Digital Me

by Alston Sleet

  Well, the guy was slightly less arrogant than I had expected, but it wasn’t by much.

  “I’m sorry, but I have made an agreement to assist Mennen and the village until after winter and so I will be remaining here. I thank you for your offer of travel,” I said with my most respectful and polite tone and smile I could produce. I doubted that would be the end of things, but if this was going to go badly we might as well get it out in the open quickly.

  Mennen was making faces behind the messenger and I could see that he thought my comment a terrible mistake. This was confirmed by the messenger’s sudden ramrod straight posture and blank face. The blank face was actually a surprise to me, I had expected a rude sneer or anger, the poker face told me that things were somehow different than I expected, but I didn’t know how.

  “The King has commanded no village to assist nor hinder you sir. Melcot village would be in violation of the Kings command if they continue to assist you,” the words were carefully neutral.

  I wasn’t sure what cards this messenger thought I was holding, but it was clear he thought I had a pocket pair of something since while he was hinting about trouble for the village. I was amazed he was making an effort to not directly insult or threaten me. I hadn’t been expecting that, I had been expecting a simple ‘get going or I’ll hog-tie you’ vibe to the conversation once I knew what he wanted. Officials in medieval societies not being known for politeness in particular.

  I rubbed my chin pensively, I could feel I had leverage here, but I didn’t know in what way or what my failure to apply it would produce for me or the village. While the village and Mennen had been standoffish and business like with me, they had been fair and helpful to me. I didn’t want them to be harmed. But I also didn’t want to lose my powers and I realized now at this late point that I never made any provisions for things out of my control. I could see that I was going to have to be far more careful in the future. I didn’t need to turn into a lawyer, the thought made me shudder, but I would have to be less blasé about agreements than I had been.

  It seemed so simple before.

  I looked to Mennen and then towards the messenger. “I can’t go back on my word. I have given my word to Mennen and the village that I would be assisting them until after winter. So I can’t travel to meet the King. If they instead fail to provide me the assistance in our agreement then they would be breaking their word with me. At that point I won’t have to hold to my end, harm to Mennen and the villagers would be allowed to me at that point.”

  Follow along with my idea here. I was trying to subtly threaten the village, not because I wanted to harm them, far from it. I had no ill will for them, but the logic problem was clear. The town was being held hostage to my behavior, this was a trap that was difficult to escape. I just made it clear that the snare applied to the messenger, not me. By threatening them, I put the messenger in the position of protecting them instead of me. Not that they would need protection from me, but the implication was clear. Don’t be impressed, it was from a contract trick which was used on me during my first failed business, I just learned from the mistake.

  I looked at Mennen beyond the messenger and I could see a hint of anger form in his scowl until a pinch of confusion formed across his brow. The comical glance between me and the messenger told me that Mennen had worked things out and then his face returned to his typical ‘business scowl’. I much preferred his laughing good natured face, but it wasn’t right for the situation.

  The messenger looked nonplussed for a moment and in that moment of confusion Mennen chimed in perfectly. “If the Kingdom would provide a payment equal to your effort, I would be willing to break our agreement without fault Shawn.”

  The messenger seemed to think this would be a simple solution to solving the problem and readily agreed. I looked to the messenger, and remembering my recent agreement issue and carefully stated my position, “Barring outside forces which I can’t control, in exchange for payment equivalent to that still owed to me and that owed in the planned work for the village to be paid by the Kingdom, I will accompany you to visit the King on the understanding that if threatened or harmed I will retaliate in kind”.

  I could see Mennen grinning behind the messenger in glee as he recognized what I had done. Gold would flow into the village’s coffers over the amount of work we had planned. Magic road work, magic fortification wall, magic stone building construction? Apparently, according to the grin Mennen was sporting, I had been scammed far worse than I had been aware. Quickly returning his face to neutral I could see Mennen look to the messengers back.

  “With five percent surcharge, we will have to wait for payment instead of gaining the vitally needed services, which we already worked for,” Mennen said as if he was upset about some small coppers and was working in every effort to extract all he could from the messenger.

  The messenger looked back and forth between us and then stated, “As a Kings’ hand, I hereby Bind to this agreement”. I could feel a small tightening of the air. This was obviously some kind of magical contract spell. Which made me happier since I wouldn’t be the only one punished for failure to follow the legal agreement.

  I watched Mennen as he ran off to get his ledger for payment. He was practically skipping along as he went to get the proof of the work we had planned out.

  I was just wondering what the King wanted and what this trip would entail. Obviously, this was something the Digitals had set up since it was the only way information of my existence could have reached the capital about me.

  Time would tell.

  Chapter 6

  On the Road Again.

  What’s that old saying about war? War is “months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror”, that’s essentially how the trip to the capital went. Days of boredom, slowly riding beside Rolick, the name of the snooty messenger now delivery boy, followed by moments of him slaughtering goblins, giant snakes, and in one memorable moment a giant creature that regrew limbs as Rolick slaughtered it, this turned out to be a troll.

