The Dragon's Revenge

by Conor Kostick

  Take Blackridge, huffing and puffing in front of his team. The General. The man in charge. Or was he? There was a fade in the intensity of his shouts when he made his threat. Surely, Watson was higher up the corporation structure than Blackridge? And surely what mattered to Yuno was the result? Could Blackridge really send me home? I doubted it. Maybe I was wrong, but I went all in.

  ‘I’ve read my contract a dozen times. My mum even more. There’s nothing in it about taking orders from you. My job is to kill that dragon and that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to do it my way.’

  ‘On your own?’ Blackridge sneered.

  ‘Of course not. I’ll lead a raid.’

  ‘Not with this team, you won’t.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  I gave him a moment to prove me wrong in my call and send me home. He just stood there, teeth clenched, muscles of his jaw tight.

  With a nod to the spectators, I turned back towards the rigs. Before I left the control room I checked the board. There I was: Klytotoxos the Hunter, Level 0, Safehaven. I had a long way to go to prove myself.

  Back in the game, I felt a great deal more relaxed than when I’d walked away from Blackridge. I’d rather encounter a poisonous snake here than that bully in real life. Whoever put him in charge of this project made a bad mistake. If I were building a team - and I’d the experience of having done so online - I’d listen to the players, and if someone said they had a plan that involved being a hunter, well, I’d probably let them try it, even if I had doubts. Sod him anyway. Time to rid myself of thoughts about that bruising exchange and concentrate on the game.

  One glorious day I’d reach level 20. Then I’d get the spell Swift as a Panther, which would double my speed for an hour, by which time the spirit I’d lost casting it would have been restored. In other words, I would pretty much be able to keep the buff on the entire time. For now, though, it was plod, plod, plod. There was plenty to admire as I journeyed: scatterings of white and purple wildflowers across the grass; hundreds of birds; an amazing rendering of the effect of a light breeze on the treetops, utterly realistic. Even so, it was pretty dull. I couldn’t think of a better option though. Perhaps I could have tried to find beginner mobs near my spawn point and level up on them. Then search out slightly tougher mobs and so forth. The quest I’d been given, however, was pretty straightforward and it would be helpful to have a town nearby to trade in.

  You are hungry.

  No kidding. I was starving. After hours of my walking south, keeping the sea in view but not going back to the beach, the sun was descending above the treetops. In real life, I’d been the best part of five hours in the game, with nothing to show for it and an empty stomach demanding I visit the canteen. While my avatar munched a nectarine, I wondered about my plan for the night. Probably, the safest action would be to log out in case of roving monsters.

  Given that the gentle hillside I was on was fairly safe-looking, perhaps I should unclip here and go eat. What you had to consider in leaving the game was the possibility of clipping up and finding yourself under attack, having been unfortunate enough to appear in the world close to a monster. Again, this had the feel of a region suitable for new players: I was well away from the forest edge; had good clear views towards the sea and downhill, back to that river I’d crossed.

  As I lifted my arms to unclip the helmet I heard an odd sound, like a drum beat. Yes, it was definitely a drum, from within the forest. Lowering my arms again, I stared hard towards the heavily shadowed region past the first line of trees. The sound was getting closer and it seemed to me that the ground beneath my feet shook. What could this be? Realisation came along with the appearance of several goblin archers. It was an army on the march.

  To the heavy beat of a marching drum, the forest itself seemed to be moving as hundreds of deep green, muscular goblins emerged, some of them carrying banners depicting a white, fierce, fanged face on a red background. Their level was 5, minimum, since every one I targeted was labelled impossible (in Epic, as here too probably, if you targeted a mob, you’d often get an indication of its level of difficulty. One the same level as you was described as even, a level higher as challenging, two or three levels higher as dangerous, four as very risky and five or more as impossible).

  All of the goblins were armoured, with plate mail on the heaviest, a chainmail-plus-leather combination on the archers. And they were heading towards where I thought Safehaven was, on a route that would bring them close to me!

