Making Game: CH 170 – Captain's Plight (Patreon)

Two months had slipped by, and the biting winter of Friton was finally beginning to loosen its grip on the valley. Melting frost dripped from the eaves of the studio glass, yet inside the Round Table Studio headquarters, the atmosphere had reached a fever pitch. 

With the official commercial launch of the Caliburn VR seat scheduled for the coming month, every corridor hummed with urgent preparation.

Arthur sat in the quiet junction room, staring at the holographic roster hovering above the table.

The list of third-party studios actively developing titles compatible with the Caliburn was painfully short.

He let out a heavy sigh and slumped forward, resting his forehead flat against the smooth surface of the table. He understood the reality of the situation all too well. 

To unlock its full capabilities, the Caliburn required widespread adoption across every inhabited system. Its architecture relied on independent, decentralized nodes that communicated directly with one another, forming an interstellar web that was theoretically vastly superior to the sluggish plasma data network maintained by the Stellar Accord.

Yet the hardware faced a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. The Caliburn needed widespread distribution for its node network to function at peak efficiency. Outside studios were terrified of sinking years of labor and millions of credits into an unproven, newly launched platform. 

In turn, everyday consumers would hesitate to purchase a piece of hardware if the game library of compatible hardware was sparse. That hesitation circled right back to the beginning, leaving the platform without enough active nodes to unlock its true potential.

For the time being, Arthur was forced to shoulder the entire burden with his own catalog. He scrolled through the studio's verified lineup: Assassin's Creed, Sky, Monster Hunter, and Pokemon Arena.

He groaned softly, staring at the glowing titles. 'Would four games truly be enough to carry an entire hardware revolution on their backs?'

"Uh oh. Did I walk in at a bad time?"

Arthur straightened up, smoothing his hair down as he looked toward the doorway.

Liseli stood at the threshold holding a sleek datapad against her chest, offering a tentative smile.

"Not at all," Arthur said, waving her inside with an encouraging gesture. "Come in, Liseli. What is on your mind?"

Liseli stepped into the room, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "It's about Pokemon Arena on the Caliburn. The internal network stress test wrapped up this morning, and I wanted to show you the final telemetry in person."

She set her datapad onto the round table. The hardware linked automatically to the room's central projector, casting a vibrant three-dimensional simulation into the air between them.

Arthur watched as a colossal, multi-tiered arena materialized above the table. In the center of the ring, two trainers were locked in a fierce battle between a Blaziken and a Dragonite. What caught his attention, however, was the surrounding environment. The towering stadium stands were packed to the absolute brim with cheering spectators, their synchronized roars echoing as they chanted the tester's name handle.

"As you can see, we filled the arena bowl to the absolute maximum," Liseli explained, tapping a diagnostic slider. "The rendering pipeline maintained a flawless frame without a single hitch during complex elemental attacks."

Arthur leaned closer, studying the animated crowd. "Good NPCs animation there."

Liseli beamed, crossing her arms with immense pride. "Those are simulated users, Arthur. They aren't generated NPCs."

Arthur froze. He slowly pushed himself up from his hover chair, his eyes wide. "Wait. Every single one of those figures in the stands is equal to player connection?"

"Every single one," Liseli said with a bright laugh. "Logan got the distributed mesh protocol running yesterday afternoon. When we initiated the stress test across our localized servers, each lobby held roughly 300,000 players without breaking a sweat."

Arthur felt his breath catch in his throat. His thoughts raced through the technical implications at blinding speed.

Three hundred thousand concurrent players within a single lobby was an astonishing achievement. More importantly, solving the lobby architecture for Pokemon Arena meant the networking breakthrough applied to their entire Caliburn library.

The limitations that had held their virtual worlds back were shattered. Players would be able to walk the dense, living city streets of Assassin's Creed alongside genuine crowds rather than scripted pedestrians. Hunters could gather in massive, bustling guild hubs to organize expeditions in Monster Hunter. Wanderers could travel together across the vast, starlit skies of Sky without feeling isolated. In Pokemon Arena, contenders would step onto the field to experience the deafening roar of hundreds of thousands of living spectators watching their every move.

The weight that had been pressing down on Arthur's chest ease into pure, electric excitement.

…

Several days had rolled by on Friton, and Dorian found himself once again seated upon the invisible floor of the primordial void. The deep purple luminescence of the realm drifted around him in slow, tranquil ripples.

"...and so the four Pevensie siblings tumbled back into their own world," Dorian said, leaning back on his palms as he finished the tale. "They returned to their young bodies, spilling out of that mysterious wooden wardrobe only to be discovered by the old professor. After living an entire lifetime as kings and queens in another land, the whole adventure wrapped up as if it had been nothing more than an afternoon game of hide and seek."

