by G. Akella
There were substantially more people once they returned, and they had to spend eight hours in line before they could register the quest as completed, all the while listening to news from the outside world. The news was unremarkable, however—all the developments were expected. The panic and the hype were growing by the minute. The death of over thirty million people drowned out all other reports of current events and was discussed on every channel and all over the Internet. Several governments had already implemented limits on capsule usage while scientists discussed whether or not the Realm of Arkon could be considered a separate reality. Most people, however, didn't care much at all. Parents followed their children and vice versa. Many of those who couldn't find a place for themselves in the world had migrated, as well as the terminally ill, adventurers and thrill-seekers. Capsules skyrocketed in price and soon became impossible to find. One man claimed to have bought his for eight hundred grand. But the weirdest thing was that the same capsule could only be used by close relatives to leave one after another. Therefore, a mass exodus into this world wasn't likely to happen anytime soon.
"Salutations, heroes," said Almaren in a strange voice as he rose to greet them. "I bid you welcome to my humble abode..."
"You're trolling me, aren't you?" Luffy looked at him suspiciously.
"Just a tiny bit," the druid grinned. "However, I'm truly grateful to you for the awakening of the soil."
"Soil is all nice and good," muttered Luffy while examining a plain-looking wooden staff—his quest reward. "But we really didn't expect we'd have to spend three days gathering a comprehensive collection of herbs and flowers," he grunted, satisfied by the visual examination.
"Oh, so it's hunting that you're after?" The druid shook his head in reproach. "Well, that's easy enough." He settled into his armchair, produced a blank scroll and started to write something on it...
You've accessed the quest: The Majordomo of Venlamin.
Quest type: normal.
Find Majordomo Diplexius in Venlamin and deliver the message from Mentor Almaren to him.
Reward: experience.
"The Brown Hills are overcome with packs of rats—they feed on the bark and the soft heartwood of young trees," he explained to Max as he gave him the scroll. "Certain events that have transpired lately have made me focus on something else entirely. A week ago, Majordomo Diplexius asked me to send him a few hunters to destroy the pesky rodents. I have no free hunters at the moment, but the two of you should be able to handle the task without much trouble."
"Kill a beaver! Save a tree!" Max looked at Almaren, holding the two-handed sword received as a reward for completing the quest on his shoulder for want of a sheath.
"Something along those lines," nodded the druid. "You get the drift, but note that wood rats are a bit larger than beavers. Good hunting, heroes," the druid waved the companions farewell. "We're unlikely to meet again here—on the mainland, perhaps, two years later, when my service here is done. One more thing—I come from the Wood Moose clan and consider it a great honor to be compared to that animal. You should bear that in mind, young warrior..."
"There's a place that's a lot like this one near Kiev, right next to the village of Rovzhi. When I was a student, we would spend nearly every weekend there during the summer." There was a hint of nostalgia in Luffy's voice. "The pines are just like the ones here, and the shore is just as steep. This puddle is a far cry from the Kiev Reservoir, of course, but..."
"I can't remember the last time I went fishing," Max replied in the same vein. "There should be someone here who teaches the fishing skill—we should definitely find them tomorrow."
"Don't you ever feel horrified when you think all of it is gone forever? After all, we're basically walking corpses, you and I."
"Cut the crap," Max took his eyes away from the players splashing in the lake a hundred feet away and frowned at the mage. "How the hell are we walking corpses? As for beautiful places, I'm sure there are lots more of them here than back there."
"But how is that relevant?" Luffy sighed. "There may be more beautiful places, but none of them feel like home..."
"You're at it again, are you?"
"Don't mind me—I get this way when I've had a few," the mage shook his head. "Still, it's a good thing we came here instead of staying at the inn... those drunken mugs depress me."
"Remember the movie that came out recently—The Final Day, or whatever it was called? With another asteroid heading for collision with the Earth? They really partied hard there, knowing the end was nigh, didn't they? But why would you do it here? Did you notice that only one person in ten or so is actually doing something useful? The elves are supposed to be one of the evolved races." Max looked at the drunk elven maidens screaming and splashing each other, and then his glance fell on the chalice in his hand. "At least they can't remove their undies in a noob zone. Thank goodness. I shudder to imagine what would happen here otherwise."
"You're a snob, brother," Luffy snorted. "Why do you care? The two of us aren't all that sober, either."
"I don't like seeing people behave like animals, is all. As for us, a bottle and a half each is a ridiculous amount. Also, we've been working like beasts of burden for three days straight—we deserve it." He rose in a single fluid motion. "Shall we go? The moon is out already."
"Let's—it's high time we had some proper sleep. I'm sick of camping out in the woods."
"Don't forget you're an elf—they're supposed to sleep up in trees, aren't they?" Max shot over his shoulder.
"Let monkeys sleep up in trees," Luffy dusted his pants and followed. "But think how convenient this is—there are ten rooms tops in the inns, and they can house a hundred—and everyone gets a room of their own, unless they invite someone over. This hotel owner lady—the one that looks thirty at the age of sixty-something, what's her name..."
