Riding south, we knew we were heading into goblin territory. Everyone seemed tense. Conversations were nonexistent. It's not like there was a lot of conversing among the raiders the day prior, but there was even less so now.
One thing I knew I had to do was talk with Emma about the skills she’d picked up. Her healing skills were awesome, but something about her ability to zap goblins out of existence made me uneasy. Which I admit was hypocritical. I didn’t blink an eye at Slade killing three goblins with a single swing of his axe or Max backstabbing everything.
Emma seemed so sweet that she wouldn’t be able to harm a fly. So, when I saw her killing hordes of goblins with a wave of her staff, it unsettled me. There was also the whole goblin raiding party at the fort being destroyed. I had no reason to doubt Emma’s account, but… it seemed convenient that the glitch did it, especially when she had a spell that interacted with the world the same way the glitch did.
While I was pondering how to broach the subject with her, Max rode up next to me.
“So, what did you pick?” he asked.
“I stuck with Hunter and morphed it into Ranger.”
“Ha! I had a feeling,” he said. “A stalwart protector of nature. Seems your style.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What makes you say that?”
“The absolute joy you showed when you were climbing trees that first night. It was like you waited your whole life to do something like that.”
“Hmm, maybe,” I said. “What about you? What path did you pick? Assassin? A blade in the dark? Something more ominous?”
He laughed, “What would make you think any of those?”
“How did you put it? The absolute joy you showed when backstabbing goblins.”
“I considered it,” he said, “before we ran into the glitch. The more I thought about things after that, the more I realized it wasn’t the right path for me.”
“How did the glitch change your mind?”
“At first, we thought it was an error in the programming. I’m not so sure now. One thing I believe, though, is that the roguey scouty path I was originally on had sets of skills tailored to taking advantage of bugs. It was built to manipulate the game with its own set of things that look like bugs. Turning invisible, finding secret doors, opening things not meant to be opened. It was all about manipulating those bugs.”
“The glitches, you mean?” I asked.
“No. the bugs. The errors in the game’s programming,” he said. “The glitches are exactly how they were meant to be. As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t call them glitches anymore, just for clarity. We should call them by their proper name.”
“Which is?” I replied.
“Enneaxi. As per the storybook that Emma found.” Max said. “Anyway, I decided I didn’t just want to exploit the bugs we will find. I want to be able to create my own. What the code of this place is, I want to be able to alter it, to change it, to help us complete this thing. I chose Wizard. And like Emma, I’ll be able to cast spells.”
“So, you want to gain some sort of control over the game?”
“Exactly!” Max exclaimed with more excitement than he usually showed. I don’t just want to use bugs to help us; I want to make bugs that help us.”
It was an interesting take. I had to admit it was far more meta than I’d been thinking. I was just taking skills that sounded cool or had benefits that I wanted to play with. Max was thinking way above that, and that was a good thing. If anyone was going to ensure our winning and leaving, I had a feeling it was Max. Slade was too oblivious, and Emma was showing what I could only conclude were cracks in her personality as the stress got to her. I was a little jealous I hadn’t been capable of thinking of the game at the level Max was delving into.
“So, what can a Wizard do?”
“I’ve got a handful of spells. The help says I can collect more just by finding spellbooks. Most of them are offensive, but there are some utility spells, too.”
“What do you consider a utility spell?” I asked.
“Light is one of the utility spells. We were tripping on ourselves with just one torch back in that fort. Now, I can just cast us out of situations like that. And another is Identify. If we loot any unknown magic items, we can figure out what they are.”
“Oh yeah, like Slade’s necklace,” I said.
“Yup.” Max replied, “I already ID’ed it. Amulet of protection. Gives him a bonus to his armor, making it more difficult for enemies to hurt him.”
“And the tank gets tankier.” I said.
“Tank?” Max asked.
“In MMOs, a tank is a player role that absorbs damage. While they are taking a beating, their teammates do damage and heal.”
“Cool,” Max said. “What other roles are there?”
“There’s DPS. Stands for Damage per Second. They mostly try to hurt things. The tank takes the hits. DPS hits things. Then there are healers. They do exactly like it sounds, heal things. And the last one would be crowd control. They manage how enemies can get to the players, like gluing enemies down in one spot or making others flee. A good crowd controller makes sure the team never has to fight more enemies than they can handle at one time.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Hmm,” Max said. “There’s more to it than I thought.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What did you think happened in MMOs?”
“I didn’t know,” Max said. “A lot of neckbeards saying milady and thee and thou to each other while pretending to be elves.”
“Really?” I sneered, “And when you were playing your builder games, did you put on a top hat and monocle? Were there missions to crush the protesting slum dwellers?”
He laughed, “You know it!”
After a pause, I said, “It's strange…”
“What's that?” Max said.
“Why invite players of building games? This is most like an MMO. Why not just flood it with those kinds of players?”
“Because they need people from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of skills?” Max offered. “Or maybe the game changes too in time.”
“You think as we progress, the game will evolve into other types of games?” I said.
“It's impossible to say right now,” Max said. But I'm not ruling anything out. This whole thing has already exceeded all expectations.”
We rode in silence in the middle of the column. Up ahead, I could see Slade and Emma talking. Slade was telling stories, and both were laughing occasionally. I kept thinking about sweet little Emma killing goblins with black magic and wondering what had really happened at the fort.
