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“There we go! I was starting to wonder when something like that was going to happen. When’s the last time you heard of a game not having a rocky launch?”
I didn’t have to think long about my answer.
“Never.”
“Right?”
She probably would have shot me a wink then, had she not been turned away from me, eyes fixed on the large monster before us.
It was a hideous beast that stood over two stories tall; made of yellowed bones and dust, it looked as if it had come straight out from the depths of Hell itself. Long and slithering like a snake, but with a single arm on either side, it reminded me of a legless lizard. Or perhaps a snake with arms. Either way...
“Akagi! Give me a ward, now!”
I was already in the process of casting the defensive spell, but I was nonetheless surprised at how fast Isabella’s reactions were. My abilities had been honed in live combat, where a few milliseconds could mean the difference between life and death. And yet, her speed was only marginally behind mine.
A beam of white light shot out from the head of my staff. When it reached Isabella, it split into hundreds of smaller beams, which proceeded to form a radiant sphere around her.
The spell took effect none too soon, for the monster’s arm came down right at that moment. The light flared at the impact of the monster’s giant claws, and pieces of shattered bone flew in every direction.
Had the monster been able to feel pain, it likely would have reeled back and screamed. As it was, however, it lifted its damaged claws and brought them back down on the ward. Then it struck with its other hand. Then back to the first, back to the second. Again and again, it continued to bash at the ward until its claws were ground down to glowing, white stumps. And the ward…
A sound like that of shattering glass met my ears, and Isabella lifted her shield in preparation for the next attack. While the monster’s claws were gone, a direct hit from its giant arm would cause more than enough blunt damage to knock Isabella out, if not kill her outright.
But no matter – everything was going as planned. These monsters were powerful, but they were incredibly dull. Like this one’s claws were now.
Smirking in mild satisfaction at my terrible joke, I raised my staff again, but this time calling upon an offensive power.
Hellfyre.
This monster had come from the underworld; these scorching flames would hopefully send it right on back.
A burst of orange erupted from my staff, turning white and then blue as it moved away from me and heated up further. The fire converged near the monster’s skull (the one that served as its head, as there were many skulls within its body) and struck with a brilliant explosion of smoke and charred bone.
The room we were in shook from the gut-wrenching scream of rage the monster let loose. It was blinded, and it began to thrash around wildly with its arms, aiming in the direction the fire had come from. At me.
I jumped back, though one of the monster’s swipes came dangerously close; had its claws still been intact, I would have likely gotten cut in two. It was an unfortunate limitation of Hellfyre, which was my single most effective spell against undead monsters. Because the fire not only needed to travel a short distance before it could reach its max heat, but would also begin to lose effectiveness if it traveled further than its “sweet spot,” I had to position myself uncomfortably close to my target to use the spell to its full potential. Not so close that I would get caught by a stray slash if the monster was focused on Isabella, but close enough that it could easily hit me if it stretched its body out in my direction. Which, unfortunately, was exactly what it was doing now.
It was slithering slowly towards me, inching forward, feeling out the space before it with its madly flailing arms.
Hellfyre!
Another flash of flame, but the monster had gotten too close and the attack was unable to fully prime itself. White fire slammed into the monster’s face, and it was not enough to really damage the hardened bone.
“Isabella! You’re up!”
I continued to backstep and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isabella unequip her shield. The kite shaped metal plate vanished into nothingness in a small flurry of twinkling dust, and she now gripped the handle of her sword with both her hands.
The monster continued to flail about. However, I could tell that its attacks were getting less and less random. As we had learned from our previous encounters, these monsters had a keen sense of hearing, and the sound of my boots crunching on the loose stone floor was enough for it to keep honing in on me.
I wanted to turn and run. But if I did so, the monster would almost certainly break out into a rampage and give chase; the only thing keeping it moving slowly was the fact that I could easily flank it if it charged. If I ran and it started to move faster, Isabella would not be able to catch up and carry out her part. Moreover, this was not the first time we had tried this strategy, and I knew Isabella was capable of pulling it off. I just needed to trust her.
