This chapter: 5053 words

Current stats: 19857/50000

As promised: the chapter I liked! Poor MC, I´m sorry but it´s necessary.

For people who ignord the tragedy tag until now, just a small warning.

Happy reading to you all =)

________________________________________________

The birds sang their usual tunes and mixed their melodies with the soft sounds of waves and leaves blown by the wind. The sun burned with an above average intensity as the hottest hours of the day passed in an agonizingly slow speed, dooming all life beneath its fiery gaze to a crispy fate.

A person rested beneath a palm like tree, a keyboard on his thighs and holographic windows blocking the glorious view of a beach with white sand and water so clear, everyone of the multicolored fish that teemed within was easily visible. The peaceful scene was only interrupted by the persons grumbling as he was unable to achieve whatever goal he had set himself this time around.

Seemingly ignorant of the scorching heat, the person was dressed in a black robe, which was surrounded by dozens of luminescent ones and zeros. They randomly floated around the strangely dressed person and cast an eerie green glow in their immediate surroundings.

The person in question was of course the GM and the paradisiacal beach he rested on was located on the very same island he had teleported himself to after the failed attempt to leave the game.

Time had passed in the blink of an eye after the GM had found a way to play the game with the happy little group he had encountered in the beginning. Against all odds they never disbanded and traveled to far off regions of the continent, uncovering mysteries and slaying evil creatures along the way. They had successfully found two of the missing relics.

From the northernmost city of Arnam to the southern tip of Gefrierbrand the group seemed to have made it their goal to find adventures in places no player had set foot in before. Only once in a while after an especially taxing mission or like right now after the successful retrieval of the second relic, they took a holiday, a brief respite in the face of the unending fights the world had to offer.

On days like these the GM liked to seclude himself on his island which he had officially, at least in his mind, named GM island. It was still undiscovered by the rest of the world and thus naturally belonged to him.

The GM would hack into the system to find the same impregnable fortress as always. There was no getting by the security, no breaking through the ever vigilant AI. Despite all the fruitless efforts the GM never gave up on his task. He hacked every evening after a long day of adventuring and started every day in another attempt. Time might have passed but the GM´s longing for reality had only grown.

There were the obvious wishes, to see his beloved, if that person had bothered waiting for him that is, and then there were many things he never really appreciated and only started missing now. A hot bath at home, a relaxed movie evening and unexpectedly driving a car.

Even if his friends regularly made the GM forget his worries by just being around, homesickness simply didn´t leave and he kept searching for the exit he knew he wouldn´t find.

The last specs of concentration left the GM as a ping heralded a new ticket which the GM routinely opened.

"Stop fooling around and help us, egoist!

~Uziefer"

The GM deleted the message just as routinely as he had opened it.

For a reason he couldn´t quite place the remaining player population had begun to become more...aggressive? antagonistic? towards him. They sent more hatemail than before and generally were impolite douches. Well the GM had stuck to his word and didn´t work. If there was a bug, why would he care? If there was an argument, was he their babysitter? If there was an enemy they couldn´t defeat, why were they fighting it in the first place? He had better things to do!

Whenever one of those requests for help arrived the GM just told them to settle it on their own. He definitely wouldn´t work for the company that had kept him imprisoned for two years now.

Yes, two years had passed since they became unable to log out. During this stretch of time the GM had paid the majority of the players no heed and simply played the game. Their antagonism towards him had helped keep him away too. When he encountered other players while traveling they would sometimes try attacking him and throw accusations at him. They were unfounded though and the GM easily brushed them off.

The only thing the GM truly regretted was the fact that his friends were alienated alongside him. He didn´t want them to make enemies just because he was their friend but when he mentioned that they laughed at him and said it was fine. During those two years they really had become true comrades.

This was already the third message for the day and the GM wasn´t used to this amount of mail. He usually got one message per two days or so. There was something going on but he didn´t know nor care whether those players were again fighting some dungeon boss and wanted him to cheat for them. The GM had lost all concentration once more and pondered his next course of action. Maybe it was time to switch the tropical paradise for a different scenery. Maybe a mountain range...

Ping!

Another message arrived. Glad for the distraction the GM opened the message and read it carefully.

"Hello GM,

we really need your help. This war against the NPCs is just too much for us, especially after they developed this terrifying spell. Please, help us please. We have nobody else to turn to. 50 of us are already traumatized beyond help and... I am so scared. If you have any heart at all please help us.

