The cottage in the clearing was golden-brown and covered in brightly colored decorations. Its eaves were hung with what looked at first like snow, until you realized it was a warm summer evening and the icicles hanging from the gingerbread eaves were, in fact, made of frosting.
The trees and bushes that surrounded the cozy little cabin were hung with candy. An odor of warm melted chocolate wafted from the chimney of the gingerbread house. As I waited, concealed in a sugar plum bush, Sage messaged me. You're kidding me. Hansel and Gretel? And we're helping the witch?
Just go with it, I replied wearily.
She snorted. I could hear her from eight feet away. She was up a tree, hiding among pink sponge sugar candy blossoms.
Keep it down, I warned her.
Nobody heard that, and if they did, they'll think it was a bird. What kind of birds do you think live here? You think they're made of candy, too? If not, they should be attacking this house and eating it. How come the whole thing doesn't just dissolve in the rain? This story never made a whole lot of sense. I think it's an allegory about the dangers of step-parents.
Focus, I told her.
There were twelve of us concealed in various bushes around the cabin, just waiting for the arrival of the team of hardened veterans that would be going up against the Candy Witch. This whole zone was Brothers Grimm themed. The encounters ran the gamut from horrifying versions of the fairy tales that I suspected were closer to the original, complete with chopped-off feet, red-hot iron shoes and barrels of spikes, to slightly more candy cut-out variants like what we saw here.
This was one of the all-outdoor zones we’d found, called the Dark Enchanted Forest. The three optional bosses had been in the lands beyond the forest and had been a wicked stepmother, a lord mayor, and the Brothers Grimm themselves.
All three had been defeated before the gates of the forest had opened. Each of the seven gates had been assigned a different guardian — one of Snow White’s dwarves and let me just tell you, they were not the Disney versions — and each team had been forced to defeat one dwarf to receive a key to enter.
That was a rule that held across all of the over forty raid instances we had surveyed so far. Only 70% of the teams even made it into the heart of the raid. As Grandpa and Juana had pointed out to me, the math didn’t necessarily work out in our favor. The other 30% of teams were busy scavenging the outer sections of the raid levels for consumable materials.
Jones messaged us. I’ve got eyes on ‘em. I count 14 of the space elves, mostly equipped with those shiny energy sabers and plasma rifles. They’ve got two healers and one of the ones we’ve been calling Tinkers.
Okay, mark the healers and the Tinker. We’ll try to get them down first, I said. Affiliation?
Dreamnight Summit, a subsidiary of Alabaster Sky through 8 proxies. Veda says they’re owned by the sister-in-law of a cousin of a demi-niece of Alabaster Sky’s eighth vice president, so we should expect them to have fairly large pockets. One wipe isn’t going to dissuade them.
And you’ve confirmed the location of their base camp?
Yep, Jones said.
Then let’s do this.
I switched over to my message thread for Team 2. Jones will send you the IDs of the healers and their support caster. Make sure you pay attention and follow the plan.
That got a quick “yup” from Mitch, who was leading Team 2 today.
I switched back. Team 1, ready to go?
You know we are, Captain, Frank replied.
I grinned as the space elves entered the clearing. They spread out in front of the witch’s cabin in an arrangement similar to how the dwarves had approached Podaga’s hut. I was starting to realize that all of their many years of experience at Reality Engines had made the galactics predictable. They knew how to set up a big fight like this. They had all the strategies down, knew how many healers and tanks they’d need, what weapons to bring.
Predictable meant exploitable. And today, we were going to do just that.
Their tank ran up and knocked on the witch’s door. He sprang back down lithely into the glade, drawing his energy saber and activating his force shield. They glowed bright purple in the fading sunlight. His hair was purple, too.
Space elves moved with grace and poise. What I really liked was the noise they made when they died—a sort of strangled scream about an octave and a half higher than you would have thought them capable of.
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I didn’t have any particular animosity for this team. We had never crossed paths before, but they were in the wrong place—our solar system—and they were about to learn how big a mistake they’d made.
The witch appeared in her doorway, cackling, plunging into her boss speech as the crew of raiders spread out. She cast a spell over the whole clearing, and the elves froze in place like statues as she began to monologue. "You villagers should have taken better care of your children. They would have never come to seek out me if you had provided for them as parents should!”
Her monologue went on for a good minute and a half as the elves stood frozen, doubtless communicating on their own private channels for last minute arrangements. As the witch stepped forward into the clearing, the freeze ended and the elf tank ran forward and taunted her. Is that an ability or an item? I asked Sage, who was supposed to be using Eye-Spy on our enemies. We were still working on building up a picture of just what they could do.
Item. Definitely. I think it’s his belt. Yeah, it has eight charges left. You could probably target it and ruin their pull.
Save that for another fight, I said.
