Prologue
“Alphy, duck!” Panic shrieked as she swept her massive black greatsword toward his head. “Shit!” he said, as he bent his knees, and tucked into a curl. The huge ogre had immobilized him from behind with a bear hug and tightened his arms around Alphy. The tuck caused the ogre to lift back in reflex, raising his head and opening his neck to Panic’s swing. The air brushed the back of Alphy’s hair and neck as the blade passed over. He heard a wet thwack! Hot, sticky liquid splattered down his neck and back. The ogres head bounced off the back of his and rolled into his view. Alphy chuckled. “Ah, a real bloodbath, yeah? I could have taken him…” The game’s level alert prompted like mystical wind chimes.
“Lili, show most recent progression stats.” Alphy said.
“Opened.” His AGI (artificial gaming intelligence) Lili replied. The dialogue opened in his view and he glanced over it as Lili read it aloud:
“You hit ogre for 1oo damage. You hit ogre for 100 damage. You kill ogre for 10 experience. You hit ogre for 100 damage. Ogre Bear Hugs you. You are immobilized. Ogre squeezes you for 100 damage. Ogre squeezes you for 100 damage. Panic hits ogre for 100 damage. Panic inflicts critical hit for 300 damage. Panic decapitates ogre for Instant kill. You gain 10 experience. You gain group bonus 240 experience. You gain Ogre Slayer badge. Welcome to level fifty.”
“Okay.” He said, “Close it back up.”
That was the last ogre in the jungle camp. In this beta version of the game Total VR, the average ogre NPC (non-player character) measured in at two meters, two hundred kilograms of muscle and fat. Fleshy, hairless monsters with flat, round teeth, they would often gather in small groups to graze on the local fauna and flora. When they ate everything in the area, they would move the camp on to new feeding grounds. Knocking out ogre camps was not only a good challenge for high-level players, but also helped the lower-level players by keeping low-level NPCs around for them to kill for XP (experience points). Panic and Alphy had been taking out ogre camps for the last few hours. The beta rewarded groups by doubling experience gained at the end of an encounter with a group bonus. Already maxed at level fifty the game still kept track of their experience. If the beta had more levels unlocked they would both be around level eighty.
They’d found this camp high in the hilly jungle area on the east side of the map. These ogre SOBs were playing a game of stone toss when they got jumped by the two players. The ogre’s headless body, squirting blood from its clean decapitation, still clung to Alphy in a tight bear hug. He glanced around, then asked, “That’s good, yeah? I just received the Ogre Slayer badge with that one! How many ogre’s does that make now?” Waiting for Panic to answer, he pried at the fingers and hands still clasping him. His energy was drained; only five percent left. Better to pry the headless ogre off manually than use the last of his energy to explode the clinging arms. Panic flicked the blood from her blade, she answered in her South Indian English, “Badge? Well, if you just received the Ogre Slayer badge, it would be five hundred. You should have an extra ten percent damage increase when fighting ogres.” She continued to clean the blade with a rag she plucked from the ground.
Alphy wriggled, breaking free with a strained “Argh!” The ogre’s body thumped to the ground. Alphy grimaced, and wiped at the back of his head and neck, smearing more than cleaning the sticky drying blood and pieces of dirt and flesh. They had made a wonderful mess. Littered about them and on them, the gore of two dozen ogre bodies slowly soaked into the environment. It would take about two hours. The ogres would respawn eat whatever was around then find a new area to set up their camp.
“When you gonna come to the island and say hello? I got friends with a beach house on North Shore,” Alphy said as he began to auto-loot his share of the corpses. A massive amount of loot from the twenty-four dead bodies flooded his inventory. “Lili, trash anything not rare or craft material.”
