by Arthur Stone
It was a watershed moment. ForestBison had made a discovery that could have turned him into one of the most powerful players in the world of X.
But his future would not be a bright one.
After all, his discovery had not been made by him alone. His party had been made up of various players. Some were cunning and quickly began to work behind the backs of their partymates.
The human element in ForestBison’s story ruined the ending for him.
Dark was unable to piece everything together from the many fragmentary comments, but one thing was clear: One of ForestBison’s fellows, whether on their own or with the help of accomplices, gave access to the new land to the top clan in X. For a price, of course.
Discovering a location made it accessible to everyone, in principle. Anyone could pay real money to teleport to a place they had visited before. And they could bring other players with them. ForestBison failed to keep control of his party. One of X’s most powerful clans, with all of its wealth and its mighty players, crushed the lost world and its discoverer both.
But even the clan’s discipline, which some called draconian, did not prevent new traitors from arising. Or perhaps ForestBison himself, and those loyal to him, made moves to try to fix the situation. Several more clans, weaker clans, soon had access to the location. Large-scale hostilities followed. The new territory became one of the fiercest battlefields X had ever seen.
But that was its own story.
Dark had learned enough. He exited the forum and looked around. Land which no other player had walked on stretched in all directions, and he had no idea how far it extended. No one could get here without a purposefully created teleport scroll. And no one could create such a scroll yet. There was simply no way for other players to reach this zone.
Only Dark could bring them there. He didn’t have such a scroll, and had zero idea how to make one. But he was sitting atop the corpse of a huge monster packed with loot. There were likely more such beasts around. The forums said that intact monster carcasses were common features of abandoned locations. And that such lands were worth scouring for them.
Sooner or later, he would encounter a scroll which let him return to places visited before. Or a whole suitcase of scrolls. After all, it sounded like high-level monsters often dropped scrolls.
But they were also high-level scrolls, of course, so a level 0 character would be unable to use them.
No matter what Dark did, no matter what path his thoughts trod, he keep running into the brick wall of his own inferiority. In order to escape this trap, he had to pump his level up high. Of course, even then, things might not work out.
He could find the scroll he needed and reach the level he desired. Then, he could contact the leaders of the top clan in the world and make the deal of the century. If the forums told the truth, the player or players who had betrayed ForestBison had received a seven-figure reward. In real-world money.
Having that kind of money would help any situation. But he had to consult with other, wiser people first and make sure this was the correct course of action. Otherwise, he might gain new hunters on his trail, even new torturers, in the place of a seven-figure sum. The clan could decide to squash him like a bug. This was a game. He couldn’t file a lawsuit against the clan, and no one would give him seven figures unless there was no other way to obtain what they wanted.
In the real world, there might be courses of action he could take to prevent abuse. Here, anything could happen. Especially when the subject in question was a player who was unable to return to the real world.
Perhaps selling access to this land was off the table, but that wasn’t all he had. It was a new territory that seemed quite sizable. Loot-filled skeletons, ruins packed with treasures, mines dug in the ground. There was a great bounty to be had.
Dark was finally realizing that he had struck the jackpot. For nearly a week, he had been killing for peanuts. So much time wasted on frogs and fish and mortal fights with furry beavers. It was like living in a warehouse of rare delicacies and hunting for dog food!
How had he gotten so lucky?
All of the answers that came to his mind were grounded on dubious assumptions.
Perhaps the Emergency Bot had just been too stupid. It had routinely evacuated the stuck player without considering the situation. Every race in X had one or more start locations. Newbies who created a character could spawn in one of their race’s start locations, or in the start location of another race, if permitted. But the best location was that belonging to your own race. It was there that you’d find the safest conditions: heightened security, many low-level opponents and easy beginner quests, friendly NPCs, and representatives from the most widespread guilds.
So start locations were usually the best choice for evacuation targets. Ergo, the Emergency Bot had sent Dark to his race’s start location.
Without considering the fact that Dark’s race did not exist. It was defective, never finished, abandoned by the developers. And its start location was unknown and uninhabited. Any player who arrived there was an explorer in a rich and hostile land, with all of the consequences that entailed. Kim’s people, of course, had chosen a different starting location, one that was well-suited to their plans for him. The gang’s criminal actions and the AI’s thinking had unlocked an enviable opportunity for Dark.
Enough with the frogs and fish! Dark cast them out of his mind. Or mostly, at least. This was the last day of his miserable existence.
Tomorrow, he would become an explorer.
He would find out what this land had to offer him.
Chapter 23
The Explorer
Total stat levels: 6
Character level: 0
Mastery level: 0
Wasteland Panther deals you 227 damage.
You have died.
Note: Last respawn point selected. You have entered the Central Wastes of Ethria. This is the edge of the world, a place watered with the tears of hopes long lost and dreams long dashed, a cemetery of races long forgotten, or which were never known in the first place.
10 seconds to resurrection. 9...
Dark sat in the phallic shadow and considered.
