The Territory Boss Pt1

After the conference video my little brother and sister were actually fairly hyped and wanted me to try training them again. However, I was far too tired to do something like that today.

Instead, I passed them off onto taking ten-minute turns on my treadmill in the yard while I took advantage of the pre noon sun with my shirt off. My siblings top speed was five on the treadmill and I honestly found that to be pretty amazing in its own right, but neither of them could actually maintain ten minutes of sprinting. I used this as an excuse and challenged them to come back for real training when they could maintain this minimum requirement.

Since they were little kids, though, as soon as they managed to catch their breath for a moment they were ready to spend another few minutes on the treadmill. Then again, and again, and again for an entire hour before it they were finally as weak in the legs as I felt when I got home.

Returning indoors with my brother and sister at noon after soaking up lots of vitamin D and cancerous UV rays from the sun, I settle the kids back down in the living room where I search through about for a series of videos about combat and crafting in the game while centering one large document window containing a guide to known alchemical and metallurgical values.

With these advanced materials to watch and study, they should be busy for a couple of days when not in school. And I should have secured my place as the best big brother in the world while I keep 'sleeping' the days away. After all of the junk I had eaten today with some light cramps brought on from effort and last night's gluttony, I spent the next hour in the bathroom and then showered before checking the time until the update would be finished.

I still had way more time than I was comfortable with so I finally sat down in my gaming chair with my AR visor to sort through all of the information that I had missed. Thankfully, Melpomene had compiled and mailed me hourly reports pertaining to only a few dozen donated issues that were specifically meant for me.

These alone took the better part of an hour to go through, answer, and then mass post in my thread. Over the later morning and noontime, the thread had finally managed to die down. Throughout the night, I received several thousand new readers and many new posters who actually spoke in different languages. Luckily, the forum came with a post translator.

I had exactly eight questions in different languages but also received a few in not-so-great English which was probably still the same group. They actually asked some of the harder questions about being classless that I was not that familiar with and I had no choice but to privately ask Melpomene about them. She could only reference their questions to my experiences, but this at least allowed me to work out my own answer.

Some of them actually encroached on 'dangerous territory' asking about skills that reflected some of my abilities or their cause. One person with a post written in Mandarin had specifically asked about advancing from their own Enchanted Warrior mastery of Self-Enchantment and move on to something like self transmutation. That was suspiciously surprising.

The best I could do was tell them that any success in such a field for our class would be dependent on training a high Intelligence stat and wearing a lucky title. Survival would depend on Willpower at the very least. Then I jumbled it all up by advising everyone to keep their stats balanced for the potential of hidden synergy perks while distracting everybody away toward my Luck triggered Intelligence and Agility synergy perk.

After this I personally made my way through the threads posted by my party and gave my full-blow two cents on each topic targeting several interesting discussions previously at a time and then told everybody in each thread that our clan was currently understaffed.

Loads of people from all over the forums took an interest in these posts, leading to thousands of small donations suddenly pouring in on not just my posts but also my teammates who made the threads. It was like people were trying to buy their way in and had no idea who to actually pay. However, Tragedy's Travelers still got paid.

Finally, though, after spending another two hours just going over basic information updates on forums there came a post from 'The Development Team' in the forums that said Bygone Era would be back online in thirty minutes and people could go ahead and start logging in whenever we were ready. It would still be a while before we could play, but our hardware will have consolidated the new software changes by then.

Every VR hardware, whether it was a helmet or chair, capsule, or cabin, had one thing in common and that was that they had a pre-execution lobby where the user could oversee the settings and functionality of the VR device itself as well as simply kill time. In my hardware, the 'waiting room' was a vast starry night sky but instead of being viewed from the surface of a planet I was standing out in the middle of the Milky Way itself.

Despite the feeling of solid ground under my feet I literally stood within the vacuum of space and simply enjoyed the view while trying to pick out familiar constellations. Luckily, my current position was the usual position of Earth on my birthday and so all of the constellations were in their best positions.

"You finally showed up," an almost hauntingly familiar voice says, disturbing the serene silence created by my waiting room settings. Looking over, I see a tall and elegant woman with a large theater mask for a face.

"There was a lot of things I had to do in reality, I'm sorry," I say reflexively, worried that I might have actually upset this goddess character who was somehow outside the game and its related content. Is she even allowed to be here?!

