by Oliver Mayes
“You know what? Forget I said anything. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here just so you could listen to me—”
“It sounds like it’s a good thing I got here when I did.”
Damien looked up and found that Aetherius’s trademark smirk had disappeared. He met Damien’s eye and thumbed toward himself.
“I promise you that before I leave, I’ll have made you world famous, both in the game and out! You have my word.”
Damien could hardly believe his ears. He’d thought Aetherius would be offended, but instead it was like a dream come true. If Aetherius was going to help him save his mother then it was totally possible.
“All right, Damien, that stuff you told me just now was a bit sensitive so I’ll have to edit it out. Let’s start from scratch. Everybody’s going to see this, so try to look your best, ok?”
Damien nodded eagerly. He didn’t have to pretend to smile. It finally felt like his bad luck was turning around.
Aetherius made a gesture and a wisp of blue light instantly appeared over his shoulder. With a flick of his wrist, Aetherius sent the Mana Wisp in front of him and held three fingers behind his back so Damien could see it. The fingers counted down and when they were all gone, Aetherius’s cocky grin was back and he began talking to the wisp as if it were a video camera.
“Hello there, loyal viewers! Today I have a special treat for you. We are joined by none other than Scorpius, AKA Damien! The brave soul who took on Toutatis yesterday has now joined us in the Streamer Competition. Damien, give the viewers at home a wave.”
Damien obediently raised a hand and beamed at the camera. Aetherius turned back to make sure Damien had hit his cue. The elf’s smile crept a little higher up one side of his face.
“As you can see, Damien hasn’t chosen a class yet and he’s still wearing the gear he entered the game in. So, first things first, we’re going to fix that. Damien, I’ve brought you some gear to play through your first dungeon! Let’s trade them in for those dirty rags you’re wearing, shall we?”
Awesome! Aetherius had clearly thought this through. Damien quickly went into his menu screen and found the trade tab. He looked at his equipped clothes tab. The rags he’d spawned in provided no stat bonuses except for one armor point each. He’d be glad to see them gone. He put them into the trade window and waited for Aetherius to insert his new gear. No items appeared on Aetherius’s side, but a green tick indicated he was ready to trade.
Damien glanced up at him, puzzled. “I don’t see the gear yet. Did you—”
Aetherius turned his head to face the Mana Wisp and laughed, a finger raised.
“Excuse me for just one moment. I probably should’ve briefed my partner on what we’re doing.”
He swiveled, leaving the mana wisp behind him and over his shoulder, his smile faltering as he hissed at Damien between his teeth.
“I need you out of those rags. I’ve got a short spiel about the items prepared and then when I trade they’ll be auto-equipped into your empty slots instantly. It’ll look really cool! Come on, man, don’t waste time. Let’s go!”
Damien looked between Aetherius and the mana wisp behind him, then quickly accepted the trade. He didn’t want to look foolish, keeping everyone waiting. The rags were unequipped and transferred over in the blink of an eye. Good riddance! Now he was only wearing the mandatory loincloth that Saga Online wouldn’t allow you to remove, but that would soon be fixed.
Aetherius beamed and turned his back on him to look at the mana wisp. There was a pause of a few seconds while Damien smiled awkwardly in the game’s equivalent of underpants, wondering what the delay was for. Then Aetherius started to speak again.
“Hello, everyone! I’m here with the mighty Scorpius, AKA Damien, who became so popular after his fight with Toutatis yesterday.”
Damien’s smile faltered. What was going on? Had his interruption prompted Aetherius to start the stream from the beginning?
“I’m here to give him a boost, as well as sharing a special trick with all of you at home.”
While Aetherius kept talking, Damien’s mind raced. Why wasn’t he talking about the gear yet? Did he want him standing here wearing nothing but the loincloth, looking like a complete moron? Then it hit him. He never needed to trade Aetherius the rags. He could’ve just unequipped them himself. He’d only traded them because Aetherius was recording—
“You see, this is one of the only dungeons where it’s possible to boost someone all the way to the boss floor in just five seconds flat!”
—but now it was obvious that Aetherius could have just started again from the beginning. He didn’t understand. Before Damien could advance the thought further, Aetherius had turned around and rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you ready?”
Damien recognized the grin that crept up one side of Aetherius’s face. The hand on his shoulder that was slightly too tight. Most of all, Damien recognized his eyes.
The sharp, green eyes that were the last thing so many of his enemies had seen. He recognized all these things and the wisp zoomed in on his face to capture that final, aching moment of despair.
“Bye!”
Aetherius planted his foot against Damien’s chest and pushed. Damien’s legs hit the back of the stone wall surrounding the chasm before he tumbled helplessly over it.
He caught sight of the wisp flickering over the top of the entrance to immortalize his fall from grace before the darkness swallowed him whole. Aetherius’s laughter followed him all the way down.
6
Things Can Always Get Worse
Damien couldn’t believe his bad luck. As the wind rushed around his ears, he gritted his teeth and yelled a single word.
“Menu!”
