by Edward Brody
I grabbed onto the dagger in my shoulder and yanked it out as I tried to scramble away, and then I focused on the dagger sticking out of the back of my leg.
You are bleeding and require medical attention. Bleeding is a damage-over-time effect.
There it is, I thought.
The group approached me slowly as I wriggled on the ground, trying to ignore the pain, splitting my attention between pulling myself back to my feet and dislodging the weapon from my calf.
“No dark elf to help you today, huh?” Milton asked.
“We never wanted any trouble with you,” I said as I ripped the dagger out from the back of my leg.
“Well, you found it, and now you’re about to pay for the trouble you caused.” Milton turned towards his companion with the flail and gave a slight head nod.
The man with the flail stomped towards me with his weapon gripped tightly in his hand, and when he was about to raise it to strike, I shot a Fireblast at his face, then raised a Fire Curtain across the direction where the other three were standing.
You have gained 1 point of Wisdom!
The flail user screamed and started grabbing at his face, while Milton and the dagger wielder grunted and rolled to the ground, extinguishing the flames that had burned them without taking on too much damage. Ozzy was on the edge of the fire and avoided most of it just by jumping out of the way.
I raised my hand to Ozzy, ready to cast a Fireblast at him, but he was just looking back and forth between me and the other guys, seemingly unsure what to do. I didn’t say anything to him, but I did my best to ask him ‘Why?’ with only my eyes. Instead of meeting Aaron and I the night he stood us up in Thorpes, he decided to team up with those clowns? I just couldn’t understand it.
Ozzy gritted his teeth. “He’s hurt now!” he shouted. “We don’t need to kill him. Let’s go back and loot the wagon!”
Milton picked himself off the ground and started brushing himself off. “Oh, he definitely needs to die.” He grabbed the two swords on each side of his waist and started rushing for me.
I moved my hand from Ozzy’s direction to Milton’s and let a Fireblast fly at Milton’s face. He was fast though, and managed to duck the blast, then lunged forward into a roll.
I was pushing myself to my feet when Milton was right upon me, raising both of his swords high in the air, but then there was a loud, angry shout from behind him. Milton stopped what he was doing to turn around.
Ozzy had equipped his shield in one hand and his sword raised in the other. “Come on, then!” Ozzy said as he activated his taunt.
Milton snarled and started rushing toward Ozzy, and the dagger wielder joined in on the attack, jumping at Ozzy with his daggers. It was as if they couldn’t resist his provocation.
Steel rang against steel as Ozzy blocked the attacks of the two men with his shield, and I rushed forward, slashing the man with the flail across the chest with my sword. He grunted and swung his flail at me. I did my best to block with my sword, but his weapon was just so unorthodox that the spikey end of the flail ended up cracking me across the shoulder anyway.
You are bleeding and require medical attention. Bleeding is a damage-over-time effect.
Shit! I thought. My health dropped to 35%. I hadn’t had any time to inspect anyone, but it was clear that the chances of killing the three thugs, even with Ozzy helping, were pretty slim. I might’ve had a chance to kill the flail user if I cast Boiling Blood, but it was unlikely I’d be able to kill the other two before the spell ran out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ozzy take a stab from a dagger to his arm while he was busy doing everything to block Milton. He wasn’t in a good position either.
I cast Boiling Blood right as the big guy was swinging his flail at me again, and with my speed boost, I was able to dash backwards and out of the way with no problem. Before he even realized he had missed, I was already dashing forward, circling around him, and landing a precise blow right to the back of his ankles.
The man screamed and fell to the ground, as I dashed in Ozzy’s direction, swiping my sword across the dagger user’s back, then a fast stab into the abdomen of Milton.
Milton yelped and dropped one of his swords so that he could grab at the wound, and I pulled my sword back to stab him again. But before I thrust the tip for another blow, I paused for a moment, and my stomach turned a little. It was the first time that I had really battled other humans—even if Milton and his thugs were human NPCs—and the idea of killing a human was unsettling.
