We had brought in about three dozen of our farming and crafting allies and as Grandpa and I explained what we wanted them to do, their expressions were an interesting combination of shocked, amused, terrified, and excited.
A couple of them rubbed their hands together, nodding, while others were shaking their heads. "No way!" someone shouted back. "Nuh-uh!"
"Only the creep can harm you," I said, "and we've got a bit of a breather from them. Besides, death's not permanent. You just end up back here."
"We need this," Grandpa said. "We need all of you right now. This is important. It's bigger than just us. This is for all of us here who've been dragged from our home and set to work by a bunch of aliens that don't care about us, our feelings, our hopes and dreams. We're doing this to prove to all of them that they made a mistake when they thought Earthlings were going to be pushovers."
I saw a couple of heads nod, but mostly they looked scared. I didn’t blame them. In the previous phase, death had been permanent. We combat miners had adjusted to the rules of Phase Two, but the crafters and farmers hadn’t.
Mama Grace pushed to the front of the crowd. I hadn't known she was here. She almost never stepped through into Phase Two, preferring to remain in Threshold, keeping us all well-fed and looked after.
Now she had a meat cleaver in one hand and a determined look on her face. "My Juana says this matters," she told the crowd. "So I'm going down there and I'm going to do what Louis here says. Any of you who don't want to come, that's your choice, but you aren't welcome at my table after that."
If Grandpa's plea hadn't worked, Mama Grace's threat certainly did. The non-combat miners set off down the hill en mass. I directed them right toward the section of forest where our enemies were hiding.
They were all armed, even if they weren't going to be able to hurt the enemy players, and I told them to yell, scream, make as much noise as they could.
As they charged out across the open space toward the wood, Grandpa, Sage, and I snuck out the back and looped around, keeping to the cover of the woods. We didn't have a camouflage ability, but with a horde of thirty or so angry Earthlings yelling and charging at the enemy, the Vortali miners reacted the way I hoped.
They scattered.
Two came crashing straight toward us. A pair of bald male space elves, their pointed ears sticking up above their gleaming skulls, running flat out, came right past our hiding place. I stepped out of the brush and cast Call ‘Em Out just as Sage got a Lasso around one of them. Grandpa Shadow Stepped in behind the other and hit him with a quick Scalp. I followed up with a Barrage, then, as he dropped low, a Finishing Shot. He dropped to the ground, despawning before he hit, and we turned on the one Sage had roped.
She hadn't bothered to cast Tame on him. That would have been a waste of the cooldown. Just used the lasso to delay him while we took out his friend. Fifteen seconds later, the second space elf had despawned.
I checked my minimap. There was another red dot not far off, moving northward at a lope. The other three were gone. A sea of green dots ran northward through the jungle, but I didn't need my minimap to tell me that. I could hear them.
I pinged the map. "Let's get 'em!" We rushed forward. I raced ahead, watching my map, stumbled into a clearing, and took a knife to the chest.
I saw the knife just in time to duck, so it slid in a little too high, close to my shoulder. It hurt like hell. I grabbed for the wrist behind the knife and pulled hard as I could with my right hand. My left was dangling useless as blood flowed down my skin under my shirt.
The elf let out a high-pitched cry. It was a woman. It didn't matter. I used Quick Draw to summon my gun to my hand and hit her with a full Barrage. She stumbled back, reaching for another knife.
As I reloaded my gun, I fired again. Grandpa Shadow Stepped in and took her down with a coup de grace. Sage cast "Raise Your Spirits" on me, and the pain in my shoulder wore off a little.
I yanked out the knife and tossed it aside. My health plummeted down to 20 hit points. I swore and grabbed one of the healing potions from my inventory. I rarely had to resort to them. Usually Sage's healing would fix me up, but I didn't want to risk the time it would take, so I swallowed the healing potion whole. This was one of the newer ones Veda had gotten us, and it took me up to 85% health.
I checked my mini-map. There were no other red dots visible. "We got lucky," Grandpa growled. "They could have taken us.”
“They weren't expecting that rush. Now they're going to have to respawn back at their camp. We might have a numbers advantage if we move fast enough.”
“Unless they brought one of those portable respawns," Grandpa pointed out.
“Then let's stop wasting time." I checked on Smith's location. Mongoose was about half a mile north of us, fighting for control of the spawn point.
When we got there, it was clear why no one had emerged on top in the battle for this spawn point. The alien miners had dug in beyond the spawn point, erecting a fortification about four yards wide, just ahead of where the pirates were coming ashore.
Boat after boat touched the sand, dumping its load of undead pirates before collapsing into a heap of seaweed on the beach as the pirates streamed ashore. The fortification was a pair of towers, similar to our defense turrets, with a translucent purple barrier of energy in between. I could see the form of five space elves behind it. Every now and then, they lobbed a grenade or fired shots over the top of their fortification.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Smith and his team had dug in as well. The Mongeese had a set of abilities that all worked together to construct a machine gun nest. They'd done that twice, then erected a wall of sandbags between the two and dug a trench behind them. It would take a lot more than a couple of grenades to dislodge them from this point.
I dropped into the trench next to Smith. "Plan on being here forever?" I asked.
"Just waiting for you to show up," Smith retorted. "What's the plan, Major?"
