Life Reset: Human Resource (New Era Online Book 4)

by Shemer Kuznits

  “I bet it was,” she said. “You wouldn’t have managed to cheat me out of winning our little duel otherwise.”

  “Anyhow, I contacted the company,” I continued, refusing to take the bait. “I didn’t know it at the time, but they were experimenting with time dilation to try to push forward technological advancements. So instead of going out of their way to get me out, they convinced me to try to meet them halfway through – by becoming a tier 4 boss.”

  “Why the hell did you agree to that?” a feral-looking bugbear asked.

  I shifted uncomfortably. It was embarrassing, but I’d already decided to come clean. “They outsmarted me,” I admitted. “I signed an NDA and agreed not to hold them liable. In return, they offered me token help and some monetary compensation.”

  The bugbear’s nostrils flared. “Please, contracts signed under duress never hold in a court of law. Everyone knows that. They had a legal and moral obligation to help you out.”

  “I didn't know it at the time,” I said. “They made it look like it was all my fault.”

  “Bastards,” Malkyr said darkly.

  I smiled at him. “Don’t worry. Once I got out, my lawyer made them pay dearly. I’m fairly wealthy right now because of it.”

  “Good for you, man.”

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I … eventually found a different method to log out. The company’s techs found a way to build on that in order to send me back here and check up on the rest of you. When I got here, I discovered you were all being held prisoner and gathered my few remaining forces to come get you.”

  “And here we are,” Hoshisu said.

  “And here we are,” I agreed.

  “Bullshit.”

  I blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

  She started counting her fingers. “How did you get out? Why did it happen just after Shiva made his appearance? What took you so long to get back here? And who the hell is that goblinette behind you and why is she listed as a princess?”

  I winced. As always, Hoshisu’s sharp eyes and sharper wits didn’t miss a thing.

  From the start of this conversation, I’d decided to be honest with the other players, but I still wasn’t ready to admit my involvement in their imprisonment.

  Deciding to deflect for now, I motioned behind me. “This is Lirian, my daughter.”

  Hoshisu’s eyes narrowed into thin slits.

  “Daughter?” Malkyr laughed good-naturedly. “That’s a good one, Chief. How do you even get an in-game daughter? A special quest, or something?”

  Aly shook her head. “Not unless the quest is titled ‘Bonk Booties with a Goblin Hottie.’”

  Malkyr stopped laughing and gaped at me.

  I coughed, embarrassed. “Well, yeah … so … yeah. Lirian is my daughter.”

  “Does she look like you?” Hoshisu asked suddenly.

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “No, I meant the real you.”

  I stared at her. How the hell did she know to ask that? “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “What does she mean by the ‘real you,’ Father?” Lirian asked suddenly.

  That also took me by surprise. As an NPC, she was not supposed to be able to ask that. NPCs always sort of zoned out when players talked about the real world. This was either further indication of the changes Shiva made or of how different Lirian was from other NPCs.

  I looked at the young goblinette. “I’m a traveler,” I answered carefully. “I look different in the other world.”

  “Oh.” She thought it over for a moment. “And I look like you do there?”

  “There’s a resemblance,” I admitted. I looked at Hoshisu. “Any idea what it means?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure. Thought patterns can’t reflect physical appearance like DNA, I mean, it’s not like your look is stamped into your mind.”

  “What then?” I asked. Hoshisu was obviously more intelligent than me. Maybe she could shed some light on the matter.

  She bit her lip. “Something. A feeling. Sometimes I just know stuff on instinct, and it takes me time to work my way up to see the whole picture. Give me time.”

  “Alright,” I said. I looked at the siblings. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. When we first met, I was under NDA not to talk about my situation.”

  Malkyr nodded. “Yeah, man, we were under the same thing. The company recruited us to be the first beta testers for their time dilation gaming experience – like everyone else in here.”

  At his words, the other players also nodded.

  “They are an evil, soulless bunch,” Nero, the half-dragon player said. “They’ve engineered this entire thing. Shiva has handed them everything they were looking for. At our expense.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That sums it up about right. The good thing, at least, is that they’re still legally, if not morally, obligated to look out for you. Now that you guys are safe, I need to find other players and make sure they’re not being mistreated.”

  The players exchanged meaningful glances.

  “What?” I asked.

  Malkyr cleared his throat. “Our in-game contact lists were mostly wiped clean when Shiva booted the rest of the players from the game.”

  “Mostly?” I asked.

  “Some of us still have a few active contacts – the others who are trapped here with us. We made contact with them, and they, in turn, had a few more players in their lists and made contact with them.”

  “So you’ve established a sort of player network?”

  “We did,” Nero chimed in. “And the tidings are not good.”

  Malkyr looked at me grimly. “Almost everyone had it as bad as we did, some even worse. Players are trapped in NPC cities as the lowest of the low. They have to scrape and bust their ass to get even a half-decent meal.”

  “And with the increased pain threshold, hunger pain can drive you crazy,” Aly added, stony-faced. “Trust me on that one.”

  “But I thought players can perform research to earn their keep,” I said.

