Enough aimless stumbling through the game world. It was time to make some progress. Start carving a name for herself.
As she crept out the door, she tested her grip on the knife, rolling it in her hand until it nestled comfortably in her palm. Her feet had toughened while she rested, and the little pebbles embedded in the earth didn’t hurt as she strolled toward the edge of the village.
She passed the fire ring, now full of smoldering coals. A frame of sticks held an iron roasting spit with bits of charred meat still clinging to the metal. Devon’s stomach growled, reminding her that hunger was a stat in this game. She sidled over and plucked the crisped flesh from the spit. It tasted like burned dirt, but the ache in her stomach faded.
She jumped when a loud snore came from the stone chair.
Apparently, Uruquat didn’t leave his throne even to sleep. His head had fallen forward, and drool ran over his chin and down his chest, glistening in the moonlight. Devon curled her lip and moved on.
At the edge of the forest, she paused to listen. The darkness under the canopy seemed impenetrable. With a shrug, she shoved aside the first branches and stepped into the jungle.
The screeches of birds and chirring of insects grew louder. Devon moved slowly, attempting to bend rather than break the twigs and vines as she passed. But to her ears, her passage was like a snorting warthog crashing through the undergrowth. She definitely needed to spend some time leveling her stealth skill. If the game had such a thing.
Ever so slowly, gray shapes began to resolve from the surrounding ink. She squinted and could make out a dangling curtain of vines.
You have gained a skill point: +1 Darkvision.
Well, that was something. Even if she didn’t find any snakes before dawn, she’d get something out of this adventure.
As she pressed deeper into the jungle, strands of spiderweb tickled her face. A dense mass of vines tangled her path. She tried to press through, but the foliage resisted. Grunting, she hacked at the thick stems. Finally, one parted.
You have gained a skill point: +1 One-handed Slashing.
Now try cutting an enemy.
“Yeah, if I could find one,” she muttered.
Abruptly, light flared, painting the jungle stark white. A glowing sphere descended from the treetops and bobbed in front of her face.
“So you aren’t the champion of Ishildar after all. You abandoned the city at the first sign of adversity.”
The same wisp, it seemed.
“For your information, I was kidnapped while unconscious.”
“A true champion would let nothing stop her quest to restore the city to its past splendor.”
Devon sighed and tried to step around the wisp. “Maybe after I manage to kill my first mob.”
“Speaking of…” the wisp said, darting back in front of her face. It flared, brightening even the undergrowth. Movement caught her eye as something hissed.
A snake! Finally!
She crashed forward to the little clearing where the reptile coiled. It was about as big around as her arm, and when she drew within a pace, it reared up and struck. Fangs snagged on the tattered hem of her pants but missed her flesh. Devon yelped and flipped her grip on the knife to stab downward. With its fang tangled, the reptile couldn’t dodge. The knife punctured scales behind the animal’s skull. A combat alert flashed in Devon’s vision, but she quickly swiped it away, issuing a mental command to disable non-critical popups in combat.
The snake wrenched free of her trousers and slithered back, coiling for another strike. Glistening in the light from the wisp, a drop of venom beaded on one of the inch-long fangs. Devon circled carefully. Hezbek probably had a recipe for Jungle Antidote - Minor, but Devon had less than zero interest in tasting it.
Blood seeped from the wound on the back of the snake’s neck, but it didn’t appear to slow the reptile’s movement. As the snake struck again, Devon snatched a leafy branch and yanked it into the space between them. The snake ate a mouthful of twigs, and Devon sprang. She sliced at the beast’s body, cutting deep. With a twist of her wrist, she felt the snake’s spine snap. The reptile went limp.
The jungle around her chimed.
Congratulations, you have reached level 2!
Nice! Now to see about the spoils of her battle. Devon crouched before the snake and slid the tip of her knife along the belly skin. Given how realistic the game had been so far, she expected to spend a long time reducing her kill to component parts, but to her surprise, the token act of beginning the skinning process caused the snake to fall apart. She grabbed the items arrayed on the muddy jungle floor.
You have received: 1 x Snakeskin - Poor, 1 x Snake Meat, 2 x Tree Viper Poison Glands
She dropped the loot into her bag and stood. The wisp continued to hang around, slowly circling in the air overhead.
“Not bad,” it said. “Though if being Champion of Ishildar is your destiny… No offense, but there are far more powerful forces ensuring the city’s continued decay than a garden snake.”
“First of all, it was a tree viper. Second, I never claimed to be a champion for your city.”
The orb stopped circling and drifted closer, stopping just inches in front of her eyes. Devon squinted against the glare.
“Ishildar is not mine. She belongs to no one. If you remember nothing else, remember that.”
Devon blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. Maybe we can talk about your—the—city’s needs later on. For now, I’ve got some snakes to hunt.”
“Hmm. Or perhaps a worthier candidate will arrive.” The light dimmed slightly as if the wisp were contemplating something. But it said nothing else. A few seconds later, it zipped straight up, abandoning her to darkness.
