by Luke Isaacs
Yu Senior looked relaxed and nodded at this sensible advice. He’d been thinking that very thing himself. When Dana took her hand away, he turned to his son.
“If I allowed you to go on playing under your proxy character, do you promise to keep me informed of all your activities in the future?”
“Of course, Dad,” Edward answers, his eyes wide. “I’ve wanted to share my adventures in GodsRealm with you for so long.”
Yu nodded.
“The driver will see you home. I’m going on ahead to have my lawyer draft an agreement between us and notify the championship board of your wish to remain in the game and keep this character, Son of Beelzebub, on their lists, but assigned to your real name. I imagine we’ll also have to pay a monetary penalty for you using a fake identity to sign up – I’ll take care of it and ensure there is no suspension or game time penalty, after all, that wouldn’t be fair on your teammates.”
After he left, the group congratulated EdwardMark on his father’s approval. He looked at Dana with an unasked question on his face, but all she gave him was a fast wink.
Selma waited for the group to finish and approached Rick. He turned and threw himself into her arms.
“I heard you, Grandma, I heard you in the coma, it’s how we found our way back.”
“You did?” she hugged him back, “what did you hear me saying then?”
“Please come back, Rick. Were you saying that?”
“Yes, but it’s strange, that was three days ago,” Selma said. “On your birthday – which reminds me…”
She reached into her bag and lifts out a silver tablet.
“Awesome!” Rick said. “The Alpha Capture Think Tab, an older model but I think it’s upgradable, I love it!”
The air pulsed with positive energy until one of the doctors interrupted the reunion.
“I have a message here from the championship board, and I will put it on the open Holo circuit of this room.”
He placed his hand on a hidden panel in the wall and a holo image sprang to life in the middle of the room, a 3D rendering of the CEO of the championship board faced them.
“Hello Valhalla Greatest, we are very pleased that you’ve returned to us from Helheim.” He paused and looks above the camera, clearly reading from a prompter – Rick suddenly realized it wasn’t only the team he was addressing. “You have touched the hearts of the world as you ascended the ranks of GodsRealm, an ascension that placed you at the top tier of the championship this year. However, your journey is not done. As you know, the championship was paused after your incident. Now that you are back and healthy, we want you back in our ranks. In 20 days, the championship will recommence where you and the remaining 200 players left off, in the second zone of Ragnarök. Valhalla Greatest, you have a date with destiny, don’t miss it.”
The doctor raised a hand to silence the babble following the announcement which, even as it was received by the team and their families, was broadcast to every VNet device on the planet.
“I have a final message I was instructed to deliver in person,” he said, clearing his throat before he continued. “Should you opt to leave the competition, your game assets will be forfeited, and the costs for your hospitalization would revert to you.” He quickly went on, knowing from the gasps that they understand the magnitude of that statement. “However, should you accept and participate, all costs will be covered by GodsRealm and a bonus of 100 thousand GG would be placed in your accounts to spend in game… PLUS, 5000 DC compensation for the time you’ve been comatose. This amount has been affirmed and approved by the ruling body of the VNet as compensation for occupational injuries. You have one hour to respond, and you can use the room’s holo communicator to sign the provided legal agreement.”
With this last, he turns and practically ran out of the room.
A minute passed then the room exploded into argument.
“How can we pay the amount asked for your treatment?” the father of Rania, Omar said, his face pale.
“Well, you won’t have to, will you? Because I’m playing…”
“Mom, we can sell the house,” said Dana’s son, Peter. “I don’t think you should return to the championship in case something like this happens again.”
“Rick,” Selma cried as she held Rick. “They are going to take you away, just like your parents!”
The UN Veteran’s association representative that had come to see Mario home leaned into his ear.
“The UN won’t cover expenses incurred due to accidents in leisure activities. I advise you to take the offer.”
Mario pushed him away.
“I don’t want your dirty money.”
“Please, stop the worrying,” Edward said, raising his voice over the excited din. “We will play the game! We’ll compete in the championship!”
“How can we risk the life of our daughter again?” Dorine, Rania’s mother, shouted back.
Edward’s face darkened at her hysterics and he drew a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper and more resonant than any teenager’s voice had a right to be.
“We will play, and we will win.”
Rick recognized the Fear intonation. Edward’s words were enchanted to cast fear over those who heard them, an ability unique to the demonic races of the game. Rick cast a calming spell over the families and slowly saw the fear on their faces melt away. Edward felt it and understood he’d unconsciously overstepped.
“There is no other choice,” Edward spoke normally, shocked at the fact he had summoned the powers of the game so easily.
“He is right, and you know this,” Dana said, stepping forward. “As he said, it is the best course of action.”
The most susceptible of the people around them nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes, we know this,” called Rania’s parents in unison. “You must play Rania.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Selma.
“Grandma, this time,” said Rick, “we’ll also be protected from ‘accidents’ by the game’s own board of security.”
