Istoria Online: Square One: A LitRPG Adventure

by Vic Connor

  She turned around and inspected me over her glasses. “Hungry, sir?”

  “Not sure,” I replied. “I mean, if I had to be honest … no, not really. But after those rock-hard cookies Abe shared with us, I’m kind of craving something nice and greasy. Is this normal?”

  “That’s to be expected, I guess,” she said, her attention focused on the coffee table again. The sweet, heavenly, rich aroma of freshly-pressed espresso filled the lobby. “They keep your body well-nourished in the capsule, and last I checked, all your stats were green—so, biologically speaking, you’re not hungry.” She approached with a warrior-queen’s grace, a spotlessly white, tiny cup in her hand. “But, in many cases, players experience a strong craving for greasy junk food.”

  She placed the cup on the polished wood in front of me and went back to her seat, slowly enough to ensure I’d appreciate how stunning she looked in her black pencil skirt.

  “You guys know we players are gonna crave greasy burgers and oily pizza, but you only offer us coffee in here? I mean, how come you don’t have a wider menu, when you can simulate a whole frigging food court in there?”

  “In four words, boss: bottom line.” She sat down. A mischievous smile flitted across her lips as she rubbed three fingers together. “Can you guess the other two?”

  I looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant. Two words…?

  “Since you’ve missed me so much, sir, I’ll give you a hint. Think ‘cosmetic, like having to do with appearance…’ think ‘no in-game advantages…’”

  “Son of a bitch.” I laughed. “Micro transactions?”

  “Right on the money, boss.”

  “So, you can provide food and beverage—”

  “If it’s served anywhere in the world—from a gourmet’s dream three-star Michelin bistro to a trucker’s greasy roadside joint—yeah, Maneesh and friends likely have it stored in their database.”

  “—but the plan is to charge extra for it; to nickel and dime players?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how many nickels and dimes some rich folks can cough up, boss.” She smirks. “And consider we can make you feel eternally hungry in here, so you could eat non-stop if we wanted you to. And gain no weight, let alone suffer from food poisoning. This has to count for something!”

  “Damn. NozamaTech must really care about their bottom line…”

  “They do, boss,” she confirmed. “Not yet implemented though, so right now, we only have water, tea, and coffee. But it’s all-you-can-drink and free in your case, so not such a bad deal, yes?”

  I took a sip of her espresso, savoring the subtle caramel and chocolate notes. “I have to admit, it could be worse.” I smiled.

  “On to Duurstad then, boss? To solve the shiny new quest?”

  I took a second sip of espresso while studying the bird’s-eye view of my party, en route through the jungle. “This is where Juanita said that frigging map I keep failing to remember should be, yes. Somebody from Duurstad bought it, she said. Abe kept nagging that we should go to see his acquaintances in the pirate heaven, Morgantown, but he was clear those fine folks loathe slave trade and want nothing to do with it.”

  “Your party’s healer cannot be there, then, you think?”

  “Not if what Juanita and Abe say is true. Our healer was bought in Villarica, says the witch; nobody from Morgantown would buy a slave, says the pirate. It follows that Uitzli wasn’t sold to someone from the pirate town.” I paused for a third sip of Sveta’s heaven-in-a-cup coffee. “Besides … early quests tend to be linear, right? If the map—which apparently has +5 Dodge against recall—went to Duurstad, as Juanita says, then my bet is that either Uitzli was sold to somebody in Duurstad, too, or we’ll find some clue there about her whereabouts.”

  “Are you sure, though? Your healer might have been taken away on the Spanish ship Reina Isabel, and now she could be sailing to South America…”

  “If she has, there’s nothing we can do about it. At least, not without a ship ourselves,” I said. “But I don’t think so. I mean, she could be… But call it a hunch, I think there’s still too much to do on this island for the quest to lead us elsewhere. And, impressive as Istoria’s realism is, I don’t think Maneesh’s crew is out to simulate the entire world just for the single-player campaign.”

  I finished my cup and put it on the table. “Yeah.” With my thumb, I indicated the stainless-steel vault door behind me. “My gamer’s intuition says that whatever I need to beat to unlock Multiplayer—” I drummed my index finger over my party’s bird’s-eye view “—will be confined to just this island.”

