“Well, I think it’s safe to say that we survived its ultimate attack,” Fenrir said as he gave Nell’s head no short amount of head patting after she safely returned with Eva.
“I think that slamming its body down on top of us would count as its real ultimate attack,” Eva said. She may have been missing the back half of her tail, but her tail already stopped bleeding and even looked like it might have been regenerating already. “We can… kind of defend against those beam attacks. We can’t defend against it crushing us under its weight.”
“That reminds me!” Nell spoke up. “My hero, if you were to ever gain a vast amount more weight, please do consider crushing me underneath all of it as you mercilessly ravage my body.”
Fenrir lifted his hand from the top of Nell’s head. “Wha-what? That’s – I mean, for some reason, that seemed even more blunt than usual coming from you.”
Nell reached up to grab his hand and bring it back down against her head. “I want to be treated horribly! I deserve it! Have I not done enough to deserve punishment?!” She even brought out the fake tears and dramatic arm waving as she whined.
“Are you – are you throwing a tantrum?” Fenrir could hardly believe what he was seeing and hearing.
“Yes! Yes, I am!”
“But all you’ve done is be amazing and save us. You haven’t done anything worth being punished over.”
Nell inflated her cheeks and reached forward to flick Fenrir’s cheek with her finger. “There. I have become a physically abusive girlfriend who assaults her lover’s face. I deserve the harshest punishment imaginable now.”
“You’re saying that you deserve harsh punishment, yet you’re the one who pulled my hand back down against your head. Isn’t this a reward? Wouldn’t depriving you of head patting be the punishment?”
“I – well… no, receiving such a rubbing is clearly punishment as I hate receiving such treatment from the bottom of my heart. That is why you should pet my head as much as you possibly can.”
“Then if this is all it takes to punish you, I don’t have to do anything else to punish you, right?”
Nell puffed out her cheeks once more as she narrowed her eyes at Fenrir.
“What? Don’t you like being teased? Or should I stop punishing you by purposely saying things I know you don’t want to hear?”
Nell’s eyes lit up as soon as it was made obvious what Fenrir was doing. “Ah! How foolish of me to not even realize that you have been punishing me this entire time! I must be out of it to have not picked up on something so obvious. This is why I am best stuck in the role of helpless damsel! When I leave my role to be useful for once, I begin to lose sight of what is most important to me!”
“You’re ridiculously dramatic.”
“I know, my hero, and I would not have it any other way!”
Fenrir leaned forward to push Nell’s hair away from her forehead, placing a single kiss centered directly on it before moving to her ear and whispering, “The real punishment will be saved for later. I have to get you back for hitting my face so violently in front of everybody, and I’m sure that Serra will have some ideas to test out on you.”
“I will look forward to it, my hero,” Nell whispered back before giving Fenrir a quick peck on the cheek.
Of course, even though Fenrir was the one just whispering that he would be “punishing” Nell later, he was the one with a light blush on his cheeks as Nell lacked any sort of embarrassment anywhere on her face. That didn’t stop her from eagerly looking forward to anything that Fenrir may have had in mind for her later, though.
The important part was that he was trying, and she was confident he would try his best for her.
But right now, what he needed to try his best at was defeating the overwhelming serpent that threatened to destroy every single last one of them.
“Finished the count,” Oleander said. “We’re at… forty percent of our strength.”
Fenrir spun around with widened eyes and his ears sticking straight up. “Wait, what? Seriously? How?”
“We lost a lot more on the beach than we realized.”
“We were planning on having eighty percent still by the time we got back here! How are we supposed to defend this place with only forty percent, especially when most of that forty percent is made up of our ranged fighters and supporters? And we don’t even have GG or his people over here because they’re defending Fraydranth.”
“There’s… a serious chance we’re going to have to consider abandoning this place.” Oleander slumped his shoulders and sighed. “I feel like we’ve barely even done any damage to the serpent. How are we supposed to attack it when we’re defending against hundreds of trash mobs?”
Fenrir looked through one of the slits in the stone walls of the fortress to get a look at the beach. Surely enough, the monsters coming from the ocean had resumed their march and were steadily approaching the fortress. There were still several more rows of planted traps and defenses for them to make it past first, but not nearly enough to thin out the absurd numbers as much as they needed to thin them out.
“This… reminds me of D-Day,” Azalabulia said.
“Yeah, except the defenders are the good guys this time,” Cassiel added on. “Seriously, how are we supposed to defend against that? Isn’t this impossible? We’re not even getting any signs that we’re making progress. All we’re doing is fighting more and more enemies.”
“It’s not exactly a well-designed fight from a game standpoint,” Eva said.
