by A. J. Markam
“Are you saying this is my fault?”
“No, boss!” the imp said, although he nodded his head ‘yes’ as he said it.
I stopped and frowned. “Wait, what was that?”
“What was what?”
“You just said ‘no,’ but you nodded your head ‘yes.’”
“Did I?” he asked innocently, although I was pretty sure he was faking it.
“Yes, you did!”
“Sorry, boss.”
“Fine,” I said, and resumed walking. “Just so we’re clear, this is not my fault.”
“No, boss!” he said – and nodded again.
“Stop that!” I yelled.
“Stop what?”
This was idiotic. The imp was obviously yanking my chain, and I was falling right into his passive-aggressive trap.
“Never mind,” I muttered.
The important thing to find out was why the farmer had attacked us – and if it was something I could expect from everyone I encountered in this area.
I opened up my Reputation window to find out if I had some sort of problem with the local populace.
No, I was neutral in Ostmere. In fact, I had a +10 buff to Reputation just for being human.
“Stig, do you know anything about this area?” I asked.
“Not really, boss.”
“What about that goddess the farmer mentioned – Chalastia? Who’s that?”
“Oh, she’s a real bitch, boss.”
It was kind of funny hearing a muppet curse. But still –
“I need a little more info than that,” I said.
“She’s the goddess of purity and light.”
“Wait – so does she get along with Warlocks and demons ?”
“No, we freaking hate that bitch.”
I could have slapped my forehead, it was so obvious.
“So people who worship her are probably not going to like me, is that right?”
“I’d say that’s about right, boss.”
“Great,” I muttered. In the game for half an hour, and I already smelled like ass and had made a whole bunch of enemies without trying. “Can you disappear, Stig?”
“I can’t become invisible, boss.”
“No, can you go back to where you came from if – never mind, hold on.”
It was easier just to find out for myself than rely on a potentially unreliable source of information.
I looked at my action bar. Besides Darkbolt, there was now an icon of Stig’s face.
Summon Imp
2.5 seconds cast time
Stationary
50 Mana to cast
Summon your imp.
Can also dismiss imp for 0 mana.
That last sentence was what I wanted to see.
I activated the icon with a thought.
Immediately my right hand twirled in a circle, and my left hand cut left in a straight line. Apparently this was the way to get rid of my imp or call him back.
Stig disappeared in a puff of fire and smoke.
The last thing I heard was his disembodied voice croaking, “See you soon, boss!”
“Ah,” I sighed, happy to be alone as I walked on down the road.
6
In a few minutes I came upon the town.
It was basically a small village with an inn, several shops, a blacksmith forge, and a couple of other nondescript buildings. There were all sorts of people walking around – but they tended to be humans, dwarves, and elves. No goblins, orcs, trolls, or any of the other races who didn’t get along with humans.
I noticed as I was walking through the streets that everybody who came close to me made a face, looked at me like I was a fresh dog turd, and moved about 45 feet away.
Great.
I needed to earn some money fast, get a room at an inn, and get a bath.
Suddenly the crowd parted. People started running away, or at least backing up really quickly.
I immediately thought, Jeez, do I smell THAT bad?!
Then I realized they were backing away towards me from something else.
Not only that, but the men in the street were staring with slack jaws.
The women in the street scowled angrily. Some of them hit their husbands in the arm, as though to make them stop looking.
The villagers ignored me completely. Well, until they smelled me, that is. Then they all quickly moved ten feet away.
I wondered what was going on – and then I saw for myself.
There was a guy walking through the center of the town square. He was tall and good-looking, with long hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
He wore all black – a badass duster jacket that came down to his calves, a black vest, black shirt, black boots, black pants. The shirt was open to expose a hairy, muscular chest. He had an awesome staff strapped to his back, apparently made out of an orc spine with the upper half of a skull at the top. Two huge rubies were fixed in the eye sockets and glowed faintly.
He basically looked like a Rock and Roll god.
But he wasn’t what everyone was staring at.
Behind him strolled a woman. And not just any woman, but one of the hottest women I had ever seen in my entire life – in real life, movies, or the internet.
She had a gorgeous face – high cheekbones, slender nose, and sensual lips. Her teeth were white as pearls and perfectly straight. Her hair was a deep auburn color, thick and wild, and hung down to the middle of her back, nearly hiding her graceful neck.
But as beautiful as her face was, her body was even more incredible.
She had D-cup breasts on a tiny little frame, nearly bursting out of the black leather corset binding her entire midsection. Her arms were thin and toned, her waist was incredibly tiny, and her hips were va-va-voom, with a luscious ass I didn’t expect on such a thin woman.
In addition to the corset she wore a black leather thong, which let you see every inch of her long legs. Her dainty feet ended in black stiletto high heels, and somehow she walked confidently on them even on cobblestone and grass.
She basically looked like a Playboy Playmate of the Year, and was wearing next to nothing – which explained why all the men were drooling as they stared at her.