  Both my body and my crutches feel lighter as I hobble on bound feet along the jungle path. I know Juanita, Miyu, and Abe could go faster if I wasn’t dragging them down, but we are moving at a much quicker rate than we did yesterday—let alone two days ago, right after I got resurrected.

  “Just so we’re all on the same page,” I say to Juanita, who leads the way a few steps ahead of me, “what’s our story? I mean, when we show up at Duurstad’s doors.”

  “That will not be necessary, my child,” Juanita replies, not looking back.

  “Witch be meanin’ thems doors,” Abe grumbles from behind me. “Dutch towns, thems don’t have ‘em.”

  “How come?” I ask. “Villarica does, or at least that’s what I understood from the way you described it. And Tepetlacotli had some huge walls, I’ve seen them myself.”

  “Thems city walls ‘n’ gates, thems be expensive,” Abe grumbles. “An’ when it comes to avoidin’ spendin’ a bit o’ coin, ‘em Dutch be even more miserly than ‘em Scots. Penny saved be a penny earned, an’ all that.”

  “Aztecs, Spaniards, and British seek to conquer territory,” Juanita explains. “The Lowlanders have built their empire on trade—”

  “Godless lot.” I hear Abe spit. “God be good, but trade be better; so ‘em Dutch says.”

  “—so they buy to and sell from every other power,” she continues, “and do not clash with other empires.”

  Wait. This can’t be right. “My memory is still hazy,” I admit, “but haven’t the Dutch been at war with the Brits recently? And the Spaniards before that?”

  “Ya be right, lad.” Abe chuckles. “Yarr memory be hazy. Thems sneaky Dutch have been avoidin’ a stand-up fight fer ages.”

  “And while other powers exhaust each other through warfare,” Juanita adds, “the Lowlanders grow rich by trading with both sides.”

  “Interesting.” I nod. “History here is different from what I remember.”

  Abe grumbles something under his laboring breath.

  “Things may be about to change, though,” Juanita says. “War is brewing in the sunrise lands across the large sea, from what I could gather in Villarica.”

  “War be always a-brewin’ back in Europe,” Abe agrees. “Thems gears o’ war be always a-turnin’.”

  “This time, it seems to be brewing big enough for the Lowlanders to worry about it, rather than seeing it as yet another chance to enrich themselves,” Juanita tells him. “Worried enough to spend on hiring mercenaries and privateers, rather than investing their precious gold to make more gold.”

  She pauses and turns around. I stop by her side.

  “That could be our story this time,” she says. “So, what shall we do to enter Duurstad, young Jake?”

  Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken, I say; portraying you as an escaped slave, and presenting us as your captors, should work again.

  I like the mercenary angle; it would explain why we’re such a ragtag bunch of weapon-wielding companions.

  We could try to pass as sailors, perhaps? At least one of us already looks the part…

  I’d rather just be upfront about it, and mention we are looking for somebody that matches Uitzli’s description.

  Do we even need a story? If the town has no gates, it should be easy to sneak in more or less unnoticed.

  Abe and Miyu halt behind me.

  “Do we need a story?
” I ask. “If the town has no gates—”

  “That don’t means Duurstad be havin’ no guards, lad.”

  “Nor that those guards are blind, my child.”

  I contemplate our options. With my crutches, I don’t look like a seasoned sea dog, and faking it as a slaver isn’t something I’m looking forward to.

  “I like the mercenary angle,” I say. “It would explain why we’re such a ragtag bunch of weapon-wielding companions.”

  “And I have spent most of last night playing the role of a servant,” Juanita says. “Indeed, my child; I would welcome the chance to portray myself as a sellsword for a change.”

  “You mean a sellstaff, right?”

  “My staff is not for sale.” She smiles. “But that would be our story, unless you have something better.”

  I turn to the Noh mask. “Duurstad.” I point ahead of us. Then, indicating the four of us, I add, “Yohei,” remembering Kaito Nakamura’s mercenary in Mechageddon: Apocalypse.

