Forced Login

by R K Billiau

  “Advanced class?!” Ernesto shouted, surprise evident on his face. “How did you get that?”

  “I don’t know, I just cleared the tutorial. I’m not much of a fighter so I kinda tricked my way through,” I said honestly, shrugging my shoulders. “It offered me this class, and I jumped at the chance. What’s going on with this group though? Why are you all holed up in here, and what’s up with all the injured people?”

  Arnold grimaced, his eyes looking around the cave. “Tell me,” he said, “how long have you been out of the tutorial zone?”

  “Most of a day, I was exploring a bit, got killed by a zombie then found my way here,” I said.

  “A lot of us have been out for almost two weeks now, and it has been a constant struggle for survival. In the tutorial zone, food was everywhere, and it was easy to stay away from things that wanted to kill you. It’s different out here. The wildlife attacks so often that we haven’t been able to leave this cave unless we stay very close. As a result, many of us have starved, a debuff that thankfully doesn’t cause pain, but causes all of your resources to stop regenerating, and then degenerate until death. Then we die and lose experience we can’t make up because every time we leave this safe zone, we get swarmed and die again.”

  “The wildlife?” I asked. “They didn’t seem to cause me too many problems, I took out a few rabbit nests with no issue. Besides not being a combat class.”

  Arnold nodded. “Rabbits are not the problem, it’s the larger creatures like the deer and bison. As soon as they see you they attack, and-”

  I interrupted him. “The deer? I walked by some and they didn’t even look up. The rabbits didn’t attack me unless I attacked them first either.”

  Kai’s face lit up with surprise. “Wait... really? None of the animals attacked you first?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I always had to start combat. I kited a zombie by luring it through a nest of rabbits, those little fuzzbutts tore into it like it was their mortal enemy or something.”

  “That’s what happens to any of us when we go outside!” Arnold said. “It’s like we are all ‘kill on sight’ for any living thing out there. Do you have a skill that lowers your threat level or something?”

  “Not that I know of. I have skills that work towards finding treasure or getting better loot drops and stuff.” I shrugged. “But you’re telling me you guys can’t leave the cave because you get swarmed by the wildlife and then sent to spawn? What if you go out in a large force?”

  “We tried that a few times. It worked at first, but not without getting wounds. And when we explored in a group, nobody gained experience thus, no level gains.”

  “Then Tim betrayed us,” Kai said.

  “I was getting to that,” Arnold said.

  “Tim? Who’s Tim? What’s his deal?” I asked.

  “Tim,” began Arnold, “is a narcissist. He fancies himself a necromancer, I think he called it. He was a mortician back on Earth, and the game gave him a carryover skill that makes the undead ignore him, so as soon as they showed up, he tried to take over as leader of the group. When we weren’t having any of that, he started harassing us, sending the zombies to attack us every time we left the cave or engaged with the wildlife. Whatever progress we made, he erased.”

  “We kicked his ass out. He would train his zombies on us and laugh when we died. A legitimate griefer. I’ve taken him out a time or two but he always comes back,” Kai said.

  No wonder Cora thought this place was Hell, they couldn’t do anything but suffer. “Let me see if I understand. You get KOS’d by anything when you go out of the cave, and when you try to team up, this Tim guy comes at you with zombies. Is that it?”

  “Sometimes he trains the animals on us too, like your trick with the rabbits. The animals hate the zombies so attack on sight. I don’t know how he does it, but he can get a zombie walking down here, attracting all kinds of attention that we then have to fend it off. That’s why so many of us have injuries,” Arnold said.

  I shook my head. “Well, I can help with part of your problem.” I pulled out the rabbit meat I had looted. “I have food, and since the animals don’t attack me, I can hunt more.” I handed it over to the Chief whose face lit up and beckoned over one of the Gatherers.

  “Get a fire going and prepare this, we may have a way to get more now, and finally get to eat!” The Gatherer took the meat but paused before turning away.

