by Ramy Vance
“It’s also obvious that they’re in the windows! Gimme something I can work with.”
“Well, excuse me. I’m kind of busy trying not to get nixed right now.”
Suzuki looked out from behind the semi. Sandy wasn’t exaggerating. She was dodging multiple projectiles, and he could tell it took every ounce of her concentration to do so.
The voice had been right; this was nothing like VR. In VR, they had equipment and time. In VR, they could pause the damn game. Here it was real-time, and Suzuki felt like a newb jacking in for the first time. “Stew and I will draw their attention,” he yelled. “Beth, you just hold tight. Come on, Stew, and please don’t Leeroy this up!”
Stew unsheathed his sword. “Gotcha.”
“Beth, when we’ve got their attention, I want you and Sandy to regroup.”
Suzuki looked at his HUD—sixty percent chance of success. Not good enough. “Stew, cast Enrage on yourself.”
The barbarian nodded as Suzuki exited cover and pulled out his shield to offer cover. He listened as Stew clanked his sword three times against his breastplate, casting the barbarian spell on himself.
Suzuki checked his HUD. It now read eighty percent. That was more like it.
Within seconds, arrows crashed into his shield. One of them lodged, and Suzuki felt his shield heating up.
The arrows exploded, and the blast flung Suzuki against the wall. Blood trickled down the side of his face and his side spasmed with pain, reminding him that this was real and not some VR simulation.
A surge of adrenaline ran through him.
“Beth, scratch what I said,” Suzuki shouted as he did a quick calculation. “Hit the foundation, all four corners. Got it? You too, Sandy.”
“On it,” Beth yelled as she sprinted toward the building. She deflected arrow after arrow with her small shield and pulled out a red pouch. She tossed it at the corner of the building, sidestepping the onslaught of arrows coming down.
“Hit it, Sandy,” Beth shouted.
Sandy flew out from behind the building and raised her hands. Four lightning bolts struck the corners of the building.
There was a massive explosion, and glass shattered and flew everywhere as the building shook. Then it came crashing down, floor by floor, and goblins screeched from inside the building as it caught fire.
Suzuki brushed his shield off. “That was easy enough,” he announced as Sandy and Beth rejoined the group.
Across the street, there was loud rumbling, and from the shattered concrete and rubble, goblins emerged. Some of them were on fire. Flames licked their flesh, but they didn’t seem to care. There were at least a dozen goblins left.
Some of them drew their swords, while others nocked their bows.
Suzuki lifted his shield high above his head. “All right, Mundanes. Let’s show them why we deserve to be in Middang3ard.”
The Mundanes rushed into the fray, and the air filled with the clashing of steel and wood. Suzuki blocked a thrown goblin ax as Stew leaped over the goblins to flank them. The barbarian swung his broadsword and cleaved through a couple of goblin heads.
At Suzuki’s side, Beth was dueling with a goblin. She wasn’t even bothering to wear her helmet. She smiled and winked at Suzuki as she sank her sword deep into its chest.
“Fuck, yeah,” Stew yelled. The barbarian was right. This definitely was a “fuck, yeah” situation. Suzuki was fighting for real, and he wasn’t scared.
Nor was he getting tired.
It was like being in this place gave him the strength and courage he could never have dreamt of having back home.
He cut through another goblin as Beth rolled to the side and sliced the legs off an advancing goblin. The goblin horde was already noticeably thinned. Suzuki raised his shield and cast Protection over the Mundanes, dropping his mana pool to four percent. “Fry the rest,” Suzuki shouted.
Sandy flew down into the midst of the remaining goblins and slammed her hands on the ground, forming a circle of fire around her. It spread with the rapidness of a tidal wave and washed over everyone.
The Mundanes were thrown back but remained unharmed. The goblins burned, and the street was filled with the smell of roasting flesh.
The stench was all-consuming. Yet another difference from VR, Suzuki mused as he surveyed the damage.
