Chapter 11

Incomplete Monster

[The Nicholas is down! The Prontera had received substantial damage from the explosion! The Masked Organization took down the Nicholas!]

“Deploy Cyclone escort squads six and seven. Tell them the priority of Prontera’s safety until it gets back to the hangar base.”

[The interference on the southeast and eastern sides of the battlefield have been confirmed, sir!]

“Order the 9th Division to deploy their beast platoon first to flank the enemy. Tell the Hydra to lend a panel of missiles to cover the east gate.”

[Another platoon of Bombers are coming sir!]

“Tell the Shield Mages to hold their grounds!”

[Second division is starting to crumble! Division commander has fallen to the masked men! H-His MOD has been taken!]

“Damn. Tell the 13th Division to support the 2nd Division and tell Colonel Forge to take charge of those troops. Do not let the line crumble down! Warn the others of the masked men’s target at once!”

[Attention to all Sylphs, the Masked Organization is targeting MOD wielders! Warning to…]

“Radar! What’s the situation in the sky?”

[Winged Element units are being deployed from the Amaya and Acala sir! Captain Nash is currently taking part in a dogfight!]

“Shit! He’s done it again. How long until Missouri recovers its energy?”

[Unconfirmed sir! The communication is down due to the masked men’s interference!]

[Sir! Detected an unknown heat signature! Location, 139! Estimated speed at 140kn and dropping! Distance, 180km! Its headed towards our direction!]

The reports from the officers of the Sylphs came in on the Command HQ. Their Guild Master, Matsuri, were looking at different angles of the war taken from his own men assigned to become correspondents. In the conference room of their HQ, [email protected] screens were set up in a side way series, placed next to each other like a large curved wall.

“What is the affiliations of that ship?” He asked the Radar Officer. The operator looked at his console and did another check on the database regarding all of the publicised information about warships in Terroa.

[Nothing…sir. Its…It’s not registered in any of the existing database. I think it’s a rogue unit or a private owned ship that is just developed recently sir.]

“Does it look like it’s going to attack any side?”

[Its not sending any lock-on lasers. But it’s ignoring our warning messages! Though I don’t think its going to target anything for now. But scanners shows that it’s equipped with six Bloodymary cannons and two large bio-signatures inside. Category, “S”.]

Bloodymary and an S-ranked bio-signature? But if it has six of those monstrous cannons, then that means…

“Alright. Mark that unknown ship.”

[S-Sir?]

Matsuri somehow became anxious as his expression made the people in the room nervous.

The Radar Officer encharged of the table console for watching over the battlefield locator chart marked the unknown blue dot on their [email protected] locator hologram though he himself wasn’t sure if he received the right command.

Then, Matsuri called out without turning his head.

“Reynolds.”

“Sir!” On Matsuri’s right side was a gruffly Atlas in his classic Swordmage attire —semi-armor clothing and a large buster sword on his back, always looking like ready to leap into the battlefield anytime. “What’re your orders?”

Lieutenant Reynolds, with his stark and firm bearing that immediately betrayed the sense of the avatar inside a game stood neatly in a military manner.

He pursed his lips and looked straight ahead as if in a real military office and his snappy posture gave away his real-life affiliations, a military personnel.

What more, it’s because Matsuri, his Guild Master, is actually his real-life commanding officer in their liaison somewhere in Fort Magsaysay. That would explain the reason why of all of Matsuri’s Guild Staffs, he specifically trusts the gruffly character Reynolds. If there was actually a reason the two of them is this close and familiar with each other, that would be because the two of them are living in the Liaison Officer Quarters.

“Sneak out of the battlefield. Bring a squad of your trusted skilled men and meet with the crew of that ship.” Then he gave him a small box. “Give this to the person who will meet you and…just be who you are in there. Do you understand?”

“Sir!” Without hesitation, Reynolds replied with a firm tone and stiffened posture.

“Good.” Replied Matsuri and sent him a PM. After seeing that Reynolds had understood what was written there, their eyes met and he nodded at Reynolds. “Go now. We are pressed for time. Oh, yeah, some piece of advice, no matter what happens, don’t look at her.”

