by Harry Nix
“Murphy, get the paperwork,” Orson said, unperturbed. A moment later a scroll of paper came flying out of one of the holes. It landed on the ground and unrolled. Without picking it up I could see it was a bill of sale. There were pawprints and smudged ink signatures at the bottom.
“This isn’t the first time he’s tried this shit. Tell you what—kill that mental case and we’ll give you a lucky rabbit’s foot.”
We’re Hunting Wabbits
Convince Augustus to leave the moles alone... one way or the other.
Reward: Lucky Rabbit’s Paw.
I was curious if conflicting quests overwrote earlier ones so I hit accept. The quest joined the other in my open list. As was common, both were open until I guess I closed one.
And what was up with the tonal shift? The quests were taking on this wacky vibe that felt off.
Orson was asking me to kill Augustus but the quest wording didn’t ask for that. It just wanted me to convince Augustus to leave the moles alone. The rewards for both quests were identical. No money mentioned. Was there another way through so I could somehow complete both quests?
“Is there some reason we’re not just murdering everyone? Have you suddenly gotten over killing helpless animals?” Scarlet said, twirling her gravespike.
“Who are you calling helpless?” Orson said. He wasn’t even wearing any clothes but he still managed to reach behind him and pull out an ax that looked big enough to topple him.
“Relax everyone,” I said, stepping between him and Scarlet. “Let’s just talk this through and see if we can come up with a solution that meets everyone’s needs.”
I suddenly felt like I was in some bullshit meeting in a corporate office talking action items, trends and budgets. Maybe I should just murder the moles, collect the reward from Augustus and then take him out too.
“Make your choice and be quick about it,” Orson said. The other three moles stopped digging dirt and stood up before pulling out weapons. One had nun-chucks and a band of lighter fur across his eyes, making him look like a Ninja Turtle.
“Cowabunga dude,” I said to him.
He just narrowed his eyes and gripped his nun-chucks tighter. Sheesh, tough crowd.
Okay, was there a third way?
I picked up the bill of sale for “the clearing” as it was described in scratchy handwriting. The moles had paid Reginald five gold.
“What if we get your five gold back from Reginald? Would you move on then?”
Orson tapped a paw on his ax as he thought.
“Make it six because we’ve already put work in here and you got a deal. But you should know Reginald probably took that money down to Bron and went drinking and whoring. It’s gone by now. But you want to try, be my guest. I’ll give you... a week before we solve this Augustus problem ourselves for good.”
Mole Money, Mole Problems
Get the mole family to move... one way or the other.
Pay Orson six gold within two weeks
Reward: Lucky Rabbit’s Paw.
Okay, adaptive questing. I could work with that.
“We’ll be back within two weeks,” I told the moles and then walked away, heading for Augustus’ hiding spot.
“I’m a little puzzled about why I’m not gutting a mole right now,” Scarlet said.
I glanced at her, wondering if she’d picked up relaxed or bliss from our roll in the grass. She didn’t seem too relaxed right now.
“Because if we can solve their problem and solve Augustus’ problem too, maybe we’ll get more experience and rewards. Keep one Rabbit Foot, sell the other. Or we can both have one.”
Scarlet gave me a look that suggested she didn’t believe me but then she shrugged.
“Okay, but six gold is a lot to give to some moles. If we’d just killed them you could have leveled up already, and me too.”
She had a point but I was still trying to work out the game. I was told Lucy, the Ai running it, was adaptive (which was often a big, and bullshit, claim made about games), and so I wanted to see what that really meant. If I managed to save the moles and the apparent psychopath rabbit, what would happen?
We found Augustus where we left him. He was using the machete to scrape fur off one of Reginald’s bloody paws. Beside him were two completed lucky rabbit’s feet. He had a ball of twine nearby he was using to bind the top of the paw to make a necklace.
When I glanced at the two completed ones sitting on the grass, the HUD helpfully named them and gave a breakdown of the benefits.