  Malkyr opened his arms. “We can, but not many people out there are able to.”

  “Hell, I’m a surgeon,” one of the players said. “I’m an artist of laparoscopic surgeries, but I suck at developing new procedures.”

  “Exactly,” Malkyr said. “All of us here worked together. Those of us who could trade in their research shared the rewards with the others, but most other players in NEO weren’t so lucky. They’re confined to the cities they’re in. Can’t afford to leave and can barely afford to live.”

  Vic said.

  “There is even one person who’s being held in solitary confinement,” Nero said. “One of the others in the network heard about him by eavesdropping on a couple of guards. They just threw him in there and left him to starve.” He looked straight into my eyes and added somberly, “Hunger and thirst can get as bad as they are in the real world, but they won’t kill you. Not here. You just keep on living.”

  My eyes widened as I realized what he was saying.

  Nero nodded. “It’s a fate worse than death.”

  I got to my feet. “We’ve got to help him!” I declared. “All of them!”

  “Hear, hear!” Kythareon, the gnomblin, said.

  “How?” Hoshisu asked. “The other NPC communities treat players much like the kobolds did. We’re nothing more than a valuable resource to them. The big cities have thousands of high-level soldiers they’ll use to make sure their resident players stay put. Even if you had thousands of players helping you, they would be too low-level and too afraid of fighting to be of any real help.”

  I grinned at her. “You forgot something. I’m not your average player.”

  She shook her head. “Even as a boss, you can’t just barge into the civilized cities with a handful of goblins and expect to win.”

  “Oh, I was thinking of slightly more than a handful of goblins,” I said, still grinning.

  She til
ted her head at me.

  “Think battalions of trained, high-level hobgoblin soldiers,” I said. “Accompanied by companies of Ogre fighters.”

  Aly looked at me skeptically. “How on earth will you put together a force like that?”

  “Through my clan,” I said. “We took a big hit when Raystia sabotaged our Breeder’s Den, but we should be able to fix it now. Then it’s just a matter of gathering the required resources to summon all the warriors we need. We’ll also need to train them up a little before making them fight. That is where your expertise as players can come in handy, by the way.”

  Aly looked unconvinced.

  “Wait, are you talking about that adorable catgirl?” the half-dwarf player who’d fought alongside me before asked in surprise. “She was the one who blew up that building?”

  “She was manipulated by Vatras, but she eventually turned on him and helped us take down his guild.” I looked at the gathered players. “Anyone know what happened to her?”

  “Last I heard, she and the rest of the Mob Squad were still at Everance,” Malkyr said. “But none of us here had their contact information to confirm.”

  I winced. “I do. I should have checked it earlier. Hang on.” I opened the messaging interface and stared at the only name on the contact list: Raystia. “I guess they survived the attack on my old guild,” I mused aloud and started composing a short message to the catgirl.

  “And now they’re stuck there,” Aly said. “What are you going to do about it?”

  I returned her gaze steadily. “As I already said, we’re going to build an army and go get them.”

  The short-haired woman shook her head. “Maybe you can pull off something like that against another clan, or even small villages, but Everance is a capital city. You’ll need tens of thousands of high-level warriors to even have a chance at conquering it.”

  I smiled at her and motioned around me. “I built all of this from scratch with a handful of low-level goblins. And it only took two weeks of real time. Now that I have the infrastructure in place, and with your help, building up will be even faster.”

  Aly studied me closely. “You’re being serious?”

  I grinned. “Give me a few months, and you’ll all witness something that’s never been seen in the history of gaming.”

  Everyone gazed intently at me.

  My grin widened. “The monsters are going to save the players.”

  Interlude: The Mob Squad

  The catgirl entered the rundown house, closing the wobbly door behind her.

  The interior was one open room with four thin mattresses on the floor at one end and a rudimentary kitchen at the other.

  “Raystia,” Riley, the half-goblin dwarf adventurer said with obvious relief. “You’ve been away for a while.”

  “You got us all a bit concerned, Kitty,” added Misa, the half-goblin elf woman.

  “Sorry,” Raystia muttered. She placed a few small parcels on top of the lone rickety table in their meager kitchen. “This is the last payment.”

  A large yellow bugbear strode toward her and examined the goods. Despite his muscular physique, his cheeks were hollow. “Is that all?” he demanded. “It’s barely enough to feed me.”

  “I’m sorry, Fox.” The catgirl looked down. “I tried to haggle for more, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Claimed our findings weren’t that exciting.”

  “What?” Riley nearly shouted. “We worked on it for weeks! This research will completely revolutionize medical operations in a zero-g environment.”

  “Apparently there’s not much demand for advanced surgeries in space,” Fox said dryly. “I told you to concentrate on other areas.”

  Riley narrowed his eyes. “We explored the most promising lead we had. It’s not like I saw you come up with any new architectural designs lately. Which is your area of expertise, as I recall.”

  The yellow bugbear growled at him.

  “Boys, boys,” Misa said almost lazily. “This is getting a little out of hand. We know what to do to improve our situation here.”

