Turn 12

  Synexus laid in a field of blue grass feeling the spring breeze wash over him. He had landed on his first sustenance space and instead of a ration of some odd food, a ray of sunshine shot down filling him with energy.

  Each turn took about twenty minutes to finish with the fifty people playing the game. It had mostly been the players walking around. Nothing had come close to threatening even the lowest leveled class chosen yet. Event tiles were pretty common, and they ranged from fighting off a horde of monsters to sitting in a storm until the next turn. If you completed the event successfully, meaning you were still alive, then you got some reward based on your performance. Gift tabs randomly rolled items in the sky until it landed on one to give you. At turn ten, they found out there were rest spaces that required you to sleep for a set amount of time before you could take your next turn. Four players had already been left behind since they rolled ten to twelve hours. Challenge spaces were some kind of contest and seemed much harder than event spaces but were also much rarer. The one class chosen to land on one had failed the challenge because he couldn’t find a key in a sandpit in time.

  Prith was currently the front runner in terms of being the furthest player from the start space. He had great rolls and most of his spaces had been event spaces which he cleared easily. Three of them let him move more spaces while the other two events gave him items.

  Synexus was somewhere in the middle of the pack. He could see a few class chosen in adjacent spaces, but so far, he had been pretty much alone since they started. Of course, there was clearly some extra reward for winning the game and he would try his hardest when he could, however, most of it was up to chance. His view was to go with the breeze.

  Vorin, Zuls, and Shell were all in adjacent tiles about ten spaces behind Synexus. Vorin started strong then some low rolls slowed him down. Zuls skipped her first turn and was travelling with the pathfinders so she didn’t care about moving a lot. Shell took the time to record more music while having a relaxing time. She hadn’t landed on a single event tile yet.

  Kumo actually wanted to win, but she was dead last. Three separate times she had landed on gift tiles that rolled for her to move back spaces. She was quite upset and her spaces looked like hurricanes while she waited. Synexus couldn’t help but laugh at his friend.

  Overall, the floor was a nice break from the last couple. So far that is.

  Turn 28

  Prith parried the massive, spiked club and followed with a quick mana blade cutting through the thick skin of the pale-green ogre. Sickly yellow blood dripped from the multiple wounds lining the torso and arms of the beast. The swordsman hadn’t been hit once.

  Sweat still beaded on his forehead from the midday heat and intense fighting. He had landed on the first space that forced him to stop in the middle of moving after his roll. A boss space that conjured an ogre and with it a warning that all players must defeat the ogre before they could continue the game. If you didn’t beat the ogre in five minutes, then you’d have to wait for another player to catch up before trying again.

  Prith just smiled at the challenge and his battle began. For him, it was easy. The ogre was slow and predictable with the swings of the comically large weapon. The sword master was much too fast and skilled to fall to such a beast and only two minutes later, the ogre disappeared marking his success.

  Boss Battle Successful!

  You may continue by adding the remainder of your previous roll to a new roll.

  Two extra dice awarded.

  Applause could be heard stretching out among the scattered class chosen.

  Turn 42

  All the class chosen had finally passed the boss space. A few of the lower level or non-combat class chosen had to stop and wait, costing them precious time. One woman had gotten one of her arms sheared off from the swing of the ogre. She bandaged it the best she could, but most of her health points had depleted by the time it stopped.

  Synexus passed along a message to her that he could help her get her arm back afterwards if she didn’t land on a heal space.

  The heal spaces were a new addition after the first boss battle. They were far and few between, but they completely topped off all resources and healed any injuries.

  Along with the addition of the heal spaces, a new treasure space was added. Any player could opt out of the treasure event, but if you did then you would lose a turn. If you took part, then you had to pick a numbered chest. It could have something extremely valuable in it, any of the regular gifts, or it could have something negative. One class chosen had already lost all the gifts he had received. Another woman lost five turns.

  Synexus took the chance and was awarded with an artifact that let him switch places with any of the current players. He chose to hang onto it instead of using it. Skala had passed Prith up and he didn’t know the strange class chosen that well. A fear of making enemies stopped a lot of shenanigans from taking place. Belle, the kitsune, did make Kumo skip a turn because her fur had frizzed up after passing through one of Kumo’s rainy spaces and that had caused a laugh to roll down the board.

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  Turn 73

  Progressively harder. That was the only way to describe the game. Before it was taking twenty minutes to go through the whole player list. Now, it was taking two hours. Three days into the game and the players were exhausted.

  Even if you were asleep when it came to your turn, you had to wake up and roll within thirty seconds or you’d be penalized. Before it would take a turn away, but as the game progressed, so did the penalties. Class chosen were getting sick or getting sent back hundreds of spaces making them waste the last three or more turns.

  A bleak turn from the light heartedness.

  No one had died yet, but there were some close calls. Another boss tile had some class chosen fighting for their lives. Ten class chosen had to be clustered together in order to defeat it. Kumo had arrived as the tenth and she unleashed her pent-up rage on the bristled mountain hedgehog that had nearly ended the nine others.

