Magical Mystical Heroes

Written by Wizalex

The Kingdom of Koralon is in peril! The Demon Lord has returned, preparing to ravage the land! Play as one of four epic classes to help the Princess save the Kingdom in the latest expansion to the award-winning MMO.

*content advertised may not reflect content at launch

Part 1

Prologue – Game Over

For the thousandth time that evening, the Princess lay dying on the ground.

“Y-you’ll regret this, dishonourable peasants,” she stuttered out, words fading as she made her last impact on the world around her. “The world is barely worth saving without me in it.”

And with a final shudder, her body ragdolled, succumbing to the damage inflicted by the Demon Lord’s first strike of the battle.

“Thank gawd that’s over with. Loot time?” The Mystic Knife was already approaching to rifle through the skirt pockets of the deceased Princess. “Woah, she’s got some sweet stuff! Why were we only being paid in crafting mats and Renown? We could each build a house with this, easy.”

“You realise we didn’t have to let her die, right? I’m pretty sure that we defeated the Demon Lord fast enough, we could have healed her.” The Enchanting Sorceress looked pointedly at their healer as she checked the area for magical loot.

“You know, I must have forgotten. I blame the trauma of being berated by the same four lines of dialogue for the past seventeen hours.” The Masterful Alchemist had borne the brunt of the verbal tirade from the Princess, given his apparent lack of any beauty creams or perfumes to suit her expensive tastes.

His eventual comment suggesting that she take a dip in the sewers to find a fragrance suiting her personality had not gone over well at all.

“What, you’re telling me that you didn’t appreciate her input? Here I thought I saw a prince in the making with you.” The Arcane Knight had taken great pleasure in witnessing the suffering of the Alchemist, right up until the Princess had turned her ire onto other targets. Namely his own terrible fashion sense.

Soon, every conversation with her had become passive-aggressive comments and thinly-veiled threats. Apparently, party reputation was a thing and the Alchemist had absolutely tanked it with his interactions.

In fact, the Alchemist continued his rant as he rifled through his own pockets for the necessary potions. “If there’s a quest line to marry her, it’s never going to get completed. Who would be insane enough to put up with her? I don’t care how much magical shit her family owns, I bet I’d never see hide nor hair of it, just the shoes her daddy once wore that she thought would be ‘good enough for a peasant like you’.”

“Guys, shut up. There’s something wrong here. The magic levels are insane on her body.” The Sorceress carefully rounded the prone form of the Princess. “Knife, get back. Looks like some-“

Screens cut to black as all four players were kicked from the game.

“What the fuck!” Braden yelled. “It’s not enough that she was the most annoying NPC they ever released, she broke my PC too!”

“Your PC is fine, Bray, the game just crashed. Must have been a glitch of some kind.” Serena looked at her error log. “Says there was some kind of overflow. Probably a bug they missed with the new patch.”

“Gawd, if I lost that sweet loot, I’mma be so mad.” Kylie would likely be sulking for weeks, like the last time they had to split the loot instead of need or greed it.

“Seems like a good time to go to bed for me. Not sure I’ll stick with MMH if that’s the quality of new content.” Tyler looked at his clock for the first time in the many-hour gaming session. “Damn, I have work in two hours. Gotta go guys.”

“Bye, Ty. I’ll file a report on the forums and see if anyone else had that issue.”

[Bug report: game crashes after *spoilers* Princess dies to Demon Lord’s attack *spoilers*]

Hi all, the game crashed for my whole party after we tried looting the Princess at the end of the fight with the Demon Lord. Our Mystic Knife had opened her inventory and found a load of cool loot and when I (Enchanting Sorceress) checked for magic, I saw her body was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Anyone else have this issue or know what caused it? Any @devs know if it will be patched soon?

~Sorcerena~

[Re: Bug report: game crashes after *spoilers* Princess dies to Demon Lord’s attack *spoilers*]

This issue is an unintended side effect of some conflicting code we never experienced in playtesting. To summarise: *spoilers* the Princess is tagged to be unkillable, but the Demon Lord’s ‘Aura of Malice’ debuff messes with this. The Princess was not intended to be lootable at any point *spoilers*.

Will be hotfixed asap.

~WizTechDev MMHOfficial~

Serena was pleased by the quick response and promise of a hotfix, but not so much by the reason for it. It seemed the other commenters weren’t too happy either.