  “We all agreed that’s too risky,” the dwarf argued. “They’re guarding that place constantly.”

  “They’re not paying attention to the parts they already dug through.” Misa looked at Raystia. “What do you say, Kitty? The chief gave the location of his secret stash to you. ‘Secret’ implies no one knows it’s there. We can be in and out before anyone notices. Then we’ll have plenty of gold to live comfortably until the cavalry comes to our rescue.”

  Raystia closed her eyes for a moment then slowly nodded. “I think you’re right. When it started, we could have still lived off our research, but it keeps getting harder. We need to find another source to sustain us. I’m in.”

  The half-elf goblin woman clapped her hands together. “Wonderful.” She turned to the two men. “You heard her boys, gear up!”

  “What gear?” Fox huffed. “We had to sell off most of it for food. We’ve barely got enough left to hunt down a stray cat.”

  He moved to a wooden storage chest and drew out a few pieces of equipment. The muscular bugbear put on a dented chestplate and pulled a knuckle duster onto his fingers. Riley put on black priest robes over a rusted chain shirt and held a simple wooden staff. Misa strapped a couple of chains around her torso, having long ago pawned her magical chain-ring. Raystia put on her tight-fitting black clothes and pulled the hood over her head, looking like some sort of exotic ninja cat.

  Misa studied them with a mischievous smile. “Now aren’t we a group of dangerous-looking misfits? Not bad for a bunch of level 4 characters, if I do say so myself.”

  Fox snorted. “Not a single decent weapon among the four of us. What can possibly go wrong?”

  Riley winced. “We’re probably going to get ourselves killed.”

  “Maybe.” Fox tightened the leather strap of his armor. “But Misa’s got a point. A year of inaction has atrophied us. It’s time for the Mob Squad to get back into action. Screw the pain.”

  A small chime accompanied by a blinking icon appeared on Raystia’s side view. “I got a message,” she said quietly.

  Everyone turned to look at her. “Who besides us has your contact information?”

  Raystia hesitated. “You know who.”

  “He’s back?” Riley asked excitedly. “What does he say?”

  The catgirl clicked on the message and read it out loud. “Back now, sorry it took so long. Hang on in there. Help is on the way. Oren.”

  Misa gave a small chuckle. “His name is Oren?”

  Fox grinned savagely. “Kinda stupid name for a goblin chief and our would-be savior.”

  “Hell, I don’t care what he’s called,” Riley said. “He’s coming to get us!”

  The bugbear shook his head. “He can’t help us. The entire force of Everance stands between him and us. They need us here to continue doing pointless research for them. If this Oren guy tries to bring his goblins with him, they’ll all be obliterated.”

  “I don’t know.” Misa tapped her teeth. “He’s a pretty resourceful guy. He did bring down the strongest guild in NEO. I think there’s a chance he can save us.”

  “Then he’s going to need our support,” Raystia said firmly. “We need to be ready to help from the inside. And for that, we need resources.”

  Riley grunted. “You don’t mean …”

  The catgirl nodded. “We can do it. Get the stash. Get ready. Together.”

  Misa gave them all her sunny smile. “Let’s have some fun!”

  9 - Muppets

  The players began leaving the chief’s house. Many had promised to train my warriors or take up useful crafting skills.

  “Now that was exciting,” Vic said when the two of us and Lirian remained. He disengaged from my shoulders and assumed his goblin shape. “I knew being with you again would be entertaining. You might be a dense meat suit, but it’s never boring around you.”

  “Don’t speak to the chief like that!” Lirian huffed, crossing her arm
s.

  Vic ignored her. “So now what, Boss?”

  I let my mind wander over my clan’s steady stream of information. It was late in the day, and my workers were just finishing their duties. It was a good opportunity to take some time off and re-familiarize myself with my character’s abilities.

  “I’m going to train,” I said.

  “The arena should be empty, Father,” Lirian said.

  “I don’t fight like that. My training is different.”

  She stared at me for a moment, then said, “I will go with you. I want to learn.”

  “Okay, I guess,” I said and reached out for her.

  She took my hand, and I felt an odd sensation as her small palm touched mine.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “The first exercise,” I said, closing my eyes. I pictured the place I wanted to go to. Concentrating harder, I poured myself into that point and summoned my mana.

  The shadows swallowed us whole and an instant later deposited us at my appointed destination: right on top of the Dark Temple’s roof.

  Lirian stumbled at the sudden shift but quickly found her balance. “What happened?”

  “I cast Shadow Teleport,” I said with satisfaction. “It still works.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” I closed my eyes again and spread my arms wide. The feeling of power coming from the temple was tangible, like a pulse of energy that ran through me.

  “I can,” Lirian whispered, and I could almost feel her close her eyes and bask in the power along with me.

  I opened my eyes in alarm as I felt a disturbance in the power, concentrated around my daughter. Before I could do anything, the shadows swarmed over her, and she disappeared.

  I nearly shouted in alarm when she reappeared on the far side of the roof. “How’d you do it?” I asked her, slack-jawed.

  She gave me a weird look. “I did what you did, Father.”