The Battle

by D. Rus

  "The Fallen One has promised to personally bless the golem. He was impressed by its potential power. The idea of becoming its godfather struck him as a fun one, which means he accepted. But other than that, I think the gods will give us a raid buff at most, or help out with a minor intervention. They don’t know what it’ll cost them later. Plus they’re paranoid. They’re busy bulking up the astral projection shields and are about to get their own war going. We’re like ants to them, bustling about, stinging their heels."

  Orcus frowned. "We could sting them in the balls instead."

  "Indeed, and we’ll do just that. We’ll castrate the fucks! Well, our list’s pretty clear to me. What about the Guards of The First Temple and other sympathizers?"

  The Analyst pulled up his virtual interface. "The Alliance’s mobilized reserve unit comes up to about seven thousand strong. But that’s just the number of high-level first line warriors. The entire headcount’s over fifty thousand. But it doesn’t do us any good. They’re mostly unskilled rubbish: crafters, relatives, untouchables, and other bums, each a level 10 at best."

  I nodded understandingly. The ratio of worthless folks to top fighters was about seven to one. That was normal for perma-clans. In the real world, an army that’s 15 percent of the population could unsettle a world power in just a few years. But such frenzied militarism was not only allowed in AlterWorld, but welcomed. Here, the tops were not just the biggest items of expenditure, but also the main breadwinners.

  "How many of the Alliance’s forces can be allotted for joint action?"

  The Analyst barked with laughter. "Zero! Moreover, our allies all need help. Everyone is up to their balls in shit, dontcha worry. Several of their castles are under siege. The chaos has spread to several locations. Their productive capacities have been seriously sabotaged. Even the Auction’s been undermined. Someone’s bought out all our key craft and commercial components. Their prices have gone through the roof. Plus, the independent rating agencies just sent the Russian cluster Dark clans' reliability ratings down the crapper. No one’ll give us loans now, not even on real estate collateral."

  Orcus clenched his mighty fists and growled hatefully, "What a skillful buncha bitches!"

  The Analyst agreed, "Smells like a hardcore government agency indeed. But then, the first wave of attacks really wasn’t that intense: 15-20 thousand at most. It’s just that the Alliance is forced to cover too many locations. We can’t concentrate all our forces in one spot. So the enemy sends their strongest to wherever we are poorly covered. We’ve lost the initiative, and are merely responding now, being late every time."

  I raised my index finger and replied, "That’s it! That’s the key point! We should mimic their tactics. Like in a boxing match: divert the enemy’s attention with a series of smaller false hits. Let’s see our plans for D-day and what can be used right away. We’ll destabilize the enemy’s economy, spread chaos, foil their plans, seize leading positions. Those who partake in the massacres for fun shall have none of it. We’ll experiment on them instead, or sell them. Those who have been hired – private military companies, foreign special forces, and other such foes – must be taught to stay the hell out of our lands!"

  As I said this, I plunged Lloth’s blade into the table with a crack and let out my staff’s eternally hungry adamant sting.

  The others started back. This put a much needed seriousness and decisiveness on their faces.

  Orcus nodded in agreement and drove his scimitar through the table with a threatening growl. "So it shall be! Let's line our borders with millions of the enemy's tombstones topped with their rusty helmets to symbolize our love for peace!"

  "So it shall be!" a multitude of steel weapons were driven into the poor table.

  Wood chips flew into the air. Cracks appeared. The slain furniture fell at our feet as a symbol of our enemy’s inevitable defeat.

  "Hear the clanwide orders!" I fell silent for a minute, thinking things over. "We must be brutal! As you already realize, this is no gaming event – this is lethal warfare! The Macarian wizards are to excommunicate everyone forever! Fighters are to take prisoners. We’ll give them an object lesson in how to properly treat captives! Watch out for Camos! Use your heads, or wherever the Creator’s Spark resides within you! Try to digitize them or help get rid of the self-destruction system. Free your minds, forget the rules and you will be strong!"

  I remembered the jedi-like she-elves, ground my teeth, and willed a coffee cup to levitate into the air. Bang! - an invisible baseball bat turned the flimsy china into a cloud of moist dust.

