《Underworld》
Prologue - Champions Again
In a small trailer on a dusty lot, found off a dirt road outside Arizona City, a holographic display was showing a lifelike image of a huge golden warrior wielding a huge cartoonish silver axe glittered unnaturally in the light, squaring off against a smaller western swordsman, in iron plate mail both standing on a stone stage. A teen girl with dirty blond hair and emerald green eyes wearing cheap jeans and tee-shirt sat on her bed/couch in the narrow trailer. She was wearing no makeup; she didn¡¯t need any as she was at the age where her tender skin and soft features were more than pretty enough to turn a head or two. Her homework was long forgotten and half done, and she was watching the battle between the two holographic men with a rapt expression on her face. The scoreboard showed 2W next to the Golden Warrior¡¯s health-bar, and a 2L next to the health bar of the swordsman. The commentator¡¯s breathless voices could be heard ¡°Unless Maximus can win the next three battles against the Lion the championship would be decided, with LM-STARS ''Team A'' taking the championship!¡±
As the two men started to circle each other for their third match, the lights in the room were flipped on, effectively ruining the view of the fight, and an older man wearing flannel and blue jeans entered the trailer, his face was dark from the sun, hair mostly silver, his exposed skin covered in dirt. The resemblance to the girl was faint, though they did share the same face shape and eye color. His steps were heavy, and he walked with a pronounced limp, his green eyes barely glanced at the faint fight on the 3d projector, he just reached out and snagged a half a sandwich and flipped off the light, then limped past the girl through the 3d image of the battle to the back of the trailer and bed.
Neither said a word to each other, in fact the girl didn¡¯thide her impatience with him as he walked past. When the door to his room at the back of the trailer closed, she turned her eyes back to the match, just in time to see the Lion finish off Maximus with his axe. Her prior irritation was forgotten as she jumped for joy.
Leo "The Lion" of the world¡¯s best e-sport gaming workshop was basking in a champagne shower, the cold liquid raining over his head and stinging his eyes, a full-mouthed smile on his face. His eyes still stung no matter how much he wiped them as the liquid kept running down his face as more bottles were emptied over his head, clouding them, causing him to take a more than a moment wipe his face, as he answered the question from the pretty reporter ''Lizzie'' in front of him.
¡°There never is anything boring about winning yet another world championship! I don¡¯t care if it¡¯s the 3rd or in this case 9th one in a row. These guys worked hard to make it here¡¡± he gestured to his legendary teammates behind him, a world-famous group from the lovely Holly to the burly Rodrigo, to the young teen heartthrob James. The group of 7 was world famous in the 9-year-old FBEVR-Fighting E-sport Legions of Legends, Leo was also a 2-time champions in another FBEVR game called Global Warrior. Global Warrior was the first true global FBEVR E-Sport sensation after the ¡°Last War ended and the world was united almost 12 years ago. However, 9 years ago the ¡°Lion¡± of Global Warrior took his gaming workgroup called LM-STARS from the transcendent Global Warrior into a new game called Legions of Legends, and promptly won every championship in that game¡¯s history. Legions of Legends popularity soared past Global Warrior and LM-STARS went from a small workshop with 20 employees, to a global brand worth Trillions of GC and over 1,000 E-Sport Athletes all of whom were the very best in whichever game they played.
With the interview over, Leo logged out of the game, forgoing the remaining celebration, he woke up in a small dimly lit capsule, little larger then a coffin, he felt a small sting in the back of his neck which turned into a low grade headache as the capsule disconnected from his IO port, and feeling returned to him limbs. Ever so slowly, he flexed his fingers as he tolerated the slow return of sensation in his fingers and a painful sensation akin to regaining his circulation in all 4 of his limbs. The prickling sensation went away, and he pressed a button on the side of the capsule to open the door. He could hear laughing and chattering outside the capsule as he stepped out into the much more modest afterparty outside the game. Leo felt every minute of his 44 years, he was very old for an E-sports star, everyone in LM-STARS was at least a decade younger then him. None of them were old enough to remember life before the Last War.
Half a dozen of employees, were sitting around in luxurious lounge, the skunky smell of Marijuana almost made Leo gag, though instead of discouraging the drug use, he simply opened a window and sat down next to it. Marijuana was one of the few forms of intoxication allowed by the government.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Champagne was missing from the real-life celebration (just one of the reasons why half the team was still celebrating in game), as alcohol was something reserved for the political elite, alcohol being judged to be too ¡°corruptive¡± for the masses, it couldn¡¯t be had for any amount of GC. Adventurous people could of course find some form of moonshine in the black markets, but the punishment for possession was so strict no one with any actual wealth like Leo would ever risk it. It was after curfew, so of course everyone celebrated with hushed voices (noise ordinances were strict after hours). The world had been under a perpetual martial law since the ending of the Last War, supposedly due to the threat of ¡°insurgency¡±.
Leo frowned as he recalled an email he had received recently from a source within EAB, which had given him a tip about the next big thing. He looked at Holly and smiled, she was the smartest person in his inner circle these days, and he waved her away from the others. Holly was just 26, short at just 150cm she was one of the only people in the workshop Leo (who was also quite short) could look in the eyes, like most E-Sport gamers she had a slightly unhealthy ¡°thin¡± look to her. Dark skin, black hair and brown eyes, Leo found her to be very attractive. The best part about her was her brain though.
¡°What¡¯s up boss?¡± Holly asked in a hushed tone, the smile on her face from winning another championship still there.
¡°I am planning to start a team for a new game. This one is a remake of a classic VRMMO called Underworld.¡± He spoke quietly, and saw a change in her eyes, as her excitement peaked.
¡°Underworld? I¡¯ve heard about it, it was a big game back around when I was born¡¡±
¡°Big is an understatement, it was 50 years old when you were born. It basically turned E-sports stars into superstars, half the game channels out there were born thanks to it. Had it not been for the war, it probably would still be the dominant title out there.¡±
¡°Why was it so big boss?¡±
¡°Variation. It was basically a world as big as the real world, the continents and land forms were based on the real world, but it was a fantasy world, with myths and legends and some straight-out fantasy elements. Of course, it was back when VR was just some headsets and body suits, so there was a degree of physical fitness required to dominate in it. It¡¯s the game that started LM-STARS. Anyway, the reason why it was so popular is it was ¡°fun¡± to pretty much anyone. So almost everyone played it. Which meant that they enjoyed watching those who were good at it compete and play the game as well. This was how it started. In video streaming sites as experts sold their tactics and strategies; since there was nearly infinite variation in playing, everyone had an opinion. Eventually that turned into Raid video walkthroughs, then live streaming playing sessions, then some of the top players merged together to create the first tv game channels, and from there by the time I was a kid even my parents had played the game as a kid.¡± Leo stood up and started pacing as he spoke, his body finally feeling ¡°right¡± to him after exiting the capsule. He knew many people preferred to spend almost every waking hour inside the capsules just to avoid the awkwardness of you¡¯d feel when leaving one as long as possible.
¡°Boss, do you have any inside information about this release? I¡¯m sure it would be huge news if the game was coming out soon, if it was as big as you say.¡±
¡°Yeah, a friend at the company with publishing rights EAB said it was coming out in 3 months. Better still he warned me to save as much old information as I could find online, because they were currently purging old information from the net about it. Which means the game is going to be nearly completely recreated into a FEVER-MMO.¡±
¡°So why did you want to talk to me about this boss? Seems like a safe move to start a team in it¡± Holly sat down to listen to him, feeling awkward to be the only one standing, he sat down across from her.
¡°I wanted to talk to you because when I looked online all the information was already gone. All I got is my memory about it. I was going to talk to Mark¡¡±
Holly made a face ¡°You mean the other founding member of LM-STARS?¡± Her tone was a bit hostile, mostly because this ¡°Mark¡± had left a bad impression with her, as he seemed determined to veto most of her best decisions to grow the company, never bothering to show his face, just voting no via email to Leo. Mark owned 40% of the shares making him the majority shareholder in LM-STARS. Even Leo, the chairman of the company only had 17% of the shares.
¡°I know you don¡¯t have a good impression of him, but I think we¡¯ll need him in Underworld this time. I was good at that game. He was on another level. In fact, it was his skills that made this company possible. I wanted to run this past you because I want to know what type of hit, we¡¯ll take if it becomes public knowledge that the ¡°M¡± in LM-STARS is a living person and he¡¯s one of the ¡°Sinners¡± of the past war.¡±
¡°A Sinner?¡± She looked taken back for a moment. ¡°We¡¯ll be ok, LM-STARS is big enough to absorb that one, though I¡¯d rather we not face that one till he¡¯s a star himself in Underworld. Else we might take some pressure from the government.¡±
Leo nodded then sighed. ¡°I¡¯ll go see him tomorrow. I¡¯m pretty sure he doesn¡¯t have a capsule where he¡¯s at right now. So, its best if I try to see him in person. Clear my schedule I¡¯ve got a bit of a trip tomorrow.
Chapter 1 - Visit from an old friend
Mark woke up to the usual aching pain in his knees, he rolled over in his cramped bed, and slowly rubbed the sleep from his eyes with callused hands. He never bothered to set an alarm clock, getting up at 4am seemed to be drilled into him to the point he always woke up within minutes of it. He sat up slowly tossing the light sheet off him and grabbed onto a crutch laying next to his bed. Standing up with it¡¯s aid he hobbled and thumped a few feet from the bed to the door, he set the crutch aside with practiced motions, and pushed the light door open, then using the wall to assist his standing, hopped on one leg, into the bathroom, his left leg missing from about ajust under the knee.
He showered and shaved in under 10 minutes, wrapped a towel around his waist, and hopped staggered back to his bedroom with the aid of the walls. He carefully closed the door, and quickly affixed his fake leg to his stump, it was a low tech version little better than a peg leg (though it did have a wooden foot of sorts which he could put a boot on) like you¡¯d see an old pirate wear, he had been denied permission from the government to have one of the new bionic style replacement limbs due to his ¡°war sinner¡± status. He suspected had the government not used the Sinners for manual labor he would have been left without even this much.
Old faded blue jeans and clean white tee-shirt came next, then he stood up and made his way forward past his sleeping daughter on the couch. He made a bitter face as he passed her. She didn¡¯t deserve to live like this. He¡¯d like to give her more, but she was too young to legally accept the shares of LM-STARS and all the dividends that had built up over the years, and he was a Sinner, forbidden from the government to collect those dividends or sell those same stocks. Of course, the government was happy to offer him pennies on the dollar for his shares, much like they bought many companies from other ¡°sinners¡± after the war. He wasn¡¯t dumb enough to accept it though.
He put his work boots on, after double checking there were no scorpions in them, and stepped outside the trailer into the predawn morning. Lighting a propane grill took a minute and while it warmed an iron skillet, he retrieved his keys from his pocket and unlocked a large outdoor refrigerator/freezer. Eggs, onion, cheese, some ham. It took him minutes to scramble the eggs and chop up the other ingredients. Another couple of minutes before he had cooked up two basic omelets. He took one inside on an old warn plate, covered it with a paper towel after seeing the time, and placed it in the microwave. Then closed and locked the door to the trailer eating the omelet in a few quick efficient motions, then started the two mile walk to work, with the sun rising behind him.
It had been years since his punishment as a ¡°sinner¡± had been ended. All sinners spent some time in a military prison, being reeducated on their crimes against society. Though what those crimes were he was never quite clear on. Apparently going to war and losing after serving as an officer in the former USNA (United States of North America) army was enough to be judged politically unreliable or a ¡°sinner¡±. He had been promoted to lieutenant in a battlefield promotion straight from his prior rank as a lowly corporal after being the lone survivor from his platoon. The war had run from 2119 to 2132, 13 years. By the end of the 13 year war he had lost a leg and rose to the position of Major in the USNA army. He still remembered the surrender in the ruins of the old Capital, and the tears shed by General McCaffery.
The only reason he had not been executed as a member of McCaffery¡¯s staff like the rest was probably because he never went to West Point, and wasn¡¯t even in the Army when the war started. His status as an E-Sport star in Underworld probably helped a bit. Not much, of course, but he suspected it played a role. The judge did ask him for an autograph after his war crimes trial. Of course, being a ¡°sinner¡± as all the former officers and politicians who weren¡¯t executed meant a sort of permanent ¡°underclass¡± status. He was required to be ¡°reeducated¡± about his crimes against the people of the world, then to do manual labor rather then take the government stipend of GC (Global Credits) everyone else had. His monthly salary was significantly less then the stipend of GC, which was intentional. The government had used the poverty of the situation to further marginalize the ¡°sinners¡±. Many of whom turned to crime to support their families, which of course further stigmatized the sinners in the eyes of the public.
His daughter was born to him during the war with his childhood sweetheart. He had been able to see them both just a handful of times before the war ended. Between the prisons, reeducation camps and forced labor, he was unable to see them at all for 5 years following the war. Then one day, a 10-year-old girl was delivered to him by his old sweetheart, she had found another man, and he wouldn¡¯t take both his ex-wife and his daughter, so he was left with a 10-year-old girl who he never really met before. Their relationship had been a challenge ever since.
His need for more GC to raise her lead him to drift around the countryside with her from Jacksonville to San Antonio until eventually settling on the outskirts of Arizona City, where he had located a job which paid enough to keep them both fed and clothed. His long two-mile walk terminated in front of a huge lot which as far as the eye could see was filled with old military vehicles. Dozens of other ¡°sinners¡± were filing in for the 6am shift, where they would disassemble the old war assets. The work was quiet and oppressive. Since all the employees were sinners, the government ran the place much like a prison, with armed security everywhere, cameras and other listening devices. For fear of losing his job, Mark basically didn¡¯t associate with anyone, and spent his 10-hour work shift disassembling an old personnel carrier called a ¡°VHLOKU¡± (very high likelihood of killing us) thanks in part to its design ¡°feature¡± of exposed and unshielded fuel tanks making it a rather unsafe vehicle to be transported in during war time.
At the 6pm bell he stopped his work, took some time washing his hands and treating the new cut he had on his forearm, then made the long walk home. Just like every day all he had for company was his memories of days gone past. The bitter look on his daughter¡¯s face was something he didn¡¯t want to face when he got home. He knew she resented living like this. Granted the one blessing for living out in Arizona city was most of the residents were either off the grid criminals of some sort or sinners from the past war thanks to the disassembly plant here. Of course, even though she wasn¡¯t the poorest kid in school, he knew she wasn¡¯t far from it. Worse she was at that phase in her life where she was rebellious, her grades had been sinking, and she seemed to be basically aimless with her life. With the elimination of almost all jobs, most kids simply stopped going to college and spent their life living in ¡°fever games¡± (Full Body Experience Virtual Reality, FBEVR, usually pronounced "Fever") after high school. Unlike many of her friends at school she never had played a Fever game. Which he knew isolated her even more.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
His uneven footsteps came to an unexpected stop as he noticed an expensive looking Honda out front of his trailer/home. A short squat looking figure was leaning up against the red car and his daughter was outside chatting with the man who was so short he couldn¡¯t reach her clavicle. Frowning he started to walk faster approaching quickly, a bit of anger started to peak as he noticed the man was probably in his 40s judging by his hair which was salt and pepper.
The protective instincts of a father started to roar to life in his chest when he saw the awestruck look on his little girl¡¯s face as she talked to the man. His ambling gate picked up purpose along with his pace. Before long she looked up from the little man and spotted him, but rather then look embarrassed or angry she smiled and waved to him.
The little man in front of her seemed to notice the wave and turned around. Mark¡¯s footsteps came to a quick stop as he noticed the face of the man. Then a big grin broke out and he started to approach again. ¡°LEO!¡±
Leo¡¯s laugh echoed and he said back ¡°Mark you bastard why didn¡¯t you tell me Bliss was such a looker. Had I known I would have visited you years ago.¡±
Mark¡¯s expression darkened a bit then cheered up when he realized Leo was just twisting his tail, he knew the types of girl Leo liked. Heck he grew up with the man. ¡°What father would let you near their daughter you dumb bastard?¡±
Leo laughed harder at that ¡°Are you kidding me? Do you know there are fathers who offer up their daughters to me every day these days, if it will land them a place in LM-STARS.¡±
¡°Really?¡± Mark looked a little surprised at that. ¡®since when was Leo that big an esport star?¡¯
Leo shook his head and asked his daughter Bliss, ¡°Does he watch the news?¡±
She rolled her eyes and replied ¡°He never watches anything uncle Leo, especially the news¡±
¡®Uncle?¡¯ Mark paused a moment at that one. ¡°Uncle? How¡¯s this old bastard your uncle?¡±
She laughed again, this was more laughter and smiles he had seen from her today then he had heard or seen from her in a year. ¡°Since he drove up in a MX-2133. Why didn¡¯t you tell me Leo was an old friend dad?¡±
Shrugging his shoulders, he fixed his gaze on Leo then held out his hand Leo returned the handshake, Mark was a bit surprised at how soft and delicate his palm was almost like a little kid. He gave leo a closer look and noticed his skin appeared to be a bit pale and pasty, if anything he looked a bit sickly, his limbs had little to no strength in them, and he had a bit of a belly. ¡®Well Leo was always a bit more round then fit¡¯. ¡°Is this what those Fever games do to you? You look like half a corpse Leo.¡±
Leo shrugged, ¡°We implemented a bit of an exercise program and some rules at LM-STARS after a couple of promising rookies died from too much gaming and not enough sunlight, sleep or nutrition. Fever gaming is still a bit new, so we¡¯re always trying to figure out a healthy way to make it work without losing our edge. Right now, most of the team is using a mostly liquid diet to help balance out some of the health problems, with no guidance from the world government health agency, I¡¯ve had to dump millions of GC into private research. Keeping the athletes healthy is a top priority. Of course, you¡¯d know this if you¡¯d bother to read any of the status updates, I send you. Or had a phone.¡±
Mark shrugged, ¡°I left you the voting rights from my shares and made you president of the company. Why should I bother to keep up? You know why I can¡¯t get involved. So why torment myself?¡±
¡°Times are changing¡¡± Leo took a look at the trailer, then shook his head. ¡°What if I told you Underworld was going to be released again, this time instead of VR it will be for a Fever setup? Full touch, smell and feeling, full body emersion.¡±
Mark frowned, he glanced at Bliss, then grabbed Leo¡¯s arm and lead him to the side. ¡°Bliss, can you make something for us to snack on? I need to talk to your uncle Leo alone for a bit?¡± he sat Leo down on a rustic looking bench made from cedar, then sat across from him.
¡°You think LM-STARS can take the government pressure if I played?¡± Mark asked quietly.
Leo nodded, ¡°We talked it over, we think we¡¯ll hide who you are till your famous, then reveal the tie to LM-STARS and the famous ¡®Mark Ulrich¡¯.¡±
Mark looked at him a long moment, then sighed. ¡°Are you serious? Why do you want to take this risk?¡±
Leo shrugged, ¡°a couple of reasons, one I¡¯ve wanted to help you for years you just never bothered to return my calls or take my money. Can¡¯t you accept someone¡¯s help? For god¡¯s sake look where your pride had you living? This is no place for a girl to grow up. She¡¯s 17, what¡¯s she going to do in a year when she graduates high school? Become a prostitute? Follow you to work at the scrap yard? Take government GC and become another eggplant?¡±
Mark felt himself get a little angry, ¡°I was going to pass on my shares of LM-STARS to her on her 18th birthday and let her do what she wanted with her life. What¡¯s it worth now? 10 million?¡±
¡°add 5 zeros¡±
Mark paused then did the math in his head. ¡°A trillion?¡± He looked a bit disbelieving at the number. ¡°Stop fucking with me.¡±
Leo pulled a black wallet out of his back pocket that looked a bit like a bank book, then opened it and pulled out a thin transparent plastic looking sheet, he tapped on it and handed it to Mark. Mark took the transparent sheet, flipped it over and looked at the data displayed on one side, it was a stock portfolio with his name on it. He gasped as he saw his net worth.
¡°A bit much to just toss at your daughter when she turns 18. I¡¯ve seen money ruin good kids just in E-Sports, how is a girl who¡¯s never had anything going to handle this much money?¡±
¡°She¡¯s smart¡¡± Mark started to say then paused thinking about it, his concern as a parent starting to pull at his heart a bit.
¡°Stop dodging the issue. You might not be able to touch that money now, but anything you earn as an E-Sport Athlete will be yours, and the government won¡¯t take it. You can become very rich if Underworld gains even a quarter of it¡¯s popularity back from it¡¯s last year in 2119.¡±
¡°If I¡¯m a star you mean. I haven¡¯t played games since 2119 you know. It¡¯s been 25 years.¡±
¡°You¡¯re making excuses, and don¡¯t point to that stupid peg as an excuse either. This is a FEVER game not one of those old VRMMOs, you don¡¯t need any physical fitness to win in one of these.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have an IO port or a casket¡±
¡°It¡¯s called a capsule, and we¡¯ll install one, get you team housing¡¡±
¡°No, build the house out here. If I live in known team housing the press will figure out who I am before I even log in.¡±
¡°You dumb fool. Do you think I¡¯m that stupid? I already have a place for you. Resign from your job, apply for your GC, using your war injury as an excuse, I have a doctor that will sign off on it. The government will never even bother to look into what your doing if you suddenly move to phoenix on government cash. Rent a place, move in, and enroll your girl at school somewhere in the valley. I¡¯m sure you can find her a good place. Use the cash from the government for your expenses. I¡¯ll cover the rest. We¡¯ll have you going in under a month.
Mark made a face, his insides felt like they were squirming. The very idea of being yet another person taking the ¡°living income¡± from the government turned his stomach. Part of him liked getting up and working with his hands daily. ¡°Will I have to play this game until I look like a corpse like you? Christ Leo, you look whiter then me, and you¡¯re fucking Hispanic.¡±
Leo laughed at that one, ¡°And?¡±
¡°Fuck, you got me, I¡¯m in.¡± Mark paused a moment then asked "What''s the other reason you''re inviting me?"
Chapter 2 - Underworld (pt1)
¡°Other Reason?¡± Leo looked at him with confusion
¡°You just said you invited me for a couple of reasons, and only gave one. Which was you wanted to help me, what¡¯s the other reason?¡±
¡°Oh right. EAB has been deleting all information about old Underworld off the net. Not many E-sport celebrities from old Underworld still alive out there, after the war.¡± Leo left the thought hanging in the air. Then continued ¡°Right. You do know it¡¯s been over 2 decades."
"A lot has happened since, what do you think I remember from Underworld?¡± Mark retorted
¡°I¡¯m hoping between the two of us we can remember enough secrets and tips to give us a leg up.¡±
Bliss interrupted the conversation as she delivered a plate of peanut butter sandwiches. ¡°What¡¯s Underworld?¡±
¡°A game¡± Mark¡¯s answer was short.
Leo looked mischievous and smiled then spoke up, ¡°Did you know your old man was an E-sport celebrity in Underworld?¡±
¡°What? No way! Dad hates games.¡± Bliss made a face and looked skeptical.
