by Bruce Sentar
Ajax stared at it dumbly for a moment.
“Hurry up, or do you enjoy being a doormat?” A female voice said over the crowd.
Ajax grabbed the hand and used their weight to hoist himself back to his feet. “Thanks,” Ajax said to the blue-haired woman in front of him. Ajax had to say she was gorgeous, though most of the avatars were pretty good looking.
“Don’t mention it,” and she was off into the crowd before Ajax could say anything else. He was left with unfulfilled gratitude at the kind gesture amongst the torrent of selfish jostling of the crowd.
He was left with his own thoughts, slightly haunted by her beautiful face. He was kicking himself for not making a better impression. The first girl I meet and I’m a doormat. He knew he couldn’t waste time dwelling on her, and he looked back at the notification that had caused him to stumble.
Ajax thought of all the beta tester comments, ‘you have to train your character’. He had seen something like this in the videos but how sudden it came at the start of the game as if it was meant to teach everyone that training could increase stats.
Ajax figured that was exactly what the earlier stat increase was for. Ajax wasn’t really the type of guy to go to the gym. He’d tried a few times in school to put some muscle on and it would work at first but it never really lasted. To think now he’d probably find himself working out in virtual reality for stats. The sad part is he’d probably love it with all the +1 progress encouraging him.
Before he could fall into his daydreams the road opened up into a town square. He didn’t read any of the signs, not bothering to treat anything but his quest as important, he veered off towards his quest marker.
The herd of players actually split in every direction swarming the square and every shop. His piece of the swarm all streamed in and out of Roderick’s Smithy. It was a small shop with three attendants at a front desk, Ajax waited in line and took in the blacksmith shop. It was a pretty basic wood building, the wall behind the large counter that divided the one room in half was covered in medieval weapons. There was a door to the side of the wall through which faint wisps of smoke curled out. The attendants were two teenagers and a woman that had some soot from the forge on their clothes.
Players were running up and trying their best to hurry through the chat sequence to get on with their quests. The woman and kids looked slightly annoyed at the players' rushed behavior.
When Ajax stepped up the NPCs were already being brisk.
“Who ya pick’n up for?” The teenage boy seemed both annoyed and bored at the same time.
“Farmer Henry, and can I see your wares? I’d like to pick up a weapon, even if it’s simple.” Ajax was tired of fighting off wolves unarmed. He would make do with just about anything rather than have to fight unarmed anymore.
The teenage boy’s attitude did and one-eighty and he seemed excited at the prospect of a sale. Damn these NPCs are so lifelike. The boy pulled out a leather scroll listing all the weapons on the wall behind him, and Ajax thanked some programmer for not having to have the poor kid talk through each one. Ajax looked at his measly starting fifty copper, and he was limited to the simplest of weapons. The boy didn’t seem very excited that Ajax only bought a wooden club, but he accepted the copper and lifted a polished wooden club that looked like a kids baseball bat.
“There you are sir. When you need an upgrade or if you want us to repair your equipment we’re your stop!” Depleted of his starting coppers Ajax ran out of the blacksmith with his delivery quest item and a new wooden club.
As everyone trickled out of the blacksmith they scattered yet again in all directions. Ajax didn’t hesitate and darted off towards his marker.
Running along, he caught sight of the blue-haired woman. It wasn’t her beauty that caught him; hell all of the characters he had seen so far were attractive. Happens when they are all healthy, slightly touched up versions of themselves. Ajax was pretty sure being healthy was most of what made someone attractive.
It was her movement that captured him. She ran in a strange fashion moving sideways at times, stepping unevenly unlike everyone else. She turned to look at him and he blushed like he’d been caught staring at her ass. She frowned then realized he was watching her feet. She gave Ajax a wink and sashayed her hips as she more deliberately jumped from one black cobblestone to the next then the next. She only stepped on the black cobblestones.
“Ah!” Ajax realized what she was doing but would it work? He chased after her following the black cobblestones towards his quest marker. Quickly he realized she was moving further away. It wasn’t a huge difference, but she was moving faster than the other players. Ajax thought of the agility stat; she must have leveled up her agility. He continued after her looking up at her nameplate
“Thanks for the tip, what is your agility at?” Ajax cursed himself for being so forward.
She didn’t seem to mind “11. Oh wait just hit 12.”
Damn Ajax could see her picking up speed fading into the crowd ahead.
Agility +1
Thank you! Ajax prayed to some unknown god and was reinvigorated by the chance to try and keep up. Ajax was so pumped by the idea of speeding up he suddenly felt lighter and raced past two players. Huh? How did he…
System’s voice rang “Congratulations! You’ve learned Sprint! What motivated you to run so fast?” He wasn’t hearing other people’s announcements so he guessed that no one else could hear System. He silently thanked the game for that.
