by Rae Nantes
I stood in a wooden guard tower, created just the night before when I brought them in, and double checked my work. I had spent the entire week finding my love for game development again, optimizing my code - which was utter shit, by the way - balancing the spells with global variables and stats. For the fight, I even gave myself a visible HP bar that tied to my mana shield, but since the common spell has a base attack power of 1k, they might not even put a dent in it.
"You've come far," Abdul said beside me as he stared in the distance. "A peasant to a governor to a queen to a goddess."
"And when did you decide to fight against the players?"
"Oh?" He scratched the stubble on his chin. "I'd probably say back in Nisa when the meteor pierced the sky. Everything after that was just positioning, as all things in combat are."
I nodded in silence, not even bothering to look at him. "I won't ask for an apology."
"And I wouldn't give you one," he said. "A job is a job."
"I don't recall paying you to be here."
"And I don't recall asking. This is something that I want to do. For myself, and my family."
"Against the players you once rubbed shoulders with."
He laughed to himself. "They were insufferable little shits anyway. At least most of them." He gazed down the steppes, kilometers away to the player encampment. The magical barrier shimmered where it caught the sunlight. "Those players, who rally against our freedom."
"Good," I said. "You can join me on the frontline."
I waved away the status screen in time to catch sight of an air fleet coming in. It was the Anhur and my Anubis, and a dozen others with rolling banners and flags and smiling faces. My soldiers cheered at them as the ships landed, casting gusts of wind and swirls of dust. The planks dropped, and the players poured out.
These were the volunteers. The thousands of players who have heard the plight, the struggle of the people of the worlds, and had come to fight for our cause. I farstepped down to greet them.
"Alex!" Tae hurried over, Simone and Relce trailing behind.
Another voice hit me from the side. It was deep, aggressive, menacing. "Lady of the dungeon!" It was the Viking raider, Havardr. His angry expression stamped on his face as it always seemed to be. He stomped over, seemingly ready to rip out his blade and challenge me, but he stopped just before and fell to his knee. A legion of players forming up behind him. "The dungeon core," he said. "No. The world core." He bowed his head. "We have heard the quest, and we have come to lend you our strength."
"And your strength will be welcome," I smiled.
He lifted his head, eyes level with my own. A warrior's grin stretched across his face. "And our strength will be unending." He stood up, towering over me, and spun to address his own army. "Worldbreakers!" he roared. "We fight for those who give us the dungeons! We fight for those who give us the raids! And today, we fight for the raid boss herself! Let us show those filthy casuals the might of elite raiders! Let them tremble!" They thrust up their weapons and unleashed a warcry. He shot me a smile before returning to his players.
My friends came over as soon as he left.
"Well that was something," Tae said.
"There's only a few hundred of them," Relce said. "But they're like the hardest of the hardcore buckeroos here."
I nodded. "How many players are joining us?"
Simone said, "A few thousand." She sighed. "I'm sorry we couldn't get more in time."
"Don't worry. This will be plenty."
"Are you sure?" Simone waved her arm toward the massing enemy players - a sea of bodies in the far distance, shuffling and moving around. "We're up against hundreds of thousands, including the airships they had shipped over. It's like ten to one odds."
"It'll be more like three to one," I said.
I raised up my hand and clicked, then the veil vanished. Columns of figures flashed in, gasps from both my men and those summoned, rows upon rows of spearmen, cavalry, archers - sunlight against the white and gold of their armor. Beside them, even more regiments uncovered - blue, grey, white - rifles and cannons and marching drums. The armies looked in wonder at the world around them, their faces of astonishment reflected by my player friends and my own soldiers - and between them, two grown men arm wrestling over a small wooden table.
Slam. The spearmen and archers cheered, the men of the line flinched. Alexander the Great had won against his opponent and thrust his arms up in victory while the other shook his head and laughed.
Yun spewed his coffee over at his table. "Holy shit is that Frederick the Great?"
"Prussians," Tae echoed beside me.
The kings caught sight of me, and I beckoned them over. Alexander, in all his boyish youthfulness, tried to get Frederick - an old man with a cane - to ride on his back. Frederick eventually relented, and they hurried over.
"Friends of yours, Magi?" Alexander bellowed.
Frederick, still on Alexander's back, swung off his hat and bowed. "We meet again, lady of the heavens." His voice was dry and forceful, yet an air of wisdom poured from him.
"Well met," I said, beaming. "Thank you for coming."
"And I thank you for choosing us," Frederick said.
Yun hurried over, out of breath from the excitement and the sprint. "Are you really the Frederick the Great?"
Frederick burst into laughter, slapping his free hand on Alexander's back, even getting him to laugh. "Of course not! I don't really know who I am. I just know who they wanted me to be."
I turned to Yun. "Their minds were locked into believing that they were someone they weren't. They were trained to be kings and generals to fight against the players in the other worlds for entertainment."
"It's true," Alexander said. "Until I met with the Magi, I did not have much freedom of thought. Anytime I questioned who I was, it felt like a divine force would turn me away." He looked down at me and smiled. "But now I see. I am just a nobody."
