Total Immersion: Dark World: A LitRPG Adventure

by S. J. Larsson

  Maybe the game alone is responsible for my death, and that’s how I died. I know more about Elora and Dark World than I did about Irvine, California, my hometown all my life.

  I’m going to farm some Sand Worms and Wild Cactuses for AH stuff. There’s no clothcraft station in Dawn, and when I asked a fellow player where one was, he said Mylop Territory’s crafting was banned by Bane.

  So, yeah. I have to farm.

  It takes about twenty minutes of letting Djinn whack the suckers around before I get an ah-ha moment. It’s ridiculously easy, and I feel incredibly stupid.

  “Djinn, that Third Wish of yours…”

  “Yes, Master Mystic? Find Treasure?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that one. Can we try it?”

  “You don’t ask, you command.” He grins. “It’s about time. Let’s treasure hunt. These piddly creatures are for eating, not looting.”

  Sid commands Third Wish. Treasure and hidden objects within 30 Selcos will appear on your map for an hour.

  Oh, yeah. Now this will be fun. I open my map. So many sparkly, yellow Xs. All over the place! We’re going to have fun, and no more farming.

  You can buy treasure maps. Nuudles make scrolls of them. It’s a high-end spell-making scroll that sells on the AH for millions. I got one once for $2 mil from Peter when he first started making them. He did it for cost of mats. And there was the one I bought what feels like years ago when I got the Seer’s Amulet. It’s best to hunt down information on where a special item might be hidden before getting a treasure map, as the cost of one doesn’t pay off the investment of a random hunt. I spent a month figuring out how to get that Seer’s Amulet.

  I’m so giddy.

  We have a grand time, and we even get a pair of Black Pearl Earrings I think Simple can wear. INT stat is +45 if you wear both. I tell Djinn she’ll love them. He agrees.

  Yes, this is better than farming, but most stuff I find is garbage or something I want to give to a guildie. I get a few pieces of nice gear I can AH.

  I find a Moldavite Ring at the edge of a cave entrance, and that says it has +6 CON and “Grant God Status” as its use description. It’s thick yellow gold with an oval, faceted deep green moldavite set deep in the metal. All within the stone, I see natural inclusions, making the gem seem to catch more light. It’s downright manly, and rings are never manly. It fits me perfectly, unlike a lot of things in Dark World. MYT class-specific, so it must be good for me somehow.

  The prize is the Rose Gold Anklet we dig out from under a random pile of sand. How in the world could anyone find this without Djinn? Or a Treasure Map scroll and some serious research?

  This one is mine. Oh, the irony.

  I plan on using the payoff from farming and treasure hunting to fund my next clothcrafting session. I need materials, and with Third Wish, I don’t have to farm them and I get more loot. Sell high-stat found treasure, buy the mats.

  I’ve found crafting to be just as much, if not more so, lucrative than farming, and it takes less time, too, once you get past the grinding levels where you make the same things over and over to get a 0.4 raise in clothcraft skill every fourth try. Thread is the best for that because it sells, and I don’t have to pay as much for gear because I make most of mine. Getting materials and making my own stuff is much cheaper than buying gear off the AH. At least with the stat gear I can wear now. Still, I’ve found that the clothcraft recipes I got or learned that are craft-specific to the crafter only, well, they’re better pieces of gear than I could get at an AH. The only other places to get great gear are dungeons, and I’m not high-stat enough for the dungeons with the best drops.

  Also, I haven’t wanted to be in a dungeon party as a Mystic. Sure, I’ve done three summon boss battles, but I still feel like I’m flubbering about with this class.

  Maybe Cedra is right, and someday, I’ll know everything.

  CHAPTER 12: BATTLE OF XIUHCOATL

  I’m the first one at the Cavern of Oddities, where Calla marked Xiuhcoatl’s battle on my map. I don’t go inside, and instead, summon Djinn for company.

  “What is your bidding, Master Nuudle?” he says after he takes form.

  “We’re going after Xiuhcoatl. I’m waiting for my friends. They helped me with you, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. I like that Voodoo Lady. So beautiful.” He sighs dramatically. “Their magics are dark and twisted.” He says it like a compliment.

