The Apprentice of Arabella

by Matthew Kent

  I took up my sword. I looked for mobs or some clear sign of where I was and the direction to get to civilization. The first thing I noticed was a fox, from its coloration and ears I’d say it was a swift fox., I readied my short sword in my right hand and then pointed at it with my left and cast Magic Missile.

  Magic Missile hits for 15 damage.

  The fox tried to avoid the ball of energy but yipped in surprise, then charged at me. As it drew near, I whipped my sword across in a slash and pivoted my body out of the way of the animals advance.

  Short sword hits for 23 damage.

  In then slammed my sword home into the foxes body in a vicious jab with the point.

  Critical hit! Short sword hits for 42 Damage, Level one Brown fox has been slain. You receive 10xp.

  I bent down, collected the loot, and received a tooth. I pulled out a dagger and skinned the critter. Skinning an animal in-game went much smoother than skinning an animal in the real world. No blood, no fuss, no muss. No nicks or cuts on my hands, it was glorious.

  Skill learned: animal skinning. Neophyte 49 skill points until next level.

  Well that was easy, I thought to myself, and then went to looking for my next mob. This time it was a rabbit. Now, most people like rabbits, but I had a friend who owned a mean rabbit he had named Buggs. Buggs would bite the crap out of me anytime it would get a chance. Taking careful aim at Buggs Jr, I blasted him with Magic Missile. I got off two missiles, then a slash with my sword and skinned the little beastie. I worked myself around the area in a spiral search pattern looking for or foot prints that might lead me to a village. As I searched, I also farmed the various animals I found. I realized that I had to sit and rest often to recover my Energy and Mama. I stopped and smacked myself in the head. I had applied no buffs to myself.

  I played Song of Courage and felt healthier and just a little stronger. This was an amazing buff, but an icon appeared that showed it would only last fifteen minutes. Once more, I got to work farming the area. After nine more kills, my body flared white, and I heard a soft ding. I had collected a few hides from fixes and rabbits and found a set of tracks heading away from the campsite I had been in.

  I followed the tracks and kept farming. I noted that my xp gains had dropped from ten xp per kill to eight xp. My racial ability was kicking in and while small right now as I leveled It would be better if I tried to farm mobs at least one level higher than I was. As I moved, the mobs rose in level. Within fifteen minutes, I dinged level two and collected more teeth, claws, rabbit paws, and hides. My skinning skill was at four after twenty-four mobs. I needed to figure out how to cure them for the game. I know I would not be using pee for it, but brains was a possibility. I would just need water. It was an incredible amount of work, but… brained tanned leather stayed softer and more pliable, and stayed flexible after getting wet.

  I tried to collect brains from my kills, but had limited success. In about another half hour, I dinged third level and found a small clearing with a stream. I set down to work. First, I prepared the brain solution and then stretched the hides. I liked the game world way of doing things; it wasn’t gross and there wasn’t a smell of rotting flesh or chemicals.

  Congratulations, you have a crafting achievement. +1% to skill growth. Brain tanning solution, you are the first crafter to discover this pattern.

  Alchemist: Apprentice. Points to next level 99.

  Congratulations, you have a Crafting achievement. +1% to skill growth. Brain tanned leather pattern you are the first crafter to discover this pattern.

  Skinning: Neophyte. points to next level 24.

  I took the leather I had made and examined it. I wasn’t sure what a blue resource was, but I had an idea I’d made something special. I smiled and kept working. Not Bad I thought as I continued to process and clean the hides. At the end I had made twenty pieces of brain tanned leather and damaged five other hides. It left me with sixteen still to do but I was out of materials. All in all it had been a good morning. I cleaned up my mess and then headed down stream to what i hoped would be civilization.

  X X X

  "What do you mean you can’t find him?” screamed a voice through the com’s speaker. “You had one job, and that was to put that bastard in prison!” The listener blinked at the words, and shifted her eyes over to her Partner whom she hoped would take the heat.

  “Yes, we were, but his records were clean and everything was above board and legal.”

  “I don’t care about what's legal or illegal, he can’t be allowed to escape justice. He has to be taken down, humiliated, and destroyed. Otherwise, people may think they don’t need the government!”

  “I understand. I will find him and arrest him.” Agent Prentice sighed. “Whatever it costs.”

  They could hear the pregnant pause in the voice on the other end. “His records. Get rid of them. If the burden of proof is on him, then our pet judge will be inclined to throw the book at him as an ecological looter.” Dabrowski looked over at Prentice. She saw him looking back at her and he nodded.

  “Yes, we will comply,” he said respectfully, before the call disconnected. “I have got to know what that guy did to crap in her cornflakes.”

  “Yeah, she seemed a little unhinged over him. Ex-boyfriend maybe?” Dabrowski mused.

  “I don’t know, but all the files I saw were paper. You know accidents happen.”

