I opened my eyes, refreshed and energized and ready to take on the word. It still amazed me how nice it was to just be able to, you know, sleep. Close your eyes, and get a solid nights rest. I suffered from insomnia before Truck-kun and it was rare that I got a full nights rest, and no matter how much sleep I got I woke up groggy. And as I got older I’d wake up stiff, sore, and just aching. The fact that none of that applied since I’d woken up in Apoch’s Twilight was simply glorious and I began to look forward to mornings.

I’d found out from Dagg that apparently even regular, non-reincarnated players could sleep inside the game as well, and it worked nearly as well. The neural override that the 4th Gen VR tech utilized could actually allow a player to put their mind into a calm, mostly-dreamless sleep state near instantly. There were several simple VR programs available that simply allowed someone to combat insomnia and sleep on command, but Apoch’s Twilight incorporated that ability as well and it was expected that a number of the so-called residents that would be joining the game in later release waves those non-combat players would just mostly live a second life inside VR would take advantage of it. Dagg assured me that it was completely safe and that not only were there a number of safety protocols in place, that even a mild stimulation from the outside such as a loud noise, a drastic temperature change, or being shaken or jostled would trigger the failsafe and wake the player up.

This worked to my advantage. I’d been worried about showing up as online on one of my friends’ social lists in the middle of the night while I was asleep and not being to explain it. Plus the lovely, lovely full nights sleep. Just amazing.

I stood up with a grin and called out. “Aibee! Raider! Rise and shine!” I might be a morning person now, but neither of my AI companions were, strangely enough. Raider would rouse slowly, but Aibee frequently just grumbled at me and snuggled into the fur on Raider’s back and would go back to sleep until breakfast time.

I was staying in one of the rooms in the Maiden’s Rose, the only Inn in town. It was owned by a family of nekos, adorable grey-striped tabby cat-people. Unlike Enos, who I found out was half-kobold, Don, Tisha , and their four children were full-blooded, which meant they looked completely like bipedal cats. They were large for cats, standing about four and a half feet tall, and reminded me a lot of Puss-In-Boots from Shrek. Don even sounded a little like Antonio Banderas without the Spanish accent. Don and Tisha had evacuated with the majority of the townsfolk, but they had left the keys for the adventurers to use.

I headed into the kitchen and started making some breakfast. As Dagg and Lorelei had found, you didn’t have to actually have a recipe to craft something in Apoch’s Twilight, you just had to have a basic idea of how it was made and the appropriate crafting skill, as well as the right ingredients. Non-recipe items didn’t have stats or give buffs, but that didn’t make them useless. Lorelei had already made a couple outfits for herself and Torrie using Tailoring, and I found that I could make some pretty tasty food. I could actually cook back before whatever happened to me, happened, but I didn’t do it very much. Having the skill made simple recipes very quick, and I could cook up meals far faster than I could in real life.

The nekos hadn’t been able to take all their food stock, so I dipped into it and started making some eggs, French toast, and bacon. The smell drew in other adventurers and even some of the town guard that were staying behind, so with the help of a couple others with Cooking we soon were setting out a huge buffet. Most players had some basic buff food as well, but everyone really seemed to enjoy the breakfast feast and it was good to see everyone’s mind taken off the upcoming battle for a little while.

As I was eating, my [Crystal Vox] beeped, indicating a chat request. I looked at my friends list and saw that Torrie was on, so I opened it.

Bull> Hey Torrie, what’s up?

Torellisin Nimblefingers> Yo, Bullie. Just getting ready for class and figured I’d pop on for a few minutes, check in with you and see how things are going?

Bull> Fan-fraggin’-tastic. Just peachy keen. I’m living the dream here, lemme tell you.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> Someone woke up on the sarcastic side of the bed, I see.

Bull> Yeah, sorry. I’ve just been trying not to think about it. I’m not even sure why I’m bothering here. We’re doomed.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> That bad, eh?

Bull> The town is barely defensible. It has a shoddy wooden wall and a handful of guard towers. The town was even smaller than Ravensport, and has maybe 50 NPCs that can fight worth a damn. I sent the rest of the NPCs to Ravensport along with a handful of players who had shown up to play lookie-loo but were still really low level or were only crafters. They got a ways outside of town and then camped, so I imagine they’ll be arriving in Ravensport sometime around noon or so.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> How many players you got there?

Bull> Not really certain, honestly. Jericho, the kid that kicked off the quest, is playing General, and I’m so disgusted with him that I’ve largely been leaving everything in his hands.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> He at least a decent level?

