Avalon Rebirth

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

  “Put that way this sounds more like a curse than a reward.”

  “Well, it's all what you want to make of it. Weren't you guys famous for coming up with different plans to exploit certain builds?”

  “I guess, but I'm not sure that this is worth the trouble. Especially if it makes the other teams come after us.”

  “That doesn't sound like the person that was the head of the top team in Avalon Online,” Morri said. “And think about it. Everyone knows who you are. You don't think that they're going to try to gang up on you anyhow?”

  “They might be wary of us and keep their distance.”

  “Then you need to have some way to draw them out, don't you?” Morri asked with a smile. “What better way to do that than making yourself a nice piece of bait?”

  “Oh, so now you're a strategist, huh?”

  “Just some suggestions. So are you going to try to get the seals or not?”

  “So you're just encouraging me because you want me to pay a lot of money to have them made?” he asked. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Hey, I know how much gold you and Leah have. And that you're willing to pay to get a leg up on the competition. So what'll it be?”

  Darin shook his head. “I'll think about it.”

  “So ungrateful. And I even gave you a free appraisal.”

  “And thank you for that. But if I'm spending a lot of money I want to be sure that I'm not just throwing it away.”

  “You call spending your money on my work throwing it away? Get out of my store,” Morri said, though he could see the smile on her face.

  “Does that mean you don't actually want my money?”

  “Well, if you come back with it then I'm not going to refuse...”

  “Maybe I'll go shop around. See if anyone else can give me a better price,” he teased.

  “Hah, as if. Don't come crying to me if you lose a tournament match because the seal didn't hold up like mine would have.”

  Darin grinned. “Thanks again,” he said, and exited the shop.

  He met up with Leah later that day and heard the news.

  “So, finally ran into one of them, huh?” Darin commented after he heard her explanation.

  “Yeah. It was completely out of the blue too. I don't think he was expecting it. I certainly wasn't.”

  Darin frowned. “And Leo said they had their reasons for ditching us, is that right.”

  “Don't get the wrong idea, but they were a lot more… reasonable than I was expecting them to be,” Leah said. “I don't agree with they way they did it, but...”

  “But nothing. They still ran out on us and cost us everything. And they have no room to talk about trying to win the right way, or whatever. They contributed to how we kept our spot. It was as much Jon's idea as mind.”

  “That might be true, but like it or not both of them thought there was a problem, and they were convinced enough to act on it,” Leah insisted. “Maybe it's better to give it some consideration rather than dismissing it outright.”

  Darin scowled. “Yeah, I'm not exactly enthusiastic about doing that. Especially when it's coming from the two people who couldn't even break up the team face-to-face. They had to stab us in the back.”

  She sighed. “OK, then consider something from the person that stuck around. When I say we need to take some time to get to the top I mean it. I want to get back there, but I don't want to do it if it means sacrificing our soul to get there. What's the point if we're just following along with what we're supposed to?”

  “The goal is to become champion.”

  “And after that?”

  “To stay champion.”

  “And how long will you do that? How long do you think you can manage that without trading away parts of your soul? The things that made the team strong when we were on the way up?”

  That question took him aback, and Darin struggled to come up with an answer. Winning had been Silver Star's sole goal, to take and hold the top spot in the A-rank division and reap the rewards. They had done it, maybe far beyond anyone's wildest dreams including their own, but…

  “Is there really a soul, or is that just people trying to ascribe some higher importance to this all? It's a competition.”

  Leah leaned back against the wall. “Did you ever play sports in school? Or did some other kind of team activity?”

  “I ran track.”

  “OK, that's not the greatest sport for my analogy. Let's go with mine. I played volleyball in high school. We were pretty good, actually. Made the state championships twice, won once. We were pretty focused on winning. But there were other parts to it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Playing together as a team. Pushing ourselves to be better. And just enjoying it all when we we went out there and played. I think that was the biggest thing that made us successful. We wanted to win, we wanted to be better, but we also wanted to keep doing it as a team. We enjoyed it, and that seemed to feed our enthusiasm. It's a lot easier to push yourself when you're doing something that you enjoy.”

  “And you think that needs to happen now?”

  “I do,” Leah said. “Like it or not, the top of the A-rank division is stagnant. Everyone is locked into one way of doing things, one way to win. No one wants to take any risks for fear of losing their spot and falling down the ranks.”

  “I can't really blame them. There's millions of dollars at stake there, and everyone needs to be able to compete at a high level. Who knows if a new method is going to change anything.”

  “But that's the problem,” Leah argued. “No one is willing to take the risk. No one wants to put their neck out because they're too afraid. It's like they're all trapped in a cage with no way to spread their wings and try something new.”

  “So what are you saying, that we should try something new?”

  “Yeah. I think we can change the tournament divisions for the better. Everything is too set into one pattern, one way of thinking. Why not go outside the box and create a new way of doing things?”

