by Arthur Stone
“Yikes!” yelped Babe as a fat chunk was taken out of the dwarf’s HP bar. “I’m so sorry, Barry, I didn’t mean to!”
The dwarf’s prediction about being hit by friendly fire did come true, after all.
Sathitankur’s HP bar flashed red, and there was nearly nothing left of it in less than a second, leaving him with a measly five or ten HP. Ros switched to him almost in the nick of time, but he never managed to finish casting the spell—the lowly warrior’s icon in the party window greyed out. Still putting up furious resistance, Marrak nearly went down, too—Ros barely managed to wrest him from death’s doorstep.
The dwarf finally realized that if he kept chipping away at each of his opponents a bit at a time, he’d go down before any of them would. His damage output was nothing to write home about, so he’d have to assist the dagger fighter if he wanted to get healed. The pressure eased instantly. Together, they took out one mob after another, and soon Ros could keep Marrak’s HP up without an effort, and even start throwing Barry some heals. The greenskin was fighting with one arm by then. The second one hung lifelessly, though that didn’t affect the speed of his movements.
The last mob to die was the one who begrudged getting hit with an arrow, switching to Babe at the end of the battle. Ros didn’t even have to heal her, as Marrak finished it off from behind.
“Why didn’t you heal me?” the dwarf roared.
“Put a sock in it,” said Marrak in a tired voice. “She was great at healing. She’s a good healer. A natural. She’s the reason we didn’t wipe.”
“Not all of you lived,” Ros shook his head.
“Well, that one was a total noob, poorly-outfitted, and with a stupid stat balance to boot. They offed him in two or three hits—no way you could’ve kept him up. There was no point letting him join. Can you heal injuries?”
“No such skill, alas.”
“In that case, I’ll run along. Thanks for the party, everyone.”
“There are few of us, and it will get dark soon,” said the archer. “It will get real dangerous here.”
“That’s true,” the dwarf nodded. “We sure did get carried away a bit.”
“Your party has been disbanded.”
As they approached the village, Babe saw some acquaintances of hers who were returning from some expedition, and turned toward them. The dwarf kept on chattering, primarily addressing Ros, offering to meet the following day and spend another day leveling together. Ros kept responding along the lines of, “Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
Once they returned to the village and the dwarf left, Marrak said in a low voice:
“Don’t group with him anymore.”
“Why?”
“He let the final attack of the mobs through to you deliberately.”
“He wanted to kill me? What for?”
“There’s an interesting bracelet you have there. I won’t ask any questions, but it looks like its grade is Good or higher. You might have something else on you, too—you’re pretty quick with those heals, and your mana hardly gets used up. You shouldn’t be able to pull it off with your stats, and your level isn’t all that high, either. So there must be something about your gear.”
“The bracelet is a good one indeed. I got it as a present. But the chance of losing it is very small—I have a white name, after all. The dwarf would not have gotten anything.”
“The chance is infinitesimal, but it still exists. If you go with him to another dungeon, he’ll try to talk you into binding near the entrance, so that you could level faster, albeit with more risk. Once you do that, he’ll just keep killing you over and over until he gets all your stuff. Players often do that.”
“Well, I’d never agree to changing my bind point in the first place.”
“I just wanted to warn you. Keep away from players of this sort.”
“Thanks!”
“You’re welcome. You’re a great buffer. Call me anytime, if anything.”
Ros stared after the goblin halfling. It was strange to find out that there was all manner of intrigue among the noobs.
* * *
No living creatures wandered through the Fallen City at night. No one left their characters there as they relinquished control of them going offline. Everyone stayed at the village. This was the time the creatures from the lowest levels ran rampant, emerging from the depths where the ruins of once magnificent buildings still lay, covered with a mound of earth.
Today, however, things were different. One of the players headed deeper and deeper in, disregarding his own safety. Yet, he was not exactly on his own.
