Tyler opened his eyes to the side room where he was ejected from HYTOMA, briefly reminding him of his encounter with the chaotic AI. He knew all about why that particular Prime AI exists, but with the stories told about VI, it's hard to accept that she had so much power. He not so stealthily looked around the Shop Keeper wing by popping his head out of the room, relieved to see that the chaos hadn't entered the College.
He ducked away from the doorway of the side room and sat down in one of the chairs at the table. He decided to wait on creating a quest to fix the wheel on his wagon until he entered the game, not wanting to use the quest creation tool while walking. In his mind, creating something in HYTOMA while walking felt fake to him, being reminded every day how important it was to keep the two realities separate.
He pointed three fingers to the ground, then quickly flicked his wrist, so his fingers swiped upward in the air, bringing a window into his view. He looked at the 'Wagon' tab, and winked his right eye, activating the screen bringing up the dialogue describing the use of the quest creation tool. He winked at the Quest name field, bringing up a keyboard at his waist, not taking time to fill it out, continuing down the list.
*** Quest Created
A Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
A mysterious wagon has appeared in the woods outside of Myneria, rumors involving dragons being involved. The wagon was discovered with a broken wheel and needs to be repaired before that wagon returns to service.
Reward: Adventurers name shall be mounted on name plate to hang off wagon for a period of no less than 6 months. Negotiation for continuation of reward will begin after a period of 5 months. ***
After his first attempt at creating the quest, he received two warnings, and the failure of creating his original quest three times. The first error was the quest reward, he originally asked for cost of materials plus 100 gold, and he was notified that he did not have enough money for the cost of materials. The second error came up when he tried to choose an employee, two of the errors occurring when selecting either one of his current employees. Turns out that adventurers are not able to accept his quests while in combat. After selecting TitanicVoice for his second choice, and new window popped up;
No employees available to spread word of quest, a letter has been mailed to Town Hall requesting a notice be posted to the adventurers board to find an adventure to complete quest.
To fix the quest reward, he decided to write down "Patronage" as a snarky way to avoid paying any gold. He was surprised when he didn't get an error, and it looked like an AI somewhere in the administration chain decided to fill in the blanks with the nameplate idea. It was clear to Tyler that creating a quest in this form was significantly more difficult than screaming in a city that you needed something done and offering some sort of monetary payment. His original idea for a quest name was "Repair the wheel", only to quickly change his mind when thinking about it, knowing that he wouldn't even read the description with a name like that, ignoring the task all together.
Satisfied, he closed out his windows, and got ready to leave the small room, he heard a ping in his ear, telling him he just received a message. Opening his mailbox, he saw that he received 10 messages from JarsforJars, leaving a confused look on his face, how did he miss the 9 other messages? He decided to read the latest message, seeing how many messages sent to him in a short period of time, clearly there was something that needed his attention.
"Pylioth, I don't know why you aren't replying to me, but you need to get out of the College now. I don't know what this group wants, but they are looking for a low leveled shop keeper, and as soon as I heard about them looking for a shop keeper, a quest was dropped on me. I won't be able to hold this pack of animals for much longer, so you need to MOVE!"
Tyler groaned, quickly realizing that once again, he was being dragged along in a developing situation. Not wanting to create any more trouble for the warrior, he quickly got to his feet and made his way towards the exit of the gigantic complex. As he neared the gates to the building, he caught whispers of a fight happening just outside, wondering who would be so brave to fight so close to the place of learning. It was well documented that any violence near the property will create an investigation, and anybody involved will face punishment.
He was about 15 feet from the large gate, when he heard shouting from the city. "Listen here girl, we don't have any reason to fight with you, we just want the little noobie. He got one of our guildmembers with the city guard, and we just want to make sure that he faces his own punishment for his involvement." The nasally voice set Tyler's teeth on edge, how could someone sound so annoying, and yet sound so confident with wanting to punish a practically brand new adventurer. A group of 5 people stood at the gate, and between them and the gate stood JarsforJars, her sword point down in the ground, her leaning on it breathing heavily.
