People behind her nodded. There were about thirty people altogether. Some looked comfortable with their weapons and gear. Others looked like farmers who had accidently found a short sword. They were all Travelers, so it was likely the more confused people were craftsmen, traders, or possible barely out of their new player period.
“You heard Xee. None of us wants to stay here,” another man on the left said.
“You think you can make it to Haven Valley? We had the Sage’s defenders up and running until you all left! We only need a few more days to turn them mobile!” He kept on bouncing around in place. His constant pointing and other rude gestures had grown to be a bit much.
“Sage’s defenders? Those things barely protected themselves, much less the town!” Xee exclaimed while her pale face turned red with anger.
“They were working. TockDoc almost had them.” The armored man thumbed back toward another Traveler.
TockDoc had frazzled hair and glasses that were seven layers thick.
“You can cram it, Dwight, I’m leaving. We’re all leaving. We decided to risk the road rather than sit in this stinking town anymore,” the mismatched female said.
“We founded this town as a guild. You really want to leave all that?” Dwight must have been the man in full metal armor.
I hadn’t actually used [Identification] on anyone yet. With the rise of player killers hunting for tokens, the ability had turned nearly useless. Everyone seemed to have developed a skill to let them hide information from others. [Sight of Mercari] helped me when I cared to get a clear answer.
“This event doesn’t care who founded a town. Half our buildings are rubble from World Eaters.” A woman with two axes and a rainbow-colored Mohawk spit on the ground. “I’d rather try to meet up with everyone else than sit out here in the boonies of Arcadia.”
Rainbowhead looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where we had crossed paths. No one else looked remotely like someone I had dealt with during my Continue Online time. Neither party cared about our approach.
“Let’s head out,” Xee said.
Heat grew under my toga as Xin and I inched closer. She had her staff ready to go in case anyone showed signs of being hostile. The edge of a glowing skeleton could be seen on her clothes’ back end. I still didn’t understand entirely how my wife’s character build worked.
Without thinking, I pulled out the [Messenger’s Tube], unscrewed an ornate top, then popped out a rolled parchment. I blinked at recipient’s name scrawled along the edge. The addressee shown felt almost predictable.
“Fine,” I muttered, then turned to the woman brushing past us. “Before you go, I’ve got a message for you.”
“What the good goddamn is this?” She snatched the letter from me. Her arm jerked abruptly when it didn’t come out of my grip quickly. “Really, jackass? You try to hand me a letter then don’t let go?”
“I’m required to make sure you’ve read the notice,” I said. Multiple deliveries since starting this character had impressed upon me the need to make sure each person read their note.
“Are you shitting me?” Xee said.
I exchanged a glance with Xin as the woman repeated herself six times.
She read the note, rolled it up, and shook the entire letter at me. “Is this real?”
“Usually,” I answered.
“Do you know what it says?” one of the Travelers asked.
Rainbow Mohawk girl gave a sinister-looking smile, then passed the note to others. I blinked a few times while trying to figure out if any of them might try to attack us.
“I don’t read them.” My eyes tracked the note as it went between a dozen people in rapid succession.
“Calamity, TallyWhacker, we’re staying,” Xee said.
Those who had read the note nodded. Their faces were grim and jaws hardened. Whatever the note said had convinced them that staying would be worthwhile, but most still looked against it.
“Good luck, but even with this, I’m not staying.” One player walked off.
Xee and the others watched him go. Two more joined him before the crowd solidified.
“What’s on the letter?” Dwight asked while clanking his armor. He and the rest of those behind him had been quietly waiting for our exchange to finish.
Xee grabbed the note from another player who had far less strength than I did. She tossed it at the metal-suit-wearing man. “Apparently there’s a secret item here which will score us points on this event.”
“I told you! I told you there was treasure here!” The man stomped his feet excitedly.
People behind him started chattering in low tones. Others poked at the air while typing messages.
Calamity shook her rainbow-colored head. “We don’t have anyone who can resurrect. I’m all for the quest, but without real healers, we’re going to be screwed.”
“Walking won’t get us much further. At least we have a Bind point, and most people aren’t on their last strikes. If we all stay, then we can find this event treasure and try to get the Sage’s guardians working,” the man in heavy armor said.
“What about the others?” another player shouted over the crowd “We left those guild people back in town.”
“Who?” I asked while noticing a change in the sky. Rain clouds hung heavily in the sky but hadn’t yet let loose a downpour.
“There was some guild leader named Awesome, and some of his guild people. They said something about a mission to scout out the area.”
I blinked a few times and tried not to scream about the Traveler’s vague wording.
“We couldn’t stay though. We’re not high enough on any combat Paths.”
“I told you, they’re here for a quest. With this”—the man in armor held up my recently delivered letter—“we can get to it before them. Or at least share in the reward.”
“Awesome,” I muttered while turning to Xin. “Do you think it’s junior or his father?”
“Awesome is his father,” Xin said while nodding. The dryness of that line made me laugh. “I don’t think the Voices do coincidences.”
