Lord Lucian Villamar. A handsome man with long gray hair, sharp yellow eyes, and a half-smile that dripped with languid superiority and condescension. He looked impressive. Looked like a major villain, maybe—the kind that killed the protagonist’s parents, then kept showing up again and again to torment him until the final confrontation. He most definitely wasn’t. Call it subversion, call it wasted potential, but the bottom line was that Lord Lucian Villamar was a nobody. Maybe that was where Lucas’ sympathy rested.

  “I'm gonna see this smug bastard’s face in my dreams…” Lucas muttered, kneading his forehead.

  He’d spent at least eight hundred hours of his life dedicated to Lucian. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate—he’d spent it playing War of Four, a turn-based strategy RPG from a small indie studio. He had bought the game on a whim, but the characters were surprisingly good, the story was solid if a bit generic, and it had a lot of small choices that branched paths. The gameplay, though… it was ruthless, yet fair. There was always a cause to the effect—something that could be tweaked to fix the mistake.

  Once Lucas had beaten it once, he replayed it thrice to side with the other three factions. Eventually, he started up with speedruns: trying to beat the game as fast as possible. When he got bored of that, he did challenge runs: trying to beat the game with certain limitations, or under certain conditions. There was nothing quite so satisfying as a grand plan coming together to overcome insurmountable odds.

  Lucas never expected to get so absorbed in this playthrough in particular.

  Lord Lucian Villamar was, frankly, god awful. Even though he was technically an ally, the player couldn’t control him directly. He was intended to be nothing more than the tutorial to explain death to the player. His stats were rock-bottom, his growth rates were abysmal, his elemental affinities were all lackluster with the exception of dark, his proficiency with weapons was non-existent, and on top of all that, he would blindly rush in and attack without any sense of self-preservation. It was like he wanted to die.

  But if the player played their cards right, he could survive. Not just one or two battles, either—he could survive the whole game. Lucas had fought and scratched and clawed his way through hell to make it through War of Four while keeping Lucian alive. He was only intending to do one or two battles after he read about someone discovering some unique dialogue on a forum—but now, a wasted lifetime later, he was at the final boss.

  The consequence of War of Four being a small indie game was that there wasn’t much documentation. He had to find out firsthand that Lucian didn’t just have unique dialogue after the first chapter—Lucian had unique dialogue through the full game. He was a shameless, self-assured spoiled brat with no sense of how useless he was, but Lucas found him endearing all the same. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome.

  Everyone else seemed to hate him, in-game or otherwise. With good reason, granted—Lucian was quite petty and spiteful; the archetypal coddled rich kid. If the player wanted to prevent his death, they had to forego recruiting a lot of allies. A lot of people wanted to kill Lucian to settle old grievances. Still, Lucas just couldn’t bring himself to hate the guy. He was such an awful person it looped around to being funny again.

  “I just need him to survive one attack,” Lucas muttered. He’d gotten so angry he was talking to himself—last time that’d happened, he’d gotten a complaint from his neighbors. “One round.”

  This wasn’t even a hardcore run—he could always reload a save. The problem was that he couldn’t defeat the final boss fast enough to prevent Lucian from taking a hit. The main character—the avatar, who he uncreatively named Lucas—was beefed up with everything imaginable. Every stat-boosting item, every secret perk, every hidden item, had gone to buff the main character so that he could carry Lucian through.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  It just wasn’t enough to make it past this.

  Lucas stared at the ‘end turn’ button, dreading this. He’d already done this fight enough to lose his mind. The end result was always the same. Lucas couldn’t kill the boss in one round. Consequently, the boss did his big AOE attack, which hit everyone. Lucian evaporated.

  “…I need a build with more attack,” Lucas said with dread.

  He hunched over his desk and bumped his forehead against it repeatedly, groaning. He tried to think of some ways he could raise Lucian’s defense, or increase his character’s attack further. But… bupkis. All the consumables, all the temporary buffs he could imagine were activated. His brain was blanking. He had already reloaded some older saves to tweak his stats a little bit before arriving here, but the fact was he couldn’t do it. None of his saves went back far enough to make his build strong enough.

  Lucas took his mouse over to the ‘end turn’ button, and clicked it. The turn switched over to the enemy. The First Emperor displayed his attack’s cutscene—raising an orb of fire up into the air elegantly, before slamming shut his fist and sending fire cascading out across the map. Lucas watched with one last flicker of hope as the fire spread out. It hit his character, dealing 0 damage. When it came to Lucian…

  97

  Lucas blew air out of his mouth and sunk back into his chair. Considering Lucian had 10 health, that was 87 too much damage. Lucian’s portrait appeared on screen, alongside his death quote.

  “No…! How could they possibly… win… without me?” Lucian said, and then faded off the map.

  Lucas tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling in despair. When he saw light, he turned around to look at the window. “It’s morning already? God…”

  Lucas hit Esc, then clicked ‘Return to Title.’ He checked on his saves, scrolling through them. The furthest save back… he’d already loaded that once before, two days ago. He couldn’t fix it.

  Lucian grabbed the small book at his side. He flipped through the pages, looking for something that he could do differently. He always liked to keep handmade notes when he was planning out a build. People always told him just to use a text file, but he liked to have a physical book. It helped that he had solid handwriting—his one talent. Writing stuff down helped him remember all the intricacies of the game.

  After a long while of scanning his notebook…

  I can’t salvage this save, Lucas accepted.

  Lucian went back, then clicked ‘New Game.’ He stopped just before hitting confirm.

  “The hell is wrong with me…?” Lucas asked, alt-tabbing to look at the clock. “Work in 3 hours… idiot… gonna catch hell for this…”

  Lucas stood up from his chair, went and brushed his teeth, and then crawled into his bed. After setting his alarm, he flopped on his back and looked up at the ceiling. He didn’t realize how tired he was until he laid down. In the distance, he could still see his computer. He forgot to turn it off. He couldn’t be bothered, now.

  Think I’m done with Lucian, Lucas thought, staring at the ‘New Game’ confirmation panel. Wasted half a century on that prick. What am I even doing this for? Bragging rights? Game’s got maybe a thousand active players, tops.

  Lucas sighed.

  Lucian’s beyond saving.

  As he came to that conclusion, Lucas started to drift off. Before long his breathing slowed as sleep claimed him. The monitor was still shining brightly in the room, the mouse’s cursor hovering just over the ‘Confirm’ button on starting a new game. After a while… though the mouse hadn’t clicked, the prompt disappeared. A black screen took its place, three words across it.

  Starting new game.