by Oliver Mayes
“Reset! Noigel, the imps and the succubus cover up the tracks around our hiding places. Beat your wings over the snow until your stamina is low, then back to your positions. Quickly!”
He strode forward to remove his weapon from Gatz’s eye, suppressing a laugh when it turned out that it was the Sacrificial Dagger and that it was charged with a soul for delivering the killing blow. You learn something new every day. Not that he had any intention of hurling his precious weapons at players in the future.
Gatz himself had provided him with a further 2.5 souls, which Damien regarded as a poor return for the effort invested. He left Gatz’s body where it lay to act as the new bait, retrieved Shankyou’s Striking Dagger from the ground and made his way back to his tree, with all his minions already concealed again. He was wondering if he should summon any more imps when his hound started growling.
This could work.
5
One Giant Leap Back for Mankind
The next half an hour was tense. Something Damien had not taken into account was that he didn’t have to kill everyone who wandered into his trap. If he didn’t like the look of a target, he could simply let them pass by. The main objective was to bring his minion numbers back up, and each player only gave 2 or 3 souls at best, so he had to keep tactical losses to a minimum.
As soon as he’d replenished his minions, he’d start scouting for a place to build a solitary Gateway, to test the new Portal ability. Then it would be onward to scout out Carlisle. It would help if he got to grips with the terrain and people’s tactics in this zone in the meantime.
He learned this the hard way when a party of three came through, a ranger, a priest and an assassin following in Gatz’s footsteps. They came across his body and wasted no time in taking Damien’s spoils for themselves. All he could do was look on as they looted, then headed out on the looping trail he’d left for them to follow. Completely unaware they’d walked into an unsprung trap.
It soon became apparent that Damien’s biggest concern was not whether he could kill the players who were appearing, none of whom were anything like as sturdy as Gatz had been, but whether he could kill them fast enough to be able to reset the trap before the next player appeared. The blizzard did a good job of disguising how busy Frozone was.
Fortunately, by picking his targets correctly and matching his approach to their playstyle, success was all but guaranteed. The squishiest targets also tended to have the highest burst damage, but were dispatched fast enough with a Demon Gate in their blind spot and a quick flurry of sneak critical strikes. The heavily armored were fewer in number, so letting them pass through uninterrupted was no great loss.
He’d already dealt with three more players in this fashion before the party who’d looted Gatz returned, the figure of 8 loop leading them right back to where they’d started. Except there was what appeared to be a large, snow-covered boulder at the intersection. As they passed it, Damien directed his thoughts to the succubus hidden behind it and she cast Bloodlust. Then all his minions, save one, burst from their hiding places and charged toward the enemies. The party was quick to react, putting their backs to the snow-covered mound as they drew weapons and took aim.
Damien had often wondered how he could make the largest of his demons, the incubus, more viable. The problem was that while it was both powerful and sturdy, it was also an obscenely large target and an enormous investment of 10 souls. Not generally a sensible option to maintain a low profile or get a good return, especially on the move. This terrain had led Damien to take a risk.
The snowy boulder burst open and two massive, clawed hands shot out of it, snatching up the ranger before he could escape and the priest before he could cast. The assassin abruptly vanished, leaving his comrades to their fate, only to rejoin them as the hell hounds reconjured him out of thin air with savage bites. They wouldn’t have needed the Detect skill to find him, since the thoughtless slew of swear words and hastily retreating snow prints gave him away.
Damien was quick to Demon Gate and render the fight one-sided before it reached its conclusion a few seconds later. A costly skirmish turned into a quick and painless injection of 8 souls’ energy, plus another one in his Sacrificial Dagger. Only 1 soul shy of the investment in the incubus being fully returned.
With a full Soul Summon Limit of seven imps, two hell hounds, a succubus and an incubus, it was time to start filling his base. Once the succubus and the imps were finished clearing incriminating tracks, Damien opened a portal and sent the incubus and the succubus home. He immediately summoned a new succubus, so he still had a solid 20 soul-cost team to help him.
This was all well and good, but he’d killed ten players and was yet to level up. That was weird. They’d all been around his level, he’d have expected to go up at least one or two after killing so many. What was going on?
He’d finally finished resetting, paying close attention to his hell hounds the whole while, when the headset started to ring. It was Kevin. Damien checked the time. 10:48. Kevin really was a very conscientious guy, logging in on a day off to check messages. Damien answered the call.
“Hello, Kevin?”
“Damien! My man! How’s it going?”
Heh. That was a far cry from how Kevin used to address him. No umming or ahhing in lieu of his name. They’d been through a lot together since then, even if they’d never met face to face. Without the opportunity to fight Toutatis that Kevin had fatefully thrown his way, his life would look very different. Whether his mom would’ve had the heart attack without their fight as a catalyst was anyone’s guess, but they’d all come through it somehow and things had turned out well. He’d rather report to Kevin, someone he all but knew personally, than a random fill-in from the enormous Mobius Enterprises employee pool. Better the devil you know.
