by K D Brand
You have been offered the quest, Rabid Raccoon Rampage, by the farmer, Tolon. You must kill ten of the offending creatures and return their hides to the farmer for payment. Do you accept? Yes or no?
“You can most definitely count on me,” Ty told him.
You have accepted a quest! Hope you’re up to date on your shots.
The quest engaged, Tolon simply wandered away without a word to anyone, returning to the fence to scream at the raccoons terrorizing his fields, his hoe glinting in the last of the day’s light just as it had been when they arrived.
“I got this, Old McDonald,” Ty called to the man’s back.
“His surname is Granger, not McDonald,” Amon corrected.
Ty sighed. “I so need to give you all a crash course in sarcasm.”
Before any of them asked him what he meant, he glanced over at Char. “Mind if I borrow your sword again? I haven’t earned enough coin to buy a good one of my own.”
This time, instead of arguing that she didn’t have a sword, she shifted her hip so Ty could pull the sword out of the sheath. “Of course.”
Ty grinned as he did. While the three had a long way to go, they were finally starting to come around.
“Time to go kill some trash bandits. Who’s with me?”
Deven straightened and glanced out at the field. “I’ll accompany you. Tolon might not realize he needs the help of more than just a scrawny boy.”
“I’m right here,” Ty droned, shaking his head at the butcher.
“No offense, of course.”
“Some taken,” Ty replied, holding up his thumb and index finger about an inch apart to show just how much.
The butcher gave him an apologetic shrug and, much to Ty’s surprise, he pulled his sword from its sheath and made ready to use it.
Amon raised a hand and waggled a finger. “I’ll pass, thank you. Rabid raccoons are a bit more than I’m prepared for at the moment. I’ll never get their stink out of my fur.”
“I’m in,” Char sang out, “however…” She cast a sideways glance at her sword in Ty’s hand.
“Oh, yeah, huh?” Ty passed her sword back to her, and reached over and snatched Amon’s from its sheath without asking. “Since you’re not using it, I’m going to borrow it. Bring it back soon.”
Amon bristled, but he remained silent.
Ty chuckled at the man’s rigid posture at losing something he had never noticed on his hip, let alone used, and turned away. Ty then walked toward the field where Tolon still stood, screaming at the raccoons as if that would somehow chase them away when it hadn’t worked the last hundred times that he’d tried it.
Knowing it was simply a construct of the game, and doing his best to ignore the man’s wailing, he slipped through the gates, Char and Deven on his heels. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder and smiled at their presence. Seeing them there, ready to fight alongside him, was a huge change from their passive standing about. It was as if a corner had been turned in their programming. They were becoming even more real quicker than he could have expected.
Ty hoped that was a good thing.
They were in the fields just a moment later, and the destruction caused by the raccoons was immediately obvious.
Holes were dug every few feet, and the plants that had been there were torn from the ground by their roots and torn apart. Shredded bits of greenery littered the earth as though some great giant had vomited up a salad.
The raccoons darted about in the distance, avoiding him and the others, but a flicker of movement from one of the holes drew his attention. He glanced over, and his heart nearly pummeled his ribs into submission.
“Holy…!” he shrieked and stumbled back before catching his balance, clasping at Charice’s arm.
“What are you…?” Char started to ask, then her voice broke and dropped off.
Not more than ten feet from where they stood was the first of the creatures they needed to kill.
The raccoon emerged from the hole, frothy teeth bared and red eyes gleaming. A cold tremble ran through Ty then as he realized something was seriously wrong.
The creature, even hunkered down, stood about thigh-height on Deven and Char, which put it about waist-level with Ty. Its fur bristled at its back, bringing to mind spines rather than just tangled mats of fur. The things teeth were almost as long as Ty’s pinky. A mustard yellow, their sharpened edges glistened with foam, which ran in gooey rivulets down the raccoon’s crusted chin.
“Is that a bear?” Deven asked. Ty noticed the man had stepped back even further than Ty had. “There’s no way that’s a raccoon.”
Ty vaguely remembered the quest from his early days, but the butcher was right. This was no normal raccoon. It was nothing like he recalled. The critters had been vicious and relentless, but none had been anywhere near this big.
“No wonder Tolon needs assistance,” Char mumbled. “Though, I’m not sure we’ll be much help against these monstrosities.”
Ty agreed, though he kept his comments to himself. Partly because he was afraid that he’d stutter and show his fear, but also because he didn’t want to scare the NPCs away from helping him.
Ty contemplated canceling the quest and walking away to find easier XP, but the raccoon took the choice out of his hands.
It snarled and hunkered even lower, then leapt toward them, kicking up dirt in its wake.
“Ahhhhh!” Deven screamed, backing up in a rush and swinging his sword in front of him as if he were swatting at flies.
Char took an instinctive step backward, but Ty stood his ground.
This is so seriously stupid, you know this, right?
Ty nodded an answered to himself, but he’d mastered the lesson of momentum with the rats.
He ducked down and dug his feet into the ground, leveraging himself as best he could as the raccoon hurtled toward him, coming down in an arc. Then Ty, holding his sword with both hands, pulled back, then thrust forward with all his might, meeting the slavering raccoon just as its full weight came down.
