Team Newb

by M Helbig

  Before I could stand, a dinging sound came from nowhere, and a message appeared in front of me:

  Welcome to Sun & Shadow Online!

  Accessing bank account . . .

  Your $3,527 has been converted into 35 gold 2 silver 7 copper.

  I cursed as I saw the number. That was all the money I had, and from what I knew of the game, it was not a lot. I was a little surprised it had accessed my bank account and not my dad’s, since I’d come in on his resurrection account, but I was a grateful it hadn’t, as that would’ve left Mom and Lilly destitute. I figured that the resurrection wristband must have been only for the resurrection—it was awful cheap looking after all— and they must have accessed my bank information from my normal wrist communicator.

  I remembered Dad saying most people went into the game with at least 100 gold, since new players tended to die a lot, and if you died with no money, you were kicked out of the game. For a normal player that would’ve only been somewhat bad; with me being dead in the real world too, it meant I’d be dead everywhere. At least I thought so, but I really didn’t want to test that. I’d definitely have to play it safe; probably something crafting-related, as those tended to die a lot less. And maybe when I’d saved up enough to afford dying a few times, I’d try a bit of adventuring. To think all the babbling my dad had done about work would one day prove useful.

  Dad . . . I would never hear his enthusiastic nerding out ever again . . . his big laugh and terrible sports metaphors . . . his mispronunciations of all things pop culture . . . his awkward but sincere attempts at romance with Mom . . . his groaningly awful attempts to connect with Lilly and me—all gone. He was dead and so was I, but I would at least live on in the world he loved so much. I owed it to him to do my best in my new life.

  Wiping back a digital tear, I took in my surroundings. I was in a dirt field. More and more people fell from the sky and landed around me. I considered asking them what to do, but every one of them immediately jumped up and ran off before I could get a word out.

  It was probably for the best, as the way they’d arrived meant they were new players like me and more than likely just as clueless. As the fifth anatomically inspired name ran by to the main part of the town, my heart stopped when I saw a bald, red-bearded man pop out of a shop across the street. My first thought was that it was Carl, but that was ridiculous. Why would he kill me and then come into the game?

  The bald man shouted something back into the shop, and the response caused him to laugh. As the high-pitched, weaselly laugh caught my ears, I hopped to my feet and ran toward it. I stared hard at him, and suddenly a name appeared over his head, “Nyytro.” My gut told me it was him, even if my brain was screaming that it made no sense for Carl to be in there. But that name . . . It was so similar to his email address of nytro@pyrite.com, a play on his last name of Nytrander. It had to be him, but why was he here?

  I stopped looking for a second as I puzzled out what I’d do when I got to Nyytro, and in that second he turned down a side street. My heart nearly stopped, but fortunately I found him a few minutes later. He’d gained considerably on me and was now a few hundred yards away.

  I slowly closed the distance, but as we neared the open gate and the blindingly white town wall, the crowd grew thicker, and I had to stop. He was about a hundred yards away now, but he might as well have been a mile away as the wall of humanity between us wouldn’t move. I was about to yell at them, but one look at their gleaming armor and stylish equipment, and one look down at my threadbare boxer shorts and cloth booties, told me I’d be laughed out of the area.

  Fortunately, the area was only two ways, and as Nyytro hadn’t passed me, I knew where he must have gone. I was finally able to get to the gate twenty minutes later. The guards gave me a funny look as I passed but didn’t say a word.

  A prompt covered my vision saying something about going into a combat area and something else about being bound, but I quickly cleared them away. There was a lush forest to the left. A pair of glowing, yellow eyes stared at me from the darkness as I took a step forward, almost daring me to enter the forest. I decided against taking them up on that challenge, which had nothing to do with how scary they looked and everything to do with seeing a familiar bald head and red beard bouncing through a field filled with bunnies to the right. Honestly, I wasn’t at all intimidated by the big, scary eyes. I had priorities.

