Level Up

by Craig Anderson

  His shoulders sag and he nods sagely. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  I’m going to have to trust him on this one. I watch him run off and find myself hoping for both our sakes that he can control his impulses.

  It is hard to follow his progress. He does an expert job of sticking to the shadows. I only catch glimpses of him as he darts from darkness to darkness. The guards on the perimeter vanish one by one as Carlos takes them down.

  I lean out of my hiding spot to try and keep track of Carlos and a patrolling guard walks round the corner. We both startle. He opens his mouth to shout and I realize I am not going to be able to shut him up in time. I tense up, ready to fight, when there’s a loud thwack and the guard falls to the ground face first, an arrow sticking out the back of his head. I look up and see a hand sticking out of the shadows with a brief thumbs up, before it disappears again.

  After a few more minutes Carlos is in position at the top of the tower. I can’t believe he’s made it. This may be the first time he has ever resisted temptation and not intentionally kicked the hornets nest. He fires an arrow and it severs the rope, dropping the barrels onto the group perfectly. I wait for the explosion, but nothing happens. The guards all pick up their weapons and start to fan out.

  I think fast and shoot the nearest barrel with Waterfall, triggering a fireball explosion and sending guards flying everywhere. Most of them drop to zero health instantly, and the ones that don’t are set alight and are running around while their health plummets. They are easy pickings.

  Carlos appears back by my side without a sound. I give him a nudge. “Nice shot! I never doubted you.”

  “Sure, sure. Now lets go find Sarah, that explosion is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention.”

  Right on cue five guards come running, brandishing swords and shields. We haven’t fought shielded opponents yet. Carlos says, “You get the three on the left, I’ll take out the two on the right.”

  “Why do I get three?”

  “You’re the hero. I’m just the sassy sidekick.”

  “Ok fine.”

  My combat skills have slowly been improving, especially with the bo staff. I step into the centre of the guards as Carlos hangs back, lining up a shot. Everyone waits for someone else to make the first move. Eventually the guards can’t take it any longer. One of them steps forward to attack me and Carlos immediately shoots him in the leg. As he reaches down to try to pull out the arrow I take advantage of the distraction and thrust at him with my staff, catching him right under the chin and knocking him out. The guard on my left lunges in, his sword held high, but I duck under my own bo staff and his attack lands on the staff, which buckles but holds. I flip the staff up into the air and take advantage of my free hands by grabbing the guard and throwing him over my shoulder, crashing him into one of his friends that is charging at me. I leap into the air, narrowly avoiding a sneak attack from behind, and catch my staff at the apex of its flight, landing gently with it held behind my back. I hear another guy running up behind me, but I don’t need to react, I can see Carlos already has him lined up. The arrow just misses me, the flight tickles my cheek on its way past, and I hear it embed in the guard behind me as he slumps to the ground with a groan.

  The three remaining guards scramble to get back to their feet. Two of them are already at half health. Carlos says, “You want the easy pair or the healthy one?”

  Better to fight one on one. “I’ll take the healthy one.”

  The guard immediately rushes me. The bo staff is a great long ranged weapon, but it is lousy in a sword fight. I swing at my opponent, but it bounces ineffectively off his shield with a clang. He reaches me and takes a swipe with his sword. I roll just in time, his sword carving up the ground where I was just standing. I can’t let him get close to me like that. That is when I see them laying on the ground. I slip my bo staff back into my pocket as I roll again, this time standing up with the swords of the two fallen guards. I go back on the attack, alternating swipes from each sword, which the guard blocks with his shield or parries with his sword. I swing particularly hard and shatter his shield, breaking the sword in the process. Now it’s a straight up sword fight.

  The guard hangs back, wary. I turn to check on Carlos. He’s sitting eating a burger, the other two guards nowhere to be seen. I shout over, “What are you doing?”

  “Taking five. I’m hungry.”

  “I’m engaged in a fierce sword duel here. Could you maybe help me out?”