Reynolds saluted, “Yes sir!” and turned around with a snappy act as Matsuri watched him leave the room while wearing a tensed expression and going back to his in-game job.

***

The Miranda, an Archangel-class Explorer Vessel that can also be categorized as a semi-warship, stopped from its cruise speed approach and hovered 4km above the Buendia River, overlooking the on-going war of the TGG and Sylphs on the Buendia Valley, 38km away, in a relatively safe distance.

Actually, anything within 1,000km from any warship inside, and especially outside, the atmosphere can be detected by the Laser Satellite Communication System (LaSaC System).

But the difference in those distance, especially those within the atmosphere, is that civilian and the nearby countries’ warships (if any) deployed in their defensive stances could also be detected. So with this approach, not until the Miranda had entered the 300km distance from the battlefield that the warships taking part in the war could actually notice that it was already coming.

If it was in space, any ship approaching within the distance of 300km is already considered approaching close-range firing distance.

Rafaela knows it. She already knew that entering the nearest 200km of the battlefield will make them receive Warning Messages from the groups partaking the war.

Especially when they are coming from the east side, where the defensive line of the Sylphs were grounded, with Miranda’s unknown affiliations, it was actually a wonder that the Sylphs haven’t attacked them at all.

Since with the Lightstone Disbursement Technology (LDT) that shoots out High Density Particle Beams (HDPB) in sub-light speeds, anything near 50km can be taken down without worry. That is, speaking within the atmosphere of Terroa since the HDPB’s concentration is greatly affected by gravitational pull and the aliens’ Plasma Field that bonded within the atmosphere, were able to affect the HDPB to lose 90% its effectiveness.

The principle behind the LDT, according to Terroa’s storyline, is that the Lightstone absorbs light from the Sol and stores it in itself until it becomes dark. And so with the LDT, the absorption of light of the elemental stone reaches the vacuum level and its disbursement or release was forcedly amplified through the use of the Blackrock chamber in the cartridge —bullets.

Hence is the principle behind the majority of all the weapons technology used in warships in Terroa, a trend that began eight months after the release of the game.

It’s not only destructive aside from being expensive, it was also the strongest of all ship weapon technology, as of five months ago, as it was toppled by a video of the Alcides Guild’s invention, Spandau Technology that reshaped a mountain in a single blast.

The Alcides Guild did not share its specs and thus created fear amongst the players against them.

Still, those were not the only Weapon Technology available in Terroa. There was also the Nanoweapons Technology, or just Nanotech, the widely conventional user-based weapons. Nanotech weapons are developed by humans against the aliens, according to the story. It is, by default, the user’s very specific-based weaponry that they can access right after entering the game.

In the recent months, there have been more records of very unique designs. Many of such have been appreciated on TV shows and other media related ways of connecting to people. Trend on social network sites are also discussing things regarding inventions and though Inventions are used by almost 99.5% of all the users of Terroa, there still those .5% who preferred weapons sold in the Shops or kept by monsters.

These weapons are very basic and do not have any explosive damages in them. But these extreme minority that preferred to use these seemingly weak weapons are the ones who’re secretly, currently, standing at the top.

Rafaela, for one, is also part of this crowd, though, only in the away side.

And upon discovering the secret that lies behind the simplicity of these weapons, she began to take the interest on progressing and feeding her curiosity in the field of Terran Weaponry.

And that’s how she came to be who she is now.

There are many kinds of weapons in Terroa that was already somewhere in the intelligent mind of Rafaela who, she herself, was a corrupting Mage, Necromancer.

Necromancers aren’t an official class in Terroa, nor are the Mages. But these players, fewer than ten as they are, originally, are all but those who reached advanced level of knowledge and experience inside the game. For melee users have a tendency to search for more power and strength, the path of wizardry requires one to be hungry for more knowledge in magic. Thus, research is essential if one wanted to advance.

If being a Mage is the main road in the path of the mastery of wizardry, then Necromancers are some sort of one of its branch. Like chemistry, as a branch of Science, Necromancy is also in the same category.

