Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

  I got to plan how to thwart Maya and the Eastmans, who smugly believed that everyone had to do things their way and that they were entitled to crush any dissent.

  I got to feel like I wasn’t alone and that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t doomed to slave away for people I hated in a system I thought was going to fail us all.

  It was glorious.

  Pulling thought she could get a surprisingly large number of volunteers. Unbeknownst to me, my bet and my run-ins with the Party were a matter of public interest. People out there knew of the bet and knew I had managed to solo the Mines of Madness! and take out Jude and his team. I wasn’t quite seen as Robin Hood or Spartacus or something, but plenty of people enjoyed the idea of someone sticking it to Tasha and the Party.

  Personally, I thought strangers willing to help me out and piss off Tasha Eastman probably had a screw loose. I was relying on the cranks and malcontents of society. That doesn’t tend to work out well, but Pulling thought some of these people were worth a damn.

  Most of our debate was about how big the force to block and break trail for me should be. Too small and the Eastman team and their reinforcements would overwhelm us. But every additional member was an additional possible double agent. I suspected that the Party and the GMs tracked dissident elements. Pulling let me know that this paranoia was right on the money. There were GMs who did that kind of work over and above whatever the Eastmans did themselves.

  Not knowing any of the people who I had to trust to fight for me sucked. I had to depend on Pulling. I worried she didn’t have my finely-honed sense of paranoia and mistrust of my fellow man. As far as I knew, her best friend had never stuck a knife in her back. She might be naive.

  Still, eating, planning and joking now and again with Pulling made me happier than I’d been in months. Not surprising given what my last few months had consisted of.

  The only thing that marred the best time I’d had in a long time were these ceaseless thoughts of how I desired Pulling. Marred isn’t really the right word, as it also added a spark to our planning I had never had when studying with Jude.

  She is so beautiful. She wants you. Get her. Take her. Stop all her talking with your mouth. Grab her.

  I was finding it harder and harder to resist just leaping on top of her. When she gave me a truly admiring glance after I had solved what we both agreed was our biggest problem keeping this scheme from being workable it nearly drove me mad. The compulsion to grab her leaped and roared within me. But I couldn’t afford to complicate our alliance.

  Maybe it wasn’t protecting the alliance but just plain old fear of rejection. Somehow, I gritted my teeth and did my best to stamp down the thoughts that whispered in my ears.

  Eventually, we had talked things through as much as we could. Her shift would be over soon and her replacement would arrive. It was time for me to leave.

  I thought of inviting her to leave with me, but I lived in the Pitts.

  Coward. Fool. Bring her. Invite her. Together you can investigate and enjoy all that the Pitts have to offer.

  I did feel like a coward and maybe I was. I think if I had still lived in my old apartment or anywhere other than a porn pod in an abandoned basement, I would have said something, done something. To the muttered condemnation of my inner demons, I just wished her goodnight and left.

  * * * ***

  Ruod seemed extra happy to see me when I returned to the Pitts. Before, his smile had always made me suspicious. At this moment, I was feeling good enough that I just felt welcome.

  “Welcome back!” he greeted me.

  “Good to be back,” I replied.

  “Wonderful!”

  His red lipped smile followed me as the elevator closed on me.

  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do at the Pitts. Until Pulling put together her counter-strike team and I solved my Eastman/pillaged land problem, I couldn’t effectively play the game. My main job was to stay safe and out of trouble until we made our move.

  The bunker was just as I had left it, institutional and grim.

  Let’s get into the pod. We have time to kill. Let’s have some fun.

  I had about a week to wait before I had to be at the entrance to the Mines of Madness! For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t sure what I could or should be doing to win my bet.

  Get into the pod. So many ways to while away the time. To distract yourself. To enjoy yourself.

  The last time I had an enforced vacation from playing the game, I had been jailed by the GMs. In the end this had really helped me. I had managed to get at least some access to my magic. Without it, I’d never have made it this far.

  That was something. I could train.

  There really were a lot of things I could do.

  Or people to do…

  No, I would be facing off against some of the best the Eastmans had in a bit over a week. I needed any edge I could manage.

  The pod cover slid back. I entered and the lobby of the Pitts revealed itself around me.

  Part of me was thinking about how I could use my time trapped here constructively. Part of me definitely wasn’t.

  Once again, I was overwhelmed by so many choices and options to entertain myself. For the first time I noticed how compelling the more stripped down offerings were. An ad importuned me to “Grosse out! Violence, language, racism, sexism, sex, gore, vore, and more! Rules Free Scenario.”

  That looks interesting.

  I wasn’t sure what vore was and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  In real world time I had a week and a half until Pulling would have her end of our operation set up. With the time dilation possible in VR programs outside of the Game, that made six weeks subjective time. I could spend it learning all sorts of skills I could really use in the Game.

  Or indulge yourself just a bit…

  Every pod had to offer access to the educational worlds and programs. Even the ones here in Lilith’s domain. The last vestiges of a shared moral code for society, I guess. Public libraries had hung on back in the old world long after all the books in the world were available with the click of a button. People are funny.