Even as he cartwheeled through the air in the pitch black, the menu remained illuminated and helpfully centered in his vision. One particular option, usually his least favorite of them all, suddenly seemed incredibly attractive. It was a bit of a stretch, but he didn’t see how else he might get out of this situation.
“Log out!”
‘It is not possible to log out while your character is falling. Please wait until you have stopped falling and try again.’
Damien’s vision flashed red and his health bar plummeted. A sickening crunch was followed by a high-pitched screech that rang in his ears, echoing the scream his mother’s guardian wristband had made not so long ago.
What little remained of his health faded and the screeching ceased. There was only one reasonable conclusion Damien could come to. He was dead. He had never actually died in the game before but he was pretty certain this is what it looked like.
Through his blurred vision he could make out a tiny pinprick of light in the distance. Probably an animation of his character entering heaven, where it would be stuck for the day. Maybe he’d meet Toutatis and get some pointers about landing properly.
Damien lay there, trying to come to terms with what had just happened to him. His body felt sore all over, but at least it had been a quick death and didn’t hurt too much. Maybe his pain settings were set at the default level? That would make sense; he hadn’t looked at them since he logged in.
Damien closed his menu so he could watch the death animation without anything being in the way. As soon as it was over, he resolved to contact Kevin and tell him what a douche Aetherius was. With any luck, Kevin might be able to get him around the twenty-four-hour respawn timer so he could keep testing the headset.
But first he’d have to get through the stupid death animation, which seemed to be going incredibly slowly.
His eyes widened, and he realized he’d got it all wrong. The light, far from being a simulated version of heaven’s gates, was actually coming from the dungeon entrance far above.
He was alive? Damien focused on his health bar. It was so low there wasn’t even a trace of green inside it, but upon closer inspection it turned out he had a whopping 4/100 HP. As he watched, it ticked up another notch to 5/100 and t
he tiniest sliver of green appeared on the left-hand side of the frame.
How was this possible? The gaping maw of the dungeon entrance was barely even visible from this distance, surely over a hundred feet. Fall damage, much like in real life, was calculated by how hard you hit the ground. Unlike real life, it was calculated on a percentage basis to guarantee death for even the sturdiest of characters: the higher the fall, the faster the drop, the higher the percentage cut from your health points. It only took a few seconds for the percentage to exceed 100%. Armor and damage mitigation abilities helped, but not much. Damien had neither. Fall damage from that high ought to have killed him outright.
As he attempted to push himself upright, something shifted underneath him. He lost his balance and collapsed alongside it.
Damien found himself face to face with a monster. Cold eyes stared at him down a long frothing snout, ending in a vicious pair of teeth. Damien yelped and instinctively pushed it away, expecting the beast to start gnashing and biting at any moment.
The creature did not respond. Unlike him, it was very dead. Damien removed his hands from it in disgust and the creature’s corpse rolled back to its original position. He dragged his aching body a few precious inches further away and squinted at it in the darkness. It was a giant rat.
He’d killed his fair share of these things when he was playing as Scorpius. They were a pretty common sight in the dungeons across Arcadia, even if they didn’t pose much of a challenge after the first few levels. That didn’t explain why it was dead.
An idea dawned on him. It was almost too stupid to contemplate, but he couldn’t see any other solution that made sense.
“No. No way. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Damien opened his stat page. As he’d suspected, he’d gained experience points. The screech he’d heard when he hit the floor had been this unfortunate rat. He must’ve landed right on top of it, and its body had softened the fall just enough to allow Damien to survive. He stared at it in disbelief.
All of a sudden, the ridiculousness of the situation got the better of him. He was lying on the bottom floor of a dungeon dressed only in a loincloth, he’d survived a hundred-foot fall with no skills whatsoever and his first in-game kill had been carried out accidentally by means of a gravity-assisted body slam. He burst into hysterical laughter.
Damien’s high spirits were short lived. He may have just performed the most hardcore kill of all time, but he was still in an extremely bad situation. His health had slowly ticked upward to 7/100.
With a mere ten constitution, he was only going to regenerate one health point every ten seconds outside of combat. Well, he could at least try to use the time wisely.
He went into his menu options, selecting ‘Settings’ so he could review his pain setting. It was at the default, 10%, as he’d suspected. Much less and he might not even be aware when he was taking damage, much more and he might simply wish he was dead to get it over with. Damien considered the various horrible things that had happened to him recently and decided it could stay there.
Then he went into his friends list to delete Aetherius and discovered the name was already grayed out. Maybe Aetherius had already blocked him or maybe he’d just logged out to upload the video as soon as possible, but either way it wasn’t possible to connect with him right now. Damien blocked the link on his own screen, severing ties permanently.
Aetherius had promised to make Damien’s life easy but had decided to cripple him and make fun of him instead. At some point Aetherius was going to pay for what he'd done. But that would have to wait.
His mother still came first.
To that end, he’d need video content for the Streamer Competition. He clicked the ‘Media’ tab and was presented with two options: Record and Review. It was a shame he’d only found it just now, but besides landing on the rat there wasn’t anything he felt like sharing from that morning. Aetherius was probably going to post his side of the story before too long anyway.
