by Deck Davis
You have completed a [good] repair.
Item changed: Crude Bone Dagger upgraded to Sharpened Bone Dagger
Bone dagger legacy increased to 2
Armorer Skill leveled to [Nickel 2]
- Repairs are easier to complete
- You can sharpen low-level weapons to gain between 4-7 extra damage points.
Bee floated back over. Tripp showed her the dagger. “Looks a little better, huh? I might not be able to create yet, but at least I can improve stuff.”
“Impressive! Only a few more levels until you hit the next rank.”
“Ah, right. Every skill rank has four levels before you advance onto the next.”
“Correct. Did you get what you needed?”
“Not quite. Game books like this only tell you the basics; we’ve got to go a little deeper to find out the good stuff.”
He left the library and crossed into the oval plaza where he found the Dwarven Adventurers’ Guild. It was an impressive building, easily the most standout in the plaza. The brickwork shone gold in places, glittering like stars when sunlight hit it. A dwarf out front was chipping away at a half-finished statue of a dwarf in battle armor, setting his chisel down from time to time to wipe his brow. After admiring it, Tripp headed through the double doors.
Inside the guild he was met with a hubbub of activity, where players who were dozens of levels higher than him and wearing much better armor walked to and fro, some of them getting quests from the dwarf NPCs, others returning quests they’d completed so they could earn EXP and rewards. Tripp felt dizzy when he tried to read their player tags as they rushed by, seeing characters whose levels dwarfed his.
Other players were using the guild common room as a meeting place, and Tripp went into that room to find someone who could help him. There, he found dozens of players chatting to each other, creating a medley of sounds and voices. A gang comprising of a barbarian, a rogue, and a spellsword were leaned in close to one another, whispering and occasionally glancing around them. Nearby, a lone cleric drummed his fingers on the healing book strapped around his waist, glancing at the door each time it opened.
Tripp listened to the hum of conversation, drinking in the feeling of life and bustle.
“Anyone got a spare scroll of return?”
“I picked up a spare Axe of Ulthra; it doubles your strength. 250 gold. Any takers?”
He liked it there; being in the middle of a throng of players was a welcome change from how deserted the plains had been until he’d met Jon, Warren, and Lizzy, the loot hunters.
“Look, it’s the Tin Man,” said one player, a paladin who apparently had earned enough gold to turn his DF guide into a purple warg.
Tripp ignored him, knowing that as flaming went, being called the Tin Man was pretty tame.
He studied the players around him and judged who best to approach. Being an adventurers’ guild, most of the guys and girls here looked combat-focused, holding all manner of giant swords and axes. There were a few mages, too, but he guessed most magic users sought out their own appropriate guild. Simply put, almost anyone in there could have flattened him if PVP wasn’t disabled in towns.
He approached two guys in the corner. Their player tags listed them as Stefan – level 54 hunter, and Ossie – level 60 paladin.
“Excuse me, guys,” said Tripp.
Ossie had red skin and two curved horns protruding from his head. He wore darkened metal armor with a flaming fist printed in the middle of his chest plate. He was a squat thing, not much different in appearance from a demon who’d been put in a car crusher.
“Level fours can’t get quests here,” he said. “You’re better off leveling up first.”
Tripp nodded. “Yeah, I figured that. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Make it quick,” said Stefan, who had chosen to play as a reptile race. He had orange eyes and a forked tongue that stuck out of his mouth, making him look like a salamander who’d been exposed to a mad scientist’s grow-ray.
Ossie shook his head. “We don’t have time to babysit, Stefan. Sorry, Tinny. If you’re looking for someone to rush a quest for you, we can’t help. We’ve got two hours of playtime left, and we’ve wasted too much of it in here,” he said.
“It isn’t that. You two look like you’ve been around a bit,” said Tripp. “I was wondering if you know how to kill a sleel?”
“Sure.”
He waited, but neither of them said anything.
