CHAPTER 08 — HORNSLOGS AND MUSHROOMS
Flint watched as the arrow arced through the air. There was a high-pitched squeal as it thudded into a tree thirty paces away.
“What the hell was that?” Esmeralda asked.
“Shut up,” Flint hissed at her. If there were enemies about, he didn’t want their position given away.
Quirin didn’t notch another arrow though. He glanced at them with a stupid smile. “Gotta get XP when you can, man.”
“XP?” Flint said, for the first time noticing the small letterings over his XP bar.
Kill: Trufluffle.
+15
“Group XP,” Quirin said. “It’s worth twenty if you’re alone.”
Flint nodded his approval. They stepped forward towards the tree. As they drew closer, a pair of big eyes and a furry tail came into view. A small creature pinned to the tree by a bloody arrow. The damn thing basically looked like a stuffed animal.
“I like XP,” Dexter said. “Wuh— wuh— works for me.”
“Like I said, gotta get it when you can,” Quirin said.
“Squawk. XP for the idiot,” Stanley said.
“Killing a human got me 25 XP at the Coliseum,” Flint said. “You’re telling me this helpless thing is worth more than half that?”
“For now anyway,” Quirin said. “As you level up, the yield will decrease.”
Flint figured as much. Still, he’d always been a proponent of the “get XP when you can” motto.
“That’s horrible,” Esmeralda said. “What did that poor thing ever do to you?”
“Squawk. Dumb bitch is dumb,” the parrot said.
Dexter roared with laughter. Even Flint had to work to suppress a grin.
“That bird is rude,” she said.
Dexter beamed. “Yeah. That’s why I luh— like him.”
They continued their walk through the forest. A few minutes later, Quirin raised a hand for them to stop. He pointed off in the direction of a small clearing ahead.
Flint squinted, caught sight of the doe standing there, looking off in the opposite direction.
Quirin carefully retrieved his bow and an arrow.
“ROAR!” Dexter yelled. There was a crack of thunder as Storm Rider was activated. He appeared just above the deer, his sword arcing downward.
The doe turned. Dexter’s sword swooshed and hacked its head off, a gout of blood erupting from the stump of its neck.
Esmeralda bent forward and coughed puke onto the floor the forest. When finished, she looked up at him half disgusted and half outraged. “I hate this game.”
“Cool,” Flint mumbled, seeing the +15 XP flash across his HUD. A new dialog box popped-up on his screen:
Mission started: Small Game Hunter 1
Collect 15 Deer Hides, 15 Raw Dear Meats, 20 Truffluffle Hides, and 10 Larpy Hides
Flint accepted the quest immediately. “What is a Larpy?”
The answer came not more than a minute later when Quirin shot one in the tree canopy. It looked more or less like a squirrel with eight legs. At the next clearing they they came into contact with a giant buck.
Flint drew out his hammer and activated Headhunter. He was half nervous he might end-up impaled on the deer’ antlers. But it seemed when he hit the deer, there was some kind of magical force field in front of him that didn’t allow him to be harmed by whatever he hit. It was a neat thing to keep in mind for the future. Although he should’ve discerned that based on his experience at the Coliseum, having never been injured by a collision.
The deer was slammed to the ground and Flint’s hammer smashed it’s belly, ribs crunching. Very clumsy move, since he didn’t immediately kill the animal. But Quirin helped by shooting an arrow through its eyeball.
With the animal down, all Flint had to do was reach down and touch it with a gloved hand. As the carcass disappeared, a text message populated his HUD.
Inventory
+1 Dear Hide
+1 Raw Dear Meat
“At least we don’t have to clean the damn things,” Flint said.
They continued on through the forest, seeing more random critters here and there and shooting them up, gaining XP. It wasn’t long until Flint heard that sweet chime.
LEVEL-UP: You have reached level 4.
Skill Point gained: 1.
Talent Point gained: 1.
“Talent point?” Flint asked.
“You spend it on core attributes,” Quirin said.
Flint scrolled through the core attributes in his HUD.
Strength - Increases your base physical damage multiplier.
Agility - Increases your base movement speed and fire rate with long-range physical weapons.
