by Kyle Vauss
“And I suppose you came straight into the game at level 30?” I answered.
He folded his arms. The stuffed heads across his belt shook, and I heard the bones rattle. “Actually, I did. I paid some chump to grind for me.”
That hit me like a bolt across the chest. Why hadn’t I considered that? Of course Crawford would buy his character from a reseller! I just hoped it wasn’t me. I’d hate to have done his work for him. I thought about it. I’d levelled a hunter a couple of years back, but that was for a woman who wanted to stalk her husband in-game and make sure he wasn’t flirting. No, I hadn’t sold a hunter since then.
Crawford stood with his hands on his hips. With the bun on the center of his head and the flowing hair at the sides, he looked so ridiculous that it made me angry. He puffed his chest out.
“Shadow walker, eh? Never seen one of those before,” he said. “And I’ve seen a lot. Killed the Dostoon Basilisk last week. Took five NPC mercs with me, and two guys I found on a message board. I was the only one who made it through without a respawn. Took 6 hours, but I got through.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Dostoon was a city I’d heard of, but I had no idea about a basilisk there. Why was he telling me this?
The thing about Crawford was as much as he annoyed me, I felt sorry for him. It was obvious to everyone who knew him that he was desperate for his dad’s approval. Being ignored all his life had turned him into an ass.
In lots of ways, it wasn’t even his fault. His dad had divorced his mum when Crawford was only 3, and then he’d beaten her in court to get custody of their son. Only, once he had custody, he’d let a nanny raise Crawford. He had barely spoken to him.
How did I know this? On a staff evening event, Crawford had gotten drunk and spent thirty minutes spilling everything to me. The day after, he’d walked by me in the corridor as though we’d never talked.
The thing was, he had a kind side to him. Whenever we were collecting for birthday or wedding presents in the office, Crawford would drop in a few coins. Then, when everyone had left work, he’d go over to the collection, open his wallet, and put even more money in. I don’t know why he needed to hide it. It was like he thought that being kind was something to be ashamed of.
Crawford carried on. “So, I whipped its head off and got the trophy. That makes it 296. You know what that means?”
“That you can count?”
“It means I only have 4 more to go. Impressive, isn’t it? Four more creatures to kill until I get the achievement. I know where three of them are, so soon that’ll leave one.”
The smug edge to his voice was back. Even knowing what he was like, I couldn’t help but get annoyed. For his own good, someone had to teach him a lesson one day.
“It must be great having money do the work for you,” I said.
Crawford glared at me. “You think I don’t know about the game? How about this, then. Just east of us there are 4 imps. Combined HP of 478, an attack power of roughly 8 DMG. With their size and speed, they can probably hit me 2 times per 5 seconds, meaning I’d lose 64 HP before I can attack. If I move back into parry mode, that gets halved. But if I step out of reach and use my bow, I can take down all 4 in one shot, if I score a critical.
“But at that range, and with my luck stats taken into account, I’d get a critical roughly every 1 in 38 shots. My reload speed is around a second with the bonus I’ve gained from using my crossbow. It’s a four bolt, meaning I can shoot 4 arrows at once. So, while they can probably score 64 DMG per 5 seconds with perfect hits, I can score 400DMG. In 5 seconds, staying out of range, all four imps will meet their maker.”
“Great,” I said. “But you haven’t seen the spider snakes in the tree next to the imps. They have a 1 in 20 chance of scoring a poison effect. Plus, their sneak attacks would make you move back further, slowing your reload speed. Maybe you don’t see everything, after all.”
He stared at me. He put his hands out in front of him, as if the words were appearing in mid-air in a big font.
“Whatever,” he said. “Picture this. Crawford the Hunter – the 3rd person to get the Every Creature achievement.”
“Great. If you’re into that sort of thing.”
He scoffed. “Well, you clearly aren’t. Listen, if you need to get help killing imps, you can always ask your daddy to hold your hand.”
Like you would? I thought. Crawford’s father’s money was the answer to everything in his life. From his position in the office, to his character in the game. I just wished there was some way I could wipe that insufferable grin off his face. But I didn’t want him to work out who I was, or that I knew him. It was bad enough listening to him in the office, let alone in Infarna.
I heard yelling from the distance. Far away, near a tree that stretched out of the ground so that it looked like a hand, Loria was fighting three rats. One of them tried to bite her boots, but she crushed its head with one strike of her staff.
I looked at Crawford. Somehow, he’d managed to make his game avatar smarmier than he was in real life. I wanted to shut him up, but I didn’t have the time.
I walked away. I headed toward a pack of forest imps, who turned and sneered when they saw me. I pulled my sword from its sheath and held it in an attack stance. With the right hit, I could cleave two imps at once.
Just as I was about to attack, four arrows glided across the forest and struck the imps one by one. I turned and saw Crawford, crossbow raised. He held his hand up and waved.
