Whoever had written the article had even included an old student body survey where Trent stated he played SOO for fun. Nothing in the article was conclusive, but the points it raised would be enough for most people.
Trent’s thoughts grew wild as he stared at the article. He should have radically changed his appearance or created a female character or something. When he rolled his character, he couldn’t imagine actually looking down and seeing boobs. He wasn’t sure how he’d react to actually being a girl in-game, either. However, that was before he’d started becoming one of the most famous gamers in the world!
He backed away slowly. Even the professor was just watching from the corner. He had no allies here. He took another step back, ready to turn and flee to the log point at the back of the classroom, but someone grabbed his arm. It was a big guy; Trent vaguely remembered his name was Tony. “Hey, how about you tell me how to get to the World Tree?” he leered. “I’ll give you a grand right now if you do.”
Another man grabbed Trent’s shoulder and said, “Hey, buddy, why the rush? You don’t mind telling your class where you found that Monarch Stone, right? There are still a few out there, after all.”
Trent kept trying to back up, but the entire class seemed to be surrounding him. He was panicking. He didn’t like being around this many people in the first place, and they were pressing in. They all seemed to be talking at once. They all wanted something.
Trent closed his eyes. He felt hands all over him. They were restraining him. He couldn’t move. “Let me go!” he yelled…and cast
“Let me go,” Trent said again more quietly. This shouldn’t be possible, he thought. He was using skills from a completely unrelated game within his virtual classroom. It didn’t make any sense. He shook his head, deciding he could think about it later, and ran to the room’s access point. Doing so would log him out several times faster than through his persocomp alone.
Back in his room, he gasped awake and heard pounding on his door. Mind still in disarray, Trent padded to the door and asked, “Who is it?” His voice sounded a little shrill to his own ears.
“Vermillion Entertainment Security,” said the muffled voice outside the door. Trent used his persocomp to see through the exterior camera outside the door. He saw a man and a woman wearing suits.
The man was big and dark-skinned with close cropped hair. He barely fit his jacket. He looked like a linebacker. His dark suit and dark sunglasses made him seem intimidating before Trent even registered his size. The man looked like he bench-pressed firetrucks for fun.
The woman was a little taller than Trent, so definitely tall for a woman. She was built like a volleyball player. She had tan skin, blue eyes, and dark blonde hair. She wore the same type of suit as the man but tailored for her, and she wore different shoes. Instead of dark dress shoes, she had on faux heels; her pants were hemmed up to show her ankles.
Both the man and the woman looked like they were in their early forties, but extremely fit. Just standing there, they seemed to exude a “don’t fuck with me” vibe.
“Uh, how do I know you’re really with Vermillion?” Trent wasn’t taking any chances.
“You mean other than the fact we’re talking to you through the door instead of kicking it down?” The man’s voice was amused. “The passcode you gave us to meet with was, ‘Swish and Flick.’”
“Okay, you guys are legit,” Trent muttered. He opened the door and the two security personnel funneled into his tiny dorm.
The female guard suddenly turned her head, looking at something nobody else could see. She was probably conferring with her persocomp’s overlay. “Wait, Rich, we’re here early.”
“What?” asked the man. He turned looked at his own overlay. “Trent, weren’t you supposed to be in class right now? I mean, it doesn’t matter anymore, but that was one thing we came to talk about.”
“Uhhh…” said Trent lamely, “there is an article in the school newspaper that basically outs me as Vale.”
“What?” said the woman. Her voice was sharp enough to cut steel. The man and woman’s heads swiveled to look at him, and Trent suddenly got the feeling they were both very scary people.
“We need to move now! Alert HQ.”
“On it,” said the woman.
With that, the two suits began rushing Trent down the hallway toward the parking lot. He tried to slow down, asking, “Hey what about my—?”
“We will get it later,” said the woman. “Everything will be taken care of. Don’t worry, our job is to make you comfortable.”
“What the…?” Trent didn’t know what else to say. He’d hired on as a streamer for protection, but this was ridiculous. They were treating him like he was a VIP or something.
The man was on his left and the woman on his right when they emerged from the building at a trot. Suddenly, Trent heard some popping noises. It sounded kind of like cans getting run over by a car. He began looking around to figure out where the noises were coming from, but the woman forced his head down. “Stay low!” she yelled.
Nearby, a car’s window exploded before the car door developed a couple holes. Another car’s alarm began screaming. Trent finally understood. We’re getting shot at! Trent’s first reaction was to panic. However, then he remembered his time in SOO. He actually knew what to do.
He ducked down low and began following his guards’ lead, not fighting them anymore. “My car is over there!” he yelled, pointing.
The woman had a pistol in one hand and was silently moving her lips, probably communicating with someone via her persocomp. She briefly glanced at Trent and shook her head. “Too dangerous. We’re leaving it.”
Trent wanted to argue but decided to just let it go. The entire situation was bizarre. Someone was obviously trying to kill him, but he was so hopped up on adrenaline he didn’t feel much fear. More than anything, he just wanted to know what the hell was going on.
