38. Battle Grounds: Preparation
Several days passed, and the guild drama began to settle. The forum thread started by Ulasha gained thousands of replies. I didn’t bother to read more than a tenth of them. Most of them were people arguing about the DSS while seemingly having less knowledge of that law than I did myself and speculating what my new classification meant. A large number of them seemed to think that meant that I was being written out of the game, and were expressing various degrees of disappointment, anger, or celebration. I knew that wasn’t the case at all. I might have been confused on the matter had I not had the discussion with my lawyer, but now I was confident of my situation.
I wasn’t class eight because I was being retired. I was class eight because there was no other classification which could apply to me except for class ten. And if I was class ten, then, well, I didn’t really understand the implications of that. As Kellen had explained things, it wouldn’t really change things much in Lagrea, but it might seriously upend things on earth.
If I were class ten, then I would qualify for citizenship in most countries which had signed some version of the DSS. I’d have the same rights as an earth human, rather than having the same rights as a corporation, which was the status that Thedum and many other self-owning AIs enjoyed.
But ultimately, that wasn’t my problem. While I was, at Kellen Moore’s suggestion and provocation, moving forward down that path, I was far more focused on leveling and assuring that Rain II ascended to the throne. I had another meeting scheduled with Kellen to follow up on the previous one, but that wasn’t for weeks.
First came the battlegrounds I had promised to set up for the various factions warring on earth. I had already received the funds for the five dungeon cores and converted them into a single battle core according to the arrangement that the winners of the auctions had agreed to. The battle core had thirty charges. It was restricted to a ten square mile location in North Shire, on top of a former bandit hideout with three encampments surrounding it that my forces had set up during the siege leading up to the Battles for North Shire, along with whatever modifications the Travelers had made to the area in the time since the land had been leased to them. And the death penalty for dying in the battle ground was reduced by seventy percent. Not the ninety percent that the Travelers had enjoyed during the Battle for North Shire, but that twenty percent difference allowed for an additional thirteen charges, and all parties agreed that was a fair trade.
With two days left before the first battleground was set to start, it was time for me to visit the grounds and finish my end of the bargain. I rode west from Ebbyvale to the lands where the battlegrounds were set to take place with Tarisha, Marvin of Cincinatti, Lucile of Socal, and eight players from a mix of other guilds who had worked their way into a spot in Tarisha’s bodyguard system. I didn’t think that I’d need them, considering that the bandits had been routed from my lands. I was expecting this to be a simple errand, but they enjoyed accompanying me and I didn’t mind their company either, so I didn’t argue when Tarisha put her team together.
I was pleased to have them, however, when we were confronted by a large armed force of endgame Travelers. Twelve of them strong, they were all from the guild
“Halt!” called their leader. “The road ahead is closed to all Travelers!”
My eyes went wide at the audacity that they would block me on my own land. I had just run the bandits off, and already they were returning?
“They’re not bandits, Hail,” Tarisha said before I could get too far into my indignation, “They’re security guards. They’re here to keep people from mapping the modifications that are being made to the battlegrounds in advance. Hello Neven. Are your eyes really that bad that you don’t recognize one of the most recognizable faces in the game? This is Lord Hail. If you keep him from going through, then he can’t set up the battlegrounds properly for tomorrow, and everything goes out the window. Isn’t that right, Lord Hail?”
I took a minute to calm down when I saw that she was correct, then I shrugged. “I’m not really sure. The entire point of this trip was to explore what options would unlock once I visited the land itself. I’ve already set up everything that I can set up from my throne. The schedule is locked in and ready, it’s just the particulars that are left over to decide. We could probably leave things up to the system and everything would turn out alright.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that your bosses would be perfectly fine with ‘leaving things up to the system,’ Neven,” Tarisha teased.
Neven, the leader of the force that had confronted us, visibly paled as he realized his blunder. Then he hardened his expression. “Lord Hail may pass. The rest of you will have to wait here for him to return.”
“Tarisha goes where I go,” I insisted.
“I’ve already signed the same NDA that you have, Neven. I’m not even planning on participating. If you actually check the list of approved visitors, you’ll see that I’m on it, as is everyone I brought with me today. Now stop stepping on your own dick and get out of our way,” Tarisha scolded.
Neven scowled, then began fiddling with his interface and muttering to himself. Tarisha chuckled.
“This is the sort of thing that pro players get caught doing when they’re struggling to make ends meet, Lord Hail,” Tarisha explained. “They’re likely being paid in earth currency for their time here rather than gold. However, unless I’m wrong, I doubt that they’re making significantly more than minimum wage. With time dilation, it’s usually more lucrative to carry pay-to-win players through dungeons and raids for gold and exchange it for earth currency than to accept a fixed wage like they’re likely receiving.”
Neven looked up, his expression darkening. “What is that supposed to mean, Tarisha?”
“Nothing. We all have bills to pay,” she answered, her voice completely neutral. “Lord Hail has asked me to help him learn about Earth’s economy. Pro-gamer compensation falls under that umbrella, does it not?”
Neven grumbled and went back to checking his list. After a moment, he cleared us to continue riding through, as well as sending a message ahead to the teams preparing the area for the coming wars.
“Are you going to explain why you felt the need to irritate him like that?” I asked Tarisha. “I’m pretty sure you did it on purpose.”
“
“I see,” I said, and I think I sort of did.
