by Charles Dean
“Ha ha ha ha!” The girl’s laughter made him cringe. Yeah, you’re creepy to the point she finds it funny. “You’re good, real good. I’m just messing with you. I’m Ash, short for Ashley--don’t ask, my parents loved zombie movies. I’m the GM handling your case.”
“Oh.” Locke turned around and accepted the offered handshake waiting for him, feeling rather embarrassed about being caught tangled up in his own yarn. “Well, I’m Locke, though you probably already knew that.”
“Yeah, I did. Look, let’s cut to the chase: You violated the Terms of Service and the End User License Agreement for playing Tiqpa, so we should, by all rights, ban you.” She left the sentence hanging like she was waiting on a commercial break before she broke the suspense.
Come on, finish the thought! You should ban me, but . . .? There is a but after that word, right? The words ‘should’ and ‘but’ usually go to together . . . I think. He was doing his best to reassure himself as he stared at the shiny metal plate helm in front of him, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
Ash likely saw his anxiety, and she probably wanted to draw it out for as much effect as possible. The pause between when she stopped speaking and started again was distressingly long for Locke. “But I think I’m going to help you out a bit,” she finally finished.
Locke let out a deep breath.
“I just need you to pick a new name, class, and if you want, we can even reset your race. All up to you, but we need it done quick-like. If you pick a race that couldn’t have made it to this side of the map since Tiqpa’s release, well, I’ll have to warp you somewhere else. That’ll be extra work on my part, so pick something close by if you don’t mind. Naga, Hellspawn, one of those furries or Humans . . . I don’t care. Just make it easy on me since I’m doing you a favor.”
“Oh, thank you. Like, thank you so much.” Locke almost floated as the lead blocks of stress and worry over his account being banned lifted off his shoulders. “But, why the new name and class? Can’t I just keep my old class and level? I kind of like Blacksmithing.” Or, rather, I like the paychecks, and I don’t think I’ll get caught twice.
“Yeah, about that . . . See, I’m restoring your character, but if you haven’t figured it out from the secret meeting and the new name, class and race, I’m not supposed to.” The giant plate armor shrugged. “I just thought that punk Anthony was in the wrong, too, and that Gary, that perverted mouth-breather of a boss of mine, should have banned both of you. God, that guy gives me the creeps. You know he even hits on his boss Robert’s daughter every time she swings by the office? She’s in her twenties! So gross!” Ash’s voice rose in volume with every passing word, and she sounded practically distressed by the time she finally finished her rant.
“Shy, then?” Locke suggested a name quickly before this angry girl could change her mind. “How about Shy? And can I please, please keep my work on the blacksmithing? I worked very hard to get it,” he pressed.
“Um, sure. They’re already unlocked. Technically. I just reset your level to one, so you’ll still have to get back to the level and power requirements needed to forge each item. It’s not a bad idea, though, since you’ve already put so much effort into it. But don’t you want to try something new? We did have that patch recently introducing the Alchemist class. That’s probably the easiest one for you to play as.”
“The Alchemist class? No one has picked that for a reason. Who would want to spend time and money on potions that only last five minutes and add one damage?” Locke scoffed at the concept. Everyone knew about the new alchemy path, but, to date, no one had actually picked it. The reason was simple: Every class had access to the same crafting paths listed, but the alchemist potions barely lasted more than a few minutes, generally required a lot of ingredients, and they didn’t do much more than add a few points of health, damage or a random stat. You could coat a blade with a poison, but when the weapon already did fifty damage, why waste effort on continuously coating it for only one extra damage point? Every player except those who cared about obtaining the fancy title of being an Alchemist had written it off as a joke.
“Well, I thought someone who had spent so much time being a blacksmith might know better than that.”
“Oh.” Locke turned away from the metal-man to look at the beach for a moment. Hmm . . . All the weapons were posted online too, and while I couldn’t make most of them because of the level, power and concentration requirements, the ones I made repeatedly kept getting better. Even the latest sword was just an upgrade of the previous one. What if . . .
“Alright, I’ll do it.” Locke made his decision and shrugged it off in the same instant. If this really is an undiscovered route left alone just because most people didn’t want to take the time to make new characters, and the advantages look nonexistent, maybe I’ll find my way to riches once again. “I’ll take the alchemist route.” Locke turned back and stuck out his hand to once more shake with the plate-covered giant.
The handshake was returned. "That’s what I like to hear. About the race, though, which one did you want?”
“I’m going to stick with Human,” Locke said. All the other races had size, stat or passive advantages to combat, but Human was the best for crafting. Most skills had a minimum stat requirement, and Humans could raise their stats up faster than any other race. It was their only redeeming attribute.
“Excellent! That means I won’t have to port you to some random noob island for a different race. This will do just fine.” The plate armor extended its hand and pointed in a direction away from the coast. “If you head that way for half an hour, you’ll find the closest town. Where you are now is the only place on the island with the herbs you need for the starting potions and level one enemies.”
