Chapter 3: Beginning The Game
I awake with my alarm going off. I am tired when I wake up because i just messed up my sleeping schedule. I really shouldn’t have gone to bed because now I’m going to be more tired throughout the day. The sleep cycle functions in five different stages. Stage one you are just falling asleep and can be easily awoken. Stage two your body starts to lower temperature and eye movement stops. Stage three is when the body is in deep sleep and the only signals being sent are fast and short waves. Stage four the body continues deep sleep, but if aroused during this time are disoriented for a few minutes. Lastly the REM cycle which imitates the awoken state of being, but the eyes are still closed. During this time is when people commonly dream.
During stages three and four if awoken the body changes its sleep schedule and you become more tired from waking up at the wrong time. If you oversleep your body becomes confused and you are tired as a result because your sleep schedule has changed. I’m going to need caffeine now to function regularly throughout today. I’m just going to have Chris fix me a cup of coffee now and again later in about eight hours from now. I head down stairs into the bar. No customers right now except for one younger couple over in the corner. They look like they are only about twenty-three at most. Probably only just started drinking a few weeks ago. I haven’t really seen them around that much.
I walk over to Chris and say “Can you fix me a cup of coffee, sugar and milk please.”
Chris responds unsurprised with “Sure when do you want it?”
“In about five minutes if you can manage that” I say without delay. “I’m going to head back up because they just released the info on the game. Also I’d like another cup of coffee before you go to bed I plan on staying up late.”
“Alright then Mr. Wright” Chris says jokingly.
“Thanks Boss” I say and head back up to my room.
I jog back up to my room and turn my computer on. It powers up out of rest mode and goes directly into the last page I had pulled up which was the main page to Evolution. The new update is a basic synopsis of the game. It says: In Evolution the game does just as it suggests. The game evolves to make gameplay more difficult for the player. The terrain will change, the enemies will change, the dungeons will change all to make sure each player experiences the game to the fullest. After that it showed an image of a knight heading to a castle. Below this was another line of text.
In this game the ruler is the one who finishes first. There are rewards for participation in Player versus Player combat. On top of that we have added a feature for whoever beats the game first with its own set of perks. Those who rise to the top quickest will be rewarded, but this game won’t be an easy one. Just because there are challenges does not mean you shouldn’t take your time. Slip ups in this game may prove to be fatal so don’t go too fast.
Next Update: May 3rd 2024
This company which hadn’t seemed to be anything special was certain that there was no actual bugs in their games. The ones before hand had been from what I can tell rigged with lots of bugs. Yet they were certain their next update would be May 3rd which was about seventeen days from now. Other than the brief synopsis of the game I didn't know much about the game. What I had managed to figure out however was this game was definitely open world and it didn’t have a turn taking system. Battle in this game would be entirely decided by skill and strategy which were things I excelled at. I would need to maximize the amount of time I spent on the game learning while minimizing the amount of time it would take me to solve each scenario. There was only one thing that bothered me about this game; what were the consequences for dying.
The only thing they said about dying was that consequences could prove to be fatal. In the history of RPGs death usually meant only one of four things. The first type meant a simple loss of progress. Loss of progress was the original punishment that was put into RPGs. You had to save to ensure that if you died you had a fail safe. However, while saving could be used as a backup there were many instances in which saving ultimately lead to having to restart the game. If you made an error that proved to be bigger than anticipated it sometimes had really bad repercussions. I like to think about save files like time travel.
Every action you make in a game changes the end outcome even if there is only one ending. Every choice you as the player makes changes the difficulty of the game and even sometimes your entire play style. I’m not even talking about story based choices either. Sure sometimes there might be a quest like: Save this character if you don’t they die which gets you the bad ending, but those aren’t what I’m talking about. I may not yet be a hardcore gamer, but I’m good at analysis.
I’ll give an example of the scenario I’m talking about. You are low health mid way through a dungeon. The dungeon itself is only around six floors total so you have to descend another three floors in order to reach the boss. You know that the boss fight will be difficult therefore want to conserve your mana points(magic points determining how many spells you can cast.) You decide to use a large healing potion to get yourself back up to full health, but that was your last healing item. You manage to reach the boss.
