Now we’re getting somewhere. For the past few weeks, we’ve traveled from world to world in an attempt to experience as many different game worlds and play styles as possible. We’ve mostly avoided talk of the tournament, though, because it’s all speculation at this point. I know it will incorporate full-immersion, but aside from that, we don’t have much to go on.
“Why do you want to create games, Dean?”
He frowns and turns away. “Why do you want to know so much?”
I can tell I’ve struck a nerve. It’s not easy for someone like him, like me, to open up about their dreams. He’s probably never even said them aloud out of fear that they might disappear into the ether.
I decide to let it go. “I’m sorry. You want to create games. That’s enough of a reason.”
“I just—” He sighs. “I just want something that is mine. Something that I have control over.”
I know exactly what he means. Growing up in an orphanage, nothing is truly our own. Only the thoughts inside our heads.
I put my arm around his shoulder. “Tell me about this world you want to create.”
His lips curl at the edges. “Well, it’ll be set in ancient—”
He lets out a grunt as a shuriken hits his shoulder. There are whispers in the shadows just before a gleam of silver flashes in our direction.
Dammit! I knew we shouldn’t have rested so soon. I pull Dean aside, and the second ninja star skips across the pond.
“They’ve tracked us down. We need to move.”
Dean pulls up his cowl, and I pry free the weapon buried in his back. We both activate Shadow Step and moved in a shadowy blur into the bushes.
We’re concealed for the moment. I listen for signs of movement, but all I hear are rustling branches.
“How many are there?” Dean whispers.
“I don’t know. One, maybe two. If there were more, I’m pretty sure we’d be dead.”
“Kaze!” someone shouts from the darkness.
I know what’s coming next, so I channel my ki into my forearm. I say the Japanese word “shīrudo,” and a translucent shield forms in front of my arm. A gale of wind blasts through the bushes with enough force to rip the leaves from the branches. My shield holds, blocking the damage, but we’re sitting in plain view of our assailants, surrounded by skeletal bushes.
Dean curses under his breath. We need to move, and quick. Right now, we’re sitting ducks.
Two shuriken cut through the darkness toward Dean and I. I activate Smokescreen and then Shadow Step again, bringing my ki reserves down to half as I search for an advantage. The smoke conceals us for a moment as Dean and I split up. While still in shadow form, I scale the wall of a nearby building and attempt to flank our attackers.
I spot one standing on his tiptoes, balanced on an outstretched tree branch as they throw another shuriken. Dean comes out of his shadow form in a nearby tree, but our attackers anticipate his move. The shuriken are already thrown before Dean reveals himself. One buries itself in Dean’s neck and he falls to the ground.
“Dammit,” I mumble under my breath.
Both ninjas turn their heads in my direction. If I’m going to go out, I should at least go out in style. I burn through the last of my ki activating Shadow Step and then Doppelgänger. I have enough ki that three separate shadow versions of me spread through the night.
While my attackers follow the moving shadows, I stand still. Once I know their attention is gone. I launch myself at the nearest one. Mid-jump, I pull out my katana and bury it in the back of the ninja. His final words gurgle out of his mouth.
Without any ki, I can only rely on my own skill for what comes next. Unfortunately, it’s not enough with the remaining ninja using his own Shadow Step, appearing behind me, and burying a dagger in my throat.
Blood stains my vision and a moment later, I find myself in the empty room where our quest first began. Moonlight glows from outside the sliding door, and a branch sways in the night breeze gently scratching the window.
I search for Dean and find him in a corner with his eyes glazed over.
“They got me too,” I say.
A moment later, his eyes return to normal. “Check your messages! There’s a tournament update!”
Greeting Esil!
We are happy to announce that you and your apprentice Dean Wilmington have been approved for the final five hundred contestants in the Pangea Online Pro-Am Tournament. With two-hundred and fifty champions and an equal number of wards competing for the top prize, this is truly the best Pangea has to offer.
