by Matt Ryan
84 Damage
+25 XP
+10 Evil
You sick bastard.
+ 1 proficiency in spears.
I’d killed many NPCs in my day, probably in the millions, but I’d never had one stare at me the way Farmer John did. I breathed hard, trying to push back the guilt that was creeping up into my conscience. This is just a game, not real people. Get over it.
I waited for their bodies to disappear and the loot to appear, but nothing changed. I knelt and searched their pockets. I found three dollars and thirty-two cents. I stared at George Washington on the paper bill. It was American money. So freaking weird. Even the paper felt right. What the hell did Farmer Bob here think about this bill? I put it in my pocket and it went into my inventory.
Bank: $3.32
The woman in the blue dress moved next to me, looking at the men on the ground, as if confused by it all. “What did you do? Are you some kind of monster?” She knelt next to the dead body of Farmer John and lifted his head, blood spilling onto her hands. “No! Please . . . please wake up, John.”
What the hell was this game? The hack and slash with no consequences was part of the fun, the escape from reality. I didn’t want to feel this bad about killing a computer character, they were just numbers in a machine.
“Man,” Gor said. “That was hardcore, Mago.”
“Look at her,” KILLian said. “It’s like she’s truly devastated by this.”
The woman looked up at us. “Of course, I’m devastated. You just killed my lover. He was going to marry me.”
“He was trying to kill you,” I argued.
“That was just a misunderstanding. I can start a fire with my hand, so what? Doesn’t mean I’m evil. You’re evil. Twenty points of evil now. Just wait until you get to fifty. I know you won’t be able to control yourself, and I’ll be there to see you rot in jail.”
“Jesus,” I said, backing away from the woman as she grabbed the other man’s spear. “We’ll just be on our way.”
She collapsed into sobs and rested her head on John’s chest.
I turned away from her and looked to the glimmer of a small town sitting on a knoll. “I’m heading to that town.” I took off at a jog, trying to put some distance between me and the woman in the blue dress.
What had she been talking about with the twenty points of evil? I pulled up my stats as I jogged along.
Magoton:
Level 2
Spec 1: None
Spec 2: None
Bank: $3.32
XP 250/300
HP 150/150
Mana 100
Stamina 100
Attribute Points: 5
Crit rating 4%
Attack Power 0
Spell Power 0
Agility 0
Charisma 0
Intelligence 0
Strength 0
Service 0
Merchant 0
Evil 20
Good 0
Weapon specialties:: 2 points in Spears
I saw another tab, right behind the Crit rating and clicked on it.
Chance of a critical strike increased by 2%
if you hit a critical spot on your foe, chances are increased greatly of a successful critical strike.
I check my one weapon next.
Farmer’s Wooden Spear:
100 -150 Damage, may give splinters.
Bonus points for imaginative uses.
That would explain the critical hits I received on the two farmers then.
I stared at the low stats, and a feeling of being weak spread over me. I wanted to up all my stats, except maybe Evil. The woman had suggested something would happen when I’d got over fifty . . . jail time, was it? Nothing like killing a player’s experience by locking them up in jail.
I checked my map and saw that Gor and KILLian were represented by two green dots moving behind my blue dot. Most of the map was covered in a fog, but more was revealed as I continued to jog forward. Gor and KILLian caught up to me and ran to either side.
As we jogged, I felt the tension from the last situation sitting right there on the surface, but none of us talked about it. Good, I didn’t want to talk about it. The further I could get away from the woman and her wailing, the better.
Chapter Six
A name popped up on my screen:
Parkman’s Town
It held a dozen structures, mostly modern-looking houses with stucco walls and tiled roofs. I smelled a bit of campfire in the air, and saw tendrils of smoke rising from a couple of chimney stacks. One thing that seemed to be lacking was other players. Usually, they’d be running around and questing, all in launch-day craziness. Maybe Avarice Online’s mystery had backfired and nobody wanted to participate in a game they knew nothing about?
There were a few NPCs walking around though. One carried a bundle of hay toward a pen of brown cows. Another woman walked by, heading toward the end of the town where a small church sat. Its steeple held a cross with a circle around it. I wasn’t sure what religion it was, but it seemed like some Christian one.
I walked slowly, and kept my attention on the few people walking around the dirt street. Just to be sure, I used the spear I’d taken from Farmer Bob as a walking stick, but mostly as a warning to others that I was armed. It seemed to work well, as NPCs moved to the other side of the street as I passed.
“Hey, there’s a store,” KILLian said, pointing ahead.
“You think they sell pants?” Gor asked.
I saw the wooden sign flopping in the soft breeze and headed over. Right next to the front door was a passed-out homeless man. Or at least I assumed he was. The tattered, stained clothes were a hint, but the smell of urine and general lack of hygiene solidified my opinion. Interesting, how Avarice held such details. Homelessness was used in other games, but mainly as a plot device or trap. We walked past the man and into the store.
