by R K Billiau
Kai stepped in the way of Cora and gently pushed her arm down, then pushed a little harder after meeting resistance. “What do you mean an undead army, and what do you mean it will attack our tribe?”
“Yeah! The jerk with necromancy powers was like a real bond-villain type, you know, telling me his great plan to wipe all you guys out. Whatever you did to him, it pissed him off, and he is not going to rest until he kills all of you. I think he wants to hurt you and put you into his stupid death trap thing so he can have more zombies.” Her chipper tone of voice did not match her news.
I stared intently at Kai and Cora. “What did you guys do to him?” I asked. “I thought you just kicked him out of the tribe.”
Cora’s body language changed, her hand going limp at her side and a flush crept up her face. “We exiled him, because he was, well, like Madison says, he was being a jerk.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough to foster this level of anger. What else happened?”
Cora looked away. “Nothing. Talk to the Chief about it. Tim was an ass and treated all of this like it was a game.”
Now I knew something was up. What were they hiding? “Well... it IS a game, you know. Sure, it’s the world we live in, but it is a game world.”
“That is not the way I see this. I didn’t choose to come here, and my life isn’t a game for me or anyone! This place has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and now she shows up, with powers to make this whole thing somewhat livable, but she is too busy playing Dr. Doolittle to bother!”
Madison got a confused look on her face. “Dr. What? Boy you sure have a chip on your shoulder, don’t you? It hasn’t been the easiest time for me either, you know. I did have to die a bunch of times until this Tim guy let down his guard enough for me to escape. Plus, I healed your mean face, and you don’t understand what it even cost me to do that.” She crossed her arms and looked to the side, her face a mix between a frown and a pout.
“You are such an idiot!” Cora spat, getting up in Madison’s face. “Why did they choose you of all people as System Cleric?”
“Just because I’m happy and, you know, a kind person, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” Madison said through gritted teeth.
“Enough,” Kai said forcefully. “Cora, we all know you aren’t happy here, but I won’t let you take it out on Madison, who also has been having a rough time. We need to keep moving. If what Madison says is true, then Tim may be heading to our tribe already.”
“So we are just going to abandon Austin to his fate?” Cora spat.
“Damn woman! Can you lighten up just a little?” I said. It was the wrong thing to say. I doubt I’ll learn from it.
“WHAT did you say to me!?” Cora shouted. She drew up to her full height, fists clenching. “You are just as bad as HER!” She jutted her arm out at Madison. “How can you be excited about any of this? This. is. Not. A. GAME!”
I held my hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay, chill. I just wanted to move on so we could, you know, try to find Austin and save the tribe instead of wasting all this time fighting.”
“I said ENOUGH!” Kai shouted. “Cora, can you bottle it until we find Austin, or should we go without you?”
“Please oh mighty one, lead on!” she shouted right back at him. Without another word, Kai turned around and walked off. Cora stalked after him.
“I’m gonna loot these corpses, I’ll catch up to you!” I knelt down to activate the huge spider corpse. It was definitely dead, but I still shuddered. It contained; Huge Spidersilk, a crafting supply I supposed, and a Filled Chelicera. This was one of the mandible things, I guessed it was filled with venom. I also scavenged another Huge Spidersilk from it. All the smaller spiders just gave me Spidersilk, but I netted 8 from the 5 little guys. Not a bad haul! No Lucky Finds though, and no cores. I took a moment to jot down everything I could remember about the spiders in my notebook, well, maybe longer than a moment. When I looked up the rest of them had gotten quite a ways away.
I jogged to catch up to the party and slowed when I reached Madison. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry about all this.” I covertly pointed at Cora. “We have a tribe member who is probably caught in this death trap, and we are heading to the spawn points to see if we can find him. You uh, wouldn’t happen to have an attunement, would you?”
“Oh, it hasn’t been all that bad, the dying part sucks, but I knew it would only be temporary. We’ll be here for a long time, so a bumpy start is okay! And the monkeys were so sweet and fun. I was sad to have to leav…”
I couldn’t help cutting her off. “The monkeys on the island? Are you serious? They were hellions!” I shook my head. “That’s neither here nor there. Do you know if you have an attunement?”
She smiled and it made the whole spider battle worth it. “I have an attunement, to light, do you know what that does? It came as part of my class.” The easy joy in her voice was contagious, and quite frankly, a breath of fresh air.
Congratulations! You have increased your Connection attribute!
I really liked this girl. “All we know so far is that the Attunements stop making you the most delicious thing ever to anything that lives. So, a System Cleric? I see you can heal, what else can you do?” My curiosity was piqued about this unique class. We kept a little distance between ourselves and Cora who was still fuming behind Kai.
“Well, I’ve got my healing ability, called Self-Sacrifice. I can heal other people at a cost to myself. I have another ability called Boost, that lets me give someone a buff to one of their attributes or skills. Then I have the Party skill, which is what I used to form this group, and the System skill, which gives me access to things like display tags, trade windows, that kinda stuff.”