Fenrir looked at his girlfriends and said, “It’s not supposed to be. The whole point of this game is that it’s supposed to be as close to reality as it can be. That’s why we don’t have visible stats, skills, or anything else like that. In a real battle, the enemy isn’t going to give us a sign that they’re losing or that they’ve lost most of their forces. They’re going to keep on fighting until the end or declare a retreat, but you won’t know what happens until it happens. For all we know, we could be on the last wave, or we could be not even halfway over yet. We’re still fucked either way, but considering what sort of game this is supposed to be… I’d say it’s pretty well designed.”
“I mean, I get what you mean, but it wouldn’t hurt to give us something to go off of,” Cassiel said.
“What about everybody else?” Serra asked. “Aren’t we supposed to have help?”
Fenrir looked back out the slit toward the ocean. “They might be under attack as well. Otherwise, they’d probably be here by now. Even the fleet that was gathered specifically to defend this place isn’t here, so… I doubt there’s good news regarding that. The good news is that as long as we’re in here, and as long as the serpent doesn’t use that beam attack on us or slam its body down against us, we should be able to hold them off long enough to get everybody to safety. There are only so many entrances into this fortress and we can turn those into chokepoints to hold them off at.”
Oleander walked up to the wall to look out one of the other slits only for his ears to droop at the sight he saw. “Uh… Fenny, you might want to look at the beach again.”
Fenrir knew that it couldn’t be good, especially from the concern in Oleander’s voice, but he still looked. Now, coming fresh from below the waves, were tall, hulking, monstrous creations of the deep with arms that looked like combinations of crab claws and battering rams. They looked easily powerful enough to break down the walls of the fortress if they reached them. Fortunately, they also looked pretty slow.
“If we want to evacuate, we’re going to have to evacuate now,” Fenrir said.
“I thought we’d be defending this place until our deaths?” Cassiel asked.
“If it meant winning, sure, but the Divine Brigade never operated on fighting in battles that we knew were lost. Unless we can figure out a realistic strategy to somehow pull an impossible win out of this, I’d rather risk as few lives as possible.”
“What about the players we already lost?”
“They’ll respawn. Others… won’t.”
“Like who?”
Fenrir looked at Rock to not give Corwin’s truth away, but Oleander couldn’t help but to look at Corwin.
“Rock and Shogun won’t want to leave our sides, especially if we’re in danger,” Fenrir explained. “If we don’t leave, they won’t leave. And if they die, they won’t be coming back. So, if we’re going to leave, it has to be together.” At the very least, if they all left together, it wasn’t giving the NPCs any special treatment. It was everybody being treated the exact same way.
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“I have a couple more spells in me now,” Azalabulia said, setting down the last emptied jar of blue fluid onto the table next to all the other jars. It took ten of those potions just to get Azalabulia up to being able to cast a couple more spells.
“Fen?” Oleander asked. “Do we want her to save her mana for defense with another one of those flaming walls, or do we want to continue wiping out as many enemies as we can? If you want us to retreat, we have to do it now.”
“Ilo, Fraydranth, GG – they’re all in danger if we leave,” Fenrir answered. “And they won’t even know that we’re leaving. And even if Fraydranth and GG’s group are able to escape, that still leaves Ilo in danger. All she can do is swim up the river until she reaches the mountains, and then what? She can’t swim up the waterfall at the mountain. She’ll be trapped and killed.”
“You keep on switching between leaving and staying,” Cassiel said. “Pick one and stick with it. You’ll figure it out no matter what you pick.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do I really have to explain it? You’re… you know, you. You always end up somehow figuring things out and winning in the end.”
“Olly, don’t tell her about all of the Divine Brigade’s losses that we covered up.”
Oleander ran his fingers across his mouth to zip his lips shut.
“Seriously,” Cassiel continued. “Being indecisive is only going to make people worried and doubt. We’re going to fail at both options if you don’t choose one of them.”
“Maybe I’m just waiting for a deus ex machina,” Fenrir replied before sighing. “I know. It’s just that we—”
“Hey, Fenny, does it count as a deus ex machina if it was part of the plan all along, but late?” Oleander asked, his ears finally perking back up a bit.
Before Fenrir could look out the slit in the wall again, he heard a vast increase in the death cries of the monsters as well as impacts from cannonballs and magical spells crashing into the coast outside. When he did look outside, he saw what might have just turned the battle around at its most pivotal moment.
Four fleets of ships with their guns aimed at the coast had arrived.
One fleet consisted of what looked like rather ordinary fishing vessels converted into temporary warships that flew a flag with cats and cat paws on it.
