by Matt Ryan
QUEST: Kill Butcher Bob. This may increase your evil.
The quest had a light tinge of red to it. Great, a hard quest.
“Now leave. You are not welcome back here until you complete that quest,” he said, pointing to the door, and I didn’t wait to beat feet.
So, Denton was a dick. Pretty much like Lukin had warned. Probably some history between the two. This entire world seemed to be full of it, and it was getting to me. The lives of the NPC’s seemed too real.
At least I had gotten the quest from him, and now I was just a step away from getting to Spider Island. How far along was Trevor? I didn’t see him in the Shadow clan building and I dreaded he might be pulling further ahead of me.
I checked the quest and spotted the mark on the map for Butcher Bob’s. I strolled by some more stores and even found myself walking by Trinity Hall again. It really was a marvelous display of design and craftsmanship.
I watched as the various guards moved in and around the building. Getting in there wouldn’t be easy, not like the flower delivery—Trevor had made sure of that. Yet, if I found one way, I could find another. A straight attack to that fortress seemed liked suicide.
When I was ready, I’d be able to create my own shadows.
With that in mind, I practiced as I walked, keeping to the shadows and dodging people as best I could.
+2 Stealth
I kept doing it, and by the time I got to Butcher Bob’s shop, I had earned another two points.
I stayed in the shadows across the street from the shop and watched. There was no mistaking the butcher shop with various hanging meats in the windows. A wooden, carved sign hung above the door, displaying the name Butcher Bob’s.
A man moved further back in the shop. The figure moved in and out of my view and I couldn’t get an inspect to show on him at that distance. Taking a few cleansing breaths, I dashed across the street.
Near the window, I watched the man who had a white apron with a few blood stains smeared on it. He glanced at me and I entered his shop. A small bell chimed above me as I walked through the door.
His eyes narrowed as I approached the counter. First thing I did was inspect him.
Level 19, with a high skill in blades.
“Hello,” I said, trying to break the awkwardness.
“A service traveler.” He smiled. “Glad to see one of you for a change. You looking for a job?”
“Umm, yeah,” I stalled, trying to find an opening for attack. I’d have to end it quick, or the big man would crush me. I gripped my dagger and tried to slow my breathing. If my heart beat any faster, I might pass out or have a stroke.
Bob set his cleaver down on the table, then wiped his hands on a towel hanging from his apron string. He stopped and turned back to the table, grabbing a piece of paper. With his back turned, my eyes went wide. This was the moment. If I didn’t take it, I might not have another.
The meat hanging on large hooks to either side of me seemed to sway. Or maybe that was me. I brought up dash and gripped the handle of my rusty dagger. I had to kill this man. This simple working man who was trying to help me. Why did I even care? It was just a computer program facing me. Hell, I was just a program to a certain extent. None of it mattered.
But it did.
With Bob’s back turned, I took a deep breath, trying to summon the courage, but it kept slipping away as another voice pounded in my head. A voice of mercy and common decency. I couldn’t just kill this man cold blooded.
The smell of blood, meat, and spices filled the air and started to make me feel sick. I had the dagger in my hand, in my pocket. One dash. One stab. Maybe I would have a chance.
None of this is real. Now. Do it now!
The back door opened and a woman holding a baby came in. “Can you close up early tonight, honey?” she asked, then leaned in, kissing Bob on the cheek. She spotted me and her eyes narrowed. “What’s he in here for?”
“Just offering him a service job,” Bob said.
“I think it’s better if we let this one go. We don’t need the help.”
“Come on, dear. I wasn’t all that good at one point in my life either. People deserve the opportunity to prove us wrong.” Bob held up a wrapped chunk of meat. “Can you deliver this to Tommy’s Inn?”
I couldn’t move, or take my hand off the dagger in my jacket. The whole room came into hyper focus. The wife and the baby in her arms. The smell of blood and meat. The growing look of concern on Bob’s face.
I breathed out slowly, then put the dagger back in my inventory. “Yeah,” is all I could get out as Bob handed me the meat.
QUEST: Deliver meat to Tommy at Tommy’s Inn.
You bring the meat, he’ll give the money.
“Told you, he’s some weirdo,” his wife whispered loudly.
“You go on now, son. Prove her wrong.” Bob winked at me and I left his shop, holding onto the package of meat. I ran to the nearest shadow, tucked the meat under my arm, and threw up on the ground.
I moved to the log out option in the menu, and thought about stopping the game entirely. It was all too much. How could I kill that man, knowing what I knew? But if I didn’t, how could I get ahead in this game, or pay back my benefactor and start a new life?
The idea of not being able to do the quest seemed stupid. The guy was just pixelated blood and bones. A series of numbers in a computer. Not real. I wasn’t real. None of this was real!
Then why was there vomit on the ground? Why was my heart beating so hard? I felt in danger of a heart attack. Glancing at my HP, I saw I hadn’t lost any, but noticed the spear sitting in my inventory. The very spear I’d taken from a man at the start of the game, back when things seemed very different.
