by G. D. Penman
Strategy paid off here. It wasn’t like other MMOs where he had to wait until the endgame before his talents actually became useful. It was like this game had been made for him.
Stepping right over the skewered corpse of the Pack Rat, Martin knocked a descending pickaxe off course so that it narrowly avoided Lindsay’s exposed back.
[Skaife BLOCKS 6 damage]
[Skaife suffers 6 stamina loss]
“Took you long enough,” she called. He could hear the laughter in her voice, almost on the edge of hysteria.
The blade of his sword was notched and bloodied, but there was still enough of its surface clear for him to see movement behind him. He spun and thrust it forward in the same motion, hammering the blade into a Tunnel Rat’s guts, right to the hilt.
He was used to the sight of blood. That was normal video game fare. The smells were something else.
[Tunnel Rat suffers 14 piercing damage]
Tunnel Rat has died.
Skaife gains 180 experience.
Rabid Ratmen
8/10 Murovan deserters slain
“Sorry,” he grunted in response to Lindsay’s comment. “I didn’t want to interrupt before you got your hits in. It’s like having a dog. You’ve got to give it plenty of exercise or it turns weird on you.”
She ducked a swinging pick that would have created a mineshaft right out the back of her head and cackled. “Did you just call me a bitch?”
[MISS]
“No. I just called you a hyperactive puppy.”
Martin threw himself onto the back of the Warren Warden, wrapping his free arm around its neck and leaving it reeling – wide open to Lindsay’s attacks.
[CRITICAL HIT]
[Warren Warden suffers 22 piercing damage]
Warren Warden has died.
Rabid Ratmen
9/10 Murovan deserters slain
She flicked blood from her knives onto the last surviving Murovan. “Puppies are cute. I can live with being a puppy.”
The rat backed away into the side of a building. Now that he had time to slow, Martin couldn’t help but notice how amazing the graphics were. He could actually see the Warren Warden’s throat moving as it gulped.
“Mercy?”
Lindsay glanced from the monster to Martin, eyes dancing over the corpses littering the village all around them, then back at the last thing between them and completing their quest. Lindsay answered.
“Bit late for that, ain’t it?”
[Warren Warden suffers 11 piercing damage]
[Warren Warden suffers 14 piercing damage]
Warren Warden has died.
Skaife gains 90 experience.
Rabid Ratmen
10/10 Murovan deserters slain. Quest complete.
They both stood very still for a long moment; the only sounds were the crackling of dropped torches and the heaving of their breath. Martin was startled when another message popped up.
Your Sin has been purged and you have returned to Aten’s grace.
He blinked open his character sheet. His class had returned to exorcist, his Sin now resting comfortably at -3. So… the change of class had been because his Sin had drifted into the positives. He was going to have to find someone to ask about that mechanic.
Sin definitely increased when you killed other players, but did it go down when you killed monsters? Was it tied into some sort of faction system? He really needed to find someone who wasn’t part of the crusade. And who wasn’t likely to set him on fire just for asking.
He called up his Healing Touch and patted Lindsay on the head, restoring her feathers to their original sheen and closing up the more obvious wounds on display.
[Tesra recovers 9 health]
She rustled those newly-shined feathers in appreciation. “Better late than never. You switched teams again?”
Martin shrugged. “Apparently killing rat-men isn’t as sinful as killing douchebags who are trying to murder you.”
“Who knew?”
Picking over the corpses revealed 19 silver pieces and a lot of vendor trash weapons that did comparable damage to what they already had equipped. It was their first quest; hardly surprising the game wasn’t showering them with riches.
They beat a hasty retreat out of the Murovan settlement before the remaining rat-men could rediscover their courage. The tunnels that had seemed so dangerous on their approach passed them in a blur.
Martin had never understood the visceral rush Lindsay got from games – his enjoyment had always been more about the satisfaction of solving a particularly tricky problem – but now he got it.
He was buzzing with energy. Joyful.
They burst out into the open air of the main cavern, still buoyed along in a cloud of their own contentment. Martin was halfway across to Beachhead before he realized Lindsay had fallen behind. He backtracked.
“What’s up?
Her eyes were closed.
“My notification just pinged,” she said. “I’ve got to call it a night.”
“Wait, what time is it?”
Martin briefly shut his own eyes and searched around for a clock, but there was nothing of the sort.
Lindsay’s eyes opened.
“Like, three or something? I set the reminder to the maximum it would let me.”
“You can set a reminder?”
Martin went back to searching through the menus.
“You’re meant to. Didn’t you get the health and safety spiel?”
Now it was his turn to snap his eyes open.
“Uh… no,” he said.
“The whole thing about overuse causing brain damage, and dreams about the game being a warning sign you’re playing too much?” She shrugged.
“Maybe I skipped it?” he said.
“Well, uh, don’t play too long or you’ll get a headache or something.” She started walking again, calling back over her shoulder, “I’ll keep you right, don’t worry.”
