Hei's spear flared up with arcs of energy as he charged in to strike. The girl loosened her volley of arrows at Hei, and I launched a Frost Missile toward Atlas. Atlas whirled his axe overhead before chopping at Hei's torso.
All our attacks hit, in one cacophonous mess of steel and magic. But…no one among the four of us took any damage, at all. Heck, Hei's Graviton Joust kind of just fizzled out on contact with Atlas' chest plate.
"Oh w-wait," I said. "I think friendly-fire doesn't work." I tried my best to speak while panicked and shaking from the heat of battle.
That seemed to calm everyone down a bit. The pair of strangers slowly lowered their weapons, as did Hei. I tried to explain that we were probably players working together on the same team, hence why we were physically incapable of actually damaging one another. It'd be like how you couldn't injure your own teammates in a first-person shooter game.
I demonstrated by kicking Hei in the shin.
"See, did that hurt?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"...Oh. Sorry."
"Alright, I get it," Mr. Atlas said with a grunt that blew through his moustache. He took a few cautious steps back, then thrusted the blade of his axe into the soil to ease its weight. "We know how this works. You can still hit your friends, but you won't do real damage. Becky there shot me by accident when she first tried the bow. Arrow bounced right off my eyeball." He gave the little girl a sideways glance, his sharp eyes gleaming under the shadow of his hat's brim.
"That's a relief," I said.
"Well then. That settles that," Mr. Atlas said. "We're about to grill some fish. Interested?"
...That was a quick change of attitude.
I was still cautious of these two strangers. Hei looked wary too. But this could be the start of an alliance, and it'd probably help if we all got along. As Atlas gutted the fishes, Hei and I scavenged the perimeter for firewood, and we managed to bring back several armful. Mr. Atlas carved out a batch of wood shavings with his huge axe, then spun a stick on top of the shavings like a drill. After minutes of furious drilling, the thread-thin strips of wood started to smoke, and finally kindled into a fire. Look at that. Mr. Atlas might've been an actual Navy Seal, after all.
We sat down in the grass, in a circle, and ate fish together. I offered some dried meats to Atlas and Becky in return. Mr. Atlas and the little girl, Becky, had been here for three days now. Food wasn't an issue. There were fish, and the pine-melons were edible (Mr. Atlas already tried them himself, and so far he experienced no signs of poisoning). The river provided water, which was clean enough to drink after a quick boil.
"I have a Ring of Water Purification," I commented. "Seems like it won't be of much use."
"Does it purify water?" Becky asked.
"I mean, I'd assume so. I haven't actually tried."
"There's a river right here," Becky said.
"I know. That's why I came."
I approached the shore of the river and knelt down, hovering my ringed hand over the teal waters. The ring began to vibrate, the way your phone does when you get a text message. Then, a bright puff of sparks flew out of it and down into the water. That patch of the river, about the size of a bathtub, turned clear like tap-water, and I could see through to the rocks on the riverbed. The transparent patch got washed downstream seconds later, and the murkier waters mixed into it and ate it up.
"That's impressive," Hei said. "Does it cost mana?"
"Apparently not."
"Cool," Becky chimed in. "So you can do that. And you can also fire an ice shard like you did earlier. And then Mr. Spear-guy has a spear." She looked at Hei, then me. "Anything else he can do?"
Hei paused for a moment. He seemed hesitant to disclose the extent of his abilities.
"I want to propose a formal alliance," he finally said. "Between the four of us."
"We're already on the same team," I pointed out.
"That doesn't mean we've built up trust yet. When danger comes, can we rely on each other to keep us alive?"
I mean, I didn't disagree. Sure, we weren't able to directly injure each other, but these strangers could abandon us at the first sign of danger. But Hei didn't have to put it so bluntly…
Becky nodded thoughtfully at Hei. "That's some sigma male energy. I like you."
...What did that even mean? I had seen that term a couple times on the internet, and I'd wager a sigma male was something like an alpha male. But beyond that I hadn't got a clue.
Mr. Atlas gave a low grunt. "We can have an alliance. Don't know how we'll make it formal like you said." He held up his gauntlet and tapped the barrel-like fixture on it. "This here. It's a grappling hook. 40 meters' range. 10 seconds cooldown, no Mana needed. I've got a Ring of Vigilance. It lets me skip sleep. And my armor brings my HP up to 700."
