Airship Privateers
Author: Blaise Corvin
Date: 2022-01-04 08:00:00+00:00
Description: Trent Noguero plays as Vale dePardon in the massive, culture-redefinining deep dive VR game, Secret of the Old Ones. The game feels like reality, a better version of reality. The primary form of entertainment on Earth is to either play SOO or watch those who do. After becoming a streamer and a professional gamer, Trent abruptly discovered how dark and ruthless the real world can be. Now he does what he can to search for those who threatened his loved ones. His regular job remains growing his career as Vale, a member of one of the most powerful streaming parties in SOO. The new PVP event in Sec

Contents

Title

Copyright

Also by Blaise Corvin

Dedication

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Book End

Author's Note

2022

Airship Privateers

Secret of the Old Ones, Book Two

By Blaise Corvin

Airship Privateers

Copyright ©2022 by Blaise Corvin

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Also by Blaise Corvin

*Note: Some titles are scheduled for launch in 2022

For a list of books by Blaise Corvin you can visit: Blaise Corvin’s Books

Artifice Universe

Delvers LLC

1. Welcome to Ludus

2. Obligations Incurred

3. Adventure Capital

Nora Hazard

1. Mitigating Risk

2. Competitive Advantage

3. Accounts Payable

Delvers LLC (Cont.)

4. Golden Handcuffs

5. Hostile Takeover

Surviving Ludus (anthology)

Cole Blooded

Yggdrasil Universe

Secret of the Old Ones

1. Luck Stat Strategy

2. Airship Privateers

3. World War

Apocalypse Cultivation

1. Trojan Nightmare

2. TBD

Anthem of Infinity

1. First Song One

2. First Song Two

3. First Song Three

VeilVerse: Asgard Awakening (HaremLit)

1. Asgard Awakening 1

2. Asgard Awakening 2

This one is for the fans, pushed for by the fans after years of…gentle pestering. SOO fans, this one is for you.

-BC

Foreword

Hello readers! This book is classified as GameLit or RPG GameLit or LitRPG.

I used to actually explain what all this stuff meant in a block of text, but I think most folks know now.

If you don’t and you’d like to see my explanation, you can check out my blog post: What the hell is GameLit and LitRPG?

***

So…it’s been a long time, fam.

SOO1, Luck Stat Strategy, came out in 2017. The story was basically written for fun to give myself a break from Delvers LLC. It turned out to be a slow-burn, cult favorite series of mine.

Color me shocked.

Over the years, I’d always intended to get back to SOO, but I’ll admit that I was was a little nervous to. The first book was like lightning in a bottle. LitRPG and GameLit readers historically have not been keen on shorter, snappier books. However, ya’all never relented, and some of you I could mention by name. You know who you are. Lol

On that note, if you are a fan of SOO and you want more of it, spread the word. Reader recommendations are 100x more powerful than any self-promo post I could make on social media.

This book was a ton of fun to write, and I will probably bust out book three this year. Hopefully this book sells decent so I can afford to continue the series to the second series I have planned following Trent’s adventures.

Last but not least, SOO is kind of an experimental series for me to see if I can be a little bit less reliant on Kindle Unlimited. As such, I don’t intend to put SOO books into KU for at least a year after launch.

***

If you’d like to visit my website, the URL is http://blaise-corvin.com/

I also have a writer’s note in the back of the book with a whole mess of links.

My mailing list can be found here: Mailing List

If you’d like to connect with me on Patreon, the link is http://www.patreon.com/BlaiseCorvin.

My reader group on FB is at http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/.

I hope you enjoy your time in SOO with Trent!

Dueling Time

The fancy ruffles on his shirt made a rustling sound as he moved. Vale dePardon squared off against Bartholomew Holstings in a rented dueling chamber, a popular feature in Secret of the Old Ones. Sword point forward, he stood in an Italian rapier fencing stance, weight on his back foot. His current costume was flashy, but also practical.

Vale had been experimenting with ruffled shirts over the last week. The baggy arms sometimes seemed to confuse his opponents when he fought. Bart looked like some sort of gothic agent of death, as usual--all spikes, dark leather, and skulls.

This dueling chamber didn’t have an audience section. Some had them. All dueling chambers cost in-game money to use, though. Luckily, free access to dueling chambers were just one perk of being affiliated with a large company like Vermillion Entertainment.

The company had its own in-game city.

“Don’t you ever get tired of taking your frustrations out of me?” asked Bart.

“Not really, no. And you need the practice anyway. You can’t always rely on potions to throw around, even though you do carry a fuck ton of them.”

Bart sighed. “Trent, you’re always so easy to read.”

“Dude, don’t use my real name. What’s wrong with you? I’m already fighting with a handicap. You don’t need a penalty too.” Vale frowned and moved the tip of his rapier around for emphasis. His physical body was lying down on his bed back in the secure compound he lived at with his best friend Steve, aka Bartholomew.

The creators of Secret of the Old Ones took role play in-game very seriously. In fact, they took it so seriously that anyone with too silly of an in-game name might be banned. And using someone’s real name in-game too many times could result in a crippling debuff. Nobody was quite sure how the game or the devs kept track of such things. It was a well-known fact, though.

And after the game had launched, most players began to enjoy the added immersion.

Bart shrugged. “Whatever. It’s not like I don’t understand part of what’s eating you. I’m annoyed and curious too.” Without warning, the moment he stopped speaking, Bart whipped a potion from his coat, throwing it at Vale’s feet.

Shit. Vale appreciated Bart’s growing tool box of nasty concoctions, but not when they were used on him. He barely managed to dodge far enough to avoid being caught in the sticky tar trap. The move would have been far easier if he used magic, but he was trying to rely on it less lately.

After all, solid skills would make his magical abilities shine that much more. At least that was what Minerva had said in-game a week ago, before she and her brother had flown to the US, arrived at the compound in the middle of the night, and hadn’t been seen since.

“It’s bullshit that the company hasn’t told us anything yet,” Vale groused. He almost casually produced a flintlock pistol from the small of his back and shot his best friend. His Mystic aura made guns less accurate and do less damage, but he might still get a solid hit in.

Unfortunately, Bart didn’t stay still, though. He was moving, and his dark duster wasn’t for show. The bullet struck his shoulder but didn’t penetrate his defenses. Even if it had, he would have lost minimal health. Bart had been getting a lot more tanky lately.

Vale barely dashed out of the way before another thrown potion could envelop him in a cloud of green gas. But then Bart produced a little, simple-looking pistol and Vale tried evading again. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge what his friend was trying to actually do.

The pistol belched flame and the fire ignited the green gas, throwing Vale to one side like a rag doll. He rolled and kept rolling, barely avoiding another thrown vial.

“This is bullshit! I can’t even use my regular magic but you’re using yours like crazy!”

“It was your rule,” said Bart mildly. He threw two more bottles at Vale. “I just said it’d be enough if you didn’t use your Wind magic.”

“Fuck,” was all Vale said. He ducked and knocked one bottle aside softly enough with the blade of his sword, Yarikh’s Will, that it didn’t break, just careened to the other side of the room. The other bottle zipped over his head.

He grinned. Time to go on the attack.

Bart leveled his special, quest reward pistol and tried to fry Vale with fire as he closed, but even without his magic, Vale still had a very solid Agility stat. He managed to spin around, juking Bart’s aim and delivering a savage, but graceful stab to his friend’s wrist. This sort of light wound didn’t actually do much damage, but the pistol dropped.

But Bart had unsheathed his sword cane now, and he managed to knock aside Vale’s killing blow. It was a good block, and Vale grudgingly complimented, “Nice.”

“Yeah, Minerva taught me that one.” Bart’s face fell. His friend must have known that mentioning their missing teammate had been the wrong thing to say.

Vale growled and delivered a blistering series of strikes. Some were turned aside, some only partially penetrated Bart’s armor-like coat. But others solidly connected. By the time Vale finally delivered a killing critical, Bart’s health had already been whittled down near zero anyway. He’d never managed to get out another potion.

The lights in the combat room changed and Bart floated upwards, a green, spinning cloud around his form before he was set back on his feet again. Both of their expended stamina were restored.

Vale still felt antsy and also had a sudden flash of guilt for beating up on his friend. He glumly sat on the floor. If he’d been footing the bill for the room, he wouldn’t have wasted the time--the rooms charged every 5 minutes. Vermillion Entertainment could handle it, though, he was sure.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just talk about it?” asked Bart. “That’s what normal people do, you know.” He scratched a cheek. “Actually, maybe you just need a girlfriend.”

Vale glared at him. Ever since Bart had finally admitted to dating Abbey IRL, he’d been insufferably smug about it. “Stow it, Casanova.” He turned to stare at the wall.  “It’s not like I can’t talk, it’s just a lot of different things, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” Bart sat against the wall and put his sword cane across his knees.

“Like, this, all of this,” Vale gestured around and continued, “it’s all bullshit. I should be fighting you at max power while you have elemental magic, too. You’d be on my level once you get to the World Tree. But I need to wait on the fucking Euro siblings, and they haven’t come out of their rooms for a week. I need Minerva to get her ass back to work so I can take everyone to the World Tree at once.”

“Yeah, I know. The Trace.”

Vale hit the ground with a fist. Taking everyone one at a time to the World Tree would not have been a problem if not for the Trace. Someone had put magic on him, probably more than one person because it came back immediately, even after a long, and tedious process to remove it. The amount of energy and resources someone was spending on an incredibly powerful [Trace] spell was mind-boggling. It had to be another streaming company. They might be going specifically after the World Tree, but they were also monitoring him. At least there was a delay of a few hours or he’d be an easy target for assassination, too.

It was still a pain in the ass, though. He wasn’t sure how they’d even been able to put the spell on him in the first place. It usually had to be consensual.

An unfortunate result of the Trace was that Vale was locked down. If he went to the World Tree to help his friends get a Legendary Class, whoever was tracking him would likely also be able to find it.

