Ravens of Eternity

162 Time Off, Pt The disgusting Ratman’s rusty, jagged sword struck the heavy kite shield over and over. Sparks flew with each blow as the barely-sharp blade left tiny scars and scratches in its wake.

The Ratman itself was a fetid, disease-ridden beast-like humanoid. Its fur was matted, its muscles were sinewy, and its eyes were beady. It stank of the ripe combination of urine and rotting meat.

How its weapons and armor didn’t disintegrate from direct contact was a complete mystery.

Not that Pelli even cared about any of that.

His eyes were wild with surprise as he held up his kite shield and blocked blow after blow from the enraged Ratman. And although he was covered head to toe in gleaming plate armor, and wielded a razor-sharp longsword, he was still pushed back heavily.

Worse, another Ratman charged at his flank, which he was forced to fend off with this sword. Faced against two of them, there was nothing he could do but stay on the defensive.

Pelli’s heart pounded hard in his chest as he frantically swatted both Ratmen’s attacks aside over and over. Their slavering wildness combined with their rusty blades pushed an element of fear into him, and he felt his nerves choke his throat at all times.

“You seriously consider this fun?” Pelli yelled at Pio. “‘Coz I don’t consider getting stabbed and contracting tetanus the slightest bit enjoyable!”

“It’s a game, Pelli!” Pio yelled back. “At least try to enjoy it!”

.....

About a dozen meters behind the front line Pelli had established, Pio shot arrow after arrow at the charging horde of Ratmen. He was wearing a simple green hunter’s outfit, which was reinforced with a stiffened leather chest guard and supple leather bracers.

He drew his string back, aimed quickly, and loosed an arrow. He didn’t even stop to see if he killed what he shot at before he nocked another arrow and shot at another Ratman. They seemed to continually stream in from the thick, dark forest in front of them in endless waves.

In all the game was rather simple, they were supposed to do their best in preventing the Ratmen from invading a nearby township. Players were well-equipped and highly skilled. Except, there was one problem...

“Do these fuckers ever end?!” said Pelli. “These things are scary as hell, and stressing me out!”

He was at his wit’s end. They had been fighting these things for a half hour straight, and they showed zero signs of slowing down. But he was getting increasingly tired with every passing moment, which was compounded by all the steel he was wielding and wearing.

“Ugh, quit crying,” said Pio. “Why can’t you be more like your girlfriend?”

Pelli glanced over at Eva, who was further forward, and deep among the Ratmen’s lines.

She wore an all-black padded leather ensemble and wielded a couple of short swords. Despite her lack of armor, she seemed completely at home in the midst of her enemies and swam through them with little resistance.

Her body moved between jagged edges with incredible grace and precision, and every step she took kept her well out of harm. At the same time, she swung her blades out as she danced, and eviscerated as many Ratmen as she could reach.

With her black hood up, she looked like a reaper, and the Ratmen wheat.

“Yeah, well, she’s a fuckin’ killing machine, okay?!” Pelli retorted. “I’m usually the charming rogue in the party! Singing songs while drunk and making the ladies swoon! That sorta shit!”

He slammed his shield into the Ratman in front of him out of sheer frustration, which stunned it deeply. While it was preoccupied, he charged at the Ratman to his flank and slashed deeply into its throat.

Blood flooded out as it chittered desperately for air.

“So why the hell did you pick a tank, then?” asked Pio.

“We need one!” said Pelli.

“Says who?”

“Uh, everyone in every game ever!”

“A tank-based damage-soaking strategy is only viable with strong healer support,” interjected Miko. “Since we do not have one, it is better to rely on avoidance strategies instead.”

She came up beside Pio, and hovered very slightly above the ground. She was enrobed like ‘Ye Olde Wizard’ – long, flowing, and plain. There was even one of those cliche pointy hats on her head.

But she liked the look, and that was all that mattered.

Floating in the air right next to her was a thick, gigantic spellbook about half her size. Its pages were open to some kind of spell.

Wild energy swept around her as she performed gestures in the air and chanted the spell’s verbal components. She pushed outward with a palm pointed at the closest Ratman.

“Arky Sparks!” she yelled at it.

An arc of lightning leapt out from her palm and struck the first Ratman, bounced off to a second, and then a third all within the blink of an eye. All three were blown back slightly and electrified. They shuddered uncontrollably, completely stunned by her attack.

“These spell names are awful,” she muttered.

“Hey, as long as they work,” said Pio.

He then nocked four arrows on his bow, aimed them at the Ratmen that both Pelli and Miko had stunned, then fired. They flew through the air gracefully, landed neatly on each of the Ratmen, and killed them.

“You oughta go change classes,” said Eva. “I mean, besides what Miko said, if you’re not having fun tanking, then don’t tank. Simple enough, yeah?”

“But the team needs to be balanced,” argued Pelli. “Otherwise, how are we gonna make it to the end?”

“Balance isn’t about finding what’s missing and trying to fill it – it’s about doing what you can, when you can. And if you fail at it... well, that’s part of that balance, too. Honestly though, just do what you think is gonna be fun.”

Pelli grimaced, and sighed as her words sunk into him. He realized he was taking fun way too seriously.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “Game Master: Players minus one, show exit.”

As Pelli relaxed his stance and pulled back from the fight, a door appeared in midair dozens of meters behind them. He started walking towards it immediately.

“Lemme go change up classes,” he continued. “I’ll be right back, alright?”

After he was gone, Eva fell back closer towards Miko and Pio, and killed as many Ratmen as she could along the way. She appraised the situation, and realized that numbers stayed thinned out, likely due to the game having one less player involved.

