PROLOGUE - CULLING
Flint opened his eyes a bleary crack. He reached a hand out, grasped something soft. The other eye opened and his vision accommodated to light.
He was in a tent of some kind. He glanced down, felt his shirt, then the skin underneath.
He frowned, lifting the shirt. Muscle visible beneath a skin-tight abdomen. Lifting his woolen trousers, he examined his other equipment.
It was a strange feeling. With VR goggles, you had the optical impression of being in another body. But here, well, it felt no different than real-life. Except…
He twisted around, letting his legs dangle off the bed. He leaned forward, planted both feet. “Moment of truth,” he said. Then he stood.
At first he didn't move. Just stood still, waiting for the artificial gravity of the ship to overcome his atrophied legs. But it didn't happen. He put out a cautious foot, shifted his weight, and stepped. Then took another.
“Haha! I’m walking!”
He did a circle around the plush carpet. First at a walk, then at a jog. Laughing like a lunatic the whole time.
A band of yellow light flashed across his vision, stopping him cold.
“What the…”
A rectangular band settled on the bottom-half of his visual field. The band consisted of six empty squares. To the left of the squares were three different-colored meters — the top filed with red, middle with blue, bottom with green.
He knew instantly what the bars represented. Confirmation flashed across his central vision:
This is your Heads-Up-Display.
It contains your Skill Bar (the six squares in the center) and your Constitution Meters (the three lines to left, indicating your Health, Stamina, and Energy). The message you are currently reading is also considered part of your HUD.
Flint focused on the band taking up a sizable portion of his vision. Despite its size, it wasn't obtrusive, and when he started walking again, the bar shrunk into the periphery. When he closed his eyes, it disappeared. “Cool,” he said.
And it was. The HUD was a standard mechanic in games like these. But usually, he was staring at it through VR optics. It was a much different experience to have it right in your visual field.
A new message populated his HUD:
NEW QUEST: THE CULLING
Locate the Jackhammer and register for the next round of the Culling-a team-based deathmatch that will test your mettle against other officer candidates.
Flint acknowledged the words with a thought, and they faded. Neat how that worked. Just think something, and the HUD obeys.
“A deathmatch, huh? Not big on the team part, but otherwise... right up my alley.”
He walked excitedly over to the tent flaps and shoved through into sunlight.
He was in a camp. That much was obvious. In front of him was a haphazard row of other tents identical to his own. Even now, several confused figures not unlike himself emerged from them. Probably other players.
He glanced across dirt pathways leading through a field toward a round coliseum, where even at this far distance he could hear the sound of yelling crowds.
He started off down the path, savoring the ambulatory sensation. In this virtual world, he didn’t pain or stiffness moving appendages. A pair of muscular legs carried him without trouble. Hard to believe it, really. Hard to believe all of this. He raised his palms and studied their pinkness and firmness. He made tight fists, watched the forearm muscles bulge.
Safe to say, this wasn’t the crippled, worthless body back on the Star Ark.
A few yards further into camp, he came across a motley of people in medieval armors and clothing. They were sat around in groups, their legs on wooden benches, sharpening blades or minding cookfires. There were circles of them sparring with swords. A few paces away, a thick bald man in an apron hammered at stone and anvil while a woman filed a blade against a sharpening wheel. A third blacksmith carried the body of sword between tongs, pulling it from the blazing forge and dumping it into a quenching barrel. Hot steam rose from the barrel, filling the air with the crackling and sizzling of water on hot metal.
Flint drew in a breath through his nostrils. For all their ghoulishness, these Caskets provided an insane level of realism.
Two people walked around him on the path. The one that caught his eye first was a female with a white shawl drawn about her head. She had a staff in hand and was talking to a man in a breastplate with a pair of hatchets at his waist. His armor and weaponry were so cool, Flint stared at him long enough for the man to notice.
“You lost fellow?” the man said.
Flint stopped. When he spoke, his voice was the same as it was in real-world, except maybe a touch deeper. “Uh... no, I'm not lost. Just wondering what town this is.”
“This is Reach City,” the man said. He pointed at the stadium ahead. “That up there is the Coliseum.”
Flint thought about the location. Likely he'd been spawned inside the capital city of one of the four major kingdoms. The one he would be expected to fight for in the on-going war that was the main plot of the game.
“Are you guys players, too?” Flint asked.
The two looked at each other, then back at him.
“Player of what?” the woman asked.
A new HUD message appeared:
These persons are non-player characters (NPCs). Except in rare cases, NPCs do not know the difference between real players and themselves.
“They don’t?” Flint asked, frowning.
The two people slowly stepped back from him like he was crazed, then continued down the path.
He stood there a moment still breathing in the realistic air. He tracked down the pathway towards the arena and through the thick of the camps. He noticed none of the soldiers were in any kind of uniform. Was he in a mercenary camp?
