My name is Raymond, though people call me Ray. I’m a 19-year-old college student who lives on campus. Although it’s currently spring break, I don’t have anywhere to live other than my dorm right now. My roommate left to visit his family, and I’ve been here by myself, playing Infinite Skies every moment I get to. It’s nice not having to worry about my roommate barging in and ruining my concentration.
Infinite Skies is a 3D action RPG that has taken the world by storm ever since its release back in November of last year. And if you played the game until you got an ending, you wouldn’t understand why everyone loves it. Sure, the battle system is fun and engaging, and the story isn’t half bad, but it feels like any other action RPG out there. Keep playing though, and you’ll realize that the reason why the world is in love with this game is because Infinite Skies is truly infinite.
Ok, it isn’t actually infinite, but it feels like it! There are over five hundred quests, thousands of NPCs, and a map size over a hundred thousand miles squared. Not to mention the dozens of endings, hundreds of weapons, and near infinite number of monsters. To see everything the game has to offer, you would probably have to put in at least six hundred hours.
For me, though, I was drawn to Infinite Skies’ tough bosses. Most mid-game bosses, for example, take at least three hours of attempts to beat for the average player. And those are considered the easier fights! The Elder Dragon, a hidden super boss worthy of the name super, has only ever been beaten by a hundred people since the game’s launch. Completing this game is a test of skill, endurance, and luck, where being a pixel imprecise can mean the difference between life and death.
I picked this game up at launch and completed most of the easy stuff by the end of winter break. I’m not your average player, so bosses that would take other players hours I could beat in minutes. When the spring semester started, I kept playing whenever I was not in class. I completed most quests, explored the entire map, and defeated most of the super bosses before January ended. I was on track to fully complete the game by the end of February, yet here I am, mid-March, still stuck on a super boss.
The super boss before me wasn’t a huge dragon or a celestial being, but a normal-looking girl. She actually has a fair amount of lore that you uncover throughout the story, but she was always presented as someone with average strength in a world where ‘average’ is considered weak. Yet, if you try to fight her, you’ll face the toughest opponent in the entire game.
I can’t even call her a super boss because that would imply that she was beatable. No, she was designed to be impossible to beat. Her arena is the entire map, her technique leaves her without a weakness, and her abilities are broken. She improves every time you fight her, exploiting your weaknesses without ever revealing her hand. If you told me she could predict my move before I pressed any buttons, I would believe you. She is so tough that no one has beaten her, despite beating her being the most coveted achievement in the game. After all, if you beat her, you would be the first one to complete Infinite Skies, as she was the last obstacle between you and the final ending. Even with a week dedicated to trying to beat her, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even come close.
Ironically, in a game about stats, her stats are her biggest weakness. Her stats rivaled a mid-level player, in a world where super bosses have stats at least ten times greater than the player’s maximum stats. Players ran the numbers, and a level 99 character with the best gear could defeat her in exactly three hits. However, the way she fought was so skillful, it left the player unable to hit her. And if you give her a single opportunity to attack, she will end you before you could even blink using the most broken ability in the entire game.
A handful of players have managed to hit her once before being obliviated, while a single player hit her twice. And these aren’t your average players; I’m talking about high level players who played the game perfectly. However, I knew that perfect play wasn’t enough to beat this boss. What you needed was genius play, and currently I was smarter than Einstein. I had somehow hit her two times, a feat only one other player has managed, and was only one hit away from claiming the most prestigious achievement for myself.
The super boss began shooting numerous beams of light. Normally you could only summon one beam at a time, but her ability allowed her to summon as many as she wanted. There was no summoning time, either, meaning she could immediately prepare another attack. In this case, she began summoning meteors from the sky.
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I dodged the countless beams of light that shot towards me, then ran towards her as meteors rained down around me. She ran towards me with a dagger in hand, but I knew this was a trick and rolled towards her instead of retreating. Frames later, a laser shot down at my former position. I missed getting hit by pixels.
“Nice try!” I yelled as I reacted to her feint.
