Dead Man Gaming

by A. J. Markam

  “Got it,” I said, a little miffed that she didn’t even think I could handle getting treasure out of a bunch of damn boxes.

  “All right, go to Stealth mode and let’s move out.”

  27

  I split off from the group and went upstairs to check out the rest of the manor. Even though I was in Stealth mode, I needn’t have worried; I didn’t see a single person at any point during my search.

  It was a gigantic house, with tons of winding hallways and smaller rooms. I began to worry if I was going to be able to remember where anything was once I found a treasure chest.

  If I found a treasure chest.

  I must have looked through forty rooms before I finally found one. Most of the objects in the rooms were of little value to me – clothes, beds, furniture, clocks. Even when I did select one to check it out, I didn’t see anything about its resell value, so I figured it wasn’t worth taking.

  Then I hit the jackpot.

  It was a large, expensive-looking chest at the foot of a sumptuous bed – mahogany wood with large metal bands across it, and a silver lock on the front.

  I looked around the empty room. Nobody around.

  I thought about Jen’s instructions: Don’t open anything you find – just remember where it is for later. Whatever you do, don’t come out of Stealth unless you absolutely have to.

  Her words had rubbed me the wrong way. They reminded me of Arkova.

  What would it hurt if I opened it?

  I could just split the loot up with them later. It wasn’t like I was going to hold anything back from them. I was just starting to get annoyed at being bossed around.

  I bent down and tried to open the lock. No go.

  I let go of it to grab my picks out of my bag, and the silver lock fell back against the chest.

  Clack!

  I guess I couldn’t make any noise without coming out of Stealth, because as soon as the lock hit, I stopped being invisible.

  No big deal, I could just –

  “RRRRRRRR!”

  I about crapped my pants as something sprang out from behind the curtains.

  It was a human. A man, maybe 40, with shoulder-length black hair and a servant’s simple suit – but he looked like he had been drained of every ounce of moisture, like half an orange left out for a couple of days in the hot sun. Bones stood out against his tight skin, and his eyes glittered maniacally.

  Stealth! I thought in a panic, but nothing happened. The icon had a red outline.

  Apparently I was in combat now.

  “RRRR!” the not-quite-human growled as it circled me.

  The ID said Withered Servant.

  At least it wasn’t a vampire.

  Suddenly it lashed out with one hand, with fingers that had dried out to sharp, bony fingertips.

  20% of my hit points suddenly disappeared.

  For a sucked-dry husk of a human being, it sure did hit above its weight class.

  “Vicious Strike, Backstab!” I screamed, and started in on the creature.

  I got in a couple of good hits before it slashed me again.

  Another 20% of my hit points, gone.

  I got into another war of attrition, trading blows and stabs as I shrieked my head off. At the very end, the edges of my vision were pulsing red – but he was low on hit points, too. It was him or me. One more strike would decide it either way.

  I watched my energy bar edge up just enough –

  “Vicious Strike!” I screamed, and stabbed him just as he was about to deliver the killing blow.

  The light in his eyes extinguished like a candle flame, and he fell in a heap on the floor.

  I dropped to my knees beside him. I went into Stealth, terrified that there might be more – but no one came.

  My hit points were creeping up dreadfully slow. Without Richard to heal me, it was going to take a good five minutes before I was back to normal.

  Unless…

  I looked down at the guy on the floor.

  Ew… no.

  But the thought of my new friends finding out I couldn’t even handle hunting out treasure chests? It was almost too embarrassing to take.

  I hemmed and hawed, stalled and paused, but my last glance at my health bar decided me.

  7%.

  “Screw this,” I muttered, and hit Cannibalize on my action bar.

  Like a puppet, I bent over his stomach and started to eat. I came out of Stealth, though, as I dug in.

  I guess the vampires hadn’t sucked him completely dry, because there was still some blood. Not much, though. He had the consistency of beef jerky as I chewed.

  Still tasted like bacon, though.

  My hit points were rapidly going up when I suddenly got the feeling I was being watched.

  I stopped chewing… froze… and slowly looked up.

  All four of my friends were standing in the doorway, staring at me, their mouths open.

  “Oh… uh…” I mumbled.

  They didn’t say anything.

  In fact, Russell’s hammer slipped out of his hand and CLUNKED on the floor. He didn’t move to pick it up.

  “This… isn’t what it looks like,” I managed to choke out.

  “So… you’re not eating a dead guy?” Jennifer asked in muted horror.

  I looked down at my bloody gloves. “Uh…”

  Slothfart winced and put out his hand like he was trying to block me out. “Oh dude – can you just not – oh man, I can’t look at this – ”

  “What are you doing, exactly?” Jennifer asked.

  “I’m dead… if I want to regenerate my hit points, I have to eat people,” I said forlornly.

  “Well, you’ve made elegant work of it,” Richard said.

  Slothfart made a choking sound, puffed out his cheeks, then swallowed and shuddered. “Oh dude, I think I just threw up in my throat a little…”

  “I’m sure this is perfectly normal for a Revenant,” Richard said, meaning well. “It just looks bad to us. It’s sort of like when your mother catches you masturbating.”