And his friends needed him as a guide to get there. At least Vale could return to the tree without losing any more from his Intelligence stat. He actually visited the tree again, with Vermillion Entertainment footing the bill of his expensive magical reagents to do so. It’d been necessary to find out if he could actually even return.

Three weeks had passed since the group’s daring attack on the massive boss monster Hygon. And a lot had changed in three weeks.

All of his stamina was reset now from the duel. Vale idly opened his character sheet. It read:

Name: Vale dePardon

Class: Occultist

Subclass: Explorer

Hero Class: *At level 20*

Legendary Class: Air Adept

Level: 16

Experience: 1710542

XP to next level: 389458

Stamina: 76/76

HP 76/76

Mana: 120/120

Stats: (Total/Original/Level Ups/Bonuses)

Strength: 6/2/2/2

Agility: 12/3/6/3

Endurance: 6/4/2/0

Intelligence: 10/7/0/3

Willpower: 9/6/1/2

Luck: 17/8/5/4

Class Skills: Fencing, Ancient Body Magic, Paranoia, Ancient Occult Lore, Map Reading/Cartography, Elemental Magic: Air, Spirit of Adventure, Mystic Alignment

Permanent Bonus Source: Mystic Clover (Luck +3), World Tree Tithe

(Int -5), World Tree Boon (Int +8, Agi +3), Hygon Light Power (Lck +1, Str +2), Ring of the Unknown Saint (Will +2) Auras and Status: Mystic. A mysterious status that confers additional magical mastery. Not compatible with tech skills.

His stats were really starting to look great.

Dealing with Hygon had imparted an absolutely huge amount of XP. The days following had been a blur, just a carnage of grinding that he’d lost himself in to deal with what was going on in real life. As a result, he’d barely made level 16. He’d improved three levels over where he’d been before the big boss fight...and his family’s life changing.

The choices he’d made for his stat increases had been difficult, but he’d actually gotten some good experience after fighting higher-level enemies.  While he’d wanted to put more points into Luck, he’d needed to concentrate on survivability first. And sometimes a good offense was its own form of defense. Magic was such a huge part of his kit, he’d finally invested another point in Willpower to handle his [Ancient Body Magic]. Another two points in Agility had been noticeable across the board.

What to choose for his next two skills had been even more difficult.

He’d actually considered taking [Athletics], a general skill that would help with Stamina and physical stats. But he’d taken [Spirit of Adventure] instead, a skill he’d only been eligible for based on a hidden prerequisite, probably being first to enough ruins or dungeons. The skill was situational, but powerful. It activated whenever Vale was exploring a new dungeon, or relatively unexplored area. He would get a boost to one or more stats, or at least that was the best he could tell. The level of increase was greater the earlier he was to the location relative to other players. This skill had been how he’d managed the last bit of XP to level 16.

Vale had actually considered taking [Basic Technology]. That skill would help him drive things, and actually use his newfound real-world firearms experience. But his “Mystic” status had actually prevented it. He hadn’t wanted to try removing it, either. The stats it came with were too good.

So ultimately, he’d chosen [Mystic Alignment], a skill available for having a 6 in both Intelligence and Willpower, for the same reason as he’d taken a point in Willpower. One reason players took [Mystic Alignment] was to see supernatural signs or messages in-game. But another passive benefit was a general buff to all magic skills. This meant he could control [Ancient Body Magic] much, much better now.

He should feel excited that he was getting so close to level 20, to choosing a Hero Class, but the last week had just felt like he’d been sitting still. Waiting on other people had never been one of Vale’s strengths.

To one side, Bart quietly said, “I’ve said this before, but you know that your parents being threatened wasn’t your fault, right?”

“That’s what they tell me.” Vale traced the beautiful design of his rapier’s hilt. The weapon had become something of a symbol for his character. And that was a problem, too. As a famous streamer, he was so recognizable that he couldn’t just wander around the same way he used to in-game.

Everything was more complicated now.

Suddenly, a light blinked in the top corner of his vision. He had a message. And to have bypassed his filters, it would have to be marked urgent. Bart must have gotten one too, because his friend turned and smiled slowly. “Dude, I think you should take a look at the message you just got. I was copied. Actually, let’s just Surface.”

“That important?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.”

Vale closed his eyes and mentally reached out to his persocom connection. Dueling areas were considered safe zones, so he wouldn’t suffer any penalty from leaving immediately. His consciousness swam back to his body in the real world.

When he woke as Trent, thirsty as usual, he scanned his messages and slowly grinned. Bart had been right. “Finally,” he hissed.

Social Skill Roll

Trent knocked on Steve’s door. “I’m gonna get something to eat. Wanna come?”

“I dunno. Are you going to stab me with something IRL like you just did in-game?”

Trent sighed. “It’s not my fault you’re so shitty at PVP.”

Steve defended himself. “I play support!” The door opened and Trent’s big, indignant, linebacker-looking friend ran a hand through his hair. “Tell you what, asshole. Next time in a dungeon, I’ll do the damage and you can CC, okay?”

“You know I might be able to do that with wind magic…”

Steve shook his head and closed the door behind him. “You’re lucky I put up with you.”

“I know,” said Trent without a trace of sarcasm. The last few weeks really had demonstrated who had his back. Steve knew his parents, and the big guy might have been even more angry than Trent after finding out they’d been threatened.

Player apartments were all clumped together in the same side of the building, on the opposite end of the kitchen. Their dorms weren’t bad at all, but now that Trent knew how much he was making and how much Vermillion in general made, he wondered if they could spring for some better decor. Sometimes it still felt like he was living in the dorms at his old college.

He and Steve visited the shared kitchen area, grabbed some pre-made sandwiches and went outside to the new outdoor patio tables. Vermillion had been sprucing the place up a bit since the three streaming teams in this location basically couldn’t leave anymore.

Security had tightened up--not just because of what happened to Trent. A streamer in another company had been murdered two weeks ago. Stream-related crime was climbing as fast as streamer paychecks.

Trent sat and tore into his sandwich. He’d grabbed an entire grocery bag full of bottled water that he set to the side after taking one out.

“Still dehydrated after you Surface?”

Trent chewed for a few seconds and managed to say, “Always.”

Steve frowned in an odd way. Trent knew this meant his friend had probably gotten a message on his persocom. Sure enough, he said, “Michelle just texted me. She saw I logged out of SOO and asked where I was. Mind if she joins us?”

Trent was tempted to sigh, but he just waved a hand in acceptance. His friend grinned in thanks and concentrated for a second, sending back a reply. It wasn’t that Trent disliked Michelle Wong, AKA Abbey, AKA Abigail van Cog. He found her in-game persona a little frustrating, but in real life she was quiet and had a very dry wit that Trent could appreciate.

Ultimately, he’d realized recently that he just didn’t like change very much, especially in his close friends group…and the epiphany hadn’t been a pleasant one. Steve and Michelle were obviously happy together and Trent even respected Michelle, so he’d decided to get over himself.

There were way worse problems to deal with anyway. And having some help wouldn’t hurt. People were disappearing. Streamers all over the world were scared. Most had gone into streaming to get rich and famous, but crime and streamer-targeted violence had never been this bad before. It felt like some other notable streamers might even currently be trying to gracefully retire, to fade into obscurity. Unfortunately for them, they made way too much money for their companies and were still on contract.

And the security necessary to retire would be very, very expensive, too.

If it wasn’t for Vermillion taking care of his family, protecting them, Trent wasn’t sure what he’d do. But he actually loved gaming, and as long as he could still be making good money while his family was safe, he was content to stay in the compound. The “Rainbow Ranch.”

His living situation wasn’t the problem, it was the lack of information or current plan that had been chafing on him. With a slight shake of his head, he turned his attention to Steve’s girlfriend.

In-game, Abbey had a 9/10 physicaldex, same as Vale. So Michelle looked almost the same as her character. One of the only changes was that she’d made her nose in game a little taller. In fact, almost everyone in their little group looked so similar to their characters in-game that there hadn’t really been all that much awkwardness upon meeting, at least not as much as Trent would have suspected.

He’d sort of seen her naked before, at least in game. Nobody talked about that anymore.

Michelle was average height, average weight, and her hair was so black it practically shined. She squeezed Steve’s shoulder and sat down. A piece of pizza in a ziploc bag turned out to be her only snack. She raised an eyebrow at Trent and turned to Steve again. “I take it you guys got the message.”

“Yeah. Just in time, too.”

Michelle chewed thoughtfully. “I’m not as tightly wound as Mr. Sunshine over there,” she said, gesturing at Trent, “but nobody recently threatened to murder my parents, either. And nobody stole a fortune from me with an in-game item. But I will admit I would like to get the hell out of Vermilliontown.”

Steve and Trent both nodded. The in-game city they’d been staying in for almost a week was very safe. It was also an XP dead-end. None of them had been advancing in their classes, just practicing and waiting on Vermillion. Their team was supposedly going to be receiving a ship, a crew, and one last team member.

And according to the message they’d gotten, they’d be meeting their last team member today in about two hours. Tomorrow they’d be let loose to participate in the PVP free-for-all that Secret of the Old Ones had become.

The three of them chatted for a while about the mysterious new person who would be joining their team, and what they’d been hearing about the player-versus-player skirmishes happening in-game that they had not been able to take part in yet.

While they talked, the doors to the main building opened and two people stepped out into the garden. All conversation ceased.

Trent’s eyes narrowed. On top of everything else that had happened recently, the way Brutus and Minerva’s players had arrived in the middle of the night only to completely vanish had been...annoying. They hadn’t left their room since it seemed. He couldn’t exactly figure out why he was irritated, though. They didn’t owe him anything, and they were still practicing in-game. But neither of them had divulged any information that wasn’t game-related.

And now here they were.

The two of them were striking. In SOO, Minerva had a p-dex of 10, so of course her player looked exactly like her character. Her real name was Katya. She had dark-blonde hair, high cheekbones, and green eyes that practically glowed. If she were walking through a mall, Trent would just assume she was a model. She had the kind of body that wasn’t usually naturally possible without a great deal of work.

