Encounters
Page 20
Kano shook his head, knowing from his own introduction he was the first to beat the ogre bear. Carl apparently had done the same, which made Kano leery, as that meant the man had solid combat skills. If he was telling the truth, even with his sword, Kano might have a hard time defeating him in combat. He sheathed the blade and then stepped closer to Carl, offering his hand. "Sorry if I sound paranoid," Kano said. "It just seems like more often than not, the people I've met in this world seem to want to kill me."
Carl grinned, sticking out his hand to shake Kano's. "I am sorry for that, Kano. I arrived at the same time you made it in here but it still took time to get here. I saved time by using speed potions I picked up in the capital but because of the distance to Three Rivers, it took me a while. I hope you haven’t suffered in here alone."
"Wait, you got here the same time I did?"
Carl nodded, "As soon as the system detected you, our team was alerted. We can't recreate the drug you were injected with but we're certain with a digital copy of your DNA as a template, we can reverse engineer it and finally achieve a breakthrough."
"What kind of breakthrough?"
"Immortality. Not just in a game, but in real life."
"Sounds cool," Kano said. "What do you need me for, then?" While Kano was skeptical, he had seen the pace of science advancing like crazy before his coma and knew that some things were just a matter of time.
Carl gave him a smirk, rolling his neck and flexing his fingers. "Just your DNA, Kano."
Twenty - Leave my DNA Alone
Kano was confused. "Like you need me to do a spit test or one of those blood draws?" He didn't like the way Carl was looking at him, but the egg started to break again, the sound making him glance down. The shell had a spider web network of cracks now and Kano could see the baby inside. If you could call it a baby. From what he could tell, the drake was more than four feet long, bigger than some species of alligator.
"Sure, something like that," Carl said. With Kano watching the hatchling intently, Carl made a move. The large man slowly reached down for a long, thin dagger he had hidden underneath his pants, belted at the waist. The egg was cracking louder now and pieces of shell broke off, dropping to hit the ground.
Kano knew he shouldn't be ignoring the man, but somehow the egg commanded his full attention. Sure, the mother drake had been a human slaying, terrifying creature, but Kano could sense the baby would be different. Somehow.
"Rawwr," the baby drake cried from inside the shell, louder this time.
Carl looked down, interrupted, pausing his movement.
Kano saw that the reptilian head was larger than he'd thought. The lizard might weigh only fifty pounds or so, but the drake reminded Kano of a pit bull crossed with an alligator. As it stretched, Kano could tell the creature was closer to five feet or longer, tip to tail. Its head was larger than a human one, the long snout filled with two rows of glittering, sharp teeth.
When Carl was close enough he drew back his arm, in position to stab the unsuspecting youth in the back. The lizard seemed to be just about to break free and, from the way Kano was staring at it, Carl thought he could fire a gun and still be ignored. Carl liked dogs but detested most other animals. He felt that dogs could serve a purpose for him. People, too. If something living didn’t serve a purpose for him, he couldn’t care less about it. This was the reason Carl had made such an effective agent for Platnam’s paramilitary operations, anytime the trash needed taking out, Carl Deeter was the many who was happy to do so, no questions asked.
"Come here, baby," Kano cooed, making sounds like he’d watched parents make in TV shows and movies. The baby lasher blinked, looking at him and flicking a slender forked tongue from its massive jaw. Curious if he could see anything of the baby drake’s stats, Kano focused on it and sure enough, details appeared in his display.
Name:
Baby Lasher
Level:
1
Class:
Drake
Energy Points (Max)
50 (50)
Health Points (Max):
100 (100)
Skills:
Unknown
He bent down slowly, trying to focus on making contact with the baby drake. “It’s alright, little guy. Stay calm,” Kano reached a hand down to make contact with the back of Baby Lasher’s head and was shocked when it moved faster than he thought possible. Jumping free of the last bits of shell, Baby Lasher leapt to climb his arm. The claws dug painfully into Kano, as the creature made its way from arm to up over his shoulders.
"Hey! Owww!" Kano yelled, the scratches on his arms stinging and bleeding. The drake might be a baby but the claws were already sharp and dangerous. He had really felt a bond; the inner certainty the creature in the egg would become his companion. Then, Kano felt the weight leave his shoulders and he paused, blinking. He had expected a message, some telepathic, extrasensory connection with Baby Lasher. Instead, all he could feel was pain throbbing in his arms and shoulders where the claws had raked his skin.
A scream, then a crunching sound came from behind Kano, interrupting his inner monologue. The scream cut to a gurgling sound before he turned to look. "Whoa!" he said, staring in horror.
