“You’re what level?” Rachel asked incredulously.
They had retrieved Josh’s things from his lodging house, and were now booked into an inn. Josh had splashed out and got them a suite, which consisted of two bedchambers joined by a common sitting room area. They were currently standing in the sitting room.
Babel had disappeared the moment Josh had climbed out of the window at the cathedral, and Josh hoped that he had followed them here and was lurking in a shadowy corner somewhere, rather than, for example, infiltrating other people’s libraries in order to eat all their books.
“I would be level 17 if I applied all my experience,” Josh said, defensively.
“Yeah, but that’s not what you are now!”
“Technically…” Josh began.
Rachel was laughing so hard she was bent over double.
“Level nine!” she repeated. “You’re level nine!”
“I’m not!”
“Why not apply your experience?”
“Because you can’t hide your character sheet once you’re level 10 or above. If I can’t do that, anyone with a player core would be able to tell I’ve got one too—which, for your information, includes many of the nobles in this town—"
“Since when do you know any lords?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What’s your class, anyway? Some kind of dark mage?”
“I wish,” Josh said. “No. You know that three of us got kidnapped at the same time, and were all choosing classes from the same list?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Yeah, well I was staring at the class list, and there were only three choices. The assassin class disappeared right in front of me. I assume you got that.”
“Yeah.”
“So that left two choices. One of them was demon. Only I missed out on that one too.”
“You idiot.”
Josh gave her a superior smile.
“Actually, now I know what the class does, I’m glad I didn’t get it. I had a narrow escape from being the next Dark Lord.”
Rachel’s eyes widened.
“I could have been the Dark Lord. I missed out on being the Dark Lord! That would have been so cool!”
Josh shivered. “Rach, that class eats other players.”
He didn’t know if it was figuratively or spiritually, and was extremely glad he hadn’t had to find out the hard way.
“Eww.”
“Exactly. So, yeah, after that, there was only one class left, which was plumassier.”
“What the hell is that supposed to be?”
“It’s, er, well, it’s … magic feathers.”
Rachel gave him a look.
“Could you not have chosen something that sounded less like a My Little Pony?”
“That’s all that was left, because someone took assassin.”
“You shouldn’t have been so slow—ohmygodwhatthefuckisthat?”
Josh turned around.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey Babel.”
Babel had somehow found his way into their chambers, and resumed his pig form.
“Babel, this is my cousin’s best friend’s sister. Rach, this is Babel the pig.”
“What kind of nutcase class did you choose?” Rachel asked, her eyes wide with horror.
At that point, whatever potion Rachel had given Josh earlier suddenly ran out. The room receded to the end of a long tunnel, a fierce pain bloomed in his side, and something whacked his head hard enough to stun him. He blinked and realised he was looking at the ceiling.
Distantly he could hear Rachel panicking, and Babel saying in his eerie little voice, “Josh the Sage is sick.”
The next time Josh opened his eyes it was daylight, and he was lying in a bed. The pain in his side was still there, but it was more of a dull, persistent ache. His mouth was dry and he felt light-headed. He turned his head and saw Rachel sitting in a chair by his bed. She had dark circles under her eyes, and white, pinched look.
“Hey,” he said. She started and leapt up.
“Oh my god, Josh, you’re awake.” She sounded relieved for precisely three seconds, before she added in an angry tone of voice, “Why didn’t you say that guy sliced you to ribbons?”
Josh frowned.
“What? Don’t be silly.” He lifted the blanket, realising he had been dressed in one of his shirts, and that there were bandages wrapped around his middle.
“The only reason you’re still alive is because your weird pig thing apparently stopped the bleeding right after it happened. The doctor gave you stitches.”
“Doctor?”
“I had to go down and ask the innkeeper,” Rachel said, her tone accusatory, as if it was his fault. “He sent out, and this guy came, and…”
Josh hadn’t previously considered the state of medical care in Six Spires, but from Rachel’s description it sounded like the doctor had known what he was doing. Josh was grateful not to have been exposed to the standard of medical treatment common to the medieval period on Earth.
