by Erik Rounds
A message hovered in the air in front of her:
You have died and respawned.
Time elapsed in Oblivion: 1 hour, 9 minutes
You have lost 5% of your level progress, bringing you to 0 XP.
She dismissed the message by tapping it away. Respawned? As in being reborn after death in a video game?
Tasha felt different. It wasn’t clear how, but she didn’t feel the same as before. It was as though she’d changed somehow, that she wasn’t the same person anymore.
Taking in her surroundings, Tasha quickly realized that she was in the same starting room that she had appeared in earlier. At her feet, clay fragments littered the ground. The large metal box was where she had left it: on the pressure plate. Light shone through the large door at the far end of the room. It was the room with all of the weapons where that… thing had killed her.
A rush of anger overcame her. Anger at herself for dying so easily. Without pausing to think about what she was doing, Tasha headed toward the door. Picking up one of the spears, she peered into the room and saw the two creatures wandering about in repeating patterns. They hadn’t noticed her. She waited patiently until they both had their backs to the door.
The moment the boblins’ backs were turned, Tasha ran into the room and thrust the spear, impaling one of the creatures in the back.
2 Boblins appear! Combat started.
Backstab – critical hit – Tasha deals 2 damage to Boblin B.
Boblin B dies.
The boblin let out a scream of pain and vanished. Its body dissolved into a purple cloud of particulate vapor that dispersed into the room. The spear that impaled the creature was covered in blood.
The second boblin rushed to attack her, but Tasha extended her spear in an attempt keep it at bay. Her attacker tried to move past her spear but was unable to dodge past her defense, so it returned to its earlier position.
Tasha quickly scanned the room. The gunblade was lying on the ground next to her corpse, which still lay unmoving. Her corpse’s dead, unblinking, unseeing eyes locked on the ceiling above.
No time to get all weirded out and introspective now, Tasha. There are monsters to kill.
She reached down with her free hand and picked up the gunblade from where it lay on the stone tile, dropping the spear. With no small amount of trepidation, she approached the boblin and slashed at it in a downward motion, and the blade opened a diagonal cut into its skin. The boblin didn’t even try to dodge her attack.
Tasha deals 1 damage to Boblin A.
The creature lunged at her in response, but she backpedaled, losing her balance and falling backward to the floor, causing her to land right beside the corpse. The boblin rushed her, so she stabbed toward it. The creature’s own momentum drove it right into her blade. She pulled the gunblade’s trigger, causing the blade to vibrate and ignite, tearing the boblin apart from the inside.
Tasha deals 1.5 damage to Boblin A.
The creature’s body vanished, fading into the same purple haze as its companion and rapidly dissipated into the surrounding air.
Victory! All enemies have been vanquished.
+10 experience gained (90 to next level)
6 GP found.
Boblin blood coated her white shirt with splotches of red. As a wave of nausea set in, she started to retch, but since her new body had never eaten anything, she had nothing to throw up.
Getting to her feet, she backed away from the woman’s body in the center of the room. It was her body, still dressed in the bathrobe and bloodstained PJs. There was a smattering of blood pooled on the ground, and her pajama top was soaked red.
Upon seeing the wound in the corpse’s belly, Tasha’s hand went to her own belly sympathetically. But Tasha had no such wound. Her skin was smooth and without any injury.
The air was frigid, causing her teeth to chatter. The simple cloth garments that she had respawned with provided no real protection from the cold. She gazed at her corpse’s bathrobe longingly. It looked warm and inviting. She found herself actually considering looting her own body.
She couldn’t quite believe what she’d done to those boblins. Knowing herself, after respawning she should have curled up into a fetal position. Instead the first thing she’d done after coming back to life was to kill two creatures. Now she thought about killing more boblins and was excited by the idea.
The old Tasha hated violence of any kind. She wouldn’t harm a fly. She literally captured flies in bottles and set them free outside. That’s how much of a pacifist Tasha used to be. How had she changed so much in such a short period of time?
Gathering her determination, she moved to her former body and carefully removed the cell phone from her bathrobe pocket. She then drew out her arms from the bathrobe. The body was limp and didn’t resist movement. The body was still warm to the touch. Ignoring the unfortunate smell as best as she could, Tasha removed the bathrobe and dragged the body to the corner of the room. She wished she could bury it, but that didn’t seem practical in her current situation.
It seemed somehow appropriate to offer a short prayer over her corpse, just in case.
Tasha opened her menu by swiping up and accessed the inventory page. She pulled out her phone and touched the button to store it away. Her phone was currently the only object in her inventory list.
She wanted to explore the menu system and learn more about the world that she had been transported to. Right at that moment, however, Tasha was more interested in finding mobs to kill.
Chapter 5
The Pugilist and the Thief
Two travelers stood upon a hill overlooking the valley. The man and his adopted daughter had spent the last two months trying to reach this place. The latitude and longitude they had been given matched up; they had made it without a moment to spare.
The girl wore a tunic, trousers, and a brown cloak that partially hid her brown hair. She was short, and her frame was almost painfully thin. She couldn’t afford a true invisibility cloak, but her cloak was enchanted with an unnoticeability enchantment, which was nearly as good. Monsters were less likely to target her and people’s eyes naturally slid off her as though she wasn’t there when the ability was in effect.
