by Deck Davis
Congratulations! You are now a Tin artificer of the inventor discipline.
- Ability unlocked: create crafting cards
The same glow seeped through him as when he’d chosen his armorer discipline. It was like raw knowledge shot into his veins, a swelling of newfound ability that washed inside him.
He couldn’t wait to get started. To learn how to use his new skill.
His contentment was broken when he heard a loud screech from outside the studio. He looked out of the window where he saw a flurry of activity on the streets of Mountmend.
CHAPTER 40
If chaos was rain, then the streets of Mountmend would have been soaked. Only a day earlier its nights were peaceful, with lamps affixed to poles casting a soft light above the streets, illuminating the NPCs on their programmed routes home, lighting on players who were heading out in groups toward the plains where they’d take on the creatures of the night.
The Mountmend he looked on now was a twisted version of that, Mountmend run through a force of chaos so that it warped and became a hellish town where NPCs and players fled through the streets and toward the gates.
Tripp couldn’t see what the problem was, but he had an idea. He hurried down into the oval plaza where bunches of people were standing still, engrossed in their own character menus. Weaponry changed in their hands, a sword becoming a staff, an axe transforming into a spear, as they cycled through their inventories.
He caught up with a woman who was wearing a flowing robe with steel shoulder bracers over the top. The badges floating beside her were a zinc mage wand, a bronze demon of some kind, and an iron potion bottle.
“Is this the Blood Wave?” he asked.
“Yep. Check your map. Shit just got real!”
His map showed Godden’s Reach, but with a mental command, he made it expand to a larger view of Mountmend.
Now, he saw what she meant; his map had changed. The town was divided into eight sections, and each section had numbers in the middle, such as 25/25. The numbers were different in each section.
As he watched, the numbers in a part just east of the plaza dropped to 34/36.
“Blood Wave must be a wave of monsters that attack at night,” he said. “Maybe the totals are the numbers of monsters left to kill in each section?”
Bee shook her head. “The plaza is a section of its own, see? And it says 6/6 here. Do you see 6 creatures?”
He shook his head. The truth appeared grew as a small fire, igniting further as he looked around added more information to his situation, every realization a new piece of kindling.
“The numbers represent how many players are in each section,” said Tripp. “Not monsters. And the numbers are falling.”
On the map, the oval plaza was the heart of Mountmend, nestled in the middle among the other six sections around it. The seventh section was Old Kimby herself, centered on the public entrance to the mines.
He wanted to go and see what was happening, but the low number of players in the plaza worried him. If there was a player counter on the map, there was a reason for it.
“What happens when the counter drops to zero?” he said.
“Something bad, knowing Lucas and Boxe. Lucas likes to test peoples’ ingenuity. Devise tricky quests and stuff and see how they work their way out of it.”
“Let’s go to the gates. It looks like every section around the plaza has enough players in it that it’s protected. I’m guessing, and I hope I’m right, that whatever’s attacking the town needs to get through the crowded sections to reach us here.”
He ran out of the plaza and through the streets, and it was like being in a different town. No tranquility, no sense of idle adventure. Instead, the air was thick and crackling with tension.
When he was just one turning away from the gates, he heard people shouting, roaring, and crying out. There were explosions, whooshes of air from spell use, the click-click-clicks of repeated crossbow shots from archers. The worst sound was the highest, one that rose above them all; a screech, like a metal hook scraped over brick, loud enough that he had to press his finger against his ear and dull the sound.
“Any idea what that is?” he said.
“You sound scared,” said Bee. “Deep breaths…”
“Scared? I’m terrified! A big part of full immersion is realism, and there’s one realistic emotion that god-awful screeches bring in me…”
“This is all new to me. It’s Lucas and Boxe having fun. Boxe has a mind of his own, but the devs can still guide him, they can load directions and parameters into what he does. Brainwashing, I think you’d call it. Sometimes, when Boxe changes things, I get the feeling we’re seeing Lucas’s dark side shown through good old Boxe5.”
“I thought Lucas was Mr. Perfect?”
“He has problems. He tells me sometimes when we’re alone. And he didn’t tell me this, but I think he takes his problems out on Soulboxe sometimes, through tweaking Boxe.”
“I doubt a town is under attack because some dev got dumped or woke up in a bad mood or something. This is more than that; it’s a change in the fabric of the game. Of any RPG game, actually. Towns are safe zones, not screech zones.”
On cue, more of the terrible screeches sounded from south of them.
“We better check that out.”
He ran with his map open, adjusting it to be semi-transparent and leaving it hovering to his left.
The further he went, the more the sounds of chaos rose around him. Real ones, real shouts, real noises of swords striking things, the real sparks of spells in the distance. It was right about now that he thought something; something about the utter mayhem made it hit home what Lucas and the other devs had really created here.
Soulboxe was both a feat of genius beauty, and an utter nightmare brought to life.
He hurried on, thankful for his orc stamina. His map showed him going into one of the newly defined sections of Mountmend, this one with the number 84/89 written on it.
