by Kyle Vauss
Gabber stepped back. “What the heck? I didn’t even touch it.”
Neither of us had hurt his tamed creature in the battle, and there was nothing else around to cause damage.
“Maybe they’re all linked in some way,” I said. “Some kind of connection. When one is damaged, the rest of them are.”
Gabber sighed. “I thought I’d found a new pet. This is like the time I tamed a forest warg and father made me get rid of it.”
I heard sounds from behind us. They came from deep in the cavern, toward the entrance. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. I needed a rest from fighting, and I had less stamina than a 40-a-day smoker.
“We better press on,” I said.
“Lead the way,” said Gabber.
As my glowing lights began to fade around us, we walked into the darkness ahead.
Chapter Seventeen
We didn’t see any more of the forgotten ones for a while. The break gave my stamina bar a chance to regenerate, and the weight in my arms and legs began to lift.
Every so often we’d see glowing crystals clustered together, some red, but most blue. At first I thought there would be something there to loot, but there was nothing. The crystals were the cavern version of flowers, it seemed.
As we went deeper into the cavern, Gabber hummed a tune. It was quieter this time, as if he was trying not to make his melody echo off the cavern roof.
I’d never heard the song before. I wondered if it was one that the devs had programmed into him. The problem was, I just couldn’t get my head around the idea. Gabber seemed so like-life; so intelligent, full of emotions, deep. I just couldn’t believe that he wasn’t real.
That line of thinking was dangerous. I was helping a computer character just to get back at someone I hated. That was all. The last thing I needed was to start thinking this goblin was real. The worst thing was, I was starting to like him. I needed to watch him, and to look out for the tell-tale flaws that marked him as an NPC.
“It’s opening up ahead,” he said.
The tunnels had started widening. As we walked on, we saw signs that they had been dug by a person, rather than just being natural formations in the rocks. Every so often we’d see signs carved into the stone, most likely by the same person who drew the monster in charcoal.
“I’m starting to wonder if it’s a warning,” I said. “The monster drawing on the wall.”
“I heard of a clan who tried to live underground once,” said Gabber. “Didn’t work. Goblins need to be up top, in the open air. Within a decade, every single member of the clan snuffed it.”
Ahead of us, the tunnel widened further, and it seemed to open into a rectangle room cut into the stone. The walls were straight, and an attempt had been made at decorating them. Someone had started to fix mosaic in a strip through the middle of the east wall, but they’d stopped halfway.
“Now that’s a sight for sore eyes,” said Gabber.
Over in the corner, were four beds. I hated to admit it, but I agreed with him. There were few things I wanted more than to get in bed and close my eyes. Thinking practically, I needed to use the opportunity to log out of the game and get some rest in real life.
The atmosphere changed when we stepped into the room. The walls cut out the draught of the cavern, and the echo that followed us was muted. I just hoped Gabber wouldn’t take it as an opportunity to start singing again.
“Someone lived here,” said Gabber, walking across the room toward a bed. “They didn’t have much of an eye for decoration, though.”
“Let’s make sure they’re not still around,” I said. “Keep your ears open.”
“My ears are always open.”
“So’s your mouth,” I said.
Gabber frowned and then closed his mouth. He walked over to a bed, turned his back to it, then flopped down as if he was falling into a swimming pool. It was such a curious animation to program. There was no way that the other game goblins received such special coding. This little guy had never shown any sign of acting like other NPCs.
I needed him to show me something. I needed to see that he was just code; it’d reassure me. Because if I ever though he was anything but the product of a programmer’s day in the office, it would worry me. It would mean that failing him would actually mean something. It wouldn’t just be about pissing off Crawford anymore.
I looked around. I reminded myself that Ulrip Cavern were made by the Infarna devs. I was no quester, but I’d watched a few streams on dungeons and familiarized myself with how they worked. I’d had a few orders for raid-ready characters in the past. These weren’t just get-to-level-10 cut-and-shuts. Making a raid character meant hitting level 30, then choosing from optional skills or cantrips to optimize for raiding.
Since Ulrip Caverns was meant to be an expansion pack, the devs would have made it with the raiders in mind. It took a long time to get through the caverns, and they would have left supplies around for adventurers.
“It isn't snooze time yet,” I told Gabber. “Look around for a barrel or a box.”
The exaggerated sounds of snoring came from the direction of the beds. I knew there was no way Gabber was getting up. I walked around the room. Signs of this being a dwelling were everywhere. There was a table on one end of the room, though the surface was bare. A shelf full of books on Infarna lore was propped up against a wall.
The path out of the room was on the north wall, and that was where we’d go in the morning. On the north-east wall, there was a wooden door. I walked over and turned the handle, but it was locked.
