Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

  “Hey, Tin Man! What’s happening?” said Warren.

  Tripp told them about Gilla and Lamp, about what they’d said about the Blood Wave, and their request – threat – to get access to Konrad’s mines.

  “You did the right thing,” said Warren. “Don’t bow down to those bastards.”

  Lizzy scratched her trunk. “I don’t know. There’s something to be said for working together.”

  Tripp shook his head. “If I friend them, they’ll have access to the labyrinth. Call me suspicious, but I think a guild with fighters and rogues and artificers might have more on their mind than just mining for materials.”

  “And speaking of labyrinths,” said Warren. “Jon? You’re up.”

  The archer elf nodded. “I’ve been researching the fiends. As NPC mobs go, they aren’t so tough. No magic, no special attacks. Their thing is brute force, and I think we can deal with them. Lizzy can be our tank and soak up the damage while I pepper them with arrows and Warren heals us. That’ll leave you time to work on a solution to the door.”

  “I might have something,” said Tripp. “I found a broken prism buried in a wall under the platform. I figure it’s either a silver or gold solution, since I found a completely obvious lever under the platform too, which must be for the bronze chest.”

  “Great, what are we waiting for?”

  “For my mind to get into gear and work out what the hell to do with the prism. It’s called a light prism, so I figure that I have to find a light source in the labyrinth.”

  “Or maybe you don’t,” said Lizzy. “Maybe you need to shine some light on the prism itself.”

  Tripp felt his mental cogs start turning. She was onto something.

  “Let me work on it. At least we have time, right?”

  And as soon as he said the words, his old friend Boxe5 conjured a dialogue box in front of him.

  Wrong! Time left to solve room two of the labyrinth: 60 minutes.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” said Tripp.

  I never kid.

  “Did you guys see that?”

  Warren nodded. “We’re friends now; we see the same quest notifications as you.”

  “Then I better get to work. Meet me at the labyrinth in 30 minutes.”

  They filed out of the studio, leaving him and Bee alone. He could almost hear the clock ticking in his head now, and every tick-tock was another finger pushing the button of his dad’s garage door.

  “We’ll have to go with the prism solution, then,” said Bee. “What choice is there?”

  “Do you think I can fail the quest? I mean, most in-game quests can be restarted if you screw up. Maybe it doesn’t matter if the timer runs out.”

  “Sorry, Tripp. Lucas and the devs believe in consequences, right? Dynamic quests can’t be failed. That’s the whole point. If you can just fail, restart, fail, restart, where’s the urgency?”

  “Damn it. Whose idea was it to put a demented AI in charge of things? I better get to work.”

  He guessed the first step was fixing the prism. It wasn’t going to be much use to him while it was broken, but luckily he had a tool that maybe, just maybe, would be useful in fixing stuff; his repair hammer.

  He needed to be careful; he didn’t want to shatter the prism by hitting it too hard. At the same time, he needed to be quick.

  “Bee, can you keep track of time? Warn me every ten minutes?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll be your personal stopwatch.”

  “You could be like those home listening devices. You know, the ones where you say, ‘How many milligrams in a gram?’ and the device tells you.”

  “You need a device to tell you that?”

  “Just keep me updated.”

  He started work on the prism, delicately tapping it with the repair hammer, careful not to use too much force and chip away any of the glass.

  Nothing happened. When he’d used his repair hammer before, it felt different; he got a sense when it was working. Now? Zip.

  “What am I missing here? This should work; it’s how I’ve repaired stuff before. Hmm. Maybe the clue is in the name? Light prism. The lighting in here is pretty dull since Konrad doesn’t clean his windows.”

  He went outside the studio and into the daylight, and he set the prism on the ground and crouched beside it, again tapping it with his repair hammer.

  Nope, nothing.

  “I can’t repair it with the hammer, and time is ticking away. At this rate, I’m going to have to use the bronze lever. What am I missing?”

  He couldn’t help thinking that the name was the key to it all. He picked up the prism and held it high, pointing it at the sun.

  Nothing.

  There was something he needed to do to fix it. Boxe5 might have been an ass, but he guessed he wouldn’t give him an impossible quest. There had to be a way.

  “Maybe I need to get light into it, and that’ll fix it.”

  “Fifty minutes left,” said Bee.

  “Hey Bee, what materials absorb light?”

  “How the heck should I know?”

  “I told you, you’re my knowledge device now. You’re supposed to know these things.”

  “There are 1000 milligrams in a gram.”

  “Cute. If I need to get light into the prism to fix it, then I need something that absorbs light. So…that’s anything dark, right? Black things absorb light. Got it!”

  He opened his inventory and took out a piece of carbon that he’d mined earlier. Using his Deconstructor mallet he smashed it down into a fine powder. Then he strapped his artificer goggles over his eyes and stared at the prism.

  It took a few seconds of concentration, but then he saw it – one tiny, circular hole.

  “I think we’re getting there!”

  He put the carbon essence into the hole and then held the prism up toward the sun.

  The glass changed color now, tinting yellow. Light swirled inside the prism.

