PWNED: A Gamers Novel

by Matt Vancil

  “Grats,” said Yanker. “Two-thirds to go.”

  Noob knelt to check the wolf and swore. “No liver in this one either.”

  “We’ll just keep grinding.” Yanker shot another wolf on the plain below them. The beast streaked towards her, all fangs and fury. Noob stabbed it in the back and found a couple of dead rabbits in the treasure menu.

  “We’ll get there,” Yanker sighed, drawing back her bowstring. “Only need three more.”

  “How exactly are all these wolves surviving without livers?”

  “Their drop rates are just low. Like twenty percent.” Yanker shot another. It murder-charged her and died on Noob’s dagger—a wicked looking thing he’d found on their run through the Inverted Volcano.

  “That’s still eighty percent of the wolf population born without a vital organ,” Noob pointed out.

  “You can’t think of it in those terms. Logic sometimes has to take a back seat to mechanics.”

  “I’ll say. Try eating an all meat diet without something to emulsify lipids.”

  “Look, the quest is asking for ‘intact’ wolf livers, so we can assume that any wolf that doesn’t drop one got it damaged when we killed it.”

  Another wolf charged. Noob Pickpocketed it and came away with its liver. “Got one! Wanna explain how it’s still attacking me? And how I just stole an organ?”

  Yanker dropped the wolf with an arrow. “You’re ruining my immersion.”

  “It’s also got a magic axe.” Noob was looting the body. “And chainmail leggings. Wouldn’t these have slowed it down?”

  “Immersion.”

  Noob nudged the mound of wolf corpses over the ledge. “As much as I love harvesting wolf guts, aren’t dungeons better for power leveling?”

  “Yes, but you’re in the mid-thirties doldrums. No good dungeons in your breadbasket, not for few more levels. And you’ve gotta find a drop quest here anyway to even get into the next dungeon. So for the time being, we’re grinding XP the old-fashioned way.”

  “You know wolf livers go for 3,000 gold on the Black Market.”

  “That’s because everyone hates this quest.”

  “Their hatred is justified.”

  “Hey, don’t be that way. It’s a quest to save that sick little girl, remember? If we don’t get enough wolf livers, her mom can’t make the folk medicine to save her.”

  “Folk medicine. In a world with magical healing and resurrection. And wolves with axes.”

  “Immersion.” She fired a dozen arrows at a dozen different targets. “Hey, look! Wolves!”

  When the frenzied stabbing had ceased, Noob found only a single wolf liver, alongside eight dead rabbits, six wolf flank steaks, five damaged wolf hides, two wheels of cheese, a +2 breastplate vs. chaos damage, and a small scroll.

  “‘Suspicious letter,’” Noob read off the scroll. “It says, ‘This item starts a quest.’”

  “Drop quest,” said Yanker. “Finally. Now we can get into the Clockwork Abyss dungeon and get the hell out of wolf town.”

  “What about the little girl?”

  “Potions of resurrection are cheap. And we’ve got four wolf livers to sell on the Black Market.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do with all of these wolf steaks?”

  Noob hit 40 baking wolf pot pies in the kitchen at Drunkfucker’s. The inn had gotten its nickname for the glitch that made its NPC proprietor wobble and fall down at random intervals. Boy Howdy had fixed the glitch in a patch, but the player outcry was so great that they’d reinserted it, and even timed it with appropriate bursts of dialogue.

  Yanker had sent Noob to the kitchen when she found out he’d been neglecting his Cookery skill. He would have kept doing so (“I don’t see how knowing how to poach a salmon will make me a better backstabber,” he’d protested), but Yanker pointed out that he’d ignored his non-combat skills for so long that even basic recipes awarded max XP. So the guild had dumped all of their collective saved meat onto him (“Do you want more of my meat?” Mansex had asked about seventy times) and sent him into the kitchen.

  After an hour of cooking, Noob backed out of the kitchen and dropped several thousand XP worth of dishes on the guild’s table. “Grub’s up. Come taste the fruits of my labor, none of which involve actual fruit.”

  No one responded. They were stomping and clapping with a hundred other patrons crowded around the fireside table. Noob slipped between toons and spotted Mansex dancing atop it in her skivvies.

