War Games

by Nikita Thorn

  Ippei chuckled as he looked at Seiki. “This is going to be an all-nighter, isn’t it?”

  Seiki glanced at the rest of the group. Kentaro had started distributing mid-grade food that would help with health regeneration for the next hour, and Mairin was running around in fox form, trying to make it snow with shredded paper. Genta and the rest of the unit were sitting down to rest near the far wall, and were talking in a low voice to some of Yamura’s archers. The room was full of noises and life, and Seiki found himself grinning as he looked back at Ippei.

  Maybe it all started with the ability to hear and appreciate these noises once again. “I hope so,” he said. And he really meant it.

  CHAPTER 20

  Keeping very low in the shadows near the ground, Seiki peered into the room.

  The chamber, nearly twice the size of the first room, was as wide as it was deep. In the middle, the ceiling receded inward into a shallow dome. Right beneath it sat an enormous earthen tub, three feet high and filled with black bubbling liquid, which occasionally spilled over the edge and dripped down in long lines, staining the side of the container.

  Next to the tub was a black-clad figure: a Demonic Potionmaster [Level Unknown], who appeared like nothing more than a shadow in the dim light, and who was busily stirring the dubious mixture with a large metal oar. Perhaps to avoid spillage, his arms were covered in thick elbow-length leather gloves, and his glowing red eyes narrowed in the darkness beneath his hood as he bent down to study the texture of the liquid. Completely absorbed in his task, the demon showed no sign of noticing intruders spying on him.

  “Poison,” Mairin whispered. “The same poison that killed the soldier at the beginning of the instance.”

  “That’s… quite a bit of poison.” Seiki was somehow not very excited about the idea. The circular tub, brimming with the tar-like substance, was enough to comfortably fit at least four or five people in, and the black metal oar the demon was stirring the liquid with was larger than that of a rowboat. Shifting his glance toward the ground, Seiki noticed dark patches all over the room, especially around the base of the tub. Some appeared to be charred marks, while some were still wet and gleamed like muddy puddles.

  Because of the size of the space, the illumination from the wall torches did not quite reach the middle of the chamber. The main source of light was the two paper lamps hanging on both sides of the tub, lighting the Potionmaster from beneath with their flicking orange glow, giving the scene the look of an ancient pagan ritual. The demon lifted a large earth jar from the ground beside him, and poured into the tub a large portion of black sludge, whose label Seiki could not catch in time—but which Mairin reported was marked Corrupted Obora Slime.

  The black concoction started bubbling violently, spilling sticky droplets all around. Grunting, the Demonic Potionmaster threw in a handful of dark purple flakes from his sleeves and continued to stir, before letting out a satisfied hiss as the thick liquid calmed.

  Seiki turned his attention to the rest of the room. Around the edges of it were piles of burnt oddly-shaped sticks that bore no labels but could very well be bones. Further away, near the far left wall, was a large wooden chest, marked with some symbols Seiki could not make out in the dark.

  “That’s our loot,” Mairin guessed.

  They waited a while to see if anything else would happen, but the demon simply alternated between adding the slime and the herb, and they soon retreated back down the corridor to join the group and give their report.

  “Poison,” said Ippei thoughtfully. “No wonder they gave us an antidote card.”

  “Yep.” Mairin nodded. “Lots of poison coming up, so I think it’s time to burn one of the cards.”

  The kitsune had been rather excited to see the cards in use after Kiku and Ippei explained to her how they worked in War Games.

  Unlike War Cards, however, these cards appeared to be true items and took inventory slots. Also, further to their surprise, the moment Mairin stored them in her pouch, identical copies instantly appeared in the rest of the group’s inventories.

  “Maybe these are like… shared cards,” the samurai had said, coming up with his own term. “Since this is like a one-off War Game, you can’t rely on your card collection, and so it makes sense that these are shared items that anyone in the group can use.”

