War Games

by Nikita Thorn

Seiki could not quite believe it either, but since there was nothing they could do, he searched for the timer hidden somewhere in his consciousness. It somehow reminded him of the countdown for prison time.

  Muraki Woods – Urgent [Time remaining: 41 minutes 14 seconds]

  “I guess we have to go with the normal strategy now,” Umiko said. Her expression sobered as she turned toward Ippei, her tone reflected a kind of a no-nonsense authority. “So try to do the locks as much as you can. Then afterward, when you’re baiting, we’ll find a spot off the path with enough room to turn. Climbable trees preferably, since Hayata can climb, so he’s the one holding the Ambition Blade. I’ll mark out the spot for you.”

  “Really cutting us no slack, are you?” Ippei said with a jerk of his head.

  “Well,” Umiko said. “That’s the deal.” And she smiled.

  Whatever the subtler points of this exchange were, Ippei simply nodded. For his part, Seiki glanced at the darkness ahead. The footsteps had ceased, and the faint orange torchlight had not moved any closer, so he could only guess that it was left to the players to engage the enemies and start the encounter.

  “Don’t claim our guys when we’re dead,” said Ippei, jumping off his black horse and dismissing it. He then glimpsed at Rumi. “Uh, and girl.”

  Ippei told his unit to wait with the main army, and so Seiki did the same. The villagers looked a little worried but said nothing.

  “You’ve got ten minutes,” Umiko called after them.

  Ippei turned to reply, “We’ll be done in five.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Hayata.

  On foot, Seiki followed Ippei deeper into the forest toward the firelight. The old red pines towered up like dark, silent pillars, and the grass came up about half their calves and rustled as it parted to let them through. Seiki did not glance back, but he could almost feel the West Defenders’ eyes boring into their neck.

  “Think ‘map’,” said Ippei before Seiki had a chance to even ask. They had walked about fifty feet away from where the main group had stopped.

  Seiki concentrated, and a strange kind of awareness filtered into his mind. The instance was roughly the shape of a vertical ellipse, and they were near the bottom of it. The left side of the instance was walled by the cliff where Muraki Fort sat.

  Seiki blinked. He was certain this knowledge had not been his own in the first place. Peeking up to check, Seiki could see the dark face of the cliff. Far above was the soft glow from the torches placed around the fort. He could almost point out the location of the campfire he and Ippei had been at earlier.

  There was no visual map to consult, but spatial information suddenly registered like recalled memories. Seiki understood the approximate distribution of the red pines around, and perhaps even the general shape of their branches. Once again, he looked around to check and found the impression to be more or less accurate.

  “This will really need some getting used to,” Seiki said under his breath as he found himself wondering if any of these trees would yield Woodcutting experience.

  “Be careful near the edges,” said Ippei. “If you cross the instance boundary, you phase out, and there goes your run, unless you’ve spent some War Coins to get multiple copies of the war order from Kato in advance. That will allow you to phase in and out once every half an hour like it’s a ticket.” He pointed to the cliff. “There’s no way to exit to the left, but the top edge is tricky, so check where you are and try not to go too near it.”

  A path cut through the mental map, from top to bottom-right, which perfectly matched the physical track that led through the forest. Beyond that, Seiki’s impression of the upper half of the instance was still a little hazy. The information appeared like a gray and undetailed mass, which somehow reminded him of an unformed Sheathed Blade.

  Seiki glanced around some more. “Well, that’s a stone shrine over there,” he said as he spotted a tiny white roof near one of the ancient pine trees. The tano-shrine looked exactly like the one he had seen before in the tutorial with Lieutenant Kato, except that this one was dark. “The light’s out, though.”

  “That’s from me breaking my Jade Card earlier,” said Ippei. “Once you use a tano-shrine, the flame goes out, and it’s inactive for the rest of the instance, unless someone resets all of them with a certain ryoushi card. When you activate a Jade Card, it automatically snuffs out the nearest shrine, so even when you don’t need to be at a shrine, you still need at least one active shrine in the whole instance.”

