The Omnithaneum

by Matthew Powell

  You have chosen to abandon the Demons Who Corrupt!

  As you are on a war-torn world and no longer have a faction, you have been automatically placed into the neutral Renegade faction.

  Renegades are present in every world with an ongoing faction war. As they serve no faction, Renegades are not allowed to enter any faction hub or accept faction quests. In exchange, they receive 2x EXP from killing any member of any faction during the war. Special rewards may be given for destroying valuable objectives of either faction, but there is no quest or guide to discover these objectives. These bonuses will be lost if the war ends, and Renegades will be forced to either make amends with the winning faction or escape to a new planet.

  Joshua nearly slapped himself. In that moment of thought following the battle, he had completely forgotten that the only reason he got EXP for killing the Saint’s players was because of his allegiance to the Demons. Thankfully this new Renegade thing made up for that, or he would have been in big trouble.

  In fact, Joshua thought, it was probably better this way. While he couldn’t get quests or buy equipment, the EXP bonus more than made up for that. The only thing left to check was whether the new bonus was additive or multiplicative with his old ones. That would be easy enough to find out once the next battle started.

  The bit about valuable objectives was noteworthy, but just barely. Joshua knew that, realistically, anything valuable would be guarded by NPCs like Jakobus. As hard as he might try, such a powerful foe would eradicate him instantly.

  Joshua kept moving while lost in thought, barely noticing as the landscape blurred past. He ran in a straight line at first but diverted the moment he saw signs of battle. The first place he found turned out to be another drop pod site that the Demons and Saints were fighting over. All of the freshly dropped recruits meant that there were plenty of players, and almost no tier 6 or higher NPCs. It was almost too perfect.

  Joshua approached the battle carefully, taking cover at the edge of a nearby hill to think out a strategy. Given the low number of people involved compared to the trench war and the lack of available cover, the fighting would be quick and brutal. Going underground, as effective as that had been in the trenches, wouldn’t help much with a time constraint.

  Instead, Joshua charged towards the Saints position. The battle was split between the two forces, with roughly twenty Saints fighting the same number of Demons, half of each side in melee while the other half fired ranged attacks. Charging out in the open like this, straight at two factions that were trying to kill him, would normally be suicide, but Joshua had a plan.

  He made it halfway to the fighting before the first Saint saw him. A magical bolt, moving faster than he could see, flew over Joshua’s head an instant later. Joshua immediately took to the air, burning his Pestilence to achieve a low-flying glide while forming a bubble of shields around him. Most of the mages and gunners in the Saint’s backline didn’t even notice him until it was too late.

  Joshua landed right in the middle of the Saints, cracking the ground with his entrance as his shields dissipated. Several of the players reacted instantly, shooting him or sending quick-cast magical bolts, which Joshua let dissipate into his barrier. The barrier shattered instantly, but he only needed that moment.

  Joshua pulled on his stored Pestilence, pulling nearly 300,000 for a single massive attack. 150 swords formed in a tightly packed ring surrounding him before shooting outward. Joshua’s current control only allowed him to use 20 swords at a time, even though he had the Pestilence for more, but this was different. He didn’t need to control every sword individually, he just needed to overwhelm the enemy with numbers.

  The swords dissolved into the air seconds later, unable to hold their form without his control, but they had done enough. Of the original ten backline players, only two survived. A quick glance at his status screen showed him that the new 2x EXP bonus was, indeed, multiplicative with his Blessing of Growth. So long as he continued to fight members of the Saints and Demons, or any other faction so long as he was a Renegade, Joshua had an effective 10x EXP multiplier.

  The two survivors were quick to join their allies on the frontline, hoping for a bit of protection. Joshua was willing to let them be…for the moment. He shot back into the air and landed among the Demon’s backline, who were cheering his success. This was where Joshua thought things might get tricky, but his plan had worked.

  The Demon’s players didn’t know who he was. Joshua, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be a member of the Demons himself. After all, his armor had the proper color scheme, and he had just killed a bunch of Saints. This wouldn’t have worked if there were any NPCs, who might have immediately attacked him, but he could fool the players.

  “Hey man, good job!” One of the backline mages said. “With that done, we should be able to clean the rest u-”

  The player was cut off when Joshua blew another 300,000 Pestilence, repeating his trick from earlier. Unlike the Saints, who had been prepared for a fight, the Demons had seen the carnage and assumed their victory. None of them had been ready for the attack, and there were no survivors this time.

  Joshua quickly spent the EXP on another level up as he turned towards the center of the battle, where the fighting had stopped. Everyone was staring at him, both in shock that a single player had done so much damage, and in anger for the same reason. None of them, however, made a move to attack. While Joshua may have been the most dangerous enemy on the field, apparently able to wipe out masses in an instant, none of the survivors wanted to risk being backstabbed by the other faction if they tried to fight him.

  Joshua took advantage of the confusion to run away. Staying to finish the fight, while incredibly tempting, was too risky. Killing both factions’ backlines had been relatively easy because of how lightly armored they were, along with the element of surprise. The players on the frontlines were much heavier armored, some of them to the point that his floating swords wouldn’t be able to pierce.

