War Games

by Nikita Thorn

  Fuyu had recently sent him another pigeon message saying she had some information he would most likely be interested in, with a claim that she was entirely honest this time, but Seiki had chosen to ignore it. For some inexplicable reason, he was rather certain Ichikeya knew a thing or two about these mysterious unlabeled shadow seals. They claimed to deal in rare goods after all, but he really did not want to imagine what kind of trouble Fuyu would get him into if she knew he had one in his pocket.

  “But then again, I bet she already knows.” Seiki shook his head and decided to get on with what was ahead of him at the moment before Genta could give him another helpful reminder.

  The familiar notification greeted him as he led the villagers on foot out the gate.

  Welcome to the West Plains! PVP status: enabled. Military combat rules apply.

  The sun was already halfway down toward the horizon, and the Tiger Gate cast a long cool shadow into the City. The small dirt-paved opening directly outside the city threshold was essentially a market, populated by NPC merchants who sold overpriced healing potions and other wild ingredients that could be gathered out the West Gate—like a herb called Shadowsprout, used in some Medicine recipes, which Kentaro seemed to be in need of. All around, players were constantly running in and out, and Seiki motioned his troops out of the way so as not to get trampled.

  From here, the northwest path led to several instance locations, including the familiar Nezumi Temple. To the south were wooded areas that served as a zone for missions and skirmishes with Demonic Clan scouts. Actual War Games happened further west, deeper into the mountains and wild fields, where Seiki had never set foot.

  Unlike the Chubu Plains on the eastern side of Shinshioka, the war zones were much more strictly regulated. While PVP was still permitted, players were penalized with a deduction of 16 Honor Points for starting combat with another player, which was quadruple the normal penalty for doing so in the city. Killing another player resulted in a further deduction of 16 points, and the ‘Out of Line’ debuff prevented the perpetrator from joining War Games for the next seven days. The amount of time doubled if you happened to be the one to have instigated violence in the first place.

  “Shinshioka must stand united against the Demonic Clan! Save personal quarrels for somewhere else” was the usual Shinshioka Army Officers’ line when they caught people brawling, and for this reason, players were generally well-behaved out the West Gate.

  As Seiki scanned the crowd, a girl in light blue, Yumiko of the Crafters’ Guild [Level 19], ran up to them and offered to sell strength potions at a discount, which he politely declined. Further away, near an NPC merchant’s food stall, a Level 14 ryoushi, with four bowmen behind him, looked a little lost while he glanced up and down from a piece of paper. Perhaps was he on the same part of the quest as Seiki.

  “Tell me if you spot Lieutenant Kato anywhere,” said Seiki as he peered around for Ippei.

  Saburo squinted. “Well, I see Shinshioka supply carts.” He pointed ahead. “Didn’t Captain Sakurai say Lieutenant Kato was overseeing supplies?”

  Seiki turned to look. Indeed, at the edge of the marketplace, right before the northwest path, five horse carts marked with red and black Shinshioka flags were being loaded by Shinshioka Soldiers [Level Unknown]. Lieutenant Kato was walking among the troops with a slightly tired expression like a man constantly overworked.

  “Good job,” said Seiki to Saburo, and he started leading his unit across the busy opening toward the officer. He wondered if he should send a message to Ippei, who was still nowhere to be seen. “Let’s—”

  He almost tripped as he sighted what was on one of those carts.

  About thirty feet away, sitting on top of a pile of heavy sacks on the nearest horse cart was the same white-masked figure he had seen before in an abandoned alley. Instead of the surrounding darkness, the white wooden face was now framed by black hair that hung loose over its shoulders above a dark red kimono. Again, as it noticed him, it tilted its head in acknowledgement, and despite there being nearly fifty people around, Seiki had no doubt its thin slanted eyes were looking directly at him.

  Wondering if reaching for his sword at the moment would be overreacting, Seiki glanced at Genta. “As stupid as this sounds… can you see that thing?”

  As was his habit in encounters with magical inhabitants of this realm, especially the kind that came out after dark, Seiki quickly checked if the figure cast a shadow.

