Ever onwards stretched the corridor, into the castle’s gloom. A path of red carpet, lined with an endless procession of stately decorations and faux-gothic flourishes. A hundred years this place had laid abandoned, or so the stories went. One ill-starred night, agents of the dark ones descended upon it, driving its inhabitants to a terrible madness, then vanished from whence they came, as those inside slaughtered each other to a man. None had since tried to claim it. All knew the taint of the dark ones was not so transient. The curse that struck that night would continue to fester inside the walls, waiting to burrow its tendrils into anyone foolish enough to enter. No, let that evil rot and be forgotten. And it was so for a century.
Curious, that it was so tidy.
Not a speck of dust to be seen, nor ornament out of place. Too clean to have been left even a week without maintenance, let alone a hundred years. Did the restless spirits of the castle’s staff haunt the corridor with duster in hand? It would not be the only menial task to be supernaturally maintained. Candles were lit and snuffed out as the aspiring explorer passed, leaving the hallway's impossible length concealed in the opaque darkness.
With time, even the least attentive visitor would find the place disquieting, as previously passed decorations appeared in new, inexplicably altered orders. With such narrow, encroaching walls, surrounded by darkness, it was a claustrophobic, paranoia inducing place, and yet...So alluring. It beckoned to the bold and ambitious. Such places were sure to house unimaginable treasures, were they not? Was House Frostbriar not once the greatest of the old Nobles? Surely, if it was as untouched as the stories told, the family's vast wealth would be hidden somewhere, deep in the bowels of castle. Was that unimaginable fortune perhaps hidden just out of sight, beyond the end of the corridor?
Short answer, no.
There was nothing beyond the corridor.
The corridor wasn’t real…Well, nothing here was real, per se, but the corridor was more not real than most other locations in Archon Online. At least most places had consistent geography. The corridors of the castle barely had consistent geometry. ‘Haunted and cursed’ was the in-character explanation. ‘It’s keeps people distracted while matchmaking does its job’ was the real one. An elevator button, if you will. A fancy loading screen, if one wanted to be more literal. One that could continue for, without exaggeration, hours.
Not today, though. For one last day, as it had been in those halcyon times just after its addition, Castle Frostbriar was bustling and lively, metaphorically speaking. Thousands upon thousands of otherwise uninterested players had turned up for its farewell. It wasn't surprising. There were achievements tied to the place, and with them, a tiny amount of extra ARC rating.
It wasn’t like they were new. Everyone had just been content to leave them till ‘later’. At least, up until there wouldn’t be a ‘later’.
The darkness shifted slightly, ever so slightly less impenetrable. My ears perked up as the silence shifted in texture, as the tiny, atmospheric spooky noises stopped and the physics engine kicked back into gear. I pushed myself off the wall I’d been leaning against and walked towards it.
A duel was imminent.
With a single step forward, the corridor came to life, as a full row of candles burst into light and revealed a distant foe.
Sixty seconds until duel start
-Wolfram-74 v xXxSh4d0wEdgexXx-
I suppressed a chuckle at my opponent’s username. It was an appropriate name for his appearance, all dressed up in black cloth, adorned with a veritable gallery of exotic patterns. Dragons and lightning bolts and other such gaudiness decorated his ostensibly stealthy gear, all topped off with a shock of spiky red hair. A look at his stat page did little to change my initial estimate of his skill.
Character Stats xXxSh4d0wEdgexXx LVL.80 ARC.810 Assassin [60] Charlatan [10] Fencer [10] Attributes Strength 60 [+95] Endurance 60 [+20] Agility 255 [+513] Wit 60 [+20] Focus 105 [+45] Fervour 60 [+20] Blah Blah [+Blah] Etc Foo [+Bar]
The first two lines told me all I needed to know. I was vaguely aware that ASN/CHR/FEN was a meta raiding build -iframe abuse to supplement the Assassin’s extreme single target damage for speed-killing bosses, if I were to guess it’s exact purpose-, but my knowledge of such things was years out of date at this point and, in any case, it really didn’t really matter. All I needed to know was that he was a non-spellcaster with no piercing attacks.
As was to be expected, my opponent took the opportunity to size up my stats in turn. From his derisive grin, he didn’t think much of my own build either.
