40. Battlegrounds: Acolyte

I drew Acolyte. And I was the first among the others to break the silence as I began filling the room with curses to the seven hells. The others knew what that meant, and the one of us who hadn’t drawn yet exhaled a sigh of relief. Lucky bastard. I mean, he was me, but he was still the lucky one.

We changed into our respective gears in relative silence. We didn’t need to talk, we’d been anticipating this for weeks now. Perhaps if we were different people there would have been chatter, but everything that we might have said to one another had already been considered while we were together. We simply exchanged nods before logging into the world of Lagrea and waiting the last few moments for the battlegrounds to begin.

I had selected a random name and appearance, leaving me with red hair and freckles. I had decided, before splitting, not to use the Hagi name in battlegrounds. Only [Lord] would participate as one of my established identities, that identity being Hail of course.

I entered the world in a inn in Eolstree, where I had logged out the night before. Seeing no point in moving on, I simply sat in a chair next to the bed and waited.

Travelers of Lagrea!

A Call to Arms has been issued!

Prepare yourself for a non-stop, weekend long bout of battlegrounds, sponsored by

The Coalition of Omega Gaming Solutions, AMDvidea, and NeXus international (Team Red)

vs.

The alliance of TeslaMegacorp, Nestle Omnicorp, and MitsubishiFord (Team Blue)

With special thanks for our host, Hail Jeoran!

This is a canon event in the history of Lagrea!

Thirty back-to-back battles, with unique challenges and customized dynamic maps!

The Death Penalty has been reduced to 30% of normal for these events!

There are no Reputation gains nor losses associated with these battlegrounds!

Rewards? Who knows? You’ll have to take part and find out! All we know for certain is that they scale with performance!

Will you join the battle and be part of history?

Join Team Red

Join Team Blue

Mercenary: Shed any allegiance in favor of getting into the melee faster!

Pacifist: Battlegrounds aren’t for everyone.

Selecting this option will grant a buff which will automatically pass on all Red vs Blue Battlegrounds.

It can be removed at anytime, if you change your mind.

I sighed at the wall of text. I’d been expecting it. I’d entered it into the system very carefully after negotiating with the corporations which had purchased my cores. Well, I hadn’t personally negotiated it. I’d left that to Liam, my Australian friend who knew far more about these sorts of matters than I did. The initial version that the companies had wanted me to post was significantly longer and hadn’t included vital information which the system required to be in the message, such as the mention of Reputation. It had taken almost a dozen drafts before they had settled on a version which I could enter into the prompt that also made everyone happy.

Or, as Lucile Becker had put it, a version which made everyone equally unhappy. Personally, I didn’t care one way or the other, so long as it was clear to all of the Travelers who saw it knew what they were signing up for. I had no inkling of how serious the conflict between Team Red and Team Blue was on Earth. It must have been a pretty big deal, considering the finances involved.

Since I had no horse in this race, I selected the Mercenary option. I had checked with Tarisha to make certain that this would be socially acceptable on Earth. She assured me that it would be fine. In fact, it would be better to appear as a mercenary, as that way I’d look neutral in the matter, allowing the system to determine which side I fought for. I saw her reasoning on the matter.

I waited patiently for the system to whisk me away, which it did momentarily.

The First Battleground is an ancient favorite!

Capture the Flag!

Navigate the map to find the hidden flag, then return it to your base before the enemy takes it from you!

Following each capture, the flag will respawn in a randomized location!

You have been randomly assigned to Team Red!

Battleground One Begins!

Victory Condition: Team Red is ahead on points when time expires,

or Team Blue Morale reaches zero

Loss Condition: Team Blue is ahead on points when time expires,

or Team Red Morale reaches zero

Team Red Morale: 200

Team Red Captures: 0

Team Blue Morale: 200

Team Blue Captures: 0

Battleground begins in 05:49

Battleground ends in 1:05:49

Good Luck!

This Battleground sponsored by He-tap!

I zoned into the bandit camp inside of a dugout shack with fifty Travelers. The walls were glowing brightly red, with an impassible wall of light sealing three exits to the squat building.

I was shocked to realize just how heavily instanced the area was. There were thousands of unique instances stacked on top of each other for this battleground. If there were fifty players on each team in each instance, then hundreds of thousands of Travelers were taking part in this event. I was still contemplating the scale of that when a Traveler with a deep voice spoke up.

“Alright everyone, it’s game-time. Raise your hand if you’re a healer!” the burly man said.