We will be announcing the first stage of the tournament tomorrow morning, along with introductions to the competitors of past and future. Please be in your home portal with your apprentice at 10:00am for a brief interview. Highlights of your win in the tournament have already been gathered.
We look forward to your contribution to the tournament, and as always, never stop leveling!
-Pangea Online Developers
Wow! Five hundred people competing in the tournament. I honestly don’t know what to expect. The second stage of the Developer’s Tournament had one hundred people and it was insane. This sounds like it could be a bloodbath.
My pulse suddenly thunders in my ears. This is getting more real by the day.
“We’re in!” Dean shouts, harboring none of my anxiety. He runs toward me, hand raised, and we high-five.
“We’re in.” I echo. I don’t want to put a damper on his enthusiasm, but our chances of beating out four-hundred-and-ninety-eight other competitors are slim to none. “I hope you’re ready for a wild ride.”
“I can’t wait!” He grins. “Just wait until the others see.”
I take a deep breath. The whole world is about to be watching.
Chapter Thirteen
I have dinner with Buzz, Grayson, and Maria the night before the big reveal. I try one last time to pump them for information, but to no avail.
Buzz shoves a heaping mound of mashed potatoes in his mouth. “Bro, it’s going to be awesome,” he says between bites. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Grayson? Any last words from you?”
The fragile old man smiles. He has the same fiery eyes as his avatar, but his body is a lifetime away from the brawny pirate of Pangea. “We have been sworn to secrecy. But let’s just say you’ll have a fighting chance.”
“Enough talk about the tournament,” scolds Maria. “It’ll be here before you know it. I suggest you get a good night’s sleep, Esil. You don’t want to have bags under your eyes for your big interview.”
Despite my best intentions, I toss and turn for most of the night. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s not like anyone’s life is on the line, but I’m still riddled with anxiety. I finally decide to put my time to use and pull out my tablet. I go to the site for the tournament, hoping to learn a little bit about my fellow competitors. Just my luck, though, the contestant list hasn’t been posted. I guess they’re planning to make a huge event of tomorrow. I could go through the list of previous tournament winners, but over the past few years, there have been hundreds of tournaments across Pangea. None as popular as the Developer’s Tournament, not until now.
Eventually, sleep wins out. It feels like I’m only out for a minute before a gentle ring wakes me as my alarm goes off.
I make sure to eat a hearty breakfast, not knowing how long the introductions will take. By the time I log into my home portal, Dean is already waiting outside.
I buzz him in, and Fenrir immediately pounces on him, licking his face and disheveling his already-messy black hair.
“How long have you been waiting?” I ask.
Dean crawls to his feet and attempts to slick his hair down. “I didn’t want to be late.”
I can’t help but laugh. I still remember the excitement of the Developer’s Tournament. Even though I was doing it for Buzz and his mom, it was still a dream come true. I’m sure Dean feels the same way.
“Have a seat. We still
have a few minutes before things kick off.”
I tap a button on the wall and a giant screen descends from the ceiling, taking up nearly half the wall in front of the sofa. I tune into the official Pangea Online stream, where two reporters discuss the upcoming tournament.
A man in a blue suit with neatly-parted hair stares into the camera. “We’re only a few minutes away from the start of the first ever Pro-Am Tournament. No one knows what awaits the challengers, but it’s sure to be exciting.”
“Exciting is an understatement,” his co-anchor chimes in, a woman with a towering afro wearing a high-necked red dress. “This will be the best of the best competing alongside the newest of the new. I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds.”
A timer at the top of the screen counts down, currently at three minutes and twenty-one seconds. Three minutes until playtime is over and we live and breathe this tournament for the next few weeks.
When the timer hits zero, the screen goes black. A tiny pinprick of white forms in the center of the screen. It slowly expands, filling with greens and blues until it forms a planet with one giant landmass surrounded by deep blue oceans.
