She was five feet tall and of slight build, but she hefted the eight-foot long broadsword over her shoulders like it were an extension of her own self. Her short, raven black hair fell neatly on either side of her face, and her dark-brown eyes glistened in the pale light of the stars. Her black-leather armor, the Raiment of the Hero, was some of the highest-level equipment one could find in Ark World. The broadsword, known as the Dark Star—twin sister of Achlesial’s Heaven Star—was tied for the highest level sword in the game. Her talents were at their maximum level, and all skills and abilities could be used to the game’s limit. Armed with administrator commands and the knowledge to wield them, she was a perfect match for Achlesial.

“This isn’t a battle I can win,” Amy told the demon emperor, tears pricked in her eyes. “Even if I’m Achlesial’s equal, I can’t beat him.”

“Are you scripted to fail?” the demon emperor asked.

Amy giggled, a little. It had felt like she’d just spent her last smile on her spunky introduction, but the emperor’s question was so dumb she snickered to herself. “No,” she answered quietly, “it’s because of his Ego. Administrator commands have the same level of authority, so if two commands are executed that contradict each other, the Director must decide which command has priority. Between the arkitects, our commands are a winner-take-all game, where those who believe the most are the ones approved by the Director. In Ark World, madness is power… and there’s no one more insane than my brother.”

“If you can’t defeat him, why did you save my life?”

Amy was surprised to feel another smile perk up on her face. “It should be wrong, isn’t it? The heroine saving the villain? But it was your voice encouraged me.” She swung her sword off her shoulder and aimed the blade at Achlesial, the near-imperceptible speck of a god that gathered mana at the distant light surge. “This world and its NPCs are my precious friends, and that perverse god is the monster that betrayed the human race. So, consider us on the same side.”

Globes of light, like small stars, glittered in the void around the light surge. If Achlesial intended to win with admin commands, this would be over already, she thought. It’s just like him to try and make this fair, but that conceit gives me a chance.

“Hey, Demon Emperor,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I’m used to doing things in a weird way, so do you mind helping me get in the mood?”

“If we’re allies, then my powers are yours.”

Amy made another unwitting smile. “If say it with that deep, handsome voice of yours,” she muttered to herself, “I know I won’t hold back.”

“Excuse me?”

The heroine lifted her sword back onto her shoulder and turned half back to the kneeling demon emperor. She set her left foot forward, placed her left hand on her hip, and puffed up her chest. She flashed the best smile she could muster. “Give me a quest,” she said. “Any wish you have, I’ll do my best to make it come true.”

The demon emperor watched her with his fluttering orange eyes, his serpent diamonds, narrowing on her from the shadow of his plate helmet. He took a minute and her leg started to ache as she held her heroic pose, but the time he took meant he was considering it carefully.

“I want you to avenge—no, I want you to save—save our world.”

Her eyes rounded and her brimming smile diminished. She raised her hand to her heart and clutched the shadow-wrapped leather of her doublet.

“That is my desire,” the emperor said again, his diamond eyes pleading. “Please, save this world.”

She closed her eyes and pressed away tears that streamed down her cheeks. “Quest accepted,” she said softly and disappeared with a cloud of startled dust.

In the distance, Achlesial had prepared himself. His body was enhanced by every applicable skill his collective stats raised to their maximum levels. He raised his sword and flapped his six wings, but when he focused his vision on the speck of rock that was the demon emperor, Amy was already gone.

She appeared behind Achlesial.

If it’s him…. If he’s the one that’s asking! She gripped her sword with both hands and swung for Achlesial’s neck. Then I won’t fail again!

The god vanished and reappeared far above. They had Agility stats so high that their movements were instantaneous to those with low Perception stats. With the telekinesis of her Dark Hand skill, Amy rotated to face Achlesial, and to them it would appear as if they were on the same plane as before, but the light surge was horizontal.

“You can still smile?” the god asked.

She smirked; a drip of cold sweat gathered at her brow. “Did you think my Ego would be damaged by you?”

“I broke your will for your own safety,” Achlesial said and, in the same breath, braced his sword with both hands. “If you stayed suspended, I could have left you alive.”

Her smirk flinched. “What life would I have in infinite suspension?” she asked. Circles of dark light began appearing around her.

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“You would have one,” he said. “That’s more than the rest of humanity.”

She wanted to scream at him, to launch a bitter assault with all the powers at her command. It was just like back then, during their first round, when he goaded her with painful memories and weakened her Ego. I won’t let the same trick work twice, she thought, and whispered words so quiet they couldn’t be heard. “Metamagic: Intensify Spell.”

“Obliteration Chorus.” Amy pointed her sword at Achlesial. “Level 10.”

It was a spell based on the Demon Emperor’s signature spell where a beam of dark energy was fired from an arcane circle. However, instead of one circle, there were ten, and ten more for every level. The effect of Metamagic: Intensify Spell doubled all of its effects, but doubled the spell difficulty. Two-hundred beams of dark energy coursed through the void, so numerous that for a moment they blacked out the twinkling stars.

Achlesial dodged swiftly, appeared to dance between the beams as they curved toward him. Dark magic was tricky to aim, it was much slower than other magic of equal level, but its damage was unparalleled, and the power of a spell with an effective level of 20 couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t something even a god could ‘tank’ with the depth of his health pool. Achlesial dodged and ended up in the only gap he had.