“Holy shit, what the fuck is that armour you're wearing?" he asked, barely able to contain his mirth, “What’s that meant to be? A fashion set?” An understandable response from someone with little experience in duelling. A set of full plate armour polished to a mirror sheen and ornately patterned with faintly glowing filigree, the Bronze Clover set was an impressive piece of 3D art -far more than an otherwise middle of the road armour set deserved-, and as a level fifty four quest reward, the Bronze Clover set may as well have been a t-shirt and jeans for all the defence it provided. Irrelevant in the Stomping Grounds, where equipment stats were ignored, but Castle Frostbriar bore no such constraints.
Not that armour rating was relevant here either, but that was another kettle of fish.
"Mmm, you'd be surprised, I think," I answered, rolling my wrists out of habit and carefully ignoring my opponent unsubtly edging his way into range of his gap closer.
"Look, dude, tell you what, you surrender now and avoid wasting both my time and yours. The servers are going down in ten minutes, but I’m nearly done with the achievements. I’ll try to re-queue into you and trade it back, yeah?” he said. Perhaps the condescension in his tone was merely my imagination and he sincerely thought he was doing me a favour, or maybe he was a scumbag that didn’t want to waste time. Either way, he’d entirely misjudged my intentions.
I wasn’t here for achievements. I was here because, tomorrow, my preferred past time of half a decade would be gone for good. For most, it would likely be remembered as an unbalanced joke. Castle Frostbriar was broken beyond repair, or so the developers had declared. I was here to show as many players as I could, for the sake of posterity, that ‘broken’ didn’t mean ‘simple’ or 'shallow'. Frostbriar had always been a place for the skillful and that was how I wanted it to be remembered. The more people I demonstrated that to, the better.
“Mmmmm, no... I think it'd be more interesting if you show me your best " I said, a confident grin concealed beneath my helmet. My opponent rolled his eyes and drew his two daggers. For the sake of not being entirely disrespectful, I drew my spear and shield, though my stance was no less loose or casual.
“S’whatever.”
-DUEL START!-
He lead with a Cheap Shot. "A quick stab to the gut" was the skill's description. A bald faced lie; the teleporting attack was neither quick nor to the gut. I juked forward. The attack’s tracking broke, dumping the assassin a foot out of range. He lunged at me, with a flurry of attacks -Lacerate, Hamstring, Killing Blow, Coup de Grace- that I flowed around lazily. His attacks weren’t slow, but I could read his flowchart better than he could. Again and again, he struck without progress, transitioning from an optimal rotation, to chucking out attacks as they cooled down, burning through energy and all the while growing more and more frustrated.
"STAND -grunt- FUCKING STILL," he demanded with all the authority of a tantrum-throwing preschooler. Another rotation of abilities without anything closer to a solid hit was enough to trigger a change in tactics. With an easily punishable Back Dash, he opened up enough space to feel safe about his next move.
“UNSEEN ASSAILANT,” he declared, as he faded from sight with the Assassin's signature ability. Unlike most forms of invisibility, which couldn't be sustained through the user's attacks, Unseen Assailant would remain active until the buff expired. Invisibility wasn't a bad tactic by any measure (besides maybe regarding balance), but it required a certain subtlety and to be exploited to its fullest extent, and my opponent had proven anything but subtle so far.
It was a good thing my helmet was down. I wouldn't want my opponent to think I enjoyed tormenting him.
Eliminate wasn't a quiet attack, despite its described purpose. It was preceded by an audible *shing* that acted handily as a cue. I struck an authoritative pose against the backdrop of a great, red flag, magically conjured from the aether. There was a *thump* my opponent passed through me without resistance and landed on the ground. Like most panic buttons, Rallying Banner came with a short window of invulnerability, where I technically didn't exist1.
