Raid Party Formed
16/16 players.
She looked around at the other players who had appeared, some a little stunned about what happened with Delarius but none as shaken as they were.
“You doing ok, Amelia?” Grey asked.
“I’m fine,” she responded, sounding a little distant. “Let’s do what he said. Whatever’s about to happen, we keep it running as long as possible.”
“Really great time to have a party of sixteen,” Patrick said.
“Hey, Glass! Great to see you again!”
Amelia turned around to see Gungnir walking towards her. Lambda was keeping his distance, examining the area. The other players were chatting between their own groups or watching the strangely beautiful array of debris that was hanging above them.
“Was not expecting to meet like this again,” Gungnir continued. “Where’s Cieth?”
“He clipped through the floor back in the palace,” Patrick explained. “Really shoddy geometry. You know how this game was at launch.”
Lambda raised an eyebrow, but didn’t inquire further. Suddenly, four blue beams of light shot into the air from across the city. Explosions rang out, screaming was heard, guards began rushing out to other streets. Lilian waved her staff, quickly healing everyone there to max HP. Then she created a hard light map of the city, with the four beams marked in blue, one on each corner of the Capital.
“Valzekt used some sort of teleport spell,” she explained. “I sense monsters pouring into the city. Destroy the teleporters, and do not let the palace fall! The 16 of you should be enough to destroy Valzekt’s path into the capital.”
“Yeah!” Gungnir shouted. “Especially if we have you on o-”
“I shall go my own way and try to rally the city’s defences before we are wiped out. Good luck.” Lilian vanished, leaving the players alone.
“Oh, come on!”
“She said 16, right?” They whispered to Amelia and Patrick. When they nodded, they continued, “There’s only 14 of us. We know where James is…but who’s number 16?”
“Is it SoulAmoury?” Amelia asked.
“I sure hope so.”
“Alright, we split up into our separate parties,” Lambda shouted, immediately trying to take charge of the situation. “Divide and conquer, make this quick.”
“Surely you don’t want to do that?” Patrick said, hurriedly. “These are probably infinitely respawning enemies. If you drag out the fight, you could get a hell of a lot of XP.”
Lambda raised an eyebrow. "Respawning enemies like that don't give XP in this game."
"Yeah, but...what if these guys do?"
A few of the players chuckled, but none of them seriously wanted to entertain the idea of enduring against endless hordes of Orcs forever.
“We’ll take the one over there!” A man in a robotic suit of armour shouted. His party of four soon vanished down one of the sidestreets. Another group of three glanced between each other, nodded, and vanished into a nearby sidestreet.
“I thought this was a fantasy game,” Amelia said, watching the man in armour walking away.
“Armournaut’s a DLC class,” Lambda explained. “The first DLC this game got is kinda whacky. Full sci-fi stuff, it's where Gungnir's Gunslinger comes from. Anyway, I’ll see you guys on the other side,” he shouted over to the two players who were currently lacking a party. “Monk! Other robot guy! You’re with us!”
“I object to the name other robot guy!” The other robot guy replied.
“Yeah, just look at our name tags!” The Monk shouted back.
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“Now’s not the time!” Lambda replied. “Swap names when we’ve saved the kingdom!”
Gungnir mouthed “sorry about him” to the two of them. Both of them sighed, and reluctantly followed Lambda and Gungnir into the battlefield.
“We’ll take that one!” Grey said, pointing to a light reaching up from far behind the Palace: probably the furthest one from where they started. “And hope our friend gets...unstuck at some point.”
The three of them rushed through the gardens, dodging through panicked gardeners and knights running out of the palace. They restarted their conversation once they were out of earshot of the other players.
“This isn’t good,” Patrick said. “We can’t lose this fight, but we shouldn’t win it either.”
“We can stall for time,” Amelia said. “Take control of one of the teleporters and sit on it as long as we can.”
“The other players will show up eventually, though. This would be so much easier if we just knew when James was done.”
A group of orcs walked out of the side streets, slashing guards and civilians apart. They had thick green hides, were twice the size of an average man and carried axes that were more like slags of concrete than weapons. They glared at the party and ran forward, cutting down any trees that were unlucky enough to grow in their way.
“Ignore them,” Grey commanded, “the more enemies we have knocking about, the better.”
Orc 12-14
0/60 HP
In a single stroke, the orcs were bisected, both halves of their bodies collapsing onto the floor.
“If only the enemies didn’t suck,” Patrick said. “How did you one shot them, Amelia?”
Amelia grabbed onto the hilt of her sword and looked out past the orcs. “Wasn’t me. It was her.”
The group looked around to see, Knight Oblivia walked towards the party, sword outstretched to her side, having somehow bisected three orcs from that distance.
“Where is James?!” She screamed. “Tell me!”
“There’s no way you’re getting to him,” Amelia retorted, hauling her sword off her back. “We don’t want to fight you. Just go now.”
Oblivia stopped a few paces away from them, pointing her massive sword at them. “I heard what you were saying. The quickest way to win will be to tear down the teleporters as fast as possible. Then he’ll be safe, and Sable Online will remain an unsolved mystery.”
Flaming rocks arced overhead, slamming into the gardens. The gardeners rushed away as the trees and the flowers began to catch fire. Some of the shots went through the nearby buildings, their flight path marked out by floatstone shards that were starting to choke the air. Screams radiated from the greater city as the general populace began to panic. The four of them ignored it all.
“You can’t keep it a secret forever,” Grey replied. “Whatever’s hiding in this game will come out at some point. We can’t just ignore what we’ve seen.”
“No,” Oblivia snarled. “This is the exact same shit that happened to us. We got greedy and were snared by the mystery. The allure, the secrets, the stories. We thought we could do anything. Now my closest friends are gone because of a damn video game. And what he showed me…” Oblivia trailed off, remembering
“Cut the crap,” Amelia shouted back, “you’re not trying to do this for us, you’re doing it for yourself. You want this because it lets you act high and mighty over everyone else. If you truly gave a damn about your friends, you would have kept going, or leaked the information you learned online, or something, anything, to show that the time you spent together in this game was worth it.”
“And risk Kabletech killing me too? I do the same shit that got them all killed?”
“So you’re ok with their deaths being in vain?”
“How dare you. You think they’d be ok with me throwing my life away? What fucked up kind of friendship is that? You’re insane.”
“Maybe I am, or maybe you’re just a coward. Who can say?” Amelia smiled and looked at the others “You guys run, I’ll hold her off.”
“You can’t do PvP in dungeons under normal circumstances,” Patrick reminded her, “and even if she agrees to a duel, which she won’t, she’s still got better gear than you even if your levels are closer together.”
“Even if I can’t do true PvP here, I can at least slow her down. Get the hell out of here.”
Patrick and Grey nodded and ran to the side. Oblivia rushed over to intercept them, but Amelia smashed the hilt of her sword into her gut. Oblivia staggered back, and once she regained her focus Patrick and Grey had vanished into the flames.
“I’m gonna be honest,” Amelia said, twirling her sword above her head. “Ever since I saw you in that tavern, I’ve always wanted to kick your ass.”
Oblivia held her sword out in front of her, entering a firm stance. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“Then let’s go.”
Gungnir Stats: Level: 8 VIT: 200/200 STR: 30 DEF: 5 DEX: 25 SPL: 5 INT: 0
Lambda Stats: Level: 8 VIT: 150/150 STR: 15 DEF: 5 DEX: 10 SPL: 25 INT: 0