James pulled himself out of his Pod, arms stiff and legs sore from having rested in the same position for so long. As he raised his head above the lip of Pod’s cavity, he spied Mark also in the midst of pulling himself out of his own Pod.
“Hey,” James called to his friend and roommate, voice cracking and quiet from disuse. “Your nutrient slurry ran out too?”
“Yeah,” Mark answered after clearing his throat. “Are you as hungry as I am?”
“Yeah,” James nodded. “Did you read the manual about the nutrient slurry? C99 said that since the slurry is fed to us by our skin absorbing it and having it drip-fed to us in our masks, we need to pull ourselves out of the game from time to time so we can eat solid food or we’ll trick our bodies into starving.”
“I don’t even want to think about how bad it gets for the people that have spent a full week in the game,” Mark said as he stood on the fluid catch-tray beside his Pod. “If it sucks this much, then they must be dying when they get out.”
“Maybe,” James agreed. “Want to catch lunch after we take a shower?”
“Sure,” Mark nodded. “I’ll buy, and we can ask Axel and Pear if they want to join us.”
“Great,” James said, starting for the door. “I’m getting in the shower first.”
“And I’ll try not to fall over waiting for you,” Mark said as he reached for his phone on the table beside him. “How about pizza?”
“You read my mind,” James called over his shoulder as he left the room.
“I’m just saying, it doesn’t make any sort of sense,” Axel’s voice carried to James from across the table they sat around. “Mark’s working with the bigshots in one of the churches already, Pear’s got himself a cushy spot as the student of one of the strongest wizards in the game, and you’re already looking at starting your big dream. So why am I the only one that’s still in the city instead of out in the wild like I want to be?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re afraid of the woods,” Pear suggested innocently. “We all know that you’ve had problems with dark spaces since you were a kid.”
“Haha,” Axel deadpanned to their short friend. “That’s not funny Pear.”
“I thought it was kind of funny,” Mark said as he took a drink of his soda. “But in all seriousness, maybe you’re still in the city instead of doing what you really want to, because you’re afraid. Maybe not of the dark like Pear said, but something else out there.”
“You did mention that you did something really cool over the chat,” James said. “What was that?”
“I helped some dude that called himself a Mystic of Nature, whatever that means, destroy a source of corruption that would have allowed fairies to enter Astrana,” Axel told them. “It was pretty neat.”
“You fought fairies?” Pear asked skeptically.
“No,” Axel insisted. “I fought animals that had been corrupted by their magic and then I cut down a tree.”
“You’re missing a few key details when you tell us this story,” James told him.
“Like what?” Axel asked.
“How did you learn that the animals were corrupted?” Mark asked. “Where did you meet the guy? What are the fairies like? Are we talking about little flying women like Tinkerbell?”
“I found some blood on the ground, Drago tracked it to a bird that was turning into something really nasty and we killed it,” Axel explained. “After we killed it, Harn, the Mystic, showed up and told me about where the corruption was coming from and we went to take care of it. Apparently fairies are assholes that want to take over Astrana somehow and I don’t know if they are tiny girls with wings.”
“There’s so much to unpack there and it still isn’t the full story,” Pear said, massaging his forehead as though he had a headache building. “Fairies tend to be mischievous and tricky, but they’re more carefree than other Fae, which is probably who your new friend meant when he said they wanted to take over Astrana. It sounds like this corruption stuff is just a side effect of them trying to get through that barrier that keeps Outsiders out of Astrana. One that they can use, but still a side effect. As for this Harn guy, I don’t think that he’s trying to do something terrible, so if you see him again and he needs your help, then do whatever you want.”
“What?” Mark asked as he stared at Pear. “You got all that from what Axel said?”
“Leave it alone,” James told him, patting his shoulder. “You know that Pear speaks fluent Fantasy even when it is Axel he’s talking to.”
“You know what fair,” Mark nodded his head. “Shift gears?”
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“Sure,” Axel said. “I gave you guys an update about me, it’s someone else’s turn now.”
“Cool,” Mark grinned. “I’m about to make my Clan. Do you guys want to join?”
“This is the Clan that you’ll use to make that empire/kingdom that you want to make?” Pear asked. “Pass.”
“I’m good too,” James said. “Seems like something that you’ll use to give me a bunch of responsibilities.”
“I’m out,” Axel said. “If I ever start really looking for new pets, then I won’t have the time or care to help you out with that stuff. You’re on your own with your Clan.”
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t offer,” Mark said as he grabbed a slice of pizza from the fresh one the waitress had just placed on their table. “Just remember, if you ever want to join later, I’ll have to send you through the same interview process that my other hopefuls will go through.”
“That’s fine,” Pear said as he piled three slices onto his plate. “Whenever you’re in charge of the guild stuff it always tends to be decent anyway, so I’m sure we’ll be able to sneak in later if we have to.”
