SpeedRunner (Tower of Babel Book 1)

by Adam Elliott

  It was only once he felt himself safely concealed from those inquisitive eyes that he checked his fly.

  “Oh look at that, he has risen. It truly is a miracle.”

  “You picked a Rogue archetype at character select, didn't you?” Cayden retorted, turning in his seat to see Sarah not five feet behind him, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Maybe you need to level up your perception.”

  “Don't you work the night shift?” He replied, rolling his eye at her taunt.

  "Sadly for you, I worked the dreaded clopening shift today, which is why I look so dreadfully terrible." If she looked any different from the previous night, Cayden couldn't see it, though he supposed any baggy eyelids would be pretty well concealed by the flattering green stripes radiating away from her eyes. "Then again you're one to talk. You look pretty good for a dead guy."

  “Okay, I get it. I slept in.”

  Sarah's head cocked to one side; then a smile grew into a full on giggle on her lips. She couldn't speak through her mirth, instead pointing to his fellow patrons, many of whom were still giving him looks while whispering to one another, or focusing their attention on him while manipulating unseen screens.

  “You really don't read the news, do you?” She asked, almost through tears.

  "I-" Cayden started only to think better of it. She was dissolving into laughter and would be no help at all. Instead, he snapped his fingers, flicked open a web browser and navigated to Tower of News, one of the top sources for all Babel related news.

  And there he was, just to the right of the main headline. The profile photo he used for his social media sitting just above a bold proclamation:

  Stream Gone Dark: Cayden Caros Presumed Dead

  Chapter Eight

  "So yeah, in short, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Cayden managed a lopsided smile as he stared at his reflection. It was his third such attempt at recording an apology video, and even now he couldn't decide whether or not to laugh or cry at the whole thing.

  "As you know, live streams of tower gameplay have a few things that are blocked out. Some of these are event locations, such as unbeaten dungeon bosses or the beginner lobby. Guild Halls or fortresses are another example." He continued. "The most common by far, however, isn't a system block at all, but one instituted by the streaming companies. A stream is disabled anytime a player in view of one or more cameras enters bleedout."

  Cayden paused, as much to give him time to steel himself against the wave of emotion as it was to let the pronouncement sink in for his audience. "By now most of you have probably seen yesterday's footage where I attempted to help a party of low-level players who had pulled more mobs than they could handle. During that fight, one of the players fell into bleedout, which triggered the fail-safe and cut my stream."

  "When I woke up this morning and read the news, I was angry. My parents read this news, my friends, and fans. I thought the headlines were incredibly irresponsible." He frowned, drawing a slow breath to fight back the same emotions that had come over him when he'd called his mother to assure her that he was, in fact, alright. "But actually, I screwed up. One of the players in that fight didn't make it, and the shock of it was a little more than I was prepared to deal with. I didn't just forget that the stream was off, I forgot I was even supposed to be on stream in the first place. I worried a lot of people unnecessarily, and for that, I am deeply sorry."

  Contrition was a bad look for him. Sadly, it was also a necessary one. Even a cursory glance at his social media accounts had told Cayden he was probably better off dead than alive as far as the public was concerned. There was a veritable mob calling him out for a supposed publicity stunt, claiming that he'd disabled his stream at the start of the fight in an attempt to drum up views. It was nonsense, but it was nonsense that had caught fire that he couldn't easily refute. The streams were all on a five-minute delay, and his had cut out just seconds into the battle, long before any viewer could have seen just how much danger John3 had been in.

  No, he had to take the fall for his screw up, even if it was just the media blowing the whole thing out of proportion. The last thing he needed was to look cavalier about the incident or start pointing fingers. The honest truth and a bit of a mea culpa and with luck, he could put this whole thing behind him.

  Not for the first time, he wondered why he was even still bothering. His streaming had funded his gaming habit for the last few years, but real world money was useless in Babel. One of the more ironclad of the Terms and Conditions, Babel was in no way pay to win. Apart from the Bazaar at the foot of the tower where game items such as potions or metals could be sold out to the 'real world,' the currencies of the world were mostly useless. If he tried to pay for a room at an inn, to buy a new sword or simply trade dollar bills for Zeni, he would suffer one of a hundred different nasty curses until he could rectify his mistake.

  Maybe I'm just an exhibitionist at heart? Cayden thought wryly. It probably wasn't even that far off the mark. He just liked having the channel. He loved watching subscriber numbers go up, and reading news about himself. Bullied from a young age, he felt powerful in front of the camera, doing the one thing, perhaps the only thing he felt he was good at.

  "For now though, I don't think anyone watching my channel is tuning in to see me get all mopey and down on myself." Cayden picked up after the appropriate moment of silent contemplation, at last, came to an end. "By the time this video finishes uploading and getting through approvals, I should be down in Town Square to show you the first big skip of the game. Till then."

  Cayden reached up and keyed a button on his display to kill the recording and another to send it to his editor for publishing before he sighed with sudden exhaustion. Trying to look that penitent when he was practically ready to bounce off the walls with relief was more tiring that he'd expected.

