by Byron Kings
“Of course,” King Gregor said. “Whatever you want.”
“Fucking right whatever I want, twat.” The emissary walked over to me, looking up and down my body. “How did you find the sword so soon? Did you cheat?”
“Maybe,” I said, my lips barely moving as I stared into his eyes.
He looked away and clapped his hands.
“Is this how you treat important guests in the badlands?” he asked.
As King Gregor rushed to give the emissary whatever he wanted, Xin Jang walked over.
“You fucked up the mission,” he said. “I heard all my men died.”
“They fucked up the mission,” I said. “You didn’t do so hot yourself.”
“Fuck you, man,” he said, pushing me.
I drew my sword, ready to kill him.
“Whoa!” the emissary shouted.
He waved his hands, freezing Xin Jang and myself.
“You two are to go to your separate ways and prepare for the battle in three days. Transportation to Gristle will be provided. Anyone have any questions or problems? No? I didn’t think so.”
He snapped his fingers, freeing us. Xin Jang glared at me but said nothing before turning and walking away with a few of his men.
“What about us?” I called out as King Gregor and the emissary walked away. “We need rooms.”
“Take whatever fucking room you want!” the king shouted.
I turned to Harper and Morgana, shaking my head.
“What the hell just happened?” Harper asked.
“I wonder if he knows anything about that weird system message,” Morgana said.
“We have to concentrate on one thing at a time. Are you two willing to fight with me in the arena in a few days?”
“You don’t need to ask us,” Morgana said.
I turned to Harper. She nodded.
“You’re acting so strange,” I said.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Morgana said. “Let’s find a room.”
“What about you, Newton?” I asked.
“I’ll fight with you for a place in your kingdom,” he said. “I’ve got something to fight for now.”
“Great,” I said. “We have our four already.”
“Let’s go find that room,” Morgana said.
“We’ll talk more later,” I said then waved at Newton.
He walked over to Alondra as we left the throne room and wandered around a bit before we eventually found an empty bedroom. I locked the door once we were inside. Harper wandered over to the four-poster bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Morgana took my hand and led me over to the bed.
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.
Morgana took my hand in both of hers as she stood in front of me.
“We played a trick on you,” she said. “I had to be sure.”
“Trick? Be sure about what?”
I pulled my hand away and glanced over at the bed.
“What’s going on, Harper?”
“I’m Harper,” Morgana said. “We switched.”
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”
“We switched characters before you came into the game full time,” Morgana said. “I’m actually the Harper you played with before.”
“But why?”
“I wanted to see if you loved me or my avatar,” Morgana said. “Haven’t you noticed we get along better than you and the woman playing me?”
“This is nuts,” I said, shaking my head.
I sat down next to Harper on the bed. She put her arm around me.
“There’s more,” Morgana, the real Harper, said. “I have a horn sword too.”
“What?” I stood up. “When did that happen? How is there another one?”
“It’s a long story,” she said.
“We have nothing but time right now,” I countered.
She sighed then motioned toward the bed.
“Have a seat. I’ll try to explain it all from my viewpoint.”
“That would be nice,” I said, sitting down next to the fake Harper. “Who are you anyway?”
“My name’s actually Morgana,” she said. “Harper and I go way back.”
I snorted, still unable to believe they’d been able to pull it off.
“You know, there’s a few times I was wondering what the hell was wrong with you.”
Morgana smiled and leaned down to kiss me. I pulled away as she slipped her tongue in my mouth. She stood up straight.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “We’re going to win this other horn sword. If we have two of them, we’ll be able to truly rule the entire badlands.”
“Yeah,” Morgana said. “About that... I stole the sword from Gristle.”
“Are you nuts?” I asked.
She grinned. “A little.”
“You’re definitely the Harper I know,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” she teased. “You like this new body of mine?”
“I like the old and the new,” I said. “Why don’t you two get naked.”
After a rousing sexual session, we laid around to enjoy the afterglow for a few minutes. The seriousness of Morgana’s statement hit me. Had she really stolen one of the other horn swords used by the League of Twelve? And if so, why hadn’t the emissary said anything?
“Tell me about the other horn sword,” I said, twirling Morgana’s long, black hair with my fingers.
She sat up. “What do you want to know?”
“I helped her steal it,” Harper said.
“How did you pull it off?”
She snorted then backed away.
“You don’t think much of me, do you?” she asked.
I sat up. “You mean the world to me. Both of you.”
“They don’t know it’s missing yet,” Harper said then giggled.
Morgana smiled. “We learned a lot by stealing and replicating that katana of Xin Jang’s.”
“Nice,” I said, nodding my head. “Tell me more. Where is it?”
“It’s safe,” Morgana said.
“She won’t tell me either,” Harper complained.
“We need to secure yours first,” Morgana said in a more serious tone.
