by Mia Archer
The woman out in front of the tower stared at me. She seemed out of breath. The way her clothes were ripped and torn told a story of someone who’d seen better days, but for all that she was quite attractive under all the dust and grime.
I leaned against the tower door and grinned. I wasn’t above looking at a pretty girl, thank you very much. Though she looked back at me with about as much interest as the girls at the Academy.
Which is to say none at all.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, dusting off some flirting muscles I hadn’t flexed in so very long. “So what’s this going to be? A fetch quest? Gathering a bunch of ingredients or something?”
Her face screwed up in confusion. We were speaking the same language, but we weren’t quite speaking the same language if you catch my drift.
“We are having trouble with goblins who have been stealing gold from local caravans bringing gold ingots from the mine to the keep!”
She looked up to the tower behind her. If this was their idea of a keep then it was a wonder anyone ever managed to defend anything in this world, but maybe the game designers had been a bit lazy with this and copied and pasted a starter zone tower or something. Lazy game design was a little surprising in something like Etherea, but not too surprising considering the kind of crunch time devs and designers were usually working under.
“Um, right,” I said. “So you need me to go out and kill some goblins? Bring back the money they stole?”
Her face lit up in a smile that warmed me, and I found myself wondering what kind of fun I could have with her. She was curved in all the right places, and those curves were practically bursting out of her tattered outfit.
I idly wondered if the game even let people have that kind of fun. I hadn’t heard about it yet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a thing. Everything else felt real enough, so why not extend that realism to taking a roll in the hay with the NPCs?
Or maybe even the player characters. I felt an ache deep inside me considering that possibility. It’d been so long, but I pushed those thoughts aside.
“That would be wonderful!” she said, bouncing just a little as she said it.
And there those thoughts came roaring back. Someone in the art department had obviously had a hell of a good time putting together that animation. I wondered if they went to the trouble of doing motion capture, or if someone had to animate it from existing video.
Whoever did the animating was a lucky bastard either way.
“Right,” I said. “So can you point me in the…”
The little minimap in the top left corner of my screen dinged. I looked up at the thing and it brought up a bigger version of the map. Neat how it automatically responded to whatever I wanted.
Though considering we were talking about a game that had a direct connection to my brain I guess it wasn’t all that odd.
“Okay then. I guess that answers that,” I muttered as a marker showed where I needed to go. The map around the marker was shrouded in a fog, I hadn’t discovered it yet, but at least I knew the general direction I was supposed to move in.
“There should be enough goblins outside their lair that you can retrieve the gold ingots,” she said. “Though if you are able to gather some companions about you, you might be able to delve into their lair and stop their corruption from spreading!”
“Right,” I said. “So we’ve got a fetch quest with a touch of gathering items, and on top of that you need a dungeon cleared if I can get some other newbies together to help out with the goblin genocide.”
Again her face screwed up like she was confused, but I waved a dismissive hand. She was, after all, an NPC. It’s not like I expected all that much from an NPC. Even in a game this amazing.
“Whatever,” I said. “You sit here sending people out on your fetch quests, and I’ll go off and fix your little problem. Something tells me I’ll be doing that a lot with my blades!”
I did a little twirl of my blades. Sure they weren’t all that impressive at the moment considering I was in a starter zone with starter gear, but that animation was pretty awesome. It had to be an animation considering I didn’t have the ability to do that on my own.
The girl frowned, then she made a rude gesture. I blinked a couple of times. That was a lot more thought than I would’ve figured an NPC would give to being insulted. Almost like she could understand that I was insulting her, and she didn’t care for it.
Weird.
“Whatever,” I muttered, turning to walk off in the direction of the fetch quest.
4
Questing
The next half hour or so was the kind of mind-numbing stuff I expected from questing in a starter zone. Goblins started coming up and attacking me when I got closer to their mine lair, and I did my best to relieve them of their lives and their possessions.
Though there was something odd about these goblins. I was expecting little hunched over things that made growling noises and were barely able to rub two neurons together to make a coherent thought, but these things were different. Like we’re talking they were muscular and tough, and they looked more human than goblin, for all that they had green skin.
And all of them looked like they’d be more than happy to stick me like a pincushion. I dodged and did my damage dealing thing, but the more I fought them the more I was starting to realize that being a pure DPS class kind of sucked in terms of being able to get a good monster killing rhythm going.
It was almost enough to make me want to log out and go to the trouble of creating a new character. One that had some armor and the ability to actually stand up against attacking monsters without losing most of my hit points in every battle. Being pure DPS was a drag without any items to regenerate my health between pulls, and it was a close thing every time I got into one of those battles.
I sighed as I got closer to what I assumed was the goblin lair the rude lady at the tower had been talking about. The goblins were getting thicker, and I figured I was getting close to the moment when I’d have to turn around if I couldn’t find anyone out here adventuring.
