Chapter 48
Hardest Heart
Asher stared hollowly at the fluttering letters in front of him which read Battle of Ellidson Hills. It was the new Daily Stage, refreshed anew, with a difficulty rating of 34/100, even easier than yesterday's. But... he was still hesitant.
As quickly as he could close his eyes, memories of the Castle Hold would flood him like a rushing river, reminding him of pain, suffering, and all but certain death that he’d overcome. He fought tooth and nail to crawl out of that place and just barely did so, and though he could postulate day and night over whether the difficulty rating included Alice, he could never be certain. And wanting to confirm could lead to his death.
That was the hang-up, he recognized. That was the ultimate difference.
He firmly believed that no one who could qualify as a ‘Shepherd’ shared the same fear, the same anxiety over death. It may not have made sense to him, even back on Earth, how fearless some people were, but they existed. In small numbers, yes, in numbers that, statistically, were insignificant... but they were real. Those who’d jump into the fire just to feel what it was like to be burned.
Did he fear it? He asked himself. He asked loudly and silently until his inner voice reverberated throughout his entire body, shaking him. But only silence, and its deeper sibling, responded, both tangled in an insensible peroration that had no answer.
“Goddammit,” he mumbled into his jaw, tightening it. He raised his finger and yet paused before he could make a choice. Breathing out and breathing in, he calmed down--or attempted the best he could, at least--wondering why he was struggling so much. Not just with whether he feared death or not, but with why he was so determined to even try and be a Shepherd.
He almost felt like a teenage boy out cruising with his friends who all mocked that he had no ‘game’ and found it necessary to prove them wrong. A chip on the shoulder the size of a mountain, it seemed, weighed him down; it couldn’t be small, after all, if it was pushing him into what sounded like certain death.
His hand fell back down and he opened his eyes once again, resuming the staring. It was a wall he knew he’d encounter--wanting to go from just uncomfortable heat into deathly fire was never going to be an easy choice, but he thought he had worked it out... as well as he could, at least. Even after Rae’s warning, however truthful it was, his desire didn’t feel stymied.
“You should do it,” a familiar voice that he did not want to hear joined him in the dark. He didn’t know she could get in here--one of the few sanctuaries of freedom that he thought he had... vanquished, just like that. “That way you can just die and make the universe a better place.”
"I begged God for courage and he sent me a plague," he glanced over to the side where she Qyne was aflutter. "That tracks."
“You have ruined my Mother and I,” she said, her voice cold and void of the snide tone she always had. “We are a laughing stock, now, because of you.”
"Because of me?" Asher arched his brow. "Fuckin' hell, do some self-reflection, you dumb bitch. You made a choice to try and assassinate me basically and it bit you in your fucking ass. What was I supposed to do? Say no to that fuckin' Duke? He was gonna make an example out of you one way or another. Just 'cause he used me as a prop doesn’t mean that it’s my fault.”
“YOU COULD HAVE JUST DIED!!!” she screamed, her eyes suddenly awash with tears. “IF YOU HAD JUST DIED, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!!”
“--or, and hear me out,” he said. “None of this would have happened if you didn’t try to kill me either. Why are you here, anyway? If it’s that bad, go comfort your mother.”
“... she kicked me out.”
“Huh?”
“That ring,” Qyne said, her voice cracking slightly. Though it was strange to see her so emotional, Asher felt... nothing. If anything, there was a small sense of glee within him bubbling that he had to suppress. “She will get it back, no matter what. So, I’m going to stick with you like glue to see how she skins you alive and takes it back.”
“Maybe,” Asher said. Though he was frustrated when she appeared, he suddenly felt glad. Her obnoxious presence was like a talisman that dispelled his demons. He felt calm, suddenly--his churning heart settled and his rattled mind quieted. “But, even if she does kill me, and even if she puts me through the most painful death imaginable... remember this, Qyne. It won’t change the fact that you lost. You lost... to me. No matter when or how I die, that will always remain unchanged. Besides,” he added as his finger traced toward entering the Stage. “My mother was far from a saintly woman. The opposite, really. She beat me, abused me, threw her crack needles at me, and God knows what else. But you know what she never did? Kicked me out over some jewelry, no matter how important it was. Memories and mementos are important... but if she loved you as much as everyone claims she does, no matter what that ring represented, she would have thrown her anger at the Duke, at the Emperor--hell, even at me. But she threw it at you. Because she can’t do anything to the Duke or to the Emperor or, yes, even to me. But you? You... she can hurt.”
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“What are you--”
“--wish me luck, Qyne.”
