“I know it’s absurdly dangerous, but I need you to go back to the battlefield, avoiding all the armies of the forest, and get my fucking book back. Without it, we have no edge. No way to survive this thing…”

  They were in the command tent. Johan’s tent. From the outside, the tent looked like it could fit about four people, a little cramped. But once inside, the tent was big enough for about ten people to relax without worries. There were couches and a few small beds. And in the middle of the space, there was a small pit that you had to walk down two steps to reach.

  The voices outside were greatly muffled. It was so silent that Mark could have heard somebody whisper a few feet away.

  It was incredible. That tent was a miracle. It was magic. It was overwhelming.

  It hadn’t stopped Arthur for more than two seconds. That’s how much it took him to look at the interior of the tent, and then, without hesitation, walk the two steps down to the pit, towards Johan.

  “So will you do it?”, asked Johan, still standing behind the big, rectangular wooden table at the middle of the pit. “Will you go back to the battlefield and recover the book?”

  Mark was about to tell him to “fuck off” again when Arthur answered.

  “Sure. We’ll do it.”

  Johan was surprised. He seemed to have been ready to give a long, convincing speech. When he realized Arthur wasn’t kidding, he let out a sigh and let himself fall down in the chair behind the table. The two candles on the table illuminated the interior of the tent, accentuating the dark bags under his eyes. He seemed exhausted.

  “Really, just like that?”

  “You’re right,” Arthur said, standing in front of Johan. “We’re all dead without it. So getting the book back is something that has to be done. And we’re the best people to do it…” Arthur shrugged. “So let’s do it.”

  “My God… I’m starting to really like you guys…”

  “But I want answers. Right now.”

  Johan stood a little straighter after that. He eyed them for a couple of seconds, trying to gauge them.

  “Oh… of course. It’s only fair. What questions do you have?”

  “We received a message directly from one of Julius Caesar’s centurions. Apparently, he wants to speak with you. He said that we don’t have to be enemies.”

  Johan smiled slightly.

  “He said that, didn’t he?”

  “Why does Julius Caesar want to speak with you?”

  “He suspects I fucked him. Which I totally did. I fucked Julius Caesar. So you should avoid him at all costs—same with Genghis Khan, by the way. Although I probably don’t need to tell you that.”

  “Why? What did you do? What happened before everybody arrived at that battlefield?”

  Johan seemed to doubt telling them about that. And Arthur started talking before he could say anything.

  “Look, I understand your position here,” he made a gesture encompassing the tent and the camp full of Gamers, “You were never the general of all these people. They don’t owe you shit. So the only reason they’re following you is because they assume you know more about what’s going on than them. And you think you have to keep information to yourself until you have cemented your position as a leader.”

  Johan started to open his mouth, and Arthur made a gesture indicating that he didn’t have to bother. “Don’t try to deny it. I see you starting to create a power structure. I saw how you gave that…”, he snapped his fingers a couple times and looked back at Mark. “What’s the name of that kid, Mark?”

  “Eric,” Mark answered. He had been caught off guard by Arthur’s tirade, but he had already caught on.

  I guess we’re doing it right now…

  “Yes, that one,” Arthur looked back at Johan. “Eric and those other idiots? What you did there was smart. Most of them didn’t have any swords, and now they do, so I assume you kept a little stash of weapons in your bag of holding to give to people you considered loyal? Smart. Very smart. You’re making great decisions, Furry Lover! It must have taken some time to think it all through!”

  Johan looked at Arthur, his mouth slightly agape. Arthur sat down in a chair in front of Johan’s table, and he took down the sword from his hip, keeping it in the sheath, and let it rest against the table. The gesture was done in a relaxed manner, as if he just wanted to sit more comfortably, without meaning anything by it.

  In the silence of the tent, the sword made an ominous sound when it clicked against the wooden table.

  Johan stared at the weapon, probably remembering that not that long ago it had been covered in the blood of their enemies.