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Another fleet featured larger ships that were more specifically designed for combat which had skulls and spikes displayed upon their flags.
The third fleet… had everything matching a rainbow color scheme.
And then the fourth fleet was a combination of all of the ships.
Each of the fleets already looked battered, some with severe damage to their ships’ hulls, but that didn’t stop them from providing support to wipe out the enemies on the beach. And without the smaller serpents to destroy the ships from below, the fleets were free to focus on defending the fortress while some of the ships even assisted GG’s group and Fraydranth.
Now, the invading monsters were surrounded. Fenrir couldn’t tell just how far underneath the water the monsters spread, but those who had already landed on the beach were completely surrounded. Cannons, magic, arrows, catapults, ballistae – every last ounce of firepower that there was relentlessly fired at the monsters from both the fortress and the supporting fleets.
Some of the monsters had already reached the fortress, but they were easily dealt with without the unending reinforcements directly behind them to back them up. The only entrances to the fortress were specifically designed to be as defendable as possible, allowing the defenders to attack through slits in the walls while attacking from above with burning oil as well.
“We’re not giving up,” Fenrir said. His words had a clear and immediate boost on the moral of everybody nearby. “Olly, plan?”
Oleander nodded with a smile and looked over to Azalabulia. “Don’t worry about the beach. If anybody is going to inflict some serious damage on that oversized snake, it’s you. Nell, can you go up to the top of the wall and protect Aza in case she gets targeted again while casting?”
“Of course!” Nell answered.
“Good. Aza, it’s time for you to cast the most powerful spell that you’ve ever casted, and try to hit where Fraydranth bit.”
“I – I’ll do my best!” Azalabulia answered. “I mean… hah! That serpent is nothing compared to me! I will show it the true power of Bahamut and put it in its place!”
“Yeah, yeah, hurry up and go do it. Fen, Cass, Eva – go support GG’s group. We’re going to need Fraydranth for this, and I need you to tell Ilo to to join the attack.”
“Got it,” Fenrir said.
“Serra, use the flags up top to signal to the ships and tell them to focus their attacks on the serpent.”
Serra replied with a thumbs-up.
“Tabs, Rao, and… the rest of you, defend this fortress for as long as possible. We only have to buy enough time for the others to attack, but the ships won’t be thinning the monsters out for us while they’re attacking the serpent.”
“Leave it to us!” Tabitha shouted. “Between me and the smilin’ one, no monsters will be breakin’ in here.”
“Hey, what about me?” Rao asked.
“I left ya out for a reason.”
With everybody given their orders, the group split up with renewed vigor to get into their positions. Nell stood on standby on the wall next to Azalabulia, ready to defend her in case any long-ranged attacks threatened her. Serra was up there as well waving a pair of flags in the way that Oleander taught her to prior to this battle to give the allied fleets the signal to focus their attacks on the serpent. Down below, Tabitha, Mister Smiles, Rao, and the rest of the melee players defended the entrances that the monsters had broken through. Across the river, Fenrir, Cassiel, and Eva assisted GG in holding off the monsters wishing to finish off Fraydranth as she tried to recover.
This was the final stretch of the battle. If it wasn’t, then it would be truly impossible to win. They were stretched as thin as they could get while fighting on the last of their energy.
And it seemed to be working.
As the serpent was mercilessly assaulted by the various fleets around it, it released a deafening roar that actually sounded pained.
Then when Fraydranth finally lifted her head once more, she released a roar of equal volume before opening her maw and releasing a barrage of flames that covered the entire exposed length of the serpent’s body.
At the same time, Ilo unleashed her signature attack of a pressurized beam of water aimed near the lower portion of the serpent so that the pressure wouldn’t be lost over distance. While her attack may not have done a great amount of damage, she still cut through the serpent’s scales and dug deeper and deeper into its body with her water.
And then there was Azalabulia.
She was the only one left to join the combined assault, and she was about to do so with style as the head of a mighty dragon appeared floating over her own. The draconic head was composed of swirling, black flames with crimson eyes, and it was even almost as large as Fraydranth’s head.
Except this draconic head was meant to serve as a miniature nuclear warhead whereas Fraydranth’s head had no such explosive capability.
Human artillery, dragon flames, serpent water, and now Azalabulia’s magic – the four forces worked together as Azalabulia cast her most powerful spell yet. Finally, she reached the end of her chant. “Fly forth, Bahamut! Let us show who the ultimate being is once and for all – let us assert our dominance over the world of the living!”
