Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "I'm still surprised those idiots aren't mining the place,” I said.

  From up here I could see the clear glow of goblinsteel ore all through the walls. “There’s a fortune hidden in these walls waiting to be mined. If somebody were to set up an actual mass production mining and crafting operation…”

  I shook my head. Not exploiting the resources here was a waste, but if my enemies were going to be idiots about using in game systems and leave a bunch of money that was literally sitting right under their noses in the ground then I wasn't going to reveal to them how to make that money.

  Not when I planned on stealing it out from under them if I could get away with it. Or maybe even killing them and taking over. Yeah, that was a much better plan.

  An odd noise moved past my ear and interrupted my contemplation of all the new ways I might exact my vengeance on Horizon from within Lotus. The noise was like a tiny puff of wind. Not that there were many puffs of wind on our level of the arcology. Not unless the ventilation system was screwing up rather than merely not working at all which was its typical state.

  "That's odd," I said.

  A moment later the pain hit. It was very slight. Like when I stubbed my toe. Which is to say it was one of those minor pains that was very annoying because of how minor it was. Then the pain mitigation kicked in, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about the source of that pain.

  "What the…"

  "You’re bleeding," Keia said.

  There was another noise. Something hit the rock wall behind us. I turned and looked, unblinking and not quite understanding, at an arrow shaft that fell to my feet after slamming into the rock wall and knocking some pebbles loose.

  "Shit!" Keia shouted.

  She pulled me down just as another arrow shot through the space where my chest had been. I couldn't be sure that arrow would’ve killed me, but I was sure it wouldn't have been a pleasant experience getting it lodged in my person.

  "I thought you said they couldn't reach us from down there!" I said.

  “I said they probably couldn’t,” she said. “There’s a little wiggle room in that statement.”

  "Great," I said. "We need to get the hell out of here. Now!"

  "Totally agree with you.”

  Arrows flew through the air making it impossible to stand. So we crawled back into the ring mine. Meanwhile arrows hit the rock and landed on us, but those arrows couldn't do any damage once they'd expended most of their kinetic energy by slamming against the rock wall instead of burying into our flesh.

  "Remind me to never listen to you again when it comes to in game safety,” I said once we were safely back in the mine brushing away dust that’d rained down from arrows hitting the rock.

  "Hey," she said. “That one wasn’t on me. They usually don’t watch these overlooks.”

  “Yeah, well I imagine they also usually don’t see magic grenades flying out of those overlooks to kill their people,” I said.

  Keia sighed. “I also didn’t think they’d be able to shoot us from that range. Like before they couldn’t hit that high, but their archers must’ve leveled their skills up a bit. The bastards.”

  “I thought you hated archery?” I said.

  “I do,” she said. “Which is probably why the Horizon Dawn people down there were able to skill up until they could hit us at that range and meanwhile I’m fucking around in the forest shooting people at close range and underestimating their ability because I haven’t been working on my distance shooting with a bunch of trees between me and any far off target.”

  "We really need to find you a new class," I said. "Being a half-assed stealth archer doesn’t suit you.”

  "I always wanted to be a healer,” she said, letting out a wistful sigh as we retraced our steps back through the mine. "But those bastards didn't understand how useful it could be having a good healer in their group. They all wanted to be assassins, and Torian said I was harshing their buzz by being visible when they were trying to sneak around."

  "How on earth did they manage to conquer the local raid dungeon if all they had were a bunch of stealth players?" I asked.

  “The ringleaders, people like Torian and Gregor, were the stealth players. Though even that asshole Torian switched it up when he got bored and went to that sword and plate monstrosity. I wasn’t allowed to though, the fucker,” she said, spitting on the mine floor.

  "You met Kravos, of course. That asshole was allowed to choose his path too and become their pet magic DPS. They have other players who did tank roles, but the inner circle, the ones who really run things in that Guild, are all a bunch of assholes who liked sneaking around and ganking people. Even Torian still does it from time to time for funsies, for all that he walks around in that plate armor all the time now for show.”

  “So all the ringleaders in Horizon Dawn were stealth archers.”

  “Well yeah. That’s what I was just saying.”

  “And you’re a stealth archer…”

  Keia stopped. She turned to stare at me. For a surprise it wasn’t a glare, though. No, she looked genuinely worried.

  “Look, I didn’t know what they were going to do,” she said. “All I knew was this guy who had a thing for me in the real world said he could get me into the greatest new video game the world has ever seen and I wouldn’t have to pay. What would you do?”

  I frowned. “I’d probably be a little conflicted since I’m not into the dudes, to be honest.”

  I managed to keep from smiling for a couple of beats. Then we both devolved into giggles.

  “Point is I left their stupid guild and started killing the bastards from the shadows after one run through the ring mines with them. You were the one who was just talking about trust.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well now it’s your turn to trust me on this one. When I saw what they were doing to those goblins I got the fuck out of there.”

  She had a point. Not to mention I was still suffering from a bit of “teenage dude under the influence of hormones really wants to believe the pretty girl telling him a pleasing justification for her potentially sordid past.”

