by A. J. Markam
SUCCUBUS
A LitRPG Series
A.J. Markam
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Other Books by A.J. Markam
DEAD MAN GAMING
LitRPG - a safecracker has to infiltrate the Russian mob, who are posing as a bunch of orcs in a virtual reality video game.
OPERATION ZODIAC
Sci-fi - elite American military group uses bleeding edge tech to fight the wars of tomorrow.
1
As I sat there in the headquarters of Westek Inc., I prayed to the videogame gods for a break.
I had made it to the final round of interviews for a Quality Control position, and I desperately needed this. I had been laid off from my previous job three months ago, my bank account was getting perilously low, and I was a month late on rent.
Please, I begged. Just this once, please let things go my way.
Three mid-level managers were sitting across the table from me, looking at my résumé. A guy in glasses, a bro-tastic dude from Sales, and a woman from HR.
I, of course, was putting on the best dog and pony show I possibly could. “I’ve been playing OtherWorld for years, even before you guys went to virtual reality. It’s my favorite MMORPG ever.”
Sales Guy loved what I was saying. “Ian, yo – have you tried the full immersion unit yet, my man?”
Crap. I prayed my borderline poverty wasn’t going to sink my chances. “I, uh… I want to, but I could only afford the basic system. I’m saving up, though.”
“The basic is good, but you gotta try the full immersion. It is sick, dawg. Get this – you have a beer in the game? You get buzzed. You have five beers? You get drunk. I shit you not.”
I wanted to ask him, What’s the point of being in the most visually gorgeous video game ever created – one where you feel like you’re really THERE, battling dragons, casting spells, raiding dungeons – if all you want to do is get wasted?
Nothing against getting wasted. I was doing it a lot lately to cope with my current life situation, or lack thereof. But I could do that with an $8 six-pack in real life. Why the hell would I do it in a video game?
Still, I might need Bro-Man’s support, so I smiled weakly and nodded. “That sounds… awesome.” Then I turned to the others. “As I was saying, I’m super conscientious, I’m always on time to work, and I’m always available for overtime.”
Especially since my girlfriend of three years had broken up with me.
A sharp pang pierced my heart. It had been five months ago, but it still hurt like it had happened… maybe not yesterday, but definitely last week.
“Mr. Hertzfelder,” the woman said to me, “I see you participated once in a medical research program.”
You mean that one time I was a professional guinea pig for Big Pharma? You mean that thing I almost left off my résumé, but kept it in because I didn’t want my work history to look so thin?
“Oh – yeah, I needed some extra money one summer in college, so I was in this experimental drug program.” I laughed nervously. “Prescription drugs, not drug drugs. Bad drugs, I mean. I don’t do drugs. Just say ‘no.’ Haha… ha.”
Stop babbling, you fool!
“What exactly did they do in this program?”
“Um, well… we had to stay in a hospital for three weeks to isolate us, and they gave us this prescription drug to make sure it didn’t make us sick… and then they biopsied us at the end to make sure it didn’t give us cancer or anything.”
“Did they take blood regularly?”
“Yeah, twice a day.”
“Where did they biopsy you? From what part of your body?”
Jeez, why was this lady so interested in my drug trial job? Did she have some kind of medical fetish or something?
“The backs of my arms.”
“So you’re not adverse to medical experimentation as part of a job?”
“Uh… I guess not?”
Glasses Guy spoke up. “The reason we’re asking, Mr. Hertzfelder, is because we’re working on a prototype for a long-term immersion system – the kind where you could conceivably stay in the game for weeks at a time, maybe even months, and not suffer any ill effects. That’s the QC position we’re hiring for, and your background in medical research really stands out from the other applicants.”
I didn’t quite know what to say.
I hadn’t enjoyed being a guinea pig, but, hey – I was desperate at the time.
I was desperate now, too.
And frankly, a long-term immersion unit sounded kind of awesome.
“Are you… going to have to biopsy me again?” I asked hesitantly.
All three of them laughed at once.
“No, no biopsies. Just some standard IVs to keep you fed and hydrated, that’s it.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. That didn’t sound so bad. “It’s safe, right?”
“Perfectly safe,” Glasses said.
“Absolutely safe,” the woman agreed.
“Totally safe!” Bro-Dude exclaimed. “But the best thing is, we’re paying $50 an hour plus overtime. So, say they want to hook you up to the system and have you pull a 24-hour shift. After eight hours, that’s time-and-a-half, dude, so we’re talking $75 an hour. After twelve hours, it’s double-time – so you’re making a Benjamin an hour for getting drunk in a game, dawg! It don’t get any better than that!”
I have to admit, the sales guy was good at his job. He was selling me on exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Great,” I said, and added jokingly, “So when do I start?”
“How about now?” the woman replied.
I stared at her in shock. “…seriously?”
“We need someone as of yesterday.”
That’s good, because I needed a job as of three months ago.