  “Do you have a crush on Sorry?”

  “I do not get crushes. I only serve.” He swells his massive green chest.

  “You do more than that.”

  “Like what, Master Sid?”

  “Like think Siren Voodoo Ladies are hot.”

  “Hot?” He tilts his head. “She always dresses in practically nothing. Robes, she calls them. She has to be freezing all the time, not hot.”

  He almost had me, but then I laugh. “Touché.”

  My nerves are frazzled. It’s been a day since I warped Seeker to wherever his HP is, and now that I know he can find me with his Clairvoyance spell, I feel watched by him all the time. It’s creepy, not knowing if I’ll read that I’m being hit with Crystal Ball at every turn.

  At long last, as the heat of the desert sun is about to catch my flesh on fire, Days, Sorry, Doolittle, and Simple fly in on a black dragon big enough to fit them all on its back.

  The dragon lands, lets out a barking, gruff huff, and shakes its head as my companions climb off.

  “Is that a mount?” I ask.

  Days laughs. “Nah, we grabbed one that had gotten loose and rode him over here. Dragon, get it? Keeping in the spirit of the quest.”

  The black dragon’s enormous, webbed wings flex and flap, and then it’s off into the hot sky. I watch it until it’s out of sight.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow,” says Simple, tugging my hair. “I never should have done blue. I like your black. Who am I kidding? All Nuudles look silly. I do these stupid pigtails for the Double Magic Bandwraps’ INT boost in my hairstyle slots.”

  “That why you’re extra silly?” Days asks her.

  Sorry slaps his chest. “Quit flirting with the Nuudle.”

  He gives Sorry a sly look but says nothing.

  “So, let me guess. Looking for a dead end that looks exactly like every other dead end the summon fights have been at?” Doolittle says.

  “That seems to be the drill,” I respond. “Ready?” I turn to Djinn. “Will you be our guiding light, oh green one?”

  “Anything you ask, Master Mystic Sid.” He takes the lead into the darkness. We follow. It’s so much cooler out of the sun the deeper we go. There are no mobs anywhere, and that feels a bit creepy.

  “Shell didn’t come?” I ask, speaking quietly. It feels appropriate.

  “She said she had already promised a friend she’d help him with a quest line for the next few days,” Simple tells me.

  “We really could have used her help,” Sorry adds. “Two Mystics for a summon battle? That would be amazing.”

  “Two Djinns,” I murmur. I have a fleeting thought of what Cedra told me about Djinn leaving Mystics when they use his Seizure move. I know I’ll have to use it on Xiuhcoatl, and I’m pretty sure Djinn will come back. But what if he doesn’t? Is that my wishful thinking? Projecting onto Djinn a comrade?

  The game has become everything. It’s all I know now. I live here. I sleep here. I dream here, and I die here. I’m reborn again and again. My closest confidant is a genie.

  Djinn doesn’t waste time and leads us down a rocky slope to a familiar-looking dead end. “Master, as you wish!” He waves his massive hands at the wall in front of us.

  I look at the snaky dragon mark on my left palm. “I’m nervous.”

  “You aren’t nervous,” Days says. “You’re getting him. You’re excited.”

  No, I know I’m nervous. I have no idea what to expect. Dragons can hurt. Bad.

  “We doing this?” Sorry says.

  “Yeah, let’s do it,” I say, and
put my left hand on the wall. The dragon mark leaves my hand and glows yellow on the rock this time, and then everything fades to black.

  Then we’re in.

  The arena, although in a cave, is full of twisting, ancient tree roots from god knows where, and they cover the cavern’s ground, climbing all the way up to a wide, open-air view of the sun directly overhead. It’s incredibly bright and hot.

  I don’t see a dragon.

  “Where is he?” says Doolittle.

  “I don’t know. It’s just roots and nothing else,” says Simple. She sounds a little nervous too.

  Sid summons Djinn.

  “Yes, Master Sid, I am at your beck and call,” he announces loudly after forming from his green smoke.

  “Shhh!” I tell him.

  “Why shhh?” he asks.

  “Oh, sorry. Gut reaction. We don’t know where Xiuhcoatl is. This place is empty,” I tell him.

