[World Event]

  Group chat for World Event ‘Whir the World Miner’ is now initialized.

  A screen popped up in the corner of Elijah’s vision, and text filled it. Several dozen people filled it with useless messages before Mara stepped in.

  Mara, the Bulwark of Eternity (100) > Enough! This channel is for tactical coordination. Anyone caught spamming it will be sent for respawn.

  Luigi, the Fighter (24) > Loloolololol. #Luigi4President #MaraCantFindMe

  Elijah saw a flash of steel, and someone went flying through the air before evaporating in a mist of green particles.

  Mara, the Bulwark of Eternity (100) > Anyone else want to try me?

  The chat went silent after that, though Elijah could hear grumbling from the crowd about Mara’s ‘dictatorship’. Several group teleports activated as others made call-outs, and most players on the plateau began making their way towards Whir.

  “They’ll keep him busy while we shut down those towers,” Annika told him and Bo. “I guess I’ll meet you at the first tower.” She pointed at one tower even as she pouted at Bo. Flowers welled up around her and carried her away, passing over Elijah again and giving him the same feeling as he’d felt the last time he’d been exposed to her magic. A lover’s embrace. He shuddered at the thought.

  “Ready?” Elijah asked Bo, who nodded and clasped forearms with him.

  Bats surrounded them as Elijah locked in his location for the teleport. He’d been concerned about not teleporting to the same place as Annika—she hadn’t given him any more instruction other than which tower they’d be assaulting—but the game was only letting him teleport to one place. The base of the tower.

  When they landed, they found Annika already hard at work. The tower defenders—constructs of iron and mana in a roughly humanoid form—surrounded her. They moved about with fluid motion, as if swimming through the air rather than walking. Her class was technically a healing class, but a Celestial wasn’t bound by the stereotypical game logic. She was already fighting and burning mana quickly. The mana overload debuff here wasn’t as intense as it had been when he was standing on top of the leyline, but it was still present.

  [Debuff: Mana Overload]

  You are being overloaded with mana from a cracked leyline. -5 HP per second while your Mana is full. +20 mana regeneration per second.

  He didn’t have a spell to burn off mana that quickly, but he’d had time to think about how he’d cope with it. He only hoped the game would recognize his effort.

  Three bats sprang from his sleeve, ghosting over his hand and receiving various spell effects. He silently let out a prayer that this would work.

  [NEW SKILL ACQUIRED]

  Dragontooth Bombs

  Description: Summon Dragontooth Bats infused with various spell effects. The base cost allows you to summon up to two bats with either Electric or Fire as the bomb effect. You may summon up to ten bats at a time, with each additional summon requiring exponentially more mana and costing mana to maintain.

  He had to stop himself from doing a happy dance out of excitement. He’d gotten lucky with his scout spell all the way back in Raystown, normally it took several tries to get the game to write a new spell, but he’d been using the scouts as bombs for a while now and had been getting annoyed that he hadn’t earned a new spell from it.

  He wanted to summon his familiars, but he couldn’t risk it. They wouldn’t have fast enough ways to burn through their own mana reserves. Summoning them would just mean a quick, painful death from the mana overload.

  Bo pulled a potion and put it to his lips. “I don’t think right now is the time to be drinking mana potions,” Elijah yelled at him as he started summoning bombs.

  The rogue wiped his lips with a sleeve and grimaced. “That’s why I went into town before we teleported. It wasn’t a potion; it was poison.”

  His words made immediate sense to Elijah. He’d found a poison that could drain his mana, hopefully faster than the overload could refill it. “Good thinking, Bo.”

  Elijah found that five bats was the sweet spot where he was losing just a trickle of mana. Summoning another five, up to the maximum of ten, started draining him at a prodigious rate. That wouldn’t be something he’d be able to maintain outside of this battle, unless it was for a quick burst of damage where he didn’t have to worry about Mana Drain later. He sent the additional five bats flying after Whir’s minions, and they exploded in blasts of fire and lightning.

  Bo was nowhere to be seen as Elijah and Annika fought their way towards the entrance to the tower. He knew the man; he wasn’t a coward; he was doing something under the cover of stealth. Elijah just didn’t have time to worry about it as he swung his blade into the throng of minions. They didn’t appear to have health bars or any of the other usual information that appeared on enemies, but they died all the same after a few hits from his sword.

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  They finished the last of the minions before Annika finally spoke to Elijah again. “Seems your rogue friend got scared and ran off. I told you it should just be the two of us.”

  Elijah was about to respond when Bo made a rude sound at her from over by the door to the tower. “Didn’t run off. Was just trying to get this door picked open before you finished them all off.” He made a twisting motion with his hand, and the door slid aside, revealing the interior of the tower.

  Her pout returned as Elijah cheered on his friend.

  Inside the tower was claustrophobic. He had to force his bat bombs to rest on his shoulders while they moved through the constricted space. Annika was much higher level than he was, but she wasn’t a front-line fighter, so Elijah went first. The air inside smelled like burning oil, and Elijah had to breathe through his mouth to stop from throwing up with how pungent the odor was.

