A Slave in the Locked Lands

by Arthur Stone

  “The unknown creature hits you for 384 damage. Critical damage sustained: you have been blinded. Critical damage sustained: you cannot get up.”

  He could cast spells blind, too, but at a much reduced speed. Ros cast Heal first, but didn’t manage to dispel the effect—something hit his staff so hard he heard a sickening crack, and he saw a log message he’d never encountered before: “Your weapon is damaged and needs to be repaired.”

  Unceremonious paws lifted him up, placing him upright. The darkness before his eyes started to clear, and he saw himself surrounded by unpleasant-looking creatures resembling hunchbacked Neanderthals with extra hair and a bony ridge on their backs.

  “Unknown creature. Aggression: unknown. Sociality: unknown. Level: unknown. Abilities: unknown. Stats: unknown.”

  He raised his hand instinctively, trying to cast a Chaos Arrow.

  “Your weapon is damaged, and has lost all its qualities. You cannot use the chosen ability. Change your weapon, or cast the spell without the aid of the broken item.”

  One of the mobs hit the staff with the butt of a spear. Ros got the hint and put the damaged weapon away.

  The creatures wielded all sorts of weapons: light clubs, short spears, daggers on wide belts, and spiked chains of some sort. One of the mobs placed a noose attached to a long stick on Ros’ neck, tightened it a little and started to drag him along. He had to march on—the rest of the creatures kept guard from behind.

  He saw a similar procession to the left of the city—a mob with a captive, with more mobs bringing up the rear. As Ros saw the name, he couldn’t help but grin in satisfaction. It was HedTeSdjo—the very same bastard with a bow who didn’t feel like sharing mob carcasses. Like Ros, he must have been so engrossed in their exchange that he never saw the mobs approach. A dark elf… Figures, Ros had never been fond of dark elves. Nor of their light kin and their many variations.

  The mob kept dragging him by pulling on the stick, choking him and making him dizzy from lack of oxygen, but Ros still dragged his feet as slowly as he could. He had nowhere to hurry—his pet was following the creatures with orders to protect its owner. The reptus was much larger than the “Neanderthals,” and Ros believed it would make quick work of them.

  The creatures noticed the pet approach from far away and arranged themselves in a semicircle formation, their weapons at the ready. One of the kidnappers took a step forward and raised a short staff above the head, which emitted a swarm of black dots that hit the approaching reptus. The pet stumbled, raised its paws and began rubbing its snout vigorously. It never noticed the approaching mobs as they closed their ranks around it and attacked.

  The fight was over in some six or seven seconds. Ros realized that the “Neanderthals” may have been weaker than the reptus, but not by much. Apart from that, the mage with his nasty debuff had done them a good turn—the poor pet never managed to do any damage, flailing its paws wildly but uselessly as death came swooping in.

  “So, they got you, too, eh, asshole?” said HedTeSdjo smugly as he approached. “It’s all because of you!”

  “You should look in the mirror more often if you want to see someone responsible for all your troubles.”

  “It’s a pity I didn’t get to waste you, shithead.”

  “Don’t worry, these guys will fix everything shortly.”

  “Who the hell are they, anyway?!”

  “You might want to read about them on the forum.”

  “Yeah, and let them strangle me while I leave my body here? Screw you, I ain’t gonna lose any XP.”

  Ros didn’t give a damn about the player or his XP, and he didn’t feel like chatting with his kind, so he decided to stop talking.

  A large group of the same mobs waited on the other side of the copse, where the prisoners were taken. There was a camp here—wagons on high wheels, canvas awnings, and draft animals resembling dinosaurs whose name Ros couldn’t recall, with ridges of bony scales along their backs and long tails, long necks, and small heads unlikely to contain much brain matter. A jerry-built pen stood at the center, with four players inside: a dwarf, an orc, a human, and a norder, or at least a half-norder with the other half being less than apparent. The race was rare enough—players disliked norders due to the bony scales scattered chaotically all over their body. Their faces were especially hideous, as though plastered with small tortoises. Even male players disliked looking that ugly, and no woman in her right mind would become a norder by choice.

  The first two players were obviously workers, but hardly hopeless noobs. Ros took a look at their equipment and decided it wasn’t of the cheapest sort. The human was clad in chainmail, with greaves that looked expensive, a helmet that was probably above average, but not the vambraces. Your typical warrior. The norder looked much the same, and was equipped similarly.

  “Hey, fellas, what’s shaking?” asked the garrulous elf the moment they entered the pen.

  “We thought you’d tell us,” replied the norder gruffly.

  Emerging from the catatonic state associated with logging off or reading the forum, the orc shook his head.

  “No mention about any of this anywhere. What’s all this supposed to mean? Whoever’s heard of mobs kidnapping people?”

  “It can happen,” said the warrior morosely. “But I’ve never heard of it happening here. You can’t identify those mobs, either.”

