Continue Online The Complete Series

by Stephan Morse

  “Are you okay?” Beth asked.

  They were all dead. Six wolves, and I had only defeated three of them. [Convict Brand]’s partial reduction might account for some of that. My niece, a sword-carrying mage of some sort, had destroyed the others with one spell. Two wolves showed scorch marks. The third had frozen with a bit of melting green fur.

  “Uhhh…” I said while trying to evaluate the damage. Even TinkerHell hadn’t been this effective. That friendly woman had done ice bolts and walls but not a heat-seeking multiple element spell. “Voices, that’s neat.”

  “Sure is. It’s a pain in the ass to learn though. I had to get my elemental affinity up to Rank Seven in three categories.” She blushed while putting away her sword. “If I get lightning higher, then it’ll get more powerful.”

  I thought about it for a moment. There were a lot of things we knew about each in real life due to being related and living together briefly. Our game characters were almost completely alien to each other though, aside from meeting near the end of that great battle.

  Elemental affinities didn’t mean much to me. I had Rank One in [Fire Spell]s and could only manage the small light ball. Basically, I used it to start fires when camping, and now with [Breath of Flame], even that attempt at learning [Lithium] felt worthless.

  [Power Armor] slowly slid back into the toga’s positioning. One shoulder remained uncovered while the fabric wrapped around front and latched in. It looked like the classic clothing, but at least it latched in places so that I could move quickly without suddenly turning naked. The biggest issue was drafty lower legs, which [Gait of Bowman]’s wrappings helped with. It was odd that a pair of fancy shoes resulted in full-body clothing.

  “Dusk,” I said as my thoughts caught up. My [Messenger’s Pet] was missing in action, and we hadn’t paused long enough for me to reach out to him.

  “Nightfall is a few hours away,” Beth said with a half-formed smile. Her lips quivered a bit.

  “No, Dusk, my companion. I need to summon him.”

  I ran to a clear spot beside of our recently dead attackers and scrawled the spell circle. [Morrigu’s Gift] once again transformed into a small blade with the blacker handle. The runes that normally lined [Morrigu’s Gift] sat on its flattened edge.

  “Oh, the cute little dragon,” Beth said while I speedily followed the system-assisted pattern. She looked down at the patterns. “You know, you could probably get a chalice and cut down on the spell time.”

  “I’m still new at the actual spell circle,” I said.

  This wouldn’t even be possible if it weren’t for my unique connection to Dusk. Once again, I wished that my skills had included a spell-caster route, but abilities in Continue Online had more to do with personality and tendencies.

  “Oh. Well, if you find time to research, study some of the Wiccan ritualistic stuff.” I heard her feet shuffling behind me as Beth talked. She sounded almost embarrassed. “I’ve got a friend who uses different tools to shortcut spell circles.”

  “That’s neat,” I muttered. The idea of following witchcraft in a video game seemed odd. Then again, Continue Online was designed to allow everyone a mildly unique path through. It was a shame so many people ended up being the same.

  “I—”

  I raised a hand briefly. “I promise a dozen cupcakes at my earliest convenience!” I shouted the keywords at my dirt engraved circle.

  Nothing happened. The circle didn’t flare with light or look even remotely special. All that happened was me trying to look cool in front of Beth and flopping. My head hung downward as I studied the spell circle. Maybe Dusk hadn’t died. He could even now be guarding Wyl. I remembered asking him to do exactly that before I ran into a hoard of undead shamblers.

  “Crud,” I muttered.

  “Let’s keep walking,” Beth said. “You were headed somewhere, right? You lead, and I’m going to ask a friend what to do about your branding.”

  It took me a moment to register what she meant. After a few seconds of staring at my circle, I realized Beth was talking about the fact that I was still a convict with a load of [Redemption] points to work off.

  “Oh,” I said while trying to gauge how low my abilities were. My skills clearly worked, and [Morrigu’s Echo] could still pierce wolves. They were low-ranked creatures though, which made a difference.

