The Bathrobe Knight

by Charles Dean

  “So Darwin, you said you lived in Georgia, right?” Kass asked, doing her best not to look at the EXP sources Darwin was hacking in half.

  “Yeah, why, what’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing, just wondering if you’re going to go to the Comic-Con convention in Atlanta coming up soon. I think my dad is dragging me, and I was debating if I should invite a few friends,” Kass said, slightly curious what her friend Darwin would be like in real life.

  “Your dad is dragging you to Comic-Con?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He has to go . . . part of work you could say. They do a lot of marketing, and he has to answer questions constantly at those events,” she said, not wanting to admit she actually usually begged to get brought along for the events since he generally had VIP access to everything.

  “Really? So what are you planning on going as?” he inquired.

  “Oh me? I’m not really sure what I am going as,” she said, trying her best not to let Darwin know that she had been planning the entire thing for months.

  “I’ve always did want to go to one of those, but I’ve never had the time. They were always scheduled on event weekends.”

  “So you avoided Comic-Con because of gaming events?” she asked in disbelief. Usually gaming brought people to the dorky events, not pushed them away.

  “Yeah, if you want to put it that simply, I guess?”

  “Well, what about coming to this next one? You look like your avatar, right? Minus the red eyes?” she asked, trying to pry further.

  “You could say our faces are identical, yeah.”

  “Then pop on a bathrobe and come to the next one,” she pushed again.

  “I would if I could, but I’ll be pretty occupied.

  “You mean, you’ll be playing the game the entire day? Come on. One day of leveling missed won’t be a big deal, and it’ll be nice to have another friend to see all the events with. Half the fun of an event like Comic-Con is either making fun of or admiring the costumes, depending on how awful or well-made they are, of course,” she pushed.

  “No, it’s okay. You go. I’d love to, but I’m kind of already trapped into something. Seriously though, thanks for the invitation,” he said, awkwardly scratching his head.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll drop the subject. But you really should go to one, even without me one day. They’re absolutely a blast,” she said, feeling a bit like the creep herself for once.

  As they rounded the next corner, Kass felt like she should have been surprised. Normally, if someone made it through a dungeon of grotesque Mutant pig-boar creations only to find a simple marble kitchen that looked like it was straight out of a Martha Stewart catalogue with a bunny cooking something on the island stovetop, they’d be shocked. But, between the poker-playing Bear and Buffy the Medusa, she honestly would have been taken aback more by a normal Boss.

  The eight-foot-tall Rabbit, dressed in a suit with a monocle and a timepiece as if he was straight out of an Alice in Wonderland book, was in the middle of flipping some pancakes when he saw them. “Ahhh!” he shouted, messing up the flip and leaving the pancake he was making to land flat on his head between his long pointy ears.

  “A bunny with a pancake on its head--why do I feel like I’ve seen that before?” Kass asked, staring at the very familiar sight.

  “Not sure, but I’m actually going to say that that is cute.”

  “Really? I thought men aren’t supposed to say things are cute.”

  “Who said that?” Darwin asked indignantly.

  “I don’t know. People?” Kass replied.

  “Well, people are wrong. Things are cute, like a bunny with pancakes on its head,” Darwin insisted, both of them still stuck staring at the Rabbit curiously. It was indeed cute.

  However, while they chatted back and forth, the bunny with the pancake on its head slowly grew bigger. It started off as a tall Rabbit to begin with, and each passing second it grew wider, turning it into something monstrous. Where there were only skinny arms, muscles started to pump up and veins began popping out. The clothes it was wearing slowly shredded as the muscles kept bulging bigger and bigger.

  When it was finally done with its transformation, it looked like an eight-foot-tall steroid junkie trying to overdose.

  “So . . .” Kass started, giving Darwin a look that said they needed to take care of the monster before they talked any more about where they had seen it before.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Darwin said, dashing at the hulk bunny behind the island.

  As Darwin hopped over the island and landed blade first on the bunny, who blocked the attack with his claws, Kass had to decide what type of spell would be best. There were a lot of fancy spells like Ice Dragon’s Dance, but each of them had a huge setback in terms of low DPS from long channeling times, low accuracy, or, even worse, the AoE Damage from the spell might send Darwin all the way back to spawn. It was for this reason that during most fights, no matter how hard she thought about what type of spell she wanted to use, she always ended up slamming her Staff into the ground and chain casting Snowball’s Chance as fast as she could. It was reliable, and it’s exactly what she did here.

  Kass kept on casting the spell at the monster’s legs to help decrease its mobility too, all the way until Darwin did something that made her laugh so hard she couldn’t concentrate. During the fight, the cottontail had grabbed both of Darwin’s blades and was using its ears as a weapon to swing at Darwin. Darwin let go of his weapons, crouched to the floor and darted under the Rabbit’s legs. When the bunny turned around to attack him again the Rabbit was met with Darwin throwing two onions from the counter into its face and then chopping them up over and over again in mid air with a Butcher’s Knife he had found.

