by M Helbig
The Golden Hole That’s Neither Golden Nor a Hole
I almost collapsed in relief. While Olaf’s earlier statement about us not being able to become physically exhausted in the game was true, mental exhaustion was still a very real thing. I wanted nothing more than to crash into a bed and not get out of it for several days. However, before I could do that we’d have to take care of our patients.
The once beautiful town of emerald green was now almost completely in ruins. A small corner in the northwest seemed to be the only part mostly intact besides three sporadic buildings still standing in the rest of the city. People walked around lethargically with no direction. If this hadn’t been a game, I would have called it battle fatigue.
The only bit of organization occurred at the town’s edge, where three players stood in obscenely impractical but jaw-droppingly awesome armor directing other players in their corresponding colors. Cedra was one of the three, so I assumed the other two were also guild leaders. Right now, their groups’ main task was piling the corpses of the Shadow Players into a big pit.
“The Bass Kickers, the Scourge of Darkness, and The Guard! Those are the three most powerful guilds in the game!” Olaf yelled a little too loudly and drew the attention of Cedra. Her withering glare told me what I could expect if I asked her for anything.
“Well, we do need to get these two rezzed and the top guilds are bound to have lots of people who can do that, so I guess that’s where we should start.” I barely finished my statement before Olaf vanished. There was no puff of smoke or gradual fade; he was there, and then he wasn’t. Alizia was too busy chugging the last of her new potions to notice.
I was about to enquire in group chat where he was when Olaf’s cheerful voice pipped up. “Someone just rezzed my old corpse! I almost completely forgot about it. To think that was only a few hours ago. It feels like a week.”
Alizia’s empty potion vial shattered as she disappeared too.
“So—where exactly are you?” I asked.
“Oh, right. Decrona and Nyytro,” Olaf said. “I almost forgot.”
He came sprinting from around a green townhouse shaped like a keep. It was only a couple of blocks away, or at least it would’ve been if there were anything resembling blocks left. A rez message of my own popped up just before he arrived back and I accepted, appearing a second later in front of a cheerful woman in the shimmering blue of the Bass Kickers. A message indicated I’d recovered half of the gold I’d lost on death. Olaf and Alizia dragged Nyytro’s and Decrona’s corpses to me shortly after.
As soon as she finished casting the resurrection spell on Nyytro, the kindly Light Mage convulsed and winced in pain. The pit of my stomach dropped as I remembered how Amphicyon had reacted to just the corpse’s smell. I was terrified of what danger we might have inadvertently put her in, but a couple seconds later, her face returned to normal.
“Hmm,” the Light Mage said. “That’s a new one.”
Nyytro’s corpse spasmed for a few seconds and his eyes blinked open. She then turned to Decrona and cast the same spell. When nothing happened, she tried again. After the third failure, she turned to us and shrugged. “I’m getting a ‘Player Not Found’ message. Never seen that one before.” She pointed to the next corpse in line. “Sorry, but I still have a lot more to do. When I’m done, I’ll come back and try again.” She moved on to the next in line, a plate-clad beaverkin.
I stared at Decrona’s corpse feeling awful for our failure. True, she had earned something terrible for her betrayal, but not permanent death. She’d done a lot for us, and it wasn’t like she intended or knew what would happen to Nanny. I still felt I could’ve done more for her.
Nyytro cleared his throat loudly, drawing me back to the present. “Thanks for getting me a rez. You have no idea how much money I would’ve lost.” He hopped up off the ground and stretched.
“How much are we talking?” Alizia asked. “And more importantly, what’s our cut?”
Olaf shot her a withering glare. She shrugged and began tapping her foot impatiently.
“I don’t think he does rewards,” I said. “Which brings up the question of why you sacrificed yourself to kill that thing. No offense, Carl, but you don’t strike me as the heroic type.”
Nyytro took a few quick practice swings at the air in front of him. “None taken, kiddo. I’m not, but after what happened with Frank, I figured I owed it to his memory.”
