by Jakob Tanner
“On it,” I said. My fingers spread out and crystal diamonds glided from my palm and slipped through Shade’s breeches and entered his body, his skin glowing with a bright luminescent sheen. Status cured motherfucker.
A harsh grunt came from my right. The shadow wraiths had teamed up on Bertwald. They pecked at his shoulders like hawks circling their prey. Shadow claws thrashed his skin and chipped away at his HP bar. The stitching on his robe’s right shoulder ripped and tore as the inky black nails dragged themselves across his body. His entire sleeve fell off, revealing his arm. Holy shit. The swirling Prophetic Seal on his wrist took up most of his forearm and continued up his arm in smaller twisting inky black tear drops all the way to his shoulder. The marks continued deeper into his chest. How much further, I was unable to see.
“Um, a little help gentlemen?”
Oh yeah. I quickly cast status cure on myself, removing the weakness debuff. My hands flicked and twirled, my fingers bent and snapped, and a cold energizing thunder filled my legs from my knees to my feet. Blue lightning sparks of electricity flickered from my legs. I thrust myself forward with new shocking speed, striding full meters at a time. I positioned myself to the right of Bertwald as Shade stuck to the other flank, firing off revolver shots at the wraiths.
The creatures attacking Bertwald lost their focus. One kept on the advisor while one went after Shade and another came towards me.
I whipped my arm in the wraith’s direction, sparkling thunder coursing through my veins. A streak of jagged lightning burst from my hands towards the shadow wraith. The lightning was about to hit and coil itself around the nightmarish creature, but the monster disappeared in a puff of smoke. What the—
A burst of black fog erupted inches away from me, the shadow wraith now intimately close to me. It stuck its head out toward my own. Did this thing want to kiss me? Its head stretched towards my own. Beneath the wispy black smoke of its exterior was a surprisingly more human shape than I had expected. A bald and naked body with shriveled gray skin. What the hell were these things?
The bony lifeless face opened its mouth, its jaw contorted in weird formations, casting a spell. A horrible icy cold rushed through me, my body growing weaker. My HP fell. It was draining me of my health points to heal itself. I wriggled and pulled myself away, yet the shadow wraith’s spell was suctioned to me. A debuff flickered in my HUD.
Life Sap (Debuff): Your health is slowly being drained to cure someone else’s. Think of it less as your death and more like a charitable donation.
Shade dashed across the cliff passage and lunged through the air. He tackled me out of the shadow wraith’s spell. The creature screeched and retreated back further into the air.
“Enough,” said Bertwald. Lifting his arm, clutching his wrist with his other hand like his arm were a cannon, a gun to be cocked and aimed. A massive blast of purple energy shot from his palm and obliterated the two shard wraiths.
+116 EXP!
+116 EXP!
I turned to the final shadow wraith. My hands heated up with flame and I threw out a blast, aiming for the gold collar at the shadow wraith’s neck. Smashing into the collar, the shadow wraith twitched and writhed as an electric pulse shot through it. I fired another blast at it and then another. The wraith continued to shriek and wrangle in the air. Throwing out a fourth blast at the gold collar, the shadow wraith collapsed onto the cliff. The shadowy wisps dissipated leaving only the decrepit gray corpse and the collar around its neck.
The fallen creature shivered on the ground, its HP hovering at 1%. I conjured another fireblast, preparing to put it out of its misery. The shadow wraith was now nothing but a naked man on the ground. He looked up at me with scared, terrified eyes.
“Help me…” pleaded the man on the ground. “They’re enslaving us… The players…”
“How is that possible?”
The gold collar glowed with energy again, digging into the flesh of the wounded player’s neck. The player screamed and thrashed. The collar controlled him. The shadowy tendrils poured out of little holes in the collar, wrapping themselves around the player, masking him as a shadow wraith again. The wounded creature flew back into the clouds and retreated from us, swirling towards the ominous dreadnought from which it came.
What the hell was that thing?
Bertwald’s words echoed through my mind as I watched the wraith fly back to its master ship: You’re happy you spawned on this continent, even if you don’t know it yet.
