by James Hunter
Scott was about to open his corpse’s Inventory when movement caught his eye. Half of the buttmunch heroes lounging around the common room were converging on him.
“Welcome back, dickbreath,” GothicTerror sneered, popping up from behind the counter like a stupid hot jack-in-the-box. She leveled her crossbow at him. “How was respawn?”
Scott threw Purifying Lightning at her and lunged for his corpse, but being an Undead-aligned bitch, the Divine spell didn’t touch her. It did fry a couple of her buddies, though, so that was something.
He tried for another one, but the BK ass-kissers who managed to avoid the lightning nailed him with swords and crossbows and shurikens. Without decent armor, their combined shots took him out in no time.
WHEN SCOTT RESPAWNED three hours later, he made sure to check the stats of everybody in the common room before he got all the way on the stairs. Every one of the dirty fuckers was Pledging for Karma’s guild. No gothic whoretot, though. Maybe she’d racked up enough PKs on him to get membership.
The way he figured it, it’d be smarter to just jump out the window and go grind out a new set of armor and weapons bare-assed than go for his corpse again. He was getting sick and tired of this colossal pile of horseshit.
He turned back to run up the stairs.
“Boo.” GothicTerror shot him through the eye with her crossbow. Undead Chaos damage ate away at his unprotected Health, and he stumbled back a step, cussing up a storm.
His generic attack spells were critically lowbie, but he threw as many Fireballs as he could conjure at her. She activated something on her lacy black corset, and a Death’s Head Shield popped up to deflect them. Then she raised her hand and started leeching away his Health like a vampire.
“Bitch,” he snarled, instinctively throwing up his own Tower Shield of Holy Light. Naturally, it did fuck-all against the Undead drain spell.
And surprise, surprise, it didn’t protect him from behind, either. Her crew of dicktards attacked from the stairs, pinning him in between them, then killing him in like a second.
He gritted his teeth in a snarl. That ragdoll death flop was getting less and less funny every time he saw his main do it.
THE NEXT TIME HE RESPAWNED, GothicTerror and her crew of body-camping assholes were waiting right outside his door.
“Morning, shitshine,” she said, grinning with a set of perfect pearly whites.
Scott shot her in the face with a low-level Water Ball. “Drink it up, you cum-guzzling—”
That was all he got out before they killed him. Again. Time number six. Or was it seven? He’d been PK camped so many times he was losing count.
HE WAS STILL FUMING when he respawned from that one. He hadn’t felt this kind of rage since Roark was griefing him. In fact, this was way worse than that. Roark at least had been creative about it. These fuckers were just sitting on his respawn point and gangbanging him.
Fuck going out the door, this time he really was taking the window. He would pickpocket some armor on his way through the marketplace—he just needed to get the hell outta the Unicorn in one piece. Shit, what he really needed was an away-portal spell, but the only one he had would take him back to his fucking respawn point.
Scott jerked the window open and climbed out, hanging over the alleyway. It was a long way down, and there weren’t any drainpipes or handholds to help him. He let go and landed with a thud. His filigreed Health vial dropped a little, but he didn’t have any broken bone debuffs, so all in all, a win.
Now to screw off out of this city. Forever, maybe. Forget all his high-level shit. It sucked to lose yet another top-tier mace, but he could farm some more if he could just live long enough. The Griefer would probably even spot him something with decent stats if he made it to the Cruel Citadel. Then he could set his respawn there and start working on getting some grindhouse-style revenge on these dickweeds.
Especially GothicTerror. She was at the top of his To Be PKed list. Oh buddy were some bad times coming her way. It didn’t even matter that she was hot in-game. She was probably a freaking troglodyte IRL. At least, if her personality was any indication.
He crept to the mouth of the alley, checking for anybody allied with Bad_Karma’s guild, then slipped out into the flow of traffic.
“Nice undies,” some chick snarked.
For a second, Scott’s blood turned to ice. But it wasn’t GothicTerror, just some other chump who thought she was funny.
“Ha fucking ha,” Scott grumbled, shooting her the bird.
“Kill yourself, loser.” She veered off into the crowd.
“Not today, sis,” he muttered.
Really, he was feeling pretty good. He’d managed to get away from the One-Eyed Unicorn. The Avery City gates were only like four blocks away. If he just kept his head down and kept moving, he might actually—
“Where’d you see him?” a sickeningly familiar voice asked.
Scott glanced over his shoulder.
The chick he’d flipped off was pointing at him across the street. And standing next to her was GothicWhoretot herself. Those perfect blow-me lips stretched into a grin when she caught his eye.
She pointed a finger gun at him and mouthed one word: Bang.
“Having fun, wad-catcher?” he yelled at the top of his lungs, the rage of all his consecutive respawns finally boiling over. “You won’t be for long. I’m gonna murder you to death, then I’m gonna murder your corpse and sit on your respawn point, one-shotting you until you wipe your account. And when you try logging in under a new tag, I’ll find that, too. I’ll chew you up and shit you out. If you think I’ll ever fucking get tired of camping you, you’ve got another—”
A greataxe chopped into his spine, followed by about a thousand swords and daggers and shit. The last thing he saw as he died was GothicTerror laughing at the way his corpse flipped into the air.
