DoucheMage

by Damien Hanson

  Finally! He turned and laughed heartily at them. “You should see your faces!”

  “Not cool, man.”

  “Seriously, what the fuck? Now you’re gonna laugh, when we’re getting our butts kicked?”

  Yes, he would kill them.

  Instead, he opened the spell folio and selected a sheet of flame. It utilized Wreck, or Will, so he opted for Will. After a roll of 2, he popped in a Plot Point and re-rolled, but it was still a 3, took a deep, calming breath, and popped his last Plot Point into the thing.

  A 7, finally. His hand and the tome glowed with arcane power, several more arrows bounced off Nicole’s superior shield, and then fiery death descended upon the lizardfolk like a quilt made of magma. It swept forward and enveloped all of them, resulting in screaming agony, and finally death.

  And while it wasn’t quite like watching Taz and Curtis have their faces melted off, it was at least a level one catharsis.

  “Aww man, we can’ even loot them!” Taz complained. “Jeez, indiscriminate butchery much? Look at that, there’s a little copper being melted off into the puddle of frying flesh. Ugh, it smells worse than Al-Anon here covered in my piss.”

  Brian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Please, he thought, don’t give them any experience points for this encounter.

  “Oh, I’m close to leveling up!” Casino said, as if she could read his mind and knew the exact wrong thing to say at this very moment.

  Great.

  “There’ll be more of them,” Nicole announced. “Let’s keep our eyes open this time. Rogue bro, you got any skills that might actually be useful here?”

  “Sweetness, I got skills for days. Watch how I float.” He tiptoed past the charred bodies and disappeared down into the darkness.

  “He’s going to get himself, or us, killed,” Curtis said affably.

  Brian prepared another spell.

  For a time, there was nothing. He strained to hear what was going on, but failed a Study test with a 5. All was darkness, silence, and the sound of his breath.

  And suddenly Robby Robber reappeared, grinning. “All right, we are gold. They’ve got some other perimeter defenses in here, but if you follow the sign that looks like Curtis’s dumb face with a knife sticking out of it, we’ll get close to the center.”

  Looking back on this, with the magic of his grimoire, Brian would eventually see Robby Robber cross past him and tip a wink to Cornholen and Casino. Worst of all, he would eventually see the lewd grin and licked lips he sent Nicole’s way.

  But at this moment, he didn’t want to try rolling Study or Resourcefulness any longer. He also didn’t want these idiots to get any more XP that belonged to him. He charged into the darkness with his torch in one hand, his tome in the other, and a spell at the ready.

  Here the natural tunnels had been enhanced by some digging and shoring up, and some of the floors had been leveled out. Brian made his way forward, found the first set of underground road signs, and tried to guess at which of them appeared to be a dumb rich kid with a knife stuck in his idiot face.

  He went left without checking to see if they were behind him, and charged on ahead. No problem. He didn’t even bother with the flashing Prowl indicator in his HUD, given that he had intel and offensive magic. He had a spell at the ready, and he had a short sword he used with a fair amount of skill. He could just–

  Around the corner he discovered a barracks room just stocked full of lizardkin. They were piled on one another for warmth near a fireplace, about twenty in total, and another four were up and about, and now turning to regard the fleshy mammalian intruder in their midst.

  You are highly outnumbered! The HUD told him, quite unnecessarily. You may spend a 2 points of Stress to add a die to your roll. Would you like to continue?

  “Yes,” he breathed, and unleashed his first spell, with a roll of 1 and 9.

  Yes.

  When he finally finished off the barracks full of lizardkin, it was a good five minutes later, he’d racked up another 3 XP for rolling skills during a Desperate situation, and he was at a Level 3 Harm. Each time he’d taken a Harm, it had cost him more Stress, which was why he was now totally out. That and Spell Points were drained dry. The Harm system ramped up the pain responses in his haptic suit, so the arrows sticking out of him were actually his own smart bodysuit pinching his shoulder and side painfully.

  “Enough of that,” he groaned, and pressed Level Up!

  A list of his rewards cascaded down the HUD, and for once he didn’t mind the level of cheerfulness.

