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

  Jay laughed. “You’ve turned into a disembodied hand and a bottle of beer.”

  “Mmf. Can’t…sit…up.” Gracie considered the beer. “Which makes drinking this difficult.”

  “Into every life comes some struggle,” Jay said solemnly. “Be strong, fearless leader.”

  Gracie forced herself to sit up and took a sip. “Oh, beer, what I wouldn’t do for you.”

  “I’m sure it loves you too.” Jay shook his head. “Now, because I am losing my mind just a little bit, what the fuck is going on with Harry? And Dan and Dhruv.”

  “Right.” Gracie settled back. “Soooo, let’s start with Dan and Dhruv. Long story short, Harry says he hasn’t been emailing you, and I believe him. I think Dragon Soul was using you to try to find the quest.”

  “It makes so much sense.” Jay sounded furious. “All those emails where they’d suggest that things might be in a certain zone, but they wouldn’t tell me what they’d supposedly left there? That big email he sent that was a whole bunch of nothing. They wanted me to go hunting for things, just like they had when I was working there.”

  “Dangerous game, though,” Gracie pointed out, “because I got that armor out of it, and I don’t know if you noticed, but my crit chance has gone way up.”

  “Which must have made it especially difficult to suck so much on that run,” Jay said pointedly.

  “Yeahhhh.” Gracie looked down at her lap and tried to think of what to say. “Okay, don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad, Gracie.” His voice was quiet. “I just wish I’d known. I would have helped you. Any of us would have.” He considered. “And, uh, what did Harry do to make you go all medieval on his ass?” There was a laugh bubbling up in his voice now.

  “It wasn’t so much him… Well, it was kind of him. It was when I figured out that Dragon Soul was really the one emailing you. He was trying to fight it out with them, and they were trying to mess with us. It was just too stupid, you know? They made this beautiful world, and now they’re trying to rip it apart with sponsorships and old grudges and…”

  Jay waited.

  Gracie looked at the far wall and considered. In the dark quiet of the apartment, the world of Metamorphosis seemed far more vivid than anything here. If she closed her eyes, she could see flames dancing on the ground and the fiery whip coming towards her—

  “If I gave the quest back to Harry,” Gracie explained, “he’d have tried to control all the players, and go to war with Dan and Dhruv. If I gave it up and he didn’t get it, they’d keep undermining the world with their sponsorships and backstabbing. I guess I wanted to keep them in line.” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “Which is ridiculous. But I actually fucking care about this place. That team.”

  “You get to,” Jay said. “And I think at this point, you get to ask some hard fucking questions of them as well. They should be living in fear of you coming to them to ask them what the hell they think they’re playing at.” He considered. “At the risk of you repeating yourself, what even happened in there? I’m guessing that if you had lost that fight, Harry would have gotten the quest back.”

  “Yeah,” Gracie said. “He built it so it was almost impossible to take out. I don’t know what that even means.”

  “Neither do I, honestly.” Jay frowned. “I’ll have to go back over the bits of the quest that I found and see how they’re embedded. It shouldn’t be very difficult to just take the lines of code out, but lord knows what else he put in there. Anyway, go on.”

  “So, since he couldn’t take the quest out, the only way for him to get it back for himself was for me to fail at it,” Gracie explained. “See?”

  “So you took us back to Altar of the Gods, hoping we’d get the same boss—which was actually Harry, right?—and we’d wipe and you’d be done with all of that craziness.”

  “Bingo.” Gracie held up her beer in a toast before taking a sip. “God, I’m ravenous. Anyway, by the time I realized I wanted to keep the quest, I was already down to half a life, and he was pulling out all the stops. Oh, well.”

  Jay began to laugh. “Just imagine how much that’s pissing him off.” He rotated his shoulders and stood. “Ugh, I need to stretch. I can feel my muscles cramping.” He disappeared out of the frame. “The more we play, the more I feel like Metamorphosis is a government conspiracy to get more people in shape for the Army or something.”