“You mean the part where you murdered him, your best friend?” I asked. Several people nearby were staring, including two people who had looked so far gone in shock that I didn’t think they’d ever come out of it.
“It was all part of his master plan. You see, when Frank discovered those things, he went to our boss, and she passed it on to the CEO, who told us it was just a coincidence and ordered us to drop it. ‘A few deaths were to be expected with a player-base this size,’ he said. ‘If you get enough people playing for long enough, some of them are bound to die for reasons unrelated to the game.’ He took our evidence as we left, had it wiped it from our personal drives, and deleted them from the systems. With our new, limited access, it took almost a year to track even the smallest record of them again. Frank was hoping that if that interactive demo we were working on went big we’d get it back, but they must have figured out that we were still looking. Someone came to my house and tried to kill me.”
“But they weren’t as good at the murdering as you were,” I grumbled.
His wheezing laugh came out more as a whimper. “I still got the old reflexes. When I called your dad afterward, he came up with a crazy plan. He told me the only way to get them off our tail would be to kill ourselves. While we hadn’t been able to get the footage of the Reapers back, we had been able to get into Chang’s project data. We changed the data on some bracelets from it to make it look like me and old Frank were some other people. When we died, those special medics would come a-runnin’ and put our dying brains into the game. Frank made sure to have some friends change the records back after we passed. No way the higher ups would check the faces on the bodies. With the company thinking we’re dead, Frank was hoping they’d leave his family alone, while he and I live on inside the game, still gathering evidence about those things with them none the wiser that we’re still mostly alive.”
“And Dad’s brilliant plan to investigate them involved killing a ton of players to draw them out?”
Nyytro tried to play it cool by winking at me, but it looked more like he was having an allergic reaction. “Frankie wanted to try and find people who had recordings of existing incidents, but I figured it’d be way quicker to cause a few thousand deaths to draw ’em out. Bright guy Frank was, but not a risk taker. Best friend a guy could have.”
“Then—then why did you shoot him?”
“He told me to. Tried doing it himself but couldn’t. Told me to surprise him and boy, did I.”
“And he told you to murder me too?”
“Yeah. That was . . . an accident. When you appeared so suddenly, I thought you were one of the guys who’d tried to kill me earlier. You weren’t supposed to be there, and you certainly weren’t supposed to be the one brought into the game. It was supposed to be Frank and me, together again, just like in the old days. No wife or kids to tie us down or get in the way.” Nyytro looked me straight in the eye. “But, as usual, you mucked it up, and now Frankie’s dead for good.”
I shook my head in disgust. Typical him. Never takes responsibility for anything. Always someone else’s fault. “Never got what Dad saw in you.”
Nyytro sneered. “Likewise.”
“So, why did you kill the Reaper?” Olaf asked.
“Cause it’s what Frank would’ve done.” All the false bravado and anger washed from his face as he stared at the ground. “He wanted to stop those things. The chance to have my friend to myself again was all I cared about. A dream come true. But then I killed him—even though I was only doing what he told me to and someone else ruined our plan, I still
felt like I owed it to him. He’s the only friend I’ve ever had, and I plan on seeing this thing through to honor his memory.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and nodded. “You have my help, for what it’s worth. If there’re any more of those things out there, we’ll take them out for Dad.”
Nyytro brushed my hand off. “You’re right, it ain’t worth much. There are more of ’em out there, I’m sure of it. And I don’t need your help. You’d only cramp my style. Well, thanks for the rez. I won’t be seeing you. Don’t look me up. Don’t send me any messages, and certainly don’t talk to me if you ever do happen to see me again, which you probably won’t because I won’t be in any of the newbie-infested places where you’ll be hanging.” He turned and walked away.
“Wait!” Alizia ran after him. “What was that potion you used to kill it, and more importantly, what did it taste like?”
