Beginner's Luck (Character Development Book 1)

by Aaron Jay

  Aabid you just admitted that you let me escape. More damningly you just admitted that you led off with an attack. You were too stupid to hit me with some crowd control. You had a low-level runner and you let me run. Your life is already over Aabid. You think the Eastmans are going to keep a screw up like you around now?

  Calm down Aabid. He is just trying to get in your head. - Jude.

  Easy for him to say Aabid. Maya will protect him. After I succeed and the Eastman analysis team look at your logs they are going to hang the whole thing on your necks. Meijas - you broke silence too. You guys are fucked. Heck, even if you guys succeeded who is going to get the credit? Maya’s pet or you guys?

  Shut up. Stick to the plan - Jude.

  Meijas took a breath and turned to Jude IRL.

  “You going to throw us under the bus?” Meijas asked Jude.

  “Will you shut up? He isn’t going to beat us unless you idiots keep falling for his mind games,” Jude hissed.

  “Why are we even hiding and going dark in the first place? It is stupid. We outnumber him. Communication and coordination is the best way to use our numerical superiority,” Meijas argued.

  “Because there is nothing to discuss. We are set up on the two strategic centers of this exercise. We aren’t moving anywhere so there is nothing to coordinate. If you had something to contribute back when we made the plan, that was the time, Meijas. You and Aabid aren’t saying anything that is actually, you know, constructive. You are talking in a conversation THAT MILES STARTED.”

  Meijas grunted out a quiet, “So?”

  “So, he must want this for some reason. Doing what your enemy wants you to do is the way to lose!”

  They were too focused on each other. The funny thing about texting is that it makes you assume that the other person isn’t nearby. I knew this because I had managed to sneak a quarter of the way down the hall and into range while Jude and Meijas were distracted. Jude really should have stuck with a teammate who could execute a plan.

  “This is why I play solo,” I said as I unleashed the spell Flare.

  I haven’t bothered to talk about or use 0 level spells. 0 level spells or cantrips are extremely weak spells that cost little to no mana or effort to cast. Largely useless in a combat situation. They let you do small but mildly useful things. Like move a small object, make a sound with magic or do some prestidigitation type of trick to amuse a crowd of children. Some can be downright useful in the right situation. Flare, for example, casts a bright light. Useful for signaling people. Flare can also let you momentarily dazzle someone if you launch it right in their face. If you caused the status effect Dazzled it might give you a moment of surprise – temporary blindness and brief paralysis. Of course, they get a chance to resist the effects. Everyone else in the dungeon with me was so much higher in level than me that the spell wouldn’t affect them.

  What I liked about Flare and the other cantrips was thata I could cast it extremely quickly compared to my other magics. Too bad they were so weak and the kobolds and other players would shrug off these spells like they didn’t exist. Flare was also one of my longest ranged spells. Its range was significantly longer than the tunnel I had snuck down. Jude and Meijas would easily shrug off the spell. Also, even if it worked it would only work on one of them and even if it triggred the debuff lasted just half a tick. It was stupid to attack them with it. That is why I didn’t attack them with it.

  The flare sped past their heads and down the hall to my actual target. It erupted in front of Grumth, the Wyrmmdigger chieftain. I didn’t bother to wait and see if he was dazzled. A level 11 End Bboss wasn’t going to care about my cantrip. I might as well have farted in his general direction. But it certainly counted as an attack causing him aggro. Which is why I took off back into the rest of the mines like a monster almost three times my level whose entire clan I had massacred was after me.

  Meijas was caught more flatfooted than Jude. Not surprising. Grumth piled into Meijas with a roar.

  “Help me take him down!” Meijas cried. Jude started to help his teammate and then stopped.

  “I can’t you idiot. If we kill the boss the instance will end. Jesus. Try to crowd control him. I need to get out of range. You try and flee too if the crowd control takes. If it doesn’t, you need to let the mob take you out. Make sure you last long enough to let me get far enough away. Damn it Miles, you clever bastard. We can’t kill the boss or Miles wins. I can’t believe I didn’t see that!”

  Meijas grunted and struggled.

  “No! Please Jude! I am going to try and kite him long enough for you and Aabid to get some crowd control on him. If I am killed out of here, Maya and Tasha are going to break me!” he begged.

  Jude was conflicted.

  “Fine. But if Grumth there falls below two thirds of his max hp you bare your throat and let him take you out. You understand?”

  “Thank you Jude! Thank you!”

  I slipped through the winding tunnels just far enough to be sure Jude wasn’t chasing me and I wouldn’t run into any of the Eastmans either coming or going from the entrance. They texted with Aabid to coordinate their plan to save Meijas. I got a fine blow by blow of their struggle to stop an End Boss without actually fighting him. Not an easy problem to solve.

  Jude wasn’t as calm, cool and collected as he should have been. Of course, he was under a lot more unexpected pressure than usual. He should have taken up meditation. It really helps you deal with emotional turmoil.

  Grumth wouldn’t take long to either finish off Meijas and get back here or break whatever crowd control they trapped him in and then make his way back to here. Grumth was linked to the final room. If you kited him far enough and broke contact he’d head back to his starting location. I didn’t have very long to act. There was another possible advantage I could get if I had enough time.

