by Elliot Burns
“Leave him,” said Mav, stepping away from the window. “He won’t listen.”
Elena looked conflicted between stopping Jack and listening to Mav. The pained expression unhappy she was with the fact that the thief might have a point. What that point was, Jack had no idea.
Elena sighed. “I’m just your game guide, no reason to listen to me,” she muttered, sarcastically. She seemed to be getting a little annoyed. The problem with that, was that she looked amusing when she was mad.
“Sorry, Elena. I just need to see who’s out there,” said Jack, trying his best not to provoke her any further. “It could be someone from home. Maybe someone who can help me get back.”
“Before you go, you could at least arm yourself,” said Elena.
She led him out of the oval-windowed room and into the main atrium of the castle, near the drawbridge. Set against one of the walls, next to a giant open hearth, was a weapons rack. The rack was made of wood, and it held a rusty sword, a blunt axe, and a mace with most of the spikes missing.
Jack picked up each weapon in turn, but none of them felt right in his hand. He couldn’t explain it, but it was as though he wasn’t meant to use any of these weapons. He just felt clumsy withy them. Still, he didn’t really have much choice.
“Something wrong?” asked Mav.
“None of the weapons feel right to me.”
“Try this,” said Mav.”
He opened his coat. The inside was lined with silk and had dozens of pockets sewn into it. Jack guessed they were to conceal everything he stole. He unfastened the button of one pocket and drew out a seven-inch dagger. “Take this,” he said, handing him the blade.
Jack felt the heft of it. It was surprisingly weighty, but still small enough for quick strikes. It was standard issue game weaponry, with a silver blade that bore notches of prolonged use, and a plain brown handle. It was the kind of equipment you’d start with in a game before eventually moving onto something stronger. The best thing was how good it felt to hold. It was a different feeling to when he’d picked up the sword of the axe. There was something just plain right about it.
“Daggers rule,” he said, without thinking.
“A dagger is a beautiful thing,” said Mav.
- Dagger Equipped. Combat increased to 12
- Dagger Proficiency gained – Level 0
[Through steady use, you will become better at using your weapon, and you will unlock attacks.]
“If you’re making me tool up, there must be something different out there, right?” he said.
“Again,” said Elena, with a tremor of anger in her voice. She seemed to be getting so angry that Jack wasn’t listening to her, that her reaction was almost hilarious. “Again, my lord. I know you’ve been here five minutes, so you must know better than me. After all, I’ve only been here for…let’s see…years! Again, I ask that you don’t go outside.”
It was still hard for him to get used to Elena’s behavior and how sophisticated it was. In most VR games, if you ignored the in-game guides then you might get a few pre-programmed rebukes from them. With Elena though, it didn’t seem programmed. Jack firmly believed that she meant everything she said, and that she really was getting comically angry about not being listened to.
Jack had always thought that you could tell a lot about someone by how they treated computer characters in a game. If someone killed everyone they saw, including innocent bystanders, then they probably had one or two things going on in their head. Jack decided that he wouldn’t treat Elena like most people would have treated a computer-generated game guide.
“Elena, I’m sure you’re a great guide, and I’ll listen to you on almost everything from here on out. But if someone has entered the game, I need to meet them.”
Next to the weapon rack, he found a coat folded over a chair. It was a thick coat made from fur, and it looked like it would help keep away the cold. He put it on.
With that, he left the atrium and went out over the drawbridge. Outside the castle, the two suns of Royaume stood in tandem, big brother and little brother, as a cloud the color of rat-fur drifted over them. It wouldn’t be long until the clouds opened and drenched the land. Jack felt the presence of the castle behind him as he ran along the path that had originally brought him there.
“Steady on lad,” said Mav behind him. “Let me catch up.”
Soon, he reached the wooden sign which, hours earlier, had been incomprehensible to him. Now, the words made sense. Two arrows pointed to Kiele and Eldersgate, and the others at Castle Halberd and Riggamond Canyon.
Ahead of him was the place where he’d first entered Royaume. The dirt pathway was still disturbed with the markings from where he’d been stretched out on the ground earlier. There, in the exact same spot Jack had found himself hours ago, was another person. It was a guy. Scrawny looking. Thick, nearly-black hair, and pale skin. He looked almost like….
Wait a minute. Something wasn’t right. Jack got closer and realized two things; one, the person just ahead looked exactly like him, and two, they looked almost holographic.
“This is a copy of me or something, isn’t it?” asked Jack. “And you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Mav nodded. “Aye, but that’s not the only thing I knew.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Atronarchs,” said Elena.
“Yep,” said Mav. “Atronarchs store the things they see in their head, and then they can cast them out as light to trick people.”
“What the hell are atronarchs?”
“Look,” said Mav, nodding to his right.
