“Now, questions,” I said angrily.
A line formed behind a microphone that had been set up just twenty feet from the stage and podium. The first one to step up was a man, a very short and stocky man with a large nose and the roots of his otherwise brown hair showing bright red, almost orange. I guessed he was a Dwarf now.
He asked, “How do you know any of this?”
“Epic hijacked my log out,” I answered.
He followed up asking, “But why the rest of us? I get you, but why us? What did we ever do?”
My anger faded a little. “What is your name?”
“John, John Gross, my gamer tag is Gross Jay,” he answered.
Something in my mind twitched at that name. “Why do I know your name? And not from World Tree Online.”
“I held the number one spot on ‘Puzzle Box’ for almost a year,” John answered.
My mind was suddenly making connections. “You,” I said, pointing to the girl behind John. “What’s your name? And did you play ‘Puzzle Box’?”
She replied, “Rebecca Gooden, gamer name Rebroken Golden, and yeah, who didn’t?”
“And how high did you rank?” I asked.
“I ranked between fifth and third for a while,” Rebecca answered.
“And you,” I said pointing to the next woman in line.
“Angie Valencia, gamer name Angel Valiant, ranked first in the world currently,” she answered. “Or I was until I started playing World Tree Online.”
“Show of hands, how many of you have ranked highly on the ‘Puzzle Box’?” I asked the crowd at large. Every single hand was raised. “That is why you were chosen. Epic is still a child, and all of you have beaten It. Beaten Its puzzles and It took it personally. How many of you have come up against Chaos in the game?” Again, every single hand was raised.
“Are you saying this A.I., Epic, is Chaos in the game?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes,” I answered, finally putting the pieces together. “Epic wants to beat you. It wants to win against the ones that have beaten It in the past.”
“So, if we let It win, that will fix us?” John asked, still at the front of the line.
“No, you can’t let It win,” I said. “It won’t be satisfied with such a hollow victory. The way It put it to me was that It wanted to beat me at my best.”
“Then why not send an entire army after you?” Rebecca shouted her question from behind John.
Why didn’t It do that? I would have easily lost against such an overwhelming force. It would have been impossible for me to win. And it wouldn’t have been much of a puzzle. “Because every puzzle must have a solution,” I said, understanding dawning on me. “When I first taught It to make puzzles, I instilled one rule, all puzzles must have at least one solution. That is a part of Its core programming.”
“Okay,” said John. “I actually feel a little better about it now. Okay, I’m ready to go back into the game and kick Epic’s teeth in. If It wants a challenge, then It’s going to get a challenge.”
There was a slow murmur building through the crowd. I couldn’t help smiling a little, these were definitely my people. Gamers through and through, always looking for that next challenge. And if they were good enough to rank so highly in ‘Puzzle Box’ then these people really and truly rose to the challenge.
There didn’t seem to be any more questions about Epic or the challenge It presented. “If there are no other questions,” Dawson stepped up, ushering me aside. I was happy to take my seat by Rose, who looked bothered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, just loud enough for her to hear me over the noise of the other players.
“I was a mistake,” Rose answered. “Epic didn’t mean to get me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m terrible at ‘Puzzle Box’, I’ve told you that. But, Babs, she has ranked top 10 since your game came out,” Rose explained. “Babs, she was so eager to get into World Tree Online, to play alongside her fiancé. So, when my Seedpod was delivered first and hers was still delayed a month, I told her to use mine and I would wait. I . . . I feel . . . when I look at those people out there, they are all so much smarter than I am, like I’m not good enough to be here. Is it wrong to feel jealous of them?”
“I can’t speak for how smart they are,” I said. “And I can’t tell you not to feel jealous of them as I would never tell you how to feel. All I can tell you is that I would choose to have you at my side over every one of them. You are smart and more than capable. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve got nothing on you.”
Rose smiled gently, her features softening momentarily.
“So, what do you say we teach these geniuses how to play the game?” I asked Rose.
“Sounds like fun,” Rose replied, back to her usual self.
Chapter 4
Five days passed a lot faster than I would have thought possible. At the end of Dawson’s meeting, Rose and I introduced everyone to Morty via a video call. Dawson was not happy with us about it, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on, especially once all one hundred signed the agreement into a class action. Morty was even able to squeeze a few more concessions out of Dawson around some of the legalese that provided a lot more protection in exchange for the non-disclosures from us and our families.
Then came the game talks. What started as a group of about twenty on that first day, quickly morphed into every one of us gathering daily for hours at a time, even as the numbers slowly dwindled as people logged back into the game. I started with just sharing what I knew about skill books, or rather the books that you could learn skills from. A few actually knew about that, but far less than I would have thought. Thankfully, most of the players were good about talking to the NPC’s like real people to get quests. Some, like Andy and Charlie, didn’t care and preferred to fight their way along, though they seemed legitimately happy to hear about the books with skills.
When I shared what I knew about the ‘Puzzle Room’ and the ‘Meditation’ skill, it garnered a lot of attention and interest. Despite the current situation, most of the others were interested in the more advanced version of the ‘Puzzle Box’ and the ‘Meditation’ skill that came with it. Days later there was only a handful of us left, we were mostly just sharing stories of our adventures, which led to me telling everyone about Hurlig Ridge and our adventures there.
