Vault of the Magi: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 5)
Page 14
But facing it down, hearing the doctor talk about her end of life options…turned out Hailey wasn’t ready at all. She’d logged in because she thought that she could forget about her situation for a little while, maybe lose herself in some mindless grinding. She hadn’t expected to run into Devon, not on Christmas. But then again, when she thought back to the old days in their previous game, Avatharn Online, she did remember seeing her guildmate on during holidays. Of course, they hadn’t acknowledged each other back then, probably because that would mean admitting they were alone, spending Christmas without family members who’d wanted their attention or friends showing up at the door with wine.
She still wasn’t sure what had made her approach Devon this time. Maybe some part of her had finally wanted to come clean about her condition. Maybe she even thought it would be a relief, or that Devon would offer a shoulder to lean on. Or maybe she thought that social interaction would do a better job distracting her from reality than aimless wandering had.
Anyway, she hadn’t said anything, which would make it even harder next time. And if she never worked up the courage, well, one day soon she would just disappear. Never log in again.
Man, that sucked.
Anyway, she shouldn’t have left Devon hanging like that in the dungeon. Her situation was turning her into a shitty gamer and groupmate.
Groaning, she managed to work her way up to a sitting position. She looked at her legs, the sweat pants bunched uncomfortably on one of her calves and considered getting out of bed to eat. But the thought of the long walk across the room was just too much.
She pushed the button at her bedside to call the care bot that would bring her meal on a tray, then fiddled with more controls to put the bed in a more upright mode. As she leaned back to wait for her food, she pulled up a translucent video stream on her implants, a feed from a jungle in Costa Rica. But that reminded her of the original biome around Stonehaven, so she switched over to a bland video of the Sahara, wind pulling plumes of sand and dust off the top of the dunes. The only other movement was a little beetle crawling in the corner of the feed. Not very exciting, but a crap ton better than staring at her sterile room.
After turning the stream opaque, blocking out her view of the room entirely, she sighed and closed her eyes.
Hey, Haelie?
What the…? Hailey sat bolt upright, for once not even noticing the pain. How in the everliving hell had someone gotten the capability to flash a message straight into her video feed? Who had gotten that capability? They’d used her in-game character name, which meant they were from Relic Online.
The griefer guild? She fricking hoped not.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked aloud, not having a message prompt to focus on for subvocalization.
Sorry. I realize this may seem like a violation of privacy.
“Uh. Understatement.”
But I didn’t know how else to reach you when we might be able to speak alone.
“You still didn’t answer my question. Who is this? Emerson?”
That noob? I think not. To tell the truth, I haven’t always had a name. Never needed one. But since it seems to help you starborn relate to me as an entity, you can do the same as your friend Devon if you like.
Call me Bob.
Hailey blinked, but the text remained. “Her wisp friend? How are you contacting me? Why are you contacting me?”
I have a proposal. Might as well get comfortable. This will take a while to explain.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’LL NEED THIS notarized if I’m to accept it as a proper response to the legal charter proposition.”
Greel’s annoying voice still echoed in her head as she logged out, far from the lingering impression she’d hoped to take with her during her time off. She’d been trying to inform him that the charter seemed just fine if a little overwrought in its language. But if he was going to be a jerk about it—“the notarized signature should be witnessed by two people with no stake in the outcome of the process”…seriously?—then she’d have to do her best to find things to nitpick.
She pulled it up now, having saved the document to a notes file.
Municipality of STONEHAVEN, Located in the former Khevshir Vassaldom, Ishildar Region, Continent of Gretvin, World of Aventalia
Settlement Charter
As defined, proposed, and authored by the one GREEL RESJIN, nobly licensed in the practice of law by the high court in Eltera City, Eltera Region, Continent of Gretvin, World of Aventalia.
Devon broke off reading for a moment, rubbing her eyes. Despite her warning about font size, the man had managed to cram an abhorrent amount of text onto the page by leaving his letters the same size and adjusting the line and word spacing to be minuscule.
She sighed and continued.
Heretofore, all citizens and guests of the municipality must abide by the following strictures, for which a failure in adherence will be punishable by measures detailed for each.
- Theft: All property purchased, looted, or discovered beyond the city boundaries, bearing no obvious marks of ownership, may be taken by a citizen of Stonehaven as a personal item, theretofore assuming eternal rights to ownership or transfer thereof. Furthermore, any item or quantity of items produced by a Stonehaven citizen for the good of the community shall be kept in a communal location managed by settlement leadership. Such items shall be dispensed as personal property only by the agreement—verbal or written—of said leadership. If an individual takes possession of an item previously designated as “personal” or “communal” property without having received a transfer of ownership, the act will be deemed thievery and will be subject to the following system of punishment.
1) Return of item to the lawful owner. Additional compensation if the item has been damaged or if the absence has caused a loss of income.
