As I dashed through the underbush of the forest, I couldn't take my mind off the monster slung over my shoulder.
Alynn...full name, Alynn Redheart, as she would be known when she sends the empire into chaos.
I had seen her countless times, but only through a screen.
She is the final boss and antagonist of "Tales of Valor and Might" (or TVM).
She hung over TVM like a Spectre, both in the story and over the game's reception.
The final boss, the driver of the story's many tragedies and the source of the game's infamous reputation.
TVM would have been lost in the waves of releases that followed it, if not for one simple fact:
No player had ever beaten Alyn. As such, no one had ever seen the game's ending.
It initially caused an uproar in the RPG community, attracting waves of players, all eager to be the ones to defeat her.
And the company who made it? New Hope Games? Didn't say a word about the difficulty; no comments, no patches, not a peep about the impossiblity of the fight; after the game started buzzing, they made only one official statement:
'An award equivalent to 1,000,000 USD will be given to anyone who can defeat the Vile Witch, Alynn.'
Not the first to do it, anyone. No time limit.
Not even with the stipulation that you had to do it legit.
It was absurd.
If she could be defeated, no one could understand where they got the confidence to post such a bounty.
At first, hopes were high. Some of the biggest content creators and speed runners threw themselves at the wall that was TVM.
They gave up in three months.
Next, the more tech-savy users tried to force the issue, hoping that a liberal use of a cheat engine would atleast get them to the credits.
The issues quickly became apparent. The game's code was at it's best comparable to a mixed plate of spaghetti and at it's worse it bordered on esoteric.
It sported over 10,000 meaningless lines of code; all written in an in-house engine and language. If you removed, tampered with, or bumped even one out of place? You would completely bricked the program.
Not that it mattered, even editing a single file could brick your copy.
News spread quick. It was the final nail in the coffin for the games hype.
If the pros couldn't beat it, the programmers couldn't crack it, and the company was, at least what felt like, bragging about how impossible the task was, how could anyone hope to do it?
So, the hype died down, only resuscitated by the odd challenger.
TMV's ending became an urban legend, hunted after only by the obsessed or those desperate for the reward.
I was amongst the latter.
I was an orphan back on earth too, could you blame me?
A million dollars could change my life.
So, in between classes at middle school, on a beat-up laptop, I beat my head up against the wall that was TMV.
No, that was Alyn, the Vile Witch.
The rest of TMV was nothing if not fair.
I knew the game like the back of my hand, I could blow past the entire game in a day as long as I skipped cutscenes.
Even then, after two years of painful nights, I had nothing to show for it but a graveyard of save slots.
No, that's not right...I did manage to do... something.
I could have reduced Alyn's HP to zero, once.
In all honesty, it as much luck as it was skill.
A team of disgustingly min-maxed, hyper specialized characters (so fine-tuned that they would be useless outside of Alyn's fight), all of the best equipment, buffs, and an absurd string of criticals and near misses.
She was one hit, and I had my finger over the attack button.
I had won.
But I can't say that I 'beat' Alyn.
As in the moment before I was about to attack, I was....well, here.
I was still an orphan, only an orphan in the world of TMV.
A world that was sent to face destruction; a world bound to face Alyn, the Vile Witch.
At the thought my fingers dug into her back, causing her to shake.
What was I doing?
I had came here tonight with the intention to kill her; to free myself and the world from the dreadful beast she would become.
Although TMV didn't explicitly show Alyn backstory, I could piece together her story from her countless monologues.
More importantly, I knew which slaver group had captured her in the game and the rough timeline.
After all, the first CG you see of Alyn is of her in front of her once captors, their bodies impaled ass first on wooden, burning spikes.
I still remember the image; as well as the emblems on the slaver's corpses.
I came here knowing what I would find, what I should've done.
I still could. That thought had been burning at the base of skull since we escaped the camp.
But I couldn't seem to get the sight of her trapped in the cage out of my mind.
She was vulnerable, she was alone.
She probably thought the whole world hated her.
It wasn't logical. She would do far worse to countless innocents if thing played out the same way.
But I couldn't do it.
Worse yet, a terrible thought emboldened me..
I summon my chain, it's thick spine flicking in the air.
'I've already beaten her once.'
If there was anyone who could stop the Vile Witch, it was me.
My game knowledge, this Arte that I formed, the resources I've gathered since I arrived...
I could...
I stop dead in my tracks, ending my leap on on one of the high branches of a tree.
I readjust Alyn, my eyes resting on her pale, sleeping face.
No. 'could' isn't enough.
After betting countless innocent lives on the chance I could change her, I have no right to half-measures..
I will stop her.
I will not allow The Vile Witch to throw the world into madness.
Whether I'll do it by changing Alyn's mind or by punching the spike of my chain through her heart, I don't know.
But I will do it.
I turn to fix my eyes north, bringing them against a wide metropolis in the distance beyond the forest's edge.
It's golden light seemed so far away.
Yet, I leapt forward.