  Looping around my many enemies and back down to the end cavern with the pool, I dove in. Somewhere down there were the corpses of two Wyrmmdigger shamans. They might have something that would help me.

  The cold water closed over me and quickly I found the remains of one of the shamans. At my touch, the drowned shaman faded and I received a staff.

  Shaman’s Staff of The Desert Sun

  Two Handed Blunt Weapon

  Damage 3-12

  A gnarled staff with a sun spirit trapped within it. A tool to let a Shaman commune with the spirits and forces of the desert.

  Nature Spells +8.5%

  Fire Spells +8.5%

  The staff was a solid piece of loot for the instance’s level. That and some nano would get me a cup of coffee. This wasn’t going to change anything about my situation.

  Things must not have been going well for Meijas. Jude was using text to communicate with Meijas. That meant he had pulled back too far to talk with him, which meant he expected Meijas to die soon.

  Meijas. After you die tell them that they can’t depend on just us to hold the line. There will be only two of us after this and Miles can keep sending a mob we can’t kill after us. The situation is too unstable. Tell them to plug the entrance with a team. Miles may be able to finish off the instance but we can just pick him up outside and figure out something else.

  It seemed like Grumth was only going to take one of them out for me this time. Then there was the whole Eastman clan waiting to grab me at the entrance. Time to bug out before Grumth makes it back here.

  Miles. - Jude.

  I didn’t respond and tried to focus on my search of the dark waters of the pool. Jude had made a good point about starting conversations initiated by your enemies. Nothing good could come from engaging with Jude. At best, it would just mess up my emotional equilibrium. There was zero chance that he was going to offer me a way out of the situation.

  Miles. I want to offer you a way out of this situation - Jude.

  Goddamn Jude. He is so goddamned frustrating. Even when we were friends he drove me crazy.

  Miles. I know that you are listening. This is all so stupid.
What do you want from me? I love her, ok? I know your family and her family have this epic fight for the future of the human race and irreconcilable ideological differences with all these profound implications and all this grandiose bullshit. I don’t fucking care. You are my best friend. I love her. What exactly am I supposed to do?

  The outline of a body floated off to the side. I swam for it.

  You act like it is so obvious that you are right and the Eastmans are wrong about all this stuff. But guess what? She says the exact same kind of things. You think she is going to destroy humanity. She thinks you are going to destroy humanity. I have no idea how to prove which of you is right. I just wanted to follow the rules, play hard, see where things went with my girlfriend and live my life.

  You want me to give up the woman I love. A career I have worked for years to get. All my friends. And for what? Well, fuck you Miles. I didn’t do anything to you. You broke the rules. Rules I begged you not to.

  Surprise. It wasn’t the other shaman. It was my dead body. There was my bloated and distended face. Dead and drowned.

  You can’t win. You never could win. You wanted me to go down with you. Yes. Very impressive clearing this dungeon. A newbie dungeon in the Cradle. You got rid of Meijas. Wonderful. You might be able to take out Aabid. You might even be able to take me. You never could before but maybe you are better than you used to be. Maybe you can even take out that beast of a chieftain. But so what?

  I touched my dead cheek. My face faded into dust that dissolved through the water. The dagger I had used before started to sink and I grabbed it before stroking as fast as I could for the surface to grab a breath of air. If I wasn’t so emotionally healthy from all my meditation and didn’t have a job to do so that I couldn’t let my feelings affect me, Jude’s pleas and unexpectedly encountering my own corpse might have messed me up. Any wetness on my cheeks was strictly water from the pool.

  You can’t beat the rest of the world, Miles. You can’t beat all of us. The Eastmans will have set up a team of no-nonsense serious hard-cases outside the instance. A team who are usually out of the cradle fighting monsters that make you a fucking fly, Miles. You going to fight a bunch of level 20s? You won’t even be able to scratch their armor.

  A few breaths and I swam back down.

  And they shouldn’t be here dealing with this shit, Miles. Maya is right about this much. You are stopping them from focusing on the real fight. They are supposed to be out fighting the wild nano. Instead they are here dealing with this mess you insist on.

  Grumth would be back before long. I needed to loot that shaman. Where the hell was it?

  So even if you beat me and this instance you are just going to get thrown down into another hole.

  Jude was such a prick. I had a ton of things that I wanted to say in response. To show him how wrong he was. How I didn’t take the Eastmans send their heavy hitters away from the fight. How all I wanted was the same chance they took for themselves and their cronies. How it was he and his girlfriend who threw me down this hole to break the spirit of our wager. How they turned what was left of humanity into serfs. But Jude knew all these arguments. He was so hardly ever obviously wrong that in those few instances when he was wrong he was never able accept it. He was bright enough to fool himself and others that it wasn’t him that did anything wrong. Smart people don’t tend to make simple mistakes. They make huge completely plausible mistakes with much greater and more terrible fallout. Hubris tends to drop those who can climb to greater heights.