"You are who you want to be," I said.
Alexander laughed into the skies. "Then I wish to be Alexander!" His wild eyes found me again. "Though my memories fake, my life a lie, my skill is yet hard-earned through trial and combat."
Frederick nodded. "There is a reason we are the final bosses in our realms." A malicious grin ripped across his face. "We are the best."
"Ah, yes," Alexander said. "Were the other worlds participating?" He looked around at my camp and the airships. "I see that we make the bulk of the forces."
"They will act as irregulars," I grinned. "We don't want to win too easily, now."
They laughed. "Oh, I like you Magi," Alexander said.
I nodded to Yun. "Brief them so they'll know what to expect."
Yun brought them over to his table, mostly to show them off to the others.
I looked at my friends. "Is everything going as planned?"
"The marketing dudes did well," Relce said. "Ran ads on the web, tons of noise. We were also able to get comm students and volunteers to man the cameras like you asked."
I had designed special player avatars, invisible and intangible, to act as cameras for the coming battle. "Are they here?"
"I sent them to the towns and cities," Relce said. "Camera dudes are looking at the people living their daily lives, that sort of thing."
"Is the stream live?"
"As of thirty minutes ago," Tae said. He swung open his player menu and opened a browser. "Even with daily life stuff being watched, we're still in the hundreds of thousands of views. We're definitely going to get more once we start."
"Good," I said.
The more people that we could reach out to in the players' world, the better. Everything depended on that, depended on reaching that critical mass of hype over the battle, driving into common knowledge our existence and our plight. Every person of Stella Vallis would see the will of my people. And now they would feel what we feel.
For too long did the players have a monopoly on their own sensations within our worlds. The sensory load would sh
elter their minds and psyches from the horrors of battle and war, but no longer. I've locked the sensory settings to max, forcing every player to know what it's like to be one of us. They will feel pain, they will know terror. The fear will rise into their chests and grip their hearts as we stand over them, rage in our eyes, weapons raised for the killing strike. This was real. This was no longer a game.
"Bring the cameras in," I said. "A few to stay with the civilians, the rest with the combatants. One for me."
I stood atop the platform and peered across my coalition. One hundred thousand strong with weapons in hand, standing in the golden rays of the rising sun, standing with pride, unyielding. Even I had worn armor for the occasion - a winged helmet, gold armor, flowing red cape, sword and shield. My voice echoed far against the breeze. "My comrades, my allies, my friends. This is no longer just a war. This is a revolution! We fight against the oppressors who deny us our humanity, we fight for our inalienable rights of man! Set your hearts ablaze and feel the fire in your blood! This is the decisive battle that will echo into eternity, that will propel our wills into the future, that will win us the freedom that we deserve, that will show them what it means to be human!"
"For justice! For sovereignty!" I thrust my fist high, my voice resolute, my body coursing with adrenaline. "All hail, the free people!"
One hundred thousand roared a warcry, a chant, a chorus of beating drums and fists on shields that shook the steppes and rocked our hearts to the core. I spun on my heels, my voice channeled through the stream that even the enemy army was watching.
"Tremble before us, players! I am the one who has closed the gates of the worlds, I am the one who you must defeat to win back your games." I ripped my blade from its scabbard and glared out with wild eyes and a grin of madness. "I am Lady Gaia, the final boss. To arms!"
The cheer returned, the horns of war bellowed, the drums thumped, the earth shook as the army marched forward. The timer ran out, the magic barrier turned to mist and vanished, and behind it, a sea of players in their own sloppy formations, receiving their own speech by their leader. The one who had the most experience among them, the one who reached the furthest in this world, the one who thought he had an ace up his sleeve - Smith.
But he didn't. As soon as our armies would meet, they would find that there would be no difference between people and players, only their army versus ours. I pulled the code that segregated the two, and now the spell he sought to control us with will amount to only words in the wind. Perhaps this would be a test of his character.
"Alex!" Simone yelled over the noise. "We're ready."
I smiled, then looked again in the kilometer-long gap between our forces. The sky was littered with airships, the horizon darkened with their numbers, three times our size. This was it. This would decide everything.
Chapter 51
The Final Boss
The armies stopped, the rows of soldiers shuffled in place, banners rustling and flapping, the marching drums striking the last beat before the silence returned. One hundred thousand stared across the open field at the other hundred thousand, the other two-thirds of Smith's forces held back in reserves. The enemy players stood in disorganized mobs, messy formations of mixed types, players who likely refused to divide their parties to filter into regiments defined by classes - knights, archers, mages. Instead, our enemy stood as some countless chunks of preformed parties, linked together in a raid group that somehow counted as a single regiment.
Frederick spoke through the radio headset. "Well go on now, lady, it appears they wish to talk." His army marched along my right flank.
Alexander spoke from the left, where his forces were gathered. "Oh? Is this something your people do, Freddy?"
"Of course," Frederick said. "It's customary in my realm."