Vitality - Increases your base magical damage multiplier.
Efficiency - Increases your inventory space and the speed at which you gain experience.
Charm - Increases your ability to bargain with merchants for better prices.
Flint added the talent point into Strength. He then shuffled over to his Skills and Constitution tree. He could add another point into Health, Stamina, or Energy, or procure a new skill. His skill bar had seven open slots.
He pursed his lips, muttering thoughts to himself: “Don’t need to add any Energy, since all my skills use Stamina. But I’m not really running out of Stamina too quickly with my current skill chain. Or am I?”
He did a little test run where he activated Headhunter on a tree stump, then activated Dance of the Whirlwind before he hit the target. After he collided with the tree, he activated Crushing Blow. While he did this, he watched his Stamina bar.
Apparently Quirin knew what he was up to. “How much did you use with that chain?” the elf asked.
“About forty percent, maybe,” Flint said, frowning. “A lot more than I thought.”
“But those are your only skills.”
“For now they are,” he replied. “All I need is an extra twenty-cost skill to add to the chain. Then I’ll be using up over half my bar.”
“So?” Quirin said.
“It means he can’t cycle his skills twice,” Vardock explained. “Bad in a fight.”
Flint nodded, surprised the so-called Tutor NPC didn't understood the conundrum. “Exactly.”
After a few more minutes of thinking about it, he decided to examine the Skill Tree again. He scrolled beyond the high-Stamina cost aggro skills and checked some of the low-cost passives. “Do these passive skills take-up a skill slot?”
“No,” Quirin answered.
“Excellent.”
He took a look at the first of them. The icon was of himself standing tall on some kind of precipice, beating his chest with his fist.
Skill: Immovable
Projectile damage has a 10% chance of doing 50% damage.
Cost: 0 Stamina (Passive)
He frowned. Not a very good skill by itself. But he glanced up at the connecting icons which represented future upgrades to the skill. The highest upgrade, which could be procured at level 200 (provided he had the prerequisite base skill and upgrade) a 35% chance of projectile damage doing 0% damage. He thought back to the Coliseum and being slammed sideways by that spell. Would’ve been useful, then.
He moved-on to the other Passives, examining both the base skill and the subsequent upgrade possibilities. Part of the problem in judging their usefulness was that he hadn’t much battle experience yet. Who knew what kind of damage he need more protection from?
At the end of the final window, he happened on a new category: Lifestyle Passives. He examined the first one — the icon was of himself squatting above a hole with his pants around his ankles:
Passive: Weekly Defecation
You will not suffer the urge to move your bowels more than once every 6 days, and will suffer no ill consequences from not doing so at greater frequency. Note: This skill can be overridden by status effects from Illnesses, Debuffs, and Toxidromes.
Cost: Permanent -5 to total Energy
He immediately purchased the skill, but stayed in the menu to evaluate the others. There were other skills related to bodily functions —- pissing, eating, drinking, even screwing. One of the passives advertised permanent contraception, while another gave immunity to common STDs. Still others provided shortened duration of colds, reduced chance at developing allergies, and even making sleep more efficient. This last group related to sleep carried some cost, however. All appeared to increase your chance of nightmares.
“These lifestyle passives seem useful,” he said. “Less shitting, less sniffles, less aching.”
Esmeralda grinned over him. “What do you think I’ve been spending my points on?”
The Lifestyle Passives menu also contained some class-specific options. For some reason, the Charger ones seemed to involve a lot of head stuff. One had an icon of himself massaging his temples.
Passive: Limited Cephalalgia
Description: Headaches, no matter how severe, never last more than 1-hour.
Cost: Permanent -5 to total Energy.
Flint snorted. If only such a thing existed in the real world. He told the others about it.
“Seems like a strange thing to spend skill points on,” Flint said.
“Not exactly,” Quirin said. “There’s a growing population of mage-kind who specialize in Pain magic.”
“Pain magic?” Dexter asked. “That sounds buh— buh— badass.”
“Not if you’re on the receiving end.”
“Speaking from experience?” Esmeralda asked.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Quirin grimaced. “My lovely Nara is a member of a TC.”
