I breathed a sigh of relief at the change of odds. My stunning abilities and Holy Ground spell had all refreshed, so I locked down two more orcs quickly, burned them all with more magic, and focused on healing all the knicks and cuts I had received. The three non-stunned orcs hammered on my armor while I did this, sending my nerves tiny pinpricks of pain through the neural sensors on the VR rig, but it wasn't enough to disrupt my concentration and I healed myself back to full health. Then I charged into the middle of the five remaining monsters, using their bulk to interfere with their swings.
This might sound like a bad idea, and in some other games it probably is. But here in Heroes Unbound, it was the best strategy I could come up with. Since Veronica was insisting on playing ‘monster jail-bait,’ I couldn't just run off and fight the monsters over a large distance, because they'd lose interest and come back for her. I had to constantly risk getting hit by all five of the remaining over-sized goblins if I wanted my reporter ‘friend’ to survive, but getting hit non-stop in five different places is suicide, even in full plate armor. So I had to try and move to where their computer brains at least thought they could eventually reach me, forcing them to step around each other to hit me. The Paladin was supposed to be a tanking and healing class, so I was able to handle a number of blows from their glowing machetes and axes.
Provided I broke out every trick in my class’s playbook.
I continued to hack their unarmored arms with my sword, trying to land every critical hit I could. My shield bashed an orc in its snarling face every time they left themselves open from a wild swing. While I was doing that, I chanted every quick, cheap, spell or special ability I knew. Paladin spells were weak, but they take almost no time or mana, which gave me more opportunities than people realized. A tiny heal here, a half-second stun here, a three-second snare, another critical strike and suddenly it was four orcs against one very desperate and cranky paladin player.
Yes, I said cranky.
I was stressed, feeling tiny tingles of pain through my VR gear, and in danger of being made into an online laughing stock in one of the only things I seem to be able to do without getting dizzy spells or headaches.
Or without being called 'cripple-head.'
More than that, I was sick of failing every time something hard or 'impossible' happened. I didn't know how to fix random dizzy spells that inexplicably empty my head during tests. I didn't know how to fix having to deal with a hundred classmates determined to push me or hit me in the back of the head with a giant textbook. But I did know how to excel here, and I wasn't going to let this last bit of me be taken away.
So I blocked, dodged, chanted and stabbed faces until all the orcs were dead.
And I felt proud and mad at the same time when I heard clapping. I turned to face my interviewer, reminded myself that I was being both streamed and recorded right now, and gave my best, if strained, smile right now.
“There you go. Six dead orcs, and suicidal lowbie still unharmed. All for your viewers' pleasure. Well done Wes! Great crowd control and footwork! And you did it all without the paladin's invulnerability shield! That’s excellent!”
“Thank you,” I replied. I pointedly didn't mention that I couldn't use my invulnerability skill because then the monsters would all turn and kill her in the first three minutes of her own interview. “But please tell me you have actual questions for me other than 'can you die from this?'”
“Of course,” she chuckled, in a way that made me hope she really thought I was funny. She was actually pretty charming, I reflected, because if anyone else had sprung this scenario on me, in front of a live audience, I'd be really tempted to hate them forever.
“First real question,” she continued, oblivious to my internal monologue. “How long have you been playing Heroes Unbound?”
“I came on during the open beta test, about three months before its official release. I've been playing it off and on since then whenever school and life allowed.”
“How much raiding did you do?” She asked, her eyes watching me casually.
Too casually, I thought. She's about to pull again.
“In these past two years? Not very much. But before that I was a member of the guild Augustus Imperium. I joined before they began clearing Black Talon Lair up and stayed with them right up until after they had mastered the Soul-Scorched Citadel.”
“I've heard of them. They're in the top thirty of raiding guilds these days. How involved were you with them? Did they give you any responsibilities?”
I could see her eyes scanning past me, and figured that we were two questions max away from her playing suicidal newbie again.
“The guild leader, Kragmus, can give you the details about every member's responsibilities. Expectations in the guild were high: Everyone had to find a way to contribute one resource and was required to lead one raid by their sixth month of membership. The guild's philosophy was that giving everyone a taste of responsibility helped us all work together and understand each other's role better.”
Finding an excuse to turn my head, I looked around for whatever monster she's already decided to pull. But we've been walking while we've been talking, and there wasn't anything in the immediate area for her to antagonize, even with her bow.
“How many raids did you help lead?” She asked cheerfully, no longer looking around.
