Dungeon Lord: Abominable Creatures (The Wraith's Haunt Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

  “It should be here, somewhere,” she told Omar.

  The new hire sported a brand-new Lasershark purple-and-pink vest, with the eponymous shark smiling at the center. His curly hair was pulled back into a tight bun and held together by a copious amount of gel. It was his third day on the job, and so far he’d done tolerably well.

  “Mister Ryan was so kind lending me a laptop,” Omar said.

  Lisa fought back the urge to roll her eyes. “Sure,” she said. Where is that damn thing? She was sure she’d left it somewhere nearby… Perhaps past the stack of busted motherboards?

  “I mean, it’s so cool, right?” Omar went on. “I never would’ve thought I’d get paid to play games on the job. It’s the dream, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.” She dug through a pile of faulty power supply units. The laptop wasn’t there, either.

  In the end, it wasn’t Omar’s fault that he wasn’t able to read social cues, although that did little to comfort her. She could just tell him directly and be done with it, but that would mean having a long chat with Ryan—and or his aunt—and where would that leave her?

  Playing games on the job wasn’t as cool as Omar hoped. First, the store still had to run, so Mark was doing the job of three people right now. Second, Lisa knew she’d need to stay for several extra hours to finish inventory, and she knew Ryan’s thoughts on overtime: it was the kind of word a team player shouldn’t even keep in their vocabulary.

  Third, she was sure Ryan only wanted Omar to get the hang of Ivalis Online before the weekend so Ryan wouldn’t have to teach the newbie the ropes on his own.

  The laptop was half-buried under a small mountain of black trash bags full of useless CDs that offered free anti-viruses, free email accounts, and free trials of some corporate slide-show or spreadsheet processor.

  “Here you go,” Lisa said as she dusted the surface of the bulky thing with the back of her hand. The laptop was old and technically the property of the store, but its previous user had added a bit of personality to it with a couple stickers, one of a scantly clad elven Wizard from a popular MMORPG, and another of a giant hulk of a demon that was the final Boss in the same game.

  Omar grabbed the laptop almost reverently. Lisa found the charging cable inside one of the plastic bags and handed it to him as well, then stood and massaged her legs.

  “Hopefully it still works,” she said as they exited the storage area into a dusty hallway with naked wooden walls decorated only with plastic-wrapped A4 sheets printed with memos and motivational messages from HR. An intermittently working light-bulb hung from a cable on the ceiling, and a cockroach’s shadow skittered on the floorboards.

  They reached the back of the store and cleared a space on the table near the water cooler. Omar grabbed an old mouse, then connected the laptop to an outlet. While it booted up, Lisa took a quick peek at the front—Mark seemed to be doing okay. At least the store wasn’t on fire, which was all anyone had a right to expect. They made eye contact across the phone case rows. Lisa gave him a grimace, and Mark gestured up at Ryan’s office and mouthed something foul before hurrying to the register.

  “What’s the password?” Omar asked when she returned.

  She sat next to the kid, who tensed up at her closeness and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Lisa pretended not to notice and turned her chair to an angle to put a bit more distance between them, playing it off as getting a better look at the screen. “Let’s see,” she said. “System04. All lowercase, a zero before the four, no spaces.”

  Omar typed the password under the username, which was “Ed. W.”

  It was a small miracle that Ryan hadn’t tossed the damn laptop away. After Ed’s mysterious disappearance, Ryan had searched his workstation in case it hid any clue as to Ed’s whereabouts, but despite Ryan’s hopes it turned out that life didn’t work like a mystery movie. The laptop only contained work-related data, Ed’s work email, Ivalis Online, and a pair of flash games that Ryan used as further evidence of Ed’s malicious incompetence. Lisa recalled Ryan’s disappointed frown with a small smile of her own. What did you expect to find, a terabyte of scandalous porn, his new address, and a written confession? Every one of your employees is computer literate, dude.

  The desktop took several painful minutes to load, then it showed a black background and a sparse spread of icons. Omar took a few seconds to find IO’s pixel-art icon on the screen, and double-clicked it with an eager grin.