  “That's a lot easier said than done,” Darin commented. “And the enemy will adapt. Then the new way becomes the old way soon enough.”

  “That's true, if we stick to one way of doing things. But if there's multiple ways of doing things then they can't do that, can they? Teams will have to constantly change, constantly adapt. If we're always in the running at the end of tournaments and we're unpredictable, that forces everyone else to change their tactics and be on their toes.”

  “So change ourselves to change the rest of the division,” Darin mused.

  “That sums it up.”

  He shook his head. “That might sound fine, but that's not going to help us now. Is this really the time to try to change things when we're trying to get Erika and Taji far enough into the ranks to get decent earnings? If we don't take the top of the D rank division our team is dead in the water.”

  “Which is why we need to change things up. There's so many other teams aiming for the top of the division as well. Do you really think that none of them are going to be a challenge?”

  “OK, then what are you proposing? Something radical?”

  “No, something a little different. But the effects will probably be radical. I want to change my character build.”

  That wasn't quite what Darin would call a little different. Changing a character build could have far-reaching effects on both the player and the team. Even switching the weapons they wielded could fundamentally alter the way they fought in combat.

  “What are you planning?”

  “I'm switching magic. Going from destruction to support.”

  “Any reason why?”

  “You remember the archer the Black Wolves had in the Cave of Origin, right?”

  Darin nodded. “Yeah. So that's where you got your idea from?”

  “Yeah. Normally I might discount it, but after thinking about it for a while I realized that it might be an even stronger build on an archer than destruction magic. It mi
ght not be as obvious, but...”

  “So what's your plan?”

  “My plan? You're going to have to make some changes as well,” Leah told him. “Switch from support to manipulation magic.”

  That caught him a bit off-guard. “So you don't want to have any destruction magic in the party? That's a pretty significant handicap. Or are you planning on lowering our points values so we can pick the stages?”

  “That would be nice, but I'm not counting on it,” Leah said. “Even if we were guaranteed to be the team with the highest points total I'd still choose it. There's a particular strategy I want to try with it.”

  “Is it the one where you attach everyone to the ground with Bind?”

  “That's part of it. But Weeping Wounds is the real killer in the support magic tree, and that could be really deadly in the lower ranks. You know how narrowly a lot of them think.”

  Darin nodded. Players using support magic tended to be pigeonholed as healers, used to keep the tanks and the attackers upright and in fighting condition. That was one of their primary roles, in fact, but it wasn't their own ability. Support magic was capable of changing the battlefield.

  Many players seemed to forget that when they were in the middle of a match. Darin had been guilty of it more than once, content to only heal and use his weapon as his only form of offense. But the other powers….

  They might seem weaker than pure destruction at first glance, but they were just as capable of altering the course of a battle. One shot from the archer in the Cave of Origin and Darin had been effectively taken out of the battle, even if he hadn't actually been killed.

  “So your configuration is going to be you as an archer support, Taji as a tank and me and Erika as attackers?” he deduced.

  “That's the idea. We transition to being an offense-oriented team, and that means I switch from being a damage dealer to being a supporter.”

  “That's a fairly drastic change.”

  “For us, maybe. We can handle that. But Erika is used to constantly being on the attack, and she has the skills and smarts to pull it off. She's the only one of us that got a one-on-one kill against the Black Wolves. And Taji's role is straightforward.”

  “I suppose. But then that means I'm going to have to make a transition. And I have to make a completely new build if I want to use manipulation magic.”

  “Not exactly. Everyone goes for pure speed to pair with flash step. But maybe that's not the only way to look at things. Maybe your current combat build would be able to use the abilities effectively?”

  Darin thought about that for a moment. Most players that took manipulation magic also chose light weapons and armor to increase their precision and speed. The theory was that focus on one particular area would turn the user into an extremely powerful specialist.

  But there could be another way. Daggers lacked the reach of his halberd, and a lightly armored player couldn't absorb as much damage as someone wearing medium armor. That limited the number of roles they could play. And while he might not be able to match the speed of a pure rogue with his current build, using Flash Step he could run circles around players in heavy armor and even all-rounders.

  “The reach is going to help,” he said aloud.

  “I was hoping that you'd come up with that,” Leah said. “I thought of that while watching Erika fight with her rapier, but I wanted you to come up with why it was a viable idea.”

  Darin could see how a new build might be used. He'd combine speed, reach and protection, forming an all-rounder that could deal with all manner of enemy classes. It wouldn't have the defense of Taji or the quick-strike ability of Erika, but it would be able to serve many purposes.

  “This might be worth looking into,” he said.

  Leah nodded. “And this is why I wanted things to change. Put a little more excitement into the way we fight. Come up with something new.”

  Darin remembered Chad's theory about the commission wanting to shake things up at the top. They may have done it in several unintended ways.