“Undead Thylbit Commander. Creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 52. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 109; Attack: 98.”
The mob was a far cry from the leprus lost fighting the boss, but for a dungeon where mob levels scarcely went above 25 it was the equivalent of heavy artillery.
During the daytime Ros would have cleared the upper levels, but this was the night, with much more formidable creatures crawling out from the depths underneath the hill. He kept running into fiends in the thirty to forty level range, and even encountered a few elite mobs over level fifty. Those were incredibly tough, and he had to heal his pet nearly constantly. In other cases, he kept casting Chaos Arrow, leveling the magical attack skill he was growing to really like.
He also made a pleasant discovery: the pet could be buffed, too. And while the buffs were active in battle, the corresponding skills leveled up.
He would definitely have to get them up to snuff, collecting as many scrolls as he could at the guild, and using the buffs on himself as well as his pet.
By the end of his night run Ros raised his level from fifteen, which he’d achieved in the daytime, to twenty-seven. There was nothing surprising about it—he no longer had to share the XP with the rest of the party, and the new mobs were much tougher, which also expedited progress. He didn’t go any higher than that—his new level was sufficient for him to equip a few of his better trophies. In particular, he could now use the least demanding thylbit mage staff, which would make his Chaos Arrow deal more damage, and his healing more potent.
Dawn was still a long time away when Ros emerged from the tunnels and headed away from the village, distinguishable only by the lonely light of the night guard’s lantern. The map marked the outlying area as relatively safe, with few mobs and even fewer aggressive ones, and hardly any players. He would keep on until he’d reach a town where he was unknown to anyone, make himself conspicuous, run a few useful errands, and then move on.
He would try to get noticed in every new town. People should remember the flighting, and none of the interested parties should find it odd to see him wherever he might be. Ros intended to create a certain reputation for his character that would help him address some pressing issues.
He would change his appearance again when the time was ripe, but he would get as far away from this sector as he could before then.
And if they still found him after all that, he might as well hang himself, as it would mean that no one in this game had any chance at all of disappearing.
Chapter 39
“Folks, I have found something interesting—looks like an unidentified boss in a quiet place no one ever visits. We went into the woods with my girlfriend to get our Herbalism and Mushrooming skills on. The forest was really quiet—we saw no one, just birds and squirrels. As we were gathering herbs and mushrooms, a deer came out. My girlfriend plays a ranger, so it only took her one arrow to get the beast—a critical hit right in the neck. As soon as I started dressing the carcass, something weird appeared… you wouldn’t believe it—a twenty-foot-wide smiley face. I cast Sleep, and my girlfriend popped her deadliest skill, hitting it right in the eye. It responded by calling us worms and gobbling us up. Not just killing, mind you—it ate us! Real slowly, like, while we were standing there stunned. And it wasn’t any regular stun, either, more like complete paralysis. The thing was chewing me, and there was nothing I could do.
Can you imagine that? If it’s a boss, let’s farm it. It seems like no one knows about it yet. The woods are quiet, and there are few people in those parts.”
“I ran into this ‘boss’ once with my friends. Lost ten percent of my XP fighting it. Will it ever sate that hunger, I wonder…”
“Folks, that ain’t no boss! That thing’s absolutely awful, don’t bother fighting it!”
“Oh, so Smiley Face is still eating everyone? I thought they’d have fixed that bug long ago.”
“You can gather all the herbs you want over there, just make sure you leave the deer alone. That thing comes when it smells fresh meat, and eats up the carcass as well as the hunters.”
“Smiley Face rocks like you wouldn’t believe, dude. You should be proud of meeting it. It’s as rare as mammoths—few have seen it.”
“The mammoths are long extinct, you noob, whereas Smiley Face is alive and kicking.”
A private thread on a clan forum.
* * *
Ros opened his eyes, instantly snapping into alertness without letting it show in any way. He spent the night underneath a tall fir tree, having fashioned a luxurious bed out of boughs the night before. The branches reached the ground here, forming something resembling a teepee, which was dry and gave the illusion of safety.