“But we have to find another inn or lodging house, or something tonight,” he told Rachel. “All the Order need to do is canvass the city looking for someone with an injury like mine. Inns will be the first places they’ll check.”
“The doctor said you should stay in bed.”
“We’ll find somewhere with a bed then.”
Rachel rolled her eyes.
“Tell me what happened,” Josh said. “How did you get here?”
Rachel’s story
The first thing Rachel did, after she heard Ben explaining the trap they were setting for the kidnapper, was download Spiralia Online and create a trial account. It was one of those pretty, fluffy, colourful roleplaying games. She preferred her games gritter, like Dark and Darker, or DungeonBorne. This was like living in fairyland, exactly the kind of game you'd expect some pedo to haunt.
She played for a few hours, with a brief interruption where she pretended she was going to bed, and waited for her parents to fall asleep before logging back in. By the time she finally got up from her PC, it was early in the morning, and her eyes were gritty with tiredness. She hadn’t pulled the curtains across her window properly, and a slanted ray of early morning sunlight was bathing her pillow in pale light.
She leaned across to twitch it fully across, and saw a flash of movement along the path behind the house. Was that Josh? She pulled the curtain back. He was shambling along like a sleepwalker and heading into the woods.
Where was he going at this time of the morning?
Had he got a lead on the kidnapper? But why was he going by himself?
Rachel grabbed her phone, wished she had had the foresight to acquire some pepper spray, and quietly ran out of the house. Josh went into the woodland behind the house, aimlessly wandering along as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She wondered if she should call out to him. But maybe he was just going for a walk, and it would be weird if he caught her following him.
She got her phone out, just in case.
When they arrived at the lane on the other side of the woods, the first thing Rachel noticed was the tall column of light. She squinted, trying to work out what it was while fumbling for the camera app on her phone, and then realised that Josh hadn’t paused. He was heading straight towards it as if planning to walk right into it.
Rachel sprinted towards him.
“Josh!” She called. “Josh!”
He stopped just before the column light. Rachel grabbed for the back of his t-shirt, but then he took a step forward, and the column of light swallowed him. She didn’t even have time to react before the column of light expanded briefly, and sucked her in too.
And that was that. She was in fantasyland.
The Gatekeeper was an unhelpful git.
Once she had established that—which didn’t take long—Rachel stopped trying to talk to it, and scanned the class list. The moment she spied her favourite class—assassin—she took it, without bothering to look further.
She opened her eyes to find she was lying in an old-fashioned summer house, decorated with faded paintings on the inner walls. The light was dim, as if it was late evening, and the air smelled of ozone. In the distance she heard thunderclaps. She tried slapping her hand to her left breast like they did in Jumanji, but there was no character sheet. She got to her feet and—what the hell was she wearing? It wasn’t cold, but she shivered in sudden fear.
The first couple of days were awful. She worked out how to open her character sheet, and realised that she needed experience to level. Normally you got that from killing mosters, but there were no monsters except wolves who ran away if she approached, and they were too pretty and too close to dogs for her to want to attack them. The quest log said to go to Leybeck but neglected to explain where that was, and she got thoroughly lost trying to find it. There was no food except some tart berries, and she got increasingly cold, miserable and hungry.
On the second day, she found a barn to sleep in, curling up despondantly in a pile of straw in the hayloft. That was when the other players turned up. She stayed where she was, and watched them. There was a man and a couple of boys, all older than her. They set up some kind of defensive ward at the door, made a fire, and cooked some bread in a pan. The smell of it nearly made her scramble down the ladder to join them, but she held back. After while, she realised she could concentrate and see their character sheets.
They didn’t have classes as good as assassin. The man was a level 30 woodcarver, and the two boys were a level 19 soldier and a level 15 lamplighter, of all things. The lamplighter could make objects glow, and he seemed to control the fire with only a snap of his fingers. All three wore wooden scale armour, made from hundreds of tiny wooden buttons linked together like chainmail, and they carried ordinary weapons—crossbows and swords.