  Dabrowski nodded. “It's not EPARDS fault if he had work performed by a non-union electrician, now is it?” She added with a smirk.

  “That might work,” Prentice said. “That just might work. Besides, we need to take all the storeroom into impound and evidence.”

  “It would be a real shame if those records burned, then he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in court to say it was preban or not.”

  “Last I checked, it was two years per count, and there must be a thousands of counts in the porcupine quills alone.” Prentice added, a nasty look on his face. “And, even if we don’t find him, he can be tried in absentia. That might even work out better for what she wants.”

  X - X- X

  Fortunately, I knew to follow downstream. It will usually lead to a village or town. That's a survival tip for you. What people don’t tell you, is that the stream is a draw for animals - the cute and cuddly, and their fierce predators. While I wasn’t a tracker, I could figure out most of the tracks I had seen around the stream. I knew the rabbit tracks, the fox tracks., I’d killed a few wolves already so I could spot theirs. Then I saw a large track that was two-thirds the size of my foot. The pad for the foot was broad, four toes and one big toe.

  I swallowed hard. I was lucky the forest I was in was old growth;I could see a few clearings with felled trees, most likely from storms, that meant the trees were further apart and were hard woods. This gave me good sight lines, and I could see that the tracks led to the northwest, away from me. How could I tell it was north west? The compass on the map function. But that meant the bear was going in the general direction I was going in.

  I continued to walk. I spotted two wolves. They were a little way from me, so I activated Levitate and rose into the branches of a pine tree, one of the few in the wood. Then, I used the ability to haul myself through the trees over to them. This was a useful spell. Though it was draining to my Mana. When I was in range, I sat in another pine tree to regain my Mana, then I aimed at the first one and let loose with a Magic Missile.

  Critical hit Magic Missile hits for 50 damage.

  I let loose another;

  Magic missile hits for 24 damage.

  I saw the wolfs hp bar drop by half; I fired again.

  Magic Missile does 13 damage.

  The wolf was scrabbling at the base of the tree. I kept shooting him until he dropped.

  Congratulations. level five Grey Wolf has been slain. you receive 53 xp.

  My Mana was three quarters gone, but I had a dead wolf. I rested then descended and collected my prizes: wolf meat; a pelt; one brain; slightly fried and a few teeth.
I stored it all in my pack, then climbed up the tree and repeated the process all over again.

  I had been up the tree killing wolves for about ten minutes when I heard a crunching in the woods. I had gained nearly a full level, and I was feeling full of myself. So when I saw that bear, I smiled knowing I could take him with my tactic. I took careful aim thinking just where I wanted my missile to hit him. Then I let lose.

  Magic Missile hits for 14 damage.

  That did it. I aggroed the bear, and it came running. There I was up in my tree, and was congratulating myself that there was nothing he could do as I shot Magic Missiles at him from safety. I yelled out “Death from above!” But the bear wasn’t so impressed. Now just a joke for you, how do you know how to tell the difference between a brown bear and a grizzly bear? Well in Arabella what you do is climb a tree and shoot it with a magic missile. If it climbs the tree and eats you it's a brown bear. If it pushes the tree over and eats you it's a grizzly bear. This one started to climb. And I thought to myself, that's not good.

  I pulled my short sword and shot it one more time.

  Magic Missile hits for 23 damage.

  I’m pretty sure the system was mocking me, but next I tried cutting pieces of limbs and throwing them at the bear as it climbed. I kept working my way to the top of the tree throwing things at the enraged bear. Do you know there are levels of anger above enraged? I was sure I would experience them. The tree we were in was a pine that was about sixty or seventy feet tall, so as we climbed the tree bent over. It was to the point it had bent about forty to forty five degrees with me hanging on for dear life, trying to climb away from an enraged bear. I did the only thing I could, and used Levitate. When I did the tree sprung back, whipping me with the limbs.

  You take 2 damage.

  You take 3 damage.

  Critical hit you take 10 damage

  You take 7 damage.

  You take 5 damage.

  Critical hit, you take 10 damage.

  While it hurt, I got off luckier than the bear. The jolt of the spring was enough to dislodge him and fling him off the tree in a slight parabolic arc. He was about three hundred pounds, I’d guess, but as he shot out from the tree and fell, he bawled out fear the entire time. I dropped as fast as I could with Levitation to avoid the tree coming back. I heard a loud thump in the woods.

  Critical hit, you do 250 hp damage. you have defeated a level 8 bear. Your luck has increased by 1.

  You have gained a level in Magic Missile.

  I rushed moved to find the bears remains., It had landed among some boulders. It’s body lay crushed and bleeding. I shook my head, but still I took my trophies from it a large hide, the scrambled brains, some teeth, and bone shards. I realized I couldn’t keep counting on my luck to save me; I knew that would never happen again. Sighing, I decided I should climb a tree and log out for a bit.I needed to eat and figure out how to get some new clothes. As I climbed, I noticed that the boulders weren’t the only stones in the area. In fact they looked like the start of a village. It was time to log out and to strategize.