Lucky Rabbit’s Paw
More Luck!
Reginald wasn’t very lucky at all... but his feet are.
“I can’t help but notice a distinct lack of screaming, bloodshed and pitiful begging as four moles are systematically torn to pieces,” Augustus said without looking up.
“According to Orson, their leader, they paid Reginald five gold for that clearing. If we get them six gold they’ll leave. Do you think Reginald still had the gold?”
Augustus snorted in disbelief. “Well, you saw him—out there naked in the forest. He’d pawned his waistcoat to pay for some whore no doubt, so do you think he still had five gold?”
“Fair point. Can you give us time where you don’t do anything so we can raise the gold? The moles leave, you get your clearing, everyone is happy?”
Augustus stabbed his machete into the grass and then methodically began winding twine around the exposed bone at the top of the paw.
“A week and then I fix this myself,” he said.
I saw the quest faintly update, just like Orson’s quest.
I turned to Scarlet who was watching all this with an air of incredulity.
“Let’s go see Bron and work out how to make some money. There must be a city or something nearby, right?”
“This way,” she said.
I followed her through the forest, away from Augustus who was now working on the final rabbit’s paw. Hopefully, Bron wasn’t too far away. From the sound of it, he ran a pub or inn. Typically in games, they were a good place to pick up quests and rumors.
There was something strange though—Scarlet had said he was a hermit who’d moved away and isolated himself from everyone. Had he had a change of heart and returned to become a barkeep?
After five minutes of marching (and following Scarlet was a very easy and enjoyable thing to do), there was a sudden chime from nowhere and golden sparks floated up from the ground.
Taking the Third Way
You can solve your problems with violence and death but sometimes there are other ways.
LEVEL UP!
Big gold letters sparkled and I saw my level change from one to two.
In my action bar a small lightning Bolt image appeared. Next to it was a scowling face of a monster.
“Hold up a moment,” I said.
The lighting Bolt was Bolt. Electrical attack. Not bad. It had grayed out capabilities that would unlock at higher levels, like paralysis and chain Bolt. My mana bar unlocked and turned a purplish-blue.
I waved a finger over the scowling monster and a help cloud appeared.
Summon a Creature of Legend
A Random Creature is summoned to fight by your side. Once summoned it will be bound to you.
Random creature sounded vague. I turned to Scarlet.
“When a Summoner brings forth a Creature of Legend—what appears?”
“Could be anything. An imp, a sprite, an ifrit. It’s all about who’s waiting on the top of the list.”
“The list?”
“List Demonica. When we’re not here, we live in one of the Hells until we are summoned. A Summoner pulls their creature from the pool at their level. Don’t worry, if you don’t like your demon you can send it right back, get a new one.”
She said it so matter-of-fact, like it was no big deal but I wasn’t so sure.
“Do you go to the bottom of the list when you go back?”
“Oh yes, various creatures are often scheming and fighting to move
up the list. Most of us prefer it here to there.”
“Aren’t you from the Hells though? What’s so good about the Nine Realms?”
Scarlet gave me a devilish look.
“There are many pleasures available here that are lacking back there. That other place feels shallow and false after you spend time in the Nine Realms. Plus there’s beer.”
I could see what she meant. After experiencing this I wasn’t sure the real world would hold much appeal for me. A tiny shitty apartment, bills to pay and taking bad jobs from dodgy criminals... or magic powers, a hot demoness and kick-ass quests? I’d rather stay here.
It looked like I was just going to have to try my luck. Hopefully, the sprite or demon or whatever appeared would be useful in a fight.
I hit the summon button and instantly my hands began to move of their own accord. Black flames sprouted from my fingertips but there was no heat. As I spun my fingers they left trails in the air, making a complicated pattern, like a dreamweaver made of fire.
Chanting followed in a language I didn’t understand. With each word the dreamweaver grew in size, forming a portal. My mana drained away down to almost nothing.