Across the street, the old lady stood on the street corner and waved.
Sandy grinned. “That trick never gets old.”
The simulation shimmered out of existence, and the Mundanes were back in the valley. Some of the other parties were back too, but others were missing. Suzuki didn’t know if they were still in their simulations or if they just hadn’t made it. Either way, the Mundanes were done --- mission accomplished.
At least he hoped it was mission accomplished.
The Mundanes stood around waiting as the other recruits started showing up party-by-party. They looked the worse for wear, with some of them seemingly seriously hurt, but despite that still moving as if wounds and pain worked differently in Middang3ard. A cut here felt a lot less…Suzuki searched for the word before settling on “severe.” Their bodies healed faster here.
Still, a wound was a wound, and those in pain were immediately attended to. As for everyone else, they were invited to rest in the barracks, where they could wait in relative comfort for the last of the recruits to finish their missions.
Inside, Beth cleaned off her sword with a rag while Stew paced back and forth. Sandy had wandered off to talk with one of the mages running the simulations. Suzuki wasn’t interested in resting yet. He wanted to understand something, anything a little more.
He stepped outside the barracks and went around the back. He had expected to see a bit more of the base and terrain. What he hadn’t expected was to see Grimpston sitting alone on a stump, looking grim.
Suzuki took a deep breath, knowing that this might be his only chance to speak to the gnome alone. Walking over, he took a seat by Grimpston. “Excuse me, Sir,” Suzuki said quietly.
Grimpston jumped at the sound of Suzuki’s voice before realizing Suzuki was sitting next to him.
“Oh, oh,” Grimpston murmured. “You caught me in the middle of a thought. I see your party made it through, correct?”
“Yes, sir, we did.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Mundanes.”
“You know us?”
“Of course I do. Robert, correct? Everyone calls you Suzuki. Even your parents, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes, Sir. But how did you—”
“We’ve been keeping tabs on players the whole game. As we said before, we’ve been seeding this idea for a long time. It goes further back than I think any of you could imagine. Every book, every game. We’ve been placing the idea. Raising up an army. I’m excited to see what you were capable of once you got out there and into the real shit.”
“Thank you, Sir.” Suzuki hesitated, still wanting to ask his question.
“Out with it,” Grimpston said. “Your propensity for over contemplation will be the death of you.”
Suzuki was taken back. Did everyone know he over thought things? And did everyone have to tell him? “OK. I wanted to know why my access to magic was so severely throttled, but Sandy’s wasn’t. I barely had enough mana to cast one spell.”
“Sandy’s a mage.”
“And I’m a warrior-mage. “Mage” being the key part of that. Mages have spells.”
“The truth? You’re not going to like it.” The gnome stopped talking.
“Please.” Suzuki gestured for the gnome to continue speaking.
“Not every warrior-mage’s magic is restricted. Just yours.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the leader of the Mundanes, a player we’ve watched for some time now. In battle, magic can be a tool or a crutch. We wanted to see how you’d perform without the crutch when all you really had at your disposal was your sword and your wits.”
“How did I do?”
Grimpston clapp
ed his hands together before slowly separating them. In between his spreading hands appeared a scroll with writing on it that Suzuki didn’t recognize. Grimpston read it carefully, nodding as he did. “Not bad. Not bad at all, my boy.”
“That’s good to know.” Suzuki breathed a sigh of relief.
Sensing that he shouldn’t disturb the mage further, Suzuki stood.
“Hold on,” Grimpston said. “That’s not the real question ye have for me, is it?” The old gnome tapped Suzuki’s nose with his finger. “Ask it. I will answer.”
“But I did ask my question. And you did answer it.”
“No, ye didn’t. Not the one that burns in yer heart.” Grimpston was hamming up his in-game persona, hitting the Scottish drawl harder than usual. “The one you swore that you’d ask me if you ever got the chance. Now’s the time.”