  Carl—sorry, Nyytro—weaved through a pack of fluffy white bunnies that were munching happily on some farmer’s latest crop. Several other players decked out in threadbare attire madly stabbed and whacked away at other bunnies all around. I didn’t know that bunnies could scream, until I turned and realized it was mostly the players. Evidently cloth armor isn’t very good protection against long, flat bunny teeth.

  Nyytro made his way through the field easily, as the rabbits only seemed to attack in self-defense. I followed his lead without any difficulty besides occasionally tripping over a pile of soft adorableness. When he turned toward the forest, my stomach dropped as the yellow eyes continued to follow me; no doubt whatever they belonged to would make a fresh newbie dinner out of my corpse in several seconds of combat. I breathed again when he veered toward a path going up an incline on the edge of the forest. As the owner of the eyes hadn’t leapt out to attack him when he walked past, I was confident it was restrained to the boundaries of the tree line. I still gave the forest a wide berth as I reached the path and managed to climb it without being torn to shreds—unless you count what the gravely terrain was doing to the bottom of my feet through the thin cloth excuses for shoes I was wearing.

  The sloping path soon ended at a flat plateau. On the right, I could see a bunch of horned, waist-high, doglike creatures as well as an occasional winged gray eyeball; to the left was a collection of tents that seemed to be the homes of hunched, anthropomorphic lizards with weapons and the modesty to wear loincloths and half shirts. Among the few players busily slaughtering the lizard villagers, I saw Nyytro’s bald head, so I headed that way.

  As soon as I entered the village, my ears were assaulted by strange hissing sounds coming from every direction. I willed them out of my mind and focused on the small bunch of tents between me and him. It was the closest I’d gotten to him and my mind raced as I prepared what I was going to say. I decided to stay away from comments on his clothes. Hard to target that when you’re only wearing boxers. I definitely should’ve bought some equipment first, but give me a break. If you got murdered, reborn in a fantasy role-playing game, and saw the guy who murdered you, you’d immediately go chasing after him before you bought gear too. OK, kind of hard to relate to that, but you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

  I’d have to rely on my wits for now. Maybe get him off balance with some of my handy-dandy, brilliant insults, and then try to trick him into going back to the guards or someone who could do something about him. His hair and his weight were always sore spots for him, so I readied all the things I’d held back before as too mean.

  I had a brilliant one on the tip of my tongue about his stomach eating all the hair that was supposed to be on his head when a red 2 flashed on my screen. That it was blood red should’ve been my first clue about what was happening. Unfortunately, my mind was elsewhere. A second number flashed, and the staggering pain in my chest finally clued me in. The splash of blood that wetted my chin confirmed my theory. One of the lizards was using my abdomen as a training dummy.

  Now that I knew what was going on, I managed to dodge the Lizardman Youngling’s next blow. I felt like a genius when I managed to catch him on the side with a kick and a white 1 floated off him. My euphoria was short lived when a prompt covered my vision asking me if I wanted to use a skill point on the newly unlocked Kick skill, and the jerk got in another stab to my shin. I was about to counter the lizardman when another prompt appeared indicating I had my first negative status “Hamstrung.” I was about to grouse about how my hamstring was in the back of my leg and he’d hit the front, when three
more red numbers floated to the far right. I turned to find three more Younglings had decided to join in on the fun. I couldn’t remember how many Hit Points I had, but when I thought about it, a bar in the top right began to glow with the fraction 1/15 highlighted. I decided to run and made it a few steps before searing pain erupted from my back. A fountain of blood covered my vision as my ghostly form floated from my body.

  You Have Died

  You have lost 5 gold. If you make it back to your corpse in less than 24 hours, you will recover 2 gold 5 silver.

  The helpful prompt told me what the searing pain, out-of-body experience, and view of my corpse—complete with dancing Lizardman Younglings—had made blatantly obvious. At least the follow-up was more helpful.

  Do you want to resurrect at your last bind location: Highwall Main Gate, or wait for another player to resurrect you?

