The trebuchet creaked as its limbs locked back into firing position. Raven adjusted the sighting arm with steady fingers, then tapped his partner on the shoulder.
"See that? Between the two fires by the farmstead. That’s our kill box."
The farm fields stretched before them, unrecognizable ruins of once-living land. Cratered soil gaped open like raw wounds, blackened by fire. Broken fence posts jutted up at odd angles, skeletal against the haze. Smoke drifted in low, choking the sightlines, curling along the ground like it was searching for sothing to drag down.
Raven squinted through the ss. For a second, there was only silence—the surreal, aching quiet that ca just before slaughter.
Then, a faint tremor.
He felt it through his boots before he saw them: the rhythmic, building beat of hundreds of armored feet, the Fold’s vanguard erging like a shadow tide.
Raven exhaled once, slow.
His body shifted without thinking—hands tightening, breath locking in that familiar soldier’s readiness.
The calm before the storm never stayed calm for long.
His partner—a loud, high-energy player with an Australian accent—grunted skeptically.
"That scorched gap there? Kinda wide open, mate. How you figure they’ll co through that?"
"Because I would. It looks like a safe flank," Raven said simply. "Not all of them, but so will try it. Enough to matter."
Monts passed. Then shapes erged through the smoke—a ripple of movent against the charred farmland.
Soldiers.
Fold infantry. Hundreds of them.
They ca in from multiple angles, but a full company peeled directly into the gap Raven had marked. Just like he predicted.
"Incoming! Firing now!" his partner shouted.
The first projectile soared.
A flaming boulder arced over the battlefield, trailing sparks as it slamd into the kill box. The explosion scattered soldiers like toy figurines. A wave of shrieking particles burst skyward.
Kill feed flickered in the corner of Raven’s HUD:
7 13 21 30 41
"Bloody hell! You’re a damn prophet!" his partner howled, cackling. "Dead on! This’s nuts!"
Raven kept loading. Cranked tension. Fired again.
50. 53. 58.
Then sothing shifted.
A strange heat hit Raven’s cheek. His peripheral glowed orange.
He looked up.
A flaming projectile.
It was falling fast. Too fast.
He threw himself to the side.
"MOVE!"
His partner didn’t.
The enemy boulder hit the edge of the platform. It detonated with a deafening crack, turning timber and bone into a burst of fire and shrapnel. Raven crashed hard behind the edge barricade, his HP bar dropping to 42%.
When the dust settled, there was nothing left of the trebuchet. No trace of his partner.
Only a system ssage:
[Player ’Taz’ has been defeated]
Raven grimaced. "He respawned, probably."
He rose, brushing ash off his bracer. A trail of fresh fire burned through the gap below—still swarming with Fold infantry. But now other trebuchets were gone too. They weren’t the only ones targeted.
System chat was already flooding:
Enemy trebuchet sighted! Careful guys! Healers are moving forward!
Then Raven can feel it.
The first sign was the tremor—subtle, then sharp, rattling the stones underfoot. Echoes of hundred of machines echoed through the sky.
A sound of enemy’s trebuchet line launching.
Raven’s head snapped up just as the sky split open. Enemy trebuchet fire rained down in waves, casting long, sickly red shadows across the broken wall.
Below, defenders scrambled like ants, shoving crates, dragging wounded, screaming partial orders into the smoky air.
The mage shield above the slope flickered once—then failed entirely, collapsing in a burst of distorted light.
Raven’s mind worked faster than his body.
The siege line wasn’t just under pressure. It was collapsing.
They were about to be overrun—and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it except survive the next hit.
[Zone Chat]
"We need reinforcents on NE slope!"
"Mage shield down, MOVE!"
"Respawn group incoming."
Raven scanned the chaos. He could deploy another siege—but it would take ti. He might not survive the setup.
Another fireball soared overhead. Then an explosion followed.
"They’re burning the siege line," Raven muttered. "No ti."
He sprinted down the wall stairs, weaving past defenders dragging supply crates and healer class players tend the wounded.
Below, the ground was chaos. Scorched farm fields stretched between the wall and the broken outer defenses. Amid the smoke, Raven spotted a half-assembled ballista kit behind a collapsed tower turret. A nearby player lay dead, half-pixelated into the rubble before slowly disappear to respawn in Inner Sanctum.
He bolted toward it.
Fast fingers, fast eyes. He activated the ergency deploy sequence, slamd the crank forward, and loaded a single bolt. Just ahead, a Fold flanking unit—assassins and cloaked scouts—was pushing past the wreckage.
The bolt scread and struck.