Dana waggled her fingers and added Faith to his words, leading his grandma and the final resisters to believe that his words were the ultimate truth.
“Ok,” said Selma, her eyes bright. “You can play but promise me you’ll be careful.”
Rick put his arm around his grandma’s shoulders.
“Of course, Grandma.”
She leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“And don’t think I said yes because of these silly enchantments.”
Rick stared at her wide-eyed, but Rania swept him away to sign the agreement before he could ask how she knew.
17
The team members returned to their normal life, the only physical reminder of their injuries were the strange lines burned into their bodies when the suits were electrified. Of course, no one knew about their abilities, and they had vowed to keep them secret.
Several strange things happened over the next two weeks. Rania’s exam papers were presented at the end of the term exam, even though her professor swore she never attended. Everyone knew that it was impossible for the papers to be presented without the DNA tracking and the incident became a mark on the poor woman’s record.
Rick became even better than his AI comrade at work in sensing and dealing with hacking attacks sometimes before they even occurred. This garnered him a 10% pay rise.
The vetting board finally accepted Dana's thrice rejected application for entry into the master's course of the most prestigious university in VNet. But if you asked them what proved the difference, they wouldn’t have been able to say.
Mario had given up his crutch completely and was proud to announce to the group in their daily meetings that he was seeing somebody from the local activity center.
Edward had developed his Fear speech to a new level, and he terrorized his teachers to allow him more VNet time.
There were some not-so-happy occurrences too — occurrences caused by the
ir inability to master their powers quickly.
Rania was attending a real-life event for coders in her university, and as two graduate coders started to measure her up, she dematerialized. This caused the technician who was setting cables on the platform to trip over her, plunging the entire event into blackout as everyone was disconnected at the same moment.
Dana went to negotiate with her son’s principal and Peter ended up being put in a higher grade because her magic swayed the principal into believing the boy’s academic ability to be greater than it was. Sadly, this spelled misery for the boy and she soon had to meet again and convince him that even though her son was special, he should probably stay in his original class.
Rick tried to warm up their residence to save on the power bill; it worked well in the beginning until a neighbor reported them for power theft. Since the power meters were all in the common kitchens, the nosy neighbor had seen that the day-round warmth emanating through their common wall never caused a spike in their meter reading.
Corporate police for the local energy company destroyed half of their walls searching for a power-stealing device that was never there. The company issued an apology after the event and some credit was added to Rick’s account as a compensation. As expected, it was not enough to fix even half of the damage.
Mario cast a ‘boost’ on his now healed leg, causing it to grow longer and more muscular than the other leg. The result was that he had a new limp and it forced him to grow the other as well. He was now taller by an inch than he had been before waking up from the coma. This caused further problems when he went to have his biometrics checked in order to collect his disability payment. His readings didn’t conform to the files on the system.
Edward practiced his Dark Bliss power. In the game, this gave him immense power over holy creatures. In real life too. He didn’t know that their housemaid was a very pious person, and simply thanking her for doing his bed after a practice session punctured the poor woman’s eardrums.
Other than those glitches, life went on as normal as they readied themselves for the resumption of the competition. During practice game play they found one more glitch, the strange patterns tattooed into their skin by accident also appeared in the game but manifested as continuously swirling and changing patterns on the skin of their avatars. It made them the envy of a lot of other players.
As they counted down the days to the resumption, the team encountered another side effect of the real-life manifestation of their powers. A worrying one. Their powers in the game seemed to be waning.
“The effects of my entire spell book seemed to be halved,” Mario complained. “During the last week’s gameplay, I gained an extra level, which should have doubled the effects of the spells!”
“Same here,” Rick said, “Even the stats of the conjured items that I call from the ether seem to be set at level 15 in effect, even though they show on the stat screen as 24s.”
“Maybe our stats had reset when we went into the coma?” Dana asked.
“According to our character sheets,” Edward commented. “They actually increased a bit during the championship fight.”
“So, what can we do then?” Rania puzzled. “We’ll be creamed in the coming championship if they’re that low.”
“I have a feeling that the answer will provide itself soon,” Rick said. “Maybe we should practice harder and hope for the best.”
“For the time being, there is nothing else to do,” agreed Mario.
“Ok, Eloria’s testing grounds today?” Edward asked.
“Yeah, the monsters are all level 27s,” Dana answered him. “It might help.”
18
“Yee,” Mehemet answered the holo call impatiently after letting the incoming call ring for a full minute. “What do you want?”
“Our deal was not fulfilled,” Yee had an edge to his voice, brought about by being ignored by Mehemet for an entire week. The call from Mehemet’s lawyer demanding he finalize the payment had been the last straw. “You can’t demand anything from me, I owe you nothing.”
“You are gravely mistaken, Yee,” Mehemet spoke slowly and deliberately, “my men supported your team till the championship ended.”
“But it didn’t end!” Yee shouted. “In two days all the top 200 are to rematch in the second zone and finish the championship.”
