Team Newb

by M Helbig

  Item: Thermal Underwear with Cat Prints

  Restrictions: Woodsman class only, Restricted Sale

  Slot: Legs

  Rarity: Uncommon

  AC: 7

  Stat Bonus: +2 AGI +1 INT +2 WIS -1 CHA

  Weight: 8 Pebbles

  Description: Me-ewww! If you don’t mind the smell, these pants offer solid protection and great stats for the price. They’re really warm too. Warm enough to make you forget . . . Ahh, that’s where the smell came from.

  Item: Leafy Belt of Pants Holding

  Restrictions: Woodsman class only, Restricted Sale

  Slot: Waist

  Rarity: Uncommon

  AC: 4

  Stat Bonus: +1 STA +1 END +1 INT +1 WIS

  Weight: 3 Pebbles

  Description: It keep your pants up and has leaves on it.

  Item: Jerkin of Please Don’t Kill Me

  Restrictions: Woodsman class only, Restricted Sale

  Slot: Chest

  Rarity: Uncommon

  AC: 12

  Stat Bonus: +2 DEX +1 AGI +1 STR+1 INT +1 WIS

  Weight: 14 Pebbles

  Description: It’ll probably stop a sword, but maybe don’t test that out. Warrantee not included. Life insurance not included. Health insurance not included. That? It’s not included.

  The smell of the pants immediately ruled them out. Besides, with my mediocre level in manliness, I didn’t think I could pull off walking around wearing pants with kitty cats on them. That meant I’d be going with the chest piece and either the belt or the sleeves. I picked up the jerkin and tried it on after taking off my old Used Sack. It was surprisingly sturdy and didn’t at all feel like it deserved its less than assuring name. Maeva took the sack from me and flung it at the wall behind the counter.

  While it didn’t have any stats, the Lizard-Skin Belt did have 2 more AC than the other piece I was considering replacing, the Moth-Eaten Sleeves. Both the new pieces had the same total number of stats on them, but the sleeves had Dexterity, which was going to be my main stat as a Woodsman focused on DPS. Plus, the sleeves had one more Armor Class. It was an easy choice.

  As I reached forward for the sleeves, my hand suddenly shot back as I realized I had a much more pressing concern. My main role was going to be “do as much damage as possible,” and there was no more important piece of equipment for that than my weapon. I quickly summoned my blade and then just as quickly set it down after Maeva jumped back in fear.

  “Sorry,” I said as my face reddened with embarrassment. “I only wanted you to look it over, so you could see if you have anything better I can afford.”

  Maeve’s shoulders sagged in relief as I set the blade down. She bit her lip as she looked at Dav whose head finally poked out from under the bag of armor. “Why am I not surprised? Let me guess, too busy working on that ridiculous impersonation of a snooty maître d'.”

  Dav finally shook himself out from under the giant bag and leapt up. He stumbled slightly as several of his toes failed to join him in his escape and almost knocked Maeva over. “Showing him the training rooms was next on my agenda, and I figured it’d be best to get to that part in there. We came here first because, well, it’s closest to the stairs.”

  She shoved him back onto the armor bag with a loud clang that made me wince. “You have to pass both training rooms to get here, nimrod.”

  “Oh, right. Someone should put signs on those doors.”

  She slapped her palm into her forehead. “We told you to do that at yesterday’s meeting.”

  “Well, someone should put up a sign to remind me to put up signs then.”

  Maeva took a half step forward to push him again then stopped midway as she determined it wasn’t worth the effort. She turned around and shook her head at me in apology. “You’ll get your choice of a free new weapon soon. When you outgrow that one, though, come and see me. With more coins, of course.”

  I picked up one of the sleeves and held it over my left arm to see how it fit. The sleeve immediately clamped down like it was a vacuum cleaner and snapped on for a perfect fit. A second later, the gap at the top closed seamlessly onto my new tunic. My old Moth-Eaten Sleeve plopped to the ground. I held the second Junior Explorer’s Sleeve over the right arm and the strange process repeated.

