The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

Chapter 53: No Rest for the Wicked

A small crowd was gathering near the South-West of Kruxol. As Crucis joined the crowd, he saw that some players were fighting at the edge of the woods South of Kruxol. Looking closer, there were four players: three Hashin were taking on one level 50 player, but seemed to be losing. The crowd around Crucis were cheering for the solo player.

The Hashin players were all over level 50 as well, so this lookeed like a surprising case of underdog resistance. The level 50 player was a Ranger, a sub-class of archer that used both melee and ranged combat, and he was deftly spinning to attack the Hashin with barely any concern for defence. Crucis could see a deep sense of hope in the eyes of the players around him, which was very different from the despair he had witnessed in the aftermath of the war. Crucis was just confused by this turn of events.

Curious, he stood and observed the battle by standing on an elevated platform at the entrance to the [Fortune Teller's Store] nearby. With a better vantage point, he could see that the level 50 player holding off the Hashin had a familiar name: [FGRT]. To the left of his name-tag, the text 'GM' was floating in embossed yellow. Crucis could see that the Hashin had got the drop on FGRT near the entrance to the woods, but FGRT had managed to fight his way back. To prevent abuse of power, GMs were unable to start fights in the wild, and could only defend themselves. These Hashin had probably planned the attack in advance, and ambushed FGRT.

However, although the Hashin were attacking savagely and landing several blows, Crucis noticed that FGRT's HP bar barely seemed to move downwards. There was no known way for players to increase their defences so high, especially at only level 50. FGRT, on the other hand, was dealing solid damage by sweeping his sword around at the Hashin, and soon the Hashin were all down below 40% HP while FGRT still had 70% HP.

Crucis saw that the Hashin had taken to grappling FGRT and trying to prevent him from counter-attacking. However, FGRT shrugged off their grapples as if they were nothing. While the Hashin were managing to lay painful thrusts near the throat, and FGRT was groaning loudly in pain, FGRT's indifference to defence meant that he was freely cutting at the Hashin and they were also starting to double over in pain.

As one of the Hashin tried to grapple FGRT from behind, the GM effortlessly untangled himself and spun around, striking with a firm [Slash] to the neck. The Hashin fell to the ground, and FGRT took this as an invitation to attack further. While this left him open to attack from the other Hashin, he seemed indifferent. Slashing and stabbing at the grounded Hashin, he reduced the Hashin to just 10% HP. The Hashin eventually managed to claw his way behind a tree, and leap to his feet as FGRT's sword collided with the tree.

There was a loud cheer from the crowd as the Hashin began to retreat. A few were chanting FGRT's name, in a slightly slurred and drunken sing-song. However, that was not the end. As the Hashin began to run, FGRT switched weapons to a [Test Musket]. This weapon was a planned feature that was given to GMs for testing, and it was not available to other players. He aimed the burly, brown-black gun towards the fleeing Hashin. As he began to fire, loud blasts rang out across the woods, and one of the Hasin fell dead. The others were reduced to around 25% HP, but managed to escape with [Stealth Cloak]. A couple of players from town began to chase after the wounded Hashin.

The rest of the crowd were cheering and screaming loudly, and gave FGRT a hero's welcome as he slowly trudged back to town. Crucis saw that this event had given the town a symbolic hope of rising from the ashes of the morning's defeat. This was slightly naïve: the GM may have some power which mitigates damage dealt to them, but that doesn't mean that everyone else does as well. However, symbolism can often be irrational.

Crucis saw that, as the struggle against gankers went on, symbolic events like this would become increasingly important to a frightened, superstitious population of players. He had tried successfully to avoid a symbolic victory over DeathGang, but only a few hours later there were players rejoicing over a different symbolic victory. War of opposing forces is easy to understand, war between ideals can easily seem futile. But ideas did not fight wars, and a 'war of ideals' is just a masquerade. Crucis didn't know how he could extract a clear thread to follow, a real battle to fight and win, amongst this shadowy masquerade.

However, in a masquerade, one must wear a mask. He decided that, since one strike had been made by the opposite side in the symbolic war, he should respond with a symbolic victory of his own. He would have to play a pantomime villain, since, after all, what use was discretion in a pantomime?