Then I saw what I needed. In the corner of the room were three barrels. I walked over to them and started to swing my sword, putting in as little effort as I could to save my stamina. When the barrels smashed, I found two torches and one health potion.
“Did you have to make such a racket?” said Gabber, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
I passed the torches to Gabber, who lit them and handed them back. I put one of them in an empty torch holder on the north wall, and another on the south wall. The orange flames sent a glow across the room.
On the wall next to the beds, we saw a map of the caverns. I went over and started to peel it off.
“We’ve already got a map each,” said Gabber.
I pulled the last corner of the paper away from the wall. “We’ve not been here before,” I answered. “So, our map will only complete as we travel. This one, though, will autofill the rest of the map for us.”
I looked over the map, and I heard a bell sound that indicated my map had been updated. After reading it, I passed it to Gabber. He took it from me, then brought it closer to his eyes to see it better. The flames illuminated his face, and showed him locked in concentration.
“This whole place used to be a settlement, by the looks of things,” said Gabber. “Wonder what happened to them.” He didn’t turn to face me, so I knew he didn’t expect me to have a guess.
Sleep was calling me, both in-game and out of it. I walked over to a bed and sat on it. I took my inventory bag off my back, set it down on the floor and opened it.
“Time to divide the loot,” I said.
“What loot?”
“From the forgotten ones.”
Gabber put his hand to his mouth. “I forgot to take their stuff.”
I nodded. “I know you did. Luckily, I’m not so stupid.”
We divided the loot between us. The forgotten ones had dropped:
-57 GD
-2 potions of mana
-2 hand axes
-An unidentified item
-Leather armor.
I kept the mana potions, since they would have been no use for Gabber. Ditto the GD. Since I was risking ruining my shadow walker’s resale value by helping him, I would take all the coins we found. The unidentified item would have to wait until I got to a village. I wondered what it was. There was always something magical about getting unidentified loot. It was like being faced with a Christmas present and then grabbing hold of the r
ibbon, ready to pull.
“Can you use an axe?” I asked Gabber.
He nodded. “A hand axe, yes. War axe, no.”
“What’s the damage on your dagger?”
“I can probably kill a mouse if it stays still.”
“Take this then,” I said, and passed him one of the hand axes. I kept the other. I’d sell it to a weapons merchant in town. It wouldn’t get me much, but everything helped.
That left the armor. My shadow walker wouldn’t benefit from leather armor, since my black robes gave me an agility bonus. Gabber was in sore need of some defence points. To be honest, I was sick of looking at his frilly shirt. Baggy around the waist, his sleeves trailing down until he remembered to push them up. It was ridiculous.
“Take this,” I told him.
Gabber held the armor in front of him. “It’s too big,” he said.
“And the shirt isn’t? It might slow you down a little, but it’ll let you take a hit or two.”
To my dismay, Gabber put the armor on over his shirt. Now he had leather armor covering his chest, and a frilly, billowing shirt covering his arms.
“That everything?” said Gabber.
“There’s something I can’t identify. I’ll take it to Quasmose in the newbie village.”
“I can do that for you,” said Gabber.
I sat up straighter. “You can identify stuff?”
“Another skill I picked up. While father and Fengr were hunting, I’d be reading. Yet another reason why he got so much support in ousting me.”
I passed the item over to Gabber. He closed his eyes, running his fingers over it. At first it was a blurry shape, a kind of formless shadow. Then it began to change. As Gabber ran his hands over the contours, it took on a definite outline.
“You’ll like this,” he said, and passed it to me.
Fully identified, I could see now that it was a sword. I took it from him and studied it in my inventory. [Firetooth Ironsword] was the name of the blade. As well as dealing 1.5 x more damage than my current weapon, Firetooth had a 1 in 3 chance of adding fire damage to each strike.
“Thanks,” I told Gabber. “You’ve made my day.”
“It’s nothing,” answered Gabber, scooching back on his bed. “You know, they always looked down on me for the books. Even Father did, sometimes. Goblins don’t read. They hunt, the kill, they feast.”
“Must have been tough for you,” I said.
Gabber nodded. “They tried to discourage me. Especially if I was reading something about humans. But that just made me want to learn more. It made me think that if they were trying to stop me learning, there must be something they didn’t want me to learn.”
“That’s usually the way.”
“I started getting obsessed with human culture. I even had a human friend, once.”
I looked at him. I couldn’t help the smile on my face. “You’re kidding?”
He put his hand on his heart. “I swear, Tamos. His name was Kevdar. We used to sneak out of our villages and meet in a small cave near a marsh. Kevdar would bring food and stuff, and I’d bring him goblin weapons for him to play with. We’d park our rumps and chat about our lives.
