by Dakota Krout
Two people worked together to throw a large rock at the guards, but beyond ringing the shield like a gong, the rock did nothing but fall to the ground. Joe had seen more than enough. “Hey! You don’t seem to understand your situation! You are trespassing during a war event and attacking guards. If we send you to respawn, the only people that are going to be hurting is you! Leave them alone.”
Joe’s commanding tone caused the people to turn, startled that someone could sneak up on such a large group. One of them glanced at Joe and snorted, “Shoo, freak. You don't even have clothes. We could wreck you.”
“Hey! He said ‘we’! He’s one of them!” another shouted, getting the small mob riled up again.
“Don’t. Unlike those overly kind guards, I won’t hold back,” Joe warned as the enraged people charged at him. Joe sighed and held out his hands. “Enjoy respawn. Cone of Cold!”
Even though he had known that they were at a low level, he wasn't prepared for the utter devastation his spell created. Most of the people were under level five and had never figured out how to train their characteristics independently of their level. In an instant, twenty people froze solid and died instantly.
Damage dealt: 140.25 cold damage x20. (Title effect of Tatum’s Chosen Legend reduces damage to characters of a lower level than you by 15%.)
Even with the damage reduced by almost twenty-five points, Joe had dealt double their total health in damage. He assumed that most of them were between twelve and fifteen points of constitution; nowhere near enough to survive even a Beginner-ranked spell. They also had no magic resistance or life-saving items. Joe shook his head at their underpreparedness, and walked over to the now-relaxing guards. “Hey, guys, don’t hold back. We are the Ruthless Defenders, and we need to act like it. A deterrent only works if people know you will use it.”
“Is that a direct order?”
Joe paused. He wasn’t going to do that to them. “No, I’m not going to demand that you kill people. Use your judgement, of course. But don’t idly stand by while you are being attacked either. Pardon me; I need to get into the dungeon.”
He walked down the tunnel, and soon stood in the ‘choosing room’. Joe set the dungeon to ‘luck’ and walked over to the door. Tossing it open, he stepped inside… to total darkness. Joe took a second step, and found himself stepping out of the door into the dungeon area.
Success! You have gained +5 luck! Three Karmic Luck has been consumed.
Joe shook as though he had been hit by a lightning bolt. There was no vision, or passing out, or anything noticeable as he passed the threshold, but he felt altered. Joe reviewed his active effects and noticed that the final threshold debuff was gone, which was a happy extra bonus. He considered the trial, and once again felt that there should really be more to it.
Walking toward the entrance of the tunnel, he kept waiting for it to get brighter. As he stepped out into the open air, the guards yelped, and one even took a swing at him. Joe dodged it easily enough, but frowned at the two in confusion. “Guys, what the heck? I just went in there.”
The guard only recognized him after a long moment of panic, “What…? Joe? You’re alive? You were in there for practically the entire day!”
Checking the sky, it was easy to see that they were telling the truth. There were only a few hours until sunset - at best - and Joe had likely been missing the entire battle. Without another word, he turned and started sprinting toward the guild, kicking up a huge dust plume as he empowered his extra-bouncy run with mana.
“Wait! Are we getting any guys here for the next shift?”
Joe only heard the faintest part of the shout coming at him from behind, but he didn't bother to figure out what they were saying. He tried to think of a way to not only help when he arrived, but to explain his absence. It was likely that anyone who had seen him running away thought that he was a total coward, and that made his stomach churn.
Joe found himself in range of the sounds of combat not five minutes later, but the cataclysmic booming of artillery spells wasn't exactly a great indicator of proximity. “Where in the abyss did they get siege mages?”
He kept going, and soon the smoke-covered battlefield was in view. Joe was approaching the back line of a huge horde that must have been at least a million strong. The people were packed so closely together that there was no clear path forward. Scanning the ground, he could see that the terrain was completely demolished; likely from so many people tromping through the area. The fields that the guild had been attempting to cultivate were now nothing more than mud pits, any food that had been ready to eat was gone, likely already gnawed down to nothing.