“Four,” I answered. “I primarily brought just crafting resources for others as my other contribution. Mostly for potions. Again, you can ask my old guild-mates for more specifics.”
“And why did you leave your old guild?” She asked carefully, glancing away again. “Did you have a falling out with the other members?”
“No,” I answered uncomfortably, wondering how much it showed in my posture. “They're all still good people, and I miss playing with them. I'm just not able to commit as much as I used to anymore.”
“And why is that?” Veronica asked, genuinely curious and looking a little more intently at me.
I figured this was coming, and was prepared to answer it. I initially had planned to pass off the question and just answer “school” or “personal reasons.” But then I realized that not only would that make for a lame interview, it wouldn't stop people from being curious and nosy. The best way to avoid too much attention to my personal life would be to go ahead and come clean about how I got hurt. That way, in addition to satisfying a lot of people's suspicion and curiosity, it might help encourage someone else going through a similar situation. After all, I couldn't be the only gamer who with a serious disability. And I didn't know how many other gamers had actually managed to use their games to help their lives.
For all I knew, this interview could make a difference in someone just as handicapped as me.
With those two motives in hand, I prepared to bare my personal life to the dangers of the internet, and answered her question.
“Several years ago I suffered a bad accident while playing football. The collision messed up my balance and memory pretty bad, and I spent a long time in recovery. The doctors have been unable to fully diagnose what I'm suffering from, so I spent most of the last two years in a lot of intensive therapy and surgeries. Because of that, I'm not able to maintain anything like the normal raiding schedule my old guild requires. I still try and keep in contact with most of the players, but these days the only people my schedule permits me to really play with are those in different time zones, like the Australian guild I took down that boss with.”
“Wow,” Veronica said, her fingers no longer reaching for her quiver (yeah lady, don't think I didn't see that). “I'm sorry to hear that. Wait,” her eyes narrowing slightly. “Did you say you were still suffering from this condition?”
“Yes, and it originally affected my ability to play just like everything else. But then one of my doctors began researching the effects of virtual immersion software on people with certain neural conditions. He wanted to see if integrating into virtual reality could help fix my brain's pathways. At the time, I
was just using a basic computer interface to play the game, one that let me maintain most of my senses in the real world. But then Heroes Unbound released their new virtual reality harness, and so my doctor encouraged my family to try it out.”
“And how did that work?” she asked, leaning forward, and seeming much more interested.
“At first, it didn't,” I replied. “My family couldn't afford the new headset, and insurance wasn't going to spring for what they saw was just a video game appliance. But then my doctor wrote to a charity called Kid's Play. Kid's Play usually provides children in hospitals with electronic entertainment, but they were interested in my condition too, so they generously sprung for the headset. The neural link in my headset and rig lock down my physical body almost completely, allowing me to immerse in the game completely, without needing to move my body at all. Ever since, I've been incorporating my play time into therapy.”
“Really? That's why you've been playing?” She asked.
“Yeah. And why I've been playing the hours I've been. It seems to be helping me improve in real life, as my pain has been diminishing and my grades have slowly been getting better. Recently, I've been trying to see if more extreme situations in the game enhanced the treatment.”
Her eyes widened at that comment.
“So does that mean the boss fight with Chevelross...”
“Was to simulate my condition in real life,” I confirmed. “For some reason, my condition is almost non-existent when I'm inside the game with the helmet, but the doctor and I wanted to see what could happen if I ran into something that reminded me of my disability in real life. Since the boss's roar simulated messing with my balance and concentration, I figured he would be the best test I could take at this point. So I asked the Australian players I sometimes group with if they wanted to take him on with me and they were kind enough to agree.”
“Were you expecting to be the first group to ever beat the boss that day?”
“Honestly, no. My Australian buddies are a really good team, but I expected to at least wipe on the first try, like raids normally do. My strategy worked a lot better than I expected. That chant I used was one of the only ways I could see anyone beating the dragon with, but I didn't know it would completely knock his special attacks out of the fight. I'm glad I won and it still took a lot of hard work to take him down, but I wouldn't be surprised if the company continues to tweak that encounter.”
“Do you think the fight improved your condition?”
I nodded.
“My pain and balance problems were almost non-existent for the first half of the day. I'm still waiting for the official grades on my test, and I still had trouble the rest of the day, but my English teacher said my performance was on par with or better than most of her other students. That was huge for me, because until this year English was my worst subject, especially the writing portion. My improvement there has been really incredible.”