We continued to introduce ourselves and share our abilities, one by one. Becky went last.
"I shoot arrows," Becky said. "60 meters' range, 80 damage, two second reload. My special attack lets me shoot five targets at once, and that has a 100 meter's range. It's on a 10 second cooldown. And then I also have the Ring of Forest Whispering. It lets me pick a plant and hear things from its location."
"Good to know," I said. So that was probably how she sensed me hiding among the trees.
"If a fight breaks out, I'll take the frontline," Mr. Atlas said. "Becky, Sophia, you're our ranged units so stay behind me. And Hei here…I honestly don't know where you fit."
"Yeah," I said. "I guess he's sorta both frontline and ranged."
"I'll alternate as needed," Hei said. "Mr. Atlas, Becky, how were your past few days here? Sophia and I met golems on the road. And we found a few caves."
Mr. Atlas nodded. "You saw what's in there?"
"No."
"Zombies. And skeletons."
"Spoopy cave skeletons," Becky said.
I raised an eyebrow at her. "You little memer."
She nodded with a slight grin. "You know, memes are so slept on, as a form of communication," she began. "They're so compact, and...efficient. You know how when you say, 'The Boy who Cried Wolf,' or 'Pandora's Box,' people know exactly what you mean? Memes are like that, except now anyone can make new ones –"
"Becky," Mr. Atlas interrupted. "You think we should show them our bag?"
"That's our secret weapon!"
"I would say it is."
"Well…" Becky said. She drummed her fingers on the grass and looked around at each of us. She made a little pout, as though deep in thought. "Go ahead, I guess. This is an alliance after all."
"...What's in the bag?" I ventured.
"Used to be cheese and meat there," Mr. Atlas said. He then patted his belly. "Now it's empty. It's what's on the bag that matters."
"Eeh?"
"Just show her," Becky said. Mr. Atlas walked a short distance away, to where they had stashed their belongings beside a rock. He retrieved an empty beige sack, the same sort Hei and I got our food in. He laid it out flat on the grass for us to see.
There was a drawing on the sack.
"Painted with fish blood," Mr. Atlas explained. "Made this myself."
I studied it closely. On the bag, delineated in dark lines, was a map.
"This is the map of the entire city," Mr. Atlas explained, tracing the outer boundary of the drawn, polygonal area of land. That boundary must've been the walls we saw.
"This is the arena we're trapped in," he said.
"Wait," I said. "Trapped?"
"Did you bother to check the gates after you came in?" Mr. Atlas asked. "They close. And you can't open them again. Those things are unbreakable."
"What about digging underground?" I suggested.
"Been there. Chances are, if you think there's a clever way out, it won't work. Anyway, where were we?"
"Wait, you have a grappling hook," I said. "Have you tried scaling the walls –"
"Sophia, please let me finish. We can entertain your escape plans later."
"Just trying to help…”
"Yes, I know. Now. This city is basically a square, about a mile or two across. We came in through the lower left. There are three roads. One top, one middle, and one bottom. Then you got the towers. The green ones are safe. The red ones shoot lasers at ya if you get too close. You got golems marching down each road. Green golems go from the gate-corner towards the castle. Red golems go from the castle toward the gate. They meet in the middle and kill each other." He ran his finger along the middle-diagonal of the map, from top-left to bottom-right, along the length of the river. "And that's the river," he said. He found a small pebble, and placed it on the map beside the river, on the side of the green towers. "And this, that's where we are."
Mr. Atlas scanned between Hei and me. "Does that make sense?"
"What's in the castle?" Hei asked.
"That's the only part we haven't been to," Mr. Atlas said.
"When do you think we can explore it?" I asked.
Mr. Atlas looked at me. "We can do it now."
Hei and I both stood up, at the same time, instinctively.
"Now works for me," I replied.
The map showed the castle on the opposite side of the gate, with all three roads leading to it. It felt like a finish line, a destination. Perhaps it'd be the key to completing the game; I couldn't say for sure. But we needed to figure things out sooner or later. And if this really was a death game, I'd say the sooner we gathered knowledge, the better our chances.
We packed up and set off towards the castle. We went out of the forest back onto the middle road, which bridged across the river. For the first time I saw a green tower. It was a tall stone spire jutting out of the ground, reaching as high as the tallest trees in the forest. Carvings of strange, winged creatures decorated its length. A glowing green orb, the size of a pumpkin, floated above the spire's sharp tip. And farther down the road, there was a near-identical tower, but with a red orb instead of green. In between, golems with red or green orbs in their chests fought, like Mr. Atlas described.
