Couch Potato Chaos- Gamebound

by Erik Rounds

  One of the card players turned to the other. “Will ya listen to this tree-hugging socialist drivel? Nobody can own an NPC… right. Lord Hempledon controls access to it and keeps it guarded. How is that not ownership? Look, are you going to pay the fee or not?”

  Aralogos thought for a minute. “I just need to use this NPC to buy some food and supplies for this baby.”

  The woman at the card table said, “I don’t see how that’s our problem. Either cough up the money or stop bothering us.”

  “Can I check the price of baby formula, diapers, and some clothing?”

  The man crossed his arms. “Money first. And don’t get it into your head that you can fight all four of us and live. I’m a level 12 swordsman, and my buddies are all level 7 to 8. We’re more than a match for a level 4… whatever you are.”

  Aralogos thought for a minute. “I’m not sure there will be enough left over to buy the supplies if I pay the fee. Can you check the prices for me?”

  “Why would we do that?” one of the card players asked.

  “Because I’m carrying a starving baby,” Aralogos said. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

  At this, the entire group started laughing. The laughter didn’t let up for about a minute. Finally the swordsman said, “I’ll tell you what, funny man, I’ll check for you, but it’ll cost you 10 GP.”

  “Fine.” Resigned, Aralogos handed over a 10 GP coin. The man took it and went to join his friends at the card game, throwing the coin into the pot in the center of the table. “I’m in for 10 GP next round.”

  “Hold on a second!” said Aralogos. “You said you’d check the prices for me.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?” mused the swordsman. “There’s no need. This NPC merchant only buys and sells weapons and armor. It won’t sell groceries or clothing. Try the one in the city square… if you can still afford the fee, that is.”

  “If you knew I wanted baby supplies, why didn’t you tell me that this NPC couldn’t help me?”

  “I was hoping you’d be dumb enough to give us some GP for nothing. Turns out I was right.”

  For a moment, Aralogos considered attacking the four of them, level difference and numbers be damned. But his only priority was taking care of his master, so he let the matter drop and started walking toward the city square.

  “Have a nice day, and thank you for your business,” the man called to him while his friends laughed.

  He might have had enough before, but after losing 10 GP, there was no way he would have enough left over for supplies. Maybe he could find a human-run item shop or grocery store. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to pay a fee to Lord Whatever-His-Name-Was.

  An elven man dressed in simple clothing was walking past. Aralogos put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Hello. Can you help me?”

  The elf turned to look at him, and for the first time Aralogos noticed the iron collar around the elf’s neck. Instead of answering, he cast his eyes to the ground and started walking faster.

  Another elf was walking past, this one a white-haired elven girl. She wore the same iron collar around her neck. Aralogos approached her cautiously. “Excuse me, miss?”

  She cast her eyes to the ground and whispered, “Please, please don’t talk to me. I’m sorry, master.” She cast her eyes to the ground and sped away.

  “Don’t waste your breath, kid. They won’t answer you, no matter how times you ask,” said an elderly human woman from outside one of the wooden houses.

  Aralogos approached the old woman. “Old mother, why won’t they speak to me? And why are they wearing those metal collars?”

  “Don’t call me old, sonny! I’m barely seventy years young. Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a lady’s age?”

  “But… I didn’t ask about your age.”

  “Good thing, too. I’m already tempted to give you a piece of my mind for calling me old.”

  Aralogos looked at her, confused. “But I already have a piece of someone else’s mind, why would I need a piece of yours?”

  The old woman was used to confusing other people and putting them on the defensive. With his perplexing statement, she had been unexpectedly thrust outside of her comfort zone. “What do you mean you already have a piece of someone else’s mind?”

  “I’m a figment, and this little child is my summoner. That means I’m using an unused portion of the girl’s mind to think for myself.”

  The old crone looked thoughtful. “I see. I’ve heard talk of summoners but ne’er met one in my long eighty years of life.”

  “I thought you said you were seventy?”

  “Are you asking about my age again, kid?” The woman was now back in her element.

  “Only tangentially,” Aralogos said, blundering right into the old woman’s trap. “I was trying to ask about those elves. You said they wouldn’t talk to me no matter how many times I asked. Also, I wanted to know about why they were wearing collars.”

  A look of understanding and sadness appeared on her face. “They’re wearing those iron collars because they’re slaves. If they are caught speaking to strangers, their human owners might punish them in order to reassert dominance. You aren’t doing them any favors by trying to talk to them.”

  “So this country has slavery,” he muttered.

  “Of course it does,” she said, “Where are you from that you don’t know that?”

  “I’m a figment. I just told you that a minute ago. This little girl summoned me.”

  The old woman looked around, confused. “What little girl?”

  “The one I’m carrying in my arms.”

  The old woman cackled. “Ah, that little girl. So she’s a summoner. I’ve heard of summoners, but I’ve never met one in my entire eight-five years of life.”

  “But you said…” Aralogos started, but then he stopped, deciding it best not to press the issue about her age. That wasn’t progressing what was already a circular conversation, and he suspected that the old woman was just toying with him.

