by Adam Elliott
His greatest success had come from the media.
Ever since Launch Day, there had been a voracious appetite in the outside world for information about Babel. Would be players like Cayden wanted to plan their strategies, but even your everyday housewife half a world away wanted to see it at least. There probably wasn't a magazine or newspaper in the last two years that went to print without some tidbit about Babel on its pages.
That hungry demand for new information on Babel led traditional media to report on anything and everything. They reported on the weather, on the nightlife of various cities, on the newest fashions and the most recent successes of the progression guilds. As such, it wasn't too much of a surprise that a copy of National Geographic's annual Babel issue had proved the missing key.
The article had been titled The Runes of Babel. It had shown up pretty early on in his search, but he'd ignored it at first since it had been behind a paywall. When other avenues had proven fruitless, he'd eventually come back to it, sucked up, and called his mom to get her to order him a subscription.
That had been one hell of an awkward conversation.
It had been worth it though. The article, or rather the series of articles, as it turned out, was all he could have dreamed of. They detailed over two hundred different locations over the first thirty floors where he could find runes. From there it had taken him the rest of his evening to cross reference the different places with possible quests and read up on the possible dangers he would be expected to encounter. The result left him with two useful locations on the second floor, and another three to look forward to once he progressed to the third.
Assuming I can get this damn quest finished.
"Well let's-" Cayden faltered mid-sentence as the small speaker in the left arm of his glasses chirped to inform him that yet another message had arrived in his inbox. The damn thing had been going off incessantly for the better part of the last hour, which was as frustrating as it was unusual. Still, it might make for a good excuse. "-err, sorry about that. I am getting a lot of messages right now apparently. I'm going to drop stream for about five to ten, grab a snack and figure out who is trying to get a hold of me; then I'll be back."
Cayden ordered down his drones, plucking each from the air in turn and stowing them away in is pack as they flew towards him. He disabled his main camera as well and took a moment to slip the glasses off entirely to rub at weary eyes before he returned his attention to the AR display. His social menu indicated in bright neon red that he had twenty-seven unread messages and three missed calls. A quick tap of the button expanded on that, revealing a list of messages that couldn't mean anything good:
Yanagi – 2:36pm
Cayden I can't believe you are still...
Mom – 2:31 pm
Cayden! Answer your phone.
Mom – 2:29 pm
Cayden!
Mom – 2:26pm
i need to talk to u asap!
Missed Call – Mom 2:25 pm
The messages continued like that as he swiped through them trying to make sense of what had his mother in such a tizzy. There was something in there about a press conference, but his mother was never one to make much sense under pressure, and from the looks of things she was positively frantic.
"Command. Message: Mom." Cayden started, waiting for half a second for the system to react to his command before dictating further. "I'm fine mom. I'll call you in just a few minutes okay?"
That done he scrolled back up to the top of his menu, selecting the one out of place text and expanding it past the short blurb so that he could read it in its entirety:
Yamagi
Cayden I can't believe you are still streaming right now. Do you have a death wish or something?
"Well, that certainly clears it up." Cayden said with an annoyed snort. "Message: Yamagi. I'm off stream now. What the hell are you talking about?"
A few seconds passed, then a new message popped up in reply.
Yamagi
You don't really watch the news, do you?
Below the words were a link to a YouTube video. Curious, Cayden reached out and hit play, leaning back against the wall as the minute and a half long video buffered before starting.
The scene before him was of some press event, undoubtedly the one his mother had mentioned in her frantic text messages. An empty oak podium emblazoned with the easily recognizable corporate logo of Vitalita took up the majority of the frame, the somewhat shaky video showing only hints of the suit-clad men who stood to it on either side or the purple curtains behind it.
After several seconds of run-time, a man walked into view, throwing a handful of papers onto the podium and speaking angrily to someone just off camera. There was a bit of back and forth, but it wasn't until the man finally turned to the camera that Cayden finally recognized him.
Immolatus. Or rather, David.
"Thank you all for coming." David said with a tone that didn't exactly ring with gratitude. He looked worse than when Cayden had last seen him. His short hair was unkempt and greasy, his eyes sunken and exhausted. If he'd slept in the last few days, David certainly didn't look it. He wore a bespoke suit that might have offset his evident exhaustion, but loose cuffs and a poorly knotted tie gave away the game as easily as the bags beneath his eyes.
“As you know, three days ago my father, John Veda, our CFO, Liam Raylen and myself visited Babel as part of my eighteenth birthday celebration.” David's eyes were dark as he spoke, his fingers curled tight around the edge of the podium. “And during the course of our time there, both my father and Mr. Raylen were killed.”
With that announcement, the camera drew back to reveal the men on either side of David holding up smiling photographs of two older gentlemen. He barely recognized the face of John3, but it was hard to forget the face of QwazyDaddy.
