In answer, Merridack pulled out a tiny lead weight on a string. Then he began to whirl it around in a circle – fww fww fww fww – and released it straight at Daniel.
SMACK!
The lead weight hit him square in the forehead.
“OWWWWW!” Daniel roared, putting his hand to his forehead and pulling it away to make sure there was no blood.
As Merridack yanked the string and lead weight out of the cage, he turned to his men. “Who wants to take odds on how many blows before he replaces the coin?”
“Fifty!” one yelled, and slammed some money down on the table.
“A hundred!” another yelled as he pulled out his money.
“Two hundred and fifty!” a third shouted.
“I think you’re going to kill him before it’s over,” a fourth said, and the entire room roared with laughter.
Oh God… he might be right, Daniel thought in terror.
“We can take bets on that, too,” Merridack shouted, and the whole room laughed even harder.
But just at that moment, Daniel was saved.
And not by the bell.
There was a booming knock on the iron door. A gravelly voice yelled, “It’s Davil – let me in!”
Merridack gestured with his hand, and the big-eared skinny guy opened the door.
A burly man with a shaved head and red beard stomped into the room dragging a smaller figure by the arm.
“Eric!” Daniel cried.
Eric didn’t look too banged up, although he looked plenty pissed that he was getting dragged around and couldn’t do much about it.
Though he brightened as soon as he heard Daniel. He looked around, then seemed just as confused to see him in a wooden cage full of strings.
“Caught this little fool wandering around the sewers,”Davil growled. “Said he knew you.”
“That he does,” Merridack said in amusement as he strode over to Eric. “What’s the matter, boy – the mages not to your liking?”
“Let’s just say, now I know why you said the statue was a giant robed asshole,” Eric answered.
Merridack threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I could have told you they were all snotty little pricks, but some things you have to learn for yourself. Sit down, sit down – Spat, get the boy some food!” Then he turned back to Daniel. “Come on out, Thief – you’re not doing any damn good in there anyhow.”
Merridack and Daniel sat down as Eric hungrily tore apart a roasted chicken.
“So – what happened?” Merridack asked, apparently eager to hear anything bad about the mages. “Did they have you perform some test? Did they give you a speech about how they ‘serve the Natural Order’?” he said in a mocking, whiny voice.
Eric looked up in surprise. “You know about that?”
“If you ever hang around a mage till he opens his mouth – which isn’t often, because they’re a boring, standoffish lot – he’ll start yammering on about the damn Natural Order.”
“Yeah… he basically said I was ‘unworthy,’” Eric scowled.
Daniel could see the anger flashing in his eyes – the same hatred that had been there when Trent pushed him around in the school cafeteria.
“Unworthy of having a stick up your ass like the rest of them,” Merridack laughed.
“Yeah,” Eric agreed, his dark mood lifting a little.
“So, have you given any thought to your next line of employment? Maybe a thief, perhaps?” Merridack asked, then jerked his thumb at Daniel. “This one’s not working out so well. Might have to replace him.”
Daniel looked over in shock. “But I just started!”
“Ye gods – it was a joke,” Merridack groaned. “The first thing I’m going to have you steal is a sense of humor, since you obviously don’t have one.”
Except for Daniel, everyone else laughed – including Eric.
After a second, Daniel joined in. It was good to see his friend back to normal, the hatred gone from his face.
“Well?” Merridack asked. “Thief or street sweeper?”
Eric chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed. “You mentioned earlier about being an assassin. I think I’d like to do that instead.”
“Ah – now that I can help you with.”
Daniel didn’t know which he found more disturbing: the smile on Merridack’s face… or the one on Eric’s.
13
Luckily they didn’t go back to the cage of strings right away. Instead they switched to the dummies.
Daniel and Eric watched Merridack as he stood beside what was essentially a scarecrow nailed to a wooden post. The burlap bag forming its head had been cut and torn so many times that straw poked out in every direction. The same was true of its old, ragged clothing.
“There are many places where you can stick a fellow and kill him immediately,” Merridack lectured.
His hand flicked into the air, and suddenly a knife appeared between his fingers.
“Here – ”
Thunk in the dummy’s temple.
“ – here – ”
Thunk in the back of the neck at the base of the skull.
“ – and here.”
Thunk, right in one of the black circles drawn to represent the dummy’s eyes.
“Although if you go for the eye, you need a long enough blade to get deep enough. Nice thing is, even if it doesn’t kill him, it’ll be enough to distract him while you finish the job.”
Merridack went on to talk about other areas that didn’t cause instantaneous death, but would be pretty quick nonetheless.
The heart: “An excellent target, but protected by a whole birdcage of bone, so you better strike hard.”
The throat: “Make sure you cut deep and finish the job. Don’t cut shallow or you’ll just have a pissed-off bastard spraying blood all over you.”
The area under the sternum: “My favorite. You stab him right up through there at an angle. There’s no bones to stop you, you might just nick the heart, and even if you don’t, his lungs’ll fill up and he’ll drown in his own blood.”