Trees in proximity to the mob’s passing had been stripped of bark all the way to about seven feet off the ground, and Joe could see people chewing on it while they waited for their turn to throw themselves against the defended town. Wanting to test the levels of his targets, as well as what help he could provide from his location, Joe got right up to the back line and cast Cone of Cold.
Damage dealt: 140.25 cold damage x41. (Title effect of Tatum’s Chosen Legend reduces damage to characters of a lower level than you by 15%.)
Forty-one people dropped by the time the spell ended an instant later, and Joe jumped away as people started to realize what had happened. He heard someone scream, “Oh my gosh! They’re dead! Why would someone attack us?”
“Which one of you sickos did that?”
“I think, oh man, oh man…” That voice devolved into hyperventilating a moment later.
Joe was completely thrown off by their reactions. They were attacking a town. Did they not think that the town would attack in return? The cries of outrage swelled, and soon people not involved were screaming and cursing at each other as they got shoved. Fists started to fly, and the mob surrounding the dead players turned into a brawl. The chaos lasted only a few minutes before the area took on a slight blue tinge, and everyone stopped cold. They got to their feet and stood patiently, otherwise not moving a muscle.
The phenomenon was explained a moment later, as a Jester walked out of the crowd and examined the crowd. He fiddled with something, and the blue tint in the air vanished. People started blinking, then looked around as if they had forgotten something. A few started crying suddenly as they nursed broken jaws or bruised body parts. Joe recognized that effect; it was an apathy… something. A field that muted emotions and made people forget to protect themselves. He tried to keep an eye on the Jester, but the assassin vanished back into the crowd a moment later.
“Dangerous.” Joe muttered softly. It was time to act. He walked over and started making his way through the crowd, only making it a few dozen yards before he encountered something very unwelcome.
“Come along, make sure to set this as your bind point so that you come back if those jerks in there attack us! No one wants to have to walk all the way back here from Ardania!” There was a bard standing by some kind of a totem, and people were appearing next to it almost as a continuous stream. They all seemed cheerful, and Joe realized that it was because the bards were giving generous mugs of what he assumed was beer or ale to anyone that reappeared in the circle.
As much as he wanted to destroy that respawn point, he could see dozens more of them poking above the heads of the crowd off in the distance. All that attacking right now would do was put him at risk, and make all the other areas better-defended. Joe pressed forward, his winding path through the crowd giving him a good look at many of the active command structures.
“Don’t forget, this is all vengeance for Master Reggie!” a purple-robed man was shouting at a crowd of mages that Joe recognized as specializing in silencing spells. “Death to those who harbor the destroyer of the Mage’s College!”
There was a roar of approval from the mages, and Joe winced. Whoops. He had figured that cutting the head off the snake would kill it, but it seemed that this group was a cockroach: cut off the head, and the body would run around for a while. Or… was that a chicken? Okay, cutting the
head off the snake would kill it, but the fangs were still filled with a deadly poison. There. Joe felt better with his thoughts sorted.
Shortly after that run-in, Joe passed what seemed to be a group of engineers or… he paused to listen as one of them started speaking excitedly. “We finished the scan of the outer wall, I just sent off the specs of all weak points! Sappers are going to take it down, then we’ll get to work on the inner wall right away! Take a breather, everyone. I laid out estimated town maps, so make sure to look them over.”
“The walls of the Architect’s Guild will rise again, stronger than before!” One of the younger members of the group shouted in glee. The others nodded appreciatively, and Joe decided that this group was too dangerous to simply walk away from. As the group started to cluster around a large round table that had clearly been pulled from a storage device, Joe steeled himself to act.
“I need to be ruthless now, if we are going to survive in the future.” Joe swallowed, his throat feeling like it was full of gravel. He took a few slow, hesitant steps as he steeled himself for action. He jumped, landing on the wooden table with a *thump* that made everyone's eyes jerk up to look at him. All of those eyes were filled with confusion at first, and just as a few started to turn into recognition, Joe acted.