Nyytro laughed and shook his head. “Newbs . . . It was a Resurrection Potion. They put a buff on you that brings you back to life with 10% of your HPs if you die.”
“Now, about that reward,” Alizia said. “Potions are preferred like, say, one of those Resurrection Potions, but money is OK too.” Nyytro snickered and pushed her aside. He turned on Sprint and disappeared in the distance shortly after.
“Now what?” Olaf asked.
“Now you let me tape your commentary for my latest video on your epic battle with Bruce!” a voice called out from behind us. We turned to find Clewd sitting in a director’s chair with four other chairs aligned next to him. On the cloth backs of the chairs were the names “Olaf the Terribly Mustached,” “Alizia the Much-Less-Amusing-than-Clewd,” “Decrona the Vanilla Yogurt of People,” and “Lucas the Lucas.”
“What’s wrong with my mustache?” Olaf asked.
“Evidently it’s more amusing than me,” Alizia grumbled.
“Clewd, this isn’t a good time,” I said.
“Which makes it the perfect time to record your commentary. Angry people say things they normally wouldn’t.” He pointed at the chairs. “Now sit and start talking while I replay the footage. You’ll have to talk a little louder to be heard over the circus music I added.”
“So you finally figured out how to record?” I asked.
“About that . . . could one of you go over how to do that again? And also, how do you record something that already happened?” He pointed harder at the chairs.
We were saved from having to answer him when Cedra stormed by with a trail of followers toward the kindly Light Mage. I got the feeling that loud and angry were Cedra’s default method of doing everything. Clewd said something, but I couldn’t hear it.
“Noradine, hurry this up,” Cedra said. “We need to be out of here in ten minutes.”
The Light Mage, Noradine, shrugged and went back to her work. “This will take at least another hour, probably two.”
“Let the other guilds’ healers finish.” Cedra tried to walk in front of her but Noradine turned away. “We’re going to Awesome City. With this place out of commission, we need to be ready for the influx of traffic for our auctions.”
A newly resurrected wood elf climbed off the ground and shook Noradine’s hand. She smiled and quickly went on to the next corpse. “I find making money at a time like this very distasteful, Dra. And the name for that city is ridiculous. Go on without me.”
Cedra spewed out a string of nonsense I assumed were originally curses before the profanity filter garbled them. Eventually, her sycophants calmed her down.
“The other guilds vetoed ‘Kick Bass City’ as the name, and since it’s a joint venture we had to comply,” Cedra said. “Right now, our faction needs a replacement location for players to trade their goods, so what better place than the one that we can restrict competition in? Now, as your guild leader, I demand that you come with us. Players need high-level potions and you’re our best alchemist.”
Noradine narrowed her eyes as she finished another spell. “Fine, but only for the good of the other players.”
Cedra looked about to utter another long string of curses when Clewd popped up between them.
“Excuse me ladies, but do you mind? We’re trying to record some commentary over here, and we can’t until you quiet down.” He pointed directly at me. I would’ve run for cover, but he caught me completely off guard. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I responded with a pathetic wave that I immediately regretted.
“You!” My heart skipped a beat as Cedra looked directly at me, but she stuck her finger in Clewd’s chest instead.
Clewd maintained his usual placid grin. “Do we know each other?”
“Know each other? Know each other! You ruined our raid on Nehebkau by pulling the rest of the dungeon on us in the middle of the boss fight.”
“I felt the scene needed more drama.”
“And then you wore a disguise to get into our raid on Grafvitnir and somehow flooded the whole cave.”
Clewd shrugged. “It was too dark. I needed to up the contrast for my shot.”
Cedra grabbed Clewd by the collar but failed to lift him. “That doesn’t even make any sense. The water made it darker. And you don’t even know how to record!”
“But when I do, I can assure you, you’ll be first to get a look at the videos. Now, if you’d be so kind as to quiet down, my new friends and I are about to record the commentary for my latest unrecorded video.”
