War Games

by Nikita Thorn

  Behind them, the old beggar cackled. “They said I was crazy. Now I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

  “Can’t you, like, dismiss him or something?” muttered Yamura.

  Ippei, who was working on his handicraft by the beggar’s dim fire, let out a similar laughter. “I’d like to see you try. He’d probably give you an earful.”

  To get to the correct position to attempt the crossing, Seiki had invited his friends into his instance, which immediately earned them the old beggar’s ire. The man started complaining about the unwelcomed visitors crowding his favorite spot in the wilderness, before proceeding to dismiss everyone’s troops with a rude yell.

  “I can’t believe this is your field officer,” Ippei had said at the beginning, before adding something about how ronin instances had definitely changed. Over the course of six jumps, however, the samurai seemed to have warmed up a little to the old man.

  Seiki found the whole situation with his so-called field officer rather amusing. If they had given him four clueless villagers for his starting troops, it made perfect sense that his West Plains war officer would turn out to be a disgraced general who was not quite right in the head. The disgraced bit was proposed by Mairin and Koharu after speculating about how the old man was connected to the story line.

  “Since you said he knew Captain Okamoto and Master Tsujihara, he must have spoken up when Captain Okamoto was executed. That pissed off the Shogun, who dismissed him on the spot and stripped him of his title, but then Commander Nakatani felt sorry for him, so now they secretly allow him to help ronins out in the wilderness.” The two girls had been rather pleased with the plausible but totally unfounded backstory they had come up with for the old man. Unsurprisingly, the beggar only responded with the usual: “That’s what you think?”

  The old man shook his head as Seiki approached the fire, muttering something intelligible under his breath as he moved the dying embers around with his scrawny crooked stick.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Seiki said to Ippei.

  The samurai looked up from his fourth wooden bowl. “Give up?” He grinned. “I remember Ryuta being pretty stoked about his Rush-Slide combo when he first got it.”

  “Yeah, it does feel good.” Seiki admitted. This was another severe understatement. While not entirely pleasant, there was something about the combination of the warm rush of energy surging through his body and the chilling loss of health that made it strangely thrilling and dangerously addictive.

  “Especially with that variation,” said Ippei. “Now you can try for the Olympics long jump next.”

  His friend managed to sound entirely earnest, and Seiki started to laugh, harder than he thought he would, perhaps at the tragic, silly and utterly glorious thought of having just broken every human record in existence trying to jump over a virtual gap with a virtual superpower.

  It had taken Seiki a while before he finally grasped what the Infinite variation actually did for his ability. First of all, it meant that as long as he had access to a healer, he would have close to unlimited energy for a short period of time. The health cost doubled for every full bar of health spent, and the lockout time applied on top of previous ones, so it would quickly stop being worth it once he got past the second round. However, once he had a firm grasp of it, the burst damage he could achieve would be unthinkable. This, of course, only worked when he had a healer. Alone, it only allowed him to use a health potion as a lesser energy potion, which was not that useful.

  Second of all, it meant that his last-resort Parry now had multiple charges. After blocking a lethal attack, he could still trade health for more energy for yet another Parry, but that also meant he would keep applying the lockout, which, again, might not be worth it in the long run.

  Third, it meant that his class perk Strength of Will would always be within reach, as he could always drop his health down to 8% to activate it and break himself out of Fear effects.

  Lastly, and rather disturbingly, it perhaps meant that he could pretty much choose to kill himself at any time by lowering his health to a single percent and hoping the enemy made the slightest mistake. Which meant no obake would ever be able to keep him trapped and hovering in near-death nausea for six minutes. While that was an oddly comforting thought, Seiki hoped there would never be a situation where he would actually need to consider it.

  This single variation actually changed his whole gameplay, and opened up many more possibilities he was not yet aware of. And at the end of his testing, he finally understood why Ippei had sounded so impressed.