  After I crawled into the shower and cleaned myself up, I headed for some lunch. Once more, I sat and read through the gaming guides. They had a wiki page, and I was reading about crafting, when I heard a thump at my table and looked up. “Look if it isn’t a noob.” It was a tall, lean man, with brown hair, dark skin, and, from his tone an attitude.

  “Can I help you?” I said blandly.

  “Yeah, this is our table.”

  I looked around and noticed there were more empty tables than full. “Whatever.” I sighed as I got up and moved my tray.

  “And that's how you get rid of noobs,” the loud mouth said.

  I looked at min and smiled before I replied with a quote from the Odyssey. ”To be angry is easy, but to be angry at the right man at the right time for the right reason is difficult.”

  “What was that?” he said as one of his friends smirked and waved him down. I wasn’t sure if it was for em or the bully boy.

  Moving a few tables away, I sat with my back once more to the wall and continued my researches into crafting. I'd book marked a few pages, including a page on brain tanned leather, to which I apparently had a month long patent, I figured I could make a lot of money on it in that first month. At about the time I had finished, and looked up amazon for clothing I saw Eira grace the door with Malik and two or three other players.

  I heard Malik point me out to Eira and the others in the group. They got their food and headed my way. Fortunately, I had finished with lunch when they sat down. I acknowledged them as I finished my order for two pairs of pants, socks, under-wear and three shirts. Three hundred credits I hated to spend, but I thought these would be the last clothes I bought for a long while.

  “How goes your search for a world quest ,Malik?” I asked, preempting his own unasked question.

  “Not so well. Right now we were cleaning out a bear’s den” I quirked an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I had a run in with a bear earlier…”

  They laughed. Eira chimed in with “Yeah, someday you eat the bear in Arabella, most days it eats you.” Her friends nodded and laughed at that. Eira continued, “oh this is James, everyone. James this is Virginia, Antoinette, and Lois.”

  I waved and smiled shyly. They were all fantastic looking women; Virginia was short, redheaded and well-built like a gymnast. Antoinette was blond, buxom, and girl-next-door pretty. Lois looked like a blond pixie.

  “Hi,” was all I could squeeze out.

  They sat around me, and I got the feeling I was back in the high school my grand mother told me she went to back in the day where there was the nerds table, the jock table, and the cool kids table. “So how went your farming and leveling today?” Eira said as she dug into a salad.

  I shook my head. “Not bad, but I’m not even sure where I am. I haven’t found a quest giver yet.” Virginia seemed to choke on that, but I continued to speak in the hopes it would distract them from there being a nerd at the table. “I managed to level skinning some and I managed to patent a new pattern, so I have that going for me when I get to a town.”

  “You what?” Came from Lois and a “bullshit” left Antoinette’s mouth.

  “I discovered brain tanned leather,” and handed them my tablet after I opened the wiki article. Malik snatched it away and read. “’Brain tanned leather, a new pattern discovered in the game by Lorcan; Thirty day patent? Holy….” I gave him a half-hearted smile when he looked at me. Then read quietly. “Oh my god, it's a blue resource.”

  “Oh, crap, I didn’t mean to say anything cause I’m so new and….” I was feeling nervous because of the girls and I didn’t want them to think I was trying to unduly impress them. I could feel a blush coming up my cheeks as they all, gave me funny looks.

  “No, that's incredible.” Eira said, and the other nodded.

  “Thanks,” was all I could say. Look, I’m not used to people noticing me or my accomplishments. Its kind of the lot of an artisan, as soon as the work had been done you faded into insignificance.

  “So, uh, anyway I need to figure out where I am. I logged out after climbing a tree. Just as I logged out, though, I noticed an abandoned village of tumbled down stone huts. So, I’m hoping that may lead me somewhere.” They all nodded.

  “It's strange that they would have started you out in an area like that.” Lois said.

  I agreed, but shrugged.”I guess the developers had their reasons.”

  “Like what?” Virginia asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe for me to learn the class better, since I’m reliant on the two spells and three songs I started with.” I sighed, “and a hell of a lot of luck.”

  They laughed.

  “No, seriously. My luck has been incredible…” I related to them my bear story. Some of the girls guffawed, while others looked from amused to horrified.

  “Oh that poor bear,” said Lois

  “Don’t mind her," Antoinette chimed in. “She plays a d
ruid, and she loves animals.”

  I nodded, but then excused myself when Eira put her hand on my arm. “James, we are all members of a guild. Would you be interested in joining?”

  “I know little about guilds and from my modern experience of art guilds. I’ve always wound up regretting being a member.”