[World Announcement: 1,000,000 Kill Achievement! Congratulations to Randomizer!]
[World Announcement: First Level Up to 15! Congratulations to Randomizer!]
When Hermes saw how abysmal his leveling speed truly was, he changed his plan at once.
"Gabby, you analyzed the bodies of my streamers, right? Start producing the best crystals for them too."
Those first level-up rewards were not something to scoff at. Hermes had no wish to let the rest of the world profit from those global announcements. Better that the gains stay within his own circle, among those already bound to him by contract.
More than that, the women under him all knew what Gabby could do. She could read minds, trace intent, and even glimpse the shape of actions before they were taken. That knowledge alone was a stronger leash than most threats.
So Gabby took ten percent of Hermes's level-up stones for processing and began shaping them into customized crystals suited to each streamer under his banner.
For most of them, the process was simpler than it was for Hermes. Most carried only a single energy within them. A few had two.
Soon they began to level one after another.
They still lagged behind Hermes, but the speed of their growth was startling all the same.
Among them, Noelani of the hive-ant stood out most sharply. Her genetics were monstrous even by the standards of this world, and once she leveled up, her attributes surged.
[STATUS WINDOW]
[Username: Futuristic Hivemind (Noelani)]
[Age: 21] [Level: 15]
[Next Level: 111/112]
[Race: Ant-Hive]
[Class: (Rank-SSS) World Devourer]
[Constitution Rating: 10.47]
[Strength: 17.42]
[Agility: 1.15]
[Dexterity: 2.31]
[Reflex: 13.34]
[Tenacity: 18.14]
[Intelligence Rating: 8.79]
[Processing Speed: 10.13]
[Comprehension: 6.38]
[Analytical Logic: 9.87]
[Internal Energy Rating: 0.75]
[Qi: 0.00]
[Mana: 0.00]
[Elemental: 0.00]
[Divine: 0.47]
[Cosmic: 0.00]
[Eldritch: 4.03]
[Karmic Rating: 14.75]
[Luck: 59.00]
[Faith: 0.00]
[Fame: 0.00]
[Enmity: 0.00]
[World Devourer Skills]
[Form of Devourer]
[Consumption]
[Area Destruction]
This was one of the advantages of coming under Hermes. Had Noelani gone her own way, she might have climbed to a higher level by now, but her attributes would have been scattered and wasteful, strength piled where it did not belong, and weakness left where it could kill her.
"Noelani, you can help kill the stronger undead, can't you?" Gabby asked into the ant queen's mind.
"Help? The one that means world peace? Yeah, I can do world peace. What do you want me to do?" Noelani said, clearly unused to the language of helping others.
Gabby explained that she would shape the field into mazes and funnel the stronger zombies toward her.
"Yeah, do that. For the king," Noelani said, lifting her antennae and all four arms in delight.
She had not yet begun building her swarm. Gabby had told her it would be better to delay that until later in the game. Noelani had not liked the sound of it at first, but once she heard that she could birth super soldiers one after another without relying on luck, she gave in.
Makamae, another of the ant queens, had been given her own task. Her class was S-Rank Carapace Conjurer, a thing that let her shape insect-like devices with only a little stamina to control them. She could make explosive bugs, carapace communication towers, even structures that spat acid.
Kunahihi was the strangest of the three. She was the smallest, almost sickly to look at, with yellow skin that made her seem frail. That appearance was deceptive. Her ability was SS-Rank Hive Seize. Any hive, not only insect hives, could be taken by her, and once she did, her own genetic make-up would shift to match it.
Hermes hurled a half-dead Third Evolution Zombie Commander in Kunahihi's direction. It was the sort of zombie that could command a few thousand of the dead at once, and that too counted as a kind of hive.
The moment it landed before her, Kunahihi used a skill called Brain Hive Mimicry. A great protrusion swelled from her head, like a brain grown into the shape of a mushroom, much like the one the Zombie Commander bore. Then Structural Form Mimicry followed. Her sweet, flowerlike pheromones curdled into the stench of the dead, and her skin took on the look of rot without any true decay clinging to it.
From there, she started with the witless ones, the easier zombies, the kind that were simplest to bring under her hold.
With Lena, who came from the military, teaching her the bare bones of formation and command, Kunahihi soon began shaping the dead into something far more dangerous than a mob. What had been an undead tide became an army with order in it.
On the back lines, the first to finish their quota of twenty kills were not the combat streamers at all, but the non-combatants, helped along by the people around them.
