Stay on the Wing

by Michael Atamanov

  "It's gone that far...? I didn't think a player's mount could raise such a commotion," I said thoughtfully. Jane exclaimed emotionally in response:

  "Timothy, I've actually been understating things! You should have heard what the directors were really saying! The public relations director used nearly only curse words, shouting in annoyance at Mark that this incident could eradicate the trust of our player-base, which is fragile enough as it is. There’s been a stream of hateful messages coming in from players to the developers in all day and it won't let up. In fact, it's only picking up strength!"

  These were the same general terms I'd already heard from my sister, but I was interested in finding out the opinion of the corporation's employees on what had developed. And that, as it turned out, wasn't the greatest either. Jane continued sharing her discoveries:

  "Initially, the forum admins harshly banned the most unrestrained, but then they got an order from the upper directors to soften their position and not to touch high-level players or any members of top clans. The corporation has always positioned itself as sensitive and open to player opinion. That is why the highest directors are now meeting to come to a decision that will allow them to take advantage of the current frenzy of activity for their benefit. They're talking about letting the players blow off some steam and voice their frustrations. After that, they plan to 'act in line with user opinion,' add some new rules to the game and redirect the negative attitude of the crowd at something other than the developers..."

  Jane went silent, offering to let me think over the rest.

  "Am I understanding right that they want to direct the rage of the masses against me?" I hazarded in fear. Unfortunately, I was correct.

  "Yes! The details are still being discussed but, overall, they have come to an agreement. It will be a big hunt that will be announced to all of Boundless Realm tomorrow, and you will be its target. They will imbue an object in your inventory with the ability to control your flying mount — a token or an amulet, and there will be a certain chance for it to drop every time you get killed. If that amulet does drop, the player that kills you will become the owner of the unique flying mount! The directors did a survey of some top clans, and the results are in — they all found the idea intriguing. Seeing that, the hullabaloo must have been unprecedented."

  "I have no doubt..." I said gloomily, my view on the situation growing dimmer with each passing moment.

  My mood sunk below the floorboards. The leadership wanted to deprive me of my VIXEN — the pretty little wyvern, which I had earned fair and square, and raised from an egg. Was that really just?! Where in the game rules was it written that a successful player has to part with his property in order to calm a faceless herd of less-successful losers? I asked that last question out loud.

  "Such a thing is, of course, not in the rules," the director's assistant agreed. "Appropriate bylaws will be written in, though, and along with them, your voluntary agreement to play the victim in the hunt will be obtained."

  Seeing my slain state, Jane smiled and tried to perk me up a bit:

  "It's not all that bad, Timothy. As far as I know, the hunt will only be for a limited time. And the biggest thing is that, at the end of the hunt, if you do manage to keep your pet, you can officially sell it at a Boundless Realm auction and legally convert the game currency to cash. I heard them mention a figure in the millions!"

  I looked at Jane incredulously, but she reaffirmed her statement. For faithfully executing the role of victim of the great hunt, if I could manage to keep the trophies to the end, the Boundless Realm corporation would give me an official, public job offer. That was exactly how the directors were planning, not only to once again hype working for their company, but also to explain the legal method of withdrawing game currency. However, I would be strictly forbidden from revealing the fact that I was working for the Boundless Realm corporation until the end of the hunt — otherwise, I would just be fanning the flames of a false narrative that the corporation greased the wheels for "their people," and preferentially awarded unique quests and objects to corporate employees.

  There really was something to think on here, as well. Mark Tobius had said before that there were buyers ready to invest ten million coins of in-game currency just for an unhatched wyvern egg. Now that she was at level 16, my Forest Wyvern had to be worth a bit more, especially if sold at open auction, where she could be bought by any player with enough cash. But a million credits in real life was a ton of money. That could provide a comfortable and safe dwelling for my sister and me. That could be our future provided for. That could be a pair of new biotic legs for Val. That possibility was the very reason I had gone to work for the Boundless Realm corporation in the first place. But getting that million would be damned hard work. Otherwise, the corporation wouldn't have set up this whole mass-hunt spectacle in the first place...

  "I see, Timothy, that the gravity of the moment has already reached you," said Jane, standing up from her desk and walking over to the doors leading into the hallway, then locking them from the inside with a key. "And now, I want to have an even more serious conversation. Just accept this as a fact––without outside help, you'll never manage to keep your pet. Already, your character is under thick cover from a few large clans and tomorrow, after the hunt is officially announced, your goblin herbalist won't even be able to enter the game without being killed immediately. After that, the players will wait for you at the respawn point, killing you off again and again. Sooner or later, the item will drop, and you'll lose your wyvern. And you won't be able to do anything with that. All your attempts to hide or change the respawn point will have no effect, because you have no concept of the methods being used to track you."

