World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (51 page)

Marcus catches the eye
movements of his opponent. “I’m sorry man, but you won’t be
able to help your comrades,” the dual wielder taunts as he swings
his left scimitar to drive his Eternian opponent back. “You’re
going to watch the rest of your group gets slaughtered by my men. And
once you’re dead and out of this tournament, you will watch
helplessly as I step through the portal and win this Hundred Man
Tournament.”

Maximus chuckles at the
lofty prediction. “Wow, you must have a crystal ball or something
in your inventory. Or did you consult a fortune teller?” he asks as
his bastard sword collides with the dual blades.

* * *

Loquist summons a
Circle of Blades, and catches four enemy fighters within the circle.
The avatars are quickly ripped into shreds by chest high, rows of
deadly, rotating blades. The spell dissipates after a handful of
seconds.
That’s it; I’m
completely out of mana
, the spell caster sighs as he grabs
his staff tightly and prepares to engage in hand to hand combat.

Viktor and Trinity use
the sudden swing in momentum to press their attack. The two Eternian
swordsmen each deliver a flurry of swings and forces the remaining
Virtuous fighters to regroup.

Suddenly a shadow falls
over the combatants. Crackle! Kaboom! A deadly bolt of lightning
strikes the three Eternians and knocks them out of the tournament.
The shadow quickly moves away, hidden by the clouds in the sky.

* * *

The two duelists are
forced to stop as each man turns toward the direction of the
lightning strike. As the moment of truth arrives and the identities
of the fallen ones are revealed, one man is angered by sudden loss of
his comrades and renews his attack with reckless abandon.

Marcus can do nothing
against this brutal, deranged assault but block every strike with
both scimitars.

The sound of the
clashing blades draws the attention of the remaining survivors, and
the four remaining Virtuous contestants quickly surround the two
fighters. With swords in hand, the four prepare to intervene and
strike the sole remaining Eternian on the battle field.

“No!” Marcus yells
out. “Do not interfere! Or would you rather have The Returned
disgraced on streaming video for cowardly attacking this man from
behind?”

The chastened followers
step back from the two, their swords still drawn. Either way, the
Eternian fighter will not be leaving this field alive.

“I don’t need your
pity,” Maximus growls as he takes another mighty swing of his
bastard sword against the apparent leader of this group.

Virgil chuckles. “My
friend, you have my utmost respect for continuing to fight despite
the obvious foreseeable result of this battle. I admire your spirit,
and merely wish to honor this one-on-one duel,” he explains. “But
I have a traitor to catch up with, and no longer have the time to
play with you anymore. So let’s end this right now!” With the
bastard sword swinging down on his head, Virgil catches the blade
with the guard of his right scimitar. Using his right foot as a
backstop, the dual wielder dash forward with his left foot and lunges
his left scimitar to stab his enemy in the heart.

Maximus looks down at
his avatar’s chest and releases his bastard sword before the
player’s screen goes black. “GAME OVER,” flashes in red a few
times before the player is resurrected back in church at Starter
Town.

Once his opponent’s
body has dissipated, Marcus raises his left scimitar in the air and
lets out a big roar! Since this event occurs in real time in virtual
reality, the encounter is taking a physical toll on the player’s
real body. His heart is still beating rapidly as the adrenaline
continues to course through his veins. Yet, there is no time to
waste! The victor looks at the remaining men on the field.
From
twenty men we are now down to five.
Marcus hides the anger
in his heart as he orders, “Let’s catch up to Easy Money, and
give those traitors some payback!”

The other four
survivors quickly line up behind their leader, prepared to resume
their march to the portal.

“Wow!” Evan
exclaims to the camera as the final moments of the duel between
Marcus and Maximus is replayed on the screen. “What an exciting
duel!”

“But the encounter
proved to be extremely costly to the Virtuous players,” Antoinette
quickly points out. “The lives counter now shows fifty Eternians
versus forty-five Virtuans remaining in this contest.” She turns to
Charles. “This encounter started because a Virtuous player
inexplicably threw fireworks over the position of a hidden group of
Virtuans and exposed them to the Eternian riders. Aren’t all fifty
players fighting on the same side?”