  “It would be nice to kill one of every kind,” the norder sighed. “You get achievements for that.”

  “Oh, sure. I’ve been thinking of that myself. Not a bad achievement, either. You get two rewards—a small one for killing the critter, and then some more once you get to the Academy. But it doesn’t seem like these mobs are too keen on being killed by anyone. Whoa, and what the hell is that supposed to be?!”

  A group of three mobs approached the pen. One of them differed from the other two—and from everybody else as well. He was considerably taller, not as hunchbacked as the rest, and even showing something like proud poise. A luxurious cape covered his back, and he wielded an exquisite long staff with bright green dots buzzing around the tip chaotically.

  The most interesting thing was that the mob had a name.

  “Agythric, leader of the slaveowner gang. Level: hidden. Abilities: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

  “Attention! You have found a named creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! This is your second named creature. You receive a reward: +8 to Vigor. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic.”

  “Hey, I got an achievement!” cried out a jubilant HedTeSdjo. “Only it’s noobish. Just a single health point.”

  “And I got three Fury points, which I couldn’t care less about,” grumbled the dwarf.

  “You can get more at the Academy,” said the norder. “It’s a named mob, after all, and they give you good rewards for those.”

  “Even if a whole bunch of us discovered it?” asked Ros.

  “A single player would get more, but this is worth something, too.”

  He decided to pay the Academy a visit as soon as he’d get out. Having discovered lots of mobs, he might end up with a nice “bulk” reward.

  Agythric stopped next to the pen, examined the prisoners with small eyes buried behind the fur, and said in a screechy voice:

  “You are our meat. Either you die, or you bring gold. We need a lot of gold. You shall work as much as you’re told. And bring as much gold as you’re told. Whoever’s lazy will stay hungry, and whoever runs away will stay naked.”

  The named mob raised his staff, and a thin ray of light from its tip struck the orc in the head. The orc’s eyes bulged and he groaned in surprise. He stayed silent for a few seconds, and then started moaning and shaking his head. All his clothes went up in a blaze and disappeared, replaced miraculously by pair of dirty trousers and a shabby jacket. Agythric repeated the procedure with HedTeSdjo, the result being the same. Then it was the norder’s term, who broke the pattern.

 
Once the ray hit him in the head, he froze for a couple of seconds, and then yelled:

  “Kill yourselves, whoever still hasn’t!…”

  He didn’t manage to complete the phrase, falling silent like everybody else, unable to utter anything more.

  Ros’ turn came just when he was about to pull out his dagger, plunge it deep into his chest and twist it a few times, hoping that would bring his HP all the way down to zero.

  Alas, he never got to do it. The ray hit him faster, and he could no longer move his body. Against his expectations, there was no pain—just a slight tingling at the back of his head (not in his forehead, oddly enough).

  “You receive a quest: Slave in the Locked Lands. Quest conditions: meet the mining quota. Quest duration: 30 days. Reward: freedom and transportation to the borders of the occupied territory or any Western Empire city known to you. Additional reward: unknown. The reward depends on exceeding the production quota. You lose all your possessions except for the bags for the duration of the quest. Your possessions will be returned to you upon completion of the quest. The quest cannot be refused. Alternative completion option: pay Agythric a ransom of fourteen thousand golden Imperial guineas. Attention! Your bind point will be changed to one chosen by Agythric for the duration of the quest. Attention! If you escape or fail to complete the quest due to any event, you will not be able to get your possessions back.”

  “Attention! Execution error! You are wearing an item containing four bags. Illegal operation. Item expropriation without the loss of bags is impossible. Condition update: the item containing the bags will remain in your inventory.”

  “Attention! Item lost: Enchanted Golden Thylbit Mage’s Ring.” “Attention! Item lost: Enchanted Moontear Ring.” “Attention! Item lost: Enchanted Magical Ring of Master Daedric (Named).” “Attention! Item lost…”

  Ros went into a stupor as he browsed through the list of lost equipment. It was a long one. He’d never heard of anything like this! This was highway robbery! So much hard-earned equipment lost… Sure, some of the pieces may not have been that great, but so much time and effort had gone into getting them. And judging by the quest’s description, it would take him a month to get it all back.

  Unless he’d missed something, that is.

  He spent the next three hours in the pen, silently watching the mobs bring in new captives. He could do nothing to warn them—the accursed Agythric had used a spell of an incredible duration that left him completely mute. All he could do was bulge his eyes, but the careless idiots just went in like sheep, unaware of what was in stock for them, and let themselves get robbed.

  Ros browsed the forum, finding it full of cries of woe from fellow players suffering the same fate. Many refused to believe them, while others spared no invective cursing the developers who dared to infringe on the most sacred of all things—the characters’ private possessions.

  The administration remained silent.

  That was typical of most cases, no matter how scandalous.