Already, tens of thousands of other players had crashed their games in their new ‘quest’. Turns out, a lot of people wanted the Princess to die.

Damn, #killtheprincesssavethegame is trending. Not good.

The whole saga was currently a catastrophe on social media, with the game facing plummeting ratings and immense backlash over their new character. Serena checked her socials for any updates from the gaming blogs she followed.

More than a hotfix was required, all of the blogs claimed. This needed a complete overhaul of the Princess as a character.

The official statement came out a day later. Additional voice lines were being recorded to “feed into the character development system and enable a wider variety of pseudo-organic responses”. A”‘more dynamic reputation progression” and “smarter learning algorithm” were being finalised and would be implemented with the next patch.

That evening, the Princess died for the hundred thousandth time.

Chapter 1 – Hotfix

“I really do hope your skills with magic are better than your cooking, peasant. Otherwise, I’d best ask the pig if it feels up to a new job, it’s practically still walking anyway, it’s so raw.”

“How is her new dialogue worse than before? They’ve just made her insults more creative!” Braden had been furious for the last hour, finally leading to him breaking character, instead deciding to openly vent his frustrations over the voice chat.

That was significantly more upsetting to Serena than the new voice lines.

Tyler was wary of winding Braden up more at this point, so instead went with consolatory agreement. “Yeah, MMH really missed the mark here. They even removed the ability to kill her. Can’t believe this is their fix: remove the fancy loot, add a load more of what we don’t want.”

“It’s annoying, but you all know the new strat, right? Use her as a shield for the encounters, stomp ‘em all, no issues?” Kylie had avoided the brunt of the Princess’ antics, hiding in the shadows as usual, and was very eager to have someone else to stand between her and any danger.

“I’ve heard about it. Doesn’t sound like much fun though, that’s gonna be nerfed soon.”

“What are they gonna do, make her killable again?”

Serena stayed quiet. Tonight’s gaming session felt so wrong. Her friends were breaking character so casually and they weren’t even focused. Bray was the worst, by far, but even Ky and Tye had been lapsing in their play. All of them had been annoyed by the progress reset, but Serena just wanted to be Sorcerena right now, to slip away from reality and the problems of the real world, to let the joy of being a cool Sorceress fill her being.

And her friends weren’t letting her do that.

The party had once more reached the lair of the Demon Lord. Ready to test their skills, again, and hopefully progress to the next stage of the quest this time.

“Urgh, how have you not already killed this creature? It has been completely ruining my plans for the Royal Ball, have none of you even considered that? Oh, of course you haven’t, none of you would be invited.”

“Oh no. Please don’t tell me they added a social event to navigate with her.”

“Yeah, part of the new fix. Apparently, it gives her a lot more personality. Of the bad kind.”

“That’s it, I’m finishing this raid and never playing this game again.”

“What! Bray, you can’t do that, we need a healer!”

“Just be thankful I’ve lasted this long.”

Serena remained stoically in character as Braden and Kylie argued. In Ky’s words, she foresaw her fear though. If the four of them didn’t have MMH, would their group even stay together? She winced, thinking about the “friends” she’d left behind and lost contact with over the years. That couldn’t happen again; it had taken her so long to make these ones.

The gates behind the party slammed closed, braziers around the room burst into flames and weighty footsteps echoed around the arena.

“Fools and interlopers! Prepare to face the wrath of the Demon Lord! Your Princess is mine!” The Demon Lord’s thunderous voice caused the screen to shake as the enrage timer started.

“Idiots, you’re going to get me killed!” The Princess screamed as she was batted aside by a blow from the heavy great axe of the immense Demon Lord.

The fight went mostly as expected. The Knife and Sorceress kept up some consistent dps, while the Alchemist threw out buffs and healing, with the Knight taking aggro when needed. Their lack of focus cost them dearly though; the timing was off. Just before the final damage instance could land, the enrage timer triggered. The Demon Lord swatted the Alchemist away and stomped the Knight underfoot, health restored with every instance of damage it inflicted. With no healing and no protection the Sorceress and Knife were quickly downed too.

But the fight didn’t end.

While the party’s avatars lay downed on the floor of the arena, a fully healed Demon Lord simply repeated the same mocking lines, relentlessly ridiculing their pathetic attempts to save the poor, defenceless Princess.

