Chapter One

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a talking goblin. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing that slips your mind. For me, it was a day that changed everything.

Until then, I thought I knew everything about Infarna Omega. I had a formula. I’d log in, swing my sword, kill some imps, get EXP. That was my mantra. Cleave, rinse, and repeat. I didn’t realize it then, of course, but things were about to change for me.

That evening, I walked through the woods near the newbie village. The trees transformed in color around me. They went from red to green to yellow, before finally settling on a cold blue. It was rumored that the trees had changed color depending what emotion the game sensed in the player who passed them. I wondered what that said about me.

I saw a pack of forest imps ahead. Four of them, no taller than my knee, backs hunched over as if they were in a constant state of sneaking. Green faces, craggy like a cliff face shrunk onto a goblin’s body. I lifted my sword and held it in attack position.

The imps sized me up. They were an aggressive species. Their jaws hid teeth sharp enough to cause considerable damage to a level 1 player. I knew how to handle them, though.

I’d dispatch these in a few minutes, then go on the hunt for more. I needed at least 4 levels tonight if I was going to hit my deadline.

Infarna Omega was my second job. The grind that waited for me when I left the office. I’d level up new characters and then sell them on to people who were too impatient to level up themselves. Why? Well, why does anyone work their fingers to the bone? I needed the money. Badly.

As much as it was a grind, there was something meditative about it. I could plug in my mind and then switch off, swinging my sword on auto-pilot. It was one of the rare times that I could stop thinking about Sarah and Baxter. And that…well, that was priceless.

My latest order had been a strange one. A guy called me and told me he needed a level 10 Shadow Walker ready in just a fortnight’s time. His son was turning 16, and he wanted to gift him a character that was quest-ready.

The characters didn’t vary much. It was usually warriors. Or mages. Someone might order the occasional thief, which at least gave me a little bit of variety. If a fantasy film became popular and there was a particular character people liked, that class might rise in favor. Generally, people stuck to the classics. The Conan the Barbarian or Gandalf the Grey special, as I liked to call them.

This one was different.

“Why does he need a shadow walker?” I had asked the man.

He sighed down the phone. “I don’t know. But what the kid wants, he gets.”

Shadow Walker was a new one on me, and I’d played the game for years. After accepting the order I’d done my research. Shadow walkers dressed like a mixture between a thief and a mage. They used stealth, and they could blend into the shadows to get places unseen. That was useful, but it didn’t end there. A shadow walker started with 3 wizard cantrips. This was the part that really piqued my interest.

“Which cantrips does your son want?” I asked the man, wishing I could pick them myself.

“What the hell is a cantrip?”

“It’s a low-level trick used by mages,” I answered.

Cantrips were like spells, except at first, they were basic enough to be used by a non-magic class. The shadow walker picked 3 cantrips at character creation, as did the barbarian, thief and scout.

“Mages? Tricks? I don’t really give a damn,” was his answer. “Just pick something.”

Well, the customer’s always right. I decided that if he didn’t care which cantrips I picked, I’d choose the three that appealed most to me. After some research, I ended up with:

Blade Turn, which gave a limited-time resistance against piercing, stabbing and bludgeoning.

Glowing lights, which did exactly what it said on the tin – it let me cast glowing orbs of light.

Finally, I chose Minor Illusion. Now, this was something I could work with. Minor Illusion let me create real-looking holograms of any object I chose. The effect would last until someone, or something, tried to touch it. I imagined that the man’s son would have a lot of fun with that.

“Are you sure this is all legit?” asked the man.

“They make you sign terms and conditions thicker than the Oxford dictionary,” I told him. “But one thing’s certain. If you pay a subscription, you own your character and any items in your inventory. If I want to sell my own property to you, that’s my business.”

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Knowing I would never keep a character took most of the fun out of it. Fun wasn’t really something I cared about, though. It was money I needed, and lots of it.

I needed cash so that I never had to look at my apartment again. What I really needed was my own island, but no amount of office work or character auctioning would pay for that. Failing that, I’d settle for a brain wipe. Get a scientist with a laser and then slice away at my memories. I’d get him to target the ten years I spent with Sarah.

Before I could do that, I had a few year’s salaries-worth of debt that I had to clear, and that meant long hours. As well as an unhealthy distrust in other people, Sarah had also left me with a mountain of unpaid bills and bad credit.

Six swings of my sword later, four imps lay dead on the grass. I heard a jingle that told me I’d earned exp. It wasn’t enough for level 2, but I’d get there. Only another fifty imps lay between me and level 4 tonight. After that, I’d get a few hours of sleep. A brief spell of nothingness where I could close my eyes and forget everything. And forget her, especially.

Yeah, right. I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head in the months she’d been gone. Why should tonight be any different?

