I left the TruShift headgear on my bed where I had thrown it, and slowly stood up. My muscles were a bit sore from all the time I had been in VR over the last month. It wasn’t recommended to be fully immersed for more than eight hours a day for a reason, but I found the escape from my solitary life helped. My muscles might protest a bit, but at least they still moved when I told them to.

It wasn’t as though there was much in my room to keep me interested in reality. I had my single bed shoved up against one wall with two soft blankets, and five pillows of various shapes and sizes. A small shelf sat above my headboard with my tiny collection of paperback novels. There was a window beside the bed that allowed me a view out onto the streets several stories below. On the far wall there was a screen built into the woodwork, with the keyboard and mouse tucked away in a panel under it if I needed them. Most of the functions through the screen were touch activated, but the mouse and keyboard were still useful for some of my work.

The monthly stipend given to every man woman and child wasn’t quite enough to pay for my above ground apartment with a window, but I supplemented it with web design. The creative industry was one of the few left where human contractors were still needed, but I was sure it wouldn’t be long before an advanced AI program would be taking that job as well.

Web design didn’t require me to go into an office, or deal with people face to face, something I hadn’t been able to do in years. It also didn’t require that I use a regular keyboard, so I had been doing more of my work in VR as well. I rarely needed to leave VR anymore. My virtual office had shifting murals on every wall with whales flying across the sky, or unicorns grazing in a deep dark forest. They were scenes that I could step into if I wanted to. Why would I care to stay in the real world if I could be in that setting? It was so easy to work, sleep, and play in VR, why would I be outside of it?

Because I was a coward.

The thought was out before I could stop it, but I couldn’t deny it.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I experienced death in a game. I liked to think that I was a decent player, but even decent players made mistakes, or came across mobs that were a bit too hard. Death was unavoidable. So why had I been so afraid of the bear?

I thought of the bear running at me, his jaws wider than my head, and a shiver ran down my spine. Giant teeth, and great big paws with sharp claws ready to dig into my flesh, and all I could do was stand there. I had no weapons, no spells, and nothing else to summon. I had been helpless.

It was one thing to stand up to a creature when you have a sword in your hand, and at least a chance of surviving. It was entirely different watching your death approaching, knowing there was nothing you could do.

It wasn’t as if being a coward was unusual for me. I became a shut in because I gradually became afraid of the outside world. That fear drove me farther and farther into my rooms, until I barely left them. Everyone made excuses, said my feelings were valid, and pointed out all the horrible things happening in the news. It was easy to stay indoors.

Maybe the fear was valid, maybe the world outside was just as dangerous as I thought it was. I didn’t even think I was a coward for admitting it was scary out there. No, I thought I was a coward because I couldn’t deal with it. Everyone out there was afraid sometimes, but they still went out there and did what they had to do while I stayed locked behind a door.

It was hard looking in a mirror, and seeing the mistakes you made in your life. I tried not to, it was too uncomfortable, but leaving Gill behind like I did wasn’t going to be simply forgotten.

I ran, it was what I did. When Freddy tried to be the hero and save the village from a wererat I wanted to run. When the leader of the bandits we just defeated was a player I wanted nothing to do with him. And when a bear was about to put my head between his jaws and bite down I ran.

It’s what I did. What I had been doing since junior high.

I watched out the window as electric cars silently wove their way through traffic below my window. At least I assumed them to be quiet since the window hadn’t been opened in years. My deliveries came through a secure door. No sound, no fresh air, no avoidable stimulation from beyond my four walls.

There was a woman jogging on the side of the road, a leash connecting her to a fluffy black dog. I imagined winding my fingers through the dogs fur, and feeling just how soft he could be. I imagined it wouldn’t be that much different than Gill.

A stab of pain shot through me as I remembered Gill running to my defense. The fuzzy mongoose had been willing to die for me, to protect me to the last hit point. And I left him.

