“Look who’s back,” Daisuke said with a grin.
“Why are you so chipper?” Maxi said and slumped back into her chair.
“We each get a month off from worrying about the chopping block!” Daisuke said.
“That’s not cool, man,” Flav said.
“Ever since she’s been here, she’s just sunk us deeper into debt. Then when she bites it, that debt is ours to pay off. I’d deathmatch her right now if we could PVP our own pool. She is a liability.”
“She’s a person,” Farhad said.
“Don’t take us all down because you have a crush on her,” Daisuke said, kicked his chair away, and went to the elevator. As the doors closed, they could hear the word, “Cafeteria.”
“Guess I should go talk to him,” Maxi said.
Farhad said in a soft voice, “Let him go.”
“What’s all this about me biting it?”
“Credits are part of your monthly performance,” Farhad said. “Go enough into debt, and lights out. Only it doesn’t stop there – the rest of the Office Pool splits your debt after your termination.”
“Look, I’m sorry. Who designed this system, anyway?”
“Think of it the other way,” Yancy interjected. “If a teammate perma dies, we get to split their possessions. Helps with the loss–”
“Sounds like a scam for the rich to get richer. You think nearly thirty thousand in debt is fair because I needed a day off?”
“Prices were surging yesterday, and it was unauthorized,” Yancy said.
“Yeah, well, what if I had a sick kid or something at home? Think I should lose my life over it?”
“You have kids?”
“No, but what the fuck is this place? Because I’m not rich, I don’t get a day off or have a life beyond work? This is screwed up. We should just go on strike.”
The room was silent.
“What?” Maxi said.
“Yeah,” Yancy said. “The bottom Tiers tried that once. When it was clear the raid of the month wasn’t going to be beaten.”
“Speaking of which, your sword is back at your desk,” Flav said.
“After charging the office pool the retrieval fee,” Patti said.
“Company property always must be returned to the building or they’ll send a team to get it, and charge the Office Pool,” Yancy said.
“I’m with Daisuke on this one,” Patti added. “Let her die. We’ll work off the debt.”
“The debt will be all of ours, either way,” Farhad said. “She has an epic ongoing quest, and I’ve seen her in combat. She took down a boss twenty levels higher than her, not just once, but twice! If anyone can pay off the Pool’s debt in a month, it’s her.”
“That only means one of us will go,” Patti said. “I say good riddance.”
“Not if she gets us to tier 9,” Farhad said. “None of us have to die. I say we help her. Train, give her equipment, weapons. We are a team. We live and die as a team. It takes one month of a bad raid, and we all bite it.”
“The Power Twelve will never let that happen,” Patti said. “The rewards are too great. You know they aren’t going to sacrifice a pay day if they can help it. Farhad, I’m sorry you lost your team, but that was a fluke. Outside of Farhad, Yancy, you’ve been here the longest? What is it, two years?”
“Two and a half,” Yancy said.
“How many boss raids have failed during that time?”
“Zero.”
“My case in point,” Patti responded. “She dug her own grave. Let’s let her go, and hopefully the next newbie won’t be such a poser. No offense.”
Maxi had nothing to say because there was nothing she could say. She couldn’t get them to see that it was the system that was screwed up. It was only a matter of time before it’d come for them all, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. If this was a game, she’d outgame them all.
She turned to her computer and summoned HR Terry. Maxi might as well start trying to learn whatever obscure rules would come to bite her in the end. Not that she could learn them all. The employee handbook was thousands of pages long and considering that each rule seemed to punish anyone who didn’t march in line like mindless automatons, she wasn’t sure that she’d ever catch a break. But before she could ask Terry a question, Yancy spoke up, “I vote we help her quest, level up.”
“What?” Patti said. “That’s absurd.”
“The motion is seconded,” Farhad said. “It’s time for the Pool to take a vote. Sorry, Maxi, since this involves you, you don’t get one.”
Flav looked between Farhad and Patti. He shrugged and said, “Let’s give it a try. Worst that happens is she leaves us with a little less debt.”
Patti’s face turned red. She stood up and yelled, “The worst that can happen is you waste all your fucking items on a lost cause. Then you’re broke, and you don’t have any more shit left!”
Patti stormed out and went to the cafeteria.
“What just happened?” Maxi said.
