The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  I felt a tear roll down my cheek for my first and best friend in the lands of Freedom Online, and before I could stop myself I’d rushed to kneel over his fallen lifeless body.

  “You bitch,” I managed to sniff out as a tear fell from my cheek and splashed onto my fallen friend.

  You have gained the skill Friend to All

  Through determination, perseverance and sheer willpower, you have gained the skill Friend to All. With this skill, you have demonstrated that you do not see race as a reason to judge others. You have completed an action that is selfless to a member of another race.

  Effects:Your reputation will never start at hatred with any unknown sentient beings.

  You will find it easier to gain a positive reputation with other sentient beings.

  Actions that would usually incite a negative reputation change in sentient beings will cause less of a negative change.

  As you have gained this skill in the presence of a sentient being, they have been affected by your actions.

  ‘Wait what’s this now?’ I could overlook the new skill, it seemed that it’s just kind of like a Dr.Doolittle thing that affects reputation. Don’t get me wrong it sounded like a great supplement to my arsenal of passive skills, but it certainly wouldn’t help me kill a bunch of enemies all at once. No what I was interested in was the note at the bottom – it seemed to be implying that either Grish or the Spider Queen (or possibly both) would be affected in some way by me gaining this skill now and in their presence.

  Before I could gain any answers to my internal questions, I was presented with an additional message.

  You have gained the skill Healing Aura

  Through determination, perseverance and sheer willpower, you have gained the skill Healing Aura. With this skill, you are able to heal any creature for:

  Level 1: +10HP Cost: 5MP

  As the level of this skill increases, the healing amount will also increase. Additional effects may also be unlocked.

  I couldn’t decide what to think of this new skill first. So I thought everything at once: ‘That’ll come in handy. Shit I don’t want to be a healer. Shit that’s all of my MP in one go. 10HP doesn’t seem like a lot. How do I get MP back?’

  All of these questions could be answered later, but as it was right now I’d been completely distracted by the fact that Ushuk’s name had recoloured itself and his health bar had filled part way again. He was alive.

  “Ushuk!” I cried out in relief and amazement, I couldn’t be happier that my little companion was back with me.

  “What…what happened?” He asked as he sat up and shook his head as though he’d been asleep. As he turned his head upwards, his eyes opened wide as he both realised and reminded me that above him was the huge, menacing spider queen. I did find it kind of strange that she hadn’t made any moves to attack either Ushuk or myself in all the commotion – the events that had preceded had seemed to freeze time for everything around us.

  Ushuk scrabbled away from the queen on all fours although I didn’t feel as though it would make much difference at this point.

  I looked at the spider queen ready to ask a plethora of questions but when I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out.

  “You are an interesting one,” the spider queen hissed. “You are not kin to these two creatures yet they are not your prisoners and you seem to care for them, even going so far as to shed a tear for their departure from this world.” For a spider, I was very surprised at just how articulate she was. “I wonder if you would extend the same courtesy to all beings?” She asked.

  Sensing the question was not rhetorical, I stammered my response, “I…I…well yes of course!” I announced.

  “Will you swear to it?” The spider rasped.

  “I will, yes I will swear to it, all things are created equal!” I promised quickly stating what I presumed she wanted to hear.

  “No, no you fool. This is not what I am asking of you. I am asking if you would become the protectorate of my little nest here and my…small…family. In exchange you will be free to leave this place…with your lives.” It seemed as though the spider queen was making me an offer, which was confirmed by a new message appearing in my vision.

  You have been offered the role of Protectorate of the Spider Nest Of the Dark Forest

  As protectorate, your role is to do all you can to ensure that the location thrives in its goals whatever they may be. There can be many rewards gained from becoming a protectorate of a settlement, depending upon their available resources

  Would you like to accept this charge? Yes/No

  It seemed a little vague, and I was surprised to learn that the actual name for the Forest was the ‘Dark Forest’, but it seemed like my choices were to either accept the position or risk having my friends and I dispatched from this world – which wouldn’t have been much of a problem for me, but I was still unsure what would happen to my goblin friends upon their deaths, and I didn’t think crying on them would work for a second time. Besides I was already all out of MP.

  I selected yes for the ten millionth time and noticed that the spider queen seemed to kneel down to reduce her stature and overall threatening posture.

  “You have made a good choice…and will reap the rewards in time.” She said in response to my acceptance.

  “What…exactly do I have to do?” I asked, slightly uncomfortable that I was now engaging in proper conversation with this terrifying creature.

  “You are the protectorate of my nest. As our fortunes grow, so will your own. However if my family and I are destroyed entirely, these tributes will inevitably stop.” She rasped.

  “So I have to protect your family?” I asked.

