Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

  Thinking about level-ups reminded him of something. “Bee, can I see my post-fight stats?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Congratulations! You have survived wave two, chicken man.

  Bonus EXP: 1000

  Bonus item: Warhammer of Heal

  While most warhammers pulverize things, this one heals damage.

  Legacy: 35

  He held the warhammer in his hands, feeling the weight strain his muscles. Tripp had a classic orcish body, but he’d put so few level points into power that his muscles might as well have been made of air.

  The hammer was a beauty; the handle was made from auburn stained wood, and the hammer head was solid purple rock with strange markings all over it. It exuded a feeling of magic, but a peaceful kind.

  Checking its legacy, he found that it had started as a regular warhammer before an artificer in a town called Yuncook had been tasked with adding fire damage to it. When the artificer contracted redlung disease and was bedridden, his apprentice decided to save his master’s business by completing his orders by himself.

  He was so nervous and so rushed that he messed up, adding healing essence to the warhammer and turning it from an instrument of death to something that bludgeoned life back into people.

  After that, a barbarian player called Kunshi came into possession of it. He would find the biggest creature he could comfortably fight, practice his various barbarian skills on it until they leveled, then heal the monster with the warhammer when it was on the brink of death, only to repeat the leveling process over and over again.

  A weapon-collecting player named Thabo Colton saw him doing this, and he bought the warhammer from him, where it stayed in his collection until he just quit playing Soulboxe and deleted his account one day. After this, the warhammer found itself back in the loot system.

  It was an interesting history for a weird, weird weapon. As a melee weapon, it was useless since it healed rather than caused damage, and as a healing device it was way too heavy to be practical.

  Before he knew it, Lizzy was standing beside him with her own warhammer in her hand, her face resembling a kid marveling at skateboards in a shop window.

  “Wow. That’s a beauty of a hammer.”

  She was the only one out of all of them who could use it effectively since it took a lot of power to swing a monster of a hammer. Sitting in Tripp’s inventory, it’d just gather dust. Whereas if he gave it to Lizzy, they’d have two healers in the group.

  “You want this, don’t you?” he said. “Do you have anything to trade?”

  “Like what?” said Lizzy.

  “I don’t know what kind of stuff you’ve picked up in Soulboxe. Let me see.”

  They opened their inventories to each other, and Tripp saw that Lizzy’s was almost full. The girl was a hell of a hoarder; she’d collected broken swords, basic iron axes, tons of pans, vials, and herbs. It looked like she’d taken anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  Unfortunately, even if he took the vials, herbs for alchemy and maybe some swords to use with his armorer skill, it didn’t come close to the value of his warhammer.

  He closed the window, ready to disappoint Lizzy. “Sorry, Lizzy. You don’t have much worth trading.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she was dejected and it made him feel like a jerk. He wasn’t a charity, though, and even if he couldn’t use the warhammer as well as her, it’d still come in handy.

  Lizzy turned to chat to Warren and Jon, so Tripp looked at the rest of his combat stats.

  The orb weavers they’d fought hadn’t been enough to remove his chicken icon, but he’d leveled up another four times, taking him all the way to the dizzy heights of level 22. This put his total loot points up to 50 and boosted his hitpoints and manus.

  After sinking a single point into power, one into mind, and two into technique, he smiled at his improved crafting and focus stats, and then closed his notifications.

  Checking out his stats had made him forget about the Forgestriders for a minute, and when he returned his thoughts to Gilla and Lamp, the edge of anger had left him.

  “We need to work out what to do about the Forgestriders,” he said.

  Warren shrugged. “We take the fight to them. They’ll be leveling up during the day, and maybe they’ll split up when they do that. They can’t travel together all the time. We go into Godden’s Reach and find one or two of them alone, and we pummel the hell out of them.”

  “That’d be a great way to waste time,” said Jon. “Forget preparing for the third wave, which is bound to be harder than the last. Don’t worry about getting through the labyrinth. Just concentrate on a petty vendetta.”