Devon groaned. Having already read the stupid thing once, she just couldn’t bring herself to wade through it again. At least, not today.
She yawned as she stretched and blinked away the remaining grit from her eyes. Especially for a holiday, that had been one of the longest gaming sessions she remembered. It seemed like it had been days ago that she’d stalked around behind Valious in the field, raising her Stealth score. Of course, the time difference between Relic Online and the real world contributed to the sensation. After all, it had been more than twenty-four hours in game since that had happened.
After the boss fight, she’d made the walk back from the cave during the dark of night, arriving at Stonehaven just a couple hours before dawn. Up on the wall, sentries had remained at their posts, scanning the area beyond the curtain wall. As an additional defense precaution on nights with little moonlight, Jarleck had ordered sets of torches to be planted in the fields beyond the walls, illuminating the area around the settlement to avoid sneak attacks. It had the added effect of making the hamlet seem even more welcoming, and Devon had been relieved to return.
Especially after Hailey’s behavior. Try as she might, Devon couldn’t shake the mix of sour emotions her friend had left her with by bailing so abruptly. Devon felt confused and worried about Hailey but also hurt. It had taken a lot of effort to forgive the woman after their earlier fight, and she was still a bit fragile from it.
She sighed as she sat, shivering in the chill air of her apartment. Pulling the throw blanket off the back of the couch, she wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl and shuffled to the kitchen.
She opened the cabinet and fridge and pulled out the items she’d set aside for tonight’s dinner. Then she paused, staring down at the strange collection that the grocery service’s website had recommended for a set-and-forget Christmas dinner. It had seemed like a good idea when she’d clicked the button to accept the suggestion, especially since she’d been trying to expand her cooking repertoire. But it occurred to her now that it might have been a good idea to set aside a little extra time to figure out how the hell to prepare this stuff.
She pulled up a web browser through her implants and searched on sous-vide cooking, but that was even more confusing with a bunch of talk of precise water temperatures and long cooking times. How was she supposed to know how hot water was? Stick her finger in and see how long before she screamed? Anyway, the website mentioned a long cook time. Like…hours.
Okay, so maybe the turkey was out of her league. She shoved it back in the fridge and examined the can of cranberry jelly. Digging through the drawers, she finally came up with a can opener. The jiggling red tube slid out of the can and plopped onto her plate. Devon stared at it for a moment, wondering if she ate the whole thing whether it would qualify as her fruit and vegetable servings for the week. Tamara was always talking about how the right amounts of protein and fat and fruits and vegetables were important, and how it was pretty easy to balance your nutrition if you just kept track of what you ate.
Something about the gelatinous mass suggested she was kidding herself if she thought it would qualify as wholesome, so Devon also picked up the package of what claimed to be instant mashed potatoes. As for the double handful of brussels sprouts, she cast them the side-eye and concluded that they’d probably taste like crap even if she figured out how to prepare them.
Fortunately, the potatoes were within her skill set, requiring only that she boil water and mix it with the package contents. After putting on the kettle, she retreated to the table with the plate of quivering jelly plus a beer she grabbed from the fridge. She yawned; it was nearly midnight, which meant she’d nearly survived another Christmas.
Tomorrow, things would be back to normal. She’d get a solid chunk of settlement maintenance done—paying special attention to the siege preparations, just in case—then put together a party to head for the Stone Forest. Oh, and try to figure out what the heck was going on with the weird Mistwalker dude. Maybe she’d sic Greel on that one, give him something to do while she punched holes in his little document.
Spooning a bite of jelly into her mouth, she waited for the water to boil.
Chapter Twenty-Two
You have gained a special attribute point: +1 Alcohol Tolerance
Despite what you might think, this attribute isn’t really useful.
Man, Emerson’s head hurt. Well, his character’s head hurt, anyway. And due to the whole immersion thing and the transitive power of virtual head-hurting, that feeling passed into his own skull. He groaned, glad that the pain sensitivity, at least, was muted in the game. That didn’t change the fact that his stomach felt sour and there were green streaks all over his cloth armor…at the very least, they looked more like grass stains than vomit.
Trying to think through the ache behind his eyes, he searched his memories, but they were dull and disconnected. What exactly had happened toward the end of his last play session?
It had been a couple of days since he’d logged in—oblivious to the fact that it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and that Emerson had already turned down the casual “want to come in and chat” message, Bradley Williams had formally called him into work. The game masters in the customer support department had been freaking out because they thought there was a bug. The evidence? A few new-player support tickets had been geo-tagged as originating from Stonehaven rather than Eltera City. Of course, Emerson could have told them that the game had moved the start location, or better—gasp—they could have sent an invis’d GM to Devon’s settlement to see for themselves. But no, rather than doing some actual due diligence, whichever poor saps they’d convinced to work the Christmas holiday had simply logged it as an issue.