The start of the boss fight is going good and you aren’t having too much trouble. You saved enough mana and you prepared enough that the boss isn’t really dishing out too much damage. However when he gets below half health he switches modes and starts doing more damage. This is forcing you to heal you and your teammates each turn, however you don’t heal anywhere nearly enough health back in comparison to the damage he is dealing. Your team is slowly starting to die one by one until its only you.
You have half health so if he hits you you will have a couple hit points left and be finished next round. However if you heal you won’t finish him in time. You choose to heal rather than being one shotted and hope for a critical strike. The critical nevers comes and so you die and must restart the game from where you last saved at the entrance of the dungeon. If you had just had that potion you would have had just enough health to finish him off and revive your teammates, but you used it earlier ensuring your eventual loss.
From there when you continue if you once again use the potion there is a chance you can win however you would have to change your battle strategy. Little things like that can make or break how you play. If you use items at the wrong time you can screw yourself up later in the game. If you burn through too much mana or take to much damage or are careless about certain traps the exact same thing happens. You are forced into situations where it is likely you fail and that continues through the rest of the game. That’s why it is imperative to save at the right time.
The second scenario only works assuming you’re playing a game that has lives. This would be games like mario, sonic and most platformers. Once you hit zero lives you would have to restart the game from the beginning or where ever the game resets you. In the original mario you had to restart from the very beginning of the game. Later on it just made you start from the beginning of the stage and lives became irrelevant and were more or less just medals of status.
The third scenario is a lot less common and only starred in a few games I researched which would be that when you die you drop all of your items. If you hadn’t spent points for a level up some games even took that away from you. Taking exp away was mostly a dark souls exclusive. The way this system worked was that if you died and dropped your gear you would have to collect it within one life or it would disappear and be replaced by your current gear.
Lastly the most unthinkable that I’ve never actually seen, but have heard a couple of rumours would be a total wipe. This was mostly introduced in pen and paper RPGs, but some people actually incorporated it into their games. A total wipe meant regardless of save points regardless of lives, and regardless of most exceptions if you died in the game your data was entirely deleted. If you died in a RPG and weren’t revived you had to entirely make a new character or new save file depending on the game itself. A total wipe hasn’t been used very much because most players get annoyed at the first one and if it happens again aren’t invested enough to retry so they just quit.
I don’t know what the consequence for dying is, but I honestly would like to know before I start. I started searching to see if they actually mentioned anywhere what the death penalty was, but I couldn’t find it. That meant one thing. I would have to watch someone live to see how things worked. Currently only a couple of people were actually streaming. I click on J0hN135 stream to see what he is doing.
He is in a forest. Right now he is only looking around at his environment. I can see in the background a castle and a mountain directly ahead of where he is facing. He pulls up his map which goes into very neat details about everything around him. There is no direct path from where he is at to any one of three locations he could head to which means he will have to just go based off what his map says. He looks around and places a marker on his map which shows up as a blue icon about three miles away. He looks for the marker when he pulls down his map and there’s a large beacon of blue light coming out of the ground where he placed his beacon.
His beacon is set at the lake. He follows the beacons light for a few minutes. He is fairly close to the Lake and then as he is walking something comes undone from the tree. It falls on the ground. He looks down to see what it is. It appears to be a moss pile. The moss stands upright and then tree roots and bark start curling upward to form a body. He stands there watching it. It moves in his direction and lurches forward. He shoves it backward and it falls on its back. It doesn’t seem to have strong muscles because it can’t get up. It reaches its arms upward along with its legs and starts flailing.
The moss figure keeps writhing on the ground. He walks over and stomps down with his foot. His foot goes through the moss figure which makes a crunch noise. The moss figure starts to decay and decays back into the ground. He is awarded a couple exp points. He is only three points from leveling up. He continues on his trail and encounters a lone wolf. He still doesn’t have any legitimate weapons other than his fist so he looks around frantically for a stick. He can’t find anything so he backs up slowly.