***
As Devon shoved through yet more foliage, earning scratches and losing a couple hitpoints, she scanned the ghostly tree branches for more vipers. A notification announced she’d gained another point in Darkvision.
Which reminded her… she hadn’t had a chance to examine her character sheet since she’d leveled.
Character: Devon (click to set a different character name)
Level: 2
Base class: Unassigned
Specialization: Unassigned
Unique class: Unassigned
Health: 32/35
Fatigue: 15%
Her attributes window now looked like this:
Attributes:
Locked until Level 5
Special Attributes:
Bravery: 1
And her skills window like this:
Skills:
Unarmed Combat: 3
One-handed Slashing: 2
One-handed Piercing: 1
Darkvision: 2
Special Skills:
Improvisation: 1
Not bad progress for a single fight. She’d gained a skill point for each of the two knife strikes she’d made against the snake, one in slashing and one in piercing to reflect the types of blows she’d struck. Granted, advancement was always quick in the beginning, but finally seeing the results of her in-game work was satisfying.
The real surprise was that she’d gained a new entry, a special skill. Improvisation.
Huh, when had that happened?
Quickly, she scrolled back through her combat log, skimming over the hitpoint notifications—there was a passive dodge notification as well… that must have been when the viper caught a fangful of her pants—she spotted the entry.
You have gained a special skill point: +1 Improvisation.
The higher your score, the less likely your “clever” choices will result in epic failures.
Like special attributes, points in special skills are rarely rewarded to players.
It had come just before the killing blow, which likely meant the point had been awarded when she’d used the bush as a shield.
Bravery and Improvisation. The special stats suggested an interesting direction to take her
character growth—if running headlong into overly dangerous battles and then winging it could be considered a valid character build. Anyway, until she dinged level 5 and got a notion of her base attributes—and for that matter, a notion of what the in-game attributes were—she wouldn’t be making any major decisions.
She’d added ten points to her health pool. Seemed pretty standard for a level 2 gain. As she watched, her number of current hitpoints flared and increased by one. Slow natural regen. Nice to know she could recover out of combat. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see. She closed the window.
And spotted another pair of glinting eyes, the gray shadow of a forked tongue licking the air.
“Hello, little snakey,” she said before striking.
***
As dawn lit the sky and replaced the shades of gray granted by her darkvision with true colors, Devon started retracing her path to the village. Five snakes had fallen victim to her rusty knife. While she hadn’t gained another level, she’d added another two skill points in One-handed Slashing. Her strikes were smoother and more damaging, and the hilt sat easier in her palm. All in all, a decent night’s work.
If there were paths leading to and from the encampment, she hadn’t found them. But her passage through the dense foliage had left plenty of broken sticks and a few footprints. Just before she pushed out of the brush into the open circle of packed earth, she received a skill-up notification in Tracking. She shrugged. Could come in useful. In Avatharn Online, she’d played a ranger specializing in wilderness adventures. Though she wanted to go a different direction this time around—assuming she had a choice—any skill increase was nice.
More tribe members were out and about this morning, enjoying the cooler morning air. In particular, Devon noticed a man punching an awl through pieces of leather. She’d have to talk to him later about armor. On the way to the throne, she passed Hezbek who was outside stringing herbs on a drying line. The medicine woman raised an eyebrow.
“Looking more capable already,” she commented.
Devon’s new level must have been visible to the woman in some way. Or maybe she just carried herself with a little more confidence after finally having made some progress.
When Devon stuck her hand into the sack Hezbek had hung from her waistband, the inventory screen popped up. Two of the boxes were filled with snakeskins, one stack of three poor quality skins, and another two that were fair quality. As she’d become more competent with the knife, she’d learned to target the same area with each blow, reducing the number of slashes on the corpse and raising the quality of the resulting loot drop.
She focused on both stacks of skins and felt them drop into her hand. As she stalked up to Uruquat’s throne, she pulled out the skins.
The ogre jumped and shrieked, pulling his feet up off the ground. After a moment, he relaxed and narrowed his eyes at the contents of her hand.
“Dead slideys,” he said.
She nodded and shook the skins. “Dead.”
“Good. You show sorry-ness. Eventually, I forgive.”
You have gained esteem with Uruquat: +50 reputation
You have gained esteem with the Tribe of Uruquat: +25 reputation
Wait. So just ten points each? It had taken her most of the night to find five vipers. She rechecked the quest log, verifying that she needed another 450 points to meet the objectives. By the time she killed enough snakes to finish the quest, she’d probably have advanced so far that the kills wouldn’t even grant experience.
She sighed and shoved the skins back into her bag then looked around for the lawyer. He wasn’t outside, so she stalked to the door she remembered him exiting the day before. There was nothing inside but a messy bedroll and a side table holding a quill, inkpot, and paper. Plus the sheath he’d pulled her knife from. Seeing as he didn’t need it anymore, she reached in and grabbed the item.