The landmass splits into several continents and they spread around the planet. Mountains rise, deserts and lakes form, and then the planet expands again, doubling in size before it breaks apart into hundreds of shards, each one reflecting images of the many worlds of Pangea Online. Warriors fight, spaceships race, kingdoms battle one another in open fields.
The shards continue to spread until they take up the entirety of the screen. Then, in a flash, they all retract into a tiny white dot once again. After a moment, it fades into the darkness. There’s a shimmer as words begin to form in the darkness, dark gray then slowly brightening until they are silver.
Pangea Online
The World is Yours
The words fade, and hundreds of rectangles form across the screen, each one filled with videos playing simultaneously. A flash of green catches my eye and I notice one of them is a clip of me from the Developer’s Tournament. I’m standing next to Aleesia as a giant tornado of fire rips through Ryken. Each clip must be from a tournament winner.
A speeding motorcycle overtakes another at the last second before crossing the finish line. A tennis champion lifts a trophy. A woman wearing a jetpack holds a ray gun in one hand and tosses a ball at a large net hundreds of feet off the ground. A lone minotaur stands atop a hill surrounded by the bodies of his enemies.
This time, when the screen changes, Benjamin smiles at the camera. He is as polished as ever, wearing a black suit and not a strand of hair out of place.
“Hello, I am Benjamin, President of Pangea Online, and welcome to the first ever Pro-Am Tournament. If you looked closely, you may have noticed some of the winners of past tournaments in the intro clip. No need to fear though, you’ll be introduced to all of our two-hundred and fifty champions over the course of the day, along with their apprentices. The apprentices will be competing for a chance at an internship at Pangea Online Headquarters. But it wouldn’t be fair to leave out the champions, now would it?” Benjamin winks at the camera. “The pro who takes home the trophy will be winning a donation of one hundred thousand to the charity of their choice. Now, without further ado, let’s send you over to Nancy, head of Pangea’s tournament division. She’ll be introducing you to our contestants, starting in alphabetical order with Annabelle Akron and her apprentice Kirsten Hoffman.”
I take a deep breath. If they are going in alphabetical order, then we should be up soon.
Just as I suspect, I receive a notification telling me to prepare ourselves, because we’re up next.
Benjamin vanishes and the screen splits in half. On one side is Nancy, who hosted my own tournament. She’s a valkyrie, wearing shimmering silver armor. Her blond hair dangles from the sides of a winged helmet. I remember her riding a pegasus through the air before stage two of the tournament.
On the other screen, two women sit inside a room full of pink and neon green lights. Graffiti covers the wall behind them, depicting a crown and a dagger. The women could pass for sisters, and I’m not sure which is the champion. They both have black hair, pink skin, bangs that cover their eyes, and a face full of piercings.
Nancy smiles for the camera. “Annabelle won the most recent Brawl Busters tournament. Check out her amazing combo that took home the trophy.”
We zoom in on a fighting arena in the center of lush forest. Annabelle wears black boots, tight jeans, and a leather jacket. She twirls a chain as she faces off against a woman in tights with legs so thick, they look like they could crush watermelons. Their health bars and ki bars are at the top of the screen, both HP bars nearly depleted for each fighter.
The woman in tights lunges for Annabelle, but she jumps at the last second, leaving the woman grasping at air. She flips over the woman’s back and performs a leg sweep, knocking her on her back. The kick moves her ki bar to full and it pulses with energy. Annabelle leaps into the air and spreads her arms wide, a swarm of missiles shooting in from off screen.
“KO” flashes across the screen, and Annabelle raises her fist into the air in celebration.
“Quite the tactical performance, Annabelle. Do you have any words for the viewers at home?”
She looks into the camera, her face showing no trace of joy or excitement. “Kirsten and I are here to win. By any means necessary.”
Dean laughs and looks at me. “This has got to be some sort of show for the cameras, right?”
I shrug. “You never know. For some of these people, they live and breathe these tournaments.
