"Something like that," she said. “Fucking Horizon Dawn. They’re idiots most of the time, but they can be crafty idiots. The problem is you never know when they're being stupid or when they’re being crafty until they've stuck their swords in you."
There was something about the far-off look in her eyes that said she was reliving a painful memory of a time when they'd done exactly that to her. She shook her head and motioned for me to follow.
“Whatever. We need to get a move on and get the hell out of here before one of those patrols looking for us accomplishes its goal. One of the ring mines should be up ahead," she said.
“So the ring mines aren’t the raid entrance?” I asked.
“Yes and no. It’s easier to just show you," she replied. "Now come on."
31
Mine Entrance
I was having a hard time not enjoying the view as we approached the ring mine. Whatever the fuck that was. She was a hot blonde elf, after all, and her leather armor left very little to the imagination.
It turns out a lady didn’t have to be in the traditional fantasy chainmail bikini to be a distraction when the game allowed her to wear leather that was way more formfitting than would ever be practical outside of a superhero movie.
There were more than a couple times when I was pretty sure she caught me looking from the way she turned around and smiled a little half smile that reminded me of the way she’d smiled while I was enjoying that soak in the hot spring. At least she didn't seem to mind me looking.
I tried to remind myself that there was a very good possibility this hot elf girl could be an overweight dude living in his parents’ basement.
I shook my head and wondered why I was even thinking like that. Keia was a girl. That was all there was to it. And I figured the model in front of me in those tight leather pants was all woman, too, so I would enjoy looking.
I was so preoccupied by those thoughts, and the hypnotic sight of her butt moving in those aforementioned tight leather pants, that I almost ran into her when she came to a stop and put a hand on my chest.
I tried to ignore the way the game had once again taken my natural biological reaction to being touched by a pretty girl and mirrored it faithfully in the game world. I also regretted, again, that I didn’t have the kind of armor that included a codpiece that wouldn’t make that reaction quite so obvious.
"What's wrong?" I asked. “Is there something else that might kill us?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
She went into stealth mode. I could see her plain as day right in front of me as she moved through the forest. The branches and leaves seemed to meld around her as she moved. A neat effect, that, and also mildly terrifying since it meant I wouldn’t be able to track any cloaked characters coming for me by the path they made through the trees while they were hunting me.
I looked around for plants I might be able to gather, but there was nothing nearby and I didn’t want to risk making noise if she thought there was something dangerous enough that she needed to scout ahead.
“Okay,” she said from behind me.
I jumped and yelled, but thankfully that yell went into party chat.
“Sorry,” she giggled. “I couldn’t resist.”
“So is there something scary and dangerous out there?” I asked.
“Maybe. More potentially dangerous than scary. This is going to take a little finesse,” she said.
"What?" I asked.
"We’re going to have to do something sneaky to I get into this ring mine,” she said. "Look."
"I know what finesse means," I muttered. "I just wondered what it meant in context."
"Well there's your context right there big boy," Keia said, pushing me forward to where the trees thinned out and an open spot began.
I could make out a lone guard in a Horizon Dawn tabard standing in front of what looked like a classic mine entrance from any MMO ever.
I always thought it was a little funny how mines seemed to inexplicably dot the landscape in MMOs. I was pretty sure mines weren’t nearly as frequent in the real world as they were in digital fantasy worlds, but I guess they were too convenient for game designers to resist.
“They only have one guard?” I asked. “After those big patrols?”
“Looks like it,” Keia said. “I guess they’re getting lazy, or they figure they can have a strike team at the mine before the gankers get away with any loot. That guard is probably a lowbie whose only purpose out here is to yell when he gets ganked.”
“So you put an arrow through his head and we rush in there to get what we can before that response team can get out here?” I asked.
“I like the bloodthirsty plan, but it’s too risky. We might get in there, but there’s no guarantee we’re getting out once he raises the alarm. There’s guaranteed to be a patrol close enough to give us some grief.”
“Right. A smash and grab is out. So what's the plan?" I asked.
"The plan is I'm going to do something to distract him, and then you’re going to get into the mine."
"How are you going to get in there after you distract him?” I asked.
I also wondered what kind of distractions she was thinking. I could think of a couple of ways I wouldn’t mind her distracting me, but somehow I didn’t think she was going to pull that kind of thing with the guard.
She looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. "What part of stealth archer is so hard to understand?"
"Oh. Right."
"Stay right here," she said. "As soon as that asshole gets distracted I want you to get in there, and I want you to go deep enough into that mine that he won’t see you when he comes back. Got it?"
"Is there anything in there that could kill me?" I asked.
“Maybe. You’d better hope they cleared it recently,” she said with a manic grin and a pat on my shoulder. “You're going to have to hit the sweet spot of going deep enough that the guard can't see you, but not so deep that you risk stirring up any hostile goblins who might be lurking. Easy, right?”
