Tim took one look at Baron Nashor and turned around and walked the other way. Mel reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder but he shrugged her off.
“Tim, wait, we need you!” Mel said.
“Forget it. You’re all insane.” Tim replied, stalking off into the jungle.
Mel picked him up and put him over her shoulder, he indignantly slammed his fist down on her back.
“Put me down!” he demanded.
“Not until you calm down. We need to work as a team and we can’t do it without you. I promise you’ll be the furthest away from it.” Mel said.
He stopped squirming.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah really. Your job is going to be to sit back, scout for the enemies to make sure we don’t get jumped and keep shooting it. That’s it hotshot.” Mel said.
“Ok you can put me down…” he grumbled.
Mel gently placed him on his feet and he straightened out his khaki’s doing his best to retain some dignity. He eventually gave up and joined the group as they walked towards the Kaiju in the pit.
That was the only point of reference that Tim had for the beast they wanted to engage.
“It looks like a Kraken mated with a Lapras.” Tim tried.
The group’s heads snapped towards him as one.
“Did you just make a video game reference?” Christine asked.
Tim shrugged.
“I can’t believe you.” Christine said.
“First you act like a complete noob and now you’re quoting Pokémon? Who are you?” Mitch seconded.
“Guys. Focus up, this is Baron Nashor.” Mel said, redirecting the group's attention.
In the pit, barely submerged at all by waist high water stood a purple creature the size of an airplane. It was a worm of some kind with tentacles lazing around in the water and a four pronged toothy mouth. Two more mouths sprouted from tentacles that rose from where its shoulders should be filled to the brim with sharp looking teeth. It opened at least a dozen glowing purple eyes as the group neared.
‘This is it! Remember the plan and make sure I’m the only one getting hit or we’re doomed!” Mel screamed. She activated her ultimate, suddenly rivaling the giant worm in height if not stature. She ran forward and dropped her shoulder, crashing into the worm with a mighty boom.
It wasn’t knocked off balance but it was pushed back into the wall of the pit where Mel tried to pin it. That’s when Craig stepped in and activated his ultimate in front of the group for the first time. His spear started glowing and he jumped high in the air, slashing the air with his spear in front of him and causing a huge arc of energy to shoot out from his spear and nail the Baron in the side, causing its health bar to appear. It had taken approximately 2% damage.
The crack of gunfire ran out and Tim steadily shot at the creature, on his third shot he nailed one of its eyes and its health bar dropped another percent. Mitch hung back as Mel had instructed him, he was virtually useless in the fight and they needed to save his ultimate for their getaway if the enemy team showed up.
Christine let herself be enraged and climbed high with her shadow tendrils. She began to swipe and stab at the body of the worm as Mel grappled with it. Eventually Mel worked her hands around the back of the head of the vicious creature. Nimbly dodging strikes from the side heads as they snapped forwards like vicious vipers.
Having established the clinch position, Mel started firing knees into the belly of the worm. Christine backed off to give her room and the health bar of the worm started steadily ticking down with each knee as Mel fired them off in rapid succession.
The Baron gave a cry and tentacles shot up from the river around them knocking the team off balance. Mel was unaffected due to her size and kept beating the Baron up single handedly. Its health went down to 75%.
This went on for ten minutes, with the team utilizing all of their abilities except for Mitch. When the health bar fell to 10% disaster struck.
“Tim it’s getting low, scout check.” Mel called over her shoulder.
Tim paused his shooting to slam the butt of his rifle on the ground, sending out a golden shockwave that revealed 5 red enemies clustered on the other side of the pit wall. Upon being revealed they charged into the river as a team.
“MITCH NOW” Mel screamed at the top of her lungs, her ultimate had run out and she was now normal sized.
Mitch leapt from his hiding place and used his ultimate ability, a golden cross shot out from his body and when it struck the enemy team all 5 were suspended by their wrists in the air, their feet bound together.
Craig fired off his ultimate again which had recharged during the fight with Baron and his arc of energy slammed into the enemy team as they were suspended in the air.
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Tim was right behind him firing his net and as Mitch’s ultimate wore out the team was binded to the ground by the large net. Slamming down with a crash of armor and broken bones. Then Christine went beast mode and just eviscerated everything in the net until the same notification popped up as last time.
Pentakill!
“Ok I have a feeling you might get nerfed.” Mitch said.
Christine, having returned to fighting the Baron, looked at Mitch with disappointment.
“Can’t you just be happy I’m on your team?” She said tiredly.
“Not really you’re very distracting.” Mitch said.
Christine rolled her eyes and continued to fight the giant worm.
The team eventually killed the Baron and two notifications popped up.
Your team has slain Baron Nashor
Your team has received Hand of Baron buff
“Guys we have recall now!” Mel called out excitedly.
The team saw in the bottom left of their vision there was now a glowing purple ‘B’ that when they focused on with their vision activated the recall spell. They all teleported back to base and spent their gold. Christine had a long staff and she took her veil off so she could put on a witches hat.