Mark just sat back and let Leo talk. Leo gave him a glance almost as if to see what Mark would do, seeing no response from Mark his smile grew and he started speaking excitedly. ¡°Yes way! He was fantastic, the youngest world champion in the 2119 PVP tournament, he was just two years older then you at the time. We had been playing underworld for 5 years at that point, the game was 51 years old. This was before F.B.E.V.R. We played jumping around in rooms with full body suits and headsets. He was a mighty mage¡¡±
¡°Shaman¡± Mark interrupted, ¡°If my class was anything it was a shaman.¡±
Bliss looked confused a moment ¡°What¡¯s the difference? And why the confusion?¡±
Leo pipped up ¡°Well you see Underworld was an interesting title for its nearly infinite possibilities. The game did provide ¡°templates¡± when making characters, the templates had fixed progression and skill or magic trees, on the whole they were rather easy to play, without messing up your character. However, if you played Underworld with one of those template characters your potential as an esport star was pretty limited. A lot of people believed even though the risk of mucking up was much much higher, that the best way to build a character was to play classless. Organically growing your character. It was slower and took a lot of effort, furthermore with the shear size of Underworld, even at 50 years old new combinations called the ¡°best¡± were showing up all the time. For example, your Dad started out as some sort of Aztec like priest thing, then smeared his character with all sorts of weird classes and skill trees and somehow hit on a magical formula which resulted in a pretty overpowered shaman type build.¡±
Mark made a face and spoke up, ¡°It was part accident at the start, but don¡¯t listen to Leo, it was mostly planned after I figured out the strengths and weaknesses of those first few skills. There were loads of documents laying around at the time that made making that character pretty easy to accomplish. The real trick was figuring out which worked with what, and not taking some skill tree at level 40 which would be worthless at 1000. I still don¡¯t think that build was perfect¡¡± he trailed off.
Leo grinned. ¡°Anyway, your old man was pretty good. I wasn¡¯t too bad myself, I mean we started LM-STARS together before we turned 18 thanks to the money, we were making with raid videos. Got a decent workshop going as well. I was playing as a type of Jaguar Warrior. Well at least that was the closest ¡°template¡± to what my character was.¡±
¡°Jaguar? A cat?¡± Bliss looked confused.
¡°Aztec warrior. See the game recreated earth. And depending on where you started different classes and abilities were available to you through the template system, furthermore those skills were available to the classless players as well. We both started in Tenochtitlan, in the Aztec empire. For example, a traditional mage would probably want to start in London England. We both started in Tenochtitlan because of Spanish class. Your dad¡¯s Spanish teacher wanted him to play the game to learn better Spanish. Of course, the game had a translation program, but he played with it off. I joined him since, well, you know I already spoke Spanish so it wasn¡¯t a big deal. The Americas were a good place to start for people wanting horse warriors, tankers, musketeers, sailors or support mages like shaman. I ended up with some sort of Jaguar warrior variant. Was a pretty good tanker as a result of some of the shamanic magic I ended up learning. Other places of the world had other specialties, but generally they were all balanced out. For example, someone starting in Boston, could get a good DPS class like a musketeer, a good tanker class like an Iroquois warrior, or a good buff/magic class like a priest or shaman. Every major hub city had similar ¡°template¡± classes available, and generally those template classes were rather balanced. In Tenochtitlan there was more a leaning on blood magic but the basic result was similar, you had DPS and Tank warriors and healing or buff shamans, and Curse magic as a type of specialty, sort of like how musketeers were the Boston specialty.¡±Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Bliss listened quietly then asked ¡°But what was the goal?¡±
Leo continued ¡°Well, eventually you¡¯d hit level 500, and the battlefield of Underworld would open for you. This was where Epic level questing would happen, in sort of a semi story mode, eventually if you weren¡¯t totally incompetent, you¡¯d become level 1000, and gain the status in the game as a demigod. There was a lot of content for level 1000 characters to gain ¡°Epic Perks¡±, and a ranked PVP arena unlocked for any level 1000 player, which was the main e-sport draw in the game¡¯s late stages. Your dad won the solo championship in 2119, becoming no.1 out of 100 million competitors. Our LM-STARS workshop ended up finishing 2nd in the 8-man team PVP in that same year, after finishing 7th the year before.¡±
Mark interrupted ¡°There will be a rush to level 1000, even if all the information about the game is lost, the big workshops will want to open up the arena as fast as possible and gain the title of first world champion.¡±
Leo laughed, ¡°They can try. My main concern is you won¡¯t be able to keep up with us. If I recall you were pretty slow to level up.¡±
Bliss frowned in confusion then spoke up ¡°It almost sounds like you¡¯re going to play Underworld again dad?¡±
Mark nodded and Leo spoke up ¡°That¡¯s why I came out here, to invite him to join up with LM-STARS in Underworld again.¡±
Mark almost laughed at the confused look on his girl¡¯s face then felt a bit of bitterness at not discussing this with her before telling Leo he¡¯d go, then said ¡°We¡¯ll be moving up to Phoenix, and I¡¯ll be gaming full time. I know a new school for your senior year will be¡ ¡°
¡°YES! I¡¯ll do it. When do we go?¡± Bliss cut him off. She didn¡¯t look slightly upset at leaving Arizona City, and her friends her behind. Her quick response took him back a moment.
Leo jumped up and shook Mark¡¯s hand again. ¡°Great, now this is decided I¡¯ll get going. Start packing up. I¡¯ll get the ball rolling on my end.¡±
Mark didn¡¯t even get a chance to reply as Leo¡¯s car started to move before his door even closed. ¡°You heard him, I guess we have some packing to do.¡±
Bliss wasn¡¯t that easy to direct, she started to ask Mark all sorts of questions about Underworld and his time as an E-sports celebrity. He answered her questions awkwardly, he wasn¡¯t used to her asking about his past. Eventually he escaped her bombardment of questions long enough to call in to work and report his injury and inability to come in the following day.
They both got a little packing done before turning in at a very late (for Mark) 1am. He had a lot to do the following day such as withdrawing Bliss from school and transfering her somewhere in Phoenix. Eventually he found himself sitting on his bed, half undressed holding a photo album. Pictured of his old high school friends, war buddies, and ex-wife, when they were happier. His hand however was on a picture which was posted on the front page of ESPN when he won the PVP title. In the photo was a painted well-muscled Aztec male with a huge feathered headdress and bone necklace, his body was painted and tattooed and, in the caption, it said ¡°Insanity! World first support build in 22 years win¡¯s Underworld PVP solo title, what¡¯s next for the champion?¡±
A small smile touched his lips as he looked at the old digital avatar of what was once one of the most famous figures in underworld¡¯s history. His eyes then turned to the picture next to it with Leo, his mother and father, and his ex-wife all together around his pvp championship trophy in his old home, at the celebration party.
He pondered thinking about that day ¡®that was the last time we were all in one place wasn¡¯t it?¡¯ Lori had been his high school sweetheart, they were neighbors growing up, and would get married 4 years after this picture, during the war. His parents would die when in the second year of the war there was a limited nuclear exchange, his home town of Los Angeles had been nuked along side Mexico City and Toronto. Leo never fought in the war. His size and poor physical fitness disqualified him, of course his parents were wealthy enough to pull some strings to keep him out of service.
He flipped the page in the book and came to the first photo which included Bliss, she was 2 and crying in his arms, it was the first time he saw her, Lori insisted on a family photo. He was wearing a dirty tanker¡¯s uniform. He had been fighting on the front lines for almost 8 years at that point, the happy young man long gone, he looked almost as miserable as the crying little girl in his arms.
The next photo was with him and Bliss after her mother dumped her on him 7 years ago. She was miserable in that photo too. He didn¡¯t know it at the time, he hardly knew he at all, but she was barely keeping her tears in all the time back then. It took him years to recognize that look on her face. The forced smile, the way her eyes squinted. The photo album had many more pictures of him and his girl none of them were particularly happy memories. He couldn¡¯t afford happy memories. That forced smile on her face in many of those photos started to hurt his heart, and he put away the album.
He never wanted to see that look on her face again. He stretched his arms then laid down, his knees aching as always, as he looked forward to tomorrow for the first time in years.
Chapter 3 - Underworld (pt2)
The following month past by in a blur. The father-daughter pair left Arizona City and moved 90 miles north to Phoenix, ending up in the suburb of Glendale, in a small townhouse in a gated complex. Bliss was ecstatic to have her own room for the first time in her life, with a door and lock. She even had her own bathroom. Mark left the whole upstairs to her. Meanwhile he got fitted for a new prosthetic as part of his ¡°disability¡±, this one was a simple cybernetic one, which had a functioning ankle allowing him to do some light jogging for the first time in years. His limp also went away and the pain in his knees was greatly reduced. It was amazing how quickly his life of crippling poverty turned around with the help of some money and a sympathetic doctor.
He got Bliss registered in time for year end finals in North Glendale High School, she of course struggled in the finals though managed a pass. He spent almost 3 weeks of the month in some form of recovery between the cybernetic limb and the IO port installed in his spine, while the living conditions were superior Mark did spend most of the month laid up on a bed for most of it. Leo came through with the capsule as well, installing two in the house and getting Bliss setup for the IO port install as well. Mark wanted to reprimand Leo for taking liberties with how he raised his girl, but in the end gave up, he knew she had wanted an IO port and capsule for years, and while it was easy to brush the issue off when she went to a school where 70% of the kids also lacked one, he knew not having one in a large public high school in a cosmopolitan city like Phoenix would probably isolate her socially so he simply bit his tongue and let Leo get away with his excess.
Almost 6 weeks after leaving Arizona City the first news about Underworld-GOLD being released leaked out. The media explosion around it was so explosive and clearly planned Mark wasn¡¯t able to determine how much enthusiasm for Underworld there actually was. Of course, his doubts melted away inside a week as the hype seemed to get stronger and stronger, on the net and in the news. Stories about past champions and the mysterious lack of information about the old game on the net were headlining for a while. There was even a story about the last world champion, and interestingly even stories that ¡°Mark Ulrich¡± the e-sport athlete had died in the war. He figured that was Leo¡¯s work though whenever he was asked in person, he¡¯d no comment it.
Four weeks before release of Underworld the Unified Government pronounced it approved for public consumption, and a series of new health regulation was passed with it about safe use of FBEVR gaming systems, including a daily time limit of 18 hours a day logged in, which did get some public complaints from the professional gaming community. The whole controversy seemed mad to Mark who thought playing any game for 18 hours a day was already extremely unhealthy, and he had no interest in playing the game for that long no matter what Leo wanted. Throughout these weeks Mark was busy working with Leo via phone and any old gaming buddy who they knew who was still alive to put together as comprehensive a guide book for LM-STARS.
With two weeks before launch Mark found himself logging into a capsule for the first time in his life. The process was easy, he stepped into the capsule, rest his back against the padded backing, closed a neck collar and guided the ¡°pin¡± a small plug which mates with the IO port to the port for the first docking and pairing. Once the pairing with the system was complete the capsule door closed and the capsule reclined back into a horizontal position. The pin entered the IO port, causing a painful sensation much akin to plunging himself into boiling water and he lost sight, hearing, taste and feel one after another, almost as if his mind was sinking into a black void.
Then a setup prompt for first time use of the capsule. It asked for a gamer handle and email address. He used his favorite gamer handle Ingtar and email address [email protected]. Much to his irritation the handle was of course in use so he switched it up to [LMSTARS]INGTAR which worked fine. He didn¡¯t need to enter a password, of course there were biometrics which took care of identity. He connected his cell phone to the capsule as well, then entered his address to complete registration.
The capsule had other setup options such as tying it to a social media account or YouTube, he left that blank because he knew LM_STARS had their own contracts and contacts. Then he entered something akin to a lobby, where he was allowed to customize his personal avatar. He left it as is, something that looked pretty much like he looked in real life. He had a strange suffocating feeling and realized he didn¡¯t feel like he was breathing properly, the system seemed to notice his discomfort and advised him to take deep breaths until he got used to his virtual body. The sensations for the virtual body were strange to say the least. He had to think about how to even move his limbs, and found even taking a step difficult. It was almost surreal to have two working legs in this virtual world, to feel his toes on a missing limb was an odd moment.
After taking almost 20 minutes getting used to the body enough to walk without looking like he was walking on ice, a call came in from Leo, inviting him to a planned meeting with the rest of the first teem LM_STARS would send into underworld. Mark agreed to the meeting request and was brought into another room, one with 7 other people.
He spotted Leo immediately, Leo was using the same handle he used when he was 14, xXx_THE_LION_69_xXx, the others in the room were [LM_STARS]Beanstalk, [LM_STARS]Schoolgirl_XOXO, [LM_STARS]Suave_Guy, [LM_STARS]HAWKEYE, [LM_STARS]EAT_PIZZA, and [LM_STARS]Latin_Lover. Everyone¡¯s eyes went to the space over Mark¡¯s head, then the black girl in a catholic school girl outfit suddenly spoke up, ¡°New guy Mark, the expert that Leo hired for Underworld-GOLD is finally here. I believe everyone has read the guide. Now is the time to ask whatever questions you want.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Leo jumped up, his avatar was almost 2 feet taller then he was in real life, a legitimate monster, similar in size to the old Jaguar warrior he used to play in Underworld. ¡°First an introduction¡± He cut off the schoolgirl mid-stream.
Leo first pointed at Beanstalk, ¡°he¡¯s Jack, 3-time pvp world champion in the World of Warcraft -REVISED-, and two-time champion at the team pvp challenge in Legions of Legends. Jack will probably be starting in Kyoto Japan, and creating a Melee DPS build.¡±
Then he pointed at Schoolgirl_XOXO, ¡°this is Holly, global icon and face of LM_STARS, 6 times team pvp champion in Legions of Legends. Currently you can treat her as the boss when I¡¯m not around. Holly will be starting in Tenochtitlan she wants to be an Aztec melee DPS/Off Tank¡±
Then he pointed at Suave_Guy, ¡°this is Jim, he¡¯s an actual male model, and with Holly is the face of LM_STARS, besides numerous TV promos and movie roles, he¡¯s also one of the better ranged DPS players we¡¯ve had in any MMO style game. In this one I think he wants to aim for the peak of magic, and will start in London and ranged DPS¡°
Then he pointed to Hawkeye, ¡°This is James, he¡¯s a world champion at Call of Duty ¨C FEVER- 10. This will be his first MMORPG, but when he heard there were gunmen in this game, he volunteered to join the first team. When it comes to guns, he¡¯s a legit champ, he used to be a sniper in the Unifying Army back during the Last War and is the 3rd oldest player on this team between me and you. He¡¯ll be starting in Boston and aiming for gun skills, he¡¯ll probably end up doing some traveling to Europe as he searches out the right gun skills to be a proper ranged DPS¡±
Then he pointed to Eat_Pizza, ¡°This is Juan, he was part of our Legions of Legends b-team, Personally I picked him for this team because I think he¡¯s ready for the big time. That and he wants to play a Healer, and no one else good enough wanted to be a primary healer for an 8-man raid team. He¡¯ll be starting in Rome Italy¡±
Then he pointed to Latin_Lover, ¡°This is Ricardo, keep your daughter away from him. Oh, and he wants to be a magic swordsman, so he¡¯ll be starting in Berlin¡±
Then he jerked his thumb at himself ¡°And I¡¯ll be playing main tanker, though this time I think I¡¯m going to start in Beijing and aim to be some sort of Daoist, the Daoists were some of the best tankers last time around and I¡¯m going to aim at the top of course.¡±
Mark blinked then raised his hand, ¡°Mark, old Underworld player, and writer of that guidebook you guys got. I¡¯ll probably be playing a revised version of my old Shaman, crowd control with some Debuff and Buffing build.¡±
Holly aka, School_Girl, seemed about done with the introductions and took back charge of the meeting, ¡°First things first we need to get some basic questions done. Anyone have any questions for Mark?¡±
Ricardo raised his hand, ¡°How old is your daughter?¡±
Several of the others started to laugh then Leo slapped him in the back of the head. ¡°Focus¡±
Jim then raised his hand ¡°Why is the guy who wrote the guide on the main team doing something important like buff/debuff or crowd control?¡±
Mark shrugged then spoke ¡°I was pretty good in Underworld at that role. I remember how to build it.¡±
Jim spoke up ¡°No I don¡¯t doubt you were good at this in the past, but what are your competitive ¡®Fever¡¯ gaming accomplishments? Everyone else here stands at the peak of billions of players, I don¡¯t think an old VR player really stands out as qualified to be on our first team.¡±
Leo popped in with an amused smile on his face ¡°Don¡¯t worry about Mark, he¡¯ll be fine. Worse case someone from the B team can take over. Real questions about Underworld?¡±
Dead silence.
Mark then spoke up, ¡°I don¡¯t know if it came through well but part of the key to finding new skill trees, magic and talents is to explore. Talk to the NPCs, granted their AI wasn¡¯t amazing¡ who knows it might be better now with this re-release, but generally the quest giving NPCs are easy to tell apart because they have obvious care put into their design. I¡¯ll give you an example. I ended up in a snowstorm in the game around level 100 or so, and was chased by a pack of wolves. When I noticed that one of the wolves in the back of the pack wasn¡¯t ¡®red named¡¯ where as the red named wolves weren¡¯t really trying to catch up to me. They were mostly herding me. I was smart about it and chose to NOT attack the animals, and let them herd me. This lead on to a quest which allowed me to meet a wolf god. You have to be smart about gaining quests. What we wrote down in that guide was a tip of the iceberg. This was a game which new builds were discovered all the time. 50 years and probably a billion players and there still was no dominant meta to it.
The keys to a proper build are ¡®growth skills¡¯ as in skills which will grow in power with your character anything that grows in power with some of your base stats or level, if you come across a talent tree you have to be careful it¡¯s not a worthless one, what¡¯s a worthless one? One in which ANY skill is worthless at level 1000. It takes some foresight and guesswork, especially if you get a skill tree with optional growth, which means parts of it will be blacked off. You¡¯ll have to use your good sense to decide. Furthermore, in my experience skills which strengthened each other were far more valuable than a lone strong skill. So, look for overlapping skill trees which strengthened each other. Finally, while no buff can be duplicated, for example two skills which buff 10% increase in damage can¡¯t be stacked, two buffs which increase damage CAN be applied if they buff a different number for example one which buffs 10% and the other which buffs 2.5% both will be applied for a 12.5% buff to damage. If you run into a skill or skill tree you don¡¯t know about don¡¯t hesitate to ask, I only included the information I was 70% sure about, there is a lot of skills and skill trees I know about which were not included in the guide because we couldn¡¯t get good information on.¡±
Leo looked at the others in the crew then spoke up, ¡°No one has any other questions for mark?¡± He waited a moment then added, ¡°Holly you should meet up with Mark on day one, you¡¯re both going to spawn in Tenochtitlan, he can help you save some time. We¡¯re probably not going to run into each other much however if you find a skill tree or skill you think can help someone else let us know, it might be important enough to make the journey to another region for it. With that lets disperse.¡±
And thus, ended Mark¡¯s first experience with fever. His misery recovering from it of course will be omitted, something which he did his best forgetting.
Chapter 4 - Underworld (pt3)
July 5th, 2144, 12AM GMT, Underworld-Gold went live. And the servers promptly crashed under the load of hundreds of millions of people trying to log in at the same time. Of course, the netizens found this failure immensely amusing and roundly roasted EAB (Electronic Arts/Bioware-Bethesda) as one of the worst companies in the world. Meanwhile due catastrophic failure of the launch EAB went back to the drawing board delaying the launch longer than expected. The relaunch was delayed almost a week, and on July 12th at 12AM GMT the game was launched again and this time survived the initial influx of players for almost 5 minutes before crashing. It was another 2 weeks before EAB gave it a proper launch on July 26th at 12AM GMT. This time despite even the most cynical critics Underworld-Gold launched to rave reviews.
Mark found the whole thing rather hilarious and enjoyed the extra few weeks trying to get used to ¡°Fever¡± gaming with some free sport games that came with the capsule. To his shame he found the whole thing to be rather difficult to figure out. He wasn¡¯t an uncoordinated person, he but after his 10th straight loss to some 14yo trash talking him with language that would make a sailor blush Mark had to admit to himself, that these new Fever gaming systems were a bit outside his experience, and whatever gaming reflexes he used to have had long ago rusted away. This did make him a bit nervous about his pending return to Underworld. On the bright side, he recalled the build he wanted to play did not require a lot of motion on the part of the player, or at least it didn¡¯t back in 2119.
On July 25th at 5am local time in Phoenix, Mark logged into Underworld for the first time in 25 years. The character creation tools were just as varied as he recalled 30 years ago. First, he chose his start location as Tenochtitlan, which of course changed the base character model to a dark-skinned Aztec warrior. He then set his gender to male. For no other reason then his level of discomfort in moving his limbs in these Fever games, he set the physical height to his own and left the limb size to his own. He left the general fitness to be similar to himself, of course this being a game the body of his avatar looked quite a bit more defined then his 44-year-old self, sporting a 6 pack and cut muscles of the like he never had a day in his life. For a long moment he thought about modifying it but in the end decided to leave it as it was for fear he¡¯d struggle getting used to a body too different from himself. He set the hair to black, his first real cosmetic change to the looks, then paid EAB 15GC for the right to set the name and set any physical tattooing. Of course, he remembered this feature from 30 years ago, this was one of the few pay to win aspects to the game. Tattoos in Underworld were separated into magic and cosmetic, magic tattoos were hard to come across in the game, and even harder to earn, yet in character creation you could gain a magic tattoo if you bought the cosmetic DLC. It wasn¡¯t much but when you¡¯re aiming to compete at the upper limits of the game every percentage of advantage mattered.
He then chose out a magic tattoo for forearm, last time he did this he chose the Eagle because he wanted to long vision of one, he had been planning on a ranged arrow warrior, this time around he was going to pick one that supported his planned build, and took a stylized feathered snake, the god Kukulkan to the Maya or Quetzalcoatl to the Aztec who was the god of the wind and wisdom. From what he recalled of the original game the ¡°hidden¡± feature of this tattoo was to grant a percentage bonus to your wisdom stat, which was vital for all shamanic spell casters. He paused a moment at the adult section in character creation, this had to do with modifying genitalia and allowing erotic play in the game, in the end since it had been over 10 years old since his last contact with a woman and seeing little chance to come into contact with a real woman anytime soon, he decided to enable the ¡°adult features¡± granting his avatar male genitalia, then set the parts to roughly his dimensions, and closed that part of the character generation. Finally, he set the character name to Eztli and the class to ¡°NONE¡±, and told the system to submit the character.
To his immense surprise Eztli was ¡°not¡± taken, banned or not permitted, he remembered paying almost 10,000 USNA Dollars for the character that had the name Eztli in Underworld almost 28 years ago (as well as $50 for the character name change token), just to delete that character and rename his main character to Eztli. Eztli of course means blood in Aztec¡¯s old language and strangely enough was an actual name Aztec children were given. Since his character mostly was focused upon blood magic, he felt it was a much better name then xXx_BLOODWAR_69_xXx the name his 14 yo self-had chosen once upon a time.
Then he entered into the game.
His sight cut off then he found himself waking up in a village on the edge of Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec capital rose high in the western sky, with the huge ancient 60-meter-tall pyramid dominating the capital with the twin shrines to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc at its peak. The colors of blue, red and yellow dominated the buildings. The house he woke up in was a small adobe square structure, with painted walls. He was 10 years old. He remembered this was the default start for the unclassed character. He was to do some simple tasks to determine his starting stats and basic skills at various ages in a simulated start. This was his first challenge as you had to know what you WANTED your character to be or else, you¡¯d run a serious risk in this stage of screwing up your character forever. Of course, you could always toss the character and remake, but that would be time consuming, and right now LM_STARS was aiming to get the first 8-man team to level 1000 so that it could dominate the first PVP tournament.