“Thanks for distracting them,” he said, and then walked over to loot the bodies.
Chapter Five
The imps lay dead on the floor. Their blood seeped out and discolored the leaves. Two had arrows in their heads, one through its heart, and another had one in its belly. Crawford’s crossbow could shoot four arrows at a time.
I wondered whether that was because it was an advanced weapon, or whether it was a skill he’d taken. A 4-bolt crossbow wasn’t on the hunter skill path, but there were people who could get you any ability you wanted for the right price. At any rate, it was a good choice.
Crawford kneeled next to each imp corpse and looted their bodies. Kill stealing wasn’t such a big deal in Infarna. Sometimes it was unavoidable, and a mage casting fireball or scout using his arrows might unwittingly get the final blow on a monster you’d been fighting. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered me. It was because it was Crawford.
“You only need four more creature trophies until you get the achievement, huh?” I said.
He smiled with pride. “An Enraged Ornxy, Flightless Phoenix, The Ogre of Alacantra. I should get those in a day or so. After that, there’s a final beast I don’t know about.”
“You don’t know what the last one is?”
He shrugged. “It’s greyed out on the achievement screen. Some sort of mystery creature.”
I put my hand to my chin and pretended to be in thought for a few minutes. “That’ll be the Elepantasm of the Blue Girder” I said, wondering if I’d gone too far in naming my made-up creature.
“You know it?”
I nodded. “It’s on the eastern most edge of the map. You couldn’t get any further away from me. I mean, here. Takes days to get there, even on the best mount. Let me mark it on your map.”
Crawford pulled out his map. I found the point furthest away from us, and I marked it. When I’d finished, Crawford rolled up his map, then pushed me away.
“And I expect you want some sort of reward for helping me? No chance.”
I shrugged. “Just knowing I’ve sent you in the right direction will be enough reward,” I said.
Crawford studied his map, then began to walk away. He hummed a tune to himself. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it sounded like an army marching song. As he moved ten paces away, he stopped. He stood still for a few seconds, then turned around.
He was frowning now. It was a look I’d seen enough times back at the office. He’d yell at some innocent intern because his coffee wasn’t stro
ng enough, humiliating the student in front of the whole office.
Part of the problem was Crawford’s father. The old man was seventy and his business days were behind him. He sometimes visited the office to see how things were going. When he did, he never failed to embarrass Crawford in front of the rest of the staff. He’d pepper his son with questions on facts and figures that even the company accountants would struggle to know. Then he’d belittle him when he didn’t have the answers.
In a way, it made me feel sorry for him. I could tell he was struggling to match up to his father’s expectations. He might have been an ass, but he got an A for effort. He was a hard worker, and he was eager for just a glimmer of parental approval. It was just that his personality was twisted.
Crawford held his map up to me. “An elepantasm doesn’t exist, does it?” he said. “You made it up.”
“You’re the hunter. I’m just telling you what I heard.”
His face curled into a sneer. “You think you’re so funny. With your 1GD newbie robe and your sword. I could snap it over my knee, it’s so cheap.”
“We don’t all have money behind us,” I said.
“And how do you know I have cash?”
Damn. I needed to be careful, I didn’t want Crawford to realise that I knew him outside of the game.
“Just a hunch. The way you pronounce your ‘h’s.”
Over in the distance, Loria had moved on to fight two delvers. They were mole-like creatures, except that they had better sight and an aggressive streak. Even when you were level 15, a delver wouldn’t back away from a fight. Despite their courage, they weren’t too tough. Loria proved as much when she cast a Bait Illusion, leading one of the delvers into a trap. She was improving her class, it seemed.
Crawford took a step closer to me. Suddenly, Loria’s company didn’t seem so bad. Anyone but Crawford. He moved forward until he was close enough to reach out and prod my arm. I batted his hand away.
“You better pray I never see you in a PK zone,” he said.
“You wouldn’t know where to find one, you coward,” I answered.
He held his map out. “Don’t worry…” he said, and then looked above me to see my name. “…Tamos. I know where they are alright. And the minute you enter a PK zone, I’m going to fast travel there and hunt you down. The look on your face will be priceless when I send you to a respawn.”
I tuned out most of his threat. There was no need for me to go to the player killer zones. As soon as I hit level 10, I’d turn the character over to the man so he could give it to his son. It would take a while to level up once I reached 6 or 7, but with patience, I could do it near the newbie village.
It would have been quicker and easier to travel a little and seek out some tougher creatures who gave more exp. The problem was that I couldn’t risk a respawn. If this character died, it was soiled, and the man could back out of the sale. If I was lucky he’d still buy it, but at so cheap a price that it wasn’t worth my time. I still had a useless level 10 monk saved which was a reminder that I had to be careful.
“If I’m ever crossing into a PK zone and fancy an easy fight, I’ll give you a shout,” I told him.