“None of my concern,” Mehemet raised his voice in turn, “our contract didn’t involve a rematch, so your shares are now mine by rights. I have been patient Yee and haven’t sent my men to enforce our agreement, but my patience is not bottomless.”
“No, your men didn’t call on me,” Yee suddenly dropped his voice to a whisper, “because you know what kind of damage will result to your ‘legitimate businessman’ reputation from breaking an agreement and for extorting a payment for a job poorly done or, in my case, not done at all.”
“How dare you!” Mehemet was losing his famous chilled temper, “I will kill you! I will destroy you!”
“Go ahead and try, I am an experienced businessman Mehemet, and I know how to cover my tracks and take precautions.” He smiled, displaying a different face than the one Mehemet thought he knew. “Yes, you are a big crime lord, but when it comes to rules, law and business deals, you are but a level 1 newbie.”
“What do you mean?” Mehemet now was talking at a low voice mirroring Yee’s. “What precautions?”
“If I die, or am harmed in any way,” Yee’s smile grew to fill his face, “our earlier conversations, meeting and even the contract would be released from my data secure holding to VNet’s security board. You would get nothing but servitude time.”
“Impossible,” Mehemet had a growl to his words, “all of our conversations were over secured channels, and our meeting was hyper-encrypted by very expensive coding.”
“Ha! By a channel operator that my company owns. It was leased to you through one of my fronts, and as for the expensive hyper-encrypted code, you bought it from ComSE, for whom I am an information consultant. You forget that I was a coder of some skill before becoming a businessman.” Yee stopped smiling and continued in a conversational tone. “I planned the whole thing for an entire year; I studied you and your spending habits in security as well as everything else. You always go for the most expensive option. Is it to compensate for your poor, deprived upbringing? I have you, and you know it.”
What made Mehemet the crime lord that he was, rising against his competition in record time to head one of the biggest crime franchises over VNet, was his uncanny ability to learn and to adapt. He was a genius when it came to molding himself to fit a niche until he grew big enough to smash it.
Right at that moment, he had been placed in a niche of temporary servitude to Yee. He knew it. Now he decided to fill that niche until he could find a way to break it and, in the process, smash Yee into little screaming pieces.
“Ok, Mr. Yee, what do you need of me?” Mehemet managed to show deference to the man on the other side of the call in these few words. “I am listening.”
“Double the men you sent last time to protect the Thugs,” Yee said, keeping the gloat from his voice. “And nullify the contract we had from the last championship. To prove that I am not abusing my power over you, I offer you half the number of shares from the first contract as payment.”
“Understood.” Mehemet nodded. “I will try to hire one of the teams already listed in the top 200 and add them to the men from the last championship.” He took a breath as if fortifying himself. “And I will talk to my lawyer about your new terms.”
“You do that,” Yee said. “See you after the championship.”
19
Selma hugged Rick just as he was about to step out of the apartment.
“Take care, please don’t put yourself in danger’s way, Ricky.”
She pinched his cheek as the hug ended, as she had when he was very young.
“Aw! I promise to be on the watch, even though since the coma, all our game powers have become very weak. I do
n’t think we’ll pass this zone at all.” He smiled weakly. “I might be home a lot earlier.”
“Just trust your gifts, Ricky, you are a kind soul that has been gifted by God with lots of compassion. You care for others, just feel the love and you’ll be alright whether you win or lose,” she ruffled his shaggy hair, “now go, enjoy the game!”
As Rick ascended the floors through the passive gravity elevator, he thought about what his grandmother had said.
He was the first to be picked up by the car sent by Realms of VR. Once the whole team was on board, he passed the time by telling of his grandmother’s advice.
“She seems to be a very sweet lady. You are lucky to have such a caring woman in your life.”
“I like your granny,” Rania commented. “In the hospital, she smelled of bean cookies, and I just love bean cookies.”
“Yuck!” Edward made an exaggerated gesture. “Beans cookies, too sweet to taste and too gooey to chew!”
“Shut up rich boy!” Rania nudged him, which caused Rick’s face to redden and this, in turn, caused Dana to chuckle.
“Anyway, it is always good advice to stick to what really defines who you are,” Mario commented. “This is what helped me to survive the China wars back then, and it’s as good as any advice right now.”
Before Rick could respond, they arrived at the Omega Dome. Thousands of fans waited for them outside the gates.
The moment they stepped out of the car, the cheers deafened them. It was a frightening yet exhilarating experience to witness the adoration of such a crowd, something that was new to the Valhalla Greatest. They were more accustomed to their original fan club, which was 30 members strong at the end of the previous year’s championship.
As before, Selma watched from home as the same flamboyant reporter from the last event covered this one. His hair was now a bright red color.
The warning horn blew, shifting the view on the holo to the actual events in the stadium, once again showing the fans at home the preparations for the game as players talked last-minute strategies, suited up and began entering their globes. After 10 minutes the third horn blew and the game started, with the game environment appearing on screens around the nation.