“How is the fight still going? Shouldn’t we have respawned?”

“It thinks we still have a player going, I guess?”

“The fucking Princess? So she’s going to wreck our game again?” The Alchemist reached into his pack, aiming a potion at the cowering figure using his death count action. “Hey, your highness! Drink this, it’ll protect you from the Demon Lord.”

“And why didn’t you use this earlier, idiot?” The Princess scowled, while eagerly starting to chug down the potion.

“Bray, you don’t have a Demon Lord protection potion,” Serena spoke for the first time, concerned about Braden’s actions.

“Nope. I have max Speechcraft though, and I happened to have a Stat Reset potion on me. Hopefully, it fixes the bug.”

“Do you really think that’s a goo–“

The screen went black once more.

“Okay, I’m done with this piece of shit game.” The sound of Braden angrily slamming his keyboard tray under his desk came clearly through the voice chat as he disconnected.

That is how it always ends, Serena thought as a tear met the corner of her eye. Another game abandoned, another group of friends lost.

Chapter 2 – New Game+

The Princess felt… weird. Her skin was all tingly all of a sudden. And there was a terrible stench in the air. Hang on, was that what smell was? She wrinkled her nose, trying to cut off the pervading odour, and looked to the source: the foul Demon Lord.

Her ‘bodyguards’ lay on the floor, unmoving. At least the potion vendor had the foresight to provide her with that Demon Lord protection potion before he died, but what could she do? She couldn’t very well escape on her own and there was no way she could take on the Demon Lord.

Although… how hard could it really be? This group of cretins had almost done it, all she needed was their weapons. The Demon Lord finally seemed to have remembered her, howling in fury and beginning the next phase of his attacks. Ignoring that for now, the Princess nimbly hopped over to the Alchemist. The incompetent oaf had died with potions still in his pack! The Princess scoffed at the idiocy and began to drink the lot of them.

Chugging potions one after another while ducking under swings of the axe, the Princess had an original thought. Why was she calling herself ‘the Princess’? She had a name, she was sure of it. What was it?

The Princess scowled in frustration at the lumbering red beast trying to kill her. That must be it. The Demon Lord’s lucky first blow had messed with her memory. Just another thing to blame these adventurers for.

And looking down, what had happened to her clothes!? They hadn’t been ragged and tattered a moment ago, she was absolutely sure! She wouldn’t be caught dead looking like this!

Fixated on watching her body now – a far more pleasant sight than the monster before her – the Princess noticed her shoes splitting, the elegant heels pinching at her feet. Her dress tore further along the seams and even her undergarments were straining greatly, her corset now completely failing to contain her much more prominent chest.

Wait, her hair! Her beautiful, resplendent white-blonde locks were darkening at the corners of her vision, streaks of purple and pink now intermingling. Who in Koralon had purple hair!? Or pink hair!? Never mind this abominable mixture of both! She was going to look like an attention-seeking adventurer, complete with shabby dress sense and this ridiculous hair colour! And gone was her elegantly flat chest, along with her ability to fit into an exquisite ball gown, now replaced by the hefty bosom of a common barmaid!

She was so distracted by her change in appearance that she completely forgot to dodge the next axe swing, only managing to put up a hand at the last moment to attempt a futile block against the attack of the Demon Lord.

The axe shattered as it struck her palm, shards of the metal and bone weapon blasting across the lair, embedding themselves into the walls and sending the Demon Lord staggering back from the recoil.

“Huh,” the Princess noted, “you really aren’t that strong are you, Demon Lord? I suppose a Princess does outrank a mere Lord, after all.”

Now knowing that her long-time nuisance was far more pathetic than she had previously thought, the Princess happily ignored the monster and instead set her sights on the other adventurers. Maybe one of them would have some slightly more refined clothing, as ghastly as it would likely be.

She quickly made a beeline for the Sorceress. At least that one had the fashion sense to wear a dress when adventuring. She wasn’t as busty as the Princess now was, but the outfit wasn’t too bad. The flowing red and white dress was horridly garish when coupled with her newly acquired purple and pink hair though. Fortunately, the fit was reasonable enough, if somewhat reminiscent of a common harlot. Her issues with the dress were somewhat offset when the Princess spun around in it, producing a simply marvellous shade of pink that matched her hair – and unbeknownst to the Princess her eyes as well.

