Aiden jogged the short distance across the field and looked down at his friend, lying on his back in the grass. “Best lunch break ever!” He held out a hand with a grin.
Ravi grasped the offered hand with a laugh and accepted the help up. “Easy to say when yer not the one takin’ the hits!” Ravi had been Aiden’s best friend for years, ever since Ravi had moved to the city from some little hick town he didn’t like to talk about.
“The hits, you say.” Aiden arched an eyebrow with a grin.
“Hey, I’m all down here in the dirt, runnin’ around, gettin’ a workout, while yer standin’ in the back singin’ dirty limericks,” Ravi teased his friend. He dismissed the glowing blue magical armour and lance his class abilities gave him and brushed some of the dust and grass off the back of his jeans.
“Limericks?” Aiden held a hand to his chest in feigned shock. “My incantations are pure poetry! Poetry I say!”
“Yer such a nerd,” Ravi laughed. “I don’t even know why we’re friends.”
“Best friends, you mean. And we’re not, I’m only in it for the loot. Speaking of,” Aiden nodded his chin toward the sparkling corpse of Frostscale the Shardlord smoldering across third base. “Let’s get some.”
Most of the people present had already rushed over to the creature and were holding up the various pieces of gear they’d been awarded from the battle. Rare spawns were much stronger than the regular monsters wandering around, typically requiring at least a few dozen appropriately levelled people to take down, but they dropped exceptional grade rewards. When one spawned in a public place like this, especially when it coincided with lunchtime, there was always a crowd.
Some of the other players who’d helped in the fight gave the two men congratulatory fist bumps as they walked up to the shimmering corpse together. After a few others had walked away with their own rewards and made some more space, the pair touched their hands to the loot gem hovering in the air over the dragon’s body.
“Damn,” Ravi stepped back after checking his personal loot menu. “Jus’ got loot box coins. You get anythin’ good?”
“No, same here. I feel like the devs lowered the drops on everything but the coins.”
Ravi sighed. “Game’s only been out a few months and they’re already jackin’ up the micro-transactions.”
“It is what it is.” Aiden checked the time on his HUD and pointed at a sandwich shop across the street. “Still got twenty minutes on my lunch break, wanna grab Banh Mi?”
“Sure. Ya got that work meetin’ you were worried about yet? That’s today, eh?”
“Ah, right, yeah,” Aiden stammered. “Not yet. It’s later after the—”
“Yah!” A man in a nice suit, tie tugged loose, burst out onto the path from behind a tree and collided with Aiden, knocking them both to the ground. “Ah, sorry! Sorry!” The man quickly jumped to his feet. “Did I miss the rare dragon thing?” He looked around frantically, spotting the huge corpse a moment later. “Ah, damn it!”
Ravi steadied the man with a hand on his shoulder, “Yeah man sorry, just killed it a coupl’a minutes ago. All we got was coins though, ya didn’t miss much.” He looked over at Aiden picking himself up off the ground. “You guys okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the newcomer said, clearly distracted. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Aiden brushed the dust off his jacket with an annoyed look at the man, “Maybe watch where you’re go—”
“Holy shit!” The man said. “Another one?!” Without a second glance at Ravi and Aiden he sprinted by them onto the field.
Aiden and Ravi turned to look after the man, confused. High above the slowly fading corpse of the defeated creature, a black mist swirled in the air. Inside the miasma, rapidly coalescing into form, they saw another large, serpentine, dragon-like creature just like the one they’d just defeated. The new spawn flickered into existence over home plate.
“Two rare spawns back to back?” Aiden looked at Ravi. “Hell yeah! Guess lunch is off the menu!”
Frostscale the Shardlord solidified in the black amorphous mist and dropped, landing right in front of the corpse of the previous spawn in the middle of the infield. Its heavy wings kicked up clouds of dust. It threw its head back and screeched to the heavens, a cloud of frost breath shooting upward from its open mouth, causing the light drizzle of rain to condense overhead into freezing mist.
“You ready to do this?” Aiden yelled to his friend over the dragon’s screech. “Same plan as last time!”
“You got it!” The familiar magical blue armour appeared over Ravi’s body, and a wickedly sharp blue lance formed itself in his hand. He paused for a moment, “Wait, hol’ up, that guy that ran into ya looks like he’s got tank gear. Let ‘im take aggro and then we can pile on.”
