Metamorphosis Online Complete Series Boxed Set; A Gamelit Fantasy RGP Novel: You Need A Bigger Sword, The New Queen Rises, Reign With Axe & Shield

by Natalie Grey

  “Are you…did you get a job with their marketing team?” Gracie shook her head at him as she went to the kitchen. “I smell pizza.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look, you get into the game, and I’ll feed you pizza while you roll a character.”

  “That’s a hard no from me, chief.” Gracie grabbed a slice, saw the look on his face, and sighed. “Okay, how about this? I’ll come eat in the living room, and you can play so I can see the game.”

  “No,” Alex moaned softly, although he chuckled when Gracie grabbed the whole pizza box. “I swear, one of these days, science will discover a portal in your stomach.”

  “If they could fix it, I’d save a lot of money,” Gracie said around a mouthful of cheese. She chewed and swallowed. “Okay, so what’s so important about me playing the game?”

  “It’s just…” Alex flopped on the couch and gazed up at the ceiling. “It’s so cool. I can’t even tell you.” He rolled his head to look at her. “I did the whole starting zone, and now I want to do more. But I also want to hang out there to help you because I want you to see it because it’s so freaking cool.”

  “Well, hold up there, I haven’t even made an account.” Gracie stuffed the rest of the slice in her mouth, wiped her fingers off on a paper towel, and grabbed her laptop.

  “I…might have set one up for you. You left your wallet, so I had your credit card info.”

  “You—” She shook her head, laughing. “What’s a day without a little light credit card fraud?”

  “Yeah, yeah. No jokes about that where my boss could hear, though.”

  “Oh, solid point.” Gracie took another slice, rolled it up, and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth, nodding at the VR headset. “Oh-hay. Hoo me uh.”

  “Women,” Alex said whimsically. “Such graceful, delicate creatures.” He brought up his phone and took a picture. “I’m sending you this for posterity. Seriously, I swear your jaw unhinges when you eat.”

  Gracie chewed and swallowed. “And don’t you forget it.” She guffawed when the picture came through. “All right, I’m banking this. The next time Matt gets on my case about being a cocktail waitress, I’m sending him this pic.” She wiped her fingers again. “How do I put this stuff on?”

  “Ah, right.” Alex began searching through boxes. “So, here are the undergloves. Watch the dangling bits, those go on your arms. Oh, crap, forgot the belt. Arms up.”

  Gracie pulled on the gloves as Alex fastened the belt and got out the actual headset. The gloves tracked the movements of her hands and the rig attached to her elbow and shoulders, connecting across the back and hooking up to a piece that came up from the belt. Similar connections went down both legs, hooking up at the knees and ankles.

  “Well, this isn’t going to be quick to get into and out of,” she commented. “Couldn’t they just do one of those things like the dance games, where it tracks your movements?”

  “You can do that,” Alex said dismissively. “But the suit is more accurate, and it has haptics.”

  “Sure, sure. Having my elbow buzz really puts me into a game.”

  “You’re joking, but it actually does. Just you wait. Ready for the headset?” At her nod, Alex settled it over her head and strapped it in place. It was shiny and white and had elegantly sculpted edges, and it cocooned her in silence.

  “Uh…Alex? Is the game on?”

  She could feel the faint tremors in the floor from him walking around, and then his voice popped up in her ear. “Turning it on now. If you link the headsets, you get a voice chat even in-game. Okay. You ready?”

  His voice had taken on an almost awed tone.

  “Yeah.” Gracie was laughing. “I’m ready for this crazy, mystical—”

  Her voice broke off as blue burst into her vision. A ripple of harp music sounded, and she felt her jaw hanging open. She was formless, floating in the middle of a void filled with swirls of light. The music came from all around her.

  “Okay,” she managed after a moment, “I get it.”

  “Yeah.” The voice came from beside her, and she turned to see Alex “walking” toward her. He’d made a character that looked a lot like him in real life: tall, with very close-cropped brown hair, only he was a lot more muscular in the game, and his eyes were brilliant blue instead of their actual brown. “Yeah,” he repeated. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  Gracie could only nod. Then she looked around and down at herself. She didn’t seem to exist. “Wait, what do I look like?”

