by Aaron Jay
Choose Guardian…
Well, that looked pretty crappy. Also, I had no idea how this would help me avoid getting murdered.
Maybe I should have tried the Philosopher’s Stone option. Could I have turned my blood into some sort of poison?
The prompt disappeared in a blink.
Anomalous factors in HUMAN BLOOD detected
Analysis being updated
HUMAN BLOOD transfigured by MATERIA PRIMA
This blood has been refined and is infused with the influence of a master level potion: Materia Prima.
Attributes will be decided once a guardian is chosen.
Choose Guardian…
What did the system mean by “Choose Guardian”?
Your guardian will be bound to your settlement and will define much of its character and attributes. Creature chosen as Guardian will be sacrificed on the altar.
Despite the immanence of my real life demise, the idea of a settlement built around Hamartia seemed like a very bad thing. He was powerful but was a creature of Lilith’s and was bent on my corruption and destruction.
The idea of bonding one of Lilith’s creations to a fundamental piece of the architecture that made up the Game that was keeping humanity alive seemed like a really short-sighted way to victory. Choosing Hamartia was out of the question.
If only some random monster would just wander over from beyond the barrier.
Had anything come across? I tried to unpin my leg from Hamartia’s mouth to look around, causing myself a wave of fresh pain and a loss of 1hp.
There was one creature. He wasn’t truly part of the Game though. And he was my friend.
Remus came over. Somehow Hamartia wasn’t able to see him.
“Hey, got any bright ideas?” I hissed.
He lolled his tongue and looked at me.
“No?”
He growled at me and nipped me for an hp that I couldn’t afford to lose. I only had two more left now. Maybe that was a useful thing.
Remus growled at me again.
I was being purposely obtuse. I knew what he meant. He wanted me to make him the Guardian. The thing was, I was pretty sure that this would destroy him.
He saw the sadness and fear in my eyes and gave me a small lick on the nose. I may have lost track of him now and again due to being possessed and all, but he had been my sole companion for all my time in the Game. If I did this, I’d lose the one friendly creature I had in my life.
He saw me continue to hesitate and he butted his head under my hand and gave a short, sharp yip. My lack of hp finally stopped him from telling me what to do via biting. I chuckled and he growled.
There wasn’t a lot of time to decide. Whatever Lilith was going to do to me in real life was going to happen any minute. Weirdly, this made it harder to choose Remus as a guardian. It felt like I was sacrificing him to save myself.
He barked but I just couldn’t do it.
He snuffed and then surprised me by reaching out with a paw to my prompt. Somehow, he clicked the prompt. The Baetylus shifted back toward becoming stone once again. The rune-filled translucence dissipated, flowing out of the stone and into Remus. He grew until he was the size of a lion and even a bit larger. Then the runes flowed out of him, fading, and he too turned to stone.
My friend was now a statue guarding the stone. He looked fearsome and deadly. A guardian, cold as stone.
The world began again.
WHaT hAs hAPpenEd? WhAt dID yOU dO?
I tried to take advantage of Hamartia’s moment of confusion and use it to kill myself. No luck. Hamartia still managed to keep me from dying and escape to my respawn point.
That is when the giant statue of Remus moved with the sound of stone tumbling down a cliffside and leapt on Hamartia.
The two massive creatures battled, jaws snapping and claws tearing at each other. But it wasn’t close. Remus had the element of surprise and soon enough he had Hamartia’s neck in his jaws. Remus dragged the giant lizard out into the fallow and the dragon writhed in new pain. Its claws scrabbled and scratched.
Remus set himself. Hamartia seemed to sense that his end was nigh.
iT dOeSn’T mAtTer. mY brOTheR wiLL bE sEEinG yOu sOon.
Remus gave his head a sharp shake and Hamartia’s neck snapped. Then he walked back to the stone, dragging the dragon’s corpse. And with each step toward the stone, the barrier moved back.
Step by step, the barrier expanded and new land was claimed for the Crib. And the land wasn’t under the fallow. Greens and reds and browns and life were revealed. By the time Remus was back at the stone, a circle of normal game terrain spread from one side of the valley to the other in a circle out into the wild and back into Brady’s territory.
There were a ton of game notices being generated. I didn’t have the time or interest to read them right now. All I could look at was my companion. He dropped his foe or, as he would have called it, his prey to the ground at the foot of the stone. He turned toward me, putting one paw on Hamartia’s neck just to show everyone who had killed whom.
Hamartia’s corpse turned to stone. Then Remus’s marble paw touching him returned to immobility. Bit by bit, my companion turned back into a statue. I raised my hand in farewell.
He looked massive, fearsome and deadly like before. Only this time his statue’s expression had a subtle difference. That wolfish humor I thought of as quintessentially Remus was visible in the cold stone. My friend was in there, somewhere.