  Even if the swords could pierce, he was almost out of stored Pestilence. Those two attacks, with less than a minute between them, had drained the majority of his stockpile. What was leftover, combined with his actual energy pool, would be more than enough to take on any single player, but not an entire group.

  Joshua continued thinking as he ran, continuing the train of thought he was on before the short skirmish. Killing other players was extremely valuable, as he had just proven by gaining two levels in a single fight, but it came with a big downside: he wasn’t able to absorb any Pestilence from their bodies.

  If this continued for too long, he might wind up unable to fuel the abilities necessary to fight more powerful enemies. Any battle against the Saints or Demons would be composed primarily of either players or tough NPCs working with players, neither of which helped his problem. That left him one simple solution, though it was risky.

  He needed to find a dungeon that one of the factions had upgraded. The Zombie Mall was an obvious choice, as Joshua had personally seen it be upgraded to tier 5, but he had no idea where it was located. There was no choice but to wander around and hope he found one.

  Finding dungeons, as it turned out, was both surprisingly easy and difficult at the same time. Dungeons weren’t exactly common, but they were easy to spot in the otherwise empty wasteland. The difficult part was in finding an upgraded one that wasn’t already swarmed with people.

  Joshua crossed five dungeons before settling on one. The first two were un-upgraded, the second two were upgraded and guarded. The fifth was guarded as well, but at this point, Joshua had been searching for an hour and thought “screw it, I’ll just kill ‘em all.” The dungeon was an underground cave that the Demons Who Corrupt had set up fortifications around, but he could still see the dungeon from a distance.

  Corrupted Grotto

  A sorcerer’s dark magic has tainted this once peaceful grotto, attracting dangerous mutated wildlife and creating an extensive cave system

  Difficulty Leve
l: Tier 5

  Recommended Group Size: 3+

  Around the grotto was a series of barricades manned by lightly armored recruits and scouts. Joshua couldn’t see any of the Demon soldiers and reasoned that most of them were actively fighting on the battlefields but kept an eye out for them anyway. Seeing that the NPCs manning the barricades didn’t have anything other than laser rifles, Joshua whipped out his shield and charged right for them.

  The recruits didn’t have a chance as Joshua barreled into them, knocking down their hastily constructed walls and tearing them apart. There were only three of them, and they didn’t have any heavy weaponry like the fighters in the trenches, so he had no problem wiping them out.

  As the last recruit fell, Joshua heard a sound that made his blood run cold. Heavy footsteps came thudding from the grotto entrance, the sound audible even from a distance. Joshua watched with fear as a single fully-armored soldier stepped out of the dungeon, spotted him, and immediately pulled out his massive Ordnance Bombard assault rifle.

  The Demon soldier didn’t hesitate to open fire, each shot ringing out through the wasteland. The first shot hit the upper edge of Joshua’s shield, punched through it, and almost broke his barrier beyond. The second punched right through the middle and shattered the barrier, leaving a hole in Joshua’s stomach. The third hit the bottom edge of the shield and kept going, severing Joshua’s right leg in a spray of gore.

  Joshua saw the attack coming and was already preparing Pestilence. Tendrils shot out of his leg stump, grabbing the falling limb and forcefully reattaching it, while stored Pestilence was used to quickly heal stomach wound and repair the shield. There hadn’t been enough time to fully recharge his stored Pestilence supply, but it had gotten back to a little over half full. It would have to be enough.

  Joshua rocketed forward, pushing his speed with an overcharged Pestilence launch pad. Close combat with one of these soldiers was incredibly dangerous due to their extreme strength and powerful melee weapons but ranged combat was impossible. Joshua didn’t even attempt to use his flying swords, already knowing they wouldn’t be able to pierce the soldier’s several-inch thick armor.

  The soldier got off two more shots, taking off the same leg again along with an arm before Joshua got close enough to fight. Both wounds were healed instantly, thankfully taking less Pestilence than normal as he was able to reattach the limb instead of regrowing it.

  Once Joshua got too close, the super-soldier threw his gun to the side and drew his own customized melee weapon. What appeared to be a large iron ball at first glance quickly proved to be a mace when a handle extended from it. The mace, at full length, was nearly seven feet long, almost as tall as the soldier himself. It was covered in six-inch-long spikes. In-between the spikes were what seemed to be…smaller spikes? The soldier pressed a button near the mace’s handle, and the smaller spikes started loudly moving and grinding together.

  “Is that…a chainsaw mace?” Joshua asked, stunned.

  “Yes.” The soldier replied while swinging it towards Joshua’s face.

  The chainmace, while incredibly intimidating, wasn’t a very fast weapon. Even the Demon soldier’s strength couldn’t change that fact. Joshua was barely able to dodge, and even then, lost a chunk of armor where the mace grazed it.

  Now that he was close enough, Joshua noticed a new problem: he didn’t actually have a way to kill the giant soldier. The armor was beyond anything he would be able to pierce, no matter how much Pestilence he threw at it. The exploding eyes would be a similar failure, unable to penetrate the armor. That left one option, something that Joshua hadn’t used seriously in a while.