  A patch of blackness seemed to spread under it, but before he could make sure, the figure suddenly burst forward with a shrill scream, like a ghost puppet traveling across the stage on an invisible string, its arms stretched out toward him.

  Reaching for his sword would definitely not be an overreaction now. Seiki gripped the hilt of his Hikari. Before he could even pull the blade free, the cart where the masked human-sized puppet had been sitting exploded in a flash of black and purple smoke. The impact knocked him off his feet, and a second later, Seiki found himself on the ground, fighting to breathe through the dust. His health was still pretty much intact, but bits of flying wood had left shallow cuts on his skin wherever it was exposed.

  Seiki blinked to clear his vision. Around him, his troops were down onto the ground. They had taken much more damage and were all below half health, bleeding from the debris. Ojisan was coughing violently.

  Confused, Seiki turned back to look at the masked figure, but in its place was now a gigantic demon, much like the one he and his friends had encountered before, but with a long spear instead of each of his arms.

  Kagenoyari [Level Unknown] let out a delighted cry as he swept his arms about, swiftly stabbing one nearby Shinshioka Soldier [Level 14] clean through and casting his dead body aside like a rag doll.

  To arms! Shinshioka is under attack!

  CHAPTER 06

  From behind the supply carts, twenty or so demonic warriors rushed out, catching the Shinshioka soldiers by surprise. Most of them had not yet recovered from the blast, so they were easy targets for the demons to slash at as they ran out from their hiding spots. Lieutenant Kato had been behind one of the carts, which had luckily shielded him from the blunt of the explosion.

  With a furious cry, the young lieutenant sprang into action. But by the time he reached the demon, Kagenoyori had already killed a dozen more men, and bodies were piling up under his feet.

  All around, shouts, screams and confused noises broke out as more demonic attackers appeared from the other side of the clearing and descended on the merchants. Seiki looked back at the market. Most of the players had jumped on their mounts and were galloping back toward the city gate, but their escape route was quickly cut off as another band of demons appeared, forcing them to flee towards a larger group of soldiers further along the wall. The Shinshioka troops rushed in to engage the assailants, and combat started to spread out as they clashed in front of the West Gate.

  Still dazed, Seiki picked himself up from the ground, just in time to ward off an incoming attack from a Demonic Swordsman [Level 14] who had spotted their group and was running in with his sword raised. The villagers were still struggling to their feet, and Seiki knocked the attacker back further with Sweeping Blade before the demon could take a stab at Genta.

  He glanced once more toward the West Gate behind him. What had a minute ago been a buzzing market was now a battlefield. A samurai in all black on a war horse had commanded his troops of twenty or so into two lines of defense in an attempt to take a stand, but the demon invaders were pouring in from all sides, and Seiki was rather shocked to witness the rate at which they were being cut down.

  With an angry growl, the Demonic Swordsman in Seiki’s immediate vicinity jumped in for another attack, calling his attention back. Seiki dodged and stabbed the enemy with Focused Strike, which he then automatically followed through with an Upslash. The combination instantly dropped the attacker, spilling dark purple demon blood onto the dirt.

  Demonic Swordsman slain. 112
XP gained.

  Demonic Swordsmen were standard warrior types without any special abilities, and Seiki had fought many of them in military missions. Technically, he should have been able to kill the demon without spending energy at all, but at this point he was not sure how his inexperienced unit would handle combat and would rather err on the side of safety.

  Saburo was still staring in horror at the corpse of the fallen demon right in front of him.

  “Get up, Saburo.” Seiki grabbed the boy’s arm and lifted him to his feet.

  Saburo shakily drew his short sword as Genta helped the rest of the group up. Rumi looked horror-stricken as she watched a few attackers cut down fleeing citizens, but then she took a deep breath and unsheathed her weapon. At least Ojisan seemed calm, but he had somehow lost the most amount of health.