Bull> Hah. Are any of us? He’s level 5, like we are. Gear looks halfway decent too. But honestly, over half the players here are still mostly in Common white gear or just have some basic crafted stuff. I think there are only about 20 of us that have above-average gear, and I suspect I’m by far the best geared here.

Bull> Oh, speaking of which, I might have a few new bits of gear for you guys. I’ll let you dig through them when I get back. And keep an eye out for three players, Stiletto, Bonebreaker, and Talon I think were their names. They dress in black and call themselves the Soultakers. They’re PKers, and they target NPCs as well. I killed a couple of them protecting an NPC and they kinda vowed vengeance on me, I think.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> Hah. Yeah, sounds like you. Ok, I’ll let the others know. Let me know if you need anything or if there’s anything I can do?

Bull> Just keep an eye out for the refugee caravan coming in later, if you can. Let Geira and the town elder know what’s going on as well. There’s a player blacksmith named Meera that’s kind of in charge of them.

Torellisin Nimblefingers> Ok. I gotta run, but I should be back on a little after one, maybe sooner if the exam doesn’t take too long. Good luck.

Bull> You too. I just gotta deal with a horde of 1000+ gorillas that look like they escaped from the set of a Mad Max film. IIRC, you gotta deal with math. *shudder*

Torellisin Nimblefingers> Mad Max Gorillas?

Bull> I’ll tell you later. Go take your test. I need to get ready here. Later!

I finished eating and took my dishes into the kitchen, where I left them piled up near the sink. I didn’t think there would be much point to washing them, plus I had other things on my mind. I looked around at the inn and sighed. Chances are in a few hours, this would all be gone. Or would be home to a bunch of damn, dirty apes. In either case, the dishes didn’t matter.

I headed out to the front wall, waved to a few players and town guard milling about, and climbed up one of the main towers. Each of the towers was a simple wooden affair, big enough for about four people to comfortably operate and fire bows out of. I sighed and looked out over the field with Eagle Eye now that it was daylight. It was even worse than I had thought.

I wasn’t lying to Torrie when I described the [Primals] as Mad Max Apes. These were one of the last things I’d specifically designed and laid out for the tabletop version before it got derailed, and I wanted something that was different from your standard ork race as well as something that could embrace the “post-apocalyptic” design aesthetic. So I came up with these – six to seven foot tall gorillas wearing a hodge-podge of makeshift armor of leather and iron made up of straps and buckles and spikes.

Besides the [Primals] there were also the large boar-triceratops crossbreeds, called [Ironhide Boars]. These boars were the size of a small horse and attached to large chariots capable of holding a half-dozen [Primals]. There were also a couple of [Greater Ironhide Boars] which looked similar, but were a darker color and were even larger, standing easily over eight feet at the shoulders and a good dozen feet long.

I sighed and swapped out my [Manacite Crossbow] for my older ranged weapon, my [Wicked Desert Ash Longbow]. It was a drop In damage and I lost out on the special Manashot ability, but for the first part of the fight the longbow would be a much better weapon. The crossbow had pretty short range, even with the boost from Eagle Eye. The longbow had three times the range and the base damage was still pretty decent. I was glad I had stashed it in the bank rather than selling it off, as I was able to withdraw it from the Hayver’s Mill branch of the Sylvan Savings Bank. Even though the bank’s NPC tellers had all left, the bank function still worked. At the end of the day, it was still a game.

I heard Jericho calling for everyone to gather around and headed down to get my Raid group assignment. The morning was flying by, and the battle would be on us before I knew it.

“Bull!” A voice called out as I climbed down the ladder from the watch tower. Looking over I saw a pair of familiar faces approaching me. One was a tall, grizzled looking man with iron grey hair and a short beard, the other a lanky dark-skinned male with bright orange-red hair and a long goatee. I hadn’t seen either of them since my first day in the game when we’d been matched up to run the tutorial dungeon.

“Morrick! Flamebolt.” I waved as they came near me. “When did you guys get here?”

“Really late last night.” Morrick said, cutting Flamebolt off before he could start speaking. I grinned at that, remembering the fire mage’s rambling chuuni habits. It looked like the two had been running together and Morrick had gotten used to him. “Almost didn’t come, but figured what the hell. I didn’t want to miss out on the first big in-game event.”

“We’re doomed to fail you know, right?” I asked and shrugged at them.

“Failure is not possible. You have me, Flamebolt, wielder of the sacred fires of Tiamat at your side!” Flamebolt exclaimed, raising his staff in the air. It looked like the same one that Lorelei had gotten from the Metro dungeon. “I shall call down the fire and fury upon the army encamped outside these walls and burn them all to ash!”

