by Sam Ferguson
“Then let the games begin.”
Brian said, “No head start needed. Let’s both just make a run for it.”
“Deal,” Barry said and then took off to the west. Brian thought it odd since the target was due south of Fezhik.
He took a moment to read up on the quest. Often there was a bonus for the assassination method or some other criteria, and he was going to be sure to do this right if he was going to shut Barry up.
A hermit by the name of Longbones has been stealing from the Miter Camp outside of Fezhik. He has injured several guards and lays traps to fend off frontal assaults to his cave. Penetrate his defenses and slay him by any means necessary. Reward is 150 GP. A bonus of 100 GP will be awarded if you manage to slay him without being detected.
Recommended for level 1-5. 1 player quest.
Brian read the passage twice. The traps might prove difficult, but this was still a low-level quest. Shouldn’t be too much for him to handle. He opened his map and placed a marker on the southern gates. No need to backtrack to the east and then around by the docks. It would be easier to make a direct line.
He sprinted to the south, making his way along the main roads as much as possible. He ran into several people on the way, causing a few NPCs to cry out in anger or surprise, but he didn’t stop to help them up. He managed to avoid a pair of guards on patrol, but in doing so he slammed right into a person carrying a load of books. The books went flying across the road and the NPC landed face-first on the street.
[Fezhik reputation -5]
That seems harsh. Brian thought. Oh well, no time to worry about that now. He had a target to hit, and he had to beat Barry to it. He continued sprinting until his stamina bar hit empty and his avatar was forced to walk while heaving for breath. I could keep running. Brian thought. He waited until the stamina bar was half full and then sprinted again. He repeated the cycle twice more before reaching the southern gates. Fortunately the portcullis was open, so there wouldn’t be any holdups at the gate. Part of him had worried the Barry had gone west because the southern gates might have been locked or something.
One of the guards called out, “Why the hurry?” but none of the NPCs moved to interfere.
Once outside the gates he noticed the in-game sun was on its descent, nearly below the horizon. This would help with the stealth aspect. He left the main road and cut through the berry bushes and ferns until he came to an old shed near an empty stable some twenty yards away from a wooden hut. He could tell from the collapsed roof and the claw marks on the widows and walls that no NPC would be living there. Stepping into the shed, he donned the Morr’Tai gear.
[Leather Morr’Tai initiate hood equipped. Stealth +10 Armor +11]
[Leather Morr’Tai initiate hauberk equipped. Armor +11]
[Leather Morr’Tai initiate trousers equipped. Armor +11]
[Leather Morr’Tai initiate gloves equipped. Armor +11]
[Leather Morr’Tai initiate boots equipped. Armor +11]
Successfully changed in private, Brian emerged from the shed and continued along his way. He entered the forest about two hundred yards after the shed and began sprinting again up over a hill down into a valley, making a wide berth around a hornet nest hanging from a tree. He was not about to let Barry beat him because a nest of hornets ambushed him.
As he ran around the base of a tall hill he stopped and found a large wolf-like animal walking lazily toward him. Blue stripes running vertically down either side of its snout caught the moonlight and glistened with an eerie radiance. Dots of similarly moonlight-sensitive fur speckled its back and ran down the top line of its abundantly bushy tail. The green dot above the animal informed Brian that there was a good chance for success, and either way, his stamina bar was too low now to try and outrun it. The wolf creature’s ears laid back, and it emitted a low growl as it took a step backward. Brian pulled his dagger and decided to take a preemptive approach to the battle. He cried out as he leapt within striking range. The animal bared its teeth and snapped at his arm. He swung as the fang-filled mouth lunged in—he took a small amount of damage, but landed a solid hit on the animal’s neck. A HP bar appeared under the green dot that stood in place of the unknown name for this animal, and nearly half of the HP emptied from the bar.
The creature howled and charged again. Brian swung the dagger, but he did so too early. He was struck with full force and knocked to the ground.
Brian’s stamina bar drained to about twenty percent, and his HP bar lost about a tenth as the animal bit down on him. Swinging twice more with his dagger, he dispatched the beast.
[+50 XP]
Brian quickly looted the corpse
[+1 moondust wolf pelt]
[+1 moondust wolf tooth]
A moondust wolf, huh? Brian thought to himself. He would have to read up on what those were worth after the quest was over. No time for extra reading until the hermit was assassinated. Brian started running again toward the map marker. He scavenged a few berries on the run as he crashed through bushes. They wouldn’t help much, but every little bit of HP restoration might come in handy. He was running through the bushes anyway, so it seemed like a no brainer. Worst case scenario, he could give them to Rhonda, have her make potions, and split the profits.
He saw two more wolves on the way to the cave but was careful to stay out of their perceptive range and avoid getting slowed down by fighting them. When he was within sight of the cave marked on his map, he stopped and watched. He wanted to be thorough in checking for traps, and for any sign of Barry.
A deer picked its way between the trees off to the left of the cave. It nibbled at the grasses, unaware that Brian was watching it. If he had owned a bow, he would have taken a shot at it, but there wasn’t much he could do by throwing his dagger. He watched a couple more seconds and then realized the deer was heading straight for a tripwire—the animal triggered the trap, and a ram made of a log with spikes affixed to the front came swinging down from the tree branches above.