  “That’s the first thing to tackle. You open a systems menu by holding three fingers out and then tipping them up, like this.” He demonstrated. “They wanted something you wouldn’t do by accident.”

  “Right.” Gracie brought up the menu. “New character. All right. Female, yeah. Ooh, okay. Do I want to be a human? I’m not sure I do. What are all of these?” She scrolled through the races, first bringing up Aosi.

  A woman sprang into being in front of her. Tall and stately, she had an unearthly purple sheen to her skin, and her long white hair flowed behind her, twisting and swirling as though it were underwater.

  Gracie scrolled to Ocru and jumped when her character shrank, becoming much more human-sized. The figure had defined muscles and tiny tusks at the corners of her mouth. Her hair was black now, and her eyes blazed gold. Her skin had a greenish sheen.

  “Where do I see my stats bonuses?” Gracie asked Alex. She was scrolling along the side.

  “Race doesn’t affect stats in this game.”

  “What the hell? What kind of lawless fantasy wasteland is this? Society has rules.”

  Alex was laughing. “Think of it as a nice blank slate. Try Piskies; they’re hilarious.”

  Gracie selected Piskie and started laughing when her character became knee-high. The miniature humanoid was bouncing on her feet and looking around, her hair bright pink and piled into an elaborate gravity-defying hairdo.

  Human was the only race that Gracie hadn’t tried, and she sighed and shrugged when she saw a fairly standard human woman pop up. As with the other races, sliders on the right-hand side of the screen could adjust colors, hairstyle, and other features, but all of the ones for humans were normal, boring human colors.

  Gracie went back to the Aosi and grinned. “Yeah. I’m gonna be a tall…I don’t know. Tall. Let’s start there. Height slider up.”

  “What class are you playing?” Alex asked her.

  “I don’t know. Probably a tank; that’s what I usually play. What are the tank classes?” She looked at his leather armor. “What do you play?”

  “There are three classes at the start,” Alex explained. He watched as Gracie picked a shade of purple for her skin and began scrolling through eye colors. “They grouped them sort of oddly. So you have Fighter—that’s probably easiest to explain. That’s anyone who fights up close, and then you’d spec into DPS or tank, rogue or warrior, et cetera, right?”

  “Weird, but I guess I can see it. What’s DPS? Melee?”

  “Nah, it’s…DPS means Damage Per Second. In that context, it’s someone who isn’t a tank and isn’t a healer. So they do damage, right?”

  “Okay. I’ll learn all the lingo sometime, it’s just slightly different from D&D and that’s going to fuck with me. Should I go with my face? Yeah, I’ll go with my face.”

  “It works,” Alex commented. “Sometimes it looks super weird, though. Especially Piskies, but I looked weird as an Aosi. Anyway, I’m a Summoner. That’s anyone who fights with a companion—that’s hunters, warlocks, and necromancers.”

  “Ooh, ‘kay.” Gracie settled on pale purplish skin with deep blue hair and eyes. Now her fingers were hovering over the three icons on the bottom: a sword, a wolf, and a stylized explosion.

  “Yeah. Then there’s Senders—anyone who does ranged damage or healing. Mages, clerics, that sort of thing. So what happens is you pick one, you get this basic starter pack of some magic and some non-magic abilities, and then you evolve according to your play style.”r />
  “Huh. Okay.” Gracie considered. “Fighter it is, then.” She double-tapped the sword icon in the lower right corner and her Aosi female changed from plain white pants and a shirt to basic leather armor. There was a stick in one hand. “Good to go. What about you? Got any pets yet? A wolf? A demon? A…zombie wolf-demon?”

  “Well, I did have a panther, but my new goal is having a zombie wolf-demon.”

  “I support this goal.” Gracie double-tapped the name field and typed in Callista. That had been the name of her first character in D&D, and it had stuck. It was her tag in every game she played.

  At least it made some sense in this world.

  She clicked through to accept her character, and her pointer hovered above the LOAD button. “All right, can I just…go?”

