Patior, or rather Patior's dream self, was hiding within a tower on Derse. He'd been gathering more and more information about the territory the longer he;d been there, he wasn't sure why he was gathering information, it was happening almost instinctively, but he was learning quite a lot about the place.
He'd learned how frightened of the 'sleeping heroes' that were locked up in the spires. They referred to them as the Mage, Prince, Thief, Heir, Knight, and Witch. The words meant nothing to him, but he'd learned them. He was more interesting in the Queen.
The Queen of Derse, known as the Black Queen, was a slender carapacian woman with an aura of power around her. Patior had caught sight of her only once, and despite her not knowing he was there, and despite his having no info on her at the time, he'd been immediately terrified of her.
He couldn't explain why, there was just something about the way she carried herself, like she knew for a fact that if she wanted someone dead, they would be. She had a small group of other Dersites that carried out specific orders for her, and currently all four of them were being sent to 'deal with the Prince'.
Patior wasn't sure what this meant, but he knew that she would be alone while they were out. Patior could feel instinctively that this was going to be his best shot to get into her castle. He wasn't sure why he needed to get into her castle, but he could feel that he needed to. Under ordinary circumstances, he wouldn't follow petty instincts without any logic to explain them, but he was willing to make an exception just this once.
Patior opened his eyes. The dreams of Derse were starting to get annoying, but he supposed there was probably some point to them that he'd just not figured out yet. He rolled himself over, looking through the scope he'd set up.
Using strategic alchemization, Patior had essentially creating a small fort for himself. It kept the monsters away from him while he rested, and could be stored in his code modus whenever he wasn't using it.
He'd left Java to her own devices once he'd set the fans at the correct angles for her. He was certain she'd be able to get the biplanes down, though what she would end up doing next, he wasn't sure.
He on the other hand had slowly made his way across her land, slaying any boss monsters from a distance with his rifle. He guessed this game hadn't had any testers. If it had, they'd have likely realized how broken sniper rifles were in it.
After a few minutes of waiting, the boss guarding the gate showed itself. It was a Greater Arachnid, a ten foot spider with metal, hooked legs and an unsettling smile painted on its center. It would likely be an extremely difficult fight.
But Patior wouldn't have to know if it were or not, as his Air Target Burst Sniper killed it in a single shot through its head. Patior took down his fort, gathered the grist, and headed into the gate to leave Java's land.
He appeared on a platform in the branches of a tree. Said tree was in the middle of a swampy forest. He wasn't sure where he was, but after looking around for a few minutes, he found Dustine battling a winged, mouse eared, scorpion tailed golem.
He was legitimately surprised by what he saw. He'd expected to see Dustine trying to avoid combat, trying to befriend or sneak passed enemies. Certainly if Dustine was indeed fighting, he'd at least be on the defensive.
But no, the happy go lucky clown worshipping Dustine was wailing on the golem like it had personally insulted the core of his being, practically roaring with anger as his mace took chunks off of its body. He barely seemed to notice the powerful strikes he was taking, even when they hit hard enough to send him through a tree.
Patior was especially confused by the purpose aura that seemed to be radiating off of him, causing steam to rise from the marshy terrain at his feet. He was in full tilt berserker mode, and it was actually somewhat impressive.
He was tempted to just wait and watch to see how well Dustine was able to fight the golem, but figured it would be a waste of time when he could finish things off himself. He set up his sniper rifle, took aim, and fired at the golem's head.
The stone creature died instantly, though only because of the amount of damage it had taken already from Dustine. Dustine looked confused by this, then saw Patior approaching him from the hill.
"Oh.. uh, hey man," Dustine greeted, trying to catch his breath and switch gears in his mind from the rage state he'd been in to the carefree state of mind he forced himself into when he was talking with others, "Um.. how much of that did you see?"
"Enough to know that you've been holding out on me," Patior said, "Let's go, I'll lag behind and give you cover." He said, heading forward. Dustine hesitated, but nodded and went ahead of Patior, who took aim through his scope as he moved forward slowly.
As they progressed through LoMaW, Patior got to thinking about the game they were playing. Surely the two groups of players, heroes and villains as they'd called themselves, would end up crossing paths physically at some point. The gates would likely start leading to the lands of enemy team members.
And if the objective was to help your team members.. Then surely he would also have to hinder the enemy. Why else would they have named their teams 'heroes' and 'villains'? They were headed towards conflict.
From there, Patior got to thinking about what the end of this game would hold. Considering how the world itself had ended before they'd started playing, then victory would mean getting somewhere else to live.
And if there were two teams, and the two were meant to be pitted against each other.. Then perhaps there was only room enough for one team to take the prize at the end. He couldn't see any other logical reason for the separate teams.
It was a rather morbid thought, and even Patior was stopped by it, but his mind quickly rationalized and he kept going. Surely if they were defeated in this game, killed by someone on the other team, the effects wouldn't be permanent. Sure it was a game with a world on the line, but it was still just a game; code and mechanics, nothing more.
And with these thoughts in mind, Patior started to formulate plans to pick off the heroes team before they could start picking off the villains. If he'd figured this out, surely Aspico couldn't be far behind him.
Java had thanked Patior for the help with the fans. She couldn't have been able to figure out the precise angles to put them at by herself. He'd left before she actually started getting the pilots down, but she was able to handle that part by herself.
She adjusted fans, and helped the pilots land their planes safely one after the other. Once the consorts were no longer trapped in the air, they were more than willing to refuel one of the biplanes and let Java take it.
Patior had explained to Java how there were gates that let players go from one world to another and visit the other players in the session. She smiled as she started up the plane and took off, thoughts of finding Arvis' land in her mind.
Lurabo pulled herself onto another platform, panting heavily. She wasn't sure how long she'd been climbing, but she knew she needed a break. Thankfully there was another platform at about the midpoint of the ladder, and she was able to rest.
Naturally, the platform wasn't completely empty of threats. A small swarm of winged basilisk flew down at her the moment she was in sight. The yellow blood drew her Arcane, waving it through the air and sending a blast of magic energy combined with a pulse of her telekinesis to keep them at bay just long enough for her to draw from her deck.
She ended up drawing two cards instead of just one, and it was rather a moot point considering the first card was the Death card, which caused all the basilisk to drop to the ground, writhing on the verge of death and melting into piles of grist.
But the second card she'd drawn was the High Priestess, a card connected to learning, intuition, impatience, and knowledge in general. It gave Lurabo an instant insight to something she'd not put a modicum of thought into yet.
It showed her the boss. Not the boss of the entire game, but the boss of her planet. It seemed there were actually two final bosses; the one that everyone would fight at the real end of the game, and the one before it, the boss that each player would have to fight to get the opportunity to fight the final boss.
The Denizen.
'Cetus,' Lurabo thought, learning perhaps a bit too early for her own good the name of her planet's Denizen. She saw a silhouette in her mind, a massive serpent, too vast to fully comprehend, with a golden yellow shimmer around its edges, and two searing bright lights coming from the top of it, Cetus' eyes staring down at her.
It was a good thing Lurabo wasn't closer to the edge of the platform when this happened, because if she were, she may very well have fallen off of it when she collapsed from the force of this new information invading her mind.
Thankfully she managed to maintain consciousness. 'Gotta tell the others..' she thought.