  “When a man seeks revenge, he digs two graves,” said Bee, affecting a mystical voice.

  “They started it. Why are they so hot for access to the mines, anyway?” said Warren.

  Tripp crossed his arms. “Apparently there are metals and minerals in Konrad’s section of the mine that you can’t get anywhere else, which makes sense given that he’s an artificer. They’ve also got it into their heads that they can get some hellbrick. They have crafters in their guild, and if they got some hellbrick they’d be able to make some amazing stuff.”

  “Why can’t they just get the labyrinth quest?” said Lizzy.

  “The same reason you couldn’t; dynamic questing. Boxe has opened the path for me and not for anyone else. Just like how they’ll be people out there in other parts of Soulboxe doing quests I can’t get access to.”

  “They want access to the mines, and they’re going to use their strength in numbers to get it,” said Jon. “It’s a case of unstoppable force and unmovable object, isn’t it? They can’t kill you because then you wouldn’t be able to come back to Godden’s Reach, and you’d have failed the quest. With it, Konrad’s mine will be closed.”

  “I didn’t think about that. You’re right; won’t kill me,” said Tripp. “In fact, most of what Gilla says is hot air. If I’m dead, they get nothing.”

  “They could kill us, though,” said Lizzy. “Send a message by killing your friends.”

  “Nah,” said Tripp. “I don’t care about you enough for that to work.”

  Lizzy gave him a playful punch on the arm. Although given her size, it hurt a little more than he wanted to admit.

  She carried on. “They’ll be able to see that we’re friends, so they might use us to pressure you. We all have something invested in this, don’t we? We want to beat the labyrinth and survive the Blood Waves, and one death is all it takes to stop us.”

  “So the plains aren’t safe for us anymore,” said Warren. “Damn it!”

  “I’ve seen enough bullies in the schoolyard to know a thing about dealing with them,” said Lizzy. “We teachers get training for that sort of thing, but I had a little first-hand experience growing up, too.”

  “Really?” said Warren, his voice shot with concern.

  She nodded. “Kids can be mean, and they’ll take whatever edge they find and use it against you. Growing up without a dad was one of those edges.”

  “If he was around, Dad would have a lot to answer for,” said Jon.

  “Let’s not go dancing through that minefield butt naked. Bullies look to hurt people they see as vulnerable. There’s one sure way of answering that.”

  Bee nodded in approval. “Move swift as the wind and closely-formed as the wood. Attack like the fire and be as still as the mountain.”

  Warren snapped his gaze on her. “Huh?”

  “The devs loaded her with a bunch of quotes, most of them about war. That one sounds like Sun Tzu to me,” said Tripp.

  “I like the ‘attack like fire’ part,” said Warren. “Bullying is an easy language to learn, and they hate it when you speak it back to them. They punch you in the face, you break their arm.”

  Lizzy shook her head. “The standing up to them part is fine, but physical force isn’t usually the answer. Sure, sometimes socking the bully kid in the jaw works, but other times it makes
things worse. Like I said; bullies target people they see as vulnerable.”

  “We need to think about how we’re vulnerable, and fix it,” said Tripp, finding himself nodding at Lizzy. “First up, they’re ahead of us in player levels and in general numbers. There must be a dozen of them in the guild.”

  “We have to be careful leveling up,” said Warren. “If they get us in the plains while we’re busy fighting, we’re more screwed than a buffalo chugging from a river in lion country.”

  Thinking about this, Tripp looked at Bee. “My friend here can keep watch for us. When we’re in the plains, Bee can sweep an arc around us and let us know when someone is coming. As soon as I get the word, I’ll start a campfire. They can’t attack us there.”

  “That’s something, at least, but even if we spend all day slugging it out with frorargs and prairie wolves, we wouldn’t catch up to their levels,” said Jon.