The monsters pulled back its right arm. The monster had inched ever closer, and somehow, I sensed that this time it would find its mark. I held out my staff in front of me, though I knew it would do next to nothing against the incoming blow.
“Isabella!”
Isabella leaped into the air.
“Don’t worry Akagi! I! Got! Youuuuu!”
Yelling hysterically for the entirety of her jump, she pointed her sword downwards and tightened her grip.
“Raaaahhhhh!”
She plunged her sword into the top of the monster’s skull with a satisfying “shlunk.” How her frail-looking weapon was able to cut through bone immune to a 2,000 degree flame, I did not know, but I was certainly happy that it could.
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The monster’s eye sockets began to smoke and loose bones started to fall from its wretched form, clattering madly as they hit the catacomb’s cobblestone floor.
Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, the monster went limp and keeled over forwards. I quickly stepped out of the way, and its long, thin body hit the ground with a resounding crash, raising up a thick brown cloud as it did. No longer held together by a dark magical force, its bones were expelled by the force of its fall and scattered in every which way. I raised my free arm to cover my face – as luck would have it, the femur of some large animal found its way straight to the center of my gut.
“Oof!”
I dropped my staff and reeled in pain. The blow to the stomach and the bottled fear from all our encounters thus far finally pushed me over the edge, and I bent forward and retched.
But the insanity! Why was throwing up even possible in a game?
“Akagi! Hey, are you okay?”
Isabella had pulled her sword from the monster’s cracked skull and was making her way towards me through the screen of dust, a concerned expression on her face.
“What are you –”
The sight of me triggered a similar reaction in her, and she too bent her body forward.
“Bleeaaaaahhh.”
When I was finished, I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. It was a little disgusting, but I didn’t have many other options available.
I looked up, and saw that Isabella was crouching in a slightly different position from where she had puked. She was wiping the back of her hand on the ground. She was scowling.
“You know… I’d say the two of us are oddly similar.”
She turned towards me and smiled a crooked smile, a bit flustered from what had just happened.
“Yeah? I guess we kinda are.”
I rested my hands in the small of my back and bent backwards, stretching out the front of my torso.
“Pff. Are you trying to say something, huh? Real subtle.”
What?
I followed her gaze and looked down. In real life, I would have only seen my pecs in the very bottom of my vision. But now…
Mmm. I glanced at Isabella. Her character… was not quite as well-endowed as mine.
“Looks like we aren’t that alike, now are we?”
She spoke with ice in her voice, but the playful twitch in her eyebrows belied her attempt at sounding genuinely angry with me.
I smiled, a smile that soon turned to laughter.
She snickered along as her eyes darted quickly around. She was looking through her UI.
“That should be our fourth one of these, and add on a few dozen skeletons… Ugh! Wow, only a quarter of the way to level 26…”
Show progress to next level.
Sure enough, the EXP bar sat at 26% filled.
“Over two hours of running around this place, and we’re not even halfway to our first level up. I regret choosing this race!”
In all honesty, I was starting to doubt the wisdom behind my choice as well. Not that we hadn’t been having fun – the monsters we encountered had all been very challenging. But that fact was also the main problem, because the monsters were perhaps a bit too challenging.
Unlike in most other games, where monsters at the same level as a player were significantly weaker than said player, the monsters we’d encountered so far – save the skeletons, which served as cannon fodder for their serpentine counterparts – were surprisingly capable. The first time we fought one of the skeleton snakes, we had almost died. It was only because we were near the entrance to the catacombs that we’d survived. A trio of level 30 NPC guards had heard our screams and rushed to our aid, blasting the snake to smithereens with an endless stream of fireballs.
It was them, also, that told me to try a spell called “Hellfyre.” They’d explained its limitations to me, and I was able to use it on the second serpent we encountered. Of course, I had almost died to an outstretched claw after firing it off, and that quickly led to our strategy with the wards…
In short, we were grossly ignorant when it came to the mechanics in this game. Apparently, the short “Beginner’s Guide” only listed skills and spells available at level 1, and it was only prior experience, from older games and otherwise, that Isabella and I were able to kill anything at all. Indeed, had we started at level 1, perhaps progression would have felt far more natural...
