The Scout of Artemis (LitRPG Series): Press X to Loot Book 1

by Gregg Horlock

  Rex spent his time leaning over the side of the boat. At first, I thought he was watching the sea. Then I realized that with every lurch of the vessel, his face turned a little greener, and soon he was retching into the water. It struck me again how realistic the game was, but it seemed perverse of the developers to write sea sickness into their code. I’d heard that years ago, back when VR headsets first came out, motion sickness was a problem.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  He turned to face me. He looked terrible. “I get sea sick,” he said. “Father stopped trying to take me on his yacht after I threw up on it when I was ten.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “We’ve all been there, though. It’s tough when your rich father bans you from his private ship.”

  Rex recovered from his seasickness just enough to glare at me. “I thought that my sea sickness wouldn’t be a problem in the game, but it’s all just so damn realistic.”

  That was the thing. The developers of Pana walked a fine line. People played games for escapism and fun, and that had to be a priority when coding a title. As well as that, though, people cried out for realism. They wanted better graphics, better voice acting. People didn’t know what they wanted really. They yearned to escape from reality, but they wanted their method of escape to be realistic. Looking at Rex as he tried to keep his stomach inside, I decided that the makers of Pana still had some fine-tuning to do.

  At the end of the boat, Jack turned his head. “Is the rich guy feeling sorry for himself?”

  Cal – I was still struggling to get used to calling him Jack Spades – spent his time gambling with the NPC sailors. With the boat steered on a course and the wind doing most of the work, there was little for the men to do. I watched Jack play his cards, and straight away I saw that he was up to his old tricks. I looked on with a smile as he changed poor hands into unbeatable ones, and I hoped that the NPCs wouldn’t catch on.

  With every successful cheat, I heard a tinkling sound coming from Jack’s direction. From my research, I knew what that was. As a gambler, one of his skills must have been sleight of hand, or something like that. By using it on the sailors, he was getting experience points.

  At least he was using the journey productively. There wasn’t much I could do; there were no skills to be learned on the boat that would be useful for a scout. I started to feel impatient, and I wished the journey would take less time.

  Rex turned away from the side of the ship. His face had regained some color now, and he joined me in watching Jack cheat at cards.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” he said.

  Jack and the sailors looked up from their game and stared at the barbarian.

  “It’s only a game of cards,” said one of the sailors.

  “I don’t mean that,” said Rex. He nodded at Jack. “He’s cheating. He’s using sleight of hand to change his cards.”

  A look of anger crossed Jack’s face. He quickly hid it, and he replaced it with an expression of mock-hurt. “Me? Cheat? You’re mad.”

  One of the sailors threw his cards to the deck. The wind picked one of them up. I saw the Ace of Hearts fly out of the boat and into the sea, where it floated on the surface for a few seconds and then sank. Ahead of us, the sky looked mean and grey. A storm was coming.

  “I knew it,” said the sailor. He stood up. A few coins fell out of his pocket and rattled on the wooden deck. “Every damn hand you have is a flush.”

  Jack turned to face Rex. “What the hell’s your problem?”

  Rex crossed his arms. “Just because they’re computer characters, doesn’t mean you should cheat them out of money.”

  I expected the sailors to look confused, but they acted like they hadn’t heard themselves described as computer characters. I guessed that they were programmed to ignore all references to this world being a game. To them, it was their life. Again, I wondered how sophisticated their AI was.

  “They’re lines of code,” said Jack. “Just numbers fed into a computer. Who does it hurt if I take their money?”

  “They’re more advanced than you think,” said Rex. “You need to be more attuned to the things around you.”

  The other sailor stood up now. “I want my money back,” he said.

  I realized that the sailors were levels above us. Although neither of them had been assigned a fighter class, I guessed that their attributes still dwarfed ours. Besides, we didn’t need to get into a fight with the only people who could get us to Artemis safely.

  “Pay them back,” I told Jack.

  “But Chris…”

  “It’s Columbus here, remember? Pay them back. We don’t want to get off to a bad start.”

  “How about you tell money-bags here to pay them?” said Jack, nodding at Rex. “His dad’s loaded. He’s got money falling out of his arse.”

  “Father doesn’t give me much,” said Rex.

  “Come off it,” answered Jack. “I know your type. People like you think they can buy their way out of anything.”

  “And cheating gives you the moral high ground, does it?” said Rex.

  I could feel the tension rising in the air. “Come on lads. Calm down.”

  Jack wasn’t to be deterred. When he got into rant-mode, there was no stopping him. “You think you’re better than me? Waving money at everything is no different than cheating, you know. You’re using an advantage that nobody else has. I mean, look at us. We’re sailing to Artemis days before everyone else. It hardly leaves them a chance to find Helder’s Bane.”