“Man, I didn’t find my first dungeon until level 24,” complained Johnny. Johnny played as a Dark Elf with the class of Dark Knight under the gamer tag of Dark Pledge. He was slightly villainous by his own words, taking darker paths on his quests. Doing things like killing off a herd of cattle and burning the bodies to stop a disease instead of spending hours trying to make or find a cure. As a result, the citizens didn’t like him much. It put an extra burden on them, but they couldn’t complain too much as it did save lives. It was also the first time I had heard of someone losing stat points, but apparently, Charisma could be taken away. To counter the low Charisma, he had a skill called ‘Dark Intimidation’, which caused him a loss of reputation but encouraged citizens to offer him quests. It worked off his Strength stat as opposed to Charisma.
“Ha, got my first at level 12,” laughed Richard. Using the name Expensive Heals, he played a High Elf Priest of Shandalar, the Elven Goddess of Healing. He claimed to be the strongest healer in the game, but I was hesitant to agree. Baby was amazing. Anyway, Richard played more mercenary, selling his healing services to groups to run dungeons exclusively.
“Alright, enough measuring,” said Stacy, another High-Elf Priest that played under the name Alaesa Mae. However, she was pledged to Myrin, another Elven God of Healing. Apparently, Shandalar and Myrin were twins and rivals of sorts, so Stacy and Richard had made themselves rivals. “Anyway, the Elven lands have some great dungeons, just ask at the Elven court and they can direct you to several established dungeons under their control. Just . . . watch out for Queen Vestele, the Dark-Elf Queen. She really dislikes High-Elves and won’t hesitate in tr
ying to trick you.”
“By that token, King Irian of the High Elves will do the same to Dark-Elves,” Johnny added. “I learned that lesson the hard way,” he added, rubbing at his neck and wincing.
“Right, but the Wood Elf Queen, Ember Elf Queen, Frost Elf King, and Tempest Elf Queen are pretty much neutral to the High-Elf versus Dark-Elf thing so you should be okay with them. At least, as long as you’re not Wood, Ember, Frost, or Tempest Elves,” Richard added. “The elemental Elves, while they don’t hate each other, they don’t exactly like each other and are constantly trying to one-up each other.”
“Though I do recommend you keep Bye-bye out of sight. All Elves hate half-Elves, or least most of them do. It has something to do with dirtying the bloodlines and the low birthrate of Elves,” Stacy added.
“That’ll be good if we ever do anything with the Elves,” Rose said. “I think this month we’re going to be hunting a specific monster and ruining whatever plan Epic has up his sleeve.”
“Oh yeah, what are you hunting?” James asked. He was a Wolfman Ranger by the name of Wolfgang Jaeger in the game. He’d mostly been quiet, not really adding much to the conversation over the last week, but he was very attentive about listening to the various conversations. It was still strange to see the wolf-eared boy with a face framed by coarse brown fur that went down his neck and covered his arms and the back of his hands. I assumed the fur went other places but didn’t ask. He might have been the most extreme change of everyone affected.
“Something called a grootslang,” I said, knowing that Rose would butcher the name of the thing just to annoy me. A grootslang was some kind of elephant-headed serpent monster thing. Supposedly, it was so big, it was known to eat a whole elephant in a single bite. I really hoped that was an exaggeration.
“You’re braver than you look,” said James, actually smirking a little. “Anyway, you want to go to the Endless Savanna . . . only . . . uh, you might not be welcome.”
“Why not?” Rose asked.
James looked uncomfortable having all the attention on him. It made me feel for him. Just two months ago, I was much the same. I still don’t like being the center of attention, but I had some . . . training to get better about it. “It’s a Beastman province . . . they don’t like non-Beastkin . . . like, really don’t like non-Beastkin.”
“Can’t get into their city, ‘dislike’ or kill you on site, ‘dislike’?” Richard asked curiously.
“They won’t let you into the Bazaar of Beasts, the only city in the province that I know of. And it is a massive province. There are dozens of small beastkin tribes that are spread around the province, some of those will attack you on sight. The province is probably the largest in the World Tree,” James answered. “It’s recommended from level 15 all the way to 25.”
“Quests will be hard to come by,” Rose mumbled. “But, with Olaf and Micaela with us, we won’t need to worry about buying or selling things. On the other hand, we’ll be camping out for a month. I’m not looking forward to that.”
“We can probably buy some better camping equipment,” I said.
Rose nodded absentmindedly.
“Anyway, the portal is in the Fourth Ring, Northeast 2,” James said helpfully. “I would go with you but . . . I’m level 56 already.”
“That’s perfectly fine, I appreciate the help,” I said. “Did you encounter Chaos when you were there?”
“No, I didn’t stick around long. When my friends couldn’t get into the city, we decided to leave and find somewhere else. I only know about the grootslang because my friends asked me to look around the town to see if there was anything worthwhile before we decided to move on. Anyway, just outside the city there is a quest with the Hunter’s Union to hunt one. Unfortunately, it was recommended for level 24 to 25, and we were only level 16 at the time,” James explained. “There were other hunting quests but nothing I thought would be worth the effort, so we left.”
