by Prax Venter
“Toenails…” Lex spoke slowly, her eyes unfocused. “Added Insomnia? Alt, could you take two of my Inventory Spaces and make me an inch taller? Based on your swapping part costs, as Jack puts it.”
“What?” Jack said, appalled she wanted to change her irrefutably perfect size. Then he turned his eyes down to address his scabbard. “And I told you there’d be questions.”
“I’m just curious, Jack,” his wife said with an amused raised eyebrow.
“It’s a relevant question!” Haylee nodded with a grin to the Bastion, then they both silently waited for an answer.
“I suppose…” Alt said, trying not to pull too many resources from Jack’s current level of consciousness. “The answer is no. I believe affecting her size in such a way would give her a detectable Gameworld bonus. This is all my best guess on trained modeling based on observed Corruption behavior. That data tells me making NPCs into giants would draw its focus more than a basic personal text interface would.”
Jack waited for him to finish and then said, “No, he doesn’t think it would work.”
Haylee started pacing along the deck. “If we could equally swap parts, I would trade six or more slots for a big boost to attack damage!”
Jack spoke out loud to Alt again. “I think you underestimated my personal impact on their value of Inventory Slots.”
Alt sighed. “Yes I see that. Being non-biological has skewed my perception of say, vestigial toenails when you wear artificial coverings anyway.”
The three then brainstormed what they would and wouldn’t trade for parts of their bodies before the funny or clever suggestions suddenly became too morbid and surreal and they decided to stop. Instead of going into the passenger cabins, the three sat down right on the deck with their backs to the sun and quietly tried to process what they’d already learned.
Not only were there text files for toenails to consider, but there was also that whole abandoned Tower just sitting out in the endless sea. And this was supposed to be a boring trip as they journeyed to new lands…
Before they did see land again, Jip and Ryea came back out into the sun. Whatever they did down there had settled the skittish farmer and the couple moved to the front of the prow to lean out against the rushing air.
The steering wheel still reported over twenty minutes left by the time they saw an uncorrupted Tower and Town come into view on the horizon.
“That’s Brittlehorn,” Jip said as they sailed past the sandstone city settled up to a busy port. “Lots of people with Negative Marks congregate there. Said there’s murder, thievery, depravity, and all sorts of unscrupulous services on offer for a big enough pile of coin.”
Jack was about to follow up with a question regarding how anyone stole anything from someone’s inventory, but he remembered Lex handing him his first shirt from a dresser, then the diverse trade goods Demi had in her kitchen barrels alone. Having near infinite inventory space was incredibly game-breaking, but Alt’s gift made it more of a challenge for him to think as one of the NPC natives.
“We need to visit this Town as soon as possible,” Haylee said, leaning against the rail as they zipped by the bone-white structures. Jack noticed that this Tower was also silvered and crusted with jewels, but there were far more buildings huddled along the coast than he’d ever seen in one place. They were all made from adobe or from type of long carved stones that was certainly not bone.
“Despite having a bad reputation,” King Jack said out loud, “Brittlehorn seems to be doing well enough on its own.”
“There’s no Corruption anywhere.” Lex pointed beyond it.
Jip sputtered. “Pfeh- and rightly so. If it weren’t for Ivyset standing as a bulwark against the shadow from the brambles and the swamps, they’d have hordes of Demons at their door.”
“Ah,” Jack said, standing on his toes and shielding his eyes. “This is like a peninsula or something and the biggest Town in the land is further in?”
Precisely 00:26:12 further in if the steering wheel ETA was accurate.
Alt voiced his geographical insight. “We appear to be passing into a wide channel between two large continents.”
The intense dry heat of the region felt right at the edge of bearable, and Jack angled his guess about being at this world’s equator toward his AI friend.
He responded with a mental shrug. “More or less, however, the biomes in this universe only partially adhere to what I could consider normal. We’ve witnessed isolated pockets that shift more dramatically than thermal dynamics should allow.”
