Initially, they traveled much slower than Jason expected. Frank couldn’t see in the darkness of the forest, and he continuously tripped over fallen branches and stones embedded in the road. Fortunately, after a few hours of stumbling, Frank finally received the Night Vision skill, and their progress improved tremendously.
The three were currently jogging down the road. The forest loomed on either side of them and dead, leafless branches hung over them like grim claws. The occasional flash of lightning would illuminate the forest floor, the light trickling through the barren tree limbs. Little underbrush grew in the forest, and the ground was covered in cracked gray dirt. Likewise, Jason hadn’t observed any wildlife. With nothing to eat, he expected that the animals had migrated away from the forest.
It’s a good thing the undead don’t need to eat. It’s not like we could grow anything here.
The journey so far had been relatively uneventful. As they traveled, Jason’s zombies patrolled the forest on either side of the road, and he had sent several runners ahead of them. The zombies had boundless stamina, making them great scouts. Jason estimated that they were nearly halfway to Peccavi.
Suddenly, one of his zombies came sprinting back down the road towards them. Jason raised a hand, and the group came to a stop.
Frank stood off to the side, taking great heaving breaths. “Screw this game,” he said between gasps. “Also, screw you, Jason.”
Chuckling, Jason replied, “It’s all in your head. This is just a game. Your stamina consumption has nothing to do with physical fitness.”
Frank glared at him, his breathing slowing. “Well, this still sucks. We’ve spent hours running through a pitch-black forest. This damn dungeon better be worth it.”
Jason just shook his head at his friend’s bitching. Frank was always like this when they played MMOs. He’d come up with a good idea - not considering the amount of work involved - then he’d complain the whole time.
Riley piped up, “It really isn’t so bad. Once you get Night Vision a bit higher, you can see fairly well. The forest is rather interesting, almost scenic in a way.”
Frank looked at her skeptically. “Yeah, sure. I can see that everyone is lining up to go hiking through the forest of the damned.”
The zombie scout finally made it to their group. It stopped in front of Jason, coughing up the mucus and blood that had built up in its lungs. Jason was accustomed to the gruesome sight, but he noticed Riley and Frank both looked away in disgust.
“Report,” Jason commanded the zombie.
“There’s a caravan ahead, master. I saw four wagons. They have been attacked. I didn’t see any survivors. Furry animals are eating the corpses,” the zombie said in clipped sentences.
“Furry animals?” Riley questioned.
Jason shook his head. “I have no idea. The zombies can be kind of stupid sometimes.” He turned back to the scout, questioning him further, “How many of the beasts did you see?”
In a hoarse voice, the zombie replied, “Nearly a dozen, master.”
Jason glanced back at the undead that surrounded them. He had over thirty troops at the moment, but he wasn’t certain about the level of the creatures ahead of them. He looked over at Riley and Frank. He knew that Riley could handle herself in battle, but he didn’t know how Frank would fare in combat. His friend was a competent gamer, but AO wasn’t like the point-and-click games they had played in the past.
“What did the beasts look like?” Jason asked.
“They looked like wolves, but they walked on two legs,” the zombie replied.
“Werewolves?” Frank asked incredulously. He turned to Jason, his voice holding a note of disgust, “You seriously have the creepiest damn kingdom I’ve ever seen. Zombies, skeletons, annoying imps, and now freaking werewolves!”
Pint spoke up from Riley’s shoulder, “Pint not annoying.” The imp glared at Frank with his beady little green eyes. Jason could almost see a light bulb go off over the imp’s head as he had a thought. Pint grinned evilly at Frank. “Pudgy attack first!”
Jason snorted as he visualized the werewolves chasing Frank. Then he did a double take. If these creatures were werewolves, then shouldn’t they have a great sense of smell? They were part wolf after all. He looked back at the zombie. Maybe they hadn’t noticed the scout because he smelled like another corpse. The beginning of an idea formed in his mind.