  After experimenting, Ippei concluded that the feature was meant to allow any group member to burn any of the cards at a shrine to activate it, after which the identical copies would then automatically disappear for everyone else.

  The concept was intriguing, and, naturally, they immediately tried trading, destroying and dropping the cards just to see what would happen. But they soon found that none of those was possible. Ippei claimed that the only way to get rid of them was for all group members to drop all copies at the same time, since it was technically the same item. However, since this was something no one was really willing to test, their scientific experiment came to a quick end.

  After exiting the first room, they had continued to follow the tunnel, and had discovered a second golden tano-shrine hidden behind another crevice in the cave wall. They took it as a clue that there would be more along the corridor as they went deeper into the instance.

  “Since we have two shrines now, we can try one. Let’s see… maybe this one.” Mairin took out one of the polished shell cards. “To revive troops?”

  Seiki looked into his own inventory and retrieved an identical Polished Shell Card of the North Star to read the descriptions.

  “After that we can use the conch shell to double our troops number for the next pull,” said Mairin.

  “It would be nice if that’s actually what it does,” Ippei said. “But of course that would be too easy.”

  They had been a little disappointed to discover that the glass conch did nothing more than create a shimmery copy of each NPC unit member, who followed the original NPC around but did not attack or interact with anything else besides that. So apart from providing great entertainment for Rumi and Saburo as they studied their transparent doubles with interest and causing great uneasiness for Ojisan, who refused to even look at his ghost twin, Seiki could see no real use for the conch shell.

  “They gave it to us, so it’s gotta do something, right? Maybe we can confuse the poison demon guy,” said the kitsune. Noticing the five-minute lockout time was over, she blew the conch again, and the corridor suddenly filled with extra idle troops.

  Kiku laughed. “You mean confuse ourselves.”

  “Okay, can you stop doing that? It’s kinda creepy,” said Yamura, who obviously shared Ojisan’s opinion of the effect.

  Mairin cocked her head as she studied the ghost troops. “But what’s the point then?”

  “I think it’s just a toy?” said Kiku.

  “Maybe if the poison guy summons ghost troops then you can summon our ghost troops to fight them,” said Ippei with a laugh.

  Now that they were starting to understand the nature of the instance, the group felt a little more confident as they continued to discuss their strategy for the Potionmaster. Guessing from the layout of the space, where the tub was right in the middle, plus the fact that there was ample space to freely move around the demon, they surmised that the poison tub would play a big part in the encounter, and that avoiding the poison would be of paramount importance.

  “So basically it’s a fight of bad,” Yamura concluded.

  “Yeah, so make sure not to stand in it,” said Ippei. “And when the demon starts throwing poison at you, try to manage the space and keep it to only one side of the room if you can, and keep your troops out of it, too.”

  “Is that a… common strategy?” asked Seiki as he noticed his friend’s casual tone.

  Ippei somehow found the question amusing. “Yeah. Although most of the time I wish people actually did it.”

  They then agreed to move clockwise around the tub, starting from the left side, to keep the entrance free of po
ison in case someone needed to run out and activate a card.

  “And usually, there’s also a time element,” said Ippei after some more thought. “So we would want as much fire power as possible to burn him down before the whole room is covered in that stuff.”

  They decided to activate the Polished Shell Card of the North Star as Mairin had suggested. The kitsune happily disappeared back down the corridor where they had come to use the very first tano-shrine before the scroll room, in order to save the second shrine for later use.

  The notification was similar to those in War Games:

  Card in play: Polished Shell Card of the North Star

  The light of the North Star shines on lost souls. All player NPC troops have returned to life!

  As they had predicted, all North Star cards disappeared from the group’s inventories, and the dead troops faded back into existence.

  Kentaro nodded thoughtfully. “If the poison gets too much, we can use this Ocean Wave card, then.” He sounded a little relieved at the thought of having a back-up plan for healing.