A terrible thought came to mind, and I searched the map for Parkman’s Town. I needed to go back to the start, right where it all began. I needed to see it, and hoped I was wrong about the feeling that currently overwhelmed me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I ran past the deer as it squealed from the trap wrapped around its back hoof, and kept running down the road. I had to know and I hoped I was wrong. I headed straight to the first town I’d been to. As I passed the forest and entered the rolling grassy hills, I slowed to a walk and entered the single street of Parkman’s Town. Just a few buildings and some farm animals in pens, but I was looking for the people. The dirt road splitting the town didn’t have a single person on it. Even the store was locked and the homeless guy wasn’t blocking the entrance anymore.
A bell rung and I gazed down the dirt road. At the end of the road, where the gravel met a small, cobbled pathway, stood a quaint church with a pointy steeple. The bell rang again and I walked closer to it. A woman wailed. I stopped short of the cobble stone path leading to the door of the church. I knew that woman’s voice and it came again, a crying out sound. A woman in agony. As if her heart had been crushed.
This couldn’t be happening. Why would they do this?
The sounds weren’t coming from inside the church, but from behind it.
Following the noise around to the back of the church, I found the congregation standing in a semi-circle, mostly wearing black. In the middle of them were two wooden caskets with a woman draped over one, sobbing uncontrollably, her blonde hair covering her face.
I didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. She was part of the first quest we ever took. The one where we saved, then killed, the two men who’d been after her, getting $3.32 for the effort.
This couldn’t be real. Any other game would’ve just had those two men respawn. They’d still be chasing the woman around for the next players. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have remained dead to the world after I’d killed them.
That went against everything in gaming. The hack and slash of the game world, with little to no consequences, was part of the draw.
The very mechanics of it didn’t make since. Inevitably, there would be players who just wanted to see the world burn. They would eventually be powerful enough to kill half the
city, before the guards brought them down. How could that work?
It made my quest to kill Bob much, much worse. He would die and he wouldn’t come back. His wife would be without him. His child would grow up and wonder what his dad was like. How could I do that to a kid?
“You,” I heard a woman scream.
Coming back into focus, I realized I hadn’t been paying attention to the group of people who were now all staring at me.
We made eye contact, the woman and I, while she pointed her finger at me in quick, stabbing motions. Her blonde hair matted against the tears on her face, and I think she wanted to say more, but couldn’t.
“Me?” I whispered.
“You killed them!” It burst out of her like lava from a volcano of pure hate. “You evil son of a bitch!”
The townspeople grumbled in anger.
“You killed them in cold blood,” she screeched, then picked up a spear leaning against the casket. She ran at me, spear in hand, screaming like Gor’s battle cry.
The crowd moved with her and their faces were beginning to match hers in rage. I turned and dashed down the road and kept running as fast as I could. After a minute, I looked back to see the mob still running after me with the blonde woman leading the charge.
Using dash on a constant rotation, I quickly put a long distance between us. By the time I got to the gates, I felt once again as if I might die from a heart attack and my stamina was at twenty points. I ignored the stupid guards this time around, and went right into the city.
This game was too much.
I kept using my dash all the way to Tommy’s Inn, thankful I’d dumped an extra five points into it, and ran right up into my room. My stamina was now at five, and I barely had the energy to crash onto the bed. I rolled onto my back and logged off.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shake the game from my head. The voices, the smells, the people. I felt like a jerk for not telling Gor and KILLian I’d logged, but they’d most likely be understanding, like real friends would be. Weirdly, they felt more real to me than people in the real world. Hell, they were the first people who’d seemed to genuinely care for me, and not get a government check for the effort.
The bed in my apartment looked inviting as I climbed off the VR chair, but too much was running through my mind to allow me to sleep. Something was wrong with Avarice. I knew KILLian felt it as well, and maybe she wasn’t talking for the same reason I wasn’t—we were being watched. Abigail in the sky, Sephorus in his office, not to mention the Adam guy from the game’s start, had all said as much.
I went to the forums and looked at what the rest of the world was seeing.
The hottest debate seemed to be the cultural divide among the different realms. They were segmented based on what type of V Corp. gear you could afford. If you could only afford the cheapest tier seven gear, much like the one I had bought for myself, you went straight to realm seven.
Since people couldn’t get screen shots or videos of the game play, drawings were surfacing. A bunch of events and interactions from the lower realms were being talked about, but nothing from realm one was online. For some reason, the rich were keeping it to themselves. I wondered how much I could sell the opening to Seerer’s Hill for? And then again on strategies for defeating Nathaniel?
The possibilities to make money in the beginning of a game were endless, but it felt wrong to let people cheat in this game. Plus, I wasn’t sure if the next person would even get the same kind of boss or mobs I did.
The rest of the forums went on and on about the NPCs. There was even a whole story about a person devoting his time to a family and getting all kinds of odd quests from them. Not one person mentioned anything about the money being real though. That was just for me and Trevor to know, I guess.
