disintegrating, its crown crumbling to reveal the onrushing planetoid. Sagie had used his final trump card: the rainbow sunset seal.
The ring lurched, throwing Sagie’s body into the portal. Femida looked up at the enormous block of stone the young man had summoned down upon himself. Suddenly, the falling leaves froze in mid-air; the planetoid was so large, it was distorting gravity. As soon as she realized what the impact was going to be like, Femida took off for the portal. A quick message went out to everyone in the group chat.
“Hurry, follow me!”
Ekron switched to her Petbe visage. Five seconds later, the two girls were both through the portal.
∞ ∞ ∞
When Reiji saw what Sagie had done, he decided to step in. One powerful leap sent him flying into the sky with a shock wave that knocked all the survivors backwards, also shaking them to their senses.
The cloak Sagie had given him fluttered in the wind. His mind was crystal clear, just one thought beating through it: he had to stop the monstrous meteor.
∞ ∞ ∞
Death was gone, and Tiamat was bellowing at the crowd.
“All battle units at red alert. Knight squad! First-level threat. The third-sequence limitation is off for twenty-four hours, and you’re authorized to use plasma and laser weapons, antimatter charges, and mobile combat units. Work together, using techniques and abilities to amplify your attacks. That fireball has to be stopped before it hits the planet, so I want all senior officers to put together operative groups. You have ten seconds; fire at will.”
Twenty-four groups representing a variety of civilizations began forming into their battle groups as soon as Tiamat finished talking.
∞ ∞ ∞
Akashi, the leader of humankind, was expecting the portal to open and to meet Sagie. He was going to start with an introductory speech before quickly introducing the envoys from the alliance of civilizations, finally bringing them to meet the chosen one Miguel had talked about. There, in the interworld, they had a special room used by all the senior representatives of the races. Akashi, Krash, and Miguel were there now. The trio had been watching a live feed from the portal ring, all excited until the moment Sagie jumped down from the tree. The players started behaving unnaturally, and then, Sagie went crazy. When Femida’s trident knocked him out from under the drop of light, Akashi got himself ready for the meeting, though Sagie didn’t come through the portal. One of the trial judges high above the ground noticed the planetoid right at the moment Sagie arched his back in pain.
The portal flashed, and the bloodied, tattooed young man tumbled in.
“I hate you. I hate you all.”
He clenched his fists helplessly near the open wound where his eyes should have been. The enormous bruise on his left side framed another wound, though the bleeding had stopped.
Akashi started talking.
“My name is Akashi,
and I can heal you if you’ll let me.”
No sooner did he take a couple steps toward the young man than the latter instinctively jumped into a protective stance. He howled in pain, bloody tears running down his cheeks.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Oh, how I hate you!”
Krash looked Sagie over from farther away, and his eyes suddenly opened wide.
“Akashi, he has a third-order critical injury!”
“I hate you…”
As soon as Akashi looked over at Krash, the young man dashed in the opposite direction, tripping over everything in his path. He worked his way over to the closed portal to Papilio, having no idea where he was. Really, he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, of complete psychological exhaustion. But the portal was turned off, so nobody paid much attention until Sagie uttered his final words.
“Please, take me to your field of flowers.”
The portal flame flashed as the young man fell into Papilio.
Akashi realized to his horror that he’d been outplayed. Even Miguel hadn’t predicted this turn of events.
Krash barked out an order, bringing everyone to their senses.
“Everyone, get into Project Chrysalis. That scumbag is going to destroy the planet!”
Part Three
Golden Age
Reiji tried to stop the falling planetoid, but the chunk of rock cracked under the pressure and broke into four parts. Two of them were destroyed by antimatter charges. Tiamad and Akashi’s group went after the biggest piece, though none of the six were wearing the right equipment. And while their job was to smash the chunk of rock into bits of gravel, they were only able to chip off smaller pieces.
The part of the planetoid ticketed for the portal ring wasn’t going to damage the planet —the ring couldn’t be destroyed in an attack like that. But Akashi realized the mistake they’d made in not paying more attention to it as soon as it hit the Tree of Worlds. The tree died, as did its root system, which reached all the way through the planet’s crust to the magma underneath. The piece of the planetoid which hit the portal ring started destroying the stone layers. Each one, released by the dead roots, collapsed into the next, burying the portal ring underground along with the piece of planetoid. Magma spouted high into the air. The thousands of players who hadn’t been able to get to a portal either died in the first couple seconds after the impact or from the fire that broke out immediately afterward. The welcoming committees from other worlds, not to mention Akashi and Tiamat’s group, teleported away from the strike zone.