“I’m glad you called, I wanted to ask you about the stream Mobius edited for me yesterday, with the player raid. Did you see it?”
“I did. I wanted to talk to you about it but we’ve all been pretty busy here, getting the endgame in shape.”
“That’s good to hear! I’m headed that way myself, so I’m glad—”
“Woah there, hold up. You’re still a little too early to be heading to the Outer Ring. What level are you now, 42?”
The hell hound at Damien’s side started to growl. Curses. He peered out from behind the tree and lowered his voice as a new target blurred into existence at his vision’s edge.
“I’m sure I’ll manage. Anyway, about the stream. I—”
“Damien, I’m not sure if I should be telling you this, but now isn’t a good time to go that way. There’s a situation brewing that doesn’t bode well for anyone under level 50.”
Kevin hadn’t lost his habit of cutting off Damien mid-speech, evidently. But this sounded important. The next words out of Kevin’s mouth included a name that had been making the rounds recently, along with some less well-known tidbits.
“There’s a player, called Magnitude, who’s taken over Carlisle. He didn’t do it by conquest. He bought the whole settlement. In one go.”
Damien was so distracted he let the lone gunslinger who’d blundered into his trap wander past. There was a lot to unpack in that short sentence. The first, and the weirdest part, was that Magnitude was a player. Damien had assumed he was an NPC, due to the imposing name and credentials. He hadn’t even been aware that players could become leaders of settlements, by conquest, trade or any other means. Kevin steadily plowed onward through Damien’s already labored thought processes.
“We always planned for players to take control of settlements, but much, much later. He’s removed the Carlisle quests, all of them, and put in one of his own. A player-killing quest, no less.”
Damien’s heart briefly jumped out of his chest before remembering the bounty set on him in Carlisle, likely by the very man they were discussing. Even if Carlisle had been Empire-affiliated before the takeover, it was no less hostile to him now.
“What’s the quest?”
>
“Kill ten players in a row and report back, without dying. If you die, the quest resets and you have to start again.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. I’ve managed that already.”
“Damien, not everybody is an occultist. Your class is specifically designed for solo play and ambush strategies, balanced out with strong social demerits and a need for almost constant in-game presence. You, a full-time streamer playing that highly specialized class, would no doubt have an easy time of it. The fact is, Magnitude has brought all progression in the zone to a grinding halt.”
Damien, who’d briefly felt pretty pleased with himself for accomplishing this goal without knowing it existed, was a bit put out to have the achievement presented as though his carefully planned success were simply a matter of course. Then the real problem burrowed its way into his head, as he realized that he’d already seen the effects of this quest. The question of why he wasn’t getting any experience for his kills had been answered. If a player died, their accumulated EXP to the next level was reset to zero. So his ‘Soul Harvest’ trait was completely useless, and his primary source of EXP gain was gone.
It had been nice waxing philosophical, thinking he could lay off the player-killing and focus on Bartholomew’s quest for his channel instead. Now the option had been taken away, he was more than a little reticent.
“That’s outrageous! It’s unfair! What are Mobius doing about it?”
“Nothing. Magnitude hasn’t broken any rules and we’re not about to start penalizing players for creative play, outstanding achievement or imaginative thinking. If that were the case you’d probably have been in trouble yourself, not too long ago.”
“Come on, Kevin, that’s a rubbish comparison! I fought for my victory fair and square, I didn’t buy a key settlement then lord it over everyone lower level than me for funzies. I’m assuming this Magnitude is higher level, right?”
“You know I’m not allowed to give you specific details of other players. Anyway, there are at least some people progressing. A few players have already managed it, and as a reward they’re being inducted into his guild and given access to more quests.”
“It’s a conscription exercise?”
“We’re not sure what he’s doing. The North is becoming more full every day as players finish the quest chains in Brociliande. Most of them died on entry, since everyone looking to complete Magnitude’s new quest stayed pretty tight-lipped about it. It’s started to come out this morning though. In fact, it’s trending. Haven’t you looked at the official Saga Online channel yet?”
Damien squeezed his temples between thumb and middle finger. He had, in fact, and had been presented with a completely different problem. One which Kevin had just unwittingly reminded him of.
“Yeah, I have, but the news wasn’t there when I looked. I saw something else though, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. That stream Mobius cut for me was terrible! It didn’t cover what happened properly at all! It’s like they wanted to make me out as the bad guy, when all I was doing—”
“Now Damien, hang on a se—”
“—was trying to join a party, and then this—”
“—Damien, it was—”
“—moron with a samurai sword shows up and—”
“—Damien, I’m the one who cut the footage together.”
The forest briefly went silent again, causing Damien to realize just how loud he’d been. Fortunately his hell hound wasn’t growling, but Damien certainly felt like growling in its place.
“I’m sorry, you what?”
There was a pause, followed by the familiar swish of papers being moved around on Kevin’s desk. Damien waited, his temper rising steadily, until Kevin had found his bearings. He’d obviously prepared this in advance.
