by Dante Steel
Gary flinched.
She winced and hung her head. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s the truth. Do you think I wanted to be a trash collector? You think that was my goal in life? News flash. It wasn’t. You don’t give your cousin a hard time about being one.”
“Actually, I do. I tease him about it all the time.”
“How is Jorge?” Gary swallowed hard. He felt so far removed from his friend, from all of his friends, from his life. The more time he spent trapped here, the more this felt real and his old life like a dream. “Is he still with that girl?”
“Yes. He loves her. He’s bought her a ring already.”
“It hasn’t even been that long!” Gary protested. “He’s never been in a long relationship. How can he be certain she’s the one for him?”
“He claims that because he’s dated around so much, he knows what he wants and what he doesn’t want, so he knows he wants her. I’ve convinced him to not propose yet, but he doesn’t always listen to me.”
“Crazy,” Gary muttered.
“You and him both,” she said lightly, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“Nicoletta, please. Let’s talk about your future. What do you want to be?”
“I have no idea, okay? I’ve tried and tried and tried to figure it out. Since high school, I’ve been thinking about this, and nothing ever seems right. Nothing makes me happy.”
“Not even me?”
“Not always and we’re talking about my future, my work, not you, remember?”
The hint of hostility in her voice made him wish he hadn’t said that, even though he had meant it as a joke.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m sorry, too. It’s just… I’m confused and scared, and I can’t afford to go to college forever. I need to figure something out.”
“You’re young. You have time.”
“I don’t have a lot of money, and debt is piling up already. I need to figure this out, Gary.”
“What do you like?”
“I like to read. I like to play video games. I like to argue. I like to run. I’m competitive. I don’t see how any of that helps with anything at all.”
“You could be a writer,” he suggested.
“No guaranteed money and I would’ve wasted all of the money for college because I don’t think you need a degree to self-publish.”
“No, but you can draw from your experiences.”
“Yeah? And write about a guy named Gary who has a harem with every woman in the world?”
“Only those who game,” he said.
She smirked and rolled her eyes. A soft laugh escaped. “I don’t think so.”
“So write the story for a video game. Or can’t you be a video game tester?”
“I think that’s something, but I wouldn’t know how to get involved with that, and again, that would make my college experience pointless and a waste of money.”
“I can’t help with the money, but I can talk to Haru. The least he can do is to get you a job.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m kind of sick of the whole thing.”
“You and me both.”
She gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry.”
“You and me both,” he repeated.
Nicoletta smiled wanly.
“Arguing… you could be a lawyer.”
“And go to school for a gazillion more years? No thanks.”
“You could… I don’t know. I think you can do anything you put your mind to.”
“Thanks, but that’s not nearly specific enough. I know I have an excuse to knock down everything. I know I’m just being unreasonable, but this is huge. It’s my future.”
“It’s important,” he said. “I don’t care what you do. If you don’t play this game again. I just want you to be happy.”
Nicoletta managed to smile as tears filled her eyes. Gary held out his arms, and they embraced. He rubbed her back.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured. “You’ll figure everything out.”
“I want to. I just don’t know how. I wish I knew the future.”
“Me too.”
“I… I should go,” Nicoletta said.
He swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said, but he didn’t stop holding her.
She kissed his cheek. He wanted to turn so it would be on the lips. He wanted to throw her down onto the bed and show her just how much she meant to him. He wanted to talk for days and nights until she figured out her future. It didn’t have to be only sexual.
But he said nothing, only embracing her until she was no longer in his arms.
Gary swallowed hard and hoped that wouldn’t be the last time he ever saw Nicoletta Rodriquez.
Chapter Seven
Feeling isolated and all alone, getting a headache from all of the drama with the girls, wanting to get away from it all, Gary bought a few more supplies from the various shops in the town. Then, he headed due north.
It took him longer than he expected to come across a glowing blue blob in the middle of a desert. This must be the force field Haru had mentioned. All Gary had to do was walk directly into it, and the portal would bring him to Vampire War.
He didn’t hesitate and strolled right through it. The glow surrounded him, and then the strangest sensation filled him. He felt cold and hot and like he was flying through darkness, and then he was screaming, but he couldn’t hear it.
When Gary was next aware, he opened his eyes and glanced all around him. The landscape appeared similar from what he could see. A desert still surrounded him, but the portal was no longer in sight. In fact, not much was in sight besides sand. The entire place was so very dark. Nighttime had fallen, which was interesting. In the first issue of the game, it was day the vast majority of the time.
Gary figured it was most likely the opposite here, given that the main villains were vampires.
Just then, a screech sounded, and something small and dark flew toward Gary’s face. A bat. There had been a fair number of bats in the beginning of the first issue, and Gary used his mind to cause a rock to lift into the air and smash against the bat’s face. The creature dropped to his feet and died.
Gary smirked. Bats wouldn’t be able to hurt him. They were too simple to kill. They hardly even gave him any experience points.
