《Riftworlds Online Book 1: Space Opera》 Chapter 1 Generally everyone in prison knows exactly when they¡¯re getting out. There aren¡¯t very many surprises on that front. So that April day in 2028 was an unusual day. It started out pretty ordinary at first, gray eggs and stale toast for breakfast. We sat around the chow hall at tables with hard round attached stools. We shoveled the watery eggs into our mouths. The new guy complained, just like every other morning, about the lack of coffee. It¡¯s prison, what did he expect? But ordinary wasn¡¯t destined to last long that day. Bruce, one of the guards came over. Bruce isn¡¯t a bad guy. I think he¡¯s a pretty friendly guy on the outside, but with the inmates he¡¯s quieter. No fraternizing and all that. But he¡¯ll loiter and watch the card games and sometimes chuckle quietly at a dramatic win or loss. He¡¯s a poker guy. I¡¯m more a blackjack guy, but poker has grown on me. Blackjack is a little easier to count cards and know when not to push your luck. Poker feels a little more dangerous. I kinda like that. ¡°Danburg,¡± Bruce said. ¡°Git up. You got a visitor.¡± That right there told everyone at the table something unusual was going on. Visiting hours didn¡¯t start until ten, and today wasn¡¯t even a visiting day. That meant lawyer or cops, generally. I would¡¯ve bet hard and long against lawyer. Mine was about as useful as a marked deuce. Everyone in prison is either a number or a last name. Behave and you get to be a last name. I¡¯d done a pretty good job of not getting into trouble--as long as you don¡¯t count those first few weeks. But I was only nineteen when I was arrested. At a much more mature 22 I knew better. Two and a half years out of nine. That was how long it had been since anyone called me Rick. If someone did, would I even realize they were calling me? So I followed Bruce, leaving half of my ¡°breakfast¡± behind. I did hear a, ¡°Huh, wonder what that¡¯s about¡­¡± as I walked away. ¡°Um¡­?¡± I asked as Bruce led me through a doorway I hadn¡¯t been through for two and a half years. He didn¡¯t say anything as we got buzzed through two more doors until only one more stood between me and the outside world. I¡¯d assumed by that point I was being brought for some unannounced court thing, but the woman in that final checkpoint room was no lawyer, and was no court bailiff. She stood like a soldier, more so than the prison guards. No, they stood with an overt authority. She stood with a disciplined confidence in a casual black suit. Silver-rimmed black sunglasses poked out the top of a breast pocket. ¡°Agent Wald, I hereby remand custody of inmate 55169B, Danberg, Richard to the Secret Service.¡± Now for one, I¡¯d never heard Bruce sound so formal. For another, Secret Service? How could that possibly not end badly? I sighed and stuck my hands out for cuffing. ¡°Am I going to need them?¡± she asked with distaste dripping off her tongue. Gulping and saying no really is the only reasonable reaction in a situation like that, right? Because that¡¯s exactly what I did. She stood aside, clearing the way to the exit. The buzz of the door being unlocked did not ring of freedom. ¡°Walk,¡± she ordered. The East Coast morning sun was bright and warm and exquisitely amazing. Yet I still turned and looked back at the door closing behind us. Things in there were predictable and understandable. Everything worked on a system, on a schedule. You could rely on that. By contrast, I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. She put her sunglasses on with a one-handed style that broadcasted confident cool. She probably swaggered when she walked, but she stayed behind me on the walk to the tilt-rotor helicraft. We prodded me up and in and secured the hatch behind us. ¡°Strap in.¡± She conserved words like she had only been issued a fixed amount that morning. Budget cuts again, maybe. The helicraft¡¯s engines started up with a whine as rotors came to speed. ¡°Um, can you tell me what¡¯s going on?¡± I tried. ¡°You¡¯ll be briefed on arrival,¡± was all she gave me as the pilot lifted off. Briefed. That didn¡¯t sound good. That had a distinctly military sound to it. I¡¯m not very military. Well, okay, I¡¯m not at all military. I¡¯m a computer gamer. A really good one, at that, but when it really came down to it, computer games had always been the main thing I was ever really good at. Math, sure, but boring. Some coding, which I¡¯d probably never be allowed to use again. A lot of other classes had just been boring. But gaming had always felt like a focal point in my life. I was good at finding patterns, learning how to game the systems. When the first VR games had hit big I was ready. I was a star. I could always seem to figure out the tricks to maximize results without as much of the tedious grinding. And then SecondScape came out, a VR game which overlapped game aspects with the real world. It was part virtual reality and part augmented reality. It was genius from a marketing perspective. Real-world obstacles became things to navigate, and could look entirely different. It was huge. Hundreds of thousands of people played. It had a truly slick way of taking everyday objects and turning them into dual-purpose things. Real-life objects could be bought or sold for what they did in-game. Money connected in a few ways, several of which were designed to turn in-game purchases into revenue streams for the game company. And that turned out to be a mistake. Agent Wald¡¯s greatest talent seemed to be sitting in silence. I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯ve never met any other Hispanic who could be so infuriatingly still and silent. But she breathed, so she wasn¡¯t some science fiction android. Nobody makes them that realistic. She just sat there, opposite me but offset a little, looking towards a window further ahead. She blinked. She swallowed. Her eyes shifted from place to place now and then. Her hands shifted on her lap. But her expression never changed. It was getting seriously creepy as the flight went on. I¡¯d say it was about forty-five minutes or so of that before we landed. We had to wait a few minutes while the rotors slowed before the ramp lowered once more. We were on the roof of an office building. I didn¡¯t recognize the buildings around us. It wasn¡¯t New York, I could figure that much out. Two more agents stood by a door labeled, ¡°STAIRS.¡± I didn¡¯t need Agent Wald¡¯s prodding to know where to go, but that didn¡¯t stop her from providing it. ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± she said in a voice that was anything but encouraging. The two agents bookended us down three flights of stairs, where another door opened onto what could have been any corporate cubicle farm. People hurried out of the way, creating a clear path to a conference room. ¡°Wait here,¡± Agent Wald warned before she closed the door and left me alone in the room. Eighteen words total. Come one, the math isn¡¯t hard, and it isn¡¯t like I didn¡¯t have time to keep count. So I had a conference room to myself. A plastic pitcher of water sat next to a short stack of recyclable cups. I tried the communications panel at the center of the table. Disabled. As if I were some criminal. Yeah, I didn''t blame them. They left me waiting a while, so I helped myself to water, figuring they wouldn¡¯t have brought me here just to poison me. I sat back in one of the cushy chairs and propped my all-white prison sneakers up on another. I figured if they were going to make me wait I¡¯d make myself comfortable. And man, those chairs were pretty kick. Sure, maybe I was biased because the only padded surface I¡¯d been exposed to for the last two and a half years was a thin mattress, but still. Kick chairs. When the suit-and-tie parade began it took deliberate effort not to sit up straight. They¡¯d let me wait. What were they going to do, arrest me for being disrespectful? They all sat down along the other side of the table. It turned a little, laced my fingers, and gave them my very best, ¡®wazzup¡¯ nod. I think I was supposed to be feeling intimidated, but if so it wasn¡¯t working. It was feeling good. If they wanted me intimidated they should have kept Agent McSternface.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Richard Danburg,¡± one of them began. ¡°I prefer Mr. Danburg or Rick,¡± I explained, not sure where the cockiness was coming from or how long until it ran out. I was already figuring out that they wanted something from me. Something they needed me for. And McSternface--her new name as long as she didn¡¯t come into the room--didn¡¯t like me being involved. That right there made me determined to play this up. Plus, I couldn¡¯t help but screw with the guy. He looked every bit the formal type, who would normally be inclined to go for Mr. Danburg and not Rick. The full name route would be tedious for him. First point to me. Take that, G-Man. ¡°I am Secret Service Director William Thomas,¡± he went on, perfectly nonplussed. Might have scored that one too early. ¡°A situation has arisen that we need your assistance with.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± Okay, he was better at the nonplussed thing. But I tried anyway. ¡°Agent Smith, fill him in.¡± Agent Smith? Really? This guy couldn¡¯t have been more than a few years older than I was. His hair screamed company man and his skin was paler than mine. And that¡¯s saying something. At least I wasn¡¯t the scrawniest looking guy at the table. ¡°Are you familiar with Riftworlds Online?¡± Agent Smith¡¯s voice was a little nasally, that annoying kind of voice where you just want to tell the kid to speak from the diaphragm. ¡°Um, no. I haven¡¯t had anything to do with anything ¡®Online¡¯ in a couple years.¡± ¡°Well, things have advanced since SecondScape. Riftworlds Online took it to the next level with a direct brain interface.¡± ¡°I heard those were coming.¡± ¡°Not coming,¡± he corrected. ¡°Here. Riftworlds launched about a week ago. The biggest game launch in history. The first few days everything went well, and good reviews made it even more popular. Four days ago they started a tournament. Also the biggest. As of two days ago people are unable to log out. The first few times people tried disconnecting players physically those players died. There are approximately 12 million people, globally, trapped in the game an unable to get out.¡± Well, damn. That was the first thought in my head. I said it a couple seconds late. ¡°And how is this my problem?¡± The door opened and McSternface ushered in a woman in a bluish suit with an American flag pin on the lapel. President Hearn. Everyone at the table stood. That was enough to get me to sit up properly. I probably should have stood. I voted for her. Men shifted positions and she sat directly across from me. Things had just gotten a lot more serious. ¡°Agent Smith was just explaining the situation,¡± Director Thomas said. ¡°Mr. Danburg was just asking how it was his problem.¡± Hah. I¡¯d made him say my name the way I wanted after all. I¡¯ll admit I felt smug about it, but also confused and a little intimidated by the President¡¯s presence. But come on, she was the President. I think that¡¯s fair. ¡°They told you about the people trapped in the game, right?¡± she asked with the same majestic voice she¡¯d campaigned with. I¡¯m sure she¡¯s given a lot of speeches since her inauguration, but I¡¯ve missed most of them. ¡°Yes¡­, Madame President.¡± Hey, I can be polite and respectful. ¡°And that people are dying?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°We think they¡¯re dying because their...avatars are dying.¡± Now that¡¯s taking realism too far. I don¡¯t want to be that immersed in a game. ¡°That is where you come in, Mr. Danburg.¡± ¡°Umm, hey, I had nothing to do with this!¡± If prison wasn¡¯t a good enough alibi what was? ¡°Nobody is blaming you, Mr. Danburg. Far from it. Right now we¡¯re not sure who to blame, but we have a lot of people working on that, and we¡¯re not the only ones. No, this is about something more¡­.close to home.¡± I raised an eyebrow, still not understanding the connection. ¡°My daughter is inside the game,¡± she said with a resignation brutally unlike her. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± I know, kinda lame. I didn¡¯t know what else to say. ¡°So that is why you are here. I have a deal to offer you, Mr. Danburg.¡± She already had my attention, but that really brought it to focus. ¡°Our best resources are working on fixing the problem. In the meantime, I need a way to keep her safe. If you go into the game, find her and keep her safe until we can safely get everyone out, then I will officially pardon you. You¡¯ll be a free man with no felony conviction on your record.¡± It was a lot to take in. For a moment I just sat there like an idiot, trying to think what to say. ¡°Why me?¡± was the best I ended up coming up with. ¡°I¡¯ve never played the game.¡± ¡°Because they tell me you¡¯re the best. Because she¡¯s my daughter, and I need her kept safe. You¡¯ve never had a child, but if you did you would understand. And I want the best. So that¡¯s you.¡± ¡°Hook me up with a levelled-up avatar with good gear?¡± ¡°The game doesn¡¯t work that way,¡± Smith explained. ¡°Each player can have only one avatar. Nobody else can log in to another person¡¯s avatar. They¡¯re genetically tagged. You¡¯ll have to go in at level one.¡± ¡°So people have been leveling up for a week, and for the last couple of days people haven¡¯t been able to get out so they¡¯ve probably been leveling up even faster. I go in at level one and if I die in game I die for real. And if I can find her, and keep her safe, and not get killed myself, for however long it takes for you to fix things from the outside, I get let out about five years early and don¡¯t have to tell future employers I¡¯m a felon? Is that what you¡¯re saying?¡± ¡°There will still be restrictions to your computer access afterwards,¡± Thomas added. ¡°You know you¡¯re really not selling this well.¡± ¡°She¡¯s my daughter, Mr. Danburg. And you¡¯re supposed to be the best. If that¡¯s not the case, if you¡¯re not good enough, give us the name of someone who can do it.¡± Oh, that was not fair. Come on. I took some time running over pros and cons. If I refused I¡¯d go back to prison, and someone would probably make sure parole hearings went poorly. Once I got out I¡¯d have a hard time getting any kind of tolerable or worthwhile job. If I did it, I¡¯d either die or come out a hero, with the President and her daughter both owing me, plus a pardon, albeit with some computer access restrictions. That left three possibilities, two of which kinda sucked. I felt like I¡¯d seen this movie. The hero usually gets betrayed in the end, right? Hero. There¡¯s a word nobody had ever used for me before. I could be the President¡¯s daughter¡¯s hero, and from what I¡¯d heard she was a good person. She could keep me from getting screwed over. Risk my life against bad odds to be a hero? Me? Who was I kidding? ¡°Okay,¡± I said anyway to my own surprise. ¡°Tell me more about this game, and anything you have that might help me find her,¡± I said from a reclining chair as they hooked up monitors and an IV. Not far away a an eighteen-year-old girl lay in an identical setup. ¡°It¡¯s comprised of seven different virtual environments called Worlds,¡± Agent Smith lectured. ¡°Each world reflects a different game genre. The worlds are connected by portals called Riftways. A central hub connects all the worlds, but there are Riftways scattered throughout the game. There¡¯s a fantasy world, a post-apocalypse world, a space opera world, a steampunk world, cyberpunk, superheroes and Western.¡± I could understand the appeal right away. Seven radically different settings to play in. And probably the idea to take things from one genre and play them in another. Steampunk adventurers in space, or Old West wizards. Cool concept. ¡°The President¡¯s daughter¡¯s avatar is elven. She¡¯s a cleric, a healer that--¡± ¡°I know what a cleric is.¡± ¡°Sorry, I had to explain it to Director Thomas. Anyway, her name in game is Silleste. Before being locked in she had left the fantasy world, we know that. She dislikes westerns and superheroes, so that narrows down a couple.¡± ¡°Leaving four complete game environments to search?¡± And I thought the odds were bad before. This was not helping. ¡°From what I¡¯ve gathered about her, I don¡¯t think she¡¯s into punk genres. I think that makes space and post-apocalypse the best places to start,¡± Smith suggested. Fifty-fifty was better, at least. Leads and IVs were hooked up. They asked me if I was ready. I lied and said I was. They put a device around my head that covered my eyes and ears. It did a fantastic job of blocking out all outside sound. I could barely hear my own voice when I asked, ¡°How long will it take to get started?¡± Nobody answered. Instead every sense went dark, or silent, or whatever you¡¯d call the rest of them getting absolutely no sensation whatsoever. --- Chapter 2 2 I really couldn¡¯t tell you how long the utter lack of brain input went on. Visual came first, a swirling gray fog I perceived around me even though I couldn¡¯t see myself. Figures surrounded me, to mist-shrouded to make out more than their presence. I could tell they were different, and that there were seven of them. One for each World, I could see where this was going. I¡¯d seen similar enough in other character selection screens. A woman¡¯s voice came next. ¡°You are about to enter Riftworls Online, a gaming experience truly like none other. You are approaching a universe that spans spaces and times, an entirely unique experience both shared with others and tailored to your individual personality. Be ready for the ultimate adventure. You will never be the same again. ¡°First you must create your alternate self. Riftworlds Online takes things beyond characters or avatars. Your brain is being mapped so the experience you have can be customized with information from both your conscious and subconscious minds.¡± How¡¯s that for creepy and invasive? But it was too late to do anything about it now. Not even a user agreement, no privacy statement about how that information would be used. There must have been something in the packaging about all that. Leave it to the government to not bother telling me about any of this. ¡°The first step along your journey will be to select the World you will enter. There are seven, connected by a central Hub, and connected to each other in many different places. Review the seven Worlds and step towards the one you choose.¡± The mist thinned some as if partly dispersed by a gentle breeze I couldn¡¯t feel. I still couldn¡¯t see the figures any clearer, but a box of text floated in front of each. I read post-apocalypse first. Wastelands, Post-Apocalypse World Society has collapsed. Will you struggle just to survive, or will you carve out your own little empire among the wreckage? I scanned over some of the others to find the Space Opera description. Futura, The Space Opera World The World of Futura has many planets to explore, where military conflict can be anything from small scale skirmishes to sweeping space amadas. Futura offers the widest range of available races. As for adventure, your options are as wide as the sky. High technology, alien mystics, heroic military officers, roguish pirates and smugglers, ancient lost civilizations...New wonders await. Will you live by your wits and your laser blaster? Will you command a starship exploring the frontiers? Will you battle alien invaders with your comrades as ground infantry or a glamorous fighter pilot? Step forward and embrace your destiny. I already knew I¡¯d be starting in either Space Opera or wastelands. Hopefully she¡¯d be one of those. But I had to consider the possibility she wasn¡¯t. With that in mind, I needed to figure out what kind of character I¡¯d need to be to have the capabilities to find and protect her. She was a cleric, so focusing on healing abilities would be redundant. But I¡¯d be starting alone, so I¡¯d need to be something that could work alone. I figured a space character would give me access to communications and travel and maybe scanning stuff I could use. I wasn¡¯t sure about embracing destiny, but I stepped towards it. The mist shifted, a whirling galaxy of stars in an ocean of blackness. The view zoomed in--or it rushed at me--bringing one spiral arm closer and closer, sweeping past nebulas and stars until I saw a map of dozens of star systems connected by dashed and dotted trade-route lines. Wastelandworld seemed like it ought to be smaller place to search. ¡°You don¡¯t have to remain human if you don¡¯t want to,¡± the woman¡¯s voice suggested. ¡°The options are yours. Step forward to claim your race.¡± Figures stepped out of nebula and galactic gasses, encircling me. Familiar text boxes floated before each. As I looked at them the figure stepped forward, clearer to get an idea what to expect. Human The most diverse Riftlands race, humans are the only race that can start in any world. They easily learn to get along with other races, and can become any class. If you want the least restrictions, choose to be Human. Android Androids have the most restrictions, but come with a number of unique advantages. They can never use Spells or Prayers, have reduced Charisma, and are immune to poisons, toxins, and mind control. Androids cannot be magically healed, but instead are repaired. They have the slowest Health regeneration of all the races. Androids can be build for many specialties, and android players will choose from a range of models to customize. Cyborg Cyborgs mix human and machine parts to create a range of different capabilities. Cyborgs learn any magic at a slower rate than most other races, but they can learn it. Cyborg players will choose customization packages which will offer different abilities and bonuses. Elf Elves are graceful and quick and beautiful but not as strong or tough. They excel at magic but can learn to become good at almost anything. They make outstanding navigators and adapt well to different gravities. If you want to be part of the World¡¯s oldest spacefaring civilization, step forward. Fenurian Fenurians are a feline spacefaring race from the forest planet Fennur. While they are new to space exploration, their influence is expanding rapidly. Whether scouting a newly discovered planet, or dogfighting in their sleek fighters, or negotiating trade deals, Fenurians are natural explorers. If your curiosity drives you to be the first to see new sights, step forward. Mordian The Mordians are a fierce and proud warrior race. Strong and tough they live for the pursuit of greatness. Whether you¡¯re a Samurai-like warrior, or a mystic leaving your monastery home, or blazing your trail across the sky, you¡¯ll be the master of your own destiny. Step forward and grab it. Make your people proud! Figures stepped out of nebulae and galactic gasses, encircling me. Familiar text boxes floated before each. As I looked at them the figure stepped forward, clearer to get an idea what to expect. Some of them were easy to rule out. Android would be too limiting, especially alone. I had no interest in being a cat-man. The Moradian was...ugly, with exaggerated, harsh features that suggested angry as the default state. Space-Elf was intriguing, but when it came down to it, cyborg struck me as being a good mix of flexibility and customizability. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. And when it came down to it, this wasn¡¯t a game for me. I had a mission. Space-elf sounded fun, but fun wasn¡¯t the goal. Cyborg struck me as the right combination of searching and protecting. I stared at the half-human, half-robot, gulped and stepped forward. The figure nodded approvingly before fading into dust. An extra box appeared off to the side:
Race: Cyborg +5 Strength, +5 Constitution -10 Magic, -2 Charisma +100 Stamina, +50 Health Nightvision 20m
¡°There are eight Primary Attributes, four physical and four mental. They range from one to one hundred. ¡°Strength affects carrying capacity, armor that can be worn, chance to hit with some melee weapons, melee damage. ¡°Agility affects speed, Evasion, Dodge Cance, chance to hit with ranged weapons and some melee weapons. ¡°Constitution affects Health and Stamina, chance to resist poisons and some spell effects, smaller effect on Mana. ¡°Appearance affects social interactions, can be more or less effective with other races. ¡°Intellect affects chance to hit with magic, vision range and chance to detect concealment. ¡°Magic affects magic damage and mana. ¡°Willpower affects chance to resist mental magic effects, increases Mana and Stamina. ¡°Charisma affects social interactions. A table showed me what I had so far.
