by Deck Davis
By then, the eastern deserts weren’t what you would see in old history books. Changing weather patterns brought a never-ending tide of rain upon the once-golden deserts. Lashings upon lashings of cloud water turned the deserts into a boggy mess. As much as it rained, though, the sun also refused to quit. Rain met sun in a constant battle, leading to even wilder spells of weather: severe thunderstorms unlike anything ever seen, monsoons, tornados. The deserts and the land around them were abandoned, and we lost yet another beautiful part of the world to nature’s wrath, a wrath which scientists had been arguing for years was humanity’s fault.
The sheikhs and their people set up colonies hundreds of miles east of the deserts. They had enough bits to afford to protect their lands with the latest prot-tech, and they even installed early, not-ready-for-release versions of a new prot-layer that had weather control. They built plush houses for their people, opened schools, hospitals, you name it. The only problem was that, geographically, they were quite cut off.
They needed an ethnically diverse society if they were to flourish, but nobody wanted to go within a thousand miles of the wild deserts, much less set up camp a hundred meters east, never mind that it was completely safe. To combat this, the sheikhs decided to host VBRs. If there was one thing that would make people travel, it was a new battle system. There were people with VBR season tickets who went to as many venues as they could and merchants who went from town to town and sold their wares to drunken spectators. Then there were the fighters, coaches, and all their entourages.
The sheiks had made inquiries about designers and eventually had come to Dad. He talked with them and he liked their plans for their colony, and so he agreed to build them a map. After listening to their specs, he came up with Desert Dunes, which was a beautifully-rendered version of their once golden-deserts. He toiled over every grain of gristly gold and every tumbleweed that cartwheeled from dune to dune.
Then, there was an accident with the sheikhs’ experimental new prot-wave. Their weather control system, which they had been warned was decades away from being ready for use on a real-world colony, turned ‘gentle Sunday wind’ into a gale. Trees were uprooted, s-cars were flung around. By the time engineers got to the panels to reprogram it, a gust of wind had uprooted a tree and sent it crashing into the prot-layer generators. There, another unhappy coincidence happened. The backup prot-layer failed. For two days, the Savannah colony lay under the merciless sun without a prot-layer. After that, the sheikhs didn’t need Dad’s map anymore, since there was barely a colony left. Away it went into his finished-but-not-released archive.
Here and now, Dylan and I stood with the swelling dunes around us. The wind lapped at the sand, chipping away at it, and carrying small pockets of it in front of me, though Dad had engineered the sand so that it didn’t get in your eyes. Dylan was across from me. His avatar was a spirit archer, and in keeping with the elfish style of the class, he’d paid a few bits to sharpen his ears, make his skin a shining, pale marble, and have his hair sweeping down to his belt. A quiver on his back held a plethora of basic wooden arrows, and in his left hand, he gripped a bow. It was a standard, wicker level-one weapon. In a real VBR, he’d be wise to spend a wave or two searching for something better. Looting was the key.
We didn’t need to loot in Desert Dunes, however, because I’d loaded the training version of it. As such, Dylan and I both had a bunch of weapons scattered at our feet; axes, short swords, bastard swords, quarterstaffs, daggers. The list went on. I looked at the arsenal by my feet. What should I go for first? The whole point of this was to get to grips with my new abermorph class, so I guessed I better see what I could do.
I reached for an axe first. I gripped the hilt and tried to lift it.
Axe proficiency too low!
So, I couldn’t use axes. No big deal. They were cumbersome anyway. Even as a storm knight, when I could have wielded anything up to a mammoth-felling axe, I usually picked something lighter. If you could attack more quickly, then missing didn’t matter as much, whereas if it took a heroic effort just to attack once, then sweeping the air was a real pain. I grabbed a short sword and felt the cool metal against my palm. I went to lift it, but I couldn’t.
Short sword proficiency too low!
I needed to work out more! Abermorphs were pretty puny, it seemed. Still, with lower strength usually came much-increased speed. As long as I could move like lightning, I didn’t need the growl of thunder.
I picked up the daggers.
Dagger proficiency too low!
I let the weapons fall back to the sand. The wind whipped golden grains of desert sand in front of me and carried them away. The swirls and whispers of the breeze sounded mocking now. I wondered if Bill had bought me an abermorph avatar as a joke, maybe to see my face when I realized that it couldn’t do anything. Nah, that couldn’t be it. Useless class or not, avatars were still expensive. Bill had always loved a well-natured joke at my expense, but even he wouldn’t have spent half a year’s wages to do it.
“You…ooaa—” said Dylan across from me.
“What?”
He shouted again, but I couldn’t work out what he was saying.
The wind picked up in volume now, groaning and swilling. A couple of tumbleweeds careened down a sand dune, before being caught in a gust of wind and swept all the way to the top again. They must have been programmed to act on a loop. I cupped my hand around my ear in the universally-accepted way of amplifying sounds. No matter what the noise around you, cupping your hand near your ear was a scientifically-proven solution.
