I swung by my digital apartment before heading to the café after logging out. One of the greatest advancements was that if you had a recipe and didn’t have the time, you could input it and it would be replicated. Wanting to split between filling food and fattening snacks, I loaded three of my favorite recipes. One dip with cream cheese, softened and covered with chili and an obscene amount of shredded cheddar for dipping tortilla chips in as well as a crock pot full of melted cheese with a can of those spicy Rotel tomatoes would be the snacks. In another crock pot, shredded Italian beef with a bunch of those incredibly soft rolls to make sliders with.
“Yo Jon, where you want the foodstuffs?” I said as I brought my offerings into the café thanks to a digital food cart.
“To your right, wherever it’ll fit.” Jon said. “We don’t really have any type of system going.” Heading over to the table in question, I would be surprised if we didn’t all have a food coma by the end of it. Swedish meatballs, cocktail wieners in a spicy sauce, potato salad and a beef brisket were just some of the offerings that looked good. “Oooh, crock pot offerings are the best.” Jon said, having snuck up on me as I was finding room on the loaded table. “Mind if I make up a slider real quick?”
“Not at all. Hit it with a bit of ketchup and mustard, that’s what I always do.” As he was crafting his slider, I was busy filling a plate for myself. “Any idea when the commercial starts?”
“About five minutes. C’mon, we don’t want to miss this.” He said, hurrying off to where the others had set up a large viewing screen. I followed behind, happy to get a table near the back with a clear view, letting all the kids get the front row seats. Halfway through my plate of food, they dimmed the lights and started the commercial.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The scene opened with the old man who walks everyone through the character setup, sitting on a decrepit altar. “Good evening. It seems those that embrace the light have crafted quite the bit of propaganda, riling up their followers in preparation of some sort of war. Oh, they’ll claim that we started it, of that I have no doubt. Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. Unfortunately for them, it will be the first time that we have the power to fight back, fight back and win.” He said, practically hissing the last word. “But, you won’t be taking the word of an old man, living in the soft embrace of the lies you never question. So come, peer into the darkness, and see what it truly holds.” Holding out his hand, an orb that seemed to suck in all light was formed, the view slowly zooming in until it took up the entire field of vision.
Flying over a fiery wasteland, shards of rock just waiting to cleave through exposed flesh, two massive beasts battled. One was a stereotypical devil, complete with goat legs, tail, red flesh and curled horns. It had a loincloth on, and two leather straps formed an X across his chest. He had a greatsword in each hand, coated in red and black flames. His opponent, a squat winged demon with rocky skin and red light leaking from between the plates. Their speeds roughly equal, you could almost feel the impact of the swords on the beasts forearms in your chest. “Growth and death comes fast in the Infernal Isles, where the Infernal Planes encroach upon your world. Strongest of the gargoyles that roam free, the onyx version has incredible defenses, strong melee attacks, and a speed that most would be hard pressed to match. However, even the toughest defenses crumble before the onslaught of the Infernus Knight.” The voice of the old man overlaid the battle. As they battled, the knight was obviously concentrating blows into the same area of the creature’s chest. With a massive roar, the knight knocked aside the gargoyle’s arms, and plunged a sword straight through the middle of the creature. “[Hellfire eruption]!” The intensity of the flames on the sword grew, and the gargoyle’s chest swelled as it cried out in agony, before being silenced as the body was torn asunder by the expanding flames.
“Heh heh heh, powerful, yes? Of course, by now you light siders are probably rationalizing it away somehow. Sure, and Infernus Knight is powerful, but a sole monster can’t stand against our legions of heroes. Well, let me show you just how wrong you are.” A swirl of darkness changed scenes, this time a guard on a wall was scanning the empty night. He turned, and got a notification of his death. This happened several times for each of the guards on the wall, none of them even catching a glimpse of what had slain them. Until the view switched to someone walking through a courtyard, and they grunted and looked down to see several claws dripping with blood sticking out from their chest. As the claws were removed, the view turned to see a wolfish grin as the screen shook with terror before a blurry flash showed the death notification. Panning back, several of us recognized Phoebe’s assault on the hunter guild, only the production department had outdone themselves. Blurs streaked through the camp as she slew players left and right, unable to catch sight of what was killing them. Then the mass curses descended, and players were yelling in panic as clerics tried to dispel them as fast as possible, though the golden glow of their spells betrayed them, marking them as high priority targets. “This guild made the mistake of angering a Loup Garoup evolution, and paid in blood. The entire headquarters taken out in the night by one attacker and one supporter.”
