by Deck Davis
Part One
A Knife in the Back
Chapter One
5 Teams Remaining
Someone once said that me, you, and everything and everyone you ever knew would be gone someday. The best you could do was try and outrun the wave of death long enough to leave something lasting behind. It was a while before I’d hear the words, and even longer until I understood them. To see the seed of them begin to grow in me, I guess you’d have to go all the way back to the Bernli Virtual Battle Royale.
Before the words, before any kind of understanding, first, there was the knife in the back.
I can still picture it in my mind, clear as a movie projected on a gel-screen. I remember what I was doing and how I was feeling. I had my map open, didn’t I? Yeah, that seems right.
It was my in-game holo-map. It should have shown that I was alone, but something told me that it wouldn’t.
I stood in the upper floor of a cottage. You’d expect a place like this to be cozy, but instead it was spoiled by war and age. The timber beams above me were rotten, and the splits in the wood looked like they could widen at any minute and send the whole roof crashing down on me.
The cottage wasn’t real. Nothing here was real. From the daisy-patterned décor, the musty smell, to the way the timber window frames rattled when the wind hit them, it was all pretend. Yet, I remembered the house as if it was somewhere I’d really been to.
I started to get an uncomfortable feeling. The hairs on my neck tingled like my body was telling me to turn around, but I knew I was alone. All the same, I needed to check. I’d learned that people have instincts for a reason, and it’s never good to ignore them.
After commanding it with a just a thought, a blue rectangle of light flashed in front of me. It wasn’t quite solid. Beyond it, I could still see the ravaged walls of the cottage hallway. I could see the wooden banister on the stairs that led to the ground floor. If I wanted, I could have reached forward and put my hand through the rectangle.
Within seconds, the blue light changed. On the rectangle, the contours of a map started to appear. The edges were lined by mountains, which were put there to stop us from straying beyond the boundaries of the map. The rest of the terrain followed suit; on the holographic rectangle, I saw marshland, rivers, swamps, and even a few roads. Clusters of buildings formed line by line, color by color, spun like a spider’s web. I saw a church, a school, a neighborhood of houses.
In the south west, flashing bright, was a lonely dot that showed my location on the map. Someway east, probably a mile or two if the scale was right, were three dots which highlighted where the rest of my team members were.
I breathed out. The cold in the air turned it into what looked like steam. Relief flowed through me. I was alone in the cottage. I was cut off from the rest of my team, but that had been the plan. They had to be somewhere else, keeping the other teams occupied so that I could do this alone.
A dot flashed up. A red dot, angry looking. The hue of danger. It was around fifty meters away from my location and getting closer.
Always trust your instincts.
Someone was coming my way. They shouldn’t have been, since the battle was being fought in another part of the map, but here they were. There was a solitary enemy, a red blip, taking a swaying path toward me.
I closed the map. Suddenly, I felt exposed in the centre of the upper landing, so I ducked into a bedroom to my right. I stepped in and stood behind the door, leaving it open just a little, but still hiding myself from view.
It never paid to close doors completely. It was the biggest sign that you were there. People see a closed door and think Hmm, someone must have closed this. I better be careful. An open door says the opposite. It says Come in, there’s nobody here. Don’t worry! Normally, when I was looting, I’d close doors behind me. Today was different.
Now I had to wait. This really got to me. I was never good with waiting. Why wait when you could be doing something? Why should I cool my heels when the other three members of my team were across the map - a man down? I couldn’t join them just yet, though. I had to be patient.
To calm myself, I quickly checked my gear.
Iron Sword [Level 1]
- A standard, easily lootable piece of weaponry. Comes as default with Storm Knight class
[+60 Att]
Leather Chest Piece
- A chest piece made from a competent armorer using decent materials. Nothing special but will stop basic blades and arrows.
[+50 Def]
Iron Boots
- Good, solid, metal boots. And you drop a piano on your toes and barely feel it.
[+15 Def]
Hear Evil, Speak Evil Rune
- A non-standard battle rune
[Increased movement and sound detection]
Wind Dash Rune
- A standard speed rune for storm knights
[5% movement speed increase]
Copy Cat Rune
- Rare rune, unlockable only by certain classes
[Create a copy of yourself]
Minor Mana Potion
- Restores mana
[+25 Mana]
Potion of Chaos
-A potion brewed by a mad alchemist, with the effect unknown until used
[Effect unknown]
It wasn’t the best looting I had ever done, but then, I’d usually spend more time on it. Today, in this battle, time was not my friend, and that made it harder to wait while someone approached the cottage.
Come on. The sand’s draining out of the glass. I need to be somewhere!
