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  I climbed to the front of the wagon pulled by one of a dozen horses I’d purchased from another island. They used up a lot of resources, but they came in handy. As the last of my land troops streamed into Cocoa City, I pulled on the reins and headed toward the gates. Smoke rose from multiple points in the city. I hoped we didn’t have to kill them all.

  Riding through the smashed gates, I saw firsthand the amount of damage we’d inflicted. Screams filled the air as I moved the wagon down the wide main street of Charlotte’s city. We needed to catch and kill her. The rest would likely surrender once we did. I wanted to keep as much of her city intact as possible to use it once I took over as their leader.

  “We’ve got trouble on the docks,” Julian said. “They’re launching suicide boats at us.”

  “Protect that artillery,” I said into the wooden block.

  Three women ran by on the left of my wagon, all of them screaming.

  “I’ll send a team of shamans that way now,” Keith said. “These crossbows are great.”

  “Keep me informed, and let me know if anyone spots Charlotte,” I said. “Over and out.”

  I put the block of wood away then turned my attention to the street ahead. Several buildings on both sides of the street burned, flames lapping out, almost hitting my wagon. I saw a group of Charlotte’s warriors throw their weapons down and surrender as my troopers with the magic crossbows and an endless supply of energy bolts surrounded them.

  We’ve got this, I told myself as I neared Charlotte’s main building in the center of her city. I wasn’t sure what she called it, but I hoped to find her hiding out. Killing her would end the war once and for all. That’s all I wanted—a way out of the constant madness. I stopped the wagon and got a few hundred feet away from the four-story brick structure.

  Spider webs covered most of the outside, giving it a decidedly macabre look. I tied up the two horses pulling the wagon then stroked their heads to calm them down. Screams from a street over increased in volume then stopped suddenly. I could hear the giant stones raining down on the docks nearby, but I focused them out too.

  The only thing I wanted to think about was finding and killing Charlotte. Everything else would fall into place once I’d taken her out of the picture. All the other players had total control of their entire island. I wanted the same, and I would have it no matter what it took. Spear in hand, I walked toward the spider web-covered building.

  As I approached, the four surviving adolescent spiders appeared on top of the building. I stopped, dropped my spear, and cast three Fire Lances in their direction. The high-level spell hit and three of the spiders burst into flames. I ran for cover as the fourth cast a spell. Dozens of fiery pellets from the sky. Several of them hit me.

  The Fire Pellets MAUL you for 29 damage.

  You have [248/277] health remaining.

  I turned and followed up with a Lightning Bolt. The electricity arced through the air, hitting the adolescent spider on top of the building while the other three scrambled down, catching some of the webs on the brick to burn brilliantly. In the confusion, I got two more spells off before any of the spiders could respond, killing two of them.

  Once the others hit the ground, they scurried toward me. Were they out of mana so soon? How had I seen them as so scary? I pulled out the special magic crossbow from the Ruins of Monkey Island and fired off a few shots—yellow and blue. The yellow would strip the rest of their mana while the blue bolts would slow the spiders.

  Both shrieked as they got hit. I fired six more shots of red damage bolts into each of them. They both fell to the ground, no longer moving.

  Combat is Over!

  You get 10,000 xp

  You have 842,600 xp

  You need 167,400 xp for level 10 Valkyrie Skyrider.

  “What did you do?” Keith asked.

  I dug the block of wood out of my sack.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Over.”

  “Charlotte’s fleeing!” he exclaimed.

  “Repeat, please?”

  “Charlotte and a few of her men and machines got onto a few boats and they’re leaving the island. I think we won!”

  “Go after her,” I said. “Don’t let her get away. Julian, do you hear me?”

  “We’re trying,” he said. “Those spider ships are fast. I think they’re powered with magic.”

  There’s an idea, I thought, filing it away for later.

  “What about the catapults? Can they hit her?”

  “No,” Julian said. “She’s moving too fast. We can go after her.”

  “Forget it. That’s too dangerous,” I said. “Dock all the ships. I’m heading that way. Good job. Both of you.”

  “I can’t believe we won!” Keith yelled. “We actually won!”

  “Don’t sound too shocked,” I said. “Meet me at the docks. Over and out.”

  I put the block of wood away then headed toward the water. We’d managed to run Charlotte off, but at what cost?

  I stared at all the destruction and devastation as I walked to the docks to talk with Julian and Keith about our next move. On the way, more game notifications popped up. My population nearly doubled, hitting 21,432 adults. Had they already surrendered and come under my control? The weight of responsibility hit me.

  * * * * *

  A few days after the big battle, I sat at a stone and glass table in my backyard, enjoying a pitcher of tea. We’d traded another island for the leaves. Things were looking better with Charlotte out of the picture. She had survived, but she was in hiding. No humans wanted to work with her, not willingly. She would have a hard time coming back.

