“Yeah, but I was the one who…”
Kris paused and scratched her head. Which very nearly took that head off considering she was carrying a cybernetic handaxe that looked like the less dangerous younger brother of the badass cybersword I held.
“You’re going to take your head off doing that someday. You know that, right?” I asked.
“Maybe, but that day isn’t today. Speaking of taking some heads off?”
I followed Kris’s gaze to the gathered court who were clearly getting more and more confused. Though some of them were looking at that cybersword in my hands as though they were wondering if the king was the only noble who was going to have his back against the wall by the time the revolution was over.
I double checked the numbers on the live stream. They’d paused in the low four figures, and now they were starting to tick up again. I grinned.
Recordings of what I’d just done would be going out all over the Internet right now, which meant more and more people tuning in to catch what was next on the live show.
“Told you they’d come back,” I said in group chat where the livestream watchers couldn’t hear.
“Showoff,” Kris muttered.
“Right,” I said, raising my voice and speaking in general chat where the assembled NPC toadies and livestream viewers could hear me just fine. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your kingdom just came under new management. That means things are going to change a bit around here, and we’re going to start from the top down!”
I held up the control crystal I’d been hiding in my ratty robes. The one we totally shouldn’t have at this point in the game, but there it was. The thing glowed bright pink. Not exactly the blood red that seemed appropriate for an object that could control the nastiest cyborg army this game world had ever known, an army headed by an asshole who called himself the Blood King, no less, but as long as it did the trick I wasn’t going to complain.
There was a collective intake of breath from the gathered nobles below as a good chunk of them realized how collectively fucked they were if I was in a bloodthirsty mood.
Though some seemed to still anticipate something that wasn’t their impending doom from the way they eyed me hopefully. Maybe they thought if there was a new power in town then they could get ahead by being the first to attach their lips firmly to my ass.
I grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin. It was the sort of grin that said a bunch of AI NPCs were about to have their lives cut short. At least until the next time someone played this module, at which point they’d be booted up from their parent object or whatever it was Horizon’s devs used to program these assholes.
One thing was for sure. They’d come into this room anticipating blood, and boy were they going to get some blood. Just not from the source they’d expected.
“Kill them,” I said.
The cyberguards throughout the room moved into action pulling out their cyberpunk cutlery. They were poised on the verge of teaching the gathered masses the dangers of being too close to the top when the revolution comes when the room flashed red.
“Crap,” Kris said.
The cyberguards around the throne room were frozen on the brink of laying into the crowd of nobles. Those nobles were frozen in a mixture of terror and confusion. It would’ve been a hell of a sight, but it looked like the game wasn’t going to let us have our fun.
“You knew this was going to happen,” Kris said. “They don’t like it when people break their games.”
“They really don’t like it when people break their games and broadcast it to the world,” I muttered, glancing at the viewer count again and blinking when I saw that it’d reached six figures and was climbing so fast that the numbers were a blur.
I grinned. If we were getting this kind of attention then that red flashing was a good thing. Maybe we wouldn’t need a bloodbath to get Horizon’s attention.
I’d just taken the ultimate no-win scenario and turned it around on the pompous developers at Horizon Online Entertainment who’d claimed no one could cheat their system, and chances were they were pissed.
Though I didn’t consider it cheating if I was using a system they’d been stupid enough to put into the game. Even if I was using it in a way Horizon hadn’t anticipated. I was smart enough to know they wouldn’t see it that way, and them not seeing eye to eye with people not playing their modules in the way they intended had turned deadly in the past.
For all that they denied it and tried to hide behind their fucking lawyers.
A roiling ball lightning storm appeared in the middle of the throne room slightly above the crowd of toadies frozen on the brink of death, and a figure resplendent in bright red robes floated out of said storm.
I was supposed to be terrified by that display, but I had a shit-eating grin plastered on my face. Holy. Fucking. Shit. It worked!
“Huh,” Kris grunted. “Not the sort of weather you typically get in an enclosed space like this.”
“Yeah, I think we just summoned a shit storm,” I said.
The figure would’ve been impressive, a sort of cyberpunk meets medieval armor chic look that was the sort of thing that appeared in the fever dreams of people who used pop culture to replace their social life, but the whole image was ruined by the stupid “H” logo emblazoned on the asshole’s chest.
I tried to replace that shit-eating grin with what I hoped was the appropriate amount of terror, what this asshole would expect, but it was hard not to grin.
This was what I’d hoped for. Prayed for. What I’d devised this whole scheme to accomplish.
A representative from Horizon Online Entertainment was coming down from on high to pay us a personal visit and spank us for being naughty and exploiting the game.
It was go time. Killing the king had only been the first part of my plan, after all. Now that the in-game personification of Horizon had finally arrived it was time for the real fun to begin.
3
Crime and Punishment
“Attention valued subscriber.”