The store was kind of like a merchant store from the old days, or at least what I’d seen in pictures. The two aisles inside were stuffed with various packaged foods and edibles. Some had labels and prices with dollar signs on them. Such an interesting place, but it wasn’t really telling me what this game was, exactly. From the moment I’d fallen off the cliff, I couldn’t pin it down. Was it a fantasy game, where we’d fight mythical creatures? Or heck, for all I knew, an alien invasion could be coming from the skies and it would be an all-out war of swords versus lasers.
I walked up to the shop keeper, a skinny man with arms folded and a mild sneer as he looked at me from top to bottom. What was his problem?
“Excuse me,” I said. “Have you ever seen anything magical in this realm?”
“Like what, my wife going down on me once a decade?” he said with a slight jerk of his head. “What do you want, kid? And if you try anything, know I’ll mop the floor with you.”
“Why would I—what?” I looked back at KILLian and she shrugged. “No, I was wondering what kind of creatures this land holds. Are there dragons in the sky, trolls under the bridges, Drynocks waiting in the dark to suck my blood, or aliens in the sky?”
“Kid, I didn’t understand a word you just said. Are you going to buy something?”
I frowned and looked around at the few edibles on display. Food buffs were nice and could heal me, but I didn’t have enough money. If I were going to buy anything, it should be something I might be able to use in-game. And then I spotted one—a flashlight. I examined it and saw I had just enough money to buy it with two batteries included.
“A flashlight?” KILLian asked.
“Have you ever been in a dark place?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
Gor went up to the store clerk and removed his jacket skirt and put it on.
“My god man, put some pants on,” the owner said.
“My good sir, as you can see, I’ve had the grave misfortune of entering this fine world without the comforts of pantaloons. I doth require said pants and would be willing to forgo said c
oin for said slacks? Doth thy inventory contain such amenities?” Gor asked.
The guy squinted. “What?”
“He’s asking if you sell pants,” KILLian said.
“Yeah, I got some pants,” he reached in a bucket behind the counter that contained several items of clothing.
“Thank you, good sir. Your kindness will be sung for the ages. Now, I am a very poor man—”
“Here, just shut up, take them and get out. No charge.” The man tossed the pants while covering his eyes.
“Thank you, good sir. I will thine adorn these fine threads and bid thee a farewell.”
“Just get out of my store, freak.”
“Aye-Aye,” Gor said with a salute.
“Hey,” he said, nodding to me. “I have a box near the door where people donate stuff, I think there’s a shirt in there.”
I looked down at my shirt. Just a white T-shirt that had a tinge of orange from the rusty water in the Slabs. There were a few stains on it as well. The basket near the front door held a black, button-up shirt made with a thick fabric. I pulled it over mine and checked the stats on it.
Basic Black Shirt
Did you really think you would get any bonus stats for a shirt you pulled out of a free bin?
I left the shop, putting my flashlight into my inventory tab.
Flashlight
Light the way in the dark
Beware, batteries may run out.
Illuminance rating: 10 yards at 100%
Each ten yards yield 20% less light.
While inspecting the item, I hadn’t noticed the homeless man’s hand grabbing my foot, until I was going down, face first into the dirt. I crashed hard and found the homeless man climbing over me. He stuffed something into my hand, then rolled back to his spot to pass out. It all happened so quick, I didn’t even have a chance to use my spear on the guy.
Gor ran over to the man, his fist raised high. At some point, he must have realized the man was about as big of a threat as a sack of potatoes because he aborted the mission and looked back at me. “You okay, Mago?”
“Yes,” I palmed the item, which I knew was paper and turned away to read it.
Go to Tommy’s Inn at Brayers City and ask for Tommy.
“What’s it say?” KILLian asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Just some side quest. I rejected it.”
The truth was, no quest had popped up. It must have come from my benefactor. I had questions, but the fact my benefactor got this NPC to give me the note meant they had influence in the game code itself. Another reason I wanted to meet with this person. Who were they? I’d gone over it a million times, and I couldn’t come up with the justification for the money spent to acquire me.
KILLian looked at me warily. “Don’t be holding back on us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, we’re in a party, remember?”
I looked at my map and saw they were still with me. “I’ve got to go straight to the city, so I don’t know if you guys want to go. We’d be skipping a lot of these starter quests.”
“Oh please,” Gor said. “Those are the worst. I kind of like you guys, so I say we keep going.”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if having them along would slow me down or not. In-game friends were cheap to come by, if I needed to pick up more . . . but there was something about KILLian. There was a mystery there I’d like to solve. I’d spotted her, more than once, looking around, as if the thing she was looking for would pop up at any second.
“I think I should go straight to the city as well,” KILLian said, then a quest for all of us popped up.
QUEST: Gather hay for the livestock.
“God, no,” Gor said and swiped his hand, rejecting the quest.
I sighed and knew right away that KILLian had known I was lying. If I’d received a quest, they both would have seen it.
“We need directions to the city.” KILLian glanced at my pocket, then found a man walking down the street and asked him.
The elderly man stopped and took off his straw hat to talk with her. “Just stick to the road, it’s a safe path to the city. Don’t stray into the forest. There are dark things there.”
“Goblins?” I asked.
