Lightning quick, Hammer flicks his tail and bats the grenade directly back at Wind, causing it to detonate in front of her face, a move no dragon’s ever pulled before. Stunned, she falls to her knees, hands blindly groping through the air. Ignoring Slend’s taunts, the dragon swipes Wind with an open palm, slamming her furred body into the cavern wall in a cloud of dust and flying rocks, then grinds its taloned hand in a circular motion against the wall. A bloodied pile of meat slowly slides to the floor, the once agile fox now roadkill.
“Fucker! That hurt! Fucking fuck, I hate fighting devs. Watch the tail, Ash.” I hurdle the whipping tail once again, Wind’s high-pitched voice sounding in my head like the voice of a disembodied phantom. Which, essentially, is what she now is.
Dying during an encounter ghosts a player for as long as the encounter persists—able to relay information to teammates, but unable to physically interact with anything. Some games fade the screen to black and mute communications, so the dead player can’t call anything out, but in Infinite Game, the devs figure if you lose somebody in endgame, you’re going to need all the help you can get.
I dodge a crushing stomp from one of the dragon’s back legs and flick my blade out, aiming for the tendon controlling its foot. Metal sinks in deep, but not enough to fully sever the iron-like tissue. It’s enough to injure that foot, though, and Hammer roars in fury. I spend the next several seconds weaving between claws and tail whips, contorting my body through impossible poses—katas learned from Mom long ago, practiced religiously every day, like dryburb prayer sessions. Hammer’s head darts down away from me, adder-quick, and magma erupts in the background. More runes appear, the music increasing in volume.
“Slend, try and get it off me!”
“Can’t, boss. Got et. Fucker’s fast.”
“…Shit. What’s Kiro doing?” I backflip over the tail, slicing through scales and nerves in a blurring strike. The last third goes limp, but I’m not close enough to get the upper nerve clusters that control the whole length of the tail. Hammer roars and spins again, trying to impale me with concentrated lances of flame from the dragon’s mouth. I quickly dodge, bobbing and weaving across the rocky floor, molten puddles congealing behind me.
“…I’m dead too.” Kiro’s voice is glum. “Was trying to shield Slend, and I forgot to watch the floor. Magma eruption.”
“Fucking newbies,” Wind says, exasperated. “Well, Ash, looks like you get to one vee one a dragon. Something that’s literally impossible. Have fun with that. Oh, and there’s only about five million people watching now, so you’re doubly fucked. Hammer’s gonna get paid.”
“Great,” I groan.
“Why don’t you just bail, Ash?” Kiro asks softly. “You’ll only drop a couple places. It’s a lot safer than trying to take a dev. Besides, there’s no way you can beat a dragon by yourself.”
“The hell I’m running from a fight, Kiro, and the hell I’m letting Mikelas’s group of boardshits win this season,” I snarl. “Not gonna happen. Don’t distract me.”
A petulant sigh is his only response.
In front of me, Hammer rears up, planning to flatten me beneath the dragon’s bulk, and I sprint forward, aiming between its massive hind legs. His shadow starts descending, and I push my muscles even harder, hoping I don’t tear a hamstring. Luckily, my body accedes to my demands, and I dart out from beneath the crushing weight, blade flickering from side to side. This time, I get both tendons cleanly, crippling Hammer’s movement. The dragon’s torso comes crashing down, causing the ground to shake.
Without breaking stride, I plant my sword in the side of Hammer’s tail and use it to swing myself on top of his armored hindquarters, searching for the weak juncture between plates. A quick thrust and twist, and the rest of the tail goes limp. Hammer bellows, shaking his body, throwing me off, but I convert my fall into a dive and spring upright, spinning to face the angry beast rolling around on the floor. Even more runes pop into existence, the walls now almost completely covered with curving glyphs. The music increases in intensity.
“Just another encounter,” I whisper, heart thudding in my chest in time with the mantra. “Just another encounter.”
Wind lets out a low whistle. “Holy shit, Ash. Not only did you outrun a bodyslam, you turned it into a tail crit. You should’ve been dead, there.”
“‘Aten’t dead yet,’” I mutter, thinking of one of my few heroines. “What’s it look like damage-wise?”
“Closer to even,” Wind responds, her voice rising with excitement. “Mobility’s gone, bleeding heavy from the wings. Flame breath’s still in play, but you should be able to dodge that.” Her voice goes even higher. “No one’s ever soloed a dragon before. Especially not one controlled by a dev. The viewrate is skyrocketing. You pull this off, and we’re rich. Fuck, we’re already rich from the split, even if you wipe.”
“It’s not over,” I say, spinning my blade absentmindedly. “That was the easy part. Hammer wants to get paid too. He’s gonna back himself into the exit and make me come to him. It’s what I would do.”
As I say the words, Hammer does exactly that, pushing the wounded rear of the dragon into a notch in the cavern walls, talons digging deep furrows in the cooled lava floor. He props his head on his front legs, like a dog resting on a carpet, and stares at me. Waiting. A grin snakes across the crocodile face, revealing long yellow teeth stained with blood, and a pointed tongue licks scaly lips.
“Feeling lonely, Ashura?” The dragon’s voice sounds like crumbling bone, Hammer relishing the moment, playing to the crowd. “It’s only half your progression if you give up now. You’ll still be top three, top five at worst. Save yourself the humiliation of a full wipe. It’s the smart thing to do.”
“And let you knock us out of first? Go back to Candyland, Hammer. That’s more your pace.”
I know how to play to the crowd too. More glyphs burn into existence, news of the encounter viraling across the ’Net like a plague, socials close to crashing under the commentary.
“Besides, when I kill you, we’ll clinch the ladder for this season. Dragons are worth triple, not even counting the dev bonus.”
“When you kill me, Ashura?”
Hammer laughs, long and low. My mind races, trying to think of a viable strategy against a monster twenty times my size. I have a vortex grenade in my inventory, but that’ll kill me just as quickly as Hammer in an enclosed space like this, and we don’t get the win if the entire party’s dead. My rifle’s too far away to reach cleanly, and Hammer will be expecting that. I still have my blade, trusty tool for so long, but—
“Ash! Look out!”
“Don’t distract her, newbie!”
Kiro’s voice is shrill in my head, Wind’s admonition slightly less piercing, but I’m already moving, deeply ingrained instincts slamming my body into motion.
Smoldering orange-yellow cracks appear beneath the back third of the room, centered where I was just standing. Magma vents shriek and hiss, belching more hot rock into the air, and I leap forward, desperately trying to clear the edge of the fractured lines. My feet barely make it out of the danger zone before a full third of the room explodes into lava, massive geysers shooting from the floor. Heat sears my back—nothing damaging, but uncomfortable all the same.
Diving forward, I tumble once, then push off the ground with my right foot and arm, cartwheeling to the left. A taloned hand slams into the space I just vacated, cratering the rock again and again, always a bare instant behind. I manage to get a couple attacks in on Hammer’s paws, but the shallow cuts don’t do much more than irritate him. Finally, I create enough room to back out of the threat space directly in front of the dragon.