“I hope the food here is better than Noob Town,” said Bob.
“I hope the women are, too.” I thought of my conquests so far and shuddered. I knew it was bad when I realized they made my ex-girlfriend look like a supermodel. She wasn’t, just so you know.
We strolled into town, checking out the passing players. The women were of a better class than in Noob Town, but so were the guys. We watched one player—in every sense of the word—who must have been a Five at least, picking up a much lower-level woman.
“That’s not very fair for us,” I complained, but Bob nodded with admiration at the guy.
“That’s gonna be me soon.”
“Way to aim high, Bob.”
We spotted the sign that said “Food” in badly painted letters. Not promising, but we went on in.
I ordered a joint of wild boar and boiled vegetables. Bob ordered what was described as ground ox steak and bread, with potatoes dipped in boiling oil. It looked an awful lot like a burger and fries. It kind of took me out of the game, but Bob explained, “When in doubt, order the burger. It’s hard to screw up.” He took a bite. “Not great, but not that bad. Needs more of this ‘sauce of specially prepared tomatoes.’”
I eyed him suspiciously as he poured the bright red sauce onto his burger.
“It’s ketchup, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
My meal was fairly awful, and I wished I’d ordered the same thing as Bob.
He asked, “How many girls did you get when you were alive?”
“One. One measly woman.”
“Was she hot?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you still got me beat.” Bob finished the last of his burger and called to the serving girl in his fantasy voice. “Hey! Wench! Bring another of the same, and more ale, and make haste!”
“I hope that’s an NPC. You didn’t talk to women like that in real life, did you?”
“I didn’t talk to women at all in real life.”
Bob’s burger came and the way he tore into it you wouldn’t have guessed he had just finished one a minute ago.
“Being dead is fucking sweet! My whole life I had to watch what I ate, and I still couldn’t lose weight. Now I can eat as much as I want and not gain a pound.”
“I would save my appetite for the higher-level chefs if I were you. But I know how you feel, in the opposite way: no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t gain weight—especially muscle. I lifted weights several times a week, but I still stayed scrawny and weak.”
Bob took a huge swig of bad ale and smiled at me.
“Not anymore, Karl. You and me are done being that guy. We’re gonna look great, we’re gonna have fun, and we’re gonna get so much pussy we’re gonna be tired of women.”
I reached across the table and gripped his hand. “You got it, Bob.”
Studying him, I wondered what he’d looked like in real life. His character was so skinny it was hard to imagine him being a big guy. I realized how easy he was to talk to, which was a little weird since I was twenty-one and he was fifty-two. Maybe that explains why he never got laid.
* * *
We found a store selling weapons. They had a badass level-three sword hanging on the wall, but I couldn’t have bought it even if I had enough gold. I settled on a level-two axe, remembering to save enough money to get new boots.
As we left the shop I swung my new weapon in the air, getting a feel for its heft. It was about a foot and a half long, with a single blade on the side and a spike on its tip. I was so eager to test it that I wouldn’t have minded if one of those damn skeletons popped up out of the ground. And I hated those things.
No monsters appeared, but the woman who came out of the inn across the street might as well have been one. I swear she was a Level One.
“Hey, big boys. Care for a three-way level up?”
I shook my head quickly. “I’m good.”
Bob nodded just as quickly. “I’m down.”
“Want to go back to the—” The woman stopped and her eyes widened. Bob’s robe was already open. “Or, I guess here’s as good a place as any.”
I had to turn my head as Bob bent her over against the wall and lent credence to the phrase “doing the nasty.” He wasn’t going to be earning any extra Experience points: in about thirty seconds he was done. The woman scowled at him and walked away.
I said, “That was fast.”
“I’m making up for lost time.”
“It’s a good thing this game doesn’t have reputation points. Oh hey, a clothing store.”
In a few minutes I emerged with a pair of level-two boots. They weren’t pretty, but the soles appeared reasonably secured to the leather and I couldn’t find a single hole. No longer would I cower in fear at the sight of a puddle.
“Check these out,” I said to Bob, when I noticed a small commotion in a nearby alley.
“Go away, creep!”
“Come on, baby, you know you want a Level Five!” I stepped over to see that it was the same douchebag who had been picking up low-level girls earlier.
“I don’t care if you’re a Level Ten, you’re an asshole! Don’t make me call a mod.”
“I’ll reset you before they even get here.” He lifted his sword menacingly.
“Hey!” I called, angry enough that I didn’t care if he was three levels above me. “Leave her alone, jackass.”
He turned and smirked when he saw me.
“What are you gonna do, noob?”
My pulse began to soar to uncomfortable levels, but then I saw how narrow the alley was and had a flash of inspiration. I blocked the entrance and put my hands out, axe in the right, exposing my chest in a tempting target.
“What cheat code did you use to get to Level Five, bitch?”
I struck a nerve, attacking his pride as a gamer. He turned from the woman and came at me.