  Tripp paced a little now, letting his blood circulate a faster. “We need to bridge the gap. We don’t actually need to match their level, we just need the appearance of not looking vulnerable.” It was as if a firework of inspiration was exploding in his head now, and he paced quicker. “In short, we don’t need to be tough. We just need to look at it. And how do you do that? With badass armor and weapons. I’ll craft us some stuff that looks like its high level, and we’ll look less vulnerable without having to spend all day leveling. That leaves us time to think about room three.”

  “Yeah, I like it,” said Warren. “Jon? Lizzy?”

  The left nodded, and Lizzy gave Tripp the thumbs up. “Asses up and sleeves rolled, as my ma used to say. What do you need?”

  “I need you to go to Konrad’s mine,” said Tripp. “Take the right tunnel as soon as you go in, and it’ll lead to where his goblins work. You can borrow a few pickaxes and then I need you to start mining. If you don’t have the skill yet don’t worry, you’ll earn it when you start pounding the walls.”

  “What do you need us to mine?” said Jon.

  “Iron and carbon, mostly. But take anything else that looks interesting or unusual, and I’ll see what I can do with it.”

  “I’m keeping any gems I find.”

  Tripp nodded. “I’d expect nothing less. Let’s meet in the work studio in four hours, okay? Asses up and sleeves rolled, as Lizzy’s mom used to say.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Gilla

  Gilla watched the Godden’s Reach sunrise through the window of the Slugtrail Tavern, a cozy inn on the east side of Mountmend. The Forgestriders weren’t rich enough to make their own guild house yet, so they used the tavern as their base. Besides, when they finally saved enough gold for their own headquarters, Gilla wouldn’t have chosen a base in Godden’s Reach, anyway.

  Dreams of a guildhouse seemed a thousand light-years away now, and she had other things to think about. A stubborn problem she needed to solve before she was out of time.

  Most of the striders were already out on the plains, acting on her orders to level up and gather loot while keeping a lookout for Tripp and his friends. That left her and Lamp in the inn, as well as a few other NPC patrons who were there to make the place feel ‘lived-in’.

  Lamp returned from the bar with two pints of beer. It was still early morning and in real life, she wouldn’t have dreamed of drinking beer so early, but this was Soulboxe. If you couldn’t live a little here, where could you? Besides, in real life, she had to be careful. After a few beers a switch flipped, and things always went south from there. She was sick of splitting headaches, a sense of guilt, and the need to make apologies.

  “Here you go, Gilla,” said Lamp, and set a mug of beer in front of her and then settled into a seat.

  She smiled at him. Lamp had been her in-game friend for years now. Hell, he was probably her best friend even if she’d never met him in person. He was studious, loyal, always willing to back her up. It felt right having him around. Trust counted for a lot.

  Lamp took a sip of his beer. “Looks like it’s back to square one,” he said. “What the hell was that, anyway? Have you ever seen someone climb over a fence like that?”

  “Their boots were artificed,” said Gilla. “The orc is a crafter. Must be a pretty good one, too.”

  “Other than hounding them every time they set foot outside of Mountmend, I am at a loss. We can’t force him to let us into the mines. We’re like my Auntie’s poodle, Roger. Nasty little thing with a scary bark, but it had lost all of its teeth.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Tripp is a stubborn bastard. In any other circumstance, I like stubborn bastards, but we don’t have time for this. We need to come at it from another angle.”

  “Or we could just get out of Godden’s Reach. I mean, is it worth it?”

  “You read the forums; they’re all talking about the Blood Wave. Anyone who wasn’t here before it started is kicking chunks out of themselves. Out of the thousands of people playing Soulboxe there are, what, eighty of us here now? This is one of those game events that they’ll talk about for years. We’re lucky to be part of it.”

  “The guild tournament is two months away, Gilla. We should be leveling somewhere else. The frorargs and wolves and sleels won’t cut it for us. You don’t make a baby strong by feeding it formula all its life.”