“THAT BITCH!” SCOTT ripped off his CandorSight UIVR headset and launched it across his living room. It slammed into the wall, but fell on some discarded dirty clothes, so it didn’t break.
At the moment, he didn’t care whether the headset survived or not—he couldn’t even play again for three hours—but he knew he’d want it later. And the bullshit would continue when he logged back on.
He grabbed his Infinitab and ran through his seedFeed messages in about ten seconds—most of them were death threats from assholes who were trying to get in with Karma. Scott thought about sending them the Endless Glitterbomb force console command Kevin had showed him how to embed, but that would just get him banned from Hearthworld forever, so he settled for copy-pasting the same generic reply telling them all to suck his dick if their mouths were big enough to get around it.
That took all of five minutes.
“I’m bored,” he complained to the beautiful naked redhead projected in front of him. “Infinitab, find me something interesting. Like now.”
“You got it, sexy.” She disappeared, and a fail video started playing in her place.
“Seen it.”
The fail video flipped to a porno of two girls with one of those old-fashioned handheld game controllers.
“Seen it.”
The porno changed to a low-budget live feed from some dumb wannabe guerilla journalist.
“As you can see,” the douchebag running the camera said, “the authorities are trying desperately to cover up the latest in the string of grisly homicides that some people, this reporter included, are calling the Mutant Murders.”
The pretentious dumbass panned across a shot of crime scene tape and cops keeping the news bloggers away from the shadowy alley.
“Eyewitness reports are claiming to have seen everything from aliens, mutants, and college students in Halloween costumes to angels—yes, faithful followers, angels—fleeing the scene before the cops ran in and locked everything down. This reporter, for one, hopes those brave witnesses who spoke out are still free, but fears that they’ve been transported to a black site never to be heard from again.”
The redhead reappeared. “Do you want me to keep searching, handsome? There are over ten billion sites and feeds left to check.”
“No. Just shut down.”
“Okay, sexy. I’ll miss you.”
“Whatever.”
She winked out of existence.
For a while, Scott just glared at the blank wall. Everything outside of Hearthworld sucked. And right that second, everything inside Hearthworld sucked too. It was like when the Griefer was ruining his life, but even worse because he couldn’t freaking defend himself.
He blew out a long breath, then held up his hands as if he were blocking himself from a sixteen-flavor Mountain Dew suicide. Nothing happened.
GothicTerror appeared in his mind, laughing at him. He stuck out his hand and imagined wiping that smile off her hot undead face with a little Culmination of Elemental Fury.
Blue lightning crackled and arced across his fingertips.
The volume of the sound surprised him, and he dropped the spell immediately.
“Oh shit, right, it’s concentration-based,” he muttered. He stuck his hand out again and concentrated.
Tiny arcs of lightning sizzled. He widened his fingertips, then brought them together, watching the arcs grow and shrink.
A filigreed Magicka gauge appeared in the right corner of his vision, just like in Hearthworld. Except this one was draining way faster than his had since he was a newb.
“So, either I’m crazy, or the whole world’s a game now.” He fidgeted his fingers, making the lightning dance and spark. It petered out as his Magicka hit Empty. “Lowbie. Need to figure out how to level up whatever cool shit I can do.”
Subtleties of Transmutation
AFTER DUMPING OFF MOST of the items looted from the Greater Hellstrike Jackal at the Cruel Citadel’s vault, Roark made for his study with a purpose, waving away all attempts to get his attention.
“But Dungeon Lord—”
“No.” Roark shook his head. “I have business paramount to the Troll Nation to attend to. Take up whatever issues you have with your floor overseer.”
The Thursr Behemoth Zyra had sent to watch his study door while he was experimenting was still at his post. As Roark strode down the passage toward him, the Behemoth straightened his colossal shoulders and stared directly ahead, as if at attention.
“Dungeon Lord,” he said.
Quickly, Roark glanced over the creature’s information for a name.
“Crusher, I’m getting to work on something incredibly important and potentially volatile, and I don’t want to be disturbed by anyone unless all of Hearthworld is coming down on our heads or Lowen himself shows up in the second-floor entry hall, leading an army of Heralds.”
“Understood!” The Behemoth slammed a fist to his chest with a heavy thump.
Roark started to go in, then paused, considering that he didn’t know exactly how the Transmute Flesh ability would operate or what the process would entail.
“It’s possible you’ll hear screaming or perhaps an explosion,” he told the guard. He’d had more than a few setbacks when working with his Transmute Magick and Curse Chain ability for the first time. “Just ignore it.”
Without hesitation, the Behemoth gave a sharp nod of assent.
“Good man.” Roark slapped him on the bicep—all he could reach of the towering Thursr—then headed into his study and let the heavy oak door fall shut behind him.
Finally alone, Roark rubbed his hands together and grinned, almost giddy at the prospect of experimenting with the Transmutation Cores. He opened his Inventory and studied them, feeling like a child staring down at a pile of brightly wrapped Candelmas presents.