The wolf lunges at him and he kicks it in the side. He does little damage, but the kick itself dealt around an eight the wolfs hp(Hit points.) The wolf gets up and starts circling him once again. It lunges and he kicks it. He tries to do a follow up attack while its on the ground, but slamming his foot into it again, but it recovers quickly and jumps on top of him. It attacks him aiming for his throat. He grabs it by the throat and twists hard breaking its neck which kills it with a critical strike. He levels up.
J0hN135 asks via mic “What build should I go for?” I look for his level. He is level eight so he has been playing for at least a little bit. The people in chat remains silent so I take the initiative and look at his stats. From the looks of things he has yet to spend a single point. He has no ranged capability, but based on the fact he has no weapons he should probably prioritize either his agility or his endurance. He probably wants more out of his audience since he is live streaming for them. I ask him “J0hN135 you haven’t spent any points yet right?”
J0hN135 replies “No, I haven’t” he says pausing to look at my gamer tag so he knows what to call me. He says “Asher Wright what build should I go for?”
“Based on the fact you have no weapons most likely you should focus on your speed or endurance. You have no weapon preference right now so you should just focus on staying alive.”
There were nine total stats each did something entirely different. There was strength, dexterity, willpower, agility, luck, skill, talent, stamina, and last but not least charisma. I’m not sure what they did in this game because I haven’t played it myself, however based off their titles I can take a guess. Strength influences damage, speed influences character movement, dexterity influences either weapon precision and accuracy or it changes the characters weight limit, willpower is magic,luck boosts critical rates or damage, skill probably boosts precision or skill damage/cooldown, talent I’m at a loss for, stamina probably influences amount of times you can attack or how long you can run and lastly once again charisma probably influences agro or health.
J0hN135 says “You’re pretty smart Asher. I hope I can count on your guidance.”
I respond a little sarcastically with “I haven’t played the game yet so I’m going to be the best walk through you’ve ever had.”
J0hN135 laughs over mic for a brief period of time and then finally puts half his points into endurance and half his points into speed. He now has a four in speed and a five in endurance. He originally started with nine points because I’m guessing the level five level up gives you an extra ability point.
Me: Do you have skills you can get now?
J0hN135: I have talent points, but I have no slots since my talent is at zero
Me: Ok do you have any equipment?
J0hN135: I wish. In the first dungeon I got chased out and the only thing I had when I left was this map.
Me: Where was the first dungeon?
J0hN135: While back. I don’t want to die out here so I figured the Lake should be safe.
Me: I am not sure you should.
J0hN135: Why?
Me: Frankly I am fairly sure water monsters in most RPGs are higher level so I’m not sure its safe.
J0hN135: I’m pretty close though it’s a long walk anywhere else.
Me: Well your game not mine.
J0hN135: Agreed.
J0hN135 continues heading forward towards the lake. At this rate he should make it in about a minute. Another one of those moss creatures slides off a nearby tree. J0hN135 prepares to attack it waiting for it to lunge so he can push it over. The mossman lunges as he expects and he pushes it over and crushes its stomach like last time. Another two moss creatures are walking over to him. He starts getting antsy because if they both lunge at the same time he can’t push both off since he doesn’t have enough strength.
He plays it smart and moves so that one of them is closer than the other and then circles around them so that they distance themselves out even more. The moss creatures are now level four whereas before they had been level two. He bates the moss creature into attacking and then pushes it over and crushes it’s stomach with his foot. After this he has to back up because the other one lunges forward towards where he was. It falls on top of the decaying moss creature and absorbs it. Its level shoots up to level six and it is now bigger than before.
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J0hN135 backs off and starts stepping backward trying to predict when it will lunge. The moss creature doesn’t lunge. Instead it goes over to the almost completely decayed carcass of the first moss creature and absorbs it. Its level shoots up to eight and it now lumbers over top of J0hN135. It stands at least two heads taller than him and its muscular enough that it probably can’t be knocked over easily. It moves forward towards him.
I say “J0hN135, run or that thing is going to kill you. You aren’t equipped with gear so the chance it wins a one on one fight with you is fairly high.”
