It didn’t take long to get back to the cave and try another path. Rick tried to imagine the pressures he’d face when the ring became part of the equation.
Like before, he silently followed Alex into the forest. Before long, they spotted the first AI enemy.
“This is much better,” she said.
Ahead, at the crest of a hill, lay another small clearing. The sun had shifted to a position nearly straight overhead, which set the emerald and dark green flora aglow. In the center of clearing sat a man with long, flowing white hair and a beard to match. As with the greenery around him, the light shining on his white mane caused it to glow. The training gi he wore was immaculate, though it was light blue, so it called little attention to itself.
Rick sighed. “Kung fu? Really?”
Alex stepped back. “That’s… bad?”
“Kung fu isn’t very effective in a fight. There’s a ton of bullshittery involved in the competitive circuits.” He shook his head. “There’s a reason you didn’t see any kung fu in the MMA scene—back when it was still legal, I mean.”
She took a deep breath. “Brace yourself, because there’s a lot of—bullshittery, did you call it—in this game. Kung fu is flashy, and its speed and style is a major draw for viewers.”
Great. “Why do you even want a fighter if it’s all just a game?”
“It’s not just a game. You can have all the stats and boosts you want, but if you don’t know how to move—or learn it quickly—you’re gonna get”—she ground her fist into her palm—“creamed.” She put her hands on her hips. “The fighting part is the better half of it, so any fighter—at least one who isn’t stubborn as fuck—has an advantage.”
He nodded. “I’ll try to keep an open mind.”
She frowned. “I don’t see any evidence of that. Maybe after your first whuppin’, there’ll be hope.”
Cute. Lady, you have no idea what you’re up against. He kept his temper in check at the insult and calmly gestured with an open palm in the direction of the seated AI bot. “Is he… meditating? That’s some corny-ass, corn… something,” he said.
“It’s just a part of the—”
“Game,” he said. “I got it.” He stepped forward, but stopped when Alex stifled what he suspected was a chuckle. “What?” He failed to keep the irritated tone out of his voice completely, but he suppressed the majority of it.
She frowned. “I usually don’t tell newbies this because it’s so much fun to watch them smack against the edges of the game, but…” The skin around the eyes of her avatar went soft for a half-second before she narrowed them. “We need to prove you can do this. It’s better for everyone.” She pointed at the meditating AI fighter in the meadow. “You’ve seen you have limited stamina, but you also have limited strength and speed.”
He nodded and leaned in.
“Right, so out in the world or in the training room, you may have your own natural abilities, and those are your baseline, except for speed, strength, and stamina. The game doesn’t fuck with speed because it would totally screw with your rhythm. For that reason, speed boosts aren’t automatically applied, either. Faster is always better, but not until you’ve trained with it. You’ll get an idea what each new level of speed will do for you, and ultimately, it’s a necessary stat—”
“This seems… complicated,” he said.
“It is. But, let’s say you were a fighter?” She winked and assessed his acceptance of her statement. “That took—wouldtake—a while, right?”
Rick looked away, then back, before nodding.
“Same here. You’re gonna have to train.”
He sighed, then waited for more info.
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Alex shook her head. “No, that’s it for now. The rest is harder to explain until you get a feel for it. I just wanted to give you a”—she pinched an imaginary space between her thumb and index finger and raised them—“tiny advantage.”
He shrugged. “Thanks.” After he emptied his lungs completely, he took a deep breath and held it for five seconds, then released it slowly. Calmly, he approached the seated enemy.
It’s a game. Her words played over in his head. A game. He stepped slowly forward, unsure what to expect. A memory from his childhood came to him, one of him sitting on a leather couch in his friend Craig’s basement. In his mind’s eye, he watched as his friend manipulated a console’s gamepad controller, easing his video avatar slowly forward toward an online opponent.
