by Jeff Sproul
“That’s rough,” said Aaron. “You making any money?”
“Yeah, I’m making some,” Riley responded as he brought the cup of coffee to his lips and took another slow sip of the warm bitter liquid that he just couldn’t get enough of.
“The group cuts me in on half of the value of whatever I find. So, they get dibs on whether they want to use it, sell it, or end up letting me have it outright to use. I’ve found a couple items that the group has been willing to let me keep for myself, which have helped me stay alive.”
“Any cool offensive items?” Aaron asked, before taking a bite of his crepes.
“I’ve found a couple support items and niche items that a few of them have kept. Nothing really worthwhile for myself,” said Riley. “It’s best that I don’t get in the middle of fights. For the time being, I’m happy just to be alive and making a little money while I search for powers.”
“So you’ve just been going to those caves? Don’t you think you’d have better luck finding powers if you looked elsewhere?” Aaron asked.
“We’ve been sticking to the caves,” Riley replied as he set his mug back down and looked over to one of the televisions, depicting a monster fight between a group of paragons, which were tier-two players. “I’ve been listening and asking around for anyone who has any idea about—”
Riley stopped as his eyes widened. He stared at the television across the room.
Aaron blinked at him, then turned his head to look at the TV screen. “What’s up?” he asked, but soon discovered what had grabbed Riley’s attention. “Oh, yeah...I was gonna mention that, but I got distracted after ordering the—”
“Shh!” Riley held up his hand as he stared at the TV.
The video footage depicted a paragon throwing green balls of energy at a large scorpion monster. The scorpion’s tail dripped with purple liquid and flailed around, shooting that purple liquid around the fight area. The liquid would burn into the ground, causing the other paragons to dodge and duck out of the way.
“Attack the small one!” one of the voices in the video shouted.
The scorpion reached out and snapped with large pincers, knocking away one of the paragons that was encased in blue fire. Its tail whipped around and more purple liquid sprayed around the area. They seemed to be in some sort of underground structure, encased in concrete and pipes.
As the scorpion stepped around to attack one of the other paragons, it revealed a white chitinous insect-like form, standing no taller than a person. The white humanoid insect’s hands were up in the air, shifting and turning with its movements.
“What the hell?” Riley asked. “That’s the same thing that got me! It has to be!”
The video continued to play out, but whereas in Riley’s fight, he’d been killed, the paragons fighting the monster were all able to flee from the encounter and get away, apparently with minimal hit points amongst each of the combatants, while the scorpion easily had thirty percent or more.
“Yeah, they’ve played that video a few times this morning,” said Aaron. “I was gonna send it to you over messenger, but then you showed up.”
“So there’s more boss monsters that spawn that white bug thing?” asked Riley, looking over to Aaron.
Aaron pointed up to the TV. “Watch,” he said.
Riley looked back to the TV and saw a woman appear. She wore a pink T-shirt with a black blazer overtop. The name on the screen read ‘Susan Graff.’ Her lips parted and she began to speak. “And there you have it. Live coverage of the second appearance of this strange white insect creature that has been seen empowering monsters during their fights. The paragons in the video said that they’d seen the previous footage on the news, where the white insect was spit-out by a worm boss, but apparently during this encounter, the white insect appeared to rise out of a pile of broken rubble in the room. It’s not clear whether this new creature was there the entire time in the boss room. Already there’s been massive speculation around the white insect, such as that it’s actually a rare spawn that was released in the last content patch and that it goes around and increases the difficulty of already higher-end bosses. Rare spawn hunters are already searching the areas that the white insect has been seen and are actively hunting it down. A monster of this rarity and power must have some pretty good loot.”
The woman’s segmented ended and another news anchor took their place and began talking about the last patch updates and what the developers might’ve meant by some of the cryptic language in the text logs.
Patch-note speculation was always a hot topic on the news and online forums, even months after the content update’s release.
“It’s not just a single boss mechanic then,” said Riley. “It’s a rare boss itself?”
“That’s what they’re saying. I hear that the news outlets are paying a lot for any footage of the creature. It’s getting a lot of attention now that it’s been seen twice. They’re calling it ‘White Weevil.’”
“Is that really it’s name?” asked Riley. “It doesn’t really look like a weevil.”
Aaron shrugged. “I’ve never seen a weevil, so I wouldn’t know. The paragons in the video, and your old buddies all said that they didn’t see a name above it’s head, but apparently no one’s been able to land a hit on it either, so it’s possible that no one’s been able to trigger its health and name yet.”
Riley nodded. “Yeah, we weren’t able to hit it when we fought it. It was just so chaotic at the time. I guess there’s groups out there that might not know of the previous encounter, so this is a really annoying mechanic to pop up on them. I know exactly how that feels,” he said with a sigh. “It sucks.”
Aaron nodded. “Those guys were fighting in the vaults, which is a higher level area, just like the glow mine. So at least you won’t have to worry about it coming after you in the amber caves.”
