by Eric Ugland
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to do. Frankly, I didn’t know what to feel. It was such a foreign occurrence that I was frozen in place from indecision. I’d never actually seen a murder. Hell, I’d barely experienced violence before, having spent my childhood in a comfortable prototypical suburban experience until everything fell apart, and then I was so busy and poor that the violence plaguing the city of my birth didn’t seem to extend to me. No one wanted to waste their time mugging the miserable idiot I turned out to be. It was a sheltered life up until the end, so now that I was getting a front-row view of a stabbing, of an act of pure violence, it was, I mean, I had no idea how to react.
The killing was brutal, visceral, and wrong. Not just because murder is wrong, which, you know, I mostly believe. There was just this familiarity to the man’s motions. Like he was so used to doing this that he was bored. I knew the look well, it was how I served ice cream to screaming children. I’d slung cream for years, and I knew exactly how to do it with the minimum of actual effort. That’s how this dude was approaching killing the woman. Was this guy such a mass murderer that he’d grown bored with the violence? So experienced that he’d become efficient? Or was violence so commonplace that this was an unintended side-effect? The whole thing was weird.
Chapter 8
That feeling burbled up, the same annoying feeling that came over me when I turned back to the burning McMansion. What I saw was unfair, and I didn’t like it. The woman seemed young, maybe she was a child, I didn’t know, but I knew that the killer was wrong. And if I could do something, I needed to do it. That meant my first strategy, hiding and waiting for the bloodthirsty son of a birch tree to leave, wasn’t going to work. Being a level one Rogue meant I’d stack up poorly against anyone who’d been in the gameworld for more than a day. Likely. And given the psycho’s ease with the blade, he was definitely at a much higher level than I. To the point where I was afraid to identify him in fear he’d somehow know what I was doing and kill me.
But as the woman’s screams petered out, likely as her life did too, I thought about what I had on me. I thought about my life, the things I’d done. I thought about Wyatt Hendricks in the third grade and how I’d ignored him getting beaten to a pulp because I was afraid his bullies might become my bullies. This was marginally different, what with this being a murder and that being a playground beating, but it was mostly the same in a roundabout moral sense.
I needed a weapon.
The damn crossbow wasn’t going to do jack. The bolts themselves were tiny, so I couldn’t even use them as improvised stabbing devices. It’d be like stabbing someone with dull needles. But as soon as I peeked at the climbing kit, I knew I had an option. The kit came with a wide variety of equipment, all falling under the umbrella of climbing gear. Some rope with a fine white weave, a grappling hook, a rudimentary harness that was little more than a belt with a steel ring in the center, pitons, and a climbing hammer. The climbing hammer had a short handle with a weighty looking head, one face square, and the other side coming to a sharp point. I did a little test swing, and it seemed brutal enough to do the job.
Another scream came from the other end of the alley, and given the decreased volume, I had the distinct impression the victim was nearing her untimely end.
Time to act. Or, rather, late to respond, but at least I was doing something.
I came out of my hiding spot, keeping low to the ground. The murderer had his knife buried into the woman’s sternum and was muttering something into her ear as foul red froth poured from her mouth.
Silently as I could, I ran towards the murderer, then jumped up, pushed off the wall, and brought the climbing hammer down as hard as I could with both hands, pointy-bit first.
I managed to pull off a nearly perfect Trotsky.
Unfortunately, said maneuver involved copious amounts of blood. Copious. It wasn’t, say, a Kurosawa blow-out coming out of the top of his skull, but the spike-end of the hammer went right through the skull like it wasn’t there, and then there was stuff pouring out everywhere.
WHOA! Critical Sneak Attack. Double Triple Damage!
The thing was, the dude didn’t die. He stumbled around, and he made some really terrible noises.
I needed to finish the job, so I swung again and again until he stopped moving, and then I threw up.
GG! You’ve killed a Human (LVL 9 Thief).
You’ve earned 4200 XP! What a mighty hero you are.
GG.
Good game.
What a twisted little world.
The reality of what I’d done, of what reality really was here, of how this game worked, was so much worse than I could have imagined. What I’d done was so much more intense and gross, and whatnot than any book or movie or video game had ever made it out to be. The man was the first thing I’d ever killed, excluding some insects and spiders. I looked at the dead body, really looked at it, and I tried to understand why I’d done this. Had there been another way I could have gone about working through this situation?
Letting the guy live just seemed wrong. He had definitely killed before, and he probably would again. I had no choice in the matter, I did it because it would save other people later.
Definitely provided me my first clear view of the inside of the human, which was something I could have lived without. According to the information that the game gave me, this dude was, in fact, a human. What if this dude had been some sort of skinwalker or pod person that didn’t have a brain? Were there skinwalkers or pod people in Vuldranni?
Insert gif of my mind exploding.