  Item: Light Prism

  Concentration: 100%

  “Woo hoo! We did it!”

  “You did it,” said Bee. “I’m a talking clock, remember?”

  CHAPTER 45

  ‘Games are an escape, but they can also be used to teach. You can direct people to your way of thinking by which consequences you put into a game.

  Want to make people behave better? Program violent deaths and penalties for players who kill others. They’ll soon cut it out, and that newly-learned conflict-avoidance stays with them outside of the game, too.

  But a fully immersive game like Soulboxe can also be used to heal.

  I always said that. Lucas agreed, Rathburger was skeptical, and Rudy Beasant just asked me ‘where’s the money in that?’

  We could have done so much more with Soulboxe. I think the gaming side of it was the tip of the iceberg; we’d found a way to expand, study, and tweak the human mind in a sandbox environment.’

  - Julie Ward writing in her personal blog in a post titled ‘What I can Say About Being Forced Out of Soulboxe Without Breaking My NDA.’

  ~

  He met the others outside the labyrinth door. Jon had a full quiver of arrows, so he must have visited a trader to stock up. Warren was pacing nervously, probably thinking about all the loot he was going to get.

  Tripp thought about the message that Jon had sent, about how the brothers had come from a poor family and hadn’t had much growing up, and he felt bad for him. He could almost forgive the cleric for killing him. Almost.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got a solution. Well, part of one. I fixed the prism, and now we just need to work out what to do with it. How long have we got, Bee?”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “Good enough. That’s time to go into room two and scope it out again. Check for anything that might be another solution, and then we’ll make our choice. Forty-five minutes should be enough to go in and find something. If I see something that means having to go back outside, I should have enough time to die and start the room a
gain.”

  “What do you need from us?”

  “You have your boots of anchor. Just keep the fiends busy and make sure you distribute your weight evenly. Lizzy, you must weigh, what, two hundred…”

  “Careful what you say next,” said Lizzy.

  “C’mon, you’re an elephant woman. That’s just a fact. You can stay on one side of the platform, Warren and Jon and me on the other. If the fiends crowd one area, we just need to move so we keep it steady. Are we ready?”

  Warren nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  They crossed through room one and then into room two, letting the door lock shut behind them.

  As soon as it locked into place, a message appeared.

  This is your third entry into the room.

  Entries left: 0

  “What?” said Tripp. “This is new.”

  “We must only get three tries in each room,” said Jon.

  “So, now we’ve got a time limit and we only get three shots to solve a room. I’m getting the sense that this game is rigged.”

  “A labyrinth wouldn’t be a labyrinth if it didn’t get harder the deeper you went,” said Bee.

  “That’s what she said,” said Warren.

  Lizzy punched him on the arm. “So immature.”

  “This is our only shot at this, and we’ve got forty minutes to solve it. We know there’s a lever under the platform, and I have the prism. You’re just going to have to keep the fiends busy and the platform steady while I try to figure out something else. Warren, use your cleric stuff to keep us healed. Lizzy and Jon, I need you to keep the fiends focused on you.”

  “So we’re just fiend fodder?” said Lizzy.

  “I prefer to think of you as fiend bait, but yeah. Let’s get to it!”

  And so the five of them stepped into the room – well, Bee floated into it – and onto the platform. Warren, Jon, and Lizzy spread out to balance the platform, while Tripp held the light prism and looked around.

  He didn’t have much time here. He was desperate to see the third solution so he could weigh up which was gold and which was silver, but he doubted he’d have the time. There was something he was missing, but that was kinda the point of it being missing; he couldn’t see it.

  So, what was he looking at?

  He already knew from casting underlay that there was nothing in the walls, and there was only the lever under the platform. What else was there?

  A groaning sound broke his concentration. The alcoves in the ceiling opened, and a ball of rock crashed down. Jon had to leap to the side to avoid it smashing into his skull.

  With the added weight on that side, the platform began to tilt. Warren sprinted away, joining Lizzy on her side and evening it out.

  “It’ll be the fiends next,” said Tripp. “Take them out as quickly as you can.”

  “Twenty minutes,” said Bee.

  “Twenty? What the hell?”

  I forgot to mention. Time now moves differently in the labyrinth. I could give you an explanation based on complicated physics, or I could just tell you that it moves faster just…because.

  “Ever get the feeling you pissed off the wrong digital god?” said Tripp. “Okay, when we’re in the labyrinth, we have even less time. Bee, can you use your big old computer brain to match up with how fast time moves in here?”

  “There are 1000 grams in a kilogram, master. And yes.”

  “Thanks. Keep us up to speed.”

  Alcoves on both sides of the ceiling opened, and two fiends dropped from each. The gorilla-like creatures adopted aggressive stances, pumping out their chests. One beat his breast and bellowed.

  “We don’t have time to fight them properly,” said Tripp. “We’ll have to switch to Plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll see. You’re all wearing your anchor boots, right?”

  “Yup,” said Warren. Jon nodded, while Lizzy lifted up her giant elephant leg to show him.

  “Good. Follow me.”

  Tripp crossed the platform and went to a wall. He lifted his leg and set his foot onto the wall, and then did the same with this other until he was standing horizontally now, glued to the wall.