“You’re right, It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for a strong monster like that to attack a lower area,” said Riley. As he’d been talking, he was taking longer sips of his coffee as if he was anxiously finishing it off. He continued to think about the ‘White Weevil.’ If it was still out there, it could be anywhere. If there were already groups actively looking for it, that meant that he was going to be far behind in hunting it himself. He didn’t even have tier-one powers yet.
“You’re going to try and go after it, aren’t you?” Aaron asked.
Riley glanced back over to his friend. “What makes you think that?”
“I know that look,” he pointed out. “You’re racing to finish your coffee and you’re trying to figure out where you could find it. You know that’s suicide, right? You couldn’t kill that thing with your old group. Even if you got your new friends to hunt it with you, what makes you think you’d have a chance?”
Riley set his empty mug down and scooted out of the seat. He stood up and looked down to Aaron. “Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“I am worrying about you,” said Aaron. “If you go and get yourself killed again, you’re not going to be able to pay your bills. You know that, right? Your savings aren’t going to last forever.”
Riley rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I know that, I’m fully aware. That monster could be my ticket back to tier-two. I just need to figure out how to get some powers, and then how I’m going to hunt it.”
“Well, if you end up having to remake your character, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And don’t think about asking me for a handout,” said Aaron. “You wanted to do things on your own.”
“That’s right,” said Riley, his voice having raised a level. “And just you wait and see. I’m going to turn this all around, and killing that White Weevil is the end-game for me.”
Aaron sighed and turned his attention back to his breakfast. “Whatever,” he murmured. “Good luck.”
“See ya,” said Riley as he turned and left the cafe. He didn’t look back to his friend. Aaron had a point, but he couldn’t just let this go. How could he ignore the resurgen
ce of the White Weevil? Being killed by a single monster in a boss encounter was one thing, but this monster was appearing elsewhere. It was just begging for him to come and hunt it down.
Riley walked down the street. His eyes drawn up to the large screens on the sides of buildings. More advertisements for Sigil Online and various services. One of the monitors ran the same news segment he’d seen in the cafe, but out there in the street, there wasn’t any sound. It was just a silent image with captions. He watched the video all over again. He watched as the paragons fought and fled from the fight.
When the segment was over, his attention returned back to the street. If he could find the White Weevil, maybe he could take its powers. In a game like Sigil Online, there were all sorts of methods fo obtaining powers. He’d heard of people killing rare monsters and gaining tier-two that way. He remembered a player who was a tier one that had some flame abilities. That player managed to bring down a strong arachnid boss with the help of some of his friends. Upon killing the boss, the player with fire powers, ended up gaining abilities that let him create fire webs. It was one of the coolest ability-mixes he’d ever seen. Sometimes the game increased the powers you already had, and sometimes you gained complementary abilities. But the game was never ‘an exact science,’ as players liked to say. There was never a way to know for sure, if you’d gain powers by doing something. The statement was even truer when it came to obtaining your tattoo-like sigil and becoming a paragon.
Riley’s lips curled. He could only imagine how powerful he could be if he had some sort of ability that let him control monsters. He could pretty-much make them fight each other at that point. Maybe he wouldn’t even need a group!
With powers like the ones the White Weevil seemed to possess, all he’d need is himself.
Chapter 7: Surprise
Riley walked through the barren desert with his new comrades. Erica and Brenda were chatting, while Seth and Tod were comparing stats.
Riley pulled up his own status screen and checked his progress. It had been a long month of scavenging and watching boss battles in the amber caves, but his stats had certainly progressed. A player gained levels from doing activities that generated experience, like killing monsters or crafting. It didn’t matter if you were a tier zero, one, or two. You always gained the same amount of experience and there was no actual ‘limit’ to levels. Levels got harder to obtain the higher you went. Radiance had been level one-hundred and nine. Which wasn’t a huge difference from another player within twenty levels, but when you leveled up, you had the choice on where to place your new stat-point. You could place a single point in whatever stat you wanted.
Riley stared at the number ‘23’ next to his character status page. He’d placed ten points in ‘constitution,’ (which affected how many hit points he had) and ten points in ‘toughness,’ (which affected the damage he could mitigate.) There was a number ‘3’ beside his stamina stat, which helped him run and would later help him use his powers more frequently. Currently, it didn’t do him any good to increase his ‘power,’ ‘mind’ and ‘dexterity’ stats. Power affected the potential output of a person’s abilities, which was currently useless until he got some. Mind only helped with defending against certain magical attacks—and using certain mental powers, which he shouldn’t even be up against if he kept hidden during battles. Then there was dexterity, which would help his dodging capabilities and climbing and a few other things, but it wasn’t that useful to him until he knew what powers he’d be gaining. Health and toughness—with a little stamina, was a safe bet. There was also the ‘luck’ stat, but he never knew if it was worthwhile or not.