Once their first blooding was done, they turned at once to order, seeing to it that all who had come under them were pushed, guided, and helped through the event mission.
Another cluster of nine women opened a separate stream and began reporting the state of the event back to their home planets. The response was immediate. Sympathy poured in by the hundreds. Hermes could not help but give the girls a silent thumbs up.
They cried as they spoke, poured their hearts into every word, and knew just how to keep the fear close without letting it swallow them. One let a slow zombie stagger after her while she sobbed to the camera. Another sprawled in a pool of blood and played at being badly injured.
It was shameless work, but effective, and the people watching from their worlds drank it up with both hands.
Some of them were already hitting three digits in earnings, and their minds had begun to drift toward small rewards, a new dress, a finer coat, something a little more fashionable than what they already had. It was the sort of thinking that belonged to a woman going to work, not one standing in the teeth of an apocalypse.
But where there was good, there was always bad beside it. In a crowd of sixty thousand, there was no hope of keeping every mind alike. Not when fear worked at them from within. Not when greed worked at them from without. And certainly not when Hermes had knowingly allowed a few troublemakers through the gate.
One of them was Dexter, a human. His class was S-Rank General King. He had never served in any military, but back on Earth he had not been some idle fool either.
At twenty-seven, he had already made himself rich, with assets worth over two hundred million dollars and close to a hundred million followers. He was a guru of wealth, and begrudging though many were to admit it, his advice was no sham. The man had real clout.
"Everyone, I have a buff that can make a larger army invincible. Anyone who wants to charge now and climb the rankings, this is the best time. Randomizer is not stopping anyone, right? Right?"
And in that, Dexter was not wrong. Hermes had given no such orders. He did not chain even his employees by the throat. They were allowed their own will, and with will came the right to make a fool of oneself.
"He said larger army, not a suicide squad. Dexter isn't stupid, guys."
"If Guru Dexter is leading, this is our chance to break into the top ranks!"
"This is the opening! Move before the others hear about it!"
Soon Dexter had gathered around five hundred like-minded men and women, all of them eager, all of them smelling easy glory in the air. He was not the only one.
The other races had also seen the first undead reach the walls, and seeing how weak those creatures looked, many decided the danger had been overstated.
Then Dexter of the human camp, Jorgi of the wolfkin, Tachibu of the catfolk, and Jonjon of the ratfolk gathered their voices together and raised an army more than two thousand strong.
The female streamers were not supposed to interact with one another on stream just yet, so they shut down their invisible streaming apparatus and stored the devices away in their inventories.
Lena was not a patient woman, and by then, whatever patience she had once possessed had been worn thin. She strode up to Dexter and drove a finger hard against his chest.
"Are you really willing to throw away all these lives for a little glory? Where is your head? Are you even a soldier?"
Dexter tried to shove her back, failed, and settled for planting his feet like a stubborn fool.
"I come from the land of the free," he said, throwing his hands up like he was already standing in front of a cheering crowd. "We got this chance to rise, to prove ourselves, to build a nation of our own one day. Randomizer's already killed over a million people, so don't that make these zombies easy work."
"And Miss Lena, we appreciate you for letting all us brothers of freedom come together like this. Come on now, it's time to put a plan together first."
Many had feared those people were rushing out with no plan at all, but the moment Dexter said they would huddle first and settle on a proper attack, sighs of relief spread through the camp.
Some who had still been half doubtful began drifting quietly toward them, drawn by the weight those four carried. It was plain enough that Dexter, Jorgi, Tachibu, and Jonjon were not ordinary voices among their kind.
Each held real influence within his own species, and when men like that chose a direction, others were quick to follow.
Once it became clear they were not about to rush headlong into folly, some of the female streamers turned to Gabby for counsel. Concern still lived in them.
For some, a life spared now might become an ally in whatever storms lay ahead.
Gabby gave them nothing that could pass for an order. She only told them the choice was theirs, and that Randomizer would not hold it against them, whatever they decided. No command bound them in this matter.
Still, she had said only that she did not believe in the plan to charge out, and nothing more.
Yet what were an angel's words, if not something meant to carry weight. Such words were never cast out in vain, nor meant merely to slap shame across a person's face.
They were spoken because some truth sat beneath them. And so frustration took hold among the female streamers in that part of the line, until they began urging the others to stop this madness.
The orcs, however, were another matter entirely. From the first day they were born, such creatures were made for weapons and the ranks of strong armies, and their tough bodies were only a cruel boon laid on top of that. Jazzork made it plain soon enough.