The sword split flesh and muscle and drove deep into the raccoon’s chest until it clanked against bone. Blood spewed, spattering warmly across Ty’s hands and forearms in a pungent spray. Ty wrinkled his nose against the smell, but he knew it was dead already, red eyes flickering and fading into a dull orange. However, there was no stopping its forward motion.
+75 thrusting damage! Death blow!
“Oh…crap!” Ty grunted as the full force of the beast hit him dead center.
Outweighed by at least three times his weight, Ty was bowled over. He hit the ground hard, and the raccoon landed right on top of him, knocking the air from his lungs.
“Oooof!” he cried out. Well, sort of. It was more like a garbled hiss as the raccoon settled over him, all of its dead weight pinning Ty down so that only his arms and legs flailed from underneath it.
Maybe mastered was the wrong choice of words, he thought. I’ve clearly more to learn when it comes to momentum.
You have killed a rabid raccoon.
You have earned +100 XP!
Only nine more to complete the Rabid Raccoon Rampage quest.
Ty groaned, his face buried in the raccoon’s massive chest. He could taste the coppery tang of blood and felt strands of the thing’s fur wrapping around his teeth and tickling his tongue.
He could only imagine the nastiness he was ingesting, and he hoped he wouldn’t catch rabies before he died, the creature growing heavier with each passing moment, Ty’s breath growing more and more shallow. Darkness closed in on him.
Then he could suddenly breathe, and he blinked his eyes against the sudden brightness. Char and Deven loomed over him, yanking the raccoon’s corpse aside. It thumped to the ground beside him.
“Oh…” Ty moaned, rolling over and spitting, rubbing at his mouth with his sleeve, and spitting again, trying to clear the taste of dead raccoon from his mouth. “That sucked.”
“Only nine more,” Deven said, clapping him on his back a
nd pulling him to his feet.
“Only nine…” Ty parroted with far less enthusiasm. The butcher hadn’t been the one buried under the meaty slab of a funky carcass.
“Maybe we can help with the next one,” Char offered.
“Yeeeah,” Ty muttered under his breath. “That’d be nice.”
Their opportunity arrived just moments later when another raccoon emerged from its hole and came at them, aggro in full effect.
Still dripping with the blood of the last one, Ty baited the creature in and let it leap at him like the other one did. This time, though, he didn’t stand there like an idiot and wait to be crushed.
He sidestepped at the last instant, swinging his blade hard with both hands, taking advantage of the momentum while avoiding the unfortunate side effects of it as he rolled with the recoil of the blow.
+55 slashing damage!
The attack was brutal, the raccoon crashing to the ground and rolling, but it wasn’t dead yet. It desperately scrambled to get back to its wounded feet.
Char didn’t give it the chance.
She darted in and stabbed the thing in its exposed belly. It shrieked and thrashed as the blade pierced its flesh, then went still a moment later.
“I killed it,” she whispered, Ty barely able to hear her.
She looked pale, and her hands trembled, her sword wavering when she pulled it loose. It looked as if it might topple from her grasp.
Ty grinned. “You did. Great work!” he told her, doing his best to reinforce that it was a good thing she’d done.
But as he thought about it, the raccoon had probably the first thing she’d ever faced off against, let alone killed. He could easily imagine how she felt, so he went over and set a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She stiffened under his touch, focused completely as she was on the raccoon corpse.
“They’re vermin, remember?” he asked, giving a gentle squeeze. “It’s what we’re here for. This…” he gestured to the corpse, “is one less creature to tear up Tolon’s fields and ruin his crops. Think of this raccoon like the goblins and orcs waiting outside the walls.”
Char sucked in a deep breath at hearing the last, offering him a hesitant nod. Ty smiled, reinforcing the rightness of what she’d done.
He needed her to be okay with killing monsters. They couldn’t just stand around and wait to die like they had at the Orchid during the last horde attack.
While she processed her feelings, Ty went over to the raccoon he’d killed and grabbed a handful of its fur. He expected to have to hack the hide off the corpse to collect it, preparing himself for the disgusting deed ahead, but the creature shriveled away at his touch, the hide coming away in his hand in one piece.
You have collected a mangy hide. (1/10)
“Whoa!” Ty muttered in amazement. Even with as real as things were, it seemed some aspects were still driven by game mechanics.
Now, he wondered if he could have searched the gnoll for something without having to gut the thing.
Something to try next time.
Another raccoon popped from its hole then, disrupting his thoughts, and Ty motioned to Deven, then to the raccoon. “Your turn.”
Deven groaned and raised his sword awkwardly as the creature crept toward them.
“Treat it like a piece of meat,” Ty encouraged. “Just more bitey and foamy and squirmy.”
“Oh, that helps,” the butcher complained.
“Only eight more,” Ty added, grinning, patting the older man on his back.
“I’m thinking we should have left you in your world, boy,” Deven muttered.
“You and me both, buddy,” Ty shot back. “You and me both. Now, go kill that thing before it bites your face off.”