Attribute Base Cyborg
Strength 10 +5
Agility 10
Constitution 10 +5
Appearance 10
Intellect 10
Magic 10
Willpower 10
Charisma 10 -2
¡°You may add five points to any two Primary Attributes. Which two would you like to increase?¡± That one took a little mulling over. Agility and Constitution both seemed like they¡¯d be important for survival. So one of those was probably going to happen. But Intellect seemed important, too. In the end I settled for Agility and Intellect. ¡°You¡¯re almost there,¡± my disembodied companion said. The mists around me coalesced into a humanoid form. Nothing else existed. ¡°Will you be male or female?¡± I¡¯ve played both plenty of times. I thought about it. There was too much I did not know about this game. I didn¡¯t think this was the time to experiment more than necessary. ¡°Male,¡± I said, since it hadn¡¯t given me anything to step towards this time. The misty figure solidified to look like me standing in basic white briefs. As if I hadn¡¯t worn enough basic white in prison. ¡°Now we can customize your appearance. You can look as different as you like.¡± From there she ran me through a list of questions. Did I want to be taller? I decided on slightly shorter, thinking that would make blending in easier. I chose to be a little more muscular looking. Hey, a little wish-fulfillment wasn¡¯t going to hurt the mission. They had some weights in prison, but all I¡¯d manage to do in a couple of years was look leaner. Apparently my body wouldn¡¯t bulk up nicely. So I put on some muscle for my new me. Not over-the-top, but some. I kept my hair pretty much the way it is, with an easy to manage under cut, but I went with darker than my normal light brown. I darkened in stages until is was a fairly dark brown, not quite black. Then I changed my mind and went with a rich, dark red. I could have had any color, or even combinations of colors. Blue would definitely have stood out too much, but dark red looked wicked cool. She wasn¡¯t kidding when I said I could look different. I played around with different facial features, sharpening them up some, which looked a little more fierce and rugged, but keeping the overall look pretty similar. I could adjust any measurement, and I probably could have resized individual muscles if I wanted to. Pretty darn impressive. Then I was presented with more than a dozen different customization options. Each had a point cost, and I was given a budget. Most of them also had some kind of visual component, and I could preview what they would look like. I considered a package with built-in, upgradable weapons. Knowing I couldn¡¯t be disarmed definitely had appeal, but they were pretty obvious and didn¡¯t look concealable. There was even an option for replacing an arm from the elbow down for a bigger gun, but that just did not seem like a good idea. I did take a Mobility package (x4 Jump distance) thruster-assisted jumping, because that sounded pretty useful. A Tactical package cost quite a bit but included a lot. It turned my right arm into a gleaming steel, obviously robotic one, and replaced my right eye with a goggle-like lens that stuck out a little and wrapped around the side.
Tactical Package +2 Intellect, +2 Willpower, +5 Crit Chance +5 Evasion, +5 Ranged Attacks Double nightvision range (40m)
That left me enough for Quickness or retractable claws in one hand (+50% melee damage)
Quickness Package +2 Agility, +2 Evasion +50% movement speed
That was another tough one, but in the end I went with claws in my left hand. It had the obvious ¡°I always have a weapon¡± appeal, and I figured I already had boosted jumping mobility, and plus two didn¡¯t seem like that big a deal. ¡°Only one step remains, your name. You should never use your outside name in Riftworlds Online, and do not reveal personally identifying information about yourself. Take time to think carefully, and then speak your new name.¡± Oh, yeah. I hadn¡¯t thought about that part. Names were always the hardest for me. For a lot of players they weren¡¯t that big a deal. But I refused to be Cyborg215, or something like that. For me, they always mattered. Names were part of an identity. When you become somewhat famous in the online community you learn to pay attention to things like that. It could have been a head scratcher, if I had a head. I didn''t seem to. Not yet, anyway. I actually liked my name. I tried to think of a name that sounded like a hero that would come to the rescue. Jack and John were too obvious. Non-human names came easier, but just didn¡¯t feel right for a cyborg commando. I looked at it appearance I¡¯d selected. I wanted something part action hero and part bad boy, since I looked like a combination of both. A first name came to me, but the last name took more. The cybernetic arm and eyepiece led me to Steele, which I discarded immediately. But from there my brain made one of its characteristic leaps, and I spoke with confidence.¡± ¡°Max. Max McAlloy.¡± Hey, never take life one hundred percent seriously. ¡°You are now ready to enter your new life in Riftworlds Online.¡± She actually sounded proud, which I thought was an interesting touch. ¡°Brace yourself!¡± Chapter 3 3 The sudden existence of reality was startling. I blinked my eyes at the bright light high in a cloudless blue sky, shielding myself with a shiny hand made of who knows what metal alloy. That was the part that jarred me into focus. Oh, yeah. The game. This was more real than I expected. A mix of earthy scents drifted on a chilling breeze. A gray jumpsuit and black, sneaker-like shoes were far too familiar, which was disappointing. At least the shoes weren¡¯t the white of prison sneakers, and gray was at least a change from khaki. The fabric was smooth under the fingers of my flesh hand. Rough canyon walls sloped gently up away from me. Blue-green grass lined the canyon floor dotted with purple-leaved low shrubs. I squatted down, checking out the grass. This was no rendered field, these were individual blades of grass. The moved independently. I plucked one. It broke with a smooth edge, the first hint it wasn¡¯t real, but it even had a scent. Something herbal. It reminded me of one of the spices in Mom¡¯s kitchen, but I couldn¡¯t place what. I considered tasting it, but decided to just drop it. It fell realistically, drifting several inches in the breeze. ¡°You are in the Keldor Mountain Range, not far from Outcrop, a small spaceport town, on the planet Relkit III,¡± NarratorChick explained. ¡°Take some time to explore, get a feel for your mobility. Let¡¯s start by heading west, directly ahead.¡± At least there was a tutorial, then. I walked forward, which felt no different than walking normally. A smooth dirt trail wandered through the canyon, easy to follow. I ran forward, and a blue bar came into view towards the upper left wherever I looked. ¡°This is your Stamina Bar. Strenuous activities deplete it. Things that raise your Constitution will give you more Stamina. Penalties apply to most actions below twenty-five percent.¡± Okay, pretty straight-forward. The canyon curved while the stamina bar slowly decreased. I stopped before a number of large boulders, and the green bar replenished very quickly. ¡°You recover Stamina whenever you aren¡¯t exerting yourself, and especially when resting. Cyborgs recover Stamina very quickly. Those boulders are taller than people can jump up to the top of, but you have thruster assisted leaping. Try it.¡± If that didn¡¯t sound like oversimplifying I wasn¡¯t sure what would. They were about the height of a two-story house. Sure, just trot over there and jump, right? Fine, leap of faith. I ran. I jumped. Ports opened at the back of my shoulders and hips and, sure enough, I sailed up to the top of a boulder, landing neatly on my feet. The ports closed. I reached around, and the jumpsuit didn¡¯t seem any worse for wear. That was handy. A cool-down timer started, counting down from two seconds. +100 XP Once the timer reached zero I hopped down, and similar ports at the bottom of my feet let me land lightly. Okay, that was cool. So a couple stories up and down I could do. That was good to know. It also reassured me that yes, things would be pretty much as simple as just do it. That would speed up the learning curve. The patch of boulders here looked like they had tumbled down one side of the canyon. It would make a good ambush point. That would be a fun welcome to the game. Good to see they were nice than that. I trotted along the continuing path to see what would happen next. Something hit me from behind and knocked me down. I got to my hands and knees to see a red and blue six-legged lizard, looking me in the eye. Or lens, since it seemed to be looking at my right eye. What, a lizard that ate bionic parts? That¡¯s not creepy at all, right? ¡°You¡¯ve been attacked by some kind of alien creature,¡± NarratorChick so helpfully stated the obvious. ¡°Get up and punch it while it decides what to do.¡± Who was I to argue? I hopped up to my feet, more agile than real-world me, and I slugged it good. Metal fists, it turns out, are decent to punch with. Didn¡¯t hurt my hand at all. A red bar showed up over the lizard-thing, and shortened about an eighth or so. ¡°Enemies you fight have a red Health bar. You do, as well. Penalties occur below fifty percent, and if it runs out completely, you die. You¡¯ll need to kill this lizard before it kills you. It will probably eat you if you do not defeat it.¡± It lunged at me, hissing and snapping like some twisted chihuahua-crocodile crossbreed. Scales around its neck flared out. I managed to avoid it and I punched at it again, but missed. We went back and forth, and it scored a bite on my leg. It hurt. Not mind-wracking agony, but it was still real, genuine pain. My health bar showed up, except it was red on top and silver on the bottom, then it got marginally shorter. ¡°Cyborgs are part human and part machine. The red part of your Health bar represents damage that can be healed magically. The silver part represents damage that can be repaired or will heal over time.¡± The critter lunged again, but this time I was ready. I hadn¡¯t been distracted by hearing about the Health bar because, honestly, I¡¯d already figured that part out. So instead of catching me off guard like it might have, I bopped it good on the nose. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°You¡¯ve scored a critical hit, doing bonus damage.¡± Yep, she was a master of the obvious. The critter¡¯s Health bar dropped by about double what it had before. About two-thirds were left. ¡°Try using your claws,¡± she suggested. Melee Combat Skill +1 (1) I looked at my fleshy left hand. The critter was either dazed or waiting patiently. That would be pretty stupid, but this was the tutorial, after all. I wouldn¡¯t expect them to do that later. I clenched and unclenched my hand, expecting some kind of mental command, and, sure enough, claws popped into place. One sprouted out each knuckle, nasty serrated blades about as long as my outstretched hand. I punched at the lizard-thing with them jabbing them deep into it. The thing screeched a sound somewhere between a hiss and a squawk, about as pleasant as a screaming baby. The health bar dropped much more dramatically this time, losing about half what was left. Okay, I could handle this. It took a couple more swipes, during which it made a couple more feeble biting attempts, before I caught it with a good slash that finished it off. The claws retracted automatically. +300 XP (400 total) Melee Combat Skill +1 (2) I half expected some kind of selection ring around it and another oh-so-helpful suggestion that I check it for loot. Nope. Nothing. But, after a little looking around, I found a dead body. It looked human, face down, with blue hair and a gray jumpsuit suspiciously similar to my own. Either that was just the local fashion or someone actually failed the tutorial. As uninteresting as the jumpsuit was, I couldn¡¯t help but hope it was just a local fashion. I wasn¡¯t ready to lose that much faith in humanity. I rolled it over and spotted a pistol. Ah, reward for checking, I guess. The body had what looked much more like a gunshot wound in its chest than any kind of lizard wound. The pistol I picked up. ¡°You now have your first weapon. Notice the counter displaying the number of shots remaining.¡±
Item acquired: Basic Laser Pistol This simple laser pistol doesn¡¯t look like much, but it¡¯s functional.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 50m +1 25 15/50
The weapon itself wasn''t terribly interesting or unique looking. Rounded edges, but still basically pistol. A counter on the back under the rear sight read 20. And here I''d been hoping for one of those games with unlimited ammo. Oh, well. ¡°Weapons will generally come with basic, automatic holsters. Simply put it where it feels right to assign that holster location for that weapon.¡± If it hadn''t been for the jumping experience I think I might have been confused at that point. But sometimes you just have to roll with it. I holstered it on my right hip and, boom, a holster and belt took place to hold it. Basic black, pretty much much what I expected. I tend to pick up these games quick. If not, I probably wouldn''t have ended up in jail and then recruited to rescue the President¡¯s daughter. I could be sipping beer on a ratty sofa blowing off class coming up on graduation. Just then I''d settle for the cold beer. Lacking that, I figured it was time to move on. The trail wound up until a set of switchbacks up one canyon wall. This was prime ambush territory, so I kept the pistol out and ready. Reaching the top of a ridge would have been anticlimactic if it weren¡¯t for the view. A broad valley sprawled away into an expanse of blue forest. A red-and-brown raptor circled casually at about my altitude over the trees. The mountains curved outwards in both directions, a mix of rounded edges and jagged peaks, the taller ones capped in white. Off to the north, thanks to a pop-up map that showed what I¡¯d explored and bits of what I could see from here, a small spaceport perched on a plateau jutting out from the range. A ship angled in from over the forest and lowered itself to land, too far away to see details. Apparently, magnification wasn¡¯t part of any of my packages. Maybe that would be an available upgrade later. The trail I had taken followed the ridge for a little before dipping down into the range again. It looked like a pretty solid day¡¯s hike, at least, to the spaceport, which seemed a likely destination. A transport and communications hub should have been a good place to start my search for Silleste. I trotted off, alternating between faster and slower to maintain my Stamina bar. I didn¡¯t feel any exhaustion from it, which was nice. Track days in high school had sucked. But no stomach cramps in this life, it seemed. I came into a valley, too gentle to call a canyon, but still clearly defined not just by the path snaking through it. Scraggly trees scattered up the slopes and huge boulders sat here and there along the trail. More ambush territory. I told myself I was getting paranoid, but I felt pretty sure that as soon as I stopped expecting one, the game would throw one at me. I had plenty of gaming experience learning that there was only one good side of an ambush to be on. I ran towards one and lept up to the top, landing in a crouch down behind the tallest part of it. A soldier in gray combat gear toting a rifle walked along, his head scanning side to side. I flattened myself down, pistol out. ¡°You are about to encounter your first dangerous opponent. How you choose to act will determine your first character class. Will you hide behind a rock and attack from behind after he passes? Will you fire from cover? Will you charge and take the fight up close? Or will you observe and then let him pass? Choose your destiny.¡± A text box appeared with more.