She moved like a tiger. Her self-confidence and flashing gaze reminded him of how she fought in Secret of the Old Ones with her saber--all grace and aggressiveness.

Her brother made Trent tense up. He’d been fighting with the man’s in-game character, Brutus, for what felt like his entire time playing Secret of the Old Ones. The man’s name was Pavlo, and he looked almost exactly like his character. He was a hulking man with an air of menace just standing there. If his sister was a sharp dagger, Pavlo was like a big, European hammer.

Trent decided to draw first blood. “So you finally decided to leave your rooms, huh?”

Pavlo gave him a withering look. “Perhaps you should open your mouth once you actually have real problems.”

“Hey dickhead.” Trent frowned and felt his heart race. Pavlo was six inches taller, outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, and he had to have real fighting skills or he wouldn’t be so dangerous in-game as Brutus. But Trent wasn’t going to let it go. “Someone threatened my parents less than a month ago.”

“I know. You told me. But it was only a threat--nothing happened. If our family find us, we will die for sure. No SOO item will save us.”

“Brother!”  Katya gave her brother a murderous look. “Your mouth iz flapping!”

“Sorry,” Pavlo muttered.

“So what is going on with you two?” asked Michelle. “I don’t mean to pry, but with some of the hints you dropped while we were grouped up, I have been...curious.” Beside her, Steve nodded.

Pavlo raised an eyebrow and looked at his sister. “I don’t care but if you don’t want to tell them, I won’t.”

After a brief pause, Katya shrugged. “Might az well. We will be living here now.”

“In this dump,” finished Pavlo.

“It’s not that bad!” protested Michelle. “The Rainbow Ranch will grow on you.”

“Rainbow Ranch?” asked Pavlo.

“It’s what they call this place,” explained Trent.

Pavlo frowned, and for a second, Trent actually dropped his hand down to brush his rapier, which he immediately realized wasn’t there. He hoped nobody had seen him make the nervous gesture. Whether the man was Brutus in SOO, or Pavlo in the real world, he was always startling and dangerous.

“What’s the deal with you two, then?” asked Trent. “Organized crime?”

Pavlo shared a look with Katya and slowly said, “Something like that.”

“You are a criminal?” asked Michelle. She’d pulled a roll of Starburst from somewhere and popped a colorful candy in her mouth.

“Not uz. Our parents,” answered Katya.

Just when Trent was leaning forward, ready to hear the juicy details, everyone’s communicators went off. When he heard the chime of a high-priority message through his persocom, his team all stopped talking and their eyes grew unfocused.

Trent quickly read the message, but Steve beat him to a reaction. His friend said, “I thought they said an hour or two.”

“Maybe they knew we were all talking together anyway?” ventured Steve.

“Whatever,” said Trent. “Let’s go see what they want. The quicker we get the fuck out of Vermilliontown and actually start levelling again, the better. All the stuff I’ve been seeing online about the skirmishes and PVP battles we’ve been missing out on is bullshit.”

For once, everyone nodded in agreement and the group headed towards the meeting hall, the detached building on the compound for administration activities.

Better Late Than Never

As usual, Trent thought the Administration Building looked sort of like a church. The meeting hall was built like a worship center, just a lot smaller. Instead of a long table like most meeting rooms he’d seen before, the chairs were arranged in a semicircle, amphitheater-style.

When the entire team sat down, they barely took up any room compared to the size of the room.

To one side of the room stood Florinia, the general liaison from Vermillion. She was looking as sexy as usual. Trent tried to meet her eyes to waggle his eyebrows but she seemed very distracted. A couple of middle-aged men in suits that Trent didn’t recognize were standing next to her. At the front of the room was Julia Mills, the manager that Vermillion Entertainment had recently dispatched to oversee the team. Julia was in her thirties, dark skinned, and heavy set. She almost always dressed like she’d just popped out of a 90’s era sitcom.

Standing by himself on the other side away from the suits was another unfamiliar person, a stocky guy in his 20’s. He leaned against the wall and winked at Trent’s group.

Julia cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to call everyone here early, but we knew that you were all logged out and together anyway. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we can move forward. We have some new developments. Your wait is almost over. We haven’t wanted to drag it out any longer than you all do.”

“I was right,” said Steve in a loud whisper.  “Now you owe me a candy. Pay up, lady.” Michelle wordlessly handed a Starburst to her boyfriend.

Julia held up a clicker and the large screen behind her lit up. A slick-looking, polished podium rose from the floor in front of her as well. “Why don’t they put cool stuff like that in our rooms?” wondered Trent out loud. Nobody responded.

“The situation in the game has changed a lot over the last week,” said Julia. “Since you all watch videos, streamers, and lurk forums when you’re not playing, I think most of you probably know the gist of what I’m about to tell you. But you might not know the extent of it.”

The screen behind her lit up and displayed a map of Europa, the continent that most American and European players called home. Trent recognized most of the large cities on the map, but some just by reputation. The game was really large, and the steep penalties for dying made players usually take fewer travel-related risks.

Of course, that was before the big PVP event. Lockout times were much shorter now.

Julia hit a button and a red overlay covered the map...almost all of it. “Everything in red is enemy territory at this point,” she said.

“And the enemy iz?” asked Katya.

“Good question,” said Julia. “Sorry for not clarifying. I just assumed we would all be using the same terminology. For the sake of this briefing, the enemy refers to all non-human race players, and all the players who are allied with them.”

“None of them are friendly?” asked Michelle. “I thought some people were trying to form cross-species alliances.”

“None are friendly that we know of. Even the new races. That includes a new race, and the First Things.” She didn’t look at Trent. It was an open secret now how the Monarch Stone had been extorted from him. “What’s more, this PVP event has allowed most of the new monster-race players to power level. They are growing in level at an alarming rate.”

Trent nodded as he studied the map. Some of his favorite towns had been covered in red. There were still free areas, but he could see what was happening. “We’re running out of resources. They even control some of the newbie dungeons. They’re taking over and pushing everyone in towards Newlondon.”

“Yes. That is our analysis, too. The situation has gotten bad enough over the last few days that some of the larger streaming companies have actually been reaching out about a truce, or even an alliance. I’m sure you all know about the Flying Eels race that was unlocked recently?”

“Yeah, but nobody knows much about them. There’s just been speculation in the forums,” said Michelle. “We all saw the system message, then...nothing. No option to switch races, either.”

Julia sighed. “Well, one of our teams got massacred by them yesterday. So I can brief you on them. They can fly without wings, and they seem small, but we predict they will grow based on level. Their playstyle is different. The player experience would have to be more like a shark sim than an MMO. We have found and destroyed one of their settlements. It looked like a termite mound. Oh, and when they attack you, they also have a SAN attack. That’s how our team was killed despite being higher level.”

“The team. They didn’t have a healer?” asked Trent.

“No. This was over one hundred miles past the line, inside our territory. The Flying Eel players can attack anywhere. They destroyed an NPC quest-giving settlement before hitting our team. After we found out, we sent in the Matthews team to eradicate them.” She added, “This tactical ability of the eels to theoretically strike anywhere is one reason we’re moving forward as quickly as possible now.”

Trent frowned. “The Matthews Team,” had to be referring to Samurai Matthews, one of Vermillion’s earliest streamers for SOO. He demanded, “‘Moving forward more quickly,’ you said? Why the hell has Samurai been able to play and level while we’ve been stuck in Vermilliontown?”

Julia regarded him levelly. “Because we are not giving Samurai a flying ship. We have been preparing your ship, your crew, and still trying to maintain some sort of security and secrecy.”

“Oh.” Trent’s righteous anger fizzled.

Steve awkwardly patted Trent’s shoulder in sympathy.

Michelle crossed her arms. “Alright, Julia. All this stuff jives with what I’ve been seeing online the last few days. Basically, all the monster players are being dicks, shutting down quest areas and cities, griefers are joining them, and all the human players are on the defensive. There are more of us, but we respawn slower. Oh, and some human players are still dicks and attacking each other, too.”

Julia nodded slowly. “That is about the gist of it.”

Pavlo had his chin in his hand, staring at the map, and seemed to be deep in thought. He said, “The monster players. The game doesn’t have official factions yet, at least that I am aware of, but this sort of thing was common in old MMOs with different races. Players from different factions or races sometimes couldn’t communicate. In SOO it works that way too. So they can’t talk to us in-game, but has anyone figured out other ways to communicate? Maybe we could bribe some of them or have an understanding.”

“Sign language?” offered Steve.

Julia shook her head. “As of now, communications hasn’t gotten anywhere. All attempts have just resulted in ambushes. Other than taunts and insults, they aren’t really reaching out online, either.” She shrugged. “PVP has been excellent for levelling...for them, and for us. Now, mostly for them. The monster players have already almost caught up, level-wise. And the First Things race is extremely powerful. It’s not a surprise that Yggdrasil has shut down race changes for the time being. Balance is already shot.”

“Alright, so why are you telling all of us this now?” asked Steve.

One of the men in suits nodded at the lone man on the other side of the room. “That’s your cue, Charles.”

With a smile, the man named Charles stepped away from the wall. Trent studied him more than before and noticed he wasn’t actually heavyset, just muscular. He looked shorter than Trent but probably weighed a lot more. His t-shirt had a graphic of a comic book character smashing a building.

Julia nodded at the comic t-shirt guy. “This is Charles Allison. He is your team’s 6th member. So today you are meeting your new teammate, and getting your new airship. You’ll have to meet your crew in-game. They aren’t on site.”

“Yes!” Trent fist pumped. “Can we leave now?”

Steve elbowed him in the side. “Shhh!” He scratched his chin and muttered, “You have a point, though. I wanna get back in-game.”

“Then why the hell did you elbow me?”

Michelle shook her head and ignored them. She pointed at Charles and said, “So this is our new teammate? That’s great and all, but what can you tell us about him? This is kind of sudden. We were waiting for a couple weeks, then, ‘boom,’ here he is.”

Pavlo raised a big hand and added, “Also, why are we even here? In this building? This meeting could have been virtual.”

Trent knew the answer to that question. “Taxes and stuff,” he said with a Jedi-style handwave.