He glanced around and tried to get his bearings. There had to be a town somewhere nearby if he could just figure out where to go to reach it.
To his right was a wall of darkness. No, wait, not a wall. A mass of darkness. A mass of bats. There was an entire horde of them, and Gary had to spend the next half hour if not longer killing them all. He used more rocks. At one point, he even made a few collide so hard into one another that they became dazed and possibly concussed. They weren’t sure what was what, and they began to attack the other bats for him.
Finally, the last one dropped, and Gary patted his hands. To the right seemed clear now. There was a hill of there, a tall one. Maybe the higher vantage point would help him find a town.
Gary took one step and winced. He’d stepped on something squishy. Not a bat. No. On bat dung. Ugh. He wiped his boot on the sand, but that didn’t help much. As he stalked toward that hill, the stench of the bat dung stayed with him.
Bat dung was the worst.
The hill was a lot farther away than Gary had anticipated. The shadows and the darkness made it difficult to gauge distances. He finally climbed the peak and glanced all around. More dark specks were heading his way. More bats? Most likely. Well, better bats than vampires, he guessed. After he fought a crapton of bats, he almost would’ve preferred a vampire just to have a different foe.
Gary’s throat burned. Thirst ate at him, and he would give his left nut for an orange soda.
It wasn’t long at all before he felt lost. There was nothing to
suggest a town in any direction. He supposed he could just take off, pick a direction and walk until he stumbled upon something, but what about Elena? Wouldn’t she be coming to the issue? Had she already? She might have been here and gone off by herself. He couldn’t see any other footprints in the sand. In fact, the slight breeze was able to shift the sand enough that he couldn’t even see all of his own footprints.
Great. Just great. How was he supposed to find Elena in all of this? And Olivia? She wasn’t going to be able to convince Nicoletta into transferring to the new issue, but would Olivia come through herself? If so, when?
It was a good thing Gary had such a large breakfast because he might not have anything to eat but bats if he didn’t find a town and soon.
In the end, Gary did decide to continue in this direction. He faced even more bats and scorpions. As he killed them all easily, he felt both powerful and tired.
Up ahead, a tumbleweed rolled. Gary didn’t think much of it until the tumbleweed altered direction and headed straight for him.
Amused, Gary darted to the right, but the tumbleweed slid over to cut him off. A weed uncoiled and snapped toward him, trying to wrap around his leg.
What the hell? This was an enemy? Seriously? First mages in a superhero game and now killer tumbleweeds?
Gary sidestepped the weed, but it reached for him again, so he stomped and pinned it to the ground. Instead of sending another weed, the plant grew thorns that detached and spiraled through the air straight for Gary.
He called forth his telekinesis, the blue circles of his power bright and familiar. With relative ease, he deflected all of the thorns but one. Thankfully, that one only sliced through his clothes and not his skin.
More thorn darts were growing, but Gary didn’t give the killer tumbleweed time to throw them. Telekinetically, he separated and unraveled the tumbleweed until it was no more.
Pleased with himself, he patted his hands and started to walk away. Crunch. He had stepped on one of the darts. Hmm. They might come in handy. Swiftly, he gathered the thorny darts. As he walked, he used them to kill bats or other creatures. In no time at all, guts and blood covered the darts, and he had no way to wash them. This desert seemed like a never-ending wasteland. It was miserable.
Thanks a lot, Haru.
Gary needed water. He needed an oasis. He needed a place to lie down and sleep. There weren’t even any trees that he could climb so he could get away from the mutant crabs or the scorpions. He was stuck on the ground, and he wasn’t about to sleep there.
At least his eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough for him to realize that something wasn’t right with the patch of sand before him. The coloring was darker. A scorpion was heading toward Gary, and he used his telekinesis to force the scorpion to walk into that darker area. The scorpion proceeded to sink until drowned by the sand.
Quicksand.
Gary headed north and tried to see how far the patch went. After a mile, he gave up looking east and just continued northward.
In the distance, so far he could barely see it, Gary spied a single building. It looked like it might be a tower.
In the first issue, Gary hadn’t seen any castles. This building, if he had to guess, was either a ruin or a castle, and Gary, because of Olivia, immediately thought of Dracula. That place had to mean a boss, possibly even the boss of the entire issue. No thanks.
Since the castle was north and the east was a barren wasteland of quicksand, Gary headed back west. It wasn’t ideal to essentially backtrack, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t stay here.
A massive number of bats were trying to follow him. Gary ignored them, not wanting to be bothered. His feet were getting sore, and he just wanted to sleep. If only he could find a cave, but there weren’t any mountains. There wasn’t any means to find shelter, not unless he headed toward the castle.
Another horde of bats sneaked up on Gary from the south, and the two clusters of the winged terrors combined gave him a massive number of foes to deal with. The darts helped immensely, as he sent each dart go through five or six bats at a time. He did manage to avoid being bitten somehow, but it had been a near thing.