"I won't say I understand why you are hunting down a newly entered adventurer, but just consider me an early response to your griefing. Honestly, five of you all for one noob?" She pulled out a green potion, drank it down and cracked her neck, the stamina potion making her feel like she wasn't just holding off a party from entering the college.
"Now girl, you can think you are doing good here, but you aren't part of the City Guard, so you don't get to dole out punishment as you see fit. Now, if you kindly stand aside..." The man trailed off, looking over JarsforJars' shoulder, he exhaled a chuckle. "Well, it seems like it doesn't matter what you do, because the person we are looking for is right behind you."
She looked over her shoulder and grimmaced, the stamina potion finished its effect, so she didn't delay her next moves. She grabbed her sword, leaving the point in the ground, she dragged it through the ground in front of her, creating a small trench. She passed her hand over top of the trench, and a liquid fell from her palm and quickly filled up trench end to end. "Flame Wall!" She yelled, kicking her foot across the ground near the newly formed pool, and a spark dropped into the liquid, and a 15 foot tall wall of fire appeared in front of her, extending in front of the entrance to the college in a semi-circle.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She took a few steps back, so she was a few steps from Tyler, and started speaking over her shoulder. "You have to head to the east, get across the street, and duck into an alley that is next to the Fancy Pantsy Brew Stop House." She pointed in the direction she wanted him to run. "You are going to have to run with me for a bit, just enough to get past these guys. Once we get past them, you keep running, and I'll try to hold them back so you can get out of site, and lose these guys in the city."
"Wait, what's even going on here? How did these guys know I was here, and how did they know I was the one they are looking for?"
"Did you not even read the messages I sent you? We don't have time for this, but everybody knows who you are, there are videos everywhere of you and JackAttack just before he got arrested. My Fire Wall is about to end, and I won't have enough juice to light another one for a bit. MOVE!" She grabbed him by his collar, shoving him towards the bar.
As Tyler took his first step, he felt the heat of the flame wall, but just as he took his second step, the flame wall dropped, revealing a malicious smile pointed at him. "Quick Step!" In a flash, JarsforJars was on his left, putting her body between Tyler and the group. In a blur, she stepped into the group, swinging her sword in a large arc, keeping it low, aiming at as many legs as possible.
Before her swing could reach the group, a thick Dwarf stepped forward, bring a large shield in front of him. "Iron Wall!" The man screamed his ability, and his shield unfolded, setting up a wall in front of the incoming sword. JarsforJars gritted her teeth, the reverb of her sword bouncing off the wall, looking towards Tyler, she only saw his back. Knowing that Tyler was on the move, she took a breath, and jumped into the air, bringing her sword behind her. She screamed down "Meteor Slam!", her sword swinging in a large arc from above her head, the momentum of the huge sword brough her body into a front flip. As soon as her sword hit the ground in front of the group, a huge explosion leapt forward, completely shattering the large wall.
"Shakes, follow that noob, the rest of us will put her down." The leader of the group had dropped his smile, his face was pure anger. "We would have been happy to let you go, but now, you're going for a nice walk." The man obviously planned to send her digital character to respawn, forcing her to spend a day walking.
-
Tyler heard the explosion behind him, but he refused to look back to see what was going on. He knew he had to run, even though the group wasn't after him for the Property Deed he originally thought, he couldn't run the risk of getting respawned. The group were making threats towards JarsforJars, but he was too far away to make out what was being said. Tyler made his way to step around a barrel outside of a Dye trader, and as soon as he stepped to the side, an arrow was suddenly embedded in the barrel, right at his calf height.
*** Ability Unlocked! Shop Keepers Luck
As a trader, you don't have the ability to fight back against a combat class. You now have the ability to randomly dodge a sure hit skill. This ability does not have a cool down, and can manifest itself at any time. Let your attackers know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. ***
Tyler didn't have time to read the message, thanking the fact that while in combat, his companion UI automatically minimized the message window. "Keep trying to run noob, but you have no way of getting away from me. Crippling Shot!"