I didn’t know what would happen to Gill when I exited the game. He could have simply despawned, returning to my deck until I reentered the game. Or he could have been left there all alone, waiting for the bear to bite down on him .

I sat down on the edge of my bed, head hung down. For a second I considered logging back in just to help Gill, but there wasn’t any point in that. If he didn’t despawn as soon as I exited the game then surely he was back in the deck by then. I hoped, for his sake, that he just despawned because it wasn't his fault that I bailed on him.

That was one downside of The Hub World; almost everything was persistent. If you left the world or exited the game, it kept going without you. There was no pause button, and certainly no do-over’s.

Sighing, I lifted my head, catching sight of the black dog rounding a corner far below. There wasn’t much I could do at that point. Gill wouldn’t have survived the bear attack even if he did stay in the world after I left, that meant there was nothing left for me to go back to at the moment. Better to let the bear move on to a different area before logging back in. Until then I would do whatever I could to make us stronger from outside the game world.

I took a few moments to run through my normal evening routine while exploring my options. I ate a bland, if healthy meal, took a shower, then slipped into my night clothes. It was the same routine I had been performing every day for the last decade. Usually it soothed me, setting everything right for the next day as I slipped into bed. Tonight it felt wrong. I kept seeing the bears jaws reaching for me, and instead of the soothing motions of repetition it was grating against my nerves.

I finished my routine, my mood still as sour as it had been before, and grabbed my tablet before climbing into bed. I needed something to help me in the next fight. I didn’t want to be ambushed by a bear again, and be stuck with nothing to do except wait for death. I needed a weapon, or a spell, anything that would keep me from feeling helpless in a similar situation.

I needed information first, and the best place to get information was the forums.

The boards for Vertigo were sectioned off into general chats, tips and tricks, bug reports, and a more advanced section that had password protection on it. I wasn’t sure how to get the password, but I wasn’t looking for anything advanced yet. I also found a guild section listing the various guilds, their officers, and requirements to join. Bannershroud held the number ten spot. I wasn’t surprised when I found that half of their guild forum was also blocked with passwords. They had basic information, events, and guild member data all public, which made me wonder what they kept behind the wall.

Their next tournament was in a week. That gave me six days to round out my deck so that I could participate. I had no illusions about winning, but games weren’t won in a single battle. No, there would be a series of smaller battles that lead up to the main boss. Most people had to practice and fail a lot before they could win, and I wouldn’t be exception.

Participating in the tournament would give me a better understanding of the fight mechanics, allow me to see what other skills and creatures were out there, and possibly even give me some insight into the guild and if I wanted to join it.

In another section of the forums I found several posts labeled as “advanced” guides made by users who did not have high participation or wins in their profile. That didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t know what they were talking about, but make it less likely. There were always those who preferred to figure things out but didn’t care to put in the effort to actually implement it, though they were few and far between. I’d have to go through several of them to see if there was anything that might help my situation, but the night was already getting late. I needed something faster.

The last thing I checked into were the trades. There were hundreds of posts for trades including creature cards, spells, and equipment. At the moment I had two creatures, a piece of armor and a spell to my name. That wasn’t much to go on. I wouldn’t be able to do a straight trade since I had nothing to give in exchange, but not everyone was looking for card trades. I still had my earnings from Yevelia so it would be possible to transfer some gold to The Hub world currency, Kronos, and use that to purchase a few things.

Most of the listings were expensive. I wasn’t surprised, Vertigo didn’t have its own coin system, instead using the universal currency of The Hub. It simplified things, but it also meant that prices fluctuated with the markets. The AI had been designed to regulate the influx of currency and keep inflation down to a minimum, but there was no way to halt it entirely.

Supply and demand for specific cards also played a role. If there were a few dozen of the same card up for trade, like a basic forest spider, then the price was much lower than the blue scaled dragon that was going for nearly a million Kronos at the time. I could have bought an entire apartment complex, or a super car for a million Kronos, but someone in Vertigo was selling a dragon for the same price.