Quest: Intro to Tactics
Interesting way to pick a class. Nicer than scrolling through a list, but this time I would have preferred a table of bonuses. I needed to play this right if I was going to accomplish my mission. And live, let¡¯s not forget that part. The guy kept coming. A decision would be made for me if I didn¡¯t make one. If I let him get close we¡¯d be fighting in fairly tight quarters, which would minimize the range benefit of his rifle. Plus I had claws, which seemed like an advantage. But here I had cover and he did not. If he got close I would still have that options, but from a maximum-benefit-minimum-risk standpoint, sniping from here won out. I took aim and fired. Chapter 4 4 Somebody once said, ¡°The most unfair fight is a sniper ambushing someone.¡± Some other guy said, ¡°Never fight fair if you want to win.¡± I gotta say, I agree with both of them. I kinda felt sorry for the guy. Here he was, just hiking down the trail, minding his own business, on some patrol he probably thought was boring as all get out. He probably walked this route every day, maybe more than once a day. Kinda like the perimeter guards at the prison. Except those were real people. I was pretty sure this guy was not actually a person, but a computer-generated non-player character. Because if I logged into a game like this, which had to be on the pricey side, and my role was to just patrol a mountain trail waiting to be ambushed by newbies¡­I¡¯d want my money back. I figured he was about fifty or so meters out, the pistol¡¯s maximum range. The shot went right over his head. And there went the element of surprise. Pistol Skill +1 (1) I got off another shot while he was scrambling for the limited cover his position could provide, catching him in the side. His Health bar showed up and went down by about a quarter. Three more hits like that, that sounded doable. He found a large rock to kneel down behind, but more of him was exposed than I was. As far as I could tell. But I was pretty sure that was the case. We both aimed, both using solid rock to steady our weapons. I was pretty sure his was both more accurate and more powerful than mine. We both fired. My shot hit his rock pretty ineffectively. His hit my rock for a shower of dust and debris. Yep, his was definitely more heavy duty. After that we both started firing, trying to stay as much in cover as possible. I got a hit on him, taking him down to about half, and he hit me in the shoulder. It hurt more than the lizard thing had, and my Health bar dropped about a quarter. I slid backwards and let myself drop off behind my boulder. His weapon hit harder, but I was tougher, all things considered. Pistol Skill +1 (2) I sprinted across to another rock and crouched down. It was his move now. I aimed at the open space he would have to come through to get to me. It was nine deep breaths before I saw him. Naturally, I missed, and he ducked back. Things were feeling stalemated. ¡°This is your last chance to surrender,¡± the man announced. Really? I shoot at him out of the blue and he¡¯d be willing to accept my surrender? Either he was far more forgiving than I was or he was ballsy. Two clunk sounds preceded a round object bouncing to land pretty much at my feet. A grenade? Seriously? It was a really good thing this game worked through a neural connection instead of any other kind of interface. Sure, it many games a grenade isn¡¯t fatal. But instinct kicked in and I jumped. Hard. I¡¯d forgotten in that moment that I had boosted jumping, which took me even higher. And a little forward. By the time the blast happened the boulder was between me and the majority of the blast. As it was, it took me down to about twenty percent left. And I was coming down on the other side of the boulder. The same side as a guard who was about to step around and finish me off. He hadn¡¯t caught me leaping to...safety? I turned down and came down behind him. I wish I could say I came down claws ready. Or that I shot him in the back on the way down. Either of those would have sounded cooler than what actually happened. I landed behind him a bit like an idiot. I tried to turn mid-air, but it seems the game had more physics than I was prepared for. Or there was some Aerial Acrobatics skill I needed to level up first, maybe. So we both spun around to face each other. Normally, this is where I might point out that pistols work better in close quarters than rifles. Which on paper is true. The guy was better than I gave him credit for. He full-on butt smacked with his rifle and knocked the pistol out of my hand, then brought it back around and up to his shoulder. As a general rule, any gun wins in a fist fight. So I knew this was going to end badly if I didn¡¯t do something. You know when a rifle is at its least advantageous? In a wrestling match. I dove and tackled him. We rolled on the ground, at first trying to get control on the rifle. We rolled right, we rolled left. We stirred up dust. Now that¡¯s attention to detail. He was bigger, and clearly better trained. But I had one edge he did not have. Actually, it was four edges. Serrated ones. I snicked them out and punched him in the gut over and over in classic ¡°button mashing¡± glory until he stopped moving. And then a couple more times, well past the point where his red Health bar was gone. I rolled off him and got up to my knees, noticing the decrease in my green Stamina bar. It was down maybe ten percent, if that. I would have expected more. That +100 from being a cyborg must have helped. A transparent window had popped up when the guy died.
Quest completed: Intro to Tactics Quest Rewards:
  • Level gain
  • Class gain
Level gained! (Total XP 1000) +15 Health, +15 Stamina, +10 Focus Class gained: Hunter +3 Agility, +3 Con +100 Stamina +10 Evasion, +10 Speed +5 Sneak, +5 Dodge, +10 Track Choose one:
  • +5 Melee Attack, +5 Ranged Attack
  • +10 Melee Atk
  • +10 Ranged Atk
¡°In addition to gaining a level, you have gained points in skills. The more you use a skill, the better at it you will become.¡±Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. The man¡¯s body lay in a pool of blood. Now I had the time to notice details I had been too busy before. I suspected he was designed with some randomness around a basic template. Who knew how many I¡¯d see before I found duplicated faces. Or would I? He was not wearing the ever-fashionable plain jumpsuit, but pants, boots, a shirt and jacket. The shirt and jacket were pretty ruined, especially on the side with all the claw damage. It was a detailed game. I took things that looked valuable. He had two small rectangular things that looked like ammunition cartridges on his belt. I took those and put them on my belt, yielding a pop-up confirming them as ¡°Basic E-Rifle Magazines (50) x2.¡± The small communicator on his left shoulder I debated with myself about. On one hand, it was bound to be valuable. But would it make me trackable? In the end, I concluded that if they were standard issue I could get one if I needed one. The rifle rounded out my gains for this encounter.
Item acquired: Basic Laser Rifle
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 75m +5 50 35/50
That definitely looked like an upgrade. I kept the holstered pistol, though, seeing no reason to discard a usable weapon. I had another weapon, and a class. Hunter sounded about right. Hunt a woman down and then protect her. Hunter was a good start. Certainly better than ¡°Dead Soldier.¡± I waited around while my Health bar slowly recovered. Newbs die easy in a lot of games, and so far I wasn¡¯t convinced this was one of the more forgiving ones. In the process I confirmed that I did heal faster when specifically resting. So there was that. When I was fully recovered and ready I hopped up and trotted down the path, toting my new rifle and ready for more. I was especially on the lookout for anything that looked like a potential ambush. Generally a tutorial will tell you when you¡¯ve finished it. Since I had been told no such thing, it was safe to assume I was not done. Or it was not done with me. Tutorials exist to teach new players valuable lessons. I kinda figured ¡°avoid ambushes¡± might have been one the developers wanted to teach the newbies. Learning quick is an important element of survival in new games. I was determined to be a quick learner. Especially given the potential consequences for not. ¡°It is time to learn about your character sheet. It will display whenever you want it to.¡± More tables popped up in front of me. I stopped, not wanting to trip--or get caught off guard by another patrolling sentry--while studying new information. The sheet had a number of different sections. Primary Attributes, Secondary Attributes, Tertiary Attributes, and short skill list. I started with Primary Attributes:
Strength 15
Agility 18
Constitution 18
Appearance 10
Intellect 17
Magic 0
Willpower 12
Charisma 8
All in all, not bad, I supposed. Charisma was lower than I would have liked, especially if I was going to have to be asking around to find Silleste. I was pretty sure the game wasn¡¯t going to just give me that quest with NPCs leading me from place to place until I found her. If it did, I was going to be really creeped out about what that meant for the game reading my brain and acting accordingly. Secondary attributes started at 100 and were modified by Primary Attributes and class and race modifiers. Cyborg and Scout in particular did good things to Stamina, considering these all maxed out at 1000.
Health 180
Stamina 330
Mana
Focus 124
Tertiary Attributes were the longest section, and had some of the more important numbers, I figured. Attack bonuses, Evasion to take less damage, chances for critical hits and how hard those crits would be...all good things adding to survival, which had to be the primary mission, no matter what the suits outside said. Can¡¯t rescue anybody when you¡¯re dead, right?
Ranged Attack 115
Melee Attack 115
Evasion 125
Toughness
Resistance
Melee Damage 15
Magic Damage
Crit Chance 16
Crit Power 11
Mitigation
Speed 28
The skills list looked like it needed work. But I was just starting, after all. Presumably it only listed the skills I had. I couldn¡¯t believe that might be all the skills the game had.
Dodge 5
Melee Combat 2
Pistol 2
Sneak 5
Track 10
I had five skill points to spend. I put two into Melee Combat and three into Pistol. Early on, fighting skills were probably going to be a big factor in survival. An inventory tab listed what gear I had, with all kinds of stats about it all. It seemed just about anything could have some possible use or stat modifier. The sun crept across the sky and shadows changed accordingly. Clouds trekked from horizon to horizon. I passed through valleys and over ridges. About half the day went by before I came to another wide, shallow valley. Burning wreckage bookended the valley, with a line of what I thought was the demise of a vehicle convoy at one end and the smoking corpse of a larger air vehicle of some kind. A group of soldiers and a more ragtag group skirmished among rocks and shrubs and tall grasses in between. ¡°Welcome to the end of the Riftworlds Online tutorial,¡± my ever-present narrator said. ¡°One last thing to discover is that in most lands you will encounter rival groups or factions. Choose carefully which side you help, for your friends and enemies can have a direct impact on your game experience.¡± Game experience. There was a euphemism if I¡¯ve ever heard one. Life or death. Pick your friends and enemies carefully. Got it. ¡°Federal troops and rebel Separatists struggle for control of this system. Will Relkit remain a part of the Federation? Will their fight for independence lead to freedom or civil war? What part will you play in a drama that spans countless systems and planets? It is time for you to choose your destiny. Welcome to Riftworlds Online. Good luck.¡±
Quest: Choose a Side Federalists and Separatists are clashing nearby. Choose which side to help. Defeat all opponents.
Chapter 5 5 Figuring out which side was which was not too hard. Black uniforms on one side, multiple colors on the other. Ten on six. Rebels are always the underdogs, right? Now and then I¡¯d like to see the ¡°Brave imperialists holding out against insurmountable odds by the brutal rebellion.¡± Was it the easy decision it presented itself as? Was this Federation the source of law and order in the galaxy, or were they tyrants? Were the Separatists noble freedom fighters, or ruthless terrorists? The truth could have been anything. No, my choice was about more pragmatic issues. On one hand, side with the winners. On the other, side with whoever could help me more. Federal troops already had the numbers advantage. Me joining in would only go so far to win favor. No, when you need their help, the underdogs will always appreciate you more. With that covering the strategic decision, the next question was more tactical in nature. What did I need to do? I was essentially at the centerline of the field. I got down in what grasses I had available to me and crawled forward. It was time to put some of those Sneak points to use, and maybe get some more while I was at it. The outnumbered six were mostly holding ground, crouched down low or just plain belly down. The Federals moved forward slowly, crouching low. Some would fire while the others rushed to a cover spot. Classic bounding overwatch. What can I say, I read a lot. Well, I read more before prison, but still. The Federals would move past my position. Crossfire it was. I crept forward more until I found a vantage point I liked, happily gaining +1 sneak (6). The rifle display showed forty-six shots before reloading. It looked like the range would be fine. I steadied the rifle and aimed. The Federals moved in a disciplined manner: fire, move, switch. Fire, move, switch. There was always enough firing to keep the Separatists from getting good shots off. Since nobody was firing at me yet, so I didn¡¯t have that disadvantage. Three raised up to fire, and I started with the one on the right. I was rewarded with a floating, ¡°Critical Hit!¡± and his Health bar suffered accordingly. He and the guy in the middle turned as I missed the middle one, despite a brief notification of ¡°+1 Rifle (1).¡± Laser fire lanced across the valley in all directions as the rebels took full advantage of the distraction to fire on running federalist soldiers. Federalists fired back on the run, but their health bars seemed to be showing more abuse than the rebels. I took a ¡°grazing hit¡± to my right arm, for 25 HP, so either they had wimpier rifles--which I doubted--or a graze was a half damage shot. If there was some random element to damage, I hadn¡¯t seen it yet, which was suspicious. I supposed the possibility that laser weapons did more or less fixed damage, while melee weapons might be more random. Not that I was thinking that during the actual fighting, of course. I got off some more shots, missing more than hitting, as soldiers tried to find the compromise between ducking behind cover and staying in formation. Each group of three seemed to stick together, leaving their leader identifiable. Whether killing him would affect the rest or not I didn¡¯t know, but he certainly had to be worth more XP. But before I could even get started on him I had to deal with the group of three whose attention I¡¯d drawn. You know, by shooting one of them in the back pretty hard. All were hurt more than I was, but one of them only barely. That still seemed like solid three-to-one odds, which I was not thrilled with. Oh, for a grenade, right? They were advancing slowly, although still at longer range. I had some time before they were on top of me, but only so much. Maybe if I had started in Superhero World I¡¯d have more powerful claws, in both hands, and some kind of nifty area effect attack with swooshing visual effects. Then I could leap at them, probably covering the distance in one jump. Jump! I forgot I had that. That had to give me some tactical advantage. I took another aimed shot, hoping for a headshot on the grounds that it ought to do some kind of extra damage, and got him, clean in the gut. He stumbled a step and dropped about half the health he had left. I ducked my head down against their counter shots and snuck quick peeks in both directions. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. No boulders in sight. Low brush, tall grasses, and the occasional tree. Some of the trees were big enough to cower behind. A couple were maybe big enough to get up into. Would that give me a high-ground advantage, or just leave me trapped in a place I couldn¡¯t dodge without falling? More shooting to do before figuring that out. One rose slightly from his crouch and probably pulled the trigger. Mostly he shook his gun in frustration. Out of ammo or¡­ jammed? Could a laser rifle jam? Malfunction, then, maybe. Not the most reassuring thought either. If his could, mine probably could, too. Pistol and claws against three--two?--rifles wasn¡¯t any better odds. But his delay gave me a valuable opportunity. I lined up careful aim and fired like mad. Classic button-mashing where you just hit a button over and over until something dies. Several shots missed, but he never fired back before he fell, dead. +200 XP (1200 total) His two buddies weren¡¯t stupid, and they took full advantage of my distraction. By the time I caught on they had separated and gotten a lot closer. The more I focused on one, the more his partner would have an easier time gunning for me. And this was the tutoral? Sheesh! I was starting to think the game wanted me to pick the easier fight. There was probably an important lesson in there somewhere, but first there was some more important learning about killing paired hunters. Hunter. That¡¯s what I was supposed to be. If they were going to fight like the soldiers they were, I needed to fight like a hunter. That meant smarter, for one thing. I had the high ground, and I had a jumping boost they didn¡¯t know about. I fired off some shots a little wild to distract them while I scoped out the terrain again. There, a low dip. From above, not anything to notice. But it would give me cover from downhill. That was an improvement already. I took another graze, and a pack of misses, on my way before I dove into it, hitting soft ground hard. Not hard enough to take damage, apparently, but it still hurt. I rolled over to edge, glad to have more Agility than I would claim in real life, and took my first aimed shot. That got me another ¡°Critical Hit!¡± notification, along with ¡°+1 Rifle (2),¡± and finished that one off for another 200 XP. I was glad I picked the more injured one first. The other one fired but less of me was exposed now. He was closer, maybe 30 meters or so. More button mashing commenced as bits of dirt exploded to rays of super-hot laser light. Or whatever it was. All I knew was the rifles shot red rays of burny pain. Most of my shots went wild. Some of them hit him as he advanced, and I got him pretty low on health before the gun stopped firing. Zero, the display under the sight taunted. Crud. I ducked down and back so he couldn¡¯t see me, and I drew my pistol. His head would come over the ridge, and I¡¯d plug it. Or put a hole in it, anyway. I had everything lined up, so ready, so proud of myself. I was hurt below half, but I was pretty sure one more hit and he was mine. What I saw was not a crew-cut, helmetless head. What I saw was a smaller thing, about fist-sized, that bounced on the ground and bumped off my forehead. Grenades in this game, at least the explosive ones I¡¯d seen so far in Space Opera World--yeah, yeah, the one, but still--were grey spheres with one black stripe. This one sat in the grass inches from my nose. Military people probably have some special things they¡¯re trained to do in situations like these. Pick it up and throw it, maybe. Or pray, maybe. As a proper Manly-Man-Hero-Guy (?) I grabbed it up, rolling up to my feet in an impressive display of ground gymnastics. I threw it just past him and let his own body shield me from the blast. Okay, no. That¡¯s not what I did. What I did was far less manly. You ever seen someone startled when a fly or a bee landed on their nose? And they did this spastic thing where they¡¯re all, ¡°Ah! Ah! Git it away¡±? Yeah. It was kinda like that. I flailed away with both hands, batting it away and over the ridge. But it did get over the ridge before it blew. The ridge sheltered me from some of it. After the noise and concussion battered me and might have basically stripped off my face from the feel of it, I was left with four (4) HP, and a flashing, very short Health indicator. I also couldn¡¯t see anything that wasn¡¯t part of the game interface, and my ears were ringing. I waited for the end. What else could I do? I couldn¡¯t hear footsteps over the stupid tinnitus, and I couldn¡¯t see anything. I still felt around for the pistol, which I found. For all the good it would do me. My Health bar ticked up. Black turned to gray. The Health bar ticked up again, and the gray became different shades of gray. And then I could see, and the hissing static in my ears faded away. I poked my head up over the ridge and into the valley. +200 XP (total 1600) Chapter 6 6 The action had wound down; bodies lay strewn about like scattered litter. Two rebels remained, kneeling down and tending to the other. Victory. Cool. But, ow. In most games, being hurt doesn¡¯t actually affect you until you run out of Health. Just then I could have done with a bit less realism.
