Cat's Quest

by Roman Prokofiev

  It was beginning to get dark. A message from Alex blinked. He was waiting for me at the tavern. He had been sitting at one of the best tables. Karn’s daughter was bustling around, laying the table, putting up the candelabras and serving beer mugs with a thick white head on top.

  Having slumped into the chair opposite my friend, I took a generous sip. The light, cool, flavorful beer felt good. I was definitely tired from the day’s endeavors.

  “Here’s your clothes.” AlexOrder handed me the helmet that I lost by the Watchers castle. “I saw your death in the clan’s kill rate. How did you end up there? You should have written me, I could’ve warned our guys.”

  “I don’t know how… It was kinda stupid. I barely had time to comprehend it. How did they spot me so quick?”

  “They saw you in the Castle crystal. The guard on duty got on the bird and shot you from above,” Alex explained. “How are you? Are you enjoying the SPHERE?”

  “Absolutely! It’s cool,” I said, honestly. “It’s amazing how real everything feels! I sometimes think this is real!”

  “You know what I like most?” Asked my friend. “Food. Its taste. It’s like I’m going to restaurants trying various dishes, I could never try in reality.” A dream-like expression appeared on his face.

  “Look. I’m so confused about leveling up. No levels, skills… I don’t get it…” Alex sighed and began to explain.

  “Well, when it comes to gaining XP, it just gives you attribute points. You invest it in the required stat of the character thus building the kind of character you need. A mage, for example, needs intellect, and a warrior, durability…”

  “I get it…” I said, interrupting him impatiently. “What about skill points?”

  “You get skill points only by using particular skills, as you may have noticed. The more points, the harder it gets. Each skill has 10 ranks, from newbie to legend. Each rank gives a bonus to a fixed attribute. Usually, each skill had two fixed attributes, primary and secondary. For example, One-Handed Weapon features Agility and Durability. Ideally, having leveled up all 10 ranks, you get +6 Agility and +4 Durability. Are you with me?”

  “Not entirely,” I confessed. “But go on. How do I gain special techniques? I saw on the arena…”

  “Counter Parry and Fan Protection,” Alex nodded. “You gain those through archetypes. Having collected a certain combination of characteristics and skills points, you automatically get the archetype. The system assigns it to you automatically. The simplest is ‘fighter’. Almost everyone gets it. Those who level up weapons and invest character points into durability and fitness. There are many kinds of archetypes, some of them are hidden, and some are very rare.”

  “Are they like classes? What’s the points of the archetypes?”

  “Not exactly. First, you can have multiple archetypes. Second, they’re more flexible than classes… It’s something similar to what you like to call Multi-classes… and a player can change archetypes if they get bored. Why do they exist? They give various bonuses and abilities. One of my archetypes is ‘Rune Master’. This is an epic archetype that is very hard to obtain. And it’s extremely hard to level up. But I can cast runes, and it’s worth a lot.”

  “I think I’m starting to get it… what do you suggest I develop?”

  “The main archetypes and conditions required to obtain them are described on the forum. But there’s no rush! Level up as you play and enjoy the game. The system will assess your development path and skills and will assign you an archetype. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to gain at least a couple of thousand skill points first.”

  “Look,” I said, “I found a very strange sword.” I laid the blue sword on the table for him to see.

  “Weird,” Alex said, examining it closely. “Looks like lots of bugs. Only question marks and nine affixes. This doesn’t happen.”

  “It’s forged form Star Metal,” I said. “Check out the properties.”

  “I told you, Star Metal doesn’t exist. I only see question marks. Did you try identifying it?”

  “What do you mean, doesn’t exist? The blacksmith identified it and said it was made from Star metal. He ID’d it partially.” I looked again at the weapon’s properties. Material: Star Metal, mithril handle. Everything seemed right.

  “Look in the properties,” I said to Alex. “I’m only seeing question marks.”

  Alex sent me a message. The sword’s properties appeared to be question marks only. There was nothing about the material, or the number of slots. I saw it quite differently. What the hell? I sent him my picture.