  “I’ve reading up on this game,” he told Lisa while the .exe loaded. “I wanted to download it into my own PC, but there’s no official download link anywhere, only cracked single-player versions.”

  “Yeah, we’ve talked about it on the forums,” Lisa said. Despite it all, she couldn’t stay away from a bit of game-related gossip. “Apparently the devs stopped answering mails or calls without explanation and took down their site a few years ago. No one knows why; the game has a rabid fan-base, so they would’ve bought anything new the devs launched.”

  After a black loading screen, the words PANTHEON appeared in golden letters, along with an audio file, like the metallic sound of drawing a sharp sword in a movie.

  “These are the devs?” Omar asked.

  “That’s right. Weird bunch, you know? Ed and Mark loved them because they were so quirky, but I think that’s the reason the game never took off in the first place. They added dozens of limitations that made no sense, all in the name of immersion, but they made the game unplayable unless you’re really trying to get into it.”

  “To be honest, I’m even more curious now.”

  “You’ll see what I mean.”

  After the PANTHEON screen came the usual legalese, a warning that the game wasn’t appropriate for children, and a disclaimer that the devs weren’t responsible for the shit players did to each other while in-game. Then came a pixelated introductory video about the single-player campaign’s main character fighting hordes of bad guys while a narrator rambled on in the background about justice and destiny. The CGI had aged terribly, but Lisa found that it only added to the game’s charm.

  When the video was done, a start screen took its place, with the Good Kingdom’s castle in the background, besieged by hordes of the Evil Empire. On the right side of the screen appeared a list in a medieval typeset:

  Campaign

  Ivalis Online

  Options

  Forums

  Account

  Exit

  Omar clicked on Ivalis Online, which filled the left side of the screen with another menu. It was divided into four rectangles which had a character portrait in each of them, with bars showing their names, stats, levels, and hours played. Each character was a different level. The one on the right, an elven Wizard, was the strongest and had the longest playtime, and the one on the left was a rookie Warrior with only a few hours played.

  “On a fresh account,” Lisa explained, “you can only have one character at the time. Apparently, Pantheon wanted us to prove we were worthy of the responsibility to keep more characters, so we have to unlock more slots by killing Bosses and the like.”

  “I’ve played games that do that,” Omar pointed out. “Nothing weird about it.”

  Lisa grinned. “It’s in the way they frame the reward. Think about it. Most games IO’s age pretend the players are the characters, to maintain immersion. Player characters are the ones killing the baddies and finding the loot. But IO rewards the players themselves and keeps talking at them the entire time. If you have a careless play style and keep killing your characters, the game scolds you, and may take features away in punishment. There are even a few guys who got banned from the multiplayer version because they died too much.”

  “Okay, now that’s strange,” Omar said. “Not even EA does that.”

  “It pissed off some of the fan-base, but most only shrugged and told the angry ones to get good.”

  Omar snorted. “Sounds about right.”

  “So, let’s get you started on the campaign first, ok
ay?” Lisa said. “It’s an extended tutorial. After you’re done, you can delete the two weakest characters and make your own.”

  Omar left the Ivalis Online menu and hovered over the Campaign, showed a New Game and Continue options. “Are you sure this guy won’t get pissed I’m messing with his account?” He tapped at the laptop’s stickers.

  “Well… he hasn’t logged on in a while, so he’s probably moved on by now,” Lisa said, trying to keep her voice level. She had always wondered how well Lasershark’s security cameras could pick up audio, because Ryan had the tendency to show up at exactly the worst times. “To be honest, Ed’s a touchy subject around here. I wouldn’t mention him if I were you.”

  “I heard bits of gossip here and there,” Omar went on, oblivious to Lisa’s discomfort. “He’s the guy who lost it, isn’t he? The one who attacked Mister Ryan and ran away from the police. Crazy fucker, am I right?”