  It made quite an impact. My officers’ jaws dropped.

  "Any questions? No! Then take my orders!"

  USA Cluster. The Temple of Hermes

  "We’re closed, god-fucking-dammit! How many times do I have to repeat myself?!" the 200-level warrior strained his voice. He was the commandant of the Temple’s National Guard and had already grown hoarse by now.

  "An antiterrorist operation is in progress! Clear the court at once! There will be no quests, no gifts, and no blessings until the forces of Darkness are utterly defeated! You’ll have to live with your current XP gains and divine abilities!"

  The massive doors had been sealed shut and barricaded with sand bags. Players shifted from foot to foot nervously as they stood in two rows, holding hands. Yet they did what they were supposed to; no enemy stealth suicide bomber would pass. Bent hand-made bars covered the windows. The elite A-list personas slipped in and out through the temple’s back door.

  "Damn Russians..." muttered the exhausted commandant.

  But seeing an unfamiliar fighter who wore the cape of the British Unsinkables clan, he got fired up again and yelled,

  "Damn islanders... You, roast beef! I said we’re closed!"

  "Sir!" the Brit said in alarm. "Look what I found!"

  With an effort, he produced the easily recognizable Sukhoi T-4 aerial bomb from his inventory.

  The commandant flinched and said in a husky voice, "Where?! Where did you find it? Careful, don’t drop it!"

  "Sure!" the stranger nodded, then smiled and released the bomb. "Oops!"

  The bomb fell nose down. Its sensitive detonator hit the stone tiles.

  "Kaboom!!!"

  The commandant’s single-use ability to absorb any level damage was the only thing that saved him. Saved him from the explosion, that is. Not from being thrown against the wall super-hard. Fragments of the bomb hammered on his steel armor. A hail of stone came down on him hard, mixed with sticky claret.

  Blood spurted out of his torn shoulder. The shock wave had dislocated the arm on which he wore his shield. His leg twitched, crushed by a terrifyingly huge block of stone. But he still had enough health to discern a second islander race into the temple through the crack in the wooden gate.

  The commandant’s ears were ringing. He couldn’t make out what the damn kamikaze was yelling,

  "Fu...fu...fuck...you..."

  "Kaboom!!!"

  A blinding flame shot out of the edifice. Its majestic roof shot into the air, then slammed back down on top of the falling ruins. The altar no longer conveyed a sense of divine grace. The delicate music of the celestial orbs gave way to a resentful silence.

  The commandant shielded himself from falling debris with his one good arm. He heard two more explosions in the northern part of the city, near the Sun God’s Small Temple.

  No one noticed the White Winnie behind the clouds of smoke. He was covered in soot, his tongue hanging out in exhaustion as he scrawled the unfamiliar Cyrillic characters on a large chunk of debris: "Happy with the temple ruins. Agent Che."

  The Grand Duchy of Lithuania micro cluster. The Arch Caves, a low-level dungeon, 288 players on site.

  A few groups had already gathered by the dungeon’s exit. A terrifying necromancer was barring the way out. His pet was outrageously high-leveled for a noob. Under his supervision, three dwarves were quickly putting up an embarrassingly thick wall out of massive stone blocks.
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  In just four minutes, the last stone was laid. The master dwarf quickly signed the brickwork, inscribed additional runes on it for durability and huddled up close to the door to insert a tiny Power stone into it.

  The necromancer pulled a group portal scroll out of his inventory. "North Michaelovich, are you finished?"

  "Yup," the dwarf nodded. "Let’s fly."

  With a pop, they were gone. The young Europeans bricked inside the dungeon finally got to appraise the work of the unknown mason. "An indestructible wall with the master’s autograph: ’This is for the butchery at the Original City’s walls.’ Armor: 700, Health: 40,000."

  A minute of silence was followed by someone’s sad, rhetorical question, "Sirs, I hope someone’d already managed to level up the group portal?"

  "British cluster. The El Dorado Gold Mines Zone. On site: 1744 prospectors, 2181 hired NPC-miners, 220 top guards.