Across the dark expanse, the colossal, shifting presence of Chaos watched him with countless unblinking eyes. The bat-like wings framing the ancient head stirred gently against the silence.

"A vessel bridging both space and time," the chorus of voices echoed, blending varied masculine and feminine registers into a single, measured sound. "Yet the architect chose the mundane shape of a wardrobe."

Dorian chuckled. "Well, the author wrote the story as an allegory for Jesus Christ, woven into the character of Aslan."

The shifting faces in the dark tilted slightly. "Who is Jesus Christ?"

Dorian opened his mouth to explain, then stopped dead. He closed his lips, rubbing the back of his neck as his thoughts scrambled. Where would he even begin? Unpacking millennia of Earth's religious history to the primordial originator of Greek mythology seemed like an impossible task.

"Is this another lengthy chronicle?" Chaos asked, the voices carrying a purely analytical cadence.

Dorian let out a sheepish breath. "Yeah, kind of."

"So be it," Chaos murmured, letting a starry hand drift through the dark. "It is of no concern of mine."

Dorian leaned back and let his thoughts wander across the cosmology of Hades. Chaos was the ancient Protogenos, the very first consciousness from which creation emerged. If an entity of that stature possessed zero recollection of that figure, perhaps that entire theological branch simply never developed in their reality. That line of thinking carried his mind toward the classic holiday movies stored inside his mnemonic echo, full of snowy avenues, colorful string lights, and cheerful brass soundtracks.

"Spare me your idle wanderings, child," the voices rumbled through the quiet expanse. "Our allotted time is nearly at an end."

Dorian shook away his daydream and pushed himself up onto his feet. He smoothed down his trousers, hesitating for a brief second before deciding to raise the question that had occupied his mind for months.

"Master Chaos, may I ask you something? Do you know a way to summon the Chthonic Gods?"

It was the first time Dorian had brought up the deities of the Underworld. When it came to the Olympians, Chaos held a notoriously low opinion of them. The primordial being regarded the court of Zeus as arrogant and presumptuous, convinced they intervened in mortal affairs purely out of vain self-interest. The Chthonic realm, governed by Hades and Nyx, held far closer ties to the ancient dark.

The eyes lining the entity's brow focused directly upon Dorian.

"I suppose that this was unavoidable," Chaos answered, their multi-toned voice rolling across the abyss like distant thunder. "It is my hope your journeys remain less difficult, son of John. I did not witness the underlying order of this universe, yet here I stand, resting within my own domain."

Dorian met the gaze of the towering titan. "Is there a way, then, Master Chaos?"

"What manner of power called me into this realm?" Chaos responded evenly. "You already know the answer."

Dorian paused, bringing up his internal status display. The golden pool of his resonance points hummed quietly in the corner of his vision.

Chaos continued, their tone steady and piercing. "Resonance was never just simple currency."

A soft, knowing smile appeared on Dorian's face. He offered a respectful bow to the entity. "You are telling me to figure it out on my own. Even so, thank you for giving me and other gods hope. Real hope."

Chaos looked down at the mortal youth, their vast form slowly melting into the shifting grey fog of the perimeter.

"My mark be with you."

Dorian nodded with a bright smile. He walked over to the radiant golden boundary of the portal, gave one last wave into the deep, and stepped cleanly into the light to return to the surface.

…

Deep within the secure subterranean redoubt, Ula sat staring down at his massive, calloused palm.

Slowly, deliberately, he curled his thick fingers inward until his knuckles formed a solid wall of iron, then extended them outward again. Open. Closed. Open. Closed. 

The massive Neman wore a vacant, detached expression as he watched the motion. For a year, sending a single impulse to his fingertips had triggered an explosion of phantom agony that left him retching on the floor. Now, the nerves responded with dull, obedient clarity.

"Ula... Ula."

A calm, authoritative voice cut through the mechanical repetition.

Ula blinked, the haze lifting from his eyes as he looked up from his hands.

Seated along the curved conference table before him was the clandestine high command of the revolutionary movement. At the center sat Todde Sorvis, the former admiral of the Stellar Accord Navy who had stepped into the leadership vacuum following the death of Rear Admiral Ganea Rallizas. 

Flanking Sorvis were powerful men and women cloaked in opulent velvet robes and tailored senatorial tunics: planetary governors, corporate financiers, and high-ranking Accord senators who secretly bankrolled the insurgency from within the core systems.

Among them, the most imposing figure was Governor Parvis Nox, the administrative ruler of Nexus Prime.

"Captain Ula," Sorvis began, resting his forearms against the table. "Can you retrace your experience for the council? We require a complete accounting of your timeline."

