by John L. Monk
I wondered who would make such a silly choice. Then I remembered Magda, the noob killer. Beautiful, yes, but reduced to slaying new retirees for money.
Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but smile at the image of a world full of beautiful weaklings and ugly super-beings.
A half-hour later, as I passed the westernmost corner of the city and turned northeast, I read the section on “Melee Classes.” Much like mana, a stat that appeared after taking the sorcerer class, melee classes had their own attributes. Warriors and thieves got reflexes, which boosted their ability to dodge and block attacks. Priests and paladins got zeal—a measure of their holiness. Wizards were similar to sorcerers in their use of mana. Their spells were different, though—a mix of combative and utilitarian. Wizards were also one of the default classes retirees could choose for a gold piece at The Slaughtered Noob.
By the time I’d finished reading, the northern wall was a good half a mile behind me. The land had become flat and grassy, with low hills in the distance. I was pretty sure if I ran into a bunch of lumbering giants, I could quickly choose Sprint and escape. I’d then choose Disappear and hide until they left the area. I could probably do this all the way to Ward 2, avoiding all the so-called “monsters” along the way. I’d then follow the tips section in the manual and kill squirrels and other critters as a way of leveling up slowly in a tactic called “grinding”—except I’d do it from the comfort of the road, and not some gloomy dungeon. Thus, in relative safety, I’d accumulate more spells and mana as I made my easy way to—
A massive blow from behind rocked me forward. I tried to look down, but my chin jammed against the shaft of an arrow sticking out of my neck. Carved into the wood just behind the arrowhead were the words, “Go back.”
Then I died.
When I resurrected, I was inside the city in a section called Martyr’s Square wearing a noob tunic and a pouch around my neck. The pouch was empty of gold, as Magda said it would be after my third death.
Martyr’s Square was a wide plaza with fantasy-themed shops and cafes around the perimeter. I stood in the middle of a polished disk of what looked like slate. It was about twenty feet in diameter and had a band of squiggly runes running the circumference.
Angry and determined, I moved to get off the disk … and then stopped at the oddest sound: applause from the people around the plaza, who stood looking at me and pointing. Some laughed or hurled insults. Others flashed thumbs-up and cheered.
Flushing under the attention, I wondered if I’d be forced to come back here every time I died. If I had any chance of success, I needed to bind repeatedly along the way or I’d never make it to Ward 2.
My local map showed I was in the exact center of the city, with roads leading away in the cardinal directions toward each gate.
I headed north. Surely, my killer would have looted my gear and left by now. Still, I had to check. Maybe they’d only taken the gold and left the rest.
As I exited the plaza, I noticed a tall stone building with a sign over it reading, “First Mythian Bank.” I gazed at it in thought. If I had a bank account, I could deposit any new gold I got rather than carry it around. Then, if I died, I could use it to buy new gear before heading back out.
The northern gates were grander by far than the western. Very few people were coming and going. Most of the traffic was overhead—people flying between towers or over the walls on dragons, pegasi, and other mythical creatures. This spawned an idea: if I could get one of them to fly me to Ward 2, that’d neutralize the so-called “guardian” and every other threat along the way.
Abruptly, my spirits fell. Likely anyone with a dragon would want a good deal of gold for the journey.
Cipher’s words came back to me: Level up. Acquire power.
Gazing down the road, I saw a group of four people leaving on foot. I considered begging to join them, but two things stopped me. One, I had my pride. Two, I was curious about the arrow. Someone had clearly carved Go back into it. Was that a personal message to me, or the twisted scribblings of a demented gamer?
I angled off the road heading northwest. The direction wasn’t arbitrary—there was a tiny Grim Reaper on the world map showing where I’d died.
Less than twenty minutes later, I arrived at a familiar grassy expanse and knew I was close. Gauging by the size of the Grim Reaper icon, my body could have been anywhere within a few hundred feet.
Taking a systematic approach, I paced back and forth in each direction through the knee-high grass and found it a few minutes later.
Chapter Twenty-One
Luck was definitely with me today. Not only was the body still clothed in my magic sorcerer robes, but my staff was there, too. And my boots.
The sight of my bloody body was disturbing and surreal, with that arrow sticking through its neck. I reminded myself this was all make-believe—fake blood, fake body, fake world. Computerized data, nothing more.
Lodged in my dead self’s throat, the arrow prevented me from pulling off my robes. With a grimace, I straddled my corpse and tried yanking the arrow out, but the arrowhead snagged and wouldn’t pull through. I tried pushing, and that worked until I got to the fletching, which wasn’t feathered. Rather, it was constructed of the sharp, rigid scales of some unknown creature. I applied pressure and broke one off—and sliced my thumb in the process. The cut hurt like hell and bled quite a bit, so I wrapped it in my tunic and waited. Five minutes later, my regeneration kicked in and the wound closed tighter and more seamlessly than possible in real life. No scar, either.
Not wanting to get cut again, I pulled a coin from my coin purse and chipped away at the remaining fletching until all that remained were nubs. After that, the arrow pulled right through.