  “Let me put this in simple terms so that you may grasp this concept. You are the protectorate of my nest. You can come here and fight amongst my family if you wish, in fact it would do me a favour to eradicate the weakest amongst us. You may also challenge me as queen of this nest to combat should you desire a quick and painful death.” That part made me shiver. “The nest will always be here regardless of the number of my family present so long as the heart of the nest exists,” She seemed to gesture to the cave behind her. “Even I will be revived myself after some time if you do the impossible and manage to kill me.”

  I understood now, this was a dungeon and the spider queen was offering me raids! How I’d missed them!

  She continued her explanation. “There remains a maximum population of the nest depending on its level, which also governs the levels of my family members within. We protect the nest’s heart, so it is within your interest to allow us to gain as many levels as possible.”

  This was new, it sounded as though I had some influence in the level of the nest. “How do I increase the level of the nest?” I asked, falling entirely into my ‘gamer mode’ and out of the ‘oh shit I’m talking to a huge spider’ mode.

  “The same way everything works of course,” the queen answered, “through experience, hard work and dedication.” That seemed to be a bit of a generic answer, but I had an incling that I’d be able to see some new information if I queried the menu systems I was able to peruse, and I wasn’t disappointed, as usual.

  Spider Nest of the Dark Forest

  Level 1

  Central Building: Dungeon Heart

  Current Master: Spider Queen (Level 10)

  Protectorate: Tandy (Crocodile’s Teeth)

  Protectorate Gains:

  1% of Xp gained by visitors to dungeon

  1% of loot base value lost by visitors in dungeon

  ‘A-ha’ my greedy inner child piped up, ‘this seems like a good way to get some free stuff!’ But I still needed some way of levelling up the damn thing. The queen had said it would level up in the normal way but that really didn’t help me right now.

  “How…um…exactly does the nest level up?” I pressed my questioning a little more but noticed that the queen was getting visibly annoyed.

  She huffed before she spoke and stanped a pointed
needle-foot, which was a very odd gesture for a spider. “The nest must kill the visitors to increase in level, their deaths fuel the heart. I got it this time, I needed to think of the nest, or ‘dungeon’ as a player, and as such it needed to feed on the lives of its enemies to grow. It wasn’t something that I thought I’d be able to affect directly…other than let the little creatures devour me over and over, but again I didn’t think that that sounded like a very favourable idea.

  As much as I loved to sit and chat with a huge terrifying spider, I felt as though my welcome had been overstayed and moved to make my exit. To my delight, the way that’d been cut through in the first place hadn’t been repaired, and we were all able to walk almost unimpeded back into the Forest proper.

  The very moment I stepped outside of the perimeter of the spider webs, I was immediately presented with a new system message.

  ATTENTION ALL PLAYERS

  There is a new threat in the lands of Freedom Online. A new dungeon has been formed and is available for raids within the Dark Forest. Enter at your peril, although the rewards could be great…

  ‘Well that solves the getting lambs to the slaughter problem’ I thought, so long as the first group didn’t just go in, wipe all of the spiders out and destroy the dungeon heart…which come to think of it was pretty likely. There was nothing I could do about that right now though. Judging by the lack of surprise from my goblin friends who kept walking into the dusk before me, it seemed as though this message was for players only – and I wondered if there was a radius of effect on the message or if it simply went to everyone. Thank god the nest was hours away from Coyote Creek otherwise I might’ve been inundated with a constant flow of aggressive players looking to make a quick buck.

  I took a quick look at the Coyote Creek settlement information and was both surprised and pleased to see my newfound dungeon listed amongst the buildings that were available to the settlement. It showed as level one, which meant that it had plenty of potential for growth. When analysed further however, something a little more peculiar occurred. There was an experience slider that I was able to amend that went from negative one percent, all the way up to one hundred percent. It seemed that not only could I farm a percentage point of all of the experience gained by the nest, but I could choose to give it a portion of my own – all the way up to one hundred percent in fact. Thinking back to the information panel on the nest, I postulated that the one percent gain would eventually be able to be increased as its level was increased. Right now it wouldn’t be the clever thing to do to give the dungeon any of my experience, as I sorely needed it for myself, but in the future this could be a very quick and relatively safe way for me to increase the level of the nest and the spiders within. So long as I’d never lost control of them I was sure I’d be safe.

  The journey back to Coyote Creek was delightfully peaceful. Ushuk and Grish barely said two words as we walked, either simply too exhausted from the day’s activities or too embarrassed about having fallen prey to the spider queen. It wasn’t a problem for me though, I was happy to take a moment to absorb the beauty of the Dark Forest – if that was the name given to the entire region of course.

  I was the first to eventually break the silence. “Ushuk, are you OK?” I asked after I’d watched the little goblin walking ahead of me for a few moments.

  “Yes.” He replied curtly bt didn’t offer anything further voluntarily.

  “Are you sure?” I continued.