Fourteen
Daisy Duking It Out
IT TOOK A while before Deven and Char became more comfortable with taking out the raccoons, but they finally settled into the task. They were far from cold-blooded killers, but at least they had figured out how to hack one apart and avoid getting bitten while doing so.
Ty took that as a win.
Unfortunately, though, he realized he didn’t get any of the experience from their kills, nor could he collect the hides. At least not until they joined together as a party.
He remembered Char inviting him when he was first summoned into the game, so he focused on the idea of asking the pair to join him, and the notification popped up. The two figured out how to reply to the prompt and, soon after, they were adventuring like a real group.
Sort of.
Notifications flew across his vision like runaway bullet trains after they were joined.
Every kill was broadcast, as was every action of the NPCs, every hit popping up in green, their every wound showing in red. After about fifteen kills, Ty was ready to gouge his eyes out.
You have collected a mangy hide. (12/10)
“Hold on,” he growled after snatching up another of the raccoon hides. He waved them over to the side of the field where there was no sign of any of the creatures. “I need to do something.”
It was one thing to have notifications pop on a big screen monitor, the whole picture visible as he looked at it from a third person perspective, but having all of them crowd his vision in first person was obnoxious.
It didn’t help that each notification came with a gong, either.
He could mostly ignore it when the system comments weren’t coming at him fast and furious, but it was simply too much to absorb and comprehend while grinding through XP with a party in tow. He had to figure out how to shut those dang things off.
Ty thought back to how he’d summoned his character sheet, and it popped up readily. Nothing there he needed, he cleared it away and focused again, trying to remember what the various screens were called that controlled the settings in Umbra Online.
Display?
Notifications?
Settings?
At the last one, a small screen popped up, transparent like his character sheet. Across it were a variety of toggle switches, mostly having to do with sound and the frequency of notifications.
He grinned. That was what he’d been looking for.
He trailed down the short menu and imagined toggling the notification sound off. The switch moved, and the color shifted from green to a dull gray. It was, of course, accompanied by a gong.
You have silenced notifications.
Ty pumped his fist. Victory is mine!
That done, Ty read over the remaining switches and sadly realized there wasn’t an all-encompassing on-off switch. The closest thing he could find was one labeled Non-Critical Combat Notifications. So, he triggered that, glad to note no bell went off when the system text popped up.
You have turned off Non-Critical Combat Notifications. This will eliminate repetitive notifications regarding kills, wounds, party status, and loot details. Be warned, however, that some notifications cannot be halted. Wounds to self, important system messages, and quest notifications will always appear as necessary.
“Good enough for me,” Ty mumbled as he continued down the line of switches.
He laughed when he spotted a toggle for the snarkiness of UO’s AI.
“I’m leaving that on, for sure,” he said with a grin.
“Do you often speak to yourself?” Char asked.
Ty shrugged as he blinked away the menu. “More often than is likely healthy,” he admitted. “Anyway, now we can get back to killing raccoons.”
“Why?” Deven asked. “You already have the required number of kills and hides to help Tolon protect his field. What’s the point of killing more?”
“It’s all about the grind, baby,” Ty told him.
Deven’s eyes narrowed. “I hardly see how you can mistake me for a child,” he argued, gesturing to himself, “and this grind you speak of sounds…uncomfortable.”
Ty laughed. “It can be,” he replied. “But it can also be productive if done right.”
He’d gained about 1,100 XP since they’d started, the p
oints being split between him and the NPCs—though he wasn’t even sure they were actually earning any—it was hardly enough for him to reach another level. He needed more and, as much as he hated to be selfish, they were slowing him down.
You have left the party!
Char stiffened, clearly seeing the notification herself. “What are you doing?”
“I think it best we do this as individuals,” he explained. “Much as I appreciate your help, I’m missing out on some of the benefits of doing this quest by being attached to a party.”
“But the quest is finished,” Deven argued. “All you have to do is give the farmer the hides he asked for.”
“This is another one of those things I can’t really explain, but it helps me to keep killing raccoons and wait to finish up with Tolon.”
The butcher shook his head. “Like I’ve said before, I don’t understand you, boy.” He sheathed his sword and walked over to where Amon stood, hovering near the wooden fence. “I’ve had my fill of stinky vermin. I’ll be over here should you need me.”
Ty glanced over at Char. She shrugged. “I’ll keep working at it,” she told him. “I want to get better at using this thing?” She held up her sword and wiggled it, raccoon bits and blood shaking loose.
Ty grinned, glad she wanted to keep going despite him leaving the party. “You go, girl.”
“You want me to leave?” She looked crestfallen.
“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he rushed out. “I’m sorry, it’s a turn of phrase that’s meant to be supportive. You know, like me telling you to go get ‘em.”
“Then why not say just that?”
“Uh…” The only answer he could think of was to shrug.
“We have much to learn about each other, it seems,” Char said with a sigh, starting off toward the fields again.
“You’re not wrong, Sista,” Ty muttered. The two of them lived in different worlds…literally. It would take some time before they understood each other fully.
But that’d mean not going home anytime soon…