Three deaths in half a day, and nothing worthwhile to show for it. No matter what path he took along the cliff, he always ran into some huge angry cat. There was no way to escape them, no way to defend himself. One blow from their paws, or sometimes two, was enough.
This Ethria was a terrible start location.
The forums said that start locations were filled with meadows of low-level monsters that posed little danger even to naked players. It was difficult to find any strong monsters there. They were usually located in obviously ominous caves and lairs, distant corners which were easily missed or avoided.
Had Dark been brought to such a place? To a whole location that was a distant corner of the world? Apparently. There were some low-level creatures here, but they were just animals, the kinds that lived everywhere in X. Frogs, fish, beavers, turtles, pheasants, deer. None of them were real monsters, or “mobs.”
The chitin hunters counted, of course. They were not animals, but creatures imagined up by the game developers. The wasteland panthers were similar. Wild cats usually didn’t have huge eyes burning with ruby-red flames.
Players hunted ordinary animals and monsters alike. But Dark was having the worst of luck with the monsters. He still had not met any that he was a match for. They all finished him off in less than three attacks. Still, the forums insisted that he needed to kill monsters in order to level up.
Of course, this location could be defective. Perhaps the AI paid it little attention. Why balance the location when Ethrians never existed, and never would?
Dark might just be wasting his time. If there was a good place to grind around here, he wasn’t seeing it.
Still, only half a day was wasted.
He’d keep going, but not the same direction. How about the other way along the cliff, to the left? That is wher
e he noticed the ruins and the suspiciously round mound on the way to them.
But there had been far too many dark bald patches on the way, where those chitin beasts lived. How could he avoid running into them?
Perhaps they actually, helped, though. Their presence might explain why no panthers had intercepted him on his many trips to the river. As long as he could see the bald patches, he could go around them. Hopefully.
* * *
The ground underfoot became different. Dark was still barefoot, after all. No change escaped his notice. He had experienced no difficulty with the dirt anywhere else. Even with his normal Ethrian bonus, the sensation experienced by his feet was lower than in the real world. And clay soil was nice and smooth. When a thin layer of sod covered it, it was as comfortable as a carpet. As long as he kept an eye out to make sure he stepped on no dry branches.
This area held no dry branches, but it was still becoming more unpleasant to walk on. Dark reached down and plucked several sharp pebbles from the soil. He had only previously encountered them at the base of the cliff. All of the stones by the river had been smooth. Stepping on them had been annoying at times, but never painful.
These did not appear to be the same stone. Nor were they sandstone, like the cliff rocks. These had a rounded shape but sharp edges and were dark colored with spots of blue.
A common rock. Class: none. A small piece of marbled limestone. Cannot be used as a melee or ranged weapon. However, it can be used as a light projectile for a slingshot. It will only damage the weakest of enemies, and only at close range. Base damage: 1 x (1 + Strength). Minimum level: none. Estimated value: even the simplest of idiots will not buy these, unless he produces lime. In that case, he might buy them, as long as you have a wheelbarrow full.
Dark hadn’t held limestone before. The geology of the area was changing. Perhaps that meant some other fundamental changes to his location, as well. He was approaching something new. The next clearing did not look like a chitin hunter’s lair. He had seen many of those on the way, and had not received any unusual stones in his feet.
But as he rose, he heard a familiar sound behind him. With a sigh, he turned. There it was: a large cat, twenty paces away. It stared at him with its eyes of red fire as its hisses grew in volume. His experience told him that in about five seconds it would cease its noise and charge its prey.
There was no point in trying to escape. Each of his three deaths proved that the panther could catch him in fifteen seconds or less.
“Come on, get it over with!” Dark screamed inwardly, picturing himself walking those three or four miles all over again, avoiding the bald patches the whole way.
But he wouldn’t give up yet. He charged the opposite direction, at maximum speed. There was no point to conserving Stamina. When he respawned, it would be refilled, or at least mostly.
Dark cleared a little over thirty yards, and the panther was still hissing. The man encountered a dense thicket of prickly shrubs, but he charged on. He pushed through, ignoring the tiny damage dealt him by the thorns. The beast with the burning eyes would go around the thorns, rather than move through them. Dark had earned himself a bit of time.
Perhaps something up ahead would give him a chance at survival.
He emerged into a bush-free glade and screamed in pain as he stepped on a rock as sharp as glass. It was no pebble. He might as well tie it to a stick and get a spear out of it. The man imagined a developer chuckling to himself as he placed the razor in the earth just to trip up newcomers.
He limped on, blood gushing from his foot. All of the thickets disappeared around him, now, as he entered a fully open area.
Behind, he heard the sounds of his doom. The panther was on his tail, and approaching fast.
Dark slid around the final bush and began to slow his pace. The land was devoid of grass, a strip of yellowish soil littered with stones, and beyond it... nothing.
A cliff.
Why hadn’t he seen this cliff before? He hadn’t noticed any significant drops from up on high. That had been a good distance away, of course, but surely such a change in altitude would not have escaped his gaze.