There was a little blood on the front of my robes, which was fine. If I wanted to look fashionable, I wouldn’t be wearing them in the first place.
Scanning the area with my sharp young eyes, I felt safe from whoever had killed me. I set out again, angling toward the road with those travelers. No, I wouldn’t beg to join them. I’d simply stay near them. If we ran into anything nasty, I’d lend a hand and they’d see I was worthy of their company. Maybe—
Maybe didn’t happen, because there was another damned arrow sticking out of my neck. This one protruded farther than the last one. It, too, was marked:
Go back.
Behind it was another word:
Jaddow.
Then I was dead again.
And back alive again, in that stupid plaza.
More clapping and cheering, and more laughter than last time. Who the hell were these people? Didn’t they have better things to do than stand around gaping?
“Jaddow,” I said in disgust.
He was supposed to be here helping me—not shooting me in the goddamned neck!
I tamped down my anger and looked at the situation in the best possible light: if Jaddow existed then Cipher existed, and therefore Melody existed.
A tremendous weight I’d been carrying fell away. Unexpectedly, I dropped to my knees and wept openly as new hope flooded into me.
Maybe Mythian wasn’t so bad after all. The brilliant Everlife developers clearly knew their stuff. They were the real wizards. Melody and I could easily have a life here. I smiled at the thought of us fighting side-by-side against hill giants, dragons, and talking skeletons…
“Pull it together,” I whispered, wiping my eyes.
The crowd had definitely turned against me. Almost all of them were laughing and pointing—whereas I could barely keep the grin off my face as I trekked back to the northern gate and followed my previous trail through the grass.
This time, I had little worry about arrows through the neck. Jaddow had only killed me when I kept going north. Clearly, he was enforcing through murder what Bernard had advised through suggestion. Which was fine. Everything was fine because Melody was alive.
She has to be alive.
It was much easier now to find my corpse. My two corpses, actually. The f
irst was decomposing at an accelerated rate, and boy did it stink. Probably as smelly as it would be in real life, though of course I’d never smelled a dead human body before.
The writing on the second arrow had more to say than the first one: “Quit being stubborn and start leveling like you were told. I’ll find you when you’re ready.”
I threw the arrow down and gazed around the clearing. No doubt he was out there watching me—waiting to see if I went north again. He was a violent bully, but he also wanted me to succeed. Yet more proof that Melody was alive.
She has to be alive.
After putting on my bloody robes, I examined my staff to make sure it wasn’t damaged. It wasn’t. My purse, however…
“Well, all right,” I whispered in awe as the coin count registered in my character sheet. A whopping 10,000 gold!
This time, when I looked around the clearing, I did so for an altogether different reason: for Magda, or someone like her. As Jaddow had shown, I was a sitting duck out here.
Quickly, I hurried back the way I’d come. A look overhead showed the sun dipping low in the east. Were there monsters that only came out at night? Would they come this close to the city? I skimmed the manual, but nothing stood out.
When my location status switched to Sanctuary, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I was safe again. Richer and wiser, and happier than yesterday. So happy, in fact, that I wanted to fall on my knees and start crying again, because she was alive.
Instead of that, I pulled myself together and proceeded to the bank.
The “First Mythian Bank” had an embarrassingly out-of-place revolving door with room for one person, and no more. The door was formed of smooth plate glass like something modern, and I had to shuffle along uncomfortably to get the door to cycle me through. Strangely inconvenient.
Being a physical bank, I’d expected to see a row of tellers from ancient times when people did their banking in person. Instead, I found myself in a big room, about fifty feet square, with no hallways, offices, cubicles, or stairways. The ceiling towered several stories overhead, and I wondered at the wasted space. No windows either, but I could still see easily because of those ubiquitous glowing runes everywhere.
“Hello?” I shouted into the emptiness.
“How may I help you?” a voice behind me said.
“Eyaaaah!” I yelped and spun around to find…
“How do you do?” a tall elf man said. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Lord Snoot, manager of the First Mythian Bank, Ward 1 branch. We pay no interest, make no loans, and invest in nothing. But we’re perfectly secure—it is impossible to steal from us. Now … if you’d like shelves brought in, display tables, racks and things of that sort, simply call for help and we’ll make arrangements. Nobody can enter your banking instance unless you invite them. Such invitations revoke immediately upon their leaving and must be renewed each time. Do you have questions? Because I’m quite busy.”
Staring at him dumbly—heart still racing—I tried to think of something to say.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lord Snoot huffed impatiently and rolled his eyes.
“Um,” I said slowly. “Uh, hello. My name is—”
“Ethan Crane,” he said. “Yes, yes, how very fortunate that I won’t be forced to revoke your immortality and destroy you with a thought. Will that be all?”
“What is this place?”
“It’s a banking instance, of course. Weren’t you listening?”
I nodded. “But why’s it so empty?”
Lord Snoot gaped as if he’d never heard so stupid a question before. “Because you haven’t put anything in it, you silly human! Gods, I get so bored with this job … Same questions every time, day in, day out…”
“How many fish are named Arnold?” I said.
His eyes narrowed and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t. I was just trying to ask a different question.”
