by Scott Seier
Grim limped his way back into the square faster than I thought he would. His chest looked fine, but had clearly been collapsed by my strike. The armor around the impact was burned away, but his green skin was smooth underneath. The guy had some solid healing spells, I'll give him that. "You shouldn't be able to seal away my power so easily." Grim said as whatever healing he was using finally seemed to straighten out his limp. I shrugged. "You have tens of millions of parasitic organism inside you right now. I wouldn't expect your spells to be working as intended. I'm frankly surprised that you're even moving. You're completely infected with my Alpha Strain." Grim fell to his knees as the Alphas in question doubled again, as if on queue.
As he hit the ground he coughed several times and green mist drifted from his ears and nose. He shook himself to clear his head and struggled to stand again, giving up after a second.
"I was wondering what that was. It's like a never ending hunger has been burning inside me this whole time. And that mace! Jeez, that packs a punch." As he spoke his skin was slowly going back to its normal color and his voice and eyes were getting some life back in them. The more energy I stole from him the more himself he was becoming.
"You know the god seed just kinda took you over, right?" Grim paused with a smile frozen in place, his eyes suddenly moving back and forth as he tried to analyze his last few minutes. He seemed to come to the same conclusion I had because he closed his eyes for a few seconds and actively relaxed his whole body. Morse green mist leaked out of him.
He opened his eyes slowly, Then he nodded. "I see that now, thank you. I've dammed the flow, the seed is dormant again." It was easy to see that he was telling the truth. My Alpha strain was fading. Millions were dying every second as their infinite source of mana dried up. Grim's stam dipped sharply, then his health, but eventually the Alpha strain and his resources evened out, keeping him perfectly at zero mana, and just enough stamina to stay standing, but not enough to run.
I walked over and clapped him on the back, making him wince. "That was a damn good fight!" Grim nodded, he was just trying to catch his breath and stay conscious it seemed. It was hard to tell why I wasn't more pissed at this guy. He had single handedly brought about the end of my career as a hero of whatever kingdom I had spawned in, but I still felt a sort of kinship with him. Weird.
A roar shattered the silence around us, vibrating what windows remained in tact within the town. "Silence field is down..." Grim muttered. The roar continued, only increasing in volume and intensity as time went on. Grim raised an eyebrow at me and glanced at the amulet I had in my hand. "Throw that thing in your inventory and help me up. I bet that turtle is really giving the Division a run for their money." I did as he suggested."You have no idea..." I grunted as I threw his arm around my shoulder and heaved him upright. We walked to where the square met the main street and paused as the view of the valley opened up in front of us. "Oh..." he said after a second.
The turtle was beyond a force of nature. Each of the huge spikes that now covered the mobile mountainside seemed to act as a massive conductor. Lightning coiled around them before discharging into the sky where storm clouds were building, darker and larger than any I'd ever seen before. Now when the turtle launched its breath attack it wasn't the purplish caustic energy it had been throwing around earlier. Now it was bright blue, and more intense by a factor of about a hundred. Those two things, coupled with the fact that the monster was moving twice as fast as it had before, and was nearly a third larger than it'd been, meant that when we saw the Pinch break off in a smoking fireball heading towards us, we weren't really that surprised.
"Is the ship going to land where I think it's going to land?" I asked dryly. "Oh yes, it looks that way..." Grim said, a lighter tone in his voice that I didn't expect given the circumstances.
The Pinch was groaning loudly, like the ship was alive and mortally wounded. The closer it got, the more certain I became that the whole "protect the town" mission had been completely thrown out at this point. The ship made a shaky arcing turn and then began descending. Quickly. The bottom of the hull brushed treetops as it closed the distance between us. It barely cleared the walls of the town and preceded to grind off the roofs of an entire street of homes. "The hell I'm paying for that..." I muttered dejectedly.
