The two of them came into the command post. As they walked in, Zim looked at Sevs. "Report."

"One left injured. Carl and Bexy should take them, sir."

Zim relaxed a little. "Good job, soldier."

Zim nodded and turned back to a few of the other soldiers. Then, he reported to his superior. "All but two of my squad reported. There were two breaches, but it seems likely they were contained. We will know shortly if not."

"Very good, sergeant. Get your squad and prepare to make some rounds."

Zim called recruits to fall in. 12 of them had respawned. And it seemed Bexy and Carl would either join them extremely shortly or they wouldn't. "All right, we're off to go around for a view. The first stop is Bexy and Carl, assuming they survived and stayed in position. I sure hope they didn't go wandering off. Jason, Soshal, Robert, you report to Sevs. Watch the rear. The rest of you are under me."

Sevs was surprised. He hadn't expected to get a command even as simple as it was. He gathered Jason and Robert and set them up in a formation, allowing them to watch each other's backs and continually have eyes behind them. It was one he'd used many times in his adventuring days. It only requires a slight adjustment to use rifles instead of bows and swords. It involved quick rotations and ensuring someone was always looking backward every couple of seconds. They moved out. Carefully going around each corner, swinging wide and low with multiple people's rifles at the ready. Every once in a while, they might meet resistance.

However, it was pretty light. Remnants of a boarding party that had managed to slip past the squad were not cut out to take fire from a fully armed patrol. They were meant to corner the other teams and let more in. Once, they did run into an almost full 20 who had boarded unopposed that had just finished tearing apart a fire team. But they were unprepared and had no cover as they finished off their short lived victory. Zim set it up so that eight people swung at the hallway turn at once and absolutely filled the hallway with fire. The Tarlaki could not get off any shots before they were all cut down as the other five joined in firing on them.

This continued until they reached the spot where two landing pods had docked really close together. Carl and Bexy both sat back to back. Both sustained wounds that seemed to be quite painful, but they managed to keep watch on each end of the hallway. When they saw the squad, they sagged in relief. Then, lowering the rifles, they slipped off each other's backs and lay down gasping on the ground.

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"Good to see you, sarge sir," Bexy slurred.

Zim nodded, "good job, recruit." And quickly dismissed them as he set up the squad in positions to hold. After he had done so, his tone changed a lot. Zim knelt down next to them and checked over their bodies.

"Nothing a respawn couldn't fix. But with a little treatment it will also be fine in a few hours. So what would you prefer?"

"Treatment," Bexy replied. "I hate having to respawn."

Carl opted for respawning, and Zim then managed to do it quickly and situated himself such that no one saw how. Perhaps it was a mentor perk? But either way, his body disappeared along with his armor and weapons.

The Tarlaki had also disappeared, so that's how Sevs figured they did respawn. This explained why the humans had such trouble wiping them out.

The player advantage of the game was that the humans would respawn endlessly. This means that the monsters either had to breed fast to keep up, be nigh impossible to defeat or respawn as well. The first two were possible to deal with permanently. Sevs thought that when players managed it too thoroughly, the system would retire that game world. But the other was hard. The humans had to take over their spawn points generally. And if their spawn works the same way as ours, we have to destroy their ships and send them scattering across the world. Maybe old age would kill them, but he doubted it.

So really, this was never-ending violence. But it was almost bloodless, actually. There was likely a very low rate of permanent deaths. For a human, it would take the ship being destroyed, then spawning somewhere random and unable to make their way back. If one in five never made their way back, Sevs could assume that there were a lot of players wandering around somewhere. Many people have chosen to just give up, or maybe there are other centers of humanity, and this was not the only one. All those were possibilities. For the space elves, though, there was no choice to not respawn. Well he supposed that an AI maybe could choose suicide, but that seems unlikely. They also probably didn't get the same rate of influx of new players. Or monsters. He wasn't sure about their birth rate, but it would probably relate to the rate of players humans would get.

It was a brutal ecosystem here. One that constantly required players to fight to even hold their place, let alone for advancement. It really would push these warriors to their limits. However, how many would get pushed past and break? Just as Lieutenant Dan said, this was not for everyone. That was when Sevs found himself relishing the challenge. It'd been a long time since he had encountered such an unwinnable situation. This time he had friends and allies he could trust. It had been so long since he had had that.

Yes, this is the place, Sevs thought to himself. If he could find himself here, maybe the machine could also find him.

End of vol 1