by Brian Simons
“Mana spring,” the game’s text said in my field of vision.
I held my hand out to the spring. Rather than wetness, I felt a warm energy course through my skin. A blue meter glowed in the corner of my eye with 10/10 next to it, representing my MP. I also had a red meter with health points, starting out at 100/100.
The ground was covered in grass and small flowers. I bent down to pick up a blade of grass and tried to activate my Grow spell. My mana meter stayed at 10/10 and the plant remained unchanged. I plucked a flower and tried again. Still nothing.
How do I use this spell?, I wondered. A menu appeared before me listing my spells. Grow was the only one so far. I selected the spell with my mind and saw a description of it hover before my eyes.
CURRENT SKILLS
Grow (Tier 1): At tier 1, Grow allows you to speed the growth of an existing plant growing from the ground. [1 MP per second to cast].
AVAILABLE UPGRADES
Grow (Tier 2): At tier 2, Grow improves growth speed noticeably while slightly increasing mana cost. [1.1 MP per second to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.
Osmose (Tier 1): At tier 1, Osmose allows you to learn the essence of basic common plants. Hold a plant and spend MP to understand its basic form and energy. At higher tiers, you will use this knowledge to create and govern the plants around you. The plants you familiarize yourself with may lead to additional skills to unlock. [2 MP to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.
I tried again, touching a flower where it sprouted from the ground. As I touched it, I felt warm energy leave my fingertips. The flower’s stem grew longer, the bloom unfolded, and another stalk appeared from the base of the plant. It formed a flower bud but then stopped growing after ten seconds. I had run out of MP.
I reached into the mana spring and recharged, then continued to develop the flower until the second bud blossomed alongside the first. I plucked the flower from the ground and smelled it. It smelled real.
“Pansy,” someone said from behind me. It was a Level 5 Sword Fighter two inches taller than me, holding his weapon out at another player.
“It’s a crocus I think,” I said. The swordsman swung his weapon upward and blocked another player’s sword.
“I meant you,” he said. “What kind of a pansy picks green magic? You want to spend eternity growing dandelions?”
“It’s a crocus,” I said again.
“Don’t listen to him,” said a woman on the other side of the mana spring. She was a Level 3 White Mage with dark skin and short black hair. The swordsman charged at another player and disappeared into the crowded field.
“I’m Mary,” she said. “Are you just starting out?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Here.” Mary put a hand out toward me and shot a pellet of white light from her palm. It landed on my chest and seemed to melt into my body, filling me with energy. “It’s a slight Haste spell. It’ll get better as I level up.”
“Thanks,” I said. I bent down to Grow another flower and felt my spell working faster than before, my MP depleting more quickly. I put my hand into the spring and recharged. In the corner of my vision I saw that the game had prompted me with a level up notification.
You have reached Level 2! Total skill points: 1. Total attribute points: 1.
I had no idea how much XP was necessary to level up, or how much I was earning. As far as I could tell, that information didn’t show up in any game menus.
I opened my skill menu and used my one skill point to unlock Osmose. Then I used my attribute point to improve my Acuity.
ATTRIBUTES
Power 1
Speed 1
Acuity 1 -> 2
HP 100
SP 20
MP 10 -> 20
I closed my game menus and saw Mary waiting there. “And your name is?” she asked.
“Oh, sorry. It’s Cale.”
“Like the salad?” She chuckled. “Green mage was a good choice then.”
“No, actually, it’s Cale with a C, short for Caleb. Only my wife calls me that though.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Her name is Nadine Cross. She came to Ripcord two years ago. Do you know where I can find her?”
“I’ve never heard of her,” Mary said, “but I’m new here too. As you can see, a lot of players just stay here in Cortina, but they don’t all. She may not even be here anymore.”
“So there are other cities?” I asked.
“There’s something out there.” She took a deep breath. “That’s all I know. This field doesn’t go on forever. When you get far enough, there’s a game prompt that says you can leave Cortina behind, but you can never return.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would they develop the game that way?”
“I haven’t been here long,” Mary replied, “but I did spend the first few days walking around in that endless circle in town asking people what they knew about Ripcord and how they got here. I got tired of it pretty quickly, but I did hear a thing or two.
“Look how crowded it is here. It gets worse all the time as Ripcord sends more people here each day. Players are constantly fighting each other to get stronger, for lack of anything else to do.
“This area is a safe zone. For all the fighting that goes on here, dying isn’t permanent. If you die, you lose a level and you start over again. Out there though, no one knows if the same rules apply. It’s all just a mystery.
“If they did make this the only safe zone, it would mean people who leave might have their data permanently erased if they die. So why would they design it that way? To save money. It must be very expensive to run the processors that keep this many people running around in a computer game.”
