by Elliot Burns
The atronarchs closed in on him. Jack was outnumbered, outmatched, and feeling woozier by the second. He knew the sensible thing was to ask for assistance, but he couldn't. He’d learned through bitter experience that you could doubt yourself in private, but you could never show fear in public.
He tried a few more slashes with his dagger. The flame atronarch roared in pain, and Jack was able to strike it and then dart away without taking a thorn in the face.
Dagger Proficiency increased by 18%!
Dagger levelled up to level 1!
[10% toward level 2]
New Attack unlocked: Force Strike
[By adding mana to your attacks, you can inflict greater damager. While you wait for your mana to drain into an attack, you are vulnerable.]
A new power! Things were looking up. Hopefully, his new attack would help him make short work of his moss-covered enemies.
“Don’t just attack them,” said Mav. “Use your noggin. Look at them.”
“When I’m done with these, we’ll find three more of them,” said Jack. “I’d like to see you get your soft arse pricked like tissue paper.”
“A toddler with a fork could take these down,” said Mav. “Stop using your anger on me and focus on these stupid mounds of mud.”
He’d seen enough of the atronarchs to last him a lifetime. He’d smelled their earthy stench so much that his nostrils were clogged with it. Mav knew something about them that he didn’t, but what was it? Was it something to do with their moss armor? Or the way that when they died, they didn’t actually die?
That was it. It seemed that the atronarchs had some kind of regenerative power, and they’d only stay dead for a short time. Earlier, they had seemed to move in tandem. It was as though they were one entity, just in three separate bodies. He needed to take all three of them out within a certain time, or they’d regenerate.
“I think someone finally understands,” said Mav.
Jack focused on the atronarchs. He needed to take them out quicker than he had before. Until now, he’d tried to be cautious and avoid getting hit - without much success - and that had meant that he hadn’t killed them in time. Now, he had to be bolder. Luckily, his new force strike would help him take them down quicker.
He gripped his dagger tight. He raised it up, focused on the poison atronarch, and charged. As he ran, he used force strike. He felt his mana slowly drain out of him. A purple light gathered around his dagger, and the blade seemed to vibrate in his hand.
He yelled as he ran toward them. As he got closer, he unleashed a force strike on the poison atronarch on the middle.
18 damage inflicted!
[22 ATT – 4 DEF]
The poison creature gave an unnerving series of squeals as the blade slashed its skin. It’s HP bar drained. Jack knew that his own bar was fading just as quickly, and now it was a race to see whose would hold out. The atronarch collapsed to the ground, leaving the other two left.
Dagger Proficiency increased by 5%!
[85% until level 2]
Hmm. It seemed that after hitting level one, his dagger proficiency levelled slower with each strike. He quickly checked his stats.
HP: 32/100
Mana: 85 /100
Damn. The poison debuff was still leeching his HP, and the force strike had sapped fifteen of his mana. He wasn’t going to hold out much longer; he just had to attack like crazy, and hope he killed them before his bar emptied.
He slashed until his arm muscles felt like it was on fire. The water atronarch shrieked in pain. Thorns stabbed into Jack’s arms and shoulders.
13HP lost!
[18 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP: 23/100]
Come on, he told himself. He hit the water atronarch again, killing it this time.
Dagger Proficiency increased by 3%!
[82% until level 2]
Now it was just him and the fire monster. With the poison coursing through his system, Jack’s HP had fallen even further, and he was down to just twenty-eight. He didn’t have long.
He focused on the fire atronarch. He held his dagger and let the mana seep out from him and build into his dagger. When his dagger vibrated, he knew it was ready. Then, just as he was about to unleash a force strike, the fire creature lashed at him with one of its vines.
15HP lost!
[19 ATT – 5DEF]
[HP: 13/100]
Between the thorn damage he’d taken and the poison, Jack’s own bar was almost empty. He had just one last chance.
The atronarch’s attack had reset his force strike, even though the fifteen mana points had been taken. He took one step back so that he was out of reach, and then let his force strike charge again. When his mana dropped to fifty-five points and his dagger rattled in his hand, he knew that his attack was ready for use. He leapt forward. He stabbed his blade deep into the atronarch’s head with as much power as he could muster, forcing it through the monster’s moss-like skull.
25 damage inflicted!
[22 ATT – 3 DEF]
He let out a long sigh of relief. His guess had been right. Now that he’d killed all three of the monsters, there was no way they could regenerate. He looked at their lifeless bodies, and he smiled. But as much as it pleased him to win his first fight, he was worried. His hitpoints were almost empty, and the poison debuff didn’t show any signs of stopping.
“We’ve let this get too far, you bunghole badger,” Elena said to Mav.
“He wouldn’t have listened to you. The lad is stubborn as hell. You have to let him learn from his mistakes, sometimes.”
