Whispers around me, “The electronic void?”
Panicked, I turned to face D who was already looking at me. He always kept his cool better than I did, but even he was looking concerned.
“Is that possible?” I asked him, praying he would tell me it wasn’t.
D shrugged slowly. “The body cannot live without the mind.”
Another movie quote, but this time instead of mildly annoying me, it sent shivers down my spine.
“So, I guess technically you don’t die,” The Ripper mused. “Brain dead would be more accurate.”
“That can’t happen!” someone shouted confidently. “You’re lying!”
“Am I?” The Ripper chuckled. “Hmmm…I hadn’t anticipated skepticism. Perhaps a demonstration is in order?”
The Ripper raised his hand and someone screamed behind me. I turned around to see a player, wearing nothing more than starter clothes, rise up into the air as if being pulled by invisible strings.
“H—help!” he screamed, thrashing about helplessly like a fish on a hook. “Help me! Somebody do something!”
He struggled hard, but it was useless. His wand fell from his hands and landed somewhere in the mass of bodies below him.
“There’s nothing they can do for you,” The Ripper said menacingly. “I truly am sorry it has to be you, but someone needs to be the example. What is your name?”
“Ch—Chris!” The player stammered, giving out his real name instead of his character name.
“I truly am sorry, Chris,” The Ripper replied. “But you can’t make an omelet…”
Chris was at least one hundred feet in the air and still rising. But then, suddenly, as though the invisible wires had been cut, he fell.
People screamed and threw themselves out of the way as his body came plummeting down from the sky.
I couldn’t see him hit from where I was, but I could hear the reaction.
People were shouting in horror. Some started to cry. I looked at D, still in disbelief, wondering if all this could be actually happening.
“It’s not real…”
“He’s not really dead. He just woke up at home!”
“He’s back at his Bindstone!” a tall knight shouted.
“In a way you are correct,” The Ripper replied, addressing him directly. “His character model has returned to a special Bindstone I have constructed, deep at the center of this world, but he has not.”
A platform formed in the sky at the center of the crowd.
On it, a character model began to materialize. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as it began to solidify and heard a synchronized gasp from the crowd as it did. It was Chris, but now I understood what The Ripper really meant—It wasn’t really Chris.
“It’s him!”
It was his character model, but it stood there lifelessly like one of the decommissioned hosts from Westworld, moving with an unnatural stillness that only a video game could emulate.
“Why isn’t he moving!?” Someone shouted.
“He’s dead, you idiot!” Replied a panicked voice.
I thought everyone would panic, but everyone simply stood there, frozen, staring at the horror above them. The Ripper reached out and summoned Chris’ body to him. With a wave of his hand, it disappeared, back to his graveyard at the center of the world.
“Now that you understand what I am capable of, let me tell you about the changes I will be making. To begin with, I am returning everyone to level one,” The Ripper said. He waved his hand carelessly across the crowd and I heard everyone start to mutter as they opened their character sheets.
I opened mine to see all my stats, all my attributes, had returned to what they were when I started to play. And my level—level 1.
“And I know you are already thinking you will all just band together to defeat me, so I have something else in store for you,” he said, a smile twisting at the corners of his lips. “I am making the entire server Red.”
A thin red mist appeared from nowhere and washed over the plateau, sweeping through all of us. Instantly, the pale white auras around everyone’s character that indicated their PK status, turned Red.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
“We have to get out of here, now!” D hissed from beside me.
“No arguments here!”
D pushed through the crowd and I followed after him, shoving people out of the way with all my strength. I had no idea where we were going but sticking around in the middle of a massive crowd of Reds was the last place I wanted to be.
“Don’t fight!” someone shouted. “That’s what he wants us to do!”
“Just stay calm!”
Someone in front of me had their sword drawn. In all the commotion, they lost their footing and stumbled backwards, completely out of control. Their blade arced out and slammed right into my chest. Half my health vanished instantly.
“Oh, shit!” he gasped. “I’m so sorry!”
As fast as I could, I grabbed an Inferior Health Kit from my inventory and tried to use it to restore my health, but another player spun around and his mace slammed into my face, interrupting the heal. I stumbled and fell to my knees as more of my health fell away.
“Jack, come on!” D shouted, reaching back for me. I snatched his hand as he pulled me through the bodies.
Cattle, I thought. We’re packed in like cattle…
“Oh, there is one more way for you to leave this world if you are able to complete a task for me,” The Ripper’s voice called out. “There is a player among you. His name is Jack.”
I froze. My mind went blank. I saw D looking at me like he couldn’t believe what was happening.
He can’t be talking about me… I thought. How many Jacks are there in the world? It can’t be me!
But then—I froze.
I couldn’t move. Nothing except my eyes.
A pillar of light formed in the sky above me and projected down around my body like a spotlight, isolating me from the rest of the crowd. The people around me backed slowly away as though the light might harm them.