Awaiting him was a cardiac arrest of visuals.
He saw the town gates. They were closed, but they might as well have been wide open. There was blood; lots and lots of it. Was it a player's blood? Maybe. He saw why the numbers on this sector read 84/89, though.
There was a dead elf to his left, slumped against a house wall. Nearby, a human mage had bit the big one. He saw two more bodies over by the gates.
The bodies weren’t the worst thing, though. Nope. Usually, when dead bodies were strewn around, it wasn’t the unfortunate corpses that were the problem. It was whatever had done that to them.
That was what Tripp saw now.
Holy hell.
“Blood Wave is an apt name, don’t you think?” he said.
Bee’s eyes were wide as she took in the scene.
Someone had taken a spider, one of the disgustingly ugly ones with big swollen bumps on their backs, and then they’d magnified it, making it reach to the height of a man’s chest. Someone had created a creature of utter nightmare.
Well, it wasn’t just someone, was it? It was Lucas or Boxe or one of the other devs.
Whoever took the blame, not content with just making giant spiders they’d bulged out their eyes, and they’d made their legs as spindly as possible, almost like eight giant spikes.
And they’d given them human faces. That was the kicker, the part had made Tripp feel sick. The giant spiders of the Blood Wave had human-like faces but with bulging black eyes and pincers extending from their mouths. Some of them were grinning as if they were telling jokes in the screech and squeal of their spider language.
That wasn’t everything. One more arrow of truth hit Tripp in the gut. These were the creatures he’d seen when his fast-sleep had taken him into some kind of spawning room.
How had that happened? Why hadn’t the devs replied to his message?
“If Blood Wave was Lucas’s idea,” said Tripp. “Then he needs therapy.”
He saw that the spiders had NPC tags above them that named them a
s Orb Weavers. They were spilling in from the plains, emerging from the darkness and then scuttling into the glow of Mountmend’s lights where they were met by players who swung swords and cast spells.
The newbie players hung back, some of them using long-range spells or bows, while higher level players charged toward the orb weavers.
Looking at the chaos and with his map open, Tripp understood what Blood Wave was now.
NPCs could attack towns, and they would do so in waves at night. On the map, each section showed how many players were in each zone, and how many had died.
What did that mean? What if one zone had zero players in it, and the orb weavers attacked it?
Worse, what if someone saw Tripp just standing there with Bee floating beside him, doing nothing?
“We better go help,” he said.
It was one thing saying it, another forcing his body into action. He quickly checked his abilities and inventory.
Weapon-wise, all he had was his flagellation flail and morning star. In terms of abilities, he was a lover, not a fighter. Or maybe not a lover, given that he was an orc, but he was certainly a crafter.
Hmm. He wasn’t the best person to enter the fray, but he couldn’t be seen just doing nothing. He already had lower street cred than a bum, and doing nothing now would make it worse.
He equipped his morning star and headed east to where a party of ten players was surrounding two spiders. That seemed a safe bet.
He’d only taken two steps when a figure smashed into him, winding him.
Luckily he was a giant orc in steel armor, and the figure bounced off him and fell down.
“Stefan?” said Tripp.
It was the reptile who usually played Soulboxe with his buddy, the red-skinned demon guy called Ossie.
He held his hand out and pulled Stefan to his feet.
“Surprised you’re not hunkering in the adventurers’ guild with the rest of the low-levels,” said Stefan.
“I didn’t even know there was a reason to do any hunkering until I got here.”
“Let me ask you something,” said Stefan. “You ever see a spider in your house that was so big that you couldn’t face trying to trap it and put it outside? You just killed it instead?”
“I guess, when I was little.”
“Well, this is what happens when you do that; their relatives grow up and get pissed.”
“This is the Blood Wave, right? Spiders are going to attack the town at night, and we need to defend it.”
Stefan nodded. “As far as anyone can tell, it’s supposed to be a community event. Get us all to work together.”
“What about the numbers? What happens when one of the zones hits 0/0?”
“That’s the million dollar question. The thing is, when a giant boulder is running toward you, you don’t stand there to see what happens when it hits you. The only thing everyone is agreed on is that we don’t want to let the counters drop to zero. Every sector needs people in it.”
Tripp checked his map. “The sectors near the mountain are pretty low.”
“Most people are going where the action is. The bulk of the orb weavers come from the southern plains, so we’re defending the outer reaches of town. It’s chaos though, and we need someone to organize things. Listen, I better go. One last thing. Check out the weavers’ asses. See their colors? That’s important because each differently colored weaver inflicts different kinds of damage. Here’s another thing just to add to this cocktail of crap; as far as we can see from the fighting so far, if you die during the Wave you don’t come back straight away. My bet is you don’t respawn until the morning.”
Before Tripp could say anything, Stefan darted away on his reptilian legs, disappearing down a side street.
Tripp eyed the fighting around him, aware that it had been an age since he’d even moved now. People were going to notice the guy who’d just stood at the edge of the battle and watched.
“I guess I better help with the wave,” he said.
“Yeah, I suppose…” said Bee.
