After that fourth time, exhausted and bleeding from multiple locations, I looked across to where I figured Tomash would poke his head out. I didn’t see Tomash, however, because the room was awash in bright Red. The kind of Red that tells me I’m in danger!
“Sally, what the hell is going on?”
“What do you see?”
“I’m surrounded by danger, that’s what I see!”
“Yes. But how do you know?”
“Know? Because I can bloody well… Oh.”
I hadn’t noticed the announcement I had received from the game.
After encountering over a hundred Traps, taking damage from each, your subconscious has learned to identify these pitfalls. From this point forward, you will have an innate Skill to Detect Traps. The stronger your Skill, the better you will become at finding the most concealed of these deadly foes.
This time, when I moved the lever, the door opened. Sally was on the other side, along with Tomash. He hit me with a heal, and Sally hit me with her most wicked smile. “Now my boy, now we can train.”
*
Sally led me back into the great room and explained that the very structure we were standing in was built for the sole purpose of teaching Rogues this skill. She told me that my “initiation” took longer than most, since I kept pushing forward at every Trap. Most fell over, rolled around, and set off numerous more traps in the process. My drive to push on toward the lever meant that I ended up hitting far fewer Traps in the process, and lost far less life than most. It just meant that it took longer.
Sally looked around from the center of the room, and settled on a door two down from the first one I had entered. As we approached that door, she continued to explain the building we were in.
“In the world outside of here, it would take you a lifetime to improve your Skill to the height of its ability. The reason is simple: there just aren’t that many traps out there. I created these various courses to quickly increase your Skill to the highest. With your ability to move quickly, and with your obvious aptitude at avoidance, I think we can get you to your full potential before you leave today.”
We had reached the door, and Sally opened it. Down the hall, I could see several red blotches on the floors and ceilings.
“What am I to do?”
“This task is simple. Avoid the Traps. Passing by them without triggering their effect will build on your Skill. Noting ones that are concealed by an expert, and avoiding them, will greatly add to it. I don’t expect you to see those right away. Tomash will heal any damage you receive. Move the lever at the end of the hall and all of the Traps will disarm. When you can avoid them all, we will move on to something harder.”
I nodded my head and sprinted into the room. I started seeing my route from the moment I began my sprint. I barely took note of the door swinging shut behind me, but I wasn’t going to try and run out on this challenge.
I took a few shots before I got to the end of the hall, but my Skill already climbed several points in a matter of two minutes. With the traps disarmed, I went back to the door. It was open, and Tomash hit me with a heal before I left the hall. I wasn’t ready for the door to swing shut behind me this time, and I gave a little jump.
“Why’d the door close?”
Without answering, Sally walked over to the opening and turned a knob I hadn’t noticed next to the door’s handle. Several seconds later, the door opened again. I hadn’t been sedentary, though. I was remembering where the first Traps were and thinking about how to change my route.
All of that was for naught, as the door opened and I saw that the first Traps were all in a different configuration.
“Oh, did I forget to mention that the Traps are put into a random order each time? How silly of me,” Sally said, wearing her evil smile again.
“You know you are worse than Waseem, right?”
“Good for you, dear. It usually takes people a lot longer to realize that. Now run!”
And run I did.
Over the next two hours, we ran through four halls total. Each of them became harder and harder to navigate, and I was forced to use my Climbing and Scaling, which increased two points, to get through. At the end of the two hours, my Detect Traps Skill sat at 100.
“Excellent! You definitely made a play to beat the fastest time for completing the circuit. I think only Dhalean had a faster time.”
“Of course he did.”
“As I have told you, this was only the first step in your training,” she said while we walked to a table that was set up in the middle of the large room.
Four Traps of some sort were sitting on the table. Each one was a glowing red to me, but their edges were crisp and I could make out all the details of the Trap. When I first learned the Skill, it was just a big blotch of Red sitting on top of the ground or on the side of the wall. As the Skill increased, so did the clarity of the Trap itself.
Sally pointed to each one as she explained their presence on the table. “The first is a simple hunting Trap, the second was made by an Apprentice of a Carpenter for some rich Baron, the third is the work of a Journeyman Trap maker, of which only three exist in our time. The last was designed and built by a Master. There is only one Master walking the world of Tholtos, so far as I know.”
“Should I start calling you Master Sally now?”
“Heavens no! I love it that you don’t stand on all that pomp. I wish the rest of the community would stop doing it. The wrong ears hear someone say Master anything, and I will have far too many people looking in my direction whom I would rather avoid.”
I understood her reasoning, and I had no intention of calling her anything but Sally. She put me through hours of torture, and did so with glee.
“Your Skill showing you that all of the Traps are extremely dangerous was not tied to your Detection Skill. It is tied to your Disable Skill, of which you have none at this moment. You will take apart this hunter’s Trap. The first time you are successful in doing so, without setting the Trap off or getting injured, you will receive the Skill. After that, it will be a matter of working on the various contraptions before you, until the Skill reaches its apex. This Skill will take much longer than the last one. You will need to come here several times before you can move past the Disable Skill and on to what we have really come here to learn.”
