by A. J. Markam
Time to get Stig back and level the hell up.
7
“I don’t know, boss.”
Stig was sitting on a tree stump in the forest, looking doubtful.
“What you mean, you don’t know?”
The imp shook his head. “Hot girls, boss – they’re nothing but trouble.”
“But she’ll be under my control.”
The imp raised one eyebrow – or would have, if he had any hair on his brow at all – like I don’t know about that.
“Are you saying that she won’t follow my orders?” I asked.
“Do you know what a succubus is?”
“Yeah – it’s a female demon. They have sex with men while they’re asleep,” I said, repeating the only thing I knew about them from mythology in the real world. To be honest, I didn’t know much about them inside the game.
“I don’t know about doing that with men in their sleep,” Stig said distastefully, “but they’re really good at messing with your head.”
“What you mean?”
“They make men fall in love with them, and then they make the men do whatever they want.”
Didn’t sound that far off from regular women in the real world.
“But I’m the master,” I said jerking my thumb at my chest. “I’ll be the one in control.”
The imp gave me another raised eyebrow like Suuuuuure you will, buddy.
“I will!” I exclaimed in irritation. “Besides, it doesn’t matter – we’re going to get a succubus no matter what, so your job is to help me out. Understand?”
“Yes, boss,” he sighed, sounding distinctly unhappy about the prospect.
“All right, the first thing I need to do is find some quests. So let’s go talk to a farmer.”
“You want me to disappear again, boss?”
I remembered Robert the QC Warlock and his words of advice.
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.
“No, you’re not going to be hiding anymore,” I said confidently. “We’re going to be the ones in charge of the situation from now on. Time to let them know what’s what.”
Stig gave me another doubtful look, but said, “Okay, boss.”
We walked out of the woods and headed towards the nearest farm. There was a whole family out in the field – a farmer with his wife, and three small children under the age of nine digging potatoes out of the ground. The youngest couldn’t have been any older than four.
The farmer had a golden ‘!’ above his head, the sure sign of an NPC with a quest to offer.
Act like you own the game, I reminded myself as I walked up.
Stig walked hesitantly in back of me, peeking out from behind my legs.
“Farmer!” I yelled. “I’m an adventurer – and I know you have a quest for me! What do you – ”
Suddenly all three children screamed at once.
“Imp! Imp!” they howled, and started throwing potatoes.
“Hey! Cut that out!” I yelled.
“He stinks, he stinks!” they chanted as they continued to throw spuds at me.
“Go away, you rancid warlock – and take your demon with you back to the abyss!” the wife shrieked, and started throwing potatoes as well.
The potatoes each took off a hit point as they slammed into my forehead and chest. At this rate they would have to hit me with another 146 potatoes before I died, but it was still annoying.
Then the farmer raised his hoe. “Get out of here, you foul-smelling witch!”
Then he ran at me.
I could’ve killed him. It was a definitely a possibility.
But I really didn’t want to kill the woman and three little kids, too. That was seriously messed up.
And I didn’t want to watch them weep over their dead videogame father’s corpse, either.
So I turned around and bolted for the woods.
Stig raced ahead even faster than me.
We stopped once we got back to the treeline. Apparently the farmer had quit chasing us and gone back to his crops.
“Good job, boss,” Stig said. His shoulders were shaking slightly, and I could tell he was trying to suppress a laugh. “Way to let them know what’s what.”
I glared at the imp. “Stig?”
“Yes, boss?”
“No sarcasm from now on.”
“Okay, boss.”
“All right – new plan.”
“What’s that, boss?”
“You hide while I talk to the farmers.”
I knew Robert wouldn’t approve, but I wasn’t a rock god Warlock yet. I would eventually get there… but first I needed a couple of quests.
And a bath.
8
With Stig safely hidden in the woods, I got my first quest from another farmer on a different plot of land. Far, far away from the family of potato-throwing brats.
“Wild pigs are destroying my corn,” the new farmer said. “I need someone to kill them for me.”
A window appeared with the details of the quests:
Pig Out!
Wild pigs are destroying the farmer’s crops. Kill 10 pigs for the following reward:
200 XP
50 coppers
Farmer’s Gloves: +2 armor, +1 Stamina
A pretty mediocre haul, but at least it would get me halfway to my next level. Even more, actually, since I would get experience points for killing each individual pig. And I could definitely use any amount of money that would get me closer to renting a room and taking a bath. I had hoped that the skunk stink would be a temporary debuff, but nope – it wasn’t going away.
I hit ‘Accept’ on the window, then started back towards the woods.
“This should be easy for you,” the farmer called out after me. “I think you can probably knock the pigs out with your smell.”
I turned around in bewilderment as the farmer guffawed and went back to hoeing his field.
That was wild – normally NPCs had a very small scripted range of responses, but this guy had commented on my smell! He’d basically improvised on the spot, given the input of the skunk smell!
Was this one of the new AI’s that my supervisor had mentioned?
