War Games

by Nikita Thorn

  Seiki returned his attention to the warrior spirit, strangely fascinated. “So you actually made that thing from… crafting ingredients?” He was not sure why this particular magical concept sounded so uncanny.

  “Yeah, crafting ingredients, plus expensive weapons and armor, and a ton of Orbs. The more you add, the higher level it gets,” explained Chika. “You gotta cook them up correctly or they fall apart and there goes your precious binding scroll. Or you end up with some weird monster you don’t want and you have to kill it and start over, which also wastes your scroll.”

  “I see,” said Seiki, not quite sure how he felt about that. The ghost samurai looked almost human, and it was turning its head around as if it had thoughts of its own. Seiki told himself that technically it was just another NPC, but the fact that someone had literally created it out of random items was a little disturbing.

  “That’s a good-looking guard,” Yamura admitted.

  “Well,” Chika said. “Considering an unclaimed named sword went into it…”

  “You mean the one it’s holding?” asked Yamura.

  Once again, Seiki observed the nodachi sword in the Yureimusha’s grip, but found that he could not inspect the item, as it was most likely considered part of the creature. From where he stood, he could tell that the blade was very fine, and now that blood had faded from it, it was gleaming reflective silver.

  Chika nodded. “Crazy range, crazy attack power,” said the ninja girl. “Daisuke and Makino stopped wearing their armors because they were dying too much.”

  “And guess what?” A furious voice chimed in from the doorway. “Once combat starts, if you’re out of melee range for more than two second, it Life Drains you.”

  Daisuke [Level 15], the man who had just died after being thrown through the shoji door earlier, appeared at the doorway of the Red Dragon Cave spirit room behind them, presumably after his five minutes of death nausea had ended. The blood on his clothes had completely faded, but the gray yukata was still slowly mending itself, carefully and discreetly stitching the long gaping cut close.

  “Yeah,” Daisuke fumed when the group turned to face him. “Like a freakin’ obake, the thing has a Life Drain. So you can’t use Escape, since it puts you too far away. And if you take a hit, it knocks you out of range and then that triggers the Life Drain anyway.”

  Seiki had a feeling he was not the only one who hated that particular obake ability.

  Emerging from the spirit room right behind Daisuke was Makino [Level 14], a well-built square-jawed young man in a very low-level green yukata and straw sandals with 3% durability; that must have been the throwaway gear he had opted for to avoid taking too much damage to his regular gear set.

  “And the bloody ghost takes your weapons,” Makino added in annoyance. He and Daisuke had stopped behind them before the doorway, eyeing the spirit warrior angrily, careful to stay out of its attacking range.

  The ghost samurai turned to fix its eyeless sight upon the two men, its curved sword raised, but made no attempt to charge. Letting out a grunt, Makino backed up, pulling Daisuke back with him, and the guardian relaxed and slowly sheathed its long sword.

  “That thing makes me nervous,” muttered Makino.

  Seiki could empathize. Judging from how they had switched out their normal gear set as well as the current condition their replacement sets were in, they must have been at it for hours. And Seiki knew all too well that if you died to the same thing more than five times in a row, it really started to get on your nerves.

  “Hey, come on, you’re getting extra salary for this.” Chika laughed and ran into the room to retrieve her clan mates’ bow and two daggers off the floor. Since she was a clan member, the ghost warrior largely ignored her presence.

  “There you go.” The ninja girl returned to distribute the weapons back. “One Kitayama Short Bow,” she said to Daisuke. “And there, one Jagged Throwing Blade, and, of course, your precious Kaminari.” She presented the named dagger to Makino with both hands in mock respect. “Would you like a shopping bag with that?”

  Too frustrated to be amused, the two men said nothing as they silently re-equipped their weapons.

  Yamura frowned. “Uh, what do you mean it takes your weapons?”

  “When you fight these territory guards, both your weapons auto-unequip when you get killed, so they drop where you die,” said Chika. “If you don’t have a named weapon, you’ve gotta run back and grab them, or they’re gone.”