“Wait, did you plan on me picking Alchemist?” Locke was shocked as he realized how difficult the task was that he had signed up for.
The two plated shoulders shrugged. “How would I have known what would happen? It’s not like I had a part in building a class that no one picked and that I’m hoping you follow your instincts and become a walking advertisement for it so my perverted creep of a boss doesn’t keep blowing up at me for wasting an entire dev team’s time and resources on a class no one plays. That would be really self-centered of me.”
Locke blinked. Wait, if I didn’t go along with Alchemist, or she didn’t need a walking billboard, would she have just banned me for good?
“Anyway, see you round, Shy. And remember: Don’t let anyone find out who you are.” Ash waved as she faded out of Tiqpa.
Now that it was officially over, Locke gritted his teeth and brought up the character screen. The only items he had were a suspiciously large number of empty bottles and some alchemy gear like mortars and pestles, the starting sword that everyone gets regardless of class, and a cloth outfit that wouldn’t serve as anything more than protection against a soft breeze. He didn’t even have the ten coppers he had started with the first time he played.
Great. Nothing, he grumbled. Freaking nothing. The anger started to build inside him. “This is all his fault,” he spat. He may have been placated when the GM was around, but now that she had gone, the reality of his situation was beginning to set in. He was reduced to poverty, back to square one, and he had even less to show for it than he had had when he first joined Tiqpa. And for what? For actually trying to help out someone he loved and keep his own head above water. I’ll bet he didn’t even receive a slap on the wrist. Locke’s rage grew more focused as he thought about Anthony.
Spoiled, rich brat. Stupid son of a-- He kicked at the ground in anger and was rewarded with a reminder of the fact that he was no longer even wearing shoes. He felt his face flush red with frustration, and hate welled up inside him. Ever since he was a child, he had worked hard to suppress emotions like these. They were bad for business. No one wanted to deal with someone who was emotionally unstable or threw hissy-fits. Acting out or lashing out meant he’d lose a deal and any potential earnings along wi
th it. He knew that no good was ever going come out of it, but this time, he didn’t care.
Locke opened up his skill menu to see what recipes the GM had given him.
Layman’s Deadly Poison: Apply to weapon to add +1 Damage (effect expires after 5 minutes). Ingestation will cause 10 points of damage unless the user is undead.
Layman’s Health Potion: Upon ingestion, restores 10 points of missing health and increases the maximum health of the user by +1 (effect expires after 5 minutes).
Locke looked at both of the available potions and decided that, if he had to make one, it would probably be best to start with the deadly poison. While the health potion was more tempting for his solo grind, especially since he was probably going to get hit a lot, and there was a strong chance of him dying even against a level one creature, he decided to go with the damage one. Damage sells better than health. If this GM is right, and I can improve the stats on the potion by continuing to make it, then it will be worth a lot of money in the future.
Almost as if reading Locke’s mind, a PM popped up on his screen:
P.S. Don’t try to violate the EULA by selling stuff on the dark forums again. I’ll be watching you, and I’ll personally ban you before anyone can figure out that I restored your account in the first place. Later! ~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Ash.
Locke put his hands on his head and rubbed his temples. Don’t lose it, Locke. Don’t lose it. We’ll figure out a way. But first: revenge. His earlier profits, the burgeoning success during his recent blacksmith days, had helped buy him some time. He certainly wasn’t on an indefinite time table, but there wasn’t going to be any immediate pressure to produce cash. He had some leeway to figure things out as he went along, just not forever. There has to be a way to make money online. Maybe I can use the fact that she did something illegal as leverage to get her to allow me to trade in the forums, but this is all just hypothetical and won’t matter if I can’t get anywhere, he thought, pulling out his flimsy, brown-handled blade with a rat-tail tang.
Locke cringed at the idea of not getting paid today as he checked the ingredients for Deadly Poison. There were several different combinations of individual flowers that could be used to make it, and, thankfully, he was able to find quite a few of them near him. He used his sword to cut the stem of the first and proceeded to the next one. If she’s going to give me hundreds of empty bottles to fill, then I’m going to make sure that generosity isn’t wasted. He grinned as he dove into the hard work. Flower picking: a real man’s job. He couldn’t help but laugh to himself while cutting the thirteenth flower. This place really is a gold mine of a starting location for an upstart Alchemist, he mused, and by the time he had picked his fifteenth flower, he was in a slightly better mood.
He stopped after he had picked over a hundred flowers, cracked his neck, pulled out the mortar and pestle and began to grind away at making the potentially profitable toxins. There was always something odd to video games that Locke never understood: exactly how the physics in the game worked. He expected to use five or six flowers per poison, but he found it was rather the opposite: one flower ended up producing two to three potions. It didn’t make sense to Locke, especially considering that the flowers were barely bigger than a blooming rose, but after the water was added, and the flower paste was diluted, the math somehow worked out, and the bottles were filled.
