"Thanks," I said.
"Don't mention it," she said. “I figure it's the least I owe you for killing your friend."
"Hello? Conlan?” Kris said.
I jumped. I looked around for Kris, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The treasure chest and some bones where she’d recently expired remained in place.
"What's wrong?" Keia asked, her eyes casting around for the threat that’d made me jump.
"Sorry," I said. "Kris is sending me a private message, but it's a voice in my head and I’m still not used to that.”
"Oh yeah," Keia said. "That does take some getting used to."
"What's up?" I asked the air.
"I'm back in the graveyard just outside town and these assholes are chasing me again!" Kris said. "What about you? Did the crazy lady kill you?"
"Actually no,” I said. "She just saved me from some Horizon Dawn bitch. The same one who was hunting you earlier."
"Great," Kris said. "You have all the fucking luck. Meanwhile if you killed that bitch it means she’s going to respawn near town and come after my ass.”
"I don't know if I’d call it all the luck," I said, looking down at my arm. “And you know all the ladies can’t resist your ass.”
"Whatever," Kris said. "I assume from your tone and your smartass remarks that you're going to be spending your time making googly eyes at the new hotness out there and not coming back into town to save my ass?”
"Honestly I'm not sure what I'd be able to do to save your ass," I said. “My PVP immunity just wore off, so I’d only be an extra body for them to kill.”
“Damn. You're right," Kris said with a sigh.
I blinked. “Wait. You're not going to tell me I owe it to you to go back there and save you?"
"No," she replied. "I totally own that this is a situation I got myself into. I mean it is your fault that I was out there where the crazy lady shot me, but it's not entirely your fault that these assholes are chasing me. That was on me waving my two hander without thinking first.”
"So what are you going to do?" I asked.
“I think I'm going to lay low for a little bit. See if I can lose them, or at the very least introduce some of their lowbies to my two hander.”
“Be careful," I said.
"Oh, and can you please grab my stuff?" Kris asked.
I looked down at the treasure chest. "Sure thing.”
"I knew I could count on you," Kris said. "Have fun out there playing kissy face."
"Shut up," I said.
"No, really," Kris said, talking in a tone that had me picturing the lascivious grin and the raised eyebrows she was no doubt showing off on the other end of this line. "Think of all the perverts who've been doing that kind of stuff in games like this using text and creepy asterisks over the years in places like the Deeprun Tram or Elwynn Forest. You'll be part of a brave new generation who’s the first to be able to do that kind of thing for real in a simulation that lets you see and feel everything! Talk about hot!"
"It disturbs me how interested you are in my virtual…"
I stopped and looked at Keia who was looking right back at me with a bemused expression. I didn't want to say anything out loud about my virtual sex life in front of her.
Not when the wide smile on her face made it pretty clear she already had a pretty good idea of what was going on on the other side of this conversation, for all that she couldn’t hear it. I blushed.
Damn. I must’ve been broadcasting my side of the conversation to local without realizing it because I’d spoken to her after I opened the line to Kris. I was going to have to learn to be more careful about that stuff.
"I'll talk to you later," I said.
"I bet you will," Kris said, making kissing noises as I waved to try and get the voice to go away.
"How do I make a conversation stop?" I asked.
"Just think about muting your friend and the game will deliver," Keia said.
I did just that, and for a miracle Kris went silent.
"Dang," I said. "I'm going to have to try that more often."
"It works on everyone," Keia said. "Try it on me."
I thought about muting her. She started talking. Her mouth was clearly moving, but nothing reached my ears. Then I decided to test something and thought about her speaking in Spanish. It took a moment, but a dubbed voice started talking, and it was pretty fucking funny since the dub was a deep male voice which didn’t jive with the cute blonde elf in front of me moving her lips.
"What's so funny?" she asked as I switched her back to English and unmuted her with a thought.
"Switch me to Spanish," I said. "You're not going to believe what…"
I knew the moment she’d switched me because she started giggling.
"Pretty funny, right?" I asked.
"Yeah, it is," she said. "I didn't know they could do translations on the fly like that. That's the kind of thing that could make them more money than the video game!"
I shrugged. "Who's to say that's not the kind of thing they're working on releasing to make a shitload of money? Just because you have one shitload of money from a game doesn’t mean you can’t make other shitloads in different markets. Maybe they need people trying that stuff out before they can release it commercially or something. Like they’re experimenting on us and gathering data for the day they get to release it on the world and put translators out of a job or something.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “Poor translators.”
“Yeah, there’s gonna be an awful lot of dudes who don’t get to make their spirit quest to Japan to find a waifu teaching ESL anymore,” I said.
I’d known one guy who did that on our level. More power to him for getting out of the level, honestly. Even if the one Japanese exchange student our school had claimed the dude talked like a cartoon character.