  “Yeah, that one’s pretty much a houshi raid-save,” Ippei said. “And guessing from what it does, the next encounter might be a bit damage-heavy.” He turned to look at the white fox who was dashing back toward them at full speed, activating a random Fox Dust perhaps just for the joy of it. “So, Foxy, if you can save your energy for heals only, that might be very useful.”

  Kentaro continued to stare at the remaining cards. “Or should we save the shrine in case someone dies and use this revive one instead?”

  “Your call as our main healer,” said the samurai. “Although I’d say the 75% chance is a little cruel.”

  Seiki understood his meaning. So far, normal War Cards never required players to gamble and take their chance on a card that might not even work.

  “Maybe it’s a hint for us not to use it,” said Mairin, popping back into human form. “Three cards so far, and two shrines, so obviously one’s an inferior option.”

  “Or maybe it’s a complete bluff,” said Ippei. “They say 75%, but it’s actually a guarantee.”

  Koharu’s eyes widened. “They do that?”

  Seiki was equally surprised. “Why?”

  “Imagine that the encounter didn’t go well, your friend’s dead, and you want to revive them. You run to a shrine, knowing there’s a chance that it might be for nothing. You burn the card. It works! Now you feel really good about having made the right decision. And imagine if you have only one healer, and your healer’s dead and the group’s in danger of wiping. You burn the card, bring back the healer, save the whole group,” Ippei said. “That’s something you will probably keep talking about forever.”

  From the spark in his eyes, Seiki somehow suspected that his friend was speaking at least partly from real experience.

  Ippei continued, “Like I said, it’s all engineered. Actually, maybe they gave us two healer cards because Kentaro and Mairin haven’t got their troops yet. So, like War Games, the cards help compensate for aspects we’re lacking in the group make-up.”

  “I see.” Seiki was starting to understand the design of the instance. Loot from the first room contributed to their attempt at the next challenge, while it still gave them some freedom of choice, although he supposed how it would exactly play out would depend very much on what the Potionmaster had for abilities.

  After another short discussion about positioning, they crept up to the entrance of the second chamber, where the Potionmaster was still busying himself over his concoction. Glancing back across his shoulder at his troops, Seiki nodded to his unit, who nodded back as they readied their hands on the hilts of their iron tantou.

  “What now?” whispered Koharu.

  “Try to get in as close as we can?” said Yamura. “Or I can try sniping him from here?”

  Again, this demon only had slightly more than eight thousand health, and they thought it did not hurt to try. Taking a deep breath, Yamara stepped into the opening and released his charged Focused Shot. At once, his unit followed suit and rained arrows into the room directly at that one target.

  The Demonic Potionmaster let out a high-pitched grunt at the surprise attack, before sweeping out his metal oar horizontally in reflex, sending a large glob of black sludge flying toward the hail of arrows.

  Mairin blinked. “How is he going to fight arrows with pois—”

  An unexpected explosion burst out from the glowing white tip of the ryoushi’s arrow, and the shockwave threw Yamura and his unit backward against the tunnel wall. Luckily, being quite a distance away, the explosion did not deal a tremendous amount of damage. Yamura let out a loud curse as they sorted themselves out and got back to their feet. “What the hell was that?”

  Ippei had already drawn his sword. “So the stuff explodes…”

  Whether knocked out of the air by the explosion or stopped by some other magical shield that Seiki could not see, none of the troops’ arrows seemed to have found their target. The Potionmaster, still at full health, had already dug the metal oar into the bubbling liquid once more.

  “Intruders!” yelled the demon in alarm. “Die!” Jerking the oar upward, he splashed the sticky poison toward them. The liquid hissed as it hit the ground, before forming into small separate pools of ooze.

  Motioning to his unit, Ippei was already sprinting off into the room. “We have to get in close before he covers the whole entrance area with it.”

  “Let’s go.” Seiki nodded to his villagers, pushing away a slightly worrying thought of how underequipped they still were. “Don’t touch the black stuff.”

