Faro and Mark sat together, back to back, with Faro watching the door while Mark kept an eye on the steps that had brought them up to where they were now. The other ten, all that was left of the attack force, were scattered across the room as they made final preparations for whatever was waiting for them on the other side of the stone gate.

  Though they all suspected it was the fort's commander that was waiting for them on the other side. Though whether he was alone or with bodyguards, they wouldn't know until the gates were opened and they charged through for a final time. Faro began to take stock of what equipment his men had on them, figuring he needed to know what men he had left who were working with.

  The remaining players were all wearing the same type of red plate armor. Faro asked Mark for details on the strange red armor as well as the weapons they carried. Seeing as he hadn't seen the plant-based equipment before and Mark was among their number, hopefully he would know and would tell Faro all their special little tricks. Mark looked over and got the stats screen for the armor the remaining ten players were wearing first.

  Upon hearing the description of the armor, Faro nodded a bit in wonder. As the description explained how they made it as far as they did. Though Mark wondered how they all got the same rose armor considering they should have gotten a random selection of seeds to choose from, he then remembered that it had been a couple of days since his first battle in the game at Faria.

  Which meant people had been sharing ideas on forums and message boards probably. So once Mark realized that it made sense someone else came up with the idea for the rose plate armor and it simply got shared online and these guys simply repeated the idea. Which did explain why they were different from each other in that their armors didn't line up exactly, giving strange patterns to their armors that made the surviving ten different from each other.

  Though now that they had the armor figured out, Faro needed to know what the weapons they had actually did besides the obvious. As several of the players remaining weapons differed wildly from each other, unlike their armor, Mark began to go through them one by one. The one furthest to the left of Faro had a black whip, and Mark told Faro its stats as it appeared before him.

  Faro nodded to the description of the whip user's special trait that gave it supernatural control, which would make its user rather effective on the battlefield. As unlike other whip users, he didn't have to worry about accidentally losing control of his whip and hitting allies since the weapon's own ability prevents that. Mark, upon seeing Faro, was ready to hear about the next weapon and began telling him about the weapons that belonged to the player right of the whip user.

  Faro nodded once again to another description by Mark at a player's weapon, the effects sounding rather effective, mostly due to the fact that even if you didn't get a good hit, any hit with Lenten's doom could be dangerous. The fact the man had two of the things was a rather fortunate affair as it made him rather dangerous to any undead as it doubled any chance of death by spiked seeds. Faro would have to put him to the front of whatever formation they ended up taking. Mark once again seeing that Faro seemed to have processed the information moved on, though this time to a set of four players and their equipment.

  Faro's was keeping close attention to the four as Mark explained the abilities of the shields and spear they had. Faro began making plans on how to fit them in with the previous two players discussed and liking that the four would make a decent front line. Now knowing what their equipment did, he nodded his thanks and asked Mark to continue with whoever was next.

  Faro looked at the last four as they held their staffs at the ready. That group had a nervous energy to them as if they were on itchy trigger fingers, and once Mark explained what their weird pink staffs did, he realized they were. He figured weapons like that needed a few seconds to burn through a target, and in a battle, a few seconds is a long time. He nodded his thanks to Mark and sat there for a moment thinking about the men he had: four heavy spear users, four heavy mid- to long-range attack users, and two specialists. Along with himself and Mark, he thought about those numbers and the best odds of victory, considering that anything could be waiting for them on the other side of the giant stone doors.

  "Alright lads, break time is over; it's time to gather around!" Faro roared out as the 10 remaining men gathered around him and Mark. "Alright, we're going to be in formation when we go in there, and the formation is going to be the spear users up front, me and Mark to the flanks, while the gold flamers are going to be just behind the spear users with the specialist to their sides." Faro said before looking every single one of his remaining men in the eye.

  "Are your orders understood?" Faro roared out to which he got a yes sir back. "Well then lads, I think our last fight of the day is beyond those stone gates, so let us give a good account of ourselves, shall we?" Faro told the men as they all got into formation and marched up to the stone gate from the midway point of the room. The front ranks pushed the stone gate open with their combined strength, and once it was wide enough for the formation to walk through, they began their march through.