  “Yeah, I might have guessed that you weren’t from around here, judging by your crazy antics and the way you go around asking random girls for their age. Well, then. May I be the first to welcome you to Zhakara, the country of perfect freedom.” She spoke the words with clear contempt. “That’s what the people in charge like to call it, anyway.”

  “Perfect freedom? Why is it called that?”

  “Here in Zhakara, there is only a single law: that no human may claim mastery over another. Other than that one rule, humans are free to do whatever they like without interference from the government.”

  “What about those elves from a moment ago?” Aralogos asked. “They were slaves, what’s so free about that?”

  “Nothing,” the old woman said, “I used to think that the right to own slaves made us more free to pursue our own goals, but I was just young and naive. Now that I’m young and arguably wiser, I know that slavery is a terrible thing. Thinking about other people as objects is the foundation of all evil acts. Read that in a book once.

  “The elves you passed by earlier are the property of Lord Hempledon, who controls this city and the surrounding land. Under the law, he can’t actually force you to do what he wants, but people won’t get far in life without being able to level or use NPCs, and he controls access to those things. If you want to get anywhere in life, you should avoid getting on his unhappy side.”

  She looked at the baby in Aralogos’s arms. “Is that your daughter?”

  “No,” Aralogos said with what he considered to be unlimited patience, “as I said earlier, she’s my summoner, and I’m her figment.”

  “Well, you should be keeping that kind of information to yourself. The people who live here are simple folk, meaning that they fear anything new and different and tend to react violently to things they don’t understand. From now on, she’s your daughter. Where did you get her, by the way?”

  “Actually, I found her abandoned in the wilderness. She summoned me to fight a bunch of monste
rs but then kept on summoning me. I’m looking for her parents. Why would anyone abandon their child?”

  “I literally just told you not to say out loud that you’re her figment. If people think you are different, they’ll probably kill you, and the girl for good measure. Criminy, some people never listen.”

  She took the girl before Aralogos had a chance to protest. “Well, that’s just typical. Just look at her scan data. It says that she has several disabilities. Autism, anemia, nearsightedness, muscular dystrophy… Tsk tsk. In Zhakara, people who can’t take care of themselves are often discarded. Her mother probably saw her stats and debuffs and left her in the woods so she could forget about her. It happens more often than you might think. You might be able to track the mother down, but it’s not really worth the effort.”

  She inspected the child more closely. “She doesn’t look well. What have you been feeding her?”

  “Nothing at all. I have no food fit for a baby and those… People here won’t let me use the merchant NPC to buy food. I’m a fighter, not a nanny. I know nothing about raising children. She hasn’t eaten anything in at least a day. The only food I have is a burrito from a loot drop.”

  “Are you stupid? Newborn babies can’t eat burritos. They might get indigestion.” The ancient woman seemed to come to a decision. “Well, better bring her inside, then. I’ll get her something to eat. If you need a place to stay tonight, you can have the couch. And don’t think of getting frisky just because I’m a young unmarried woman in her prime living all by herself.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “Don’t ma’am me, sonny. I never married, so miss is the appropriate moniker. And just so you know, I’m a high-level lightning mage and aspiring romance novelist, so just in case I’m wrong about you being good people, don’t go thinking that you’re at some sort of advantage.”

  “I would never take advantage of a beautiful young woman like you,” Aralogos said, catching on to the old woman’s game. “I do have a question, though. Why are you helping us, miss? Nobody else I’ve met seemed inclined to help us.”

  “What kind of a fool question is that?” she said as they entered her home. “Why am I helping a starving child and a clueless traveler? We can’t all be self-interested ne’er-do-wells who abandon their children in the woods. Zhakara will try to break you, to turn you into a bitter person with no moral restraint. I’m made of sterner stuff than that. My name’s Marina, by the way. They call me Mad Marina, though I have no idea why.” She extended her hand.

  “Aralogos,” he said, taking her offered hand and kissing it. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The years passed quickly. Aralogos raised his charge as best he could. He rented one of the rooms in Marina’s house and opened a martial-arts school to make money. The only thing he really understood was fighting, and opening a dojo seemed like the best way to utilize his talent. Marina suggested he open a casino, but Aralogos wouldn’t have known where to even start with that sort of business.

  When he wasn’t teaching, he fought against mist monsters in the wilderness to gain experience for himself and Pan. Marina told him that he was even madder than her to bring a child into the wilderness, but Aralogos wanted to raise her level as quickly as possible so that when the girl was old enough, she could assign some stat points to strength in order to counteract her anemia. Marina would tag along for support and to keep the girl safe while her father/figment was fighting. She would occasionally cast a lightning bolt or two when things became dicey, but mostly she held back, allowing Pan to get as much of the experience as possible.

  Lord Hempledon of Wilmarth took eighty percent of the GP that Aralogos earned from fighting mist monsters, but he got to keep the loot drops, and more importantly, the experience points. Aralogos had been warned that failure to pay his dues would lead to a bounty being put out on both him and his family.