Shrugging their shoulders, Melpomene simply sits on the 'floor' beside me and says, "Nothing to worry about, there were just some things that I wanted to talk to you about. Things that could not be mentioned on the forums but things that you should know for future reference. Can you guess why we suddenly closed the game out for an update?"

Just from the fact that she was here right now and this was what she wanted to talk about, I could already imagine. "I did something that finally broke the system?"

"Yep," Melpomene replies instantly. "You really broke the balance on this one, so we had to go in and tweak the balance. Do you remember the weapons used by the Troll Commander? They are a default item related to the raid," she explains without waiting for an answer. "As long as a team manages to kill the commander, they get those poles to use as weapons.

"Those poles," she continues almost without even stopping for breath, which was surprising because I did not think she really needed to breathe to begin with. "In this raid, they're a key item used for dealing permanent damage to the raid boss. Any attacks made by someone not wielding those weapons would eventually regenerate and the damage they do is multiplies because they're parts of the raid boss's soul and body.

"You, being who you are, ate them. Now, you can produce the same material. The weapons are not only supposed to be super powerful legendary artifacts shared by the clans tied to the raid as trophies but they're supposed to be one of a kind items. However, you ate them and thus you can no replicate them. Permanently. This was a problem that cannot be ignored, so we went in and tweaked the boss. Now, not only is its AI unrestricted but it will recognize the fact that you are the bane of its existence. All of the aggro will be placed on you and if you die… you empower the boss by giving back their soul bone. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you what this means, right?"

"I think I can figure it out on my own," I reply shakily as the wheels in my head start spinning wildly. Not only was I now the heaviest hitter in the raid, I was also the crutch and liability for everyone. As the strongest, I was the person everyone would probably have to rely on and as the liability I was the person who should be furthest from the fighting. If I died, the boss's difficulty would presumably double.

Nodding their head without really looking at me, Melpomene says, "Good… I just wanted to make sure you were aware of this before you ran headfirst into your death. I can't really say much else, but… do your best. I'll be cheering for you, Leo."

Smiling a little as I find myself emotionally spurred by these words, I say, "Thank you for worrying about me, Melpomene, and than you for all of your help. Even if I say thank you whenever you do something for me, I cannot begin to express how much it means to me. So, just sit back and enjoy the show because I'm dedicating this one to you."

Laughing lightly, Melpomene simply gets up and walks away after a few moments of silence before vanishing from sight as if she had never been there at all. Watching her leave, I was honestly a little disappointed because every time I actually saw this figure it was always for business and professional reasons. I could not help but wonder how much time she actually had to enjoy herself.

Finally, after picking out most of the constellations from historic Greek star charts I received a notification that the only game installed and registered on the hard drive was finished updating and ready to execute. Finally, after struggling to survive for twenty-four hours of reality I could go back to the game. Finally, I could fight a real boss!

When the game finally loaded up and my waiting room vanished, I found myself standing back among my party enshrouded in the familiar weight of heavy 'medium' armor with a giant sword strapped across my back.

Unlike when I first appeared in this boss fight area, though, the other two groups of hundreds of players were no longer in the midst of combat. Instead, they were gathered together further back toward the edges of the field and the giant lich lord bone demon thing in the middle of the territory grounds was simply standing there surveying the gathered crowd.

"The gods are present here…" a voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once murmurs as if to itself, filling my head with its thundering volume while the world outside remain unaffected. Turning its head in my direction, I quickly realize the voice was coming from the giant bone monster as I meet its empty abyssal eye sockets while it says, "You. Upon your shoulders rest the guiding hands of fate herself and in your heart… my own fragmented soul. You have my curiosity… what are you?"

We just got here and the raid boss has singled me out in almost an instant! Does it have to be like this? Can it not wait until I actually used its soul bone material instead of being omniscient of my power?!

Feeling my pulse quicken as my heart begins hammering at a familiar pace, I decide to see where this will take me as all eyes in the territory are soon turned toward me. "I am Life Hack, the Chosen of Melpomene and the Monarch of Plague. That strange feeling you get whenever you try to study me? That's the realization that I am your natural predator. Whatever I eat makes me stronger and I've already eaten you so that means… to put it simply, OMAE WA MOU SHINDEIRU!"

*