  “He and I are old… acquaintances. I gave him a wish once. Just because.”

  I look up at him. “What wish?”

  “To be able to become invisible. He foresaw the Dragonbane. Came to me for help. I admit I regret it now.”

  “Why?” Simple asks him.

  “Because I hate being burned, and young Master Sid plans on utilizing my wishes to convince him to join Master Sid in his Mystic progression.” He grins. “I’ve been burned worse, though.”

  I want to ask him about my Mystic progression and what that means, but out of nowhere in the middle of the cave, Xiuhcoatl becomes. We all freeze in terror.

  He’s indeed a snake dragon, solid, shining gold scales covering his long, twisting body as he flaps his gigantic, skeletal sapphire wings. His face is more animalistic than the dragon my friends arrived riding on earlier. He looks like he comes from another world, another time, hell, another dimension. His long, sleek, spiraling spiked tail sways and swirls as he keeps flying in one place, looking right at me. Wind from his flapping wings blows my hair.

  “Oh my,” whispers Sorry.

  Xiuhcoatl hisses at me, a thin, blood-red forked tongue whisking around his oh-so-sharp double rows of teeth.

  Sorry casts Spiritual Intervention. Sorry and 5 others gain +80 DEF.

  She had reacted, but the rest of us just gape at the enormous golden beast in front of us as he opens that terrifying mouth, feeling the Defense stat boost cool our heads.

  “Never again!” he rumbles, and hisses again, still glaring at me. We’re frozen in fear and panic.

  Djinn clears his throat, shaking his head.

  We all get targeted. Here it comes. Why can’t I do anything?

  Xiuhcoatl uses Solar Explosion.

  The sunlight coming in from above in the cave becomes a solid thing, shooting down at us like molten gold instantly. It’s so fast. Too fast.

  Sid dismisses Djinn.

  I’ve never felt such pain in my life, bypassing the feeling of being about to puke up my guts and making me pass straight the fuck out. I just experienced being bombed by a nuke. Yep. Really no way to describe that except “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I kind of come to in my graveyard. I’m a dazed ghost for several moments, trying to figure out what happened. I can’t access guild chat as a ghost, for some reason, to ask my friends what happened to them. All I remember is that I felt like the sun fell on me and burned out my soul. I swear I felt my eyeballs melt.

  He wiped us. Wiped us all right out before we could even begin.

  Dazed and crushed, I don’t move at regular ghost speed. My ghost body even hurts still, but maybe that’s my imagination reliving that horrid experience.

  I make it to the wrought-iron fence and drift through it. I sit down suddenly, and I feel so very alone. I want to cry for the first time in as long as I can remember. I stare into my rain-soaked Moldavite Ring’s stone, at all its familiar inclusions after a few lifetimes of gazing at it when I can’t sleep. They make different pictures to me sometimes. Little connect-the-dots.

  “Sid,” I hear a woman’s voice say. I look around me.

  Anella stands next to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. I can feel it. But how can she see me? I’m a ghost. How can she touch me?

  “The Hidden can see ghosts. The Hidden can do many things with and for ghosts.”

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” Her voice is soft, almost a whisper. “Here, let me help.”

  Anella casts Revive on Sid.

  My see-through self becomes solid, and lord, my whole virtual body aches. I bend over my knees, moaning. She brought me back from being a ghost. I thought you could only revive at your body.

  Anella casts Soothing Stream on Sid. Sid gains +560 MND for 120 seconds.

  A jolt of pure ecstasy fills me, starting at my toes and running up my small body to the top of my head. I see things I can’t make sense of, hallucinating from so much Mind. The highest stat I ever had was my ATT when I went after Seeker in Elora so long ago, and I didn’t feel stats in Elora.

  This is a drug.

  I lie back in the leaves and close my eyes, letting the feeling fix me. It does just that. Fixes me. “Thank you so much, Anella.” I murmur. I stay still and breathe the wet, rainy air as the eternal rainfall of the graveyard drenches me.

  Anella casts Shielding from Horrors on Sid.

  That familiar greenish fog embraces me in its bubble and the rain stops pelting me.