Then there were the arteries in the leg and groin.
“Best part about this is,” Merridack said, stabbing the dummy right where the leg met his crotch, “is even if he doesn’t bleed out in 30 seconds, he’s screaming too hard to chase you.”
Daniel shivered. Eric looked fascinated.
“Alright, now you try,” Merridack said, handing them each a knife.
Assassin’s Knife
Quality: Average
Durability: 20/20
Damage: 1 point for graze / 5 points for cut
Stab/deep cut: 10 points to limb / 20 to torso / 30 to neck / 50+ to head and heart
“Can we throw with these?” Eric asked as he held the knife in his palm.
“You can, but specially weighted ones are better. We’ll get there – learn the up-close work first.”
They spent the first hour on stabbing, the second on slicing. After the dummies were reduced to tatters, they moved on to throwing.
Throwing Knife
Quality: Average
Durability: 15/15
Damage: 1 point for graze / 5 points for cut
Piercing throw: 5 points to limb / 10 to torso / 20 to neck / 40+ to head and heart
“Put the blade flat against the palm of your hand, with the point down near your wrist. Use your thumb to press the knife in place against your fingers, which you hold out straight. That’s it… now when you throw, throw over-handed, and let the knife just glide out from under your thumb.”
Merridack wound up, threw –
THOCK.
The knife stuck deep in a dummy’s throat.
Just like in that Vadaleros guy’s neck, Daniel thought with a shudder.
After about a thirty minutes, new stats appeared:
New skill: Knife throwing
Points Awarded: +1
After a couple of hours of practice – during which Eric excelled and Daniel basically sucked – they mo
ved on to pickpocketing and purse cutting. There was a special dummy with bells attached to every pocket on its body.
“In real life there won’t be a bell, but trust me, if your victim feels your hand in his pocket, he’s going to start making noises a lot louder than any bell,” Merridack said.
It took them nearly forever, but Eric was finally able to consistently pick the dummy’s pants pockets without triggering the alarm. Daniel got to the place where he could do it about once in five tries.
“Hey, I just got 10 points on pickpocketing!” Eric whispered happily to Daniel. “What’d you get?”
Daniel looked at the translucent numbers floating mid-air.
Skill: Knife throwing
Points: +3
You have a 3% chance above average to hit a target.
“Uh… I did okay,” Daniel muttered.
Merridack overheard the remark and just shook his head in disgust. “It’s a good thing you’re going to be a thief, because you’d make the worst assassin ever. Now – on to dodging and climbing.”
They moved over to the obstacle course, which was a giant Rube Goldberg machine of wooden beams, clock-like gears, and levers.
“What’s all this do?” Eric asked.
“Boys!” Merridack yelled.
Half a dozen of his minions came running over. Some positioned themselves at levers, while the others manned a grain-mill-like wheel pushed by three men at a time.
“Go!” Merridack commanded.
The men began pulling the levers and pushing the wheel.
The beams of the obstacle course began to move up and down.
Every few seconds, heavy sacks of sand would swing from the top of the framework, swooping by.
Trap doors clattered open, then slowly wound shut.
The whole thing turned into a shifting, moving death trap.
Merridack jumped into its midst, hopping from a log jutting up into the air onto a crossbeam. He dodged bags of sand falling from the ceiling, grabbed a bar and swung to a platform, then jumped a second before it fell away beneath his feet.
In short, it was like watching a monkey navigate a gigantic machine intent on grinding it to pulp.
He made it to the other end in twenty seconds flat, not even out of breath.
“Whoa,” Eric gasped.
“That’s nothing,” Merridack grinned. “You should see it when we lash knives and swords to everything and grease the wood with pig fat.”
“Do we have to do that?” Daniel asked, aghast.
“Of course. How else are you going to learn?”
“While it’s moving?” Eric asked incredulously.
“Not at first. You’d get a hand caught and grind it into pulp, or get a foot snapped off. We have a few healing potions tucked away, but I don’t want to waste them on your feeble asses. No, you’ll start with the machine at rest… and then we’ll see how you do.”
The machine ‘at rest’ was plenty hard. Daniel slipped off logs and platforms several times, and got banged up over and over.
Eric did better, but not by much. By the end of the training, they were both black and blue – although Daniel did receive a “Congratulations – Level Up!”
Daniel checked his stats:
Level: 2
Strength: 11
Intelligence: 11
Dexterity: 15
Endurance: 14
Willpower: 12
Thievery: 4
Sleight of Hand: 3
Pickpocketing: 4
Knife throwing: 4
Merridack wasn’t as impressed. “You two are the sorriest excuses for a thief and an assassin I’ve ever seen.”
Eric and Daniel looked at each other nervously.
But Merridack wasn’t finished.
“…however, you have potential,” he added with the slightest hint of a smile.
14
The training ended for the day. Daniel and Eric were rewarded with platters of roasted meat and fried potatoes, which they ate with the rest of the thieves at the table.