Switching once more, a caravan circled up to camp for the night. Though the guards had gone outside the circle of firelight, they were still visible in the heat vision of whatever was watching. At some unknown signal, several arrows pierced each of the sentries, as lithe figures darted out to catch the bodies before they hit the ground. Silent figures crept through the camp, until there was one above each sleeping figure. As one, daggers plunged through hearts as the firelight revealed the culprits. “Slaying a caravan of humans is child’s play to the drow, still as comfortable in the forests they were exiled from as they are in their new underground homes.”
“Though not all monsters need an evolution in order to wreak havoc.” This time the view was of a wooden palisade, defended by several bandits. There was an off screen roar, and the bandits had time to widen their eyes in surprise before a stone smashed through the ramshackle barricade. A troll strolled through the breach, attempting to whistle a jaunty tune as it dragged a tree club behind it. The view rose to give an overhead view of the troll laying waste to all that tried to attack it, in an almost bored manner. That is, until a mage launched a fireball at it. Bellowing with rage, it picked up a nearby bandit and threw the body like a dart. Charging behind its projectile, the club smashed the mage into a bloody paste before he could extricate himself from the tangle of bodies. The rest of the group had watched in horror, before they finally turned to flee the troll’s wrath. None made it far, as the troll went into a frenzy and started smashing everything in sight.
Derrick leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Not my finest moment.” And got a chuckle out of me and a few glares from the surrounding people.
This time the view shifted to inside of a castle. An incredibly handsome face looked into the screen from incredibly close, as his hand caressed the side of whoever’s face we were borrowing the view from. “Words can’t tell you how incredibly happy you have made me, my love. Before we do this, I have something for you.” Pulling back, he pulled a long box from inside a bag on his hip. Opening it revealed a gorgeous necklace, crafted of silver set with amethysts. The silver lace grew from the wire at the back into an incredibly intricate interweave that expanded into a triangular shape in the front, where a gemstone the size of someone’s thumb knuckle sat.
“Oh Corey, it’s gorgeous! How did you ever?”
“Shhh.” He shushed her, “Let’s just put it on, shall we?” He asked with a smile. The view nodded, and Corey went off screen for a second before we saw the back of the necklace flash through our view. As it clicked, we heard Corey whisper, “Now be silent as your master instructs you, slave.” Spinning in a circle, we saw the loving grin Corey used to have was now one of malicious glee. His skin darkened to take a reddish hue, and small horns poked from his head. His eyes turned from a bright blue to golden with a slit pupil, and he let out a dark chuckle. “You are forbidden from bringing undue attention to your actions. You are forbidden from removing the necklace, or allowing another to remove it in your stead. When asked about it, it is a family heirloom that you recently rediscovered. You will not change any of your personality traits in public, and take the greatest care to let no others know that you are now my slave. Your loyalty to me shall supersede all other vows or obligations, but you will go through any motions to maintain your image to others. Do you understand these orders?” The view nodded, and a purple glow started from below screen. As the lady gasped in pain, Corey’s smile grew. “When in private, you must answer all my questions out loud, and call me master. In public you must treat me as you normally do. Understand?”
“Y, Yes ma ma master.” She stuttered.
“Oh, there’s no need to cry my dear.” He said, wiping something from the corner of the screen. “As an incubus, you will soon feel nothing but pleasure so long as you obey my orders.”
Once again the view faded, this time the old man was back. “We are strong. We are smart. We are everywhere.” Smiling, he tilted his head just slightly. “Could we be living within you? Join us, and find out.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Oh thank god above that this taste is muted, and I can’t gain any weight by eating digital food.” Emily said as she plopped down into a seat between Derrick and I. “Otherwise this dip would go straight to my ass.” I looked over to see that she had a large dollop of the chili cheese dip I had made.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Well, you know there’s only three ingredients and.”
“LA LA LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU BUT MY THIGHS THANK YOU FOR NOT TELLING ME THE RECIPE LALALALA!” She said, sticking her fingers in her ears and getting a chuckle from both of us.
Once she had settled down, and convinced herself I wasn’t going to share the recipe, she unplugged her ears and let me talk again. “So what brings you to your neck of the woods?”
“That lovely email you dumped on me the other day. ‘Member ‘bout the kobold player?” She said around a mouthful of chips. Swallowing, she continued, “We had a lovely series of meetings about that. Meetings that should have been emails, truth be told. Just so you know, we decided to give him a one-time port to a different kobold starter city, so he is out of your hair. But, the devs have no faith that you people won’t be evolving whole cities together in the future, so I’ve been sent to pick your brains on how to deal with it next time.”
“Don’t look at me, I haven’t even evolved yet.” Derrick said, sitting back and looking accusingly at me.