Rafaela had her research in the field of the Tier-1 magic and she discovered that not all of Tier-2 are their improved versions, as the public stated. In truth, it’s a branching of abilities with each and every one of those ability having an equal corresponding junction that can be integrated to work together with another junction. It therefore bring about an endless chain of junction “events” resulting from one effect to another with each one of them having endless potential for another magic.

She herself experimented countless times on these phenomena, that subsequently resulted on her discovery of the Corruption ability —which in turn became her Ultimate Skill, which, also, in turn, defined her class in Terroa, the Necromancer.

At first it began with a skill that resulted from Tier-1 magic, Bind, that she junctioned with the Tier-3 magic spell, Save Them (5m diameter AOE, healing magic, 40MP = 50%HP) and Telekinesis (Tier-2 magic, active spell, 5MP/1sq. m, 1MP/sec), that then results in an event that can make a corpse moving again. The corpse doesn’t have a will but it moves according to the will of the caster. But the effect of the magic lasts only as long as the caster has MP, which is not a practical spell for battle since she had to first cast the spells according to the formula and wait for the casting time to finish.

The manna cost per casting is 37MP per AOE and the casting time and cooldown period for the respective spells are accumulated because junctioning abilities doesn’t cancel out the spells’ basic properties. She also had used up four of the 10 slots intended for the maximum number of equipped abilities, with the fourth being the resulting skill, Revive. Thus, she had to be careful on choosing what other skills she had to take to get to her goal. After all, the limit on how many times junction can be used is (15x) per equipment settings.

So what she did is to junction the skill, Revive, with three Tier-3 accessories, Area Extension (expands the AOE of the junctioned spell by 15m —x3), and did it again with a Tier-4 accessory, HP Battery, that enables her to buy a “Battery with 100HP” on the target of the junctioned skill —the AOE of Revive. And as soon as she did that, the skill’s name changed to Howl and ate up the ability slot where Revive has been earlier.

But even if she already had the desired ability and effect parameters, utility wise, Howl, in general, isn’t battlefield ready yet. She would immediately die before she could even cast the spell.

It’s because with every accessory used, 1sec is added on the junctioned skills’ casting time. Since she had used four, that’s automatically +4sec on casting time.

With all its disadvantages, she junctioned Howl to another set of three Tier-3 accessories. The first was the Half Down to reduce cooldown period by half, second was Half MP that already goes by its name, and then the last, Half Count, that halved the casting time of the skill by half of its overall amount. At that time, as soon as she finished, Howl had changed into the ability, Evoke, that greatly resembled the ability to actually bring the dead back to life.

She did it all with almost countless trials and error before landing on the resulting event, Evoke.

Still, it was AOE dependent and 50m “around” the user doesn’t guarantee that she’ll be able to actually bring her targets inside the skill’s AOE. Plus, the shape of the AOE is just a circle, fixed around the caster as the origin. So she sought to modify the “target” of the skill, went back to the target of the Bind magic, and junctioned it to a Tier-3 (supposedly useless) accessory, Crosshair, that allowed the target of the ability to only effect those with the same status like it.

Thus, the birth of a legendary skill, Summon.

Upon looking up on what tier the skill is, it easily landed on the S-ranked only, Tier-4 magic spells. But as soon as she saw her Invention —the solid staff made of pure S-ranked monster bones, Drake’s Whiskers, she immediately thought of the extra junction slots and tested if the Dark Spear —the staff’s hybrid form, would actually connect. When it actually did, Summon immediately became her prided skill, Corruption, with the versatility of the Dark Spear applied to the spell.

So far, she had only known of three people who also unlocked the concept behind this Necromancer class.

The first is herself.

The second is Malecite from the Alcides Guild.

And the third is an unknown character who, in some odd circumstances, only roams around a dangerous area in one of Heartilia’s neutral territories, Caledonia, somewhere in the Island Country of Antoine. And the accidental meeting with this person did not end well into a good impression. Because this player is one of those very few who wasn’t at all affected by her charms and instead attack her without second thoughts.

Rafaela was proud of these achievements. Even if this world is just a recreational place for her, the fact that there are people who was able to test her wits in terms of ingenious originality was enough to make her stay and linger for more hours, studying magic and doing research for concepts for new Inventions.