“Think you two can handle this?” she asked. “I really oughta check on Pelli.”

“Yeah, he looked pretty down,” said Pio.

Miko looked out at the Ratmen, then over at Pio. She appraised him briefly, pondered for a moment, then nodded her head at Eva.

“Nn,” she said. “This is not a problem with this difficulty setting.”

“Yeah, this is no sweat,” added Pio. “Raijin, queue up a big spell – I’ll cover you!”

“Alright, enjoy!” said Eva. “Game Master: show exit.”

As Eva headed towards the still-materializing door, Miko flipped through to a ridiculously complicated spell in her book and began to chant its components. Her arms and hands waved specific patterns in the air, and traced the lines of energy her spell was to be drawn out of.

While she prepped the spell, Pio shot at the oncoming Ratmen with incredible speed. Without anyone to keep them occupied in melee, it was up to him alone to keep them at bay.

At first, he wasn’t too worried – his speed and accuracy were unparalleled. Combined with an unlimited quiver, he was all but unstoppable. Every arrow he shot almost always struck its mark and skewered the Ratmen with ease.

But that didn’t mean he could do it forever. Eva didn’t remove herself from the player count, so the game didn’t adjust the Ratmen’s numbers when she left.

Over time, he realized they came in slightly faster than he was able to kill them.

They came streaming out of the woods in batches, and he fired on as many as he could. But no matter how many he killed, he wasn’t fast enough to catch up to their numbers. Their front line crept up closer and closer, even as he tried to kill them faster and faster.

Sweat began to fall from his temples as he saw the Ratmen circle and flank from the sides as well. Dread fell on him when he realized it wasn’t long until they would be right on top of them.

“Soooo, badass spell when?” he asked.

“Almost done,” replied Miko. “I am just ashamed of saying the spell name.”

“Wh-who cares about that?!”

She chanted the last portions of the spell, and finished drawing the energy matrix. As she did so, the sky above her darkened, and the wind picked up and swirled around her.

“Thunderstorm Dance Party!” she exclaimed, then pointed in the air above her.

Dozens of bolts of lightning then flashed down from the sky and blasted down on the Ratmen all around. Many even reached down into the forest and slammed into those still incoming.

The entire area all around them was lit up with a blinding white light as curtains of electricity came crashing down. Beyond the brilliant glow was the cacophony of the lightning itself.

It was like the sound of a hundred guns all firing at the same time, in near unison.

Pio had to shield his eyes from the glare, and braced his body as he felt waves of force strike him. The shockwaves from the lightning splitting the sky pushed at him from every direction.

Once the moment was over, all of the Ratmen around them were reduced to corpses, blackened and smoldering. Many fell where they stood, into a heap of burt Ratman.

The acrid stink of it all invaded their noses and threatened to upturn their stomachs. The Ratmen’s final, devastating attack.

Pio exhaled deeply from relief.

“So, uh, Raijin,” he stammered, “other than blasting Ratmen with lightning spells, what kind of stuff are you into? Usually.”

Miko immediately blushed at Pio’s attempt at small talk. It was honestly something she hated doing and always avoided it. But he was quite literally the only Reborn she had met that was about her age.

So she took a page from Eva’s book and pushed through her apprehension.

“I, um, have been enamored,” she replied a little awkwardly, “with counter-graviton dynamics, and its potential applications in rapid armor deployment on spacefaring vehi...”

She trailed off when she noted Pio’s face expressed utter confusion. So she abandoned her original train of thought and replaced it quickly.

“I like games and manga,” she finished.

“Oh yeah? Me too!” said a rejuvenated Pio. “And um, I don’t mean to intrude or anything, but I heard Pelli said you’re 13. Is... is that right?”

“Technically, yes,” Miko replied. “When I arrived here, I was 13 years old. It has almost been a year since then, of course. In that time, our old lives have had little over three years pass. I am, by my old life’s standards, technically 16 now.”

“S-so I’m actually 19?”

Miko tilted her head slightly as she thought about it, but ultimately shrugged in response.

“You are who you are,” she replied. “Whatever age you want to be is probably the right one. I’m not sure how much it matters. Freya told me that our cells are... frozen. They do not decay and do not age.”

Pio’s eyes went wide as she revealed that truth about their existence. He looked down at himself, at his hands. It slowly dawned on him that he was going to be stuck in that body forever.

.....

“Are you serious?” he said. “I’m not gonna get any taller? Or more muscular? I won’t get one of those manly tree-cutting beards or huge biceps? ...But at least we get immortality in exchange, right? That’s gotta count for something.”

“I do not know about immortality,” said Miko. “Just because our cells do not age does not mean we won’t someday die. We might still have strict expiration dates – we will not know until it happens. If it happens. Of course, we can still be killed like normal.”

Pio was immediately crestfallen. Frozen in time, with little escape from death. He thought he had respawned into a game, but now realized that it was still a huge life-or-death struggle. One filled with a lifetime of awkwardness and inadequacy.

As he looked around at the many corpses surrounding him, he realized just how much more lethal this universe really was. And how much he could never match up to those larger or older.

“Do not worry about it so much,” Miko continued. “The galaxy is beautiful and filled with amazing things. You will miss out on seeing them if you are only concerned about mortality.”

“How old are you really?!” he said. “I mean seriously – that’s kind of a heavy concept, don’t you think?”

Miko laughed at him, then nudged him with an elbow.

“It is only obvious,” she said. “Now let’s go into the forest and beat the level boss. I want to see how much harder it gets after that.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the other two?” he asked.

“They can play their own game.”