  Rolick of course looked to this as just the normal course of travel. I thought I had been prepared for the trip. I was after all the ‘killer of the white horde’. Sadly I had figured out that this wasn’t just some game since then. The further recognition that I would be killing sentient beings sometime in the future, ones with clothing, culture, and even language, put things into a new horrible perspective.

  I figured out how the travel would be when at the start Rolick told, not asked told, Sindil one of the villagers, to ride back to the previous village in order to collect another horse for me in the travel. With that command he strolled into the inn and demanded food and a room.

  I will admit that I gained a huge amount of entertainment when Rolick was informed how much Mennen was to be paid for the services I was planning to provide, with a five percent surcharge. The fact that he would be responsible for providing me with thirty levels of power leveling was icing on the cake.

  Apparently earth focused mages would be reserved for castles, palaces, and front line defenses. There was no amount of gold available to get one to build like I was planning in the village. Mennen won out double in this. Now that I wasn’t going to be building things out by myself it would need to be done through payments and laborers, laborers who will then settle in the village. Mennen basically loved me by this point. Rolick on the other hand seemed to look to me as his painful own personal ass carbuncle, though he seemed to be making every effort to be polite to me about it.

  It looked like Mennens efforts were going to have his town turn into more than just a way station in the woods between two adventure towns. The kind of growth this kind of cash infusion will provide may well shift the population distribution of the Kingdom over a few hundred years. Not sure how the King will feel over having his name so casually pledged to such an endeavor, but that wasn’t exactly my fault so I didn’t particularly feel guilty about it. The King put me in a delicate position with my word and now it seems it will
be returned to him.

  I wasn’t sure why I was getting the royal treatment here instead of being beaten, tied up and off for the trip routine, but I was pleased with it all the same.

  Camping wasn’t particularly dangerous along the way. There were set camp sights which Rolick cast some kind of spell on when he arrived. Renewing some type of protection which was reserved for royal messengers. Travel on the road itself though was intermittently annoying, boring, and frightening.

  Rolick didn’t make the trip any less annoying. At first he seemed like a decent, if stuck up, travel companion. He was polite and seemingly interested in anything I said; until I realized that I barely knew more about Rolick than his name and our conversations seemed designed to get me to talk about my past and plans. It was clear that while I might be an outgoing and personable guy and not matching the engineer geek stereotype, Rolick had some mad skills in the art of conversation and I would need to guard myself a great deal more.

  Still, even with the random violence, the annoying weather -slightly damp as only an overcast sky in a forest can deliver- or even the need to guard my tongue, I couldn’t help feeling great. I didn’t have that persistent tightness in the chest I had been dealing with. My thoughts flowed smoothly. I could hop around as I pleased and moreover, I could sling magic if I wanted.

  I missed my old world, but in a way it still existed. I had made peace with the fact that I was going to have to take my insane gamble and lose my life one way or another. I was just glad that my gamble had paid off.

  Besides, I was going to be meeting the King! Yes, there were all kinds of problems which would need to be worked around. We have a bit of conflict here, he owes me some power leveling, he was a bit rude to me, forcing me away from my chosen village, I had finagled a gigantic cash payment from him that would probably change the future direction of his Kingdoms growth…but hey. We all don’t get what we want right?

  Yes, I know my thoughts were optimistic at best, seeing as how a King probably was used to getting his own way. But I wasn’t too frightened. I could shift and move earth around now. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but trapping me or imprisoning me had just moved up to being an almost impossible task. Oh it would still be possible. Off the top of my head I would think using some kind of metal cage would solve the problem quickly, but permanently imprisoning just got far more difficult. Worse case I was still religious about making a new backup each night. To stop me for a long period would require a cage around my backup point as well.

  My introduction to the adventurer town that was midway between Melcot village and the capital was eye opening. The town was huge. Stone walls surrounding a hundred miles at least of the town. Every building inside at least two stories of wood, somewhere moving towards brick and stone. The dungeon was a giant stone barricaded and guarded hole near the center of town with groups being moved slowly in and out under guard. This town was old, very old, and obviously prosperous.

  Apparently the dungeon acted as mine, monster part resource, and even equipment source for the entire town. A Dungeon of the right difficulty in the right location acted the same way rich resource deposits had worked in my previous life.

  My efforts to get Rolick to let us stay for a bit and talk to people about the dungeon and how things worked met with stony silence and a blank poker face. Truthfully that was pretty much what I was expecting, and even hoping for. I had to nod and finally agree that we had an agreement and while our agreement hadn’t said we would travel directly to meet the King, the spirit of the agreement clearly implied it and so we would follow through. I was hoping it wasn’t too ham fisted and overdone, acting was never one of my skills, though it was starting to look like it was a skill I was going to have to develop.

  I was making every effort to play up the agreement and how I had to follow it. I was starting to get why the Digitals always kept their word and why they avoided any type of lying. In a short lifespan a lie could be expected here and there. But over a long enough time period, especially when anyone could simply look up your previous agreements and behavior, well…you need a good reputation of truthfulness in order to get along. Even one instance of lying means you can’t be one hundred percent trusted to follow your word.

