Jennifer Finch triggered her avatar into a roll to avoid the Orc’s war axe. Well, Orakh, but everyone playing World of Magic Online knew they were actually orcs. Like many others, she had become enthralled with the game when it came out about a year and a half ago and broke the VRMMORPG paradigm. Most games on the market were little more than genre nods: science fiction games where you tried to collect lost relics from ancient races, fantasy games where you slew dragons, and modern action games where you used guns and reflexes to fight against terrorists and government conspiracies. World of Magic somehow combined the three with very recent history. It imagined a world where the invading aliens, ‘elves,’ as the internet had dubbed them, were part of a vanguard trying to enslave Earth as part of their plan to defend against the ‘Orakh’ hordes. Players could use both magic and modern technology to defend the planet and, in later expansions, take the battle to the aliens themselves.

“Eyes front Raptor,” Matt her guild leader cum PR agent’s voice sounded in her ear. “Jester spotted one of those flying wolf things coming in and we’re running low on 20mm ammo, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to keep it from landing.”

“I just have one more Lieutenant and then the Warchief is going to spawn,” she stepped inside the Orakh’s guard, tapping the axe lightly to the side with her free hand before stiffening the fingers on her right hand and driving it into its neck. It staggered backward with a scream, orange blood spraying from the wound. Although her character could use a sword, she left it on her belt. Jennifer was playing as a body refiner, one of the new classes that came with the ‘Twilight’ expansion a couple of months ago. The class specialized in speed, and strength- perfect for up close and personal violence.

The rumors on the internet said that it was based on what was observed from the movements of the ‘elves’ in the Amazon, but Jennifer didn’t really care. It was fun to be this fast and strong, and the people following her stream certainly agreed. Already, the corner of her vision was filled with her followers donating money. True, she could have used a sword on the Orakh Lieutenant, but that wasn’t how she broke into the top 50 streams. It was by pushing herself and completing tasks with panache. No one wanted to see her easily completing mundane quests, instead they paid to see her do things that they didn’t know were possible.

With a roar, the tent flap to the warchief’s command tent flipped to the side and the creature stepped out, the purple glow of a spellshield hanging off of her. Behind Jennifer, she heard the chatter of machine gun fire. For a brief moment, she waited for the telltale ripples of bullets bouncing off of the warchief, but nothing happened. The Orakh picked up a truly grotesque axe, almost five feet long and with the haft made of a spine coated in some sort of resin, and began stomping towards Jennifer.

“The gunners are occupied with the wolf Raptor,” Matt’s voice was tight over the team chat. “I’m coming to assist as soon as possible. Try to keep her occupied until then.”

“Duke, if you don’t hurry there won’t be anything left for you,” Jennifer smiled as she toggled the mana flow to her enhancements, almost doubling her strength and speed. She still didn’t understand why World of Magic Online insisted on making her use the same mana reserves as a caster rather than ‘ki’ or ‘stamina’ the way a lot of its competitors did, but Henry Ibis had always been a bit eccentric. Every time someone in the media asked him a question about the game he would always reply with a ‘no comment’ and an enigmatic smile.

Really, a lot of people had questions about the gameplay balance in World of Magic Online Jennifer mused as she ducked under an axe swing and snapped a roundhouse kick into the warchief’s knee. For a game with ‘Magic’ in the name, the casters were incredibly underpowered. At lower levels, pretty much everyone used firearms as none of the other classes were even close to their damage output. Later on in the endgame, casters and refiners began to rise to prominence. Jennifer had seen it coming from the beginning. The opening campaigns in the Amazon against the elves hinted at where the game was going. Gunners were useful, but the elves moved so fast from tree to tree that they were almost impossible to hit. Even when you managed to hit one, bullets were incredibly ineffective against spellshields.

At later levels, the better gunners had taken the arcane archer advanced class which let them enchant bullets or arrows. It at least let them do real damage to spellshields, but the players who really shined were the refiners or the refiner/caster multiclassers. It seemed obvious, but even with advanced weapons it was almost impossible to fight enemies that moved so fast they blurred. As for the casters, she suspected that with enough time they would be able to do the same things the elves could. Right now their arsenals were limited but most of them had one or two good tricks: being able to throw up a spellshield, shooting a laser from their fingers, or warping an enemy’s armor to restrict their mobility.

Jennifer dropped to her side, her left leg at knee height in front of the towering Orakh while her body torqued and her right leg whipped around and clubbed it in the back of its knees, forcing it to stumble forward and trip over her left leg. That’s what she liked about this game, even though the spellshield would protect the creature from damage, World of Magic rewarded its players for being innovative. That was why the magic system intrigued her. The only real limits were your affinities, the laws of physics, and the amount of mana you had earned. Everything else was just a matter of hard work and slowly figuring out how to shape the primal forces of magic to do what you wanted. The ‘elves’ in Brazil had already proven how potent the magic could be once you got it working properly, it was just a matter of putting in the time to develop an effective combat skill.

Before the Orakh warchief could regain its feet, Jennifer shimmied up to her head and began bashing it into the ground with both hands. The creature reached for her, but Jennifer sprung to the side, once again stiffening her fingers and jabbing them repeatedly into the monster’s prone torso. The clumsy Orakh bellowed at her and tried to stand only for Jennifer to step behind it and kick its knees out once more.