12
The cliff face emptied of attacking monsters. The dreadnought retreated into the clouds, out of sight. This had been merely a warning strike.
Two notifications came up in my HUD.
Fire Blast has leveled up (Level 3)
Fire Blast: Shoot a molten orb of lava at your enemies
MTKP: 35-60
MP Cost: 8
5% increased chance of inflicting burn (debuff) with every blast
Lightning Cage has leveled up (Level 2)
Lightning Cage: Paralyze an opponent with a cage made of lightning. Opponent is paralyzed for 10-15 seconds.
MP Cost: 9
I closed the prompts and headed towards the king’s advisor, standing by the cliff. He seethed with rage, staring out at the sky where the Arethkarian ship had been.
“Those wraiths—they were players,” I said.
“I know,” he said, quietly with shame in his voice. “Do you ever wonder why A.K.O. never got released? We were unable to get the world we had created under control. It had a life and mind of its own. Each and every NPC. They acted with all the desires and cruel feelings of humans. They weren’t the docile, quest-giving NPCs from the golden age of RPGs.” He rubbed his eyes, barely believing his words and the sights in front of him. “Even now, they move forward making decisions that don’t serve the players. In fact, they act antithetical to how we’d want them to behave. They should be helping the players, encouraging them to play and go on adventures. Not this…”
The image of the lifeless human player who had been transformed into the shadow wraith came back to me. Help me, he had said. Please.
How was any of this possible? We had entered a video game made of code, logic, and rules—hadn’t we? I shook my head. Illyria didn’t govern itself that way. Even if it was made of code, it was made to be the most immersive realistic experience possible, including NPCs who actively despised The Chosen. But fuck—the implications of what Bertwald was saying were insane.
Bertwald sighed and shrugged. “Arethkar is a powerful nation and will stop at nothing until it gets full control of Illyria. They fight dirty so,” he looked down at the black swirling mark of his Prophetic Seal. “We’ll eventually have to use this.”
“Why is your mark covering so much of your body?”
“Everything has a price. Including the ability you saw the other day. A hefty one too. The more you use it, the more the power overtakes you—covering your body with its mark.”
“What happens when the mark spreads over your entire body?”
Bertwald snapped his fingers. “You die and you don't respawn. Your soul is destroyed.”
“But you guys put this in the game to edit the world, didn’t you? Why would you handicap yourselves?”
“The game has a mind of its own. It’s inexplicable. Why do horrible people get praised as great leaders? Why do innocent people die? These are impossible questions to answer, yet they are facts of life. So we added this ability and in turn, a sickness and disease developed in the bodies of those who chose to wield it.”
Well, I guess I would not be using my Prophetic Seal power ever then. Or at least, only when I really needed it. Better to die and respawn than use the power if the consequences for its use were so extreme. Still I was curious how Bertwald used his Prophetic Seal with such precision.
“How do you use it though?”
Bertwald shook his head. “Not now. I can show you what I know of the Seal’s power later. For now, I need to inform the king
of this morning’s events. I really shouldn’t be standing here. Goodbye.”
The man trudged up the cliff and towards the elevator shaft.
A new quest notification appeared in my HUD.
Quest Update: Disappearances in the Capital
Arethkar’s airship fleet is closer than initially expected. The quest time limit has changed from 1 week to 3 days.
Damn. We better get going then. I turned around for Shade and saw him down by the ruined bunker, sitting on the cliff edge, letting his feet dangle over the abyss. The mad man.
I hurried over to him. “Shade—is everything alright?”
The Lirana stared out into the gray stormy sky, mesmerized by its sheer vastness, its endless quality.
“Sorry Clay,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I needed to take a walk and then got caught staring at this.” He pointed to the sky in front of us. “Of the cloud oceans, this one is the biggest in all of Illyria. The Haeren call it The Cloud Rift. But its original name, given to it by the Rorn cartographers who mapped the new world with the first airships, was something else. They referred to this nasty horrible ocean of stormy skies as Argon’s Rage. After their god of war.”
“God of war, huh? Apt name for this place.”
“You said it,” sighed Shade.
