“Thanks. So have you played the game yet?” I asked as I took the lid off of one of the trays. It looked like turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes.
“No actually. But I’ve seen the videos. Looks like a lot of fun.”
“Did you watch me play?” I asked as I grabbed a turkey wing and took a bite. As soon as the salted skin hit my mouth, I realized I was starving.
“Ummm no. Sorry, Champ,” he said.
“Did you eat? Looks like you brought a lot of food,” I said around a mouthful of turkey.
“I grabbed a snack while I waited for them to make you dinner. I’m good.” Ky seemed a bit nervous, and he glanced back into the lab room as if he thought someone was standing in there.
“Ahh. So you didn’t see me work for Artus.”
“No, Champ. Was that an NPC you met?”
“Yep. Fenia. I got into some trouble, killed Lord Halafast’s fifth son or something, and then Artus got captured by the city guard. They think he is an accomplice. What do you think they will do to him?”
“Most humans don’t like fenias. What city were you in?” Ky looked at me with a smile, but I saw his eyes go back to the lab.
“Cutno,” I said around another mouthful of turkey. I wondered if the same chef that cooked my lunch had made this. The man was a culinary master.
“Yeah. I think that city is kind of backwater. They’ll probably execute him.”
“Jeeze. Harsh. Kind of pisses me off,” I set down the turkey leg and grabbed a fork. Then I noticed the bowl of miso soup, and I decided to drink it next.
“Well, you could always log back in and try to save him.”
“I can?” I asked
“Well, I dunno for sure, but they aren’t going to kill him immediately. They will probably try to figure out where you went. They might interrogate him for a week or two. They don’t know you can just log out.” Ky laughed nervously. “Anyway, Champ. I’m a huge fan, and I want to stay and keep you company, believe me, but I need to finish my work on the VRIU and then head home. Wife doesn’t like that I work with so many good looking women, and she always gets suspicious when I’m out late.”
“I feel ya. Thanks for chatting.”
“Yeah. I hope I get to see you again. Take care.” Ky smiled at me, and then made a quick walk to the lab door. He nodded at me one last time and then closed the door behind him. I heard a lock turn in the metal, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end again.
I took a sip of my miso soup, set it down, and then walked to the front door of my suite. The door opened easily to the hallway, and I took a quick look around to ensure there wasn’t anyone watching me.
Maybe I was just paranoid.
I walked back to the food cart, grabbed the miso soup, and then sat on the nearby couch. I’d have to wake up in half a dozen hours, but I didn’t feel tired. I just felt hungry.
And I wanted to log back into Ohlavar Quest.
Chapter 8
“So, when is the wedding?” Jax smirked at me as he tied back his blond hair into a short ponytail.
“Ha. Very funny,” I said as I pushed my arms through the sleeves of my tight lycra USA team uniform. Zarra’s jet had dropped me off a few minutes ago, and Sal had dragged me into Disney’s corporate stadium locker room so that I would be able to get ready for the demonstration match.
“You leave suddenly, spend the night, meet the parents, and come back to your friends all fuzzy eyed. Am I going to be your best man?” Jax wiggled his hips as he reached back to yank the uniform out of his ass crack.
“Pretty sure I’m going to be the best man. I’m more organized,” Garf winked at his blond friend.
“See, this is where you are wrong. Organized dudes are the ushers. They have to know where to seat people. The fun best friend gets to plan the bachelor party. I’m thinking Rio. Remember when we were there a few years ago. Those girls were kaaa rraaaay zeeee!”
“That does sound fun. I wouldn’t mind going back there,” Garf leaned back on the locker room bench and raised his arms with a sigh. His uniform stretched over his chest and exposed his muscular torso.
“It’s settled then. I’m the best man, and Garf gets to tell people what side of the church they should sit on.”
“I’m not getting married, asshats,” I laughed at them.
“But you should. I want to go to Rio.”
