Dead Man Gaming

by A. J. Markam

On the other hand, I had to level up way more if I wanted to pull anything like what I was considering as a Plan B.

  And if Arkova couldn’t find me, all the better.

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I need to go see my profession trainers before I leave the city, but otherwise I’m in.”

  “Dude, I told you about that – remember whacking off for pennies versus banging chicks for Benjamins?” Slothfart said.

  “To be fair,” Russell said with a grin, “the last time Jimmy banged a chick, he ended up with something that cost way more than a hundred bucks.”

  The entire table gasped.

  Russell looked over at me with an Uh-oh expression. “Sorry, mate – too soon?”

  Considering we were talking about an imaginary kid from an imaginary ex-girlfriend, I didn’t exactly take offense.

  “It’s all right.”

  Jen glared at Russell. “Maybe you should go to the profession trainer and learn how to think before you open your mouth.”

  “I said I was sorry!” the goblin wailed.

  “Maybe you should go to the profession trainer as well, Seth,” Richard said. “Perhaps you could pick up some new supplies of thimbles and darning needles and knit Jimmy Jr. a nice pair of booties.”

  Slothfart got red in the face as the rest of the table laughed.

  “He told you the baby’s name, huh?” Jen asked Richard.

  “What? No, I just went with the most stereotypical name I could think of.” Richard looked at me and realized what he’d just said. “Uh… that’s not his name, is it?”

  “It is,” Jennifer said.

  “Ah. I just stepped in it, didn’t I?”

  “And got it aaaall over your shoes,” Slothfart snorted.

  Everyone laughed at Richard’s faux pas – except for Jen.

  I noticed she was regarding me with a curious expression after what Richard had said about ‘the most stereotypical name possible.’

  I tried not to react or look at her.

  Finally she turned back to Slothfart. “Do you know where to pick up the quest?”

  “Yeah – over at some miner’s shop in the Trade Quarter.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “Now go get us some drinks so we can celebrate our next quest.”

  “I think Richard should – ”

  “NO!” the entire rest of the table shouted as one.

  “Democracy, bitches,” Richard reminded him.

  “Man,” Slothfart grumbled as he got up from his seat. “Democracy sucks balls.”

  38

  I went to the profession trainer and spent the rest of my money getting advanced lockboxes to train on – this time, lockboxes that combined both mechanical and magical lock picking. Plus an advanced Enchanting kit, and as many new Enchanting recipes as I could afford. There was even a level boost for lock picking, which I winced as I paid ten gold for – but I didn’t have much of a choice. If I wanted to get high enough to start on the advanced lockboxes right away, I needed it.

  Now I really did need to go out and quest, because I was absolutely broke.

  After I joined the others, we went by the Miners Guild and looked around until we found a dwarf with a gold exclamation point above his head.

  “G’day, adventurers!” he addressed us heartily. “Might ya be in need of a bit o’ work?”

  It turns out the job was to escort a supply line to a mine a half a day’s travel outside the city. There were bandits along the road, not to mention monsters. If we got the supplies to the mine safely, we would get 2000 experience points each.

  “2000 XP for half a day’s journey? That’s pretty chintzy,” the orc complained.

  “It’s not going to be the initial quest that pays off,” Jen pointed out. “It’s going to be all the chain quests that come up along the way. And then there’s the dungeon. No telling what kind of loot we could walk away with. But we shouldn’t leave until morning.”

  “Why not?”

  “We only have two hours’ worth of daylight, and I really don’t want to be fighting bandits and monsters in the dark. Especially since I’m sure the whole thing is going to go to shit, if the game developers have anything to say about it.”

  “That’s sensible,” Richard said.

  “Plus it leaves time for nudie bars!” Russell cheered.

  “What about you?” Jen asked me. “You cool with waiting? You can even go see your baby mama,” she added with a little smirk.

  “Really? REALLY,” I asked, although I couldn’t suppress my own smile.

  She grinned. “Sorry, low blow.”

  “Midget fellacio,” Slothfart said.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “Low blow? Midget fellacio?” Slothfart said with a grin, then sighed. “I couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a ‘that’s what she said.’”

  39

  After accepting the quest, I got a room at the Morningstar Inn for the night. Jen had to pay for it, since I was wiped out from getting the lockboxes.

  “You don’t mind fronting me the money?” I asked her.

  “No, I know you’re good for it. I trust you.”

  Hearing her say ‘I trust you’ felt like somebody had stuck a needle in my heart. But I forced myself to shrug it off.

  “Well,” Slothfart said, “I would offer to front you gold for the nudie bars, too, but that would mean fewer lap dances for me – and I don’t think your new squeeze would appreciate it.”

  Jen glared at him. “I am going to turn you into an iceberg just like I did Russell if you don’t shut up.”

  “Do it! Freeze the big green bastard!” the goblin egged her on.

  “All right, all right,” Slothfart said, holding up his hands like he was giving up. “What do you say, Richard? Want to go see a naked troll shake her ass in your face?”

  “No, I most certainly do not. I will bid you bonsoir until tomorrow. What time are we meeting?”

  “How about 9 AM outside the city gates?” Jen asked.