As he drew closer, the sounds from the arena grew louder and more prominent. He wondered what was taking place inside. Some gladiatorial combat perhaps?
People formed a queue outside the gate. Some were shoving each other, one of them getting very angry and smashing a man across the face with his gauntleted fist sending him flailing into the mud. A moment later, a female mage threw a fireball in his face, bursting his head into hot flame that drew the crowd back.
Flint jumped back. This violence was somewhat unexpected in this area, though shouldn’t of been completely unexpected. These types of games liked to shock you early on.
There was a throng of bowstrings, and he looked up saw the mage take four arrows through her body, one through the side of her cheek and out the other end. She gave a sickening gurgle, vomiting blood down her shawl and keeled over in the muck.
“Shit,” a man gasped next to Flint. The generic white shirt and trousers gave him away as a player.“I actually feel nauseous watching it.”
Flint looked over at him and shrugged. “It’s a medieval MMO. What do you expect?”
A moment later, black-clad soldiers with the insignia of a dragon on their breastplates moved through the crowd. They had long, black great swords in hand, their bodies covered head to toe in platemail.
Flint whispered under his breath. “Where can I get me some of that armor?”
A voice rang out over the throng of people. Flint could smell the burnt smell of flesh. And oddly enough, it made his stomach grumble with sickening hunger.
“All right you fuckin’ pansies,” a hard voice said. “Y’all want to fight, you sign-up for the Culling.”
A small man pushed his way through the soldiers, pushing some of them aside hard enough to make them stumble. The rest stepped gladly out of his way. Flint got the impression whoever this man was he was very powerful. Sure didn’t look it, though. He was maybe 5 feet tall, walked with a limp on the right.
The man stopped five feet away, looked from burnt-face to the female mage laying dead in the mud. Her companion was still knocked out cold a stride away from her.
“What a waste,” he said, spitting on the ground.
Flint watched as the man took care to survey the scene, looking at each of the forty or so people gathered around him. Though he took his time, nobody spoke a word.
“I’m the Jackhammer,” he finally said. “I run this arena for the Royal Chamberlain. Which of you wants to earn a commission?”
There was some murmurings among the crowd, but nobody volunteered outright.
“Form a queue. And nobody kills anyone till I say so.”
The queue reformed, and somehow Flint ended up at the front of it.
The man called Jackhammer looked him up and down. Flint imagined there was never a more unimpressed face in the universe. “What’s your name, shit head?”
Flint was about to say something, but before the words left his lips, his HUD flashed a message.
WARNING — The name you select cannot be changed from this point forward.
He heaved a breath, then almost said his real name. But then he thought about it. Would he want the same name in this world as he had back on the ship? Flint never took these dialog screens seriously. He’d given himself all kinds of crazy names in other games. JackMehoff and BarryHallsacks, among others.
“Well?” Jackhammer said. “What’s your name shit-stain?”
“Walker,” Flint said. “The name’s Walker.”
The dialog box in front of him entered the characters in block letters. It hovered a moment, then the letters blinked and he heard a brief confirmatory chime.
“Walker,” Jackhammer said. “What kinda dipshit name is that?”
“Uh…” He honestly had no idea. No matter, though. Jackhammer wasn't interested in an answer.
“What kinda fighter are you, Walker?” he said.
Another dialog box popped up, though this time It was a miniature pop-in screen, of the type he was used to in these games. It brought up his heads-up display at the bottom, where his skill bar sat empty along with his statistics — health, manna, stamina. Filling in the dialog box were three images of himself or what he imagined himself to be. It looked like his real form, only this time, he wasn’t in a wheelchair. It was an idealized version of himself. Well-built and stocky with olive-skinned. Like he grew-up in a tropical military camp as opposed to a radioactive space-ship.
Flint whistled again. Damn I’m built like a brick shit house.
In the image on the left, Flint saw a version of himself in a kind of robe holding a wooden staff. Below the image was the word Magus. To the right of that was a thicker built but somewhat shorter version, this one with a bow on his back and a pair of daggers in his front holster. Below this one the word Adventurer. The third version was the biggest of the three—both in terms of height and size. He studied the thick chest and legs of this version, falling instantly in love with it. Warrior.
“Warrior,” Flint said.
The dialog box shifted and a new three set of forms appeared.
“Warrior,” Jackhammer said. “Care to be more specific?”
The three versions of the warrior flashed into his view. The first one—the Knight it was called—depicted him full-clad in battle dress not unlike Jackhammer’s soldiers. The middle one was called a Vanguard. A much taller and beefier version holding a tower-sized shield and a short sword. The third option—the one Flint selected almost instantly—was the Charger. This one had a great Warhammer in his hands and warpaint on his face. He looked like a mean son-of-a-bitch ready to rush into a fight and bash someone’s brains out.