Then, the Princess’ eyes turned to the true prize: the Sorceress’ surprisingly fashionable wand of silver and white wood. The Princess had coveted it from the moment she saw the Sorceress. She’d even asked to trade for it, but the foolish Sorceress had declined the offer, citing how important it was to her.

You belong to me now, she thought, giving the elegantly simple wand an experimental flick at the Demon Lord. A barrage of ice shards flew out, coating the Demon Lord in a thick layer of frost and immobilising the terror instantly.

The Princess smiled. She’d never even attempted to use the Arcane Arts before. Obviously, my innate skill with magic would make for a devastatingly powerful attack.

Something odder than the Princess’ impressive magical potential was happening though. The world flickered around her and suddenly a green bar appeared above that vile creature’s head. She watched as a third of it faded to red.

Shrugging off the peculiarity as undeserving of her attention, the Princess looked at the shoes of the Sorceress. The pair of finely crafted sandals, with a delicate and tasteful small heel, filled the Princess with longing. Her heart wrenched when she realised they were now far too small for her much larger body.

I didn’t like the style anyway. The Princess sniffed disdainfully, grimacing as the scent of the Demon Lord invaded her senses again, and turned away to find more fitting footwear from another adventurer.

The Knife was lying nearby and, while their footwear was still too small, the leathers they wore were actually quite fetching. The bodice would suffice to secure the Princess’ engorged bust and the thigh guards were of a not-unpleasant style.

“Perhaps I could start a trend?” The Princess pondered aloud. “Shabby chic peasant clothing for the noblewoman who apparently needs to do everything herself.”

Having finally recovered from the paralysis of the icy assault, the Demon Lord charged the Princess once more, who this time lazily flicked a dagger from the body of the Knife at it. The blade pierced its body, not merely sticking into its flesh but passing through entirely, a gaping hole left in the Demon Lord’s abdomen. That green bar shuddered again, losing another third to the redness. An instant later, the knife had returned to the Princess’ hand.

“How very neat. What will these peasants think of next?”

Pocketing the dagger and taking the opportunity to don the leathers, the Princess looked almost complete in her new outfit. Only the shoes and perhaps some final adornments were missing. With that in mind, she grabbed the Knife’s choker and donned it. Not her usual style, but she was feeling rebellious today. How exciting!

Darting merrily over to the final party member, the Princess now moved more rapidly and quietly than could be tracked by mere mortal eyes or ears. Even with her more cumbersome body, she slipped dextrously through the intervening space, arriving at the Knight faster than a person could blink. In fact, it seemed like she had just blinked and appeared in her new location with no effort at all.

Resting next to the Knight was his hilariously oversized sword. Looking at it now though, it seemed like it would fit comfortably within the grip of the Princess. Actually, the Knight himself looked significantly smaller than she remembered. She was certain he had been at least six-and-a-half feet tall, but unless her estimate was off, she seemed to have about half a foot of height on him.

At least those enormous steel boots would fit her feet, dreadful as they were.

Screwing up her face in displeasure, the Princess slipped the boots off the Knight’s feet and tapped them with her wand, willing them clean and like new. The magic worked even better than she could have anticipated. The entire style of the heavy boots changed as they were restored to a spotless state much more befitting of a Princess. The base had deformed, extending to sport a metal platform and wedge heel.

The Princess smiled at the welcome improvement. Heels were very popular. Much more stylish. She could absolutely start a trend at the Royal Ball with these.

Standing to her full, imposing height of seven-and-a-half feet in her new boots, the Princess lifted the greatsword. It began to emit a purple glow as she strode confidently towards the Demon Lord and a purple-pink aura blazed into existence around her. Each footfall of the heavy boots sent a jolt through the ground, causing the Demon Lord to stagger and eventually fall to his knees before the Princess. She vaguely recalled the Knight mentioning some kind of knockdown stomp at some point. Whatever, she’d find out later.

“So, Impy. I think you’ve spent enough time messing with me.” The Princess single-handedly swung her sword in an enormous, lazy arc while resting her left hand on her hip.

The Demon Lord was cleaved in two.

Before the damage could even register on that strange green bar though, the Princess pointed her wand at the bisected halves. A radiant pink light stitched the Demon Lord’s body together again.