  This didn’t mean Lilith needed to make these options easy to find. I had to wade through ads and program descriptions designed to appeal to any and every taste. Pop up ads at our current level of technology unleashed small tastes of possible realities, complete with people designed to seduce you to come with them. I really regretted when I opened a directory labeled “Training Programs.” It wasn’t what I had been looking for.

  Take a break. Just for a day. For a few hours. With time dilation, a short adventure will cost you hardly any time.

  It was hard to focus on what I should be doing. The ads and part of me really wanted me to explore the Pitts. I’m not a dead man and I had just finished a tough bunch of months, or even years depending on how I looked at it. Perfect women in revealing clothes beckoned to me. The Pitts had to follow rules about how much VR they could impose on someone who hadn’t chosen to enter a virtual world, but they really skirted the line of what was permitted.

  My fingers trembled as I waded through Lilith’s worlds. It was getting harder not to just click on some of these things. For weeks I had been walking past all of this every time I logged into or out of the game. But today it was harder than even the first time not to just take a look. My palms would have been damp if nano didn’t just absorb anything as mundane as sweat.

  I told myself to shut up and stay focused. If I lost my bet with Maya I’d have the rest of my life to waste in the Pitts. What hours I wasn’t slaving for the Eastmans.

  Finally, I found what I was looking for. It was buried five levels down under various synonyms of “Settings,” and “Preferences.” Let me just say that those two words, like “Training Programs,” also had some disturbing dead ends and cul-de-sacs under Lilith’s nomenclature.

  From here though I was finally able to access the Hardcore Playmode Manual. It was the same book I had gotten back
in jail. I opened it up and found the same endless list of skills that I had seen before. It covered all the original skills the Game had offered. Everything my father thought might help enable people to become their video game characters.

  Skill listings from Alchemy to Zweihander, (melee)basic were there for my perusal.

  Sometimes a lack of necessity makes it harder to know what to do. Last time I had the massive deficit of not being able to use magic staring me in the face. This time I couldn’t think of any specific single skill that was make or break for me.

  There were a ton I didn’t think I would need any time soon, like Handle Animal, Sailing or Sleight of Hand. Even after weeding those out, I was left with a ridiculously long list. Every form of combat and weapon was listed. Spellcraft specializations looked interesting. If I was limited to only one spell at a time it, might make sense to overpower that one spell.

  I was still going to have to finish the Gathering Quest and also earn my keep for the rest of my time in-game. Skinning, cooking, mining: there really was hardly anything that wouldn’t help me either collect more quickly and with higher quality or let me refine what I collected into things that were more valuable.

  No matter what happened, I didn’t think I’d have easy access to a town market. I needed to be self-sufficient.

  Thinking longer term, I was leaning toward learning how to refine materials through either alchemy, blacksmithing or another of the profession/crafting skills as opposed to the gathering skills. I had been able to figure out how to crudely skin an animal. There was no way I would be able to teach myself blacksmithing or alchemy.

  A nice gaming and character build problem was a great distraction from all the other distractions I knew were just a few clicks away. Burying myself in these options quieted the voice that kept urging me back.

  There were other skills like using rope, tumbling, or hiding that also called to me. The rope thing came up across a lot of areas. Ropemaker was a professional skill, and it added to skills like climbing, spelunking, setting traps, escape artistry. That last called to me even more given my recollection of how the Eastmans had tied me to the back of one of their mounts before throwing me in a dungeon. I had a terrible premonition that I might need to be able to escape being bound and gagged by my enemies.

  As in real life, many of these skills interacted with each other. Escape artist helped with grappling and vice-versa. Certain crafting skills helped with disarming traps. Professional skills like Cordwainer helped with skinning, tanning, and apparently even things like stealth.

  I started making notes: relisting skills into trees, flow charts, and Venn diagrams to give myself some idea how these things would interact. I could see the relationships more clearly, but without knowing the underlying mechanics in the Game, it was impossible to really know how to munchkin my skill development.

  Example number 10,432 of how the Party had a leg up on everyone. They knew exactly how skills and play style interacted. They could either keep exploits for their own use or sell guides to us plebes. No one used Hardcore Mode besides me, so there weren’t any guides even if the Party would sell one to me.

  In the end I decided that knowing how to use a sword properly was so basic that I had to learn it. My playing the Game without knowing how to swing a sword correctly was like trying to rescue your love from a giant ape without knowing how to smash barrels with a hammer. What sealed it for me was that I was days away from a prison break. Combat was pretty much guaranteed. Skinning a giant rabbit, not so much.

  It was time to train.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The training program was situated in what I found out was called a salle. It was a mostly empty room with a hardwood floor and a mirror spanning one wall. There were racks and stands on one side carrying a number of different swords. There was a barrel filled with wooden practice swords in the corner, with some target dummies nearby.