The CEO of VG throws
his hands up and shrugs. “Unfortunately, the company’s employee
who was assigned to fill all fifty slots for this event is
participating in the tournament. Since the hundred players are walled
off inside a separate instance right now, I cannot contact her and
ask what happened. I can only surmise that there may have been some
bad blood between the two groups for some reason.”

His rival chimes in.
“What is unfortunate here is how the leader of the organization
tries to pass the buck along to his lackey. When you have a player
who backstabs another teammate, on live stream no less, this episode
casts serious doubt on the entire culture inside Virtuous Gaming,”
Richard remarks. “When I receive controlling interest in VG,
fumigating this cancerous culture inside the organization will be one
of my first priorities.”

Charles laughs off the
remarks, but shoots daggers at his rival.

“That’s enough from
the spectator table,” Evan quickly changes the subject to forestall
Charles’ reply. “Let’s check the battle field and see which
Virtuous group will test the Eternian defense first.”

* * *

The five Virtuan riders
lead their mounts on a circuitous route around the mountain. Hugo
Everheart is careful to keep his distance to avoid being spotted by
the lookouts that Eternians have surely posted up on the mountain
top. “Any contact with the column?” he asks.

Yeva Truthseeker shakes
her head, “No.”

The contingent of three
fighters, one priestess, and one mage keep silent. The five members
of The Returned are aware that their side has already lost fifteen
players. The radio silence means that the loss probably came from
Marcus’ group, rather than Easy Money’s.

Yeva begins to cast the
spell for which her avatar is named, Clairvoyance: “Oh wondrous
Gods of Eternia, Hear My Plea! Unveil the Truth to Thy Servant!
Amen.” An image appears in thin air in front of the priestess,
showing the enemy position on the mountain top directly behind the
portal. An archer is perched almost directly above the portal, with a
black robed spell caster right next to the bowman. On the left and
right edge of the plateau, in direct line of sight of the archer, are
two more spell casters.

Hugo smiles in irony at
the use of a spell granted by the grace of the Gods of Eternia for
the express purpose of destroying Eternia and, by extension, the Gods
themselves.

Timmons Rangehand
speaks up once the spell has expired. “Sir, I think we should scout
the back of the mountain. The other Virtuans should be reaching the
front of the base shortly. We should check for any weaknesses at the
back to exploit and then report to the other players,” he suggests.

Hugo turns to face the
young ranger. “You’re half right.”

Timmons looks at his
leader quizzically.

“Anyone know why I
said that?” Hugo asks and opens the discussion. The players under
his command are relatively new to the alliance, and Marcus does not
fully trust them yet. One of Hugo’s assigned tasks is to evaluate
these newcomers and determine which should be keepers as permanent
members of the alliance, and which should be booted from The
Returned, once the tournament is finished.

Elmer Freeman nods. “We
want to avoid waiting in front of the base for the other Virtuan
forces to arrive, until we can confirm it’s a force led by Marcus
rather than Easy Money’s group. Since Marcus has a personal bet
with Virgil, our leader would not want us to provide assistance to
the mercenary group and make our leader lose his bet,” he explains
the thinking in depth.

Hugo pats the berserker
on the arm. “Bingo!” he says with an admiring look at the man.
He’s a keeper.
“Okay, let’s circle around the mountain to the back and check out
the Eternian defense there,” he orders and stirs his mount ahead.

“Nice one,” Jasell
Firebrand says as the fire mage fist bumps Elmer. The mage lines up
his horse behind Yeva, and Elmer takes the back as the rear guard for
the scouting party.

* * *

Virgil finally catches
up with the rest of his men, who are now standing within sight of the
mountain. “Any trouble?” he asks.

Demetrius Tripper
salutes his leader. “No sir.”

Virgil sighs. “In
this game, there is no need to salute. We’re here for a cash paying
job, and we’ll collect hefty bonuses doubling our payout if we win
this tournament. Decorum goes out the window when it comes to mercs
like us,” he says. He turns to Davida Wishbringer. “I want you to
contact the cloud runners and the assassin corps, and find out their
current status.”