  The ground was shaking. From the Black Canyon, a hitherto unseen horde of monsters was racing toward the region’s most valuable assets. The Death Knight running ahead kept glancing worriedly at the recon golem’s Crystal of Power: it was rapidly growing dim.

  His radar indicated that some of the diligently assembled monsters were beginning to lose interest in the chase and were falling behind. With a deep sigh, the knight activated an aggro-generating ability and sharply turned around.

  His actual role in the clan consisted of diverting the attention of mobs during large raids. It was the clan leader's sick imagination that had put him in the saddle and sent him to a high-level zone to put together a surprise for the laid-back Anglo-Saxons.

  Making another circle around the monsters, the knight used his ability to revive their rage. He then made for the narrow passageway which led to the El Dorado mountain valley with its web of streams.

  The monsters effortlessly crushed the NPC guards, trampled over their leaders, and with a triumphant roar dashed amidst the slag heaps. They crumbled up the pricey machinery, destroyed the narrow bottomhole passes, chopped up the top-notch miners and slaughtered prospectors by the hundreds.

  Monsters that fell into the mines of larger clans were no small disaster, either. The walls got painted with miners. Delicate supports were smashed to pieces, forever sealing the underground galleries.

  The event had begun!

  The knight gazed upon what he had accomplished with amazement. He took out a bucket of red paint and ran up to a perfectly smooth mountain ledge.

  As Max had pointed out: ‘No punishment has meaning if the punished does not know why he got it hot’."

  South Castle. The Veterans.

  Dan gritted his teeth in exhaustion and rage. He looked on as the enemy’s line of siege artillery finished off the Minor Dome Shield over the castle’s gate. Several-thousand-pound counterweights of the massive trebuchets rattled as they sent giant mountain chunks through the air.

  The clan’s cross-eyed snipers on the walls made for a pretty lame air defense.

  The enemy was good at improvising. The catapult would fire a ranger from time to time. For his remaining ten seconds of life, he would become a one-time spy aircraft, shooting over the castle to get updates on the current state of affairs.

  In half an hour, the Vets would take yet another stylized tower off their flag. That would be the second of the day. What could three hundred guards do against over a thousand assailants?

  "Was Max informed of the battery’s coordinates?" General Frag asked the counterspy a second time, betraying nervousness which wasn’t like him at all.

  The clan was dying.

  Without help, they would be forced to retreat back to their ancestral Stronghold. There, the thousand united warriors would see their last battle as mere real estate owners. Perhaps they shouldn’t have set their hopes on the Fallen One with his quickly maturing yet still young and naïve wizard?

  "Yes, I’ve promised to help. Although I’m scared to even think what’s going on in his private channel. Half the Alliance’s castles are under siege."

  "Bloody bitches," the general snapped hoarsely, enraged. "I need five hundred more to attack! Send Max this fucker’s location. Maybe he can wipe that grin off his insolent mug and save our boys."

  Dan glanced at the nearest hill. There, a camouflaged observer sat comfortably sprawled out in an armchair with a foppish sunshade. Five warriors were kneeling next to him. Their hands were tied behind their backs and way above their heads as the diligent guards had left them. Three of them were Vets, two were Laith’s – Children of the Night.

  "It’s almost certainly a trap," Dan said.

  General Frag nodded. "I think the First Priest knows it. If not, we’d better turn from him now, before we’ve followed him too far. Although I think we already have."

  Dan looked at the thousand enemies as they gathered together to attack. Then he shifted his gaze to the few hundred Vets falling in in front of the gates and noted sadly,

  "Four minutes till the Dome falls. We hired all available NPC guards. Regular personnel’s been swapped for military. The Merc Guild refused their services. They’re blaming accounting system issues. Lies. We’ve resorted to the Rainy Day Supplies: the scrolls, the artifacts, and the vials have all been handed out. We’ll pull another hundred fighters from the other castles, where the shield lifetime’s a bit higher. And then, we fight until we fall. As the song goes, ‘We hope only for a decent end, for strength, and the hand of a friend'

  [i]."