"At my lawyer's request, I've held off talking about the specifics of the incident in hopes that we could come to some lawful solution, but here it seems the law is wholly inadequate." The young man drew a slow, steadying breath before he continued. "Three days ago a player named Cayden Caros murdered my father and his business partner in cold blood after we had just barely managed to hold off a wave of monsters. I attempted to intervene, but I am ashamed to admit that I was no match for him and ultimately I fled the area with the aid of a teleportation scroll."
"I've been told that the following day he bragged on an online stream about how he'd intervened to save us from attack. Frankly, I haven't watched the video, because the idea of this sociopath patting himself on the back to conceal his murders disgusts me."
"What he did, and the lies he is telling to conceal it cannot go ignored. Against the advice of counsel, I am offering a five million dollar bounty to any player, party or guild that kills Cayden Caros." Chaos erupted in the video, the assembled media shouting over one another to have their questions heard by David as he turned to leave the stage. Then the video ended.
Cayden was stunned. He didn't even know where to begin parsing what he'd just seen. Was it worse that he'd just been accused of two murders? Or that he had a multi-million dollar bounty on his head? What had caused David to make up such a ridiculous lie, worse yet, what had happened to QwazyDaddy after he left the two of them. Had David killed a man just to blame it on him? Why?
Question after question raced through his mind, but before he could address any of them, his glasses chimed at him once more:
Yamagi
You need to get out of there if you haven't already.
Cayden
How long ago was that press conference?
Yamagi
An hour maybe?
Cayden
Damn.
Yamagi
If you've got a teleport scroll, you can head back to town and just lay low for a while. They can't attack you in a settlement.
Cayden
No such luck. Gotta travel by foot. If I can get out of the dungeon before they find me, I should be ok.
The fingers-
crossed emoji he got back from Yamagi was less reassuring than the other man probably intended it to be.
Cayden pulled up his map and winced at what he saw there. With three different ways in or out this dungeon had more entrances than most, but fewer than he'd have liked. He could reach the closest with maybe a five-minute walk, but if there was anyone coming after him who had been watching his stream they might have a decent idea of where he was in the dungeon. If so, that was probably his riskiest bet, even if the other two would add several minutes to both his dungeon and overland travel.
The other problem was the monsters between him and the exits. Even if he were to go out the way he'd entered, the monsters were likely to have respawned between him and the exit. He'd have to clear himself a path, and Cayden didn't relish trying to do that while looking over his shoulder for possible hitmen. He could try and run past them of course, but then he'd run the risk of bumping into them with a horde of monsters right on his tail.
Actually, that didn't sound too bad.
The sudden sharp clank of metal on stone brought him back to reality.
Skill Level Up: Perception
Type: Passive
Skill Level: Novice Level 4
Effect: Improved situational awareness. 8% increased hearing and vision within 200ft.
Really?! Now? Cayden could have screamed at the notification as it blinked into his vision. It didn't take increased situational awareness to notice that an arrow had missed his head by inches, though it might have been nice to have been alerted to the archer before he'd fired it.
Not that she was particularly hard to spot after she'd fired. The twang of her bowstring and the clack of another arrow leaving her quiver gave her general location away. A second of squinting down one of the darkened side passageways was all it took to find her, a woman dressed in night black leathers, crouched in a firing pose.
The second arrow ripped through the air, but this time he was ready for it. Cayden took the attack on his shield, his arm reverberating with the impact as his HP ticked down a handful of points. Strangely, the damage was reassuring. If she were much higher level than him, even a blocked shot could have done substantial damage. Chances were she was somewhere near his level, someone who was in the right place at the right time who thought she could earn a few million dollars with a few well-placed arrows.
Lucky for him she couldn't shoot for shit.
"Personal Skill Use: Leap Attack." He whispered, not wanting to alert her before he bent his legs and pounced. A regular leap attack would have slammed him into the fifteen-foot ceiling, but he'd spent much of the morning practicing his leap attack in these very caverns. The fit was tight, but his jump cleared the side passageway with half a foot on either side and landed him directly in front of the surprised woman before she could react. No doubt she'd thought she'd have time for another two or three shots while he advanced cautiously down the hall at her. Perhaps she even thought she could kite him with arrows for a time.
Those thoughts were dashed as his sword scythed through her from shoulder to hip.
“Personal Skill Use: Shield Bash!” This time he shouted the words. The ferocity of his cry seemed to stun her as much as the attack itself would, for she put up no resistance as he drew back his shield arm and slammed it into her face. The blow knocked her back, driving her into the wall for a few more points of damage before a thrust of his sword through the woman's abdomen removed the remainder of her HP.
Three clean strikes. That had been all it took. It might not have even taken her that if she'd properly hit with that first arrow. Fighting mobs it was easy to forget just how easily a fight between players could end, particularly a lopsided fight between a swordsman and an archer.