Layman’s Deadly Poison. Hmm . . . After twenty bottles were filled, and the effects were still just +1 damage, he was starting to become disappointed. He was hoping that, like Blacksmithing, the progress between the first and second version of the poison would be short. Previously, it had only taken him ten swords to reach the second version, and twenty more to reach the third. With the piddly concoctions he was mixing up now, it felt like making any progress was going to take way too long, but then finally it happened:
Your proficiency in Layman’s Deadly Poison has enlightened you. You have discovered how to make Amateur Deadly Poison. The effect has increased from +1 to +2 damage. The damage dealt has increased from +10 to +20 points of health if ingested.
Locke stared at it. Part of him felt relieved. He had been starting to worry that it wouldn’t ever happen. The other part of him, however, was expecting better. The effects doubled, which was amazing in its own right, but it didn’t tell him if his gamble on the class was worth it. If it had tripled or even quadrupled, he still might not have felt relieved. After all, what if the next version was only +3 damage? Ten iterations down the line, he’d be left with only +12 points of damage. So, without letting himself dwell on how unfair it seemed, he put it out of his mind as he spent another hour gathering flowers and making potions until the upgrade finally occurred again.
Your proficiency in Amateur's Deadly Poison has enlightened you. You have discovered how to make Greenhorn’s Deadly Poison. The effect has increased from +2 to +3 damage. The damage dealt has increased from +20 to +30 points of health if ingested.
So, it’s just as I feared, he thought glumly. It wasn’t doubling. It just goes up by +1 each level. He kicked the ground again in frustration. The poison was still great, and he knew it, but this type of progression meant that his plans for returning to the scene of world power were going to take a long time. It took a full thirty bottles to reach the first upgrade and then another sixty to reach the second . . . This is going to be a long road, he thought as he sighed to himself.
Then, like he did before every day at the grind, he counted to ten and dug back in. The boredom of doing a repetitive and monotonous task for a long period of time began to seep into his bones and sow discontent in his heart, and he knew from experience that the best thing for him to do was to space out each task into sections. An hour of work wasn’t an hour of work. It was just ten six-minute intervals. He didn’t have a hundred and twenty potions left to make. He just had ten different sets of twelve, and he persisted in his monotonous routine with only one thing on his mind. You can do this. It’s boring, but you can do this. At the end of this, I’ll make the best potions in the world for Darwin’s Demon Host, and we’ll wipe that smile off that Holy Alliance’s campaign. We’ll break it into a thousand pieces until Anthony has nothing left to live for in Tiqpa. That’ll teach that brat that money can’t buy everything. I will collect my pound of flesh, he promised himself.
----
Locke would have spent the entire day just harvesting and working on increasing his Deadly Poison ranks if it weren’t for the fact that halfway through the day, long after he had gotten his Deadly Poison to the rank of Journeyman (a bonus of +5 or +50 damage if ingested), he was interrupted by company.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?” a voice called as Locke was bent over by a tree, picking more flowers for his potions.
“Oh, umm . . .” Locke straightened up and looked around to see who had found him. Am I going to get PK’d? Sweat beaded up on his brow almost immediately, and it wasn’t from the strenuous process of picking flowers. Killing was common in MMOs, and it was likely to happen at any time.
“I’m just out here working on my craft, if . . .” Before he could finish his explanation, his marketing instincts immediately kicked in. “If you’re interested, I’m running a very special offer. I can promise you that, after you see the effects, you’ll agree they are the best in the region!”
There were six adventurers in the group that approached him. There was a gruff-looking Minotaur wearing chainmail and holding a giant two-handed axe, a Dragon-Wing similarly in platemail but with a longsword and a shield, a Satyr in what could only be taken as a priest’s robe with a staff, two Succubi wearing leather with daggers and whips, and a man with a bathrobe and a bow. The one who had called out to him was the bathrobe-wearing man.
“Your wares?” One of the two Succubi licked her lips as she eyed Locke, sending a shiver down his spine.
“Yes,” he said, maintaining his composure as the six players began to circle him like prey. He knew that he was in a very vulnerable position, and there was
a good chance that they might just kill him to see what items dropped on his corpse rather than spending anything on his gear. “I am a humble Alchemist who believes that what I hold would be of great interest to you.” He produced a Journeyman’s Deadly Poison potion in his right hand as an explanation, extending it for any of the six to take and inspect.
The bathrobe-wearing man hesitated for a moment before he finally reached out and took it. “Let’s see what you got.” His thick Boston accent pressed in on Locke’s ears harshly. The man held it for a minute and the potion vanished.
Locke knew he had to keep his cool here. If he accused the man of trying to steal his product, he was going to lose a potential sale. In the worst-case scenario, he might end up dead. Then again, he’d probably end up dead at the hands or claws of something else even in the best-case scenario even if he did somehow manage to make a sale. Relax. Save your anger for Anthony, he reminded himself as he maintained his fake smile. Don’t forget to make sure you smile with your eyes, not with your lips. “It’s a great product, right? I don’t think you’ve seen anything of that quality before, have you?”