"Keep to the side of the road," Mr. Atlas said, "then right after you cross the river, get off the road, head back into the forest. That way, you stay outside the range of the red tower."
We did as told, and after several minutes of walking through the forest, the castle came into view, peering above the treetops some distance away. It seemed relatively unremarkable, resembling an old, unceremonious fort made from crude stones. Heavy-looking tiles lined the sloped roofs. We approached the castle's middle gate, a stone archway without doors. We hid ourselves behind a bush near the road that led to the gate. A red tower guarded the entrance, so we had to keep our distance.
As I squinted at the dark interior of the castle, I made out the shapes of a large machine that sat right behind the gate. Its metal pistons contracted and extended periodically.
"What's that thing doing?" I asked.
"It might be powering the tower," Hei guessed. "Can you snipe it from here?"
"Too far. Mr. Atlas, how close can we get to the tower before it fires on us?"
"The tower's got a range of 'bout 150 meters."
That covered a huge circle around the entrance, then. Based off the map Mr. Atlas showed us, I doubted our luck would be any better at the other two castle gates. If this whole walled arena was a game, and the objective was getting into the castle, then there ought to be some sort of solution. For instance, we could…
A hatch slid open on the front of the machine. Metallic groans echoed out of the gate-hole, accompanied by a blast of steam. A troop of golems emerged from the steam, each with a red orb in its chest. Three held shields and two held crossbows. They marched out from the castle, down the road in our direction. Were the golems holding the shields in their hands? Or were the shields fastened onto their arms by welding or nails? If we could pry them off, maybe we'd be able to block the lasers with them. When the golems walked closer to where we hid, I popped out above the bush, squinting to get a better view.
A crossbow bolt whistled through the air. It hit me in the chest, and its tip burned as it burrowed into my flesh. I choked out a cry of pain. As I fell backwards, I caught a glimpse of one of the golems pointing its crossbow at me – and the rest of the golems all charging toward us.
Hei's spear flared up with arcs of energy as he charged in to strike. The girl loosened her volley of arrows at Hei, and I launched a Frost Missile toward Atlas. Atlas whirled his axe overhead before chopping at Hei's torso.
All our attacks hit, in one cacophonous mess of steel and magic. But…no one among the four of us took any damage, at all. Heck, Hei's Graviton Joust kind of just fizzled out on contact with Atlas' chest plate.
"Oh w-wait," I said. "I think friendly-fire doesn't work." I tried my best to speak while panicked and shaking from the heat of battle.
That seemed to calm everyone down a bit. The pair of strangers slowly lowered their weapons, as did Hei. I tried to explain that we were probably players working together on the same team, hence why we were physically incapable of actually damaging one another. It'd be like how you couldn't injure your own teammates in a first-person shooter game.
I demonstrated by kicking Hei in the shin.
"See, did that hurt?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"...Oh. Sorry."
"Alright, I get it," Mr. Atlas said with a grunt that blew through his moustache. He took a few cautious steps back, then thrusted the blade of his axe into the soil to ease its weight. "We know how this works. You can still hit your friends, but you won't do real damage. Becky there shot me by accident when she first tried the bow. Arrow bounced right off my eyeball." He gave the little girl a sideways glance, his sharp eyes gleaming under the shadow of his hat's brim.
"That's a relief," I said.
"Well then. That settles that," Mr. Atlas said. "We're about to grill some fish. Interested?"
...That was a quick change of attitude.
I was still cautious of these two strangers. Hei looked wary too. But this could be the start of an alliance, and it'd probably help if we all got along. As Atlas gutted the fishes, Hei and I scavenged the perimeter for firewood, and we managed to bring back several armful. Mr. Atlas carved out a batch of wood shavings with his huge axe, then spun a stick on top of the shavings like a drill. After minutes of furious drilling, the thread-thin strips of wood started to smoke, and finally kindled into a fire. Look at that. Mr. Atlas might've been an actual Navy Seal, after all.