  “And if you have a named weapon?” asked Yamura.

  Chika rolled her eyes. “With named weapons, you just go claim them back from Lost & Found. Don’t tell me you don’t know that.”

  “Of course I know that,” muttered Yamura.

  Seiki looked at the ghost samurai in even more fascination. He had always thought equipped items were completely safe from theft and looting. “Are territory guardians the only things that do this? I mean, make you drop your equipped weapons?”

  “Pretty much,” said Chika.

  “Why?” Seiki wondered. This condition would probably serve as quite an effective deterrent for invaders, but then again he was quite certain all higher-level players had named weapons, so ultimately it would simply be a minor inconvenience.

  “Makes you think twice before you engage,” said Gin. “If you’re ever in combat with it, the auto-unequip effect applies until you kill it, or leave the territory. Even if you run away and someone else deeper in the territory kills you, you still drop your weapons.”

  “I see,” said Seiki. This would certainly make territory invasions more challenging. The point was perhaps not to steal their weapons, but to unarm the invaders and force them to retreat.

  The bandit leader was in the room, arms crossed in front of his chest, staring thoughtfully at the ghost samurai. Seiki started to suspect that Gin had not brought them here simply to show off his new territory guardian.

  “I suppose you’re going to ask us to fight it?” Despite not having agreed to it, Seiki was already calculating how he would get in a proper connect while avoiding the five-foot sword. Unlike a certain famous oni-cleaving sword, this one was slim, and based off a real weapon, meaning it was actually useful in combat.

  “Yes,” said Gin. “You can see that we haven’t been quite successful. The best we ever got was about two hits in.”

  “Shouldn’t you be happy about that? That means your treasures are probably safe,” said Yamura.

  “I want you to try to kill it,” said Gin. “There must be a weakness somewhere.”

  Yamura scoffed. “Yeah, right, as if we’re going to do that. I see what you’re up to. You’re trying to take our weapons.”

  Glancing at the bandits, Seiki felt that was not their intention. They had to know that both his weapons were named, and so he had nothing to worry about here. In the worst case, he would need to spend some Favors speeding up the Bureau to recall the weapons. Yamura’s bow was not named, but it was not very high-level either, and the hunting knife on his belt was from a ryoushi class quest that was not too difficult to obtain. The bandits had no need at all for their weapons.

  Yamura’s accusation seemed to amuse the bandit leader. “This challenge goes both ways, mister ryoushi,” Gin said seriously. “If you kill it, you know it has a chance to drop whatever it’s made of as loot.”

  That caught Seiki’s attention. “Including the named sword?”

  Gin smiled at his instant enthusiasm. “Yes, including the named sword, if you’re lucky.”

  “Drop chance is about 20% for crafting ingredients, and 8% for gear,” Chika explained. “According to the Society, anyway, but I think they only experimented with trash-tier monsters.” The ninja girl shrugged. “With this thing, who knows?”

  “If you fine gentlemen manage to kill it and it really drops the named blade for you, you are welcome to keep it.” Gin sounded perfectly earnest.

  “Wait. But this would actually encourage people to
attack and kill guardians,” said Seiki in slight confusion. “Why would they do that?”

  The moment he asked, he suddenly realized why. If Ippei was right that unique weapons were put in the game to stimulate PVP, perhaps guardians were put in to encourage territory invasions. The higher-level the guardian, the harder it was to kill, but the better weapons and gear it could drop. This condition motivated the defending clan to keep upgrading their guardian but at the same time also incentivized other clans to invade them.

  “Okay, never mind,” said Seiki. “I guess it’s to keep the game from stagnating,” he said, using the bandit leader’s term from earlier.

  “You’ve said the magic word, mister ronin,” Gin said. “This brings me to my second theory about Hatsuo and his gang, which is not included in your hundred gold, by the way. This is totally a bonus.” He paused for a moment to make sure he got their attention. “Maybe it’s the opposite: the Worldbreakers weren’t banned; they were… rewarded.”

  “What does that even mean?” asked Yamura. “Rewarded with what? Unlimited gold? So they can start clan wars for fun?”

