by R K Billiau
“I know how to help with that too. At dusk wolves come out to hunt,” he pointed towards the village, “hence the walls. They should be good enough experience for you to gain those levels back.”
Madison, Kai, and I looked at each other. “What do you think?” I asked.
“I am curious what secret the village holds, that they will not even let us near it. If they can provide those items for us, I do not see a reason to refuse the quest,” Kai said.
“I’m fine with it too,” Madison said. “It’s not like we have anything better to do, and it sounds like it could be fun! I love a good mystery.”
I chuckled at her ever-present optimism, then turned towards Graham. “Okay, we’ll help, on the condition you can provide all that stuff for us first.”
Graham beamed and clapped his hands. “Great! Feel free to rest here, I’ll go get the mayor who can issue you the quest. Along with the supplies you’ll need.”
We each shook hands with him and he headed back towards the small village.
“So, this is where your Hunch was leading us, Huddy?” Madison asked.
I had completely forgotten to even check and concentrated on the skill, feeling for its directional indicator. It wasn’t pointing towards the village, but off to the side, into the forest.
Chapter 4
We didn’t have to wait long before we saw Graham coming back toward us, an unfamiliar woman beside him.
“Does anyone else find it weird that we haven’t seen other people in the village?” I asked. The way the village was laid out didn’t provide a great view inside with the walls blocking a large portion and what looked like a large barn or big hall blocking most everything behind it. We could still see through the gaps though and hadn’t caught sight of another person.
“There is definitely something odd about this place,” Kai said. “I wonder if we should be concerned.” He spoke quietly so our approaching visitors could not hear, squared his shoulders and stood up a little straighter.
“Oh come on guys, it’s like Graham said, they just weren’t prepared for newcomers and are trying to protect the village,” Madison said. “I doubt anything bad is going on. We are probably what’s making them act so strange.” She made a face as her stomach grumbled.
“Hey if they feed us, they can be as weird as they want to be,” I said.
Kai looked down at his bare feet. “Shoes would be nice too.”
Graham and the woman arrived, greeting us with a nod. She was dressed in thin, dark brown leather from head to toe. Unlike Graham, her clothes looked less like armor and more like your typical jeans and shirt, only leather.
“Okay,” Graham said as he pulled a leather pack off his back and set it down. The woman did the same with her pack. “This is Therese McKase, our mayor.”
I was still having a hard time adjusting to everyone looking the same age. I had never really considered how variable ages were in every encounter before PrimeVerse. To have someone introduced to me as the mayor who looked, like all of us, still in her teens was as off-putting now as it had been when I met Chief Arnold of the Ascendants. This was an uncanny valley situation that I had never given thought to before.
Mayor McKase held her hand out to us and we each took turns shaking it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. Graham has explained our situation to you? I do hope you understand. You are willing to take on the quest to help us?”
“Right to business, eh?” I asked.
The woman nodded at me, her severe looking face not breaking into a smile. She had an olive complexion with black hair and steely dark brown eyes. She crossed her arms, her body language clearly indicating she was not at all interested in a lively conversation.
“I take the protection of my village very seriously, and I’ll be upfront with you. You people aren’t welcome. It’s nothing against you, you might be great folks, but the fact that you are here represents something that we have been dreading for some time now.”
“What’s that?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“Change,” she answered.
“But change is ineviti…” I started before Madison cut me off, hands raised in the air.
“Ma’am, what Hudson means to say is we don’t intend any harm. In fact, I was given a unique class by the devs to spread knowledge and skills of the system, solely so I could be a help.”
The mayor arched an eyebrow at her. “I find this annoying and somewhat hard to believe. Why would they assign something like that to the world, but not to their beta testers?”
“Maybe they decided the world needed it after watching you? I honestly couldn’t say what their reason was. They offered the class to me with hardly any explanation at all. They did say I met all their ‘personality profile matrices’ for the class, whatever that means.”
The mayor actually chuckled at that, a slight smile gracing her face for the first time. “That does sound like something they would say. Sometimes I swear their jargon was a second language.” Her smile faded as quickly as it came. “Can you show me something to prove your class? How are you supposed to help people learn about the system?”
“Oh! Sure!” Madison said. “I don’t know what you’ve already figured out, but here’s something that nobody in our previous group could do.” She waggled her fingers and made a waving motion, then a second later Graham and Therese popped into the group.
“Oh damn,” Graham said.
The look on Mayor McKase’s face was priceless. Instead of the tight scowl she’d had since she arrived, her mouth hung open. “We... we didn’t think this was even possible! We just assumed it wasn’t part of the game design.” She snapped her jaw shut and cleared her throat, forcing back some diplomacy.
“The best part,” Kai said, “is that being in a group spreads XP gains from combat, so now the XP doesn’t only go to whoever did the most damage. That would have helped my old tribe tremendously in our first days had we had Madison there.”