Standing up he ran to a woman with a generic NPC name ¡°Mom¡± in gold meaning she¡¯d give out a required story quest, or she was a key story NPC. He thought a moment about how to interact with her, in the old game you had controls in your hands for the old VR, and you¡¯d basically select the NPC and click a button to interact with them. In this fever game there were no buttons, so he tugged her dress and asked ¡°Mom, is there something you need?¡±
The woman turned to look at him, interestingly her features moderately resembled his own which he thought was a nice touch. The woman smiled and said ¡°Eztli, are you up? Can you go find your father? Let him know breakfast is ready¡±
QUEST: Find your father
Quest succeed: Locate father and bring him home for breakfast, +2 honesty, +2 affinity with mother
Quest fail: Don¡¯t locate father or don¡¯t bring him home, -2 affinity with mother
Accept? Y/N
Eztli flinched at the worthless fetch quest, and replied ¡°Mom, do I have to look for dad? Isn¡¯t there something else I can do for you?¡±
Mom frowned then smiled again, ¡°Of course Eztli, you can go to old man Guatemoc, and see if you can get a sacrifice to bless our new year¡¯s dinner¡±
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
QUEST: Find old man Guatemoc
Quest succeed: Locate Guatemoc and get a sacrifice for new years dinner, +1 affinity with blood magic, +1 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 affinity with mother
Quest fail: Don¡¯t locate Guatemoc, -2 affinity with mother, locate Guatemoc and fail to return with a sacrifice -1 affinity with blood magic.
Accept? Y/N
Eztli paused, blood magic affinity basically shifted the level of your spells for ¡°resistance¡± purposes, +1 affinity meant when he cast a blood magic spell or one containing blood magic, he¡¯d be treated as 1 level higher then he was, and the same when attempting to resist blood magic. Basic affinity of +1 was needed to learn blood magic, and since that was the first thing, he needed to learn this was the quest he needed to do.
¡°Of course, mother, I¡¯ll go find Guatemoc!¡±
QUEST ACCEPTED: Time Limit, 4 hours
He didn¡¯t really remember anything about this quest but he knew that quests didn¡¯t all have to be completed the same way. So, as he walked down the curving street asking around for Guatemoc he kept his eyes and ears open. He knew there may be options to completing this quest and getting better rewards somewhere around. He peaked under tables, spoke to every person along the way, and after 2 hours made his way little more than a quarter mile, during which time he got a loaf of bread, a cotton cloak worth a thousand cocoa beans, and a handful of cocoa beans. He knew the cotton cloak was a minor windfall, and was curious what it could be used for in this quest.
Eventually he made it to Guatemoc¡¯s home. He was an old priest of Huitzilopochtli. The man was sleeping in the small hut. Eztli knocked on the door several times and noted the old man wasn¡¯t waking up. He noted the fire going and water boiling. Taking the beans, he crushed them and mixed them into the boiling water. Then he poured out the brown liquid into a cup, the system identified the cup as ¡°cocoa water, a tasty luxury¡±, and wafted it under Guatemoc¡¯s nose.
Guatemoc woke up immediately and looked at the young boy with a frown then saw what he was holding and his eyes widened. ¡°Eztli? Why did your mother send you to me?¡±
¡°Sir, Guatemoc, mother wants to procure a great sacrifice for new year¡¯s, and thought you could help her¡± He bowed and handed Guatemoc the cup of hot cocoa.
Guatemoc seemed to be eyeing the young boy curiously, then he took the cup and sipped it, sighing. ¡°The best sacrifice would be human. However, a human sacrifice would cost thousands of beans of cocoa, for the best sacrifice you¡¯d need a warrior or virgin. And those will run probably similar in price to a cotton cloak. I can get you a small child for sacrifice, it won¡¯t cost you anything, you already paid with this drink.¡±
Eztli pulled out the cotton cloak, from where it was bundled behind his belt. ¡°Do you think you could get a virgin or warrior for this? Can you teach me how to perform a blood sacrifice as well?¡±
Guatemoc looked surprised. Then he nodded slightly. ¡°I can instruct you on the path for blood sacrifice, and get you a better sacrifice. I¡¯ll meet you at your parents place this evening with the sacrifice for new years and with your mother¡¯s permission I¡¯ll let you perform the sacrifice.¡±
Eztli smiled and thanked Guatemoc before returning home. He had to tug on his mother¡¯s skirt to get her attention and report the progress of the quest.
QUEST UPDATE: Time limit extended to end of day
With nothing to do for several game hours (an hour in game was about 20 minutes in real life), he wandered about the slums looking for any other quests, stumbling upon his father by accident and bringing him home for new year¡¯s (his father was shacked up with another woman). Disappointingly he didn¡¯t receive a reward for bringing his father home.
The sun was setting when Guatemoc arrived with a young woman slave in toe. She looked like some native from one of the local tribes, she looked terrified as she saw the small stone alter in the home, and she started to beg in some language the system decided he didn¡¯t understand
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 to Mayan Language, +1 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence
The woman¡¯s pleadings became a bit more understandable to Eztli¡¯s ear, they mostly sounded like begging to not be sacrificed, and her willingness to be a slave for the family. Mark thought ¡°jackpot!¡± when the prompt popped up about the Mayan language, learning new languages were simple in the ¡°child mode¡± part of why he was wandering about was in hopes to hear another tongue and learn it. Learning other languages were very hard after character creation was done, and required hours upon hours of effort. The more languages you¡¯re exposed to early the better your character became at learning new languages.
The ceremony was fairly simple, though it had been 30 years since Mark first learned a proper Aztec blood sacrifice he still remembered the actions, furthermore Guatemoc¡¯s instructions refreshed anything he might have forgotten, the woman was held down on the stone alter, a small prayer was said, in this case it was to Huitzilopochtli, then Eztli plunged the obsidian dagger into her abdomen, cutting her diaphragm, then jammed his hand up into her chest cavity, and ripped her heart out of her chest. The whole action was far more disturbing then he remembered it in Underworld. The sensations were real, the smells, screams and cries sent shivers down his spine, the smell of blood gagged him as memories of the war suddenly crashed through his head. Tears came to his eyes unbidden as he ripped the heart out of the girl¡¯s chest and he watched her eyes lose focus. It was so real his body was on autopilot as he took a step not talked about in the sacrifice ritual and his mouth came into contact with the still beating heart, the taste of blood exploded into his mouth as his teeth clamped down on the writhing muscle. This was not part of the sacrifice, but a behavior his old character learned from the Iroquois Indians 30 years ago. He twisted his head, completely without thinking about it and ripped part of the heart off and chewed the tough meat before swallowing it. Waking up from the horror of human sacrifice he handed the mutilated and still twitching heart to Guatemoc, who had a stunned look on his face.
Guatemoc finished the ceremony, burning the heart and using the blood from the girl¡¯s body to paint symbols on the family and home, then he clasped Eztli on the shoulder and nodded his approval.
QUEST COMPLETE: Find old man Guatemoc
Completion percentage: 300%
Standard Reward: +1 affinity with blood magic, +1 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 affinity with mother
200% Bonus: +10 affinity with blood magic, +10 affinity with Guatemoc, +20 affinity with mother
300% Bonus: +20 affinity with blood magic, +20 affinity with Guatemoc, +40 affinity with mother
Quest Bonus:
Gained Bonus Skill: Cannibalism
+10 to Wisdom, attributes gained 10% of highest stats of victim ofCannibalism (if stat is higher than Eztli)
Accolade: Perfect Clear, +5% to all attributes
----------------------------------------------------
Character Sheet: Eztli
Age: 10
Strength: 10 (+5%) = 10.5
Agility: 10(+5%) = 10.5
Constitution: 10(+5%) = 10.5
Wisdom: 21(+5%) =22.1
Intelligence: 11 =(+5%) = 11.6
Charisma: 10(+5%) = 10.5
Skill Trees: 0/8
Skills: 0/10
Bonus Skills: Cannibalism
Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (1/10)
Items: Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian)
Relations:
Mother: +62
Guatemoc: +31
Accolades:
Perfect Clear: +5% to all attributes
Titles:
(none)
----------------------------------------------------
Mark hurriedly logged out of the game after receiving the quest cleared prompt, the idea of eating that dinner next to the dead body of that young woman simply made him nauseous. His nerves were far too raw to continue playing at this time. As he vomited up his dinner in his toilet, he realized this FEVER style version of Underworld would probably not be anywhere near as enjoyable as the VRMMO used to be. The horrible things you had to do for some magic and skills will probably be a huge hurdle for most of the players. Unlike 30 years ago, the graphics weren¡¯t cartoony and surreal, this game felt like real life, and the added sensation was far too real.
It took him almost 4 hours to get to sleep that night as he was haunted by the NPC woman he sacrificed, which of course opened the door to some of the horrors he had long buried from the war.
Chapter 5 - Underworld (pt4)
Mark woke up at 4am as was his habit. He felt hungover, with a pounding headache after just 2 hours of fitful sleep. Sleep interrupted a couple of times with disturbing nightmares filled with terrible imagery, memories from the front lines. Shaken he swallowed a handful of ibuprofen, made his way to his bathroom, showered, shaved then made breakfast. Since moving to Phoenix his early morning walk had to be shoved back in the schedule as the city was locked down at 4am in the morning under a curfew. After eating a light breakfast of toast and a hardboiled egg, he browsed the forums and net for news about Underworld.
The official region forums for Tenochtitlan were filled with random nonsense, though there was a thread in the forums with over a million views expressing their SHOCK and DISMAY at the blood sacrifice rituals occurring at the central pyramid on a daily basis. The author complained about the ¡°negative stereotypes and white European lies, which perpetuated the myth that the Aztec performed human sacrifice.¡± Mark rolled his eyes, he had fought on and around some of those very temples in southern and central Mexico, and remembered seeing the obsidian knives used for the human sacrifice. There were people like this is most regions of course, for example atheists were currently taking offense in Italy at the prayers to Christ being performed in the Vatican by priests being answered.
Once 6am rolled around Mark did a little light stretching and took a three mile jog around the neighborhood, returning home at about 6:35. Not a great pace for a 3 mile jog, but to with a low end cybernetic it wasn¡¯t particularly bad, at least it got his blood flowing. He took a second shower, this one longer after getting home then logged into the capsule, he took 10 minutes writing up the details of the Find old man Guatemoc quest in the LM_STARS private forums for Underworld, then sent off a quick message to Holly with a link to his post.
He then mentally braced himself and logged back in. The ¡°child¡± portion of ¡°classless¡± character would consist of completing 3 quests at 10 years old which would give your character some basic flavor and abilities, then you¡¯d get one more quest at age 17, this one would let you gain your first skill tree (or if you¡¯re lucky, 2 skill trees) it also would give the character the chance to return to the ¡°template¡± character option in the event the player changed their mind about playing classless.
The first thing he did after logging back in was check the bonus skill ¡°Cannibalism¡± he got rewarded with last night. This was a skill he never had in Underworld, the skill he gained with the Iroquois which he accidently performed during the sacrifice ritual was called ¡°Ritual Heart Eating¡±.
BONUS SKILLS:
CANIBALLISM (Ritual) ¨C When eating a part of a human (heart/brain/eyes) gain some aspect of their power. Skill can only be used on one part of the body per sacrifice. The sacrifice victim (in the case of players) can only be cannibalized one time, ever. The part ingested cannot be cooked or prepared in any way whatsoever. When eating the heart, the player has a small chance to gain 10% of the victim¡¯s largest stat to the maximum of that stat (meaning if the victim has a Intelligence stat of 110, and the cannibal has an intelligence of 109, the cannibal will gain just 1 point in intelligence, not 11 which would be 10%). When ingesting the Brain a small % chance to gain one of the victims skills or a larger chance to gain proficiency in a shared skill. When ingesting the eyes, gain a chance to gain a permanent boost to perception (only if the victims perception skills are higher tier). Note skill will only trigger if performed as part of a ritual. In most regions, performing cannibalism is a taboo and will make you permanently ¡°Red¡± to the player base in that region if witnessed.
He vaguely remembered Cannibalism was a moderately popular skill for PvPer¡¯s in the early and mid-games prior to level 500, however he had little to no recollection of Cannibalism (Ritual) version. The basic cannibalism worked similar to this version only the bonus was capped at 10% of the user¡¯s base skills and the PVP implications were far worse than this one. This was different then the Ritual Heart Eating skill he wanted to learn from the Iroquois, however it looked like something conditionally powerful depending on how he used it; though it¡¯s condition of requiring a ¡°ritual sacrifice¡± did make it a bit tricky to use.
Deciding it was time to get this childhood phase over quickly, he started wandering the streets looking for gold names on NPCs, since his mother didn¡¯t seem to be giving quests today. Eventually he came across Guatemoc, and noted his name was gold today. Saying hi and hoping the higher than usual affinity would help him get a good quest he asked him if there was anything he could do for him.
¡°Oh Eztli, yes there is something for you to do. I want you to go and get my rituals from the main temple. Talk to the temple boss to get them.¡±
QUEST: Find old man Guatemoc¡¯s rituals
Quest succeed: Locate Guatemoc rituals in the main temple at the top of the large pyramid, +10 affinity with blood magic, +10 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 intimidation skill
Quest fail: Don¡¯t locate Guatemoc¡¯s rituals, -20 affinity with Guatemoc, locate Guatemoc¡¯s rituals and keep them for yourself, +20 affinity with blood magic, -100 affinity with Guatemoc
Accept? Y/N
He double checked the quest fail punishments, and had to suppress the desire to fail this quest. While another +20 affinity for blood magic would put him well ahead of most of the rest of the world, he had to admit this felt like a trap. The quest felt like a chain quest and he suspected finishing it will land him a lot bigger rewards then 20 affinity for blood magic.
With this in mind, he noted no time constraints on this quest, which meant the system felt the issue here wasn¡¯t getting the rituals, nor was it returning with them, the real quest was whether or not you kept them for yourself. He still had a pretty good feeling for how quests were put together in Underworld, and it looked like this release of the title kept the basic of the prior game. What Mark feared most however was the changes. He suspected they were there, he just didn¡¯t know where or when they¡¯d pop up.
He accepted the quest and quickly made his way toward the great pyramid at the center of the city. He kept his eyes open for other questing opportunities along the way, and got rewarded with learning another language when he overheard some arguing in a large market
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 to Inca Language, +1 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence
Eventually he reached the base of the 60 meter tall pyramid, and started to climb up the back steps, on the side of the pyramid away from the sacrifices which were ongoing at this time of the day. The 60 meter pyramid was a serious challenge for this 10yo body to climb. And as he mounted the steps small notifications continued to pop up
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Constitution, +1 Will Power
He felt his limbs burning, and it was getting difficult to continue on, despite gasping for breath and the constant red tint to his view he continued to force the small avatar to mount the steps one at a time without a break.
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Will Power
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Constitution, +1 Will Power
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Will Power
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Constitution, +1 Will Power
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Will Power
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Constitution, +1 Strength, +1 Will Power
ACCOLADE GAINED: Top of the World (Tenochtitlan) ¨C reach the top of the tallest man-made landmark in your region. +5% ConstitutionA case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
A triumphant feeling much like he felt when pushing his limits when exercising entered his heart as he reached the summit of the pyramid. He was amazed at the shaking hands and limbs of the small child avatar, the sweat dripping from his brow, and getting in his eyes, the way his clothing got damp from perspiration, it all felt exactly how it might have felt in real life to exhaust yourself to the limits, even his head was swimming a bit as he felt a little unsteady on his feet. On the whole Mark found the experience amazing. The accolade was just a cherry on top.
He looked around and had to admit to himself the view was amazing from up here. He then walked to the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of War, the Sun and Human Sacrifice and presented himself to the priests.
¡°Excuse me but I was asked by priest Guatemoc to bring his copy of the scriptures back to him. He¡¯s grown old and cannot climb the stairs to this temple anymore.¡± Eztli spoke quickly.
An old priest with his arms covered to his elbow in drying blood nodded then gestured to the side, the path the priest wanted Eztli to talk brought him past the sacrificial alter on the top of the temple, a child this time was held down on the alter and a line of people were backed up behind the child waiting their turn. Huge Jaguar warriors kept the line orderly, and another priest was conducting the latest sacrifice.
Eztli started to walk past the sacrifice but then thought twice about it and instead bowed and prayed as the sacrifice was done and the boy¡¯s heart was torn out, forcing himself to watch the whole sacrifice from start to finish
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
Mark sighed at the prompt, he sacrificed a girl and didn¡¯t get religious knowledge because he didn¡¯t watch the priest sacrifice her, now he learned religious knowledge because he watched another sacrifice. The system seemed about as inflexible as it always was. At least the ¡°increased¡± learning speed of the child version still was benefitting him. Had he come here as an adult, he probably wouldn¡¯t have gained anything except for the accolade for climbing the pyramid, and he might have had to watch the sacrifices all afternoon or even days to gain any religious knowledge or affinity for blood magic from it. Knowing this was a chance to power level both, he pretended to be enraptured over the religious ceremony, and continued to watch, or at least he had the avatar for Eztli watch, he had actually pulled up the in-game forums and chat menus and was using those to distract him from the sacrifices going on.
He paused at the trending topic in the general forums
[YOU GOT TO WATCH THIS SICK VIDEO]
-guys LM-STARS just put out a video of THE LION in UNDERWORLD. IT IS SO SICK!!!!!!!!
https://lm_stars/underworld_the_game/the_lion/video_7_26_2144
Out of curiosity Mark clicked the link, the video was lovely cut promo with clips that looked like something from live wuxia movie, Leo¡¯s avatar a huge man wearing yellow Daoist robes and wielding a green jade longsword was jumping through tree tops, and fighting a horde of bandits singlehandedly to rescue a lovely maiden. Mark started laughing recognizing the scenes from one of the form quests to get accepted into one of the Daoist sects that Leo was aiming for. But he had to admit the professional editing of the video made it look like a Hollywood movie promo, and the rising music in the background certainly got the blood pumping. It made all the videos Mark and Leo had painstakingly put together 30 years ago look like dog poop.
The reception to the video was insanely explosive. At a time, most players were trying to figure out up from down and left from right in Underworld Leo¡¯s video was definitely mind blowing. Heck Mark figured it would be a week before he could have anything like it cut for his video. It looked like Leo hadn¡¯t stopped playing since the game came out.
-Leo¡¯s Amazing!
-Its almost like he¡¯s playing a different game from me, all I am doing is running fetch quests for my mom
-Guy¡¯s I¡¯m in Beijing and there are Daoists flying around like that all the time. I thought you had to be level 500 to do that stuff though ? How did he do it?
-Maybe you need to learn how to play the game
-fuck you this user was banned for abusive language
-Guy¡¯s do you think LM_STARS will sell a guide to Leo¡¯s build?
-Last time they did that it was for a lot of GC, besides do you think you could PLAY like LEO? Stop dreaming
-Looks like LM_STARS will dominate this game too, wonder who¡¯s on their A team in here
-I heard Holly is retiring
-Fuck you, where?
Mark closed the forum page and thought about the promo video and thought to himself he¡¯d have to catch up to Leo to not let him down and get them enough video for something impressive as well. Leo had mentioned this as well; however, he didn¡¯t think there could be anything which would be as impressive as what was in that promo anytime soon. His play build just wasn¡¯t that dynamic. If anything, it should be mostly dull to watch.
He then looked at the system notifications
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli), +1 Affinity with Blood Magic
SYSTEM PROMPT: Religious knowledge (Huitzilopochtli MAX), +10 Affinity with Blood Magic
The last prompt had come in almost 10 minutes ago, it appeared he had little else to gain from standing here. The head priest was waiting by the side patiently, Eztli then moved over to the side the priest had prompted him to go to initially, not bothering to look at the human carnage going on by the alter any longer.
Getting the Religious scripts was simple, it was just a bundled-up cloth with woven pictographs on it, so it was small and light. Leaving was easy, as was delivering it to Guatemoc. Overall, he was already satisfied with his rewards just from climbing the temple and watching the sacrifice.
QUEST COMPLETE: Find old man Guatemoc¡¯s rituals
Completion percentage: 100%
Standard Reward: +10 affinity with blood magic, +10 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 intimidation skill
Old man Guatemoc smiled at Eztli, ¡°Child, would you like to learn about the gods?¡±
QUEST: Learn about the Aztec Gods ¨C Education is invaluable to children with a plan to make it big in this world, Guatemoc has taken a liking to Eztli and offers to give Eztli an education available only to noble children. This is a huge chance to change Eztli¡¯s social status!
Quest succeed: +10 affinity with blood magic, +20 intimidation skill, caste change from commoner to ¡°noble¡±, +10 Wisdom, +10 Intelligence, Religious Knowledge: Huitzilopochtli (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Xipe Totec (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Cente¨tl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Mictl¨¡nt¨¥cutli (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tlaloc (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tezcatlipoca (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Quetzalcoatl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: ¨mete¨tl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tonatiuh (MAX)¡
The prompts continued as dozens of gods of the Aztec pantheon were listed. This was a bonus Mark hadn¡¯t achieved in his first play through. He knew it existed if you got close to a religious figure but his goal last time around was to be an archer/ranged DPS so he avoided the religious tasks as a child 30 years ago.
Mark had no reason to turn it down, when playing a Shamanic type character your power came from the gods and one of the most laborious tasks was maximizing your religious knowledge of the gods of the pantheon for the skill/spell trees you were using, as different levels of religious knowledge were needed to unlock different levels of the spell trees.
Eztli nodded to Guatemoc, ¡°Of course!¡±
Guatemoc, lead Eztli to his hut and started a long dull lecture on the myriad of Aztec gods. Several hours later Mark received a prompt.
QUEST COMPLETE: Learn about the Aztec Gods
Completion percentage: 100%
Standard Reward: +10 affinity with blood magic, +20 intimidation skill, caste change from commoner to ¡°noble¡±, +10 Wisdom, +10 Intelligence, Religious Knowledge: Huitzilopochtli (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Xipe Totec (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Cente¨tl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Mictl¨¡nt¨¥cutli (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tlaloc (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tezcatlipoca (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Quetzalcoatl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: ¨mete¨tl (MAX), Religious Knowledge: Tonatiuh (MAX)¡
A prompt appeared in Mark¡¯s eyes, ¡°progressing from childhood¡± then the world faded to black
Character: Eztli
Age: 10
Social Status: Aztec Noble
Level: --
Hit Points: 1
Magic Points: 1
Strength: 11 (5%) = 11.6
Agility: 10 (5%) = 10.5
Constitution: 13 (10%) = 14.3
Wisdom: 32 (5%) = 33.6
Intelligence: 22 (5%) = 23.1
Charisma: 10 (5%) = 10.5
Willpower: +6
Poison/Disease Resistance: 0
Pain Resistance: 0
Reflexes: 0
Skill Trees: 0/8
Skills: 0/10
Bonus Skills: Cannibalism, Intimidation (+22)
Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (1/10), Inca (1/10)
Knowledge: Religion: Aztec Gods (Max)
Affinities: Blood Magic (+71)
Items: Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian)
Relations:
Mother: +62
Guatemoc: +41
Accolades:
Perfect Clear: 5% to all attributes
Top of the World (Tenochtitlan): 5% to Constitution
Chapter 6 - Underworld (pt5)
The world came back into focus, Mark checked out his avatar and noted that Eztli was dressed like a young Aztec noble. He had golden wrist bands, a beautiful kilt like dress with elaborate and colorful designs, gold shin guards and hemp slippers rather then the bare feet as a child. He even had a cotton cloak around his shoulders a bare chest and a feathered headdress feathered with colorful parrot feathers.
He liked the look of this Aztec nobleman and checked the properties of the clothing, noted it was all cosmetic, so he slotted the clothing into his character¡¯s ¡°appearance¡± clothing tab. He wasn¡¯t a big fan of showing off his items and liked displaying cosmetic clothing as his base appearance. This appearance was good, he also noted the avatar was now the adult version he had chosen before, with the magic tattoo on the arm.
Mark pulled up the character sheet to see how the game progressed him into adulthood.