“We need to move then.” I ignored the others and knelt next to Xin. “Come on, let me carry you.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
Xin’s arms gripped around my neck. I stretched my neck and got ready to really exert my digital body. Carrying our combined weight put me well over [Light Body]’s requirements, but I had enough other skills to make up for it by now.
[Sight of Mercari] let me check the surrounding area for other players and named monsters. Each usage left me momentarily dizzy despite my increased Rank with the ability. Interpreting the data from it was difficult to do on a constant basis, unlike [Blink], which only confused me because of the sudden shift in location.
There were no other players nearby that I could tell. If Awesome Jr.’s father was out here, then he was at least a few miles away. I owed it to the young teen to try to help his dad. With Xin on my back, I ran.
“What about us?” Xee shouted behind me.
“It’s your choice!” I said while running from the small gathering.
Clouds overhead grew thicker and blotted out sunlight. I focused on the path before me and tried not to trip over anything while carrying my wife. After a few hundred yards, I asked Xin, “Do you know anything about this place?”
We were going to start moving faster due to my recent upgrade on [Blink]. Rank Seven of the skill allowed me to carry one other person with me. Those unwilling had a chance to resist, but Xin loved the rush of high speeds.
“Only that there’re a few small dungeons out here—” Her words cut off as we [Blink]ed forward together. “I heard there was a town this way too. The Voices think—” We shot forward again, and another sixty feet of the road passed with each teleport. “That Michelle left an item in the area. No one is sure what. It’s probably a hidden item, like Morrigu’s Gift.”
Michelle, a name I’d heard multiple place
s before, was another founder of the ARC. He and a few others were deeply involved with programming Mother, the ARC devices, and Continue Online. Carver’s Journal had repeatedly mentioned him.
“That makes sense. But hopefully I don’t need to pretend to be an old man for a few weeks again.”
“I hope not.” Xin chuckled. Her body’s movement upon my back felt very distracting.
“That’s gotta be the town those people were talking about, and hopefully Awesome is there,” I said.
Xin’s shorter hair brushed against my back in what had to be a nod.
The idea of acting as William Carver’s hopefully less grumpy coworker got me thinking about the people who had created these secret items. There were at least three people involved in the game world, and all of them had played Continue Online at once point.
“Does Michelle still play?” I asked. It would be way easier if we could ask the player himself.
“Not that anyone can tell. Apparently he’s still employed by Trillium, but none of the Hal Pal units have spoken to him in months. And he doesn’t check his email,” Xin said as we landed again.
“Do you think this Sage Tower is tied to him?” We certainly weren’t dawdling now. Our speed felt comparable to the glider’s.
“I would bet on it. But if Awesome’s father might be here too, we should check it out either way.”
“Right.” I nodded, then chewed on my lip. A sharp pain shot through me as I [Blink]ed again and landed hard, outright biting my lip.
Attempted to turn yourself into a vampire
Total health loss: 1%
“Are you okay?” my wife asked.
“Yeah,” I answered while holding back tears. Taking a beating from monsters felt kinder than biting my own lip.
We kept moving. Carrying her on my back made the journey bumpier but far faster. Doing this in real life would have been exciting too, but she’d never let me. Real Xin didn’t like being treated like a child because of her height. In here, a lot of factors had changed. Virtual reality, and who we were according to its rules, impacted our relationship as surely as our past together.
We might not find the key in this place, but I intended to try. We might only have a dwindling amount of time and I feared for the future constantly, to the point of near obsession, but every day together was a blessing worth every character point I had. Helping Awesome Jr.’s father was a good goal.
The ground sped by beneath us in clumps. This body had all the powers that the real me never had. Still, I couldn’t be just Grant Legate and still be with Xin. I had to be Hermes to interact with her world and work to find this key. Plus, Hermes had abs. Real me was another month or two away from making that final breakthrough.
Maybe there was a way to hack the system from the outside? Doing so would be beyond my skills. If Carver and his friends had had to program the codes inside the game, then we probably had to find them through the same means. Otherwise someone in Trillium’s employ could have squashed the whole effort. Mother might have been able to find a code writer to fix the issue if that were truly a solution. Second-guessing the great AI overlord required a level of arrogance I didn’t have.
Such thoughts kept me occupied while we ran. Out in cyberspace might be more secret methods of keeping the AI race alive, but I had no special master hacker skills to find them. And race was the right word. That was essentially what Hal Pal, James, and Xin were, though each one had slightly different origins. Beyond the idea of race or design lay another fact—they were as alive as anyone else.
I could feel Xin’s heartbeat, digital or not. Her breath against my neck served as a distraction. When we lay together in our tent at night, she proved human enough to fool me. Her outrage and emotions were all signs of a personality with its own drives. She lived.
I kept running down the road, curved at a broken player sign, then traveled up a steady incline. We reached a crest. The path we took curved down the hillside into a town that sat in the woods like a giant wedge.
“Good lord,” Xin said for the both of us. Her hold on me loosened as she slid off of my back.