“Oh sure, blame it on me. Not my fault I found an item tier that the devs had forgotten about and used it to break the game.” I said laughingly.
“Yeah, the camp is pretty split on that. Half of them are glad that they finally get to use the code that they worked hard on, and the rest are upset that a monster player got the fame for it all and not one of the big guilds. Though the bean counters and lawyer types are just happy that it has brought in a slew of new players and nobody from development spilled the beans and broke NDAs about what was in the game.”
“Well, at least I’m not a persona non grata in that department.” I said.
“Actually, some of the developers and game artists are incredibly excited about what you are going to do next. Trying to predict how you will evolve next time, how you are going to break the game again. Your little group of four has several new evolution options based on what might happen.”
“So you’re saying we can evolve a third time?” Derrick asked.
“Yep. Most evolution paths cap out at three, exceptions being some of the goblin and imp paths. Anyway, got some ideas on how to deal with evolutions in the future?”
“Well, first let’s give people an option.” I started. “If they aren’t at the level cap, give them a portal to another starter city if they want. Other than that, we could just let them get caught up in the evolution.”
“Hmm, seems a little plain but I’ll take it to the devs. Anything else you guys think of, or the other two come up with just send it along with an email. We’ll do what we can.”
“Hey Emily, mind if we steal these two for some epic battling?” Phoebe said coming up to our group.
“Not at all. Have fun guys, and remember I’m just an email away.” She said before waving and logging out. We spent the rest of the night getting our fort swarmed by an army of small children with squirt guns, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get some of the soundest sleep of my life afterwards.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Logged in to Monstro-city chatroom as First_of_his_kind. Current occupants: WarriorPrincess, TheUnrustable, HolyDungeonDiver, RycranSeacrest, and FirestarterOzai
First_of_his_kind: Anyone else as disappointed as I was at the monster commercial?
TheUnrustable: Yeah, it seemed kinda bland. Though I do want to know where that incubus was and who he managed to enslave.
WarriorPrincess: Gonna show him how to use a gloryhole Unrustable?
TheUnrustable: G*******T! HOW DO YOU STILL REMEMBER THAT?
WarriorPrincess: I have a list of funny chatroom moments, you took first place.
First_of_his_kind: Care to fill the rest of us in?
WarriorPrincess: He stuck his head through a hole in the Kobold Warrens and got a broken neck. PSA kiddies: Gloryholes are bad for your health.
First_of_his_kind: Hahahaha! Sorry Unrustable, but I honestly never thought that anyone would ever fall for that trap. Thank you for proving me wrong.
TheUnrustable: Yeah yeah, wait. You were the one in the Kobold Warrens?! Dude, some of your stuff was legendary!
WarriorPrincess: Hey, he could be a woman.
RycranSeacrest: Chill out warriorprincess, depending on where unrustable’s from, dude is a pronoun that has no gender and can even refer to inanimate objects.
FirestarterOzai: Truth. Hell, just this morning I called my showerhead dude because it wasn’t putting out the right pressure. Dude shaped up with the threat of percussive maintenance.
First_of_his_kind: Percussive maintenance has fixed many an issue.
Rycranseacrest: Indeed. So, First, I assume you have evolved and are possibly going into more dungeons?
First_of_his_kind: Thinking about it, have we run into each other before?
RycranSeacrest: Yep. I’m probably the highest level player you managed to kill, and I’ve been dying to test you out again.
First_of_his_kind: Lookin’ forward to it myself. I’ve got a few new tricks to try on competent players.
WarriorPrincess: On the next episode of Throwdown, RycranSeacrest comes to First_of_his_kind’s house to see who’s got the best techniques!
FirestarterOzai: Can we get a video of that battle? I don’t even care if we have to wait for the dungeon week to end, I’ld watch it.
First_of_his_kind: It’s only three days this time
FirestarterOzai: EVEN BETTER!
RycranSeacrest: I would be up for that.
First_of_his_kind: I don’t know what dungeon I’ll be in, but if you want I can send you a message before I head out there. Meet on day three?
RycranSeacrest: Done. Who should I expect the mail from?
First_of_his_kind: I’ll put something in the header so you will know. Don’t want to give my game name out on here.
HolyDungeonDiver: Afraid of the forces of light coming and ending you?
First_of_his_kind: Not at all. But I do have an incredibly important question for you.
HolyDungeonDiver: And?
First_of_his_kind: Are you the star of the masquerade?
HolyDungeonDiver: What?
WarriorPrincess: *Sings* Holy Diver! You’re the star of the masquerade! No need to look so afraid!