  I glanced out at the park, enjoying not seeing the backside of a huge statue of myself. The future of my city looked bright, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Thomas the Quest Giver. Had he escaped the penalty level early? Was he another player? Answers eluded me, but I swore to spend more time on figuring them out. The war, finally, was over.

  “Are you back here?” Julian asked.

  I stood and turned, seeing Julian and Keith.

  “Yes, come over, sit down. My chef is making dinner.”

  My two most-trusted generals walked over, each taking a seat. I sat back down, smiling as they both stared at me. They had been crucial in winning the war and uniting the island. I owed them so much, and I planned on making their lives better.

  “Thanks for coming over tonight,” I said.

  “Keith never passes up a free meal,” Julian joked.

  “As long as it’s meat,” Keith replied.

  “We’ll be feasting tonight,” I said. “Don’t worry. I invited you because I want to thank you for your service and ask a favor of one or both of you.”

  “Uh oh,” Julian said. “Here it comes.”

  “You’re making us step down, aren’t you?” Keith asked.

  “No,” I said. “Quite the opposite. I want one or both of you to run the other side of the island and integrate Cocoa City with the rest of Kron. We’re getting too big for me to run everything on my own. I don’t want anything to slip through the cracks.”

  Keith smiled and poured himself a glass of beer from the pitcher on the table.

  “Can I think about it?” Julian asked.

  “Oh? You don’t want to rule?”

  “No, I do, but it’s a big decision,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m worthy.”

  “You’re more than worthy,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” Keith said. “I like building things back up, and Cocoa City needs a lot of rebuilding after what we did to it, combined with Charlotte not taking care of the place.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Julian, you can help if you want. Both of you mean so much to me. You two understand my vision for our island.”

  “Kron Island,” Julian said. “We have a name now that we’re united.”

  I smiled and raised my own glass of beer.

  “To the future,” I said then took a long, refreshing drink.

  Ch
apter 20

  Making Hard Decisions

  Sarah

  A little over a year after Charlotte fled the island and twelve long years since spawning on the strange penalty level, I fell into a new groove. Many of the other players on other islands hated me for one reason or another, but I started trading more with others. This led to an explosion of new products and technologies throughout the level.

  One such example was indoor plumbing. Through various teleportation spells embedded in porcelain toilets, we sent our human waste into a volcano at the center of all the islands on the penalty level of the Tower of Gates. I often wondered if there was only one, but nobody had answers. But back to the plumbing and how I became a legend.

  The problem of sanitation hadn’t been a priority for over a decade, and it showed wherever you went on the island, especially in Cocoa City. Instead of sitting down and taking the problem seriously, I ordered the Shaman Society to team up with engineers to create our toilets that teleported waste away from the city. The people loved me.

  When the volcano backed up, however, they all changed their opinion of me. Even more players openly railed against me, throwing shade whenever possible. Still, I’d managed to bring the population of my island to 29,987 people. Once I hit 30k, I’d gain resources to invest in the next stage of my growth. Unable to find the Quest Giver, I’d thrown myself into growing the stats of my island—my civilization in the game.

  The volcano being capped by crap isolated me which slowed my growth. Some thought it would blow, destroying the islands closest to it. Others, like me, figured it would all work out. I just needed it to be stable for another eight years. When I got off the penalty level, it wouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

  Creating things like the teleporting toilets added some levity to an otherwise boring and eventually pointless exercise. I had begun to understand how the Tower of Gates, with its ability to bend time, could be used to change a person. Was it working on me? I often thought about how I’d changed over the last twelve years.

  “Are you nuts?” Keith asked as he busted into my office at the City Center.

  “Hello to you too,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “You can’t teleport all your waste to my side of the island,” he said.

  I stood. “Your side of the island?”

  “Our side,” Julian said, walking in.

  “You two are teaming up on me now, huh?” I asked.

  “No, but you need to listen to reason,” Keith said. “It’s crappy!”

  Julian groaned. “We said no bad jokes.”

  “It’s not a joke,” Keith insisted. “This is a crappy situation!”

  “Calm down,” I said. “We’ll work it out. I don’t know where else to dump it all. When we tried teleporting it to the ocean, the fishers on several islands, including our own, resisted. Do you have any other ideas?”

  “No, but you can’t teleport over to us,” Julian said in a more reasonable voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “With all the growth, I’ve been under a lot of pressure. You two aren’t making it easy with all your demands.”

  “There’s a lot of work to do in Cocoa City,” Keith said. “You put us in charge.”

  “I know,” I said, sitting back down behind my desk.

  My two sub-leaders sat down across from me, neither looking happy.

  “How about this,” I said. “We teleport it to a central pit in the no-man’s land until we can come up with a way to use the waste.”

  “You should’ve worried about this problem a lot sooner,” Julian said.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head to shame me.

  “You’re right, but I got carried away with the whole teleportation toilets thing. People loved me. After the war with Charlotte ended, the people started to hate me more. I just wanted to please them no matter the consequences. To my credit, it worked for a while.”