The lower it got, the more destruction it wrought, until finally it hit the ground, sliding another hundred yards, now destroying everything in its path as opposed to just the top floors of everything. It creaked to a halt nearly dead in the center of the square that Grim and I had just had our duel. Oddly, the ship didn't look like it had taken much damage from battering half the town down, but it was still on fire in several places and players were leaping from it with more than a little pep in their step. When I took the time to pay attention I noticed that there were actually a lot less players than I'd expected. Only about fifteen. Was that all who had survived? Jeez..
Milenta, of course completely unscathed, bounded off the top deck where the wheel of a normal ship would have been located. She looked annoyed more than anything else, and when she laid her eyes on me and Grim her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. "Lyst?" she said, walking over flanked by Janis and Cranst. "How the hell are you still alive? I got a report that the entire low level raid was wiped out by one of the turtle's random attacks ten minutes ago." Her tone was weirdly accusatory. I shrugged. "Secret mission to catch the mastermind of the outlaw's plan." I said matter of factly. Setting Grim up on his own two feet and waving at him with a flourish. "Mission accomplished, by the way! You're welcome."
Milenta locked her eyes on Grim, but he didn't attempt to meet her gaze. He was actually, quiet valiantly, trying to avoid eye contact all together. Something about his wayward eyes must have triggered a memory for Milenta, because she snorted loudly. "Grim? As in the Grim? From the Thorgoods?" I looked at Grim curiously, that would explain his expertise at least. Grim bowed slightly with a guilty smile on his face. "At your service, as always Milenta." He was still avoiding her eyes as best he could, staring resolutely at her left shoulder.
Milenta chuckled and smacked him on his own shoulder. "I guess that makes sense. You killed Hael? How did he do against you?" Grim tilted his head back and forth. "One of my people killed him I believe. As for the strategic aspects of our interaction, he was certainly more trouble than I was prepared to deal with, as evidenced by the fact that I have been rendered completely powerless by Lyst here, and have failed at the objective I was sent here to complete." Grim nodded in my direction and Milenta glanced at me appraisingly. I could almost feel her combat potential skill analyzing me, the result? A single raised eyebrow. High praise!
Milenta tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Let me guess... you're here, so you somehow stopped the baron from evacuating. You were sent to assassinate him? No, that's not right... let me think... you were going after the amulet, the mark of nobility?" she glanced at Grim's, now stony, face for confirmation. Apparently she read something there that I couldn't see because she nodded to herself as if he had clearly agreed with her. "An interesting mark, so the Thorgoods were trying to take this zone for themselves.. Or perhaps that was just a byproduct of something bigger." Milenta glanced at me, then to Vigil who was floating near my head. Her eyes flickered from Vigil to the giant turtle, and back again several times.
Curious, I too turned to look at the turtle, only to find it staring directly back at me. Well, perhaps not at me, but it had its eyes locked on the main square of the town for sure, and it was holding perfectly still. Milenta seemed unbothered by this for some reason. I suddenly remembered the AI's command to warn "the Tactician" ,clearly Milenta, to get her people to safety because of the reset. I opened my mouth to relay the message, but her finger was suddenly resting on my lips before I could get any words out. Then I couldn't get any words out.
"That is very interesting Grim. I'm sorry to say I hadn't figured that much out yet. If I'd been a little faster I might have joined you instead of opposing you here." Gr
im looked shocked for about three seconds before he just nodded, resignation causing his shoulders to sag. "Of course you figured it out. Diana warned me that I couldn't reveal anything in front of you, but I suppose my mere presence was enough to work out our entire plan. Well played." Milenta didn't respond in the slightest, still deep in thought, and still pressing her index finger against my mouth to keep the little cascader silent.
Milenta finally shook herself out of the trance she'd fallen in to. "It's a very interesting prospect. Tell Diana that I need a meeting. I'll show up at your main castle in a week, and I expect to not be killed when I arrive." Before Grim could say anything he was dead. Milenta just looked at him funny and he disappeared, a grave marker replacing him. Then she finally pulled her finger away from my mouth. "You were saying Lyst?"
