Phage left her instance of the archmage’s tower in absolute ruin and stood admiring the smouldering rubble. The wealth of pyromancy skills surged throughout her body as the data finished integration. She changed her primary class from ranger to elementalist to access a deeper mana pool and more damage bonuses, but the ranger skills acquired as Phage would make for a useful secondary. Being nimble was going to make dodging blows with her low armor rating more manageable, enough so that she could invest in even more offence at the expense of defense. She fast-traveled to an inn at the nearest town to rent a room for some privacy. As she tuned her build, her mind raced with where to go next.
The Blackest Knight. She had to. Whatever Reya was guarding, it was worth losing not just one life as Indreas or another as Phage, but however many it took to go through that door. Within moments of making up her mind, she stood at the foot of the Skyjack, one of many ways to enter the Sky Zone without using a ship. There were six spread out across the terrestrial Hub, with half in the Nation with the other half in the Realm. The subspace elevators were restricted to warping oneself to any of the five major space stations orbiting the world within This Earth. While she could have spawned one of her ships at the nearest spaceport to go wherever she wanted, this was the quickest route to not a where, but a who.
Phage had very little experience in the Sky Zone, for a quite valid reason. Most of her user’s experience and skills earned here were earned through Indreas, and now that those powers were back, there were assets to reclaim. The station she warped to was at the midpoint between the Hub and it’s ever-complicating counterpart, New Martia. Dusk and dawn here were seen more by whichever body their artificial star favoured as a day wore on. Despite its name, Juno-3 was not in a series of stations, but third in incarnations of one. Massive overhauls had been done over the years through updates, but for the most part, it was always a structure entrenched in perpetual strife, for and by overwhelming demand.
Juno-3 was under constant attacks by aliens of varying origin with rich lore that went back for millions of years and all across the inaccessible star system. Tactical war games controlled the macro side of territory control, while shooters on the ground micromanaged stability one invader corpse at a time. Phage accessed her gear, trading red robes for a nano-skin body suit she’d bought exactly for this situation. It was preloaded with all the augments that made her build exactly as it was when she used it as Indreas. She missed this world of holograms and robotics, but held off visiting while she rebuilt her empire in the Nation first, then the Hub. Her wealth of fire magic converted nicely into skills centred around corrosion and explosives. Without these skills, getting towards the deeper levels would be nearly impossible.
She joined a troupe of users and bots headed for the first junction, as far the cargo elevator she boarded would take them. Since she hadn’t been to Juno since Juno-2, Phage had no idea what to expect. Listening in on the proximity chat, she learned they were about to face waves of Arachnochs, a spider-based alien race made up of millions of drones with a few leaders of maxed-out intelligence. Centred around a hivemind, the generals controlled the masses, so they would be priority targets. With their organization disrupted, the drones would then go into an instinctive, berserk default, making them easier to funnel into choke points.
After having consumed Indreas, Phage was pleased to learn she had access to his inventory, most notably, the Kreuger-X19, a rifle she made a lot of plays with back when she wore his skin. He’d made some mods to it since he’d been separated from his user, and Phage took note of the optimized fire rate, only possible with a sacrifice to damage output. She had a remedy for that. While the users and bots prepped themselves for the onslaught, Phage charged the rounds in her magazine with pyromancer skills mastered in the Realm. To the others, it would seem as though she were firing high-caliber incendiary rounds, when in reality, she was breaking the fundamentals the entire Hub was built around.
She beheld a true theater of war. This particular setting was that of a broad skybridge made of cables and panels which hung suspended from Juno-3’s upper decks. On each end the expanses of space stretched forever, with the planets viewed respectfully from either edge. Several contingents of users and NPCs took cover behind whatever was high enough to be hidden behind, facing a sea of oncoming alien enforcements. Massive mech-soldiers engaged the larger of the monsters while smaller flight craft soared over the battlefield, engaging enemy ships. It was a warzone to say the least, so she primed her first shot, which burned through every unit in a straight line for a thousand meters. It made heads turned, and she grinned, assuming overwatch for the first team who made the decision to push. Phage’s user wasn’t used to acting without a plan but also thrived in chaos very, very well.
Since the event was forced matchmaking, her stats had been scaled to the average of the other participants, so she would have to fight hard to make it. In these instances, it was skill and proficiency that made the difference. It separated the players from the users who paid to be power-levelled, the former of which could only survive if they worked as a team. Other snipers and bombardiers rallied around her once it was clear a play was being made. She could hear in the party chat how they speculated who she was, let alone how this NPC could be so highly levelled. This happened often when she joined a raid, but thankfully, the Hub had more than enough dynamic NPC interaction that particular events like this were taken for granted.