"Yeah, easy,” I said. "Super easy. Why would the goblins be hostile anyway? The ones I’ve met have been nice enough to me.”
“Probably because Horizon Dawn is clearing them out on the regular if they find any goblins sneaking their way back into the mine. They let them go back in the ring mines to mine the goblinsteel, then they kill them and take whatever they’ve gathered,” she said.
“So a brutal way of gathering ore that doesn’t involve any of them doing any mining,” I said. “Okay then. I can understand why the goblins out here would be more annoyed than the ones in Nilbog.”
“Horizon Dawn is brutal, but effective,” she said. “Which means any goblins in there will slaughter us if there’s enough of them to take us out. Keep that in mind.”
“Oh believe me,” I said. “It’ll never be too far from my mind at all.”
“Good,” she said.
Not for the first time since venturing out into the dark and foreboding forest, I found myself wishing I’d invested in some combat abilities. Why had I spent all my time picking flowers instead of killing stuff?
Keia disappeared. One moment she was next to me, and the next she was stealthed and moving off through the woods.
"That’d be a useful ability,” I muttered.
"Not as useful as you might think," Keia said in party chat. “Especially when everybody and their mother in Horizon Dawn is walking around with their own stealth build.”
So I was left with more waiting. I was sick of waiting. Of traipsing through the woods. Sure it had taken a lot less time to get here than I figured it would’ve taken to cover the equivalent distance in the real world. Either the devs were doing something with how fast time passed in the game or they’d condensed the map just a little, but all the walking and waiting was still irritating.
It reminded me of old gamers who always complained about how games built character when they were young. How if they wanted to travel across the game world the
y had to do it the old-fashioned way by walking and killing any monsters that got in the way without any helpful quest markers to show them the way, and that's the way they liked it. I’d always been more of a fan of modern conveniences in games, including fast travel, and…
A noise on the other side of the small clearing drew my attention. It also drew the guard’s attention. He looked around, clearly searching for the source of that noise as he fingered the sword at his side.
I didn’t think that sword would do the guy much good if it came to fighting Keia, but the name of the game was stealth. That sword might not do him any good, but killing him wouldn’t stop him from sending a private message to his Horizon Dawn buddies about the bad guys moving in on their territory.
I held my breath and wondered if this was really going to work. If this asshole was going to fall for the obvious trick.
There was more rustling, this time followed by a screech that might've been an animal of some sort. I grinned as I realized someone was doing an impression of crazy old Ben Kenobi doing an impression of a krayt dragon. And despite that noise still the guard didn’t move. I sighed into party chat.
“You and me both,” Keia growled back at me.
“You could try to distract him with bubble wrap,” I said.
“What?” she replied.
“It worked in the old Naked Gun movies, so it might work with this guy,” I said.
“Except I don’t have bubble wrap,” she replied. “And something tells me you’re not going to be able to craft some of that out of all those flowers you picked.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said. “I haven’t actually crafted anything yet. I’ve mostly been gathering stuff.”
“Right, well let me try something new since that krayt dragon didn’t work,” Keia said.
“Kudos to you for being so accurate on that,” I said.
“Thank you!” she said. “I still think it’s a damn shame that got pulled out of Star Wars canon though. Thrawn is my sequel trilogy.”
“Thank you!” I said, falling even more for this girl.
“So you want to try and take this guy on?” she asked.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
That guard might not be any match for Keia, but I held no illusions that I’d be any match for the guard. Even if we were talking a lowbie whose only real utility was the ability to phone the dorkish horde after his death.
“Kidding,” she said. “Don’t do something stupid like try to attack. I need you alive if you’re going to mine my shit for me.”
“Glad I’m so valuable to you outside my mining utility,” I said.
“I’ve had relationships that started on less,” she said, which seemed like a maddeningly enigmatic response to my unspoken question.
There was more noise, and finally someone spoke in a voice that obviously sounded like a girl trying to disguise her voice as a guy.
I couldn't make out what she was saying. It sounded like she was talking about the rising dawn or something. It sounded like a code phrase, and I wondered what she was doing talking in code phrases. I mean given how much she seemed to know about Horizon Dawn and all she’d said about them forcing her to be a stealth archer I had a pretty good idea where she’d learned those code phrases, but there was still part of me that had a hard time thinking of my bad girl crush being a reformed bad girl who worked for Horizon once upon a time.
Whatever she said, it finally got the guard’s attention. He ran off into the forest like whatever ginormous predatory creature had created the petrified shit I hid under earlier was hot on his trail.
I ran into the mine and tried not to think about how I’d be good and trapped if that guard came back and Keia left me for dead. I’d have no way of getting out that didn't involve going through that guard.
I sighed. "I really hope you know what you're doing."
"Of course I know what I'm doing," she said, causing me to jump nearly six feet in the air.