Damien shook his head. There was no point in thinking about that. He’d have to deal with it after he got out of there. For now, he had to make the best of a bad situation. He clicked ‘Record’ and the menu automatically closed. A small red dot was blinking at him from the corner of his HUD.
Damien blinked back at it. Like the rest of today's events, he hadn’t thought this through. Lying on the floor in almost total darkness, wearing nothing but a loincloth next to a giant dead rat was not an ideal streaming platform, but he’d have to make do.
“So…. hello, everyone. I’m Damien, and this is where I am after Aetherius’s generous boost. Thanks, Aetherius, by the way. You psychopath. Anyway, as you can see, I’m still alive.”
He looked up at the dungeon entrance overhead to make his point.
“All thanks to this cheeky little fellow. Everybody say hi!”
He turned his head back toward the dead rat. It seemed uglier each time he looked at it.
“So, I landed on this thing when Aetherius kicked me in. Survived the fall with—”
A skittering shriek reverberated off the walls. It sounded like another giant rat. Damien had no way of knowing where it was coming from but it was clearly close by. It must have heard him talking to himself and come to investigate. As usual, he’d somehow managed to make things worse. And since it lived down here, it would probably see him before he saw it.
Damien checked his HP. 17/100. Not enough to try and fight it, especially unarmed. He could hear the pitter-patter of feet and heavy rhythmic breathing getting closer and closer. Even though he wasn’t live streaming, the blinking red dot added terrible pressure.
All his potential viewers were about to watch him die. Damien considered his few options and only found one that made any sense. He placed his head on the floor and pretended to be dead. At least with no clothes and very low health he’d look the part.
As soon as he’d made his choice, the dungeon went eerily silent. Damien knew better than to raise his head. He kept his eyes locked on the foaming mouth of the dead rat in front of him and waited. He might have to move very quickly if this plan of his didn’t work out.
In that case, he would probably be as good as dead anyway, but he’d rather leave himself the option instead of simply closing his eyes and wishing the evil away.
A shape loomed behind his first kill. Despite Damien’s inability to see more than a few feet in front of him, the low rattle in the back of the new arrival’s throat confirmed it was another giant rat. It was investigating its fallen comrade. He would be next on its list and his HP wasn’t getting much higher. 19/100.
He heard the creature sniff the air, searching for the smallest sign of life. Damien did his best impression of a corpse, slowing his breathing and remaining perfectly still. The slightest movement would give him away. A notification popped up in the corner of his HUD
Sneak Unlocked!
Well, if he died here, at least he’d have something to show for it.
But even with this new ability it wasn’t going to take the rat long to find him. He needed a plan, something other than pretending to be dead until the rat removed the ‘pretending’ bit for him. The red light was still blinking as if to remind him what was at stake. Damien had nothing to offer it. All he had was this dead ra—
Wait.
There was a chance. It was only a small chance, but it was better than nothing.
Trying his absolute best not to make a sound, Damien used the dead rat as cover and moved his hand toward it until he made contact. His heart thumping in his chest, he focused every ounce of his concentration into a single word: ‘Loot’. An inventory bar opened in his vision with a little pop. The pop made him flinch, thinking the noise would give away his position. In fact, as he remembered an instant later, it was an auditory cue for his ears only.
It was the flinching itself that gave him away.
All at once, the second rat gave a grunt of surprise and swiveled its misshapen head over its brother’s corpse. A steady st
ream of diseased drool spilled out from the beast’s lips. Damien remained absolutely still, his hand still pressed against his unwitting savior’s chest, keeping the inventory tab open.
There were four items, each more useless than the last: an eyeball, a toenail, a shattered rib and a patch of fur. Damien had never understood why the drop rates in RPGs were so hilariously inaccurate. Surely this thing had more than one toenail? What happened to the other eyeball?
He did not have time to pore over these deep philosophical questions, because the living rat had hopped up on top of the rat corpse with its front legs and was looming over him, extending its snout toward his prone body.
Damien made his choice. His chosen item appeared directly in his hand and he grasped it firmly.
The creature inhaled deeply—
And Damien thrust the shattered rib upward, directly into its exposed throat.
Sneak Attack Multiplier Added!
Critical Strike Multiplier Added!
Damage: 18
The creature roared with surprise.
Damien cried out in exasperation. That damage was absolutely pitiful for a sneak critical. The enraged rodent lunged at him but was kept at bay by the makeshift dagger lodged in its throat. Damien put both hands together around the improvised weapon as he tried desperately to keep the snapping jaws away.
The rat’s claws were scraping his arms, causing damage that ordinarily would have been of no concern to Damien whatsoever. Not now, though. His health was so low he couldn’t afford to lose a single point. He pulled his feet around until they were underneath his struggling adversary and kicked.
Had he been playing as Scorpius, this maneuver would have sent the rat flying. With low stats and no skills, it only served to reduce his stamina, remove the rib from the rat’s throat and allow it access to his unprotected legs. Greedily, the rat took advantage, twisting its head as it attempted to catch them in its open jaws.
Damien screamed with rage. He hadn’t come all this way to be killed by a damn rat. He drew it back on his legs and kicked again, harder, and the rat toppled over the corpse behind it.