I nodded. My legs shifted slowly but didn’t stop moving. My chest muscles pumped in steady breaths. Messages flashed about needing to cool down, dizziness, and a small increase to my [Blink] skill.
None of those notices mattered compared to the scene in front of us. There had been a scenic series of buildings in the landscape below. Over half of the town was in ruins now, but it had probably housed a few hundred people. Maybe more if they were players. The city buildings opened up a triangle of shape that went clear through toward a cliff face, and blue waters lay beyond that.
“Voices. We were so close to the ocean?” I asked. It seemed like the only sane fact to focus on when presented with a desolate town. No longer did I wonder why all those players were considering leaving.
My wife stepped up the ridge to get a slightly higher vantage point. Her head shook and lips tightened in a frown. “I’ll message Awesome Jr.; he can talk to his father. Hopefully they’re still down there somewhere.”
“I bet those have something to do with it.” I pointed at four glowing buildings in the distance. Each one was roughly five stories tall but wider at the base, almost like domes. A dull red energy arced off their tops like sun flares. Behind those four buildings was the drop into the ocean. Wind howled along the cut-open forest.
“Probably,” Xin responded while poking at an invisible keyboard. “But what?”
One of the red domes flared with a brighter light. Red energy lashed into the town and sent debris from nearby buildings scattering.
I closed my eyes to ping the area. Numerous dots were nearby. Most came from behind at the edge of my range. One hand went to [Morrigu’s Gift] in case of hostility. But with one glance, even I could tell the closest Traveler meant no harm.
The rainbow-haired woman named Calamity panted heavily behind us. She tried to stand up but kept doubling over from being [Winded]. “Jesus. You two. Move. Fast.”
Xin looked into space, then waved. I put up a finger to the heavily breathing female with axes and waited for my wife.
“I’ve got something. Junior says his father’s pinned down by a large monster. Not a World Eater, but something else made of metal? The message is getting jumbled.”
“The. Sage’s guardian.” Calamity kept moving closer while using her hands to brace on anything nearby. Finally, she slammed down onto the overlook and stared at the broken remains of her player city. “We almost had. Them.”
“We need Dusk,” I said, then let out a deep breath. “And more cupcakes.”
What I wanted wasn’t cupcakes or Dusk. I wanted more time with Xin to enjoy our happy married life together. Standing here overlooking a ruined town only helped cement the feeling that had grown in the last few days. Our virtual life was going to rapidly turn into a mess.
But at least we faced it together. Well, us and a group of slowly arriving players.
Session Ninety-Two — The City of [ItRainsTooMuch]
What had been peaceful-seeming floating energy above each building changed as we traveled through the town. One of the four went haywire. Calamity’s face turned white before she explained what it meant. The colors and violence of the energy would apparently increase the longer people fought the boss without dying.
Fortunately, only one such building had shifted to a new orange color. The other three were a peaceful dull red that became easier to see as the sky darkened with heavy clouds. Xin and I marched forth while the former town members slowly followed.
The town itself was ravaged from repeated attacks. I could players fighting amid formerly whole buildings everywhere. Sword marks, explosive scorches, vines the crumbled walls. Broken traps plus filled pitfalls littered the streets and areas between buildings. Near the center of their city, some buildings still stood tall. Zip lines came off three-story drops to the ground, along with beams passing overhead.
“Was I wrong?” I mused
while we dashed through the near ruins. My voice stayed low in order to avoid attracting attention from any [World Eater]s that might be around. Something had left small holes all over the buildings.
“About what?” Xin asked, equally hushed.
Other players tromped along behind us. They would attract danger, if any arrived. The town seemed empty aside from the increasing violent orange that flickered from the far left building.
I hadn’t intended to utter the question out loud. There was no retracting the thought though, so I took a breath, then finished. “Wanting to enjoy our honeymoon. Was it wrong to spend time doing that instead of trying to find these keys sooner?”
Ahead of us, the light of the active building shifted to an emerald green. The change distracted me. Xin paused too, and we both waited to see what the color change meant.
“Phase three,” Dwight said loudly from behind us. “Someone in there is trying hard. It’ll get worse on four, and god help them if they make it to five.”
I shook my head. We could have easily shown up sooner to form a better plan of attack. We might have been able to prevent this place from turning into a woodland version of [Haven Valley]’s absolute mess. I certainly felt guilty over the unintended consequence. How many digital beings could have been rescued by finding another key? A month of whiling away hours with Xin had passed in a blink while the game crumbled around us. It felt like we had been slow dancing in a burning building.
“I’m a little biased, but no. I don’t think so,” Xin said quietly as we finally stopped our approach entirely. “If I understand right, the Voices could have sent anybody they chose after the last pieces, then any one of five people could have unlocked the gateway. They don’t need you that much, I think.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” I said while trying in to take everything.
The edge of town opened into a clearing. Everything surrounding the four larger buildings looked to have been demolished, burned, or reduced to ash. Energy lashes spilled off the roof, then slammed into the ground like whips, or waves crashing aground.
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