“Dark Lightning Strike.”
Damage dealt: 165.75 dark damage x42.
Damage dealt: 80.75 dark damage x118.
(Title effect of Tatum’s Chosen Legend reduces damage to characters of a lower level than you by 15%.)
The nearly silent strike spread across the ground in a twenty-foot circle around Joe, killing a hundred and sixty people instantly. Joe knew that those confused eyes that had been looking up at him would haunt him for many nights to come.
There was no respawn for the non-player characters in this world.
Chapter Fifty-One
Joe was running as hard as he could. He had given up on the ground, and was now taking his chances with much less stable footing: people’s heads. Even with all the death that Joe had just caused, there were simply too many people packed together to make a huge commotion. It might have been a different story if his lightning had been accompanied by thunder, but the near-silent kills only caused people to shout after a short while. Almost everyone was still facing the town, and his kills had been nearly unseen.
Nearly.
The reason Joe was now running was that several Jesters were bouncing along people’s heads just behind him. They were shouting, trying to get people to see Joe and stop him, but the sheer amount of speaking, yelling, and detonations happening made that an unlikely possibility. As he was bounding along, Joe split his focus to cast Cone of Cold behind him; taking down a thirty-foot swath of people. The Jesters fell as their ‘ground’ gave way, and Joe was finally able to gain some distance.
Since his presence was known, Joe started alternating between Acid Spray, Cone of Cold, and Dark Lightning Strike every time they were off cooldown. As he rushed forward, he was able to single-handedly kill thousands of attackers. Joe was planning to get to the walls and jump up, but the constant stream of arrows and spells going both ways made that mostly impossible. Still, he resolved to do it, and began picking up speed. He dropped back down to the ground as he got close to the wall; the mob had begun thinning out onto a large killing ground where people weren’t as densely packed.
Seeing Joe charging forward so recklessly, a huge wave of attackers cheered and madly followed his rush; mistakenly thinking that he was spearheading an assault. As Joe got closer to the walls, rain started pattering off his bald head, and he looked up in surprise. There were no clouds accompanying the water that was falling, only rising smoke. “Oh, no! Ze Flammenwerfer!”
Joe used someone ahead of him as a springboard, jumping back the way he had come and sending the person sprawling with an ‘oof!’. He empowered his jump again as he landed, backflipping and sailing over the heads of a large group. They looked up in concern; why was he running? The water in the area suddenly vanished, and a torch was thrown over the wall. Joe jumped one more time, and just managed to get away as the huge flamethrower ritual roared to life; incinerating a circle of thousands of people surrounding the town and filling the air with the scent of burnt hair and roasting pork.
He dropped to the ground, gasping for air. His stamina and mana had taken a huge hit in the last few minutes, and Joe needed a full minute or two to get back up to maximum power. He felt a hand on his arm, and was pulled to his feet a moment later. Joe locked eyes with a purple-robed mage, who was grinning at him happily. “That was an epic escape! I could see so much mana coming off of you, I couldn’t believe it! With reserves like that, you should talk about joining The Silence when this is all over!”
“Oh, ah… thanks.” Joe muttered as the dust slid off his Exquisite Shell.
“One, um, thing.” The mage made a ‘mystical’ motion with his hands, and a set of neatly folded purple clothing appeared. Clearly, he had pulled them from a spatial ring and didn't expect Joe to know what that was. “Feel free to get dressed. You can have the clothes as a sign of good faith. Look for me at the Slithering Eel back in Ardania, and you can get tested for the group.”
“I’m sorry to say, I’m not sure what your group does…” Joe spoke without thinking as he pulled on the clothing. As much as the items were from a group he didn’t want to be associated with, he was showing off only a little less than a true Scotsman, and he was jumping off people’s heads with surprising frequency. That was a little too much trauma for them, by his standards. Soon Joe was all geared up in his new clothes, and they stood together and stared at the unending flames.