The woodcarver was obviously the one in charge, and the one with the most experience in the game. The other two were typical examples of teenage boys everywhere—continually sparring with each other for dominance while boastfully covering up insecurities, and still under the impression that a ‘your mom’ joke was the gold standard of humour. The woodcarver kept playing them off against each other, one moment praising them and the next undermining them, setting them up compete for his attention.
Rachel had no desire to join or interact with a group that had such an unhealthy dynamic, particularly one that was full of strange men, so despite her desperate hunger, she stayed hidden in the loft.
She learned a lot while she was listening in—that previous players had killed all the monsters, that everyone was scrabbling for experience to level with, and busy killing each other for it. The wasteland around them was crawling with small groups banding together for protection, but they couldn’t risk getting too big, because every time a sizeable gang formed up the Storm King’s minions would sally out and break it up.
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The trio both despised and were envious of the Storm King and his golden city, where there was enough food for everyone, but you had to suck up to the higher-level folks to keep your place there.
And Rachel learned that if you died, you came back.
She had been given two skills—one called Fox Walk and the other called Stab. Fox Walk made her quieter while moving, and Stab did exactly what it said. It was easy to walk up to them while they were sleeping, but when it came to shoving the knife in, she sat beside the sleeping bodies for nearly half an hour, unable bring herself to do it.
In the end, she merely took their packs, went back to the hayloft, and climbed out of the barn through a half-broken roof timber. By morning she was miles away, with a full belly for the first time in days.
She levelled up a little by stealing from items groups of other players while they were sleeping. She didn’t feel bad about it. It was nothing personal, just PvP, and she was kind of a thief class. Plus, from the things she overheard, everyone here was an arsehole anyway.
She kept listening out for mention of Josh but didn’t see him anywhere. Maybe he’d been killed by a gang of arseholes already and would be resurrected in a week or so. All these people were hardened killers, and Josh was a nice guy—a bit goofy, but funny and easy-going, kind of like a golden retriever. He probably would have jumped straight in to talk to the woodcarver, and got stabbed for his pains.
Rachel's days of running and hiding ended when the Old Man turned up. She had overheard people talking about him, and she’d heard enough that she knew to avoid him, because he was some kind of slaver—he bought people, although for what purpose she never managed to find out. It was one of those subjects people were cagey about, even when they didn't think anyone could overhear.
And then Rachel woke up one day to find him crouched over her.
He didn’t kill her. Instead, he talked, and he was friendly and charming, but Rachel knew he was a creep. He was like the woodcarver, but better at hiding it. Everyone called him the Old Man, but he was in his late twenties or early thirties, pale-skinned with an old-fashioned haircut and a widow’s peak, kind of like a vampire, and although he was young, he talked like an old guy. He didn’t have a class, but he seemed to know all about players and Earth. He offered to help her level up.
The first time she didn’t trust him, and ran away from him. He found her twice after that, and realised that if she didn’t go with him he would probably capture her anyway. There was an impatient glint in his eyes that deepened with every meeting.
He had a secret subterranean hideout with multiple entrances, and while he was a creep he wasn’t that kind of creep. He didn’t touch her, but gave her a room of her own, with a bed and pillows and a soft, fluffy duvet, and there was a kitchen with a chef—a player with an actual class—who could make phenomenal food.
He asked her about the character creation screen, and the Gatekeeper, and the list of available classes. He seemed interested when she mentioned the demon class had still been available.
His underground labyrinth had a monster breeding pit, with an arena, and this was how he helped her level up. It was grotesque work, but her skills improved by leaps and bounds. She felt sorry for the monsters, though.
Even though he didn’t have a class, he seemed to know a lot about how assassins worked, and gave her pointers on which skills to select, and how to build her class. When she got to level 15, he gave her a quest—to assassinate the head of the Order of the Unyielding. The last thing she did before she left was open the doors to all the monster cages, and set them free.