  ● Your Spell Points have been refilled!

  ● You’ve been completely healed!

  ● Your position has been moved from Desperate to Controlled!

  ● You have been gifted 1 Plot Point!

  ● Your armor has been restored!

  ● Your account has been given 2 Credits! Indicate now if you’d like to place them in your Stash, or hang onto them. You may place them in your Stash at any time.

  ● You have gained 1 Skill Point! Tap to choose and allocate.

  He sighed when the arrows pushed themselves out of his body, or the pressure of the game suit left, whichever. Instead they now just stuck out of his cheap leather armor.

  “You minmax,” he muttered to himself, “there’s got to be a min somewhere.”

  The single skill point was disappointing but not unforeseen. If he was going to do this, he would have to get used to the slow climb up towards the ultimate levels. He put the point into Study, and thought better of leaving the Credits on him. Robby Robber would no doubt love to get his hands on Brian’s stuff.

  “That’s how it’s done,” he breathed.

  “Bro, what are you doing? You went the wrong way!”

  Brian turned his arrow-studded, partially hacked off, robed self towards the Three Muskyteers, and wondered just for a moment if Brett had called in some kind of favor to get whatever little revenge might be had out of this.

  “Oh yeah?” Be the Alpha. He gestured toward the piles of lizardkin corpses. “Just wanted to show this dungeon who’s boss.”

  “And while you were in here playing footsie with these nobodies, we went and fought the boss, bro,” Robby Robber said, and gave Nicole a playful shove on the huge glowing shoulder pauldron. “Casino was like shing, shing! And I flipped over this robed loser and threw him into two of his buddies, then cracked another one’s spine, and Robby Robber here was sneaking up on folks, then POW, backstab right through your chest with the heart sticking out on the end of his knife!

  Robby stepped forward. “But bro, Nicole’s a buh-dass. One hunnert percent BAMF. You shoulda seen her slice her way out of that huge lizardkin holy creature or whatever it’s called after it ate her whole. We all got like 5 XPs each, and we’re totally leveling up.”

  Nicole, to her credit, had the good grace to appear embarrassed when he turned his hurt and betrayal toward her.

  ***

  They did, luckily, split the loot with him, which amounted to another two Credits. These he sank into his Stash as well. They kept other things secret from him, and after a Stress-enhanced Study roll of 8 and 7, he discovered they’d found some enhanced items. Robby Robber got extra quiet boots, Casino a new sword, and some enhanced leather bracers for Cornholen. Let them keep the trash, he thought. He didn’t need any of that when he had magic. The whole cart ride back down the hill and toward Franjy Ponny he tried to keep the bros happy. Robby and Casino especially liked to jump around and reenact the fight for them, throwing in extra dick jokes and innuendos anywhere they could.

  “Oh, I gave it to that lizard priest hard, from behind. And here’s Nicole’s big swinging dick, bashing dudes left and right, giving me a half chub.”

  “And that huge lizard stayed up about as long as Morelon here lasts in bed,” Casino giggled.

  “That’s what happens when he meets a real woman!” Taz declared. “Just shows if you’re done eating her too quick, she’ll cut you down.”

  They reach
ed Franjy Ponny in half the time it took to get there, which Brian would’ve found amusing except that he was teetering toward really hating these three. Nicole, too… she could’ve stopped them from charging ahead into the boss’s lair, or just waited for Morelon the Learned while they got their asses handed to them, and done the end stage with him. She was his companion for the first two weeks, not these imbeciles and their crap names, their crap attitudes, and their crap… everything.

  “Alllll right!” Curtis said when they’d hopped off the cart. “Party time, and Morelon the Learned is the guest of honor. We couldn’t have got through any of that while we were sitting here drunk off our butts, and to top that off, we met the baddest assest chica in the whole whatever you call this dumb game thing, our bff Nicole!”

  And for just a brief moment, he’d felt like maybe the five of them would work out. It wasn’t to be. No, the plan remained: kill them. Not here, not now, but also not far off and not far into the future.