  With a feeling I’d already spent too long staring, probably with my mouth open with amazement, I turned and ran. Perhaps I could warn the town. Perhaps I could be the hero who saved them and gain a lot of faction items and even experience. Was this a quest opportunity? If so, it was a strange one, because it wasn’t likely to ever recur.

  A flicker, as swift as a blink; I flinched and a dark arrow streaked past my right shoulder.

  You have learned the skill Dodge (1).

  Go me!

  The next arrow hit me in the back. Even though my real body was still standing, all I could see was the immense blue sky and a wisp of cloud, high, high up.

  You have been hit by an arrow for 6 damage. You are on 0 hit points and unable to move.

  A dozen heartbeats later a dark, fanged figure leaned over me, blocking my view with his drooling, grinning face. There was nothing I could do. Unclipping wouldn’t help, to avoid people cheating in these situations, your avatar remained static in the game a full minute after you unclipped.

  You have been assassinated.

  Damn. As a curtain of complete black fell over me, leaving me in silence, I felt something like a mild electric shock from the equipment. Now that was an unpleasant new feature of the game. It wasn’t the worst death I’d had playing RPGs, not by a long way. All I’d lose…wait. I was alive again. Back in a sunny, calm glade on the edge of the forest, near where I began. Naturally, I no longer had my backpack, nectarine, flask and knife. Presumably, if I found my body, I’d be able to retrieve them. Although possibly they were lootable items and the goblins had them. In any case, that was trivial. What was far more shocking was that I had a red bar to the right of the 0 on my level indicator. An experience penalty. It was going to take me a lot longer to even reach level 1 than before. Clearly, death was worse for you in Epic 2 than in Epic where there was no experience loss. Would you drop levels? I wondered. Suppose you had just made level 1, then died, would that penalty bring you below 0 and would you lose your recent gains? I didn’t remember reading about this. Hopefully, I wouldn’t find out from personal experience.

  Finding a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, I swallowed heavily. I’d died plenty of times in games before. This was different. This time I was out to prove something to Blackridge and the others. And what would they see? That after a full day of play I was worse off than if I’d just started. Blood and thunder! This was bad. My appetite was gone. I had to play on some more. How could I get experience though, without a weapon? It had to be through the Set Trap skill. And what did I need to use that? Cords at a minimum. A sharpened stick, maybe, to dig a pit. Both could be found.

  There was no point trying to race to Safehaven, the goblin army was eight hours ahead of me. The people there would have to manage their defences without my warning. Hopefully, they had strong walls and vigilant guards.

  Instead of moving towards the beach, therefore, I set off walking through the forest, looking attentively about me for items I could gather to make traps with. Soon, I had a pretty decent five metres of rope, made of out three strands of ivy I’d plaited together. And I also had a branch whose tip was strong enough to scrape away at the soft soil of the forest floor. The task of finding these items distracted me from my failure to progress in the game, although it was never too far from my thoughts.

  Set Trap

  Of its own accord, my avatar squatted down and tied the cord to an ash sapling that it had pulled over ninety degrees. Then it tried to lay down a loop.
>
  You have failed to set a trap.

  The tree sprang up, pulling me off balance as I hung on to the cord. Oh well.

  Nearly thirty minutes later, after seemingly endless failure messages, I got this:

  You have set a trap.

  You have become better at Set Traps (2).

  Good.

  With that one in place, I started over. More cord, another trap. And, eventually, another skill improvement. This was quite a different experience to my happy march down the coast earlier in the day. This was a grind.

  You have become better at Set Traps (3).

  Rinse. Repeat.

  You have become better at Set Traps (4).

  You have become better at Set Traps (5). You have reached your level cap.

  Ahh. Shame. So I’d probably have to be level 1 to be able to advance the skill to 10 and so on. The shadows of the forest around me were dark, although my ability to see tiny details was hardly affected at all. One of the advantages of being a half-elf compared to being human was excellent low-light vision. It was getting late in the game and presumably in San Francisco, since the game clock was also on a 24-hour cycle. And I had something of an appetite. Time to unclip and in the morning I could see if my traps had brought me any luck. Something my avatar could eat, hopefully.