I and five other Travelers raised our hands.

“Right, that’s good, we’ve got six. That means we split up into six teams. We explore the map in those teams, and if anyone sees the flag, we call it out in battlegrounds chat,” he said. “Is anyone here a battleground noob? Raise your hand, there’s no shame in it!”

Several members raised their hands, and the deep-voiced man began calling out advice on how to succeed, but it all ultimately came down to killing the other team without dying yourself in my opinion. Well, that, and apparently capturing the flag.

Seven players approached me while the timer counted down. A warrior gave me a look up and down and said “Fancy outfit. You pay-to-win?”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“No, just lucky,” I answered. “I found a few rare spawns.”

“Right,” He said. “You any good as a healer?”

“I’m okay PVE. I’ve never healed in PVP before,” I answered honestly.

“Well shit, why are you wasting our time then?” he scoffed.

“Don’t be a jerk,” a mage scolded him.

“Whatever. Look kid, if we find the flag, I’m going to grab it, and all you have to do is follow me home and keep me alive. That’s it. Do that and we win,” he said dismissively.

“I’m not an idiot. I know what capture the flag means,” I said. “And it’s not that simple. They’re going to see that I’m a healer and focus me down. Everyone needs to work together or--”

The discussion continued -- with nobody taking the lead or issuing a strategy other than splitting up to find the flag -- until the timer hit zero and the walls of light vanished. I had been trying to form some sort of chain of command, but the moment the battle officially began, the others took off out of the dugout at a sprint. Cursing, I chased after them.

In what I was pretty certain was the wrong direction. I knew where we were, of course, having helped to set up the map. I recognized the bunker that the system had assigned as Team Red’s base and knew where it was in relationship to the rest of the camp. We were heading towards the border of the battleground, whereas I was pretty certain that the flag would always spawn somewhere between our base and Team Blue’s.

“We’re heading the wrong way,” I called, but the others ignored me. It wasn’t until we hit the boundary and a flare of white light flashed in front of the warrior leading the charge that the others paused.

“Okay, that’s bullshit!” The warrior complained. “How are we supposed to know the outline of the battleground if the edges aren’t marked?”

“They are marked,” I pointed out. “You just ran face first into the marker. This is the northeastern edge of the battleground.”

“I meant on the map. All we have is a huge area covered by fog of war,” he complained. Then he frowned. “No, wait, it’s updating. Now that we’ve hit this corner it’s shrunk down.”

“You were relying on your minimap when it was covered with fog of war? Are you an idiot?” the mage asked. She scoffed and turned to me. “Hey kid, how did you know that we were going in the wrong direction?”

I pointed at the hills beyond the border. “Everyone knows the basic layout of the camp before DeltaEpsilon Development modified it. Those hills were on the northeastern corner. That means we spawned in the east. We need to head towards the river if we’re going to find anything.”

“Apparently not everyone,” the mage said, glancing at the glowering warrior. “Looks like the PVP noob did more research in preparation for this battle than any of the rest of us.”

“I’m not a PVP noob,” I said. “I was in both Mooncrest Manor and the Battles for North Shire. Just not as a healer.”

“Alright,” one of the rogues with us said. “We’re listening. What do you think we should do?”

I thought for a minute, then shrugged. “Honestly, I think we should team up with one of the other six groups that split up and camp the enemy base. Let them find the flag for us, then take it from them when they try to capture it. That way, we can also cut off their reinforcements where they spawn to drive their Morale down even faster. I think we were way too quick to split up at the beginning like we did, and --”

Team Blue has captured the flag!

Team Red Morale: 189

Team Red Captures: 0

Team Blue Morale: 211

Team Blue Captures: 1

The flag will respawn in a random location in 00:48

“What the hell?” the warrior exclaimed. “How did that happen?”

A disembodied voice answered him. “I’m the only survivor of Alpha Squad. We found the flag at the same time as team blue, but they outnumbered us three-to-one. The idiots in my squad--”

“Wait, you guys took the time to name yourselves, and you chose ‘Alpha Squad?’” a random voice interrupted. The survivor continued speaking as though he had not been interrupted.

“The idiots in my squad charged them anyway and they got stomped. I only survived because I’m not an idiot. Blue team is not spreading out guys. They’re divided into two, not six like us. They’ll cover less ground, but unless we match their strategy they’ll stomp any group of ours they come across. It also helps that both of their teams somehow left their base in more or less the right direction.”

