We crossed the border back to Reignland – the core nation of Mu-Ur’s world system – and headed northwest.
Instead of heading straight northward to the gates of Sun City, our next check point was the western side of the city. We had to light up some pyramid-shaped granaries as a distraction. Burning some high quality grain will definitely trigger a reaction from Death Squads and other high level Caliphate forces, if there are any in the vicinity. If there's no reaction, we're good to go and proceed to the next check point.
The overall plan was to draw out as many Death Squads in the open as possible – not just to minimize civilian casualties, but to ensure that our other groups can infiltrate the city without triggering the strongest NPCs.
We let them hunt us. Because we can take the heat.
Be a Flame Tank, act like a Flame Tank.
Speaking of tanks, Flame Tank was quite uncomfortable to drive with one hand tied to a flagstaff. I mean, I could position the staff sideways to keep it out of the way, but I also kind of need both hands to fully push the steering rods, so I have to keep the staff awkwardly on the side.
This unexpected glitch handicap wasn’t taken into account in our original plan, but it’s fine outside the city because I don’t need to make much hard turns in the open desert. I’m just worried it’s going to get worse inside on the narrow city streets.
“My hands will get tired like this. Kim-chan, you need to help me drive this thing.”
“Why me?” (Kimono)
“Because Crys controls the fire and our spotter Rain might turn this into a road rage incident. Your base stats are the best for driving.”
“...Fine.” (Kimono)
Kimono knelt next to the driver’s seat.
“Two people hacking on the same keyboard.”
“What?” (Kimono)
“An ancient joke. You turn those levers on the left, and I turn these rods on the right. Let’s practice. The main levers on both sides manipulate the tracks separately, so you have to mirror what I do on steep turns.”
“Speedrun, just teach Kimono how to drive alone.” (Crys)
“Well, that’s… an option?”
Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees.
“Okay, Kim, take my place. I’ll backseat you. This Strangers vehicle is old and weird, so this is going sound a bit illogical. When you push those rods forward together, the tank keeps moving forward by itself. Those foot pedals control the speed and – no, not those two, the other two. Those other two pedals are for controlling the track speeds separately, the middle ones control both at the same time. There are no breaks as such, so if we want to slow down, use the separate pedals and pull back those middle levers–”
“Brother, this is infuriating. Change.” (Kimono)
“You're supposed to be the dexterous character, Kim.”
“Your constant drivel is what’s irritating! Change.” (Kimono)
In the end, I had to be the main driver. Kimono backseated by pulling levers under my command.
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Sun City had six city gates on land and a seventh gate for boats and ships on the navigable water channel.
Each of the six city gates were decorated with tall, red pillars resembling absurdly elongated Japanese torii and topped with a round, gold-plated stone representing the Sun. The north gate, northeast gate, northwest gate and south gate were considered the four main gates for caravans and merchants. West gate and east gate were mostly used by Caliphate soldiers.
The seventh gate was on the eastern side of the canal. It wasn’t a lock that controlled water level, it was just a watercraft check point with massive batwing doors and chain booms. On the overworld map, this deep artificial water channel created by Strangers was called Ob Canal. It started from the western dungeon mines and flowed leisurely through the sand desert and Sun City, straight as a ruler, all the way to the Watership City on the east coast of Mu. Players often compared it to the Corinth Canal in Greece, except there was a circular Carthage-esque port for trade ships right after the seventh gate, with long stairs and tunnels where rows of slaves moved cargo to the city above, and a few narrower side channels leading in the Sun Palace (mostly used as open sewers and trash dumps).
By the way, Sun City was never called “The City of the Golden Gates” in the official lore. This name was used only by a small subset of fans who were into finding esoteric meanings and allusions, basically equating Sun City to the mythical capital of Atlantis.
I checked my time card.
The first airship bombing runs should start soon.
Our revolutionary members and allied gangs (on horses and hijacked mining vehicles) should be moving like biker gangs and harassing local authorities from north to south – roadblock by roadblock, outpost by outpost – using the road network on the west side of Sharp Mountains. Their plan was to simply joyride openly through northern areas of Reignland and build aggro, then make a wide curve near Sun City, and ride north using the Palace Road to meet other allied groups, and then turn back as a bigger group to surprise the pursuers; turn the hunters into hunted.
Like ancient warriors on horseback, they would only touch their enemy before riding away, and then they would return with full force to finish the job.
Crys and I had created a route map of cooperating nobles that accommodated and provisioned our associates when they moved inside their territories, or at least looked away when the masked, heavily armed street rats blitzkrieg’d through sequestered towns and villages.
Moving fast and staying on schedule were paramount. We didn’t want to give Reignland any time to prepare for concentrated bait attacks.
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After casually torching the pyramid granaries (and most of the guard posts around them), we quickly turned the Flame Tank around and headed striaght for the tent villages in front of the massive south gate of Sun City.
“I can’t see that any Death Squads.” (Rain)
“Excellent. Our pre-game manipulation has pleased the Random Number Gods.”