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  Once they were on the other side, they were blinded for a moment by light, having to wait a moment for their eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness. Then once the group's eyes fully adjusted, they looked around the room they had walked into beyond the stone gate. They saw the room was actually part of a balcony, and the light was coming from the sun shining down upon them. As they looked upon the room, they noticed all along the walls were multiple statues of dragonfly heads built into the walls. They were all twice the size of the average man.

  Wondering where the commander was, as they expected the commander to spring at them as soon as they walked through the gate. Instead they found no enemies waiting for them and were just wandering around the entranceway of the balcony and starting to question if the commander was even here. That's when they noticed a being was sitting at a table at the edge of the balcony. It had its back towards them. They could tell it wasn't a man as they could make out strange insect scales shining even from the opposite side of the room.

  "Well, it seems you made it past my defenders. Well done, Commander Faro." The being at the table said with a voice of a thousand buzzing wings. This caused the attack group to flinch in surprise. Faro took a step forward, a strong grip on his scythe, as he stared at the creature's back.

  "Are you the commander of this fort?" Faro asked in a firm and even tone as he motioned for the group to be ready for a fight. The rest gathered themselves and all prepped their equipment, getting ready for whatever would come next.

  "Well, yes, I am Faro." The voice of thousands of buzzing insect wings said. "Now that we've established our positions, shall we get on to the battle between our subordinates?" The creature stated causing Faro confusion as to what subordinates he was talking about. He was about to ask when the being at the table raised his right fist then dropped it, which was a sign. In response, out of the dragonfly heads that lined the walls came hundreds of flying creatures that immediately dived at Faro's attack group.

  The group reacted immediately; the four that had golden flamer staffs opened up, filling the air with burning leaves. This kept the full tide from hitting them, causing the creatures to have to maneuver around the burning leaves burning above and come to attack them from strange angles if they wanted to strike at the front ranks of Faro's attack formation.

  The melee that made up Faro's front found themselves trying to not be killed by these never-ending swarms that kept coming no matter how many burned in the magic leaf firestorm or were struck down by the weapons of the front ranks. The fight started to turn desperate as the enemy ranks went from hundreds to over a thousand as they were beginning to get overrun. Faro began to notice that these creatures never stopped receiving reinforcements from the dragonfly statue heads.

  As the grand melee below and the dance of burning leafs above intensified as they scorched more and more of the strange creatures attacking them. They finally saw the creatures stat screen telling them what exactly they had been fighting.

  The players, now knowing they were in an endless horde that were the bodyguards for the being claiming to be the fort's commander, were growing nervous. They weren't sure what to do about this situation. Luckily, Faro was, even if he didn't have access to the same intel as the players; he could still observe that numbers of enemies were growing, not shrinking, despite how many they'd killed. "Alright lads, looks like if we want out of this, we're going to have to go for the head. So spearmen to the sides, Mace up front with Mark, and Whip is in back with me; the golden flamers will be in the center. Now move people; we don't have all day!" Faro shouted put as the players obeyed him, getting into his moving formation as they charged towards the being at the war table at the end of the balcony.

  They charged forward, the leaves from the golden staffs burning through dragonfly ghouls over their heads as they moved forward. Those dragonfly ghouls not burning above them were slamming into them, using their wings maneuverability to get an angle to attack. They would claw at the player, trying to use their tails to find gaps in their defense and pierce them. But the players left had proven their skill and gained experience in making it this far into Carthax, so they proved they quickly could handle the dragfly tricks. Luckily, moving forward made it harder for Dragfly to find a gap in the defenses as the attack force kept charging forward.

  They got closer and closer to the enemy commander though as they did the dragfly ghoul swarm got thicker as the reinforcement speed seemed to increased the closer they got to threating the commander they eventually they did reached the commander despite the setback. "Alright, Mark, time for you to duel like you're obsessed about! The rest of you were keeping this swarm off him while he kills the creepy bastard!" Faro roared out as to be overheard over the sound of the now thousands of dragonfly ghouls swarming around them.