  “Oh, hey,” said Yanker, waving a frothing beer stein. “Didn’t see you come in.”

  Noob folded his arms and sniffed. “I’m not gonna pretend I’m not a little bit offended.”

  “Gods damn it!” the innkeeper blurted as he fell over onto a coat rack.

  “Oh, come off it. We got bored waiting, so Mansex put on a show. Bandy dared her to.”

  “I did no such thing,” Bandaid sniffed. “I may have insinuated she was afraid to display her wares in public, but I never dared her.”

  A dwarf tucked a gold goblet in the band of Mansex’s panties. She polished his bald head with a kiss.

  “I finished off the wolf flanks and basilisk cutlets. Can we go back to adventuring now?”

  “Depends,” replied Yanker. “What level are you?”

  Noob pointed at the 40 above his head.

  “And what level do you need to be to enter the Labyrinth of Lost Souls?”

  “41,” said Bandaid, munching. “Mmm. Good braised unicorn.” A +20 Wisdom buff popped up over her head. “Effective, too.”

  “Forty-one,” echoed Yanker. “Which means back to the kitchens, cook-boy.”

  “Can I at least take off the chef’s hat?”

  “The one that gives you a 10% XP bonus? That would be a no.”

  The innkeeper hit the floor. “Blasted pygmies!”

  Noob sighed. Then he leveled in a flash of light.

  “Well,” said Yanker. “That was quick.”

  “My naga noodle soup must be done.”

  Bandaid wrinkled her nose. “I never cared for that dish. Too snakey.”

  Yanker nodded. “Let’s get to it, then. Truth, collect Mansex. And Noob, ditch that stupid hat.”

  The guild crouched behind the only pillar still standing in the ruined throne room as a cackling wizard hurled bolts of black lightning their way, shearing off half the pillar and spattering the guild with plasma-hot shrapnel for thousands of points of damage.

  “Take your time, Noob!” yelled Mansex. “I’m basically wearing a bikini here. It offers tons of protection.”

  Noob was stealthing up behind the wizard. “He’s way higher level than me. Are you sure I can take him?”

  “No,” said Mansex. “You can’t take him. That’s why the rest of us are here, getting showered with shards of molten pillar. Which does percentile damage. So please kill his ass before we all die. You’re making The Truth mad.” The Truth shrugged.

  Another bolt of lightning. The guild took 15% damage. Yanker glared around the pillar at where she thought Noob was. “Please stab him now.”

  Noob plunged his dagger into the Wizard’s back. As with any action other than walking, the attack broke his stealth.

  The wizard whirled on Noob, unhinged his snakelike jaws, and bit at him. His teeth bounced off Bandaid’s bubble shield. Then Mansex and Yanker hit him with a fireball and bomb arrow at the same time, and the wizard exploded like a piñata filled with motor oil and roaches.

  When Noob presented the wizard’s head to the queen, he leveled to 60 in a flash of light.

  * * *

  Noob had nearly finished level 79 when they completed the Hulks. That had been his favorite dungeon yet: a series of sunken shipwrecks haunted by their zombie crews and some feral merfolk who’d taken up residence in the debris.

  “How are we even talking?” Noob had asked. They were hovering underwater in the last of the Hulks. “Let alone breathing?”

  “Waterlungs enchantments,” replied Bandaid. She ca
st her bubble shield around The Truth as he swam up to skewer one of the merfolk spearmen.

  “I’ll accept that, but how are Sexy’s fireballs working? Explain the physics behind that.”

  Mansex fireballed a trio of mermaid spellcasters into strips of smoked salmon. “Magic. Now shut up. Please. You’re ruining immersion.”

  “We’re immersed right now. That’s my exact point.”

  Noob dropped his protests because the dungeon was pretty cool. The final boss was one of the zombie captains, who’d somehow managed to enslave himself a kraken. They fought him in the broken-hulled hold of a galleon perched on the edge of an abyssal trench. The boss rode around on squid-back, stomping holes in the bottom of the ship, and anyone who swam above one of those would get sucked into the inky blackness by the undertow. It patently defied the laws of physics, but it passed the Rule of Cool, so nobody complained. They chopped the boss and his pet into calamari.