There were two possibilities. Sometimes a player would post something at a ridiculous price not to sell it, but to show it like some kind of trophy. I have a dragon, you don’t, suck it.

The other, more likely, option was simple. Vertigo had a lot of whales, players that didn’t care about the price because they either wanted the most extravagant and expensive creatures to collect, or they just wanted to win at any cost. And they had the money to back it up.

Whenever you played the market it was a good idea to watch the collectors and fighters because they drove a lot of the demand. If there were enough collectors you could make a killing off of rare but useless creatures since fewer people would bother to go hunt them down. Fighters, on the other hand, wanted the best creatures and spells they could get, and might sacrifice anything to get it.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

I wasn’t interested in playing the market at the moment, though I had done my fair share of playing auction houses in the past. Vertigo wasn’t about extravagance for me, at least not at the moment. I didn’t need anything flashy, I just wanted to learn the game and be proficient enough to win a few battles. For that I thought a second spell card could be useful to go with my entangle spell. It might even prove the difference between getting eaten, or getting away from another large creature.

I already had the two pets, and one set of armor. I felt pretty confident that I could capture at least two more creatures each day for the rest of the week. It was the spell power that was concerning since I still hadn’t figured out how to make a spell card, and nothing in the open forum seemed to explain it outright.

So I went to the marketplace. If you couldn’t earn it on your own then maybe you could buy it.

There were plenty of traders looking to sell or trade creatures. Some of the smaller creatures, like spiders and rats, were going for a few coins. The larger ones, like a mountain lion, were starting to get expensive. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that there were three hundred rats listed, and only a dozen mountain lions. Someone, it seemed, had been doing quests to clear rats out of a basement somewhere.

Then there were the rare creatures, like a centaur or a griffin. Both were far more than I could afford, but I wasn’t surprised. They started at level thirty and higher, and most only had one or two on the board. That meant I probably wouldn’t be running into many magical creatures in the world until I got to the higher floors.

While price was a consideration I also wasn’t sure how effective a magical creature would be. Balancing a deck was always a consideration, and without more information I was loath to spend that much on something that might not fit into my future plans.

No, I wouldn’t be getting one of the high level creatures any time soon. It wasn’t practical on any level.

Looking at the lower end there were hundreds of cards available for a few coins a piece, including rats, cats, and more beetles. For a few coins more there were things like wolves and mountain lions. It seemed pointless to purchase some of the lower ranked cards even if they weren’t expensive. I could catch a rat just as well as the seller could. The mountain lion could have been useful, but it almost felt like cheating. I wanted to experience the game, not buy my way through it.

The spells, on the other hand, were different. As far as I could tell there wasn’t a way to get a spell card in the game, at least not on the lower level. I had only come across natural woodland creatures so far, and a wolf wasn’t going to have a fire ball spell. Since there were magical beasts on the server it was likely there were magical spells as well, but I was going to have to get to higher floors to get them.

I still didn’t know where the portal to the second floor was, but I had a feeling I would need to defeat the bear to find it. The bear was higher level than any of the other creatures I had come across, and much more aggressive. It was the perfect end of level boss. That meant I would have to defeat it before I could go on.

Who needed a mountain lion if you could get a black bear?

I would have to collect a few more creatures, of course, but a second spell might give me an advantage against the bear. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

The trade section had been split into four sections, creatures, spells, items, and miscellaneous, and each category had several subcategories. I closed out of the creature section and opened the spell selection. Spells were split into attack, boosts, damage, and utility.