Even if I did have to get biopsied.
2
After signing about two million non-disclosure agreements, liability waivers, and tax forms, I accompanied the Glasses Guy up to the fifth floor. Sales Bro and HR lady congratulated me and went back to their own departments.
“Rip it up, dawg!” was the last thing Bro-Man told me before he disappeared.
As I got in the elevator, I asked, “So what is it exactly that I’ll be doing?”
“We’ll be putting you into the unit for progressively longer periods of time,” John said. That was Glasses Guy’s name: John Perkins, my new supervisor in the Experimental Quality Control division.
“Right, but am I looking for programming bugs? Quests that can’t be completed, items that can’t be looted, graphics that suddenly disappear?”
“Actually, the system is pretty stable and mature. We’re testing a few new forms of AI that will help NPCs learn and interact better with players, so we’ll want your reports on how those interactions go. But the main thing is we just want you to play the game like a regular consumer. It’s just that your body will be in a form of suspended animation, that’s all.”
Maybe Bro Sales Guy wasn’t that far off when he said I would be making a Benjamin an hour for getting drunk in a virtual world.
“Cool,” I said as we got out of the elevator and walked down a non-descript hallway. “I could even use some of my regular characters, if you like. I have a Level 87 Dwarven Warrior – ”
“You’ll be playing a Warlock,” John interrupted.
“Oh. I, uh, I’ve never played a Warlock before.”
“Even better. You’ll be starting off at Level 1 and progressing like a normal consumer through the beginning stages of the game.”
For the uninitiated, Warlocks were characters that used spells to bind demons and force them to attack enemies. That was all I knew about the
m, except that you always saw them running through the game with some ugly-ass monster following them around like a pet dog.
“You sure you don’t want me to play something I’m more familiar with?”
“It has to be a Warlock. We decided to implement the AI in the least-played classes first to work out the bugs before we started putting them into the more heavily-played classes like Warriors and Mages, so the Warlock class is what you’ll be testing. Some bugs need to be worked out with the demons you’ll be summoning. Not only that, but there have been some issues shifting back and forth between worlds.”
That made my ears perk up. “Worlds?”
“Some of the new quests involve you going into different dimensions that you can access as a Warlock.”
Okay, that sounded kind of cool.
“Okay – I guess I’m a Warlock, then.”
John scanned his hand on a sensor embedded within the wall, then opened the door next to it. “Great. Here’s the unit.”
Whoa.
It was like a science fiction movie and hospital room had a baby, and then the baby threw up a bunch of wires all over itself.
There was a hospital bed with a big mechanical donut-looking thing circling the top of the bed, sort of like an MRI machine. Dozens of cables and wires snaked everywhere across the floor, connected to a bank of computers and EKG machines lining the side of the room. There was also an IV stand and a bag of saline hanging on a stand next to the bed.
A woman in a white uniform stood over in the corner, writing some things down on a clipboard.
“Hey Vivian, this is Ian Hertzfelder,” John introduced me. “He’s our new QC tech. Ian, this is Vivian, our on-site nurse. She’ll be monitoring your health while you’re in the game.”
“Nice to meet you,” Vivian smiled as she shook my hand.
“So – shall we?” John said, and gestured to the bed.
“Just like that?” I asked nervously.
“Just like that.”
“Okay…” I murmured, then stepped gingerly through the cables on the floor and pulled myself up onto the gurney. Vivian came over next to me, swabbed my arm with alcohol, and proceeded to stick an IV in me for the saline drip. I winced and tried to concentrate on what John was telling me.
“So, what’s going to happen is we’re going to skip the normal onboarding sequence. We’ve already set up your character – a human Warlock, Level 1. The system will take your appearance and use that in the game. Otherwise, just follow the prompts like you’re playing the game normally.”
Vivian started sticking electrodes to my chest and forehead, then clipping wires to the patches.
“Cool – do I get to choose my name?” I asked.
“It’ll be Ian.”
“Really?” I asked, disappointed. “I mean, that’s a little… bland, isn’t it?”
“It helps to keep the reports simple,” John said. “‘Ian’ is a lot easier than ‘Vargosterok.’ That way we don’t have to try to remember who’s who – we know Ian did this, Janet did that, Sandeep did something else. All the QCers use their own first names.”
“Oh… okay…”
“Just remember, the game won’t throw anything at you that you can’t handle – at least, nothing you can’t handle with a little ingenuity. When in doubt, remember that there are no coincidences inside the game. You ready?”
Not really, no.
“Sure,” I said, and forced myself to fake a grin as I gave him a thumbs-up.
“Alright,” John said, and typed on a keyboard hooked up to the bank of computers.
The mechanical disc around my head began to whir and hum.
“Initiation sequence in three… two…”
3
One.
I opened my eyes to find myself standing in a beautiful meadow on the edge of a forest of oak trees. The grass all around me was tall and green, and delicate yellow flowers swayed gently in the breeze. Sunlight warmed my face, and I could hear the chirping of birds off in the woods.