The thing was chewing on Carl’s skull. Shocked, Kano saw the larger man had a dagger in his right hand. The man's head was half eaten and the lizard was chewing noisily, swallowing, digging its claws into Carl’s chest as he toppled over, and blood spraying everywhere. When the large man fell, Baby lasher clung onto him, chomping down once more on the bloody stump. Carl's remaining neck and above were chewed summarily before the lizard gave a loud belch, licking its jaws.
"Okay," Kano said, fighting the urge to vomit, "that was unexpected."
The lizard chewed for a moment longer, then swallowed again, its neck bulging as the pieces of Carl were escorted to its stomach. "Rawwrrr!" Baby Lasher yelled and then turned. The creature ran into the woods without another look back at Kano, or the headless corpse of Carl, the man that had apparently been sent to kill him.
Breathing hard, Kano thought about the past few minutes and gained a new appreciation for the term wild animal. He'd grown up in the suburbs and the baby lizard had been his first encounter, druid skill or no, with something completely wild. Those warm fuzzy feelings he had experienced gave him pause.
"I was feeling life," he guessed. "Just because it's living doesn't mean it likes me," he said, shaking his head and thinking about the whole druid situation. “I need better training in my class so I don’t get eaten.”
A look down at the remains of the man made his stomach clench, and Kano was glad he had not eaten since much earlier. Dry heaving, he ignored the bloody, warm fluid soaking the ground and picked the man’s pockets. Irritated, Kano had a sudden wish he could just magically loot the body as he searched for coins or other valuables.
Item
Description:
Money pouch, 1
Quality:
Average
Attributes:
Carries up to a hundred large Ducats
Item
Description:
Large Silver Ducats, 10
Quality:
Average
Attributes:
Money makes the world go round
Item
Description:
Small Silver Ducats, 20
Quality:
Average
Attributes:
Money makes the world go round
Item
Description:
Small Copper Ducats, 30
Quality:
Average
Attributes:
Money makes the world go round
Other than the money pouch, Kano did not find anything else useful. The slim dagger Carl had carried looked too narrow to be good for anything other than backstabbing and Kano didn’t think he would be doing much of that so he left the weapon where it lay on the ground. He stood up, dusting off his clothes and wiping his hands as well
as he could on Carl’s body.
Then, Kano peered into the woods and listened intently. However, the woods remained quiet and the sounds of the Baby Lasher running off in the distance had faded. For a moment, he considered trying to chase after it, but then decided it was not worth the trouble. People had been trying to tame lions and tigers for decades on Earth but no matter how docile they seemed, a large cat was always one second away from biting your head off.
A minute later, he shook his head and acknowledged the brutal truth. The baby drake was as bloodthirsty as could be expected and had taken the first opportunity available to feed and then seek other prey.
"Fine," he said, walking along in between the trees in the late afternoon sun. He tried to put the sudden death of Carl behind him, but it was a little too real, too fresh, to be easily dismissed. In his head, he replayed the encounter, even going so far as to imagine they got to talk about the real world, before Kano had been blown to bits and loaded into a game world. He regretted missing a chance to find out what had happened since.
Nearly a full hour later, Kano was still fuming about the encounter. He knew a corpse could bring disease and other problems in the real world, so he had started digging an impromptu grave. When he finished the grave, he threw dirt over the headless body and walked off, growing more anxious to get back to Three Rivers. Even though he'd lost the drake, it was clear that, what with the money he'd found and experience points, the short adventure had been worth it.
With another hour or so to walk, Kano decided to pull up his character sheet again to check his stats. He was curious if the encounter with Carl had given him anything. However, when he saw the character sheet, he was disappointed. “I guess that makes sense,” he said, smiling, “I mean, it was Baby Lasher that killed and ate the guy after all. I just buried the body.”
Character name:
Kano
Profession:
(Blank)
Class:
Druid
Level:
5
Experience Points:
7,600
Next Level:
10,000
Energy Points (Max)
40 (60)
Health Points (Max):
80 (100)
Complications:
Fatigue, dehydration
-10 energy
-10 health
He was glad the system notifications did not include the attitude Kano had seen in a few game systems before. Those were always irritating. Why would you want an AI that gave you crap? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a classic book, and Kano learned from it giving an artificially intelligent assistant a personality was just asking for trouble. The programmers in charge of many virtual assistants still had not received the memo, from Kano’s experience with them, even decades after they’d been introduced. The interface was a novel and appreciated part of the New Lands Online experience for Kano, as quantifying life was always something he appreciated, even before the accident. That was one reason why for snowboarding, he had improved far beyond his peers, as breaking down all the skills, techniques and movements to ensure consistent technique had made him an expert.