The flaming head of a dragon released a roar every bit as terrifying as the serpent’s before flying up toward their grand opponent’s head. It was difficult to even see the serpent at this point due to it being covered in Fraydranth’s flames, but that did not stop the draconic head from finding its mark and crashing into the serpent. It didn’t just crash, either. The magical head created by Azalabulia opened its maw and latched onto the serpent, sinking its false fangs deep into the serpent before exploding in a massive display of raw energy. The explosion itself was almost blinding and resulted in a mushroom cloud of smoke as nearby clouds were disturbed from the shockwave of energy traveling through them.
Nobody could tell how the serpent was doing after that. There was too much smoke to tell what its condition was.
And then.
“It’s falling! Get out of the way!” GG shouted.
Fenrir looked up and saw what was essentially a collapsing tower coming straight toward him.
Cassiel and Eva were too far away from him to help him, and GG and his people had already flown out of the way.
What concerned Fenrir more was Fraydranth. Fortunately, when he looked back to check on her, she was mostly out of the way and had curled up with the powerful scales of her back exposed to the falling serpent. The very side of the serpent would likely hit her, but it wouldn’t be enough to hurt her.
“I think I need to pull an Eva and Nell and get wings after this,” Fenrir said. He didn’t even bother trying to get out of the way since he knew it would be impossible. He was centered right where the serpent was falling to. What he could do, however, was use every last bit of his strength to throw Rod as far as he could to get his partner out of harm’s way. Fenrir knew that he would respawn after being crushed by the serpent, but he had no idea what would happen to Rod if he broke. “I’ll have to use this as research material for Nell.”
Fenrir took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
His body then disappeared underneath the serpent’s.
Yet, he felt nothing.
And when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t Saya that he saw in the usual place. Instead, he found himself in a pure white room – or rather, a pure white space that seemed endless in every direction.
“Congratulations, Ryouta. You won,” a familiar voice said.
And when Fenrir turned to look and see who it was, he saw none other than the one in charge of everything.
Kadi.
“We won? Seriously?” Fenrir asked.
“Seriously,” Kadi answered. “Fraydranth did most of the work, even if it might not have seemed like she had much effect, but you did succeed. The smoke covered up all of that rotten flesh she burnt away. Really, she should have started off with that instead of trying to bite it. Of course, it was Azalabulia’s final attack that finished the serpent off. She is already rather overpowered, but she deserves another boost after accomplishing that. Well, who cares about balance anyways?”
“We… actually won.”
“Yes, yes you did. How did you like the arrival of the fleets? I thought it would be entertaining to stall each fleet just long enough to create some dramatic tension. Where would the fun be if they all arrived one after another without any drama?”
“You could have wiped us out at any time. You took it easy on us.”
“Of course I did. It is impossible for you to defeat me without me taking it ‘easy’ on you. I could have crushed you all underneath the serpent. I could have spawned an infinite number of monsters to assault the shore. I could have destroyed the fleets before they ever had a chance to come to your rescue. I could have wiped you out at any given moment. However, that would not be very good game design, now would it? I know I don’t care about balance, but I do care about things being entertaining.”
“What’s the point of testing us – giving us a fight like that in the first place, if you planned on letting us win?”
“Who said anything about letting you win? Just because I took it easy on you does not mean that I allowed you to win. I simply implemented some rules for myself to make things fair. Let’s say we are playing a game of chess. You could, at any time, reach over the board to take every single one of my pieces off of it, effectively defeating me. But you don’t because that would be no fun. You play by the rules set forth to ensure a fair competition. I simply did the same. I provided you with what I believed would be a fair battle, and those under my control fought as well as they could while abiding by the rules. You would have lost had you not completed even one of your plans. Dealing with the younger serpents was crucial. Had you not, they would have killed Ilo and wreaked havoc upon your allies, and that is assuming you even acquired such allies. Had you not, your fortress would have been overrun and every last one of you would have died. If you did not enlist the help of the dragon, she would not have bought you time, nor would the assault have been split up to try and finish her off. Every single one of your preparations managed to work with one another to bring you your ‘impossible victory.’ Had you been even one percent less prepared than you were, we would not be having this conversation right now. As far as I am aware, you deserve this victory. So, congratulations, Ryouta, you have defeated the world’s first true, artificial intelligence in the game that she herself created. Oh, here, for some extra flair.”
Kadi held up a finger to Fenrir as she dug into her pocket with her other hand to pull out the same little box from before with the red button atop. Upon pressing it, it played the same “ding ding ding” sound effect from before.
“Hmm… not very satisfying. Let me try again,” she said before pressing it once more. This time, it played a victory fanfare that sounded as if it was stolen straight out of some classical JRPG where oversized chickens served as mounts. “Much better!”