We sat down in the grass, in a circle, and ate fish together. I offered some dried meats to Atlas and Becky in return. Mr. Atlas and the little girl, Becky, had been here for three days now. Food wasn't an issue. There were fish, and the pine-melons were edible (Mr. Atlas already tried them himself, and so far he experienced no signs of poisoning). The river provided water, which was clean enough to drink after a quick boil.
"I have a Ring of Water Purification," I commented. "Seems like it won't be of much use."
"Does it purify water?" Becky asked.
"I mean, I'd assume so. I haven't actually tried."
"There's a river right here," Becky said.
"I know. That's why I came."
I approached the shore of the river and knelt down, hovering my ringed hand over the teal waters. The ring began to vibrate, the way your phone does when you get a text message. Then, a bright puff of sparks flew out of it and down into the water. That patch of the river, about the size of a bathtub, turned clear like tap-water, and I could see through to the rocks on the riverbed. The transparent patch got washed downstream seconds later, and the murkier waters mixed into it and ate it up.
"That's impressive," Hei said. "Does it cost mana?"
"Apparently not."
"Cool," Becky chimed in. "So you can do that. And you can also fire an ice shard like you did earlier. And then Mr. Spear-guy has a spear." She looked at Hei, then me. "Anything else he can do?"
Hei paused for a moment. He seemed hesitant to disclose the extent of his abilities.
"I want to propose a formal alliance," he finally said. "Between the four of us."
"We're already on the same team," I pointed out.
"That doesn't mean we've built up trust yet. When danger comes, can we rely on each other to keep us alive?"
I mean, I didn't disagree. Sure, we weren't able to directly injure each other, but these strangers could abandon us at the first sign of danger. But Hei didn't have to put it so bluntly…
Becky nodded thoughtfully at Hei. "That's some sigma male energy. I like you."
...What did that even mean? I had seen that term a couple times on the internet, and I'd wager a sigma male was something like an alpha male. But beyond that I hadn't got a clue.
Mr. Atlas gave a low grunt. "We can have an alliance. Don't know how we'll make it formal like you said." He held up his gauntlet and tapped the barrel-like fixture on it. "This here. It's a grappling hook. 40 meters' range. 10 seconds cooldown, no Mana needed. I've got a Ring of Vigilance. It lets me skip sleep. And my armor brings my HP up to 700."
We continued to introduce ourselves and share our abilities, one by one. Becky went last.
"I shoot arrows," Becky said. "60 meters' range, 80 damage, two second reload. My special attack lets me shoot five targets at once, and that has a 100 meter's range. It's on a 10 second cooldown. And then I also have the Ring of Forest Whispering. It lets me pick a plant and hear things from its location."
"Good to know," I said. So that was probably how she sensed me hiding among the trees.
"If a fight breaks out, I'll take the frontline," Mr. Atlas said. "Becky, Sophia, you're our ranged units so stay behind me. And Hei here…I honestly don't know where you fit."
"Yeah," I said. "I guess he's sorta both frontline and ranged."
"I'll alternate as needed," Hei said. "Mr. Atlas, Becky, how were your past few days here? Sophia and I met golems on the road. And we found a few caves."
Mr. Atlas nodded. "You saw what's in there?"
"No."
"Zombies. And skeletons."
"Spoopy cave skeletons," Becky said.
I raised an eyebrow at her. "You little memer."
She nodded with a slight grin. "You know, memes are so slept on, as a form of communication," she began. "They're so compact, and...efficient. You know how when you say, 'The Boy who Cried Wolf,' or 'Pandora's Box,' people know exactly what you mean? Memes are like that, except now anyone can make new ones –"
"Becky," Mr. Atlas interrupted. "You think we should show them our bag?"
"That's our secret weapon!"
"I would say it is."
"Well…" Becky said. She drummed her fingers on the grass and looked around at each of us. She made a little pout, as though deep in thought. "Go ahead, I guess. This is an alliance after all."
"...What's in the bag?" I ventured.
"Used to be cheese and meat there," Mr. Atlas said. He then patted his belly. "Now it's empty. It's what's on the bag that matters."
"Eeh?"
"Just show her," Becky said. Mr. Atlas walked a short distance away, to where they had stashed their belongings beside a rock. He retrieved an empty beige sack, the same sort Hei and I got our food in. He laid it out flat on the grass for us to see.
There was a drawing on the sack.
"Painted with fish blood," Mr. Atlas explained. "Made this myself."
I studied it closely. On the bag, delineated in dark lines, was a map.