  Seiki quickly checked and found that he was still in a group with Ippei, but it was perhaps impossible to search for him in this chaos. Near the gate, the ryoushi Seiki had seen earlier was trying to spray arrows at the advancing demons, and his four bowmen copied his moves; unfortunately, the whole group was quickly overwhelmed as the attackers rushed in for close combat. In the middle of the marketplace, the samurai in black and his two dozen men were no longer there, and the ground was now littered with bodies in uniform.

  If someone with twenty mounted men could not hold them off, Seiki doubted his untrained unit had any chance.

  “Uh, stay close together,” Seiki said, deciding that keeping his unit alive was his main priority right now. He should have asked Captain Sakurai what would happen to his troops should they die. He knew that East Gate clan troops resurrected after a period of time, and he guessed it should be the same for war troops. But, again, he would rather err on the side of safety.

  As another Demonic Swordsman closed in, Seiki thought he would do what he always did with his friends, which was to keep the demon’s attention while his unit chipped away at its health from the sides.

  “Follow my lead,” he said to his troops as he engaged the demon. Genta ran in and slashed at the attacker from the side. Rumi followed suit.

  It worked for a few seconds. However, as Genta’s sword left a gash across the attacker’s side, the demon turned to look at him. “Stand back!” cried Seiki as he figured out what was coming next. The demon spun around with his sword, missing Genta by a few inches and grazing Rumi on her shoulder pad. The fierce lady gritted her teeth as a long line of blood bloomed over her upper sleeve.

  Spending the rest of his energy for a quick kill, Seiki drove his Hikari through the demon’s back with a hasty Focused Strike.

  Demonic Swordsman slain. 112 XP gained.

  This was clearly not going to work. His troops were much more vulnerable than his friends, and he could not seem to hold threat off them. Without unlimited energy, he would not be able to defend them for long.

  “A little tutorial would be nice,” Seiki muttered, wondering if this was a small-scale world event he had stumbled into.

  From within the city, alarms sounded, and the West Gate was slowly closing. The fleeing players and NPC merchants squeezed into a thin line as they tried to get in. Even when mounted, some of them were too late, and the demons pounced on them like a pack of rabid wolves.

  From afar someone was yelling, “The Demonic Clan!”

  The middle of the marketplace was being overrun by the attackers, and Seiki decided it was too risky to try and cross it. A few of Lieutenant Kato’s men were fighting in a group of twenty or so around one of the supply carts, and Seiki led his unit in that direction, fending off two more attackers along the way.

  “Stay close to these guys for now,” he told them as they reached the safety of the group, before turning to fight the Demonic Swordsmen that had chased after them.

  Demonic Swordsman slain. 74 XP gained.

  Demonic Swordsman slain. 39 XP gained.

  With some extra protection from the NPC soldiers, the villagers were doing a little better. Seiki checked his surroundings once again. Slightly ahead, Lieutenant Kato was still engaged in combat with the fiend. Like other demons of the same class, Kagenoyari was twice the size of a man, his skin the hue between purple and black, and his armor a shade darker than the shadows around him. The two long spears he had for arms swished through the air as they whipped and stabbed at the lieutenant. Thankfully, Lieutenant Kato was a skilled swordsman and seemed to be holding his ground without too much trouble.

  “Third unit, formation!” the young lieutenant cried, and a group of soldiers quickly got into position behind the demon. “Second unit, on the left!” Parrying off one of the spear arms, Lieutenant Kato pressed in with two direct slashes, forcing the demon back a step. “Third unit, forward!”

  The so-called third unit rushed in with raised swords, delivering rapid cuts to the demon’s flank. Kagenoyari let out an angry roar as he turned toward them and lifted his spear. Seiki quickly noted that perhaps normal tanking strategies did not apply in War Games.

  “Brace!” Lieutenant Kato said.

  A second later, the demon’s spear swept out. An invisible explosion threw the soldiers onto the ground. The lieutenant took this chance to shout for the second unit to attack from the opposite direction, which nearly pushed the demon off balance. Kagenoyari roared as he recovered and swung his left arm at them.

  Despite their synchronized attacks, the demon seemed to be taking very little damage. Even with more than forty soldiers slashing away at it, Kagenoyari still had nearly five million health.

