by Kevin Murphy
[You have gained 420 experience! EXP until next level 45/1,640]
[You have gained a level! You have 5 free stat points to distribute!]
“What the hell was that?” exclaimed another girl with crimson hair and a blade nearly as long as her body.
“That some sort of badass high level?” asked a tall man of similar age with windswept, spiky, ashen-colored hair.
“That’s—hey, I know that guy!” the blond, taller-by-a-head, Cline stated with surprise. “We started playing at practically the same time.”
“But he cut that oversized bird down like it was nothing,” protested the girl with a massive sword. “Didn’t you say you started five in-game days ago?”
Cline shrugged and walked towards Dakkon who, now seated, was looking over the calcaba trying to figure out what parts of the animal would be useful. He didn’t want to take anything that would be likely to spoil in his bag again, but didn’t know if beaks, talons, or feathers would be worth taking the time to harvest. The feathers were a lovely emerald green color, but plucking an animal as big as he was of its feathers was a daunting prospect.
“Dakkon, was it?” Cline said, looking down at the seated man. “We meet again.”
Realization immediately flickered across Dakkon’s face. “Hello.” His answer was short and perhaps a little guarded.
Taking no mind, Cline continued, “What kind of hellish training have you been through since we last met?” The rest of his companions arrived at his side, waiting expectantly in case some great secret would be revealed to them.
Dakkon considered the events that culminated in him sitting next to a large, dead bird, then loosened his guard a degree. The group had tried to help him, there was a familiar face, and he really wanted to compare his first day in the game with the others. Did everyone go through trials like he had? He wanted to know. So, without much further deliberation, he told them of the message boards, the strange tasks he had set out for, and his narrow avoidance of several sticky situations. He spoke about the rat stew and the furry hell that was the Brass Badger’s cellar. He showed them the knife and bag he had been gifted along with his clothes, before embellishing his training to become a thermomancer—carefully omitting how he had fainted from the heat of the trial—and finished with the betrayal that had kept him out of the game for days of playtime.
The group listened in awed silence. None of them had experienced anything approaching such a rough start. None of them had even died yet, and from a cruel trick from higher leveled players of all things. Eventually, the ashen-haired man spoke up, “So then, what level are you after all of that?”
Dakkon glared at him for a moment and then relented, “Five—after killing that bird. I just leveled.”
“My god, man,” the crimson haired girl started, “You just killed a level 18 calcaba like it was nothing. We’re all around level 16 and it takes us a minute with healing support from Mina to finish one off.”
Cline looked around, and realized an opportunity. “Dakkon,” he began carefully, “I know you’ve had a rough go at it, but leveling up doesn’t have to be so difficult. You should group up with us.” He looked around at the others’ faces, checking to see if he had stepped on any toes. “Roth here is a good guy, if a little proud. Mina is new to healing and games in general, despite that she’s dependable and really knows her stuff. Melee has a gigantic sword so you can bet she knows how to dish out some pain. And I’m a noble, fearless leader who ra—”
The other three had a good, interjecting laugh.
“Yeah, I’m the proud one,” the ashen-haired Roth said with a smile laden with playful sarcasm.
“In any event,” Cline went on unruffled, “you should group up with us for a bit. We’ll all be better off for it.”
The evident camaraderie tugged at Dakkon’s desires. Wasn’t he there to enjoy himself? The grinning faces of the four before him felt exactly like what he was looking for. He stood up, brushed grass off of his pants and cloak, then said with a half grin, “Oh, wise leader, please accept me into your ranks.”
Cline smiled with his eyes, nodded and sent Dakkon an invite.
|You have been invited to a group by: Cline
|Do you accept?
|Yes No
Dakkon accepted the invitation and, able to see the compact pane of party information, exchanged pleasantries. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all—Melee, Roth, Mina,” he nodded to each of them in turn.
“Wow, you really are level five,” Mina said with some surprise, “90 hit points. I can almost heal that much with one spell. Melee and Roth both have over 400.”
“With only 90 hit points…” Roth looked considerate, “I suppose you haven’t distributed any of your free stat points yet. Everyone is likely to need stamina sooner or later. It can help keep you from getting booted out of the game again for 11 more hours, and each point will give you an extra HP per level.”
“I’ll admit I’m jealous,” chimed in Melee, “if I could kill a calcaba with a single swing I wouldn’t have to invest so many points into strength.”
“Oh, so you’d set aside your great sword for a dagger, would you?” asked Cline slyly.
“Well…” Melee reconsidered.
“What I think they’re trying to say, Dakkon,” the youngest member, Mina, interjected, “is that you probably won’t need to focus on dumping your stat points into strength for a while. I would be grateful, as the healer, if two or three hits didn’t flat out kill you. This area is nearly four times your level, so I’m not sure I can heal you in time.”
“Cline said you were new to games?” Dakkon asked, adding the right amount of inflection at the end of his sentence to make it a question. She seemed knowledgeable.
“What can I say, I’m a prodigy,” Mina said then thrust her chin forward and grinned.