The deer never stood a chance.
The animal’s HP bar appeared just long enough to fully drain for Brian’s benefit and then the animal bounced along the ground, thrown several yards by the ram. The flailing limbs triggered another trap, this one a rope net that hoisted the animal up into the air.
Brian scrutinized both triggers and then began picking his way through the trees in front of the cave. Studying the ground, he checked for tripwires with each step. He saw what looked like a possible pressure plate and avoided it, only to find himself nearly pressing into a trip wire at his left. He delicately lifted his legs and moved forward. When he was certain he had avoided both traps he turned around. Still no sign of Barry.
Perhaps the western gate had been closed and Barry was a couple minutes behind him. Still, Brian couldn’t dawdle. He increased his speed slightly, leaping over a couple of wires and skirting around an obvious pit covered with loose branches. He missed a pressure plate, however, and stepped squarely on it. Not knowing what to expect, Brian somersaulted forward and left. A pair of darts flew through the area he had just been standing in, launched from a chute of bamboo cleverly hidden in the bushes near the pressure plate. He didn’t even want to consider whether those darts had been poisoned.
He finished picking his way to the cave and then looked around one last time for Barry. Not seeing anything, he moved into the cave and crept along, using his sneaking ability to try to conceal his movements.
The cave was dark, with very few torches inside to light the way.
A couple of bear traps dotted the first ten yards of the cave, but they were easily avoided. The trip wire in the shadows was harder to see, but Brian caught it too and was able to continue forward without triggering any traps inside the cave.
He rounded a corner to the north and then the cave dipped downward. Brian crept as close to the darker wall as he could, rolling through the patches of light cast by the few torches in the hallway until he reached a large, fifty-foot wide and hundred-foot lon
g chamber. There were four pools of murky blue water, each sporting white mushrooms in the middle of the chamber. A small cabin of logs sat some twenty yards behind the pools, the roof nearly touching the stalactites hanging from the ceiling directly above it. A few torches hung from the walls in the chamber as well as a couple of larger campfires, throwing light throughout the rest of the chamber.
As Brian watched, a tall man opened the cabin door and came out wearing a tattered pair of trousers with the right pant leg nearly entirely missing. The rags only barely kept the NPC decently covered as he walked to each pool in turn, checked the mushrooms, and then went back inside the cabin.
Easy enough. Brian thought. Creep up beside the house, wait for the hermit to emerge, then stab him in the back while he’s making his rounds. Brian didn’t wait another second, fearing that Barry might be just a minute or less behind him. Hopefully the traps outside would slow him down long enough.
Brian crept to the side of the house and then turned around. The pools were positioned badly for a strike from this location—he’d be caught before he could creep up on the hermit. Quietly sneaking around the back of the house, he froze.
The hermit was standing there, checking another pool. He hadn’t counted on there being a back door. Brian tiptoed backward and out of view until he heard the back door close. Then he carefully went out and around to the other side.
The front door opened. The hermit started walking and Brian moved to follow but then stopped. The pattern wasn’t the same. Previously the hermit had come out and checked the outermost pool first, then worked counterclockwise to check the rest before circling back to the front door. This time the hermit was heading to the pool in the middle, and he was far enough ahead of Brian that he would turn well before Brian got to him. If the hermit turned right, Brian could get him, but if he turned left, then the hermit would see Brian and he would forfeit his bonus.
He couldn’t just beat Barry. He needed that bonus.
Brian snuck back behind the corner of the house and watched.
Curses! Brian thought when the hermit turned to the right. Should have risked it! It was too late now. The hermit would be facing Brian no matter what. He backed up and then considered going for the hermit once the front door closed. After all, there was only one pool behind the cabin. No variables to consider.
Brian was just about to turn around when a hand moved in front of his view and grabbed him from behind. A dagger flashed before his eyes from the other side—a feathersteel dagger with a black handle.
“Heeeeeeere’s Barry!” Barry called out over the smart comms.
“Barry! What are you doing!?” Brian called out. “You can’t kill a fellow assassin!”
Barry laughed as the dagger plunged deep into what Brian assumed was his avatar’s neck. A sickly, wet sound played as a freshly bloodied dagger came back into view, and then Brian’s avatar dropped to the ground.
“That would be true if you were a full member of the Morr’Tai guild,” Barry said in his annoyingly condescending tone. “I took a chance that perhaps you had lied about killing someone in the marketplace.”
Brian’s avatar was still on the ground. His viewpoint shifted, pulling back out of first person and hovering about ten feet off the ground some twenty yards away. His respawn countdown timer started at ten, allowing him enough time to watch Barry take the victory from him.
Barry waited for the hermit to emerge from the rear door, crept up, and slit the man’s throat just as he had done to Brian. As if that wasn’t enough, Barry returned to Brian’s body and looted it.
