Dice whispered in Booth’s head. Announcements flickered past in midair just above the raider’s head, hanging there just long enough for Booth to see before vanishing.
[You use Melee Attack on Meres Raider.]
[Attack Roll: 7 (1d20) + 4 (STR) + 2 (Proficiency) = 13. Hit!]
[Damage Roll: 1 (1d4) + 4 (STR) + 2 (Proficiency) = 7]
[You deal 7 damage to Meres Raider.]
Booth had no idea how attacks and defenses worked, yet. He hadn’t even opened his character sheet. But the pitchfork slammed into the raider’s shoulder with a satisfying sense of resistance. Blood spatters appeared on the man’s clothing—not nearly as realistic as everything else so far. Booth could process that later. For the moment he just wanted this jerk to hit zero hit points and never get up again.
The game provided no enemy health meter by which Booth could gauge how badly he’d hurt the raider, but the bar at the bottom of his screen said his own health was only 13. The enemy might be higher than level one, though.
Booth gathered himself for another blow, but at the bottom of Booth’s vision, the Main Action indicator turned dark. He growled in frustration.
I want a piece of that motherfucker. Now.
Booth fought through his anger and tried to concentrate on figuring out the game’s mechanics. He hadn’t used all his Movement, apparently—that indicator remained lit. Booth strafed around the raider to put his body between the man’s spear and the children.
The Secondary Action indicator went gray. Booth stared at it.
[You currently have no available Secondary Action available. Refer to your character sheet.]
The three turn buttons faded. A new indicator flickered.
[Complete your turn?]
After a moment’s uncertainty, Booth nodded toward the indicator as he’d done back in the character creation screens.
Not like I have a choice.
The full row of turn-specific messages vanished, and the sense of his limbs being too heavy to move returned. The enforced stillness only made him want to fight back even harder.
The raider put both hands on his downturned spear and with lightning speed dragged it upward. Instinctively, Booth tried to lean back. His avatar moved in what felt like real time as he reacted, but even so he wasn’t fast enough.
[Meres Raider uses Melee Attack on you. Hit!]
[You take 5 damage.]
The spear’s stone tip sliced into Booth’s left cheek, starting at his jawline and burning up to his cheekbone.
Pain sucked Booth’s virtual breath straight from his virtual lungs.
Oh, holy fuck!
Whatever controlled Booth’s ability to defend himself kicked in. Without really thinking about it, he turned his head before the raider’s spear could hit his eye. The turn-based time freeze held him mostly immobile after that. The pain started to fade, although he felt blood splattering his face and neck.
The scar.
He’d left the scar on his avatar during character creation. If he’d removed it, would that have impacted how this tutorial combat went?
It’s all scripted.
The kids behind Booth screamed, but Booth felt abruptly calm and confident, if a little sheepish about the intensity of his emotional reaction to the game’s manipulations and pain simulator. He was playing out his Origin, which was in the past. In terms of his character’s history, he’d already won this fight. This combat was just to teach him the mechanics. The sense of urgency which had infused him faded.
Booth’s turn came up again. He still didn’t bother with looking at his list of possible Actions.
Scripted or not, I still just want to hit him.
With more composure this time, Booth jabbed his pitchfork at the raider. He expected a glorious finishing blow—he’d been walked through a combat round and had an Origin for his scar. Finishing off the enemy was all that remained.
[You use Melee Attack on Meres Raider.]
[Attack Roll: 1 (1d20) + 4 (STR) + 2 (Proficiency) = 7. Miss!]
The raider neatly side-stepped Booth’s attack, just like a quarterback moving away from a telegraphed tackle. Not only that, but the enemy’s spear, now stained with Booth’s blood, moved in a smooth arc even in the slow motion of turn-based paralysis.
Booth had spent his Main Action. No Secondary Action presented itself. He could move, but with screaming kids behind him, he didn’t feel like he should.
It’s scripted, he tried reminding himself. The system presented the same question as before.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
[Complete your turn?]
There was nothing else Booth could do. He’d run through all his turn options, and nothing remained. Paralysis seemed to set in even before he nodded.
Booth ended his turn.
The raider’s spear finished its arc level with Booth’s midsection. Its point aimed at his stomach. Booth glanced at his health bar.
I have eight hp left. It’ll be fine.
[Meres Raider uses Melee Attack on you. Hit!]
[You take 7 damage.]
The spear’s point punched into Booth’s stomach. Of its own volition, his left hand released the pitchfork and grabbed the raider’s spear, slowing its forward motion and preventing it from utterly impaling Booth. The pain this time was like a pile-driver to the gut. The stink of his own blood brought bile into his throat.
The raider pulled free his spear and shoved past Booth. He didn’t move beyond Booth’s reach, but the kids shrieked in renewed alarm.
One hit point. Booth had no idea yet how the game’s system worked, either as a game or with the whole digital upload aspect of things. What happened if his character died? Maybe he’d be rezzed. Maybe he’d get to roll a new character.
Maybe I don’t want to find out.
The raider slowed to a twitchy pause. The air around Booth thinned and allowed him to move.
He had his tiny heal spell, of course. That would bring him back to six hit points. But that was his Primary Action. If he used that, he couldn’t also try to hit the raider. If the raider swung around and hit Booth again, it felt entirely possible that he’d do enough damage that Booth’s measly little heal wouldn’t matter at all.
Or maybe the raider would just start spearing kids, instead. Booth couldn’t waste his turn on healing himself when he might be able to stop the raider from killing someone else.