“So go to Rio! Ya, dick.” I finished putting on my uniform and did the same movement Jax had to pull the back part out of the crack of my ass. I didn’t really understand why they made us wear such tight outfits when we did tournament or display matches. Yeah, I knew that the women audience liked it, but it wasn’t like we were riding bicycles or swimming in pools and needed to worry about air flow. The running on the Omni Station was all performed over the circular treadmill, and I could have done it just fine with a loose pair of gym shorts and a workout shirt.
“You ready?” Garf asked as I finished yanking the lycra out of my butt crack.
“Yeah. Who’s doing what?” I asked them.
“I’m not sure. Sal didn’t say anything. He was too busy freaking the fuck out because you weren’t here at eight,” my Asian friend said.
“I called him to tell him when I would be here,” I sighed.
“I think these guys need to DPS. It will be a clusterfuck if we let them tank or heal,” Jax said as he poked his head out of the locker room door. The sound of the waiting crowd poured into the room, and it reminded me of an angry ocean.
DPS or Damage Per Second was an ambiguous gamer term. In this instance, Jax meant that he wanted the two tag alongs to just stick to doing damage. The role was important, but it wasn’t as important as soaking up the damage from the monsters, also known as tanking. Nor was DPS as important as healing.
“I’ll heal. I’ll do a Wiccan,” Garf yawned.
“Did I DPS last time? I think I did. I’ll tank. You guys fine with Defender?” Jax asked.
“Cool with me,” Garf replied.
“Yep. I’ll do Beastman,” I said.
“Ohh I was hoping you would. The crowd will love it,” Garf said.
The Beastman class wasn’t exactly loved by players. It did a lot of damage, but the class used a claw weapon in each hand, and it was exhausting to play. It also had almost no escape skills that could be equipped into a slot, and they could die easily if a monster or other player targeted them. Observers loved the class because it was high movement, and as long as there was a skilled player tanking- or keeping the focus of the monsters, the Beastman class was fun to run around with.
“Alright, guys. I wanted to introduce you all,” Sal said as he walked in with two men dressed in lycra uniforms. “Champ, Jax, and Garf; this is Jake Cushing and Billy Iger.”
“Nice to meet you guys,” I said as I shook both their hands.
“Nice to meet you too, Champ. I’m a huge fan,” Billy said.
“He isn’t as big of a fan as I am,” laughed Jake as he shook my hand. “I’m a fan of all three of you actually. This is really exciting. My kids are in the front row.”
My friends shook hands with the two men, and the four of them started talking about the strategy for the upcoming demo. These two were high-level executives in the corporation, and Disney was paying us to walk them through one of the harder dungeons in Astafar Unlimited while their employees watched.
“Ahhh, they aren’t mad that you were late,” Sal whispered in my ear while the other four men talked.
“I wasn’t late.” I stuck my tongue out at him.
“If you aren’t early you’re late, Champ,” Sal let out a laugh. “So how did this thing go in Albany?”
“Did you read my email?”
“I glanced through it. Then I got confused by all the zeros they listed. These guys are lying. No way they have that much money.”
“I did see a bunch of jet pods in their hanger. The place was a fortress.”
“Let’s talk about it in a few day
s when we are laying on the sand drinking colored drinks.”
“Sal, you never want to talk about work when you are on vacation,” I smiled at my friend.
“Naw, Champ. I just don’t want you to talk about that stuff. You need your break. I’ve got your back twenty-four seven.”
“These guys are going to DPS for us Leo,” Garf called to me, and I nodded.
“Got it, did you go over the strategy with them?” I asked.
“Yep. They are good to go.”
Who ever played the healer normally ran our strategy. It made sense for us because that player would be watching the battlefield, looking at their teammates’ health, and observing the flow of monsters. Everyone else was too occupied either doing damage or trying to keep the monster’s attention away from the people doing damage.
The five of us walked out of the locker room and down the long hallway to the stadium. The roar of the crowd wasn’t as loud as the World Championship rounds, but the stadium here probably housed ten thousand people, and I didn’t see a single open seat. There were rumors that Disney had tried to buy Astafar Unlimited in the first five years that the game operated, but the owners hadn’t sold.