  “We uh... we don’t have enough firewood. That’s why we haven’t had the signal fire going, remember?” The Gatherer, a fair skinned man with freckles, said.

  Arnold nodded. “That’s right. Well, we may know how to solve that too.” He looked at me. “Hudson, I want to explore how you can get around without the wildlife attacking you, but we have a dire situation here we need help with. We have little to offer, except for a place in our tribe, and the camaraderie that goes with it. Will you help us?”

  This wasn’t quite the situation I was hoping I would walk into after the tutorial zone, but I knew I could help, and belonging to a group would be important. “I don’t need a lot of reward, Tribal membership would be great. Does that do anything mechanically? What do you want done?”

  Chief Arnold has offered you a quest!

  Quest: Bring the tribe back from the brink! Reward: Tribal membership.

  Bring the Chief 25 pieces of firewood and 50 pieces of meat.

  Do you Accept? Yes / No

  “Sweet! A quest! That’s so awesome you can do that!” I selected YES. “I’m happy to help with this, but I am not the best fighter, is there anyone who can back me up?”

  Arnold shrugged. “I can’t make anyone do it, I can offer the quest but have no rewards to offer besides membership which they all have.”

  “I’ll do it,” Kai said, “but I don’t know how much help I can be if I am a KOS target for everything out there. The last thing we want is to get swarmed and killed.”

  “I have an idea for that, we can work close to the cave and I’ll pull whatever I can find towards us. If I can get smaller groups or single targets even, it should be easy enough, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “The sooner you can start the better,” Arnold said.

  I looked around the cave again, my eyes running over the poor, dispirited people. The wounded, the angry, the depressed. This was not what I had imagined this new life would be like. It looked more like a war torn, third world country than a virtual environment. I had had enough of misery and starvation, enough pain and dejection on Earth. This life should be better, for me and for everyone. If I had the ability to help with that, I damn sure would try.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Empathy attribute!

  Congratulations! You have increased your Connection attribute!

  “I’m ready Kai, how ‘bout you?”

  ...

  We exited the cave, back into the crisp late afternoon. The cave seemed to be set up as a safe zone, no nests showed up on my mini-map, and looking out as far as I could, I saw no evidence of wildlife.

  “Kai, where do the zombies come from, anyway?” I asked.

  He groaned. “That’s the real messed up part. They come from our own corpses. I’ve fought zombies with faces from the tribe and it’s freaky,” he said.

  “What a mess. So when you die the corpse automatically turns into a zombie? Or do you think this Tim guy has something to do with it?” I looked for the spot where the other Hunter had fallen. No corpse was there. “Is that what happened to the guy that died here?”

  Kai shrugged. “They rise within a few hours and make their way to the spawn points; something draws them there. I know little about Tim, I only came to this tribe about a week ago, and they kicked Tim out a few days later.”

  “Didn’t you say you fought him?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, he comes by like every other day with another group of zombies to pick off any of us that are outside. We can defend inside the cave from the entrance, but if he catches any of us outside.
..”

  “Yeah, I get it. Kind of an ass. Don’t the animals attack him too?”

  “I don’t know, if so I haven’t seen it.”

  I grunted and thought about this. “I wonder what makes the animals attack everyone but me. If we can find that out, we can figure out how to duplicate it.”

  “That has to be a priority. If we were back on Earth, I wouldn’t be playing,” Kai said.

  “Well hopefully I can help a little. I think my first plan will be to get wood so we can get a fire going, then I’ll focus on meat. Where have you been getting firewood so far?”

  Kai pointed towards the gentle slope of the large hills nearby. “We’ve been running into that area to pick up whatever we can off the ground. There seem to be fewer animals over there, but I’m not sure how many easy pickings there will be since we’ve already gone through it.”

  “Okay, stay here and I’ll head that way,” I said.

  “Yell if you need help!” Kai said.