  The samurai had speculated that his Level 15 ability quest had been integrated into the unlabeled quest chain for ronins, and that the variation had been a direct reward from that. Having no other examples to go off of, they all decided it was the best theory for now. Seiki, however, could not help wondering if it was simply because he had been so utterly desperate to save Genta, and that somehow counted as deviation from normal gameplay, as no one was supposed to take the threat that seriously.

  “So, let’s get to that cave,” said Seiki.

  His one-hour rental of the training ground had long expired, and his troops were no longer permitted to hang around. Seiki glanced at the edge of the instance to look for them. Rumi had respawned, now back in full health and looking cheerful, which meant that another forty-five minutes had passed.

  Kentaro walked over to join them by the fireside. “One more try?” The houshi had made it his own challenge to catch Seiki with both Soothe and Ward every time before he disappeared down the abyss, even when they had decided that neither ability helped much when it came to fall damage.

  “I’m at the point where it’s either stop now or keep at it all night,” Seiki said. He had tried all the sensible options, and if he continued it might start bordering on very dubious ideas, like carrying a fox while Sliding and jumping and attempting to throw her over the alleged invisible wall. Or perhaps trying to stab his Hikari through the wind and see if he could make it stick on the cliff. “And I think now that I’ve gotten the basic hang of it, I need to really think how to optimize it.”

  Despite all this potential, the Infinite variation came with its own complication. Seiki had never realized until now how slippery energy was, as he never had to manipulate it beyond pushing the flow through his body to the correct contact points to activate his special moves. All his abilities so far, except Slide, automatically took fixed amounts, so he never had to think about energy management beyond a simple check whether he had enough. Blood Rush was much trickier. The ability gave him the freedom to trade any percentage of health for the same percentage of energy, but the process did not happen in clear chunks of numbers. Rather, it was like turning a valve and letting water flow through. So, most of the time, Seiki was blindly grabbing at the source of energy and pulling it out for use.

  The Infinite variation added another layer of complications. Since it allowed him to continue using the ability during lockout, he was tempted to keep pulling more and more. Subsequent uses extended the health regeneration penalty on top of existing ones, and if he was not careful he knew he could easily end up with hours of it. Even now, having used it so many times in succession, his lockout had added up to 18 minutes, and his health was recharging almost twice as slow.

  This was partly why Seiki thought it was a good time to stop experimenting. There were simply too many things to think about and he was once again feeling a little overwhelmed with options.

  At the edge of the cliff, Mairin was still trying to convince someone to try throwing her over. “What happens if you hold me and jump?” she asked Koharu. “I can’t believe we’ve never tried that.”

  “We would just drop like a rock, and I don’t die, but you do,” said the obake. “You know that the only reason Seiki can survive the fall is because of his shield armguard thing, right?”

  The kitsune mused for a second. “Or maybe I can try to Dash right when I’m about to hit the ground. And if th
at doesn’t work, then Kentaro can climb down and revive me.”

  “I don’t have Revive yet,” Kentaro reminded her. “That’s Level 21.”

  “You’re never going to make it, Foxy,” Ippei shouted to her as he casually packed away his half-crafted bowls. “It’s not meant to be jumped.”

  Seiki glanced back at the cave. “Why would they make it look like you can?” The demons could have easily sealed shut the cave once they burned the bridge, and that would have been much less misleading. Or if the gorge had been even only a little bit wider, it would never have crossed Seiki’s mind to jump. “Why put it right there to tease you?”

  “It’s a one-way exit,” said Ippei matter-of-factly. “You enter through the cave at the other side of the mountain. And once you finish whatever quest you have to do in the tunnels, you exit here, and it puts you right next to your private instance and saves you the trouble of coming back round the mountain.”

  “Oh.” That made perfect sense.

  “And you didn’t say anything until now?” said Yamura in protest. “I wasted like a hundred arrows.”

  “Didn’t want to spoil your fun, especially when Seiki’s test driving his new ability,” Ippei said. “From Level 15 onward, it starts to get interesting, and when Free Slots start opening up at 16.”