Quest completed: Choose a Side +300 XP (Total 1900)
The almost-forgotten voice of NarratorChick came back one last time: ¡°Congratulations. You have completed the tutorial. You have learned the basic of how to navigate and survive Riftworlds Online. There is an enormous amount of content for you to explore. More than any one person can explore. Your next step should be to find and talk to a class trainer. Perhaps the people below can help you with that¡­¡± And so close to level, too.
Quest: Find the Hunter Trainer Seek out and talk to the Hunter Trainer in nearby Outcrop.
I figured things would only get harder from here. Tutorials are usually more forgiving than the rest of a game. That did not bode well for the rest of my time here. I was going to need better gear. GrenadeDude had been very close to the ridge, counting on the blast being on my side. The whole back of him was...gross. Let¡¯s just leave it at that. I really doubted there was going to be anything lootable, and even if there was I didn¡¯t really want to touch¡­that. I shuddered instead and headed down the slope to the other two. These were in much better shape. You know, for people who had been laser-burnt to death. No jumpsuits for these guys. Black uniforms with jackets and pants. I really considered taking a jacket, just so I wouldn¡¯t look like a newb toon. I also didn¡¯t want to look too much like one of the Federalists. Maybe I didn¡¯t really want to take sides just yet, and if I did, looking like my chosen enemy would probably not win me friends. And that¡¯s what I needed. Their rifles looked better than mine, so I grabbed one. Yep, a little better than mine. I kept it, and worked my way down the slope.
Item acquired: Federalist Laser Rifle In most ways just a basic rifle, but more accurate and with slightly better range.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 85m +10 50 45/50
The hurt one kept an eye on me as I approached, and eventually tapped the woman wrapping bandages around his abdomen. I could not see exact hit point numbers, but he was down pretty badly. Bandages covered four separate wounds. She stood up, drawing a pistol. The move would have looked better had she not winced while standing and nearly fallen over. HurtGuy--no name floated over his head, so I gave him one--raised his rifle and both gave me skeptical looks. ¡°Hey, if I was gonna kill you wouldn¡¯t I have done that from further away?¡± I held up my flesh hand and my alloy hand, wondering if racism was a thing here. ¡°True,¡± the woman conceded. ¡°Who are you?¡± ¡°Max,¡± I said, puffing up my chest and trying out the whole heroic main character thing. ¡°Max McAlloy.¡± I did feel a little heroic. I had taken on more than my share and come out...well, sore, but winning. These two had survived against seven. I was pretty sure that three more would have tipped the scales. Which meant I had saved their lives. Of course, they were NPCs, non-player characters, and thus might not even care.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°I¡¯m Reck,¡± the man said, setting down his rifle. ¡°You look like a wreck,¡± I joked. ¡°Have you seen your...face?¡± the woman asked. ¡°I¡¯m Dara. Thank you for helping out. Things weren¡¯t looking good there for a while. We were already a bit messed up when we ran into these guys.¡± I didn¡¯t have a mirror, obviously. I couldn¡¯t pan a camera around to see myself. I felt my face with my fingers--the flesh ones. About half my face was steel skull. Wonderful. I didn¡¯t look Terminator enough, huh? I half expected a further Charisma reduction, so I checked. No change there, although Appearance had taken a hit from 10 to 6. Wonderful. Their Health bars were recovering about twice as fast as mine. I wondered if it would take magical healing to make me look normal again. All the more motivation to find that elf cleric, huh? ¡°So, what happened?¡± I asked. Dara wasn¡¯t bad looking, but unless she liked her men shiny I suspected flirting wasn¡¯t going to go far. ¡°We were out scouting. We ran into some trouble and was on our way back to report it when we ran into these lovely individuals.¡± Reck stood up with a groan. About half his health was back. ¡°We should get moving.¡± ¡°Where are you headed?¡± I was pretty sure I knew, but it never hurts to ask. ¡°Outcrop. The starport,¡± she explained, packing up her medical supplies. She hesitated, looking back and forth between Reck and me. ¡°You¡¯re with the rebellion, right?¡± Hello there, elephant in the room, ¡°Yes. You¡¯re at least no friend of the Federation?¡± ¡°No, I guess not.¡± ¡°Well, then here¡¯s the thing,¡± she said, standing, ¡°We have a hideout in the city. I¡¯m not authorized to tell you where just yet. You can come with us to the gate, after that, if you want to be part of us, we¡¯ll arrange a meet.¡± ¡°Well, are we going?¡± Reck asked. It was still going to be quite a hike on foot, but the vehicles were way past repairing. So we hiked off. Reck set the pace, limping along, and we had no problems catching up. I felt more comfortable about all of it after finishing healing. My face was still about half missing. It had to have been a nasty sight. ¡°So, what¡¯s the story here, anyway?¡± I asked when I got bored of the quiet and had seen enough mountain views to stop being impressed by it. ¡°With?¡± ¡°The Rebellion. How come?¡± Dara squinted one eye and raised the other eyebrow, as if they had to balance each other out. ¡°I¡¯m new here.¡± ¡°The Federation had kept things peaceful and good for a good hundred years or so. Now there are new rules all the time, each one more oppressive than the last. They¡¯ve rotten from within with corruption. They want to control all interplanetary shipping. They board ships randomly for inspections, and confiscate cargos with new, trumped up charges. Licensing fees for all kinds of things. Increased taxes, increased surveillance and scrutiny. We stand for freedom and independence.¡± I could understand that. I¡¯d heard the story plenty of times in other settings, and not just games. I suppose my time in prison might have biased me a little. Still, not my mission. ¡°Head down,¡± Dara barked after about three hours of hiking. We all took cover where we could, glad we were off the sheer rock face with its barely wide-enough-to-walk-on trail. Some kind of hover Jeep cruised by, with four soldiers on top and a laser machine gun on the bottom. It passed by at about a good running pace, not slowing down to investigate if anything had given away our hiding. ¡°There¡¯s a mining operation not far from here. They arrest anyone who gets close.¡± Now, that sounded like the thing that would involve a number of quests. That might be a good thing to keep in mind for later. I marked the current position on the map as ¡°Mining Base Quests nearby.¡± ¡°Well, they say it¡¯s a mining operation. But they have a lot of guards around it for something as simple as mining. No, there¡¯s something there they don¡¯t want anybody seeing. Classic Federation. Anywhere they don¡¯t want you to go is off limits, trespassing.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t get arrested,¡± Reck warned, coming out of a moping silence he¡¯d been nursing, the hangover of grief, I suspected. ¡°Let me guess, no right to a trial?¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s not it, you get a trial. Not even a show trial, at that. But they all happen at far away planets. So they can have an ¡®impartial¡¯ jury. Usually they¡¯re on planets either nobody would want to live on or nobody can afford to live on. So there you are, halfway across the Federation, with nothing. Even if you¡¯re found not guilty, you¡¯re still stranded somewhere you either hate or can¡¯t afford, and by this point you¡¯ve got no job, so no income. Then they get you for vagrancy, or you end up in an indentured servitude.Vagrants tend to become fuel miners. You wanna guess the life expectancy of fuel miners?¡± ¡®No, not really,¡± I freely admitted. They were really playing the recruitment angle. If I were here just to play, I¡¯d have gone for it. ¡°But I¡¯m sorry, it¡¯s not my mission. I¡¯m here looking for someone.¡± ¡°A woman, with pointed ears,¡± I said, not sure if people in each World knew there were others. ¡°An elf?¡± ¡°Yes. She¡¯s a healer. Her name¡¯s Silleste.¡± ¡°Maybe she can fix your face,¡± Reck taunted. ¡°When we get in I¡¯ll ask around. Maybe we can help you find her,¡± Dara offered, much more helpfully. ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it. By the time it got dark we still weren¡¯t there. A cluster of flashing lights passed more or less overhead, a ship coming in. ¡°We should be there about noon tomorrow.¡± Dara shrugged out of her pack. We all picked smoother patches of ground to rest on. Dara passed out Ration Bars, which came with a Stamina buff I didn¡¯t really need. Clearly what had been rationed to stretch as far as possible was flavor. We all rested quietly as the darkness deepened faster than I expected. Stars came out brilliant diamonds against black velvet. One moved straight across the sky. It came across the same route once more before I fell asleep. Something in orbit. I couldn¡¯t help but wonder if there was an actual ship or station up there, or if it was just a cosmetic feature. The last thought I was aware of having before drifting of was, ¡®Do we dream in the game?¡¯ Chapter 7 7 I couldn¡¯t sleep on the cruddy prison mattress. My android cellmate sat up, his eyes glowing a faint orange in the subdued lighting. I rubbed my flesh eye with my flesh hand. A sheet would have been nice. I ignored the stupid white sneakers. My bionic feet didn¡¯t care if the floor was hard or cold. I ran the backs of my alloy fingers gently against the bars. I didn¡¯t want to wake anyone else, but I needed sound. My cellmate certainly never made any. ¡°Just walk out,¡± the dwarf across the hall suggested, running thick, pale fingers through his impressive blond beard. ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°You heard me, boy.¡± He brushed at the sleeve of his shirt, too long for him and all he seemed to be wearing. If his leg hair were any thicker he could braid it. ¡°You know this isn¡¯t real. Walk out.¡± The bars felt pretty real to me. Cool to my flesh hand and hard to both. I pulled, hard. Nothing happened. As expected. ¡°Not like that, boy,¡± the dwarf grumbled. ¡°Turn around. Shut your eyes. And just step backwards.¡± Stupid and pointless as it sounded, there didn¡¯t seem to be any harm in it. So I did. And backed into a huge biker. ¡°Oh, sorry.¡± I meant it. ¡°Meh, don¡¯ worry about it, mon,¡± he said in a Jamaican accent that matched with exactly nothing else about him. I looked around the bar. I was supposed to meet someone, right? I was pretty sure I was, but I couldn¡¯t remember who. Hopefully I¡¯d know when I saw them, or they¡¯d recognize me. Smoke hid most of the ceiling and wafted around the lights, casting a yellowish hue over everything. Sultry music guided a cat woman dancing on a small stage. ¡°Your shot,¡± the man in camouflage overalls and the mother of all black cowboy hats said as he handed me the cue stick. The guy was such a showoff, and he was probably sharking me. I lined up the only shot available to me, the solid-green six. Any other shot would hit one of the rolled up hedgehogs. The shot itself was pretty clear, so maybe I had a chance afterall. I felt the cue as it slid over my knuckles. It tickled. I hit the ball perfectly, just above center and not too hard. It collapsed as powdery white dust. ¡°Ooh, that¡¯s gonna cost you,¡± a cigar-smoking elf leaning against a tree pointed out. ¡°Okay, now you have to take your shirt off,¡± gloated a woman in tight jeans and a blue lace bra the same color as her hair. She laughed, a musical laugh that pulled her head back, lengthening her neck. What else could I do? I took off the khaki shirt, adding it to a waist-high pile of discards. Was I always this muscled?The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. She took me by the hand and led me to the door. A sweet, honey scent followed her. We stepped out onto a tropical beach, where green water lapped against white sands and toucans wheeled in the air. The breeze was warm and salty and mixed well with the warmth of the suns on my skin. I breathed in the clean air, welcoming its freshness after the dank bar. ¡°Gretzl,¡± a burly android said by way of welcome. Two of his hands held a large tray of drinks. I could tell it was; text floated above it labeling it, ¡°A tray of drinks.¡± At least it wasn¡¯t ¡°The tray of drinks.¡± That would have been creepy. One of his other arms pointed out a sign. ¡°NO FENURIANS¡± ¡°Huh?¡± I asked ¡°It''s the fur,¡± she said, still holding my hand in hers. ¡°It clogs up the plumbing.¡± Ah, Fenurians were the feline race. Right. Obviously. We walked through the sand, my metallic toes sinking into the super-fine sand deeper than her stiletto heels. The sand we kicked up drifted in the breeze like ash. She led me to the edge of the water. It lapped over our feet, but I couldn¡¯t feel it. She laughed as her jeans got wet. A taller wave splashed over, getting both of us nearly the waist. Her jeans clung even tighter, which I wouldn¡¯t have thought possible. Maybe it was because the fabric was so thin. With a laugh she stepped in front of me and turned around. Her lips were also the same blue as her hair and her nails, vibrant and rich, police officer blue. She kissed me. It was a slow, long kiss that grew and grew in intensity. I stood speechless when she let me go. ¡°Stay right there,¡± she purred. ¡°Whatever happens, don¡¯t move.¡± I turned to watch as she strutted up the sand, finally kicking off her blue stilettos. And she danced, slow and lithe, with her hands up over her head. Her body was all curves and sinuous movement. A crowd gathered behind her to watch. With just her thumbs she slipped her jeans down, teasing. One hip exposed and then covered for the other to be revealed. She turned in slow circles, edging the jeans a little lower with each seductive turn. Faces in the crowd changed. Concerned frowning replaced lustful leering. Then widened eyes changed the frowns into quivering, slack-jawed terror. ¡°What, is this not allowed here?¡± I asked. We probably should have been in a room somewhere. Her response was either a shrug incorporated into her dance or part of a shoulder roll that led her whole body in a slithery spiral. She looked right at me and smiled. And laughed. People ran away, heading further up the beach, away from us. Panicked screams drowned out tropical songbirds and a cooing dragon nuzzling the sand. I turned to the side to look out to sea, expecting a monstrous head or invading armada. At first all I could see was ocean. Until perspective helped, and I realized the ocean was not a field of rippling waves, but one colossal wave easily a hundred feet tall. And charging fast. ¡°We have to run!¡± I¡¯m good at pointing out the obvious. How could she possibly have not noticed that? She turned, but instead of running wriggled her butt, lowering her pants down below full, round cheeks. She left them there just long enough for me to notice a lack of underwear. ¡°Whyever would we do that?¡± she asked, now with a texas accent. I couldn¡¯t move. My feet were stuck. The ground was not sand, it was cement. Dry cement encased my feet fully; I was stuck facing sideways. I could look at the coming wave, or I could look at her. She unhooked the front of her bra and teased with it, never actually uncovering too much but each time suggesting she was about to Roaring warned of the coming wave is coming, now faster and bigger. An aircraft carrier halfway up tipped over, spilling airplanes into the sea. ¡°You know it¡¯s not real, right?¡± the pale, Nordic dwarf said. He drew a flaming sword and struck a heroic pose in his glistening chain mail. ¡°Is she real?¡± he asked, looking more serious. ¡°Are you? I think the only thing real here is me.¡± Chapter 8 8 I woke up on hard ground under a blue sky. Lines of clouds took different colors from the rising sun, yellows and oranges bright and dramatic. The dwarf¡¯s words hung in my mind like a fog. I hadn¡¯t really expected to dream in game. Sleep really only ever seemed to happen in single-player games, and then it was just...poof, it¡¯s morning now. The realism in the game was unsettling. I was hungry, which seemed to correspond to a shortened Stamina bar. Was the dream something out of my subconscious, or had the game server created it? My muscles were even stiff when started moving. Maybe the Android players didn¡¯t have that. I did notice that clothes weren¡¯t seeming to get dirty, although it did seem like they could deteriorate from damage. Reck and Dara were both awake, and both looking better. Both had full Health bars and looked ready to go. Dara tossed me another ration bar, which threw my Stamina bar back to normal and removed the hunger. We hiked through the morning, ducking behind bushes for another AirJeep patrol. When we came into view of Outcrop I paused for a minute to take in my first settlement on an alien planet. First of all, the name made sense. It looked more like a town that a city, but what it was perched at the end of a stone outcropping from the mountain range. A wall encircled the entire thing, although landing pads jutted out from the wall along the far edges. Towers rose, castle-like along the walls, but topped with altogether different turrets than any castle I¡¯d ever seen. The trail joined a road passing through the only gate. Not somewhere I¡¯d want to try to attack. Dara pulled two beige ponchos out of her pack and handed one to Reck. They both pulled them over their heads. The material looked plastic and hung to their knees. ¡°You¡¯ll be fine dressed as you are, but let me carry that rifle through for you.¡± She took it and vanished it up under her poncho. It still took an hour to reach the gate. ¡°Things are pretty peaceful here. As long as you don¡¯t start any trouble you shouldn¡¯t run into much. We used to have our own police, but the Federals replaced all that. They don¡¯t look like they¡¯re on high alert, so we should be able to just walk though. Still, try to avoid eye contact if you can.¡± The open gate was wide enough for four lanes of traffic, although none flowed through it that I could see. A pair of soldiers stood to either side. Two AirJeeps sat on one side, opposite what I guessed was some kind of armored personnel carrier with a rear assault ramp lowered. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. I tried to stride casually, as Reck and Dara did, but it felt false. I still had the pistol on my hip. I wanted to flex my claws to reassure myself they were really there, but that really did not seem wise. Now, in most games, guards at city gates are ridiculously powerful. These did not look any different than the soldiers I¡¯d fought meeting my new friends. I actually found myself holding my breath as we walked through. The code for this game had to be boggling. Within the walls, foot and ground vehicle traffic were commonplace. Pod-like cars and enclosed motorcycles zipped along amid people on hovering disks or walking. Colors were all over the place. Except for buildings. Most of those looked relatively plain. Most weren¡¯t all that tall, from what I could see from here, definitely increasing the ¡°town¡± versus ¡°city¡± feel. ¡°So,¡± Reck said, ¡°watch yourself on the streets. You probably won¡¯t run into trouble, but make sure you don¡¯t start any. Federal patrols are pretty commonplace, and they¡¯re not likely to stop and ask questions.¡± ¡°Got it.¡± Dara looked around, carefully, and handed me back my rifle. I expected to feel eyes on me with it slung on my shoulder. ¡°Now, the first place you should probably head is down that street towards that dome. About four blocks down look for a greenish door with black trim down one of the side streets. I forget which side. After that, there¡¯s a large market about six blocks north. Meet me there at noon in three days. I¡¯m doing to do some asking around, and see if I can find out anything about this Silleste you¡¯re looking for. I¡¯ll let you know then if I was able to find anything out.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, meaning it. ¡°I appreciate it. You guys take care.¡± ¡°Nah, laying low never makes enough difference,¡± Reck replied with a grin. If I hadn¡¯t had a mission, helping these guys out would have been a good one. Dara looked over her shoulder a couple of times as they walked off; whether she was checking for me or anyone else following I couldn¡¯t have guessed. A block away a hover-truck passed between them and me, and when it was gone they were as well. I was pretty sure the red door place was the trainer I was supposed to find. In any other game, I wouldn¡¯t have worried about toting around a rifle looted from a dead soldier. But his troop-mates occupied the town. Sure, maybe the game wouldn¡¯t include the soldiers noticing and asking me where I got it. The consequences of being wrong, however, I was not too keen on. I weighed the risks of a soldier asking me versus a merchant asking me. I chose selling it as the lesser risk. I looked around, working out in my head where everything should be, and set off. The diversity of the town was nice. It still looked to be about half human, but I saw furry Fenurians, hulking Mordians, and all the other listed races. An elf in a pristine, skintight, white jumpsuit toting a boxy toolkit jogged along, and I wondered if that was the first player character I was seeing. Nobody else I saw ran, and that struck me as a sure sign, just as it was in pretty much every other game. I watched him go, not sure where to even begin speculating what the crafting system might be like. At each intersection vehicles and people and...other things I didn¡¯t have a name for crossed through without incident. Still, I crossed carefully. Exceptions happen. But it seemed an orderly place where people knew which side of the road to be on. People mostly ignored or avoided each other. About two blocks from the market I encountered the first exception. Chapter 9 9 So far I liked the town; I wasn¡¯t sure if I was willing to call it a city or not. In most games, a city could either be something a dozen blocks or so across you could explore fully, or it could be a number of zones, each containing just the area needed for the relevant quests. This, so far at least, seemed to be an entire town. For all I knew, every building could contain people with potential quests to offer. Quite a few buildings were unlabeled, although I saw some that were probably restaurants or bars. One I was pretty sure was a strip club, although the silhouette dancing on their sign wasn¡¯t entirely humanoid. I watched a hovering robot moving from building to building collecting scrap, or maybe recyclables. I was about two blocks from the market on a narrower, more shadowed street between buildings four stories tall on the right and five on the left. The shadowing wasn¡¯t intense and didn¡¯t seem to affect me at all, thanks to cyborg nightvision, although I could make out where its forty meter range ran out. I don¡¯t know what made me look up. I hadn¡¯t seen any birds, or any wildlife at all really, in town so far. So I couldn¡¯t tell you what I expected to see, other than a robed figure falling towards me was the last thing I would have. I dove forward, rolling out of the way and coming up to my feet as quickly as I could. As it was I barely avoided a spinning kick I hadn¡¯t risen enough to be hit by yet. He must have thought I¡¯d be faster. The blue-skinned figure with short, purple horns and purple ridges and stripes was a Mordian. Between the metal staff and the whirling mass of blue, gray, and black robes I was guessing a Monk class. That meant close-in, melee fighting. Whether there was armor under the robes, or what degree of protection they might grant him, I couldn¡¯t say. He¡¯d hit fast, but maybe not as strong as others. He wasn¡¯t a spellcaster, or he would have opened up with magic. The two ends of the staff came at me one after the other. The first one whacked me in the left arm just above the elbow for a hefty 30 damage. The second I was more ready for; I brought my cyborg arm up, blocking with that and getting a popup I dismissed quickly to get it out of the way:
Ability unlocked: Cyborg Arm Block You can block melee attacks with your cybernetic arm, protecting softer body parts. Agility scores are compared to determine whether to apply +10 Toughness to reduce damage. Reduced damage is done directly to cybernetic HP which cannot be healed magically. Use with caution. Stamina cost 5, no Cooldown
I dodged the next several blows, hopping back with each. Was he herding me? If so, it was back towards the last street I¡¯d crossed. Close-quarters fighting wasn¡¯t going to work in my favor. He leapt forwards and right; I ducked low and avoided a hard swing. He kept his balance with the swing, and started circling me. Ah, old-school PVP combat--me against another player. Strafing, the tactic he was using trying to keep me spinning while he circled me, was definitely old-school. It hadn¡¯t worked as well since VR games made keyboard controllers obsolete. I kept turning and avoiding, letting him think I couldn¡¯t turn fast enough to get him. But I knew how to counter this, and I had just the thing for it. I stopped, throwing some of my weight the other way, and let my claws extend as my arm snapped into place. I hit him hard, slashing him across the chest.
Ability unlocked: Power Attack Make an extra strong melee attack. Doubles melee damage. Stamina cost equal to base melee damage, Cooldown 10 seconds
I traded 15 Stamina to do 45 damage in one hit. Not bad. That knocked him down by something like a third. He stepped back, a look of surprise on his face. ¡°PVP the noob, huh?¡± I taunted him while he glared at me. Maybe I wasn¡¯t the easy fresh meat he expected. He jumped forward. I slashed at him but he blocked it with his staff. A sparking flare of silver light flashed at the hit, like with my arm block. So we each had some kind of special defense move. We traded some back and forth blows, both missing more than hitting. Our Health bars seemed to be suffering relatively evenly. We were both at about one third left, both suffering penalties for being under half, when his hand flashed up to his face, drinking a healing potion with his staff in just one hand for that short moment. His Health bar doubled. That was not good. Cheater. I didn¡¯t have any of those! But it also delayed him a moment, which meant time to change tactics. I jumped up and back and drew my pistol mid-air. By the time I was back on the street I had already fired four times. Only one of them hit, but that was another 25 HP chipped off of him. He charged forward, clearly wanting to negate the pistol¡¯s range advantage, but again I was ready for him. I jumped forward--a regular jump since my booster¡¯s cooldown timer hadn¡¯t run out--and threw everything I had into a claw slash. The jump lifted me enough, with his staff off to the side winding up for his own power attack, I raked him across the face. Critical Hit! 81 Damage! He went down sprawled on his back. I landed, barely, on my feet. +500 XP (Total 2400) ¡°Hah! Who¡¯s the noob now?¡± That was when it hit me, looking down at the dead body. This guy was a player. He had started it, but I had killed him. That meant somewhere in the real world, hooked up to a game system, a real person had just died. I had killed a real person. Should I have tried to talk him down? He might not have listened, he never even said anything. But I had no doubt. This had not been some NPC spawned randomly. He was a player out to kill other players for their loot. Murdering jackass or not, I had killed him. The blood on my claws looked real. I retracted the jagged blades knowing the blood would be gone the next time I needed them. I had also leveled up.
Level gained! (Total XP 2400) +18 Health +18 Stamina + 10 Mana + 12 Focus +5 Primary Characteristic Points +10 Skill Points
The characteristic points I put into Charisma for 2 to get that to at least not penalty status, in case less than the default ten brought any penalties, and Willpower for 3. The skill points I split between Dodge and Melee combat. I considered one of the weapon skills, but it was seeming like I came back to my claws a lot. Then I was able to really turn my attention to the dead Mordian. The robes were monk-only, of course, but I took them to sell. The staff didn¡¯t seem like something I¡¯d be as likely to use, but still wasn¡¯t something I was going to leave behind. He also had a communicator, which I figured this time I¡¯d keep, plus 14 gold chips and 7 silver ones.
Item acquired: Combat Staff This metal staff is well balanced, with non-slip grips. Two-handed. +100% Melee Damage Durability 41/75
I dragged the body--heavier than it looked--off to the side to be less obvious before I continued my way to the commotion of the market. The market was a square about three blocks to each side, pretty sizeable. Buildings around the edges sported shops at ground level and three to five stories of apartments with balconies above that. Holographic signs projected out above doors for each shop. Names on larger signs on the walls rotated through different languages. One cycled through eight different ones before returning to what I could read. A flea market of a fanboy¡¯s dreams filled the center space, like the vendor room of a convention. Tables in rows sported a bizarre assortment of goods. I was thinking all player-crafted, but you never know. I spent a fair amount of time looking things over before I made any decisions. In the end I decided to stick to the shops around the edges. Those should be NPC merchants, and I thought my luck might be better with them than with other players. So far my first interaction with another player had left me reluctant to seek out more. ¡°You might want to be careful toting that rifle around like that,¡± one shopkeeper suggested, pointing at the Federalist rifle slung across my back. ¡°Might find yourself getting into trouble like that.¡± Perhaps that, as much as the jumpsuit, had signaled newbie to the monk. Tutorial gear, dead giveaway. I sold the rifle, the staff, and the robes for 8 gold chips and 5 silver. In the process I confirmed the expected exchange rate: 10 copper per silver, 10 silver per gold, 10 gold per platinum. That brought my total wealth to 23 gold 2 silver. I also gained a point of Bargain. Eventually I was going to want to upgrade from the starting pistol, but I was willing to wait until after finding the trainer. There was a good chance there would be a better weapon merchant there. What I did want was a better outfit. I spent some time looking at the market crowd, getting an idea for local fashion. I wanted nondescript. I paired a red shirt and brown jacket with black pants and boots. The ensemble gave me a whopping 4 Toughness, one from each item, and 10 Resistance, from the jacket. All for 63 copper. I got quite a look when I asked if I could sell or exchange the jumpsuit I was wearing. Now I felt more relaxed trekking the streets to the trainer. I found the black-framed, green door without any further issues. No sign marked the door. If Dara hadn¡¯t told me to look for it I don¡¯t know how I would ever have found the place. Weird was about the best word I could think of for the place once I stepped inside. People and beings in a range of sizes and colors lounged on chairs and couches surrounded by the a freakshow zoo of trophy heads mounted along the walls below a tall ceiling. A red-skinned lizard-thing stood behind a bar serving a smoking drink to a tall elf with a green shoulder cape thrown over one shoulder. The hunting lodge of the future. Now if only one of them had, ¡°Hunter Trainer¡± floating over their head. When in doubt, ask a bartender. Hopefully the couple of points into Charisma had been a smart move. I strode up to the bar and slid onto a stool, leaving one empty between myself and the wiry elf. The exposed right arm was bare, with lean muscles and a circled crosshair tattoo. ¡°Hi, I¡¯m new around here, but I was told this was a place hunters hang out. From the looks of it, I¡¯m thinking the guy wasn¡¯t lying.¡± The bartender laughed, a staccato croaking sound I could have lived without hearing. The elf turned, giving me a long, weighing look. He looked along the walls, from trophy head to trophy head, with a proud gleam. ¡°You¡¯ve come to the right place, kid.¡± His voice was soft, deeper and throatier than I expected. No high-fantasy melodic voice for this guy. Maybe it was a Space Elf thing.
Quest completed: Find the Hunter Trainer +250 XP (Total 2650)
¡°You look like you¡¯ve got the eye for it, I¡¯ll give you that. I guess we¡¯ll have to see what you¡¯re made of.¡± He finished his drink and slid off his stool. ¡°Come on.¡± He led the way to a door at the back, and from there down a stairway to a shooting range. Rifles of all description lined the back wall. He led me past them, through the room to another.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. This room was smaller, about the size of a decent living room. Couch seating circled the room leaving an empty space maybe five or six meters across. He sat sideways on the couch and patted it in front of him. I sat, seeing a nicer and larger pistol on his thigh than mine. ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me why you¡¯re really here?¡± I was really hoping for a simple prompt asking me if I wanted to increase skills. His right hand rested atop his thigh, much too close to that pistol. No doubt this was some kind of test, but at the same time this didn¡¯t strike me as the room you take someone to kill them. If it were my couch I wouldn¡¯t want to kill someone on it. ¡°Look,¡± he added at my hesitation, ¡°people come here for training. To either become a Hunter or to become a better one. I don¡¯t have to ask to know you¡¯re looking for that, too. But why you want to be a Hunter, that interests me.¡± ¡°Honestly, I have a mission. There¡¯s someone I need to rescue. I can¡¯t do that as some brawler or staff-spinning monk or straight-up soldier type. I need to be able to find her, maybe track her. If she¡¯s in trouble--and I¡¯m expecting her to be--I¡¯ll need to scout out the people who have her, and then slip and and rescue her. Can you honestly tell me Hunter isn¡¯t the perfect choice for that?¡± There. Honest and flattering at the same time. Curry favor where you can, you know? I didn¡¯t think the guy would refuse me, but still. True, nothing had indicated that she¡¯d be in trouble. Maybe I was just looking for problems where they didn¡¯t exist. But Murphy¡¯s Law can be a bitch sometimes, and I¡¯d rather be prepared for the worst than not. ¡°I can respect that. Thanks for being honest with me. Not everyone is. Some are looking for revenge, some for worse. I¡¯m Bellan.¡± I introduced myself and we spent the rest of the day going learning basics. Again, I was really hoping for just, ¡®poof, here¡¯s a bunch of skill points.¡¯ We spent about an hour of him criticizing my inability to move quietly enough for him. But after that there was a sudden +10 Sneak notification. We broke for dinner, which we ate upstairs at in a large dining hall attached to the lounge, decorated in similar fashion. More people had gathered, most in camouflage cloaks or other hunting gear. Four long tables of boisterous talkers made quite a din. An odd couple the next table over caught my attention as food was served. While the food itself was quite good, it was less captivating than a man in one of those old British safari hats, complete with monocle, gesturing flamboyantly with a clockwork mechanical hand. ¡°It had to be an instanced zone, I¡¯m telling you.¡± ¡°Yeah, so?¡± the pointed-eared elf across from in asked. A carved, recurved longbow ran across his back over a brown cloak. I listened to their story enough to catch the lack of elven clerics. Mostly they were comparing which world¡¯s Hunter class was the better for soloing. They each had their merits, apparently. The fantasy Ranger was less for showmanship, if nothing else. I really weighed introducing myself, possibly even making a case for laser weapons, although I was clearly nowhere close to their level range, whatever level they were. What this game really needed was a Consider system to tell you how much more or less powerful a target was. A little powerleveling or some twinking with high-end gear could do a lot for my odds. But what did I have to offer them? ¡°Those guys regulars?¡± I asked the woman beside me. She looked much more like I expected, garbed in green and brown armor with compact weaponry mounted to the forearms. ¡°The blowhard is,¡± she nodded. ¡°The archer I¡¯ve never seen before.¡± She went back to her meal, not offering more. I figured I¡¯d leave it at that. If Captain Steampunk was a regular, I could probably come back and find out more about him later if I wanted. The evening I had time to kill, but no desire to go anywhere. I relaxed in the lounge with a datapad catalog of the animals to be found on the planet. The diversity was impressive. I made special note of the flying ones. Space Dragons were certainly something better avoided. Training resumed in the morning, and filled every minute up to dinner. We spent hours at the shooting range, which gained me +10 Rifle skill and unlocked a new Sniper Shot ability.
Ability unlocked: Sniper Shot (Class Ability) Each second of aiming with an appropriate rifle adds +10 to Ranged Attack and to Crit Chance up to a maximum of +50. This is on top of the normal +50 Ranged Attack for aimed shots.