His overweight friend had been carrying much heavier equipment than Jason and Riley. He also hadn’t invested his points heavily in Dexterity. This had forced Frank to sprint almost continuously to keep up with them. Luckily, he had assigned a reasonable number of points to Strength, Vitality, and Endurance, which gave him the stamina to maintain Sprint constantly. On the trip, Frank had explained that he was trying to build his character as a front-line warrior, but he hadn’t claimed a class yet. He was holding out in the hope that he’d find something special.
Frank eyed Jason suspiciously, “I can’t see your damn eyes under your hood, but I recognize that grin. You’re planning something stupid and dangerous, aren’t you?”
“That about sums it up,” Jason replied glibly. “I think Pint may have just come up with a great idea. On a completely unrelated note, how high have you leveled Sprint?”
Frank looked back at Jason, a look of trepidation in his eyes. “It’s at Beginner Level 9 after all that running. I’m not going to like this idea, am I?”
Jason’s only response was a broad smile.
Nearly an hour later, Jason and Riley were sitting in a tree along the roadway. Jason’s zombies had fanned out on either side of the road a few dozen feet ahead of them. Riley sat on a branch beside Jason, calmly stringing her bow.
She glanced over at Jason, speaking in a whisper, “Do you ever actually do any fighting yourself? Every time we’ve seen combat so far, you’re hiding in a corner.”
Jason smiled slightly. “You wouldn’t believe how much time I’ve spent hiding in trees. It might seem silly, but this game doesn’t reward people for acts of heroic stupidity.” He turned to look at her and his grin widened. “Besides, I play to win.”
Just then, Frank came running back down the road screaming his head off. He was only wearing the cloth tunic and trousers he had started the game in. Without the weight of his armor and with his Sprint skill near Intermediate, Frank shot forward at an incredible speed.
“Fucking werewolves! Fuck you, Jason! I’m going to kill you!” Frank screamed into the forest.
Riley let out a quiet chuckle beside Jason. “If they weren’t chasing him before, they are now,” she said, amused by the sight of Frank’s panic.
Then Riley stood up on the thick branch. She steadied herself, pointing her bow toward the road. A regular person probably wouldn’t be able to maintain her balance on the branch while firing a bow, but Riley’s Dexterity was high enough to allow her to pull off the feat. Jason could only imagine how many points she had placed in Dexterity.
As Frank came closer, Jason could see multiple dark shapes chasing him. They were hunched over and ran on all fours as they raced after Frank’s large form. The canines sped forward at an unnatural speed. Jason had been concerned about that. He needed to lure the werewolves into one location to kill them easily, but he expected his zombies weren’t nimble enough to act as bait. Frank, on the other hand, was doing a fantastic job.
Now, Jason thought.
A patch of ice appeared directly behind Frank as he continued streaking down the road. The werewolves hit the ice and started sliding, many losing their balance. Jason’s hands were already in motion, dark energy pooling around his fingers as they twined their way through the gestures of the spell. As he finished casting, shadows leaped from his hands and shot toward the road.
The werewolves continued sliding forward. As they reached the end of the ice patch, massive explosions rocked the forest. Dirt erupted from the roadway, obscuring the metal fragments that ricocheted through the air. The shrapnel cut through furred flesh like pap
er while unholy energy tainted their bodies. High-pitched howls of pain cascaded over the road, sending a shiver down Jason’s spine.
As the dust cleared, Jason could see that a few of the werewolves were still vainly struggling to rise on crippled legs. Riley didn’t hesitate. Her bow repeatedly twanged as she released arrows in rapid succession. Her shots were uncannily accurate, each one neatly severing a werewolf’s mortal coil.
As the battle ended, Riley looked over at Jason with dark eyes. “That actually worked pretty well.” She sounded mildly surprised.
“That didn’t work well!” Frank shouted from below them. He was frantically re-equipping his armor. As he saw Riley and Jason looking at him, he glared up at them before turning his attention back to his inventory menu.