“TC?”
“Torture cult.”
“Ah.”
Flint shot Esmeralda a narrow-eyed look, praying she wouldn’t ask the idiot to elaborate. But Quirin didn’t need prodding.
“Last summer she caught me in bed with another woman,” he said. “Cast a curse on me that gave me a week-long migraine.”
“Wow,” Esmeralda said.
“Yep,” Quirin continued, eyes narrowed as though peering into the past. “It got so bad at one point I was begging the Shaman to cut my throat and end it.”
“That’s terrible,” she said.
Quirin chuckled. “Not half as terrible as what she did to Auri.”
“The girl you were caught sleeping with?”
The elf nodded. “Nara placed a special hex on her. Made some kind of devil worm spawn in her brain cavity.”
Flint stepped on a branch, hearing it crack underfoot. He didn’t much care for this story.
“That’s some dark and messed up shu— shit,” Dexter said.
“That’s Nara for you,” Quirin said.
“What happened to her?” she asked.
Quirin sighed. “Unfortunately I had to marry her.”
“You married the woman you got caught cheating with?”
“Oh no, I had to marry Nara,” Quirin chuckled. “Thankfully we had a rushed ceremony. She wouldn’t stop the headache till it was consummated.”
“She forced you to screw her while under a cuh— cuh— curse?”
“Indeed.”
“What happened to Auri?” Esmeralda asked.
The elf’s face darkened. “She billy goat-charged a giant slab of granite.” He raised a flat palm in front of his face and pecked his forehead against it. “Smashed her brains out. Right in front of the whole town.” He shook his head sadly. “Huge mess, let me tell you.”
Flint’s stomach roiled. “Great fucking story.”
“A little sickening, though,” Esmeralda mumbled.
“You don’t say?”
“Some people find Pain magic fascinating,” Quirin said, shrugging. “I got more stories about Nara if you’d like. Wanna hear about the time she caught the housemaid kicking her cats?”
“No,” all three of them said in unison.
And that was the morning’s conversation.
They spent the next several hours into the evening moving along a path Quirin assured him would lead them to Dugath, all the while killing Small game. Eventually, he completed the Small Game 1 mission, and moved on to Small Game 2. Unfortunately one of the creatures, a Moondevil, wasn’t indigenous to the Bellwoods. That would have to wait till they got further south.
By evening, Flint gained five more levels. With each level-up, he elected to invest points into Health and Stamina, alternatively. By the time they setup camp for the night, he checked his Constitution Statistics and realized he was in a good position to buy another Stamina-cost skill. He studied the options to see if there were any he could add to his repertoire.
Skill: Heave
Throw your two-handed melee weapon at an opponent no more than twelve paces away and have it return to you after impacting your target or traveling twelve paces, whichever comes first. The skill may be activated a second time within 0.50 seconds, causing you to teleport to its location.
Cost: 40 Stamina and 10 Energy (base) + 45 Energy (if teleport activated)
Flint considered it. An attack that could also be used as an escape. He made it the fourth addition to his skill bar. After a couple times testing it, he was satisfied he made the right decision.
They setup camp for the evening on a dry clearing between ancient oaks and dry leaves. Flint removed the small tarp from his bag and it ballooned into a tent. Esmeralda and Quirin did the same, but Dexter didn’t have one, having instead chosen to buy the parrot.
“So you’re gunna sleep in the dirt?” Esmeralda asked.
“Yep,” Dexter said.
“He can share mine,” Quirin said.
“I don’t puh— play that way, elf,” Dexter replied.
“We need someone awake to watch,” Quirin said. “I can do my shift while you sleep and vice-versa.”
Flint glared at Dexter. “No shelter or armor. But at least you got that stupid—ass bird.”
Stanley jittered on Dexter’s shoulder. “Squawk. Kill yourself, fuck-nugget.”
They sat on logs around a small fire. Flint pulled out his magical cook pot along with a parcel of dear meat.
“That’s gross,” Esmeralda said. “You’re really going to eat that?”