“What?”

Michelle sighed and said, “It’s because we’re streamers. There are new US laws that force us to have in-person meetings and stuff or we don’t get benefits and the feds might investigate. It’s so streamers have to be in the US and can’t avoid paying taxes or something. Also to prevent human trafficking? I don’t entirely understand all of it.”

Julia turned to one of the suited men. “Please send the welcome packet to all the new teammates again. Make sure they get it.” After the man nodded, Julia said, “Your tax and in-person meeting questions should be answered with our onboarding packet. We need to be here physically right now, but I’d prefer not to waste the time we have with admin matters.”

Then she gestured at the newcomer. “Despite being lower level than all of you, only at twelve, Charles should be an equal and is a good fit for your team. Would you like to explain, Charles?”

“Call me Charlie.” The man in the graphic t-shirt stepped away from the wall with an easy smile. “I’m really excited to be here.”

“So why are you here?” asked Michelle bluntly.

Charlie’s eyes sparkled. “I’m a min-maxer.”

“Aren’t we all?” said Steve with a chuckle.

“Hear me out,” Charlie began to explain without any noticeable nervousness. “I was one of the first SOO players. Rolled a Burglar. But eventually, I rerolled.” He held up a finger. “But I made plans. See, before rerolling, I had a high Luck stat and found three BOE items that gave permanent stats, and...other things.”

Trent twitched when he heard the luck stat line. The rest of what Charlie said made him frown and ask, “If they were BOE, and you weren’t going to use them, why not sell?”

“Selling items makes a lot of money, but being a streamer is where the real cash is at. And to stand out, I needed to build a new character using everything I’d learned and a lot of theorycraft.”

“You can’t keep your items if you reroll, though,” pointed out Michelle.

“Yup.” Charlie smiled again. He practically beamed. “Sorry for the enthusiasm. You’ll have to give me a pass here. I don’t get to talk about this much and I’m pretty proud of it. Anyway, before rerolling, I handed over my items to someone I could trust, and they gave them back after I was back in-game.”

Trent appreciated the simple solution. It wasn’t unique, though. Others had done the same, but giving such valuable items to other people to hold onto could be risky. “So what’s your build?” he asked.

Charlie dramatically cracked his knuckles. “My time as a Burglar gave me a lot of opportunity to think about the game and how the system works. I was actually planning a reroll even before I found the last item that I needed. When I found it, there was a local system message about it, too. If I hadn’t rerolled it would have caused problems.”

“Wait,” Trent said. He held up a hand. “So you found something big, like a legendary class or something like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you just use it without rerolling? You probably could have tried streaming then.”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have been as effective. The synergy wasn’t good with the Burglar class tree at all. Plus, Burglar players are never the top of the heap for streaming. Fans wanna see combat, explosions, magic. Some Thieves have done okay, but they have a small, dedicated following. Maybe Thieves will break out if they can start assassinating or something. But I wanted to be mainstream ASAP.”

“Was there a system message when you used your item?” asked Trent.

“Yes. Legendary class. But I timed it to happen right after a big name also used one.”

“Smart,” said Michelle. Her tone had a kernel of respect.

Charlie gave them a big, shit-eating grin. “When I rerolled, I chose Priest and put almost all of my stats into Intelligence and Endurance to maximize my mana and HP gain per level. A normal player would have been way too squishy and wound up dead all the time, but I knew what I was doing and had my items waiting for me.”

“Zey must have been good items,” said Minerva.

“Only so-so, but they came with a set bonus.”

“A set bonus?” Trent had never found an item with a set bonus before.

“Yes. A set bonus. One Luck and 100 Stamina. Not groundbreaking, but helpful at level one.” Charlie continued, “My Strength and Agility are still low, but it doesn’t matter. At level 12 right now, I still have 180 mana. As long as I keep track of my resources, I can run around with buffs on pretty much 24/7. And because I’m a priest, my failed spells can’t damage me, just fail.”

“But that would just mean you’re a meat shield and hard to kill,” said Steve.

“Uh huh. That would be true if not for my legendary class! It basically gives me armor and offensive magic. Recently I took the Path of War skill. Path of War gives me proficiency with basic, mundane weapons. This is where my build really took off. Since I knew I was going to take Path of War ahead of time, and it scales with holy skills, all of my choices until this point were to eventually buff it. This way I covered my weak points from pushing the magic build.”

Trent shook his head. He could vaguely understand Charlie’s class choices now. “You must be broken as hell. You can heal yourself too, right?”

“Yup!”

“And SAN checks?” asked Trent.

“Not a problem!”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” said Michelle.

“Wow. Without a killing blow or something, this guy is gonna be scary at max level, huh?” asked Steve.

“He is kind of scary now,” said Julia from behind her podium. “We are very impressed with Mr. Allison’s achievements so far, and how fast he has reached level 12. It might be the fastest power-levelling the game has seen so far.”

“Thank you,” said Charlie.

“So you did all of this to stream?” asked Trent.

“Not just to stream, to stream with people like you. Man, now I’m gonna be rich! And better, I have a chance to be great. You know, I was never super great in school. I can’t sing, can’t dance, but for some reason I’m pretty good with a spear. Maybe I can make my mark on history like this.”

“The money was enough for me,” said Michelle. Steve elbowed her--much more gently than he’d hit Trent. She folded her arms.

Why’d he hit me so hard? Trent mentally complained. He even agreed with me before!

Pavlo fixed Charlie with a neutral look. He said, “Being great. Wonderful. This is all fine, very touching, but can you fight?”

“I can definitely fight,” said Charlie. His tone had changed.

There was a second of silence before Michelle blew a raspberry and said, “You two can see who pees farther later. Are we done here? Julia? Can we Dive?”

Their team’s manager hit a hidden button and her podium began to sink back into the floor. The screen behind her turned off. “Yes, you can all go back to your quarters now. We ask that you be back in-game at the original time this meeting was scheduled for. So about an hour. Once you are in-game, I will join you there and introduce you to your new airship and your new crew.

“After that, we’ll give you all the information we have, some gentle suggestions, and turn you loose.”

“Gentle suggestions, huh?” said Trent quietly. He didn’t try to actually ask any questions, though, just joined everyone else as he left the building. On his way out, he shot a couple furtive, speculating looks at Charlie.

This is the sixth team member, huh? he thought. He talks a big game. Hope he’s not too noob.

Nobody spoke much on the way back to the main building. After Trent’s door was open, he caught Steve’s eye before they entered their rooms, and he knew they both could tell the other was excited.

This day hasn’t turned out to be too bad after all, thought Trent. I can finally join the war! As he closed the door behind him, he grinned. And level again!

Before he Dove, the only thing he regretted about the day was not being able to hit on Florinia again. He was wearing her down, he could tell.

The Crew

Trent mentally commanded his persocom to Dive...and woke up in Secret of the Old Ones as Vale dePardon. As usual, the act of Diving had been strange and full of color, like being drowned by a rainbow.

His avatar was still in Vermilliontown. Logging out in a safe zone was different than somewhere in the general world. When he appeared, he was at one of the many spawn locations, a break room. Since this was a safe zone and he’d been here for so long, he had quite a bit of XP bonus saved up for when he finally got to leave.

Vale’s persocom flashed him a meeting notice and he immediately started moving to the airfield. As he walked, he checked all of his gear. Even though nobody could steal from players when they were logged out, Vale still liked to check. He was also always trying to optimize his load. So much of his playstyle relied on being swift that having a bunch of clunky weight hanging off of him would be unacceptable.

Physics in SOO could be very realistic.

Before he got to the tarmac of the airfield, Vale got a PM from a player he’d never heard of before. The handle had a Vermillion Entertainment symbol next to it, same as his. Before he read the message, he cross-referenced emails he’d gotten from Vermillion with the name of the player: Nicholas Constantine.

The emails confirmed his suspicion that this was Charlie Allison’s character, their new team member. He quickly skimmed the private message and sent Nicholas Constantine a party request.

A second later, his group was a party of six.

Team chat messages popped up one after another.

Bartholomew: <Wow that was quick!>

Brutus: <I am almost to the airfield.>

Minerva: <You should hurry. This truly is impressive.>

Vale began to jog. Minerva almost never admitted that anything surprised her.

When he got to the tarmac, he understood her reaction. The airship was not quite what he’d been expecting. Instead of an actual floating galleon, or a dirigible, the airship looked more like a hovering train. It did have a small, token balloon above it, but Vale couldn’t imagine how such a thing would be lifted by that alone. And sure enough, stubby ovals that looked like wings jutted from the side of the craft. Parts of them glowed a faint purple.

A tall, statuesque woman stood before a gaping Minerva, Brutus, and Bart. The woman was Julia’s avatar. Her name in-game was Julia, too. Only her last name was different. She was Julia Mills in real life. In SOO, her name was Julia Grimoire.

Vale figured her lack of creativity stat points must have been pumped into management know-how.

When he arrived, they only had a moment to wait before Abbey and Nicholas showed up.

Vale studied Nicholas Constantine as he arrived. He was similar-looking to Charlie in real life, just taller. His hair was lighter too, a true blond. He wore a thick, long coat, almost like a soldier, but he had on a more ornate shirt. An embroidered, tricorn hat sat atop his head. Behind one shoulder poked up the barrel of a long rifle. At his waist he had a tomahawk and some sort of short sword.

“Good,” said Julia. “You’re all here. Let’s go meet your crew.”

Vale thought about saying something snarky, but the airship was so cool he just made a little noncommittal sound in reply. The group went up a ramp through a solid-looking door. Vale caught a glimpse of some interesting-looking rooms and machinery in the guts of the ship before Julia led them all up a ladder to the top.

A rail ran around the edge of the ship and there was a pilot station at the front. With the new vantage point, Vale could see down one side and studied the gun emplacements. Something like a long cannon was poking out of a round ball.

Behind the large, antique-looking wheel at the front of the ship was a very average-looking man who looked about thirty years old. Another, younger man stood next to him. The two looked related, and out of curiosity Vale checked their physicaldex. Both were at a 7/10.