I took a deep breath. "Shit! No need to silence me. I was going to say that you need to get everyone out of this zone. It's gonna reset and everyone needs to be out of it when it does." Milenta quirked an eyebrow at me and then shot a look over her shoulder. "Janis, mana status?" The portal mage was sitting cross legged already, chugging potions, and after only a second responded. " Seventy percent, three minutes or so." Milenta turned back to me and half shrugged. "I'm already working on evacuating, but I'm more curious about how you know the zone is going to reset, how you know what a reset is at all, and why do you think everyone needs to be out of here. Anyone left behind would just die, no harm done."
I sighed. "Look, I'm just the messenger. The AI told me that all players needed to get out of here, or else they could be unsafe, whatever that means. He also told me about the reset system, and he's the one that put our little turtle friend on steroids." I suddenly realized that I'd never actually seen Milenta surprised before. She suddenly looked completely vulnerable, and her eyes turned from steel into something more similar to what I would expect a real human to have stuck in their skulls. "The AI? He spoke to you?" she reached out and grabbed my upper arms, pulling me face to face with her. "Lyst, I need to know everything that he said. Every last detail, every word, every gesture, every facial tick, everything!" she was almost shaking me by the time she stopped yelling at me. Luckily the turtle saved me from the concussion I was definitely about to receive.
A super high pitched wine tore across the valley. Milenta jerked her head in the turtle's direction and cursed so violently I almost laughed. She let me go and turned to what was left of her guild. "Any warders left? Reinforcers? Anyone with a damn shield strong enough to block that thing?" all she got for each question were shaking heads and glum faces. They were completely tapped out. Milenta cursed again and shot me a pained look, like she saw something she wanted really badly, but someone told her she couldn't have it. "Don't think this will stop me from asking my questions, remember our agreement." She waved at Janis and snapped in my direction. "After you get the group portal up, send this one to Cartlends Station." She turned back to me. "You need to flee south, far south. When the inquisitors get sent out after you, I suggest you not be within the kingdoms borders at all." I just nodded dumbly at her because as she spoke, she changed.
Does everyone get a final form in this game? If so, then Milenta's took the gold metal for damn sure. She didn't grow taller, or start glowing, instead he cloths started melting away and her skin was turning a light purple color. Horns curled out of her forehead and runes flared to life in their coiled structures. A tail appeared and wings sprouted from her back. When she was done changing a demoness was standing in front of me. She raised the same perfectly shaped eyebrows that Milenta usually had and shrugged. "Now you know why I don't like talking about my real class too much." For cloths she was only wearing the equivalent of a bikini, and her...dimensions...had shifted slightly further into the realms of fantasy then her normal form flaunted.
The high pitched whine was reaching incredible heights, and it looked like the turtle had expanded to twice its normal size. Milenta squared her shoulders and faced to the beast. "I'll deflect whatever is coming. Janis, remember what I said. Guild retreat, then Lyst to Cartlends." The mage nodded, seemingly unfazed by either her abrupt transformation, or her claim that she was singlehandedly going to save us all. Apparently there was no reason to doubt her...
The turtle deflated in a single instant, forming a pressure wave and a compression of energy so large and dense that it completely blocked the beast from view. The attack seemed to have trouble existing it was so huge, it was like the game mechanics were struggling to calculate everything that was going on. If I thought I felt a slight lag before, it increased tenfold when Milenta snapped open her wings and crouched, punching her fingers into the ground and setting herself like an Olympic sprinter. The world seemed to bend around her body as she gathered herself, then she was gone. Instead of a crater being left where she had pushed off from, the entire top part of the town was rocked off kilter and pressed into the ground around it. The result was that the entire town square was untouched, but we suddenly found ourselves on an angle and about twenty feet lower in elevation that we had been a moment before.
