by A. J. Markam
“I’m not.”
“You want me to steal hundreds of billions of dollars worth of gold?”
“Don’t be stupid – they don’t keep it all in the same place. It’s dispersed throughout hundreds of locations in the game. However – you will be stealing some of it.”
“How?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Right now, you have more pressing problems.”
“What are you talking about?”
She pointed. I looked over and just about crapped my pants.
In a small clearing there was a spider creeping past a tree. But not a regular spider – this thing was the size of a St. Bernard. It was freaking gigantic. It had a body covered with brown hair, nasty looking jaws, eight beady eyes, and segmented legs as thick as my wrist.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” I screamed as I stumbled backwards.
“A spider,” she said, like Obviously.
“That’s not a spider! Spiders are LITTLE!”
“Not here, they’re not.”
“I’m supposed to kill that thing?!”
“Probably six or eight of them, depending on the quest.”
“How the hell am I supposed to kill that? Why would I want to go anywhere near it?”
“You have to if you want experience points.”
I watched the thing as it skulked through the clearing. “I’m rethinking this whole thing.”
“Don’t be a wimp. It’s just a computer-generated image.”
“It looks real enough to me!”
She rolled her eyes. “Just go ahead and do it and quit whining about it.”
I tentatively pulled out a knife and crept closer.
“Wait,” she commanded.
“What?”
“You’re a Rogue.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Rogues can fight with a dagger in each hand. It’s part of your fighting style.” She gestured at the other knife in my belt. “There’s no need to go in with only half your firepower.”
I grumbled, but I pulled out the other knife and crept towards the spider.
I must’ve looked like a toddler trying to sneak up on a scary dog. I sure as hell felt like I was going to wet my pants like a toddler, that’s for sure. I normally didn’t mind spiders – when they were small enough for me to step on. When they were big enough to step on me, I started to have a whole different set of feelings about them.
As soon as I got within five feet of the thing, it turned towards me and its eyes began to glow red.
A creepy chittering noise squeaked from its segmented pincers, and it leapt into the air.
I barely had time to react when the thing hit my chest and toppled me over onto my back. It immediately sank its mandibles into my left shoulder.
There was a sharp pain and I scre amed – more from fright than anything else.
“Stab it!” Arkova yelled.
I tried slashing at it, but couldn’t seem to hit anything.
The thing backed up a foot so that I could see its drooling, snapping mandibles – then it lunged at me and inflicted another bite, this time on my right shoulder. More sharp pain.
“You have to fight back or it’s going to kill you!” Arkova shouted.
Wait, WHAT?!
“What do you mean, ‘kill me’?” I shrieked, all seven-year-old girl, no Barry White.
Another bite – this time to the chest.
“Your hit points are dropping! You have to fight back and kill it or you’re going to die!”
“I don’t want to die! You never told me I could die!”
“It’s a videogame! Of course you can die!”
“What, am I going to die in real life?!”
I didn’t hear her answer, because suddenly the drooling spider jerked forward and bit my face – and everything went black.
12
I shrieked and held up my arms in front of my face.
Then I realized I was standing up instead of lying on my back.
What the –
I gingerly opened one eye, and saw I was back in the cemetery in the woods.
Except this time everything around me was black and white and covered in a silvery sheen. It looked beautiful, but very strange.
Whispers surrounded me, like a thousand people nearby had decided to murmur to each other at the same time. There were no other sounds.
Not only that, but my entire body was transparent. I could see through my hands.
Was I dead?
Was I a ghost?
“What is this?” I asked myself wonderingly.
“This is where you begin anew,” a harsh voice said behind me.
I whirled around and almost took a ghost crap in my pants.
A tall figure hovered above the ground. It was basically the Grim Reaper, with angel wings sprouting from its back and a giant scythe in its hands. Its tattered robes rippled and floated like it was in a windstorm in slow motion.
“You may resurrect here,” the Reaper said, “or you may seek out your body. If you choose to be raised here, you will suffer Resurrection Sickness for a brief time. If you find your body within six minutes, there will be no penalty except to the durability of your goods.”
Durability of my goods? What the hell is he talking about?
“Which way is my body?”
A skeletal hand lifted from the robe and pointed into the trees.
Great.
Might as well try to go find my body, I guess. Resurrection Sickness doesn’t sound so great.
“…alright… see you later,” I said, then sprinted off into the woods.
I ran as fast as I could. I had no idea what the penalty would be if I didn’t find my body, so I was determined to get there by the deadline.
Unfortunately, as I raced through the woods, I stumbled right into the path of another giant spider.
I shrieked – but it didn’t turn to attack me. It just kept crawling along the forest floor.
After my sphincter stopped being quite so puckered, I started thinking.
If I’m really a ghost, then maybe it can’t see me!
Acting out of curiosity (though maybe not common sense), I crept closer to the spider.
It never reacted.