  Say “Yes” or “No.”

  I said “yes” because I was sure that no one in such a low-level zone likely had a resurrections spell. In every RPG I’d played, that was a high-level spell.

  I appeared back near the gate and hurried toward the field outside. Five gold was a lot of money to lose. I’d have to remember to get back to my corpse before I confronted Carl so I could recover half of that. The monetary death penalty was the chief reason why few players made it past two weeks. In this game, you couldn’t store money in banks. Pyrite did that to make losing money as easy as possible.

  As I passed the bunnies, I decided to take a shortcut and began planning out everything I’d say to Carl when I cornered him. I’d start with the belly-eating-his-hair joke, then go with how his voice sounded like weasel mixed with a certain dimwitted cartoon sidekick, and then maybe something about the way he ran. How can I mix a duck insult with a fat joke? I know I’ll—

  A dark red 5 flashed across my vision. The number looked different this time. A 7! quickly followed it, and I realized it was from the dimmer lighting. That proved to be the high point of the situation, as my guts were torn from my body on the next strike. I didn’t even get a chance to scream. My disembodied consciousness floated above my mangled corpse.

  When I cleared the branches and leaves, I realized what had happened. I hadn’t been paying attention and had wandered into the forest. The yellow eyes that’d been following me before belonged to something that looked like a mixture between a bear, a wolf, and a mobile home. Evidently in a bodyless state, I wasn’t allowed to Inspect it to see what it was called, but I definitely knew to stay out of that forest.

  Now that I was down to twenty-five gold, two silver, and seven copper, I’d be ejected from the game if I died five more times without finding more money. I yelled “yes” and respawned again.

  After exiting the gate, I ran through the bunny field, avoided the forest, and ran up to the path to the lizardmen plateau. The first thing I saw was the trio of lizardmen still dancing over my corpse. There was no chance I’d be able to get to it without adding another one. I was about to skirt the side of the camp when I noticed a small incline overlooking it which would give me a much better view. As I got closer, I realized the spot wasn’t empty.

  A fiftyish gnome with a long, graying, blond mustache, a bald head, and a wiry build was kneeling on the far edge. He bowed his head in recognition, respecting the single-minded determination on my face by not asking any questions. I quickly found the area where Nyytro had been hunting, and my stomach dropped when I saw he wasn’t there. As a matter of fact, no players were in the camp at all.

  “Say, friend,” I said. “Have you seen an overweight, balding, red-headed guy recently?”

  He turned slowly and twisted the edges of his mustache. “Is he friend or enemy?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked.

  He nodded seriously. “Not at the present, only curious. I believe he is the one who just gained a level.”

  “You can tell when someone levels?”

  The gnome appraised me, and I could feel a weak, invisible force across my body. I could see why people didn’t like to have Inspect used on them.

  “Level one.” He mumbled something under his breath that I probably didn’t want to hear. “Yes, you glow golden yellow for about a minute. You should probably try hunting elsewhere for a few more levels.”

  “But that guy I’m looking for couldn’t have been much higher, and he did fine.” Carl had to have come into the game after he murdered me, and since you couldn’t “save” a character and come back, I knew he also must have started at level one. Much to my dad’s chagrin, that rule even extended to executives.

  “While I did not exactly use Inspect on him, I am quite confident he had more than the rags you now wear, friend. Anything more than a bunny or squirrel would be too much in your situation, and even then, I highly recommend you get some starter gear first.”

  “Whatever. Did you happen to see where he went?”

  “Down into that cave at the back of the village, but you should not go down there until you get gear and a good group. Getting a few levels would be a good idea too.”

  Vengeance was screaming through the back of my skull, but my recent experience and basic logic beat it down. If I died a few more times—and I almost assuredly would if I tried to go in that cave—I’d be dead forever, and a dead me wouldn’t be getting any vengeance. Carl would have to come out of there eventually. There’d be ample time to confront him in the city—since that was where he’d need to go to sell his loot and buy new gear, among many other things.