The journey there wasn’t hard, although it was the first time she had come across people who had been born here, and who had never heard of Earth, and acted like extras in a period drama. She used her disguise skill to blend in, and the achievements she got from that pushed her up to level 16. The rest was history.
“But did you actually plan to kill Sir Owain?” Josh asked, as Rachel came to the end of her tale.
She glared at him.
“No! I didn’t trust the Creep. I was planning to talk to Owain and tell him the Creep wanted to kill him, and see if I could join the Order instead.”
“The Order kills outlanders permanently.”
“I know that now,” Rachel snapped.
“Alright.” Josh sank back on his pillows, relieved. He gave her a quick summary of his own adventures in Six Spires, and by the time he’d done that she had directed her ire elsewhere.
“There was a message,” she asked, incredulously, “telling Sir Owain that I was coming for him?”
“Yeah. Could it have been from the Old Man who sent you after him?”
“It couldn't have been anyone else! The creep!”
Rachel’s story had given Josh the cold chills, and while parts of it were horrifying—what would have happened if the victims of her various thefts had woken up and caught her in the act?—he was willing to admit it could have been worse.
“It seems to me as if the system is trying to make everyone become the worse iteration of themselves,” he said. “The achievements, the levelling, it all feels malicious and directed.”
“What are we supposed to do though? It’s not like we can just pretend all that stuff doesn’t exist. We'll die if we don't level up and get stronger.”
“We get the hell out of here at the first opportunity, and go back to Earth.”
“Can we do that?” Rachel asked in a small voice.
Josh paused. He had been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks. If his body had been recreated in Six Spires, did that mean his old body was stored somewhere and he could get it back? Or had it been left behind? Or vaporised when he’d been transferred here? Given the exploitative and manipulative methods of psychological control the system had so far demonstrated, he was very much afraid it wouldn’t have kept anything it didn’t think it needed. And it didn’t need him or anyone else to return home.
“Yeah,” he said, projecting confidence into his voice. “Of course we can.”
“So we need to find this Dreamer guy, Karl,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But you’ve got no idea where he is.”
“No.”
“We need to do a skip trace, then.”
“Is that part of your assassin expertise?” Josh asked curiously
After Rachel had launched into a long description of what a skip tracer was supposed to do, based on all the tv documentaries she’d seen, Josh held up a hand.
“Alright, alright … we’ll get on that.” He winced, as something twinged in his side. “Is Babel okay?”
“Your creepy Pig of Darkness? Yeah, it went into hiding when the doctor came. It’s probably the only reason you didn’t bleed out back at the cathedral. Apparently, it staunched the wound. The doctor found all this black smoke that evaporated when he went to clean it and stitch it up. Which freaked him out. I had to pay him extra to get him to shut up about it.”
How had Babel known to stop the bleeding? He seemed to know and understand things Josh hadn’t taught it.
“We need to keep a low profile,” he said. “Sir Owain must be furious that his trap failed. He’ll be looking for Ramina, and she could lead him to us. Or what if the doctor tells anyone about tending to a wound bleeding black smoke?”
“Can’t we stay here?” Rachel had obviously taken a liking to the luxury of their quarters. “That prick who grabbed me by the neck was the only one who saw Ramina’s face, right? And he's dead. So that gives us a couple of weeks before they’re back.”
“I don’t want to leave that to chance. What if there’s some kind of magic spell that can recreate what happened in that room?”
Rachel heaved a huge sigh.
“Well, get your fancy woman on it then.”
“Who?” Josh was nonplussed.
“Lady P!”
“She’s not my fancy woman!”
“She obviously fancies you, you stupid git. So get her to give us a safe house.”
Josh wasn’t willing to trust Lady Paleyne as far as he could throw her.
“We’ll find another inn for now,” he temporised. “And get out of Dendral as soon as we’ve got the information we need. Also, we should swap character sheets with each other. Is there a way to do that beyond the basic information?”