Slowly, like a marionette on its strings, an invisible force spun me around, forcing me to look up at The Ripper, standing high and monstrous above us.
“This is Jack,” he said with amusement. “And I would like him dead.”
5
Marked for Death
The Ripper snapped his fingers and I was free. My body was back under my control.
People murmured around me, and I could feel the hostility growing as I tried to back away and get myself out of the pillar of light beaming down on me, but the illuminated column followed me perfectly with every step, tracking my body with perfect mathematical precision.
“Who are you!?” I screamed at the sky. “What do you want from me!?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” The Ripper replied. There was a touch of hostility in his voice where there hadn’t been before. “How does it feel, Jack? Being powerless? Being on the outside of things?
“Get your Bindstone ready,” D hissed in my ear as the players around me moved closer.
“There won’t be time,” I whispered back.
“Get it ready!” he repeated.
The Ripper waved his hand and I heard the Level Up sound ring out and the celebratory rainbow colored sparkles burst around my body.
“I’m gifting you some levels. Let’s make you level…20,” The Ripper said with a smile. “Just to make sure we make things… fair. But this is the second condition for escaping this world: whoever manages to kill Jack for me will be gifted with a free ride home.
A simultaneous murmur came from the crowd. Even those who hadn’t been looking at me now all had their eyes on me.
“Good luck, Jack!” The Ripper laughed.
Someone beside me screamed and leapt forward at me. An axe swung in my direction. I ducked out of the way and the blade struck an archer standing behind me.
“Hey, watch it!”
“Get him!”
; “Guys, don’t!” someone else shouted. “This is what he wants! For us to turn on each other!”
“Come on!” D shouted, reaching out for my arm. But a group of three players pushed him aside and squared off with me.
“Sorry, Jack,” one of them said. “Nothing personal.”
He raised his sword to swing, but I quickly activated Warrior’s Charge. The Ripper must have allocated my experience for me, because the burst of strength in my legs was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
I bowled through the players in front of me, knocking them aside like bowling pins. As I passed D, I snatched him by the collar and dragged him along beside me. The charge ended and we both carried our momentum into a sprint through the crowd.
I took the lead, using my level 20 strength to smash people out of the way. Even my melee blows were dealing significant damage.
Please don’t score a critical hit and kill someone!
“This way!” D shouted.
An arrow struck me in the back, but the damage was insignificant. I quickly checked my health pool. 110!
Someone leapt at me with daggers drawn, but another player slammed into him before he could reach me and sent him flying.
“Thanks!” I shouted as I raced past.
“No problem!”
“Don’t do this!” someone screamed. “We can’t fight each other!”
I could see the edge of the crowd, but I couldn’t tell who was on our side and who wasn’t. I barreled through a group of five who definitely weren’t intent on helping us, scattering them aside like bowling pins.
“Don’t let them get away!” The Ripper cried out, howling with laughter at the chaos he had created. Someone howled behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to see a mob of players throwing themselves on some poor bastard.
“Got him!” he shouted, drawing his dagger. He stabbed at the fallen player with a flurry of blows.
“I’m not him!” the player screamed, trying to fend off the attack.
“That’s not him, you idiot!”
“Get your Bindstone out!” he shouted again. We were almost to the edge of the crowd. Quickly, I found my Bindstone in my inventory and selected it. “Follow me!”
D drove a full blown Sparta kick into the chest of a knight wearing starter plate mail blocking our path. The strike to his armor rang out like a cathedral bell as he toppled back. As he fell, I saw our salvation.
We had reached the edge of the crowd, but as I burst through, I saw something even worse. The edge of the plateau.
“What now!?” I shouted.
“Fucking jump!”
“We’ll die!”
“Use your Bindstone on the way down!” D shouted, shoving people out of his way. Someone slammed a mace into his side, chipping off a good chunk of his health.
“You can’t use it while moving!” I bellowed as the edge of the plateau raced towards me.
“It’s a glitch!” D roared. “Now jump!”
My feet kicked stone and propelled me into the air. As I hurtled over the edge, and looked down to see the ground beneath us, far, far beneath us, a moment of peace came over me. I was weightless, soaring through the sky like a bird, escaping the horde of players behind me. A moment ago, they had been my comrades, just like me, but now many of them wanted me dead.
“Now!” D shouted, shaking me from my brief moment of peace as he activated his Bindstone. Quickly, I used mine and felt the familiar pulling sensation.
“It worked!” I shouted through the air as we both plummeted towards the ground.
Using a Bindstone wasn’t instant, and normally, you had to stand in one place while the animation completed. But D was right—the glitch was working.
But the ground was hurtling towards me. The wind was a roar in my ears as I screamed towards the Earth like a meteor.
D vanished into thin air, but I was almost at the ground.
I’m not going to make it, I thought as I closed my eyes.
But then, the sound of rushing water filled my ears.