  “Yep. I’ll make sure I’m near your starting point. Enjoy the intro.” Alex disappeared.

  Gracie pressed the LOAD button and jumped when everything went black. The music vanished, leaving behind a ringing silence—and a growing growl.

  “Ten thousand years ago, the gods created Elakara.” The voice was female, low and oddly persuasive. In the black, color rushed to a single point and a chunk of land appeared, spinning slowly. Boulders had broken off from its sides, and they tumbled end over end in the void beyond the land’s borders.

  Ocru appeared, running in groups with dogs at their sides and spears in their hands. “The first to walk the land were the Ocru, mystics and shamans who subdued the beasts of the wilds.”

  Then there were humans, their spears set aside as they sat around campfires with the Ocru. Some held balls of magic. Others held books. “Next came the humans. Together, the humans and the Ocru learned the mysteries of magic. Together, they molded the Piskies.”

  Now there were cities, smaller buildings in the alleys with Piskies emerging from half-sized doors. The camera panned through the city, and Gracie saw taverns, fighting rings, auction houses, and more.

  “But war broke out,” the woman told her, and a flaming boulder shattered the building beside Gracie.

  “Fuck!” Gracie threw up her hands instinctively. The haptics on that side of her suit buzzed, and the picture careened away as if she’d been thrown by the explosion. A moment later, the haptics on the other side simulated the landing. Though it was nowhere near as painful as it would have been, Alex was right. It did put her in the story.

  Armed soldiers rushed through the streets, people fled, and screams rang out. Smoke filled the air, and when it cleared, there were armies facing one another on the battlefield. A group of animals and others—wolves, bears, panthers, and shambling undead—surged across the open land toward their enemies, fighting their way through arrows and raining ice.

  “Desperate to end the fighting, the gods created the Aosi,” the narrator told Gracie. The battle froze into slow motion and two figures stood in beams of light between the advancing armies, their heads thrown back to look at heaven. “They were made to be more—smarter, faster, wiser. In the end, however...”

  Again, the picture shifted, showing two new armies, this time with Aosi on both sides.

  “The Aosi were no different,” the narrator said sadly. “They picked sides in the wars between and among the races, and in a last attempt to make peace, the gods flung the four races to the far corners of Elakara.” A maelstrom was shown, ripping people from their homes, dragging them away as indistinct figures stood in the middle of the storm, guiding the winds. “Now the races have found their way together once more. In the city of Kithara, they mingle, astonished to find that the beings from their myths truly exist, unaware that all of this has happened before…”

  The picture soared above a city and then descended, dizzyingly, below the ground. Blackness surrounded Gracie.

  “You have come to Kithara to see this new world,” the narrator told her softly. “But there are many trials to pass before you may enter the city. Good luck, adventurer.”

  The world brightened. Gracie was underground, a rough stone ceiling above, the walls of the cave stretching away into the darkness. She could hear water dripping somewhere nearby and she took a few steps in the real world before controls popped up on the screen to show her how to move. A very faint glow around her showed her where she was within the VR area, showing her where it was safe to move. She heard the faint scuff of her character’s shoes as she moved. Something was glowing nearby on the ground.

  She came around a corner and gasped. This path had led to a pool of water, shining faintly from within. Gracie knelt entirely by instinct, and the view of the water drew closer. She reached out trembling fingers and dragged them through it, the haptics buzzing slightly.

  It was beautiful. After all of those years imagining a magical world, now she was truly in one.

  That was when she heard the growl.

  Chapter Three

  That sound was unmistakable—it was something that wanted to kill her, rip her to shreds. Gracie spun and ducked at the same time, throwing herself sideways. She didn’t care about anything but surviving right now. She had completely forgotten that she was standing in the middle of the living room, and she only just managed to stay within the VR area.

  “Fuck me!” She rolled and came to her feet, hands up. There was a jolt of pure adrenaline as she stared down the thing in front of her.

  “Shit.” Alex’s voice echoed in her headset. “Are you already fighting?”

  “Yeah. Fucking…wolf-beast thing.”

