Chapter 50: Final Boss – The Dark King pt.2?

Behind the wall of bodies Grace stood rooted to the spot as she began to cast a new spell, Lexa immediately recognised it as something complex and incredibly dangerous and so fired off a nature spell to try and interrupt the process. But her attempt was thwarted by one of the summons blocking the spell causing it to dissipate as it took the member of the Dark Army down. Seeing the panic written across Lexa’s face only increase as time moved on and Grace continued the casting process the frontline trio switched from going after the spawning circles and back to the created members of the Dark Army themselves hoping to create a pathway for Lexa to interfere with the casting process by thinning out the Dark Army enough so they weren’t able to cover for their boss any longer. Recognising they had little time remaining Lexa began to cast her own high-tier counterspell as a response to Grace’s spell, hoping that she would finish her’s before Grace completed her casting. Lexa’s spell tore though the ranks of the Dark Army opening a path for something with a little less strength to follow it through and hit it’s mark, as the goal is not to kill Grace but instead make her realise that fighting is futile and that she should just make up with the people that she wronged or was wronged by. With Lexa’s void spell dissipating after creating the channel it needed to for her nature spell, which was a single hardened leaf to reach Grace and interrupt her spell cast at the final possible moment.

“Clever, interrupt me with a weak spell after creating a path through my ranks with a high-tier. You are certainly the best human mage I have come across; you might even be equal to Alyssa in terms of power. But even Alyssa is not as powerful as I.”

With that Grace releases the spell that was thought to have been cancelled when Lexa interrupted the cast just moments ago. Suddenly the entire room is engulfed in flame, all the summoning circles breaking and any of the Dark Army soldiers still standing fell to the intense heat being radiated from the flames. The only thing protecting the party is Ilev’s magic resistance and damage reduction buffs, knowing not a lot of time remained before they fell like the soldiers, Lexa attempted to cast any water spell to extinguish the flames but the heat radiating throughout the room evaporated any of the water she managed to create before it could be useful. Seeing her party begin to struggle Lexa pointed to Aromi and then to the roof, the pair cast spells that wouldn’t be affected by the intense flames in order to blow open the roof to allow Lexa to cast a set of water spells free of the fire that was now making up the room. Seeing this Grace attempted to stop the mages but only contributed to the size of the hole that was made in the ceiling. Which Lexa floated up through without a second’s hesitation, and began to cast the waterfall spell again alongside a low-tier sandstorm spell to douse or smother the flames. Allowing Ilev to take a short break from having to constantly re-up the buffs else they face the full effect of the Dark King’s flames. With her flames doused and throne room chard and destroyed and most importantly being flanked by Ami and Arano who were holding the only swords that are known to be effective on the Dark king, Grace surrendered.

“Ok, ok. Put the swords away, I can see that I am no match for this party. As much as I hate why you are here, I will at least hear you out for the sake of my life.”

Ilev stepped forwards before speaking.

“As you already guessed we came here not to kill you like the Empress wants and Lord Seolfor does not have an opinion on you. We came with the intention to talk with you as the Crown of Ehccihster asked us to do, as while we might be on the grand quest handed out to us by Lord Seolfor nowhere does it say we must kill you. Only that we must stop you, and I think you going back to being friends with the Crown of Ehccihster would be the best way to do that. As she gets her friend back, you get your friend back and we get to complete the grand quest, and no one dies either.”
“Well I cannot hope to get rid of you. If I tried again, I doubt I would be long for this world. And I do miss the Crown even if only a little, but I do wish to live for a little while longer. Very well I will abandon this castle and return to Ehccihster, where I will try to make amends with the Crown.”
“Thank you for hearing us out and agreeing with us. We really didn’t want to have to kill you as the Crown of Ehccihster seemed to really miss you and was hoping we’d be able to convince you someway, somehow to come around.”
“You made it very clear that as a party you far exceed what I am capable of defeating. I will be seeing you, the new generation of heroes.”

With that Grace left the throne room on her way to make up with the Crown of Ehccihster, leaving the party and Isla alone in the now silent ruined throne room.

“So, what now? Do we have to go and report our success, or…?”

Arano was in the middle of wondering but his words were cut off by an ethereal light that appeared to stretch down from the heavens and engulfed the eight people that were left standing in the throne room.

“Arano, I think that’s your answer.”

Ilev just about managed to reply as the light slowly increased its intensity until it reached an almost blinding level, causing everyone to close their eyes because of the dangers of looking into bright lights they had been taught.

When the party opened their eyes again, they were in a nearly pitch-black space, the dim lighting of the space coming from rectangular objects. Someone got up in an attempt to find a light source nearby or a way to create one, after some minutes of stumbling around in the dark someone braced themselves against a wall turning on the lights in turn as their hand flipped the light switch. After another adjustment to the newly illuminated room, they found themselves back in the development space for the game they seemed to have just been inside. Aromi was the first to speak.

“We’re home, right?”

Those words hung in the air as everyone grabbed for something to prove those words as truth. Lekly was the next to speak.

“I have my phone again, and I can use it, and it’s showing the time and where we are on Earth. We’re home.”

Those last two words seemed to reverberate around the room, after spending so long in the game world they almost forgot that their goal was to make their way home.

“I guess that was our Beta test, I was hoping the story me and Aromi wrote would be immersive but not that immersive. I wonder what happened to Isla though, she was also engulfed in that light same as us.”
“I don’t know, maybe we’ll run into her again someday, maybe once the game releases she’ll find us once more. However, we might need to work on how immersive your story is, don’t want that happening to anyone but us. The game seemed to work alright and with no bugs from what we played? Or maybe better to say experienced. Right, everyone out before something happens again, shut down your machines and get on home. And let’s take tomorrow off? While it’s the same day and year that it was before I feel like I’ve really been on a long adventure.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. See you all on Wednesday for whatever we’re going to do then.”

As the conversation petered out because of how tired everyone was, and as people slowly shuffled out of the office space leaving only Ilev inside, he made one quick addition to the game in the form of the final appearance of the eight-person party as a statue in Seolford’s town square, before shutting his own machine down. Then getting up to turn out the lights and lock up the building after what seemed to have been a very immersive, almost to immersive to believe it wasn’t just a shared dream or them getting super into the beta test of the game they’d spent so long working on.