The Embrace disengaged from the torrential outer current and slowed as it banked south east along the coast into the calmer waters between virtual landmasses. It wasn’t long before Jack saw another Tower stretching up into the overcast sky above.
“Ah, the bulge,” Jip sighed with a toothy grin on his boyish face.
Ivyset Crag was exactly what he’d described it would be. Silhouetted against the horizon sat a colossal solitary hill learning toward the sea and every building of the sprawling city bristling on its back must have been built from quartz.
“Oh my,” Lex said, pressing her hand to her corset as a billion sparkles from the afternoon sun reflected off the Town and dazzled her golden eyes.
“You weren’t jesting, love,” Ryea said, her eyebrows lifted high. “Your home is a sight.”
Jack’s focus panned over countless orderly trellises of a vast vineyard arranged along the coast. Behind them, the rich land sloped upward away from the sea and there the telltale patchwork of farmland stretched toward the shadows of outlying mountains crouched at the back of this new, thriving, region of Subroutine Sana. Their vessel hugged closer to the coast as they continued southeast, and the temperature came down to something far more pleasant while structure after structure continued to coat everything they could see.
“It’s so huge,” Jack said, shaking his head at the uncountable glittering quartz buildings leading up to the infinite, vine-coated Tower at the top of the crag. What would he do if this Supreme Mayor thought it would make more sense if Jack bowed to him instead of the other way around? Should he even disagree? He turned back the way they’d come to see Brittlehorn’s Tower still barely visible against the layer of clouds behind them. Why hadn’t they ever joined together as one in all recorded virtual history? For that matter, how did one person have enough time in the day to go through this metropolis of a Town and assign Jobs?
As they got closer and he saw several dozen Townsfolk moving around on the Docks or fishing in the calmer ocean from multiple wharfs, Jack started to get angry.
Lex, Haylee, Ryea, and everyone he knew back at Blackmoor had been on the verge of oblivion at the time of his rough entrance into their home, and yet here was a massive cluster of NPCs just going about their business.
“This is a Level 20 Town,” Alt said telepathically, and Jack could tell the AI’s mind was slowed from scanning everything he could get away with. “I believe it is the Maximum Level a Town can reach within the game rules. Lots of information here… Allow me a moment to confirm and organize the data.”
“I never thought I’d live to see anything… so splendid,” his wife muttered, and he moved to hold her as a seatbelt while their automated royal speedboat pulled into one of the several Docks stretching out over the water.
Jack brushed his lips against one of her long-pointed ears before he whispered his response.
“Now we need to find out why they haven’t taken back their world.”
- 3 -
“Five steaming Woolly Sausages ‘ll be twenty-five coins.” The Townsfolk Inn Staff bared his blinding white teeth as he initiated a trade window and Jack’s focus snapped to a small painting of a bagel dog resting on a bed of onion rings with a white number 5 dangling off the bottom.
“The meat comes from yet another Corruption-free Town further south, yes?” Haylee asked her gray eyes consuming everything as she experienced her first open-air common room.
“That’s
right,” Jip said, his thumbs pressing against his suspenders with pride. “Tyga Slopes down south is fertile fer their grazing. I know Ryea’d simply swoon over those mammoth furry cows.”
Ryea nodded, smiling softly as she traced the ubiquitous ivy creeping up a nearby column with a gentle finger.
“This Town is wrapped in life. I could get lost in its leaves.”
“Oh no!” Jack smirked as he moved a few more than the requested coins over to the outdoor waiter. “Did I just lose my best Farmer?”
She snapped out of her plant-induced daze and would have taken Haylee’s head off with her braided ponytail if the Dark Prism weren’t short and observant.
“Ha! Not likely, King Jack. I know where my real home and family are.”
“Bwa- King?” squealed the sausage vendor. No doubt he’d been Inspected again.
A woman in white overalls leaned out from her gardening work- her iron spade held subconsciously like a cat’s focused ear- and Jack hurried his party out into the cobblestone street.
