Then Og and Anorak began to grapple with each other as they careened across the heavens, throwing boulder-crushing punches at each other like Superman and General Zod, while they shouted things only the two of them could hear.
Then they suddenly broke apart and began to hurl fireballs and thunderbolts at each other like two warring Olympian gods. But Og and Anorak both appeared to be impervious to each other’s powerful attacks, which ricocheted harmlessly off of their unarmored avatars’ skins, wreaking havoc and destroying huge chunks of the simulated landscape around the castle.
I zoomed in on my HUD for a better look. Og looked like he’d gone into full berserker mode. He was attacking Anorak with a relentless and uncharacteristic ferocity that I’d never seem him exhibit before, in person or in old simcaps. Now that Nolan Sorrento was no longer holding a gun to his head, Og was finally able to get some long-overdue payback for all of the pain Anorak had caused him over the past few days…
I was still standing there at the study window, watching their battle in awe, when I suddenly felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through my skull. The pain made me drop to my knees. I felt myself starting to black out as I struggled to maintain control of my avatar. I’d been wondering when this would happen. It was even more terrifying than I’d anticipated.
I slowly lowered myself to the floor and lay very still. That was when I noticed the broadcast-invitation icon flashing on my HUD—an indication that one of the handful of people on my friends list was currently doing a live broadcast of their avatar’s POV…
When I tapped the icon, I discovered that it was Og!
Og was broadcasting his battle with Anorak live to the entire OASIS. Along with the rest of the world, I watched as the battle of the OASIS co-creators continued to rage on outside, in the skies around the castle. Anorak and Og exchanged blasts of red and blue lightning, scorching the landscape all around them.
The pain in my head subsided somewhat, and I managed to pull myself back up to the windowsill. When I looked out, to my horror I saw that an army of Anorak’s acolytes had begun to arrive via teleportation. In just a few seconds there were hundreds of thousands of them.
I was worried they were all planning to try to gang up on Og. But they all remained on the sidelines, watching like spectators at a prizefight. They all began to broadcast their POVs to the rest of the OASIS, too, and suddenly it became possible to watch the battle from hundreds of different locations and angles.
Anorak and Og collided again in the sky above the castle, creating a massive shockwave that rocked the surrounding landscape.
A few seconds later, Art3mis teleported to Chthonia. Her avatar rematerialized on the steps of Castle Anorak far below me. Then she immediately launched herself into the sky to try to assist Og.
Art3mis had one of the most powerful and well-equipped avatars in the OASIS, and she was a deadly PvP combatant too. But it didn’t matter. Anorak dispatched her avatar with a single blast of energy from his right hand. Her ninety-ninth-level avatar instantly disintegrated, and its enormous inventory fell to the ground outside.
I desperately wanted to fly down to retrieve her things, but I was too weak to move. And I knew I couldn’t leave the study without making myself temporarily vulnerable to Anorak and all of the powerful magical artifacts in his possession.
When Og saw Anorak kill Art3mis, he looked completely enraged, even though he must’ve known that even though her avatar was dead, Samantha was still alive and well in the real world. Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly either. Or maybe he’d just had enough of Anorak.
Og let out an angry cry of rage as his avatar took flight again. He rocketed toward Anorak like an ICBM and the two of them collided in another explosion of light and energy.
From that moment on, Og and Anorak were locked into a knock-down, drag-out man-versus-machine fight to the death that seemed like it might go on forever.
It was like Yoda versus Palpatine, Gandalf versus Saruman, and Neo versus Agent Smith, all rolled into one epic clash of the titans.
Even without his robes, Anorak was still incredibly powerful, thanks to the vast arsenal of magical artifacts his acolytes had collected for him.
In a matter of minutes, Anorak forced Og’s avatar to the ground with a barrage of magic missiles and then immobilized him with a powerful hundredth-level spell called Anorak’s Entrapment. An egg-shaped cage made of bars of white-hot iron suddenly appeared around Og’s avatar, trapping him inside. He appeared unable to move or escape. For a moment, it looked like Anorak might actually defeat him. I watched in horror as he drew a deadly magical artifact from his inventory known as the Wand of Orcus…