With a final guttural roar and a clap that sent sparks shooting up into the treeline, the air inside the portal turned black and a moment later a body came shooting out of it to crash on to the grass. The second it hit, the portal vanished.
I have to admit that I was hoping for another hot demoness on some level so I was a little disappointed with what I got.
The demon that had been spat out of the portal was pitch black and wet. It was about two-feet tall, maybe, and although it landed on its feet it burst like a water balloon instantly, splattering the ground and me. Scarlet nimbly pirouetted out of the way.
“Ink demon,” she said from beside a tree.
I looked at the puddle of black that was slowly seeping into the earth.
Ink Demon
An adaptable all-rounder starter Demon for Summoners who don’t know anything about anything. Ink demons can liquefy at will, be decapitated and survive and are extremely useful for breaking locks, seeping through small holes and as a source of ink. Many ink demons have been enslaved by Scholars, trapped in enchanted inkwells, bound perpetually against their will. The very same Scholars who write about ethics often do so with stolen ink, ignoring the ethical issues. In this essay I will...
The pages went on and on, an entire treatise on using Ink demons for their ink against their will. I skimmed parts, shaking my head. Was this Lucy generated? It was like an entire book of text. If the Russians had an Ai that could do that... well, there goes the publishing industry. Throw another few billion on the pile. Could it generate movies too? What about other art? The possibilities seemed limitless, which made it even weirder that it was locked in a facility in a dodgy part of town.
“Is it going to reform?” I asked Scarlet.
“The trip out of the Nine Hells is a bumpy one. Just give him a moment.”
Sure enough, the pool soon began to bubble and then did that liquid Terminator thing, crawling up itself to form legs and a body and finally a head. The ink shimmered, changing colors, and then the ink demon blinked at me. It was wearing graveyard rags, just like me and wasn’t it, but a he. The image on the HUD changed to his face.
“I’m James Katz,” I started to say but got cut off when he dived past me and started scrabbling at the base of a nearby tree. There were tiny blue mushrooms with red streaks on the caps growing there. The demon was scarfing them down like he hadn’t eaten in years.
“Thanks, Meow Meow,” the demon said once he’d gulped all the mushrooms down. He gave me the double finger guns as I watched his pupils dilate, making both his eyes pure black orbs.
“It’s Katz with a K and a—”
“I’m Ori,” he said and toppled on to his back, where he started humming and looking at his hands. As he moved, he left smudges of ink on the grass. The dots on me had soaked into my pants.
Ori was an Ink demon and quite literally ink.
I looked at him, willing Lucy to give me more information, but I just got the text from before. No info on spells or how he fought. Him being able to break locks and go through small holes seemed useful.
As I was pondering whether to insta-reroll and see what else List Demonica spat up, I realized a few things all at once. I had no idea what Scarlet’s abilities were. She had a graveyard spike and had entranced me, but what else could she do?
Also, what happened to the quests about getting out of the grave any way I could? Hadn’t Scarlet asked me to bond with her and then something about going to another realm?
I opened my quests and flicked my fingers in the air, trying to figure things out but the old quests were gone.
“Just show me the completed quests,” I finally said aloud.
A screen flipped open and there they were, listed under completed. But nothing about Scarlet there or in the active quests.
“What did you say to me in the graveyard about going to another realm?” I asked her.
A strange look came over her face and when she spoke it was stilted and oddly formal.
“I’ll save you from your grave if you’ll bond with me and save me from mine. More specifically, I want to go to the tenth realm.”
Then she coughed and cleared her throat, giving a double-blink.
“Yes, that was it,” she said after a moment in her normal tone.
“What’s the tenth realm?”
“Nine hells below, nine realms here... but there are rumors of a tenth realm. I want to go there.”
“But why?”
“Why not? I’ve been alive for a long time. I want to get out of here and go somewhere else.”
I glanced up at the sky I could see through the crowded trees. I know Lucy wasn’t up there and was in fact all around us, but it felt better talking to the sky.