  Bo was at his back, which made Elijah feel safer, he still didn’t trust Annika wasn’t up to something nefarious. Something about her personality just rubbed Elijah the wrong way.

  He fought his way through another swarm of minions. These were smaller and more nimble in the confined space. He was taking damage regularly now, razor-sharp iron slashing into his body and face. Annika was dumping mana into healing spells, keeping him topped up on health, but the phantom pains remained. A reminder that while he was effectively immortal with her at his back, he was still human.

  The corridor spiraled inward, and after several long, excruciating minutes, they finally found themselves at the center of the tower. The pillar of mana that Elijah had seen coming from the top of this drill structure passed through the actual structure itself. He could see the deep chasm through the metal grating of the floor illuminated by the blindingly bright light of the mana. It was channeling this beam up from the leyline itself.

  “That looks like a lift to me,” Bo grunted, pointing towards a platform on the other side of the room. A short pedestal with knobs and levers sat in its center. Elijah took another look up and down the shaft of light, his eyes aching from the brightness.

  ”What do you think? Up or down? Do we stop the mana at its source, or block it from escaping out the top?”

  He directed his question at Elijah, but Annika answered him.

  “At the source, duh. This boss specifically dug down to the leyline before coming up, then it wasted time bringing that power up here. It had to have a reason for that. Remove the leyline power and the boss will be easier to kill.” She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, like she was showing off. Trying to prove herself smarter than Bo.

  “What makes you think it needs anything from the leyline? It’s already a Celestial-level threat. The AI system is going to want this fight to be a spectacle. If we block off the top of the tower, it will fill with mana and then explode. It’ll be cinematic and give the players a sense of accomplishment. Exactly what the game is designed to do,” Bo argued.

  Elijah had to admit that Bo made a good point about spectacle, but there was something else going on here that nagged at Elijah’s perception. Something that begged him to notice it.

  ”You said we were ‘one team’ that was assigned to these towers. Who are the others, and what are they doing right now?” Elijah asked Annika.

  Her eyes glazed over as she opened a menu. “The other team is Arturus and Kyle with a legendary-rank healer they picked up. They’re just arguing about what needs to be done with their tower,” she paused for a moment, and Elijah could see frustration growing on her face. “Now they’re asking what we think we should do. Typical.”

  Elijah wasn’t happy to hear that Arturus was taking an active role in this event, though he should have expected it, and he worried for the healer the two men had taken with them. Did they know Arturus was a known player killer?

  Elijah had to decide. Annika wanted to go down, and Bo wanted to go up, which left him as the tiebreaker.

  ”Whir needed the power of the leyline to rank up to Celestial before he made his appearance,” Elijah thought aloud.

  “Right, which means—” Annika started before Bo put a finger to his lips to silence her. She scowled at the rogue, but Elijah ignored them while he continued to think.

  “He’s already Celestial, so these towers are feeding something else. Or providing some kind of buff to him. If we blow them up, then they’ll no longer be regulating the flow of mana from the leyline.”

  “So we go down and stop it at the source!” Annika affirmed, moving towards the lift with a confident stride.

  ”No, I think that would be a bad idea,” Elijah answered, causing Annika to stumble in her tracks. His eyes flicked to the debuff that was ever-present at the top of his vision. That was the key; it wasn’t a real debuff. It was a buff in disguise.

  ”The mana streams are buffing Whir, but they’re also buffing the players. You said it yourself, Annika, the mana mages we have on hand are our greatest asset because there is so much mana for them to soak up. If we cut that off completely, they become much less useful.”

  Bo caught on before Annika could and spelled it out for her. “So it’s like you said; these pillars are for regulating mana. We have to find a way to lower the output so we can damage Whir, while still allowing our guys to use the buff.”

  Elijah looked up at the top of the tower and smirked. He was proud that Bo had managed to figure it out before Annika did. “My guess is that we’ll find what we need up there.” He pointed to the top of the tower, where the beam of mana met the open sky.

  Elijah tried to activate his teleport, which would be easier than riding the lift—and he suspected waves of enemies would attack them as they rose—but the proximity to the mana stream seemed to affect his ability. That, or there was some hidden effect within the tower that stopped short-range teleports from working. Either could be the case, he realized, after all he hadn’t been able to teleport inside the tower from the plateau.

  They rushed over to the lift, and Bo activated the controls. “Make sure you let your husband know what we figured out so they—” An explosion rocked the tower nearly knocking Elijah over the side of the slowly raising lift. It had been too late; Arturus and Kyle had taken out the tower instead of waiting for Elijah to figure it out.

  “Tell them now!” Elijah barked angrily at Annika. Her eyes went wide as Elijah yelled at her before glazing over. In Elijah’s own peripheral vision, the world event chat lit up.

  Nate, the Knight (28) > Was that supposed to happen?

  Kenny, the Elementalist (55) > We’re getting overloaded with mana over here! We need something to drain it.

  Bob, the Mana Mage (84) > Sending one of my squad your way now.