~WoodPriest"

This message confused the GM for a while. He did understand from various previous messages that the players fought humanoid NPCs, some sort of cult if he remembered it correctly. But there was no mention of a war against the NPCs or a traumatizing spell...

The GM quickly dusted himself off and teleported towards the player WoodPriest, while still in his invisible mode.

"What the hell!" In front of his eyes there was a war going on. A real war. In a field directly south of the easternmost city of Lavender there was an overwhelmingly large army made up of tens of thousands of soldiers fighting a small group of perhaps two hundred people. The two hundred were however a good match for the gigantic army as every single one of their fighters was capable of wreaking havoc among the enemies.

The floor was littered with corpses as streams of blood mixed with the upturned dirt. The corpses seemed to already start piling up. The GM took it as an indication that this battle had been going on for a while now.

Among the bigger army there were platoons of magicians arranged in a reasonable distance for spell fire. Directly before those magicians foot soldiers did their best to survive against their overwhelmingly strong foes. Whenever one of them was slain he was immediately replaced by the next.

The players showed no mercy and decimated their enemies as fast as they could in an attempt to push through towards the magician troops who kept raining spell on them.

The GM took his time to observe the situation carefully. He was in the center of the smaller group´s formation, where healers, supporters and the more fragile damage dealers like magicians stood. From the looks on their faces the situation wasn´t as good for them as it had first seemed. There were simply too many enemies. They could slowly whittle the players down and kill them once they were fatigued. Mentally fatigued that is. There was no real fatigue in the game.

Their doom however was of no concern to the GM. Players died all the time after all, even if they died they would simply respawn at one of the temples. It was impossible to play a fighting game like this without dying, so he didn´t see a point in preventing unnecessary deaths.

A more important concern was how this situation was possible in the first place. NPCs, while programmed to execute certain daily activities, wouldn´t just form an army to attack players. In order for this to happen there had to be an event... there was no such event though. The artificial intelligence was unable to direct the NPCs towards a grand scale battle like this as well.

Currently the GM was the only person with the ability to start an event as the outside world was still completely shut out. So how did this happen? Obviously he wasn´t behind this.

In a hurry the GM took a look at the soldier´s code just to find it in a normal state. There was no such thing as an event programmed into these NPC. Some of them weren´t even soldiers. There were bakers, scribes and farmers amongst the troops. These professions shouldn´t even be able to attack with a sword or gun, yet the GM had to admit that in front of his eyes the wannabe soldiers at least tried to swing their swords at the players.

Intrigued by this turn of events the GM figured asking the players would yield the fastest answers.

"Hello WoodPriest, can you tell me what exactly is going on?" The GM asked the person directly next to him while turning visible.

The young priestess jumped in surprise and turned to look at the GM. Some other players took note of his arrival as well.

"Ehhh, GM? You actually came? Waaah I´m so glad~" She hugged him in excitement while he tried to push her away. She kept a tight grip of him though and he couldn´t shake her off without hurting her. When she finally let go she had tears in her eyes.

WoodPriest was a beautiful girl dressed in a silvery dress with violet ribbons attached to it. She exuded a playful and energetic atmosphere with her pink hair and the childish gleam in her eyes. This energetic image was dampened by the sorrow clouding her expression.

"I was so scared that I would end up like Nolnol and ChrystalMan... will you help us defeat those awful NPCs?"

Her hopeful eyes glittered in anticipation as she peered into the darkness of the GM´s hood. With an uneasy feeling the GM tried to remain objective. He had long since decided not to work for the company that had imprisoned him and he wouldn´t do it even if some desperate girl tried to sway his resolve.

"Tell me how this-" he pointed towards the war in front of them,"-happened. Where does this army come from? And what exactly do you mean by 'end up like Nolnol and ChrystalMan'?"

"You don´t know?" she looked at the GM with big eyes. The surrounding players showed similarly complex expressions. Their reactions were similar to how one would react to a person who didn´t know something as basic as the name of the country they were living in. As if the GM was lacking in the most important aspects of common sense. Not that this situation actually made any sense to begin with.

"Well nobody told me anything... I assumed you guys were raiding some dungeon." The GM cocked his head.

"This can´t be... no, more importantly! These NPCs have a spell that does something to our heads. It´s awful! Everyone they use it on becomes unable to even have a normal conversation. They just sit in a corner of a room without speaking or eating or doing anything beside wailing... even Nolnol was..."