“Not to be insensitive, but shall we head out then?”
Shade nodded. “Give me a minute. Lirana have a special connection to the cloud oceans. In front of this vastness, all Lirana feel a wistful melancholy in their hearts. We yearn for our lost home.”
“But aren’t Lirana nomadic?”
Shade sighed. “We have been ever since the great rift separated and divided Illyria into what it is now. Before that, we had a city, a capital of our own. The name can only be spoken by the Lirana. It is impossible for your tongue to conjure the word. Other races of the past have referred to it as Ariellum.”
“Ariellum?” I said, gulping the word as I said it.
“Yes. Ariellum. The lost Lirana capital. An ancient grandiose city of ziggurats and floating gardens. It fell into the cloud ocean during the great rift and was never seen again. Our home fell to this wild stormy sky thousands of years ago and, even us young Lirana, feel it in our hearts. A yearning for Ariellum, a throb that won’t leave us alone. Won’t let us forget.”
I put a comforting hand on my friend’s shoulder. I guess you didn’t have to be from Earth to know what it felt like to lose a home. So that was why Shade didn’t join in conversations like the one I had with Bertwald in the elevator. Not because he wasn’t curious about the world from which we came, but rather the discussion of our lost home reminded him, painfully, of his own. My own throb of guilt panged me for not doing more to help the world outside. I was barely dealing with the crises plaguing Illyria. How was I supposed to juggle two realities? I remembered the promise I made to Serena: We’ll find the answers, the truth of what happened on Earth and what’s presently happening in the game. Even if I had a game quest to complete, I wouldn’t let myself forget my own personal quests as well.
I pulled the Lirana thief to his feet and rubbed his back. We climbed up the mountain pass to the elevator. We headed forward with our mission, still lacking the answers we sought but already more than we’d ever wish to know.
13
The streets of Land’s Shield thronged with activity. Air trams zoomed over the hustle and bustle of the city, casting shadows over market stalls, shops, and passersby. Jackhammers banged alongside other machinery as construction workers—a group of sweaty red-faced Rorn with black marks of soot all over their clothes—went about fixing and installing new lampposts. A group of Haeren nobles sat on the patio of a leafy café, drinking and laughing the day away. A set of young Muumuu magic students rushed by, clutching books to their chests as they ran off to school. Cloaked priests went through the streets, handing out bread to the many begging on the pavement. The whole city went about its day, giving zero thought of the siege at its doorstep. The shadows of the great mountain simply loomed behind them, its reach curving all around the city, nestling its arms around the metropolis like a mother protecting its young.
Shade and I moved through the crowd, creating a distance between ourselves and the great mountain. Walking through the crowds I opened my HUD and sent a quick note to Serena.
Clay: Hey! How’s your morning going so far? Ours has been pretty hectic already. But wanted you to know we’re safe now :)
Serena: Safe? What happened!?
Clay: Too much to go into now. Let’s just say politics is tough work.
Serena: I bet :P
Serena: I’m at the city’s head library now and all the mages and scholars are giving me such weird looks. They made me leave my sword at the door! I swear I’m the only person in the reading room who can wield heavy weapons. Scratch that. I’m the only one here who’s even a melee class!
Clay: Alright, bookworm. Let us know if you get bored there and want to join us. You’re our tank, remember? Shade’s thief class is nearly as squishy as mine!
Serena: I’m pretty sure Shade’s class functions as a decent evasion tank, no?
Hmm. I hadn’t seen Shade’s move set and abilities, but I had been thinking as he leveled, his build would grow along those lines.
Clay: True. But evasion tank is a hard position to play. One mistake and he’s dead. Forever. Our favorite furry fella!
Serena: Fair enough. I guess all he can do then is hide in the shadows and guard your corpse :P
Clay: […]
A mana-powered carriage broke through the translucent sheen of my HUD display, barreling down the road in my direction. The vehicle screeched, swerving away from me, knocking over crates of fruit, sending oranges and apples rolling down the street. Beggars scrambled for the free food. The stall owner yelled and ran about collecting his fallen merchandise.