My patience was rewarded soon after, when I heard the tell-tale sounds of footsteps. Someone was in the cottage. They were trying to be quiet, and they were pretty good at it, but I was even better at hearing. I tapped my wrist and felt the touch of cold metal on my fingertips, and I was glad that I’d equipped the Hear Evil, Speak Evil rune that granted me better hearing when hostile players came within a certain range of me.
Most fighters chose combat-heavy runes, ones that granted better critical hit chances or that gave them shields which activated when their health reached 5%. I took a different approach. Where possible, it was better to avoid a fight, or to at least get warning of an enemy’s approach so that I could stick a sword in his belly before he even knew I was there.
I brought up my map. The red dot was getting closer, and soon the staircase groaned as boots thumped up it. Since my enemy, whoever he was, was moving, I could see him on the map, but I didn’t need to worry about him seeing me. If you stayed still for long enough, you wouldn’t be visible on a map.
I leaned back, hidden by the door, and I looked through the half inch gap between the door and its frame. I saw my enemy.
It was a man. He was just short of six feet tall and wore black metal armor that looked like it had been scorched. Under his armor he wore a baggy red shirt, with billowing sleeves that made him look like he belonged in the court of King Henry VIII. In his right hand he held a katana with a long, curved blade. A red pulse ran from its tip down to its hilt and then back up again. This was a sign that the sword could cause elemental damage (probably fire). Above the man’s head was a block of capitalized text that displayed his name:
Rynk [Team Bassinger]
Rynk looked around with the lazy manner of a man who was out for a stroll rather than fighting in a battle royale. For a second his gaze settled on the door that blocked me from his view, but he didn’t linger on it.
Instead, he reached into an inventory bag which was looped over his left shoulder. It was a basic level 1 bag, the kind that indicated that Rynk hadn’t done much looting yet, (since level 2 and 3 bags were easy to find). He unclasped the bag
, reached inside, and fumbled for something. What was he going to take out? A potion? A trap?
No. I looked on in surprise as he pulled out a sandwich. Two slices of bread with cheese in the middle. It was a measly looking snack, though it made my stomach churn with hunger all the same.
I’d only discovered the joys of cheese when I was a teenager. For years, my mom had told me that I was lactose intolerant, and that any kind of dairy would make my stomach bloat, ending with me clogging up the toilet. The thing about Mom was that she was a hypochondriac; not for herself, but for me. The slightest thing happened to me, and it became a time to panic. If I scratched my hand on a piece of wood, she’d become convinced I’d gotten tetanus. The one time I felt a little ill after eating cheese, she assumed my body would go into a fit if I ever tried to eat dairy again.
It was only when I ate a burger with a piece of cheese that was stealthy placed underneath the lettuce, that I realized that Mom was wrong. She was wrong about a lot of stuff when it came to her precious Harry and his health, but God, I missed her hypochondria now.
Today, my belly was empty; I preferred not to eat before battles. Early on in my VBR career I had heard about a guy who had to pull out because the adrenaline of battle had seeped out of his avatar and into his real body, and he’d apparently had explosive diarrhea. Maybe it was just an urban legend, but there was no way I was letting that happen to me.
As Rynk munched on his snack I thought about what to do. My own sword was a level 1 iron sword. It was a basic blade I, as a Storm Knight, started with by default. Since our plan today had called for speed, I hadn’t bothered to loot for anything better.
Now, I started to wish that I had. Even without the elemental damage, Rynk’s katana was a higher-level weapon than mine. In a fair fight, Rynk would have the upper hand. Luckily, this wasn’t a fair fight.
You see, when you move around in battle, you get displayed as a red dot on the map to anyone within a certain radius. Before a battle, you can equip runes that hide your dot for longer distances, but other people can also equip runes that increase their enemy detection rate. Either way, I was safe here. If you stayed completely still for longer than ten seconds, your dot disappeared. I hadn’t moved around since I’d picked up Rynk’s dot on my map, so the odds were that he didn’t know I was even here.
All I had to do was pick my moment and attack.
“I know you’re there,” said Rynk, his words mumbled through a mouthful of bread and cheese.
I stayed still. Maybe it was a trick. Perhaps he had no idea I was there, and he was just trying to sound out any would-be hiders.
Stay still; pick your moment, I told myself. He’s doesn’t know you’re here.
“You’re behind one of the doors,” he said.
This lessened my options somewhat. If Rynk knew I was here, a fight was unavoidable. The question was, where was the rest of his team? In team VBR’s, you moved in fours. The other three guys on my team were a mile away right now, but teams usually stuck together. I found it hard to believe that Rynk would be alone. Maybe his friends were waiting nearby, staying still so that their dots didn’t appear.
Unless…
Was Rynk on this part of the map for the same reason I was? No. Not possible. He couldn’t know about the secret, could he?