  Now they were trudging back to shore, dragging a bunch of kraken tentacles behind them. “They make the best thief’s gloves,” explained Yanker. “All the suction cups, you see. It’ll super pump your Pickpocket skill.” She stopped to pour the water out of her boots. “Sorry you didn’t hit 80. I was sure we’d timed it right.”

  “No worries.” Noob poured the last of the deep sea out of the tricorn hat he’d taken off a mini-boss. “I’m in this for the long haul.”

  “I know this is taking forever.”

  “Stuff’s been getting harder,” Reid admitted. They’d needed the full guild for the last couple dungeons, which meant he got less of the divided XP.

  “Yeah, I know, but—I dunno, I can’t stop worrying. Like we should have gotten you there by now, and there’s so little time. You must be so sick of us.”

  “You guys aren’t that bad. Mansex is, but the rest of you are pretty pleasant people.”

  “You’re just jealous I have an ass that won’t quit,” said Mansex. “Hey, you think I can make a dress out of all these mermaid scalps?”

  “Ah, speaking of that…” Noob reached into his knapsack.

  Yanker raised an eyebrow. “If you pull out Ariel’s hair, I’m screaming.”

  Reid opened a trade window between them, dropped a parcel into it. She eyed him suspiciously. “Go on,” he told her.

  Yanker double clicked on it. Her armor vanished, replaced by a crystalline ball gown that shone in a spectrum of icy colors. A quintet of adventurers jogging down the beach towards the Hulks stopped to whistle.

  “It dropped off the zombie bosun down below,” said Noob.

  “Not really my style,” said Yanker, “but it’s nice.”

  Bandaid ogled at the dress. “The Crystalline Dress. One of the rarest treasures of the deep, lost when the Hulks first went under!”

  “To translate that into Non-RP Freak,” said Mansex. “That’s a super rare drop. You know that goes for about 8k on the market, right?”

  Yanker’s eyes widened. “I had no idea. I need to start paying attention to deco prices. Noob, this is too much.”

  Noob shrugged. “Didn’t know. Don’t really care. It’s not real money.”

  “There are gold farmers in China who’d disagree with you.” The dress vanished, her armor appearing in its place. “I’ll keep this in a very safe place. Here, I’ve got one for you.”

  A trade window opened between them. A parcel appeared inside.

  “It’s not exactly the same value, but a gift for a gift, right?”

  Reid clicked on the package. He found his armor replaced with lederhosen and a Peter Pan cap.

  The rest of the quintet, which had whistled before, catcalled and howled. Noob broke into Mansex’s sexy dance. Bandaid laughed so hard she fell into the ocean.

  Noob hit 80 six minutes later when he killed a Cyclops. He was still wearing the lederhosen.

  The final battle with the sky pirates was a tough one. Debates raged on the forums whether this or the Moonhollow on legendary was the (proportionally) hardest dungeon in the game. Reid had read up on it the night before at Yanker’s request.

  After you destroyed the pirates’ base on the crashed floating island (the island had been a floating island some time ago, Bandaid explained; before the lore of the game began, it crashed into the top of a mountain, and from a distance it looked like the mountain was wearing a big stone sombrero), the sky pirates fled in their armada of captured ord airships. The final battle took place in the mothership with all of the sky pirate lieutenants rather than a single big boss—a team battle on both sides rather than a tank-and-spank.

  That wasn’t what made Sky Pirates so deadly, even for level-capped players. The real trouble was the pilot, who would randomly jerk the ship’s wheel right or left during the fight. Any players without good footing were likely to fall out of the many ridiculous openings on the flight deck. The lieutenants never fell, of course. And because the ground below was well outside the dungeon, rezzing anyone in the airship who fell out wasn’t possible.

  Of course, all that was moot if you had a rogue maxed for infiltration.

  Noob stealthed between the lieutenants and smacked the pilot with his sap, knocking him cold.

  That broke Noob’s stealth. The lieutenants all shouted and whirled on him, but Mansex froze them in place with ice blasts.

  Noob waltzed from one lieutenant to the next, stunning them with his sap. The Truth followed, kicking each stunned, frozen pirate out an opening.