“Oh, Alphy. Probably never. I can hardly support myself now in the little studio. I can’t afford a ticket to Hawaii. You come to Texas!” Panic was more selective, picking through the available treasures—displayed as spectral name tagged objects floating above the bodies—she looted an Ogre Tooth. This was a decent crafting item. She voice-activated her AGI interface. “Coolsans, open inventory.” A window opened before her like a spreadsheet. Never happy with the low quality of standard options, she had customized her inventory by every cross-reference she could think of. “Put this in Crafting under Teeth.” She tossed the tooth in front of her, and it fell into its proper place. “Close,” she said, and the inventory disappeared. Auto-looting, the way Alphy did, wasn’t nearly as efficient in terms of categorization of items and usage. Everything just got picked up and dumped into your immediate inventory slots, too much like a garbage heap of items.
Panic and Alpha Beta had never meet in RL (real life), but they’d been the best of friends since Total Quest Beta launched over a year ago. They had grouped together on the first day to attack a prairie beast. Both were trying to complete the same quest and needed meat to turn in to the NPC that offered task to the players. By the time they dropped the beast, Panic had resorted to calling him Alphy and they had both dinged level three, together ever since. And now, after building up their characters and their friendship for over a year of online beta testing Total Quest, the final hours of this unique world were winding down.
Panic was a warrior class player. She stood at the max height of 190 centimeters and ninety kilograms, all rippling muscle, like an Olympic athlete. Her gear was an eclectic ensemble of leather and spiked metal leaf fashioned into an unconventional bikini rated as Heavy Armor. Alphy was a cleric class player, 170 centimeters and eighty kilograms of lean muscle. He had on a leather kilt and vest fashioned like a Roman sentinel, but it made Alphy look like a Koa warrior from the islands. The game mechanics based the avatar’s face on the players that created them. A kukui wood relic hung around his neck. It increased his cleric skills with a sweet plus fifty percent to critical chance. He carried no weapons—clerics rarely used them, as grappling was their primary fighting skill and healing their primary role.
“Alphy, this was a good idea.” She was beaming, hungry for more. Together they were a formidable duo, but with their other friend, a mage named Fatal, they ruled the beta.
“What a way to end a great beta game,” he said. “Oh, man! Remember the first time you told me to duck?” He cackled as he grabbed his neck.
Her face reddened at the memory of decapitating him. She held back the laughter but a snort escaped. “Oh yeah. Your eyes got so big when you saw the blade coming for you! Didn’t I knock your head over a stream?” She covered her laughs with curled fists, but the memory of his face when she followed through with the blade caused her to laugh even harder.
He grunted. “I don’t know; I was dead. I doubt you could have hit my head so far. Everyone says I have a big head, yeah?”
She let her smile fade as she furrowed her brow. “I wish we weren’t going to lose all our progress, all of our equipment.” She held up the greatsword. It was her favorite, earned after many months of grueling quests and crafting. She had forged it with black steel, and gave it a razor-sharp double-edged blade. The blue edges gleamed at the smallest hint of light, and the hilt was a dark blue leather made from narwhal hide. Even with the weight, the balance made it easy for her to twirl it around like a toy. One of the allures of the game was its demand on the physical training of the player. The warrior and cleric classes were especially physically demanding. As new skills are unlocked to the player, they player has to physically perform the skill to a satisfactory proficiency before it levels. Panic in the real world had become quite experienced as a swords woman, though she might not have recognized it. The game had made both of them physically fit as athletes.
Panic did a few of her sword forms. Falling into the playful Cat Paw, she swatted down from an overhead swing with the flat of the blade. From Cat Paw she coiled herself, pulling back into Viper Strike and exploding into a forward lunge. She marched three steps forward, swinging figure eights of Infinity Dips, then about-faced and squatted down, flipping the great blade over and behind her back as a shielding pose Turtle Shell. She looked over at Alphy. He was gawking at her, as usual.
“You like to watch me practice, Alphy?” She snickered.
“Nah, I’m just waiting to see you slip up and fall on your butt.”
“When beta ends”—she kept swinging— “our gear… our maps”—she spun the blade over her head in Maple Seed Falling— “all our skill sets, gone…” She took in a deep breath and sighed. “You want to call it quits?” she asked with a mighty down-thrust of the sword with Chopping Wood. “I need to go to bed soon anyways. I have work in the morning.”