HR Terry spoke up. “While I’m not an expert on human emotion, I believe she is upset because players can agree to temporary rules by Office Pool vote. Failure to comply will cause experience and credit penalties. She is also the Customer Care Advocate class, so the penalties would be even worse for her.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“She’s our Customer Care?” Maxi said, astonished.
“She’s a good healer, if her bedside manner isn’t always the greatest,” Farhad said. “Now, let’s spend your rewards from yesterday. I left the boss drop on your desk, by the way. I figured it was only fair because you dealt the final blow.”
She saw a ream of printer paper on her desk. She checked her inventory, and the only new item was a +4 Ream of Bat Minions (500), which required a printer to use, but could churn out the critters they had fought. Each had 10 Life Points, an AR: 0, Att: +4 and did 2-5 bite damage. Maxi guessed that they’d do well in a swarm, so it depended on the printing speed. She had noticed a portable printer in the common items list.
A quick check of the market showed her that low level minions weren’t worth much. Had she stayed, it would have cleared what she owed and then some. Now, it was better to horde, because all that mattered was completing the next quest.
She pulled up her character sheet next.
“47 Luck!” Farhad yelped. “There are Power Twelve players who don’t have 47 Luck.”
“Can I change my vote?” Flav said.
“It’s too late,” Yancy said.
“It seems to have worked out so far. Look at my other stats,” Maxi said.
“23 Ambition? 26 Creativity?” Farhad said, dumbfounded.
“That’s impossible,” Yancy said. “She’s only level 9. At two stat points per level–”
Maxi pulled up her items. Her Shirt of Growth had unlocked some enhancements. Stat Boost I - +10 to all stats. +2 Grutomaton Defense - Aides in defensive rolls against Grutomatons. Mending: All damage to the shirt will be automatically repaired at the end of each quest. She also noticed that it was now +3 instead of +2.
“A legendary item?” Farhad’s mouth was agape. “I’ve been here for… well, long enough, and I’ve never got a legendary. Rare, sure. Mythic… yeah… but legendary? How’d you get it?”
“I bought it. The abilities unlocked on the raid,” Maxi said.
“You have better chances of winning the lottery,” Yancy said. “The odds are–”
“Trust me,” Maxi said, “I know. But Luck snowballs, right? Good Luck gives you a better chance on the next roll? I mean, someone has to win the lottery at some point.”
“Yeah,” Yancy said. “But .00000000001 versus .00000000047 is virtually no chance at all. +10 stat boost may seem like a lot now, but in the future, it will be virtually negligible. All the power players sink their credits into stat points.”
“You can buy stats?”
“Yeah, a million credits a point.”
“Okay, so you’re saying I got millions of credits worth of upgrades for my Luck.”
“Sure, now,” Yancy said. “But there is a reason there are no high-ranking players with a high Luck. It took one bad roll to do them in. You roll the dice enough times, and you’ll lose everything. When you get high enough, there are things your chair can’t heal.”
“You let me worry about that,” Maxi said. “Besides, if I die, you can sell my shirt.”
“The way for you to lose a legendary item is for you to sell it, wager it in a PVP battle, or otherwise willingly part with it. They’ll bury you in that shirt,” Farhad said, ominously.
Maxi shrugged. Despite her Office Pool’s misgivings about her stat choices, she was undeterred. Luck had gotten her this far, and it wasn’t like she needed it to last forever. Just enough to figure out how to keep herself and her mom safe.
She already saw the trap. Stat points for one million credits. It was a scheme to keep players pumping money into the system no matter what the level. The Company was one of those games that no matter how much a player spent, there was always more to buy. It was a game where those with the largest bankroll won.
“At least let us help you pick a class,” Farhad said.
“I was thinking Paranormal Investigator,” Maxi said. “Magic and swords, kinda my thing.”
“It’s not magic,” Yancy said. “It’s psychic ability.”
“Mind Shard sounds like magic to me,” Maxi said. It was one of the abilities she could see in the Psychics tree that seemed like a basic attack. It did 1-10 damage, modified by her Creativity and proficiency in the skill. It cost 10 pp (Psy Points), and her psy was calculated based on her Creativity Stat (which was calculated like Life Points, 10 + her modifier per level).