I thought back to the first time I killed a squirrel in Eden’s Gate and the same strange feeling of murder was resurfacing. When I fought Garrik, his odd-colored skin and pointy ears kept him feeling like less of a person, or maybe it was the fact that I assumed that the duel was a friendly duel that made fighting him so easy?
But out there in a wild encounter, there were no rules, and Milton’s cries were just as real as any human’s would be on earth—the blood that he left on my sword was just as red as any real blood. If I landed a critical hit on him, there was the possibility he would die, and even if he had tried to kill me, the killing thoughts made me hesitate. I was having seriously mixed feelings.
I swung my sword at Milton again in an attempt to hurt him, not kill him, but surprisingly he managed to get his sword up to block. He raised his boot to me, but I was still too fast for him to connect. I dashed back and squared off to defend the next round of attacks. Suddenly, sparks of energy started rippling out of Milton’s one remaining blade, and he smiled devilishly as he took a step toward me.
Shit! I thought. He had some hidden tricks up his sleeve.
Ozzy slammed Milton on the back of his head with his shield, and he fell face-first to the ground, and the sparks disappeared.
“Good timing,” I said with a huge sigh of relief.
I swung around and slashed my sword against the dagger wielder who was recovering, causing him to fall back to the ground, and I looked up and saw that Boiling Blood was going to end at any moment.
“Run towards the Crystal River!” I shouted to Ozzy.
“Crystal River?” Ozzy asked, his eyes looking perplexed.
I tilted my head in the direction I had been heading and started running right as my buff ended. “This way!”
You are bleeding and require medical attention. Bleeding is a damage-over-time effect.
My health was down to 25%, and the dagger wounds stung with each step that I took.
Ozzy and I ran as fast as we could, and I turned to look back a few times to make sure that none of the three thugs were still following. They weren’t. Apparently, we had caused enough damage that they were willing to give up the fight.
“Over here!” I shouted as we approached a large farm. In the middle of the farm was a silo, and right beside the silo was a stable with a visibly open door.
I rushed for the entrance of the stable, and once inside, I slid on the dirt as I sat down. The smell of manure and hay filled my nostrils as I reached inside my bag for my bandage. “Are you okay?” I asked Ozzy as he plopped himself down beside me.
“50% health but I’m not bleeding,” he huffed.
I nodded and as I tied a bandage around my calf, securing it on my first try. My shoulder was still aching, but the bleeding there had stopped naturally. The blood drop icon below my stat bars disappeared.
Ozzy and I were breathing heavily as we tried to catch our breath.
“What the fuck, dude?” I asked. “What were you doing with those guys?”
Ozzy shrugged. “I met them in Newich. Played a little Pig with them and they invited me to go out and explore a little.”
“It looked like you murdered somebody at the wagon.”
“I didn’t murder anyone. Milton did. But what’s it matter?” Ozzy asked. “They’re just NPCs.”
“Yeah, they may be NPCs, but you know this is… our lives now, right? Those NPCs are part of our lives.”
Ozzy smirked. “Yeah, I guess. But…” He shook his hea
d. “I dunno… I’m just trying to get by, man.”
“When I first met you, you said that you had trouble telling the difference between NPCs and humans from Earth.”
“Yeah?”
“Well then, doesn’t that make you feel a little closer to them?”
Ozzy pushed his shoulders back and his bones cracked. “Are you trying to put me on a guilt trip?”
“No, I was just a little shocked to see you with those guys.”
Ozzy sighed. “Not my proudest moment, but hey. I abandoned them when they tried to attack you. I wasn’t about to side with NPCs over a real player.”
I didn’t get the feeling that Ozzy was getting what I was trying to say, but I wasn’t about to press the issue. In some ways, he reminded me of when I first entered the game. I took Kronos’ sword because I still viewed the world as a game and Jax as an NPC. I had since realized that things were far more than a game, but Ozzy was apparently coming to that realization a little more slowly… Or he just didn’t have the same moral compass that I had.