Oh – I forgot a few minor details.
Her skin was a deep rose color, she had two small horns pointing up from her forehead, black raven’s wings sprouting from her back, and a long, slender tail that ended in a triangle.
She was a demoness.
Which meant that the guy was probably a Warlock.
Suddenly I was a whole lot more enthusiastic about my role in the game.
I selected him and checked him out – Level 23, Robert –
Robert?!
Unless he liked playing unimaginatively named characters, I figured I had just run into another QCer.
“Excuse me,” I called out as I stepped forward. “Are you in QC for Westek?”
“Why yes I am,” he said, sounding sort of like Matthew McConaughey. I half-expected him to bust out with an All right, all right, all right.
“So am I!” I exclaimed.
He looked me up and down. “You a new hire?”
“Yeah.”
“First day?”
“First hour, actually.”
“Well, welcome to the – ”
Suddenly he grimaced and put a hand up to his nose. “Sweet baby Jesus, what is that stench?”
I winced. “Oh… I, uh, I got sprayed by a skunk.”
“Dude, you need to get that taken care of right away. That shit is vile.”
“I know,” I said dejectedly. “I was going to start over, but I tried to log out and I can’t.”
“What you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean I can’t. The option is greyed out on the menu.”
“Well, just take the headset off, then.”
“I can’t. They’ve got me in some sort of new long-term immersion thing. I don’t know how to get out.”
“Get ‘em on chat.”
“That’s greyed out, too.”
“Mail?”
“I can receive it but not send it.”
“Well shit. You try clickin’ your heels and sayin’ ‘There’s no place like home?’” He laughed at his little witticism. “Little Wizard of Oz joke there.”
I wanted to yell at him, This is SERIOUS! but I didn’t think now was the time to be making enemies.
“Could you do me a favor and let the administrators know about me? Maybe check up and see what happened? My supervisor is a guy named John Perkins.”
“Sure thing, amigo.”
“Um, would you mind doing it soon? I’m a little freaked out that I can’t log off.”
“Tell you what – I’ll send off a text to my boss-man right now.”
I breathed out in relief. “Thanks.”
His hands moved like he was typing on an invisible keyboard.
Behind him, his demoness looked at her crimson nails like she was bored out of her mind. Either that or contemplating a manicure sometime soon.
“What’s your name?” Robert asked.
“Ian. Ian Hertzfelder.”
“Spell that.”
I did, then he typed out a message and read it back to me.
“‘Just encountered a new QCer inside the game named Ian Hertzfelder. He is unable to log out or contact his supervisor John Perkins via chat or any other method. Says he is in a new experimental long-term module. Please manually pull him out of the game or otherwise contact him.’ How’s that sound?”
“Awesome,” I said gratefully. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem, cowboy. Have a good one.”
He started to walk on by –
“Do you mind if I ask you a couple other questions?”
He looked annoyed for the briefest of seconds, then said, “Shoot.”
“You’re a Warlock, right?”
“That I am.”
“I am too!”
He looked around as though searching for something. “Where’s your imp?”
“Oh… we were having a little trouble with a farmer back there, so I –”
“What did he do?”
“Stig? Nothing, really.”
“Not the imp – the farmer.”
“Oh. He, uh… threw some potatoes at me.”
As soon as I said it out loud, I realized I sounded lame as hell. Especially to Mr. Rock ‘n Roll Warlock here.
Robert just confirmed my impression.
“Potatoes?” he said in disbelief, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I hope you fried his ass.”
“…no…”
“Why not?” Robert asked, almost belligerent.
“Uh… it seemed like it was a little bit of an overreaction to a couple of potatoes,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. “Do they hate Warlocks around here?”
“Yeah, this whole region worships some goddess of purity or somethin’, they basically hate our guts. What did you do with your imp?”
“I just sent him away until I could figure stuff out.”
“No, no, no, no,” Robert said disapprovingly. “You can’t be like that, hombre. You gotta lay down the law. Let ‘em know who you are.”
“But – Stig’s not very powerful, and neither am I – ”
Matthew McConaughey shook his head dolefully and proceeded to give me a lecture.
“You got it all wrong, man – it’s not about the hit points, it’s about the attitude. You gotta walk around here like you own the damn place. You get me?”
He gestured at the crowd.
“These people? They’re just NPC hicks with a bunch of potatoes. You are a freaking rock star. You are a scary mofo. You are a binder of demons – a destroyer of worlds. You are the emperor, and these are your peons. It’s the mindset, dude.” He tapped both of his temples with his fingers. “It’s all up here, man. Psychological. You gotta act like you got the biggest swingin’ dick around, understand?” he said, suggestively rotating his hips.
“Uh… okay…” I said, trying not to look at his gyrating crotch.
“These villagers – take a good, hard look at ‘em,” he commanded.
I looked around at all the farmers gaping at us.
“See how they look at me? That’s the kind of respect you need to command, ese.”
