The unnamed blinked. He was standing outside the door to the Rat Run, completely unharmed, the memory of spidery legs tapping on his face still fresh in his mind.
** CONGRATULATIONS! **
You’ve just received your first achievement!
The words showed up in his HUD in big, golden letters. A description of the achievement was listed in the box below.
The Lonely Demise achievement is awarded for dying on your lonesome. Maybe if you’d had some friends with you, you wouldn’t have died so quickly? Maybe they would have told you not to go wandering into the dark on your own? The point is, get some friends.
Achievement Bonus: +1 to Death Speed
When you die next time, you’ll die a little faster.
The unnamed frowned. He presumed this was an inbuilt function of his training collar, but why all the snark?
** CONGRATULATIONS! **
You’ve just received the You Got Bit award for getting bitten and killed by venomous creatures.
Achievement Bonus: +1 Venom Resistance
Next time you get bit, it will take an extra half second for you to succumb to the cold embrace of death. Grab yourself another fifty of these and you’ll be getting somewhere.
The unnamed mentally tapped on a small question mark icon beside the announcement window.
Achievements gained for the duration of the Rat Run will be recorded in your training collar and announced to you via this function. A record of your previous achievements will also be maintained and can be accessed at any time by opening up your stat window. Though, judging by your current performance, it’s not likely to be a long list.
He snorted, shaking his head. Again, there was that snark. Either there was something wrong with his collar or whoever programed it had a sick sense of humor. The unnamed closed down the achievement display and opened up his main collar consol. He noticed that there was a microphone symbol in the corner and found that, by holding it in place he could reposition it on his HUD.
He did so, then tapped the microphone and spoke directly to the collar.
“Can you tell me more about the Rat Run?” he asked, hoping to get as much information as possible. “How do I get past this first chamber? And what’s the deal with that fountain?”
Words appeared in the center of his HUD in response to the question, or rather in spite of the question.
Achievements typically come with a bonus that offers a boost to your abilities and skill levels. On their own, achievement bonuses typically don’t amount to much, but over time they will stack up.
If you manage to survive the Rat Run and acquire a guild sigil, these achievements and associated bonuses will carry over and might one day add towards your status and perhaps even rank.
Additional boons may also be rewarded in recognition of acts of great valor or ingenuity.
The unnamed scrolled through the words, waiting as more populated at the bottom of the window.
Of course, given your current status and your performance thus far, boons aren’t something you’ll likely need to worry about. It is recommended that you focus on staying alive and leave the quest for glory to more capable initiates.
And there it was again. This wasn’t just a sting in the tail, the collar was being downright rude, dismissive. What kind of help system was this? Maybe this was all part of the test? They programed the collars to be snarky and sarcastic, to demotivate initiates and see how that would impact their performance?
“Tell me more about boons,” he ordered.
Boons are typically bestowed in recognition of acts of great heroism or extraordinary endurance. Because boons come with a permanent and typically significant increase in skills or abilities, they are rewarded only rarely.
A record of the boons acquired throughout the Rat Run will probably cross over to your sigil, if you manage to survive, but it’s unclear whether the bonuses applied to the boons will carry over. Again, best not to focus on them considering your circumstances.
The unnamed snorted at that. The word probably was completely out of place for an automated help system like this. It had to be programmed in because a fault with the programming wouldn’t lead to terms of uncertainty like that. Whoever had built and set up these collars had purposefully written in the uncertainty, the snark, and the attitude.
“That plus one to venom resistance, where do I find that in my collar menu?”
All achievement bonuses will be transferred to your sigil in the event that you are successful at completing the Rat Run. At that time you will be able to view the full list of bonuses and boons. Your training collar does not permit that functionality, however.
The good news is that everything you have so far is pretty useless. None of it is likely to keep you alive any longer, but at least it feels like some kind of progress, right?
The unnamed sighed. He closed down the collar display and prepared to re-enter the maze, pushing all the business with achievements and boons to the back of his mind. Before he stepped forward, the reminder note he had set earlier appeared in the corner of his vision and he turned, heading for the training room to the right where the practice weapons were kept.
As he entered the maze a second time, he was holding a short wooden sword and a small round shield. In sum total, he’d had exactly zero experience with either of those items, but he reasoned that a sword and shield could both be useful even if he didn’t know exactly how to use them.
To his relief, the maze hadn't changed as he entered it a second time. He guessed that there must be a twenty-four-hour timer on changes within the Rat Run, even though he had nothing to base that assumption on. It could be completely random, or it could be set to change every two hours or three months or based on the current mood of whoever entered the maze at a given moment.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He reminded himself that the purpose of this outing was to gather information, collect data and use that to make the journey easier when it was time to do it for real. If he could give himself some advantage here, make himself valuable to the team, maybe he'd have a shot of getting through this in one piece and becoming a legitimate initiate in the guild.