  In this case it’s the same thing. I will be here for hundreds of thousands of years. I might not be making any other agreements with the King, but I probably will with his children, grandchildren, and great great great etc children. I might be making agreements with whoever conquers his Kingdom as well as the conqueror of that Kingdom as well. Getting a historical record as someone who always follows their word, and provides horrific retribution when cheated, probably needs to be something to focus on when it comes to long term tactics.

  Long term tactics, an idea which was slowly coming to mean a whole new thing to me.

  It was interesting that even the abstract acceptance of my immortality was slowly starting to reshape the way I was viewing the world. Part of it was that I was able to concentrate on the idea for a longer period and what it meant without getting distracted. I had expected to require a more visceral experience before I would start seeing major changes in my view of the world, but apparently not.

  The capital was an interesting place, the town’s size reminded me of something like downtown Portland, my previous home, before my incarceration that is. The castle was granite and pressed up against and slightly over a cliff side, while the town gently swarmed the hill before it. The battlements and crenelations were manned and had obviously seen actual combat at some time since the discoloration and replacement of some of the stones was plain.

  It was a clear reminder that this world was ancient and had a fairly violent history before I had arrived, and it was likely that I was going to experience plenty of that myself. I made a special effort to direct the mental command to make a backup right before I entered town. My plan was that if I died and found myself outside of town, I would high tail it back towards Melcot. Not a long term plan perhaps but as long as my backup isn’t in town and found then I can simply keep running as needed. This also means that as soon as I’m away from anywhere after a re-spawn I needed to make another backup. Making a repeat of this process as often as possible.

  It took a good part of three hours to get to the castle from the gate. The capital was crammed with humans on all kinds of business. I even noticed a couple Dwarves, an Elf, and a black shelled creature which oddly enough wore a poofy sleeved dress. It was clear that while this was a fantasy world, strange and different creatures also pervaded it beyond the stereotypes from novels and games.

  Upon arriving at the castle, Rolick informed me that I would be housed in the dignitary quarters as a sign of respect, and that after dinner I would have a private discussion with the King.

  ###

  The knock on the sturdy oak door saved Calferd Melnus the Third from the torture of dealing with yet another request for a portion of the tax surplus of this year. While it was always wonderful to have intake exceed outlay, at least when you have spent more than you have taken in, the local lords tread lightly on requests for special projects.

  “Enter,” commanded the suddenly relieved monarch.

  The sight of one of his more trusted messengers, and secretly third in his spy hierarchy, sent a bolt of ice along the Kings spine. Rolick had been instructed to travel along the more dangerous route towards the Elven Kingdom past the two low order dungeon towns. If he had returned, then he had grave news to impart instead of continuing on with his mission.

  Rolick’s voice was rather grumpy as he started his report, “My King, I have found the level one wizard The Cursed Seer had reported.”

  The tone of voice raised the King’s alarm further, Rolick was known to be hushed and pleasant in tone to nobles, strict but fair with commoners, and sly and smooth with merchants. Rolick’s words were always just as they needed to be in order to extract exactly the action needed, it was one reason he had the place he did in the King’s spy netwo
rk. For Rolick to be grumpy in tone was concerning since he had been known to pleasantly request a sword before a duel.

  “The wizard, Shawn Bradshaw, is the most vexing man I think I have ever met. He is either a laughable and lovable idiot, or the shrewdest negotiator with long term plans which reach beyond what other can see, or both. Worse he might be neither and I wouldn’t know it. I simply can’t get a read on him,” Rolick practically hissed as he dropped his weary body into a chair near the King’s desk.

  Calferd was not pleased to hear this proclamation, when he found out how Rolick had been manipulated into paying a small town and promising thirty levels in power-leveling simply because he had miss judged the man because he seemed to be simple and common born the King started to reach a certain level of concern.

  Calferd’s concern was raised to a pinnacle when he discovered that Shawn had been planning to turn an important trade route village into a defensible bastion between the Kingdom’s only two adventure towns. An obvious effort to form some kind of foreign rebellion against the Kingdom, perhaps as a way to disconnect the southern most dungeon town and pass it off to the Elves?

  “The man is obsessed with deals, but seems willing to agree to voice deals without even a token agreement spell being cast. He threatened me, me, and the town, if subtly when an agreement was going to be broken. How he planned to enforce his threat I can’t imagine, his level is low and he knows but two spells but I’m convinced he would have found a way. That was the other thing. He seemed willing to talk about his spells, his levels, and I found out from a villager that he willingly showed the town mayor his status panel!” Rolick had been shouting in disbelief by the end.

  The news of sharing of the status window was surprising. Children were taught from a young age never to share their status windows. Commoners might share a view of their status window to a wife or husband, but anyone with any higher standing would never do so since it would pass on far to much information to another. A noble or wizard would never do so since it would be similar to passing over a way to clearly trap, trick, or harm someone. No one should see so deeply into another.