  “I guess you’d have to ask Hatsuo,” Gin said casually, before nodding toward the ghost warrior. “So find a way to kill that thing for me and I’ll get you a face-to-face with the guy.”

  Seiki started to feel that there was a common trend with all the major RPers in the City, in that they all excelled in the art of coercion, their main tool being human curiosity.

  Yamura glared at the bandits. “The thing’s Level 23. Your guys are Level 14 and 15, and they didn’t come even close. How do you expect us to kill it?”

  “Fair point,” said Gin, stopping a moment to muse. “Okay, how about you only need to get it to half health, and I’ll consider our deal done.” The bandit smiled before clarifying, “So, get it down to three thousand HP. That’s all I need. And I’ll get Hatsuo himself to pay you a visit.”

  “A friendly visit, with willingness to answer my questions,” said Seiki, in case the bandit’s words actually meant the kind of visit the Shadow Manor often paid him.

  Gin laughed. “Oh, of course, mister ronin. You sound like you’re making a deal with the devil. I’ve got a reputation to maintain, too, you know. Gin always does win-win deals, satisfaction guaranteed, or money back.”

  Yamura was still not having any of it. “Both Life Drain and melee abilities with a five-foot range?” he cried. “That’s just ridiculous and I’m sure you’re just trying to scam us out of our weapons. You obviously designed it to be impossible.”

  “It’s the Rogami’s design, actually,” said Chika. “And yeah, they probably designed it to be impossible if you’re too low to one-shot it. Magic, check. Melee, check. It also has a very high dodge on projectiles. That’s like everything covered.”

  “Down to the scarf,” muttered Yamura. “Can’t get away from their stupid yellow and black.”

  “Oh, actually I put the scarf there myself,” said Gin with a mysterious smile. “For… well, motivation, I guess.”

  Something clicked in Seiki’s mind. “You’re going to rob the Rogami!” he blurted out. That was the bandits’ intention.

  Looking at the guardian again with its Rogami-themed scarf, which Seiki just now realized was made from Rogami flags taken off the streets, it all started to make sense. “They have a territory guardian exactly like this one,” he said. “So you created an exact copy here, and you’re trying to figure out how to get past it.”

  This was the big fish the bandit had been referring to. It also explained why the room was fashioned to look the way it did. It must have been the shape and size of either the front room or the treasure room at the Rogami clan territory.

  Gin’s delighted smile was enough confirmation. “You go to the Shogun’s banquet, we come rob your unprotected clan hall.”

  “So these guys are here to help us?” Daisuke turned to ask his clan leader.

  “Yes,” said Seiki, even before he could think.

  Yamura held out a hand. “Wait a minute. Okay, I hate the Rogami, too, but that thing is impossible. These guys have been trying for hours and they can’t even touch it… No offense.”

  Seiki glanced at Daisuke and Makino, not sure why he was rather excited about this project. “We might be able to do it with four people.”

  Gin nodded. “Four people’s fine. When it comes to the real thing, there will be at least ten of us.”

  “In that case, can’t you just burst?” asked Seiki. With ten ryoushi and ninjas, all with ranged abilities, they might be able to kill it quickly if they timed their attacks.

  “No. We tried that,” said Daisuke. “We all shot it at the same time. Eight people, I think, but it’s got quite a bit of armor on, and high dodge, so we couldn’t do it fast enough before it starts Life Draining.”

  “I see,” said Seiki. All under Level 20, the bandits were too low-level for the strategy, but it was not impossible, and they were all at a disadvantage when it came to physical combat in a tight space. As the only melee player in the room, Seiki had brought something new to the table. This must have been part of why Gin decided to ask him to try in the first place. “What else do I need to know?”

  Seiki learned that the ingredients that went into each created guardian determined the kinds of abilities it had. Several Essence of Spirit orbs and the two high-level class-specific obake charms had gone into this particular ghost samurai, probably giving it the Life Drain ability, which only triggered when players were out of melee range. A rather rare Windtamer’s Chest Guard also resulted in high dodge stats, so about a fifth of mid-level projectiles went astray. The fortunate thing was that the ghost samurai only utilized straightforward normal attacks.