  We kept going west. Our path traveled over a hill until we found a major road. I couldn’t find any signs of Dusk or Wyl, but tracking people was hard without a letter from the [Messenger’s Tube].

  Voices above, I should have thought of that sooner.

  “Gah. He’s offline,” Beth grumbled behind me. “Hold on, maybe Awesome will know.”

  “You’re talking to Awesome Jr.?” I asked while sitting down. A feathered quill and piece of paper came out to send my message upward. The ink dripped on the paper as I paused to think about my wording.

  “No, his father. We worked together in a raid once,” Beth answered while I debated exactly what to say.

  Bothering the Voices now, after Mother’s death and the world falling apart, might not be a good idea. How much attention did they require to plan a way out of it? Could they? Was the world falling apart while I was down here fighting digital wolves?

  My legs were crossed under me, and my lip hurt from where I bit at it. My left palm pressed against an eyeball, trying to fight off growing frustration. Finally, I stood, throwing the paper and quill far away. Beth said nothing as her fingers pressed away at air, typing a message to whichever random contacts she had.

  I got up and paced a few laps, then I sat again. I picked up the writing instruments and smoothed out the paper on my thigh. There, I unevenly inked a note.

  Let me know if I can help. Until then, I want to be with Xin.

  – Hermes

  The poorly flattened parchment was crumpled up, then shoved into the tube. It heated up as my message to any Voice above vanished. Knowing my luck, they would be waiting for me again in the Atrium. I had no intention of logging out until after Wyl and Dusk were found.

  After that, Dusk could probably find Xin. I hoped.

  Beth still looked distracted. I closed my eyes to ping the area with [Sight of Mercari]. No Wyl. No other players. For a game with so many players, remote areas like this rarely saw more than a few people pass through on any given day.

  “Got something,” Beth said. “Wait, no. He said the item’s hard to get. Maybe we can find it on an auction house, but it’ll cost a lot, and the guards probably won’t let a criminal inside.”

  I rocked a bit while chewing my lip then nodded. My [Messenger’s Tube] hadn’t lit up with a return message. Dusk didn’t wing through the sky that I could see. A city might be best. A [Porter] would be even better.

  “Let’s go that way anyway. I want to try to friend Xin in the game.”

  “You mean with a Porter? That’s a really good idea. I didn’t even check to see if she was on my friends list. If you can’t get into town, maybe I can,” she said.

  We jogged down the road, and after ten minutes, Beth huffed. My avatar had no issues, despite missing a good chunk of my character stats. My pulse was raised according to the EXR-Sevens, but nothing hurt. We weren’t moving quickly enough. Beth could run fast, but my character had spent most of its game career running the countryside.

  “We’re hardly going to make any headway.” I slowed down, then sighed. All this rush to get somewhere now and do things right this moment was pointless. “We could run for days and barely make it to a town.”

  “Everything in this game takes time. You can’t just go rushing about and expect things to happen right away. NPCs move around, monsters don’t come back right away, bosses take a month to respawn. The game isn’t all go, go, go.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll take it slow, Uncle Grant. One step at a time.” She stared at me while huffing a little. Maybe we had run longer than she expected. But I could still see the tower far away.

  �
�That’s amazingly grown up,” I said. It had taken me a decade to adopt that frame of mind.

  My niece was more put together than I was. She passed her classes, did homework, and played around in an alternate video game reality with friends. Apparently the young woman even found time to have a vague boyfriend.

  “You know how it is. Mom pays all the bills, which means technically I’m her dependent and she can legally watch all of this.” Beth abruptly veered into a complaint.

  “I understand.” I nodded.

  That was weird to me. The idea that my sister might be floating off to one side and watching a video replay bothered me. Voices knew that anyone and everyone could be watching my life with modern technology, but Liz might care enough to do it. She had taken to spying on me after that whole issue with Xin’s first letter.

  “But despite being young in the real world, with Continue Online’s time dilation, I’m almost twenty-two. I’ve done lots of stuff.” My niece nodded twice, then raised a hand over her eyes. They glowed a soft yellow as an ability kicked in.