However, unlike her Melee Weapons skill, it wouldn’t max at 10. If she wanted to keep getting better at the blade, she would have to pick Swords next, and likely Longsword from there, which would be fine if she picked the Sales Associate class that would give her the skills for free at higher levels, allowing her to load the skill like she did Melee Weapons. But she wasn’t interested in being good at just one thing.
She wanted to be versatile.
“Be that as it may,” Yancy said, “you need to undergo the trial before you can pick any psy class.”
“The trial?” Maxi asked. She had seen the asterisk that indicated she needed to complete some requirements before picking the Paranormal Investigator class, but she assumed that she just needed to pick certain skills or stats. Honestly, she had been so focused on leaving that she didn’t pay much attention to the game aspects. Now she saw that, while she met all the stat and skill requirements, Creativity 18 and Ambition 12, in addition to knowing the skills Listen and Investigate, there was a final requirement of completing the Trial. For all hacking and psy-based classes, a person needed to compete in a trial with other hopeful recruits before even being allowed to choose the class.
Before she could read further, Farhad said, “There’s always the Generalist class.”
Maxi had seen “Generalist” on her initial read-through of the classes. It was a vague description. All it said was “Master of all, expert in none, a Generalist gets the job done.” Compared with the Paranormal Investigator class description, “A powerhouse of the Psychic arts that can hold their own in a pinch. Paranormal Investigators are always looking for the truth and can see through the lies. They come from a long lineage of Psychic Warriors who seek the truth beyond all else.”
It was no wonder she had skipped the Generalist altogether, but for the sake of thoroughness, now considering that picking a class right for her could have life and death consequences, she looked at the Generalist class. The primary stat was Luck, and she needed 30 Luck just to pick it. Considering how most players felt about the stat, she imagined that there wouldn’t be many of them out there.
However, there was only one skill on the skill tree. All Skills: Learn any class skill at a discount based on Luck.
“Wait, what?” Maxi said. “Are you kidding me?”
She could be a Paranormal Investigator, or a Hacker, or a Sales Associate, or all three if she wanted. Seeing that dual classing was outrageously expensive, and that the skills only went up in cost, even in her own class, there was an advantage to having a discount. Sure, she'd miss out on the traits of a particular class like Foresight, where Paranormal Investigators got +10 to psychic attacks at level 35, or the free weapon specialization skill that Sales got, but the discount in the long run would accelerate enough to be worth not gaining the class traits granted at the higher levels.
“Naw, man,” Flav said. “You can’t have her do that.”
“But if she is going to go all in on Luck...” Farhad said.
“Why don’t we let her decide?” Yancy said.
“Why? What’s wrong with the Generalist class?” Maxi said.
“The same thing that is wrong with Luck,” Flav said. “It’s a ticket to nowhere. Last Generalist I met wanted to be good at IT and healing. Couldn’t fix a computer worth a damn, and his healing skills weren’t near as good as Patti’s. You got to go all in on one thing, or else you are only half as good at anything. You still got to use skill points to buy the other skills. You waste the points buying new ones instead of maxing the ones you already got.”
“Yeah, but Luck helps me learn new skills. I learned three on the last quest.”
“Damn, girl, three? I’ve only learned three my whole time here.”
“Guess I’m just lucky,” Maxi said.
“Still,” Yancy said, “he has a point. You can’t always rely on luck. And if you are that lucky, then you can OP Paranormal Investigator. Imagine what you can dump into your class skills if you are getting them for free. Not to mention, the only skills you can learn by chance are ones you can use during a quest. There are skills, especially at the higher levels, you can only learn with training, and that you either get for free from your class mentors or have the credits to pay for it. Take Mind Shard. Without being taught how to do a Mind Shard, how would you just do one on a quest?”
“I don’t know,” Maxi said. “Give a guy a dirty look. Think of their head exploding.”
“If it was that easy, everyone would be doing Mind Shards!”
“I’ll ask someone on message boards. We have the internet, you know.”
“Giving away company secrets is grounds for instant termination, and class secrets are considered company secrets. Besides, Patti had to train for weeks to learn her first low level healing skill, but her branch paid for it.”
“Fine. Paranormal Investigator it is, then,” Maxi said, and clicked on the “Request Trial” button. Her email dinged with an invitation seconds later.