He focused on the Charger and was surprised to find two more subclasses: The Berserker and the Dragoneer. There was no information on either of these, but a HUD message told him they would unlock at level 75.
“Charger,” Flint said.
“Charger,” Jackhammer repeated. “Very well.”
The dialog box disappeared.
“You’re signed up, ” Jackhammer said. “Next!”
One of Jackhammer’s assistant’s stepped over to him. “Best to go get a weapon, friend. The next round starts in ten minutes.”
A new message appeared in his HUD:
QUEST UPDATED: THE CULLING
Do not fight unarmed. Equip a weapon before the contest begins.
Flint was led over to the sparring circle with a scarecrow dummy next to a tent filled with weapon racks. There was a rack of fresh weapons on the table. There was a long lance, a huge two-handed great sword, and a battle axe. All of them were somewhat generic looking. Flint reached down and picked up each of them in turn, examining their stats in the dialog box that popped-up. The image of the weapon appeared on the left in a panoramic view. Next to it was a blank dialog box, which presumably would’ve held a weapon to compare stats with. He picked up the warhammer, and a dialog box flashed in front of him.
Basic Warhammer
Base Damage: 15+2 per each level of Strength.
Weight: 10.2 pounds.
Among the three, it was the heaviest. The others had similar if slightly less powerful stats. With each of them, he took a swing at the dummy in the sparring circle, handling each weapon with ease. Back on the Silvestre, he could barely lift a fork to his mouth. Here he could wield a great sword with ease.
In the end, he settled on the heaviest of the weapons. A chime pinged as he equipped it, automatically bundling it to the harness on his back.
QUEST UPDATED: THE CULLING
Join your team at the starting corral. Hurry before the contest begins.
Red arrows formed on the pathway. He followed them around the series of tent camps and towards the other end of the arena. When he came to the starting corral, he was surprised to see Jackhammer standing on a podium near the other warriors.
“Okay, dipshits, here are your uniforms.”
A dialog box appeared suddenly, this time holding a set of chainmail. With merely a thought, he equipped the item.
Gladiator Melee Armor.
Base 10 armor with +2 bonus resistance to physical and magical damage of all types. This armor is colored green to represent your team in the Culling Contest.
When the dialog box disappeared, he felt the heaviness sink into his body as the armor was suddenly equipped. Strange how it all felt so real. The armor was much heavier than the shirt and pants he recently had on.
“Step into the corral,” Jackhammer said.
Flint followed the arrow marker into an tunnel where other players in the same color armor were standing.
“The goal is to kill everyone on the other team,” Jackhammer said. “Last team standing wins.”
Flint smiled. Killing people virtually was something of a personal specialty.
He stretched his neck out and got loose. Time to see if the game's combat mechanics lived-up to the hype.
His building excitement was interrupted by the sound of a teammate. Flint's head froze mid-stretch on his shoulder when he heard the voice. A familiar one. The words came from the opposite end of the corral, sounding like it came from someone with blocked nasal passages.
“Hey baby, you ready to open a can of wa—wa—whoop-ass?”
He slowly turned to the source. A giant warrior of a player in green armor carrying a great sword. He was at the other end of the corral with a buxom red-haired mage. Even in idealized form there was a close resemblance to the person behind the player. Flint's HUD, perhaps sensing the growing interest in this teammate, engaged the targeter, highlighting him an soft glow. Identification came through a second later:
Vardock
Level 0 Charger
Flint stared across the corral, mouth agape. Hundreds of thousands of players, and they just happened to end up on the same team? Had to be a cruel prank. Or sabotage. But why and by whom? “Gotta be fucking kidding me.”
The woman was beaming at Vardock, touching him on the shoulder and giggling at every stupid thing the moron said. Flint’s targeter named her as Sally Short, a level 0 Battlemage.
“I’m just hoping to stay alive,” she said. “I'm not very good at PvP games.”
“Stick with me and I’ll watch your buh— backside,” Vardock said.
She giggled. “If you’re the real King, you can stay as close to my backside as you want.”
Flint walked toward them, scowling. He grabbed the big man by shoulder, causing him to turn.
The face of the man was obviously an idealized version of his arch-nemesis. Where the weak, dark eyes and weak jaw were once held, this was a sharp chiseled jaw. The flabby body was replaced with muscular stockiness, still rotund and rounded but powerful.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Vardock's eyes went big. “Flint? Is that you?”
“Of course,” he snapped.
Sally Short's eyes widened. “Flint? As in Flintlock?”
“That's the one,” Vardock said, a stupid smile on his face. It was then Flint knew the prick had inveigled his way into the same instance, probably to annoy him. “What's going on, boss? Looking a lot less cuh—cuh—crippled.”
“What are you doing here, Dexter?”
“Playing the guh— guh— game,” he said. “What’s it look like?”