From the rear of the ship, a hatch opened and a third man appeared, somewhere between the other two in age. But unlike the average-looking other two, he had a very notable feature. From the waist down, his body was what looked like a mechanical spider.

“Oh, they’re here!” The oldest-looking man waved a hand and said, “Hey, let’s go!”

All of the presumed airship crew gathered around and Vale kept feeling his eyes being drawn to the man with spider legs. Julia gestured at the three and said, “This is your crew. By the way, do you want to register a new ship name for the PVP event?”

“Maybe we can wait on that,” said Vale.

“So be it. Alright, team, let me introduce you to the Herterz brothers.”

Vale did a quick character check and verified that “Herterz” was their in-game last name. The brother with the spider legs was Hans. The oldest at the wheel was George. And the other brother was Rivera. Everyone shook hands.

The oldest brother, George, introduced himself and his two brothers by name. Then he said, “We’re actually all brothers IRL, too. That was one reason Vermillion recruited us. We were good at what we do, and we live together, and work well together. We’ll be on call for when you need us.”

“Why does your brother have metal spider legs?” asked Vale. He added, “That’s pretty cool.”

Hans, the brother in question grinned. “I have a wheelchair in real life. Actually, me and George both have Achondroplasia.” He must have seen the glazed look on some of their faces because he clarified, “We’re little people.”

Bart was still making a confused face, so Abbey said, “Dwarves. Sorry, Hans.”

“Nah, I don’t mind. Trust me, people have called me a lot worse.” He gave a crooked grin.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” said Abbey.

Hans waved a hand. “Chill. We’re cool. Joking helps me not throttle people who call me Willow. I know you were just explaining, and it’s not a slur. Seriously, don’t sweat it. Anyway, Rivera is average size. George walks so it wasn’t a big deal for him to be average size in-game. But for me, well, I’ve never really walked so it was too hard to adapt. The game gave me this ride free of charge, and it pretty much goes anywhere I want it to automatically. It’s way better than a real-life wheelchair!”

“Oh that’s right, I heard about that,” said Bart. He hit his fist in his hand as he looked up and consulted his memory. “I read about that online. A lot of players in SOO could use full limbs if they’ve lost them and stuff. Actually, some folks were speculating that a lot of the First Things players might be handicapped, since playing such an alien creature might be too weird otherwise. But nobody knows for sure. None of the First Things players are talking about it.”

“No streamers yet, either,” said Vale. He’d been paying close attention. The person who stole the Monarch Stone from him might be a First Things player now, after all. They might even be the leader of the race.

He had a score to settle, but still had no idea how to go about it.

“Yeah, exactly.” George stepped forward. “Some of my friends think it’s a sign of weakness or something that I like playing as an average-sized character in-game, but I mean, come on. Lots of people play different sizes and shapes in this game.”

“Yup,” said Hans.

George added, “It’s a game, it’s meant to be fun. At the end of the day, it’s a game. People IRL can make changes to be who they want to be. Hell, chicks even get fake boobs IRL. Nobody ever says shit about that.”

“They use push-up bras, too,” said Vale.

“Pigs,” muttered Abigail.

Vale just cocked an eyebrow at Abbey and offered George a fist bump. With a surprised but pleased expression, the oldest Herterz brother responded in kind.

“Did we just become friends?” asked George.

“I think so,” said Vale. “Tits unite us all.” To one side, Bartholomew began chuckling before Abbey gave him an elbow in the arm.

Rivera Herterz, the middle brother, hadn’t said anything yet but suddenly stepped forward and said, “We...I’m...so excited to be here, doing this. I’m a fan. We watch your stream, Vale.”

“Oh! Well, thank yo--”

“You’re a legend, man!” Rivera had stars in his eyes.

“Ah...thanks.” Vale wasn’t really sure how to deal with fans yet, so he looked around to do something with his eyes. That was when he noticed Minerva and Brutus wandering around the top of the ship, inspecting the guns and other emplacements.

Julia noticed, too. She’d remained tactfully silent during all the gamer speak and shit talking earlier, but now she suggested, “George, Rivera, Hans, why don’t you tell them about the ship and what you all do?”

“Oh yeah,” said George. “Well, I pilot the ship, usually from the cockpit down below. I can come up here in case we are being boarded. Hans works on the engines, handles bombing targeting, and works the short-range Tesla coils. Rivera is mostly on the big guns. We’re all cross trained, though.”

“We have bombs?” wondered Vale.

“Oh yeah. We have bombs. Lots of bombs,” said Hans. “I think we need to be higher level before we can use them well, though.”

“So you three can fight?” asked Constantine. “Like to repel boarders?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Rivera. He held up his hands, “Probably not as well as you all, but that’s your job. Our job is to get you from point A to point B with as much style as possible and we’re gonna do that.”

Brutus left his inspection of the guns to join them. “Can you PK? Kill other players from the air?”

“Not quite,” said Rivera. “But we still do damage and we can hit them with debuffs. Our big guns are mostly for settlements, defenses, and other ships.”

“We can get shot down?” asked Vale.

“Yeah. And the respawn for the ship is a lot longer than individuals. It costs resources too,” said Hans. “We have parachutes if Old Betsy ever goes down.”

“You named your ship Old Betsy?” asked Constantine.

“Well, until you name it officially,” said George. He patted a rail. “Ol’ Betsy hasn’t seen much combat yet, but we’ve been training like crazy. This is gonna be fun.”

“Ol’ Betsy? Really? Fuck that,” said Abbey.

“Hey, it’s an…okay name,” said George.

“We should rename it, shouldn’t we, Vale?” asked Abbey.

“I don’t--” began Vale.

Abbey interrupted. “Mitochondria!”

“Mitochondria?” asked Julia.

“It’s the powerhouse of the cell, and we’re a powerhouse. That means the ship is a powerhouse, too.” The goofy steampunk girl gave a quirky smile. To one side, Bart looked like he was falling in love with her all over again. Vale just rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, said Vale. “That works. I don’t care that much as long as Julia doesn’t veto it for some reason.”

“It’s actually not bad. Okay, I just made a note,” said Julia.

“Uhh, your call and I guess I don’t hate it,” said George. His brothers nodded.

Vale started feeling antsy, like a wave of pent-up energy crashing down on him. He couldn’t wait to finally get the hell out of Vermilliontown. “Julia. Can we go now?”

Their manager gave him a level look. “Yes. Your mission briefings have been sent over. You should get a quest or two from it.” Sure enough, as soon as she got done speaking, Vale saw two quest prompts. He dismissed them to examine later.

“Alright, cool. So who is in charge?”

Julia just looked at him. George slowly said, “You are, I guess.”

“Okay, great!” Vale gave his best, friendly smile and said, “Julia, could you please get off the ship so we can get to work?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She stomped the deck meaningfully. “This thing was super expensive. Nothing is free, even in the game. Make sure you get some good footage, please.”

“We have to. We haven’t been able to do anything for a week,” said Abbey.

Bart nodded. “True that. Besides, it probably won’t take long before we start blowing shit up.”

“Alright, just not the ship. I’ll see you later.” With that, Julia climbed down the elevator below deck.

“George, as soon as she’s gone, let’s get airborne. I wanna get the fuck out of dodge.”

“Alright, no problem, Boss.  Where are we going, though?”

“It’s time to do something we should have done a while ago. I’ll give you directions as soon as we are in the air.”

A few minutes later, all three Herterz brothers had gone inside the ship and it began to rise. Vale had a little microphone next to him on the rail so he could communicate with George down below. For the time being he’d just told him to head south.

Most of the team was at the front of the ship, holding the rails and watching as they rose into the sky. Constantine was standing with them, but not speaking much yet. Vale was a little surprised since Charlie had been so animated back at the Rainbow Ranch.

After a little more study, Vale realized that Constantine and Brutus were acting weird. They seemed to be watching each other carefully. Meanwhile, Minerva was absently tapping her hand on the hilt of her saber.

Vale stood by himself about mid-ship before Bart walked up. He asked, “Where are we going first?”

“It’s time for you all to finally go to the World Tree and get your legendary classes,” said Vale.

“Oh hell yes!” Bart hissed.

The two watched as Vermilliontown got smaller behind them. The last week had been good for training, but it was going to be good to finally start earning XP again.

With that in mind, Vale opened his new quests again and his eyes widened as he carefully read through them.

Embrace the Cray

Vale had gotten two quests. The first read:

Welcome to the Secret of the Old Ones Player versus Player event!

<Root Quest>

This is a dynamic, personalized quest that will always display at least two objectives. If objectives are completed, more will be added.

First objective: Kill twenty enemies in contested areas.

Second objective: Destroy one R&D center or factory.

Third objective: Take a side! Your actions in the upcoming conflicts will determine your allegiances. New factions will be created soon!

Quest reward: Varies

Vale carefully studied the quest and noticed that the “enemy” was never defined. So this was a quest that human players could fulfill by killing other humans if they were lazy or role playing as evil characters. Or if they were just dicks.

The objectives were very interesting, and not for the first time, Vale wondered what kind of technology Yggdrasil Entertainment was using. Their server rooms must be massive. It boggled his mind to imagine what they’d have to do to keep track of all the player choices in this game.

He moved on to reading the second quest:

Heroic PVP Quest:

Make a difference!

As an individual or part of a team, make a serious contribution to the upcoming war efforts after factions are established.

Primary quest rewards: Varies

Secondary quest reward: PVP Purchase Token (PVPPT)

Vale thought, Now that’s interesting. The description was vague. He knew what a PVPPT was, though. Over the last week he’d been salivating over the War Store.

Quite simply, PVPPTs were how players could buy limited-time PVP gear. For a permanent bonus item that wouldn’t disappear after the event ended, Vale would need a minimum of three. Better gear would cost more. Getting the PVPPTs wouldn’t be easy, but this was an amazing opportunity to get new gear for all players.

After reading through the second quest, a third quest suddenly popped up.

Rare Quest

Sky Battle (repeatable)

Destroy three other airships or capture one! Quest resets if your airship is destroyed.

