Chapter Fifty: Who Claims That No Man Is An Island?
March 17, 2010
Silver City, NM
“Fire on the left side.”
“Got it!”
“What’s the CD on Earth Wall?”
“12 more seconds.”
“Heal!”
“On it!”
“TSUKI! Losing aggro on that whowie.”
“There are too many salamanders!”
“DEV! Can you draw off some heat from TSUKI?”
“One sec. Yup, all taken care of.”
“TRAV! You have to get the whowie down to 25%. Then I can hit it with the Big Gun.”
“20 seconds!”
“L’ROY! Need a CD Buff for TRAV.”
“On it.”
“Alright. When the whowie mode shifts, everyone back off.”
“NOW! Big Gun incoming.”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“PANDARA Fire for effect!”
The sky lit up as a giant lightning bolt fell from the sky.
The party had pulled back so that the splash damage didn’t affect them, but the large, six-legged lizard was hit directly on the head.
Not only did it fry the giant minivan-sized wave boss, but it also managed to wipe out almost half of the surviving fire lizards that had been making the raid a nightmare.
“Now! Clean ’em up as fast as you can!”
“Go!”
Less than five minutes later, the field was clear. The clock that had been counting down in the corner of their screen stopped at 41:33.
“Forty-one minutes? That’s crazy!” Ryan exclaimed.
Everyone was smiling, except for Jess, who slumped down on the folding chair beside the truck.
The party would have none of that as they ran over to congratulate her.
“That was amazing. Your field control was spot on!”
“Great job, Jess!”
“What level is your Lightning storm now? That was epic!”
Marc caught the eye of the exhausted woman and flashed her a thumbs-up.
With this victory, the team had completed the sixth and final preliminary elimination round. According to the online leaderboard, they should be well within the top 1,000 teams globally, and hopefully close to the magic cutoff line.
They needed to make it by the 21st of the month to be considered for the final elimination. The details for that contest had finally been posted, and it was sure to be a tough grind.
From the first of April to the last day of the month, teams would be competing for points. At the end of the month, only the top one hundred teams would be invited to Salt Lake City, where the final championship would be held. The winning team of that championship would, of course, take home the five million dollar prize.
This time, the point battle was already looking to be a cutthroat, battle royale to be in the top.
While defeating any spawned beast earned you points, the clear advantage would go to those teams that took on raid bosses. The point rewards were much higher. It was simply impossible to get enough points to be competitive without taking on raids, even if your entire team farmed high-level spawns 24 hours a day.
The problem with raids was that there were simply not enough of them.
In a six-hour respawn cycle, only one raid would appear per five square mile zone in highly populated areas, while sparsely populated zones would only see one raid every twenty-five square miles.
Sticking to cities might seem to be a good strategy, but of course, that meant more competition. It would be much easier to find unclaimed raids away from the major cities, but that would mean a punishing amount of travel.
It was becoming clear what those hotel and airline vouchers were for. Indeed, everything the betas had received during the launch event had turned out to be almost a cheat advantage.
Still, in this final run, the fight to be in the top 100 teams was looking to be brutal.
All would have been lost for team Rocinante if it hadn’t been for Jess.
She had managed to corral several sponsors, and if the party managed to make the top 1,000, the support was set to be pushed into overdrive.
Hotel rooms, vehicles, as well as a support team, although that team would be tasked with filming, editing and posting content related to their push to make the top 100. They would be able to stay on the road for the entire month, moving constantly to lock in as many raids as possible.
The raid mechanism was simple. At a random time, in a random place, a raid would appear in each zone on the online map. The first team to reach that point on the map would “reserve” that raid, giving them first dibs on defeating it. Should that team fail to beat the raid within a one-hour window, they would be locked out, and any other team could approach and reserve a chance to take on the raid.
Any interference with a party attempting a raid would be logged and could result in a permanent ban, though with the high stakes involved, it could be assumed that unsupported teams would be at a severe disadvantage in the contest.
Jess pulled out her laptop from the back of Marc’s truck and launched the leaderboard website.
Everyone waited as she searched the list, plugging in their party ID.
Jess read the screen, then let out a long, exhausted sigh and closed her eyes.
During this last preliminary round, each team was given one chance to challenge six different raids, each progressively more difficult than the last. The combined times for all six raids were then added to give the final team score. The combined total for team Rocinante was 198 minutes and 41 seconds.
Even if they made the top 1,000 teams today, there were still five days left in the preliminaries. If their time wasn’t high enough, they could still get bumped before the last day.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t we make it? What’s the time?” Ryan yelped.
The others crowded in as the this score would be their one and only shot to advance.
Jess opened her eyes slowly, then checked the screen again.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Seventy-six.”
“Huh?” Leeroy asked. “Seventy-six, what?”