There was an announcer, one of the pretty blonde women that acted in a bunch of their TV programs. She introduced the Disney guys first, and I realized that the two men were CEO and president of the company. I looked over at Garf and Jax with surprise, but my two friends were waving at the crowd. Well, Garf was waving at the crowd, and Jax was blowing kisses with each hand.
Once the woman finished introducing us, and the crowd had screamed for a handful of minutes, the five of us moved to our Omni stations and connected to the harness. Then we put on our headsets, and the crowd stared at the visual monitors that surrounded the stadium.
“I’m opening a private channel,” Garf said after we loaded the dungeon.
“Why?” I asked as I saw that he had moved Jax and me into his private channel. We could still hear the other two men talking, but we would have to press on the team channel button to speak with them.
“Oh, I just wanted to talk about your trip some more. It’s not like we have to pay attention during this run. We’ve done this dungeon thousands of times, fuck, I’ve soloed the damn thing at least a hundred times. Jax, go pull the first group of mobs,”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir,” my other friend said, and I saw his heavily armored avatar dash around the first corner of the dungeon.
“So, really, how were her parents?” Garf asked as Jax back-peddled around the corner with four armored lizard warriors beating on his shield with saw-toothed swords.
“They were… I dunno, weird.”
Garf created an orange diamond icon over one of the lizard warrior’s heads, and I dashed to attack it from behind. One of the other men, Billy I think, was playing a Daggerdancer, and he stood next to me while we attacked the creature’s back. The mob died to our blades in two seconds and then we moved to the next monster that Garf marked.
“What do you mean ‘weird’?” Jax asked over the sound of weapons hitting his armor and shield.
“They didn’t talk a lot. They were nice and all, but I got the feeling from Zarra that they had a lot of input in the game, especially her father, but the man didn’t seem to want to talk about the development process. It was probably because I hadn’t agreed to work for them.”
I replayed the breakfast conversation in my head as I spoke. It felt as if Zarra’s parents had none of the personality that their daughter did. They certainly had the good looks, they were just really reserved. Probably because I hadn’t agreed to sign the contract and work for them.
“They asked you to work for them?” both of my friends asked at the same time.
“Jinx! Ohhhhh got you!” Jax shouted.
“Are you eleven years old? It’s adult time, and I’m trying to talk to Leo about this girl he wants to marry,” Garf laughed.
“Ugh, fine. I’m going to go pull the next group to us.” Jax still had a lizard mob beating on him, and the creature frantically smashed it’s sword into the back of his helmet as he walked away.
“Yeah. They want me to test their game for the next year. Before they release it.” I dug my claws into the armored back of the lizard pounding on Jax and watched the monster’s life bar drop. The Beastman class added a small buff every time I connected a hit that let me attack faster. It meant that the class ended up doing a significant amount of damage the longer combat lasted, so it worked really well for boss fights. I wouldn’t really spin up to speed with these smaller trash mobs that died after only a few dozen hits.
Each of my attacks triggered the vibrations on the Omni station sensors. They made my hands shake, but the sensations felt ridiculous after my time in Ohlavar Quest, and I kept thinking of the NPC that I had kicked in the face. That had felt real, the vibrations I felt now just seemed like a poor imitation of a much better game.
The graphics were also bugging me. I had always thought that Astafar Unlimited had some of the best graphics of any retail game, but now that I had played Ohlavar Quest, I could see where my old game was severely lacking. The lizard mobs had no facial expressions, their teeth didn’t look sharp, and their jaws hung open at the same angles. I could see the pixels at the edges of their saw blade swords, and they just looked like clones of each other. All the NPCs in Zarra’s game, even the town folk, had looked unique, and I kept thinking about the various facial expressions that the AI had given Kimmel during our interaction. They had spent a lot of time just to make sure that a minor boss looked-ultra realistic.
“Test their game? Did you play it at all?” Garf asked.
“Yeah. It needs a tiny bit of polish, but I’m kind of in love with it.”