That’s right, we’re in a group now! With all the drama I had forgot. “What does being in a group do anyhow? I guess we’re in one now, but I see nothing on my HUD that shows that.”
“You won’t until you learn the skill yourself. At my skill level all it does is allow me to see everybody’s health bars, and it equalizes experience, whatever that means.” That stopped me in my tracks.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
She turned to look at me. “The skill says it ‘equalizes experience gained preventing XP from being lost due to combat conditions’. But I don’t know what that means. This is the first chance I’ve gotten to make a group!”
“I think it means we won’t lose out on XP anymore when fighting! Kai! Kai! You gotta hear this!” I dashed up to Kai and told him what I had just learned.
“I bet you’re right. This is good news. We should test it and see,” he said.
Cora threw her hands up, “Who cares!? We can’t go running off to test out every little theory you have, we need to keep going!”
I stared at her incredulous. Maybe she hadn’t played a lot of games before, and just didn’t understand. “Cora this could mean when we are grouped, we will all get experience when we take down mobs, so we can level our classes.”
“So what? What the hell is a mob, anyway? Would you kindly keep going?!”
I had no idea what to say to that. Maybe she didn’t get it? Kai just smirked at me as if this was nothing new to him and started walking again. I slowed my walk to be with Madison.
“Man, she’s cranky,” she said.
“Tell me about it. Hey, you said you had Teaching as your carryover skill. Can you teach me how to use the Party skill?”
“Sure, let me try!” She stopped walking for a second looking at her HUD. “It says we can’t do it out in the wilderness, we have to be somewhere safe, I guess.” She shrugged and skipped up by me again.
“Rats... well maybe when we get back to the cave.”
“We’re here,” Kai said, stopping in front of us. Cora crouched down, looking ahead to where Kai was pointing. There was a depression filled with huge rocks, it had a flatter area in it, containing a pair of zombies. “Only two, Hudson, can you see more on your map?”
“You ha
ve a map?” Madison asked. “How cool!” Cora rolled her eyes.
I zoomed out as far as I could on my map but could not see any more enemies. “Unless they have Stealth mode or something, these two look like it. Should we take them out?”
“Hell yes we should. Cora, want to Stealth over and we can surprise attack them? Hudson, if you chuck a rock past them to make a noise when they turn you should be able to get a Sucker Punch. Madison, do you have anything you can do?”
Cora frowned. “The only time I’ve ever fought one of these it whooped my ass. How are we going to take two?”
Kai grinned at her. “I’m level 2 now, plus… level 50 Martial Arts kind of makes me a badass. I can take one, and with you and Hudson attacking the other, it’ll go down easy as well.”
Cora was shaking. “I hate this. I hate this so much, I’m an accountant, I crunch numbers and find optimal spending to enhance logistics. I don’t fight stupid zombies.”
Madison patted her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, I’m here to heal and I can Boost your health so you won’t be at too much risk of dying.”
“You can Boost? What’s that? Like an HP buff?” Kai asked.
“No, well, yes but also no. It’s an anything buff. I can Boost any skill, attribute, resource, whatever. Here I’ll Boost you.” She reached out and touched Kai, and a small lightning bolt zapped from her hand to his body.
“Oh I see!” Kai said “You Boost me and I choose something for it to effect. It looks like it defaults to HP, but I think, yeah, I’m going to Boost my Strength for some extra damage!” Kai paused to fiddle with his HUD. “All right! 21 points! That’s huge! Weird number though, why 21?”
“It gives a Boost of 10+ skill level. I haven’t used it much since the tutorial so my skill level is only 11. It gives double that number though if you Boost one of your expendable resources.”
Cora’s frown settled into a tight-lipped determined expression. “I’ll take an HP Boost then please.”
“Great! No problem! HP is what the buff defaults to if you don’t choose anything.” Madison touched her, the lightning shooting between them as well. Then without hesitation, she touched me. I felt the energy course from her, then got a System message.
You have been Boosted!
Please choose what attribute you would like to Boost by (21) points
Not choosing after 5 seconds will default to Max HP
Expendable resources are Boosted by 42 points
Then a checklist appeared, translucent in front of me, listing all my attributes and skills. I selected Agility and could feel the effect take place. It was like a ripple shooting through my whole body from the center out. I shook it off. “Okay guys, what’s the plan. Kai take the one on the left, Cora and me the one on the right?”
“Sounds good,” Kai said.
“I’m ready, let’s get this over with,” Cora said.
“I’ve got your backs!” Madison said.
I set up a small pile of rocks, picked up a large pinecone, and threw it over the heads of the zombies, causing it to fall behind them. They both snapped their heads at the sound, turning to investigate if there was something alive to devour. That’s what I thought anyway, who knows if zombies actually care about those kinds of things. As soon as they turned, Cora hurled her spear, I threw my rock, and Kai threw himself, foot first, in a flying kick at our targets.
Sucker Punch! Your attack catches the opponent off guard!