“Abyss, how long is this going to last?” the mage groaned.
“I’m guessing about three minutes and forty seconds longer,” Joe answered truthfully. He was trying not to look the man in the eye; he didn't want to remember his face going forward. Especially considering what was going to happen next. Joe was counting down, and when there was only forty seconds remaining, he scooted back another ten yards and prepared himself to run.
The mage looked around, and caught sight of Joe. “Hey, why did you-”
*Whoohff*.
Flames wrapped around the mage, and the entire group in front of Joe. He had almost misjudged the blast’s reach; the flames came within five feet of him. Just like when a grill or stovetop was being put out, there was a brief moment when flames exploded outward. The burst was more dangerous than a small-scale stovetop, obviously, and the flames were at least twice as hot as they had been a short moment before. As the fire receded, Joe started running when there were only ten seconds remaining on the ritual.
A Dark Lightning Strike finished off the people around him as he got moving, and soon Joe had already blown through a quarter of his mana. Ten feet… five… Joe jumped, blasting mana out of his feet and spinning uncontrollably through the air as the force sent his legs above his head. He was running on only the fumes of his mana at this point, but the wall was speeding past him. The top came closer, closer… then Joe was above it.
The downside was that he was tumbling uncontrollably, and there was no easy way to course correct in midair. Just as he was about to slip below the crenellations, he was clipped by a ballista bolt and slammed into the wall. Joe managed to secure a grip, and pulled himself up… only for the tip of a sword to slide off his Exquisite Shell. “Guys! It's Joe! I’m in the guild!”
Another sword clattered against his head, and his shell was finished off. Then a strong hand gripped him, and Emjay the construction worker yanked him over. “Kid, you’re lucky I was bringing up some more bricks for them to throw. The abyss are you doing, jumping into the town in the middle of a war? Not a lick of sense in that shiny head of yours!”
“I’m doing something right, since you’re still around and I made it up here.” Joe smirked, then collapsed as resource deprivation hit him like a ton of bricks. “Ugh…”
“Well, come on then. You’re useless up here.”
Emjay grabbed Joe by the arm and dragged him toward the stairs, forcing him to stand or bounce the whole way down.
Joe struggled to his feet and wobbled down the stairs, hurrying to the command area of the Guild Hall. The raised voice of an unknown person met Joe as he approached, “We are getting overrun out there! The defensive magical crud is all used up, and we’re sitting ducks! Did you see how many of them there are?”
“Chauncey.” Aten’s voice was stern, and his eyes were hard. “They are on the other side of the wall right now. As far as we can see, they have no way over. Not a single attacker has made it in, so calm. Down.”
“It’s going to take some time before more defenses are ready, anyway.” Mike joined in. Joe could finally see what was happening. The doors to the war room were wide open, and thanks to the recent upgrade, the room had excellent acoustics and stadium seating available. Joe slipped onto a bench, noticing that everyone present had a seat if they wanted it now. It seemed that the days of crowded meetings were over. “Activating the aegis now will only make it harder for us to hold out. It will give us a day, yes, but we need to use that when it is needed. Using it now is no different than wasting it!!”
Joe spoke up from his bench, as relaxed as if he had been present the entire time. “I think that it would be a good idea to have repair crews on standby at the outer wall. On my way back in here, I overheard a group that claimed to have found the weak points in our outer walls and passed them to sappers. If the magical defenses are down now, I think it is likely that there is about to be a breach.”
The room quieted, and Aten did a double take as he recognized Joe’s voice. “Joe, when did…? How did you get back in here?”
“Oh, you know.” Joe waved at the table. “While I was working my way through that mob out there, I overheard some of what was going on, and I found out that there are totems set up to allow their people to respawn. That means that one of our biggest advantages - respawning next to the battle - is now gone, unless we can figure out a way to make that vanish.”