Suzuki gave Grimpston a confused look, and the gnome sighed in frustration. “You know, the question you asked a dozen times on all the forms.”
It took a moment for Suzuki to make the connection, but when he did, his face brightened as he realized that he was about to get the chance to ask something that had been bothering him since the game’s inception. “About the game’s name.” He snapped his fingers three times. “I want to know about the name.”
“That’s the one. Now ask it.”
“How did you know about that?”
Grimpston gave Suzuki an impatient look. “Like I said, we’ve been watching you…all of you, for some time now. Now ask.”
“Okay, okay,” Suzuki muttered. “Why is the game called Middang3ard and not Middle3arth? I mean, Middle3arth would be a much easier name to remember, wouldn’t it?”
Professor Grimpston burst into laughter. “Because Tolkien’s people copyrighted it.” His laughter grew into a full cackle. “We didn’t want to drain the war budget with a lawsuit.”
The gnome laughter was so intense that it was infectious. Suzuki found himself crying while laughing. Even cadets who were too far away to have heard Grimpston were laughing.
But as suddenly as it started, it stopped, the gnome’s face returning to its typical serious nature. “Now that that’s out of the way, you’d better get back to your squad. You can’t let them deal with all of this without their leader.”
“I’m not their leader. We’re just a party.”
Grimpston shook his head and smiled. For such a crusty looking gnome, he could have moments of pure joy shine through his spindly beard.
“Suzuki.” Grimpston voice was soft, caring almost. “I told you that we’ve been watching you all for some time. And you are their leader. You might not think you’re ready for something like this, but you’ve been leading the Mundanes for a long time. Might as well keep going. Go take care of your party.”
Suzuki stood and nodded. He felt larger, as if he’d just grown or leveled up. “A leader.” He never would have used those words to describe himself. As he walked back to the Mundanes, he noticed that they all looked up at him as if they were waiting. He knew that he wasn’t going to disappoint them. Deep in his core, he knew what he was here for.
There was going to be honor.
There would be glory.
It would be one hell of an experience.
Chapter Eight
The rest of the day had continued to be grueling: A litany of physical activities ranging from long-distance runs to being beaten with a stick. Grimpston assured the cadets that the next day was going to be even worse. He suggested the cadets retire to the barracks to get a good night’s sleep before they found out who was going to be continuing on to the next stage of the admissions.
After hearing the groans of the cadets, Grimpston let them know that the tavern would be open all night. And there was no such thing as a drinking age in Middang3ard.
Before dismissing them, he called forth a few cadets to speak to them in private, Stew among them. “Don’t say anything stupid,” Sandy said as the barbarian trotted off.
“Always do,” Stew called back.
“We’ll meet you in the pub,” Suzuki yelled out, wondering why Grimpston wanted to speak to Stew and not the rest of them. But as soon as they were in the old wooden tavern that smelled of hay and mead, he put Stew out of his mind.
He’d find out soon enough, and right now he was trying to brush off the various humiliations of the day.
Suzuki was sore.
Sorer than he’d been in his entire life. Still, he felt like he could keep going. It was an odd feeling. He hadn’t been much of an athlete back on earth. Not that he was out of shape, but he wasn’t the sort of guy to go on walks for the hell of it. Out here in Middang3ard was something different though.
He felt like he could have run drills all night.
It was probably the excitement.
The tavern was lit by candlelight, with candles on the walls and decorating the rows of tables which the cadets were rapidly taking up. But other than the obscene number of candles, this place was like any other old pub you’d find on Earth. Rustic, pungent with the smell of mead and already full of drunks.
Most everyone was drinking. Cadets with officers. Or whatever they called themselves. No one had been straightforward about the ranks yet. Suzuki could see that there were distinctions based on how the officers spoke to each other, but it was all over Suzuki’s head. Still, it seemed that they were all having a good time without getting caught up in rank.