He withdrew his blade as the woman slumped to the ground, her skin and armor glowing from two deep rents and a bright smudge across the side of her face. She had a hundred seconds to live, and from the look on her face, she knew it. Players were fully paralyzed when they entered bleed out, but that did nothing for the look of fear in her eyes. The pleading look of desperation.
"You tried to kill me." Cayden whispered angrily. "For money. For something, I didn't even do. You have no idea who I am, and you just tried to shoot me in the back."
His grip on his sword loosened as he looked down at the woman, the surge of adrenaline leaving him. She seemed like a doll with her strings cut, a toy thrown to the ground with her legs laid out on the floor, her torso half propped up against the wall where he'd run her through. Stranger still, she was old, at least by comparison. Probably in her late fifties, perhaps early sixties. Her skin was wrinkled in places, her roots showing a hint of gray she probably covered up with a vanity dye job. When he'd seen her crouched in the hallway he'd somehow expected a sexy, sultry rogue from a D&D manual. Not someone's grandmother.
"Goddammit." He growled. The whole situation had him angry, had him eager to lash out and just hurt something, but he wasn't going to coup de grace someone's gran gran. Instead, he summoned his menu and drew a set of bandages to his hand.
“Skill Use: First Aid.” Cayden sighed. From there the system took over, his body kneeling down to wrap the bandages a handful of times around each of the two major wounds he had inflicted. He couldn't see her HP now that she was in bleed out, but he knew that it was going up. And soon enough light began to emanate from her body. A pillar of sky blue so pure it was almost impossible to look directly at it as it encircled the woman's body.
He didn't need to watch this, but it was hard not to as the light lifted her body and rocketed out of the dungeon. The old woman would be deposited in the floor's temple no worse for wear save for a seven-day debuff that would lower all of her stats and skills by 90%. She wouldn't be coming after him again anytime soon, even if she could build up the courage or stupidity to try again.
If only she were the only one.
Chapter Eleven
Cayden alternated walking and sprinting as he made his way through the winding stone corridor. Getting out as quickly as possible was paramount, but it had to be measured against the possibility of running into another would be bounty hunter. He'd gotten lucky with the archer and her bad aim. A more competent or higher level player would spell his doom, particularly if he bumped into them with an empty TP bar.
A primary alert blinked for his attention at the corner of his vision, and Cayden smiled in spite of himself. Level four.
Owing to the danger involved and the day's long debuff for those who survived, the XP rewards for successful PvP were surprisingly high. Even more so when the enemy had a level advantage like grandma must have. All told she'd been worth over two hundred XP, and he knew that amount would have doubled if he'd finished her off, or even just let her bleedout.
Talk about your screwed up incentives.
Cayden shook the thought away as he continued to speedwalk his way through the cave, navigating his menu as much as the twists and turns of the complex. This was no time for hemming and hawing, his fingertip tapping decisively on his usual class choice of Guardian. This time, however, he stopped just short of pressing accept, and instead pinned the open window to the very top left corner of his display. It would be useful later if push came to shove.
Ahead of him, the corridor diverged, and he moved to the right even though his map indicated it as a dead end.
As he rounded the corner, the claustrophobic walls of the cave system opened in front of him. The floor fell away in a cliff-face, leaving him standing on the edge of a wide vista that overlooked a gaping chasm the likes of which he'd never seen, at least, not in person. It was perhaps a hundred yards across, and no doubt four times that in length. Dozens of stone bridges crisscrossed one another from one side to the other at various heights and widths, each leading to an exit back into the cave system at large.
He couldn't even begin to tell how far down the blackness below him went. Considering the Mortal Kombat vibe, he was getting; it was probably best not to fall into the pit in any case.
It was nice to laugh.
"Third bridge, then fifth." He muttered to himself as he squared his feet and looked out over the chasm once again. His vista didn't connect to any bridges, which meant that for the majority of players, it was indeed a dead end. Not so for a player with Leap Attack.
"Targeted Skill Use: Leap Attack." Cayden whispered. Ahead of him, a red and white targeting reticle appeared on his AR display, its 2d surface tracking with the movement of his eyes. It took several seconds for him to get accustomed to its movements, and then a handful more for him to finally place it on the target location before he spoke again. "Activate."
The skill took over his body and launched him into the air. Skills were, in general, pretty accurate. If he was looking at a mob, the skill took control of his body and attacked the mob. If he were looking at a road, the skill would jump him further down the road. That was all well and good.
When you are jumping thirty yards across a pit, trying to land on a five-foot wide platform ten feet below you... precision is the name of the game.
Cayden slammed onto the first bridge with a disheartening crack of stone. The very ground beneath him had earned a half dozen new fractures from the force of his impact, some of them as much as a foot in length. Not exactly what he was hoping to see.
And that was the easy jump.
"Targeted Skill Us-argh!" Cayden shouted in sudden alarm as an unexpected sting radiated from his upper arm. A six-inch long throwing knife protruded from the glowing wound, a sight so surreal it simultaneously astonished and nauseated the young man.