"Paris Hilton?"
"That's the one. Imagine what she could have paid for someone implementing that IRL..."
"Like I care! We're not IRL anymore," Max turned over as they approached the massive door of the inn, with the din of inebriated patrons coming from inside. "At seven in the morning, right here," he pointed to the ground with his finger. "Tomorrow's gonna be a hectic day—don't you dare oversleep."
"Worry about your own oversleeping," the mage grunted. "Let's get going before I pass out right here," he nodded at the bodies piled up next to the entrance, wincing at the smell of vomit, "right next to these folks..."
"You have drunk ten times less, although you can surely try if you want," Max smiled, and the companions entered the inn.
Max found it really hard to fall asleep that night. He never slept well in a new place, and now his unease was compounded by the wine and all sorts of uneasy thoughts coming to his mind. How would Alyona react to his arrival? What if she'd already found someone? What would he need to do to find her in the first place if she never checked her mail? Everything had seemed easy enough initially—log into the game, send a private message, and wait for the answer. But on the very first day it turned out that after the patch, which took place less than a week ago, the only way of reaching someone was by mail. It was impossible to send mail to the mainland from Sunlit Forest, so he'd have to wait until he got out of here.
Then he started to worry about his friend. There was no information on Demon Grounds anywhere on the game forum—that plane was still being prepared for launch, so there was simply no one around who would know how to get there. Max eventually got tired of tossing and turning—he rose, turned on the light, opened the window and lit a cigarette. There were drunks singing tunelessly in the street. A woman was laughing loudly. The young man sighed. How would this new world accept them the way they really were? He sat down on a ramshackle stool near the windowsill—you needed money to change the interior of your private room, and he and Luffy had spent everything on missing pieces of equipment—and surrendered to contemplation. It was true that the players differed little from NPCs who had come to life now, t
he way Mentor Almaren appeared to have done, all of them following a preprogrammed pattern of behavior. In case of the elves, that pattern was affected by such qualities as pride and arrogance. If Almaren, like the other Sunlit Forest NPCs, was programmed to have a certain amount of benevolence towards players, the movers and shakers of this world were unlikely to cry tears of sympathy at the sight of a warrior dressed in rags. That meant they'd have to fight hard for their place under the sun—and, on top of all that, he'd have to find and protect Alyona, and then discover a means of infiltrating a locked gaming plane to save his friend. He could contemplate his place in this world later—he was no stranger to hardship and expected a lot more to come, yet Max didn't doubt himself or his ability to succeed for a second.
He opened the character menu to distract himself, and took another good look at his stats and equipment. The best item out of those laid out carefully on his table was the two-handed sword received from the druid.
Young Warrior's Two-Handed Sword.
Sword: two-handed weapon.
Durability: 200/200.
Ordinary.
Minimum level: 10.
Damage: 15-27.
+11 to strength.
Weight: 9 lbs.
His stats with the sword equipped looked as follows:
Agility: 1.
Strength: 35.
Constitution: 30.
Vigor: 8.
Spirit: 1.
Intellect: 1.
HP: 300.
Energy: 80.
Mana: 10.
Armor: 62 (31.2% physical damage absorption).
Weapon damage: 16.05-28.89.
Mighty Blow I: 42.80-68.48 physical damage.
Max didn't know the exact formula for calculating the percentage of physical damage being absorbed by the armor vis-a-vis the player's level, but the fact that his 35 points of strength increased his damage output by 7% (5 points of strength being roughly equal to 1%) was indicated next to the stat. Having reached level 10, the newfangled warrior was faced with the selection of the skill that he'd have to learn first—either Dash or Mighty Blow. Max decided to invest the points in extra damage. He'd see whether or not he'd made the right decision tomorrow. He took another look at the learned skill.
Mighty Blow I.
Energy: 10 points.
Instant cast.
Cooldown: 3 seconds.
Minimum level: 10.
Required: melee range, melee weapon equipped.
An instant attack that deals 100% damage on top of the weapon's base damage. +10 to damage for two-handed weapons or +12 to damage for one-handed weapons.
Just like the guide recommends, he thought, minimizing the character menu. Whether the simple set of chain-and-leather armor that he had managed to buy for one gold could protect him also remained to be seen—it increased his armor class, but didn't boost any stats. He resented the fact that his utter lack of experience meant he'd have to listen to other people's advice—in his former life he tried to make all his decisions by himself. However, there was no choice at this point, unfortunately. And then there are the rats to take care of, he put out the cigarette and shut the window tight. He'd never have to kill anyone previously, so those who've spent a while playing such games had a definite advantage. However, Max didn't doubt himself—he'd kill anyone who would stand between him and Alyona or Roman—and, possibly, also Luffy, since they'd become close friends over the past three days and had decided to seek their fortunes together.
The time on the wooden clock on the wall showed three AM—there was less than three hours of sleep left. Max turned off the light, stretched out on the bed, made an approximate plan for tomorrow, and only then finally managed to drift into peaceful sleep.