The first part of the afternoon was spent wandering the streets, following people. Bellan pointed out body language to indicate which way they were likely to turn. He talked about how to stay out of sight and look inconspicuous. That netted me +10 Track, which was also for following people. After that I climbed on an AirScooter behind him. It was basically a flying Harley. We zoomed along low to the ground downslope towards a patch of forest. I spotted a tusked mountain goat thing called a gusker I had seen in the animal database. It¡¯s short, boxy head turned to watch us pass. The rest of the afternoon we spent tracking things through the forest. Okay, most of that time was spent just looking for tracks. It was frustrating, but it was also relaxing and pleasant. A musty scent hung in the air and sunlight cast dappled light on the shrubs and ground cover. ¡°So, just to be clear,¡± he said at one point when we stopped to rest under a sprawling tree with coarse reddish bark, ¡°hunting animals and hunting people aren¡¯t the same thing. Both in methodology and...morality. Bounty hunters can be a dangerous sort. If that¡¯s where you think you¡¯re headed, I¡¯ll help you out for now, but there will be a point where I¡¯ll have to refer you elsewhere for training. You saw the people at dinner, right?¡± ¡°Yes. An interesting mix.¡± My stomach tightened up, and it was not from hunger. ¡°People come from different planets, even through Rifts from other Worlds. There is some fantastic hunting around here, up and down the range. We track and stalk our prey. We study it and observe it and learn its behaviors and patterns. Then we set up the right approach and we take that animal, as cleanly as we can. It¡¯s a predator/prey relationship. We¡¯re never careless about it, and we respect the animal¡¯s place in the ecosystem. We live by rules. One of those rules is we don¡¯t hunt other people.¡± His face hardened, especially around the eyes. He was serious. Dead cold serious. Possibly as in I¡¯d be left out here dead if I got this wrong. ¡°I understand where you¡¯re coming from, Bellan. The girl I¡¯m looking for isn¡¯t a bounty. We already talked about this. I¡¯m not trying to become an assassin. There¡¯s no revenge, no dark motive at all. She¡¯s...someone important. I have to find her and keep her safe. I...I made a promise. And I intend to keep it.¡± Was it technically true? Not really. I hadn¡¯t promised the President I¡¯d succeed. But failure just didn¡¯t seem an option. Would they just pull the plug on me if I failed? I¡¯d like to think not, but it would be an awfully convenient and easy option. The scarier worry was whether they¡¯d backstab me even if I got her home alive. ¡°I just want to make sure we understand each other. Our hall has a reputation. Sully that reputation and I will find you.¡± I raised my hands defensively. ¡°Whoa, yeah I got it.¡± A long moment passed while he regarded me with that cold stare. ¡°Alright. Good,¡± he said, nodding approvingly and standing back up. ¡°Let¡¯s get back to work.¡± He was back to the more cheerful, if sometimes harshly judging, self. By the time we stopped to head back I¡¯d scored another +10 Track Before dinner he presented me with a new pair of boots. They were taller and sturdier, but also lightweight and more flexible. ¡°You aren¡¯t going to get far trying to sneak around in those boots.
Item acquired: Basic Hunters Boots Sturdy boots for any terrain
Toughness Resistance Durability +1 +2 45/45
+10 Sneak, provides -10 modifier to others¡¯ attempts to track you.
Dinner was similar to the night before, except tonight¡¯s bragging--storytelling--came from a slender Fenurian who rocked from foot to foot as she talked. I guess being covered in fur negated the need for clothing. Pants and a tail seemed like it could be an awkward thing. Harness straps did cross over much of her, with a range of gear and weapons attached to her. A dark green cape around her shoulders, the only piece of clothing per se, came to about her tail and seemed to shift between green and brown depending on the angle. ¡°So, you¡¯ve got a pistol,¡± Brellan said the next morning at breakfast. ¡°Perfect. I wouldn¡¯t want you doing today¡¯s challenge from too far away. I¡¯ll drop you in the foothills. There¡¯s a bird called a grawk. When you have killed one you can signal me and I¡¯ll pick you up.¡± ¡°You want me to track a bird?¡± Really? As part of an epic quest, I could see. But at level 3? This bird was not in the database I scrolled through, or if it was it was in a section I didn¡¯t get to.¡± He laughed, and several others nearby joined in. If this was going to be one of those initiation-type jokes I was going to be upset. Or it could be a string of go here, go there, go to this other place. I never liked those quests. Who does? ¡°Only partly. Grawks feed on little vermin that follow murse. Well, live on them, basically.¡± Murse I had read about. Huge, lumbering things somewhere between an elephant and a moose. The murse head on the wall was about as wide as my arm span. ¡°If you can¡¯t follow a murse, then you¡¯re hopeless. You¡¯ll find one, or it¡¯s tracks. You get close enough, you shoot the grawk. Mind you, grawk are skittish, so you¡¯ll need to be quiet.¡±
Quest: Stalk the Grawk Brellan wants you to track, stalk, and kill one Grawk.
¡°And,¡± one of the other guys added, ¡°don¡¯t startle or anger the murse. You get trampled by one of those and you¡¯re...never coming back.¡± Brellan confirmed I had a communicator, paired them, and and we zoomed along the mountains again. He banked through sharp turns and hopped over low ridges as if to test my stomach. Maybe it was metal, too, because I was fine with all of it. Once he spotted one, and pointed it out, he took us down a good kilometer away and dropped me off. He started me in a clearing at the border between denser and thinner forest. The denser zone stood between me and my prey. ¡°Good luck, kid,¡± he said with another laugh. I glared at his back as he sped away, still sticking close to the terrain. I wanted one of those bike things. Sure they the game had mounts in it. Hopefully they didn¡¯t come with some stupid level requirement. ¡°Well¡­,¡± I said as I puffed up my chest and set out. First was finding a path through heavy underbrush. Several times I had to work my way around large patches with wicked looking thorns. A red tint on the thorns made them look as though they¡¯d already found prey. It was warm work. I had to move quietly among places that generally weren¡¯t clear enough to pass. Brellan probably dropped me off at the worst starting place on purpose. Dank air hung, lifeless and breezeless. Decay was the perfect word for the scent that relentlessly pursued my nose. A good three hours passed while I wormed my way through. My patience and dilligence paid off with another +1 to Sneak, bringing it up to 17. Eventually I did break through to a wide clearing. A shallow, broad valley crossed my path, sloping downward to my left. Yellow grasses, sparsely speckled with pink and blue flowers, waved in a welcome breeze. On the far side and downslope, some three hundred meters away, a murse munched away at low-lying growth. It followed the treeline, moving slowly away before stopping to much again. Pistol range was seriously inadequate for the distance. In some games I¡¯d just slowly move forward, and see if it reacted based on distance. In this case, I wasn¡¯t going to take that chance. For one thing, it deciding to aggro and stampede me out in the open was not going to end well. For another, there was a deadline here. Following it waiting for it to calm down was not going to be the best use of my time. So getting close quietly was the only thing for it. I was supposed to be a Hunter, after all. That really should have involved me using a rifle. Who hunts with a pistol, anyway, right? While I was debating with myself, however, I did see a bird swoop down from the trees and dive-bomb the murse. It swooped back up and perched up in the branches somewhere. Yep, this was definitely the target for me. Stupid one chance missions. I made my way up the valley, further away from the thing, before moving across. I still moved slow, and froze when the thing lifted its head. It ambled away to another clump of undergrowth. Once in the cover of the far treeline I crept through the trees after it. Time can be such a weird thing. Sometimes an hour goes by in a flash. Other times? Other times creeping through trees trying not to make a sound is the when time¡­slows¡­down. Agonizingly slow. I did end up gaining 2 points of Sneak, now 18, 28 with my boots. The sun had passed its zenith by the time I got close enough to get a better view of the beast. Shaggy brown fur rippled in the breeze like grass. I could probably have walked under the thing as it stood on legs I could take cover from gunfire behind. Behemoth as the thing was, it¡¯s head wasn¡¯t as big as the trophy one back at the space-safari lodge. Still, it took whole bushes in a single bite to gnaw on patiently like a cow chewing cud. Well, bull in this case. Yikes. The birds, now they were distinctive. Bright, vivid blue, royal-looking birds the size of a hawk with a short beak and talons that actually seemed undersized for it. Its feathers shone in the sun as it swooped down for another attack run along the beast¡¯s back. Without a sound it rose back into the branches, with something that must have been the size of a mouse in one talon. Again it moved, clomping its way to another bush to be ripped up in one chomp. I moved on ahead of it while it chewed ponderously. All I had to do was wait for it to come close enough to me. A bird struck again, lighting in branches closer to me but still too far for a good shot. Sure, +50 aim bonus was good, but closer would be better. The huge head rose. Soccer balls with pupils scanned the ground in my direction. I didn¡¯t even breathe. More lumbering brought it closer before it pounced and bit a bush like a cat going after a fluffy toy. It was far more agility than I¡¯d ever have expected from something that big. That was when an extra complication showed its head. A complication in an oh-so-familiar jumpsuit. A complication with a rifle. They get a rifle but not me? The jerk just strolled out of the treeline across the shallow valley, which was narrower at this end. Seriously? I hadn¡¯t seen anybody in dorky jumpsuits at the lodge, so he had to be out on some other class¡¯ training quest. Either way, the last thing I needed was some noob scaring this thing off. Kill stealers are the worst. Well, I¡¯d actually put PVP spawn campers lower, but that didn¡¯t seem to be an issue in this game. You can¡¯t gank somebody at their spawn point over and over again when they only die once. The wannabe hunter started across the grasses, rifle ready, moving slow. Not a complete idiot, just a partial one. The murse tromped closer. A bird swooped over it, coming up empty taloned, to land in a branch not ten meters from me. I held as still as I possibly could, drawing the pistol ever so slowly, hardly daring to breathe. I drew a bead on it, waiting for the next exhale. I barely hit it. Winged it, in fact. Literally, got it in the wing. But it went down. Which was enough to make me happy just then. +100 XP (Total 2750) Laser pistols in Riftworlds Online don¡¯t make noise, which worked in my favor just then. There was the red beam of light momentarily connecting me to my target, though. And those eyes, each the size of my head, swiveled up. I¡¯d swear the thing stared right at me, maybe sizing me up. Snow-shovel ears twitched and turned, though, and it shifted its attention back up the valley. That head turned, scanning for something. It was too much like scanning for predators for my liking. Whatever natural predators this thing could possibly have was not something I wanted to encounter without serious, military-grade¡­military. It ended up seeing the noob now almost halfway across the valley. It reared up and snarled a groan that shook my heart like a sick nightclub base rumble. Its front...feet came down hard with an earth-shaking whump. The newbie turned and ran, full-out, while the thing yanked it¡¯s feet back out of the ground. The mammoth turned and worked its way back up the valley. I fetched my azure prize and signalled Brellan for pickup. It was about ten minutes before he showed up with a much too happy smile. Chapter 10 10 Brellan¡¯s airbike thing whispered up the valley preceded only by the slight whining hum of whatever powered it. I waited in the shade, letting myself continue enjoying the smells on the breeze. Some of it was a dusty scent, but there was also the musk of damp earth, a hint of blooming flowers. And something that smelled like sourdough bread. I had no idea what that might be coming from. The bike settled on retractable landing struts and lowered closer to the ground, settling into the grasses. ¡°Took you long enough,¡± Brellan carped as he hopped off. Tightness in his face made the smile he put on look fake. ¡°But you got it. Good work.¡± I stuck the bird in his outstretched hand. ¡°Not the prettiest kill, but you could still mount it if you wanted. Just from the side a little. Not that grawk are really trophy birds.¡± He plucked a long wing feather off, suggesting, ¡°You should keep one of these, however. I¡¯m sure you learned a couple of things today, kid. Keep the memento so you don¡¯t forget.¡±
Quest completed: Stalk the Grawk Reputation increase with Outcrop Hunters¡¯ Hall +500 XP (total 3250)
Level gained! (4) +18 Health +18 Stamina +15 Focus +5 Primary Characteristic Points +10 Skill Points
I did take it and tucked it into a pocket, glad to have an outfit that included them. ¡°Come on, we should head back.¡± The smile sagged away, letting the underlying glumness show. I climbed on behind him, and we rose up and away. We skimmed the treetops in silence. If he wasn¡¯t wanting to talk about whatever was bothering him it didn¡¯t seem my place to push it. I instead took the time to review my stats and spend points. I put all 5 characteristic points into Agility, taking it up to 23. That bumped Ranged Attack and Evasion by 5 each to 128 and 135, respectively. The skill points I split between Sneak and Pistol. One to help me avoid trouble, and the other to give me more options when I couldn¡¯t avoid it. A shuttle, marked in Federalist blue and white, descended towards the town, ultimately landing somewhere in the town. Not on one of the landing pads. Interesting. ¡°Troop ferry,¡± Grellan grumbled. ¡°Probably forty to fifty more in that, a whole platoon.¡± A low growl rumbled in his throat; it was only because I was as close as I was I could hear it. ¡°Third one today.¡± ¡°Something going on?¡± I had waited long enough to ask. ¡°Seems like it. Nobody¡¯s got good guesses about what. I¡¯ll tell you one thing, though. There¡¯s lots of nervous people in town. Old fears getting stirred up. Some of our members with...past problems with the Feds...are talking about leaving. Some were packing things up when I left to come get you.¡± Grellan brought them over the wall and immediately dropped to street level, zipping above traffic and between rooftops faster than I would have. We set down behind the Hall. A pair of women in brown overalls ran out and took the bike in through a loading door. ¡°We¡¯ve got a little more work to do, you and I. So we¡¯re going to finish up what we can tonight. You¡¯re always welcome in our Hall as long as you don¡¯t bring trouble with you. But¡­,um, if you think you might have plans that involve going anywhere else? I¡¯d seriously consider going there early tomorrow. I won¡¯t be at all surprised if this place is locked down by tomorrow night.¡±This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°I¡¯ve gotta find someone,¡± I reminded him, doubtless unnecessarily. ¡°I¡¯m supposed to meet someone at noon tomorrow that I¡¯m really hoping will have a lead for me. Wherever that points I¡¯ll try and head for right away. Thanks for the warning.¡± I was glad I had found good people. In some ways I enjoyed dinner a little more for knowing that. Other hunters included me in conversation more. I was becoming one of them, starting to belong. Nervous undertones rang in conversations. Several were quieter than normal. No one boasted of recent deeds. A slight hush dampened everything. It was harder to enjoy dinner, although we all tried to. Several were clearly sharing final meals before departures. One woman was boarding a shuttle right after dinner. Words were being left out, avoided. Invasion. Occupation. While many seemed to have ideas of what to expect, none shared details. More than one said they hoped they were wrong, or they didn¡¯t want to be right. I was sure new quests were becoming available throughout the town based on what sides people had chosen. After dinner Grellan took me downstairs again, through the shooting range to one of the rooms beyond. An elven technician with a toolbox on his lap sat on a couch next to a drab green bundle. The elf stood when they entered. ¡°First,¡± Grellan said, ¡°a quick upgrade.¡± ¡°Have a seat,¡± the elf said, indicating the spot he had vacated. ¡°Upgrade?¡± I asked as I sat. The technician had me take my shirt and jacket off, and started fiddling with my arm. He opened a panel and brought a number of tools to bear, even plugging a hand computer up to it. I couldn¡¯t see what he did to the implant that included my right eye. I was, however, rewarded with a dialog box spelling out the upgrade. I certainly wasn¡¯t going to complain.
Tactical Package II +4 Intellect, +4 Willpower, +10 Crit Chance +10 Evasion, +10 Ranged Attacks Triple nightvision range (60m) X10 vision magnification
¡°Now, get changed and come back out,¡± Brellan instructed before leading the technician away. I checked the green bundle. Green and brown pants and an olive colored jacket. Brown reinforced patches covers shoulders, elbows, and knees. Both were nice upgrades, as well.
Basic Hunter¡¯s Pants These brown and green pants offer a small degree of padding and reinforcement
Toughness Resistance Durability +5 +5 30/30
Basic Hunter¡¯s Jacket This green jacket offer a small degree of padding and reinforcement. When combined with Basic Hunter¡¯s Pants provides +5 Sneak
Toughness Resistance Durability +5 +10 30/30
I decided to hang onto my prior outfit. You never know when more run-of-the-mill clothes might be called for. The new outfit looked more Hunter-y, and fit perfectly. Brellan nodded approvingly when I rejoined him in the firing range. He had one more gift for me, a long, scoped rifle. A cord connected the scope to the weapon just above the handgrip. I couldn¡¯t find a safety mechanism.