"Do not get bitten. Devil Chief Randomizer will be shamed. If any of you get bitten, do not blame me when I kill you myself."
"Hu ha. Hu ha," the orcs answered as one.
Fear of death did not trouble them much. To their minds, Devil Chief Randomizer had already slain a million, and still he stood there as if it were no great labor at all.
Orcs respected strength above all things, and once Hermes passed one hundred thousand kills, the matter was settled in their hearts. Now he was their chief.
More than that, his battle cry had struck some deep iron in them, and even now it still rang in their blood. Just like that, five thousand orcs came under his banner with genuine sincerity.
For all that, they were not so witless as to charge blindly beyond the outer walls. The booming beyond and the roars that followed told their own tale. Even with minds cruder than a human's, they could still reckon enough from sound alone to judge the size, weight, and kind of creatures Randomizer was facing.
So Jazzork asked for a task, and it was decided she would patrol the outer walls instead, where zombies might yet come pouring through.
"We split into hundreds. Big Mama Gabby will count who wins," Jazzork said after taking Gabby's advice, with no wish to count it herself. "Winner gets all the meat. Last place gets leafy soup."
The roar that answered her shook the air. Then the orcs scattered in different directions.
At a glance, it looked disorderly, but it was not. They already knew one another's places, and somehow, without any long discussion, each group always formed the same shape.
Twenty-five shield wielders in front. Twenty-five spearmen. Twenty-five swordsmen. Twenty-five archers. It was a marvel to watch, as if war itself had bred them for the purpose of making armies run.
But the most efficient of Hermes's streamers were the gnome triplets, Spiregears, Flintbooms, and Munitionsiphoner.
The three of them had built shrapnel cannons with their own hands from little more than raw materials, and once the fighting began, they worked in perfect rotation.
One fired while the next reloaded and the third adjusted aim, then they changed places without a word. The rhythm never broke.
Their cannons tore into the undead in ragged bursts of iron and splintered death, turning dense packs into shredded heaps before the dead could even press the walls.
Back on Hermes's side, the Second Evolution Zombies and Third Evolution Zombies proved a fouler breed. They did not hurl themselves at him like witless beasts. They schemed.
They hid in cracks and ruined gaps, gathering in silence until they had numbers enough to drown him in a sudden rush. Hermes dragged them out all the same and killed them where they lurked, before his own people were the ones hauled into that ugly farce.
Even so, a question still gnawed at the hearts of the female streamers. Would it not be better to use the one hectare platform as well, and clear the field faster that way? On its face, it was the simplest course. The safest too, perhaps.
But Hermes had come to a different conclusion after reading the survival guide and studying the accounts of those who had lasted longest.
These events would not be survived by caution and convenience alone. Sooner or later, true combat skill would be demanded of them, and of all the things he possessed, that was still where he lacked the most.
Once the events of Worlds Collide Series began in earnest, time to hone a skill would be as rare as water in the heart of the Sahara.
That was why Hermes meant to use this chance while the enemy was still little more than cannon fodder.
He turned the battle into training. Energy ran through his swords in shifting currents, from spiritual qi to eldritch force, and he practiced coating the blades, testing flow, timing, and control while the dead kept coming.
[WORLDS COLLIDE SERIES]
[World Population: 938,897,601]
[Event Timer - 02:22:14:47]
[Event I: Pestilence Catastrophe]
[Act 1: Infinite Undead Emergence]
[1. Randomizer - Hermes (Devil) - 1,232,457 Zombie Kills]
[2. Dream of Swarm - Kunahihi (Ant-hive) - 417 Zombie Kills]
[3. Futuristic Hivemind - Noelani (Ant-hive) - 403 Zombie Kills]
[4. Insectoid Ant Queen - Makamae (Ant-hive) - 389 Zombie Kills]
[5. Love of Turrets - Spiregears (Gnome) - 117 Zombie Kills]
[6. Love of Guns - Flintbooms (Gnome) - 116 Zombie Kills]
[7. Love of Bombs - Munitionsiphoner (Gnome) - 115 Zombie Kills]
[8. Very Strong Female Orc - Jazzork (Orc) - 55 Zombie Kills]
[9. Lena Plays Apocalypse - Lena (Human) - 42 Zombie Kills]
[10. Claudia Huntress - Claudia (Wolfkin) - 40 Zombie Kills]
Note. Their given names do not appear in the rankings. I only included them for convenience, since none of them announce their usernames or use them the way Randomizer does.