Ajax silently yelled with joy as he sped past multiple players and caught sight of AzureSky again. He saw the yellow bar on his HUD draining. A quick check showed 86/110. Flipping open the skill menu he saw Sprint 1: increases speed by 60% at the cost of 5 energy per second. Even with the increased speed, he kept at his cobblestone pattern. The street’s stones were a repeating pattern and he started to fall into the rhythm.
His energy bar was at 30/110 when he was a few feet behind AzureSky and he decided to cancel it. He was going to wait for his energy to recover before he overtook her. His bar ticked slowly for a few seconds before it seemed to increase in speed and he had fallen back to 10 feet behind her before his bar refilled. He could see up ahead the cobblestone turned back into a dirt road but looking at his marker he still had a ways to go to Farmer Henry’s place. He hadn’t hit 12 agility yet but he turned to sprint back on and shot ahead. When he passed onto the dirt road he didn’t stop the cobblestone pattern. Having done it for the last few minutes he had it down pat. He continued with his odd run shooting past AzureSky and turned to give her a wink.
Ajax winced when he looked forward, berating himself for being an idiot.
“Right back at you big guy; how did you do that? I mean, get so fast.”
Ajax let out a heavy breath. If he’d looked back she’d see his face full of relief.
He was happy to share with his new friend “I learned a new skill, Sprint.”
Her voice was sweet and excited though Ajax thought it had more to do with the game than him “Nice, how did you do it?”
With no small amount of embarrassment, Ajax thought about when he was looking at her rear and wishing to catch up when he learned spring. “I just wanted to run faster and it sort of happened.”
Her playful voice responded, “Oh, why did you want to run faster? Maybe the motivation was an important part. For science and all.”
Ajax started to respond then thought better of the response. It took several iterations of his thoughts before he settled on one. “I saw you getting ahead and thought about how much it would help to get ahead of the group.”
Catching up and running at his side, she showed a pouting face “Ah, so it was because you wanted to get ahead. Awe, I thought it was because you wanted to catch up to me” Ajax was metaphorically kicking himself in the rear as he ran. Ajax was at a loss for words, scrambling to make it u
p as long blue hair whipped him in the face. She activated sprint and shot ahead.
She didn’t seem to be that upset and giggled as she took the lead again. Ajax didn’t think but instead activated sprint to keep up with her. The two ran through several more farms before their jockeying ended. Running shoulder to shoulder Ajax cracked a grin with the next message from System.
Agility +1
A broad grin spread across Ajax’s face. He kept pace with AzureSky. “So what was your motivation for learning sprint? For science of course.” His grin grew bigger at throwing back her own words.
“Oh, there was a sweet piece of ass in front of me.” She suddenly veered off into a farm. “This is my stop.” Ajax ground to a halt, thinking for a second about lying that it was his too. The herd of players caught up before he could think what to do, and he lost her. With no other idea what to do, Ajax turn sprint back on and rushed to his farm skipping along the imaginary cobblestones. He made up his mind and sent a friend invite to her just as he left the main road for Henry’s farm.
CHAPTER 7
Turning onto the farm road, Ajax left the bustle of the main road flooded with players. Looking over his shoulder, no one else was rushing to Henry’s farm. Finishing his sprint into Henry’s Farm, Ajax saw Farmer Henry standing just inside the doorway to the farmhouse.
“Heya there boy did you bring my tools?” Farmer Henry got straight to the point.
Ajax looked the farmhouse over. It was better built than his shed at least. Everything should be better built than his shed though.
“Yes, here you go.” Ajax pulled the bundle out of his inventory and handed it to the farmer.
“Oh bless you. Here is the 40 copper.” Farmer Henry gestured and his wife stepped out with a small coin purse.
“Thanks,” Ajax said bitterly. His starting money was 50 copper and after all that running he only got 40 copper! Damn starter quest was just a delivery. He needed some grinding quests or at least monsters to kill. Thinking of monsters he hadn’t seen one on his whole run out. His internal rant was interrupted by a blinding golden light a double helix of gold ribbons swirled up around him.
As the column of light wrapped around Ajax and System chimed in. “Congratulations Ajax you’re now level 2. Only like a billion to go to get to end game.”
He was getting more used to System and her humor, though the joy of leveling was fairly blunted by the comment. At least the system message reminded him there was more than money to be gained.
“Young man, would you like to stay with us a while?” Ajax wasn’t sure how to answer. Was this a follow-up quest or something like setting a new spawn point? Thinking about how long it had taken to run out here he decided it wouldn’t hurt to be closer to what he assumed would be wilds out past the farms. He agreed to the farmer's request to stay even if it was resetting his spawn point.