Some people thrived on player killing, and for lots of different reasons. Unofficial tournaments were held every so often, where players would dual each other to win money and glory. Other players stalked the player killing lands and stuck to the shadows, emerging only to slash the throat of a hapless warrior or mage.
The hunter turned around and left, muttering to himself. With Crawford gone and Loria walking deeper into the forest, I was almost alone. There were a couple of newbie barbarians to my left. They were sat cross-legged under a thick-trunked tree, eyes closed in meditation. It probably meant they were away from their headsets. More likely than not, they were waiting for their newbie stamina to rise, and they’d decided to take a break from the game in the meantime.
I’d found a trick for that early on. I was levelling a barbarian, when I realized that if I let my stamina bar drain completely, it only restored at a rate of 1 point per second. But if I let it drop until there was still some stamina left, it regenerated at 4 points per second.
Okay, it might not have been a mind-blowing trick. They wouldn’t write books about my stamina regeneration discovery. When your business was grinding, any second you could shave off your levelling time was a win. Tonight, however, was a big tick in the loss column. I’d spent too much time with Loria, and I’d let Crawford get to me. I’d be lucky to get level 3 that evening.
As I walked by a tree and watched it turn a gold color, two snakes made a clumping sound when they dropped onto the ground. They hissed when they hit the mud, and then eight legs cracked open from their sides. These were spider snakes. As well as having agility, they boasted a bite that had a 1 in 20 chance of poisoning you.
It was time to use one of my cantrips. I activated Minor Illusion, creating a hologram copy of myself. I sidestepped, leaving the hologram in the place where I’d stood. One of the snakes turned its attention to my replica. With its attention diverted, I cleaved the remaining snake with my sword. It took two hits before I was rewarded with EXP.
The other snake coiled up, then sprung on my copy. As soon as it touched it, the hologram disappeared. It gave me enough time to strike the snake, slicing through its scaly body with a critical hit.
I felt a stinging pain on my calf. I turned to see that three more snakes had dropped. One of them had hit me for 5 HP, but thankfully I wasn’t given a poison debuff. With my Minor Illusion cantrip on cooldown, I would have to fight them the old-fashioned way. Blade Turn wouldn’t be good here, since the creatures weren’t using weapons. There was no point casting Glowing Lights.
Instead, I waited for one of them to strike. As it leapt toward me I took a step back and let it fall in front of me, then sliced it. The snake jerked back, and my blade missed.
Another snake went to my left, the other to my right. It was yet another example of how advanced the AI was in Infarna. It was amazing that low-level beasts like these could use a pincer tactic to fight me.
I sliced to my left, striking one snake on the mouth and killing it instantly. I felt a sting of pain as the one on my right hit me. I waited for a poison debuff to appear, but it seemed I had gotten lucky again.
Four swings later, and all the snakes lay dead. I kneeled and looted their bodies, earning three snake skins and 4 GD coins for my trouble. I would sell the skins to a pelt trader in the village later. After that, I’d bank the GD in my account, ready to be transferred to my real-life bank.
That was the beauty of Infarna. Money earned in the game could be sent into the real world. Of course, it lost a lot of value in the process. 1 GD in Infarna was worth around 0.20GD in the real world but hey, it all added up.
As I stood up, there was a flash of light. I felt a surge of energy run through me, soaking into my arms and legs and then settling into my chest.
Chapter Six
The forest began to fade around me. The air shimmered, and my body felt light. I heard a noise. It sounded like a dire wolf was growling, but the sound was stretched out, as though someone had taken both ends of it and was pulling it apart.
I wondered if I was experiencing a computer error. Infarna servers went down from time to time, but that was rare. These days, you were more likely to have problems with your water supply than your internet connection.
For a few second I was lost in nothingness. I felt as though I was standing on something solid, but there was nothing but darkness around me. I heard a clap, and then white lights flickered above me.
I was in a room. Bare white walls and flooring, with not a mark on them. There was a metal table in the center of the room, and two chairs around it. Sat in one of them, there was a man.
“You’re looking good, Tom,” he said, smiling. “Not as good as me, of course. But still, it’s an improvement. Last time I saw you, you were a monk, if I recall. The robes didn’t really suit you.”
>
This had never happened to me before. Out of instinct I looked around for enemies, and for an escape. There was none of either, just featureless walls with no clue of how someone could get in the room, or out. I had to careful. Whoever this man was, he probably couldn’t be trusted.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Come, take a seat,” he said.
He looked like a more sinister version of Clive. Where my next-door neighbor had a pleasant smile, this man’s grin was sarcastic, as though there was an edge behind it. He wore red silk trousers and a shirt, which made him look as if he’d just gotten out of bed.
“You don’t seem happy about the clothes,” said the man. “Your stress levels rose by 1.3% when you saw me. I’ll change.”
He clicked his fingers, and then he wearing a brown shirt, ankle boots and normal-looking trousers.