  “Yes.” He replied again. “Not happy that I lost,” he added thoughtfully, sensing that my questioning wasn’t about to end there.

  “Right,” I said slowly. “What…actually happened there? How come you came back to life?” I asked, not sure if he would even know the answer.

  “Don’t know. Was dead then next minute alive again. Very scary for me.” He was starting to open up again and that made me happy.

  “I help,” Grish steamrollered our conversation. “I seen before, new heal ability used first time can sometimes make…um…back to life.” The sentence had been a rather long one for the physically biased goblin, but I understood him, he was saying that one of my new abilities, either Friend to All or Healing Aura had managed to revive our little friend. If that was also the case, the message about gaining the Friend to All skill in the presence of another put the fact that I was allowed to win over the spider queen and subsequently her nest into perspective. Could I really be this lucky?

  Our excursion had opened my eyes to some of the finer details of Freedom Online, not to mention earning my warband a few levels for our troubles. Grish hadn’t grown, but I knew that my grandmother had always said to ‘look after the pennies and the pounds would take care of themselves’ – i.e. Grish would have progressed towards his next level, even if he hadn’t quite made it there yet.

  When the campsite presented itself back into our view, I was pleased to see that we did look a little more defensible now. The wooden palisade had been started and there were a couple of goblins carrying logs to where it would be continued, which I hoped would be all around the perimeter of the camp. I couldn’t help but wince at the fact that they were probably wasting four times that amount of logs as they should have been using, simply because we didn’t have a woodworker converting the logs into planks. This would have to move up my internal priority list if I wanted to start being a little more economical with my resources.

  The barracks was progressing along nicely, however in hindsight I did think that it may have been a mistake to lean towards a more militaristic building before I’d gotten my economical setting properly defined. There was just so much to do and so little time, ‘wait’ I interrupted myself. ‘I have all the time in the world don’t I?’ I had to stop thinking like this was the real world. Deadlines simply weren’t a thing at the moment. Other than Theodore’s bunch of merry pricks I hadn’t got the impression that we were in any grave danger, and they’d have to find us before they could break us. No, we were in a relatively safe position for the moment and that was definitely something to be celebrated.

  A splashing from the lake made me turn to look at what exactly was going on while my campsite worked its fingers to the bone on my every whim, but rather than the playful swimming that I’d expected when I heard the noise, I saw one of the workers diving in and out of the water in the same way that Ushuk had done when he was trying to catch a fish. I watched for probably a little longer than I should have, his green body disappearing into the water for seconds at a time before emerging with an almighty splash, nothing in his hands. As much as I would have loved to stand there and watch him achieve nothing all day long, I decided that eventually enough was enough.

  “Hey!” I called as I approached the water's edge.

  “Hey, You!” I repeated as the goblin either ignored me or simply didn’t hear my call.

  This time he stopped what he was doing and turned to look at me. I beckoned him over to me with a wave of my hand. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get wet, but I kind of didn’t want to get wet.

  When he arrived a few feet in front of me I saw that it was one of the twins, Bishook. Not that I recognised him, but the analyse skill that Freedom imparted onto me was fantastically useful for not having to remember names.

  “What?” Bishook asked when I didn’t say anything right away. “Busy.” He finished.

  “What are you doing?” I asked casually, a little taken aback by his short tone but ultimately unfazed by it.

  “Fishing.” He said simply. This was an excellent conversation, I thought to myself.

  “Why aren’t you at the beetles with the other feeders?” I asked

  “Like fishing.” He seemed put out by the fact that he’d had to answer me with more than a single word, but my inner child smiled.

  “Why do you like fishing?” I pressed.

  “Peaceful.”

  “It doesn’t look very peaceful,” I smiled.

  Bishook seemed to deflate slightly as he realised that I wouldn’t let him get b
ack to his work until I’d been completely satisfied with our conversation.

  “It…hard without tools.” He said slowly. “and boat,” he added thoughtfully.

  ‘Ah here we go again,’ I thought. ‘Everyone wants something.’

  “OK what do you need and what effect would it have on your work?” I asked the question that seemed to always be on the tip of my tongue when talking to my little green friends.

  “Need tools and boat you not listen?” he snapped. “Make ten times fish then.” He announced slightly more animatedly than he’d been previously. It sounded to me as though he was getting a ninety percent penalty to his collected food simply because he was having to fish with his bare hands.

  “I presume that I’d need to recruit a crafter to get you these things?” I asked.

  “I not care. You get, I use,” he was apparently fed up with our conversation again, but I wasn’t just yet.

  “I will get you your tools, but then you have to promise to be a little nicer, OK?” I asked.

  Bishook responded by pressing one of his nostrils with an outstretched finger and snotting out a green lump right before me. Then he turned and waded back into the water to his previous fishing area.