“The wagon?” I asked.
“Milton saw it riding along the trail and they decided to attack before I had any say so over it. Looked like a big payload. The driver and the guard were both fairly high level. Everyone spent their mana in the fight.”
“The girl?”
“The fuck if I know.” Ozzy started standing to his feet.
“Those guys are—“
“Fuck yeah,” Ozzy interrupted. “Look at this shit.”
I picked myself up off the ground and scanned the stable. It wasn’t huge, but there were four different stalls on each side, and in each stall was a horse. They all looked healthy and lean.
Ozzy grabbed onto a stall gate with a speckled gray horse inside. “We’ve got mounts now.”
“These aren’t ours,” I muttered. “We can’t steal them.”
Ozzy pulled his hand from the gate and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You can’t be serious…”
I tilted my head to the side. “We don’t even know who these belong to.”
Ozzy licked his lips and huffed as he blinked several times. “You not much of a gamer, huh? Sometimes you’ve got to steal shit to get ahead.”
“This isn’t really a game,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” Ozzy said. “I mean… Our lives are inside this game now, but it’s still just a game.”
I shook my head. “I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. This is our life now, and we’ll have to face the consequences for our actions. I’ve been there and done that already.”
Ozzy’s smirked and he stepped back from the gate. “Okay, so then you’re scared?”
“Not scared. Just trying to play it safe until I have more levels under my belt and understand more about the world.”
Ozzy sighed. “Fair enough. If you want to play Mr. Nobility, I suppose we can walk.”
I was feeling a bit uneasy about Ozzy after his comments. I saw a lot of myself in him—goodness knows I had done a lot of naughty things in the RPG games I played in the past, but why was he still hanging on to the game concept? Before he mentioned it, I had almost forgotten that we were living in a game.
“And what happened to you the other—“
“The other night?” Ozzy took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sorry about that. Not too long after you left, the ants at the hill suddenly swarmed me, and I ended up getting killed. I was bound near Newich, and there was no way I was going to make it to Thorpes without any of my items in the middle of the night.”
I nodded. “Understandable.”
“And where are you headed now?” he asked.
“Mist Vale.”
“Mist Vale?”
“Across the Crystal River. The city of the High Elves.”
“A city of High Elves?” Ozzy asked, looking surprised. “I’ve seen a couple elves here and there wandering through the Freelands, but a city of them?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Hell yeah. I want to check that out.”
“You have to kneel when you encounter an elf in the forest,” I explained.
Ozzy smirked and shrugged. “Alright, whatever. I just want to explore. I haven’t really been outside of the Freelands since I spawned.”
“Okay then,” I said cautiously. “You’re welcome to come, but the guards don’t grant passage to everyone. We’ll have to ask.” I wasn’t feeling too hot about traveling with Ozzy. He still seemed like a great guy, but he had an air of naivety that made me uncomfortable. But then again, I had gotten used to Aaron’s naivety, so I could probably handle him.
Ozzy nodded. “Oh, and hey… Maybe you could use this since you’re a fire magic user.” He pulled a scroll out of his bag and handed it to me.
You’ve received: Scroll: Igniting Touch. A touch of your flesh ignites your target into flames, causing fire damage over time for several seconds. Requires 15 Intelligence. Fire Magic Level 5. Durability: 8/10. Quality: Average. Rarity: Uncommon. Weight: 0.1 kg
I looked up to Ozzy then down the to the scroll again. “Where’d you get this?”
“You know that little forest area where I met you?”
I nodded.
“Well, after I went back there find all the equipment I dropped, there was this farmer guy who was planting seeds in a garden nearby. He invited me in his home for a drink, and he had this scroll just posted up near the door. I was planning on selling it, but you’re welcome to have it since—”
I sucked in a deep gulp of air and sighed. “Dude…”
Ozzy shook his head in confusion. “What? If you don’t want it, just give it back, and I’ll sell it.”