The boys could barely keep their eyes open.
“What time is it?” Daniel yawned.
Eric flicked his wrist and checked his menu screen. “Holy crap, it’s almost eleven o’clock at night!”
“In the real world?!”
“No, in the game world, dummy. It’s only been, like, three hours in the real world.”
“So we’ve been in here twelve hours?!”
“About, yeah.”
Merridack overheard their conversation.
“‘Game world’?” he sneered. “What kind of daft idiots are you two?”
Then he ignored them.
Daniel and Eric swapped knowing looks. Apparently NPCs were programmed to discount any mention of things outside the game, too.
Daniel looked around the dim room. With no light coming in from the outside world, it was impossible to tell what hour it was.
“How do you know what time it is in here?” Eric asked Merridack.
The master thief pointed over to the corner of the room, where a very large hourglass was suspended on a rotating frame. Almost half of the sand had run out of the top.
“That’s twelve hours’ worth of sand,” Merridack said. “When we flip the glass, we know it’s time for our day to begin.”
Eric frowned. “What do you mean, for your day to begin?”
“Do you think a thief lives by the same hours as everyone else? Our day starts at dusk, when all the gamblers and drunkards come out, just begging for their money to be lifted.”
“But… if that hourglass is right… then your ‘day’ started hours ago,” Daniel said. “Why are you still in here?”
“Because I was training your sorry asses!” Merridack snapped.
“If you work at night, why were you in the forest this morning?” Eric asked.
“Because there were stories of travelers pouring in by the thousands, all of them coming from the woods. So me and the boys decided to go see what’s what. Unfortunately, all I wound up with was a sub-par thief and assassin.”
Daniel realized Merridack was talking about all the new players spawning for the first time on launch day.
‘Thousands’? There should be millions of people playing today. Maybe tens of millions.
Did they all spawn here near Blackstone – or did they wind up in other cities in the Shattered Lands?
“All right, boys,” Merridack said as he stood up from the table, “time to get to work.”
The other thieves all stood up and started gathering their things.
Daniel and Eric stood up, too.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Merridack scoffed.
“Aren’t we going with you?” Eric asked.
“What, so I can lose you on the first day? You’ve barely begun to train! Stay here and get some shut-eye. You’ve got a long day ahead of you tomorrow.”
Daniel checked his stats and found the bar for sleep was in the red, and that his Endurance and Strength stats had partially fallen.
“When do you guys sleep around here?” Eric asked Merridack.
“Once each man brings me at least five pieces of silver. Until then, he slaves for his sleep.”
Jeez, Daniel thought.
“So enjoy your first night of rest on the house,” Merridack said as he put on his hat and grabbed his staff. “It’ll be the last free thing I give you around here, for tomorrow you start earning your keep.”
“Great,” Eric muttered as the thieves opened the iron door and filtered out in a line.
“Bolt the door behind us – and don’t open it unless you hear three knocks, then two,” Merridack ordered as he slammed the door shut behind him.
When they’d bolted the door, Daniel asked, “You think now’s a good time to log out? Maybe grab a bite to eat in the real world and then come back in?”
“Sounds good to me,” Eric agreed.
They crawled, aching and bruised, into the wooden bunks in the thie
ves’ den.
“What do you think’s gonna happen to us while we’re logged out?” Daniel asked as he waved his hand and brought up the gaming menu. “What if Merridack comes back and kills us because we won’t get out of bed?”
“Well, the game makes you log out every five hours of real world time… so if you’re playing by their rules, I can’t see them screwing you over intentionally.”
“Other games let you program what your character does while you’re away,” Daniel suggested. “Like mine ore or build shelter.”
“That’s true – maybe we should check the menus.”
“Hold on a second,” Daniel said as he selected ‘Character Settings.’
The main menu disappeared, to be replaced with a submenu that included the option ‘Character Actions While Not Playing.’
He selected that and was presented with a notification and a menu:
During logout periods, the player’s character remains active but will not communicate with other players and NPCs. If you want your character to do a specific action during log-off, select from menu below.
Sleep
Rest
Build
Mine
Work
Other
“Check out Character Settings,” he called out to Eric. “You’ll see it.”
He chose ‘Sleep,’ at which point a text message popped up:
You will not be penalized by the game while in sleep mode, IF your character is not in the middle of a dangerous situation, such as a battle. Note: NPCs will not harm you, but other players MIGHT try to find and kill you in your sleep, so choose your sleeping place carefully!
“Did you find the sleep menu and get the message?” Daniel called out.
“Yeah – good thing we’ve got that iron door there,” Eric said.
“Okay – see you on the other side?”
“Yup.”
Daniel returned to the Main Menu and selected “Log Out.”
The thieves’ den and the bunk beds faded to white.
The pleasant computer voice whispered in his ear, “Thank you for visiting the Shattered Lands. Come back and play again soon!”
Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series Page 8
