by A P Gore
Jon was observing the growth of the two Magic weed plants when Kron suddenly shouted in ecstasy. He was touching a seedling here and there like it was his newly wed wife.
Wrapping the fingers of both hands around the seedling, he exclaimed, “Wow! Jon, you hit the jackpot. I’ve never seen Excellent quality crop before.”
Jon chuckled as he pulled Kron’s loaned flags from his bag. “Stop fondling my plants. Let’s use the flags and see if we can improve the growth speed.” He glanced at the golden seedlings waving in the chilly east wind. It felt good. With the flags, he hoped he would be able to get the harvest in one day. Though it cost him a lot of time to do this thing, the results were promising. If only Purify cost less, he would have used it on all two thousand plants.
Next time.
“Easy,” Kron said. “Pour 100 Mana in each flag and plant.”
Jon rubbed his two-day beard. “Mana won’t do. I need to put Spirit in it. Let me see.” Taking the flag in his hand he cast Elemental Shield and poured some Spirit into the flag.
System: Warning: These flags are Mana flags. To use Spirit as the source, you will need to put 2x Spirit into it. Do you want to continue? Yes/No.
Heck yes. Jon didn’t care for his Spirit or the pain it brought, so he poured more Spirit into the flag, and a wave of green energy oozed out of his palm and entered the flag. The flag glowed with green light, and then a prompt appeared.
System: Congratulations, your dedication has opened up your spirit channel to a new level. +1 to Spirit Cycling.
Congratulations! You have reached level 5 in Spirit Cycling. You gain the Spirit Interface. Now you can manage the level 1 channels using your Spirit Interface. Do you want to access the Spirit Interface? Yes/No.
Strange. His constant use of Spirit had opened a Spirit Interface in the game. Jon wanted to open it and try it out, but then he looked at the timer he had set for Grimish’s respawn and decided he should focus on wrapping up his current work. In twenty minutes or so, Grimish would respawn, and he needed to finish the formation activation first.
After selecting no, he continued charging the remaining flags.
“Let’s do this.” He handed two flags to Kron and started for the other side of his farm.
“Don’t put it there,” Kron called after him. “Put at the edge of one thousand crops. It will fail for two thousand crops.”
Disappointment nibbled at Jon’s stomach. But what could he do about it? Placing the flags at the end of his 1000th crop, he activated the formation. The energy inside the formation area fluctuated, and the seedlings grew into two-foot-tall plants, shining with golden colors. They had a vigor Jon had never seen before in any plant.
Kron patted Jon’s shoulder. “Congrats. You can harvest this tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, and for the others, I’ll use the formation again tonight once the flags are reusable.” The counter reset at 12:00 a.m., so he could use the flags again tonight to get the other thousand plants to grow smoothly.
“Good. Let’s go have some dinner.”
“You go ahead, I’ll be back after some work.”
Kron raised his brow. “What work?”
Jon let a wicked smile form on his lips. “I’ve got to kill a jerk.”
Chapter 26
Grimish woke in the respawn room. The dark gray walls added to his already frustrated mood.
“You, fella, wait for me.” He gritted his teeth. “I’ll... send you to hell, fella.”
After an hour of frustration, Grimish finally calmed down and sat in a cross legged position. Closing his eyes, he waited patiently for six hours to pass. He could order some food from the real world, but that would require copper or silver, and he would not spend a dime on food made up of digits. All he wanted was to save money to get out of this hellish game and see his family.
Thinking about his family, his daughter Anya’s face floated in front of his eyes. When he’d entered the game, she was five. She would thirty-five now. If he hadn’t cheated that government official, he would be with his family.
He sighed—a sigh of regret he’d experienced for the last three-hundred-plus years in the game.
Living longer than normal was actually hard. It had only been thirty years in the real world, but for him it was three-hundred-plus years. They were hard and uncomfortable. He just wished they’d go faster so he could get this over with.
