Healers Suck!

by Charles Andrews

  Healers Suck!

  Crystalia Online 1

  Charles Andrews

  Contents

  A Taste

  1. The Academy

  2. Crystalia Lab

  3. Character Creation

  4. Class Selection

  5. New World

  6. Boar Ass

  7. Rescued

  8. Meet Cute

  9. Town

  10. Old Enemy

  11. Trainer

  12. Awkward

  13. Blowout

  14. Next Steps

  Thanks for reading!

  Healers Suck!

  A GameLit Harem Adventure

  Crystalia Online 1

  By Charles Andrews

  Copyright 2018 Charles Andrews

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First digital edition electronically published by Charles Andrews September 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  A Taste

  “Um, what are you doing?” I asked.

  She turned and hit me with a wink. A wink that seemed to promise things. A wink that had me wondering if it was really all that much of a problem to worry about whether or not I was going to make a mess in my pants back in the real world.

  Besides, if the people who designed this game put in a system where I could have this kind of fun in the game then surely they wouldn’t put in something that could cause embarrassment in the real world, right?

  I wasn’t sure, and I was getting to the point where I didn’t care. The hypnotic curve of this trainer’s ass was pressing against me, her mouth was open and inviting, and she was going more and more wide eyed as I tried my best to think about anything but what was happening.

  It wasn’t working.

  “You’re not just a Healer, are you?” she asked.

  I licked my lips. My brain was being short-circuited and all I could think about was how good what she was doing felt and so I opened my mouth and blurted out the big secret Treanna told me not to.

  “I’m not,” I gasped.

  “Psionics?” she asked, licking her lips in time with me doing the same.

  “Yes!” I gasped again, wondering if she was going to continue this torture or give me the relief I so desperately needed.

  “Oh my,” she said. “This just got a lot more interesting.”

  And before I could say anything else she was lowering herself down below the altar, leaving me on my feet staring out across the temple as she started working on my robes.

  Which would’ve been a pleasant surprise. The only problem was at that moment the door banged open and none other than Tomas the mighty warrior stepped through looking like he was ready to commit murder.

  Motherfucker! Could nothing go right for me today?

  1

  The Academy

  "Watch where you're going loser!"

  I instinctively braced for the hit before it came. It was something I did without thinking these days. An elbow slammed into my back and I pitched forward, my arms flailing as I tried and failed to catch my balance.

  The stars around the edge flew past and then I was going down. Damn it.

  The lower gravity here in the elevator was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it only added to my lack of balance since everything felt weird up here compared to the surface. On the other hand that lower gravity meant I didn’t hit as hard when the inevitable consequence of that lack of balance happened.

  Stars danced in front of my eyes that had nothing to do with the star view around the edges. I knew the pain would come, but honestly I was used to it at this point.

  I looked up to see Tommy staring down at me. His cool blue eyes sparkled under his mop of brown hair. And there was Madison right beside him. As always.

  I took a moment to enjoy the sight. She was in a short skirt that showed off everything. It was the latest fashion from orbital of course. She had on a crop top that looked like it’d be more suited to clubbing than class, but it was showing off a generous amount of her impressive cleavage and her flat toned and tanned stomach, so I wasn’t complaining.

  The lower gravity also did interesting things to her chest. Booyah.

  Of course she was just as much of a cruel bitch as Tommy was a cruel asshole, but she looked a lot better than Tommy did which raised my opinion of her ever so slightly. Hey, I was only a man.

  It raised other parts of me too, if you catch my drift, but there was always something about being humiliated in front of her that made it seem worse than being humiliated in front of a crowd of strangers or classmates.

  I felt all around. Did a quick damage report. Wondered if there was anything broken. Everything seemed okay. Mostly. I reached up and felt at my nose. At least it wasn't bleeding this time.

  Damn it. I hated that I was so used to this bullshit that I was doing a damage check and thinking I was lucky that I'd only slammed my cheek into the ground. There’d be a hell of a bruise there later.

  "What's going on here?" a voice, like the crack of a whip, came through the laughing crowd staring down at me.

  I looked up to see Professor Biggins staring down at me and then up to Tommy. Disapproval was written plainly on his face.

  "No trouble here at all sir,” Tommy said, smiling a smarmy smile.

  "Are you okay Reynolds?" Professor Biggins asked, turning to me.

  Not for the first time I thought about saying something. About trying to deal with this once and for all. Only I didn't.

  I'd appealed to the authorities before, and it hadn't done a damn bit of good. What was the point in trying to appeal to those authorities when they relied on the money Tommy's dad, granddad, and great granddad gave to the place?

