Chapter 676: So you’re saying there’s a chance

Daniel Nyman, captain of the city guard, highest ranking soldier in charge of the holy city’s defense, just wanted to get laid.

Of course he couldn’t very well leave his post. Someone would talk, as they always did, and sooner or later General Chinua would strip a piece out of his hide. But every problem had a solution.

He invited his girlfriend to the top of his tower, and sent all his soldiers on ‘patrol’. Normally he kept at least his team back, so they went with skeptical looks or rolled eyes, but they went. Then he smuggled his girl up the lesser used eastern stairs.

“We’re gonna get caught,” she said, hiding her smile as he pushed her up against the wall. “And what if there’s some kind of…I don’t know, attack?”

“We’ll be fast.” He kissed her neck as he worked at her pants. “And the attacks are on little settlements. Nothings happening here.”

She wasn’t really worried, it was just part of their game. She loved sex in weird public places, and was so ready and eager by the time he’d stripped her panties he paused to savor the moment.

“Don’t tease me,” she whispered, ass pushed out as far as she could.

He was about to end the teasing when he caught some kind of movement in the corner of his eye. He looked up and blinked, seeing a flashing color just off the edge of the wall.

“Danny?” His girl was practically begging now. Little hairs were rising up on his arms. He hissed for quiet and stepped closer, lust vanishing as he felt his blood draining away.

More colors. Light flashing. He looked out over the ramparts, and saw half a dozen circles swirling into existence, not more than ten feet from the base of the wall. He zipped up his pants.

“Danny?” His girl was panicking now. She started pulling her clothes back on as he ignored her completely.

He didn’t know what was happening. Not exactly. But he knew enough. He opened his profile and slammed the central wall alarm. Warning sounds blared to every tower and would trigger in the profile of every guard.

“Go back to the house,” he said, pushing his girl towards the stairs. “Stay there and don’t go outside.”

She looked truly frightened now but he put her from his mind. She’d get back and be fine, just like all the other civilians. As long as the walls held.

He gripped the edge of the wall, messaging his team to get their asses back to the tower. His heart beat faster as the glowing circles started to materialize. As dozens more started glowing to life further from the stone. And then more.

An arcane hum of energy filled the air—like some giant electrical machine had fired up. A mechanical voice entered his mind.

[Nexus: under attack. Defences and titles: activating.]

Power shivered through him as some kind of ‘defender’ title came to life in his profile. He wasn’t sure what it did exactly, but he saw a percentage based boost to all his statistics. That was something, at least.

He doubt he had to, but he messaged the general with a trembling mental finger forming the letters. Of course the man would have seen the warnings. But he wouldn’t know about the portals the guards were seeing. And he had a bad feeling they weren’t the only ones.

South side. Twenty to thirty planar portals already forming. Investigating other sides now.

He heard movement down the wall as those strange, multi-colored constructs made by Mason’s brother started springing to life. And he really hoped they were scarier and less ridiculous than they looked.

Chinua’s response popped into his profile.

Activate everything. Defend the wall with your lives. Help is en route.

Daniel took a breath and tried to find a moment of calm. His team came rushing up and gathered all around him, looking out at the growing field of portals.

“Fucking hell,” said Graham, a powerful melee/ranged hybrid class. “Look at them all. Are those like regular portals? They’ll be a fucking army.”

The men he’d survived the game with looked to him as always. They’d survived the madness of the intro and the first month. Survived Jeong. Mason. The Neutral Zone. The last several months of facing the wilderness and getting as much experience as possible. They’d survive this together, too.

“Stay with me,” he said, forming his defensive shield. “We don’t separate for anything. We keep each other alive. If the wall fails, we fall back, we don’t go down with it. Understood?”

His men watched him and nodded. As always, they understood.

A wall could fail. A city could fall. Everyone they knew could die in the chaos. As long as they survived, they could start again. All that mattered was their brotherhood, and their survival.

But still, they’d see what they could do.

Daniel gestured his men towards the tower defences.

**

Blake was spinning in a chair in the holy city’s communication beacon as the Nexus warning scrolled. Civilians everywhere started panicking. He watched them all with a sigh, not really interested in trying to get things under control. He wasn’t in charge, after all.

Psion had said the chances of early attack on the city were ‘low’. But that was the thing with chance—it made no difference how unlikely a thing was when it happened. Whining about how small the chance had been didn’t help you. New statistics were required in your new situation.

He smiled as he imagined some mathematician in Pompeii shouting ‘but this is exceptionally raaare!’ as the nearby volcano bathed him in magma.

“Blake. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

Chinua had apparently arrived and found him in the swirling chaos of running, shouting people. Blake stood and smiled politely.

“Of course, mon Capitaine. I am at your disposal.”

Chinua’s people were all around him looking suitably fierce—including Annie. Blake gave her a specific nod and smile. Many months ago they’d had their little crush and kissed a few times in the Neutral Zone. But it felt like a lifetime.