Until Mina’s point was made, Dakkon was planning to keep his free stat points unallocated until he found out exactly what it was he wanted to do in the game. Barely having had enough play time to make any real decisions, he already suspected that he would be putting most of his points into agility. The idea of moving more swiftly and dodging attacks rapidly without breaking a sweat was very attractive to him. But, should an attack ever catch him, it would be important that he survived it.
“Right,” Dakkon had made up his mind. At some point or another he’d put at least 15 points into his stamina, he was certain. He might as well do it now, while it would likely have a more profound effect on his performance than the other stats. He opened his character window and distributed 15 of his free stat points into stamina. His HP increased from 90 to 150 and would grow by 25 more points every level, instead of his previous 10.
“I still don’t have enough HP to survive another attack from a grand panther,” Dakkon said with a hint of discomfort in his voice.
“None of us would,” Roth said flatly. “Those things are supposed to be around level 35. One would probably tear us apart before we had a proper chance to scream and shit ourselves.” Mina cocked her head at Roth, reproachfully—for his choice of words, Dakkon surmised.
The notion didn’t comfort Dakkon. He would have to keep his eyes toward the skies when the group found itself near trees.
“And what classes are you guys?” Dakkon asked with a sudden surge of curiosity. Perhaps if one suited him, he could find their trainer and switch.
“Melee and Roth are both warriors, although she prefers her massive swords while Roth doesn’t have any particular sentimentality,” Cline said while gesturing towards Roth who held up a cudgel and nodded. “Mina is a Druid. At lower levels like these, she’s more or less the same as any other type of healer class. As for me…” Cline trailed off.
“He’s a ranger!” Melee offered gleefully. “Without a bow, naturally.”
Cline shrugged. “I managed to pass my class trials well enough with the equipment at the ranger’s guild, but it turns out bows are rather expensive.”
“So, I take it you a
ll came this way because of the 300-gold bounty for driving off the goatmen?” Dakkon inferred.
“Your information is a little outdated,” said Roth. “The bounty has doubled to 600 gold now. Goatmen started hitting the town harder yesterday. But—” he searched for the right words.
“The goats are a bit too strong for us. We were at the inn together when a group of six goatmen attacked,” Mina said. “Around 15 players were killed, some were as high as level 27. Realizing we were outclassed, the lot of us decided we’d be better off leveling up together.”
The group did not look particularly proud that they had shied away from the quest, but their reasoning was solid enough. “So, there’s been no progress on the quest, then?” Dakkon asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” Roth said as he held out his left-hand palm upwards. “Book!” he said. A large tome materialized in his hands and he looked down at it.
“That was… so cool!” Dakkon said as he held out his hand, imitating Roth. “Book!” he exclaimed. When nothing happened, he tried again.
“Ah, you need to set up a voice macro to do this,” Roth said as a matter of fact. “This one just opens up my quest journal.”
“Oh. I’ve never opened mine up, come to think of it.” Dakkon had learned a valuable trick that he would undoubtedly find a good and appropriately extravagant use for. For now, he would settle for binding his quest journal to the invocation ‘Book’ as Roth had. He did so, and summoned his quest journal.
|————
|Active Quests — ( Completed Quests )
|————
|Get the Goatmen:
|Goatmen have been attacking Greenburne.
|The village inn’s proprietor has informed you that the goatmen must be
|killed or driven off. After this has been accomplished, you should seek
|out the village’s leader, Barrcus, to claim your reward.
|Promised rewards:
| - 300 gold
|!Update - Talking to other players with this quest has provided new
| information!
|!Reward increased to 600 gold!
Dakkon’s first look at his quest journal taught him that he could receive quest updates simply by communicating with other players. “I wonder if that means players can give quests?” Dakkon wondered. It was something he would have to consider. He noticed the button leading to the completed quests tab, but recounting his triumph in rat hunting could wait for a later day. A much later day.
“So now that we’re up one more, killing calcabas should be easy-peasy,” Cline said sagely.
As part of a group now, Dakkon found it impossible to follow a conversation while practicing his Thermoregulate skill, so he decided to abandon it temporarily. He was happy to do so, though, because he was gaining experience much faster than he had hoped for. At first, the group would track down a single calcaba, then keep it occupied as Dakkon moved forward and struck it once. After a few of those encounters ended without incident, they moved on to groups of two then three calcabas with equal success. The warriors, Melee and Roth, never fell below 75 percent health, and Dakkon was hit only once over the course of 40 minutes. Feeling bolder still, they began to send off Cline and Roth to pull additional calcabas to the group as Melee, Mina, and Dakkon finished them off. In a grand total of an hour and thirty minutes of hunting with very little down time, the group had entirely run out of easily reachable calcabas to hunt.