He checked the floors for traps as before, but this time also kept one eye on the ceiling and held the shield ready to protect against attack from above.
The spiders came, of course, sliding down their silken threads, dripping with venom as before. This time the unnamed was ready, holding the sword in one hand like a tennis racket, the shield on his left arm. Not wanting to get bogged down with the spiders, he moved forward at speed, heading toward the distant statue and swiping at any spider that came too close.
Blood and venom sprayed left and right as he batted the spiders, using his shield to swat them away when they jumped at his body. For a minute or so he managed to hold them at bay, slicing and swiping, battering and stomping his way toward the fountain with the spider statue.
As before the sickly white liquid poured from the spider statue into the circular fountain basin. The flowing liquid filled the chamber with an acrid stench that brought tears to the unnamed’s eyes and made it difficult for him to focus.
More and more of the spiders kept coming, swarming the unnamed as he circled around the statue trying to find a way forward. He saw that the chamber led off into a tunnel on the opposite side, but the passageway was closed with a solid stone wall. The unnamed guessed that this meant he’d have to kill all the spiders in the room to open the door or find some other mechanism or switch to clear the chamber.
The problem was, no matter how many he killed, how many he batted away with the shield or sword, they just kept on coming. Worse, while he was able to fend off the majority of the attackers, some managed to get through, biting him through his clothing and sinking venom laced fangs into his legs and body.
Even those he did manage to kill sprayed venom onto his skin as their bodies were batted away, weakening him with each passing moment as the venom did it work. There was only one exit out of the chamber, and the passage stayed closed off no matter how many spiders he killed. And there were a lot of spiders. He tried in vain to fend off the oncoming arachnids but eventually succumbed once more to the venom and inevitable unconsciousness.
He reset, standing at the entrance to the Rat Run, no longer holding the sword and shield, which were presumably still lying in the maze where he had fallen. The weapons had given him a few more minutes but that wasn’t enough. He walked into the training room once more and this time picked up a sword and club, wondering whether two offensive weapons would prove more effective than the shield.
He entered the maze again, running toward the first chamber with his weapons ready. It became rapidly apparent, however, that entering the Rat Run with two offensive weapons was much worse than a sword and shield. True, it was easier to clear a path through the attacking spiders, but the battering and slicing of club and sword also filled the air with a mist of venom as many of the spiders dispatched by brute force squirted the acrid substance as they died.
It turned out that the venom didn’t need to be injected directly into his body to be effective. It didn’t work as quickly, and the effects were slightly different, but it was just as debilitating. The venom mist made his vision swim, to the point where he couldn’t see straight and ended up swinging blindly at enemies, while several invariably got through his defenses and bit with their venom-filled fangs.
Ultimately, he performed even worse with sword and club than he had the first time he’d entered the chamber with no weapons at all. As he rematerialized at the entrance to the maze, the unnamed reflected that he was simply not good enough with the weapons to make any difference. This time, he opted for maximum defense, selecting two shields and heading back into the maze, moving more cautiously than before.
This time he managed to survive a little longer, making it close to the fountain but succumbing to the spider venom a little quicker than he had the first time he attempted to clear the chamber. The shields were effective at battering enemies and shielding him from the worst of their venom, but the problem was, he had to keep shaking spiders off the wooden shields, opening up space for more of the arachnids to attack while he was doing so. It ended the same way as the previous encounters and the unnamed soon found himself standing once more at the entrance to the Rat Run puzzling over how on earth he was going to clear the room.
The unnamed rolled his eyes as an achievement box popped up in the middle of his HUD once more.
** CONGRATULATIONS! **
You’ve received The Definition of Insanity achievement!
His collar display showed a small image of a figure picked out in orange light banging its head against a wall.
You truly have proven the adage that trying to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.
Achievement Bonus: +1 Mental Resilience
A little boost to your mental fortitude, so you can just keep banging your head against that wall.
The unnamed ignored the message, flicking away the achievement notification with his mind and focusing on the task at hand. He was beginning to think that his own lack of fighting skill wasn’t the only reason he was continuing to fail. No matter which way he looked at it, there were simply too many enemies to fight.
Even if he were far more skilled with sword and shield, he’d still struggle to make it through that chamber. Even Tusk would have trouble surviving the onslaught. The venom just worked too quickly, and it was too hard to avoid getting bitten or splattered with the noxious substance while holding the relentless tide of arachnids at bay.