But no one was ever quite safe in the woods. There were always beasts that ate the grass, followed closely by beasts that ate the grass-feeders. Apart from everything, this was a game and not the real world. You could always find an abandoned old graveyard cursed by an insane archmage in the vicinity, with corpses with an axe to grind wandering about, getting their revenge on anyone too slow or too stupid to get out of their way. Or some scatterbrained genius of necromancy prone to forgetting to lock the cages holding his horrendous experiments.
The forum map didn’t show anything but woodland here, but Ros was already aware of what such maps were worth. It was likely that no players had ever set foot here, not even once. They probably just drew the map staring at the ceiling, at best sneaking a quick glance in this direction from a faraway hill, which categorized the terrain as poorly-studied and thus sufficient for leveling up one’s Cartography.
There was no grinding to be done in the area, and no bosses worthy of bothering with. So, what was the point in wasting time here if there were so many more other, more interesting places?
A branch cracked. It didn’t just fall from a tree, but was broken by a paw or a hoof. Or, perhaps, the boot of a high-level player with a red username who had decided it would be safe to leave a body here, since no one would find it.
Ros had a feeling he wasn’t alone—there must have been a reason he had awoke before dawn. It could have been his burgeoning intuition warning him about likely trouble. He did not believe in the supernatural, so it must have been his beefed-up Luck and Perception, or something to that effect.
Also, the description of the auxiliary Seer stat said that he would occasionally be able to foresee future events, and the more he leveled it, the more effective it would be.
Actually, that was a law of the game’s mechanics—all the stats behaved this way.
The bough of a nearby fir tree shook. Ros heard the breath of someone huge. He tensed, clutching the short staff in his hand. It was a pity the pet wasn’t around—he didn’t risk having it accompany him openly, for a flighting with a revived corpse would look a little too extravagant.
He saw antlers above the overgrowth, and then the head they belonged to.
“Forest Moose. Aggression: none. Sociality: low. Level: 35. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 62; Attack: 52.”
Letting a moose scare him… how positively ridiculous.
Ros slowly raised the hand holding the staff, waited for the moose’s head to stop moving as it chewed the top leaves of the bush, and hit it in the neck with the Chaos Arrow. The beast reared up in pain and surprise, and then got a critical hit in the leg as it came back down. The limb collapsed, and the animal fell down, rolling over and crushing the spinney. Ros didn’t let the moose rise again, finishing it off with his third spell.
He didn’t think the fretful herbivores were good for leveling—that wasn’t the reason he had killed the moose. According to the forum, you received an achievement for killing a thousand mobs of different types, so you shouldn’t spurn any of them. He’d also get a big hunk of excellent meat, as he was starting to get sick of berries and mushrooms already.
Ros looted antlers and some glands from the moose. The hide was torn, so he decided against taking it—it was heavy, and too damaged to cost more than a few coppers.
The rest of the stuff must have been cheap, too, but it was a matter of principle—if he had enough free slots and could carry the weight, it would be unreasonable to leave anything of value behind.
Ros had a problem—he didn’t know how to start a fire, having no matches or anything else that could be used for this purpose. No Fire School magic spells, either. Should he try to rub two sticks together? Would it work? It was a game, after all. Then again, why wouldn’t it? Everything here was extremely realistic.
He never got around to making a fire, as his musings were interrupted by some guests. Two wolves were watching him from a distance, baring their teeth but reluctant to come any closer. With a light breeze having picked up at dawn, they must have sensed the smell of blood and meat…
The forest was nowhere near as empty as it had seemed…
Ros was about to cast Chaos Arrow to scare the lupine visitors away, but they darted off before he could do anything—with much haste, and their tails between their legs. It didn’t take a genius to realize some other fan of fresh meat was approaching—and one that was a lot more formidable than the first.