  “Ah,” said Seiki, starting to understand how it all worked. Even with the ability to activate War Cards, players were still limited by the number of tano-shrines in a certain instance, and it was rather obvious why mapping was necessary. “So I guess the locations of the tano-shrines are random?”

  “Yeah,” said Ippei. “And the number of shrines you have in each instance is also random, so we now need to mark them all out.”

  Seiki concentrated. In his consciousness, the location of the inactive tano-shrine was now marked. Again, it was not visual, but Seiki could turn and point exactly where it was.

  “So,” Seiki began. “Why a Calamity card?” He was quite certain his friend must have had better cards to pick. And given the rarity of Jade Cards, if it had been up to him, he doubted he would ever pass up on a chance to deal a thousand percent damage again.

  “At the end of Beta, when they asked me to choose, I really thought about it. Most of the people thought the best Jade to keep was one of those epic ones, but then I thought it’s only in these early events that you really have a chance to use a Jade Calamity and not wipe, and any early upgrades would have made all the difference. I was planning to get ahead in the game as soon as this official version went live, you see.”

  Seiki was not quite sure he understood his friend’s whole meaning. “But you didn’t even play when it came out.”

  “No,” said Ippei, shrugging. “Life happened. But this is our chance to catch up. You’ll see.”

  Ippei sounded confident, but Seiki still could not help asking. “What are our chances right now, with the extra boss ability?”

  “With that Ambition blade and how Muraki works, I’d say this is still too easy,” said Ippei. “Unless we’re very unlucky with the random boss ability.”

  Seiki thought he should ask for examples of what that could be to prepare himself a little more, but they had already walked another forty feet forward, and Ippei said, “There’s another one.”

  To test it out, Seiki concentrated on his mental map without turning to look, and—sure enough—he knew exactly where the shrine was. Again, he could not stop himself from double-checking with sight, and there, indeed, in the dark, the faint glow of the ethereal flame from the active tano-shrine shimmered like a large stationary firefly.

  “Okay, this is weird,” Seiki admitted, blinking as he tried to get used to the sensation. He now knew the area as if he had walked these woods a hundred times. The bottom half of the map was now filled with all kinds of new information. Like there was a large pine tree right next to the tano-shrine Ippei had just spotted, or that the ground around it sloped slightly upward.

  “It’s about to get weirder,” Ippei said. “But when you get used to it, you soon start to wonder why they still can’t give you these kinds of maps in real life.”

  “Oh, yeah, that would be really nice,” said Seiki.

  Ippei must have missed his meaning, as he simply pointed ahead. “Now if we had three hours, we could creep around and avoid dying. But we’re pressed for time, so we’re going to have to pull everything. To map something, you need to look at it. Even if you don’t actually see anything, if your eyes sweep through an area, the relevant information gets added to the map. So we need to cover the whole instance. I’ll go on the right. You take the left. Run, look, ride, whatever you have to do. If the demons spot you, kite. We’re not trying to live for long. Then once you reach the top, come back down the middle. Don’t die un
til you get the rez notification, and after you do, try to die in the next minute. We’ll rez back at the beginning, at the main army, with the instance fully mapped. The enemies haven’t spotted the main army, so they’re none the wiser, and then we can start properly.”

  Perhaps trusting Seiki’s claim that he was good with verbal instructions, the samurai did not even pause to make sure he understood all that before breaking off in quick strides in the opposite direction. “Pre-mount when you’re near the cart,” he turned to say.

  Seiki was not quite sure what his friend meant, but he kept walking forward carefully through the woods, keeping to the general left of the ellipse.

  If he thought the automatic familiarity was odd, what he felt next was something beyond peculiar. Map information was shared with all group members, so what Ippei discovered also surfaced in Seiki’s mind, popping up like old memories jogged back into awareness. Someone else back in the main army must have been looking around as well, and Seiki was suddenly aware of a gentle mound on the ground next to where his villagers were standing.

  He did not know how he should feel about this. The information was no doubt useful, but he could not help feeling it was somehow rather intrusive.