“There's a million fucking players and you happen to spawn in my instance?” he said. “This some practical joke? Are you streaming for your idiotic fans?”
“You can't stream in this game,” Sally Short said, laughing. “And you also don't get to choose what instance you spawn in.”
Flint turned his scowl on her. “Was I talking to you?”
“Ease up, Flint,” Vardock said. “There's no streaming or practical joke here.”
“Bullshit.”
Vardock frowned. “Believe what you want, then. But you ask me, you should feel lucky you’re on my tuh— tuh— team. Might have a chance at winning for once.”
Before Flint could reply, a loud voice admonished them from behind.
“Hey, Battle Smite jerk-offs.”
The three of them turned. A woman nearly seven feet tall with white hair and bulky chain mail glared at them above a rectangular shield. Flint’s targeter showed her playername as Lady Val, a level 0 Vanguard.
“This isn't the one-v-one ladder,” Lady Val said. “This is a team game, so save your shit-talking for the other team.”
Before Flint could reply, Jackhammer’s voice boomed through some magical amplification.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages… Round three-hundred and ninety-one of the Culling Contest is about to begin!”
The cheers were resounding in response.
Flint gave his arch-nemesis a final glare before walking away. If only the game at least them on separate teams. At least then he could get revenge for the Clownie Moroccos stunt.
“On the count of sixty, the gates will open!” Jackhammer said.
As the countdown started, a new tool-tip appeared in Flint's HUD:
You have three Tree Points to allocate. Use points to unlock Skills before the battle commences.
This was followed by another pop-in window. A series of square icons appeared, connecting to each other through branching gold lines in a tree pattern. At the top of the tree it said: Charger Skill Tree. Next to the title were three golden I’s, each representing a point to spend.
Before he could scrutinize the icons, another message flashed:
Choose your skills wisely or you will likely die during the Culling Contest.
Flint frowned. These damn HUD warnings were morbid.
He scanned the Skills, his focus illuminating descriptions written in white. The first one that caught his eye was an illustration of himself charging an unseen enemy, streaks of red like comet tails trailing his impossibly quick movement.
Skill: Headhunter
Charge an enemy foot unit 60 paces or less away. The further you charge, the more likely you are to knock up your opponent.
Cost: 30 Stamina.
Flint grinned. Steamrolling kids looked like a blast. He applied a point with a thought. The skill icon appeared at the bottom of his vision on the Skill Bar.
“TWENTY-ONE… TWENTY… NINETEEN…” came the crowd’s countdown.
Flint scrolled through the other options. He found an illustration of himself bashing in the skull of a kneeling enemy.
Skill: Crushing Blow.
Add four times your base strength to your next strike which cannot be blocked or parried.
Cost: 25 Stamina.
He quickly applied one of his two remaining Tree Points. Headhunter was an excellent setup skill for Crushing Blow. And in his vast PvP experience, wombo-combos were key to victory.
“NINE… EIGHT… SEVEN…”
With so little time, he almost randomly selected the last skill. The illustration was of himself whirling in a circle, a dust vortex forming around his body as though he was the heart of a tornado.
Skill: Dance of the Whirlwind
Become immune to ranged physical attacks for two seconds +.05 seconds per rank of Agility.
Cost: 10 Stamina, 35 Energy.
He selected it, and the third icon transferred to his Skill Bar.
“THREE… TWO… ONE!”
Flint followed his team forward as the portcullis ascended. At the front of their group were three Vanguards, with tall player called Lady Val at the center. They moved as a single, closely-packed mass toward the center of the arena.
He gazed across the pitch, saw the other three teams doing the same. In seconds, he knew, the groups would break and the fight would be in earnest. This was a mosh pit waiting to form.
Flint had become euphoric in similar gaming situations, but this was something different. It was as though the Casket provided its own source of adrenaline. Maybe it did.
Two of his team's archers drew back bowstrings and fired.
“Stick together!” Val screamed.
Flint felt a nudge at his shoulder and turned. Vardock was marching next to him, a crazed smile on his face.
“Time to light these kuh— kuh— kids up, eh Crip?” Vardock said.
Flint scowled. It would be no surprise for this bastard to troll the game. “Try not to ruin our chance of winning.”
“How could I ruin it?”
“Maybe by rushing the enemy like a fucking dipshit?” he said. “I know you’re thinking about it.”
Vardock scowled. “You’re a pro PvP player for fucks suh— sake,” he scoffed. “Can’t be a little bitch about it.”
Flint was about to tell him to get bent when Vardock gave a loud roar. A red mist exploded from his body, and before Flint could process things, the man charged the enemy team with breakneck speed.
No surprise the erratic fool charged ten enemies by himself. Probably he’d be dead in the next few seconds. Hopefully, anyway. So long as he respawned in a separate instance.