For the most part, the games of his youth blurred together in Rick’s mind, jumbled with the chaotic sensory and emotional overload that defines adolescence, but this game—the one he remembered—had been different. Brutally hard, it punished mistakes until the player “got gud,” and though stats and boosts helped, rhythm and timing were just as important. He’d become fascinated with it, obsessed with acquiring skill and coordination within the game, and there was something about the situation he was now in that called those memories powerfully back to him.
Tension rose within his simulated body as he edged forward again, and he breathed into it. At some point, he’d cross an invisible line that would alert the enemy; he was sure of it.
He took another step and it happened. The man opened his eyes and raised his head to acknowledge Rick’s presence.
He tried to focus on the man, but when he did, the fighter appeared two-dimensional and, in a way similar to his experience with the MMA videos and his attempt to attack Alex, the entire scene struck him as unreal. He smiled and strode forward as the man jumped to his feet.
There was no music, but if there were, it would have been a battle tune. This was instead more like a real MMA event, minus the crowd. The white-haired man stepped forward and cracked his neck.
Rick didn’t wait for him to finish before he dashed forward and unleashed a series of jabs. The white-haired man blocked the second one, but the first knocked the side of his head and the third got him in the ribs right below the armpit. The green bar flashed into the left corner of his vision, indicating he’d used about half his stamina.
The white-haired man appeared stunned, as though it were impossible someone would break etiquette, and even less possible someone else would get the first hit. Rick shrugged and smiled. As far as he could tell, the game rewarded survival, not manners. The white-haired bot took a fighting stance, but when Rick’s stamina bar was at seventy-five percent, he struck with a hard right knee. White-hair blocked it and followed up with a hard open-palmed strike of his own, which Rick dodged as he ducked and used more stamina to come up and under like a boxer.
It was a gamble that left him little stamina when he finished, but it worked. His wrapped fist connected with the man’s jaw, knocking him back. The green bar flashed.
That stamina meter is a serious pain in the ass. It would have to be the first thing he improved. He slowly backed up, which didn’t drain the stamina. He’d have to work on timing it so he was never stamina-starved when he needed to block. Alex had been right to discourage him from taking on the bigger grappler they ran across on the first path. That fighter would have overwhelmed him immediately.
The white-haired fighter recovered more quickly than he expected. Could be strength? My strikes don’t hit as hard? Had he ever had an endurance match with a kung fu—
The high kick came devastatingly quickly, and though he ducked, he still received a hard jolt from white-hair’s right shin.
Damn! He’s fast.
The dodge ate into his stamina. As he leapt backward again to avoid white-hair’s incoming knee, he lost still more.
This is fucking ridiculous. He shuffled back farther, but not quickly enough to drain stamina again. This whole fight is gonna be stamina management. Frustration caused him to grunt.
White-hair extended a knee that turned into a kick, and Rick pulled to the side at a rate he guessed would almost—but not quite—cause a stamina drain. The bar had stopped rising, but it didn’t drop, either. Good, I—
White-hair had corrected while his kick was still high, but instead of pulling his kick directly back, the AI enemy instead dropped his heel. The rushing air from the unexpected move warned Rick too late, and the stomp caught his hip, causing him to bend awkwardly.
From the corner of his eye, he saw White-Hair’s next incoming, downward strike and dropped to the ground to confound the other fighter’s expectations, then rolled aside and back to his feet. It almost emptied his stamina bar again.
I can’t win like this.
Again, he tried to pace his movements to be as fast as possible without drawing down his stamina, and though he was successful, the other fighter pressed him again with a strike aimed at Rick’s inner shin and the instep of his foot, forcing him to move more quickly than he liked.
Through a series of carefully timed and paced dodges, Rick’s stamina bar slowly rose as he drew out White-Hair’s attacks. Within a few moves, his patience bore fruit. One of White-Hair’s strikes abruptly slowed, signaling—if it wasn’t a feint—that White-Hair had bottomed out his own stamina bar.
Rick struck immediately, connecting with two jabs before risking a stamina depleting attempt to trip his kung fu opponent and follow him to the ground. It worked, and once they were on the ground, he landed two powerful strikes to the unfortunate fighter’s head, rendering him unconscious.