Chapter 21: End Game Revealed

A planar incursion? I opened my map and located Simba on the river bank not far away. I fast walked to Simba’s location. It sounded like we were going to be invaded, and it was going to be a disaster for the small village.

I found Simba peering into the water, and he was using his vine entangle spell as a fishing pole. I watched in amazement as a fish came up and tried to snag the bait on the end while another vine lashed down to the water and stunned the fish. The fish was then transported to the shore and added to a pile of flapping other fish. Simba directed his attention to me, and the spell ended, and the vines evaporated to dust.

“One of the children in town asked me to get her some fish and this is a great way to level up my spell level and control.” Simba’s tail twitched in irritation at being interrupted.

“The child wouldn’t happen to be the overly talkative elven girl?” I asked, guessing.

“Indeed, Savannah is her name, Tallis. I suppose you are here because of the recent worldwide announcement? You don’t have access to the forums yet, so I can summarize it for you if you wish.” Simba asked slightly mockingly.

”Please do, oh great and powerful feline seer of the outside world.” I said, returning his condescending tone.

Simba leaped four feet up to a branch on a nearby tree. He was now almost at eye level. “Well, Tallis incursions are a major part of gameplay. There are nine realms in the game. This realm is by far the biggest and is constantly expanding. The other eight realms are fire, earth, water, air, beast, insectoid, undead, and ascendant. To reach the ascendant realm, you need all eight keys, one from each of the other realms.” Simba paused, waiting for a question, so I asked him one.

“So, where is the key in this realm?” That was a good question, right?

Simba chuckled. “Oh, like it is that easy! The first phase of the end game is finding it! You need to research in grand libraries, explore remote ruins, and conquer difficult raid bosses just to get clues to its location!” I thought for a bit before asking.

“So why would they put out the ‘end game’ of this world? I mean, wouldn’t it be better to let players find out on their own?” I wasn’t going to invest in searching for whatever artifact this was, but it definitely made me feel small in the world.

“It was a secret until the testing. But an enterprising test player spent hours in the grand libraries researching clues and discovered the basics, so the admins released some details. It has only spurred interest in the game. The admins are holding 1% of all profits to the first player to claim the Ascendant realm crown.” Simba finished a little smugly.

“Wow, I responded. How much will that be?” I asked, slightly curious.

“Depends how long the game runs, but most likely it will be in the billions of dollars…American currency.” Simba replied. My thoughts were on how cutthroat the game was going to be due to this incentive. “There are already 49 million dollars in the prize account, and a website showing the steadily increasing amount.”

My face was shrouded in concern. If the game ended, then so would I. Simba read my thoughts, “Don’t worry; the rulers of the other realms have special coding. They will always be 100 levels higher than the highest-level player character in the game. This means that a global player will be required to invade and capture the keys in the other realms. Besides global incursion rifts, the only way to travel to the other realms will be with this its specific realm key. So the first player rush will be to find it. Developers are estimating it will take players four or five years to find the location of the key and then another year to acquire it.” Simba added.

I had brief illusions of finding the key myself but dropped the foolish notion. So if the world was constantly expanding and the developers thought it would take years to find the key… “So the key isn’t accessible right now, Simba? It is in one of the areas yet to be revealed?”

Simba nodded in agreement, “That is the consensus on the forums.”

“So what does this ‘test’ incursion mean for my village of Malcum?” I asked, returning to why I sought the feline’s glorious wisdom.

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”Not much. Incursion portals are only open near large cities. The NPC defenders will not be enough to hold back the wave, so players need to participate in stopping the incursion. If they don’t, the city may fall, giving the planar entities a foothold. The NPCs from the other planes are highly intelligent and are coming here seeking this realm’s key. Unlike most games, the players are not guaranteed to win.” Simba looked a little arrogant. As he was a basic AI himself, maybe he was hoping the NPCs would win.

“So, oh wise and powerful king of the jungle, what do you advise me to do?” I asked, finally feeling a little more comfortable.