He pressed on without veering. Even if it were a bottomless pit, it might allow him to repeat the stunt with the skeleton. He could pause on the edge and let the panther take a running jump at him. Dark would die, yes, but the mob would follow him to the grave soon afterward. The game would consider the animal’s death as a victory against a high-level animal for Dark, with excellent rewards.
But there was no abyss beyond the drop. Just a small river. It wound through numerous boulders and cut into the rocky shores on either side. The height of his “cliff” was under fifteen feet. It could only cripple him if he failed to land correctly.
Still, he moved as quickly as possible. The panther was close. He lunged as powerfully as he could manage, aiming for a deep hole just behind a huge boulder.
And he nearly made it. In real life, he would have. But here, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t overcome the limitations of his newbie character’s body. It was as if he was jumping while encumbered by barbells. The result clashed with his own instincts born of his physical experience.
He plopped to the ground yards from his intended destination. Of course, had he gone a foot further, he would have landed on the boulder rather than in the water next to it.
Not that the water softened his fall much. It was too shallow. Dark suppressed the pain and jumped forward again, almost blindly. He caught his foot between two rocks at the very edge of the pit in which he had planned to land. Thankfully, the game’s realism had coated the rocks with slippery algae, and he pulled free. Yanking his foot out didn’t even hurt.
Biting his lip, he clambered up onto the sharp stones biting into his bare feet. Seizing roots dangling overhead, he completed his climb.
At last he allowed himself to look around. Doing so lost him time, but he had to wonder what had so occupied the panther that it hadn’t caught him long ago.
The angry black cat had stopped on the other side of the river, in fact, and refused to jump in. It scowled at Dark, its body tense.
The ruby red eyes burned brighter than ever. He imagined these cats had excellent night vision.
Of course, wasteland panthers with eyes of fire didn’t like water, but this was too much. The “river” was a stream, easy to cross by hopping from one stone to another without getting your feet wet. A mob with feline dexterity could bound across in seconds. But this one had stopped atop the opposite bank, making no attempt to pursue the human.
Dark noticed the soil change once more. No more sharp stones were pricking his feet. The ground was not clay, however. Better: it was covered in green grass. The area had the look of a lawn which had been neglected for months but then recently cut again, albeit irregularly and sloppily.
You have left the Central Wastes of Ethria location. Welcome to Outer Omertis.
That confirmed Dark’s assumptions. This stream was a location border. Now the soil and the vegetation were different, as this was no longer a wasteland. The panther was apparently bound to its location. No matter how close its prey, it was obliged to cease its pursuit. Hissing, it pulled an about-face and returned the way they had come.
Of course, things could be worse than they seemed.
This was a new location. It might hold creatures so fearsome that the panther was unwilling to get within a mile of them. He remembered how the beaver turned and fled when Dark had entered the home of the chitin hunter.
In any case, he would be in no hurry to create a new respawn point. The sad affair of the skeleton’s serial slaying was still fresh in his memory.
Chapter 24
Discovery Bonuses
Total stat levels: 6
Character level: 0
Mastery level: 0
Ripened fruit of the gasthos tree. Alchemical ingredient. Known properties: none. Poison level: unknown. You can risk eating these. Positive effects: unknown. Negative effect
s: possibility of poisoning.
The fruit was attractive and smelled appetizing. Dark barely resisted stuffing it in his mouth. Nothing had tried to kill him during the past fifteen minutes of exploration. But this land was full of life. Birds sang in all scales and modes, butterflies of all colors flitted about, deer grazed in green meadows kissed by sparse but verdant groves, the grass was lush yet trim, and rabbits and pheasants dodged and ducked under bushes filled with berries.
It was a paradise. Perhaps it was even the start location intended for Ethrian beginners. He felt none of that sense of continual danger which had in six short days become an integral part of his consciousness. Dark grabbed the fruit. He was willing to risk some gastrointestinal distress.
What if the fruit was fatally poisonous? Then he would have to push through the wasteland again, avoid the evil panthers, and let the sharp stones consume his bare feet. That would lose time, even if he made it on the first try.
This location seemed safe. He decided to relocate. This would be his new home, and he could explore outwards from here.
But try as he might, he could not find a landmark that worked as a new respawn point. No ancient ruins, no giant stumps, no prominent stones. Nothing. Just grass, groves, and greenery. The game denied one attempt after another, and Dark always found himself in agreement. He had to find something that genuinely stood out. So, he proceeded, walked in a straight line, slowly but surely.
Once he was two hundred paces from the stream, he turned to walk parallel to it, downstream. Along the way, he counted his steps. This small river should eventually flow into the larger river on which Dark had affected his amphibicide and later his brave beaver battles. Perhaps the biome would shift again and something close enough to a landmark would show up.
He stopped and peered intently forward. There was something new up ahead, yes, but he did not understand what. The trees of yet more groves made it difficult to see, but it wasn’t far.