My eyes snapped open to the purple-blue twisting tube of portal space.
“Ha ha!” I roared with laughter as the portal sucked me away from the plateau. “We made it, D! We made it!”
6
The Bandit Tower
“Execute,” I growled as I activated the skill, bringing my sword down in a vertical slice to deliver the killing blow. The Horngrin Bloodletter screeched as my blade connected with his chest, stripping him of his remaining health. He collapsed to the ground and disappeared in a burst of smoke and flame.
“You didn’t have to do that,” D scolded me as he put away his daggers and used a Health Kit to restore his health, which was precariously low.
“That thing was going to kill you,” I told him, knowing it would piss him off. D was closing in on level 12, while I was almost 21. For the first time in our gaming history together, I was the “more powerful” one.
We’d hit the Stoneburg Bindstone running and gotten out of town as fast as we could. I was a wanted man, and with The Ripper turning the entire server population Red, every person you ran into had gone from a potential ally, to a potential threat.
There were two outcomes in a fight between players, and neither of them was good. The first outcome, was we lose, and we die—and that would be bad. But the second outcome was, we win, and we kill someone—we actually kill someone, and neither of us wanted that on our conscience.
So, we’d decided to head out on our own and level. Of course, I was already level 20, thanks to The Ripper, so none of the low-level monsters D was fighting gave me any significant experience. In the 12 levels D has risen grinding Horngrin, I hadn’t gained one, and we’d been at it for two weeks.
I’d gone out one night on my own to find some monsters more my level. Despite being level 20, I was still wearing starter gear, and that wouldn’t do. I’d managed to take down some Horngrin Guardians, which were level 17, and put together a decent set of plate mail. One of them had dropped a Polished Bone Sword. Its base damage was 54, which was pretty decent, although it lacked any special bonuses or enchantments.
I was doing my best to stay focused, but one question had been plaguing me day after day: What did The Ripper want from me?
He’d singled me out from the entire server population for a reason. He even knew my name. But why? What was so special about me? I was a nobody. D was always the one making a stir, discovering bugs, starting drama with other players, being involved in the personal lives of the developers. I was just one person out of millions.
And now those people are all after me…
A wanted man. That’s what I was. It sounded romantic, and if the consequences weren’t so severe, it would have been pretty cool. But now with the ever looming threat of real life death hanging over my head, all I wanted to do was fade away into the masses, be another one of the countless other anonymous faces.
But instead, I was a server legend now.
A small group had passed by a few days ago; the only people we’d seen in days. We’d taken cover in a small group of trees and listened as they went by.
“What we need to do is find that guy Jack and take him out!” one of them suggested. By the way he was speaking, he sounded young.
“How do you plan on doing that, dummy? He’s level 20. You’re level 5.” The voice of wisdom.
“The three of us could take him!”
“You wish,” the other laughed.
“Besides, we can’t just kill the guy,” one of them had said.
“We can’t?” the first one replied.
“He’s a person just like you and me. You wanna be a murderer?”
“It’s not really murder,” the young one whined. “It’s just… a game.”
“It’s not,” the other scolded. “It’s murder. Don’t try and twist it.”
Their voices faded off as they went over the crest of the hill. Only then did D and I emerge from our hiding spot.
“You’r
e a celebrity,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or envious, but there was something negative in his voice. D wasn’t used to playing the background in our relationship, and even though my fame had put my actual life in danger, I could sense some jealousy there.
“Yeah, well if it came with millions of dollars instead of a death sentence that would be nice,” I replied.
“Let’s go see Alfrin,” D muttered, heading off in the direction of the Bandit Tower, a spot he’d found during Beta that was remote but great for leveling. “I’m running low on arrows.”
Alfrin was an NPC merchant who would buy most of the junk loot we got from the Horngrins, and sold arrows, basic food, some low-level garbage gear, as well as Moderate Health Kits and Moderate Health Potions. He was the main reason we’d chosen to hunt here. It meant we could sell and restock without having to go back to any of the towns. The great thing about Alfrin was he was reliable, always right where we left him.
Despite the fact that we were hiding out, Carrethen really was a beautiful world. Our hunting grounds were sort of nestled in between a group of hills, with Horngrin camps on the slopes all around us. They were far enough away from each other that it wasn’t really possible to pull two camps at the same time and get overrun, but by the time we completed a circle and wiped them all out, the first camp would be respawning again, and we could start all over.
It was strange to think about the fact that my body was somewhere else, lying in my bed, or maybe somewhere else? Maybe I’d been taken to the hospital. It seemed impossible that so many players could be taken care of in the real world. Many of us must have died already, those of us that lived alone without friends or family.
D lived somewhere in the Midwest, with his parents as far as I could remember, and would probably be fine and taken care of. I wasn’t sure, but from the things he’d told me, it sounded like they had at least a decent amount of money. I, on the other hand, wasn’t as lucky.
Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1) Page 3
