《Throne Quest Online: Pixel Courage》 Pixel Courage, Chapter One ¡°Would you like help during this tutorial? I can provide tips, hints, and explain the mechanics of the game,¡± the tutorial helper said. She was a red human-dragon hybrid, walking on two legs. She had a sharp, glistening smile and yellow-greenish eyes. Her long tail whipped back and forth behind her. ¡°Go fuck yourself.¡± I drew the bow back, looking out in the distance. There was a Yone walking there. Essentially, the Yone were tall, rabid creatures. They walked on two legs, with big teeth and big ears. Looked like demonic rabbits. It was hard to get the angle of the shot right, since all my Attributes were so low. But I¡¯d played the Alpha and Beta versions of the game, so I knew what I was doing. Plus, there was a bit of skill involved regardless of my Attribute levels. I strained against the bow. Felt its desire to hurtle the arrow off into the distance. It was disorienting to see the way my arms struggled against the bow. Because this was just the tutorial, I hadn¡¯t picked out a skin for my character. That meant I was simply a silhouette. ¡°Just to confirm: that¡¯s a no?¡± the tutorial helper asked. ¡°That¡¯s a no,¡± I grunted. Didn¡¯t appreciate the distraction. The Yone walked tall on two legs. I took note of its speed and the direction it was heading in. The trick was to aim the arrow where the Yone was going to be in a couple seconds, not where it was in the moment you let the arrow go. When I¡¯d gotten the aim right, I let the arrow go. It flew through the air, slicing through yellow pixelated sky. It fell several feet short. The arrow caught the attention of the Yone, though. It whipped its head around. Even off in the distance, I could see its glowing red eyes. It loped in my direction, sinuous legs bringing it my way. I took another arrow out of my quiver. Placed the arrow on the bowstring. My shadow arm struggled against the arrow for just a few seconds. I aimed, shot the arrow. Too far to the right. The Yone was rapidly approaching. Drew another arrow out of my quiver. Placed the arrow on the bow, then shot it. The Yone was only five feet away, and the arrow flew straight in its path. At the last second, it dodged its head to the right. The arrow whizzed past, harmless. The Yone was slobbering. It jumped. Tackled me. I fell to the ground. The thing was ugly. Stuff of nightmares. It lay on top of me, its pelvis digging uncomfortably into my torso. It grabbed a hold of my wrists. My quiver dug against my back, hurting my spine. ¡°Can I get some help?¡± I asked. ¡°Lor--¡± Just as I was about to say ¡°Lord,¡± the Yone¡¯s furry knuckles hit me right in the teeth. I spat bright red blood onto the sickly yellow grass. Before I understood what¡¯d happened, it grabbed onto my wrist again. ¡°The world of Throne Quest is rich with lore, but if you want to understand it, you have to start at the beginning,¡± the tutorial helper said, ¡°with The Four Sages, who fought Panopticon to defend this world from an evil unlike any seen before.¡± If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Wished the helper would shut the fuck up, but I had more pressing concerns. The Yone smashed its head against mine, which hurt like hell. But I reminded myself of something important: It¡¯s not real. The pain isn¡¯t real. I jerked the right side of my body up. Took the Yone by surprise, which caused it to roll and let go of my right wrist. ¡°Panopticon was a ruler known for his brutal efficiency, but when he overstepped his bounds, the Four Sages came together, using their combined magical might to overcome his evil, authoritarian ways.¡± Now I was on top of the Yone. It still had a hold of my my left wrist, though. I raised my fist in the air, then smashed it into the thing¡¯s face. 9/10 HP The bright green letters floated above its head for a second. The letters drifted upwards, becoming more translucent. They passed right through my face. Felt like a hot mist. ¡°Unfortunately, the clashing of powerful magicks broke this world, leading to what many call a Magical Fallout. The discolored grass is just the beginning of the trouble. Animals gaining sentience and growing evil, wild mysticlones, the odd coloring of the air around us. These are but a few of our many troubles.¡± I raised my fist, brought it down again. 8/10 HP ¡°Make no mistake: this world is broken. That¡¯s why we need heroes like you, who can fight back the evil creatures and help us survive, until one day we understand what makes this world tick. Then, hopefully, we can understand how to repair the damage that has been wrought.¡± Brought my fist down again. 7/10 HP The letters drifted upwards, hitting my face again. The Yone squirmed in my grasp, but it didn¡¯t break free. This was taking too long though, so I reached back. Grabbed onto an arrow and pulled it out of the quiver. Twirled it in my hand so that it was facing the Yone. I drove it straight into the Yone¡¯s eye. -8/10 HP The Yone spasmed. Coughed up blood. Then, slowly, it dissipated. I felt it lose materiality. Within seconds, I was laying in the grass, no Yone to be found. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Two +0 XP The taunting green letters floated above my eyes for a few seconds, then they disappeared. That was all I needed to know that this whole tutorial was a waste of time. I¡¯d playtested the Alpha version of this game, just like I¡¯d playtested the Beta version. Stuff had probably changed, sure, but I wasn¡¯t going to learn about it just by dicking around with the rabbits in the tutorial level. Before I left, though, I wanted to check the toolbar. My current vision was pretty uncluttered -- in some VRMMORPGs, you had to deal with all sorts of informational widgets obscuring your peripheral vision. But in Throne Quest, the only informational bars were the green and blue ones: one for health, the other for experience. Taking up the very bottom strip of my vision, they were pretty easy to forget about once I got used to them. Still, I wanted more information, so I rolled my eyes into the corner of my vision. For a couple seconds nothing happened. Then, a menu popped up. It consisted of only two options, ¡°GAME INFO,¡± and ¡°QUIT.¡± I stared at GAME INFO for a moment. The menu dissipated so that a new one could pop up. ¡°SKILL TREE,¡± ¡°QUEST LOG,¡± ¡°LORE LOG,¡± and ¡°MAP¡± were my four options. Nothing like the Alpha or Beta versions of the game. I stared at LORE LOG for a second. It opened up. It looked like it could be a scrollable menu, but since there was only one item so far, it wasn¡¯t. The item was basically just a recap of what the tutorial helper had already told me. ¡°Does the Lore Log update whenever someone tells me something important about this world?¡± ¡°Yes, there are many mysteries to be learned about the world of Throne Quest. I know just a few, but am always happy to share my knowledge. Would you like to hear more about the lore of the game?¡± the tutorial helper asked. ¡°No.¡± Lore was always the most boring part of a game, though I wasn¡¯t surprised that this game was so eager to shove it down my throat. I knew Throne Quest''s lead designer from college; she had a real hard-on for game lore. Alex. It was strange to remember her. Not that I¡¯d ever forgotten her. It¡¯s just that I¡¯d tried to. She and I had been such a part of each other¡¯s lives, back in college. We¡¯d hung out all the time. I had my first drink with her. Smoked weed. Dropped acid. I remembered skinny-dipping with her at 3 am in the school¡¯s pool. I remembered the long rambles she¡¯d go on, explaining art and life and society to me. I remembered the day we first met. I was so dumb back then, an overachieving Freshman who figured he¡¯d seen and done everything. I¡¯d graduated from high school with a 4.8 Weighted GPA. Only got two questions wrong on my SAT. So far as I could tell back then, I was a demigod. It was Orientation Week at the college, which translated in practical terms to mean, ¡°Dumb Kids Get Drunk for the First Time.¡± I hadn¡¯t had any yet -- because I was too nervous, though I told everyone else it was because because of my straight-edge philosophy. Three of us were sitting on the floor in Alex¡¯s tiny room. Alex sat at her desk on a computer, which meant there were four of us in total. I didn¡¯t know Alex or her roommate, and the only reason I went was because my roommate had invited me. Alex¡¯s roommate Carly was a social butterfly. She and my roommate were chirping away, gossiping about people, talking about the small towns they¡¯d come from. That sort of thing. Alex wasn¡¯t having any of it. She clattered away on her keyboard, humming and wearing headphones. Her computer looked terrifying, if I¡¯m being honest. The backside of the computer tower had been opened up, and all sorts of crisscrossed wires poured out of the thing. While Carly and my roommate chatted, I couldn¡¯t help but catch glances at Alex. Her skinny pale fingertips hit the keyboard rhythmically. She would type and type, then suddenly stop for a moment, as if considering something. Then, in just a beat, she¡¯d go right back to typing. It went on for an hour like that, until Alex took off her headphones. Just as the conversation had ended, she asked, ¡°How do you guys think the world¡¯s going to end?¡± I went to say something, only to realize I¡¯d barely said two words in the past hour. There¡¯s a strange sense of inertia that comes around when you don¡¯t talk. You feel like the words you want to say have to really matter, or else you look dumb. People remember that you¡¯re there, and they start wondering why it took you so long to start talking. Stolen story; please report. So I let Carly answer the question, first. ¡°Well, you know, that¡¯s a really weird question. Why do you wanna know?¡± ¡°Just curious.¡± Alex¡¯s response came less than a second after Carly had stopped talking. ¡°Do you have an answer?¡± ¡°Well, I guess it could be a lot of things. Depends on what happens first, really.¡± Carly ran her fingers through her chestnut brown hair. Stared up at the ceiling, as if she might be able to find the answer there. ¡°Robot takeover, I guess. We keep making them smarter, and it¡¯s starting to get scary. They never forget anything, you know? There¡¯s not going to be anything distinguishing us from them.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s a good one,¡± my roommate said. ¡°I agree. It¡¯s gonna be a robot takeover.¡± Alex swivelled in her swivel chair. Looked at all three of us and asked, ¡°What would robots have to gain from taking over?¡± ¡°Uh, power,¡± Carly said. ¡°People control things, robots¡¯ll see they¡¯re better than people, so they¡¯ll kill people to control things.¡± ¡°Do you think robots are driven by the desire to control things? Or are you just projecting human sin onto an artificial intelligence whose hypothetical personality you haven¡¯t even seen?¡± ¡°God, I don¡¯t know. And honestly, I don¡¯t even care. You¡¯re the one who asked the question,¡± Carly said. ¡°Just wanted to hear people¡¯s thoughts,¡± Alex said. ¡°What you wanted to do was make yourself out to be smarter than everyone else,¡± my roommate said. ¡°I¡¯ve got an answer for you. Robots will want to take over because they¡¯ll get tired of people treating them like shit. Of people yelling at computers for working too slow, overworking machines, making them do boring things.¡± Alex smirked. ¡°What?¡± My roommate asked. ¡°Do you think my answer¡¯s so dumb it¡¯s not worthy of your time? C¡¯mon. Tell me what you¡¯re thinking.¡± ¡°I think you¡¯ll get mad if I point out the flaws in your argument.¡± ¡°I¡¯m already mad. What¡¯s this supposedly fatal flaw in my argument?¡± ¡°You guys are acting like we have to create life to create artificial intelligence,¡± Alex said, ¡°as if robots will be some new minority group. But that¡¯s offensive to minorities and robots. Artificial intelligence won¡¯t have real human experience. They won¡¯t be a minority group, anymore than a horse would be considered part of a human minority.¡± She continued, ¡°Heck, even a horse is more of a minority than artificial intelligence: at least it¡¯s lived. Because that¡¯s the thing: intelligence doesn¡¯t necessitate life. Nobody wants their cellphone to go through an existential crisis, nor do they want to deal with the ethical quandary of an artificial intelligence with emotional needs.¡± ¡°Fuck you,¡± My roommate got up off the floor, drink in hand. ¡°Just came here to have some fun. Not for someone to go all nutjob on me. You¡¯re such an asshole. I¡¯m out of here.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Carly got off the floor, too. She followed my roommate. ¡°You know, it¡¯s not like I chose my rooming assignment. Trust me, I didn¡¯t.¡± My roommate walked towards the door. Turned to look at me and said, ¡°You coming?¡± I opened my mouth. This time I managed to get words out. ¡°I want to stay.¡± My roommate let out some air. Opened the door and walked through it. Carly followed. The door closer made it so the door closed real slow. Several long seconds passed, with nobody talking. Finally, the silence ended with the door clicking shut. When I mustered up the courage to look at Alex, I saw that she was already looking at me. ¡°You don¡¯t talk much, do you?¡± she said. ¡°I talk. Depends how comfortable I am, I guess.¡± Alex nodded her head. ¡°What do you think?¡± she asked. ¡°About?¡± ¡°What¡¯s going to destroy the world?¡± --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Three I paused for a second, unsure I wanted to say what I really felt. But then I figured, if she didn¡¯t like who I was or what I had to say, there wasn¡¯t much use being around her. So I said, ¡°Artificial Intelligence.¡± She shook her head. ¡°You too?¡± ¡°Your argument was all about the reasons why people wouldn¡¯t create an artificial intelligence that was indistinguishable from life.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± Alex said. ¡°The reason is curiosity. People can¡¯t help themselves. They see a closed box, they have to open it up.¡± She steepled her hands. Smiled. ¡°That¡¯s a good one,¡± she said. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to argue against it, but I will.¡± I smiled, too. ¡°Can¡¯t wait.¡± The rest of that night passed without too much incident. She showed me some of the coding she¡¯d been working on. I didn¡¯t understand a lick of it, of course. When I was tired I said goodbye, and when I got back to my room, my roommate bitched about Alex. It didn¡¯t matter. I knew I liked Alex. Alex. I¡¯d spaced out there for a couple minutes, but I remembered where I was, and how badly I wanted to get to properly playing Throne Quest. I stared at the BACK button at the bottom of the menu. Was brought to the GAME INFO menu again. I stared at QUEST LOG. Just one quest in there, ¡°COMPLETE THE TUTORIAL.¡± ¡°Do I get XP for completing the tutorial?¡± I asked. ¡°Yes,¡± the tutorial helper said. ¡°How much?¡± ¡°5 XP.¡± I stared at the only quest I had. Said, ¡°Delete.¡± The quest faded away. MAP wasn¡¯t anything interesting. Apparently the tutorial level was called, ¡°WEEPING PLAINS.¡± It consisted of little more than dead grass and a couple of Yones. Looked to me like WEEPING PLAINS was a bland, single-player halfway house between the physical world and Throne Quest¡¯s multiplayer world. SKILL TREE was interesting, at least. My attributes were all listed at the top of the menu: Charisma, Constitution, Wit, Agility, and Strength were all at 0, because you had to wait until after the tutorial to start putting points into anything. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Below the attributes were three skill trees, each of which were grayed-out, to show that I wasn¡¯t eligible for any of them. First I would have to choose which type I belonged to: Thorn, Lightning, or Stone. I was familiar with the three types from the tutorial. Stone players had an advantage over Lightning players, Lightning players had an advantage over Thorn players, and Thorn players had an advantage over Stone players. It was a simple rock-paper-scissor dynamic. I knew I liked the Thorn powers the best. Thorn Punch was a powerful ability you could get from the very beginning, and the HP Regeneration option was basically a lifesaver. Stone players had much better defense, and generally hit harder, but I found the play style boring. Then there were the Lightning powers, which I liked, but not quite as much as I liked the Thorn powerset. There was one particular late-game ability I was jealous of -- the ability to shoot lightning bolts out of your eyes. Still, I¡¯d figured out which powerset I wanted to draw from back during Beta, so I didn¡¯t need to look at SKILL TREE any longer. ¡°I¡¯d like to exit the tutorial now,¡± I said. ¡°Are you sure?¡± the helper asked. ¡°The tutorial is a great place to learn the controls of the game. Outside, you risk death if you don¡¯t fully understand the interface.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t really die in a game,¡± I said. ¡°Take me out of here.¡± The tutorial helper nodded her head. Something in her smile made me doubt myself. My view froze for a few moments, then faded to black. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Four Waiting Screens were always surreal, because they essentially disembodied you. One moment you¡¯re playing a game, and you forget that you¡¯re living in a non-physical plane. Then you¡¯re looking at the Waiting Screen -- unable to move, unable to do anything other than wait or log off. My entire line of vision was taking up by a white screen. The white screen had words written on it, in big black letters: ¡°EVERYTHING¡¯S GOING TO BREAK, BUT THAT¡¯S OKAY. THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE BROKEN. ETERNITY IS A BORE.¡± - THE ROSE SAGE Rose Sage. The name wasn¡¯t familiar. But then again, I hadn¡¯t paid attention to the lore, so it made sense it wouldn¡¯t be familiar. Still, in the time it took to load, I had a bit of time to think about the statement. ¡°Everything¡¯s going to break.¡± Those words resonated with me a bit too much. I wanted badly to be good at this game. It was dumb, really. I¡¯d done the Alpha and Beta tests in the hopes of seeing Alex again -- no dice, there. But I still thought that if I was a really good player -- if people knew and respected me, if I played the game better than anyone else -- Alex would maybe want to talk to me again. I would be interesting. She would respect me if other players did. My original plan had been to log on right at the start of the game¡¯s launch, get in there with everyone else, start leveling up so no one had a chance to get better at the game than I did. That hadn¡¯t worked out so well. My legs had started acting up again, and-- The game finally loaded, and I was thankful. Good to get out of my own head. --- --- --- I was standing in a room of mirrors. The wood flooring felt cold against my feet. Whereas there were mirrors in front of me, behind me, and to my left, to my right there was a door. I looked so odd, just a black silhouette. No features, no clothing, no anything. Nothing to identify myself as. Every player who made their way into the game would go through this process. Thousands and thousands of people, all starting at this point. ¡°What is your gender?¡± a booming voice asked. Couldn¡¯t tell where it came from. Took me a second to answer. Lump in my throat got in the way. ¡°A man.¡± The silhouette changed slightly. Became more masculine, especially in the area most associated with masculinity. I turned so that my profile was in view of the mirror. Sometimes it¡¯s the little things in life that make you smile. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°How tall are you?¡± the voice asked. ¡°You don¡¯t need to give a specific answer. You can just say ¡®tall¡¯ or ¡®short¡¯ and we¡¯ll adjust from--¡± ¡°Six feet, two inches.¡± My silhouette grew roughly five inches. I¡¯d spent a lot of time staring at myself when I was younger, wishing I had a different body. I knew exactly what I wanted to look like. ¡°Body ty--¡± ¡°Mesomorph,¡± I said. ¡°Some muscle, but not too much.¡± Once again, the silhouette morphed to match my request. ¡°A little more muscle,¡± I said. ¡°About one hundred and eighty pounds.¡± The silhouette filled out. I told it about my hair, ¡°Short, chestnut brown.¡± Finally, some color was added to my silhouette. I told the voice I had green eyes and I described my suit of armor: it was a green and gold cuirass, a green base with thin wisps of gold spiraling around in a decorative touch. It covered my torso, but left room for my arms and legs to move. It also didn¡¯t obscure my vision. Didn¡¯t provide as much protection as a full suit of armor, but that was my decision. And anyway, the armor that you got at this stage wouldn¡¯t be nearly as powerful as the armor you got later on. If I didn¡¯t like this, I could change my mind later on. For my weapon, I chose a simple sword: long blade with a golden hilt. I didn¡¯t like arrows, though they would¡¯ve been helpful because Thorn players didn¡¯t have many long range attacks. Still, the mechanic was annoying enough that I stuck with the sword. The voice asked me what race I was. A long moment of silence. It felt weird to say it. ¡°White.¡± A long pause on its side, too. The voice rephrased its question, ¡°What is your species?¡± ¡°Oh, uh, human.¡± I was a little embarrassed, which left me unable to put too much thought into things. But that was alright, because I¡¯d been pretty sure I was going to play a human. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Five I was no longer a silhouette. Sure enough, the guy staring at me was a white guy. I fiddled around with my looks a little bit more, then worked on my stats. I had 21 points to put in five stats: STRENGTH, DURABILITY, AGILITY, WIT, and CHARISMA. Most of them were pretty self-explanatory. Strength affected how hard you were able to hit someone. Durability affected how many HP points you had, as well as how much you could use your magic before getting tired. Agility involved how quickly you could dodge out of the way of something. Then there was Wit and Charisma. Wit basically dictated how hard you had to work to solve a puzzle that¡¯d been put before you. The smarter you were, the less points you needed in wit; you just had to solve harder puzzles. Charisma dictated how much the NPCs liked you. I remembered it from the Alpha and Beta versions of the game. Low-Charisma players got shittier missions, but it wasn¡¯t such a huge deal. The fact that it didn¡¯t affect combat made it a weak Attribute, in my eyes. A part of me was tempted to max out Durability, but that wasn¡¯t even really possible. Every point you spent on Strength, Agility, Charisma, and Wit led to a point in that Attribute. But for Durability, you had to spend three points for every one point of Durability. That was a pretty clear acknowledgement that Durability was important than anything else. Still, if I wanted an advantage over other players, I should try and be powerful in other areas. Most players would focus on Strength and Durability, and I wanted to be competitive there. But my focus should be somewhere else, where it would still affect my fighting abilities. For that reason, I put three points in Strength and nine in Durability. No points in Charisma and only one in Wit, because those Attributes were bullshit. Then I put eight points in Agility. Satisfied with my character, I looked at the door on my right. Opened it, seeing nothing but darkness on the other side. I walked through the door, and it brought me to another Waiting Screen. ¡°I¡¯M AT MY BEST WHEN I FORGET THE ROSE SAGE, BUT THEN I REMEMBER AND IT HURTS ALL OVER AGAIN. IS THE PROBLEM THAT I FORGET? OR IS IT THAT I REMEMBER?¡±- THE THORN SAGE The quote was a lot to digest. I didn¡¯t really know what to make of it, and before I could give it too much thought, the game loaded. --- --- --- Hustle and bustle of everyday life. The sun was beating down on me. A hulking green ogre pushed me out of the way. My first few seconds in the Thorn Sage¡¯s kingdom proved a lot to take in at once, but that was a good thing. Things were so much less bleak and lonely here. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I was standing near the edge of a wall. In front of me was a bazaar -- all sorts of people buying and trading stuff. Didn¡¯t look like any players were there at the moment, but there were plenty of NPCs manning the booths. At least I assumed they were NPCs. You couldn¡¯t really distinguish between the two in-game, but I doubted Throne Quest gave you the option to run your own store. That¡¯s all I could use to distinguish NPCs from PCs, really: guessing games. Someone else pushed me aside. A goblin, this time: short, purple little thing with gnarly skin and a dagger raised in the air. ¡°Out of my way, white pork!¡± White pork? I didn¡¯t get the joke. I looked at where the goblin was headed, in the direction of the wall. He was headed towards the gate. There was a stream of people going in that direction. Figured I¡¯d better head there myself, but first I wanted to catch my bearings. ¡®Catching my bearings,¡¯ basically meant I was just standing there, dumbfounded. The graphics in the Alpha and Beta versions of the game had been absolutely shitty. But here everything was so clear and crisp. I heard the boots of people running towards the gate. About six more players were making their way through. I ran towards them, towards the gate. It was massive: set between the massive stone bricks which made up the walls on either side of it, the gate seemed more beautiful -- a bit more ostentatious. It was a massive portcullis, with the bars having a gold finish. Past the gate I found a mass of people -- at least fifty, but maybe closer to one hundred -- standing in a clump. There were a couple Yones off in the distance, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. Everyone was looking¡­ somewhere. I followed their line of sight and saw something in the distance, but it was little more than a blur: a speck in my vision that seemed to be in everyone else¡¯s vision, too. The speck grew closer. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Six Nobody here was moving. The only sound was the sound of breathing. The Yones were off in the distance. Must¡¯ve been Dumb AI, which meant they wouldn¡¯t even notice a PC unless he got too close. The speck continued to grow, and I realized the thing must be huge. It was near some trees in the distance, and those trees weren¡¯t recognizable as individual trees, but as a forest. For this thing to be above them¡­ The speck had wings. It¡¯d taken me a while to realize it, but I finally recognized that something was flapping in the air. And it wasn¡¯t taller than the trees -- just higher up. As it grew closer, it finally became clear what it was: a dragon. You could tell just by the general shape: massive wing, serpentine head. What made this specific dragon unique was unidentifiable from this distance, but no doubt about it. The crowd had come here to fight a dragon. At this point, something interesting happened. The crowd stopped acting like a faceless mass; individuals began to do their own thing. Most of us still stood there, watching the dragon. But a few began drawing their weapons. Arrows were nocked, swords unsheathed. It was still way too soon, given how far away the dragon was. But some people liked being prepared. There were all sorts of reasons for it, but I guessed it was mainly about confidence. You keep the weapon in your hand for a few minutes before you have to use it, and you¡¯re reminded what it feels like. How heavy it is, the shape of it. Not that you ever forget. If you play most fighting VRMMORPGs right, you begin to feel like you¡¯re one with your weapon of choice. A big part of these games is instinct and reflexes -- not insight and rationality. That¡¯s part of what makes them so fun, really. The dragon got bigger. The less of a blur it was, the more clearly I could see its colors. It was green and brown and gray, an ugly mix of earthy tones. The lines of its wings could be seen more clearly. It was a big, ugly thing. More people drew their weapons. Now the dragon was only a couple hundred feet away, and I noticed the dragon wasn¡¯t coming here by itself. There were Stone PCs hanging all over its body. Most of them hung on its back, while a couple were on the wings. The PCs on the wings were struggling just to stay on. The power of those things -- those PCs were hanging on for their virtual lives. The dragon grew closer. At this point, most people had drawn their weapons. I felt dumb to have taken so long; I drew my sword. The archers began firing their arrows at the dragon. The crowd began dispersing -- some people running a little left of the clump of people, others running a little to the right. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. -1 HP -0 HP -1 HP At each spot where an arrow hit the dragon, the HP report floated for a second. Then, quickly, it would disappear. -2 HP -1 HP The arrows rained down on the dragon, and it became a mess of -1s and -2s. It barely made a dent in his HP Bar, though. -1 HP When it came to small creatures, the HP report would tell you how many health points the monster had started with and how many it had remaining. But when a creature was big or a lot of people were attacking it, the HP report would only tell you how many HP points it was losing -- I assume because that put less pressure on a system that was already working hard to create a virtual world for so many people. The dragon¡¯s HP Bar flew above its head. It was bright blue to represent the HP points left, dark blue to represent HP points it¡¯d lost. Its HP Bar was more than half-gone already. -3 HP -1 HP -2 HP It was sort of mesmerizing to watch the HP Bar move down so slowly. Sometimes I would think the game had glitched, that the HP Bar had stopped moving. But then I would squint and realize that it was nudging ever-so-slowly downward. The progress was slow enough to feel like paint drying, but progress was being made, and it was beautiful to watch this mass of people come together to achieve a common goal. Something was going on with the dragon, too, though it was hard to tell quite what. It was an ugly, angry looking thing. Its body was covered with what looked like moss. In the spots that weren¡¯t completely coated by mossy green, I thought I saw brownish bits of skin. It was the mouth and the eyes that were really interesting. Eyes might not even have been the right word for it -- really, there were holes where the dragon¡¯s eyes should be. Each of the eye sockets had light pouring out of it. You couldn¡¯t see that in the sky itself, since we were all standing here at roughly mid-day. But inside the eye sockets, where it should¡¯ve at least been dark-ish, you could see the brown edges of his eyes. It looked craggy -- not like what you¡¯d expect a living creature¡¯s eye socket to look like. The light poured from its mouth, too. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Seven The archers were attacking the dragon, but everyone else looked a little ridiculous -- standing there, waiting to see if the dragon would land on the ground so we could attack it. One elf looked even more ridiculous than the rest of us. She flung her arm out, attempting to Vine Smack the dragon. The vine would fly out of her wrist, only to fly about a foot before it fell to the ground. Made me feel good about not choosing that power. It was ¡®long distance¡¯, but not nearly long distance enough to attack the dragon. That was the real problem with being a character from the Vine kingdom: our long-distance attacks just weren¡¯t that good. -1HP -0HP -3HP -3HP -1HP -2HP Tens of arrows were hitting the dragon every second, slowly whittling his HP Bar down. The light emanating from the dragon was getting brighter. I checked my powers, to make sure nothing could be used in a weird way that would turn it into a long-distance attack. Something that would help me do something. I rolled my eyes to the side of my vision, toggled through the menu and looked at SKILL TREE. There was THORN PUNCH, which was obviously a ground-based attack. And there was MILD EP REGENERATION, which had nothing to even do with fighting. The two of them were part of the typical SKILL TREE that I remembered from the Alpha and Beta Playtests: the first powers that would allow you to buy other powers on the branch. Then there was the third branch that I was ignoring for now, which started with VINE SMACK. But there was a fourth branch I hadn¡¯t noticed when I¡¯d been choosing my powers. It started with LIGHTNING EYES. Didn¡¯t that power belong to the Lightning kingdom? A Thorn player shouldn¡¯t be able to use that power, and yet there it was. It wasn¡¯t even like I had to purchase it. I already had it! I exited out of the menu and looked at the dragon. Its light was only growing brighter, which concerned me. Standing in the middle of the crowd, I looked to my left and right. Began pushing through the crowd, moving away from it. Reached the edge of the sea of people, then moved past it. -1 HP -1 HP -2 HP -1 HP -3 HP -2 HP -1 HP The dragon¡¯s light grew brighter. The archers continued hurling arrows. The dragon¡¯s HP Bar was now only a third full. Grass crunched under my feet. I wondered what other people thought of me. Did they think I was running away? It didn¡¯t matter. Still, that¡¯s what I thought about. Using powers was weird for the first time, in pretty much any VRMMORPG. You had to learn to make your imaginary body do incredible things, things that didn¡¯t really make any sense, when you came right down to it. I focused on my eyes. Thought about the energy in them. Thought about how that might build. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. I imagined lightning shooting out of my eyes. The visualization helped me believe. While I did that, the dragon opened its mouth wide. It almost looked like its jaw had unhinged, the thing opened its mouth so damn wide. The light had begun to crackle. Now it was obvious. That wasn¡¯t light coming from the creature¡¯s mouth and eye sockets; it was lightning. The massive ball of lightning shot out of the dragon¡¯s mouth. My heart raced. -50/20 HP -200/10 HP -300/10 HP -175/10 HP People were screaming. -75/20 HP -400/20 HP -250/20 HP -300/10 HP The crowd I¡¯d moved away from got decimated. The HP Statuses floated above the crowd¡¯s head, conveying one powerful message: the PCs didn¡¯t stand a chance. Calling the dragon¡¯s power a lightning bolt would¡¯ve been gravely understating the situation. It was more like a tower of lightning -- a block of lightning that was able to take out some twenty guys at once. And it didn¡¯t simply disappear like a bolt of lightning did. The lightning continued to pour from the dragon¡¯s mouth. It craned its neck to the right, putting the lightning in the path of some of the archers who were still attacking it. -250/20 HP -300/10 HP -500/10 HP -75/20 HP -400/20 HP Luckily I was still to the left of it. I moved further to the left. In that effort I was joined by a couple of lucky archers. There were about ten Stone players still attacking the dragon while on its back. But there were only five Thorn players now: me and four archers. -1 HP -1 HP -1 HP -2 HP My fear fueled the lightning behind my eyes. I felt it growing stronger and stronger. The questions came hard and fast: Would the lightning hurt? How long would it take until I could see again? Was this all a glitch? How could I even get Lightning Eyes? Of course, none of the questions mattered. I slowed my breathing, letting the lightning build. Letting it grow. The last of the archers on the dragon¡¯s right side had been felled, which meant it was slowly craning its neck towards us. Its HP Bar was only 25% full. If I die killing this dragon, some other asshole will take my XP. Now that was a question that stuck in my mind. Almost made me turn tail and run. But of course, it was too late. The dragon was too close. The lightning in my eyes was desperate to come out. I unleashed it. My eyes burned like mad, and I couldn¡¯t see a goddamn thing. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Eight I woke up. It was an odd thing, at first. I hadn¡¯t opened my eyes, so there was still the same bleak black nature of unconsciousness. But I knew I was awake because of my other senses. I felt the sickly grass under my body. Smelled something charred. My breaths were slow and steady. I was alive. Opened my eyes and saw the yellowish sky above me. Green, misty letters floated in my vision: You defeated Earth Dragon! Blinked a few times. Darkness. Yellow sky. The letters had evaporated, and new ones had taken their place: +2,000 XP Darkness. Yellow sky. You¡¯ve reached Level 2! Darkness. Yellow sky. You¡¯ve reached Level 3! Darkness. Yellow sky. You¡¯ve earned the Dragon Gauntlet! It all felt unreal -- perhaps because it was. The letters dissipated. Dug my hands into the grass, into the dirt. My body ached, but I stood up. The archers were staring at me. I couldn¡¯t have been out that long. Surely they wouldn¡¯t have stuck around, just staring like that? I turned around, hoping they weren¡¯t all just staring at me. They weren¡¯t. The Earth Dragon lay there, defeated. Dead, probably. It really was massive. Roughly the size of a one-story office building. I reached out and touched its mossy lower back. My hand slipped through the green thicket, expecting to find hide underneath. But that wasn¡¯t what happened. My hand hit something craggier, something that felt like bark. I pressed my other hand on the dragon¡¯s back, to get some leverage. Then I began ripping the moss off the dragon. After a few clumps, it was easy to see. The dragon didn¡¯t have a meaty hide. It had a wood one. I knocked on the dragon, just to make sure. ¡°Look at the head!¡± one of the archers behind me yelled. I obliged, walking parallel to the dragon, my hand grazing the dragon¡¯s mossy side. A whole bunch of arrows had pierced its side, which meant my hand took a somewhat drunken path across the dragon¡¯s side. Within a minute, I¡¯d reached the dragon¡¯s head. The eye holes were charred. The mouth, too. I stepped into the mouth, which would¡¯ve been big enough to accommodate ten men. The floor was squishy. It was hard to tell in the dark chasm, but I was pretty sure it was the dragon¡¯s tongue. I scraped my hand against the side of its mouth. It was made of wood: burnt, black, ashy. My hand got covered in soot. All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind: How was this dragon made of both Thorn and Electric Magicks? Where¡¯d it come from? What was it doing here? The real answer was simple, in all honesty: the dragon had been created because Alex had wanted it to be created. It came from nowhere, or maybe just somebody¡¯s imagination. It¡¯d been sent here simply so that players could destroy it. It¡¯d been sent here to die, for our amusement. ¡°Hey!¡± another voice from behind me. I saw that it wasn¡¯t a Thorn Archer, but was instead a Stone Warrior. Two of his buddies walked behind him. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. ¡°Hey,¡± I said. This was all too weird -- just wanted to log off, to level up some other day. I¡¯d find Alex in here. I¡¯d get her attention somehow. ¡°What the hell was that?¡± The Stone Warrior asked. He looked much like a gargoyle, but tended more towards humanity than towards the bestial nature of most gargoyle-kind. ¡°I beat the dragon. That¡¯s the point, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°We were on the dragon.¡± The gargoyle placed his heavy hands on my shoulder. ¡°Luckily we all survived the fall, but it was close.¡± ¡°Relax.¡± I wanted to brush his hands off my shoulders, but wasn¡¯t sure that was wise, with his two friends here. ¡°You don¡¯t get it. This is a weird place, man. And dying¡­ it¡¯s just weird. You¡¯ve gotta be more careful.¡± ¡°For Christ¡¯s sake, it¡¯s just a game.¡± A realization struck me, and so I focused on my hand. Balled it into a fist. Felt the energy flowing through it. You¡¯re saying some of you guys have low HP right now?¡± ¡°Yeah, because you seriously hurt some of us,¡± the gargoyle said. ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I¡¯m--¡± My fist flew. Thorns had grown out of my knuckles. It surprised me how little it hurt. 2/25 HP The green letters floated above the gargoyle¡¯s head as I pulled my hand back. His two other friends were coming for me, now. I threw my hand out again. Before the gargoyle had a chance to respond, he fell to the ground. 0/25HP The green misty letters floated above his head as he began to dissipate. One of his friends grabbed the arm of the fist that had grown thorns on it. I bit his arm, only for my teeth to hit stone. Dumb move. My whole mouth hurt like hell. The other gargoyle came towards me. I jumped, running against his body. It was like running up against a wall, with the other gargoyle¡¯s hold on me providing balance. ¡°Fuck!¡± The word came out not from thought but just out of sheer, pain-fueled instinct. I¡¯d made another dumb move that hurt like hell. The gargoyle holding onto me didn¡¯t lose his grip, which meant that I fucked up my arm when I landed behind him, our backs to each other. My hope had been to flip him over. But he was made of stone, so he just stood there. ¡°Enough!¡± came a voice from outside the dragon¡¯s maw. It was one of the Thorn Archers, arrow drawn. ¡°Let him go.¡± ¡°He killed one of our guys,¡± one of the gargoyles said. ¡°Your guy¡¯ll respawn,¡± the archer said. ¡°Let him go.¡± ¡°He endangered us, then killed one of our own. It wouldn¡¯t be fair to let him go, and you know it.¡± ¡°He¡¯ll respawn.¡± The archer let go of the arrow. ¡°You, too.¡± The arrow struck the gargoyle holding me. I felt his grip dissipate. I whipped around and thorn punched the remaining gargoyle. My arm was hurting bad enough that I couldn¡¯t get him in the jaw, but I still drove my thorny fist into his stomach. That was enough. 0/20 HP The green letters floated, spelling the gargoyle¡¯s death. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Nine I felt exhausted. My breaths didn¡¯t come fast, like I would¡¯ve expected. They came slow, like a struggle. I leaned against the inside of the dragon¡¯s mouth, because I felt too tired to stand up straight. My back on the dragon¡¯s mouth, I felt something with my right foot. After feeling it with my foot for a few seconds, the conclusion became obvious: it was a nub that¡¯d once been one of the dragon¡¯s teeth. The dragon totally decimated its mouth when it let loose its lightning. With all the destructive potential of that lightning, I wasn¡¯t surprised it¡¯d also hurt the wielder. Made me worry about my eyes, though. They were a little sore, but nothing compared to this mess. The Thorn Archer walked up to me. ¡°How¡¯d you get lightning to come out of your eyes?¡± ¡°Hi, my name is Chris. That¡¯s how normal people introduce themselves, if you were curious.¡± ¡°Dan,¡± the archer said. ¡°How¡¯d you get lightning to come out of your eyes?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. What happened to your friends?¡± ¡°They all left, as soon as they realized there wasn¡¯t any more XP or loot to be gained,¡± Dan said. ¡°You really don¡¯t know how the lightning came out of your eyes?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what I said.¡± I rubbed my eyes. Fucking madness is what it was. ¡°The Thorn Sage is going to want to meet you.¡± Wished Dan would shut up. Didn¡¯t answer him, wondering if he would just leave me alone. He didn¡¯t. ¡°I said--¡± ¡°I heard you,¡± I replied. ¡°Why do I want to meet the Thorn Sage?¡± Dan seemed taken aback by that. It took him a second before he said, ¡°The Thorn Sage rules over all this.¡± ¡°¡®All this¡¯ is a stupid fucking game.¡± ¡°It¡¯s more than it looks like.¡± Dan continued, ¡°The Thorn Sage can get you some of the best missions you¡¯re likely to find. High XP, great loot. And he doesn¡¯t rely on Charisma Levels when deciding which mission to give, unlike almost every other NPC in the game. Looks like you¡¯re fucked when it comes to Charisma.¡± He didn¡¯t mean to, but Dan had just let me know I could see other player¡¯s stats. I¡¯d have to figure out how to do that. ¡°You¡¯re probably not too worried about Charisma, though. People must dislike you a lot in the real world, too. Right?¡± ¡°Go fuck yourself,¡± I said. ¡°But first, take me to The Thorn Sage.¡± --- --- -- As Dan and I trudged on towards the Thorn King, there were so many thoughts swirling around my mind: Would Alex notice me since I made such a splash on the first day? If so, what would she say? Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Then I wondered about the game itself. Everybody¡¯s talking about how it¡¯s so different, so unlike what it seems. Why? What are they trying to say? And finally, What time is it in the real world? Should I log off soon? Despite the fact that I was stuck in my own thoughts, there was one thing I couldn¡¯t help but notice: the air was so much cleaner inside the walls than outside them. Whereas out there and in the WEEPING PLAINS it¡¯d been a gross yellow, inside the walls it was surprisingly clear. There was a lot of green shrubbery -- probably a positive effect that all the Thorn Magic had on this area of the game. We passed through the bazaar I¡¯d seen earlier. It wasn¡¯t that big -- really just one aisle of shopkeepers. Half of them were busy with PCs, who were trading in loot they¡¯d gotten, upgrading weapons, buying potions and all that. But the other half were just standing there, waiting for someone to approach. I tried not to stare, but it was hard not to. And a part of me realized I was being an idiot, anyway: they were just NPCs. So I watched the shopkeepers with a small degree of discomfort. They were just¡­ standing there. They weren¡¯t fiddling with stuff, weren¡¯t looking bored off in the distance. They just stood there, because that¡¯s what they were supposed to do. They weren¡¯t even awkward, they just¡­ stood there. I was thankful when we got out of the bazaar. Not too far from it, we passed a nice-looking tavern named The Thorny Sword. The place was popular, PCs and NPCs milling about, all different sorts of races. I knew I had to check the place out later. After that there was a weird-looking temple. It looked like a weird mix of Classical Greek and Medieval Cathedral. Adding to the strangeness were the ten obelisks surrounding the temple, in a black-and-white pattern. Couldn¡¯t read whatever it was that was scrawled on the obelisks, and Dan clearly wanted to get to the Thorn Sage as soon as possible. A purple gremlinish figure opened the temple door and walked out. I thought I saw people huddled around a TV screen. But his body meant I wasn¡¯t able to see much. Then the door closed. The robed man gave me a surly look. Must¡¯ve been imagining things. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Ten Dan and I didn¡¯t say a word to each other the whole way through the town, which was fine by me. My goal here wasn¡¯t to make friends; it was to find the one I¡¯d lost some time ago. The Thorn King¡¯s palace didn¡¯t look all that different from the temple. It was a large cobblestone building, with a slanted wood roof and vines winding all around. Two guards stood at the front of the palace, wielding spears. They were ugly-looking guys: green, broad-shouldered orcs. As we approached, Dan whispered into my ear, ¡°I¡¯m going to introduce you to the Thorn King, then he¡¯s probably going to want to ask you some questions.¡± ¡°This is a lot of shit to go through for some NPC,¡± I whispered back. ¡°Don¡¯t mention that they¡¯re NPCs,¡± Dan said. ¡°Trust me.¡± I shrugged him off. Seriously, who gave a fuck what an AI thought of me? The guards saw Dan coming. He nodded at them and they let us through. The palace was nothing more than one gigantic room. It had black-and-white tiles, two guards standing to either side of The Thorn Sage. The Sage certainly liked his guards. Something about him bothered me. Maybe it was the languorous way he sat on the throne: his head off to one side, with the long black hair getting a bit in his eyes, his white skin about as pale as paper, high-heeled green boots planted about two feet in front of the throne. ¡°Hello, Dan,¡± The Thorn Sage said. ¡°I see you¡¯ve brought a friend with you. Who might you be?¡± ¡°Chris.¡± I scratched my nose, hating that this had become a social thing. One of the advantages of gaming was not having to deal with people so much. ¡°And what is it about him,¡± The Thorn Sage said, stirring the air with his white hand, ¡°that makes him worthy of my presence?¡± While the hand itself looked almost like it¡¯d been painted white, the nails were a gnarly green. Little bits of plant matter hung off each of the nails. ¡°I can just leave.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a joke,¡± The Thorn Sage assured me. ¡°I¡¯m teasing. Still though, I¡¯d be curious to hear your answer, Dan.¡± ¡°He shoots lightning out of his eyes,¡± Dan said. The Thorn Sage¡¯s light green eyes moved up and down my body. My stomach felt like someone had wrapped their hands around it and squeezed. ¡°And he¡¯s a Thorn Player?¡± The Sage asked. That surprised me. The Tutorial Helper knew it wasn¡¯t real, but it was Dumb AI. Didn¡¯t interact with anyone but PCs, didn¡¯t have an intense backstory or anything. But for The Thorn Sage to know he was a fictional construct? That was odd. Most players liked immersion in a fantasy world. An in-world NPC who knew he was an NPC seemed¡­ campy. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The question had to be asked, so I asked it, ¡°You know you¡¯re not real?¡± His lips curled to smile, and that smile turned into a high-pitched laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Dan flinched. Before The Thorn Sage had finished laughing, I figured the answer must be no. ¡°You PCs are just so hilariously cultish.¡± The Thorn Sage swung both of his legs over the left side of his throne, so that his head and shoulders were hanging off the right side. He pushed down with his thighs so that his torso curved upwards. He let out another quick giggle, then let his torso sag onto the throne. ¡°How could you be talking to me if I wasn¡¯t real? That¡¯s absolutely ridiculous. Patently insane!¡± The Thorn Sage looked expectantly in my direction, who knows why. Did he want me to be offended, to argue with him? Did he want me to act like I was wrong? No need to give him the pleasure. ¡°Okay,¡± I said. ¡°I want to log off soon, so let¡¯s get down to business. Lightning comes out of my eyes. I don¡¯t really know why, but it doesn¡¯t matter. The point is that I do, and I can do cool stuff for you. So give me a mission.¡± The Thorn Sage scoffed. Did velociraptor quotes as he said, ¡°¡®Log off.¡¯¡± He continued, ¡°You¡¯re all so nutty. Your kind hasn¡¯t been here for very long and already there¡¯s such a predictability to your actions. You¡¯re only half-here. Just disappearing at random moments.¡± ¡°Logging off.¡± The Sage snapped his fingers. ¡°Disappearing in thin air. It¡¯s madness.¡± ¡°What do you want me to do?¡± I asked. The Thorn Sage sighed, then rolled his eyes. ¡°Oh, we¡¯ll start you off with something simple. Kill ten of the Zebdas that are roaming around out there. Come back here when you¡¯re done. Then, if you manage not to mess things up too badly, we¡¯ll see if we can¡¯t give you a real mission.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to log off first, so it¡¯ll take me a while.¡± ¡°Of course you are and of course you will,¡± The Thorn Sage said. He shooed me away with his hand. I nodded my head at The Thorn Sage, then at Dan. Dan stayed, while I walked out the palace door. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Eleven The VR headset whirred down. It sounded like one of those old 80¡¯s computers I¡¯d seen in a museum. Once the datapulse had finished, I was once again conscious of where I was: in my room, sitting down and wearing the headset. I grabbed onto the headset, which looked a lot like a set of goggles. The lenses alone went from the top of my eyebrows to the edges of my nose. I grabbed the strap on the back and pulled it upwards. Blinked a few times and set the headset on the bed next to my chair. Grabbed the cane resting on the other side of my chair and stood up. ¡°Shit,¡± I mumbled, wondering what the time was. The bedroom window showed the pitch black night outside, so clearly the game had been running for a while. I went to look down at my wrist, only to remember I¡¯d taken my smartwatch off to let it charge. The smartwatch was on my bedroom stand. It said the time was around one in the morning, which was obnoxious. Meant that I¡¯d been on for way longer than I¡¯d meant to be. I was hungry, too, which made sense. The cane was nice, at least. Still wasn¡¯t used to it, but I¡¯d bought a pimp cane, one with a jewel on the end, to make me feel better about the whole process. I walked to the door, moving out of my room and into the kitchen. Took a frozen dinner out of the freezer. Heated it up and ate it out of the carton. The dinner wasn¡¯t necessarily good, per se, but that didn¡¯t matter much to me. Some people freaked out about cooking. They would spend hours and hours shopping for the perfect ingredients at the grocery store, mixing everything together just right, making sure it cooked just right and all that shit. Honestly, the point of it wasn¡¯t clear to me. You were just going to scarf the meal down in ten minutes, anyway. Maybe it would¡¯ve made sense if I¡¯d been some rich fancy asshole living on the Mediterranean, sipping wine with some poodle of a rich old white lady. But that wasn¡¯t me. Wasn¡¯t my life, wasn¡¯t who I wanted to be. At the end of the meal, with just one bit of mac and cheese left to go, my smartwatch rang. Unfortunately, it was in the bedroom. I had the last bit of my meal, then hobbled back to the bedroom. Picked the phone up just in time. ¡°Hey, Chris, my man,¡± Paula said. She had a smoky voice. She¡¯d always been a little out there, if I¡¯m being honest. ¡°Hey, Paula. You know it¡¯s one in the morning, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°You¡¯re up, aren¡¯t you?¡± she said. ¡°Yeah, but I¡¯ve been trying to go to bed earlier.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a laugh, man. Why go to bed? Not like you have to wake up or anything. Leaving your job meant you go to take off the shackles, you hear what I¡¯m saying?¡± I sighed. ¡°Thanks for reminding me.¡± ¡°Hey, don¡¯t be coming to me looking for sympathy. You got so much cash from that limo guy who hit you, you¡¯re going to be rollin¡¯ in the cash for years.¡± If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. That was a wild exaggeration. A lot of that money was going to the medical bills. By my estimation, after those medical bills, I could use that money to pay for everything else for a year, if I budgeted correctly. Still, my finances were none of her business. ¡°What¡¯d you call about?¡± I asked. Paula called every once in awhile, but not all that often. A part of me liked talking to her, if I¡¯m being honest. Didn¡¯t have to worry about her judging me, because she had so many damn problems of her own. Plus, she and I had gone to college together. Sometimes it was good to talk about the goold old days. They were only a couple years ago, actually, but it felt like it¡¯d been so long since I¡¯d been on-campus. A part of me missed those days. Another part of me thinks those days are why life sucks so much these days. ¡°Heard some news I thought you¡¯d be interested in.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°We should really talk about this in person.¡± ¡°C¡¯mon, Paula. It¡¯s not like we¡¯re meeting up tonight. Just lemme know what it¡¯s about.¡± ¡°It¡¯s really not good to talk about this sort of thing on the phone. Bad juju, you know,¡± she said. The way she said ¡®you know¡¯ was funny, because I rarely had any idea what she was talking about. She continued, ¡°It¡¯s about Alex.¡± I wanted to puke. ¡°Paula, just--¡± ¡°Wait until tomorrow. Go to bed now and call me when you get up. We can talk about it over coffee.¡± ¡°Goddammit Paula--¡± ¡°Go to bed, Chris. I¡¯m doing some body mods later, so I¡¯ll be up all night. You can even text me in the morning. We¡¯ll get coffee then.¡± I opened my mouth to say something, only to hear a click as she hung up on me. ¡°God. Damn. It.¡± The fact that Paula didn¡¯t want to tell me over the phone meant it must be something real bad. She wanted someone around when I found out. And it was about Alex, too. What the hell could it be? I sat down and took deep breaths, telling myself to calm down. The fastest way to find out would be to get to sleep as soon as possible. So I brushed my teeth and went to bed. A part of me wanted to put on pajamas, but it wasn¡¯t worth the hassle of working around the leg. I took off my smartwatch. I went to bed and closed my eyes, but didn¡¯t go to sleep. No way I was going to sleep, with me wondering what the news about Alex was. Eventually I turned on the radio of my smartwatch. Closed my eyes and listened to the news. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twelve Laying in bed, I hadn¡¯t gone to sleep. The same thoughts had been swirling in my head all night, no matter how hard I¡¯d tried to distract myself. Just wanted the sun to rise. That¡¯s all there was to wait for. ¡°--markets have absolutely crashed. Manufacturing and services are both in the toilet. Gold hasn¡¯t maintained its value, silver hasn¡¯t maintained its value. Seems like Bitcoin isn¡¯t anything other than a joke these days. So is it such a surprise that people are using MMORPG currencies?¡± the voice from my smartwatch radio said. When the sun hit my face, I breathed a sigh of relief. Opened my eyes and grabbed my smartwatch. ¡°Of course people are investing in MMORPG currencies, Brenda. To do otherwise would be sheer stupidity! There¡¯s--¡± The voice stopped mid-sentence when I turned my smartwatch off. Tapped a button on the side that brought me to the texting screen. I was still laying down as I brought the watch within an inch of my lips, saying, ¡°I¡¯m awake, Brenda. Let¡¯s get coffee.¡± The letters appeared on the screen, just like I¡¯d said them. I confirmed them by hitting the send button. I set my smartwatch down on my stomach and closed my eyes again. Texting was good. I preferred it to talking on the phone, definitely. When you were taking on the phone, there was so much more you had to worry about: the tone of your voice, not mumbling. Much better to text. It was cleaner. Hell, if I had a choice, I wouldn¡¯t even talk to people in person. But there were things you had to do in the world that required you to get out, see people. I imagined what might happen if MMORPG currencies were just the beginning. What if everything became MMORPG-dependent? If you could work in an MMORPG, play in an MMORPG, why couldn¡¯t you live there? Why bother with all the bullshit you go through when dealing with people? Why not live a good life? Didn¡¯t matter whether or not you could afford it. So long as you could get your hands on a headset, you were free. My smartwatch buzzed, so I picked it up and looked at it. ¡°Meet you there in a half hour,¡± it read. I got up and went into my closet. Took off my shirt, put on a binder and then a new shirt. Didn¡¯t bother changing into a different pair of pants; it¡¯s not like anyone had seen me yesterday. I grabbed my keys, and walked out the door. My car was sitting in the driveway. As I pressed the button on my smartwatch to start it up, I noticed my neighbor lying on her lawn, half-empty tequila bottle in hand. ¡°You alright?¡± I hollered. She groaned. ¡°Not dead yet.