His body throbbed in pain for a moment as he found himself flung once more through the vastitude of space. He blinked and realized he was no longer encased in darkness--instead, there stretched a steep drop of a hill into a small valley beneath. The day was bright and clear and the skies above azure, though the world beneath hardly shared the beauty.
The paused world reflected a scene Asher was not all that happy to see--one of war. The valley below was beset with corpses, and the stretched-out sides of the hill saw thousands currently frozen in motion, yielding. On the other side, the same story played out--it was a march of two opposing sides toward the valley, en route to a frontal clash.
His head spun as he tried to comprehend the numbers. He... couldn’t. Not for the lack of trying, but that the chorus of people stretched into heat-wobbled horizon, beyond what he could see. There were thousands, potentially tens of thousands, rushing toward each other. His calm heart stirred once again, reminded that despite his pride-fueling moment with Qyne, he was now once again about to fight for his life.
And now, among the starter weapons, there were no Legendary ones to take him over the hill. Luckily, though, one weapon was of ‘Epic’, one was ‘Rare’, and one was Common--the Wooden Staff.
From the looks of it, he concluded, he'd likely need to either stem the other army's charge or defeat a number of soldiers--and, a quick glance to the side confirmed both, in fact.
Battle of Ellidson Hills [Daily]
Difficulty Rating: 34/100
Context: At the height of the Empire's Second War of Succession, armies of Crown Prince Aeon and Duke Wattar clashed in one of the grandest and deadliest single battles in the Empire's entire history--Battle of Ellidson Hills. Ellidson Hills, wedged between Siewa River and Western Silver Mines, was an important strategic position that changed heads several times during the course of the war. However, only one of the battles fought here has ever been named--and is immortalized in the carved names of all those who had fallen found at the Weeping Wedgewall in the Empire's Capital.
...
Defeat Soldiers: 0/20,000
Or
Hold The Line: Do not allow Ellidson Hill to fall into the hands of Duke Wattar’s forces. If you hold on for a battle’s length without surrendering the high ground, it will be counted as a victory.
Asher sighed ever so slightly, his lips stretching out into a bitter and self-deprecating smile. It wasn’t the number, it wasn’t the context, it wasn’t even the alternate way to ‘play’ the map, as it were. No, what caught him off guard and got him to stiffen was a single word: Soldiers.
It was no longer ‘Defeat Monsters’... it was ‘Defeat Soldiers’. He chuckled, and that chuckle grew louder and soon became laughter. However, it wasn’t audible. It was all in his head--for nothing but his eyes could move.
Though he was always conscious of the fact that the creatures he was killing weren’t just monsters that had neither thoughts nor emotions, there was a wall of separation between his mind and reality. They looked odd and different and were dubbed as such. But he was no longer afforded that courtesy. Even if he wanted to somehow, some way convince himself that 'Soldiers' still didn't necessarily mean human, it was for naught.
The world was telling him to either embrace becoming a monster... or die denying it. After all, the ‘alternate path’ to completing the Stage was just impossible. Not because one force was larger than the other, but because Asher’s involvement wouldn’t change a damn thing in the outcome. He was just one person, and even if he got the luckiest rolls in the world, he would still be unable to hold the line. This wasn’t Castle Hold, where he had to face ‘just’ a dozen monsters at a time. There were thousands, tens of thousands--and that was just those he could see.
The grandest and deadliest single battle--that was what this place was. The single deadliest battle on Earth was Siege of Leningrad with five and a half million casualties. Half of that--no, even just a tenth of that was a number so astronomical Asher didn't want to comprehend it. And even if he dove deep back into Earth's history and excluded modern conflicts, there was still the Siege of Gurganj with over a million possible dead, the Siege of Osaka with half a million, or the Siege of Carthage with just a little bit below that.
If this battle simply approached those numbers... what could he do? No... this wasn't a 'multi-choice test'... he would have to kill 20,000. Not monsters, not creatures, not misshapen things that only resembled humans in some unifying notion of 'humanoid', no. He'd have to kill 20,000 people. And even if he was more than certain that this wasn’t like Castle Hold which could have potentially been a ‘real event’ and was very much him just living out one of the historic battles, it did little to assuage his raging heart.
The hardest part, he mused, wouldn't be the numbers. The sheer quantity. No, the hardest part would be the beginning. The start. If he could kill one, his mind would urge to self-soothe, he could kill two. And five. And ten. And once you have killed a hundred, what's another hundred? And after a certain point, they cease being deaths of people and just become... numbers. Numbers that are then etched into historical records so that future historians can study them and exclaim in amazement at their wild scope. And compare them to whatever barbaric choice they, too, are now forced to make.