Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

He’d watched some streamers rant for hours about the system. He’d heard others praise the hell out of it. The truth was, there was no single loot system that would please everyone.

  Not that the devs hadn’t tried; he remembered watching a video of Lucas the dev giving a lecture to a bunch of game design students at Oxley college.

  “You’d think the joy of an MMO comes from the combat, right?” Lucas had said, pacing at the front of the auditorium and pushing his curly hair back from his forehead. “Nope, it’s what comes after. Consequences and rewards. What are the rewards in a roleplaying game?”

  Hands shot up in the auditorium. Lucas nodded at a big guy in a football jersey.

  “Experience points? Increased skills?”

  “Yeah,” said Lucas. “To a point. More and more, it’s becoming about something else. Variable rewards, to be precise. What are variable rewards?”

  “Skinner boxes?”

  “Exactly. They are funny things, Skinner boxes. Can you name a popular type of Skinner box? One that you might see in, oh I don’t know, every first-person-shooter out there?”

  “Loot chests,” said a girl.

  “Exactly! That’s part of the hook. Think about this; your reward for killing an epic demon creature is cool items, right? The cooler the better. But if the demon dropped the same item every time you killed it, it’d be boring as hell. Why bother replaying that level when you already have the loot? Similarly, if it dropped a mega-brilliant-hammer-of-Thor-type weapon every time, that’d get boring too. Simply put, the player would have no need to repeat levels they’d already completed, and soon, they’d finish your game and move on to the next. So, to counter that, most loot systems…”

  “Drop random rewards,” said a boy.

  “Yup. Kill monster X one time, and you’ll score a wooden spoon. Kill it the tenth time, you get a rare magical ring. The randomness is what keeps you coming back to kill that monster, and it keeps you hooked like an ex-child actor in a coke den. Don’t write that last thing down.”

  “How does that relate to Soulboxe?”

  “We went further than that,” said Lucas. “Variable rewards hook users in, but they remove a little of the player agency. They take control of the loot away from the player, and Soulboxe is all about-”

  “Choice, grind, fun,” said the students as one, as if Lucas had made them say that a hundred times before.

  “Did I tell you guys that you’re the brightest class I’ve ever had?” said Lucas with his wide, ridiculously charming grin.

  The class laughed.

  “So, how do you give a player some choice about loot, while keeping the rewards variable? That problem took a while to solve.”

  Tripp had watched the lecture three times, partly because the content fascinated him, but mostly because Lucas just had that gift of being personable and intensely watchable. It was no surprise that Lucas’s game stream was miles ahead of the other devs in terms of viewing figures.

  Now, Tripp was going to get a chance to put the Soulboxe loot solution into practice. It only happened when two or more players had fought the same creatures together. Since they’d all been involved with the undead tinker imps, it was going to come into play.

  With Lizzy dead, and since Jon had been away tracking the sleel, it was down to Warren and Tripp.

  Bee floated near his head. “Loot time, huh? This is where having a guide like me comes good.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’d have been a champion in poker. I can read you humans like a book. And not a good book, either.”

  “Ready?” said Warren.

  Tripp nodded. “May the best looter win.”

  A game dialogue box appeared in front of him.

  Loot Received from: undead tinker imps [x4]

  Place your loot points.

  Tripp had earned 10 loot points so far from the frorargs that he’d killed. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Since Warren was so many levels ahead of him, he had to assume that the loot hunter had way more points.

  The question was, how would he use them?

  ‘I’ll switch to in-mind communication for this,’ said Bee. ‘No sense him being able to hear us, right?’

  ‘Good thinking,’ thought Tripp.

  ‘Here’s how I see it. No matter how many loot points you gamble, you’ll both get at least some loot. But if you put more points in than him, you’re more likely to get the better items that the imps dropped.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, what do we know about this kid?’ said Bee.

  ‘He wants to score as much loot as possible. He wants to sell it outside of the game and buy a car.’

  ‘Exactly, and he seems like the impatient type. He’s going to load up on this. He’ll commit a barrel of loot points.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ thought Tripp. ‘Selling loot outside of the game is pretty ineffective; the ratio of game value to real currency is 1:50. He knows that he needs to score rare loot to have anything worth selling, and the imps aren’t a high enough level to have dropped something mega.’

  ‘You think he won’t commit many points?’

  ‘Nope, and he’s cleverer than you think. He’s gonna save them for when he kills something big. He’s not too interested in getting low-rarity items that are only useful in-game. Whereas I only have a bone dagger. I need stuff that I can use here in Soulboxe.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Watch.’

  Tripp made his choice, and another dialogue box appeared.

  You have committed 8 loot points [total remaining: 2].

  Waiting for player: Warren

  …

  …

  …

  Warren has committed 4 points.

  “Sweet!” said Bee, out loud this time. “You beat him.”

  “Ah, damn it,” said Warren, stomping the grass with his boot.

  Loot received!

  A copper shovel

  *Common*

  Used for digging holes.

  Steel Morning Star

  *Common*

  Legacy: 12

  A medieval weapon consisting of a shaft with a spiked ball attached at the end. Used for blunt force and puncture attacks.