By the time they had exhausted the area of calcabas, Dakkon was already level 12, and the rest of the group had leveled out at 19 each. Dakkon had been receiving roughly 3 times as much experience per bird slain than any other member of the group thanks to his low level and contribution toward each fight. He may have been the lowest level, but he was doing almost all the damage.
|————
|Statistics ( ][][ ) ( ][][][ )
|————
|Strength: 10 ( ? )
|Stamina: 25
|Agility: 10
|Dexterity: 10
|Intellect: 10
|Luck: 0 ( X )
|Free Stat Points: 40
|Hit Points: 325/325
|Endurance: 188/188
|Mana Points: 160/160
|Level: 12
|EXP Until Next Level: [____ 640/3,330 ]
|————
|Traits ( ][ ) ( ][][][ )
|————
|Appearance – 8 (Equipped)
|Heroic – 1— 12% [__ ]
|Hunter – 4— 55% [____________ ]
|Steadfast – 1— 0% [ ]
|Thick – 1— 20% [_____ ]
Dakkon was much stronger. A change so large over a period so small meant that he could feel the difference. He wondered what it might feel like to allocate all of his points into one stat in a short period of time, but dismissed the idea as a passing fancy. He needed to distribute his points intelligently, and at this point the only thing he knew for sure was that he liked the feel of close combat.
Dakkon’s Hunter trait had also improved dramatically. He had been at rank two plus zero percent experience toward the next rank upon checking, after his early death. Heroic started at zero percent too, but it had only gained 12 percent over the course of the hunt. He hadn’t been fighting recklessly or heroically, so it was somewhat of a surprise to see it had progressed at all. His other two traits remained unchanged just like his unused thermomancy.
“Dakkon, I know I’ve said this already, but you’re a killing machine,” Roth beamed, satisfied with his gains.
“I can hardly believe it,” Mina appeared to be calculating something. “At this rate, we’ll probably be able to fight the goatmen in a day or two. We’re going to need to step up our hunting grounds, of course.”
“Longbow, here I come!” Cline shouted, clearly overjoyed.
Still happy with the result of their grinding, Melee voiced her concerns, “We may be strong enough to kill goatmen already, for all I know, but that’s not really the main issue here.”
“What are you on about?” asked Cline, still smiling from ear to ear.
“Players have been killing off goatmen left and right for a week now, but no one has gotten half a lick closer to completing the quest,” Melee frowned. “Everyone’s missing something important.”
“Maybe the increase in bounty is a clue,” proposed Mina. “Perhaps there’s a set condition that needs to be met. An increase in the number of goatmen attacking, an amount of casualties, a sum of money offered by the capital as a reward, or maybe even the number of players active in town at once.”
Everyone’s moods dampened a little at that idea. The leveling was great at the moment, but the idea of having to wait an indeterminate amount of time for some unknown condition to be met wasn’t an exciting proposition.
“Well what about their base camp?” Dakkon suggested.
“What do you mean?” Cline asked.
“Has anyone actually run them off or tried to kill them all at wherever it is they’re coming from?” Dakkon reiterated.
“Nobody has found a lair,” Melee sighed. “If it’s out there, it’s too well hidden. People have been looking.”
“Has anyone tried following a goatman back?” Dakkon asked.
“The problem is,” Roth began with a grimace, “the goatmen always come to town, right? So that means they always get killed. If anyone wanted to follow a goatman back, they’d have to convince everyone to let the goats commit some atrocity without intervening. Then, everyone would have to trust one or two people to follow them back to their lair and report the information to the rest.”
“So, in other words, people aren’t going to stand for it,” said Melee. “Even if you convinced them to let the goatmen make off with some supplies or townsfolk, there’s no way everyone will hold hands, smile, and trust random strangers to tell everyone else where they’ve gone.”
“Plus,” added Roth, “there are plenty of people who think killing the goats night after night is t
he correct way to advance the quest. So, there’s a fair chance they’d just take the opportunity to kill the things.”
“I get it,” Dakkon said, raising his hands palm out. “It’s not such an easy problem thanks to the human element. Still though, I’ve got a feeling in my gut that it’s the only way anyone’s going to finish this quest anytime soon.”
“Well, we’ve got time and leveling to do before any and all of that,” said Mina with a bright smile. “Everyone good to keep at it?”
“I’m willing to, certainly,” Roth said, “but I’d like to propose a 25-minute break. We’ve been at it for a while. Since Dakkon got here, we’ve been going at a breakneck speed, and I would be better off after watching an episode of The Mysteries of Karmen Lockette.”
“Karmen Lockette,” Cline said with a stumped look on his face. “Isn’t that a bit… girly?”
“Of course, it’s girly,” Roth said without a trace of awkward in his voice.
“And… you’re comfortable with that? Being a man and all?” asked the puzzled Cline.
“To be honest, the show’s good enough, but the girliness is the main reason I watch it,” Roth said with the beginnings of a smile on his lips.
“Eh… explain,” said Cline.
“Well,” Roth began, “if I like something that a girl likes, then that creates common ground. We can relate to each other’s interests, and then we can get to know each other.”
“Hm. You know, that actually sounds fairly well thought out,” said Cline, amazed by his own words.
“It’s just common sense. Why try to avoid girliness when trying to meet girls? That’s about as dumb as trying to swim without getting wet,” said Roth. “Plus, the show’s pretty funny.”
“Huh,” Cline felt somewhat odd about Roth’s motivations, yet he was impressed.
“You won’t catch me watching any of that rubbish,” said Melee.
“It’s not so bad, Amelie,” Mina smiled at her. “The plot is actually pretty good, once you get past all of the magic cats and the cheesy dates she goes on. I’m sure you’d like it.”