This time, before he could point toward me Alizia grabbed me and pulled me behind the only building nearby.
“They were just here a minute ago. Reminds me of the time me and my four friends nearly took out Barry the Lich King.” Clewd stared wistfully at Cedra.
Having spent a bit too much time with Clewd, I knew this was the perfect time to run away before his ridiculousness sucked us in. Cedra, however, had not learned that lesson.
“The Lich is a queen, not a king, and her name is certainly not Barry,” Cedra growled. “And no single group could possibly take her out, unless you secretly happen to be one of the Trium.”
“Ha!” one of her followers exclaimed. “Him a member of the Trium?”
“Yeah!” another one said. “You wouldn’t survive one hit from the Lich Queen.”
Cedra glared at her followers, and they scurried away. Noradine laughed.
Clewd puffed up his chest. “I, as the group’s bard, of course went in first.”
“There is no Bard class in this game!” Cedra was now only an inch from his face.
Clewd ignored her. “When lo and behold, I noticed our Burglar was completely missing.”
“That’s what Burglars are supposed to do, you idiot. They turn on Sneak so they can scout out the area while invisible.”
Clewd nodded thoughtfully. “If only you had been there to remind me of that, but as you weren’t, I was thrown into such confusion that I completely forgot to tank the very unhygienic Barry as he charged into our midst. He tore both our poor mage and Gladiator to pieces before I could get his attention with my lute. The Holy Fist did a valiant job keeping me healed, but with only two of us, it was a matter of time before he fell too, especially with those cloaked people distracting us by doing naughty things to our fallen friends. Fortunately, Barry was a good sport and let me concede the match in dignity. We shook hands, and he helpfully pointed me toward the door. I never did find the Burglar, though. What was his name? Rapunzel? Ropesock? Repsak? Chap is probably still down there, now that I think about it.”
“Raid bosses do not just let you leave.” Cedra shook her head in disgust and in doing so caught sight of Noradine’s hysterically laughing face. Infuriated, she tried pushing Clewd out of the way to get to her giggling guildmate, but he didn’t budge. She looked like a toddler trying to push a mountain. Eventually, she gave up and circled around to grab Noradine and haul her off. The pack of blue-clad followers trailed after her, though at a much greater distance than before.
Taking her lead, I decided to leave the scene before Clewd found and engaged us in
further silliness. It was nice to see him annoying someone else for a change, and downright entertaining to see Cedra’s overreaction. Judging by her big, goofy smile, Alizia felt the same. However, Olaf’s mouth hung wide open, his face pale like a ghost’s. I looked for one of the healers to see if they could cure him.
“Did—did you hear what he said?” Olaf stammered out after Alizia slapped him hard on the back.
“That he tried to take on a Raid Boss with a single group and got them all killed?” I asked. “Yeah, I think the most unbelievable thing about that is that he could talk four people into grouping with him.”
“N-n-no. The Burglar’s name.”
“I know, right?” Alizia asked. “Ropesock was the name I was going to use when I started my career of rollicking banditry. Ropesock and her band of married men. We rob from the rich and give to the pourer of beer. Now I’m going to have to order new banners. Change our theme song. Get new sponsors. A whole big mess of paperwork.”
“Not that one. Repsak. That was the name Kasper was using.”
My eyes lit up. “Then we need to grill Clewd for everything he knows.”
“Yes! We finally have a real lead.”
Olaf activated Sprint without even giving me a chance to move, but it was the happiest collision I’ve ever been in. I didn’t even mind dusting myself off as Alizia pulled me off the ground. My smile was short lived when I noticed Olaf frantically pacing back and forth about a hundred feet in front of us. Neither Clewd nor any of Cedra’s guildmates were anywhere to be found. Even Clewd’s chairs were gone. Seeing our panic, and probably a little afraid that Olaf might Sprint into the newly resurrected, one of the other healers approached us. His elk-head hat indicated he was probably either a Shaman or a Druid.