Kai’s leap kick blasted into his zombie, shoving it back and he began raining punches onto it. Cora’s spear slammed through our zombie’s thigh, impaling it. My rock cracked it on the head, and I got to see its skull break open enough to see brain goo. It wasn’t dead yet though, and it ambled towards us. The spear in its leg was hampering its speed and I threw more rocks at it, ending its existence well before it could reach us.
Meanwhile, Kai was taking his time, dodging attacks from the creature, and only occasionally hitting it. “Come on man! Quit training up your skills, kill that thing already!” I shouted at him. With a sigh Kai did a cool looking spinning back kick, the heel of his foot cracking the zombie in the side of its head and sending it crashing to the ground, its head cracking open like an egg on one of the large rocks.
You have slain a zombie!
You gain 7 XP
You have slain a zombie!
You gain 7 XP
“YES!” Kai and I both shouted, pumping our fists in the air.
“What!?” Cora shouted, flinching.
“We get XP now that we are in a party!” Kai shouted. “Madison, this is awesome! I hope we can all learn this Party skill because this will make the game so much easier.” Kai was shadow boxing over the zombie corpses in happiness.
“I’m happy I could help,” Madison said cheerfully, and I could tell she meant it.
Cora just shook her head, her face getting red. “Anyway, what do we do now? Austin isn’t here, so either he’s transitioning in somewhere or he is at the next spawn point. Do we go check the next one, or go back?”
Madison said, “Well, this is the spawn point I was at before I escaped and got captured by the spiders. The last time I was here that Tim guy was here also, with a lot of zombies. He was going on and on about how he would “show them”. If he isn’t here now, then he might be heading toward your tribe.”
“If Austin is in transition, or in another spawn point, he’ll eventually end up here,” Kai said. “Since we’ve taken out these zombies, he will be safe here and can rest or make his way out of the trap.”
“So we want to leave him to die a few more times.” Cora’s anger was rising again.
“Cora,” I said, “if Tim is heading to the tribe, with a horde of zombies, a lot more people could die soon. We came here, and he isn’t here, we helped by clearing out the zombies, we aren’t strong enough to take out the group at the first spawn point. What do you want us to do? It’s a lose-lose situation.”
Cora’s shoulders slumped. “I know, and I know I’m being unreasonable. I just... I feel responsible for Austin, I’m the one that convinced him to take on that duty with Kai when he died. We were hitting it off and... and... I got him killed and most likely tortured. I know we should go back to the tribe. My guilt is just eating me up.”
Madison grabbed Cora’s hand in her own and looked her in the eye. “You couldn’t have known what would happen, we all have to make decisions. You didn’t force him to go with you right? No, he decided to. Maybe he wanted to because you would be there too. I don’t know, I don’t know any of you, but he still made his own decision. We have to decide right now if we’ll track down Tim the ass, to put an end to this madness, or move to the next spawn point. I’ll go with you wherever you want to go and help.”
Kai and I both looked at each other. I raised an eyebrow. Kai shook his head. I raised both eyebrows, Kai nodded. I had no idea what was going on. Kai opened his mouth to speak. “We will too. If you feel like we have to go see if Austin is there at the next spawn point, we can go.”
“Sure,” I said. “I understand how you must feel terrible. What do you want to do?”
Cora looked at all of us, tears welling in her eyes. Madison brought her in for a hug, but she pushed away. “That’s a little much,” she said, the steel already returned to her voice. “Let’s go see if Austin is at the next spawn point, then we’ll head back.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Chapter 15
We walked, and I fiddled with my mini-map. Now that we were in a party, I wanted to check if I could see my party members. At first it was just me centered on it. When I tried to focus to bring my party members on nothing happened, so I assumed it had something to do with the Party skill. I got an idea and paused while I tried to implement it. The rest of the group kept going. I zoomed my map in as close as it would go, concentrating on assigning a chevron to each of my friends. And Cora.”
It worked! 3 chevrons in navy blue appeared next to
each other on the directional ring. I walked sideways, perpendicular to my group, and watched as the chevrons moved according to where the others were.
Congratulations! You have increased your Illugraphy Skill!
Congratulations! You have reached a milestone!
You have Unlocked milestone Ability: Map Projection - You can now project a map of anywhere you have been.
“Sweet!” I said out loud. Kai stopped and turned around. “You okay Hudson? What’s the holdup?”
“I’m great!” I said and ran to catch up to the group. “I was just messing with my mini-map and leveled up my skill, I reached a milestone and check this out!” I didn’t know how it worked so I held up my hand and activated the skill. A 3D rendered map appeared floating above my hand like a hologram. It displayed only a small area, around a hundred yards from a top-down perspective of where we stood.
Kai’s eyebrows shot up. “Well that looks... useful. Kind of small though don’t you think?”
“Hold on, let me adjust it,” I said as I waved my hands around, pinching my fingers, clapping and doing all kinds of things to no effect. Then I remembered. Duh, I could be such an idiot! I focused and simply thought about what I wanted to do and the projection expanded. I overlaid a compass onto it, then expanded it to the maximum I could, about 18 inches by 18 inches. I zoomed in to see if it had the same properties as my mini-map but couldn’t see myself or the party on it so it must be separate.