----------------------------------
Character: Eztli
Age: 17
Social Status: Aztec Nobel
Level: 1 (0/1000)
Hit Points: 1430
Magic Points: 3260
Defense: 105
Strength: 110 (5%) = 116
Agility: 100 (5%) = 105
Constitution: 130 (10%) = 143
Wisdom: 320 (10%) = 352
Intelligence: 220 (5%) = 231
Charisma: 100 (5%) = 105
Willpower: +9
Poison/Disease Resistance: +1
Pain Resistance: +1
Reflexes: +1
Skill Trees: 0/8
Skills: 0/10
Bonus Skills: Cannibalism, Intimidation (+22)
Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (10/10), Inca (10/10)
Knowledge: Religion: Aztec Gods (Max)
Affinities: Blood Magic (+71),Affinity with Air Magic (+1), Affinity with ShamanicMagic (+1)
Items: Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian)
Relations:
(none)
Accolades:
Perfect Clear: 5% to all attributes
Top of the World (Tenochtitlan): 5% to Constitution
Tattoos (Magic):
Quetzalcoatl: 5% to Wisdom, +1 Affinity with Air Magic, +1 Affinity with ShamanicMagic
----------------------------------
He smiled, a template character would have about 800 stat points at level one, his 1052 wasn¡¯t an amazing step forward, but it was nice, considering they wouldn¡¯t have any of the accolades yet, nor any of the extra languages, only basic affinities and knowledge¡¯s, if they spent some of their attributes they could come in with a noble status, something he picked up without spending or sacrificing points. Every level up you gained 10 attribute points. Better still his character creation wasn¡¯t done yet, he had more chances to gain attributes, skills and accolades before entering the actual game.
Looking around he noted the home he was in now was a drastic step up from the slum home in the first part. It wasn¡¯t impressive to a modern human but there were actual room divisions, and something better then a pile of hay in the corner to sleep on. He walked out of the well put together bedroom and looked around for a quest prompt. He saw a slave cleaning in a corner and since the slave had nothing interesting about his design and no specific name, he figured the chances this NPC had anything interesting to say was unlikely. So, he kept making his way through the home. Golden ornaments were everywhere.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
Eventually Eztli made his way out of the front door, his parents and younger siblings were standing outside waiting for him. His father handed him a Macuahuitl, weapon which looked like a wooden cricket bat with obsidian glass edges to it. This one was rather beautiful, with the design of Quetzalcoatl on the flat side. He examined the stats of the Macuahuitl.
Ceremonial Macuahuitl ¨C The weapon of a noble youth. This is designed to be looked at, not designed for war, though it is a real weapon which can be used to kill a human being with.
Attack Bonus: -10
Damage: 100-500
Critical Chance: 10%
Critical Damage Multiplier: x5
Durability: 50
Combat in this game was a little variable, because you could physically avoid attacks, or a martial artist could accurately hit a target. To make combat ¡°somewhat¡± fair for untalented fighters, there was a type of combat assist in the form of attack skills. Attack skills varied from untargeted skills like AOE (area of effect), PBAOE (point blank area of effect/effect centered on the caster), Always Hit, and Targeted skills. AOE and PBAOE skills allow some damage mitigation based on armor and reflexes. However, anyone caught inside the range of one of those skills will take damage. Granted some AOE attacks were better then others, some differentiated between friend and foe, some didn¡¯t. In group play the ones that differentiated were superior to those that didn¡¯t. Always Hit skills would target a single target and it hit every time, the balance to these skills is much like AOE and PBAOE skills reflex and armor tended to mitigate the damage received, and these skills rarely triggered any sort of critical. Targeted skills however depend a great deal on your ability to move your character. These skills only landed if the attacker actually connects with the defender. However, to balance this a bit, defense and attack are compared to produce a damage modification. The math for the system was a bit complex, but once upon a time he used to have spreadsheets with the actual numbers the system used to min/max his DPS (damage per second) he produced.
The Macuahuitl was just as ridiculous a weapon as he remembered. It basically was a devastating weapon that did an insane amount of damage. However, it broke easily. It was meant to be wielded 2 handed, and was not a weapon that Mark planned to rely on once he started to open his skill trees.
Eztli accepted the Macuahuitl from his father, and his father started to speak. ¡°Eztli has reached the age of adulthood and needs to find his path. He can become a warrior like his father, or a priest like his uncle. Eztli would like you to chose either of those paths?
SYSTEM NOTE: You may change to a specific class at this time, this is your last chance to chose a specific class, all your progress will be reset and you¡¯ll be brought back to character creation to chose a class for your build. Do you wish to change to a specific class at this time?
Y/N
Eztli shook his head. ¡°Father I want to find my own path not take a path chosen by others.¡±
The man nodded, ¡°Then go out into the world and find your own path.¡±
The scene changed and Eztli found himself standing in the middle of Tenochtitlan at the base of the great pyramid. A quest note flashed in his eyes
Character Quest: Gain a skill tree
No other details were present though when he looked around the central plaza numerous NPCs had gold names over the heads. Many of these NPCs would allow him to gain life skills if he wanted to become a crafter or merchant or just wanted to chill out in the game as a level 1000 fisherman. He noted priests at the top of the pyramid also had golden names. What he was seeking was something a little more special then these.
So he started to make his way out of the city heading west with a purpose, the journey took almost a full hour in game time just to get to the western gates, which spoke to the impressive size of Tenochtitlan, people parted before him and he moved in a bubble of freedom, inside the city his status was absolute, though he knew once he left the city, unless he was near some soldiers, his status as a noble will draw more arrows then it will deflect in this play region. The Aztec had a lot of enemies in central Mexico, for good reason, they were a warrior people who raided nearby tribes for ritual sacrifices and slaves constantly, earning them the enmity of the whole region. As a result, most of the non-Aztec natives in this region were flagged as ¡°hostile¡± monsters to Tenochtitlan players.
Eventually he made his way out of the city, and started to cut across the countryside taking a path he vaguely remembered. He had found this by accident almost 30 years ago, and in spite of a clear recollection of what he was looking for, where it was, was only a vague memory. The lifelike appearance of the countryside made it harder to find his way accurately, since the old game was much more cartoony in appearance. He paused in the middle of a wild grass field, the smells were so lifelike he almost forgot he was in a game, as Eztli spun about in the endless grassland trying to find a good point of reference he remembered from 30 years ago. All he could find was the 60-meter temple on the horizon, so he made his way further west looking for the stream he recalled.
It took almost 4 hours to find the stream he was looking for, and another hour to find the general area he thought he needed to be in. When he did this last time, he was on a quest from an old man offering to teach him archery skills if he used a bow to kill a wild deer. He was chasing a wounded deer in this area and fell down a hole, nearly killing himself. That hole was what he needed to find. With the sun setting Eztli finally found the hole. It was exactly as he remembered. So, he climbed his way in carefully. It wasn¡¯t as large as he remembered, and with the controlled entry, he didn¡¯t injure himself like he did last time.
Eztli stat down under the entrance to the small cave and ignored the sounds of snakes in the darkness. He remembered last time he was here the snakes unnerved him. He was terrified of ending up in the belly of one. Instead of fear he felt expectation. Eventually the sounds of snakes vanished, and something large made its way closer, he heard a large slithering noise, it clearly was a boss monster sized snake, a blast of hot air blew past his face and the fires of the Underworld rose deep in the cave coloring the black rock cave red, in front of Eztli was a huge snake with golden eyes, covered in feathers, with feathered wings. It was close enough Eztli could reach out and touch its nose. Hovering above the snake¡¯s head was the golden name Quetzalcoatl
Bowing deeply, pressing his face into the rock floor Eztli called out ¡°Great Quetzalcoatl, your servant is honored to see you¡±
The huge snake god simply sat there, staring at Eztli as if deciding wether he¡¯d make a good dinner or not. Eztli kept his forehead pressed to the stone floor, the fires of the underworld raged in the distance increasing the temperature of the cave drastically. The stone floor got hotter and hotter, sweat dripped from Eztli¡¯s forehead down his nose and onto the stone floor where it started to evaporate. Eventually Quetzalcoatl spoke in a surreal and dreamy voice ¡°Do you wish to be my servant human?¡±
Eztli¡¯s answer came quickly ¡°Yes¡±
¡°Are you sure?¡±
Update Character Quest: Gain a skill tree
You have found Quetzalcoatl and have impressed him.
He wishes to make you a servant. Will you serve Quetzalcoatl?
Reward: Gain skill trees: Blood Sacrifice, Ritual Curse and Bless, Animal Shape
Will you accept? Y/N
¡°Yes, I¡¯m sure.¡±
Quetzalcoatl¡¯s voice melted into the night, as the light from the fires vanished and the oppressive heat disappeared as if never there ¡°Then rise my servant¡±
QUEST COMPLETE: Gain a skill tree
Completion percentage: 100%
Rewards: Gained skill tree Blood Sacrifice, gained skill tree Ritual Curse and Bless, gained skill tree Animal Shape.
Chapter 7 - Power leveling (pt1)
Eztli¡¯s view came back into focus and he was in the main square in Tenochtitlan, at the base of the Pyramid. All this playtime had just been what amounted to character creation. Now he could see other characters throughout the square, it was absolutely flooded with people. There was a huge crowd at the steps of the pyramid watching the human sacrificing going on, likely new Aztec priests trying to gain blood magic affinity, or some knowledge about the gods. He saw hunting parties forming everywhere.
Mark took a moment to check his skill trees, the casting conditions of the skills and their effects. He had the blood magic affinity to unlock the whole blood magic tree, however his level was too low. His HP and MP had taken a big hit as well, now that he was out of character creation. All he had access to in the tree was Blood spear, Blood Casting, and Blood Field. It appeared that casting the spells required a hand motion holding a ceremonial wand. There was even a video displaying the casting motion.
The Ritual Curse and Bless tree was much more locked down, with just one point in shamanic magic affinity he could only cast the basic curse and bless spells from it, from what he remembered of that tree and those spells they were hardly worth the effort to learn so he shelved the tree for now. There were much better spells at the later levels, and curse and bless themselves got better the higher his affinity for shamanic magic, so it¡¯s not like they were worthless, just not worth using at level 1 with a +1 affinity for the magic. The final tree was why he chose to ditch archer in the first place 30 years ago.
One of the biggest problems facing new characters, especially in the ¡°Aztec and south American zones were the lack of travel options, meanwhile the level one option in this tree was ¡°Hawk Form¡± allowing him to move around the map far faster than any mount will allow until much later in the game. He remembered how Shamanic magic was loved for this low level form of movement causing melee characters to splash in shamanic magic just for this ability.
He read the casting conditions then sighed as it seemed the casting conditions also required a hand motion of sorts with a ritual wand, he also needed to sacrifice a hawk to unlock the skill. The other forms in Quetzalcoatl¡¯s animal form shamanic tree were Python, Panther and if he managed a +100 affinity for the tree, level 500 character level and sacrificed a feathered winged serpent he could shapeshift into a feathered winged serpent like Quetzalcoatl. This was one shape shift form he didn¡¯t get last time around mostly because he never found a winged/feathered serpent.
He checked his inventory and noted the only thing of value on him was his cotton cloak and ceremonial Macuahuitl. So he walked around the square until he found a merchant selling the type of wand he needed. It was a bone wand made from a human arm bone with colorful feathers tethered to the end with a leather cord. All in all it looked rather barbaric.
Eztli pointed at the wand and spoke ¡°How much for that?¡±
The merchant simply looked at him.
Mark pondered a moment then watched the others around the square purchasing items to see how it¡¯s done. Then sighed. It seemed the AI still wasn¡¯t that advanced.
Eztli grabbed the wand and placed it in front of the merchant, the merchant then spoke ¡°500 cacao beans¡±
Eztli removed the cotton cloak and handed it to the merchant and said ¡°300 cacao beans, I¡¯ll pay you the full cloak if you can find me a Hawk in a cage.¡±
The merchant smiled at his windfall and quickly hurried away from the stall, Eztli examined the wand closer.
Bone Wand (Poor) - A required component for spell casting
+5 affinity with all Shamanic, blood and nature based magic
+10% damage with all shamanic, blood and nature based magic
Attack Bonus: 0
Damage (if used as a club): 50-100
No Critical Chance
Durability: 50
The merchant returned with a wicker cage holding a half dead looking hawk. Not bothering to waste any time, Eztli opened the cage door and seized the hawk by the neck, pulling it out of the cage, then pulled out his ritual dagger, and read one of the basic sacrifice prayers he had in his journal next to his knowledge ¡°Aztec gods¡± skill. ¡°Oh great Quetzalcoatl accept this sacrifice¡± then plunged the dagger into the chest of the half dead hawk. A small golden light flashed and the bird vanished from his hand and the skill ¡°animal shape: hawk¡± became available to use on his skill tree.
Mark then pulled up a friends list and checked for Holly¡¯s status. He saw she was grey¡¯ed out meaning she was either still in character creation or in an instanced dungeon. He then waved the bone wand above his head, following the example shown in the small video with the animal form: hawk skill. He knew he probably looked like an idiot, as it took him 3 times to match the motions correctly before a blood red light covered his vision and his body changed shape into that of a large robust looking hawk.
A number of the players stopped what they were doing around the square staring in disbelief when a player suddenly shone with a red light and changed shape into a hawk, their level of awe was greatly reduced when the Hawk spread its wings and hopped a couple of times as if trying to figure out flying.
Mark spent almost 3 minutes trying to figure out the motions for flying it was surreal as his body literally transformed into a hawk. Eventually he managed the wing motion and launched into the air, soaring above Tenochtitlan before turning south. He had two more animal forms to unlock and about 100 levels he needed to grind before he left the Aztec region for the north. The eyes of the hawk were outrageous and Eztli soared higher and higher into the sky he glanced from time to time to the upper right hand side of his vision to peak at his magic points. It looked like his current points could only maintain this form for an hour or two at the rate it was being depleted. On the bright side the speed of this hawk form was no joke and he covered a huge amount of territory flying south for about 40 minutes, until he saw the hunting ground he wanted to monopolize.
Folding his wings he dove to the ground, spreading them at the last minute then landing in a tree¡¯s branches on the edge of a clearing. For a first landing he felt it went pretty well. Then he canceled the spell.
Changing back into a human was much less eye catching then changing into the bird, and didn¡¯t come with a blood red light, his eyesight got so much worse he felt he needed glasses it was an awkward moment where he almost felt half blind after enjoying the eyes of a hawk. He quietly dropped from the tree to the ground and started to make his way west. He had seen the hunting ground he needed to the west of where he landed.
After moving through the jungle for about 10 minutes he came to a cliff¡¯s edge and under it was a large group of Caimans resting on a river bank. These were foes ranging from level 30 to level 100. He knew this was a famous low level grinding spot for shaman and other ranged dps thanks to the Caiman¡¯s poor movement range on land, and the small cliff face you could attack them from.
Shaking the wand as instructed in the video he cast blood field around himself, then activated blood magic, then with a flick of the wrist created a blood spearThe narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Blood Field: creates an area approximately (Affinity/5) meters in diameter centered on the caster, in which all creatures which die while in this field provide ((affinity+level)/1000 to a max of 1/10) of the target¡¯s HPs and MPs to the spell caster. Casting Consumption -50MP/Min
Blood Magic: allows the caster to use HP in exchange for MP when casting a spell.
Blood Spear: Automatic Hit Magic Attack, Range 50 Meters, Damage (100*(level/10+wisdom/50))*Affinity, Armor and Reflex as well as level adjustment can mitigate damage. Cost 50MP Causes ¡°black magic¡± type damage for the sake of immunities and resistances
This was where his fraudulent Blood Magic affinities he earned in creation will really shine. Normally the level adjustment from a level 1 character attacking a level 30 mob would be so severe he could spend all day attacking it and never kill it. However now, he had a base damage of 46k or so, even with a 1/30 reduction in damage from the level shift he¡¯d still do 1533 damage. The trick was what type of armor or reflex mitigation he¡¯d face.
Eztli waved the wand over his head and cast a blood spear at one of the smallest Caiman he could see. Generally level was directly proportionate to size in these mobs. A damage number of 404 popped up over the head of the small caiman. Eztli winced, apparently these monsters had a high resistance to this magic. It roared and started darting across the shore, eventually ending up under the cliff face inside his blood field. Smiling Eztli waved the wand again casting out another blood spear. He kept an eye on his own hit points, he was spending them to cast this, mostly because Caiman¡¯s didn¡¯t have mana so he¡¯d recover none of his mana back from killing one. Another 404 popped up over its head. He did the math in his head and realized he¡¯d have to turn off blood casting in order to kill it, a level 30 basic mob should have around 6000-9000 hit points. He waved the wand again and hit it for another 404, then one more time and 404 popped up again. He deactivated blood casting and continued to cast with mana this time.
404
404
404
¡
By the time he cast the spell for the 20th time he had grown rather proficient with the basic motion, and no longer needed to think about it to cast. The Caiman suddenly let out a pained roar and collapsed. +800 HP, +200 MP popped up along with a whopping 253,500 xp points. He leveled up a number of times in a row; ending at level 11, with 33,500/66,000 xp needed for level 12. He quickly dumped half his 100 stat points into wisdom, the other half into constitution.
The he cast blood magic again and took aim at another small Caiman, then attacked. The first attack did 4216 damage and more than half the Caiman¡¯s life vanished. He waited for it to enter range of the blood field and cast again. Killing the caiman and restoring the 150 life he lost between the field and two spears when another +800 HP, +200 MP prompt popped up. This time a 160,550 popped up for xp, leveling him up two more times to level 13, with 55,050/91,000 toward the next level. Grinning at the delectable hunting, he then examined his spell list spells that might have become available with the level up, sure enough at level 12 ¡°Blood Ball¡± was enabled, blood ball was basically a version of fireball providing some solid AOE damage at the cost of some health for the caster.
Eztli carefully waved his wand as he copied the wand motion from the small video and a large ball of blood floated into the are in front of him, selecting where to drop it wasn¡¯t too hard he just had to focus his eyes where he wanted it to go, then point his wand to make it go. Blood ball wasn¡¯t a great AOE spell because it did damage to the caster and it was an untargeted AOE meaning it would harm allies if carelessly used. However, it was fantastic in this situation.
Blood Ball ¨C creates a ball of blood, which explodes dealing damage to everything inside 5m radius, damage determined by (Affinity+level+100)*(Wisdom/10). COST: 250HPS, 500MPs causes black magic type damage (for the sake of resistances and immunities)
The ball blew up right over the head of the middle of the nest of Caiman, a series of damage values ranging from 1 to 500 popped up on every Caiman in the group became hostile to him including a couple of the big level 100 ones, and made their way over to the cliff face. Then Eztli started to rain more Blood Balls down on the Caiman at the bottom of the cliff, sprinkling in some Blood Spears to quick kill some of the weaker targets and recharge his MP and HP. His level started climbing like mad and the damage he did to the Caiman started to climb with his level.
With careful management of his health and magic using the blood field for full effect he kept his health and magic basically full while he cast a continuous stream of magic down on the heads of the slow Caiman. As they respawned on the riverbank (they crawled out of the river) he would cast more blood balls to draw their agro. After casting a certain number of blood magic spells, he got a prompt his blood magic affinity increased by +1. Once he saw that he started to throw the currently useless ¡°Curse¡± magic at the caiman too, meanwhile he was dumping all his attribute points into Wisdom and Constitution at an 8 to 2 ratio. He didn¡¯t need a lot of extra constitution and he knew adding too much too early could gimp him going forward, he just recalled at the pain and effort he went through getting constitution buffing items in the late game due to a lackluster constitution stat. When using blood magic constitution was as good as wisdom and while he would eventually rely on other spells and many of his blood spells will get put on the back burner, he would need the high constitution if he wanted to dominate in pvp and late game raids like he used to. Finding items for Shaman which buffed wisdom was childsplay. Finding items which buffed constitution was not. So, he sacrificed a little power now for bigger rewards later
His casting got rather proficient, he was now waving his wand quickly. There were no cooldown timers in this game. The limits to spell casting were the relatively long casting times, and how easy it could be to be interrupted. While the old VRMMO didn¡¯t use hand motions to cast spells it did have casting timers. He strongly suspected the bigger late game spells would have elaborate hand gestures to guarantee a long and easily interruptible motion for non-spell casters to fuck with your casting. On the bright side most of his favorite spells really didn¡¯t have long casting times, and many of them had some added advantages when his build got complete.
He basically put his mind on autopilot while he was destroying the Caiman population at this point in the river. Eventually he started to get prompts about his Shamanic magic getting a +1 affinity after casting a number of curses, so he kept raining the borderline useless curses at the caiman. He had to admit it was fun casting his blood magic like this. He felt like he was exploiting the heck out of the game, when he remembered how painful it was for him to correct his old archer build. The first hundred levels took forever for him. Of course, there was nothing fraudulent about this build, he just wasn¡¯t used to playing the low levels with a properly min-maxed build. When he got tired of casting spells, he took a break to check out the LM_STARS forum. It was there he realized that he wasn¡¯t fraudulent in the least. The other members of LM_STARS were all leveling up like mad like he was right now, judging by the forum posts. Leo was already level 100 apparently. He was just level 67, which put him about in the middle of the group. He frowned thinking about leveling efficiency and decided to finish off the 2 level 100 caiman and change his strategy up to catch up a bit to Leo.
Standing up he checked out his spell list and noted several new spells in the blood tree were available. Blood Wound and Blood Puppet. He grinned, as his favorite blood spell was on the list. Then he cast blood puppet on the less wounded lvl.100 Caiman. The Caiman howled in pain and then became ridged, Eztli felt the great burden controlling such a huge monster was on his mind, and directed it to attack the other level 100 caiman. Suddenly the huge monster launched itself at the other large Caiman and they both started to battle without need for his control. He relaxed the control and watched the show. Sure, enough the healthier one, won landing him 73,880 experience, however since he needed nearly 2.2mil experience points to get to level 68, his experience bar didn¡¯t fill. Then he commanded it to attack the next biggest Caiman. Using blood puppet, he slaughtered all the remaining Caiman. He examined his experience bar and sighed, it looked like level 68 would take a bit more time.
----------------------------------
Character: Eztli
Age: 18
Social Status: Aztec Nobel
Level: 67 (1,798,325/2,211,000)
Hit Points (0.5): 10,753
Magic Points (0.8): 48,240
Defense: 105
Strength: 110 (5%) = 116
Agility: 100 (5%) = 105
Constitution: 292 (10%) = 321
Wisdom: 818 (10%) = 900
Intelligence: 220 (5%) = 231
Charisma: 100 (5%) = 105
Willpower: +15
Poison/Disease Resistance: +3
Pain Resistance: +3
Reflexes: +1
Skill Trees: 3/8
Blood Magic
Ritual Bless and Curse (Shamanic Version)
Animal Form (Quetzalcoatl Version)
Skills: 0/10
Bonus Skills: Cannibalism, Intimidation (+22)
Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (10/10), Inca (10/10)
Knowledge: Religion: Aztec Gods (Max)
Affinities: Blood Magic (+98), Shamanic Magic (+22), Air Magic (+1)
Items: Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian), Ceremonial Macuahuitl, Bone Wand (Poor)
Relations:
(none)
Accolades:
Perfect Clear: 5% to all attributes
Top of the World (Tenochtitlan): 5% to Constitution
Tattoos (Magic):
Quetzalcoatl: 5% to Wisdom, +1 Affinity with Air Magic, +1 Affinity with Shamanic Magic
Chapter 8 - When sightseeing sometimes its better to take a bus
Mark woke up at 4am sharp. He had logged out around 11pm the prior night, and scarfed down a cold sandwich left on the table by Bliss. He wasn¡¯t particularly hungry, just felt warn out after a 16-hour gaming session the prior day. He put a pot of coffee on and started perusing the forums. It seemed everyone from LM_STARS ¡°a¡± team was over level 50. He wasn¡¯t particularly worried about keeping up in the short term, the amount of XP needed for each level up just got progressively more and more which would slow down everyone¡¯s leveling pretty soon. Judging by the forums it seemed the general public was mostly dealing with lvl.1-20 stuff. There were a lot of complaints about screwing up their build with the unclassed characters, and cries for more guidance from EAB about how to make a good unclassed character. There were the standard stories about PvP, and complaints about the open world pvp in this game. One of the ¡®features¡¯ of this game is there are no ¡°no-pvp¡± zones. Pvp is allowed anywhere on the map. The only consequences being the guards in cities becoming agro on the pvp ¡°red¡± players, or getting yourself flagged permanently ¡°red¡± in a region. So of course, there is a sizeable number of 14yos with too much time on their hands running around attacking people at random. PvP was actually a solid strategy for power leveling, he seemed to recall if you took player bounties and killed your bounty you got x5 the xp you¡¯d normally get for killing a player of that level (generally players were worth x3 the xp a similar leveled basic mob). Which meant if you bounty hunted players your level you only needed to kill 7 pvp¡¯ers to level up. He remembered there were some players who basically power leveled straight to 1000 using this method. Since being a ¡°red¡± player basically made you stand out as a giant xp pill to bounty hunters, random ganking pvp was pretty rare in this game back when he played. Of course, since everything is new, ganking is a major epidemic right now. Most players don¡¯t know about the bounty hunting mechanic. And so, they were crying about the issue in the forums.