“What’s a goblin?” he asked, but said it wrong, like goo-bin. Shaking his head, he continued, “No, I’m talking about bands of criminals, or packs of wolves, but the scariest thing out there is a middle-aged, bald man named Jeffrey. Many folks think it’s just a myth, but I’ve been around long enough to know the boy before he became the monster.”
“What kind of bad guy is named Jeffrey?” Gor scoffed.
The old man seemed confused and began to dust off his straw hat. “Evil is most successful when it masquerades as normal, or even worse, good. Those Brayer city-folk believe the evil Spider Queen on Spider Island is their biggest problem, but in my experience, true evil always comes in pairs.” He glanced at me. “If you see Jeffrey, run. Run for your lives.” Then the old man stuffed the hat back on his head and walked away.
“Rude old guy,” Gor muttered under his breath.
“Okay. We’ll stick to the road. If this is like any other V Corp. game, we should be fine,” I said. All these games seemed to maintain a safe path, as long as you kept to the boundaries of the road—especially in the starter areas.
We followed the dirt road out of town and started heading toward the city at a jogging pace. When we reached the edge of the forest, a name popped up in front of me:
Brayer’s Forest
Non-PvP zone
No PVP. That was good. I wasn’t ready to start dealing with asshole players with happy trigger fingers. If some higher-level douche bag decided to camp me, it could waste hours of my time. Not that I wasn’t above camping someone. Basically, it meant you kept killing a person over and over again, usually at a respawn point. I’d once had a client pay me to camp another player until they logged off entirely. I felt bad from the start. It was kind of a dick thing to do, but the guy had been resilient. Thaddeus, I think his name was. He’d tried every tactic, but I’d been better equipped. It wasn’t a fair fight to start with.
The things I’d do for $5 . . . .
A mile into our jog, I started to feel a burn in my legs and lungs. I was winded, but I could maintain the pace. Gor appeared to be taking the exercise the worst, but he too could maintain it, at least for a little while.
I checked my stats and saw one was lower:
Stamina 50/100
I’d lost half my stamina running at a steady pace.
After what I would guess was mile two, we slowed to a walk, and a stat popped across my screen.
+10 Stamina
Good job.
As soon as the stat floated out in front of me, I felt better. I’d never had full immersion gear, so I wasn’t sure if it was in my head or not, but I felt stronger, as if I could run farther, and fight longer. I guess it technically was in my head. This whole world was in my head. It felt awesome though, and I wanted more levels. I knew I still had five attribute points to distribute, and I resisted putting them into stamina to see how much better I could feel. Or even intelligence. It never hurt to be smarter.
“There’s magic here,” KILLian said.
“What?” I asked as Gor wheezed in big breaths behind us.
“You were wondering what type of game this is. We have a mana bar. That means there’s magic.”
“And we have spell power,” I said. “I wonder what type of magic they use in this game?”
A soft noise came from the forest and we stopped. It almost sounded like a baby crying out for its mom. The noise grew, until I saw it just off the path. Only a fool would fall for the trap, but KILLian stopped jogging, as well as Gor. They both had eyes on the tiny deer, screaming for help. I knew it for exactly what it was; a trap.
Chapter Seven
“We can’t leave it,” KILLian said pointing at the creature in pain.
“We’re not going near that,” I
said shaking my head.
The deer bleated in pain; its baby leg pulling on the metal trap chained to the ground. I met eyes with the animal and they pleaded for me to help, as if I was the only person in the world who could save it from the fate it inevitably had coming. Even my 20 points of evil heart was getting tugged on, but not enough for me to fall into an obvious trap. Only an idiot—
“Screw it,” KILLian said and rushed over to the deer.
She got one hand on it when a man appeared from the forest, jumped on her back, and dragged her toward the forest with a knife at her neck. He wore a green and blue outfit with a band over his eyes. A bandit if I ever saw one.
“Gorgon will strike thee down!” Gor screamed. A battle cry I imagined he had rehearsed many times in the mirror.
He ran right toward the bandit, when two more appeared. Gor got a few feet from the edge of the forest when I heard a snap. He yelled and grabbed at his leg, where a bear trap had ensnared him. He pulled at the trap and stretched out, trying to reach the man pulling KILLian toward the forest.
“Let her go!” Gor demanded.
I observed the scene before me, thinking that I could drop from our party and get safely to the city. I gazed down the road. My benefactor was there, waiting. I didn’t really want to waste time with this.
I sighed and grabbed my spear. There didn’t appear to be a targeting system, so I picked the closest bandit to me and threw the spear as hard as I could. It flew in the air much faster than I’d expected and struck the bandit near Gor, right through his neck.
Good Job! Bandit Smokes is Dead.
138 Damage
+ 45 XP
I ran as fast as I could, and went to the bandit I’d speared. In the process of recovering my spear, a dagger hit me in the shoulder and my lost health points flashed in front of me.
-37 HP
I thrusted the spear into the next bandit. KILLian was busy with her own struggle. She moved her body while grabbing the guy’s hand, then sent him flying over her back, landing on the ground. She grabbed his dagger and stabbed him in the heart.
