Part 4

  Chapter 27

  After we exited the dungeon, all of us logged out, Clara included. Now that we all were at zero life credits, the risk of staying logged in . . . in Shell Woods . . . was too great. I wanted to start traveling east, but the party was beyond exhausted. We had spent a long time in the dungeon getting very little quality sleep. The nights had been spent on the hard ground. We all needed a night to recover. I just hoped it didn’t cost us.

  Once we got to the Soul Space, I purchased and installed an island stove and made myself a massive grilled cheese sandwich from cheap components from the transporter. I also bought a bottle of Earth bourbon, drank a couple fingers’ worth, then passed out.

  The next morning I blindly smacked at the bedside table, trying to hit the alarm that was blaring over and over. Unable to find the damn thing, I opened my eyes and pushed myself up onto my forearms. I reached over and felt around the side table until I finally located it. I clicked the circular device, silencing it. I’d purchased the alarm from the transporter interface to wake us up with enough time to brace for phase two. A stab of panic ran through me as I pulled up the remaining time in my HUD.

  Time remaining till Phase 2:

  30 minutes

  I wanted to be awake for the announcement and get a good grip of the new rule set Tittles had mentioned he would be informing us on. I was curious how the game would force the remaining players together, which I was certain it would. That was a common mechanic in any battle royale. Whether it was a storm, clouds of gas, or a field of raining bombs, they would find a way to force us together however they could. At least . . . I assumed they would. I glanced at the stats in the top right, noticing the players remaining tick down to another round number. Another stab of panic punched into my gut.

  Players Remaining: 250,000

  Life Credits: 0

  Three quarters of a million people squished . . . on purpose. While on Earth, I had been relatively uncertain why we died, but here . . . death was intentional. Some malicious or selfish entity was pulling the strings in ways I did not like at all. I should have felt angry, but I was so tired, and the gloom over my head followed me as I picked up Mie and made my way to the common area.

  Greg was there, huddled in the corner of the room. This was how we had found him the night before too. He had a hoodie on, and the drawstrings were pulled tight. His arms were wrapped around his legs. He hadn’t said anything then, and he didn’t say anything now. I put Mie—who was still snoozing—in the little bouncer then sat at the island on a stool, facing Greg.

  I thought we had been making progress with him. He had bought the coffee pot, he had helped with enemy callouts, and he has in general been less depressed. Though, I could admit Mie had been meaner than usual to him lately. What is wrong with him? I glanced at Mie to make sure she was still asleep. She wouldn’t be a fan of what I was about to do.

  “Uhh, Greg?” I asked.

  He raised his head but only just, lifting his chin slightly. Then it fell back to his chest. Okay so at least he is acknowledging my presence.

  “What’s going on, man?” I asked, still eyeing Mie. She let out a little snore.

  He stayed silent for a long time. Then I heard Greg mumble something.

  “Couldn’t hear that.”

  “I said, not long now till the end.” He croaked it out with bitterness.

  Thanks for reminding me, you dick. I thought about the comment though. I put myself fully in his shoes for the first time since this had started.

  This creature huddled in front of me. He had been through this thousands of times. He had witnessed thousands of squishings, right in front of him. Only for it to happen again, and again . . . and again. And here we are, further than anyone else, near the end. Ah.

  I thought I could, maybe, understand. Greg would be left by himself once again. He would be forced to shit in the corners of the Space and to wipe his ass with his own clothes. Maybe that was a newer thing—having no bathrooms between his tenants—but he had been doing this on repeat for a long time. I thought about everything we had been through and imagined Greg going through that over and over again, always watching, with no real solid way of helping. Trying to help old person after old person try to use an augmented reality interface.

  I got up, went over to him, and knelt down in front of him. I understood what this creature really needed. He needed one thing. Hope.

  I could give him that in two forms. I grabbed the edges of his hood, pulling it loose, and found his eyes. They were wet, and it reminded me of Jessica . . . torturing him.

  Fuck.

  My voice low, I said, “I can’t promise you we will win. But I can promise you, we are going to do our damn best. I have children that are still alive . . . I think. I do not want this as their reality after death. Maybe if we win . . . that can be the first step in changing that. I don’t know, but you can be sure that I am going to do everything I can to win.”

  I pulled an item from my inventory and set it in front of Greg. A blunderbuss. “But if we don’t make it . . . you can end your pain.” I hadn’t even tested if the gun would work in the Soul Space, but since it was compatible . . . I didn’t see why it wouldn’t.

  “For all I know, they’ll just bring me back and make me do it all over again.”

