The latest regimen was an attempt to alter the composition of her gut bacteria by transplanting populations with a different microbial profile, one that would produce a more balanced concoction of chemicals that affected the brain. Doctors had long ago quit calling the procedure a fecal transplant because multiple studies had found the wording was enough to turn aside at least twenty percent of the people who might have benefited. And in Mei’s case, since the procedure involved implanting much of the population through a tube shoved down her throat, through her stomach, and into her small intestine, it wasn’t even the proper description.
Regardless, most teenagers wouldn’t care whether there was a distinction. Mei was terrified that word of her treatment might get out into the neighborhood’s adolescent community.
She didn’t need any more bullying. They already fell on her like wolves when she broke down and cried in public, which happened at least once each week that she was healthy enough to attend the social functions.
Chen shook his head while thinking about the last time he’d gone with her to a friendly volleyball tournament. Mei wasn’t very athletic, and even though none of the games were supposed to matter, her teammates had made no secret of the disgust they felt every time she’d sent the ball off in the wrong direction or missed a bump or set entirely.
By the time she was in the corner, face tear-streaked, with girls whispering nearby, he’d been ready to use his old warrior ability from Avatharn Online. Power of Voice would have compelled the bullies to turn toward him and attack. Then he would have been justified in knocking every one of them out cold.
He sighed. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t handle playing another tank character and couldn’t even face Jeremy and the reminder of the responsibility he used to carry for the group. Why should he devote so much energy to keeping a group of online friends alive when he couldn’t protect his own sister? It was almost like, by pulling mob aggro and soaking up the damage so his friends could stay alive and work at their best, he was only highlighting his real-life failures.
Or maybe he was just tired. Tired of feeling responsible for others. Tired of the moments when he was utterly helpless, when Mei raged and cried and then sank into a vacant funk. Tired of watching fights go suddenly wrong and seeing his friends die under the claws of some horrific beast.
It was just too much.
But the gamer in him didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t stop thinking about maximizing his play time, figuring out the very best combination of skills for optimum effectiveness, working backward from the data he recorded to derive the game’s formulas for skill gain.
It was selfish, he thought, to want to escape into another reality when Mei was trapped in such a hell.
She rolled over beneath the covers and sighed, sounding younger than her years. Chen pulled up his latest set of spreadsheets, mentally instructing the implants to lay them over his field of vision. He was close to understanding the factors and constants that went into gaining points in trade skills.
But the odd Shadowed stat that had appeared on his character sheet when he’d respawned after dying to the demons on the beach completely baffled him. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IT HAD BEEN a long time since Devon had seen the sunrise. Not due to oversleeping, though she did that pretty often, but because she hadn’t bothered to look outside her window. Watching the dawn rays light the sandstone peaks near Snow Canyon State Park, she took a deep breath of the frosty winter air and actually smiled. Some things about the real world weren’t too bad.
Her footsteps on the concrete surface of the stairs sent a faint ringing sound through the stairwell’s metal frame as she jogged down to street level. Shivering, she pressed herself against the autocab hailing pad, then hugged her arms to her body and danced back and forth to keep warm. A few minutes later, the cab rolled to a quiet stop and the door hissed open. She gratefully ducked into the heated cab, waved her wrist over the authentication sensor, and gave the AI the address of the closest grocery store.
Her Shadowed stat was up to 65%. During today’s play, she’d raise it to 100%.
Throughout the night, as Devon had woken every couple hours to log in and use the Night’s Breath ability to debuff wandering grass snakes and burrowing voles, the reality of her upcoming transformation had finally sunk in. It wasn’t just changing the character model and abilities associated with her avatar. It was a very literal becoming of someone—something—else. Deep in her backbrain, she remembered her time as Ezraxis. Injuring creatures and letting them bleed while their suffering suffused her with power. The bone-deep desire for more of that power. The quivering ecstasy when she’d pleased Zaa.
Devon didn’t honestly know whether some of those memories were born in her imagination, reconstructed from what she knew about the demonic horde. But she worried they were real.
For the next few days, she wouldn’t be herself. Even if she managed to surface from the game, logging out to sleep and eat, she didn’t know how she’d behave. Certainly, she didn’t trust herself to answer the door and deal with the grocery delivery guy’s strange looks and sideways glances without…what? Without trying to bite him or something? She cringed. Under other circumstances—make-believe circumstances—the notion might be comical.
But this was entirely too real. The cold dread lodged in her gut grew heavier by the hour. By nightfall, the darkness that she sometimes still felt hiding in her skull would ascend and take hold. She tried to reassure herself with the knowledge that Emerson, backed by hardware engineers and neuroscientists at Entwined, believed her ability to conquer Ezraxis before meant she was uniquely qualified to handle this mission.
But that just wasn’t enough to convince her everything was going to be okay.
As she watched the city slide by the cab’s window, she shook her head. In the wee hours of the morning, she’d logged out with the conviction that she was going to simply refuse to do it. She hadn’t caused the problem, and moreover, her subconscious mind had already endured the demonic presence once. Entwined’s engineers, Penelope’s carelessness, and Bradley Williams’ management strategies were to blame for the dire situation, so why shouldn’t they be the ones to endure the transformation?