  It was kind of tough going up against someone who had their family name on various buildings because of all the money they pumped into this place. They had to if they wanted to make sure their line of rich assholes continued attending the Academy. The family line might’ve been intelligent enough to make a fortune once upon a time, but several generations of marrying trophy spouses for looks rather than smarts had diluted the old gene pool making them more stupid and more attractive with each new generation.

  A payoff was the only way they would ever get in if Tommy was anything to go on. He had a look and an attitude that was more suited to modeling than academics, but then again this place was more about breeding the next generation of asshole than it was about studying hard.

  "I'm fine," I lied, knowing it wasn’t worth it to fight.

  Professor Biggins looked between us, a frown on his face. Clearly he knew there was something going on here, and clearly he also knew he couldn't do anything about it if I wasn't going to say anything. Which was more than most of the professors would do.

  There were plenty at this private academy who wouldn't say boo when something like this happened. It was enough to fill me with disgust. Both at the Academy and at myself. Twenty years old, at one of the most prestigious private academies in the elevator, and I felt like shit most of the time because the environment here was worse than any hardship I’d faced down on the flatland.

  It was bad enough that if I'd known life was going to be like this once I got this far I might not have worked quite so hard to get here in the first place. But I was here now, and I’d have to make the best of it. They were relying on me down there.

  I shook myself. Stood up and made a point of dusting myself off.

  "You're sure you're okay?" Professor Biggins asked, concern plain on his face. And the distaste also plain on his face as he looked at Tommy who was standing there smirking.

  He knew he was going to get away with this. Just like he got away with everything.
>
  "Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.

  "Very well," Biggins said with a sharp look for Tommy. "But that will be the last incident like this that happens in this building. Are we understood?”

  "Sure thing doc,” Tommy said, earning an even deeper frown. Though again that was something he could get away with because of his name. Then he turned and glared at daggers at me.

  "You better watch where you're going in the future you fucking rizon,” he spat.

  I winced at the language. Rizon. Short for horizon. Someone who grew up on the planet surface where there was a horizon and not in the elevator where you could always see the curve of the earth off in the distance.

  I shook my head and let it roll off of me. Just like I always did. I put my slate under my arm and walked off along the path leading back to the dorms. At least there I could get some quiet. I had a lock on my door there. My room wasn’t much, the sort of one room efficiency the Academy gave everyone who was here on a scholarship, but it gave me some privacy.

  It was also nice to walk on the grass and feel the light overhead. It reminded me of home, even if it was all an expensive imitation of life on the planet surface, which always struck me as odd. They looked down on us from the elevator even as they spent ridiculous amounts of money trying to recreate what was available naturally down below.

  That there was even grass here for me to walk on, not to mention a reasonable facsimile of a blue sky projected overhead even though we were surrounded top and bottom by the elevator and well out of the atmosphere where a blue sky could be seen, spoke volumes about just how wealthy the people who called this place home were.

  Not that there was any part of the elevator that wasn't wealthy, but this was extravagance beyond even the normal sort of everyday extravagance. And I was here purely because of good grades. I shook my head.

  Who knew getting everything I wanted would become a personal hell?

  "You should really learn to stand up to that asshole," a voice said from behind me.

  I turned to see Katelyn following me, and boy was she a sight for sore eyes. Not that there were many people who weren’t a sight for sore eyes up here. See what I mentioned before about generations of wealth interbreeding with trophy wives and hot pool boys and you get an idea of just how hot the elevator dwellers could be after a few generations.

  Katelyn was a blonde bombshell in a pair of shorts and a tank top that showed off her body quite nicely, thank you very much. Her green eyes peered at me with something that approached genuine concern.

  She cocked her head to the side. She was a child of privilege, but she hadn't let it go to her head. At least not too much. Not as much as most of the other students here at the Academy, which was saying something.

  "Yeah, you try doing that," I said.

  "I do it all the time," she said with a shrug. “Tommy doesn't mess with me. He wouldn't mess with you either if you just stood up to him."

  I opened my mouth to say something, and then went quiet. What was the point of trying to explain it to her? This was one of those examples where we were from two different worlds, even if she was pretty cool about it.

  How to explain to someone whose father was the administrator of this section of the elevator that it was easy for her to stand up to Tommy because her family had power that went beyond his family’s wealth? That if I tried to do the same thing I’d probably just get the shit kicked out of me and have the incident covered over because the school didn't want to stop the donations from coming in?

  "It's just something to think about," she said, again with a shrug. A shrug that caused her tits to jiggle in a most distracting way. God bless low gravity.

