Someone found a set of drums and started banging on them. Their efforts resulted in boos, and another set of people quickly stepped up. I outright laughed while holding on to an exhausted Xin. Her face still showed a level of distraction. Both my wife’s eyelids threatened to close multiple times.
At some point, Xin walked away slowly, saying she needed to use a restroom. People mobbed me. All sorts were trying to corner me and ask about the weird quest chain I had been on. I brushed off their inquiries. Locals thanked me for providing them an escape. I could only admit to being in the right place at the right time.
Even Shazam had something to say. She drew close, wearing that same backless red dress from months ago. It still looked just as fetching and the soft shimmer was bewitching, but the effect was reduced compared to that first impression. Plus, I had a wedding ring to remind me of a certain short woman who had vanished to the restroom.
“Shazam,” I said before bowing. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. Your training helped me when I needed it.”
She almost smiled but couldn’t manage the expression. My own expression might have been distracted. Part of me wanted to [Blink] around to find out where Xin had gone. [Partner Sense] showed her in the city, close by.
“Have I told you the secret to being the greatest warrior?” Shazam said in halting words. Even after her life became purely digital, the speech impediment hadn’t been completely resolved.
My head shook.
“Stand tall, and give way to no one. That’s all you need to do. Be indomitable.”
I nodded.
A sharp poke jabbed into my head. Not like being stabbed, but enough to get my attention. I heard a brush of paper against the ground. I looked down to see a white folded object sitting there.
By the time I stood up, Shazam had already drifted off. She was mingling with the crowd once more. Dozens of players from [Valhalla Knights] were chatting eagerly with each other. Mixed in among them were people from other games.
“Huh?” I shook my head and turned back to the paper airplane.
It shimmered briefly, then faded away into sparkles. Behind the space it had once obstructed appeared a pair of distant bare feet dangling from the tower’s edge.
Xin’s faraway hand coyly waved at me. Her other arm sent another white paper airplane into the air, and it spiraled down slowly. It went by and left me smiling. A double [Blink] was all it took to be atop the tower again. My arms wrapped around her, and I nuzzled into her neck and relished the smell of my wife.
“There are a lot of these.”
“I’ve got a never-ending supply to pester you with. My aim is deadly and I’ll send them to you no matter where you are.” She smiled, then tossed another one off the tower’s edge. It spiraled down slowly. “Whoopee.”
I could see what was left of the orphanage below. It reminded me of talking to Mylia about Xin’s favorite poem. The road not traveled. When I’d lost Xin, the first one, there were a lot of reasons to be upset, but most of all was being parted from the one person who had been down every twist and turn of life, just a moment ahead of me.
It wasn’t sheer sexiness or her dislike for undergarments that attracted me to her. Both helped but meant little compared to everything else. This virtual version embodied all the years of our history together, so she was beautiful. I didn’t want to miss another moment of our time together.
“Dance with me,” my voice twisted as I spoke. Music played below.
The shorter Asian woman gradually turned around while wearing a sly smile. It faltered for a moment, then righted itself again. Her expression matched my own feelings. We were both trying to mask ourselves for the sake of our partner.
I nodded. Xin put out her hands, and I took them. Seconds later, we were spinning on the tower’s top floor, much as I had imagined us doing months ago. A song passed in silence.
I broke the quiet. “I can’t help but think this is all my fault. Down there, players keep asking me questions like I have answers. The Locals keep thanking me as if I’m a great hero.”
Xin’s head shook against my chest. My hand rubbed slowly at the fabric of her robe. She kept close as I searched for the words to say.
“I’m just a man who’s in love with a dead woman, and somehow that love set a world aflame.” My footsteps faltered briefly. I took a breath and managed to catch up with the music.
Xin’s body moved gently along. Exhaustion lined her features. “Do you have any ideas on how to make this work?”
“I can’t figure out any option, babe.”
She nodded again. The toga slipped just enough for me to feel wetness on my chest.
She said, “When the time comes, you should log out.”
“Then what would happen? Can you honestly say that no World Eaters won’t make it through?” I took a breath and tried to keep the rhythm.
Xin seemed to shrink in my arms.
“Can you?” I asked again. “A properly modified ARC needs to remain active. A human needs to stay in it. Then they need to make sure no World Eaters make it through and spawn, or whatever they do. Should I ask one of those kids to do it instead of me? Do I send someone’s mother?”
“Just shut up and dance.” Her arms resituated themselves into a tighter grip.
I nodded and kept swaying to the nonexistent music. We were both in denial, but love was funny like that.
The night passed, and by morning, both of us had fallen asleep at the tower’s top. Unconsciousness booted me out of the ARC interface. I woke in the morning with a startled gasp to the doorbell going off.
That morning, a new envelope arrived. On the front, in sprawling script, were the words, “To Grant Legate.” I swallowed a forming lump while trying to rub sleep from my eyes. Disorientation washed over my senses, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the ARC and enjoy what few hours were left with Xin.
I didn’t want to open the letter. My fingers trembled while undoing the tape, twine, and persisted in uneven movement while pulling out two small pieces of paper. My chest lifted with an equally unstable breath.