  “Why? You need the practice.”

  “Seriously?”

  The guard lunges at me and I block the attack, taking a small amount of chip damage. I try an overhead swing and it crashes down, almost connecting, until he blocks at the last second. He counter attacks and I parry, doubling my damage. Now if I can just get a solid hit in.

  He’s keeping his distance, but I can’t figure out why. Quick as a flash he pulls out a throwing knife and tosses it at me. I don’t even see the prompt, but instinct kicks in and I select it, catching the knife in the air and flinging it back at him. It hits him squarely in the chest and he falls to the ground.

  “You couldn’t have just shot him with an arrow?”

  “And ruin the show? You had it under control.” He finishes his burger. “Nice move with the throwing knife by the way.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t know I could do that, it was a prompt. You think there are any more guards?”

  “Unlikely. We’ve made enough noise that I can’t imagine nobody knows we are here. I think that must be all of them.”

  “Ok, so lets go find Sarah.”

  We round the corner and that’s when we see her. She is being held by a single guy, who is hiding behind her with a gun to her head. He says, “You might have taken out my mates, but I’m not going to give you a chance to do that to me. If you ever want to see your girlfriend again you will need to pass the trials of the Sigma Seven. You will almost certainly die trying. Firstly, you will need to fight the dragon of…”

  Thwack. An arrow appears in his right eye socket and he collapses in a heap, the gun going off when his body hits the ground. Sarah stands there shaking in the rain as I turn to Carlos. “What the fudge was that?”

  Wait, why did I say fudge? That certainly isn’t the word I was planning on using.

  “I saw an opening and I took it.”

  “What if you’d missed!”

  He shrugs. “I don’t miss. I figured if we could kill him before he gave us the quest it wouldn’t register. Am I right?”

  I check and he’s right, there is no new quest. I run over to Sarah. She’s shivering. I shrug off my hoodie and wrap it around her shoulders. She hugs me tight. “My hero. What can I do to repay you?”

  The look she gives me almost stops my heart. There is a deep longing in her eyes, like I have never seen before. What is she doing? I push her away. “No thanks necessary.”

  She sniffs the hoodie and smiles. “It smells like you.”

  It smells like charred nylon and the sweat of a dozen rugby players. Did they hit her in the head? “Are you feeling ok?”

  “No, I’m cold and damp. Let’s get me out of these wet clothes.”

  Quest complete: Earn the love of a fair maiden. +1000 Exp.

  Well this is certainly not how I was expecting to complete that quest.

  I pull Carlos aside. “We have a big problem. I think Sarah is trying to seduce me.”

  “I don’t see the problem. You like her, now she likes you.”

  “But that isn’t her! Whoever that is loves me because the game is telling her to.” The words sting as I say them. I can’t let her be manipulated like this. I have to think. I need to break her programming. How can I change her from being a trophy to being a fully fleshed out person again?

  Carlos says, “She was a damsel in distress and you rescued her. You’ve made her your love interest. Now she’s going to throw herself at you. The only way to stop it is to give her a new role.”

  “You’r
e a genius!” I stare at Sarah and pray the option pops up. It takes a few seconds, but then it appears and I select it.

  Just like that Sarah shakes her head and says, “What happened? I blacked out for a moment there.”

  “You were in trouble, but don’t worry, you’re safe now.”

  She sniffs the air and says, “What on earth is that stench?”

  I smile. “That’s my hoodie.”

  After a few more seconds she blinks and her eyes widen. “Why can I see a health bar? What did you do? Oh my god, I’m in the game aren’t I? Fudge!”

  Carlos says, “Why do you guys keep saying fudge?”

  “Because of the games rating there is no cursing allowed.” Sarah replies.

  Carlos is suddenly paying attention. “Wait, what the fudge? Fudge, fudge, fudge. Are you fudging kidding me. I can’t say fudge anymore? This is an outrage! You didn’t tell me about this. Is it too late to make it an 18 rating?”

