Quest for Vengeance

by Benjamin Douglas

  Growling, I threw the lump at his head. He dodged easily, guffawing, and a couple of goblins joined him. Then they beat me to just 2HP shy of dying. The Cave of Wonder buffed me back up, and they probably would have beaten me again if it hadn’t been time to go to work.

  That day I didn’t eat. Nor the next. But by the third, I had an awful choice. Choke down the piss-bread, or accept the permanent hunger debuff.

  I don’t care to recall my meal that day. Only that I kept my strength, such as it was.

  Somewhere along the week my captors observed that I was always trying to communicate with Angie. They took to calling me lover boy. I told them she was my sister. That only made them laugh harder.

  For her part, Angie seemed to be holding up as well as could be expected. Every time I saw her she stood tall, shoulders back, face stoic. I shook my head, marveling at my kid sis. Who knew she was such a badass? But I knew the heart of it. No matter what kind of show either of us put on, we were miserable. We’d been enslaved.

  I was in the middle of the mindless march to work one day, doing my best to keep my head down and not attract any attention or unsanitary loaves, when I got a ping.

 

  I snapped my head up in surprise.

  WTF?

  I looked around but she was nowhere in sight; the line stretched before and behind me, and we were almost to the work cavern.

  A ping? Really? I frowned. I very nearly began to compose a reply, then mused over her last sentence. Mine wouldn’t be secure? But how was hers? I shook my head.

  “Keep moving,” an elf muttered from somewhere behind me. I shuffled forward and received my pickaxe.

  Ten minutes into Hard Labor, I paused, considering. It could be a trap. But to what end? Worst case, some of the hackers had a nasty prank waiting for me back up the tunnel. Ok. I didn’t relish the thought, but what could they really do? I was already theirs. Already trapped and submissive.

  Fuck it.

  I hefted my pickaxe and brought it down, swiveling the head at the last second in order to smash it sideways against the rock. I grunted with the strain of the heavy blow.

  Sparks flew, but when I brought the pickaxe up to inspect it, it looked good as new.

  Tool: Enchanted Pickaxe

  Status: Armed

  Strength Required: ???

  Skill Required: Beginner

  Durability: ???

  Crap. Enchanted durability. How was I supposed to break it?

  I whacked it against the stone again. And again.

  “Yo, Chipdip!” Meatloaf frowned at me. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  I shook my head. “Must be getting tired.”

  “Huh. You ever not tired in here?” he wandered away, back to his work. A grating sound met my ears as he slid his shovel under a pile of rubble.

  Shovel will do.

  Oh yeah! Duh.

  “Oh hey Meatloaf,” I beckoned him back, “actually, can I see something real quick?”

  His look grew more puzzled. I didn’t waste time explaining, but raised my pickaxe. “Hold onto your shovel.”

  “Huh? Hey, look out! What are you—”

  CLANK!

  Tool: Enchanted Pickaxe

  Status: Armed

  Strength Required: ???

  Skill Required: Beginner

  Durability: 8/???

  Interesting! No idea what the durability pool was, but now I had a quantifiable stat, I was ready to quantify the shit out of it.

  “Just hold it,” I said firmly, hefting the pickaxe and bringing it down again onto the head of his shovel.

  CLUNK!

  Durability: 4/???

  I smiled. So long as my math was linear, it looked like the third time would be the charm.

  THWACK!

  Durability: 0/???

  Error! This item needs repair.

  You bet it does. I lifted it up and saw a nicely mangled head. Then it was obscured by a dialogue box.

  Passive Skill Leveled Up: Outside the Box

  Congratulations, you have gained a level in the skill Outside the Box! This is a passive skill that can only be leveled with use. It is a sister skill to Strategy and Battle Planning, both of which can be leveled with attribution points.

  Skill: Outside the Box

  Type: Passive

  Sister Skill: Strategy, Battle Planning

  Level: 3 (scalable)

  Effect: 9% increase in likelihood for plans to succeed

  That’ll do, I thought, nodding. “Thanks.”