Elena squinted for a few seconds, as if she was thinking about it. Then she nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. He might not listen to me all the time, and I need to realize that.”
“That’s the thing about heroes,” said Mav, still checking his coat pockets for the potion. “They think the world revolves around them. It’s an ego thing, I reckon.”
Elena crossed her arms. “You know what, Mav? I never thought of it that way. You might be right. Why do you think that is?”
“Well, I’d guess that they like to be the centre of attention. You see-”
“It’s lovely listening to you guys talk,” said Jack, interrupting them. “But I’m in trouble here.”
It was too late. The poisoned pumped through his veins, and the last millimeter of his HP bar emptied. The grey sky of Holuum faded, and everything in his vision started to turn black. Just before it faded completely, he saw Mav hold up a glass bottle full of health potion.
“Hey, Jack,” he said, shaking it and letting the liquid swish inside. “I found it!”
After that, the blackness took over completely, and Jack felt himself fade away.
Chapter Six
The darkness seemed to last hours while he floated on an endless sea of black. He swore that there were dreams in there too, fleeting images of his uncle attached to his machines, but when the gloom faded, and he opened his eyes, the images retreated to the crevices of his mind.
He awoke to the smell of dust. He found himself in a room with a low ceiling and dew-covered stone walls. To his left, next to a wall, was a table with a book on it. In the centre of the room was a giant block of stone that protruded from the floor. When his senses returned to him, he realized that he was back in the kingdom stone room. As he looked around, he had never felt so alone in all his life. He didn’t know if it was the gloomy walls or the after-effects of dying, but he just felt lonely. Before he could think about anything else, a series of messages appeared.
-You died! [Current death total: 1]
- Minus 15 flek [total: 179]
- Population morale decreased by 1
So, it seemed that if he died, he respawned back in his kingdom stone room. Not only that, but death brought penalties with it. As much as it pained him to lose some of the little flek he had, it was comforting to know that death wasn’t permanent. He had no doubt that there were people out there who would give up vast riches for the chance to come ba
ck after death.
He soon learned that it wasn’t all gloom. Despite dying in his first battle in Royaume, Jack had managed to kill the atronarchs. For his incredible show of valor, he was rewarded with a level increase.
106% exp gained!
Level up to level 1!
[6% toward level 2]
- HP increased to 165
- Stamina increased to 150
- Mana increased to 158
-Base Attack increased to 7 [14 with dagger]
-Base Defence not increased
- Base Speed increased to 6
[Your actions in combat determine how much each stat increases. If you use heavy attacks, your attack skill increases more. If you utilize blocking tactics, your defence will improve.]
Boost Points: 1
[When levelling up, you may add an extra boost to a stat.]
Choose a stat to boost [HP, Mana, Stamina, Att, Def, Speed]:
He was beginning to get a handle on how the levelling system worked. Looking at the differences in his attack, defence and speed increases, it seemed that fighting in one particular style would increase the relevant stat. So, dodging a lot in a fight would improve his speed, while smashing an enemy over and over with an axe would increase his attack. If he wanted to level up his character effectively, he was going to have to stick to one fighting style.
As well as increasing his HP, mana, stamina, attack, and defence when he levelled up, he could also add an extra wallop of stat power to one of those. This brought him to the age-old gaming conundrum of where to focus his upgrades. In the fight with the atronarchs, his poor attack points had meant that he took longer to kill them. Then again, his low HP count had resulted in him dying. With an extra few hitpoints, maybe he would have stayed alive long enough for Mav to give him a potion. Further, if his defence had been better then he wouldn’t have taken so much damage, and he wouldn’t have lost as many hitpoints in the first place. It was a chicken and egg scenario.
He decided that given how right his dagger had felt, that he would focus on a style of fighting to suit it. That meant speed. If he could dodge his enemies’ attacks and then react quickly enough with his own, then hitpoints and defence wouldn’t matter as much. He spent his boost point on speed.
Speed increased to 12!
The agony of the atronarchs’ thorn-pricks had gone now, but when he stretched out his arms, he saw that there were scars on his skin. He thought back to the fight. He was reluctant to go through something like that again. It wasn’t the battle so much as the experience of death, the feeling of slipping through murky water and swallowing it until he couldn’t breathe.
This was what his bravado had bought him. He could have ordered Elena and Mav to help him, but he’d been too proud. But then, he’d always been like this, hadn’t he? Back in school, he’d taken dozens of beatings from bullies just because he was too proud to ask for help.
Despite his victory, it was a little worrying. The atronarchs were level-one creatures, and his struggle to beat them meant that he still had a lot to learn. It was time to get started. Earlier, Elena had mentioned that his uncle had started a diary, hadn’t she? Now that he was down here, he needed to read it.