  “Trick the nerds into doing exercise,” Gracie said thoughtfully. “It’s a good idea. Otherwise, I would come home, tell myself I should work out, and then not work out.” She put her beer on the coffee table and stood, reaching down to touch her toes. The backs of her legs cramped, her back screamed, and she winced as things gradually began to loosen. “Oh, this is hellish.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jay gave an anguished noise, and there was a crash. “It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine here. How are you?”

  Gracie fought to hold in her laughter. Her abs hurt. Moving hurt. “Lesson learned: never fight an angry giant with a whip made of fire.”

  “Valid,” Jay said contemplatively. He appeared briefly in the frame as he righted himself. “So, here’s where I’m at… Harry clearly has some access to the database, but made the quest complex enough that it’s difficult to alter.”

  “He probably didn’t just take it out because he wanted to pick it up when I failed,” Gracie said. “So that was why we had those fights where it felt like I was fighting a real person. I was. He was trying to get me to fail.” She looked up in time to see Jay take a seat, clearly pondering. “So the first question is, will he keep trying to make me fail the quest or will he just take it out?”

  “Hard to know,” Jay replied after a moment. “You’ve put him in a bit of a bind. The farther you get, the more he can assume Dragon Soul knows about what’s going on. They can do the research I could and try to remove the quest. On the other hand, it doesn’t sound like he has a better way to stop you from completing it.”

  Gracie sighed. “He’s batshit loonball, isn’t he?”

  “They all are, as far as I’m concerned.” Jay considered. “There’s also the part where they’re almost certainly spying on us. I don’t know if your account is tagged or what. It probably is. And they may have tried to embed someone.”

  “Who?” Gracie asked reasonably. “Everyone who was there tonight signed on a while back. Well, except Cas.” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, son of a bitch. Cas.”

  “Who’s so very, very quick to pick up healing,” Jay said. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “You think he works for Dragon Soul?” Gracie narrowed her eyes.

  “I’ll ask Sam,” Jay replied after a moment. “He’ll be able to find out. It wouldn’t be anyone on my old team, that’s for sure, and they’d have had to keep it quiet or someone on my old team would have told me.” He sighed. “Let’s not jump to conclusions, though. It might not be him.”

  “It is,” Gracie said with certainty. Little things she hadn’t noticed, little silences and stray words, Caspian’s reticence. It was all fitting together now.

  There was a long silence.

  “What do you want to do?” Jay asked her finally.

  “I want to finish the quest,” Gracie said. “I want to figure out where the rest of it is, and finish it. The question is…”

  “How do we do that without one or the other of those groups stopping us?” Jay finished. He sighed. “Let’s get some sleep, and tomorrow we’ll figure it out.”

  Gracie nodded. “Thanks for being there tonight,” she said. She smiled at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was trying to do.”

  “I get it.” Jay gave a small smile back. “Crazy god-queen or not, you’re our tank, and we’re keeping you around. You can’t get rid of us that easily.”

  Gracie laughed and ended the call. She sighed as she brushed her teeth and washed her face, wishing she had Alex around to share another beer with—and ask about Jay. She left the hall light on and went to bed, where she flopped ba
ck and stared into the darkness.

  Part of her hated all these games.

  And part of her wanted more than anything to win them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sam pulled off the highway, drumming his hands nervously on the steering wheel. He’d been home last night when Callista’s team made their run, and one of his team members had kept him updated on it by text. No one seemed to be sure what exactly had happened, but they seemed sure that it wasn’t the same as what had happened the first time her group had gone through the Altar of the Gods.

  When Sam had asked what that meant, he’d been told it was too much to say over text, but that Dan and Dhruv had stayed late afterward, arguing in Dhruv’s office.

  Sam really didn’t want to go to work today. He wanted to go home, drink some coffee, and take his daughter out of school for the day to go to the zoo or something. Normal stuff. Not one thing in his life seemed normal lately, and he was tired of it.

  Which was why, when he pulled into his parking spot at the far edge of the lot and saw Jay waiting for him, leaning against his car, he swore inventively. He slammed the door as he got out of the car, jabbing his finger at Jay.

