Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 9

Charoen could sense the tension boiling in the training camp. It was there in the whispered conversations other players had amongst themselves when he walked by. It was in the strain in Sindre’s voice. The way Dr. Bierhals kept examining his medical data as if seeking anomalies that should be there but weren’t showing up.

There were conversations that needed to happen.

He had to find and confront Jessie about being her dead brother. He had to speak to the rest of the team he was supposed to play with one day about who or what he was. He had to reconcile himself to his own existence, to decide just how far he was willing to take this life, and what it meant to throw himself into training beyond the sheer exhilaration of it.

But it was so easy to avoid all those distractions. To curtail his horizon until it only encompassed one thing and one thing alone: mastering the role of jäger.

Because there was no denying his freakish talent. He learned in days what should have taken him months. It was as if he’d been a fish trapped on dry land all this time, and had finally escaped into the water. Flight made sense in an intuitive manner that Catori claimed only veterans could manifest.

He often caught her staring at him, concerned, almost alarmed, at how quickly he devoured her instruction.

Life became reduced to a few simple points of existence: his solitary medbay from which he’d forced an exit and where he was monitored while he slept and had his meals delivered, and the training complex.

He never trained when the others were around. How this affected everyone else’s schedule he didn’t try to understand. All he knew was that each day he’d rise and train for a three hour block with Catori, return to his chamber where he’d devour enough food for three grown athletes, fall asleep for a handful of hours, then awaken to train for another three hours, return, eat, sleep, then finally have a five hour training block in the evening where he was given free rein of the VMU programming.

It was in that five hour training segment that he found the greatest fulfillment. Where he could escape the complexities of life and simple delve into his talent.

Pretend, for a few hours, that being good at something was justification for every other deficiency in his so-called life.

But there was no denying the thrill each time he sealed the VMU helmet with his suit and the menu appeared in his vision, offering him a dozen locations in which to train, and then a dozen other scenarios at to what exercise to pursue.

In that moment he found himself wishing that life could be this and nothing more: a sterile, isolated existence in a virtual reality where all he need do was compete against his own limitations and the computer’s programming.

There was a purity to it.

A simplicity.

No need to think of emotions and consequences. Of how his talent was being utilized by Virgil, or his mere existence causing such pain to Charoen’s old friends.

He could even escape his own memories. Find arenas in which the old Charoen had never trained. Discover a new style of playing that had no overlap with the old Charoen’s opfern past.

He could become, if not a new person, then his own entity. A jäger. A burgeoning prodigy. A krieg chess player who broke all the rules of how a human was meant to progress, what they should be able to achieve, and how quickly.

It was in that digital void that he found the means to express himself.

And the medium he chose was violence.

It mattered not that his foes were neutral figures summoned by the AI. That they had no history, no thoughts, no personality, no relationship beyond that of opposition.

Because opposition was all he required as a catalyst for fury. The mere fact that the faceless opferns, hellseherins, jägers, and schlosses dared oppose him was the permission he needed to cease pretending to be a person, and become a machine. A monster. A force of nature.

Sometimes, after, he’d catch Sindre staring. Carmine often appeared shook. Their nervousness around him only irritated him further. Is this not what you wanted? he wanted to ask. Am I not doing what I was bred to do?

But he shackled such thoughts. What satisfaction could they give him? What consolation? Everything they had to say they’d already said. Their gestures at commiseration and pity, their feigned regrets and anger at Virgil. Whatever it took to help them sleep at night.

He knew he couldn’t keep this going forever. At some point Virgil, who’d been missing this past week, would have to integrate him with the team. He wasn’t the only new player. A handful of the old Brutal Deluxe players had been deemed inadequate for the Premiere League and let go. Sindre had recounted their names and titles, but Charoen had felt nothing and knowing they were gone: James Aklaq, schloss. Jordan, opfern. Malik, opfern. And of course Kristoff, the former jäger.

It seemed impossible that the new team would cohere in time for their first Premiere League game.

But Charoen didn’t care. He wasn’t here to be a team player. He wasn’t here to ensure a win.