And he would have to find an appropriate victim.

Switching characters to Cael, he headed towards the North of Kruxol. Swerving towards the West through a line of trees, he glimpsed a path which led to the famous Asfidel flower fields of Northern Kruxol. While these fields were traditionally used as a source of flowers for funerals, and a few heroes had been buried in the fields according to the game's lore, players had taken to using it as a romantic retreat until the bug had made players reluctant to leave town. Walking among trees in a route parallel to the path, Cael heard a few voices from three or four players who had gathered at the fields for the planned 'funeral.' This included the sobs of Marie.

Before approaching, Cael cast [Arm of Hades] and scrawled down a zig-zag pattern on a piece of paper using his [Illusory Quill Pen] until most of his mana was used up, then held this text in place with [Lesser Aura]. He also equipped the [Mask of Salamander], using the black, oozing mask to hide his identity.

Cael snuck up to the iron gates of the fields, which had the words 'Asfidel Fields' etched into them. There were only four low-level players inside at the moment, all busied crouching down and looking for pale flowers to commemorate the dead. There were no [The Fountain] members present, though there were some [Communion] members. It was still 10 minutes until Cael expected a group from [The Fountain] to show up and put a stop to the funeral plans.

Cael quietly slipped into the Asfidel Fields, and cast out a swarm of pale, faint mana projectiles using [Magic Missile]. This threw all four players to the ground, but Cael saw that Marie was a Mage who immediately cast [Healing] on herself. She recovered to 70% HP and looked angrily towards the intruder, not seeming to recognise him. Before she could cast a spell of her own, Cael cast [Spark], and saw her sink slightly towards the ground. Her knees buckled, but she kept standing. Cael put a stop to this resistance with [Mana Push], sending her falling to the ground.

One of the players was level 10, and had died from just the initial [Magic Missile]. The remaining players were half-sobbing, half-screaming, but Cael saw one named [Denis20] charging with a sword.

"Die, scum!" said Denis20, who had the eyes of a fanatic. And the bravery, too, since he was doing all of this while only being level 15.

Cael shrugged, and allowed Denis20 to strike at him with a loose [Slash] that deflected off the shoulderblades. This dealt only 1% of Cael's HP in damage.

"In a p2w game, being scum is not an obstacle," replied Cael sagely.

As the momentum of the charge caused Denis20 to lean towards Cael, Cael reached out towards Denis20's ear and cast [Mana Beam]. The Mana Beam flew through Denis20's earhole deep into his head, and Denis20 fell lifelessly to the floor at 5% HP. While he had HP left, he made no sigb of moving except for the occasional, strange twist.

Meanwhile, Cael walked up to Marie, who had almost lost consciousness when she collapsed to the ground. He knelt down next to her, and cast [Spark] again. She shivered against the ground.

"W-why would you do this? We just want to mourn," she stammered with tears in her eyes.

"It's a PvP game," Cael shrugged.

He cast [Arm of Hades] and choked her to death, grabbing her high on the back of her neck. He found that her skin and bone offered little resistance, and her skin collapsed in on itself as she died. Blood seeped out of her disfigured neck onto the ground.

Cael immediately stood up, and swung his zombie-like right arm to catch another one of Marie's allies across the face as the player ran angrily towards him. The player collapsed to the ground, dead. Cael saw that they were only level 18. The player had thrown a rock at Cael before , but it was so small that Cael had barely even noticed.

Cael ended his [Lesser Aura], and allowed for his MP to regenerate.

As he walked up to the lying body of Denis20, he heard the fallen player faintly muttering, "I don't care how much you've donated, it doesn't give you the right -"

Cael shrugged, "I never said that I donated anything. But since you mentioned it, it was mean of you to hit me early. Give me my HP back."

Cael cast [Dark's Tendrils] on Denis20, and drained 1% HP from the fallen player. Denis20's face went pale and his hands went numb as the tendrils drained his vitality like leeches. He died more pale than he had lived.

Cael watched carefully for anyone approaching, but it was quiet. He only heard one pair of footsteps from the path nearby. As he scampered quickly out of the Asfidel Fields, he saw a male level 23 player drift into sight, named [Basthion]. Cael figured that these low-level players often had little to do at this point, since they were mostly forced to shelter in towns and hence fall behind more, so they were probably the first to show enthusiasm in a project like this funeral which gave them something meaningful to do.