  Meatloaf squinted at me. “You losin’ it, Dip?”

  “About to find out. Just, ah, get back to work, huh?”

  He snorted and bent back to his shovel. “Shut up.”

  Must be only an enchanted item can break another enchanted item, I mused as I walked back to the tunnel entrance. Or maybe just these three items, like they’re part of a set. Huh.

  “Well, look who it is.” The same goblin I’d killed a week before sat lazily at the tool station, barely sparing me a glance. “And how may I help you, oh high and mighty warrior?”

  I tried to read his stats and got the same muddled code I’d received when I’d tried to read Tommy before partying up:

  Real Player

  Level: ???

  Race: ???

  Class: ???

  Occupation: ???

  HP: ???

  Armed: ???

  Figures, I thought. They must all be masked. Not that it mattered. I knew enough about their levels from the beating I’d received. They were higher than mine.

  I lifted my pickaxe to show him.

  “Broke my toy,” I said.

  He snorted. “Don’t know how you managed that, but there’s a charge.”

  I was silent for a moment. A charge? How the hell— “But you already took everything I have. How am I supposed to pay a—”

  He waved me off. “Not my problem. Here.” He reached out to take the pickaxe, then handed me a new one. “It’ll be debited to your account. Now get back to work.”

  I turned my back on him, considering his words. My account? Did he mean… like, my actual bank account? IRL?

  “Huh.”

  I began the walk back to the wall of crumbling stone, trying to scan the area around me without looking conspicuous, when I got another ping.

 

  I didn’t even look. I veered left and picked up my pace, trusting that the goblin behind me was ignoring me, lost in some in-game game of Candy Squares or something. Sure enough, a tiny, dark fissure was in the stone wall directly in front of me. I turned my shoulders and slipped inside.

  About a meter in it opened up a bit, and I found myself in a small cavern, the uneven ceiling just a bit higher than my head. Beside me, slouching so as to not bump her head, stood my sister.

  “Angie!”

  We hugged. I couldn’t help but notice her rippling biceps.

  “Geez sis, gettin’ burly!”

  She laughed. “Racial bonus. Strength increases 5% faster than base rate.”

  I whistled. At least someone was getting a decent build out of Hard Labor. “How are you able to ping me?” I asked. “I tried weeks ago.” It was true. I’d attempted to send her a message the very first day, only to get a “Message undeliverable” prompt. I assumed, therefore, that pings were all locked down as part of our imprisonment.

  “One of my cellmates is a total wizard. I don’t mean her build; I mean she knows the game mechanics in and out. She set up a shadow network that these Taco goons don’t know anything about. It’s risky, I mean, they could totally read the messages if they knew they were there. They just don’t know they should be looking for them.” She shrugged. “It’s a start, anyway.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled at her. “Geez, it’s good to see you.”

  She told me more about her cellmates and her experience so far. I told her about th
e conversations I’d had with Fangs, Jane, Meatloaf, and Nero.

  “Whoa,” she whispered. “Who knew it was so big?” She shook her head. “This is going to take a lot.”

  “This… what?”

  “The resistance,” she said simply.

  I frowned at her, images of our avatar bodies impaled on spikes flashing through my mind. “Uh… I’m all for the spirit of it, but just how are you planning to resist? If you hadn’t noticed, most resistance tends to end in a tortuous death. Followed by more slave labor.” It sounded simple to say, but we both knew the horror behind the words. With our pain settings maxed out and locked, death and labor were not easy pills to swallow.

  “Still working on that. But hey, this was an important first step, right? Finding a way to communicate with you. Man, with your brains and my gaming acumen, there’s no one can keep us camped for long.”

  I smiled, if a little sadly, admiring her optimism. I just couldn’t match it with my own.

  “Now look,” she said, “We can’t stay long, we’ll be missed. And it’s important that you don’t ever ping me back, because if you send something from your character onto our shadow network, it will get, uh, un-shadowed.”

