Parry That Poke, Rose!

Zorro took care of most of the guards on his way to rescuing us, but there were still plenty of stragglers on high alert around the edgy and overdesigned fortress interior. While our swords and daggers clashed with the enemy, our eyes were battling for some negative space to rest on around us.

Maybe that was a trick of the enemy to give them an advantage.

Luckily I wasn’t the one pulling most of the weight in battle. Zorro’s clone had an easy time sneaking up behind the guards and taking them out. He never made a lethal strike though, only getting them unconscious.

“Beat ‘em up!” Tensei shadow boxed above our heads. “Get ‘em, get ‘em! You guys are doing great!”

“Tensei, don’t forget your leading us to the access point,” I reminded her.

“Oh, yeah!” She flew forward as fast as she could. “It’s this way!”

Eventually we came up on a tall and imposing door with horns and a crown emblem on it. The decorations were gaudy and overdetailed, so I had to assume this was likely the throne room of that Lord Troja.

Two especially high-res royal guards were there, draped in glamorous red capes and impressive chrome gold armor. With a spear and shield, they had plenty of range to keep us away.

-The_Zorro: Señor, I have something for you!-

Zorro handed off a bow and multiple arrows for it.

-The_Zorro: It’s not magic, but I think it’ll play to your strength a bit better-

My dex was much higher than my strength stat, so a bow and arrow were going to be much more efficient. It would have to do until I got some magic of my own.

“Rose, the bow and arrow are a little different from swinging a sword,” I warned her. “We have to worry about ammunition and aiming. Can you deal with that?”

-Pft… Easy peazy. I’ve played shooters before!  (> o <)-/==<  -

Once she equipped the bow, she let rip a few arrows at the royal guards, but they deflected everything with their shields.

Normally I might have been upset that our attacks did nothing, but Zorro’s clone dropped in from above and got some critical hits on the royal guards. They were struck prone.

Rose took the chance to run me in, switched to my sword and slammed it down on them in a power attack.

Even with all that damage, the guards quickly got back to their feet and shield bashed the two of us away, then followed up with a few jabs of their spears.

They nicked my arm and drew a little blood. My HP didn’t drop much, but that pain was horrible.

“Mr. Roberts!” Tensei came close to inspect my wound.

“I’m fine!” I said as the wound physically faded away from sight. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

Zorro summoned a shield of his own. A little round thing that probably could have served as a nice dinner plate. Despite the size, it had plenty of potential to parry any of the jabs coming from the royal guards.

He got up close and smacked away the spear attacks, but the royal guard was no stranger to parrying either and deflected a few swipes himself.

The other royal guard was all the more encouraged to fight once he saw his friend locked in combat.

Zorro had to put in a lot of focus to hold the other guard hostage, so it was up to me to take care of the last one.

We tried the bow and arrow again, but the royal guard was great at blocking them with his shield.

“Rose!” I shouted. “You need to parry those spear attacks so we can get up close!”

-How do I do that?!-

“You have to block at just the right time, then you’ll get the perfect chance to attack back.”

I rolled in close to the enemy, just shy of his weapon's pointy edge. Rose failed to bring up my sword to block. The smell of the cold steel was strong in the air as the spear thrust forward and missed me by a hair. Luck was still on our side for now.

Once more the royal guard reeled back his arm and jabbed the spear forward, this time our weapons clashed, but my sword raised too early. The block wasn’t perfect either, so some damage bled through and shook through my now virtual bones.

The guard swung around his spear and rolled to the left to catch me on my off hand side. He quickly poked again, then succeeded his poke with another.

I took some hits to the arm and Rose had me on the backfoot.

“Stay focused, Rose!” I couldn’t fight her controls. She wanted me to run, but we needed to stand our ground. “We can’t leave now!”

-I can’t let you die!-

She couldn’t hesitate because of that. I knew she had the skill, but she needed the confidence to back it up.

“I won’t! You can do this, Rose! We can do this!”

In the real world, her hands must have been clasped tight to that controller, her eyes glued to the screen, turning red from lack of blinking. The heat was back on for her, and the only way out of the fryer was taking out this foe.

The royal guard grinned behind his gold helmet. Then struck his spear against his own shield a few times as a taunt. He sensed our fear, smelled it like an animal.

I stopped drifting backwards, instead now going the other way toward the adversary.

Rose raised my weapon and waited for the perfect time to strike. I could sense the tight focus she had through the screen, and the clarity was mutual.

Next came the spear jabbing through the air like a large dart heading for the board that was my chest.

Things slowed. Milliseconds went by from our perspective and the spear seemed to decelerate to a crawl as it closed in.

Some kind of instinct flared up in that moment and I just knew by heart our chance to win was here.

As a sign to my wife, I somehow turned the sword in my grip slightly, signaling the perfect chance to parry his attack.

*CLINK!*

Our weapons clashed and mine forced his spear downward. The parry was a success!

“Now, Rose! Finish him!”

Rose activated my special and I jumped into the air and slammed down my sword on top of the royal guards head. His helmet cracked upon impact of the critical hit and shattered. His expression flooded with wide eyed fear as he knew his end was imminent…

*TINK!*

A throwing knife hit my sword just before it cut further down on the royal guard, sending it off course.

The royal guard shouted in terror and fell to his knees. That scream was so harrowing, voice acted as if the actor had truly just faced death and survived.

I turned to see Zorro had been the one who threw that dagger. His face was uncharacteristically filled with frustration and concern. Behind him was the guard he was fighting, being tied up by his clone and gagged.

“What was that for?” I asked in shock. “Guards just respawn, you know? Why are we even sparing them?”

He didn’t answer until he’d tied up the second royal guard and gagged him with a cloth, just like the other.

-The_Zorro: I don’t kill-

That was a silly reason, but maybe it had something to do with the hero path, or some morals he set up for himself maybe? This was a RPG, after all. Some people treated it like it was an extension of their own life, play testers included.

As for me, the only one here I really cared to protect was Tensei. Everything else was for her sake and my own pride as a developer.

-RAY, HAY… When we’re done here, I have something to tell you.-

Rose typed that chat up, but didn’t send it. I could still see it, since it was on her screen. That wasn’t a bad way to keep things between the two of us.

She deleted her message and wrote another.

-Don’t say anything, but something's off about all this. These Glitched are really weird. Zorro’s acting a bit funny too-

Something about them felt off to me too. They felt too real. At least the ones we’d seen in this fortress.

But for now, we couldn’t worry about that. We needed to defeat this Lord Troja and fix all the glitches he caused. Our confrontation with him was just beyond this big door.