I tuned into the battleground voice chat to explain. “They probably spawned near the river. Everyone knows that the bandit camp was on the east bank, so they just sent their teams away from the water. We should have done the same thing in reverse because we spawned beneath the hills.”

“Yeah? Well where were you ten damn minutes ago, captain obvious?” A new voice challenged. “Now they have momentum and we’re totally screwed.”

“Shut up troll. This battle can last up to an hour; it’s a marathon not a sprint. We just need to come together and--”

“I changed my mind. How do I opt out of a battle once it’s already started?”

“Whose genius idea was it to split into so many groups anyway? One healer per group is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Hey guys, I see the flag, I’m grabbing it. I just need some support and we can balance the scales!”

“WTF, who are you? How does it help shouting that to everyone in the battleground when most of us are nowhere nearby?”

“If you think one healer per group is so stupid, why didn’t you say anything before we left the base?”

“WTF? I wait ten minutes to get into a battleground and when I do it’s already lost? WTF you guys suck!”

The voice chat channel burst out with a dozen voices trying to talk over each other, and I reluctantly left it. I looked around at the others, who were in various stages of coming to the same conclusion I had already come to.

“We’re screwed,” I said.

Despite knowing the battle was lost, I tried to lead my group to some sort of victory. I rallied them by reminding them that even if our team lost, we could earn contribution points which would probably grant increased rewards compared to doing nothing at all. We just needed to group up with one of the other groups that had split off, or some of reinforcements that were trickling in. I knew that we were receiving reinforcements because our Morale continued to trickle downward.

I tried rallying the others through chat, but nobody was listening to me. Everyone was too busy screaming at everyone else for being useless. Or screaming at me for trying to help. Eventually I gave up.

Team Blue captured the flag three more times before I finally saw combat.

We came across another group of Team Red that was getting stomped by Team Blue’s larger group. Despite being despondent seconds before we heard the melee, the warrior who led our initial charge in the wrong direction [Charged] in to help. He did so so fast that the rest of us had to either use movement abilities like [Dash] or [Charge] or [Leap] to keep up, or get left behind.

[Acolyte] doesn’t have any special movement abilities. It’s one of the class’s many downsides, in my opinion. I was left behind.

When I did catch up, I did my best to contribute to the fight meaningfully. I bubbled a [Mage] who was low on health and began throwing out heals and heal over time effects on everyone I could. I thought, for a moment, that I was making a difference, but two factors changed the tide on me.

The first was that one of the enemy mages noticed my activities and began actively [Counterspelling] my heals. While this limited his own damage output significantly, it effectively shut me down. I tried to hide behind cover, but once he saw what I was trying to do he cast [Polymorph] on me, leaving me incapacitated for ten seconds.

That was long enough for an [Assassin] to appear behind me using [Nightstep]. With coordination that was almost two precise not to be practiced, the [Mage] and the [Assassin] burst me down together, burning through my entire health pool in a matter of seconds.

You Have Died.

Mark of the Phoenix is not available during battlegrounds.

Death Penalty reduced by 70% due to battleground conditions.

You have lost 5994 Experience.

You may return to the lobby, your location prior to the battleground, or you may spectate.

Choose your destination

Lobby

Eolstrian Inn, Prowlhaven Leonid District

Spectate Battleground

Curious, both about the option and to see how my team would do without me, I selected the option to spectate.

I sat up and looked around. My body had burst into mist already. I looked down at my hand to see that it was see-through. Not entirely clear though. Like I was piloting smoke instead of my digital body. It felt the same, except that when I reached for any of my [Acolyte] abilities they weren’t there.

I looked around and realized that I wasn’t the only ghost on the battlefield. There were more than twenty others watching my teammates getting slaughtered. One of them turned and came over to me when they saw my spectral body form.

“You’re the kid that was trying to rally us, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Trying and failing,” I grumbled, watching as the last of my group burst into mist. None of them chose to spectate.

“Yeah, that’s not on you though. It takes a team to screw up this badly,” the ghost-woman informed me. “That’s how it goes sometimes. Sometimes Team Red is full of organized go-getters, sometimes its full of brain dead leeches and trolls. Same thing for Team blue. Just wanted to tell you, sweetie, that sometimes you just need to accept a loss and move on.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I muttered. “Now if you don’t mind, I want to watch Team Blue. To see how an organized team handles this sort of battleground.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you and me both.”

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