  A hundred steps more took him close enough to the source of the firelight to make out a group of around fifty Demonic Swordsmen around a large cage, easily identifiable by their standard black armor and red eyes and the long black blades that hung from their waists.

  A few of them, torch in hand, peered around idly as they stood watch, while the majority attended to the cart. Seiki smiled when he found that there was a perfectly good explanation why the demons had stopped here after all. One of the back wheels on the cart had broken, perhaps from the weight of the corrupted giant beast they were transporting, leaving the cart a little lop-sided.

  Inside the large metal cage, a pitch-black beast was thrashing about. The torches did not really help to illuminate the creature from a distance, and Seiki could not see much except for its black lizard-like tail. Ippei had called it a gecko, but to Seiki it looked more like a medium-sized dinosaur. The reptile hissed and rammed itself into the side of the cage. Several Demonic Sorcerers—marked by their long black robes—sprang into action and started chanting in a raspy language with their arms raised.

  The six black horses harnessed to the cart were half-shadow, very much like what obake players had for mounts. At this disturbance, they neighed and stamped their hooves in panic, prompting demon troops to rush in and calm them.

  On the other side of the cage were thirty or more demonic swordsmen. This must have been what Ippei had seen. The timer told him that nearly five minutes had passed, and he quickened his pace.

  Before he could move any further, he found himself gawking into the red eyes of a Demonic Scout [Level 18] who had stepped out from behind a tree.

  Seiki cussed. “They have scouts?”

  The demon shrieked and leapt at him with his jagged black metal glaive. Out of instinct, Seiki drew his Hikari to parry, wincing as the metal clank rang clear through the woods. Remembering what Ippei had said, he struck the demon away with Sweeping Blade and mapped a long Slide forward. His hand grabbed the horse whistle.

  Fubuki instantly appeared out of the forest in front of him. As Seiki jumped onto her saddle, a signal horn blared out behind him, and cries rose up among the demon troops.

  “Damn.” Seiki forced himself to turn and glance at the forest around him as he galloped past it. Another tano-shrine lit up on his mental map, but in the chaos Seiki was not sure if it was him or Ippei who had put it there.

  Pushing energy down on the stirrups to speed up, Seiki swerved sharply to the left to avoid a group of Demonic Swordsmen that had broken away from the cart to give chase. A quick peek revealed them to be anywhere from Level 17 to 20, which meant some of them could indeed one-shot him if they managed a perfect connect.

  Ippei had already filled out most of the right side, while his own left edge was still gray and nondescript. Seiki turned and peered into the darkness.

  “Gah,” he grunted as strange information about the terrain, trees, grass and yet another tano-shrine flooded his mind in the most unnatural manner. Despite its usefulness, he could not help thinking it was rather counter-intuitive.

  Behind him came the all-too-familiar sound of metal glaives cutting through air. Dismissing Fubuki, Seiki landed on the ground in a Slide. The black spinning weapon harmlessly passed through the horse, and Seiki whistled once more, ran, and jumped back onto the saddle as he continued to gallop forward.

  The forest was a little thicker near the top of the instance. Keeping his attention on the map, Seiki only went far enough for his peep to fill out the area, before turning sharp right.

  Almost immediately, he found himself on the sole dirt road that cut through the instance. The path led down directly toward the cart with the demonic reptile and its captors—who had now been alerted to his presence and were all drawing their weapons.

  Ippei burst out of the woods on the opposite side of the path on his unnamed black horse. “This way,” said the samurai without stopping, turning toward the main encounter. “Well done with your side. We only need the middle now.”

  With the demon soldiers still clambering after him from the left side of the instance, Seiki burst into a gallop after his friend. The dirt road was smooth and allowed for faster mount speed. Cold wind rushed past him as they charged directly ahead at the group of demons, who were rushing out to meet them with bared swords.

  “Get the locks,” Ippei said. “I’ll get one right now, then I’ll burn the rez card.”