  Lisa glanced at the corner where she knew the security camera lurked. “Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

  Technically, Ryan’s story was right. Ed had lost it, no question about it. She had been raised to find violence unacceptable under any circumstance. Still… Lisa couldn’t shake the feeling that Ryan had pruned his version until it showed only one side of the tale. He hadn’t mentioned the constant verbal abuse, for example.

  Still… did that justify smashing someone’s face against a desk?

  Lisa felt a pang of guilt on her chest, and she shook her head to clear it. She’d spent a year barely thinking about Ed and his assertive “I quit, Ryan” delivery. But Omar couldn’t help but bring it up over and over, and she was sure it was awakening Ryan’s old grudges. Lisa would’ve very much preferred he didn’t, primarily because before he’d made a target out of Ed, he’d focused his nastiness on her.

  Her hand gripped her jeans. Yes, that’s the real problem, isn’t it? she thought, angry at herself.

  Not even Omar could miss the meaning of a “whatever,” so he shrugged and returned his attention to the screen, which was fine by her.

  Clicking on the New Game option prompted two “are you sure?” text-boxes, and then a new video began. It told the story of the Good Kingdom, a peaceful and prosperous land that had lived in harmony for generations, which had earned them the jealousy of the Evil Empire—

  “Evil Empire?” Omar asked, looking at the screen as if someone was pranking him. “Good Kingdom? Who the hell came up with these names?”

  “I think it’s supposed to be tongue in cheek and self-aware of the tropes,” Lisa said, getting defensive like any gamer who finds her favorite game being even slightly criticized. “Anyway, the story is mostly an excuse to kill shit, and Pantheon’s mechanics are way ahead of their time, so who cares if their campaign abuses all the fantasy clichés around—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” said Omar, raising his open palms in surrender. “Tongue in cheek it is.”

  The Evil Empire had sent a terrible curse called the Culling upon the Good Kingdom. During the Culling, the Evil Empire’s agents had killed thousands of the Good Kingdom’s people, burned their cities, and salted their fields. The Wise King Varen suffered nobly for weeks while the Evil armies grew in strength and prepared for the final strike, until a brave young man heard the call of destiny, grabbed his sword, and bravely set to rally the forces of Good into a desperate attack to retaliate against the Culling and bring the fight into the Evil Empire’s lands. Along with his three plucky companions, of course.

  At that point in the video, the screen zoomed from the Hero’s village into his home, bypassed the straw roof, and showed his silhouette sleeping in bed as one of his companions ran into his room, bellowing for him to wake up, since he was already late to his meeting with the village elders.

  The Hero rose, and a character creation menu deftly replaced the cut-scene with no obvious loading screen.

  “Neat,” said Omar.

  “Not bad for a fifteen-year-old game, right?” Lisa asked proudly.

  “So, what’s the story about?”

  “Without spoiling much? You assemble your squad, fight a couple minor bad guys terrorizing the Good Kingdom, level up, then travel to the Evil Empire to confront the Big Bad—Zailos, or something like that.” She left out the tragic betrayal at the mid-point of the campaign, or the bittersweet ending with the Player Character’s heroic sacrifice.

  “Okay. Seems pretty straightforward.”

  “The multiplayer takes place after the campaign,” Lisa went on. “You’re supposed to help the Good Kingdom finish off the baddies. The main goal is to hunt down this Everbleed guy—he’s in the campaign as well, starts as a minor boss, but takes over when you deal with the Big Bad.”

  The character creation let Omar play with the Hero’s name, stats, class, and appearance. The placeholder name was “Dasius,” which Omar replaced—in a dashing display of creativity—with “Omar.” He then began changing Dasius’ appearance into his own likeness.

  Lisa knew some people could spend more time customizing their characters than actually playing the game, so she went for a drink of water, then checked on Mark again.

  He was talking to a customer dressed in an expensive black suit, a tall man partially hidden by a signboard displaying the newest overpriced ethernet cable. Mark kept throwing quizzical glances at the back, then nodding, but he seemed to be doing fine. The rest of the store was empty, which was a bit strange, but Lisa chalked it up to the rest of the crew timing their break. As long as they came back soon, Ryan wouldn’t notice. Probably.

