Jake. 19th of January 2104.
Saturday had been two days away, which suited both of them perfectly. Jake and his followers spread their memes wildly, which spread ideas of the streamer’s truly chaotic nature and the nature of company interference. Various players who used characters from the Singer class explained the chaotic energy problem and the math that explained it. This was less helpful for rallying widespread support, but generally it was recognized that the Singer’s favored Jake.
The Lord of (e)Cycles was not idle. Two days of training streams were made and between matches of training duels the half-centaur’s player explained that the corporations were to blame between advertising segments. His supporters made memes of how he could ride over any defense that Jake made or crush him with a rain of fists alone. A routine of his punching through the defenses of a Great Corrupted Toad in a series of circular swung fists until the larger monster could be finished with hooves became a widely shared meme, even breaking into political discourse.
Between coordinating sessions, forming new memes and two podcast appearances (audio only), Jake trained his character’s skills relentlessly. They had agreed to a duel with only shields and swords. Jake did not want to risk getting wiped out by a barrage of opening arrows by his multi-armed opponent. He was a little sad that he could not just bring some trip wire or traps to even the speed front, but the risk of ranged attacks was too great. So he had settled with the first offer.
Neither of them was allowed to raise their direct level before the duel, but Jake was confident, even being a level behind. The main thing he needed was practice with another person and just blocking multiple attacks, so he had Travis get three [Rogue] friends come and throw daggers, chop at him with scimitars and try other sneaky things, while he just focused on moving and blocking. The conclusion of that training was to hope that three sets of arms were less efficient than three people each with one set of arms. Jake had to struggle a lot, just to cover himself from two of the [Rogues] even though they were both lower level than him. Travis had explained what he knew about stopping heavy cavalry charges and speculated about how similar that was likely to be to fighting the half-centaur.
The plan was ultimately simple. Jake would let his character take a whole bunch of hits on his shield, then he would step through an attack, count on his armor to take the hit, and make a stab right to the lower heart. That wouldn’t end the fight, but it would slow the legs down enough for him to angle behind and attack where he could only be kicked at, rather than be attacked with two front legs and six swords.
The duel was to be in the nearest city, a place formerly three days journey from where Jake was usually based, turned into a fifteen minute run with the new road system. Travis had paid for a significant stretch of it, trying to help another First Worlder get an iron mine into operation and lower the cost of arrows.
John, Travis and a dozen other First Worlders and some other Morgan ‘relatives’ joined Jake on the trek over to the site of the duel. John was not much into gaming right now, but he was willing to make an exception to watch a friend’s duel. He had offered to be a Jake’s Second, but he didn’t really understand that reference, other than it was something to do with historical duels. It was probably a nice gesture. Jake was sad Jade hadn’t come, but according to Michael she was visiting her grandmother. Michael said he would watch the livestream out-of-game, as he and Helen were presenting a joint cooking project at a competition of their own. Jake reluctantly had said that he would watch the replay of that, and he was not looking forward to that at all. Still it seemed like the right thing to do.
They arrived and found a bigger crowd than they had expected. Fortunately, the arena had been sung into existence and it expanded to be some eight or nine times bigger than Jake had ever seen it before. More characters were still pouring in and with the sound of trumpets, the arena grew even bigger, while Jake was watching. Sections of stone seemed to unfold, while chairs seemed to fall out of pockets of space, as harried looking arena workers rushed about mopping and cleaning. Player-Characters and non-player-characters alike swept into the seating and there were two more expansions before Jake stopped paying attention.
The [City Lord] approached both dueling parties. He requested that they take an oath to avoid inciting their followers against either parties faction regardless of outcome and when this was received he asked if they minded if other entertainments were put up for the watchers. Neither contestants minded and the [City Lord] worked through a number of official matters as the arena kept expanding.
Two Singers that had a bet over who could destroy more corrupted pigeons in a minute provided part of an unexpected undercard. This was followed by two non-player-character Patter specialists that could pat the air, until it turned into fiery shapes. They then spent three minutes throwing what basically amounted to fireballs and defending with multi-hand shaped plates. One eventually took a fireball in his midsection and then he collapsed. The other also had to be helped out of the arena.
Aadvik Patel then entered the far side of the arena. Per agreement neither of them were in armor, which Jake thought slightly favored him. He had less surface area over all, and his shield covered more of it than the tower shield the half-centaur had tied across his horse back. Jake drew his sword and slowly entered the arena. The [City Lord] shouted out the start and the half-centaur was coming forward, his blades spinning wildly. Jake figured he could try and brace his sword, but there were too many attacking blades for him to feel confident of a strike, so he relied on his shield.
There were seven distinct strikes on his shield, the first blade having enough time in the pass to make two strikes. Worse yet, the shield’s total durability to was lowered to less than a third of what it was.
How did that happen?
Jake noticed that the six swords were matched and glowing with a matching effect. The self-proclaimed lord of cycles began circling his blades, until they formed a magical effect called a Weapon Formation. Ordinarily, that would have required at least three people to use, but the half-centaur had made a way around that. Travis had mentioned them, but had thought they were too hard to use. They were the Fighter equivalent to the Singer’s choir and so required immense timing. Except if you could use all of the weapons on your own macro.
Six azure blades rotated rapidly as the half-centaur came forward at a trot. Jake smiled and began rapidly cycling his sword and shield. He had not expected them to take so much component damage, but for ten seconds he parried each of the descending blades, while angling to his opponent’s left side. Then he let the half-centaur get a few free shots at him, while he attacked for its rear in turn.
His oldest title upgraded as his strike successfully took a rear leg off the half-centaur. He had taken light slashes across the body and head, but no crippling damage.