Either way, I was out of options. I couldn’t leave, because there was something I needed to find either in this house, or in the one across the street. Sure, I could have climbed out of a window and ran back to my team, but we would have been screwed. I was here to find something, and without it, there was no way we could win this battle royale. The odds were so heavily against us, that we’d be slaughtered unless I found what I was looking for.
Act first, think later. It wasn’t a mantra that I liked, but it was one I’d have to go by right now. I slowly raised my sword, shifting the grip so that I was in an optimal fighting stance. I took a breath, and then I pushed open the door and rushed out of the room. I swung my blade before even looking around, hoping to score a pre-emptive strike on Rynk.
Missed!
My blade met thin air. Rynk was gone. I looked around. There was no sign of him. It was like he’d vanished.
Something fell onto my head. Something tiny. Something that smelled like cheese.
I looked up to see Rynk glued to the ceiling above me, clinging to it impossibly with one hand, like a spider. In his right hand he held his sandwich, and another crumb of cheese fell from it and hit my forehead.
Without giving him a second to react I jumped and thrust upwards with my sword, aiming for his belly. Rynk scuttled to the left but cried out in pain as the tip of my iron scratched across his thigh. A spray of blood splattered out, and he crashed off the ceiling and onto the floor.
Critical hit!
60HP damage
Now we were level, both standing on the floor. I stared into his decayed face, and I wondered why the hell he’d chosen to have his avatar look like that.
Rynk drew his katana and held it aloft in one hand, with his sandwich in the other. Only a quarter of it was left. Not wanting to waste it, he stuffed it into his mouth.
He mumbled something at me, but the mound of bread and cheese between his teeth made it unintelligible.
I backed away, surprised at the way he was acting. Against all my instincts, I didn’t just attack. Instead, I waited for him to finish chewing.
“Maygh weth couth tragh,” he said.
I sighed. “Maybe you want to finish chewing.”
He chewed. The rotten skin on his face stretched with each movement of his jaws. Finally, he swallowed.
“I said, partner, maybe we can trade.”
“Trade?” I asked.
“Swap things of value at an agreed price for mutual benefit,” said Rynk. “You know, partner? A trade?”
“You do know that this is a VBR? Not the Rosewater virtual market?”
“Yeah, I had noticed. It’s not my first VBR,” he said. He then squinted as he read the name tag above my head, “…Harry Wollenstein. Huh. Not the most exciting VBR name, is it?”
I shrugged. “It’s my name.”
“Well, Harry Wollenstein, what’dya say we don’t knock ten bells of shit out of each other right now, and instead we trade a few things like gentlemen. Y’know, get back to our teams in one piece? Plenty of time to die later.”
What the hell was Rynk doing? This wasn’t how you played a virtual battle royale. The object was to kill all your enemies until you were the last one standing. You didn’t chat, and you didn’t barter with each other. You certainly didn’t spend valuable bits important a sandwich into the VBR for your avatar to eat.
Sure, I knew that things like that existed. Ever since the bit crypto currency dropped its ‘crytpo’ status and became a universally-accepted legal tender, con merchants had come up with all manner of things to part you from your bits.
In fact, the entire system was set up to part everyone – fighters and spectators alike - from their bits. The hunger pangs you sometimes felt in VBRs weren’t real; they were just programmed. Fast food companies were known to pay VBR overseers to dial up hunger meters in order to get fighters to buy food to take into the VBR with them. I didn’t fall for that kind of bull. If you just ignored the hunger, it didn’t affect you.
It was the same with the pain. Sure, it hurt when you entered a low-level VBR like this one that had the pain-meters turned up to sucker in crowds, but the agony wasn’t real. Once the VBR was over, you wouldn’t be hurt. Your avatar might have needed healing, but physically you’d be fine.
I was sure that Rynk was trying to trick me. Trying to get me to lower my guard so he could slice through my leg with his katana. Two could play at that game.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s a little…strange…but we can trade.”
“Come on then, partner, what have you got?”
I shifted my inventory bag off my back. It was a level-2 bag, so it resembled a rucksack. I put it on the ground i
n front of me and opened it. Accessing my system menu, accomplished by the mere thought of ‘accessing’ it, I scrolled through my permissions.
Currently, only members of my team had permission to see my inventory, which meant that Sera, Vorm, and Clyde could see my gear, and only when I was in range. Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to give Rynk permission to look, but I wanted to try.
- Add permission: user: Rynk [Team Bassinger]
Are you sure you want to give user access to inventory? Y/N
- Yes
Permission rule added.
I gave Rynk ‘read only’ access to my inventory, and I set the distance as 0.15 meters, meaning he’d have to get close to me to see it.
“Go ahead and fill your boots,” I said. “I don’t have much, but maybe we can cut a deal.”
Rynk looked confused. “I can’t see.”