“What?” Both of my friends sounded surprised.
“Jin--” Jax began
“Shaddup and go pull more mobs!” Garf shouted, and the armored avatar ducked back around the first corner to grab the third and final group of lizardmen.
“It’s just really damn good. It feels like real life. I don’t know how they did it, but damn guys. I’d bet money that they will take a serious chunk of the market from Astafar Unlimited. Maybe not all of it, but dang.”
“What’s so good about it?” Garf asked.
“I’ve got the NDA I signed. So I can’t go into detail. It just feels like real life, only it is this great fantasy world.” I was slaying monsters with ease now, and the class buffs were allowing me to move faster against the weapon swing limits of the game.
“Can I play it? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you get excited about a game since this one,” Garf said.
“I wanna play also. Wouldn’t it be sweet if we could all jump in and play test it for a year?” Jax said.
“Yeah, that would be cool.” I thought about what my blond Viking looking friend said and then considered my last conversation with Zarra. After we had enjoyed breakfast with her parents, she had walked me to the jet pod and given me a printout and datapad with the terms of their contract. Then she had reviewed the feedback I had told her last night about the game, said it would be improved in the next day, and asked me to seriously consider her offer.
I would be able to find the fifteen relics much faster with the three of us playing together as a team.
I also knew my two friends would love the game. Heck, they would probably never want to log out. Jax loved fucking around with NPCs, and Garf was the kind of guy that knew all the lore of Astafar Unlimited. He even wrote fan fiction in his spare time. Of course, it wasn’t really fan fiction. He was so famous that he actually got his stuff published and made good money from the novels. He would be really interested in learning all about Ohlavar Quest’s history.
I knew both of them would be blown away. Just like I had been.
“Alright. We are clear,” Garf said in the general party channel.
“Wow! That was so fast! I’ve never made it past this room,” one of the men laughed.
“You are
in good hands with us,” I said, and I saw their avatars nod.
We moved through the dungeon at a casual speed. The three of us could have gone a lot faster, but we didn’t want to risk one of the mobs killing the guys that hired us for the exhibition, so we played the encounters as safe as possible. Soon we were at the first boss battle. It was a giant lizard death knight warrior that was half decaying flesh and half skeleton. The monster carried a giant war hammer, and his smashing attack could take out an entire party if they weren’t careful.
“Stand where Leo stands and attack when he does,” Garf instructed the two men playing with us, and they ran to stand near me as I flanked the giant boss mob.
The lizard death knight charged at us with a roar. The cry had once seemed real to me, and this encounter had amazed me with the cool design of the boss, but now I was only thinking about what Ohlavar Quest would have for big boss monsters. The swings of this boss were easy to anticipate, and we jumped away from his charge easily.
“I’m hitting Pray to Ancestors. Jax, you got me?” I asked as I dashed to the lizard’s back. The skill multiplied my damage and added more speed buffs. It also made it more likely for the monster I was attacking to want to turn around and hit me. This was often called aggro or when the monster focused its attacks on a target. If you were a damage dealing type class, you didn’t want to get aggro. If I did, I would probably die and have to respawn so Jax would have to work to keep the boss’ attention.
“Yeah, hit it,” he said.
I triggered the skill and started smashing my claws into the undead beast. The buffs quickly began to stack on me, and I felt the throttle of the game increase so that I could attack quicker. Soon it was at maximum fluidity, and I was hitting the virtual air as quickly as I could shadow box. This was the only class in the game that could attack as fast as a human could. I heard the crowd scream through my helmet and I felt my mouth curl into a smile. That would be one aspect I would miss if I retired from Astafar Unlimited. The feedback of the crowds was a whole drug in itself.
But I was bored of the fame as well. This was fun; playing with my friends and getting immediate feedback. But always having paparazzi in my face, not being able to date anyone without seeing it on the cover of every magazine and watching news footage of my face on all the news stations was exhausting. I hated that I felt this way. It was what I always wanted.
Lion's Quest: Undefeated: A LitRPG Saga Page 13