The great yellow fireball on the sky was sautéing the desert as usual. During these zenith hours, the slave citizens of Sun City usually ate a meager meal and were allowed to take a short nap after full night of heavy work. The guards and soldiers took a break as well because surely no enemy was stupid enough to start an all-out attack during these hottest hours. The high temperatures of the open desert hindered attackers much more than the defenders who were able to chill in the shade of the massive city walls.
That’s where one of the marvelous advantages of the Flame Tank came to play: the cooling system kept the interior temperature of the tank on a pleasant level of around 25 degrees Celsius even when surrounded by raging fires. We didn’t need to worry about heat strokes or sunburns either, or even setting ourselves on fire by accident.
The Flame Tank was truly overpowered in more ways than one.
The midday heat in the desert plains around Sun City was intense, but we were about to turn the heat up even more.
“Alright, let’s force their hand. They really don’t want to come out at this time of the day, but the commanders will force them out when we do this.”
We started our drive-by attack, and randomly burned some wooden guard towers and toll bars on the main road.
We drove through the nomad tents and merchant shacks at the outskirts of the city, gathering horrified gazes from the people who lived in these temporary shelters outside the high city walls.
Crys wasn’t using the main cannons on full power yet, he was just shooting short bursts with lengthy pauses between. This was an act to make the enemies think that these short flame sprays were the full power of the tank.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The top speed of the Flame Tank was about 70 kilometers per hour – much faster than an average horse – so even after the granary attack, we moved so fast that it took the guards a while to understand that there was an unknown flame monster rampaging on their front yard.
But eventually the Torch Guns at the walls were prepped and turned downwards.
That’s right, fools. Aim those guns at us.
Don’t pay attention to the airship that will soon rise above the city from the canal.
When we got closer to the city walls, we could hear the high-pitched pings of Torch Gun rounds ricocheting from the Flame Tank’s armor.
“Your weak Torch Guns can’t penetrate this bad boy, fools!”
People tried to escape towards the southern city gates at first, begging for shelter inside, but when they saw the unknown flame monster moving directly at the gates, they started scattering in all directions.
After the initial shock and awe, the city gates were partially opened and forces were sent out to subdue the flame monster.
“Dogs.” (Rain)
“As expected, they released the war dogs first. Standard response against an unknown enemy. Fire at will, Crys.”
The Caliphate war dogs looked like huge, hairless albino hyenas. They were outfitted with spiked metal collars and spiked metal vests. Before the dogs were released, handlers sprinkled poisonous powder called Wild Dust on them. It forced the dogs to run amok and maul everything on their way until they died of exhaustion. These dogs were treated like single-use items.
As a person who cares about animals and their suffering (unlike people in this world who treat animals like food, tools or resources), it’s unfortunate when we have to burn several packs of spike-collared dogs that have been trained to kill and eat enemies on the battlefield. More than that, since dogs are already rare in this world, this specific breed of huge war dogs might go extinct soon. Sun City was pretty much the only area where these dogs were bred and trained.
“Firing!” (Crys)
Some of the war dogs were lucky and survived with non-lethal burns, but kept chasing our tank even after half of their kin were already dead and their albino skin had turned to charred black.
But soon even the most persistent dogs started succumbing to their burns and slumped down, panting in pain and distress. Sorry, doggos.
“Yosh! Let’s bait the next wave out!”
The second standard response after sending out war dogs was to close the city gates tightly and keep everyone out, and leave it to fate who the war dogs bite – but since we interrupted that response by immediately killing the dogs, then turning around and driving away from the gates, this broke their routine. In the game, this unexpected retreat action triggered the city gates to open again because the commanders thought we were escaping and really wanted to send knights after us.
And the game strat worked here.
“Two Death Squads came out.” (Rain)
“Well, well, well, the evil guys finally decided to show up! Only two squads, though... Hopefully it’s because they don’t have more on hand and rest are already after our associates at north.”
As we made a wide U-turn in the desert, Rain reported that there were three more Death Squads coming from the western side, riding outside the city walls.
“Five groups of armored midboss-level enemies total, huh? Not bad, not bad!”
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When you played the Reignland area casually and triggered the Death Squads, it felt like there was an endless amount of heavily armored elite knights with rifles, pistols and sabers coming after you.
In truth, there were only around eighteen groups with varying number of members, from twelve to twenty-five each – around four hundred elite knights total. But if your notoriety level got too high, 400 mid-bosses flooding after you in groups of dozen or more turned the normal hard difficulty into an impossible difficulty. Even the twins and Rainwoman fighting together had slim chances against so many bosses.
In a normal situation, running away from the Death Squads would be the first option. And if you cannot run away, fighting them off with explosives while looking for an escape route was the first emergency option.
But when you had a Flame Tank – You’ve made a bad move, little ant – you could simply take them head on.
Doesn’t matter how many squads appear. It’s a tank versus cavalry charge. Their routine response is out of date.
I made another wide U-turn and Crys pushed both flamethrower triggers, this time using full power.