There was a new ¡°LM_STARS¡± video gathering millions of views. He popped in the thread titled ¡°YOU GOT TO SEE THIS!!!!!!¡± He clicked the video and nearly spat out his coffee. It was a mini-movie about his character.
The movie started with native drums playing in the background and a panning shot of the wild jungle and a wild Jaguar warrior. He was sure some of this was probably pulled out of his play video at some point in time, but it was cut in a way to set the scene, the scene fades to black and we get a ¡°story¡± told mostly through pictures. A young boy living in squalor, scrambling through a market, snagging a cotton cloak left bundled up forgotten under a table then seemingly deciding what to do with his windfall before going to the pyramid to ¡°change his fate¡±, the boy climbs the great pyramid to the backdrop of the human sacrifices to bravely consult the priests at the top, which leads to him being instructed in human sacrifice. His character looked particularly devilish when he took a bite of the heart, some effects were clearly added to darken the room and make the flames seem more supernatural. Next we have the young man as a young adult, setting out on a journey, and meeting the demonic Quetzalcoatl, they way they cut it by focusing on his Quetzalcoatl tattoo and the image of Quetzalcoatl on the Ceremonial Macuahuitl made it appear as if this was a mission given him by the priests the scene was demonic and barbaric, next we cut to the young man in the center of the city at the base of the pyramid, again the way the scene was cut seemed to imply he had just left the pyramid, and then in a flash of red light he had transformed into a hawk and took flight into the sky, the hawk vanished into the clouds and the screen faded to black with a simple LM_STARS logo.
The replies were numerous,
-What game are these guys playing? I¡¯m STILL running fetch quests for my mother!?
-I play in Tenochtitlan and chose one of the template shaman, and I can¡¯t fly. What shit is this? Should I remake as a classless character?
-Does anyone know who this guy is? Anyone recognize him?
-He¡¯s using an RP name, Eztli, I saw him in the square when he turned into the hawk yesterday. I thought it was an NPC quest.
-the poster above me is a liar
-the poster above me is a liar
-the poster above me is envious
-What level do you have to be to fly?
-do you think a hawk has a high attack power?
-first post!
-anyone know how to join LM_STARS?
-f-you
-@first post, you¡¯re too late for first
-they¡¯re really pushing themselves in this title, where is school_girl?
-seriously, I want to see holly!
Closing the forum post out of embarrassment, he checked the clock. Noting it was almost 5:30, he changed into some joggling cloths and left the house at 6am sharp. The three-mile jog took exactly 35 minutes, and he took a hot shower, then made breakfast for Bliss, feeling a bit childish with all the gaming he¡¯s been doing he made a smiley face out of eggs bacon and toast on her plate, then covered it and put it in the microwave, as she clearly wasn¡¯t up yet. Then he logged back into the capsule.
He checked the LM_STARS message board and email, noting nothing of importance he sent a message to holly about his desire to do a couple of different instanced dungeons north of the city today, then entered Underworld
He was still standing on the small cliff by the side of the river, a new herd of Caimans were piled together on the river bank, sleeping. He waved the wand over his head and turned into a hawk, then nearly became Caiman food, as he nearly blew the takeoff, falling down to the river bank before sorting out his wings and taking off into the sky inches from a Caiman¡¯s open mouth. He was now high enough level he wanted to unlock the Panther and Python forms, so he took a long detour back to the city crossing over swamps and jungles, his sharp hawk eyes searching for a panther or python. Whether it was bad luck or they were higher level then he recalled, he never spotted a single Python or Panther, even with the long detour, dispirited with his bad luck he checked his MP, and regained his spirit, now that he was level 67 he could pretty much maintain this form for days without issue, spreading his wings and enjoying the feeling of flying, he caught an updraft and soared high into the sky, lazily making his way north.
Jungle, and small villages passed by, most of the villages sported hostile ¡°red¡± mobs of NPCs. When the pyramid came into view on the horizon, he started to see signs of the first players out this way. Spinning lazily in an updraft a thought occurred to him ¡°highest man-made object?¡± shouldn¡¯t there be an accolade for climbing the tallest natural object in the region as well?
Excited he set his avatar to afk which amusingly paused him mid flight in the sky, and opened a web browser. He seemed to recall which mountain he needed, but instead of trusting his memory of something he heard about in the war, he double checked it first. -Pico de Orizaba. A volcano about 200KM south east from Tenochtitlan it even had an Aztec name Citlalt¨¦petl, or White mountain.
Taking his avatar off afk he tumbled in the wind, it took a moment to remember how to fly, catching himself after a hundred meter fall, then turned into the rising sun, climbing higher until he was brushing up against the low hanging clouds in the sky, traveling at a ground churning pace eastwards. He figured he¡¯d probably have to bend his flight south a bit, but he wasn¡¯t sure how much, navigating by topography was a little tricky so he was going to depend on the insane eyesight of the hawk to fill in for whatever faults he might have as a navigator. The human villages continued to spread out under him and after about 40 minutes he caught sight of a faint mountain ridge to his southeast, banking in that direction, he flew another 20 minutes before those eyes could make out what was probably his destination, a large cone volcano with a glacial covered peak. The volcano was so tall he realized he was probably flying too low to make the peak, and started to climb.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The closer he got the more absurd the mountain in his vision became. It simply dwarfed every other landmark around it. His sense of caution started to kick in as he neared it. He had been lulled into complacency because of how realistic everything looked in this game, he forgot this was essentially a fantasy game. It wouldn¡¯t be surprising at all to run into a family of dragons or something on this mountain; it was far too eye catching, and its long distance from Tenochtitlan made it an ideal quest location or home for a field boss. Furthermore, he knew the further you got from a hub city like Tenochtitlan the higher level the mobs tended to be, up to level 500 at least.
He closed in on the mountain in a slow spiral high from the sky, paying sharp attention for any movement. As he neared the peak, he started to notice around the base of the mountain were groups of Chanekeh. He felt a headache coming on, Chanekeh were at essence ¡°nature sprites¡± and in Ireland or even further north with other native people these would probably be a blessing to find, however the Aztec version were level 200-250 killing machines which simply slaughtered anything encroaching on their domain. With Chanekeh here the chances of something terrifying like one of the five Centzonm¨©mixc¨a probably was on or near the peak. Likely Tlo-tep¨¥tl, the real question was whether the game classified Tlo-tep¨¥tl as a demi-god (in which case he¡¯d be a level 1000 boss monster) or a field boss. Either way, neither was something he could fight. He was tempted to take a dive for the mountain peak and see if he could get the Accolade without fighting anything, then take the death penalty and respawn in Tenochtitlan.
He pondered for a long moment, then laughed to himself, this was a game, why not try it right? So he climbed high until he was about 1000 meters above the mountain, then made his way close to the peak, before making a dive for the absolute highest speck of land his eyes could see. The biggest advantage of the Hawk form was it was absolutely the fastest flying creature when it was in a dive, easily getting to250 KM/h, as the ground grew larger and larger in his eyes, he got more and more nervous trying to judge when to pull out of the dive he wanted to basically land on the peak without any pause to see if he could grab the accolade for reaching it. At the last moment he spread his wings to pull out of the dive and promptly killed himself on the mountain peak.
It was so fast he didn¡¯t even feel the impact. His soul floated above his corpse, a red smear on the mountain peak. He actually started laughing it was so stupid. After catching his breath he looked around, and figured staying here was a waste of time, he hit the respawn button and lost all his XP in his current level resetting his progress to 0/2,211,000 toward level 68. It could have been worse, had he been under 50% on his progress toward level 68 he would have lost the level as well. His character spawned in the central plaza at the steps of the great pyramid. Checking his items (didn¡¯t have many) he was glad to see he didn¡¯t drop anything. Death carried with it a chance to drop something. It was a low chance to normal players, and zero chance in a raid dungeon, however if you died in PVP or were killed as a red player your chance of dropping an item was 100%. When red players died, they actually had a chance to drop two items.
As he was checking his inventory, his eyes caught on something new, and he grinned. His death wasn¡¯t in vain.
Accolade: Aztec Explorer ¨C Found 1 of 3 natural wonders in your region, (Peak of Citlalt¨¦petl), +2.5% to all Attributes, +10 affinity with spirit magic
He had a pretty good idea what another ¡°natural wonder¡± would be in central Mexico, this was likely Lake Chapala. It was about 400km from Tenochtitlan (this time to the west), and likely probably a home for another field boss or god, he was sure. As for the 3rd ¡°natural wonder¡± he would probably have to do some research to find a likely candidate, though he suspected it was probably the volcanos Popocat¨¦petl or maybe Iztaccihuatl just to the south of the city
Looking around the central square he paid attention to the party formation announcements. To his disappointment he didn¡¯t hear anyone calling for the raid dungeon he wanted to do. As a result he figured he¡¯d make his own team.
Turning into a hawk, he took wing, this time without embaressing himself, and soared to the north gates of the city, then dropped from the sky next to the guard house. Eztli approached the guardhouse and presented himself to the guardsman.
¡°Hello soldier, I heard your captain was looking for help with something unexpected.¡± Eztli heard no such thing, there was actually 8 quests he was skipping to start this dialogue, but the nice thing about the AI in Underworld is it didn¡¯t know he had skipped the rest of the questline, He just had to say the right words to trigger the quest.
The soldier stood there a moment, almost as if he wasn¡¯t going to answer the question then said ¡°Stay here sir¡±, and knocked on the guardhouse door. Shortly after a short fat man waddled out of the guard house. ¡°A savior! You¡¯re a Savior! Bandits those horrible monsters took a precious cargo back to their hideout. The guardsmen found the hideout but were all wiped out trying to enter. It seems these men are led by a terrible demon, a Tzitzimitl. I suggest you gather a strong party before venturing forth."
Quest Notification: You¡¯ve been offered a sharable RAID. It¡¯s advised you form your party now prior to accepting the raid. Once you accept the RAID you can not add any more members to the party. This is a Level 70 raid, minimum level allowed is level 50, all characters under level 65 will be raised to level 65 during the raid. All Characters higher then level 70 will be lowered to level 70 during the raid. Maximum party size is 8.
Accept the Raid; Battle the Demon Tzitzimitl? Y/N
Mark changed his speaking channel from local to ¡°region¡±. Region chat was heavily monitored, spammers, scammers and abusers could find their accounts suspended if they cluttered up region chat, so Mark wrote up a quick party invite and posted it
LF7- lvl.70 RAID, min lvl.50. Need Tanker, Healer, DPS whisper Eztli with character info for invite
He was expecting to take half an hour to scrape together a team, considering the low level of the general public at this time, but it seemed his fear was unfounded as the name of his character Eztli had been revealed in several form posts after the posting of the video from LM_STARS. As a result, he was deluged with party applications.
In a few minutes he had invited the 7 most promising members. Two template Jaguar warriors (tankers), Marz_20_XxX, and POUNDU, both level 60, at this stage in the game the template characters tended to be better balanced toward certain roles. It wouldn¡¯t be until around level 200-500 that their advantages would melt away and they would fall behind most classless builds. This was especially true for tankers. He grabbed 3 classless for DPS, FISH_LOVER, Duuca, and Sexy_Librarian, for classless characters they all had solid DPS skill trees and were all level 50-60 meaning they were solid players, the healers were both template builds ¡°ENRAGEA¡± and ¡°Golden_Flower¡±, at level 50 and 61 respectively.
It didn¡¯t take long for the group to gather at the gate. Everyone had actual equipment on, making Mark feel a bit naked without any equipment. Obviously, they had been grinding quests in and around the city (quests were the easiest way to get equipment and material rewards, only humanoid monsters dropped usable items, and no one here was a high enough level to go hunting hostile tribesmen yet. Once they had all gathered Eztli gave them a quick rundown, it was almost surreal, he remembered running this quest so many times in the past his instructions were almost automatic.
¡°This RAID is simple, we¡¯ll run it on EPIC difficulty, don¡¯t worry a PUG can do it. I¡¯ll set the drops to need/roll at the end. Which means all drops will be auto looted and only when we clear or quit the raid will they become available. The unclaimed items will be distributed randomly. This is a simple one, there is one path, and it¡¯s just wide enough for two tankers to block off so the rest of the party can attack from range, which is why all our DPS is ranged DPS. I¡¯ll be providing curses and blessings, healers focus on the tankers, when we get to the boss, the strategy is simple. He¡¯s vulnerable to taunts so the tankers can hold the agro, the DPS needs to spread out a bit, he has a melee attack which creates a damage wave which will go straight through the tanker and hit anything behind it. Luckily the battle is in the only big room in the dungeon so we don¡¯t have to be stuck behind the tankers. There are no other mobs, just do your job and it will go easy. Got it?¡±
Everyone nodded. Eztli accepted the quest from the fat man, and set the difficulty to epic.
Raid Accepted: Battle the Demon Tzitzimitl
Eztli then waved the wand over his head and turned into a hawk, then launched himself into the sky, saying over the team channel, ¡°Use the team map to find me, I¡¯ll be at the dungeon¡¯s entrance.¡± And flew straight to the entrance of the instanced dungeon, figuring it would probably take the rest of the team ten minutes to get here; as it wasn¡¯t far from the gates of the city. He was probably going to run this dungeon all day just to equip himself with proper equipment; He was planning to run this one until he was level 75, he figured it would probably take 6 times to manage that.
Stretching his limbs after transforming back into a human shape he took a seat on a rock next to the dungeon entrance and waited for his team.
Chapter 9 - Bad Luck is Contagious
The other seven members of his PUG showed up as expected, 10 minutes after him. They entered the raid dungeon in a group, with the two tankers up front, the ranged dps in the middle and the healers at the back. The ¡°cave¡± was about wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. When you started a raid in this game you were given an option to chose the difficulty, from 1 to 5 stars. However, 30 years ago, no one called it by the star rating, they called it ¡°Weak, Normal, Tough, Hard, Elite¡±. Despite what might make sense, normal ¡°toughness¡± was 2 star because that was the default difficulty for a Raid. Some raids were impossible on ELITE with a PUG (Pick up Group, or a RAID with randos), however if you wanted the most and best loot drops you needed to run them on Elite, same for the accolades. Not all raids gave you an accolade that adjusted your stats (some gave titles), but they all gave an accolade if you cleared it on Elite. The result is the number of accolades you could find in this game probably numbered over a million.
When he played the game 30 years ago he didn¡¯t become interested in Accolades until he was level 1000, and he saw how much you could strengthen your character with them. He wasn¡¯t planning on going out of his way to collect accolades, but he wouldn¡¯t avoid collecting them either. Because once he was level 1000 he¡¯d have to go around seeking the damned things out anyway, and it was simply better to gather them as you leveled up. There were larger raids then 8 person, but 8 people was the limit on party size, so if you wanted to run a larger raid, you would have one party with 8 people, and those would be the captains for the 8 parties (max size for a raid was 64 people).
The party made its way down the cavern without incident, until they ran into the first mobs, groups of foes (in this case bandit raiders were their names), each group was made up of 14 foes, and in thie passageway it appeared that 3 such groups instantly got agroed on their group. Eztli didn¡¯t wait for the tankers to start taunting, he started getting ready to cast a curse which he unlocked; it was one of his favorite curses for raids and PVP called ¡°Bad Luck is Contagious.¡±
Bad Luck is Contagious: Continuous single target, AOE curse. Target is cursed with ¡°bad luck¡±, all attack damage dealt by target is min possible, cannot crit with any skills, magic or attack, all damage done to target is maximum possible value, any attack which can result in a critical attack, will. Affects all of targets ¡°allies¡± within 5m of target with the same curse. Target may be anyone within line of sight from caster. Does not count as an attack, nor will it generate aggression in battle. COST: 100MP/SEC
Waving the wand about Eztli quickly cast blood field and blood casting, then cast bad luck is contagious on the strongest looking foe in the mob. The mob of 14 was made up of Lieutenant class foes with 3 sub boss level commanders. All enemies in a raid typically had x3 the HPs a normal mob at it¡¯s level would have, and all lieutenant class typically have x2 the attack power and hp of a normal mob, where as sub bosses were x3. Meaning each of these foes had well over 100,000 hps. It might seem hopeless, at least Eztli would be crushed by a mob of 14 lieutenant and sub boss class raid mobs, but that was why he brought the template build tankers. Template Tankers in this game lived up to their name, a properly build tank in this game could take the agro of all 3 of those groups and with minimal healing support, assuming they weren¡¯t debuffed by something, survive indefinitely. These mobs didn¡¯t debuff, so this group would be fine with one tanker. However Template Tankers usually had a couple of weaknesses. One their damage output was nonsensically low, two their taunts could only affect 14 foes at a time. Meaning in a situation like this one, one tanker couldn¡¯t hold the agro of all 3 groups by himself. A skilled tanker could keep the attention of the mobs he needed to, but with this being a PUG, he didn¡¯t want to risk it and so went with 2 even though it was going to hurt their clear time in this raid.
The two tankers did their job and made a human wall the raging mobs couldn¡¯t pass. While the DPS rained as much AOE damage as they could on the heads of the mobs. With 42 foes packed into a tight space most of the foes were taking splash damage from the AOE attacks. Within seconds the hit points of the Lieutenant class mobs had sunk into the red, and soon they started to die. What little damage Eztli had done to himself with the blood casting, returned 8-fold in seconds, keeping his life and mana filled as if he hadn¡¯t cast a thing. When the sub-boss he tagged with the curse appeared to be on the edge of dying, he shifted targets to another sub-boss and continued the debuff.
It took less then 3 minutes to clear out the three mobs, and Eztli could see the confidence on their faces. ¡°Ok, well done, we¡¯ll do it just like that. DPS if it looks like the tankers didn¡¯t pull enough mobs into the ball, just pull another mob on your own, as you can see the healers can keep up just fine, and these passageways will keep us from getting overwhelmed.¡± Eztli spoke to the team. Motivated they all moved forward quickly, they all had seen the huge XP they had gotten and were eager to pillage this place for all it was worth.
It was an uneventful 40 minutes later the group arrived in the boss room. The most exciting thing that happened was one of the tankers tripped and the mobs almost got to the ranged DPS however the fallen tanker¡¯s taunt still worked so he was able to keep the agro on him, and off the dps, so nothing really happened as a result. The boss fight was moderately uneventful. The Tzitzimitl was basically a skeleton in a kilt. It had some powerful attacks and the tankers almost bit it a couple of times until the healers figured out it¡¯s attack patterns and times their strongest heals for when the Tzitzimitl performed his strongest attacks. It took almost 20 minutes to kill the boss, and the party was transported outside the cave, with Eztli gaining 2 levels and everyone else gaining 3-5, plus an Accolade: ¡®Doesn¡¯t Fear the Reaper¡¯ which granted a cosmetic title that reads the sameLove this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
They held a party auction for the items found, there were two gold ranked items (item quality runs from white (poor), green, blue, red, copper, silver, gold, purple), however both were not appropriate for Eztli¡¯s skills and so he passed on them; instead he ended up with a silver ¡°quality¡¯ belt (that granted +100 armor and +20 CON) and a ring (+100 Wisdom). With the spoils split, Eztli told the crew he was going to do the raid again, 5 of the party stayed on for it, and he quickly filled the missing bodies with new players, and repeated the run.
This went on all day, each run taking about an hour, and about 20 minutes between. After 7 of these runs Eztli was equipped head to toe with silver ranked equipment, nothing impressive, but since he didn¡¯t particularly care about equipment until he reached later levels; his playstyle was definitely not dependent on items, he figured it would give him a nice margin of error and help speed up his leveling a bit. He also had gained 9 levels in the 7 runs, ending up at level 76, which was enough to swap over to a new raid. He just didn¡¯t feel like running another raid right now, so instead he logged out to make dinner for Bliss and see what was happening in the world. While working on dinner, he flipped on the 3DP (3d projector) and switched to a popular news channel.
Unsurprisingly the news was meaningless, basically all it talked about were fever games, reminding him why he didn¡¯t watch the news in the first place. Ever since the world government took over the news reported meaningless pap, and next to nothing about the things going on with the government or other areas of the world. For example, currently there was some mindlessly cute woman rambling about whether or not Underworld was desensitizing people to human misery. Mark laughed at that thought. The world just went through a more then a decade long war, in which half the major population centers were nuked or straight genocided, and the world population took a dive from 9 billion to 3 billion. The idea that human life could hold much value in such a world was laughable. Of course, she was pretty and worked for the state so she got paid to ask nonsensical questions like that. Even better, he knew, since the state had approved Underworld her question could be seen in certain lights as criticism of the state. So, he knew she wouldn¡¯t actually ¡°conclude¡± that Underworld was dangerous no matter how provocative the question, the ¡°news¡± she would report would end up promoting underworld for some reason or other.
Not that he minded the obvious promotion piece; the bigger Underworld got, the more likely it was he could finally turn around the shit pile that was his life, and his girl¡¯s life.
¡°Nice job Lizzie!¡±
Elizabeth Garren, the ¡°mindlessly cute¡± tv reporter Mark had just been mocking before changing the channel winced at the mindless compliment from the equally brainless hairdresser. 28 years old and on a mission, she slipped away from the news desk heading toward the station manager¡¯s office, she had seen the look on his face during her broadcast and knew she couldn¡¯t ignore him this time.
¡°Fucking hell Garren!¡± The suited company man shouted at her ¡°I don¡¯t care what the rest of your piece said, you¡¯re questioning the government with that opening question. You can¡¯t do that if you want to have a job!¡±
¡°I thought it was a gripping opener, besides, the piece was a blowjob to Underworld, and the regulators who approved it.¡± Lizzie replied with a tired voice.
¡°I said I don¡¯t care how the rest of the report went, you CANT question the government like that.¡±
¡°Listen¡¡± she thought a moment trying to recall this scarecrow¡¯s first name, she never forgot a first name, which was an important skill as a news reporter, of course being a news reporter didn¡¯t quite mean what it used to mean. ¡°Jim¡± she recalled it suddenly, ¡°you and I know this game contains content the government is purportedly against. For Christ sakes did you see those videos of the endless human sacrificing going on in the Aztec cities? How is that inclusive? Doesn¡¯t that create a negative stereotype about people?¡±
¡°Garren¡¡± he growled in warning glancing at the walls
¡°I¡¯m not saying anything the government wouldn¡¯t agree with. However this time the government approved this title for play, why? To dope the masses with something to entertain them so they don¡¯t act up like they are in¡±
¡°GARREN!¡±
¡°Right right, anyway you and I know what this is about. Aren¡¯t you tired of reading the news the government sends us to report? Wouldn¡¯t you like to do some sort of reporting?¡±
¡°I better like where this is going.¡±
¡°How about I look into some things with Underworld. I¡¯ll make sure nothing goes on air without yours and the government¡¯s approval, what do you say?¡±
¡°NOTHING on air without gold plated approval¡± Jim replied
¡°Good, you¡¯ll like it, trust me.¡± Lizzie knew he¡¯d love it, she just needed to figure out what it was. However, the longer she could keep the boss in the dark the better it was for her. At least she wouldn¡¯t need to read any more press releases from the government as if it¡¯s news for a while. And if she got something, she could air, all the better. These ¡°fever¡± games were destroying humanity, and the quicker she could prove it the better everyone else will be. The problem she was facing was the government seemed content with using these games to keep down unrest.