“Seventy-sixth. We are ranked seventy-six… in the world.”
There was nothing but the sound of wind blowing down from the hills.
Then there was screaming and shouting. Dancing and hugging.
“We did it!”
“Holy shit!”
“We made it!”
Ryan grabbed Marc by both shoulders, staring him in the face.
“We did it, right? We have to be in with that score. We’re safe, right?” He screamed.
Marc took a deep breath. He was proud of what they had accomplished in the past few months.
They had reached the maximum level in just five weeks, then spent the next two months refining and polishing the team until they worked together seamlessly. He had been optimistic at the beginning of the preliminaries, but this score…
“Yeah, I mean, it’s still not guaranteed, but…”
“But there’s no way we could drop nine hundred places, right?”
“Yeah. I think we are in pretty good shape.”
“If this were the last elimination… we would qualified for the finals…” Selena whispered, almost as if she were praying.
“Ugh! Marc! How do you do it? I almost died. I can’t keep up with everything. Why did you make me do that?”
Marc looked at Jess, still slumped in the chair with her laptop.
“What are you talking about? You did an amazing job. This was your final test. All in favor of making Jess the raid sub-leader?”
They all shouted their approval.
“Nooo. Don’t want it. Too hard…”
As a party, they had been working on various configurations to ensure that they could handle the different situations they would encounter. That meant multiple roles and backups for everything.
Marc typically lead the raids. In the eyes of the rest of the team, his ability to manage and adapt to different situations was almost prophetic. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the mobs, their strengths, and weaknesses, patterns of attack, and even strange idiosyncratic behaviors, like which sides they favored or colors they disliked.
But Marc knew that no party could rely on a single person for guidance. Without a sub-leader, a battle could fall into chaos within seconds if he was disabled or distracted.
Jess was the natural choice for sub-leader. She was a quick thinker, and had a solid understanding of the abilities of the team, as well as a vast amount of accumulated knowledge of games in general. This raid had proven that she could lead the team to a strong victory even with Marc only playing his role as a DPS.
The only issue seemed to be her stamina. With more than ten years on Marc, who was previously the oldest party member, Jess wasn’t looking to lead the team on a regular basis.
“Come on guys, let’s go collect up the cameras and gear and head back. I’ll call Cyrus, and let’s have a pre-celebration party.”
“Woohoo!”
“Pre-celebration?” Ryan looked at Marc with a puzzled expression.
“Never celebrate until the battle is over. This will just be a we-finished-the-last-preliminary-raid congratulatory dinner.”
“Gee Marc, you really know how to bring the fun level down to earth.”
“Shut up. And be careful with the cameras. If you delete any more footage, I won’t stop Jess from suffocating you in your sleep next time.”
“What do you mean next-“
“Go!”
Marc sat on the ground next to Jess.
“You did really well. That time was unbelievable. I heard that most teams took over an hour on the sixth raid.”
“Marc, I really don’t know how you keep up with it all. Managing all the cool-down times just beat the crap out of me.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“Anyway, rest up. We’ll take care of the clean up.”
“Don’t fo-“
“I’ll make sure we don’t leave anything behind. This time.”
“Things will be much easier once we have a support team.”
“You think you can pull that off?”
“Who do you think you are talking to, young padawan?”
“That’s a lot of money,” Marc cautioned.
“Nothing compared to what we have already pulled in. Once we get into the final eliminations, interest is gonna skyrocket. And with that, so will the sponsorship. With these numbers alone, I should be able to get iron-clad contracts in place before the end of the night.”
Marc was surprised by that boast.
“Really?”
“Sure. After all, we are already guaranteed VIP guest access to the finals. If we actually manage to get seated for the finals…”
“What?” Marc asked cautiously.
“If it looks like we are actually going to compete in the finals, we are going to need a real agent. A pro. Win or lose, I bet we can come out of this pretty well off. As in Set. For. Life.”
Marc was very happy to hear that. He thought about the other members of the party. They could all certainly use the stability that the money would give them.
He didn’t know about the whole agent thing. He made a mental note to talk to Sheila about that later. He wanted to make sure everyone was well protected no matter what happened in the future.
Once all the gear was packed up, and Jess had a chance to check everything, including the video footage they had taken of the final raid, they hit the road back to Pinos Altos.
This would be the last raid where they could actually pick their spawn location, and it would be harder now that they couldn’t rely on safe, clear, easy-to-move around vacant parking lots. He could imagine the chaos that would happen when the raid spawns started appearing in crowded cities.
Jess rode with him in the pickup, while Selina and Leeroy piled into Ryan’s sedan. Everyone was looking forward to a friendly and relaxing dinner at the Lobo.
----------------------------------------
True to her word, Jess had pulled off an amazing feat.