Alpha Beta shook his head. “What? No. I thought you had tomorrow off so we could play all night, until they unplug it at midnight.”
“I did! I requested the day off two months ago, when Total Quest announced the end date of the beta.” She sheathed her blade on her back. “They gave it to me, but yesterday my manager said I had to work or lose my job. You know I have to be a model employee. I need that job.”
“I would just quit…” he mumbled.
“I want to, but I can’t.” She took in a long breath. “They expect massive response from the people who preordered for pick-up, plus all the last-minute shoppers. This is worse than Christmas or Black Friday. We have over two thousand deluxe packages on the sales floor, ready to go.”
“Dang, that’s a lot of game systems.”
“Tomorrow will be a very long day.”
“Hey.” He walked over to her and patted her on the shoulder. “You and me and Fatal, we are top of our class. I’m the best damn cleric, and you’re the best damn warrior. We should go down with the ship.” He smeared blood on her cheek and smirked.
She glowered at him rubbing her thumb at the fresh gore on her face. “What do you mean, down with the ship?”
Alphy shrugged. “You know… play the game until they unplug the network… kill the beta. You know?”
Panic nodded. “Yeah! You’re right, Alphy. I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow. It’s so unfair. Those bastards, those money-hungry bastards…”
Alphy reached up and pulled her in with one arm. “Come on, let’s go kill a big boss. Think how good you will feel after that, yeah? Killing a big, bad boss? You can sleep it off at work tomorrow.”
The lust for blood sparkled in her eyes again, the war beast awakened once more. “Yes. Let’s do it!”
Panic fluttered her hands, opening chat channels, and created a raid party yet to be filled. Alphy accepted his invite, but his heart sank. She had invited everybody. Fatal accepted the invite and joined them on the command channel.
“Panic? Alpha Beta?” Fatal said. “Where are we going and what are we gonna kill?”
“Alphy and I are working our way down from the jungle to the Southern Canyons in the maps center,” she said. “We’ll meet you there.”
“Great, I’ll start there now,” he replied.
Alphy scratched at his chin. “You want to kill the King Crocotta?”
“Yeah, he’s the biggest boss.” A sinister scowl was on her face.
“Well, we need a huge party for that…” Alphy said.
Panic didn’t respond, but bounded away down the hilly, thickly forested area, jumping and running through the vines and ferns of the jungle. As usual, he followed her like a puppy.
The beta map was one huge island. It was bordered north and south with coastal beaches and cliffs overlooking the sea. East and west borders were mountainous regions, snow- and ice-themed on the west mountains, and the east, where they were, was filled with thick jungle. The southern coast dropped off into the sea with cliffs overlooking the ocean. Players making their way north from the south end would pass through barren deserts with dunes and eventually, in the middle of the map, deep canyons. The canyons gradually disappeared into the north as the grasslands continued to the only player town on the map. The grassland stopped turned into rolling beaches for about half a kilometer until the sea claimed the border.
They skipped any mob (roving NPCs that would engage them in battle) on their journey to the canyons, as they made their way down the jungle hills and ventured west toward grassland.
“Are you sure you want to do a big raid?” Alphy asked.
“Of course,” Panic replied. “I want to kill King Crocotta. He’s the toughest fight on the island. Plus, his death re-spawns all the cool-down markers of the lesser bosses. After that we can take on some smaller bosses until game ends.” As they ran out into the grasslands, Panic stopped, looking around.
“Wow, it’s so beautiful here. Just like your home?” she asked.
“This place is so much like my island it’s creepy,” Alphy mumbled.
Panic laughed. “A beautiful place to be trapped, Alphy.”
“You know, Panic,” Alphy continued, “I have never left my island my entire life. Even this game, it’s the same for me. No escape.”
“I don’t know, Alphy. I would rather struggle in paradise than in the mundane.”