My plan worked: the alley was too narrow to swing his sword from right to left, so I knew it had to come from straight ahead. He swung it down hard at my offered chest and I hopped back in time to avoid the gleaming blade. The motion carried his body forward and I brought the axe down on his neck and took off his head.
“Fuck!” screamed his severed head as it rolled across the ground. Blood shot out of his neck hole like a volcano of gore as his body stumbled out and fell onto the street face down—well not really face down, because his face was a few yards away.
The woman overcame her shock and came over to look at the body on the ground and then looked up at me.
“Oh my God that was so hot. . . .” She stepped fast over the body, put her arms around me, and kissed me hard.
She took her lips away and we stared at each other for a second, long enough for me to see that she was prettier than my real-life girlfriend had been. Definitely a higher level than me. She was a little big, but it looked like she used most of her Attraction points to level up her chest, and she had nice curvy hips and a big butt. Her face was an inch away when she spoke.
“Fuck me.”
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down to the alley. I could see Bob peeking down from the entrance, but I didn’t care. She lifted up her dress and I yanked down my breeches and I stuck my little Level Twoer into her. She was soaked, driven wild by my reckless goading of the level-five bully. Her back pressed into the wall as I pushed into her, and she pulled down the front of her dress to bare her fat breasts, which I mauled like a cornered bear. It was like nothing I ever experienced in the real world, and it was so hot I knew I couldn’t last long, but even after I exploded into her I kept thrusting until despite my limited size I felt the clench of her insides.
Earning EP never felt so good. After we stopped panting and were pulling our clothing back on, she looked down between my legs.
“What level is that?”
“It’s a deuce.”
“Damn, it felt like a Five! I guess I was just so turned on by how you got rid of that guy. I hope I see you again at the higher level
s.”
“I hope so too.” I looked at her passion-flushed face. “By the way, what level are you?”
“Four. The boobs are Fives.”
As the girl left the alley, kicking the bully’s head down the street as she went, I looked at my left palm and my eyes widened.
Attraction: 800
Chapter Ten
THE first thing I did was level up my junk to Level Three. For a second it felt like I was getting wood, but then I realized it was just growing. When Bob wasn’t looking I took a quick feel of my crotch. It felt bigger, but still decidedly small. I had enough AP left from scoring with a Level Four to bump up Face or Body to Four, but I couldn’t do that until I reached the next level.
It was almost within reach: taking down a Five gave me an extra eight hundred Experience points. If I had killed a level-five monster it would have been sixteen hundred, but they seemed to discourage players from attacking each other. I needed four hundred EP each for Weapon, Attack, and Strength, but I was a couple hundred shy of what I needed to take up all three.
I had just bought the level-two axe, so I figured I’d do Attack and Strength. I applied the points and felt a surge of power go through my body.
“What a rush. . . .”
Bob eyed me over. “You really do look bigger. So what now?”
“There don’t seem to be any monsters in this town. I’d like to get to the next level so I can use the rest of my Attraction points.”
“There’s a lot of easy women in this town, though.”
“Bob, if you don’t level up you’ll never get to any of the hot women.”
“To me, even the Level Ones are pretty hot.”
“Bob . . .” I shook my head at his desperation.
“All right, let’s stay at the inn for the night and hit the road in the morning.”
* * *
With our Stamina full and Bob’s Magic at 125, the max for a level-two wizard, we set out into the day.
We soon encountered a few low-level monsters, easy to dispatch but offering little in the way of Experience.
“When are we going to find some good monsters?” I complained, eager to push up my numbers. “These are too ea—”
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared. What blocked the road before us had an essentially human shape, and yet the details veered horribly from humanity: well over eight feet tall; blue skin covered only by a fur loincloth and fur-lined boots; wild white hair snaking out from under a horned helmet; muscles that shamed the most gened-up bodybuilder rippling under the blue skin. But it was the pure white eyes that creeped me out, and the two huge axes, one in each massive hand, that made my stomach tighten with the built-in sense that I faced a monster of a greater level than my own.
It’s only a game, I told myself, though my pounding heart felt all too real, as did the sweat threatening my grip on the axe. If I’d faced the same creature on a screen, my hands on a gamepad, my pulse wouldn’t have budged. But the thing in front of me was as real as myself. Only a game, maybe, but I didn’t want to lose any lives this soon.
Bob was already tracing his finger in the air like a madman as the creature approached with big heavy steps, the axes glinting sharp in the morning sun. The blue glow in Bob’s finger seemed to develop at an alarmingly slow rate, the beastly man-thing getting closer every second. My knuckles whitened on the handle of my axe, half the size of our opponent’s weapons, as I brought it back ready to strike.
The monster stepped within a few feet of us when Bob at last flung out his finger and sent a bolt of blue magic that hit the thing smack in the chest. It seemed to stun the giant, so I dashed in and hacked downward with my axe. The blade stuck in the massive chest, but the thing did not fall, it swung the axe in his right hand at my head, which I would have lost if I hadn’t jerked up my shield. The axe smashed against the shield, sending a jolt through my whole body as I went flying off the road.