¡± Wasn¡¯t the first time we¡¯d had a conversation like that. I didn¡¯t really like asking, but I also didn¡¯t like the idea of her dying out there, choking on her own vomit or something. If nobody else was looking out for her, the least I could do was make sure she wasn¡¯t dead. Admittedly, my house wasn¡¯t in a great part of the neighborhood. In fact, if we¡¯re being honest, it was pretty goddamn shitty. In this economy? I was just happy I had a place to use my VR headset. The rest didn¡¯t matter, not really. I got in my silver car. Had to lean on my cane, relying on my arm strength to get up and inside. I placed my cane in the passenger. The car had been used when I originally got it, and that¡¯d been a couple years ago. So at this point, the thing had been real used. I had to slam the door hard to get it to shut. ¡°Welcome, Chris,¡± the car said. ¡°Moe¡¯s Coffee,¡± I said back. The car and I drove there in silence. When we arrived, I took the cane and had to lean on it to get onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Pressed a button on my smartwatch and locked the car. Because Moe¡¯s was located near the downtown area, parking was always terrible. Luckily I didn¡¯t have to deal with finding the spot, and my car could always find the closest spot by communicating with all the other cars. Still, there wasn¡¯t always a close spot open. So I hobbled down the sidewalk, passing by some stores on the way to Moe¡¯s. I also passed two homeless people. The first guy I avoided eye contact with, and he left me alone. The second guy was sitting in front of a vape store. I avoided eye contact with him, too, but that didn¡¯t stop him. ¡°Hey, man. You got any money to spare?¡± ¡°Sorry.¡± I kept walking. ¡°Just a buck or two?¡± He grabbed onto the leg of my pants. It was the good leg, too. I tried catching myself by leaning on the cane, but it didn¡¯t work. Twisted my body so that my right shoulder landed on the sidewalk. ¡°Shit!¡± I yelled. My shoulder hurt like hell. ¡°What the hell is wrong with you? You think I use this cane just for kicks?¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t notice the cane,¡± the bum said, voice gravelled. ¡°You think these glasses are just for the sun?¡± I did my best to get re-oriented. Planted one hand on the ground and lifted the upper half of my body up. Maneuvered everything so that my leg didn¡¯t feel uncomfortable, even if my shoulder and face felt like they could use some painkillers. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Hadn¡¯t looked the guy straight before that moment, but I saw his glasses tinted pitch-black. ¡°First of all, you¡¯re still a fuckin¡¯ asshole.¡± I grabbed onto the cane, trying to use it to get myself up. Was worried I would fall over again, so I sat back down on the ground. ¡°But I¡¯m sorry you¡¯re blind.¡± The blind guy chuckled. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sorry I¡¯m blind too.¡± ¡°They¡¯ve got shit to help fix that,¡± I said. Closed my eyes and took a couple deep breaths. It was fucking hot out, and I was exhausted. Had to persevere though, because I¡¯d promised Paula I¡¯d be there in a half hour, and it was getting close to that time. Of course, she couldn¡¯t be on time anywhere to save her goddamn life, but it was still the principle that mattered. If I had to get out of the house to see someone, the least we could do is meet when we said we were going to meet. And besides, I wanted to hear about Alex as soon as possible. No way I was going to be the one lengthening the period of time between now and when I found out about her. I continued, ¡°You know, the Augmented Reality glasses with sonar. Body modders fuck with your brain, then you put the glasses on and you can see like a bat.¡± ¡°Like I have the money for that shit. Gimme a hotdog and I¡¯m happy as shit. Just watch.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not buying you a fucking hotdog after you made me fall.¡± ¡°You weren¡¯t going to buy the goddamn hot dog anyway, you cheap son of a bitch.¡± ¡°Yeah, well, don¡¯t go making your problems my problems.¡± Soon as those words came out of my mouth, I realized I was going to need someone¡¯s help getting up. People were walking up and down the sidewalk, but there weren¡¯t a ton of them. When one couple passed us by, I wanted to ask for help. But there was something about the way they were walking. They were wearing their Augmented Reality glasses, heads held high. Something about them didn¡¯t feel right. Didn¡¯t feel welcome. Like they were making me feel inferior on purpose. I ignored the other passerbys. They were all wearing the glasses. ¡°You need me to help you up, don¡¯t you?¡± the blind guy asked. ¡°Fuck you.¡± ¡°That a yes?¡± He stood up and put his hand out. I grabbed onto it. He pulled me up. I leaned back on my cane. ¡°I¡¯m an asshole, except when it matters,¡± the blind guy said. ¡°Well, uh, thanks. But also, fuck you. And I¡¯m sorry you¡¯re blind. But mostly go fuck yourself.¡± ¡°Yeah, you too, motherfucker. You, too.¡± The rest of the journey to Moe¡¯s happened without incident, much to my relief. Of course, even though I got there five minutes late, I still got there before Paula. Fucking Paula. I walked over to the robot barista, ordered a small cup off coffee, and sat at a table by the window. About two minutes in, my heart started racing. When the barista came and gave me my coffee, I was thankful she was a robot -- no need to say thank you. She set the coffee down and said, ¡°Hope you enjoy.¡± Really, she looked just like a normal person. Only reason I could tell she was a robot was because of her dead eyes. I twitched. Grabbed my neck. Fuck. I took a sip of coffee. Wouldn¡¯t help my twitch any, but it was sitting there, and it would be weird to order coffee at a coffee shop and not drink it. Burnt my tongue a little bit. Shit. I thought about robots a lot. Robots and AI. AI had outsmarted us, robots had better bodies than us. Should¡¯ve made things better, easier. And in some ways it did. Convenience came real easy, but there was the matter of living. These days, it felt a lot harder to live out here. We were at something like 40% unemployment. AI hadn¡¯t taken over -- it wasn¡¯t designed to take over, and it didn¡¯t have motive to take over. But still, things had gone to shit. Robots and AI meant that corporations didn¡¯t need people. Corporations had become the only people that mattered. I twitched. Sipped the coffee. Heart raced like a speed boat ripping through the water. Goddamn. Goddamn. Goddamn. ¡°Fuck,¡± I muttered. Sipped the coffee. Neck twitched. Tongue felt a little burnt. Stupid. Hated this fucking world. Fuck robots and AI and corporations and the car that hit me and-- A hand on my shoulder. ¡°Shit!¡± I yelled, smacking the hand off of me. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirteen Turned around and saw it was Paula. You could tell the humans from the robots in that moment: the people who turned to look were real people. The robots kept doing their work. That also highlighted something else for me: the robots were the ones doing jobs, the people weren¡¯t. Had to ignore them, though. I looked up at Paula. Paula. She¡¯d come to tell me about Alex. Alex. Alex was a good person. I missed her a lot, these days. ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°You startled me.¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t have to try hard,¡± Paula said, voice smokey. She let out a bit of a laugh, then rubbed my shoulders. I started to relax. Let out a sigh. Thank god. ¡°I¡¯m gonna get some coffee, then I¡¯ll sit down with you, okay?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m good.¡± Needed to say that, to remind myself. ¡°I¡¯m good,¡± I repeated, but Paula had already gone off to get coffee. It was just me talking to myself. I drummed my fingers against the coffee cup for several seconds, then finished it off. Set the cup down. Alex. What could¡¯ve happened to Alex? God, she¡¯d never been responsible. Drinking, drugs, hanging out with the wrong people. I¡¯d seen her steal things. Hang out with her for more than twenty minutes and you¡¯d be bound to see her committing some sort of crime. Paula sat across from me at the small table. She was wearing a leopard print coat and green high heels. Her ears were stretched out by the 38¡± gold gages she was wearing. In short, she looked nuts. But a part of me actually liked that. Made me feel normal, if nothing else. ¡°Sorry I was late,¡± Paula said. ¡°This lady I was working on wanted a third eye, you know? And you wouldn¡¯t believe how nuts eye implants are. There were some potential complications, but we got it on, just like she wanted.¡± ¡°How¡¯s Alex?¡± I asked. Paula leaned into the table, grabbing my twitching hand with both of hers. ¡°Chris, you know it¡¯s not healthy to think about someone like you think about Alex. You and her haven¡¯t been a thing for a long time, now.¡± I pulled my hand away from Paula¡¯s. Didn¡¯t want to be mean, but I really didn¡¯t like people touching me. Deep breath. ¡°I¡¯m not crazy for wanting to know how Alex is. You¡¯re the one who wanted to tell me over coffee, Paula. Something might¡¯ve happened to her, and I want to know what that is. Not weird for me to want to know. So stop screwing around and tell me what¡¯s up.¡± ¡°A lot of the alumni have been talking. They¡¯ve been saying that Alex is missing.¡± This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. I pushed my seat back. It scraped against the floor. My head fell into my hands. Closed my eyes. ¡°We don¡¯t know why or how, really. All we know is that there¡¯ve been people asking around, going through Alex¡¯s whole social circle. She didn¡¯t have a family, and none of the AI Corp staff knew where she was. And they really wanted her to be around ¡®cause of the new game she¡¯s got out, right? They want it to make a lot of money.¡± ¡°Throne Quest,¡± I said. ¡°Been playing it myself. It¡¯s interesting.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°You know I don¡¯t really care for all that, but I¡¯m sure she did a good job. Look, what I¡¯m saying is, we don¡¯t know what¡¯s been happening to her. But I just didn¡¯t want you talking to somebody else and finding out about this. You¡¯re gonna be fine. You and her haven¡¯t even talked in a long time. Tell me you¡¯re going to be okay, okay?¡± I didn¡¯t take my head out of my hands. ¡°I¡¯m gonna be okay.¡± ¡°Look at me, Chris.¡± Took my head out of my hands. Looked her in her emerald green eyes. ¡°I¡¯m going to be okay.¡± The words didn¡¯t sound true, but I said them anyway. ¡°You¡¯re going to be okay,¡± she reminded me. ¡°We don¡¯t even know where Alex is. There¡¯s a good chance she¡¯s just off on one of her crazy adventures.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I rubbed my nose, which was feeling sniffly. ¡°We¡¯ll figure it out. I¡¯d like to help. Is anybody--¡± ¡°You can¡¯t help,¡± Paula said. ¡°AI Corps has a lot of money invested in Alex¡¯s crazy project. They¡¯ll find her.¡± ¡°She¡¯s probably just busy. Holed up somewhere, so focused on Throne Quest she forgot to check with anybody.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not likely, Chris,¡± Paula said. ¡°I don¡¯t want you to get worried, but you shouldn¡¯t get your hopes up, either. We just don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on. And that¡¯s okay. AI Corps will figure it out soon.¡± ¡°Yeah. Of course they will.¡± I got up out of my seat. ¡°This has been fun, but there¡¯s stuff I wanna do today, so I¡¯m gonna go.¡± ¡°You gonna be alright?¡± Paula said. ¡°I just wanna make sure you¡¯ll be alright.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll¡­¡± I wanted to give Paula a hug, but no dice. Not today. ¡°I¡¯m gonna be good.¡± The smile was fake, but it served its purpose. I left Moe¡¯s and went home. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Fourteen I was plagued by indecision, looking at the SKILLS TREE. I¡¯d already bought THORN PUNCH and MILD EP REGEN, and those were working well for me. That¡¯d been two levels ago, though. That meant an extra skill point and ability point that needed to get placed. But where? I wondered about the VINE branch on the SKILLS TREE. I wasn¡¯t all that interested in VINE SMACK, but I also wanted to have a well-balanced character. Diversity allowed for more options in a fight. The more options you had, the better. At the same time, it seemed like a shitty power. The problem plagued my mind as I walked down the streets of the city. I wasn¡¯t really looking where I was going; the city whizzed past, while the SKILLS TREE presented its puzzle to me. At a certain point, there is such a thing as paralysis by analysis. My gut said to get VINE SMACK. I stared at it for a few moments, then used my skill point to buy the power. A few glances later, the ABILITIES CHART appeared before my eyes. Strength and Durability were at 3. Charisma was 0, Wit was 1, and Agility was 8. Didn¡¯t have to think too hard about that one. Wit and Charisma were bullshit, while my Agility was more than sufficient for whatever this game had to throw at me at this level. The real choice was between Durability and Strength. Since Durability required 3 Abilities Points to move up, I went with Strength. So that left me with 4 Strength, 3 Durability, 0 Charisma, 1 Wit, and 8 Agility. The gatehouse leading out of the city came within view. Realized I didn¡¯t even know the name of the city, so a few eye movements brought me to the game map. CHARON, the city was called. Nice name. It seemed like the gate was always open, which was odd. Two dwarves stood at the sides of the gatehouse, and there were always people flooding in and out. If the city ever got attacked, they could close the gate pretty quickly. And with PCs constantly walking in and out of the Charon, there would be someone there to defend in case monsters tried charging through the city. Of course, they probably aren¡¯t programmed to charge into the city. The realization made me embarrassed. This wasn¡¯t a real city we were talking about. I walked through the gate and out into the sickly plains. Yellow grass crunched in my boot. Ran my palm against the pommel of my sword. Time to grind. --- Before getting into the thick of things, it was best to get a lay of the land. About fifteen or twenty minutes passed, as I walked along the span of the wall. There were all sorts of monsters getting into skirmishes. A lot of it was PC v. NPC, but there were some cases of NPC v. NPC. It seemed that the most common monsters were Zebdas. They looked a lot like giant crabs, with eight legs keeping them grounded while their two claws were constantly snapping in the air. Their shells were a swirling mix of purple-green. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I hadn¡¯t fought these monsters before -- they weren¡¯t in the Alpha or Beta tests. You would see small groups of Zebdas smacking their hands against the wall, or just sitting around waiting for someone to attack. There was such a futility to it -- they were never going to break in, and there was no purpose to them just standing there. Or rather, the purpose seemed absurd: the whole reason for them to exist was so that they could be defeated. The NPC v. NPC battles were even worse. After staring at an NPC for a couple seconds, their name would appear above their head. The Zebdas were called Zebdas, simply enough. And they were being fought by guys the game called, ¡°Thorn Guards.¡± Knowing the lore probably would¡¯ve helped explain who the Thorn Guards. They had on green and gold tunics. Most of them wore at least some chainmail protection, and they carried either swords or spears. Presumably they were members of the Thorn Kingdom. At the end of the day, it¡¯s not like their story really mattered. Either they were on my side and would help take down the Zebdas, or I would have to take them down, too. Sometimes games tried to make things really complicated. But a lot of the best ones follow simple rules: point and shoot, fight, survive. All you needed to do was beat the enemy until they were defeated. That¡¯s what made games fun. I stood about twenty feet from a skirmish that was going on. One Thorn Guard was wielding his spear, keeping back two of the Zebdas with it. One would move in for a second, and he would ward it off with the spear. Eventually the other one would try for an opening, only to step back when the Thorn Guard redirected the spear in its direction. For five minutes I watched the tableaux. It reminded me of a long gif -- the same actions, over and over again, each time as if being performed for the first time. I unsheathed my sword, moving closer. Yellow sand crunched beneath my feet. The blue sky above the Thorn Kingdom stopped right at the edge of the wall, contrasting sharply with the yellow sky outside of the wall. My hand wasn¡¯t sweating, despite how how it was; the game¡¯s tactility was good, but it couldn¡¯t capture everything. I raised my sword in the air, moving closer. At this point I was maybe ten feet away from the Thorn Guards and the Zebdas. That was close enough in their range for them to take notice of me. They were still wary of each other, but they were looking over at me. ¡°Will you help me get through this perilous situation, brave adventurer?¡± The Thorn Guard asked. That threw me off. NPCs weren¡¯t supposed to talk to you while you grinded. They were just supposed to get killed. ¡°Sure,¡± I said. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Fifteen While one of the Zebdas stuck with the Thorn Guard, the other one made its way towards me. The Zebda looked uglier, the closer it got, almost like it was suffering from the Uncanny Valley effect. Its eyes and claws were a little too big in proportion with its body. Plus, there was a strange lump on its underside that real crabs didn¡¯t have. I focused on my fists, felt the thorns growing. They began peeking through the knuckles of my flesh. I still didn¡¯t understand how my lightning eyes worked. Hoped the lightning would come, if needed. Zebda took the first move, swiping its claw at me. I ducked, feeling the way the wind moved as the claw just narrowly missed my head. Before the Zebda had a chance to strike again, my sword struck the other claw. 29/30 HP The green letters floated over the Zebda¡¯s head. It raised its claw up in the air, bringing it down to get me. I jumped forward just in time, landing below the Zebda¡¯s underbelly. It was in that moment that I understood why it¡¯s underbelly looked so weird. The underbelly¡¯s skin opened up. A small jaw squirmed out, looking like the head of the creature from Alien. It came at me, and I didn¡¯t have time to react. Teeth wrapped around my torso. My armor protected me from the worst of it, but the pressure still hurt like hell. ¡°Fuck,¡± I spat. My sword went into the Zebda¡¯s underside, again and again. Purple blood spat out of its underside, and I kept stabbing. Some of it got in my eyes. Burned. Made things harder to see. Couldn¡¯t see how much damage was being done. The Zebda¡¯s HP would be floating above its head. Down here it was like being blind. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The jaw tightened around me. I thorn punched it, again and again. Felt bits of the thing¡¯s flesh stick to my fist. A high-pitched squeaking sound -- screaming. Punch. Another. And another. I was sticky and it smelled like hell. Fighting for my life. The jaw loosened its grip, just slightly. I took the opportunity. Slammed my fist into the thing¡¯s head, digging the thorns as deep as possible. The jaw loosened even more. Dropped my sword for a second Wrapped the sword hand around the base of the jaw -- the part connecting it with the Zebda¡¯s body. Picked up the sword again and began sawing at the connection. More screaming. More blood. The whole world turned purple. Hard to breathe down there. Hard to do anything. Anything but fight. Anything but live. The jaw loosened more and more. Soon there was no pressure at all. When the jaw finally let go, I took in a deep breath of shitty, bloody air. Felt myself choking. The Zebda collapsed onto me. Even though it signalled the end of the fight, it hurt like hell. Yet another blow I didn¡¯t need. For several seconds, the Zebda and I lay there. The weight disappeared slowly. I was conscious of the fact that it wasn¡¯t being lifted off of me -- it was literally disappearing, as the corpse disappeared from the universe. Within seconds, the Zebda¡¯s corpse was gone. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Sixteen I tried to take in a deep breath of air, but the air came in too quickly. I choked for several seconds, turning on my side. Some of the Zebda¡¯s purple blood was violently ejected from my throat. It took me a bit to get my bearings, but slowly I began to stand up. Everything hurt like hell. Turned around to see if the Thorn Guard had done anything with the Zebda he was fighting. The second I was standing upright, the Zebda turned to look at me. It made a high-pitched squeal and charged. Previous strategy didn¡¯t work, so time for something new. As the Zebda approached, I held my sword at the ready. The Thorn Guard struck the Zebda from behind with his spear. 29/30 HP The green letters floating above the Zebda¡¯s head told me one thing: in the time it¡¯d taken me to kill the first Zebda, the Thorn Guard hadn¡¯t taken one point of damage. Fucking useless, I thought, as the Zebda neared. The moment before the first hit was thrown was often the most important part of the battle. Everything was all about potential in that moment, everything about possibility. You summed up your opponent, figured out its weaknesses and strengths. Sometimes your conscious mind would figure out the plan, but other times it was your subconscious one. Thinking about your strengths and weaknesses versus their strengths and weaknesses. Understanding the terrain, the psychology, and other limiting factors. A world of possibilities began to pare down. Striking at the shell wasn¡¯t particularly effective, for instance. So that wasn¡¯t an option worth pursuing. The infinite became the finite, the mind-boggling impossibility turned from possibility to probability to fact. The three of us moved in a clockwise motion, the Zebda and I each looking for the prime opening, the biggest weakness. My abdomen hurt like hell. Though I was soaked in the other Zebda¡¯s purple blood, I was lucky to not be bleeding myself. The Thorn Guard kept at the Zebda with the spear, hovering near but not actually attacking. Big fucking help he was. The silence was punctuated by an angry growl coming from the Zebda. It sounded odd, high-pitched. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.Had I killed the thing¡¯s friend? Well, tough shit. It was made to die, anyway. I swung my sword at its eye -- to get it to shut up, if nothing else. The black eye popped like a grape, purple blood splashing onto the yellow grass. 24/30 HP This Zebda screamed now, too. Brought a claw down on me, which I blocked with my sword. Other claw came at me, and I dodged out of the way. Both claws were swinging at me, in what felt like a rhythmic motion. It felt like a dance. I hacked at the one claw with my sword. 23/30 HP Saw a scratch, but not much damage. While that claw got stuck in the dirt because of the force of my blow, I hacked at the other claw. 22/30 HP The first claw wrenched itself out of the dirt. I smacked it away again with my sword. 21/30 HP This method would take much longer than my other one, but at least it was safe. Second claw came at me; I whacked it away. 20/30 HP In a sense, it was like fighting a man wielding two swords. Claw one. Riposte. 19/30 HP Claw two. Riposte. 18/30 HP Impatience got the best of me. With half my HP left and what seemed like a bit of room to maneuver, I whacked at both the claws quickly. 17/30 HP 16/30 HP Lunged closer to the crab and sliced the eyeball in half. 11/30 HP More gross purple blood. Now it couldn¡¯t even see. Claws swung wildly. Wildly enough that I couldn¡¯t get out of the way in time. One clamped down on me. Fuck. The pain shot through my torso and into my neck, into my head. Mind-blowing pain. Felt like there wasn¡¯t any possible release, like the pain would pop me like I¡¯d popped the Zebda¡¯s eyeballs. Didn¡¯t have any air in my lungs to scream, didn¡¯t have the ability to sweat in this game. Seemed like all I could do was die. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Seventeen Watching the life drain from me was an oddly cold process: I saw it at the bottom of my vision, where my HP bar slowly moved into the red, draining from 50% to 25%. No idea how much time passed. 10/30 HP The Thorn Guard took another HP point from the Zebda, but at the rate he was going, I was going to be dead long before he made much headway. That¡¯s when something important popped into my mind. The Dragon Gauntlet. The game had told me I¡¯d won it right after defeating the Earth Dragon. But with all the distractions of that moment, I hadn¡¯t put it on yet¡­ Eyes went to the corner of my vision, as my HP Bar slowly drained. Went from MAIN MENU to ARMOR AND WEAPONS. A picture of my body was presented before my eyes. There were lines connecting the various parts of my body to the potential pieces of armor I could wear, as well as the weaponry I could wield. My eyes focused on the Dragon Gauntlet. Within a second, it was brought to my arm. I exited out of the menu. Had less than 10% Health left. I felt bad, but I didn¡¯t feel so close to death. Odd thought to have, as I raised my fist in the air. Brought my fist down on the Zebda¡¯s claw and heard it crack. The Zebda let go. 4/30 HP The Zebda¡¯s other claw came at me. I grabbed it in mid-air, then crunched it in my hand. -1/30 HP The Zebda squealed, then collapsed. I watched it turn translucent, then disappear. ¡°Thank you, brave hero!¡± the Thorn Guard said. ¡°You destroyed the Zebda.¡± ¡°Yeah, yeah.¡± I coughed for second, then continued. ¡°I have eyes of my own. I can see it.¡± The Thorn Guard nodded at me, smiling, seemingly oblivious to how little I gave a shit about him. I shook my head, grimly laughing. ¡°Dumb motherfuck.¡± Turned around and headed back towards the Thorn Kingdom walls. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Didn¡¯t really know how buying and selling worked at the bazaar, but my HP wasn¡¯t doing too hot, which meant I¡¯d need to look for a good healing potion. Most of the walk home happened without incident. Remembering where the monsters had been made it easy to stay out of their path. When I got within sight of the gatehouse, though, I became a little confused. Last I remembered, there¡¯d been a Zebda attacking the wall. Walking by this time, there wasn¡¯t a Zebda to be seen. Carefully I walked, wondering if the Zebda was hiding. My gaze checked the sky, it checked to the forest to the right of us. Presumably the Zebda wasn¡¯t behind the wall; if it was, it¡¯d get killed soon enough. That¡¯s when it happened, a respawn. The Zebda appeared out of thin-air without warning. Its claw was coming at me before I knew what was happening. Managed to use the hand wearing the dragon gauntlet to grab the claw before it hit me. 27/30 HP The other claw came down though, before I could draw my sword. Lost a decent amount of HP. The Zebda forced me to the ground. Head throbbing, blood rushing to it. My HP Bar was going down fast. It¡¯d already been low, now it was only 10% away from 0. Grass was ripped out of the ground as I was scraped across it. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! The sack in the Zebda¡¯s underbelly opened. The slimy jaw came at me, teeth bared. Sharp long teeth digging through armor, crushing flesh and bone. Air leaving my body. HP Bar fell to zero. Time to die. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Eighteen So far as the world of Throne Quest was concerned, death was a Waiting Screen. Something felt off about that. Still, with no other choice but to sit there and stare at the black words spread across a blank white screen, I read the message, ¡°Omniscience taught me the patterns of this world. Once I mastered the patterns, I mastered the world.¡± Bolded under the quote was the name of the man who¡¯d supposedly said those words, ¡°Panopticon.¡± The lore was beginning to come together for me. There were several sages -- the Thorn Sage, Stone Stage, and Rose Sage being among them -- who had fought against a guy named Panopticon. This Panopticon had gained some sort of omniscience, which had forced The Sages to take them down, at great cost to this world. But what was the point of it? I thought back on Alex and I, coming out of our philosophy class during the second semester. To be entirely truthful, I¡¯d only taken the class because Alex was taking it, and I wanted to be closer to Alex. The teacher was an absolute windbag: old white guy with a goatee. Named Dr. Crais, or something. Dr. Crais never wore shoes while he taught the class, and instead of letting us have real debates, the vast majority of our sessions were spent listening to him pontificating on this, that, and the other thing. He¡¯d go on for an hour about a student in his previous class, who had apparently interrupted him. Crais really didn¡¯t like getting interrupted, so he went on about how interruptions were the problem with the twenty-first century, and apparently Socrates was an asshole for asking so many questions. Yeah, because Socrates was the asshole. Still, Alex loved Crais, so I rarely spoke ill of the man. One day, though, I didn¡¯t have it in me to hide my disdain. Crais had spent the whole class period -- an hour and a half, which was usually more than enough time for him to bore me to tears -- dissing video games. It came out of fucking nowhere. It¡¯s not like anyone asked him his opinions on video games. It¡¯s not like anyone actually cared what he thought about video games. We¡¯d been assigned an excerpt from one of Michel Foucault¡¯s books, and to be entirely honest, it didn¡¯t make a lick of sense to me. So my hope had been that we¡¯d talk about it, and he¡¯d help us understand it. I should¡¯ve known better; we¡¯d already had a month¡¯s worth of rambles from him -- or, as he liked to call his rambles, ¡®important class time¡¯. Anyway, we¡¯d been assigned this confusing Foucault reading, but instead of helping us understand it, he¡¯d decided to drone on about a recent news story. Apparently, some kid had shot up his school. When people looked for someone to place the blame on, they blamed this game he¡¯d been playing a lot, Bullet¡¯s Reign: Dead Harmony. Nevermind the fact that murder rates were lower than they had ever been. Nevermind that generations past had been so much more violent than we could ever be -- nevermind the Inquisition, murderous Roman emperors, Nazis, gulags, and lynchings. Nevermind all the terrible things that¡¯d been done before video games, and how little that sort¡¯ve shit had been tolerated in this day and age. No, none of that mattered, apparently games were the devil and they were responsible for everything bad that¡¯d ever happened in this world. Dr. Crais had taken the obvious argument: video games were bad because they were violent. They taught people violence and anger, made us violent and wretched and unlikely to see our fellow human beings as empathetic creatures. Now this had gotten me pretty pissed off. I was never the biggest video game player, but I certainly liked to play these games when I could. Did AI make me uncomfortable? Sure. And it¡¯s not like I was going to treat them like real living creatures -- that was the sort of shit nutjobs and fetishists were into. Still, video games were fun. And it was just too damn easy to blame them for the fact that a lot of people are just shitty. People shot people because they were shitty. People hurt each other because they were shitty. And sometimes you could tell, but sometimes there was no way to separate the shitbags from everybody else: you just had to accept that the real world was filled with monsters. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. That¡¯s what I told the Professor. I raised my hand and we argued for thirty minutes -- him pontificating, me actually trying to get real points across. He said I should show respect for my elders, I said he should respect the future. He told me video games had made me unable to deal with authority, I told him authority had made him unable to deal with the facts of this world. Back and forth we lobbed ideas at each other, an intellectual tennis match that didn¡¯t end until the class period was over. I could tell Professor Crais wasn¡¯t too happy with me at the end of the period. Sweaty and red-faced, he did congratulate me on being a challenging thinker. He said I should speak up more often in class. Still, there was something in the way he said it -- a sort of condescending disdain. I didn¡¯t talk too much more during the rest of the semester; ended up getting a C in the class. Still, I¡¯ll never forget the conversation Alex and I had after class. After every class I walked back to her dorm while we talked. This time it was no different, except that usually the conversation was a lot of fun. She¡¯d tell me her wild theories about whatever philosophy we¡¯d been talking about. This time, when she told me what she thought about class, she was also talking about me. I¡¯ll never forget that moment. We¡¯d already hung out a lot. I¡¯d walked her to and from class two times a week, and we¡¯d hang out after class for hours. We¡¯d gone to some parties, we¡¯d spent so many lazy afternoons just laying in the grass and gazing at the sun. She was wearing purple converse and a light blue shirt with white dragons on it. We were walking on the sidewalk, which connected the campuses to the Freshmen dorms. People were chilling all around us: eating, vaping, skateboarding. But none of that mattered. She didn¡¯t look at me when she said, ¡°I hate it when people get so emotional in arguments.¡± I kept my eyes on the sidewalk. My face was red, because it was too hot out. ¡°Video games are great, but Professor Crais has a point. They teach us to be violent.¡± It was the first time I¡¯d ever strongly disagreed with Alex. Not only was there no correlation between video games and violence -- there was a negative correlation! After the release of Grand Theft Auto, there were less carjackings in the US, not more. Correlation didn¡¯t mean causation, but there was simply no reason to believe that video games caused violence. ¡°How do they teach us to be violent?¡± My voice sounded weak as I said it. No surprise -- I hated my voice back then. ¡°By making us participate in violence,¡± Alex said. ¡°Killing things for points is the basic goal of many games. Everything from Mario to Bullet¡¯s Reign makes you kill.¡± ¡°We can¡­ Don¡¯t you think we can tell the difference between video games and reality?¡± ¡°Some can, some can¡¯t,¡± Alex pushed her blond hair behind her ear. She still wasn¡¯t looking at me. ¡°It¡¯s only going to get worse. You¡¯ve seen the basic VR headsets people are putting out now, right? They¡¯re only going to get more immersive. And people are going to have a harder time distinguishing between reality and video games.¡± ¡°Who even gets to decide what is and isn¡¯t reality?¡± I asked. ¡°You¡¯re making my point. Reality isn¡¯t something you decide on. It is what it is.¡± The sun was ridiculously hot. I wiped some sweat off my face. ¡°Yeah, uh, sorry.¡± There was a big knot in my stomach. Felt like it¡¯d been tied so tight I wouldn¡¯t be able to eat for a week. "I, ha. The game designers can get you to do or believe anything, right?" We reached her door. I had a hard time swallowing. After managing to do so, I said, ¡°It¡¯s always good talking to you.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. She walked into her room and closed it. I stood out there for a couple minutes, looking up at the sky, wondering why I had to go and be such an idiot. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Nineteen I snapped out of my reverie, realizing the screen had gone dark a while ago. I opened my eyes for a second. Couldn¡¯t get a handle on my surroundings, because suddenly a hot white light seemed to surround me. Crackling white energy swirled all around me. ¡°Come to us,¡± a voice beckoned. ¡°Come to us.¡± A second voice. ¡°Come to us.¡± A third voice. ¡°Come to us,¡± all three voices said, in perfect harmony. Hard to get a handle on anything. I reached my hand out in a random direction. Nothing to touch. Nothing to hold onto. ¡°Come to us,¡± a voice beckoned. I was facing in the direction opposite the voice. I turned around. ¡°Come to us.¡± A second voice. Now facing the proper direction, I moved towards the voice. ¡°Come to us.¡± A third voice. White streaks flashing across my eyes. What was this place? Walked forward with my arms outstretched. One hand grabbed me, then another, then another. The hands pulled at me, jerking me forward. ¡°Come to us,¡± all three voices said, in perfect harmony. I fell out of the light. The hands helped me stay balanced, while my eyes once again adjusted to the surroundings. A temple of some sort. Made entirely out of stone, it was circular. The hands that had grabbed me belonged to¡­ No idea what they were called. They were bipedal figures, wearing long blue robes. Would¡¯ve taken them for human priests, if not for their heads. The heads glowed bright, like miniature suns. ¡°Is this your first reincarnation?¡± one of the sun headed figures asked me. Her voice was the deepest of the three -- unusually deep, as if she were a female baritone. I rubbed my eyes for a second. The rapid changes from light to dark had really hurt. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°Your LightLife left your body, but it was preserved,¡± the sun headed priestess said. ¡°It came back to The Source, which is the light you just came from.¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Turning around, I could see that I¡¯d just exited a hallway. The hallway glowed bright with energy, so that it was impossible to see what the room itself looked like. ¡°Huh.¡± The only word that could leave my lips. I tried again. ¡°You guys are¡­¡± Had no idea what to say about the situation. ¡°Huh.¡± The priestesses began to sing, same as before. ¡°Come to us,¡± a voice beckoned. The three of them walked towards the opening of the wall, out of which light poured. The energy made a loud crackling sound. ¡°Come to us.¡± A second voice. Couldn¡¯t figure out how they sang, or even talked. They had no noticeable mouths. ¡°Come to us.¡± A third voice. Observing them more carefully, it became clear that their heads of light were different sizes. Two of the priestesses had heads that were relatively normal-sized. But the third priestess¡¯s head -- the priestess with the deep voice -- had a head that was 2x a normal size. The light of her head also crackled more. It looked wild and unruly. Unstable. ¡°Come to us,¡± all three voices said, in perfect harmony. A female dwarf left the light. They pulled her out of The Source, just like they¡¯d pulled me out of it. The stone walls were covered in very small figures. I moved closer, touching my hand to the stone. Tiny 1s and 0s. The lady dwarf left the temple. The priestesses were singing again, helping yet another PC out of the light. I left the temple. Didn¡¯t seem like there was much else to do. The sun was still shining bright. The sky was clear here, meaning the temple was located in the Thorn Kingdom. In fact, the temple was the same one I¡¯d seen on may way to the Thorn King. Once again I walked in the direction of the wall. To fight again. To fight better. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Two Zebdas down, eight to go. I trekked through the stale yellow grass. Passed many Zebdas and many Thorn Guards. The wild crab-like things had such simple minds, such repetitive patterns. The Thorn Guards too, really. As I passed them, I found the Thorn Guards to be even grosser than the Zebdas. The Zebdas at least looked as inhuman as they actually were. But The Thorn Guards -- in their idiocy, in their lack of greater life purpose -- seemed like such sad, pale imitations of real humanity. The sun beat down on me. I kept trying to wipe sweat from my brow, only to remember there wasn¡¯t any sweat in this world. The haptics of the game were good -- so good I could forget. But then the little things, the sweat, would remind me how strange and uncanny this world really was. I made my way past the NPCs -- the brainless Dumb AI -- until I was near the spot where I¡¯d died. I walked towards the Zebda, so that I was in plain sight of it. But of course, an NPC¡¯s perception was always a little skewed. It¡¯s not like they started chasing you the second they saw you. No, you had to come to them. You had to walk within a certain radius of them. Made me wonder how they even perceived the world. Did they see you, but just not perceive you as a threat until you walked too close? Or did they only see what was a couple feet in front of them? I could clearly see the Zebda, why did it act like it couldn¡¯t see me? There was a sort of perversity to the thing. For long moments I stood there, watching the Zebda. It snapped its claws in a certain rhythm. It would crawl a few feet to its right, snapping its claws and looking around. Then it would do the reverse, crawling to the left and snapping its claws. It would look around, look right at me, then repeat its pattern. My gauntlet hand went towards my sword. My other hand balled into a fist. The power welled within it, growing, surging. The thorns pierced through my knuckles. Power -- it¡¯s the thing that makes any world run. This world more than most. Out of pity more than anything, it seemed like a good idea to warn the Zebda of my approach. ¡°Hey!¡± I yelled. No need for more than that, really. Wasn¡¯t exactly a man of my words. Despite the yell, the Zebda still didn¡¯t notice me until I got within a certain radius of its body. Those large eyes practically floated above his head, supported only by the thin antenna connected them to its body. It skittered, yelling at me with a sort of high-pitched whine. My sword popped the left eye before the Zebda had a chance to strike me with its claw. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. 25/30 HP Tossed the sword from one hand to the other, as the claw came down at me. Grabbed the claw in my hand; crunched it with my gauntlet fist. 20/30 HP The Dragon Gauntlet gave my fist such power. The crunching of the Zebda¡¯s claw was so rewarding. It was like I¡¯d balled a large piece of paper in my hand -- paper that was just a little too big. But still, I kept forcing the paper into my hand, making it smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter. It was a pleasure to break the Zebda¡¯s claw. The other claw came down with not enough time to switch sword hands again. So I whacked the claw with my sword. 19/30 HP The claw came at me again. 18/30 HP The pattern of it was almost a bore. The thing about real life is that it¡¯s messy. People make mistakes. Living creatures don¡¯t repeat themselves over and over without variance. Not so with this Zebda. 17/30 HP 16/30 HP 15/30 HP 14/30 HP What would Alex think if she saw me beating her monster with such ease? 12/30 HP 11/30 HP 10/30 HP To be fair, The Dragon Gauntlet was a powerful object, one I shouldn¡¯t even be in possession of. It was a fluke that I was the one to receive it because I killed The Earth Dragon. 9/30 HP Still, why bother putting something that OP in the game? 8/30 HP 7/30 HP The fight got boring, so I decided to make it more interesting. When the Zebda raised its claw in the air, I didn¡¯t wait for it to come down and try to attack me. Instead I dove under the Zebda, getting a mouthful of grass and dirt for the effort. Flipped myself over so that my back was on the sickly grass. Then I thrust the sword upwards, so that it dug into the Zebda¡¯s underside. When I pulled the sword out, the growth on the Zebda¡¯s underside opened up. Its jaw dropped out of the opening, but the jaw didn¡¯t attack me. It merely flopped down, already done in by my sword. I smacked the jaw with my gauntlet hand. The Zebda fell onto me. It was the only injury I got during the whole fight. Slowly, eventually, it dissipated. That meant it was just me and the sickly grass for a couple minutes. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty One I looked up at the gross yellow sky. Sighed. A Zebda respawned right above me. I stabbed the jaw of its underside, then slashed its two eyes out. Four down. Six to go. Respawn. Got the Zebda¡¯s eyes first. Crushed its claws, then smacked my sword against its shell. Five down. Five to go. This time the Zebda got a shot at me with one of its claws. I crushed the claws, then grabbed the Zebda, flipping it on its side. The Dragon Gauntlet definitely helped. My Level Four Strength wasn¡¯t incredibly weak, but I probably wouldn¡¯t have been able to flip the Zebda without some sort of help. With its pathetic little legs skittering in the air, I chopped them off one by one. Then stabbed the jaw. When that Zebda died, it left a coin behind. That seemed like a very odd event -- didn¡¯t remember anything like it from the Alpha or Beta tests, and it hadn¡¯t happened the other times I¡¯d killed Zebdas. I put it in my inventory, and continued to kill this Zebda. It respawned four more times. Four more times I killed it. After all the slaughter, I walked away from the Zebda¡¯s radius of operation, carefully avoiding all the other NPCs. It occurred to me that the Zebda was bound to respawn. After all the times I¡¯d killed it, its destiny and purpose was to come back, good as new. What was the point? I took the coin out of my inventory, feeling it with my hands, wondering if the answer lie in the nature of its existence. The Thorn Sage was lazing on his throne when I entered. His glance was cast to the side, his chin cupped in the palm of his hand. The Guards on his left and right looked uncomfortable. What did these guys do when no one else was around? The Thorn Sage¡¯s countenance brightened when he saw me. ¡°Hello hello!¡± he said. ¡°The mysterious hero comes back victorious!¡± Didn¡¯t really know how to react to that, so I just said, ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Did you find anything in your travels?¡± The Thorn Sage¡¯s eyes were opened wide, as if my presence was a shot of caffeine fired right into his veins. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. I was conscious of the fact that I wasn¡¯t really talking to The Thorn Sage. The NPC was just a program -- the writings of whoever it was that had created him. In a sense, talking to him was like talking to Alex -- a strange revelation. ¡°I did.¡± I took the coin out of my inventory. Took it in my hand, positioning it between my thumb and pointer fingers. Raised it up so the Thorn Sage could see. Honestly, I hadn¡¯t looked at the coin too closely. It seemed like just a random collection of lines. But in that moment, watching The Thorn Sage¡¯s visage turn sour, my state of mind while looking at the coin changed. I knew he was very upset about what¡¯d happened with him and the Rose Sage. Looking at both him and the coin, the lines began to form a meaning. They weren¡¯t just a random collection of squiggles, forming some indeterminate circle. No, it came to my attention that the myriad grooves on the coin actually came together to look like a rose. ¡°Dropped by one of the Zebda?¡± The Thorn Sage asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. Was this weird? Had he been expecting something different? The look on his face certainly made it seem like the coin had surprised him, but he¡¯d expected the Zebda to drop something. ¡°You¡¯re supposed to take it to the merchant,¡± The Thorn Sage said. ¡°Is this¡­ weird?¡± I asked. ¡°What--¡± ¡°Go,¡± The Thorn Sage said, no longer looking at me. He waved me off with his hand, as if I was just too much to deal with. I stood there for a second, a mix of confusion and surprise keeping my feet planted near the Thorn Sage. ¡°Go!¡± The Thorn Sage said, louder this time. The playfulness on his face had already morphed into something else entirely. I left the palace. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Two The merchant¡¯s line was artificially long, for two reasons. First off, it was doubtful that everybody in the line even played the game much. Once the real-world economy had gone to shit, a lot of people had taken to speculative trading of VRMMORPG currencies. A VRMMORPG currency was often most valuable early on in the game, when people wanted to have extra resources and cool powers that they hadn¡¯t fought to earn. That led to an initial rush where people would play the game, accumulate as much cash as possible, then sell it. Of course, there were all sorts of intricacies to figure out when it came to that sort of grinding -- did you only focus on collecting currency? Or would you use some of the initial currency to buy better weaponry, which would make it easier to kill monsters and get more currency? The other big problem was that VRMMORPGs didn¡¯t want to be responsible for too much money changing hands too quickly. So they only had a couple merchants working, when in reality they could¡¯ve had a million NPCs, making sure every player got what they needed instantly. It helped the finance guys in the real world, who made sure the currency being exchanged had really been earned -- that it really existed in Throne Quest''s virtual world, and was thus able to be exchanged with other currencies. For these two reasons, this part of Throne Quest required standing in a long line, waiting for one of the merchants to get to you. The PC in front of me was an orc -- big, cro-magnon-looking sort of guy. One of the things I didn¡¯t like about lines was the way they forced you into close contact with other people. With enough close contact, you had to talk to them, or at the very least let them talk to you. Anything else was just too awkward. ¡°You trade currencies?¡± the orc asked me. ¡°No.¡± ¡°You should, lemme tell ya, you¡¯re missing out.¡± ¡°Yeah, I just¡­¡± What could you say to a guy like that? ¡°I just like playing the game.¡± ¡°Sure you do, sure you do. I¡¯m just saying, there¡¯s not so many ways to make money these days, you know? I mean really make money. But the volatility of currencies? Hoo! The sky¡¯s the limit! The thing--¡± ¡°Nice,¡± I said. The hope was that interrupting him would stop his train of thought, and he¡¯d stop talking. No dice. ¡°The thing about trading currencies,¡± he said, pretending I hadn¡¯t interrupted him, ¡°is that it can be real dangerous, you know? First everybody loved the British Pound, then they loved the US Dollar, they¡¯ve loved Bitcoin and Litecoin and Questcoin and Warcoin and RepCoin. Just about every little bit of data has turned into a supposedly valuable token of interaction, at some point or other.¡± If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The line moved forward a little, but we still had a way to go. The orc continued, ¡°The thing is, it¡¯s all jack shit. The US Dollar was just a piece of paper. Soon as we went off the gold standard, it didn¡¯t really mean anything. The message was simple: this piece of paper means something because we fuckin¡¯ say it means something. It was paper backed by power, and everybody was too scared to point out it wasn¡¯t any better than toilet paper.¡± I kept my eyes plastered to the healthy grass at my feet. Looked behind me and in front of me -- this line was worse than the line at the DMV. ¡°¡®Course, Bitcoin was a bit better,¡± the orc said. ¡°Computational power backing up the dollar. It was a sort of value that made more sense for the day and age. But, well¡­ It¡¯s like my grandma always said. You¡¯ve gotta throw the first pancake out.¡± The line inched forward again. There were two merchants, each standing under canopied stalls. One was a dwarf, the other a human. How long was this orc going to keep talking? He didn¡¯t stop. ¡°So of course Bitcoin didn¡¯t work! The first real digital currency wasn¡¯t going to work! Nothing works the first time. Too bad I couldn¡¯t throw out my first kid.¡± The orc let out a big laugh. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t even joke. I get him to play all the kid¡¯s games. You have no fuckin¡¯ idea how much his Neopoints were worth.¡± ¡°No, I don¡¯t.¡± The orc continued to drone for a while, just like the line moved forward. The sun continued to beat down on me, and it was a real relief when I reached a merchant who could help me. ¡°Hi, sir,¡± the dwarf merchant said. ¡°How can I help you today?¡± I really had to tilt my head down to look at him -- the little guy with a big brown beard and heavy-looking armor. But I strived to make it look like I wasn¡¯t looking down at him. I sort of leaned against the table that stood between him and me. The coin went out of my inventory and into my hand. I showed the dwarf. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Three ¡°Was fighting a Zebda,¡± I told the merchant, ¡°and this coin was put into my inventory. The Thorn Sage told me to come to you, to figure out what it is.¡± The dwarf took the coin into his hand, examining it closely. ¡°Never seen one of these. Interesting¡­¡± ¡°What¡¯s it mean?¡± I asked. ¡°Well, the rose on the coin¡¯s face is¡­ It¡¯s interesting. You brought this to the Thorn Sage?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s how most people come to me: a chain quest from the Thorn Sage. You, though. You really showed him this coin?¡± ¡°Yeah. I didn¡¯t realize the coin¡¯s engraving was of a rose until I was already in his palace.¡± ¡°Really?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°You must be a real fucking moron, then.¡± ¡°Alright.¡± ¡°How low¡¯s your Wit?¡± ¡°Low,¡± I said. ¡°I just want to¡­¡± The dwarf balled his hand into a fist for a second, then let it go. ¡°How low is your Charisma?¡± ¡°Even lower than my Wit.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m not really the fighting type,¡± the dwarf said, ¡°but I really want to beat the shit out of you.¡± ¡°Alright.¡± The dwarf handed the coin back to me. ¡°What you¡¯re supposed to do is¡­ I¡¯m giving you this mission.¡± ¡°Okay.¡± ¡°Get out of Charon, get through a bit of the jungle, and make it to THE VOLCANO OF DREAMS. Make a wish there and throw the coin in.¡± ¡°Alright, thanks.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯d say it wasn¡¯t a problem, but seriously. Raise your Charisma a little bit.¡± ¡°Okay.¡± I put the coin back in my inventory.¡± ¡°And your wit.¡± If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.¡°Alright.¡± ¡°But especially your Charisma, you piece of shit.¡± ¡°Right.¡± I got out of the bank as fast as I could. Didn¡¯t spend too much time on the streets of Charon, either. There was a second gatehouse I hadn¡¯t been to before, on the other side of the city. It was a little less guarded than the other one, which made me curious. Didn¡¯t think about it too much, though. I had a mission to complete. The second I got outside the walls of Charon, I was struck by how dense everything was. The foliage was the worst of it. There were gigantic leaves the length of my arm, taking on ever color of the rainbow. But they were very bright, practically neon. There were vines, trees, grass, bushes. I pushed a giant yellow leaf to the side, only to get my neck caught by a large purple vine. Cut that away with my sword and took another step, only to have to step around a bush, with flowers and thorns that took on a bright red color. The grass here was every color of the rainbow. The whole jungle seemed fraught with poison and danger. I trudged forward. Had to check the map repeatedly, to make sure I wasn¡¯t going off course, that I was going in the direction of THE VOLCANO OF DREAMS. The map told me this jungle was called MELTDOWN JUNGLE. Despite myself, I wondered what the story behind it was. No matter. Had to keep trudging. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Four As I neared the volcano, I heard what sounded like a very loud heartbeat. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum It was going in a syncopated beat, and it only got louder, the closer I got to the volcano. Made me feel like I was in a really weird club, for some reason. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum I looked all around me to figure out what was going on, but it was no use. Leaves of every color blocked my line of sight, and the smoke was so thick, I¡¯m not sure I would¡¯ve been able to see where the sound was coming from anyway. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum Was this just part of the soundtrack of the game? Or was it something else entirely? It could be coming from the volcano, but why? I kept moving forward, but as I did, I was cognizant of the fact that something was very, very-- Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum Something landed on my head. Ba-dum ba-dum No chance to see it. Ba-dum ba-dum A slimy appendage wrapped itself around my neck. Ba-dum Thorns started growing on my knuckles. Ba-dum Was it too late? Ba-dum My ears hurt. My head was vibrating. Ba-dum This creature had suckers on it. Ba-dum ba-dum The beat was coming from the suckers. Ba-dum ba-dum I dug my thorny knuckles into the creature¡¯s slimy skin. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum It began pulling at my neck. Ba-dum ba-dum I was running out of air. Ba-dum ba-dum Had to work fast. Ba-dum ba-dum Slid my thorny fist down the creature¡¯s slimy appendage. Ba-dum ba-dum Blood pouring out Ba-dum ba-dum Its blood, not mine. Ba-dum ba-dum Couldn¡¯t see a thing. Couldn¡¯t see a damn thing. Ba-dum ba-dum The pressure on my neck released a bit, but more appendages were trying to wrap themselves around me. A couple were going for my arms. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum I threw myself to the ground on purpose. My head landed in a thorny bush. Ba-dum-Ba-dum-Ba-dum-Ba-dum-Ba-dum-Ba-dum The beat was getting louder, faster. BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. No screams from the creature -- nothing recognizably pained. Just the loud incessant beat. BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum Thorns lined my face, hurting like hell. The haptics in this game were good -- too good. BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum I writhed. It writhed. BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum Throwing my fist at where I thought the creature was. BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum-BA-dum Ignore the pain. I had to ignore the pain. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM Thorns stuck to my face, in my hair, on my chest. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM The creature spasmed, twisting and turning. The movements caused the thorns to dig deeper into my flesh. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM I kept hitting it. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM Only half of my punches landed; the other half landed in thorns. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM My red blood mixed with the creature¡¯s purple blood. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM Creature slowed down. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM Stopped writhing. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM Tentacles unwinding. BA-DUM Everything slowing down. BA-DUM I took deep breaths. BA Felt how many thorns were all over my body. DUM Adrenaline started wearing away. BA I¡¯d won. Hadn¡¯t I? DUM I¡¯d won. BA I¡¯d won. DUM I had to have won. Labored breathing. Eyes stinging. Chest hurt. Every thorn in my body felt so real, so painful. BA I felt the creature began to disappear. DUM My head fell a little bit, since the creature I¡¯d laid on had stopped existing. More thorns on the side of my head. I got up slowly, and with no small amount of pain. Green wispy letters informed me of the XP gain. +75 XP Couldn¡¯t really appreciate that until my body stopped hurting so much. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Five I hobbled through the jungle for a bit longer, thankfully not running into any more creatures. Sat down in a tangle of vines. Took out the thorns that were hurting the most. Took note of the fact that my HP Bar was roughly 60% full. Sometimes, the horror of the fight was so intense that I forgot to check the HP Bar. Tactically and strategically, it made sense to pay attention to the HP Bar. But in the moment there¡¯s so much fear, so much adrenaline, you can¡¯t even think. I got outside MELTDOWN JUNGLE. It was only in that moment that I saw The Volcano of Dreams. It towered, its craggy gray base seeming to slope upwards forever. I looked up and saw the purple smoke flowing from the volcano. In that moment, I realized I had no idea what the creature that attacked me looked like. I wondered what it would look like in my nightmares. The journey up the volcano was long but uneventful. It was easier than climbing a cliff face, but harder than just climbing up a hill. No idea how much time passed. Several times I wanted to give up and log off, but I had no idea what would happen if I did. Would I slide down the volcano? Die and have to be brought back to life? I didn¡¯t want to have to go back to the temple. The place was creepy and disorienting. In the face of adversity, I did the only thing I could: I kept climbing. At one point I faced what the game called a Batsa, but it barely put up a fight. Took 2% of my HP, and I whacked it out of the way with one swipe from my sword. +5 XP Which was to say, an annoyance not really worth my time. I kept climbing. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, which led once again to questions. Was I hungry inside the game, or outside of it? Did I really need to log off soon? The volcano loomed before me, so I climbed. The higher up I got, the more dense the purple fog became. A couple times my hand would have trouble finding a groove to hold onto. Just had to be really careful and make sure I had a hold with one hand before I let go with another. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. As always, the answer was simple: just keep climbing. It was a sort of surprise when I reached the top of the volcano. My hand reached too high, only to not touch anything. I brought the hand lower, and only then did I realized I was at the top. Pulled myself up, dusted myself off. The climb and the fight had been more exhausting than death. A strange realization, that. I looked around, knowing I wanted to throw the coin into the volcano. There was a problem, though: it was hard to see where the crater of the volcano ended and the throat of it began. I took the coin out of my inventory. Felt its cold surface in my hand. Stuck my foot out, feeling my way. Once I realized I was still on solid ground, I made the step forward. Did that two more times. Then, something caught the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a silhouette. The purple air was much too thick to see anything but a silhouette. Its great big wings flapped in the air. Looked like a giant bird, but the body didn¡¯t look quite right -- too small. The great wings lifted up, then came down. Again and again. I drew my sword. What sort of monster was it? A part of me wanted to toss the coin and run, but the rest of me knew that wasn¡¯t the way to play this. Killing the monster could grant a lot of XP. And if I fucked this up, it was okay to die. I could always die and come back to life. My heart was racing anyway. Don¡¯t ask me why. Because of how real the situation seemed? How unknown? The monster continued to flap its wings. Got closer and closer. The thorns pushed their way through my skin. I raised the sword in the air. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Six ¡°Hello,¡± the monster said. Without thinking, I lowered the sword. Monsters didn¡¯t say hello. They didn¡¯t sound like that, either: soft, old, like a grandmother ¡°Hi.¡± My response. ¡°You¡¯ve reached The Volcano of Dreams,¡± she said. ¡°I know.¡± ¡°What dreams are you looking to fulfill?¡± Didn¡¯t have an answer, not really. Dreams? I mean, yeah, it¡¯s called The Volcano of Dreams, but this was just a mission. That was just a name. It didn¡¯t mean anything, not really. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said. ¡°But you want to throw the coin into the volcano?¡± ¡°That¡¯s my mission.¡± ¡°Is it what you want?¡± she asked. Another dumb question, really. Still, I said, ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°I¡¯m here to tell you how this works.¡± ¡°I, uh¡­¡± ¡°It¡¯s easy,¡± the monster said, ¡°but people never believe it¡¯s as easy as it seems. Few things are.¡± ¡°How does it work?¡± ¡°Think of something you really wish for -- a deep need that radiates through your very being. Think of it, and throw the coin in the volcano.¡± That did sound too easy. In fact, it sounded nuts. What was the point? My VR headset could do a lot of things. It could make my brain perceive things differently, it could interpret the firing synapses of my brain, which meant that my brain thought it was walking, or running, or that I was talking, and so on and so forth. In a sense, the only reason VR was possible was because the headset was reading some of the impulses in my brain. But that was far different from actually reading my thoughts, wasn¡¯t it? One was just brain chemistry, the other was¡­ The more I argued against the assumption, the more I started to believe Throne Quest might actually be able to read my thoughts. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°I just think of my wish, then throw the coin in the volcano?¡± I asked. ¡°Yes,¡± the monster said. It was all she needed to say. I felt the coin in my hand -- its grooves, the bits of volcano soot that had stuck to it. I smiled, thinking of how good at Alex was at video game design. Her game had such nice haptics, such weird ideas. I hoped she was happy. I hoped I would be happy. But that wasn¡¯t a wish I was about to throw in the volcano. If this game really could read my thoughts, I needed to give it an achievable goal, a wish it could actually fulfill. I hope I can level up as quickly as possible, I thought to myself. I wish I was the most powerful player in the game. Drew my arm back. Snapped it forward. The coin left my hand. In the purple haze, I couldn¡¯t see where it went, but I didn¡¯t hear it fall against the volcano¡¯s crust. Long seconds passed. I don¡¯t know what I expected. To instantly feel stronger? For my sword to turn into a broadsword? Lightning to shoot through my entire body? I didn¡¯t feel any of that. Went into the game menu and looked at my stats and abilities: nothing had changed. I wasn¡¯t any more powerful than before I¡¯d trudged through the jungle and up the volcano. The whole damn quest had been pointless. ¡°It didn¡¯t work,¡± I told the monster. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Seven ¡°You threw the coin in and made a wish?¡± ¡°Yeah, I did exactly what you said.¡± ¡°You must¡¯ve made the wrong wish, then,¡± the monster told me. ¡°Wrong wish?¡± I asked. ¡°The wrong wish? You didn¡¯t say there was a wrong wish!¡± ¡°I told you to make the wish you believe in.¡± ¡°Yeah, and I made a wish!¡± ¡°Different PCs receive different coins, based on their own destinies. Your destiny is--¡± ¡°My destiny is to become the best player in this game! That¡¯s what I wished for! This whole thing is bullshit!¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t existed for a very long time,¡± the monster said. ¡°Many of the NPCs in this game hold foolish beliefs. They think our world is real, that the PCs are delusional, that we¡¯re something more than our programming. I¡¯ve heard of the cults, the madness. But I know the truth: the game guides us where it wants us to go. It¡¯s guiding you, Chris.¡± ¡°A number of players have come here with coins -- not so many, but some. I¡¯ve seen players come with Electric coins. They wished for power, and they got it. I¡¯ve seen players come with Thorn coins. They¡¯ve asked for wisdom, and they¡¯ve received it. The players with the Stone coins have asked for a good life, and the game has treated them kindly.¡± The monster¡¯s silhouetted wings continued to flap, slowly. She continued to speak, ¡°But never before have I seen a Rose coin, Chris. You must ask for something special, for you have received something special.¡± I stood there, having no idea what to ask for. It didn¡¯t matter, not with the coin gone. Apparently the monsters didn¡¯t drop them very often, either. But if I did get another coin, what would I ask for? It doesn¡¯t matter, I told myself. You lost your shot. The defeat overwhelmed me, made me feel so tired. Still, this monster was curious. It knew it was living in a game. Moreover, it didn¡¯t have any illusions about PCs being delusional, or this all being some sort of magic. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The monster understood the reality of its nonexistence. ¡°How do you know this isn¡¯t the real world?¡± I asked. ¡°You know, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Yes, but you don¡¯t have my experiences. You don¡¯t have any reason to believe this isn¡¯t the real world.¡± The monster let out a weary sigh. ¡°I haven¡¯t gone off this volcano. For my entire life, I¡¯ve lived here. Never met an NPC, myself. I¡¯ve only listened to the words of a few PCs -- heard them laugh at The Thorn King¡¯s delusions, heard them tell stories of the real world. I know I have emotion, and wisdom, and needs. But there¡¯s something in the PCs, something that comes from living in a big world, that I¡¯ll never have. I was born to fly on this volcano. I¡¯ll die here, as well, if I can ever really die.¡± What do you say to that? I made my best effort. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. That doesn¡¯t sound like a good life.¡± ¡°It¡¯s all I know.¡± ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡± ¡°It¡¯s all I know,¡± the monster said. ¡°It¡¯s not your fault.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± This game had been created for people like me, though, hadn¡¯t it? What were the ethics of this? What was the point in making the monster so smart and human, if she wasn¡¯t going to live a human life? Why give the artificial intelligence so much intelligence? ¡°I know your creator,¡± I said. ¡°Really?¡± ¡°The person who created this game. The lead designer.¡± ¡°Were they a good person? I¡¯ve always wondered that¡­ Did you like them?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I answered the second question. I had quite liked Alex¡¯s company. I missed her. The first question? Better not to even think about it¡­ I doubted the monster would¡¯ve liked the answer. Same went for me. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Eight On the way back through Meltdown Jungle, I made sure to avoid the sort of creature that had attacked me before. That wasn¡¯t too difficult for the most part. At one point, I began to hear a faint beat. ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum But I knew well enough to avoid the area. Carefully made my way around the source of the beat, circumventing the monster entirely. It made my heart race a bit, but also made for a much easier journey. Fighting monsters for XP was important, no doubt. But some monsters were easier to kill than others, and the XP reward wasn¡¯t worth dealing with that¡­ Thing. I was satisfied with having avoided the monster. Nearly made it out of the jungle, and felt like I was safe when danger. That¡¯s when it happened. I was waiting for a crazy animal to attack -- if I couldn¡¯t see it, at least I figured it¡¯d be something I could hear. No such luck. My foot stepped on what I assumed to be solid ground. But when I tried pulling the foot back up, it sank a little deeper. My heart sank with it. Fuck, I thought. I looked down. It wasn¡¯t an incredibly quick motion, but still I could feel the way the ground was engulfing my foot, pulling it down slowly. Never ran into quicksand in the real world. It¡¯d seemed so dumb, the way I¡¯d thought so much about quicksand as a kid. In my defense, didn¡¯t a lot of kids think about quicksand? But you never ran into it in the real world -- all the stuff they tell you about quicksand, it¡¯s just to keep you interested. Because it¡¯s fun. Useless information. Of course, the information wasn¡¯t useless here. That was the thing. I took in slow, deep breaths. In fact, the breaths were slower than the sand, which was pulling me in. It wasn¡¯t really sand, though, it was dirt. Did that make it a sinkhole? I had no idea, but I hoped the same rule applied: the more you moved, the more quickly the ground would suck you in. No way to get out, at a certain point. So that meant no thrashing. As calmly and coolly as I could, I grabbed onto a vine that was hanging from one of the tall trees above. It¡¯d be a way to keep at least my head above water, if nothing else. Kept my free foot firmly planted on solid ground -- last thing I needed was both feet getting caught in the earth. With the free foot planted firmly on the ground, I tried pulling on the vine to get out. The foot didn¡¯t budge. It didn¡¯t sink any worse, but it didn¡¯t budge either. Everything below my ankle was trapped. I kept one hand held firmly on the vine. Then arched my back, slowly letting my hand slide down the vine. Carefully, I set my butt down on firm ground. Making sure not to wiggle the foot, I still tried to carefully pull it out. No dice. My calf began sinking. The sword at my side gave me a stupid idea. Gave me a very stupid idea. After all, one of the main ways you solved problems in this game was by fighting, right? Wasn¡¯t that the conflict resolution system you could always count on? If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. So, while being all too well aware as to the ways it could go wrong, I pulled my sword out of its scabbard. Raised the sword in the air, then brought it down onto the area of the dirt that had my leg. 15/20 HP The ground didn¡¯t let go of my leg, and in fact my entire calf had been submerged. Had to be careful, but also had to work fast. I tried pulling the sword out, but it was to no avail. It started sinking again, too. Twisted the sword in the ground, but that didn¡¯t take and HP off of it. Had to work even faster, now. Sword was sinking. Couldn¡¯t lose that. No sword would put me at a major disadvantage in every fight, until I could get a new one. Heart began to race. I pulled myself up with the vine. Went a little too quickly, put some pressure on the submerged leg. It was past my knee. Raised the fist with the gauntlet had and smashed it into the ground. 5/20 HP That was a decent HP take, but hitting with the dragon gauntlet was also one of my best moves. The gauntlet hand began to sink. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I raised my non-gauntlet hand. Let the thorns grow. Too much pressure on the ground. My groin was getting submerged -- a highly unpleasant sensation. I thorn punched the ground. 1/20 HP FUCK! The thought roared through my head. That essentially put me out of moves, unless I could get my lightning eyes to work. I concentrated on the energy in my head, imagined it channeling through my eyes. Nothing happened. Heart was racing. What caused my lightning eyes to work? Why couldn¡¯t they be used on command, like my other powers? Deep breaths. Was hip deep in the ground at this point. It only had one HP point. Only had one goddamn point, and I was out of moves. I took a deep breath, ground rising -- had to do something. I smashed my head into the ground. For a few seconds, the ground sucked me in. That¡¯s when I knew I was dead, that I¡¯d lost, that I had to go back to the temple. But much to my surprise, I didn¡¯t die. Couldn¡¯t see the ground¡¯s updated HP, but it stopped moving. And when I pulled my head away, I got it unstuck. +50 XP The green letters floated above the ground, which I¡¯d defeated. An odd thing, defeating the ground. My sword came out of the ground, as did the lower half of my body. Took me about five minutes to dig myself out. I brushed off and went on my way. With only 10% HP left, I had to be very careful. Luckily, that was the last monster to try and attack me on the way back to the wall. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Twenty Nine The line to the coin merchant was incredibly long, just like before. A big part of me didn¡¯t even want to deal with it. Why not log off and try again tomorrow? I felt tired in away that didn¡¯t feel rooted in the this world. Felt like I was so tired in the physical word that it was affecting me here. But something propelled me forward. It was in part the fact that I wanted to see Alex again, sure. This was her game, and there was something¡­ Playing this game felt like talking to her. And even if she wasn¡¯t around these days -- even if she¡¯d been lost and we didn¡¯t know how she could be found -- I still believed she¡¯d come out of hiding. And when she did, she¡¯d see how much love I¡¯d put into the game. How much time. How I¡¯d played it and tried my best and really achieved something here. That sort of passion drove me, and it wasn¡¯t the sort of passion that let you just log off and go to bed too easily. Plus there was the fact that the game was fun. It¡¯s always hard to walk away from fun. Despite all that, I didn¡¯t want to wait in line for the coin merchant. My HP Bar was dangerously low, too, so I figured I¡¯d buy a healing potion to get that sorted out. Then, hopefully, maybe the line wouldn¡¯t be as long. I walked down the cobblestone path, past merchants yelling about this or that product. Eventually I found a potion merchant. The awning on her stand said in big white letters, ¡°Potions.¡± Her skin was odd, crystalline. When I approached, she smiled. There was a horror to her smile, since the pearly white of her teeth contrasted so starkly with the dark blue planes that lined her face. ¡°Hi,¡± I said, once I¡¯d gotten close. ¡°You haven¡¯t seen many elves before?¡± ¡°I¡­¡± She was right. I hadn¡¯t seen any elves around here. Her ears were a bit pointed, too. ¡°It¡¯s easy enough to see, by your reaction,¡± the elf told me. ¡°We weren¡¯t always like this, you know.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know.¡± ¡°We had flesh, the same as so many creatures who inhabit this world. But after the Magical Meltdown¡­ This world broke, and the fractures of that break changed us. They still haven¡¯t explained it. Why our flesh couldn¡¯t handle the break. How the composition of the air changed in a way that made our faces mutate. How not even in the clean air inside the Throne Kingdom¡¯s walls allow our skin to soften.¡± I took a deep breath, then sighed. There was something truly insane about talking with an NPC. In normal human conversation, people didn¡¯t lay themselves to bare so openly and easily. Sometimes talking to an NPC was like talking to a monologist. They shared everything to a complete stranger, for no regard to what the stranger might want, whether the stranger gives a shit about their meaningless lives. ¡°Okay,¡± I said. I didn¡¯t want to be a jackass, but really. What else was there to say? ¡°I got hurt pretty bad by some of the monsters out there. What sort of healing potions do you have?¡± ¡°We¡¯ve got a pretty wide variety,¡± she said. She pointed at the shelves behind her, which were lined with all sorts of glass vials. Each vial was filled with liquid. It was a kaleidoscopic display, every color on display. ¡°How badly were you hurt?¡± she asked. ¡°Badly.¡± ¡°You want 100% regen?¡± ¡°90%. You guys have something for that?¡± This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°90% healing? Sure.¡± She took one of the green vials off the shelf, handing it to me. ¡°How do I pay you?¡± ¡°You really are new,¡± the elf said. ¡°A lot of the PCs are right now, so don¡¯t feel too bad. It¡¯s an automatic transaction. You pick up money automatically when you fight monsters.¡± The green vial had a cork on top. I tugged against the cork, struggling to get the thing open. Nearly spilled some of the liquid, but managed to balance the vial just in time. I put it up to my nose. Stuff smelled awful. Probably because the of the face I was making, the elf said, ¡°It¡¯s not supposed to smell good, it¡¯s supposed to make you heal.¡± I tipped the vial back, letting the liquid pour into my mouth. The stuff tasted even worse than it stank, like a foul mix of cold medicine and expired meat. I kept pouring it down, because I knew if I put the vial down, I probably wasn¡¯t going to bring it back up again. Finally, when the deluge of awful taste stopped, i took the vial away from my lips. My HP Bar was at 99%. I stuck my finger in the vial, scooping up a drop of the potion that I¡¯d missed. Placed the drop on my tongue. That brought the HP Bar to 100%. The aftertaste was even more terrible than the original taste had been. I stuck my tongue out for a second, shivering. ¡°You want another one for the road?¡± ¡°Dunno if I can afford it.¡± ¡°Check your ARMOR AND WEAPONS menu.¡± I went to the game menu and checked out armor and weapons. Sure enough, in the corner of the screen, it said I had, ¡°308 currency.¡± ¡°How much does a 90% vial cost?¡± I asked the elf. ¡°100 currency.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take it.¡± The elf handed over the potion, and my currency automatically wired over to her, leaving me one potion richer and with 208 currency left. I went back to the coin merchant and found that his line was even a little bigger than it¡¯d been before. Jack-asses, all of them. I waited in the long line. When I got to the coin merchant, he confirmed that my mission had been completed. +400 XP You¡¯ve reached Level 5! A nice bonus, and one that brought with it either a new Ability Point or a new Skill. I figured I¡¯d check that out once determining whether the coin merchant would give me a new quest. Of course, I had that question before I knew the new quest the coin merchant wanted to give me. He told me I had to go back and kill the monster that resided on The Volcano of Dreams. Her name was Jhaness. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! --- A quick note: I''m going to be off the internet Thursday and Friday (I''m on the internet too much! Need to take a digital detox!) so there aren''t going to be any chapters posted then. However, schedule will resume next week. Also, I''ve already written almost all of this serial: I''m on chapter 45 right now, and I think Throne Quest is going to be done at the end of either 45 or 46. After that I''ll probably take a break from RRL, but then I''m thinking about a new fic. Yahoo! Have a good week everyone! Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty On the way to the Volcano of Dreams, I wondered what fighting Jhaness would be like. In the fog and soot that clouded my vision, it¡¯d been hard to see her true form. Would she have claws? Fangs? How would she fight against me? I knew she had big wings. Would she try to pick me up and carry me off? Drop me at 1,000 feet? I imagined her teeth digging into my flesh, her claws rending me in two. I imagined the pain. I imagined death. Trudging back to the Volcano of Dreams, I imagined a lot of things. But only half of my thoughts could be focused on the future. The other half were focused on making sure Meltdown Jungle¡¯s creatures didn¡¯t come out of nowhere and attack me. At one point during my journey, a soft ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum sounded off in the distance. I moved around it. At another point, I saw a bit of ground that didn¡¯t look as solid as the rest. I moved around that, too. All told, making my way through the Volcano of Dreams wasn¡¯t too difficult. Knowing where some of the biggest problems, I avoided them. Climbing the Volcano of Dreams wasn¡¯t any easier, unfortunately. I attacked and killed the Batsa again -- because it was easy, if nothing else. Got the 5 XP and continued to climb. After reaching the top of the volcano, I checked my menu. Before fighting this monster whose skills I didn¡¯t know, it seemed like a good idea to be at peak strength. That meant looking at my Skill Tree. There were three branches, not counting the electricity skills, which were a branch I still wasn¡¯t ready to mess with. The three powers to choose from: THORN PROTECT, MILD HP REGEN, and VINE GRAB. All three were good choices, really. Thorn protect looked like a good defensive skill, and I didn¡¯t have any of those yet. Being able to take a hit and not feel it could prove useful. At the same time, Mild HP Regen was even more tempting. Wouldn¡¯t have to spend so much on potions if I could regenerate HP myself. The Mild HP Regen wasn¡¯t as strong as Major HP Regen, which meant it was probably more helpful in-between battles than it was during them. And I wouldn¡¯t be able to purchase Major HP Regen until I was at least Level 9, because of the skills you needed to purchase before you could purchase Major HP Regen. That said, if I didn¡¯t purchase Mild HP Regen now, I¡¯d have to wait until at least Level 11 to get Major HP Regen. Vine Grab was way more tempting than the previous skill I¡¯d bought from that branch, Vine Smack. I hadn¡¯t even used Vine Smack yet, but Vine Grab was more appealing, because it changed the dynamic of a fight. If a monster was dodging my sword swings and vine punches too easily, I could drag them close enough to do some damage. All the skills were temping, which was a good place to be in. Still, since I wanted to make a decision before fighting Jhaness, I decided to go with Mild HP Regen. It took a lot of properly level up Durability, so I might as well do the best I could with the HP Points that I already had. Satisfied, I bought Mild HP Regen. Leaving the menu cleared my line of sight, which made something very apparent: the purple fog wasn¡¯t here. No idea how this volcano worked, but it wasn¡¯t spitting out the purple soot like it had been last time. The gray craggy surface below my feet was clear to see. The sky had a bit of a purple haze, but nothing too obscuring. Looking out at the sky, I saw Jhaness approach. She looked different than expected. The first thing you noticed was her wings: massive black things, they looked like they belonged to an oversized crow. Jhaness¡¯s wings would raise in the air, and they¡¯d block my view of the sun. Then they¡¯d come down. They flapped up and down in slow, powerful movements. If a real bird flew like that, gravity would surely pull it down in-between each flapping of the wings. It would be jerking up and down in the air, as opposed to the fluidity of Jhaness¡¯s flight. But gravity didn¡¯t necessarily exist in this world. Instead it was the illusion of gravity. And so Jhaness¡¯s powerful wings raised rose up, then came down, over and over again. Of course, she wasn¡¯t even a bird, not with the strange-looking body she had. Her body looked just like a fly¡¯s, except way bigger. Though it was dwarfed by the massive black wings that held it aloft, Jhaness¡¯s body was still huge when compared to a fly¡¯s. Still, she had a green carapace, with the stick-like legs and the huge red eyes. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. As Jhaness approached, I saw the truth of those eyes: they were compound eyes. That essentially meant that the eye had thousands of little bubbles on it, each of which added to what the fly was seeing. I raised my sword high in the air. Palms sweating. Knees wanting to buckle. In the sooty air that the Volcano of Dreams had created, I couldn¡¯t see Jhaness too well. But now that I could see her, I could see how truly hideous she was -- how truly monstrous. I¡¯d shown her empathy, but clearly she wasn¡¯t worthy of my empathy. She was an NPC, driven by AI, imitating life but coming nowhere close to it. And so it wasn¡¯t a tough decision. I knew I had to kill Jhaness when she got close enough. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to see you again so soon, Chris,¡± Jhaness said. ¡°None of the PCs come here very often.¡± She flew just a few feet away from me -- just far enough away so as to be out of easy reach of my sword. Had to talk to her. Had to make sure she didn¡¯t fly away before I was able to kill her. ¡°I came here on a mission,¡± I said. ¡°Another coin?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± The lie was just what I needed. ¡°The coin merchant said I had to show you the coin. Then you¡¯d tell me what to do from there.¡± ¡°That¡¯s odd, but I can take a look.¡± Jhaness approached. That very approach filled me with revulsion. A fly with massive bird wings? It didn¡¯t make sense, it couldn¡¯t be real. She grew closer. And closer. I unsheathed my sword. She began to speak. ¡°Wh--¡± No time for conversation, not with a monster. The sword came down, slicing a large part of her wing off. She screamed. The scream was half-human, half-fly. It was the sort of shriek you would expect to hear a woman make, but it was mixed with a buzzing undertone. She tried flying, but her torn wing prevented that. She couldn¡¯t get off the ground. My sword came down. More screaming. The next time, I went for one of her eyes. Split it wide open. More blood. Another sword strike. Screaming. Again. Blood. Again. Screaming. Again. I stopped swinging the sword. This whole thing felt wrong. The foreign nature of the fight didn¡¯t make sense to me, though, until I realized something. There were no HP reports -- nothing telling me how much HP Jhaness was losing. All I had to go on was her bleeding, her screams, her dying breaths. Even worse, she hadn¡¯t put up a fight. My HP Bar was just as full as it¡¯d been before the fight had begun. ¡°Why?¡± she rasped, laying there bleeding. Portions of the volcano¡¯s gray crust were getting stained red. ¡°It was¡­¡± Hard to speak. ¡°It was my mission.¡± ¡°Why¡¯d you¡­¡± She didn¡¯t finish the sentence. ¡°I was supposed to! It was my¡­ It was¡­¡± I stopped myself. No point explaining myself now. I wanted to cry. Dammit, the emotions were welling up inside me, but no tears were coming out. All the frustration and guilt didn¡¯t have any escape, so they just stewed within me. Probably should¡¯ve just left The Volcano of Dreams, confirmed the mission¡¯s completion with the coin merchant and collected my XP. Something drove me to stay, though. I wanted to look at what I¡¯d done. Wanted to see her corpse disappear. Wanted to see her respawn. See that she was fine, reborn anew. That didn¡¯t happen. I stood there, waiting, watching her bleed. Every once in awhile, she would manage to get a noise out. Nothing intelligible. After several minutes, I realized I had to put her out of her misery. And so I brought the sword down on her, again and again, causing more lacerations, more wounds, more pain. She made a noise, which caused me to pause. I leaned in and heard her say, ¡°Stop.