She adjusted her glasses and tapped at a translucent glass-like panel, which hovered before her in the air. To anyone who might have seen her, it would appear as if she was just tapping at the air. Menu screens were only ever visible to their users.
After a few taps, a spyglass materialized out of thin air and into her hand. She dismissed the menu with a gesture and regarded the spyglass.
Her name, Pan, was etched into the spyglass using stylized lettering. It was both elegant and functional, designed to allow the user to see long distances. It was spelled to increase magnification, but doing so cost the user mana points, and Pan needed to conserve the small amount she had left. Even without using mana, the spyglass was a useful tool.
Her father had given it to her for her fifteenth birthday a few months past. In only two years’ time, she would be considered a full-fledged adult. This concerned her for a moment, but she put her worries out of her mind. She needed to remain alert. They were traveling through the wilderness, far from the safety of civilization and the protection offered by well-traveled roads.
Her hands were trembling, but she steadied them as she brought the spyglass to her eye. Peering through the spyglass at the valley below, she could discern the outline of an ancient structure. She pulled up the map screen from her menu, and the familiar translucent pane of ethereal glass revealed the area map. Her map could only show places where she had already visited and was expanding as she traveled. She had plotted the longitude and latitude coordinates into her map, and a navigation point appeared at their destination.
“Ari,” she said, pointing. She handed the spyglass to the man, and he took it from her trembling hands.
“Don’t call me Ari,” the man said. “It’s Dad, remember? You’re supposed to call me Dad.”
&
nbsp; Ari was several feet taller than Pan and was wearing a heavily worn set of travel garments. His tattered cloak was in desperate need of either repair or replacement, but he had made it a rule to avoid towns and the services they provided. As long as Pan wore her hood up and Ari wore his hat, onlookers from a distance might mistake them for elves. Advertising their status as human refugees would be an invitation for trouble.
Since setting out, they had been assaulted twice by angry natives. The war with the humans was still too fresh in elven memory, and the law was liable to turn a blind eye whenever humans were the victims. Fortunately, they had very nearly reached the end point of their journey.
He took the spyglass from her and inspected the distant structure. There was evidence of some of the ruins of an ancient city. Dozens of stone columns stood like sentinels on the grassy field. The columns were the only complete things, so much of the structure had crumbled to dust, ravaged by the ages. Some of the stone columns were partially collapsed, but a few held their vertical form. A maze of dilapidated walls indicated where buildings used to be.
“I can see a structure,” Ari said. “I think that area with the pillars might have been a castle. Or maybe a temple. What do you think? Should we head there first?”
Pan waited for a moment and offered a shallow nod.
“Good,” he said, returning Pan’s spyglass to her. “If things go well, we should be able to reach our destination before nightfall. Let’s get moving.”
They descended the hill toward the structure. Ari took up the lead, and his daughter trailed several paces behind.
After traveling for about twenty minutes, a notification appeared in Ari’s log:
Entering new zone: Temple Ruin – Northern Outskirts
Recommended level: 12 – 15
They both came to an abrupt stop. This could be problematic. Ari was a level 11 monk and Pan was a level 6 thief. If multiple level 15 mobs appeared, it could be trouble. Level wasn’t everything, of course. High-level equipment could bridge the level gap, but neither of them were burdened with an overabundance of good gear.
Mobs weren’t truly sentient, and that was their main weakness. If you learned their attack patterns, it wasn’t impossible for a low-level adventurer to defeat a much higher-level monster. Things became more complicated when fighting multiple opponents, however.
“Go around?” said Pan, drawing a circle with her hands.
Ari shook his head. “We could try to circumnavigate the zone, but we don’t know its shape or extent. Mapping it would take time, and according to Libra’s prophecy, we need to be there by tonight.”
He pulled out the small slip of paper that he had received from the Libra, the Eidolon of Prophecy. The text written on it said: “To find a cure, travel to longitude 33.285947, latitude -96.572767 by sundown on Catuary 29th.”
There was still plenty of time to make it by nightfall, but only if they traveled in a straight line. If they were killed, they would respawn at their last save point nearly a hundred miles to the east.
Death in Etheria was not permanent, but resurrection came at a cost. The person who died would lose 5% of their level progress, whatever equipment they didn’t have in their inventory would remain with their corpses, and they would lose any distance they had traveled since saving. There were also less tangible costs to resurrection.
While a person’s spirit and memories survived the transition from one body to another, something ineffable was lost. The new body was not simply a copy of the old one but an approximation. There were always differences between the old body and the new one, including significant deviations in the brain’s makeup. Those differences led to changes of personality. When someone resurrected, their memories survived but their personality was lost forever.
Pan had died three times in her short life, and although her autism had survived each of her rebirths, something was lost each time it happened. Her tastes, preferences, and behavior changed radically every time she died. She didn’t feel that she loved as deeply now as she had in her first life and often thought about that version of herself.