There was a yelp to his right, and Flint jerked sideways. A female mage with the playername of Qu33n NINA caught an arrow through the bicep. Her staff dropped to the ground while her good hand covered the wound. Blood gushed through the gaps in her fingers, staining her robe dark red. She fell to her knees, tears streaking her face. “Oh fuck, oh fuck it hurts!” she squealed.
Flint gawked. That looked awfully painful. “Holy shit.”
A sharp thud, and he turned to see Lady Val a catch rain of arrows on her shield. And then all hell broke loose. Their team broke ranks and they were met in battle with a hodgepodge of blue, red, and yellow-caped players.
Flint let his team jump into the mindless scrum. No use running into a wall of melee enemies could pelt you with projectiles. He pivoted, seeking isolated targets.
Ten feet away, a mage in a yellow cape tossed a purple-colored orb at a red-caped female. The woman sidestepped the spell and threw a blast of flame on the back-step, catching him center mass. The poor bastard's uniform erupted in fire, sent him backwards with a scream. Even seven paces away, Flint felt the heat.
“Cool,” he said, grinning wide. This shit was as real as it got.
A yellow archer stood near the burnt mage and trained an arrow his direction. The bow thrummed and the arrow ripped through the air above his right ear.
Without thinking, Flint’s targeter highlighted the enemy. With a thought, Flint activated his Headhunter skill.
Rage exploded through him like a nuclear blast, bulging and stretching the veins in his neck. He seized his hammer with both hands and thundered across the pitch at inhuman velocity. He tunnel-visioned the archer and shrieked like a demonic banshee. “FUCKING DIE!”
The archer worked on notching a second arrow when he spotted Flint’s charge. He froze, eyes going big as cow’s.
That can happen if you aren’t ready for it. One second your potshotting the enemy, the next your being bull-rushed by a hammer-wielding lunatic.
Flint slammed head-first into him and sent him flying.
“AH!!!”
The archer’s scream diminished as he sailed fifty-feet across the pitch. His body arched downward toward a cement wall below the spectators. The man collided head-first with a sickening crunch, blood spraying the audience above.
“Haha!” Flint raised the hammer in triumph. Damn but that felt good. “Get WRECKED fucking nerd!”
“You bastard!”
He turned to see a female mage sprinting at him. Her heart-shaped face was perfectly symmetric and beautiful, save for the look of mad fury on it. She stretched out and sprayed a gout of blue flame from her fingertips in a wide cone.
Flint frowned. The flame didn’t reach anywhere near enough to hit him. She followed-up with some other spell that caused the air around him to oscillate strangely.
In his lower vision, just above his Skill Bar, a yellow warning flashed.
Elemental Debuff: Fire Damage.
This was accompanied by a tool-tip:
You will take double damage from any fire spell.
He roared with laughter. The mage cast her skills in the wrong order. “You’re supposed to use the damage spell after the debuff you fucking noob.”
She screamed in frustration and ran at him with clenched fists. But Flint wasn't scared. As a matter of balance in games like these, mage classes weren’t good fist fighters. Classes who could shoot high-damage ranged spells couldn’t also do heavy hand-to-hand damage.
Flint decided to test that theory. She threw a punch that he let connect with the side of his face. Sure enough, the jolt of pain was like having a tooth prodded by a dentist. Annoying but not too troublesome. The straight red line of his Health Bar blinked away only a smidge.
He reached up and touched his mouth. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“Screw you!”
The woman reeled back to throw another. Flint raised his arm and blocked it on his metal bracer. She yelped, ringing her hand like she’d caught it in a doorway.
He smiled. In games like this, warrior classes did the real melee damage.
He activated Crushing Blow. The mage became a faint glow as he raised his warhammer, light as a feather, and swung. Hard metal met cheek, rent her pretty skull open like a bloody piñata. The corpse fell away. “Two frags for me.”
He checked his surroundings, looking to add to that number.
All four teams were engaged across the pitch. Nearby, two yellow-caped archers were battling a red mage and a Vanguard, the latter using his absurdly large shield to cover them both. Toward the middle of the pitch, Vardock was wrenching his sword free of a red warrior’s skull in time to catch a pink orb in the back. The big man tripped and went face-first into the dirt.
Flint smiled. Served the fat show-boater right.
At the opposite end of the pitch, two green warriors skirmished with blue enemies. While the groups exchanged jabs and insults, a blue archer twenty feet away fired potshots at his teammates.
Flint focused the sniper, his targeter making the enemy player glow. He readied himself for the charge and thought-activated Headhunter.
A painful click echoed like a gong in his head. He stumbled backwards, dazed. Above his Skill Bar, the word COOLDOWN flashed blue over the skill’s icon.
He gritted his teeth. So much for a quick entry.
Using good legs he was unaccustomed to having, he sprinted for the melee. The distance closed between him and the enemies. Then, impact. An unseen force struck him mid-stride. His teeth slammed down, vision dizzied as his body was flung sideways with the force of a vactrain.