As Basthion walked down the path, he slowed down in shock as he saw the dead bodies in the Asfidel Fields. As he turned accusatively towards Cael, he saw an array of mana projectiles from the [Magic Missile] spell heading in his direction. As they all converged on him and crashed into him, his HP lowered to 30% and he teetered around dizzily.

Cael cast [Arm of Hades], then activated his [Hierophant Card]. He found his vision swaying wildly, but as he felt himself near Basthion he grabbed the player low on the throat with his zombie-like hand, and shoved them hard to the ground. Cael ran out of MP at this point, but he saw a shocked Basthion collapse to the ground in a heap and lie dead after a couple of involuntary tremours.

Cael hastily ran his way around the outside of the Asfidel Fields, towards the North. Once he had reached behind the back of the Fields, he looked around for somewhere to hide. He had a red name, so he would have to wait for half an hour before he could return to Kruxol. That wasn't such a difficulty, since there were few strong players still present in Kruxol and most of those weren't leaving town after the traumatic war.

As Cael saw it, the war was a risky maneouevre by FGRT and the large Guilds. In its aftermath, it would be difficult to hide that players were dying permanently, a fact that would give rise to major panic and resentment towards the GMs and developers. Further, most Guilds had insisted that any of their strong members in Kruxol were expected to take part. This meant that, after the war, the wilds were mostly empty of strong players and this meant little protection against players like Cael.

Cael expected that ganking Guilds would take advantage of this situation by edging closer to the perimeter of Kruxol in search for prey. This would soon probably lead to pushback, and perhaps some minor skirmishes. While a few wins against gankers might give Kruxol hope, Cael expected that most high-level players would move on from Kruxol soon in order to keep up the pace. This meant that the Guilds would eventually be forced to concede Kruxol to the big Guilds. Once Darys reached level 80 and unlocked the [Invasion] feature, DeathGang might even take over the town.

Kruxol was not only a low-level town, but also had been demoted to a low-value town after the draugr invasion. There was little motivation for the large Guilds to waste resources on Kruxol, outside of the possibility of an easy PR victory through war against DeathGang. While the East of Kruxol would eventually be a good way towards the Eastern Kingdoms, this path would require a high level and probably wouldn't be relevant for a few months.

As Cael made his way carefully up North, he saw a few tattered, ruined cabins scattered in a circle. As he walked up to them, he froze as he saw a faintly glowing shape passing through a clump of trees towards his right. Turning towards this while concealed behind a bush, he saw that the glowing shape was a pale white, semi-transparent human figure floating through the trees. Checking this creature's name-tag, he saw that it was named simply [Ghost], and was level 65. It had chains hanging from each hand, and Cael could just about make out a contorted man's face that looked like it was screaming in pain. In spite of its higher level, he might stand a chance in a fight against it, but he would risk attracting the attention of any other ghosts in the area. He stood still and allowed it to pass.

He crawled into one of the ruined cabins through a broken window, and hid behind a fallen cupboard. Glancing out, he saw a few more [Ghost] NPCs pass by. The North had the highest-level NPCs around Kruxol, and he expected DeathGang's stronger members to soon start to migrate in this direction. A few players walked nearby, but Cael heard them turn around as they saw the ghosts. While Cael could have tried to attack players nearby, he felt like he shouldn't extend his red name because it would become difficult to return to Kruxol and meet Akshel.

As the red name faded, Cael circled around to the West of Kruxol, and re-entered inconspicuously. He saw a few agitated players from [Communion] towards the North of Kruxol, arguing with a player from [The Fountain]. It seemed like the player from [The Fountain] was chiding the others for putting on the funeral in spite of it being forbidden by [The Fountain], but the [Communion] members seemed furious and Cael overheard them accusing [The Fountain] of committing the killings up North. Cael doubted that these accusations would stand up to scrutiny, and soon another scapegoat like DeathGang would be found. But it was interesting to see that the fanaticism of [Communion] was causing splits with some more powerful Guilds.