They kept running through the softly burrowed soil and clumps of grasses and shrubs as canyons began to groove deeply into the ground before them. Herds of grazing prairie beasts darted about, calling out warnings as the players ran near. Panic was not interested in them today. But they did drop high-quality steaks if you could take them down quickly enough. The longer a player battled a prairie beast, the more the quality of the meat would decrease. The ground gouged out before them into old river beds and crags.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Here we are.” Panic thrust her sword into the air victoriously. “Crocotta Canyon.” She cheered as she slowed to a brisk walk. A crocotta was a doglike beast with cloven feet and a humanoid face. They frequently associated with goblins and hyenas.
“Fatal, we’re ready,” Panic said.
“Almost there,” Fatal replied. “Alpha Beta, you good?”
“Yeah, great.” Alphy forced his top lip up into a mock smile. He had planned on spending these last few hours alone with her. He was miserable, but added, “I’m glad we get to keep our names and our AGI for the new game. I would hate to have to find you all over again and reinitialize with a new AGI interface. I like Lili. It would feel so weird.”
Panic shook her head. “Nah, I don’t think it would be that big of a deal. The AGIs seem to be interchangeable, don’t they? The way you describe your AGI, Lili sounds just like my Coolsans. A simple form of intelligent game interface is all they are, like a smart phone.” She paused. “You’re right. I would hate to use your phone. What a mess. I would have to repeat the personalization of my entire interface…” She reared her fist back and punched him in the shoulder so hard that he flew a few meters before hitting the ground. “Let’s kick King Crocotta’s butt!” She swung her greatsword with the forms Maple Seed Falls then Chopping Wood. With a grin, Alphy looked up and sighed, watching her move.
The mass invite was sent to all the beta players, along with an invite to the raid group. Panic divided them into the only three classes in the game, warrior, cleric, and mage. Fatal would lead the mages, Panic the warriors, and Alpha Beta the battle support clerics. Each group had a dedicated battle speak or chat channel, the three commanders connected with command chat. With a large mixed entourage of players, Fatal and company mustered around Alphy and Panic.
“Fatal,” Panic squeaked, “I am so glad you made it. Alphy talked me into staying up late.”
“Good job, Alpha Beta,” Fatal said. “It wouldn’t be as fun without you, Panic.”
“Hmph,” Alphy replied. “I know; her boss gave her the day off, then threatened her job if she didn’t come in.”
“Okay, enough of my job,” Panic said. “Do you two have your groups set to go?”
“Yeah, I think I have about four-hundred mages,” Fatal said. “The battle channel is good to go.”
“Clerics are ready too, three hundred’ish.” Alphy replied. “I’ll told them to find a few battle buddies to keep an eye on.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “My warriors are all set around six hundred. Set battle chats to speaker, then we can hear each other’s commands.”
In her top-right view, Panic had six ten-by-ten grids of the warriors in her battle group. Each name had a red and blue column under it. As the players would use health or energy, the colors would lower in the column, red for health and blue for energy. Fatal and Panic had similar displays of their subordinates.
“Okay, Alphy, smash the goblin totem!” Panic said.
Planted to the side of the path was the goblin totem that triggered the King Crocotta event upon its destruction. Alphy crushed it with his boot and all the players cheered as a map wide warning glared in everyone’s view “King Crocotta has been activated.” Almost every beta player had shown up, covering the canyon trail with teeming numbers of metal, skin, and gleaming weaponry. This was a sexy game, and as such, all the players could show as much skin as they desired. Ripped six-pack abs, lean and bulky arms and legs, all of it stuffed into tight, low-cut tops and cleavage-showcasing armor. The clerics had cargo pockets on everything: miniskirts, kilts, traditional cargo pants, A-shirts, T-shirts, or just a tight open vest with one strained button holding it closed—with pockets, of course. Everyone looked like they were dressed for a cosplay party on the beach. Even the mages wore one-piece corsets, bikini battle suits, or leaf-plate kilts under their robes. Exposing the flesh allowed for blades, claws, and teeth to leave the scars of battle. Scars of battle accentuated the players’ notoriety. At least, that was the reason Total Quest gave for the racy style and fashion of the game.