  “Any group that plays exclusively stealth archers has to be a bunch of flavor of the month chasing assholes,” I said.

  "You have no idea," she said, the tension draining as the conversation shifted away from her time in Horizon Dawn. "You think it's bad when you're talking to them out in public. Now imagine the personal hell I had to go through listening to them constantly in guild chat. Always in my head, and always being pricks. When they weren’t hitting on me, which happened way more than I preferred.”

  “What amount of hitting on you would you prefer?” I asked, wondering about the answer to that question for personal as well as business reasons.

  She hit me with a look that said she knew exactly where I was going with that question.

  “From them? Zero. From someone else? Well, I guess that depends on who the someone else is, doesn’t it? Now come on, we need to get out of here before one of their patrols traps us in this mine.”

  “Good idea.”

  I kept an eye out on our way back through the mine for any sign that new ore veins had popped up. We didn’t have the time to mine them, but knowing the respawn timer would be useful. Unfortunately I came up with a big fat zero.

  "Any idea what the respawn timer is on these ore veins?” I asked.

  “They’d go through and clear out the ring mines every week or so,” she said.

  “I thought you said you left after the first run?” I asked.

  “I did, but that didn’t stop me from figuring out their schedule from my hiding spot. I’m not sure if they cleared them weekly because that’s how long it took the ore to respawn, or because it took a week for enough goblins to sneak back into the mines to make it worth raiding.”

  "Interesting," I said. "You know it's odd, too, when you think about it.”

  “What’s odd?” she asked.

  “Well in the real world steel is
an alloy.”

  “A what?” Keia asked.

  “They take two different kinds of metal, iron and something else I think, and use it to make steel.”

  “Okay, so is there a point to this?” she asked.

  “The point is why would goblinsteel be something you could mine directly out of the ground? Steel doesn’t come out of the ground. It’s made.”

  "You're asking me questions about real world metallurgy that you’re trying to apply to the in-game crafting system that I’ve admitted, multiple times, I don’t give a shit about?” Keia asked, arching an eyebrow.

  "Point taken," I said. "Still…"

  The words died on my lips as we reached the entrance. I’d stepped out into the light without thinking. I’d been so caught up in our conversation that I hadn't thought about what might be waiting for us at the mine entrance.

  Sure there’d been the lone guard Keia distracted earlier, but while we’d been down in the mines I’d thrown an exploding gem that’d stirred up the asshole hornet’s nest if all the Horizon Dawn people standing in a semicircle just outside the mine entrance with nasty pointy glowing weapons drawn were anything to go on.

  “Shit. Looks like we didn’t get out of there fast enough,” Keia muttered.

  Gregor stood at the front of that group with a smug look of self-satisfaction. Sereh was close behind. The only people missing to make this a who’s who of Horizon Dawn people I really didn’t want to see were Torian and that bearded prick Kravos, but the people in front of us right now were bad enough.

  "Shit is right,” I said.

  36

  Improvised Explosive Craft

  Gregor stepped forward and eyed both of us. His nose was raised high with his arms behind his back. He reminded me of a classic scene from the scifi masterpiece Spaceballs where a stuck up officer gloated over catching a bunch of stunt doubles.

  "Well, well, well…" Gregor said. “When I got reports of an irregularity at one of the ring mines I figured it would be you two.”

  “And I’m going to fucking kill you for what you did to me back there!” Sereh said.

  Her hand moved up to her neck, and I got the feeling she was thinking about the way Keia had casually gutted her. That was the kind of thing that stayed with you. Especially if she hadn’t discovered her pain slider.

  She was glaring at us like she wouldn’t mind using her daggers to give as good as she got.

  “Not now, Sereh,” Gregor said, glaring at her.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, though that didn’t stop her from looking at the two of us and making a throat cutting motion where Gregor couldn’t see.

  “And what was that magic spell you used to take a pot shot at some of our members?” Gregor asked. “That wasn't very sporting of you, but if you tell me what spell you used I can promise you I’ll make Sereh kill you quickly instead of letting her all the things she’s been droning on about while we were looking for you.”

  I wasn't about to tell them that what I’d used didn't have much to do with magic. At least not directly. Or not as they conceived of magic.

  I was no conjurer of cheap tricks, to quote the pop culture ur wizard. No, my tricks were pretty expensive considering what those gems were probably worth now that I’d figured out how to turn them into enchantments.

  "Seriously Gregor?" Keia asked. "Why don't you go back to sucking Torian's dick? You'll probably have a much better time with that than what I'm about to do to you. Because I promise when I spear you in the ass with my sword it's not going to feel nearly as good as when Torian gives it to you.”

  Gregor’s eyes narrowed. "How dare you talk to us like that, you traitorous bitch!"

  "Think about what happened to poor Torian when he took an arrow to his ass,” she said, pulling her sword out and, incidentally, showing off the flame glow I’d added to it.

  Every eye in the Horizon group was immediately on her. More specifically those eyes were on her sword, which was saying something considering she was looking pretty good as she stood there in her tight leather doing the whole “badass fighter chick” thing.