  The mask nods, tilting to the left. The weird angle adds a slight wildness to its eerie smile. “Hai!”

  “Nothin’ against it,” the pirate says. “Bit o’ privateerin’ be up Ol’ Abe’s alley alright.”

  Memory Unlocked:

  Dark Alleys (1 of 2)

  I approach the closed coffin, which sits in the center of dozens of flickering candles.

  “Go say goodbye to him, young Jake,” Juanita encourages gently from behind me.

  The warm air feels like a ball of wax in my throat, sticking to my larynx and making it painful to breathe.

  “What an awful way to go,” whispers one of the looming adults to another.

  “I warned him,” replies the other. “I told him, many a time: Beware of London and its treacherous dark alleys.”

  “Aye, that be down Ol’ Abe’s alley alright,” he repeats.

  We cross two bridges along our journey south to Duurstad. The first bridge made of wood; the second, of stone; and by mid-morning, we climb a low hill where the jungle gives way to a large, sandy bay. Steep cliffs on both sides provide a natural harbor, where waves gently rock a handful of ships waiting for the tide to change so they could set sail out to the blue sea.

  “See thems ships, me lad? How ‘em has no cannons, most of ‘em?” Abe spits on the ground. “That be thems Dutch’s secret: Buildin’ theirn ships just fer tradin’, makin’ thems all ‘bout speed an’ cargo, rather than sturdiness an’ firepower like ‘em Spaniards do.”

  A quiet town lies in the middle of the bay, about five hundred paces from our hill. Scores of huts and wooden houses surround a dozen taller buildings made of stone, bricks and mortar.

  Miyu’s mask hisses softly. “Shiro.”

  “Is that Duurstad?” I ask.

  “Eyes of an eagle, me lad,” Abe smirks. He gestures toward the tallest building, what looks like a four-story tower on the left side. On its top flies a Dutch flag, with some sort of crest in the middle. “That tower be where Duurstad’s Opzichter be livin’.”

  “Opzi… what?”

  “The city’s overseer, my child.”

  “Callin’ this ‘ere town a city, that be mighty generous…” Abe grunts.

  I take a few tentative steps downhill over the sand. Nice. My crutches prefer this surface to the muddy jungle trail we’ve been following for three days. I turn around to look at Juanita. “And the map I fail to remember was sold to a cartographer here, you say?”

  The witch nods. “Such were the gossips in Villarica. Vander Kaart would be his name.”

  Abe chuckles, but says nothing.

  “What be so damned funny, Abe ol’ mate?” I ask.

  “Ya don’t thinks it be funny, this name?”

  “Can’t say I do, me friend. Why would that be?”

  Abe strides toward the town, leaving huge bootprints on the sand. “Let’s be findin’ him,” he says. “An’ mebbe ya’ll find it funny too.”

  Juanita shrugs; she doesn’t seem to understand the pirate’s joke, either. She follows his sandy footprints, and so do Miyu and I.

  “How many people live here?” I ask, hobbling as quickly as I can to keep up with Abe.

  “Never did no headcount,” he replies. “Five thousand souls, give or take?”

  Now that’s a lot of NPCs. And, with Duurstad so close by, it’s now clear that Maneesh and his friends went full-on hardcore realism again.

  I stop in my tracks to take it all in. By real-life standards, what’s in front of us would be a small seaside town, and not an affluent one at that—huts and wooden buildings huddle against each other, separated by narrow dirt and sand roads. For a game, though, it’s wonderful. It dwarfs any other town I’ve ever played in, bustling with activity as the townsfolk run errands and carry out their daily chores.

  “What’s wrong, my child?”

  “I’ve never seen a city like this one,” I reply. “Amazing how big it is.”

  “You have, young Jake,” she promises. “And far larger. You will remember eventually, the Lord of Here and Now willing. Do not despair.”

  “Yeah.” I nod, trying to reassure her. My character has seen larger cities in-game, and I’ve seen a thousand times bigger in real life. “I hope so. But there is something about seeing things with new eyes, don’t you think? As if it were the first time?”

  “We are of one mind in that regard,” she responds. “It is the first time I lay eyes on this town myself, too.”

  “What’s keeping ye two?” Abe shouts.

