by Deck Davis
“That doesn’t explain how you thought you could take down a sleel.”
“That’s part of it. These guys are smart,” said Lizzy, with her southern twang. “I can’t believe they’re my brothers. Guess I didn’t inherit the clever part of our dad’s DNA.”
“That’s because he had crap for brains,” said Jon. “Our good stuff came from Mom.”
Tripp sensed the need to hurry the subject along. “So you’re collecting loot and stuff and let me guess, you’re gonna sell it on one of those item auction websites?”
“Yup,” said Warren, drumming his fingers on the cleric book strapped to his thigh. “Then we’ll buy a car and then drive to Lizzy’s, and we can meet in person.”
“It will take you a while if you’re making suicide runs at monsters ten times your level,” said Tripp.
“I have a theory,” began Warren.
Jon looked up. “Him and his theories…I call this one ‘the kamikaze’ theory.”
“Ignore him. I’ve watched a lot of Soulboxe, too, and I know they’ve got this fancy AI who governs everything. Even so, there’s still a luck element woven into the gameplay. Or maybe not luck, but randomness. It keeps things fresh, and it controls stuff like when Jon fires an arrow, how much damage that arrow does.”
“That’s based on his archery skill,” said Tripp.
Warren nodded. “Sure; but there’s a still a random element, yeah? Let’s say Jon’s archery skill means he’s capable of between five to eight points of damage. What decides whether he does five damage, or eight? Even with parameters based on skill, there’s still an element of chance. In Soulboxe, you can do the same thing over and over and get different results each time. When you follow that scent trail, you start to smell something sweet; opportunity.”
Lizzy twirled her trunk. “Can’t believe I got brothers as smart as these two. Makes me proud.”
Tripp saw Jon smile on hearing the compliment, but then he did his best to hide it straight away.
Warren was pacing now, completely absorbed. “So I figure, let’s see how far we can push it. If there’s an element of chance involved in the gameplay, why not play the odds? Maybe, if we attack something like a sleel over and over again, we’ll get lucky and kill it.”
“You’ll die a thousand times over. That’s the problem with long odds,” said Tripp.
Warren shrugged. “We’ll wake up wherever we set our markers. It’s no biggie. Besides, we set our pain to zero.”
“Something you’ll learn about my little brother,” said Jon, “he’s so optimistic that it hurts.”
“You know we need the balance,” said Warren. “If we were both like you, we’d drape black curtains over our windows and spend all day writing poetry about death.”
Jon smiled again, then hid it. Tripp got the sense that the elf was enjoying his time with his little brother and new sister more than he showed.
You know what? Tripp was enjoying their company too. It made him glad he’d decided to make his campfire location public.
As much as it was cool having them here, he knew that people crossed paths in Soulboxe and then went on their way, never to see each other again.
“So that’s your plan?” he said. “Keep trying to kill the sleel and get wiped out over and over again?”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Is it really?”
Warren nodded. “Yeah! If you don’t try something, you don’t get anything. If Lizzy hadn’t done the DNA test kit, we’d have never known about each other.”
“Look up optimist on Wikipedia,” said Jon, “and you’ll see a big picture of Warren’s smiling face.”
“I guess you guys are just gonna keep throwing yourselves at the sleel?”
“Until daybreak, then we’ll level up on the critters around here.”
“And you don’t have a campfire of your own?”
“We haven’t done any crafting yet. We set our respawns at the Firebridge Tavern. Before we found your campfire, of course,” said Warren.
Now, Tripp had an idea. “So you guys have explored some, right?”
“Yup.”
Tripp brought up his map and set the visibility to 'public.' “Do you know where the nearest town is? Can you mark it on my map?”
“Are you gonna make it worth our while?” said Warren.
Lizzy stood up. “You boys, sheesh.”
She approached Tripp’s map and pointed at three spots far north from where they were. As she did, the map changed, and Tripp saw three town markers spawn on it.
“You’ve got a human town here – Goddenstone. They named it after Godden, who was the second person to discover this whole area, but the first one to colonize it. There were already hundreds of wild and hostile-as-hell creatures living here, and Godden had to smash through them. Took him and his men three years, piles and piles of corpses, shivering winters and intense summers, but they finally broke the orb weavers who were living here.”
“Wow.”
“That’s not all. Godden was buried in the plains of the Reach, but they decided to change his burial site when rain kept seeping into his tomb. When they did, they found that some of his bones were missing, and someone had stolen his sword.”
“You know a lot about this,” said Tripp, impressed.
Lizzy nodded. “I wasn’t too keen on this whole game thing. It made sense that if we couldn’t meet in real life then we’d do it here, but I wasn’t too happy about all the levels and stuff like that. I love the lore, though. I’m a sucker for world building. Sometimes I don’t even need a plot. I read the Silmarillion eight times.”
“I didn’t look up much of Soulboxe’s lore. I was more interested in game mechanics and crafting.”
