World-Tree Online

by EA Hooper

  World Teleport (Low-Tier) – Cooldown: One In-Game Day | Teleports the user and one other player to a lower-tier world of the user’s choice. The user may choose to only teleport another player.

  Instant Revive (Low-Tier) – Cooldown: One In-Game Week | Instantly revives the user upon death.

  “Mine don’t seem that cool when you have mid-tier abilities,” Lucas told his partner. “ARKUS won’t even let me upgrade them.”

  “I’m not having this argument again.”

  “Just because you got into the beta doesn’t mean you should have better powers, Harper.”

  Harper shook her head. “ARKUS chose the beta players and mid-tier mods based on personality compositions. I can’t help that you didn’t fit what it was looking for.”

  “That’s some crap. What was it even looking for? Everyone knows the high-tier mods are all ARKUS’s developers, but they’ve kept ARKUS’s reasoning for mid-tier and low-tier a secret. You’re friends with one of the devs, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, Isaac.”

  “Has he ever told you ARKUS’s reasoning? I know you private chat with him all the time.”

  Harper sighed. “If I tell you, you better not tell anyone. Got it?”

  Lucas nodded his head.

  “ARKUS picked beta testers for a variety of reasons, but it chose mid-tier mods from that group based on moral integrity.”

  “And the low-tier mods?”

  “ARKUS chose you lot based on your ability to follow the orders of higher authorities.”

  Lucas glared at her. “So ARKUS thinks I’m a pushover?”

  “I don’t think it meant it that way. ARKUS didn’t even want mods at all, but the government required it. So, ARKUS gave the most power to its devs, and the second most to people it thought trustworthy. Then it gave the third most to people that would obey those above them. So, quit whining and follow my orders. We have to find these toxic players.”

  Lucas stared at the woman. Seriously? Even the AI thinks I’m a pushover? Is this why Harper won’t go out with me after years in the game together?

  “You’re staring,” Harper said, snapping Lucas from his thoughts. “Seriously, get it together. These players have committed numerous crimes, including sexual assault. Several women reported they had to log out of the game to avoid being raped.”

  “Really? Half the players here are partying and looking for hookups. How do we know they didn’t just get drunk and make bad decisions?”

  Harper glared at him. “Just shut up and look. There’s smoke over that way, so they might have a camp.” She jumped into the canyon and slid down the side of the stone.

  Wish I was out partying instead of doing this. Why’d I sign up for this crap? I’ve put sixteen years into this game, and I’ve only had one girlfriend the entire time.

  He followed Harper into the canyon, but his mind continued to stray. I thought being a Sheriff would give me power in this game. That it would make people respect me. However, I’ve spent all this time getting bossed around by other mods and getting disrespected by regular players. What’s even the point? Maybe I should start the game over as a different class.

  His eyes fell on Harper’s long blonde hair as it whipped in the canyon winds. Oh yeah. That’s why I don’t start over. I keep forgetting this game is my chance to impress her. To make her see me as more than just a friend.

  Lucas followed Harper through the winding canyon. They used their HUDs to swap their travelling attire for verasteel armor, and Harper readied her hardened-verasteel spear. Lucas drew his favorite weapon, which he’d even named.

  Moonblood - Total Rating: 250 (Material: 200 | Magic: 50) | A finely crafted verasteel blade that’s been enhanced with magic.

  “Found some tracks,” Harper said, trailing multiple sets of footprints in the dust. “Use private chat from here on out and be ready for a fight.”

  Lucas nodded and accepted a chat invitation from Harper. They continued through the canyon as it became thinner and taller. The rocks overhead loomed closer together, casting shadows on the two Sheriffs.

  >Harper: Remember, take time aiming your Mod Gun. You don’t get a shot every thirty seconds like me, and we don’t need a repeat of Baker’s Farm.

  >Lucas: Oh, my god. I know, I know. Stop bringing up Baker’s Farm. That was five or six years ago.

  >Harper: From a different perspective, it was less than a week back. You need to be aware of your surroundings too. Remember when you jumped in front of my Mod Gun and got booted?

  >Lucas: That was just as much your fault as mine. Besides, I could log back in right away since I’m a Sheriff.