Two days after the final ranking for the preliminaries was posted, the support crew arrived in Pinos Altos.
There was another RV, This one even larger than Jess’s monster. There was also a full-sized van packed with cameras, equipment, and a portable video editing station that could probably do the work of an entire TV studio and beam the footage to the moon.
Chad had returned. The cameraman from Salt Lake City picked up the contract to shadow them for the next month, and he would drive the van and manage the cameras and equipment, as well as work for Jess in producing the content that would be posted online. They also had a full editing team in Phoenix that would process all the raw footage and produce content for the sponsors.
The second RV was an actual tour bus. The kind that transports sports teams around, but this one was particularly luxurious. There were bunks for everyone, as well as a living room and a kitchen and enough space to store extra gear to support them on the road. They even had police-style yellow tape barricades they could use to rope off areas when they were doing raids.
Jess had negotiated stipends for them all. Five thousand dollars each, just for the month of April. In exchange, they agreed to give up the rights to all footage of them, pending their approval.
This was a clause that Sheila had helped them implement. This gave them a veto of any footage of themselves that they did not like, provided it did not exceed ten percent of the total raw footage. Each day, they would need to skim through the raw footage before it was shipped off to the editing studio if they wanted to exercise that claim, however.
Everyone was excited about the arrangement.
Ryan and Leeroy had already quit their jobs and were focused on the game full-time. Selena was able to simply arrange for a leave of absence. She was such a valued employee at the hotel that they said she could come back anytime she wanted to pick up a shift.
As for Marc, it was a bit more complicated.
Some of his regular clients were understandably upset. There was no replacement for the services he offered, and his absence would be a difficult pill to swallow.
Still, he had never created long term contracts with any of them, preferring to work as an unsecured contractor, so there was little they could do.
In the end, they wished him luck on the contest, and accepted whatever advice and arrangements he could make before leaving to fight virtual monsters.
Marc hoped to be back, living a normal life again in a few months in the worst case, so he promised to be back as soon as possible.
Both Marc and Ryan would drive along with the other vehicles, making it a true caravan. Not only was Marc going to bring his truck, but he had built a ramp so that the motorcycle could be loaded into the bed of the truck.
This would give them considerable flexibility. Should they need to race to a raid appearance, Marc could even ride ahead in the motorcycle to secure the reservation, and wait for the rest of the team to catch up in the slower vehicles.
He made sure to give both the truck and the bike a thorough maintenance check and had built a few options onto the truck to accommodate the long time on the road.
One thing he had done that he kept from the rest of the party was to install a large metal locker welded onto the bed of the truck right below the read window.
It was double padlocked and contained not only his bow, rifle, and ammunition but a few of his personal creations that he had taken from his secret workshop in the cave in the hills. He also built a secret compartment in the front cab that held the pieces to his glaive underneath the driver’s seat.
He wasn’t sure what they might encounter out in the desert, while they hunted for raids, but he was going to make sure he was as prepared as possible for whatever could occur.
The last modification he made, was not exactly his idea.
Jess had insisted that Torren “tested off the scale,” whatever that meant. There wasn’t even a request or a vote. Before Marc could even contemplate if it were a good idea or not, the dog had been added to the team roster by universal acceptance from the rest of the party.
Marc put a bed in the space behind the seats so that Torren could sleep in the truck while they drove, but apparently, he was given full permission to stay in either of the RVs whenever he wanted too.
In a remarkably short time, the party had been prepped and supplied for the one-month race. They had all agreed to stay away from the high-density areas as much as possible to avoid conflicts and competition for raids, but that meant lots of driving.
Luckily, they had at least one professional long-haul driver. The bus was piloted by a real cowboy. His name was actually Jon Deere. Just like the tractor company, just without the “H” in Jon. That’s how he introduced himself as well. He was an older gentleman, well over 50, though no one dared to ask his exact age. With his grey goatee beard and handlebar mustache, he was the spitting image of a Wild West movie cowboy, and he had the southwest drawl to match.
Jon had been driving tour buses for longer than Selina had been alive, something else he mentioned frequently. Still, it was comforting to have at least one seasoned driver along, especially since he was the one driving the giant RV.
“What are we going to call her?” Ryan wanted to know.
“Not this again? All those in favor of not letting Ryan name things?”
Hands shot up as they sat at the large table inside the living room on the bus.
“You guys suck.”
“What’s wrong with just calling it the bus?” Marc said, oddly emotional as he made the suggestion.
“All those in favor of banning Marc from naming things.”
More hands.
After a surprising number of ballots, the name was finally decided, and the next morning, the four-vehicle caravan hit the road.
Marc’s truck took point, while Ryan took up the rear in his sedan. Behind Marc was Jess in her RV, while “The Beast” filled out the middle of the formation as they started their journey.