Keia giggled again. “I knew of a guy like that. Always walked around with cat ears on. More power to him though. Whatever makes someone happy.”
“They must have one like that at every school,” I said.
“Yeah, guess so,” she said.
Huh. Well that was one bit of information at least. She went to school. Of course that could be anything from elementary school to college, though I thought there was a minimum age for using the Lotus hardware so she was probably at least sixteen unless she was running the risk of damage to her brain to play a game.
Honestly considering some of the brain damage I’d seen tweakers risking for the chance of riding a high that wouldn’t surprise me.
I glanced down at the ground beside her. Oddly the girl who’d just been so messily killed was still there. Weird.
"Why hasn't she done the whole creepy decomposing thing yet?" I asked.
Keia looked down and frowned. She leaned in closer, inspecting Sereh. Then she hissed and pulled out the dagger that’d been lodged in me moments ago and lodged it into Sereh a few more times. Which resulted in even more blood and guts exploding out. It was like something from the worst nightmares of those old stuffed shirts who thought pixelated blood was the beginning of the end of Western civilization back in the early ‘90s rather than the bullshit policies they were putting in place.
That repeated stabbing seemed a touch excessive, but I figured Keia knew what she was doing. Also, for some reason seeing her acting all bloodthirsty like this was kind of hot. Then again I got the feeling just about anything she did would strike me as kinda hot.
"Sorry about that," she said when she came up. I noted she’d left the dagger lodged in Sereh’s now rapidly decomposing body.
She flipped some of her hair back, and the hotness of that hair flip was only slightly ruined by the blood in her otherwise pristine golden light blonde hair. "Sometimes they get down to a sliver of HP but don't quite expire. Helps to help them along just a little when that happens. Especially since she was probably spying on us from her mostly dead body.”
"Got it," I said, wondering why it had to be so messy helping a chara
cter take a trip back to their respawn point. Not that I felt all that bad for the girl. Not after the trouble she’d caused me.
There was nothing but a little treasure chest where Sereh’s body had been. Which reminded me that I needed to grab Kris’s stuff. I leaned down and tapped the treasure chest and an inventory screen popped up showing me all the starter junk Kris had on her when she was forcibly moved to the graveyard outside Nilbog.
And there was a Horizon Dawn sword right next to her starter hammer. I guess the noob she killed hadn’t been carrying any of her preferred two-handed hammers.
I held the sword out and Keia let out a hiss.
“Why are you even holding that thing?” she asked.
“Because Kris is my best friend,” I said.
“Your best friend who nearly got you killed because of those weapons,” she said.
Keia glared at me, and she looked almost as murdery as I did when it came to Horizon shit. I worried there was a good chance holding this weapon for too long would result in me getting caught dead either by Keia, by someone else who hated Horizon, or by someone from Horizon Dawn who didn’t take too kindly to me using their gear given all the difficulties we’d been having with one another.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “And I fucking hate Horizon, but she won this in PVP and she was so proud of herself for getting us better weapons.”
Keia sighed. “Fine. Just put it in your inventory so I don’t have to see it.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to see it either,” I said as the thing dematerialized and whooshed down into my inventory.
I glanced at Keia. Her reaction to that sword, and to Sereh and Kris for that matter, had me thinking she might have a story about Horizon. I could use all the information I could gather about the bastards.
"You really hate them, don't you?" I asked. “Care to share why?”
If anything her glare deepened, and I really hoped my curiosity wasn’t about to get me ganked.
28
Smelly Salvation
I forced myself to hold that gaze while I prayed that the little adventure we’d just had with Sereh was enough to cement some sort of bond that would keep her from following through on ramming one of her daggers into my chin.
Because it was clear that’s what she was thinking about if the way her dagger hand twitched and her eyes darted between my neck and my eyes was anything to go on.
Finally she sighed and deflated.
“We need to move,” she said. “Sereh definitely told them we’re here, and we need to be anywhere but here when their ganking patrol comes along to ruin our day.”
I glanced around at the trees, suddenly worried about daggers and arrows coming from a completely different source.
“You’ve got a good point,” I said.
As though on cue, Keia cocked her head to the side and seemed to be listening to something in the distance. Something I couldn’t hear.
“Please don’t tell me one of your skills is hearing things better than me,” I said.
“Totally is,” she said, her mouth thinning to a grim line. “And there’s totally a group heading towards us.”
“What direction?” I asked.
“From Nilbog. I think,” she said. “Come on.”
She turned in the opposite direction, but I grabbed her. I was rewarded by her whirling around with a dagger at the ready. I eyed the thing warily as it stopped just short of my nose.
“What?” she asked.
“Um, I was thinking maybe it isn’t a good idea to go in the exact opposite direction of where they’re coming from?” I said, my eyes crossing as I stared down at the dagger and thought about how much I didn’t want that cold steel introduced to my brain. “If it were me I’d try to flush someone out and right into a group waiting in the other direction.”
