by Jakob Tanner
Instant death here I come.
32
The demonic arm rushed through the air towards my heart. One touch and I’d be dead. It was seconds away from killing me. A bright light flashed. Serena stood blocking the blow, shielding the attack with her giant blade.
The dinosaur recoiled and its arm shriveled back to its regular size. Serena bent down and examined my wounds.
“So you decided to fight a demonic dinosaur without me, huh?”
“Serena,” I said, gasping in pain. I still had the broken leg and bleeding debuffs, galloping me towards death. I materialized my MP potion and poured it down my throat. I cast healing mist, focused on my leg. The blood of the wound disappeared and the open flesh of leg stitched up, but the bone was still crooked and broken. I needed a higher-level healing spell to deal with snapped-in-half bones.
“Thanks for saving me,” I said. “But I’m pretty useless at the moment.”
“Not true,” she said. “We’re still going to need that ability you unlocked in the dungeon earlier to destroy this thing.”
The battle raged in front of us. Kendara circled the creatures head while shooting mana-infused arrows at it. Theobold and Shade swooshed through the air in the hot air balloon shooting magic blasts and bullets. The creature’s health had been whittled to 30% HP. Slowly but surely they were destroying the creature.
“They’re getting its HP down,” said Serena. “We need to get closer for you to unleash your power.”
“Um Serena,” I said. “I can’t move.”
“Ridiculous,” she said. She slung her blade to her back and bent over and picked me up.
I grinned up at her. “My knight in shining armor.”
“Can you shut up for two seconds while we beat this thing?”
Serena jogged across the street with me crumpled in her strong arms. As we got closer, we approached the dinosaurs bottom half. Its humongous legs were each the size of a house.
A voice flickered in my mind as we approached. Please stop hurting me.
It was the little girl from my dreams.
The rest of our party kept fighting the creature in the air, attacking its upper body. A barrage of magic, arrows, and bullets punctured the creature’s right eye all at once. It wailed in pain. The monstrous scream was enough to make the ground rumble.
“We’ve almost finished it,” yelled Kendara from above. “Everyone blast it with all you got!”
They all attacked ten times harder.
The girl’s screams sliced through my mind. What the hell did she want at this moment?
Wait.
Was the corrupted amalgam related to the freaky girl in my dreams? Were the two connected somehow?
The dinosaur swiped its arms in the air as Kendara dodged, swirling in the air on her gryphon. She fired another mana-infused arrow at it. This one shot down right through the creature’s throat.
The monster was leaking blood and screaming. It was down to 3% HP.
My wrist ached with pain. The swirling black mark was creeping all over my arm now. It was happening like last time. This power inside me; it was enough to destroy the creature in front of me. I didn’t fully understand this power but I knew it would be enough to take the creature out. It wouldn’t be able to escape like it had last time. But something about all this wasn’t right. Why was I hearing the girl in the heat of battle? Why was she screaming, telling me to stop hurting her? No. I shook my head. It was more of the game’s glitches screwing with me, tricking me into not killing it. I had to destroy it: doing so would save Arondale and my friends. There wasn’t a real choice here, was there?
“Are you ready Clay?” said Serena, angling my body so I had a clear shot of the creature.
The monster screamed in pain as it dropped to 1% HP.
Here we go.
The power of the mark throbbed through my arm. I needed to unleash it on the beast.
Please… Don’t… Do… This…
I lifted my arms. I’m sorry, I said speaking back to it in my thoughts. I have to do
this. To save my friends. To save Arondale. What other choice do I have?
Please.
The swirling black lines ran across my arm. There must be another way. Destruction wasn’t right. I clenched my fingers. This power has shown me numbers and code before. Show me more. Let’s focus on what this power can do.
The black beam erupted out of my hand and blasted itself at the demonic creature. This time, however, I didn’t let the power overwhelm me. I didn’t let myself fall unconscious. A whole new set of abilities appeared in my HUD. They were unlike any I’d discovered so far in the game.
//run: virus_scan
//run: fragmentation
//run: defragmentation
//run: restore_corrupted_file
//run: VRmodelling_render
The list went on and on and I focused my eyes on one: “//run: restore_corrupted_file”. The dinosaur stopped wailing in pain but relaxed as the blast of power washed over it. I had changed the power from a destructive ability to a curative one. The fragments and worms disappeared off the dinosaur. The blue spirit of the Rorn King evaporated, replaced by a normal dinosaur ribcage. The Skren bandit leader’s arm shriveled up and disintegrated into nothing but dust.
A voice echoed in my head, the faintest whisper amongst all the chaos. Thank you.
33
The dinosaur returned to its normal self, its stats appearing in my window.
Great Mother Raptor
Level 40
HP: 3 / 2430
MP: 25
It was suffering from a bleeding debuff and the HP dropped further and further until its eyes shut in death. A burst of experience pointed appeared in my HUD.