¡°It will have to be pre-recorded and censored before airing. You know I can¡¯t just write a blank check on this type of investigation.¡± Jim temporized.
¡°you won¡¯t regret it Jim.¡± Lizzie left the office feeling better about her job then at any point in time in the last few years. Her first call was to Leo, if there was anything, she wanted to know about Fever gaming or underworld, the president of LM_STARS was the best place to go.
Chapter 10 - Questions
Bliss came home right around 6pm, as Mark was wrapping up dinner. Mark took a glance at her as she came in and smiled a small smile to himself as he was putting the finishing touches on the potato salad he was making as a side for the burgers he was whipping up. Bliss was wearing something moderately fashionable, and he thought he saw something like makeup on her face. The transformation was a little amusing, but more then anything else, he figured this was a positive change. He had struggled so long to make her safe home and ¡°normal¡± childhood, it hurt to see their poverty take away her chances to be normal. Now he could afford to give her a modest amount of pocket change it seemed that she was spending that money on herself like a normal kid on things like makeup and fashionable clothing.
¡°Those new school clothes?¡± He called to her.
¡°Mmmm¡± came her non-committal reply. He glanced at her and saw her sitting at the dinner table one knee raised to her chin as she flipped the pages in a magazine.
¡°Make any new friends at the mall?¡±
¡°Met a teacher from the high school, she was shopping.¡±
Mark laughed, ¡°Shows me what I know, turns out people still goes to malls. Is it a teacher you¡¯re going to have when school starts?¡±
¡°Mmmm, maybe? I don¡¯t know. She said she¡¯s a homeroom teacher, and I think she said something about being the school librarian. Don¡¯t think she teaches a subject.¡±
¡°Meet anyone your age?¡±
¡°Her younger sister. They were there together. And you weren¡¯t really wrong. No one really was at the mall. The stores didn¡¯t have much on display, they were mostly for package pickup.¡±
¡°you still mad I¡¯m forbidding you from your capsule until you turn 18?¡±
¡°Not really, just bored. School doesn¡¯t start for another 3 weeks, and you¡¯re in that game all day.¡±
¡°Its work. Got to make a name for myself in that game if we don¡¯t want to go back to a trailer.¡± Mark finished dinner, and carried the plate with a couple of hamburgers, and bowl with potato salad to the dining table, and placed them on the table. Bliss quickly snagged two of the hamburgers and scooped out some potato salad for herself.
¡°I know¡± She replied ¡°Its just a little hard to hold a conversation when everyone you meet only wants to talk about some fever thing or other. You know that teacher? She plays Underworld too. She said her parents are as old fashioned as you, and wouldn¡¯t let her play a FBEVR system till she was 18 as well. That¡¯s why she was hanging with her sister. Her sister was bored, and I guess she just died or something in Underworld and wanted a break.¡±
¡°I¡¯m old fashioned?¡±
¡°Duh¡±
¡°Old fashioned huh. Fever hasn¡¯t been out more then a dozen years. How can I have an old-fashioned opinion about it?¡±
¡°I bet you haven¡¯t even hooked up with anyone through fever yet.¡± Mark winced and she continued ¡°I mean that¡¯s what half of everyone spends all their time on fever doing isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°How would I know? And where are you getting that information from?¡±
¡°God, you¡¯re so out of touch Dad.¡± She tossed her magazine to him. It was some teen fashion magazine, yet he was stunned when he noticed half the stories were about the best apps to ¡°hook up¡± with in FBEVR, the cover story for this issue was how sex in Underworld was better then the real thing. He paged through the magazine growing more and more appalled at the contents; he actually was temped to write an angry letter to the editor of the magazine for teaching little girls about this stuff. Then his anger cooled as he though about it rationally. It did make sense in a way. The FBEVR system probably could simulate sex pretty accurately¡ In fact, it probably could produce more enjoyable sex no matter what your kink, you probably could have it safely in these systems. Furthermore, for young girls, it¡¯s an attractive alternative to real young men their age, since they could have relations without fear of disease, pregnancy, danger or gossip. Heck since your avatar was completely changeable it was possible to experience sex as different sexes. It was dawning on him what a nightmarish ¡°pandora¡¯s box¡± had been opened by this technology.
He set the magazine aside then finished the one hamburger he was planning to eat. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me this is why you want to get into FBEVR?¡±
She turned beet red at the question. He sighed. ¡°Sexual relations are not as ¡®innocent and risk free¡¯ as that magazine was portraying. Listen, you¡¯ll be 18 when you can log into that machine. At that point you¡¯ll be legally an adult. Do what you will. But I want you to think this one through for a moment. Since avatars and ID¡¯s can be changed it¡¯s entirely possible the guys your having relationships with in that system could be your mother, or her husband, or even me. You don¡¯t know. Of course, the chances of that are next to non-existent. But I¡¯d like for you to think this one through for a moment. What if it¡¯s some 8-year-old kid? How would you know? How much talking or honesty do you think you¡¯ll run into in there? I don¡¯t mean to rain on your parade here, but I learned this when I was in middle school. Leo was all into this girl he was meeting in Underworld, and ended up wanting to meet her in real life. Of course, I came along with him mostly for the fear that this could go wrong. It almost did. Turned out the young woman he was hooking up with in VR, which I¡¯m sure wasn¡¯t anywhere near as satisfying as FBEEVR, was some old man pedo trying to kidnap some young boy. Never forgot that. Cause I had met his ¡°girl¡± too in game, and never suspected it.¡± He paused, then concluded. ¡°I didn¡¯t make you with some machine. Human relationships are something to be treasured. And sexual relations are the peak intimacy you can have with a flesh and blood person. How devalued do you think this peak ¡°intimacy¡± will be if you have nightly orgies in fever with random people all ¡°feeling¡± as good or better then what you experience with your real-life partner, what if your partner was doing the same? I don¡¯t think it will be possible to have a real deep and lasting relationship with someone once you or they open that pandora¡¯s box. There, your Dad has said his piece. I¡¯ll leave the rest to you, you¡¯re old enough to make up your own mind.¡±The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Silence reigned over the dinner table, while Mark mocked himself in his mind. As a parent he probably was supposed to tell his daughter to not have real sex but have virtual sex. It was much safer physically then the real thing, no fears of disease, rape or unwanted children. However, he just couldn¡¯t get around the things being propagandized to little girls in that teen magazine. It was obvious the type of lifestyle being proposed was one of countless orgies with faceless interchangeable people. What parent could possibly set their child up for a lifestyle like that? The type of damage it could do to your mind must be significant. It seemed like the perfect cocktail to create nymphos, sociopaths or narcissists.
In a virtual bedroom in one of the more popular sex simulation applications on the market for FBEVR, two good looking avatars were just untwining from some serious cardiovascular activity. The man was a bronze skinned Adonis, herculean muscles, gold eyes and hair. The woman was tall with sleek curves, blonde hair and blue eyes, the man was world famous, and the woman wanted to be. Lizzie smiled as she cuddled up next to the huge muscular body next to her. She trailed a finger down his well-defined abs.
¡°You just know the right avatar to use with me don¡¯t you Leo?¡± Her enchanting blue eyes were fixed on his yellow ones.
¡°Why don¡¯t we take this to real life Lizzie? I might not be as tall in real life, but I assure you I¡¯m just as big in all the right places. And you know the real thing is better in a number of ways¡±
Lizzie sighed and then answered, ¡°I would, but you know my boss wouldn¡¯t pay for a trip to Charlotte just to get a toss in the bed. Besides when would we have time to do it right?¡± Her excuse of course was bullshit. Leo might be a global star, but he was also just barely over 5¡¯ tall, Elizabeth liked her men taller then her, and the idea an old man old enough to be her father and just tall enough to kiss her stomach putting his hands on her made her skin crawl. Reporters using their bodies to get inside news wasn¡¯t uncommon before FBEVR, so in a way she was thankful for the technology, it made the most distasteful method of information gathering positively rewarding. Leo¡¯s ¡°Lion¡± persona was attractive in every way Leo himself was not. Of course, her avatar was exactly like herself, she knew what the men wanted when she hopped into bed with her sources.
¡°Hmmm, I¡¯d make time for you, you know. I¡¯m probably the highest-level player in Underworld by a long shot right now. It¡¯s become a problem to find anyone to run raids with. So, a few hours away from the game probably would help me right now not hurt.¡±
¡°Is that right? What about the rest of your ¡°A¡± team? Can¡¯t they keep up with you?¡±
¡°Psh, there is a reason I¡¯m the captain.¡± Leo boasted
¡°So, who do I know in your ¡°A¡± team for underworld?¡±
¡°You probably know all of them. Well by reputation for one.¡±
¡°Oh? Like who?¡± Her hand resting on his abs started to move lower¡
Leo grinned ¡°Holly of course, Jake, Jim, James, Ricardo, Juan¡¡± he trailed off.
Liz did know all those names, but her count only came up to 7 and she knew there were 8 on the A team. ¡°That¡¯s 7 Leo, don¡¯t tell me you forgot the last one, poor guy. His boss doesn¡¯t even remember his name.¡± She teased, as her hand stopped its downward path just shy of it¡¯s destination.
Leo laughed awkwardly, ¡°There is a planned reveal for the team. Don¡¯t dig Liz, the last one will be a surprise. This is Holly¡¯s idea.¡± There was something about Leo¡¯s awkward dodge that struck her as strange, however she wasn¡¯t here about who the ¡°A¡± team was. While other reporters would kill for the scoop she just secured she was fishing for something bigger.
¡°Holly¡¯s idea?¡± She pouted playfully. ¡°Didn¡¯t anyone ever tell you not to talk so much about another woman when you¡¯re in bed with a different woman?¡± She rolled away from Leo, as if upset. Of course, it was an act, she couldn¡¯t care less if Leo invited Holly into a threesome with her. To her this was all work with a little pleasure, but like everyone else, Leo fell for her act hook line and sinker.
¡°Hey, you asked Liz¡± he rolled over and hugged her to his chest as if to placate her anger.
¡°Really? You¡¯re not going to ask me to change my avatar to look like Holly will you?¡±
Leo laughed, ¡°Why would I do that?¡±
¡°So then tell me, what¡¯s so special about underworld that Holly wants to play mystery theater with the last member of your team? Will it help you win a pvp tournament or something?¡±
Leo grumbled in confusion ¡°I thought you didn¡¯t want to talk about Holly?¡±
¡°You just dodged my question!¡± She made herself sound surprised and offended, ¡°Well you made me curious now. What¡¯s so special that Holly wants to make it a surprise?¡±
¡°You¡¯ve seen the videos we¡¯re releasing for Underworld? Holly¡¯s doing a lot of special promotional tricks for Underworld.¡±
¡°You dodged my question again!¡± She kept her tone playful, yet her mind was working overdrive now. Her reporter instincts were screaming at her that there was something newsworthy here, and it was wrapped up in this 8th member in some way. ¡°Are you sure you don¡¯t want me to wear a Holly avatar? For some reason I think you¡¯re favoring her more then me.¡±
Leo scoffed, ¡°Of course I¡¯m favoring her more then you, she¡¯s a valuable teammate.¡±
¡°You¡¯re so loyal.¡± She pouted
¡°Loyal, Leo, Lion, the alliteration works.¡±
¡°Since you won¡¯t stop talking about Holly, how about you tell me about your old friend Mark Ulrich, you made LM_STARS with him. I checked it out, unlike most reporters I can read a Prospectus. Every year since LM_STARS went public a block of 40% of the company has been held by one investor, who¡¯s granted his 40% share voting rights to you. That¡¯s got to be Mark Ulrich. Why did he vanish from the public eye?¡±
Leo¡¯s voice turned cold, and he let go of her avatar, ¡°Stop asking about Mark. Because we¡¯re friends, I¡¯ll do you the courtesy of telling you this. You¡¯re right, those shares are Mark¡¯s. He¡¯s also the one who gave me the voting rights. However, until he wants me to talk about his situation, I won¡¯t talk about it. I¡¯ve never answered questions about Mark. Other then to say he¡¯s a dear friend. Congratulations you¡¯ve got more of an answer from me than anyone else. I will ask however as a ¡®friend¡¯ that you leave Mark alone. He doesn¡¯t want to be in the public eye; its to such an extent he gave me his voting rights. If that can¡¯t convince you and you insist on digging into it, then this will be the last time we talk. He¡¯s my bottom line Liz, don¡¯t touch it.
Elizabeth frowned, she didn¡¯t expect Leo to get so upset at this mark¡¯s name. rolling over to look at him, she felt the need to fix this rift she inadvertently opened, else this whole afternoon would be wasted. ¡°Leo, who do you think I am? I¡¯ll respect your friend¡¯s privacy. However, I expect an exclusive if he plans to break his silence. Is that fair? I¡¯ll keep his secret in exchange I get to tell the story if he ever decides to break his silence?¡± Her offer was calculated to defuse the situation, she knew he¡¯d never believe her and the rift would never be closed if all she did was promise to keep quiet and not investigate Mark, he wouldn¡¯t believe it, properly so. Any reporter who tossed aside that type of story had no business in the field. However, the promise of an exclusive? For an exclusive, yes, a reporter would stop digging, and wouldn¡¯t spread around a story. He¡¯d believe that oath.
Leo¡¯s reaction proved her right, he smiled and jumped back onto the bed. ¡°I knew I could trust you Lizzie.¡± He whispered as he drew her close to him pulling the sheet off her.
¡°MMMmmm¡± She replied absently to his touch as she pondered the situation, she couldn¡¯t tell if she had a lead on a good story here or not yet, but she felt there was something here worth looking in to.
Chapter 11 - Interlude
That evening, after dinner, Mark and Bliss hung out for the first time in a long time, sure they used to live feet from each other in that rusty trailer, but their relationship had been strained under the crushing poverty for years. Not that they ever were particularly close. Between the war and the prison and labor camps after them, he had seen her for less then a month total time in 10 years of her life before she was dropped in his lap. He didn¡¯t particularly blame Lori. After getting married he saw her only a handful more times then he saw Bliss. She was basically abandoned thanks to the war, and their parents dying in the nuking of Los Angeles only increased her sense of abandonment.
He was only upset that she chose this new guy over her own daughter. Granted it gave him a chance to be a father, and he loved his little girl, so it turned out to have a silver lining, but he never forgave her for the pain he saw in Bliss¡¯s eyes for years after being dumped in his lap. His little girl¡¯s heart obviously was bleeding being abandoned by her mother with a guy who was essentially a stranger.
Worse, he couldn¡¯t even give the young girl the love and care she needed. Their crushing poverty didn¡¯t leave him any options to raise her properly. They couldn¡¯t take vacations, they couldn¡¯t take trips. He couldn¡¯t take her to the beach or camping or to amusement parks. He could barely afford food and clothing, handmade gifts or purchased necessities was usually the best he could manage for Christmas. When she started menstruating, the added cost of sanitary pads nearly made them homeless, that was how tight GC was at the time. Overall if asked to name the greatest regret in his life it was not giving Bliss what she needed to have a happy and carefree childhood. So, this rare chance to just hang out with his little girl was absolutely treasured.
They didn¡¯t do much, they played rummy, then watched a very old 2D movie Bliss wanted to watch called ¡°The Notebook¡±, which of course was tragic enough to drag a tear or two out of Mark, however Bliss was made of sterner stuff, and simply made fun of her Dad for crying at that movie, much to both their amusement. After the movie ended, they talked a little bit about school, and her upcoming senior year, then he sent her to bed before turning in himself.
Mark welcomed the new day like he usually did. Quick and simple breakfast, 3-mile run, some forum reading. The new LM_STARS video hit like a bomb on the forums. The new video showed a young man arriving in Boston Harbor by way of a double mast sailing ship. He looked to be 12 or so years old and apparently an orphan. It was fall, and the trees were bare. The scene shifted to a brutal winter. He was living in a slum with a few other orphan children, huddled together to keep from dying. The camera shifted to show a slowly encroaching pack of wolves, obviously targeting the slum children living outside the wall. Some soldiers spotted the wolves and started to fight. The young ¡®hero¡¯ charged out of his shack, and seized a musket from a soldier who was killed by a wolf, as if an action hero from a movie, he ducked a leaping wolf, eviscerating it with a rusty knife as it flew past, it¡¯s guts streaming behind it as it flew by, he then leapt up on top of a shack, and leveled the musket, shooting one wolf after another, his battle was a running one, where he¡¯d shoot, then leap and dodge and make his way closer to the other soldiers, while reloading, and shoot again. Every shot seemingly killing a wolf. Eventually he¡¯s in a circle with a handful of soldiers fighting off the ravenous pack of wolves. The wolves defeated, the men all congratulated the young man, and he gets brought inside the city to get food and warmth. Next, we see, the young man is a handsome adult, wearing a three-cornered hat a black coat and with a musket slung over his shoulder. He¡¯s chummy with the guardsmen, and leaves the village with an Iroquois scout. The scene shifts to him in a tree aiming carefully at a bear, he pulls the trigger and you get an absurdly cinematic ¡°bullet time¡± shot of the musket ball leaving the barrel, and following the ball straight into the bear¡¯s eye. The scene fades to black and the LM_STARS logo.
-You¡¯ve got to be kidding me, SERIOUSLY what game are these guys playing?!
-I started in Boston as an unclassed, and all I did was barely survive the winter outside the city walls. I was hiding during the wolf attack. I didn¡¯t know you could just grab a gun like that?!The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
-Even if you grabbed the gun you would have been wolf food
-You guys know who he is? That¡¯s HAWKEYE, from CoD. I met him in Boston yesterday.
-a CoD pvp champ in an MMO? Bullshit stop lying
-Seriously I ran a raid with him
-riiiiight
-It¡¯s possible, I ran a raid with that Eztli in Tenochtitlan yesterday
-Come on guys, there is no way LM_STARS ¡°A¡± team players will run a PUG, they probably have a whole team supporting each of their ¡°A¡± team in leveling up.
-I didn¡¯t see any team around Leo in Beijing. He seemed to be doing fine alone.
-The Lion is the best gamer in the world, don¡¯t compare normal people to Leo.
-I¡¯m still running fetch quests for my mom, is this game bugged?
Mark closed the forum post, then checked the Tenochtitlan forums on the EAB site. To his surprise the biggest thread going was a post about him.
LM_STARS EZTLI HELPING THE LITTLE FOLKS!!!!
Amused by the strange post title, Mark clicked the link, he couldn¡¯t remember helping anyone recently so he was curious what this one was about.
¡°Guys get this. Eztli was running a BUS for low levels yesterday in a RAID dungeon he unlocked. Not kidding, before you post, read to the end. He got an as yet unknown lvl.70 raid and instead of running an LM_STARS only RAID, he posted for a PUG in the region chat. I got to get in on the ground floor. He was accepting players as low as level 50 for it. I play an unclassed Archer, totally can¡¯t get anyone to party with because all the unclassed players seem to suck. Yet Eztli totally invited me to the PUG. He shared the loot drops fairly, I even got a gold rated bow! All my EQ is silver rated min now. We were running this on top difficulty. And after running the RAID 6 times with him I went from level 50 to level 65. 8 hours, 15 levels. I saw him go from level 67 to 75. He was still running the RAID with PUGs when I logged out. Check the link below I took photos to prove it. He even posed with me for one! I have a video of the raid too but I won¡¯t post that. Dude is a total pro.¡±
-weird
-why would LM_STARS a-team run a bus?
-OP, what¡¯s Eztli¡¯s build?
-Seriously, you can¡¯t just post this without talking about Eztli¡¯s build.
-Guys, he has a serious debuff/buff skill it¡¯s hard to believe. Totally was wrecking the mobs. He didn¡¯t seem to need to cast much else, the few times he did, he used a single target blood spear, did some insane damage, but with all the AOE we had he barely bothered to cast it. Just used it to pull in more mobs into the AOE bombardment, frankly, he had the PUG so well organized it felt like we had 2 too many people running it, too easy. And this was a raid on top difficulty.
-That¡¯s a pro I guess
-I¡¯m having trouble believing the photos. How can a trash pug like that clear a 5-star raid? I know your tank in that 4th picture. He¡¯s trash.
Mark closed out the thread with a frown then called up Leo.
Leo answered in half a minute. ¡°What¡¯s up Mark?¡±
¡°Seen the post in the Tenochtitlan forums about the RAID I was running yesterday?¡±
¡°Hang on.¡± Mark waited for a few minutes then Leo picked up again ¡°Yeah I see it.¡±
¡°I do something wrong?¡±
¡°You¡¯re afraid the Raid video will get out and we¡¯ll lose some money, right? Stop thinking small, this isn¡¯t 30 years ago. We already cut a guide for that raid using your video. We don¡¯t charge for these low-level stuffs. Usually we do these with a backup team, not a PUG but that¡¯s not your fault for not knowing. It only really matters when we get into the high and rare content. Then we¡¯ll want an all LM_STARS team to avoid legal issues over selling the video, and even then, it¡¯s really not important. Do you know what percentage of our income is from RAID videos? Less than 1 percent.¡±
¡°I have a support team?¡±
¡°Yep, each of us do. You haven¡¯t met yours because you can fly, those guys were waiting to help you farm your levels and you flew right past them. Well, not a big deal, by the time the support team found out you were already farming Caimans and there wasn¡¯t any point. They¡¯ve mostly caught up with you though it took them a serious grind to do it. Holly is hunting with her support team. She¡¯s upset that you¡¯re over 10 levels higher than her by the way.¡±
¡°So, running PUGs is fine?¡±
¡°Sure, looks like positive press to me. Don¡¯t worry about it. Just remember as you get more well known you got to remember everything you do will be filmed or recorded. Running PUGs are fine, just don¡¯t screw one up, cause that will end up on the forums too. Same with looting. By the way, when are you going to log in today? Sent you a guild invite, you¡¯re the only one who hasn¡¯t logged in yet to accept.¡±
¡°Oh right, your level 100, you can start a guild at that level.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right, git gud scrub. You need to gain 25 levels to catch up to me, so don¡¯t feel complacent.¡±
¡°Git gud scrub? Dude, that¡¯s so¡ old. Even when we were kids that was old. What¡¯s next Shakespearean English?¡±
Mark hung up on Leo¡¯s laugh, then logged into the game.
Chapter 12 - PVP
Eztli stretched his virtual muscles and looked around. Unsurprisingly thanks to the photos posted in the forum there was a small group of people waiting around the north gate near Eztli when he logged in. When a player logged in it was accompanied by a flash of white light, so of course all eyes in the area found him instantly. It wasn¡¯t hard to tell from the photos roughly where the Raid started from so there was a group of players waiting. The first thing he did was accept the guild invite from Leo, then with a smile he waved to all the players waiting for him, and raised his voice.
¡°Guys, not going to run this one today, I¡¯ll be running another one a bit later, min level for that one is 60. If you want to run this one go up to the guard¡± He pointed to an npc guardsman ¡°and say ¡®Hello soldier, I heard your captain was looking for help with something unexpected.¡¯ The guardsman will go into the house and bring out a short fat man. That¡¯s the quest procedure. Anyone need anything else?¡±
A couple players rushed up to him. ¡°Can I get a picture with you?¡± Was the first thing out of anyone¡¯s mouth.