What he’d come to realize in his VMU simulations was that he wanted only one thing: to use the game as a form of personal therapy.

And currently? That involved inflicting maximum destruction on every foe on the field.

It was 8 PM. The start of his five hour session. He’d been aware of his existence for only fourteen days. He wore the VMU suit, which already felt like a second skin. Catori was getting her rest after the two training sessions earlier that day. Coach Carmine was at the far side of the field where he’d monitor his progress and stats and pipe in with advice where necessary.

He hadn’t had anything to share in two days now.

Charoen took up the helm, turned it about so that the lights slid liquidly over its glossy exterior, then pulled it on.

The suit sealed.

The visor lit up, displaying the training complex, and Charoen quickly navigated to his chosen arena: the ruins of old New York City.

The world changed and he was there, in the flooded heart of the ancient metropolis. This wasn’t a field where a game could be played, but rather a predatory zone where players could explore and hunt each other down.

The sky was dark with tumultuous clouds. Around him the wreckage of ancient steel towers speared upward. Below, the waters of Hudson bay surged amongst the pilons and walls, inundating the first three stories of every edifice.

Rust, broken glass, weeds. A forest where every tree was the wreckage of a skyscraper, some leaning at crazy angles, others toppled but still held upright by their stouter neighbors. You could see straight through most of them, through the ancient office floorplans or loft apartments.

The location perfectly suited his mood.

Charoen appeared some twenty yards above the surging waters, his boots already engaged so that he hovered effortlessly in the buffeting winds. Lightning lance in hand, hopper pack snug upon his back, he was fully armored as a jäger.

Now for his foes.

Charoen activated the menu and summoned the enemy team. S-ranked könig, four S-ranked schlosses to defend him, a pair of A-ranked hellseherins, and ten A-ranked jägers. No opferns.

He submitted his request, and the foes materialized out of sight but all around him, hidden inside the carcasses of the buildings, or hovering out of sight behind them.

A shiver of excitement ran through him. This mix of A and Solar-ranked players would be exactly what he’d be facing on the field in their first game.

Time to hunt.

He leaned forward and the boots pushed him through the sky, down the length of an avenue, buildings on either side. He’d disengaged his radar so that he was hunting blind.

Trusting to instinct.

Watching for movement.

With enemies this skilled, they’d not just rush at him. They’d watch, plan, deploy as best they could.

Given time, the ten jägers would group up and attack him as one. Which meant the race was on to take them down before they could overwhelm him.

Charoen leaned into a steeper angle and urged the boots to go faster. He shot forward, rising higher as he went to gain a better vantage point. Not every building rose to its full height; not only had many of them toppled, but a fair number had been antiques even back in New York City’s prime, buildings from centuries before that only rose ten or so stories.

He flew above these, turning his head from side to side as he scanned, lightning lance leaking electricity behind him.

There.

A pair of figures swooped out of sight by entering the chaotic interior of a fragmented skyscraper.

Charoen veered to close, but then changed his mind. The reveal had been too obvious for A-ranked jägers. They were luring him in. An ambush, no doubt.

Curious, Charoen reversed direction and circled the great glittering ruin, descending and then entering through a great shattered window. The quad jets caused the dirt and weeds that grew amidst the old desks and toppled rusted chairs to thrash as he floated through the conference room, through a doorway and into a hall.

The light grew murky.

He made his way to the building’s center, and found the elevator shaft. The doors were luckily open. Wrenching them would have caused enough noise to ruin his plan. Into the shaft he flew. The old wires still hung in the dark.

He rose, pulse steady, breath calm. Blue light rippled across the rusted walls from his lance.

Up a floor, then a second.

These doors were closed. He drifted close to the crack between them and peered out into an identical hallway. Two jägers hovered at its end, facing outward into an open plan office complex that was a mess of broken cubicles and office equipment.

Only two. That meant another four or so were scattered around some kind of rough perimeter.

Time to act.

Charoen engaged the hopper pack. Fixed the spot he wished to appear in and willed himself to cross spacetime to that exact location.

