image [https://i.imgur.com/cas70Jl.jpg]
After the contest update roused me from my stasis, I got my bearings. My interface showed me that over four months have passed.
The undead beneath me probably didn’t know what to make of the stubborn human who refused to die. I felt grateful that I couldn’t hear the demon’s voice, for I’m sure it would have driven me crazy.
After rereading the news of a chat feature, I opened the contest interface and scanned the names to see if Fabulosa remained in the running.
16 Players remaining
The Book of Dungeons Closed Beta 0.71b
Contestant names
Apache, Audigger, Borscht, Chocolateer, Darkstep, Duchess, Fabulosa, Flagboi, HoosierDaddy, Jawbone, Kidvicious, Pixielite, Roadmachine, Sweetbread, Toadkiller, and Uproar
I shook my body to wake up and made sense of the names, trying to remember how I knew them.
Fabulosa must have knocked out Skullcaps—good news, I suppose. Two players who knew about Hawkhurst, Uproar and Darkstep, also remained. I filed that into the bad news category.
Focusing on the newest element in the contest interface opened a new window.
Apache joins The Great RPG Channel.
Fabulosa Patch! Where have you been? Are you all right? It took you a while to log on.
Pixielite That makes Dark our last holdout.
Fabulosa Did you get my letters? Be careful what you say. This is a group chat.
Duchess I still think Darkstep’s in another dimension.
Pixielite The interface works in other dimensions. It’s not magic—it’s part of the game.
Toadkiller I didn’t ban Dark. Not yet, anyway.
Duchess Yeah, yeah. That’s what you said about Clapperoth, Alienna, Blackorchid, and Kanis.
Toadkiller I can’t help it if I’m good.
Duchess As if you did anything.
Toadkiller You can’t blame a fella for making friends. Besides, it’s not like the game has awarded me any bounty money.
Duchess Cheetah.
Toadkiller Aww, you hurt my feelers.
Fabulosa Patch? Are you there?
I stared at the screen and reached up to pinch my cheek, but something held my fingers. With my free hand, I felt something around my fist. At some point, I’d wrapped twine around my grip so I wouldn’t accidentally let the trident go. I hadn’t remembered doing that.
Using my fingers flooded me with an information overload. I felt wide awake for the first time in months.
Unlike the battlefield standard, this chat channel worked in real time. Players couldn’t hold lengthy conversations in the blink of an eye. The lack of temporal dilation made no difference to me, for I possessed an abundance of time.
I’d walked into the middle of a conversation. Pixielite mentioned the last holdout—was she referring to Darkstep? For some reason, his absence felt ominous, but he was a worry for another day.
Ignoring the other contestants, I focused on my ally.
Apache Hey, Fab. Sorry, I’m a little preoccupied. Where are you? Are you okay?
Fabulosa There you are. Where did you go?
Pixielite Yeah, tell us your exact coordinates. We all want to know.
Fabulosa Be careful what you say. I put my details in my letters.
Apache Believe me, they wouldn’t want to be where I am. I’ve been out of sorts and haven’t been to a mailbox. It looks like more players got knocked out.
Fabulosa Toadkiller has been sending people from Miros somehow. Just don’t spill information about where you are or what you’ve been doing.
Uproar I’ll tell you his location. He’s in the center of the content running something called Hawkhurst.
Fabulosa You keep pushing it, weed-meister. I remember you hightailing it out of Malibar when we last met—or have you forgotten?
Uproar I keep telling you guys, Fab and Apache are a power couple.
Pixielite They’re not the only ones. You’re in cahoots with Toadkiller.
Fabulosa Don’t listen to Uproar, Patch. He’s just a weed. He’s Toadkiller’s toady and lets others do his fighting. It’s the weak man’s play.
Duchess Hah! Good one, Fab.
Uproar You wish. Can I help it if I make lots of friends?
Fabulosa You had cloaked NPCs doing your dirty work when we last met. I swept them aside like crumbs.
Uproar And I recall your title, Lieutenant Governor of Hawkhurst. I also saw your primal spells and your sword that creates illusionary attacks. Watch out, everyone—Fab has reverb.
Duchess Everyone has reverb. And anticipate. Hey Uproar, have you unlocked rest and mend yet?
Uproar Bite me, Duch.
Apache How does Toadkiller banish people from Miros?
Pixielite Sweetbread says Toad has a demon working for him. She says he’s cheesed at least ten people out of the game, but I don’t know if I believe her. And it’s too late to ask.
Fabulosa Anyway, I’m not near a mailbox, but when I am, I’ll drop you a line.
Uproar Just send it to the Hawkhurst post office box. Apache will get it.
Fabulosa I hope you’ll respond faster than you do here. It took you nearly two weeks to answer me in chat.
Apache Really? I kinda lost track of time. Anyway, no worries. I’m not near a mailbox either—I haven’t been for a while.
Fabulosa Hmm. That surprises me.
Apache I’ve been after those special items—you know which ones. I took care of the goblin thing, and now I’m working on the lake thing.
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Uproar You see? Goblins! They’re in the center of the island.
Fabulosa I gotcha. I’ve had a few adventures myself.
Apache It’s a shame we can’t talk. I’m dying for a good conversation.
Fabulosa Yeah, most people pop in and out without saying much, but watch out for lurkers. Some people log in and monitor the chat. This feature isn’t safe. Road and Sweet found that out the hard way.
I’ve been so discombobulated I hadn’t realized it’s been two weeks since the chat feature unlocked. I thought I’d nodded off for a catnap for what only seemed like an hour.
And Fabulosa’s last comment threw me for a loop. I couldn’t tell if she spoke in riddles.
I checked the contest interface to reread the congratulations message when I noticed something had changed.