His opponent half-hopped and half-staggered towards him, but Jake continued moving at the rear left side, keeping himself just out of range of retaliatory strikes, while delivering punishment.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The half-centaur then surged away, turned and prepared to attack from the front again. Jake braced his shield and then used the recently learned ability Shield Surge.
Shield Surge (Copper)
When successfully used to hit a creature automatically disrupts their roll in a formation and or charge attack. There is a percentage chance of a stun effect. There is a ten minute cooldown between uses.
His character was lifted almost half an inch off of the ground and then torn forward, shield forward, until it crashed into the half-centaur. The player-character was brought to a complete stop and the azure lights on his swords flickered out.
There was a paused beat as the streamer seemed to be wondering what he should do now and Jake exploited the stun by attacking to the left while angling. His titles activated and two arms were severed in a single stroke before the half-centaur could move out of range.
The half-centaur could no longer activate his Formation and he seemed unsure what to do. Jake waited, covering himself with his shield, in case his opponent threw a sword at him. He kind of expected that, but the half-centaur remained some feet away, still uncertain what had happened. Jake decided to press his attack and shield covering himself from a potential throw, he rushed forward. The half-centaur tried to drink from some designer drink, no doubt planning to restore at least some of his depleting hp, and tried to block with his spare arms. His macros were not prepared for this though and despite holding out three swords to block, Jake severed another arm, this time on the right side. He feinted a few more strikes that way, while the streamer tried to outmaneuver him. It was not working. A horse is faster than a person, but this goes away with the loss of a leg.
The half-centaur then began a cycling a attack with his three remaining swords. It was unbalanced and lacked the power of his formation assisted attacks earlier, which meant it did no appreciable damage to the shield, while his swords were dulling in real time. Jake was quite content to make this trade, while he kept angling himself to the half-centaur’s left hand side, occasionally snapping out a blow in return.
He took a few blows through the shield or past it, but eventually he found the correct position and cut off the last remaining left arm. Then he shoulder checked the staggering half-centaur and knocked him into the churned sand of the arena. The streamer was unable to get his character to stand up before his health bar was lowered to 0.
Jake received a level-up notification and then left by the way he had entered. Travis, John and other friends cheered him on and saw to his character’s injuries. They did not stay in the area, just in case there was bad feeling among the fans and climbed into a carriage Travis had hired, which was almost fast travel along the maze of Blessed Highways and Blessed Roads.
“What are we doing to celebrate?” John asked once they had gotten to the carriage.
“I am going to go make fun of him on Clicker and then be right back,” Jake said as he logged out, with his character safely in the vehicle.
“Kids these days, can’t even wait three minutes in a virtual carriage ride, want to use all their time on social media,” Travis said with a long-suffering sigh before adding, “Besides, if you have your phone, there’s no reason to log out.”
“He probably can’t type and listen to us at the same time,” John said before asking, “How do you think the streamer will handle this? This has got to hurt his brand.”
“He’s an adult, probably be sad for a little while and then pretend it never happened.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Private messages between “The Lord of (ee)Cycles” Clicker account and the Canned Heaven Incorporated representative on the 19th of January between 10:30 and 11:30 PM.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:31.
Have you seen what that little ***** has been posting?
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:31.
Yep. It is not great.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:32.
He’s making fun of your health restorative drink too.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:35.
Yep. It is not great.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:36.
Are you not taking this seriously? This kid has already cost me two thousand subscribers and your company like 2 percent on the market.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:36.
Yeah, but he’s a kid and we are a corporation. What are we going to do, send a hit squad after him? That is not going to help the situation.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:39.
Look at this! (Another meme of the half-centaur character being defeated by a single hit, with a brightly colored Canned Heaven drink in his hand.).
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:40.
BubbleCo just reposted that.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:40.
Oh no.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:41.
Why is the Jutland Embassy reposting this? What does this have to do with us?
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:42.
I just lost another three hundred subscribers. This is going to be a bad year.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:43.
My boss has just put out a call for damage control. This is insane. We just wanted a little product placement, not to become the center point in the Jutland political race!
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:44.
I have an idea. We discredit him.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:45
How? Claim he was cheating? Sword, Song and Board doesn’t like that. They would do a full audit and then not do anything.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:46.
Everybody knows that he is too young to play the game. The laws have changed. We get one of our journalist friends, maybe the dude who writes for BuzzCity?
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 10:49
No, that guy is currently in prison for perjury. Idk what about, but he is off the table. But I think we could do something with that. I have an ex-boyfriend who works for RPNN and he still owes me one.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 10:52.
You don’t have exes, you have operatives.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 11:00.
How goes operation RPNN?
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 11:20.
He’s going to do it, but I had to promise he could get him an interview with you tomorrow for an article.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 11:21.
**** ***** ****** and *****.
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 11:22.
Yeah. I need to explain to my overseer why declaring support for the Grisworld Independence movement is not a proportionate response to one of their interns making a meme characterizing one of our products as chemical waste.
Lord of (ee)Cycles 11:21.
Aren’t they literally terrorists?
Canned Heaven INC. Customer Service Account 5. 11:29.
Yep. And she didn’t listen to me and we now officially have promised them support.
Jake 21st of January.
Sunday had been busy and Jake had decided to just stay offline for most of the day. He had mostly received well-wishes, but towards midnight his account had been hit by a number of fans from the other side and they had not been especially kind. Taking a day to go to church, read a book and build a snowman had seemed like a good use of time.
Monday morning before school he had opened his account to see that what upgrades getting to level 18 would give him, but he was unable to connect. Eventually a message popped up that made him set down the controller in disgust and confusion.
You have been found to be illegally using this account. Please consult the following link for customer support.
Reason of suspension; account owner age entered incorrectly