46

The Apex

The room was filled with endgame players. Rather than facing Rian, they were seated and facing ahead to watch a giant hovering window at the front of the auditorium.

Rian supposed he’d suddenly walked into an instance without knowing it. He certainly hadn’t expected to run into anyone here, and he’d been talking so openly to Corvis before; he almost kicked himself. What are all these people doing here? Isn’t there a raid defense going on right now?

But as he watched, bringing up a few of their stat pages, he realized why.

It was a bunch of PVPers. A small auditorium full of them.

“I do believe this is Nostdal’s education division,” Corvis said.

“Like a classroom?” Rian whispered. “Really?”

“Of course. Paid lessons are always available from the best of the off-worlders—whether it be the intricacies of combat or the study of Miracian physics.” Corvis clicked his teeth together. “I hear it is quite lucrative.”

It was certainly impressive, at least. Rian had known there would be a hardcore sect of players, but he hadn’t thought they’d taken it this far, literally studying the game while being inside it.

Standing beside the screen at the front was a player ranked at #52, wearing plain clothes compared to everyone else. As a non-adventuring player, his public name was “Ethuvius.”

On the hovering screen was a fight, a PVP match. Two combatants up to their ankles in light snowfall were duking it out in a glade with gray overcast. One was a swordsman wearing full plate armor, a black cape, and a helm with the visor down. The other was a woman dressed in brilliant white, blue, and silver with a long skirt and decorative feathers embedded under the steel plates of her armor.

They were moving so fast that Rian had a hard time following them. They tore through the snow in the air, leaving behind a tunnel of empty space where the snowfall was momentarily absent. Their routes of attack upon one another consisted of three or four feints chained together, using their weapons as tools to maneuver with, vaulting themselves airborne or thrusting their blades into the ground to slow down or pivot into a different direction.

The fight was magnificent. They were so agile that, if Rian had known their names, he wouldn’t have been able to read them above their heads. On the side of the screen, however, was their info.

His eyes widened.

“It’s the first Fata Morgana tournament,” Corvis said. “The final match of it, I believe.”

It was the rank-one PVPer—a Knight named Raven—fighting the rank-two PVPer: a Duelist named Valkyrie of the guild Norse.

The auditorium was mostly silent aside from the sounds of the fight, but other players whispered to each other as they watched.

“I don’t get it,” someone said. “How can a Knight outplay a Duelist like that? They’re not supposed to be built for PVP.”

“Well,” someone answered, “he obviously knew something we didn’t. That’s for sure. You know how many people ended up making a Knight after this?”

When Rian returned his attention to the fight, he noticed that Valkyrie was wielding a rapier and Raven was hauling around a much heftier broadsword. And yet it didn’t seem to make a difference: Raven blocked Valkyrie’s attacks with ease, positioning the blade with perfect timing against her swipes and stabs. She was significantly faster, but she still couldn’t seem to find a way in. It almost looked like she was going easy on him and attempting to hide the fact of it amid her flurry of movement, but something told Rian that wasn’t the case.

The fight continued half a minute more until Valkyrie was caught upon the end of Raven’s sword, impaling her.

Rian blinked. What?

It had happened so quickly that he hadn’t understood it until he thought about it after the fact. Valkyrie had continued her onslaught with Raven defending, and then she’d gone for an extended thrust when it seemed that Raven’s defense had lowered. He’d repositioned his sword away from her. Valkyrie’s body had cut through the snow so fast that it sent waves into the air. A feint within a feint within a feint, she’d spun around Raven before going for the hit, Raven seemingly wide-open. That was until he’d turned and aimed the broadsword’s point even further away at the same time as Valkyrie’s final feint.

She collided right onto it, a look of shock upon her face. The point of her rapier came up short of Raven’s helm.

It hadn’t been a lucky guess, from what Rian could tell. The way Raven had moved suggested it was intended. He’d predicted her movement that far in advance, pinpointing the exact angle she would attack from.

Valkyrie’s body fell into the snow, almost vanishing among it. Raven’s cape fluttered in the wind. The footage ended and the screen went black. The room quieted.

“And that,” Ethuvius said, “is the last known footage of the rank-one player in Mirage. Any questions?”

Someone in the auditorium raised her hand, and when called upon, she said, “How is he still rank one if no one’s ever seen him again?”

