“You are putting us in danger!” insisted their would-be general, trying to convince the crowd to stop walking up the hill to watch the armies on the other side. “Don’t peek! Don’t peek!”

  The crowd ignored him. Obviously. And talked among themselves while walking up the hill.

  The talking stopped very fast when they reached the top. Somebody fainted and had to be caught before he rolled down the hill.

  Mark wondered if the axeman was still going on with his shenanigans. He pushed past a few people and looked down… and yes. The axeman was still hacking at the body. Or whatever remained of it at this point.

  It’s kind of sad to be resurrected into another world just to be used as a fucking chopping log by some crazy dude two minutes into it, Mark thought.

  “Look! That’s Julius Caesar!” somebody said, pointing at a formation a couple of miles away.

  “What?” somebody else asked. “How do you know?”

  “Can’t you see the name-tag over him?”

  Apparently, some people didn’t have the ability to see those names, although it seemed to be slowly reaching everybody.

  Suddenly, the words of the bootleg-Viking had a little more weight. And people obeyed when he begged them to walk down the hill, so the soldiers on the other side wouldn’t continue seeing them.

  Soon the questions began, and they managed to get a more complete picture from the off-brand-Viking:

  “Yes, the gods of this world brought back the greatest generals from Earth, and their chosen warriors, to compete trying to conquer the world.”

  “Are you a general, then?”

  “No. I don’t have a military background.”

  “So why would you be chosen along with the likes of Napoleon and fucking Genghis Khan?”

  “There’s a reason. But we don’t have time to discuss it.”

  “What did you do, back on Earth?”

  “I was a web developer.”

  “What languages? Were you full-stack?”

  “I… don’t see the relevance.”

  “Why were we chosen as your warriors? We’re not your warriors. I’m notyour warrior.”

  “Well, you were part of my Counter-Strike clan. Or had been part of my clan at some point. Each general got to choose two thousand of their greatest soldiers. Counting current and past members, our clan had a total of seven hundred and sixty-five players. So I picked every single one of you.”

  “That’s… not great.”

  “It’s a disadvantage, yes.”

  “So there were no choosing criteria, apart from joining a fucking gaming clan?”

  “No.”

  “How can the leader of an online clan be considered on the same level as somebody like Alexander the Great?”

  “I already said I don’t want to get into it. Not now. As some of you know, I reached international… fame, for a very brief period of time.”

  That comment got some suppressed laughter. There seemed to be a story behind the so-called international fame.

  The would-be-general got a little defensive and added, “The god who chose me as his general considered my fame as enough to qualify.”

  The questions continued. A young man with a face marked by acne scars raised his hand.

  “I don’t remember joining your clan. Could this be a mistake?”

  “We once held a raffle for new members. We were gifting a new, customized computer that looked like the Batmobile.”

  “Okay, sorry. I did join your clan. Actually, I’m kind of curious…” The young man looked around him. “Did somebody actually win that computer? Raise your hand if you did.”

  Nobody raised their hand. Mark grimaced a little. That particular scheme had been his idea. He looked at the man with the Swedish accent standing at his side, and felt like the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

  “I fucking knew it was a scam,” said the young man with acne scars.

  “Yeah… sorry. We needed new members to join an online tournament. Any other questions?”

  A woman raised her hand politely.

  “Yes?” asked their would-be general.

  “What’s your actual name?” asked the woman. “Because that name-tag is making me crazy.”

  “Oh? I didn’t say? My name is Johan. And the name-tag, most of you know where it comes from.”

  Mark focused on Johan, the not-really-a-Viking, and realized that he, like the other generals, also had a name-tag that could be seen above his head if you focused.

  The name-tag said that his name was “ILoveFurries007”.

  And the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. Mark shouted:

  “I knew it! I knew I recognized your voice! Johan, dude! It’s me! I’m Mark!”

  Even while the questions were being answered, there had been some talking among the people in the crowd. Now, everybody stopped talking and looked at Mark, who kept speaking, oblivious to the silence.

  “So we totally lost that match, right? That’s why you got that name-tag, right? I remember that stupid bet you made. You would win that tournament or…”

  “Fuck you, Mark!” somebody shouted from the crowd.

  That got some laughs.

  “What was that?” Mark asked.

  “Fuck you, Mark!” someone else repeated.

  “Fuck you, Mark!” yet another person shouted, getting even more laughs.

  “Show yourself, assholes!” answered Mark, trying to find the culprits among the crowd of people extending in front of him.

  Johan put a hand on Mark’s shoulder. He looked at him with actual curiosity—and a little worry.

  “You didn’t know we lost, Mark? What… what happened? Why did you disappear in the middle of the match?”

  “Yeah. Tell them what happened, Mark…”

  Mark looked at a tall man in his late twenties advancing a couple of steps away from the crowd. Mark recognized him instantly. Dark hair, good looks. An easy, arrogant smile.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  For Mark, it had only been ten minutes ago. It felt like he had just seen him.