  Maeva scooped up the old ones and tossed them over the counter. She gave me a good once-over and then nodded with a satisfied look. Without my consent, she grabbed my small bag of money and left nine gold coins and a few silver in it.

  “Potions?” Dav asked.

  I assumed he was asking me, but Maeva responded instead. “Right!”

  She ran behind the counter, returning with a box as wide as my shoulders and as tall as my midsection. It took all 6 of my Strength points to keep me from falling over onto Dav.

  On opening the box, I was greeted by eighteen pristine potions. The way they gleamed, they looked like they were smiling at me. As I pulled one out of the box, I noticed that it was bigger than the ones I’d gotten from the previous vendor. Inspect told me it could heal up to fifty HPs—quite the upgrade from the fifteen that the lessers healed.

  “Special discount to new members,” Maeva said. “Take one. Sorry, I’d like to give you more, but you said you wanted enough left to cover a death—unless you want to give back some of your new equipment.”

  I was so excited and grateful that I almost pulled Maeva’s arm out of her socket shaking her hand. One lesser healing potion had cost me a whole gold piece before, and she’d given me an upgraded one for the same price. Dav broke my grip on the flabbergasted woman and pulled me toward the door. “We should probably be going. I’m sure you’d like to see the training rooms, and Maeva’s quite the busy woman.”

  I waved goodbye, but Maeva was too caught up putting the potions away to notice.

  As Dav led me through the next door, I could hear Maeva shout from the other room. “Don’t drink that too fast. That was only a new member special, and they’ll cost three times that much next time.”

  I gave my patched sleeves a quick inspection. “Why is all of this stuff so used?”

  “We have all of the guild-sold armor enchanted for ‘Restricted Sale.’ If one of us dies for good, that enchantment transports those items to a special room so Maeva can resell it to other members. Also, means you can only sell them back to Woodsman vendors like Maeva.”

  I grimaced as I thought about the previous owners of my new armor and hoped that they’d sold it back and not died wearing it. The last thing I needed was cursed armor, especially since my spending spree meant I now only had a one death buffer against permanent demise.

  Sensing my discomfort, Dav directed my attention to the archery targets at the far wall. I’d been so absorbed in what had transpired in the previous room that, even with the noise of the arrows smacking into targets, I hadn’t noticed that there were two other people with us. The two practicing elves were obviously new to the skill, as more of their arrows found the straw bales behind the targets than the targets. As their armor was similar to mine, I was fairly confident that neither of them was more than a couple of levels above me.

  “Neat,” I said. “I want to become an Archer when I hit twenty-five, and I’ll definitely come back here when I can get a bow. I should probably get the Bows skill unlocked first, though. Say, you wouldn’t happen to know how to do that, would you?”

  Dav shook his head as he walked past a row of crossbows to a second rack of bows. He experimentally picked up a few before he settled on a rather battered looking one and a matching quiver of arrows. As he handed the two objects to me, he didn’t say a single word—figuring that pointing at the archery range was more than enough of an explanation.

  I moved to the opposite side of the range to the two women, who turned out to be wood elves and probably sisters at that, given their resemblance and identical red hair. I set the quiver down against the wall next to me and pulled an arrow from it. The tip of the arrow had a sizeable dent in it and the
shaft was bent, so I figured the thing wouldn’t fly terribly straight. However, my goal wasn’t to win a contest; it was to unlock the skill and maybe get a few points in it, if that was possible (though it likely was, as I couldn’t see why the two elves would be there if it wasn’t).

  I carefully placed the awkward arrow against the string and leveled the bow, the center even with my shoulders. I then pointed toward the target, pulled back on the string as hard as I could, and let the arrow fly. As I watched its trajectory in amazement, I was incredibly grateful that I’d positioned myself as far away from the elves as possible. The arrow flopped like a wounded duck in its sideways trajectory for about five feet before dropping to the ground with an impotent crash. Fortunately, they were both so absorbed in their practice that neither of them witnessed my epic failure. The loud smack of palm to forehead from behind me indicated that I hadn’t been so lucky with Dav.