The XP loss was painful and could mean days or weeks of lost experience grinding, but that wasn’t the main reason that people avoided death. It was the loss of self that people feared the most.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Ari. “We’ll have to cut straight through. If we get attacked, we’ll run rather than fighting. Otherwise, just be careful and try not to draw aggro. We can’t afford to take any risks.”
It wasn’t in Ari’s nature to run from a fight, but experience had taught him to be pragmatic. Now he had someone he cared about to protect, and this quest was important to them both.
Descending the hill, they continued their journey toward the temple ruins. Just under an hour later, a purple mist-like cloud began to form around them. Occasionally specs of light emerged and drifted to and fro on the wind before flickering out. The misty substance that surrounded them was known as ethereal mist. The fact that they could see it was the telltale indicator that they were about to face a random encounter.
“Time to suit up,” Ari said, tapping at a quick-slot on his HUD. His travel clothing was replaced by a white martial artist gi that marginally boosted his defense and speed-derived stats. As a pugilist, he fought unarmed and didn’t use weapons. Some pugilists used brass knuckles or claws, but use of those weapons would have precluded the use of certain abilities. Also, they cost money, which was in short supply.
Pan tapped at her HUD interface, and a crossbow materialized in her right hand, her weapon materializing in her outstretched hand. Her travel clothing was replaced by a set of studded leather armor.
It simply wasn’t practical to travel while wearing leather armor due to the oppressive summer heat, so she only equipped the armor when she expected to be in combat. She had her combat equipment set to a quick-slot on her HUD so she could change between travel clothing and combat attire in a matter of seconds.
A pouch of bolts appeared on her belt. Her choice of the crossbow made sense given her weak strength stat, but she dearly wished she could switch to firearms. Unfortunately, quality dwarf-made guns were expensive, and the cheaper Zhakaran and elven-made imitations weren’t worth it. The crossbow was a reasonable compromise.
She had experimented using a classic compound bow, but she lacked the upper body strength needed to fire it with sufficient force. The amount of damage that a bow dealt was derived from the user’s strength, and she would never be strong. She considered the crossbow a more elegant weapon, as it improved her aim significantly. Of course, the drawback to the crossbow was its reload time. Reloading a crossbow took several times longer than a regular bow.
She used the wooden cocking lever to arm the crossbow. Her hands were shaking, so she closed her eyes and counted backward from ten. When she opened them, her hands were steady. Just a little further; she was almost there.
She chose to go with a standard bolt with an iron tip. This variety of ammunition could be recovered after firing, saving valuable GP. If she needed to swap it out for a more expensive explosion, freeze, or poison bolt, she would be able to do that before firing. She’d have to read the situation to know what was appropriate.
The mist continued to swirl around them. The random encounter would trigger as they started moving. Pan took a position a dozen feet behind Ari. She was a ranged fighter and needed to keep her distance from the fight if possible.
Once again, Ari started walking, his legs displacing the mist with every step he took. Pan followed at a safe distance. They proceeded in this way for about a minute before the mist abruptly pulled together to a point in front of the pair. It gathered into coherent shapes, revealing the outline of two creatures. As the purple cloud coalesced, it solidified, and two fully formed mist monsters (colloquially known as “mobs”) stood before them. One of them was a towering ogre and the second creature was a snake woman.
Pan’s HUD was replaced by the combat HUD. Scan infor
mation for the two monster types appeared in a separate window beside her combat log.
Grogre (Level 14)
A towering mass of muscle and body odor, a grogre is kind of like an ogre but with more grrr factor.
ATK 26Mag ATK 0
DEF 18Mag DEF 12
Lamia (Level 8)
Part snake, part woman, all deadly. The woman part is in the top half, not the bottom half.
ATK 12Mag ATK 8
DEF 12Mag DEF 8
1 Grogre and 1 Lamia appear! Combat started.
Grogre (Level 14) attacks Ari.
Lamia (Level 8) attacks Ari.
The level 14 grogre stood several feet taller than Ari. Shaggy brown pants covered its green bark-like skin. The large mob held a club as large as a tree over its head as the creature prepared to bring it down. Over the grogre’s head, ten heart containers appeared beside its name and level.
Pan was standing a safe distance away. If she had been too close, she would have gained aggro, meaning that the mobs would have attacked her rather than Ari.
Noticing the small pouch on the grogre’s belt, Pan held out one hand toward it and invoked her thief ability, shouting, “Steal!” The knot keeping the pouch secured to the creature’s belt came untied, and the pouch flew through the air and into her outstretched hands.
When mobs died, they vanished into mist along with anything they might have been carrying. For that reason, it was necessary to use Steal during battle in order to gain extra loot.
The moment the pouch appeared in her hands, Pan dropped it into her inventory without even looking at it. She would have time to inspect whatever it was once the battle was over.
“I don’t think running is an option,” said Ari. “Grogres are faster than they look. Don’t worry Pan, we can take them.”
Beside the grogre, the level 8 lamia spit a poison attack at Ari. Ari dodged the attack, but doing so moved him closer to the grogre’s downswing. The grogre’s club smashed against Ari, knocking him back. The hit had cost him four hearts, bringing him down to eight from his original twelve. The attack timer for both monsters began to refill.