I spent two more similar iframes this way, which would've been utterly irresponsible if this were anything approaching an even match, but I had the leeway to showboat. Unseen Assailant only had a twelve second duration, followed by a two minute cooldown, which was more or less the end of the line. Assassin as a whole wasn't known for its potential in sustained combat, nor for being a particularly multidimensional class as a whole. Fencer and Charlatan only exacerbated those problems.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Now, the 'correct' decision for my opponent would've been to spend his remaining time putting himself in something of a defensible position. The most optimal strategy, for what it was worth, would've been to stall as long until his cooldowns came back up...But, if he did that, I would've laughed. The servers weren’t going to be up for much longer. The clock was ticking. At this point, my opponent was desperate. He'd thrown everything he thought he'd had at me and seen nothing for it. He'd go for a Hail Mary, I was sure of it.
There were plenty of ways I could've answered. I could've moved a step backwards, entirely out of range. I could've spent another iframe. I could've jumped to the other end of the corridor. I could've entered a Counter Stance and instantly killed him as he went for the attack.
But I didn't.
Instead, I just stood there, arms crossed as the air around me turned an ominous green. It would’ve been so easy to take a step forward, but I wanted to show the other side of a good duellist.
"VIPER'S FANGS!"
By conventional logic, the Bronze Clover set should've been an awful choice, but anyone experienced with Unadjusted PVP knew that very that few stats truly mattered in Frostbriar. For any player past level thirty, damage versus defence skewed so far towards the former that neither stat mattered. There was cooldown reduction, there was attack speed, there was cast rate and, of course...
-Blocked- -Blocked-
...There was block chance.
Oh, excuse me.
Block 'chance'.
Silenced reigned for maybe a second, as I looked back at my opponent. Mister Sh-four-d-zero-w stared at the two daggers embedded in my logic-defyingly unharmed back. His eyes were wide with incredulity and his shoulders were slumped in defeat.
I opened my helmet's visor to make sure he could see me wink.
“Good game."
-Wolfram-74 has surrendered.-
* * * * * * * *
1Better known as an 'iframe'.
* * * * * * * *
Logging out brought with it a bittersweet melancholy. It was a better feeling than I expected, really. Seeing Frostbriar busy for one last day was almost as satisfying as actually schooling the scrubs in how to really duel. Even with that balm, I'd expected it to hurt more. The dev update that'd announced the plan had been like a dagger at the time, but the painful knowledge had faded to little more than a dull ache at this point. It wasn't like I didn't understand why. As much as I loved PvP Duelling in Archon Online, even I could admit it was horrifically flawed. Beyond repair? No, but there was enough baggage that I understood regardless.
Blocking was the worst gatekeeper, both for newbies and viable classes. Every duellist needed 165% Block Chance. That was the sweet spot where every blocked hit was reduced in damage by 100%, which naturally meant every hit. Most resorted to the infamous two shields build to achieve it, but a General like myself could barely reach it with one, plus the bonus received from wearing the full Bronze Clover set. For your average PvE player, blocking was bypassed easily by most bosses and thus a minor concern at best. Players had far fewer options. If you wanted to be a duellist, you needed a separate build, a class that could viably use that build AND could damage enemies through their 165% block chance.
And that was just the beggining.
Though it was the greatest divider, there were a host of other; invisibility, area denial, counters, iframes, to name a few. Though navigating such things were what made Duelling so fun and challenging, it was little wonder that it’d never been as popular as it should’ve been. At its base, Archon Online was game based around a team of players, fighting monsters. It’d never been balanced with Duelling in mind.
The Alchemist, the uncontested king of duelling, exemplified these problems. It was spellcaster that had no need for a primary weapon, short cast times and an impossibly diverse list of utility effects. Abilities like Acid Pool and Gas Grenade, usually balanced by their low damage, ground other players into hamburger right through blocking. Of the top twenty players, sixteen were Alchemists. Of the remaining four, there were two Magicians, an Inquisitor...
...And a General.
Not that really I had any right to be proud of that.
Though my dedication might’ve been 'immortalised' in the achievement and title ("Heir to Frostbriar") I’d received a week ago when the ranking system had been discontinued, that was all it really represented. Rank had been a matter of number of victories. I wasn’t the sixth best duellist to ever grace the game. I was just stubborn. Of the accounts ranked in the top twenty, only maybe eight had logged on in the last year and, of them, only four had been to Frostbriar in that span. If any of the others had, I'd have hoped to hear from them. I knew all of them by name, after all. At this point, they were about as close to 'friends' as anyone I had left.
