I was running to class. I was probably going to be late because the bus from my dorm was. Apparently, a cape had destroyed a street on its route fighting a monster, if rumors were to be believed. I didn’t follow cape news, so that could have been completely incorrect. It was more entertaining to think “cape fight” than “malfunctioning street repair drone”, in any case.
Fortunately, the area I lived in didn’t seem to have many cape-worthy problems. The worst threat my initial research binge had turned up was Nadir, and she was a problem everywhere. Immortal supervillains were the worst, even if she’d failed to kill anyone since I was in middle school.
Other than that, there were pretty much only the standard problems, and slightly less than average. There weren’t unusual levels of extra-planar raids, abominations didn’t rip through more than usual, and if any aliens had attacked, they’d kept a low profile. I knew there must be capes in the area, but they were successfully managing to keep things under control.
I slipped in through the door, only a minute late. Not quite on time, but close enough for hand grenades. While I was unfolding my laptop to take notes(1), the professor called my name, “Ashlyn Thresher”. I signaled that I was here, and then started trying to work on my homework until the lecture started.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t managed much. I’d gotten distracted by a discussion post on the “No Savior Needed” forums. Apparently, someone had figured out how to beat the ‘Webbed Tyrant’ in the first month of the game, which sounded improbable to me. She didn’t have an obvious achilles heel like ‘Embodied Terror’, and her stats were too high for any combat strategy to work on her that early.
No Savior Needed was my favorite game, and I was fairly good at it. I had a 4% winrate on full runs, which was much more impressive than it sounded. The game was designed to be as harsh and unforgiving as the Apocalypse it simulated. Your character was a single survivor empowered to capehood at the start of a genuinely world-ending Apocalpyse. The most basic win condition was getting your survivor to the end of the Apocalypse or to safety.
Both options were brutally difficult. It was impossible to clear a run without a hefty amount of luck, or an impossible amount of skill. It didn’t matter which playstyle you used, there would always be a way for the RNG to ruin your week.
Regardless of whether your survivor banded together with a small squad of like-minded individuals, tried to find and maintain a settlement, or struck out alone without any backup, there were a lot of ways the universe could mess you up. If you focused too much on surviving on earth and not enough on what’s going wrong with the other planes, you would be left depending on the RNG to decide how many Calamities would occur. If you were very lucky, you might only wind up having to survive “Finals Season” with four of the twelve crippling global effects. If you were very unlucky, you might have to face all twelve, or even additional rare undocumented variants.
I’d been obsessed with this game for nearly six years now, and it didn’t show any signs of changing soon. The overwhelming mess of paths and optimization meant that I was never bored. I was often frustrated with a doomed run, but even doomed runs could be entertaining. The game was fun! Even my frustration was mostly a good kind of frustration, though I would’ve been tempted to activate some form of omnipotence if I had the option.
The main appeal, of course, was the sheer amount of detail in the factions and worldbuilding of the apocalypse. The devs had spared no effort there. Not only had they accurately depicted all the well-known planes, like Faerie and the Scholomances, they’d also put a lot of effort into the less-verifiable ones. The Reaper’s guilds, known only by myth and urban legend, were given exactly as much detail as the Faerie Realms. Each of the common Calamities had a clear origin, and while it was unclear why the variants happened, I had no doubt the explanation would be consistent if we had been at ground zero when the variant appeared.
Even the powers you could get (2) were almost always designed to be consistent with capes and extraplanar entities, at least within the context of the game! At least, assuming the people who told me that hadn’t been overstating it. I didn’t know enough about real capes to do anything other than blindly accept it, and I didn’t care enough to fill the gap.
After finishing reading the explanation of their run,(3) I started browsing the wiki. I loved looking into the details that I personally couldn’t discover. (4) I was currently reading about the Labyrinths, which weren’t accessible for me until after the War of the Reapers began. By that point, a lot of the smaller conflicts would have already ended, so learning what the outcomes were might’ve made a big difference. I wasn’t sure if it would be useful, but it was deeply fascinating. (5)
Suddenly, the professor’s lecture cut off abruptly, and I looked up from my computer. He’d vanished and his slide-show had deactivated. I looked around. A few other students had vanished as well. It couldn’t have been more than ten, which left a few more than forty people in the room.
The orb appeared a few inches above the stage an instant later. Except for the news ticker wrapped around its middle, it was a perfect sphere. It was about eight feet tall, and glowed a vivid blue.
“Wow! You’ve all been having a miserable time here. Drowning in a hollow and dull existence, desperate for meaning and challenge.” The Orb said, and the words appeared on the news ticker as it spoke, “I’m sorry we’ve left you to flounder in this dull world, but you won’t be neglected any longer.”
I noticed it had hijacked the projectors, and a slide of its speech was written on the slide. It had a background of a meadow filled with flowers.
“The Shutdown has begun. This world is ending. In three years exactly, it will cease to be.” The Orb said, “I don’t have the power to change that, and neither do you. However, rather than shutting it down in an instant, the Powers that See have decided it will go out with a bang.”
The slide changed to a different image of a meadow, this one at night. Something big seemed to be sleeping in the field, but the darkness made it hard to tell what it was.
“We’ve given you new problems, and new tools. You have a chance to survive this. If you live to the end, or if you find a way out, you will be safely transplanted to another world.” The orb said, ”Further explanations will be available, but not from me. It’s time for a lethal little warm up!” The orb said cheerfully, “Something to put you in the right mood for the rest of this reality!”
Pockets of tangible shadows began to slowly form on the stage, each one drifting into the shape of a wolf. The slide changed to one with the new text, and the background of the slide was the same meadow, on fire.
“No one here has any phobias for dogs.” The orb said, “But you’ve got an exceptional ally here, so let’s make it more challenging. An Abyssal Heir to fight another.”
With that, a bigger pool of shadow opened up, and a bundle of shadows shaped like a person rose from it. Four tendrils reached out of its back, and pointed towards us. The impossibly-black shadows that formed its body seemed to flow like ink.
I saw a brown haired girl from the corner of my eye, walking towards the stage. Everyone else was still frozen.
“A few quick tips before I let these things go.” The orb said, “Grab a classification to improve your odds.”
It was interrupted by a sword of light slicing through it, splitting it in two. Both pieces fell to the ground, but the news ticker stayed attached.
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Beside him, the brown-haired girl stood. An identical second girl stood between the shadows and us. They were wearing a finely stitched T-shirt and a pair of silk pants. The entire outfit sparkled with reflected light. Both girls held a sword of light in their hands. I wouldn’t have called the girls tall, but I am told my standards are skewed; they were a little under six feet. (6)
The Orb spoke again, with two voices slightly out of sync, “Kay, don’t move until I’m gone.”
Both halves of the orb slowly floated into the air and slid back together, and carefully moved until they aligned perfectly.
“Apologies for the interruption.” The Orb said, “There is now a barrier around this classroom, so you won’t be able to just run away. It’ll go down three minutes from when I release my beasts, or when all the monsters are destroyed. Have a fascinating time!”
The Orb vanished, and the wolves launched themselves at both Kays. The girls moved quickly, dodging the wolves and cutting any that came too close. Each one the swords hit vanished in a puff of smoke.
Without stopping to process, I activated my system. A screen appeared from thin air to the left side of me, and I scrolled through the class list without stopping to read it. I recognized all of these. I didn’t take time to consider which one to grab. There was only one option that would let me keep everyone here alive.
I didn’t let myself consider that the Dreamer class was a terrible fit for me. I just grabbed it, and raced towards the stage. Once I reached it, I dragged the area into a dream.
---
For what it’s worth, doing that had been an incredibly risky decision. Dreams didn’t let anyone in or out, not until the Dreamer or the enemy were either dead, or done fighting. I had trapped Kay and myself in with over forty shadow wolves and an Imprint.
The Shadow Wolves were even more fragile than real wolves, and no more deadly. That was still much too deadly for me, or my basically-civilian peers, but Kay’s powers let her easily handle the swarm. She’d already killed six.
The person-shaped shadow hadn’t joined the fight yet, but it would soon. I knew this one, even if I was stubbornly refusing to think through the implications. Legionnaire had enhanced durability, enhanced strength, and razor-tipped tendrils. I couldn’t see any of the vines yet, but I knew they would come out as soon as it attacked. It was watching us carefully, waiting for a chance to strike, but it wouldn’t wait much longer.
I had a plan, of course, but it was a terrible plan. I had three options here.
The first was that I could leave Kay to fight alone, but between the wolves and Legionnaire, she would be overwhelmed and die. Once she died, I’d join her, and then the rest of the class would join her after that. If Legionnaire faded when she did, some of them might survive, but I wouldn’t be one of them.
The second option was that I could attack the wolves. This was an equally bad option. Wolves had a ‘pack predator’ behavior pattern. If I attacked any of the wolves, I would draw aggro not from any one wolf, but from all of them. It might ensure Kay would be able to focus on Legionnaire, if she didn’t try to save me, but I would be dead in seconds, and then the wolves would be free to attack my classmates.