The Turtle's attack began moving, slowly, but surely, just as Milenta collided with it head on, the demon girl covering the intervening several miles in less than a blink. When she had said she would deflect it, I'd thought she would do something tricky, like find a specific angle to change the trajectory of the burst, or something like that, but no. She just...punched it. Really. Frickin. hard. Her counter attack popped the turtles attack like a balloon, but that just meant that the contained force was instantly unleashed.
We all watched as the tiny speck that was Milenta wrestled with the blinding power of the world endingly powerful monster. Cranst gasped and cursed at the same time. "She isn't trying to deflect it! She's trying to reverse it! She's still trying to kill it..." he was right. A scream echoed across the entire valley. Not the scream of the turtles attack, but that of a straining girl trying to push back nature itself. Her scream turned into a growl as she was pushed back slightly. Her wings were wrapped in bands of pure power as she tried to produce enough force to keep herself in place. She threw one last heave of power into the never ending explosion and suddenly something gave.
The air itself shuddered and seemed to stop functioning. The physics of the area began to break down, tiny pebbles around us were beginning to float, and the storm clouds that the turtle had formed were instantly shredded to pieces as Milenta succeeded. The huge burst of energy was bent back in on itself and redirected. The turtle only had time to tilt its head stupidly before it all blew up in its face.
The people still standing in what was left of Four Flags were completely untouched by the blast. Not a single hair was jostled as half the valley disappeared in an explosion similar to what I would expect a nuke to produce. Insane on a scale hitherto undreamt of.
A portal ripped open behind me and the Eleventh Division raiders filed through as if it was just another day in the office. Cranst was the last to go, muttering about not being sure if she was dead or not, but Janis shoved him past the threshold when he hesitated. "Old fart." The mage grumbled and let the portal collapse. Then he turned to me. "Cartlends Station. Coming up."
Before he could send me away the brilliance of what was occurring to the south winked out. Forgetting our jobs for a moment we both looked to see the results of Milenta's efforts. They were...non existent. The turtle looked scorched, perhaps had lost the top couple feet of each of the spikes on it's shell, but otherwise was already moving towards the town. What really surprised me was when Milenta dropped out of the sky, hitting the ground hard enough to shatter paving stones. She was panting, still in demon form, but very much the worse for wear. Both of her wings were shredded, barely any membrane remaining at all, and her right arm was a blackened husk. When she turned to look at me her right eye was shut tight and burns ran up and over that side of her head, her right horn also looking cracked and blackened.
"Well, I gave it everything I had. Not enough I guess." She said happily. Wa
lking over to Janis and me. "Do you have enough mana to take me with you?" Janis nodded, but he was clearly blown away by her being alive at all. "Good, cause I can't do that again." She turned to me and smiled weakly. "This is going to take a while to recover from." She said waving a hand over her body. "At my level it's easier to heal everything than go through a respawn. But when I'm back to one hundred percent I'll come and find you and we can chat about what happened here. Deal?" I returned her smile. She was really an insanely bad ass lady. "That's a deal, but it's my turn to ask, if I remember correctly." Milenta fake pouted. "Aww, and here I thought saving you would grant me some good favor. A shame, I'll remember that the next time a cataclysmic threat tries to annihilate you."
I laughed, and she joined in after a second. Janis looked mildly uncomfortable. "Mil? Time to go I think." He jerked his head towards the Turtle and we saw that it was definitely doing something. The earth around him was rising up and being compressed into a glowing sphere above its shell. Milenta eyed the display, perhaps weighing if she could take that attack or not. She seemed to choose not, and agreed with Janis. "Yup, definitely time to go. Cranst confirmed no other players in the area before he left?" Janis nodded. "All low level players have been killed one way or another. There are still some high level gatherers in the vicinity, but we have no authority over them. They're on their own." Milenta accepted this and waved at me. "Okay Lyst, I'll see you around." I opened my mouth to say goodbye, but Janis poked me in the shoulder blade before I could, and I was suddenly elsewhere.