Jack heard a series of growls. They sounded rough and mean, like they came from throats clogged up with gunk. There was a patch of trees to his right. It was too dark to see anything beyond the tree line, but he didn’t need to. As the growling sounds grew, figures emerged from the shadows of the leaves. There were three creatures. They were six-foot-high and covered in green moss. They looked like chunks of earth that had become sentient and had torn themselves from the ground. Somewhere inside their thick coverings of leaves and moss were glowing eyes. Helpfully, their names were displayed above their heads.
Lesser Flame Atronarch – Level 1 - HP: 11/11
Lesser Water Atronarch – Level 1 - HP: 10/10
Lesser Poison Atronarch – Level 1 – HP: 12/12
Jack realized that Mav and Elena hadn’t joined his side. They were both stood a few paces behind him.
“Aren’t you guys going to help me?” he asked.
Elena put her hand to her chin, and she made an exaggerated look of concentration, like she was pretending to think. “Hmm…let’s see…no, I’m not going to help. Maybe if you’d listened to me…”
Jack looked at Mav. “What about you?”
“You should be able to take on a few atronarchs by yourself. I wanna see what you’re made of.”
“Thanks guys. Glad to have you with me,” said Jack. “Mav, do you at least have a health potion, or something? Something tells me that I’m gonna need one.”
Mav opened his coat and started searching through his multitude of pockets. Jack assumed that the overcoat must have been magic, because it seemed to hold more things that should have been possible. After a few seconds of searching, Mav still hadn’t found a potion, and the atronarchs were getting closer.
“I’ll find it if you give me a second. I know I had one in here somewhere…”
They wanted Jack to prove himself, so that’s what he’d do. First, he needed to assess his enemy. The atronarchs, in their lumbering way, had only gotten a few meters closer. If this was a hundred-meter sprint, Jack would win without a problem. Where a melee fight was concerned, he wasn’t so sure. He’d never taken on a mound of moss before, but there was a first time for everything.
He gripped his dagger. It was a weapon designed for killing people using stealth, and not the best for close-quarter scraps. The hilt was worn down, as if Mav had kept it so long that it had started to shape itself to suit his gr
ip.
“Good luck,” said Elena.
“Don’t wish me luck. That makes me nervous that there’s an element of chance involved.”
“Cut their arses into ribbons,” said Mav.
“Much better.”
There was no point lying about it; he was worried. In other circumstances, he’d have used his phone to call the police or animal rescue, but that obviously wasn’t an option here. “Can I die here?” he asked.
“Yeah you can,” answered Elena, giving him no reassurance whatsoever.
“You should be a motivational speaker,” said Jack.
He started the fight tentatively, staying out of reach of the atronarchs. He needed to get a handle on his enemies’ combat abilities. The hulks of moss facing him didn’t have as much reserve, though. They lumbered forward. The one closest to him suddenly lashed out with a vine-like arm, hitting his face. Jack felt a stinging pain on his cheek.
15HP lost!
[19 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP: 85/100]
He moved back out of range. From his quick study, two things stuck out; one was a weakness, and the other was a fact that he didn’t know what to do with yet. The weakness was that the atronarchs had a wide arc of turning. When Jack changed direction, they followed him with the speed of a double-decker bus attempting a U-turn.
The second thing was that the creatures moved in perfect symmetry, almost copying each other down to taking the same footsteps. If he watched the one in the middle, he could get a good idea of which direction all three of them would move. If the middle one stuck its right foot out, they were going right, and so on.
Speed wasn’t an issue here. The atronarchs almost seemed to float, but that was because their mossy coats trailed to the ground and dragged across the dirt. Their offensive power must have been in their arms, where the moss was lighter and allowed them free movement. They were covered in hundreds of tiny thorns so that whichever part of their arm they struck you with, it would probably hurt like hell. Their hands were lined with bigger thorns, almost like spikes, that wouldn’t make an issue of tearing through flesh.
Jack moved as close as he dared, always watching the middle atronarch for signs of movement. Up close, they smelled like a garden left to turn to mulch after rain. He kept his eye on the middle and saw it lift its left foot. As soon as it did, he slashed the flame atronarch across the neck.
8 damage inflicted!
[12 ATT – 4 DEF]
Dagger Proficiency increased by 24%!
[24% toward level 1]
Damn. He was glad to have scored a hit, but eight points of damage was nowhere near enough. The problem was that he had no power or finesse behind his attacks. He felt like he was just slashing wildly.
With eight hitpoints gone, the middle monster was down to two. Now, he just had to finish it. The trio of atronarchs started to turn now, and Jack had to strafe to keep out of reach of their thorns. He waited for the perfect moment, always moving out of reach whenever a vine lashed his way. Finally, he managed to avoid an attack and then leap to his left, before getting behind the middle atronarch and slashing deep cut across its back.