  That’s how you survive, isn’t it? she told herself, breaking her train of thought. You keep your head down, make yourself small, and hope your problems don’t notice you. The only reason you’re stuck here is because there’s a fight waiting for you, yet you refuse to fight it.

  It all had started, well, like in Omar’s case. She had been a new hire, and Ryan had seemed like the dream boss. Attractive, charming, and relaxed. If Lisa hadn’t been dating a tattoo artist a couple blocks away… Goosebumps traveled down her back. That’s one hell of a bullet dodged, she thought.

  Ryan had flirted playfully with her at the beginning, nothing serious, just friendly banter—or so she’d thought. She’d made it clear she wasn’t available, but wasn’t too insistent over it. Later, her younger sister had told her that had been a mistake and that she should have been sterner, that guys like Ryan used even the slightest opening to stick their foot in the door and act pissed when you tried to close it.

  Lisa and her sister had argued quite a lot over that analysis. Lisa believed that it was insane to try to control everyone’s interpretations of her every action—it wasn’t fair, or even possible. Her sister seemed to pull it off without effort though. Diana had just graduated and had already landed a rockstar internship in a promising marketing start-up, thanks to her make-up tutorial vlog with three million followers. She was also the kind of person that claimed that her pay-to-win smartphone energy-timer game made her hardcore into gaming.

  In the end, Lisa had rejected Ryan’s advances, and he hadn’t taken nicely to it. His personality had taken a total u-turn, going from charming and straight into “you’re an ugly cow” territory, and he then proceeded to make her life a living hell while she unsuccessfully looked for another job. Then Ed had come along, a lanky nerd who had, for some reason or another, redirected Ryan’s attention and ire to himself.

  And here you are again, she thought, hoping that someone else takes the fall instead of your sorry ass. When will you learn to fight your own fights, Liz?

  The room had turned a strange shade of white. Surprised, Lisa propped herself against the wall and took deep, steadying breaths.

  “Are you okay?” Omar asked, looking up from his laptop. “You’re looking a bit pale.”

  “S-sure,” Lisa stammered, barely paying any attention to him. Her head was pulsating something fierce, sending red jolts of pain through her nervous system in the rhythm of a heartbeat.

  On a
whim, she turned to the register, half-expecting to see an unearthly creature smiling at her beneath a signboard. But Mark was alone, and the bell by door at the front chimed as someone closed it. Mark turned to her with a quizzical expression. He had a black letter in his hand.

  Was someone singing in the distance? Lisa shook her head again and fought the urge to clasp her forehead. “Actually, do you have any aspirin?” she asked Omar.

  The air reeked of pungent chemicals and rotten fruit.

  “No,” Omar said. “But I could call Mister Ryan and ask—”

  “Forget it,” Lisa said, waving her hand. “It was nothing.” She forced herself to straighten her back and fake a smile. “I bit my tongue, that’s all.”

  Before Omar had a chance to reply, she strolled out toward the front, acting as if nothing was wrong. Mark saw her and waved her over.

  “Hey, Liz. You wouldn’t believe what just happened,” he told her with an uncertain grin.

  “Funny you mention that,” she said, but Mark wasn’t listening. He held the black letter in front of her.

  “This is for you,” he said. “From a head-hunting company, or something like that. The dude just left and wasn’t very clear, but it seems like you got a job offer.”

  Lisa grabbed the letter without thinking. Her mind had gone blank with surprise. As her headache receded, the feeling of incoming doom that had almost overwhelmed her went away as well. She’d almost expected Mark to tell her that her house had burned down. A letter from a headhunter company was completely out of left field. She wasn’t even aware her resumé was still out there, or that anyone was looking at it.

  “Weird, isn’t it? I told him you were working in the back, but he said the timing wasn’t right and just left.”

  Lisa scrutinized the card. It had her full name and address on it, and the sender put simply “Mr. K. Posseur. Head-hunter.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty strange,” she said, eyeing Mr. Posseur’s handwriting with distrust. If it was a joke, it’d be a cruel one, which was exactly the kind of humor that Ryan favored most.