He replies with “That thing at level two died in one hit. If it doubled its stats I should be able to kill it in a few good hits. J0hN135 backs up and waits for it to lunge. It swings its hand at him and he ducks. When he is crouched below it the creature falls over on top of him trying to crush him. J0hN135 rolls to the left out of its way. Once it hits the ground he runs over and starts smashing its stomach with his foot as quick as he can. As he is doing this he suddenly gets tackled from behind to the ground. He tries to do what he can to get what’s on his back but it has him firmly pinned down. The creature on his back is another moss creature and its sucking his health away. His health starts dropping. It started at one hundred points and now in a matter of a few seconds is already at seventy points.
He can’t get it off, but while he is trying to wrestle the creature off he sees the bigger one get up and start walking towards him. His health is now at about thirty points. The big one picks up the smaller moss creature and crushes it. It absorbs the moss creature and it is now level nine. As soon as J0hN135 is free he gets up and starts running. However before he can get away the big creature grabs him and turns him around. It slams him up against a tree which takes out twenty of his health. It slams him into the tree again and kills him. As he dies there is a ten second countdown while everyone watching J0hN135 gets to see his lifeless corpse get eaten. After J0hN135 dies he turns off his stream and I’m kicked out of the video.
J0hN135 stream only lasted a couple of minutes. I didn’t really expect him to perform that well if he was doing everything off his own knowledge of the game which probably wasn’t that extensive. Most of the games information had been released after the game was playable which left most people in the dark. This was problematic to most players if they were not capable of adjusting on the fly. Even though J0hN135 stream didn’t last very long I got all of the information about the game I needed other than the consequence for death. I know that dying as of right now is probably bad since he cut stream, but who can say for sure.
My thoughts are interrupted as Chris knocks on the door and then walks in setting my coffee down next to my computer. Chris says to me “Sorry, about the wait Mr. Asher, it just got busy down stairs after you left.” Chris was still carrying on about the Mr. Asher thing. Oh well, he can have his fun I’ll get back at him later.
I say to Chris “Thanks for the coffee Boss.”
He quickly replies “No problem, but I’ve got to get back to work it is seriously starting to get busy.” Chris turns around and exits the room quickly, but quietly closing the door behind him. Once the door is closed I hear the light thuds going down the stairs and he is gone.
I rewatch J0hN135’s stream over and over again since no other videos are released at the moment. Each time I watch it I look out for something I missed the last time. The first time through I pay excessive attention to the path he took. His stream starts as soon as he enters the forest so I keep track of where he is and what path he took to get where he did. He started out just going straight through the forest for a couple miles before he decided that he wasn’t getting anywhere. He stops temporarily to look at the map. He walks a couple more miles before he reaches the point I picked up the stream at. He then cuts to his left and heads for the Lake. He almost reaches it and the he dies.
The second time I pay attention to the surroundings to see if there is any legitimate way to tell where you are going. While he was walking through the forest a few cuts had been made on a tree in the distance to his right before he had looked away. In the few frames it had been there it looked to be regenerating. That meant you couldn’t mark your way if you didn’t find the map because the marks would disappear.
The third time I watched how he approaches the few enemies he runs into. Right at the start he just encountered a few bats. He had no weapons so instead of focusing on how he fought I decide to focus on watching how the several enemies moved. The moss men keep low and then rise upward a little bit before lunging. The wolf seems to be mostly unpredictable of when it will strike however it only makes a half circle each time at most before it lunges. It also appears to be able to swiftly recover from strikes. The bats he fought mostly just attempt quick dives with an exception where one of them rushed directly at him cut off at the last second and then swiftly turned back around to actually attack.
The fourth time I just payed attention to the brief moments where he pulled out his map. I carefully drew it to the best of my ability based off what he had shown me. This would only help for the forest, but it was better to memorize it now then be lost later. The Fifth time I rewatched it I paid attention exclusively to the settings menu. I noticed that you could hold up to two weapons in either hand at the same time. This didn’t mean that you could use two weapons per hand, but instead meant that you could quick switch to a different weapon if you felt like it. Having four total weapons would be helpful for sure.
Weight was only calculated based off what was currently equipped. That meant that you could have lots of inventory items that wouldn’t burden you provided you didn’t have to pull them out. I didn’t get to see all of the menus however I quickly became familiar with the three main ones: Inventory, Status, and lastly Equipment. All three of these would be invaluable to me as a new player. I didn’t get to see everything I wanted, but at least I wasn’t going in dark.
