My head tilted backward to watch the struggle above. Bare, wildly kicking legs greeted me for a long second before we fell again. The man’s body pulled back as his flight powers sent us into another end-over-end fall. Xin twisted her staff to one side and changed our course to be a bit smoother.
I tried to calmly count out the cooldown for [Blink] as we fell. The ground approached fast. My hands were starting to slip. [Blink]’s cooldown ended, and I tried to estimate our direction and speed. My body vanished, then reappeared in front of a crashing superpowered player. [Morrigu’s Echo] appeared in my hand with a quick [Recall] and stabbed out in slow motion.
Xin’s body fumbled into mine. Her staff smacked into my head. I grunted through the feedback and grabbed her wrist. Screams and ripping clothing filled the air. Liquid pooled upon my arm from the recent opening I had provided in the other player. We slipped down, then [Blink] went off for a second time, aiming us closer to the ground.
We appeared a few feet higher than expected, and inertia carried us straight toward a bank of trees. [Power Armor] flickered on prior to the collision but barely helped. Air shot out of me while pain rippled up my back. Xin’s eyes went wide. Our sideways motion turned into a fall toward the earth. I twisted to try to keep Xin’s body above mine.
The flailing half-spin failed, and we hit hard. Knee met broken tree stump. Teeth bit my tongue. I rolled the last few feet with Xin in my arms while I gasped in pain.
I cried out as the knee wound truly registered. My gut muscles clenched wildly and my lungs burned. I lay there huffing and tried not to let the ARC feedback win. “Stupid. Event.”
Xin scrambled to get up and looked around. I took the slow route, inching myself up by using a tree and trying to keep weight off the damaged leg. My wife’s fingers rapidly typed away at an invisible keyboard.
Hecate: Ambushed out here. Anyone on the other side of the mountains?
Shadow: Maybe. We’re in combat. Do you have a location?
Hecate: Look for the crashed spaceship.
Awesome Jr.: Spaceship? That’s awesome.
The first superpowered flyer landed on the ground, already dead. The second still fought Dusk. I curled my fingers around [Morrigu’s Gift] and tried to imagine the Gatling gun from Advance Online. Light flared as the weapon shifted into a completely inappropriate form for a fantasy game. I looked down while rocking my head. [Worlds Collide] would only get weirder.
“Back up!” I shouted to my wife, who had lifted the staff in front of her.
The [Messenger’s Pet] batted huge wings in the black-and-red costumed fighter’s face.
“What’s that?” Xin asked while wearing a look that bordered between livid and perplexed.
“Dusk! Clear!” I needed him get away.
The [Messenger’s Pet] dove to one side. He hadn’t even glanced back. My finger pressed the trigger, and the confusion of using old abilities hit me. Low humming built to a greater pitch as the gun warmed up quickly. Did people wearing vaguely Greek-styled clothes get to use high power weapons from the far future? My musings didn’t matter. A stream of golden lasers flew out toward the caped hero, reducing his life and my mana bar to zero.
I kept pumping the trigger for a few more blasts. The weapon shimmered, then returned to a two-handed sword, which I slung over one shoulder. Xin wasted no time stomping over to the first man. I limped after her, ready with the normal version of [Morrigu’s Gift]. The man’s body lay there, completely defeated. Apparently the crash, or being stabbed by my dagger, had ended his virtual life.
“Jerk!” Xin yelled at the defeated corpse. She jabbed the staff’s end into his body repeatedly. “The world’s falling apart and you idiots are still chasing tokens!”
I didn’t know if the best option would be to hold my wife back and try to calm her down, or join in the desecration.
“I hope you’re out there and can see your failure!” she shouted at the sky while shaking a fist. Xin spat at the corpse, then stormed off.
Indecision left me standing there with one hand held midair. I grasped at nothing while trying to figure out how to digest what had just transpired. The pain in my knee didn’t help.
Xin’s eyes went wide and she paused, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and looked down. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me.” We could have easily taken a less aggressive route by [Blink]ing to the ground and hiding instead. The whole confrontation had been spurred on by me, but this event didn’t give us a lot of room to play nice. “I think he deserved it.”