“What?” I shouted.
I saw Dylan’s lips move from twenty feet away, but the sounds only reached me in broken fragments. I raised my wrist. My mainnet wrist socket wasn’t on my abermorph’s avatar, but I knew that speaking into it would work.
“Wind off,” I said. The gusts died down, and the desert was still. The absence of noise was so pronounced now that it felt a little weird. Like something was missing.
“What did you say?” I asked.
Dylan held a bow in his hand. “You gonna get started, or what?”
“I’m trying, Dyl, but I can’t seem to use any weapons.”
“What was your default?”
Then I realized that my abermorph avatar hadn’t started with a default weapon, which was strange. As I’d found with the bard and his lute, even the worst classes began a battle with a basic weapon of some sort.
Dylan raised his bow, nocked an arrow and sent it flying my way. A ripple of pain singed the top of my ear as the arrowhead sliced it.
15 HP lost! [135/150]
I put my finger to my ear and felt a sting. When I pulled my finger away, my tip was coated red. Course, in real life it would have hurt a hell of a lot more. The pain sliders were set to 1.5 / 10 here. Some people liked to keep pain sensors at zero when they trained, but I didn’t. It was a tip I picked up from Bill. He always said that if you trained without pain, then you’d be in for a shock when you got into a real VBR.
“Cut it out a sec, you dope!” I said.
“I thought we came here to fight?”
If Dylan wanted a fight, I’d give him a fight. But first, I needed something to fight with. “Okay, just hold on a sec, Dyl. Let me get my shit together and then I’ll pummel you, at your request.”
“Pummel me with what, fuzzy-face?”
“Fuzzy-face?”
“Take a look at yourself.”
Lacking a mirror, I kneeled next to the broadsword. I spat on my palm and rubbed the blade until it shined. Then, I looked into it and saw the vague reflection of myself. I looked the same shape as a human, ‘shape’ being the defining word because there was little else humane about me. I didn’t seem to have eyes, a nose, or a mouth. Instead, my human, oval-shaped face was, as Dylan, had said, fuzzy. It was the grey color of a winter sky, except little lines ran up and down it, like interference. It was as though it had half loaded or something. Maybe that was what had happened. Perhaps that wa
s why my abermorph avatar’s proficiency wouldn’t even let me pick up a dagger.
I raised my wrist to my mouth. “Check load status: Abermorph.”
Load status: 100%
This was no error, then. This grey, featureless face was correct as was my lack of weapon use.
An arrow flew past me before landing with a soft thump into a sand dune behind me. This caused a mini-avalanche of sand; grains drifted from the top to bottom into a gentle ripple, and, before long, the arrow was buried. Normally, this would have been a good time to quit the map and check the user docs on the abermorph. I couldn’t have been the only abermorph around. Someone out there must have written a strategy guide, surely, though there was no denying that the class was rare, given I’d never come across it before now.
The problem was that arrows kept flying by my head, inches away, just close enough that I could hear them. I looked across the desert and saw a wide grin on Dylan’s face. He always got like this. Being in VBR brought out his competitive, cocky side, the part of him that made him a bit of a daredevil. Back when he traveled with his family, Dylan was training to be a tightrope walker. He was cocky, carefree, and downright rebellious.
“You’re asking for it, Dyl,” I told him.
“I’m askin’, and you’re not bringing, aberass.”
“I’m gonna stick my size eleven boots in your balls.”
“You’re a size nine, and you know it.”
I lifted my wrist. “Load NPCs: level one,” I said.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, at the top of each dune, short little creatures appeared.
“Woo!” shouted Dylan. “Sand dogs!”
One began to walk down toward Dylan, the other toward me. To call these creatures ugly would be to redefine the word, making it much worse than just a minor insult. These things were black lagoon, boogeyman, space creature from the ass-end-of-mars disgusting. They were three-feet-tall and walked on four legs, like a dog. That was where any dog comparisons ended. These creatures had no fur. Instead, they had red-raw skin that looked like it had been cooking under the sun for hours. Boils, plump and ripe to burst, lined their torsos, legs, and faces. Some had faint scraps of hairs on their paws, but, mostly, they looked like meat from a butcher’s counter. And the smell? Even as the first was scaling down the sand dune, I could smell its stink. There was no wind to carry the smell to me now, yet still it came, shoving its putrid odor up my nose like a finger.
At least they were level one. That meant they’d be easy to kill, weapon or no weapon. The trouble was that, for Dylan, it was even easier. Over on his side of the desert, he raised his bow, squinted, sucked in air, and then released an arrow. The arrowhead punctured the waist of one of the sand dogs, and the beast tumbled down the hill, paws and hind legs flailing like a the limbs of a ragdoll. With his projectiles, Dylan would level up much quicker than me. As soon as he had his first skill, I was at a major disadvantage. That meant I needed to think logically.