  As I switched to a less pathetic arrow, Dav thundered up behind me and cleared his throat loudly to get my attention, as if I couldn’t sense his aura of frustration looming over me. “You need to hold the arrow tighter. Don’t worry about it getting stuck between your fingers. The force of the string will be more than enough to break it from even the strongest of grips.”

  I smiled and leveled the bow, this time pinching my two fingers on the arrow as hard as I could. Dav’s shadow moved away as I pulled back on the string, obviously not trusting in my ability to follow his suggestion. This time the arrow flew straight and landed with a satisfying thwack as it buried itself hard into the wooden wall to my right, ten feet away. I winced at the howl from behind, but in my head, was doing a little dance as the notification scrolled by.

  You have unlocked the Bows skill!

  I immediately spent one of my two remaining skill choices on it.

  Dav rushed by me, not even noticing my apologetic look in his haste to get the arrow out of the wall. He yanked hard, but it snapped in the middle. Undeterred, he went to work on the remaining part, but each pull snapped the shaft more. “Looks like we need to extend the hay bales farther along walls.” With the arrow now down to only a sliver of a shaft, he shook his head and gave up.

  I tried to shoo him out of the way so I could try for a few skill gains, but he remained in front of me. “No, I think that’s enough for today. You can come back tomorrow when we’re more prepared for your destructive newbiness.”

  He reached for my bow, but I pulled back. “Didn’t you say I get a free weapon?”

  Dav groaned. “Yes, but I was thinking of something less destructive to private property, more specifically our private property.” He paused abruptly, and I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he imagined what I could do with something larger and sharper. “Fine, you can have the bow.”

  Dav has offered you a Rickety Initiate’s Short Bow & Quiver.

  Do you accept this as your free initiate weapon?

  Item: Rickety Initiate's Short Bow

  Restrictions: Woodsman class only, Restricted Sale

  Slot: Ranged

  Rarity: Common

  Damage: 6-9

  Speed Rating: 3

  Stat Bonus: +1 DEX

  Weight: 6 Pebbles

  Description: It puts the arrows in the skin . . . sometimes even the one you’re aiming at too!

  “The melee weapons are better both in stats and damage,” Dav said. “But they’re not bows. And I know what you’re thinking, but the crossbow is identical to the bow with bolts that are much harder to get out of walls and class trainers.”

  I nodded in thanks to his offer but accepted the bow all the same. I was going to be an Archer, and that would be rather difficult without a bow. I held my new weapon up experimentally—grinning even as Dav yanked the quiver away—and gave it several pulls. The two elves chose that time to finally notice me. They pointed and giggled, but I didn’t care. I’d finally taken my first step toward being an Archer. It was the first time since I’d entered this world that I felt like I was finally in control of who I was and what I wanted to be.

  Behold Magic! And Flames! And . . . What Level Do I Learn the Fire Extinguisher Spell?

  When I was finally done playing with my new toy, I focused on it and it disappeared in a small cloud of smoke to my backpack. Dav breathed a sigh of relief and reluctantly handed me back the arrows. “If you use any weapons in here outside the proper training room, you get banned. A week for the first offense, a month for the second, and permanently for the third. That’s only if you don’t hurt anyone. And don’t go trying to get tricky with that ban. It extends to all Woodsman training halls in every city.”

  He directed me to the door, and I followed him into the hall and through the next door. “There’s other training halls? I didn’t even realize there were other cities.”

  “All the major ones have halls that are pretty close to this one and quite a few of the smaller cities have their own. Some of the bigger player towns have them too.”

  He pointed out the practice weapons on the rack in the square room and the wooden practice dummies arrayed throughout, but I was barely listening. I was too excited about his mention of player towns. My dad had spent about half a year going on about them when they’d been added to the game about twenty years ago, but at the time it was yet another one of the game-related things I’d put at the same level as people he went to high school with whom I’d never met. But now the game was quite literally my life, so the concept of becoming a king in my new world was incredibly exciting.