Item acquired: Hunter¡¯s Training Laser Rifle The classic sporting rifle, accurate with good range, but less capable of sustained rapid fire. A scope on it allows for Sniper Shots. Weapon Link compatible.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 100m +20 40 50/50
This was definitely a nice weapon. The damage wasn¡¯t as high as the soldiers¡¯ rifles, and did not seem to be burst-capable. When I gripped it for firing, however, I learned some more about it. For one thing, a ¡°Safety Off¡± indicator came up in my view, along with an ammunition counter reading 20. On top of that, a crosshair in my vision showed where the rifle was pointed. I brought the rifle up to my shoulder and sighted through the scope. A dotted line showed me precisely where it was pointed. ¡°The upgrade to your arm and visual implant will give you this ability with any weapon fitted out for it,¡± Brennan explained. Now I understood what Weapon Link compatible meant. I liked it. We spent another couple of hours shooting, going through quite a few energy packs, picking up another +5 to my Rifle skill. He left me with two additional rifle power packs and two pistol ones. His final gift was another ten gold chips to buy additional gear with. ¡°You¡¯re as ready as I can make you right now. Good hunting, and stay out of trouble.¡± I thanked him and headed to bed. Tomorrow I had shopping to do, which would conveniently put me in the market by noon. Sleep was fitful but dreamless. Chapter 11 11 After a late breakfast I couldn¡¯t find Brellan to say goodbye, so I shrugged and left the Hall. Rain fell in gentle sheets outside, not a pounding storm, but enough to get me thoroughly wet be the time I reached the market. Aircars hovered just above the street, which at least meant no tires splashing in the puddles. The market was less crowded than before, maybe 20 percent less, but was still crowded enough to lose someone in. Colorful ponchos and rain cloaks obscured well more than half the figures moving from stall to stall, or in and out of buildings. A number of androids marched about, generally ignoring the rain completely. A pack or Mordians strode through the crowd, dripping water on anyone who didn¡¯t get out of the way in time. Very few Fenurians seemed to be about. Go figure, right? The rain was not the most pleasant rain. None of that ¡°clean earth¡± smell with regular rains. This was somewhere between sulfur and wet dog. Not overpoweringly strong, at least, but noticeable. Ten silver for a rain poncho became my first expenditure of the day. I could have done 3 for a disposable one, but it seemed like a good thing to have. The range of colors and patterns was astonishing. They came from a kiosk run by a spindly blue-and-chrome android. I browsed the variety on a screen and then it printed the poncho on the spot. I went with a deep green. The poncho helped a lot. Sure, I was pretty saturated at that point already, but did I mention the rain came down cold? Better equipped for it I was more ready to wander. One of my discoveries for the day was there was no simple, ¡°Common¡± language. Most of the other races seemed able to speak human, but many of them spoke their own languages among their own kind. A follow-up discovery was that for 10 gold I could buy language skill chips to learn a language instantly. For 50 gold any cyborg or android could buy an upgrade package that would let them just plug chips like that into our heads. The other option was to own, or rent, a computer with the appropriate neural electrode accessory. I was already hooked up to something like that in real life, it seemed rather meta to do that in here, too. Either way, it was out of budget for now. I spent a little more time in a shop selling bags. Shoulder bags, duffel bags, purses, backpacks, the works. Pockets only go so far, after all. The shop was arranged by style, with rows and rows, purses and smaller bags on hooks, larger ones on shelves. Small robots hovered about overhead, dropping down closer to make suggestions in voices that might have been female. I picked up a pair of weatherproof cargo boxes for my belt at 10 silver each, and a backpack for 25 from a dwarf in a sleeveless gray tunic. I couldn¡¯t plan on getting all my gear from looting or from quests. That meant making money. Some I could get from quests, but looting was likely to be a big part. It usually is. That meant having places to put stuff.
Item acquired: Basic Belt Box This hard-sided box with hinged top is a convenient, weatherproof container for small items.
Durability 20/20
A single compartment can hold up to 2kg of small items.
Item acquired: Basic Backpack Utilitarian backpack with adjustable straps and extra external pockets
Durability 30/30
Main compartment can hold up to 20kg. Each side pocket can hold an additional 3kg
I spent longer than I expected in a weapon shop. This one was just pistols, but in an impressive array. An orange-skinned Mordian with a deep husky voice perfect for radio waited behind a counter before a wall packed with guns like they were cell phones. I learned quite a bit about the game¡¯s weapon hierarchy just by comparing what was available. Laser weapons were the bottom tier, naturally. Up from that were pulse weapons, which fired a concentrated pulse of laser instead of a beam. Plasma weapons did more damage in general, but less to armored or hardened targets. Particle beam weapons could be ionized to do extra damage to anything electronic. Like parts of me. About a dozen laser pistols fell in my price range. Some of them were only cosmetically different from each other. The Mordian introduced himself as Gorranth and we started comparing. He was patient, and I held several in my hand comparing heft and balance and feel as if I knew what I was doing. Some sleeker, sportier ones had better accuracy but less damage. Some bigger, boxier ones did extra damage, but there was always a trade-off, either in accuracy or reliability. ¡°This one is one of our most popular in your price range,¡± Gorranth offered, handing me a slightly heavier gun with rounded edges and black trim on a gray frame. It fit well in my hand. ¡°The LaserTech E-100, one of the most reliable weapons you¡¯ll find at this price bracket. Take care of it, and it¡¯ll never go wrong.¡± One of my favorite features? It was Weapon Link compatible. Just like the rifle, it was like it became an extension of me. On top of that it could even accept a scope, although at 50 silver just for the scope that was out of budget. For now. Gorranth took my old one in for trade, for all of 10 silver chips. I left his shop with 24 silver remaining, but 1 point of Bargain higher..
Item acquired: LaserTech E-100 Laser Pistol A sleeker, well-balanced pistol, tough and reliable. Weapon Link compatible.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 55m +5 35 65/65
The rain had ended by the time I¡¯d gotten outside, although sun only fell on select spots. The rain poncho refused to absorb water, which meant that a quick flap and it was dry enough to fold and tuck in one of the backpack pockets. I stood a little taller walking back out into the market. Without any kind of ceremony I had graduated myself out of newbiedom. About half an hour of people watching later I found Dara leaning against the corner of a more permanent looking booth, her arms crossed. I crossed through some traffic, especially waiting for someone in colorful armor on an even beefier version of Bellan¡¯s airbike. Others moved out of it¡¯s way, too as it zoomed through. ¡°Hey, Dara. You¡¯re looking less battered.¡± ¡°Your face is looking less battered.¡± ¡°Touche.¡± And then the awkward kicked in. It would have been rude to jump straight into, ¡°So, were you able to find anything out,¡± but I really wasn¡¯t sure what else to say. ¡°How¡¯s the rebellion going,¡± didn¡¯t feel any better. ¡°I see you¡¯ve done some shopping,¡± she said, breaking the silence. ¡°That¡¯s a nice rifle to start with. I¡¯ve used one of those before.¡± ¡°It does seem like an upgrade, all in all,¡± I agreed. ¡°So, we did some asking around about that elf you¡¯re looking for. She¡¯s been here. Week ago, maybe two. But she showed up with a guy from Fantasal, chainmail and sword type. They were both kinda noticeable around here. We don¡¯t get a lot of Rifters through here. I¡¯m not aware of there being any Rifts here, so they must have come by ship.¡± She picked one foot up, propping it against the wall behind her with her knee sticking out. ¡°But, the guy is still around. He¡¯s been poking his nose into things a bit, chatting up a lot of people. Most nights he¡¯s at a bar across town. Felnin¡¯s it¡¯s a...quirky place where people go to hire people to do whatever it is they don¡¯t want to do themselves. Don¡¯t cause trouble in there.¡± She uncrossed her arms and stepped away from the wall. ¡°If you get tired of looking for her, or you find her and need something to do, my people could use someone like you.¡± Her wink could have had a few different meanings. If I didn¡¯t have this mission I would have spent time finding out. ¡°Thanks,¡± I replied instead. ¡°I appreciate it. I¡¯ll check the place out. Who knows, I might pass this way again. If I do, I¡¯ll look you up. Say hi to Reck for me.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do that. Take care of yourself. Try not to get your face blown off again. That was gross.¡± I filled the afternoon wandering finding some of the little, grind quests for cash and XP. There were no huge rewards, but four 50XP quests add up a little. That and another 85 silver at least made it not a wasted afternoon. A woman in a reinforced, dark gray technician¡¯s jumpsuit complained about a part she was missing for the cargo lifter she was repairing. Naturally, there was only one place to get it. Just as naturally, the man with the parts was her ex and refused to sell anything to her. That man, hardly a catch in the looks department with a smooshed looking broad nose that hardly stuck out from his boxy face, was frustrated by a recent shipment of parts that had been impounded ¡°by mistake.¡± He assured me that the clerk I¡¯d need to talk to wasn¡¯t perfectly loyal, but I might need to be creative. So I had jogged over to a customs office. A pair of Federalist troopers stood nearby enough to come running to any trouble, while others supervised operations at landing pads and staging areas behind the small building. One side was the customs office, the other was a traffic control tower two stories taller. I prepped myself to see what side quest this guy would have. This guy turned out to be a woman. A stuffy looking space elf not as attractive as I would have liked. Her properly bureaucratic black tunic was buttoned clear up to her neck. A row of rings ran up the side of her ear, connected by a delicate chain. ¡°Uh, hi,¡± I started. Slick, I know. ¡°I¡¯m trying to check the status on a package. I¡¯ve got the ID number here.¡± I handed her the printed ticket number with a scannable hologram instead of a barcode. Her pained expression showed the true passion she held for her job. Her counter surface was also a display surface, although it was polarized in a way that kept me from seeing it clearly from my side of the counter. She set the paper down in a marked spot and the display changed. A few quick taps finished the check. The initial result was a frown. ¡°It was held up,¡± she explained. ¡°Some of the permits weren¡¯t right.¡± ¡°So, what do I need to do?¡± This time cut to the chase seemed the best route. At least until I knew more. ¡°Well,¡± she said, drawing the word out, as she swiped part of the display. ¡°It looks like everything has been corrected. All that¡¯s left is a 10 gold chip fine. Do you have that?¡± Ten gold, 100 silver. About four times what I had. Wonderful. Not that I really wanted to pay that much for an errand quest. There had to be another way. ¡°Um, no.¡± ¡°Then I guess you¡¯ll have to figure something out.¡± This, I figured, could mean a couple of different things. One was I¡¯d have to figure out some other way to replace the shipment. Another was a way to raise the money, which wasn¡¯t terribly appealing. The other possibility I saw I liked better; she could be suggesting if I was creative I could find some way to manipulate the situation, or get her to want to help me. I took the hint, definitely more Charisma next level. ¡°Bureaucracy, it¡¯s everybody¡¯s favorite thing, right? I know when I had a clerk job once everybody acted like everything was my fault. Like I filled out their forms for them.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the way, alright. What kind of desk did you run?¡± ¡°I helped out at a licensing office.¡± True, real-world experience. It was just a seasonal job during college, and I¡¯d hated it at the time. ¡°I think the thing that surprised me most was how easily things fell through cracks.¡± ¡°And what are you getting at?¡± Her frown and suspicious raised eyebrow were not encouraging. Yet the more I thought about it, the more it seemed I was on the right course. She was really just one of the woman at the prison commissary. This woman probably worked for the Federation, and probably hardly got paid at all. Her job was boring and people treated her like the enemy all day long. ¡°I know a fees and fines aren¡¯t the same thing, for one. A fee, that¡¯s tied to a checklist somewhere. Those get checked. Fines? Fines are a little different.¡± I loosened my posture a bit, going for more casual and relaxed. Non-threatening. ¡°If I had the money, I¡¯d pay it and it would go on the books and go away. Would it achieve anything? Probably not. It¡¯s not like it¡¯s going to teach the shipping guy to fill forms our right. Right?¡± I pulled out two round gold chips, almost all I had, and set them on the counter. ¡°You probably spend a lot of time watching money go past. I know sometimes I¡¯d see application fees higher than my daily pay.¡± I nudged the two chips closer across the counter. ¡°But mistakes happen all the time. If you were to...say...accidentally delete the fine, I might be so relieved to find out everything was actually in order after all that I might accidentally leave something behind.¡± Another nudge closer. ¡°On the counter.¡± Her eyes wavered between mine and the money. ¡°That¡¯s true, mistakes do happen.¡± I pushed them right to the edge of the counter to the side of her a little. ¡°Maybe you should check the file again, maybe the machine scanned the code wrong or something.¡± Her fingers tapped and swiped with well-practiced, efficient movements. One of those movements brought her hand near the two chips, which she swept off the counter. ¡°Oh, my. It seems there was a mistake. There¡¯s no unpaid fine on this shipment at all.¡± She push a small data chip, into a slot, dragged something towards it, then handed me the chip. ¡°Your package is in holding bay nine. Give that to the clerk there and he¡¯ll get you your package.¡± ¡°Thank you. I¡¯m glad you do better work than some of the others around here,¡± I offered with a wink. She smiled back and I wondered how often she did that. Bribery skill +1 (1) I got the box, which I exchanged for the lifter part. ¡°Sorry about the fine, I remembered that just after you left. Here¡¯s a ten gold chip to reimburse you,¡± he said, handing me a slightly larger, octagonal gold chip. I took the part back to the mechanic, who thanked me with a bouncing smile and an offer that if I needed anything repaired she¡¯d give me the friends¡¯ discount. That and other boring errands filled time. Another troop shuttle came in slow over the town before landing. Finding this knight and getting out of town after Silleste was starting to feel more urgent. Felnin¡¯s lived up to ¡°quirky¡± before I¡¯d even stepped inside. The building was designed to look like a crashed silver rocketship straight out of classic 1950¡¯s sci-fi. An opened ramp, complete with stairs, made a canopy over the ground-level entrance. Felnin¡¯s name was right on the side of the ship in big, red, vertical letters. The inside didn¡¯t fit. Outside, the ship leaned at an angle. Inside, eight levels of ringed balconies ascended straight up. The inside was also larger than the outside. Game physics. Things would have been on the tight side otherwise, of course. Smoke lingered in the air from floor to--as far as I could see, which was about eight balconies. The inner core of the place was some eight meters, empty except for two shafts of light a meter or so across forming whitish columns in the smoke. A Fenurian in an eye-poking orange cloak stepped into one and rode it upwards, stepping off three levels us. Around that was maybe ten meters to the walls. Each level had a long bar with plenty of seating plus tables and booths and empty space. A dance club this was not. Also not somewhere I¡¯d want to have a brawl. Especially not on the upper levels, when being pushed or thrown could have painful consequences. While glowing blue railings circled the center where the light elevators were, I couldn¡¯t be certain they were actually solid. The ground floor was the only space open enough for any real dancing, but nobody was. The biggest Mordian I¡¯d seen yet leaned against the wall plenty close with a menacing axe. The blade on the thing glowed. I didn¡¯t know what that meant, and I was perfectly happy never finding out. Dara¡¯s suggestion of not causing trouble sprang back to mind. I was a little early for eating dinner, so I played the proper tourist and checked the place out. Each level had a different space theme. While nothing quite broke any copyrights, I recognized each one. The levels also each had a holographic Rift, shimmering black with uneven edges. The patrons pretty much ignored the themed scenery, giving it the feel of sports teams or animal themes painted in parking garages to identify different levels. The patrons themselves were less eclectic. More than half were human, which seemed about typical of the town so far. Some of the rest mixed together, but largely they segregated themselves.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. A group of Mordians in studded black...fetish gear?...laughed and drank at a large booth, the only ones on that level. Space bikers, of course. The shiny gold android waiter seemed appropriately uncomfortable as it moved in and out of interaction distance as quickly as it could. Two levels up seemed an okay place for me to hang out and eat. A naked, black and white tiger-striped Fenurian brought me a bowl of wriggling green worms and an utterly opaque blue drink in a very clear glass for one silver. A pack of six other Fenurians lounged at a booth with no table, passing around drinks they all seemed to be sharing. I saw a cargo harness on one, a long poncho on another. One wore a slinky red glittery dress slit for her tail. The waitress was one of only a few I¡¯d seen completely naked. Again, though, when you¡¯re covered it fur it¡¯s not really the same. The worms were moving, still alive, in varying shades of green, decently sized like big earthworms. They didn¡¯t look very appealing, big surprise there, but at least I could call them worms. There had been a few prison meals with lumpy mashes that nobody could agree on how to identify. They weren¡¯t bad, but weren¡¯t good either, although they did come with an impressive Focus recovery boost. Almost enough to offset the Focus recovery debuff from the drink. The drink was actually pretty tasty, although it could have just been mouthwash that someone managed to actually taste like fruit. Not something I¡¯d order to-go, that¡¯s for sure. Music wafted about the place like the fog, although the fog did a better job of staying in the center. After I¡¯d eaten I spent a couple of hours moving from level to level, still avoiding the Space Bikers, trying not to stay anywhere suspiciously too long alone with nothing to do but watch people. When a guy showed up in chainmail, I was pretty sure he was the guy. He kind of stood out, not only for being about a head taller than me and burly to match. Light glittered off chain links from collar to about half down his thighs. A big, stereotypical shield hung with a rifle on his back over a white cloak, which was itself fastened under a set of white shoulder plates that looked plastic but probably weren¡¯t. I stood up, watching him right the light to one level above me, one short from the top. I circled around to the light shaft elevators to ascend on a column of light myself. What can I say, it still amused me. The music, coming from a small band of space elves on six, was a little quieter on nine as I stepped off. Banners of futuristic space trooper regiments lined the walls, one for each table. The one behind the knight was a gold gauntlet on blue. A waitress in a crisp navy blue uniform with white piping took his order on a tablet. ¡°Mind if I join you, good sir knight?