That had been 3 AM thinking. But now that the sun was up and she’d had just a little more sleep, she’d abandoned plans to message Emerson and explain her refusal. The truth was, she couldn’t sit back and let someone else try—and no doubt fail—to rescue Owen. His life depended on her right now. Possibly more important, the life and continued existence of every self-aware NPCs in the game world hung on her ability to pull Owen free.
The cab came to a smooth stop in front of the grocery store, and a cold wave of air doused her as the door slid open. Devon gathered her purse and climbed out onto the curb.
Time to prepare.
***
It was mid-morning when Devon logged in after returning from the grocery store with bags stuffed full of granola bars, microwave popcorn, and beef jerky. The last addition she thought was rather brilliant, seeing as Tamara and her biking friends were always going on about getting sustained energy and good recovery with protein. Beef jerky was protein, right? Either way, it tasted pretty good. Kind of like the dried antelope strips that Tom, Stonehaven’s head cook, had been making for the citizens whose work took them away from the settlement during the day.
Except, unlike Tom’s creation, the beef jerky didn’t grant her a +2 Endurance buff. For a fleeting moment, Devon wondered what the marketing people would do with that kind of benefit. Already, the jerky package had listed three or four personal failings that their product was supposed to fix. Puny muscles, deprived taste buds, something about electrolytes…
Anyway, as she stood from her cross-legged seat near the fringe of the player camp and stretched, she pulled out one of Tom’s jerky strips and tore off a bite. Actually, this was way better than the Barbeque Jerktastic of
fering.
She stopped chewing when she’d turned far enough to face the center of the camp. A laughing group— a really big laughing group—milled in the open space between pavilions. As far as she could tell, it seemed to be the entire local player population.
Quest Updated: Drowned Burrow
Okay, so this isn’t really an update. Just thought you’d like to know that the players now believe that their holy quest includes following you to cleanse the awakening stone in the Burrow. You can thank Torald, who decided to spread the word.
Devon groaned. She hadn’t forgotten about the quest to cleanse the Burrow’s awakening stone. It had just slipped way, way down on her list of her priorities. At the very least, her group had dissolved when everyone had logged out. She might be able to get away before they figured out she was online.
Quickly, she slipped back into the grass, and—lacking any tall structures to hide behind—dropped to a seat within the forest of stalks. Through a greenish-yellow screen of savanna hay, she kept an eye on the players while she pulled up her character sheet.
Character: Devon (click to set a different character name)
Level: 21
Base Class: Sorcerer
Specialization: Unassigned
Unique Class: Deceiver
Health: 364/364
Mana: 589/589
Fatigue: 2%
Shadowed: 62%
Just 38% Shadowed to go. Unfortunately, it would probably be as hard or harder to get those last points as it had been to get the 62% she’d already gained—especially with the stat slowly ticking down. Like many game stats, the lower points seemed a lot easier to gain than the higher. To get her stat up to 100% by evening, she would have to maximize the chances to use abilities that boosted her Shadowed score.
She glanced again at the milling horde. A dungeon crawl would be an excellent way to take care of that, actually. But Devon was not stoked about the idea of turning demonic in front of a bunch of strange players, especially when she didn’t know how she’d act while approaching the transformation.
And it went without saying, explaining the situation to a regular group was out of the question.
Footsteps alerted her to a pair of players wandering near the edge of camp, and she sank lower into the grass while scrolling down to examine her attributes.
Attributes:
Constitution: 25
Strength: 13
Agility: 20
Charisma: 44
Intelligence: 35
Focus: 16
Endurance: 25
Unspent Attribute Points: 4
Special Attributes:
Bravery: 7
Cunning: 8 (1 from doublet)
Dignity: -1
She stared at the unspent points for a moment, remembering Jeremy’s accusation that she’d focused on Charisma out of some sort of vanity. Devon sighed and shook her head. He was just trying to get under her skin. Typical Jeremy move. But he did have a bit of a point regarding balance. At the very least—even if trying to maximize her effectiveness as a sorcerer and deceiver—she needed to work on Endurance. Even with the buff from Tom’s Acacia Smoked Antelope she had just 25 points in the stat that had the biggest effect on mana and health regeneration. Increasing the size of her pools was important for casting a lot of spells quickly, but for prolonged battles, she really needed to be able to regain expended points.
She put 3 points into Endurance, and then, just to spite Jeremy, dropped the final available point into Charisma.
“I’ve said many times, as far as leaders go, we could have done better. But if you’re going to have strange habits like pretending to be a lion hiding in the grass, at least you show no shame. Better to have confidence in your eccentricities, I suppose.”
Devon turned a glare on Greel, who had somehow snuck up behind her despite her newly gained Perception. She was starting to think the code behind the skill wasn’t really worth anything.
He smirked at her as if reading her thoughts.