  “No. No. No more of this shit. It’s complicated enough as it is, and for the love of God, don’t go into the database again, I have to tell them when you do, and I don’t want to.”

  Jay stared at him for a moment quizzically. Then he opened his car door, reached inside, and brought out a breakfast sandwich and a coffee.

  “Bribery?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really?” But his stomach betrayed him by growling. He sighed, grabbed the coffee and breakfast sandwich, and leaned against his own car to eat. “Why are you here? And what the hell happened last night at the Altar of the Gods?”

  “It would kind of help if I knew exactly how much your dude overheard,” Jay told him.

  “They were watching the whole time,” Sam said around a mouthful of egg and sausage. “Whole team. Not a dude.”

  “Really? You’re just going to pretend you didn’t embed someone in the guild?” Jay raised an eyebrow right back.

  “Oh.” Sam nodded. “The healer.”

  “Yes. Goddammit, Sam, you could have given me a heads up!” Jay ran a hand through his hair.

  “First of all, I wasn’t in last night, so I didn’t know who was on that run. Second of all…” Sam sighed. “It’s not our guy. He’s from Demon Syndicate. We just have a feed in when he’s playing.”

  “Oh, really?” Jay tipped his head back. “She’s gonna hate this,” he said to himself. “Not that you’re to tell them that.”

  “Believe me, I’m trying to stay as far out of it as I can.” Sam gave him a look. “I have a kid, man, I need this job. I don’t like what they’re doing, but I need this job.” He hesitated. “And I gotta be honest, if you want to go up against the people who run the damned servers, you’re gonna lose.”

  There was a long silence. Jay opened his car door again and slumped sideways into the driver’s seat.

  “Harry showed up at Gracie’s apartment,” he told Sam.

  Sam stopped dead. “He what?”

  “Yeah. Found out who she was, found out where she lived, and showed up to talk to her. Apparently, she broke his nose.” Jay’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

  “If ever someone deserved it,” Sam said, “he’s the guy.”

  “Yeah. Sam, if I tell you what’s going on, will you either help us or keep it under your hat?”

  “I don’t like being in the middle,” Sam said. “I don’t like keeping secrets. I don’t like doing shady shit.”

  “Then help us,” Jay said fiercely. “Sam, Harry’s a nutjob. He’s trying to screw everyone over, and Dan and Dhruv wound themselves into a clusterfuck by promising the sponsored guilds that they’d be on top of the rankings. If Gracie keeps going, she has leverage—and I’d much rather she have it than Harry or no one.”

  Sam chewed contemplatively. “Fine.”

  “Harry thought he’d be doing the quest,” Jay said bluntly. “He’s going to try to make Gracie fail it so that he can pick it up…or he’ll try to nuke it all. Meanwhile, Dan and Dhruv have been fucking catfishing me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Sam sighed. “Well, I know they left your database access open to see what you’d do and where you’d look. The catfishing seems like it would go with that. Look, Jay, I don’t know how I can help you—”

  “Find out which levels Harry built,” Jay said. “As subtly as you can since I don’t want Dan and Dhruv knowing. And anytime you can, just keep telling them to try to make Gracie an ally. Keep telling them to play it straight. Her winning is a rags-to-riches story they could milk for thousands of sign-ups if they were smart about it. They don’t need to run this game on money from advertisers. Tell them to stop playing stupid games and just make this what it was supposed to be: a world for the players.”

  “All right, all right,” Sam grumbled. “Enough with the soapbox. I get it.” He heaved another sigh.

  “They’re making money hand over fist,” Jay said, “and they know nothing’s going to kill the game faster than people knowing it’s pay-to-play. They’re just trying to play both sides as long as they can.”

  “I know.” Sam wished he didn’t. He wished he could say this was all a revelation instead of something he’d been lying awake, thinking anxiously about as he failed to get to sleep at nights.

  “Harry may have been a total asshole,” Jay said, “but he got one thing right. Having leverage over the other two is a good idea. Sam, you say you need to keep this job, but what’s going to happen if the Ds run this company into the ground?” He crossed his arms and gave Sam a knowing look.