Tyler shuddered, knowing that a skill like Crippling Shot would slow him down for ten seconds, and had a 100% hit rate. With how things had been going for him up until this point, he figured his luck was low, and didn't have a chance to dodge two of these attacks in a row. As soon as he thought he was going to be hit by an arrow, he tripped on a small piece of cobblestone that made up the road he was running on. As soon as his face smacked the ground, he lost 5 hit points, but he heard a wizz passing over his head.
Attack dodged! The message scrolled past his vision, he put his hands under him and ran the last few steps to the alley JarsForJars pointed him towards. "What? How did my attack miss?" He heard from around the corner. "Whatever, Swift Step."
As he entered the Alley, he looked to the right, seeing his pursuer quickly gaining on him, moving quick with a speed boost ability. He shook his head, confirming that he was being chased by at least a level 40 adventurer. Sure, he had the luck to dodge the last attack, but clearly not so lucky to avoid being ganked by a mid-level player.
He ran past a door just inside the alley, then started to hear a deep base note carrying on the air. After another step, the base note turned into a deep melody. "Bring the walls down, surround the enemy in rubble, allow the escape of my team." After the last note, the entire alley began to shake, and the walls of the buildings that surrounded him began to crack. After a few more steps, rocks began to fall from the walls, quickly covering the street.
"What the....." A voice came from the entrance of the alley, letting Tyler know he was just steps from being caught. He looked over his shoulder, and realized that whatever the Scout wanted to say was cut short, a large piece of rubble landing directly on top of her, sending her to respawn. He looked back up the alley, and continued to run, not knowing where the other four adventures were.
Ten feet up the alley, he heard muffled noises coming from the other side a door nearby. All of a sudden, the door exploded into the alley, JarsForJars pushing someone in front of her through the door, slamming into the opposite wall. She quickly dragged her sword in an upward arc, across the man's neck, dropping him to the ground off for respawn. She turned back to the door, screaming at Tyler "move! I refuse to fail this quest because you are slow as molasses moving uphill!"
As soon as Tyler took one step, he heard singing from above again, this time in a higher pitch. "Let your legs carry your forward, moving faster than the wind can imagine!" Tyler took his second step, and he moved at twice his normal speed. He sped up the alley, coming close to laughing with how fast he was moving, but the desperation of the situation allowed him to focus on escape.
"Displace!" He heard a gruff voice, likely the Dwarf from earlier, using another tanking ability. Next thing he knew, JarsForJars flew past him, and slammed into the wall where the alley turned. Tyler didn't stop to check on her, and ran around the corner, not seeing anything ahead of him, he kept running. He quickly glanced over his shoulder, and saw three people surround his employee, he couldn't keep his frustration down not being able to step in and help. He looked forward to being a shop keeper, but now angry with his lack of combat skills.
The alley took another turn, and he turned left, not having any other choice not wanting to take a chance and hope one of the many doors being unlocked. Before he could even realize what was happening, he felt his back slam into a wall, losing 5 hit points, and a nasally voice greeted him, "gotcha noob".
JarsForJars was dealing with 3 adventurers, she wasn't going to help him. TitanicVoice was around, but Tyler had no idea if the Titan was even in the position to help. He grasped at the hand on his chest, pinning him to the wall, but he may as well have been trying to move a mountain, him being a Level 1 Shop Keeper and the hand came from a combat class adventurer. Tyler was in trouble, he couldn't even think of a way to get out of this, it was clear that revenge was on the menu, and he was the main course.
Just as Tyler was giving up hope, watching the man dig in his bag for, something, a call came from all over the city. "DRAGONS!!!" As Tyler looked up, he shuddered, realizing that his Property Deed was as good as gone, and the alley exploded in fire.