  I guess staring at the sword made sense though. Hot chicks in tight leather distributing swordplay were a dime a dozen around these here parts. That sword she was wielding wasn’t. No doubt they knew Horizon weaponry, and this sword clearly wasn't Horizon weaponry.

  "I'd give a great deal of gold to figure out how you managed to find a weapon with an enchantment like that," Gregor said, speaking barely above a whisper as he eyed it with greed clear in his eyes. “The good news is I'm going to have plenty of time to torture both of you to get that information.”

  "I know the pain goes down after a short amount of time," Sereh called out in a singsong voice. "So that just means we're going to have to keep creating new wounds so you keep getting fresh pain! How does that sound?"

  Well shit. With the way the pain hit you full force them rapidly diminished with the slider turned down this could get nasty if they kept inflicting new wounds on yours truly.

  “I’ll die before I let that happen," Keia said, holding her sword out in front of her like she was ready to make a last stand that resulted in her dying before they could capture her.

  My mind raced. On the one hand dying would be preferable to being tortured for information. On the other hand if I died then all that goblinsteel ore I’d gathered would be lost. Along with the gems. And everything else I’d gathered since starting the game since this had been one long uninterrupted run of the game world crapping on me. For all that it felt like watching Kris land in that massive Kris shaped hole had happened a lifetime ago.

  The low level stuff I could get again, but something told me it wouldn’t be as easy to get those gems and goblinsteel in the future as it’d been this afternoon. After all, I’d had to go into a recently cleared high level mine on the outskirts of a high level raid dungeon with a highly skilled player along for the ride to even get at the gems in the first place.

  The point being I really didn’t want to lose my shit now.

  I needed to figure something out, and fast. We could run back into the ring mine, but that wouldn’t help for long. That was just prolonging the inevitable. There had to be something else.

  The Horizon people stood grouped together. It was the kind of grouping that would be very bad if, say, this was a more modern game where things like artillery or high explosives were a thing. Or maybe a game where someone could create a reasonable simulation of high explosives that could take out a bunch of assholes who were obligingly standing clumped up.

  I didn’t grin as that thought occurred to me hot on the heels of the realization that I’d just totally inadvertently invented an improvised high explosive device using the game’s crafting fail state.

  I didn’t want to tip anyone off, but boy was the temptation there. I pulled up my inventory to see if there was another one of those blue elemental stones that didn't like having elemental fire infused.

  Sure enough I found one. Nice and blue. When I looked at it the thing it said it was elemental water. Blowing up the last one must’ve been sufficient to figure out what element it worked with. Unimaginative what with the blue color and all, but then again this was a mass-produced game that was supposed to be understandable to a casual audience with some very low lowest common denominators.

  Which was a nice way of saying the system had to be idiot proof since nature’s capacity for building better idiots was always running far ahead of humanity’s capacity to build better systems.

  So why not make things nice and simple and color coded? I was far from an idiot though. I planned on doing terrible things to the Spellcraft system. To abuse it and twist it to my will and come up with scenarios the devs had never imagined.

  Starting with using this gem as an improvised hand grenade.

  I pulled the blue water elemental gem out of my inventory and quietly infused it with my flame spell. The infusion was like second nature to me now. A good thing, too. It would’ve been r
eally awkward if I had to navigate tooltips and a tutorial while I was trying to create a secret weapon without letting all the Horizon assholes know I was trying to create a secret weapon.

  Thankfully they were all focused on Keia. She was still talking smack and waving her sword around in front of Gregor who looked like he wasn't all that eager to get within striking distance of said sword, for all that he was still boasting about all the nasty things he was going to do to us.

  I felt the fire infuse into the elemental water stone. I kept the thing behind me and prayed none of them would notice the trees behind me lighting up with a second light source that wasn’t the sun filtering down through the branches above into the clearing.

  No, I didn’t want them to notice this until that bright light was right in the middle of them ready to blow them to smithereens.

  The gem got warmer and warmer. It pulsed and the heat was almost too intense for me to maintain my hold, but my timing had to be perfect. If I was off, if they realized what I was up to and had a chance to disperse…

  Finally the heat got to be too much. I judged it was about the same as the pulsing had been when I was in the mine trying to find a way to get rid of the first gem I’d accidentally set to self-destruct. Either way I wasn’t going to be able to keep holding the damn thing. Not without burning my hand. I really needed to get some armor to help with that.

  So I tossed the gem into the Horizon crowd. Right smack dab in the middle where it would do the most damage.

  "Get down Keia!" I shouted.

  Keia didn't react quite how I’d hoped. No, instead of hitting the deck she leapt forward and whipped her sword around. Right for Gregor’s neck. Right where he didn't have any nice leather armor protecting his smug ass with that smug smile that froze in place as the sword made contact.

  Flames erupted from her sword and engulfed Gregor. Maybe she got a critical hit bonus because she'd hit old Gregor in a critically unprotected area at point blank range when he wasn’t expecting it. He had no one to blame but himself for letting someone get close enough to pull something like that off.