The witch was wielding an oversized ladle and a saucepan like a shield. She advanced on the elf tank, screeching. He raised his energy shield and her ladle bounced harmlessly off.
The space elf warriors unshouldered their guns and began firing.
Go! I ordered in our chat, and my team dropped out of the trees, sprang out of the bushes and leapt into action.
A string of grenades went off right through the middle of the clearing, ripping through the enemy ranks and throwing up smoke and glitter. The elves' cries of surprise and dismay were music to my ears.
I fired a Trick Shot at one of their healers, hitting her with a Disorienting round. It would only last for five seconds, but combined with the smoke, it put her effectively out of the fight. Six more of us fell on her, firing guns, slashing with weapons, casting our spells. Seconds later, she disappeared in a cloud of sparkles.
The elves' sparkles were more pastel and iridescent than everyone else's. Maybe I was just imagining it, but I thought they got special treatment from the system.
"Get the other one," I bellowed, and emptied a barrage into the second healer.
The tinker had a metal whirlygig out at the end of a three-foot-long metal pole. Its blades whirled and spun in a riot of colors. His device emitted a slowing field that caught at my ankles and those around me.
Sage laughed and threw her Lasso around him. "Got him!" she shouted, and she turned her Tamed elf on the rest. We had encountered a few other miners who were resistant to mind control tactics. This elf wasn't one of them. Now the elves were slowed, confused, and without support.
I felt a deep surge of satisfaction as we cut their raid to shreds, taking down the other healer and the tinker before turning on the damage dealers. They were still trying to target the witch, and it was splitting their focus. They'd gotten her down to 80%.
"Come, children, come to my aid!" she cackled.
A bevy of gingerbread children, all about four feet high, burst from the hut and ran in, wielding candy canes like axes and hacking at the knees of the space elves. One of the nice things about having joined the Tunnel Rat faction was that the bosses and all of their adds were now our allies, which meant not only did we not have to worry about damaging them, but all of the abilities we had that boosted the effect of allies or creep empowered them.
Sage cast Cowgirl Cheer and the gingerbread children grew six inches each; gumdrop buttons popped out on their chests, giving them the appearance of wearing bright little festive jackets.
"One at a time," I bellowed. "Take 'em down one at a time."
It was important that we didn't let them get all clumped up so they'd have multiple respawns at once. I got a message from Team Two. The healers and the Tinker are up and racing back to you. They've reached the edge of the forest.
All right, I replied. Lock everything else down.
You got it, boss.
I could practically hear the satisfaction in Mitch's voice as I turned back to the fight. I delivered a killing shot to one of the energy saber-wielding elves. They gave off that blood-curdling scream and vanished into purple sparks.
He would find a surprise waiting for him. Team Two was covering the exit to their base. As their damage dealers emerged one by one, they'd be taken out and sent back to respawn.
I was hoping to get at least one full complement of deaths more before they caught on to our tactics and started trying to fight back. Juana had worked with an alien support company on the hub to develop a little accounting program for us. It was tallying up just what the respawn cost was for this team. With our 10X multiplier on top of the increasing cost with each death, the bill was very quickly going to be in the hundreds of thousands of Soul Coins per resurrection.
We killed off the tank. "We need to try to ambush the healers," I shouted. "Make for the forest gate. Jones, got eyes on them yet?"
"Sure do, boss," Jones called. "They're still heading here. Guess they haven't got the word. Let's run!"
I put deed into action and sprinted through the wood as Sage called to the witch. "Okay, done for now, Evil Granny. You get back in there and heal up and make another batch of gingerbread children. Your defenses aren't nearly good enough. We need to get you some turrets attached to your hut. I'm gonna see what Dwight can do."
Sage, that's actually a brilliant idea, I said.
All my ideas are brilliant, Shad. She might have been texting, but I could hear the smug in her voice. I let it pass and passed the message along to Juana.
We'll find out if it's possible, she promised.
I had visions of every boss encounter in every instance protected by missile turrets and slowing guns. It would cost a hell of a lot, but we had patterns now to make such things. Dwight and his army of crafters had picked them up back in Phase Two. We had more crafters coming on board with us every day and an army of farmers fresh out of the Lotus Eater level.
It'd be a lot of work to coordinate. We'd need to recruit someone just for that. I was finding that running an insurgency was a lot more bookkeeping and staff meetings than I'd ever expected.
Sage raced ahead of me through the woods. "Found 'em!" she yelled, and we fell on the unprepared healers.
Meanwhile, Team Two was updating me on their kills. There's one elf we've killed three times now. He's got long blue hair. And he makes the most ridiculous noises when he dies, Mitch said. We're up to twelve and they're still coming.
We'll join you, I said as we dispatched the tinker. "Team, roll out!"