I lowered my hand and logged out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Turning away from Remus, I logged out.
It didn’t work. My real body was at the mercy of Lilith. Every second I was stuck in the Game gave her more time to… what? Reinfect me? Kill me? I repeatedly pressed the prompt to no effect.
The Game still wouldn’t let me log out. The logout prompt was grayed out. I don’t know why I still tried clicking on it since it obviously was doing nothing, but such is human nature.
Had Lilith somehow trapped me in here? No, if she could do that, Hamartia wouldn’t have needed to delay me.
There had to be something Game-related that was keeping me logged in. There were a ton of notices I had ignored what with the lizard using me as a chew toy and all the insanity since I had a vision of my father.
I whipped through all the notices I had been ignoring for what seemed like forever. A few leaped out at me.
New Settlement
Congratulations on pushing back the bounds of human controlled territory. You have increased the area safe for human habitation.
Settlement Owner: Miles Boone
There were pages and pages of my rights and obligations as an owner. Turns out I was automatically part of a series of treaties that the clans had established amongst themselves. Sometime when I wasn’t about to be killed, I’d have to read the fine print.
The next one I stopped to quickly read should have signified an important moment for me.
Congratulations! You have completed the Beginner’s Gathering Qu est. You have donated 123,451/115,000 donation units. Go forth into the wilds and reclaim the earth for humanity! It will take gatherers like you to ensure that we can pacify the wild lands. Without the materiel and resources you will bring, our brave adventurers will not be able to overcome the nano. Humanity thanks you.
How was this even possible? Oh. It turned out I was credited the value of everything in the land I claimed for humanity. Yay? Too bad I was going to join the long list of shut-ins who died playing a video game. If someone had told me beforehand that the moment I finished another Beginner’s Quest, I’d be feeling terrified and impatient to get rid of the notice, I’d have thought they were crazy.
You have accomplished 2/5 of the Fundamental Beginner’s Quests. Wager with clan heir status updated. All parties to the wager shall be informed of your progress.
Maya was going to have serious mood swings. Despair when she got the notification that I was one step closer to winning our bet, and then a re
al pick-me-up when she learned Lilith had killed me. Hooray, I had won a moral victory. But moral victories were crap. I preferred the kind of victory where you lived to enjoy the tears of your enemies. Why woudn’t the Game let me log out?
Finally, I came to the prompt I needed to find.
Territory Initialization
New territory has been claimed.
Name your land to finish initialization.
All lands are built on ideals and values. Begin as you mean to go on.
Influences:
Baetylus
Human Blood transfigured by Materia Prima
Chosen Guardian: Remus (HPM)
A name? I drew a blank. I couldn’t log out until I came up with a name? I didn’t have time for this. I almost called my territory Fred just to get things running before I died.
His statue was right beside me. I was pressed for time. There have been worse names but it still felt awkward and kind of a hack move.
Name: Reme
Accept (y/n)
A click and then I was logging out.
*** ***
The taste of a crisp sweet apple
The sound of a snake’s hiss
The feel of thorns piercing my skin
Wait. Apples did taste crisp and sweet. Snakes were famous for hissing. Where was my kinesthesia? Why hadn’t I been tasting sounds and seeing smells and all the rest? My senses lined up like they were supposed to. What was going on?
There wasn’t time to try to figure it out. I opened my pod.
Aabid dropped on top of me and I screamed. I was a dead man.
My hands furiously started clawing and pushing at him. Was that blood? Any minute I expected him to bring his hysterical strength to bear and crush my throat or gouge out my eyes.
Instead he slid off me and onto the floor. I awkwardly clambered out of the pod on the opposite side of where he was slumped. My heart was going a mile a minute as I looked around, wondering where the next attack might come from.
Nothing. The room was silent. What the hell was going on?
Gathering my courage, I peeked around the edge of the pod at Aabid. I wished I hadn’t. He had a hole in the back of his head. The base of his skull and all along his spine looked like something had eaten its way free. Probably because it had.
My gaze sped around looking for some flash of copper. On the floor next to him was the fire axe I had tried to break out of this place with. It was pretty clear that I had just missed being split open. His implant had escaped. I thought of James Eggbert, the case that had drawn Pulling and then me to the Pitts. Seeing such a thing live was more disturbing than the photos.
Was his implant still in here with me? Was it waiting to crawl inside of me? I felt at my own neck and ears. I was clear of Hamartia. Somehow, I just knew.
Grabbing up the axe, I began whirling around trying to keep anything from sneaking up and infecting me. My ears picked up the faint whush of air being disturbed. I spun around just in time to see the door to my bunker opening.