61 62
Before he could load again, Raven caught a red flicker. A Fold officer raised a spell glyph from behind the tower base, locking eyes with him.
"Crap."
Raven didn’t wait.
He retreated fast, zig-zagging through smoke and shattered barricades as flas detonated behind him, the explosion obliterating the ballista in a thunderclap of heat and shrapnel.
Ash pelted his shoulders. HP down to 28%.
The Fold officer scanned the wreckage, confident. He thought Raven died in the blast.
That was his mistake.
Raven slipped behind the tower, heart thudding, adrenaline peaking. He circled wide, hugging the burned stone, quiet as the smoke.
He erged behind the caster.
And then he leapt.
Both daggers plunged down into the officer’s collar.
63
Raven stood over the vanishing body, breathing hard.
"This is how you do surprise attack, dumbass."
Blood flecked across Raven’s visor, tiny drops steaming in the lingering heat from the ballista wreck. For a breathless mont, he stood motionless—listening. Waiting. No alarms. No spells. No reaction.
Dead before the world even noticed.
Raven wiped the blade against the officer’s cloak without ceremony, tucking back into the shadows before the blood even finished cooling. Efficiency over theatrics. That was the real art of survival here.
His eyes turned east, already hunting the next ripple of movent beyond the smoke.
The north east zerg was moving.
Ti to follow.
On his right, two zerg clusters were already pushing forward. He caught sight of a guild emblem: a red hawk with three stars. North-east formation. The commander was shouting orders through proximity mic, leading infantry and mages into a broken breach.
Raven didn’t ask permission. He veered behind them, blades drawn.
He slipped past a phalanx of heavy frontliners—tower shields, greatswords, coordinated formations—then cut into the back.
Fold mages. Archers. Light-armored casters.
Exactly where he belonged.
His dagger found the spine of a chant-weaving fire mage. He move behind the next target before the body fell.
59 60
Blood sprayed the stone. Soone scread.
Another rogue followed through the breach Raven opened. Then another. They flooded in like vipers.
62 65
His breath was ragged. He sidestepped a glimring ice spike, buried his blade into a staff-user mid-cast.
68
He had two seconds of calm.
Then the ground beneath him lit up.
Red glyph. Fold mage sigil.
His eyes widened.
"Fucking hell..."
The explosion engulfed him. A searing light. Static. His health vanished in an instant.
[You have died.]
A faint shimr passed through his vision. The respawn trigger kicked in.
Raven rematerialized in the Inner Sanctum—the heart of Greycliff Hold. Cold pulsed down his spine as the system jolt settled into his muscles.
Not pain. Just a jolt. A reset.
He opened his eyes.
Inner Sanctum. Respawn Zone.
He sat still for a mont. Breathing through the phantom heat in his lungs.
Raven lingered a few seconds longer on the stone platform, feeling the unnatural stillness of the respawn zone wrap around him.
There was no blood. No scars. The system scrubbed it all away. But sowhere deeper—in nerves mory couldn’t reach—he still tasted ash. Still felt the sharp snap of bones that never broke.
He flexed his fingers once. They moved fine. They always did.
A lie written into the code: You didn’t die. You just lost. Try again.
Raven smiled humorlessly under his breath. He knew better.
Every death still left sothing in player’s ntal behind every in-ga death.
Sothing smaller. Sothing a little more hollow.
No rage. No drama.
Just a quiet scowl.
He stood, pulled his daggers free from their sheath again, and walked without a word.
Back to the battlefield.
The Inner Sanctum pulsed quietly, as if holding its breath before the next wave. Sowhere behind the high walls, siege fire still echoed. He almost forgot the thrill—and the horror—of this monthly ga event.
There was no glory here. Just survival, kill counts, and imrsion so deep it blurred the line between player and soldier.
The AI didn’t glitch—it orchestrated. Every explosion, every scream, every delayed spellcast was part of a choreography designed to break you.
Even the communication technology is at its peak; the mont you talk or shout, the system automatically reverts it to text the zone chat box.
Even the phantom pain that lingered after each death was calibrated, perfectly legal, and dangerously real.
This was the peak of hardcore VRMMO.
And this month, Greycliff Hold of Cindraleth Union was its theater of trauma.
He logged out with plans, ready for the next day of war.
The Throne War would continue for 24 hours a day, 7 days straight—syncing across ti zones. Real-ti. No pauses. No rcy.
But for now? He needed one. Just to stay sane.
Because he had a plan grander than himself:
To let the world burn in fire and steel,
and bury himself beneath the ashes.
Die. Respawn. Repeat.
A thousand tis, if that’s what it takes.
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