  I nodded and walked towards the slope. I kept my mini-map zoomed out to the maximum, relying on it to help me see any wildlife before it saw me. This place reminded me of Northern California, the yellow and brown colors, the pine trees growing all over, not quite thick enough to be a forest.

  As I got closer to an area with a good number of trees, I spied several large bird nests. That’s when I noticed a limitation of my mini-map; it didn’t show if anything was in the nests, and despite actually seeing a few birds flying, they didn’t show up on the map either. I guess that made sense, but it made me realize that there might be other things that wouldn’t show up, and I needed to stay watchful.

  It also gave me an idea: I bet there were eggs in those nests. First things first, though. I scanned the barely-a-forest floor looking for any decent piece of wood to collect. There wasn’t a whole lot of grass, mostly dirt covered in loose, dry pine needles. There also wasn’t a whole lot of wood. Kai had been right; they picked this area clean and it took me almost half an hour of searching to come up with less than an armload.

  I set my stack of sticks down and sat on a fallen log. There had to be a better way to get wood. I sat thinking while drumming my fingers beside my leg and a loot window popped up! The header read; Scavenging and it had a picture of the log I was sitting on and a small grid with a branch icon in the first box. I selected it and read; wood.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Subconscious attribute!

  I wasn’t sure if accidentally opening a Scavenging window was a subconscious act, but I’d take it. This log was a lootable item, and my Scavenging was giving me access to the base loot window! That was great! I scavenged every log and tree laying on the ground and was able to get the rest of the firewood I needed, plus another 10, in less than 15 minutes!

  I tried to use Scavenging on other things- trees, rocks, plants- but it didn’t work. There must be something more about it I didn’t understand, but I made a mental note to keep trying this skill.

  Then I made some actual notes in my notebook about what things could and couldn’t be looted. I wanted to make sure I used my Archive skill as often as possible to see what kind of benefits I could get from it. After I finished the entry for the lootable items and how I could use Scavenging on them, I got a welcome popup.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Archive skill!

  +.05% chance to loot a higher quality item while Scavenging

  That solidified my desire to note as many things as I could, the bonuses were awesome! I made my way back to the cave; I saw Kai out front doing a dance or martial arts moves or something.

  “Hey! I got tons of firewood. Let’s bring it in so they can start cooking, then we can have some hot food!” I said. “What were you doing, anyway? Practicing your martial arts stuff?”

  Kai blushed. “No, well, kinda. It’s something from the early 1990s called Tae Bo. Have you heard of it?”

  “No, must not have been very popular. I know a bit about that era, but that’s a new one to me.”

  “Well... yeah. It’s an exercise set to keep you loose and limber. Anyway, the Chief will be happy about this firewood.” I watched the blood make its way down his face as his blush faded and grinned at him.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Connection attribute!

  “Now we can eat and get our signal fire back up, so hopefully Austin can make it back,” Kai said.

  “Austin?

  “The Hunter who died when you first got here. Without that signal fire, it’s hard to find this place from the spawn point.”

  We dropped off the firewood, to whooping and cheering, then headed back out. It wasn’t much longer until we saw smoke rising through the air above the hill. It swirled toward the flawless blue sky. “There’s a natural venting hole up there,” Kai said, as he saw me notice the smoke. “You can tell that some things in this world are designed to be a little more “game-y” than back on Earth.”

  “I noticed that sticking to strict realism wasn’t one of the design decisions. I’m not really complaining, I never got into games like that. I preferred escapism instead of having to worry about every tiny thing.”

  “Me too. This world has good systems though. I’m constantly being surprised,” Kai said.

  “Same here, and in a good way. Now, let’s go hunt us some meat!” I said.

  Kai grinned. “You mean you go, if I was with you, we would wipe pretty quick.”

  “That’s really annoying. I want to be able to party up! Get XP and have cool challenges, and I would love to have a tank!” I said.

  “Tank?! Hah, I’m pretty sure I’m DPS.” Kai punched the air. “Bring me something to kill!”