He smashed into dirt twenty paces away, breath knocked from his chest, mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. The violent ringing in his ears continued as he glanced upward, looking for the source of the assault. His health bar shuddered, drawing away 25% of the red meter.
A spell had hit him. That much was obvious. And it hurt more than expected. Way more. But lying around wasn't the best strategy to avoid it.
He gingerly pushed himself up. No sight of any nearby mage. But then his view was blocked by a scrum ten feet away.
The green Vanguard Lady Val stood nearby. She held her shield steady as she backtracked toward the wall by two Knights stabbing at her with lances.
Flint heaved a great breath, nearly choking from the pain in his ribs. He checked Headhunter was recharged. And then let it rip.
The explosion of rage tore through his every fiber in his body, overwhelming whatever sense of pain he still felt. His universe became completely about the Knight filling his vision. A Knight that was about to have a very bad day. “AHHHHHHHHH!” he bellowed.
They collided. the twang of metal radiating through his body. It wasn’t painful though, and it sent the man sprawling sideways a good four paces and tripping up into the dirt. Not nearly the effect with the puny archer. But it was something.
The Knight’s friend turned in surprise. A dumb thing to do. Val used the distraction to jam her sword through his neck. The man gurgled, blood drooling through his split-open gullet onto his breastplate. His knees crumpled, and he collapsed.
The Knight Flint collided with was now getting off the ground now. The impact had forced the player's helmet askew with the visor over his ear. The Knight tried to readjust, then tore it off, discarding it behind him.
Flint swung the hammer, the Knight catching it on his arm. He felt the man’s arm shatter beneath the blow, letting out a scream of unfathomable pain.
A simple thing then for Val to step forward and plunge her sword through the man’s skull. He gargled bloody, the tip coming out his yawning mouth. Not a graceful finish, but frags are frags.
She glanced sideways at him with wide eyes.
“You’re welcome!” he said.
“Behind you!”
Flint spun in time to see a triplet of yellow archers firing at him. Two arrows missed. The first arrow caught him through the right shoulder. A wave of hot pain shot through him and he swayed sideways in time to catch a second arrow through the left knee.
He collapsed, swooning. In his central vision, the health bar blinked madly in rhythm with his heart. A majority of the red meter vanished, only a smidge remaining. The world became a monochromatic blur.
He groaned in agony. This shit was way too realistic. “Well, that was fun,” he gasped. “Now kill me so I can respawn and beat your ass...”
But the kill shot never came. Instead, he felt a sudden, pleasant tug at the center of his being. His alarm vision cleared, and the health bar stopped blinking. In fact, as the battlefield regained color, the red line on his health bar began growing.
He turned around and spotted the reason. A mage on his team was healing him.
A thick spread of golden light emanated from the girl's hand, stretching from her palm to the center of his chest. The pain in his limbs went from unbearable agony to an annoying ache. As he stood, the arrow in his knee splintered and fell away.
His mouth opened to thank her. The words never got out. An arrow pierced her chest, jolting her backwards and cutting-off the healing spell. Two more struck home, one through the eyeball, and she collapsed, stone dead.
Flint zeroed on the three bastard yellow archers responsible.
“Take that, pussy,” one of them yelled.
The other archer, a woman with silver hair sneered. “Yeah, take that, pussy-ass bitch.”
Flint watch them notch arrows and point at him. If all struck home, he was dead. But it's not like he could surrender.
“Fuck it.”
He activated Headhunter. Madness overtook his mind like a fever as he bull-rushed the nearest one. Halfway there, the sound of released arrows, and he activated Dance of the Whirlwind.
Suddenly, his bull rush switched into a nauseating spin. The world turned a sickening blur of colors as he generated a tornadic vortex of sand around himself. Two seconds later, the spin stopped and he made contact. Big contact.
The shit-talking archer was air-mailed from the ground, bow flying from his grasp. Before he slammed into a stone facade of the arena, his girlfriend was already was already tripping over herself to get away. Flint scrambled after her. A bolt of lightning crashed next to her, and Vardock appeared. The giant man swung his sword downward at the girl's head. There was a sound like wet leaves being sheared as she was decapitated above the shoulders.
“Sit down, buh— buh— bitch!”
Flint gaped. That was a neat little trick. Seemed overpowered as shit. “The fuck was that skill?”
His nemesis have him a bloody grin. “Storm Rider.”
An arrow zipped past Flint’s head, causing him to turn. The third archer had another arrow notched and was aiming at him. The bow twanged and Flint jerked sideways, catching it on his left shoulder. The familiar searing pain tore through his body. His Health bar dropped 30% on the point-blank shot.
Flint gritted his teeth and sprinted. He closed the gap quickly, forcing the archer to turn tail and run. The hammer reached out, clipped the enemy's foot, sent him sprawling into sand.