  Crystal of Smoke

  **Uncommon**

  A crystal that emits a dense fog when activated, covering an area of 10 meters around you. Only you and other players can see through the smoke.

  Uses: 5/5

  50 Gold coins

  When Tripp had seen the shovel as his first item, he was nonplussed at committing eight loot points to get it. It felt like putting a dollar into a vending machine for a Coke, then watching the can get stuck. Only now, there was no vending machine for him to pound on.

  Then he saw the morning star and the Crystal of Smoke, and he was happier. A steel morning star was a hell of a lot better than a bone dagger, no matter how much he’d sharpened his first weapon.

  What caught his interest most was the legacy points of the morning star – it had 12. That meant that it had seen more action than his bone dagger or his armor.

  Tripp used his loremaster skill by concentrating deeply on the weapon and expanding on the legacy field, before a paragraph of text shimmered in front of him.

  The morning star had been forged in the underground armorer shop of an orc army from the main continent of Soulboxe. Given to a Nickel-ranked orc foot soldier, it had seen action in two battles; one where the orcs had taken over a human quarry, another where they had slaughtered a whole town in a revenge attack.

  Being used in two fights had given it an interesting, if bloody, legacy, but not only that. Following its legacy history, there was something else.

  Legacy Benefits: Morning star

  +2 damage when used by an orc

  +3 damage against human opponents

  The crystal made spending the points worthwhile. He couldn’t think of it right now, but there was bound to be a time when blinding his enemies with fog would come in hand
y.

  He packed the shovel, crystal, coins, and his dagger into his inventory, and he equipped the morning star. With that and his steel armor, he felt a little more capable in a fight.

  Warren walked over and slapped Tripp’s back. “Good job, buddy. I thought you weren’t going to commit too many points. I never was any good at this kinda thing. Whenever I play poker, I get cleaned out. You must really have wanted what these imps have.”

  “I’m getting sick of my bone dagger,” said Tripp.

  “I hope you saved some loot points. You never know what kind of creature we’ll take down next.”

  “Are you two finished?” said Jon. “Daylight is starting to break. Our sleel will be moving off soon.”

  “Yep, just one more thing,” said Tripp. “Bee, can you show me my post-fight stats?”

  “Sure.”

  Proficiency gained: Steel Armor

  Rank: Novice

  By wearing steel armor and taking damage, you have become more accustomed to it.

  - Move 10% quicker in steel armor

  - Wearing steel armor adds 5% more defense

  You have leveled up to level 7!

  -Hitpoints increased

  -Manus increased

  Gaining the steel armor proficiency opened a new ‘proficiency’ field on his character sheet, and he knew that there were other proficiencies to gain, too. If he used his morning star enough times, he’d gain proficiency with that, and so on. It was just a matter of using his new weapon as much as possible until a better one came along.

  After spending his new attribute point on technique and seeing his crafting speed and effectiveness increase, Tripp was ready to go.

  With the sun rising and beginning to spread its rays over Godden’s Reach, Tripp, Warren, and Jon followed the sleels tracks. Jon head out in front since he had the tracking on his map, while Warren walked beside Tripp.

  Warren nudged him. “So, what did ya get?”

  “The loot?”

  “Of course the loot!”

  “A morning star, a smoke crystal…and a shovel.”

  Warren grinned. “Better than that crummy bone dagger at least. You might be able to earn a few golds as a gravedigger.”

  “What about you?”

  “Luckily you get loot even if you lose the auction, but all I got was a few coins and an iron sword. Still, loot’s loot, huh? Everything helps.”

  “You’re really committed to this, aren’t you?”

  “When we learned we had a big sister out there, I was so happy. It’s cool seeing her in-game and all, but with Mom gone and Dad being a jackass, I wanna meet my sister in person.”

  “How much play time do you have left?”

  “We paid for a two-week stay, and Lizzy has seven days on her trial account. Strange, isn’t it, imagining our bodies hooked up to pods, feeding us nutrients, taking away our crap?”

  “I try not to think about that. I didn’t think you’d be in a pod, though.”

  “It just made sense. We could have used a semi-immersion VR headset, but that wouldn’t have cut it. We figured that if this was a substitute for meeting up in person, we may as well do it properly.”

  Jon stopped ahead of them. “We found her. My tracking ends just up ahead.”

  Tripp and Warren joined Jon, and together they followed his tracking to where it stopped.

  When Tripp saw exactly where that was, he felt a shiver creep over him.

  CHAPTER 22

  “I’ll never get the smell of rot out of my leathers,” said Jon. Tripp agreed, because although his steel armor didn’t absorb such smells, the putrid aroma coming from the hole by his feet made him think about slaughterhouses.

  Jon’s tracking led them to a chasm in the ground. It was ten meters wide and looked like a giant mouth ready to swallow them, and the only mercy was that it didn’t actually have teeth. The darkness at the bottom was so ominous that for a second, Tripp thought about just calling the whole thing off.

  It was the same kind of darkness that waited at the bottom of basement stairs in most houses, the really nefarious sort of darkness where, when he was a kid, Tripp imagined all kinds of monsters lived. The only problem was that in Soulboxe, those monsters actually existed.