  But he hadn’t been smiling then. He had been close to tears while he aimed a gun at Mark’s head.

  His best friend, Arthur.

  His murderer, Arthur.

  Mark was paralyzed for a couple of seconds, looking at his friend. He seemed a little older. And he was looking at him with a melancholic smile—the way you would look at the picture of an old friend after years without seeing him.

  For a moment, Mark wondered why Arthur was here when he had never been a gamer—then he remembered that he had forced Arthur to join the clan when they needed more members to join the tournament.

  There was no longer the tension and rage of the last few months of Mark’s life, when their criminal enterprise had started to fall apart, and everything had ended with a gun aimed at Mark’s head, with him refusing to do anything more than let himself die.

  Maybe this was a new opportunity for them to start over?

  The crowd was waiting for Mark's answer, so he made something up.

  “I was killed in the middle of the match,” answered Mark, “by some fucking junkie trying to steal my computer to get another meth hit. Probably couldn’t find enough clients in the park to sell his ass to.”

  His friend Arthur looked at him with surprise, and then he laughed, and for a few seconds, he couldn’t stop laughing. Mark smiled, a little worried. There seemed to be some hopelessness being exorcised with those laughs. Then he looked at Johan.

  “How could you not know?” Mark asked. “The police must have investigated. Somebody must have connected the dots! Oh… you’re telling me that fucker managed to hide my body?”

  “Maybe nobody was looking for you?” asked Arthur, controlling his laughter for a moment and faking concern. “Did you have anybody in your life who gave a damn if you lived or died?”

  Mark chuckled, very happy. He remembered that banter; he had missed it so much. So he repeated the last words he had said to Arthur just before he had pulled the trigger and murdered him:

  “Fuck you.”

  “No. Fuck you, Mark!” somebody else shouted, breaking the moment he had been having with his best friend, and getting, again, too many laughs for Mark’s taste.

  It was starting to get under his skin.

  “What the fuck is that? Who is saying this?” he shouted to the crowd.

  Their would-be general, Johan, smiled with some fondness.

  “After you disappeared and made us lose the tournament, we started a little tradition. We said fuck you, Mark, over and over, as a sort of inside joke. You know, somebody would complain that it was raining in his city, and finish by saying, and fuck you, Mark. Or we would congratulate each other at Christmas and add, and fuck you, Mark. Or end a gaming session by saying, good night to everybody… and fuck you, Mark.”

  “Okay…” Mark answered. It was pretty brutal to learn that was how he had been remembered by his online friends. “How long did you keep doing this?”

  Johan smiled.

  “Of course you don’t know… We made that joke until the literal end of the world.”

  Mark blinked, and Johan continued.

  “A year after your death, a supervolcano in the Pacific Ocean erupted. It didn’t kill humanity… at least not immediately. But the earthquakes. The tsunamis. The slow poisoning of the atmosphere… It eventually wiped us out.”

  Johan continued:

  “I still remember our last group chat, with everyone saying: Fuck you, Mark, before logging off.”

  “It was beautiful,” he added, with an honest, wistful smile. “Hating you really brought us together…” he said, putting his hand on Mark’s shoulder.

  Then he seemed to remember what they were doing. He shouted again at the crowd.

  “Wait! We don’t have time for this! In a few minutes, the battle will begin. Any last questions?”

  “How come we’re on the other side of the hill, hidden from the others?” somebody asked.

  “We generals resurrected a few months before you did, and I managed to convince the gods so they would offer us a little extra help, considering the circumstances.”

  Mark tried to imagine the Johan he knew, with his strange mix of shyness and arrogance, and his funny Swedish accent, making a compelling argument to some literal gods.

  “How did you do it?” Mark asked.

  “You know… people skills,” Johan seemed a little offended. “I’m not useless.”

  “So you convinced actual, real gods with your people skills?”

  “Ok. I begged, I kneeled, I groveled, and I cried. I might have peed myself a little. But I won’t confirm it, so you don’t lose all respect for your daring leader. Anyway, I did anything I could so they wouldn’t kill us as soon as we arrived. It really didn’t help much with my reputation among the other generals, by the way. Bunch of assholes. All of them.”

  “Why would you do that?” asked a man from the crowd. “Now everybody will think we are easy pickings!”

  They looked at the man who had said that. Short. Fat. Pale and with acne, in his early twenties. His head had a weird shape. Maybe from spending too much time with headphones pressing the top of his skull. And his eyes expressed an insecure and sensitive soul that seemed veryeasy to hurt.

  “No offense, dude,” answered Arthur, still smiling but having controlled his laughter. Mark could see his friend was already calculating, positioning himself within the group. He had walked a couple of steps up the hill to be better seen by everybody. “And I swear I have never been a bully. But even I feel like giving you a wedgie. We were easy pickings, in any case. And you, Mark? Being killed in a home robbery and letting your buddies down is just cuck behavior. Shame on you.”

  Some people laughed at that. They were all very nervous. And this familiar banter seemed to be helping them keep some modicum of control.

