by Oliver Mayes
Go then, there are other worlds than these.
Damien stepped forward and noticed for the first time the practical application of his agility, which had all but doubled since he started playing a few hours ago: his body felt weightless. That wasn’t the only factor in his increased speed; he was excited. What better way to test run this absurd new gear than against an unknown boss? He put his hand on the door and, upon reading the text informing him of the boss’s name and asking if he was prepared, found his imagination had been wanting.
Damien tilted his head to the stratosphere and howled with laughter. He braced his hands on his knees and laughed at his feet. When that proved insufficient, he kneeled on the floor and held his sides, still laughing his heart out. For once it was Noigel who was disturbed by Damien’s behavior.
“Perhaps you should return to your own world and rest before we attempt this, master?”
Damien grabbed Noigel by the arms and dragged him into a headlock, giving him a noogie as his captive choked out an indignant screech. Damien kissed his bald head, spat when he realized what he’d done and went back to laughing twice as hard. It was only when Noigel got the knives out and brandished them threateningly that Damien relented, letting him go and wiping the tears from his eyes.
“No way. We’re doing this right now!”
He summoned two hell hounds and two imps, draining his Soul Reserve and bringing his Soul Summon Limit to 38/44. Then he put a hand to the door, nodding furiously as the text reappeared.
“Everyone inside!”
The doors swung open, revealing not Arcadia’s skyline that lay behind it but a completely new room that lay through it. Well, not completely new. Damien had seen it once before, about a month ago. The underground arena had much more in common with the lower levels of the Dark Tower Damien had just left behind. He had an inkling that once the boss appeared, that would no longer be the case.
The minions filed in and the door closed behind them. Damien had Noigel disperse them around the outer walls. Then he reconsidered and gave Noigel new orders, having him place them behind each of the four vast stone columns that stretched to the ceiling.
“Master—,” Noigel started irritably, “—could you make up your mind?”
Not even a grumpy Noigel could spoil this moment. Damien grinned at him and raised a hand in acknowledgment.
“Sorry, I forgot how the start of this goes.”
“You forgot how the start of this goes?”
“That’s what I said. Don’t move from there.”
Damien strolled out toward the middle of the arena, densely packed golden sand crunching under his feet. He was waiting for the sign that combat was about to begin. He was nearly at the center when the low rumble started under his feet. Damien immediately turned tail and ran back to the column Noigel was hiding behind, his arms and legs pumping up and down in a pantomime of sneaking as he giggled under his breath. He looked every inch a naughty child who’d lit a firecracker under an abandoned junkyard TV.
Damien could move very fast now. He’d already reached safety by the time the low rumble had become a deafening roar and the entire arena had begun to shake, as if in the throes of an earthquake. Damien stuck his fingers in his ears, still snorting while Noigel stared at him incredulously. The rumbling stopped. In that moment of silence, Noigel gave voice to what he’d been trying to process:
“Master? What do you mean by—’”
Before Noigel could finish his question, the ceiling exploded. Damien and his minions were quite safe behind the columns as the walls were bombarded with rubble. One and a half seconds later there was a second, heavier impact, followed by an immense shockwave. Damien waited until it passed and then, unable to contain his glee any longer, jumped out from behind his cover. The gear was great, the trait was great, the weapon was great. It all paled in comparison to a second chance against the enemy that had set him on this path in the very beginning.
In the middle of a smoldering crater, surrounded by shards of glass where the sand had been superheated, lay Damien’s true prize for reaching the end of the Dark Tower. Resting on one knee, with an obscenely large serrated blade thrust into the ground in front of him, was Toutatis: The Mad Tyrant.
Damien equipped his kunai and held them out to either side. Toutatis rose to his full height, dragging his sword out of the ground with one hand before setting his sights on Damien. A red icon in the shape of a menacing eye appeared in Damien’s battle HUD: In the Sight of the Gods – All stats reduced by 40%. They’d doubled the debuff. Damien didn’t care. If this was what was waiting for him, he’d climb the Dark Tower a thousand times. So long as he never gave up, his victory was assured.
Damien gripped his new weapons tightly and yelled into the god’s face.
“Where’s my backpack, you filthy animal?”
24
The View from Halfway Down
When Damien had first fought Toutatis, he’d been playing a beta version of Saga with notably different mechanics layered over the vanilla game. Limbs could be broken or severed, his stats were reduced if his headset detected fear and there was more exposure to explicit content (not in a good way), to name a few. Saga Online had been just that little bit more unpleasant for Damien than it had been for paying customers.
He’d chosen to play a warrior, which had offset much of the unpleasantness tremendously. Heavy armor allowed him to avoid dismemberment, for the most part. A relatively high constitution stat served as a buffer against fear, at least until his hit points dropped anywhere below half. Armor and hit points didn’t do anything to protect his innocence, so it was just as well he wasn’t overburdened with that in the first place.
Having occultism thrust upon him in the regular version of Saga Online had been difficult in different ways, even before taking his circumstances into account. Nowhere was safe. He was forced to travel everywhere on foot, through hostile territory. His only realistic means of leveling had been player-killing, a risky business in any game, and more so if you’ve been playing your character for less than a day. He’d spent much of the following week alone, playing the class with only Bartholomew and Noigel to guide him. A very loose definition of ‘guide’ indeed.
