The Battle (23 page)

The sixty-foot bubble inflated over the warriors’ heads. It expanded the safe zone and guaranteed a 50,000 damage point absorption from just one accumulating crystal. And there must have been twenty of those crystals fixed to the poorly-armored cart.

But we were lucky: the Dome’s iridescent edge stopped a mere few feet from the castle’s cover. Had the horse gone a bit further, our artifact would have been burned to hell, destroying all the guards in its annihilating flash.

That would have sucked as I was planning to use it to cover the gates during the last stage of the battle.

But I decided not to race ahead. The unknown driver was to be scolded, given a huge medal, then promoted. He had no business driving carts if he was that smart. I’d give him something more adrenaline-pumping at the budget’s expense.

I stuffed back into my pocket the extra AMA scroll that I had mechanically pulled out. Then I studied the battlefield. All the warriors were in place. We’d shut down two portals out of three to save energy. The warriors were fidgeting, overflowing with righteous fury and grieving over the loss of their comrades.

There were no more surprises for the next minute. The enemy showered us with stones and arrows, burying Badaboom under tons of ammunition. He melted it all into one spiked, metal monolith consisting of a horrid mixture of poisons, acids, and sharp meteoric iron.

The Mobile Dome sparked, absorbing the damage and taking a top wizard’s 24-hour energy store. The Accumulators went out one by one, overheating from the outrageously fast discharge. The dimmed crystals spat out light smoke and cracked loudly, cooling down in the recesses of their wooden slots.

Finally, a loud bang rang out over the enemy castle. It was as if a bunch of rampageous gods had knocked a three-hundred-foot wall down with a brick.
That’s it, Medium Dome’s baked.

The enemy safety zone shrank all the way back to their castle walls. The Minor Dome Shield artifact ran at full capacity, barely stretching itself out enough to cover the majestic Nova. A guaranteed energy overexpenditure for the Chinese.

And now, for the real blow.
The shell-shocked Badaboom took out his third scroll. At this point, the Chinese were no doubt shouting into all the alliance’s channels, demanding tens of thousands of reinforcements to teach the insolent Russians a lesson.

Surely, they’d get their reinforcements. But they wouldn’t be anything extreme or impossible to beat. Flint had tied up most of the free powers.

A few minutes ago, a hundred castles had lost their shields. Scores of assailants burst into Control Rooms. Therefore, all the castles needed reinforcements immediately. To withdraw whole ranks, to put them back on their feet and ready for a new fight was no quick task.

The clanging of chains, thunder, and shaking ground made me look up in alarm.

The drawbridge, which had been covering the vulnerable gates up until now, dropped across the moat. Boots thundered over the wooden bridge as all the NPCs incapable of long-range combat rushed out. That included everyone from the sinister guards armed with spears to cooks with heavy tavern knives.

Hoping to crush the Mobile Dome, the Chinese sent out all their hand-to-hand combat forces. They didn’t dare send players because if we took over the battlefield, they’d be cut off from the players’ graves for the next three hours.

I’d give them a C+ for their efforts. Theirs was an act of desperation rather than a real threat.

Now had our Dome been poorly built, spluttering on its empty tank as it sucked the mana from the last crystal, their suicide attack might’ve worked. They’d cost us some HP, so their chances of success were above zero.

Our warriors were tired of waiting and met the enemy with joyful cries. The full mana pools intoxicated them. The ticking timers of the short-lived buffs craved blood. Seeing our cover wizards faint only fueled their thirst for revenge.

Crossbows clanged. Bow strings twanged against arm guards. Spears, darts, and other flying steel slashed the sky to the accompaniment of groans.

A horde of pets raced forward. The astral world moaned, twisting as hundreds more wizards joined the fight.

The clan chat flooded with bewildered messages. The people grew indignant. The world lagged, lengthening the time it took to cast a spell. The chances of making a mistake or losing concentration sharply increased. Mana restoration speed noticeably dropped. The temperature grew cooler.

Damn, did our wars stir things up.
We sucked the astral world’s energy like parasites, quickly transforming it into thousands of magic formulas.

But playtime was over. The real game physics could not realize all of the game designers’ wants. Mana didn’t just appear from nowhere. It had certain properties, including quantity parameters, density per square foot, regeneration speed, and the Fallen One knows what else.

Indeed, we were in for several more surprises. Reality is no treat. It didn’t have 500-level wizards for us who could crack a planetoid by lifting an eyebrow. The world sought balance, which was completely understandable.

Full-blown wars for sources of magic were a guaranteed thing of the future. Accumulating crystals would go up in price. Where were we getting them now? That’s right: buying them from merchant NPCs at any wizard guild for solid gold. Not a bad extra income for the admins, for there was no known recipe for making crystals yourself.

But what about the day when the game algorithms would fail, and the merchandise one fine morning would not get regenerated?

Are not fantasy books a sort of prophecy? They tell of tiny power rocks the size of your pinkie nail that cost as much as a downtown villa. Was this not what was going to happen in a thousand years from now?

I could tell even from where I stood that one accumulator in the cart had cracked. Now imagine that replacements couldn’t be purchased? A calamity.

My greedy pig made a note that ten percent of the available budget should go into buying crystals. And also crystal fragments. It didn’t matter that they were useless now. I could see our great-grandchildren kissing the feet of our statues, thanking us for saving up these treasures.

Yes, I shall have my own statue! Yes, a large one! No, not of gold! They’ll melt it down, that’s why!
But the Granite of Pharos, on the other hand, is indestructible after a magic treatment. That’s it, now write it down!

Dividing up my consciousness, I jotted my thoughts down in my planner as I encouraged the greedy piggy within. My eyes were fixed upon the rapidly unraveling massacre.