"The plan is for you all to get off your asses, charge over there, and kick some alien butt," Grandpa retorted. "What is this? World War I all over again? Trench warfare is too damn slow. We don't have time for this shit."
Juana sent me another message. Most of our defenses are still offline. Two of the power supplies are on the fritz. Dwight and I are repairing them as best we can. We're cannibalizing some of the toys you stole from the Grignarians back at the start of this fight, and I've got half a dozen automatons helping fill in the gap. You've got to keep the creep off of us.
I watched as another load of pirates came ashore, their longboat dissolving into seaweed like the rest. Any word from Veda?
She's doing her best.
Then we'll do ours. How about the Grignarians? They answered us yet? I felt blind out here, waiting for answers from beyond this beach.
No word. I'll send you a message as soon as I know.
"We can't just sit here," I told my team. "The outpost will be overrun by the creep from this point or one of the others.”
“This is the one that they're buffing," Smith said. "They have some sort of device that's upping the spawn rate of the other two spawn points on our island, but Ragtag is taking care of most of the spawn coming out one of the others. It's only these three spawn points that are being sent against us. I think they've got more that they're pushing toward Existalis.”
“Then if we turn the tide here, we've got a chance," I said. I had brought the rest of the flame eggs with me, and I considered lobbing one over the enemy force field. The problem was, they weren't quite grouped up enough for me to be sure of taking them all out.
“Shad? I think I’ve had one of your brilliant-stupid ideas,” Sage said. She was eyeing the towers with interest.
"Oh?" I asked.
She tapped her eye. "According to my Eye Spy, those towers are what's buffing the creep. They would also work to power our defenses and they're generating that force field. If we could take one, it would be a big leg up for us."
"How are we going to do that?" I asked.
She smiled. "Eye Spy tells me they only weigh about 250 pounds apiece. I don't think we can get them both, Shad, but you've been working out, right?"
***
The part of this I really hated was how I had to hang back as the rest of my team charged across the sand toward our enemies.
Vortali’s miners began firing as soon as Mongoose emerged from our trench. Grandpa used Shadow Step to get in behind the line. He dropped one of our flame eggs, then used his newly enhanced ability to Shadow Step right back out over to where Sage was waiting. As soon as he got to where she was, she disappeared, reappearing back behind the enemy lines at one of her Three Barrel Race positions, just as the flame egg went off. It exploded, knocking three of the space elves off of their feet.
Meanwhile, Jones and the Mongeese reached the edge of the sand, where the water lapped the shore. That was my cue. I engaged Fastest Gun in the West and covered the distance from our trench to the right hand defense pylon. I got my arms around it, lifting it from the ground as I activated my Home on the Range ability.
The fifteen second cast time stretched interminably. One of the space elves turned toward me, raising a laser gun and putting a sighting dot on my chest. Sage shot her t-shirt cannon at him, momentarily wrapping him in cotton just as my timer ran out.
I reappeared back in our camp and dropped the now inert tower to the ground with a grunt. Juana looked up from our defense table, her eyes wide. "What the...?"
"Present from Sage," I managed. “Should power some of our defenses back up. No time, gotta go," and I took off back down the hill.
***
By the time I got back to the beach, of course, the rest of the fight was over. Jones and Sage had been killed, respawning back at our outpost and grumbling angrily in messages in chat, but we had taken out the other Vortali team miners.
I managed to put the other pylon into my inventory. I would hand it over to Juana the next time we came.
Grandpa was busy clearing out the point, killing the last few pirates as their boat turned to seaweed around them. "Hold on," I said. There were three flags placed around the landing point, bearing the Vortali Crest. I touched one, and a system message box popped up. [Do you wish to repurpose claiming flag?]
"Hell yeah!"
The Vortali shimmered and was replaced by our Misfits Guild logo, a tomahawk crossed by grill tongs. Grandpa converted the other two flags, and now a new interface appeared.
[By right of capture, you have claimed this spawn point. Where would you like to direct the generated minions?]
"Haha! We need some of these," Grandpa said.
"We need a lot of these. How come we don't have any?" I sent Veda a message.
She replied back, They're only situationally useful for times when you're trying to take out enemy outposts. You aren't going to be doing that. So I didn't buy any. They're also insanely expensive.
We need these, I replied. Seriously, Veda, you've got to trust me. I know we haven't done exactly what you said, but it's worked out okay for you so far, right?
There was no reply. I sent another message. Please, you got to trust me. I've got a plan. If we take the spawn points on our island, we can send the creep back at them. They’ll have to get off our back, at least long enough for Juana to strengthen our defenses.
Finally, she said, What is it you want here?
I just told you, some of these pennants.
I don't mean now. I mean, out of all of this.
I hesitated. I had been dragged into this against my will. I had fought to stay alive, to protect my sister, and then had fought to give us a better chance at a future. I thought of all of the people in the Lotus Eater level. I thought of everyone back on earth waiting for their fate to be decided for them by creatures they couldn't really even imagine. I thought of the remnants of whatever had built this reality engine reaching out to us across eons, trying to communicate. I want to keep going, I said at last. I want to understand what’s worth uprooting all our lives for. And then — then — Then I want to see what I can do to change things. At least for me and my family. I didn’t tell her that last part. And then I want to make them know we were here.