She had seen something flying through the trees, and it was far too large to be a bird. “Hey, Nika? You guys didn’t add dragons to the game, did you?”
Nika actually laughed. “No, as much as I love their legends, we tried to keep it as true to earth history as possible.”
Ash searched the treetops for another glimpse of the thing, but it had hidden itself too well. She waited long enough for Nika to come stand beside her.
“What did you see?” Nika asked, her tone now deadly serious. “Please tell me it wasn’t a dragon.”
“I’m not sure,” Ash said. “But it was too big to be a bird.” She looked at Nika, her face concerned. “I think we’re being followed.”
“We are, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to be afraid of him.”
Ash’s mouth fell open. “So you know who it is? Who?”
“That tiger from yesterday.”
Ash’s face cleared. “No. I mean, yeah, he’s definitely following us, but this is different.” She hesitated, biting her lip, afraid this was going to come out sounding really stupid. “I’m pretty sure that whoever is following us has wings.”
“Whoever? You mean you don’t think it’s a monster?”
Ash hesitated. “It could be, but it hasn’t moved on us yet.” She shook her head. “Or maybe it’s just my imagination. Let’s keep going. It’ll either show itself, or it won’t.”
And it’ll either be friendly, or it won’t, she thought. She didn’t think for one second that glimpse had been her imagination, for all her words otherwise.
Dean was waiting for them on the other side of the clearing, but he didn’t ask. As soon as they caught up, he took off at a fast walk along the path. This new Dean was a force to be reckoned with. She kind of liked him. A lot more than the old version that was for sure.
The next clearing wasn’t really a clearing, but a widening of the path. As if they had entered a gate, once Ash, who was bringing up the rear, had stepped between two overly large trees, they realized that every exit from the path was covered in tree-to-tree spider webs.
Ash jogged forward and the three of them took stances back to back to cover all their sides. As they watched, two huge spiders closed off the way they had just come with a giant web.
Nika threw a hand toward her and Ash felt the most wonderful feeling flooding her body. She felt renewed and highly energized. When she spared a quick glance at her stats, she saw that Nika had given her a mana potion. She grinned at her, then turned to set fire to three of the containing webs before turning to face the creatures themselves.
These two were the size of the Queen from the last battle, but so far there were only the two of them. Totally doable.
“Dibs on the one with the red chest,” Dean yelled, as he began firing arrows into his soon to-be prize.
Not waiting to see how many arrows it took, Ash loped a fire spell on the other one, then followed it up with more in rapid succession. It took four to wipe the beast’s health bar down to nothing.
She noticed Dean’s spider was out too and gave him a high five. Then his spider began moving again, or more accurately, its body began moving. Suddenly the red on its chest burst and a small shower of tiny spiders began pouring out.
“They’re too small for my arrows,” Dean cried, not sounding happy about that at all. As if he had enough arrows to deal with all of them.
Ash did a quick check. There were far too many of them to hit each one with a spell without having to add more mana. Looking at the tiny creatures, she remembered reading about them and began stomping them with her feet. The other two watched as she managed to kill several with just one stomp.
Soon it looked like they were having a dancing contest, all of them stomping and jumping about, laughing to the point of tears at some of the moves they came up with.
Finally, every last spider was nothing more than specks of glitter on the ground.
“Congratulations. You have reached level Three.”
“Alright!” Dean yelled, and Ash knew that the message hadn’t just been for her. A big part of playing within a party was sharing the battle experience points.
“Congratulations. You have now learned the Heal Spell. Using this spell will enable you to heal a player’s health by 25 hit points at a cost of two mana.”
“Hey, Ash, did you get your healing spell? I got Double Shot,” Dean said excitedly, not waiting for her to answer. “I can fire two arrows at once now!”
“Cool,” Ash said. “What did you get, Nika?”
“WarCry.”
“What does that do?” Dean asked.
“Wow,” Ash said. “That’s awesome.” Then to Dean, “WarCry boosts the party’s attack. It means that once she gives the battle cry, we’ll be able to do even more damage to the monsters than usual.” She paused. “How long does it last?”
“Thirty seconds,” Nika answered. “And it’s a beginner magic, so it only boosts us by five percent.”
“So, it’s an ability that levels up?” Dean asked.
Nika nodded. “It’ll take gaining a few more levels to really be worthwhile in battle. Still, better than a kick in the pants, right? And you guys are totally rocking this thing.”
She looked up at the sky and Ash followed her gaze. The sun was starting to slide down the far horizon.
“Time to head back?” Ash asked. Nika just nodded.
It only took Dean a few minutes to gather his arrows once again, and they headed back toward town.
For good or bad, the coyotes hadn’t re-spawned by the time they passed their clearing, but twice Ash caught sight of the flying creature through the trees. It was definitely following them. And while the tiger might be an ally, she wasn’t so sure about this one.
“Um, guys?” Dean asked. “Remember when we killed the first set of spiders and found all that medical stuff for the quest? Why didn’t these monsters drop any items?”