As the sun started hanging low on the horizon, I spotted the first group of goblins trailing us. It was a small party of six, way off in the distance. The actual number was difficult to tell because the terrain we traveled through got rougher by the hour. I’d watch them for a while, then we’d round switchback up some slope, and they would be lost behind a craggy foothill.
In normal circumstances, say on a road trip across the state, I’d assume this sort of thing was of interest only to me. However, my life being under constant threat made me want to share everything. I just didn’t know what info told to others might save all of us.
I rode up to the head of the column to tell Slade and the raider lieutenants. I passed Emma as I made my way to the head. When Slade ran out of stories, she fell behind the leadership group and seemed content to ride in silence.
“Slade,” I called out as I approached, “We’ve got company following us to the northwest.”
He turned and looked, “I don’t see anything.”
William pointed to a jagged ridgeline. “Your Ranger is correct. There! Goblin scouts on our tail.”
“The sun dips low in the sky,” Eric said. “They’ll wait for us to break for the nights and test our resolve with raids.”
I hadn’t thought of the setting sun. Soon enough, it would be too dark to travel, and the treacherous landscape would be impossible to navigate at night. I checked the help menu for info on goblins and discovered that they had excellent night vision.
Exiting my menus, I told Slade, “Yeah, we got problems. In the dark, they’ll be able to see us without problems.”
“Fuck,” Slade said. “If we make camp, we’ll be sitting ducks. Victoria, get Emma and Max. We need to figure out what to do.”
I was so surprised that Slade wanted to involve the other in the decision-making that I didn’t notice he was barking orders at me. I slowed to a near stop. There was no need to ride backward through the column when Emma and Max would ride right past me.
Max was stunned when I told each of them that Slade wanted to convene to decide what to do. Emma, on the other hand, took it in stride. We trotted up from behind as Slade talked to the two lieutenants about what to do.
“To make camp, we need to find some piece of terrain that favors us,” Erick said. “A difficult slog to climb with a cliff at our backs.”
“Agreed,” said William, “Or a cliff face we can make a stand against. We need to limit the number that can reach us one time. Given even odds, these men can slay a hundred foes. The best are sneaky, though, and will try to overwhelm us with numbers.”
Crowd control. I was suddenly very happy Max had changed his class to Wizard.
“If we stop soon Erick explained, “We could use larger pieces of rock to form a barricade. It won’t be as defensible as a full wall, but it may slow the green skins down enough for us to hold them off.”
Slade nodded, “Max, what do you think?”
“Their advice seems sound. We should try to find something to defend with. I’ve got a few spells that might help.”
“Emma,” Slade said. “Your thoughts?”
“I’m ready to heal as needed. I’m as rested as can be expected in these conditions.”
Slade nodded in what I thought was his attempt to look sage. Alright, I had to cut him some slack. He asked our opinions. That was positive growth right there.
“Victoria?” he said.
“We can’t keep traveling.” I repeated what William had said, “It’ll be dark soon and dangerous for the horses. I don’t think we have much choice. But… we should try talking to them. Squintnose promised us safe passage.”
“They’ll grant us safe passage, then stab us in the back,” William said.
“Victoria is right.” Slade said, “He did offer to get us to the king. But I don’t trust them either. Let's find a spot where we can defend and camp. If they approach, we’ll try talking.”
The raiders looked concerned but agreed.
“How much time do we have?” Slade asked.
“Another hour or so,” Erick replied.
“Let's do it,” Slade said. “Find us a place we can defend, and we’ll set up a camp for the night.”
Again, the raiders looked concerned but galloped off. They scouted our path, looking for anything that might tip a battle in our favor. About twenty minutes later, they returned.
William explained, “There's a rough crag to the east. On the east side, there is a chasm, not terribly deep, but deep enough to prevent crossing. The crag itself rises above the surrounding foothills. It's rocky with no cover. We could cobble together crude mounds to slow riders down.”
“That will have to do Slade said. “We’ve only got about a half hour to make it work.”
We changed directions, heading to the east until we came to a foothill overlooking several smaller ones. They were all rocky and rough-looking. The tallest had a split in it, cutting across one side, not quite through the center.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” I told Slade, Max, and Emma before we tried trudging our horses up the broken hill.
“Why? What's up?” Max asked.
“This isn’t a chasm running across a hill. This is a fault running through a geologically unstable area. We might be safe if we camp on the lower footwall, but I don’t like that there’s a big overhang. If it collapses, we’d all be crushed.”
“We can’t camp on the smaller part of the hill anyway,” Slade said. “The goblins would just drop rocks and spears on us.”
He was right. But the alternative of occupying the larger part of the hill was also a bad bad idea. “This hill split because the composition was too heavy on one side. Denser rock, like, say, granite, on this side was so heavy it pulled this part of the hill down, making that split. The larger, less dense part of the hill probably has all sorts of fissures in it. It may not support the weight of all of us.”
“Holy cow!” Slade said, “What’s your major? Geology?”
“Civil engineering,” I said. When they all stared at me, I added, “Yeah, I want to build bridges and shit. Part of that is understanding the ground to support engineering projects.”
A goblin horn blew in the distance.
“Sadly,” Slade said. “We don’t have any time. We may die if the hill collapses, but we will certainly die if we stay out here in the open. On top of that hill, the goblins can only come from one direction, and that’s a lot better than being swarmed in every direction.”
I was about to argue with him when a second and then third horn blasted. The time for talk was done, and everyone started rushing up the hill.