Flint ignored her, plopping the bloody meat into the pot and closed the lid. A dialog box popped up.
Known Recipes:
Venison Steak
He frowned. Limited selection that was. Nonetheless, he selected it.
A new dialog box appeared:
Venison Steak
Satisfies Hunger for eight hours.
Restores 35 HP.
Ingredients: 2 Raw Dear Meat
He made a mental note to search the next merchant for recipes. For now, he reached into his sack and extracted the extra slab of meat, then put it in the pot. When he resealed the lid, the dialog box asked him what he wanted to make, so he selected Venison Steak. There was a loud snap, and when he opened the pot, two neat cuts of Venisan Steak stared back at him.
“Smells amazing,” Dexter said.
Flint picked up the cut and examined it. It seemed okay. He took a bite, feeling the juices drip down his chin. “It’s good,” he said.
“Can I borrow that pot?” Dexter asked.
Flint thought on it a second. “If you put that annoying bird away.”
Stanley bristled, but didn’t say anything. Maybe the stupid thing ran out of comebacks.
Dexter reluctantly removed an object from his sack, a thin strip of metal which immediately transformed into a bird cage. He placed Stanley on the twig inside it, then transferred the cage back into the sack, both the bird and the cage shrinking upon entry.
He let Dexter to cook his own with the cook pot. On the opposite end of the fire, Esmeralda munched on a bag of vegetables she’d bought the week prior, dripping them into a container filled with some kind of yellow oil.
“I’m going down to the river,” Quirin said. “I’ll be right back.”
Flint looked up from his second stake, juices bleeding down the side of his mouth. “The river? Why?”
“Where is the river?” Esmeralda asked.
“A quarter-mile from here that way,” Quirin said, pointing. “I won’t be long.”
“Thought you said the thorny brush or whatever made it impossible to get to.”
He shrugged. “Not impossible, just unpleasant.”
Flint grew a little uncomfortable at his departure. A paranoid part of him thought the elf would be going to signal some bandit friends to rob them. “If you’re looking for water, I have some to lend.”
“It’s not that,” Quirin said.
Flint stood-up. “We’ll all go, then.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
There was an awkward silence that stretched out between them.
“What are you planning, bud?” Flint said. “Got friends nearby waiting to ambush us?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t need to fetch them,” Quirin said. “But you needn’t worry. I’m getting mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms?”
“Hahbi’kara mushrooms. They grow on the banks of the river.” He reached into his sack and pulled out a mortar and pestle. He showed them the bottom of the mortar which was smeared with golden yellow from whatever had been ground in it. “I use it for my tea.”
A quest dialog box popped into his HUD:
NEW QUEST: MAGIC MUSHROOMS
Take a journey into a land of deep insight by imbibing a cup of Hahbi’kara tea.
Reward:
- 1,000 XP
- Basic Mortar and Pestle
Flint stared at it a moment. A nice XP reward, that. He wasn’t sure about the motor and pestle, though. And he was doubly unsure he wanted to imbibe anything, whatever the reward. That Carja experience the other night was insightful enough for him. “I’ll pass.”
“I’m in,” Dexter said, standing up. “Lead the wuh— way.”
“I need to go alone,” Quirin said.
“Why?”
“In case there’s Hornslogs down there.”
Dexter paused a beat, and Flint understood why. That giant yellow mix between a crocodile and T-rex wasn’t something he wanted to see up close.
“How are you gunna fight them yourself?” Esmeralda asked.
“Who said I would fight them?” Quirin said. “Hornslogs don’t see well. They rely on smell to catch their pray.”
Flint didn’t see how the elf benefited from that fact of physiology, seeing as Quirin smelled like a pile of dog shit. “That’s why you shouldn’t go near one.”
Quirin’s grin stretched. “Ah but I have the Scentless Wonder skill.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s in the Hunter skill tree. Makes you nearly scentless to animals.”
Flint looked at the other two. Esmeralda shrugged.
After he left, the three of them sat around the fire.
Flint looked around at his surroundings. Checked the map again. The red cursor marking his location was situated at the edge of Reach City where the forest began, a large question mark over it. He sighed and closed the map, then pulled his jacket tighter.