The creature wobbled. The shadow of the beast loomed over us and fell in our direction. Serena carried me out of the way as the creature’s body collapsed onto the ground, sending one last tremor through the city.
You have successfully completed Quest: Save Arondale!
+3000 EXP!
Congratulations you have leveled up!
You gain +4 HP
You gain +1 MP
You have (3) unused attribute points that can be applied to any of your five base stats.
“You did it Clay,” said Serena, smiling down at me as I hung in her arms.
“This arm. The power, I think, it’s—”
We were surrounded by a squad of Royal Knights of Laergard. Their bayonets pointed at us. A prompt appeared in my HUD:
You have lost status with The Royal Knights of Laergard. You have fallen from “Distrusted” status to “Wanted For Suspicious Activity.”
Warning: If you descend into further negative alignment, such as “outcast” status, you will no longer be able to enter towns or cities with Royal Knight outposts.
“You’re under arrest for the use of forbidden magic,” said one of the guards. “Come with us.”
A voice yelled, “Stop.”
Muscling his way to the front of the crowd was Edward Silver. “This man saved Arondale tonight. He did us a great service. It would be only right to let him go for this evening. If we catch him using forbidden magic again, he’ll be bound to us by the law. But tonight, I say we make an exception.”
The guards all nodded.
You have gained status with The Royal Knights of Laergard. You have risen from “Wanted for Suspicious Activity” to “Distrusted.”
The soldiers dispersed and went to help the injured civilians. Edward Silver gave a curt nod and then hurried away after his soldiers.
Kendara swooshed past on her gryphon and yelled, “I must inform the Aeri of tonight’s events. Farewell.” She shot off into the distance. She didn't waste any time, did she?
Down the road, Theobold’s hot air balloon descended onto the broken cobbled ground. The wizard stepped out of his ship along with Shade. They hurried over to us.
“Well done, Clay,” said Shade, bouncing along.
Theobold rus
hed over to me and waved his hands, casting a spell. A burst of light shot forth from his palm and next thing I knew my leg had been mended, the bone sealed back together.
“Everyone else go off and rest. You,” he said pointing a thick gloved finger at me. “Come. We need to talk.”
34
“Cover your wrist boy,” said Theobold.
We walked through the city streets of Arondale. A few people cheered us as we past, celebrating our heroics. Eventually we ended up in front of the Crow’s Heart. We entered and Theobold nodded to Eve, who gave a solemn nod herself. Theobold and I went over and sat in the furthest corner of the pub. Eve brought us over two pints of ale and then left us alone, tending to the other customers at the bar.
“How did you get that mark?” asked Theobold.
I hesitated. What did Theobold want from me? I needed to tell him the truth. I told him about my entry into the game, the fight with the mutant Skren bandit, and the mark it left on my wrist.
“Odd,” he said. “Very odd.”
“What do you know about the mark?”
Theobold lifted up his right arm and pulled off his glove, revealing a swirling dark mark identical to my own.
“You’re not the only one with this curse boy,” he said. “There’s quite a few of us with such a mark in this world.”
“What do you know about it?”
Theobold took a sip of his beer. “I don’t even know where or how to begin. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. I’m not a normal NPC. I’m a human from Earth, like you. The only difference is I’ve been living inside A.K.O. for over a decade.”
My stomach lurched. “What? The game only launched a week ago?”
The man shook his head, exhausted by his old memories. “I was on the development team. I was a programmer. That’s how I know everything I’m about to tell you.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. He was trembling. “The game went live roughly twelve years ago internally within TriCorp. Only those on the development team were entering the game on a regular basis. Because there were so few of us in here, we created this dark mark tattoo, as a way of proving to other players we were indeed part of the team. It was a safety precaution. Beyond this—the mark was also important because it was an in-game power used to edit the system. But, as players when we fixed bugs or edited the rendering or architecture of cities, things went awry…”
I fidgeted in my seat, waiting for Theobold to continue.
“You have to understand – once we launched the world and started editing and tinkering with it from the inside, it was very difficult to rewind anything back. We only tinkered with the game at this point. Any mass editing or reprogramming would cause chaos and it did. Those known to have the dark emblem on their wrist were soon viewed by the NPCs as dark gods, reaping destruction on the world. It became known throughout Illyria as a cursed mark.”
“Okay,” I said, piecing everything he was telling me together. “But you still haven’t explained why you’ve been in here for ten years.”
Theobold sighed and continued his long explanation. “One of the later stages in the development of the game was known as “Realism Testing.” Programmers would enter the VR world from the perspective of an NPC, gaining the ability to grant quests and other such things. It was done in an effort to test out quest chains and make sure the NPCs were interacting with each other properly. Or it was the official intention of the testing at least. But upon arriving here in Theobold Longstaff’s body, I soon learned I wasn’t able to log-out. Konrad Takeshimi had imprisoned me and others in the game. He never explained why. Part of me thinks he’s inside here somewhere as well. I’ve met a few others on the development team but most of us have accepted our lives here. That going home is futile.”