“What’s that?” Tim asked.
“Rabadon's Deathcap, it amplifies my magic.” she answered.
“Can you help me to decide what to buy?” Tim asked her.
“Sure, just get something called a phantom dancer if you can afford it.” she offered.
Tim bought the item and the dagger he had bought earlier transformed into a hooked sickle like blade with a dagger hilt. It seemed ghostly and when he held it he found that he could run faster than before.
“This is wild. Thanks Christine.” he said.
The team completed their purchases and headed straight down the midlane, to their surprise the enemy team was still dead. They smashed the towers, and then the inhibitor. They worked their way up to the nexus with a purple glowing wave of minions. As the health bar of the enemy's base fell, a pit of anxiety rose in Mel’s stomach.
She wondered what would happen once they completed the game, her mind going to dark places as she prepared herself for a cruel twist. When the enemy nexus reached zero health the world seemed to pause. She looked around at her team and they too, were frozen in place.
Victory!
The notification sprang up before everything went dark.
***
The team woke to find themselves in a clear box, stacked on top of other clear boxes filled with people in groups of five. As far as they could see there were just human beings in clear boxes as far as the eye could see in every direction. Their cells were bare, with no furniture, bed or even toilet. They were wearing the same thing they had on at school before the game started.
Mitch was trying to communicate with the people in the box next to us but they just stared back blankly, unable to hear anything he said.
A smooth electronic voice began some sort of introduction:
“Humans of Earth, welcome to the Galactic Federation. Your species has been selected to be inducted into our society due to your inability to become a type 1 civilization. Ten Earth seconds prior to our intervention, your species launched nuclear explosive devices that would have destroyed your planet. Rather than allowing this to play out, the Federation utilized the special powers in clause 4.3.1 of the intergalactic treatise of interplanetary subjugation (ITIS) allowing for the complete enslavement of the human population following a standardized Higher Intelligence Test.”
The group looked at each other aghast, each shared mirrored expressions of horror. Their future was to be slaves for some alien overlord?
“In accordance with the guidelines set in place by the ITIS this test will be administered in several stages to accommodate the wide variety of intelligence levels displayed by the human race. A game setting familiar with a majority of humans was selected and the initial test against low level AI’s resulted in 62% of participants passing the first stage. The other three billion, forty nine million, five hundred thousand and six humans have been granted the full rights of a slave to the Federation and shipped off to appropriate working situations.”
Mitch started retching in the corner, sweat covered his body in a thick layer.
“From now on all participants will compete against other humans in remaining matches. The Galactic Federation is required to inform you that all matches are being broadcast live to over 10 trillion households across the galaxy. You’re famous!”
Nobody in the group said a word, this was too much.
“Every win will now go towards increasing a team's rank. If a team is able to reach the rank of Diamond they will be given full citizenship to the Federation along with a small annual stipend. They will not be slaves and will be able to gain employment in the federation. If a team reaches the rank of Master they will be able to grant freedom to one human of their choosing each, provided that human is still alive. If a team reaches Challenger, they will become the custodian of all of humanity and will be given a fresh planet located at the inner rim for their species to live peacefully as part of the Federation. Losing a match will knock you out immediately and all team members will be assigned privileges and rights based off of your corresponding rank. Below Diamond however the ranks do not grant freedom. Please see the rank thresholds below.”
A holographic display popped up in the box showing a ranking system.
IRON (1 win VS AI)
BRONZE (2 wins)
SILVER (5 wins)
GOLD (10 wins)
PLATINUM (25 wins)
EMERALD (100 wins)
DIAMOND (500 wins)
MASTER (2500 wins)
CHALLENGER (3 wins vs Federation Citizens, this option is only accessible by players at Diamond rank or higher)
The team looked around at the humans surrounding their cell. Mitch was aghast as he looked into the eyes of the people in the cell next to theirs. They were now enemies, all of them. The aliens' first move was to separate the humans from what made them human. They’d destroyed their sense of community.
Mitch held hope that he could reach Diamond but as he looked at his team he was less sure. They seemed to be distraught at the prospect of facing other humans, it was time for the support to be supportive.
“Listen guys. I know this is a lot to take in but we have four League players on our team along with…” he nodded in Tim’s direction.
“Whatever that is. Anyways my point is that we didn’t just scrape by and beat the AI. We came back from losing a team fight to grinding them into dust. They couldn’t even respawn before we ended. Conversely over a third of the population on earth couldn’t work it out. A third of Earth lost against bots.” he said.
Mel frowned and interjected “Mitch I love what you’re trying to do but consider how much of the world's population is able bodied and neurotypical. How much of the world was geriatric or prepubescent? I think all of those people accounted for the bulk of that result. We need to be really careful in games moving forward. I think they’re about to get a lot harder.” she said.
A holographic display popped up on the side wall of their cube.
KEEP PLAYING?
/ YES / NO /