Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "You don't like them?" the goblin asked, his eyes darting around the room as his voice went low.

  A new notification window popped up telling me that my reputation with the Sword and Scale Syndicate had just gone from Neutral to Friendly. Fascinating.

  There also seemed to be a warning there. I’d gained reputation with auctioneers. The scales they used to balance money seemed obvious enough, but the implication that they also found enough use for the sword that they included it in their name was ominous.

  At least I figured it would be ominous for anyone who got on the wrong side of them.

  I looked around the room as well. A few Horizon Dawn people had come in while I was chatting, but I was pretty sure they weren’t players I’d seen before. It was entirely possible I’d blown them up recently and simply hadn’t realized it because they all looked the same when they were bunching together and obligingly providing a nice target for me to blow to hell and back, and they were even more similar when they’d been turned into exploded chunks.

  I was also facing away from them where they couldn’t see me. So I turned back to the goblin. I’d bet good money Torian had screenshots he’d been distributing of me. At least that’s what I’d do if I were in his shoes.

  They were far enough away that I figured it was safe enough to carry on a conversation. It's not like the big three assholes were in here.

  "I hate their guts," I said. "And with a little luck I'm going to screw them over and kick them out of this town. Out of this world, if I have anything to say about it. Out of my world too, if I’m really good.”

  The goblin sniffed and stood straight again. Though even when he held himself to his full height with the added boost from the platform he still barely came to my shoulders. There was a twinkle in his eye now. Apparently what I said had tickled his fancy.

  "I'd like to see you do that," the goblin said, and the crazy thing was he sounded sincere for the first time since we’d started our little chat.

  "Right," I said. "So could I go ahead and see the auction interface? I have some stuff I need to sell.”

  “You should be careful about that,” the goblin said, his eyes darting across the room to the Horizon Dawn assholes. “They also don’t take kindly to people selling anything that might be competition for their goods.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “You let me worry about that and lets get on with the selling.”

  “But of course,” the goblin said, sketching a little bow that might’ve been an actual bow, or it might’ve been mocking. It was difficult to tell for sure since this goblin appeared fluent in English, Goblin, and Sarcasm.

  An interface popped up. It was nice to know I wouldn't have to actually stand here and talk with the goblin to list my items. I’d worried that might be the case judging by the people standing around talking to the other goblins.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. This was it. This would either set in motion a series of events that fucked over Horizon in a big way, or it’d be a massive failure and I’d have to go back to the drawing board.

  Either way, it was time to list some shit and see how much it was worth.

  49

  Selling Out

  “Any way you can hurry this up?” Keia muttered under her breath.

  “I have to get a feel for the interface before I can use the thing,” I muttered back, splitting my attention between said interface and Keia.

  Her eyes darted through the Auction House like she was waiting for an execution squad to come in and kill us. Which was fair considering we were deep in enemy territory where said execution squad could come along without warning.

  I really wanted to avoid that. It’d be awkward if I was cut down in the middle of my auctioneering. I was also exposed considering they could get all the stuff I had on me if they did off me, and I didn’t want to lose all my potions on top of all the Horizon Dawn gear we’d stolen fair and square. Not to mention all the ore I was carrying.

  Come to think of it, I probably should’ve looked into securing a vault or whatever the game mechanic equivalent was in Lotus Online before I started carrying all this shit in public areas where I ran a very high risk of getting ganked.

  “Hurry up,” Keia hissed. "We’ll be in serious trouble if they catch us here. That entrance is a perfect chokepoint and there aren’t any other exits.”

  "I'm on it," I said. “It’d help if I didn’t have people distracting me.”

  Keia hit me with a withering glare, but I ignored it. I was already back to the auction interface. I had work to do, and the more time I spent chatting the more likely it was someone in a Horizon Dawn tabard who recognized us would come along.

  It was possible one of those assholes had already recognized us and they were waiting for reinforcements. A small smile played across my face as I thought of them quietly talking in their guild chat because they were afraid of confronting me directly and getting blown the fuck up.

  Whatever. I needed to concentrate on the Auction House interface and sell shit.

  The first thing I did was search for the Nhewb’s Blessing Potion. I figured there’d be a lot of them up on the Auction House considering the flowers were the first thing I’d seen when I entered the game. There were probably plenty of noobs who looked at those flowers and…

  I brought up a big fat zero. I frowned, because surely Horizon couldn’t have been that thorough about keeping people from selling shit. I checked that I’d spelled it correctly.

  I’d heard stories of the ancient days on eBay when you could get insane deals by searching for misspellings of rare items that no one was bidding on, back before they came up with an algorithm to fix that. Maybe something like that was going on here too, so I searched a couple of misspellings.

  Bupkis.

  Then I saw something in the bottom corner that looked like it could be helpful. It was a small item slot with the word “search” beneath it. The meaning there was clear. If I wanted to search for an identical item then I could put that item in the slot rather than going to the trouble of spelling it out.