This is insane. Konrad Takeshimi was imprisoning people in here.
“Theobold—when we were fighting the monster, a young girl came to me in my mind. She’s been appearing in my dreams. I think I may have helped her somehow tonight.”
“A little girl?” asked Theobold, shocked with disgust. “The mysteries of this game only make you sicker the more you discover them. This game is full of ghosts. The lost consciousnesses of the different people who helped form the system’s A.I. I don’t know how but you must’ve created a link with one of them.”
The NPCs drinking and chatting across the bar paid no attention to us. Didn’t care about whatever human conspiracies we were discussing. They were caught up in their own lives, from personal struggles to the politics of the realm.
What price did Konrad Takeshimi pay to create a world this real?
“That mark on your arm,” Theobold continued. “means the internal game system perceives you as a programmer, a developer. You’ve had dreams and seen fragments of numbers and code, true?”
I nodded my head.
“Those dreams aren’t normal dreams. You’re seeing the insides of the game’s architecture, a place known simply as sub-space. I don’t know why you’ve been granted this power. But I’d be very careful about using it. A.K.O. is unlike any game I’ve ever experienced, both in terms of play and how it was made and operates. The game’s central A.I. is an extremely powerful force and if it catches wind, there are players editing the system yet again, it will react badly. I’d be extremely careful if I were you.”
I nodded my head and spoke up: “But Theobold, I don’t even know how to use this mark. I’ve only been able to work it when fighting those mutant creatures and besides—I might not even be here tomorrow…”
Theobold finished his drink and slammed it on the table. “Exactly why we’ll continue this conversation tomorrow. Right now, you must rest. I don’t think it will bode well for Illyria if you were to disappear in the night. I’ll be praying to the gods you survive.”
The old Rorn mage stood up and walked out of the pub, leaving me sitting at the table alone. The man had given me more questions than answers. I still didn’t know why the game was mutating or who the girl talking to me in my dreams was.
I shook my head. I’d have to let these questions go for now.
I stood up, wished Eve good night, and headed up to my bed. The only thing left to do was to go to sleep and dream of a tomorrow.
35
###PROGRAM: DREAM TRIGGER##
RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS
……….
31454390287987083142093187431
I WAS LOST in an ocean of endless white. Was this what Theobold referred to as sub-space?
A young girl appeared in front of my eyes. It was the girl from before. Hair tied in brown pigtails. Big circular glasses.
“There are others out there. You need to help them too. Free them like you freed me.”
“Who else is out there? Who are you exactly?”
The girl smiled and winked at me. “There’s no more time now. The bad one can sense us. We’ll talk again soon.”
She disappeared abruptly, and I reached out to the blank space where she stood.
“Wait—”
I GASPED AWAKE. The room around me was a blur. My stomach lurched. What the hell is going on? Then I remembered: the battle against the corrupted amalgam, my discussion with Theobold, the cognitive upload. Oh crap—the cognitive upload. I didn’t know if I would survive—
Wait.
I was here. In my room at the Crow’s Heart Inn. Had I survived the night?
A message appeared in my HUD.
Personal Message: Congratulations!
Congratulations Clay Hopewell on successfully completing the cognitive upload. Your consciousness is now 100% integrated into Arcane Kingdom Online.
Happy adventuring,
TriCorp Dev Team
I had made it through the night. I wobbled out of bed and pulled the cloth blinds, revealing the sunny streets of Arondale. Despite the chaos of the previous evening, the city was back to full swing. Hammers banged and wood sawed as homes and buildings were repaired. The fighting hadn’t stopped the merchants from setting up stalls in the mark
et either. Adventurers and travellers were running through the busy streets like they had yesterday. I smiled.
This was officially my new home. I had made it.
A knock banged at my door.
I headed over. Who could that be?
I opened the door and Serena rushed into my arms, hugging me tightly.
“You made it,” she said.
She let go of me and closed my door. “I need to talk to you about something. It’s urgent. I continued my research last night and—”
A new message popped up in my HUD. It was a universal alert. Serena took a step back, surprised by receiving the sudden message herself.
The message was different from the others I’d received. This one had a window prompt and a play button. I made my HUD press play and a video filled my vision. It was a woman, curly haired, wearing a lab coat with the words TriCorp embroidered on the chest. She was in an office somewhere, speaking into a webcam.
“If you receiving this message then things on Earth have truly taken a turn for the worse. The ZERO virus has evolved and spread across the planet. There are not many of us left. The game’s much needed patches and updates have not been completed. You’ll have to survive within the game as it is currently laid out. This will be the last message you receive from TriCorp or anyone on Earth for a long time. Possibly forever. Be warned—” The developer turned her head to the door. It swung open, revealing a swarm of yellow-eyed creatures. Infected humans with blood stained mouths. They crawled into the laboratory, drooling. They rushed towards the webcam as the woman screamed—
The video cut out.
To Be Continued in…
Arcane Kingdom Online