“Woah! Hi Miles. I hope you were expecting someone else,” said Pulling with a lot less fear than I would have had if someone came at me all wild eyed and brandishing an axe.
Thank goodness. I was rescued.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“It’s all getting swept under the rug,” griped Pulling.
She and I sat in front of my father at his desk in his virtual office. Leaving the Pitts had been simple: we just walked out. There hadn’t been any sort of daring rescue or battle with the forces of the Pitts. Ruod even bade us a friendly, if frightening, farewell with, “You’ll be back! And we won’t judge when you do!” Somehow he managed to say “Wonderful!” a few times too. This might have had something to do with the dozens of GMs who escorted us out, but honestly Ruod didn’t look intimidated or scared at all.
Despite Pulling’s best efforts, Aabid ended up as the official scapegoat. The GMs issued a few empty warnings about Hamartia and the Pitts but too many players were Lilith’s customers for the GMs to want to come down on her in earnest. I had voluntarily accepted Lilith’s implant and I was fine. The pod I had used in the bunker was clean--at least by the time the GMs had swept it. She was in the clear.
According to the offical story, Aabid had locked me in the Pitts. The Pitts were extremely sorry and gave me a partial refund in nano. The fine meant that Lilith might have one less apple on one of her trees in her garden.
There had been some noise about consequences for the Eastmans since Aabid was one of their players, but he had been cut loose months ago. In the end, the powers that be claimed that Aabid was just a lone wacko. His death was filed away just like James Eggbert’s. An unpredictable and atypical reaction to an implant. I felt bad about Eggbert not getting at least some justice.
“What did you expect?” grunted my father. “All governments--even ones that aren’t corrupt--only react to problems after a crisis happens. They don’t prevent them. A couple of nobodies dying isn’t a crisis.”
Pulling looked interested in hearing more pearls of wisdom from the great man. I had had an entire childhood of them.
In the end I hadn’t had to miss seeing Maya’s face after she found out that I had beaten another of the Beginner’s Quests. She and her mother had sent me a video congratulating me and welcoming me to the club of those who owned a territory. Their smiles were entirely too genuine. I really needed to read the fine print on all of that.
There may not have been tears of defeat from Maya for me to taste, but I hadn’t become a mindless tool of Lilith or been chopped to pieces by Aabid. Maya and her mother having another plot against me was still better than death or mental slavery. And I did beat another quest.
Pulling’s career had fallen even farther into the crapper. It turns out she had hit the proverbial big red button when she had come to rescue me from the Pitts. She had reported that she had a suspicion of feral nano inside the wire. That was the one alarm that was responded to no matter what. No trace of either Aabid’s implant or Hamartia could be found and someone had to be held responsible for what they called a false alarm. It wasn’t going to be Lilith or Tasha Eastman.
“Patty, I am sorry my reputation and clout are not what they once were with the GMs,” my father began. Her lips tightened at his use of Patty. They both looked at me oddly as I coughed to hide a chuckle. You have to find what humor you can where you can.
“But you incurred your trouble on my family’s behalf. A few people still owe me some favors and have enough character to make good on the debts. There are also a few bodies I helped bury that I can threaten to exhume on your behalf. If you find the penance they lay upon you too impossible, come to me. What I can do for you I will.”
She blushed and muttered some thanks.
“And you Miles? What are your plans?”
Yes, I was still screwed. I had no home and nowhere safe to play the Game. I said as much.
“I have no idea.”
He grunted and shifted his bulk.
“You could always stay here.”
“Thanks Dad but I need somewhere I can play the Game.”
Leaning back, he clasped his hands on the great hill of his stomach and looked as self-satisfied as I’ve ever seen him. This is saying something as his capacity for self-satisfaction was in keeping with the rest of his girth.
“I am quite aware of your requirements Miles. As I say, you could stay here.”
Patty--I mean Patricia--and I exchanged looks of surprise and burgeoning hope.
“How? I thought…”
“You are bound to a territory founded on your blood and my baetylus, and guarded by the Hardcore Play Mode avatar. If I can’t use that to secure a game pod I wouldn’t be, well… me. I said that removing Lilith’s implant inside the game would be harder but would represent an opportunity. You exceeded my expectations, which were by no means low, Miles.”
One more quest was finished. Winning my bet was still possible. Look at me! I managed to secure
a safe place to play my Game while outplaying the Eastmans and escaping the clutches of the Queen of the Pitts. My father might not be the only genius in the family. I nodded at my father in thanks.
He smiled, well pleased, and I smiled back.
“Now I see the family resemblance,” said Pulling.
The End
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thanks for reading Gathering Strength. I hope you enjoyed it. I am hard at work on the next volume - tentatively titled Social Intelligence. Look for the continuing adventures of Miles Boone in 2019.
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