Then the sounds of combat up ahead caught my ears. I grinned as I realized that maybe I wouldn’t have to run away quite as soon as I’d thought.
“Well hello there,” I said as I rounded a bend in the packed dirt trail through the thick forest that conveniently led to the goblin lair for all that this place was supposed to be off the beaten path.
I saw a party up ahead. A guy who was clearly a fighter or tank of some sort wielded a two-handed sword that he was using to poke and slice at the goblins, and he had a group of about five goblins around him doing their best to beat the shit out of him while a pretty elf healed him.
I grinned. Bingo. They looked like they could use a little DPS in their lives.
The guy was definitely well muscled and attractive. Not that I’d ever been into that sort of thing. The elf girl that was with him, however, was nothing short of breathtaking. I had no idea how she got in a human starter area, but she was a looker.
She had the lithe frame that all elves seemed to have if the character creation screen was anything to go on, and the female model was definitely easy on the eyes!
“Hello nurse,” I muttered to myself, bringing to mind an ancient compliment.
There was another guy next to them. He looked like he was a mage of some sort. He was fireballing the goblins while the tank held their interest and the girl did her healing thing.
Clearly these three had come up with a minimally viable group composition, tank, healer, DPS, and they were going to town with that group.
I grinned as I approached them and waited for them to finish their business with the goblins. Then it occurred to me that they had a few goblins on them, so it’s not like it’d hurt anything to maybe take one of them off their hands, right?
Before I could really think about what I was doing, or whether or not they’d be pissed off at me for essentially kill stealing a trash mob, I slammed my blade into one of th
e goblins that was at full health and peeled it off.
The reaction from the goblin was immediate and more than a little violent. The thing whirled around and slammed me with a massive war hammer.
“What the fuck are you doing you kill stealing little prick?” the warrior shouted as he continued attack ingthe other scary monsters.
He did something that must’ve been a taunt. He shouted some words I could almost understand, and a moment later the goblin that’d been getting ready to kill my ass was turning back on the tank, ready to kick his ass instead.
For all that it didn’t have a prayer of kicking his ass. Stupid fucking goblin.
“I’m just trying to help you guys out,” I growled, not liking that I sounded like a whining child who wasn’t happy that the big kids weren’t letting me play.
“You can fuck off,” the guy said with a laugh as he lobbed the head off of one of the goblins. “We don’t need your kind of help, noob.”
I bristled at the accusation, for all that it was true. I was a noob in this game, and the fact that I hadn’t read the situation correctly was a reminder of that. I sighed and walked off just a bit to watch the rest of the fight. They didn’t want my help so I wasn’t going to bother them, but I did need to get at those goblins if I was going to complete this quest.
The group made short work of the goblins. It made me wish I had a group like that. Though I had hopes that they might let me join in on the fun. We were close enough to the goblin lair entrance that I could see it.
When the last goblin was dead I walked over and stuck my hand out to the warrior, because the dude seemed like he was the one who was in charge of this shindig.
He stared at the offered hand, but didn’t take it.
“What the fuck do you want, noob?” he growled.
Okay, not the best start to our time together in the game, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were a lot of people who got off to bad starts and it all worked out in the end. Sure this asshole seemed a lot more standoffish than any other asshole I’d ever met before, but I could try.
Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t used to dealing with standoffish assholes with all the time I’d had to get used to that sort of treatment at the Academy.
“I was thinking maybe we could group up?” I said. “I see you guys were maybe thinking of heading into the goblin lair, and another DPS might help out.”
The tank shook his head and muttered something under his breath. The mage and the hot elf with her healing abilities also looked like they were almost embarrassed for me, and that more than anything set me off and made me feel more than a little embarrassed.
“You don’t have to look at me like I’m radioactive or toxic or something,” I said. “I’ve been playing games my whole life, and I guarantee you I can help you out with whatever the fuck you’re doing in there.”
Okay. Now I was getting a little testy. Not good considering I needed to be in these peoples’ good graces if they were going to take me into the nice goblin dungeon where I could maybe achieve the quest’s secondary objective on top of stealing a bunch of gold pieces from goblin corpses.
Though a part of me wondered what the fuck I was doing standing here trying to group with these pricks when they clearly didn’t want anything to do with me. Maybe all the time I’d spent at the Academy having people shit all over me, figuratively, had made me a glutton for this kind of punishment.
“You’re crazy,” the tank said. “If you think we need another useless Bladedancer then you really don’t know much about this game, do you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” the elf chick said, speaking up for the first time since I ran into this group of merry pricks. “Stealth DPS characters are a dime a dozen in this game. The same as in every other game flooded by people who think stealth DPS is badass. Good luck getting anything with a shit character like that.”
“If you want to pay up then we might work something out,” the guy said.
“Ugh, this one?” the elf girl asked.