  She had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t quite a wolf, nor was it a fox or even a bigger cat. It had similarities to all of them, though.

  Mainly its giant claws and curved, blood-covered teeth.

  Its fur rippled with the same luminescence as the pool of water. The coat was thick, but there was no mistaking the ripple of muscles or the graceful way it had sunk into a crouch. As Gracie watched, it growled again and tilted its head to the side, sinking lower.

  She waited, forcing herself to stillness. You weren’t supposed to run from a predator, but she couldn’t see how it would be a better idea to attack.

  Blood dripped from one of the teeth as she watched, then it sprang at her.

  It probably would have been smart to duck, but Gracie had always been more angry than smart when something like this happened. As soon as she saw the muscles bunch, she felt an absolute wave of fury. This thing had cornered her here, and now it was going to attack her?

  Oh, hell no.

  She felt her face settle into a snarl and she stepped back with one foot, wound up a punch, and slammed her fist forward with all her might.

  A red four burst into the air over the beast’s head and the haptics in her hand shuddered, but they could only do so much. There wasn’t, after all, a real wolf there to punch, and Gracie nearly overbalanced. She would have laughed at herself—except that wolf was still there, now circling warily away. A health bar had appeared over its head, showing that she’d chewed up about a quarter of its life.

  “Come on,” Gracie taunted it. “Come on, bitch! I got three more punches in me. Fucking try it!”

  “Glad to hear you’re doing well.” Alex sounded annoyed. “I’m sorry, it’s taking longer to get to you than I thought it—”

  The beast crouched to leap again.

  “Busy!” Gracie yelled in what she guessed was Alex’s general direction before swooping out of the way and turning to lash out with her elbow. She wound back up and shot her fist outwards, only to have a faint red wall appear close to where her fingers were. Glowing words appeared: EDGE OF VR AREA.

  At this precise moment, Gracie didn’t care much. She’d punch the TV if she had to in order to win. What was taking her attention was the wolf’s pained whine as it circled. She’d hit it three times, and it should be close to dead.

  Unfortunately, its eyes were now glowing red, and as she watched, it threw its head back and gave an unearthly shriek—which was answered from the other tunnels.

  “You just know that’s not good,�
� Gracie muttered.

  It was still growling, and reckless energy filled her. It hadn’t crouched or given any indication that it was going to move, so she had her character charge it, and she landed a flurry of punches on its face and sides. It collapsed into a heap, went rigid, and disappeared in a shower of pixels, leaving two glowing gold coins and a blue jewel that shimmered beautifully. She knelt to pick them up, and they rose into the air and zoomed to the bottom of the screen, where a coin purse icon had appeared. The haptics at her right hip buzzed to show her that something had gone into her inventory.

  It was a cool mechanic, and she would have admired it a lot more if she couldn’t hear the sounds of running animals. More wolf-beasts, she was sure, and she thought to check if she was injured.

  She was. Her life bar was at half.

  A tutorial for how to drink something called a vitality potion appeared, and she drank it down. The glug of the liquid was so realistic that she found herself swallowing out of reflex. She looked around, wondering if there was a weapon stashed anywhere, and saw a rock lying on the ground nearby.

  The only problem was that she was going to have to wade into the water, and she had no idea if that would be a problem.

  “What the hell. I can always reload, right?” She directed her character into the water and was amused to see her health bar start to fill up and pulse. “So, glowing water refills your health. Good to know.” She made her way slowly through the water, which sloshed slightly, and grabbed the rock. She couldn’t pick it up, but now that she was here, she could see an old staff that had been hidden from her vantage point leaning against the wall in the alcove. “Mine,” she said, snatching it.

  Then she had another idea. She waited, frozen in the water as the beasts’ footsteps drew closer. Don’t move, she told herself. Not an inch. She even held her breath until she remembered that wasn’t going to do anything in-game.

  It worked. The wolves paused nearby, but then the clicking of their nails moved away again.

  Slowly, carefully, Gracie eased out of the pool of water. The game had astounding attention to detail. She now left wet footprints and dripped water on the ground as she crept forward.