  But the fire to compete still burned within him. Darin wanted to win. He wanted to take the top of the D-rank division and then stake their claim to the C-ranks. Changes were just a means to an end. And if they were going to make them, they had a lot of practice to do before the tournaments began.

  12

  Leah fired off an arrow, hoping that it would land right where she wanted. The charging ogre roared, almost like it was bellowing dire threats in a hideous, unknown language. A moment later its forward momentum stopped. The arrow slammed into the creature's right arm, and a dozen ropes snaked out and buried themselves in the ground. The other ends wrapped around the ogre's arm.

  It tugged at its bindings, bellowing all the while. Leah knew very well that her Bind ability wasn't very high at the moment. The ogre would break free soon enough. But her goal wasn't to kill the monster. No, it was to slow it down for the rest of her teammates to deal with.

  A series of blue-green platforms appeared in the air in front of the beast, and a blur charged up. For a moment Leah thought it was Erika, but the shape moved a little slower than usual. The leap off the last platform confirmed it. Darin jumped into the air and swung his halberd downward in an arcing blow, right onto the monster's skull.

  The ogre roared in pain and thrashed about, its health bar dropping into the red from the devastating hit. Leah nocked another arrow in case she needed to deal out some more damage, but another blur came charging in. A split-second later the ogre toppled over dead, stabbed through the eye with a single rapier thrust.

  “So how was that?” Erika asked over the telepathy link.

  “I think that ogres would be an endangered species by now if this was the real world,” Taji said. “You two have killed more than enough of them today.”

  That had been their fifth one today since Raven's Call had come to Badrock Falls. They still had a week before the tournament, and Leah wanted to take every opportunity to get her new character build down before they had to fight on the big stage.

  Taking down boss-class monsters wasn't exactly the same as fighting a group of enemy players, but it could still be useful for training. It provided them with a powerful foe that could take many hits and dish out damage as well, forcing them to use all their abilities and stay on their toes.

  So far it looked good. Taji and Erika remained in their normal roles, taking and dealing out damage, respectively. It was Leah and Darin that had the most to learn. Silver Star had used several combinations, but eventually settled on certain builds and honed them to perfection. Almost no one could even think of beating them when the team had been clicking on all cylinders.

  But teams were starting to get wise to their tricks, or at least it seemed that way. Silver Star had lost a few matches to the second and third ranked teams, though they had always managed to win their rematches and it never dropped their rank. Their losses remained few and far between, but the myth of their invincibility had been diminished a bit.

  Leah had already been thinking of making a change before the upheaval happened. If they had continued their course more and more teams would catch up, and their their championship spot would be in jeopardy. She didn't think it was going to much different in a few months or a year either. Everyone would start to use certain techniques and know how to counter them.

  The trick was to come up with different ways of fighting, several, if possible. Unpredictability would be the key. If their opponents couldn't anticipate how Raven's Call would fight they couldn't focus their preparation on one thing. At the very least it would make them think, and the more time they had to spend on multiple issues the better.

  “Is that enough for today?” Taji asked. “I have other things to do.”

  “That's fine,” Darin said. “We're done for today.”

  “Alright. See the rest of you soon.”

  Leah watched as he logged out and disappeared. It was easy to forget after being a part of Avalon Online for so long, but there was
a whole world outside of the virtual reality that paid them little mind. Even with millions and millions of followers and viewers, the majority of the world's population probably had never heard of the game, let alone the people that played it.

  And that thought was quite humbling. The best teams in Avalon Online were celebrities, with fame and fortune. They held power inside here, and yet that didn't mean a lot in the outside world. They could take their fortunes with them, but yet they could very well be unknown by everyone they passed. It wasn't like a professional sports team, where everyone's name and appearance was known. In here everyone used avatar, and though they tended to look similar to the person using them, they could be also have significant differences. Leah didn't have blue hair in the real world, for one.

  “Well that's a bummer,” Erika commented. “I had the day off too.”

  “There's other things we can do besides taking on bosses,” Darin said. “There's other things we should do, too. We're going to have to get by the qualifiers, and that's going to be chaos.”

  “Isn't that the one where they throw all the teams into one huge arena and let them fight it out?”

  “That's the one.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Leah added. “There's a few more rules to it. The top eight teams in the D-rank division get automatic bids into the tournament, so they don't have to bother fighting. So the qualifiers are to find the other eight teams.”

  “Sounds like a big mess.”

  “Oh, it is. That's why none of the other divisions do it, but it's a way to make the D-ranks exciting. Otherwise it's just a lot of teams that don't know what they're doing stumbling around and tripping over each other,” Darin said.

  “Oh come on, there's good teams on their way up through the D-ranks as well,” Leah said. “Granted, they tend to not stay there for very long.”

  “But still, the idea is to make the division exciting. And it does that. It's capped at two hundred and fifty teams, so that's a thousand players fighting it out in the same place.”