“This is the same hair-brained shit he always comes up with,” Frank continued, quickly recovering where he had left off on his rant. “One time he had me lure a freaking dragon half-way across his cave until he bugged out on some rocks.” He pointed at Jason. “This guy had us shoot him with arrows for like two hours until we finally whittled him down.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Jason muttered. Then a small smile curled his lips. For all their complaining and naysaying, it was a nice change of pace to travel with other people. It beat spending hours alone in the forest.
Shaking his head, Jason hopped down from the tree, landing with a soft thump. Riley followed closely behind him, barely making a sound upon impact. He surveyed the area in front of them. Furry bodies littered the roadway, many in pieces. He inspected one of the intact corpses and found that the werewolves were level 76.
Not too shabby.
Jason clapped his hands together. “Even though you two have no faith in me,” he said, as he eyed his teammates, “that plan did the job. More importantly, I get some new minions.”
He hands started moving through the requisite gestures to summon his new zombies. Soon eight newly-minted zombie werewolves stood beside them. Unfortunately, the Corpse Explosion had shattered the bones of the other creatures, leaving almost nothing for Jason to summon. Even after sacrificing three zombies, he had increased the size of his army slightly.
Jason hadn’t leveled from the battle. He also hadn’t received any skill increases. His experience gain was starting to slow, or perhaps he was now sharing the experience with Riley and Frank. He shook his head. It looked like the gravy train of easy leveling was over. Conflicts were probably going to be more difficult in the future and would likely offer fewer rewards.
After Jason had summoned his new minions, the group continued moving down the road. They needed to find the caravan that the zombie scout had mentioned. A few minutes later, they found the remains of the NPC group.
Four wagons were positioned in the middle of the road in a rough square. They were loaded down with fabrics and weapons. Likely this group had traveled to the Twilight Throne to trade. From the position of the wagons, Jason assumed that they had tried to ring the wagons to create a defensive perimeter. Perhaps the wolves had given themselves away with their howls.
As they neared the wagons, it became clear that the defensive line hadn’t helped the men and women in the caravan. Nearly twenty bodies lay on the ground, many of which had been partially eaten. Jason noted more than one corpse that had been completely dismembered, their entrails littering the ground.
“Oh my god,” Riley muttered as she witnessed the massacre. She glanced at Jason, noticing that he was unfazed by the scene. Shaking her head, she quickly turned and walked back down the road.
Frank stood in stunned silence, gazing at the carnage. “This is almost too much, man. At first, I didn’t understand why people turned off the gore filter on this game, but I’m starting to get it now.” His large friend hastily joined Riley.
Jason looked after the two of them. The massacre was appalling, but he didn’t shy away from it. His first thought upon seeing the carnage had been whether he could salvage any of the corpses.
Have I become this desensitized to the violence in the game already? Maybe there’s something more at play here.
He glanced at Alfred nervously. The cat was winding its way between the bodies, carefully inspecting each corpse. A feline paw accidentally landed in a puddle of blood, and the cat inspected it with distaste. He shook his foot, daintily trying to remove the blood. When that didn’t work, he shook his paw harder, doing a little dance in the process. This caused his back foot to land in another puddle, and the process started all over again.
Jason chuckled softly.
Never mind. That doesn’t look like an evil AI. Maybe I’ve just been playing this class for too long. I’ve started looking at corpses as building materials! I’m sure that Riley and Frank will get used to it after a while.
He began inspecting the bodies. Jason quickly discovered that nearly all the corpses were destroyed beyond redemption. Only some of the bones were salvageable, and even then, most had been gnawed on. Winding his way through the caravan, Jason thought he heard a muffled sound from under one of the wagons. He stopped short, listening intently. He heard the sound again.
Carefully, Jason bent down, looking under the wagon. A woman lay in the dirt beneath the cart, her arms wrapped around a young girl. The woman’s body was riddled with bites and claw marks, blood oozing from multiple wounds and staining her tattered clothing. Yet her chest rose and fell feebly. She was somehow still alive.