  Then again everything about her was distracting. Everything about all the women at the Academy was distracting, and it was made all the more frustrating knowing none of them would give me the time of day.

  We walked along in silence after that. What else was there to say? It's not like I was going to take her advice, though it was nice to have the company. I glanced at her occasionally, sneaking a peek. Katelyn was beautiful, but I never tried to do anything about it.

  After all, I was just a lowly rizon. For all that I'd risen above that somewhat. I knew the best I could hope for was to maybe become an administrator somewhere down on the planet.

  Not exactly the most promising career, even if it meant a comfortable life among my people. The key point there being that I would be top among my people, which was still below the lowliest person living in the elevator.

  That thought was yet another reminder that no matter how well I did here, I wouldn't be able to make it to the stars. To do anything worthwhile. I needed connections for that, and those were impossible to come by for a scholarship case, for all that making those kinds of connections had been one of the key advertising points trying to get people from the flatland to go for that scholarship.

  "I'm surprised I didn't see you at the dedication yesterday," she said, breaking that silence.

  "The dedication?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

  "The new Crystalia lab?" she said. "Given how you go on about that game I figured you would've been one of the first people in there after the ribbon cutting."

  I shook my head. Blinked a couple of times. Crystalia was a game, sure, and I was slightly obsessed with it even though I couldn’t hope to afford to play it until it went live for the unwashed masses, but I had no idea what the fuck she was going on about

  "The Crystalia lab?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

  “The game you won't shut up about?" she said. "The thing that's taking the world by storm? Did that hit from Tommy knock a few brain cells loose or something?”

  I shook my head. The game that was taking the world by storm? More like the game that was taking the world's richest by storm, but of course that meant everyone knew about it, and everyone wanted to play considering the world’s richest were all about showing off that lifestyle.

  Crystalia was an immersive VR world. The kind of experience that would take you out of the drudgery of your day to day life. Not that the people who could afford early access needed an escape from their life at the top of the world. Literally.

  The only escape I had these days was in the campus labs where technically I wasn’t supposed to use the lab machines for gaming, but those labs were always empty so no one ever said anything. It was my one outlet, the one thing I was good at other than studying, and even that had sucked lately because I knew Crystalia was coming and I wouldn’t be allowed to play it.

  Supposedly there were units being shipped all around the world for a big wide launch, but right now it was a game that was exclusively the playground of the very wealthy who could buy early access, because of course it was.

  Wily game developers had realized a long time ago that they could pump even more money out of their cash cows by making early access to their games exclusive to anyone willing to pay the right price.

  So of course everyone at the Academy had a copy of it. Everyone who wasn't there on a scholarship and barely scraping by, that is. Which included me, unfortunately.

  Only…

  What if there was a benefit I was a getting from the Academy that went above and beyond getting an education at a place that would allow me to write my ticket as long as I wanted that ticket to go somewhere on the dead-end that was the planet surface?

  What if being here could get me a ticket into Crystalia? That lab could give me early access along with all the other people who were able to afford the ridiculously expensive cost for early access!

  "You know what?" I said. "I think I need to go check that out."

  Katelyn smiled a thin smile. God she looked beautiful under the fake sunlight. She shook her head and her blonde hair caught the fake sunlight and reflected it, but it looked pretty good despite the fact that she was reflecting fake sunlight.

  "I thought you might say something like that," she said. "Don't stay in there for too long though. That stuff is addi
ctive."

  "Well at least I'll be able to find out for myself now," I said.

  I grinned. Maybe I had to put up with Tommy and his asshole bullshit, but whatever. All that really mattered was I had a portal into Crystalia. I couldn't believe my luck!

  All of that hard work getting into this place was totally worth it if it meant I could finally check that game out. Finally enjoy the world's first totally immersive VR massive online world.

  "I'll see you later Katelyn,” I said.

  "Yeah, see you around," she said. "Try not to have too much fun!"

  2

  Crystalia Lab

  I stepped into the Crystalia lab, worried that I was going to find the place completely packed. Only it was dead.

  A pretty girl sat at a desk by the door. I almost thought I recognized her, the Academy was small enough that you knew everybody on sight even if it was impossible to know everybody personally.

  It was even more impossible for me since most people tended to avoid me after one look and realizing who I was.

  Everyone knowing everybody at the Academy meant everyone knew who the few “charity cases” who’d worked their asses off to get scholarships to this hellhole were.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  “Um, yeah?" I said. "I was interested in trying out one of the Crystalia rigs?”

  She blinked a couple of times. As though she was surprised that someone would actually be coming in here. Which seemed odd considering this game was all the rage, but whatever. Then she fumbled with a slate on her desk and handed it over to me.