  “You’ve made your point.” Sam finished his coffee. “I’ll get you the list today, and I’ll take whatever openings I have to tell them to be more ethical about things. Not sure how much they’ll go for it, of course.”

  “You do what you can,” Jay said with a shrug. “If I thought they’d listen to reason, I’d have a meeting with them myself. Or not be worrying about Gracie keeping the quest. It’s worth a shot, right? Best case scenario, we have a big stick and don’t have to use it.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” Sam burst out. “Say I help you. Say she finishes this quest. What can she possibly do that would keep them accountable?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jay said, but he was smiling. “All I know is, Harry wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble if it were nothing, right?”

  Sam slung his work bag over his shoulder as he considered this and nodded finally. “That makes sense, I guess. Well, be smart. They can see almost everything you do, and they can definitely see when you go into the database. Well, I can. And since you’re not supposed to be there, I can’t justify not telling them.”

  Jay only smiled again. “We’ll cross that bridge next,” he said, and there was a certain sense of amusement in his voice.

  “If you think you’re going to make me a double agent—”

  “Sam, you hate people playing dirty, and you know the Ds are being dumb. You’re absolutely going to help because you want all your employees to keep having jobs. I know you.” Jay grinned at him. “Have a good day at work.”

  Sam grumbled. He watched as Jay drove away, then he shook his head and headed into the building.

  Jay was right. Sam had been dubious when he came on board. He wasn’t really a gamer, so he’d taken the job more for the benefits than anything else. He hadn’t expected to care so much about his team or get so invested in a world that didn’t quite exist.

  Because as much as people liked to make a distinction between games and “real life,” Sam was beginning to think those two weren’t necessarily different things.

  By the time Jay called, Gracie had made a list of dungeons in Metamorphosis, cross-referenced by any aspect she could think of, and she was beginning to feel like she was going insane.

  “Hi,” she said, looking up. She picked up the laptop and p
ivoted it so he could see the diagrams. “I’ve been working on things, and I have a list of dungeons I think are likely. My big question is how Harry knows when we go into them.”

  “Oh, shit.” From his tone, Jay clearly hadn’t thought of that. “I, uh…hmm…”

  “How was Sam?” Gracie asked.

  “Not very happy to be involved,” Jay admitted. When she looked at him with a sympathetic grimace, he shrugged. “It’s a weird place to be, right? We all love Metamorphosis and it wouldn’t exist without those three, but they’re all being insane about it.”

  Gracie nodded and sat back on the couch, thinking.

  “Which levels are you thinking about?” Jay asked her.

  “I have two main contenders.” Gracie held up the sheets of paper. “Yesuan’s Haunt, and Klauria Castle.”

  “I worked on Klauria a bit,” Jay said, “but I know next to nothing about Yesuan’s Haunt. I thought it wasn’t part of the main storyline.”

  “It’s not,” Gracie confirmed. “There are four optional dungeons, one for each of the playable races. They kind of go into what happened after the races got scattered.”

  Jay nodded.

  Gracie paused. “Do you think Harry thinks of himself as an Aosi?” she asked slowly. “Like, he thinks he’s better than everyone else, smarter than everyone else, and meant to lead?”

  Jay groaned. “Oh, dear God, he probably does. This guy has the biggest chip on his shoulder!”

  Gracie nodded. She was still thinking, and finally, she sighed. “At least he hasn’t been back.”

  “Are you worried?” Jay leaned forward.

  “A bit,” Gracie admitted. “His whole thing is that he’s worried about people doing the same stuff in real life that they do in the game, right? Well, in the game, we’re in a battle to the death, so I really hope that when push comes to shove, he doesn’t believe all that crap he’s spewing.”

  “He doesn’t,” Jay assured her. He settled back in his chair. “Tell me about Yesuan’s Haunt.”

  Gracie pulled the sheet of paper out and studied it. “The boss is a druid, except it’s a corruption-type thing, so the mechanics are very focused on—”