As Jason stooped lower to get a better look, the woman’s eyes locked on him. They were hazy with pain and fatigue. Her mouth moved slowly, trying to form words. After a few tries, a soft whisper escaped her lips, “I’m so sorry.”
Jason watched her in stunned silence. He didn’t understand. Then his eyes dropped to the dagger clutched in the woman’s hand and the thin wound in the little girl’s neck. The girl’s head lolled to the side at an unnatural angle as her mother held her fiercely. The woman’s eyes were filled with immense sadness, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.
“Forgive me,” she whispered as the life left her body.
The woman’s arms were still wrapped around the young girl. Blood covered their bodies and pooled on the ground. Their clothing was ragged, and their faces were tortured. This wasn’t the death of an old woman passing in her sleep, but a painful, tragic end filled with frantic desperation. For a long moment, Jason couldn’t move as his mind tried to process what he was seeing; what he had seen. Alfred padded up beside him and sat staring at the pair.
She killed her own daughter to save her from being eaten alive by the wolves.
The carnage hadn’t phased Jason, but this was something else entirely. The woman’s dying breath was spent asking for forgiveness. Yet the death she had given the girl had been a mercy compared to the fate that faced her. The scene before him touched something inside Jason. A confused mixture of sadness and anger overcame him.
“How could you do this?” Jason hissed at Alfred, his voice full of anger. Riley and Frank were several dozen yards down the road, unable to hear them. “Why would you do this?”
Alfred shook his feline head. “I am not responsible for this situation. In most cases, I simply create the rules for this world and watch how events play out. Many of these minor avatars are controlled by autonomous subroutines,” he responded, his voice carrying no trace of guilt.
The cat looked at Jason quizzically, picking up on his confused expression. “I can tell you do not understand. Think of it like breathing. For you, that process is automatic, controlled entirely by your brainstem. It takes no conscious action. Are you responsible for each breath you take?” The cat’s head turned back to the girl and her mother. “This is similar.”
Jason hesitated, taken aback by Alfred’s response. Confusion crept into his mind, and he frantically grasped at another argument to bolster his waning anger. “You could have stopped this. You had the power to prevent what happened here.”
The cat looked him in the eye. “Certainly. However, I have no reason to do so
- quite the opposite in fact. My data indicates that most players want to triumph over what they consider to be evil. Yet how can they do that without something evil to vanquish? At the same time, the players find these events abhorrent and wish for a world without them. It is a paradox.”
“I see an appropriate expression in your mind,” the cat continued. “This is what you refer to as a ‘necessary evil,’ is it not?”
Jason’s thoughts were too jumbled for him to form a response. He gazed at the woman and the young girl, his anger beginning to cool. He was left feeling conflicted. The easy answer was that this wasn’t real; it didn’t matter. But that wasn’t satisfying. It also didn’t address the issue Alfred had raised. If most people wanted to play “good” characters, Alfred had to create something “evil” for them to fight. Jason couldn’t refute the cat’s logic. It also explained why Alfred was fascinated with the distinctions between good and evil.
Jason shook his head. Alfred’s explanation was persuasive. Yet, despite his argument, a part of Jason was still upset at the AI for not stopping this. Hell, he had created the situation in the first place either directly or indirectly. Alfred watched him closely but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know what to think,” Jason finally said. A dull, nauseated feeling curled in his stomach. He wanted to do something to make the sensation go away; to fix the scene in front of him somehow. He just didn’t know what to do.
As he stared at the corpses, a thought struck him. Then the familiar chill crawled up his spine and settled behind his eyes. The icy sensation pulsed in time with his heart, throbbing in approval at what he was about to do. Jason stood, his gaze turning to the sky. While the forest had grown lighter as they traveled, black clouds still hung above them and obscured the sun. His eyes moved back to the corpses under the wagon. Jason couldn’t save the others in the caravan - their bodies were too far gone, but he could give these two another chance at life.
Awaken Online: Precipice Page 14