  “Hell no!” Slothfart said.

  “Way too early!” Russell shouted.

  “Guys, you do know that they’re all going to be fake women in a videogame, right?” Jennifer asked.

  “Which we will pay for with fake money,” Russell informed her.

  “Besides, if we went to a real strip club, we’d just see a bunch of fake boobs, anyway,” Slothfart said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with fake boobs. I always say, if I can touch ‘em, they’re real enough. Long as they’re not a hologram or somethin’.”

  Slothfart reached his hands into the air and pantomimed reaching for, and swiping through, ghost boobies.

  “All right, 10 AM,” Jen sighed.

  “I really think later is – ”

  “Ten AM,” she snapped.

  “Fine. Jeez.”

  Slothfart and Russell turned to go – but then Russell turned around.

  “Jimmy,” he called out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Wear a jimmy on little Jimmy, so’s you don’t get no more Jimmy Juniors walkin’ around!”

  Jen motioned like she was going to cast another spell, and Russell hooted and ran out of the inn into the night.

  Slothfart followed him, and shouted out as he left, “He has a point! Twice as much child support ain’t gonna do you any good!”

  We thought he’d gone – but the orc popped his head back and asked, “I mean, how do you pay for a kid and a full immersion pod?”

  Then he disappeared again, but we could hear his disembodied voice: “Just askin’!”

  Once the others were finally gone, Richard looked at Jen and me. “So – how are we going to spend the rest of the evening?”

  We both just stood there looking at him in silence.

  It took about five seconds for him to finally figure it out.

  “Oh… right. I, uh… I think I’ll be logging out early.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Jen said.

  “Good night, then.”

&
nbsp; “Good night.”

  Richard slowly faded away.

  Jen looked over at me. “Don’t get any funny ideas.”

  “Funny ideas? Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m really glad that Seth and Russell aren’t here right now,” she said dryly, “so I don’t have to listen to the birds and bees talk.”

  “I don’t even know how that works in a videogame.”

  “Which is why I’m doubly glad they’re not here, because they would probably tell you. Maybe even act it out. And God knows I don’t want that picture in my head.”

  I smiled, though I was feeling a little let down. Whenever a woman says Don’t get any funny ideas at the beginning of a night together, it’s generally not the best sign.

  “So what do you want to do?” I asked.

  She thought for a second, then smiled mischievously.

  “Want to duel?”

  40

  We found ourselves at an outdoor training ground, which was lit by bonfires on the perimeter. There were training dummies – basically scarecrows outfitted with wooden swords and shields. There were also a number of obstacle courses which were largely deserted because of the hour.

  But there were plenty of people using a bunch of 100 x 50-foot dirt pits surrounded by wooden stockade fences. Single duelists would face each other, or groups of two or three would face off against an equal number. Flashes of light sparked through the night, as did meteor showers of fireballs, glowing demons that appeared out of nowhere, and even Rogues who leapt in and out of Stealth.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked Jen as we stood on one of the wooden observation platforms overlooking the dozen pits.

  “It’s a friendly way to train,” she explained. “Occasionally people settle bad blood here. I mean, normally they do it in the streets – ganking is allowed here, after all, since it’s a neutral zone – but the authorities discourage it. And if the crowd sees you ganking somebody else, they’re just as likely to gang up on the ganker and squash him. So people with legitimate beef will come here to work out their problems.”

  “Do we have a problem?” I asked nervously.

  “No!” she laughed. “I just thought it might do you some good to train for the upcoming quest.”

  “That’s it?”

  She gave me a little smirk. “And maybe I’ll work out some of my annoyance about how you treated me this afternoon.”

  “I apologized for that!”

  “And now you have to pay for it,” she said mock sweetly.

  She walked up to a fat goblin at a podium.

  “Open pit, open pit,” he called out like a carnival barker. “One silver per round, up to ten minutes. Got a problem? Work it out! Got an enemy? Kill ‘em! One silver per round, up to ten minutes of bloodthirsty action!”

  “I’ll take one,” Jen said as she handed him a silver coin.

  “Number seven,” the goblin said, and pointed down at an empty space surrounded by a ten-foot-high log wall. “Enter from opposite sides. You can fight to the death if you want, but if one party yields, that’s it for the round! Healing potions available – one silver per hundred hit points!”

  “I’ll take ten of those, too.”

  “I like this lady!” the goblin crowed as he gave her ten vials. “If you want more, we got ‘em!”

  As we walked down to the empty pit, Jen handed me nine of the vials.

  “You really think a lot of me,” I said sardonically.

  “I would’ve given you all ten,” she grinned, “but I didn’t want to hurt your ego.”

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  “Seeing as I just dropped 11 silver, why wouldn’t we?”

  I winced. “Isn’t it going to hurt?”

  “Go into your menu and turn your pain settings down to zero.”

  “Yeah, but you’re going to be throwing ice bolts at me. And I’m going to be stabbing you.”

  “Yeah, right,” she snorted. “If you can even get that close.”

  “Oh-ho – somebody’s cocky.”

  She laughed. “Just realistic.”

  “So what happens if I do get close enough to stab you?”