  So far, no one had the slightest idea of what was going on in Rallia and how long the chaos would last. There was nothing but assumptions, most of them far-fetched.

  The only thing that was clear as day was that this was no mere invasion of brainless mobs one might expect in a border province.

  Indeed, the capture of players for exploitation and the confiscation of all their possessions was something quite unprecedented.

  Chapter 10

  Ros was grinning like an idiot. It wasn’t that he was so happy, but he couldn’t help it once he saw where they were being taken. He’d spent the evening and the night in the shaky wagon, alongside the stiff bodies of all the other unfortunates—most had gone offline to read the forum articles, write unnecessary complaints to the administration, get on with their other affairs, or just to get some shuteye. As for him, he enjoyed all the pleasures of traveling in a rattling wagon without any suspension or other amenities for the passengers.

  They unloaded the wagon in the morning, without paying any attention to who was awake, who was sleeping, and who was just a puppet without a puppeteer. Those who could walk were harried into a narrow passage between two walls of rock. Those who couldn’t were dragged across the path strewn with sharp stones.

  The passage was well-guarded and secured. Ros counted four walls with narrow iron-plated gates, with five or six armed mobs guarding each one. Behind the last one was a small square with tents and awnings spread chaotically all around. There were cones of smelting furnaces in the distance, but they stood cold. Right behind all of that he saw a well-familiar crater, the kind he’d seen twice before: back when he used to work for the Swords, and then again during his thylbit dungeon run.

  It was three times that he had seen them, in fact, since he’d cleared out the dungeon twice.

  He was in a mine once again. Those bastards had dragged him there, and he bore no illusions as to his purpose here.

  More than a hundred perplexed players huddled together, eyeing the mobs surrounding them warily. Agythric ascended one of the guard towers, stretched heartily, then yawned and gave a brief speech.

  “You are meat! Anyone who dies winds up here!” he pointed to a pole with the skull of some beast with enormous fangs on top of it.

  Just like the bind point at the Sword Power mine, this one was inside a circle of unhewn stone. All the variety of Second World notwithstanding, there was a tendency for standard templates.

  Agythric kept going.

  “Over there!” The mob pointed toward the crater. “The pit! You take pickaxes and go dig down there chop-chop! Dig for ore! Dig for gold! You dig ten chunks a day, we give you lots of yummy food! You dig nothing, you get no food! Water’s in the well! There’s a lot of water in the mine, too—you can drink as much as you like! We are generous, so you don’t have to pay for water with ore! You work for thirty days, then go! Away from here! We won’t need you anymore! Or you can dig up three hundred ore chunks. Then you can go, too. Got it? The awning is over there, you will find excellent pickaxes! You take them and you work hard! Those who do nothing will get no yummy food—they’ll just drink water!”

  Alter the appearance and the voice a little, and replace the awning with a guard tower, and he’d be just like Greedie. They even looked similar.

  Speak of the cyclic nature of events…

  While everyone was looking stumped and trying to digest the news, Ros pushed his way through the crowd and approached the awning. He was still uncertain of what to do next—and how could anyone be certain without knowing what was going on? Productive labor might be just what he needed for some clarity or mind.

  He wasn’t alone as he got to the awning—the dwarf he had seen upon first winding up in the pen was shuffling along next to him, all businesslike. He must have been an experienced worker, and in a hurry to snatch himself a proper tool.

  When the dwarf saw the pile of pickaxes, he made a face and drawled:

  “I’ve ne-e-e-ver seen such junk—even back at my first and most noobish mine.”

  Ros picked up one of the tools that looked slightly better than the rest.

  “Novice Miner’s Pickaxe. Tool and crushing weapon. Physical damage: 1-2. Tool bonus: 2-4 to damage to rock. Requirements: none. Weight: 3.26 kg. Durability: 22/75”

  “Total crap,” he agreed.

  “You have your Mining & Quarrying leveled up?” the dwarf asked.

  “I do.”

  “You need the skill to be at 25 for gold, and mine’s only at 13,” sighed the short stuff. “I’ll be losing a lot of ore because of penalties.”

  Ros had Mining & Quarrying at 16, which was also insufficient. His only hope was that other stats such as Craftsman and Creation helped miners a lot—so said the rumors, at least.

  “You’re a mage, aren’t you?” inquired the dwarf.

  “Yup.”

  “Got any buffs? To Attack?”

  “I have something to amplify damage. And Vigor regen.”

  “Can you ca
st them on me before we go down there? I’ll help in any way I can, too.”

  “Sure.”

  The dwarf offered him a sausage-fingered paw.

  “I’m Goro, by the way.”

  “Ros,” he said, and nearly bit his tongue.

  Too many people knew this name.

  Although…

  There were hundreds of millions of players, and they all preferred to use short names with just three or four letters to address each other. There must have been thousands of Roses running around.

  “Have you taken your pick?” The dwarf nodded toward the pile of tools.