  Dav continued to yammer on about the training rooms, but visions of grandeur and thoughts of what type of crown I’d have blocked out everything he said. I’m pretty sure he even hit me a few times with a practice sword, but I was so caught up in comparing how the various gemstones I’d seen would look against my golden crown that I didn’t even feel them. Eventually, he gave up and led me to the next room.

  He picked the perfect room, as the flaring of spells coming from inside the glass-enclosed booths at the far end were probably the only thing that could’ve shaken me from my daydreaming. “Do Archers get to cast spells too?” I asked as a dwarf in a deer-head mantle shot glowing green sparks at the ground before him.

  Dav rolled his eyes at me. “Of course. All Woodsman sub-classes have some spells, though Archers have quite a bit fewer than Shamans or Druids.”

  After the dwarf’s spell exploded in a shower that blanketed a small patch of earth, a tiny sapling poked its head out of the ground, seeming to bow its imaginary head toward the now dancing dwarf. Outside the booth, a forest giant and a mohawked gnome clapped in time to his hopping dance. The dwarf became so engrossed in his dance that he failed to notice that the sapling was now an adult tree. As it continued to grow, the branches became too big for the enclosed booth. The dwarf finally realized his peril when the tree mashed his face against the glass. His two friends scrambled to open the door and barely managed to pull him out as the tree shattered the glass and continued to expand.

  Dav rushed forward into the path of the ever-growing tree. His hands moved at a speed too fast for my eyes to follow—not that I could’ve seen much anyway through the dazzling colors of light emanating from his fingertips. As his hands abruptly stopped, the light shot forth into the path of the approaching tree, catching it directly in its center and expanding through its entirety. The tree seemed to wince for a second before shrinking back at roughly the same pace it’d been growing before. A couple of minutes later, the only signs of the tree were the shattered glass and leaves sticking out of the shell-shocked dwarf’s beard.

  Dav shook his head as he walked back toward me. “So, you want to learn spells?”

  The dwarf’s companions started casting spells of their own that landed against the dwarf’s belly a few seconds later. The bright green energy covered him before slowly fading into his body. The glazed look in his eyes disappeared and he shot up, spitting pieces of bark into the ground. His companions patted him on the back and began a nervous round
of laughter.

  “Boy, do I!” As Dav’s bewildered expression sunk in, I lowered my voice as much as I could into only a modest shout and held back my shakes of excitement for fear he might not let me learn any spells. “I promise to be more careful than I was at the archery range—a lot more careful. What spells do I get?”

  He grumbled under his breath and led me to a side room which was only slightly bigger than one of the seven-by-seven-foot booths. This room was completely dark, save for a candle and a lone man sitting cross-legged on the floor in apparent meditation.

  As Dav closed the door, the man spoke while keeping his eyes closed. “Has another one come seeking enlightenment?”

  “If enlightenment equals spells, then yes,” I said with as much humility as I could muster in my excitement.

  Dav stifled a laugh.

  “It does not,” the crossed-legged man said.

  “Oh, is there another booth where I can learn spells?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I sat down across from him, also crossing my legs. “Fine, then teach me enlightenment.”

  The man’s eye shot open. “Look, guy, this isn’t some philosophy school or whatever. We are Woodsmen here, not those doofus Monks from the Bruiser hall. If you want to be a goofy Monk seeking enlightenment to make you punch things harder, then you picked the wrong class. I teach the magics, and the magics makes the things go boom. Do you want to make the things go boom?”

  “Yeah!”

  He grinned wickedly. “And do you want to occasionally undo the booms on your companions when you get a little too excited?”

  “Yeah!” I raised my hand, and he high-fived it.

  “That’s my kind of guy!” He stood and motioned for me to do the same. “My name is Mija, by the way. Now, as a newly minted Woodsman, you get two spells to start off with.”