“Not the kind of payment you give me, love,” the guy said, giving the elf a wink that turned my stomach.
“I thought so,” she said, looking me over.
Her voice was so loaded with hatred and disdain that it took me back just a little. I mean sure I knew, on some level, that stealth was usually a popular class choice that tended to draw in the kind of player who wanted to look like a badass, but this game was new enough that I’d thought maybe I’d be getting in a head start on the whole badass stealth DPS thing.
I also figured there was always room for good DPS, and I’d been pretty good at dealing damage in other games. Though it didn’t look like my not-so-unique set of skills were needed here.
Fuck.
“Well y’all can go fuck yourselves then,” I said, the words escaping my lips before I could really stop and think about what I was saying.
I was saying everything I wanted to say to the rich assholes at the Academy but couldn’t. I was safe here behind an avatar where I wouldn’t have to worry about some of those words coming back to haunt me in the real world, at least. My character looked different enough from me in the real world that I wasn’t all that worried about this coming back to bite me in the ass.
So I said some things that could get me in trouble in the game.
The blow was so immediate, and so surprising, that it took me a moment to even realize what’d happened. The first indication that something had hit me was that I was staring down at the packed dirt trail leading to the goblin lair. The second idea I had that something was wrong was the rather hungry looking goblin eyes staring at me from the other side of some underbrush. Those eyes were looking at me like their owner was about to have a little fun at my expense.
Only that hit couldn’t have come from the goblin hiding in the bushes.
“Have fun noob,” the asshole tank said. “Maybe we’ll see you around, but probably not with a stupid fucking class like Bladedancer.”
The fucker hit me. My cheek pulsed and stung where the hit had landed. The pain was only now starting to settle in as a throbbing dull ache that was really going to fucking hurt when it got going.
At least it would’ve been the kind of dull and throbbing ache that would’ve really hurt if I’d had time to think about that pain. Unfortunately no sooner had I started to seriously consider what’d just happened than those goblin eyes staring out at me from the underbrush suddenly got a hell of a lot closer.
I had a moment to see a muscular goblin leaning over me. Leering down at me with the kind of look that said this wasn’t going to be very pleasant for yours truly. A moment later a cruel black sword came down and connected with my neck, severing the digital equivalent of the life giving artery that would be there in my real neck.
It certainly felt like that fucker had just stabbed me in an honest-to-fuck life giving part of my anatomy. I could feel the life seeping out of me as I was hit with a critical amount of damage, and I knew it wasn’t going to be long before I was a goner.
With my last breath I lifted up my hand and flipped the bird in the general direction of those assholes who’d hit me and left me for dead. I couldn’t be sure that they’d see it, but there was a chance.
That would have to be good enough, damn it. Because darkness was closing in around me, and there was no fucking way I was going to be able to make it out of this as the goblin started stabbing other parts of my body with that sword.
At least I wasn’t going to be conscious enough to feel that bit. Darkness closed in around me.
5
Game Over
Something seemed very off about the world all around me. Like everything was sort of pale and washed out, and there was a dull green glow to everything.
It took me a bit to remember where I was. The last couple of moments had sort of disappeared from my mind, and as those memories started coming back I found myself wishi
ng that maybe they’d stayed the fuck out of my head.
Fuck that had hurt. A goblin stabbing me in the neck and really fucking my shit up wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time in any game, but it really wasn’t my idea of a good time in a game where all that pain could be felt in realtime with all the pain receptors in my body screaming out in agony.
Fuckity fuck.
At least I couldn’t still feel that pain wherever the fuck I was now. I put my hand to my neck, but realized I couldn’t actually touch my neck. That was good for freaking me the fuck out all over again, until I looked down and realized my body was a touch more ephemeral than usual.
I looked around. Other spirits appeared around me and ran off. I looked at my minimap, and sure enough there was an arrow on that minimap showing me what direction I needed to head out in if I wanted to get to my body. There was also a spirit hovering nearby, a spectral warrior in full plate armor who looked at me as though he was disappointed I’d failed and come to this graveyard. It had to be a graveyard with all the glowing green gravestones sticking up out of the ground.
I kicked one of those graves and a small window popped up asking me if I wanted to resurrect here and lose all my stuff on top of taking a twenty percent experience penalty. Sure I didn’t have all that many experience points right now considering I’d only been killing goblins for a few hours, but I decided I didn’t want to take the penalty that came with resurrecting at a graveyard when I could get everything back if I found my body.
Besides, I didn’t want to lose my shit.
It didn’t take long to reach my body. Not when I was an ephemeral ghost who didn’t have to fight through all the goblins I could see lurking in the underbrush waiting for living players to come through.
I did a quick circuit of the trees first to make sure there weren’t any goblins lurking close enough to cause trouble. The last thing I needed was to reappear over my body in a weakened state only to find myself getting double or triple teamed by a bunch of fucking goblin assholes.