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We rode along the westerly road until we came to the choke point where the bandits had set up their ambushes. A grove of trees bordered the south of the road, with the bandit’s camp hidden between a river and a hill. When the Freelancers had been in operation, they would hide in the trees on the Ebbyvale side of the river, with a pincer force on the other side of the bridge, trapping their targets while they were crossing.
It was a clever setup, but it had also left them vulnerable to siege; when my forces encircled them, they were unable to escape due to being surrounded by hills to the north, a river to the west, and a small forest cutting off the southeast.
This was already the site of two battlegrounds, as the bandit camp had survived the first battle I had initiated to conquer it. While the most popular videos of the Battles for North Shire were from the final battle, the two battles fought in this location were a close second. As Ebbyvale itself was obviously off limits, and this plot of land was mostly vacant, it had been both the most popular of the options available, and the easiest to arrange in time for the scheduled battles.
Once we were through the choke point, we were once again approached, although this time I felt significantly less threatened, as the Travelers in question ranged from levels fifty all the way down to level four. In fact, it was the level four who approached us; a tall woman with blond hair and glasses.
“You are Lord Hail?” she inquired, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “My name is Lucile Becker. I’m the forewoman of this project. It’s been an interesting experience, trying to line up my employer’s vision with the reality of what is possible within this game. I understand you’re here to put on the finishing touches, but I need to know before you proceed whether or not your actions will lock the surroundings down, or if we can continue to make modifications right up until the final moment.”
I paused to consider the question. “I’m honestly not certain. Let me ask the system.”
<
<
“Huh,” I said. “It sounds like you can not only work up to the last moment, but that you can make changes in between battles if you’re fast enough. You’ll have to be pretty quick about it, though.”
“Really?” Lucile said. “That would have been very useful to know two days ago, while we were still planning this thing. We were operating under the assumption that once the rush started there was no stopping it.”
“The other part of the answer is that the damage caused by Travelers to the battleground will be averaged out and applied to the true version of the world,” I informed her. “So I don’t really think it will be possible to plan what changes you make. You’ll be reacting to whatever damage your forces cause over the course of thirty battles, and I know Travelers well enough to know that it will be completely unpredictable. It’s even likely that your plans will leak and some forces will actively troll you by preventing them.”
Lucile frowned, but nodded. “You’re correct, of course. But not entirely. One of the zones we created was a stone labyrinth to the southwest of here. Now that the gruntwork is done, it’s a very simple matter for us to raise walls and change the basic layout. And it shouldn’t be too hard to conduct basic repairs on the main field. I need to confer with my superiors to see how this information will impact our plans.”
I glanced at the sun rather than checking the time through the system. “I’ve got a few hours for this task, Lucile, but not all day. I need to finish grinding out my levels before the battlegrounds start.”
“I’ll make it quick,” she promised, stepping off and holding one hand to her ear as she began speaking to people who were not there.
I shrugged off her idiosyncrasy and surveyed the former bandit camp while she was busy. While the videos of the site in the Battles for North Shire had shown a series of poorly constructed huts and tents strewn together, the Traveler construction teams had put up watchtowers, stone bunkers, deep trenches, and ramparts, creating a complex no-man’s-land.
As I understood things, this was meant to be the primary battle zone, with Siege, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and various other methods of PVP being designated for this zone. I wandered about idly, and was balancing on a rampart when Lucile came to me for clarification.
“Is it still possible to change the schedule?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not,” I answered. “The throne asked me if I was really, really sure before I confirmed it. None of the locations for the battles have been fixed yet, however. If that helps.”
There was a chance that I could <
“I see. Thank you. I’ll have a solution for you soon, I just needed clarification on that point,” Lucile informed me. She went back to her ‘conference call,’ while I climbed one of the watchtowers. From the top, I could see the reinforced encampments that my army had built to entrap the bandits. Including the siege equipment which was lying about in pieces.
“I’m surprised they haven’t been put back together,” I commented, pointing them out to Tarisha.
“I’m actually fairly certain that they were taken apart, Lord Hail,” she informed me. “I’m not supposed to know this, but part of the ongoing challenge for the siege scenarios will be figuring out how to assemble trebuchets and catapults from partially constructed pieces. There’s plenty of redundancy, and now that you’ve informed them that they can make changes to the field between battles, they’ll likely be hauling some of it away and putting it in storage to bring back out in case full sets are destroyed by the battles.”
I considered the explanation, then shrugged. I really didn’t have a horse in this race, after all, so however the Travelers wanted to set things up was just fine with me.
An hour and thirty minutes later, Lucile finally tracked me down again. She looked almost haggard, but she proudly announced “We have a solution that everyone is happy with.”
“Really?” I asked.
“No. But everyone is mutually unhappy about it, which is basically the same thing,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “That’s what compromise is.”
I nodded at the sagacity of her words. “So then, you’re ready for me to get to work?”
“Yes. I’m sorry that it took so long. How does this next part work?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure,” I admitted. “Let me ask the system.”
<
I listened to the system’s response, then turned to Lucile. “So, I guess there’s two basic options. Either I can stand in the center of the battleground and set a radius for it to extend in every direction, or I can generate flags and place them. Except that it sounds like I don’t actually have to be the one to place them, I can just generate them and hand them over to your team. I like that option better.”
Lucile raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Is that all it takes? I’m quite certain we can make that work. Let’s start with Battles one through eight, eleven, thirteen, nineteen through twenty-two, and twenty seven...”