Parvis Nox leaned forward, his cold eyes fixing upon the Neman veteran. "Speak to us, Captain. Start from the beginning."

Ula drew in a deep, gravelly breath, steadying his gravelly tone. "I traveled to Nexus Prime under private orders to verify an intelligence leak. The intercepted files documented the systematic torture of my former adjutant, Jakor, by internal security agents."

Parvis offered a solemn nod. "I remember the leak all too well. It served as the direct catalyst that nearly transformed my system into an uncontrollable bloodbath."

"The demonstrators were peaceful," Ula stated firmly, looking the planetary governor dead in the eye.

A senator sitting two seats down let out a dry, scornful scoff. "They appeared peaceful only after that composer had his concert broadcast blasted across every level of the planet."

Ula shook his head with quiet conviction. "No. The crowds held their discipline before any of that."

Another senator slammed his open palm onto the tabletop, his face flushing with sudden fury. "They detonated high-yield munitions across the central harbor, Captain! Do you truly have the audacity to label terrorists as peaceful?"

"I firmly suspect that explosion was an orchestrated ruse," Ula countered, his deep voice rumbling like an approaching avalanche. "It bore all the hallmarks of an inside job designed to frame the populace of Nexus Prime and justify a total martial crackdown."

The senator surged to his feet, ready to shout down the accusation, yet Parvis Nox raised a hand to cut him off.

"Enough," Parvis commanded, his voice cold and flat. "We hold no concrete evidence pointing to BSO operatives planting those charges, just as the central ministry possesses no evidence directly tying the bomb to our own cells. With multiple factions operating in the dark, pointing fingers accomplishes nothing."

The angry senator gritted his teeth and sank back into his seat.

Ula exhaled slowly and continued his testimony. He described the moment of his capture by the Bureau of Stellar Order, the damp concrete cells, and the horrific neural interrogation cradle they strapped him into. 

He recounted how the machine bypassed his skin, muscle, and bone to strike directly at the perceptual nodes of his brain, torturing his mind into registering every breath of air and every touch of fabric as searing, unendurable agony.

He detailed the desperate extraction executed by Rear Admiral Ganea Rallizas's strike team, the heavy casualties they suffered along the getaway corridor, and his eventual transfer to Planet Dagma. He explained how Horus and the Dagmani, now calling themselves Asgardians, had taken him in and utilized a revolutionary recovery machine to slowly coax his shattered nervous system back toward sanity.

Parvis tapped his chin, his gaze sharpening. "A neural torture device, you say?"

"The Bureau of Stellar Order maintains classified files we cannot verify," a skeptical senator remarked, leaning back with folded arms. "How can this assembly be certain this entire harrowing ordeal is genuine? For all we know, this could be an elaborate ruse concocted by these Dagmani fanatics and yourself to lure our leadership into the open and catch us off guard."

A spark of raw fury flared behind Ula's eyes.

BANG!

Ula's colossal fist crashed down onto the reinforced alloy table. The impact dented the metal plate, sending a violent shockwave through the water carafes and rattling every datapad along the console.

"Horus and his people gave everything they had to pull me from that living hell!" Ula roared, towering over the seated politicians. "They risked their own survival to preserve my life so I could stand before you and fight for this revolution!"

A neighboring planetary governor waved an elegant, dismissive hand, a faint sneer curling his lip.

"Spare us the emotional display, Captain," the governor drawled, entirely unimpressed by the brute show of force. "Those people barely tolerate our presence. They treat our formal directives like casual suggestions. Your so-called Asgardians have been far more of a thorn in our side than a reliable ally."

"Enough!" Parvis Nox said, his voice cutting through the rising noise of the room. "They are fighting the same war we are."

The planetary governor took a slow breath, letting his gaze sweep across the assembly. "It's far too early to commit our sleeper cells to open conflict. I'm well aware of the friction growing between our command staff and the operatives in the field. I understand your thirst for battle, gentlemen, yet we must fight with the certainty of victory."

Ula leaned forward, the heavy muscles of his neck taut. "Then what do you propose we do right now?"

Parvis met his glare with a chilling, hollow stare. "We'll lose. We will take losses over and over, absorbing the blows until the singular opportunity arrives that grants us an absolute victory."

Ula held his tongue, forcing his breathing to remain steady. He understood the strategic reality. The movement lacked the resources to challenge the monolithic grip of the Stellar Accord today. Even so, hearing these comfortable politicians speak of Horus with such casual contempt made his blood simmer. The Asgardian had saved his mind when his own comrades had written him off as dead.