There was the crackling of trampled bushes and steps that sounded more like the sounds a pile driver would make—and not to small piles, either. There was a moment of silence followed by a sound that a herd of elephants might make if they all blew their trunks at once. Was that creature trying to sniff him out? Should he run while there still was time? Ros may have been a weird noob, but he was a noob just the same, and messing with high-level creatures wasn’t part of his job description.
The trees bent, letting through a…
Imagine a spherical creature the size of a two-story house, with minuscule crooked legs and arms to match. It had a wide lipless mouth, tiny beady eyes and a button-like nose that was barely visible. And all of that goodness was covered in ginger fur that wouldn’t look out of place on a mammoth that had never been groomed, sticking this way and that in shaggy clumps.
“Malfunctioning quest. Aggressiveness: no data. Sociality: no data. Level: no data. Skills: no data. Stats: no data.”
A quiet forest, they said. No grinding or bosses, they said.
Well, if this wasn’t a boss, what could it possibly be?!
The monster stopped and smiled beatifically, transforming into a smiley face of the sort that may have grown in close proximity to Chernobyl, and boomed in a guttural bass:
“Would you believe it? Here I go, rambling through the woods, smelling flowers and listening to birds chirping, and what would I see but some meat lying about? Finders keepers, I say. No one has eaten it, so I’ll have to do it myself.”
Having been looking for an escape route with his peripheral vision, Ros froze in surprise. This was the first time he saw a mob speaking human language instead of chirping like the thylbits.
Could this be something other than a mob? A domesticated animal, or a pet, perhaps?
“Hey! You! Round thing! This meat is mine, you know!”
“Wow!” The “smiley face” looked perplexed, all of a sudden. “A real miracle! A speaking worm! I say! It isn’t slippery, and it doesn’t wriggle unpleasantly. It must be yummy. Isn’t it a pity, though? It’s funny and it can talk, but I’ll have to eat it all the same, more’s the pity.”
“Won’t you choke on me?” Ros inquired.
“I eat a lot, but I’m always careful. I d
o my chewing slowly and thoroughly. If I find a bone that’s too hard to chew, I’ll spit it out instead of swallowing it.”
The “smiley face” reached for the moose carcass.
“Paws off! The meat is mine!” Ros yelled, undeterred by the prospect of being eaten.
That walking pillow would have to catch him first…
“Don’t get your knickers in a bunch, little worm. I’ll just eat the meat here, and then it’s your turn.”
Ros raised his staff and let loose a Chaos Arrow, hitting the upper jaw. The mob scratched it and smiled.
“Ouch! Tickles! Wanna play? All right, I’m game: I’ll start with you. The meat can wait—it only gets tastier with time. What have you been eating lately, little worm?”
“Berries and mushrooms.”
“You’re not lying, are you?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“That’s good. You get all sorts. One of them ate something horrible in the city, all pepper and cinnamon. I had a heartburn for the rest of the day. My stomach doesn’t digest such stuff well.”
As the mob expounded on its digestive problems, it ambled towards Ros in a purposeful manner, thrusting its tiny paws forward.
Ros hit the mob with magic two more times before finally realizing a direct confrontation would be futile. A single Intellect point gave him eleven mana points. Bolstered by his equipment, his current mana pool was sitting at over eight thousand points. That was a lot, even for a top-level mage, but it still would not be enough to take so much as a quarter of HP off the “smiley face.” The mob was just incredibly tough.
It had to be a boss.
Regular players may have viewed bosses as near-invincible titans, creatures that could only be tackled with heavy artillery and armored vehicle support. To Ros, however, a boss was just another mob—and one that was likely to drop good loot. He’d already taken one down, so why not another? He could at least try.
The monster may have looked clumsy, but it was a fast walker. Had Ros been overloaded, or had his running been slower, it would have been hard to get away. Once he got some distance between himself and his pursuer, he took a soul crystal out of his bag and freed the monster trapped inside.