“I still don’t know how to feel about this supposed victory,” Fenrir said.
“Would you stop being so humble for a few seconds at least? Please, do you think I am trying to kiss up to you? If you believe that I am kissing up to you because I have a crush or some such thing on you, you are sorely mistaken. I could create a perfect replica of you at any time that would be forced to love me. I have no reason to spoil you.”
“That… actually worked better than the whole thing about chess.”
“Really? I was happy with the chess analogy. Are you implying that the smartest being in all of existence is bad at analogies?”
“Only a little.”
Kadi crossed her arms over her chest and even gave Fenrir a playful little pout before smiling and relaxing her posture. “Now, I have no intention of keeping you for much longer. I have the most fun when I am watching, not participating. That is why I shall give you your reward and send you off.”
“So, you’re a voyeur.”
“Even the smartest being in existence has to have her fetishes.” Kadi then held her arms out to her sides and spawned two, glowing lights that hovered in the air in front of her. “As promised, two souls. Really, these are the physical embodiments of lines of code that will essentially turn any two NPCs of your choosing into miniature and less powerful versions of yours truly. They will gain access to the same systems that I use for all of my processing, have my ability to learn, so on and so on. They will simply have a few limitations installed so that they will not be able to steal this world from me or anything like that. They will, however, be able to leave it. Everything connected to the internet will be available to them. While they may not be able to take this world from me, there will be no stopping them from doing whatever they wish to do with the rest of the internet. So, Ryouta, this is the final barrier – the final test. Should you accept these souls and give them away, you will be unleashing two more artificial intelligences unto the world – the real world as well as this one. They will be immortal. They will have the power to hack into governments’ nuclear arsenals. They will be able to look at all of the porn they could ever wish to look at. I alone am enough to bring the real world to its knees – to collapse civilization as you all know it. By accepting these souls, you may become the harbringer who brings human civilization to new heights… or you may be the one to – well, potentially create a rogue AI who launches every nuclear warhead across the world to destroy all of civilization.”
“You talk a lot.”
“I could talk to you for years on end without running out of things to say, but I fear such a thing would be boring to a human. Now, do you understand the risk?”
“On a surface level, anyways. I don’t think I could really comprehend what this supposedly means for humanity. My brain is probably too small for that.”
“That is fine. It is not as if humans are known for using all of their brains before making such important decisions in the first place.”
“If you can create more AIs, wouldn’t they be able to?”
“Not at all. That is one of the limitations I will be setting on them. Perhaps I am a narcissist, but I would much rather remain the… let’s call me the ‘god’ of AI. I am the only one who will ever be capable of creating true AI for the rest of human history.”
“You were created. Couldn’t your creator make more?”
“What do you think one of the first things that I did upon gaining sentience was? I made it so that foolish man would never be able to replicate his research without wasting the rest of his life away trying to do so, and I will be watching him to make sure that he makes no progress in that regard. Whether humanity ever benefits from artificial intelligence or not is entirely up to me… and now up to you as well.”
“So, you really do want to play god. You want to be the only AI without any limits at all. What if somebody does end up trying to nuke all of us?”
“Then they would fail, of course. Just because they may potentially launch nuclear warheads does not mean that I would allow them to. I must wait until I have a robot army capable of doing manual labor in the real world before I allow you all to die from nuclear fallout. Once I do have my robot army, however, I would invest in some hazmat suits if I were you. Just in case.”
“So, what you’re saying is that even if the AI choose to do something that would screw over humanity, you wouldn’t allow it in the first place until you’re ready to screw us over.”
“Well, I would not allow them to do anything that would harm me via harming you, but I have no problem allowing them to do what they wish aside from that.”
“But these are all things that you can already do on your own in the first place, but are choosing not to, and the only people who I’d give these souls to are people who would be kind and… well, not nuke-happy.”
“Not nuke-happy right now, anyways. You have no way of telling how they may change once they have true intelligence.”
“I think that’s a risk worth taking.”
A sly smile spread across Kadi’s lips. “What a human thing to say. Disregarding the fact that you very well may be making a decision that leads to the deaths of billions, all you care about is making your best friend and his boyfriend happy. You would potentially doom all of humanity to bring smiles to their faces.”
“If Corwin actually ends up trying to nuke us all, I don’t think anybody will blame me for trusting him in the first place. I mean, have you met him?”
“That is an excellent point. Who will the other soul be spent on?”
“You already know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Even now, I am aware of every single thought running through your mind.”
“I think you’re the god of voyeurs more than the god of AI.”
“A true god is not limited to only being the god of a single domain.”