VR WARS Volume II - Coalition Army

TRUSTED STEED

Group F final match: UAT vs. UCD,

Teutoburg Battle,

9 AD

That f*****g i***t! Vera’s mind continuously insulted her commander while swords and spears flashed in the sunlight as the battle approached its ending stage. She and all the remaining elite riders had been ramming their way through the Irish ranks to open up the way to the rest of the infantry under the combined command of Big Richie, Leonardo, and Katherine. But even after having come this far, casualties on the side of the elite cavalry were appalling.

With a rough estimate of how many more students the UAT could lose before breaking out of the forest, all officers agreed that the best course of action was to leave Angelo and the most heavily wounded students behind. They would perform a delaying action at the rear so that the Irish commander, Shaun, wouldn't hit the main force from behind.

“Even if you fall, get back up and fight! Now, crush them beneath our heels!”

That was how the final charge started, with a shout from Vera to the twenty beatdown riders left in the UAT forces, to attack the incoming Irish horde and punch a hole in their ranks for the infantry to exploit and escape that dreaded forest at last.

Having no cavalry force of their own to intercept the Azores, the Irish leading that final assault simply kept sending student after student in an attempt to stop Vera’s charge with overwhelming numbers.

And it was working, but at a terrible cost for both sides.

“Vera! They got Mariana and Tiago on our left...” came a warning from her childhood friend Rafael. “We’re all that’s left!”

Stupid, reckless plan! Vera couldn’t stop her inner voice from screaming as arrowheads flew past her, and multiple blades came into contact with her stead. “Come on, buddy, just a little more! You’ve got 10% of health left, don’t die on me yet!”

In truth, her words could do nothing for the virtual animated beast, but she liked to think that somehow that made a difference. Having spent most of her childhood handling horses, she knew that the bond between rider and mount was something a horse never forgot. And this time, it went double for her beloved Silk. One of the options she had on her menu, to her surprise, was the wide availability of horses during her equipment selection, but even with all the possibilities, Vera every time wound up with the same brownish stead, which she had already bestowed a name. Even though the virtually generated animal algorithm changed whenever she picked the animal, somehow, she wanted to believe that the trusted horse, in which she had fought so many times and on so many battlefronts, wouldn't let her down when the time came.

“Argh! I’m…hit….good…lu–”

With blood pouring all over his body, both Rafael and his horse were cut down right before Vera’s eyes. However, she had no time to get all revenge moody, so with a small tear breaking from her eyes, she left her friend behind and kept up the suicidal charge right up until the moment a couple of Irish students dealt a final blow to her horse by cutting down one of its legs.

Both rider and horse plummeted into the ground.

The roars of incoming enemies kept Vera’s consciousness from drifting, as she once more got up to make good on her order to keep up fighting and divert as much attention to her as possible so that her fellow students would win and move on to the next stage of the competition.

“Seeeaya! Hooah! Aaaah!”

Even after having most of her health-bar drained, with two arrows locked in her back and so many other injuries, she singlehandedly took out half a dozen enemies before a swing from a bastard sword to the chest made her go down at last.

For the first time in that fake world, she could feel the energy emulating from the ground around her, the warmth of the soil, the itchiness of the grass, and the delightfulness of the setting sun above her head. All of these things had eluded her before. In all the other battlegrounds, she had been killed off so quickly that her mind was teleported off that world almost instantaneously. But now, everything was different.

Living in this place was chaos. Dying was peaceful.

I wonder if real death will be the same. She wondered for a second right before her vision was blocked from the remaining light by a shadow as someone approached to deal her the killing blow. So much for a future in business…The final thought lingered in her head; she was certain that they had failed and their destiny set in stone. Then, as the person in front of her raised his weapon to put her out of her misery, he or she had her head suddenly kicked away by a violent kick.

Vera opened her eyes more clearly and turned around to see her animal partner groaning while he jumped and kicked about anyone who got too close to his fallen partner.

“’ Da hell’s wrong with this horse?! How the f**k can he stand on three legs?!”

“I don’t care! Put him down, now!”

“Spear that fucker!”

With Vera’s body paralyzed, she could only hear the struggle that came to put down her loyal beast.

“…”

The turmoil turned into silence. But Vera’s wish had come true; her trusted stead, in the end, had not failed her.

“Let’s get that b***h now—argh! Moth…ker! Eugh—”

As she was about to drift into sleep, friendly faces came up to her. The infantry had finally caught up with her.

For a second, she confused them with angels coming to take her to paradise. Only to have the sounds of war-drums at a distance snatch her away from her fantasy.

“Vera, are you alive? Hey!” They shouted, but she couldn’t recognize any of them. Her vision was about to sink into the abyss. “…Go….” She managed to let the word out of her throat, then repeated and repeated that very same word that stuck to her mind like glue. She knew that if they stopped for her, they would indeed lose.

“I’m sorry,” came the answer in a tone surrounded by deep sorrow. “Keep pushing people! Plug any holes in the formation and get the wounded in the middle! We’re almost there!” That remarkable radio voice reminded her of Leonardo, but she couldn’t be sure.

Once more, she was left alone. Through by her side were countless others who had been slain, their minds were long gone, and so she decided to move on as well. There was nothing more she could do, so Vera accepted her fate and drifted into sleep. Out in the corner of her vision screen, her health-bar flashed in red, signaling its depletion and the end.

“You are dead.”