“Yeah, bribe your Vice-master or whatever,” Axel agreed as he grabbed a slice and began to fight with the cheese that began to stretch.
“I hate you both,” Mark said blandly as he took a bite.
“You know you’d be lost without us,” Axel laughed. “How’s your cross-country walk going, James?”
“It’s going,” James said after swallowing his own bite of pizza. “I’m about a day away from the peninsula proper and I have to dodge patrols of undead constantly.”
“That sounds like hell,” Pear said.
“Only when they see me first,” James said. “Just before I found a safe spot to log out, I had to spend like four hours running from a small horde of the zombies. A group of like five spotted me and I had to bolt when another thirty of them appeared from practically nowhere.”
“And it took you four hours to do that?” Mark asked skeptically. “Sounds like you suck at stealth.”
“No,” James said after a quick drink of his soda. “It took four hours because a new kind of ‘lesser undead’ appeared and I couldn’t hide from it and it kept showing the zombies where I was.”
“Why didn’t you just kill it?” Pear asked.
“Because it was a ghost or something,” James explained. “I couldn’t see it most of the time and I didn’t know it was there for a good two and half hours before I finally saw it the first time. After that I had to try out my Rune-enchanted arrows on it but they wouldn’t do anything to it unless it was visible. I got lucky after a while and one of my Light Arrows forced it to appear and I was able to shoot it with an Explosive Arrow before it could disappear again.”
“Remind me to not go to this undead event that’s about to start,” Axel said. “I don’t have those kinds of resources to do anything against that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure that by the time we get out there we’ll either have something for it, or we’ll be able to buy it,” Mark assured him.
“Sounds like mages will be king against those,” Pear said. “And if zombies are the most common kind, then there’s another kind of lesser undead that James hasn’t seen yet.”
“There’s a lot of them,” Mark said. “The Paladin helper they gave me for this has been teaching me about them starting from the lesser types and going up to the greater types. Zombies are like conscripts in an army, spirits are the scouts and mages, and skeletons are the enlisted men that signed on before the fighting broke out. After that they can all specialize in different ways depending on how the one controlling them uses them.”
“Like evolution?” Pear asked. “Wolf to Fire Wolf to Hellhound kind of stuff?”
“A bit,” Mark nodded as another pizza was placed before them. “But it was explained to me as something more like training and infusing more mana into them than flat out racial and species changing. A zombie that picks up a sword for some reason and holds onto it will slowly learn to use it as a club. After a while, with an infusion of mana, the zombie will start to use it like a sword or pick up some armor. A little more time and mana, the zombie will move faster, find a mount, or get thicker armor. At that point it’s not a basic zombie anymore, it’s a zombie warrior. Give it some time in that vein and it becomes a full fledged zombie knight.”
“So, does that mean that necromancy is the long game?” James asked.
“No,” Mark answered as Pear leaned in to listen more closely. “After a while, the undead develop something like their own mind and they don’t need the person that raised them anymore.”
“Like a kid growing up,” Axel said.
“Similar,” Mark nodded. “At that point, the undead will either go off on their own or choose to serve the master of their own will. At that point, the necromancer can’t control them as easily and they can’t make them grow with mana the same way.”
“Does that mean the greater undead have been raised for years?” Pear asked.
“In some cases,” Mark explained. “But for what’s going on right now, they just raised them as greater undead forcefully. When that happens, the undead have their mind fractured and they aren’t really there. The only way to do that though is to use a fresh corpse and a lot of power, more than most necromancers can access on their own. Rankins told me that they all want to use their own power for it instead of asking others to step in because they risk losing control with mana from other necromancers helping them.”
“Well, that sounds like something that’ll be interesting to follow later,” Axel said. “In the meantime, we have something more pressing to deal with.”
“We do?” James asked.
“We do,” Axel said, nodding firmly. “Pear. How’re things going on your front?”
“Not this again,” Pear groaned. “I told you Axel, I can’t see her, I’m sure she’s not interested, and I’m not even sure why you care.”
“We care cause our little Pear is growing up,” Mark said with a fake sniffle. “It seems like only yesterday he was afraid to talk to girls.”
“It was only yesterday,” Axel said with his own false sniffle and an exaggerated dabbing at his eyes with a napkin. “He’s growing up so fast.”
“Screw both of you,” Pear grouched as they burst into laughter. “You’re on my side here, right James?”
“Right,” James nodded. “Now, you need to remember that girls like compliments and you need to try to make sure that you don’t make them weirdly specific. Her eyes are pretty and maybe starlike, they don’t shine with a light that reflects your inner soul like the lake of your passion and they don’t make you want to sing in joyous rapture.”
“Fuck off, you creepy poet,” Pear said as James failed to keep his straight face and joined the others in laughing.