The experience had at first been bewildering, but now it was a delight. Everything shimmered for a second, then his sight swirled, collapsed upon itself, and he was shunted by through the localized wormhole to appear ten yards beyond the elevator doors.

A tiny hop.

But it was enough.

The A-ranked jägers sensed some awry behind them and began to turn. They were too slow. Charoen appeared with his lightning lance already extended, charge building, and engaged Shock and Conductive simultaneously.

A regular lightning lance had a range of about four or five yards beyond the prongs. With his gamma and Conductive, he could unleash an arc of livid light a good ten yards, each crackling beam made as thick as his arm by Shock’s augmentation.

Double the range, double the power.

His blast played across both jägers in a flash, leaping and caressing them in a coruscating net.

One screamed, his back arching as he was overcome, but the other must have had Grounding, for he shrugged off the bulk of the attack to raise his own lance and scream out a warning.

No matter.

Blink meant Charoen wasn’t done hopping.

Like a stone being skipped across a lake, he continued the trajectory of his initial hop, not needing the build-up time to construct the wormhole, and appeared behind the jäger a second later.

To ram the prongs of his lance into the jäger’s gorget and discharge a second blast directly into his spinal chord.

Grounding just wasn’t up to the task.

The second jäger didn’t even scream. He danced for a moment at the end of Charoen’s lance, then dropped to crash onto the hallway floor beside his smoking companion.

But they’d managed to warn the others.

Charoen grinned and sped out across the open plan office. Just below the ceiling, heading for the broken windows.

Shouts trailed him.

Five other jägers emerged from their hidey holes in pursuit, two already hopping to no doubt appear outside the building and cut him off.

That left thee behind him.

Charoen engaged Speed, Berserker, and Centering.

Time seemed to slow. Despite Centering’s best efforts, his gamma began to oscillate wildly. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been without that power. He spun, swung his lance about, and unleashed a crackling bolt into the darkness behind him.

Augmented by Shock and Conductive, the blast was already overwhelmingly powerful. But Berserker took the assault to another level. Charoen’s lethal output had doubled, and now it doubled again, so that he delivered more than twenty-five amps at twenty-five thousand volts—a six hundred-kilowatt pulse of raw current that turned the air to fire.

Everything snapped white as a thick seam of blue-white lightning clove the air, a braided plasma filament that hit like a hammer made of light. Charoen’s visor polarized automatically so that he’d not be blinded, turning the strike ultraviolet. Molten light spiderwebbed across the jäger’s silhouette, arching and clinging to the edges. The jäger’s armor attempted to phase-dampen the assault, seized, and melted where the lightning played across it into glowing slag. Sections blew open, revealing seared flesh.

Still Charoen swung the lance, and the blast leaped from its first victim to the second, who generated a combination of shields and rubber coating as it sought to adapt to the damage output—and failed.

The third jäger disappeared, their reflexes razor sharp, even as a gravity caused Charoen to be tugged down and to the left.

Charone engaged the hopper pack, not bothering to fight the pull.

The world swirled, collapsed in upon itself, and then he emerged outside. He had a second to orient, saw the two exterior jägers swing around to assault him, and Blinked to appear between them.

Speed was about to run out.

With his free hand he grasped one jäger’s lance and swung it around to aim it at the other just as it discharged a blast of lightning empowered with blue light—Overcharged, no doubt.

The jäger hauled back on his lance. Charoen flew into the man, using the tug as impetus, and crashed his elbow into the jäger’s visor. Berserker made the assault tremendous; the helm rocked back, visor shattering.

The second jäger was dropping even as he fought off the effects of the Overcharge assault. Charoen angled his own lance and unleashed another Shock, Conductive, and Berserker empowered blast.

The lightning flooded down, covering the eight yards it took to reach the foe, and enmeshed him in a catastrophic bloom of light and destruction, blasting him back into the building.

Instinct caused Charoen to hop away.

Blink not only empowered him to double skip, it allowed him to form wormholes faster than other jägers. It wasn’t quite instantaneous, but still far quicker than his foes; the world began to shrink just as an attack hit him. A blast of lightning that caused his gamma to plummet just as everything fell away.