As a spirit archer, what was Dylan’s strength? Distance. Projectiles. So, what was his weakness? Close combat. Okay. Let’s get to it, then. Take the fight to him, where he won’t like it. As soon as I killed enough sand dogs to hit level one and choose my first skill, I needed to get as close to him as possible. I guessed that the only reason he hadn’t really tried killing me now was that, at this range, it’d be hard for him to hit me with a killing shot. I’d be able to move or duck. Getting his first skill would help him.
I ran over to the dune. Since I hadn’t looted anything, I was wearing just the standard cloth trousers and shirt. With nothing on my feet, the sand would have burned like hell. Luckily, the pain sensors were low enough that it was just a gentle warmth. It was kind of nice, actually.
The sand dog growled when it saw me. It leaned on its hind legs to pounce, then lost its balance on the slope. It careened toward me. Like a baseball player aiming for a home run, I swung my fist and caught the sand dog on its face. The kinesthetic energy of its fall met with my powerful swing to create a sickening blow. Something cracked, though whether it was the creature’s face or my knuckles, I didn’t know. When I stepped back, I looked at my fist. My skin was the same grey, fuzzy color as my face, though little welts of blood covered my knuckles like snow caps on a mountain range.
The sand dog growled. It wasn’t just a warning growl now. No, this was a noise that came deep from the back of its throat, fueled by hate and bile. Grains of sand stuck to its red-raw skin. Little bits of the bronze dunes lined its burst blisters. Man, that had to hurt. It made me wince to look at it. The sand dog reared back for another pounce. Well, at least I knew that my fists worked. From the look of the monster, it was half dead. Now it was just a matter of killing a few of them and leveling up. The dog leaped toward me. I struck it with an uppercut in mid-jump. It crashed to the floor and bled in the sand. The golden grains stuck to it as though its raw skin was glue. It breathed unsteadily.
For a second, I looked down on the animal and felt a wave of pity. “You didn’t ask to be programmed like this, did you, boy?” I said.
Then, I heard a thwack, followed by a cheer. I looked across the dunes to see Dylan staring at the space in front of him, except with utter concentration. He must have leveled up, and he was choosing his first skill.
“Sorry, boy,” I told the sand dog. Even now, on its last legs, it growled to let me know how much it hated me. I raised my boot and put it out of its misery.
34% exp gained!
Great. Two more kills would do it, and then I’d see what an abermorph could do. Time to get to it. After pummeling another two sand dogs as they scampered down the dunes like lemmings, a message appeared in front of me.
Level up to Level 1!
Choose a skill.
Skill 1 – Armorer [Touch a player to steal a weapon proficiency, mana cost: 25]
Skill 2 – Terrain Drain [Manipulate the elements of the map for a magic defence, mana cost: 45]
Skill 3 - Abermorph [Camouflage yourself into the map, becoming invisible, mana cost: 3 per 1 seconds]
Skill 4 – Skill Steal [Touch a player to steal one of his skills, mana cost: 100]
I quickly checked my mana. At level one, and without any armor or clothing loot items that increased my stats, I only had 34 mana. This meant that although I could unlock any skill at level one, I wouldn’t be able to use some of them until I levelled up to have enough mana.
Dull pain exploded in my chest. It wasn’t too bad, more like a finger prodded sharply into my skin. I dismissed the skill screen for a second and looked down, only to see an arrow sticking out from my chest.
I spoke into my rest. “Set pain slider to zero,” I said.
I pulled the arrow out and threw it to the ground. Then I looked at Dylan. Uh oh. He had that look in his eyes. The competitive look that had turned some of our previous VBR sessions from me teaching him the ropes, to full-on duels. Sometimes he got so consumed with the game that he was like a feral animal.
“Quit it a second, you ass,” I told him. “We’re here for me to learn what a bloody abermorph can do, not for you to turn me into a pin cushion.”
“Then hurry up, old man.”
“Old man? I’m only ten years older than you.”
“And you look twenty!”
‘I’ll show him,’ I thought.
I selected Skill 1, Armorer. According to the skill chart, I needed to touch another player to use this. But first I had to get close to him.
Armorer skill unlocked! [1/5]
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s cool it a second. There’s something wrong with the map code.”
Dylan looked confused. “Seems fine to me.”
“No, you look all jerky to me. Like it’s not loading your movements properly. Hang on a sec. I need to take a closer look.”
I grinned as Dylan lowered his bow, the sucker. I crossed the desert and went over to him. Now, I just needed to touch him to use the skill. I walked until I was right by him, and then
I clapped my hand on his back in what I hoped was a friendly way.
“That was some good shooting there, buddy,” I said.
As I touched him, a message flashed.
Contact initiated! Armorer used. Target: Dylan [Sprit Archer]
Select proficiency to steal:
Bow
Dagger
Short sword
Hand axe
Great. It seemed that Armorer didn’t just extend to whatever weapon my target was carrying but instead let me peruse their available proficiencies and select what I wanted.
I selected ‘dagger.’ Then, I moved away from Dylan and approached the pile of weapons on the sand nearby.