  In the moment, it hadn't even occurred to Cayden that everything he saw in Krom's lair should have been live streamed. His discovery of Runic Knowledge should have gone out in full detail to the tens of thousands of viewers who had been lingering on his channel hours before. If he'd had the sense to realize his stream had ended during the melee then the jig would have been up as well as his stream. Never in his life had he felt so happy to be so damn forgetful.

  Of course, he couldn't count on dumb lightning to strike twice. His viewers weren't stupid, he'd give them maybe a day at most before one of them spotted the Runic Knowledge skill while he was going through his menus and the game was up. Even if they didn't have a clue where he'd gotten it, every active progression guild, aspiring PKer and dumb newbie who could read the news would be on him either asking or forcing him to reveal the origin of the skill.

  Fortunately, the developer had planned for a situation like this. Cayden had to dig pretty deeply into the options menu, but about halfway through the streaming options, he located it. The ability to blacklist individual skills. Viewers wouldn't see them in his menus, nor would they receive the skill notification popups or any other indication of its existence.

  It wasn't perfect, the menu appeared to be intended to hide general builds so that PvPers couldn't completely puzzle out a streamer's build, but it would do most of the job. If he used a skill in combat, the viewers would obviously pick up on that, but considering that Runic Knowledge, for the moment, appeared to be a fully passive skill that was a bridge he would cross when he came to it.

  Satisfied that his little secret was safely stowed away, Cayden hefted his bag and returned to the common room. He tossed his room key to (or rather, at) a still smirking Sarah. A curious glance at his clock showed the time at 2:38 pm, a full seven hours after he'd initially routed himself to have left the inn.

  Some Speedrunner he was turning out to be.

  * * *

  The streets of Islo were positively abuzz with activity as Cayden made his way towards the Town Square. Much of the real estate on the outer ring of the city was composed of Player owned homes a
nd businesses, but the closer one got to to the center of the town, the more and more they gave way to Elan establishments, in particular, the Marketplace and the Town Square.

  The two traffic hubs served different, but complementary purposes. The Marketplace sold goods, while the Town Square sold services. Inns, restaurants, barbers and brothels, nearly any service imaginable could be found in the Square, and Cayden had quite a number of them in mind this afternoon.

  “First stop should be...” Cayden murmured to himself, taking another look at the map coordinates before at last recognizing the wooden placard of a half dozen crudely drawn weapons set out in front of the building. “Ah, there we are.”

  It was a blacksmith, one of over a dozen such locations littered all over the city. Only its location was unique, and that was only important because of the buildings that surrounded it.

  "Video Record. Start streaming camera four in ten seconds." Cayden ordered his glasses, ducking his head to fit beneath the low hanging fringes of the canvas roof of the forge built to the side of the shop proper. Beneath the tented ceiling, he found a trio of others working on their own projects. Two were unmistakably Elan, their blue and green skin marking them as anything but human, while the petite, fiery redhead who looked up at his entry gave herself away as a player by the stylish AR glasses resting on the brim of her nose.

  “I'm just going to use the one over there?” Cayden asked.

  “Oh-kay?” The twenty-something woman replied with a roll of her eyes, returning her attention to her work without a second glance.

  "Friendly all around." Cayden mumbled under his breath, taking up residence at the blacksmith table furthest from the other occupants. It was a simple setup, the four basic blacksmith requirements, a hearth, an anvil, a set of clamps, vices, and molds, and a series of tools to shape the work in progress. More complicated work would require more advanced tools, but fortunately for him, the work he was aiming for here was about as simple as it could get.

  “Hello and welcome back.” Cayden said with his best 'indoor' version of his streaming voice. Even toned down it drew another scathing look from the redhead before she busied herself once again by striking her hammer down on a length of steel with a resounding clang. “Err, probably should be putting a volume warning on this one if you value your hearing.”

  "Anyways, we are down here in Sunny Islo with today's big skip. Now, I'm going to apologize in advance for two things. First, sorry we're limited to just the glasses stream at the moment. Assuming they are still there, I should be retrieving my drones sometime from floor one this evening." Cayden tried not to smile too hard at that. He did still need to get through the drones, but doing so was a good chance to get off camera and look for some new inscriptions. "Two, today's stream is going to be a lot of crafting. Don't like that; I'll see you here tomorrow."

  Cayden worked through his menu as he spoke. He dug into his inventory, shifting around piles of material until he had a list of Albieth Steel ore fragments sitting at the top of his inventory. He selected one, causing it to shimmer into existence.

  "As you may or may not know, Babel has a total of forty-four professions, everything ranging from mining and logging, to enchanting and composing. Players are allowed to choose any number of professions, but for simplicity sake, most players only ever take a handful. As of right now, for example, my build only has two. Well, only two I plan to focus on anyways."

  Cayden laid the ore fragment out on the table before him, then retreated from his inventory back to the main menu. He selected Abilities and then chose the Professions Tab from the left side of the screen. The options were alphabetical, and he scrolled down until he located Blacksmith under the list. Selecting it produced a new console message:

  Would you like to add Blacksmithing to your skill list? Yes/No

  Naturally, he picked yes.