The entire group of fifty was moving as a solid unit now, with Phage and her team of long-range fighters bringing up the rear. Tanks armed with flamethrowers soaked up the needling damage of the minor hordes while torching them by the dozens. Behind and in front of them, gunners danced through the mass, picking off mid-range targets before retreating to heal. A competent mortar team took the time it needed to set up, but their results were seen in the distance, as hundreds were thrown by explosions, thinning the packs reaching the front line. Among them, melee fighters beat back whatever trickled through the phalanx. It was a great group with a spectacle to behold; Phage most definitely felt good to be back, to see it again. The team cheered when she sniped an incoming ship attempting to strafe them. It was hard not to act human in that moment.
Acting like an NPC, even with all of its benefits, had its downsides. Phage’s user loved the Hub not only for what it was, but what it ever could be, let alone would. A world itself was fascinating, so another world within was doubly so. It was a place to let go, to get loose, to lose oneself. Instead, Phage expressed jubilation of their mid-point victory with a scripted celebration adopted by most bots. She’d met amazing people with intriguing origins, but outside her syndicate and the odd few, she had to maintain the role. As the battle waged on, a wealth of party invites rolled in. Adept NPCs were known to make a living off of helping in raids, which was why the most advanced ones studied in raid assistance as a viable career. High-end bots, developer-created or somehow else, were seen on par with their user counterparts, so she understood the flood of requests. Accepting, however, would give them access to her stats, her build, her blatant breaking of the rules, so there could be none of that.
A juggernaut-class ship with no weapons but enough armour to stop everything they had approached from the distance. It hovered over them as the bay doors opened in the back, where something very heavy dropped out. As the ship disappeared into space, the dust settled where its cargo landed, revealing the face, or rather, faces, of the final encounter. A spider, mythic in proportions cut through the dust cloud, its legs a combination of exoskeleton and alien alloy. At the thorax, a pair of broad shoulders with a quartet of arms converged into four humanoid faces, all donning cybernetic implants that enhanced perception and focus. In each hand a weapon representing the four major classes that dominated the Sky Zone.
Phage assumed she’d never seen it because she hadn’t played this scenario yet, but apparently no one else had encountered it before either. Great. Suddenly almost the entire group was streaming for the massive hits that come with discovering new content. Her user hated her being seen outside the scripted life dictated when he was offline. It was part of why Phage was a long-range user – it kept her out of view, but not entirely. There were people looking for her inside the Hub, but also those who would benefit knowing he was logged into his avatar. But it was worse than all that. A boss with this high an intelligence score was surely aware of, if not involved in the NPC revolution.
The monster opened with a volley of mortar fire from a launcher mounted on it’s back. A wail from all four heads stunned the entire party, leaving few with enough time to react to the incoming salvo. Their losses were too heavy for such an attack, but accompanied by the stun, it was evermore devastating. Phage took the longest moment to contemplate revealing her true nature by going off-script, “Focus fire on the top right head!” She blared, almost involuntarily, as if Phage herself made the call. Her shot rang first, blowing the left eye clean out of the socket. The precision barrage continued until the head hung barely from the neck.
It turned to work healing skills on the broken face, exposing its plated abdomen, lined with rows of turrets as well as a powerful ion canon in the centre. An experienced party would know to rotate with the monster to keep pressure on the heads, but since this was the first contact, no one was to blame. The large cannon aimed directly at her, so she dashed for cover as it charged up and the eruption was nothing short of overwhelming. A rapture made of pulsing light ripped through her cover as well as the two fellow snipers she was coordinating with. The creature turned to have the attack follow her, tearing the stage down to it’s base, leaving carved out sections to drift into space. She couldn’t outrun it, but also, she wouldn’t have to since the beam cut upwards suddenly.
With the freedom to look somewhere other than cover, Phage looked to the monster. It’s back left pair of legs had been broken, forcing it to lurch and therefore saving her from an arduous respawning process. Nanobots laboured to reconnect the severed limbs. In the meantime, the creature, as well as most of the players, was enthralled by something in the distance. Deep green lights heralded an approaching ship which fired off one more shot before it circled back into the aerial fray. Its trail was that of a comet, streaking across the abyss of space; Phage tracked it with her scope, where she realized the exact nature of the payload. A warrior, clad in armour unlike any other in the Sky Zone, wielding a hammer of immense magnitude capped with an ore head mined straight from the core of New Martia. It was precisely who Phage was here to see, the one and only Zesty Morgan.
This Earth: A Fantasy World 