I shook my head. The fighting we had gone through was a bit much for getting just a quarter of a level. And what was the level cap? 100?
Insane.
“Akagi, could you heal me up?”
She was sitting down, knees to her chest, her arms wrapping her legs closely to her body.
“Oh yeah, of course.”
Healing Light.
A dim, pleasant-looking glow appeared and embraced Isabella’s body. Contentment washed over her face.
“Ahhhh.”
Healing Light.
I sat down next to Isabella, closed my eyes, and let myself relax. The feeling as my wounds healed, the scratches sealing up, the bruises washing away… how would I describe it? Perhaps like bathing in a vat of warm honey…
“This combat is pretty crazy, but I’m definitely having fun. Are you?”
“Yeah. I haven’t felt this kind of rush in ages.”
“You like the rush, huh? Well then what do you think? One or two more? Still no word from your friend?”
I glanced at my vitals. Mana was almost out, and would likely take around a half hour to fully regenerate if I didn’t exert myself too much. Health was topped off. And on the topic of D.K.: I hadn’t heard a peep.
“Yeah, no word. And let’s rest for a bit first, I’m running low on mana...”
“Another reason I didn’t pick mage. Keeping track of one bar is more than enough for me!”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t you have a stamina bar?”
“It fills so fast I don’t even need to watch it.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t press the matter further.
We sat there in silence for at least a minute or two, catching our breaths, our minds still filled with vivid images of the battles that we had just been through.
If nothing else, this game would prove an entertaining diversion until I got myself killed. After that, I would pay D.K. back the $50 he gave me for my character…
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Caller: Drift_King
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“My friend’s calling me.”
Isabella nodded her head, motioning for me to pick up.
Accept.
“Hey D.K., what’s u –"
“Yo Akagi! You’re level 25, right? Snow Elf? Starts at level 25? Right? Right?!”
He sounded scared, but extremely excited at the same time.
“D.K., what’s going on?”
“It’s a shitshow out here, man! People are getting killed in droves! I didn’t see it myself, but I heard some dumbass died to a level 1 slime. And the slime levelled up, see? And so some other level 1 players tried fighting this level 2 slime, but level differences are crazy so they all died. You get where I’m going with this?”
Uh-oh.
“What level is it now?...”
“14. It’s tearing shit apart, and not even the NPC guards can handle it anymore.”
“Wait, what do you mean? The NPC guards are all level 30!”
“Dude, maybe the Snow Elf guards are, but we’re Humans, okay? The guards here were level 8 and they showed up when the slime was at 10. They got shit on. Hell, they’re still sending men in – even some mages and cavalry – and they’re all getting shit on too. I heard someone ran into the city to grab the elite guards, but they’re only level 16 or something. At this rate, they’ll die too.”
“Wait, that sounds so stupid. Why don’t the guards back off if they’re just making the slime stronger?”
“Because it’s heading towards the city! If it gets through the gates, all the women and children NPCs will be in danger, dude. Nobody wants to see that.”
“What about the players?!”
“I’ve been grinding like crazy and I’m only at level 7.”
“Ah…”
“So yeah. All the players who were out hunting these slimes are trying to get back into the city while more guards are trying to get out. You should probably get over here… Yo, yo! People are saying it levelled up again! Please get down here, dude! I don’t want to lose this character! I really don’t!”
“Where are you at? Does the city have multiple gates?”
“Just the main gate. On the map it literally says ‘Main Gate.’”
“Okay, okay. We’ll be there soon.”
“We?”
End call.
“Isabella? We’re leaving. We’re needed at the city’s main gate.”
“What? What happened?”
“I’ll explain on the way. But basically, there’s something threatening the city that only we can kill.”
She looked incredibly confused.
“Well… I uh...”
She stood up and made a dash for the remains of the monster we had slain.
“Let me loot this first!”
“But my friend –”
“Akagi. Loot! Loot.”
She was already digging madly through the scattered bones, looking for the telltale gleam of metal under the catacomb’s dim torchlight.
I bit my lip.
People were dying while we wasted time looting. But then again…
This was a game, wasn’t it? It’s not like you could actually die or anything...
“Ah, screw it.”
I ran up to help.