  Brian made very sure he kept an eye on Robby Robber throughout the party at the tavern, and refused any offers of drink, and their response was raucous laughter basically every time. For a time, they partied together, including playing magical music (no thanks necessary for Morelon the Learned) and dancing around. And that included Nicole right up to the point where Robby Robber sidled up to her on wobbly legs and grabbed her plate-covered behind.

  “No,” he whispered.

  And before Robby could tell her just what a beautiful piece of ass she was (or whatever idiotic and sexist thing he would say), he had the spellbook open, had slapped the Fortitude skill and enhanced it with 2 Stress points. And with his 10, the spell went off just as quick as could be.

  “Wha–” Taz said, and immediately shrank until he was about a foot tall. Luckily, his rogue clothes and armor went and shrank with him.

  “Punked you good! Oh, I got you!” he shouted.

  It was like someone had dumped a bucket of water on Cornholen there. He stiffened and pushed Casino aside. “The fuck? Not cool, dude!”

  “Yeah, so it’s cool when you guys repeatedly get me, and then I turn the tables just one time–”

  “Rule one of the bro code is thou shalt not cockblock!” Curtis shouted. A hush fell over the tavern. “That’s not a punk, bro, that’s sabotage. A real bro does not–”

  Brian stabbed another command (Command, plus 2 Stress points, result: 2 and 6) and immediately Curtis fell to sleep, slumping to the table, then sliding bonelessly to the floor. 14 Spell Points.

  “I thought we couldn’t attack each other here!” Casino slurred.

  Brian shrugged. “Doesn’t count as an attack? Maybe there’s a glitch in the system. Look, you don’t have to stay with them. You haven’t been a complete asshole to me. We can level up together, enjoy this place without pissing on each other–”

  “That’s my fiance, fuckwad!” Paige screamed, gesticulating wildly at the sleeping Curtis, and took up her shiny new sword.

  Taz, meanwhile, had tried to sneak up on him, but his other spell (All Sight) had given him a warning. The no-attack rule apparently held, because Taz got within inches of Brian with his tiny, pin-sized dagger before green magic flung him out of the city.

  “Don’t,” he said, with no real conviction she would listen. Instead he readied a spell. Casino/Paige charged him, and he swept open a dimensional door right in front of her. (13 Spell Points, no biggie.) She landed with an ‘oof!’ and he came around to the front of the portal to see if he’d gotten her all the way to the quest cavern, the barracks room. Turns out he had, after all.

  Paige turned to find him dumping Curtis through the portal after her, and swore loudly at him. “You can’t–”

  He stepped through, brought his hands up, and roasted her with fire. She screamed, and tried to rise, but didn’t have the skill points to take him on. Another sweep of flame took her and her sleeping boyfriend out of the picture. They disappeared, leaving behind a pile of Credits in the form of several platinum pieces.

  “Nah,” he said, and stepped back through. Then he shut the portal down.

  Nicole was standing with her mouth hanging open. “Holy crap.”

  Chapter 7- The Minmaxer’s Guide to Exploiting the Hottest Loopholes

  Two weeks later Brian found himself in the lovely city of Kapi Tal, the towered wonder of Slightly Left of Center Earth. A loaf of elven sweet bread and several slabs of white-gold halfling goat cheese sat on the table between the two as he held the employee tablet. In front of him sat a list labeled ‘McGuffins’.

  “McGuffins, seriously?” asked Brian, rolling his eyes.

  His companion laughed. “The park has its own names and method, Mr. Morecock. Trust me, it was once something much worse.”

  Brian nodded and looked over the list of mythical items, studying what powers they might proffer. The man across from him was grinning, and he pulled a pear from a basket of fruit laid down upon the wooden planks by his side.

  “It seems to me, Georgio, that every single one of these items is an asshole and a half to get at,” Brian sighed. He grabbed a chunk out of the bread and took a bite– it tasted like peanut butter mixed with chocolate and then dipped into fruit punch. The powerful taste kicked the back of his throat and he choked.

