by Brian Simons
Brian Simons
TRANSCEND
Travail Online
LitRPG Series, Book 3
Copyright © 2017 Brian Simons.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner of this publication.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
1
A handful of protesters stood on the expansive lawn surrounding Arbyten Inc.’s corporate office. As Travail Online’s head programmer, Hector had seen players camp out in all sorts of places before — just never IRL.
The protesters’ signs were barely legible through the tinted windows of Domin Ansel’s office suite. One read, “Workers of Travail, Prepare for Boss Battle.” Another said, “Wanted: Ansel Domin. Max Level Thief. KOS.”
“I think you’ve drawn aggro,” Hector said, suppressing a smirk. He reclined into a low chair in front of Domin’s desk, waiting for Arbyten’s President & CEO to tell him why he was summoned. Domin’s eyes were trained on his computer screen.
“This is not a goddamn joke,” Domin said. “I need you on crowd control.”
“Should I charm them or mute them?” Hector asked. He wasn’t sure what had gotten into him. He usually cowered from Domin, but after the last few weeks he was getting tired of Domin’s questionable orders. Or maybe he was feeling extra punchy today, forced to work through another beautiful Saturday morning with Domin. He almost felt guilty for wishing he could have a day off. In an economy of dwindling jobs, it seemed like the people who had work were working themselves to death, but he knew he was lucky to have a job at all.
“Charm or what?” Domin asked. “I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care. This handful of malcontents is only the beginning. There will be a lot more, and we need to stop this from becoming a spectacle. They’re also taking over the message boards, griping about how poor they are and blaming us for it.”
“We could give them their money back,” Hector said. A week ago, the game had launched content that exploited a security feature Hector had built into the game’s headsets. Travail Online had brainwashed players into donating money to the company, and now they weren’t just penniless, they were getting organized.
“There’s a cheaper way to deal with this,” Domin said. “We put on the sprinklers to chase away our new lawn ornaments and we shut down the message boards for good. Then we—”
The phone rang and cut Domin off. He lifted the receiver and held his pointer finger up, uncomfortably close to Hector’s face.
“Mr. Brantley,” Domin said, “always a pleasure to hear from you.” He paused for a full minute while the caller spoke, though Hector couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Finally, Domin spoke again. “I completely understand. Please tell the Board that I have it all under control and I’ll do exactly that.” Another pause. “Yes, sir, I do know that I serve at the pleasure of the Board. Thank you for the gentle reminder.”
Domin hung up and spat onto the floor by his desk. He looked up at Hector with a scowl. “Change of plans. Remember that girl player I wanted to meet? Make it happen. Now. I have a way she can redeem herself.”
“Should I keep working on the artificial intelligence files, or do you want me to monitor the message boards and the news to help with crowd control?” Hector asked.
“Those AI files are your top priority. We have the best AI in the world, and once we finish porting it over to the robots we acquired when we bought Finney’s Pianola Co., we’ll be unstoppable. Did you know they’ve been working on automating accountants’ jobs for the last three years? Three years! Accountants are just calculators with faces, they’re practically robots already. The jackass that ran Finney’s before us couldn’t figure this one out, but we will. You will. We’ll automate the world, Pérez.”
“Soon companies like Arbyten will run themselves,” Hector said. Maybe then he’d be free of Domin, even if it did mean being out of a job.
“In fact,” Domin said, ignoring Hector’s comment, “let’s ramp this up. Take down Server 856 and repurpose it to process the AI data faster. I want another set of ready-made personalities to sell as upgrades before the weekend is over.”
“That’s the Camden server,” Hector said. “It services half the players in New Jersey.”
“Shunt them over to the nearest server instead,” Domin said. “There may be other servers we can take offline but I’ll have to work through the system first.”
Hector sighed. Players would not be happy to find that their servers had been merged. “Most of Travail’s servers are under significant strain as it is,” he said.
“Damn you, Pérez. You know what’s under strain? Me. Every time I tell you to do something and you act like it’s up for discussion.”
Domin continued to stare at his computer screen. “Controlling the optics of our current situation is also a necessity though. Make that your other number one priority. We still need Travail operable, for now anyway. It’s the stepping stone to this company’s higher purpose. Long term, well that’s another story.” Domin turned back toward his computer screen.
Hector pushed his chair back and stood up, hoping the meeting was over. Domin didn’t protest so he walked away. He was halfway toward the door when Domin shouted, “Send in my secretary on your way out. Someone needs to clean this off the floor.”
2
Coral sat in the grass by the River Rove and watched a few dozen newbie players running around the outskirts of the Ogrelands dressed in simple rags. Once Arbyten started upgrading the robots that had taken over most people’s jobs, the bots quickly became more effective at replacing human workers. In the short week since Arbyten acquired Finney’s Pianola Co., more and more people found themselves out of work, and they turned to Travail to help them find a way to earn a living online.