“Yeah. You just say, ‘I want to share my character sheet with Josh Armstrong.’”
Rachel’s character sheet popped immediately into the air.
> BASIC INFORMATION
> Name: Rache
> Profession: Assassin
> Level 16
> Player rank: 863
> Gladiator rank: 476
> Kills: 1 | Deaths 0
> Karma: 100
>
> PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES
> Constitution 20 | Strength 27 | Agility 52 | Speed 16 | Endurance 68 | Resilience 39 | Manual Dexterity 61 | Vocalisation 5
>
> MAGICAL ATTRIBUTES
> Power 1 | Chi 25
>
> KNOWLEDGE
> Anatomy V: You understand the anatomy of creatures.
>
> SKILLS
> Fox Walk VI: You know how to move silently in grassland, wooded terrain, caves, and urban terrain.
>
> Blend In III: You know how to position yourself to hide your silhouette and break up your outline. You also know how to move and act to make yourself fit in with the people around you, becoming one with the crowd.
>
> Dagger Fighting VI: You know how to fight with a dagger. Learned moves: stab, thrust, parry, grapple, hold.
>
> MAGIC
> Magic Sense II: You can detect the presence of strong magic.
Josh felt a pulse of envy, but supressed it. If he had taken the assassin class first, he would have had useful fighting and hiding skills from the start … but then he wouldn’t have been able to placate the Queen of the Fey with a feather bracelet. And his run in with Varian’s gang might have gone much worse—they might have been much more desperate to rip out his player core from the start. And he wouldn’t have Babel, who had now helped save his life twice.
And most importantly of all, if he’d taken assassin, Rachel would probably have been left with demon.
For the first time Josh was glad he had chosen plumassier. And Rachel was right when she had asked if he was a mage—he was well on his way to becoming one. He needed to get to his final lesson with Arcanist Gryce, and pick up the spell-casting amulet as soon as possible.
“I want to share my character sheet with Rache,” he said. It appeared in the air besides Rachel’s. Everything that she couldn’t see was greyed out.
> BASIC INFORMATION
> Name: Josh Armstrong
> Profession: Journeyman Plumassier
> Level: 9
> (Experience available! Check your achievements to apply experience!)
> Total experience points: 6,406
> Experience to next level: 1
> Player rank: #865
> Kills: 6 / Deaths: 0
> Gladiator rank: #435
>
> PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES
> Constitution 39 | Strength 69 | Agility 43 | Speed 28 | Endurance 38 | Resilience 39 | Manual Dexterity 80 | Vocalisation 44
>
> MAGICAL ATTRIBUTES
> Power 1 | Chi 54
>
> KNOWLEDGE
> Feather Folklore IV: You understand the structure of common feathers. You must find an uncommon feather to advance further.
> -> Progress to next level: 0/1.
>
> SKILLS
> Feather Fingers V: You know how to manipulate feathers into decorative objects.
> -> Progress to next level: 861/1000.
>
> MAGIC
> Infuse VI (feathers): You can imbue feathers with your magical essence. You can now vary the amount of magic infused, imbue parts of a single feather, and imbue multiple feathers together as one object.
> -> Progress: 674/1000.
>
> Feather Feel VI: You can sense feathers in the vicinity which have been imbued with magic, and can ‘see’ threads of magic connecting them.
> -> Progress: 986/1000.
>
> Glow III: Enchant a feather to glow for a short time.
> -> Progress: 102/1000.
>
> MESSAGES
>
> You have 123,652 unapplied experience points. Go to the Quest and Achievements menu to apply these points now!
>
> You have enough experience points to reach level 17. Once applied, additional levels will take effect during your next long rest. Multiple levels may take more than one rest period to apply.