Eztli replied, ¡°Sure, anyone who wants a picture come around, sorry I can¡¯t do any solo pictures but a group photo is fine, I got to keep up with Leo, right now I¡¯m 25 levels behind so I got to catch up.¡±
Most of the group circled around him for a good scene capture, then with a practiced wave of his new bone wand he transformed into a hawk and took wing, ignoring the calls for items and other random propositions. Overall, he felt he did a good job getting out of there without upsetting anyone, mindful of the advice Leo left him.
The first thing he needed to do was find a panther or python to add to his animal form transformation. When he reached level 100, he was going to leave the Aztec playing area, he figured between the new dungeon he was going to run and the power level grinding spot he¡¯ll run when he hits level 85, he¡¯ll only be in and around Tenochtitlan for another 2 or 4 days max. He flew south over the city, rising high into the sky.
There was something so addicting to flying with wings. He could understand why people became pilots back before most of them were replaced with computers. The more he did it the more instinctive it became, he found he was adjusting to the slightest change in wind flow without even thinking about it. He didn¡¯t know if this was a system correct which occurred more when the player got out of the way and let it work or just how the brain adjusted to this body shape. It really was hard to tell where one ended and the other started. Still the more he flew the less he had to think about what he was doing and just did it. The old flying system wasn¡¯t anywhere near as fun. It was basically a mini-game which you used a controller for.
His hawk vision was truly too good for words, he could see the smallest detail on the ground even flying hundreds of meters in the sky. He redirecting himself toward any body of water he saw, and avoiding human habitations, as pythons and panthers wouldn¡¯t be found near those. Just as he was about to give up, he spotted a curious pursuit occurring on the ground. 3 players were fleeing from 6 players. Two men and a woman, with 4 women and 2 men chasing. Of course, sex was interchangeable in Underworld character creation, so they could all be men for all he knew. The 6 players were all red named meaning they had player killed sometime in the past 24 hours.
He slowed down and watched the interesting show from 1000 feet in the sky, following the chase. He had done the same several times in the past two days, only to move on. He wasn¡¯t a champion of justice or anything, he was sort of curious about the players involved so he paid close attention to both parties. What he saw surprised him. Two of the three being chased were people he ran the PUG with yesterday. Sexy_Librarian and FISH_LOVER. Both were in the pictures that Duuca posted in that forum post. Curious he lowered his altitude a bit to see if he could overhear any conversation.
The first thing he heard shouted from the pursuers was ¡°¡ silver or better item for your life!¡±
The three running were half dead, and the six pursuing were only slightly injured. He couldn¡¯t tell what everyone¡¯s level was, but it looked like the six chasing were all template players based on some of the items they were carrying. Mark wanted to help out the 2 he played with, they ran that dungeon a min of 4 times with him yesterday, he contemplated the situation and decided he could probably pull it off after examining the layout of the land, he flapped his wings and soared higher, heading further along the path the 3 were fleeing, then landed on a thick tree branch on a forested hillock.
He removed the hawk transformation and sent a whisper straight to FISH_LOVER. ¡°See that small forest area to your front, right? Head here, I¡¯ll help you guys out of this one. Just lead them straight into the heart of the small forest and use the trees as cover. Get ready to attack them after getting in cover, what¡¯s the build of your 3rd guy, I don¡¯t know him?¡±
FISH_LOVERs surprised voice came back over the wisper ¡°Eztli? Our third guy is melee DPS, we lost our tanker and healer, and a couple DPS already to them. Only managed to take down their tanker and a melee DPS. They got a couple of healers that really turned the fight against us, and our healer died almost immediately to their ambush.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.
¡°Which one is their toughest fighter, or leader?¡±
¡°The ranged dps shaman, H8KILLZU that one has some sick AOE attacks that we just couldn¡¯t stand up to, he¡¯s the one shouting to drop some items in exchange to be let go.¡±
''Cute name'' Eztli thought to himself before continuing his instructions to FISH_LOVER,¡°I¡¯ll tag their healer ¡°Ocho_Libre¡± with my debuff, let the others know to leave him be.
¡°Don¡¯t we want to kill their healer first?¡±
¡°They got two and the debuff effects thequality of heals too. He¡¯s a shaman healer which means he¡¯s not very good at single target healing, and his AOE heals will be weak with a wide range on the amount of HP healed with the heal effect, meaning he''ll be doing next to nothing thanks to the curse. You¡¯ll see, this will really mess with them. The priest healer needs to go though, it would be best if everyone focused on him first.¡±
A party invite popped up from FISH_LOVER, Eztli had no reason to reject it. Once the party was attacked every member was justified to kill in PVP. This just saved Eztli some trouble in avoiding the red name.
Once he was pulled into the party he noticed two of the dead members of the party were people he ran the PUG with the prior day, the healer Golden_Flower and the poster of that forum post Duuca. He didn¡¯t know the other two dead players, SpikeyBoi, and Mushashi_XXX, ¡°Hey guys, looks like you ran into a bit of trouble leveling today. What was your goal?¡±
¡°Golden_Flower got a quest for Swamp Python fangs. We must have got followed heading out of the city.¡± ¨C Sexy_Librarian
¡°Swamp Python? Lucky day. I need a python myself. Do you guys know where to find them?¡± -Eztli
¡°Yeah, the quest marker pointed to a map location, about 20km from where we were ambushed.¡± -Golden_Flower
¡°We were going to see if Python were a good thing to grind levels on¡± -FISH_LOVER
¡°Well, lets go get your python after clearing up this rabble, FISH_LOVER fill you in?¡± ¨C Eztli
There was general agreement.
¡°Well you dead guys, just head to where you were going in the first place, we¡¯ll meet you down there. Don¡¯t worry we won¡¯t be long behind you.¡± -Eztli
Eztli could now see the group climbing the hill with the PK¡¯er chasing them and shouting at them. He raised his wand above his head, he was careful about making too much motion, for fear of being spotted. And cast blood field and blood casting. Then cast ¡°Bad Luck is Contagious¡± on the healer Ocho_Libre as the 3 being chased ducked behind some huge trees, and the opposition party entered the forest. Unlike NPCs, players would definitely notice the debuff, it should show up as a red debuff icon, though the specifics of the curse shouldn¡¯t be displayed, just the name.
It was their mean looking melee DPS who noticed the status effect and seemed confused, drawing to a stop, their whole group bunched up nicely and Eztli said over the party chat ¡°NOW!¡±
Sexy_Librarian and Fish_Lover both fired off an AOE on the clustered group, while Eztli cast Blood Puppet on their leader H8KILLZU. Eztli almost laughed when he saw one of the skills on H8KILLZU¡¯s skill tree, it was the very definition of an overpowered situational (but usually worthless) skill, called ¡°Spirit explosion¡±, it was an untargeted PBAOE which took half the casters FULL HEALTH in exchange for x5 the damage and 1/3 of his MP. Basically, it was a worthless nuke; there were nukes on many skill trees, some were better than others, this one was a classic template character build nuke, usually useless. The chaos was impressive when H8KILLZU cast his non-targetted PBAOE nuke ¡°spirit explosion¡± wiping half his own party and obliterating half his life with the dangerous skill. He was crying his innocence as his hands moved against his will and cast spirit explosion a second time, killing himself and taking out the rest of the party.
The party was stunned after watching the PK party self-destruct and that turned into confusion when they got the XP from the deaths. Eztli dropped out of the tree and spoke to them over normal chat. ¡°You guys keep what they dropped, you¡¯re the guys who got hurt the most by this.¡±
¡°What was that skill?¡± Sexy_Librarian asked curiously.
¡°Blood puppet.¡± Eztli responded, then shared the information about the skill to the party. ¡°It¡¯s usually not that useful in real PVP, it¡¯s easy to resist in PVP to say nothing for passive immunities on items or skills, it¡¯s much better against mobs, only Boss or Field Boss level mobs get a player¡¯s chance to save against it if they¡¯re not outright immune. H8KILLZU was almost 20 levels lower than me, and this game is less than a week old, the chance he¡¯d have an immunity to this type of control is almost nonexistent, combined with the level split he had no way to resist it. The PBAOE nuke he had unlocked though, that was a bonus, did not expect it to go that easy. Sort of curious how he got enough Spirit Magic Affinity to unlock a nuke. I still haven¡¯t unlocked my nuke.¡±
FISH_LOVER spoke up, ¡°Found your answer. He dropped a gold rated earing, it¡¯s got a +100 affinity for spirit magic and +20 wisdom on it.¡±
FISH_LOVER tossed the earing at Eztli, He caught it out of the air and examined it. It was exactly as FISH_LOVER described, a seriously good accessory dropped from H8KILLZU. Eztli moved to hand the earing back to FISH_LOVER, FISH_LOVER shook his head and a trade pompt popped up in Eztli¡¯s view, the earing was in the box and he already had hit accept, meaning he was giving it to Eztli.
¡°You sure?¡±
FISH_LOVER nodded, ¡°We¡¯d be dead if you didn¡¯t show up, you should keep it.¡±
Eztli shrugged and accepted, then promptly put the earing on, it wasn¡¯t really a help for Eztli today, other then the added wisdom, but when he opened up some spirit magic trees in the next few weeks it would really be a huge boon to him.
¡°Well? What are we waiting for? Time to hunt some Python.¡± Eztli smiled, this earing plus maybe a python? This was already a productive choice to help this crew out.
Chapter 13 - Hazard Zone
It took a couple of in game hours for everyone to gather up near the quest location. Eztli discovered that there was an 8th member of their party, but he had logged off after getting PK¡¯ed, which is why they had the open spot to invite him into the party earlier. The map location for the quest lead to a small valley that Eztli had probably flown directly over at least twice without even noticing it was there, due to the way the cannon overhung the valley, from the air, from the right angle this location would look like flat ground. He noted his failure, he had been so addicted to those hawk eyes, he grew overconfident and sloppy.
From the ground it appeared to be half a cave, with part of the roof collapsed. If caves were hundreds of feet high. It was a dark and oppressive atmosphere in the canyon. The smells of swap gas and rotting things created such a noxious odor that most of the party was struggling to keep from gagging. Eztli had never been here before, but he vaguely recalled the name to this place, as it was famous 25 years ago. ¡°El valle de la podredumbre¡±, or ¡°The Valley of Corruption¡±. One of the most dangerous level 100 locations in the game, certainly not a place he wanted to go as a lvl.76 character. The monsters in here, weren¡¯t amazingly brutal, however they were all poisonous, and the plant life was deadly.
He looked over the party contemplating their abilities and comparing it against what he knew about this area.
Golden_Flower, the one who got the quest in the first place was a short little Aztec beauty, he had mistakenly thought she was a template priestess/healer, due to her spirit healing and spirit communion trees, both were the first two trees unlocked by the template healer. However, when running the dungeon the prior day he realized she was probably unclassed, as she had a unique skill called spirit calling which allowed her to resurrect a teammate leaving them with 1 hit point and no xp loss for the death. Spirit Calling wasn¡¯t a skill the template priests or shamans got, the template priests got a skill called resurrection, which was far more useful in battle, as it would heal a fallen party member to full health at a 50% xp penalty (on their current progress to level up).
Duuca was a large jaguar warrior, who was an unclassed Aztec archer, similar to what Eztli almost turned out to be 30 years ago. If Duuca progresses his character right, he could be an absolute terror on the battlefield, back in the old Underworld unclassed Aztec archers were terrifying for their sneak attack skills and stealth hunting and tracking skills. They were so popular in some of the non-dungeon style raids in the level 500-1000 Underworld if you had one you could probably find a party any time you wanted to and have your pick of the loot as well. It was this late game dominance that Mark originally was aiming for.
Sexy_Librarian was the party¡¯s other girl (well the avatar was female, he had no interest in discovering the truth of the matter), she was taller than Golden flower, a well-proportioned Aztec warrior, with lean mussels and dark hair, she was actually modestly dressed contrary to her character name. She was an archer like Duuca, though she had a slightly different ranged skill tree that specialized in ¡°AOE¡± damage, called ¡°spirit archery¡±. It was a good skill tree, and made her a good addition for most dungeon raids.
FISH_LOVER was small short evil looking shaman, an unclassed spirit magic focused DPS character. Clearly this guy had an RP idea in mind when he put together that old avatar, as he looked like an ancient head shrinking shaman. The reason Eztli was surprised when FISH_LOVER gave him that accessory was precisely because FISH_LOVER could have used it to send his damage through the stratosphere, and unlock his full skill trees.
SpikieBoi was a huge Jaguar warrior, pure tank template build, Eztli didn¡¯t have an opinion about how skilled he was or not, but at least the survivability of SpikieBoi was pretty much guaranteed.
The last two could have been twins, both generic template Jaguar warrior DPS, one was called Musashi_XXX and the other was one of the original survivors along with Sexy_Librarian and FISH_LOVER called xXx_PainBringer_xXx
Pausing his advance with the party Eztli cleared his throat. ¡°How much do you know about this place?¡± The foul air was so strong just speaking made him feel like he just stuffed his mouth full of rotten meat.
Golden_Flower responded to his question, ¡°Not much, I was told this was where to find the python whose teeth I needed, however the quest giver warned me to bring a party because it was dangerous here.¡±
Eztli spoke up, ¡°I know a bit about this place, this is a deadly valley filled with poisonous plants, animals and lizards. I don¡¯t know much about the creatures in here apart from the fact apparently the plants are more dangerous than the monsters, the only other thing I know is that our chance of wiping is pretty high in here if we can¡¯t detox poison or venom.¡±
They all paused at that and looked at the lone healer, Golden_Flower. Golden_Flower, noticed their gazes and spoke up, ¡°I have two spells that might help. One called advanced poison resistance and the other called detoxification.¡±
Eztli laughed at her reply ¡°You should be in LM_STARS, how did you get those two skills before level 100, ah never mind I won¡¯t pry; well half the danger here is handled apparently. I suggest we approach this whole valley like a raid dungeon we¡¯ve never been in.¡±
The party organized themselves, with the SpikieBoi up front, with Musashi_XXX and xXx_Painbringer_xXx on the sides, Golden_flower, Eztli and FISH_LOVER in the middle Sexy_Librarian in the rear, with Duuca scouting for the party. It was a little weaker on the back side then Eztli would have preferred, but with no other melee DPS to guard the back Sexy_Librarian was a solid backup choice, as she had good hit points and eyesight.
The Valley wasn¡¯t particularly wide, but it was packed with life, dark greens, black mud, the howls of some sort of ape echoed, while a roar of some unidentified animal cried back. Overall the valley had all the makings of a setting for a survival horror movie. Mark himself couldn¡¯t help but feel some tightness in his chest as this valley bore a striking resemblance to some of the jungles in South and Central America, he spent the first few years of the war fighting in as a tank driver. The worst times of those first few years were the two times his tank had been disabled, and he had basically been forced to join the infantry or be left alone in the jungle. Those infantry marches had a similar sensation to this one.
Their tension grew with every meter traveled deeper into the jungle using a path that kept the long thin pond to their right-hand side. It was broken when Duuca suddenly said over team chat ¡°Found a group of mobs, about 50 yards in front of us, some sort of small 14-unit group of monkey like things. They¡¯re called ¡°Mutated Monkey¡±. Looks like this might be a hazard area. The mobs are all level 100 and I think they¡¯re hazard caliber.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Hazard caliber was double normal hit points, basically it was weaker then a raid dungeon, the dangers in a hazard area were usually different from a raid. Raid dungeons typically were carefully balanced for an 8-person party. They had variable difficulties you could set and high rewards. Hazard areas usually were ¡°guarding¡± some content the game designers don¡¯t want you to get to too easily, or to provide a group questing environment (most quests can be done solo). Mark never heard anything about anything interesting in this valley, which means this was probably a ¡°quest¡± spot for some level 100 party questing. Furthermore, if you¡¯re not careful about how you move around you can quickly get swamped by mobs, as unlike a dungeon mobs will roam around, get attracted by fighting, and simply swarm a party to death, and of course this led to the other reason hazard areas were hated in Underworld, the death penalties in them were not reduced. The death penalty in a RAID was ? your XP toward your next level and there never was a danger of losing a level, meanwhile hazard areas were treated like anywhere else for purpose of death.
The party paused at Duuca¡¯s warning, several members looked at Eztli. Eztli sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t know if we can do this. I think our party composition is good, but if we end up drawing the agro of more than two groups we¡¯ll probably wipe. The biggest problem as you all know is our damage will be seriously reduced and the damage these mobs do to us will be seriously increased. The bright side is we¡¯ll probably level pretty fast in here if we can keep from dying, we¡¯re dealing with mobs on average 30 levels higher then us, which means we probably will be able to level up every other mob we face for a while, I really need to find a python, so I¡¯ll vote to continue, just want you all to know the troubles we¡¯ll face going forward.
Duuca pipped up over the chat ¡°I want to try as well¡± and soon the rest of the party was agreeing to give it a try.
After organizing themselves to fight the monkeys, Duuca shot an arrow at one of the monkeys drawing the pack¡¯s agro, then sprinted back to their party, getting behind the tanker, who used his taunt on the pack of ¡°Mutated Monkeys¡±
The pack was raving mad by the time it reached the tank, and leapt on him as if to tear him apart, meanwhile the AOE damage started to rain on the monkeys, while Eztli waved his wand and cast blood field, and the debuff ¡°Bad Luck is Contagious,¡± then followed up with the curse ¡°blood wounds.¡±
Blood Wounds: Single target curse, causes all damage dealt to foe to create ¡°bleeding wounds¡±, no non-magic first aid will stop the bleeding, blood splatters from the wounds when formed, causing bleeding wounds on every foe the blood splatters on at the location of the blood splatter. Damage: level+blood magic affinity per second bleeding damage per wound. COST: +1 MP per wound per second).
Blood Wounds was a nice spell, depending on its use it could even function as something akin to a half nuke, but it was a double-edged sword, due to the extreme speed the wounds spread the cost of maintaining it could balloon and it was easy to kill yourself if you¡¯re using blood casting, and just as easy to drain yourself of mana if you¡¯re not. As a result, he tried to avoid the spell excepting in 1v1 PvP or cases like this one, where everyone was going to be doing low damage, and at the moment, only 14 foes were in battle, making it moderately possible to manage the exploding costs of the spell. Of course, he didn¡¯t cast blood casting, he was a seriously worried about that ballooning cost of the spell.
Sure, enough the effects of the spell on a tightly bunched 14 creature group were as spectacular as he recalled. Once the curse hit one of the monkeys an AOE landed on the group, which caused an explosion of blood from the first monkey, the blood splattered on half the group which then caused an explosion of blood which covered the whole group, over and over again like a recursive bit of code without an end condition. The damage effected by each blood wound was tiny, just 2 or 3 hps due to the mitigation due to the level difference, however here was where Eztli¡¯s incredibly deep Magic Pool came into effect. Thanks to all those silver rated items and those 9 extra levels his MP was a little bit over 100,000; he kept a close eye on his MP, the problem was the spell only took magic once every second not once per wound creation. In the first second 323 MP was drained, on the next his MP was drained completely, and an astronomical amount of damage popped up on the heads of every ape, ranging from as low as 72,325 damage to the high end of 272,976. In an instant 8 of the 14 apes died, and his SP instantly recharged to full as his hit level 77, he didn¡¯t even have a chance to register what just happened as the curse hit one more time before he could even cancel it, wiping out the last 4 monkeys and draining his MP to zero again. Only for the blood field to recharge it back up to 2000 with their death.
Eztli¡¯s legs collapsed under him from the two waves of mana exhaustion that hit him just a second apart and quickly canceled his blood field. The sensation that mana exhaustion felt like was something akin to your stomach being pulled out of your mouth, while finishing a 40km marathon. It wasn¡¯t like this in the old Underworld. In the old Underworld you got hit with a status debuff of your movement. This was far more uncomfortable, it was both painful and unexpected which was why when it happened twice in a second, he collapsed to the ground pale faced.
It took a moment to overcome the shock of the magic loss, then Eztli stood up, the party was looking at him confused. Eztli sighed and shared the details of Blood Wound with them. ¡°It¡¯s actually more useful in one on one pvp, then it is on full mobs like you just saw. It spreads exponentially faster the more foes there are and can drain you of all your magic in moments like it just did to me twice. On the bright side it can do devastating damage in the right controlled situations.¡± He glanced at the party information and saw most of the party leveled up. ¡°I wanted to try it to see the effect here, I won¡¯t be casting that again unless we¡¯re in a tight spot.¡±
The group moved forward and soon was embroiled in a number of long drawn out skirmishes with these monkeys. The level split was so large killing the mobs of monkeys was difficult as all heck, had the party not been heavy in good AOE it would have been hard to handle as they were hard to hit with single targeted attacks. The person Eztli was most concerned about was Golden_Flower, who was the lone healer in the party and was stretched to her limits to keep the tanker on his feet through each encounter. On the bright side, leveling was rather good here, in a little under 4 hours of grinding through this mess, they had raised everyone up to level 70 at a min, and 5 members of the party were now level 80 or higher (Eztli had reached level 84, and was now actively participating with AOE of his own with blood balls, as his attacks were doing a significant amount of damage now the level difference had shrunk a bit).
Eztli watched Musashi_XXX finish off the last monkey with a spectacular cut of his Macuahuitl, decapitating it, and sighed with a little exhaustion. They had accidently run into 3 straight groups each one just as they killed off the prior group of monkeys, leading to a tight running battle, that saw Fish_Lover get killed when the last group of monkeys hit them from behind before the prior group had been finished off; In this small crisis, Eztli regained control of the battle with a well-timed and placed Blood Wounds which helped shore up a flank and allow the tanker SpikieBoi get control of the agro again. Now the battle had ended Eztli realized he didn¡¯t know where they were anymore. He couldn¡¯t see the pond/swamp, and the canopy of trees was so thick he couldn¡¯t see the valley walls or overhang. He was troubled by the fact he had heard that the plants were the biggest problem here yet all they fought this afternoon were monkeys.
Eztli looked over at Golden_Flower who was bent over Fish_Lover¡¯s corpse rising him from the dead. ¡°Golden_Flower, is there any indication of where these pythons are supposed to be?¡± He asked.
She finished casting the spell then cast a healing spell on Fish_Lover to get his hit point up over 1, and then answered ¡°No. This whole valley apparently is the quest location.¡±
¡°Maybe we¡¯re going about this wrong,¡± Sexy_Librarian added ¡°Pythons should be in or near the water, the only place we¡¯ve not gone is near the water. Perhaps we don¡¯t need to go deeper into the valley we just need to search the water.¡±
¡°I¡¯m game¡± Musashi_XXX tossed in, ¡°Anything other then more of those screeching Monkeys.¡±
¡°It¡¯s a good plan, but where is the water?¡± Eztli added
¡°That way¡± 7 people pointed, and all 7 were pointing in a different direction.
Chapter 14 - Lost
The sound of Eztli¡¯s laughter was all that echo¡¯ed through the currently and temporarily silent valley. Eztli then looked at Duuca, ¡°You learn any scouting skills yet?¡± He had been eyeing the canopy and wasn¡¯t really hopeful of his ability to navigate the trees as a bird. Soaring in an open sky is one thing, threading his way through a dense canopy that doesn¡¯t even let much sunlight through seemed a little unlikely for a hawk with a solid 3-foot wingspan.
Duuca shook his head no
Underworld was still fundamentally a game, so while in real life it would take almost no skill to track 8 people who were slaughtering crazed apes and their progress through the forest, it probably would take a pair of eyes just to spot the bodies of the apes alone, no training needed. In underworld the signs of the battle will simply fade away with the bodies of the fallen foes; nor would any sign be visible on the forest floor after those bodies vanished apart from whatever loot was dropped. The only way you''d be able to see any signs of the prior battle would beto simply have theright scouting skills to see it. It was silly if you thought about it, but Underworld always had these weird ¡°game¡± moments that could drag you out of the almost real-world aspects of it.