  At this point I have to apologize. You are likely expecting me to relate a gripping training sequence. I should tell you how I had to hit a training dummy 10,000 times before unlocking a great secret skill, or I had to chase after a chicken while a crusty old guy exhorted me to be like, “greased lightning, kid!” Training montages are great entertainment.

  Minimally, you are expecting to read about how I worked, sweated and trained, and this led me to become a more deadly warrior and set me on the path to martial greatness. It wasn’t like that at all.

  Looking around the salle, it reminded me an awful lot of the yoga studio I had spent too much time in before.

  I half expected Mordecai or Lemminkäinen, my old yoga instructors, to come teach me, but no such luck. Instead a man with long, curly black hair and a mustache entered. He wore an open leather vest over a homespun shirt.

  “My name is Imago Inintoyo, prepare to learn,” he said with a lisping accent.

  What then followed was a lot of repetition as I learned basic stances, attacks and counters. And then I was expected to repeat them. A lot. That is how developing muscle memory works.

  We had made an initial pass through such standard sword fighting styles as Benetti’s Defense, Tybalt, Capa Peia and its counter Agrippa. It was at this point that I began feeling comfortable enough to ask my teacher a few questions.

  “Sr. Inintoyo?” I asked diffidently.

  “Yes?”

  “How exactly would I use any of this against, say, a giant boar? Or, a man-eating plant that used its vines as tentacles to bind me and drag me into its maw?”

  He looked at me like I was something of an idiot.

  Imago seemed to think best while wielding a sword. I say this because as he considered my question, he picked up his sword and circled it until striking an en garde pose. He then moved through a series of brilliantly executed motions attacking quarte, prime, then followed up with a mock riposte to an imaginary attack.

  I tried to imagine which elements of his graceful movements were meant to work against either of my hypothetical foes. With no loss of breath, he stopped and turned to me.

  “What is this?” he asked, making a gesture with his sword.

  “A sword… specifically a type of saber,” I replied.

  “And what is a sword for?” he continued.

  “Umm. To kill?” I tentatively responded.

  After my experiences with my previous magic instructors, I expected him to have some sort of fortune cookie wisdom for me, maybe about the morality of killing or being at one with my weapon or something.

  “Miles. The sword is the greatest tool ever devised for one purpose and one purpose only.”

  “Yes, teacher?”

  “It is designed to be the ultimate tool to fight against someone else who is also using a sword. You would have to be something of an idiot to fight a boar with a sword. That is why someone invented boar spears. As far as giant plants go, well, an axe sounds like the thing.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. I was an idiot. Everything he had been teaching me was for fighting humans, or at least humanoids armed with a similar weapon. Thinking over most of my fights in the game and most of what I was likely to be doing in the game, this training was not very useful.

  I apologized to him and logged out of the class.

  *** ***

  The Hardcore Playmode Manual was open and unstudied in front of me.

  There are things a young man is designed by God or nature to find of interest. Most of the time I am grateful for this. It keeps life interesting and means that half the people I meet are at least a bit inherently compelling. The women vamping for the different programs and options the Pitts offered were making it hard to study the Hardcore Playmode Manual.

  The Pitts’ system somehow was able to intuit that I wasn’t interested in men. They never offered them to me. Moreover, I began to notice that the girls spamming me were starting to have more of the features that I particularly liked. If my eyes lingered here or there, whatever drew my attention seemed to spread to the other women. Even cre
epier, I started noticing that they began reminding me of Patricia, but more perfect. Or maybe sluttier.

  It would be good practice. You could get comfortable with her…

  I did my best to ignore my… let’s call them thoughts, and tried to once again figure out how to learn something useful for the Game. I had used up half the days left till my escape attempt.

  To make proper use of my training time, what I needed to do was keep thinking through how the Game, my luck stat, and actual combat skills interacted.

  For most players, the shape of their weapon was moot. A weapon had its damage values and that was that. A basic mace, axe, or shortspear all did 1-6 points of damage. There were some monsters that were immune to certain types of damage (Bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, etc.) but generally weapons only worked differently because of a player’s skill level.

  I could take down a treant just as quickly with a longsword as with a battle-axe, provided I had the same number of skill points for each. The “I” in my example is rhetorical. The real “I” didn’t have a luck stat. I didn’t have combat assist. I couldn’t swing some random weapon like a whip and automatically get it to do the listed damage. I needed to pick the right tool for the job.

  This meant that I needed to actually learn how to use an astoundingly wide variety of weapons. I wasn’t apt to become a weaponsmaster in the next year, let alone week. As I leveled and had to confront more powerful monsters, I was going to be more and more screwed.

  I sighed and shut my eyes, trying to ignore the distractions of the Pitts and the overwhelming and impossible options of the Manual.

  Ok. I couldn’t depend on the game system to make my sword work like a spear or an axe for me. I didn’t have the time to become expert with every weapon. I really didn’t have the time to become expert with even one type of weapon.

  First, I needed to figure out how many different types of weapons there were. The list of weapons in the manual was endless. Shamshirs, terbutjes, kukris, ranseur, sais: the list went on and on.