Chương 95: The Shot

The world went still. My movement speed dropped to zero, and my defense plummeted. The wind, the battle, the distant shouts of dark mages, all of it faded to nothing. There was only the bow in my hands, the arrow on the string, and the crystal, four hundred and fifty meters away. My body became a statue, rooted to the platform as if the stone had grown up through my boots and fused with my bones, and my reduced defense made me feel exposed to the threats looming around the city. But none of that mattered.

I started reading the wind, as it curled around the peaks and chimneys in my line of sight. I started calculating the angles and the potential velocity in fractions of a second. I knew where my arrow was going to go. 450 meters and a crystal barely bigger than my palm. I'd made some insane shots in the outside world. I had won medals and trophies, and bagged the pride that came with it. I won championships in Valhalla. The clips of my shots were the most-watched videos on the internet at one point.

None of those shots felt like this one. Here I was, playing a game that somehow didn't feel like a game at all. The citizens sleeping on the streets, cursed in the tavern, fellow players fighting outside the city walls, Athos and Kara getting ready to sacrifice themselves: everything felt real. Important. All I had to do now was aim. The Emberwood's string flickered beneath my fingers. I drew it past my ear, past the anchor point, drawing further than I'd ever drawn in this game.

The bow's limbs bent to their maximum. I had one shot. But one shot was all I needed. I adjusted, a fraction of a degree upward, a hair's width to the right. The world narrowed until there was nothing left but that single dark point against the grey stone. I exhaled. And I let go. The arrow left the Emberwood Longbow with a sound I'd never heard before: not the usual twang of a released string, but a deep, resonant crack that split the air like a thunderclap.

The projectile flew in a line so straight it looked like someone had drawn it with a ruler across the sky, a streak of amber light trailing cinders in its wake. The arrow passed next to a chimney stack at two hundred meters, mere centimeters from collision. It punched through a clothesline at three hundred meters, the fabric not even fluttering. At three fifty, it almost clipped the edge of a rooftop. The dark mages in the Church Square never saw it coming. The arrow struck the Dark Crystal dead center.

For one perfect, frozen moment, it seemed time itself had stopped. Then the crystal shattered. The detonation sent a shockwave across the Church Square that knocked away every dark mage within thirty meters. The nullification field collapsed in an instant, a sensation I felt even from the tower. And the temple doors' seal was gone. I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. I'd made the shot. Kara moved first.

The moment the crystal detonated, she was already out of the alley, the Lute of Abstraction singing in her hands. The melody she played had no harmony, no structure, but still, there was a strange beauty to it; like chaos given form, notes that contradicted each other, rhythms that fought themselves, a symphony designed to break the mind of anyone who heard it.

"Abstract World Symphony!" The sound hit the Church Square like a wall. The dark mages who'd been staggering from the crystal's explosion were caught in the full force of it. Their movements became erratic, uncoordinated, feet stumbling in random directions, staves dropping from nerveless fingers. The six guards at the temple doors fared no better: their disciplined formation collapsed as the Disoriented debuff took hold, and started walking into each other, shields lowering, weapons pointing at nothing.

Athos erupted from the same alley in a dead sprint. Twenty meters from the temple doors, he planted his foot.

"Comet!" He became a streak of blue fire, launching himself at the sealed entrance with the force of a meteorite. The distance closed in three seconds. He hit the doors shoulder-first, and the ancient wood, no longer reinforced by dark magic, blew inward with a crash that echoed across the district. The doors were open. Athos stumbled into the temple's entrance hall.

"Run!" he shouted into the temple.

"Get out! Fight!" He turned, looked back through the shattered doorway at Kara, who was still playing, still holding the disorientation in place, and grinned. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Then the eight seconds ended. The first dark mage recovered. A bolt of black energy struck Athos in the chest, killing him instantly.

Kara's Lute shifted to Tune of Death, but the dark mages were converging now, five of them turning their staves toward her, dark energy building. The NPCs outleveled them by a huge margin. There was nothing they themselves could have done. She looked up at Elindra's tower and smiled. Her health bar hit zero moments later. The final bolt hit her square in the chest, and Kara dissolved into light. But the doors were open. And from inside the Temple of Ravenloft, the prisoners were already pouring out.

High Priest Aldric was the first to come through. The old man moved with a speed that defied his age, his white and gold robes billowing behind him, his medallion blazing with divine light so intense it cast shadows across the entire square. Whatever weakness the sleep spell had inflicted on him was gone, burned away by the sight of his temple desecrated and his people imprisoned. He raised both hands and spoke a single word, and the Church Square detonated with holy fire.

Pillars of white-gold light erupted from the ground in a ring around the square, each one six meters tall, searing through the dark energy that still lingered in the air. Two dark mages caught in the blast were thrown backward, their robes igniting, their protective wards shattering like glass. Aldric wasn't finished. He brought his hands together, and the pillars converged, forming a dome of holy radiance that pushed outward from the temple, forcing the dark mages back, clearing the square meter by meter.