  There were about two hundred Shinshioka soldiers outside the wall, but nearly double that for attackers, and Seiki could not see how anyone was going to survive. Remembering what Ippei had said earlier, he was starting to wonder if this encounter was not meant to be beaten. Perhaps the whole point was to escape, to run, to flee into the safety of Shinshioka with danger right on your heels. That would, admittedly, be an exhilarating experience in its own way.

  Lieutenant Kato himself seemed to understand that the longer he kept the battle going, the more losses they were going to suffer. After exchanging a few more attacks with the demon, he turned and shouted, “First, fourth, fifth unit, defend the citizens and retreat to the gate! Leave the supplies. Don’t break formation.”

  “Think you can run, Kato?” The demon scoffed and stabbed down its right-hand spear at the man.

  Lieutenant Kato dodged, before grabbing the shaft of the spear with his free hand to drive it down into the ground, trapping it for a second. “Third unit, attack!”

  Following the lieutenant’s orders, the soldiers near the wall were making their way toward the gate, shielding a group of civilians who had managed to run to them in the middle of the formation. Another group of demonic attackers burst out from the trees on the opposite side of the marketplace, once again cutting them off, and they retreated back to the supply carts, suffering major losses.

  Genta grunted as he took a direct slash to the chest. Seiki noted that the injury reduced the man’s health by another fifth and he winced.

  From Shinshioka’s wall, signal horns blared out, and arrows started raining down on the attackers. The West Gate was now firmly closed, and it was clear that no cavalry was going to arrive from within the city. Still, the arrows managed to slow down the endless horde of demons.

  “Suenami!” Seeing the arrows, Lieutenant Kato turned to call, his voice projected to carry across the distance. “Suenami,” he shouted again. “You there?”

  After a moment, from the wall came a faint shouted reply. “Yes, I’m ready, lieutenant.”

  Seiki realized then that Shinshioka did have a plan for defense.

  All of a sudden, Lieutenant Kato ran up to the demon, ducked under the sweeping spear attack and slid onto one knee. “Now!” the lieutenant shouted.

  With both hands on the hilt of his sword, Kato stabbed the blade down directly in the ground in front of the demon. Seiki felt a soft silent explosion vibrating from the point
of impact, and he understood that the lieutenant had used a modified version of the Vertical Spike.

  “Of course you can do that,” Seiki said unconsciously, wondering why he had not thought of that particular combination before.

  Lieutenant Kato’s stun froze the demon in his track. Right then, from Shinshioka’s high wall, something cut through the sky in a long straight line toward them, blazing white like a comet in the dark. The air rang with a sharp scraping sound, like a thousand swords being drawn all at once. Lieutenant Kato threw himself aside, making way for the stream of light that plunged into the middle of the demon’s exposed chest.

  Seiki watched in awe as that single projectile brought the demon’s health down to a tenth.

  The attack, however, broke the stun effect, and the demon let out an inhuman roar. “Kato!” he bellowed. “You will pay for this!”

  The young lieutenant took a step back, eyes wide, and Seiki figured that the man had been expecting the projectile to finish the demon. From his expression, Seiki also figured that there was no further plan after this.

  The demon struck again with his spear, lashing at the ground, and dust exploded all around the impact. Lieutenant Kato managed to dodge aside, but many of the third unit soldiers were caught in it. Two dropped to the dirt and went still.

  “You will all die here!” Kagenoyari swung out his weapon again, forcing everyone out of range, before raising his right-arm spear high in the air. “You think you’re the only ones who can harness these ancient powers?”

  Black sparks crackled around the spear’s black tip, and Lieutenant Kato—who obviously recognized what it was—let out a frantic cry. “Get out!” he shouted to his troops.

  It was too late.

  The demon plunged the spear into the earth, and something invisible burst out around it. Seiki had no time to brace himself as the mysterious wave washed over him. His mind blanked out for a split second, and a layer of his health evaporated. Behind him, he could hear cries going up among the Shinshioka’s soldiers as they were similarly affected.