Todde Sorvis adjusted his cuffs, his tone measured. "The fact that Rear Admiral Ganea fell to Bureau operatives lends undeniable weight to Captain Ula's account. However, our intelligence sources have found no references to neural disruption hardware in the Bureau's active research archives."

Parvis turned back toward the Neman veteran. "Leave us, Captain. We are glad to have you back."

Ula tightened his fists until his joints popped. He gave a solitary, rigid nod, turned on his heel, and strode out of the reinforced chamber without another word.

Parvis let out a quiet exhale and settled back into his seat. He understood the captain's anger, yet the men and women at this table had placed their own lives on the altar. If the Accord uncovered their conspiracy, these governors and senators would forfeit their titles, their wealth, and their families in an instant. In his view, their quiet, lingering risks carried just as much weight as blood spilled in the dirt.

…

Far from the hidden redoubt, on an industrial moon along the border of the Core Rim, Captain Verza Zal stood inside a darkened monitoring bunker. Through the floor-to-ceiling tactical displays, she looked down upon a sprawling manufacturing grid choked with exhaust and coolant steam.

Her current objective was the apprehension of the regional organizer of the Zynar Liberal Front. Classified as an extremist labor cell, the group drew its strength from the millions of Zynar who made up the bulk of the Accord's blue-collar workforce.

Verza tracked the thermal signatures shifting within a low-slung residential block. "Target is clear for extraction."

A flat electronic tone chimed through her earpiece, followed by tactical confirmation from the assault unit.

"Proceed," she ordered.

A fireteam of Bureau legionnaires broke from the shadows, their pristine white armor reflecting the harsh amber glare of the streetlamps. They shattered the reinforced perimeter doors with breaching charges, flooding the narrow corridors of the tenement.

Inside the rear quarters, the Zynar cell leader scrambled toward a concealed emergency exit. He threw the hatch open, only to freeze on the threshold. Two legionnaires already blocked the alleyway, heavy carbines leveled at his chest. Fresh crimson streaked across their white chestplates, remnants of the guard who had attempted to defend the back door moments earlier.

The Zynar leader stopped. Seeing no escape, he slowly raised all his three jointed arms in total surrender.

Up in the observation bunker, a faint, satisfied smirk crossed Verza's lips. "Well done."

Footsteps clicked against the metal grate behind her. Her second-in-command snapped to attention, striking his chest in formal greeting. "Obey and prosper."

Verza turned away from the glass. "Did you get the materials I asked for?"

Lieutenant Ret Breind stepped forward, offering a thin, encrypted data slate. "Yes, Captain. This contains the preliminary profile on the composer. Trackable traces remain remarkably scarce."

Verza accepted the slate, casually tapping the edge against her palm. "No matter. He's hardly our top priority."

Beneath her calm exterior, a quiet satisfaction settled into her thoughts. The dossier provided the foundational threads she needed to map out the ghost named Percival. He had completely dismantled her pacification initiative on Nexus Prime with that single, subversive broadcast. 

Major Kalzor had instructed her to treat the incident as a learning experience, yet she had no intention of letting the slight fade into history. Step by step, she would piece together the true identity of the mysterious musician.

⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙

🎮:- Stardwey Valley: Completed.- Hades: Completed.- Pokémon: Completed.- Assassin Creed: Completed.- Monster Hunter: Completed.- Hollow Knight: ◌ Loading…

VR: - Sky: Children of the Light: Completed.- Final Fantasy 14: 11% █▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

🎬:- Spirited Away: Completed.- Pokémon Series: Ongoing…

♬:- Your Song – Elton John (ch.9)- A Lovely Night – La La Land (ch.20)- Merry Go Round of Life – Howl's Moving Castle (ch.25)- Small Fragile Hearts – Victor Lundberg (ch. 27)- Skyfall – Adele (ch. 29)- No Time To Die – Billie Eilish (ch. 30)- Yesterday – The Beatles (ch. 32)- Lovely – Billie Eilish, Khalid (ch. 47)- Best Part – H.E.R. feat. Daniel Caesar (ch. 67)- Lovely Day – Bill Withers (ch. 68)- My Song – Labi Siffre (ch. 75)- Isn't She Lovely – Stevie Wonder (ch. 89)- Gotta Catch 'Em All – Pokémon OST (ch. 90)- Don't Stop Me Now – Queens (ch. 102)- Grow As We Go – Ben Platt (ch. 102)- Feeling Good – Michael Bublé (ch. 104)- You'll Be In My Heart – Phil Collins (ch. 105)- We Will Rock You – Queen (ch. 108)- The Bones – Maren Morris feat. Hozier (ch. 110)- Achilles, Come Down – Gang Of Youths (ch. 111)- Wind of Change – Scorpions (ch. 113)- From The Start – Laufey (ch. 126)