>
> ACHIEVEMENTS
>
> Raicheus (Lvl 31) Vanquished (1/5): This was a close one, but you prevailed due to sheer foolhardiness. And also teamwork. Reward: 21,149 xp (apply)
>
> SirKorey (Lvl 16) Vanquished (1/5): Unbelievable! He practically killed himself. Reward: 5,317 xp (apply)
>
> TheAxeMan (Lvl 16) Vanquished (1/5): He conveniently walked into your spear. If only all enemies would be so obliging! Reward: 5,317 xp (apply)
>
> A Picturesque Plume (VI): Your industrious hard work is paying off. You have crafted multiple items of to a high standard, of which any journeyman would be justly proud.
> -> Progress to A Polished Plume (VII): 861/1000. Reward: 200,000 xp.
> A Pleasant Plume (V): 100/100. Reward: 2500 xp (apply).
> A Praiseworthy Plume (IV): 1/1. Reward 500 xp (apply).
> A Plain Plume (III): 1000/1000. Reward: 2500 xp (apply).
> A Painstaking Plume (II): 100/100. Reward: 500 xp (apply).
> A Paltry Plume (I): 1/1 Reward: 10 xp (applied).
>
> Mistrz (Lvl 26) Vanquished (1/5): You dealt the final blow, saving Mistrz from, well, death. Presumably he is grateful. Reward: 2,548 (shared) (applied).
>
> Like A Boss I: You like flying solo, huh? This one is for the adrenaline junkies out there. Congratulations for soloing a boss. Reward: 500 xp (apply).
> -> Progress to Like a Boss II: 1/10. Reward: 2000 xp.
>
> Fledgling Gladiator (I): You have defeated your first outlander! Don’t feel too bad about it. He attacked first. Reward: 250 xp. (applied)
> -> Progress to Rookie Gladiator (II): 6/10. Reward: 1000 xp.
>
> Hand of Karma I: You’re going to be one to watch out for—defeating a murderer at your level is no easy task! Reward: 250 xp. (applied)
> -> Progress to Hand of Karma II: 6/10. Reward: 1000 xp.
>
> Shuriken (Lvl 18) Vanquished (2/5): He just keeps picking on the wrong target, doesn’t he? Nice thinking outside the box! Rewards: (1) As Shuriken was defeated as part of a quest, you may claim your reward from the Quest menu. (2) 867 xp (applied).
>
> Fey Favour: That was a lucky escape – the Queen of the Fey spared your life! Reward: you get to live. For now.
>
> Royal Patronage I: You’re moving up in the world! You have crafted your first item for royalty. Reward: 250xp. (applied)
> -> Progress to Royal Patronage II: 2/10. Reward: 1000 xp.
Since the Azure Cathedral, Josh’s Constitution had gone up by 5 points, Strength by 11 points, Agility by 16 points, Speed by 9 points, Endurance by 6 points, Resilience by 7 points, Manual Dexterity by 13 points, and Vocalisation by 9 points. Once he applied the experience and got to level 17, he would get another 3 attribute points per level, which would give him 24 in total. He hadn’t decided where to put them. It was a choice between boosting his three primary combat stats—Strength, Agility and Chi—as high as possible, or dumping the points in the stats that were the biggest pain to raise, like Resilience and Endurance.
He was close to finishing Journeyman, which was Tier III to VI. Once he’d crafted another three hundred and twenty-six journeyman-level items, that would put him at Tier VII, and the achievement for this would give him 200,000 experience, which would take him all the way to level 19. He would then be able to start on his Masterwork.
After that it would be a hard slog, requiring uncommon or expensive materials to craft his way to higher levels. He had no idea how he was going to achieve that, particularly with the dearth of monsters in the world. The Quests so far had provided most of his experience, but with far greater risks than he was happy taking. He'd been lucky so far, but sooner or later his luck would run out. And he wasn’t going to go around killing other outlanders purely for the experience they would provide.
Meanwhile, Rachel was busy openly marvelling at the uselessness of his skills. To shut her up, he gave her one of his miniature spell books to look at. She immediately crowed with delight at how cute it was and started to look for things she could cast the spells on.
While she did that, Josh fretted at his weakened state, and tried to think of where they could move to that would be safe and would keep them hidden.