“Okay, people,” Panic shouted, “this is our last beta raid. We have spent months and months making ourselves awesome. Let’s bathe in the blood of our enemies!” Hundreds of voices went up in cheers and yells. A deep growl joined the joyous celebrants. The AGI running this area of the map would scale events based on total player presence. With such a huge turnout, it had doubled the usual size of the King Crocotta, spawning it at an enormous ten meters tall. This dog beast with hooves and a creepy, humanlike face stretched its jaws wide in a reverberating howl, drowning out the cheers and cries of the players.
From where they had gathered at the entrance to a long, straight, deep canyon, the players looked up to the other side. The boss had a guard spawning around it: several hundred rusty-brown furred crocotta mingled with hundreds of green-skinned goblins and patchy black-and-grey-coated hyenas. As if the ground itself was giving birth to the beasts, they rippled out around King Crocotta. As it roared, the monster army began its advance down into the canyon, down on the players. As Panic had desired, the slaughter began. The beasts charged down from ledges into the canyon, yipping, barking, and jeering at the players. By the hundreds they charged and crashed into the gleaming line of armor-plated warriors and swirling great swords, war hammers, and battle-axes.
Player and monster alike fell as a dark red mist rose from the field. The warriors forced a front line by Panic’s command and began a slow drive forward. Alpha Beta signaled his clerics to move into a support position behind the warriors. Clerics were lightly armored, but the lack of durability was made up for with high agility and speed. They were grapplers with amazing DPS against one or two opponents. Clerics needed to make physical contact with their foe for maximum DPS.
As the warriors hacked and sliced, the clerics dove in and out of the fray, using their Rupture ability to rip deadly tears into the monsters as they touched them. Another huge wave followed a great, roaring bellow from the king, and a second wave of fur and green skin charged down into the canyon, hundreds and hundreds more. The mages twirled and waved their wands, scepters, and staffs, crafting and weaving their spells.
Fatal commanded in a loud, booming voice, “Purple Nurple to the fore; Static ten meters beyond!” and with that, great surges of purple and green power stretched from their instruments of focus. The globular energy swirled and clawed forward on the surface of the ground, tearing its way through the lines of clerics and warriors, withholding destruction for the line of monsters. There, all forms of purple hell exploded. The Purple Nurple spell crawled up the legs of the crocotta goblins and hyena, exploding small circles of flesh into vapor. This left the first line hemorrhaging and. As the purple energy began to snap back to their owners’ tools of focus, the green Static began setting its trap for the next surge pushing down into the canyon. Fatal watched the grid of players under his control, keeping an eye on the energy point consumption. Purple Nurple was cheap for EP and had a decent damage output. Looking at the battle statistics Purple Nurple took ten percent of the targets health, pulled five percent of the average energy point or EP total, but the energy refresh was around ten percent per second. It was like shooting a pistol with unending rounds. It wasn’t as powerful as a shot gun, but over time it would still do the job.
Canyon wall to canyon wall, the Static spell snared and attached a condition that dramatically slowed movement of the assaulting force. Clinging to any enemy that touched the surface of the ground, it reduced the charge to a stop, causing a collision of monsters to pile upon themselves. The back line still rushed forward, forcing and shoving with momentum and rage into the hobbled mess before them. The warriors and clerics finished off the beasts in front of them, causing swift end to the victims of Purple Nurple. The air was full of level alerts, chiming the signal for player advancement as monster bodies piled up. “Forward!” Panic called, and the line of warriors advanced to the Green Static line. The slaughter, the feel of blade tugging, ripping flesh, the splatter of blood and flicked sweat, the smell of the animals, beasts, and humans filled Panic with fuel. Adrenaline surged through her body.
Fatal pulled free a sheathed greatsword strapped to his back. He swept the weapon made of bone and ridged with teeth through the air as he commanded, “Battle mage, freestyle!” Several hundred mages drew their greatswords and began swirling them in the air over their heads. The swords began to hum and chirp as they charged up energy in various colors. The battle mages’ attack with their greatswords produced a devastating blow to an enemy, but lost the safety of a ranged attack.