  “Then you immediately fill it with Disarm, like everyone else,” said Mairin with a wry smile.

  After some more comments from the group about how the Social Guild should think about organizing an in-game sports event and some not entirely amicable exchanges with the old field officer, they finally set off toward the mountain range.

  Kentaro, who was in charge of the map, offered to lead the way. For his personal amusement, he quickly threw a low-level enchantment on the tip of his staff, making it glow like a dim candle. “Follow the light, boys and girls. Keep your eye on your field trip buddy and let me know if someone’s missing.”

  “Do we have to hold hands?” asked Mairin.

  Two more pigeons arrived from Fuyu as they made their journey north through the forest. Seiki immediately crumpled up and discarded the messages onto the ground in puffs of smoke, much to Mairin’s amusement. Seiki hoped that his silence would be enough to deter the Ichikeya girl in dragging him into whatever further plot she had in mind and that this would be the last he would hear of the matter.

  “Yes, Ichikeya, we want to know if the Rogami Clan is after us,” shouted Yamura again into the dark.

  “She can’t hear you,” said Koharu. “She’s not here. She’s just got this psychic thing going on with Seiki.”

  Seiki almost choked. “I hope not.”

  Yamura shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why won’t she talk to me?”

  “That’s a good thing. You should try to keep it that way. She baits you with curiosity.”

  “But isn’t she the chick who gets you Yoshiwara invites?”

  “For that, your best bet is actually your new clan in East City,” Seiki said.

  Kentaro spun around in earnest interest. “Oh, you’re switching clans, Yamura?”

  “No!” cried the ryoushi as Mairin burst into giggles.

  They soon came across a small forest path. They dismissed their troops and summoned their horses in order to travel a bit faster. Saburo was not happy, and Ippei found it quite amusing how vocal the boy was about it before he reluctantly disappeared into the darkness.

  “The more you talk to them, the chattier they become,” said the samurai.

  “Not a bad thing, is it?” said Koharu.

  “Wait till you have fifty.”

  “Luckily, that will be a long time from now.” Seiki had just spent nearly all his War Tokens on upgrading his formation slot for emergency use, and he knew he would not be getting any War Games in the next seven days, which meant no Tokens for a while.

  “Oh, don’t be so sure,” said Ippei in a mysterious tone, most likely having cooked up some other plots with getting the West Defenders to help them speed-level.

  The path led west, and was for the most part deserted. The only other player they came across was a lone Honor Warrior samurai who seemed to be wandering around with his unit of twenty-five, looking for random demon encounters, and who rudely ignored Yamura’s attempt to hail him. Ippei seemed very familiar with this part of the world. He casually pointed out the general direction of several higher-level War Games further beyond the Renkan Mountain Range. He also indicated the location of the samurai instance, which he referred to as a military camp.

  “I’ll show you later, then you’ll see what a proper camp is supposed to look like,” said Ippei.

  Instanced camps gave players safe locations to log out from between War Games, and there were a few of them scattered throughout the West Plains. Some were class-specific, while some were more basic and personal versions of Muraki Fort, which every class could see and enter. The samurai had not been entirely convinced about Seiki’s alleged field officer in his Ketsui Gorge class instance.

  “Maybe for ronins, you need to unlock something first, like how you had to do that extra villager quest to get your troops,” Ippei mused.

  “Why would they do that?” asked Mairin.

  “Lore, maybe? Nakatani was all funny about giving Seiki his troops at the beginning, and he wasn’t a stickler like that in Beta. I guess they changed ronin stuff quite a bit, maybe to differentiate it more from the samurai version.”

  “Like give them an unlabeled quest chain with a ridiculous amount of XP?” said Yamura.

  “Jealous?” Mairin said with a smile.

  Yamura turned toward Seiki, narrowing his eyes as he inspected his experience bar. “Look, you’re nearly halfway to the next level, and didn’t you just level earlier tonight at the bandits’ place?”