On the table to his left was his uncle’s diary. Although the book was thick, when he opened it, he saw that only a few pages had been written on. He recognized the handwriting immediately, because it matched the notebooks in Uncle Alfie’s apartment. With his heart pounding, he read his uncle’s words.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. I told myself I’d do it so that if the unthinkable happens and someone else gets trapped here, they’ll understand. Really, I think I’m writing it for me. I have so many thoughts rushing through my head that I need to let them out or I’ll go mad, as I’m suspecting Henry is.
We didn’t mean for this to happen. When Red Frog collapsed, I saw my dreams crumble. I’d always hoped that I could create a game with the perfect balance of immersion and artificial intelligence. Sure, they said it was dangerous, and in some, small, way, I understood the sanctions they placed on tech like that. I always felt that the perfect balance was there, somewhere. We just had to find it.
Luckily, my friend Henry Veik shared my dream. Even luckier, he his family are incredibly rich. Henry was able to buy some old consoles, mainframes and capsules from Red Frog when they went bust. Together with our new tech, Henry’s programming abilities, and the incredible fantasy land I’d worked on for years, we decided to make the most realistic, amazing fantasy game ever created.
We had settled on creating a strategy game with roleplaying aspects to it. We called it the Kingdom Stone Project. Our idea was simple; two to four players would enter Royaume, the name of my fantasy land, and they would become lords. Each lord would have a kingdom stone with pieces missing in it, and to win the game, you would have to get the pieces to complete your kingdom stone. Here was the kicker; you could only earn kingdom stone pieces by defeating the other lords and their armies.
Each player begins the game with an AI guide. I have named them ‘tachers’, and I wrote an extensive backstory for their order. They are beings of wisdom and knowledge who serve the lords of Royaume - for a price. I have written dozens of different tacher characters into the game, each with their own secrets and pasts. In this way, a player will have a different tacher randomly assigned to him each time he plays.
Not only that, but the Royaume is filled with thousands of other NPC characters. I don’t like to boast, but the level of detail in their personalities and histories is astounding. For this, I have my nephew Jack to thank. If I hadn’t started reading him bedtime stories about my imaginary land, I would never have developed it in such detail.
Of course, Henry had a hand in the NPC characters too. His algorithms for them are sublime. He bought reams and reams of data from social media companies and chat bots, and he added these to a database. In this way, the NPC characters gained real-life personalities. Mixed with my own fantasy creations, it made for a breathtakingly real and detailed cast of game characters.
We programmed the NPC characters so that they know it is a game, but until they’re asked direct game questions, they will pretend it is their real life. We found that this allowed for a delicate balance of immersion, whilst having the NPCs help the player with in-game things.
After years of development, tweaking and testing, it was ready enough for Henry and me to playtest it in full ourselves. You should have seen how excited we were. We were like naughty school kids setting off firecrackers. If only we’d known what would happen.
I don’t know if it was a problem with the artificial intelligence, or some catastrophic serve failure. It could even have been one single, innocuous, piece of code. Whatever the reason, the result was the the same – once we entered Royaume, we found that our menu systems were locked, and the command console wouldn’t respond to any of our instructions. In short, we had completely lost control of the game.
After trying everything we could think of, we settled on the horrible truth; since we couldn’t access any menus of any sort, we couldn’t leave the game. I realized then that this was why they said that full, complete immersion and artificial intelligence were dangerous. I finally believed them now, and it only took having my mind trapped in a game of my own creation for me to believe it.
It was Henry who first hypothesized a way for us to escape. He realized that since the game was won when one lord defeated the other to complete his kingdom stone, if Henry or I were to win, then the game would finish, and that would trigger the code that ended the game. It was a simple plan, with only one problem; only one of us could win.
We settled on the fact that only one of us could get out of the game at first. That meant the other person would need to lose voluntarily. Here is where things turned dark. You see, neither of us could agree on who would be the one to win, and thus, leave the game and try to fix things from the outside, where he’d be able to access the console. It was during our arguments on t
his subject that I started to suspect that things weren’t quite right in Henry’s head.
“You’ll leave me in here,” he said. “If I let you win and you leave, then you won’t try and fix it. You’ll just leave me here.”
“Why the hell would I do that?” I asked. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Why on earth would I leave my friend trapped in the game?
Henry couldn’t answer this. Instead, he said, “I’m the coder. Sure, you’ve got some expertise, but I know the game so much better than you. I know it like my own heartbeat. I should be the one to leave.”
Here, I felt a stab of paranoia of my own. I started to think that if Henry could conceive the idea that I would just leave him here, then perhaps that was because it was something that he would do. I began to worry. Could I trust him? Our situation had put my friend on edge so badly that I was seriously concerned for his mental wellbeing.
After that, our argument escalated. When I looked at Henry, I could almost see the paranoia infecting him. We both lost our cool. Things got heated. Soon, we couldn’t even look at each other. This was how we ended up playing the game for real. Not just to win points, but to escape Royaume. We left each other and retreated to our own castles, where we started to build our armies.