by Charles Dean
“You two really should get a room already,” Liu said, causing Bonnie to look flabbergasted.
“What?! No! Not him. Are you crazy?” she protested a little too loudly, drawing a few angry looks from people nearby.
At this, Lucas looked over at Viola, and Liu voiced Lucas’s question. “What, no ‘lady doth protest too much’ from our theater girl?”
“No,” Viola said. “It’s a dumb idea. ‘No’ means ‘no,’ and it’s rude to insist otherwise,” she replied. “That type of reaction . . . You might see a fun night resolve the grudge, but not likely.”
“Nnn,” the Naga added.
“Now,” the king began, “I have not pressed the issue, but you are to leave immediately. I will not have you in the court covered in blood. You will excuse yourself immediately. And someone please clean up the body.” The king’s voice was stern and annoyed as if he had been inconvenienced, but it was clear to Lucas and anyone with a good eye that he, like most of the people present, had actually enjoyed the show. His face was largely expressionless, but his cheeks pulled up slightly, his eyes were smiling, and his breathing was somewhat rapid as if he had been excited by the slaughter. Lucas tried to imagine what type of person would show such a reaction, and he instantly felt bad for the staff working under the king.
He cares so little for his people that he’s more amused at how the person bit the dust than the fact someone in his employment was just brutally murdered. But he just shook his head and put it out of his mind. He had been starting to suspect that anyone in a position of power within this world was actually a GM watching over the NPCs and managing quests. For all Lucas knew, the king was no different from Liu, who posed as Xun Guan, or Lagrand, who had masqueraded as Dray von Maidbanger.
“Of course, your majesty,” the woman said coyly. She was still wearing the same sadistically sweet smile as when she had first agreed to hand over her credentials to the guard, making her look more than a little devilish as she pushed herself off the corpse and bowed, all the while covered in blood. “I’ve already seen the show I came to see, a dragon roaring at ingrate whelps. There’s no reason to be greedy and expect an encore.”
“It has indeed been a day at court that all will talk about. I hope to see you again the next time Lucas comes to court--either dead next to your hero or standing proudly with him after they have begged him to appear, of course,” the king said. He then turned around and was escorted out of the room by guards at his side while the woman left in the other direction.
“Is it wrong that I don’t want her anywhere near us the next time we go anywhere?” Bonnie asked.
“No, that chick is a giant bag of crazy,” Nick exclaimed. “Did you see her expression? It’s like she was wearing a mask the entire time, one that she could put on at will.”
“I know,” Viola said, a pressing hand over her breast. “Honesty coupled to beauty is to make honey a sauce to sugar, yet her sour flavor still excites. Should she join our party . . .”
“You know there aren’t players around. You don't have to put on the act, right?” Nick said, slightly exasperated. “Just say what you mean.”
“She . . . nnn . . . she means that she wants the girl with us because it’ll make things more interesting,” Katie explained, saying one of the longest sentences Lucas had ever heard come out of her mouth.
Lucas listened to the exchange, but something bothered him about what they were saying. No one had given so much as a second thought to the fact that a guard had just been brutally murdered while everyone else watched on. He had seen the way that new woman killed--it was almost as if it came naturally to her, like she had already known how to kill before coming to this world. Her movements were far too fluid and far too precise. It was like darkness falling over someone when the lights went out: swift and sudden, completely enshrouding an unwitting victim before even a second had passed.
What nagged at him was that Viola didn’t seem to care at all about his safety or anyone else’s; she was only concerned with whether or not things were interesting. That was pretty typical for a game, but for some reason, it got under his skin this time. “No matter what becomes of that woman, it’s our problem. We need to get moving and find someplace that we can use as home base. I have twenty troops and their families arriving from Hesse on the next ship, and if we don’t have accommodations ready, we’re going to be in trouble,” Lucas said.
“But no one is going to sell us anything, right?” Nick asked. He fell in behind Lucas as the group began making their way out of the royal court. “I don’t think the merchants’ quarter will have enough room to start your dungeon, even if there are enough rooms to rent, and I don’t think the garrison will take us after we just got tied to little Ms. Kills-the-Guards.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said, pausing only briefly as he passed by the yet-unremoved corpse.
“Feels like it does matter,” Nick said.
“It doesn’t matter since we were never going to set up in those two places anyway,” Lucas continued. He had been thinking about the issue since Penelope had first listed out the three places he could stay. “We’re going to the academy.”
“You’re going to enroll all of your guards in the academy?” Nick asked, surprised at the idea. “And us? What point does it serve? Even if it seems like a solution, it’s only temporary until the year ends or they start graduating. Also, what are you going to do about the ones that flunk out?”
“Sell them to another noble at a discount?” Bonnie asked flippantly. “At least then they’d have a place to live.”
Right, she sees the cash side of it, Lucas thought. “Well, either way. We need too much from the school to even consider the other two options.”
“Like what?” Nick pressed. “We’ve already got access to the trainers we need, and you even got that archer girl to help train Crystal-Bow Katie here.”
“But do you know how to handle monster evolutions?” Lucas asked.
“Uhh . . . What?”