After staying low, a few more lines of cars later and he finally realized where they were heading. His guards were making a beeline for a big black van. There was a gap between the last car and the van, though. The big male guard yelled, “We’ll have to run for it.”
The woman nodded and so did Trent. The next thing Trent knew, he was sitting in the van while they drove on the highway. He felt dazed. He touched his face and looked at his fingers as they came away red. I have blood on my face.
He tried to fight through the fog to remember what had happened. With difficulty, recalled that the male guard had been shielding him and got shot in the shoulder. Trent slowly blinked. His nerves began to make his body shake. He felt like he would puke.
What the fuck is going on? I’m just a gamer!
Trent concentrated on taking deep breaths and wondered how a single day could so thoroughly destroy his entire life. He needed to plan his next moves, but before that, he needed answers.
For the moment, he concentrated on just breathing regularly and being thankful he was still alive.
Smacked with Facts
Eventually, Trent felt the van slowing down. He hadn’t paid much attention during the drive. There was a lot on his mind, and he was spending significant focus on containing his nerves. It had taken an effort of will to keep his gorge down for the first half of the ride.
He glanced up as he felt the vehicle decelerate further. The van drove through a large gate and parked in front of a huge building that looked part office building, part mansion. Trent shook his head and woke from his near meditative state. The female guard who’d been driving got out and opened Trent’s door for him. The male guard was holding some sort of medical pack to his bloody shoulder.
“That looks like it hurts like hell, Rich,” the woman said, wincing in sympathy.
&nb
sp; “Yeah, I’m gonna head to the medic. You got this, Stace?” asked the big, dark man.
“No doubt. Not only that, you just literally took a bullet for us. Go do what you gotta do. I’ll tell the captain what went down.”
The man, Rich, moved off. Trent watched him go. That is one tough son of a bitch, he thought. The woman began leading Trent to the front of the building.
The woman said, “You probably have a lot of questions. Everything happened so fast I didn’t even get a chance to introduce myself. I’m Stacy. You already met Richard. Please hold your questions until we get inside. It will be quicker that way, I promise.”
Trent mutely nodded and followed her inside to a waiting room. Somehow, Stacy produced a towel from somewhere and handed it over. Trent immediately understood; he wiped all the blood off his face and handed it back. The blonde guard nodded in approval. Trent got the idea she didn’t like to waste time with pointless talking.
Stacy folded up the dirty towel and disappeared down a side hallway while Trent tried to calm his badly frayed nerves. He used his persocomp to pull up a simple minigame that overlaid his vision, then proceeded to metaphorically turn his brain off for a while.
He didn’t want to think about people in class crowding him, or his SOO skills working in a completely different digital environment, or getting shot at.
At least his gaming probably helped. Even as freaked out as he was, he had a feeling others would have been handling it worse. SOO felt so real and he had dealt with so many terrifying situations in-game, he sort of already had a coping mechanism in place.
His thoughts were interrupted when an attractive young woman in business casual clothing and wooden glasses cleared her throat to get his attention. “Excuse me,” she said. “Your friend has arrived so if you’d like, I can move you to another lobby where he’s located.”
Trent frowned. Who the hell is she talking about? “Uh, sure,” he answered. He got up and followed the woman down a hallway he hadn’t seen earlier. The building was huge. As they walked, he studied the woman and realized she was probably only a year or two older than he was.
As she walked, the woman’s skirt hugged her curves, and Trent liked what he saw. He absently thought about how Steve would probably just focus on the back of her head to not be rude. He didn’t see eye to eye with his friend. Trent refused to feel bad for checking out the woman’s booty.
As they walked, he realized that he should at least try to make an effort to be social. It was tempting to just watch her sway some more, but he shook himself and asked, “So what’s your name?”
The woman glanced around and smiled. Her teeth flashed white and her dark hair shimmered. “My name is Florinia. I’d ask for yours, but I obviously already know who you are.”
“Yeah, probably both my real and in-game name,” Trent grumbled. Florinia laughed, and the sound rang like the tinkling of bells. Trent was feeling depressed again, so much so he didn’t even check Florinia out anymore. His life had truly exploded.
And people had really even tried to kill him. What the fuck?
After another couple minutes, Florinia led Trent into a new waiting room. As soon as they walked through the door, he got hit by over two hundred pounds of man hug. Trent’s first reaction was to go for the eyes, but then he realized it was Steve and relaxed. He briefly returned the hug and then stepped back.
Florinia said, “It shouldn’t be too much longer. You can both attend the meeting together. It won’t be far from here.” Trent nodded at her as she glided away. She seemed very athletic, especially with how easily she moved on her heels. He wondered if she played soccer or something.
Trent glanced back and saw Steve shaking his head. “Dude,” he said, “you look like a starving wolf. If you’d stop acting like a creeper, maybe you’d have a girlfriend.”
“Whatever. I don’t have time for a girlfriend unless she plays SOO, and most gamer chicks suck ass at real games.”
“Real games?” Steve lifted an eyebrow.
“You know, games where you need to think fast or actually do something complicated.”