The warriors had beaten down the first several lines of monsters as they stomped over the fallen beasts. The king was in sight now. “Break their lines!” Panic howled, and the warriors surged forward into the king’s guard as their flanks came under attack by the remaining monster army. King Crocotta, towering at the height of the canyon, howled again, looking down at them. Alpha Beta commanded the clerics to alternate between Rupture on the monsters and Mend on their allies. Rupture would vibrate a target out of alignment, causing wounds; Mend vibrated the target into alignment, healing wounds.
King Crocotta let out a mighty growl, sending the remainder of his minions down into the slaughter. The battle mages rushed to the front alongside the warriors. Players began to fall with the increased pressure of the king’s guard. Alpha Beta called, “Clerics focus on mending the battle mage! Their health is dropping! The warriors can take it.” The far rear line of mages continued the assault casting Purple Nurple, helping the front line by cleaning up the peripheral monsters. The clerics rushed forward, healing the battle mages as quickly as they could, but the King Crocotta attacks were AOE (area of effect) and very powerful. Players were falling faster than they could be healed. But they had the numbers to win, and they knew it. The raid pressed on. King Crocotta howled and bellowed, cussing and spitting at the battle mages and clerics. Dropping his front hooves down on the players, he triggered his Sonic Blast skill. Unblockable and devastating, it depleted the life points of the battle mages in a five-meter radius. The clerics in the area were just as vulnerable and were lost on the attack. Panic watched the grid as two solid blocks of one hundred fell by seventy five percent HP. Without clerics healing a second blast might take out the remaining force. She glanced at the complete player raid grid. She was down three-hundred warriors, Fatal was alive and had two-hundred mages left at an average of fifty percent health, Alphy was doing great hardly any HP lost but his clerics had taken a beating with the Sonic Blast. The cleric force was down by two-hundred. They had to do this quick or it wasn’t going to work.
The back line of clerics breached and began pulling casualties to safe distance for healing. Panic yelled “Warriors swarm!” and the warriors stepped in to finish the beast off. Fatal croaked in a raspy voice, “Static!” and the remaining mages focused green static energy from scepter and greatsword, snaring King Crocotta for a few moments. In the few seconds Static held the king, warriors hacked with greatswords and battle-axes, and crushed with war hammers. King Crocotta health bar was down to thirty percent and he was immobilized by Static. The rear haunches of the great beast gave out as the king fell to its hind legs. It howled and bellowed, lifting its great front hooves, smashing them down on unfortunate players and sending out another Sonic Blast. Seeing the great hooves being raised, most of the players rolled and dodged out of the way. Still it dropped many more of the assaulting force, leaving only a few hundred mages and clerics alive. The warriors left, about three-hundred, had a higher HP count; most had at least twenty five percent HP left. “Now!” Panic cried. “Special attacks.” Each player in the game had a special attack; the only similarity of a player’s special attack was that it generally increased damage output by a considerable amount, but was usable only every few hours due to cool down. The surviving warriors, clerics, and mages all hit King Crocotta at the same time with their special high-DPS attacks, clerics squeezing through to contact the rear haunches of the beast. The Beasts health bar flashed red and fell to one percent.
It was glorious. King Crocotta dropped its jaws, straining to stand on its front legs as players teemed around him like maggots devouring a carcass. Howling, King Crocotta lashed out its massive front hooves again, but the attack was weak. The players’ special DPS strike ripped through the beast, shaking it violently as its head exploded. A rain of carnage and loot fell down from the defeated beast, showering the players in the blood and pieces of flesh and fur. A monstrous clash of cymbals sounded as fireworks erupted with great booms in the sky above them. The players cheered in delight as they swarmed over the loot falling on the ground all around them. The remaining mobs scattered, returning to previous scripted routes and priorities; a few of the players sent ranged attacks, and some chased them down to finish them off. Within the rain of blood and gore, instruments of war, crafting supplies, all kinds of rare and exotic loot fell for the victors. Clerics began healing the fallen as others rushed about eagerly, seeing what loot they’d earned.