It was probably about time to multiclass into caster, Jennifer mused as she brought her right leg up over her head and slammed it down heel first with all of the magically enhanced speed and strength her body could muster. The purple glow around the Orakh abruptly winked out and it frantically tried to grab her once again. Instead, Jennifer snatched the creature’s hand and brought her elbow down on its wrist, snapping it. Really, as powerful as a refiner was, it was too straightforward of a skillset. One of her rivals, DarkStryke69xX, had already found a way to imbue fire energy into his attacks and his new flashy skillset bumped him up five whole ranks on the top 100 board for streams. At a minimum, Jennifer really wanted one of those spellshields. As strong as her current build was, bullets still hurt like hell and a lucky low level gunner could kill her.

Her foot caught the warchief in the throat and it fell backward, gagging as it tried to draw breath. Instinctively, it reached with both hands towards its throat. She stepped in under its guard and stiffened both of her hands, thrusting them upward into the Orakh’s armpits where its breastplate provided no coverage. The monster’s thick skin barefly provided any resistance as Jennifer’s fingers sunk in, rupturing arteries and tendons. The creature tried to scream through its damaged windpipe but the sound came out as more of a croak. Jennifer stepped back and with a flourish, kicked the crippled monster in the face, knocking it out. Without hesitation she walked over to its unconscious form and snapped its neck triggering a ‘quest complete’ notification.

Matt jogged up next to her and shook his head at her bloodstained form. Behind them both the machinegun fire from the gunners continued to chatter, now interspersed with the staccato boom of Vanguard’s 20mm autocannon.

“You’re late Duke,” Jennifer smiled as she wiped her hands off on the towel affixed to her leather armor for exactly that purpose. “What would you have done if I didn’t get the drop on the warchief? Let me die out here without support?”

“It’s only a mid-tier boss Raptor,” Matt snorted. “Even without weapons I knew it wasn’t much of a challenge for you. Still, if you were actually hesitant you would have waited for me. It only took me about thirty seconds to get to you from the back row and you’d already taken it down. That’s hardly on me.”

He made a motion with one of his hands and Jennifer shrugged.

“Thanks for watching everyone,” she spoke with a bit of forced cheer. She might make her living off of streams and tournaments, but that didn’t mean that she enjoyed actually having to interact with her fans. A lot of them gave her the creeps to be honest. “I think this is the end for today, make sure to like and subscribe. My next play time will be posted on my blog shortly and I hope to see you again at that time.”

She sighed as the feed cut out and then turned back to Matt. He was frowning slightly while looking at the warchief’s corpse as it turned into golden light and loot. Really, nothing there could interest either of them. They had long since graduated to more powerful gear. Still, Matt had a guild to run and that meant ensuring that the newbies were properly equipped until they leveled up enough to give back.

“Good job today,” he nodded at the pile of gold and gold tier runes that had once been the boss. “Not an impressive boss in and of itself, but I’m certain that was the first unarmed takedown recorded. I’ll get you the analytics later, but I expect a bit of a viewership boost from this, especially if we can get it to go viral.”

“Matt,” she turned to him, using his real name now that the stream was done, “that isn’t why you had me stop the stream and we both know it. Spit it out.”

“Fine,” he grimaced slightly. “Do you really want to go forward with this ‘tournament of champions’ thing that Henry Ibis has been crowing about in the media. As much as he keeps talking about how the top 100 players will be selected for the ‘next step’ in the ‘grand plan’ it’s all just a bit creepy to me. The entire thing gives off a vibe that’s somewhere between Willy Wonka and a doomsday cult.”

“You’re not going to get me to back down Matt,” she shook her head. “What if the next step is a deep dive immersion pod? Everyone is constantly whispering that Ibis is working on one, and as much as I like the current VR simulator rigs, there are still so many outside distractions. This could be my chance to take things to the next level. Instead of playing the game, I could actually be in the game. This could be my chance to be part of history Matt.”

“Don’t come crying to me if this thing fries your brain or you get stuck in the game or something,” Matt replied with a snort. “Still, you’re probably right what with all of the press releases that have been coming out. Really what else could ‘you will finally be able to become your player’ and ‘truly become the vanguard’ mean? I still don’t know how we’ll be able to monetize a full immersion VR game unless he builds some sort of streaming software into it, but if he pulls this off Ibis is going to corner the market.”

“Are you sure you’re going to win though?” Matt asked after a moment of silence. “The tournament rules say that everyone will be starting with brand new characters. Something about how the tournament is supposed to be a measure of talent rather than popularity or resources. I know that a lot of people who’ve spent hundreds of thousands on in game currency and items weren’t exactly thrilled to hear that.”

“Why do you think I’ve been practicing unarmed,” Jennifer smiled. “If I have no idea what gear I’ll get, maybe it’s just easier to be ready to win without using any gear? No real way to be disappointed in my drops if I’m not going to use them anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Matt nodded before turning from the dissipated Orakh and looking Jennifer in the eye. “Something about all of this just seems a little morbid to me. Soldiers are dying in Brazil right now fighting off the aliens, and here Ibis has made a game out of it. I get that everyone is playing it right now and that it has the best gameplay and viewership, but it still seems wrong. Like we’re profiting from actual suffering.”

“Look,” Jennifer replied, “you know that I’d be helping if I could. Grandpa says that things are in a bit of a holding pattern right now. People aren’t really dying, they’re more just glowering at each other. I don’t like the idea of aliens setting up shop on Earth as much as anyone, but I really don’t see what I can do to help the situation.”

“I know,” Matt sighed. “It just doesn’t sit right. Everyone just seems content to let the aliens set up shop in Brazil because it would be ‘too much work’ to clean them out. Australia and Russia fought them off already, but now that the conflict has dragged on for nine to ten months, no one wants to push further. Something's got to give.”

Jennifer nodded in agreement.