  My new friend looked concerned as he stared up at my scowling face, but his worry was unfounded because I’d actually learned my lesson. I smiled in thanks and walked steadily away from the camp toward the path below. Deep down, I knew I’d made the right decision.

  Absorbed in forming a plan to find Nyytro later, and what I’d do when I managed, I ran straight into a Youngling. The lizardman did not appreciate being run into—even if I didn’t do any damage—and retaliated. I twisted away awkwardly and only got caught on the side, right above my hip. As I stared at the gaping wound, the lizardman set his feet and placed a blow directly into my belly. His spear stuck as the 5! came out, followed closely by a blood drop icon—indicating I was now bleeding. The steady stream of blood coating my boxers and the constant pain were more than enough to relay the same information.

  In desperation, I backhanded the short, green monster across his leather snout, getting a white 1. I turned around and ran—not an easy thing to do with a spear still stuck in your belly, rattling across the uneven, rocky ground. The Youngling didn’t much seem to care for my new change in tactics—or my unique method of stealing his weapon—and chased after me. Unfortunately, my opponent was faster than me as three red 1s accompanied sharp pains in my lower back and butt. I was down to 6/15 HPs, after another 1 in damage from bleed, and the path down was still a hundred yards away. I was sure I wouldn’t make it, but I didn’t have any other choice. At the very least, I’d learned an important lesson: listen to other players when they tell you something is too hard for you. It wasn’t a total loss, though, as I unlocked the Improved Stamina skill. That was little comfort, as each jarring step banged the edge of the spear harder and harder against the ground.

  A red 3! followed by a pain suggesting I wouldn’t be sitting down anytime soon flashed on the screen. “Bastard! I don’t know about lizardman society, but in human society it’s considered bad manners to bite someone in the butt.” I doubt he heard me or could even understand me, especially as the words came out as a half-jumbled, panting mess, but I had to release some frustration.

  It was comforting that my corpse would at least be in a safe spot to loot for the first time. As I cleared another fifty yards without more damage, I glanced back and to my surprise, the Lizardman Youngling was laid out on the ground in a pool of blood. I was shocked as I hadn’t seen a notification that I’d gotten any experience for the kill, but the tenacious monster was most definitely dead.

  I was no longer in danger and would
likely bleed out anyway before I got down the path, so I decided to at least loot my kill. As I turned fully around, I realized I wouldn’t even get to do that, as the mustachioed gnome stood over the corpse. That explains why I didn’t get an experience notification. Too bad it also ruins my theory that my butt is poisonous to lizards. I decided to go back and at least thank him before I died. An involuntary growl rolled out of my mouth as another point of bleed damage popped up from my new, extra-long outie belly button.

  The gnome stood back up from looting his kill, and the corpse faded and slid into the ground. The only thing left was a pool of blood twice as large as a creature that size could possibly leave behind. “I really should’ve listened to you,” I said.

  “You are one brave man, I’ll give you that. Stupid, but brave nonetheless.” He reached up and yanked on the spear. The pain was excruciating, and I passed out.

  You have unlocked the Survivalist skill!

  By the time I came to, the lower part of my face was coated in a sweet red liquid. My boxer shorts were coated in a very different red liquid which I was confident I didn’t want to taste. I decided to thank my savior, but once more the words came out as more of a gurgle than anything resembling words.

  My new friend set the empty vial down and smiled. “You hit 1 HP there, but I managed to get a healing potion in at the last second.”

  I licked some of the liquid off my face. My body felt rejuvenated and my HP meter ticked up another point. The Bleeding indicator was gone.

  “My name is Olaf, in case you were wondering,” the gnome said. “I heard a rumor at our drinking establishment that this would be an excellent place for my group of level threes to farm for experience and loot, so I decided to investigate. I must confess, I only agreed so that I could placate our overbearing group leader, Decrona. It was a good thing I did so, for you.”