  I open my eyes and look up at her. She is a very beautiful Siren, but she always looks so sad. Soaking wet. Like she’s forgotten something, like she’s lost a spark of life somewhere here in Dark World. Her silver hair seems unkempt, yet gorgeous in a mysterious, wild way. “Why do you help me?”

  “Because you’re helping me.”

  “How? How am I helping you?” I sit up, peering into her black eyes.

  “You give me hope.”

  “How? I don’t get it.”

  She’s quiet, staring. I wait, unmoving. With Anella, it always feels like I could say or do just the wrong thing and she’ll disappear with her Scatter spell, and everytime I get that feeling, I’m afraid I’ll never see her again. So, I do nothing.

  “I’ve never had hope before” was all she said. “Now, go back. Turn your guild chat back on. Boost up your people. Give them hope and try again.”

  My guild chat is off. It should have cut back in, I’d think, when I became alive again at least. Right? Did she do that, too? Really, no clue what’s going on sometimes in Dark World. It decides its own rules that usually I’d call a game glitch… but this isn’t a game and I know it.

  I want to complain, say it’s too hard, too scary to think of going through that again. I nod slowly. “Okay, Anella. I will. For you.”

  “For all of us, Mystic,” she says.

  Anella casts Scatter.

  Ghostly images of Anella shoot away in all directions. She’s an oddity, and she knows so much. If only I could get her to talk, tell me what’s going on. What she knows that nobody else does.

  I turn on guild chat to several very depressed guildmates. “Hi,” I say. “I’m back.”

  Simple bursts out, “You were gone forever! Your body wasn’t there when I got to the battle entrance. What happened to you?”

  “I have a… friend,” I say. “She’s the Hidden. She did something to me. I don’t know.”

  “You know a Hidden? I thought that class was a myth,” says Shell.

  “She’s a Hidden. She helps me sometimes.”

  “How do you know her?” asks Shell. I feel irritated at her irrationally. Maybe it’s because I died, was Revived and then pumped with MND stat so high I hallucinated. In that moment, I decide I just plain-out don’t like her as well as don’t trust her. Totally biased by her uncaring raspy tone of voice.

  “It doesn’t matter. We can do this.”

  “You want to go again? Are you nuts?” says Doolittle. “He slaughtered us.”

  “It’s the sun,” I say.

  “What do you mean, it’s
the sun?” says Shell.

  I don’t want to discuss this with Shell listening. No, it’s not a Mystic competition. I can feel she’s changed toward me, but I don’t know why. I do trust my gut…but Days trusts her and has for a long time. Could he be wrong?

  “Will you all believe me and meet me at the cavern at nightfall? If you’re not busy, of course.”

  Silence.

  Days starts laughing hysterically. “You are one crazy dude. You have me convinced. But goddamn, that was more than Dark World death. That was something else. I couldn’t move my ghost body for ten minutes.”

  “If Days thinks it’s funny, I’m in,” says Sorry with a chuckle.

  Doolittle says, “I want to punch that gold dragon in its toothy face after what he did to me, so I’m definitely in.”

  “Simple?” I ask.

  “Oh, come on. You know I’m going. Wouldn’t miss it. To beat that fight? The bragging rights would be owned by Faithgamblers.”

  I pause, then ask, “Do you know any Mystic who has beaten him?”

  “Nope,” says Simple.

  “Nada,” Days says.

  “That was the first time I’ve seen him. The real him. There are sculptures of him in Bane,” says Doolittle. “The human NPCs who haven’t been changed into Dragonbane yet, and don’t want to be, keep shrines of Xiuhcoatl in their closets. So, I have seen his image.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Days says.

  “I haven’t,” I tell them.

  “You didn’t know to look,” Simple says.

  “I own a Xiuhcoatl marble statue,” Shell adds. I still want the conversation to stop because of her, and now she’s joining in. “Mystic comes very naturally to me. I’ve always played mage classes.”

  Frustration makes me talk without thinking. “I don’t know anything about Mystic.” I feel rage coming on. “I can’t look it up, I can’t read a wiki, I have nobody to ask because nobody knows anything… I know I’m a terrible Mystic, and I really was a great Maniac.” I stop when I hear someone huff. I just know it’s Shell. “Look, I’m sorry, just venting. I know, it’s whiny.”