“Since this is a test of the incursion event, the NPCs will be able to hold off the invaders. Once the leader that emerges from each portal is slain, the remaining monsters will scatter and need to be hunted down. Some may reach you…” he paused, “but most likely not. The nearest portal will be 250 miles away. But the rewards are pretty high for assisting in repelling an incursion. You may want to travel south and participate.”

“Thank you, Simba. I think I am going to focus on leveling here instead. Now that Galana is back, I am going to try out our own little dungeon and continue building up our little village.” I left the little cat and walked away thinking.

I opened the updates that I had never looked at for exploring dungeons. I could have as many companions as I wanted, but just one NPC. And the NPC could die permanently…companions could be resurrected at cost. The cost was one platinum coin per level of the companion, quite steep, but it made sense, so players didn’t use them as fodder. But in an update, there was more… you needed 1 point of a divine reputation for every ten levels of the companion. You received divine reputation from completing quests from the gods.

So, should I level up Jaesmin and bring her with me? Should I even risk Galana in the dungeon? I needed to think about this. It was getting dark and cold out, so I returned home and snuggled with Jaesmin in front of a fire.

So many things to think on. I wish I knew more about what state my body was in the real world. My ultimate goal was to make enough money to return. That was, if the admins were telling me the truth, it would be possible to do so.

I decided tomorrow I was going to go hunting scorpions again. I fell asleep on the couch with Jaesmin. When I woke, the fire was out, and the air was slightly chilled. I untangled from Jaesmin and told her to work with Sanso today. I was going out on a ride.

With Titan saddled, I mounted and was prompted.

Would you like to make Titan your character’s mount?

I had to go to the updates and find out what caused this. Simba was never around when I needed him. Finding the update notes, it said players could only have one land mount and one air mount. Changing mounts had the old mount be permanently erased. I decided to click no for now. Titan was a great mount, but I wouldn’t want him deleted if I found a better one.

Titan was acting aggressively after I said no. Maybe I should have clicked yes? Well, it was for his own good. We ran full gallop across the plains and toward the scorpion dessert. The run got Titan out of his foul mood.

We began our normal harvest of scorpions, but Titan was harder to control. Checking, and apparently, only player mounts responded with 100% control. Otherwise, I had to rely on my riding skills. Stupid developers. I was still good enough to work on the scorpions.

A few hours later, deeper in the dessert, I found a skeleton cloaked in rags. I cautiously approached, and two massive scorpions with bright red markings erupted from the sand. I thought I could use the same tactics, but these scorpions had a ranged poison attack thrown from their stingers. And boy, did the poison burn!

It also had a splatter effect, and Titan didn’t appreciate it either. He was becoming increasingly difficult to control the more damage he took. Fine! I went to the damn prompt and added him as my mount. With that settled, we were able to circle quicker and attack. Avoiding the ranged attacks for the most part, we whittled them down and eventually killed both of them.

Titan had also turned into a big baby, constantly nudging me for affection as I dismounted and searched the scorpions and skeletons. I checked an update I had skipped called ‘mount affection’. There were three negative affection ratings, a neutral rating, and four positive ones. Each level accounted for 10% of speed and damage. So at the worst mount affection you had -30% to damage and speed. At the highest positive, you had +40% to speed and damage while on the mount. I was currently at level 1 positive.

Death of the mount dropped the ‘mount affection’ by one level. The good news was mounts respawned immediately at player respawn points. I was slightly irked by these changes even though they were currently to my benefit. I was sure all these changes to the game were making real-world players drool, but keeping track of everything was becoming an issue for me.

The scorpions were level 30 elite red spitter scorpions. That didn’t make sense since the poison came from their tails, not their mouths. I was able to get just a carapace in loot from both. The bone skeleton was more interesting. It had a signet ring noted as a quest item and a scroll with a map.

I was prompted to integrate the map and said yes. The scroll remained, but an area to the south populated my map. There was a tag on the map, and it said, Red Crystalline Cavern. Another dungeon, maybe? No. I checked the icon on the map for the location, and it was the icon for city ruins. Excellent. I packed up the scroll and loot and decided to do some quick investigation before returning to Malcum.