“Can you tell me how? Do you know anything that isn’t in the guidebooks? I know they’re vulnerable to water, but I was looking for something else.”
Ossie squinted at him. “You want to kill a sleel?”
“Yeah, it’s for a quest. Don’t ask.”
“Well, I got some advice for you.”
“Great…”
“Go out into the plains and kill 50,000 frorargs. Then you might just have leveled up enough to do more than tickle a sleel.”
Damn it. He knew he sounded stupid as a level four player asking that question. He might as well have asked them how to kill a dragon.
“There’s nothing you can tell me?”
“Just tell him already,” said Stefan, his fork tongue flicking out. “We don’t have time to mess around.”
Ossie crossed his legs. “Fine. Sleels are night-time creatures, right?”
“Nocturnal, is the word,” said Bee.
Ossie glared at her.
“Right, they’re nocturnal,” said Tripp.
“So there must be a reason they’re not around in the day.”
Tripp shrugged. “Because the devs want the night-time game mechanic to make things a little more interesting?”
“Sure, if you wanna get all technical about it, but that’s not how Soulboxe works. They don’t just throw mechanics around for no reason; they weave lore into it. They want things to make sense in a world-building way. If sleels only come out at night, they give them a reason for that.”
Stefan stood up and grabbed his friend. “C’mon; Terry just messaged me. He’s at the Well of the Forlorn.” Then he looked at Tripp. “Good luck getting killed. Hope you don’t have your pain settings too high, because sleel stings are a bitch.”
With that, the hunter and paladin disappeared, having fast-traveled to where their friend was. Their sudden disappearance was jarring, but Tripp had seen streamers using spells to do that.
He found it hard to think inside the guild, so he went back into the fresh air of the oval plaza and sat on a bench. A dwarf crafter and his apprentices were chipping crusted dirt from the fountain, while the fountain’s statue spat water down. Two players went by; a mage with red light seeping off her, and a taller, bulkier man whose armor kept changing. It went from steel to leather to something that looked like diamond, before finally settling on a golden chestplate that had shocks of green light zipping over it. Tripp would have killed to get to look inside that guy’s inventory.
Sitting on the bench, he weighed everything he’d learned in his head, but he was stuck.
“We have a creature that’s vulnerable to water. Great, that gives us a starting point. What about what the red horned-guy said about there being a reason they only come out at night?”
“Maybe they hate the light,” said Bee.
“Yeah! That makes sense, and it fits in with the dev’s world building. Maybe we could light a bunch of campfires? Draw a sleel toward us, then I’ll set fires in a circle and trap it inside?”
“By the time you’ve lit one fire, the sleel will have stabbed you so much you’ll resemble a watering can,” said Bee. “Or they’ll have zapped you with the energy of a thousand cattle prods, and your tentacles will retreat up your rectum and through your body until they flap in your throat as a second set of tonsils. Which do you think is a worse way to die?”
Tripp shrugged. “The only other option is to level up on frorargs until I’m not so weak that I die when I get bitten by a flea. I’ll probably amass a bunch of loot killing stuff, and I can use tha
t to buy something that’s artificed to cause water damage.”
“I’m not going to say no to that…” said Bee.
Tripp sighed. “Yeah, but it’s just going away from what I wanted to do here, and I don’t want to spend a fortnight killing little frog-dragons. I mean, I’m not stupid. I know I’ll need to toughen up. Then again, Boxe5 creates quests according to how you play, right? He evaluated what I’ve done and said so far, and he came up with this quest. Knowing I want to be a crafter, I doubt he’d have made a quest that involves leveling up for days on end.”
“Maybe Boxe is as bored with the idea of crafting as I am,” said Bee.
“Or maybe he created a quest where I need to use my head.”
“As a battering ram?”
“Boxe?” said Tripp, looking at the sky. “Can I have a new guide, please?”
“Aww, come on. I picked herbalism, didn’t I?”
“I just need to think. The devs don’t just introduce game mechanics randomly; they make the mechanics fit in with the world by weaving them into the lore.”