  “I still think that volcano full of poo is going to blow one of these days,” Julian said.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I’ll stop sending the waste. A few dozen people working on the problem should solve it quickly.”

  “The sooner the better,” Keith said.

  “Anything else?” I asked. “How is reconstruction going?”

  “Slow, but it’s worth it,” Julian said.

  “Good. If you two need anything else, let me know.”

  “You’re kicking us out already?” Keith asked.

  “No, but I want to assign some people to this problem.”

  “The whole sanitation thing needs reworked,” Julian said.

  “We’ll solve this problem for now then look at it, okay?”

  Both men nodded then turned to leave. I called up the game screen that list all my citizens and their assignments. Adding more citizens after running Charlotte off hadn’t made my life any easier. In fact, in most ways it had become even more difficult. The teleporting toilets were actually low on my list of priorities.

  While I wasn’t investing too much into war technology, I didn’t want to stop developing altogether. Charlotte hadn’t been killed, and she could return at any time. I needed to be ready for when she came back. New technologies would also keep me relevant among all the other islands on the penalty level which was important.

  I sighed then got back to work on figuring out how to best use my resources. Every time I thought I came up with a decent plan, something else happened to throw everything out of balance again. I was getting tired of trying to fix everyone’s problems, but I had nothing else to do. With the Quest Giver still missing, my adventuring died down.

  * * * * *

  A year and two weeks after the toilet debacle, another big decision presented itself to me. This one wasn’t as fun, however. And it was directly related to my decisions during the teleporting toilet incident. Due to never adequately investing in sanitation, disease broke out in one of my poorest neighborhoods.

  I’d tried everything to improve the quality of that section of the city, but it seemed there always had to be one area not doing quite as well as the others. And that led to all sorts of headaches and troubles as I strove to make my island the best it could be, better than all the others around me. I’d been doing okay up to that point.

  Thirteen long years after starting my new life alone on the penalty level, I faced a hard problem, difficult enough to really long for Eric, Josh, or even Bernard. I’d reached out to Eddie on Gecko Isle and some of the other players, but they were all rude, crude, and nasty people. They deserved to be stuck on the penalty level much more than I did.

  Disease in the real world had been pretty much eradicated with the invention of nano-robots that traversed the body, but in the Tower of Gates, sickness still existed in many forms. I wondered what I’d done for the game to send such a tragedy to my city. That reminded me of people asking why God had allowed bad things to happen in the real world.

  As I digested my chilling thought about the gamemaster AI that ran the Tower of Gates, I sat at a desk in the Council Chambers at the City Center. The room, usually full of people and life, was empty, deserted after most of the council members died from what we’d turned Jungle Sickness. How had it started? None of my shamans or science people could tell me.

  Julian and Keith had both survived. Cocoa City had actually escaped most of the deaths. After people started dying, I quarantined the city I ran on the island. The two cities were coming closer together all the time until the disease broke out. I’d heard rumors of my two most powerful citizens breaking off to rule their own side of the island. That couldn’t happen.

  Should I kill off everyone infected with the disease and stop it from spreading by burning that section of the city or if I should roll the dice and hope my shamans and scientists came up with a cure? The question had haunted me for days, and I was no closer to having an answer. I stood and walked over to a window. A few people walked in the distance.

&n
bsp; Maybe I wasn’t cut out for running such a large civilization. Just over thirty thousand people didn’t sound like too many until you were responsible for their daily happiness. I had tried my best over the last thirteen years, but I was close to giving up. What would I do? Could I give control of my island to one of the other players to walk away from it all?

  Over fifteen thousand people had already died. If I killed another thousand, I might get lucky and stop the blasted disease from spreading. The fact I would be killing children made the decision somewhat more difficult. Yes, it was just a game, but the NPCs were so real. They had to feel emotions even if they didn’t know where they came from or why they existed.

  Morale would also drop. I would become more unpopular than I had been at any point during my long rule. That didn’t matter as much to me as the thought of killing children and breaking up multiple families. Why did the game have to throw such difficult decisions at me? I felt older and a bit wiser, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could do what needed to be done.

  Was that the point? The Tower of Gates teaching me a lesson about true leadership, the value of the many over that of the individual? What was the lesson? I sighed then turned back to the empty room. The decision had already been made in the back of my mind, even if I hadn’t given the order. Would my warriors even follow my orders if I asked them to kill citizens?

  I walked to the council chambers, ready to find out. The few people still employed in the administrative department that ran the day to day work of the city sat around each other in the rear of the auditorium. A few of them glanced up as I approached then whispered something. They all stopped talking as I reached them.

  “You’re not going to like this order, but it has to be done to save the rest of the city,” I said, looking each of them in the eyes a few seconds. “Without your support, we’re done.”

  “Are we burning the whole city?” a woman asked.