I raised an eyebrow and glanced back at the devil-horned Miss March. “Actually, I think they’re looking at your… what is she, exactly?”
Robert grinned in a very self-satisfied way. “That, my man, is a succubus.”
I stared at her in lustful wonder. “Do they all look like that?”
“Well, I’m partial to my Kilara here – ain’t that right, baby?”
The succubus looked over at him and blew a kiss from her hand, then giggled. It was the sexiest sound I had ever heard in my entire life.
Robert continued, “But let’s just say on a scale of 1 to 10, I have never seen a succubus that was less than an 11.”
“Wow,” I murmured.
He slapped one arm around my shoulders and pulled me in next to him, like a guy showing his kid brother his first muscle car. “I mean, have you ever seen anything like that before in your life? Anywhere?”
“No,” I said honestly.
“And she’s just standin’ there looking hot! Kilara, honey,” he said, addressing the succubus, “walk ten feet that way, then come on back.”
The demoness turned around and strutted away. I swear to God, she had the most perfect bubble butt in the history of the world, and it swayed tantalizingly back and forth as her tail curled in the air behind her.
“Look at that, brother! Look at that!” Robert cried out, kissing his fingertips like an Italian stereotype in a bad gangster movie. “Leonardo da Vinci never created a piece of work as fine as that ass!”
He called out loud, “Can I get some fries with that shake? Honey, I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave!”
The succubus looked back over her shoulder and smiled and giggled. It was the most seductively feminine sound you could imagine. Then she turned around and started back towards us – thrusting her chest out provocatively in the air.
Every NPC male in the game basically had his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
I didn’t blame them. My tongue was practically hanging out, too.
Robert wasn’t immune, either. “Now, see, me, I’m an ass man – but those tits are workin’ overtime to turn me into a boob connoisseur. What are you, hombre – ass man? Breast man? Leg man?”
“All of the above,” I murmured as I watched her walk towards us.
“Haha – I heard THAT!” Robert laughed. “Let me tell you somethin’ – the company didn’t tell you when you got this job, but in this new expansion pack we’re testin’, there are some very nice perks to havin’ a demon lady friend, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, she’s awesome to look at,” I agreed.
“She ain’t just awesome to look at, if you get what I’m sayin’,” he said, and elbowed me in the ribs with a big smile on his face.
“Well, I mean, her voice sounds really beautiful, too – ”
“Oh, just wait till you hear some of the sounds she can make, if you get my drift,” he grinned.
This was turning into a bad Monty Python skit.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, know what I mean?
“No… actually, I don’t.”
He sighed like I was the densest idiot he’d ever met. “Dude. Sex. You can have sex with them.”
I stared at him, completely floored. “What?! You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I kid you not.” He got a look of rapture on his face and turned back to the succubus. “Incredible, dude. The sensations are amazing. And she will do anything, man.”
I swallowed hard. “…a-anything?”
“Anything.”
He mouthed Anal without saying it out loud.
“Couldn’t get my last five girlfriends to do that, that’
s for damn sure,” he said wistfully.
“But – that’s not in the regular game, is it?”
“What, the anal?”
“No – just regular sex!”
“Oh. No, I think they’re making it into a new expansion pack.” He grinned and ribbed me again. “If you know what I mean.”
“The sex,” I said hesitantly, making sure I knew what he meant.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Adults only.”
“They didn’t tell me anything about that in the interview.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it slipped their mind.”
I remembered the stack of NDAs and liability forms I’d signed. They’d covered everything else – how could they have forgotten this?!
“I don’t see how it could have possibly slipped their mind.” Suddenly I felt an even greater panic than when I’d found I couldn’t log out of the game. “Maybe they gave me a portion to QC where I can’t have sex!”
“Well, you’ll find out for sure in just a few levels, when you can get your very own.” He clapped me on the back. “Enjoy, amigo. Now you’ll have to excuse me, but me and Kilara gotta be gettin’ on down the road.”
“You on a quest?”
“Yes, but the main reason is you reek, my friend. Seriously – take care of that shit, pronto. Or your succubus lady ain’t gonna wanna go anywhere near you. They may be demons straight from Hell, but you smell worse than Satan’s crack. Capiche?”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“Alright, hermano – take care and remember: it’s all in the ‘tude!”
He pointed to his temple and nodded at me like, Got it?
“Thanks for the tips,” I said.
“You got it, amigo. Peace out.”
I stood there watching as he swaggered through the town square, the succubus sashaying like a runway model behind him. I felt hypnotized as I watched her perfect ass sway back and forth with every step as her tail moved sinuously through the air.
All the villagers backed away from Robert, but still couldn’t keep their eyes off him. And her.
The guy kind of acted like a douchebag, yes – but on the other hand, when you walked around with a chick like that following you… I could understand why he had a big head.
And that can be me!
Not the douchebag part.
Just the ‘having a mega hot chick’ part.
It had been a long, long time since my girlfriend had left – and while she had been cute, she hadn’t come anywhere close to what I’d just seen.