A flash of an idea hit him.
He stood up. “Grind, choice, realism; all of that stuff fits here. Think about this; they want Soulboxe to feel as immersive as possible. After all, they don’t just sell it as a game, they also market it as a vacation from reality. They want people to feel like this place is alive. The illusion is broken if you see behind the curtain, so they’ll try and keep the technical game stuff hidden.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“It’s not exactly immersive if creatures spawn out of nowhere, right? It doesn’t fit with the realism aspect.”
“Okay…”
“We know that sleels hunt at night. What do nocturnal predators do during the daytime?”
Bee smiled. “They sleep.”
“Exactly. Somewhere out there in Godden’s Reach, there must be a nest of sleels sleeping away the daylight hours, scratching their sleel asses with their tentacles. Lying there, eyes shut-”
“They don’t have eyes,” said Bee.
“Actually, they do. I’m pretty sure I saw eyes on the sleel’s tentacle. Either way they’re lying there, dozing away, working up the energy so they can go out at night. If they’re sleeping, they’re vulnerable.”
Bee did her trademark circular swirl in the air, a trait that Tripp was beginning to recognize meant she was either happy or excited, like a dog wagging its tail. Not that he’d have compared her to a dog out loud.
“We find their nest and we gut them in their sleep! Perfect,” she said.
“Not exactly,” said Tripp.
“Oh…”
“I’ve been thinking about what Konrad said. Show the quest update text for me again, please.”
Quest updated: Become Apprenticed to an Armorer
Update: Konrad the dwarf armorer might take you on as a pupil, but you have to bring him a sleel tentacle.
“Good. I’m thinking on the right lines,” he said.
“I really wish I could read your mind,” said Bee. “It’d be heaps easier.”
“Look at what Boxe has written; First, you have to bring him a sleel tentacle. I have to bring him one. There’s no mention about killing a sleel.”
“Ah, now I see, you clever man.”
“Let’s not go overboard. I’m pretty much a dunce in a hell of a lot of ways, but at least I can read. The quest doesn’t mention anything about killing a sleel – I just have to bring a tentacle. Even if I attack a sleel in its sleep, my combat skill is so low that I won’t kill it. It’ll wake up and shock the hell out of me. But, I’m pretty sure I could cut off one of its tentacles before it wakes.”
“Great! Now we just have to find a sleel nest, sneak in there, chop one of their tentacles off, and then escape before they wake up and slaughter you,” said Bee.
CHAPTER 19
Some people might have said a plan that would likely result in death wasn’t much of a plan at all. They might call it dangerous and declare that sneaking into a sleel nest and slicing off a tentacles was madness.
So, it wouldn’t hurt to see if there was an easier way.
Tripp had heard that Boxe had a sense of humor when it came to its players, so he decided that he better check if the old AI in the sky was in a good mood.
Putting it to the test, he and Bee walked around the plaza and went into every shop, seeing if any of the traders there happened to be selling sleel tentacles. He figured that a potion seller or alchemist might have some, and that would have saved him risking death by electric shock.
No such luck. With that slim chance a wash-out, he used the last of his frorarg gold to buy a Brute potion, a Quickstrike potion, an herbalist almanac for Bee, and a cooking pot.
“Stocking up on groceries?” she asked.
“Potions. When we find the nest, I’ll have one chance to cleave off a tentacle before I wake the sleel. I didn’t have enough gold to buy a better weapon to increase my chances of hacking off a limb, but one-use potions are cheaper than a new blade. The potion seller said Brute will give me one powerful hit.”
“And the Quickstrike?”
“You’ll see,” said Tripp.
They traveled out of Mountmend and headed west to Goddenstone, the human settlement. There, he found even more players milling around, some riding on their mounts, others dashing from one building to the next and talking to the NPCs.
This place had a different feel to it than Mountmend. It was livelier and more players were mixing together. One player was talking to a group of fellow-gamers using sign language, and her audience followed her hand movements with attention.