“Newton won’t be much help, but we fight well together as a team,” I said. “We’ve got a good chance to win the arena battle.”
“If the other two don’t cheat,” Morgana said.
“Yeah, that’s a possibility, but I don’t think they’ll risk it in Gristle. They don’t hold as much power as they think they do sometimes.”
Morgana smiled and reached between my legs.
“Can you bring this beast back to life?” she asked. “After tonight, we need to concentrate on the battle coming up. We should make the most of the moment.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said.
The three of us had one hell of a night.
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CHAPTER 21
┕━━━━━━━━━━━━━┙
Thunderous Rex and His Crew
“Once we secure the badlands, we can take our time to figure out how to join the League of Twelve and really get some power in this game.” I glanced at the door as someone knocked. “Come in. It’s open.”
Newton walked in, decked out in an invisibility suit with the head covering off.
“It’s legal, baby,” he said.
Over the last couple days, he’d been in a much brighter mood since learning his cancer got eradicated in the real world. We still hadn’t learned anything about the weird system message. The rumor going around was that it was nothing more than a glitch in the game as more people logged on permanently.
“Nice,” I said. “We’ve got a chance to win this.”
“I’ve heard the other two teams have a war mount,” Morgana said.
Even though it was the original Harper I’d known in Morgana’s body, I hadn’t started calling them by their real nam
es. The game had a way of making such things feel normal.
“We can’t afford a war mount of our own,” I said. “The League of Twelve doesn’t care who wins this battle as long as they get someone to run the badlands for them.”
“You mounted Morgana last night,” Harper teased.
Newton laughed, his head floating in the air.
“Take that damn suit off,” I said. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Okay,” he sighed, slipping out of the invisibility suit. “This is going to help us win. Mark my words. Unless they have something to counter it.”
“I’ve got some ideas on how you can use being invisible to sow discord among the two other teams. That’s our biggest chance for winning — getting the other two teams to fight each other and wear themselves down before we move in for the kill.”
“Brilliant,” Morgana said, slipping her arm around my waist.
She sat on one side of the bed with me. Harper sat on my other side.
“Can you go find out what war mounts they’re using?” I asked.
“I knew I should’ve left the suit on,” Newton said.
“Sorry, the idea just came to me. Time is moving so fast.” I turned to Harper. “Did you learn those new offensive spells yet? Can you do it in time for the arena tomorrow?”
“I’m on it,” she said. “I’m a better mage than Morgana ever was.”
“See you guys later,” Newton said then disappeared completely.
“That’s one of the other reasons we switched characters,” Morgana said. “The hack wasn’t cheap, but we both pitched in. Knowing you were coming into the game full time, I wanted to be a warrior and closer to you.”
“I’ll be working on my mage abilities soon enough,” I said.
Her head darted forward, and she kissed me on the lips.
“We should talk about the arena set-up,” Harper said. “There’s time to fuck later, after we win.”
“I could go for a quickie…” I started.
“Drake,” Harper moaned.
“Okay, okay,” I relented. “Tell us about the arena.”
“You’ve never been?” Harper asked.
I shook my head. “No, I’ve never left the badlands.”
“He wanted to be new to the main continent when he went full time,” Morgana explained.
We had talked so much about our lives together inside the game.
“Anyway, the arena is one square mile on each side. They use floating eyes to relay the scenes to the audience as the massive battle happens. Starting from the corners, there’s two loot boxes before the big one in the center of the arena. Each time starts in a separate corner.”
“That part I’ve heard about,” I said.
“We’ll want to go for the first two loot boxes while heading toward the one in the center. If we can claim that and hold onto it, the bonuses and buffs we get will help us defeat the others,” Harper continued. “The random loot boxes are tricky, but they’re mostly good.”
“Getting King Gregor and Xin Jang to fight each other is important,” I said. “Maybe we should avoid going for the center loot box even though it’s the most powerful.”
Harper bobbed her head back and forth.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “That’s too risky. If we move quick, we can get to the center loot box before the others. We should send Newton out to distract the others and get them to fight each other somehow.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “They both hate each other. We can use that against them.”
I laid back on the bed, hands interlocked behind my head as I stared at the ceiling. Harper and Morgana went to the other side of the room to talk while I thought about the battle and all the other crazy stuff that had happened since I went into the game full time. I didn’t see how my life could get any better than it would be for the foreseeable future.
Newton returned a little over an hour later with new information. King Gregor had rented a stegosaurus for the battle while Xin Jang had somehow acquired a red dragon.
“Fuck,” I said.
Newton nodded. “It’s worse. They’ve both got crack teams. King Gregor is going with a mage, a healer tank, and a battle tank. Xin Jang has two war mages and an insane fighter to tank. Between the stegosaurus and the dragon, I don’t see how we have a chance.”
“We need to get them to attack each other,” I said, getting up and standing next to the bed.