There had to be another way. There was something in that chamber that he was missing, some clue he couldn’t see. Part of the problem was that he succumbed so quickly to the venom it was difficult to concentrate after more than thirty seconds or so in the chamber. Despite the collar’s snarky tone, it was right. He needed to try something different, something completely out of the box.
It didn’t help, of course, that the whole time he was in the chamber his mind kept focusing on how dirty the floor was. Stone dust gathered not only where the walls met the floor and in the many cracks in the rock, but there was also a fine layer of it across the entire chamber. The unnamed felt an uncontrollable urge to clean the room, as though that was the ultimate secret to opening the exit and successfully passing through the chamber.
It was maddening and he found himself constantly fighting against these custodial impulses. Even now, his mind returned to the sparing room off to one side of the Rat Run entry area. There were still mats that needed stitching, corners that needed dusting, wooden reliefs that needed polishing.
He slapped himself hard across the cheek, the sudden sting of pain bringing him back to clarity.
“Focus REDACTED!” he chided himself, reaching for his real name but once more hitting the mental block.
“Oh, come on!”
** CONGRATULATIONS! **
You’ve just received the Self Flagellation achievement! Well done for trying to knock some sense into yourself. I would have done it myself, but I don’t have hands!
Achievement Bonus: +1 Resistance to Self Harm
Welcome to your new life as a punching bag.
Again, the unnamed dismissed the achievement announcement, wondering whether it would be possible somehow to shut off the collar’s achievement system altogether. He made a mental note to explore that possibility later on.
Seeing how ineffective it had been with the weapons, the unnamed didn’t bother picking up swords or shields, but instead walked through the door and confirmed that the maze hadn’t changed from its former configuration.
“Try something different,” he said, taking a few deep breaths and preparing himself for what would come next. “Okay, let’s try this then.”
He ran.
This time he didn’t bother looking for traps and ignored the spiders sliding down from the ceiling crawling down the walls. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, charging through the stone tunnel, down the slope and towards the fountain, intent on reaching the fountain and finding some way to open the exit passage.
He didn’t expect to find the passageway open but hoped that arriving at the fountain quickly would give him some time to think and examine the area before the spiders took him out. The unnamed figured that it would take several attempts to allow him to circle the fountain in full and examine it in the hopes of finding a lever or some other device that might unlock the chamber.
It was a simple enough plan and might have been effective too if it wasn’t for the sheer number of spiders that jumped in front of him regardless of how fast he was running. He realized too late that it didn’t matter how fast he was moving, the spiders still swarmed with such speed that he was barely able to continue his forward trajectory.
Forced to try and squash and kick spiders away while he charged down the slope towards the fountain, the unnamed’s boots slipped on the gooey innards of the dead arachnids, sending him careening forward into the fountain itself. Moving too fast to stop, his feet sliding on spider guts and venom, the unnamed was pitched into the viscous white milk in the basin, his torso cracking against the side of the fountain as he was thrown up and over into the warm liquid.
The unnamed choked and spluttered, scrambling for purchase as he sloshed about within the liquid, eyes stinking, throat burning. He kicked off against the base of the fountain, driving himself upwards and grabbing hold of the edge of the structure. He gasped for air, coughing and spitting out the white liquid, the acrid tang of it burning its way down his throat and into his stomach.
He could feel the milky poison working its way through his body, but it felt different to the venom. Instead of a warm, fever heat, the milky substance quickly shifted from hot to cold, counteracting what venom had already made it into his body and quickly settling so that he felt more or less normal.
He sat in the fountain, clinging to the edge of the stone basin while more of the acrid milk poured down from the spider statue’s fangs. The strange substance trickled down his head and shoulders as he sat breathing deeply.
It was odd. His eyes were no longer stinging, and he felt completely lucid, almost like he did when he was brought back to life by the collar. The stench of the milk seemed much more tolerable too.
The unnamed hauled himself out of the fountain, preparing to fight his way past the arachnid horde. He stood dripping wet, surrounded by spiders that were, miraculously, ignoring him completely. They crawled about, as though looking for an enemy that had been there only moments earlier, but either not sensing the unnamed or now seeing him as one of their own and therefore no longer a threat.
He found his discarded sword and shield lying a few feet away, bent down to pick them up and then took a few experimental steps toward the far side of the chamber and the corridor leading out of the area. None of the spiders followed. What was more, the passageway was now open. He hadn’t heard the stone door open, and the corridor now looked as though it had always stood like this.
He looked left and right, shrugged, and then headed into the passageway and out of the arachnid chamber. Spiders scurried across the floor, moving out of his way as he walked past, baffled by the sudden absence of their foe.