“As your minder, back when you were simply testing game elements my role was to process any abnormal findings and your satisfaction level with gameplay. Now my role has switched to ensuring the success of your channel and managing your PR. I’ve got the numbers right here in front of me and I promise this is a good thing, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
“How can you be—”
“Damien, please trust me! You should know that of all people, I have your best interests at heart. This is actually a really good situation for you.”
Damien grumbled and Kevin pointedly waited to make sure there would be no more interruptions.
“The channels dedicated to mainstream pursuits, like base-building, game mechanics or guild management are very common. The channels for player-killing are far fewer, and they’re all oversubscribed even though the content is sub-par. Half the time the players running these channels end up with bounties and can’t make new content, since more often than not they’re on death timers. But you have the class to make it work, since you’re so overpowered for player-killing and you already have negative reputation with the Empire.”
So Kevin wanted him to be a full-time player-killer, the exact opposite of what Damien had been striving toward.
“Kevin, what you’re telling me would be fascinating if I gave a damn. I don’t want to be hated by the majority of players I play this game with. I’m trying to move away from player-killing. I only did it in the first place because that’s the role that was forced on me.”
“You complained that your numbers were dropping even though you won the competition. This is the solution. It’s a pretty good one, even if I do say so myself. With this you’ll have a steady income and a secure career. This business with Magnitude even helps you, since there will be more players—”
Kevin was halfway through his pitch when Damien’s hound bore its teeth and snarled out into the wilderness. He needed to end the call and concentrate on what he was doing.
“Yeah, Kevin, we’ll have to finish this later. I’ve got work.”
Damien hung up. He was just as worried about the encroaching threat as he was relieved the conversation was temporarily over. He stuck his head out to survey his surroundings, his eyes straying over the tree Noigel was hiding behind. Only Noigel was practically in plain sight, his legs sticking out from one side and his tail swishing around behind him. There were another pair of legs sticking out from behind the tree as well: red, slender and ending in a pair of hairy hooves. From what Damien could make out, which was blessedly little, Noigel was sandwiched in between them.
That lecherous little turd. Making hanky-panky when he should’ve been standing watch, and upsetting the hounds in so doing when they needed to be paying attention. He’d bloody well kill him.
All caution gone, Damien stepped out from behind his cover and started marching purposefully toward Noigel’s impromptu love nest. The hounds were still barking, one on each side. Noigel was apparently too busy to notice. Damien was halfway there when he lost his temper.
“Shut up! I’m dealing with it! You two should be—”
Which is when, off to the left, a mage stepped out from behind a tree. He was no further from Damien than Noigel and his special interest. The canoodling couple had not been the cause of the hounds’ distress, not at all. Damien knew now that they’d been barking because their master was in danger. And what spectacular danger it was.
Between the long golden hair, the pointed elven ears and the green piercing eyes punctuating Aetherius’s all too familiar sneer, it was pretty clear Damien had messed up. Aetherius’s presentation was a far cry from what it had once been, the coordinated style and color scheme of his equipment replaced with a hodge-podge of mismatched items, but otherwise he looked every bit as imposing as he ever had. Not least of all because his hands were glowing red.
The other imps were all still concealed beneath the snow. Damien had no choice. He’d no sooner locked eyes on his oblivious second-in-command’s rump when the two of them switched places. It was hard to say which of them suffered more. Noigel transcended from oblivious self-indulgence to a screaming scattering of atoms in half a second flat. Had Damien’s view of his imp not been obscu
red by the tree, he may simply have chosen incineration rather than salvation. As things were, the price of salvation was his tongue being matted with succubus thigh fur.
This was not the sort of momentum transferal Damien had in mind. The succubus wasn’t any happier, screeching angrily as they each fought to get off the other faster. With claw marks on his face, a hairy tongue and Aetherius’s sudden appearance plunging his heart into his stomach, Damien would’ve paid handsomely for someone to rip off his headset. The feeling mostly passed after a few moments and Damien wondered why he hadn’t passed with it. He turned to look for Aetherius, expecting another spell to be coming his way. His adversary was standing in the snow, calmly drinking a mana potion.
“Everyone, get him!”
His imps had already burst from the snow while he reeled from sensory overload, their protective instincts triggered by his heightened distress. At his command, the succubus set off behind them. But something didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t just his tastebuds either. His hounds were running the wrong way.
Damien was redirecting them when a number of key facts popped into his clearing head. He’d ignored them moments earlier, to his cost. He’d given them a direct order, and although some of his units were more antisocial than others they never disobeyed instruction. Aetherius had been drinking that mana potion for a long time, considering most players could glug them down in mere seconds and it had once been a core focus of his playstyle. And the two hounds, who’d started from different locations, appeared to be converging on empty space. Not only that, but they were altering their paths as they ran, running in two curves. As if they were chasing something.
Damien’s eyes darted from the hounds to the ground ahead of them just in time to see a tuft of snow get kicked up into the air, seemingly by the wind. Until in front of it an empty footprint appeared in the snow, the latest in a trail that ran all the way back to his potion-drinking enemy’s image.