Coral was grateful that the Ogrelands smelled like rancid feet. The nauseating odor dispelled the hunger she felt from having skipped breakfast. Again. With less than a month to come up with the last $2500 to pay the property taxes, she had started showering with cold water and foregoing meals to economize. She worried it was already too late to save her parents’ house, but the hunger kept her motivated.
“Boo!” someone called from behind.
“Hello, Ernest,” Coral said without looking behind her. A few days ago a new player started fishing along the river where Coral spent her time crafting, so she added him to her friend list. Every time he logged in he tried to sneak up and scare her, but a notification sound tipped her off to his arrival. He didn’t seem to grasp that yet.
“I wish you’d call me by my real name,” he said, “Angle_of_Death.” Ernest was an elf, and a Level 5 Angler. He was not, however, very funny.
“No, Ernest,” she said. “Ready to clock in?”
“You bet,” he said. His white hair swished to the side as he cast his fishing line into the river. “When did you get here? I never can manage to log in before you.”
“At five this morning,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You know,” Ernest said, “you should try fishing. It’s very relaxing.”
“I don’t come here to relax,” she said. Coral had set off on her own a week ago, and things were going well so far. She had fought and crafted enough over the past week to level up eleven times, bringing her to Level 40. It required constant focus in-game and giving up the idea of having a life outside Travail, but she persisted. It was the only wa
y she’d get to a high enough level to craft something truly profitable.
For now, Coral had focused on making mud masks. She had used one of her skill points to unlock the ability to craft helmets in the basic tier of Earthweaving, and since then she had made a few hundred facemasks from the remains of the mud golems that lived further up the river. The day was finally here for the Ogrelands’ Death Festival, and she hoped to sell mud masks to players and NPCs celebrating the ogres’ patron god, Thanaker. That is, if any of the players around here weren’t total newbs with zero gold to their names.
Coral took her last clump of mud and flattened it out into an oval one foot long and eight inches wide. She used a stick to carve eyeholes out of it and then scratched a simple design onto the front before reshaping the edges.
>> Living Mud Mask (unfinished). This ugly mudder is no beauty mask. Finished mud masks provide Diplomacy -2, Strength +6, +3% chance to inflict Intimidation in combat.
She placed it in the sun to bake. The masks were fairly flat, and they had one main advantage over other pieces of armor she considered mass producing. The masks stacked. She could carry as many of them as she wanted in her otherwise limited inventory space.
“Come on,” Ernest said, beckoning Coral toward the river’s edge. “Indulge me. Fish until your minions return.”
“They’re not minions,” Coral said, getting up from the grass and walking toward the water. “Aga is out there hunting so I’ll make her a new outfit from the mud she brings back, and Varta… Well, Varta has decided that she’s my friend. I’m not going to question it. If it means I get live mud without waiting around for another mud golem to respawn, I’ll take it.”
She wondered whether she should go look for them, but decided to trust they could handle themselves.
Coral sat down next to Ernest and let her legs dangle off the riverbank. “However, it just so happens that I’m out of mud for now. So, how do I fish?” She didn’t particularly want to break from crafting, but until the ogre huntresses returned with resources, she had no choice but to put her mask-making on pause.
“I was hoping you’d ask,” he said. “First, you need a tackle box and a fishing pole. I bought you some.”
“You shouldn’t waste your money like that,” Coral said, but Ernest held a hand up.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s one gold each for a beginner’s item like this. Your sewing kit would be just as cheap. Here.” He handed her a small metal box. Inside, it had a series of lures and fishhooks. Coral pulled out one hook that was curved on both sides like an anchor and covered in barbs.
“Why are there two hooks on this one, do you catch two fish with it?” Coral asked.
“I think it’s to support heavier types of bait,” Ernest said. “I don’t use that one. I use these, and attach a little yellow feather for a lure.” He pointed to a pile of simple hooks, each with a single barb at the tip.
Coral attached the lure to the hook and whipped the fishing pole back before sending the hook into the middle of the river near Ernest’s.
“What type of fish am I hoping for?” Coral asked.
“Basic things like minnows and anchovies,” Ernest said. “Eventually you get to the higher end fish that are worth some real money.”
“Make sure to sell them right away,” Coral said.
“How come?”
“All these new players have started farming the lowest level items and trying to sell them,” Coral said, “glutting the market and driving down prices for half of Travail’s goods, and prices are still falling.
“See all those players just starting out?” She pointed toward the throng of new players standing at the edge of the tented kingdom. Ernest nodded.
“They’re all ogres. The old woman that runs the character selection screen usually assigns players to the human race, or at least to elf or dwarf. Ogres are far less common. If there are that many new ogres, there must be hundreds of new players starting as other races today on this server alone.”
