by Mia Archer
“That wasn’t her!” the demoness shouted, her tail whipping behind her in irritation.
She looked a little charred, but otherwise no worse for the wear considering she’d just been standing at fireball central. I think the most surprising thing about waking up after getting thrown by that portal explosion was just how many people had survived the explosion despite being caught in the middle of it.
It’d felt like the end of the world going down right behind me, but it turns out it wasn’t all that bad at all.
No, it was certainly only enough to singe some of the higher level players who’d been chasing after me. The fact that they were still chasing after me with their metaphorical pitchforks out and their mouths contorted in rage was enough to tell me that I needed to think bigger in terms of explosions the next time I wanted to stop a bunch of higher level players from following me around.
Clearly their resistances and armor and all that other background game math stuff had been enough to save their asses. Fuck.
I ducked back into the underbrush and made my way as quickly as I could around the edge of the zone while trying to make as little noise as possible. It didn’t help that my sexy blue companion didn’t seem all that worried about not making much noise.
We were right up against a small mountain range that looked like it was supposed to be an impassable wall to keep new players from making it to the other side of the zone. The mountains weren’t all that big, more like hills that’d been sculpted by some game designer to look like much bigger mountains with the illusion ruined when you got right up against them, but they were pretty vertical which meant it’d be tough to get around them.
I had no idea what was waiting for me on the other side of those small mountains considering the map on the other end of said mountains was a foggy nothing. Stupid fog of war. I really should’ve downloaded a mod that let me see all the maps even if I hadn’t discovered them, but I didn’t dare take the time to log out now and try to download something like that.
No, there were enough people in hot pursuit that the thirty seconds it would take my character to log out would be thirty seconds that allowed them to catch up to me and start doing unspeakable things to my character. I figured getting boiled alive like a lobster in a pool of clear water would be downright pleasant compared to some of the things they clearly wanted to do to me.
“This is seriously fucked,” I muttered, low enough that someone out there with a listening ability of some sort wouldn’t be able to overhear me.
I hoped. Maybe. I was still new enough at this that I had no way of knowing for sure if that would happen.
“You’re telling me,” the blue hottie said, rolling her eyes. “What kind of rescue is this anyway?”
“The kind I wasn’t expecting to make,” I said. “You don’t have to stick with me, you know. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to put you right back where you were.”
She looked me up and down and grinned. “I don’t have to stick with you, true, but I kinda want to see where this is going.”
“She has to be heading for the mountain pass!” someone said from behind us.
Huh. Mountain pass. That sounded interesting. On the one hand it sounded like that would be a good way to make an escape into another zone. On the other hand I had a pretty good idea that anything that was waiting for me on the other side of whatever mountain pass they were talking about wouldn’t be the kind of thing that was friendly to a low level character like yours truly.
I scrambled up the rocks anyway, and something dislodged and fell to the ground behind me. Which was enough that I could hear it like it was echoing off the trees, even though that wasn’t quite the case.
“Oh that’s just fucking wonderful,” the blue hottie said.
“I’d like to see you do better!” I growled. “Maybe it wasn’t loud enough to get their attention.”
Screams echoed up the mountainside from the forest below. It was loud enough to get everyone’s attention.
“Over there! I heard something!”
Fuck!
I scrambled up the small hill or mountain or whatever the fuck it was, and prayed that the mountains in this game operated under Breath of the Wild rules. Or, at the very least, if they didn’t operate under Zelda rules then maybe they operated under Skyrim rules and I could scramble over this supposedly impassable mountain as long as I fucking kept at it and prayed this would fucking work.
Up and up I went. My hands felt raw where I’d been grabbing at rocks. My breath came in ragged gasps that were really unfamiliar to me considering I hadn’t had to exert myself like this since I was down on the surface. Every step I took was pure agony.
If it’d felt like this to climb mountains in Skyrim or Breath of the Wild rather than simply giving me an impassable path or a circle that showed me how much stamina I had left then I probably wouldn’t have done something like this so often in those games.
Still I climbed. My life hadn’t been literally on the line in those games. Even though my life wasn’t literally on the line here. The worst I was looking at was a return to the local graveyard for a resurrection, but the brief tastes I’d already gotten of pain in this game world was enough to make me not want to feel what it was like to actually get offed.
I didn’t even bother to turn and see if the blue hottie was following after me. My entire world was the agony of climbing and the sound of a bunch of angry motherfuckers behind me ready to kill my ass…
Something whizzed through the air beside me. There was a tiny chink sound as that something hit a rock beside me, and then clattered down the hill behind me. I turned to see an arrow falling down alongside that rock just in time for the process to repeat itself as yet another arrow flew through the air next to me.
