Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  Dave was surprised when Emily asked him what a zone was, and then she had to explain about the zone notification they got when she and the girls had gone a few feet into the river. He explained how zones had worked in older games, as a way to load up smaller portions of the game at a time and making it easier for computers to process. He talked about how in some games you would get an extended loading screen and that creatures from one zone could not follow into another zone. He irritated Emily when he talked about mob trains and laughed because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on what their current situation was and she really didn’t understand the amusement he felt at memories of creating what he called trains of mobs to “teach a lesson to those stupid kill stealers.” When he offered more explanation, she simply asked if it mattered now, and he swallowed his grin and admitted that it probably didn’t.

  The real tension came when they discussed their plans for the immediate future. Emily argued that if she understood what Dave was saying about zones correctly that their best hope of finding civilization lay on the other side of the zone line in the Eastern Albia Logging Zone. Dave argued again that there was no guarantee that finding “people” would be safe. He pointed out that there were numerous racial options available to them when they were getting their new bodies. He pointed out that some of those races seemed terrifying and that there was nothing to say that Eastern Albia was any more human than it was Spiderkin. In opposition, Emily pointed out that they knew the beasts here were dangerous, but they had no idea what to expect from the new zone. Dave made a smartass comment about the ‘devil you know versus the devil you don’t know,’ and Emily gave him a sour look.

  Eventually, after a few more minutes, they reached a compromise. Dave agreed that in two days’ time they would leave the forest and go to this new logging zone in search of a village, but Emily had to agree to allow Dave to spend the next two days trying to level up. He had to promise to be as safe as possible and not take any unnecessary challenges, although truth be known, while she understood why he felt that gaining more levels would help to protect them, she still wasn’t prepared to understand a world that worked like this. They both agreed that the children would stay up in the tree with Emily. Finally, their conversation was broken by the rumbling of Dave’s stomach. It was hard not to laugh at the noise it made, reminding them that even in the midst of all their new struggles, they were still human, still had needs.

  Emily and Dave got out the rations of jerky and tack bread and prepared them while waiting for the kids to wake up. Over the next half hour, each of the kids awoke in turn and each was comforted as much as they would allow and then offered some breakfast. None of them were happy with this type of breakfast, but all were too hungry to complain, much. After they had all eaten, the plan was explained to the children. Mira complained about being left out of the leveling, saying that she was only a few more XP away from level 4, but Emily wouldn’t hear anything of her daughter doing any more fighting.

  Once all the arguing was over, Dave began climbing down the tree. Mira had offered to fly him down, but he wanted her to save the ring for when it would be needed. The tree had plenty of protrusions and branches making it easy to climb down. Of course, easy is a relative term. Prior to his transformation, descending fifty feet down a tree would have been unthinkable, but with his newfound strength it seemed not only possible but also not even all that taxing.

  As part of getting ready, Dave had allocated his unspent points, first the stat points and then the character points. He had considered saving some of the character points for later but had eventually determined that after the dire crocodile he needed every advantage he could gain. In his estimation, given what the family needed from him, the only three choices for his stat points were Strength for extra damage, Constitution for extra health, or Endurance to enable him to fight or run longer. He had been seriously concerned about his lack of stamina after their last prolonged fight. Ultimately, it was that concern that made his decision for him. So he dropped one point into Strength and one into Endurance.

  Deciding on the use of his ten remaining character points was more difficult. From what he had seen so far, the only points that produced a dramatic effect were points spent opening up a new school of magic, but he couldn’t focus on magic too much. He would have to trust Emily and Mira to handle that aspect of things. It chaffed to finally be in a world where magic was real, the world of his dreams, but to be stuck focusing on beating things with a sharp piece of metal rather than on using the magic which had filled his imaginings for so long. If there was one thing stronger inside of Dave, though, than his imagination, it was his sense of duty. He focused on the melee skills tab in his mind’s eye rather than the mage skills. He did also look at the hybrid skills, and while some of them seemed incredible, he was a long way from meeting the prerequisites for any of them. Eventually, he settled on trying to maximize the damage from his longsword and secondarily, its accuracy. So far with the creatures he had fought, the problem was less with hitting them and more with being able to kill them quickly enough to prevent them from tearing him up too much. This led to him adding 4 points into Long Blade proficiency which increased his accuracy by another 20% and his damage by another 4% and another 5 points into weapon specialization: longsword, which added an extra 25% damage to his blows.

  The last point was a concession to his inner desire to be a mage. He had seen the effectiveness of Mira’s evocation magic and Emily’s essence magic, but he also wanted to explore what other types of magic could do. His own Divination Magic, while being important in revealing the properties of their gear, was somewhat lackluster. Sure, Strike was helpful but not as game-changing as he had thought it might be initially. So after considering the unexplored magic types on the mage skills tab of Enchantment, Conjuration, Abjuration and Shaping, he ultimately decided on Shaping. The limited information provided to him about each type made all of them seem intriguing, but the description of shaping seemed most versatile, and since he wasn’t doing this as his primary source of power but as a concession to himself, it probably wouldn’t matter.