When the counter reached five minutes, he opened his eyes, waiting for the dark portal to form.
In those five minutes, he came up with ten ways to screw that new fella. So what if he got a class? Grimish could kill him with one hit. Only one hit. Soon that fella would wake up in Chinari, the nearest town that had a temple. The outpost area was just an extension of the Laxania company-owned towns, so it didn’t have a true temple. They had built a shrine and bound players’ respawn points to it, but a shrine always had a limitation on how many times a player could resurrect at it. After five deaths, the player would respawn in the nearest town, and that would be Chinari.
The counter reached zero, and a black portal appeared. Stepping out of it, he glanced around. It was nearly night, and that bastard fella had wasted six hours of his time.
“Welcome back, Grimish. And bye-bye.”
Before Grimish could say anything, his body locked in place, and the land below his legs shifted. Spikes grew out of the earth and stabbed him for 30 damage each. Four plants rose to his right and immensely painful acid sprays hit his body, taking 100 more life from him.
The acid melted his skin like lava and burned his muscles. The longer he remained locked in place, the more sprays of acid landed on him, burning him from all directions. He screamed and yelled, but the pain only increased. The next thing he knew, he was back in the respawn room, his clothes tattered, his skin still burning.
“Jon!” Grimish screamed from the bottom of his heart. It had been one hundred years and six levels since he had faced a death like this. That new fella was just wicked. If he could, Grimish would tear every tendon in that fella’s body and kill him slowly, but he couldn’t do anything about it right now.
Hours passed, and every passing hour increased the agony in his heart, until he vowed to kill that fella with his bare hands.
The dark portal opened again, but this time he didn’t walk out. Instead, he popped his head out and looked around. He saw no one. After confirming it twice, he ran out of the portal at full speed, heading toward his farm, slowing down only when the farm came into his vision.
Thank god, that new fella wasn’t around the shrine. Another death would have driven him crazy.
“Lock.”
The voice came from out of nowhere. His body locked in place, earthen spikes stabbed him, and four plants shot acid sprays at him. It was déjà vu all over again. When he respawned in the respawn room, his clothes had vanished, and he was naked. The game did that when the durability of clothes reached zero.
Rubbing his bald head, he cried. It was painful, getting burned by the acid spray again and again. And if a player died again and again, the game left a painful impression on the player’s mind.
Pulling out a new set of clothes, he put them on and sank into deep thought. The Jon fella was a sly character. Jon had killed him three times, already. He had to do something.
He glanced into his Bag of Holding. His eyes fell on a glowing vial. “Do I have to pull this out?” It was a magical potion that would give him invulnerability from any controlling effect for two seconds. If he could run out of the formation, he could kill the fella.
But the potion was worth 50 silvers at the market. It was a rare drop from a monster, and he didn’t want to waste it. He had plans to sell it when the time came, but dying wasn’t an option anymore. He had to show that bastard fella who was boss. Until he dropped to level 0 and ran away, Grimish wouldn’t stop killing him. That was a promise.
When the portal opened, he stepped out slowly, his hand clutching the potion. No one was around, so he slowly wa
lked toward his farm, his ears focused on any and every small sound. As expected, the fella attacked as soon as Grimish stepped out of the outpost area.
Grimish quaffed the potion at the first sign of attack.
As expected, the fella cast his Lock formation, but it didn’t affect Grimish anymore. Wearing a smile, Grimish walked out of the formation and marched toward the Jon fella, standing a few meters away.
“You...” Jon raised his hand, but before he could do anything, Grimish had waved his shovel at the fella.
Surprisingly, the ground below him shifted, and before he knew it, he was half-buried in the earth, unable to move or shift.
“Damn you!” Before Grimish could say more, an acid spray hit his face, burning his skin and his nose. In less than ten seconds, he died in intense pain and soul-crushing agony.