14 Players remaining
The Book of Dungeons Closed Beta 0.71b
Contestant names
Apache, Audigger, Bircht, Chocolateer, Darkstep, Duchess, Fabulosa, Flagboi, HoosierDaddy, Jawbone, Kidvicious, Pixielite, Toadkiller, and Uproar
Someone had knocked Roadmachine and Sweetbread out since I’d first opened the chat channel. Had it really been two weeks ago?
I almost asked Fabulosa, who knocked them out of the contest before deciding against it. If other players knew of my helpless state of limbo, they might use powers or items to locate me, rampage through Hawkhurst, or worse, convince Dino to train them.
Apache Before I deal with my situation, let me give you an update. The goblin thing is gone. We lost some people, including Fletcher, Sami, Jahid, and Greenie.
Fabulosa Oh, no! That’s terrible.
Pixielite Who are these people, now?
Duchess Hmm. Two of those are common human names. It sounds like they’re rolling a guild.
Uproar I told you, Fab’s a lieutenant governor of a settlement. They started their own town.
Pixielite I didn’t know that was possible.
Duchess Choc tried making a settlement. So did Clapper. Both said it wasn’t worth the effort. Settlements are impossible to maintain.
Fabulosa They weren’t wrong.
Apache I’m trying to destroy the rest of the special items. All I can say is it’s not an easy quest.
Fabulosa I heard that.
Pixielite How can you destroy an item?
Bircht Any game entity can be destroyed, although I’m not saying how.
Duchess Bircht! Where have you been?
Bircht In heavenly realms, slaying deities and forging dynasties.
Pixielite Game entities? Is that like an NPC?
Bircht I’m pretty sure anything that isn’t a player is a game entity. Players and entities with random seeds have cores—large trees, monsters, NPCs—even in geographical features like lakes. I found a lake core after draining a swamp.
Pixielite So cores are part of the algorithm system Josie talked about at the keynote.
Bircht Probably. The dream interface explains how the game is so realistic. Our brains are the processing power. Sensations like smell, heat, weight, and taste aren’t typically part of games. Crimson harnessed them by mapping them from our imagination. It’s how we feel specific sensations. The game triggers sensory data from our memories.
Duchess But what if I’ve never drowned before? Or ever went swimming? How could the game engine approximate these sensations?
Bircht You got me. But if you haven’t been swimming before, you probably wouldn’t notice it if the game got the simulations wrong.
Pixielite We’re networked. Perhaps it could borrow the memories from another person—or from programmers or devs who’ve worked on the project. Plus, they probably started with a library of sensations.
The thought-provoking discussion brought me out of my lingering funk. I tried to remember the keynote address Crimson’s PR rep gave us before going into the game. I’d forgotten Josie’s name and the specifics she listed about The Book of Dungeons.
While interesting, all the talk about programming reminded me of Charitybelle. This game could have been so much better with her around. She would have loved figuring out how runes worked, and I bet with Gladius, she’d be able to do more than cast Compression Spheres.
The idea of a Compression Sphere reminded me of my predicament. I couldn’t cast them underwater—along with a bunch of other things. Since no one discussed specifics about powers or items, logging off made the most sense.
The chat feature sharpened my consciousness enough to shake off my languor.
Apache I’m going to let you guys go. I’m in the middle of a fight. Drop me a line when you can, and I’ll update you.
Fabulosa Sounds good. I’m still a ways from a mailbox. We’ll link up after we deal with our things.
Duchess Dude! Are you fighting monsters while reading this?
Bircht He may be in Arweald, fighting with the orcs or elves.
Uproar My popcorn is ready. Maybe we’ll make it to the top 13 today.
Fabulosa Shut up, Uproar. We will if I find you.
Apache I’ll catch you later.
Fabulosa Back at ya.
Apache leaves channel.
It’s been so long since I’ve thought about other players that I’ve forgotten how to be paranoid about them. Still, focusing on the anomalocaris came first. The event log showed I was still in a state of combat.
I buffed Heavenly Favor, closed my eyes, and cast Presence.
Bit by bit, my pupils adjusted to the blinding light. When I reached the point where I could squint, I opened my eyes. More ice around me had melted, exposing more of the metal tube. After hours of stretching, flexing, and limbering up my limbs, I chipped away at the ice blocking me from the top of the tube, where the water’s surface promised freedom. After minutes of jabbing with my sword, the tube slid upward.
How had the tube moved? No—the ice had gone downward. At first, I thought the ice finally broke apart, but after a series of following jerks, I realized the anomalocaris pulled it downward, away from the surface.
It had reacted to Presence. The monster hadn’t forgotten about me, nor did it want me to reach the surface.
I’d forgotten the anomalocaris was also in the tube, trapped beneath the ice. Since it radiated no body heat, it hadn’t melted as much.
The tube offered no handholds to stop the downward pull. In water, a creature its size proved too powerful to counteract this tug-of-war. I resisted the temptation to poke holes in the tube with Mineral Mutation because I needed it intact for a line-of-sight blocker. If it could target me through holes, my game was over.
Down and down, the ice descended. I tried jamming my trident and longsword against the sides, but to no avail. If the anomalocaris slipped the ice off the tube, it would expose me to whatever spells it wished to cast.
When I reached the bottom, the ice vanished as if the creature had canceled the magic. I’d forgotten this was possible with spells. Casters could immediately end the duration of effects they conjured. At the bottom of the tube, the mummy’s tentacles came within kicking distance.
I cast Rejuvenate on my foe and triggered Amphibious to ascend upwards—my only escape route.
While the monster squirmed, I almost reached the surface. When the healing effect ended, the mummy shot upwards with a whisk of its tail. Two strong tentacles wrapped around my ankles.