  “Shut the fudge up.” I turn my attention back to Sarah, “About what I said in the bar…”

  She blushes slightly. “Let’s talk about that later, it feels like the kind of thing that should be discussed over a coffee, not a pile of corpses.”

  She has a point, this isn’t really the ideal location for a heart to heart. Instead I say, “I’m sorry, I had to add you as a party member. You were in danger and the only way to save you was to make you part of the game. You weren’t safe as an NPC.”

  “But it says I’m level 1. That must be some kind of mistake, don’t they know I’m a developer? I’ve never been level 1 before!”

  Carlos slaps Sarah heartily on the arm. “Welcome to the party. Now you’re just as fudged as we are.”

  LEVEL 17: THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

  “We need to get Sarah levelled up, she’s not safe as a level 1. We should stick together.” I proclaim.

  Sarah shakes her head. “No, with the EXP split that doesn’t make any sense. It will only slow down my progression. Not to mention the fact that the enemies scale with the highest levelled character, so hanging out with you guys would put me in considerably more danger.”

  Carlos nudges me. “See, I told you!”

  I stare at her. Something looks different, but I can’t quite place it. “At least check if you have any weapons. I want to make sure we aren’t sending you out there defenseless.”

  “Good point.” She stares blankly and then says, “Interesting. I’m classed as a magic user, so I have two spells right now. Fireball and Ice blast.”

  “Try one.”

  Carlos and I take a step back. Sarah holds out her hand and a tiny ember appears on the ground. We all wait for something else to happen, but instead it flickers and goes out. Sarah stares at her hand before shrugging. “Well that was pretty pathetic. That’s not going to be much use unless they want me to light their cigarette.”

  “Guess you need to level it up.”

  “I guess. It’s going to be hard to take out many enemies with that. I always said the magic users were under powered in the earlier levels.”

  Sarah stares off again. “I don’t even have a base weapon. Guess I’ll just have to disarm someone.”

  “No problem.” I try to hand her Agile and Waterfall, but as she reaches over to take them she hesitates. I say, “It’s ok, I can show you how to use them.”

  “It’s not that, it won’t let me take them. Magic users can’t use ranged weapons. Do you have anything else?”

  I scan my inventory and we try the bo staff, but that won’t transfer either. She says, “It won’t let me take it. I have to have a strength skill over 3 to use it.”

  Carlos reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stick. Sarah jumps when she picks it up. He says, “Take good care of it. That stick and I have been through a lot.”

  Sarah sighs and puts the stick in her pocket. “Thank you, it’s a good start. I will meet up with you guys back in my office in a couple of hours. That should be enough for me to catch up on levels. Then we can travel together.”

  She turns to leave and pauses. I think she’s going to say something else, maybe mention our conversation in the bar, but after a glance back in my direction she smiles and walks away.

  Carlos waits until she is for sure gone before he says, “You guys are so cute.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She likes you. It’s obvious.”

  “Since when are you such an expert on women?”

  “I’m in sales, my job is to know when someone is ready to buy. She’s still hurting from her break up, but she has feelings for you. You just need to make the first move.”

  “I tried remember, she almost got killed. I can’t risk losing her.”

  He stares at me. “You lost her once already. Not many people get a second chance like this. Stop thinking so much, you can’t plan your way into a relationship. Just go with the flow.”

  “If we get through this, I promise to try again.”

  “Thank god. I can’t listen to you moping around for five more years.” He cracks a smile. “Now let’s stop standing around gossiping like a couple of bored housewives and go kick some arse. What’s next?”

  I’m checking the quest list when a new menu catches my eye. I say to Carlos, “There is a whole menu in here dedicated to our home base. What’s that all about?”

  Carlos groans. “I’d forgotten about that. The game has a tacked on base builder. It is pretty bare bones. It does come with some major advantages though. Visiting your base immediately heals all damage, restocks all ammo and opens up more inventory spaces. It will become more important as the game gets harder.”