“He’s right,” Harper said. “Morgana and I have been calculating how to get the most DPS, and we’re going to be in trouble if we try to take either team on directly.”
“My invisibility suit will help,” Newton said.
“You just need to make sure you’re picking good targets of opportunity,” I said. “And we need to time our kills precisely. Whoever makes the killing blow gets the health and mana refresh, and we don’t want to waste it on someone who doesn’t need it.”
Newton grinned, rubbing his hands together.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m excited,” he said. “The cancer is fucking gone, and I’m going to be starting a kingdom with you in Battle Empire. Life is fucking good right now!”
“Calm down,” Harper said. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
“Nothing in life that’s worth it is easy,” I said. “We’ve got this.”
The rest of the evening, we went over strategies and tactics for the battle. In all the situations we ran through, the odds of us winning were very small. All I needed was a chance to win. That was enough to get me motivated and keep me that way. I slept without checking in on the real world that night because I needed to be at my best in the arena the next day.
* * * * *
As we stood in the corner by two walls a hundred feet high the next morning, I kept telling myself we’d win the battle and be allowed to keep the horn sword. While still not activated completely, Harper had given it some buffs, including a double damage modifier. The buffs would help give me a bit of an edge over the higher-level characters.
“Remember,” Morgana said. “Get them to fight each other.”
“Get ready to battle!” a voice boomed from beyond the wall.
The cheers of over a hundred thousand people were barely contained by the thick, brick enclosure surrounding the vast arena.
“I’m going incognito,” Newton said as he slipped on his hood.
“Go get ‘em,” I said.
“I will,” he said, his voice trailing away.
“He’s really changed since he got the news about his cancer,” Harper said.
“Makes sense, but I wish someone would confirm or deny the rumors about the system message,” I said. “Why haven’t they given us any information about it?”
“Keep your head in the battle,” Morgana said. “We need to kick ass today.”
I glanced over at the first loot box a few feet away. After that one, we’d come across another about a third of a mile to the center of the arena. The last one would help us become powerful enough to beat both the others. Gristle was famous for loving three-way battles in their massive arena. I wondered what the first loot box would give us.
“My extra mana will help today,” Harper said. “We need force multipliers.”
“Exactly.” I nodded my head. “We need good combos to defeat them.”
“Battle start!” the announcer yelled.
The thunderous applause continued non-stop on the other side of the wall as we rushed to the first loot box. Morgana tapped it with her hand, activating a game screen.
<< Loot Box Found! >>
<< +25% To Hit for all melee attacks for 4 minutes >>
“Fuck, that’s sucks,” I said.
A magic orb flew down to catch my expression. The crowd jeered on the other side of the wall. I kept walking toward the next loot box, Harper and Morgana at my sides. The battle would end up going into the history books of Battle Empire. I would be legendary if I pulled off a victory.
“Look alive!�
� Morgana shouted as we jogged toward the second loot bot.
“Wizard at twelve o’clock a hundred feet up!” Harper yelled.
I stopped and turned to the sky. A man in red robes with an insane curly mustache laughed like a maniac as he levitated.
“Lightning bolt!” Harper shouted.
Her words became reality as a ball of lightning soared through the sky, hitting the red wizard. As he fell to the ground, I ran toward the area he might hit. He hit the grass hard and moaned, curling up into a ball. I kicked my emotions to the curb and jumped up right before reaching him. Coming down, I stuck my sword through his skull, killing him instantly.
<< Arena kill! >>
<< Full health restore! >>
<< Full mana restore! >>
“Idiot!” Harper yelled. “I needed to restore my mana. That spell isn’t fucking cheap!”
“Sorry, I got caught up in the moment,” I said.
I failed to tell her I hadn’t even needed to heal my health or mana yet.
“You’re fine, but every little thing helps.” Harper leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s get to that next loot box.”
“Come on!” Morgana shouted, already running ahead.
As we reached the second loot box, I saw King Gregor’s two tanks coming in hot and heavy. Morgana reached the wooden crate first and tapped the top. Another notification popped up.
<< Loot Box Found! >>
<< +250% Damage for all melee and magic attacks for 8 minutes >>
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted, stopping and turning to face the warriors charging us. “Save your mana for now. Morgana and I can handle these dumb-fucks.”
I ran forward, horn sword raised high into the air. The priest tank slowed down while the warrior rushed forward, war hammer above his head.
“Die in the name of King Gregor!” he shouted.
I dodged to the side then took off for the priest. Morgana followed up, taking on the warrior while I pressed closer to the spell casting tank.
“Revorium mustket!” he chanted then clapped his hands.
An invisible force hit me in the chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. I plunged to the ground, rolling around and trying not to get hit. The tanky priest swung a steel mace at my legs a few times but missed. I scrambled to my feet and swung the horn sword like a baseball bat. The blade connected with his armored left arm.