“Well… Since you are staying, would you be able to help me clear some boars that have been eating my crops?” The farmer looked hesitant at the request and the wife didn’t even look like she heard what he’d said. She stood transfixed like a wax figure.
“Of course, are they out back?” Ajax was more than ready to start killing things. This is what he needed, a kill quest to grind out some experience with a nice little bonus at the end.
There were a bunch of tough-looking boars digging in the field of melons with their tusks but what caught my attention was another woman. She had a mane of dark pink hair curling down to her heart-shaped ass. He couldn’t help but soak her in for a moment as he looked her up and down; her waist pinched making her figure a perfect hourglass. Ajax took a moment to compose himself, at least till he saw her name tag.
“I didn’t know we’d be sharing this quest,” She said looking at Ajax’s name tag and for a moment he saw a look of disbelief and was that joy? No why would she be happy to see him? In turn, he looked at hers,
His mind flushed all thoughts down the drain for a second as it rebooted and tried to check himself for errors and looked again. MissyQ? THE MissyQ? The idol of all nerd gamers. She was a flirty gamer girl that was also very highly ranked in every game she played. She had live streams and videos that were amongst the top 5 on TwitchTube.
She was beautiful in LR; every male on the planet would probably kill to be in his spot. He was still frozen at the revelation. He needed to do something, he needed a reason.
Then it clicked; he realized it probably had to do with the friend request last night. He got his head back in the game and he charged a boar. It was time to put those hours of practice to work. He didn’t want to look like some fanboy and gawk and flirt. He was here to get ahead.
He would act, then talk.
His first swing hit the poor unsuspecting neutral monster easily. Its nameplate turning red, it spun to him and thrust its tusks.
Ajax jumped back and swung his club in a downward arc into its snout with all his strength. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t trying to show off for his newfound pink-haired companion he was sharing the quest with. He put all of his digital strength into the smash.
System spoke softly like she was whispering in his ear. “You’ve learned the skill Power Strike 1.” He stiffened at the new way she had updated him and then flashed a look to MissyQ to see if she saw him. She was fighting her own boar with what he assumed was a dead boar’s tusk. He tried to calm his burning cheeks before she looked his way.
Ajax didn’t hesitate and immediately used Power Strike again, feeling the game guide his body into a spinning strike and hitting a clean blow to the side of the boar’s head.
It wobbled for a moment before getting its bearing and coming at Ajax again.
He spun on his right foot and tried to turn away from the tusks, but this time he wasn’t fast enough and the tusks scraped along his abdomen. The pain was real and Ajax clutched his side only to pull his hand away covered in blood. Something about seeing his blood made him more aware, or maybe it was the pain. Thankfully reduced, but pain none the less. He squared off his feet and refocused on the boar waiting for its next attack.
Like the animal it was, it lunged at Ajax. This time he wasn’t off balance and he spun out of its attack hitting it with his club then following up with a Power Strike. The world seems to blur and slow down after he activated Power Strike, and his body quickly followed up with an enhanced second attack.
The boar’s head split open as he caved in a section of its cranium. The health bar above its head was empty as it collapsed to the ground.
Ajax looted the boar for a tusk and some meat before opening his character screen.
Name: Ajax
Level: 2
Exp: 32/200
Health: 82/110
Energy: 100/100
Mana: 0/100
Strength: 11
Agility: 12
Fortitude: 10
Stamina: 11
Wisdom: 10
Intelligence: 10
Charisma: 10
Skills >
Sprint
Power Strike
Ajax selected Power Strike to see,
He saw MissyQ watching him finish the fight. Act first and talk later. Ajax smiled, he’d had a chance to think about her statement. “Yeah, I guess it’s because we are friends. In the game I mean.” Smooth Ajax, he winced at the correction, of course, she knew he meant in the game.
She smiled “I’
m glad you came to help. And at least you brought a weapon.” She held up the two boar tusks holding them like daggers. “These are very crappy weapons, but at least they are sharp and work on hitting critical areas.” She jumped on the next unsuspecting boar and plunged both tusks, one in the back of its head and the other in its left eye. Then she jumped back, pulling them out in a spray of blood. Ajax saw over half the boar’s health drain from her first attack. “See it works like you’re fighting something real; they have vital areas that do more damage.”
Ajax didn’t want to stand around watching her for too long, so he charged his next boar
He suddenly found himself dashing faster than a spring and slamming the boar with his knee. A swirl denoting a stun appeared above its head. A swing followed by a Power Strike aimed to the back of its head took almost 80% of its health away. Ajax backed up as the boar shook off the stun and charged.
He must have backed out of range and triggered the boar. It stomped its feet and charged. He couldn’t get out of the way of the headbutt before it connected with his kneecap, forcing it straight and preventing Ajax from moving it as it locked up in pain.