The first thing I searched for was health boosts and damage reduction. Taking a look at the prices told me I wouldn’t be getting any healing spells any time soon. There weren’t very many available, and the prices were on par with the magical creatures. Clearly health boosts were an upper floor phenomenon. It made sense when I thought about it. If you were restricted on how many creatures, and the strength of the creatures, you could summon because of your health then you wanted to get a health card. Either increasing your hit points, or healing right after summoning, would be instrumental in getting more creatures on the battle field. That meant anyone who did have one kept it. Some players would even hoard the cards in order to keep their opponents from having them. The few currently for sale were either put up because someone needed money, or they had duplicates and didn’t care about scarcity. Considering how few I saw that meant a health spell would be difficult to get.

It was also likely that any stat increase cards would be the same. It would destroy the balance of the game to have too many of any stat boost out there, especially with health at a high premium.

I backed out of the utility section and tried a more iconic class; damage spells. At first glance I was more hopefully about my chances among the utility spells. There were thousands of listings, far outnumbering the utility spells, and prices were starting in the tens, not the hundreds, of Kronos. With my earnings from Yevelia, and what I could transfer from my personal bank account, I could afford to purchase three low ranking spells. I just had to find a few that seemed useful.

Entangle had been incredibly useful in the fight with the beetle. I was pretty confident it would save us in the future, if not help us capture more creatures. I needed something to compliment or enhance the entangle spell.

There were the usual fire, electric, and cold damage spells. Most of the fire spells were on the higher end, possibly because they contained a burn effect that did damage over time. I didn’t see many other DOT spells on the boards. Either they were rare, or limited in scope, but it would be odd to have it limited to the school of fire.

While the burn effect would be a nice addition to my deck I was also concerned the fire might damage the vines from entangle and break the enchantment too soon. With how realistic Vertigo was I decided it was a good possibility and vetoed it. I would experiment with flames later when I had a better deck with more options. Right now I needed every card I had to be useful.

Some of the cold spells came with slow, or freeze effects. That seemed like a repeat of entangle, and I didn’t know if they stacked, so I discarded a cold spell for now. It would have given me two chances to immobilize a creature, but I wanted something to help bring them down, not just help me run away.

I unchecked fire and ice and the list of available spells cut down by a quarter.

There were several schools left, each with their own benefits and draw backs. Air did direct damage, but was less useful in enclosed spaces. Water had limited effect depending on what you were fighting. Earth spells looked promising because they could both use rocks to do direct damage, and create traps for indirect damage. Then I noticed electric spells, and their spreading component.

While lightning could damage a creature directly once, it could also shoot out to any creatures nearby and damage them as well. That wasn’t very helpful if my creatures were the ones in the line of fire, but if we were attacked by something like a hoard of goblins, or a swarm of spiders like I had been in Yevelia, then the chaining would knock out a large portion of them.

Unfortunately lightning, like fire spells, were on the higher price range. Again, I wasn’t surprised. It was effectively an area of effect spell at a lower level. AOEs in water or earth were much higher level spells, and well out of my reach, but I could afford one good lightning spell.

I decided to take a chance on lightning and shifted the search for only lightning based spells. Auctions were out, I didn’t want to deal with them, as were trades since I had nothing to trade with, so I unclicked them in the search terms. That left a small selection of trades that I could actually use. I narrowed the options to only spells that could be bought for Kronos, then narrowed the price range down to what I could afford. After putting in the criteria I was left with a handful of choices and the page became far easier to navigate.

I checked the first few spells. Two allowed damage to go through only if the target died from the spell. Useful, but limiting as it wasn’t a high level spell, so would only kill very low level creatures. Another had chain lightning effects but only did two to four damage with a hit. That could be useful if we were up against a pack of small creatures, but anything larger than a house cat wouldn’t be effected much.

The next few spells were repeats of earlier spells, or similar in scope. About half way down the page I started finding a few differences in the spells. They were a little stronger, or effected more creatures. The price was also a bit higher. It was still within my budget, but it did mean I wouldn’t be able to get a second card like I wanted to.

I read through the common names like lightning strike, lightning fist, and thunder wave. A few of them even had extra utilities, like thunder-wave that knocked back enemies. It would have been a useful spell, but couldn’t be used with ensnare. Still, I stored that name for later. If I could earn a bit more than there was nothing wrong with buying another spell down the road.

