Because of their hyper-specialization, Team Ninja struggled with making it out the door. Achmed's gang of loonies changed that. With the addition of the Legion’s more diverse set of abilities, it didn’t take them very long to get out, even if it did have to come with a lot of yelling.

  One of the Legionnaires had an ability called French Canadian Pea Soup which created a thick cloud of yellow fog which they used to cover their escape after sending out another batch of distractionary summons.

  Team Ninja went one way, the Legion the other, and they managed to defeat all the demons by squeezing them in a pincer attack. There were some bumps and scrapes, but the effectiveness of merging the chaos of the Legion's showboating with the Ninjas' deadly assassinations from the shadows meant that the demons literally didn't know what hit them and neither team suffered life-threatening casualties in the process.

  Now out of the dome and without anything attacking them, the alliance was broken. Once again, the two teams went in opposite directions and I sent bees to follow them both. Team Ninja chose to stick together while moving as far away from the dome as they could, then worked together to clear the demons out of four adjacent orb rooms before splitting into groups of four or five Players to occupy the rooms. A smart plan. They even managed to sneak past the wandering demon mobs they encountered along the way.

  The Legion’s plan, which I overheard through the bee that followed them, was to go straight for one of the towers and ascend to the top before splitting into three groups to take its orb rooms as they worked their way down. Even smarter. The way those towers were set up limited access, making them relatively easy to defend. Unfortunately, they had to deal with the mobs they met the old fashioned way, so it took them longer to enact it. They were still fighting one of those demon mobs when the next team arrived in the dome. Team Overgeared.

  Another twenty demons had taken up positions outside the dome fifteen minutes after the Legion had entered the quest, all but confirming my suspicion that it was a pattern. A new group of demonic bad guys would come and take up position outside the dome five minutes before each team arrived.

  Upon opening the door and discovering the demons waiting outside, Overgeared fought with them a bit then closed the door and came up with a different plan inspired by the demon campers. They set up their own ambush inside the dome by positioning themselves around the perimeter of the teleportation node and waited for the next team to arrive.

  This would be interesting.

  While waiting for the next team to enter the quest, Petal arrived. She was flushed and out of breath. “Sorry it took so long to get here. We were searching the Southern forest for signs of the missing herd.”

  After my picnic with Morgan in the Beastfolk lands, I pursued the idea that each dungeon would have its own special creature that could be used as a mount. I’d asked Petal if there were any creatures in the forest that could be ridden. She told me there used to be but that they’d left the forest during the elven diaspora. When she told me what they were I’d immediately given her the mission to find them and bring them home.

  “Any luck?” I said.

  “Not yet,” she gasped. “But I think we’re getting close.”

  “Wait, did you run all the way here?” I said, producing a skin of water from my inventory.

  “Yes, why?”

  “You elves never cease to amaze me.”

  She accepted the compliment and the drink with equal grace. “It is mutual, I assure you. What did you need me for?”

  ”Two things, actually. First…”

  By the time Team Happy arrived at the Citadel I’d finished explaining things and Petal had already departed on her new missions.

  One of the reasons Overgeared had decided on their ambush plan was because they knew Team Happy was next to come. Happy was one of the weaker teams, consistently close to the bottom of the rankings, so Overgeared had figured it would be an easy win. If I was a betting man I would have put my money on Overgeared, and I would have won. Team Happy was totally unprepared for what met them when they teleported in.

  Much to my surprise, Overgeared did not immediately attack. Instead, they gave Happy the chance to surrender and join them. It wasn’t much of a choice, the obvious alternative was getting wiped out before ever getting the chance to get out of the dome. I could tell that Happy’s leader, a bear-like guy named Shamsesh Khan, was about to accept the proposal when one of his team decided to attack first, using a power to make a flying sword appear and launch itself at an Overgeared Player.

  “What is that guy doing?” Lianna said. “They’re gonna get massacred.”

  “Some Players are like that,” I said. “They can’t read the room and know when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to raise the white flag.”

  “And now he’s committed his entire team to the fight. So dumb,” she said.

  Lianna’s prediction proved correct and Overgeared, who’d all been ready and itching for a fight, slaughtered Team Happy, who’d all been taken by surprise not only by Overgeared’s ambush but also by their own teammate’s gung ho stupidity. A few of the Overgeared Players were hurt, and four were killed.

  They would’ve done better against the demons.

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  Not a single member of Team Happy survived. TPK.

  A sudden thought occurred to me “Hmmmm. This could be bad,” I said.

  “How so?” Lianna said.

  “System? Does this quest have a fatality factor?”

  System: Affirmative

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  System: Providing the exact number at this time would be against the rules

  There it was. Instead of simply saying no, System provided more information than it needed to. It had done this before, and every time it was trying to tell me something, giving a hint that a different question might yield a different answer.

  “Okay, System. I get that you can’t say the exact number, but is it lower than the fatality factor of the Light Dungeon?”

  System: Negative

  “Is it higher?”

  System: Negative

  “How is that possible?” Lianna said. “Oh, wait. I get it. It’s the same number.”