I looted the dead imps and found 6GD and a pair of greaves.  GD stood for Geld Domonium, the world-wide currency adopted a few years earlier that was good almost everywhere – in shops, online, in-game. In Infarna Omega it was represented by gold coins, but people rarely carried money anymore. Most purchases were done via a scanner imbedded in your wrist.

Ahead of me, standing against the trunk of a yellow tree, was a woman. Even so far away, I could tell she was almost as tall as me. She had red hair that flowed to her waist. When the sunlight hit it, every single strand glowed.

Four dire wolves advanced on her, ready to tear her apart. I couldn’t see her level. From the way she was backed up against the trunk of the tree, I guessed her chances weren’t great.

Dire wolves were an unappetizing combo of low-EXP and high damage. On top of that, they liked to surround you and attack from all sides. I’d learned from bitter experience that a class with high agility – like thief or scout – lost their speed advantage when they were hemmed in. If you picked a fight with a dire wolf, you needed a tank class, or you had to stay the hell out of range.

This meant that the girl was in trouble. I could have turned around and walked away. That’s what I wanted to do, there’s no point lying about it. She looked like she was struggling, so my nature fought against me. I had to help her.

I gripped my sword and walked toward her, my boots barely making a sound as I stepped over the crumbling leaves. As I got closer, the wolves snarled. One of them turned to face me. It snorted, and I saw spit fly out from its mouth. I knew what to do with dire wolves; cleave them at the leg to slow them down, then wait for a chance to get a critical stab.

Three of them advanced. They were taking their time, I knew. Assessing the threat before them. NPC creatures weren’t stupid, and they learned from their mistakes. They even seemed to speak to each other in their own primitive languages. Somewhere east, there was said to be a dragon that spoke English.

As one of the braver wolves took a step closer to the woman, she swung with her staff and cracked it across the face. The wolf stepped back and snarled. They would attack soon. I looked at the woman. Her name and health bar were above her head.

[Loria Snapstaff – Level 2 Illusionist.]

Well, that explained it. Although we weren’t far from Ikiele, the starter village, these woods were too tough for an illusionist. I’d levelled up a few of them in my time, and I knew that you were better off going somewhere remote. Somewhere away from hostile creatures. You certainly didn’t level up an illusionist by taking on a pack of dire wolves.

“You going to swing that sword of yours, or what?” she said.

I ran forward. As I reached the first wolf, I slid into a crouch and swiped at its front leg, crippling it. The others turned on me now, changing their target to the most powerful threat facing them. Me. As much as it made sense, it was the wrong move.

Loria hit one on the head with her staff, scoring a ‘While Your Back’s Turned’ critical, as we veterans called rear attacks.

With only two wolves in fighting condition, I waited for them to come for me. As one of them leapt at me I sidestepped, swung my sword, and sliced open its throat. The other one, seeing two of its pack dead and another crippled, whimpered and then ran into the woods.

After it had gone, Loria turned to face me. I didn’t need her to say thanks, though.

“I could have taken them,” she said, instead of thanking me. “I had them where I wanted them. Just a few more seconds, and they’d have been done. Bang! A swipe with my staff, and one’s down. Swoosh! I cast Circles of Fear, they run their asses off.”

“Be more careful next time,” I told the illusionist.

“You were pretty good,” said Loria. “But you should have waited just a few more seconds to see what I did.”

There was something I immediately liked about Loria. A wholesome air to her. It was as though the sunlight shining on her hair drained inside of her. Her face ruined the image though. She wore an expression halfway between a smile and a scowl. It was as though she was never quite sure how to feel about the world around her.

“That was nice of you,” she said. A ray of sunshine cut through the gaps in the leaves above us and lit on her hair, making it look like it was on fire.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just find a better place to grind. There’s a valley two miles east that has rats roaming. If you’re set on fighting, that’ll be safer.”

I reached into my inventory and pulled out two health potions. It’d cost me 100 GD to replace them, I knew. I resented the expense, but Loria’s health bar looked empty. I handed them to her.

Loria took a potion, unscrewed it and drank it back. After finishing it all, she burped.  As the red in her health bar began to fill, I closed my inventory bag.

“It’s my second night here,” said Loria. “With this character, I mean. I had an archer, but I got sick of it. Fighting long-range is just so boring, don’t you think?”

“So, you picked illusionist? Hardly a hand-to-hand warrior class.”

She shrugged. “It just sounded cool. Listen, do you want to party up for a while?”

I thought about it. Partying up was a safe way to level up, and for anyone else, I’d have recommended it. But my partying days were over. Not just in the game, either. Aside from going to the office, I’d hardly even set foot outside my apartment in weeks. Sarah had seen to that.

As Loria waited for an answer, I felt myself go down the rabbit hole of memory.