The Doll
In Legacy of Raid, a field boss was a different beast from the field bosses of other RPGs.
It was exactly what the name said: a boss that lived out in the field, and one strong enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with a proper raid boss. The difference was that there was no limit on numbers. A raid ran, as a rule, with twenty players. A field boss let everyone nearby walk straight into its zone.
What made it special was the level-locked zone. No matter how high you were, the moment you stepped inside, you were dragged down to the field boss's level. All the levels in the world would not let you kill one in a single blow.
The streamer Kang Hangil had come down from the high-level bracket into the low-level zones for exactly that: the field boss Orc Chieftain. It was content, of course. He meant to broadcast a clear with a mere five players. Of every party that had ever taken the Orc Chieftain, the smallest had been six, and he was on his way to the chieftain's ground to break that record.
"I put our chances at ninety-nine percent."
"That's right. We are going to parry."
Parry. You met an incoming attack with a weapon or a shield, timed so the blow was knocked aside. It cost far less stamina than simply blocking, and if the timing was perfect, there was no recovery lag at all. A clean, excellent answer.
The problem was what happened when it failed. Miss a parry and you ate the hit raw, with your body. Fine, if you were farming ordinary monsters. In a raid the damage was the kind that killed you outright, and the situation went bad in a hurry. Worse, a poorly timed parry left you in knockback or recovery, unable to act, so the next attack landed with nothing between you and it. In a raid, a failed parry was death.
That was why players usually parried in a crowd, several at once, to cut the recovery down, or else left it to a sturdy tank and let a shield simply wall the hit off. Even the most notorious veterans in Legacy of Raid barely used parries in raids unless the pattern was openly labeled this one is a parry. Otherwise it was something you did to trash mobs, and nowhere else.
"Oh, please. Who do you think I am? And this time we have Demok with us."
"Whoooaaa!!!"
They had gone some way across the Orc Chieftain's field when a howl rolled over the ground, the sound that announced the fight had already started.
"Huh? It seems another team is already there?"
One of the bosses new players of Legacy of Raid insisted on taking lightly was the field boss. In other games the things barely mattered. Here, a field boss fought with a small group was close to endgame: a raid that tested your body, your hands, the physical fact of how you moved. A newbie could not clear it. Level scaling meant the conditions to win were technically there, but only with a perfect raid, a perfect party, a perfect composition.
"Shall we go take a look? If it's a newbie, we ought to save them right away."
The moment they reached the Orc Chieftain, what they saw was a young girl, barely old enough to look like a middle schooler, already charging in.
"Ah!"
Everyone had already seen the future: the Orc Chieftain's enormous axe, and the little girl's body coming apart under it. The future that arrived was not that one.
Clang!!!
A sound they all knew. The chieftain's axe kicked upward, and the girl was thrown back hard.
"A parry...?"
It had not been a perfect parry, but the game had judged it a parry all the same. A single player taking a parry judgment on a boss attack was absurd on its face.
Above the girl's head floated a level and a name. Level 5. Lee Arang. A level that had no business standing in front of that boss, and a nickname that looked like someone's real name, and she had turned the boss's attack aside with a parry. A blow that should have killed her in one hit had left her alive with half her health still in her.
If a moment like that had landed in a raid, the party would have roared and covered her at once. The girl was alone.
Hangil started toward her to help, and in that same instant she slipped the Orc Chieftain's next attack by a hair.
The girl was fighting the Orc Chieftain one on one. Evenly. It was the kind of fight that forgave nothing, and she gave it nothing: not an inch of error as she slipped every attack and packed her damage into the gaps. A perfect read of startup and recovery. Movement as if she could see the blows coming, and not a single damage window missed before she put hurt in.
"Is that a person?"
Even he, trying to parry ordinary monsters, landed it barely half the time. Against a boss he would have called ten percent generous. The girl had not failed once.
And then—
Clang!
A bright, clean note. A Perfect Parry. The knockback should have locked her, and instead she was already charging, no recovery at all, and after a few blows she took the Orc Chieftain's head clean off.
The girl who had brought the Orc Chieftain down alone bounced on the spot, giddy as any little girl, and then logged out and vanished.
"Ah—"
The moment the Orc Chieftain fell, Anna called for me.
I hit the logout button and the world in front of my eyes drowned in pitch black. My whole body felt as if it were sinking into deep water, and then a bright light struck my eyes. The hospital ceiling I had seen before.
"A-Arang..."
A familiar voice beside me. I turned my head, and there were Arang's parents, worry and overwhelmed joy fighting over their faces.
"Oh— it's Mommy. Ah, do you recognize me?"
"...Yes."
The answer came out in a voice that still didn't know what to do with Arang's feelings, flat as a doll being made to speak. Her mother pulled me into her arms and broke down sobbing.
"Ah... thank you. Thank you. Thank you..."
Her father stood behind her and only cried, staring at me. They were my parents now. The parents of the girl I had become. They had been worn down over Arang for a very long time. If they came, even only now and then, I ought to at least come out and talk to them.
Once she had calmed a little, her mother stroked my hair with careful fingers.
"Arang. Do you like the game you played this time?"
She thought well of Legacy of Raid, and I could see why. As far as she knew, Arang had lived for years with no feeling in her at all, and had come back to life the moment she started playing. They couldn't have been that set against games, either. Otherwise they would never have spent a fortune to bring in this deathbed connector.
I nodded.
"Really? Thank goodness. Mommy will put some spending money on your connector. You can buy anything you want. All right?"
I nodded.
Mom was the best.
"In return, would it be all right if you stayed with your family today?"
I nodded.
"...Yes."
I thought saying yes meant we were at least going home. They told me I couldn't leave this room. The illness might turn at any moment, and no one could say when or how.
I didn't know why, but I knew my condition was healthy to the point of perfect, and none of them knew it. The medicine of this future was extraordinary. My body put out no waste, and the deathbed connector could feed me nutrients as well, so in theory I was well enough to game for twenty-four hours straight. And they had no idea.
So I stayed under the family's hands while all sorts of words passed back and forth, and somewhere in the middle of it I began, just a little, to understand why Arang had died.
Having no arms and no legs was this inconvenient. I was feeling it for the first time. I hadn't known, because in Legacy of Raid I never stopped moving. They passed me from my parents' arms into Anna's and back again, and I was held the whole time like a doll. All I could do was turn my head and squirm.
At this rate I'm not a person. I'm a doll.
After an hour or so of reality like that, Arang's emotions began to surge. Even when I didn't want them to, my feelings seemed to drag me down into deep water. That same sensation of leaving the connector and coming up into the real world grew stronger and stronger. The senses around me started to thin, and my body stopped answering my will. It felt like being shut inside a doll.