  The cart and crowd drew nearer and nearer, and the demons let out a furious collective cry. Ippei pulled his horse to the left, ducked low and struck out with Sweeping Blade, knocking a few of them back, opening up a path for himself.

  Seeing this reminded Seiki that he could indeed use his abilities while mounted in War Games. Before he could try it out, however, Fubuki bolted with a shrill neigh as the glaive from one of the demons pursuing them buried itself into her side. Seiki winced, leapt off again into a Slide, allowing the injured horse to dash off in fright.

  Ippei was galloping by the cage, aiming with his sword. With a clear ring, his Hikari struck something at the base of the cage.

  “It needs another hit,” the samurai yelled, continuing on his path. “I’ll kite as many as I can.”

  The demons were in chaos. Some had decided to chase after Ippei, while the remaining ones threw themselves in Seiki’s path. With Sweeping Blade, Seiki struck them away, but still found himself staring into a swarm of shadow limbs, gleaming metal and vicious red eyes—all of which belonged to a level near impossible for him to tackle.

  Seiki Parried almost blindly as he ran through the group toward the metal cage. Still, an icy numbness slashed across his back, immediately dropping his health to two-thirds.

  The cage towered up almost three times the height of a man, and the trapped lizard—an angry mass of black shadow—roared and shook it as it threw its weight left and right as if trying to resist the charm. The three red seals pasted on three sides of the cage were oozing purple smoke from the channels of the three Demonic Sorcerers somewhere in the crowd.

  Another blade caught Seiki on his arm as he searched for the locks, bringing his health down by another quarter. Seiki hastily turned and knocked the demons back again with Sweeping Blade.

  Ippei had turned his horse around and was charging back at full speed. Seiki had no idea how his horse had not taken damage yet, but the samurai seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Still, as he galloped through, Seiki noticed that Ippei had lost nearly half his health.

  “Locks!” cried Ippei. Metals clanked rapidly as his sword warded off the demon’s attacks, and that seemed to successfully distract some of the demons away from Seiki.

  The door of the cage was kept shut by a series of five metal locks across its width. The left-most one w
as already damaged.

  Metal Lock. 23% durability.

  Without using energy, Seiki brought his Hikari down on it, and the lock shattered and fell off.

  “I’ll use the shrine up top to save the nearer ones,” the samurai shouted. His horse burst through, with a snarling group of demons tailing him. “I’ll lead as many away as possible. Hold out for a few more seconds.”

  Seiki had no time to respond as one Demonic Swordsman [Level 19] slashed at him. Since there was no way to Parry this without losing the rest of his energy, Seiki threw himself out of the way. Another Demonic Swordsman [Level 23] closed in and stabbed his blade down, forcing Seiki to roll under the cart to avoid the lethal blow.

  Taking a deep breath as his health somehow dropped to a fifth, Seiki dragged himself across the damp cool ground, out of range of the blades. The demons were still trying to get him with blind thrusts under the cart. Ippei’s horse was galloping farther and farther away down the path, with at least twenty demons in pursuit.

  In those few seconds of safety, Seiki drew in another deep breath as he waited for his energy to charge a few more points. He then burst from the other side of the cart and used his Sweeping Blade to drop four demons, including one Demonic Sorcerer.

  One of the locks was right there. Turning on his heels, he spent the rest of his energy on Focused Strike to smash it.

  Metal Lock. 11% durability.

  He struck it again, but one Demonic Swordsman [Level 16] had recovered and swung out his sword. Blades met, and his Hikari missed its target.

  Seiki grunted. A two-second stun from his Vertical Spike would be truly useful right now, except that he did not have enough energy for it. The swordsman attacked once more, and Seiki dropped low and retreated back under the cart.

  Above him, the giant lizard hissed and struggled to break free. The wooden cage and cart creaked and shook. One of the demons on the other side had crouched down and was staring at him with gleaming red eyes as he knew Seiki had nowhere to run.

  Seiki could no longer hear Ippei’s horse, and air was filled with hisses, weapon swishes and blood-thirsty snarls. It seemed an eternity before the notification finally came: