Chapter 180: Reflection
Hae-won, like Aegis, had a blank expression on her face as she stared in disbelief at Aegis’ broadcast. The broadcast itself on the screen behind her showed Aegis sitting on his knees on the platform in front of the inner sanctum, staring blankly at the item orbs of purple and blue quality rolling around in front of him.
“Hae-won? You gotta say something.” Tommy said to her through a voice call that connected their Simboxes. She could hear him clearly, but Aegis’ audience of 300,000 viewers could not.
“That’s so unfair… They cured the poison, disabled the protection, stopped all the seekers, and killed the boss. His skill was 3 seconds left from being off of cooldown…” Hae-won whispered in disbelief. She glanced over to look at Aegis chat, and the text was scrolling by at an incredible speed. She saw some messages of support, and some of sympathy. The majority of the comments, however, were of blame. Blaming Aegis, or one of his companions, for how they played out the fight. Suggestions on how they could’ve done it better. Mistakes that were made, both major, and minor, were all being called out, and every choice heavily scrutinized.
“Hey, you guys in the chat with the negative comments. Don’t think I don’t see that shit. Sure, they didn’t play it perfectly, but I’d like to see any of you guys do it yourselves, eh?” Hae-won roared at them. “I see you, Timothy3663. He found the poison antidote too slowly? Huh? How many times have you made an antidote on the fly, while healing someone dying from the poison taking 15,000 damage a second. What’s that? Never? Yeah I thought so.” Hae-won shouted, and the chat was quickly filled with ‘lol’ and ‘stfu timothy’. In a second, she’d gotten the viewers back on the side of Aegis.
“No one has ever cleared an Extreme III quest before, but I think that was the closest we’ve seen.” She paused to take a deep breath and recompose herself. “Any streamer can act cool when they’re winning, but when you fall on your face is the time your true character will come out. Let’s see how Aegis learns and grows from this experience, once he overcomes the initial shock. And be sure to show him lots of love and support.” Hae-won continued.
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Aegis remained staring blankly at the orbs for quite some time. And it wasn’t just him doing it, either. Viella and Seliolara gazed idly as well, both looking at the orbs alongside Aegis.
> “Aegis, you okay?” A familiar voice spoke to him, breaking him out of his trance.
It wasn’t either of the NPCs talking, but rather Jillian talking to him through the Simbox communicator.
“No. I failed. I let everyone down.” Aegis replied to her in monotone, but his voice was heard by not just Jillian, but the livestream and the NPCs around him as well.
> “You did your best. You made really good calls. At the end of the day, don’t forget that this is an MMORPG. It’s about the numbers. The boss just had too much HP to kill it in time. No way we could’ve known. Extreme III quests really are bullshit.” Jillian said, trailing with a laugh as she’d quoted him.
“Yeah…. Right…” Aegis responded in monotone.
> “How about you gather up the items we dropped, then log out for a bit and take a break?” Jillian suggested.
“Yeah… well, no…” Aegis stood up slowly as he turned to look behind him, seeing the tree’s core sitting unprotected. “I can’t leave the tree’s core like this, almost all the guards died.”
“I will begin mending the door. The tree’s power is still intact. I can draw on its lifeforce and make it heal itself.” Seliolara replied, as she broke out of her stare to look at him. Having something to do seemed to bring life back into her eyes, and without any hesitation she began waving her hands around and casting spells. Slowly, the inner sanctum doorway began to fill itself in with the sides of the tree around it growing inward to close up the hole.
“But, then, the monsters that breached the walls… They still need help down below, don’t they?” Aegis said as he worriedly began rushing towards the edge of the platform, but Viella shadowstepped to his side and gently grabbed his arm to stop him.
“The alarm bell stopped ringing. That means they have it under control. The lower city guards and archmages will likely be on their way up here to see what has happened.” Viella explained. “It’s probably better if you are not here when they arrive. At least until I have had time to explain.” Viella finished.
“Right…” Aegis nodded back at her hesitantly. “You probably need this, then…” He took the necklace off that had the inner sanctum key on it and held it out for her. She slowly took it out of his hands and forced a smile as she took it.
“Thanks… And thank you, for saving our people.” Viella said weakly, before shadow stepping out of sight. In a daze, Aegis wandered around the platform and collected the items that his party members had dropped, finishing by grabbing the items that the boss had dropped, without looking at them. In this time, Snowflake had flapped his wings up over the side of the platform and arrived beside Aegis, with Darkwing sitting on his saddle. Darkwing’s head jerked around curiously while he cooed, as if looking for Darkshot.
“Hey, lil buddy.” Aegis said as he looked Snowflake in the eyes, and the gryphon stared back at him. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt as though Snowflake understood what had happened without Aegis needing to say anything, and quickly rushed forward and gave him a soft nudge in his chest with his fluffy head. “I messed up. Got a lot of NPCs killed. Two very important NPCs.” Aegis said with tears swelling in his eyes. The moment he caught himself being frustrated to the point of tears, he took a deep breath to shake it off and turned to Seliolara mending the door behind him.
“I need to leave for a bit. Will you take care of these two?” Aegis asked her.
“Yes, they’ll be safe with me, I promise.” Seliolara nodded back.
“Thanks.” Aegis replied, then turned to his gryphon. “Keep Darkwing safe and do anything Seliolara asks, I’ll be back in a bit.” Aegis instructed his gryphon, who squawked back obediently. He then glanced up at his livestream viewership, and the only thought on his mind was how annoying it was that not only had he failed, but so many people had watched him do it. He couldn’t understand his own emotions flooding into his head at that moment, and knew he needed time to collect them. “Cya.” Aegis waved awkwardly to the gryphon before hitting the logout button, and exiting the simulation.
When his Simbox opened up and he sat up to get out of it, he saw Jillian waiting for him, standing and staring across the living room.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jillian asked, and she saw the tears swelling up in his eyes.
“Yeah, it’s just…” He paused, struggling to think of the words. “They’re just AI, right? I know they’re not real… But, they were looking right at me when they died.” Eli explained as he looked away, and in that moment Jillian gave a knowing nod as she came to understand where Eli’s head was.
“Hell of a game, huh?” Jillian forced a smile.
“Heh. Yeah. Hell of a game…” Eli replied weakly. With that, Jillian walked forward and put her arms around him, pulling him in for a tight hug where he pressed his head against her shoulder. In that moment, despite him being 18, she felt as though she was holding her little baby boy. He remained in her arms, Jillian gently swaying him for a good long minute until Eli pulled back. She was expecting to see him still looking upset, but instead he had a look of anger on his face. One that she’d seen before, but not often.
“Whoa.” Jillian gasped once she saw his expression, causing Eli to catch it and quickly shake it off.
“What?” Eli replied, trying to appear dumbfounded.
“I haven’t seen you look that pissed off since that time you failed that astronomy test in 10th grade.”
“Yeah…” he gave her a slight nod, “I hate failing tests.” Eli replied back with a determined glare which shocked Jillian again. Seeing her reaction though once again caused Eli to hide his expression and shake it off. “I mean, you’re right. It’s an MMORPG. We just need bigger numbers.”
“Yep.” She smiled. “But Kur’aktos was the key to finding out about mithral, right?” She asked as she turned and made her way towards the kitchen. “Mac n’ cheese.” she called out once she’d turned the corner.
“No, not exactly. He said that he sought out the power 100 years ago. That’s after the shattering occurred. Also, he mentioned he’d never been to the surface before. So that means, however or wherever he discovered the key to forging and mining mithral, it must’ve been somewhere near that city, in the underrealm. And on that side of the Red River. That narrows it down a lot.” Eli replied, with determination coming through on his voice once more.
“Ooh, good point.” She replied, “Let’s shower, exercise, and eat. Come down a bit, that was an intense encounter. Then we can plan our next move, okay?.” Jillian said to him in a commanding tone as she poked her head out of the kitchen to watch his expression. He appeared somewhat normal, but Jillain could see in his eyes that he was still shaken up.
“Right. Okay…” Eli nodded back at her hesitantly as he took a few awkward paces around the living room, as if unsure what to do with himself. “I’ll go do a workout and hop in the shower.”
“Good plan.” Jillian smiled back with a nod, watching as her son walked up the stairs and into his bedroom, and shut the door. Hearing the door shut, something Eli rarely did, caused Jillian to let out a worried, exasperated sigh to herself. “He’s gonna beat himself up for this for a while…” She mumbled before turning back into the kitchen to get started on the meal.
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In the end, Eli ended up resting outside of the Simbox for a few hours. After working out, showering, and eating, the calm after the storm of his pumped up adrenaline caused him to crash in his bed. He was woken up a few hours later only when Jillian was notifying him that her log out timer had worn off.
“Hey, I’m going to log back in now. You want to come with me?” Jillian said as she opened his bedroom door and stepped inside to check in on him. She watched him sit up in his bed fully alert and look back at her. Despite laying down, it hardly looked like he had slept a wink.
“Eh…” Eli hesitated.
“C’mon. Darkshot will be happy we at least kept his pigeon alive.” Jillian smiled.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Yeah, but, I let everyone down. I failed the quest…” Eli replied.
“Hah. You think you failed the quest? We all did. Look.” Jillian cleared her throat and put her arms on her waist. “The best players in any team-oriented game will never look to blame others, they’ll always look to blame themselves first. Just like you are doing right now.” Jillian motioned to him laying in the bed.
“What about you? You're not blaming yourself.” Eli replied as he eyed her skeptically.
“Are you kidding me? Of course I am. I’m just not vocalizing it. It’s better if everyone vocalizes their thoughts together. So we can grow as a team. So, come on. I guarantee they’re all waiting for you to log in, to apologize for their mistakes. They won’t feel better until you let them do that, at least.” Jillian grinned. “Mom always knows best.” She grumbled after a moment of seeing him not reacting, grabbing his shirt and tugging him out of the bed with great difficulty. “Damn, you got heavy.” she groaned.
“Alright, yeah, I’m coming.” Eli chuckled at her desperate attempts to get him out of the bed by force, and relented by standing up on his own. The two made their way down the stairs and gave one last quick glance at each other before hopping in their simboxes.
“See you inside.” Jillian called out before beginning her simulation. Eli, however, just remained sitting in his Simbox for a moment without logging in. It took him a few minutes to build up the courage to log in, with the image of Kur’aktos’ disintegrating face flashing in front of him briefly.
“Just a game.” Aegis reminded himself. He took a deep breath to clear his head, then entered the simulation. A few moments later, he found himself standing on the platform in front of the inner sanctum.
The door had been mended shut and returned to its original appearance. In addition, all of the destroyed planks and other signs of battle around him had been cleaned up and mended. It was impossible to ever tell that a great battle had taken place at that location just 24 hours prior.
Standing in front of the door stood Seliolara, with Snowflake and Darkwing huddled up together off to the side of the inner sanctum door, fast asleep.
“Ah, you’ve returned.” Seliolara smiled at him warmly.
“Yeah… Thanks for looking after them.” Aegis smiled back, and the sound of his voice was enough to cause Snowflake’s head to perk up. Very quickly, the gryphon jumped up to his feet and excitedly rushed over to Aegis with a hopping movement that shook Darkwing awake on his saddle, causing Darkwing to coo in annoyance.
“Viella has explained everything to the other Dark Elves. You and your companions are to be regarded as heroes, and the new warlord would like to meet you as soon as possible.” Seliolara explained.
“Really? New Warlord?” Aegis looked back at her in confusion.
“Yes. The oldest of Kur’aktos’ sons, Kaef’aktos, has taken on the role in place of his father. He wishes to personally speak to you about everything that transpired.” Seliolara explained.
“Right… sons. He has sons?”
“Three. They, and his wife, are all eager to speak with you. I promise you they have no ill-will.” Seliolara nodded back.
“Right. Okay.” Aegis smiled back at her awkwardly. “What about my companions? Do you know where they might have respawned? I mean, well, you know. Returned to life?” Aegis asked while scratching the back of his head, struggling on how he ought to word his question to an NPC.
“Yes, outside the city. Viella is retrieving them and escorting them inside. They’ll meet you outside of the palace.” Seliolara replied.
“Okay. Great. I’ll go meet them, then.” Aegis said before giving Seliolara a polite bow. She bowed back, and with that Aegis turned and made his way off the platform and down the ramp with Snowflake and Darkwing trailing behind him.
The long way down the winding ramp gave Aegis time to glance up at his livestream viewership and see it climbing back up to 70,000 viewers from 0 since he’d logged in.
When he arrived at the base of the narrow ramp he spotted two Royal Guards standing watch, heavily armored and bearing the symbol of the White Tree on their iron chest plates. They both turned towards him as he got close and bowed respectfully as he walked by with Snowflake in tow.
It was quite a change in reception that he received from them, compared to when he’d be walking around the city as a Seeker. He made his way around the tree on the palace platform until the palace walls came into view. Sure enough, waiting in front of the palace gates already were Viella, Pyri, Rakkan, Darkshot and Lina.
“Darkwing! There you are!” Darkshot cheered excitedly the moment he spotted Aegis and the two animals. He rushed forward to greet his pigeon who hopped off of Snowflake’s saddle and fluttered over to land on his shoulder, where Darkshot promptly began scratching his head.
“Good, you’ve arrived. I will let everyone know you are ready to meet them now.” Viella smiled and bowed politely to Aegis before turning to enter the Palace. Two Royal Guards that flanked the palace gates opened them on her behalf, then closed them behind her. This left Aegis and his party to stand together a few meters in front of the gate.
Aegis was expecting to get scolded, but instead he saw Lina and Rakkan both shamefully staring down at their feet. So Aegis turned to check Darkshot, and sure enough he too was looking down, after the initial happiness of seeing Darkwing again had faded. When he turned to Pyri, she gave Aegis a knowing ‘I told you’ nod, before stepping forward.
“Okay. I’ll start.” Pyri cleared her throat as the others all looked up at her confused. “I’m sorry, I messed up. If I’d played smarter, none of that would have happened.” Pyri declared.
“What are you talking about? You played perfectly… It was-” Darkshot replied, but Pyri promptly interrupted him with a loud laugh.
“Hah! Are you joking? I didn’t have a single spell that could work around Mayiera’s blackhole. One warlock spell completely shut me down. If I had just learned and leveled up a proper spell to deal with that, I could’ve killed her before she even merged with Kagil’aktos. Bam, no boss.”
“Yeah, bu-” Darkshot tried to interject, but got interrupted again.
“AND! Don’t even get me started on the boss itself. Vulnerable to lightning. Did you know, he was taking 50% more damage from lightning attacks? But because my lighting spells are so low level, they still were not worth using. If I wasn’t relying so much on cinderbolts and thought to level up lightning magic, I would have been doing way more damage to that guy. That fight woulda been over in an instant.” Pyri shouted, and Aegis could see in her eyes that she wasn’t just putting on a show - she was indeed very frustrated with herself.
“It’s the same for me.” Darkshot spoke loudly, this time determined not to let Pyri talk over him. “Travis told me not to just rely on my bow, but I haven’t been leveling unarmed, or any melee weapons, even though my class gets experience bonuses for a few of them. If I had just run in and punched Mayiera, or hit her with some swords, that would've done the trick.” Darkshot explained.
“Not to mention, I never told you guys what Darkwing could do. I thought I was being cool, but, in the middle of the fight I lost focus, and started talking, and it got me killed. If I had just shut my mouth and paid attention… If I was alive a bit longer during that enrage…”
“I’m the reason you died though.” Rakkan chimed in. “I didn’t fully understand how my echos work, I haven’t experimented with them enough. If I hadn’t canceled that echo summon and just dodged, the beam wouldn’t have aimed at you. Then, I went and ate that beam for Darkwing stupidly, instead of just grabbing Darkwing and pulling him out of the way. I knew that the echoes damage would kill me beyond a certain threshold, but I just wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry.” Rakkan explained with his head down.
“I bet if I used smoke bombs, it would have disrupted those eyestalk beams. And the eye blast. I don’t know why I didn’t think to even try it. Sure, the boss probably had truesight, but I bet it would have done something. I was just so focused on dealing damage, I lost all sense of contributing utility to the team.” Lina explained as her head, too, was facing down at her feet.
Aegis was dumbfounded as he looked over his companions and saw their genuine disappointment in themselves. He was sure that the fault was all his own, yet they seemed to all feel the same way.
“Well…” Aegis cleared his throat. “I was slow on the antidote. We should have pre-emptively destroyed that rune before the quest even started. If I thought to do more recon, we probably would’ve learned more about what they were planning as well. But I just rushed ahead into the quest without enough information once I saw the quest reward, and didn’t prepare us properly. Not to mention, I stupidly used my Avatar of Eirene skill at the start of the fight. If I had saved it for the enrage, I would’ve been able to block those eye blasts, and no one would’ve had to jump in for me.” Aegis said, clenching his fists in anger as Kur’aktos’ face once again flashed in front of him.
“Yeah, but the biggest mistake you made was not asking for our help.” Quinn’s voice suddenly called out from behind them. Aegis and his party all looked up to see Quinn, Trexon, Tullan, Herilon and Cheryl all approaching from across the palace platform, surrounded by an escort of four Royal Guards.
“I did give you portal dust, didn’t I?” Trexon said while nodding towards Pyri.
“What the hell are you guys doing here?” Darkshot asked with a skeptical stare.
“We watched it all go down. Sucks, you almost had it.” Quinn replied sympathetically. “But, at the very least, you made the Dark Elves not hate us. So, just like with the Plashrim…” She motioned towards Aegis, then the palace gates.
“You want to try to bring them into the Kordas kingdom?” Aegis asked her.
“Bingo.” She gave Aegis a thumbs-up. “Think you can introduce me to the new Warlord?”
“Uh…” Aegis glanced around to see his companions shrugging back at him. “Yeah, sure, I guess. I still need to be introduced to him too, though.”
“That’s fine. I’ll let you do the talking.” Quinn replied.
“Can’t believe ye’ let him go down. I bet that guy knew how to forge mithral. D’you know how rich Kalmoore woulda been?” Tullan grumbled angrily at Aegis. “Tell the warden to eat the eyeblast next time, not the warlord.”
“Hey, hey…” Herilon stepped in. “There’s a big difference between someone sacrificing themselves, and being asked to sacrifice themselves.” Herilon said to Tullan.
“He’s right.” Trexon joined in.
“Just ignore him, he’s grumpy that you got to see mithral weapons up close and he didn’t.” Cheryl smiled at Aegis.
“How’d you guys get here?” Lina asked them curiously.
“With great difficulty.” Trexon replied.
“We’ve got our own known entrances to the underrealm, one of them is not far from here.” Quinn shrugged. “We never went out into the wasteland though, after we saw it was filled with level 190 raid enemies. You had balls, just sneaking through it.” Quinn explained.
“Those Hydras were level 190?” Rakkan asked her with wide eyes.
“Yep.” Quinn nodded back.
“We ate their steaks at that feast.” Pyri commented as she recalled the names of one of the dishes from the day before.
“Oh, really? How was it?” Tullan asked with intrigue.
“Eh… it was okay. Probably a low level cooking skill. I bet it’d be amazing with a proper chef class player.” Pyri replied with a shrug.
“Aw, we’ve gotta hunt some of ‘em so I can cook ‘em.” Tullan said with a look of determination in his eyes.
“Easy, we’ve got business to settle first.” Quinn reminded him, just as the gates to the palace began to slowly swing open. From them stepped Viella as she looked on at the group of other-worlders that had grown in size since she’d left.
“Uhm… the Warlord requests a meeting with just a small number of you…” Viella replied awkwardly as she glanced between the newcomers.
“That’s fine. Me and Aegis are enough.” Quinn stepped forward, then nudged Aegis in the back to push him forward as well.
“And you are?” Viella eyed her skeptically.
“I am Quinn. Guild leader of the Night Hunters, leading guild of Kordas. I come as a representative of the King of Kordas, the kingdom that rules the surface of this island.” Quinn explained. Hearing this didn’t do the trick for Viella though, and she turned her eyes onto Aegis.
“She’s okay. She’s with me.” Aegis explained.
“Very well. If you’ll both follow me. The rest of you, please wait outside.” Viella bowed respectfully, motioned Quinn and Aegis to follow her, then turned and walked back inside the Palace. Quinn gave Aegis an uncomfortable smile before the two followed in after Viella.