  Then Arthur continued talking:

  “By the way, you made a good choice. Eric seems like a nice enough guy, a little overexcited, but not the ambitious sort, so he won’t be having any thoughts of taking your power. He’ll follow you. The others will follow you. And if you have enough guys with weapons, nobody will dare to try to take your position. You’re on your way to stabilizing your power. And that’s good! That’s great! But you need to trust somebody…”

  Johan blinked a few times, taking him a little to realize Arthur had finished talking.

  “And I should trust you? You seem to have thought more about taking my fucking position than I have!”

  Arthur raised his hands innocently, smiling.

  “You can trust me. And I’ll give you a great reason for it…”

  Johan looked at Mark as if looking for reassurance. Mark, standing on a side of the tent, shrugged. Johan gestured to Arthur, asking him to continue:

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  “Please enlighten me. Why the fuck can I trust you?”

  Arthur smiled in that way Mark had always hated. As if he was holding every card. He even reclined back on the chair, relaxing in the superiority of his position.

  “Can a general take a position in another general’s army? Is there some way for you to step down from your position? Or is this a Battle Royale in the strictest sense, where there can only be one?”

  Johan didn’t answer, but he did turn pale.

  “Just what we thought,” Arthur said. “This might be a fight to the death. Just like you said. But it is not our deaths,” he pointed to himself, Mark and Tobias. Then he pointed to Johan, “This is a fight to your death. Your soldiers don’t matter, right? As soon as you’re dead, no other general will give a fuck about us. Maybe they’ll try to recruit us, but kill us? Where is the benefit of that?”

  Arthur leaned forward, staring.

  “So, Furry Lover, please tell me why… even if it was possible to take your position, why would I fucking want to take it? You have a target on your head, and millions of highly trained soldiers aiming for it. I can just walk away into the sunset, and explore this beautiful world we are in. Or I could go out there right now and tell everybody that we’ll be safe as soon as we kill you.”

  “You think they will doubt for a moment? They don’t care about you. They will not care about your begging and crying and peeing yourself. The gods seemed to have been merciful. Those scared boys and girls out there? They will not be. Maybe they’ll not have the stomach to kill you personally, maybe they’ll just exile you out of this camp and let you wander around the forest, hoping whoever finds you will give you a fast death, and not decide to make it a long one. You’re alone, Furry Lover. And nobody gives a shit if you live or die…”

  Arthur loved luxuriating in his power. Another one of his enchanting traits. Johan was getting more and more pale. And he seemed to be deflating in front of their eyes, as if he could collapse on the table.

  And Arthur, of course, continued:

  “I’m not much of a history buff, but I’m pretty sure some of the assholes out there come from times when people were extremely imaginative with the way they killed their enemies. The Romans crucified, right? I don’t quite remember what the Mongols did… But I’m sure it was delightful… What do you think?” he said, as if asking Johan. “Was it burning their enemies alive? Dismemberment? Exposure to the elements?” He looked up, a hand on his chin, as if reflecting about it. “Maybe they let insects eat you alive slowly? Or am I thinking about Indiana Jones, there?”

  Johan’s hands were starting to shake. He was about to break into tears.

  Mark remembered the good times he had enjoyed with Johan. The personal stuff they had shared while playing video games. The laughs. Especially the laughs. There have been many days when playing video games with him was the best part of Mark’s day. And then he remembered awakening in this strange world, and regretting the decisions he had made in the past. The path he had taken. And he said:

  “Cut this shit out, Arthur. Focus on what we want.”

  Mark wasn’t surprised by anything Arthur had said to this point. They had brainstormed it all while walking. It was fundamental to understand their position, the rules of the strange game they had been thrust into.

  They had other plans in case their assumptions about the nature of the game had been wrong. They were willing to lie about the offer Julius Caesar had made; to take power in the “Gamer Battalion”, they were even willing to make a coup d’état, arguing that Johan wasn’t good enough to lead them…

  To be honest, they were willing to do anything to make sure they knew what was going on.

  Arthur raised his hands a little, innocently.

  “Sorry, I got carried away. My friend here...” he made a vague gesture towards Mark. “He seems to really like you. He said you’re great, Furry Lover. A tactical genius. And I wasn’t lying when I said that I like what you have done until now. So please, prove to us you have something. Tell us your plans: Prove to us we’ll fucking survive if we follow you. And we will follow.”