Yet despite all the difficulties he’d overcome, the majority of commentators offhandedly diminished his accomplishments by saying occultists were overpowered. As if his success had nothing to do with him at all. As if killing well over a hundred player characters in a week had been handed to him on a plate. What did they know? He doubted any of them could’ve got as much out of the class as he had. His gear was always lacking, he was squishy, his minions had lower health than him, he dealt very little damage at great personal risk, and while other players could fail willy-nilly and bounce back after twenty-four hours, a death for him was a huge setback.
Until now. Now he had a high-tier, level-appropriate gear set to complement his chosen playstyle. Now he was OP. Now he could give Toutatis a proper fight. Once the formalities were out of the way.
Toutatis roared, as Damien knew he would. He braced himself on all fours, leaning into the wind. Even with 40% reduced stats, his agility was higher than when he’d entered the dungeon. His feet dragged backward through the sand, but he remained standing at the roar’s end.
The preliminaries were finished. The stage was set. On with the show. Damien ran forward, hurling a kunai at Toutatis’s bare midriff. Toutatis took the hit and the kunai sank in. That was a surprise. Damien had expected him to deflect it, as Mordred had done. It was only when Toutatis grabbed the chain before Damien could twist and release that he realized this was not a good thing.
Noigel was quick to react, the minions all screeching to announce their presence as they rounded the columns. Those in range of the succubi were Bloodlusted and heading his way fast. Damien didn’t rate their chances in melee against Toutatis, although a distraction would certainly be useful right about now. The only thing more useful than that was an exit. He thought Stop as clearly
as he could and all the minions immediately halted where they were. Not a moment too soon.
Damien had not been foolish enough to pull the chain himself, so Toutatis obliged him: the eight-foot deity jumped backward, yanking Damien off his feet, then pulled on the chain with all his might. As Damien hurtled toward him, Toutatis raised his ten-foot sword above his head with a single hand.
Damien set his eyes on an imp on the far side of the room and Demon Gated. He turned as the helpful imp was sliced in two in his stead, ran behind the column as Noigel reasserted his command over the minions, then crouched.
In the wake of his near death, the excitement was starting to wear off and logic was kicking in. This was a boss fight. Just as it had been with Mordred, there would be a specific way of handling this. He would’ve rather fought Toutatis with all his experience combined with his newfound raw power, but the fight was not set up that way. This was the Path of Deceit, not the Path of Honorable Combat. Even if he was willing to do so, he’d rather not have to climb all the way up here again.
In the Sight of the Gods reducing his stats meant he was supposed to attack without being seen, just like Mordred but with a different flavor. He’d acquired a gear set that would allow him to do just that, even with the sunlight streaming in through the ceiling Toutatis had destroyed upon his arrival. Damien crouched down and found himself in Shadow Walker in the light of day. Sweeeet. Time to go with the indirect approach.
Walking while crouched was now as fast as a light jog. He rounded the column and found Toutatis standing in the center of the arena performing his best-known trick: spinning to win. The whirlwind was in its infancy but growing rapidly. Noigel hadn’t seen this combat before. He didn’t know what was coming.
Noigel, all minions back.
The minions were retreating behind their columns when Toutatis’s rotation speed hit the threshold for the secondary effect to kick in. Most of his minions escaped, but a few of them were caught at the edge of the maelstrom and flung around within it helplessly. It didn’t last long. Lightning bolts had begun striking the ground, each of them unerringly piercing an imp within the area of effect. Their ashes were added to the swirling mass of matter that continued to expand. Damien waited for Toutatis to lurch into a column. It took five seconds before Damien realized it wasn’t happening. What he’d previously thought of as full power was nothing of the sort.
This was bad. Toutatis was spinning faster and faster and the whirlwind continued to grow. It was already twice the circumference Damien had thought was the limit and still expanding. If this went on, it would soon envelop the whole room. Damien doubted the lightning bolts cared if he was in stealth or not. Why wasn’t Toutatis triggering? Last time he’d flung himself at Damien long before...ah, of course. He’d been too efficient. Toutatis needed a target. Damien would be damned before it was him.
Noigel, send out an imp!
The edge of the whirlwind had reached the foot of the columns when Noigel sent out his unwitting sacrifice. It was in the air, flying. Damien cursed. He hadn’t been specific enough.
Noigel, put it on the fl—
There was no need. Toutatis was not deterred by his target being in the air and half the room away. Damien couldn’t see Toutatis clearly through the dense cloud of sand, rubble and dust. He could only get an estimate of his opponent’s speed from the shifting border of the whirlwind, although he did catch a brief flash of silver when the Warrior Champion of the Heavens made his move.
It took less than half a second for Toutatis to reach the target Damien had offered. Damien surmised that the longer he kept Toutatis waiting, the faster he’d spin and the faster he’d launch himself when a target did present itself. It was not the speed that shocked Damien, so much as the route: a straight line from the floor to the imp, halfway to the open roof.