  >Harper: Yeah, but by the time you were back, those thugs were long gone. And no, it wasn’t just as much my fault. I warned you not to get into my line of sight.

  Lucas gritted his teeth. Would she let stuff go already? We’ve had more successes than failures. She needs to stop treating me like a kid just because she has ten extra years of playtime.

  >Harper: Pay attention!

  Lucas stopped in his tracks and realized Harper had moved to the canyon wall. He could hear voices echoing from a narrow passage around the corner. Harper waved him over, and he joined her against the stone. As they crept to the corner, Lucas made a gun shape with his fingers.

  >Harper: Three. Two. One. Go!

  They jumped around the corner, taking aim at the five men sitting around a campfire. The men looked at them with wide eyes, and three jumped to their feet before the Sheriffs fired. One of the men froze in midair from Harper’s shot, and then disappeared with a flash of light.

  Lucas aimed at their leader, a grizzled-looking man that called himself Killer Sam. The man had somehow gotten into the beta, but ARKUS hadn’t offered him a mod position. Still, he’d grinded levels for months, and Lucas knew the Fighter-Ranger’s Agility, Strength, and Perception were each over a hundred.

  The muscles in Lucas’s arm tensed as he willed his shot to fire, but Killer Sam’s sharp eyes saw the slightest twitch, and he jumped away in time. The accomplice that had been sitting behind him took the shot and blinked out of the game.

  “Both their Mod Guns are on cooldown,” Sam told his allies. He equipped a hardened-verasteel greatsword and quickly dashed across the canyon.

  Harper gasped and unleashed two rapid-fire mana blasts. The first shot struck, knocking out one layer of Sam’s upgraded Mana Shield, but Lucas knew his shield had at least one layer to go.

  Breaker energy flowed across Sam’s sword as he ran past and swiped both Sheriffs. Lucas’s shield vanished from the hit, but the attack only knocked out the first of Harper’s two layers.

  The Sheriff’s counterattacked at once, but Sam leapt over them as his remaining allies fired mana blasts. Without his shield, Lucas only had his verasteel armor for protection. He dove away from the blasts and ran for cover behind a curved stone. Red dirt and rock exploded around him as the enemies barraged him with attacks. A mana bolt struck his shoulder plate, shattering the verasteel.

  He slid behind the boulder and glanced back at Harper. She and Killer Sam had disappeared around the corner, but he could hear their weapons clattering and mana zooming through the air. Lucas noticed footsteps as the other men descended on his hiding spot.

  Crap, crap, crap. I can’t take these guys without Harper. I could use World Teleport, but I never know where I’ll wind up with that. I guess I get one revive a week. Might as well use it. He glanced over his list of spells and found one he thought would be useful.

  Sonic Cannon - Mana Usage: Medium | Releases a large, cone-shaped concussive blast

  Lucas jumped onto the curved rock, noticing the men had prepared mana attacks as they neared him. He opened his off-hand and released his spell first. A shockwave raced from his hand and across the passage, the concussive force knocking both men off their feet. One man’s shield flickered, but it looked like a two-layered shield. His redhaired friend’s shield didn’t flicker at all.

  His shield must have Thresho
ld. At his level, it can’t be higher than a hundred, so I just need to do more damage than that to knock it out.

  Lucas unequipped his sword and readied Mana Gun in both hands. His Mana Gun spell had been upgraded to where he could spend a low amount of mana to increase the strength to a 150 Magic Rating. He prepared one as a regular shot, but super-charged the other, and then Lucas leapt from the rock.

  He landed between the two men as they climbed to their feet. Both the thugs fired their mana blasts at him as he released his in reply. His shots knocked out both their remaining Mana Shields, but their attacks ripped him apart.

  Instant Respawn…

  Lucas’s body flickered, and the damage vanished. He equipped Moonblood and decapitated the man to his right with a quick slash. He spun to swing at the other man, but the thug must’ve known about the Sheriff’s Instant Revive spell, because he’d readied his own verasteel blade.

  Their swords clashed together several times, and the canyon walls echoed with ringing metal. Despite Lucas’s sword training during his early years as a Sheriff, he struggled to fight off the thug. They danced around one another with slashes, parries, and dodges.