So designing this as a game world was intentional. I figured it was the result of putting gamers in charge of the afterlife, but maybe there was something darker lurking in the game mechanics. Or maybe Mary was just a conspiracy theorist.
“So if Nadine is here,” I said, waving my arm out at the city surrounded by fields, “and I just fail to locate her in Cortina, and then I go out there to keep looking, I’d accidentally leave her behind. I’ll end up separated from her forever. Again.”
“Right. But it shouldn’t be too hard to find her if she’s here. Cortina is small. That’s part of why people eventually choose to leave.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Are you planning to leave?”
Mary turned away. “I think so,” she said. “My son is out there. At least, he’s not in Cortina anymore. I have to level up first though if I’m going to make it.”
“And how does that work?” I asked.
“You come here, cast your spells, and wait patiently to accumulate XP. All I can tell is that each level requires more XP than the last. You just fight every day to get stronger. Then you hope no one kills you in your sleep so you can wake up and pick up where you left off.” She shrugged.
“I have to look for her here,” I said. “I’ll come back and find you later, either way.”
“Wait,” she said, reaching out and snatching my arm by the wrist. “Let me help. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to talk to.”
3
Mary and I walked through the city gates and fought against the current of players ambling around the city. We yelled out for Nadine, but no one ever responded. For all of the city’s buildings, none opened. They were decorative, stone and brick facades to give the appearance of a city when it was only a hollow shell.
The people here seemed like hollow shells too. Despite all of their talk, they never smiled or laughed. Cortina was no life after death, it was more of a purgatory.
Mary and I climbed the city walls and peered over the green fields. I screamed Nadine’s name at the top of my lungs, but no one came running. Why weren’t more people screaming for their loved ones? Why was I the only one trying to piece my life back together here?
In the span of a day we had covered the whole city and walked back into t
he green fields beyond.
“You must feel like a lunatic,” Mary said. “I did the same thing. ‘Timothy! Timothy!’ I yelled and yelled. It’s a common enough name that a few people approached me and asked if I were looking for them, but none were my little boy. He was on an experimental drug to treat his leukemia, so they gave him Ripcord as a backup. He was too brave to sit back in a rotten town like Cortina. He’s out there, I know he is.”
I took another step toward the mana spring we had met at in the morning. It felt like forever ago. Someone walked toward me with a large battle axe. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, and broke into a run, raising his weapon over his head.
I froze, much like I had the first two times I got into a fight. Here was a Level 6 Axe Fighter heading right for me. What could I do, pluck some flowers for him? It didn’t seem fair that melee fighters started with deadly weapons and all I got was a green thumb.
I expected to die on the spot, but my body filled with electric energy. Mary must have cast another Haste spell on me. It was just enough to help me dodge the oncoming blade and land with both hands on the ground. I had no weapons and no spells that could protect me. I spent six of my mana points on Osmose to see what plants I had to work with.
Grass. Crocus. Clover.
None of that would be any help, so I ran.
I dodged past other players practicing their archery, their fire magic, their war hammer moves. I ran until the Haste wore off and I slowed down to normal speed. I rested my hands on bent knees to catch my breath. Half of my stamina points were gone after my short sprint across the field. Then an axe blade landed in my shoulder. I screamed out in pain as 52 health points disappeared from my HP bar.
“Nadine!” my attacker said, taunting me. “Did you find her? Of course not! We don’t find people here. We fight.” I spun around and he raised his axe again.
I hoped what Mary said was true. Even if dying in Cortina would be painful, it hopefully wasn’t permanent. There was no way I would outrun or outfight this warrior.
As his axe came down toward me, I felt a coolness wash over my body and heal my wounds as my HP meter climbed up by 12 points. It was just in the nick of time, too. The blade slammed into the same shoulder as last time, sinking deeper into my bone and causing a deep, visceral pain.
I had lost 54 more HP, but thanks to Mary’s quick thinking and small healing spell, I still had six left. I was close to dead, but I could take off on one last sprint.
The pain in my arm thudded with each footfall, but I forced myself to keep running. I knew I couldn’t just run forever though, the game wouldn’t let me. I was limited by my dwindling number of stamina points.
What I needed was a plan. I headed for another mana spring, one with a small tree growing beside it. When I got there I placed a hand on a thick branch to ‘learn its essence.’
Cherry blossom.
I paused for a second, memories of Nadine welling up unbidden. Our wedding pictures were full of cherry blossoms in full bloom, surrounded by our friends and family on a gorgeous spring day. Light pink petals blew off the trees and onto my tuxedo, into her hair, faster than we could brush ourselves off. She loved those trees, and by extension, so did I.
I fed mana into the tree and its trunk started gaining height and thickness. I stopped. I waited.
