9 hours prior
"We are really back," Liam sighed as he looked at the huge chasm that had appeared near him. The place looked like it was under a constant storm, with everything eroding with every passing second. It looked like a very bad Mad Max movie, with the mountains and weather destroying everything.
"You got this. Head for the city ruins up the hill," Haluk spoke over his comms. He was wearing a breathtaking exoskeleton suit. The armor suit was at least seven feet tall. The suit's silvery-white metallic plating was accented with glowing energy lines, pulsating with a soft luminescence that changed color depending on its elemental charge—crackling blue for lightning, deep red for fire, and icy white for frost.
The helmet's smooth visor emitted a faint glow, hiding Liam's face as his energy-threaded mantle rippled in the wind. His gauntlets pulsed with power, the embedded crystals flickering with shifting elemental energy. Thrusters on his boots and back hummed softly, keeping him aloft, while arcs of electricity crackled across his armor. The suit felt less like metal and more like a living storm, barely contained within its sleek, mystical frame.
And that was why the name of the suit was Storm. Yes, Liam had landed himself in the game Anthem. One of the most anticipated games, but it disappointed people so much that most had forgotten it ever existed. But one thing no one could deny was that the game had technology mixed with magic.
Liam was disappointed when he got into the game world, but once he started wearing the suit and playing, he was more than overjoyed to fight and kill some mechanical and organic monsters.
Today was his last mission. A mission to face Monitor, the final boss. Haluk and Faye were his companions on the comms. Faye was the cipher, while Haluk was the mechanic. At the start, they were together, but later, Haluk and Faye had to remain back while Liam faced the Monitor alone. He had never played the game before, so he was always very cautious and took every step after proper calculations.
Each game needed different tactics, and this one was no different, especially when he might have to fight while flying in the air. Liam passed through crevices and had to face the minions of Monitor.
It was a constant onslaught of enemies coming at him. Thankfully, after killing a monster, he would get a repair for his suit and then continue forward. The first major hurdle he faced was the Elite Ancient Ash Titan. It was hell for Liam, as his attacks seemed to only take a small bit of health. Thankfully, this thing was slow, so with every attack, he would dodge using short-distance teleportation.
It felt like he was living in a world of fireworks because each of his own and the enemy's attacks were so colorful. At times, he wondered if the world he was in had the color saturation set a bit too high. After fighting for almost half an hour, he took down the Titan and moved forward.
He finally faced the Monitor, which was a special javelin that could be accessed by only a few people. But in the end, Monitor went rogue and transcended into a huge corrupted monster, the size of Pacific Rim mechas.
If he thought the Ash Titan was big, then this one made him feel like an ant. And fighting it was much harder than he realized. He soon ran out of ammo and had to rely only on focus seals and blast seals while blinking away from every attack.
The attacks were relentless, and at one point, he actually had to give chase to fight again. In the end, Monitor died while Liam was at his lowest health. Haluk and Faye drove their ship into the colossal Monitor and killed him.
In order to stop the Cenotaph, he had to close it, and Faye, who had heard the Anthem, had to let it go. Yeah, Liam never bothered to understand what was actually happening. He once tried sitting with Faye and Haluk with the help of the Forge, but the more they talked about mechanics and tapping into Arcanist knowledge, the more it boggled his mind.
The mechanics part he could understand a bit, but the Arcanist part, which allowed one to tap into elemental energy, was what made him stop. Forget about the tactics—he couldn't even understand the language of the Shaper relics. It was all jumbled, and Liam felt like he was dyslexic.
He finally gave up and concentrated on the mission. After killing Monitor, his game world finally stopped.
[
Congratulations to the host for completing the game world. You have achieved S class in this world.
]
Liam jumped with joy. S class again. By now, he understood. Any world in which he had fewer than ten deaths, he would get an S class. And another point he understood, which he had not thought of before, was that he didn't have to die every time to get back to the main world. He could just go to a checkpoint in the game and return. This game took him around one and a half months.
[
The rewards for this world are:
1. A self-repairing Storm javelin.
2. A self-repairing Interceptor javelin.
3. A forge to build any kind of javelins or machines depending on the knowledge. (P.S.: One had to be an engineer and an Arcanist to do so.)
4. All the books related to mechanics and Arcanist knowledge will be provided to the host in the form of a library, which the host can access and learn from.
]
After getting the rewards, Liam didn't know if he should be happy or sad. The first two javelins were fantastic, and he was beyond happy, but the last two rewards gave him a headache. He just went through the Arcanist books, and it was still a different language—much different from English—and he would have to learn a brand-new language just to start the basics of being an Arcanist.
[
There is another reward along with the S class evaluation.
]