I hummed an old song.
“Time to set the night on–”
Two long, bright beams of white fire burst out of the twin cannons, along with some serpentine lighting effects (the signature signs of Strangers weapon tech).
The superhot beams hit the first group point blank.
The knights in full plate armor burned. Their war horses in full barding burned.
Side commentary: the weakest point of flame tanks in the real world was the fuel you had to carry in large amounts, which meant that you had to tow a container trailer behind the tank, which further meant that the trailer was the obvious main target for enemies – one good hit with an armor-piercing round and that was the end of the tank.
But Strangers Flame Tank worked differently. Just like all Strangers vehicles, no actual liquid fuel was needed. The tank moved using wireless outside energy source; the ride juice was provided by Strangers Cube inside the Sun Palace.
In other places across Mu-Ur world, there were deep, hidden power sources inside dungeon mines, or naked power portals like the Source portal in the Winter Forest. And then there were some hotspots like Starfish Mansion that simply sucked power instead of sending out power.
Additionally, the twin cannons didn’t shoot out normal fire. It was more like plasma, superheated gas.
Why wasn’t it called Plasma Tank in the lore then? I don't know. It was always called Flame Tank, although some fansites used the neologism “plasmagma” for the long rope-like flame bursts with lightning effects.
With full power, there was a cooling period of seven seconds between each double-barrel shot, but there was an option to use each barrel separately as well. But Crys didn’t seem to care for separate shots anymore.
He fully enjoyed cooking the death knights and their horses inside their heavy armors.
“Burn, burn, yes, you’re gonna burn… I’ll try spinning, that's a good trick.”
While humming, I drove in wide circles around the Death Squads and Crys kept blasting. He was aiming at the horses feet rather than directly at the riders. The desert sand turned into glassy substance here and there from the intense heat, so even if the riders survived the blasts that instacooked their horses alive, they had a hard time getting back on heir feet.
For the most part, the riders burned together with the horses, but some knights ended up running around like headless chickens trying to desperately remove their fuming armor before dying.
“Hey Crys, people might think burning horses alive is your hobby, if you keep doing this every time.”
Crys didn’t answer.
Well, no need to talk on the job.
Anyway, I had a humming/whispering karaoke set list ready in my head. Classic oldies related to fire and flames only.
“They go to the lake of fire and fry–”
I didn’t remember all the lyrics and no one was able to join my humming karaoke. That’s solo streamers life – talking to a microphone, looking at the camera, jamming to the background music, imagining that the people watching you are partying together with you.
“With a little bit of monkey magic there’ll be fireworks tonight...”
A few knights who were wise enough to keep their distance kept shooting us with their revolver rifles, but their bullets did nothing. Not only was the tank itself heavily armored, the cockpit was a sealed space with a filtered ventilation system, so we could even drive the tank through collapsing buildings without problems.
It was also a good thing that we couldn’t smell all the burning flesh outside.
Strangers ultratech too powerful, devs please nerf!
Sorry guys, this match wasn't balanced from the start.
A random fan what-if theory popped into my head suddenly. What if the devs of this game world nerfed Strangers – as in removed the whole species on a global update?
That would actually be a plausible explanation for their sudden disappearance from spacetime – that is, if this world were a game, and if some higher-dimensional techno-egregores were able to alter this world with overwhelming simulacrum magick or something.
“When do I get to sing my way...”
Wait, how did that song got into my Fire & Flames set list? Oh, right. The band name.
“Que Sera, Sera...”
I wonder what Sera is doing right now.
“Gandhara, Gandhara...”
“Friends through eternity, loyalty, honesty…”
“He’s keepin’ up pace like a tight wound clock...”
– Uh, Qwerty, maybe stop the karaoke stream and concentrate on driving? We’re still in the middle of a battle.
I just kept going around in large circles, Crys was doing everything else.
Let's add some drifting Eurobeat on the playlist as well.
“Night of fire! Ba-baba-bababaa... Kim, sing with me!”
While I was nodding my head and trying to get Kim to sing along, Crys fired in a steep arc and set a wooden guard tower platform on top of the city wall on fire.
“Oi, oi! Crys, don’t get too exited! Our guys might be on the walls!”
“Speedrun, I can see the airship above the city. There's black smoke rising.” (Rain)
“Yosh! The city should be nicely on fire too!”
The dark clouds should soon catch up to us and put out the fires. We need to hurry.
“I can see the burning flag.” (Rain)
“Roger, roger! Time to drive inside the city! Kim-chan, get ready to help with the levers!“
I started headbanging and sang aloud.
“Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the–!“
Our young associates inside the city had used the commotion and chaos as cover and taken control of the south gate gatehouse.
A large Caliphate flag (a silver-gray seven-beamed sunwheel on a dark background) was burning upside down on top of the gatehouse. The flag was set ablaze as a signal for a successful operation.
“The gate is open! Let’s make it rain!”
Ladies, gentlemen, and people of any and all variety: It’s time for a classic war strat those in the know call Thunder Run.