I refresh the video once again so that I can once again watch it. The video no longer works. They devs probably removed it. This is going to be a pain in the ass. I decide not to worry about it. I continue going over what I have collected while I drink my coffee. By now it has cooled enough I can drink it without problem. I do this for the next two hours.
Finally Chris comes up and knocks on my door when I’m going over my notes about enemy patterns for the eighteenth time. Chris says “You’re going to need help getting it up here.”
“It’s that big?” I exclaim.
“Yeah, it's pretty big, frankly not even sure your room is big enough. It is pretty light, but it's kind of awkward.”
I hustle down stairs and there is a box about twice the size of my dresser. I pick it up to start carrying it, but it’s so large that I can’t really get a good hold on it. Chris tells Cindy to cover while he is gone and he picks up the other side. We carry it up the stairs to my room and notice a problem. It will fit through the door lengthwise, but it will not fit widthwise. It is about an inch too big. I tell Chris “We should take it out of the box and push it through the door like that.”
Chris says in response “Likewise.”Chris pulls out a pocket knife and cuts open the box. We open the box and inside is a plastic package surrounded by lots of packing peanuts. I grab the plastic package and shove it up off the top of the box for chris to pull into my room. He carefully lifts it, turns it and pulls it into my room. I hand him the second plastic package and he does the same thing. In the last package is the gear I’m suppose to wear for the rig and I tell him to be careful. The rest of the box is nothing, but peanuts. I shove the box up against the wall and tell Chris I’m going to leave it here for the moment.
Chris looks in the box one last time and asks me “What is this?” He pulls out a black sensor with a circle and an x shape on it flashing a bluish green color.
“I don’t know. It didn’t say it came with that.” I say
Chris says “Take a look at the device I’ll try and help you assemble it later. I have to get downstairs or I’m going to start losing business.”
I nod at him. He walks to the right of the box and walks down stairs. He hands me the sensor and continues down the stairs. I look at the sensor. I don’t know what it is truthfully. It doesn’t seem important, but the blue X on the back of it concerns me. I leave the box on the stairs. It slides down the stairs and Chris quickly whisks it away into a storage room.
I put the black sensor on my desk and look at the plastic packages. The one with my gear is going to be important so I set it aside on top of my closed laptop. The first package is filled with sensors and different wires whereas the second is filled with a manual on how to use it and a remote charger. It is kind of weird it would need to charge, but that’s not a hefty price to pay if it can be used anywhere.
I cut open the plastic package containing the manual. It shows a map of where all the sensors go. The biker helmet goes on top and all the wires connect to an area around the base of the helmet. After that gloves must be put on. The black sensor is an additional component. It apparently is the sensor that determines how good your sensory perception is. You put it on the back of the head at the top of the spinal cord area. Once you do that it uses the electrical pulses in your body to generate your perception of the environment. I grabbed the black helmet and put it on the charger. While it is on the charger I pull my clothes off and put all the little diodes on my body along with the gloves. Over top of the sensors on my back goes a plastic spine which reads all the sensors and makes it comfortable for me to lay down.
It takes me about five minutes to completely get all the sensors on my body and when I pull the helmet off the charger it is already at thirty percent. I wait until it completely charges to full and then I plug up the cords. I close my eyes waiting for something to happen. When I open my eyes and nothing has happened I go over and grab the manual. I slide the visor up to look at it. The manual says that I must put the black sensor on my neck and press down for three seconds. After that I should go limp and start up. Speaking of starting it up I never saw a physical copy of Evolution. I decide I’ll boot it up first before I go check for the copy of the game.
I put the black sensor on the back of my head where it is supposed to go. It turns on and I feel it hook into my neck. The sensor actually firmly grabs the skin on the back of my neck and it hurts for a second and then fades. I lay on my bed and hold down the button for three seconds like it said. Once it hits three my body goes limp and I feel like I’m floating. I hear a electronic voice say “Horizon start up sequence initiated.”