“Well, you should check it out. Next time you’re in a town, go visit the library and read a few books. Once you get the loremaster skill, you earn EXP for discovering new things. Every time you see a new race or a new creature and that kind of thing, you get EXP for nothing. Kinda like those credit cards that give you cashback for stuff you were going to buy anyway.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, thanks. So the human town is over there. Good, what about the others?” said Tripp.
Lizzy pointed at his map. “You’ve got a dwarf city called Mountmend here, right below the mountain. They mine it for coal and stuff. Then you have the orc settlement right over here.”
“You don’t wanna go there,” said Warren. “The orcs are weird as hell. They’re nothing like you’d expect.”
“Well, I don’t think our orc friend is gonna have a problem there, is he?” she said.
Tripp looked at his map. Although most of Godden’s Reach was still unexplored, at least he had map markers to aim for now.
“Thanks, guys. Here, one good turn deserves another.”
He took a piece of flint, some tinder, and some kindling from his inventory and put it on the ground. “Now you can make your own camp to respawn at.”
“Thanks, bud,” said Warren. “What kind of build are you going for?”
“Build?”
“Are you going be a mage? Fighter? Thief?”
Bee huffed. “Nothing so exciting. He wants to craft things to death. If you ever need someone to make you a nice tablecloth, come and see Tripp.”
Warren’s eyes lit up. “Ah, you don’t see many crafters. Lucky for you, we looted something you might like. Here.”
He took an item from his inventory and gave it to Tripp.
Item received: Repair Hammer
“Cool, now we can repair things to death as well,” said Bee.
“The pen is mightier than the sword, right?” said Tripp.
“And a giant bastard axe would split a pen in half.”
“Ignore her,” said Tripp. “She wants death, blood, guts. I got stuck with a maniac as a guide orb. Thanks for the hammer.”
This was great. He had the tool he needed to use his armorer skill properly, which meant he could start to repair things and eventually e
ven make new armor and weapons.
Holding his hammer, he started tapping on his steel armor and knocking parts of it into place. This time it was much more finessed than when he’d used a rock, and the metal straightened out almost the way he wanted it.
You have completed a [good] repair.
Cool! The last time he’d repaired his armor Boxe had rated his work as mediocre. This was progress.
Now all he needed were some crafting cards. From watching streams, he knew that you needed these in order to craft things from scratch.
Crafting cards would tell you which raw materials you needed for a certain item, and once you read the cards, they were added to your character’s database so you could make the item whenever you chose to if you had the materials.
These cards were part of the scaling progression of Soulboxe, designed to make crafters work for their results in the same way as a mage would be expected to master more advanced spells by levelling up.
You could get them from completing crafting-related quests, from levelling up crafting skills, and you could buy them from some NPCs. He’d heard that getting to an advanced-enough level in a skill would unlock the ability to make cards of your own, giving the people who put work into crafting the ability to make their own creations.
With the location of the nearest towns, and with his repair hammer, he was on his way.
“The sleel’s leaving,” said Jon, nodding at the darkened plains. “Once more into the breach.”
“We better be going,” said Warren. “Thanks for letting us cool our heels here. We usually go to Goddenstone to sell our stuff, so if you’re ever there, come and say hey.”
He stuck out his hand for a handshake. Jon gave Tripp a nod, while Lizzy slapped his shoulder with her trunk.
With that, the three of them were off, chasing down the sleel so they could die again and again in a mission that Tripp couldn’t see having any chance of success. Despite that, there was something about Warren’s optimism that he liked; it was the spirit of Soulboxe, after all. Do things, try things, have fun.
When they were alone, Bee settled next to him by the fire. “Well, they were quite the bunch, right?”
“At least we know where we’re going now. Knowing that sleels are out there, I think we’re gonna have to fast-sleep after all.”
“Boo.”
“Yeah, I know, but I just need to hit the town when it gets light, maybe pick up a quest or two, and then I can start to earn more experience. I’m gonna fast-sleep now. Good night, Bee.”
With fast-sleep activated, the time flew by Tripp woke seven hours later to two things.
The first was the sun’s rays spreading warmth over his face as it climbed over Godden’s reach. The second was a notification from Boxe.
CHAPTER 14
A falcon hovered too close for comfort, spreading its wings and swirling barely feet above Tripp’s head. Could it see the message, too? No. He was being stupid, and this was proven when he read the digital’s gods message and turned to see the falcon was gone. He read it again.
Boxe5 Quest Received: Become Apprenticed to an Armorer.
You have shown an appetite for creation, but you must learn how to do that from a master. Visit the three towns and convince one of the armorer masters there to take you on as an apprentice.
Rewards: 500 EXP, crafting card [random]
“You see that?” said Tripp.
“You’ve already played long enough for Boxe5 to start making a quest path for you.”
“Doesn’t this seem strange? A path sounds like the opposite of choice. The devs don’t like players walking in straight lines.”
“Think of it as an optional extra in the Dynamic Questing package. Notice that there’s no mention of the word ‘mandatory’,” said Bee. “You’re free to ignore him. I’d love you to pretend he isn’t there. He gets pissy when people do that.”