He stepped on the fallen man's back, drawing a squeak of pain. He raised his steel boot high and stomped the player's skull, crushing it and killing him instantly.
Unexpected, that. He wasn't used to having the leg strength to crush a man's head like an overripe watermelon. “That's three for me,” he gasped.
Most of the players were dead now. It was obvious because so few remained fighting. Strangely, the corpses of the fallen players weren't littering the pitch, like you would expect. The reason for that came when the dead archer, recently dead by Flint's heel, disappeared-his body vanished as though it had never existed.
Not unexpected. Dead bodies sometimes disappeared from video games.
Nearby, Vardock was fighting a red mage. The mage threw a vicious purple orb the size of a bowling ball at the big man's head. The seasoned Battle Smite pro raised his shield, blocked it, sent it ricocheting into the stands, destroying the seats and NPC occupants in a shower of gore and wood splinters.
He winced. Note to self-don't get hit by that spell.
Headhunter was off cooldown. He focused the mage and let it ride. Euphoric-rage shot him like a bullet toward the enemy, his entire being focused on murdering this bastard in the most vicious, most savage, most inhuman--
He stopped. No, not stopped. His body came to a sudden, jarring halt that by normal physics should've whiplash-shattered his spine and flattened his brain behind his eyeballs. He was frozen now. Locked-in place as though time itself was stopped.
He couldn't blink. Couldn't even breathe. That was the extent of the stun spell. One second became two. Then another passed. Finally, the effect dissipated, unlocking his muscles in a sudden, almost equally jarring release.
He sucked in a deep, squeaky breath, like a nearly-drowned man resurfacing. It didn't feel good, being turned into a statue. But the red mage was twenty paces away, and crying about it would only give the little shit more time to sling vicious magic at him.
Flint ran at him.
Vardock got there first, using Storm Rider to blink into existence behind the mage. His sword was arcing sideways in a two-handed grip that might chop the mage in half. The scrappy fellow dodged the blade with a spin, letting Vardock's momentum carry the big man sideways. The smug mage grinned, a little too pleased with himself for someone who was nearly vivisected. He raised a palm to fire a spell at the vulnerable warrior. The purple orb formed, then shattered, blinking harmlessly out of existence.
Flint stopped two paces from the mage, confused at why the spell stopped. The answer came when the mage toppled forward, an arrow dripping some green substance leaking from the bloody hole in his back.
Flint sprinted for the source- a yellow archer fifty paces away who even now was notching another poison arrow. The distance was too great. With Headhunter on cooldown, there was no way to close the gap in time.
The arrow came at him, and Flint's body vortexed into a tornado again, activating Dance of the Whirlwind. He didn't see what happened to the projectile, but once the world stopped spinning, he was relieved to find no arrow in his guts.
The yellow archer had other problems anyway. Three red players jumped at him like lions competing for the last gazelle in the world. A red knight shield bashed the archer face, sent him face up into the sand, bow flying. A second knight stepped over him, raising a spear high overhead. Like a flag bearer planting the colors, he buried the sharp end through the man's chest. A third red-not a warrior, but a mage with an odd circular tattoo on his forehead. The mage raised a hand up and pulled down like he was yanking an invisible rope. Two seconds passed while clouds overhead transformed to bilious black balloons. A flash of dark plasm spat from the unnatural object, connecting with the dead archer's corpse, flash-frying flesh and transilluminating the skeleton beneath. As the sky cleared, smoke rose from the corpse in tendrils, filling the air with the scent of burnt meat.
“Holy shu- shit-balls that was cool.”
Flint turned to see Vardock standing next him. The bloodied man was grinning like a lunatic.
“Guess it’s you and me,” he said. “Lets finish these fuh- faggots.”
Flint turned back to the two warriors and the black lightning mage. The only other players still alive. Even with a man advantage though, the three seemed very hesitant about charging Flint and Vardock.
Flint smiled. Probably the idiots saw Vardock's name on their targeter and weren't keen on charging a player with his pedigree. Little did they know there were two seasoned PvP pros staring them down. “How you wanna play this?” Flint asked. “That black lightning probably has a long cooldown. We should focus the-”
“ARGH!!!” Vardock screamed, red aura mist exploding from his form as the big man activated his own Headhunter skill.
“Idiot,” Flint spat. He should let the moron fight them alone. But that would only lower his chances of winning.
No choice left, Flint sprinted after him.
Dexter smashed into the first warrior, sent him staggering. The mage backpedaled, likely worried about getting involved in the melee. The caster likely had no spells available, having wasted the big one on a corpse seconds ago. The warrior who hasn't hit by Vardock stepped forward to jab at him in the back with the lance. The big man didn't see it coming, focused as he was on the other guy who even now was recovering from the collision.