  Rex looked thoughtful for a few seconds, and then he answered. “I’m with you on this point, Jack. I don’t agree with my father. Real life might be play to win, but games shouldn’t be. Games are meant to be an even playing field; they’re supposed to be an escape.”

  “Then why come?” said Jack.

  “I didn’t have a choice. Father made me.”

  Seeing that they’d found common ground, Rex and Jack’s argument started to settle down. Jack paid the sailors back their GD, and we all sat down on deck. I walked over to the supply crate and looked through the equipment that Terence had bought for us.

  As I rummaged through the armor in the crate, I couldn’t help but feel that Rex and Jack were right. It wasn’t fair that we’d gotten an advantage over everyone else just because Rex’s father was rich. But still, what was I to do? Finding Helder’s Bane was the only chance, slim though it was, of saving Ledfield Tours.

  The equipment in the chest was geared toward the warrior and barbarian classes. I realized that I’d already made mistake number one. I should have settled on a class before playing, and then had Terence buy my gear accordingly. The problem was that between finding out about Helder’s Bane and entering the game, I’d barely had time to think.

  I dug to the bottom of the crate and finally found a pair of green trousers and a green shirt. They only offered me 1 defence point each, but they were better than nothing. I thought it only fair that I spared Jack and Rex the sight of me wandering around half-naked.

  Fully clothed, I settled down next to Jack. The wood of the deck was rough, but I was used to discomfort. I’d led tours through Gossard at every time of the year and through every weather condition possible. Extreme cold or burning heat didn’t matter much to me. I’d sat there freezing my nuts off, and I’d sat there sweating them off too. This made me think about something else. Why did we guys always judge the weather by what effect it had on our nuts?

  “Let’s go over a few things about Pana,” I said. “Did you do some reading like I asked?”

  Jack looked at me. I could tell by the cheeky expression on his face that he hadn’t read a damn thing.

  “I spent a few hours researching,” said Rex. “First up, you need to put Helder’s Bane in your quest journal.”

  “How do I do that?” said Jack.

  Rex smiled. “Check your journal. It’s done. By thinking about it, you’ve added it.”

  Sure enough, a message appeared on my screen
.

  Quest Added: Find Helder’s Bane

  Rewards:

  10,000 GD

  Lifetime subscription to Pana Reborn

  “What’s next?” said Jack.

  I knew the answer to this one. “When we get to Artemis, the first thing we have to do is set a respawn rune. Without one, when we die, we’ll respawn back on the Pana mainland. You’d have to get a public ship back over to the island. Dying will set you back 8 hours, which isn’t too big a problem if you can respawn on Artemis rather than the mainland. Dying before then would put us out of the race.”

  “Father bought us 3 respawn runes,” said Rex. “I’d suggest we set one up as soon as we get on shore.”

  I nodded. “Agreed. Then, after that…”

  I didn’t have a chance to finish my sentence. Something burst up in front of our boat and sent a torrent of freezing water crashing over us. It hit my face full on and chilled my skin, and I couldn’t close my mouth in time to avoid taking a mouthful of salt water.

  My pulse began to fire. I tried to look around and see what had happened, but the salt water stung my eyes. One of the sailors shouted something, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  “All hands on deck,” cried the other. He got to his feet, a look of panic on his face.

  The other sailor ran to the front of the boat and looked out. “Holy hell,” he said.

  When I looked in his direction, I saw what he meant. The view in front of the boat was completely blocked by a creature that had risen from the sea. Its head was half the size of our boat, and its body was large enough to blot out everything in front of us. Its skin was covered in scales, and sharp ridges ran downs its sides.

  The creature opened its mouth and roared. Its cold breath blasted me in the face, and I smelled the putrid odour of rotting fish. If I could have had 5 minutes a room with the developer who decided to program the monster’s breath in such rancid detail…

  I stood up. I looked at the sailors. “Can we steer around it?” I said.

  His look of panic had changed to one of terror. “No. There’s only one thing we can do now.”

  “Get a bigger boat?” I said.

  “No. Hold on to something and pray,” he answered.

  With that, the creature lurched forward. It didn’t seem to have arms, and its method of attack was to dive forward onto the boat. As its giant body launched at us, time seemed to slow. Stupidly, the only thought that crossed my mind was about how fiendish the Pana developers were to put such a creature in the sea. Was this their way of getting back at the people who paid to get to Artemis before everyone else? Would the public ships have to face something like this?

  There was no time to formulate an answer to my question. The creature smashed down onto the deck of the ship. I heard the sickening crack of wood as our vessel tore apart. I grabbed hold of a rope to my right, but I knew that there was no point.

  The boat gave way under the sheer weight of the creature. I opened my mouth to shout out to Jack and Rex, but I found myself swallowing sea water. My whole body started stared to freeze, and I realized that the boat had been destroyed. Before I could do anything else, a giant wave crashed over me, submerging me in the sea.