¡± I asked him, letting him have a hint I wasn¡¯t a local NPC, but another player aware we were in a game, albeit a deadly game we were trapped in. ¡°Have a seat,¡± he offered as he leaned back in his chair. His voice matched the chiseled face that suggested to me someone overcompensating for not feeling ¡°manly¡± enough. You know the face: squared jaw, sturdy chin, the fairy-tale price look, with the perfect clean-cut blond taper cut to match. I lowered myself into a chair, deliberately choosing one just off from straight across from him. I didn¡¯t want my back to the open core either. ¡°Do I know you?¡± ¡°No,¡± I replied, ¡°but I¡¯ve heard of you.¡± He perked right up at that one. Who doesn¡¯t want to be a little famous, right? ¡°Only good things, I hope,¡± he said with a chuckle. ¡°Well, I need some help, and I was referred to you.¡± ¡°Ah. Then you¡¯ve come to the right place,¡± he declared, louder than I would have liked. The waitress returned with a platter. He had spent more for a big steak and something dark in a mug. He asked her to bring a mug for me as well, waving off my attempt to say he didn¡¯t need to. He waited for her to walk off before saying anything else. ¡°So, how do you like this game so far?¡± he asked. Filling in time until she came back with my drink, probably. He cut a strip off the steak and cut that into individual bites. ¡°Well, I haven¡¯t died, so that¡¯s a good thing. The whole can¡¯t-log-off thing kinda bites, though.¡± ¡°Yeah, they really left that out in the literature.¡± His eyes lowered, as did the corners of his mouth. ¡°That took some real adjusting to. I¡¯ve heard that if we die in here we die out there, too.¡± ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure that one¡¯s true,¡± I agreed, not willing to say I knew that when I came in. It was too early for him to start questioning my sanity. I had already done enough of that myself. Those last whispered words from the Secret Service guy still hadn¡¯t left me: ¡°If she dies in there, so do you.¡± ¡°I have a wife and kids on the outside. So at least I¡¯m pretty sure my meat body¡¯s being taken care of. There¡¯s a rumor going around though that if your body out there dies we continue in here and don¡¯t even know it happened.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a creepy thought,¡± I admitted aloud. ¡°But I¡¯m sure people are working on fixing it. There¡¯s gotta be a million people in here.¡± The waitress came back with my mug, an interruption I was more than ready for. If Silleste died before I found her, would I even know? ¡°So, what kinda help are you looking for?¡± he asked once she had marched off with her crisp military precision. ¡°Looking for an RL friend of mine. In here her name¡¯s Silleste.¡± I tried the drink. It smelled like coffee but tasted more like rootbeer with both caffeine and alcohol. The guy tensed up at the name, and his right hand moved a little closer to where he¡¯d be able to reach his sword. ¡°I heard you two came here together from Fantasy Land. Did something happen?¡± ¡°Who are you?¡± he demanded in a lowered voice. ¡°Whoa,¡± I tried with my hands out. Perfectly non-threatening as long as the claws stayed in. If he did make a move for his sword I¡¯d have the edge. Totally worth the points I¡¯d spent on that in the beginning. ¡°We were attacked. Now tell me who you are.¡± This was not going where I expected. Okay, fine. ¡°All on the table, then, I¡¯m Max,¡± I started. ¡°Did she tell you anything about her life outside?¡± ¡°Only a little bit. She lives with her parents, I know that much. There had been enough warnings not to talk about it. Where are you going with this?¡± ¡°Yes, she does live with them, her mom, anyway. Her mom is...a powerful person, with a lot of influence. And she¡¯s worried about her daughter being trapped in here. I came in to find her and keep her safe until they fix it so we can log off again.¡± ¡°Bullshit.¡± ¡°Really? You think I¡¯d make that up?¡± ¡°You expect me to believe you came in here willingly, knowing you couldn¡¯t get out?¡± ¡°And knowing that thousands of logged-in people have died, probably because their toon did. It¡¯s true. We die in here and we die in RL. It¡¯s also true that people are working outside to fix it. We just need to hang on until they do. And, yes, I came in here voluntarily.¡± ¡°Why? If you¡¯re telling the truth, why would you do that?¡± ¡°You ever heard the expression, ¡®an offer I couldn¡¯t refuse¡¯?¡± ¡°What, money?¡± The raised eyebrow lifted more into incredulity. ¡°Not quite.¡± I took a deep breath. Was I ready to trust this guy? No. Did I have much choice? Also no. ¡°Our bodies are in the same room. If she dies, I die. And I don¡¯t buy the idea that we continue in here if our bodies die.¡± He stared at me intently, and time dragged. I took another deep breath and waited his response. ¡°I think I believe that,¡± he concluded. ¡°I¡¯m Sir Altion Relwick.¡± ¡°Thank you, and well met. Do you know where she is?¡± Well met may have been a little disingenuous, but I was still dealing with somebody getting to be the knight of his own personal fantasy. ¡°Nope.¡± Great. Perfect. Big, shiny dead end. I had just put a lot of faith into someone I didn¡¯t know from Adam, for what?¡± ¡°Not really, anyway. She¡¯s off planet, by about five days.¡± I kind of snarled at that. It fit my mood right, and I needed to express it somehow. ¡°We were attacked,¡± he began, leaning forward for a long story. ¡°Mercenaries or bounty--¡± The story was interrupted by a glob of something green missing him and hitting the wall behind him, splattering threads that hit his chair and the table and seemed to solidify almost immediately. I whirled to a stand out of my chair, which clattered to the floor behind me. My new pistol was in hand without a thought. To the right was the long bar with a few people--mostly aliens--who hadn¡¯t yet turned to see what was going on. Directly across, before a line of empty booths, an elf with muscled arms and an obvious armor vest pointed the kind of oversized rifle perfect for the space marine theme of the level we were on. The elevator light shafts dominated the left side, with open space around them. Altion wasn¡¯t far behind me pulling out a sword and slinging his shield. He had destroyed the table getting it out of his way. Gotta love tanks and their high strength scores. The guy got another shot off before I could, and it splatted against Altion¡¯s shield. Green threads shot out from the splatter, reaching out into empty space. They evaporated instead of hardening. So contact with something else was important. I dropped to one knee and fired a brace of shots that missed. But it drew the man¡¯s attention as Altion charged. I dove out of the way of the next shot and returned several. I hit him once, doing much less damage to him that I would have liked. I had a feeling Altion¡¯s sword would make a mess of the guy, especially since the fighter had been in the game longer and had to be higher level than me. So me keeping the guy distracted seemed a solid plan. It would have been, if our attacker had been alone. Two men in similar vests stepped forward a level above with rifles. Helmets with partial visors probably gave them armor and stat boosts and who knew what other bonuses. Twin, sustained lines of red hatred lanced out, and they walked the lines into me, searing lines into the floor behind me before they carved into me. Together the two attacks knocked down nearly a third of my health. A lot can be said about the value of experience and training. Real soldiers train and practice constantly so that when it¡¯s needed it¡¯s right there. Firefighters, police officers, race car drivers, whatever, the key is not having to stop and think to know what to do. My real-life combat experience amounted to little more than a six week free trial of some karate classes and a friend inviting me to a gun range a few times. But I¡¯ve spent a lot of time with online computer games. Player-Vs-Player, PVP combat does a lot to teach you how to react quickly. There had been times in the past I¡¯d worried that maybe I spent too much time in games. You have a lot of time to think about things like that in prison. That¡¯s about all you get to do. Now, however, all that time was butt-saving. I didn¡¯t have to pause and think about what to do. Like any conditioned response, the stimulus happens and the response can be automatic. Their weapons were going to slice me up at range. So I jumped. I leapt right at them, pushing hard to get the most out of the jump boosters in my back and feet. Altion would have to deal with one on his own. If I took on two and left him one and he complained? That would be later, if I was still alive at that point. Both stood fairly close to the edge, so getting to them wasn¡¯t hard. I was still going up with some momentum on my side. I hoped it would count as some kind of charge attack. Claws came out on the way, and I hit the guy on the left with a power attack punch with them right to the chest as I slammed into him. Fifteen Stamina to do 45 damage to the guy seemed a good trade. We both went down in a tumble. I tried to get to my feet quick. The standing guy might or might not try shooting me at point-blank range, so I was going to roll up. If the guy missed me he¡¯d gank his partner. Or at least, that was the plan. The guy grabbed me from behind and threw me. I smashed into a table, knocking it over and ending up behind it. I was pretty sure I would have taken damage from that if I hadn¡¯t picked up some armor along the way. In any other World I¡¯d probably have crashed through the table, but there didn¡¯t seem to be much wood furniture in space. I know, right? But I was behind a sturdy table and my gun was still in hand. Twin beams drew lines up the table as I came up to aim. Being able to just walk the beam to their target gave them an edge in accuracy that made it hard to focus. A little bit of Focus traded in aiming time netted a handy critical hit, taking the damage up to about 50, which added to the claw wound to take him to about two-thirds his Health. I got down behind the table just as the red beams sliced through where my head had just been. Oh, for a grenade. I needed a plan. Motivation to come up with one came in the form of a green grenade. Jerks! My jump boost cooldown was over, so I grabbed the edge of the table, its legs pointing away from me, and I leapt with all I could. I couldn¡¯t see their faces to find out what kind of reaction they had to that. Honestly, they should have seen it coming. I¡¯d already shown I was a jumper. It didn¡¯t seem they had, though. I slammed into both and knocked them down. The grenade went off behind me, hurling sticky green fibers that hardened whenever they hit anything. None of them got me. Lucky. The table moved under me as they both pushed at it. I really wanted to see at least one of their rifles loose on the floor. Not that lucky, apparently. I rolled to the edge, whacking my leg on a table leg, but able to reach under the edge with my left arm. I heard the cry and felt some resistance as serrated blades found something fleshy to bite into. The table flipped, dropping me to the floor before it tumbled over the edge to fall far enough to account for a breaking sound when it hit the floor. The two made moves to get off their backs. I was already on my side and able to get up faster and come down hard with my claws right into one of their faces. The head hit yielded an unexpected double damage modifier and finished that guy off. +200XP (3800) His partner was the barely hurt one, though, and that guy kicked me hard with a power kick to the gut that tossed me right to the edge of the round, open core with barely more than half my Health. His rifle came up. I tried to roll away but he followed me, scorching my thigh. I kept rolling until I was face up and I shot at him, squeezing the trigger as fast as I could, but the did the same thing. His damage output was definitely higher. Not a workable plan! I rolled more, further away from the opening, and up to my feet. He was still hosing me with his laser, so I charged him. He was readier for that than I planned, and he even dodged to my right so I couldn¡¯t just slash at him. ¡°Look out!¡± Altion bellowed. A pulse blast that I would have sword had blue electricity swirling around it barely missed me and scarred the floor. Someone one level up again. What was it with these people? Altion rode a column of white up and past me, going after the new attacker. I whirled as the jerk I still had to deal with was bringing his rifle around. A helmeted figure with breasts and hips fired now at Altion, confirming the whirling blue electric effect. An ionized weapon, which at least shouldn¡¯t have extra effects on the fleshy Fighter, who took it on his shield. There wasn¡¯t time to see how he was doing, other than his Health bar was not full. The man with the rifle, about a third of the distance from me to the edge, was already firing again. Range was not an option. Pistol versus rifle was not an option. I needed something drastic. He¡¯d dodge left--my right--if I charged him. Fine, that would work for me. I didn¡¯t just charge, I leapt, going for all the momentum I could muster. I aimed right, anticipating his dodge. He did dodge to his left, enough to foil a claw attack. That wasn¡¯t my plan, though. I bull-rushed him, full-on running back flying tackle with enough momentum to push both of us out into the open core. His feet banged the floor right at the edge, stealing some of his momentum and setting him spinning. Just enough jump thrust was still going to push me further out than him. He fell away while I hurtled across the space, not fast enough. +200XP (4000) I reached out with my alloy hand to grab a floor to catch myself, half expecting my arm to be torn from my shoulder. No pain ripped through me, although I spun as the claws caught only enough to partially halt my fall and redirect myself. I tumbled, flopping across the floor below until I came to stop at a booth of people staring at me slack-jawed. ¡°Excuse me, sorry about that,¡± I said as I worked my way to my feet with full Health. I¡¯d leveled up again, but that was something to deal with later. My pistol was still alive in my hand, with one shot left, after all that. Game physics are good. In the real world I was pretty certain it would have gone skittering away at some point. I limped to the edge, knowing full well now the glowing railings were solid enough to feel but not enough to prevent falling. The sprawled figure on the floor was not moving. Several floors up Altion traded blows with the helmeted woman, who now swung a baton that sparked dramatically when it stuck the fighter¡¯s shield. They circled each other. The woman was about half dead. Altion drank a potion with his shield hand, shooting his Health bar from the barest sliver to a little under the halfway mark. Good call, but maybe cutting it a little too close. As quick as I could I holstered my pistol and unslung my rifle. I brought it up, letting the scope¡¯s physical image overlay with the one it fed me though my hand. I aimed on the inhale, again trading Focus for accuracy, as they circled. The fighter swung his sword, and although she had cuts in several places she dodged most of his swings. The woman jabbed or swung the baton, and Altion mostly blocked with his shield. Every time it hit him sparks flooded across him and he staggered. I followed her as she circled and when she lunged forward to take advantage of him being dazed I fired. Fourteen points of Crit damage added to the 40 from the rifle. Her armor¡¯s Toughness undoubtedly reduced that, so her Health bar dropped about a third of what she had left, putting her somewhere about a hundred, I estimated. Sheesh. I really needed Crit damage to be higher, or get a headshot bonus. A shot like that would be hard they way she was ducking and moving avoiding his sword. I had interrupted her attack, though, which might have saved Altion. ¡°Strength, be-yotch!¡± he yelled as he took full advantage of her minor distraction. He slammed into her with his shield, pushing her back just far enough to teeter at the edge. I started aiming as she wheeled her arms for balance only to watch her fail and fall. I followed her down, watching her slam into the floor hard enough to crack it. She landed flat on her back, and wasn¡¯t moving. Now I had a moment to check the level.
Level gained! (5) +18 Health (234) +18 Stamina (384) +15 Focus (166) +5 Primary Characteristic Points +10 Skill Points
The +5 went straight into the Charisma I¡¯d been yearning for. I figured that had to help. Skill Points took more thinking about. In the end I went with 4 into Bribery and 6 into Melee Combat, bringing them to 5 and 15 respectively. Bribery was certain to get used again, and if I kept getting into situations where my claws were all I could really work with, then I needed to be better with them. Both reasonable choices. Strength I bumped up to 20. ¡°Hey, you okay?¡± Altion asked me as he approached, having ridden the light elevator down. ¡°Yeah. It was close, but I leveled up. So all good now.¡± ¡°Cool. That was fun.¡± ¡°Fun...,¡± I repeated skeptically. Okay, it kind of had been, but fights like that were always more fun when respawning was an option. ¡°Well, you leveled up and we¡¯ve got bodies to loot,¡± he pointed out. I couldn¡¯t argue with that, so I followed him up to the one who had started the whole thing. The guy¡¯s clothes were a mess. It had clearly taken quite a few sword cuts to take the guy down. Blood was a thing in the game. The final blow had been to the side of his head, chopping the point off the top of an ear. ¡°No money on him at all,¡± Altion pointed out. ¡°Pretty sure that means hired mercenaries who didn¡¯t want to risk losing things if they got captured, and didn¡¯t want us getting money for killing him. A shame, but I can¡¯t say I¡¯m surprised. Not the first I¡¯ve seen, but we¡¯ll get back to that.¡± Altion claimed a pair of grenades and tossed me the bulky rifle.
Item acquired: G&R PR-10 Plasma Rifle This solidly built rifle is designed for battle. Rugged and reliable, it fires bolts of superheated plasma. Integrated Gelcaster in underbarrel mount.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 90m +10 85 73/80
Plasma damage has greatly reduced penetration against hard armors, effectively tripling the Toughness those armors provide.
Generic Gelcaster Gelcasters fire a capsule filled with gel which can spread or splatter on impact. Uses five-round compact magazines.
Range Accuracy Damage Durability 30m -10 By Ammunition 50/50
WebSplatter Gel Limited area splatter Snare effect, Duration depends on target Strength.
¡°Huh, so that¡¯s what that stuff was,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m glad that stuff didn¡¯t actually get either of us.¡± The fighter just nodded. We moved down to the one I killed who had not fallen. Under his helmet he was young, barely twenty if that. At least I was pretty sure most of these had been NPCs Maybe not the woman leading them, but that was just a guess. Again, no money and only carrying the basics. The laser carbine wasn¡¯t a bad weapon, but did not have a Weapon Link and wasn¡¯t designed for a scope. Altion wasn¡¯t interested in it, so I took it as sellable loot. At his suggestion I did take the kid¡¯s vest and helmet, stashing both in my pack for now.
Item acquired: Polymer Armor Vest While not terribly discreet, this vest does help reduce damage from energy weapons.
Toughness Resistance Durability +5 +20 32/50
Item acquired: Polymer Armor Helmet This simple helmet is upgradable and offers some protection against Flash effects.
Toughness Resistance Flash Resist Durability +5 +10 +20 46/50
¡°Did you get XP for the chick?¡± Altion asked as we rode the elevator light shaft down to the floor--a floor conspicuously devoid of dead bodies. A smear of blood ran from where one had fallen to the door. One had survived and dragged the other away. ¡°No, I figured you did, since I barely helped on her.¡± ¡°Okay, then. She got away. Damn. I wanted a look at her rifle.¡± Disappointment rang in his voice. ¡°Let¡¯s get away from here.¡± Again, I had no argument with that, and followed him.