Dark light flashed from the void and Amy appeared ahead of him. She crossed the vastness of space in the blink of an eye, her Dark Star sword clutched close to her chest. The smiling missile hit Achlesial dead on, struck the tip of her sword against the flat of the Heaven Star. It was the first in a combo of strikes, a Rank 10 Rampage, where she twisted her sword handle, swung it wide, and turned that momentum into four deadly slashes.

The power of their exchange, where the god Achlesial was pushed to the defensive, shook the orbiting ruins. Super-heated particles rebounded off the Heaven Star, glittered like glass beads, scattered in wide arcs at extreme velocity; it was star dust in the making. Amy could tell Achlesial was unsatisfied, he could hide his face behind his helmet, but not his bruised Ego. For the God of Light to be soundly suppressed by the Goddess of Darkness: It made him want to throw a fit. The similarity of the duel to her old battles with the Demon Emperor only made Amy smile more.

I can win! Her heart raced, wild-eyed grin, Dark Star thrust forth in an impaling lunge. I can win!

Achlesial’s golden-bright eyes boiled in his helm. He lashed out with a series of strikes, but Amy weaved through them like the honed duelist she’d become. A thousand years of playing this game—and what have you done, Achlesial? Sit on your throne and eat grapes?! With a decisive thrust she penetrated his guard and knocked away his helm.

“That face really fits you,” Amy said as she retreated. The god that rubbed blood from his swollen lip and glared with the fluttering flames of small suns, looked more like a pale vampire than a human. His cheekbones were high and his cheeks deep pits. His short hair was golden blonde, but Amy’s keen sight could see the gray at the roots.

“I should have pulled the plug from your stasis pod,” he said, eyes of golden fire narrowed in hateful focus. “You were much more tolerable when you were a gloomy shut-in.”

Amy smiled. “Are you done Role-Playing?” she asked. “If you don’t play the part, you’ll lose your Ego.”

“I am your brother!” he shouted and lunged for her, sword out-swung. “And a god!”

“Then, it’s my win!”

One last crescent of star dust and the Heaven Star flung from Achlesial’s hand. Amy turned her sword, held it with both hands, and struck Achlesial through the chest, impaling him to the hilt. Amy grinned, but when she looked at his remaining HP, she saw he hadn’t lost a single point of health. Her eyes quivered as she stared through him.

“You were always better at the game than I was,” he said, “but I wanted to beat you on my own. At least… once.” He closed his eyes and the image she defeated disappeared.

Laughter resounded through the void around her. Her brother, the God of Light, appeared in the distance. Beside him appeared the others: The Gods of the Pantheon.

“Arkitects!” Amy screamed; eyes wide. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

Light of all colors scattered out from the battlefield, where spells of the highest level, each and every one capable of leveling continents to dust, were cast freely. In the end, fate was inescapable. Amy was thrown through space—HP near depleted—until she slammed on the large doors of the ruined chamber entrance. The heroine tumbled down and landed behind the demon emperor, battered and soaked with blood. Her sword, the Dark Star, fell blade down through the concrete beside him.

Amy looked at him with her one good eye. “I’m sorry,” she said with a faint smile. “I couldn’t complete your quest.”

The twelve arkitects appeared in the space ahead of their ruined chamber section. They were spread out in a smooth curve, eccentrically dressed in what colors befit their Egos. Like Achlesial, they took dominion over a facet of nature, physics, or humanity. Amy’s brother levitated in the center; his hands were stiff at his side.

“We Gods of the Pantheon invoke the right of exile against the 13th goddess,” he said at a booming volume. “Administrator Command: Vote Kick Player.”

The demon emperor appeared to stand.

“Hold on,” Amy said weakly, “where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to finish your fight,” he said and pulled the Dark Star from the floor.

“I was a player, and I lost,” she said. “An NPC doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Then pretend I’m not one,” the emperor said. He looked at her with one glowing eye and leaned the broadsword’s blade on his shoulder plate. “If I were a player instead of an NPC, could I take your place?”

“I-I don’t understand,” she said.

He stepped his left foot forward, placed his left hand on his hip, and puffed out his armored chest. It was playful mimicry.

“Amy, could you give me a quest?”

“Channel Positive Energy!” Achlesial shouted and an area of light outshined the stars. Within it, the specters faded away, and the dark power of the demon emperor was undone. His shadows disappeared, his armor collapsed around him, and as his helm split open, Amy saw his face for the first time. He looked old and tired, but the color in his skin meant that he surely loved the sunlight.

Maybe it’s just mimicry, maybe it’s just the AI humoring me, but… the demon emperor is smiling. If he can smile… if he can still smile, then I—! Tears flowed down her face and she did her best to smile back, until the last second when his body turned to ash and her sword clattered down.

“Vote Kick Passed,” Achlesial said.

She glared up at the light. “Do you think I’ll just surrender?”

“Do not return, sister. Or I will kill you, and with your corpse end all humanity.”

“This world can change!” she shouted painfully, yelled even as it hurt to breathe. “If he can change his script, we were wrong.”

“He couldn’t change his script,” Achlesial said. “He still died.”

“But he defied you.”

The fire-eyes in his helmet flared.

“He defied an administrator’s command.” She took a deep breath, swelled her chest with the last of her effort. “If an NPC can have an Ego, what does that mean to you?!”

The world turned black, but for four words suspended in the dark.

[Player Kicked From Server]