  "I’m starting to suspect you have an ulterior motive for telling me this. Do you have a concrete offer for me?" I asked carefully. The girl laughed:

  "That's exactly right, Timothy. You're a good guesser. I wanted to offer you a mutually beneficial transaction. You see, my position as director's assistant allows me to stay in the loop on a great many processes underway in the corporation. Finding out about upcoming events, items and new rules in the game world, as well as various cunning tactics used by players. The directors and other highly placed employees don't take me seriously, thinking me just a classic dumb blonde — a living piece of furniture or a wordless coffee-fetcher. Just so you know, I have a very good education, high ambitions and my own plans for life. Also, my current hair color is not natural. All that said, director's assistants don't get paid very well. Without alternative revenue streams, I’d never manage to survive, if you understand what I'm talking about..."

  I nodded curtly, confirming that I understood all the advantages and subtleties of Jane's work, and also the girl's high demands. She sighed sorrowfully:

  "On nothing but a secretary’s salary, a young lady would never manage to rent an apartment in the center of the metropolis and provide herself with good cosmetics and decent clothing. My last boss understood that. He valued me and sent me bonuses at every opportunity, or even just gave me valuable gifts. But when Alexandro Lavrius left, the situation changed. Mark pretends not to understand my transparent remarks. Maybe he really doesn't. But I, meanwhile, am having trouble making rent — I mean, my salary is lower than the monthly on my one-room downtown! My offer — I'll tell you how to not get caught, and you help me with rent money. I need seven hundred credits."

  What a request! I had thirty in my account right now all told so, despite the attractiveness of Jane's offer, it was beyond my means. The thought of in-game money flickered by — the fifteen hundred coins my big-eared goblin had could have been withdrawn from the game in the form of one hundred fifty credits. But that wouldn’t be enough, either. The rest of the funds in my character’s possession were in the form of promissory notes from the Most Reliable Bank of Gremlins and the Subterranean Bank of Thorin the Ninth. Getting to a branch of theirs would be absolutely impossible under present conditions. Amra would just die repeatedly,
if I tried. I’d never even leave the respawn point. Although...

  "Here are the keys for a two-room suite in a hotel," I said, extending Jane a clinking key-ring. "It's a long-term hotel for young specialists in a calm residential neighborhood. The room's paid up two months in advance. It wasn't good enough for my sister and I, because it isn't adapted for non-walking disabled people, but there was no way to get our money back. If that sounds good, here’s the address."

  If I were in Boundless Realm at that time, I'd surely have seen a series of lines on raising my Trading skill run past. Jane grabbed the keys from my hand and wrote the hotel's address in her phone.

  "Thanks! You really bailed me out, Timothy! Now, listen carefully. Probably, before you enter the game, you'll see a bunch of messages from unknown players. And that's no coincidence — your pursuers are not so naive as to expect an answer. They just need to know you received the message — if you did, you must be within ten kilometers. After that, they can place a circle with a ten-kilometer radius on the map — the receiver must be inside. From that point, they can narrow down their search. They go five or ten kilometers away and try sending another free message to the offline player. If it works, they draw another ten-kilometer radius and look at where it intersects with the previous one. Then, a few hours later, they’ve got a fairly small area to search for their victim in. By the time the victim decides to return to the game, the location of the character has already, as a rule, been established to within a few meters. Then, they set up an ambush there and wait for the victim to enter the game. Usually, these murderers work in a group — in that case, figuring out the location of the offline character can be done in less than an hour. Avoiding this method of pursuit is not hard, though. All you have to do is change your private-message receipt settings for free messages from unknown players."

  What could I say? It was really valuable information. On its own, though, it was hardly worth seven hundred credits.

  "That's all well and good, but what should I do if the killers are already sitting there when I enter the game?"

  Jane laughed. Now, the expression on her face was very similar to the look of sympathy my sister wore when I was acting blatantly stupid, misunderstanding elementary things. I had already figured it out on my own, though, coming up with methods to get rid of them off the top of my head. So, I asked Jane not to get distracted and tell me about the other methods of detection — after all, Boundless Realm was huge and, in the majority of cases, players could not count on finding a given character within ten kilometers of their location.

  "It's impossible to turn off paid messages in the settings — the Boundless Realm corporation gets a steady income from them and it's pretty considerable. There are very many forms of paid message, one of which involves the players using magical messengers. The pursuer sends out such a magical being and simply notes the direction it was traveling with a compass, drawing a straight line along that trajectory. After that, they ask a partner to send the victim a message from another city, or use a teleportation scroll to another city and do it all on their own. On the map, they see where the lines intersect, and that's where the runaway must be. It's a fairly inexact method and, in the majority of cases, it gives an area dozens of square kilometers in size so, from then, they use free or cheaper private messages to determine the exact coordinates. Sometimes, an entire clan will engage in a search using these methods."

  What could I say? The information I got from Jane was very valuable. As it turned out, there was nowhere, even in the farthest reaches of Boundless Realm, for my big-eared goblin to feel truly safe. But all the same, I saw some weak points in the detection methods — after all, finding out approximately where a person is located doesn’t amount to much. They need to be able to get there, as well. But if that place is in a distant wilderness, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest city and there are no teleportation scrolls easily at hand, they'd have to walk for days through mountains, forests and swamps. After that, they'd have to just comb the wilderness in search of the runaway, at which point they’d discover that the victim hadn't been there for some time, and was now a thousand kilometers in the other direction. After all, no one had outlawed teleportation scrolls. Amra just needed to get his hands on a few.