The night was cold and airy, they grouped close to the fire.
“You know what’s weird?” Esmeralda asked, her eyes fixed on the fire. “How we’re sitting inside a casket right now, attached to all those wires. With computers snaking needles into our brains.”
“Why is that wuh— weird?”
She raised her two hands in front of her, turning them over. “When I move, I don’t feel anything outside the game.”
“That’s the point,” Flint said.
“Yeah, but it’s still strange.”
Flint had to agree with that. In the other VR MMOs, all one had to do was remove the headset to leave the game world. Now there were thousands of transducers in his brain and spinal cord working overtime to convince him the game world was the real world. Certainly an amazing feat of engineering, but the inability to leave the game universe was more than a little disconcerting.
“And we’re stuck here forever,” Esmeralda said glumly.
The fire crackled.
“I don’t care,” Dexter said. “My real life was shuh— shit.”
Esmeralda turned to him. “Don’t you miss your parents? Your other friends?”
“I have followers and fans. Not many friends.”
Silence for a moment.
Flint felt a tugging at his conscience. He hadn’t yet told them what McCormick said about the non-players. “They aren’t going to do anything. The caskets are feeding and nourishing you, and unhooking yourself from them would kill you.”
“So will dying in the game,” Esmeralda said. “What’s the purpose of killing a player in real-life if they die in the game?”
Flint glared at her. “Saying you believe me now?”
“I don’t know.”
“We haven’t met a single player whose died and respawned.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “There are other explanations.”
“Like?”
“Maybe if you die in-game, you just wake-up. Maybe the Casket disconnects from you, and you’re back in the real world.”
Flint jerked his head toward the giant rock behind them. “Go make like Quirin’s girlfriend and test that theory if you're so damn confident.”
She scowled at him. “Stop being such an asshole. I'm scared.”
“Yeah, well, me too.”
##
The snap of a twig caused Flint to stand suddenly, reaching for the hammer. But into the light stepped Quirin, a wry grin on his face.
“There was a Hornslog down there,” he said, taking up a seat on his own log across from Flint. “Spotted me as I was leaving the bank.”
“Did it follow you here?”
“Was too quick for it.”
He reached into his sack and removed the mortar and pestle. Then he fished into his pocket and removed a small item that looked like a canteen, along with a pair of what looked like small flowers.
Indeed it was. It was about the size of a small flower. The thing had a golden cap that sheened in the light of the fire. It’s stem was a clean white.
“It’s pretty,” Esmeralda said.
Flint agreed.
Quirin placed it into the bowel and started grinding it. When he was finished, he scraped it off into the canteen, then closed the lid and shook it. After that was done, he unscrewed the lid, steam coming out the top that smelled rather disgusting.
He took a small sip himself, smiling. Then he handed the canteen to Dexter who also drank then passed it on to Esmeralda when it came to him without taking a sip. She eyed it suspiciously.
“It’s really good,” Dexter said.
She brought it up to her mouth slowly, taking a sip.
“When should I start tripping balls?” Dexter said.
“You shouldn’t hallucinate,” Quirin said. “It just calms you down.”
Esmeralda tried passing it to Flint but he waved it away.
“Someone’s going to have to stay on watch and not be zonked out.”
“Tastes really good,” Dexter said, taking it from her and sipping longer.
“Smells like poop though,” Esmeralda said.
“It is,” Quirin said. “Hornslogs shit on the riverbank and this is what grows.”
Dexter gagged on the drink, coughing up a spell.
Flint grinned.
It only took fifteen minutes or so for the three of them to start chilling.
Flint looked at Quirin through the light of the fire, his eyes big as saucers. He turned over to Esmeralda and Dexter, who were sitting hunched up together, leaning on each other for support. There was a contented smile on Esmeralda’s face as she stared straight into the fire. Dexter had a sheepish grin on his face as well, drool pooling in the corner of his mouth.
“It’s a fire,” she said.
No one spoke for half a minute.
“What is fire?” Quirin asked.
“It’s an element of life,” she replied. “It’s something that’s in all of us.”