  “It looks like the weapon is trying to conceal its properties,” Alex mumbled thoughtfully. “I’ve heard about something like this before… Or it could be just a bug.”

  “The Mage told me he’d ID it for 50,000,” I told Alex. “He said something about the Great Identification Scroll…”

  “Great?” His eyes widened with disbelief. “Do you have any idea, how much that scroll costs? It’s used for legendary artifacts, and only some of them at that.”

  “I don’t understand…” I mumbled. “Have you ever seen an NPC freeze?”

  “Frozen for a few seconds?” Alex asked, nodding. “It basically means that an NPC is facing a problem of a higher AI, and a more powerful AI is being connected. It happens when someone is trying to expose them for what they really are, an NPC… When players start telling them it’s all a game, not real, and stuff like that…”

  “And what do they say to that?” I wondered.

  “Try and find out!” my friend laughed.

  “What about my sword?”

  “No idea… I think it’s a bug. Write to the support team.”

  “I’ve got another question… Promise me you won’t laugh…”

  “Go ahead…”

  “I’ve invited a female NPC on a date… It just happened. What am I gonna do?”

  “First off, don’t bail…” Alex replied, trying to contain his laugher. “You’ll lose reputation points. Second, go ahead! Just wear something nice. Maybe something will turn up…” He winked at me and exploded into laughter.

  CHAPTER 8 DATE NIGHT WITH WELDY

  I have seen all kinds of different things both in MMORPGs and VRMMORPGs, but whatever else changes, there’s always one rule: who makes the most money? Is it a top craftsman, a red-eyed moron-farmer, or perhaps, the head of a clan who takes out everyone left and right? No, my friends! It’s the merchants who make most money, assuming they are professional and know what they are doing, of course.

  I happened to be a merchant. I spent a few hours revisiting various forums trying to understand the game in better detail. My main working skill was Trade. The development tree for this skill featured at least thirteen different branches, including things like: Contracts, Clan Contracts, Direct Sales, Knowledge of Market, Management, Wholesale, Commission Contracts, and so on and so forth…

  The closest archetype available to me was Novice Trader. The conditions for obtaining the archetype were clearly outlined in various guides: ten Charisma points, five Intellect points, first Trading rank (one hundred skill points), two open secondary skills, and a brief transaction history at auction, amounted to at least 100 gold profit. There were 5 conditions that weren’t that obvious, but this archetype was among the easiest to obtain. I could reach it quite easily.

  In order to successfully trade items in the Sphere you had to have a clear understanding of where items came from. Two sources existed, perhaps, three: loot, craft, and quest rewards. First, I researched everything to do with loot. Things worked as follows: mobs lost everything they had on their person. A rat, for example, lost meat, fur, and a tail. A humanoid enemy-NPC lost something they were wearing. A wolf or bear could never lose any boots or gold, but these things could be, for example, found in the spot a forest robber had been killed.

  In these kinds of games, looted equipment took priority on the market over crafted artifacts. In most games, it was more profitable to trade a
rmor enhancers or consumables such as arrows, potions, or bandages. However, in the SPHERE a good clan artifact such as armor or a sword was better (as a general rule of thumb) than items dropped by mobs. The only exceptions were epic artifacts — these were given as rewards for a quest or good reputation and were mostly personalized items. Items looted from NPCs were normally taken apart and used in various types of craftsmanship, taking into account that most armor could break or wear out, thus losing its PvP power, so about two-thirds of the market was saturated with items made by local craftsmen.

  With crafts, things got more interesting. Almost all artifacts used in the SPHERE were made by players. Mobs mostly lost resources and ingredients. NPCs sold Blueprints and Recipes. Craft was complex, multidimensional, and involved a multi-step process. For example, in order to create a regular arrow, 5 parts were required: tip, shaft, fletching, thread, and glue. Tips were made by a blacksmith while shafts were made by a carpenter. A seamstress made the threads, and a cook made the glue. It took four different craftsmen to make a single arrow, and that was just the arrows. Imagine what it took to produce something like a wagon?