Gee, I thought. When I put it in that light, my day didn't sound that bad.
“Wow,” the elf player said. “I'm... honestly impressed. When I offered to interview you I didn't expect your personal story to be so fascinating. In light of everything, what you've done is... kinda amazing.”
“Thank you,” I said, surprised and a little embarrassed. Other than my English teacher and maybe my sister and her friends, this was the first time anyone ever called me “impressive.”
Most people just called me “cripple-head.”
“Also,” she added after a moment, “incoming pull.”
And just like that, an arrow flew out into the air and into a pack of giant canyon bats I hadn't seen.
Again, I somehow kept either of us from dying to a pack of monsters that were my level or higher, which again, left the little elven journalist impressed.
This continued for the next hour or so, with Veronica asking me questions and opinions about the game in general, about my strategies, all while testing me in many different situations.
At one point, she asked the question I dreaded most:
“So, I hope I'm not talking about a too-sensitive subject, but what do you have to say about allegations that you cheated, with inside help?”
“I didn't have any, and the person accused of helping me, my father, has been dead for several years,” I said firmly. “Whoever knew about my father had to know that he has been dead long before that encounter was even designed. The accusation should have taken all of thirty seconds to disprove, and it's forcing me and the rest of my family to deal with his death all over again. His death is an event my family's still trying to recover from, and I can't understand why someone would need to make it that much harder for us to move on. That's really all I want to say about it. I can't stop people from digging up the details of his death if they really want to, but I just don't like to talk about my dad's death or the circumstances surrounding it.”
“Oh,” she said. “That's... fair. I'm sorry I brought up so sensitive a subject.”
That was surprising, I thought. She sounded sincere about not wanting to pry. And in an interview no less.
“Don't worry about it,” I said uncomfortably. “But thank you for understanding.”
“My pleasure,” the woman smiled at me. I finally noticed that her character's smile actually matched her real smile from her videos online. It was a nice smile. “Thank you for such a wonderful interview. I wish I had more time to ask you better questions but this has actually been a lot of fun. I'm glad I got to talk to such an interesting player.”
That smile was working far too well on me. Except for Ms. Springsen, this girl probably had the best smile I had ever seen.
Unless I counted Stell's. She actually beat both women. But then I probably shouldn't count girls I dream up in the middle of the night.
The interview ended then, and Veronica surprised me by actually asking to befriend me on social media. It shouldn't have, it was a good interview for her and it was good networking. But it was still something new to me, feeling respect from a stranger instead of pity based on my appearance or suspicion based on my parents.
The only downside was the attraction. My condition affected me in many ways I'd not care to fully discuss, but even the most optimistic prognosis said I'd never be able to have kids. It didn't make me immune to a beautiful woman, but I've learned to at least manage having hormones I'll never be able to do anything about. But after that weird dream, and having two different woman smile at me so much, I felt myself wondering about meeting her again. It was ridiculous because even if the injuries last Friday hadn't set my condition back, she was at least five years older than me. This was all assuming that she would be interested to begin with, and that she wouldn't be turned off by meeting me with my cane and stumbling gait.
But still, she had smiled at me. And it felt good to be smiled at.
But beyond that, I still felt good in general. Everything didn't seem quite as hopeless as it did last Friday. Yes, the test sucked and getting hit by that asshole really messed up my physical progress (something my mother's lawyer also documented), but the final results of the tests were still being contested and if I could get better once, I could get better again.
Besides, today was a good day.
The rest of the week went by pretty well, in a sense. I was out of class, partly due to injury and partly due mother going on a warpath with the school administration and insisting that they had failed to keep a student safe. Having a witness to Mr. Jammer's actions, especially when she learned he never notified anyone of my injury, really helped her case. It was nice not having to spend part of the day dodging abusive idiots, but I began to wonder how often I'd see my remaining friends.
The school, for their part, promised to do a better job of guarding me in the future. The student who threw the book at me was suspended, although he wound up celebrating the event by taking a selfie online and showing off a new and suspiciously expensive phone. I could neither prove nor shake the nagging feeling that the phone had b
een payment for taking me out, and that Rhodes was the most likely buyer for the phone to begin with. The school had also promised that Mr. Jammers would be disciplined for his actions and that I would not have to see him any time soon. He wound up being placed on paid administrative leave, according to the local news.
Downfall And Rise Page 10