I rocked my head back and forth slowly. “The farmer you stole this from—his name is Conrad. He’s a pretty nice guy. You shouldn’t have stolen it from him.”
Ozzy raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a random NPC… What harm could it cause?”
I chuckled inside. What kind of harm? I thought back to the harm I caused Gerard the day that I sabotaged his shop. I could see where Ozzy was coming from, since I had been in the same mindset at one point, but I wasn’t sure how to relay my feelings to him any further. “How many quests have you taken?”
“Not too many. One or two gathering quests… I’ve mostly just been grinding MOBs [mobile NPC monsters] for XP.”
“Okay, then bear with me. I might have gotten a little bit more involved with the NPCs than you. I guess I’ve kind of learned to respect them the same as I would a Reborn. They think, feel, and hurt the same as us.”
“That’s what they’re programmed to do.”
I smiled. “Just wait… All it takes is one encounter to change your mind.”
Ozzy shrugged. “Whatever.” He reached in his bag, grabbed a health potion, then passed it to me. He reached in and grabbed another. “Last one,” he said as he tilted his head back and drank.
I chugged the health potion and watched as my health bar started to fill back up. “Thanks.”
I poked my head out the stable and looked around for any signs of attackers, then waved my hand to Ozzy. “Looks like it’s clear. Let’s go.”
Ozzy followed me to the exit, and right as we started off, he asked “How far is Crystal River?”
“Never travelled on foot,” I said. “But I imagine it’ll be another few hours at least.”
He looked back to the stable. “You sure you don’t want to steal a horse or two?”
I chuckled. “No, we’re good.”
Chapter Fifteen
01/12/0001
“So after killing the orcs with Adeelee, I met Aaron. He’s a bit quirky, but now I consider him sort of like a best friend. In a short amount of time, we’ve seen a lot together. He’s from LA too.” I turned to Ozzy. “And what’s your story?”
Ozzy took a deep breath. “I was an oil rig mechanic before I logged in here.”
“Oil rig mechanic? That’s kind of a big deal.”
“It paid well but it was a damn hard job.�
� Ozzy cleared his throat. “It was literally an hour before I was about to head out to work when the Nexicon headset showed up in the mail. I wanted to give the game a whirl before work, and the rest is history.”
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m 37, but I guess age doesn’t really matter anymore in here, does it?”
I chuckled. “I guess it doesn’t. How about family back on Earth?”
“Divorced for 10 years now. Never did have any kids… Come to think of it, my clock was staring to tick down. Maybe being in here will give me a second chance at having a family of my own.”
“You think you can have kids in Eden’s Gate?”
Ozzy shrugged. “You can fuck, eat, and kill people. It would be kind of weird if they didn’t allow you to make babies.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
It was late afternoon by the time we made it to the edge of the Crystal River.
“This is where we cross. There’s a bridge a mile or so that way.” I pointed to the west. “But since we’re on foot, it’ll be a lot faster if we just swim.”
“Aw, fuck…” Ozzy groaned. “My gear is going to rust up more than it already has.”
I made sure my weapons and bag were secure and jumped in the water. Halfway through the swim, I turned and waved a hand at Ozzy. “Come on. It’s alright.”
Ozzy eased himself into the water, and I continued to swim.
I was three quarters of the way to the edge of the river, when I felt something slimy wiggling near my waist. I thought I had run into a thick piece of algae at first, but then I felt a sharp sting that shocked me enough that my head dipped under water.
I grabbed for the source of the pain, but the slippery, strange entity felt like it had slid under my armor and was halfway down my leggings. I was so focused on getting rid of whatever the strange feeling was, that I wasn’t properly swimming, sinking further and further underwater with each panicked twist of my body.
Another shock and then another caused me to take a mouthful of liquid. I instinctively tried to cast Fireblast, but I wasn’t sure why. It just fizzled in the water.