  "I'm not obsessed, dammit!" Mark roared back as he charged at the figure sitting at the table, who still hadn't turned to face Mark just as his sword, Foxes teeth, would have buried itself to the hilt in his spine. The being vanished, turning into thousands of small dragonflies. Mark looked around rapidly, trying to figure out what had just happened, then he felt a burning sting in his back; he spun around and finally saw the creatures that had just been sitting at the table a moment ago. He could see it in its entirety, causing a stats screen for it to pop up for him to quickly read through.

  "You should know better than to turn your back on an enemy." Flatek said in a mocking tone, his voice of a thousand tiny lungs speaking as one. Mark ignored the good advice and charged, trying to end this battle as quickly as possible before they were overwhelmed by a swarm of dragfly ghouls. But once again Flatek deformed, but instead of reforming behind Mark as he had been expecting, he instead appeared behind the mace user, sticking a claw into the back of his leg before deforming once again and reforming in front of Mark. "Now where were we?" Flatek said, his voice filled with mockery.

  So it went on and on, Mark trying to fight Flatek only to have him disappear and appear somewhere else, mocking him and usually wounding one of the other members of the assault group. Mark knew he needed to end this, and so he racked his brain for anything to help him do just that, not finding anything and about to panic as several members were about to fall from the combination of the numbers of dragonfly ghouls and the surprise attacks of Flatek. That's when it hit him he had a reward from a previous battle that might just help him; he reached into his inventory and quickly pulled it out.

  He turned to face Flatek, holding Foxe's teeth in one hand and the staff called Calacra's Reach in the other. He waited till Flatek got close to him once again. He charged with Foxe's teeth as he had done before, and as before, Flatek deformed, turning into a cloud of thousands of dragonflies to reform somewhere else on the battlefield. But before Flatek could, Mark turned and activated Calacra's reach, which caused the claw at the head of the staff to seek out the dragonfly in the swarm that was Flatek's heart. The claw stretched from the staff and grabbed a large dragonfly that was beating rapidly, pulsing with a red glow, and dragged it back to the staff before it crushed the dragonfly in its grips, bathing Calacra's reach in the blood of Flatek's heart.

  Flatek formed one last time, holding his chest with all six hands. "Well played." Flatek gasped out before falling over dead. Once he fell to the ground dead, the swarm of dragfly ghouls turned on each other, the loss of their lord driving them mad with grief and rage as they tore each other apart. The attack force fell on their backsides, exhausted and wounded but somehow alive.

  Suddenly a huge blue screen appeared before all the players, and Mark read his. You have won the battle of the siege of Carthax. You will now be logged out, as time dilation for this event is now over, and any longer stay would be dangerous. The MVPs are the eleven elite of Faro's attack force. We thank you for playing Allyssa. Then the world went blue as Mark was forcibly ejected from the game.

  "Well, I got to say that was a good show by both commanders; both showed their skills there. Too bad I won't get to see that rivalry between the two as Flatek is dead. Rivalries always boost ratings big time." Simon said he was a bit depressed he couldn't use a Faro and Flatek rivalry in his advertisements.

  "Not necessarily; you never know considering who Flatek serves. Staying dead when you serve a god of the undead is a bit of a hard thing to do." Robert said, hoping to cheer Simon up. "Besides, I'm just glad everything worked out; this battle was starting to drain me with all its back and forth." Robert admitted as he waited to see the fallout the siege of Carthax would have.

  "True, I can hope Flatek comes back stronger than ever before; it will really help with the advertisements. Though you are right, there has to be an ending sometime." Simon admitted. "Now let's see if we needed all your expansions for Alyssa after all." Simon said he was excited to see how the world of wonders and the mad responded to the battle of Carthax now that there would be footage of it spreading through the world's internet.

  Simon and Robert focused on multiple TV screens in his workshop, watching as Allyssa and the world of wonders and the mad responded to what had happened at Carthax.