Ash took a quick glance into her inventory. Holy cow!
“Take a look at your gold, Dean. Looks like they are just bounty monsters,” she said. “I’ve got twenty-five gold just from these battles alone.”
“Yeah, we figured it was kind of cruel to give players items they really couldn’t use until they were higher levels quite this early in the game,” Nika said. “So for the first four levels, except for the quest items, monsters basically drop double gold. Once we hit level five, we should start getting items and weapons.”
Level five. Ash tried to remember the game, but that sounded about right. That was also about the time the battles went from fighting overly large animals and insects to humanoid creatures like orcs, blood elves, and red caps.
She shuddered. Ash was kind of hoping they left the red caps out of this version of the game. They creeped her out in the online version, and she really didn’t relish the idea of going head to head with one here.
All in all, they hadn’t traveled very far from town, so they reached its borders in very little time. It was just as they had left it. People milled around the streets, shopped at the market, and from the noise wafting on the breeze from the direction of the tavern, some of the town’s folk had already started their nightly celebrations.
As they passed the fountain, they each saved, not wanting to take any chances of losing their precious level up or new abilities. Then, without even having to discuss it, they headed over to the market.
A quick check showed no new weapons for them, but they loaded up with more health and mana potions. They shouldn’t really need them with the decreased difficulty, but having them would allow them to travel farther faster because they wouldn’t have to wait for their health or mana to regenerate between battles.
With their shopping done, they all hesitated outside the market. They had pretty much filled their inventories and still had ten gold each to spare. That was good as it was always wise to save for the higher priced items later in the game. For Ash, that meant upgrading from a wand to a rod and finally to a staff.
&n
bsp; She even knew the exact one she wanted. It was a beauty and extremely powerful to boot. But in the online game, you had to be level twelve before you even caught a glimpse of it in-game, and level fifteen before you could actually equip it. Something to look forward to.
Glancing at Dean, she saw his eyes traveling over in the direction of the tavern. “You know,” she said. “That drink you guys had me try wasn’t half bad. How’s about we all have a drink before dinner? My treat.”
Nika slapped her on the back. “That’s my girl. We’ll corrupt you with alcohol yet.”
As expected from the noise, the tavern was every bit as busy as the night before. As they walked in, Ash kind of wondered if there would be any trouble due to Nika’s costume. Most of the people were fully dressed, except those who were obviously ladies of the night.
One NPC did start to reach out for Nika’s hip and Ash held her breath waiting to see what would happen. But the man’s eyes finally traveled up to Nika’s face, he gulped, and the hand withdrew without ever making contact.
“Good,” Nika said. “They learn.”
Oh yeah, Ash thought. Nika had been here last night too. Then she thought about Nika’s words.
They learn.
Did that just apply to the human NPC’s in the game? Or to the monsters as well?
Chapter Eleven: Pixie Stage Right
The next morning came early, but luckily the team had agreed on making it an early night. Nika stretched out, still in bed, feeling better about things than she had since entering the game.
Yes, they were trapped, and yes, things in the real world were probably going to crap. But as long as she was here, she couldn’t do anything about it anyway, so why spend her precious game time worrying about it? Besides, finally, her small little group was actually becoming a decent team. One that she found she was beginning to like a lot.
Having grown up in a home-school environment within the company, Nika hadn’t had the opportunity to make a lot of friends. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. She had tons of friends. But almost all of them also happened to be employees which kind of muddied the water as to true friendship.
Ash and Dean were different. She wasn’t paying them. And yet, they seemed to like her as much as she liked them. Dean had been pretty rocky at first, but now that he had come around, she actually looked forward to getting to know him better too.
And for once in her life, Nika didn’t have the fate of the company resting on what she did that day. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t true, but she quickly brushed that thought aside. Whatever was happening out there, she’d deal with it once she got out of the game. For now, she was going to enjoy each and every moment as if it would be her last.
Ash must have heard Nika stirring because she rolled over facing her and opened her eyes. One hand came up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she yawned.
“Time to get up?” Ash asked.
Nika gave a yawn of her own before answering. What was it that made those darn things so contagious?
“I guess so,” she said, stretching one last time. “If we get on the trail early, maybe we can explore a little past Riser’s Creek and check out the orc camp.”
“There are orcs?” Dean asked, excitement in his voice. “Can we beat them? How well do arrows do on them?”
Nika looked over to see Dean already sitting up in bed, grinning at her.
She grinned back, then took a quick glance at the one bathroom. “Yup. Ash’ll tell you all about it.” Then she hopped out of bed and ran for the bathroom, hearing an indignant Ash call out behind her.
“You’d better let me in there before you start your shower, or I’ll burn the door down!”
Nika laughed but opted to not test out her words. She used the rest room and grabbed a washcloth and wet it down. Scrubbing on her face and arms, she came out and motioned to the empty room.
“All yours,” she said. “I’m even thinking that we can probably skip the shower unless you really want one. We’re going to get dirty pretty quickly today, so we might as well hold off till we reach the next town.”