Reward: Choice of arcane, mystic, mundane, martial, or spiritual reward package

“Oh, cool!” Vale said out loud. A reward package was basically a parcel through the mail, in-game, with a random reward. They were random, but better quests would give better rewards. A reward package was actually how he’d received the Rapier of Twilight. He patted the hilt of his rapier’s new form. His sword looked cooler after evolving. Yarikh’s Will was also a cooler name than Rapier of Twilight.

Now that his quests were reviewed and organized, Vale gave George some more specific directions for where they were going. This was a snap using his map function and his [Map Reading/Cartography] skill. Vale was able to give precise coordinates. After that was done, he moved to the front of the ship. He gestured for the rest of the team to join him.

Once they were all assembled, Vale said, “Alright. It’s good to finally be out of Vermilliontown.”

“This is rather obvious,” said Brutus. He didn’t have any expression on his face, but Vale still wanted to punch him.

“Yes, thank you, Brutus.”

“You are welcome.”

Vale closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “Alright, so we are going to the location where I set up a new portal to the World Tree.”

“Is it guarded?” asked Abbey.

“Nope.”

“Weren’t you worried about leaving it there without a guard?” asked Bart.

“Not really, because it’s in the middle of nowhere, and they’d need this.” Vale pulled the precious map out of his inventory.

“Oh. That iz what you stole, yes?” asked Minerva.

“It is,” said Brutus.

Abbey raised an eyebrow. “That’s right, sometimes I forget he’s a ninja looter.”

Vale put the map away and crossed his arms. “You know, if you all wanna be really, really funny like that and keep rehashing ancient history--incorrectly--then I can always just sell these Legendary Classes instead of giving them to you assholes. Or I guess I could just charge you instead of giving them to you for free.”

Bart removed one hand from his cane and put the back of his hand to his forehead. “Excuse me! I have no idea what I was saying! It must have been a SAN attack! Minerva, do something to protect us!”

“No,” she said flatly. But a moment later she sighed and said, “Thank you, Vale. All iz forgiven, no? Both ways?”

“Ah, yeah,” said Abbey. “That’s right. No need to bring up old history. After all, we’re all friends, right? And now we even have a party name. Mitochondria!” She put a hand on her hip and raised one fist into the air.

Brutus rolled his eyes. “I already have a Legendary Class. So I will keep calling him a ninja looter.”

“Fuck you, Brutus. I’m not the one who is hated and feared by half the player base.”

The big man looked confused. “Are you suggesting you are not?”

Vale shook his head. “Dude, it’s not even close to the same. I’m a streamer. You’re...Brutus.”

“Nah, sorry, man. A lot of people hate and fear you too,” said Bart with a shrug.

“What? Why!?”

“Remember that alley incident? And there’s some footage of you cutting off giant monster wang, too.”

Vale was still digesting that when George used their crude radio to call out, “We’re getting close to the destination. Descending.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Vale muttered. He glowered. “Seriously? People see me like that guy!?” He pointed at Brutus. “I know lots of people watch my stream. Like, they should see how I really am!”

“How you really are?” asked Abbey. “Like beating Minerva in a duel? Or deflecting hundreds of bullets from Abyssal Ones players? Or basically becoming a ranker out of nowhere? Or being the center of controversy after reporting the Monarch Stone stolen? Or being in the same party with Brutus? Or players you’ve grouped up with before doing interviews talking shit about you? Or--”

“Okay, I get it.” Vale had to privately admit that if he ever did searches on himself, he’d probably already know all of this. Doing so would feel super cringe, though.

“We’re here!” called out George. A moment later there was a slight bump and the airship stopped moving.

Vale was having second thoughts now about giving his ingrate team a free Legendary Class, but the truth was he also really didn’t want to deal with the headache of selling them. Besides, he would probably still make more money long-term this way.

Once every member of Mitochondria had a Legendary Class, they would officially be one of the top five streamer teams in the entire world.

The team moved through the ship, down the extended ramp, and onto a lonely little cobblestone road.

Brutus looked around. “This is where you ambushed me,” he said.

“No, this is where I beat you in a fair fight,” said Vale.

“I didn’t even have my sword out.”

Vale ignored him and led the group to the shack he’d first used to travel to the World Tree. He felt like it was fitting to send everyone else through at this location, too. With a gesture, he imparted magic into the hidden entry way. A hidden door opened, and the complex magic circles inside sprang to life.

Creating all of this spellwork was much easier for him now. It would also be a breeze for all of his higher-level friends to take the journey, too. He’d done it at level 10. The experiment had almost killed him. He would have lost everything.

Even thinking about it again made his scalp go numb.

Over the next few minutes, Vale made a last few preparations. He positioned Minerva, Brutus, and Abbey where they needed to be, and put his map in its linked position in the midst of the glowing lines and whorls on the floor. Then he did one last check before instructing, “You are going to need to sacrifice some stats to get to the World Tree. Don’t worry, you’ll get some back to make up for it. Luckily, you have someone to tell you this. I had to take it on faith.”

“Yeah, I know, man. You’ve already told us a few times,” said Bart. His tone dripped boredom, but he was practically bouncing on his toes.

The cost of a Legendary Class in real-world money could at least buy a sports car...if any were even sold. Big streamers companies had been snatching them up.

“We’ve already discussed who will be getting what element,” said Abbey. She looked down before meeting Vale’s eyes. “Vale, all jokes aside, thank you for this. Seriously.”

“Same,” said Bart.

“Yes, you have my thanks as well,” said Minerva. “Although this was most of why I chose to be part of ze party.”

“No, it is because Vale beat you in a duel,” said Brutus.

Vale appreciated the assist, even if he knew it was just Brutus being Brutus. The man was unpleasant, but also fair to a fault.

“Yes, that iz true,” said Minerva. “But I have not left either, have I?”

Vale chose to ignore the siblings and said, “You all ready to go? Last chance.”

After all three players in the circle said yes, he triggered the spell formation. “Alright, bon voyage.” A silent flash of light lit up the shabby room. The three players had vanished.

“How long will they be gone?” asked Brutus.

“Not too long.” Vale left the shack. When he was outside he turned to Constantine. “You haven’t said much, at least not in-game. Why are you being so quiet?”

“We just met. I’ve been observing. This is sort of my first day on the job for my dream job.”

Vale hadn’t considered it like that before. He tried to imagine how he would have felt a year ago if he were joining a famous streaming team. “Okay, that makes sense. But as soon as the three I just sent off get back, we’re going to be hitting it hard. You all got some PVP-related quests, right?” He included Brutus with the question.

“Yes,” said Constantine. Brutus nodded.

“Alright, well, Julia came to talk to me a few days ago. Our streams haven’t been down, exactly. Only the team stream has. Our individual streams have been showing old footage and highlights. But fans know we’re taking a break. Julia said we need to come out of the gate with something big if we want a spike in growth. Some of the other streamers have beat us to the punch with PVP stuff.”

Brutus glowered and began to speak, but Vale held out a hand. “It’s not our fault. We’ve been grounded. And just having the airship will help a lot. But the other teams that got airships are going to be starting streaming again at the same time that we do. We need to stand out. That means we can’t spend much time gearing up. We need to go directly to the big battles or at least do something interesting. We have to hit the ground running.”

Constantine nodded slowly. “That makes sense. We’re still playing a game, but this is a job.”

Don’t I know it, thought Vale. Now that Vermillion was paying for his family’s safety, he was taking the entire streaming thing much more seriously. “Exactly. And you know what I think would be really helpful for team cohesion, and to give fans something fun to see?”

Brutus eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

Vale needed to set up his suggestion right. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it, too. He hadn’t actually seen Brutus fight for a while, especially since he’d gotten levels from the big Hygon boss battle. And Constantine was an unknown. “Constantine, you said back IRL that you can fight.”

“Yes, I can.” The other man’s expression was firm this time.

“Good! And Brutus has a reputation.” He stretched out the last word, making it sound dirty. “I think,” said Vale slowly, “you guys should have a duel while we wait for the others to get back. A formal duel.”

“What? Right here?” Constantine looked around at their dilapidated surroundings. The place really was a dump. It looked like nobody had lived in this little town since a plague hit or something.

“Of course! This way you don’t need to worry about breaking anything or attracting attention. And Brutus, maybe you can have a big win here. After all, this is the place I stuck my sword through your eye socket.” He grinned at the bigger man. Brutus glowered back.

Finally, Brutus grunted, “Fine. Formal duel? Announcing our classes and skills?”

“That’s what I was thinking!”

Nicholas Constantine folded his arms. “I’d rather not announce my build to the world. Let’s make it just our classes and I’m game.”

Vale gave him a look and nodded in approval. Their new teammate already understood that everything he did in-game from now on would eventually have a huge audience. At least everything interesting. Smart, thought Vale. Out loud he said, “Alright! You crazy kids have lots of fun, okay?”

As he scampered back to some cover, Vale took some candy out of his inventory to munch on while he watched the show. In-game treats were awesome. He could eat as many of them as he wanted and never get fat.

In the street where he’d left them, Brutus and Constantine subtly changed how they stood. Vale could imagine that one of them had sent a duel invitation to the other. They both readied their weapons. Constantine removed the rifle from his shoulder. Brutus pulled a giant, runed sword out of thin air. Being able to store weapons was a quest reward from killing the Hygon boss.

A notification suddenly appeared in Vale’s vision.

Brutus Vann and Nicholas Constantine have begun a duel!

Vale smiled. This is going to be good.

Unstoppable Force vs Immovable Object

The duel began explosively. Brutus lunged forward with a powerful cleave. Before the sword was able to actually strike Constantine, a glowing yellow shield appeared, slowing the attack so he could juke to the side. His rifle came up and it was Brutus’ turn to dodge. He hit the ground as the crack of the rifle split the air.

Brutus grinned nastily as he sprang up. Vale understood why. Rifles in SOO were powerful, long-ranged weapons, but in melee fights, they weren’t great. They didn’t do much damage as bludgeoning weapons. Rifles could be hard to block with, too.