  “Nicely done.” Yanker nocked an arrow. “Get ready for round two.”

  The next hardest thing about Sky Pirates was the reinforcements. After you cleared the flight deck of the mothership, Reid had read, the other airships closed in and swarmed your ship. They dumped more combatants in in waves, and with them came more pilots, who’d pick up with the wheel-jerking where the first had left off.

  “Dunno if I have time,” said Noob. “I’ve got work in 45 minutes.”

  “Plenty of time,” said Yanker. “Man the ship’s wheel, Lieutenant Noob.”

  Noob raised an eyebrow. “Why? Don’t tell me I can—”

  “The wheel, Ensign Noob. I just demoted you for insubordination.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Noob took the wheel.

  “Now use Sabotage.”

  He didn’t see anything to sabotage, but he clicked the ability anyway. A HUD for the ship’s cannons sprung up. “Whoa.”

  “There’s a reason I had you max your talents on the sneaky shit.”

  “And here I am without my popcorn,” said Mansex.

  Yanker grinned wickedly. “Fire at will.”

  Noob shot down the half dozen airships converging on them. Blimps Hindenberged into the mountains all around them in spectacular blasts of FX.

  Noob leveled twice in successive bursts of light. He looked a question at the guild.

  “That would be an airship’s worth of XP hitting you all at once,” said Yanker.

  The guild gathered around one of the openings to watch. Three of the burning airships converged to crash into a jagged peak below. The explosion was like the birth of a new star. Noob leveled three more times.

  “So much destruction,” Mansex purred. She slid her arm around Noob’s waist. “So many explosions. So much death. More than a girl can take. You deserve a reward.”

  She started a standing lap dance of sorts, grinding against Noob.

  “Uh—” Noob tried not to look at Yanker. “Would you stop that, please?”

  “Stay with me,” cooed Mansex. “I’m almost there.”

  The Truth kicked her out a window. She vanished into the distance, both middle fingers raised to the airship.

  “Huh,” said Yanker. “Didn’t know there was a double middle finger macro.”

  Noob hit 94 before Mansex hit the ground.

  The guild apologized in advance for taking Noob into the boss fight at the end of the Risen Pyramid. It was a bad matchup for their group, but he needed the XP. For the best shot at success, and because of all the undead, you wan
ted to take in a paladin as well as a healer. The pally could alternate fighting with off-healing while the healer dealt the main heals; turning undead and healing and shielding was just too much for one player. But with Reid dancing on the far edge of 99, they decided (over Mansex’s objections) that it was worth the risk.

  Five wipes later, they’d changed their tune.

  “I’m out of mana,” Bandaid whined.

  “We know,” said Mansex. “We’re all at half health.”

  The Truth pulled his sword out of the last of the latest wave of mummies and struck a defensive stance in front of the gigantic onyx pharaoh’s head embedded in the wall of the dungeon’s final room. Bandaid took up position behind The Truth.

  A slit of blinding light split the head from crown to chin. With a rumble, the great onyx door began to open.

  Noob drank a healing potion. “Okay, what do we want to try this time?”

  “How about not dying?” suggested Mansex.

  Yanker shrugged. “Try to keep them away from Bandy until her mana fills.” She checked her quiver. “Great. Out of bomb arrows.”

  That wasn’t good. The boss was Ulix the bony golden-faced fucker who’d killed them five times already. Fighting him was maddeningly frustrating. He’d warp away the split second before you hit him in melee, so the only reliable way to land a blow on him was with a ranged weapon—not a spell, at least not one with more than an instant casting time, because he’d do his blink trick and the spell would miss. Worst yet, before he attacked he’d possess a member of the party, turning them on the other Pwnies and burning through their mana and supplies.

  Noob peered into Yanker’s quiver. “What have you got left?”

  “Glues, icers, and flares. Oh, and a whistler.”

  “Whoop de shit,” said Mansex. “See you in the Underworld. Try to die near the stairs this time. We won’t aggro any patrols if we rez there.”

  The hold spell hit all of them at the same time, just as it had the five times before. They didn’t even try to fight it.

  Ulix strode out of the great onyx head. “We shall live again,” he said calmly, and began to cast. Black plasma flew around his hands.