She held my gaze for a long and awkward moment. Mostly the awkwardness came from the juxtaposition of my terror at that dagger and how turned on I was getting. I guess I had a thing for badass women who didn’t take shit. Who knew?
“I think you’re giving Horizon Dawn too much credit,” she finally said, blessedly lowering her dagger. “But you also make a good point. Come on.”
She turned and set off in different direction.
“Um, do you think maybe we should party up too?” I said. “Might be a good idea to be able to chat without people listening in.”
She looked over her shoulder and smiled a secretive little smile. “And who says I want to talk with you? For all you know I’m taking you deeper into the woods so I can kill you where no one will see.”
I swallowed. That thought hadn’t occurred to me. She threw her head back and laughed, then covered her mouth and cocked her head to the side as she listened to whatever was going on in the distance.
“Good idea,” she said, then frowned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It says you’re in a party already,” she said.
“Oh, sorry about that,” I said.
With a thought I dropped the party I’d been in with Kris. The party status screen told me she’d logged off anyway. She probably figured there was no point hanging around a village where people were hunting her ass. At least not without me around to save her ass.
“Try now.”
I got a party invite and accepted with a thought. Keia’s face appeared on my party status screen, a look of grim determination there.
“Now come on,” she said, speaking loud enough that I figured she was talking in party chat.
I double checked my own settings before I spoke. I also followed her, because I didn’t want to be around when Horizon Dawn got here. Not when my PVP immunity was gone and they could have their way with me. That wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“So do you want to tell me about your hatred of Horizon Dawn?” I prompted after we’d been walking for a little while and she hadn’t said anything.
“Do I?” she asked. “I don’t remember saying anything about hating them.”
“Well it was sort of assumed and all, but…”
“You’re right, of course. There aren't words that can begin to describe how much I hate those assholes," she spat. “The pricks forced me to do this stupid stealth archer build, and they act like they run that town."
“Well to be fair it sort of seems like they do run that town," I said.
Keia shook her head. "They might have the local raid dungeon on lockdown so they can force people to pay more for a dungeon run than it costs to buy Horizon Syndicate gear on the Auction House, but…”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“They control access to the local raid dungeon,” she said. “People have to pay for the privilege of getting into the Goblinsteel Mines without getting ganked, and the cost is more than it costs to just buy slightly lower quality Horizon Syndicate stuff on the Auction House.”
“They’re selling that stuff though?” I said. “Like they’re making money from it? Real money?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” she asked. “People pay in-game gold, and it’s easy enough to convert Lotus gold to real world money. Horizon is making a pretty penny by creating that crap out of nothing and selling it to players.”
“And just to be clear, when you say Horizon we’re talking about Horizon Online Entertainment?” I asked, still not quite believing it was actually them pulling the strings.
“None other than,” she said, her voice grim.
“But why the hell would Lotus let Horizon into their game?” I asked. “They’re the competition!”
She shrugged as she expertly ducked out of the way of a vine that went whipping through the air over her head. The thing almost hit me, but she snatched it with her other hand and slammed a dagger into the thing. It squealed, and I realized I was actually looking at something that sort of looked like a cross between a snake and a vine complete with rows of nasty looking teeth that’d been on the verge of taking a bite out of me.
“I don’t know what Horizon is d
oing in Lotus,” she said. “I just know they paid to get people in the early access and take shit over. Not that any of their local chapters are doing a great job of it.”
I eyed the snake creature. It looked good and dead. I also thought about the skinning knife sitting in my inventory gathering digital dust. This thing looked like it’d be a good test case for seeing how well that worked.
Keia took a few steps before she realized I wasn’t following. She stopped and turned to eye me with a look that was pretty damn close to some of the looks Kris had given me over the years when I was doing my gathering and crafting thing.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her face going from curious to disgusted as I used my skinning knife on the snake thing.
I was a little disgusted myself. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. And really, that’s all I cared about as my inventory filled with weird vine snake skins.
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
“If I had a penny for every time I heard that from someone adventuring with me,” I said. “Got some nifty animal skins though. I’ll probably be able to do something useful with that.”
“I’m so happy for you,” she said.
The thing that was surprising was she actually did look like she was happy for me. Like she was smiling and not saying that sarcastically at all, which is what I would’ve expected from Kris.
A snapping twig somewhere in the distance brought me back to the unfortunate reality of our situation.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“You bet your ass it is,” she said, looking in the direction of that noise. “I don’t suppose you have any stealth abilities you’re hiding away somewhere?”
“Not really,” I said. “You got anything?”
“I mean duh,” she said. “Stealth archer. That’s not gonna help you much, though.”
She had a point. I hated that she had a point. Also? I hated that I’d gone into the forest loaded down with all the stuff I’d been gathering since I first logged into the game.
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