Dean sniffed his arm pits before answering. “That should work. It doesn’t appear that these avatars of ours sweat, so no body odor to deal with, just trail dust.”
Ash just gave a shrug and disappeared into the bathroom. Nika noticed Dean didn’t protest a bit about her going next.
“So I missed a quest?” he asked. “I thought you told me that we should check with everybody in the party before accepting those?”
Oh yeah, she had said that, hadn’t she?
Nika blushed. “Sorry. I really should have. But at the time…”
Dean took a deep breath and blew it out. “I was being a total dick about everything. I get it. And Ash helped me accept it, so we’re all okay now.” He paused. “But I do think you were right that we really should discuss quests before taking them. Now that we are a team and everything.”
He was looking at her for confirmation, and she nodded. “Absolutely. I swear I won’t do it again.”
He nodded, and as Ash came out and began pulling on her boots, he took his turn in the facilities.
They decided to get their breakfast to go and opted for sausage wrapped in hotcakes and an apple each. Nika noticed Dean checking his inventory and adding more apples and oranges. Not a bad idea.
Sometimes plans go awry and if they didn’t make it to the town before hard dark, they’d probably be wanting something to eat. She scanned the buffet for food that would keep, then noticed a door marked pantry off to the side of the tables. While the other two stuffed their inventories with fruit, she entered the pantry and checked out the motherlode.
The small room was filled with provisions that were simply there for the taking. She was only limited by the size of her inventory, which she had pretty much stuffed with potions the night before. Looking around, she settled on two sleeves of crackers and a wheel of cheese.
With her virtual backpack now full to the point of breaking, she stepped out to join the group. A few minutes later they were at the save point.
Just for safety, they each touched it before stepping onto the path.
Nika thought she glimpsed a black and white movement off in the trees and smiled to herself. Really, if he was going to be a friend, he could always just make his presence known and join them.
How cool would it be to have their very own pet tiger? Not to mention the added fighting power. With him on their side, Normal shouldn’t be a problem.
They had easily polished off their breakfast before reaching the small clearing with the coyotes. There were more of them this morning, but the group was a level higher, too. Within minutes, they were a few gold richer and on their way to the spiders.
Again, there were three today versus the two from yesterday, which was normal game play for Gaia’s Rebirth. The battles were set to give a small challenge to your current level, but not one that couldn’t be handled by skilled players.
With the lowered difficulty, a single one of them could probably handle the battles they were facing today. Nika thought about asking if they wanted to up the status, but decided it would be better to wait until they reached the town. She really didn’t want to keep playing the same area over and over again if she was wrong and they faced a higher leveled creature.
On the other hand, she thought, it would take them much longer to level up at this rate. They already had two battles behind them, but their experience bars hadn’t really moved. At this rate, they would be lucky to reach level four before Riser’s Creek. Maybe it was worth the risk after all?
While she was still debating broaching the subject with the party, there was a growl and an indignant scream off the path to the right of them. This was followed by a movement in the forested undergrowth that was coming straight for them. And whatever it was, it was big.
The three drew their weapons and stood in a solid line facing the oncoming menace. Only when it broke through into the clearing, instead of imm
ediately rushing into battle, the three stood there astonished.
Standing before them was the white and black tiger they had encountered before. He wasn’t threatening them at all. In fact, to all the world, it appeared he was instead bringing them his catch of the day.
And what a catch it was.
Nika had spent a lifetime helping her father create Gaia’s Rebirth, and she was fairly certain that neither of them had ever considered adding a Pixie or Fairy race to the mix. She wasn’t quite sure what it was the tiger held in place before them, but she knew for a fact that it wasn’t something that belonged in this game.
The pixie, because that’s what it most resembled although much larger than what would be normal according to the legends, was fighting the tiger tooth and nail. In her hands, she held a thick stick, and she was beating the tiger over the head with it.
Unfortunately, the beast wasn’t really paying her attack any attention whatsoever. Instead, he was standing before them, looking prouder than any tiger should be able to look, holding the ankle and foot of the floating creature.
It resembled the old parade balloons from the annual parades they used to hold. She hovered above the tiger, her wings fluttering just enough to keep her airborne.
Nika knew that if the tiger loosened his grip, she would be gone in an instant.
“First of all, it’s about time you came out to join us. But we’ll cover that later,” Nika said, walking over to the beast, but careful to stay out of reach of the pixie's stick. “So what is it that you’ve brought us?”
Giving the tiger one last whack with the stick, the pixie gave up her fight. Good, it really wasn’t doing her any good anyway, Nika thought.
Raising up to her full height, standing in midair, she was even taller than Nika had originally thought. A good five feet, and still being held tightly in place by their good friend the tiger. Her outfit appeared to be made of patch worked suede varying in shades of brown and green. While the outfit was a bit form-fitting, it was a lot more modest than Nika’s own.
Gaia's Rebirth Box Set Page 9