Because only the Jackals on which he’d struck the killing blow had dropped a Transmutation Core, he had only eight in total—the seven Lesser Cores and the single melon-sized Greater Core. Much like gemstones, they ranged in quality from Chipped to Flawless, and each had been assigned a tier for its condition. He pulled up his Inventory and glanced through each in turn, trying to suss out any information he could before diving headlong into his experimentation.
According to both Roark’s own experience and Hearthworld WikiLore, there were nine tiers of stones—Blemished (Tier 1), Scuffed (Tier 2), Chipped (Tier 3), Flawed (Tier 4), Standard (Tier 5), Flawless (Tier 6), Epic (Tier 7), Peerless (Tier 8), and Artifact (Tier 9). Selecting the lowest tier core available to him—a Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Chipped Core—Roark turned the odd, glassy stone over in his hands as he studied its stats. A far more leisurely endeavor now that he was away from the heat of battle.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Chipped Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core
Strength: Tier 3, Chipped
Creature Core Level: 32
Durability: Degrading
Half-life: 11:32:27 hours remaining
Notice: Chipped (Tier 3) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core will degrade to Scuffed (Tier 2) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core if not implanted in a compatible host within its half-life. Once implanted in a compatible host, Durability status will be converted from Degrading to Stable.
Notice: Once implanted in a compatible host, the Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core cannot be removed without destroying the Transmutation Core.
It’s what’s on the inside that counts... but sometimes what’s on the inside can significantly alter the outside...
╠═╦╬╧╪
He read and reread the description, and once he was satisfied, he returned the stone to his inventory and pulled out the Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Tier 5 core.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Standard Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core
Strength: Tier 5, Standard
Creature Core Level: 41
Durability: Degrading
Half-life: 20:13:23 hours remaining
Notice: Standard (Tier 5) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core will degrade to Flawed (Tier 4) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core if not implanted in a compatible host within its half-life. Once implanted in a compatible host, Durability status will be converted from Degrading to Stable.
Notice: Once implanted in a compatible host, the Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Transmutation Core cannot be removed without destroying the Transmutation Core.
It’s what’s on the inside that counts... but sometimes what’s on the inside can significantly alter the outside...
╠═╦╬╧╪
The greatest difference—so far as he could tell from the item description alone—corresponded to an increased half-life time, meaning the core stayed stable for significantly longer without degrading. Which, in practice, meant Roark had more time to find a compatible host to fit the stone with. But surely that couldn’t be the only difference between the stones. True, the handful of extra hours was an added bonus, but not nearly enough of a bonus. Which meant there was some other feature that lay in the actual application of the stone. And such an application would likely only be discovered through direct experimentation.
Stone in hand, he quickly flipped pages in his grimoire until he came to his slowly spinning avatar. It was only fair that he begin the experimentation with himself; he couldn’t convince himself that it would be all right to test the cores’ effects on one of the lower-level Trolls, even if he had their consent. There was no telling what would happen, and he loathed the thought of damaging one of them permanently.
Better that he be the test subject.
His avatar looked the same as always—his leathery wings and various minor injuries from the fight had long since healed—but in the lower corner of the page, there was a flashing bit of text he’d never seen before.
[Preview Transmutation Core?]
Excitement thrummed through his veins as he selected
it. A scrap of paper with a list of the available Cores overlaid his avatar.
(3) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Chipped Core (Tier 3)
(2) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Flawed Core (Tier 4)
(1) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Standard Core (Tier 5)
(1) Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Flawless Core (Tier 6)
(1) Greater Hellstrike Jackal Flawless Core (Tier 6)
Very interesting. Whatever power the World Stone Pendant used to create Transmute Flesh apparently didn’t rely on the cores being in his Inventory as long as he had them in his possession.
Roark selected a Tier 3 Lesser Hellstrike Jackal Core and watched, transfixed, as the scrap of paper disappeared.
A lump of apple-sized black lava glass floated on the page over the head of his slowly spinning avatar, next to a line of text proclaiming User-Core Compatibility: 52%. Whatever that meant, it was clear that the Transmutation Core would change his appearance drastically.
His avatar’s lean frame erupted with swollen muscle, and his arms elongated to comical proportions, fingertips nearly brushing his ankles from standing. His wings shortened and widened, rising higher on his shoulders. His joints inverted, bending his legs backward until they resembled the hind legs of a wolf, with thick claws growing from his hands and feet. His face stretched until his mouth and nose became something of a short muzzle, while a coat of scruffy black fur grew from his skin. Likewise, his ears lengthened and sharpened until they had taken on the batlike proportions of the jackals.
On the page opposite his avatar were his base level and stats. Below that, a variety of sliders had appeared, just as they had when he evolved to his final Troll form, the Jotnar Infernali.
Apparently, he could tweak the physical appearance of this Troll-Jackal hybrid. He began to slide the options this way and that, changing the length of arms, the shape of his muzzle, the color of his fur. Unlike when he’d altered his Infernali appearance to suit him, however, changing the shape and color of this hybrid also changed his stats. Strength reduced as he shortened the arms. Speed dropped as he altered the angle of his legs. Intelligence increased or decreased as he sharpened or flattened his muzzle.