As I rolled over the grass, I looked up through impact-fogged eyes to see Bob already summoning up his next magic act. This time he traced both hands in the air, and he did not wait till his fingers turned white but instead sent a weaker beam of light from each finger, one for each of the monster’s eyes. The monster roared and blindly swung an axe at Bob, who jumped back in time to keep both halves of his body together. I spotted my axe on the road and somehow summoned the energy to jump off the ground, pushing through the haze of the hit I’d taken, and before the giant could recover his sight I recovered my weapon, leaped off the ground with the axe high in the air, and brought it down into the monster’s jugular.
Blood sprayed everywhere, and as the blue man writhed in the throes of death the handle of an axe knocked into my head and for a second my vision went black. I avoided slipping into unconsciousness and watched as the blue giant fell to the ground.
I stayed lying in the dirt for a few minutes before I struggled to my feet, dizzy and aching, and then walked toward the massive blue body. There was so much blood on the ground it looked like it had rained red.
A suggestive glow at our opponent’s waist revealed a pouch full of gold, which Bob and I split.
Looking at our hands, we found we also split the EP from bringing down the giant. Neither of us could complain; if either of us had faced the monster alone, our chances would have been about as good as the real-life Bob getting laid.
“That was intense,” panted Bob. He looked pale, as if he’d been drained of more than magic.
“Tell me about it. My ears are still ringing. I haven’t had a headache this bad since the morning after my first college party.”
I looked at my shield. It was toast. I had a bright idea about taking one of the giant’s axes and went to pick it up. I could hardly lift even the handle off the ground. So much for that.
“My Health is down to thirty. Stamina’s low, too. How about you?”
“I didn’t take any hits, so my Health is fine, but Stamina’s almost shot and my Magic is at fricking zero.”
“How does it go back up?”
“It’ll go up really slowly on its own, like maybe one point every few minutes. If I eat or sleep, it’ll go up faster. When you kill magic-using monsters you get some, too.”
I wondered how the magic system worked with magic weapons for warriors, but knew it was a little early to be worrying about that. I was only a Level Two—but I realized that could change right now.
“Oh, I can level up.”
Bob studied his hand and gave a surprised expression.
“Hey, so can I. Wanna level up together?” We looked at each other for a second and burst out laughing. “I don’t mean like that. I mean at the same time.”
“Let’s do it.”
We stood in the middle of the road applying our points from left palms to right. All I had to do was put four hundred on Weapon. The brilliant sparkles of light flashed around us, and then I saw “LEVEL 3!” written backward and had a second of confusion before I realized that was Bob’s level-up notification. A second later I got my own, the bright-glowing letters slightly bigger than the last time.
LEVEL 3!
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t look much different. All my physical levels were already at Three, though bringing my total up did give a slight improvement to my looks. Bob got just a little bigger when he leveled up his Strength, much to his dismay.
“I feel too big, now. . . .”
“Dude, you’re fine. You’re still tiny. You’re skinnier than I was in life.”
“Really? I just don’t want to ever be big again.”
“You’ve got to put on a little muscle at least, if you want to score with the women.”
“But—”
“Come on, that’s what you’re here for, right?”
Bob gave me a resolved nod. “That’s right. As much as I hated being fat, it was not getting laid that really bothered me. But not anymore.” He put a little more bass in his voice. “For I, Bob, level-three Journeyman wizard, shall bathe my wizard�
�s staff in the witch-kettle of a thousand wenches!”
When the echo of his booming pronouncement faded, I turned to him with a raised eyebrow.
“Witch-kettle?”
“I mean pussy.”
* * *
Before we reached the next town I leveled up Face and Body to Fours. My share for killing the blue monster had landed me enough Experience to also take Strength up to Four.
“How do I look?”
“Good. Your hair looks better, too. I would say it doesn’t even qualify as a mullet anymore.”
“Sweet.”
The next town we came across was not a town: it was a city. I knew this because a big sign hung on the gate that said, in Old English blackletter, “City of Knarlsbro.”
Two hackers hung naked from the gate. An archer was aiming arrows at one of the guys’ balls. When he connected, the hacker screamed, “Ow! Stop it, dickhead!”
“Oh, you want me to stop?” The archer’s voice was mock-gentle and his smile malicious. “But you see, I recognize you from real life. You’re the guy who stole my Auctionwallet password and used my account to buy items for games you were too lazy to earn and then disputed the charges. You ruined my feedback score, asshole.”
“That was ten years ago!”
“But I just got woken up and I remember it like it was yesterday. You lived on the other side of the country, which saved your ass from getting kicked, but now I’ve got you right where I want you. So no, actually I’m not going to stop shooting arrows at your balls.”
To underscore his point he landed a direct hit in the hacker’s left testicle. I had to cover my ears as we hastened through the city gate. I looked around in wonder.
“Wow, there’s a lot of people here. I wonder how many players there are in this game.”
Bob said, “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say every single last male customer of Digital Afterworld.”
Conquest Page 6