Of course I didn't actually jump six feet in the air. The mine’s ceiling was low enough that jumping six feet in the air would be enough for me to clonk my head against some rock and potentially cause some serious damage. Or make enough noise that someone out there might hear it.
Bonking my head against a solid rock wall wasn’t the kind of thing that would be isolated to party chat, after all.
I wheeled around and Keia came out of her stealth mode as she stood from behind a pile of rocks and busted mining equipment. Her grin told me she’d enjoyed the shit out of scaring me.
"What the hell?" I hissed.
“I couldn’t resist having a little fun,” she replied. “Can you blame a girl?”
I looked her up and down and thought of a few ways I wouldn’t mind having a little fun with her, but none of those methods seemed appropriate when we were deep in enemy territory and the enemy might come along at any moment and fuck us over in the non-fun way.
“You’re hilarious,” I said.
"Come on," Keia said. "You need to hang back just a little. The goblins in here will eat you alive if there are any hanging around.”
"How comforting," I said.
"It should be comforting," Keia said, patting me on the cheek. "You have a nice strong woman to keep you safe and secure, lowbie. And you'd better hope you can pull off what you say you can pull off if you want to keep being all safe and secure.”
I didn't like the implication there. A mine like this would be a great place for her to do more of the messy killing she'd done to her former friend Sereh earlier. Not exactly the kind of thing I wanted done to myself if I could avoid it.
"Right," I said. “You’re sure there’s that goblinsteel ore in these ring mines? You never did tell me why they call them ring mines.”
"Pretty sure," she said. "At least all the quests talk about how you can get the stuff from the local mines, but nobody bothers since they can get it from killing goblins in the raid or leaving one of these mines open long enough for them to repopulate and mine it out. One of the services Horizon Dawn offers is running people through the goblin slaughters or outright selling the goblinsteel ore on the Auction House.”
“So why not buy it?” I asked, ecstatic at the confirmation that there was an Auction House in this game.
“I refuse to give them my hard-earned money,” she said.
“Fair enough,” I said.
“And you’ll see why they’re called ring mines soon enough. Don’t worry your cute ass off.
“Great,” I said, though I did blush at the cute ass comment. “Hopefully the lack of goblins in here doesn’t mean the place has been mined out recently and we’re stuck waiting on the respawn.”
“That would be a big problem for you, wouldn’t it,” she said with an unpleasantly predatory grin.
I pulled my pickaxe out of my inventory and gave it a little twirl. Grinned.
“Well if you need some ore then let’s get you some ore. Lead the way, my badass lady protector.”
She grinned right back at me and flashed a dagger. “Consider yourself protected, my precious little ore freighter.”
I wasn’t sure how much I liked being compared to an ore freighter, but I figured there was probably something to that comparison. Even if this was a fantasy themed game and not science fiction where ore freighters were more likely to be found on lame escort missions.
Besides, as long as I got to spend more time with this girl I was willing to put up with a little gentle ribbing.
Especially if it meant I got to level up my gathering. I grinned and followed her, not even trying to be surreptitious about catching glimpses of her backside in that tight leather.
Hey, if she was going to comment on my cute ass then I wasn’t going to feel too guilty about staring at hers.
32
Mining
We moved deeper and deeper into the mine. It was pretty typical. Twisting and turning rock passages with dank walls dripping with moisture that seemed to come from nowhere in part
icular other than the unwritten universal law that quest mines in MMOs and RPGs had to be moist.
I also caught occasional scrawling on the wall which jived with goblins working down here, though I couldn’t understand the language. If it was anything like human graffiti then it was probably the goblin equivalent of bragging about who had the biggest dick or who got laid last night.
Supposedly graffiti like that went back to ancient times if the stuff on the walls of Pompeii was anything to go on, and something told me the English majors who’d been lucky enough to write scenarios for this game hadn’t held back on the vulgarity.
Though I guess it was probably language majors and not the English majors who were doing most of the goblin stuff since they’d have to make up the language by necessity.
“So was it just the goblins in here before Horizon Dawn came in and cleared them out?” I asked.
“Yup. Just the goblins," she said. "They used to run everything in this territory. Mines and otherwise.”
“But they never ran anything in this territory really,” I said.
“Of course they did,” she said.
“That’s just the backstory in the game, though. Horizon Dawn came in and started running things the day this world went live, so from a certain point of view the goblins were never in charge. Even if they think they were,” I said.
Keia rolled her eyes. “Bet you’re a lot of fun at parties.”
“Actually I don’t get invited to a lot of parties,” I said.
“Can’t imagine why,” she said.
I opened my mouth to tell her that the main reason I didn’t get invited to parties was that wasn’t really the sort of thing that happened on my level, then thought better of it. The last thing she probably wanted to hear about was how people on one of the crap levels of the arcology she probably lived in too given the way starting areas were assigned couldn’t party because that sort of thing was bound to draw the attention of tweakers looking to cause some trouble.
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