“Wait. I thought this is what I came to learn, so I wouldn’t get caught like I did on that ledge.”
“Mm hmm. And we will get there in due time,” She said, removing the Traps from the table. “Come back tomorrow, if you are able, and we can start fresh. If you arrive and I am not here, simply place this totem against the door, and it will inform someone inside that we have a visitor.”
Sally gave me the small, wooden totem. It had no Stats or Skills associated with it, and was called Wooden Totem. I stored it in my inventory and made the mental note to mark the location of the entrance door on my Map. No way I was going to find this place again by memory.
Sally was shooing me toward the door when I had a sudden realization.
“What about the first room? Now that I have reached the top of my Skill, shouldn’t I give it another try?”
“Oh silly boy. There is no way to get through that room. Every square inch is covered with Traps of varying degrees of severity. Literally, no way to get through, without knowing how to Disable. It’s a marvelous way to acquire the Skill, don’t you think?”
“Way worse than Waseem. So, so, much worse.”
Undisclosed Location
Emily Renart had been a godsend for the General and his team. She had taken the reins of her assignment and pushed herself to her limits. The General had received numerous reports from Emily. In them, she’d drawn a greater picture around one of the major mysteries facing the General’s team and their investigation.
After learning about the previous maintenance requests on the RACs, Emily had systematically created a detailed timeline of when the RACs came online as well as the users associated to them
. All of them were employees of AltCon, and all were working in the Emerging Products department.
During the five-month timeframe, what appeared to be hundreds of techs from the Emerging Products line had relocated from the primary offices to the sub-basements where the RACs were hosted. Along with the RACs, they had transferred their primary accounts to new computers specifically set up for those techs. After the five months, Emily saw a massive number of requests for retrieving the computers in the sub-basements and moving them back to inventory.
Additionally, the number of work orders from Emerging Products diminished drastically. Emily could not be certain, but she hypothesized that the technicians from Emerging Products were spending almost their entire time in the RACs. Likewise, and still only theory, both the General and Emily thought it was highly plausible that AltCon ran a separate test for Resurgence prior to running their current beta. Whether this was to actually test the game or was the first batch of experimental subjects was impossible to say.
Given the top-notch work put out by Emily, the General had great faith that she would be up to this next task and the unique story that came with it.
“I’m sorry, General, but I don’t have any additional updates on the RAC usage. I would have filed a report if I had.”
“I have no doubt, Ms. Renart. That isn’t why you are here.”
Emily sat down across from the General at the large conference table. “Is everything OK, sir?”
The General nodded and put a bit of warmth in his voice. It was not often that members of his team had one-on-one meetings with the General that weren’t scheduled out weeks in advance, and he didn’t want to scare Emily into thinking she had done something wrong.
“All is well, Emily. You need not worry that you are in any trouble here. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Emily let out a breath she probably didn’t realize she was holding and relaxed a bit more into her chair. “Good to know, sir. Why am I here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind at all. And it’s one of the things I admire about you. You are direct and concise. I also know you to be creative when it comes to problem solving, and I’m going to need that now.”
The General reached into an attaché next to his chair and pulled up a plain manila folder and set it on the table. He then slid it over to Emily.
As she was opening the file, the General said, “I was terribly sorry to hear about your mom, Emily.”
Her head snapped up, and she was about to answer the General when he put a finger over his own lips and then pointed to the file on the table.
Emily, looking confused, nodded at the General and continued to read.
“Oh. I see now. Yes. Ok.” Emily said. After ten minutes she finished the file and closed the folder.
“Does it make sense, Ms. Renart?”
“In a nutshell, General, it does. It will take some time for me to learn the history, but I believe I can pull it off.”
“For my own amusement, give me a recap.”
“Working off of my already established presence in AltCon, you want me to inform the bosses that I am going to need to leave my position due to an illness in the family. I’d rather not leave—I do love my work—but my mother is going to require care. I will have something to back this up?”
“It’s already done, down to the hospital bills,” said the General, waving for Emily to continue.
“I’ll ask for a recommendation and if anyone knows of any good work around where I’m going. This should lead to a separate job offer, if I’m reading this correctly.”
“That is correct, Emily. It’s a plan based on simplicity, but those are usually the best. I know that AltCon has a facility 75 miles away from their Headquarters. It will be surprisingly close to where you will be headed to take care of your mother. And in case you were wondering, we will have someone playing your mother to sell this ruse.”
“Wow. That’s really going all in, sir. Is that not a little overkill?”
“No, I don’t believe it is. AltCon has its own levels of paranoia that I am trying to provide safeguards against, is all,” the General responded and then returned to the earlier explanation. “I am betting on two major things here. The first is that you have worked your ass off for this company in your short time, and that they won’t want to lose someone like you if they can find a place to put you in the short run.”