  The roid Rabbit stopped attacking Darwin to rub its eyes, clearly crying from the onions, at which point Darwin stabbed it in the gut with the Butcher’s Knife, left the blade in the hare’s belly and grabbed the nearest Pan. At that point, he just started beating the bunny across its crying face with the Pan, leaving Kass helplessly giggling in the corner instead of helping. When the poor Boss animal finally died, Darwin chopped one of its foot off with the Butcher’s Knife and threw it at Kass.

  “There, now you can have a Rabbit’s Foot!” he said. Somehow the brutality of smashing a living thing’s face in with a Frying Pan had not dented his desire to make bad jokes.

  “Did you just kill it with a Frying Pan? Was there not a Spoon nearby?” Kass asked, trying her best to be polite as she tossed the Boss’s foot to the ground.

  “Yeah, no Spoons. Just a Fork, and I wasn’t sure which way to go with that, so I grabbed the Frying Pan,” he said, feeling no shame at his odd victory.

  “Ok, well, what did he drop?”

  “Oh, yeah. Check it out. It’s perfect for you,” he said, throwing a piece of jewelry at her.

  Kass caught it. It was a cut sapphire jewel in the shape of an oval with a silver dragon curling around it, wings spread out and hooked to a thin silver chain. She opened up her menu and examined the item: Dragon’s Tear, +10 to Concentration, +10 to Spirit. Wow, this is perfect for me! And it’s so pretty!

  “Now see, you get to be the first girl I’ve ever given jewelry to,” he said as she put on the necklace.

  “Awwwww . . . I’m touched.” she feigned. What? The first girl? Really? Does that mean he has never had a serious girlfriend?

  “So, did that sate your hunger for a Boss fight with a proper loot drop?”

  “Yes! yes, it did! And now I’m tired, so I’m going to hit the hay. See ya round, Pan player,” she said, logging off for the night.

  -------

  As Kass logged off for the night, satisfied with finally getting some gear from a dungeon boss, she couldn’t stop her instinct to check the forums. She was already tired enough to pass out instantly if her head made contact with a pillow, but some habits just couldn’t be kicked that easily. It was even worse today since she had so many questions she wanted to find answers for, like “Why was
a Creation Stone on starting island?” “Has anyone ever run into a Medusa boss before?” “What ability lets a player turn a monster they’ve just killed into a permanent zombie pet?”

  The problem was that no matter how far she went through the forums, she couldn’t find any answers for any of her questions. Instead of answers she just found herself with more questions. To begin with, no one was even mentioning an ability close to Darwin’s, and even though it was clearly overpowered, it wasn’t suggested in any of the trending builds. Given the massive size of the forums and the amount of user feedback generated within them, it just didn’t make sense logically for there to be a skill that wasn’t mentioned.

  Then, to make matters worse, there hadn’t been a single sighting of a Medusa, a Creation Stone or even a boss that gave up the prize without a fight. In fact, none of her searches could even find details of a boss that didn’t just attack the player as soon as the player entered their aggro zone, much less talk to the player and then give them the dungeon’s treasure.

  The more she dug through the archives hoping to find even a single piece of information to shed a ray of light on her quandary, the more she became frustrated. What the Hell is going on with you, Darwin? she thought, adding the day’s events up with the previous events that had occurred in Valcrest. How can there be so many mysteries centered around a single doofus in a bathrobe?

  Maddock:

  Maddock had unceremoniously lugged the White-Wing back over the short distance to the small encampment and left him tied, gagged and bound to a tree. The Scout had been knocked out for almost an hour and showed no signs of regaining consciousness any time soon --which was just as well as Maddock was concerned. He had no interest in listening to the incoherent religious-fueled rambling assortment of threats that would spew forth upon its awakening. In his experience, there were only a few things worse than listening to someone on a soapbox attempting to pander his religious fervor at everyone around him. It also gave him time to decide exactly what he was going to do with the bird. This was an opportunity to finally get some of the answers he had been looking for. For the past day they had been trying to figure out what the sudden influx of White-Wing Scouts into the area meant.

  If his suspicions were correct, this was only the precursor of what would surely turn out to be a much larger invasion force. There was simply no other reason he could think of that would require sending out so many NPCs into another starter area. Politics were a possibility. It wouldn't have been unusual to send a vanguard of Scouts out to gather information if they were planning on bringing in someone else important in after them. The White-Wings could be sending an ambassador or another high ranking official to one of the other Races possibly hoping to open up some form of negotiation. He hadn’t spent much time exploring the forums for information about the other Racial starting areas, but Maddock was fairly certain that each area had the same basic starting materials. There wouldn’t be much need for them to trade amongst the various Races, in that regard. Iron and certain other crafting materials, particularly those used for making weapons and armor, were always in short supply and high demand; but, the likelihood of any Race parting with them would come at a price so steep it would make the effort worthless.