“Yes sir,” the
priestess replies as she begins to establish a communication link
with her counterparts in these groups.

While waiting for the
brief check-ins, Virgil sighs again. Why doesn’t World of Eternia
have in-game communications between parties via a messaging system?
By having a priest serve as a communications officer, and wasting
valuable mana in doing so, the game is restricting the leader’s
options for party alignments. The game may be the first to offer a
virtual reality environment in MMORPG, but it sure ain’t player
friendly!

Davida speaks up. “Sir,
the cloud runners are actually shadowing our movements; they’re
nearby and hidden by the clouds. The assassin corps has reached the
back of the mountain. They decided to climb up the mountain from
eight o’clock. Also, the riders from Marcus’ group are scouting
nearby; there are five riders in the group. Priscilla is asking for
permission to engage them,” she reports.

“Tell her that’s a
negative,” Virgil quickly replies. “The skirmish will attract the
attention of the defenders and we’ll lose our element of surprise.
Instruct her to wait for the scouts to pass before starting to scale
the mountain.” He pauses to check the timer at the top of his
player screen. “Tell everyone we will start the attack at two hours
prior to expiration.”

“Roger that,”
Davida replies and quickly relays his orders to the assassin corps
and the cloud runners.

* * *

A long distance behind
Easy Money is the remnants of Marcus’ column. Having lost all the
spell casters in the column, including Marcus’ best friend JB, the
five fighters are using the surrounding environment to mask their
presence from the traitors up ahead.

Marcus is content with
remaining in eyesight of the traitorous group for now.
Once
Easy Money is preoccupied by combat engagement with the defenders, we
will make a break for the portal
, he thinks silently.

“We have visual
confirmation of Virtuan scouts,” Lorna the Faithful reports to
Kassender via the communication link.

“Okay,” the High
Priestess replies. “Have your partner mage cast an illusion to
distort their clairvoyance,” she reminds the priestess. The High
Priestess pauses for a moment to recall Lorna’s position on the
mountain top. “Heimdall, our lookout at ten o’clock has spotted
Virtuan scouts,” she reports.

“Thank you,” the
warlord replies. “Listen up guys!” he shouts in a booming voice.
“Enemy scouts have been spotted! The main troops will be arriving
shortly. I know you’ve been bored by the lack of action so far,
doing the old hurry up and wait routine. Now it’s time to rock and
roll! For Eternia!” he shouts and raises his halberd in the air.

“For Eternia!” the
defenders respond.

* * *

“Wow! That was a
nice, quick speech to get everyone on the same page!” Evan remarks.

“Yeah, that guy has a
loud voice that probably carries over to the mountain top,”
Antoinette agrees. “Speaking of voice, Richard can you tell us why
the game doesn’t use a private messaging system? Wouldn’t you
want your players to be able to work together without worrying about
how to communicate and get everyone on the same page?”

“To be honest,” the
CEO of WoE’s developer begins, “the players themselves DID
request that we add a private messaging (‘pm’) system for this
event. The company had a lot of internal debate over this feature,
and ultimately we decided not to implement one.”

“Why not? Do you like
disappointing your players that much?” Charles taunts his rival.

Richard chuckles at the
remark, and lets it roll harmlessly off his sleeve. “It comes down
to two issues. First, the World of Eternia is set in medieval times,
and the use of a pm system goes against this environment. Second, for
the Hundred Man Tournament itself the ‘Fog of War’ is a strong
factor in the outcome of this event. We want the participants to
discover enemy movements and positioning for themselves, and not
allow outsiders to feed reports to the players. I personally think
that it is absolutely critical that the instance is completely walled
off from outside influence. Leave the fifty players on each side to
their own devices and watch them try to overcome the other side
fairly and honestly.” He smiles for the camera. “Well, there you
have it.”

“And now let’s see
what each side is doing,” Evan says before the stream shifts back
to the two sides again.