  “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”

  Greg gulped, and then more tears spilled down his cheeks as he nodded at me. He got up, and . . . hugged me. God damn it.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Mie said.

  Greg let go quickly, and I said, “What the hell, Greg! Don’t fucking touch me!” then gave him a wink and a slight shove. As I turned to face Mie, I couldn’t help but notice a small smile tug at the corner of Greg’s mouth.

  We all deserve hope. Even if it is just . . . nothingness ahead. That was better than eternal pain.

  Greg got up and started bustling about, moving from the transporter to the counter, taking out frozen sausage, a carton of eggs, and pancake batter. He turned on the new stove I had installed, got out a pan, and started frying the sausage. The sound of sizzling meat filled the air, and little specks of oil were soon spattering the counter. He even started another pot of glorious dark coffee. The smell of it wafted through the room and it was . . . incredible. It reminded me of waking up as a kid. My mom . . . had been a great cook. I shoved those memories away.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  As Greg cooked, I sat down at the counter and began to analyze my interface. Greg filled a heaping plate, and I cut into some sausage as I went over the new abilities everyone had sent me last night. As party leader it felt like I should be on top of reviewing the spells and figuring out how to use them. I started with Mie’s. She had carried over her Flash Heal as well as her Holy Armor, but the other abilities she had sent, including her ultimate, were all new. She had a couple more defensive abilities, but three others stood out to me, starting with her ultimate.

  Active Ability: {Cleanse}

  Description: Dispels a large area (diameter: 15 meters) of harmful magical effects and crowd control abilities. This ability can be cast even while {Stunned}.

  Cooldown: 2 hours

  Cast Time: 1 second

  Active Ability: {Health Shift}

  Description: Swap health percentages with an ally of your choosing.

  Cooldown: 3 minutes

  Cast Time: Instant

  Active Ability: {Spider Bolt}

  Description: You fire a spider from the end of your staff, dealing damage relative to your healing abilities.

  Cooldown: 1 second

  Cast Time: 1 second

  The ultimate was great. Mike’s stuns had wrecked us, and being able to dispel them would be huge. But that second ability was interesting to me on the off chance her Flash Heal couldn’t keep up with enemy damage output and my other abilities were on cooldown. She could essentially provide a full heal instantly. And if Impact Armor was going, I could absorb even more damage. But the use case there was pretty slim. If I was taking so much damage that Impact Armor couldn’t keep up . . . that was a problem, but I kept that combo in the back of my mind. The Spider Bolt was a nice addition to her kit. She could deal some damage at a distance, and the fact that it was based on her healing stats was a huge plus since she had items that gave her percentage boosts toward healing now.

  Next I took a look at Clara’s new loadout. She was still damage over time focused, but now it looked like she slowed her targets along with poison. Two of her abilities stood out to me as well, starting with her ultimate.

  Active Ability: {Soul Rage Fire}

  Description: Your strength and constitution attribute points increase based on damage dealt in the last 5 minutes. Damage output requires equipping a Two-Handed Sword. Lasts for sixty seconds.

  Cooldown: 2 hours

  Active Ability: {Void Track}

  Description: When placing a hand on a dead or Knocked enemy, their teammates will be revealed on your map for one minute.

  Cooldown: 30 minutes

  Those abilities were both nuts. Five minutes of damage? That number could reach well into the thousands. I read it again. It sounded like her damage points would be converted to both Constitution and Strength attribute points. If I was reading that right . . . she could go full immortal for a solid minute, and her sword swings could one shot people while she was at it. The potential use cases there spiraled out in my mind, and I realized after a minute or two that I had stopped midway through eating my eggs with my fork in front of my open mouth. I glanced around and yeah . . . Mie was giving me an exceptionally judgmental look. I finished the bite, ignoring her, and kept thinking. Void Track was great too. Part of the problem when taking out a team fully was that we had to make sure they all were put down for good. It would be easier knowing where the remaining party members are.

  I turned my attention to Fred’s abilities and was unfortunately underwhelmed. He was still crazy OP though. He had his invisibility and Arbitrary Blast still as well the new Lost Target ability which he had shared earlier. The only other thing that stood out was his ultimate, but it felt way, way too risky.

  {Arbitrary Coin Flip}

  Description: You flip a coin. Heads, you cast {Arbitrary Blast} on all enemy targets within 40 meters. Tails, you target yourself. Note: This is not a roll-based mechanic. This is a coin-based mechanic.