Toutatis hit the wall behind the imp so hard, the resulting blast dispelled his whirlwind immediately. It made Damien’s Ex-Imp-losion look like a popping balloon. It was as bad as the initial landing animation, which Damien had seen coming and had appropriately hidden behind a column for. He hadn’t counted on a repeat performance, which was why he’d been crouched in plain sight, assuming he was safe.
The shockwave threw Damien past the column and into the wall a long way behind him. As the déjà vu settled in, prompting Damien to check his HUD for internal bleeding and broken bones, he became acutely aware he wasn’t quite as OP as he’d thought. The power gap between him and Toutatis was almost unchanged. It was quite the time to have such a realization, given that the red eye had reappeared in his HUD.
Damien ran behind the column, feeling very slow, and crouched down again. Out of sight, his Shadow Walker was reactivated. He was sneaking his way around, expecting Toutatis to run for where he’d last been seen. Instead, Toutatis arrived in front of him and began methodically swinging his sword over the empty space. The minions that had been sheltering there fled without Toutatis paying them any notice. Not only had Toutatis predicted where Damien was headed, he knew he was in stealth and was searching for him to the exclusion of visible targets.
Uh-oh. Gotta go fast. Damien about-faced and rolled over and over like a florescent spiky erinaceidae with a crippling addiction to finger jewelry. It was the only way he could both stay in Shadow Walker and move fast enough to stay ahead of Toutatis’s sweeps. If that’s what it took to stay alive, no copyright law in the universe was gonna stop him. Toutatis was no sloth, but there was a lot of space for him to cover between the column and the wall. He was too slow.
Toutatis gave up his search and returned to the middle of the arena, where he began to spin all over again. Damien took control of an imp himself and placed it directly in front of a column. Sorry, dude. He prepared his weapons and edged closer, making sure he was close enough to engage while staying out of Toutatis’s path.
Toutatis took the bait. While not as fast as the previous jump had been, it was still more than enough to squish the imp before it could manage a single wing beat. Toutatis’s sword had sliced deep into the stone pillar and now it was stuck. The right kind of déjà vu. Since their last encounter, Damien had acquired better offensive options than a measured kick to an ill-defined pair of gonads.
Damien flung a kunai at Toutatis’s bare back and it sank in with a meaty squelch. It did 4% damage, far more than the non-sneak 40%-debuffed hit he’d inflicted earlier but still nowhere near enough. Toutatis remained completely focused on heaving his sword from the stone. Damien had to make the most of this attack window. He pulled on the chain and hurtled headlong toward his target.
He cocked his second arm en route, the same way he did when possessing his wraiths, and put all his weight behind the other kunai’s blade. It sank in up to Damien’s knuckles, right between Toutatis’s shoulder blades. It was a shame he couldn’t use this technique in stealth, since he’d already broken it by inflicting damage with the first kunai. It was a critical hit though, deep enough to hit the heart from the back through Toutatis’s considerable frame. Another 4% of Toutatis’s hit points were gone.
Toutatis reached behind himself to grab Damien, the sword briefly forgotten. At least Damien had found the one place in the entire arena where Toutatis had no chance of seeing him, which was somewhat undermined by Toutatis knowing exactly where he was. Damien used his embedded kunai for leverage as he twisted his head out of Toutatis’s grasping fingers. He couldn’t stay here.
He twisted both kunai and kicked off Toutatis, rolling then preparing to throw again. Toutatis returned his attention to his weapon, pulling the first few feet of it free. The window of opportunity was closing. He hadn’t done enough damage yet. Damien threw a kunai into Toutatis and pulled on the chain.
He knew the animation of the sword coming loose was a warning that time was growing short. After this column went down there would only be three more opportunities like this left, and no cover for him or his minions to hide behind. That was a significant concern. He had to milk this for all it was worth.
As Damien’s kunai sank in and he pulled on the chain, Toutatis immediately stopped trying to free his weapon, braced himself and kicked down the column.
This was definitely not what Damien was supposed to be doing. As the foot landed and the column began to tumble, Damien missed out on a critical strike because he was focused on leaving before he’d even arrived. He had to be. The column was collapsing on top of them. Damien kicked off again, jumping backward so he could see the blocks of stone that were threatening to crush him.
Toutatis had thoughtfully knocked him clear of this hazard when they’d first met, for the low, low price of breaking just about every bone in Damien’s body. Damien was more than capable of avoiding them on his own. The quick jumps he’d practiced had turned out to be less useful than tactical rolls against the Cave Urchins, but with double stamina and agility they were very applicable here.
The last of the blocks fell and Toutatis appeared through the dust cloud, just before the debris around him started moving sideways. He was spinning again. Jeez, talk about a one-trick pony. The fallen fragments of the column were quickly disintegrated by friction and lightning.
Toutatis’s hit points were at 84%. Damien was not on track to beating him with now only three columns left standing. Damien needed to up his game. He understood all the conditions of this fight. He knew how to draw his opponent, he knew the attack window, he had a baseline for how much damage he could do by himself. More importantly, Noigel had now seen all these things too.