  She searched for whatever while I pondered the legal ramifications of time dilation. Maybe Frankenstein would know, or his firm’s lawyer, Mister Stone. Perceived time couldn’t truly trump a Gregorian calendar, could it? How old would Xin be if she existed at the speed all those Voices did? Better yet, what sort of human rights did a machine AI get?

  “That’s right. Time in here is funny, isn’t it?” I said while trying to put everything together.

  We walked at a much slower pace. A few interesting thoughts ran through my brain regarding the nature of time and digital existence. Could Xin alter her shape at will? Beth had already confirmed that my body looked nothing like my reallife one. A few aspects stayed the same—my scars and height—but the fairly defined body with a high amount of [Brawn] was certainly not like real life.

  I liked my avatar, and in a few months, maybe the EXR-Sevens would let my actual body catch up at least in terms of build. Maybe I could get supplements and work out in a home gym for an hour a day. At least in Advance Online, my shape had resulted from being a [Mechanoid].

  “Yep,” Beth said as we moved along. “Despite that, I still like playing. I feel like I get so much more done, and some of the gear is really neat.” She pulled out her sharp-looking blade and slashed at the air. A few colorful lines appeared. It looked like she was cutting fabric between here and some bulging plane where bright rainbows resided.

  “That is neat,” I agreed.

  “Except your stuff. Your clothing is just weird, Uncle, er, Hermes,” Beth said. “You look one of those Greek tragedy actors come to life.”

  “Black togas are called toga pulla, I guess.”

  I had researched it, along with Viper’s real life, on the way back from Mom’s house. This color was typically worn by mourners. It felt oddly appropriate for me despite my recent happiness. Apparently it also tied into perceived danger to oneself, or public anxiety, which was also oddly fitting. My other gear had similar meanings as well. [Wild Bill] as a gambler, [Morrigu’s Gift], the name Hermes. I tried not to think about it too hard most days.

  “Oh wait, Awesome Jr.’s back online, and he’s got a message.” She pressed the screen. “He says a woman named Hecate found him and is trying to rescue you?”

  “Who?” The name didn’t ring a bell. I rapidly brought up an outside connection window and searched the Internet for any hints. The name sounded vaguely familiar.

  “A tiny Asian, wait…” Beth stared at a message I couldn’t see. “This is new. I think he’s talking about Xin.”

  “What?”

  “Xin’s in the game? Is that possible?”

  “I guess.”

  I felt kind of weird talking about Xin’s digital version to other people. Beth knew, but at the same time, she didn’t really know. It was as though I had brought a ghost home and said, “Here she is, please approve as we play video games together.” The idea sounded neat and loony-bin worthy.

  “Oh man. She’s what?” Beth laughed while tapping at the air. The only clue regarding anyone typing was a slightly blue ripple that resembled a keyboard. It appeared as fingers came down and connected.

  “What happened?”

  “Aunt Xin, she…” Beth looked at me with twinkling eyes, then shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “What?” I grew worried.

  My niece’s cheeks bunched up with a tight smile. The news wasn’t bad, based on her reaction, but if something was going on with Xin, I wanted to know.

  She laughed at me. “Nope. I’m not telling.”

  I pretended to be unhappy but couldn’t feel it. We had a connection to Xin. She was alive and reaching out to me. She, even her virtual recreation, had been trying to find a way back to me for so long.

  “Where is she?” I asked while trying not to let myself get overly happy.

  The last time I’d felt good was this morning. That emotion had promptly been ruined by finding out about other events going on. Dammit, I was being selfish. How did Xin feel about Mother’s passing? Did she even know? Of course she did.

  “Ratches Hill. I’m not sure where that’s at,” Beth answered while my mind wandered.

  “Hold on.” I wiggled my fingers at the air to bring up a system menu. My own map showed at least two weeks of travel to get to Ratches Hill. Assuming we met in the middle, our path would converge in the [Mire of Illusion]. I didn’t have much information about it stored in my journal.