Ethuvius took off his glasses and polished them with his shirt. “A few ideas exist among the top players. It may have to do with his request or wish of the Four—the prize for winning Fata Morgana—the specifics of which he did not disclose afterward. It’s also likely that he’s still active, performing secret missions in the Penumbra for certain sponsors. Even then, no one has encountered him since. He was a completely anonymous player since day one.”

“Could he have made a wish to vanish?”

“It’s possible,” Ethuvius said. “Though I suppose that without knowing the reasons why, any guesses are just that. Personally, I’m in the camp that thinks he’s been planning to make a return someday. That it’s just a matter of when. And, well—” He glanced up at the hovering screen, upon which emerged a colosseum of players. “The second Fata Morgana Tournament would certainly make a good impetus for a dramatic return, wouldn’t it?”

***

As much as Rian wanted to stay and study the top echelon of PVP with the others, he still needed to finish his advancement and meet up with Kat. Continuing down the hall, he found a narrow staircase that led upward in a massive spiral. Ascending it, he could hear the voices of other people fading in and out around him. He was passing through instances—dozens of them.

When he stopped to turn around and listen, there was no sign of Corvis anywhere.

The staircase ended. As Rian saw out over it, there was a giant, circular stone floor sprawling beneath a dome of white marble. Support pillars between the dome and the floor provided empty spaces through which daylight lit the room. It was so quiet that he could practically hear the dust in the air.

Alone amid the vast emptiness of the area, facing Rian and sitting at the center was a player: a woman with wrinkled skin and curtains of tangled gray hair. She wore a heavy gi, a martial arts uniform made of thick, brushed canvas, and she was changing the gauze on her hands. Her name was hidden, as was her level.

“So you made it,” she said, her voice like gravel. A smoker’s voice.

“Am I…late?” Rian said.

“No, you’re here exactly when you’re supposed to be.”

Rian stepped onto the floor. Everything here echoed widely as if it were closed off, though he could see the outside light coming in from all across the room.

“So you knew when I was coming?” Rian said.

“Of course. The game keeps a tight schedule for new advancing players. Weren’t the NPCs at Elmguard expecting you, too? Speaking of which, you should be grateful you didn’t end up with an NPC this time. They don’t usually have enough grace for this kind of test. And you happened to end up with someone sharing your intended subclass. Guess the game really likes you.” She finished replacing her hand wrap. Unfolding her legs, she stood. Even at this distance, Rian could tell she barely stood to his shoulders.

“I am Form Master Sidna,” she said, her name appearing above her head. “I will be administering your subclass advancement test, also known as your secondary alignment. Are you familiar with what is required to pass?”

“Not…really.”

“All right. Well—” She folded her hands together against her stomach. “Unlike your first advancement, we will only have what is at our disposal. No extra subclass skills for either of us. The skills I use against you will become visible once I use them unless you’ve seen them before, as is normal.”

“We’re still in Nostdal though, right? How are we supposed to fight inside a nullshard field?”

“The same way that any PVP happens in the major towns: in an instance that exists dozens of years in the past, before the nullshards ever existed.”

So it was similar to the Memory of Goam fight, in a way. He hadn’t even known that it was possible to have PVP instances inside the towns, which seemed preferable to what he’d been doing with Kat, fighting outside Elmguard. But even if LastWhisper was flagged against ganking her for now, he supposed it was best to avoid any public areas if they could.

“I wouldn’t quite call this a fight, however,” Sidna said. “The test itself is rather simple. Land a hit on me, and I will grant you your subclass.”

He almost laughed. Just one hit? With all the training he’d received, this would be a breeze. It wasn’t like a level 25 advancement test was going to be harder than sparring against Kat.

And yet Sidna merely stood there, stone-faced as she said it.

Wait, is she…

Rian opened her stat page.

She was level 40. Rian looked up at her, then back at the stat page. A level 40, ascendant 100 Monk.

Rank 28. In the world.

“We do have a tight schedule to maintain for the players after you,” Sidna said, “even if it’s generally good at predicting arrivals. So if you’re ready, we should hurry this along. I won’t strike to kill unless you go over the time limit.” She took a relaxed, open-palmed fighting stance. “You, however, are free to try as hard as you’d like.”