Feeling parched, Kano was wondered if the rivers in the area were nearby on his walk back to the village, thinking he could get some water sooner that way. However, when he glanced at the map in the interface, the waterways, like anything else unfamiliar, were not marked. So he decided not to stop and search for water, rather continued walking back to the village.
Lost in his thoughts about the New Lands Online game system, Kano was curious if there was anything else he could glean from his new character sheet. This thing is handy, he thought with a smile, almost like a road map to life.
The urge to sneeze each time he exercised the new ability to see the screens had faded, and he reviewed his attribute scores.
Attributes and Scores
Physical
Score
Mental
Score
Strength
73
Intelligence
57
Speed
73
Wisdom
57
Endurance
73
Memory
57
Constitution
73
Magic
63
Beauty
61
Linguistics
55
“Magic increased?” Kano asked out loud, seeing the jump in his stat. Must be from the class choice, he thought. His stats were a biased toward combat, with mental scores still far behind, and he knew over the next few levels he’d work to fixing that.
With attribute points only coming every level, Kano felt like the free, six point bump in his magic attribute might mean something like a threshold being reached but he did not know if that was the case. Still feeling appreciative at the bonus, he smiled as he walked.
"Thank you, Abnoba," Kano said, pausing near an auspicious tree and bowing his head. Worshipping nature felt a little strange, but he kept thinking about the state of the environment back home. Things never seemed to get better, and the forest fires and weird snow seasons had only been getting more out of whack with annual norms. Taking a deep breath, he said, "Thank you. Maybe that lizard wasn't meant for me but I feel grateful to have been a part of its journey." If I hadn’t felt that connection with the egg, Carl might have killed me back there.
He didn't get any reply that time, but a warm breeze ran down the path and cooled the sweat beading on his skin. "Good enough," he said, breathing deep. The air pollution was something he had never really noticed in California, but now it felt as if his entire life his lungs had been constricted.
"Virtual this might be, but I've never felt better," Kano said to himself as he started walking again.
The bite of hunger eventually gnawed at him too much to ignore. "Grumbling stomach," Kano said, holding a hand over his belly as he walked and saw the tree line ended not too far ahead. "Wonderful." Physically, he felt great, but the growing hunger he felt was driving him a bit crazy and he had a sudden craving for a cheeseburger. "I know I’m just torturing myself," he muttered, "but now all I can think about is a delicious, fatty burger with cheese. Fries. Pickles. Hell, I’d even take the onions if I had to."
He was almost drooling when the arrow pierced his left shoulder.
"Owwww! You’ve got to be kidding me!" Kano shouted, feeling the arrowhead had shredded muscle and skin, lodging in his shoulder blade. Frantic, he knew he was in trouble out in the open and he jumped to the side, ducking for cover despite the pain. "This game just doesn’t want me to make it back to town," he muttered, then had an epiphany.
Ducking down, Kano used his right arm to start crawling in the dirt, feeling the dull, throbbing pain of the arrowhead buried in his shoulder. He vowed he would use his new spell to heal himself as he crawled behind a tree. Could Carl have had a henchman or partner? I wonder if that’s who this is.
"Olli oily oxen free," a voice called from the same direction the arrow had flown.
"Or boss," Kano muttered. Either way shooting first and asking questions later is clearly a dick move.
Behind the tree, Kano knelt and took stock of the wound. His display showed a loss of ten more health points from the arrow, on top of the fatigue Complication and earlier loss from burying the bodies first at the tree, then Carl deeper in the forest. His energy points meter also showed a total of twenty missing, which told him the remainder of the trip back to the village would drain his energy further.
"Kano," the same voice called out, more casual than Carl's, higher pitch, almost playful sounding. "Your arm must hurt, sorry about that." The mystery man chuckled.
Kano grabbed the arrow shaft, trying to break it off. He could not help howling in pain when he succeeded, a notification flashing into existence and shoulder bleeding profusely. The notification blipped into view and faded, showing another five health points lost. Cursin
g, Kano fought the headache coming on and tried to figure out how to access his healing spell.
"That sounds painful, did I hit a nerve?" The man called out, mocking.
"What do you want?" Kano grunted. He focused on the interface and quickly learned how to use one of the two spells the goddess had granted him. He moved his right hand to cover the wound in his shoulder and focused, feeling a tingling, electrical sensation building beneath his fingertips as the spell took effect.