A Scuffle at the Gates of Mothbordia!

Zombified Glitched chased after us with unrelenting force, ignoring the limits of their own virtual bodies and pushing the bounds of what their vitality systems could manage.

-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! DIE ZOMBIES! \(>д < )/-

-I love big and unnecessary explosions-

Rose may have been having a little too much fun blasting them away with fireballs. Thinking back on it, she really liked our previous zombie dungeon crawler game a lot, especially when she discovered the napalm grenades and hammer combo run.

“Ouch!” A zombified Glitch shouted as he went flying into the air. “Guards! Seize this man!”

Little did his broken AI brain know, the guards of this region were already after us as well. None of the Glitched here were spared from this zombification. The funny part was that the armor that the guards were wearing slowed them down a lot, so they fell way behind the others.

That was pretty much the excitement on our ride all the way to the Mothbordia perimeter. Out in the open like this, we had a huge advantage over these guys, so there wasn’t much to worry about yet.

A low-resolution flat view of the city of Mothbordia came into sight in the distance. The buildings of this fairly advanced city were tall and imposing with huge glowing emerald windows at their fronts and thick curved walls to their sides.

Pipes and other gadgetry could be seen jutting out of some of the buildings, jetting plumes of green and purple gas into the air, which formed large clouds that rained down some pixelated triangle particles over the region. Hints of twilight could be seen in the breaks of the sickly glowing smog.

Each manmade structure was seated on huge floating platforms of landmass. Large runes had been carved into the hovering bedrock, which were likely what caused it to hover at all.

-That city looks so evil!-

“It’s not supposed to look like that,” Tensei commented.

The city was supposed to be a lot brighter in appearance and not nearly as menacing with those clouds.

Mothbordia was a place that was meant to be an inspiring hub of magical technology and ingenuity. The smartest and most capable minds journeyed here from all over the virtual world to compete in the magic advancement race questline. 

Players would have the ability to join the college, which was the central pillar looking building, and gain access to almost cyberish/steampunk looking magical items and equipment. They even had the potential to build a class around that theme, but it took a little technical skill to master.

“This’s where the smarty blokes go ta’ pat themselves on the back,” Ginger commented.

“Oi, Cap’n, I was born in dar’.” her first mate Davy gestured to a steampunk looking rifle he had slung around his back.

“Let’s hope yee’ don’ die in there too, aye?” she winked.

“Never, Cap’n!” he winked back. “Takes a lot to kill off me.”

As long as we played our cards right, we lessened the chance of anyone dying at all. That was where Rose had some suggestions to make.

-So, I’ve been thinking about how we should line up our team.-

-Ginger will be our front liner, while Ray can be mid guard with his magic.-

-Not sure what Davy can do yet, but you’ve got a gun, so can you shoot from the rear? Probs the best spot for you with your range.-

“Lady Rose, you’re really good at putting a team together!” Tensei said.

-I learned a lot about building a team watching boys play football XD -

One of her favourite genres of game were real time strategy and sports simulators. The first ever game I made in my garage was an RTS actually, and she couldn’t put it down for days when I showed her.

“So, what do I do then?” Tensei asked with a curious tilt of her head.

-Keep cheering us on! (~_^) You’re such a big help, Teny-chan!-

“If that’s all I can do, I’ll cheer my best!” Tensei fluttered into the air and twirled. “You guys will do great!”

Her command prompt might have opened up some possibilities that we didn’t think about. So maybe she could do a little more than she figured…

“Ten, can you input a command for me?” I asked.

“Sure! What is it?”

I gave her a decently long script to type up. Once she inputted the whole thing, our weapons started to glow bright orange.

“What sorcery be this?” Ginger said as she examined her now glowing cutlass sword. She poked it with her finger…

*SZzzzzz…*

“Youch!” she pulled away her finger as it burned. “Yee just made me own sword burn me.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Tensei just input a command that allows our weapons to get the fire affinity. So we can do a little extra damage now.”

It was weaker and would only last for a little bit, but she basically had support spells now.

Not only that, but I also gave her another command to use on us…

“Remember the crazy damage we were doing this morning?” I asked. “Now you can buff us with a mini version of that too.”

“Woah!” Tensei cheered. “But, do I need to use the command prompt every time I want to cast one of these spells?”