  Infection

  Virulent Aura raged out while five infection-variants of the flying eye formed, each supercharged with 20,000 Pestilence each. The eyes targeted the armor’s weak points, such as cracks or seams, slipping through and inflicting a devastating ailment on the soldier. Thankfully the soldiers weren’t so absurd as to have something like plague-immunity, otherwise things would be going much worse.

  That wasn’t to say they were going well, of course. The soldier immediately reacted to the infection and aura by striking out against Joshua. The mace carved a trench through the ground with every swing, barely even slowing down when it met the dirt. The soldier wasn’t just swinging wildly either, he was using his momentum to attack with a flurry of lethal attacks.

  Joshua was confident in his ability to tank at least a single hit from the mace without dying, but beyond that was too dangerous. He was already running Virulent Aura at a level he had never used before, draining more Pestilence than he could generate. Between that, constantly creating boost pads to evade the chainmace, and the Plague Eyes, his stored Pestilence was quickly emptied.

  Just when Joshua started digging into his personal reserves of Pestilence to keep the fight going, the soldier started slowing down. Any tier 5 enemy would have been dead within seconds of that much infection damage, but the soldier kept pushing through it. Even slowed, every swing of the mace had a great power behind it.

  However, once the soldier began to tire, the fight was over. Joshua easily evaded the remaining swings until the soldier finally collapsed, happily collecting his reward.

  Soldier of the Demons Who Corrupt slain!

  EXP +50% for tier difference

  Zandrius earns 1,500,000 (15,000,000) EXP

  Being able to fight the Demon soldier lifted a weight from Joshua’s shoulders. While the fight was by no means easy, this proved that it was possible to fight against higher tier enemies with skill and preparation. He had been worried that, due to the power difference of higher tiers and the lessened EXP of lower tiers, he would always be stuck trying to find enemies that matched him.

  That single kill pushed Joshua up into level 6, through level 7, and almost halfway to level 8, but that wasn’t even the exciting part. The Demon soldier and the three recruits, combined, gave Joshua an immense Pestilence upgrade of 30,000 in a single fight, with the soldier providing most of it. If every battle against the Saints or Demons turned out that profitable, he wouldn’t need the dungeon in the first place.

  Speaking of the dungeon, Joshua took a break before entering. He laid back against one of the now-abandoned barricades to rest, signing out of the game for a short while. When he came back, his Pestilence would be fully regenerated, and he would be ready to enter the dungeon at his full power.

  Chapter 15

  Once a player has gained their Paramount Class, their continued growth will eventually form a Domain. A Domain is a special skill that alters the environment around a player, changing the world to suit them. Every player only gets one, but it will continue to grow and change as they do. A Domain could be almost anything, and we purposefully made the system as flexible as possible. Maybe it drains the life from the environment to use as fuel, maybe it alters gravity or time, maybe it does something more technical like disabling an abilities’ resource cost. The possibilities are limitless. -on the Domain of The Paramount, from The Chronicles of The Founder

  When Joshua opened his eyes, he was lying in his bed back in his apartment. His throat felt like it was on fire and his stomach was practically roaring at him. He hadn’t really thought about it, but he had been in the game for nearly two days now, and that definitely wasn’t healthy.

  He slowly drank from a glass of water with one hand as he unwrapped a nutrient bar with the other. He needed to be more careful about his personal health from now on if he wanted to keep making money, otherwise he was going to end up in the hospital. Once he had eaten and taken a quick shower, Joshua lied back down and started browsing the forums for more information.

  He was tempted to jump right back into the game but knew that wasn’t a good decision. His character wouldn’t have fully recharged yet, and more importantly, he didn’t want to risk any side-effects from the dehydration.

  The war for Sanctum, to his surprise, wasn’t the biggest event happening in Macrocosm right now. Several other faction war
s and Paradigm Shifts had begun throughout the game. If Sanctum ever became too dangerous to stay on, he had plenty of options to choose from.

  The leveling leader boards had shifted around, with most of the old frontrunners falling behind. Several of them, including two of previous top three, wasn’t anywhere at all. Top players vanishing from the leaderboards was a rarity, but there were enough possible reasons that Joshua didn’t think much about it. They probably just had personal matters to take care of.

  Foundation, however, was still at the top. Not only was he at the top, but the margin between them had somehow grown even larger.

  1st: Foundation the Unpredictable Chaos Sorcerer

  Tier: 9

  Level: 17

  The bastard had grown an entire two tiers since they last met. Joshua was a little discouraged when he saw the difference between them, but it also made him even more determined. He wanted that #1 spot.

  Joshua closed the forums as he began to doze off. He had spent far too long in-game, and while he didn’t want to slip farther down the leaderboards, going back in right now wouldn’t be safe. He could feel the strain for staying awake too long, like a heavy pressure in his brain telling him to go to sleep. He was more than happy to comply, but only after setting a glass of water next to his bed just in case.

  Joshua woke up nearly twelve hours later, downed the glass of water in one go and jumped right back into Macrocosm. A quick glance at the leaderboard showed that he had slipped all the way down to 3000th place, and that was unacceptable.