But before Brutus could end the fight, Constantine’s entire body burst into a golden glow. Plates of ghostly, incandescent armor appeared on his arms and legs. He deflected the sword strike with an armored, angled forearm, drew the short sword at his waist with his other hand and slashed. The point flicked out twice, viper-fast.

Brutus took one hand off the grip of his sword and somehow blocked Constantine’s attacks with his sword’s wire-wrapped grip. Then Brutus began to glow red. Vale recognized the skill: [Adrenaline Rush], the one of the signature skills of the Armsman class.

What followed were a series of strikes and parries so quick that Vale didn’t think he would have been able to keep up. Brutus frowned and used short, economical attacks, fighting in a conservative manner. Meanwhile, Constantine was using a strange fighting style holding his rifle in one hand and his short sword in the other. The sword’s blade was strangely curved forward.

It was only after the two fighters separated, neither with a scratch on them, that the Priest revealed that the short sword was actually a bayonet. Brutus narrowed his eyes as Constantine affixed the huge blade to the barrel of his long rifle. Then Constantine drew the bolt back on his firearm, put in what looked like a cartridge of some kind, and closed the bolt again.

“What kind of rifle is that?” asked Brutus. “The game doesn’t have cartridge firearms yet but you are loading very quickly.”

“It’s a Chassepot,” said Constantine conversationally. “Only a couple of players have found the blueprint. One is in the Asian server. Materials to make it are rare. I knew about it before rerolling and planned my entire build around it.”

Brutus nodded like he understood. “Paper cartridges. Clever.”

“Thank you. When I decided on this class, using this rifle was always part of my build.”

Vale said, “Why would you plan your entire build around a type of weapon?”

“Simple,” said Brutus, answering for his opponent. “He more or less has a spear that he can snipe with, and the Chassepot is a pin-fire rifle. He can reload with paper cartridges. It is almost as fast as a modern, single-shot cartridge rifle.” He regarded Constantine levelly. “What level are you?”

“Twelve. And you?”

“Thirteen. I’m very close to fourteen.”

“So the same number of skills, then.” Nicholas Constantine smiled. “I’ve always wanted to fight you, Brutus.”

“You could have found me before. It wasn’t like I was hiding.”

“Yes, but before hitting level 12, you probably would have destroyed me. Now, though? I don’t think so.”

“I almost got you already,” said Brutus. His tone was thoughtful.

“Let’s go all out. No more poking. I think you will see what I mean.”

Brutus rolled his shoulder. “Alright. Not many players can actually stop me like that. Minerva and maybe a few others.”

“Not Vale?”

“Maybe now that he has wind magic. It would be a different sort of fight, though.”

“I understand,” said Constantine.

Vale scrunched up his face. He muttered, “Understand, my ass...” Vale was starting to feel like when he’d first gotten his Legendary class, when he’d been underestimated. Then again, he was part of one of the strongest parties in the world. His teammates were legitimately strong. And the two fighting now seemed to be ultra competitive.

The two fighters eyed each other for another few seconds. Suddenly, the red aura around Brutus flared brighter and the big, dangerous man attacked again. He darted in, moving incredibly fast, but had to spring back at the last moment as Constantine precisely jabbed for his throat. Then before Brutus had solid balance again, Constantine pointed at the ground behind his opponent. A streak of golden light shot out of his finger, detonating when it hit. The small explosion knocked Brutus onto his ass.

Constantine leveled his rifle and shot. Somehow, Brutus managed to cover his face with an armored arm. There was a flash of blood and he took damage, but it wasn’t a critical strike. He must have used his [Survivor Reflexes] skill.

Brutus surged up and delivered a series of blistering strikes. One snuck through Constantine’s guard and laid open his shoulder. With a grunt, Brutus surged forward, keeping his opponent off balance. But the next moment, an explosive bubble of golden light separated them. Constantine had been expecting it so he reacted fastest, immediately rolling to his feet and reloading his rifle. A golden glow surrounded his wounded shoulder, right at the edge of his glowing armor.

“Healing,” grunted Brutus in annoyance.

“I’m a Priest,” said Constantine with a shrug. Then he pointed a finger at Brutus and a flash of light zipped through where the other man had just been. Brutus ran at an angle, throwing knives. Constantine deflected each one with his supernatural wrist armor.

When Brutus made a move to close again, a mighty leap, Constantine hit him with some kind of force push and the larger man lost his balance. He rolled. Constantine’s echoing rifle shot actually missed--Brutus had committed to the roll, speeding up. He sprang up and forward, then was in melee range again.

That entire exchange had taken place in two seconds.

The combatants exchanged flashing strikes. Constantine had reach and leverage with his spear. His shimmering, faith-based armor and enhanced strength persisted, matching Brutus toe to toe despite the big man’s strength. But Brutus’ reputation was well earned. The big man constantly harried the Priest and avoided taking mortal damage.

Constantine launched magic attacks in addition to shooting his rifle and using his bayoneted rifle like a polearm. But Brutus didn’t fall again. Instead, he persisted and kept damaging his opponent. Localized balls of light showed where Constantine was healing himself.

Vale was impressed. The two fighters were fighting with the kind of skill that practically nobody else in the game could match. Their precision, timing, and sheer power were on another level.

As he watched them, Vale thought about how Brutus used to say he couldn’t beat Minerva. But since then, the big fighter had gotten a Legendary Class.

Of course, Minerva was receiving a Legendary Class right now, too. Maybe after that, Vale wouldn’t be her match anymore. That was not a happy thought. Winning a duel was how Vale had convinced her to join his team in the first place.

Meanwhile, this duel was reaching a fever pitch, but both Brutus and Constantine still only had superficial wounds. Brutus closed again before Constantine reached out a hand, directing a stream of golden light to broken pieces of wall. His power enveloped the area before some bricks and rubble sailed through the air directly at Brutus. Brutus nimbly dodged all of it.

Brutus growled as he rolled and dodged, springing forward. The runes on his sword glowed. He was going for a kill shot.

But Constantine practically erupted in light. Pressure shoved Brutus back and he began taking damage from the shining energy. He didn’t go down, though. Instead, the big man’s red glow developed flashes of lightning and a blood-red halo formed above his head.

[Berserk Spirit], thought Vale. The skill the Brutus got after becoming the Northern Warlord. In the next few seconds, Brutus dashed forward like he wasn’t affected by the ring of yellow light pulsing from Constantine anymore. Vale nodded in understanding.

[Berserk Spirit] was a double-edged skill that bled Brutus of health and stamina in exchange for immunity to anything affecting his speed or movement. It also effectively worked like another layer of [Adrenaline Rush].

The new skill activation would have immediately resulted in Constantine’s death...if he hadn’t dodged straight upward. A wake of golden flame followed him as he sprang to a nearby rooftop. He leveled his rifle, took aim, and fired at Brutus. What followed was a cat and mouse game where Brutus would rush to close with the nimble Priest while Constantine reloaded and fired shot after shot from the rooftops, staying out of melee range.

After the first rush, Brutus dropped [Berserk Spirit]. The skill cost probably stopped being worth the extra burst of speed.

Brutus seemed to be getting frustrated, but it turned out to all be an act. Constantine grew a little slower to escape, staying on one rooftop too long and Brutus lashed out with some sort of whip. The attack snapped forward like lightning, wrapped around Constantine’s foot, and he was pulled down to street level with a yelp.

The opportunity was not wasted by Brutus. He immediately activated [Berserk Spirit] again and practically swarmed Constantine. Massive, powerful blows were delivered with incredible speed and shattering power.

Constantine somehow found the time to attach his bayonet to his rifle again and grimly fought a defensive battle, giving ground while he took damage. A constant, moving glow told the story of his wounds healing one after the other.

Is this going to be a battle of attrition? wondered Vale. Brutus was good, really good. And he could probably slaughter dozens of normal SOO players at once. But Constantine was not a normal player. Brutus’ lack of ranged attacks meant the slippery priest could just kite him and whittle him down from range. Brutus had the advantage up close, but not enough to decisively win, and Constantine could heal himself.

But somehow, Brutus was keeping Constantine firmly on the ground now. The two of them stamped and parried along the cobblestone street. Constantine used his spear to skilled effect, but barely kept his enemy at bay. Any powerful cuts from Brutus that missed were likely to pulverize brick walls, or even leave gouges in the cobblestones.

Every time Brutus dropped his [Berserk Spirit] skill, his body lost the telltale glow. Constantine hit him with movement-impairing abilities during this time, knocking him back, giving himself space. Brutus was not looking good. He wasn’t down yet, but small wounds covered him and he was slowing.

Vale was actually watching closely. He thought that Brutus might actually be about to lose, but a sudden shrieking sound interrupted his excitement. It took him a second to realize that the wail was coming from the ship. George’s voice sounded loudly, like from a loudspeaker. “Heads up! Incoming enemies!” A second later, barking shots from one of the ship’s turrets echoed through the abandoned streets.

How...Vale began to think. But a moment later he saw shadows dart across the street as something passed by in the sky above. He caught a glimpse of something long, thin, and the size of a crocodile...and white.

“Oh shit,” he muttered. “Hurry up! End the duel!” he shouted. “I think it’s those eel things!”

The two fighters eyed each other before nodding at the same time, reluctantly, and presumably the duel ended. Brutus looked better almost instantly. They jogged up to Vale, both of them watching the sky. “Attack? What do we do?” asked Constantine. “The others aren’t back yet.”

Vale thought quickly. “Brutus, you don’t have ranged attacks. Wait here, stay hidden. The moment your sister and the others are back, try to protect them and tell them what is going on. Get them to the ship. We need to get out of here.

“Constantine, you are with me. We are going to get to the top of the ship or to rooftops. If we are being attacked, attack them right back. We need to distract them. If they directly attack the ship we might be screwed.”

“They’ll have numbers. Shouldn’t we stay together?”

Vale thought for a second before shaking his head. “No. I can be pretty fast and you can heal yourself. They should be lower level and shouldn’t be able to KO us too fast, and we can meet up if it gets too hot. I want to just create chaos right now so we can get on the ship and get out of here.”