  Dancer took the lead when she rolled double twenties. Earlier, they had found out that if you roll one twenty then the entire roll was doubled. When she rolled two twenties, they figured it would be quadrupled, instead it was ten times the whole roll meaning she moved four hundred spaces in one turn. At the time she had been about a hundred and eighty spaces behind first place putting her in the middle of the pack. She ended up being two hundred and twenty spaces ahead of first place. Along her lengthy trek, she had run into the first split in the path. One side led to the volcanic region of the world, while the other led down into an uneasy looking canyon. She chose the volcanic region.

  That led to a decision amongst all players. Would they stay with the pack and go the same way? Or would they take the canyon path and maybe get ahead?

  Turn 108

  “108 turns?! This is getting ridiculous!”

  Kumo yelled into the sky as she waited for her turn to come around.

  They had been playing for roughly a week and the first death on come a turn one hundred when a milestone event shook things up. Every single player swapped with another. She had been in the canyon on a sustenance spot sleeping when the swap took place. She ended up swapping with Sekra who was balancing on a small platform above a river of lava until his next turn. She woke up just as she fell off the unbalanced platform and her scream rang out as she fell into the lava. Since then, the class chosen had been less than willing to continue the game.

  Dancer had swapped with Synexus putting her at a space prior to the third boss space making her do it again. Her starlight scythe sliced through the magma of the volcano snail making the whole thing splatter against the ground once more. She smiled as it awarded her with two more additional dice to be used when she chose. After the three bosses and having to the third again, she now had eight extra dice saved up. She also received an artifact to double the total of any roll she made.

  Vorin was just on the other side of the volcano snail fight and waved to her as she passed by. He had been in the middle of the pack the whole time, but he didn’t really care. He was more concerned with everyone staying alive and figuring out how to end the game. So far, there was no end in sight.

  Shell was now in the winding canyon path that was quite dark and cold. The members of the party had decided to all go down the same path, but the milestone event had thrown that out of the window. Her songs bounced off the canyon walls to create echoes that ruined them, making her put the ocarina away and focus on working on her water skills.

  Zuls had also been switched to the canyon pass and was sad when the music stopped. She had been feeling lost for the last day because it had taken her away from Pioneer and the pathfinders. Luckily, her bonded had been teleported with her. Siz was quite upset when there wasn’t any more lava rocks to eat.

  The rest of the party had stayed on the volcanic route. Prith had been swapped with Skala who was only two spaces ahead of him. The two class chosen had seen a lot of each other and they had grown a friendly competition. Skala was covered in hard brown chitin but mostly was humanoid. He came from a world where it was dangerous to live on the surface. Instead, they lived in cracks that ran all over the surface and never knew when an earthquake would happen. He was a warrior amongst his people or more accurately a hero after saving his entire village from a great flood. Two days after the celebration, he was abducted by the Coalition when they came to mine minerals from his world.

  Prith enjoyed the friendly competition and found himself trying harder to defeat the bosses quicker or get a better reward on the event spaces. It kept his mind busy as the game dragged on endlessly.

  Turn 150

  Two weeks in and the game completely lost its luster. The players were exhausted beyond words. They had travelled thousands of spaces and done countless events, fights, and anything else the game asked of them.

  No more deaths occurred, but a few more people did lose limbs in the boss battles. More splits in the path forced the class chosen to scatter even more. Zuls and Shell were walking across sand bars between islands. Prith, Skala, and Dancer were making their way across plains that changed weather every ten minutes. Vorin, Synexus, Kumo, and Gene were on a river sitting on boats that took them forward. Belle, Sekra, and a few others had taken the challenge of walking the frozen wasteland to everyone’s surprise.

  Watching boss fights made everyone nervous as the class chosen were often sluggish due to lack of sleep. Rest spaces were more than welcomed but had grown increasingly rare. One lady hadn’t landed on a sustenance square in three days, and she was worried she’d die of malnourishment.

  What seemed like an easy floor and was masked as a fun game, was turning out to be an endless living nightmare.

  Synexus was initially worried about Gene and the boss squares until he saw the owl simply fly too high for the boss to reach and wait out the timer. It, of course, slowed Gene down, but it was only way for the owl to make progress. That’s why he was surprised to see the owl fly by while the magical raft followed beneath.

  So far, the river path wasn’t a bad choice. The raft did most of the work in between turns. The fighting for the events was a little rough and most of the fights were against strange fish trying to knock the raft over. Still, the other regions looked much more chaotic. Synexus laid back on his raft and looked at the sky waiting for his turn to come along. When it did, he rolled and drifted past Gene and Vorin waving to both. He landed on a treasure square and fifty magical numbered chests appeared in the water around him. After some deliberation, he chose chest thirty-six, and the familiar chime of a great treasure rang out over the water. He watched as the notification of what he received shot into the air.

  Teleportation Artifact-Chose any kind of square and teleport to the next available.

  That was a new treasure that no one had seen. When he read the description, he got an idea.

  “End space!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Final space!”

  Again, nothing happened. He put his hand to his chin as he churned through the possible names in his head.

  “Finish space!”

  Space warped and a portal opened up that instantly sucked him through.