  “You mean at your new clan,” said Mairin nonchalantly.

  “I’m not joining the bandits!” cried Yamura.

  “What bandits?” said Kentaro.

  Before the discussion of Yamura’s new clan could ensue, Koharu—who had obviously not been listening—let out a loud gasp. “Hey, I just thought of something.” The obake addressed Mairin. “Okay, so do you know this guy… uh, Sho? Daiki’s friend. No?”

  Mairin shook her head. Seiki could only guess she was talking about her Social Guild clan mates, who he obviously had never heard of before.

  “Kinda quiet and keeps to himself. Never mind. So he’s an obake, right, and one time we were talking about that super sad quest I told you about, when you unlock Fade for the first time?”

  “Which one is that again?” asked the kitsune.

  “The one with the twin siblings and the sister’s been dead for years but her brother doesn’t know because she keeps caring for him.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “That’s really creepy,” said Yamura.

  “Obake quests are all kinda like that,” said Mairin. “There’s one where you’ve got to walk an NPC through a tomb and you have to Possess all these dead bodies and have them fight themselves.”

  “More gross than creepy,” said Yamura.

  “That one turned out to be really sweet, actually,” said Koharu, apparently immediately sidetracked. “It was scary at first, but at the end it turns out to be a tomb for all these dead soldiers who are waiting for their commander. So when you show them proof that he’s been dead for the past fifty years, that releases them from their vows. You can even step through the netherworld portal to see them reunite. It’s all golden light and everything, and then they magically turn into real people again. I mean, not skeletons anymore. Then they get all emotional when they see their commander, like ‘We’ve waited for so long’ and the commander guy says ‘Thank you. You’ve done enough. Rest now’ and he looked really, really sad when he said it, like unspoken regrets, you know.”

  “Aw,” said Kentaro.

  “Yeah, I cried,” said Koharu.

  Ippei let out a short snort that was either a
suppressed laugh or a suppressed sigh, which was fortunately not that audible over the sound of twenty-four hooves on the ground.

  “Anyway,” Koharu continued. “Back to this guy, Sho. So he said he found the twin sister’s ragdoll in a tomb somewhere. It’s this old, messed-up doll, and when you bring it back to the brother he asks you to go somewhere with him, and it ends in some epic cut scene where he dies, too, and she comes to greet him and leads him to the netherworld.”

  “So, obake are too cool for happy endings or what?” said Yamura. “All your NPCs end up dying?”

  “Well, technically, lore-wise, Koharu’s already dead,” Mairin said.

  “Okay, so the point of the story is?” Ippei finally gave in and interrupted.

  “The point is, maybe it was an unlabeled quest,” said Koharu.

  “Yeah, right.” Yamura let out an incredulous laugh. “Suddenly, there are unlabeled quests everywhere?”

  “You see, at the time, I really asked everyone I knew, and no one has ever heard of the ragdoll quest before. I checked the Society’s obake quest chain and it wasn’t… Okay, don’t look at me like that. I don’t mind spoilers and I always check first what you’re supposed to do for your ability quests so I can’t mess them up.”

  “And the Society doesn’t have it listed?” said Kentaro.

  “No,” said Koharu. “So eventually everyone said the guy’s just lying. But why would he make up stuff like that? So then I kept asking around and someone eventually told me that his sister died, you know, in real life.”

  “Geez,” said Ippei.

  “You can’t just casually drop that kind of info,” said Kentaro.

  “Wait, okay, I don’t know if it’s true because it’s like someone heard from someone else, and maybe there’s some misunderstanding along the way, because they’re, like, not sure if he was talking about his own sister or the NPC twin sister from the quest.”

  “Geez,” cried Ippei again. “All right, that’s the worst twist ending to any story I’ve ever heard. Now you’re telling me it’s actually the NPC?”

  Kentaro let out a soft sigh. “I kinda don’t know how to feel about this.”