“Boxe has feelings?”
“Don’t sound so dubious. What is a feeling? Is it a mystical energy, or is it a spark in your brain? If it’s a biological or chemical reaction, it can be recreated. If you ask me, he’s getting grumpier the older he gets. Besides, a path can fork off in different directions. Boxe is going to watch what you do, and he’ll change things on the fly.”
“Becoming an apprentice armorer sounds good for now. I have the repair hammer and know where the towns are, and I want to get started. Just think, Bee. Imagine what it’ll be like when I create armor or a sword. Even if it’s something shabby, it’ll still feel good to do it. Creation, turning something raw into something that has value.”
“It would feel better to buy a sword and go find some frorargs and-”
“Yep, blood and guts. Got it. For now, we’ll do things my way. The question is, which town do I hit first?”
“Take your pick. It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Everything matters. Notice that Boxe said I need to convince a master to take me on as an apprentice. It wouldn’t be much of a quest if I wander into town, find the master, and say ‘hey, can I be an apprentice?’ and then he shrugs and says ‘Yup.’”
“Grind and fun.”
“Exactly. I need to figure out which town is more likely to have a crafting master who will take me on, and which will teach me how to make the coolest stuff.”
“They say dwarves make the best crafters.”
“They’re pretty insular too, though. Or is that a stereotype?”
“You’ll never know until you meet them.”
“I’m an orc, and Lizzy marked an orc settlement on my map. That seems like the obvious place to start.”
“Do you really want to spend your time around a bunch of stinking orcs? No offense.”
“All I want to do is craft some cool stuff, and that means getting crafting cards and learning skills. I could be taught by a giant, talking slug for all I care, as long as I learn. I’ll have a better chance of convincing a fellow orc to take me on as a pupil.”
He and Bee crossed the plains, now sleel-free under the protection of daylight, heading toward the marker that Lizzy had set on his map. It became a heavy slog when grass gave way to marshland. Reeds poked out as stiff as flagpoles, and a clammy smell hit him and clung to him as he walked through. After nearly falling into a pool of water, and with visions of his steel armor weighing him down, he gave the marshlands a wide berth after that.
A mile north, he came across a bunch of frorargs who had hunted a rabbit and were jealously guarding their kill, hissing at Tripp when he got close to the mess of fur and guts. They were a family, structured with three older frorargs with wrinkled skin and distended bellies, each with both male and female genitalia. The younger ones wrestled with each other in a puppy-like way, and one of them even sped off toward Tripp until an adult grabbed its tail and tugged it back.
Remembering that their fire breath tended to hurt just a little, he was going to avoid them. Then he had an idea.
“You can’t attack stuff, can you?” he asked Bee.
Bee shook her head inside her orb. “Not yet, but there are ways of changing my form. That’ll come later.”
“I figured. If you can’t attack then you can divert them. When I try to hit them, they’ll just dance around me and make me look like a fool, but critters like frorargs don’t have much AI. If I can’t outwit them, then I don’t deserve to play the game.”
“The cogs in your head are getting loud.”
“Maybe they are.”
“We’re going to kill them?” said Bee, her eyes lighting up.
“That’s the idea. Here’s what I want you to do…”
He relayed his newly-formed plan to Bee. It was simple as strategies went, but then frorargs were level-fodder, and it shouldn’t have taken the military mind of Napoleon to outwit them.
Time and effort proved him right. The plan was simple in execution; he got Bee to float behind them and shout loud enough to surprise the frorargs. They ran away from her blindly, straight into Tripp where he wa
ited with his bone dagger drawn.
Killing them was harder than he’d expected. His dagger was blunt, and he had to force the bone into the gaps in their scales, feeling it drive through flesh, hearing the frorargs scream.
He killed the three adults, but the frorarg pups sprinted off and were half a mile away by the time Tripp was done. One of them hung back further from the others, torn between coming to check if the adults were really gone and fear of Tripp, the metal clad monster who’d just slaughtered the clan elders to earn experience points and gain power.
Brown blood formed a sticky coat on his palm and in between his fingers, and the frorargs’ cries were echoing in his mind. Seeing the pups making their escape, he didn’t have the heart to chase them. The two pups dragged the third away, and they ran toward a copse of trees in the distance.
“This game is going to give me PTSD,” said Tripp, wishing he was still near the stream so he could wash the blood off his hands.
“They wanted everything to have meaning, and a fight with no consequences doesn’t have any.”
He wiped his hands on the grass and let his pulse settle. By the time his post-fight notifications appeared, he was ready to never see a frorarg again.
You have leveled up to level 3!
You have leveled up to level 4!
- HP Increased
-Manus Increased
Please choose a stat to add [2] attribute points to:
Power [1]
Mind [1]
Technique [2]
“This is where I shape my character. I need to think about this,” said Tripp.
“Choose power,” said Bee. “You know it makes sense. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln said that.”