  Georgio trailed his pencil mustache with a single finger, saying nothing, allowing his eyes to do the laughing for him. To do so publicly would be humiliating to this particular guest, and he was growing a reputation for being free with wealth and also quite easy to trigger.

  Brian snapped his fingers and a lithe elven maiden with large breasts and a thin maid’s uniform bounced on over, bringing a steaming mug of Silvernest Tea. He took a glug and waved her off.

  “So, as I was saying, this list is tremendous. And also impossible. How the hell am I supposed to get any of this stuff?”

  Georgio gave a polite chuckle, keeping his eyes locked onto Brian’s own. “Well, it isn’t my fault that you no longer have a party to venture out with. I would think, with the powers at your beck and call, though, that you might wish to roll through some of the lower level quests and build farm XPs so that you can? I mean, look at me, I’m just a Prestige Gaming employee, nothing more that I can do for you! If they caught me selling even this data I’d be fired for breaking the immersion or whatever. I know where the big stuff is and what it does, but getting to it is something you are going to have to figure out on your own.”

  Brian nodded. He had hoped that the park employee might be able to simply hack the system and move the items into his inventory for a cool million bucks but, looking into those knowing, staring, eyes, he knew that Georgio knew what he wanted, and the park employee’s hands were tied.

  “Right, right, I wouldn’t dream of asking you for any more help than you have already provided,” he lied. He put the list down upon the old oak table at which they breakfasted, and he clapped for another mug of tea. “What is this stuff in real life?” he asked, giving it a contented sniff.

  “Ha! I don’t actually know– a Prestige Gaming unique recipe for sure. I’d like to suggest that maybe you keep some things immersive,” he advised with a raised eyebrow. Combined with his pencil mustache, the action made his face look villainous.

  “Maybe. I know I sure wanted that at the beginning– but between you and me this place is full of a bunch of gym bro and business bro assholes. It’s like I left Musky to go to Muskyville.”

  Georgio chuckled. “You know I heard some of the coders are pissed at you for running all over the place, making the game environment travel so far. Apparently you almost ran into the set of a Windswept Hearts scenario in your first week.”

  Brian laughed darkly. It would’ve been really something to stumble through a ruined castle and into some nineteenth century drawing room where some horny businessman was trying to sift through a dozen layers of undergarments. He was almost sad Prestige had their act together. If he was honest, he would mention the glitches he’d noticed: the patch of wall with the
mouth in it laughing insanely in the second quest (hilariously, Nicole had tried to hide it from him), or the cockatrice that had suddenly lost its giant cockerel skin and been replaced with a weird upright shark skin instead, with two tails where its legs should be. He’d gotten his hands on LUBE and really plunged into the user’s manual of the game, and there was nothing he could do about the glitches, since guests signed away their rights to litigate before they even set foot in the park. They even reserved the right to deny you access to park websites and future entry if you so much as gave a bad review.

  “You know, there are other vistas to explore. You’ve got the run of the park, so you could go save some damsels in distress and sweep them off their feet, or young rakes if that’s more to your preference. From what I can gather, the NPCs feel no different than the real thing. And you’re certainly not obligated to venture into Windswept Hearts. There’s romance to be found in a swashbuckling adventure, or perhaps a hard boiled whodunnit. Or better yet, deep in the depths of space.

  “Most importantly, you could work your way up to Access Level 3, and buy your third dots in all these skills.”

  “It’s a stupid gate,” Brian said, with a slight glower.

  “But a useful one for us. People like you make our storyline and coding departments work overtime. Take a vacation from your vacation quest. You’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Brian shook his head. He’d grown up reading Lord of the Rings, followed by the Wheel of Time, and then went straight into every conceivable fantasy novel he could poke his escapist mind into. About that time came the video games as well, the Myths of Melda and Heaven’s Edge.

  “Well if that won’t entice, may I suggest you wait a day or two for the genre mashup version of the game to roll out? Just relax and have some nymphs feed you fruit, and then feel free to combine this fantasy world with anything else, to your heart’s content. You could just as easily mash it with Stone, Bronze and Steel to create a realm in which the gods are real and roam these hills, or cyber-fantasy with magi-technic cyborg elements.”