Lorelei couldn’t help but think that the change to the tone of Wayne’s voice at the end of that little spiel sounded more than a touch familiar. Perhaps not unlike something she had heard just before, very nearly, being killed by a Dragon . . .
“Guide? Did something sound . . . off about the Build Consultant at the end there?”
If she had been suspicious about what she had heard before, the complete and utter lack of any response from the normally chatty Guide confirmed it. Clearly, there were some sort of shenanigans taking place here – her Guide being willing to offer unsolicited advice over the cost of her earrings should have alerted Lorelei to that – which meant that the message at the very end there was pretty interesting. It was almost like someone was trying to sneak a message through to her when they were not supposed to.
Considering their very brief acquaintance, Lorelei was starting to develop a complex set of feelings towards Fortuna. It was hard not to feel thankful towards a god that had saved your life and, apparently, was cheering you on from the sidelines. But, on the other hand, the set of skills that came with this Class were a ball ache and her every battle had very nearly been her last. It wasn’t quite a love/hate relationship, but there was certainly a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
“Embrace the chaos,” Lorelei said aloud, echoing the final words of Wayne, and then wondered how much harder she could possibly embrace it without crushing it to death.
Hey ho. There would be time enough to dwell on her situation if she lived long enough to regret it. For now, though, in the absence of Gertrude, the shop was becoming even more low rent than it had been before. It appeared once she had made her purchase, there was very little purpose left to Pandora’s Box and it was almost like it had started to remove itself from existence. Speaking of fulfilling a purpose . . .
*** Quest Completed *** GEAR UP!
Objective: Suit Up, Fortuna's Herald!
1/3. Equip a weapon: You have my respect for taking on an Orc, a Dragon and the ground armed with nothing more than your face. Other options are available . . .
2/3. Put on some gear: Not that I'm not loving the pantsuit, but you might want to equip something that actually has stats on it.
3/3. Trinket Time: The Mystic Market awaits. Find something shiny to distract your enemies (and maybe your allies) from your apparent lack of skill.
Rewards: Congratulations on stumbling past the absolute minimum requirement for still being alive. You have a weapon, some gear, and some shiny earrings. Well done, you. For this awesome achievement, you are getting absolutely nothing else from me. Displays of borderline competence do not get cookies.
Well, that was disappointing.
Gear Up! had been a little, nagging voice at the back of her head for so long that she’d been hoping for something interesting to come from actually completing it. However, the lack of reward probably made sense, considering the more difficult quests she’d completed since receiving it. As the Guide suggested – and she hated for it to be right – failure to complete Gear Up! was probably pretty terminal. However, what was worrying was that without this quest glowing in her peripheral vision, it seemed to be the end of her quest chains . . .
As if by magic – or at least by System – once again, the very fact of thinking about something appeared to be the way to trigger a response.
*** Quest Awarded *** Moving Right Along
Objective: Okay. You’ve been hanging around this place like a bad smell for long enough. You’ve shown that you can take on Wolves and Kobolds – and even handle the odd PvP encounter – but there’s a big wide world out there and, frankly, it’s a touch tragic you’re still here. Day One will be ending in forty-five minutes and you need to be in a different postcode by then.
Quest Description: You see that clock that’s just appeared in the right hand corner of your vision? Think of that as a ‘Doom’ countdown. You have until that reaches zero to leave your current zone and explore another one. Any player who fails to enter new pastures by the deadline will discover to what extent ‘deadline’ is a metaphor.
Leave the Beginner Zone: I don’t know how else to tell you this. Fucking run.
Rewards: You get not to be dead.
By the immediate screams and sound of running feet from outside the door of Pandora’s Box, Lorelei was obviously not the only person who had received that particular quest. Was it a coincidence that she had wanted another quest, and everyone got it at the same time? Or had she just been lucky to have finished Gear Up! at precisely the right moment? That felt a bit like a thread she did not want to pick at right now.
Lorelei crossed to the door and peered outside. It was as she had thought, pretty much everyone who had been exploring the Mystical Market was now doing their best to frenziedly evacuate the vicinity. Even in the short time Lorelei watched, at least five people were crushed to death in the melee.
Stolen novel; please report.
Thinking it might be better to wait for the crowds to pass, Lorelei reclosed the door and leaned against it. “Guide?”
*** Help Message ***
Were the quest details a bit subtle for you, sugar tits? You really do need to be getting moving if you’re going to avoid the crush.
“At what point did this feel like a fair quest to you? Just when I find a place where nothing can kill me, you’re telling me to leave that and go somewhere else. I can’t help but feel my well-being is not at the forefront of your mind here.”
*** Help Message ***
Boo-fucking hoo. Look, this is actually to try to help out those of you that are . . . not excelling. A number of your fellow homo sapiens are being naughty boys and girls and we’re trying to smooth that out the best way we can..
“What does that mean?”
*** Help Message ***
In our experience, once a Player begins to level up, they will move away from the Starter areas and begin to explore the wider world. Unfortunately, in yet another example as to why this little planet really should not have been anywhere near an Integration schedule, various of your citizens are taking the opportunity of making use of their newfound skills to kick ass and take names. Mostly from the Players like you who – bless you all – are still wandering around with their thumbs in their mouths. It’s getting messy and whilst the powers-that-be like a good slaughter fest, just watching Level 4s and 5s being ritually massacred by 10s and 11s isn’t what this is supposed to be about. This hotfix quest is to try to get a bit of movement going and to break you all up into more appropriate parts of the world.