Lord Snoot’s upper lip quivered. Then one of his long ears shook spastically. A pointy eyebrow twitched next, and then the tremor moved back to his lip. His eyes grew so big and round I thought maybe he was about to … But then no, he didn’t.
What I didn’t expect him to do was throw his head back and laugh—loud, long, and high pitched. And a bit horsey.
“Oh goodness,” Lord Snoot said. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard an actual joke. Oh, dearie me my mo, what a hoot you are!” He covered his mouth and leaned over giggling for a good ten seconds before straightening. “You really should get a table, you know. At the very least. Then you can put something on it, yes? Here, just a second.”
He snapped his fingers and a table appeared near the revolving door.
“Less walking if we put it close to the entrance,” he added in a stage whisper.
“Wow,” I said. “Thank you. I mean: thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Do you know any more jokes?”
I shook my head sadly. “No, but I’ll be sure to think up some for next time.”
“Excellent,” Lord Snoot said, clapping his hands. Abruptly he gasped and pointed behind me. “Oh, no! Look over there!”
I looked but there was nothing to see. I turned back and Lord Snoot was gone.
“That was different,” I said, peering around nervously.
When it was clear he wasn’t returning, I went to my new table and consulted the manual.
The section covering bags and money purses agreed with what Crunk had said: I didn’t have to dig around to remove coins. I could simply think 10,000 gold and the coins would appear in my hand, spilling everywhere. Or I could touch it to someone else’s purse and it’d flow into that. I could do the same thing with a box, or even a table.
I didn’t want to put all my money in the bank, so I willed half onto the table and smiled when the tinkling coins stacked up perfectly.
Going back to Crunk’s Junk didn’t appeal to me. There were shops all over town to choose from, of all kinds. And not just the swords and sorcery variety. Art shops, florists, and pet shops were but a few of the non-gaming sorts I’d seen. There were also plenty of restaurants and pubs.
The more I saw, the more it seemed as if Heroes of Mythian was little more than an elaborate fantasy tourist trap. Literally, because the tourists were stuck here forever.
While on my two corpse retrievals, I’d spied a shop that looked more upscale than Crunk’s, yet still affordable, and that’s the first place I went with my brand-new money.
Magical Matters had a sign in the window that said it catered to “Wizards, Sorcerers, Thaumaturges, Magicians, Diabolists, Witches, Warlocks, Illusionists, Diviners, Invokers—and even Priests!” I’d seen some of those other classes in the manual. Many of them were “rare” classes, like sorcerers, but I hadn’t read up on them.
There was another sign in the window that proclaimed the shop was “100% Player Owned.”
I went in, and as I crossed the threshold, the sanctuary flag dropped. Suddenly I could be killed again and I wondered why.
Unlike Crunk’s Junk, with all manner of gear heaped on dusty shelves, here there were locked display cases of high quality, impeccably kept. Magical runes were cut into the panes, and they glowed faintly red when I leaned in for a closer look at a pair of sandals. When I smelled a whiff of burning hair from an errant strand, I backed away.
“Hi, I’m William,” a man said, stepping from behind a counter farther in. Like the players on the street, he looked me up and down, though without sneering. “Um, no offense, but are you sure you’re in the right place?”
I smiled politely and hoped it caught on. “I don’t know yet. I came into a little money and thought I’d pick up a few things for Under Town.”
“Ah, yes, Under Town,” William said, smiling fondly. “Been a long time since my days down below. The skellies were a letdown, but it gets better. So, what are you in the market for?”
“Something better than what I have.”
/> “I’ll give you the tour,” he said.
William showed me the gear he thought best for sorcerers, all of it gathered and sold to him by gamers. Crunk’s Junk, apparently, was only for buying and selling low-powered gear, or getting rid of bulk junk from a bottomless bag in a hurry. To get anything good, people had to either adventure for it or come to a place like William’s.
But wow, this stuff was expensive. The cheapest thing he had was almost 3,000 gold, and the most expensive was over 100,000. The protective runes on that display case made my skin crawl.
“My budget’s only 5,000,” I said. “What do you suggest?”
He eyed me critically. “Sorcerer, huh?”
I nodded.
“You sticking with it?”
I shrugged. “I need to level up as fast as possible.”
Clinically he said, “You’ll probably want to diversify at some point. Put a few points in warrior, or even priest. Give me a moment. I have just the thing, and it’s not too expensive.”
William went into a back room and returned a few minutes later with a box of rolled-up scrolls. From that he pulled a smaller box and opened it on the counter to reveal a jumble of loose rings.
“All these rings,” he said, “are 2,000 apiece. They’re pretty good, too—way better than the stuff in Under Town or Crunk’s. Try this one.”
He handed me a ring with a dull blue gemstone. Etched around the silver band were tiny runes. I put it on and all my resistances jumped from 1 to 6.
William said, “The FP on that will protect you against salamanders.” At my confused look, he added, “FP means fire protection.”
I nodded like I was following. “What do you mean salamanders? Like amphibians?”
He laughed. “Salamanders are fire lizards. The other tunnel has spiders. Lots of easy points at your level. Here, try this one.”