  She held up her single remaining red vial of liquid. “That’s why we have these.”

  I went around one side of the pit and she went around the other. As I walked through the entrance, a couple of goblin wranglers on top of the fence closed the wooden door behind me.

  “Keep it clean!” they yelled. “No beheadings, no castration, no vomit!”

  Then they ran off.

  “That’s a helluva list of rules,” I muttered to myself.

  “All right, dead boy,” Jen called out from a hundred feet away. “Let’s see what you got.”

  “Just like that?” I yelled back.

  “Just like that.”

  “All right,” I said, and immediately went into Stealth.

  Suddenly there was a crackling noise, and ice began raining down from the sky. BIG chunks of ice. It was like I was getting slammed by seven-pound bags of ice cubes thrown off a skyscraper. Two glancing blows knocked off a fifth of my hit points and forced me out of Stealth. A direct hit dinged me for another 50%, and I face-planted in the dirt.

  “Drink the healing potion and let’s do it again,” she called out.

  I groaned as I got to my feet.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Anything hurt?”

  “Just my pride,” I said as I popped the cork off my first vial and chugged it.

  Hm. Tasted like strawberry cough syrup.

  Within seconds, my hit points were nearly at their maximum.

  “All right,” she said, “let’s try that again.”

  This time I hit Fleet Foot. I raced at her incredibly fast – but she was still able to raise a ten-foot-tall wall of ice in front of me, from one side of the wooden pit to the other.

  I jumped for the top of the barrier, but I couldn’t reach the edge. My feet slid off the surface, and I slipped back down to the ground.

  Then I looked over at the wooden fence and had a bright idea.

  “Sorry, sweetie,” Jen called mockingly over the ice wall. “It should evaporate in a minute or two… until then, I’ll just twiddle my thumbs…”

  I still had Fleet Foot active for a few seconds, so I backed up and ran at an angle at the wooden wall. I jumped at the stockade fence and kicked off it, which gave me enough traction to jump the extra five feet to the top of the ice wall. I grabbed it and was able to propel myself over to the other side.

  “Oh shit,” I heard Jen say, which was music to my ears.

  I was within five feet of her when the Ray of Frost hit. BAM!

  Seconds later I was lying on the ground with a smoking blue haze wafting up from my chest and the feeling that somebody had hit me with a sledgehammer.

  “Better,” she said, and offered her hand to help pull me up. “I wasn’t expecting you to get over that wall at all.”

  I grasped her hand, but rather than let her pull me up, I pulled her down. She screamed and fell on top of me, her body on top of mine, face to face.

  “You know… I totally could’ve stabbed you just now,” I smiled.

  “That would have been the very definition of bad sportsmanship,” she said – though I noticed she didn’t try to get up off my body.

  “But I’m not going to.”

  “I don’t know – I kind of feel something jabbing into me.”

  I looked at her and then exclaimed in embarrassment, “What?! No – I’m not even – ”

  “Relax!” she laughed as she got to her feet. “I only felt two of your daggers.”

  If I’d been able to, I totally would have blushed.

  She brushed off her robes and grinned. “All right, dead boy, let’s try again.”

  We paid for extra time and went on for close to an hour, with me rushing at her, going in and out of Stealth, doing zigzag patterns, and trying to evade he
r attacks.

  I actually got pretty good by the end. It was the best training I’d had as a Rogue since I started the game. Most of my opponents so far had relied on brute force, but with Jen, I actually had to try to outthink her, which pushed me to a new level.

  She still kicked my ass, but I did get to stab her a couple times.

  That sounds kind of weird… but I promise, in context, it wasn’t that bad.

  Along with more time, we ended up having to buy extra red vials. Goblin vendors hawked them as they walked along the tops of the wooden stockades, carrying them in trays supported by straps around their necks like hotdog vendors at Dodger Stadium.

  “Getcher healing potions right here! One silver fer a hundred hit points! Getcher healing potions – don’t let that battle axe ruin your night!”

  Finally, we called it a night and walked back to the inn.

  “I’ve got to say, I’m impressed,” she said. “You improved dramatically over the course of the night.”

  “I didn’t get any more experience points.”

  “No, but that’s because experience points only come from the game, not PVP matches. Otherwise you could just level up by fighting your friends non-stop. Doesn’t matter, though – you can still learn valuable skills that make it easier for you to survive, which means you’ll get experience points faster.” She looked at me with an approving glance. “You’ve come a long way since that goofy little Level 5 we met out at the goblin farm.”

  I grinned. “Watch out, cuz this goofy little Level 14 is totally going to kick your ass next time.”

  She laughed. “You’re welcome to try, but I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We walked up to my room on the second floor of the inn. I opened the door – not by using the key to my room, but with a lock pick set. I got it open in three seconds flat.

  “Well, well, well,” she said. “Somebody’s been practicing.”

  “I’m looking forward to getting into all sorts of secret places,” I whispered seductively.

  “OH MY GOD,” she groaned, “that is the cheesiest line I have ever heard in my life. And I hang out with Seth and Russell.”

  I grinned. “Hey, come on – it’s better than ‘I’d kiss you, but I’m afraid I might puke in your mouth.’”