  Johan looked at them in silence for almost a minute, deciding what to do. And eventually, he said:

  “What do you want to know?”

  Mark started with an easy one:

  “How the fuck are we all standing here?”

  Johan smiled a little, looking at the unnaturally big tent.

  “I have to say, I expected to put you all a little bit more on the back foot with this. This place is my command tent. I paid a decent chunk for it. But I hope it will be useful in the future. From what I understand, it works the same as the holding bags. It’s magical, and it can hold a bigger space than it should.”

  Mark made another easy question. That was the plan. First, Arthur would terrify him, and then Mark, his old friend, would ask some easy questions to make him feel more relaxed. To make sure he wasn’t lying.

  “Why are you here?” Mark asked. “For real, how does it make any sense that you’re in the same group, or in the same sentence, with somebody like Alexander the Great?”

  Johan smiled, and answered as if repeating something that had been told to him.

  “The generals were experts on warfare who had gained much fame and recognition during their lifetimes. Preferably worldwide acclaim. But national fame was enough.”

  “You were the leader of a fucking online clan,” Mark answered. And in the eyes of Johan, he felt the beginning of a joke, as if the Swedish man was starting to set up a punchline. “A small one, too. How could you qualify? What kind of fucking fame could you have gained?”

  Johan smiled and pointed at Mark.

  “It was your fault, Mark.”

  “What?”

  “We’re all here because of you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mark looked at Arthur, who seemed as confused as he was. Tobias, on the other hand, seemed to have understood.

  Johan continued talking:

  “Well, I guess we also owe this opportunity to the guy who killed you,” he said. “You know, your disappearance made us lose the finals. And I didn’t take it very well… I made a Discord call with the rest of the clan. For some fucking reason I decided to turn my camera on, and went on a long, rambling tirade. In my deranged speech I said fuck you, Mark many, many times.

  Johan smiled bitterly at the memory.

  “Do you guys remember the video of the angry German boy? It’s from the first years of the Internet.”

  Mark started to connect some of the pieces.

  “You became a meme?”

  “I became a meme,” Johan confirmed, solemnly. “First a small one. Limited to the Counter Strike community. I couldn’t play anywhere without people shouting fuck you, Mark every two seconds. But at least it was contained to my gaming; it didn’t affect my real life. Then the fucking supervolcano erupted. And guess the fucking first name of the expert the government chose to tell us that we were all dead?“

  Johan smiled sadly and nodded.

  “Yes. His fucking name was Mark. And my video took off like wildfire. Somebody made a montage where our videos appeared side by side, and Mark the expert announced the end of the world, explaining every detail, and I got angrier and angrier, shouting fuck you, Mark, fuck you, Mark over and over while I punched the table and ripped my shirt away, and eventually started crying from the frustration…

  Mark made a real effort to block any image from forming in his mind.

  “International fame… You said generals needed international fame to qualify...” Mark said, and he would have loved to have a chair to sit on. “You are here…We are here… because you became a fucking meme.”

  “A massive one. Worldwide meme. Maybe the biggest one in history. You could find it anywhere. Hopefully, I’ll discover the fucker who leaked the video; it made my life a nightmare. Especially while I stayed in Stockholm. I couldn’t leave my apartment without people mocking me. Eventually, I went to my parents’ country house to spend my last months with them and I forgot about all that bullshit. I’ll tell you something, though… If I find out who leaked the video, I’ll fucking behead him. You can take my word on that.”

  “No, you won’t,” Mark said.

  Johan smiled.

  “No, I won’t.”

  Arthur looked back at Mark, asking him if it was the time. Mark, a little shaken by the answers already received, nodded. So Arthur turned around to look at Johan and made the next question.

  And it was the first one that truly mattered:

  “What happened before we all resurrected? You have talked about a meeting of the generals… We want to know what actually happened.”

  Johan had relaxed a little. He passed his hand through his hair. He still looked tired, but he seemed more in control. He straightened up and looked at the men in front of him.

  “So we arrive at the interesting stuff… Months before you resurrected, each general appeared in the temple of his god. And we were told about the Apocalypse. Specifically, we were told that we are the Apocalypse.”