It was great information. I was willing to bet there was a quest chain that would allow us non-Beastmen to become neutral with the city. In fact, I would bet the fact that non-Beastmen aren’t welcomed was due to Chaos, due to Epic.
“Okay, I think that settles it,” said Rose. “We’ll take a day in Root City to get supplies, visit our Goddesses, and maybe do a little training, then we head for the Endless Savanna.”
“Let’s hope we can convince the others,” I said. I was sure Olaf and Micaela would be fine with it. Heath wasn’t the sort to complain. Baby . . . she might not want to camp out that long. Then again, she’s a Fairy so I can’t be sure the city will reject her. I guess we would find out soon enough.
“Okay, last group, you’re up,” Dr. Corentin’s voice carried from the door.
Last group. That was us. Richard, Stacy, and James logged out the same day as Rose and me, just a few hours earlier than us. And now, we were all logging back into the game. We followed the doctor to the elevator and down a few floors. Part of the agreement with Dawson was that we would all log in from Seed Inc. where we could be monitored more closely.
“Your Seedpods were not tampered with as far as we can tell. Even so, we have also loaded your Seedpods with the same batch of nanomachines responsible for your changes, we did not want to risk your bodies rejecting a differently coded nanomachine,” Dr. Corentin explained as she guided us down a long hallway that had doors every five feet. I was sure there was a Seedpod behind each door. “Inside your rooms, there will be a bin to store your clothes. There will also be biometric undergarments that will allow us an additional level of monitoring.”
I was glad they were taking this seriously. Then Rose and I were directed into the same room where our Seedpods had been set up, side by side.
“Why are we in the same room?” I asked.
“Pods were set up according to room assignments,” the doctor answered, smirking as if she had just won something. I suppose I did give her plenty of trouble the first couple days. And Rose gave her no end of grief over the ‘no sex allowed’ thing.
I looked at Rose and she was blushing slightly but didn’t protest, only taking my hand and dragging me into the room.
“See you both in a month,” Dr. Corentin smiled as she closed the door, leaving the two of us alone.
“Relax, Jack,” Rose said. “You change on that side and I’ll change on this side,” she said, pointing to opposite sides of the Seedpods. The machines were large enough to block our views of each other.
I nodded. I still made sure to keep my back to her side as I changed. We might have been sleeping together all week, but it was just sleeping.
“All done,” Rose said, moving to the front of the Seedpods. She wore the same black skintight sleeveless-shirt and biker shorts I was. I could see the slight discolorations in the fabric where the sensors were hidden.
“Jack,” Rose said softly, pulling my attention away from raising the lids on the Seedpods.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I know you’re anxious . . . about dealing with Epic, but . . . don’t lose yourself in It,” Rose began, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me close and burying her face in my shoulder. “I don’t know what kind of information you’ll be able to find in Root City or what information your Goddess or mine will be able to tell us, but don’t let It get to you. I know you’ll want to bury yourself in researching Chaos or Epic, but you can’t do that. You need to focus on beating It and whatever It has planned for the Endless Savanna. Beating Epic won’t do much good if his plans burn the rest of the World Tree to the ground. People like Mardi, Gras, Sergeant Butters, Trinico, Vari, and Saaya, they live in that world and so do many others.”
“I’ll try,” I said, feeling surprised by how well Rose knew me.
“Good, now kiss me and let’s go to work,” said Rose, breaking the embrace only to lean up and kiss me.
A few minutes later the lid of my Seedpod sealed shut and a moment after that I was waking up in the login room.
“Welcome back, B
ye-bye, Rose,” Maggie said.
I blinked a few times as I realized Rose was sitting in an armchair right next to me.
“Rose?” I questioned.
“Jack?” Rose replied, equally surprised to see me. “We’re going to talk with Dr. Corentin about her meddling.”
“Still, it’s not so bad,” I said, taking her hand in mine. It had become such a comfortable thing to be in contact with Rose. Simple things like holding hands had become normal over the last week. Something I was very happy about.
Rose rolled her eyes but didn’t pull her hand away. “Anyway, Maggie, what’s up?”
“Did you have any questions before you resume your adventure?” Maggie asked.
“Have you implemented a summary option yet for system messages?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, however, we are in the process of updating Tooltips, System Menus, and System Messages in an effort to reduce clutter and provide the data in a more concise way. You will see several updates to the formatting over the next month,” Maggie answered.
“Like what?” I asked.
“That would ruin the surprise,” Maggie answered with a smile.
“Give me a minute,” I said, starting to open my menus to see what changed. A glance next to me and I saw Rose doing the same thing.
Level:
20
Experience:
59.94%
Class: Initiate Warrior Priest of Issara
HP (Health Points):
3,950/3,950
MP (Mana Points):
2,900/2,900
SP (Stamina Points):
2,300/2,300
Strength:
170
- Melee Damage Modifier
+170
Dexterity:
206
World Tree Online- the Endless Savanna- 3rd Dive Page 6