Madison blushed at that. “Yeah, and I can do this!” She made a quick slashing gesture and several glowing green X’s showed up on the ground forming a small grid with a single X in the front. “This is a formation setting, if you stand in the X’s when in combat you get bonuses.”
Graham and the mayor looked at each other, then stepped into the X’s. I smiled as I knew they were watching their HUDs and seeing the +5% combat bonus appear. I still thought it was a weird design choice to have things like that hidden, but then maybe they had put System Clerics in because of the results of the beta players.
“Well this would have been helpful,” Graham said. “I wonder how much further we would have gotten if we had this from the beginning.”
The mayor nodded at him, then sighed. I got the feeling she was annoyed by him showing such excited interest. “Do you have anything else you can show us?” he asked Madison.
“I’ve got something,” I said. And with a thought, I popped up the mini-map in the group window. It showed a bird's-eye view of the area we were in, the stretch of grass, the blue river, and all of us as white dots.
“Are you kidding me?!” Graham shouted while he threw his hands up in the air. “This is a serious aid to our defenses!” His face scrunched up and turned a little red as I pinged the map and drew little arrows on it. Madison elbowed me.
“Show off,” she said.
“All right, I’ve seen enough,” the mayor said. “As much as what you have shown is impressive, and it is, we cannot just let you into our village. We do want to though, and want to learn what you know. But this quest must be completed first. Give me a moment and I will issue it to you all.”
“Oh, if you issue it to me, I can share it with the group,” Madison said.
The mayor paused again, shaking her head ruefully. Then she disappeared from the group UI, nudged Graham, and he quickly followed suit. She pointed towards Madison, who smiled.
Madison has shared a quest!
Quest: Seek the Power in the Forest – There is a power in
the forest that Mayor McKase wants you to discover. Subdue the guardians and allow the mayor to claim the power for the village.
Reward: Acceptance into the village, 25XP
Failure: Barred entry from the village
Do you accept? YES/NO
I accepted and watched my quest log update. “Great, we’ve accepted the quest, but I seem to recall the promise of help to complete it.”
“And food!” Madison said.
“And food,” I agreed.
“Right, we can help you with that, and Graham can point you in the direction you need to go,” the mayor said.
“He can’t come with us? Even to guide us there?” Kai asked.
The two villagers looked at each other then the mayor shook her head. “Unfortunately, no, ever since that thing showed up we have been getting attacked, mostly at night, and Graham is our best combatant. He needs to stay at the village to protect it.
“Attacked by what?” Kai asked.
“They are called tutelar,” Graham said. “They seem to be energy forms that possess things in the landscape. They form bodies out of earth, or water, or sticks- we’ve seen all kinds of them. They aren’t difficult to defeat, but they come in numbers.”
“Is that why you have not been able to take on the thing in the forest?” Kai asked.
Graham nodded. “One of the reasons, anyway. It certainly doesn’t help that I can’t leave because the attacks are so unpredictable.”
“All right,” I said, “back to the other matter.”
“The food!” Madison said.
The mayor turned to Graham, “I’ll let you handle the rest then? I want to get back,” she turned her head towards us, and I saw the flicker of emotion play across her face, just a peek of hope, before she reined it in. “Please help us. We have much to share with you, and I believe you can be a big help for us, too.” With that, she turned and walked off.
“Okay guys,” Graham said, “these packs are yours. Inside you’ll find some new gear and a few weapons we had lying around.” He looked at Madison. “And food and drink.”
Without even a second’s hesitation, Madison and I jumped at them and opened their inventory screens. The packs had inventory slots instead of having to physically fit the items inside, and there was just something entertaining about pulling a five-foot spear out of a small backpack.
Digging through the inventory I found a lot of salted meats, skins of water and even some dried fruit, but then I saw it, the prize: a fresh loaf of bread and a small wheel of cheese. I almost cried. Madison did cry when she pulled something else out of her bag; a couple apples and a whole cooked chicken, steaming on a plate and everything.
Graham may have been talking, but if he was, I didn’t hear him as we descended on the food like it had just respawned and we were the death trap zombies. Eventually he gave up and just stood there, arms crossed as he waited for us to finish. With a satisfied grin, I licked my fingers and reveled in the blinking and fading away of the Starvation debuff and my expendable pools starting to regenerate normally again.
“You should probably save the travel foods for inside the forest,” Graham said. “There’s no other food in there. Also, feel free to get dressed.”
Clothes had been the last thing on my mind with the debuffs taking their toll on me, but now that they were mostly gone, I suddenly craved wearing them. Not just because I was apparently making Graham uncomfortable, but so I was no longer at the mercy of the environment.
I dug into my pack and pulled out two sets of clothes similar to Graham’s and handed one to Kai, who took them with a smile. He immediately equipped the shoes and sighed in relief.
I equipped everything and popped up my character sheet to see how I looked. Spinning my avatar around, I had to admit, the outfit wasn’t bad. It was pretty cool that everything fit perfectly, despite not even being sized. There were definitely some perks to game life.