“Do you know if there are any tricks to building magical devices? Or how to design the circuitry for staves? Or do you plan on living off bought ones for the rest of the game?” Lucas asked.
“Oh,” Nick responded flatly.
“How about traps and how to build them properly? And, for that matter, what of protection? Do you think that, if we slept in the merchants’ quarter or the soldiers’ quarter, we’d ever even be able to sleep a single night?”
“Uhh . . . Boss, how is sleeping at an academy going to be safer than sleeping in the merchants’ quarter?” Bonnie asked.
“You of all people should know,” Nick explained. “In a world full of merchants, every single person has the potential to sell us out. Enemies could attack from any direction at any time, be it the cook making our food, the innkeeper renting the room, or the maid turning down the pillows. Every single one of them might have financial troubles and be exploitable. The soldiers in the garrison might be loyal men, but there is a high chance that many of them are staffed by and bound to the nobles that Lucas just ticked off.”
“So, once again, what makes the academy safe? Won’t it be filled with people that want him dead too?” Bonnie asked.
“Well, kind of,” Nick began. “There will be many who will look to increase their standing by challenging Lucas, but they won’t be able to move their forces through the campus without being noticed. This means that they’ll have to try themselves. If they’re in the academy, then it’s likely they aren’t very strong.”
“Right,” Lucas agreed. “Not to mention, there will also be many people like myself who came from Hesse or somewhere else and were forced to use the academy as a place of residence since none of the old blood would sell them an estate. Penelope certainly didn’t take very long coming up with the three options, so it’s reasonable to assume that these are the three most common routes for newcomers. It’s also reasonable to assume that there are always going to be people trying to acquire territory, so there
are likely to be plenty of people in shoes the same size as mine.”
“So, staves are really a big deal?” Nick asked. “I’ve heard of a few good places to get one if you want to try the Spell-Staff combat fighting style.” Spell-Staff was the class that Nick had wanted to be before Lucas had gotten him access to Dark Knight.
“I might take you up on that,” Lucas agreed since anything was likely to be an improvement at this point, “but first, I think I’d also like to try and make my own.” He had the Arcane Energy, Hit Points, and Charisma of a nearly endgame player. Thanks to his negative levels, he was now far more effective than any other player who should have been in the area. The only problem was that he didn’t have the levels or gear to take advantage of it.
Lucas had spent a good amount of time browsing through the forums and learning where to buy a good staff online before coming to Kent, but most of the places that were listed where players were selling off staves were in anti-Imperium territory. The only places that weren’t were in areas that weren’t easily accessible due to the fact that he simply wasn’t strong enough to make it there. It was a difficult conundrum, one he would have normally solved by having Nick or someone else go and buy the gear for him, but at this point, every person in his party was firmly in the Imperium camp. Even the non-Humans like Katie, Viola, and Bonnie were more or less Imperium at the moment and had--thanks to their efforts in saving the guards outside of the gates--already begun building faction Reputation with the Imperium before even entering the city.
“What do you mean about monster evolution though?” Nick asked. “I mean, traps I get. Traps are awesome. My buddy Adam wouldn’t stop talking about how effective traps were before I started playing. He even mentioned how ridiculous things like cursed silver or spiked doors could be used to catch people unaware. But what do you mean about monster evolution? Do you think you can make monsters yourself like the ones you hired to protect the dungeon?”
“Yeah. I do. Smash, that one we picked up from Rowland, wasn’t like Linnaeus. He was apparently an evolved Grobendiss,” Lucas explained. “That means that, at some point, they had taken a regular one and then evolved him to the point where he was a unique monster capable of crushing armies on noob island. Rowland’s father, being generational nobility by the looks of it, probably taught his son how to do it. If it’s a learned skill, then there is a good chance someone at the academy knows how to do it, even if there isn’t a class teaching it.”
“I want a dragon!” Bonnie exclaimed. “I don’t care how you do it; I just want a dragon. I’ll go catch some stupid lizard or snake or whatever’s needed to evolve a dragon. Come on, boss. I’ve been a good merc. I’ve killed everyone you’ve asked. You gotta get me a dragon to ride around. That’d be so awesome.”
Lucas had been very interested in evolving monsters, but he hadn’t once considered the idea of using one as a mount. He already had Linnaeus, the best mount in the game, one that could have transported him from Hesse much faster than the annoying port-and-walk process he had gone through. Could I evolve a horse into a nightmare? Could I get several and make an army? Lucas wondered, thinking about how intensive the process might be. He considered whether it would just be better to upgrade one monster to the point of being unkillable or if it’d be better to upgrade multiple to an average or lower level and then use them as mounts for his soldiers.
Since he didn’t have a dungeon at the moment, he didn’t have to worry about the same restrictions he had concerned himself with in the past. Previously, he had only been able to organize his troops at a rate of either five soldiers per party or one monster since each soldier occupied one dungeon point, and monsters occupied five, which was the most dungeon points a single room would allow. What he needed to do was find a way to create a zone or something that would let him put his resources to use--the monsters and guards he had brought with him--without demanding the same limitations as a dungeon.