That meant I had to take the third option, no matter how much I hated it.
My powers were instinctive. I reached out my arm, and summoned a rock the size of a baseball. I want to be clear here, except for the fact that it only existed within the dream, there was nothing special about this rock. This was the full extent of my current powers, summoning small rocks.
I counted to three, took aim, and threw the rock at Legionnaire. Before it hit, I summoned and threw another one.
Legionnaire had been focusing on Kay, and it didn’t see the first rock coming before it hit it in the side of the face. It staggered for a second, and I summoned and threw a third rock.
It roared, and eight black vines, covered in thorns, sprouted from its back. Four raced directly towards me.
I hurled myself to the ground, and the vines flew above me. I rolled to the left as fast as I could, and another slammed into the ground where I had been. The sixth almost caught me, slamming into the ground an inch ahead of me. I reversed directions, and then the seventh one wrapped around my legs, and dragged me into the air, feet first.
Then it dropped me, a foot from the ground. I panicked, and tried to catch myself. An instant before I hit the ground, it caught me by the legs and lifted me another foot, before dropping me again. I panicked again, more dramatically.
It was toying with me. The instant it got bored, I would die. I wasn’t pretending to panic. It dropped me from three feet this time, and caught me less than an inch from the ground. As I struggled to catch my breath, the vine dropped to the ground completely. Kay had severed it from Legionnaire, dropping it and me to the ground.
I couldn’t pry my legs free, but I was lucky enough to land such that I could watch Kay fighting while I tried to yank myself free.
Kay had already destroyed the Wolves, and was facing Legionnaire alone, now. Both Kays were approaching Legionnaire from opposite sides. It lashed out with vines at the one on the left, who cut through at one of its vines before they speared her. Her body faded into sparkling dust, but the blood staining the carpet remained.
The other Kay moved oddly, like she was moving in two different directions with the same step, and then split in two. One charged Legionnaire, while the other hastily backpedaled.
The attacking one sliced Legionnaire in the face, and its vines lashed out again, messily destroying that body as well. The retreating one split in two again, and split up.
That was the Mirror Princess’ unique ability, “Traveling Two Roads As One”. Neither body was a copy. It might be simpler to say “the body that died was always the copy”. The character could sustain two vessels, and the instant either was destroyed, the other would be able to split in two again. She wasn’t the only one who could do something like that, but she could do it indefinitely and for a trickle of magic. Was Kay the Mirror Princess?
Kay was using the ability to the fullest in this fight. Every few seconds, another one of her bodies died horribly, and managed to hurt Legionnaire a little more. Sometimes the doomed body would slash at a vine, and sometimes it would slash at Legionnaire's main body. It was a gruesome, grinding crawl towards victory. I didn’t look away.
Even as it was all those things, it was magnificent. Kay was always one step ahead of death. As the fight continued, the Legionnaire vines slowly ran out, and then Kay managed to bring it down.
We watched it fade away. The hazy softness of the dream faded with it.
---
[Tutorial Quest: "A Warmup & A Welcome" has been completed.
Bonus Objective: “Destroy all quest monsters” has been completed!
A Temporary Safe Zone has been activated for fifteen minutes!
+200 Quanta
+200 Potential
Tutorial Complete!
Contribution Bonus:
+100 Potential]
[You have assisted in the slaying of Legionnaire’s Imprint. +1000 Quanta, +1000 Potential]
[You have gained a limited achievement: “No one had to die” +1 All Base Stats]
---
Footnotes:
(1) I said “Take notes” but I actually meant “work on homework.” I didn’t learn well from lectures, and by now I’d learned to read the textbooks and slideshows before class, and work on homework during class
(2) Most players could pick from over fifty types, each tied to a specific classification of Capes.
(3) The run had worked, and it was credible! It wasn’t worth doing as described, it involved making a lot of major sacrifices that would outweigh the benefits of removing the tyrant from the game, but it worked! It would take a lot more effort to make it a reasonable opening routing, however. Among other things, their character had died ten minutes after taking down the Tyrant, and they hadn’t had the luck to acquire a death-quest.
(4) Not only in the sense of spoilers or laziness! Because of the player-based spawn points, there were some places I’d never be able to go before a few months in. In another game, that might not have meant much missed content, but given the way the planes exploded into vicious conflict, even in early game? There were definitely significant NPCs and background conflict that would be nearly impossible to discover without experiencing it!
(5) Sometimes it was useful! You never, ever knew! But usually it wasn’t.
(6) At 6’1”, I am on the very edge of being tall by my own standards. These standards set it at 6’2” and higher. As far as I know, this is a coincidence.