The dwarves were the only ones who seemed like they might have preferred to be somewhere else. They kept to themselves and slowly sipped on their mead as a group of human barbarians struck up a beer song. Something about the empty fields of hope stained with blood.
They had barely finished their first drink when Stew showed up, mead in hand.
“What happened?”
Stew brushed away the question, downing his drink. “Alcohol now, talk later,” he said in a Tarzan-esque voice, but Suzuki could tell something was wrong. Especially because the giant man had barely finished his first drink before standing up and announcing, “I’m getting another round. Anyone else want one?”
Beth and Suzuki raised their hands. They clanked their wooden tankards together and finished the last golden drops of mead.
“God damn,” Beth slammed her hand on the table. “It feels good to be right.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Suzuki said. “We got it. You know everything.”
“Not like that. I mean this. All of this,” she spread her arms, motioning to everything around her, “it’s like a movie. I could never have imagined anything like this.”
Suzuki and Sandy nodded in agreement. Sandy wasn’t looking at any of the Mundanes, though. She was staring off at the mage officer’s table.
“You got a crush on one of the suits?” Beth snapped her fingers at Sandy.
“No,” Sandy muttered. “Not like that. It’s just…you know, we can be powerful here. Like really powerful. We could probably really fuck shit up.”
“Leeroy’s gonna go ham out there,” Suzuki remarked. “We’re going to have to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”
“You’re not going to have to worry about that.” Stew put the drinks down on the table, but he didn’t sit down. The rest of the Mundanes looked up at him and saw the usual smug smirk sitting on his face was nowhere to be seen. It was like a shadow was resting on his face.
His eyes were damp, and he looked like he might cry. It was an odd image to see a giant of a man decked out in armor, barely able to keep the tears from rolling down his face.
“Hey, babe.” Sandy stood up and went to him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going home.” Stew took a long draught from his tankard.
“Are you fucking serious?” Beth exclaimed.
Suzuki couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “They can’t send you home. You blew through that last exercise.”
Stew shook his head as he took another drink. The tears were coming now. But his face was still straight, and he let them fall o
n the table.
“That’s not what Grimpston told me,” Stew said. “He said I was getting carried. Sandy was covering my ass. The whole time. Cleaning up anything that I wasn’t finishing off. And keeping me from getting killed by shit I didn’t see.”
Stew looked at Sandy, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She just stared at the table, wide-eyed and in disbelief.
“Is that true?” Suzuki asked.
“We always do that,” Sandy’s eyes were sad, and Suzuki knew she was racked with guilt at the thought that she was responsible for Stew getting kicked out. “It’s just teamwork. I always cover his back. I didn’t know it was going to count against him.”
Sandy’s lip was trembling. Her hands were shaking, and she was hardly able to lift her cup.
“Hey, hey.” Stew drew her in close. “Don’t worry about it, Sandy. You were just watching my ass like you always do. Can’t swing that sword the way you like if I have to tip-toe around everything, right?”
Sandy looked up at him and forced a crooked smile. “When are you leaving?”
“Now.” Stew gestured at the door where several other cadets were already gathering. Suzuki guessed they were the ones who also didn’t make the cut.
“I just had to come and say my goodbyes.” Stew stood there awkwardly.
Suzuki could understand the feeling, and he knew Stew didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know either. So they all just sat there in silence. Stew wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone at the table as he looked down at his tankard of mead and sighed. This wasn’t the way that things were supposed to go.
“You guys remember that raid we did in March?” Suzuki asked.
“Yeah,” Sandy said. “The one that I got that death mask from.”
“Exactly. That one. I remember trying to prep that battle for at least an hour ahead of time. And I’d been thinking about it all day. And I gave that big speech about how we had to stick to the script if we were going to get anything done and right in the middle of the speech, Stew fucking Leeroys it. Everyone’s shouting at him, and I tell him to stop Leeroying it up, and he just gets quiet. And then he says that he’s never fucking seen the Leeroy Jenkins video.”