It was the immediate reaction to realizing my undeniable and incredible ignorance of this new world. I knew nothing. I had just been lucky in this whole mess. So fortunate. I needed to start learning. And calm down. My heart rate was through the roof. At least, I think it was. I realized I had no idea of the resting heart rate of a damn elf. Me.
I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and thought about what I needed to do. Even with my eyes closed, there was a blinking notification taking up the lower third of my vision. A good reminder that this was, somehow, all a game.
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 2! You receive 2 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours, or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t
I’d already gotten a level? I mean, I had killed someone quite a few levels higher than myself, so that had to count for something.
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 3! You receive 2 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours, or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 4! You receive 2 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours, or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t
Okay, so I did get a few levels from killing the higher level asshole. Maybe worth it?
Standing up, I shook my head, trying to come to grips with the situation. I was in an alley, in daylight, one foot on either side of the man I’d just murdered, my vomit mixing in with the blood and various other fluids leaking out of a corpse. As a gamer, there was really only one possible course of action.
Loot and boot.
I needed to take everything of value the man had on his person and bounce.
Actually, small edit, I needed to loot everything of value the man had on his person and everything of value the woman had on her person. She’d definitely died. I don’t know when. It might have been before I attacked the murderer, it might have been after, but, regardless, now she was dead. And, frankly, I don’t think there was really anything I could have done besides avenge her passing. Which I did.
I pulled the man’s body behind the boxes, back towards where I’d spawned in. He was more substantial than I expected, but, then again, I hadn’t done much body moving in the old world.
Once there, I went to work. I would have gone through his pockets, but
it didn’t seem like pockets had really made significant inroads in Vuldranni fashion as of yet. Pouches, though, pouches were definitely in vogue. And this dude looked like he’d been Rob Liefeld’s inspiration. Pouches all over the place. The first I grabbed was heavy, about the size of a fist and contained coins. Gold coins. The second was larger, also heavy, also coins, but this one had gold and silver and copper coins. Mostly silver. I dropped both coin pouches in my knapsack without bothering to count them. It wasn’t the time. But I felt pretty good I had a little nest egg for my new life.
Next pouch had dried herbs, the next a bunch of odds and ends of the animal variety: bird feet, cocoons, wasp eggs, that sort of shit. There were a few tiny pouches with different types of powders in them, might have been glitter or iron filings, I had no idea at that time, and then the last pouch had five thick heavy coins in them. They were larger than any of the other coins I’d seen and had a more personal sort of look to them like they’d been designed for people instead of for a government. Again, something to explore later when I wasn’t hanging around a crime scene.
Two daggers on his right hip, they looked basic, and they had black leather sheaths. In the bag. There was a short sword on his left hip, about twenty inches long or so, and that went in the bag as well, though the hilt stuck out just a bit. I took his belt next, then his boots and his pants.
Which revealed to me that he was going commando and that he had not engaged much in personal hygiene.
Also, because he was now nude, I saw that he had a tattoo on his thigh as well as a tight bandolier of throwing knives. I took the bandolier and the blades, left the tattoo.
Four rings from his fingers, two bracelets from his right wrist, one cuff from his left, and the three necklaces (or chains, not sure of the difference) from his neck. I was thinking about taking his shirt, but, well, there was quite a bit of blood soaking into the shirt, and I wasn’t exactly sure how far stain removal had come in this world. He had two small earrings in his left ear, and they went in the bag too. I gave the body a last once over, even running my fingers through his hair, and he had nothing left besides the shirt on his back.
Next, the victim.
Which is where it got weird.
Chapter 9
I waltzed out between the boxes like I'd been snoozing in case some passerby stumbled on the scene of wanton destruction while I was looting the corpse. Also, great name for a Chinese restaurant: Wonton Destruction. Feel free to take that. The body of the woman was where I’d left it. Which was a good thing. I wasn’t ready to deal with the undead. And even thinking of the reality of it, that the undead might be something I needed to deal with on a daily, or even regular, basis, was giving me the heebie-jeebies. Technical term.
She was pretty, you know if you were into really extreme goth. You know, what with her being dead. And, uh, quite bloody. She was human, at least as far as I could tell, young and with reddish hair, cute features, if not sexy. She had plain clothes on, basic cotton, things that were remarkably similar to my own, and I figured that was the cheap default clothing of the realm. Meant I’d probably be able to blend with the lower classes pretty well. She had little on her or about her person, a simple knapsack, a small hand crossbow, some bone bolts, and a black leather cloak…
I scrambled to my feet and promptly tripped over something. I rolled back to my knees and saw that I’d stumbled over another corpse.
A young woman. Reddish hair. Plain clothes, simple knapsack.
My heart was thudding in my ears, and the world was getting a bit hazy.
I needed to get out of there.
Another step, another trip over another corpse. They were everywhere.
And all the same.
Not similar, not a serial killer who had a type, nope. No. These were the exact same woman, over and over and over and over and over. All in the same outfit with the same knapsack at her feet.