I went back to the woods to find Stig. I felt a little bad about the quest – I really didn’t want to kill cute little piglets, but on the other hand, I needed to do my job.
And rent a room in an inn so I could take a damn bath.
And get a smokin’ hot succubus.
So the pigs were about to become pork chops, as far as I was concerned.
I didn’t find Stig where I had left him, though. The forest was devoid of small grey imps.
“Stig!” I called out.
“Hey boss,” a voice said from the tree branches above me.
I looked up to see Stig sitting in the branches of an oak tree, 15 feet above me.
“What are you doing up there?”
“A pig tried to eat me, boss.”
I laughed. “Seriously? You’re afraid of a pig?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “YES boss.”
I grinned. “Where is the little oinker?”
Stig pointed. “Over there, boss.”
I turned around, expecting to see Wilbur out of Charlotte’s Web.
What I got was a lot closer to Bebop out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – just no mohawk, glasses, or standing on its hind legs.
Thirty feet away stood a monster as high as my waist, covered in black bristly hair, with two six-inch tusks jutting up out of its mouth.
“Oh shit,” I muttered. I immediately started casting a Darkbolt, but it took 2.5 seconds.
The thing squealed – a sound more like the xenomorph’s scream from Aliens than an oink – and charged right at me.
I was able to get off my first shot. A roiling ball of black energy flew from my hands and hit the boar square in the face.
The Darkbolt took off a g
ood 20% of the pig’s hit points. Unfortunately, my attack did nothing to slow it down.
I tried jumping out of the way, but the pig was just too damn fast. I knew the game only allowed you to dodge a certain number of blows from an opponent, calculated randomly. This was not my lucky round.
One of the boar’s tusks ripped across my thigh, sending a sharp stab of agony up my leg.
I screamed in pain, then yelled at Stig, “Help me kill it!” as I threw another Darkbolt.
Stig fired his little fart fireballs from the tree above, which did little more than shave off a couple of hit points from the pig. But at least it was something.
The pig charged me twice more and got me both times, knocking my hit points down to 10% of my total.
But I managed to fire off three Darkbolts in the same amount of time. Seconds later the pig was dead, and the words ‘25 XP’ shimmered in the air.
Then something happened that I’d never seen in the game before: a tiny wisp of vapor rose up out of the pig’s body and dissolved into tiny sparks.
A counter appeared next to my hit point bar. It said 1/40. Apparently that was the number of souls I needed to forge a new collar for the succubus, just like the dwarven witch had mentioned.
Good to know that pig souls counted for my overall goal. Too bad the damn skunk hadn’t.
I looked around for loot, but there wasn’t any – at least no coins. But the tusks of the pig glowed faintly. I touched one and it broke off immediately. A computer window notified me that it was worth eight coppers. Not bad. I grabbed the other one and put them both in my bag.
Now I was 25 XP, one pig soul, and a couple of tusks richer – but I was a freaking mess. My pants were torn, and I had lost almost all my hit points. If the game depicted gore, I would’ve been a bloody mess. At least I was spared that gruesome sight, but I was still hobbling around like a 95-year-old man.
Of course, Stig was sitting pretty up in the tree, without a care in the world.
“Thanks for coming down here and helping!” I snapped at him.
“You told me to help you kill it, boss. So I did.”
I realized he was right: that’s exactly what I had said. Help me kill it. I had never asked him to come down to the ground with me.
The two-foot-tall demon lawyer had struck again.
Like I said, the imp was smarter than he let on.
“Why didn’t you come up here, boss?”
“I…”
Well, shit.
Apparently the imp was a lot smarter than me. After all, I was the idiot who had engaged in close-quarters combat and let myself get ripped to shreds.
I remembered that hunters in the real world would get up in blinds in trees and wait for hours for a deer to pass by so they could shoot it. Maybe that was the best approach to take here.
There was no way that I could have climbed the oak tree in time – the boar would’ve gotten me for sure – but there was no reason not to use Stig’s approach for future battles.
I started looking around. There were a couple of trees with low enough branches that I could pull myself up into them.
This just might work.
“Stig, get down from there and help me out,” I said as I walked over to the nearest tree.
The imp jumped and landed on the forest floor with a light thump. Then he ran after me, tottering back and forth like an unstable chimpanzee.
I climbed up into the tree and sat on a thick branch that would be safely above any boar that might attack.
Stig scampered up the tree trunk, nimble as a cat, and sat next to me on the limb.
“Oh no,” I said. “You get back down on the ground.”
His blank yellow eyes widened. “What?”
“You’re going to be the bait. Go find a pig, shoot a fireball at it, get it mad, then run back here and I’ll take care of it.”
His long, thin ears drooped. “Seriously, boss?”
“Seriously. Go on.”
“Okay, boss,” he muttered, then jumped down out of the tree.
He trundled off slowly into the forest… paused… then looked back at me with a hangdog expression like please don’t make me do this.
“Go on,” I said motioning him forward with one hand.
He sighed heavily, his shoulders heaving, and then walked off into the underbrush.