  “Got it.”

  “But we can keep meeting here, where it’s safe.”

  “Is it safe?” I looked around. The cave was maybe the size of a modest bedroom. Similar to the cell I shared with the others. My Night Vision allowed me to see the basic structure of the walls, floor, and ceiling, but with no light at all, there were still details I was likely missing. I hoped we weren’t being watched even now.

  “It’s a chance I’ll take,” she said, “if it’s the only way we can talk.”

  “Ok. So what, we set up a regular meeting time?”

  She shook her head. “Too risky. If we’re regular, we’re more likely to be observed. I’ll just ping you again. You’ll just have to come when I call.”

  “Har har.”

  We hugged again.

  “It’s good to see you, big bro.”

  “You too. Take care of yourself, ok?”

  She grinned, patting her bicep. “Me? Have you seen me? Dude. I run this place.”

  I chuckled and exited, leaving her behind.

  ___

  I had hacked rock for another few hours and was back in my cell when they came to collect payment.

  “That one,” the goblin sneered, pointing a crooked green finger in my direction. The ogre, who had just frozen us all with Heart of Fear and a Stun, bent down and reached into the cell. I watched in horror, unable to move as the enormous clawed hand came toward me. His skin was cold and leathery, like a dead thing, but he was very much alive. He didn’t have any trouble scooping me up and pulling me out before closing the cell door behind us.

  “Time to pay up,” the goblin said.

  “Wh—wha…” My speech was halting as the debuffs began to wear off. “What are you… t—talking about?”

  A wood-elf appeared from behind them. The same wood-elf who had escorted me to my cell in the first place. Maybe he was more than just a grunt? I hadn’t seen him since. Now he looked at me impassively, bored. “This noob?” he asked quietly. “He’s the one causing all the fuss?”

  “He broke one of my pickaxes,” the goblin hissed.

  “How?” The elf glared at the goblin, who shrank back a bit, shaking his head. “You made those yourself, Jacks. Didn’t you?”

  The goblin, Jacks, mumbled something about not knowing. The elf sighed and faced me again. “Well, bring him here.”

  I could move of my own volition again, but that wasn’t going to happen with the ogre’s cold, grimy fingers still wrapped around my torso. Instead, I was pushed to stand just a few feet in front of the elf.

  “Night elf,” he murmured, looking me over. “Why’d you pick that race?”

  I almost laughed in his face. Was he serious? I breathed a joyless chuckle, staring at the stone floor instead.

  “I asked you a question.”

  I heard the stretch of sinews and looked up to see he’d nocked an arrow and drawn his long bow. I was staring down the haft, point-blank. If he let it fly I’d be dead in a second. Not that it gave me much pause after everything I’d been through in here, but still. Those death penalties were a bitch. I took a deep, shuddering breath, grasping for an answer.

  “What do you want me to say?” I muttered.

  “You’ve a dark alignment,” he said. “Why’d you pick that?”

  I frowned.

  He sighed through his nose. “No matter. You’re nothing but goblin fodder.”

  He must have let the arrow fly, because the next thing I knew was the icy cold of the afterlife.

  CHAPTER 8:

  WHERE TIME STANDS STILL

  _________________

  April 1, 2049

  Janus Industries

  Letter from the Board

  To Aaron Sarten, Project 309 Leader

  RE: Failure to resolve issue

  CONFIDENTIAL: This letter is for Mr. Aaron Sarten only.

  Aaron,

  We have reviewed your report and confirmed its details with other project leaders. We are sorry to tell you that the board has lost confidence in your leadership at this time. We wish, therefore, to ask for your resignation, in order to vacate your post for another more qualified candidate.

  Of course it goes without saying that this memo, all prior contact between you and the board, and all information, proprietary and otherwise, regarding Janus Industries, to which you may have been exposed, remains strictly confidential on penalty of legal action.

  We expect your resignation announcement by the end of the month.