First_of_his_kind: She gets it, HAHAHA!
WarriorPrincess: God, that’s a song I’ve not heard in a long time.
FirestarterOzai: Just how old is that song?
First_of_his_kind: Early 1980’s
FirestarterOzai: That’s madness!
HolyDungeonDiver: No wonder nobody gets your references. Not that it matters, soon the light will crush the forces of darkness.
RycranSeacrest: Seriously? It’s just a game, not like they are offering contracts for your immortal soul. Chill out with that stuff.
HolyDungeonDiver: It starts in the game, but soon enough will be real life. Evil must be stamped out.
First_of_his_kind: And just what have I done that is so evil, hmmm?
TheUnrustable: Well, you did wage a psychological war against people testing your dungeon. And made a fake gloryhole.
First_of_his_kind: . . .
WarriorPrincess: Unrustable’s technically correct. The best kind of correct.
First_of_his_kind: I suppose.
BlazingBlackFlames has entered the chat
BlazingBlackFlames: OMG! DID YOU GUYS SEE THE COMMERCIAL?! I CAN’T WAIT TO FIGHT SOME EVOLVED MONSTERS!
HolyDungeonDiver: Yes! That’s the spirit!
TheUnrustable: Black flames, eh? You wouldn’t happen to be the one who mastered that hellfire spell from the light commercial, would ya?
BlazingBlackFlames: Yes! I want to put it to the test so badly.
First_of_his_kind: Well, we are waiting. I’m sure there will be a few dungeons popping up in the future.
BlazingBlackFlames: Fantastic!
RycranSeacrest: I think I know you in game. I’ll send you a message when I hear where the dungeon will be.
BlazingBlackFlames: Thanks Rycran, you’re the best. Sorry about your brother though, you still close with him?
RycranSeacrest: Yeah. He learned a good lesson that dad can’t fix everything. I think it finally did him some good, thanks.
First_of_his_kind: Glad he got something good out of that fiasco, but it sucks how it had to go down.
RycranSeacrest: Water under the bridge. Though I am looking for payback for you dropping the literal ceiling on my head.
BlazingBlackFlames: Well, now that we have hugged it out and all that, what’d y’all think of that commercial?
First_of_his_kind: I was slightly disappointed. It seems like you guys got the better commercial.
HolyDungeonDiver: That’s right, the light will always emerge victorious!
RycranSeacrest: Considering you guys have had what, two months tops to work on everything? I think you got some good press. Seeing that werewolf creature tear through players was oddly satisfying. What did they do to piss him off?
WarriorPrincess: Not all good players are guys!
First_of_his_kind: Chill out warriorprincess, it’s normal to use the male pronoun in English when you don’t know. But in this particular case, the guild hunted down the NPC party she was working with and used them for training.
RycranSeacrest: Oh no….
First_of_his_kind: Yeah. Not only that, they had two high level players overseeing the battle so that none on their side would get hurt. Well, she evolved mid battle and proceeded to take them out with a vengeance.
RycranSeacrest: I don’t think she stopped with the battle there.
First_of_his_kind: Well, no. But they did taunt her, claiming to be the guild from some Norse god of hunters. She wanted them to feel like prey for a bit.
RycranSeacrest: Heh, I think she succeeded. And the rest of the monsters showcased got some great examples of evolutions. I liked that troll player.
First_of_his_kind: He hasn’t gotten his evolution yet.
TheUnrustable: Really? D**n, I’m not looking forward to meeting him when he does. Any reason?
First_of_his_kind: Yeah. Devs wanted to balance the trolls, so they get a -40% to experience earned. Takes a long time to hit level 40 that way.
TheUnrustable: Wheeeeeew. That’s rough, but I think they’ll get some great evolution options.
WarriorPrincess: I wonder why they didn’t showcase the new city.
HolyDungeonDiver: I wish they would have, so we could figure out how to get in and destroy it.
BlazingBlackFlames: Dude, you would get smoked so quickly.
RycranSeacrest: They still don’t know if the city will be peaceful or not. I would bet until the powers that be in the game have hammered out whatever treaties they can, there will be a player ban.
BlazingBlackFlames: Why do you say that?
RycranSeacrest: So that nobody pulls a kamikaze and destroys whatever chance the talks have of succeeding.
HolyDungeonDiver: DON’T NEGOTIATE WITH EVIL!
RycranSeacrest: I rest my case.
First_of_his_kind: Well, it’s been fun guys and gals, but I’m wiped. Headin out.
TheUnrustable: Later
RycranSeacrest: C-ya
WarriorPrincess: Adios
First_of_his_kind has left the chat.