“So you consider SOO to be a ‘real’ game, right?” asked Steve.
“Of course, duh.”
“Well, Abbey doesn’t suck, not by a long shot,” Steve replied. “She has helped us out a lot.”
“She’s not my type.”
“That wasn’t my point.” Steve frowned and said, “Her existence is at least an exception to your rule, if not entirely debunking it. SOO is a game where you can artificially increase your stats. A chick can kill you in the game just as easily as a dude, and probably will if you don’t get your head straight. You should take this more seriously.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll let Brutus know to watch out the next time I see him. That is, if he doesn’t kill me immediately. I’m sure he’s just shaking in his sixty-pound boots about some Utena wannabe duelist chick.”
Steve gave Trent a side-eyed look. “First, I didn’t catch that reference. Second, for such a smart guy, you can be really dense sometimes…and an ass; probably more ass than dense, actually.”
Trent groaned. Steve was a great guy, but sometimes he could be a nag. His life goal seemed to be to save Trent from himself or something. The irony was that Steve looked so much like the type of guy who should be receiving advice, not giving it.
Trent shook his head and said, “You know what, fuck this. I got shot at and my life was ruined today. I’m not in the mood to be lectured.”
Steve held out his hands and said, “Okay, okay, I’m just glad you’re alright.”
After a slight pause, Trent asked, “So what do you think this meeting is about?”
Steve grimaced. “Well, I kind of figured with your streaming contract and my own contract—”
“What, you have a contract?”
Steve blinked. “Yeah, you’re going to have cameras on you in-game all the time now. Abbey and I are part of your group, so we’ll have cameras on us, too. Streaming companies basically need to have contracts with a full streaming group so they don’t open themselves up to lawsuit. My terms aren’t as good as yours, but they’re still very generous.”
“I had no idea.”
“Trent, you have blind spots a mile wide,” Steve sighed. “You know, you can do these amazing things like put together the World Tree puzzle, and even actually get there in-game, all while being broke and low level. Meanwhile, you totally miss real-world stuff like this.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Trent grumbled.
“Anyway,” Steve continued, “I think this meeting is probably about us getting pulled out of school and about our future security. They might be moving us to this building, who knows.”
“Wait, what? Pulled out of school? What are you talking about?”
Steve gave Trent a level look. “You think getting shot at every day will be a good college experience? What happens if they crash through into your room? You got lucky. I think we all did. It seems they didn’t know who I was yet, thank God.”
“But this doesn’t make sense,” Trent said, violently shaking his head. “My contract is going to give me less money than I’d make out of college after I get my degree. Why the hell is everyone so excited? Like…someone just tried to kill me over, what, a grand a month or something!?”
Steve gave him a strange look. “You think our first paycheck is going to be like… a few grand?”
“Yeah, divided biweekly, too, right?”
Steve shook his head and grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said. He headed over to a side table and started rummaging around, eventually producing a piece of paper.
“What are you do—?”
“Just wait,” Steve said, smiling. He wrote something on the paper with a pen and then folded it up. He slipped the paper across the little table and said, “This is how much I’m expecting to make on my first paycheck, and I will be making less than you.”
Trent felt skeptical. He walked forward to gr
ab the paper. He didn’t understand why Steve was making such a show out of the matter.
Even if he could make two or three times the monthly stipend in his contract, it wouldn’t be enough to quit school over. It wasn’t like he could play games the rest of his life, or even be popular forever, and—
Trent opened the paper and threw up in his mouth a little.
He coughed and said, “This is more than my parents make in a year. A lot more, in fact.”
Steve was obviously enjoying himself. “Yup. You don’t pay enough attention. It seems like if it’s not school or gaming, you just don’t get into details. Maybe it’s a focus thing, I don’t know. Dude, do you know how many millions of people are going to be watching your very first stream? And what’s more, that number will probably grow. Hell, if viewers stay interested enough in us, we could get action figures.”
“Of course I knew it was going to be a lot of people, but…action figures?” Trent felt light headed. He hadn’t truly understood how much money in advertising there was, or how much his little percentage would pay him.
“Yes, action figures. Streaming is a huge business. Some stream channels get more views than popular tele shows or even movies. You just don’t get it. If we’re popular enough, they may make games about us, and we’ll get a percentage of that profit, too.”
“Huh,” said Trent. He didn’t know what else to say. He was going to be rich.
“Thing is, some countries, especially the corrupt or poor ones, also have their own streamers. Someone tried to take you out today probably so you couldn’t become super popular and possibly steal viewers. Streaming is a huge industry. People will kill over it.
“Plus, if they kill you, nobody will know where the World Tree is anymore and other streamers will have a chance at it too.”
“I just, I didn’t know…” Trent whispered.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Steve said. “Abigail wanted to know if she could move closer to us. She wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get weirded out. Vermillion Entertainment will probably put her up somewhere for her protection, and she thinks she might end up by herself. It would be pretty lonely.”
Luck Stat Strategy (Secret of the Old Ones Book 1) Page 7