Xin shook her head, then touched runes to summon skeletons. She formed four of them, an increase over the old limit of three.
“Come on. There’s more nearby.” She sounded grim.
Shadow: Are you fighting someone who uses lasers?
Hermes: If they were gold, it was me.
Awesome Jr.: Lasers?!?
HotPants: Don’t even say it, Junior.
Awesome Jr.: But it is… it totally is.
Hermes: We’re okay for the moment. The wife’s on a warpath though, so look for a string of bodies.
Hecate: They shot down the first actual spaceship I’ve flown in years! JERKS.
Awesome Jr.: Use those potions I gave you.
Hermes: Okay.
I paused for a moment and brought up the player interface. Items were stored away in virtual bags, which were harder to access during combat. I liked keeping both weapons on my physical body, while items like our [Honeymoon Suite] stayed in two-dimensional boxes I could press.
Potions were useful but also annoying. They rarely returned full health or actually fixed the damage. Instead, they vaguely healed people by removing pain and increasing our life points. Not that those mattered half the time in this game. People died quickly, like those two heroes we had just fought. They must have been low level, or Rank, or whatever Progression Online used to track stats.
Even after chugging two potions, the weakness in my crushed kneecap didn’t go away. I would need a real healing spell or rest. Even then it depended on my other character statistics. Hopefully we had time to get back into perfect shape. I panicked and tried to figure out how long sleep had put me out for.
“Where’s the edge of the collapse?” I asked Xin, but she had already wandered out of sight.
I looked at a distant moon that showed even in [Arcadia]’s daytime. It looked to be almost one third gone, and the rest was showing signs of strain. Calculations ran through my mind as I tried to figure out if we were on a curve or not. If I used the current progression of a decaying moon as a timepiece, we had maybe two days left. Maybe a little more, or less, depending on acceleration as mass vanished. Hourglasses went quickest at the end.
There wasn’t enough time for me to sit in the woods and wonder which mathematical formula could be applied to the moon for proper measure. I limped carefully after my wife and kept both weapons ready.
A stray twig stuck in Xin’s hair. The small layers of makeup she wore were smudged. Nothing else stood out. My efforts to keep her body from suffering the brunt of gravity must have worked, or maybe it was part of whatever bonus she got for gliding longer.
[Binding of Hymenaios] benefited us greatly. [Partner Sense] let me know the direction Xin was in. I caught up with her crouching form, then I activated [Camouflage] and took delight in seeing Xin’s image blur. Now that the ability was passive and not granted by my boots, she could share in the effects.
We sat on a ridge of sorts overlooking a small valley. Brown and green melded our forms into the surrounding landscape. On the valley’s far ridge were large mountains. I checked my map and confirmed that [Haven Valley] lay past their peaks.
Below, an army of people fought. Giant constructs battled an army of alien beings. Two snarling werewolf-looking beasts were in the process of fighting a man with three swords, one of which was clenched between his teeth. Mixed in was a smattering of [World Eater]s, but they looked to be few in number. Travelers had been fighting
all over [Arcadia] since this event started.
I kept scanning the area. Xin’s hand patted mine, and she pointed in the distance. Jeeves and Treasure were on the other side of the valley. They were hunkered down behind a gleaming barricade that had been molded from their crashed ship. A dozen small [World Eater]s were fighting red-named players nearby. I prayed they would take each other out and leave the [Mechanoid]s alone. Jeeves lobbed a small orb overhead. It exploded into a dozen small pellets that came crashing down, causing a cascade of explosions.
Nearby us, a player and NPC overlooked the mess below. The shorter figure, who was maybe three feet tall, had his arms crossed while frowning. Xin and I spied upon the pair.
The faces were recognizable. King Nero still preferred the minimalist look, despite his worn bearing. My mouth opened, but I held very still.