“You know, those are all good points, but there is also the other major benefit of starting in the academy,” Liu said, finally speaking up.
“What’s that?” Nick asked.
“There is a reason every anime, book, or young adult novel starts in school,” Liu continued. “It’s the perfect place to give people a chance at reliving their golden years virtually with an even better set of subjects to study: combat, magic, and awesome game-building mechanics like growing monsters. Americans love college because of sex and booze, and the Japanese love high school because of short skirts and the fact that it’s a period of relative freedom from responsibility, but the effect is the same.”
“Huh? Seriously? I . . . I guess,” Nick said, somewhere halfway between a protest and agreement. “College was definitely the best: a few hours of class every day at most, no parents nagging me twenty-four hours a day to study harder, and I got my first job, so I had spending money for the first time ever.”
“Well, that may be for you, but a lot of students relate university to crippling anxiety, midterms and finals, having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, and then getting mired down in a ton of debt,” Liu countered. “Not to mention getting internships, lining up future job prospects, cultivating tons of relationships . . .”
Lucas knew exactly what she was referring to. He had met Yu Hua and Liu at college, and they all had to work incredibly hard to make it through. Sure, Lucas had money now, but that hadn’t always been the case. College had been one of the more trying parts of his life.
“And, on the other hand,” Liu continued, “high school is nothing but horny teenagers who get to sleep eight hours a day and have huge breaks between classes that aren’t eaten up by bosses breathing down their necks and forcing them to skip lunch and work extra hours or risk losing their job. They don’t even have to worry about waking up with back or shoulder pains. High school is the best set of memories for others, and it’s why old farts always hate to hear teenagers complain. Either way, the effect is the same: people love the idea of the fun and freedom of school, whichever one it is for them.”
“She’s got good points,” Lucas said. “I had only been interested in the knowledge and how I could use it, but the academic setting might draw in some potential new members. Plus, is there anywhere else we’re going to learn these things? No one has ever taken the Imperium path before, right? Can you even imagine what faction-unique spells and techniques they might have that no one’s ever discovered?”
“As long as you don’t forget which merc you love paying the most, boss,” Bonnie chimed in. “I don’t think you’ll have any problems recruiting. I mean, you won’t be able to find people, but you’ll be able to find NPCs.”
“Not ones I can trust,” Lucas replied, shutting that idea down. “We need to find people like . . . us. People who are in the Imperium. They’ll have all started on Hesse, and I have a feeling that anyone who follows my path won’t be so quick to bend the knee to a noble. I’m sure we can find members like that around here.”
“Yeah, like the crazy girl who murder-hoboed the guard that was just asking for her I.D.,” Nick said, chuckling a little.
“I mean, let’s not get her,” Bonnie said quickly. “And no more spiders.”
“It’s ‘cause she looked like a Rogue, isn’t it?” Nick asked. “You’re worried she’s going to be better at your job than you are, aren’t you?”
“What? No. Of course not. I do recon; she’s clearly an assassin of some sort. Totally different!” Bonnie protested. “I just think she’s . . . you know . . . a little bit off.”
“Hmm . . . you could be a Healer,” Nick joked. “You’ve had practice.” But his laughter was cut short by Bonnie’s scepter as it struck him across the face.
“HEAL!” Bonnie shouted. “Ah, yeah. I am getting good at that. You don't seem to have a single mark left on your face. My work is impeccable. But, sadly, that role is taken.”
“Nnn . . . Viola is good at healing,” Katie agreed with a nod.
“I’m the best at what
I do,” Viola said without a shred of modesty. “You can’t replace me. And speaking of which, where the heck are we?”
The group had been caught up talking the entire time, and Lucas was completely confused about where they were supposed to be going. They had arrived in the packed center of a bustling square that was so crowded he couldn’t see anything more than a few feet in front of him.
The only space to be had was, strangely enough, directly around Lucas and his posse. It was as if the merchants and citizens had been trained not to bump into or get too close to players. Lucas wondered if the behavior was active programming written by the developers when they were first making the game or a learned practice in response to players. He wasn’t too certain how players behaved in the mainland cities, but there was a good chance that they were just as wild and unpredictable here as they were on noob island. People often tried to pickpocket NPCs, and they would start a fight at any given opportunity just because they could. It was mostly the players’ way of testing the boundaries within the virtual world when they first arrived, but the behavior had a lasting effect nonetheless. That said, for all Lucas knew, it could just be a social behavior that encouraged the town’s citizens to create little bubbles of space around foreigners they didn’t know.
“I don’t know, but check that out,” Nick said, pointing to another clearing of people that was opening up near them.
The pocket of space around Lucas and his group had been made by people unconsciously moving away from Lucas as if he were some mobile building they didn’t want to run into, but the one Nick pointed to was a very familiar sight: the ring people always made when a fight was about to break out. They would back up and circle around so as to give the combatants distance but prevent them from escaping, and it also allowed all the bystanders to get a clear view so that they wouldn’t miss a single bit of the action.
“Two fights in less than ten minutes? This is a good day, ain’t it, boss?” Bonnie asked. She produced a bucket of popcorn from her bag along with several small bags, which she filled from the bucket and then passed around.