I tried to touch its body, but there was something like a force field that prevented me from touching it.
I even ran right in front of its beady-eyed little head. It just kept on walking.
Wild…
The clock was ticking, though, so I set off at a sprint again in the search for my body. Along the way, I came across several other spiders. None of them noticed me, either.
A couple minutes later, I finally saw Arkova. She was standing in the clearing, looking around impatiently. At her feet lay my corpse.
I stood in front of her and waved my hand in her face.
Nothing. She looked right through me.
This is pretty cool…
Then I glanced down and saw myself lying on the ground.
Huh… I don’t look so bad. For a dead guy, that is.
I had a bullet-shaped head, pronounced cheekbones, a lantern jaw, and a sharp nose. No hair at all, including no eyebrows. The eyes with no pupils or irises were kind of freaky.
Okay, I was here. I had no idea how to get back in my body – whether I needed to click some button in my settings or something – so I thought, Display.
My controls showed up, but everything was greyed out. No buttons anywhere.
Well, THIS sucks.
I decided I might as well try to lie down in my body first.
It didn’t even come to that. As soon as I leaned down and my ghost hand touched my chest, it was like my soul got sucked back inside.
I yelled and jerked on the ground like I was waking up from a bad dream.
“There he is,” Arkova said sarcastically, as though talking to an imaginary person. “You’ve set a new record – dying from your first mob.”
“Mob?” I asked as I lay there on my back. “As in
gangsters?”
“No, it’s short for ‘mobile.’ Gamer slang for the creatures that you have to fight.”
“Is that normal, what just happened?”
“Getting killed by the very first thing in the game? No. No, it’s not.”
“No, I mean, going back to the graveyard and being a ghost.”
“Yes, of course. You just respawned.”
“Respawned?”
“Started over again after you die.”
“What about being a ghost?”
“That typically happens after you die,” she said acidly.
“Can anybody see you when you’re a ghost?”
“No, they can’t.” She prodded me with the toes of one boot. “Quit stalling and get up.”
As I stood, I noticed the health bar, which was back in full color now. The green rectangle was only half full, though it was gradually increasing second by second.
“Wait – I’m not fully healed. I think I only came back half-alive.”
“No, you only came back with half your hit points – but they’ll return. You’re regenerating them every second.”
“Is that the only way to get them back?”
“Well, you could eat somebody like I told you before.”
I stared at her in horror. “Is THAT the only way?!”
“No, there are potions and things you can eat that will regenerate it faster, but it’s way too early in the game to even be worrying about that. Worry about that first,” she said and pointed.
I followed her finger to where the spider was crawling at the edge of the clearing.
“Great,” I muttered.
I gritted my teeth, pulled out my knives, hunched over, and screamed as I ran at the spider.
It was basically an exact replay of last time.
The thing turned on me, its eyes began to glow, and it jumped up onto my body. I tried stabbing it, but most of my blows just glanced off. I saw its red Health bar maybe decrease by 10%. Meanwhile, it was busy chomping on me again. Painfully.
Just as my health points were about to drop away to nothing and I was anticipating seeing Mr. Grim Reaper again, I heard Arkova mutter, “Oh, for God’s sake…”
A cloud of blue energy enveloped me, and a sensation like warm water rushed through my entire body. Suddenly my hit points went back up to full.
Then sparkling energy crackled through the air and slammed into the spider like a lightning bolt.
The monster flew off my body with a screech. It landed on its back, legs crooked above it in the air, like one of its tinier cousins you’d find dried out in a dusty corner.
The spider stayed like that for about two seconds, then slowly faded away like the manticore had – but two things happened.
First, a glowing ‘18 XP’ floated through the air and disappeared. At the same time, my experience bar ratcheted up a tiny bit.
Then came the sound of jingling metal. Two small coins fell out of thin air, hit the ground, and glinted in the moonlight. Something else landed on the ground beside them, too.
“Whoa,” I whispered as I got to my feet, then looked back at Arkova. She was holding her ebony staff in her hands, and a wispy cloud of blue sparks was drifting from the top of it. “Did you do that?”
“Duh,” she said, gesturing with the still glowing staff.
“Thanks.” I turned away, paused, then turned back. “Wait – did you heal me, too?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can I do that?!”
“No. Only priests and a couple other classes can. Rogues can’t.”
“Wait… so you could have healed me before and you didn’t?” I asked angrily.
“You have to learn. I’m not always going to be there to hold your hand.”
“Then why’d you heal me this time?”
“Because I didn’t want to wait around forever while you resurrected again,” she said as she slung the staff onto her back.
I grumbled, then went over and looked at the coins on the ground. “What’s this?”
“That’s your loot.”
I picked up the two coins. There were about the size of pennies, but they didn’t have Abraham Lincoln on them. Instead there was some dude with a crown. On the flipside was a picture of a giant castle.