“They’re all destroying each other. Just like you wanted. Minimal effort, maximum reward. That’s what I always say,” the short man said. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted at a towering bulk of green rock who was bombarding Jeeves from a distance. “Get them, MrJohnson!”
“The darkness has been loosed upon this world. Our foolish daughters have already been lost to it, and all we have left is the joy of helping you kill your own kind.” The king of a fallen city nodded. To my knowledge, most of his territory lay in ruins from [World Eater]s.
“You’re messed up, you know that?” TheLittleMan said. The short Advance Online player kicked rocks down toward the valley below.
I tapped Dusk, who sat on his haunches, watching the battle. I pointed at the green earth [Behemoth] from Advance Online. The [Messenger’s Pet] tilted, and an image of crossed swords clashing against each other appeared.
“Cupcakes?” I whispered.
Dusk nodded, then took off. I fumbled around with the interface to figure out how to activate [Mechanical Minion]s in Continue, but there was a [Lithium] chant required.
Farther below, the battle raged. A flicker of human shape crossed my line of sight. The form arced in like a meteor or thrown rock crashing to earth. Dirt went up in a rapidly formed cloud. Metal reflections flashed as a giant hammer that almost dwarfed [Morrigu’s Gift] started laying waste upon the gathered players.
My jaw hung open. That stance looked familiar to me. After a month and more traveling next to her and learning how to use [Morrigu’s Gift] against various beasts, I knew those moves. Shazam was demolishing the other people without regard.
My fingers slowly typed at the keyboard to send a message to her. The whirling mess of destruction stopped. Shazam looked down and almost frowned.
Hermes: I thought you didn’t like player vs player.
Shazam: I don’t.
Hermes: Well, your guys are kicking ass. That’s your guild, right?
Shazam: Yes. They’re irate about losing our border to player killers. Where are you?
Shadow: With me, we’re up top. Don’t jump, Hermes.
I stared at the messages being sent back and forth. I closed my eyes to ping the area with [Sight of Mercari]. No dots revealed where Shadow was, so maybe he had mistaken our location for another one.
The young man’s grim-looking face slowly appeared above King Nero and TheLittleMan. He waved once while staring at the two below. I blinked and tried to figure out what level of [Stealth]-type skills he would need to avoid [Sight of Mercari]. There weren’t any other obvious people next to us, but maybe the entire League of Shadows had decided to hide in the bushes somewhere.
“How long do you want to do this? I need to cash out sooner or later,” TLM said.
I tried to remember more about him, other than being quick and underhanded, nothing stuck out.
“It will all be over soon.” King Nero looked up from the valley and stared at the moon. He clearly had come to the same conclusion I did. The decay rate of [Arcadia], or whatever strange merger we had become, was displayed by the celestial body overhead.
“You’re still the craziest NPC I’ve seen. Most of them cashed out as quick as you please. All that’s left anymore are stragglers and the desperate.”
King Nero pulled the sword from his belt and tried to strike TLM in the back of his head. TLM managed to react quickly enough that the blow only hit his face. The short player still fell.
“Hey, crazy! I’m on your side!” TLM groaned through broken teeth.
“Rest assured, your opinion matters very little to us,” he said over the fallen player. King Nero huffed while bringing down his sword on TheLittleMan’s head.
“Fucking NPCs!” the player cried out as his health bar obliterated.
I lifted [Morrigu’s Gift] and prepared myself to fight the mad king. There was zero chance he would let me walk away, not when his prior punishment had been undone before full [Redemption] points could be achieved. In his eyes, I would still be a criminal.
I inched forward. My damaged knee gave way, sending me down. I panicked and worried about getting a message telling me how bad the brief fall had been.
“You!” King Nero snapped with wild eyes, and a bead of sweat dripped down his face. “Don’t think you can hide! I can always smell a criminal!”
He lifted the sword in my direction and snarled. I tried to figure out how the man could see me through [Camouflage]. Slipping shouldn’t have been enough to reveal me at this Rank. Was preparing my weapon too aggressive?