  Would you like to begin Blacksmithing now? Yes/No

  “Because I just accidentally stumbled into this menu.” Cayden said wryly before swiping at the yes button to progress.

  His affirmation opened an entirely new menu. This one was split into three, the left side a series of options to allow him to sort recipes in all manner of ways. He could sort by level, by type, by materials and so forth. The middle column listed all possible recipes that fit the criteria he had set out earlier, while the final remaining section detailed the statistics of the finished product, and the items required to attempt it in the first place.

  Currently, the menus were rather bare. He had only a single option filling the middle of the page, Smelt Albieth Steel Ingot. "Guess what we're going to be making?"

  Cayden snickered at his poor joke, pushing the confirmation button. The menu before him collapsed, and after a moment a new pair took its place. The first was a small progress bar resting just below his HP, MP and TP meters. The second was a selectable display with a handful of displayed icons.

  "The lowly Albieth Steel, now I know you are thinking 'why is he wasting his time making this, he'd suck as a blacksmith'? And you're right to ask that question. But just bare with me while we look at some skills. All will become clear, I promise." Cayden flexed his hands, then reached up to tap at each of the icons in the submenu, expanding them in turn:

  Apply Heat

  Type: Active Crafting Skill

  Skill Level: Novice Level 1

  Effect: Increases progress. Lowers Durability. The amount depends on tools used and skill level.

  Cost: 50 LP

  Pour Mold

  Type: Active Crafting Skill

  Skill Level: Novice Level 1

  Effect: Increases progress and Improves Grade. Lowers Durability. The amount depends on tools used and skill level.

  Cost: 100 LP

  Purge Impurities

  Type: Active Crafting Skill

  Skill Level: Novice Level 1

  Effect: Improves Grade. Lowers Durability. The amount depends on tools used and skill level.

  Cost: 75 LP

  Firm Grasp

  Type: Active Crafting Skill

  Skill Level: Novice Level 1

  Effect: Reduces Durability Loss on next skill use by 50%.

  Cost: 50 LP

  "A lot to process, but I'll try and break it down simply for you. The skills we have to start with all affect up to three different stats, Progress, Grade, and Durability." He pointed at the corresponding words on the second sub-menu:

  Progress: 0/100

  Grade: 0/220

  Durability 50/50

  "An easy way to think of this is similar to combat. Progress is the 'enemy' hp. If I manage to fill it all the way up, the crafting is a success. Durability is my HP, if it drops to zero I lose everything that I invested trying to make the item, which isn't great. LP, or Labor Points, are similar to MP or TP. They are a finite resource to use with our skills. Fortunately, you start each crafting endeavor with 1000, so we aren't going to run out anytime soon."

  "Finally, the grade is sort of; I guess a style meter? Each time I fill up the grade meter, it increases the overall quality of the item I create, assuming I finish it. So if I fill it up here, I will create a Good quality ingot instead which would sell for more. Once it is filled, it will reset with double the original goal. If I hit that the item is of Great quality, past that is Excellent, then finally Perfect.”

  “Starting with higher quality items increases the rate at which grade and progress develop, which means that if I wanted to make a Greatsword, it would be a hell of a lot easier if I started with Great ingots. Of course, making those ingots would probably be easier if I had Great quality ore, and so forth.”

  Cayden lifted his finger into view, running it just below the bottom of the sub-menu, indicating three separate icons in turn and highlighting them, so they displayed their names. "Finally, as you can see here, each item has a set of mandatory actions that must be completed for the recipe to finish, regardless of the status of the progress bar. In this example, I have to Apply Heat twice, then Pour the
Mold. I can do anything before or between those steps, such as Grasp, Heat, Purge, Heat Pour, but I have to make sure they are all done at some point. I can't go Heat, Pour, Heat and expect it to work for example."

  "All the skills are active skills, meaning that they'll take control of your body to produce the item in the same way that a combat skill might. And just like combat skills they have theirc own Personal Skill Use option." Cayden closed out the highlighting, pushing aside the secondary window to focus his attention on the bit of ore in front of him. "We won't be using those. They take a long time to practice, and unlike Combat skills, doing it personally will increase the success rate, resulting in higher rating and progress. If you do it right anyways. For us though, the auto skills will do just fine."

  "Skill Use: Apply Heat." Cayden ordered. The sensation was different this time, a more cold and detached feeling running up his spine as his body was taken over by forces unseen. He felt himself grasp the ore, holding it out for the tongs held in his other hand to properly grasp. He fed the fire, a few bits of charcoal tossed into the hearth to get it roaring before he thrust the ore beneath its withering heat.

  Cayden didn't think the heat did anything. It worked too fast melt the component metals out from the ore, and he new from his research on other skills that they cut corners in a way that could only be described as magic, but it still felt kind of cool. Cayden had pretty famously failed out of woodshop the previous year despite his best efforts, so given a choice between mastering blacksmithing or having the game just sort of fudge the corners, Cayden would go with the latter every time.

  “Skill Use: Firm Grasp. Skill Use: Apply heat.” Cayden intoned under his breath. The vibration microphones in his glasses could pick up anything short of the quietest whispers, so there was no need for him to shout out the words like attack names. Even if that would be sort of funny to do.