  This kind of chain featured throughout the game and involved numerous resources and skills from other professions. The quality of items produced depended on the materials used. A tip, for example, could be made from silver or steel, and an arrow shaft, from ash or aspen. Sometimes a skilled craftsman would produce a true masterpiece—an artifact with outstanding stats.

  The contracts system was another fascinating aspect. It was flexible and had a lot of different templates. Players could enter contracts for material supply, transport, or executing all manner of tasks. Terms, conditions, and rewards varied from task to task, and should a contract be breached, the penalty was automatically applied to a player’s account. Contracts could be created with NPCs as well. Many NPC craftsmen trading in their own shops came up with repeated quest-contracts for sullying ingredients that were essential to their craft. A lot of players depended on these to make a living. Fortunately, the SPHERE’s numerous fan-sites featured situation analysis from the huge game market. There were also craft calculators, sales charts, and diagrams with multiple tabs. I was looking for a position with good, constant demand and sales volumes, and amounts on the market that I could handle.

  I got rid of a few items right away. There was no common auction. Every market was local and situated at the capital of an NPC-Kingdom. This ensured good logistics for transporting goods between cities as well as creating dynamic hubs at the crossroads of trade routes. I was living in the backwoods, as it turned out, in a fucking province of Eyre. The market volume here was many times smaller than the market volume in Dorsa, at Golden Fairs, which I mentioned earlier. But even in Dorsa, the market is small compared to the other worlds of the SPHERE. There is a special dimension, the so-called Bazar, where the level of sales was extremely high. The Bazar market was ten times the volume of markets in the other worlds. That was where the most sophisticated merchants resided. Getting there was impossible at this point, but I made a mental note of it.

  For now, my plan was simple: I had to try making money at Fairs. There was another complication—sales fluctuated over time. Mostly, on Friday evening and lasting through late Sunday night, the trading was much more active than other days. That was the time to launch my experiment. The Devil’s in the details, as they say. In order for me to succeed, I had to understand every tiny detail of the market.

  I spent the next day studying the auction. I offered lots for the sale and purchase of the stuff I had looted during my previous quests. Valkyrie told me that in order to sell stuff, I should check out the selling price of similar items, not the buying price. Selling something based on the latter was nearly impossible. Why? Because there were so many competitors (or their hired auction representatives), who were always trying to beat the price. There were plenty of people trading. The new lot prices were beaten almost instantly. The price could be changed no more than once every five minutes, and once you changed it, you could see someone else had lowered theirs even further, even if just by a single copper coin. In the end, I broke my set of merchandise into smaller lots and started using a classic trade plug.

  It was simple. I offered a lot starting at 50 silver, and within a few seconds, a competitor offered a better price, for example 49.99. I then threw in a new lot at 49.98, and while my competitor trader was forced to wait at least five minutes before they could lower their own price, my stuff sold. The issue, however, was that there were at least three different players, and I had to have at least 10 of those ‘plugs’ ready.

  Nevertheless, step by step, I started to sell my stuff. Some other merchants lowered their prices so low, they hardly had any profit margin at all. I figured it was useless trying to beat them, so I held my goods back, waiting for their stuff to sell. The amounts were not huge, but the experience it gave me was invaluable, and with every deal I made, my Trading skills increased. Initially, I got points for every deal, but once I achieved rank one, only successful deals counted. The system awarded me a point for Intellect when I achieved my first hundred OM in Trade. Hurray! I’ve passed the first milestone.