  “So no special melee abilities?” asked Seiki. Enemies sometimes had a modified version of player class abilities. If this thing had a stun, like a Vertical Spike, they might be in a lot of trouble.

  “No,” said Makino. “Not that we would know anyway, since we usually die after one hit,” he added, with a hint of bitterness.

  “Well, you probably won’t if you actually wear some armor,” said Chika unhelpfully.

  Makino glared at her. “My set is at 4%. That’s after fixing it twice to max today.”

  Next, Seiki wondered if the ryoushi could use their Trap to hold it in place, and then have other people attack from behind from within melee range, which would prevent it from activating its Life Drain. But he quickly understood why it was implausible.

  Being a spirit, the Yureimusha had no feet. The legs simply faded into wavy air below its knees.

  Seiki suddenly had to laugh at this very specific problem, somehow as excited as he was amused. It was a familiar challenge, after all. He had sized up enemies with height and weight advantages before, as well as ridiculously quick jabs or worrying knock-out rates, but he had never encountered one where the problem was that the opponent had no feet.

  “I’m going to try something crazy,” he turned to tell the bandits, before giving Gin a nod.

  Gin has removed you from the group. The territory you are in is set to offensive PVP. The Red Dragon Cave NPCs will attack you on sight!

  “It’s going aggro once you step into the room,” Gin warned him.

  Gin also removed Yamura from the group, and as a precaution, Seiki initiated a new group and invited his team members into it—so that they would not be able to accidentally hurt each other.

  “Wait,” said Daisuke. “Once you attack it, it’s going to start Life Draining everyone in the group who’s not in range.”

  “Right,” said Seiki. He had not thought of that one. “Okay, leave the invite hanging, then. Only accept right when you come in.” He was not sure when that would be or how exactly it would play out, since he had only gotten the first bit figured out.

  Seiki turned to his friend. “Yamura, I might need you for this from the beginning.”

  “Hope you’ve got a good strat, since allegedly
we’re not planning on dying tonight.”

  Yamura of the Honor Warriors [Level 16] has joined your group.

  “We’re not,” Seiki reassured him. “Come into melee range with me. The sword’s five feet, so that should give us a bit more leeway than usual. The thing might be able to Life Drain multiple targets, but he’s only got one sword, which means only one melee attack at a time. Let me worry about that.”

  This was perhaps the reason why Seiki liked fighting monsters with physical abilities over magic. Melee was sensible, seeable, predictable. Most of the time, he wanted to know exactly what hit him. Even after all that happened, and in whatever form, physical combat was still very much his home territory, and the thought of it was starting to make him feel rather excited.

  “You just get ready to Trap,” he told Yamura.

  Daisuke shook his head. “Trap doesn’t work. The thing’s too high off the ground.”

  “I know,” Seiki said as he stepped to the edge of the room.

  Now that he was no longer in a group with the bandits, the ghost samurai turned toward him and unsheathed its sword.

  Seiki closed his eyes and took a second to breathe in, like he always did, taking notice of his position and the opponent’s, as well as the weight of the Hikari and the Kohagane dagger on his belt. With a quick nod to Yamura, Seiki burst into a Slide at the Yureimusha, the slick tatami under his feet lending him surprising speed. Yamura sprinted after him, his footsteps heavy on the ground as he tried to keep up, and the bright double shink sounded as the Trap got conjured.

  The Yureimusha had already raised its nodachi sword high above its head in an attacking stance, and Seiki kept his gaze fixed on its wrists. It all very much depended on him being able to read this first strike.

  Like an experienced warrior, the ghost samurai calmly waited. Seiki did the same as he closed in, since it was only the last second that mattered. Keeping his center of gravity low, he had aimed left on his approach, not enough to make the ghost warrior turn, but hopefully enough to limit its possible moves. His eyes still on Yureimusha’s wrists, Seiki forced himself to wait a little more.