He dispersed the screen as he saw the entrance to the amber caves. It was time to head back in and find another monster. He just hoped he could find another piece of junk that might help him out with a couple stats. Seth had been true to his word, when he said that they’d only be letting him keep junk items. There were certain things like that Grit Grit tooth, that he’d been allowed to keep, but if it was something that was easily sold and didn’t affect his scavenging ability, then it was getting sold or looted by one of the others.
At times, he wondered if he was helping the others, more than he was benefitting himself. But then he remembered the sorts of terrible quests he’d have to do, if he was still walking around town alone. This was a lot safer, at least until he could find some powers. But as each day passed by, he wondered how likely his chances were, to find powers down in the amber mines. So far, everything he’d tried had almost gotten him killed.
“Same as always,” Seth spoke up. “Same formation. Let’s head left when we reach the first fork. We haven’t been over there recently.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Todd as he took the lead.
“Hopefully there’s something new over there,” said Brenda. “Getting tired of slimes, spiders and golems.”
“Yeah, the slimes are a real time-sink,” said Todd.
“At least they tend to change up their last phase and make things interesting,” said Seth.
“It’s a fun challenge, but those things still take too long,” said Erica.
“We can try backtracking if we find one,” said Seth. “If everyone agrees that they’re taking too much time, we can try and find something else.”
“That’s probably best,” said Brenda. “Unless Riley wants to try and find a goo power,” she glanced back to him with a smirk.
Riley lifted his eyebrows. “Uh, I think I’d take whatever I could get at this point, but I’m not sure that goo powers sound all that appealing.”
“They sure don’t,” said Erica.
Todd was first into the caves and once again, Riley took the last position. His scavenger vision had already been activated, but he hadn’t seen anything yet. Ninety percent of his finds were in boss rooms, but he still took the time to look around, just in case.
When the group reached the first chamber, Todd turned and went for the leftmost tunnel. Riley looked around the room, but still he didn’t see anything. Even though he couldn’t do anything worthwhile in a fight, he still did his best at what he could do.
The group progressed down the tunnel. Todd was the first one into the next room and checked out the next chamber before calling back to the others. “It’s clear, which way?”
“Let’s try left again?” Brenda spoke up.
“Left it is,” said Todd as he took the lead once again. There were several other tunnels that they hadn’t been down in a long time, since before Riley had joined.
“Remember that amber bat we found once?” asked Erica. “That thing was so cool.”
“Yeah, you thought that if you let it bite you, you’d reach tier-two,” Seth chuckled. “It almost killed you, didn’t it?”
Erica sighed. “Yeah, but you know, nothing ventured nothing gained and all that, right?”
“Seems to be the catchphrase behind this whole game,” said Riley from the back.
“That’s the truth,” Seth agreed.
Todd kept quiet while up in front, and as the glow from the next chamber increased, he slowed down as he always did. He was the first one to reach the mouth of the tunnel and instead of slowly walking into the chamber, he stopped at the entrance.
“Uh, guys?” he called.
“What’s up?” Seth asked as he and Erica moved in on either side of the stout earth-mover.
Todd pointed into the room. “What do you make of that?”
Riley side-stepped over to the wall of the tunnel so he could get a good look into the next room. The amber light from the wall crystals was glinting off some sort of black glistening substance on the floor.
Seth took a step forward and knelt down. The black substance didn’t quite look like obsidian. It seemed puffy and unnatural. He reached out and prodded some of it with his finger. His finger pushed into it, as if it had the consistency of foam.
“I don’t seem to be taking any damage from it. I’m not seeing any debuffs,” he said.
&nbs
p; “What should we do? I’ve never seen it before,” said Todd.
“Some arachnids lay webbing all over the room they spawn into,” said Brenda. “Maybe we’ve found a creature that does something similar, but with this weird foam stuff?”
Seth flicked the substance layered about two to three inches on the floor. It had enough weight to fall back to the floor, almost like snow.
“I don’t see any bosses yet,” said Todd as he leaned in and looked around from the vantage of the tunnel’s entrance. “But there’s a lot of rocks, outcroppings and alcoves in there. It might not be all-that big, either. Like that obsidian mole we’ve run into a couple times.”
“Todd, head in first and see if you spot anything,” said Seth.
“Alright,” Todd agreed as he stepped into the black foam. His footfalls made soft ‘poof’ sounds with each step.
“Is it slowing you down? Any damage or debilitations?” asked Brenda, already having her crossbow ready in order to heal him.
“Walking pretty normally, and nothing special yet,” said Todd as he walked around, heading further in. He looked around at his surroundings. “It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
Seth cleared away some of the foam with his hands and looked beneath it. There was regular stone and dirt, nothing unusual. He stood up and shrugged. “Maybe the monster eats it,” he said. He then walked in after Todd to help him look for the creature.
“Well I’m not going to try it,” said Erica, who waited a few moments before following after Seth.
Brenda turned and looked to Riley. She lifted her free hand and pointed at him. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t eat the foam!” she said.
Riley’s brows lifted, along with his hands. “I won’t, I won’t,” he said. “I mean...the thought crossed my mind.”