“Jon!” He shouted as soon as he opened his eyes in the respawn room. It was the fourth time, and it was humiliating. How could Jon, a level 3 fella, kill a level 20 Grimish? If it happened one more time, he would wake up in Chinari, losing one level. The game didn’t like a player getting killed again and again, so it penalized the fifth death. He knew how hard it was to reach level 20. He’d spent years grinding level 7-10 monsters to gain enough experience to advance even one level. It was hard, and painful. To reach level 20 from level 19, he’d spent nearly three years in the wilderness, killing monsters and saving his a** from the hard monsters. No, he wasn’t ready to do that all over again.
He sighed, considering his options. He didn’t have any potions that would help him, nor a player friend he could call for help. There were a few people farming along with him, but he had conned them all, so no one would help him. And without a class he was like a punching bag to that fella. People like him, classless people, had it hard.
Without a class, a player couldn’t gain skills. The only skills he would get would be when his stats reached number 50 and level 10. These were special stat skills, and players with class only got them on 100 stat points.
. When he reached level 10 and invested 50 points in Dexterity, he’d gained Light Feet which increased his speed by twenty-five percent. At level 20 and Dexterity 100, he’d gained Flying Feet which increased his speed to thirty-five percent and to forty-five percent when low on Stamina. Losing a level meant he would lose the Flying Feet skill too, and that would be bad. Without that skill, he would need three days to reach Chinari, slowing down his trades and his ability to earn more money.
On top of that, he would lose something from his Bag of Holding. When a player died five times in a row, the system penalized him by dropping a random item from his Bag of Holding and reducing his stats by thirty percent for twenty-four hours, and he had already wasted too much time in his respawn room. How was he going to raise next week’s crop?
No, he had to do something or he would lose something dear to him, and everything in his bag was necessary to continue earning money and get out of the game ahead of schedule.
The counter finished, but he didn’t want to leave the respawn room. For the first time, he was afraid. But he had to leave, or the game would push him out forcefully.
Pulling a white cloth from his bag, he wrapped it around his right hand and walked out with his hand raised in surrender.
Jon stood not far away, a wicked smile playing on his lips. He was a real devil. Killing without conscience, that fella was the reincarnation of a devil. A real convict.
“Jon, please.” Grimish pleaded. “I’ll return your flags and promise I won’t kill you again, but please let me go.”
Jon shook his head.
Grimish dropped to his knees. He couldn’t die again. That would destroy all his plans. After a moment’s thought, he raised his face. At least Jon wasn’t killing him straight away, so there was a chance for negotiation. “What do you want, fella?”
“Sign a contract. Be my slave.”
Hatred and fear ran warred within Grimish. What the hell was this fella thinking? A slave contract was the game’s version of hell. He preferred dying over being a slave of that bastard fella.
Chapter 27
Jon conjured the most evil smile he could when he spotted Grimish walking out of the dark gray portal. Strange. His portal looked different. Did it change according to how evil the player was?
Maybe, his should be white, because he had no evil in his heart. Damn those game-developers. First, they made him a copier, and now an evil person too? They needed a spanking.
Grimish walked out of the portal, hands raised, a white cloth wrapped around one hand.
Good. He understood his position now.
An icy wind brushed against Jon’s face, sending chills through his neck and spine. His thin gray shirt was useless against this cold; he at least needed a woolen jacket to save himself from the chilly winds. If not for Kron’s bedroll, he might have already turned into a frozen statue. The game weather was too hard on him. What if he caught a cold? Who would pay then? The game-developers? Ha! No chance.
Damn, he missed his home. The automatic temperature control in his apartment was the best. It wasn’t top-tier equipment, but it had kept him and his daughter warm throughout the icy freezing winters. Even if he hadn’t had such a luxury in the real world, at least he could have used his fire magic to keep himself warm. No such fortune here.
Wait, there was a fire spell in his spell menu, but he hadn’t looked at it at all. Maybe he should do that.