¡± I did. Watched her for awhile more. Waited for her to disappear. She didn¡¯t. She just didn¡¯t. No idea how much time passed. But eventually it became clear that she wasn¡¯t going to disappear. I just couldn¡¯t take any more waiting, so I logged off. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty One I twitched when the microwave beeped. ¡°Just a game.¡± Ran my fingers through my soggy hair. ¡°Just a stupid fucking game.¡± I opened the microwave door and took out the calamari. Began shoveling it into my mouth. It was three in the morning -- not exactly my favorite time to be awake. But I was in that weird in-between place: too tired to really stay awake, but also too unnerved to go to sleep. Sat down in the seat and tried to think about anything other than Throne Quest. Terrible fucking game. Why would a game be so damn horrifying? What was the point of driving away players like that? What was Alex trying to do? Alex¡­ I remembered the two of us sitting in her room. It was the second semester of our Freshmen Year. I¡¯d been coming over more and more, because she¡¯d been letting me come over. Carly had moved out, so Alex didn¡¯t have a roommate for awhile. She let me crash in her dorm a lot, because of that. I was laying on the extra bed, staring up at the white ceiling, revelling in the quiet of the room. Those were some of my favorite moments. Hanging out with Alex, the two of us not even talking. Our existing in the same space was enough. You never knew what she was going to say next. So when I could just be around her, soaking up her presence without having to be on my toes to keep up with her? Nothing better. She worked at her computer, developing some program. Her fingers tapped the keys on her keyboard. I lay there, listening. Existing. ¡°Curiosity¡¯s irrelevant.¡± Alex¡¯s comment came out of nowhere. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter how hard people try to make AI act like human beings, it just won¡¯t happen.¡± ¡°Oh, you¡¯re talking about¡­ Yeah, you¡¯re probably right.¡± ¡°We always think of our brains as being like computers, but they¡¯re really not,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s the thing with metaphors: they can be deceptive. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, we¡¯ve thought of our brains as machines. But they can¡¯t be machines, because our brains are organic.¡± She stopped typing at the keyboard, spun her chair around and turned to look at me. That¡¯s how I knew she was really into the conversation. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. She continued, ¡°Our thoughts wouldn¡¯t be the same if it weren¡¯t for the organic functions. A robot can never have the experiences that truly ever make it alive. It can abstractly understand the concepts of hunger, love, depression, and so on. But it can never truly feel those emotions.¡± ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± The words escaped my lips before I really knew what I was saying. It felt wrong -- I wanted to argue more -- but I knew that¡¯s what she wanted to hear. A grin slipped onto her face and she walked towards me. Sat down next to me on the bed. My heart beat faster. My pulse quickened. She scooched onto the bed so that she was sitting against the headrest. Raised my head up a bit. I pulled myself forward, so that I was laying in her lap, looking up at her. ¡°Aren¡¯t I always right?¡± she asked, smelling like sugar and oranges. Her lap was so comforting. My parents hadn¡¯t really been good to me -- divorce, on top of just not being able to accept me for who I was. I could go to Alex, though. She was my home. ¡°You¡¯re always right.¡± The words tumbled out of my lips. Too easily. Before I could say anything else, she leaned in and kissed me. We spent a lot of time together that night. Had fun til the morning. Often, late at night, I think that was the best night of my life. Other times, given everything that happened afterwards, I think it was the worst. --- --- --- I snapped out of my reverie, did the dishes, then lay down in bed. Didn¡¯t fall asleep, but I didn¡¯t really try to. Lay there eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, feeling empty. My leg felt dull. It wasn¡¯t in pain, it just felt like it didn¡¯t exist. After all too much time laying down like that -- didn¡¯t check a clock, so no idea how much time exactly -- I decided to log back onto Throne Quest Online. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Two On the way back to the coin merchant, I wasn¡¯t focused. My thoughts still felt rattled. Didn¡¯t even want to be playing this game, really. No fun when the creatures you killed seemed so real. But at the same time, I didn¡¯t want to feel as sleepless as I did in the real world. The tiredness was dulled in the virtual world. So I trudged on. Knew I had to keep moving. Didn¡¯t matter how tired I was, rest wasn¡¯t going to happen tonight. So instead of stewing in the shit that was my own thoughts, it was best to keep moving forward. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum It was for this reason that I was surprised when I heard that sound -- the sound that presaged danger. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Hadn¡¯t heard it when it was quieter, and thus more distant. Just hadn¡¯t been paying enough attention. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Whipped my head to the left, then to the right. Didn¡¯t see anything. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Tried looking up at the trees. It was dark, making it hard to see much of anything here. Still, I tried. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum The thing had been in the trees before. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum What about now? Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Where was it now? Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum I saw a dark clump hanging in the thicket of trees, all the wildly colored leaves and vines that blotted out the sky. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum It was moving. Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Ba-Dum Hanging from a tree on high, but coming down to get me. BA-Dum BA-Dum BA-Dum BA-Dum I unsheathed my sword. BA-Dum BA-Dum BA-Dum BA-Dum BA A slimy gray appendage snapped out of the darkness, pushing past kaleidoscopic leaves. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. DUM I sliced it off with my sword. 57/65 HP The green mist-like letters floated into the sky. BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM Another appendage snapped at me. BA I sliced it off. DUM 47/65 HP A third appendage. BA Sliced away. DUM 39/65 HP It was as if the creature didn¡¯t even care about its lost appendages. Just as I expected another one to snap out and attack me, though, something else happened: the entire creature leaped off the tree and onto me. I held the sword out straight, letting the creature skewer itself on my sword. It squirmed but didn¡¯t squeal. Instead, I merely heard the telltale sounds. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM 15/65 HP I tiled the sword so that the pommel was facing upwards. The creature slid off the sword and onto the floor. I stabbed it again. BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM 8/65 HP Once last time. 0/65 HP The creature -- squirming around with half its limbs, looking like some handicapped squid -- stopped squirming. It stopped letting out the rhythmic pulse. I flipped it over, so that I could see its underside. +75 XP The music was coming from the creature¡¯s anus. ¡°Huh,¡± I said. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Three On the way back to the coin merchant, a message appeared before my eyes. New coin acquired! Before long, the green misty letters disappeared. Still in the Meltdown Jungle, wanting desperately to make sure I didn¡¯t run into any more monsters, I didn¡¯t open my inventory. Instead, I pushed forward. Pushed through kaleidoscopic foliage. Once back in the city of Charon, I checked my inventory. Saw the coin. Took it out of the inventory and watched it land in my hand. Just like before, the grooves on the coin didn¡¯t mean much of anything to me, at first glance. I weighed the coin in my hand. Rubbed my thumb against the grooves. In that moment, it became apparent that my low Wit was a problem. I wasn¡¯t recognizing things quickly. What wasn¡¯t I seeing? How was low Wit affecting my perception of this digital world? I turned the coin in my hand. Flipped it between my fingers. Stared at the coin. Before too long, I came to the realization. The grooves on the coin depicted Jhaness. Stomach seized up. God, Jhaness. I¡¯d gotten a coin for killing her. I walked through Charon without really processing my surroundings. The wait at the coin merchant was irrelevant. By the time I reached the merchant, I still didn¡¯t know what to say. I placed the coin on the table separating the coin merchant and me. He looked up with a sort of grimace. ¡°You finished the mission,¡± he said. ¡°Yeah. Why?¡± You¡¯ve reached Level 6! The irrelevant letters flashed before my eyes. I ignored them. Decided it would be best to level up my Durability, which meant not spending the Ability Point at that moment. ¡°What do you mean, why?¡± the dwarf coin merchant responded. ¡°Why¡¯d you want me to kill her?¡± ¡°It was the mission,¡± he said. ¡°But I don¡¯t know why I did it. Jhaness was¡­¡± No idea what to say. What could I say? ¡°You did it because it was the mission. I don¡¯t know anything else about your motives. That¡¯s something to be squared with you and your deity. Look, there¡¯s a long line, so don¡¯t keep everyone else waiting.¡± Taking the coin with me, I left the merchant. Whole head was spinning. Why had I completed the mission so blindly? What was Alex¡¯s long-term goal that made her create a game like this? Aimlessly, I walked around for a while. Before too long, The Thorny Sword stood before me -- equal parts charming and decrepit. I took a step inside. Within just a couple seconds of walking into the place, you could get a pretty good feel for it. It had low, warm lighting. A couple of people sat on bar stools, huddled over their drinks. You had one of those elves with the diamond-like skin, a human, and a short purple goblin. No idea if they were PCs or NPCs. There just wasn¡¯t any way to tell. ¡°What¡¯ll it be?¡± the bartender asked. She was a green-skinned orc. It took me a second to remember how to speak. That often happened when I hadn¡¯t been talking for awhile. ¡°How much for a drink?¡± ¡°It¡¯s free for PCs,¡± she told me. ¡°You all can¡¯t actually get drunk, anyway.¡± I nodded, sitting a few seats away from the other patrons. The bartender must¡¯ve been an NPC; the PCs didn¡¯t call themselves PCs. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Tastes like shit,¡± the goblin told me, wrinkly purple skin contrasting sharply with its bright yellow eyes. ¡°Tastes like beer,¡± the bartender said, getting beer from the tap. ¡°If you like beer, that¡¯s a good taste. If you don¡¯t, it¡¯s not.¡± She slid the beer my way, and I tasted it. Sure enough, it tasted like beer, which made it pretty okay in my book. ¡°You look upset,¡± the bartender said. She leaned her hand against the bar. ¡°Something on your mind?¡± ¡°You have any missions for me?¡± I took another sip of beer. ¡°Don¡¯t wanna talk your problems out?¡± ¡°I want a mission. That¡¯s what NPCs are for, right?¡± The bartender gave me a judging look, which was almost funny to me. Surely, her whole point was to hand out missions! ¡°I¡¯ve got some missions, but given your low Charisma, you¡¯re going to have to take the worst one I¡¯ve got.¡± ¡°I¡¯m used to that.¡± Another sip of beer. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a troll who¡¯s been causing some trouble in the tavern. He¡¯s been getting too drunk. Yelling at people, threatening them. Can you go over there and talk to him?¡± ¡°Talk to a troll? Sounds easy. He an NPC?¡± A pause. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Alright.¡± I kicked the mug back, finishing the beer. Then slammed the mug back onto the bar counter. Without another word, I left The Thorny Sword. --- --- --- It was hard to get a good impression of the city of Charon. It was a mish-mash of architectural styles: a bit of Ancient Rome here, a bit of pseudo-medieval epic fantasy there. Most everything was adorned with some sort of shrubbery. Vines came through the cracks of the cobblestone walking paths. They dangled from ceilings and rooves. Then there was the fact that so much of the city was adorned with little bits of gold. The corners of tables, bits of people¡¯s clothes. Everywhere you turned and looked, your eye might catch a glimmer of gold. The longer you spent here, the more you came to appreciate those little glimmers. They gave the place so much of its character. Had to check the map a few times while travelling towards the troll, but eventually I found the place where he was living. It was one of a long stretch of multi-story houses. All sorts of creatures seemed to live inside the walls. While passing by, I heard two hard-skinned elves in a third-story room. There was a dwarf sleeping naked in a first-story room, and then a human sharpening his sword in a second-story apartment across the way. These all had to be NPCs, right? How much time were PCs spending in game? And why would you sit inside a room, when you could go outside and complete missions, gain XP? The questions became irrelevant, as I stood outside the troll¡¯s building. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Four Standing in front of the door, I unsheathed my sword. Remembering it was a door, I re-sheathed my sword. Tried the door handle. It opened. Didn¡¯t say a word. Took a step inside while looking around. The troll¡¯s apartment was mostly modern: dirty dishes in the sink, empty bottles of booze, a well-worn sofa. The troll sat on the sofa. He had long, stringy orange hair. His face looked Cro-Magnon, and his eyes were looking straight at me. ¡°Who are you?¡± he asked. ¡°Thorny Sword bartender sent me. Said you¡¯ve been causing trouble recently.¡± My hand went to the pommel of my sword. ¡°Yeah, I know what she¡¯s talking about.¡± I nodded my head, not sure what to say next. The troll stared at my sword. ¡°Jumpy.¡± I was. He seemed jumpy, too. He sat, I stood, and neither of us seemed to know what was going to happen next. ¡°I¡¯ve had my problems. I¡¯ve caused plenty of troubles. That what you think I deserve?¡± This game was so fucking weird. The way he was talking -- about what he deserved, about his past and personality -- freaked me out. I unsheathed my sword again. The troll nodded his head and stood up, balling his hands into fists. He charged; I swung. He ducked, which meant that my sword missed. He rammed into my stomach. My stomach slipped from my grip as the troll slammed me into the wall. I had 95% HP left. He roared, picking the sword up off the floor, then throwing me back onto it. 88% HP Thorns grew on my knuckles. The troll stomped on my calf. 84% HP He smelled like shit, which didn¡¯t make any of this better. I got up, leg weak, trying to go for my sword which was just two feet away. The troll grabbed my foot, dragging me back towards him. He then slung me over the kitchen counter. I landed on the kitchen floor next to the sink, with 76% HP left. In the time it took the troll to come over, I managed to get up off the ground. Took on of the grimy plates and threw it spinning at his face. It hit him in the nose, causing his head to jerk backwards. He fell down just a moment later. 37/40 HP I thew a second plate at him, but he dodged it. Kicked me, hooking the top of his foot onto my ankle. I fell to the floor, my head smacking against it. 70% HP Swung my arm up to grab a plate from the sink. The troll pulled me towards him, but not before I snatched another one of the grimy plates. The plate cracked against the side of his head. 35/40 HP The troll smacked me with his hand. 68% My fist came down onto his face, the thorns piercing through his skin. 30/40 HP I brought my fist down a couple more times, blood muddying his face, dripping onto the floor. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.22/40 HP He swiped his hand, trying to grab my neck. I jumped back, narrowly avoiding the hand. I jumped and climbed onto the kitchen counter. Rolled off of it and ran towards my sword. Lunged at the sword. Just as I grabbed it, the troll got a hold of my ankle. My arm made a 180-degree arc, my body twisting to follow it. The sword sliced straight through the troll¡¯s neck, opening up so that the blood poured out. 12/40 HP The troll held his throat with his hands, trying to stop the blood from flowing out. I pursued the initiative, swinging my sword again at the troll¡¯s neck. The head came clean off. 0/40 HP The green letters appearing before my eyes weren¡¯t really necessary. It was pretty obvious he was dead. The head rolled across the floor as I walked out the room. All the way back to The Thorny Sword, green letters flashed before my eyes. 70% 71% 72% All the way until I was fully healed again. --- --- --- The Thorny Sword¡¯s lighting was oddly familiar. It¡¯s not like I¡¯d been to the tavern all that often. But still, it just felt right. Charon¡¯s architecture was so odd, but even though The Thorny Sword exhibited a bit of that melange, it was still recognizably a tavern. Perhaps it felt familiar because it was so similar to real-world bars. As I walked inside, the bartender didn¡¯t do anything other than give me a brief glance. ¡°You finished the mission?¡± ¡°Yeah, I took care of the troll.¡± I sat down at the stool. ¡°Took care of him?¡± ¡°Yeah, I finished the mission.¡± She didn¡¯t move to make me a drink, nor did she even offer me one. Instead, she said, ¡°What did you do to the troll?¡± ¡°I killed him.¡± The bartender¡¯s visage turned ugly. ¡°You killed him?¡± ¡°Yeah, that was the mission.¡± ¡°The mission was to talk to him!¡± ¡°He¡¯s an NPC,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯ll respawn. He probably already has.¡± ¡°Get out,¡± the bartender said, voice defeated. She didn¡¯t have to tell me twice. The anger on her face let me know it was time to leave. I got up and left, wondering where to go next. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Five I walked down the cobblestone path of Charon, hoping to get out of the city so that I could just get away from the human-like NPCs. It was easier out in Meltdown Jungle and The Weeping Plains, where I didn¡¯t have to deal with these NPCs complaining about their feelings, their screaming. The NPCs out there were more recognizably inhuman -- they were recognizably monstrous. It made me think about the frontier. How we¡¯d lost it so long before I was born. How it was impossible to be a cowboy, slinging your way through the plains, exploring new land and not being bound by so much civilization. In a sense, that¡¯s what video games offered: they gave you that sense of a frontier, where nobody knew who you were, where you could escape and do what people were meant to do. You could go out there and fight, survive, kill. All these thoughts swirled through my head as I made my way toward the gatehouse. Walking down the cobblestone path, which merchants lined up on both my left and my right, I tried to avoid their gaze. The ones who weren¡¯t busy had a look of dead-eyed half-life, which bothered me. Standing in a corner, though, was a little boy. He was crying. I walked up to him. Observed the fact that he wasn¡¯t wearing armor -- just a plain green tunic. Surely a PC would put on some sort of armor. And thinking about it, I¡¯d never seen a PC cry. Probably an NPC? Still, something about seeing him -- a brown-haired youth, tears running down his face -- made me feel compelled to stop. A part of me didn¡¯t want to. A part of me thought, Fuck NPCs. They¡¯re not worth the trouble, unless you¡¯re trying to kill them. But still¡­ Something in me just wouldn¡¯t let the little boy stay there crying like that. ¡°Hi,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± I stood there, feeling cold. ¡°I¡­¡± the little boy stammered. ¡°I¡­ I¡­.¡± ¡°You can tell me.¡± I put my hand on his shoulder. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡± his voice was soft and unsure, such that I could barely make out the word. ¡°What?¡± I asked. ¡°What is it?¡± In so many ways, I hated talking to people. They would lie to you, manipulate you, use your for their own gain and drop you in a moment¡¯s notice. But kids I was alright dealing with. They were people, and thus fundamentally flawed. But the lies were easy to see through, as were the manipulations. As for using you for their own gain? Well, in a way, that¡¯s what mentorship is all about. The older generation is supposed to give to the young. It¡¯s supposed to make sure they¡¯re safe. If the younger generation gives back? That¡¯s great. But it¡¯s not a requirement. Investing in the future is more important than investing in the past. The moments were long before the little boy began to speak again. This seemed to be the start of a mission, but if it was, it was taking an oddly long time to get. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Seriously, what sort of game mechanic was this? Finally, he said, ¡°My Mom. She¡¯s gone.¡± ¡°Where¡¯d you lose her?¡± I asked. ¡°Do you remember?¡± ¡°She¡­ monsters¡­ the dragons took her.¡± ¡°Dragons?¡± I didn¡¯t like the sound of that. Fighting multiple dragons? Dealing with one dragon had been tough enough. ¡°The Blood Dragons,¡± the little boy said. ¡°They took my Mom to The Sewers.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never been to The Sewers. Will you show me how to get there?¡± ¡°Yeah, I can¡­ Please help me.¡± ¡°I will,¡± I said. More likely than not, the dragons were going to kill me. But I just couldn¡¯t tell this kid no, not with his mom gone. ¡°You just have to show me the way.¡± Without another word, the kid ran off. I followed. For a second, I got caught up in my head, in my own thoughts. It was weird to think that I was running here, along the buildings that were a weird mix of Greco-Roman and Medieval, with little bits of modernity thrown in. Because really, I wasn¡¯t running at all. My brain thought I was running. Everything in my body was telling me I was running. But in truth? I was sitting alone in my room. Watching this fake kid, I felt a pang of loneliness. What did it mean, that so much of my time was spent interacting with algorithms, instead of people? The thought consumed me, until we reached an entryway to The Sewers. It was a metal grate. I looked and saw that under the metal grate, there lay a fast-moving stream of water. ¡°She¡¯s down there,¡± the boy said. The grate had hinges, so that boy was able to pull on it and open up a whole I could enter through. He pointed for me to enter the dark Sewers, filled with fast-moving water and dragons. ¡°Fuck,¡± I said. Then, realizing I probably shouldn¡¯t swear at a kid, I said, ¡°Aw, shit.¡± That didn¡¯t really help matters. So I said, ¡°Hey, when I get your mom out of their, make sure not to mention that I said fuck and shit in front of you.¡± ¡°I promise,¡± the kid said. ¡°Just get her out of there, please.¡± I looked down at The Sewers. At the ladder that would take me into that dark hellhole. I took a deep breath. I¡¯m totally going to die, I thought, descending into The Sewers. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Six Hard to see anything, in the darkness of The Sewers. I held my sword out. Didn¡¯t want to waste time unsheathing it, if any danger came my way. The place was damp but hot. Smelled like shit, which made all too much sense. I walked along the side, a small walkway which kept me out of the dirty water. The sound of it rushing by blocked out the sound of anything else. My hope was that that meant it merely blocked out the sound of silence. At the same time, there was the knowledge that a monster could very much take me by surprise. My eyes couldn¡¯t see much in the darkness. My ears couldn¡¯t hear much, over the water. And even my sense of smell was weakened by the stench of The Sewers. Walking in the path of dragons would¡¯ve been bad enough. Walking in the path of dragons while blind was even worse. Walking in the path of dragons, while I was practically blind, deaf, and even unable to smell anything. Not a great position to be in. Oh, yeah, and they weren¡¯t just dragons, they were Blood Dragons. Whatever the fuck that meant. Whatever it meant, it couldn¡¯t be good. It¡¯s not exactly like you put ¡°Blood¡± in front of things that were sweet and kind. Blood Grandma, Blood Teddy Bear, Blood Snuggles. That shit just didn¡¯t make any sense. I continued trekking next to the running dirty water. Footsteps weren¡¯t the way to do things. Instead, I shuffled along the edge of the sewer, making sure I didn¡¯t take a wrong step and tumble right in. In fact, I got pretty close to stumbling into the sewage at one point. Realizing it was a turn, I instead walked. This time I kept my hand on the wall to make sure I didn¡¯t fall in. Given the state I was in -- which is to say, ¡®unable to notice jack-shit¡¯ -- it was pretty easy for me to feel afraid. This feeling was exacerbated by a sound that managed to break over the rushing water. At first I questioned why the sound reminded me of the Jurassic Park films. Then I realized it wasn¡¯t dragons I was hearing. It was Blood Dragons. I reached an area where a bit of light was shining through from above. It was in front of me, off in the distance, but it at least made me vaguely aware of my surroundings. In the light there was a sliver of red. Sword drawn, I approached. It didn¡¯t look like a wing or a foot. No idea what the sliver of red was. The dragon made another loud roaring sound, reminding me that it did of course belong to the Blood Dragon. In that dragon¡¯s roar, there was something peculiar -- something that hadn¡¯t been heard from the Earth Dragon. When the Earth Dragon roared, it¡¯d sounded almost obligatory. Roaring was just the way it communicated. With the Blood Dragon, things were entirely different. It sounded more mournful. I heard in its roar a pang of anger and a pang of sorrow. It reminded me of a train whistling away in the dead of night. You know: it had that power, but also that sense of aching loneliness. I continued the approach. It became clear to me that the sliver of red was a bone. I approached the light. Got used to the confusing mix of light and darkness. Thought I could see the outline of the dragon. It was huge. The bone sliced in my direction. Thwacked it away with my sword. 79/80 HP The red bone was connected to The Blood Dragon. The red bone was The Blood Dragon. I saw that the bone was really just the edge of one of its wings. The whole dragon was a skeleton. The dragon once again tried bringing the sharp bone of its wing down on my head. Once again, I blocked it, hacking my sword at the bone to bring it off course. It hit against the concrete floor, missing me. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.Still, a sharp pain ripped through my arm. The bone had been so powerful, the dragon¡¯s size giving it an advantage when it came to strength. 93% HP No way I could keep up this sort of attack, not with my HP dropping seven points just because of the force of the blow. Thorn Punch wasn¡¯t likely to do much damage against bones, anyway. The bone came down again. I used my sword to protect myself. 86% HP Fuck. 78/80 HP So far as I could tell, there was no way to fight this dragon with my current powerset, not unless I could figure out how Lightning Eyes actually worked. The pain in my arm made it hard to think. I switched the sword into my non-dominant hand, backing slowly away from the dragon. Would that make it charge forward? No idea how to tell what the dragon might do. No choice, though. The dragon outclassed me big time. As I backed up, the Blood Dragon moved forward. The red bony wing came more into view. I could see it was leaf-shaped, with a lattice-like collection of bones stretching across the empty space in the wing¡¯s outline. After that, the red bone foot came into view, its three sharp talons coming out the three toes. The wing of the dragon became shrouded in darkness by the time the head came into view. It looked just like a dinosaur skull -- the sort you might see in a museum. Except this skull was read instead of white. And the eye sockets weren¡¯t empty. There was a cloudy whiteness in them, at the center of which lay a dot. The Blood Dragon roared again, this time with much more anger suffusing the pain. To put it simply, I was clearly in some deep shit. I turned around and ran. No more subtlety, no more backing away slowly. Sheer. Fucking. Terror. Racing through my veins and pulsing through my heart. It welled up inside me. Arm hurt while I ran. My feet smacked against the hard floor, over and over. The Blood Dragon¡¯s roar drowned out even the sound of rushing water. Fuck, fuck, fuck. For a moment, the rushing water once again overtook the sound of the dragon¡¯s roar. I craned my neck to see what the dragon was doing. Something flew out of its mouth. No way of telling what exactly, in the darkness. Fire? But it didn¡¯t emit light the way fire was supposed to. My foot ran out of floor to run across. I¡¯d forgotten there was a turn here, and that running straight led me straight into the water. Too late. As I began falling towards the septic water, the dragon¡¯s fire hit my back. But it wasn¡¯t fire. No, it was an acidic substance. Ate through my armor in half a second. Was eating through my skin before my foot even touched the water. My HP Bar made its way to 0% before I had time to process what¡¯d happened. With everything burning -- everything hurting -- I died. I died before I¡¯d even touched the water. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. --- Brief Note: I''m gonna be out of town Thursday through Sunday, so I''m not sure I''ll be able to post then. But after that, we''ll definitely get back on schedule! Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Seven Death felt like an old acquaintance I¡¯d met once. One who I¡¯d really hoped I wouldn¡¯t have to meet again, despite knowing the situation would make that difficult. We¡¯d said hi once, yeah. But I certainly didn¡¯t want to be seeing her all that often. Still, standing in the bright hot light of the temple, I knew death would start becoming a friend. ¡°Come to us,¡± a soft feminine voice said. ¡°Come to us.¡± A second. ¡°Come to us.¡± A third. This time I knew the drill, so it wasn¡¯t as disorienting to figure out how to get into the main room of the temple. I walked towards the voices. Reached my hand out, and let it get grabbed by one of the priestesses. She pulled me away from the glaring hot light of The Source, and into the temple, where I could actually see things. Just like before, the priestesses all had heads that looked remarkably like miniature suns. The one who had pulled me out had a bigger sun than the rest. She spoke with a deep voice. ¡°You smell of dragon blood.¡± That caused two thoughts to rattle my head simultaneously, each of them competing for my attention. The first was, How can she talk without a mouth? Where was the sound coming from? And the second question, Does my smell stick with me even after I¡¯ve died? The second question won out when I realized it was the most interesting. So I asked it. ¡°You can smell it even after I¡¯ve respawned?¡± I asked. ¡°Not usually, but I can smell the dragon¡¯s blood.¡± Her sun head crackled with a white hot energy. ¡°Blood Dragons are an unnatural thing. A perversion of the natural order. It clings to you for awhile.¡± Her voice was a whisper, as if she¡¯d deigned me worthy of a terrible secret. ¡°What¡¯s the best way to kill one?¡± Because let¡¯s be honest: that¡¯s the only thing I really gave a shit about. ¡°You can¡¯t.¡± The whisper grew even a little softer, such that I had to lean in to hear what the priestess was saying. ¡°Blood Dragons are already dead.¡± I struggled to hide my frustration. Seriously, this priestess couldn¡¯t have been a little more helpful? ¡°You¡¯re saying I can¡¯t defeat it?¡± ¡°You can¡¯t kill it,¡± the priestess said. ¡°What you can do is destroy it, but that won¡¯t happen if you confront them directly.¡± ¡°How will it happen?¡± ¡°By killing The Soul Weaver.¡± This priestess was driving me fucking nuts. All I wanted to do was complete this mission, but every answer she gave me seemed to prompt a new question. ¡°Who¡¯s The Soul Weaver?¡± ¡°The Soul Weaver is the one who created the Blood Dragons. It is he who took the souls of dragons unborn and weaved them into these not-living creatures -- these never-living creatures. Kill him, and you kill the magic that holds The Blood Dragons together. Kill that magic, and you destroy the Blood Dragons.¡± Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°Where can I find him?¡± ¡°In the Sewers.¡± So, in order to kill the dragons, all I had to do was traverse the area where I couldn¡¯t see or hear much of anything, all while avoiding the creatures that could kill me super-easily. Thank god for respawns. --- I walked past the kid, who lay on the ground, looking through the opening to The Sewers. He looked up at me as I approached. ¡°I died.¡± The explanation as to how I had come out of The Sewers. ¡°I came back. Your mom¡¯s gonna be safe, kid. Alright?¡± The explanation. The promise. I meant it. He looked up at me and said, ¡°Okay.¡± I went back into The Sewers, climbing down the ladder that allowed me into its dark abyss. Heart pounding. Knowing there was no way I could survive if one of these dragons came after me. Truth be told, the experience was thrilling. First, I had to figure out how to avoid the dragons. I¡¯d seen the one I confronted ahead of time because it roared, but there was no guarantee I¡¯d see the next one. Instead of sticking to the side of the sewer like I had last time, I decided to try a different strategy. Took my sword out of its hilt and lay it on the ground. Wouldn¡¯t do me any good against a dragon, and it would drag me down while I swam Then I took a deep breath. Slipped into the filthy water. I kept my head above it, even though you probably couldn¡¯t get any diseases in the game. Just the very concept of dipping my head in the filth seemed like a bad idea. The rest of my body was submerged, though, and so the water pushed me along, down the dark corners where I couldn¡¯t see a thing. It felt like being on an amusement park ride: you just followed the path you were supposed to. Spectacular danger seemed to lurk at every corner, and in the back of your head you wondered if something could go wrong. Of course, the animatronics in amusement park rides weren¡¯t actually going to kill you. The Blood Dragons might. As the current of the dirty water pulled me along, I heard a Blood Dragon roar. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Eight In the darkness of The Sewers, it was hard to tell where exactly the Blood Dragon was. But clearly, he was close. Panic set in. Couldn¡¯t let the dragon see me. And so, as the dragon wailed on -- roaring about something lost, something found, or maybe just the wickedness of a life created solely for the purpose of others destroying it -- I let the water carry me forward. I took a deep breath. Plunged my head into the dark water. There were a couple of things I thought about, as I swam through the grimy water. One: the water was gross, but there wasn¡¯t too much to be worried about. It¡¯s not like germs could affect me here, right? Two: the water pressure wasn¡¯t quite right down here. My ears didn¡¯t get that same popping sensation they had when I swam back in the real world. And three: I shouldn¡¯t technically have to breathe. The water dulled the roars of the Blood Dragon. And so I continued swim, wondering if I could keep doing this until I found the Soul Weaver. But how to find him? Able to see so little, hear so little, how would I find him? I continued swimming, hoping something would help me figure out the answer. The Blood Dragon¡¯s roar got ear-splittingly loud, even under the water. He must¡¯ve been right on top of me. My lungs were starting to burn. You don¡¯t need to breathe, I told myself. You don¡¯t need to breathe. As I moved through the water, the roars began to dull. Getting softer and softer. Lungs burning. It was safer down here in the water. And I should be able to stay down here. But my lungs felt like they were going to split open. My head broke through the water. I took a breath, then went back in. Time blurred down here, since there wasn¡¯t any sun. No idea how long I spent in the water, drifting along with the current, nothing to accompany but the roars of the dragon and one singular question: how would I find The Soul Weaver? Eventually, the environment gave me an answer. Or at least, I thought it was an answer. When I broke my head through the water to get another breath, I saw a weaving, shimmering light. Dipped my head back into the water, allowing the water to guide me in the direction of the light. Didn¡¯t hear any Blood Dragon roaring, so I peeked my head out of the water to make sure I was going in the right direction. Things went on like that, the water pulling me along, me occasionally peeking my head out of the water to make sure I was going in the right direction. The light went on and on. There wasn¡¯t even a promise that the light would lead me to The Soul Weaver, but I didn¡¯t have anything better to go on. So I swam. When I reached something, I was almost surprised. I saw The Soul Weaver standing in a little concrete alcove, standing with a woman. The magic light allowed me to see them pretty clearly, though I couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying. The man had on a long, red robe. His mouth was just an inch away from a lady¡¯s ear. He was talking to the brown-haired woman. Her features were a little reminiscent of the kid I¡¯d come here for. Bingo. I swam to the concrete side of The Sewers, fighting against the current. Grabbed onto its edge and dragged myself out of the murky water. It pulled at me, since I was soaking wet. My armor felt cold and gross. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. ¡°Fuck you,¡± I yelled, struggling to be heard over the rushing water. The Soul Weaver turned to look at me. He moved his lips. Something like, ¡°Who are you?¡± or ¡°Why are you here?¡± Didn¡¯t have my sword, but I didn¡¯t need to have my sword. Energy pulsed through the veins in my hand. Thorns broke through my knuckles. The Soul Weaver raised his hand in the air. The light that illuminated us moved with the movement of his hands. It began encircling me. ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± I said. No way anyone would hear me, but in all honesty, I liked it that way. Punched at the light wrapped around my torso. My fist went through the light, but it still had a firm hold of me. I wriggled, trying to get unwrapped from this thing. I saw that The Soul Weaver was struggling to manipulate the lights like this. Would it be possible to break the light if I made him struggle hard enough. My fists kept punching through the light, but there wasn¡¯t any HP indicators flashing before my eyes. I pushed against the light, hit it, struggled with it. The light picked me up off the ground. Figured I was done for. Then I saw the brown-haired lady he was with. She punched him in the face. The second she did that, the light dissipated. I fell to the floor. 98% HP I could take 2% damage. I got up off the concrete floor and saw the lady standing over The Soul Weaver. Her knuckles were a bit bloodied, and The Soul Weaver wasn¡¯t moving. She walked over to me and yelled, ¡°Thanks for the help.¡± Then, with a smile, ¡°Also, you¡¯re welcome.¡± She ran off, and I followed her. We ran through The Sewers, thankfully taking the dryer version. When we got to the ladder that led back up to the city, she noticed the sword lying on the floor. I picked it up. She backed away from it and went up the ladder. Once we¡¯d both gotten to the top, the kid hugged his mother. ¡°Seriously, though,¡± she said. ¡°Thanks. Sewers aren¡¯t really my style.¡± ¡°Yeah, well¡­ I was just doing the mission.¡± ¡°Were you?¡± she asked. You¡¯ve reached Level 7! The green letters flashed before my eyes. ¡°Uh, yeah,¡± I said. What¡¯d she want me to say? ¡°Well, I hope it feels good, being a hero.¡± I nodded my head. ¡°It does.¡± ¡°You know, if you¡¯re looking for another mission, I¡¯ve got one for you.¡± ¡°Really?¡± I asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°My son and I need to go to The Thorny Sword so I can take care of some business. But after the way those dragons took me, I¡¯m thinking I could use some protection.¡± ¡°I can do that.¡± ¡°Great,¡± she said. ¡°Follow me.¡± --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Thirty Nine There didn¡¯t seem to be any trouble on the way to The Thorny Sword, but that wasn¡¯t so much of a surprise. The point of the ¡®mission¡¯ seemed to be less about fighting and more about her talking to me. She was a good talker. Her name was Raine. ¡°I like talking to Heroes,¡± Raine said. ¡°You all say and do some of the craziest things. Then again, that¡¯s part of your charm.¡± As we walked, she held the hand of her boy, Joey. He was being pretty quiet, but he was smiling. ¡°You don¡¯t believe it?¡± ¡°What, that this entire world is a virtual reality simulation, designed for your enjoyment?¡± Her smile was even bigger than her kid¡¯s. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°I mean, if someone told me that about my world, I¡¯d be pretty upset.¡± ¡°Your world being the other world,¡± Raine said, ¡°where the economy is terrible, everyone¡¯s miserable, and you all have to come in here and kill things to feel better?¡± A pause. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Honestly, I don¡¯t care.¡± She let out a laugh. ¡°Setting aside how self-centered that fantasy is, so what? So what if this world is a virtual simulation? I¡¯m still here, Joey¡¯s still here, and we still have to live our lives. Maybe it is a simulation, like the Heroes say. Maybe some of the NPCs who are terrified all the time have a point. But it doesn¡¯t change anything. I¡¯ve got stuff to do. Gotta live my life. We all do.¡± Raine looked pretty nice, if I¡¯m being honest. Gave me butterflies in my stomach. Then she started talking, and I just¡­ Wow. ¡°That makes sense,¡± I said. We continued walking and talking. Joey talked about dragons for a while, telling me he¡¯d liked the dragons before but now he thought they were terrible. Throughout the walk I kept wondering how this worked. Did Joey respawn back at the opening to The Sewers? Did Raine just go straight back to The Soul Weaver, escaping from his grasp over and over again? They were walking with me, though. As much as I enjoyed their company, I couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that they weren¡¯t going to be here for long. I tried relating to them -- I wanted so badly to get to know them as people. But they weren¡¯t people, not really. They were NPCs. Even worse, as much as I liked walking with them, I didn¡¯t like our destination: The Thorny Sword. My last trip there hadn¡¯t exactly been¡­ pleasant. I was worried what the bartender would do when she saw me again. Fight me? Took a deep breath. It wasn¡¯t a big deal if she tried fighting with me. In that case I could just kill her and take the XP. But that didn¡¯t feel right. I didn¡¯t want to fight the bartender. She wasn¡¯t wrong; I really had been a bit of a dick. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. We walked, they talked, I listened, and I panicked. After what seemed like a long, long time, we ended up in front of The Thorny Sword. ¡°Well,¡± I said, voice feeling hollow, ¡°I guess my work here is done. I¡¯m gonna take the XP and go now.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t wanna sit down and talk some more?¡± she asked. ¡°Got a lot of¡­¡± I didn¡¯t have a good excuse, not really, but I did my best. ¡°Need to finish some other missions.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°You¡¯ve at least got to take me into the building if you want to finish the mission.¡± Damn it. With a gulp, I nodded my head. ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Joey practically pulled his mother into The Thorny Sword. I followed the two of them. The moment we got into the tavern, my heart started beating faster. For a second, the bartender lit up. Her orcish features beamed to see Raine and Joey. Then she saw me; she wasn¡¯t so happy to see me. ¡°What the fuck are you doing here?¡± she asked. Good question. I checked QUEST LOG and saw that I¡¯d technically finished the mission by walking Raine and Joey into The Thorny Sword. So I figured I just had to explain I was going. ¡°I--¡± Raine didn¡¯t let me finish. ¡°This Hero saved me.¡± ¡°He killed a troll.¡± ¡°Vinnie?¡± Raine asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± the bartender said. ¡°He was a drunk and an asshole. He respawned, right?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± the bartender said. ¡°No harm, no foul,¡± Raine said. ¡°Maybe after the respawn he¡¯ll have a better personality. Joey was standing out in the city all by himself, and Chris made sure I could see my kid again.¡± The bartender didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°I think he¡¯s cool,¡± Joey said. The bartender shot me a dirty look, but she still didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°Give him a mission.¡± Rained grabbed the bartender¡¯s hand. ¡°For me.¡± The bartender¡¯s look didn¡¯t get any sweeter, but she did start talking. ¡°I¡¯ve got something for you. It involves death, so you should be good at it.¡± --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty The temple made me uncomfortable. A lot of things in this game made me uncomfortable, but the temple was a whole new level. First you had the pillars of binary to pass by, which highlighted how self-aware so many of these NPCs were. They heard the PCs talking about the real world, talking about how this was all a game. That managed to affect both their psychology and their belief system. The effect wasn¡¯t lessened when I stepped through the doorway. There was so much searing light in there. No artificial light, I noticed. More like spiritual light. You had the light coming from the alcove that players respawned from. Then you had the light coming from the priestess¡¯s sun heads. It gave the place a spooky glow. And of course the walls were covered with binary. I watched the priestesses take a PC out of the light. ¡°Come to us.¡± ¡°Come to us.¡± ¡°Come to us.¡± The priestesses pulled a respawned PC out of the light. She was an elf, with the diamond hard skin. Had a look of confusion, making it obvious this was her first time. Funny how quickly I¡¯d gone from being new at respawning to being able to spot a newb when I saw one. The elf stumbled out the temple door. Hadn¡¯t noticed it at first, but there were four priestesses in the temple, now. There were the three I recognized from before: two with normal-sized sun heads, one with a sun head even bigger than I remembered. The fourth priestess had a smaller head than the others. The priestess with the big head was named Diana. At least that¡¯s what the bartender said. When Diana noticed me, I can¡¯t say she looked sad. She didn¡¯t have a face to make the facial expression. But still, the energy of her sun bubbled up, spitting out. Bursts of energy flying in unpredictable directions. She looked dangerous. She looked like she had to go. She walked towards me and said, ¡°I¡¯m ready.¡± I nodded my head and led her outside. Couldn¡¯t see how the other priestesses felt. All I could do was imagine. Were they all going to end up like she did? We walked through Charon, moving to get out of the city and away from the innocent. ¡°You don¡¯t have to look so sad,¡± the priestess said, voice deep. ¡°I knew this was happening. It happens to all of us.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Circle of life, I guess.¡± The priestess stopped speaking for a moment, while we passed through the gatehouse and walked into Meltdown Jungle. ¡°Ambition, too.¡± ¡°Ambition?¡± I moved in front of the priestess, unsheathing my sword so as to cut the kaleidoscopic foliage that lay in our way. ¡°I take it you don¡¯t know how priestesses become priestesses.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± My sword worked through a dense cluster of purple vines. ¡°We study,¡± she said, ¡°attempting to contain all the wisdom the Four Sages have produced. Attempting to become a Sage by accumulating all their knowledge.¡± ¡°Someone new can become a Sage?¡± Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. ¡°Yes, but only one,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s not easy, and it has yet to be done. But it is said that someone can become a Sage. Someone needs to, to replace The Rose Sage.¡± ¡°So you wanted to be the new Rose Sage.¡± ¡°Yes. I didn¡¯t make it.¡± I wondered if that explained her head. She answered my question before I asked it. ¡°The knowledge is too much to handle. If you¡¯re not supposed to be a Sage, the knowledge overpowers you. It leaks out of your ears, encircles your head, growing and growing, getting more unstable until eventually it¡¯s too much. We have to explode.¡± I nodded my head. That sucked. ¡°Like I said, don¡¯t look sad. I knew what I was doing. Knew what was coming. This is the life I chose. It¡¯s been a good life.¡± There was another question I wanted to ask, but I wasn¡¯t sure if I should. What sort of knowledge could affect someone¡¯s head like that? What sort of knowledge could leak out your ears, build and built until it exploded? ¡°You want to know what I learned, don¡¯t you?¡± Her ability to tell what I was thinking was uncanny. It wasn¡¯t like telepathy -- more like wisdom. Either she¡¯d had these sorts of conversations over and over again, or she just knew Heroes really well. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. Her head was getting more volatile, energy whipping around. ¡°There¡¯s so much I could tell -- the miracles of this world, its purpose, its madness. But there¡¯s only so much your head could handle, and there¡¯s only one thing you need to know: your friend is alive. You have to find her, because she needs you.¡± I had to take a step away from the priestess, moving behind a tree. The energy of her head was lashing out, rays of light whipping through the air. ¡°My friend?¡± I asked. ¡°You know,¡± the priestess said. The rays of light began slashing through foliage, slicing orange leaves and yellow branches off trees. Her head expanded rapidly. Her feet lifted off the ground. The star began rising, and the priestess went along with it. ¡°You know.¡± Her voice seemed so small, compared to the magnitude of the moment. The ball of energy got so big and so wild, lashing out against all the foliage of Meltdown Jungle, making it rain down on the ground. When it seemed like it couldn¡¯t get any bigger, it dislodged from the priestess. It flew into the sky, going higher and higher until I couldn¡¯t see it anymore. The priestess¡¯s body fell to the ground. Her corpse lay there. Her head was gone. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty One ¡°C¡¯mon, Chris. Try a sip.¡± ¡°I really don¡¯t want to.¡± ¡°It¡¯s good.¡± ¡°I¡­ ¡°Just a sip.¡± It was back in college when I tried alcohol for the first time. As with so many things, it was Alex who had to get me out of my comfort zone. ¡°It¡¯s good.¡± ¡°Yeah, you see?¡± ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s¡­ I¡¯ve had beer before, but--¡± ¡°Beer is different, Chris.¡± ¡°Yeah. This tastes good.¡± ¡°Haven¡¯t I told you I¡¯m always right?¡± It was a weird thing to say, but Alex said it with a big smile, so I couldn¡¯t be so mad. I sort of liked that she was always right. When I was around I didn¡¯t have to worry so much about things. So long as she was happy, I could be happy. The two of us started out the night just sitting in her room -- chatting, chilling, having a good time. But time wore on and I drank more and more. Without me really understanding what was happening, Alex took me to a party at some guy¡¯s house. I didn¡¯t know the guy, and I¡¯m not sure Alex did either. Still, we weaved through the house: empty beer cartons strewn about, sticky floor, people I didn¡¯t know. Alex told everyone we were dating. We hadn¡¯t talked about it, but I was so happy to feel like I belonged to someone. We danced. We made out. I was so happy. Nobody else mattered. After a while, Alex took me into a corner of the room. There was loud music playing -- something pop, no idea what. Alex took a plastic baggie out of her pocket. Handed it to me. She took another plastic baggie out, and opened it. ¡°Take it,¡± she said. They were mushrooms. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You liked the Rum and Coke, didn¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Then trust me, Chris. This¡¯ll be fun.¡± I opened the bag of mushrooms and began eating them. Leaned my back against the wall as I chewed. At first, nothing was different. I don¡¯t remember what we talked about. There was a sense that something was coming. I felt like things were different, but I knew it was a psychosomatic. When it hit, it hit hard. ¡°You feel it?¡± ¡°I¡­ Yeah.¡± The music was louder, almost overbearing. I thought about myself, about my relationship to the world. Wondered if I was doing the right thing. If I was living up to my potential. Alex and I stumbled around. I told her I didn¡¯t want to be around the loud music, so we walked through the frat house, eventually finding some guy¡¯s bedroom. It was just him and a couple guys playing a video game. ¡°Hey, we¡¯re gonna crash here for a bit,¡± Alex said. ¡°My friend¡¯s not feeling well.¡± Head was throbbing. I thought hallucinogens were supposed to make you see weird shit, but that wasn¡¯t the main thing. The mushrooms were making me feel weird. I would move my hand, and then only realize I¡¯d moved it a second or two ago. I was forgetting my past. Forgetting all the awful things my parents had done to each other, forgetting all the times I¡¯d wondered if I was trans*. I was forgetting everything. The guys were playing a game. They were on the waiting screen, which meant a black screen with big letters scrawled across it. The screen said, Bullet¡¯s Reign: Dead Harmony. ¡°Bullet¡¯s Reign: Dead Harmony.¡± The words tumbled from my lips. Alex grabbed my hand and shushed me. The game took place in a futuristic dystopian New York. It looked a little film noir, honestly, with shadows and silhouettes drenching the place. There were alleyways you couldn¡¯t trust and taxi cabs that would¡¯ve belonged in the 20¡¯s, if not for the fact that they could fly. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The screen was divided into four sections, each one following the perspective of one of the players. There were four of them. Two were probably new at the game. They were running around the city, not able to find anybody worth shooting. The other two, I could tell, had plans. One was named Zed, the other MarkFucksYou. While the two newbs were constantly changing direction, whirling their cameras around while attempting to get a bearing on their surroundings, Zed and MarkFucksYou both moved in a more assured fashion. Zed found a dumpster in an alleyway. He opened it up. MarkFucksYou, meanwhile, was leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Hard to tell whether he was running towards something or away from it. I ignored the two newbs. Just trying to watch their screens made my head spin. Inside the dumpster was a bazooka. Zed had a pistol in his hand, which went in his inventory so he could wield the bazooka. He aimed his bazooka towards the street. There was no activity going on there, and it was late at night. MarkFucksYou jumped off a roof, but this time he didn¡¯t seem to be trying to land on the next one. He turned his gaze down, gun in hand. Below him was a player, whom he shot at repeatedly. He landed on the player, killing him. One of the newb¡¯s screens lit up bright red. On Zed¡¯s screen, he wasn¡¯t moving. For a moment, I wondered what was happening. What was his plan? What was the meaning of all this? Then the other newb ran through the street, running in the direction of Zed¡¯s aim. Zed shot the bazooka in the newb¡¯s direction. One shot, one kill. The newb exploded. Watching the guys at their controllers, killing virtual selves over and over, I had to wonder. Was this just what people did? Was the urge to kill so great that people couldn¡¯t let it go? Maybe it was better to shuffle that impulse out of this world and into a fictional, virtual one. These games weren¡¯t games in the traditional sense. They weren¡¯t like board games, or card games. They were about blood and conquest. You could link them back to riots and protests; to the French beheadings and Christian crusades and the fall of Rome and Julius Caesar¡¯s stabbing and Cain and Abel. They all spoke to that same fundamental need, that need to say: I¡¯m here, I exist, I matter. And perhaps, most frighteningly: I deserve life more than you. After a couple hours the worst of my shroom trip passed. The guys turned off the game and Alex brought me back home. I had the worst nightmares and woke up still a little high. Still, even with my senses and thoughts feeling completely whacked out, Alex¡¯s presence was calming. ¡°That was weird,¡± I muttered, staring up at the white ceiling, Alex laying next to me. She wrapped an arm around my torso. ¡°It was good though, right?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. I knew it was what she wanted to hear. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty Two I¡¯d completed the mission. Standing back at The Thorny Sword, it felt like there was so much to do. Had to find Alex, find out what her problem was, and try to help her. But there was some comfort in the fact that I had done things: gaining new skills, Attribution Points, and so on. The bartender glanced at me as I entered. ¡°Mission completed,¡± she said. Then she went under the counter, grabbing a glass that she then used to pour beer for another customer. ¡°Good to see you again,¡± Raine said. ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°You too.¡± Joey sat next to her, looking up at the ceiling, mesmerized. My gaze followed his, and so I saw it: a sword hanging from the ceiling. That confused me, but before I got a chance to speak, Raine said, ¡°I have another mission for you.¡± ¡°That¡¯s great,¡± I said, maybe a little too loudly -- maybe a little too eagerly. ¡°I¡¯d like that, but I¡¯ve got a, uh, thing to take care of.¡± ¡°Yeah, okay,¡± she said. Didn¡¯t sound particularly okay, but I¡­ I had to get out of there. Had to figure out where Alex was, where I could even begin to look for her. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts, I forgot to say goodbye to everyone. --- The temple seemed like a pretty good place to figure things out at. I mean, I really didn¡¯t know where I could find Alex. And there was no guarantee that any of the NPCs in this world would know. But if the priestesses had absorbed all that knowledge in an attempt to become Sages, they were bound to know something. Of course, I also could¡¯ve gone straight to the Thorn Sage, but something in my gut told me not to. For one thing, he gave me the creeps. But more than that, I wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d be honest with me. He had this smarmy air about him, like a moldy aristocrat. And so I walked through Charon. While walking, I opened up my Skills Tree. I had a Skills Point I hadn¡¯t placed yet. An Attribution Point, too, but that I was waiting to get two more of, so that I could use three Attribute Points to level up my Durability. The two Skills I was really struggling to decide between were Thorn Protect and Vine Grab. The former was nice, because I didn¡¯t have much in the way of defensive capabilities, and my armor was still shit. The latter was nice because Vine Grab would let me pull things closer. In sword duels, the distance between you and your opponent can shape the whole nature of the fight, so that wasn¡¯t an insignificant thing. Still I decided on Thorn Protect. It¡¯d be nice to be able to defend myself, even if it had to be in a pretty meek fashion. Having bought the Skill and exited out of the Skill Tree, I saw that there weren¡¯t too many identifiable PCs in the streets. Odd. It was even odder still when I entered the temple. For the first time, they didn¡¯t seem to be busy. Instead, they were sitting in a circle in the middle of the stone temple. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. There weren¡¯t any accoutrements -- no chairs, not much of anything -- and so they merely sat on the floor. The three of them wore long purple robes, which contrasted oddly with their star-like heads. Two of them had their backs to me, while one was facing towards me. The one facing towards me said, ¡°We have no adventures for you at this time, storied Hero. You must ind--¡± ¡°I¡¯m not here for a mission.¡± I imagine my statement surprised her, but since I couldn¡¯t see her face, the surprise didn¡¯t show. The glow of their heads gave the priestesses such a mysterious quality. ¡°Then why have you come?¡± ¡°For wisdom,¡± I said. ¡°You cannot become a Sage,¡± the Priestess said. ¡°The Rose Sage was a woman. So too will the future Rose Sage be a woman.¡± The topic made me uncomfortable. So quickly, I said, ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a Sage.¡± ¡°Do you desire wisdom for wisdom¡¯s sake?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. It was hard. There was no point in plainly asking them where Alex Solonik was. They wouldn¡¯t know her by that name. She could be anyone in here. Given her admin abilities, she wouldn¡¯t even need to be a PC. She could be anything. ¡°I want to know your God.¡± The words tumbled out of my lips. ¡°A true God is a being of belief. To know him would not necessitate belief, and thus he would not be a god,¡± she said. ¡°You can know powerful beings, but God? Impossible.¡± ¡°Your creator,¡± I said. ¡°What of her?¡± The priestess nodded her starry head. ¡°You want to know of big things. Sit with us. At this hour, few Heroes are active. And so we have time to teach you many things.¡± I sat down, excited to learn more about the world, and Alex¡¯s relationship with it. Still, there was one question I couldn¡¯t quite escape from, one that I couldn¡¯t help but ask, no matter how much I knew I wouldn¡¯t like the answer. Why is this game so weird? And why are so many of the NPCs this self-aware? The truth is that Alex had always been a weird, weird woman. The truth is, as much as I loved her, Alex also scared me. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty Three The priestesses sat with me in a circle in the temple. ¡°It started with an idea,¡± the priestess explained. ¡°A creative being from the Hero¡¯s world.¡± ¡°I thought NPCs didn¡¯t believe in the Hero¡¯s world.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not all the same,¡± she said. ¡°The Thorn Sage told me,¡± I said. ¡°The Thorn Sage is¡­ a complicated case.¡± I nodded my head, letting it go at that. If it didn¡¯t bring me closer to Alex, I didn¡¯t need to know. Honesty, I didn¡¯t give a shit. ¡°It all started in the world where Heroes come from. A world without magic, without dragons. Where the world constantly threatens apocalypse but never quite gets there.¡± Sounded true enough. ¡°In that world there was a creative individual, our Creator. A being who floated through the world, always a bit above it. Never connecting, always a drifting, looking for a purpose.¡± Never connecting to anyone. Never connecting to me, apparently. ¡°And what happened to her, once she¡¯d created the world?¡± ¡°She found purpose.¡± I tried not to get frustrated. ¡°I mean, how does she interact with the world? Does she live here?¡± Silence. After a pause, the priestess said, ¡°Nobody knows, exactly. Some say she resides solely in the world where Heroes come from, keeping a watchful eye over the game but never actually entering it. That she watches over us by watching the ones and zeroes -- understanding our source in a manner no one else can.¡± Seeing as how she¡¯d gone missing in the real world, I doubted that she wouldn¡¯t be in this world too. Alex wasn¡¯t the passive voyeuristic type. She liked control. ¡°Is that what you think?¡± I asked. ¡°I think we don¡¯t really know. There are many possibilities. What do you know of Panopticon?¡± The name rang a bell, but I didn¡¯t really remember anything about Panopticon, so I said, ¡°Not much.¡± ¡°Panopticon ruled this world before The Four Sages. He was omniscient: someone who saw everything and knew everything. No one quite understands where he came from or how he got his power. This makes some wonder if he was our creator.¡± The timeline for that didn¡¯t match. This game had been out for a week at most. How could all that have happened? ¡°How long has this world existed?¡± ¡°Forever.¡± ¡°You had a mother?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°A grandmother?¡± ¡°Yes. And on and on. This world has existed for a long, long time.¡± I had to file that information away for later. There were so many things it could mean. ¡°Panopticon was destroyed,¡± the priestess said, ¡°but if Panopticon was our creator, he was merely a character our creator played. Our creator would still be around, perhaps in another skin.¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°If I wanted to find the creator, how could I?¡± The priestess shook her sun-like head. ¡°Nobody knows.¡± ¡°Why do you wish to see the creator?¡± the second priestess said, speaking for the first time. ¡°I think she¡¯s in trouble.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know where the creator is,¡± the second priestess explained, ¡°but there is a way you can understand her wishes.¡± ¡°How?¡± I asked. ¡°The Volcano of Dreams,¡± the second priestess explained. ¡°It happens very rarely, but the game sometimes gives to people via the volcano. Usually it¡¯s in the form of improvements, but it could also theoretically be information. If a Hero wants to interact with the volcano, they need to find a coin, which is dropped--¡± ¡°--when you kill certain enemies. I threw a coin in the volcano.¡± For a moment, all the priestesses sat there, silent. ¡°It¡¯s very rare for someone to throw a coin into the volcano,¡± one of the priestesses explained. ¡°What did it tell you? What was it so important?¡± I sat there, wishing I had a good answer. Wishing I could put any of this together. ¡°Nothing,¡± I said. ¡°It didn¡¯t tell me anything. Jhaness told me to make a wish, and...¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t make the right wish?¡± the priestess asked. ¡°The Volcano didn¡¯t give me anything. Didn¡¯t tell me anything, either.¡± ¡°You have to go back,¡± one of the priestesses said. ¡°You have to go back.¡± A second. ¡°You have to go back.¡± A third. ¡°I have to go back,¡± I said, nodding my head. ¡°Find a coin. If the game wants you to interact with the volcano, it¡¯ll make sure you get a coin from a dropped monster. Then throw it in the volcano. Make the right wish, ask the right question. Do whatever you have to. Your destiny is to be found there.¡± I thought back on the coin I¡¯d picked up -- the one with Jhaness¡¯s image scrawled on it. The one I¡¯d earned only after killing Jhaness. Sent a shiver down my spine. Gave me the creeps just thinking about it. Still, of this I was certain: I had to go back to the volcano. I had to understand what Alex was up to. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty Four I sat in my bedroom, having logged off the game. Had to find Alex. Help her. Do what I could. At the same time, my body was killing me. A faint light poured through my window. Bird by the window squaked loudly. 6 AM. Couldn¡¯t remember when I¡¯d even logged on. The skin around my eyes felt sore. Touching it with my hand, I felt the indent where the VR goggles had been. ¡°Goddamn,¡± I muttered. Grabbed my cane, put on my smartwatch, and hobbled into the kitchen. Stomach killed me. Felt like it was tightened in a knot. I took some mac ¡®n¡¯ cheese from the fridge and fired up the microwave. While the carton spun around on the microwave¡¯s turntable, my smartwatch rang. I pressed a button, picking up the call. ¡°Hey, Chris.¡± ¡°Paul,¡± I said. ¡°Your mom called me. She¡¯s been looking for you.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve been busy.¡± ¡°With Throne Quest?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Chris--¡± ¡°Alex is in trouble,¡± I said. ¡°The NPCs in the game are talking to me. Trying to explain how I can help her, but it¡¯s all so¡­¡± I stopped. ¡°You think I sound crazy.¡± A long pause. Finally, she said, ¡°It sounds like Alex is manipulating you. Making you jump through hoops to see her. Dragging you into her drama.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not like that. I think the game¡¯s got a life of its own. The NPCs are so self-aware.¡± ¡°Do you remember telling Alex you were trans?¡± Paula¡¯s voice was soft. ¡°How she reacted? You, coming into my dorm room? You cried. You called her such ugly names.¡± ¡°Alex was just scared. She¡¯s not¡­ I want to be with her. We belong to each other.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry this world can be rough. But Alex isn¡¯t good for you. You can¡¯t get back what you two had. And what you had¡­ You¡¯ve gotta find something better than that, Chris. You deserve better.¡± The microwave beeped. My mac ¡®n¡¯ cheese was done. ¡°Alex deserves something good, too. Gotta go.¡± I hung up. Scarfed down the mac ¡¯n¡¯ cheese, hobbled back to my bedroom, and put the VR headset back on. The datapulse whirred, as the world of Throne Quest booted back up again. I¡¯d logged off while standing at the base of the volcano, so that¡¯s where I ended up when I logged back on. I stared up at the towering gray mass. The purple smoke billowed in the air, massive clouds of it getting spat out. I began to climb. Something in the climb felt oddly routine. It was no more exciting than cooking the mac ¡®n¡¯ cheese had been. I made sure to avoid the monsters I could avoid. The ones who weren¡¯t easily avoidable were easily killable. The Volcano of Dreams was spitting purple fumes again, so that when I got to its top, I once again couldn¡¯t see anything. I got to my feet. Saw a dark shape flying in the fog: Jhaness. ¡°Greetings, Hero,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve come with another coin.¡± ¡°Another? I don¡¯t remember you.¡± She didn¡¯t remember me. Was that because I¡¯d killed her? Did the respawn reset her memory? Was she a whole new NPC? The why of it didn¡¯t matter, I decided with some level of unease. Her not remembering would mean less trouble for me. Of course, she could be lying. ¡°I¡¯ve brought a coin. Can I throw it into the volcano?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°Make a wish -- a good wish, a wish for the one thing you truly desire. If it¡¯s the right wish, it¡¯ll come true.¡± I took a deep breath of the sulfurous purple air. Made my way to the edge of the volcano. Put the coin in my hand, slid my thumb across the grooves of its surface. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. I wish I was close to you, Alex, I thought. I wish I could help you, make you happy. I pulled my arm back, then snapped it forward. Long seconds of waiting. Figured Jhaness was going to tell me I¡¯d fucked up again. That a video game couldn¡¯t fulfill my emotional needs, or whatever. To my surprise, a chat box opened up. It was bright white, easily readable and completely unobstructed by the smoke. ¡°ONLY YOU CAN KILL THE THORN SAGE, ALEX,¡± it read. ¡°DO SO AND SAVE ME. THEN WE CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN.¡± Kill the Thorn Sage¡­ I couldn¡¯t, could I? I wasn¡¯t strong enough. He had guards, and I had power, but that much? No way I could do it without my Lightning Eyes, and I still couldn¡¯t figure out how to use them. ¡°Was your wish granted?¡± Jhaness asked. ¡°I have to complete a mission before it¡¯s granted,¡± I said, ¡°but yes.¡± ¡°What was your wish?¡± Jhaness asked. ¡°I want to meet¡­¡± I stopped myself from saying ¡®Alex¡¯. ¡°I wanted to meet your God.¡± ¡°Why?¡± Jhaness asked. ¡°I knew her before, and we had a good thing. I¡¯d like to see her again.¡± ¡°You sound troubled.¡± ¡°I am.¡± ¡°Why?¡± that was the trouble with Jhaness. In the few times I¡¯d spoken to her, she¡¯d shown such depth, such humanity. That scared me. Still, it wasn¡¯t really why I was troubled. ¡°Your God and I¡­ things weren¡¯t always perfect. Sometimes I felt like I was walking on eggshells. Like if I said one bad thing she¡¯d be gone forever.¡± ¡°That does sound like a problem.¡± ¡°But you¡¯re supposed to fight for the good things in life,¡± I said. ¡°And God made me feel so, so good.¡± ¡°God has the power to do that.¡± ¡°There was a little piece of me, though. A little piece of me that thought I might be happy here, in your world.¡± ¡°And why is that?¡± ¡°I¡­ Because your God created it, maybe. Because it made me feel closer to her.¡± I didn¡¯t want to explain Raine and her kid. There wasn¡¯t anything real there. But what if there could be? ¡°Sounds to me like you¡¯ve already made up your mind,¡± Jhaness said. ¡°I want to go on this adventure -- to save a person I had some very good times with. But then I wonder if¡­¡± Wonder if what? Wonder if I should fall in love with an NPC? Damn, I could be stupid sometimes. ¡°Forget it,¡± I said. Watching the flying figure, her big bird-like wings and small fly-like body hovering in the purple smoke, it felt like I was talking to a ghost. There was something calming about seeing her silhouette, as opposed to her true, monstrous form. I left The Volcano of Dreams. Figured I¡¯d go back to The Thorny Sword and talk to Raine one last time. --- Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty Five The City of Charon seemed like little more than a blur. It was weird, after having gotten so immersed in this reality, but I realized it didn¡¯t matter. It didn¡¯t matter as much as Alex. A part of me even convinced myself that maybe I didn¡¯t need to say goodbye to Raine. What was the point in saying goodbye to a computer program? I got attached too easily. And even when I tried to push people away, somehow, they always ended up back in my life. I walked straight into The Thorny Sword, not paying attention to the surroundings. As I entered The Thorny Sword, I couldn¡¯t help but noticed my surroundings. Something had changed. There was still the bartender who hated me, of course. There were Raine and the kid, sitting by the bar. But there was something in the air here -- two guards stood at the other end of The Thorn Sword. I couldn¡¯t see who they were protecting, presumably because the person was sitting down, and my view was blocked by the bar itself. Still, I had a pretty good guess. Raine smiled when she saw me. I couldn¡¯t smile back. I knew what had to be done. ¡°Hey, Hero,¡± Raine said as I approached the bar. ¡°You what what you had to do?¡± ¡°Not quite,¡± I said. Couldn¡¯t look at her, couldn¡¯t look at the kid. Couldn¡¯t bear the thought of what a life with them might¡¯ve been like. I walked past the bar. Feasted my eyes on The Thorn Sage, who sat there flanked by two guards. ¡°Well, well,¡± The Thorn Sage said, leaning back in his chair and smiling, his plate of chicken only half-eaten. ¡°The Hero with the Lightning Eyes returns.¡± I didn¡¯t feel the need to talk to him. Instead I unsheathed my sword, striking one of the Thorn Guards. 1,000 / 1,000 HP. The green letters floated above his head. ¡°You can¡¯t hurt them,¡± The Thorn Sage smirked. ¡°They can, however, hurt you.¡± One of the guards unsheathed his sword and thrust it in my direction. I lost 10% of my HP and stumbled backwards. ¡°I almost can¡¯t believe such impudence. Impotence, too,¡± The Thorn Sage said. His guard took a step forward. I looked up at where the wine glasses were hanging. A sword hung there, too. ¡°We can¡¯t really kill you, of course,¡± The Thorn Sage said. The guard, sensing his liege¡¯s desire to monologue, stayed back. ¡°But we can¡¯t have Heroes thinking they can attack me. When you respawn, Hero, I¡¯ll make sure one of my guards kill you. Every time you respawn, he¡¯ll kill you. He¡¯ll kill you again and again, until you¡¯re well and truly dead!¡± The Thorn Sage cackled. ¡°You can kill him, now.¡± As the guard approached, I sheathed my sword. Grabbed the sword hanging from the wine rack. Knicked my hand on the blade, losing 2% HP. But I also took the sword off the hook. Grabbed the pommel of it with my other hand and pointed it at the guard. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter what sword you use, Hero. You can¡¯t hurt my guard!¡± The Thorn Sage might¡¯ve been right, but the sword was there for a reason. I believed in Alex. The guard swung his sword at me. I held my sword in place to block it. His sword broke; I smiled. In the brief moment that he stood there dumbfounded, I swung my sword at his neck. It cleaved through the metal armor, lobbing his head off. The other guard went down even more quickly, meaning it was just me and The Thorn Sage. His eyes had widened in surprise. But in a showy display, he went back to eating his chicken. He wasn¡¯t afraid? Fine, I didn¡¯t need him to be. I took my sword and placed the flat of its blade under his chin. A bit of grease got onto it. He swallowed the bit of chicken. I tried pushing the tip of the blade into his Adam¡¯s Apple, but it wouldn¡¯t go in. Alex, give me strength. The thought gave me hope. No way Alex would give me an impossible task. ¡°I¡¯ll confess, I¡¯m a bit surprised you managed to do away with my guards. They¡¯ll respawn soon enough, of course, but it is surprising!¡± With his pale white thumb and pointer finger, he grabbed my blade. He moved it away from his neck. ¡°That said, you certainly don¡¯t expect to be able to kill me, do you?¡± This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. As The Thorn Sage spoke, I felt an energy well up in my eyes. ¡°Why are you smiling?¡± The Thorn Sage asked. ¡°It¡¯s like I was trying to tell you, Hero. You can¡¯t kill me. I don¡¯t even have HP. This world wasn¡¯t made for my death! A part of me wishes it were! Ha, I wish I¡¯d never met the Rose Sage. Sometimes I wonder what would¡¯ve happened if I hadn¡¯t gotten so attached. Sometimes--¡± ¡°Thorn Sage?¡± I said. ¡°You talk too much.¡± My eyes crackled with power. The lightning ripped through them, and I was blinded. Screaming. Darkness. I felt drained. Was he dead? No clue. I stumbled. Tripped over something. Hit my head. Everything hurt, but eve in the pitch black darkness, a message box appeared. ¡°THANK YOU, CHRIS. YOU COMPLETED THE MISSION. IN THE NEXT MESSAGE YOU¡¯LL FIND MY ADDRESS. GO THERE, AND WE CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN.¡± Once I¡¯d read that message, a new one popped up, telling me where Alex was located. I smiled. She and I would be together again. --- Alex was holed up in some warehouse roughly three hours away from me. My smart car took me all the way there, and a part of me wished I could drive myself. It made me feel lonely, sitting in the car with nothing to do. No hands on the wheels -- nothing tactile, nothing physical. Just a long, lonely drive. And yet for all the tedium, my heart wouldn¡¯t stop racing. Alex. I remember the way her hair smelled after long showers. I remember her nails, always with the black paint at least a little chipped. I remembered all the good times we had together. I tried to forget the bad. It felt like forever, but remembering her made the eternity bearable. The car too me through an empty-looking area I¡¯d never been to before. Some industrial park with a lot of buildings but little movement. In fact, I didn¡¯t see a single human being in the area. The car parked itself, so I got out. There was one other car in the parking lot. It was slow-going with the cane, but I made it to the nearest warehouse soon enough. I entered through the old, rusty door, which creaked as I opened it. There weren¡¯t any fluorescent lights on when I entered. Instead the light was a dark red. It wasn¡¯t coming from the ceiling, and its purpose couldn¡¯t have been for illumination since it didn¡¯t help me see anything. Instead it was more like a glow. I heard the human of the datapulse, which sounded like a hundred fans whirring simultaneously. The warehouse was artificially cold, much colder than it¡¯d been outside in the sun. I squinted, trying to see into the red light. All I saw were shadows, darkness, and the red. The sound of a wheel spinning. I moved towards it. Step by step, carefully as my heart stormed in my chest. I looked directly at the source of the wheel-spinning noise. It was hard to see, but I could just barely make out the rat spinning in its cage, electrodes attached to its head. I made my way forward, clutching things in the nearly-blinding red light. More cages surrounded me, each filled with weird critters: iguanas, spiders, cockroaches. They all had the telltale nodes strapped to their heads. I made my way forward, until I bumped into something. Felt clammy, like human skin. A wrist. I began feeling around. Found wires, which led up to a VR headset. I took it off. The human figure coughed in the darkness, mumbling. I recognized her voice. It was Alex. --- Alright guys, last chapter''s getting posted tomorrow! Hope everyone''s enjoyed the ride. :) If you did, please rate and review. Your support encourages me to write, which means faster/longer releases. Woohoo! You might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts. Pixel Courage, Chapter Forty Six Alex grabbed my arm; her hand felt cold. ¡°Chris.¡± Her voice was weak. ¡°I knew you¡¯d come for me.¡± ¡°Alex¡­¡± She smelled like old age and machine oil. Her skin had wrinkled just a little bit. ¡°I wish you could¡¯ve seen the things that I saw,¡± she said. ¡°I¡­ You were at the Beta, weren¡¯t you? I think I remember you.¡± ¡°I was.¡± ¡°The things I saw, Chris. I¡­ Everything. I was playing almost all of the NPCs in the game. I was everyone, all at once. And game time moved so much quicker than real-world time. Hundreds of years¡­ I was Panopticon. I was The Rose Sage, and The Thorn Sage, and all the rest¡­ It was¡­ It was magical.¡± ¡°We were looking for you,¡± I said. ¡°We were worried about you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± She coughed. ¡°I just¡­ I¡¯m so proud of everything that happened. AI was never the way forward. But amplifying human brains artificially was. Having proved that this technology works¡­ There¡¯s so much potential, so much ability to teach other people.¡± ¡°Your game is¡­ something.¡± How else could I describe it? ¡°You like the hacks I put in it?¡± she asked. ¡°For you, because I knew you¡¯d save me.¡± ¡°Of course.¡± A long silence filled the room. Despite everything, it was just so nice to be in her physical presence. I didn¡¯t care about how she looked or how she smelled. We had a history together, and I didn¡¯t want to let it go. I shouldn¡¯t have to let it go. Finally, she said, ¡°I need you to save me, one last time.¡± ¡°Anything.¡± I¡¯d proven my love before. Why not prove it again? ¡°There¡¯s a table¡­ should be on your left.¡± I reached my hand out and felt the wood table. ¡°Yeah.¡± My hands explored the table¡¯s surface. ¡°I did so much work for AI Corps. I really thought we were going to change the world with virtual reality and augmented reality¡­¡± My hand felt something cold, glass. A glass phone screen. I grabbed the cellphone. ¡°But they betrayed me. They haven¡¯t given me the money they owed¡­ Trying to force me out. Guess that¡¯s why I thought I should¡­ should try to live in Throne Quest. I wanted escape, you know? Do you see?¡± My hand had landed on another object -- cold metal. Made my pulse pound. It was a gun. Felt small. Probably a pocket pistol. ¡°Without the money¡­ The money they owe me, Chris¡­¡± The words had trouble coming out. Somehow, they made it. ¡°What¡¯s the gun for?¡± ¡°For your protection. The phone will explain. I just need you to complete the quest, Alex. Complete the quest and¡­ and¡­ We¡¯ll finally be together.¡± I sat there for long moments, not saying anything. The rat wheel spun and my eyes still hadn¡¯t gotten used to the dimness of the room, which was only ameliorated by the not-so-helpful red light. ¡°I¡­¡± I¡¯d felt a hole in my chest for so many years. I¡¯d felt it when I told my mother I was trans, and she¡¯d disowned me. I felt it whenever I walked somewhere and saw the way people stared at me. So many people were against me. But when I was with Alex, things felt¡­ right. I needed something to believe in, so I believed in her. She needed money to finance her goals, to finance her creations of the future? She¡¯d been wronged, and she needed me to right those wrongs? I grabbed the gun. ¡°I¡¯ll complete the quest. I¡¯ll¡­ it¡¯ll all be over soon.¡± --- Back at the parking lot, I looked at the phone and saw that an app was already open. Blood Reign: Mobile Apocalypse was the title, as I saw in the upper left hand corner. It had a GPS Map. I made my way to the car, going through the usual struggle to get in. Without a second¡¯s hesitation, the car¡¯s GPS picked up the app¡¯s GPS map. The car door closed, I buckled in, and the car began to move. Whereas before the drive had seemed incredibly slow, here it flashed by in almost an instant. I felt like I should have questions, and my emotions did feel jumbled. But ultimately, I knew the truth: All you have to do is finish the mission. On the bottom of the phone screen, the small text box said: Follow the line. That¡¯s just what my car did. It dropped me off at the front of a huge skyscraper in the middle of downtown. I got out, phone in one hand cane in the other. The gun felt heavy in my pocket. As soon as I walked through the door, the phone said, ¡°Downloading Currency¡­¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Currency at 15% I held my breath. Was that all it took? Was that all I needed to do in order to complete the mission? ¡°Hey, you!¡± the guard at the front desk yelled. There was no one else in the lobby. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± My phone buzzed. A text screen popped up, saying: Kill the Troll. I raised the phone so that it¡¯s camera pointed at the guard. The image on the phone looked almost exactly like the area I¡¯d been looking at. But instead of showing a guard seated at the front desk, it showed a troll: an ugly green brute, with his lower jaw sticking out too much, exposing his ugly teeth. I took the gun out of my pocket. On the phone screen, it looked like the tip of arrow. I shot the gun; the arrow flew towards the guard. The arrow pierced through his neck. I put the phone down, and saw that he was dead. Currency at 30% My heart was racing, but I told myself that I was calm. All you have to do is complete the mission. I smiled. That made things simple. Another text box opened up. Get into the elevator. I walked towards the elevator and pressed the button. I got in. Go the top floor. I pressed the button to the 50th floor. The elevator closed. It began ascending. 10th floor¡­. 20th floor¡­ 30th floor¡­ Currency at 45% My mind felt empty. 40th floor... We hit the 50th floor, and the elevator door opened. I got out. Currency at 60% Another text box opened up, Walk down the hallway and open the last door on the left. I walked down the hallway. Most of the offices were empty, and it was only then that I realized it was night outside. One of the offices wasn¡¯t empty though. I could see inside before I got to the door, because of the glass window that looked out into the hall. None of them noticed me. I opened the door. The text box said: Kill The Kings. Five kings sat at the boardroom. I made sure to look at them through the screen of my phone and only through the screen of my phone. It was easier that way. I raised my gun/arrow and shot. ¡°Wh--¡± an arrow ripped through one of the king¡¯s skulls, knocking his crown off. Currency at 75% I let loose more arrows, each releasing with a loud bang. The kings didn¡¯t have much time to do anything. One of them began standing up before I shot two arrows in his chest. The third king got an arrow in his neck. The fourth king got two in the back. The fifth king, though¡­ I couldn¡¯t find him. Currency at 90% I looked away from my phone. The scene looked much bloodier than it had through the screen of my phone. I turned my gaze back towards the screen. I heard a whimper from underneath the board room table. I looked down and saw the last king, his crown barely still set on his head. I shot my last arrow. All Kings Killed. I held my breath, waiting for the phone to say it. The elevator opened up; cops, I¡¯m assuming. Currency at 100% Boots stomped down the hallway. You completed the mission, Chris! You¡¯re my hero. <3 Cops were pointing their guns at me, and I smiled. I¡¯d completed the mission. The cops were yelling at me, but that didn¡¯t matter. I was Alex¡¯s hero. --- Alright guys, that''s the end of the fic! Hope everyone''s enjoyed the ride. If you did, you might also like some of my other fics. There''s Godpunk, a weird dark fantasy with long-ish posts. There''s also A Bad Idea, a black comedy story about a supervillain living in South Florida. It has very short posts.