  The entire group turned away from me and stared at him in silence.

  He muttered in embarrassment, “Not that that’s ever happened to me, mind you.”

  “Can we get this man a heal, please, so he doesn’t have to keep eating… that?” Jennifer said.

  The troll said, “Look at his hit points – he’s actually almost – ”

  “JUST HEAL HIM, FOR GOD’S SAKE.”

  “Right,” Richard said quickly. He waved his hands and a purple stream of light shot out and blasted into my chest.

  Back to 100%.

  The rest of the guys had apparently gotten over their disgust and reverted back to form.

  “Oy, Jimmy, it looks loik you buried your face in a strawberry tart,” Russell the goblin said. Then he snickered. “The question is, was she a natural redhead?”

  “I think she was on her period,” Slothfart joked, and he and goblin chortled together.

  “GUYS!” Jen yelled. “SERIOUSLY! Can we do without the gross sex jokes for ONCE?!”

  Then she turned to me. “How’d he get you?! Why’d you come out of Stealth?!”

  “I was… I…” I was too ashamed to say Because you were bossy, so I turned it back around on them. “What are you even doing here?! I thought you were off killing vampires!”

  “We heard you squealing like a stuck pig, dude,” the orc said. Then he tried to suppress his laughter as he pointed at me. “Seriously, if you needed some alone time, all you needed to do was tell us.”

  “I was – I found a treasure chest!” I said, and pointed at the foot of the bed.

  They all walked over to see.

  “Wow… you have an impressively large chest,” Slothfart snickered.

  Jen scowled at him.

  “I was talkin’ to the dead guy, not you,” Slothfart said.

  Jen shook her head in disgust, then turned back to me. “Why didn’t you just – ”

  Then she stopped talking, a
nd a look of realization passed over her face. “You were trying to open it, weren’t you?”

  “I – I was – ”

  Her realization turned to horror. “You were going to try to keep it all for yourself!” she gasped.

  “NO!” I shouted, then began to babble. “NO! I was confused and I felt bad because I suck at fighting and you were kind of bossy when you told me not to open anything and I was feeling bad and nobody was around so I figured what’s the harm and I tried to open the lock and then he jumped out from the curtains and that’s all that happened, I swear to God!”

  Jennifer stared at me for a long moment, then turned to Slothfart. “You still think it was a good idea to add him to the group?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Well… you are kind of bossy,” Slothfart said.

  She hit him on the arm.

  “Owww!” he whined, which was funny, since it was a 5’8” thin woman hitting a hulking, eight-foot-tall orc. “Come on, now, do you really have to embarrass the dude any more after we caught him with his dong hanging out?”

  My eyes flew open wide in panic, and I looked down at my pants frantically.

  “I think that was metaphorical, Jimmy,” the troll said kindly.

  “Yeah, Jimmy,” Russell said cheerily, “if you was actually eatin’ a guy with your todger out, now THAT’d be ALL kinds of effed up.”

  “That’s what she said,” Slothfart snorted.

  Jen rolled her eyes, then walked over next to me. I flinched, thinking she was going to hit me – but she just looked at the treasure chest.

  “What’s in it?” she asked.

  “I… uh… I didn’t get that far,” I confessed.

  “Alright, well, go ahead and open it, then.”

  I looked around at them in a rising panic. “…now?”

  “Yes, now!”

  “…don’t you have some vampires to kill?”

  “Dude, they must be like, Rogue vampires in Stealth mode, because we have not seen a damn thing,” the orc said.

  “So… go ahead and open it, then?” I asked timidly.

  “It’s what we brought you along for,” Jen said.

  “…right…” I mumbled, and knelt down on the floor next to the lock.

  Back in the real world, this would have been a snap. I would have busted out my lock picks and had this open in –

  Oh yeah, my lock picks.

  I searched my bag window and selected the leather slipcase. Suddenly it materialized in my hand.

  However, the two picks didn’t look like any of their counterparts in the real world. One had a corkscrew at the end of it, and the other had a cross.

  I guess I was staring at them in confusion for too long, because Jen finally cleared her throat.

  “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “Yeah – sure, sure,” I said, and inserted the two picks inside the lock.

  I started moving them around gingerly, but the interior of the lock felt like nothing I’d ever picked in real life. The ‘feel’ was all wrong.

  “What’s wrong?” Jen asked after another minute went by.

  “Um… just give me a second,” I said.

  Another minute went by.

  “Well?” Jen asked.

  “I’m having a little trouble,” I said.

  “That’s what he said,” the orc muttered under his breath, and tried to keep from laughing.

  “Trouble?!” Jen asked.

  “Performance anxiety can strike a man at the most inopportune times,” Richard said.

  The entire group looked at him in silence.

  “…or so I’ve been told,” he muttered.

  “This is harder than it looks,” I protested.

  “That’s what she said,” Slothfart snorted, barely able to keep himself from laughing.

  “Have you actually ever done this before?!” Jen demanded.

  “That’s what she said,” Slothfart whispered, barely able to choke back tears.

  “STOP DOING THAT!” Jen yelled, and smacked him again on the arm.

  “Owww,” the orc whined.