“Yeah, we know. Despite what Red here says.” Morrick laughed and shook his head while Flamebolt looked indignant. Despite the gruff, grizzled look of his avatar, Morrick’s voice was softer and younger than you would expect. “I was hoping, but after seeing how few players there are, yeah. We’re so screwed. Still, we’ll go down swinging, right?”

“For you that works… maybe…” A deep, growling voice said from behind us, speaking slowly and drawing it’s words out. Flamebolt, Morrick, and several other adventurers started as they stared behind me, and several drew blades. I spun and nearly pulled my bow out myself when I saw the creature standing behind me. “If what this softflesh says is true… you don’t die. But we… do. I’d like to prevent that.”

Standing before us was a dragon – well, a dragon-man, really. This must be the scaleskin that Gareth told me about. His head was more of a snout, broad and flat with a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. Scaled ridges lined the sides of his head, and a pair of wavy horns jutted up from his skull about six inches. His neck was about three or four inches longer than a human’s, and appeared to be flexible like that of a dragon’s. It also added to his height, standing near seven feet at the top of his horns.

His body, on the other hand, was well-muscled but more slender than I would have expected, having the build of a lightweight boxer. He was covered in tough-looking deep red scales that faded toward an orange-yellow on his torso, and wore no armor and very little clothing. His chest was bare, and he only wore a leather skirt that hung to his ankles. He had a long, graceful looking tail that protruded about three feet behind him, and the skirt had a slit in it for the tail, but buttoned up underneath it, possibly for modesty or extra protection. His hands had long, slender fingers tipped with smaller but wickedly sharp looking claws, and his feet resembled those of a velociraptor with some nasty looking talons. A tall bow was slung on his back, and a sword hung at his hip.

“Ahh, heya.” I said stupidly, caught by surprise at the sight of him. “You must be the scaleskin, I think it’s called? Gareth mentioned you, but he didn’t tell me your name, sorry. I’m Bull, and this is Morrick and Flamebolt.”

“Nice… to meet you…” The scaleskin growled, his neck twisting into a nod to each of us. His body remained still, so it looked unnatural and made my own neck hurt seeing the way it bent. “My name is hard for most… softflesh to say… so they just call my… Keddraym.”

“Ok people, gather round!” Jericho called out as he climbed up one of the towers so he could see everyone. “We need to organize ourselves and get ready. This fights set to start in about an hour, so that doesn’t give us much time.”

Jericho set out trying to distribute our forces as evenly as possible. We had a little over 90 adventurers, though the majority were likely to get torn apart pretty fast. We also had about 50 townsfolk, though Keddrayn looked to be the only one that could really fight. The rest were mostly town guard and locals, hunters or those who had trained a bit to help ward off bandits and wild animal attacks. Unlike Ravensport’s guards the ones from Hayver’s Mill weren’t high level. We were also dreadfully low on healers, which would make things difficult.

We split up into parties of six and then joined a larger raid group. Raids were normally limited to 36 players, six groups of six, but this was an exception due to being part of a Storyline Quest. We were even able to add the NPCs to the raid, something normally impossible to do. I ended up forming a group with Morrick, Flamebolt and Keddrayn. We also added a couple of the town guard to our party at the insistence of scaleskin, two human NPCs named Jim and Halbert wearing heavy armor and carrying swords and shields.

“We have a decent party for this.” I said, looking everyone over. “Three of us up in the tower, and three guarding the wall and gate. I just wish we had a healer.”

“You underestimate me once again, Bull!” Flamebolt said with a grin, holding his hand up triumphantly. “My powers have been bestowed upon me by the great and mighty Tiamat! I’m surprised you do not know of her many and varied wonders and powers, but she is the awe-inspiring five-headed queen of the dragons, and she combines many magics under her illustrious auspices that—Ow!”

Morrick flicked Flamebolt in the forehead. “God, you remind me of my little brother sometimes. I convinced him to take up light magic as well as elemental, and he’s been putting all his points into expanding his mana pool.”

“I was getting to that, jeez…” Flamebolt muttered, rubbing his forehead. “But yeah, I have both healing light and healing burst, so I can hit an AoE with my heals. I also have a lot of fire I can rain down, and since Morrick doesn’t use mana, he’s been giving me all his mana pots, so I have quite a few of them.”

“That’s really great to hear, Flamebolt.” I grinned at him, and decided to throw him a bone. “Praise be to Tiamat, may her terrible majesty bring ruin to our foes.”

Flamebolt broke out in a grin, and I swear for a moment he looked like an excited puppy and I had to struggle not to laugh. IIRC, there was no version of Tiamat that had healing abilities, but that was ok.