  Chapter Eleven

  The waves threw me from side to side. Every time I opened my mouth I swallowed sea water, and I fought to keep my head above the surface. I tried to look around for signs of Jack, Rex and the sailors, but the sky had darkened. The wind sprayed water into my eyes. A piece of wood drifted by me, a sign that our ship was gone now. I tried to grab for the wood but the waves took it away, and I gulped panicked breaths as I tried to swim against the tide.

  Forcing myself to stay calm, I looked around and saw the Artemis shoreline in the distance. Thunder rumbled above me, and the waves around me were so powerful that it sounded like they were roaring.

  I fixed my stare on the shoreline and put all my energy into swimming toward it. With stroke after stroke, my stamina started to drain.

  Warning: Stamina Drained – 2HP lost (Total: 110/112)

  Despite the points I’d loaded into my endurance, I still wasn’t strong enough to fight against the sea. A dark thought hit me; the creature that destroyed the boat might still be around. It could be underneath me now, lurking as a dark blot in the ocean, toying with me. A shot of panic hit me, but I forced myself to stay calm.

  Ten minutes later, the shoreline was close. My arms ached, and I realized that I could feel pain in Pana. It wasn’t as strong as it would have been in real life, but the feeling was there all the same.

  By the time I reached shore, I could hardly breathe. My hit points had dropped to 74, and I shivered as a tremor of cold hit me. When I reached the beach, I turned over onto my back and caught my breath. The darkening sky was above me, with the last traces of sunlight fighting against the onset of evening. I took deep breaths, glad to be taking in something other than the salt water that burned my throat.

  I got to my feet. I looked around me, hoping to see the panting figures of Jack and Rex on the beach. Instead, I found that I was alone. Not only that, but there was no sign of the boat or of any of our equipment.

  I knew that Pana Reborn was a challenging game, but I hadn’t expected all of this before I even reached level 1. Not every player would get this treatment, I knew. The world of Pana was full of chance encounters that had a specific probability attached to them. It could have been that only 1 in 1000 players would encounter the sea creature, and I was just the unlucky one.

  Not only that, though. When I read about Pana, I had learned something of its history. The first iteration of Pana was a game called Blezedale, which again was a fantasy game. Blezedale was more socially-driven, and the combat mechanics of it were easy. Monsters 20 times your level could be killed in a few hits, and it took barely a week to get to level 99. The developers had assumed that with attention spans shrinking, people wanted an easy ride. They were wrong.

  Sales of Blezedale started poorly and got worse. The makers had no idea what to do. It was only when a rogue programmer – about to be fired for taking too many days off sick – made a monster that was almost impossible to kill and put it on the map as revenge, that things changed. Players of Blezedale loved the challenge of killing the newly-made monster, and they banded together to slay it. In the space of a week there were a thousand deaths and respawns in the game, which was more than the 9 months prior to that. The players loved it, and subscriptions went up. After that, the developers made Pana Reborn. They made sure to learn from their lesson about setting challenges and difficulty.

  Warning – Status Gained: Hypothermia (20HP loss per 30 minutes)

  There was a programmer out there somewhere with a devious smile on his face. I was sure of it. When I’d first entered Pana and stood on the docks, I’d been in awe of the game. I couldn’t wait to explore. Stood alone on a beach with hypothermia draining my HP, I was starting to wonder whether someone had it in for me.

  I needed to find Jack and Rex, but there was a more pressing matter. If the hypothermia drained my HP, I could die on the island before putting even a step in the direction of Helder’s Bane. Our respawn runes had been washed away with the rest of the equipment, so if I died now, I would respawn on the mainland. That was it then; I had to get rid of my hypothermia.

  The only way to do that would be to get warm, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to shelter. I was going to have to build a fire.

  Quest Received – Build a Fire

  Reward: 55 Exp

  Chapter Twelve

  I looked around me. Further down the beach, a crab the size of my chest scuttled toward a rock. Seaweed shook when the lapping tide washed over it. North of me there seemed to be an expanse of trees, which might have been the start of woodland. That was where I needed to go, then. To build a fire, I’d need wood.

  Before setting out, I took stock of my information screens. My hypothermia status had been added to my character screen. I looked in dismay at my tarnished
hit point total. A tab on the character screen was marked ‘Party Chat’, so I brought it up.

  Available Chats:

  Jack Spade - *Location Unknown*

  Rex Alpha - *Location Unknown*

  I decided to send a message into the party chat in the hope that one of them got it.

  “Hello?”

  I waited a few seconds, but nothing came back. I hoped they were okay, and that neither of them had died. Things were bad enough as it was, but we couldn’t afford to have one of the group respawn on the mainland.