  The other possibility was that the White-Wings were hoping to form an alliance against one of the other races. It was fairly common knowledge at this point that the White-Horns and Black-Wings had made an attempt at a serious land-grab against the Humans fairly early on. The Human legions that had been deployed to the area had been wiped out. That had been the beginning of the series of events that had led Maddock himself to dare attacking Valcrest so early on. Maybe the White-Wings were hoping to finish that land grab off? A partnership with the White-Horns and Black-Wings would have been unusual, but not entirely out of the question. If they were greedy enough, they might possibly think themselves in a position to completely wipe out the remainder of the Human forces and set up shop in the lands for themselves. The combined strength of the White-Wing and Fire-Walker legions, in conjunction with those of the White-Horns and Black-Wings, would certainly be more than enough to finish off the remainder of the Human legions.

  The possibility of an alliance of that nature, however, didn’t sit well with Maddock. As far as the game went, everything was fairly open-ended. It wasn't out of the question for any of the Races to conquer the others, even the starting areas. It simply meant that the subjugated Race would face much higher penalties when creating new characters. They would probably be excluded from most of the best mob spots and be forced to pay premium prices when buying goods from any of the vendors. Once players began raiding the dungeons on a more consistent basis, the conquered Race would probably be locked out entirely with priority being given to the dominant Faction within the area. It also meant much higher competition when it came to farming resource nodes. Simple supply and demand meant that more players within any given region would make it harder for players just starting out to get the resources for gear they needed and progress through the game. The White-Wings would be aware of all this, and Maddock highly doubted that they would be willing to share the small plot of Human lands with the White-Horns and Black-Wings. Splitting the area four ways wouldn’t make sense: it wasn’t worth the effort, time, or money if that were to be the case. The only remaining possibility, the one that made sense, was that the White-Wings were planning an invasion of their own--and that meant moving a massive amount of troops, materials, and resources across the ocean to set up the attack.

  As time passed, more and more members of Maddock’s Guild began logging in. Everyone was anxious to find out what the new ship would look like, how fast it would be, and to climb on board and test it out. Summoning a vessel of this level would most likely be common place later on as time passed and the game progressed; but, for now at least, it was something new and exciting--something that no other guild had even been able to attempt. As far as events went within the gaming world went, his Guildmates were as eager as most to explore the world’s content. The world of Tiqpa was rich with content and was, if nothing else, visually stunning. The difference came when they were deciding what to do with it. Maddock knew that most members of his Guild were itching to test out the cannons. If his information was correct, the ship would possess three of them. Cannons were designed the primary defense against other ships on the seas, but were also usable against both players and cities alike. Any city built on the coast or near a body of water would be susceptible to taking damage from cannon fire. That was the trade off for having immediate access to larger bodies of water. Most players would be anxious to use the ship and set off to explore the world. Setting sail to the mainland was certainly what Maddock had intended to do. Now, however, he was beginning to have second thoughts.

  “Someone get that bird awake. I’ve got questions that need answering,” Maddock demanded.

  “Right-o,” came the response from next to the fire pit. The Huntsman, dressed in a dark Hunter’s Garb, rose from where he had sat crouched all this time. “Would be my pleasure.”

  “Oh, you suddenly feel like doing work?” Thorn said, from across the camp. “Like an archer knows anything about getting information out of someone. Just let me twist his little birdie neck till it goes pop.” He made a wringing motion with his hands, a wicked smile splitting his face.

  “And the little bird goes pop--then what? How do we get anything from him once you pop him?” The archer shot back.

  “Oh, I can imagine he might make a nice little stew,” Bear chimed in.

  “Or chicken soup!” added Xane.

  “Ahh . . . these lug headed Minotaurs know what they’re talking about. Give me the stew and a nice dark brew. Now we’re talking.” Thorn responded, eyes lighting up at the thought of beer.

  “Enough!” Maddock shouted. “Shane, go to work.”

  The archer pulled one of the small Knives from his belt as he approached the White-Wing where it was bound against a tree. He pushed the knife,
point first, into the palm of one of the White-Wing’s hands, slowly increasing pressure as he went. One prick, then two, then three. Blood quickly began trickling down the avian’s hands in a steady stream and pooled on the ground.

  The White-Wing shuddered against his restraints and came awake with a gasping squawk. There was a moment of confusion in his eyes before he realized the situation he was in.

  “Welcome back, chicken little.” Maddock said, from across the camp.

  “Blasphemers!” The White-Wing managed to choke out.

  “It’s a little soon to be starting the name calling already, isn’t it?” Maddock asked. “We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”