  "A portal!" a watchman suddenly cried out, drawing the gloomy officers’ attention.

  And sure enough, an iridescent arch had opened up exactly at the spot that had been indicated to the First Priest. His lonely figure emerged from the portal.

  "Huh?!" General Frag wrinkled his brow in perplexity. "What the fuck?! Where the hell’s he going alone?! Vision and hearing amplifiers, quick!"

  The enchanter guard next to him obediently covered the headquarters with the aura of Eagle Vision and Wolf’s Ear.

  The portal scene instantly drew nearer. Yet they still couldn’t make out the voices, so noisy was the sea of enemies.

  The First Priest calmly pushed aside the astonished guards as he slowly approached the teacher. The latter was still sitting carefree in his armchair, petting a tiny kitten. The Priest frowned looking at the captives, then shook his head, refusing the invitation to sit at the snack table.

  The teacher shrugged indifferently, then sharply snapped the kitten’s neck. The metamorphic lizard’s body began to shift its shape. The silver fur turned into a green scaly hide. The astral world rippled, casting the spatial coordinates into chaos and making magical transportation impossible within a hundred paces of him.

  Beyond this astral storm, five portals opened up. Thirty Camos surrounded the Priest, cutting off all escape paths – a sign of both fear and respect on their part.

  With a disdainful smile, the Priest pointed at the teacher accusingly with his staff. His finger pressed the spring-mounted button. The pink stiletto flashed as it sank into the enemy’s forehead, effortlessly passing through the film of his personal shield and pinning him to the armchair.

  A mask of surprise froze on the teacher’s face. A thin streak of blood ran right down its middle. The Priest shook the body off the staff, wheeled around and slashed at the guards’ backs.

  The adamant dagger knew no bounds. It was at one with the boiling blood, the dissected bones, and the wet flesh as it whistled through the air. The horrid chunks of the guards' bodies hadn’t yet hit the ground when the Priest charged at the first of the Camos.

  He was quickly gaining speed. His shape blurred as he dodged the sudden nets, the freezing rays and the boiling swamps popping up from the ground. The enemy tried to take him alive, relying on their levels, numbers, elite gear and unknown abilities.

  But the First Priest was out for blood. The Camos had to be killed, and adamant was the best and most precise instrument of mass extermination.

  The camouflage chainmail shirts snappe
d right off. Scarlet geysers sprayed the pink dagger which was roaring in ecstasy. The scent of burning plasma filled the air as the omnipresent blade reached inhuman speeds.

  The officers’ excitement gave way to a superstitious fear in the face of a mid-level character slaughtering the invincible Camos in seconds, showing off hitherto unseen skills. Some of the officers took screenshots, others stepped aside to film. The footage was definitely worth it.

  In just ten heartbeats, the camouflaged foes backed up, leaving more than half of their comrades on the ground. A strategic pause. The Priest’s figure froze, breathing heavily. The portals spat forth another hundred Camos. Was that all? Or were there more to come?

  It looked like that was all. They charged, clearly forgetting the orders to take the First Priest alive, intent only on avenging their comrades.

  Steel flashed, immense magic roared. The blades spun as they traced out lethal combos. Amidst this splendor, the Priest’s blurred figure renewed its dance. He was now using both hands: the staff in his right; Lloth’s Spider Dagger in his left, leaving a trail of darkness and horror.

  The Priest was losing health by the thousands. The flames charred his flesh, ice bound his muscles, poison burned his lungs. His flesh melted right off the bones. His armor gave under the steel chopping his body. Yet he still sunk his dagger into one Camo after another, piercing them with nine blades at once.

  The enemy corpses disintegrated into a gruesome tangle of spiders. The Priest’s body shimmered with purple flashes completely restoring his health and signaling the achievement of new levels.

  Clouds covered the sky. Lloth’s divine face appeared amidst a web of lightning bolts. Her demented laughter echoed across the battle field. With every fallen foe, the storm grew fiercer, the First Priest got faster, and Lloth seemed more and more pronounced as she materialized in our reality.

  People threw themselves on the ground in fear and covered their ears. The Priest and the Camos battled alone.