The rest of Travail’s servers were likely in the same boat. Coral didn’t want to make Ernest feel bad for signing up for Travail when he did, but she worried that Server 215 would be overrun with low level players if this kept up.
“Just last week,” she continued, “I sold 25 gold bars for 150 coins each. Now they’d only be worth 87 coins apiece. So, even the mid-level items are taking a hit.”
Coral instantly regretted mentioning those gold bars. She had just admitted to earning $375 in real world money from them. It wouldn’t matter that it took her days’ worth of questing to earn her share of the bounty she, Daniel, Sybil, and Sal had split. And nevermind that she had no clear path to saving her house. To a brand new player, she’d sound downright rich.
“Have any more gold bullion lying around?” Ernest asked.
“I wish,” Coral said. “All I have are a few hundred mud masks I’ve spent the last week making. I thought I’d get a good price for them but with prices still falling I’m not so sure.”
>> New PM!
Coral ignored the small notification that popped up in the corner of her vision, as she had been doing all week. It was probably another message from Daniel, but she wasn’t ready to get pulled back into the group. Not yet. She wanted to solo for a while and explore Travail on her own terms. She’d message him back though, eventually.
Besides, checking that message and seeing who sent it would require opening her communications window, and she didn’t want to distract herself while Ernest was running an impromptu fishing tutorial for her.
Ernest’s line began to jostle and he reeled it in. He had caught a fish, sort of. The half-decomposed body of something long dead had snagged on the sharp tip of his fishhook. A large lower jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth hung limp from its face.
“This keeps happening,” he said. “I don’t know why there are rotting fish floating down the river, but I can’t sell this, or cook it. At least I get XP for the catch.”
“Is that common?” Coral asked.
“It’s happening more often,” Ernest said, “and people on the message boards are complaining that it’s not normal. I’m still too new to know for sure.”
He tossed the useless item onto the grass. Coral and Ernest sat quietly, waiting for a live fish to take an interest in them. The morning sun reflected on the water as a cool breeze carried a strong whiff of the Ogrelands’ signature smell.
What was taking Aga and Varta so long? Coral should have gone with them. Varta was prone to distractions. Now Coral was sitting here for who-knows-how-long, waiting for a virtual fish to eat a virtual yellow feather. This was the opposite of productive.
“I’ve decided. Fishing is as boring as it looks,” Coral said.
“Not boring,” he replied, “relaxing. You need to chill out sometimes.”
She tried to chill out, but her mind was already working on the gear she’d craft next. Aga and Varta planned to hunt down some mud golems and then lure them back to Coral so they could kill them and use their gloppy corpses for parts. If she unlocked the rest of the items in the basic tier of Earthweaving she could make sets of sodshell armor. The armor itself was mostly mud, with a healthy coating of grass on the outside. It wouldn’t be the most flattering armor, but Coral’s sahuagin suit was starting to deteriorate and she’d rather not wait until it was in tatters before crafting a replacement.
Coral reeled in her line.
“You haven’t caught anything yet!” Ernest said.
“And at this rate I never will. There has to be a faster way to do this.”
“There isn’t,” Ernest said. “I’m an Angler, trust me. I know fishing.”
Undeterred, Coral put the fishing pole to the side and aimed an arrow at the water. She shot twice without hitting anything as small fish darted out of the way in time. With her third arrow, her aim was perfect. Yet, she hadn’t speared a fish.
>> This activity requires fishing equipment.
Of course. The last time
Coral shot arrows into the river, she had snagged a sahuagin and used the fish monster’s skin to craft her current set of armor. She hadn’t come close to shooting a plain old fish though.
“Hold on,” she said. Coral took one of the basic fishhooks from the tackle box and tried to bend it straight. It wouldn’t budge. She took an arrow from her quiver and spent 10 MP to activate Hot Shot, heating up the arrowhead and turning it a bright orange. She pressed the arrow against the bend in the hook, warming it in her hand. With the metal heated up, she was able to straighten out the hook.
Next she took out her fabric shears and used them to loosen the head from another arrow. She plucked it off and jammed the eye of her straightened fishhook into the arrow’s shaft. Now she had an arrow fitted with a fishhook. Then she used her shears to dig an indentation below the fletching and tied a knot of fishing line that fit snuggly into the groove she had prepared. She tied the other end to her wrist, completing a new item.
>> Hook Shot Arrow. Now that’s how you lance a bass! Durability: 5/5.
Coral watched a few corpse fish float past, and ignored the tiny fish that would be impossible to target. After a minute of careful watching, a larger fish swam into view and she let her arrow fly. It sank into the fish’s flesh and the fishing line tugged at her wrist. She pulled the line in and voilà, she had caught her first fish.
>> Congratulations! You have unlocked Bowfishing. Each level of Bowfishing increases your likelihood of catching rare fish. Chance of catching rare fish: 1%.
“So,” Coral asked, “what do you think of that?”