  Shaping Magic: This is the magic that defines reality. At its most basic level, Shaping magic will allow you to alter or enhance yourself or other creatures even to changing their physical structure. Yet that is the barest taste of Shaping magic. At higher tiers, foundational forces of the universe such as gravity, space, and even time can be altered to fit your whims. Determines the highest tier of Shaping spells available to you as well as increasing the effectiveness of those spells by 5%/level. 3x first-tier spells gained.

  Minor Binding: Cause two surfaces to become one. Maximum area is 10 sq. inches + 1 square inch/level. Duration on inanimate objects is 10 minutes + .5 minutes/level. Duration on living beings or worn gear is 1 tick + .1 tick/level Range: 5’+.5’/level. Cast Time: 1 sec. Mana: 15.

  Minor Mending: Repair an inanimate object up to 5'x5'+5 square feet/level from minor dmg. Cooldown: 1 minute. Range: Touch. Mana: 20.

  Minor Enlarge: Increase the size of an inanimate object by up to 100% in all dimensions. A living being by up to 50% in all dimensions. Duration for inanimate objects is 1 hour +5 min/level. Duration for living beings is 3 ticks+ 1/level. Mana: 50.

  Well, he wasn’t disappointed by that. He felt affirmed in his choice. Minor Enlarge, while costly, would have immediate combat applications, and he felt that Minor Binding would be useful. At least, if it worked the way he was thinking. He couldn’t stop imagining being like a mistborn with that spell. He even tried using it as he climbed down and found that it did, in fact, make his hand stick to the side of the tree so firmly that he couldn’t feel any separation between his hand and the tree itself. From his testing, it appeared that a tick was about 6 seconds, although he didn’t have a stopwatch to be entirely accurate. It didn’t really matter now though, as he put his feet upon the ground of the forest floor. He looked back up at his family and then started to look around for something to kill. He needed to be st
ronger.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Psyched is probably the most accurate word to describe how Dave was feeling this morning. He was down at the bottom of the tree and ready to try leveling. His family was safe up in the tree, and maybe it made him a bad person, but he felt so much freer with them up there. Certainly, it was in part because of his desire to ensure their safety that he was better able to relax now, but it was also because now for the first time since reaching Eloria, he really felt the excitement he always felt when starting a new game. Those first few levels when you learn the specifics of movement or timing or magic in a new game. He was no professional gamer but rather one who gamed for the love of it, and now he was fulfilling a lifelong dream of actually being inside a game. Well, at least a game world. If he dwelled on it too long, his mind would point out the many ways in which they had already discovered that Eloria deviated from his expectations of a game world, but he didn’t let himself go there. No, his family was safe, his stomach was full (even if it hadn’t tasted all that great), and he was alone in an alien game environment ready to pit himself against the beasts he would find.

  An outside observer, upon watching him might wonder at the raw exuberance he was displaying. After all, for all practical purposes, Dave was about to put his life on the line. That observer might consider Dave to be borderline unbalanced or disconnected from reality to so readily engage in life-threatening behavior, but such a view wouldn’t take into consideration the thrill that so many people of Earth gain from taking chances. Whether it’s skydiving, deep-sea diving with the sharks, racing a car, or even the simple rush of gambling, humans, or at least some of them, are made to revel in risk. Even the most pessimistic doesn’t always stop to really evaluate the risk to reward ratio in any activity. If that were not true, then lottery tickets would never be sold, unplanned pregnancies would never occur, and life would be a much more measured activity. It may often be thought that reckless behavior is the province of the young, but even the elderly will undergo risky long-shot surgery for even a slim chance of prolonging life.

  Dave, who would have considered himself a cautious man in his driving, legal practice, and most aspects of life, was viewing this not only as a game but as something far better than a game. He was viewing it as a game with real-world consequences, and his mind gravitated toward the positive aspects of those consequences rather than the threat of death. A game was, at least to him, an inherently good thing. So it wasn’t really all that shocking that he focused on the benefits of leveling over its risks. For once, leveling a character in a game would have real-world implications, and in his excited state, the only implication he was considering was one of awesomeness. Perhaps Dave was tackling this with a bit more excitement than he should have been, but could he really be blamed? Yesterday was a cluster in every sense of the word, but today was a new day, and he intended to treat it that way.