“I needed some time to evaluate my options without input from players,” she said, as if hiding in the grass were perfectly normal. “So if you wouldn’t mind…you’re drawing attention.”
“I will not lower myself to such literal levels. However”—Greel shaded his eyes as if surveying the camp—“we won’t trouble you for long. We heard about your new quest.”
“We?”
Greel stepped aside to reveal an approaching group. Hailey, Dorden, Heldi, and the dwarves’ toddling son, Bravlon, marched steadily through the grass. Upon noticing the child, Devon immediately dropped her gaze. Her resistance to the toddler’s Adoration ability was still absolute crap, and the last thing she wanted to do was start babbling like an idiot.
The toddler giggled.
“Aww!” Hailey said.
Devon made the mistake of glancing up as the woman smiled down at the large-eyed child. Hailey dropped to her knee, face awestruck. Moments later, she seemed to shake free and backed away. For Devon, however, it was too late. She couldn’t help staring. Sometime in the last few days, the boy had been fitted with miniature chainmail armor. He carried a one-handed warhammer with intricate carvings up and down the handle. He giggled again and pounded the ground a few times with the surprisingly large head of the hammer.
“What a bwave wittle warrior!” Devon cooed, abruptly finding herself crawling toward the child.
A popup sprang forward, blocking her view of the adorable green eyes and tiny button nose. Frantic, she swept the interface away and scrambled forward, desperate to poke the little dwarf’s belly and hear another giggle.
The popup flashed again.
“Dev,” Hailey said. “Accept, you idiot.”
Devon blinked. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized Hailey was trying to form a group. Why? So they could play ring around the rosy with the little guy?
If only to get the prompt out of her face, Devon accepted the group invite.
You come under the sway of Haelie’s Clarity ability. Your resistance to mind-altering effects has been greatly increased.
All at once, the dwarves’ son was merely…cute. He was like a cartoon toddler, amusing to watch, but no longer so overwhelmingly fascinating.
Everyone in the vicinity seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Greel snorted. “I don’t suppose I need to make any comments on that behavior, oh glorious leader.”
Ignoring him, Devon gathered her wits before standing. She slipped around the group to put them between her and the player horde. The toddler wobbled in a circle to face her, giggled, and smashed the ground within a centimeter of her toes.
Devon took another step back.
Looking into the faces of her friends, she cocked her head. “So, uh, is there a reason you’re here?”
Greel sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Slow on the uptake, isn’t she. I presume you remember accepting a mission to cleanse some vermin hideout…”
“Yeah…that’s what we starborn do. Accept quests and such.”
“And the item which you received to gain passage into this so-called Drowned Burrow will convey the water-breathing ability to a group.”
Devon glanced at the dwarf child. If not for Bravlon’s presence, she’d probably take them up on what was clearly an offer to party up for the dungeon. “Yeah…?”
Greel widened his eyes and spoke both loudly and slow. “So we’re here to go with you into the Burrow.”
Bravlon looked up at her and grinned. Two tiny tooth nubs glistened on his lower jaw.
“I…” She glanced at the child’s parents. “A dungeon isn’t really the place for a child. He could…I can’t let him get hurt.”
Heldi scoffed. “Don’t ye remember, lass? His buff lasts until adolescence.”
Devon nodded. Right. Heldi’s damage shield buff granted some protection for adults, but it made her child completely impervious to damage. Not onl
y that, anyone trying to strike him would take a mega dose of retaliatory damage.
Basically, the little guy could tank any monster in the game. The rest of the party might not be able to do enough damage—or even land blows—on mobs that were too high in level, but Bravlon could take whatever hits the mobs dealt.
But it still wasn’t right. There were reasons people had condemned the use of child soldiers throughout history. Violence and death belonged to adults. Sure, little kids got angry and hit one another. But when that happened, they were sent home from day care or put in time out or any number of other responses parents made to bad behavior.
Devon’s mind flashed to her own mother, whose brand of discipline had been deeper indifference the worse Devon behaved.
So maybe it was just responsible parents who responded to aggression with correction.
What she couldn’t understand was why Dorden and Heldi, who clearly loved their son and fawned over him at every opportunity, could even consider bringing him into battle. A toddler. Sure, it was a game with rules that—for better or for worse—rewarded fighting with experience, and they were NPCs, not humans.
But they were just as alive as she was.
Different rules didn’t justify exposing the little kid to crawling through corpses on a dungeon adventure.
“Oh wait. Ye don’t think…?” Heldi was looking at her suspiciously. “Ye don’t think we’re bringing him for the combats, do ye?”
“Well, you did say you guys wanted to come to the Drowned Burrow with me.”
“Of course. But the wee lad isn’t fighting. He can’t.”
Relief swept through Devon’s body. “You had me worried, to be honest. Seeing him all armored up.”
The dwarf mother smirked. “I can’t control that. Ye know crafters and tradespeople. Half of ‘em didn’t get enough time playing with dolls and toys when they were little. The whole choice of profession is an excuse to play dress-up or to build with blocks.”
Citadel of Smoke: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 4) Page 17