The man had run straight for Frostscale the Shardlord with a cartoonishly enormous battleaxe pulled back over his head, ready for a powerful strike. He swung the mighty axe in a wide arc, straight for the creature’s kneecap, and stumbled forward as it passed right through the creature. The game didn’t have any physical presence, of course, but the implant did provide a bit of haptic feedback that made people falter a bit when strikes connected. Aiden frowned at the man’s fumble, but the other players didn’t seem to notice.
The tip of Frostscale the Shardlord’s nose flashed blue as it reared back once more. A player in heavy armour with another cartoonishly gigantic blade and shield yelled out to the group, “Arctic Breath incoming, get behind me I’ll absorb it!” The tank player planted the V of his shield into the ground, then placed his hand flat on the back of the shield. Softly glowing butterfly wings formed of golden energy unfurled from each side of the shield, stretching out ten meters on each side of him to protect those behind.
Aiden yelled to Ravi, “This is it! We rush dps after the breath attack!” He started intoning one of his longer incantations in preparation. The spell had a much longer cast time, but low mana cost and decently high damage.
An icy chill passed through the assembled players as Frostscale the Shardlord’s nose flashed two more times, then its mouth opened wide to let loose the blast of arctic breath they’d all been expecting. A two-meter wide beam of icy rime blasted forth from its mouth, obscuring the shield bearer and the half dozen other players who’d been standing near him.
When the beam dissipated, the tank was standing frozen in place, encased in a literal block of ice, and surrounded by snow and frost in all directions from the subzero blast.
“Wow,” Ravi lowered his lance in awe. “Is that a new spell effect? I’ve never seen that before.”
With a roar and flap of its wings, Frostscale the Shardlord took a mighty step forward and whipped its long, serpentine head down. With a single snap of its powerful jaws, it ripped the top half of the man’s body apart. Frozen chunks of blood and flesh splattered across the ground, staining the snow. Frostscale the Shardlord turned its head, one of the man’s arms flapping limply from the corner of its mouth. One black eye narrowed, focusing on the small crowd before it.
For a single moment, everyone on the field froze, as still as the ice coating the baseball diamond before them.
A sickening crunch echoed through the field as the dragon-kin casually began to chew.
Then, chaos.
Screaming. Running. Colours flying in every direction from poorly aimed spells. Frostscale the Shardlord seemed almost to delight in the chaos. It moved quickly, slashing a talon out at a fleeing player, catching her by the leg. She fell to the ground screaming while it descended upon her with its full weight, ripping into her with teeth and claws.
Ravi broke from his stupor a moment before Aiden. He grabbed his friend by the arm and pulled. “We gotta get outta here, NOW!”
“I’m… I can’t disconnect,” Aiden said stupidly, mouth hanging open. “It won’t turn off.” His body refusing to function, he let Ravi drag him, stumbling, toward the street and away from the destruction. “It says it’s already off, but it’s not off.”
“Worry about that later!” Ravi pulled Aiden’s arm harder. His friend finally broke free of his confusion and began to move on his own alongside him.
“Alison’s callin’ me,” Ravi said as they ran. He tapped at air in front of him, picking up the call on his implant. “Hello?” They made it to the street and ducked behind a car. The sound of screams seemed to be all around them now.
In the far distance, they heard an explosion. “Alison, where are you!”
Another scream, closer this time.
The crunching of cars colliding a few streets over.
Sirens.
Car alarms went off in every direction.
A squelch, then something enormously wet splashed behind them.
Ravi continued yelling into his call with Alison. “I don’t know, I don’t know! Just stay in the lobby, me an’ Aiden will come to you. Try an’ find somewhere to hide! We’ll be there soon.”
$ shoutout.swap --stacked --clean
by BooksByMandiMay ● Sci-Fi / LitRPG
Maura ran a game store. Now she's trapped in a deadly multiverse tutorial and assigned a class extinct for fifteen eras: Technomancer. Half magic, half machine, zero instructions. She has to figure out powers nobody remembers and keep a group of strangers alive long enough for any of it to matter.
by BooksByMandiMay ● Sci-Fi / LitRPG Lite
Samantha gets fired, framed for corporate espionage, and then something in her brain snaps. Suddenly she can see reality's source code. A voice says: LEVEL UP. She keeps notes in a journal titled "DEFINITELY NOT EVIL PLANS." She is, in fact, lying about that.
// two systems. two protagonists. same universe-breaking energy.