“Makes sense, sir. What is the second reason?”
“Jolston. When he was first coming on in the company, his mother became very ill. The company is what allowed him to take care of her and afford the care to save her life. I’m betting that Jolston has some say on who can and can’t go to this facility.”
“Sir, do you mind if I be blunt?”
The General let out the same smirk he had used with Grissten and waved Emily to continue.
“That is a whole ass load of ‘ifs’ you are banking this on. Right now I have a solid position, I’m getting information, and I’m trusted in the company. Do we really want to risk that for a ‘maybe’ and a ‘possible?’ It’s my thoughts, sir, but is it worth the gain since we know absolutely nothing about this facility?”
“Well said, Ms. Renart. Those are the same questions I asked myself. In the end, I decided on this approach, since we appear to have hit a wall on our previous investigations. You may not get the job. You may not learn anything. But we are at a status quo I can’t abide, and the people above me are asking for results.”
Emily looked down at the closed folder on the desk for several moments before addressing the General again. “And what do you believe I will find, sir?”
“I truly have no idea, but something that well-guarded and well-hidden has to have some secrets to give up. I’m guessing it is tied into our ongoing investigation. But again, I could be wrong.”
Emily shook her head a few times as she looked at the General again. “I’m not saying no, sir. I just think it’s a bad play,” she said before picking up the folder. “But you are the boss, and you make the call. I need to study the files here and get ready to put in my resignation. Can I have two days to learn my part?”
“Thank you, Ms. Renart. I appreciate your candor and your honesty. I have no doubt you will master the information, and two days should be fine.”
“Thank you, sir. Cross your fingers.”
“I’ll have everyone on the team crossing theirs as well. Dismissed.”
Chapter 19
November 24th, 2043
Five more days in the swamp got us the experience we needed to hit Level 31, but that wasn’t enough to get our next quest from Sir Arthur. There were also no additional Skills or Spells that we would get at our new level. The only reason we went back to the Keep at all was to sell all the junk we had collected. We no longer looked at our bank, which was a great feeling. I knew well, however, that rich men can become poor men very quickly in these games with the purchase of one or two rare or epic items.
Selling loot was the reason for everyone else to go to the city, at least. I had been traveling there every night, burning so much of my time online just traveling there and back. Sally hadn’t lied about how much I would need to visit her place to raise my next skill. So yeah, grinding for experience both with the team and in these skills. A double whammy of the suck.
For the first several hours, on that first day, I tried again and again to take apart the hunter’s Trap. Unfortunately, I set it off each time, doing damage to myself. The difference between this skill and ones I previously learned was that I was actually studying the Trap on all sides. The game mechanics were such that the Trap looked different to me each time, although I thought I started to notice a pattern.
After each fail, I looked at what I did wrong and took note of how I could do better. Several times, my changes had adverse effects that led to unforeseen consequences later. With other Skills, there was a natural progression based on my Wisdom Stat, and I imagined my Wisdom score was allowing me to see where I could
have done something different. Without asking the Wanderer, I didn’t really know.
Near the end of the first day, maybe after three hours total, I finally disabled the Trap. The successful attempt led to a notification by the game that I had, in fact, learned Disable Trap and that I was at the Skill Level of 1.
Now that I had succeeded, I needed to continue to Disable the hunter’s Trap and increase my Skill Level. As it continued to change slightly, my first attempt after receiving the Skill was a dismal failure, and the Skill did not rise at all, as you would expect.
So for those next four days, I returned to Sally’s place and kept working on the hunter’s Trap. On day one, the Trap was Red, which was why I kept failing as much as I did. But as my Skill improved, I started to see areas that were slightly highlighted on the Trap, giving me an indication as to what part I should take apart next. At the end of the fourth day, the hunter’s trap was finally Green.
“Congratulations, my apprentice! That didn’t take you anywhere near as long as I thought it would! Let me take away this hunter’s trifle and let you get to work on this next bauble.”
With that, Sally slapped another device on the table. To my dismay, this one was Red, again. I reached out to the Baron’s Trap, and with the tiniest bit of manipulation to the device, a dart flew from the contraption and hit me square in the neck.
“Oops. That would be a fail,” Sally said as my vision went blurry and my forehead slammed into the table right before I passed out.
November 29th, 2043
“She is a horrible, twisted woman who takes great pleasure in the suffering of others!”
“Sorry, pal, you just described every woman I’ve known. And my mother twice over.”
“I’m serious, Waseem! Her method of helping me involves repeat concussions and no small dose of mockery on her part!”
Another five days had passed and we were inching ever closer to Level 32. In the meantime, I continued to acquiesce to Sally’s lessons in her Hall of Torturous Wonder. That was my name for it. Sally called it home, but secretly she loved my name more.
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 41