The axe-wielding assailant approached and I stayed on the opposite side of that tree from him. We circled the cherry blossom for a few moments. He made jerky movements like he was going to swing his axe at me, but they were feints. I kept darting the other direction to prevent him from getting an opening at a clean, solid swipe at me.
When I circled around with the mana spring behind me and the tree in front of me blocking my attacker, I was ready. “What are you waiting for,” I yelled, “let’s do this!”
He lunged at me, bracing one hand on the tree trunk and swinging his axe arm in a wide arc toward my body. I dodged away from his awkward attack as his arm came to rest on a small branch near the middle of the tree’s forked trunk.
I pressed my palm against the trunk’s base and thrust my other hand into the mana spring. I continued to pump more and more energy into the tree as I replenished my mana points in an endless stream. The tree grew higher, lifting my attacker’s body off the ground and sending long wilting branches down around it, sprouting occasional small flowers. It wasn’t the tremendous growth I had hoped for, but it slowed him down. He grappled with the branches for purchase to avoid falling backwards to the ground.
Then the tree stopped growing. My MP meter was empty. The game alerted me, too late, to a limit of the mana spring.
This resource is available only to players level 5 and lower.
Had I really just used enough of my Grow spell to reach level six? Now was no time to check on that. That giant axe was chopping its way through the cherry blossom branches, bringing my attacker closer to the ground. Mary had caught up with me. She put her hand in the fountain and Hasted us both. It felt good, having that fast energy coursing through my mind and body. It also felt good to have her by my side. What a terrible world to go through alone. If it weren’t for her I’d have already died.
I looked around. There were other cherry blossom trees, there were flowers tall and short. I just couldn’t see anything that would help against this foe.
He leapt off of the tree and walked up to me, his axe at the ready. There was no sense in running. I stood between him and Mary and said, “Mary, you should go.”
“Yeah, Mary,” he said. “Skitter along.” He raised his weapon and I closed my eyes.
A rush of hot air enveloped me and I stumbled backward, knocking into Mary. Our attacker was on fire, his clothing sending flames into the sky. His axe lay on the ground, the glowing red of molten rock.
Ten feet away was a Level 12 Red Mage. He prepared another fireball and hurled it toward all three of us. Mary and I stepped out of the way just in time. The axe fighter we had been up against rolled on the ground until he put out the fire and charged at the mage. In the distance, I saw a Level 15 Shortbow Archer preparing to shoot at one of them.
We had stumbled into an all-out warzone.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Mary’s hand and running toward the city walls until my stamina ran out completely. After that I could only walk. Once we were surrounded by low level players again we stopped and lay on the ground.
“What was that?” I asked.
“You can only level up so much from casting lowbie spells,” she said. “After that the XP is a slow trickle compared to the amount necessary to keep leveling up. Getting a kill earns better XP, but killing a newbie is worth a lot less XP than killing someone at a higher level. We were lucky we stumbled into an area with high level players that were already targeting each other instead of us.”
Lucky. That’s not a word I would have used for anything that took place that day.
We walked up to the outer wall surrounding Cortina’s buildings and I felt around for the plants there.
Thistle. Ivy. Bamboo.
Bamboo would do. I brushed my hand against a row of the woody plants and Grew a short wall for us to hide behind. It took several tries, spending all of my MP and waiting for it to gradually replenish with time, but there were enough bamboo shoots here to raise a decent barrier. It wouldn’t make us invisible, but I hoped it would encourage people to leave us alone.
Mary and I lay there, sandwiched between a row of magically enhanced bamboo stalks and the stone outer wall of Ripcord’s only safe zone city. We watched the sky turn from orange to deep blue and stared at a smattering of virtual stars overhead until we both fell asleep.
4
I woke with a start to the sound of metal crashing against metal. Two people were sparring nearby under the early morning sun. I panicked for a moment, assuming my arm would still be injured from yesterday’s fight, handicapping me if someone else attacked. Luckily, a full night’s sleep had replenished my HP and healed all of my wounds.
Ma
ry was nowhere to be found.
Before going back into the fray, I needed to allocate the points I earned by leveling up the day before. My game menu told me that Osmose (tier 2) would let me learn “special” common plants, but I still couldn’t do anything with those plants. I decided to sink my skill points into Grow instead.
Each additional tier added to my Grow speed until I saw the upgrade option for tier 5. That tier would add the ability to raise a new plant from a piece of the old one, provided I had fresh dirt and water available. That meant I wouldn’t be stuck growing things on the spot, but could instead transplant flora from one place to another. It would cost 1.5 mana per second to cast, but the added growing speed from each tier should more than compensate for that, at least if the speed jump from tier 1 to tier 2 was any indication. I saw no reason to hoard skill points, so I unlocked Grow (tier 5) with my last one.