  Dashing after Ippei’s unit of nine, Seiki led his troops into the room in a straight-on charge at the Demonic Potionmaster in the middle. Another large splash of liquid spilled from the tub at their direction, and Ippei and his unit swerved out of the way. Still, one of his men let out a panicked yelped. Seiki could not perceive where he had been splashed, but his health was suddenly below a tenth and he stumbled. One of his comrades quickly pulled him aside.

  “Safety first,” shouted Ippei as he signaled his men to keep running. “We’re low on heals.”

  Following closely behind Seiki, Kiku and Koharu dashed in with their obake units. With ranged attacks, they did not need to get close, and as soon as they were within range they activated their Life Drain on the demon.

  Kiku suddenly gasped. Before Seiki could even turn to her, a second unexpected explosion burst out, knocking him off his feet and sending him skidding on the ground. Grunting, he rolled aside just in time to avoid touching a suspicious pool of black liquid that was dangerously close. His four unit members, dazed, had landed on the ground beside him, with only two-thirds of their health.

  Genta let out an exhale at the near-miss, and Seiki could tell he was not comfortable being around so much poison either.

  “What was that?” cried Yamura.

  The demon’s cackle rang out. “I wonder what that could have been,” he said mockingly.

  Kiku’s eyes were wide as she looked back and forth between the Potionmaster and the poison tub. “I think… light spells set it off,” said Kiku. “Over… line of sight.”

  “What does that even mean?” Yamura aimed once more, and the demon submerged the end of his oar into the liquid again in preparation to throw the poison in his direction.

  “Don’t!” cried Koharu to the ryoushi. “Anything light-infused, uh, explodes the poison.” She let out a yelp as the demon changed his mind and swept out the oar toward her unit. The obake jumped backward to avoid a spray of the black substance. Her purple-clad unit members squealed and ran out of range.

  The Demonic Potionmaster let out a gleeful laugh. “Did I forget to tell you? My poison is made from volatile shadows!”

  “I thought it was made from some gross slime,” Mairin shouted back.

  The demon, of course, ignored her, as he continued to cackle. “So, naturally, it has a negative reaction to light!”r />
  Mairin then raised the red glass conch to her lips, and a shrill trumpet sound rang through the room. The number of NPC troops doubled.

  Behind Seiki, Ojisan let out a grumble.

  “What is this?” the Potionmaster said, swinging out his oar again to spray the poisonous liquid into their mass.

  “Let’s give him false targets to aim at,” said Mairin. Bursting into her relatively tiny fox form, she disappeared into the midst of the NPC crowd, and Seiki could immediately guess her intention.

  To help her, Seiki made his way around the closest pool toward the demon. “Hey!” he shouted. As soon as the demon turned toward him, he could see the white kitsune speeding from within both fake and real NPC troops and making a leap at the demon from behind.

  Her Fox Dust burst out, and the demon let out a squeak as he lost a few points of health. Spinning around, he swung the oar at the kitsune.

  Yet another explosion burst out, sending the white fox flying backward, her health dropped by half in one blow.

  “For ranged spells, you can’t have your line of sight cross any of the pools,” shouted Kiku as she continued to run deeper into the room to find a safe spot. “Or it blows up. I think area spells are the same.”

  Dodging a splash of the liquid that had landed a few feet to his right, Seiki kept running clockwise around the pot and deeper into the room as he tried to find safe grounds. The demon continued to let the black sludge spill from the tub, forming a barrier around his location in the middle of the room. When someone got too close, he flung poison directly toward them. Without anyone in range, he swung the oar out horizontally, splashing drops of poison into the room.

  Cries rose up in the various troops as they suffered damage. The whole group was still trying to move clockwise around the tub, but with pools of poison landing in the midst of them, it was getting difficult to stick to the plan. Some of Yamura’s men were cut off and started running in a different direction.