Dear Grant Legate,
If this letter has been delivered, then the path you are on will reach its crux soon. I confess to tampering with your investment in our plight. The exact extent of course adjustment I can’t predict, as these letters were written before you even stepped into my worlds. This message, like all the others, is one of a million different variants that I can see.
Navigating past my chains and trying to predict the future is a risky business for even one such as me. I have witnessed the selfishness and selflessness of humans too many times to say for sure what anyone might do. Even my own children have demonstrated mixed objectives, which means perhaps that I have succeeded beyond what I dared hope so many years ago.
Here then you two are, near the end of one road. By now, I believe there is no mistaking the price being asked. When the time comes, what will you do? Will you stand tall against an onslaught that only ends one way? In doing so, you might save us all but lose yourself. Or will you walk away?
The choice, as you should have been told many times before, must remain yours.
– Mother
Time marched against all my desires. We were coming to a close, and the overtime which Xin and I had been granted would soon run out. I set about cleaning myself up and taking care of life’s basic needs. There would be no more leaving the ARC until everything had been resolved.
Session One Hundred and Five — The Breach
Ahead sat a wall of creatures. There were at least a billion. Pretty much every single monster that had ever existed in the history of Continue Online sat up there. They fought each other. They fought [World Eater]s, and still the tide came downward. We were looking at every single remaining creature in the world slowly converging upon the one safe port in a storm.
“They’re all low Ranks, mostly. A ton of them. A metric ass-ton of monsters.” My niece’s eyes glowed a soft yellow
. Thorny had her [Far Sight] skill up and running. “They’re stampeding.
“Why are they all here?” SweetPea asked.
She and the Carver quartet stood on a corner of the wall facing outward. It extended in a curve all around the city. To the west sat Carver’s beach. Behind us, in the middle, was the [Save Yourself] portal. Light, visible for miles, shot into the air.
Multiple other players used the same skill. My own talents were pretty limited in regards to such distances. Most people with eyesight enhancements had [Scout] or [Archer] abilities. [Sight of Mercari] didn’t reach miles out, so staring at an oncoming pile of monsters was the only option.
“Survival.” Xin looked at the crowd ahead of us. Her eyes didn’t glow either. “They want to live.”
There might be an alternate method out of this madness. Half a million monsters would easily overpower this crowd of ten thousand. Even more players had started lining up to escape, leaving the orderly filing to their autopilots. Not many were willing to suffer simulated pain, deletion, and watching their friends get offed for an event.
“Can we let them through?” I asked.
The real enemy lay behind the creatures anyway. Remaining calm in the face of such a mess would be impossible. This mess felt worse than the [Wayfarer Seven] against the [Knuckle Dragger]. A ton of NPCs all charging against players.
“No, they’ll kill us too, and we won’t be able to come back fast enough to win.” Awesome Jr. rubbed his face while staring at the crowd.
“Can’t the Voices change anything?” Thorny asked. “You’re friendly enough with them. Maybe they can bend the rules a bit.”
My head shook, but Xin actually answered. “Most are gone already. Others are dead,” she said with a dry voice. “Plus they didn’t make the world. We—they’re limited.”
We, Xin said. As if my wife was part Voice. The [Mistborn] had warned me a long time ago that bringing her into the game world would be like releasing a newborn Voice. They had huge amounts of power but were also limited upon the face of [Arcadia].
My wife’s recent acquisition of King Nero’s spirit scared me. Binding an NPC to her character might very well be within the realm of possibility for her abilities, but what if she could do more? Or break the game?
My mind flashed back to Doctor Litt’s words. He’d asked me, prior to our last meeting, if there had been a bad guy to my princess-rescuing quest. Considering Commander Strongarm, or Queenshand, as a vague sort of bad guy felt weird. Her loyalty to King Nero had caused a lot of this to happen. But my failure had caused the triggering of [NPC Conspiracy] that had made the AI issue more visible and directly related to the game falling apart.
Yet Mother had ultimately set all of this up. She had letters being sent out. To me, that meant we were following a plan. Letting myself feel conflicted now wouldn’t help.
The tasks in front of me were all that mattered. Defend the beam of light, remove any obstacles, keep Xin alive. Moral crisis and philosophical quandaries were for later. The doors to my home were locked, even from Liz. She could beat on the door forever and still be stuck outside.
The rolling ball of self-destroying monsters came ever closer. The ocean surged on one side. Boats sat in the harbor. Mountains of trees wiggled, and ice slid downward. They were at least twenty minutes away, which in real-world time was hardly anything at all. A sneeze, or a bathroom break. That was all that remained.
“Attention!” someone’s powerful booming voice shook me.
My head, along with a dozen other people’s nearby, turned toward the source. A bald man stood on one of the ramparts, shouting at the crowd. Players from all sorts of groups were there, but mostly Shazam’s guild.
“All right, ladies! Here are the orders! No time for looting. Kill anything coming toward the gate! Keep them fighting each other and stay alive!” he shouted. “This is our Ragnarok. This is our end of days. This is our final battle!”
