Aaaaaand here they come again.... Haaaaaaaaaaaa....

'Who?', you ask?

Woah, I didn't even see you there. But let me answer your question first.

With 'they' I mean the posse of around forty to fifty cocky players. Yes, you heard me right, players.

Those guys are a kind of their own. Always marching about, intruding into nests of viscious beasts, sometimes toppling a kingdom and other times they kill of each other over a useless piece of cute, black, cloth cat-ears, only to discard them later on as they grew bored of their newest acquisition.

I can't say I hate those guys, really can't. They provide me with plenty of entertainment. But lately it's just.... haaaaa...

They ain't even making an effort anymore. Most players just enter, get killed by me or some other mob and then they never show their faces back here again.

I still remember the good 'ol days of those 'Hardcore grinders', where I would face each day hordes upon hordes of greedy and murderous bastards. They pillaged my castle, broke my furniture and killed my servants but at least they put their all into it, it was commendable.

The fights were truly enjoyable, fierce and without rest. We would slug it out for hours sometimes, neither me nor the players getting any ground against each other, but at the end most of them prevailed. And those that did not tried it another day.

Some of those players came so often that I started to get to know them. As the only intelligent and self-aware A.I. in this fuckfest of a game world it was quite quaint to have someone to talk to. I even let them kill my guardians just so we could have a nice chat without interruptions.

At first they couldn't believe their eyes, mouths agape and shock plastered square on their faces. But when I told them that I was something special -I was a little extra the designer crew threw into the mix of the game called Ar'rathia-, more special than just the game's endboss, and even had access to the.... drumroll please.... INTERNET they began to huddle around me like curious children.

I loved those times. And sometimes I stare at my marbled ceiling and think, my eyes wandering past the gold-veined chandelier.

'I wonder if Alex still got his job as an electrician, although the game was more job to him than his actual job. Maybe Clara and Maurice finally told each other how they felt? Is Noel still online, I wonder?', and then I started to reminisce for hours and sometimes days about the past times. So many faces and fortunately my self, consisting solely of ever expanding data, could remember them all too well.

I sighed dejectedly. The newcomers already intruded onto my orderly scheduled... shedule, two hours allocated to self-pity and one hour fucking around on the net.

Their weapons gleamed under the white luminescence of the cackling torches. Some had crimson blood dripping down from their edges while others were nicked and dented. All in all they looked like a decent bunch, looking all heroic and stuff.

I gave a snort and waved them forward, no time to waste. 'Maybe if I reallocate my internet fuckery onto the afternoon... hum... it may or may not work.'

The throng of warriors, mages, archers, brawlers, muses, bards, even painters and what looked like a clown, marched onward, the ground rumbling under their mighty stampede.

The air was dank and musty, the acrid stench of flesh being covered by metal and sweat for hours straight only accentuated the pungent stench.

I saw silvery beads trickle down their skin whenever they stepped forth, dripping downwards and onto my costly carpet. 'Argh! GODDAMN! MY CARPET!', I wanted to shout but only squealed like an incensed granny inside my mind.

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A wall of shields, a wave of ardent metal coming to live, pushed all the way up to my throne. I grimaced at the foolishness of those warriors or berserkers or paladins or... ARGH fuck that!

Invoking one of my go-to AoE spells and at the same time crowd control I unleashed literal hell upon them.

The ground bulged upwards as hundreds of dying and decaying limbs surged towards the ceiling. The wall of rotting flesh slumped onto the ground and pushed the shield phalanx back in their clabbery tides.

I snapped my fingers, inhaled, and a mighty maelstrom of condesated energy unfold above the ten to twenty warriors. The spell took a jab at my mana pool but I couldn't care less at the moment.

All have survived but their plated vests and shiny harnesses were now being corroded by tenacious skeletal hands that reached from the black depths. Luckily my wonderful AoE debuffs 'Sacrifice to the Deceased' and 'Magic out' took most of their magical resistences and durability. A nice side effect was the demoralizing stench of death that was a notch stronger than the smell of day old sweat.

Priests in the back-line began to chant, their level 200 rank Z artifact class staffs shone in a myriad of colours and all damage I had done had gone to waste.

Well, I had expected that much.

The game was now running for how many years? Nine? Maybe ten or eleven? Over the course of time I spoke less and less to the players and now they thought the intelligent A.I. endboss Xeres the Ashenlord was naught but an urban legend. That's why they thought placing their healers in the backline was a good idea.

It had to be said that unlike in any other game, without genuine A.I.s of course, there existed a mechanism called aggro. When damage is dealt a normal mob or NPC would, naturally, attack the source of the damage, or sometimes the diverse taunt spells, in other cases, and in most instances with bosses, the mob would attack those that provide constant healing, thus keeping the change in aggor dynamic. But in my case I was impervious to any kinds of aggro-pulling or any of that shit.

I killed what I wanted to kill.

Raising my arm I summoned a single bolt of black lightning, arching over my obsidian flesh I let it soar through the wide hall. The unreal bolt of shadows thundered across the lines of crimson pillars, past various painting of immaculate design and then finally reached its destination among the panicking healers.

The umbral tether made contact with the ground and exploded with a nigh beastial roar. The walls shuddered and a dome of blackness stretched above the unlucky fellows, the only testament to their premature demise, or so I thought.

Like glass a high-pitched noise of shattering glass rang into my ears. The abyssal cupola cracked open, night-sky coloured shards flew through the air. Beneath the cracks an unholy amount of brightness accumulated until it breached the web of shadows and blinded all present, yes even their own comrades.

I allowed myself access to their data, something only I could do and only then when I had 'visitors' on my 'lawn'.

Most of their mana was still there, only one person had suffered incredible losses, the mana was totally gone.

'Taking one for the team, huh...', I mused and let the frenzy of fight wash me away.