It was a spell at the top of the second page that really caught my eye.

Lightening Strike

Instant

Deals 2*lvl damage.

Stun, 5 seconds

Chain x5 within 5 feet

It was the first spell I had found that linked damage output with level. That meant it kept increasing with me and had a longer tail end on the spell card. I was surprised that the spell was even in the list, and especially for the same price as simple straight damage spells. Not only did the damage increase with level, it also had the chain effect which would be useful with crowd control.

That made me wonder if the spell could have been miss labeled. I expanded search for the name of the card and found a few dozen cards listed, so it wasn’t incredibly rare, but all the cards except the one I had found had an extra zero tacked onto the price.

I bought the card.

The system asked me if I wanted to use direct funds, or transfer from another worlds currency. Transferring funds between worlds took time, and I didn’t want this chance to slip through my hands so I quickly tapped on the icon to use my personal funds. A bell rang indicating the sale went through and the card had been added to my deck.

Feeling like I had used up every ounce of luck I had left, I closed my interface. I found the perfect spell, and I got it for a few hundred coins less that I should have been able to get it, so I wasn’t about to push my luck.

Taking funds out of my bank did leave me a little short for the week, but it wasn’t the first time. I could always transfer funds from Yevelia back into my personal bank account if necessary, but a few nights of soy powder shakes didn’t bother me much.

There was one more thing that concerned me. I still didn't have a weapon of my own. Vertigo was basically a trading card game, or a pet battle sim, in which the pets did all the fighting and I just managed them on the field. But the end goal to win the battle was to kill me, the trainer. I felt naked out there, especially knowing that if something killed my pet it was coming after me to finish the job. The bear didn’t even wait to kill Gill before attacking me directly. I didn't have immunity in Vertigo like old games. I was the source of my pets existence, and to win I had to go down, too.

Since health boosts weren't possible just yet I looked into weapons. Searching the auction house for character use items I found slim pickings. There were several fishing poles, backpacks, food and water, and sundries. The few pieces of armor appeared to be high level and worth quite a bit. There were no weapons at all.

The small knife wouldn’t be good for fighting, but it did come in handy for cutting vines, harvesting ingredients, or other utilitarian needs. I would have to look into what “utilitarian” encompassed, but for the moment it seemed pretty straight forward. I hoped the knife could also be used as a last ditch weapon, like a dagger on a mage.

Cashing in a few more coins, this time from Yevelia, I added the knife, a satchel, and a globe of light to my cart. The light globe would work similarly to a flashlight if I found a cave.

Did that mean Vertigo expected you to fight through your pets and only your pets? Or was this another instance of guilds rigging the auction house? If they kept any boosts only for their members it would be yet another way of squeezing people to conform to guilds. More money for them, and harder to rise for anyone playing alone, like me.

I couldn’t be certain that was the case, but the possibility of guilds being just that sleazy and underhanded was really starting to bother me. I needed to figure that out so I could decide to join one.

It wasn’t an entirely comfortable feeling to know I had to completely rely on the creatures in my deck to protect me. I didn’t enjoy relying on others. Too often it allowed them to disappoint you, like Jupiter running off in Yevelia and getting us in over our heads. Still, Vertigo intrigued me, and there was no lasting damage to seeing how far I could get. I would just have to do everything I could to fill my deck with strong creatures.

I closed out of the trades and opened up the forums again. If I wanted to find out more about the guilds then my best bet would be the tournament. Six days didn’t seem like a lot of time, but it wouldn’t be the first time I was on a deadline.

I just hoped that Gill would be waiting for me when I got back into Vertigo, and that the bear had lost interest and wandered away from my exit point.

I had a new spell, a new creature, and it looked like I had a good chance of building a decent starting deck, even in the first zone. With that knowledge I climbed into bed and fell asleep.