I sat there waiting for my hit points to regenerate. They came back up to full after two minutes, though my pants stayed shredded. I would have to find somebody in the village to repair them.
Another minute passed in silence. I was starting to wonder if Stig had come up with some interpretation of my command that allowed him to go sip Mai Tais on a beach somewhere, when suddenly I heard a distant farting noise, followed by a horrific high-pitched screeching.
Stig came bolting out of the underbrush, an absolutely terrified look on his face. I would have laughed, but then I saw the monstrous boar that came tearing out of the brush behind him. It was even larger and uglier than the last one that had attacked me.
“Run around the tree in a circle!” I yelled as I fired off my first Darkbolt.
Stig didn’t have to be told twice. The imp darted behind the tree, but he didn’t need to worry – as soon as my Darkbolt hit it, the pig immediately came for me, and got up on its hind legs as it tried to reach me.
No dice. I fired off Darkbolt after Darkbolt until the thing was finally dead, and the numbers ‘30 XP’ floated up from the corpse.
I got down out of the tree, snapped off the tusks, and put them in my bag.
“Good job, Stig,” I said. “You can come out now.”
The little imp was shivering as he emerged from behind the trunk.
I knew I shouldn’t pay any attention to his fear – the whole ‘using the imp as bait’ gambit had worked beautifully, without putting me in danger at all.
But my conscience got the better of me.
Which I knew was incredibly stupid. This was a videogame, and he was nothing more than a bunch of zeroes and ones – but I still felt horrible putting a small creature in danger so that I could stay completely safe.
“Okay, new plan,” I said. “From now on, we’re both going to walk next to each other, we’re both going to fight side-by-side, and nobody is going to hide up in a tree while the other person stays safe. Deal?”
“So I don’t have to be bait again?” the imp asked with a trembling voice.
“No more bait.”
“Thank you, boss,” he said, exhaling deeply. The relief in his voice was palpable.
Robert the Rock ‘n Roll Warlock would not approve, a voice in my head whispered, followed by another voice that said, Screw Robert the Rock ‘n Roll Warlock.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go kill some pigs.”
9
We finished off the rest of the porkers, and I actually got good enough where I was able to kill them without too much trouble.
Oddly enough, one of the boars was wearing a cloth belt around its neck. +2 armor, +1 stamina – not bad. The loot gods work in mysterious ways.
The closest I got to dying was when two pigs attacked us at the same time, but Stig was able to help out and draw the one pig’s aggro while I handled the other. We both were nearly dead by the end of the round, but we made it.
After we recuperated, I left Stig in the forest and went to go turn in the quest.
The farmer had a golden ‘?’ over his head, which indicated I could claim my reward. He watched me approach and sniffed the air as I got closer.
“You fall in my pigsty by accident?” he asked, then chortled at his own joke.
If he really was a new and improved AI, he sure was an annoying one.
“I would like my reward, please,” I said without cracking a smile.
‘200 XP’ glimmered in the air, and suddenly I was surrounded with a shimmering curtain of light. There was a sound like a trumpet blast, and the words ‘Level 2’ appeared midair.
A new icon appeared in
my action bar:
Darkfire
1.5 seconds cast time
Stationary
36 hit points Dark Magic over 6 seconds
40 Mana to cast
Range: 50 feet
According to the description, Darkfire was an attack that did damage over time. A ‘slow burn,’ you might say.
Sorry, that was bad. And here I was complaining about the NPC’s jokes.
My stats had also increased. My Health was up to 168, and my Mana was up to 300. Plus I gained a point in intellect and stamina as well.
Movin’ on up...
The farmer handed over some copper coins and a pair of cloth work gloves that added +2 to armor and +1 to stamina.
Health 168
Mana 300
Intellect 21
Stamina 14
Armor 11
Shirt: +1
Vest: +2
Pants: +2
Belt: +2
Boots: +2
Gloves: +2
“Good job on the pigs,” the farmer said. “By the way, are you looking for any more work? Foxes have been raiding my henhouse, and I’m tired of losing my prize chickens to them. If you could kill ten for me I would be more than grateful.”
Another quest window appeared:
Foxy Raid-y
I groaned.
‘Foxy Lady.’ Jeez, the puns could be bad on these quest titles.
Foxes are killing the farmer’s prize chickens. Kill 10 of these feral pests and receive the following reward:
400 XP
75 coppers
Shoulder Pads of the Pig Farmer: +2 armor +1 Intelligence
I didn’t exactly look forward to wearing Shoulder Pads of the Pig Farmer, but if they would offer +2 to armor and +1 to Intelligence, I wasn’t going to complain too much.
I accepted the quest and set off for the woods. When I got back to Stig, I saw from the stats hovering over his head that he was now Level 2, as well.
“Time to go hunt something closer to your own size,” I told him.
The foxes were a different challenge from the pigs. They didn’t do as much damage, but they were definitely faster, and they would attack in groups of two and three. Working together, they could be more dangerous than a single boar.