  Having spent four hours in the trading war, I came to a sad conclusion: the SPHERE’s auction was a speculative market, where dealers and auction bots ruled! I saw a bunch of merchandise being sold for next to nothing. My first round of trading: fifteen gold for gray loot from last night’s quest and a hundred for the flute. I used a little trick to sell it for twice as much—all I had to do was flood the chatroom. Silly questions about a special quest which linked to special items—the flute was purchased by a noob, a mysterious buyer. He’s in for a big disappointment, but what do I care? I decided to hold on to Ailinel’s ring. It might come in handy some time. I left the auctions with a hundred and twenty gold clinking in my wallet, at least twice as much as my friends had anticipated making. On the other hand, in four hours, we could have completed two more quests, so it was pretty much worth the same.

  * * *

  This was the night of my date with Weldy. I followed Alex’s advice and stopped by one of the clothing shops to buy some formal, civilian gear. I wore a blue jacket with white sleeves, a pair of boots, topped off with a velvet hat with a fancy buckle and falcon feather. I looked just like d’Artangan, or Puss In Boots! Everyone here dressed similarly, so it wasn’t considered comical. Items of civilian clothing each added one point for Charisma, and overall, made the players appear more attractive to NPCs. Having pondered some more, I put on a sword sling made of bat skin, and added a sword and a small bag, as so far, I hadn’t seen a single person who was not carrying a weapon.

  We were supposed to meet by a fountain in one of Eyre’s public squares, not too far from the shop where Weldy worked. I came early, a habit of mine, to have some extra time, and sat down by the fountain. It was beginning to get dark. Various NPCs and players walked by. By then, I had learned how to tell one from the other. The player almost always moved confidently and fast, mostly heavily equipped. NPC characters appeared to be in no rush. They were just living their lives. They had no reason to be in a hurry, after all, as this was their world. On the other hand, if a player decided to pretend to be an NPC, that would be harder to spot.

  “Lord HotCat!” I turned around. Weldy removed her hood. Her cheeks were red, and she appeared to be slightly out of breath. She must have been in a hurry.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come,” I said, kissing her hand beneath a thin, white glove.

  “The thought did occur to me,” she said shyly. “But, you make quite an impression on a girl like me, lord HotCat!”

  “I’m glad. Where would you like to go?”

  “I don’t know…” Weldy thought for a moment. “I suppose you don’t know Eyre very well.”

  “It’s only been four days…”

  “Perhaps I could show you around!” The Mage’s niece seemed excited. “Maybe after that, we can go to a tavern and enjoy some mull
ed wine?”

  “Sounds great!” I said.

  We talked as we walked. I found out Weldy had moved to Eyre a few years ago from the northern Ardat province. She wasn’t closely related to the mage, yet he gave her shelter and work at his shop in the Upper Quarter, a fact in which she took great pride. She knew nothing about magic, but a lot of local players thought otherwise, which flattered her.

  “Look! This is Eyre’s castle! Getting in there isn’t simple. You have to be reputable among our people,” Weldy said, pointing at the citadel’s towers. “See that tower over there? The one on the left?”

  “Yeah… the one with the flag? With birds flying over it?”

  “Yes! That’s where my uncle lives!”

  “Have you ever seen the king? I mean Err?”

  “I sure have,” she said giving me an odd look. “He often travels through the city with his entourage. He’s quite strict, and not particularly good looking. His son, however, Prince Endwed is really handsome. There isn’t a girl here who doesn’t dream about him.” She looked at me again and blushed.

  “Please, take no offense, lord HotCat,” she said, taking my hand, “You’re very handsome, too!” Having listened to a few more compliments, she turned red, but I could see she really enjoyed it. The system awarded me with a few more Reputation points.

  “And this one is Melissa Temple. Isn’t it beautiful? Melissa is my guardian…”

  By this time, we had reached the city wall. Weldy took me up a narrow, barely noticeable stairway. We climbed up all the way to the lookout point at the top of the tower. Weldy led me to the edge of the tower which came to the height of my chest.

  “We made it just in time,” she whispered. “Look at that gorgeous sunset!”

  It was quiet. There was no wind. The huge red disk of the sun was passing behind the mountains, lighting up the forests, snowy slopes and half the sky with an otherworldly glow. The view was indeed magnificent.