  Just when Lucas thought he had the upper-hand, the thug planted a kick to his chest that knocked him to the dirt. The enemy raised his hand, super-charging a mana blast to finish him off.

  “Bye-bye, Mod,” the thug mocked.

  Lucas smirked and raised a finger at the man. “Your minute’s up.”

  The Mod Gun hit the thug before he could fire. The man’s eyes bulged, and he vanished from the game.

  Lucas climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. He turned to the passage where Harper had been fighting Killer Sam. No sounds came from the passage, and he worried his ally had been defeated.

  >Lucas: Did you lose?

  “No,” Harper’s voice called from the passage. Within a few seconds, she circled around the corner into his line of sight. “Didn’t win, either. He knew my Mod Gun was ready, and escaped. I tried to chase him, but he used Breaker to knock a bunch of rocks into the path.”

  “I killed one and banned the other,” Lucas told her.

  “Who’d you kill? We can alert the other mods to his respawn timer. There’s only two nearby City-World’s he might spawn at.”

  “The redhaired one.”

  “Jackal-Heart Ryan. I was hoping it’d be one of the others.”

  “Oh, I think I remember you telling me about him. Ryan is Sam’s second-hand man, right? The other three were only random people they picked up along the way.”

  “That’s right. I’m glad you at least halfway listened. Why didn’t you target him with your Mod Gun? Sam and Ryan were the ones we really needed to ban.”

  Lucas threw his hands into the air. “Are you serious? I tried to shoot Sam first. Why didn’t you target them?”

  “I didn’t have a good line of sight on either of them. I’d rather take a for-sure shot than waste one. At least we got those three lackeys. They were the ones harassing women. Sam and Ryan were mostly focused on raiding players on Nature-Worlds.”

  “Then why bother with them? ARKUS won’t give them a permanent ban for that. Worst-case scenario, they have to take a week or two off from the game, and then they’ll be back to cause more trouble. At least we got the three harassers.”

  “That’s not the point. Sheriffs are supposed to keep order on the World-Tree. Yeah, Sam and Ryan will be back—they’re smart enough to not do anything to deserve a permaban, but if we keep hitting them with bans, each one will be longer. Eventually, they’ll wise up and play nice or risk month or even year-long bans.”

  Lucas sighed. “It’s an endless game of cat and mouse. If ARKUS gave us more power, we could end their troublemaking for good, but we’re more like janitors than moderators. We clean up mess after mess. Doesn’t that get old to you, Harper? This job was so exciting when I first started, but I thought we’d have more authority. The other players don’t even respect us.”

  “This job isn’t about respect. It’s about maintaining order.” She flashed a beautiful smile. “To be honest, I love it. The excitement of the chase—the thrill of victory and defeat. I don’t mind chasing after Sam and Ryan over and over. We’ll lose some and win some. Maybe one day they’ll change their minds and use their talents for good. Or maybe not. At least their three lackeys will get permabans like they deserve. You see, we did something good today, Lucas. I’m sorry if I was being hard on you. Sometimes I forget this is a game, and I start to take it too seriously. But I really love these worlds. I love what we do here.”

  Lucas frowned and looked away from her. I wish you loved me even a tenth that much.

  “Something wrong?” Harper asked.

  Lucas’s feelings turned and twisted in his gut. He opened his mouth to speak, but then a message appeared on his HUD.

  New Update – Time Remaining: 30:00:00 (Real-World Time)

  “An update?” Harper questioned, staring at empty space. “I’ve never seen one in this game.”

  “Thirty minutes,” Lucas read. “You serious? I’ve never seen an update take longer than thirty seconds. What decade are we in, the twenties?”

  “Oh, my god,” Harper said, her eyes moving back and forth. “Look at the notes.”

  Lucas opened the patch notes for the update, and his eyes widened as he skimmed the document.