  Convenient, that.

  I pulled one of the potions out of my inventory and dragged it over that slot, then hit the search button. I figured that would pull up something, but again I was met with zilch.

  What the ever loving fuck was going on here?

  Either the interface was completely broken and the Auction House wasn't working correctly, something I seriously doubted from the number of people in the room using the thing without complaint, Horizon had been a lot more thorough about shutting down the competition than I thought, or I’d just stepped into something far more interesting than I could’ve imagined.

  “Quick question, Keia,” I said.

  “You’d better make it really quick. They’re gonna realize what we’re doing here and kill us any moment now,” she said.

  “Have you ever actually heard of someone gathering flowers?” I asked.

  She blinked and seemed to think about it. “Ore, yes. Flowers? Not so much. Why would someone go picking at the background?”

  It boggled the mind to think that I was the only one who’d gone through the starter area picking those flowers, but then I thought about how those flowers had been presented within the game world.

  Lotus wasn't like other MMOs, but so far just about everyone I’d run into, my friends included, was treating it like a traditional MMO with more impressive graphics. Only it was far from that.

  Lotus was weird. Everything that’d been abstracted over years of videogame development had suddenly gone back to the real world equivalent of that abstraction because for the first time ever players were in a game that could generate that real world equivalent perfectly.

  The game was so realistic that it didn't need to bother with abstraction any longer, but gamers were still looking for that abstracted shorthand. They expected things like a plant that had a sparkling animation overlay to let them know this plant was different from the others, and some
thing that would be worth gathering.

  The gamers coming into Lotus Online had cut their teeth on games that held their hands every step of the way. They didn’t have the old school exploratory instinct of gamers from a time when they had to reach out and touch everything in the game world to see if they could do something with it.

  I couldn’t believe it even as it totally made sense. Was it really possible that everyone else who'd played the early access, everyone who'd been in the launch, seriously hadn't decided to pick the flowers and see if they could be used as a reagent?

  And, not for the first time since starting this game, I felt that familiar tingling along my scalp. Though this time it ran down through my entire body as well.

  I was onto something here. Something potentially huge. Something that might allow me to get a head start over anyone else who tried the crafting thing. Sure other people would probably figure out what I’d done as soon as I started listing these items on the Auction House, Horizon Dawn would definitely come calling when they realized what I was up to, but I’d have the advantage of being the first mover.

  Because as impossible as it seemed that gamers had ignored Trelor’s crafting system so thoroughly in the interest of killing monsters, there was the evidence, or rather the lack of evidence, here on the Auction House in front of me.

  So I took one of the potions and listed it. There was no suggested pricing based on what the potion had gone for because nobody else had tried to sell a potion like this.

  Again that tingle hit me.

  With every new discovery I was backed up in my assumption that I was the first person to find this, and every time I thought that it felt more and more ridiculous. That it had to be Horizon killing people who muscled in on their territory. Yet here was the lack of evidence in front of my eyes.

  If Horizon was killing people who put stuff up for sale on the Auction House then it stood to reason there’d still be some items on the Auction House from people who didn’t know any better, but I was looking at a whole lot of nothing across the entire game world.

  So I started listing shit.

  The Auction House had all the usual options. I could set up a straight up auction, or I had the option of allowing a Buy It Now price. Considering I had no idea what these potions should even go for, I decided I was going to do a straight auction and let the market dictate what it thought something that gave a person a bonus to all their abilities was worth.

  I figured there was a good chance that whatever I set a Buy It Now for wasn't going to be nearly close enough to what people would be willing to pay, and my instincts were screaming at me not to leave any money on the table.

  I briefly considered unloading everything I had onto the market. After all, if there wasn't anything up there then I could corner the market. I did a quick search for other enhancement potions and found some, but they were all Horizon Syndicate branded. They offered all sorts of nifty bonuses, but nothing close to what I had.

  I decided a little bit of scarcity might help. Horizon was flooding the market with their potions, but I was going to do things a little differently. I’d see what a couple of them went for, give potential buyers the impression there was some scarcity involved, and then adjust the price from there.

  “Potions are up,” I said, looking up from the auction interface.

  Keia and Kris were still scanning the place looking for trouble, but everything else in the Auction House seemed like business as usual.

  “Good, so we can go?” Keia asked.

  “Not quite,” I said. “I’ve still got all that Horizon gear, and I need to get a vault while we’re here.”

  Keia sighed and hit me with a look that told me I needed to hurry the fuck up. A sentiment I could totally get behind, but honestly I was having too much fun with this to be too worried about Horizon.

  The next part was easier. There were a bunch of Horizon weapons that were the same as the ones I couldn't disenchant. Even better, they all had a firm Buy It Now price. No auction for those. So I listed the weapons I “found” at a ten percent discount below what Horizon listed their stuff at.