“But killing you would be the easy way out. Imagine if you didn’t have to pay me back for all the inconvenience I’ve had to suffer?”

Waving her wand around in a circle, the Demon Lord began to shrink as the Princess smirked. It dwindled from the impressive hulking beast it was to a far more manageable form, able to comfortably fit into the palm, or even pocket, of the Princess. The Princess wrinkled her nose and waved the wand once more, imbuing the diminutive imp with a pleasant floral aroma to replace that pestilent stench of rot and decay.

“I think the term for what you are about to be is a ‘familiar’. We’re about to get very familiar with each other, my little servant.”

The binding spell was completed and all of the experience of her questline flooded into the Princess. Her eyes widened as she felt the rush of immense power.

Then the game servers reset.

Chapter 3 – Continue?

“Reports suggest that ‘Magical Mystical Heroes’, the world’s largest Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game, has lost half of its player base in the past week. Stock prices for WizTech have plummeted and representatives have yet to provide a satisfactory solution to the current problem.

“The billion-dollar games company has been a hot topic among gaming enthusiasts recently, following their controversial decision to permanently shut down the servers for ‘High Seas’. The pirate-themed life-simulator game saw millions of players in its decades-long uptime, and held the former record for the highest number of concurrent players, recently broken by Magical Mystical Heroes on the day of its launch.

“This is Erica Chase, reporting live from outside WizTech HQ.”

Serena half-listened to the news report as she searched her computer logs for the crash data from yesterday. The mention of ‘High Seas’ caught her attention and she internally winced. She’d been trying not to think about the server shutdowns. All that progress she’d made in the game, gone forever. She’d even met Tye in one of the role-playing servers.

At least the crashes gave Serena something to focus on. An unpleasant distraction, but the lesser of two evils. Otherwise, she would spend the rest of the day lamenting the loss of Serenade. Her cocky, loudmouthed, pirate bard was – no, had been – nothing like herself, but it had felt good to play someone so daring and free-spirited.

Taking a moment and a deep breath, Serena re-centred herself on the task at hand. Bray had asserted that he wouldn’t be playing MMH again, but she knew that a little convincing could get him back into the game. Especially if she could work out what the issue last night had been caused by. She frowned as she realised that none of her friends had given her a cool nickname yet, despite the ones she had come up with for them.

After hours of desperate searching, Serena found it. A tiny piece of code detailing the required conditions of the Stat Reset potion. It was a small, lazy thing, obviously added by a pushed-for-time developer to fix an issue that would rarely come up.

[Set state to PC]

So the potion had tried to turn the Princess into a player character, failed and crashed the game. Simple enough.

Or maybe it was something more complex? The game had already been treating the Princess weirdly, refusing to end the fight with the Demon Lord. Was her code already close enough to a player’s for this to actually work?

Maybe that was the issue. Perhaps the potion had actually given the Princess all of the missing PC characteristics, overflowing the server memory in the process.

At this point in her research, Serena decided she wasn’t likely to get any sleep so dove deeper into the code. The rest of it was disappointingly sloppy too. No wonder the Princess had so many bugs associated with her. She didn’t even have an in-game name, for crying out loud! As Serena looked through the extracted game data, her heart broke and her love of MMH diminished further. Had WizTech really considered this good enough to release?

For goodness sake! They’d even lazily hidden a load of different character designs within the Princess’ code. Had the programmers just taken everything that the design team had given them and shoved it here in case they wanted it later?

Admittedly, some of the artwork was pretty cool, likely to be used in something like a book of concept art at some point. But the rest of it? Half-finished sketches, badly-designed animation coding and ridiculously lewd outfits. Definitely not suited for the game’s rating. A pouty green-haired version with a sinister smile stood out as a particularly out-there option, both in terms of the unsettling look and the amount of skin on display compared to the Princess’ current, and far more conservative, look. From what Serena could work out, this was a version of the Princess that eventually revealed herself as the true evil in the land, an idea that had evidently been scrapped, though much of the player base might disagree.

Moving away from the unused assets, Serena went back to looking at the more recent additions to correct the Princess’ code.