  “Ah,” said Jon. “Clever.”

  The siblings joined him now, leaving the platform and sticking to the wall by their boots.

  With the sudden unbalance of weight the platform shifted momentum, tilting to the side the fiends were standing on.

  The fiends realized what was happening, but they were too late. As they went to flee the platform tilted under their weight, swinging perpendicular and sending the creatures flying down into the depths below, straight into the lava pool at the bottom.

  Free from their weight, the platform leveled out again and Tripp stepped onto it and crossed into the middle.

  “Fifteen minutes,” said Bee.

  Warren joined Tripp. “Gotta say, I’m not happy about this. We’re here for loot, right? That was our part of the deal. I can’t loot from a creature when its body is swimming in lava.”

  “If we let time run out, you won’t get anything at all.”

  “You owe us, Tripp. We didn’t even get experience for that since they died before we could touch them.”

  “We’ll sort this out after we get through the room. Time’s running out, and I’m not using the bronze lever unless I have to.”

  He just needed to think. Everything in the labyrinth was there for a reason. The lever, the prism, everything. He’d managed to repair it, but how did he use it?

  The walls…the door…the platform. What was he missing?

  Everything was for a reason. That was the whole point, right?

  He looked at the platform now, at the lines that were etched into it, dividing it into four segments. Four segments that all met in the middle.

  “Ten minutes,” said Bee.

  He took out his pickaxe and then hacked at the center of the platform, chipping away the stone.

  The alcoves rumbled open again.

  “More fiends coming our way!” said Warren.

  Damn it. They couldn’t tilt the platform and wait for it to rebalance, there wasn’t enough time. He had to do this now.

  He swung the pickaxe again and again, working up a sweat, feeling adrenaline flush through him. On his twelfth strike, he carved away enough stone that he saw something; a grove in the center of the prism.

  Figures crashed onto the platform, rocking it. There were six fiends this time, and these looked bigger and angrier than the last ones. If there was one thing they didn’t need, it was pissed apes bounding around an unsteady platform.

  “Take them out!”

  Jon drew his bow and started firing arrows, while Lizzy advanced on a fiend and swung her warhammer at its face.

  Tripp put the prism in the grove in the platform. When it set in place with a satisfying click, light leaked from the glass and spread along the lines gouged into the stone, flowing like water along a tunnel. The light lit up each line in the platform and then, something happened.

  Four icons lit up on each platform segment. Faces.

  Four faces, four segments…and there were four players in the room. Tripp, Warren, Jon, and Lizzy needed to each stand on a newly-lit icon. That had to be it!

  He was about to tell them, when Jon cried out and fell onto his back, his face covered in blood. He’d just taken an almighty punch from one of the fiends, and now the creature leaped on him, making him wheeze as its weight landed on his chest.

  Tripp equipped his morning star and smashed it into the fiend, only to feel pain burn along his knuckles from the force of his blow.

  The fiend, on the other hand, might as well have been hit by a fly for all the damage Tripp had done. He just didn’t have enough power to hurt them.

  The fiend raised its fist and was ready to pummel Jon when Lizzy charged and crashed into it. The platform started to tilt over to the side, revealing the chasm below it where the lava rested way at the bottom.

  “Warren, get
over here!” said Tripp.

  He and Warren ran to the other side, but they weren’t heavy enough to redistribute the weight. He had to do something else; they needed more weight.

  Feeling utterly ridiculous, he ran over to a fiend and swung his weapon at its face. He barely dealt any damage, but that didn’t matter; he’d aggroed it, and now the beast prowled toward him.

  He lured it to the right of the platform, and it began to balance.

  Before it could level up completely, three fiends leaped at Lizzy. They barreled into her, and Tripp watched in horror as the force was enough to break her anchor boots’ contact with the platform.

  The sight of Lizzy flying off the platform and then screaming down into the abyss was a reminder of how undeveloped his artificery was. His boot workmanship hadn’t been enough; the force of the fiends was too strong.

  Just like his fire-resistant iron had melted, so too had his boots failed when it came down to it. And now, Lizzy was gone.

  Warren was about to run to the edge, but Tripp grabbed him. The platform leveled out as the fiends crossed into the center.

  “One minute!” called Bee.

  This was no good. Four icons, but only three of them left to stand in position. They couldn’t do it, and he didn’t have time to get to the lever. It was over.

  Unless…

  “Jon, do you have any arrows that can hold a fiend in place?”

  “I picked up ice arrows from the archery trader. They work like the ones we used on the sleel.”

  “Good enough.”

  As a fiend advanced toward Tripp, he backed off and then edge over to the side, leading the fiend to him until it was standing on one of the glowing icons.

  “Hit it!”

  Jon unleashed an arrow. It smashed into the fiend’s back, and Tripp heard the crack of ice as a blue wave of light spread over it. The creature stopped moving, frozen in place.

  “Get to an icon, now!”

  “Ten seconds…” called Bee.

  As the sand in their hourglass drained, they darted to the icons, and Tripp jumped onto his section just in time.