Saber had a talent for talking while running. As we hurried over to the middle of the arena, she effortlessly briefed us on what she knew, and what she now planned.

She had been watching the map for the three days she had been here. In every lane, the golems marched out in groups. Or waves, as she called them. Each wave, red- or green-side, had two crossbow-golems that dealt most of the damage, and three shield-golems that soaked up most of the damage.

"You guys call them roads, but the proper MOBA term is lanes," Saber said. "Top, mid, and bottom lanes."

"Does it matter?" I asked, but she avoided the question.

In each lane, one red and one green wave spawned every five minutes. They'd march down, meet in the middle, and duke it out. The next waves would arrive before the prior waves finished killing each other off. So at any given moment, you'd have about seven or eight golems, from either side, locked in combat along the midpoint of the lanes.

image [https://imgur.com/w6HxcEY.png]

(Diagram of minion wave pathing)

We arrived at the edge of the river, right where it crossed the middle lane. There, the golems fought in the lane, between the red and green towers.

"There are four red golems, nine green ones," Saber counted. "You killed two red crossbowmen. Then, before we came, the greens snowballed their numbers advantage. And at this rate, they'll wipe out the reds and march to the tower before the next wave comes. That's when we strike."

"Strike what?" Hei asked.

"The enemy tower."

Saber explained her theory. According to her, once the golems got within the red tower's laser range, they'd become the targets. And while their presence kept the tower laser busy, we'd close in and bring the tower down. Her deductions honestly felt like mental gymnastics to me.

"How do we know the tower won't switch to hitting us halfway through?" I asked.

"Because that's not how MOBAs work. If there are minions – these golems – around, they'll be the ones getting shot at. In fact, let me try this…"

Saber rushed up ahead of us, into the midst of the brawl between golems. She swung her sword in a great arc at one of the red crossbowmen, lopping a slice of stone off its arm. But the other golems scarcely paid her heed, and instead continued to pelt one another with attacks, ignoring the obvious threat of the human in their midst. Backed by the mini-army of green golems, she made quick work of the remaining reds. As anticipated, the greens marched onward, towards the red tower. Saber looked back at us and beckoned us forth.

Her plan began to make sense now. We'd take down this tower, then the one farther down the lane. Then we'd blow up the machine spawning red golems, the one we saw in the castle gate. Then we'd march our own golems into the castle, take care of any threats inside, and maybe find our way out of this arena. Maybe we'd find our way home.

And yet, something about the current situation still bugged me. We had ceded total control to a stranger we all just met, and we were letting her direct our every step. If she really had our best interests in mind, then sure, I wouldn't mind. But what if she hid a treacherous side, and we were playing blindly into her plans? Did she want to get us killed so she could loot us?

"Do we follow?" I asked Hei, the one person who I knew to trust.

He nodded. "Let's hurry."

The remaining four of us jogged after Saber. She flashed an excited smile back. I had no idea how Mr. Atlas or Becky felt about this new Saber person. If they both consented themselves to her authority as the de facto leader, that'd make them three the supermajority in our group. For better or for worse, Hei and I wouldn't be able to challenge Saber then.

But politics could wait. Right now, we had a tower to demolish.

Just as Saber predicted, the tower aimed a laser dot at one of our shield-golems. A split second later, the red orb atop the tower glowed and shot out a brilliant beam of energy. It blew off half the golem's shield into charred, smoking splinters. As our party approached the tower, I caught a whiff of the burnt wood.

Saber dashed past the golems at the tower. A second and third shot felled that first shield-golem. The laser then moved on to another shielder, but left her alone. Seeing that she hadn't been targeted, the rest of us charged forward as well, following her lead. Saber reached the tower first. She hammered its polished stone base with the pommel of her sword. It only took a few blows before the tower began to chip and crack. Our whole party joined in the assault. Even Becky's arrows put in work. Each shot sank deep into the tower, spreading fractures across the stone's surface.

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Soon, the tower's laser had destroyed all but one of our golems. We sprinted out of the tower's range. Looking back, the edifice had taken quite a beating, and now the orb on top flickered, occasionally darkening for a moment or two.

"Almost there," I said before Saber had the chance to get a word in. "Rinse and repeat?"

And thus we did. When the next golem waves arrived, we killed red golems strategically, accumulated two waves of green golems, then cleared a path for them to the tower. Our greenies tanked the laser attacks, and we went in right after to attack the structure.