The priestess did her best to suppress her tears. She struggled for a while and the GM felt at a loss of what to do. Before the GM could however offer the priestess some comfort another member of the assembled players gave her a tight hug and whispered sweet nothings into her ears.

Relieved the GM turned back to his own thoughts.

He didn´t know of any spell that could traumatize the players. The company would have never implemented something like that. There was however no doubt that this girl was telling the truth, so the spell actually existed and some players suffered its consequences. The situation seemed grave indeed.

Another player stepped forward. The GM read the name tag hovering above this magician´s head and found out that this man was Uziefer, one of the players who persistently kept sending hatemail.

"This is your fault. Why didn´t you stop them? There are already 50 of us in that state and you show up only now? You gotta be kidding me!" Uziefer ranted in righteous fury while the GM outwardly displayed nothing but calm. Within however, he was consumed by guilt.

How could he have missed this tragedy? Were they really telling him the truth? Were those requests for help he ignored really of such a significance? But nobody ever clarified the situation. They said the NPC were bugged and he didn´t care. They said they couldn´t handle their enemy's spells, so he just told them to go to a different dungeon. And when they wanted him to help end a certain conflict... with a look towards the NPC army he finally truly understood what they were dealing with all this time. Some bug allowed the NPC to have more freedom than they should.

Was that even possible? Perhaps if the artificial intelligence was corrupted...

There could be a virus causing this entire mess. It was a thought the GM had repeatedly dismissed as nonsensical as the virtual reality was known to be unhackable. Hell, after all the time he spent trying to break into this virtual fortress he knew better than anyone else that this kind of virus would have to be just as unbelievable as the virtual system itself... which wasn´t impossible but... something inside the GM just refused to believe the system, which continued to ridicule his attempts at a break in, could be breached by a virus.

The GM shook his head, trying to shelve these thoughts. There were more pressing issues at hand.

He had to stop this war before the spell that caused the players to suffer could claim even more victims. To his relief he knew his party wasn´t in danger as they were still in the city of Mist, resting after their adventure in the lost jungle dungeon.

"Honestly, I don´t know what led to this. But I will do you a favor and end it here." The GM said to Uziefer and threw another look towards the crying WoodPriest. He had also made sure his voice carried across the entire battlefield.

A plan of action at the ready the GM turned invisible and teleported right in front of a magical attack, which was aimed at the distracted players in the front of the formation.

"Cease!" A simple voice command was enough to delete the magic in midair. There was no time to type the commands so the GM resorted to this alternative.

As the magic was deleted there was no firework of clashing powers or magical shields. It simply disappeared from one second to the next. More magic was cast and fired but the GM disrupted every single attack. He also spotted a slightly different magic, one which he had never seen before. This spell however posed as little a threat as any other and was easily deleted.

As the opposing mages began to understand that their magic had no effect a voice, as loud and recognizable as the GM´s called out.

"Who dares stand in the way of true justice?! How dare you defend those sinners, the scum of the world! Cursed by all existence to wander in their doomed state of immortality! Those wretched thieves and murderers who know nothing of justice and honor! Why, great one, do you protect this filth?"

The GM continued his task unperturbed. The thought that this message could be meant for him never even crossed his mind. He may be the one protecting them but the NPCs were in a bugged state and their words meant little to him. They were only code after all.

NPCs weren´t programmed to react to GMs and wouldn´t react to them even if attacked. They were the same as monsters in that regard.

When there was no answer and no change after the first shout for at least five minutes the voice resounded once more.

"Great one! The ones you protect are not worthy. Don´t you see that we need to cleanse them?"

The GM still didn´t react as he honestly was too busy deleting various fireballs, water bullets and frog enchantments, that kept coming at the players. He was searching for a command that would let him package the army in front of his eyes so he could study them in leisure later on. Deleting them would have been a matter of seconds as the command was known to the GM, but he thought they might prove to have some worth if there really was a virus manipulating them.

The players on the other hand had taken note of the obnoxiously loud voice as well, though they didn´t treat it with the same indifference the GM displayed.

The insults enraged many of them. They shouted their own insults at the enemy army and attacked in heightened fervor.

"You leave us no choice! Men prepare the aurora!"

The voice again resounded across the battlefield. NPCs swiftly changed their formation, placing a thin ring of stronger looking knights at the outside of their formation while the people towards the inside formed a big circle. A hundred or so NPCs stood in the center of this circle, fell to their knees and waited in anticipation of the following events.