The voice boomed like a god coming down from on high. Which, in game terms, was basically what this guy was, for all that he was probably some neckbeard with anime figurines decorating his cubicle in the real world.
I grinned. We had the asshole here, after all, so why not have some fun with the prick? Besides, there was an undercurrent to that booming voice that said the gamemaster didn’t value me at all.
“Does it chap your ass that you have to kiss my ass like that when I’m breaking your precious rules?” I asked with a grin.
“My feelings are irrelevant. There is a violation of the game terms taking place in this simulation.”
“Um, excuse me,” I asked. “But could you tell me exactly what game term is being violated? I thought we were having a little fun here.”
Besides. I’d checked the rules. Sure what I’d done might be seen as an exploit from a certain point of view, but it’s not like I’d hacked them or anything. Everything I did to kill the king had used systems that were available to anyone.
I’d just been the one who figured out how to combine them in a unique way that let this plan work. I’m sure some dev’s head was going to roll over that one.
The gamemaster, for that was the only thing this person could possibly be with that over the top entrance and ridiculous sense of style that lived in a fashion grey area somewhere between Liberace and Imperial Guard, stared down at us with open disdain.
Though that disdain was more in the body language than anything I could see on the gamemaster’s face considering that face was covered by a mask that looked a little like a certain bounty hunter who’d gained a badass reputation despite his only professional claim to fame being a swan dive down an embarrassingly stationary monster’s gullet.
Again the similarities were close enough to get the idea across while at the same time being distinct enough that Horizon’s lawyers could make a case that it was different enough that the mouse’s lawyers could pou
nd sand.
“You were breaking the game scenario,” the gamemaster said. “Your purpose in this scene is to die. You aren’t supposed to reach a victory condition in the Game Over cut scene.”
For a moment the gamemaster lost some of their theatricality. Sure their voice still boomed across the room, but there was a subtle shift in the way they spoke that said they were astonished they’d even need to state something so mind bogglingly obvious.
“Excuse me,” I said. “But could you explain to us exactly where in the rules it says we aren’t allowed to win the game when we’re in the Game Over cut scene? Because I looked through your terms of service, that shit is a great sleep aid by the way, and I’m pretty sure it’s not against any rules.”
“Good one,” Kris muttered.
“I thought so,” I said, glancing at viewer numbers that were now in the millions. This was getting way bigger than I’d ever dreamed, and that question had been more for those viewers than for the gamemaster. I figured I’d let the asshole hoist himself by his company’s hypocrisy.
The gamemaster glared at me, as much as one could glare through an impassive and unmoving mask, but for a surprise he seemed to seriously consider the question. He cocked his head to the side, and I got the feeling the guy was listening to some communication from the higher ups at Horizon.
Management would be getting involved with this since it was streaming live, after all. Especially since it was getting so much attention.
They were already in the middle of a hell of a PR disaster, and no doubt my gamemaster friend had suits with fancy ties stepping in to try and micromanage their way out of the brewing disaster.
The gamemaster finally came back to reality. Or back to unreality, as it were, since we were in a virtual reality simulation of a gaudy 1980s set designer’s idea of what a cross between the middle ages and the far future might look like. Assuming that at some point in the far future humanity lost all sense of taste and decorum.
“The terms of service contain a clause that states we may revoke your access to our modules at any time,” the gamemaster finally said. “And that clause is being invoked now. You are violating the spirit of the game even if you aren’t breaking the letter of the law, and you know it.”
“But you put these mechanics in the damn game,” I said. “If you didn’t want people to do something like this then why make it possible in the first place?”
Sure doing this had involved a little skullduggery, but if there was one thing I’d learned in my fight against Horizon it was perception mattered more than truth. It was an unfortunate truth of the post-truth era of the information age.
Besides, there were enough people rooting against Horizon these days that it’s not like anyone would give me shit for taking advantage of some dev forgetting to put in an inventory failsafe that prevented me from carrying that crystal into a Game Over screen where it definitely shouldn’t exist. The game let us do it. It’s not my fault no one else ever thought to try it, or some overworked dev didn’t think of that use case while they were working hundred hour weeks in one of Horizon’s infamous crunch times.
There was another pause. The gamemaster’s head cocked to the side again. Oh yeah. This dude was definitely having a consultation with a social media team or something.
“Your feedback about the game systems has been noted,” the gamemaster said. “Please be assured that our development team is already hard at work patching the features you used to manipulate this scenario.”
“Manipulate is such a harsh word,” I said, but the GM rode right over my protests.
Not that I cared. Again, those protests were more for the viewing audience at home than they were for the gamemaster or anyone who might be watching at Horizon.
“Also be assured that you will have a chance to enjoy these features after your seventy-two hour ban from this module has been lifted. Thank you for playing a Horizon Online Entertainment property. Power to the gamers.”