It had been thirty minutes since I had last hit her. When she realized one more hit would kill her, she began playing it safer. I couldn’t attack her recklessly, yet she refused to attack me. We both kept fighting, waiting for one of us to get exhausted and make a mistake. However, with that last attack, she got too close to me. She threw a teleportation stone to escape me. When it landed, she would teleport to wherever it landed. However, I couldn’t see where she threw it, so I was clueless to where she would end up.
I got out my teleportation stone. Even though I couldn’t see where she threw her stone, I knew that she wanted to go to the nearby watchtower. It was the tallest place near us and taking the high ground would give her a massive advantage. But she knew that I knew this. So, thinking that I will teleport to the high ground to corner her, she’ll probably teleport into the forest behind me in order to buy more time.
…
No. That isn’t what she’s going to do. She isn’t passive like that. She will always try to go to the place that will give her the biggest advantage. Yet, there was no place more advantageous than the watchtower. Unless…
Without even thinking, I throw a stone in a perfect arc, landing on top of the largest meteor falling towards me. If I was a millisecond later, or a degree imprecise, I would have missed, losing the advantage I had just built up. The moment I landed on the meteor, I attacked before I could even acknowledge my surroundings. I didn’t know if she was even programmed to teleport to a meteor if she could. Then again, I didn’t know if I could physically land on the meteor before I teleported. But for some reason, my body told me this was the right thing to do.
Amazingly, she was there. She had reacted to me instantly and had begun lunging away from my sword. It was so close! Pixels would decide whether I would win this or not. Would I hit her? Would she dodge?
Please!
…
Darkness.
No, I literally mean darkness. The entire world became black. The power must have turned off.
…
DAMN IT!
I spent day and night on this boss! I only took breaks to eat and sleep, every other moment was spend fighting her! And on this perfect run, the run to end all runs, life does this to me?!
I fell to the ground, defeated. I have spent so much time trying to beat this one boss. I was about to finally claim victory, and this is what I get?!
I sighed for what felt like forever. I mean, I guess it’s possible that I missed her. Maybe it was better to not see my failure. Regardless, I’m done for today. I’m just going to lay down on the floor and sleep, wallowing in my failure.
“Raise your head, my child,” a heavenly voice softly spoke to me.
As I resigned myself to my wallowing, I heard a soft voice. It was a voice I knew very well.
I looked up to see a beautiful, tall lady with long blue hair. She wore a white robe, and carried a large golden staff. She is the Saintess, and she is the one who summoned the player to the world of Infinite Skies.
“To think this game would haunt my dreams,” I said as I laid on the floor. “Go away, I want to wallow.”
“Wallowing?” the Saintess asked, perplexed. “Oh, I see. You do not understand what is going on, do you? I am the Saintess, and I have summoned you to this world in order to save-”
“Ah, how nostalgic,” I said, reminiscing on my first playthrough. I finally opened my eyes and saw that the room around me was exactly like the church the player gets summoned to in the game. A grand chapel larger and more ornamented than Notre Dame. “To think I can recreate the game so well in my dreams. Even the creepy looking statues are the same as-”
Before I could even react, the Saintess had bludgeoned me in the side of head with her staff. I saw white for a second as I fell to the ground hard.
I couldn’t do anything but groan as I grabbed my head. Isn’t this a dream? Why does this hurt so much?
“Even if you are a Hero, I will not have you squander the name of the old Heroes,” the Saintess scowled. “I will forgive you this once, but the next time you insult the name of the Heroes, this won’t end with a light injury.”
After taking a moment, I removed my hand to see that it was bleeding. And it was bleeding a lot. I felt the warm blood flowing down my head and onto the floor. If I didn’t get to a hospital soon, would this kill me?
“Heala,” the Saintess whispered.
With that one word, the pain I had been feeling suddenly dissapeared. I grabbed my head with my non-bloodied hand, and didn’t feel any blood flowing from the wound. Did she just use a low-grade healing spell on me?
“That’s the only free heal you’ll get from me,” the Saintess said. “Go clean yourself up. I still have to summon a few more of you, but once I do we will be heading to the castle.”
“Wait, hold on!” I exclaimed. “What’s going on?”
“Did you not hear me?” the Saintess asked. “I have summoned you to our world. The others before you called it ‘being Isekai’d’.”
And that is how my journey started. With a lady I never met before kidnapping me and beating me with a stick.