A low rumbling sound could be heard as the magicians cast a spell of power in unison. As one their metallic staves hit the floor in a foreign rhythm and thus created a foreboding tune. The volume of their voices increased further as time passed and their speed increased accordingly. Faster and faster the staves hit the blood soaked ground, crushing grass and bones, discarded armor and flesh alike.

The GM wanted to use this opportunity to concentrate on finding the correct command but was too intrigued by this never before seen display. Whatever the 'aurora' was, it had to be their trump. He really wanted to see it.

The players beneath the GM on the other hand looked in dread at the nightmarish scene before their eyes. Goosebumps covered them. Shivers ran down their spines and they felt like an icy touch grabbed their hearts and slowly squeezed down. Some screamed in fear, others fell to their knees in tears. Then some just stood there, a smile on their faces as they watched in a daze. There were few who dared to fight and get closer to the horrors they had run away from for so long. Thus although they might have been able to interrupt the ritual in front of their eyes if they had forced their way through the thin line of elite knights the feeling of futility kept them away.

If it didn´t get them this time it would haunt them until the next time.

Every single player had seen this scene countless times before. It haunted their sleep, the memory assaulted them as if it was right in front of their eyes. And now a repeat of that incident was upon them. It was no surprise.

They had come to this battle fully knowing about the spell.

They had forged dozens of plans, had formulated counter measures and strategies, simply to realize the futility of their actions because knowing about a fear and trying to rationalize it was useless until you actually mustered the courage to face it.

During the months they had watched their fallen comrades waste away the seed of fear had taken root deep within them and now that they were faced with the cause of their suffering they were unable to move.

The best of strategies were useless if nobody dared to execute them.

The chants rung in voices that seemed to reach the heavens and beyond. Its deafening rhythm dragged everybody´s heartbeats in as the ritual neared its climax.

A scream tore through the heavens.

As one the entire NPC army screamed in agony as their magic was ripped from them and sucked into a vortex in the center of their circle. Orange streams of energy turned like a maelstrom and found their way towards the center of the formation. They seemed to be dragged into the earth.

Mad laughter could be heard as the soldiers who sat in place on top of the vortex thrust their knives to their hearts. No blood spilled though.

The sacrifices kept laughing. Their swords were stuck in their chests and they laughed and laughed and simply didn´t stop. The GM wished they would just stop.

They were long dead yet kept reminding the living of what they had done.

With the next beat of the staves the vortex turned into a sea of white light and if one braved the luminescence the laughing dead could be seen disintegrating into particles of red and blue. The colours mixed and intertwined, separated and changed as they pleased. A sight so beautiful it stole everyone´s breath.

The GM too was focused on the spectacle and barely registered a comparatively quiet 'ping'. He didn´t want to read the message. Common sense told him that he would miss something unique if he took off his eyes of the formation on the floor.

But when he thought about it some more he realized that all the players were assembled here and were too busy fighting to...

The GM took his eyes off the spell and looked at the devastated players. Their lightless eyes as they stared at a fate worse than death and were unable to so much as lift a finger.

In a hurry the GM read a hastily scribbled message.

"Stop them! THATS THE SPELL THAT KILLS OUR MINDS!!!!!!!!

~WoodPriest"

As realization hit the GM he looked towards the dreadfully beautiful spell that chose this exact moment to ascend into the sky like a reversed waterfall. Before the GM had the chance to shout 'Cease' a wave of light hit the row of players which was the furthest from the front and made its way towards the frontline.

"Cea-"

Screams of agony and despair.

"-se!"

The screams did not stop. The light shower did.

Aurora, what a terrifying spell.

In the second the GM took to understand what was going on and delete the spell it had already consumed roughly half of the players, leaving only the frontline alone.

Ironically the players who were actually hit by the spell were still alive. They sat on the ground, wailing, screaming one of them was running around shouting nonsense about the end of the world. They were alive yet they were not.

Truly a fate worse than death and the one who could have prevented it with ease was still floating above the victims, a baffled look on his cloaked face.

The NPC army mirrored the GM´s puzzled face although they couldn´t see him, invisible as he was. Their mighty technique, a spell that had consumed an entire army's worth of mana, had been cancelled in a second. For a while they doubted their success but one look at the crumbling players, even the ones that were not hit, told them otherwise.

"Now is the chance! Capture them!"

The voice resounded across the deathly silent battlefield in which only the mindless´ agony could be heard. And as if ripped out of his stupor the GM finally accepted the fact that this was no longer the game he thought he knew. And with the realization came fury, again aimed at none but himself.