It pulls up my profile and has me fill out my profile. It asks for name, age, date of birth, and lastly my email account for potential updates in the future. After this it asks for my username. I decide to go with my name and pick Asher Wright as my username online. Upon filling out of everything it takes me to the home menu. I’m now standing in a grey area with dim lighting. It shows a plus and minus sign. I click on the plus and it brightens the main menu. I press the plus button a few times and now the area I’m in is lighten well enough I can see.
I click on the next icon by waving my right arm to the left. It shows me the actual home screen now which has evolution already downloaded and shows my friend list as well as my profile. My profile has no image at the moment, but I’m not worried about that. I click wave my left hand once to the right and press forward with my hand to start evolution.
The area around me changes and I see a character roster along with my current lv zero stats. There are no classes here so I can only change how I look before I begin the game. To the left is the character roster with all the players that are currently playing. It ranks them entirely based off of levels and stats. The current highest player is level ten. It doesn’t go into specifics about the character or anything else because they have their character data listed as private.
To the right is my current character which has a zero in all stats. The only thing needed for me to start the game are my character name and my appearance. I myself am a fan of red hair. I give myself a medium length red wavy hair with a small red soul patch as well. My body build is average like it is currently listed. For eye color I decide on grey. I don’t mess with the eyebrows other than changing any part of my body with hair to have blood red hair color. My skin color I change to slightly tan. As far as skin and hair color you can have pretty much anything you’d expect. You can even make yourself non human, but those options are locked for the moment. My character is now complete. I name myself Asher Wright and I start the game.
I start off in the middle of a underground room. There are several players around me. There are probably around twenty five in total. In front of me is two large wooden doors. The whole room itself is made from stone blocks around one by two in size covered by green moss and lichen. I open my menu by sliding my hand identically to the way J0hN135 did. My menu opens. I check my inventory and I have nothing. Because of this I also don’t have a map in which to follow. I start walking over toward the door and am about to push it open. I hear a voice behind me say “Hey, you’d better not go out there on your own.”
I turn around to see a man with green hair. He looks and sounds american. He has a friendly aura about him ,but I know I should still tread with caution. I look up and see his player name. His character name is just Jack. I look him over and then ask “Thanks for the heads up, but why?” His character level is also zero so I wonder why he is warning me.
“I’m a refresh. I was waiting here for someone to party with. You just spawned in so you probably don’t know anything do you? I’m sorry for being too forward, but unless you’re a refresh like me I don’t think you should go out there without a party member.” Jack says subtly.
“I”m not exactly sure what you mean by refresh or why you are talking to me, but could you try and be a little bit more concise in your warning?” I ask hesitantly.
“Whenever you die your character is deleted and you have to restart. I died almost three minutes out of spawn. After I refreshed normally I would rush back in again and try to do things differently right? Well I decided I should party with someone else. I’ve been watching the roster and almost everyone who has left out that door has had to restart. I’ve seen the same player go out and get killed three times within fifteen minutes. Restarting is a hassle and I want to be a top player not a refresh. I figured partying with someone would be helpful, but everyone out here so far has turned me down.”
“So a refresh is someone who has already died right?” I ask.
“Yes, it’s prolly not their real name, but that’s what I call them.” Jack says without delay. “Do you want to party up with me?” Jack asks with hope.
Normally I would turn him down, but he has a degree of knowledge I don’t. He knows at least a little about the first area. On top of that it will be helpful to not have to do combat alone especially if both of us are unarmed. I respond affirmatively “I could definitely use the help.”
Jacks face lights up. He opens his menu with a flick of his wrist and within a few seconds I have a party invite pop up in front of me. A few seconds after I accept the invite I see a change in the roster. The top player dies and is replaced by the new one which is level eight. I open the door and say to Jack “You are going to have to guide me on this first part.”
Jack says “Sure no problem follow me. I do have one question though.” He takes point and looks back at me while we are walking out. The area around us is made of the same stones covered in algae. The walls around us are illuminated by torchlight which only barely gives us enough light to see.
I ask Jack “What’s the question?”
Jack asks bluntly “How long is this partnership going to work for? I’m sure some players do it only for the first quest and others do it until both players are ready to leave on their own. I just want to know if you’re going to be reliable.”