  “First, who talks about making babies strong, Lamp? It sounds weird. Secondly, we could level up for a month straight, but we’d still be behind the other guilds. Soulboxe isn’t a maths equation of X level beats Y level. It’s about what you do with it. A clever level 30 mage can beat a level 100 barbarian.”

  “And you think the mines are the answer?”

  She nodded. “There are materials in Konrad’s mine that you can’t find anywhere else, and that means if we can get some, our crafters can make weapons other guilds don’t have. That’s the big equalizer for us. If we want to place highly in the tournament, we need to bring something to the table that other guilds don’t have.”

  Lamp scratched his chin and squinted. Gilla had known him so long that she could tell when he was troubled with something.

  “What’s wrong? Spill.”

  He took a gulp of beer as if it would give him courage. “After the tournament, I need to take a break. I need to think about things outside of Soulboxe for a while. I’m not in a good way. I’m not exercising, I’m eating crap all the time, I’m turning up to my job with rings under my eyes. People are starting to notice.”

  The words wrenched her heart a little. Not because she was upset with Lamp; everything he said made sense. Soulboxe was a game, and spending too long in it wasn’t healthy. You needed a balance.

  That was the problem for her; balance. She had less than a tightrope walker with one leg longer than the other.

  She’d never told Lamp about it, but her life was a mess. In fact, the last six months had been a tornado of destruction sweeping through her life.

  She and James had split up. Then her mother died. Then her dog, Flud, had to be put down. He was sixteen years old, but still. Talk about everything coming at once.

  Her job sucked, and she found it hard to summon the nerve to even leave the house to see her friends. Friendship was a plant, and you had to water it or it’d wither. She’d let hers go brown and dry.

  As much as she felt pathetic even thinking it, Soulboxe was all she had right now. A game was all she had, it was her escape from it all.

  Here, she could leave everything behind. As the leader of the Forgestriders she had power, respect, and she had friendships. Soulboxe opened up possibilities that just didn’t exist in the real world.

  That was how they hooked you. She’d realized that years ago. Soulboxe was marketed as pure escapism, and the thing that made that so powerful was that it was true. It was a drug designed for perfect addictiveness, and the developers were the chemists.

  Here, it didn’t matter about your background. People didn’t see you, they saw the character avatar you had chosen. They saw your status in the kind of armor you wore, in the skil
ls you’d earned, and most importantly for Gilla, in the guild that she’d built from nothing.

  With the guild melee tournament coming up in a couple of months, she was desperate for the Forgestriders to get themselves on the leaderboard, for their name to be sitting at the top. Winners of the melee fighting tournament – the Forgestriders! Next to it would be her name, there for everyone to see.

  She wanted it so badly that thinking about it made her stomach heavy. While most guilds poured all their efforts into mastering combat abilities and spells, she knew a better way; the Forgestriders were going to win because she had a strategy.

  That strategy relied on having weapons and armor that nobody else had, and that meant she needed to get the right materials for her crafters.

  But Lamp was planning on taking some time out, and that worried her.

  “Can you give me a couple of months?” she asked.

  Lamp nodded. “As I said; I’m here for the tournament.”

  “I want this, Lamp. I want it so much that when I’m not in Soulboxe, I’m dreaming about it.”

  “I know, and I’m here all the way. Until the tournament, that is.”

  “We need to make it count and send you off in style. How do we get access to the mines? Tripp clearly isn’t going to let us. He’s going to fight us all the way.”

  “He has friends who might not be so stubborn,” said Lamp.

  “What are you saying?”

  “That maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. People always want something. It’s just a matter of finding out what.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Having a plan made Tripp feel like a mental masseur had teased out the tension knots in his mind. What Lizzy had said made sense to him. Gilla thought she could use her guild to bully Tripp into giving her access to the mines. While he wasted time dealing with her, he wasn’t thinking about how to get through the labyrinth, so he had to deal with her quickly.