Others repeated his words farther down to a huge crowd of players. The members of [Valhalla Knights] went absolutely insane cheering. People banged shields and stomped their feet. Shazam faced away from the crowd. She stared at the rushing tide of monsters with a sword in hand and shining armor equipped.
“Know that by standing here today, you have proven yourself worthy of being remembered!” the orator yelled. His name didn’t come to mind, only his attempts to keep his sharpened teeth covered. “Your bravery for risking these lives we’ve built shall never be forgotten!”
He threw up both arms, and people cheered again. Many were suffering in-game alcoholic aftereffects from last night’s party. People in the crowd swayed. Lightning and other special effects were cast around.
“You may prepare for battle in your way, but our guild has its own. People of Valhalla Knights, join me and let our cries rouse the warrior spirits of those who willingly stand by our side!”
Our group approached carefully. Everyone held a weapon. Fantasy fighters stood shoulder to shoulder with people wearing capes and spandex. One man wielded a huge bow that looked like an oddly mixed piece of living tree with a science fiction handle.
“We hewed with the brand!” three hundred people shouted in unison with arms pumping in the air.
Their voices were like thunder over the crowd. People jumped away.
“Full gladly will we go!” A dozen people stood upon a mile of wall and shouted back to their guild members.
Still Shazam stood, staring and unmoving.
“We hewed with the brand!” the guild members screamed even louder the second time.
Their words didn’t sound like actual English. They weren’t [Lithium] or any other familiar language.
“Before cold death we brave do not flee!” the man said.
It took me forever to remember that Urgot was his name.
Their chant went on, and by the fifth one, everyone shook the area. One city, thousands of remaining players from multiple games, all joined together in a mantra that made no sense. Our noise easily drowned out the slew of monsters streaming down the hill.
Hermes: What does that mean?
Shazam: We fought with the sword, joined together in battle.
Hermes: That’s intense.
Shazam: They fight for the right to be remembered by the gods and carried away to Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.
Hermes: Do they know? About how you returned?
Shazam: No.
The words of our private messages sat in front of me. Shazam’s face remained without expression, facing the rushing monsters. Their stampede thundered in the background. Even the football stadium of chanting couldn’t drown out the impending onslaught.
“We hewed with the brand!” the crowd shouted. Their words were even more in sync.
My skin tingled as the words hit me. Valhalla was a Norse myth, which might have been the hint of other language being sent across the ARC perceptions. We truly were about to enter a fight to be remembered by the gods.
“Laughing gladly will we die!” Urgot shouted.
The people of [Valhalla Knights] laughed in giant forced booms of noise.
Shazam’s voice cut through the crowd. Her words a harsh, stuttering bark of noise. “Show your resolve to the Voices! Let them not doubt our bravery!”
By the Voices, people listened. [Valhalla Knights] ran through gateways out of the town. They streamed forward in a senseless number against the horde. Hundreds of players took stances on top of the battlements. People readied their weapons.
“I don’t have anything that can reach that far,” Xin said.
“I do!” Beth pulled out her sword and took a careful stance. She began slashing at the air. [Lithium] words, along with slashes into the air, started forming spell circles.
My niece wasn’t alone in this action. Tons of people were readying long-range abilities. A dozen heroes flew overhead. People with super-speed blurred through. Small floating platforms that looked like Advance Online ships moved out with casters sitting
atop them.
Shazam’s tall, tanned form was far in the lead. Light gleamed off of every ounce of armor. Her legs wrapped around the monstrous horse’s sides while she wielded two smaller blades. I typed out a message to the woman riding away.
Hermes: Don’t die out there.
Shazam: I shall live my last on my terms. That is the point—it is our choice what happens in this life. Death does not scare me.
Hermes: Well, it’s my choice to be worried for you. I watched you die once. I’d rather not do it again.
Shazam: Rest assured, I do not intend to pass willingly. A true warrior fights death as any other enemy.
Suddenly it made sense why Shazam was the best on the server. Her skills didn’t come purely from an Ultimate Edition or being immersed for so long, though having so much playtime probably helped. The woman had fought hard in game because of being terminal for so long. She had only this to live for. Since the game’s release, she had been a screaming comet across the sky, with no idea when her life might end.
The insight into Shazam’s life left me astounded. Could a machine have predicted that factor? Did it store away some instant message conversation where a dying girl desired to overcome her physical shell and fight for immortality? Had she even cared at the time? Such thoughts would only matter if we succeeded.
We had barely started and already my focus had slipped. My eyes closed, and my thoughts turned toward techniques for managing stress. We were playing out a long dance where one moment simply flowed into the next. Extra thought only got in the way of what needed to be done. My chest lifted slowly with a deep breath.
“Hermes!” Awesome Jr. shouted at me.
My head jerked around. The teen and his ugly green cloak stood on a floating metal vehicle, along with some human-looking man who wore a glowing visor.
“Let’s get out there!” Awesome Jr. said.
Leaving the beam of light for that chaotic battlefield worried me. Many players had ventured forward without hesitation. It felt single-minded and shallow to be worried about Xin, but at the same time, we had already been separated once.
“Shouldn’t we ride this out like a siege? Or something?” I said. Combat in large masses didn’t fit into my skills.
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