  He was always careful to hide the fact that he was a figment. Aralogos didn’t really understand people, and so he took Marina’s warning very seriously, not wanting to risk angering the simple folk of Wilmarth.

  Whenever his summon timer was almost up, he went off somewhere private to despawn, only to be resummoned seconds later. Panella had learned to spawn him every time he disappeared. She had needed a parent, so she summoned one.

  Panella’s first word was “Ari.” Marina had taken to calling him Ari from that moment on. Her vocabulary slowly increased, though by her second year she still only spoke a handful of words.

  When she was five, she could still barely speak more than one word at a time, although her vocabulary had grown. She understood complex concepts like language but couldn’t articulate her thoughts into sentences. She had learned to read and write and often communicated by writing what she wanted to say into her notebook.

  When it came time to assign stat points, she followed her father’s instructions and put most of her stats into strength and a few into agility. Because of this, she was able to stand up and move around without needing to be carried.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  One day, a royal delegation arrived in town. The queen had sent a large contingent of elven slaves. The procession of slaves was led to the city save point in the center of the town and placed in cages on high platforms surrounding the save point, and a cage was assembled around the save point itself. A large gathering of citizens had congregated.

  The elven slaves looked somewhat different than the ones that Ari had seen in the city. For one thing, many of them were high level. One of the grown elven men was a level 42 archer. It was more than that, though. The elven slaves who lived in the city had given up. The eyes of these elves still shone with defiance and hope. Their will hadn’t been broken yet.

  Once the cages had been fully assembled, a herald stood upon the platform. His voice had been magically amplified so that everyone in the square could hear him speak.

  “Good people of Wilmarth, by order of Her Majesty the queen, you are to be given a gift. Bring forth any children in the town of at least two years of age who have not yet reached level 5. Your children will be quickly raised to level 5 and then will be returned to you. This is the queen’s order.”

  The queen’s men were moving through the crowd, examining one child after the next. One woman approached the herald, dragging her two boys behind her. “My children are both below level 5.”

  “Mine too!” said a different woman, who passed up a three-year-old girl.

  Marina turned to Ari. “We need to leave, now. Don’t let them see your daughter.”

  “Why not? Level 5 would give her enough stat points to counteract her physical disabilities. She needs this. The man said it was a gift from the queen. If it’s a gift, that means it’s free, doesn’t it?”

  The ancient woman grabbed his arm. “Trust me, those 5 levels come at a cost. Think about it. How do you think they would raise her level?”

  “I don’t know. I…” Then he saw the high-level elves held in cages around the save point. Comprehension dawned on him. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  Ari picked up Pan and turned to leave, but one of the queen’s men had already seen her. He approached and took the girl from Ari’s arms before he could react. Pan tried to resist, but her meager strength was nothing compared to the man who was carrying her. She was dropped right before the platform with several other children. The entire city had gathered. More children were being brought in every minute until there were nearly a hundred children alongside her.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Pan watched the crowd, seeing her father’s eyes upon her, looking confused.

  The children were arranged by the queen’s men into a line. An elven woman was bound and tied to a post in full view of the crowd below. The elven woman’s brown eyes blazed with defiance. She struggled against her bonds, but that just made the crowd laugh and cheer.

  One of the little boys was brought to the platform with the elven woman. He looked at the c
rowd and then back at the queen’s man, who was handing the boy a dagger. He took it. The dagger was emerald green and shone with its own light. The guard said something to him and pointed at the bound elven woman.

  For a moment, he looked uncertain. He looked to the crowd for support. The queen’s men were moving through the crowd, starting a chant. Before long, the entire crowd was chanting, “Kill the elf! Kill the elf! Kill the elf!”

  The boy looked at his parents, who had joined in the chant. He nodded and approached the bound elven woman. The elf shook her head, but the boy thrust the knife into her chest. It cut through her like a hot knife through butter. He pulled it out and stabbed her in the belly and then in the face. Each time, the knife ran straight through her with no resistance. Despite her high level, she died after only three imprecise stabs from the small child.

  The boy looked at his bloodstained hands in horror, but then his eyes were brought upward, and his expression changed. “I leveled up!” he declared.

  The crowd cheered his new achievement, and he held the glowing green dagger above his head in victory.

  Several more children were led to the platform, where each of them killed an elf. The victims’ cries for mercy were met with laughter and jeers from the crowd. Whenever a child killed one, they were met with cheers and adulation.

  The line continued to grow shorter, until Panella stood at its front. One of the men took Panella’s hand. “You’re next, girl. Come with me.”

  Panella’s entire body was shaking. She didn’t like this. The man led her up some makeshift stairs to the platform. The elven woman’s body from earlier had already been removed and thrown into a wagon. In her place, a dark-elven man with white hair and red eyes was being tied to the post.

  She was offered a glowing green dagger.

  God Slayer

  Class: Weapon (dagger)

  Artifact-tier item

  A dagger forged of the holy metal orihalcum.

  Damage: 90

  Durability: 672/900

  Active effects: Temporarily ignores level restrictions.