“About time they showed up,” muttered Gaius. His eyes tracked the hundreds of people streaking through the air, clearly intent on hunting down the artillery forces, and the scenery shifted and warped as he manipulated the holographic screen masterfully. “Is there any way to increase the size of this thing?”

“As a matter of fact, Master Gaius, there is such a function. You can duplicate the screen by swiping up with your left hand, and swiping down with your right simultaneously. By joining two screens together, you can then form a bigger one,” said Nexus, the apparently part-robotic and part-shadow artificial intelligence.

Gaius felt somewhat amused by the fact that the Nexus, something created on Orb, was teaching him how to operate an artefact whose design philosophy was based on Earth’s technology, but to be fair, the concept of joining floating screens together to create another one was a bit too unscientific for him to have guessed anyway.

Despite his thoughts, Gaius obeyed Nexus’ words, and two rounds of duplication and joining, a screen twice the length and breadth of the original was floating in front of him. There was a faint outline around the body of troops, and when Gaius touched it, a small rectangle with text inside appeared.

“Two hundred and ninety Knights, sixty Lords and twenty Paragons,” Gaius read out loud, his mind whirling from the numbers. From what he knew, just the number of Lords alone were greater than the Lords that had appeared in the Battle of the Southern Capital, Empyria, from both the South and the East-West alliance. Such a force would have been enough to crush any other continent, but the North probably knew what was coming…especially given their perfect track record when a Northern Paragon faced off against a Central one.

“One of the largest forces the world has ever seen, Master Gaius.” Nexus’ words were tinted with solemnity. “But it seems that the Northern forces have prepared extensively for this. If I could draw your attention here…”

Red lines enclosed the artillery deployment grounds, each of them a differing shade of bright crimson that somehow set off alarm bells in my head.

Nexus’ voice was wintry as it proceeded to explain what the lines were. “These are boundaries, edges of where immense fields of power have been abruptly cut off and focused around. We can assume that these lines form a trap of sorts, a cage of power to prevent prey from escaping.”

Gaius nodded. “A killing field.”

“Correct.” The intelligence’s voice was icy, yet brimming with anticipation as the massive group from the Holy Temple entered the area marked in red. As one, the Northern ground forces rippled, and before Gaius could process any more information, the skies above the artillery deployment grounds shimmered with blinding light.

Pinching the screen, Gaius zoomed in to reveal the Central forces, who were now maintaining a defensive screen. The flier squads of the Northern Continent were strafing around the battered Central group, maintaining a distance of what seemed to be at least three hundred metres. Each flier was holding on to what looked like a Straight Shot artefact, but upon closer inspection, they had been heavily modified, presumably to increase their range.

In closer proximity to the Central experts were their Northern counterparts. Unlike their central counterparts, groups of them were operating in tandem, and even as Gaius watched, a Lord of the Holy Temple exploded into bits of flesh, overcome by the collaborative effort of three Northern Lords.

Of course, Gaius couldn’t differentiate between a Knight, a Lord and a Paragon from the Library; the fact that the Map of Stars was appending ‘K’, ‘L’ or ‘P’ was doing him a great favour in keeping track of the action. It was a technological marvel…or a miraculous artefact, and by now Gaius was utterly certain that it was the latter.

The battle began in earnest, as supporting fire from the hundred or so Northern fliers began to land with deadly accuracy, and Gaius saw a Central Knight’s head explode, overcome by the sheer weight of suppressive fire. The elites of the Holy Temple had stuck too closely to one another, and in their mad dash to silence the artillery, had been outmanoeuvred and encircled.

It was one thing if they had actually succeeded in taking out some of the howitzers that were still pounding merrily on the walls of the Holy Temple, but as it was, they had been stopped in their tracks even before reaching their target. Gaius couldn’t help but think back to Earth’s Charge of the Light Brigade, but Orb’s on-going replica of this significant historical event had a lot to improve on.

Strictly speaking, it was a pity, as the Holy Temple has this whole light motif going on. The wordplay was there, but the execution of the event itself was sadly lacking.

Golden light shrouded the skies as the Central Paragons finally began to move, but their efforts were stymied at every turn by the Paragons of the North, who nullified their large-scale efforts by blasting out penetrative lances of qi, interrupting their attacks, and in the case for some unlucky sods, injuring them.

As one particularly burly Paragon from the Holy Temple staggered backwards, a giant red hole appeared in his chest. Time slowed as that Paragon stared at the shell that was partially embedded in his chest, Gaius pinching his fingers frantically to observe the anomaly up close.

Flesh and blood scattered into the winds as the shell blew up, taking the unfortunate Paragon with it. At some point in time, the Northern artillery forces had started to fire at the ongoing melee in the air, with what looked like shells that were timed to explode in mid-air. But the scene of the Central Paragon exploding directly from the shell had profound repercussions on the morale of the experts from the Holy Temple.

The melee slowed down for a moment, as the elites from the Central Continent hesitated subconsciously. In that instant, for the first time since the fight started, the Central experts had stopped moving, and it was in that crystallised motion of inaction that the Northern forces unleashed a decisive blow.

Gaius hadn’t been paying attention to the ground troops of the Northern army, but that didn’t mean that their commanders weren’t. But either way, he didn’t know what kinds of equipment the soldiers and commanders of the Northern ground troops carried, and nor did the experts of the Central Circle care about that either.

But it was their undoing.

In a single fluid motion, nearly a thousand soldiers, each of them clearly a squad leader or beyond, raised what clearly were heavily modified Straight Shots and levelled it at the motionless fighters from the Holy Temple, and fired.

The Map of Stars, though impressive, was unable to replicate the entire experience without audio, but Gaius could easily imagine the deafening cacophony as these men fired in unison. The enemy response was as good as it could have been under such circumstances, but the dwindling morale of repeated losses by the Northern experts had taken its toll. The modified Straight Shots had fired rounds that were too fast to be dodged by a fatigued and demoralised enemy, and as whatever projectiles that had missed vanished into the blue skies, men began to fall in droves.

Whatever survivors that had remained were either the lucky ones or the ten-odd Paragons who were still alive. The Northern experts, who had scattered to avoid friendly fire, watched passively as the bedraggled attack force from the Holy Temple reversed course to flee.

Gaius shook his head. The Northern elites were clearly toying with their routed counterparts at this juncture, as horror made its way onto the face of the Central Paragons attempting to retreat. A cage that shimmered faintly was blocking their way back, and the relaxed demeanour of the Northern experts just made things worse.

The little boy could almost taste their despair, amplified by the languid movements of the Northern elite forces.

“Looks like that’s it for them, eh?”

“Not quite.”

A new holographic screen popped up, just in time to reveal a scintillating beam of golden light break apart the crimson cage that was preventing the Central experts from retreating, swallowing up a few unlucky Northern Knights in the process.

Gaius glanced at the tag appended onto the newcomer, who was hovering above the walls of the Holy Capital, and confusion snuck up onto his face.

“What’s this?”

“It’s one of the many plans already in motion,” replied Nexus. “Master Gaius. Prepare yourself. The final function of the Map of Stars has been unlocked.”