“Lucy, what’s the tenth realm?”
No answer. A cricket chirped nearby and then fell silent.
Scarlet smiled at me and then looked up at the sky.
“Lucy, who is the hottest one here? Me, Cats, or Ori? Say absolutely nothing and give no sign if it’s me.”
No answer. Not even the cricket spoke up.
“Well, that’s nice to know,” she said, preening.
“Why is there no quest to get Scarlet to the tenth realm?” I asked, despite feeling I’d get no answer.
“Tis all adaptive. You gotta go with the flow,” Ori slurred and then rolled over, planting his face in the dirt. As I watched, he started liquefying into it.
“Ori, stay with us,” I said. The demon jerked back to solidity.
I turned to Scarlet who was enjoying all this too much.
“What spells do you have? What can you do?”
She took just a single step towards me but man, that slink.
“I can do that. Plus you saw entrance and there’s bliss and relax.”
“Slink?”
“Attract attention. What else do you think I can do?”
From the look on her face and the sudden heat I felt in mine, I guess she was thinking about sex but I managed to pull my mind off that. Something about the way she spoke made me feel like she, or Lucy via her, was asking me to choose what she could do.
Practically the adaptive Ai showing off at this point I thought.
Ori was back to gently melting into the ground again. His descriptive text mentioned lock-breaking but not much else. Was he the same?
Aware that this could have long-term implications for success, and in particular finding that Orc and making him pay, I knew I’d have to tread carefully.
The game obviously believed in moving things along quickly because three figures suddenly emerged from the trees. There went my whole harmonious powers thing I was planning. I hadn’t even had a chance to test Bolt yet.
It was two men and a woman, all dressed in mismatched leather armor. One of the men had a bow with an arrow loosely notched. The other
was holding a sword with streaks of rust running down it. The woman had a ring in her hand, the size of a Frisbee. I glanced at it and a name appeared: Diva’s Chakram. I looked at each of them in turn but no level information appeared. My guess they weren’t high-level, given their clothing and armor but they looked more than capable of putting Scarlet and me back in that graveyard again.
“Summoning requires a permit in our woods, doesn’t it William,” thug number one said in a conversational tone.
“It certainly does Mancer, it certainly does and the funny thing is I don’t remember issuing a permit to this lot,” William replied.
“Just get on with it,” the woman muttered. She was grim-faced and clearly sick of an act she’d probably seen many times before.
“Elora thinks we should just get on with it William,” Mancer said with a nasty grin. He raised up his bow until it was pointing right at me, but hadn’t drawn it fully back yet.
“Well, perhaps we can give these lovely folks the chance to buy a permit before things get all bloody, yes?” William replied.
I nudged Ori with my foot but he was out of it, tripping into dimensions only he could see. He was liquefying again.
“Get up,” I hissed at him.
“I think a hundred gold pieces should be enough for a permit,” Mancer said. He glanced at me while he spoke but then went back to leering at Scarlet.
A hundred gold? I didn’t even have a hundred copper at this point. I had zip, zero, nada. I’d have to find a way to talk us out of this... or fight if it came to it. Maybe that would be a good idea—especially if they had six gold on them. I could knock off my two new quests straight away.
“Okay, this is a shakedown, but we don’t have a hundred gold. Even if we did, we wouldn’t give it to you.”
I was prodding Ori with my foot as I spoke, hoping I’d pull him back to reality before shit went sideways.
“I told you they had nothing. He’s wearing stolen grave rags. This is a stupid risk for just a few coppers,” Elora spat at her two companions.
“You should listen to your friend,” Scarlet said in a silky tone to Mancer. “Let us go our way and we’ll let you go yours.”
“Shut it, graveyard slut,” Mancer said in a cold tone.
I felt a flare of anger (I nearly hit the Bolt button right then and there) but also I realized that he knew, or at least had heard of, Scarlet. Perhaps she was somewhat of a local legend in these parts.