The urge to protect what remained of the players overcame him and he materialized himself.

The NPCs gazed at the mysterious figure cloaked in black and surrounded by countless unknown symbols of two different types that radiated a majestic shining green light.

"You will let these people go, or I will make you."

A deceivingly calm voice resounded far and wide. The soldiers recognized it as the one that had spoken before. They instinctively associated it with the mysterious floating person.

"Who are you to command us, the holy army of the one true god?" The annoying voice from before inquired.

"The one who will kill you all if you don´t comply." The GM answered in a deadpan voice. He had already prepared a written command that would delete each and every one of the NPCs within a radius of three kilometers. This would also include a part of the city of Lavender but the GM was beyond caring at this point. He only needed to send it.

"Were you the one that destroyed the aurora?"

"Yes"

A murmuring went through the NPC ranks and in a turn of events the GM would most likely never be able to fully comprehend the voice, now louder than ever shouted:

"Bow your heads soldiers! Our glorious God is upon us!!! Oh majestic being! So long have we waited for the day you show your holy form to us lowly servants!!! It is an honor the people generations from now will envy us for!!! Oh God!!! Finally you have come to rule us unworthy peasants!"

As the voice continued spouting nonsense the GM remained in his spot in the sky. Looking around for the 'God' these NPCs were calling out to. The entire NPC army had fallen to their knees and were sunk in prayer. Not the quiet mumbling the GM was used to from churches in reality but loud prayers meant to reach as far as possible. In seconds the entire army was shouting words of devotion towards their god.

The remaining sane players watched in apathy, not even caring about the fact a God was supposed to be around. Many cried, refusing to look at the comrades they lost.

While the NPCs showed their devotion only one of the tens of thousands of NPCs dared standing and walked towards the spot over which the GM hovered in the air. It was a chubby man in red and blue garbs, reminiscent of a formal suit with fly. Why he would be on a battlefield dressed as such was anyone's guess but what he did next startled the GM to no end.

He threw himself to the floor and started worshipping the GM above him. With another look around and above him the GM confirmed that there was nothing else around. The GM just kept floating there, transfixed, confused and in disbelief at this turn of events. Since when did threatening death upon your enemies result in them forming a religion around your person?

New hope was kindled within him as he stared down at the man.

"You! Who are you?" The GM pointed at the chubby suit wearer.

"I am your lowly servant Udo." He bowed deep enough to touch the ground with his face. The GM recognized his voice as the one that had commanded the army. For a while the GM fought his anger at the man and tried to keep the calm image up. Hopefully these people had a way to save the players.

"About this aurora of yours. Is there a way to reverse the mental trauma?" The GM made his voice extra menacing for good measure.

Udo paled and didn´t dare raise his face to look the GM in the eyes, well scratch that, towards his hood.

"Your lowly servant asks for forgiveness!!! The aurora was a hastily made spell to fight the threat of the immortal army! There has not been a cure created as of yet! Please allow this worthless person to find a way to redeem himself. God, please forgive my sins!"

By the frantic expression on Udo´s face the GM judged him to be telling the truth. This was awful. A mental trauma wasn´t easily repaired after all. The last hope that these crazy cultists would actually be able to help the players seemed too optimistic for the GM´s taste. Sure, they had created the aurora. Creating something that destroyed things was, however, easier than repairing something that was destroyed.

Thus a new impossible goal had joined the GM´s unrealistic to-do list. It was on second place, right after the search for a way out of the game. A real psychologist might be better suited to helping those lost cases anyway.

The GM was deep in thought by this point as he regarded the insane players. He landed on the ground and walked towards them. A suffocating feeling of guilt washed over him.

She was among them.

The one who had desperately pleaded for help, a girl he didn´t really know. She sat on the ground, drool running down her mouth as she looked suspiciously at a fly sitting on a corpse next to her. Her eyes moved around without ever lingering anywhere for more than a moment.

When the fly left the corpse in favor of swirling around her head she screamed, got up and ran while tripping over people, equipment and thin air. She landed on the ground, apologizing, crying, trying to escape from a foe only she could see.

Unbeknownst to him silent tears ran down the GM´s face.

She was merely a stranger.

The tears wouldn´t stop. He looked around and saw utter chaos.

A praying army, people with empty faces and the wailing victims of an inhumane spell caught in almost blissful unawareness.

Failing may only be human but this time he had failed on a whole new level.

This is how a moment's hesitation resulted in a catastrophe.