I also saw that the blue hottie was still following me, but I didn’t need the distraction of how sexy she looked wearing practically nothing covered in a sheen of sweat as she climbed the mountain with a desperation that caused her body to jiggle in all the right places and…
Another arrow pulled me out of my reverie.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted, not even caring whether or not I gave away my location by shouting. It seemed like a moot point considering someone was shooting at me, but I quickly learned what a bad idea that was as a fireball came flying out of the treeline below and sailed through the air to explode on some rocks next to me.
Okay then. So the bad news was there was someone shooting at me. The good news was they either couldn’t see me, or they weren’t a very good shot. With arrows or fireballs. Either way I figured that meant I had a good chance of making it.
Maybe.
Not to mention that fireball knocking some of the rocks loose had actually done me a favor. I hadn’t had anything to grab ahold of before, but the new crater that’d been created in the side of this mountain that wasn’t a mountain gave me an advantage in scrambling up.
I looked up. There was a line up there, with blue skies and fluffy white clouds that taunted me. That line that told me if I could just reach it then I’d be able to get away from these assholes. At the very least I’d be making my way down while they were still climbing up, and maybe that’d give me enough time to go into hiding or log out or…
Something. I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was doing other than retreating in a panic.
I was so close. So very close. I scrambled over that edge and had just a moment to look down at something that seemed a lot more dark and grey than a happy friendly zone should’ve looked.
I wheeled around. The blue hottie was almost there. She stared up at me and she looked genuinely scared. Then that terror turned to something else. A look of determination as she looked back to a crowd of players gathering at the tree line down at the bottom of the mountain and moved close to me.
“What are you…”
“Sorry,” she muttered as she got up next to me. “But there are too many of them and there’s not a fucking chance I’m going down into that zone.
Maybe they’ll be gentle with me if I hand them your corpse.”
I didn’t have time to understand what the fuck was going on before she gave me a shove. Though it’s not like it’d take a fucking rocket surgeon to figure out what the fuck she was about to do saying something like that.
I pitched forward and down. Motherfucker. This is not what I wanted. This was not what I imagined when…
Again darkness came up to greet me as I fell down into a dark and forbidding looking forest that didn’t seem nearly as friendly as the place I was escaping. Even considering there were a lot of assholes down there at the bottom of the hill ready to kill my ass.
Fuck!
10
Taking A Break
I held my hands up in terror. Colors swirled all around me. I wasn’t sure where the fuck I was. All I knew were there were people who were after me and they were going to do terrible fucking things to me if they managed to catch up.
I jerked this way and that as I tried to avoid the fall. It was an instinctive reaction that came to all people who fell, for all that it wasn’t going to do them any fucking good to try and break a fall from that height.
That was the trouble with having instinctive responses designed for the scale of a bunch of hairless hominids who were a little too smart for their own good thrust into the modern world where those instincts weren’t much help.
Then the world resolved around me and it wasn’t the tranquil starting zone being interrupted by an angry mob trying to kill my ass. It also wasn’t the scary looking forest rushing up to meet me as I rolled down the other side of the mountain headed for rocky ground.
I was in a quiet room. I could hear a slight ringing in my ears that’d been there for as far back as I could remember. A dull glow came from somewhere behind me. I took a deep breath. Let it out.
Right. I’d fallen, but I’d also managed to live through that fall somehow. It helped that I’d hit every fucking rock while I was rolling down, not a pleasant experience, which broke up the fall somewhat even if it’d hurt like a motherfucker. I’d scrambled into a small cave and logged out, and for a miracle my pursuers hadn’t found me for the thirty second count it took me to log the fuck out.
I needed a break after everything that’d just happened. Talk about fucking intense. If my in game experience was going to be like that every time I logged in…
Well, this game was everything everyone had ever said it would be, and then some! Talk about fucking amazing! Sure I could’ve done without all those assholes trying their best to kill me, but whatever. At least it hadn’t made for a dull moment while I was being introduced to the game!
I sat up and shook my arms out. It probably wasn't strictly necessary to do that, the game supposedly kept the body twitching here and there so you didn't have to worry about your muscles atrophying or doing anything else that might leave Etherea open to the kinds of lawsuits that could only be brought by the kind of rich assholes they had playing their game right now, but still.
There was something about waking up from a portal to another world that had me wanting to shake my arms and legs out. To give my hands a little wiggle just to make sure everything still worked.
I paused to take a look around the room. Everything was exactly as I remembered when that pretty girl up at the front desk had let me in here. My only companion was the subdued glow of the interface crystal pulsing behind me.
I turned to look at the thing. It didn't seem any different than before, and yet there was something about it that also felt more menacing than before. There was something about knowing it was a portal to a world where there were a hell of a lot of people who wanted to do their best to kill my ass that had me wondering what whether or not it was worth going in there again.
A grin split my face as the thought occurred to me. Who the fuck was I kidding? Of course I was going to go back as soon as I could! That’d been intense, but talk about a wild fucking ride! Talk about the kind of thrill, a shot right to the pleasure centers of the brain, that was nothing like the boring old two-dimensional games I’d played on boring old computer monitors!