The sun that rose from behind the trees transformed the elven village in an astonishing way—it played in the droplets of dew hanging from the blades of grass, chasing the layered fog into the woods and painting the slowly drifting clouds pink.
"Why so grumpy?" Max chortled at the sight of the mage—scowling and shivering from the morning chill. "The early bird—"
"Stays sleepy all day long," said Luffy gruffly, still half asleep. "Right, let's go see this Dyslexius..."
"Hey, you guys," a level 13 elf hunter nicknamed Theophilus separated from a nearby group and approached them. "Let's go take care of the local miniboss—we're just missing a tank and dps," he sad with a barely audible accent. "It's a level 12 boar—we'll deal with him in five minutes."
"Sorry, man," Max shook his head. "We've got a lot of stuff to do ourselves, but thanks for the invitation."
"Have you shat your pants now?" the hunter snorted derisively. "Not enough cojones, eh?" the guy turned to address those behind him, as if calling them to witness. "The game's overrun by chickenshit noobs..."
"Get stuffed, imbecile," Luffy butted in. "I bet this guy is the master looter in your group, isn't he?" he asked the young men and women standing behind the hunter. "Once you snuff the boar, this dope will grab everything for himself—there's no way you'll be able to take your share. So good luck to all of you," he chuckled, shaking Max by the shoulder. "Come on, let's move."
According to the expressions on the elves' faces, the mage's words hit the mark, but the two companions decided not to wait for the situation to resolve one way or another. As Max was leaving, he just smiled back at the hunter, who was staring him down furiously.
"Do we really look like such easy marks?" he asked the mage who was walking in front. Max had read a few warnings about con artists of this sort on the forum, and regretted having almost allowed himself to be taken in.
"Perish the thought," the wizard hastened to reassure him. "You and that phallic symbol on your shoulder," he nodded toward the dully glistening two-handed sword, "not to mention the shining armor, doubtlessly make you look like a legendary hero of yore."
"Accompanying Merlin the Great to the golf course?" Max pointed toward Luffy's poker-shaped staff, and they shared a merry laugh.
"Heroes, eh?" Majordomo Diplexius—a tall, broad-shouldered elf with long silver hair in two long braids—put away the scroll and looked at Max with a mix of irony and scorn. "Well then, it shouldn't be hard for you to destroy a meager fifty wood rats in the Brown Hills."
You've accessed the quest: Vermin Extermination.
Quest type: normal.
Bring fifty Wood Rat Tails from the Brown Hills, located to the north of Venlamin, to Majordomo Diplexius.
Reward: experience, increased reputation in Sunlit Forest, 1 gold, unusual cloak of your choice.
"The rats are basically not aggressive," the elf explained once they accepted the quest. "However, the instant you attack one, you shouldn't approach any of the others without a weapon in your hand. Those beasts have something like a hive mind binding them together—you should bear that in mind. And another thing," Diplexius pointed toward one of the residential trees. "Pay Alaune Veliessa a visit. She might have a quest for you, too..."
Alaune Veliessa's marlorien was surrounded by flowering vegetation growing in a fifty-yard radius—it was the lushest garden Max had ever seen. Flower combinations that seemed impossible created an unimaginable overall effect—one couldn't stop admiring them. Decorative hedges assumed the shapes of fantastical animals and seemed to come alive when touched by the rays of the rising sun.
The owner, a middle-aged elven lady with very comely and symmetrical features, met them at the doorway of her home. She appeared flattered by the admiring looks cast at her garden by the companions.
"You like it, don't you?" she inquired in a melodious low voice.
"It's amazing," Max exhaled, having finished admiring the bush that grew in the shape of a sleeping panther. The wind was ruffling its leaves, creating the impression that the large cat was asleep and breathing steadily in its slumber. "How do you manage it?"
"When your comrade becomes a Herb Whisperer, he'll also be able to do it," the woman smiled in return. "Why didn't you take up this noble p
rofession, o young warrior?"
"I'm not that young," Max shook his head. "If I find out how you do it, it won't seem like fairy tale stuff anymore, and I'm not sure I'd like that to happen."
"What a great excuse, bravo," whispered Luffy, who had stood to the right, making Veliessa smile for a moment.
"So you opine that your thirty-two years make you an adult?" she inquired with a touch of irony in her voice. "Well, it doesn't matter—be an adult if you want to." The woman stepped to the side graciously and invited them in with a gesture. "Come in and tell me what brings you here so early in the day. I have no wine, but I think you might like my tea."
"I'm really sorry that you'll have to kill these animals," the elven woman shook her head when they told her about the purpose of their visit. "But I know it cannot be helped. Those rats breed at an alarming rate, and the forest is in serious danger. As you must have guessed," she nodded toward the rows of test tubes and flasks standing on the shelves, "apart from herbalism, I dabble in alchemy and have pretty decent command of nature magic. If you get me 10 wood rat secretion glands, I'll probably be able to come up with a spell that will substantially slow down the propagation of those vermin. I can teach you alchemy in return, with mana, HP and energy restoration potion recipes thrown in, or pay you a gold coin for those glands."