  An incoming message beeped out. Jane walked over to her desk and read the text on the screen.

  "Tomorrow morning, Mark Tobius is preparing to come in to the office, despite his injured leg. He just gave me the assignment to get in touch with you and call you back here in the first half of the day. He'll almost certainly be telling you about the final decision of the board and the rules of the 'great hunt.' I hope, Tim, that you understand that our conversation must remain a secret. So, try to act surprised tomorrow and get at least a bit outraged, just for appearances."

  I promised the girl I’d put on a real spectacle for the director tomorrow, so he wouldn't have any doubts that I was in the dark, and felt truly incensed.

  "But, look, just don't overdo it. Mark has a pretty short fuse and can easily get out of control. I mean, he recently fired an employee just for having the gall to argue with him. I hope you have enough tact and acumen to drop your guard when the time comes to accept his offer."

  "Don't you worry about that. After all your warnings, I'm morally prepared for a conversation with the big man."

  Jane smiled in satisfaction and, pumping her thighs alluringly, walked up to the door and opened it, showing me that we were done talking. I bid the girl a polite farewell and headed for the exit. But when I walked past her in the doorway, she unexpectedly grabbed me by the hand and turned me toward her, placing her hand on my shoulder.

  "I really hope, Timothy, that we can work together for a long time to come. I really do have something to offer a successful corporate tester. And, if you play your cards right and follow my advice, you’ll have plenty of money to afford my services."

  Jane stood up on her tip-toes and kissed me right on the lips. To be honest, I was completely caught off guard. Also, now, her offer of other services sounded like it had a good deal of double meaning. But she was satisfied with the effect she’d produced, smiled and pushed me out into the hallway, wishing me happy gaming.

  Already in the elevator, thinking over my conversation with Jane, I concluded that the fancy clothes she was wearing, her saying her plans for the evening hadn’t come together, and Mark Tobius not showing up to work due to a suddenly sprained ankle, were possibly connected. At some point today, Jane had realized I could serve as a backup, probably when she overheard upper directors talking about the grand hunt and its main prize.

  * * *

  On my floor, it was very crowded and noisy — the work day was just coming to an end. The corporate testers were all leaving the game together to go home. I took advantage of the crowd and hurriedly slipped through to my work cabin — there was absolutely no time for me to get acquainted with and talk to my new colleagues. I did notice that Kira was already at work, though — over the door of her cabin, there was a glowing red light. My sensor suit already donned, I was still in no rush to enter the game. I just loaded up my character's "work space," changed the message receipt settings and opened my mailbox.

  Yes, there truly had been a great deal of messages... I didn't waste my valuable time reading them, just took down the names of those who'd managed to send me free messages — they must have been relatively nearby and so would be the most dangerous. There were twenty-six such players. I placed all of them on my black list, so I could always know whether they were in Boundless Realm or not. Three of them put me particularly on guard. They had sent a few messages each at intervals of thirty to sixty minutes. It looked very much like they had determined the location of my goblin by the method Jane had described.

  None of the perfidious trio was playing now, but that didn't really mean anything. Valeria and I had quite often used the "login-trap" in other games when a person we'd marked for death noticed the threat and managed to leave the game. We woul
d just log right off after them and watch from another account to see when our victim logged back in, at which point we would also enter and kill them.

  But in Boundless Realm, a player could only have one account, and I could hardly imagine someone convincing a partner to help them with an endeavor like this — there was little joy in sitting watch for hours at a stretch to see when the victim entered the game, especially at night. Also, the main prize for killing me now — the ability to join the Goons — was only for one person, and had already been claimed. Nevertheless, I was in no rush to start playing. It was only around ten, and night had already fallen in Boundless Realm, but two players from my black list were still in the game for some reason. That put me on guard.

  I called Valeria and asked her to check if she'd also received messages from these characters, and what they wanted. But while my sister was finding that information, the green circle opposite one of the names changed to gray — the player left Boundless Realm. Of my pursuers, the only one left in the game was a woman, a level-80 Elemental Mage. Based on her high level, the night monsters of this area were of no threat to her whatsoever, so I had no hopes the magess would be leaving the game any time soon.

  "Answer her message," I suggested to my sister, "and better to talk in a private channel. If they ask about me, say I definitely won't be playing until morning. You can think up a good enough reason on your own."

  Three minutes later, the last of my pursuers had also left the game, after which I almost instantly got a call from Val:

  "Yeah, she really was asking about you. But I feigned ignorance. I just told her gladly and willingly, that you were studying for a test and wouldn't be coming back today. After that, I asked her to accompany me to Stonetown. I pretendedlike I didn't manage to get into the protected village before dark and was now afraid to go alone through the scary dense forest. But the magess said she had stuff to do in real life, apologized and left."