  I grinned and headed away from the cave. It didn’t take long before I came upon a rabbit nest and popped one.

  Sucker Punch! Your attack catches the opponent off guard!

  You have slain a rabbit!

  The rest of the rabbit nest charged towards me. I was far enough away I could kite them towards Kai with no problems. As soon as Kai was in their threat range, the rabbits screamed like they had when attacking the zombie and leapt straight for him. I guess what the Chief was saying was right, these people really were KOS to the wildlife!

  Kai made quick work of the rabbits. Before I could even get two throws in, he had taken them all out with powerful punches. He reached out to loot the bodies when I stopped him. “You should let me loot them; I have a skill that gives me a chance of more loot,” I said.

  “Really? That’s great! Is that part of your Treasure Hunter skills?” I nodded as he gestured towards the corpse and I reached out to activate it. I got the usual stuff, with no Lucky Find bonus. After I looted the corpses, I went through again using my Scavenging skill. Two out of the four had additional meat.

  “Are you looting them twice?” Kai asked.

  “I have another skill that allows me to loot things again and get more stuff. It’s pretty handy. Here.” I handed him a nice stack of rabbit meat.

  “Another Treasure Hunter skill?”

  “No, actually. This was the skill the game gave me based on my old life. I was a scavenger and apparently got that skill here as well. It doesn’t give me anything other than what’s on the base loot table, but that’s how I got so much firewood so fast.”

  “Those are some pretty awesome skills. It gave me Martial Arts at level 50, not a new skill, but it’s awesome having a combat ability so high right out of the gate. So you say it’s not a skill of yours that makes the animals ignore you? Is it a piece of equipment, maybe? Maybe something you got from the tutorial zone?”

  “I didn’t get to keep anything from there, I had to sacrifice all the loot I found, that’s how I got access to the Advanced class.”

  “Oh man, that’s extreme! No wonder I haven’t seen any Advanced classes before you. I don’t think many people would have just given away loot. I know I didn’t. The damn game took everything from me anyway at character creation, so I suppose that was part of a puzzle
.”

  I cocked my head. “How did you get your Basic class then? I thought it would have something to do with sacrificing the loot like I had.”

  Kai laughed. “No no, I just beat the crap out of everything on the island. I trained all my combat attributes up to the limit and went on a rampage. Couldn’t do anything about the birds or those weird plants, but the other animals I could take out and get to their treasure piles before I felt like I was ready to leave the zone. Have you gotten any other loot then?”

  I thought of the cores I had gotten. “Actually yes! I got a couple cores; they go in your charm slot.” I showed him the two cores.

  “A core? I haven’t heard of that, what do they do?” He inspected the two charms, curious.

  “They say you have to have some weird skills to use them, but I can still place them in my charm slot. I have no idea what using them will do but... oh...”

  “What?”

  “They grant something called attunement. I wonder if that has anything to do with...” I trailed off, thinking.

  “Can you let me equip one?” Kai asked.

  “No, they’re soulbound. But... hang on. Let me try something. I’ll be right back.” I ran off zooming my mini-map out all the way to find a rabbit nest. When I found one, I got to the edge of their threat zone and unequipped the cores from my charm slot. I took a couple steps forward, and the rabbits screamed and charged me.

  Chapter 9

  Congratulations! You have increased your Conscious attribute!

  That increase proved my idea was right. Well, that and the fluffy bunny teeth digging into my flesh. I almost panicked as the rabbits attacked me like I was a zombie. They were much more ferocious than I had experienced before, and this time, when I smacked them off me, they didn’t get dazed for me to Sucker Punch.

  I hate to admit it, but I ran from the fluffy bunnies. My health had dropped a large amount by the time I made it back to Kai. “Help! Help!” I shouted, then got to watch Kai laugh before engaging the rabbits, slapping them and kicking them away from me. He didn’t finish them off though.