“Nice to meet you!” he said to the vendor with a grin before turning to hand out their lunch on the move.
“I know a place,” Jip said, closing Jack’s trade window by accepting. He then took the lead and picked up their speed. With a quick shot over his shoulder to make sure everyone was following, Jack saw Lex and Haylee grinning ear to ear as they hustled on his heels to hide from the Mayor’s Gardeners.
And they were everywhere. At least a quarter of the Townsfolk Jack Inspected were assigned to the role of Gardener.
The plan had been to show up unannounced and walk around for a day to get a feel of the place before finally popping in on the Supreme Mayor, but the Dock Master started yelling and put a ticking clock over everything. The young man assigned to Pier 7 understandably drooled over The Embrace when they pulled up and became enthralled by her elegant curves… until he had to do his job and Inspected her Captain. Jip’s itinerary fell to pieces when they were instructed to wait there at the coast for an escort to the Town Hall at the top of the crag.
But they couldn’t physically restrain the group without getting a Negative Mark, so Jack made a snap decision and hurried his group away from the area as the Dockmaster was waving down the closest Gardener. The cheerful Jip adapted well to the unexpected challenge. It was a reckless decision, and Jack wondered what he would do if someone came to Blackmoor then intentionally evaded the King’s attempts to meet them. In the end, he realized he wouldn’t employ standing orders for them to stand waiting at the dock like prisoners.
But what if this evasive person had been accused of murdering another Mayor?
Too late now.
Jack shook off the indecisiveness and focused on the giggling Ryea and Jip taking some sharp corners until they entered yet another area of this sprawling Town dedicated toward housing massive amounts of beautiful vegetation. Tall topiary sculptures served as line-of-sight barriers on any nosy Gardeners searching the streets for the stray King and Queen, and they all found a nice quiet corner to sit and eat their foreign delicacies.
Surrounded by his favorite people- and munching into what was closer to something Jack found at one of the many Oktoberfests from when he still lived with his parents- a wave of homesickness struck him hard for the places before Blackmoor Cove, and even before spelunking in caves all over the world. Jack paused with half of this world’s sweeter interpretation of an onion ring held before him and snapped back to the long summers of his childhood.
“From now on,” he began still focused on the broken circle in his hand. “Anyone that climbs with me is required to fill their useless inventory with at least one item of food before heading into the Tower. We will stop somewhere halfway and eat lunch together. Every day.”
“I love it,” his wife said after a moment of contemplation.
“You’re the King,” Haylee said with a shrug and the small smile he was seeing more of today.
“Why are you making them hold stuff?” Ryea said from her cross-legged position on the other side of their private leafy nook. “You finally running out of room in your magic pocket?”
“I want to start a new tradition in Subroutine Sana. Besides, everyone else waits for stuff from the top Floors of the climb anyway. Their ham sandwich and pudding snack should be long gone by then. The point is to sit as a group and share a meal before charging further into the life-or-death decisions for that day.”
“Pudding snack,” Jip repeated, rubbing his chin and licking his lips. “There’s a confectioner’s shop that processes the cane from our lush fields with cream from The Slopes to make some of the most luxurious pudding that ever sat quiverin’ on a spoon. Perhaps we ought to-”
Jack recognized the signs of an impending ramble coming so it was easy to disengage when his imaginary friend sent a request for high-speed telepathy. He responded to Alt by sending the concept of a spaceship and a human sitting in a school cafeteria trading bags of chips.
The AI flexed his creativity and sent back a complex visual mix of the world map of Subroutine Sana, a human, and a spaceship all twisted into something different and unique.
“In contrast,” the AI continued verbally, “the Town of Ivyset Crag has not changed recently. I now understand previously unlabeled data that implies Pinefall had fallen and been retaken 29 times over the many virtual centuries. Until I’d seen some of the data here in this enduring place, I didn’t even know what I was missing. If you stay in the vicinity for at least 21 hours, I could collect enough data to estimate a daily value cost- but I already know it’s astronomical.”
