“You win some, you lose some, and sometimes the game pauses for a cutscene.”
— The Tao of Idleness, Book 3, Verse 21.
I’m not 100% clear on what happened next.
One moment, Berker had been towering over me, his mace still dripping with blood – and other things - from crushing Dema’s skull, and it was all looking a touch spicy. Then the next? Well, in a blink of an eye, I was standing back in my village, gawping stupidly, Lia was dusting herself down, and Berker was back onto his horse, making threats that sounded pretty hollow for a guy who’d just had his whole not-inconsiderable arse handed to him.
Lia and Berker’s ‘fight’ had been some sort of pre-scripted cutscene.
Another one of those moments where reality had released, and something else took over like it didn’t quite trust me not to fuck up their awesome, grand finale of the fight. There’d been glowing blades, spinning punches and kicks, and a lot of slow-motion impacts and ‘nooooooos’. But before I could really process any of it, Berker was vanishing off into the woods, shouting about revenge and giving it plenty of “you’ll rue the day”.
Even weirder was that a full complement of Rebels slunk off behind him, as if they hadn’t all been massacred by a combination of me being epic and, well, the sort of Luck that made a guy itch for the existence of a lottery he could buy a ticket for.
What mattered most, though, was that the battle was over—at least for now – and my village was safe.
“You alright, ‘Rogue’?” Lia asked, rolling her shoulders like she hadn’t just thrown down with the world’s ugliest medieval sumo wrestler.
“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m fine. Just still processing . . . that. It was a lot.”
I glanced around the clearing, taking in the carnage. Bodies littered the ground, the remains of all the Rebel soldiers I had killed during the chaos. Although, as their doublegangers had all walked away fine and dandy in the cutscene, I wasn’t totally sure their deaths had ‘stuck’, if you know what I mean? Which was odd. The ten corpses I was looking at seemed pretty fucking final to me. Honestly, though, I didn’t remember doing half of it. Or any of it, really. I just remembered running around and not dying, and somehow, that had translated into a massive XP haul.
+2000 XP for defeating ten Rebel soldiers. (x2 multiplier for solo. x2 multiplier for successfully defending [Unnamed] village.)
Level Up: Level 5 Achieved!
Level Up: Level 6 Achieved!
Level Up: Level 7 Achieved!
New Abilities Available. (Choose 1)
Freeloader’s Escape (Rank 1): Automatically dodge the first attack of any encounter without effort. Passive ability with a 5-minute cooldown.
XP Trickler (Rank 1): Slowly gain XP for every minute spent doing nothing in a combat zone. XP rate scales with the level of danger.
Slacker’s Guard (Rank 1): Automatically redirect up to 10% of incoming damage to a nearby ally once per fight. Passive ability, with a focus on avoiding effort.
The slew of notifications blinked in my vision, but I dismissed them. I couldn’t focus on that right now. Because, no matter what the reward notifications might suggest, I hadn’t soloed that event, had I?
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Dema lay sprawled in the mud, a mangled wreck of shattered limbs and twisted flesh. Blood oozed from the jagged wounds where Berker’s mace had torn through her, her head caved in as if she’d been hit by a delivery van. I felt I had some context here with which to play. Splinters of bone jutted grotesquely from her face, and her left arm bent at an angle no human arm should ever attempt outside of Mr Fantastic and one of his signature japes. The raw grey of her exposed brain glistened through the ragged gash, and I didn’t think she was breathing . . .
Lia’s eyes flicked to Dema, and for the first time since the fight ended, I saw concern cloud her features. “You need to get her to the Medical Hut.”
“No shit,” We ran toward Dema’s crumpled form. Lia knelt beside her, checking her pulse with a practised hand and gave me a weak little smile. “She’s not dead, but she’s close.”
I felt a surge of panic rising in my chest. Dema was tough—Level 7, Huntress, all that—but she didn’t have the ridiculous stats Lia had, and Berker had really done a number on her. “I can throw some gold at it. Pay to win, right?”