Just beside them there was a statue of a man, a giant of a man dressed in battle armor, holding a sword aloft. A plaque fixed to the base read ‘Godden – conqueror of the Reach.’
Huh. Tripp remembered the statue in Tillicult, where Godden was depicted as an orc. Just what was he? How could he be an orc and a human? Maybe that was a lesson in history and perspective.
Towns like this were the heart of MMOs; it was where players gathered to chat, to trade, to form parties. It was strange how real it all was; chance meetings of strangers in games led to them questing together for a little. Then they’d add each other on out-of-game message apps, and before long they were arranging to log into the game together. Digitized meetings became real friendships.
For some, it was a human connection that they weren't getting in real life. It was an escape, a fantasy world where real life had to wait at the door. Tripp loved being there. If games like Soulboxe had been around during his library-dwelling days, he would probably have played so much that he would start seeing goblins in his sleep.
They couldn’t stay long in Goddenstone, though. He walked through the sunlight-lit streets, looking at the player tags above people’s heads.
Finally, he found who he wanted to see; Jon, Warren, and Lizzy, who were talking to an ogre trader who wore glasses and an immaculately tailored suit.
Lizzy stepped forward in front of her brothers, her elephant trunk swinging with each step. “Give the gear to me, boys,” she said. “I have the barter skill and my feminine wiles.”
“Eurgh,” said Warren.
“Not only do I echo that sentiment,” said Jon, “but your wiles aren’t going to work when you look like Frankenstein’s pet elephant.”
While Lizzy dealt with the trader, Tripp approached her brothers. Jon gave him a curt nod, while Warren smiled. “Hey, it’s our campfire friend. You’re level four now, cool! Small steps, pal. Small steps.”
“He’s also wearing clothes this time,” said Jon. “Thank god. Nothing worse than a naked orc.”
“Well, I was wearing steel armor. The only difference now is that I have trousers on underneath. I wasn’t exactly walking around with my cock hanging out.”
“Still, imagining your orc penis underneath the metal gave me nightmares.”
“The beauty of the human mind is that you’re free to think about m
y orc cock as much or as little as you like. Whatever choice you make is on you, pal. ”
“What’s going on, Tripp?” said Warren. “Looking for a quest?”
“Looking for you, actually,” said Tripp. “I was wondering something. You guys are loot hunters, right? You were trying to take down a sleel.”
“Trying and failing,” Jon. The sunlight glinted off his bald head. “Failing again and again and again. I told you, Warren; sure there might be an element of chance, but we’re like mice trying to topple a rhinoceros. No way we can kill a sleel at our level.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” said Warren, while tapping the bible-like cleric book strapped around his right leg.
“Do you guys know where the sleel nest is?” said Tripp.
“Nest?”
“Sure; the sleels come out at night, so they must have to go somewhere during the day.”
“Don’t they just spawn?”
Tripp was surprised; he’d thought that the three siblings were more experienced in Soulboxe than him and that they’d have figured this out already. But then, he guessed they were just using the game as a way to meet their newfound sister. Maybe they hadn’t been as obsessive in watching streams and reading stuff as he had.
He explained his theory to them, about the dev’s dedication to immersion and world building. By the end, Warren looked amazed.
“Damn, I never thought about it like that. They really go to those lengths?”
Bee nodded. “Lucas is obsessed with detail. Everything has to happen for a reason.”
“She loves Lucas,” said Tripp.
“Shut up.”
“How do we find a nest?” said Warren.
Tripp shrugged. “That’s the problem; I checked a book in the library, but there was no mention of it.”
Warren shrugged. “I’m stumped. We haven’t seen any in the plains, but maybe that’s because we weren’t looking for them. What’s it called where the more you think about something, the more you notice it?”
“Baader-Meinhof phenomenon,” said Jon.
“Right. Bad Mindhop phenomenon. Like, when I got a crush on a redhead called Jenny, I started seeing redheads everywhere.”