  Chapter 3

  Player: Vincent

  Location: Teramor (World) | Knightrest (City) | Glass District (District)

  Class: Ranger

  Vitality: Lv 1

  Spirit: Lv 1

  Resolve: Lv 1

  Perception*: Lv 2

  Agility: Lv 1

  Strength: Lv 1

  Vincent screamed as the world turned black. For a few seconds, he could feel his real body in his gaming chair as he stared at the black screen. Then he felt himself floating down, and his feet touched a brick road. He gaped as a bustling city materialized around him. Streets, buildings, towers, plant life, stray cats, and then thousands of people appeared.

  He leaned over, taking a long breath. His nerves still trembled from his death, but the pain had lasted for only a moment.

  A woman in plated armor smiled at him. “Respawning, huh? Always a terrible feeling.”

  “First time for me,” Vincent replied.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? You a newbie or just a cautious player?”

  “I’m new. Barely even got a chance to learn the basics before Gazal one-shot me.”

  The woman chuckled. “That’s some bad luck. Well, enjoy your stay at Knightrest.” She walked down the road and disappeared into the busy crowd.

  Vincent peered at all the people in various fantasy armor and clothes. Eventually, his sight fell on the massive, several-story-tall crystal that he had spawned facing away from. It looked almost as if the city had been designed around the crystal, so Vincent guessed he was standing in the center of Knightrest. Intrigued, he Scanned the crystal.

  Knightrest Daiglass Tower – Material Rating: 999 | Spawn set: Yes | Items stored: None

  >Vincent: Hey, what’s this big crystal thing?

  >Jim: Oh, you’re back?

  >Vincent: I was only dead for about thirty seconds.

  >Jim: Didn’t I tell you the time dilation starts to wear off when you’re dead? You’ve been gone for an entire day.

  >Vincent: Oh, that’s right. So, this big crystal thing. It’s my spawn point?

  >Jim: The Daiglass Tower? Yeah, you can change your spawn points to those things by touching them. You can also store items in there for safekeeping, like a bank. Daiglass has some kind of radio type effect, too, so your items can be stored and taken from any other Daiglass Tower.

  >Vincent: Is there one of these on every world?

  >Jim: No, they’re only found at the center of cities. Originally, ARKUS included NPCs in the game that built the cities around the Daiglass Towers. Once the game went live, ARKUS let the NPCs grow old and die. Now, the
cities are controlled entirely by players—at least on the low-tier and mid-tier worlds. I’ve heard there might still be NPCs on high-tier worlds, since only ARKUS’s developers and the earliest play-testers have reached that far.

  Vincent touched the daiglass, opening a menu for storing items. He noticed he no longer had the items he’d picked up from the goblin and had respawned with his starting gear.

  >Vincent: So, you lose your items when you die?

  >Jim: Yup. Anything that’s not soulbound gets left behind as crystals. Soulbound items are super rare, too, so you should be careful when leaving the city. I hope that’s hardcore enough for you.

  >Vincent: That must make exploring other worlds very dangerous.

  >Jim: Usually, people form large caravans to travel between worlds. Although sometimes, no one survives the trip. Considering it can take weeks or months to reach certain worlds, it makes it hard to explore the World-Tree. I’ve spent over a decade in this game, and I’ve only been to five worlds. Two were City-Worlds, including Teramor, and three were Nature-Worlds, which have more dungeons, monsters, and all kinds of resources. There’s also something called a Dead-World, but they’re only located among the mid-tier and high-tier worlds. They’re smaller, have higher gravity, and are full of dangerous monsters. However, you can find rare resources and good items there. I might visit a Dead-World one day if I ever get bored of my party lifestyle. Speaking of which, you should head over to the Blue Phoenix District and find me.

  >Vincent: Maybe later. I want to explore this place.

  >Jim: Alright. Just don’t join any guilds until you know what you’re doing. Also, don’t sell any items until I give you a rune made to check gild. Gild is the currency here. There are banks that stamp gild into coins, but you have to watch out for scammers that will give you coins that are slightly off weight.

  >Vincent: Got it.

  Vincent walked through the crowd, eyeing the people. He checked the profiles of some of them, noticing their classes. Their profile only listed their highest stat, so he Scanned a few individuals to see their stats in greater detail. Most hovered around twenty to thirty, but he saw several people with specialized stats reaching forty.