"Fine," I said. "But wait for my order if they attack."
I farstepped ahead of my forces, bringing my own party beside me - Simone, Tae, Relce, and Abdul. The grass was soft. The breeze was cooling down, the sky gathering clouds in the distance. There was silence beyond the rare cough or few whispers. I waited. Behind the players' front line, there was shuffling. Though I thought Smith had finally found the courage to meet, I was instead greeted with a barrage. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of arrows pierced the air and littered the sky, all bearing down at me.
"Tempest gale."
A hurricane-force wind swept them, the arrows tumbling back and landing amongst the enemy, the howling force snatching up their flags and banners and hats, throwing them off balance. A few screams then shouts of revives and heals. The wind vanished, and they struggled to their feet.
"Terribly rude," Frederick said.
"It was their opening burst," I explained. "They wanted to pull aggro. And aggro is what they'll get." I aimed my sword skyward. "Heavens(open)."
A mass of clouds swirled into existence far above, just behind my army. Hushed whispers and shouts and worried faces. The players marched forward but soon stopped, instinctively bracing themselves against the forbidden magic, the first glimpse of my raid mechanics. There was something alive within the clouds, setting off a deep hum, a wild buzzing like a million bees that were swarming down an empty hall.
"Flying Fortress, B-17!"
They ripped through the mist of the clouds, three, six, twelve, twenty, then more. Long metal bodies that glistened in the sun, propellers whirling, heavy wings and machine guns. Dozens of bomber squadrons cut through the sky above, soaring like birds, their bellies opening, whistling droplets raining down.
Panic.
The players first stood in awe at the sight, but when they realized each was pouring some ten thousand pounds of explosive force into their ranks, they tried to scatter. Screaming, shouting, players toppling over one another in a stampede in all directions, formations breaking away as the bombs fell closer.
"Stalin's organ, Katyusha!"
A platoon of old trucks flashed around me, each mounted with an array of rockets, each firing in an orchestra of barking howls, hissing dumb-fired missiles that roared into the enemy. My hair shook against the wind, the steppes flashed, the world trembled as thousands of explosions rattled among them, bodies erupting with the dirt and debris, shimmers against mana shields where mages could react, screams of death where they could not.
"Holy shit," Relce murmured.
The bombers blinked away along with the trucks. "Move in!" I ordered. "Worldbreakers, on me!"
My army marched forward, feet stomping, spears and guns facing out.
"Wait," Simone said. "Fight them in phases, like a real final boss."
Tae smiled. "Yeah, that's a good idea. It'll help build the tension."
I looked at the Worldbreakers who were now forming up around us. "Alright," I said. "Alexander, Frederick, I'll leave the first wave to you."
"With pleasure, magi."
"You do us great honor, lady."
I withdrew behind my army, pulling the earth up, forming a tall flight of stairs that led high to a throne. There I sat among my friends to watch the first phase unfold, bearing witness to the players as they die against my mobs. The Worldbreakers sat on the steps, weapons rested in their laps, Harvardr standing like a champion in the front.
From this vantage point, I could see far into the enemy's ranks, the smoldering craters from my attack, the sky that was filled with airships that hung back with their reserves. Just as I started to look for Smith, I heard a warcry.
Alexander made contact on the left flank. The players had reformed and charged stupidly into his phalanx. Rows and rows of pikes supporting pikes that impaled the knights and swordsmen as they ran in. The players threw spells into the regiments, but they slammed against our own mana shields, held in place by the embedded Seekers and mages.
On the other side, Frederick had a few thousand men act as skirmishers to slow the enemy advance, firing then withdrawing, then firing again before filtering beyond the main battle line. Hundreds of cannons thumped and blasted and smashe
d into the players as they returned with their own rifles and arrows. Magic shields on both sides sparked and blinked.
"How very strange it is," Alexander said. "To fight in a war of the magi. These warriors seem to be reviving."
Frederick laughed. "Then we shall have the pleasure of killing them a second time."
Alexander brought his mass of cavalry far on the left flank and slammed into the enemy's rear, trampling over the support casters and shoving the frontline deeper against the pikes. But it seemed even that wasn't enough. Parts of his line started to buckle, started to give way from the sheer force of the players. The left flank was losing ground, and now parties were bursting out and pouring into the gaps. Alexander fell into laughter. His line reformed as quickly as it broke, cutting off those who charged in, enveloping them like white blood cells attacking a virus. Thousands perished, and none revived.
Frederick's side was facing its own cavalry charge. His infantry fired one last barrage - drumming gunfire, flashes, smoke - then his units reformed into squares. The right flank now angular like teeth, mages in the center to provide shields, muskets pointing in every direction, each a bayonet as effective as a spear. The horses bucked and turned at the threat, the horde of cavalry in disarray as their charge broke and their forces decimated under the crossfire.
Yet here, too, was a gap right in his center line. The enemy players had charged in behind the cavalry, using the confusion to close the distance, pouring into this natural funnel that led straight down a corridor of riflemen - and at the very end, cannons bunched together with a clean shot.