Leather Doublet – 15 armor
Leather Pants – 15 armor
Leather boots – 5 armor
Kai equipped the gear as well, but frowned at the doublet.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“If I wear this doublet, it gives me a penalty to my agility. I don’t want that.” He handed it back to me and I put it in the pack.
“There should be a lighter leather shirt in there, too. We haven’t figured out cotton or silk yet,” Graham said. I pulled out the lighter shirt and gave it to Kai. He put it on and nodded.
“There should be enough food for several days,” Graham turned toward the forest and pointed. “I’ll take you over this way, it’s the quickest way to where you need to go.” He looked up towards the darkening sky. “If you set up camp near the edge of the woods and get a fire going,” I grimaced at those words, “you will usually get attacked by wolves. They tend to come out at dusk in several packs and will attack for an hour or so. That should help with XP. There are a couple tents and some bedrolls in the packs so you should be able to get a Good Night’s Sleep bonus as well.”
Nobody else said it, so I had to. “We uh, we don’t know how to make fire.”
He stared at us and cocked an eyebrow. “How did you guys make it through the forest?” he shook his head. “Don’t worry, there’s a firestarter kit in the packs also.” I could have hugged him, but I have boundaries.
We followed him to where he wanted us to set up camp, and he even built the fire for us, showing us how to use the firestarter, tinder and flint. Then he stood up and pointed towards a small path. “Follow that into the forest and keep on it for about half a days walk. It’s northeast if your survival skill is high enough.”
“Hold on,” I said and activated my Illusory Map, expanding it as large as I could and adding a compass. I zoomed out as far as possible, allowing it to show our current location far off to one side, then using my finger I drew a rough line in the direction I thought Graham wanted us to go. “This way?” I asked him.
The shock on his face at seeing my 3D projected map was a reward in and of itself. He brought his hands up and rubbed his eyes, blinking as if it might disappear when he reopened them. Then a huge grin spread across his face. “You guys are really full of surprises.”
He came over and moved his hands through the map, which fuzzed out like a poor connection wherever he would touch. After a few seconds, he pointed to a spot near the opposite end from us. “I don’t know how big this map is relative to the area, but it’s this direction.” I adjusted the line on my map, and with a thought brought up my quest log. In a moment of inspiration I imagined merging the map into the quest log and an orange chevron appeared on the directional ring of my mini-map.
“Okay,” Graham said. “I need to get back now. The wolves have a standard attack pattern and should be easy to take on once you figure them out. I hope the tutelar leave you alone, but if they attack, just do enough damage to their physical form and they’ll dissipate. Do you need anything else?”
Kai shook his head, and I was about to respond when Madison beat me to it.
“One thing, whatever happened to the other guy you said came out here?”
Chapter 5
Graham frowned. “Carl? We gave that guy the same deal we gave you. We gave him fresh clothes, a spear, the quest, and sent him on his way. He wasn’t thrilled that we wouldn’t let him into the village. We caught him trying to sneak in a couple nights later, and, well… I had to send him to respawn.”
“You killed him?” Madison asked. “Just for trying to sneak in?”
“As I told you before, until we get this thing in the forest sorted out, nobody is allowed in. No exceptions.” He shifted uncomfortably and continued. “He still has the quest, so he might have respawned and come back to complete it. I don’t have any hard feelings against the guy, but I will enforce our rules. If you run into him out there, tell him that.” He shrugged.
“Do you know where he respawned?” I asked.
“The village has its own respawn point, bu
t the closest one that we know of besides that is in the forest. You know right where the forest, river, and our plains meet?” he gestured in the general direction. “You had to have passed through it. We haven’t seen him since, so hopefully he went off to try the quest. If you complete it and he comes back to the village, we might let him in, too.”
I didn’t peg him as a bad guy, but something certainly felt strange about this whole thing. I started wracking my brain thinking of what treasures they must be guarding in the village. And what kind of treasure they needed so badly from this quest. Some kind of…
“Thank you, Graham, for all of your help. We will do our best to complete this quest.” Kai cut off my train of thought and I shook my head back to reality. Or whatever this was.
Graham nodded and took a step to leave, then hesitated, his face softening. “Look, I understand we may come off as hardasses, and once this thing is all figured out, we can tell you why. We have good reasons to act the way we do. Reasons that are probably more shocking than you’re guessing.”
Now I really wanted to know what they were hiding.
“It’s okay, Graham,” Madison said. “We totally understand. We’re all just learning as we go in this world.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, we won’t hold it against you, as long as you don’t, you know, start killing us indiscriminately,” I said.
Graham laughed. “As long as you don’t try to get into the village until we say so, you’ll be fine.” He nodded at us again and walked away.
I waited until he had walked a good distance away. “I lied,” I said. “I’m desperate to know what they have behind those walls. Maybe we could…”
“Do not even go there, Hudson. Whatever it is, it is something important enough to kill for,” Kai said, then shook his head. “This world has too much violence between us all.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Too much violence? Weren’t you a, like, violence aficionado on Earth?”