I didn't talk to many people anymore.
The monolithic VR-Pod that dominated my tiny apartment could be assigned the majority of the blame for that. My parents had bought it as half-graduation, half-eighteenth birthday gift. Back then, everyone called them the future of gaming...And maybe they still were. Five years later and people were still trying. For now, however, the pod may as well have been synonymous with 'Archon Online'. No other game could replicate the response or feel of Archon's immaculately responsive controls, nor the detail of its immersion. For a company that'd sprung up more or less out of nowhere, the polish that Aethernaut Games had put on their magnum opus was almost unbelievable. Unfortunately, they were also infamously cagey, especially when it came to the game's engine. Whatever witchcraft they were privy to, they weren't sharing it.
Now, even if the servers were only to be down for a couple of hours, I felt lost and listless. In the year since I'd left university, my life had been divested of all definition. Finishing my degree had been the last concrete goal I’d maintained, completing the roadmap I knew my parents would’ve wanted me to finish. Without that, every day seemed to flow together into a slush that had been increasingly devoured by Archon Online. In that moment of clarity, I couldn't rightly say how much of it was out of enjoyment, and how much had been driven by sheer competitive spirit. My obstinance extended far beyond enduring the excessive wait between matches.
General wasn't some secret powerhouse only I knew about. Nearly every round I fought against someone of comparable skill, I was at a disadvantage. Though access to a proper weapon allowed me access to tools unaccessible to nearly anyone else, it was in exchange for nearly all the utility of a better class. I couldn't steal wins with a well placed Gas Grenade or Arcane Mischief. I had no Camouflage Potion or Unassailable Character to give myself breathing room. Against anyone of any skill, I lost more than I won.
That feeling when I won, though? That feeling when I lined up my iframes and predicted my opponent's position just right?
It was what got me up in the morning for an entire year.
I wouldn’t be getting that from Archon Online anymore. I didn't have the same investment in any other game mode, and Aethernaut had actually spent time and energy balancing them. Anything forward wouldn't be the same...but then, did it really need to be? I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t remember a time where I enjoyed other things besides Archon Online.
In a brief moment of insanity, I wondered if I might be happier ending my time with Archon Online, going out and finding a job.
...or maybe it’s about time I get back into raiding.
I booted the pod back up, eyeing the time. Five minutes. Surely, that was enough time to make my next character. I already had an image and an idea in my head. A fresh start for a fresh patch.
Back when I was unlocking all the classes, I used the exact same model each time, which was more or less as close to creating myself as an avatar as I could get. Pale skin, a shade above average height, a dark brown mop in dire need of a brush and a build that sat on the midpoint between ‘thin’ and ‘muscular’, as the programmers hadn’t deemed it worthwhile to allow for a male character that was neither. The look lived on with my General and main, Wolfram-74. In time, 'me, but slightly better' had grown tired and I'd used my newer characters to become someone very different. The more permanent additions to my roster were an eclectic bunch. There was the tall, severe Gunslinger, the (tastefully) sexy Bandit Queen, the scholarly Diabolist, the innocent and affable Magister...
...And as the sixth and final member of the gang, I decided upon a young, spunky Tinker girl. I’d vaguely wanted to revisit a Tinker-primary class for some time. Gunslinger didn’t really scratch the same itch.
It began with the bright purple pixie cut. Perhaps something more outlandish like a Mohawk would’ve been more appropriate for the concept but, just like my Bandit Queen, I couldn’t help dialing it back a little. Deciding on the perfect shade was a pain, but the rest of her appearance just sort of slotted into place once I decided on that. Short and thin; almost spindly in appearance, but the character creator wouldn’t let me go that far. A sort of ‘common’, almost tomboyish face that would look perfect with a pair of goggles. I took one last pass at her, admiring my handiwork. Though she looked like a young girl, I was reasonably sure she looked ‘interesting’ enough to avoid attracting the wrong sort of attention.
Vaguely pleased with myself, I confirmed her as a Tinker and christened her ‘Aurum-71’. My vision faded to black as I was pulled into the tutorial area.
Considering the servers had been offline for a full three minutes, it was at this point I should probably have realised something was wrong.