  When I had gathered my wits upon entering the real world again, I could see that the building was as busy as ever. All the rooms were lit up and at least ten people were rigged up. Without meaning to, I gave a heavy sigh. This morning, when I had woken up, the day had been full of promise. I’d really been looking forward to chatting with my teammates and maybe making some new friends, if there were other players around my age. Back home, my interest in Epic - at least the level I played it at - tended to cut me off from my classmates, most of whom were much more interested in bands and sport. As a result some of my best friends, like Raitha and Braja, were people I’d never met in the flesh, although I had shared with them intense moments of delight and also of failure.

  Speaking of which, it was the knowledge that I had pretty much been a total failure during the course of the day that meant I no longer had the same eagerness to chat to the other players. Also, I found that as I approached the control room my stomach was constricting with tension. Evidently, my body was anxious about Blackridge, even though my assessment of the situation was that I was fine, he had no real power over me. It was Watson I had to account to and hopefully, he would understand my strategy.

  On opening the door from the corridor into the control room I was relieved to see that instead of Blackridge, a middle-aged woman I hadn’t noticed before was standing on the south end of the map, moving figures with a long stick and sometimes looking up at the scoreboard on the wall. There were only three other people in the room.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hello. Might you be Tom Foster?’

  ‘I am.’

  She gave me a smile from beneath her grey fringe. ‘Welcome. I’m Katherine Demnayako, please call me Katherine, I deputise for Paul when he takes a break.’

  ‘Oh, then I should tell you this. A goblin army, with banners showing a white goblin face on a red background, is probably attacking Safehaven right now.’

  ‘Safehaven?’ She was looking at the wrong part of the map, down south.

  ‘It’s on the north-eastern coast, in Palernia.’

  ‘Oh. How many would you say?’

  ‘I don’t really know, I just saw them coming out of the woods, about forty or so, but there probably were a lot more behind them.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Katherine looked across at one of the others in the room. ‘Mark, would you please clip up and check this out. And Ying Yue, can you print a goblin with the banner of King Ppyneew.’

  A man in his twenties left the map without a word and walked over towards the corridors with the rig rooms. Meanwhile, a 3D printer started up in the corner of the Den and I watched with interest as it built up a goblin warrior carrying a banner.

  ‘Like this?’ Katherine asked. And I realised she wanted confirmation of the image on the banner.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Oh dear. The dragon has a new and powerful ally. The caves of King Ppyneew are a top-end raid region. It just gets worse and worse.’

  Listening to the dejection in her voice, I was reminded that for the staff of Yuno, their loss of control over the game was a disaster. Suppose the goblins had conquered Safehaven: then Klytotoxos’s father, Knegos, might well be dead and unable to respawn. This would break my crucial quest lead and, presumably, the path to learning more about the game. There’s no way you could open such a game to the public. At least, not unless you went for Plan B and admitted there was a problem in order to encourage people to help solve it. That’s what I’d do. Give everyone a month’s free subscription (since if the dragon conquered our spawn points, you wouldn’t be able to guarantee the character could return to the game on death) and hope they got interested enough in the challenge to stick at it.

  ‘We’ll get the game back,’ I said, with what I hoped was an encouraging tone.

  It was only a flicker of her eyes, but I caught her looking at the scoreboard and when she nodded at me, it was with a careworn expression. I knew she’d noted that I was still on 0.

  After a pause, I said, ‘I’m going to the canteen. Then, I think I’ll go to my hotel.’

  ‘Rest is important.’ Katherine was looking at the scoreboard, where something had changed. A group had moved region and she turned to the map and adjusted the figures on the board accordingly. After she did so, she turned her tired-looking face towards me. ‘You can ask reception to call you a car.’

  On the way down the lift to the canteen, I took out my phone. Then I hesitated. I wanted to chat to Mum about my day. But it had sucked. And anyway, it was 3 a.m. her time. So instead, I just sent a message: Finished my first day. Didn’t go too well. Getting something to eat and going back to the hotel. Will try to unclip around 6 p.m. your time tomorrow for a chat but don’t worry if I’m late, stuff might be happening in the game.