If you can even hit him. If he has few enough hp that it even matters if you do.
In retrospect, that first hit Booth had landed felt like dumb luck. Both the options available to him seemed equally futile. Fury seethed beneath Booth’s pain.
Why would they do this? I just died for real. Why put me into a game scenario I can’t possibly win?
There had to be an answer. He had to be missing something. Turns didn’t seem to have any time limit, so he forced himself to stop and cool his head and try to think. A bull-headed refusal to just keep beating on the problem until it stopped being a problem wasn’t going to work here. He might be bigger than the lanky Meres-folk Raider, but apparently that wasn’t going to matter.
Booth looked at his turn indicators. Secondary Action was already grayed out—why the game even suggested he might have one was beyond him. Maybe it got better at higher levels.
Assuming you live that long.
Booth fixed his attention on the Main Action button.
[Refer to your character sheet for a full list of available Main Actions.]
Character sheet. Booth hadn’t bothered looking for it earlier, but maybe he’d missed something. The bottom of his vision seemed to be the anchor for his user interface. Bottom right was the mini-map, bottom center for indicators, so he tried looking at the bottom left.
An abbreviated version of Booth’s character sheet opened and filled his vision.
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1163627398881886250/1166048718810779809/Char_Sheet_Booth_lvl_1_Ch_7.png?ex=6549127e&is=65369d7e&hm=2ab3c7d018904843bd47c55206d9c930c23b5419d2a27f135771afd54498a0cf&]
He skimmed the tables that summarized his Stats and the various modifiers derived from them and located a section with his miserably short list of available Actions—melee attack, the little healing spell Touch of the Earthmother, the utterly useless Voshell’s Wisdom.
And one more ability, one he didn’t remember seeing before.
[Desperate Prayer. (Origin. Single use.) Make a plea to Voshell for her intercession on your behalf.]
That’s it. That’s exactly what I need.
Unlike the melee attack, casting the spell presented no immediately obvious method of taking the action. Booth tried focusing and nodding at the spell’s description, but that didn’t work. Finally, he tried taking it literally.
“Voshell.” This time, the game allowed him to say exactly what he was trying to say. “Please.”
Please help me stomp this motherfucker into the mud.
There were kids standing right behind him. Instinctively, Booth adjusted his wording. “Please help me to stop this enemy from hurting anyone else.”
The Action indicator went dark. At first it seemed like nothing would happen. But a whisper like summer wind in the trees around the farmhouse Booth had grown up in rose around him. A breeze scented with warm earth and grass cooled his face. No voice answered his prayer, but he suddenly knew exactly what to do.
Booth stumbled in a half circle and lashed out with the pitchfork. Brilliant golden light flared, more blinding than sunlight. The pitchfork’s tines caught the raider in the back, impaling him in the way that he’d tried to do to Booth. Blood splatters pooled all over the raider’s body, ridiculous save for the fact that it seemed like very real blood and there was a large amount of it.
The attacking raider fell face first onto the ground between Booth and the huddle of children. At the same moment, a victorious shout went up from the larger group of fighters nearby.
“We’ve routed ‘em again!”
“That’ll teach them!”
Booth looked at the kids. Awed, grateful little faces looked up at him, but none of them resembled Toby. He tried to ask if they were all right or if they knew Toby, but the tutorial seemed to have taken over again. He couldn’t say anything. Townsfolk suddenly crowded in on all sides. All of them were talking, but their words got lost in a general buzz.
[The System has updated your Origin to: Local Hero. During an attack by Meres-folk Raiders on your village, you called on Voshell and successfully saved the lives of several children. Traton’s townsfolk witnessed your bravery and devotion. They were so impressed and grateful that they sponsored you to go and train as a Tilier in Voshell’s service.]
Unable to move or speak, Booth slid into spectator mode. He wasted another few seconds looking for faces he’d recognize among the thronging villagers before comprehending that Toby and his parents had never actually been there.
It’s all just part of the game.
Ill-advised emotional manipulation aside, the scenario he’d just played through was kind of cool, Booth thought he might admit later. For the moment, he felt mostly dizzy and ready to lie down.
One hit point.
One point from what fate, he wasn’t exactly sure. But despite what the Origin update claimed, he knew he hadn’t actually saved anyone from anything. If not for stumbling across that one-time spell and his new goddess, he and all those kids would be dead.
Booth had a feeling he wasn’t going to get tossed god-mode bombs like that single use spell on any regular basis. He might need to revise his assumptions about this game’s difficulty level.
Or maybe it was all scripted to put me in the debt of this goddess I’m supposed to be serving. To make me feel small and weak at the start of things.
If so, it had worked.
The scene on Traton’s village square faded to gray and then black. Happy voices gave way to a murmuring darkness. A dulling of senses that resembled sleep fell across Booth like a blanket. He experienced again that dilating of vision and awareness, accompanied by mild panic, like being put under anesthesia.
The darkness which fell wasn’t complete. At the edges of Booth’s awareness, movement and sound swirled. Voices spoke words he couldn’t quite make out. Events unfolded that he couldn’t quite see. Time seemed to pass both too slowly and too quickly, all at once. He lost all sense of whether he’d been floating there for minutes or years.
Then everything fell truly still. The darkness brightened to gray. Shimmering pinpricks of light and consciousness formed in Booth’s vision. He regained just enough coherence to assume this was the start of whatever the game was going to throw at him next.