  “That sounds pretty handy. Can we buy a base, or do we have to capture one? How does it work?”

  “You have to buy the initial base and then I think all the upgrades are through resources. Like I said, it didn’t appear to be very fleshed out. I’m sure someone in their focus group told them they should have it and it got plonked in.”

  “Ok, so how do we buy one? Is there a virtual estate agent we need to visit?”

  “No, you have to find the base locations yourself. They were really expensive though. It is meant as end game content, they don’t want players too OP in the early game.”

  I look at my measly balance of gold coins. “Doesn’t sound like we’ll be getting a base any time soon then.”

  “Nonsense, we just have to find a way to make lots of money quickly.”

  “I’m not robbing another bank!”

  “Don’t be silly, I would never suggest you rob a bank. It’s too risky.” Says Carlos.

  “Ok phew. For a moment there I was worried.”

  “Why take the chance when we can just walk into people’s houses and take all the gold we can find.” He follows this up with his innocent grin, the one that always gets me into trouble.

  I groan. “That is so much worse than robbing a bank.”

  “Nonsense. No armed security guards, no cameras, no five inch thick safe doors. We can just stroll right in.”

  I open my mouth to argue and stop myself. I wouldn’t think twice about doing this in a game, so why am I overthinking it here? I need to embrace my situation.

  “Ok fine, lets do it.”

  Before I can change my mind I run up to the nearest house and kick the front door in. Thankfully no-one is home. I start smashing up anything breakable, looking for gold coins. Teapot? Smashed. Decorative vase? Smashed. Espresso machine? I pick it up and smash it on the ground. Gold coins fly out everywhere.

  Carlos runs in behind me. “Holy crap! Easy there tiger, I said lets rob them, not lets burn their house to the ground.”

  “You told me to find loot, so I am finding loot.”

  “I guess. Just try to leave the walls standing.”

  I scour the rest of the downstairs as Carlos works on the upstairs. When I am sure there is nothing left I shout up to him. “Ready to go next door?”

  “Yep, hold on one second.” There’s a loud crash, follow
ed by the sound of several things breaking. He leaps down the stairs three at a time. “Ok, I’m good.”

  We do three more houses in quick succession. All is going great until I open the door to move on to the next house and hear sirens. I glance down the street to see three police cars approaching at high speed. I turn and run straight into Carlos. “Change of plans, we are going out the back door.”

  He hesitates and I grab his arm. “No. We aren’t getting into a punch up with the police.”

  “But, they probably have really great gear!”

  There’s only one way to convince him. “What happens in the game if you attack the city guards?”

  He mumbles, “Every guard immediately recognizes you as a bad guy and you have to fight the guards everywhere you go.”

  “Does that sound like a fun way to spend the rest of our game? On the run from the cops?”

  “Point taken.” He doesn’t look happy about it, but at least he is agreeing with me for once.

  We run out the back door and leap over several garden fences. Once we are a safe distance away we switch to walking. We aren’t exactly inconspicuous, what with me wearing a bright purple hoodie and pistols hanging off my belt. We have to circle back to the castle to pick up the car, but we don’t encounter any trouble on the way. As we drive away several more police cars race past us on the way to a very confusing spree of break-ins, where houses were trashed and nothing valuable was taken.

  I should be angry, or annoyed, but instead I feel exhilarated. “Wow! That was a close call.”

  “Nah, we were fine. What was our final haul?”

  I check my inventory. “Just over 500 gold coins. I can’t imagine it is enough to buy us a base.”

  “You’re right about that. Bases start at 50,000 gold. We have enough to kick into phase 2 though.”

  ***

  We sit in the smoky tavern that I am sure wasn’t here a couple of days ago. The gentleman sitting opposite us is of short stature and has a long flowing beard. He sports several items of jewelry, including a very unusual black ring. The battle hammer he is holding completes his ensemble. I’m not sure what the etiquette is of calling someone a dwarf when they aren’t one. I don’t think I want to find out.