  There were six people in the canteen, all sat together. Two of them I recognised from the Den. So naturally enough, having made my choices from the self-serve displays (lentil curry and rice, a bowl of ice-cream and a pear), I went over to them.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  Unbelievably, no one answered. Nor did they meet my eyes. Jeez Louise. What? These were men and women in their twenties and thirties, and they couldn’t manage to be polite. Obviously, the issue was that I’d fallen out with the General. And there they were, saying nothing, not even to each other. Just hurrying their food.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  A girl glanced at me, pale and anxious-looking. ‘You should play like you’re supposed to. Yuno are paying you.’

  ‘There’s nothing in my contract about how to play. Just that my goal - our goal - is to kill Mikarkathat. And that’s what I’m going to do.’

  In response, one of the men snorted derisively. A surge of anger gripped me but I said nothing; I just sat in the nearest empty chair and began my meal. There was no point making things worse by picking a fight. Especially when I was still on 0 and couldn’t really defend myself other than bring up what I’d achieved in Epic. And that might sound like showing off. I might have to lead these players in a raid one day.

  After an awkward, silent meal, they left as a group. As soon as they were gone, I flung down my spoon. There was no point pretending I was enjoying the ice-cream; right now, I just wanted a good night’s sleep. Sod them all anyway.

  Chapter 7

  Back in Black

  That night, I dreamed that Blackridge was making me row a boat. Or perhaps a rowing machine in the gym. Anyway, it was pull, pull, pull, without end. When I woke up I was annoyed at myself for letting him into my unconscious. Later, as the car took me to Yuno’s headquarters, I found that a lot of yesterday’s joy in my new life had disappeared. Still, Epic 2 was an amazingly immers
ive fantasy world and I was looking forward to resuming the story of my alter ego, Klytotoxos the Hunter.

  Of course, Blackridge was on duty in the control room, discussing tactics with a group of eight players. It sounded like they were going on a mini raid, as Blackridge was counting off the boss mobs they would face and their related quests on his thick fingers. Jealousy isn’t quite the right word for what I felt, but I did experience a pang of loss, that I wasn’t part of whatever it was they were up to.

  As I left in the direction of the corridor with the rig I used yesterday, Blackridge caught my eye but he didn’t stop his briefing.

  Right. Deep breath. Back to Epic 2. With a hope for a better day.

  After I’d clipped up, I flicked the enter world menu and a rush of sound and colour picked me up and deposited me in the forest.

  Morning in the forest was pleasant, there was a gentleness in the birdsong and the erratic flight of a dozen dark blue butterflies, who barely alighted on a flower before taking flight again. In the direction of the darker, older trees to the south-west a mist had formed in the night and still lingered, blocking my view of the deep interior of the forest. First, I should check my traps.

  A rabbit! Good start. But nothing in the second, third and fourth. The fifth, however, contained a shock for me. A wolf had been raised up by the cord around its right hind leg. It was just able to touch the ground with its front paws and it was standing there now, trembling with the effort, the grass all around having been torn up by its claws.

  Wolf: Impossible.

  Here was the chance I needed to gain experience and level up. If I could find a sharpened stick, I should be able to kill it. And a level 5+ kill by a level 0 character had to be worth a lot of experience, maybe enough for two levels even with the penalty I had acquired from dying. Mind you, if the cord from the trap should give way at all while I tried to stab the wolf, I’d be dead with another penalty to my experience.

  There was another consideration too. Even though I knew this was only a game, I felt a pang of remorse at the suffering of the poor animal. That back leg was clearly dislocated, it was raised at far too steep an angle. The pain the wolf must have experienced – and probably still was experiencing – must be awful. In testimony to that were the signs of a fierce struggle by the wolf to get free. Savage marks were torn into the bark of the tree that had sprung the trap and raised the wolf off the ground.