  “Look, can you do this or not?” Jen asked, visibly irritated.

  I was starting to get panicked.

  “Hold on,” I said, and opened up my menu, praying that I’d overlooked something that could help me. Meanwhile, they started arguing behind me.

  “I can’t believe this,” Jen growled.

  ‘Profession Menu’ – please God, let that be it –

  “Maybe we should just break it open!” Russell suggested.

  ‘Lock Picking’ submenu – yes, yes –

  “We can’t,” Richard said.

  A notice appeared under my Lock Picking profession: You have 5 unspent talent points. Do you wish to allocate them to Lock Picking?

  “Why don’t we try?”

  Oh yeah – Talent Points – I’d been picking one up whenever I leveled the last few times –

  “I inspected it already. It’s Adamantine – it’s not going to open, even if you threw it off the top of the Empire State Building.”

  Arkova had ordered me not to use my Talent Points. Wait for me, she’d said.

  “We’re not in New York, if you hadn’t noticed,” Slothfart said. “Maybe we should find the equivalent of the Empire State Building and toss it out the window.”

  Screw it. I selected ‘Yes.’

  “We are NOT lugging this thing around until we find a hundred story tower we can toss it off of!” Jen fumed.

  Suddenly a window appeared in front of me.

  1 Talent Point = 10 Profession Points.

  +50 Talent Points to Lock Picking

  I said a little prayer and stuck the picks back in the lock as the others devolved into a shouting match.

  “But there’s – ”

  “We could probably – ”

  “We’re not – ”

  CLICK.

  Everyone went silent as I pulled off the lock and held it up.

  “I did it,” I said.

  “OPEN IT, OPEN IT!” Russell howled merrily, and ran over and yanked up the lid.

  As soon as he did, everybody bent over the chest to look inside.

  “Oh wow,” Jen murmured.

  “Shiny!” Russell aaahed.

  “Impressive,” Richard whispered.

  “Gimme that!” Slothfart shouted as he reached down inside the chest.

  Besides a smattering of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, there was something for everybody.

  A Tiara of the Goddess for Jen, with +50 Intelligence.

  A Shield of the Vampyr for Russell, with +200 armor and +40 strength.

  A Cloak of the Druid for Richard, with +40 Intelligence and +10 Haste.

  A Helm of Blood for Slothfart, with +60 strength and +15 critical strike.

  And a bright, shiny new dagger for me.

  Dagger of the Vampyr

  Damage: 15.0 per second

  Durability: 150/150

  +20 agility

  +20 stamina

  +10 critical strike

  Everybody immediately forgot how pissed they were at me just 20 seconds ago.

  “I KNEW it was a good idea to bring him along,” Slothfart chortled as he slapped me on the back.

  28

  After dividing up the loot, we set off through the house together.

  “You sure you don’t want me to go around and look for more treasure chests?” I asked.

  Jen shook her head. “It’ll be more efficient if all five of us look later. Besides,” she teased, “I don’t know that we can trust you not to eat any more people.”

  “That was only the second time I’ve ever done it!” I yelled.

  “That’s what he said,” Slothfart snorted.

  “Okay, fine, simmer down,” Jen laughed, then grew serious. “Really though… it’s not cool that I separated you out. Sorry about that. You shouldn’t have to sit at the kids’ table.”

  “Metaphorically speaking,” the troll
said.

  “He knows it’s a metaphor, you wanker!” Russell said. “Anyone can see there isn’t a bloody kids table!”

  “Don’t you think I know – ”

  Suddenly their tiff was interrupted by a booming voice.

  “You dare set your filthy feet on the hallowed ground of my family’s ancestral home?”

  We all froze.

  The voice was young and powerful, aristocratic and unspeakably arrogant.

  “Who wants to bet that that’s the son?” Jen asked.

  “Vampire Junior?” Slothfart said. “Probably.”

  The voice rang through the hallways. “A filthy orc… a dung-stained goblin… an inbred troll… a whore of a frost elf…”

  Jen cocked one eyebrow. “I think I’m going to have to send a message to the company about their writers’ choice of words.”

  “…and an idiot corpse that didn’t have sense enough to stay and rot in the ground.”

  I frowned. “Is he talking about me?”

  “You are the only dead guy walking around – you know that, right?” Slothfart asked.

  “Other than Young Dracula and his family,” the troll pointed out.

  “Our friend Jimmy’s just your type, you undead freak!” Russell yelled. “You probably want him to bugger you up the arse!”

  Then the goblin turned to me. “Sorry, mate. No offense if yer gay.”

  “I’m not gay!”

  Russell yelled at the voice again, “Yer out of luck, he’s not gay! Yer gonna have to find somebody else to bugger you up the arse!”

  Jennifer shook her head, then led us up a set of stairs to the third floor. “All right, let’s go find his ass so we can kick it.”

  At the end of the hallway, we found a doorway with a glimmering barrier.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Russell squealed, jumping up and down and clapping his hands.

  “What’s he so happy about?” I asked.

  “That’s a dungeon, dude,” Slothfart said as he pointed at the shimmering light. “We’ve seen a couple since we started, but you can only get in if you’ve got five people. Which – now we do.”