  Without saying it, System had just told us the fatality factor of the quest was 80, and no rules had been broken in the process. That meant there was an 80% chance of respawning, so one in five Player deaths would, on average, be death-deaths. We’d just watched almost twenty people get killed, meaning four of them would not be coming back.

  Yeah. This was really bad.

  Team Karma were the next ones due to arrive. While poor Team Happy had hovered near the bottom of the rankings, Karma had always been firmly entrenched in last place. Pumped by their bloody success, Overgeared chose to try the same tactic again.

  Before Karma arrived, a bunch of the creepy plague doctors came to retrieve Team Happy’s corpses. I was glad the game prevented you from looting a dead Player’s body. Allowing Overgeared to strip another team entirely of their gear would have been a big boost for them, and a death knell for the other team.

  The situation after Team Karma appeared began the same but had a much different ending. To my relief, Karma immediately agreed to join Overgeared. I didn’t want to see more Players die, not with a 20% chance they’d never come back, so I was glad I didn’t have to interfere to prevent it.

  “Things are getting a bit crowded in there,” Lianna said. “Think they’ll try to make a break for it?”

  She was right, there wasn’t a lot of space between the affinity circle and the inside wall of the dome, and with over thirty Players in there things were getting crowded. Even the two teams were talking about it because nobody knew what would happen if someone was inside the circle when the next team teleported in, and nobody wanted to risk finding out.

  “Given who’s coming next, I think they’ll wait.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s Team N3m3s1s next.” I went on to explain the curious dynamics at work with Kiki’s crew. She’d worked them into the periphery of the Axis of Evil but they were not core members. I’d also sensed a distinct shift in Kiki’s behavior, at least towards me, which I hoped meant that she was reconsidering her allegiances.

  Sure enough, Overgeared and Karma waited for another twenty minutes inside the dome. Lianna and I didn’t waste the whole time watching. Given the fatality factor revelation, she and I were going to have to take a more hands on approach and she needed more practice.

  I shared superspeed with her and ran her through some drills so she could get used to using her guns while operating in fast forward. I checked in on the Citadel every once in a while.

  Toward the end of the gap before Team N3m3s1s arrived, Team Ninja captured their first orbs. They regrouped and repeated the tactic with the closest four rooms. Achmed’s crew had been delayed by fighting demons along the way, but they’d cleared the three highest rooms in their tower and had around twenty minutes left before the hour of occupation was up and they’d get the orbs.

  It was becoming a familiar scene inside the dome. Team N3m3s1s appeared in the affinity circle and was given the ultimatum to join or die. A little part of me was happy to see Kiki take some time to think about it. The fact that she didn’t choose to join right away told me she really was cooling on the whole Axis of Evil, but she eventually made the smart choice, choosing to live.

  Another difference this time was that as soon as Kiki’s team showed up, the hourglasses over everyone’s heads disappeared. Team Overgeared had been there exactly one hour, and the orb had been claimed. We knew who got the orb because the Overgeared leader gave a whoop when it happened and bragged to everyone that he’d taken the token.

  Sure. Paint a target over your own head. That works.

  It made me wonder how teams would handle token possession. They would have to decide between sharing the tokens amongst them to mitigate the damage if the token holder is taken out, or pooling them with one person and defending the hell out of them.

  Team Ninja had four tokens already, and they’d given them all to their leader, Ai Homochi. I was willing to bet Overgeared would do the same if they ever got more. Leaders like that didn’t tend to trust their underlings with important things.

  By now, there were close to fifty people in the dome, too many to function if they all had to be outside the teleportation circle. They needed to get out. But that shouldn’t be a problem; after all, that many Players ought to be more than enough to take out the demons waiting outside.

  Or so they thought.

  None of the Players inside the dome had stepped foot outside of it yet, so none of them knew how many demons there were out there. They assumed they’d be facing the same mob that Overgeared had fought against, not knowing about the twenty more who’d joined them before each new team arrived. With the twenty from Overgeared, plus the ones who came for Teams Happy, Karma, and N3m3s1s, a significant force of eighty demons were encamped outside. Team Happy wouldn’t be able to help with that, though, what with all of its members being dead and all.

  The three remaining team leaders began talking strategy, eventually deciding on an old tactic called the testudo formation, named after a species of tortoise. The Roman legions had used it to defend against archer attacks, and as the name implies it involves the soldiers locking their shields together to create a protective shell around them.

  It worked well for the Romans because each legionnaire carried a large, rectangular shield that fit together nicely with their comrades’ shields to create a gapless barrier, but not every Player had a shield, and the ones they had were all different sizes and shapes.

  They planned their formation inside the dome and although the barrier they formed together would have many gaps, they chose to go with it. It only needed to get them as far as the inner wall, after which they’d be able to engage in close combat and wouldn’t have to worry about the arrows anymore.

  At least, that was the plan.

  Daniel might think everyone matters, but I don’t share that opinion. Some characters are just there to get in the way and don’t need names.

  Up next: The odds are not in their favor