Jericho continued to split up parties and give out orders. I noticed he steadfastly avoided me, however, and had since the night before. Following my impromptu speech, a bunch of the adventurers and townsfolk had approached me to ask about what would happen, but I turned them all away, told them to talk with him. I was serious when I told Jericho I had no interest in leading this fight, and honestly I couldn’t lead. Like the NPCs, I couldn’t risk dying, so my plan was to fight for as long as possible, then bail, and try to save as many of the remaining townsfolk as I could.

Looking out over the walls, I could see the Primal army beginning to mass for attack, right on schedule. A countdown had been initiated by the system at the five-minute mark, and a nervous excitement ran through the gathered adventurers. The remaining NPCs of Hayver’s Mill simply looked resigned to their fate, prepared to die defending their homes. I shook my head, wishing I could have convinced them all to leave, but that went against their programming I guess.

The Primals were not organized and orderly. They appeared to be grouping into warbands, groups of anywhere from six to a dozen Primals. They were disorganized and sloppy, but there were so very many of them.

“It just means… We can’t miss…” Keddrayn growled next to me, sensing my worry at their numbers.

“Hahahahahaha!” Flamebolt laughed melodramatically. “My firestorms will sweep over the enemy and annihilate them all!”

I rolled my eyes and looked down to where our melee fighters were lined up with their backs to the Hayver’s Mill wall. The plan was for them to sortie out and attack as soon as the battle started, then slowly fall back to the wall to prevent them from being surrounded. We’d provide ranged covering fire from up top and hopefully prevent too many of the enemy from reaching them, and hold out as long as possible.

The timer ticked down to zero, and a status window popped up, giving us a quest update:

STORYLINE QUEST: Defend Hayver’s Mill (Stage 1) GOAL: Defeat 500 Primal Grunts STATUS: 500/500

That was actually better than I expected, since there were easily double that number of Primals arranged on that field. But if we had to complete this in stages, maybe it would be more doable than I originally thought. I moved the status window to the corner of my vision where it would be out of the way, but left it open so I could track our kill count.

A roar rippled out from the army, animalistic and throaty, and then they began charging across the field, howling as they came. A few of the archers on the tower let loose a little early, their arrows falling short, but the rest of us held back with our bows drawn tight, waiting till they were in range. The second they were, I let loose with a Rapid Shot, sending two arrows flying. Both hit their mark and two Primals dropped.

I smiled at that. The basic [Primal Grunt] at least wasn’t that tough. Good. But I suspected things wouldn’t be that easy for long. I chose another target and let fly. Next to me, Raider growled. He wanted to go out and attack as well, but I kept him back with me. In the chaos of a big battle like his, I wouldn’t be able to keep a close eye on him, and I expected most of the healers would overlook a simple Animal Companion in favor of healing other players, so I opted not to risk him. Plus this way if somehow some Primals broke through and attacked us here, we had a bit more melee backup.

The status of the Primals ticked down – 450, 400, 350. Flamebolt let loose a couple AOE flame burst spells. They weren’t quite powerful enough by themselves to drop the enemy, but two was enough, and he took out a dozen enemies that were bunched up tightly all at once. The numbers ticked down faster, but there were still almost 250 when they finally clashed with the melee line.

Morrick wore chainmail that I didn’t recognize, the shirt a bright green color that stood out on the battlefield. I watched as he whirled through the enemy, a pair of longswords flashing, his Sweep Talent combining with his other skills to allow him to mow down multiple enemies with each swing. Jim and Halbert flanked him, acting as shields to allow him to attack without worrying about being attacked from behind. I provided some cover fire as well, helping them clear out an area of attacking apes.

That first clash wasn’t without cost, however. I had the status plates for the entire raid set off to one side, and I glanced at it now and then. Seconds after that first melee skirmish, several of the players on the list went dark indicating they’d been killed, and a lot of others were taking heavy damage. The [Primal Grunts] didn’t have much defense or health, but it looked like they hit really hard. Our healers began topping off the melee, and the battle stabilized a bit, though by the time we’d finished off the last of the first wave of Primals, we’d lost a dozen players and unfortunately two NPCs.

There was a brief pause in the battle, and everyone took advantage of that to top off health and mana with potions, refill their ammunition, and generally prepare. The darkened names on our raid list reappeared briefly, then left the raid group one after another. I looked back toward Hayver’s Mill’s Chapel, but didn’t see any of our raid group respawning there.

“Aibee, what’s going on? The players respawned, so where are they?”