“To answer your question I’m going with the simple answer of til death do us part” I say with a laugh.
Jack says “Alrighty then partner.”
“You can call me Asher” I tell him.
“Likewise you can call me Jack” He tells me with a wicked grin.
We continue walking forward until he stops. Jack looks back at me and says “ I died here last time. There is a ceiling block that comes down and crushes whoever is beneath it. However I don’t have anything to use to activate it so I can move past it.”
“Can you run past it in time or no?” I ask curiously.
Jack says “No, the second anything with any kind of weight hits the floor the block immediately comes down.”
I think about our particular circumstances right now. Nothing around us except for these walls and this trap. No items this early so there's no way we could get past by normal means. I wonder how the top players got past then. I ask Jack “How did the top players get past here?”
“The first person got crushed and then they ran under it while it was rising back up.”
“So we would have to have a sacrifice in order to get past. Well the game may be difficult, but it wouldn’t be unplayable for a singular person.” I say out loud thinking to myself. At this moment I remembered earlier when J0hN135 was streaming that tree that had been damaged. This made me think the walls might be breakable. I punch the wall to try and see if I can break it down. Immediately pain shoots through my hand. The wall has four hundred health and the punch only did one point of damage. I take eight damage out of my current health of one hundred.
There is some algae now sticking to my hand. “I just figured out how to get past” I tell Jack excitedly.
“How?” He asks with a interested expression.
“The algae and moss on this wall are loose meaning we can pull it off. We are going to pull enough off to make a clump and throw it into the radius of the trap.”
“That’s brilliant” Jack tells me.
We collect enough off the walls to form a clump and throw it out underneath the trap. The trap slams down and the moss/algae clump is now flattened against the floor. Jack takes point and leads us down a couple more hallways. We reach a fork with three doors. Jack tells me “The middle door is the only one I haven’t tried.” We open the middle door and I see a room filled with bones. The hallway stretches about a hundred feet. I start cautiously walking down the hallway. I’m careful to avoid stepping on any of the bones or touching any of the blood soaked walls. Jack keeps himself to my side. We reach the end of the hallway without issue.
“This is going easier than I expected” I say.
“Yeah, this is going better than the last time.” Jack says quietly muttering to himself.
This reminds me of something he said earlier. He said the middle door is the only door I haven’t tried. However before we got there he had said he died only once and it was at the crushing trap.
After we open the door I see a tunnel with light at the end. “We reached the end of the first area” I exclaim.
“Yeah we did Asher.” Jack says.
Neither of us run towards the end of the tunnel. Jack stays in sync with me as I walk until I ask him the question. “You said you only died once, but that was supposed to be at the crushing trap. You later told me that you had only not tried the middle door. Why was that?” I ask a little bit worried of his response.
“Well I figured it would be easier if you thought I wasn’t a stuck up prick.” Jack says.
“I guess that makes sense.” In all reality it doesn’t though. There are ways he could have explained it without sounding stuck up.
“Where do you think we should head after we get into the forest?” Jack asks me.
“Frankly I want to head to the castle” I answer him.
“I don’t know where that is” He says without much surprise.
“I know where it is. I can lead us there” I tell him with assurance.
“Cool, you can take point then” Jack then gets behind me so he follow.
We head off to where J0hN135 originally was before he started heading for the lake. As we come into the clearing in between the castle and the lake on the far sides there is a sudden rustling of leaves. The rustling starts coming from all sides. I put my back against Jack’s. I tell him ‘I think we have a fight on our hands.”
“Agreed” He says anxiously. Jack says “If they are a pack monster were screwed.” Jack was right about that. If what came out of the woodworks happened to be something like wolves we would both die right here. I still had my pain receptors on so I’d feel every second of it. Around us out of the trees dropped five goblins. There were four small ones and one larger one which appeared to be the captain. Jack asks me “You have a plan?”
“Not at the moment” I say irritated by our predicament.
“You’d better start thinking because we don’t have weapons right now.” Jack says sullenly. He is right though. If we do get into combat with these things we have a high chance of dying since we don’t a single weapon between us. This isn’t looking too good. The goblins start closing in and we prepare for combat.