“Every blessed one of us,” Dexter said. “Every man, woman, child, and animal. We are one with the server. And the server is one with us.”
Flint’s raised an eyebrow. Dexter hadn’t stuttered a single syllable.
“The fish in the pond is not with us,” Quirin said. “He is for himself.”
Another pause as the fire crackled.
“Walker?” Esmeralda said softly. “Walker, are you there?”
Flint’s brow raised even further. She hadn’t called him that name yet. He didn’t say anything in reply though.
“Walker?” she repeated.
“Walker,” Dexter said. “Runner… Walker… Talker… Walker…”
“Who’s to say there is none?” Quirin said. “We all rest on the seeds of the new beginning.”
“Walker, Walker, Walker,” Esmeralda repeated. “Are you there, Crippled One?”
Flint scowled. “I’m sitting right in front of you.”
Her eyes lifted up to his very slowly and asked in a tone that was equal measures calm and earnest: “You are the special one, Walker. You were born to be here.”
Flint sighed and stood-up. Being in the company of stoned fools weren’t any kind of fun sober. He stepped out from the campfire and back towards the perimeter of their little circle towards the tent. He was drowsy and wanted to sleep. “Wake me up when it’s my turn on the watch.”
He was about to turn around when he caught sight of something behind Quirin. Flecks of red against the backdrop of pitch black, bobbing up-and-down as they grew closer. It took him a whole second to realize what they were.
“Quirin,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. He carefully drew out the hammer on his back, heart thundering in his chest.
The sound of a twig snapping caused Dexter to turn around. Esmeralda kept her head half-laid on his shoulder.
“Quirin,” Flint repeated with more urgency.
Quirin’s heavily-lidded eyes scanned upward. “What?”
The horrifying jaws of the Hornslog appeared three feet in front of its beady eyeballs, thick films of saliva pooling off its fangs. Up close, the thing was even more enormous than he’d thought. Certainly big enough that he would’ve though it might’ve made more noise. It was hovered less than a half-stride from Quirin’s back.
Flint’s targeter zeroed in on it.
Baby Hornslog
Level 232
“Run,” Flint said, scrambling backwards. “Run!”
There was a mighty roar and a pair of eighteen inch fangs spitted Quirin at an angle like a piece of gristle. The elf was ripped apart in a bloody shower, the creature shaking him like a chew toy.
Flint had never ran so fast in his life. With great strides, he bolted from the clearing into the tree-line, not thinking or caring one iota for the other two. He ran and ran until his lungs were near to bursting, and then he ran some more. The wind itself couldn’t outrun him.
A good twenty minutes later, he came up to a stop, chest heaving. Even then, he checked over his shoulder with the hammer out, ready to Heave away at the first sign of that yellow beast. There was no one there though. He stood there against a tall tree, his smoky breath coming in wheezes as he watched a whole minute. When nothing came, he doubled over on the ground, sucking air like an asthmatic.
A good ten minutes later, a plume of red ash lit up the treeline, causing him to bolt back on his feet, hammer ready.
“Flint?” a voice yelled.
Esmeralda.
“Over here!”
Two figures stepped through the clearing, their own breaths smoking. There was blood running down Dexter’s face from a gash in his forehead.
“What the fuck happened?” he demanded.
Dexter’s calm and unstuttered voice came back. “The Hornslog ate Quirin, man.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Where is it now?”
“Gone with the wind,” Esmeralda said, waving her hand in the air. “Whoosh.”
Dexter looked at him with wide eyes. “Whoosh,” he repeated.
Flint gaped at them. They were still very much high.
Esmeralda laid a hand on Flint’s shoulder. “The universe is full of secrets. We must learn to unlock the boxes.”
Flint shook her hand off. “The fuck are you talking about?”
But neither of them said anything. They calmly walked over to the nearest tree. Without a word, they sat down with their backs to the trunk and closed their eyes.
Flint worked his mouth in anger, then confusion, then realized it was up. He looked up at the sky, spotted the twin moons high above, the nearest one covering a fourth of the sky, and the far one just a smudge straight overhead. He sank against the trunk and stared, not daring to sleep.