He’d put a quick stop to it because it seemed like the right thing to do. Wolves probably shouldn’t mate with sheep, he decided. And while he couldn’t stop being a wolf, he could leave the cutest sheep alone. Every few months he’d checked on her to see how things were going.

The answer was: not great. At some point she’d entirely embraced her void power. Did that have anything to do with him? He had no idea. Maybe yes. But unlike with everyone else, he couldn’t read Annie’s mind.

She stared at him blankly. No happiness, no regret. She looked at him like she looked at everyone else: as a human shaped object not currently requiring an axe to the face.

It made him…sad. He’d tried to help her and he’d seen the possibility of her being more. A happy young woman who might have had a life outside that comforting void. A part time warrior who could put down the axe.

But everyone chose their path in life, and she’d chosen hers. He tried not to feel responsible.

Chinua and the others were quickly returning order to the chaos. Players and civilians rallied around the impressive general like moths to the flame, the man’s silent bearing spreading quicker than a plague.

Blake had no idea how he did that. It was a kind of charisma he did not possess—a still calmness based on known competence. Or something. Blake could only control others with noise. With loudness and narrative and chaos that only he could see through.

Soon everyone was silent and watching the general. Chinua made his short little speech about saving the world. It was all very inspiring, Blake had no doubt.

“Stay with your teams,” said their fearless leader. “We go to the walls. Protect the civilians with your lives.”

There was cheering. All kinds of soldierly vim and vigor. Blake smiled like he was one of the team. Of course his fifty-odd constructs would put in more work than any other player in the world except Mason (if he showed up). If he did everything he could, it would be many times more valuable than anything anyone else did.

No one would thank him.

He was about to follow the general out when Chinua turned and met his eyes. A light blinked in his profile.

“I’ve added you as a Nexus officer, You can control the city’s constructs directly now. I won’t have the time or attention to do so. I assume you can improve on their automated function, if necessary.”

Blake nodded, immediately splitting his brain into ten pieces, handing off construct control equally amongst them. A number of Partitions in the low double digits was nothing to him now.

“I’ll do my best, general.”

“And I understand you are very skilled at dealing with planar portals.”

He said it like he’d been carefully briefed on all of Blake’s powers, but was trying to downplay it. How interesting. Blake was very curious who had given him that briefing.

“I can close them, if that’s what you mean. How can I help?”

He glanced between Chinua’s officers, looking at the many little bubbles of text available from Mental Influence. Over the past several months he’d of course examined each of them very carefully, as he’d examined nearly every powerful player in the world. Their minds were an open book to him now.

Except’s Annie’s, of course. Her mind was an empty dark pit with a demon in it. Best to be avoided.

“My team will escort you in the field. We’ll close portals while the others defend the walls. You’ll have our complete support.”

Blake flashed another smile. He expected not to be properly recognized by the humans when all was said and done. But the system was fair. For being the most important player to save the Nexus, he’d be rewarded well.

“I’ll try. I hope my powers haven’t been exaggerated.”

Chinua stared with his stone face, giving away nothing. But then Blake could read the man’s thoughts and didn’t need his face. The African general didn’t like or dislike him. He didn’t consider him an enemy or an ally. He thought of him as something like a powerful weather event, very useful in the right situation, catastrophic in the wrong one.

And beneath that carefully controlled mask, he feared him. And not in a ‘I don’t understand you’ sort of way like some of the others, which more was more about distaste. But real, honest fear of what he might do.

It was the correct feeling for anyone to have towards Blake. So this raised the man in his estimations. In his concern that he couldn’t predict what Blake was capable of, or what he might do, Chinua proved the following: he was one of the few humans on New Earth who wasn’t an idiot.

Blake spun through his powers as his mind expanded, and expanded. In the last demonic invasion his personal best to close a demon portal had been twenty seconds. But then that was several months ago. This time he expected to do much better.

As he followed Chinua and his people towards the wall, he glanced at their magic items and magical protections. At all those nice, tidy runes, cobbled together by limited craftsmen. They were all so predictable. Breakable. Anything made without the chaos of primordial magic was almost quaint to Blake now.

What he did was far more difficult. Every project was fresh, without the ‘magical best practices’ everyone else used. It had been hard in the beginning, of course. But it trained him to handle novel magic problems like second nature.

It made his magic impossible for others to decode and destroy. And it made theirs simple for him. He could pull all their items apart, if he wanted. He could rip the guts out of their arcane-based powers with a flick of his mind.

Chinua’s primary defense, for example. His spear. All of his attacks.

That he had no purpose to do so was the only reason he did not. Perhaps what was what Chinua correctly understood. That to kill a man who was once his ally might cause him a moment of regret. But if he had a good reason, he’d do it. And that night he’d sleep like a baby.

Blake smiled and followed the others, the useful brother, the peppy savant ready to protect mankind. That was mostly who he was. Maybe you could even calculate how much of him. He noted it as a future experiment, logged in one of his Partitions.

In any case, he had no reason to be anything but helpful. His path to victory wasn’t losing a Nexus. At least not yet.