A few repetitions later, Hei landed one last Graviton Joust on the tower. It blasted a solid chunk of rock loose. The great tower leaned slightly, then crumpled and came crashing down. We scurried away, but thankfully no debris fell on us, except a shower of stony dust. Saber ran up, and tackled me with a hug. She steadied me in her arms before I could fall over.

"Wah –" I sputtered. "Your pauldrons are digging into me."

"Oh. Sorry." She let me go and glanced self-consciously at her shoulder-armor. That piece of plate did taper off into a dull point, in the shape of a carved eagle head. Her armor looked heavy, but even then, she still moved around faster than I could. Maybe her strength got bumped up a ton as part of the powers she got. The same probably applied to the others as well, especially Atlas with his humongous axe.

We returned to the riverside to rest. I washed the stone-dust off my hands and face, and tried my hand once more at using my ring's water-purification magic (it still worked). We made a campfire and had a lunch of fish and melons. I tried melting a slice of cheese on my fish, the way you'd make raclette. It didn't taste quite right.

And thankfully, our wounds had mostly healed by now. Even Hei's crossbow wounds had closed up and clotted over.

"HP?" I asked him while eating my cheese off the fish.

"About three-quarters. Do those taste good together?"

"No."

"A+ for effort," he sighed. "It's not easy cooking when you just got trapped in a fantasy world. Wanna trade?" He offered me his own, un-cheesed fish. I declined.

In the afternoon we got back to work destroying the next red tower farther down the mid-lane. This tower was the one we saw near the castle gate, guarding the entrance.

"The one before is called the outer tower," Saber exposited as we advanced with a green golem wave at our side. "This one's called the inner tower. Mid lane inner tower."

We did the same thing as before: take out a red crossbowman or two, accumulate a big group of greens, and let them charge into the tower. Saber called it sieging. First we "build the wave," then we let it "push to tower." It worked just as well as before. By the end of the day, my legs wobbled like pool noodles, from all the running into and out of tower range. Taking down the tower sounded easy on paper. But if you messed it up, someone was gonna get fried by the laser. Thankfully, we managed to destroy the inner tower as well without anyone getting injured.

Before dusk, we returned to the riverside, back to the spot where we ate lunch. We rekindled our campfire to cook, and also for light. Hei and I foraged for pine-melons in the forests nearby. Or rather, in the jungle. MOBA lingo and all that. During dinner, we went over our special abilities again, for the newcomer's sake.

Night fell and gifted us with a round moon. The silvery light, though dim, proved sufficient for my eyes to see the surroundings. I took off my hat and shoes, and waded into the cold waters. The riverbed felt rocky and cragged under my feet, so I stepped carefully. I squatted down to let myself submerge up to the neck. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to relax. The river soaked off the grime and sweat and blood that now caked my body and clothes. I was wearing an ivory-colored, button-down linen jacket. Everything stained it hard. Heck, I remembered seeing some zombie-juice on it earlier this afternoon.

Afterwards, I sat at the campfire to dry myself. The flames flickered and cackled at me.

Things had changed so much, and moved so fast. Last night, it had just been Hei and myself. And now…

"...Who's keeping watch tonight?" I asked.

"Oh I don't know," Mr. Atlas said. "I would assume the guy who doesn't sleep?"

Oh right. His ring-thing. Ring of Vigilance, which allowed him to skip sleep. The question was, did I trust him enough to let him be the only one awake? I could go to bed, then pretend to sleep and keep an eye on him. I wanted to discuss my doubts with Hei. But with Becky around, it'd be hard to have a conversation in private, without her or her plants listening in.

When Hei and I wanted to communicate in secret, sometimes we'd speak Spanish to each other. Both of us took Spanish in high school, and we could converse in very elementary phrases, like "estoy enojado" (I'm angry), or "no pienso que es buena idea" (I don't think that's a good idea). But the things I wanted to say to him right now were much too complicated to express with our limited capacity for the language.

The others seemed content with Atlas on lookout. Becky and Saber had already climbed into their bedsheets laid out on the grass. I decided I had dried sufficiently and followed suit, and I squirmed into my sheets. I needed rest. The endgame awaited us tomorrow. Whatever secrets the castle held, we'd discover soon.

As I settled in, I noticed Saber still had her plate-armor equipped.

"You sleep in your gear?" I asked. "How does that even work?"

"It's not that bad," Saber said.

"Is your plate armor magically cushy or something? You wouldn't be able to get away with this stuff in real life."

"This is real life," Becky pointed out.

"This is real life," Mr. Atlas pointed out.

"This is real life," Hei pointed out.

"This is real life," Saber pointed out.

I groaned. "You're all literally the worst."