“Sorry, Bull.” Aibee said as she flew up from Raiders back to my shoulder. “It appears that during events like this, the local Church is disabled for the duration of the siege.”

“Drek.” I grumbled. “That means that they’ll respawn at their previous location, which means they’re back in Ravensport.”

“I’m afraid so. Sorry.” Aibee apologized. I sighed and patted her on the head with one finger, then looked down to where Jericho stood in front of the main gates shouting orders.

“Hey Jericho!” I called down. “We got a problem!”

“What now?” He yelled up, annoyed that I was interrupting him.

“Notice we’re missing a few people? Looks like the Chapel’s not working for respawns during this fight.”

“So? Why does that…” He started, then his face flushed with realization. “Which means they’re not able to respawn here. So they’re out of the fight for good. Ahhh, shit.” He turned and looked at a couple of players next to him and said something to them, and they ran off, picking up the couple player loot bags that had dropped on the field. Most players had deposited any loose items they were carrying in the bank and had Bound their gear to themselves, but there were always things like potions and Common gear that couldn’t be bound, and some players possibly didn’t think about it. Hopefully Jericho was planning on sorting the gear and delivering it back to the players who dropped it, but I couldn’t worry about that now. Two more windows popped up:

STORYLINE QUEST STAGE 1 COMPLETE Experience Reward 500 Gold Reward 100 STORYLINE QUEST: Defend Hayver’s Mill (Stage 2) GOAL: Defend Hayver’s Mill Gates for 15 Minutes STATUS: 15:00

With another throaty growl, the Primal army surged forward again. I quickly dismissed the first window and moved the second up to the corner to track the timer. This stage was going to be harder, and I expected we’d have more than just some simple [Primal Grunts] to deal with.

I began firing again, quickly dropping several Primals in the front of the oncoming army. They vanished in a swirl of particles which the Primals behind them simply charged through, paying their fallen no mind. I lined up another shot, and something punched me in the shoulder, knocking me back and down. As I hit the floor of the tower a loud “crack” sound ripped through the air. A red “325” floated in the air in front of me, indicating that I’d taken damage, and then the surge of pain hit me, and I could see a large, ragged looking wound in the shoulder that had been hit.

“Snipers” I called out as I could hear the sound of more gunshots ripping through the air. Flamebolt looked down at me, confused, and then a shot hit him in the side of the head. I was really, really grateful for two things at that moment: one, that the gore and damage graphics weren’t completely realistic, and two, that despite it being a pretty nasty looking headshot that it still only did it’s normal damage and that it wasn’t an instant-kill shot. The chuuni mage was flung to the ground, dazed by the blow, and I could see his health had dropped nearly half from that single shot.

I was in decent shape since I’d raised my Endurance and been focusing on gear that gave me boosts to that as well, but that one shot wasn’t even a critical, meaning that it did 350 damage before factoring in Damage Reduction. My health had dropped by nearly one-third, and from the sounds of it there were at least a dozen snipers out there.

I slowly raised my head to peek over the wall of the tower and used Eagle Eye to try and pinpoint the snipers locations. I spotted two clusters of them, hiding in a dense grove of trees. We needed to take them out, fast. Most of the mages were pretty squishy and would die from just a couple shots from these guys, and if they had to keep their heads down it meant they couldn’t heal. It was bad news.

“Do you have stealth?” I asked Keddrayn, who nodded. He hadn’t gotten hit, but he’d ducked after seeing us get hit. I drank a healing potion, then motioned for him to follow me. “Flame, we need to go deal with those snipers. Focus on staying out of sight and healing until we take them out, ok?”

“Y-yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” He said unsteadily, forgetting his chuuni roleplay for a moment.

I led the scaleskin hunter down from the tower and out through a small, single door set next to the gate that allowed for a single person or a small group to move through without the need to open the gate up fully and approached Jericho, who was issuing orders and yelling about the sniper fire.

“Hey, I got an idea.” I called out to him. He looked back at me with a look of annoyance, but took a few steps back toward me and said “What?”

“I know where those snipers are. Give me a few rogues with stealth, and we should be able to deal with them.” I replied, staying low. “If we have enough, give me four and Keddrayn here four. They have two sniper nests in the woods, so we can split up and hit them both at the same time.”

“Ok. Do it. And be careful.” Jericho said with a sigh and called out to a handful of players who came over. Two were archers who’d been in another tower, and the rest were fighting on the battlefield. They disengaged and made their way to us, healing up with potions as they did so. He explained the situation, and they nodded. Keddrayn and I split the archers and formed two impromptu groups, dropped into stealth, and began making our way toward the two camps.