We held up all right. The golems hit from the flanks and trampled the assailants into the mud. The kamikaze NPC horde had cost us another crystal – a hundred thousand gold wasted. These crystals were just not made for fast energy discharge. They burned up like flimsy wires under an immense load.

The bloody action did not prevent Badaboom from finishing reading the High Spell. He fell to the ground, crushed by the recoil a mere second after the destruction of the enemy dome.

The Chinese instantly lost interest in the overpowered enemy spot. They took cover behind the spiked bridge again and froze, refilling their mana and awaiting an attack on the gates.

The magic flame slowly died down. The long-lived DoTs fine-tuned their cycles. Puddles of acid fumed everywhere. Clouds of poisons began to dissipate. Only the enemy’s NPC archers kept firing as no one had told them to stop.

When Badaboom crawled out, heavily shell-shocked and spitting out pieces of his lungs, he instantly got pumped full of sharp arrows.

A smart spotter sat in one of the towers. The siege machines opened up with blanket fire, hitting the dense ranks of Chinese hard. The loss counter went through the roof.

The warriors that got away with a sixteen-foot spear in their gut saw the end of their career underneath a fridge-sized big-ass stone.

Upon respawning at the bind point, each warrior sent a clan stealth character to retrieve their grave, then awaited their turn to resurrect. The Chinese had NPCs operating their machines. Thus each death took away precious XP points.

I charged at the gunners with my guards. It was time for phase two of the operation. I had doubts about our success as it depended heavily on the half-finished creations of one mad genius.

The restless Gimmick was already pulling the tarpaulin from the massive ammo carts, impatiently spurring on the slow-witted loader ogres.

I completely understood the NPCs. A Gunner Droid left without power had been fitted into the ancient vehicle, crushing its wooden sides. It was the two-ton mini-boss from Station-8.

Quite a sight for a fantasy world.

"Come on, lift him outta there! Don’t fret! Ya couldn’t break ‘im if ya tried; he’s a solid mithril-based armor-composite!" Gimmick yelled, slightly swelling with pride as he searched my face for approval.

"You kick ass, no doubt! How many did you bring?"

"Four, plus some smaller ones. I woulda brought more, but the right 6
th
Generation Processing Units and Modular Memory Slot kits are hard to come by. External weapons also required some thinking through. We hoarded everything that was compatible with the Droid’s universal fire-control system."

"Gotcha!" I interrupted the understandably proud expert and snapped at the ogres myself, "Take them to the trebuchets. Snowie, help these weaklings!"

Snowie chuckled and slung his wonder-club over the back of his divine armor. Grabbing the lugs of the Droid’s external armor, he raised the Droid over his head.

He looked around for Bomba, who was now holding the first line together as she bestowed a photogenic smile upon the guard taking screenshots. Sinking into the ground, Snowie marched to the trebuchets.

"Here! Set it here!" Gimmick fussed, pointing at the wide trebuchet pouch.

Checking the strap anchors on the Droid’s homemade parachute system, he snatched a Power Crystal off his belt and carefully stuck it into the complex slot. Closing the latch, Gimmick looked around and quietly ordered,

"And now, beach party’s over!"

Then he signaled to one of the orcs. "Now!"

The trebuchet’s beam went down, hit the counterweight stopper and sent the Droid flying. Gimmick quickly yet lovingly brushed the controls, bringing the machine into action, then swiftly stepped aside.

The Droid’s faceted eyes began to glow. It wanted to get up but immediately crouched, absorbing the throw of the catapult.

Whoosh,
the twelve-ton counterweight went down. The sling shot up, sending the Chinese our surprise.

In the first second of its flight, the Droid flipped over like an agile cat, pointing its gun barrels right at us.

The tiny laser dots found our frozen bodies. We made anime eyes in fear. The Droid fired plasma at us in huge amounts.

"Danger!" cried Gimmick, instinctively throwing himself into a crack between two stones, thus demonstrating impressive agility.

"Shit," was all I could say as I dove behind a heap of troll guards' bodies.

Now I understood why Gimmick got beat up in the Crypt.
Inventor my ass!

Plasma looms went straight through the bodies and the trebuchets. They blew up any rocks they hit. Burning shrapnel showered us from all sides, pounding on our armor.

We had to endure these few seconds of plasma gun fire before the Chinese who were scared by our surprise. They took the aggro upon themselves by attacking the Droid with everything they could.

The Droid flipped in flight again and fired at them, confused for a second due to the abundance of targets.

Actually, the Droid was nothing extraordinary. A 380-level creature, upgraded a bit by the skillful Gimmick; external shields, better armor config, and twice as many guns as the default version.

The top ten warriors familiar with our tactic could have slaughtered it in five minutes. But again, they had to know what they were dealing with, be masters of their techniques, and have adequate equipment. Surely, having such a Droid suddenly drop on your ass meant chaos and serious losses.

The flashing Droid flew over the castle a bit too high. The braking parachute wasn’t on time either. Lines tightened, and the smooth flight path turned into an emergency landing somewhere beyond the donjon. The dome shield’s area turned out to be too small for such a huge robot. We might just as well have launched a Jeep at them.

"Overshot," Gimmick commented as he left cover.

I disagreed. True, we missed the yard, but the robot still landed in a good spot. At least the Chinese stopped firing at us for now, and the first fires started up on their territory.

"Yeah, party’s over!"

A second Droid was launched. The noise of its launch was made worse by the racket of the trebuchet’s counterweight.

Fortunately, I was a quick learner. Diving behind a rock, I called to the NPCs, "Get down!"

This Droid was armed with two Gatling guns. The electric motor's noise rent the air. The guns reached the optimal speed quickly, and a hail of lead rained down upon us.

The sound of the parachute opening rang out frightfully close. The Droid went down halfway between us and the enemy.