  “Northwest a ways,” she said. “We’re headed in that direction anyway. At least, I think we are. Normally Mister Fuzzy does all the navigating.”

  “Your boyfriend?” The question slipped out before I could stop myself. It wasn’t my business who Beth went out with. She was my niece, not my daughter, despite how big a role her well-being played in my own stability.

  “He’s sweet and purrs,” the young woman said with an excited voice and red cheeks.

  Flattened earth by the roadside thudded. It sounded almost like knocking. I frowned before shaking my head. That sound had been repeating ever since my return to the ARC. Did it have to do with Mother’s passing?

  “Do you hear that?” My feet cautiously stepped around the path, searching for weak spots. A creature might be following me, ready to pop out.

  “Hear what?” Beth asked.

  “The knocking,” I asked.

  “Nope. Birds, some buzzing,” she said quickly while smiling. “Occasionally I’ll get a chime from a message to my ARC, but no knocking. Is someone at your door maybe? Did you order a pizza?”

  “No.” I waved to check the house security again. There was nothing apparent anywhere in the house. Even Hal Pal’s shell sat quietly in the garage. I had the nagging feeling of being crept upon by another person.

  I whipped around, trying to figure out if some monster had stalked us. Our surroundings looked empty. I pulled out [Morrigu’s Gift] and swept it around, carefully avoiding my niece. The only result was a strange look from Beth and a tired arm. I thought the stress was finally starting to get to me.

  Rain dripped as the clouds overhead floated across the sky. Our weather was turning worse, and our path westward grew darker with each passing moment. The change in skyline made it easier to see a small dot in the distance. Something with wings circled a few miles away. The creature barely stayed ahead of the rolling storm. I squinted while trying to figure out what it might be.

  I pointed upward for Beth. “Can you see that?”

  “Hold on, Far Sight might be able to.” Beth placed a flattened hand above her eyes like a visor. The brief glow of yellow came forth again. “It’s… a dragon?”

  “Dusk.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  He probably knew I would be looking for him. Dusk had found us, and through him, we could find Wyl. The Local was probably still hurt and limping toward a settlement. Things were looking up, aside from that whole destruction of the artificial intelligence’s creator. My fingers curled around the [Messeng
er’s Tube] under my toga, but it remained inert.

  I glanced Beth and tried to decide how much to tell her. The last time I’d tried to explain my life, Liz kicked me out of Continue Online. Or maybe I could wait to tell her about Mother until after talking to Xin. My fiancée had chosen the name Hecate for this world. According to the Internet, she was a Goddess of Ghosts and the Moon, among other things. It was fitting for a woman who had been training to go to Mars before she transcended death.

  Session Eighty — Desire’s Voice

  Dusk’s circling form had been far away, and getting to him wasn’t easy. Our goal sat at least six hours away, through the dense forest. As such, Beth and I were barely on a real path while hiking through wolf-infested woodlands.

  “How are you not tired?” Beth huffed along behind me. She kept trying to yell at me between gasps.

  “The benefits of an Ultimate Edition.”

  I glanced back. Beth’s face ran with sweat. Maybe I had overestimated her character’s statistics. My own face dripped, but it might have been from rain splatting down through trees.

  “Right.” She huffed while blowing away a strand of hair. “You guys gain stats absurdly fast.”

  “It tapers off. I haven’t gained any new character points in a while,” I said while trying to find Dusk. His form wasn’t overhead anymore, but we were going in the right direction.

  Viper must have led Wyl through the thickest trees he could find. Maybe his reallife military background had taught him to go into harder places to navigate in order to throw off pursuit. I was clueless about who he had been running from. My kamikaze dive should have taken care of most of the [Heavenly Body Clone]s. According to [Sight of Mercari], there were no other players around.

  Only trees, shrubs, and the rest of nature’s annoyances sat between the pseudodragon and me. Knotted bits of wood wove an ever-tightening path in front of us. I thought about coughing up another fireball and lighting up the whole place, but Dusk had already murdered one forest under my watch. Trying to one-up the much larger flame-spitting lizard would be foolish.