Behind him, loyal knights charged through the open doors. Dozens of them, armored and armed by whatever they could find inside, weak from captivity but burning with fury. They hit the disoriented dark mages and their guards like a hammer striking an anvil, steel ringing against ward and bone and flesh. The priests and mages followed, their healing spells and elemental attacks washing over the knights and enemies, respectively. These weren't adventurers. These were Tidemark's strongest. Level 40s, 50s, 60s.

The kingdom's professional soldiers and scholars and holy men, freed from captivity and very, very angry. From the tower, I watched the battle unfold like a painter watching a masterpiece come to life. The dark mages regrouped fast. They were powerful, despite the loss of the crystal. Dark bolts the size of tournament lances streaked across the square, cratering stone and shattering columns. Shadow barriers materialized to block the knights' advance, holding strong against their relentless assault.

But the freed prisoners had something the dark mages didn't: Court Mage Elindra. She emerged from the temple last, walking with the measured pace of someone who refused to hurry for anyone, least of all dark mages who'd locked her in her own city's church. The elderly woman looked exactly as I remembered: sharp eyes, hair in a bun, and an expression that suggested something bad was about to happen.

She stopped at the door, surveyed the chaos with the disapproval of a teacher watching students make basic errors, and raised her hands. The sky above changed color. Storm clouds materialized from nothing, swirling in a tight vortex directly above the square. Lightning forked downward, hitting only the dark mages and Darius's supporters. Each bolt crashed with enough force to turn people into bloody mist.

One of the dark mages raised a barrier, a dome of shadow energy to absorb the lighting, but Elindra snapped her fingers, and the barrier inverted. The dark energy that had been protecting the mage suddenly became a deadly coffin, crushing him in his own spell. He collapsed, and the shadow dome dissolved into nothing. A second mage tried to flank her. Roots of pure arcane energy erupted from the ground and wrapped around his legs, lifting him into the air. Elindra didn't even look at him.

She flicked her wrist, and the roots threw him fifty meters across the square, where he crashed into the side of an administrative building and didn't get up. She's level 70 at least, I realized. Likely more. On the plains below, the last of the rifts collapsed. I could see it from the tower: the final portal was barely keeping itself together; the last few creatures were stumbling out only to be cut down by adventurers who'd been fighting for over an hour and had gotten especially efficient at killing them.

The army surged forward. Some had already respawned back in Maelridge, but most were still alive. Hundreds of adventurers, Tidemark's militia from various hamlets and villages, and the Count's knights charged across the Salt Plains toward Tidemark's gate. From up here, they looked like a river breaking through a dam: a mass of bodies pouring toward the city walls. At the front, I could make out the Trident's blue glow; the Count was leading the charge personally. The gate defenders saw them coming.

Soldiers scrambled into formation, archers nocked arrows, and whatever dark mages remained on the walls began charging their spells. The gate shuddered as the first wave hit it. I could hear the impact from the tower, a deep, resonant boom that rolled across the city like thunder. Spells crashed against the walls. Arrows darkened the sky. The gate groaned, cracked, and held for now. Inside the city, the battle at the Church Square was spreading.

Aldric's holy fire had pushed the dark mages out of the square entirely, but they'd regrouped in the surrounding streets. The freed knights and soldiers pursued them, and the fighting devolved into dozens of smaller engagements across the district. I watched a group of loyal knights corner two dark mages in an alley. The mages unleashed a wave of shadow energy, but one of the knights, a woman wielding a greatsword, cut through the spell with a blade wreathed in holy light and brought both mages down in two strokes.

Elsewhere, Elindra was systematically dismantling the dark mages' infrastructure. Every ward they'd placed, every enchantment, every trap: she found them and destroyed them like a housewife cleaning a messy house. Lightning continued to strike from the conjured storm, each bolt finding a target, each target going down. Aldric had moved to the sleeping civilians. He knelt beside a woman slumped on the steps near the square and placed his hands on her temples. Golden light pulsed, and she began to move.

Her eyes opened, confused and frightened, and Aldric spoke to her softly before moving to the next. He was waking them up one by one. But the battle was not over yet. A massive explosion rocked the western side of the city. The gate had finally given way. I could see the breach from the tower: a gap in the fortifications where stone and iron had been hammered apart by the combined force of the Count's host. Players poured through the gap, and the battle for Tidemark's streets had begun.

I slung the Emberwood Longbow onto my back. It was time to get off this tower and join the fight. But as I turned toward the trapdoor, movement on the far side of the city caught my eye. I looked at the Knight's Tower, Tidemark's military headquarters, rising above the skyline like a dark dagger against the clouds. A figure stood at its peak. Even from this distance, I could make out the silhouette: tall, broad-shouldered, a longbow in one hand and a sword at his hip. Calian.

He was watching the battle unfold with the stillness of a man who wasn't surprised by any of it. As if he'd known this was coming. As if he'd planned for it. And standing beside him, draped in dark robes, was a figure I didn't recognize. He raised one hand. And the sleeping city began to stir.