“That sounded a lot more tentative than I expected from you.”
“I guess it’s one thing urging you to fight a little frog-dragon. It’s another sending you to duke it out with giant arachnids.”
“I can’t just stand here. Besides, it will be easy EXP if I work this right.”
“People are dying, Tripp.”
“An incredibly clever man once said get busy living or get busy dying. I don’t think he had a battle with huge spiders in mind, but the point stands. I didn’t come to Soulboxe to stand around like a pussy and watch everyone else fight for me.”
He took a second to evaluate the various fights breaking out around him, before settling on one near a tavern, where a dozen players were ganging up on a lone orb weaver with a blue rump.
He charged forward, morning star raised, ready to share in the collective EXP he’d get. All he had to do was hit the weaver once and then he’d technically have joined the battle, earning him a share of EXP when the bigger, tougher players took down the creature.
With that thought, a grin spread over his face. A big, stupid one that probably looked even more ridiculous plastered on the features of an orc.
“Why are you looking so goofy?” said Bee.
“An idea. Watch.”
Tripp reached the first orb weaver. The melee players - people with swords and axes and armor that looked way too heavy - were up close with the spiders, while spellcasters and healers stayed back and used their powers out of the range of the creatures.
There was a problem here, in that Tripp didn’t have a place to be. He wasn’t good enough with his weapon to be a melee fighter, and he didn’t know any spells. As a crafter he found himself in the middle, a sandwich ingredient that nobody wanted. Like putting bananas in a steak baguette.
If the size of the orb weavers was anything to go by, he couldn’t take one down. Luckily, he wouldn’t need to.
He ran from orb weaver to orb weaver, making sure to target the ones who had enough players already fighting them that he wouldn’t focus the creatures’ aggression on himself.
After hitting each one with his morning star and dealing a pathetic amount of damage, he went to the next, smacking every spider in turn. He’d hit eight of the creatures before he finally left the fight and then stood by the wall of a house.
In the scheme of things, his contribution to the fight wasn’t much, but that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that by hitting eight creatures, he’d technically involved himself in eight fights. Now, he just had to wait for the other players to kill their foes, and he’d get a share of the EXP.
It was that simple – hit ‘em, run away, and then wait for the orb weavers to die and watch the EXP roll in.
Bee didn’t seem too happy. “Kinda cowardly, don’t you think?” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s a fine line between being devious and being cowardly, and I know which side I want to be on.”
“What happened to not looking like a pussy?”
“I had an even better idea. I’ll be more useful when I’m stronger, and I can’t get stronger if people don’t respawn during the Blood Wave.”
Soon, notifications began to pour in. Weavers died at the swords and spells of the tougher players, and with each deceased spider, Tripp earned a share of EXP for killing the creature.
He leveled up one, twice, then again, each notification making the smile spread wider on his face.
“See, Soulboxe doesn’t calculate your EXP based on your contribution,” he told Bee. “All you have to do is to be part of a fight. You don’t have to make the killing blow. Boxe calculates the EXP you get based on the level of the creature.”
“So hitting the spiders made you part of the fight, and now you just have to let the others do your work for you?”
“Never get your hands dirty when other people are willing to do it for you, Bee.”
“I wish I had hands…”
&nb
sp; As the battle wore on Tripp leveled up again and again. He’d started the night as level 13 and now, after eight meager hits on the orb weavers, he found that he was level 17, and he hadn’t taken so much as a smidgeon of damage. His hitpoints and manus shot up, and he earned an extra four attribute points to spend. Wow.
He placed two points in technique and two in mind, and then he watched the conflict in front of him, ready for the second round of his EXP farming.
“I guess you get a share of the loot, too?”
He nodded. “I earned more lootpoints each time they killed an orb weaver, but I’m not going to spend them yet.”
“Then you won’t get much.”
“Doesn’t matter; I don’t need rare loot because I’m going to make my own stuff. Even if you don’t bid in the loot auction, you still get a base amount of loot. I don’t want swords and trinkets, I just want whatever the orb weavers leave behind. Their essence. I can use that to craft.”
You think that you’re clever, don’t you?
The notification took him by surprise. It was displayed in the same way his EXP and skill notifications were, except this was just text.
It was Boxe5.
It was then that Tripp realized the flaw in his plan.
Boxe was what counted for a deity in Soulboxe, he guessed. A figure in the sky watching everything, adjusting the game in response to what players did.
By farming EXP in the way he had, Tripp had simultaneously done something clever, and gut-wrenchingly stupid.
He’d angered the digital overlord. Whoops!
It was time to gather the loot he’d earned – well, not earned exactly – and then figure out his next step.
Before he could, another notification appeared.
I admire you, in a way. I think you deserve a gift.
“Boxe is giving you a gift?” said Bee. “Cool!”
Tripp shook his head. “I don’t like this. Boxe5 is up to something.”
Yes, I am. One of my makers has a saying. ‘Work smart, not hard.’ And I suppose that is what you have done, Tripp the Orc. Well done. That said – here, have a hex for your troubles.