King Nero took two steps forward, then paused. His eyes crossed as a sword of bone sprouted out of his chest. Xin’s giant skeleton construct rippled as green leaves turned into faded white bone. The creature’s free arm lifted a second smaller sword.
“What?” I exclaimed while freezing up. My eyes closed to ping the area again. There were no players nearby aside from Xin and Shadow.
My wife turned slightly and said, “We share abilities, remember?”
My confused gaze turned back toward the impaled NPC. King Nero’s body bent sideways. The second blade sliced harmlessly over his head. He fell, gasping for breath, as Xin walked out of the bushes toward the fallen Local. The bone sword still pierced straight through him, and his hands grasped at its edges.
“I’ve been saving something special for you, King Nero,” Xin said while getting closer. She smiled, and for a moment, I truly worried that this whole situation had driven my wife off the deep end.
Shadow apparently didn’t care in the slightest. The young man melted from view, and I watched as his fading footprints headed toward the battlefield below. I couldn’t even bring myself to type out a message of thanks.
King Nero’s mouth overflowed with blood. The jaw muscles opened and closed as he tried to get words out but failed. Bubbles gurgled up. My wife knelt next to him, uncaring about the small bits of blood that made it to her robe.
“What are you going to do?” My voice shook slightly. The idea of either one of us outright murdering a helpless NPC bothered me, despite everything we had been through.
“Kill him. Eventually,” she said.
“Do we need to?” I asked. Torturing anyone felt wrong. Even the one player I had mocked before beheading them had bothered me for days afterward.
Xin spun around as she pointed back at the defeated royalty. “He put you in prison, Gee! He sent you to that undead pit and trapped you there for trying to bring me to this world! He led Travelers from Earth all across Arcadia to hurt each other for revenge! This man is evil!”
Xin was right when she listed off his crimes. What might have happened if we hadn’t needed to rush like that toward [Haven Valley]? The man clearly was out to get us too.
“He’s…” What was I going to say? That he’s just programmed that way? That he wasn’t the only person who had come back from the dead? Could I dare to utter such hollow justification while staring at the computer version of my wife?
Xin shook her tiny head slowly but didn’t look at me. She spoke more to the ground than my face. “I don’t expect you to be a killer.” She turned around, her head tilted down, and the bo
ne staff sat across her knees. “I know that’s not who you are, but I am. You remember that test the Voices gave you? Once, during training, they gave me the same scenario—kill one person to save another. I made a choice without hesitation.”
I knew about those training scenarios. She had done dozens of them in preparation for space. My lips were dry and my throat felt sore. This digital world was exhausting at times, especially after battles. I felt so detached, drained, and wished desperately to be somewhere else. But every single other option would have been away from my wife, which meant that there wasn’t an alternative at all.
“If, if it helps, King Nero will live on and make it to the portal with everyone else. He’ll just be a little different than others.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Do what you need to.”
Xin leaned in as her outstretched fingertips glowed the same white as her dress’s runes. I walked away while King Nero screamed. My mind tried to rationalize life and the depths to which we sank in order to progress.
The battle below had ended violently in favor of [Valhalla Knights]. Shazam stood in the midst of a defeated pack of Travelers from multiple games, dripping in blood and completely emotionless despite being a picture of carnage. A massive hammer that didn’t look anything like the prior one rested over her shoulder.
A few minutes later, the former king’s screams died down. Xin and I walked toward Shazam and Shadow, who were busy clearing the battlefield of anything useful. Xin’s listless body slumped into mine, and my knee hurt.
King Nero, recently turned into a literal ghost of his former self, silently glided along behind us. I would have called it neat were it not for the fact that a dying man had been used in the process. Chains around his arms and legs left no signs to follow our trail.
Session One Hundred Four — [Save] the Last Dance
Jeeves and Treasure were both damaged but functional. They salvaged parts from the ship for both repairs and to build a few makeshift sleds to carry wounded. Scaling the mountain pass was fairly easy after that. Only the slight pain in my knee made us slow down. Along the way, a few straggling Locals and Travelers joined us. Our small group trudged through the mountain pass in less than half a day.
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