But I did learn about the consequence of dying. You had to pay for a resurrection, or be forced to drop a realm. It seemed like the amount you paid was based on realms. I couldn’t find any info for realm one numbers, but realm two was two hundred dollars. I could afford that, but damn, this game was going to rake it in. In a typical game, I died more times than I could count.
The players went on and on about how catered the quests were for each person, and some even tried to create a quest tree in the forum, by posting each quest and subsequent quest. The tree grew so massive and wide, it became unwieldy and lost its form. They were still posting in it, but I had to zoom way back to see all the branches. And the one I was looking at was only for realm three. It seemed that everyone had a unique experience based on what they did. The world around them reacted to their actions.
Then it struck me like a bat to the face.
What if all of this was in the game? What if it was part of the game for me to meet Sephorus, then have it send me on a trail that led to Abigail? Maybe it was all an elaborate quest they’d put me on—breaking the fourth wall—so I’d trust what they say.
The idea blew my mind and I felt nauseated. Could an AI like Adam be that complicated? Could they really make the world inside Avarice that unique just for me? Were they the ones who’d sent me the gear? Was Sephorus just part of the game?
Then I started to search for V Corp. at large. I wanted to see if they were saying anything about the game. But they were silent as always, except for one video released from my favorite rep, Tilly.
She sat in a white chair and wore a black dress that was tight around her neck, and had no sleeves. Her hair had been done with a bun on the side of her head and bangs cut just above her eyes. Every time she blinked, her eyelashes would get caught in her hair.
“I wanted to thank the gaming world for making Avarice Online the most played game in launch day history.” She looked just above the camera, maybe reading a cue card. “I know many of you have questions about the game and are frustrated at the lack of information released. But I assure you, as you get deeper into the game, there will be the most epic battles, and you will have more paths to success than any other game in history.
“This world isn’t about a race to the top, but more of a discovery of who and what you are as a player. The progression will be slow, especially for the lower realms. But as you progress, the challenges in front of you will multiply in difficulty and—”
The website went down. Probably too much traffic. Before I could try to pull up the website again, my whole computer went black. I looked at the power light—nothing. I tried a hard reboot, but even that wouldn’t work. Well, shit. I called down to the main desk and told them about the issue, and they gave me some assurance they’d get it fixed tomorrow.
Sleep deprived. I’d had enough for today. Shuffling to the bedroom, I set the alarm for four hours, hit the shower, then jumped into bed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Daylight peeked through the tiny holes in the blinds, sending beams of light into my apartment. Well, the apartment. I had yet to take ownership of it. The place felt more like an extended stay hotel, and that at any moment, the manager would knock on the door telling me my card had been declined.
The buzzer on my alarm chirped away. A delicate chirp that was supposed to ease you out of subconsciousness.
“Alarm off,” I said and the noise stopped.
I flung the luxurious sheets to the side and slid to the edge of the bed. My muscles didn’t hurt exactly, but they didn’t feel right either—a side effect from the full immersion gear. I rubbed my face with my hands to wake myself up more, then I jumped up, willing my muscles to obey my commands without falter. I felt slower in this world. Weaker. Even my mind didn’t feel as sharp. My stomach growled and I went to the kitchen.
The air from the refrigerator felt cool and pleasant as I stood in its white light, staring at the Mountain Dew I had bought. I grabbed a green can and closed the fridge.
A few gulps would be enough. I had to pace myself, or I’d be getting red-flagged in the first couple of hours. The last thing I wanted to do was piss my chair, even if it did have a capture b
asin. Some hardcore players were known to use these basins, along with adult diapers, to complete epic gaming marathons. They would livestream the whole thing, never leaving their chair. It was another way to make money, but I’d never been comfortable enough to put myself on camera. Plus, I had no money to buy the equipment.
After a Pop Tart and a bag of chips, I settled into the chair, put on the tier one gear, and logged in.
Waking in the gaming world, I welcomed my heightened senses. I noticed my perception building, along with my agility. I felt faster, more powerful, and smarter. It made me wonder why I would ever want to go back to the real world.
A soft whimper sounded from behind me. I rolled over in bed to see KILLian looking out the window.
“Where are you?” she whispered, dragging her hand over the glass. “I’m looking everywhere and I can’t find you. I’m so sorry.”
“KILLian?”
She jumped back from the window and wiped her eyes. “Oh hey, Mago, didn’t know you were here.”
“Just logged back in. You okay? You looking for someone?”
She sucked in a deep breath and I thought she was going to give me the old I’m fine routine, but a different expression pinched her face. A regretful look that turned to wariness as she looked up at the ceiling. It made me nervous and I fidgeted as I sat up and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, thinking I might be hearing a secret I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I’m only going to tell you this because I think you’re connected to it somehow. I believe you’re my friend, and the gods are talking to you here. You might be able to help me find him,” KILLian said.
“Who?”
She walked over and sat so close that her thigh rubbed against mine. If that weren’t enough, she leaned in, until her lips brushed against my ear.
“Have you followed the making of this game?” she whispered.