Rather than have her type up a command every time she wanted to buff us with something, I had her input the code in such a way that it would bind it to a particular action of hers…

“Anytime you cheer for us, depending on what you say, it’ll give us special effects.”

The little thing was overjoyed and did a dance on the carriage floor like she’d just won the lottery. Ginger and Davy were clapping her along, and Rose had me join in with a similar dance emote. All the while a plethora of buffs were being randomly applied to us, but only one at a time as it would turn out.

“I'm really helpful now!” Tensei cheered. “Yay! Thank you, Mr. Roberts!”

-♡(*^ ‿ ^*)♡-

💻⚔️💻

The city was no longer just a high-res PNG on the horizon. We were looking at the true models of each building, and the closer we got, the more the LOD models improved in detail. With our fast approach, we had to be ready for action.

There was a wall around the city that loaded into view when we were close. It had a big horde of zombies around it trying to break through and get inside. The sheer number of entities in this area was bringing down the framerate.

“There’s thousands of them!” Tensei announced.

-Leave it to zombies to go to the places with the most big brain people ¯\_(⊙_⊙)_/¯-

“This is probably every NPC in the region,” I commented.

Even the zombies who’d been chasing us this whole time decided to start heading that way. Something about the city was attracting them, so maybe Rose was right.

We spotted some kind of struggle going on at the gates that was also getting the notice of the zombified Glitched.

Three people were locked in combat on the steps to the gate through the wall. One guy in really big and bulky looking demon lord armor with spikes and skulls. He was riding a black horse while he battled a man in knight armor and a heroic looking cloak.

There was a girl in the scuff too. She wore mage robes and a tiara. With magic, she was using flame walls to block the zombies from attacking them.

The bulky guy was lumbering and slow, carried through the fight only by the swiftness and skill of his steed. With a heavy sword, his random swings eventually hit hard enough to wreck the knights claymore and turn it into a stub of its former glory. The knight was forced to call upon a dagger side arm. It hardly fared any better.

From our angle, it was hard to tell, but it seemed like a lot of swings from both sides were connecting, but not doing any damage, as if they were just harmlessly phasing through eachother's bodies.

*CLINK!*

The big, armored guy made a wide sliced and knocked away the knight. Then after tanking a flame thrower spell from the girl, he simply grappled her by the neck and hoisted her over his shoulders.

“She’s mine now, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” announced the bulky guy as he turned and rode through the gates. “Muhahahaha! Waifu acquired!”

“I am not your waifu, you idiot!” the girl mage growled as she continually punched his backside. “Watch where you put those hands, you armored chimp!”

“Troja, you fiend!” shouted the knight as he had to fight off the zombies trying to attack him. “I’ll slay you if you harm Malwaria!”

-Did he just call him Troja?! ( ಠ - ಠ)-

“Forget that for now!” I shouted. “Let’s help that knight before he's eaten!”

-Already on it!-

She had me jump out of the carriage and race in. Ginger took the lead with Davy following close behind me.

“Don’t forget the horse!” Tensei shouted as she took the reins of Ruth.

Ginger let out a battle cry and alerted the zombies focusing on the knight to us. She slid in and sliced up the Glitched, then grappled the knight to pull him out of the horde.

Once there was a clear isle, I shot a fireball in there and blasted them to smithereens. Whatever remained after was headshot by Davy’s quick trigger finger.

*BANG*SPWISH!*

*BANG*SPWISH!*

Each bullet casing ejection was accompanied by a blast of steam. The gun had a lot of moving components that very vaguely simulated how the steampunk fire mechanism would work if it were real. Had to hand it to the team that designed that, because it sure was interesting to look at.

“Good shooting!” I congratulated. “That rifle’s pretty sweet.”

“Sure is!” Davy grinned. “Used to belong to me grand-papy!”

There was plenty of space between us and the Glitched, so he gave a little demonstration of his aim by flick shooting a few dozen in quick succession.

“Best par’ of it, ain’t gotta’ reload!”

That weapon was pretty OP, so maybe some tuning was in order after this to get it just right…

-Earth to RAY! We gotta’ move!-

The zombies were quickly refilling the vacant slots of their fallen kind. We’d made enough chaos to get their attention and were on the menu. Tensei came riding in on the carriage and gave us a quick way out of there. We saved the knight, but the girl was in the clutches of Troja, and he was not happy about that.