“Just as I suspected. Your tally ribbon is blank. You haven’t killed anyone. Otherwise you would have started in the guild with a scarlet border around the edge. I won’t be in trouble for killing you. Oh! You had three luck flowers! Do you know how rare these are!?” Barry squealed with delight.
Score one for Barry. Brian sighed. Screw it, score like five for Barry.
“Now to see what’s in the hermit’s house. With three luck flowers I bet I find some really good treasure.” Barry was laughing now. “Oh man, this is too good. See, you can’t win against me. You just—”
Brian forced the respawn early. There was no reason to listen to the gloating.
Everything went black, and then he saw through his avatar’s eyes once more, standing in the Morr’Tai underground lair. He stood near the save point.
[-3 luck blossoms]
[-15 luck]
[QUEST FAILED: HERMIT CRAB]
“Ugh,” Brian said. He opened his stat sheet and noticed that the fifty XP from killing the moondust wolf was gone too. The whole quest had been a dreadful waste.
5
The Scholar of Anorit
Brian ground his teeth as he removed the VR headset and placed it on the ground next to his bed roll, kicking the alpaca wool blanket from his legs. Flexing his shoulder blades as he brought his hands to his face, he used both hands to rub his eyes and then massage the skin on his forehead and cheeks. The headset was nice, lightweight with high-quality foam padding that kept his skin from feeling either too hot or suffocated. Professor Rojas’s college buddy sure had done well for himself and had sent some awesome gear for them to use on this beta test. Still, it did feel good to be free of it, especially after such a frustrating end to his first gaming session.
He exhaled heavily as he stretched his head back to rest on the thatched wall behind him. The graphics had been amazing, the environments stunning, and the interface was super user-friendly. But even with that being the case, he didn’t want to dive back in right now, not with that frustration hanging over him. Plus, he didn’t want to run the chance of meeting Barry back at the assassin guild when he showed up to collect his reward for completing the quest.
Brian stood up and stretched the rest of his muscles as he considered a quick snack before turning in for the night. Nah. It would take too much effort to scrounge something up that would be worthwhile enough to keep him up at this point. Instead, he made a quick visit to the latrine out back and then performed his nightly ritual of tidying up of his equipment and notebooks before turning in for the night.
Especially after the virtual excitement and simulated bustle of the city, the quiet around him seemed oppressive. He considered turning on some sort of white noise with his computer, but tossed the thought away quickly, feeling it would be a poor substitute for the companionship of other people. It had been an odd month’s worth of work so far this summer.
In previous years, four or five people would have shared this living space, and another team might have joined them during the day from a Mapuche settlement a few miles away. The local people were eager to learn about their ancestors and be linked with their past. This year was turning out to be strange though. Nearly all the locals had evacuated, and safety restrictions had left only a skeleton crew—just the folks from tonight’s game—plodding away at the various dig sites in an effort to preserve what could be saved either through 3D modeling or outright evacuation of the artifacts. None of them knew whether they would have one more day or one hundred to work.
From the shadow of the volcano where Brian’s dig site was located, things seemed calm, the occasional rumble reminding him that things were active and moving deep beneath him. He understood the reasons for concern, but he just couldn’t work up the same level of worry the authorities seemed to feel. He guessed it was a glaring testament to his youth that working in view of three volcanoes which sat nestled among a pack of fault lines during a period of unprecedented tectonic activity didn’t produce more anxiety in him.
Actually, working outdoors in the rainforest of southern Chile gave him such a sense of peace. He imagined the great, smoking sentinels were somehow working to show him what he needed to find. Some of the quakes over the last few years had actually given them more of what they’d needed than taken it away. As he stowed the last of his electronic gear securely, he checked the seismic readout on his virtual display just for good measure. Lookin
g good. He sighed with satisfaction and tossed a shirt over the screen so the blinking lights wouldn’t disturb his rest before kneeling down and climbing into his sleeping bag.
Tomorrow would be a good day. He had a clearly mapped-out plan in his mind for where he wanted to start documenting with the drone. There would be some great images to send to Meredith. She was a thorny one based on their interactions so far, but he was excited about the prospect of the virtual simulations that could be created.
If they were anything like what he had just experienced in the game… Brian made a satisfied whistling sound through his teeth. Wow, that game world had sure been something. There would be time to get his work done early and then possibly make up some game time before he would be expected to present himself for the nightly virtual meeting.
As he kneaded the pillow to get it into a comfortable shape, his mind kept replaying scenes from the game. The fire kraken knocking people into the water, the way the spines on the steggo’s sides had shuddered when it was attacking, the sound of the great horn that had scared the Jathler away from the cave entrance. He made a quick mental tally in his mind of the quests that had been added to his HUD during those short couple of hours.
He wondered whether Meredith would give them more concrete instructions about either following the main questline or exploring any and every side quest that came up. Going straight to meet with the scholar from the order of Anorit could be fun, but if he were playing strictly for his own pleasure, he would probably put that off for quite a while. Just as he was starting to drift off, he remembered the promise of sword training with Freya at her shop. The final vestiges of annoyance surrounding the bet with Barry melted away as the vague image of those green eyes swallowed up the last of his conscious thoughts and he gave in to sleep.