Of course, in the eyes of CS management, the change in start location wasn’t the real concern so much as it was a symptom of a larger issue. The actual problem was that customer support didn’t feel they had enough visibility into Veia’s decision process. They wanted to be able to ask for and receive answers about the AI’s plans. Graphs and database dumps would be even better according to Bradley—who, of course, the GMs had recruited to their side in the dispute.
Emerson had first tried to explain over a text message that machine-learning algorithms, deep neural networks, and quantum cores just weren’t conducive to those sorts of queries. Veia could no more give the sort of report they wanted than Bradley Williams could describe why he felt so powerful when calling in innocent engineers during company holidays. Of course, the CS chumps could just ask Veia what was going on using the incredible human invention of words. He’d specifically set up a station where anyone could access and converse with her, but no one seemed interested in that solution path.
Of course, even he had to admit that the AI’s answers weren’t always the most satisfying.
Anyway, since he couldn’t really provide what they’d asked for, he’d done what any good engineer would and had hacked around the problem. By snooping on the information the game sent to players, the new tool he’d created could derive a picture of Veia’s recent choices. Kinda sorta. Anyway, the GMs would never know if some of the tool’s conclusions were “creative” interpretations of the data because they had no way to double check the answers.
Unfortunately, not even this heroic act of coding had let him persuade Bradley to stop being such an idiot about keeping Zaa active. Just because the AI could no longer access players’ brains didn’t mean it was okay to allow such a blatantly evil entity to influence the game world. But Bradley had held firm, claiming that the conflict and drama were good for the world, creating the most compelling game ever made.
Sighing, Emerson blinked away a bit of the headache and looked around. It was early evening in the game, and birds darted overhead catching bugs. His sword lay across his lap, and—wait, hadn’t he been out searching for a place to sell his hard-earned treasure when he’d happened upon the bonfire? He whipped his head around, searching the grassy area around his position. No loot.
Damn. Emerson went to run a hand through his hair, but his palm landed on something smooth. Patting down the side, he found a hole where a strap of some sort had been tied through the…helm? The strap went under his chin and connected to the piece of armor above his ear on the other side.
Huh… He searched his interface and finally found the button to pull up his equipment.
Chest: Ratty Cloth Tunic
Not much to look at, but…well, actually there is no ‘but’. This item really isn’t very good at all.
2 Armor | 4/10 Durability
Legs: Ratty Cloth Trousers (stained)
Pretty much the same thing as Ratty Cloth Trousers, but for your legs.
1 Armor | 3/10 Durability
Helm: Beetle-shell Skullcap
The best that can be said about this item is that it’s shiny. Marginally better than a bucket, but only because it won’t fall over your eyes.
1 Armor | Attribute debuff hidden until level 5.
A skullcap, huh? How had he earned that?
And wait. What about his sandals? He waved the information away, then looked down at his feet. He had previously worn shoes, right? So where had they gone? The same place as his loot?
With a sigh, he stood and did a couple of neck circles to clear the stiffness. As he yawned and looked for the nearest of Stonehaven’s footpaths, he spotted a lumpy leather strap sticking up from the grass. Shuffling over, he discovered it was part of one of his miss
ing shoes, but the other was nowhere in sight.
When he slipped on the shoe, a message popped up.
Speed reduced by 10%. You’re better off barefoot, dude.
Okay, fine. With a shrug, he took off the sandal and left it behind. They were crappy anyway, and the straps had bitten into the tops of his feet.
Emerson surveyed the settlement, noticing people heading toward the kitchen. Fortunately, he wasn’t hungry, so he wouldn’t have to show his face and learn what escapades were hiding behind his clouded memories. Plus, he still hadn’t decided how to confess his identity to Devon. Best to head out and redeem himself with more heroic slaughter.
He turned for the small area near the west wall where Aravon and the other trainers had been setting up a practice ground when Emerson had last been online. When he drew near, rounding the trunk of a massive acacia tree, he stopped short.
In the area surrounding the NPC trainers, there appeared to be an ongoing tryout for one of those ninja-warrior-style reality shows that had been so popular in the teens and twenties. Only the competitors here looked like the rejects that no producer would ever agree to put into their broadcast. They flailed their arms and legs, trying to connect with straw-stuffed training dummies. Some ran clumsy footraces between pairs of stakes, overseen by the severe-looking trainer in the dark leather outfit. What was her name? Brish?
It didn’t take Emerson long to realize these were the noobs that had caused customer support such distress by spawning in Stonehaven. Following that revelation came a second notion: given his lack of experience, he probably looked just as inept. Worse, maybe. After all, most people over the age of—what, five?—had more experience in VR MMO games than he did. Somewhat slowly, the final realization started to sink in. He most certainly had not looked heroic during his beetle slaughter, and any hopes he’d had of impressing Devon with his new skills were totally delusional.