  The plan was for Dave to start by moving toward where the boar carcass has been left the day before as it had already attracted a predator once and wasn’t more than a few hundred feet from the base of the tree that the family was using as its base. If worse came to worst and Dave had to run back to the tree, the plan was for Mira and Emily to support him with their frost blades and healing spells respectively or even if it was safe for Mira to try to fly down with her ring and bring Dave back up. Dave reflected that healing was clearly much faster in this world, but it wasn’t fast enough to help out in the middle of a battle. It would take Dave a full 2 ½ hours to heal up all of his health, and in a battle, that would be an eternity. Those thoughts fled his mind as he broke out of the tree line and saw the corpse of the boar. Sure enough, it was being eaten by three dog-like beasts. They seemed to be too busy fighting over the best parts of the boar to have noticed him, so he cast his Assess Enemy spell and took the opportunity to visually examine them. He was shocked by the amount of information that he got from his spell as it was far more than he had gotten before, but he just assumed it was a result of his level relative to the beasts.

  Horned Drey Hound. Lvl: 3.Health: 100.

  Drey Hounds are pack hunters common to the Drey Plains in the south, but some have been imported as pets and later escaped. Small numbers of these beasts can be found in the Chenhou Forest.

  While considering the information that the spell had produced for him, he looked at the hounds. They were about the size of a mastiff but had a more pronounced jaw that was wider and blockier as well as a slender spiraled horn on their forehead. They were a mottled gray in coloration and seemed to be playfully fighting for the best eating spot on the boar. Dave only saw three of them and after having fought some of the much higher-level beasts, he perhaps felt a bit cocky about his ability to deal with level 3 beasts, even if he was only level 3 himself. He ran his hands over his armor, feeling the spot that his Minor Mending spell had repaired after multiple castings. It appeared to be sturdy, and he couldn’t tell it had ever been damaged by the flame lynx. He then cast his Sure Strike spell and pulled out his longsword while preparing to cast his Minor Enlarge Spell. It had been a concession that he had to make to Emily for her to allow him to go “hunting” that he attack every foe all out and not take any risks. Dave may have been feeling giddy about the imminent battle, but he was still a man of his word and he wasn’t going to hold anything back.

  Dave charged forward while spending the three seconds it took to cast his second spell, and then he was upon the beasts. His approach hadn’t been quiet, but the hounds had each individually hesitated when hearing and then seeing his approach because they didn’t want to give up their spot on the boar. So, only one of the hounds had actually started to move toward him. As he came up upon his target, his body was wracked by a split second of pain as he started to expand. It was brief but almost caused him to stumble. He hadn’t been fully prepared for how the magic would feel. First, the rush of 50 mana pouring out at one time was dramatic, a much larger rush than the 35 of his Sure Strike spell, but even more profound was the way it felt for his own mana to pour into the very structure of his body. It affected him down to a molecular level. His size expanded by 50% in every measurement, his height, his weight, his width. He was massive now, but it wasn’t limited to that. His muscle fibers multiplied to match his increased size, and his bones grew denser to support his massive weight. Dave had never been a science guy and so would have been shocked to realize that his formerly 6’0”, 200-lbs. frame was now more like 9’0” and 680-lbs. In the end, it was only his excitement at the prospect of fighting and gaining XP that kept him focused enough to land his first hit.

  The magic of his Sure Strike took over, and he saw the perfect way to strike the single charging hound. His now significantly enhanced strength in his giant frame pushed the sword forward in a powerful thrust to a vulnerable spot between the neck and shoulder blade of the hound. The magic made it a critical hit, and the physics of his enhanced strength combined with the momentum of not only his charge, but that of the hound as well, produced an amazing result. At the same time, he saw in the corner of his mind’s eye a timer for his enlarge buff ticking down from 24 seconds, his enlarged sword drove into that precise spot he had targeted. He got another combat notification with that blow.

  Critical Strike: Base damage: 10 +130% (strength) + 5% (Long Blade skill) +25% (weapon specialization) * 4 (sure strike, base critical strike, momentum bonus) = 104 damage.

  He knew he had to push the notification away immediately, but freak, he had just one-shotted his first monster. This was truly awesome, or it would have been if the hound’s little spiral horn had not also found a way to dig into his thigh, piercing his armor and causing (24) damage. It hurt, but his excitement and the need to respond to the other two hounds who were coming at him kept him from doing more than crying out briefly. He reached forward and pulled the horn out of his leg while
simultaneously sliding the hound a few inches further down the three feet of steel impaling it. Then with his newfound strength, he gripped his sword handle in both hands and flung the corpse of the first hound into the two oncoming hounds. In combat, what takes seconds to describe actually happens in fractions of a second. So it was that he stood there favoring his right leg while one hound yelped on the ground, having been struck by the flung corpse of its packmate, and the final hound was upon Dave faster than he could react. By instinct alone, he raised his left arm in a rising block to shield himself and felt its boxy mouth clamp down on his arm. In that instant, he knew why their jaws were shaped in this distended fashion. It was stronger than he would have ever imagined, and he immediately felt teeth crushing through his armored vambrace and even his thickened bone started to crack under the pressure.