“…and next up, is Esil Allen and his apprentice Dean Wilmington.”
While Nancy introduces me and goes over my highlights, I receive a request to join the video chat. The next thing I know, Dean and I are on the split-screen with Nancy.
She smiles at the camera. “Now, if this isn’t a great story, I don’t know what is. We all remember Esil’s rise to fame during the Developer’s Tournament, when it was revealed that he was in fact the son of deceased developer Howard Allen who had somehow found himself growing up in an orphanage in The Boxes. Esil has spent the past year working at Pangea Headquarters, but he never forgot where he came from. His apprentice is a young man by the name of Dean, an orphan at the very same group home where Esil grew up. So tell me, Esil, what made you want to partner up with someone from The Boxes for this tournament?”
There’s something about the way she harps on and on about the orphanage and The Boxes that rubs me the wrong way. Like they’re using my story, and now Dean’s, for ratings. Well, if they’re going to use us, then I’ll make sure to use them too.
I don’t smile when I answer. I look directly into the camera without blinking. “Because who else would?”
She stutters for a moment, caught off guard. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I had no intention of entering a public tournament ever again. Dean reached out to countless champions, asking for them to take a chance on him. Do you know how many even so much as offered to meet him? Zero. But here’s the thing, Nancy. We’re not just some sob story for people to rally behind. We’re real people stuck in a place that most of you couldn’t even dream of. Real people with dreams and talents and skills that this world could use. We could do so much more than mine and die while living in a metal box. Dean has ambition, and he has skills that some of these champions wish they had. So, you want to know why I partnered up with Dean? It’s because I’ll be damned if he doesn’t get his chance.”
I cut the feed, and half of the display goes black. I don’t know why I’m so angry, but I start pacing across the room. Fenrir raises his head, watching me before letting it fall back to the floor.
Nancy looks stunned for a moment before regaining her composure. “Well, there you have it, folks. Esil Allen and his apprentice are sure to shake things up once again.”
She introduces the next champion, a gnome who wields a battle-axe twice the size of his body,
but I shut off the display and it retracts into the ceiling.
“Hey, I was watching that!” Dean objects. “And thanks for letting me speak.”
I turn around, ready to snap. “You don’t get it—”
Dean’s death stare has me swallowing my words.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve made a better life for myself, but it’s still raw at times. It’s like anytime we do anything worth notice, it’s not about the act itself. It’s about someone from The Boxes doing it. This was supposed to be your day, your tournament, and I made it about me. It was wrong of me to take away your moment to speak for yourself.”
His face softens. “You know your little outburst is only going to have more people watching us, right?”
I sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You might be a drama queen,” Dean laughs, “but if it gets people to notice me, then maybe my only way out of The Boxes won’t be by winning.”
“But you’re still gonna give it your all, right?”
He looks offended that I even asked. “What is it that Grayson said? That sometimes those of us in The Boxes only get one chance, if that. You think I’m gonna waste that because you don’t know when to shut up?”
I gently shove him in the shoulder. “Easy there, I’m still your mentor.”
“Glad to hear it. Now, do you mind if we watch some of the other challengers? I, for one, would like to know what we are up against.”
I turn the display back on just as a vampire explodes into a swarm of bats. A bolt of lightning crashes into the spot where the vampire once stood, scorching the earth. A second later, the bats rush back together and the vampire forms once again, just in time to pull a sword stabbed in the earth. “Victor” flashes across the screen before it shifts back to Nancy.
“Quite a narrow victory for Lyle Hagan, but impressive ingenuity nonetheless.”
Lyle’s home portal mimics an ancient castle. Stone walls surround him, lit by flickering candles and adorned with oil paints of him in various poses. His skin is a pasty white and his black hair is slicked back. He wears Victorian-era garb complete with ruffles and a tailcoat. When he smiles, his incisors jut down farther than the rest of his teeth.
Pangea Online: The Complete Trilogy Page 58