His brain was finally catching up to their conversation. Three in the morning. He had to be up for work in four hours.
“Do you still have time to hand the quest in?” he asked.
“Yeah, of course. Not like ten more minutes is going to hurt, right?”
They strode into town with their heads held high, but the residual pride only lasted for a moment before one of the guards hissed. “Decided to come back then, did you? That’s a pity.”
Lindsay spun on the lizard-man, hands going for her daggers. “The hell did you just say?”
Martin already had a grip on her wrist. “Don’t. It isn’t worth it.” He dragged her deeper into the town as she grumbled.
Lindsay had been given the quest by the captain of the guard, and since Martin didn’t fancy listening to another lecture about how meaningless he was compared to some made-up god, he went along with her to hand it in instead.
Captain Culvair was a Sythvan knight from the looks of him, with armor inlaid with ivory and scales to match. Like the other Sythvan, his eyes were vertically slit and strangely lifeless. The only clue Martin had that the immobile reptile was even alive and not a statue was the way his tongue kept flicking out to taste the air.
As usual, he let Lindsay do the talking.
“We killed ten Murovan deserters, as requested.”
Culvair didn’t move from his place. They’d found him at the top of the rickety central tower looking out over Beachhead. Much like the Lord Exorcist, he only had a few regular haunts, apparently.
“Tales of your triumph precede you. You did well, both of you, though I know it pained one of you to do it. You will go far in this crusade with commitment like that.”
Rabid Ratmen completed.
Skaife gains 900 experience.
LEVEL UP!
Lindsay mumbled, “Thanks” to the captain, but her attention had obviously been drawn to her iteration of that little golden notification too. Martin kept his mouth shut, but he was already desperate to get away from this place and look at what he’
d earned.
“There is another task for you, now that you have proved your value—"
Lindsay cut him off.
“Maybe in the morning, eh? Catch you later.”
They clattered back down the rickety stairs of the tower and burst out onto the street, their glee from earlier returning. Lindsay’s eyes were already pressed shut.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said.
Skaife Murovan Exorcist
Strength: 4 Agility: 7
Endurance: 7 Willpower: 6
LEVEL 2
You have 3 points to assign.
Obviously, Strength translated directly into how much damage his weapon attacks did.
Agility covered a lot of his mobility within the world, which now seemed to be a lot more important than he’d originally assumed. Higher agility could have gotten him up onto the roof out of harm’s way earlier.
Endurance determined both health and stamina, which were proving to be absolutely vital now that he understood how the combat actually worked.
As far as he could tell, stamina regenerated at a flat percentile rate, probably based on the class – he’d have to experiment with other options to be sure. If it was a percentile, a bigger stamina pool meant faster regeneration too.
He still hadn’t seen Willpower in action. From the way it impacted the other derived statistics it seemed to improve resistance to magic, and it seemed to increase the power of more mystical abilities too.
All of them had value, but at this point, when he was still getting used to the combat, he didn’t think making himself into a glass cannon was a good plan. Once he was more confident in his skills with his sword and spells, he could dump everything into strength or willpower as his preference demanded, but for now, making himself durable enough to survive to higher levels seemed like a better idea.
Strength: 4. Agility: 8
Endurance: 9 Willpower: 6
Health: 45 Stamina: 58
Martin strained to do the math in his head, but it all seemed to add up. That extra stamina was going to be particularly useful if combat went on being so technical.
You may select 1 new ability.
Trinity Strike – Activates after two successful Celestial Strikes. Shares a cooldown with Celestial Strike.
Deals 12 light damage.
Increases critical chance for all allies by 33% for 30 seconds.
[30-second cooldown]
Rebuke – Repulses a target creature by 5ft.
[60-second cooldown]
Halo – Blinds all hostile creatures looking in your direction within 20ft for 5 seconds.
Increased effect on targets with light-weakness.
[60-second cooldown]
All of them were pretty tempting. If this had been a regular MMO, Martin would have been all over Trinity Strike the moment he saw it, but here in Strata without a whole guild at his back, the other two seemed more immediately useful.
Halo was the first area of effect ability he’d come across so far, so that called out to him, but this game had fall damage, which meant that being able to give monsters a five-foot nudge could become incredibly useful in a lot of situations.
He selected Rebuke with a firm nod, then opened his eyes to see Lindsay bouncing up and down on the spot in front of him.
“I know we have to go to sleep, but this is amazing. Right?”
“Better than I could have imagined.” Martin grinned. It was starting to feel more familiar now. This body was starting to feel like it was his.
Lindsay rubbed at the back of her neck, not quite making eye contact.
“So I did the right thing, bringing you along?”
With some effort, he swallowed his pride.
“I… Yes. Thank you so much. And I will totally pay you back for the rig and the game and… everything. I promise. It might take me a little—”
Lindsay wrapped her hands around his snout.