  I figured that’d be good enough to get their attention, piss them off, and also make me a tidy profit at the same time. Selling Horizon stuff was nothing but profit considering how I acquired it.

  Finally I pulled out my last listing for the day. A plain sword I’d bought at a merchant for a trial run selling a Spellcrafted item.

  It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to narrow my search to certain spell infusions, but the Auction House search was obligingly granular once I played with it a bit.

  I looked up items that had similar spell infusions, and didn’t find much in the way of comparable gear. Just like with the potions, it would appear that no one was selling Spellcrafted items yet. I’d be the first to go live with this discovery, and after my conversation with Trelor I was pretty sure I actually was the first mover here.

  Which was a hell of an advantage, but I had no idea what to list my weapon for since there was nothing comparable on the market.

  The sword was better than the Horizon stuff at the same level, so I figured screw it. I tossed it up for an auction price and set the lowest bid at ten percent lower than what a comparable piece of Horizon gear would go for.

  When I’d finished I turned and looked at Keia. I grinned and gave her a thumbs up.

  "I think we're good to go for now," I said.

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s get you a vault and get the hell out of here.”

  “Might want to hurry,” Kris said. “Our friends at the entrance are looking worried about something.”

  I looked to the goblins I’d made nice with at the entrance. Sure enough they were alternating between glancing outside and turning to make little waving motions at us.

  “Come on,” Keia said. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “No way?” she said, staring at me like I’d grown a second head or something.

  “If we go out there then there’s a good chance we run into Horizon Dawn people and I lose my shit,” I said. “If I get a vault and toss my stuff in there then there’s a one hundred percent chance I keep my shit.”

  Keia opened her mouth like she was going to protest, but for a surprise Kris chimed in to defend me.

  “He’s got a point,” she said.

  “What if I lose my stuff?” Keia said. “I’ve worked hard to get this shit!”

  “And I’ll buy you new stuff with what I make on the Auction House or make you something better with the goblinsteel we’re about to lose,” I said.

  She stared at me for a moment, then sighed and disappeared.

  “I’m going to go scout outside. Hurry up,” she said.

  “On it,” I said.

  “I’m going to stand here and look menacing with my hammer,” Kris said.

  I patted her on the shoulder. “You look menacing buddy.”

  I turned to the other side of the Auction House where there was a massive vault that looked like something out of an old school bank from back in the days when money was a physical thing and not a bunch of numbers on a screen. A goblin stood behind a counter leaning against it looking bored, though she perked up as I approached.

  “I need a vault,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to the entrance. “And I need it fast.”

  “But of course,” the goblin said, smiling and showing rows of pointed teeth. “I can provide it for you at a slight discount considering your business relationship with us."

  "Business relationship?" I asked.

  The goblin’s grin grew even more predatory. “I heard you were going to do everything in your power to rid our town of the Horizon Dawn? I believe that was how you phrased it to my associate? So tell me, was that mere idle boasting?"

  I glanced over my shoulder. The goblin who’d been helping me list my items grinned a similarly rapacious grin and gave us a little wave. I’d have to keep in mind t
hat these goblins had scary good hearing. Or, more likely, the system allowed them to communicate without actually holding a conversation.

  I turned back to the vault vendor and my face hardened. "No boast. I'm going to run those assholes out of here if it kills me."

  It probably was going to kill me several times before this was all said and done. My quest against Horizon Dawn was going to kill me in very unpleasant ways I wasn't going to care for considering how realistic things were in this game, but thems were the breaks.

  "Well then it's a simple business arrangement," the vault vendor said. "You're the first person I've seen actually making promises like that, and I think you're the kind of person our organization want to make a business arrangement with."

  I grinned. "Fine. What's the cost for a vault?"

  There was some haggling, but in the end I was the proud owner of enough vault space to hold everything I’d need for a good long while. It was certainly enough to hold all the extra potions I had as well as all the ore I’d gathered with Keia and the leftover gems I had sitting in my inventory.

  I almost handed all the gems over, then hesitated. I decided to keep a couple of water gems in my inventory. Those things had been a useful defense, after all, and I figured I wanted to have at least one around in case things went pear-shaped and I needed to to create an improvised explosive magic device.

  Not to mention I really wanted to see about getting more points in Spellcraft Combat.

  "A pleasure doing business with you, sir," the goblin said. “And best of luck to you in your quest.”

  "You too," I said.

  I turned to see Kris running for the door with her hammer out. The goblin guards also looked like they were on edge, and not at all happy about what they saw going on out there.

  “Company coming!” Keia said. “I hope to fuck you’ve dropped off your stuff!”

  None other than Gregor stepped through the door, his eyes searching. He didn’t get a chance to do much but scan the room before Kris’s hammer came up and hit him under the chin with one hell of an uppercut.