I rolled my eyes. On the one hand I was impressed that this asshole was able to stick to the script even though he was dealing with a situation that was a little more difficult than your typical tier one Horizon game support puke was used to. Maybe they’d patched in someone from management to handle this one.
The gamemaster held his hands up readying a well known high level attack. The official name was balefire, and I couldn’t decide if that was because the scenario designers were ripping off mythology or The Wheel of Time. Either way, it sent a blast of multicolored blinding light at a target and, if it hit, rapidly reduced that target to a state of nonexistence.
As far as I could tell in my research leading up to this that spell never missed.
My scalp tingled. This was the last part of the plan. There was a chance this wouldn’t work. If it didn’t then we’d already accomplished a hell of a lot, but I really wanted this next bit to work. It was the piece de resistance of this whole thing.
Besides, I never thought we’d get this far with this scheme. Maybe we’d keep getting lucky and take it all the way.
A blinding multicolored light appeared at the tips of the gamemaster’s fingers and blasted out at me. I pulled another little something out of my inventory that totally shouldn’t be available in the Game Over scenario.
Oops. He’d said they were patching the oversight that allowed me to carry things I shouldn’t have into the Game Over scenario, but that didn’t apply to things I’d already brought with me.
In this game all I had to do was hold my hand up and think of the item I wanted. No rummaging around in stupid inventory squares in an active battle like in an old fashioned MMO. I could still look at those inventory squares if I wanted to, but it wasn’t necessary to bind them to an action bar or anything primitive like that from the digital stone age.
A translucent pink shield that matched the “ancient weapons meet anachronistic cyberpunk Vaporwave aesthetic” look everything around here had materialized on my arm and reflected the beam back at the gamemaster as I did my best Link vs. Guardian impression. I had to take a couple of steps back under the force of that beam, but the important thing was the beam bounced back to its source instead of instantly incinerating me.
I’d been hoping that’d happen, but I couldn’t be sure it would work until I’d actually tested it in combat. Which meant provoking a gamemaster to come down from on high to lay down the law on us.
When we stole the cyber army control gem I went ahead and raided the good king’s weapons storage as well. So a shield that was meant to help out the old king when he was in raid boss mode acting far more spry and dangerous than his old visage would make him seem, at least when he wasn’t getting surprise ganked in a Game Over screen where that shouldn’t have been possible, was now mine to use as I pleased.
And it pleased me very much to send the gamemaster’s ban beam blasting back on the asshole.
The beam hit the prick. I liked to think there was a moment of surprise, though of course it was impossible to see that surprise considering the asshole was wearing that helmet that looked like something someone picked up at a garage sale at Skywalker ranch back in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s when the world very briefly didn’t give a shit about Star Wars.
The gamemaster’s colors reversed. It was a neat little effect, and I’d only ever seen it being used on players who were being either temporarily suspended or permanently banned in Horizon games. A moment later there was no gamemaster.
“Holy shit,” Kris breathed. “That actually worked.”
4
But Mostly Punishment
I turned and grinned at my friend and frequent partner in crime. “It hurts me that you’d ever think that wouldn’t work.”
“Yeah, well sometimes your crazy schemes end up getting us in a lot of trouble without much to show for it,” Kris said. “I know we’re just marking time until Lotus Online comes out, but if we get kicked out of these Horizon modules we’re screwed for good content.”
I frowned.
Kris had a point. There were some who speculated that Lotus had decided they weren’t even going to bother with their flagship game that was supposed to be the ultimate expression of the revolutionary hardware they’d created. Hardware that allowed someone to step into a virtual world by putting in a simple pair of earbuds that attached to their brain via electrical impulses through the ear.
It was revolutionary, and they were making money hand over fist with the hardware licensing alone. There really was no need to make a game to go along with it. There’d been rumblings forever about how their game was going to change the world, how it was going to be the most amazing thing ever, and yet there’d been nothing from Lotus on the software side in the two years since the earbuds launched.
That’d allowed Horizon Online Entertainment to step in with their modules, and they were cleaning up.
Which led some people to speculate that the whole reason why Lotus Online was so much vaporware these days was because Lotus had decided it was easier to take the licensing fees from other people using their platform than it was to invest the time and money in making a truly revolutionary game that couldn’t possibly live up to the hype that’d been building since they first showed off their earbud tech. Sort of like what happened with Valve and Half-Life 3 back in the day thanks to Steam.
It wouldn’t be the first time ravenous gamers were burned by developers who lost their desire to design anything once the money started rolling in and they realized it was way more fun to snort coke off of some hot young thing’s ass on their yacht in the non-irradiated western end of the Mediterranean than it was to spend countless hours holed up in front of a computer monitor making a game that most gamers were going to piss on once it released no matter how good it was.
“Might as well get our fun where we can take it, and if we can have our fun fucking with Horizon that seems like a pretty good deal to me,” I said.
Spellcraft Page 2