“Stop. Stop. Honey, I don’t care about money. If you really want to pay me back, then you get me down to the end of this dungeon before everybody else. You use that juicy little brain of yours to puzzle it out and get us through to the end before everyone else. Then we’re even. Deal?”
He tried to answer, but she was still holding his mouth shut, so he was forced to nod. Lindsay crowed with victory.
“All right. Sleep tight. See you tomorrow!”
She closed her eyes and a pillar of light shot down from above to consume her. By the time Martin had blinked the afterimages away, she’d vanished, back into the real world.
With a heavy sigh, he opened up the menu and found the logout button himself. He knew that he had to sleep. He knew that he was going to be an absolute wreck in the morning regardless.
But choosing to leave Strata was still difficult, even if he had a million reasons to do so.
Martin didn’t see some shining light when he logged out. Only the darkness of his empty apartment.
Eight
Bane of the Beholder
If it wasn’t for caffeine, Martin was sure the whole world would come apart at the seams. Coffee might not have had the most delicious flavor, it might not even be a pleasant experience, but you could rely on it to pull you through when all your friends and family had abandoned you. There was no problem in life enough caffeine couldn’t fix. Well, maybe some heart conditions.
Today’s minor problem was having had only three hours’ sleep after being dumped unceremoniously back into an aching and exhausted body that barely felt like his own. The solution? One can of room-temperature coffee from the stockpile beside the computer, one “36-Hour Energy” from a vending machine at the subway station and one gut-wrenching serving of the slop from the office coffee machine.
Enough caffeine to give a bull elephant palpitations was just about enough to keep Martin in motion.
There was a tremor in his hands, but as long as Gillian kept out of his personal space nobody was likely to notice something that minor.
He’d remembered his clothes and ID badge, and patted his hair down into something resembling a hairstyle when he caught a glimpse of his haunted looking face reflected back at him from the subway train’s window. Nobody needed to know that anything was out of the ordinary.
But somehow, Gillian did.
Every time he glanced away from the screen she was there, hovering at the periphery of his vision like some deranged moth being drawn to the flame of his misery. She’d give him a scrunched-up little smile that reminded him of a sick dog and then he’d turn back to the screen because anything was better than looking at her faux pity, knowing she was just waiting for the opportunity to pounce on him and tear him to pieces.
By lunchtime he had been more productive than half the office combined, outstripping his usual score of orders processed by a frankly ridiculous amount, particularly considering that he felt like the front of his head was slowly collapsing inwards.
The tremors ground to a halt at about 1 p.m., and his productivity nosedived about ten minutes later. He stared down at his keyboard for a long moment, his headache gradually building in intensity until he was giving serious consideration to hiding under his desk.
“Martin, are you feeling all right?” Gillian’s voice drifted over from behind him. “You don’t look well.”
It felt like his tongue had swollen up to twice its size.
“Just a little headache.”
“I hope you weren’t out partying all night,” she tittered.
Why won’t she just go away?
“Nope,” he said. “Quiet night in as always.”
“Well, you can always use one of your sick days if this is a genuine medical problem and not self-inflicted.”
It was her voice. Just on the wrong side of shrill. He pressed his eyes closed, bathing in the hot darkness throbbing away in there.
“Just a headache, Gillian. It will pass soon enough.”
“Hmm.”
She had an amazing ability to make innocuous noises sound l
ike pointed accusations. He kept his eyes shut until he was sure she wasn’t going to say anything else. A moment later he heard her across the office, hovering over someone else for a change. Finally.
Martin had blown through his break, trying to keep going while his energy lasted, and Gillian’s sympathetic noises would not extend to letting him take his break outside of the scheduled time.
Still, he was technically entitled to fifteen minutes of toilet breaks throughout the day. Most people portioned those precious moments of company time out into five-minute segments, just long enough for a brief run out onto the plaza to catch up on their vaping.
The trip to the bathroom by the elevators was under a minute. He could always go hide in the toilet for thirteen minutes. That would leave just three hours until the end of the day. Three hours in this state sounded like hell.
A six-minute detour to the coffee machine on the way back would still give him seven minutes to hide in a bathroom stall. Was seven minutes too long for a trip to the bathroom?
If he took too long, would they assume he was being sick and send him home? He didn’t want to have any sick days on his record, and if he was going to blow through one of his four allotted sick days for the year he certainly didn’t want to waste one of them on a mere three hours when he could take a whole day off.
He started to drift into a daydream about what a whole day off might look like. A quick trip down to the store for supplies, then settling in for a solid twelve hours of Strata.
He’d always been good at portioning out resources in games; he’d always known when to use a potion and when to wait. It wasn’t time to use up a sick day yet. When they were deeper into Strata and they were getting close to the finish line he could take all four days, play for six full days in a row if he scheduled it next to a weekend. But it wasn’t time for that yet. He was just getting started.