9 damage inflicted!
[12 ATT – 3 DEF]
Dagger Proficiency increased by 26%!
[50% toward level 1]
After this final slash, the middle atronarch died. The two remaining monsters separated. While they did, Jack quickly looked at his stats. He felt like he was getting to grips with things now. It seemed that successful hits with his dagger increased his weapon proficiency. The more damage he dealt, the more it increased. Not only that, but his stats showed that the amount of damage he dealt was calculating using his attack points against his enemies defence, with a slight random factor thrown in. Now that he knew how combat worked in Royaume, he just needed to finish off the final atronarchs.
The reaming creatures didn’t get any cleverer with the death of their friend; they still just came at him without any sort of caution. Despite that, the fight was made tougher by the fact that the flame atronarch approached to his left, and the poison one to his right. It meant he had to keep an eye out on both sides of him.
As the poison atronarch got close to him, Jack slashed out with his dagger. It was then that he felt a thorn stab into his back. He quickly realized that pain and HP loss weren’t the only things to accompany a thorn stab. When the flame atronarch pierced him, his skin felt like someone had held a blowtorch against it.
18HP lost!
[22 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP: 67/100]
This dropped him down to sixty-seven hitpoints after getting hit twice. He really needed to score some armor soon.
“Come on, Jack,” shouted Mav, yelling advice from the sidelines like a parent at a soccer match. “Stick one of ‘em.”
Jack ignored him, focusing on backing away from the atronarchs and waiting for an opening. He managed to hit the fire atronarch, knocking seven hitpoints from its total.
Dagger Proficiency increased by 16%!
[66% toward level 1]
He was pleased to see that his slashes were hurting them. Their HP was draining. He felt like his plan was working….until it wasn’t. The poison atronarch on his right lifted its left leg, indicating that it was going to move in that direction. Jack darted to the right to avoid it, only to realise – too late- that the atronarch had tricked him. Before he could dart out of the way, he felt a sting on his right shoulder. He jerked back out of instinct and saw a triangular-shaped thorn lodged in his skin. He pulled it out.
13HP lost!
[18 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP:54/100]
Debuff gained: Poison
- Minus 1HP per minute
- Speed reduced by 25%
Now it was Jack’s turn to lumber like a double decker bus. With the atronarchs wise to his tactics and his speed reduced, he needed to finish this quickly.
The fake image of himself was still there, stood to the side of the melee and staring at the peasant houses in the distance just as Jack had done earlier. Using the atronarch’s fake image of himself against them to confuse things, he circled around the atronarchs again. This time he slashed with as much fury as he could, moving his dagger left to right across their moss armor until his arm ached.
10 damage inflicted!
[12 ATT – 2DEF]
The fire atronarch’s HP bar fell to empty, and the mold-caked creature collapsed onto the floor.
Dagger Proficiency increased by 26%!
[92% toward level 1]
Improving his dagger proficiency was great, but he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t gaining exp from killing the atronarchs. There was something wrong here.
“One-on-one now,” shouted Mav. “Child’s play!”
It didn’t feel that way to Jack. His HP was draining as the poison coursed through his veins. Only the poison atronarch was left now, which was something, at least. Maybe he could do this after all.
Only a second later, he learned that his optimism was wasted. His stomach sank as he watched the water and fire atronarchs on the floor begin to move. Their HP bars re-filled, and they pushed themselves up from the ground. It was back to three-on-one again.
“We need to help him,” said Elena.
“No. He needs to learn,” replied Mav.
“There are better ways to teach a lesson.”
“You can’t learn to brawl from books.”
“Will you two quit bickering for a second?” said Jack. “I’m up to my ass in atronarchs.”
So that was why he hadn’t earned exp from killing the atronarchs; they weren’t actually dead yet. The question was, why?
He tried to attack again, draining some HP from the water atronarch but getting stuck with a thorn for the effort. The water atronarch pumped salt water into the newly-created wound on his arm. Jack rubbed his skin as if that would get rid of the pain.
15HP lost!
[19 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP: 37/100]
They
had the measure of him now. His HP was draining by the second. He’d wanted to prove himself to Elena and Mav by taking on the atronarchs alone, but he wasn’t stupid. It was time to ask for help. Before he opened his mouth, he realized that if he did ask them to help him, then he’d have failed. Damn it. He wasn’t ready to quit yet. He had to win his first battle on his own, so that he could prove himself.
“How are you getting on with finding that potion, Mav?” he asked.
Mav was still searching through his inner coat pockets. “I really need to organize this bloody thing some day,” he said.
“Maybe you should stop, Lord?” said Elena.
“Stop? I haven’t started yet. This is how I warm up for fights; by getting my ass pricked full of holes.”