Chapter 10: A Splendid Defense

Morrigan watched from a safe distance, with a crow perched on her fair-skinned shoulder, as her soldiers bravely defended their castle from a sudden raid by the Elven-Dwarves alliance.

“Well, well. A sudden raid at a time I’m supposed to be resting. What a pleasant surprise.”

The attractive goddess looks like an eighteen-year-old girl with fair skin and a flawless face  wearing an elegant black body-hugging dress that showed off her sexy body said sarcastically with a smirk plastered upon her lips.

“Let’s ramp things up a bit. Brave of those elves and dwarves to come without knocking. Stay here and defend this place. This shouldn’t fall to the invaders.”

She said to her new male and handsome assistant, who wore a black robe with a hood that normally covered his handsome yet punk and gothic face, along with his punk hairstyle.

The crow perched on her shoulder flew outside the window.

Its size grew to that of a dragon, and Morrigan jumped right on its back.

The crow hovered right above a massive army of invaders marching upon the hilly field right in front of the castle.

She waited for a few minutes until the army almost reached the bridge, where most of the fighting went on.

When the reinforcement of the invaders arrived at the bridge, Morrigan started to chant.

 “Oh, ancient soldier spirits of the dead, make your bodies arise from eternal slumber. Protect your ancestral land, and drive these invaders out.”

The ground at the back of the invaders started to crumble, and out came valiant soldiers of the past who fell in battle.

An earthy yet creepy smell of undeath filled the whole area.

The fallen soldiers are in pristine condition and can move their limbs and use their weapons properly as they did before their death, but their souls had long left their bodies. They lost their ability to think, and are nothing more than scary undead puppets controlled by Morrigan.

The fallen soldiers advanced upon the invaders, the swordsmen hacking and slashing with their swords at the invaders, covered by the spearmen, who thrust their spears at the backs of the invaders.

They’re closely followed by foot archers who nocked and fired their arrows at will.

The defenders got a morale boost and started fighting even more fiercely.

When the invaders realized they got trapped, they tried to fight back, but it was too late.

It’s hard to defeat the undead, as only those with Nobility Badges can prevent them from respawning.

The invaders turned tail and retreated back to where they came from, with Morrigan’s soldiers and undead in hot pursuit.

Morrigan flew back to her castle room, then sat down in one of the cushioned chairs.

She scanned the room for any signs of her assistant, who was nowhere to be found.

Where are you?

 She asked her assistant through the in-game chat.

“I’m in my bedroom resting. Organizing the defendants and making sure they defend the castle sure is a tiring job. I’m about to drift off to sleep now. Leave any important message you have right on my chat.”

Morrigan would have liked to ask her assistant a few more questions, but she decided against it.

She made a bottle of Scotch whisky and a tulip whiskey glass appear on the varnished wooden table along with a stainless-steel ice cube. 

She poured herself a cold drink of whisky and started drinking while she stood at the window, admiring the serene scenery.

She remembered her past while drinking the whiskey. 

She still remembered how she got into the game RPG Fantasia.

She was in her human form, casually dressed like an eighteen-year-old girl, sipping some hot coffee in a café somewhere in Tokyo when a smartly dressed Japanese man named Shikari Hashimoto, accompanied by other mythical figures she also knew, sought her out, correctly identified her as the goddess of death, then offered her a position as a Game Administrator in a ground-breaking new virtual reality game he’s developing, RPG Fantasia.

She still remembered his exact words back then.

“Hello, you must be Morrigan, the goddess of death, correct? Pardon me for my intrusion, but I’ll get straight to the point. I’m Shikari Hashimoto, and I plan to develop an augmented reality online game named RPG Fantasia. Do you want in? I’ll make you a Game Administrator if you do.  The game will be played on an artificially created and simulated dimension that transports the player into that dimension by tapping into their minds. And it will be a very addictive life-or-death game with super realistic scenes, ultra-high-definition graphics, and real NPCs. Only those with Nobility Badges can defeat the final boss, and successfully clear the game. But all the players can still log out safely.  So, do you want in?”

She understood what it means, and immediately accepted his offer.

It took three years to develop the game. 

When it was finally officially launched, it was a smashing success, with millions of players worldwide.

RPG Fantasia always topped the charts, and they raked in a huge profit from sales and marketing alone.

At first, all of the Game Administrators and the Game Guardians got along well with each other.

But as time passed by, cracks eventually formed until they splintered into the Majority faction, who wanted to hold the power for themselves and only let the elites log out safely.

While the Minority faction wanted to balance out the power by giving some of the power to all the players and letting them log out anytime.

Both factions had a serious falling out after a particularly nasty argument between Morrigan, who led the Majority faction, and Orochi who led the Minority Faction.

At that time, Morrigan already did something nasty and altered the codes of the game so that no player can log out safely to the applause of the other Majority faction members, but it angered Orochi when he heard the news.

It angered him so badly that he swore revenge.

Orochi the Dragon God of the Minority Faction stole her young female assistant back then and immediately married her female assistant right after, and it led to a total breakdown of the already worsened relations between the two factions.

Morrigan declared war on Orochi when his daughter Hinata was already 12 years old, in a blind hope that she retrieves back her assistant and brainwash Hinata into turning against her own family.

She immediately launched a full-scale war right at Orochi’s fortress.

At first, things seemed to be going well for her, with a unified faction behind her back.

Little did she know that the Minority faction is luring her into a trap by attacking Orochi.

In the latter part of the war, Orochi and the rest of the minority faction finally showed the trump cards they’d been hiding all along and made Morrigan retreat back to her castle.

The besieged became the besieger during the final months of the war in a dramatic and surprising turn of events, which eventually led to her defeat after Orochi’s dragon burned her crow to a crisp in the valiant defense of her castle.

She noticed that her tulip whiskey glass was already empty and refilled it again.

“Alas, for good times never last, and even friendships break down over time.”

She sighed bitterly as she thought about Orochi, once a close friend but now her worst and most dangerous enemy.