“Jon, please.” Grimish pleaded, his voice low like he hadn’t eaten a thing in days. Didn’t he drink some coffee in there? God, for that coffee Jon could die again. He missed the taste and the caffeine rush. Coffee was the best thing about dying in the game.
The thought of coffee steeled his resolve to find coffee seeds in the game, and for that he needed Grimish’s help.
Grimish continued, “I’ll return your flags, and I promise I won’t kill you again. Please let me go.”
No, that wouldn’t work. Jon shook his head firmly.
Grimish dropped to his knees, his face turning pale. “What do you want, fella?” For the first time, Jon spotted desperation in the old man’s eyes.
Jon licked his lips, moistening them a little. “Sign a contract. Be my slave.”
Grimish stared at him, myriad of emotions passed through his eyes. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Kill me instead.”
Jon smiled, hoping to ease tension from Grimish’s heart. “Listen to my condition first and then choose. I want you to sign a slave contract for six months.”
“Six months?” Grimish’s tone changed, a little surprise slipping into it.
“Yes, six months, and I won’t disturb your routine at all. You keep doing what you do, but I want you to sell my stuff in the Chinari market.”
Grimish eyed him, eyes narrowed. “Then why the slave contract, fella? Why not an employment contract? That one is binding too.”
Jon chuckled. Did Grimish take him for a fool? “Because I want you to stop conning people and suffer instead. You’ve done enough, Grimish, and it needs to stop.” He steeled his voice. Grimish had to be stopped, and he was going to do that. Then, he needed a trusted ally to run his errands to Chinari. Making Grimish a slave, he would have that trusted ally. A stringent employment contract could do, but he wanted to make sure there was no way Grimish could try to con him again. And in six months, he would surpass Grimish by a huge margin, and would find his own way to get to the town. He would be stronger than everyone in the outpost area by then.
“Give me a day to think this through.”
“Lock.” Jon activated his formation. “I’ll give you a minute, or you can respawn in Chinari.” He’d questioned Kron about Grimish, and understood how Grimish worked. That man was a cunning fox, but he boasted often about his attributes and stats, so learning his weaknesses was simple. Now, Jon knew Grimish feared going back to level 19 the most.
Grimish was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “Okay. But I have conditions of my own.”
&
nbsp; “Shoot.”
“I’ll only help you after I complete my daily work. You can’t force me to go to town before that. Also, you can’t ask for anything from my Bag of Holding.”
Jon furrowed his brows. He knew what that jerk was thinking, but Grimish didn’t know that Jon had ways to accelerate crop speed. So, he would have a free worker for at least five days a week. “Okay, but that will only apply to the weekly quota of one thousand crops.”
Grimish nodded and signed the contract. Once he signed it, a system notification confirmed that Grimish was his slave for the next six months, and he could read the general direction of his thoughts. Like if Grimish was lying or telling the truth etc. That was sufficient.
Jon signed it too. “Let’s go. I’ve got to handover my weekly quota.”
Grimish froze in his place. “How did you...”
Jon smirked. “I have double the quota this week. Don’t worry, I have a way to raise them in one day.”
Grimish’s lips parted like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
Laughing inside, Jon walked to the outpost office and placed his two thousand crops on the small wooden platform attached to the window. “Mr. Denis, here’s my quota.”
The old man with the white beard popped his head out and stared at him with disdain. “Mr. Jonathan, I’m happy to tell you that you need not submit anything anymore. Actually, my lord. Mr. Baltazar will soon contact you for a meeting.”
What? What the crap was he saying? No quota for the week? Were they going to pull him out of the game? Already? Damn, that would suck!
Chapter 28
A white light wrapped around Jon and zapped him into the sky.
The next moment, he stood in his respawn room, and Baltazar—the man with the glasses—sat at a table, studying him carefully.
Wait, it wasn’t his respawn room. It was the first room he had walked into along with the others when they entered the game. Yes, the tasteless and scentless huge hall with hundreds of chairs.