  To Mark, being called a cuck for having been killed in a home robbery by the actual man who had killed him felt more reasonable than whatever the hell was happening at the moment.

  Somebody else repeated the “Fuck you, Mark!”, and it got a few laughs again. Arthur ignored it and continued talking.

  “I actually have another question, Furry Lover.”

  “Don’t call me… Bah. What do you want?”

  Arthur unlatched a frying pan from his hip.

  “How come this dude,” he pointed with his frying pan to the short guy worried about being considered easy pickings, “has a sword and I don’t? I’m literally armed with a frying pan.” He raised it to further prove that he was indeed armed with a frying pan.

  Johan approached him rapidly, his face decomposed with fear.

  “DON’T WAVE THE FRYING PAN AROUND! IT COULD DESTROY US ALL!”

  Arthur threw it to the ground as if it were a snake. And looked at Johan.

  “Really?”

  Johan looked at him, now with a deadpan face.

  “No. And you should listen to me because I know what the fuck is happening, and you don’t know shit. And time is running out.”

  Silence. A chuckle. Another. A few nervous laughs. Even Arthur laughed eventually, although Mark could see his eyes had gone cold.

  “Sure,” Arthur said. “Could you answer my question?”

  Johan looked at him quietly, and some instinct seemed to tell him not to push Arthur any more.

  Hey, maybe he does have some people skills…, thought Mark.

  “Which question?” Johan asked.

  “Why don’t we all have weapons?”

  “Oh, yeah. They gave me some choices on equipment, and I decided to get as few weapons as possible.”

  “Ok? I mean… Is there a reason for that? Or did you decide to beat the game in hardcore mode?”

  “Of course there’s a reason. But there’s no time to explain.”

  Mark heard many people complaining about not having a weapon, about the absurdity of it all.

  Johan continued, raising his voice above the murmuring of the people.

  “Okay, okay. For all of you not fully committed to this, I wasn’t going to say it, but if you’re not happy with this resurrection, you can let those soldiers kill you, and you’ll get to yet another world where you’ll be surrounded by hundreds of beautiful women. All for you. So please walk in that direction.” He pointed to the hill and the many armies getting ready to kill each other.

  “If possible, make us gain some minutes so we can get into the forest.” He pointed to the forest that surrounded the field they were in, a couple of miles away. “Actually, the more minutes you gain for us, the more women you’ll receive.”

  One of the women in the group shouted:

  “What happens to the women of the clan? Don’t we get to go to paradise?”

  “This is your paradise!” shouted back some guy. “Don’t you see you’re surrounded by beautiful men?”

  “The men are on the other side of the hill, loser. Here I only see some scared gamer boys dressed in cosplay.”

  “Is the paradise thing for real?” asked some other guy, who looked at the other side of the hill as if he was actually considering charging the other armies.

  “What do you think, dude?” somebody else asked.

  “What? Don’t act as if you know the rules better than anybody else! It could be real!”

  Johan raised his hands to get everybody’s attention.

  “Wait, I don’t want to have your deaths on my conscience. It was a joke. There’s no other life; at least that I know of. If you die now, you go back to being dead. For all eternity.”

  “How do you know? We resurrected once. Maybe we can do it again!”

  “I actually asked the gods. We got one life. This one. If somebody dies, he’s not coming back. The god I asked actually called me a useless, ungrateful brat for even asking.”

  “Maybe he lied?”

  “And I’m not entertaining this,” answered Johan. “Even if he lied, I want everybody to make a very simple thought experiment. Think about all the great people in history, the ones who changed the world with their deeds, the ones who accomplished things that ended in history books, the ones who truly managed to stand out among all the billions of people who ever lived. And ask yourself this: Will I be chosen among them… Twice?”

  That made people sober up a little. Johan finished up.

  “Okay, okay, let’s say one last fuck you, Mark, for the good old times, and then we focus on surviving this fucking thing.”

  “One, two, three…”

  And every single one of them voiced it together:

  “Fuck you, Mark!”

  Mark rolled his eyes and raised his middle fingers toward them. He was about to respond when he felt some words deep in his mind, in his very soul.

  [Kilser the Traitor Unlocked – Horsemen of the Apocalypse]

  [Level 1 Unlocked]

  [You are hated by everybody. Even your allies. There isn’t a single being in the world who doesn’t curse your name. You embody one of the twelve horsemen of the apocalypse, Kilser the Traitor. Hated even by his peers for his cruelty and lies.]

  [Traitor’s Premonition unlocked]

  [Phantom Presence unlocked]

  “Wait… what?” Mark asked.

  And a metallic gong sounded from the heavens, so powerful that it resonated in the bones of every person in the field. A few seconds later, a powerful wave of wind reached them from the sky, terrifying the horses in the field, throwing some birds to the ground.

  And just like that, the greatest battle in history began. Mark could feel his heart starting to beat faster.

  “I didn’t understand what the plan is!” somebody shouted.

  “I mean…” Johan answered. “Isn’t it obvious?”