What was he going to do? Sue her?
She rolled her eyes at her own stupid joke.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked as she approached Hezbek.
The medicine woman nodded. “I didn’t hear you leave. Were you successful?”
Devon shrugged. “More or less.” She pulled out her loot and arrayed it on the ground.
Hezbek clucked her tongue. “Not bad.” She glanced toward Uruquat’s chair then leaned close to Devon’s ear. “Take the skins to Gerrald. The guy with the awl and leather. Don’t speak. Just hand them over—the ogre’s eyesight is terrible, but his hearing and sense of smell are keen. Gerrald knows what to do. I had a discussion with him earlier.”
Despite the foul taste of the woman’s so-called remedies, Devon was starting to like Hezbek. As she began to collect her loot, however, the medicine woman swiped the poison glands.
“Payment for my negotiating services,” the woman said with a wink. “They’re a common enough component, but I find it difficult to drag myself into the jungle to hunt down my own. I’ll compensate you for the next batch.”
Devon shook her head. “I’m done hunting vipers.”
Hezbek’s brows raised. “Oh? The rumor I heard was you had some forgiveness to earn.”
“Yeah, but unless there’s a faster way, I’m going to have to pass.” Some people fell into the trap of completing quests even after they were no longer useful to their advancement. Devon wasn’t one of them. Onward and upward.
The medicine woman sighed. “If you’re going to do something stupid, do it in daylight, okay? I don’t want you respawning on my cot while I’m trying to sleep.”
Smirking, Devon started toward the leatherworker. A plan was starting to take shape in her mind. And yes, it was stupid. But how else was she going to raise her Bravery attribute?
Chapter Eight
EMERSON CLOSED DOWN the output from the previous day of decisions made by mini-Veia. This project really wasn’t going well; the AI had ordered him a pizza for breakfast, which wasn’t terrible—he liked pizza and had mentioned being hungry—but beyond that, the home assistance module had done nothing useful. In fact, it had turned off the air conditioning via a hard override he couldn’t find in the user’s manual. Thankfully, it was October in Tucson. He’d survive until he could get help from the AC unit’s manufacturer on restoring a connection to the machine’s data storage.
A video call came in over his interface, tagged as originating from Entwined, Inc. He rubbed the series of ridges on his scalp—feeling them was quickly becoming a habit. The onboard hardware was certainly more convenient than his old set up: AR glasses, cochlear implants, a full helmet when he wanted deep immersion. Most of the time, he didn’t worry about the security of having these new implanted electronics with direct access to his brain. He’d reviewed the specs and even some of the access-control code. But if there were a back door, it would probably have been created by someone at Entwined. Could answering this call activate the vulnerability?
Emerson shook his head. He was just being paranoid. Besides, the implant company was just returning his call about the pain sensitivity.
He moved to his home office where he had a small camera on an adjustable arm, and before accepting the call, sat down and made sure it was pointed at his face. That was one thing about the embedded tech. Either you communicated via an avatar hologram, which occasionally failed to convey the proper body language, or you still needed a camera.
“Thanks for getting back to me,” he said as a woman’s face popped into his view. He adjusted the settings to make her overlay opaque, creating a window around her face.
She had an honest look about her, a sober expression that indicated she’d taken his question seriously. That was one thing about engineers. As long as egos didn’t get in the way, which was less of a problem once they’d achieved a certain level of competence, they tended to approach their jobs with passion and sense of duty.
“Yeah, so… I’m not sure what to say, Emerson. I’m not doubting the report from your player…”
Bu
t she was. He could see it on her face. She just didn’t want to be disrespectful.
“She’s experienced,” he said. “One of the few we specifically recruited. A contractor on the payroll, actually.”
The woman’s brow furrowed. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and there were slight bags under her eyes, probably earned from long hours on the job.
“We put one of our testers through a series of scenarios, stimulating the nervous system with heat, cold, pressure… All the ways we can create the sensation of pain. Even with the dial set to the maximum allowed by the tech, the testers reported nothing but mild discomfort.”
“And there’s no way the software interface could override that maximum?”
She shook her head. “It’s a hard-coded constant. Burned into the hardware.” She chewed her lip for a moment as if thinking. “There’s one theory that I might run by our neuroscientists, though. In real life, some people exhibit pain responses beyond what would be indicated by their injuries. The central nervous system becomes sensitized for reasons we don’t understand, or at least that’s what I was led to believe. Has something like this ever happened to your player before?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask her.”
“Please do. My concern is that if her nervous system is hypersensitive to our stimulation, she might encounter other effects outside the bounds of our testing.”
“Thanks for following up with me. I’ll get back to you with her answers.”
The woman nodded. As she closed the connection, he realized he hadn’t asked her name, but it was probably in the call log.
He tapped his fingers on his desk. While he was sitting there, he might as well check in with work. He opened up his contacts and put a call into the main office where customer service supported the realm. His liaison in the CS department answered after just a few seconds.
Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) Page 6