OtherWorld never ceased to amaze me. The game actually beamed sensations directly into your brain so that you saw, heard, smelled, felt, and tasted the video game world exactly as though it were the real world. There were some things you could vary – for instance, you could turn your pain settings down to zero – but otherwise, it felt as though you were really there, in a world where magic and monsters actually existed.
I might have skipped the character selection phase, but I did my own version of onboarding to familiarize myself with my new character. I opened my Stats window.
Health 154
Mana 200
Intellect 20
Stamina 11
Armor 8
‘Health’ was the amount of damage I could take, and would regenerate slowly over time.
‘Mana’ was basically magical power, or my ability to cast spells. It was the base stat for Warlocks and Mages – basically anything magic-related. Which kind of sucked for me, because I was used to playing classes where the main stats were Strength and Focus. So this would be a learning experience to see how Mana worked. It would be depleted with the more spells I cast, but just like Health would regenerate over time.
‘Intellect’ was one of the basic core stats, and increased the amount of Mana I had to cast spells.
‘Stamina’ was basically how much punishment I could take during a fight.
And ‘Armor’ was how much protection my current outfit provided against attack.
I checked out the clothes listed in the Stats window, and my heart sunk in despair. I was used to being a Warrior – meaning I had a shit-ton of armor and was really resistant to damage from enemies.
Compared with that, what I was wearing now was little better than a diaper.
Shirt: +1
Vest: +2
Pants: +2
Belt: +1
Boots: +2
All of it cloth. From my previous experience in the game, I was pretty damn sure that I could never wear a better class of armor than cloth – no plate armor, no chainmail, not even leather.
So 8 points of armor overall.
A stray pine cone falling off a tree would kill me.
Well, no, not really… but that’s sort of what it felt like.
And no weapon. As a Warrior, you at least started out with a crappy sword. Here, I felt naked. What was I supposed to defend myself with?
I looked at the action bar in the lower half of my vision – basically a strip of icons across my lower frame of vision.
There was only one icon so far: something called Darkbolt.
I hovered my finger over the ghostly image, and a small window appeared:
Darkbolt
2.5 seconds cast time
Stationary
15 hit points Dark Magic
25 Mana to cast
Range: 50 feet
Translated into English, that meant my only weapon was a magical attack that took me two and a half seconds to use, and I had to be standing still to do it. I could inflict 15 hit points on an enemy – but again, I could do it only once every 2.5 seconds.
I was used to my Level 87 Warrior inflicting 2000 damage with one swipe of my sword.
Plus, the spell cost me 25 Mana – which meant that I could get in roughly eight shots before I was depleted of magic. Possibly nine shots, since I would be regenerating Mana as I went.
Great.
I was really loving being a Level 1 Warlock so far. (That was sarcasm.)
The good news was, I only needed 400 experience points to get to the next Level, at which point I would get a new ability and upgraded stats like higher intelligence.
I really wanted to try my magical attack out, but there was nothing around to pit myself against, so I decided to wait until a wolf or something came along before I took Darkbolt for a test drive.
The good news (other than I was getting paid to be a magical 98-pound weakling) was that at the lower levels, the game never threw anything at you that cou
ld one-shot kill you. As long as you didn’t go bumbling into a pack of wolves or Death Cultists, and instead just engaged each enemy one at a time, there was a low probability that I would encounter anything with more than 120 hit points (15 damage per Darkbolt x 8 attacks). At least, nothing that could inflict more than 154 damage on me within the same time period.
In other words, I would hopefully only be encountering 78-pound weaklings for a while.
I had a leather bag hanging off my belt. I checked it out – yup, standard 10-slot bag with nothing in it. Not even one copper.
I looked around me. Other than the field and trees, the only other thing of note was a rickety old house in the shadows of the forest.
My supervisor John was right: there were never any coincidences in OtherWorld. Whatever the game put in front of you, you could assume was meant to further along your progress – and that rickety old house was the only thing within eyeshot.
Might as well get this party started.
I walked across the meadow towards the house, startling a few digital field mice along the way.
The house was more of a weathered shack, really, made of logs that had been faded to grey by the sun and time (and the skills of the game’s digital artists). There was smoke coming out of a dilapidated stone chimney, so I figured someone was living inside.
As soon as I walked up the steps to the creaky porch, though, I heard the unmistakable whoooosh of something coming out of invisibility mode. It was the game’s friendly warning of ‘Prepare to get boned.’
Two creatures appeared on either side of me: one, a somewhat humanoid shape made of twisting shadows, the other a wolf-like shape made of living flame.
The shadow thing hissed, and the fire wolf snapped and crackled menacingly.
I selected them quickly to see what I was up against.
15,000 hit points each.
Might as well be ten million, given my meager powers.
But they weren’t attacking. They were merely warning me so far.