The silence of the valley seemed to be mocking them, so Eztli broke the silence, ¡°We¡¯ll have to look for the monster drops and track those back to the lake/pond then. Lets keep each other in close at all times, I¡¯m not liking how quiet the valley got.¡± In reality the silence was strange after all the noises they¡¯ve been hearing in the valley up to this point. It was like everything was holding it¡¯s breath.
The party all spread out a bit poking around for monster drops in the piles of dying leaves and black soil of the bare valley floor. The silence was growing oppressive, Eztli found himself glancing at the other party members more often than he was paying attention to the bare forest floor, something just felt so off about the atmosphere, he heard some old alarm bells starting to ring in his head.
The last time he felt this way, he was a Captain, just 2 years before the end of the war, riding in an open roof jeep on the outskirts of the ruins of Atlanta. The war was obviously going to be lost. He knew it, his men knew it. The men at the top had to have known it. Heck, it had been nearly a decade since he was ordered to move forward to take territory. All he had been doing since the fall of Bogata was falling back in a running battle up from South and Central America, through Texas and into the southern states basically fighting a war of attrition, the West Coast had fallen almost without a shot fired once Texas was lost. He had chances to just quit fighting, his initial enlistment was for four years, Bogota fell in year 3, yet he hung on. He had chosen to stay in the war. He rubbed his left shoulder subconsciously, lost in the memory of that snipper bullet that nearly ended his life on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Snapping out of his daydream the sensation of alarm seemed to grow not fade, he felt an oppressive sensation and noticed he was basically holding his breath, forcing himself to breath much like the first time he used FBEVR he ended up gasping for breath as if he had been running a marathon. Glancing around quickly, he counted the heads of the party and came up with 6.
¡°Where is Musashi?¡± Eztli spoke up, regaining control of himself. Everyone paused and looked around. Eztli was already checking the party list, and noticed Musashi_XXX¡¯s information was grey¡¯ed out. The only cause for that would be if he was in an instanced dungeon or building.
Seeing the hints of confusion in most of the parties faces, Eztli spoke again, ¡°Where was Musashi searching?¡±
Golden_Flower answered, ¡°Not far from me, over this way in that undergrowth,¡± she started to make her way to her left, without any conversation needed, the rest of the party quickly formed up around Golden_Flower, as they made their way a few yards into the foliage, which was unusually thick and green considering the tight forest canopy. Eztli was frowing at the foliage trying to recall of he had seen it before or it just appeared here recently.
Sexy_Librarian suddenly spoke up, ¡°Wait, something is wrong here, this is a Jungle, there really shouldn¡¯t be any undergrowth like this, there isn¡¯t enough light, the forest floor has been emptied of random foliage thus far.¡±
Eztli suddenly realized why he had been feeling something was wrong. His eyes widening at the path behind them where they were all searching earlier was now covered in these green vines. ¡°Where did all this undergrowth come from? This was an open forest floor when we were fighting here. Look behind us, where we were fighting is now covered in this undergrowth.¡±
The undergrowth was dark green with spade like leaves sprouting from long above ground vines an appearance fairly similar to grape vines. As he was examining the soft vines, he noted that the undergrowth no longer soft, easily giving away for their feet and bodies, had became very wood like, with thorns sprouting from the vines, locking the party of 7 into location.
Duuca spoke up, ¡°Crap, and we don¡¯t have any fire-based magic, do we? If you have a sharp tool let¡¯s start cutting before this gets worse.¡±
¡°Stop!¡± Eztli spoke quickly. ¡°Don¡¯t move, this is a spell, not real plant life. We need to find the caster. Fighting the plants will get us nowhere, and if this is the spell I think it is, it¡¯s sort of like quicksand, the more you struggle the worse it gets.¡± Eztli was straining his mind trying to recall if he had seen something similar in the past. It was hard to tell since old Underworld definitely looked more cartoony, but he seemed to recall a shamanic spell in the Aztec region which was capable of creating vines like these.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Sexy_Librarian spoke up ¡°How do you know this is a spell?¡±
¡°Were these plants here 5 minutes ago? I could buy these were real if they were there 5 minutes ago, but they just sort of appeared without making a noise.¡± Eztli spoke in voice a little above a whisper, watching the silent vines seem to notice his speaking and slowly start to twist around his feet.
¡°They¡¯re a type of vine, right? Couldn¡¯t they move here?¡± Sexy_Librarian whispered back to him, her face flushed with embarrassment as the vines started to wrap around her calves.
¡°Did you see them move here? What about behind us? They just were.¡± Eztli retorted. There was no longer any doubt the vines definitely were reacting to his speaking, as several more vines wrapped around his calves.
Sexy_Librarian nodded, accepting the explanation. The party as a whole was trying to see where the spellcaster was, looking around left or right. Eztli was getting aggravated by the situation, he didn¡¯t really have a lot he could do with this type of attack. Maybe in another 200-300 levels he could crush this, he remembered using lightning from a special spirit magic tree to blow up similar style traps in the past, but what was happening now was simply outside his ability to counter.
¡°Hang on let¡¯s see if I can find the caster.¡± Eztli wove the wand and transformed into the hawk, the vines that used to be wrapping around his calves leapt into action and reached out like lightning for his Hawk body and wings. Eztli leapt into the air with the perusing vines, feeling thorns tear into his wings the vines seemed desperate to keep him trapped. For a long moment, which seemed to stretch for an eternity as his hawk struggled into the air, he thought he was going to get entangled, however with a ripping sound, a few feathers fell from his wings and a small drop of blood or two, he slipped free from the vines and made his way up into a tree a dozen yards away from the group. That really had been too close. Eztli realized he might have been too hasty and nearly created a disaster for himself by transforming while in that patch of vines. Taking a deep breath to blow away the tension in his chest, he started to examine the surroundings closely from his perch in the tree. Unfortunately, the incredible eyesight of the Hawk didn¡¯t shine any light on the source of the spell. Glancing at the distressed party, and feeling his frustration growing, he flew around the patch of vines looking for the source. Of course, that was easier said than done. The trees were densely packed and flying about under this canopy was stressful. Eventually after 5 minutes of dodging trees and trying to search for the caster, he alighted on a tree above the patch of vines, then transformed back to a human.
The party was now wincing, he could see the vines had started to wind their way up their legs and the thorns on the vines were pricking and scraping their skin.
Duuca called up to Eztli, ¡°Do you think you can find a vine or rope or something? Maybe we can get out by going up?¡±
Eztli nodded, then took wing again after transforming back into the hawk, it wasn¡¯t hard to find a tree with vines hanging off them. It took him a couple of chops with his Macuahuitl to separate the vine from the tree, he bundled it up and put it into his pack. Then transformed into a hawk and flew back to the tree next to the group, landing on a thick sturdy looking branch a dozen feet or so above the heads of the party members. He canceled the hawk transformation, secured the vine to the branch he was standing on, then looped it over a branch above his head before tossing the vine down toward the party bellow.
¡°Anyone have the climb skill?¡± Eztli asked as he watched Duuca catch the vine. They all shrugged, so Eztli sighed. ¡°This game won¡¯t let you climb a vine without it. Alright, change of plans, who has the highest strength?¡±
xXx_Painbringer_xXx raised his hand.
¡°Alright, Painbringer, grab the vine, tie it up under your arms, I¡¯ll pull you up.¡±
xXx_Painbringer_xXx tied the vine up under his arms across his chest and loops his arms around the vine getting a good grip. ¡°Ready¡±
Eztli grabbed the looped vine between the higher branch and it¡¯s anchored position on the branch he was standing on, then took up the extra slack by wrapping the vine around his chest, and using his own weight as leverage started to pull xXx_Painbringer_xXx up basically walking down the tree. His own strength wasn¡¯t sufficient to pull a grown man up a tree after all he hadn¡¯t put any attribute points into strength, but his weight was about the same as xXx_Painbringer_xXx, by using leverage and his own weight he could manage to drag xXx_Painbringer_xXx up several feet. The problem was the vines twined around his legs weren¡¯t letting go, and started to dig deep into his muscled legs. To Eztli¡¯s dismay he saw more vines reaching out of the undergrowth to grasp at xXx_Painbringer_xXx. xXx_Painbringer_xXx face said all Eztli needed to know, it was twisted in pain tears forming on the corners of his eyes. He could see blood dripping down the dark vines and his legs were no longer visible under them. Eztli¡¯s dismay was replaced with horror as the vines twined around xXx_Painbringer_xXx¡¯s chest and sucked him back into the undergrowth, pulling Eztli up to the overhanging branch he was using as leverage, and nearly crushing his chest and pulling him over it and down into the patch of vines.
xXx_Painbringer_xXx¡¯s name was grey¡¯ed out from the player list on the party almost immediately after he was sucked under the vines in the undergrowth.
Eztli was forced to cut himself free of the vine, and watched helplessly as it vanished into the brush.
Eztli spoke into the silence. ¡°Well now we know why I couldn¡¯t find the spell caster. He¡¯s underground, likely wherever Painbringer and Musashi is. We¡¯ve got a decision to make. Neither is dead, both are underground. Anyone else get a reply to a tell from either?¡± The remaining 5 members shook their heads.
¡°Which means it¡¯s a plot related instanced dungeon. Decision time, do we let the vines take us underground and enter the instance, or fight them with everything we got, and see if we can¡¯t get free through force? We could be trapped in there till death or this could be a huge lucky chance for skills, items or quests. Who wants to take this ¡®chance¡¯?¡±
Spikieboi who had been quiet for a while spoke up, ¡°I say let¡¯s share their fate. If it¡¯s good luck, lets all share it, and if it¡¯s bad luck, lets share it.¡±
The vote was unanimous.
Chapter 15 - Ahuizotl
Entering the ¡°dungeon¡± was child¡¯s play. Eztli showed the rest just how simple it was by simply falling from the tree into the weeds below and ¡°vanished¡± straight into the instanced dungeon. The others swallowed their fear one by one, and lay down in the weeds, vanishing right behind him. Soon the silence that reigned over this region of the valley faded away, as first bugs then animal then monster noises started to echo again. The patch of vegetation long faded away, leaving the black dirt of the forest floor whole and undisturbed.
For Eztli, the world had gone black, and all his senses dead, when he fell into the vines, simulating, he supposed, that he had gone unconscious. It was a disconcerting sensation, similar to how it felt just as he logged into the system, or logged out, however the sensation of ¡°nothing¡± seemed to stretch for minutes instead of moments. Eventually his senses returned and he found himself trussed up, dangling from a wall, it was pitch black, he couldn¡¯t see a thing, but what was suspending him felt similar to the vines on the surface. He heard his own breathing, and the sound of water, judging by how wet his back felt, and the stench of stagnant water, he suspected this was someplace near the pond/stream they were looking for.
He purposefully kept silent, and waited to see if his eyes would adjust to the low light. After several minutes of dangling with no light, he had to admit he still couldn¡¯t see, and sight likely wouldn¡¯t return unless he made a source of light himself. He slowly moved his right hand and waited to see if the vines would react. He felt no life from the vines tying him to the walls, but he wanted to be sure before moving around too much.
Deciding it might be safe enough to cut himself free he checked his status just to be sure there wasn¡¯t any particular status issues.
----------------------------------
Character: Eztli
Age: 18
Social Status: Aztec Noble
Class: NONE
Level: 84 (2,367,481/3,486,000)
Hit Points (0.5+0.2): 23,050
Magic Points (0.8+0.3): 107,091
Defense: 126 + 160 = 286
Strength: 110 (5%) = 116
Agility: 100 + 20 (5%) = 126
Constitution: 326 + 30 (10%) = 392
Wisdom: 954 + 100 (10%) = 1159
Intelligence: 220 + 10 (5%) = 242
Charisma: 100 + 20 (5%) = 126
Willpower: +17
Poison/Disease Resistance: +3
Pain Resistance: +3
Reflexes: +1
Skill Trees: 3/8
Blood Magic
Bless and Curse (Shamanic Version)
Animal Form (Quetzalcoatl Version)
Skills: 0/10
Bonus Skills: Cannibalism, Intimidation (+22)
Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (10/10), Inca (10/10)
Knowledge: Religion: Aztec Gods (Max)
Affinities: Blood Magic (+124), Shamanic Magic (+41), Air Magic (+1), Spirit Magic (+100)
Items:
Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian), Ceremonial Macuahuitl, Ancient Bone Wand (Weapon1 Slot, Silver, +20 Wisdom, +20% magic damage), Shaman¡¯s Teocuitlatl (Earing1 Slot, Gold, +100 Spirit Magic, +20 Wisdom), Fine Hemp Cactli (Shoes slot, Silver, +10 defense, +20 Constitution), Plated Greaves (Shin slot, Silver, +40 Defense, +5% HP), Jaguar Leather Paldrons (Shoulder slot, Silver, +10 defense, +10 agility, +5% HP), Beautiful Noble Maxtlatl (Pants Slot, Silver, +10 CHA, +10 Wisdom, +10% MP), Fine Cotton Timahtli (Cloak Slot, Silver, +20 wisdom, +10% MP), Battle Ichahuipilli (Chest Armor, Silver, +100 defense, +10 Constitution, +10% HP), Wrist Guard (Arm1 Slot, Silver, +10 defense, +10 agility), Bone Necklace (Neck Slot, Silver, +20 Wisdom, +10% MP), Gold Bangle (Wrist1 Slot, Silver, +10 Intelligence, +10 Wisdom)
Relations:
(none)
Accolades:
Perfect Clear: 5% to all attributes
Top of the World (Tenochtitlan): 5% to Constitution
Tattoos (Magic):
Quetzalcoatl: 5% to Wisdom, +1 Affinity with Air Magic, +1 Affinity with Shamanic Magic
Status Effects:
BOUND
----------------------------------
Eztli pondered the bound status a long moment. He didn¡¯t have any skills which would allow him to escape such a status, his hands were trapped which meant he couldn¡¯t cast a spell either. This meant he¡¯d have to cut, rip or untangle himself. Of all his base stats, agility was slightly higher then strength, but both were so bad it was unlikely he¡¯d get free any time soon.
He looked at the party screen and saw everyone¡¯s name was still grayed out, meaning this cell (if it was a cell) was still considered a unique instance compared to the rest. Prison areas in Underworld used to work just like this.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Eztli spent almost 10 minutes getting his right arm free, once it was free, he quickly changed shape into a hawk and slipped free from the rest of the bindings. To his disappointment, the hawk eyes couldn¡¯t see anything in this black, so rather than kill himself by flying into a wall, the moment he slipped free from the vines he dropped to the floor and changed back to a man
Eztli felt around a bit and realized he was indeed in a prison, the stone walls were wet, the floor was covered with shallow water, and the cell was roughly circular. After some more feeling around he figured he found the door, which felt like a stone boulder blocking the path out. Pondering a moment, he gave the boulder a shove. It didn¡¯t move. He backed away from the boulder and moved along the wall, to put the boulder out of direct view, if he could see anything, then sat down on the floor of the cell. He had been in a jailcell smaller and fouler then this after the war. Being a high-status prisoner, he had been placed in solitary confinement almost immediately. Those had been some difficult days, but compared to that cell, this stone cave was far more humane. He waited patiently, knowing this game was (at its core) fundamentally ¡°fun¡±, or it had been. Assuming this wasn¡¯t a new event, Underworld probably wouldn¡¯t leave its players in a jail cell for long, because that¡¯s not ¡°fun¡±.
His faith in old Underworld was soon rewarded and amusingly punished as he soon heard something similarly to dog¡¯s growling speech coming from the other side of the boulder. Of course, the game wouldn¡¯t leave him in a cell for long, however the dog noises spelled a different type of disaster. His skin turned cold the moment he heard those voices. In the Aztec region there was a type of creature known as an Ahuizotl, a dog like creature with damp fur that clumped up into spike like protrusions. It was particularly cruel and enjoyed eating human eyes, nails, and flesh, and its tail had a hand like thing. He remembered stories about what a pain it was to fight these in Underworld because they were crafty and used a lot of shamanic magic. Worse they were about the size of a man, making their physical threat almost as grave as the magic one.
With a rumble, the boulder started to move, without waiting for the situation to turn worse, he quickly cast blood field, he didn¡¯t cast blood casting as he assumed the Ahuizotl probably had a lot of magic points, making the advantages of blood casting sort of pointless. He then cast Bless on himself, the bonus wasn¡¯t worth much, but solo against an Ahuizotl in close quarters combat for a spell casting build was probably a death sentence if it was more then 5 levels higher then him. Considering they were in a level 100 area the chances it¡¯s a raid level 100 Ahuizotl was pretty good. Hearing the boulder move some more, light started to filter into the cell, Eztli raised his wand and did the initial movements for Bad Luck is Contagious (BLiC). This debuff plus blood wounds wouldn¡¯t be able to display their might due to the fact it was probably just one on one, but they still were useful in PvP, so he had every intention to use both. The moment he saw something move at the edges of the door he cast BLiC, the monster didn¡¯t agro, as the spell didn¡¯t draw agro or even count as an attack to monsters in this world. He then cast blood wounds on it. Just like BLiC the curse itself didn¡¯t generate agro initially, only after it was wounded would it start to generate aggression.
The Creature still hadn¡¯t noticed he was free, so he cast his best single target damage spell before the door could open enough to allow it in. Blood spear lashed out, hitting the Ahuizotl, and a small 5,200 damage total popped up over its head, and the blood wounds triggered causing an explosion of blood, with a little -40 popping up. Wincing at the low damage and it¡¯s outraged howls, his hands moved quickly as he cast ¡°Blood Puppet¡±, to his dismay the creature resisted his ¡°control¡± however, since it was not a sub boss tier creature it couldn¡¯t resist the spell, meaning instead of controlling it, it¡¯s blood boiled and exploded in it¡¯s veins, the secondary damage caused by this spell was fairly good, but hard to trigger so he never really counted on it. Another damage figure popped up over the dark shape¡¯s head reading -21,300
Eztli winced, it wasn¡¯t worth the MP use for that much damage. Casting 20 blood spears would use up about the same mp, and do almost four times as much damage. His mind quickly did the math based on the assumption the Ahuizotl had 300k hitpoints, he¡¯d need to cast blood puppet and get it to trigger the damage 15 times, or 15,000 MP and 21 seconds or so of battle; deciding it was worth the inefficiency for the fast victory, he cast blood puppet a second time, however luck or fate turned out differently than he expected, as this time he gained control of the Ahuizotl.
His plans for the inefficient win were dashed with a lucky easy win. He did a quick search of the Ahuizotl¡¯s magic skills, finding nothing to kill itself with, he simply ordered the stupid beast to beat itself to death with it¡¯s own tail-hand. It took almost 3 minutes to kill itself.
+213,000xp
+30,000 HP
+50,000 MP
He slipped out the door into the hall, while the opening wasn¡¯t large enough for the hulking Ahuizotl to enter, it was more than large enough for him to slip out. The black stone hall was lit by magic stones which glowed with an eerie green light. The floor was covered in ankle deep water, making it very hard to walk without making noise. Without care for direction he started walking to his right, keeping his hand on the right wall, making turns with the right wall and following it for a while.
Eventually after walking for what seemed to be an hour, and killing 3 more Ahuizotl along the way, he reached a large black stone room with 10 Ahuizotl surrounding 3 of his party members, unconscious. They were Duuca, Musashi_XXX and Sexy_Librarian. The other members of the party were not there yet, and it seemed like the Ahuizotl were waiting for them to arrive. They were chatting with each other in with that strange guttural barking language they used. The room was little better then a large cave, black walls with green stone lights. In the center of the cave was a sacrificial altar and next to the altar was a small cage with an elderly looking priest of Huitzilopochtli bound within it. The priests name was in Gold, as if Eztli needed that type of visual prompting to know he was an important quest NPC. After examining the cave closer he realized his 3 party members were conscious, not unconscious like he had originally assumed. However, since they were still considered by the system to be imprisoned, they were still grey¡¯ed out of his party list.
He got a pretty good idea of how this was supposed to go. Likely the rest of the party escaped, and just as likely they would eventually find themselves here. Once everyone was here the event in this dungeon would happen. So Eztli moved a little away from the entrance to the large room, and hid himself in a dark corner, waiting for someone to come along.
He didn¡¯t have to wait long as he could head something making little effort to walk silently splashing its way down the hall toward him. Eztli held his breath, and stood motionless, then relaxed when xXx_Painbringer_xXx came into view, he was carrying a dead FISH_LOVER, and walking silently behind him was the large Spikieboi.
Eztli noted the moment the 3 came into view their names no longer were grey¡¯ed out on the party list. Wincing at the pathetic state of FISH_LOVER, he looked the other two over, and nodded, he noted Golden_Flower still wasn¡¯t there, and silently filled the three in over team chat. They set FISH_LOVER¡¯s corpse down in the dark corner by Eztli, and waited with him. Several moments later Golden_Flower, alone, sneaked down the hallway on feet so silent Eztli saw her before he heard her. He found it curious she was able to escape on her own since she should have the lowest combat power of the whole group. Still she did have the 2nd highest level of the group, and her heals were strong enough he supposed she could simply outlast the Ahuizotl if she needed to in a protracted battle, and set the thought aside.
As soon as Eztli stood out and Golden_Flower spotted them, her name was colored on the team list. He left filling in Golden_Flower to the other guys and returned to the entrance of the large cavern while Golden_Flower healed up FISH_LOVER. Now they had a tanker, a melee DPS, and a healer, their chance in this raid just took a huge upswing, so now they needed to figure out how to rescue the rest of their party.
Eztli examined the room, and considered the spells he remembered the Ahuizotl had available and pondered how he¡¯d deal with it in a normal dungeon raid. The problem is they didn¡¯t really have any means to fight off the magic control spells these things had on hand. Nothing to resist them with, which means everyone would be rooted by the magic, and taking moderate damage. This would make the melee dps become pretty useless. He pondered for a moment and thought of two ways to deal with the mess, then withdrew from the doorway and rejoined the rest of the team, who were surrounding FISH_LOVER, who was mostly recovered.
¡°We¡¯ll need to hurry, looks like our friends and a gold named NPC will be sacrificed and eaten soon. Maybe not in that order. Let¡¯s try pulling them to the door if we can bunch them up and stay out of their direct line of sight we should be able to avoid the worst of their magic.¡±
Golden_Flower gave him a strange look, then said cautiously, ¡°Magic? These things have magic?¡±
Eztli looked at her strangely then looked at the others, Spikieboi spoke up, ¡°They never cast anything at me.¡± The others nodded in agreement. Eztli frowned ¡®a bug?¡¯ Bugs in old Underworld were damned near unheard of when he used to play. But then EAB had a reputation for releasing buggy games, he was rather surprised at how bug free underworld had been to this point, it¡¯s launch not withstanding.
¡°Let¡¯s pull them to the door to bunch them up, I don¡¯t want to be swarmed any more than I want to be bombarded with spells¡± Eztli temporized, the others shrugged and agreed. The party made its way to the door, Eztli cast Blood Field, and then cast BLiC on one of the Ahuizotl in back, while FISH_LOVER cast a large AOE attack on the group.
The Ahuizotl went nuts, and charged the door, where Spikieboi started using his taunt to gain their agro, to Eztli¡¯s surprise none of the Ahuizotl attempted to cast a spell, as they charged enraged at Spikieboi. From there it was a simple raid against a surprisingly weak foe, sure the Ahuizotl were akward to fight in melee, but they were primarily spell casters who at this moment were acting like melee dps. The xp was excellent, Eztli who was just 100k or so away from level 85 when the fight started ended up leveling up twice, ended at level 86 when the last one fell.
The party rushed into the room and freed their comrades from their bindings, then turned to the gold named npc in the cage.