I had stumbled across a killer who’d been spawn-camping another player in this game-world. And, I realized I shared my spawn point with someone. Who’d been spawn-camped. It was a rather bizarre introduction to the game world, and I wasn’t sure what I should be doing or thinking at that moment. Instead, I stood there in shock. The bodies were, for the most part, stacked like cordwood against the red brick, hidden from street view by crates and barrels. I was aghast at the sight.
Then came the quick realization that I was supposed to be looting the victim, so, maybe there were more victims now. That just meant more loot, right? Just as messed up to loot one body as it is twenty, right? Or something like that.
I grabbed a knapsack and started stuffing it with the things I thought useful. Lockpick kits, spell books, skill books, and even all the janky crossbows. And the bolts. Maybe I could sell them to a tailor or something. I left the cloaks behind, as well as most of the rations.
At the bottom of the stack of bodies, though, I noticed something a little different. Same victim but wearing different clothes. These were nicer, tailored, a bit more worn, but significantly more beautiful and no longer the basic attire.
“Find anything interesting?”
I spun around to see the same girl, this time alive, leaning against the wall. She looked utterly different alive. I mean, obviously. But after seeing her face many times, like, a lot of times, it was almost weird to see her alive, with blood in her body instead of outside of it.
She waited patiently for a response, and my brain-wheels spun, trying to figure out a proper reply.
“Seems like I left a gang of you over there on the curb,” I said.
“Regulators reference? Weird flex, but okay.”
“Weird flex? That’s a classic.”
“Given the distinct lack of freaking out and the knowledge of both regulators and flex, I’m guessing you’re new to this world?“
“As are you.”
“Eh… define new.”
“Well, uh—”
“You know you’re speaking English right now?”
“So are you, what of—”
“They don’t speak English here. You got Gift of Gab?”
“Yeah.”
She said something I didn’t understand.
Smashing! You’ve learned a new language, Imperial Common.
“… And now you should know Imperial Common,” she continued. “Did it work?”
“It did,” I said, my mouth feeling like it had been speaking Imperial Common its entire life. I could hear the difference, in a way, but it was difficult. It just felt so natural to speak in Imperial Common.
“Okay,” the girl said, “here’s the thing: this isn’t a quest sort of a thing, but I’m still rewarding you for saving my life.”
“But you died. Er, uh, spawn camped.”
“Bingo, baby,” she said, walking over to all the bodies, and looking over them. “If it happens to you, you’d better pray to whatever gods you know that you’ll have someone save you. Otherwise, it’s a whole new type of hell.”
“Sorry it happened to you,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. But at least you got me out of it.”
She knelt at the bottom of the pile of corpses and slid her hands in and around her body, the one with the different outfit. The dead body, not the living one. She was looting herself. Bizarre. After a second, she seemed to find what she was looking for and stood up.
“Okay,” she said,” I wish I could just chill here with you for a while until you get over the whole trauma of slamming into a new world, but I have to get moving. Which means, if you want to learn what I can teach, you need to come with me.”
“It feels weird,” I replied. “This new world thing.”
“Yeah. I remember. And you’ll probably do things you wouldn’t in the old place. Especially as you try to come to terms with being, you know, the you here.”
“Like that?” I said, pointing toward the corpse of her killer.
“Yeah. Like that. Tough entrance to the world. But I appreciate it. Let’s get walking,” th
e girl said, pulling her standard black cloak around her slight frame.
She moved quickly and quietly. Like, I could barely hear her even though when I walked, I was making all sorts of noise. The jingle jangle of the pouches of coins, for example. I stopped walking, and I started paying attention to the way I was moving, to the sounds coming from me. I’d done this nonsense before, I’d trained myself how to move in silence, it shouldn’t be that hard here.
Cool Beans, you’ve unlocked the innate skill Silent Movement (LVL 24). Now you can move without making noise, great for sneaking and peeping, as well as remaining unnoticed. +29% harder to detect.
She stopped at the mouth of the alley, looked out along the street either way, then paused, and looked back over her should at me.
“Maybe a little faster? We have a ways to go.”
I ran after her.
Stepping out into the street was like entering another world. Again. Sort of. Maybe a bit less so. It was so different, though, another revelation that the world was so much larger than I had anticipated or realized. It was more urban than I expected, and the technological advances on display were, well, different. They were almost anachronistic. Buildings went high up, five or six stories, and had glass windows. There were even lampposts on the corner. Probably not electric or gas, but they looked like they cast light in the night, but I had no idea how.
The street was calm, quiet, basically deserted. A cat sitting in a window two stories up seemed interested in us for a moment before returning to licking itself, but I could hear the hustle and bustle of the city in a way I hadn’t in the alley. Horses whinnied, horseshoes rang out as they hit on the cobblestones, wagon wheels creaked, and people called out to each other. It felt alive in a way my own experiences on Earth had. This was reality. A full reality and there was something beautiful about it.