"You, are fucking amazing," I said to the crystal.
I knew talking to the crystal was ridiculous. The thing was a chunk of advanced computer hardware, after all, and nothing more. It's not like the crystal had any idea what I was saying. But that didn't stop me from leaning down and planting a big old kiss on the thing.
Maybe it was ridiculous, but I was beyond caring. After everything I'd just survived I felt alive. I felt like I needed to kiss something, and that crystal was the only thing nearby.
I frowned slightly at that thought. That crystal was also probably the only thing up here on this level of the elevator that’d be willing to let me kiss it. Stupid fucking stuck up rich bastards.
Though I grinned even at that thought. They might be a bunch of stupid fucking stuck up rich bastards, but I'd certainly given those rich bastards something to think about by blowing up that inn!
That grin was quickly followed by a sigh. It might've been fun looking back on that if it hadn't been so terrifying while I was doing it. Not to mention that’s where I’d met the blue hottie who’d been so eager to betray me there at the end.
The bitch. She was a good looking bitch, to be sure, but still a bitch for betraying me. I was going to give her a piece of my mind, and maybe my weapons, if we ever had the pleasure of meeting up in the game again.
Oh well. Enough about that. I was supposed to be taking a break, after all. So why not take a break? I needed to give all those people chasing me time to get bored with the chase. Maybe they’d realize I’d logged out and give up before I logged back in.
Either way I figured it was time to go and get a snack or something to pass the time while I waited for the assholes to figure out I wasn’t coming back.
As though on cue, my stomach rumbled. I looked down. That was a hell of a loud rumble, too. I was pretty sure I’d seen a break room with some autovendors down the hall from the lab. I even had a food stipend since there wasn’t much point in giving me a scholarship to come up here to study and then not give me anything to eat, though of course my diet wasn’t anything as extravagant as some of the assholes who had, say, a permanent chef on staff to cater to their dietary requirements.
I pressed my thumb against the plate and the door slid open. I stuck my head out. I guess there was a part of me that was still in "being hunted" mode. That part of me worried that maybe there’d be people out there looking for me.
It was a ridiculous thought, of course. The game encompassed the entire world. And it's not like time had any meaning in the elevators where they weren't beholden to any of the schedules from down on the surface where there was always a glowing ball of nuclear fire filtering through the particulate matter in the atmosphere to let people know when it was daytime or nighttime by its presence or absence.
There was no one out there there. I sighed again and shook my head. I was being ridiculous, of course. It's not like there’d be anyone out there hunting me in the real world. The assholes I'd pissed off in the game could’ve been on the other side of the world for all I knew.
I stepped out and looked at the pretty girl at the front desk. She turned and looked at me. There was something there for a moment before she went back to the old unreadable expression. Like I thought I almost saw the hint of a smile there for a moment, but then it was gone.
That was about all I could ever expect to get from any of the people here who might’ve been interested in me under different circumstances. Not when they knew I was just a filthy rizon.
There were always plenty of women willing to take a walk on the wild side when they got to the university level. If anything that’d become even more of a thing now that society was a lot more open about that sort of thing and letting people explore it.
The only problem being I'd missed my opportunity by not going to a surface university where I could take advantage of ladies wanting to try a little exp
erimental game after a few drinks. More's the pity.
I brushed past her. Hit her with a smile and then decided to have some fun. I winked and stuck my tongue out and wiggled it just a little. Just enough to put the idea in her head of what it might be like if she decided to indulge in that walk on the wild side she'd obviously been contemplating when that ghost of interest passed across her face.
Then I was past her before I could scandalize her any more than I already had with that simple look.
I checked the hallway to make sure there was no one out there. Again it was a ridiculous thought, but the chase through that starting zone had been so fucking realistic that I still felt like I was being hunted.
Probably an evolutionary leftover from the days when people seriously had to worry about getting hunted by dangerous creatures. The people who lived the longest were the ones who were the most cautious, and so that genetic gift of caution had been passed down the line to me in an era when people didn't have to worry about getting killed by things with claws and teeth.
I stepped out of the room and headed down to the break room I’d seen on the way over here. Normally I tried to get food at one of the cafeterias that sold food that was way better than anything I’d ever had on the surface, for all that it was the kind of food that everyone else here looked down their nose at because it wasn’t made by those aforementioned personal chefs.
Whatever. I could get something from one of the autovendors that’d still be better than anything I’d had growing up.
I stepped into the vending room and pressed my thumb against the autovendor. I was in the middle of trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go for something light like a sandwich or a more full meal, or maybe even just a quick snack I could wolf down before I headed back to the game, when voices in the hallway caught my attention.
I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was some of that caution I’d been practicing thanks to my ancestors not getting eaten by ancient sabre tooth tigers or something.