Jack wanted to know every detail he could about this place if he were going to stand in front of its Mayor with any type of intelligence, so he eagerly opened the figurative floodgates for the AI to give his initial report.
“There must be many hundreds of Heroes here to sustain such a Town. This is an obvious statement, but I didn’t realize how expensive Town Levels became after the 10th. Apparently, all the buildings that spawn in after 10 only duplicate what exists. It’s why there are so many Docks and Gardens. However, now that we know there may be hidden ways to trigger unique buildings, it is in our best interest to diversify as much as possible in the early stages when-”
“There you are.”
The gravelly voice pulled Jack from the lightspeed exchange with Alt, and he looked up to see an older Hero wearing ornate white leather armor. The guy had to be a Shadow Blade like Farrah as no one noticed him enter and casually begin leaning against the entrance to their private garden nook. Jack shot a glance to his party as he stood.
They’d been found out.
Before Jack could introduce everyone, another Hero wearing a complete set of vivid red and orange cloth armor stepped around the same hedge. Long straight feathers angled sharply away from his face making this pointed-eared man appear dressed in a predatory phoenix costume.
“Ah,” the newcomer said as he raised a thin eyebrow. “A King that cowers?”
Jack forced a smile and held out his hand in greeting as he inspected the one who’d found them first.
Kaazo - Hero: Wind Blade | Level 85
Gardener (Makeshift) | 13% Proficiency
[Health: 10.2K/10.2K | Mana: 4811/5599]
Relationship -
[Disposition: Disappointed]
The proper words one uses to speak coherent concepts fell out of Jack’s mouth as his focus erratically bounced around the Wind Blade’s equipped items.
Nerrymah - [Sword | Value: 515 | Floor 80]
| Dmg: 790 |
| Hit Chance +0.49 |
| Crit Chance +0.68 |
| Max MP +600 |
| Dodge +245 |
| Movement Speed +20% |
~ She swoons with every wound.
Eternal Echo - [Amulet | Value: 685 | Floor 74]
| Def: 500 |
| Max HP +720 |
| Max MP +810 |
| +200 DMG with Swords |
| +20 HP on Kill |
| Movement Speed +15% |
~ Attack again, and again, and again…
“Your bow is amazing!” Haylee cried out as she inspected the other Hero, and Jack forced his attention away from this lucky guy’s epic gear and toward making some new and powerful friends.
“Hello,” Jack said as the first Hero returned his handshake. “Kaazo and…”
Ilowin - Hero: Archer | Level 85
Gardener (Makeshift) | 59% Proficiency
[Health: 6,052/6,052 | Mana: 8,268/8,268]
Relationship -
[Disposition: Cautious]
“Ilowin. I am Jack, and this is my wife Lex, Queen of Blackmoor. The excited Dark Prism over there is Haylee, our advisor. And with us are our good friends Ryea and Jip, Townsfolk from Blackmoor Cove.” Jack paused a heartbeat for everyone to wave or nod, then turned to the Archer and continued quickly. “As an experienced climber in a ranged combat role, I’m sure you find it wise to scout the Boss Chamber before you move in, am I right? Jip here spawned in this beautiful Town. I’m certainly not here to fight anyone, but knowledge is power, after all.”
“And,” Lex added, her golden eyes narrow, “there is a wide difference between cowering and appreciating the peace such a lush garden brings.”
The two high-level Heroes shared a glance Jack had a hard time reading, yet it was clear that the pair had fought closely within the Tower.
“I have many questions!” Haylee said, breaking the silence and pulling out a homemade journal. “You both aren’t climbing today so the Town must have enough to rotate powerful Heroes out and assign them to Gardener duty. How long did it take you both to get to Floor 85? Did you get there with a regular party of single-path combat roles?”
She seemed to realize that she’d almost unleashed an unstoppable torrent of questions and instead held her loaded pen over the page, waiting for any type of response.