“Did no one ever tell you to keep your eyes on the road?” said Shade.
I shrugged. “Let’s get out of here before the stall owner makes us pay for the loss in his profits.”
We hurried down the street, turned and stopped at a new corner, unsure where we were going.
“I’m guessing you don’t know the city very well,” I said to Shade.
The thief shrugged. “I’ll admit Land’s Shield isn’t my favorite city in Laergard. I prefer Arondale and Claren’s Crossing—the security there is more lax. I mean, you’ve seen how much more anal Archades is compared to Edward Silver. And Silver is as anal as it comes! The loot and thievery are sweeter in Land’s Shield without a doubt, but with it comes higher risks.”
“I see,” I said. “Let me consult our mini-map then.”
I clicked through prompts on my HUD until I had a map of Land’s Shield. It displayed an overarching view of the city while most of the individual streets were blurry, presumably waiting to become more detailed once I explored them myself. Consulting the map, I got a better understanding of how the city was structured. The mountain wall covered from the northwest corner to the southwest corner of the city. An aerodrome was situated at both of these northern and southern locations. The Royal Keep along with the Knights of Laergard guild hall and the Mage University hugged the northern section of the mountain wall. At the center of the city was a large marketplace called the Trader’s Forum. All roads from the different districts led to there. Land’s Shield was not only the political hub of the continent, but also the crafting, financial, and economic base as well. Trader’s Forum was the center of that base. I scanned over the different districts, taking note of the engineering sector and the sky pilot flight academy. Two quest notification markers hovered in the southwestern corner of the map. One was for the Grand Casino Palace which was situated in a district known as the Night Court, while the other was the Church of the Nine’s Orphanage in an area called the Southside Slums.
I zoomed in on the map and plotted a route for us. We’d first go through the Trader’s Forum and see if there was any tasty gear or items to
pick up and then beeline for the Night Court and then the orphanage.
The crowds grew thicker and louder as we zigzagged through narrow alleys until the streets widened and the grand marketplace laid in front of us. I gaped at the sheer size of it; I had never seen a bazaar so big. Rays of sunlight shone through a blue glass canopy hanging over the market from high above. The glass roof undulated like a child’s blanket fort. Shoppers and adventurers walked up and down a set of stairs; above the canopy roof was an air tram station. Merchants and stall owners yelled out deals on potions, elixirs, and antidotes. Players and NPCs ran back and forth between crafting stations and market stalls, buying ingredients and selling goods. The place was a maze of stalls selling everything from exotic rugs to rare daggers and blades.
I eyed all the incredible merchandise. A portly man with a moustache sold flowers that when you sniffed them granted you status buffs; another merchant specialized in alchemy ingredients; a husband and wife with their young daughter sold incredibly sharp hunting knives (peering at their stats, they gave special bonuses against particular types of enemies. Perfect for a fetch and kill “x-amount of one type of beast” type of quest). We passed by a man brewing a delicious smelling apple cider.
“What does your cider do?”
“It bloody tastes good! Is that not enough for you!?”
I raised my hands in self-defense and continued walking through the stalls, contemplating what to spend the king’s bribe money on.
At the center of the market was a thick green pole that, in addition to keeping the glass canopy raised and sturdy, also flickered with holographic screens displaying charts and numbers. The chart featured different loot items, from crafting components to raw materials, showcasing what were the most popular selling goods at the moment and at what price they were selling. At number one was the raw material: “Shard of Crystallized Mana.” It was the most heavily traded material. Underneath was the typical rare raw materials I’d seen from other games: orichalcum ore, diamond dust, ancient wood logs, spirit oil. Damn. Were people already so far ahead they were crafting top-tier weaponry? The rest of the list eased my anxiety, suggesting early to midgame mats were selling very well too: copper ore, copper ingot, basic wood log, iron ingot, and on it went. Aha. So the top-tier mats were sold and traded loads—most likely by powerful NPCs—fueling the overall Illyrian economy, but due to the influx of so many new players the early to mid-game crafting materials were having their own rise in the market. If I survived a full year in this game, the prices for a “wood log x 1” will surely have decreased.