Flint swung at the lance jabber, forcing him to abandon Vardock. He caught the blow on the hip, staggered sideways. He recovered by activating a skill that made two copies of himself. The copies appeared to the side and back of Flint, jabbing at him in synchrony. Flint dodged the side jab, but the other grazed his shoulder, shooting hot pain and pouring blood down his left arm. There was a popping sound, and the copies vanished. But the damage was done. The graze took away a good amount of his health bar, leaving a 10% smidge that set the meter blinking and turned his vision black-and-white again.
Flint roared, swinging his hammer at the limping Knight, who even now was using his lance as a crutch to keep himself from falling. The hammer smashed into his guts, driving the wind from him like an exploding tire. He keeled over, purple-faced and wheezing like an asthmatic. Flint's steel-toed boot came down on his throat, crushing his windpipe.
One down. Two to go.
Flint checked Vardock and the other warrior. The enemy one-handed thrust at the big man with his spear. Vardock twisting away, used the momentum to bring his sword in a circle, and cleanly sliced the player's thrusting arm. The limb should've come off, but it didn't. Likely because the Knight still had HP left. The game didn't seem to let one suffer limb-losing injuries or decapitations unless they were killing blow. Or at least that's what he guessed,
The knight shrieked, spinning away, blood fountaining from the gaping wound, spear dropped and forgotten. Vardock stabbed him through the heart.
And that was two down.
They zeroed in on the last enemy. The mage stood far on the other side of the pitch, appearing for all intents like he was trying to escape.
“He’s mine,” Vardock said.
“Like shit he is.”
Flint highlighted the mage and activated Headhunter. The mad, screeching bull-rush across the pitch began, and he could almost taste the violent impact. Right before contact, the mage vanished, causing Flint's bull-rush to end. He reappeared five paces away, out of Flint’s immediate reach.
“Come on, don’t kill me man,” the mage begged, holding out both hands in surrender. His eyes were wide, the circular tattoo on his forehead crinkled as he backpedalled.
Flint stepped forward, smiling so wide it hurt.
The mage tripped over his own feet and landed on his ass. He gave girlish squeal and turned sideways, reaching for the sword of a disappeared corpse nearby. Vardock stomped on his hand, grounding the bones into the dirt with a twisting motion.
“Ah!” he screamed, tears and snot bubbling from his face. “It hurts so bad!”
Flint raised the hammer high, he activated Crushing Blow. The mage reached up in the air as though grasping for a rope that wasn't there. As the blow came down, the sky darkened overhead.
CRUNCH.
The head exploded in a shower of blood and skull fragments.
An impossibly loud clap, and Flint's every fiber exploded with pain, and his health bar drained of what little red remained.
##
Flint didn't respawn. But he did wake up.
Actually, he more or less appeared into existence through teleportation. The problem was, he wasn't inside the game world anymore. He knew this because the first thing he saw was a Casket. A modular egg-shaped device occupied by a naked person.
“What the fuck?”
He spoke the words, but no sound escaped his lips. He glanced around the darkened interior of what was obviously a storage container very similar to the one his real body was currently laying in. Or was supposed to be lying in, anyway. But then how did he get here?
He glanced at his hands, shimmering with blue-white light. His whole body was pixellated. Ethereal. As though he was a hologram. In fact, that is exactly what he was. On the floor was a rolling cylindrical projector—the same kind that projected McCormick in the Airlock bar a few days prior. It was broadcasting his form upward into reality.
He stepped toward the Casket, the projector rolling forward in tandem. Was he somehow being materialized outside his own Casket? Was this some kind of bug?
He stared through the clear glass of the Casket, he knew that was wrong. The naked man in this unit wasn't Austin Flint. This guy was much taller and black-haired, with a strange circular tattoo on his forehead.
Flint's eyes widened. Could it be him? The mage he just killed in the battle?
A video screen inside the module caught his attention. He saw himself on the screen. Not himself exactly, but the idealized, non-crippled in-game version of himself. The camera was evidently capturing his growing form from foot-level, as though the lens was pointed upward from the ground.
A first-person view from the mage's perspective.
That became obvious when the camera shifted and a hand entered the frame, reaching for a sword in the sand. A giant foot smashed down and crushed the wandering fingers. The camera turned again, and Flint's character was back in the frame, raising the hammer high for the killing blow. The mage's good hand came into view, yanking the invisible string, sending the sky darkening overhead. The hammer fell.
“Holy shit…”
Again he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice.
What he could hear was a loud ringing sound. A frantic, screeching monotone alarm went off inside the Casket. The naked man jerked violently, the needles in his body withdrawn in a sudden, bloody shower.
He glanced at the telemetry monitors on the module. The green lines that displayed the heart rhythm ran across the screen in a straight line. The words at the top of the monitor read: NATHAN GOODWOODY. STATUS: DECEASED.
Flint tried to scream. But all went black again.