“These are coppers?”
“Yes.”
“Wow,” I said sarcastically. “So I got, like, 2% of a penny for killing that thing.”
“You mean for me killing it?” she asked archly. “Yes, you did – but the more you level up, the more dangerous monsters you’ll fight, and the more money you’ll make with each kill. Not to mention more experience points.”
“What’s this other thing?” I asked as I bent over and picked up the object that had fallen beside the coins.
As soon as I did, I realized it was the spider’s serrated jaws. It was all that was left behind.
“EW!”
“Those are actually somewhat valuable,” she said. “Well, relatively valuable for you. You can sell them to vendors for a couple of coppers.”
As soon as she said that, a small window appeared over the pincers in my hand.
Spider mandibles.
Crafting reagent.
Four coppers.
“What the hell is a crafting reagent?” I asked.
“It’s basically an ingredient for magic potions.”
“Does everything you kill drop a crafting reagent?”
“Most animals do.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Put them in your bag.”
“What bag?”
She pointed at my hip.
I looked down. I hadn’t noticed it before, because it was behind the sheath for my right side dagger, but there was a brown leather coin purse hanging from my belt.
“Oh – cool!”
Just as I was about to put the coins into the purse, a new window popped up in front of me. It was a grid of 10 spaces, with a little counter at the bottom.
“What the hell?” I asked, confused by the window.
“You just accessed your bag,” Arkova said. “Other than your weapons, you can only carry as many things as there are slots in the bag – although you can carry a large amount of money, up to 10,000 gold. We’ll drop by a merchant later so you can sell your loot and keep the space clear.”
“There’s people who buy this crap?” I asked, holding up the spider pincers.
“Yes.”
“So… just drop them in the bag?”
“For now.”
As soon as I did, the mandibles and the coins disappeared, and one of the slots in the window filled up with a little picture of the pincers. At the very bottom of the window, there was a counter that showed two brown circles.
“How the hell are you supposed to carry around much?” I asked.
“You can get bigger bags, and you can actually have up to five of them at one time.”
“Isn’t that a lot to carry?”
“They magically reduce the weight of anything you carry by 90%. So a fifty-pound object would only feel like five pounds to you until you take it out of the bag. That way you can carry around a fair amount of heavy stuff. And multiple bags merge into one – don’t worry about it, you’ll see.”
As we were talking, another spider crawled into the clearing.
“Okay, let’s go. You have seven more spiders to kill, and this time you’ve got to do it on your own.”
“Man,” I grumbled. I pulled out my knives and tried to work up some enthusiasm for wading back in. It didn’t work.
“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you,” Arkova said. “Tell me what you’re doing.”
“I get out my knives, run at it, and try to stab it.”
“Are you targeting it first?”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “Well, I’m looking at it – ”
“No, you have to select it.” She rolled her eyes. “No wonder you looked like a monkey humping a footbal
l.”
I wanted to yell No I didn’t!
But honestly, I probably did.
“Okay… so how do I select it?”
“Look at it and think ‘Target’ or ‘Select.’”
I looked at the spider and did what she said. Suddenly the monster glowed with a translucent red outline. It was subtle, but it was there.
Not to mention a new window opened with the words Night Spider along with a red bar beneath.
“Whoa,” I muttered. “That didn’t happen before…”
“Tell me what’s in your action bar,” she said.
“My what?”
“There should be a row of squares along the bottom of your vision, with some kind of a weapon or something in the first one.”
“Yeah, there’s a picture of a knife.”
“Hover your finger over it, but don’t touch it.”
I did as she told me, and a tiny window popped up that said, Vicious Strike. Underneath was a paragraph of text:
Inflict 14 Damage on selected target.
“What’s it say?” Arkova asked.
“It’s called Vicious Strike, and it does 14 Damage.”
“Okay – this time, when you run at the spider I want you either to say or think, ‘Vicious Strike.’”
I stared at her. “Are you punking me?”
“Just do it.”
I shook my head in resignation, then ran for the spider and yelled, “Vicious Strike!”
It was like something took hold of my body – like I was a puppet, and a puppeteer was guiding my actions.
I jabbed violently with my right dagger, then slashed through the air with my left.
The right knife stabbed into the spider’s body with the sound of an egg breaking. The other knife slashed viciously across its head.
The creature barely had time to shriek – but then it started attacking me back.
A red bar appeared directly over its head. Except that the rectangle wasn’t full – it was only about three fourths its normal length.
I’d hurt it!
But then the damn thing bit me on the leg. I yelled in pain as my hit points dropped.
“Yell it again!” Arkova called out.
“Vicious strike!” I screamed, and it happened again – that feeling of my body being taken control of by an outside power. I stabbed and slashed, and the red line above the spider went down even more.
I screamed like a madman over and over again, “Vicious Strike! Vicious Strike! Vicious Strike!”