  “The pirate is right,” Juanita says. “The Lowlanders in this town may be traders by nature, but they do have soldiers.” She looks down Duurstad’s main road, where about half a dozen men in uniforms are eyeing our ragtag crew as we approach.

  “Probably wondering what the heck we’re doing, standing here,” I say. “Let’s not keep them waiting, then.”

  “Nor let the pirate make the introductions,” Juanita adds, trotting to make sure Abe doesn’t get ahead.

  Miyu stops by my side; the Noh masks briefly scans me head to toe.

  I resume swinging forward on my crutches to show, rather than tell, that I’m well and okay.

  We seem to be the only travelers approaching Duurstad at the moment. Looking sharp and alert, the five soldiers guarding the main street watch us with curiosity rather than mistrust as they privately exchange words.

  They seem all cut from the same cloth with their red, blue, and white uniforms; the colors remind me of those worn by the American patriots during a revolution this world won’t see for a century or so. They all wear wide-brimmed hats not so different from mine, as far as I can tell. Four carry flintlock muskets, and they all have a rapier-looking sword at their belts…

  Appraising Gaze

  …“The tall one in the middle,” I tell my companions, “De Groot. He’s radiating a Commanding Aura, so I guess he’s calling the shots. Hendricks is the shaved one, on the far left; he looks like he’s carrying pistols under his coat. The other three, Brouweer, Van Dyk, and Mueller, they all carry daggers.”

  “This be a tough fight,” Abe grumbles, “if push come to shove.”

  “It won’t,” I assure him. “We’re not going to war with the whole town.” I do my best to carry myself forward with as much dignity as my crutches will afford me, making it very clear we have no ill intentions and nothing to hide.

  Brouweer, Van Dyk, and Mueller seem to be mostly intrigued by Miyu. De Groot has his eyes on Abe; Hendricks, the shaved one, is smiling and paying close attention to my left crutch, where three of my flintlock pistols hang. He nods appreciatively and whispers something to De Groot.

  I stop about ten paces from the soldiers; my companions halt behind me.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Groeten,” De Groot replies.

  Hmm. Is that Dutch? Is the game that realistic? “Do any of you gentlemen speak English, by any chance?”

  Brouweer and Van Dyk chuckle. Mueller, seemingly pissed off, spits at the ground very much
like Abe usually does. “Stront,” he grumbles.

  De Groot smiles thinly. “Ja,” he says.

  “Have we caused any inconvenience?” I ask.

  “Ja,” he confirms. Brower and Van Dyk chuckle again.

  I sense no hostility, but…

  We’re not looking for trouble.

  [Threatening] What’s so funny?

  [Easygoing] What’s so funny, my friends?

  We didn’t mean to bother you; we’ll be going now.

  “We are not looking for trouble,” I say.

  “Ja,” De Groot repeats.

  “Friggin’ broken record…” I grumble under my breath. But let’s keep calm. Keep calm and choose the right answer.

  [Threatening] What’s so funny?

  [Easygoing] What’s so funny, my friends?

  We didn’t mean to bother you; we’ll be going now.

  I look at Hendricks, the shaved one, who smirks at me. “What’s so funny, my friends?” I say, doing my best to produce a jovial smile.

  “That one,” says De Groot, pointing his thumb at Mueller. “He will pay for een biertje tonight.”

  “Een bier…? You mean the beer?”

  “Ja.”

  “May I ask you why?”

  “Ja.”

  Oookay. “Why?”

  “Ye spreek the English,” Van Dyk says. “Mueller—” he pats his comrade on the back “—said ye spreek the Spaanish.”

  “He bet on the wrong horse,” De Groot says, staring at the fluffy ostrich plume on top of my hat. “Ye seem to be a subject of the British crown, though I do not recognize yer accent.” He stares at Abe. “And ye are British to, ja?”

  “Bain’t nobody more British than Ol’ Abe on this ‘ere island, Dutchman.”

  “But the ladies you escort—” De Groot glances at Miyu and Juanita “—they are not.”

  [Sarcastic] You have keen eyes for small detail, my friend.

  [Threatening] Our lady companions are none of your business.