All three of the friends, Panic, Alpha Beta, and Fatal, had survived the battle. Fatal walked over, a grand smile stretched across his face, laying hands on his friends’ shoulders he said “A glorious beginning to our unfortunate end. We need to meet up in the new world to celebrate.” Panic and Alpha Beta nodded in agreement. Alpha Beta added, “We could start on launch day and go from there.”
Panic backhanded Alphy in the gut and said, “Hey, I have to work, remember?”
Alphy paled. “Oh, sorry… forgot.”
Fatal interjected, “How about we just wait for Panic? That will be the start date for us. Any way we do it, I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. We call our party Trinity Ball or Trinity Festival or something like that. You know? We show up every few weeks and trigger map bosses for raid events. We’re the best of the three classes. We can lead the charts in the new game. Maybe even start a guild or clan if that’s an option. But we wait for Panic.”
Panic smiled at them both. “You would wait for me? I love you guys. Let’s do it!”
“I don’t know, Fatal,” Alphy said. “I really want to play on launch day.” He kept his eyes from Panic while saying this. He couldn’t help but fidget with his wooden relic. Pinching his chin, Panic pulled his face up and curled up one side of her mouth. “It’s okay, Alphy. It isn’t fair to make you suffer just because I have to work. But let’s start the Trinity bash when I can return to the game to play. Deal?” She crisscrossed her arms in front of herself, hands sticking out, the other two did the same, and they shook on it, three ways.
“Well, I’m not done tonight. See you two squares in the new world,” Fatal said while turning away. He shouted, “I’m leading a raid to sweep from south up on the west side of the map. Whoever wants to join, let’s go!” And off Fatal went, with a large trail of mixed-class players following him.
Bombastic, a small female mage, called out, “I’m gonna sweep up from the east through the jungles and on to the north beach for a party.” A great cheer went up from the players. “Well?” she said. “Let’s go!” A massive group formed with her, and they broke away down to the southeast.
“Come on, Alphy, we can take center,” Panic said.
“Yeah, sure,” Alphy replied. “We gonna bring the rest of these spare wheels with us?” He thumbed at the other players. Their eyes filled with as much eagerness as Panic’s.
“Of course.” She thrust her sword into the air. “Let’s move out!” The remnants of the raid party all cheered as they set off to the south boundary cliffs. The raid chat was still on, and Bombastic was added to command chat. The players all agreed to kill-sweep all the way back to the north shore for a final beach party.
Hours passed in game, and the players cleaned the island to the bone, not one boss left alive. Slowly, a great beach party began to grow on the north shore as teams of players rolled in. The day had passed into the dark evening; the end of the game swiftly approached. The friends sat around a large bonfire, watching as the ocean breezes played with the dancing embers rising far above their heads.
Panic mumbled, “I wish you lived in Texas, Alphy. I could use a friend to cry on after work tomorrow.” The massive purge they’d played on the island, the last hours of the game spent, had made her maudlin. More players, still online, gathered on the beach. They would all go down with the ship, gathered together on the north shore.
There were only a few minutes left. Bonfires littered the beach as they waited for the end of the beta. Panic sighed. “I know I won’t be able to play for a few days. I’ll be too tired from work.” She took a deep breath. “When I log back in, I want to be ready.”
“For what, Panic?” Alphy asked.
“To win, to be the best again, to fight and sweat.”
Alphy patted her on the head.
“Thanks for talking me into staying online, Alphy.”
He turned his head and studied her face for a moment, then hesitantly said, “Sure. I wish I lived in Texas too. I hate where I live. It’s just like here. A tiny green island in the middle of an endless sea. It’s claustrophobic and it’s so hot all the time. I fill buckets with sweat. I used to go to Costco with my mom so I could stand in the dairy freezer to cool down.”
He was trying for a bit of sympathy, but Panic started giggling at him. “Oh, Alphy, you’re always so funny.”
Alphy scrunched his face in hurt confusion. He never understood why she always laughed at him when he shared his emotions, but he did like to see her happy. Her laugh was contagious, and he soon joined. The sun set behind the mountains to the west, a last brilliant display of purples, blues, and reds before the world turned black.