Lia looked at me, eyebrow raised. “Gold? How’s that going to help?”
“Trust me. I have all sorts of things to fill you in about.” I opened the Village Interface and threw everything I had at the Medical Hut. Gold piled into the system like I was trying to bribe the universe itself. “Can you carry her in there?” I asked, still mentally throwing coins into the slot machine.
Lia picked Dema’s broken body up with a surprising tenderness and slipped her inside the building which, up until now, had been her own little Bacta Tank.
Almost as soon as Dema was positioned in the bed, the whole thing started humming again – I’d oddly missed that sound – and the messages started again.
Medical Hut: Maximum Gold Enhancement
Patient Condition: Stable (Critical)
“Stable (Critical)?” I glared at the message. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“It means she’s not getting worse,” Lia said in an annoying, reasonable tone. “Considering how she looked, I think you can take that as a win.”
“I didn’t throw all that gold at this place just for another bloody 'stable condition. What’s wrong with this fucking system? It can’t function without a wrecked damsel in distress in a weird Snow-White-Glass-Coffin situation?"
Lia’s hands went to her hips. “Two points. Firstly, fuck you and that ‘damsel in distress’ bullshit. I was only in there because I ended up soloing Balethor the Magnificent whilst you . . . no, my memory doesn’t have you doing anything at all. And if you were lucky enough for Dema the Huntress – and you better bet your arse I know who she is – to take a hit from Berker for you, I don’t want to hear any more of that ‘damsel’ bollocks about her either. And secondly, if I understand your metaphor correctly, you’re suggesting you’re Prince Charming in this scenario?”
I wisely didn’t say anything here.
“Because,” Lia continued, “if I even get a hint of you visiting her in that unconscious state to try to wake her up with a kiss, I’m going to fuck you up faster than you can say ‘lack of consent.”
Fair point. Well made.
Fuck, I felt shit about this. Dema had been the only person who stood with me when everything had gone to hell. Sure, Scar’s crew was good at gathering resources, but Dema was different. She’d stepped up even though she must have known this was how it was going to end. That made her a helluva ally. Maybe even a friend?
“Message heard and understood. But what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“First off, calm down,” Lia said. “The Rebellion will leave you be for now. You’ll have a bit of peace and quiet to be able to build things up. I’m sure the next level of the Medical Hut should take care of her.”
Okay. That wasn’t as shit an outcome as it might have been. “And the Empire? There’s someone called the Harbinger coming back in a day’s time. What do I do there? If the Rebels hate me, shouldn’t I just go in with them? That’s who you’re with, right?”
Lia didn’t answer for a moment. “I need to get back to Eldhaven,” she said eventually. “I need to hand in my quest and see where things lie. That will give us both a reputation boost, which might smooth things out a littl with the Harbinger. Or not. But there will be resources available there. People. Maybe even someone who I can bring back to boost Dema’s healing. If I go now, I can be back before you have to make a decision. Maybe things will look clearer by then.”
Eldhaven. The place where everything had started going wrong. The place where I'd picked up this bloody title. The one that had dragged me into this mess. The thought of Lia heading back there sent a shiver down my spine, but she was right. It appeared I had time now with the Rebels. I needed the same with the Empire. A slacker could always make use of more time.
Lia looked like she was about to say something more when the underbrush rustled behind us, and Scar stepped out of the woods. His face was set in a grim mask as he took in the scene—Berker’s soldiers, the shattered battlefield, and then, finally, Lia standing with sword drawn.
I opened my mouth to explain but then realised this was one of those moments when I wasn’t even close to the main character in this clearing. Scar and Lia obviously had . . . history. I’d be wise to stay clear. The moment stretched out, the air between them crackling with barely contained hostility. Scar’s face darkened, and Lia’s hand instinctively moved toward the hilt of her sword. Ennio Morricone would have scored an awesome little ditty to accompany this moment.
“Where is she?” Scar asked. “What have you done with her?”
It could just be me, but I thought the answer to this question was unlikely to lessen the tension . . .