  Miles. Just stop fighting and I know I can get you out of this. I know Maya already regrets this whole wager. Let me try to get Tasha to agree to some kind of a deal. Maya doesn’t hate you. She just hates what you believe. And she has her reasons. She is a good person. Her motives are good, Miles. Really. She isn’t evil.

  Jude believed this. He really believed he could get me out. Could I just stop all this? All I had to do was stop fighting. And he was right. I was fighting thousands of players who were almost without exception more powerful than me.

  Diving back down, I finally found the last corpse. This one dropped a scroll and a gem. Taking my loot, I made my way back to the secret room. As I turned off of the corridor I heard the heavy tread and grunting breath of the chieftain coming from the other turnoff. I had made it out with only moments to spare.

  Dropping to the floor of the little hidden room I couldn’t help but think of the dwarf who had died in here, hunted by his family’s enemies too. He and I had more in common than I’d like. The Wyrmmdiggers didn’t offer him a truce. I could reach out to Jude. I could have a version of the life I had always wanted.

  He and I had made a great team. Yes, the Game is for the survival of the human race. But it is still a game. The best game humanity has ever created. The incredible stakes actually make you want to play it even more. Fighting for the survival of the human race with your best friend is pretty heady stuff. Probably the largest reason I ended up down in this hole was because I wanted to get to play the Game with Jude. His getting the clan package was splitting us up. I hated that as much as I hated anything else the Party was doing.

  My best friend and I could fight and play together to save humanity. If you have never played a game with close friends you have no idea what a primal and satisfying thing it is to do. If you have never worked a job that was challenging and took all you had, with people you cared about, you don’t know what you are missing. Shared triumph and defeat will bond you to someone in ways that nothing else does. It is why soldiers will die for each other when they won’t for a cause or flag. And maybe I could still have that.

  It is just so damned lonely playing alone, and even if I beat this instance they will be waiting for me. And if I escape the next hole--it is just holes all the way down.

  All I had to do was stop fighting. Just join them.

  Tasha would demand some proof of loyalty. She’d make me spout pro-Party stuff. All I had to do was say what they wanted me to say. All I had to do was think what they wanted me to think… and it wouldn’t ever end. I’d have to prove constantly that I was loyal to their cause. They would judge whatever I, as my father’s son, would say.

  Actually, that wasn’t fair. They judged each other the same way. They were constantly making sure that they said the right things. I thought of Aabid and his protestations of loyalty. I thought of Arneson who had to quit his job to prove his loyalty. I thought of Maya who found anyone who made her question her beliefs impossible to be around. That wasn’t the behavior of someone confident in their beliefs and the world.

  I thought of Jude. My best friend. They made him choose to try to enslave his best friend. Tasha forced him down into this hole with me to prove his loyalty. The woman he loved demanded that of him. Expected him to do that.

  They were all slaves. Even if I ended up in a slave contract, I was a free man. I could say what I wanted. I could think what I wanted.

  At the deepest level, this wager was a farce because even if Maya put me in shackles in my heart I was a free man.

  This was why my father fought them. Because their way is why the singularity went so terribly wrong. Because when people deny each other their freedoms no matter how noble their intentions, tyranny and brutality are the inevitable result no matter how enlightened the slavers think they are. The tyranny necessary to enforce such a society traps everyone in it. It falls because it turns on itself. If people are lucky it falls because people who see themselves as free cannot be ruled for long. But one way or another it will fall. It is why they were failing to win the Game.

  Enough philosophy. Time to just fucking get on with it.

  Let’s see what I got from that last shaman and see what I can do with it. The staff wasn’t going to do much for me.

  The scroll was better. It was a charm person scroll. That was pretty darn useful. It could temporarily turn this three on one situation to two on two. An even fight. Not that I wanted an even fight. My father always told me that if you end up in
an even fight it means you are playing badly.

  The last item was the gem. It was very familiar. What were the odds? Another minor enhancement gem.

  I don’t know if I made the choice I did then was because it was my best strategic option or because of other motives, but I made my choice. I used the enhancement gem. I took the dagger and sheathed it. I filled my inventory with all the trash loot, the magic pick I found here, everything. I re-donned my armor and left.

  Jude and Aabid weren’t waiting near the chieftain. It seemed clear that they were going to guard the entrance until the Eastman team had it plugged. As they saw it, I’d just be thrown down a new hole if I managed to finish off the chieftain. Next time they would camp me first, drop my levels and steal all my gear.

  I took out the charm scroll and waited. I hoped they would show up together or Aabid would show up on his own. I had reasons why I didn’t want to confront Jude yet.

  Luck was with me. Aabid turned the corner. He saw me.

  He is near the chieftain’s room! - Aabid.

  Coming - Jude.

  Aabid cast some spell that sent green energy into the floor at my feet. Thorny vines grew out of the cracks and twined themselves up my legs. They pierced my flesh and held me in place. I wasn’t sure how to score Aabid’s performance this time. He obviously decided to start off with some crowd control. He wasn’t making the same mistakes as last time. But there is the old adage about how generals often fail because they prepare to fight the last war and not the new one. Why didn’t he just let me go attack the Chieftain? How easy would it be to make sure I lost that fight?