Lorelei thought about that for a moment. She’d had her own encounter – in the alley outside the Bullring – with several people who were playing a little game of l’et’s rob and kill those who are of a lower level’. It hadn’t been a lot of fun. “But isn’t this just going to move the problem into new parts of the city?”
*** Help Message ***
Thank fuck you’re here! We hadn’t thought of that. With all our years of experience and countless simulations of every possible scenario, it’s so humbling to be in the presence of such an original thinker. Fortunately, completely by accident because we are – indeed – the Clampetts, we have established different zones into which players can only when they are the appropriate level.
“Well, why not include that in the information for the quest? Can’t you hear all the people panicking outside? There are probably going to be more people killed in the rush than would have died in any event! If you’d just said, ‘We’re dividing you up into levels to keep some of you safe,’ there’s a chance it would be much calmer!”
The Guide did not respond. Lorelei waited for a moment to see if the ticker tape would start moving again. But no: it appeared to have lost its chattiness. She would have enjoyed the sensation of, however briefly, putting the Guide in its place. But the ticking countdown of the Doom Clock suggested that any satisfaction was going to be temporary at best.
Poking her head out of the shop’s door again to check the coast was relatively clear, Lorelei slipped out and made her way towards the entrance. As she went, she did her best not to look too carefully at the crushed remains of fallen shoppers. The sales had been rough this year.
It was interesting to her that in a ‘neutral’ area, so many people had been able to be killed by good old-fashioned carelessness. However, she guessed that in the grand scheme of things it probably all slotted in quite nicely to the genocidal vibe that seemed to have gripped the whole world. Shaking her head at the pointlessness of it all, and checking she had her [Veil of Vindication] on, Lorelei slipped out into the crisp evening air. The way things were going, it would be just her luck to run straight into Sylvie and Rupert . . .
It took her a little while to get her bearings, and even longer to work out where she was off to next. Since the quest announcement, her Map had been updated to display a series of routes she could take to access the Zones the Players were required to reach.
The first route, which was a reasonably long green track, led from her current position and out towards Edgbaston. She could be wrong, but it looked as if it was the Cricket Stadium that was the final destination there. If she mentally pressed down on the green line, it gave her a bit more information which indicated this was the destination to which everyone sub-Level 5 should head.
Frowning, Lorelei moved away from that and looked at one of the other routes. The second road, this one marked in amber, went in the other direction towards Hagley. If she was a betting woman – and as Fortuna’s Herald, Lorelei kind of thought she probably was now – that line appeared to terminate at the Botanical Gardens. This was where the sub-Level 8s were supposed to go.
Finally, there was a red line that led from where Lorelei stood and off towards Spaghetti Junction. This track clearly terminated at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and was by far the shortest line from where she was currently was but was flagged as the destination of choice for those sub-Level 12. There was no info about where those higher than Level 12 were supposed to take themselves, but she assumed they made their own arrangements. Or just did whatever the fuck they wanted. If Lorelei had learned anything so far about this world, then it was that the strong could pretty much ignore any rules that were going.
“So, green is easy, amber is a bit harder, and red is difficult, right?” Lorelei’s Guide was stoically silent to her musing. That, or it did not find her semiotic literacy worthy of comment.
The choice was obvious, wasn’t it? The smart call was to get herself along to the cricket stadium and hold up there with other like-minded wimps who had failed to set the world alight on Day One of the Integration. It seemed to her that anyone tempted to prey on the weakest members of this post-apocalyptic society would have moved out of the Level 6 range and – therefore – she would probably be much safer going that way.
Of course, it was a long way there – forty-five minutes at a brisk jog if she was lucky – and that was assuming that the newly evolved local flora and fauna didn’t treat the long stream of weak and hopeless Players trudging that way to be an all-you-can-eat buffet.
In fact, the more Lorelei thought of it, the more the Green Zone seemed like a terrible idea. It basically had a big flashing light above it that said, ‘Not a Single Baller Inside – Please Pick Us Off At Your Leisure.” If the Guide was hoping that bundling all the weakest members of society up into one giant stadium was going to keep them safe, well they had obviously never seen a divorcee on a Club 18-30 holiday.
For that matter, neither had Lorelei – but she had a decent grasp of the visual nature of the metaphor.
At the other end of the scale, the Children’s Hospital was also obviously out. Lorelei was willing to ‘embrace the chaos’, but what she had seen in that alleyway had made her realise that she had absolutely no interest in rubbing shoulders with people who’d reached double figures. Besides, that would have to be where Sylvie and Rupert would be required to set themselves up – and keeping some distance there would be idea.
So, the Botanical Gardens then? She was a little underpowered for that Zone, but then so had she been for every other experience she had thus far. At least the Amber Zone didn’t have the feeling of having a massive cross painted on her back. Checking the Doom Clock, Lorelei saw that she had just over thirty-five minutes to get there. With no further ado, Lorelei started out, with a quick jog, to move in that direction.