"This is the map of the entire city," Mr. Atlas explained, tracing the outer boundary of the drawn, polygonal area of land. That boundary must've been the walls we saw.
"This is the arena we're trapped in," he said.
"Wait," I said. "Trapped?"
"Did you bother to check the gates after you came in?" Mr. Atlas asked. "They close. And you can't open them again. Those things are unbreakable."
"What about digging underground?" I suggested.
"Been there. Chances are, if you think there's a clever way out, it won't work. Anyway, where were we?"
"Wait, you have a grappling hook," I said. "Have you tried scaling the walls –"
"Sophia, please let me finish. We can entertain your escape plans later."
"Just trying to help…”
"Yes, I know. Now. This city is basically a square, about a mile or two across. We came in through the lower left. There are three roads. One top, one middle, and one bottom. Then you got the towers. The green ones are safe. The red ones shoot lasers at ya if you get too close. You got golems marching down each road. Green golems go from the gate-corner towards the castle. Red golems go from the castle toward the gate. They meet in the middle and kill each other." He ran his finger along the middle-diagonal of the map, from top-left to bottom-right, along the length of the river. "And that's the river," he said. He found a small pebble, and placed it on the map beside the river, on the side of the green towers. "And this, that's where we are."
Mr. Atlas scanned between Hei and me. "Does that make sense?"
"What's in the castle?" Hei asked.
"That's the only part we haven't been to," Mr. Atlas said.
"When do you think we can explore it?" I asked.
Mr. Atlas looked at me. "We can do it now."
Hei and I both stood up, at the same time, instinctively.
"Now works for me," I replied.
The map showed the castle on the opposite side of the gate, with all three roads leading to it. It felt like a finish line, a destination. Perhaps it'd be the key to completing the game; I couldn't say for sure. But we needed to figure things out sooner or later. And if this really was a death game, I'd say the sooner we gathered knowledge, the better our chances.
We packed up and set off towards the castle. We went out of the forest back onto the middle road, which bridged across the river. For the first time I saw a green tower. It was a tall stone spire jutting out of the ground, reaching as high as the tallest trees in the forest. Carvings of strange, winged creatures decorated its length. A glowing green orb, the size of a pumpkin, floated above the spire's sharp tip. And farther down the road, there was a near-identical tower, but with a red orb instead of green. In between, golems with red or green orbs in their chests fought, like Mr. Atlas described.
"Keep to the side of the road," Mr. Atlas said, "then right after you cross the river, get off the road, head back into the forest. That way, you stay outside the range of the red tower."
We did as told, and after several minutes of walking through the forest, the castle came into view, peering above the treetops some distance away. It seemed relatively unremarkable, resembling an old, unceremonious fort made from crude stones. Heavy-looking tiles lined the sloped roofs. We approached the castle's middle gate, a stone archway without doors. We hid ourselves behind a bush near the road that led to the gate. A red tower guarded the entrance, so we had to keep our distance.
As I squinted at the dark interior of the castle, I made out the shapes of a large machine that sat right behind the gate. Its metal pistons contracted and extended periodically.
"What's that thing doing?" I asked.
"It might be powering the tower," Hei guessed. "Can you snipe it from here?"
"Too far. Mr. Atlas, how close can we get to the tower before it fires on us?"
"The tower's got a range of 'bout 150 meters."
That covered a huge circle around the entrance, then. Based off the map Mr. Atlas showed us, I doubted our luck would be any better at the other two castle gates. If this whole walled arena was a game, and the objective was getting into the castle, then there ought to be some sort of solution. For instance, we could…
A hatch slid open on the front of the machine. Metallic groans echoed out of the gate-hole, accompanied by a blast of steam. A troop of golems emerged from the steam, each with a red orb in its chest. Three held shields and two held crossbows. They marched out from the castle, down the road in our direction. Were the golems holding the shields in their hands? Or were the shields fastened onto their arms by welding or nails? If we could pry them off, maybe we'd be able to block the lasers with them. When the golems walked closer to where we hid, I popped out above the bush, squinting to get a better view.
A crossbow bolt whistled through the air. It hit me in the chest, and its tip burned as it burrowed into my flesh. I choked out a cry of pain. As I fell backwards, I caught a glimpse of one of the golems pointing its crossbow at me – and the rest of the golems all charging toward us.
