09
No worries, I can Fix it
The CEO was now completely trapped in a prison of trees. Absolutely lovely. But, with sarcasm aside, this was one area he didn’t mind getting his ass creamed. If he has this much difficulty with a spawned enemy, than nobody is going to be reaching his final dungeon!
With trying to win still in his mind, he went through his options. He has a few seconds, that spell the wizard is casting is 15 seconds long.
First thing he did was call his Batmobile. He’d like to see what it does when he’s deep in the thick forest.
Secondly he went through any skills that might be of use now, the Undead Knight had some interesting skills. Open the Depths, Death Blast, Lance Shot, Death’s Grip… just to name a few. But nothing really caught his eye, nothing that would get him out of this trap.
But something out there did catch his eye. The Forest Mage had just crumpled to the ground and was suffering heavy spell feedback. Interesting. He watched closely as two players came up and started whaling on him. They did good, sent him of spinning again and finally drained all of his health and slammed him up against a tree. Then the woodsman put an axe into his chest, just to be sure.
The CEO had very mixed feelings about this.
For one, someone had just totaled that Forest Mage that had just creamed his ass, and secondly, he doesn’t have to suffer fighting that Mage anymore.
Then he laughed seeing the Banished Bear round a corner and locking on to those two players. They put a good fight. Good enough to hold it back until his very own summoned Death Knight Cavalier had shown up to teach them a lesson. And she knocked him off his horse as well!
This didn’t look like the fight was going well… he didn’t know what to expect.
And just when things were about to get real good, she cast a tier 5 skill with the Forest Mage’s Staff and kill the Banished Bear and the Death Knight!
HO-LEE Fuhhh…?
Well now, at least the Woodsman can let him out of this trap of trees. Which made him think; in the future, always carry an axe.
The CEO got their attention, they were hugging and being all cute after almost dying. Very cute.
He called them over and introduced himself. Well, not himself, his costume.
And just to pay them thanks he shook their hands with Death’s Grip.
The two players lay at his feet, probably already defaulting back to the suburbs.
He kicked them aside and wondered what happened to his bat mobile. Ok fine. He’ll have to walk back to the road.
The CEO sat down at the desk in his penthouse office making notes on what to fix. He definitely had to make those spawned enemies like at least ten times stronger. Most of those players fight in groups anyways, as how the game was built.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
He upgraded his Modern Knight costume, Kevlar N. Lead. He couldn’t let another mistake like that happen again.
Everything was uploaded into reality and he headed off to get back home.
The CEO exited the immersion bed, startled by, but nearly expecting, a handful of reporters standing by watching his cctv live feed. No one was supposed to be watching him live.
He sighed, knowing what might be coming.
“We saw what you did to our building. Repercussions will be had. You will have to pay for the damages.”
Darren questioned the idiotic reporter. “It was just the game.”
“But you killed our boss and got an achievement for it.”
He didn’t know what to say.
Some chipper reporter shoved a microphone into his face and asked, “What do you think the repercussions might be for a threatened terrorist attack in our city?”
Darren got up and walked out, going back to his office to get those bugs fixed up and the trees a bit more real, the AI needed some tweaking and somebody better explain how a level 12 Psychotic and a level 27 Wanker can take down a high level boss by themselves.
At the office, everything was going as planned until the phone rang. It was for him.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Bret. I heard you just came out. You want to come over and have some coffee? I want to hear all about your first experience in Default.” Bret was the Vice President of Omnicorp inc. and his best friend.
“Oh, sure. Let me just finish up here. I’ll be over in twenty.”
He looked around and just gave up on he rest of day. Coffee is calling.
Bret’s butler served them two coffee and sat down in his back patio, looking through his perfectly manicured garden. “So how was it?”
“Gruesome,” Darren said, “on all levels.”
“Go on?”
“I took out the prime time office and killed their boss. Checked out the Forest, and then got creamed by a Forest Mage. Oh, and by the way, that Batmobile was cool. Your re-creation of any and all vehicles… super awesome project. It turned out well.”
Bret chuckled. “Thanks. It wasn’t easy. Oh you know, fifteen thousand vehicles and plenty of different modifications.”
Darren and Bret sat happily as he they sipped their coffee. But something was bothering them both.
Darren voiced his concern first. “I have to make this game… the best. Unfathomable, irresistible… simply the best.”
“We’ve made it already, you don’t have to change anything. Well actually you can’t. At least nothing too much. It’s fine how it is, people love it, it’s going to be top of its class for the next year at least. Nobody is working on something this big, so it’ll probably be another fives years, then it goes down in history as one of the biggest, baddest, most epic games that changed this world.”
Darren cheered up to that.
“But on another note,” Bret continued, “we do have shit flying in our direction. People are making a fuss about things.”
“What things?”
Bret took out a piece of paper and showed him.
Darren read it, slowly and carefully, then read it again. “They want to sue us?”
“No,” Bret said. “Not yet. ‘The people’ are concerned that players in Default really feel the pain, feel the deaths. We already had two players have seizures. They were both early starters, beta testers still going. Nothing abnormally high for an immersion game. Plus the waivers covered our asses. Though the court summons are still valid.”
“So what? People signed the papers and they should know that what comes their way is their own misfortune.”
“That’s the wrong way to put it, and please don’t say that with a microphone to your mouth. It’s better to say that we’ve expected this to happen in a very few cases and the two victims are currently recovering and will be back to full health soon.”
“I know.” Darren hung his head. “You’ve always been the better speaker.”
“But I do have a question. Since the softies are starting to bring up whether or not the players actually feel the pain and deaths in the game. So tell me, do you feel the pain?”
Darren thought about that. Remembering the magic missiles hitting him square in the chest, the lighting knocking him out of the tree. “It wasn’t painful. Just shocking.”
“What did you feel?”
“Nothing really, just a surprise. The mental haptics gave me a vibration, but even then, you know that it’s very slight, and not reality.”