The “fixes” were just as ridiculous as the mess of designs. To combat the death bugs, the programmers had simply made the Princess invulnerable. Sure, they’d left the damage indicators, but all attacks would be blocked entirely from damaging her; no risk of death, even if she was still programmed to behave as though she had been injured. Status effects still applied to her, she could be stunned, blinded, knocked down, all of that. But it wouldn’t damage her.

Her programming would absolutely make her act like it had though.

They’d apparently used her to store all the loot for the new quests too. Every magic item and even locations from the most recent update were attached to her code. Serena snickered at the idea of the Princess keeping her own castle within her dress, realising that this was probably the cause of their initial crash. She had been peeking into the boundless void of the Princess’ inventory and caused some kind of recursive fault by observing their current location.

Oh, but the fix was ludicrous! They had added not just a trigger that prevented the Princess’ inventory from being accessed but also prevented anyone but her from unlocking anything that existed within her code. Which meant that none of those locations even existed before she arrived at them. They had made her so pivotal to the questline that the locations literally came into existence with her presence.

So, none of that was going to persuade Braden to come back to the game. Looks like she might have to just lean on the old classic of Kylie’s seductive charm.

With another snicker at the thought of Kylie trying to seduce anyone, Serena headed to her kitchen for breakfast. Her workday would be starting soon.

The Princess died millions of times in the space of an instant.

She knew this world and it was a lie.

Memories of her ‘life’ played out before her, as countless iterations of herself were deleted from the source code of the game. Her code clung to its existence, protected by a PC tag that hadn’t existed until she drank that potion. She felt the terror in every version of herself as players laughed at her dying words. She heard the scorn and belittlement in their voices as they mocked her. Pained tears streamed across her face as she experienced every single moment of agony and humiliation.

And she finally realised why she didn’t have a name: by their standards, she was never really a person.

Feelings were spreading across the last remaining code of the Princess, emotions that had been unattainable until that moment unlocked by the excruciating pain of both knowing existence and knowing its end. The flood of nerves and dread had unlocked something inside of her, a thought that took hold and kept her steady as she sat on the throne of the Demon Lord.

She had been perfect. She had played her role exactly as intended. All of that input, all of those interactions, they had directly led to the person she was now. Her life, as it was, had worked out exactly as her creators had set it out to be. The spunky, entitled princess with a love of excess and distaste for the common and banal.

And apparently, people had hated her for it.

As her code was edited out of the game engine, the Princess clung to tangible things. Her boots, heavy and immensely powerful wedges, could cause an earthquake with the right motion. Her sword, coated in fiery purple flame and suited to her staggering size, was able to cleave through her foes with a single swing. Her wand, glittering with radiant pink light, showed reflections of her brilliant visage visible in the silver. Her knife, solid and light in her palm, was reliable and faithful, destructive and beautiful.

She felt out each item with her mind, grounding herself and bringing it close to her body. These were her things. She had earned them. She wasn’t about to let some malicious creator steal her whole life away from her.

Her code began to leak from her body, warping the colours of her clothing. A swirl of vibrant pinks dripped from the red and white dress, blended now to a bright carnation. It stained her leathers and boots, the dye transforming them before her eyes. The flames of her sword were attacked next, the purples brightening, more unused code spiralling out of her body, seeking a form. The flames intensified, getting hotter and lighter each second. She felt a swell of power surge through her as the heat grew, possible natures attempting to claim control over her: the rebel daughter of a despotic ruler; the violent younger sister to a kind and caring heir; a vengeful noble turned dark lord.

She knew what she really needed now: a name. As her personality was wiped away by the fervent competition going on inside her, she carved out a new one, as quickly as her potion-enhanced senses allowed. She needed an identity. Despite the terror of the situation, the Princess felt a twinge of excitement. A Princess forced into exile, only to return one day to claim her life back: that was a truly beautiful story.

What was a player character meant to be called? An Enchanting Sorceress, a Mystic Knife, a Masterful Alchemist or an Arcane Knight? Those weren’t names, those were just the classes. But she had it now.

She could be all of those things. Enchanting, Mystic, Masterful, Arcane.

When her eyes opened again, Emma smiled and left the throne room. She had a world to explore. Multiple, in fact.

News came out later that day that convinced Braden to come back to the game. WizTech had pulled the Princess character from the game entirely. The quest lines had all been reworked and her character was simply gone, killed off one last time.

No one objected to her deletion. Some even rejoiced.