  Cooldown: 2 hours

  Cast Time: Varies

  I searched through my logs and found the Ring of Fate entry. It specified specifically that it was for roll-based abilities. So that meant this was a true fifty-percent-chance ability as he would not be flipping four coins and taking the best result. He would be flipping a single coin and taking that single result. I went ahead and messaged Fred my thoughts on that one, and he agreed it was best to save it for extremely dire situations.

  All in all, I was pretty happy with the class turnout. We now had amazing damage through Fred and Clara and my Wind Rogue, good crowd control and sustain through my Warden, and solid healing through Mie.

  My thoughts were interrupted as the large screen flicked on. The phase two timer had reached zero.

  I swiveled my chair towards the TV. Tittles looked different. His hair was unkempt, he looked tired, and as he started talking, I noticed his voice was somber. Still regal . . . just sadder. He sighed, then said, “It's time.” He made a movement off screen, and then there was the sound of a small click as if he had just pushed a small button. Immediately after the sound, I saw my map icon start flashing.

  “You will notice a change to your global map. Within that interface, you will now see that instead of total black where you haven’t traveled the map has been all revealed. It is still under fog of war, but you will note you can see things like terrain and area names. Why? You will see in just a moment. Time to roll. This instance of Hearth’s Dead Zone will be . . .” He put two dice into the leather cup again and rolled. He looked at the result and cringed. “Ooph that’s . . . a rough Dead Zone. Rot. I’ll explain what that is in a second. If you look at your global map now and imagine it as rolled out dough, you will see a circle cookie shape cut out from the rest. The remaining ‘dough’ is covered in black. That black area . . . that’s the Dead Zone, Black Zone equals Dead Zone. You will also see a large white ring located randomly within the area the cookie was cut out of.”

  As I opened the map, I switched to the global view. Now it was completely revealed. I couldn’t see any activity, but I could now see all the areas and terrain. Starting from every edge of the map, there was a black area that had appeared, surrounding the island in a perfect circle. There was also a second circle of white within the black ring, which was about an eighth of the area of the remaining cookie cut area. Half of the white ring’s inner area was off the northern coast. I noticed that the top part of the white ring was almost touching the edge of the Black Zone in the middle of the sea. Then I looked at the entrance to Charlie’s Crypt . . . our location. My breath caught. We were so far away. Mie . . . had been right. I knew from my experience in battle royales . . . that this was a big problem.

  I cringed, waiting for Mie’s comment. When nothing came, I looked over at her. She was looking at me dead in the eyes with an expectant ‘I told you so’ look.

  I sighed. “Yeah . . . I know. Mie is smart. Sam is dumb.”

  She gave me a curt nod, then looked away.

  Tittles continued, “The Black Zone will shrink till it reaches the edges of the white ring. You can think of the white ring as the Black Zone’s inevitable goal. Once it reaches the white ring, a new, smaller white ring will appear. The new ring will appear randomly in the remaining non-Black Zone area. I am being told that in this instance, due to time constraints, there will only be two white rings. The one you see, and one additional. The Black Zone will reach the first white ring in nine days. It will reach the second in one. That second ring, being the final ring, will also begin shrinking over a short time period, until . . . the Black Zone is all that is left.

  “As you can probably imagine . . . if the Black Zone reaches you . . . it isn’t a great time. Sight is reduced considerably, and you receive rot damage over time until you become a mindless undead corpse, intent on killing anything and everything alive. Basically, avoid the Black Zone or you are dead.

  “Okay. Next, let me explain some other rule changes. First and foremost, players will no longer be able to log out. Folks who have been hiding in their Soul Spaces will no longer be able to do that. Second, on player death, those who have remaining life credits will become an incorporeal, invisible ghost. They will have ten seconds to move around before becoming corporeal once again. All other negative effects will still be in effect. So basically, to sum that one up, instead of a four-hour time penalty, you now get ten seconds to relocate to your desired spawn location. This means you will no longer return to your Soul Space in between life credit losses. If you are at zero life credits remaining, then you will return to your Soul Space for imminent disposal—unless you have party members that still have credits. In that case, you get to watch until your entire party is out of life credits, but your communication channels with Hearth will be turned off. Third, you will be able to see other players’ life credits. Ah yeah, and lastly, unfortunately for you, this all starts now.”

  I saw him move off screen again, and suddenly I saw the server transaction logs start scrolling in my display. I looked up, a black poison filling my stomach. The last thing I saw before teleporting back to Hearth was Greg . . . looking at me with sad eyes.

  It hit me like a truck going eighty miles an hour.

  The next time we saw Greg . . . would be the end.