Entering a portal was thrilling. One moment Liam was on the Plane of Life, worrying about his finances and coursework. The next he was in a fantastical world of magic and monsters, with a completely different sky and with adventure all around him.
The class’s destination was one of the castles of Queen Elisend the Good and even though Liam had been here four times already, on arrival he had to stand still and fill his senses with a heartfelt appreciation of the scene in front of him. Instead of a grey, damp day in Dublin, he was standing under a bright spring sky on a well-kept field that sloped down for two kilometres to a distant line where the green of the grass met the blue of the sea. Apparently, there were cliffs down there, although he’d never gone that far. The sea was a deep blue with a scattering of glitter on the surface from a bright sun. Liam was looking at a bay that was about ten kilometres wide, with tall and sharp-pointed mountains on the far side. Once you’d imagined the severe, snow-capped peaks as vicious teeth you couldn’t view them in any other way.
The castle was downslope and slightly to his left, but before reaching it was the queen’s rose garden and that was to be their camp. It was extremely safe, which was presumably why first year students were brought here to grind. The mobs were rarely more than level 1 and they were spread out, which meant little danger of pulling a train. Typically, they were giant insects or animals. Sometimes, too, Liam had fought an animate plant, like a Crawling Fly-Trap.
With everyone through the portal, Rob led the way across the field and to the rose garden, where Liam threw his bag onto the stonework of a fountain and then joined his group ready for battle. Each of the four groups had a quarter of the large garden to pull from and Kevin was just about to cast a Magic Missile against their first mob, a Malevolent Bixie level 1, when Rob called out, ‘The gardener is up! Come and get your quests.’
This was good news. Only once in his previous four expeditions here had Liam seen the gardener and on that day he had obtained one of the two quests he’d completed. He needed eighteen more to get his upgrade in rank from grey to light green, an achievement valuable in its own right but also for increasing Magic Missile to level 2. No wonder there were smiles on every face as all sixteen students hurried down a gravel path to where an elderly human male leaned on a rake.
‘Take your time; take your time; there’s plenty needs doing. As always.’ The gardener gave a chuckle and asked. ‘Who are the group leaders? Step forward.’ Pointing his finger at each in turn, he announced, ‘you can clear the nest of giant wasps; you can kill the Malevolent Bixie Lord; you can gather redcaps; and you can gather sweet pinks.’
Quest Received
Your group has been asked to bring the royal gardener 20 sweet pinks. Due to their appealing scent, these rare flowers often attract dangerous creatures.
Gathering quests could be just as challenging as battle quests, because there were usually mobs in the vicinity of the item to be gathered. All the same, Liam felt a surge of resentment when Winifred said, ‘you’ve given the right group the wasp quest. We’re a lot stronger than the others. No offense to you guys.’
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Remarks like that made Liam feel ashamed and yet angry at the same time. Given time to devote to his adventuring or wealthy parents who could pay for private grinds, he’d be just as powerful as Winifred. Perhaps more so, because she had put some time and effort into getting ranks and an evolution, when what mattered most of all was levels. For the rest of this academic year, Liam wasn’t going to worry too much about anything other than reaching level 10. After that, he would think about his priorities and whether to spend some time getting a star or a higher ranking.
Rankings came from quests and while many quests were perfectly compatible with grinding exp for levels, some were terrible time-sinks, involving a lot of travel and talking to a wide variety of people across the planes. Similarly, evolution stars came from filling a ‘star box’ within your inventory with spirit stones. Again, some progress could be made from the loot of dead mobs. There came a point, however, where to complete your box you had to spend considerable time hunting and camping rare mobs for rare types of spirit stone. Winifred and Tom had done this for their first star. They were delighted to be the only students of the whole Junior Fresh year to get this achievement and yet Liam wasn’t the only person in the class to see their stars as a signal that declared the two of them were more about show than substance. Instead of sitting around for hours waiting for a rare spawn, they could have spent their time beyond a portal in gaining levels.
Liam’s group left the well-tended rose garden to roam the field in front of the portal where wildflowers – including sweet pinks – grew freely. Soon, they were in combat and casting spells against giant ants, giant beetles, and evil sprites. The risk of these monsters inflicting injury on someone was low but not negligible. In an emergency, so long as there was no one in the way to whom he might accidentally bring a train, Liam knew he could escape a dangerous fight by running back through the portal. Not that this was likely to happen. Maeve had a Freeze spell, which was perfect for this situation. The group could ‘root n shoot’ its enemies and Liam felt pleased that he was playing a useful part, firing Magic Missiles as fast as his mana pool would replenish.
Two hours rushed by as his small team efficiently cleared the field. By the time they had the twenty plants for the quest, Liam was at about seventy percent of the way to level 3 and they had obtained three spirit stones. Very occasionally, there had been a loot drop; nothing too exciting: a sprite wing, a giant beetle eye, and a giant ant leg. They always took everything that dropped, because even low level items could be quite valuable if you were lucky and some crafter happened to need what you’d found. Player trades could net you real world money and if no one in the player community wanted the drop, it could always be sold to the in-plane merchants for copper pieces.
Liam was at the back of his group as they strode cheerfully towards the rose garden to hand in their sweet pinks and get a valuable quest completion credit. Something troubled him though. The air was distinctly more humid than when they had arrived. The light had changed too. The sun! A purple aura was writhing around the sun.
‘What’s happening?’ Maeve had noticed too.
‘The bushes are growing.’ Kevin had stopped and now he took a step back. He was right. Ahead of them, bushes that had only been waist high now were above their heads. And they were visibly meshing together to create impenetrable barriers full of cruel thorns.
‘Hurry!’ Kate pointed towards the portal. ‘The way back is going to be blocked soon.’
‘Rob!’ shouted Kevin in a surprisingly loud voice for his modest size. ‘What should we do?’
‘Run back to TCD. Get help.’ Rob, who had been monitoring the wasp group, sounded a long way off.
As his group took off up the hill, trying to run faster than the vines that were stretching and twisting all around them, Liam took a moment to try to understand these unexpected developments. There was a pattern to this plant growth. It was leaving corridors between the thorn bushes. They were not being attacked by a massive plant monster, this was something else. It was as though the land had come alive to refashion itself into an enormous hedge maze.
As a kid, Liam had loved visits to houses with hedge mazes. They were so much more difficult to solve than a pen and paper maze and the feeling of being trapped was exciting because really, it was perfectly safe.
This maze, however, did not feel safe.