  Board of Directors

  Janus Industries

  ___

 

  I read the ping in a rush and mentally deleted it. No point leaving a trail.

  A few days after our first meeting, Angie and I had a system. Not every day, but when she pinged, I’d find a reason, about 10 minutes into my shift, to head back toward the fissure. Now that I knew where it was, I didn’t have to go all the way back to the equip gob, Jacks. Good thing too, since I was pretty sure I’d get murdered every time I broke one of his tools. The second time I’d begged off saying I had to pee. Raised a few eyebrows from my cellmates, who hadn’t seen me relieve myself since I’d joined them, but our malevolent overlords hadn’t cared much, since I came back after a few minutes. But after that I’d gotten bolder and just begun to slip away without saying anything. They didn’t care. They knew I couldn’t get out, and I always came back. Maybe they thought I was always going to pee. Or maybe they didn’t even notice. That’d be ideal.

  Angie and I shared information as we got it. She told me what her cellmates had been discussing, and I told her about mine. None of it was particularly helpful. The best we had so far was that the only way past the traps was to die and resurrect at the runestone, which sat out in the entrance cavern, past the prison. But everytime either of us had been killed so far, we’d woken at the stone, weak from the debuffs, and guarded by the wood-elf. We couldn’t read his level but it had to be high. The other peons all seemed to defer to him. Some kind of warden, maybe? In any case, it wasn’t an ideal plan.

  We hadn’t seen Tommy or the rest of his party since coming in. Angie suggested they were a scouting party and rarely spent time here. Made sense to me.

  “Here’s something interesting,” she said. We’d been in the tiny cave a few minutes already just catching up, and we’d have to leave again soon. “One of my cellmates is a mage. Didn’t get far, obviously, before getting caught, but she has some kind of mana skill that she’s offered to train me in on our downtime.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “You, a mage?”

  She laughed. “I know, doesn’t make much sense with my build. You’re probably jeolous—you’re the one who should be learning magic, mister dark-elf.”

  Yeah. I was.

  “But th
at’s sort of the point,” she went on. “I figure I can learn some tricks from her, and pass them on to you in our little meetings. That way you can start to gain something useful.”

  “Oh,” I mouthed. “Thanks, Angie!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t mention it. Fair’s fair; I’m getting my strength built up in here. Ok, so check this out: first lesson. Close your eyes.”

  “Uh… ok.” Seemed superfluous in the near-perfect dark, but to be fair, I had built Night Vision up to level 5, improving my chances of seeing in the dark by 20%. I shut my eyes and lost sight of the cave.

  “Alright. I’m going to take your hands.” She did. “Do you feel anything?”

  “That your hands are enormous.”

  She snorted. “Don’t fuck with my positive body image. I chose part-ogre on purpose, remember?”

  I shook my head. Man. My kid-sister with the slapbacks.

  Then I began to feel it.

  It began as a coolness in her hands that passed over into mine. It glowed faintly, like a light, only my eyes were closed and it wasn’t really sight I was experiencing. It was, and it wasn’t.

  Passive Skill Unlocked: Mana Sight

  As a Night Elf, you are already used to seeing in the dark. But now you’ve got a real edge. Channel or deploy raw mana and it will illuminate your surroundings, uncovering other sources of mana as well. Goodbye, secret magic. You may not always be able to stop a mystical attack, but at least now you’ll always see it coming! Mana Sight is a passive skill that will be leveled both by use and as your mana pool increases.

  Skill: Mana Sight

  Type: Passive

  Level: 1 (scalable)

  Effect: 5% increase in ability for mana to illuminate surroundings and other mana sources

  Cost: 1MP per minute

  “Alright!” I “looked” around with my eyes closed, letting the cool glow emanate from our hands and uncover the cave to my senses. It looked more or less the same, but instead of solid rock, the walls were composed of a fluid, flowing substance. I looked closer. There was a distinct crawling effect. It was like watching an army of ants weaving a blanket. I shivered and opened my eyes. “Mana?”