Charoen emerged high above the melee, his gamma having dropped to 67 hz. With that drop he lost Berserker and Blink.

The jäger had hit him with Siphoning.

Berserker going offline so rapidly left him woozy and sick to the stomach, but the attack had caused the jäger’s Invisibility to drop; Charoen swung his lance around, saw the telltale shimmer of the enemy player where he was trying to activate the ability again, and dove as he loosed another bolt of lightning.

Shock, Speed, and Conductive were more than enough to stun the jäger, who screamed and fell back against the skyscraper’s shattered facade.

Fighting off the nausea, Charoen  accelerated his dive with the remnants of Speed and at the last moment turned his head to drive his shoulder square into the other man’s chest, shattering armor and punching him into the metal siding.

The jäger screamed as something punched through the rear of his armor and transfixed him, clanging dully against the inside front of his armor.

Charoen backed off, still fighting Siphon’s nausea, Speed wearing off and leaving him even more sluggish, and took in the environs. One jäger had fallen into the surging water below. The one with the shattered visor was retreating. Four more were dead within. The sixth was impaled upon rebar or some such and weakly struggling to tear himself free with the thrust of his boots.

Charoen placed the triple prongs of his lance against the man’s helm and unleashed a bolt.

The man spasmed, every muscle going taut, and then went limp.

Deep breaths.

Charoen let the wounded jäger go. He had to buy himself time to allow Siphon to wear off, to recover his gamma, and prepare for his next encounter.

For now?

He wanted to find the twin hellseherins. The farther they’d flown away from the könig, the more powerful the four S-ranked schloss forcefield shields around the könig would be.

But how to find them?

Unlike normal fields, this arena didn’t have a vertical limit.

So Charoen surged up into the violent sky. Higher and higher, lance trailing behind him, till at last he cleared the highest skyscrapers and could take in the city below him. Such was the nature of the arena that players had to remain within a half-mile, and while human hellseherins might simply find a closet to hide in, the AI kept its players on the move to provide gainful exercise and gameplay.

Where…?

Deep breaths. Charoen fought for calm, centering himself, and saw his gamma tracker rise and fall. Berserker’s lingering effects made it hard to regain his control. It would have been completely impossible without Conductive. Slowly, carefully, Charoen examined the avenues and cross-streets below. The building tops and exposed interiors.

There.

Movement.

One figure was skimming over the waves, keeping close to the ancient walls of one building at the far extent of the half-mile limit.

A hellseherin.

Charoen grinned. Speed came back online. Not tapping it yet, he dove, angling so that he’d could down on the building’s far side and moving counterclockwise to intercept the enemy player.

Wind streamed past as he not only allowed himself to dive, but used the boots to accelerate into the fall. He approached at a wide angle so as to remain out of sight, and mentally kept track of where the hellseherin would be on the building’s far side.

When he approached the corner, he engaged the hopper pack and cut straight through the building to appear on the far side, lance raised and ready to blast the hellseherin.

Only to see three jägers hovering in a triangle formation, their lances already crackling.

Fuck.

He tapped Speed and tried to Blink away, but they’d been ready for him. Their lances blazed as a variety of attacks went off, and Charoen’s whole body spasmed as pain coursed through him, making it so that he lost control of the boots, his body, himself.

With a cry, his vision went red, and he fell toward the waters.

The simulation stopped and the pain disappeared.

Maximum damage accumulated.

Charoen found himself hovering in the center of a broad avenue, twenty yards above the dark waters, unhurt, armor repaired, the scenario reset to neutral.

Damn it.

He’d been so eager to take out the hellseherin he’d forgotten how cunning A-ranked foes could be.

What would it be like to fight Solar-ranked jägers? If their gamma ratings were in the Quantum zone—120 hz or more—he’d be facing Quantum-ranked Armor and Weapon abilities, too.

Charoen laughed.

Virgil was a fool.

A fool to believe they had any chance at all.

But no matter.

He’d enjoy this life while he had it.

Charoen commanded the AI to reset the enemy team, and raising his lance, surged forward into the hunt once more.