  At least it was getting lighter by the minute, and since they’d tracked the sleel here, he knew his theory about them being nocturnal predators held true. He’d learned to savor those rare times when his theories were right.

  As he stared at the hole, his orc vision adjusted to the darkness beneath.

  “It’s a gentle slope,” he said. “Seems to wind down a dozen meters or so before flattening off.”

  He wondered if the hole had been there already when the sleel chose it for a nest, or if the sleels had a way of making the holes. Everything in Soulboxe was there for a reason, and if the hole existed before the sleel found it, were there others? If so, what did they lead to? Maybe there were hidden caverns or dungeons underneath Godden’s Reach.

  “Perhaps we better wait for Lizzy,” said Jon.

  Warren shook his head. “Relax! The sleel will be sleeping, so we’ll get a sneak bonus when we attack it. That’ll boost our damage by at least five times, and if we all hit it at the same time, that’ll be a hell of a wake-up.”

  “Woah,” said Tripp. “I came here for a tentacle. I never said anything about actually killing it. Sneak attack or not, it’s still too high a level for us.”

  “I didn’t slog all the way out here and slaughter a bunch of bomb-throwing imps just to hit it once and run away. We’re not puppies pawing at a cat. I told you, I need loot, and this thing will give us the motherlode.”

  “What if there’s more than one sleel down there?”

  “Are you scared of dying, Tripp? This is a game.”

  Warren was right; it was a game. The problem was that full-immersion made it indistinguishable from reality. So lifelike that the thought of death threatened to trigger a very real fight-or-flight response in him.

  Tripp shook his head. “Nope, one of them is still too many.”

  “We held good on our side of the deal; Jon tracked it. I’m going down there even if it sends me to respawn. I told you, there’s an element of chance. Imagine the EXP we’ll get if we strike lucky with this thing. Even if not, what’s the worst that’ll happen? We wake up in Goddenstone.”

  Tripp looked at Jon, who shrugged. “One thing about Warren; when he gets an idea in his head, it’s harder to shift than a beached whale.”

  Warren put his hand on Tripp’s steel shoulder plate. “I know what happened to you with the acid. Something like that would make Evel Knievel risk-averse. You can’t let a couple of bastards affect you like that. You think I wasn’t scared after the dogs ripped my ankle to shreds? I had nightmares for months. As soon as I could walk, I made Jon take me to the park. First thing I did was to go back there. Rip the band-aid off, Tripp. Now, I’m going down there whether you agree or not. If you want your tentacle, you’re going to have to suck it up.”

  Bee, floating beside Tripp, smiled. “I like this kid.”

  Tripp realized he wasn’t going to talk sense into Warren, and he hadn’t come all the way out here to leave with nothing. “Fine. Let’s take a second and think about this properly. If we are going try to kill it, no sense rushing in.”

  “Okay, orc, what’s your plan?” said Warren.

  “I want an assurance from you,” said Tripp. “I help you try to slaughter this thing, I need to get what I came for first. We all hit the same tentacle at the same time and cleave it off.”

  “Fine. But on the flip side, we get to keep the best loot. You make a low bid after we kill this thing.”

  “If we kill it. I couldn’t bid higher if I wanted to - the imps cleaned me out.”

  “Then we’re agreed,” said Jon “What’s the plan?”

  Tripp thought about it for a few seconds, and then he had something. A weak plan, but a plan nonetheless.

  “This thing is a level 2
9, right? That’s low for a sleel, but it still makes us look like ants. But if this goes right, we might have a chance. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  After he explained his plan, they crept down the slope in the ground, seeing the daylight slowly fade behind them and submerging them in the darkness under Godden’s Reach. The magic tip of Jon’s arrow glowed, while Warren took a wooden torch from his inventory and lit it.

  Tripp almost had to stop. The space was too enclosed, and although it didn’t look like a utility cupboard, he felt the same sensation of being trapped. Only now, he was going to be trapped down there with a giant sleel instead of a tarantula.

  The only things that kept him going were a determination to get the tentacle, and his orc vision. He didn’t need the torch to see what waited at the bottom. The slope opened out into a cavern. The ceiling was five feet above them and covered in moss, and the whole place smelled earthy. It looked like the kind of hole a bear might crawl in to hibernate, but there were no bears here.

  Instead, the sleel was lying on the ground with its thorn-lined tentacles spread out. Pores on its slimy body opened and closed as it breathed, filling the cave with a wheezing sound. It looked like it was dreaming, shaking in its sleep like a dog, with faint snaps of electricity sparking from its tentacles.

  Holding his morning star, Tripp gestured at a long tentacle close to him. Jon nodded and took out a dagger, while Warren crept over and crouched close to the sleel, his sword raised.

  Here we go, he thought. Death or glory awaits. Most likely death.

  Tripp raised his morning star in his right hand and his crystal in his left. The brothers stared at him, Warren gripping his sword with excitement, Jon calm.

  Tripp mouthed the words, one, two…

  When he mouthed three they all struck as one.

  Sneak bonus: damage increased by 6x!

  Wow, a six times damage bonus. It was more than he’d hoped for, and with three strikes at once, they hacked the limb clean off.