Once they were all killed, Gary stood on a rather impressive hill of dead bats. Although they smelled, Gary shoved the bats aside and used them as a blanket and a way to try to conceal himself from any other predators. He was too tired to keep on going. This was far from ideal, but he wasn’t a real superhero. He wasn’t invincible. He was still human, and he needed to rest.
The next time Gary opened his eyes, he had no idea how much time had passed or if he had slept long. The sky was every bit as dark as it had been before.
Unfortunately, because there weren’t any trees around, Gary couldn’t start a fire, and he wasn’t about to eat raw bats. Although he didn’t feel as tired anymore, Gary felt hungry, a fact he had no choice but to ignore. He had brought supplies, yes, but he didn’t want to risk going through them too quickly. If he had seen signs of a town in the distance, sure, he would’ve eaten. Since he seemed to be all alone, he had to be careful.
He continued to head west, going as far as he could and only stopping to kill all sorts of creatures. There even was a cactus that shot thorns at him, but Gary yanked it out of the soil by its roots. Even though it required some energy to do so, Gary used his power to carry the cactus along with the thorn-darts from the tumbleweed and some of the thorns from the cactus. He had weapons all right but not traditional ones.
“Not much about me is traditional,” he muttered. “Only fitting.”
On and on he walked, and gradually, he was too hungry and thirsty to keep going. He dozed off, hiding behind his cactus, a boulder behind him. Sleeping while sitting wasn’t ideal, and his body was sore when he woke.
“Haru, this issue sucks,” Gary muttered as he resumed walking. “You should’ve realized I would need a town and places to eat and drink and sleep. This barren desert is for the birds… er, bats.”
Luck finally shone on Gary later that day, if it was day. Maybe it was only ever night here because Gary had yet to see the sun at all. He couldn’t even see the moon. Above him was only a blanket of darkness. No stars were visible either.
As he stumbled above a tall sand dune, Gary spied an oasis. Not far ahead was a small pond and a palm tree. Just perfect.
Only that oasis appeared to be a mirage because Gary thought it was only an hour away. He kept dragging himself along and finally, three hours later, he reached the oasis.
Gary drank and drank and drank. He ripped off bark from the palm tree and then left to find some bats. He killed three and brought them back to the oasis. Making a fire wasn’t the easiest, but Gary was turning into a regular boy scout… if you didn’t consider that he wanted to be with three women for the rest of his life.
The fire was hot and ready, and he cooked the bats. They didn’t have a lot of meat and were a little slimy, but Gary was too hungry to care. He ate all three and then slept.
When he woke, Gary wondered briefly if he should wait here forever. Just live here, eating bats, drinking the water, making do.
But eventually, the water would be gone. The palm tree would only provide so much bark for fires. He was banking on staying in Vampire War for a long, long time. Maybe even forever at the rate Haru and his developers were going.
Gary knew he was so far removed from his life that he didn’t see how he could ever return back to it. For now at least, this barren wasteland was his home. He might as well resign himself to that fact because having hope in Haru just wasn’t happening.
Chapter Eight
After eating some more bats, fresh ones that he almost burned, Gary drank some water and then headed off farther west. He wasn’t about to stay at the oasis forever. There had to be a town. At the very least, he had to find an NPC so he could learn what the heck was up with this place.
By the time Gary had traveled for at least five hours, he finally went up a level. He had found and killed at least three hundred
bats since he had come here. Three hundred. If he saw another bat, it would be too soon, and he was sure that was only a matter of time.
Another two hours, and Gary spied a tree. It looked so out of place in the middle of the desert. Gary was almost wary as he approached. A man was standing there, stiff, staring straight ahead. His clothes were gray, as was his beard that reached his elbows. The man’s hands rested on top of a gnarled staff.
“Hello,” Gary said.
The NPC slowly turned his head. “Hello, would-be hero. Are you ready for a quest?”
Gary groaned. More quests. Great. Just what he needed. And would-be hero? He had lost his superhero status? At least he still had his superpower.
“A quest? Sure,” Gary said. “Lay it on me.”
“You must travel far to the west and locate the lost ocean.”
“Lost ocean? How can an entire ocean be lost?”
“Within the lost ocean, you will find a mermaid. Be mindful you find the mermaid and not the siren.”
“How will I know the difference?” Gary asked.
“The siren will try to kill you.”
“Of course,” Gary muttered. “What about the mermaid?”
“She will give you another quest.”
“Great. Quest to quest to quest. Busy, busy, busy. Hey, do you know where a town is?”
“What is a town?”
Seriously?
“Do you know where any other people are?” Gary asked.
“No.”
Ugh.
“What about food? Water? Do you know where anything is?”
“You must locate the lost ocean far to the west.”
“Yeah, yeah, you said that already. What happened here?”
The man turned to him. “I am a wizard. I lost my powers. When the vampires came, they destroyed the world. All is a barren wasteland. The desert has no end and never will unless the lost ocean is located. Save us all.”
“You lost your powers? Your magic? Is there any way that can be changed?” Gary asked excitedly.