“As time went on Kevdar started to change. I could tell when he came to meet me that he was looking at me strangely. That he was backing off a little. Can you guess what was happening?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“He was getting indoctrinated,” said Gabber. “Probably by his parents. Our meet-ups became less frequent. Then they stopped altogether, and that was the end of the only human friendship I ever had.”
With this, he looked down at the ground. His forehead creased up. I felt like moving over and putting an arm on his shoulder, but I thought better of it. I had to remind myself I was still looking for the telltale signs of programming. Anything to stop me getting suckered into thinking Gabber was real.
Gabber looked up at me. “When I was sixteen,” he said. “I journeyed to Kevdar’s village. It had been years since I saw him. I wondered if, with hairs on his face, he might have started thinking differently. Matured. Learned to ignore his parents.”
“And had he?”
Gabber shook his head. “When I found him, he was stood with three other human lads his age. They started throwing stones at me. Then they chased me with swords. And Kevdar not only didn’t stop them, he was in the middle, flinging rocks at my head.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute. I felt bad for him. Against every will in my body, I walked over to Gabber, sat next to him, and put my arm on his shoulder.
“Cheer up, buddy,” I said. “It’s the way of the world. Remember one piece of advice, and you’ll never go wrong.”
“What’s that?”
“People always let you down.”
He looked at me. “Sounds like awful advice. No wonder you were on your own when I met you.”
With that, he stood up. He suddenly seemed full of energy. “This is why I need to become the chief. If I can just get my clan back, I can make a difference. I can start to change the way humans and goblins think about each other. Maybe we can even form an alliance. I need to break down barriers of hate. That’s why it’s so important I get back.”
There was no point looking for flaws in his code, I realized. They weren’t there. Whatever they’d done, however the devs had made Gabber, they’d built something real. That was the only answer. He wasn’t just code, he didn’t just represent a programmer’s work before lunch time. He was a living, thinking, being. It was just that where I was made from atoms, he was composed of 1s and 0s.
I stretched my arms. Tiredness coursed through me, weighing down my limbs, trying to pry my eyes shut. It was time for me to log out.
“We better sleep,” I said. “Six hours or so, then we’ll get back on track.”
Gabber nodded. As he walked over to his bed and I settled into mine, I heard a noise. I shot up into a sitting position and listened carefully, hoping it was my mind playing tricks.
It wasn’t.
From somewhere in the cavern behind us, I heard footsteps. These steps were followed by a noise. It was the sound of a man humming a marching tune. I’d heard that tune before.
Chapter Eighteen
“Is that our friend?” I said, trying to listen.
Gabber nodded.
It was Crawford. I hadn’t expected the hunter to come into the cavern. I thought he was a guy who always took the easy option. The sort of person who took whatever shortcuts his money would allow. By coming into Ulrip Caverns he’d set himself up for a long trek. Maybe he was willing to do whatever it took to kill Gabber. I had underestimated what he would do to earn his achievement.
Sleep was going to have to wait, it seemed. I got off the bed and walked into the center of the room and listened. The humming tune was far away, but the cavern walls and roofs carried it.
“Give me a sec,” I said, turning to Gabber.
I quickly logged out of Infarna. Back in my apartment, I was on my bed with my VR set around my head. Sensation wires were connected to the pressure points on my palms. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the daylight, and I got up.
I went to the kitchen, opened a drawer and took out a box of pills. These were caffeine supplements. I didn’t like to use them, since they’d keep me wired for hours, but it was unavoidable. I popped two in my mouth, washed them down with water, then logged back into Infarna.
When I found myself back in the cavern, Gabber was stood in front of me, poking my stomach. I batted his finger away, and he stepped back in shock.
“You went loopy,” he said. “You just stood there, not moving. Looking more dopey than usual.”
“We need to go,” I said.
We still had a head-start on Crawford, but it wouldn’t take the hunter long to catch up. An important part of his class was an advantage in speed, and I had no way of telling what optional skills he’d taken. I already knew he’d chosen the 4-bolt crossbow, and an arrow that remove
d the ability to sneak in an area. That was all I’d figured out so far. If he’d taken a speed skill, we were screwed.
Gabber heaved his inventory bag on his back. “Let’s hit the road, then,” he said.
I brought up my map screen and skipped from an overview of the game world to an internal view of the cavern. After looking at the map we’d found on the wall, mine was updated with a layout of Ulrip. A green marker showed where we were. Miles away, at the end of the tunnels that snaked through the cavern, was the exit. There was a hell of a lot of real estate between us and freedom, and it gave Crawford too much of a chance to catch us.