When Constantine looked confused for a second, Vale slowly said, “If they know it’s us, like us, the streamers, they’ll call their friends. We need to leave ASAP.”

“Oh. Understood.” Constantine nodded and ran away. Vale followed him and used <Wind Jump>, a movement spell he’d developed, to reach the top of the ship. He couldn’t remember the name of the vessel at first. That’s right, he thought. The Mitochondria.

His eye tracked the sky for a second before he saw the enemy. He’d been hoping that whatever was going on wasn’t an actual attack, that George had been mistaken or something. That thought flew out the window the moment he saw the Flying Eels.

They all looked different. Some were almost like giant sharks with too many eyes and fins. Others were all angles and spikes. But they all had a big mouth, and they were flying in formation directly at him.

Vale used <Wind Slash> at the same time as a turret on the Mitochondria opened up again. His <Wind Slash > had been powered by 10 points of mana and it tore through the Flying Eels, disrupting their formation. They were tough, though. None of them instantly died like Vale had been hoping. Instead, two of them hit each other. One fell, perhaps hit by a critical strike of some sort. Most of them spiraled out of control, but one of them was completely unaffected and sped towards Vale like a heat-seeking missile.

As it got closer, it was even more jarring-looking. This Flying Eel didn’t look like an eel at all. This one was like a long, wriggling caterpillar covered in screaming faces with one, larger face up front with a single eye. Its mouth opened, displaying a mouth full of sharp teeth that glimmered with green malice. Vale began getting hit with SAN attacks. His willpower protected him for now.

He leapt aside at the last moment. The Flying Eel’s chomping bite hit nothing but air and Vale swept Yarikh’s Will in a glittering arc. His sword cut the side of the alien player as it passed, but didn’t bite deep enough to be critical, not even close.

About one hundred yards away, bolts of yellow fire flashed into the sky from Constantine’s position. The guns on the Mitochondria barked. What looked like tracer rounds mixed in with the shot let Vale verify they were hitting, but none of the Flying Eels were falling. In fact, they were regrouping. He yelped and scuttled back as one of them launched a glowing bolt of goo at him.

More of them seemed to be appearing, flying down from the clouds. He counted at least a couple dozen now. The instructions he’d given Constantine were quickly proven to be the wrong call. If they fought alone now, they’d die.

Luckily, the situation corrected itself quickly. “We’re here!” Constantine called from the street below. Vale glanced down and saw Brutus, Minerva, Bart, and Abbey all hurrying up the boarding ramp before it began to close. With a flash of light, Constantine flew up and landed on the deck next to Vale. “Go, George!” he shouted.

The ship immediately lurched upward. Volleys of fire flashed out from the guns as Vale leveled another <Wind Slash> at the largest concentration of Flying Eels. A moment later, the aggressors counterattacked. At least half a dozen launched glowing projectiles. Vale spun Yarikh’s Will, using his ability to deflect projectiles. Luckily, it worked as well on whatever the Flying Eels were throwing as it did on bullets. This ability sapped even more of his will and stamina, though.

The ship rose faster and began to move forward. After Vale delivered another <Wind Slash> he glanced back as a hatch opened and Abbey climbed to the top of the ship. “Nice of you to join us!” he shouted.

“Yeah, well, I had some things to take care of. How much mana do you have left?”

“Enough,” said Vale. He actually still had over 80 mana, which was really good. The fact he hadn’t actually downed any of the enemy yet didn’t bother him, either. He’d been attacking groups, and the Flying Eel players weren’t stupid. They were waiting for a quick or easy kill.

“Alright, well, I’m here so save what mana you have left anyway.” With that, she took tubes and parts out of a pouch at her waist and began fitting them together. “Target rifle,” she said.

“Good,” said Vale. “They’ve only been testing us so far but more are showing up. I think they’re getting ready to zerg us. This was probably a scout group and they’re calling in the rest of the raid. I’m glad you’re here with your guns.”

“That’s not all, though,” said Abbey. She had a glint in her eye.

“Yeah, I can help, too,” said Bart. He climbed through the hatch up to the deck.

Minerva lightly jumped up on deck after Bart. “We all can now,” she said confidently.

“Thanks to you, actually, man,” said Bart. He opened his hand and a large, steady flame appeared from nowhere. “We’re all magicked up now. Legendary classes.”

There were at least four dozen Flying Eels pacing them now from behind, just out of range.

“Good,” said Vale. His stomach did a flip and he got hit by a dozen emotions, making him feel strange. He ignored it. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

As if his words had been a trigger, the mass of weird, alien monstrosities silently surged forward.

“Here they come!” said Rivera Herterz over the ship’s speakers. A second later, the tail gun began to chatter.

Don’t Laze Me Bro

The escape from the Flying Eels was a battle made of pure chaos. Vale had never experienced anything quite like it in SOO, at least not in the sky. Enemies came from practically every direction, all while his team defended from the top of the Mitochondria. The three brothers below operated the turrets, firing crank-operated machine guns, giant shotguns, and airburst cannons to assist.

Although the Herterz brothers couldn’t solo kill any of the enemy players with the turrets, they helped a lot. And whenever Vale’s team killed an enemy he was sure the brothers got contribution XP.

Vale was focused on dodging Flying Eel projectiles, protecting his team mates, and trying to make his <Wind Slash> attacks count. He realized rather quickly that the enemy used some sort of air shield, which was effectively a hard counter for Vale’s elemental magic.

In this fight, Abbey was the MVP by far. Her guns were accurate, effective, and packed impressive firepower. The fact that the enemy Flying Eels were lower level also helped.

At one point in the fight, a fireball the size of Vale’s head sped up from behind him, slamming into a Flying Eel. He didn’t dare to turn yet, but one of his team had obviously just used their new World Tree elemental magic. He was impressed. Using elemental magic so soon after getting the legendary class would not be easy, especially for a player who didn’t have a magic-based class before.

His thoughts seemed to be underscored when someone fell behind him, landing on their butt. They’d overdone it.

Vale released another, lower-power <Wind Slash> to make sure he had some room and turned around. His friend Bart was sitting down, looking dazed. Bart took the fire magic from the World Tree?! he thought. He shook his head and yelled, “Someone give him some smelling salts! Try to help him up if you get a chance. He just experienced backlash. Probably overdid it.”

Bart would have a very high Intelligence stat already from being an Alchemist, and it likely just went higher after visiting the World Tree. Casting elemental magic was no risk to Vale because he was an experienced magic-slinger and had a decent Willpower stat. But most of Bart’s stats were in Intelligence and Stamina.

It felt like their little group was about to escape. They were pulling away from the Flying Eels slowly and were almost out of projectile range. But then Vale felt something strange through his magical senses. Like a buzz. Then his [Paranoia] skill went crazy.

"What the hell?" he whispered. Then he yelled, "Everyone brace yourselves for something!"

"What?" hollered Abbey.

"I don't know!" Vale yelled back.

From a low cloud, two ominous figures rose. They were bizarre-looking, with barrel-like bodies, something like a fleshy flower on top as a mouth, two rigid, wrong-looking wings, and strange, blunt tentacles instead of legs.

Vale’s blood ran cold. These were First Things race players. This was the class that had been unlocked with the Monarch Stone that was stolen from him.

One First Thing flashed with green light, the other with pink. All the surrounding Flying Eels glowed with both colors. They’re casting buffs, he realized. “The Eels are being buffed!” he yelled out loud.

What followed was a completely insane three minutes of absolute madness. The First Things players attacked with weird, laser-like and electrical attacks, but most of their time and attention was spent on buffing the Flying Eels. Vale and his friends were able to kill a few more of the Eels, but the rest kept getting closer and closer.

Sounds of gunshots, snarling monsters, the rush of wind, and crackle of Bart’s potions became Vale’s world.

Suddenly, the clouds burst apart to the left and another flying ship came streaking in from the distance, guns blazing. Figures on the top of the ship were firing weapons, too. At first Vale thought they were enemies, but he felt an overwhelming sense of relief when he noticed their attacks hitting the Flying Eels. The Vermillion Entertainment symbol was painted on the hull of the other ship.

Vale turned back to the fight around him just in time to see the glob of Flying Eel goo coming right for his face. He tried to dodge but it hit. Vale was almost instantly paralyzed. The paralyzation was only for a second, but that was enough for a large Flying Eel to latch onto his shoulder with serrated teeth.

He barely had the presence of mind to stow all of his important gear in his storage before one of the First Things fried him with a glowing beam before it began to retreat. It didn’t have a face, but Vale could just imagine the smug player. His HP fell rapidly, and he heard his teammates yelling behind him as another Flying Eel ripped out his throat, hitting a critical strike and taking out the rest of his HP.

His vision went black.

You are dead. Would you like to play as a monster? Go to minigames? Play as a bandit? Gamble? Log out?

Vale was standing in an empty room that had no lights other than the glowing options hanging in mid air. In the past, someone dying would be locked out of the game for a week. No matter how popular and fun SOO was, such a harsh penalty would have cost the game most of its player base…if not for the mini games.

“Oh well, at least it’s only a few hours instead of days now,” he said. Before becoming a streamer, Vale might have chosen to gamble, or play minigames to earn in-game money. He was tempted to play as a monster, too. That could be fun and would net minimal amounts of XP for his main character. But Vale ignored all of them, smiled with one side of his mouth, and chose to play as a bandit.

It’d been a long time since he’d died and even longer since he’d played as a bandit. Now that he understood the game better and had more combat experience in general, playing this way might be a lot of fun.

When his vision cleared, he was standing in a forest clearing with a group of about 10 other new bandits, all dead players. Vale looked down at his belt, saw he was armed with a rapier, and grinned. Plenty of people played minigames or gambled in SOO to take a break from their characters. But playing as a bandit or as a monster required dying first.

Some people played as a monster all the time, staying dead. Eventually most of those player types eventually evolved into PVP griefers, though. This required levelling a main account.

Everyone just sort of stared at each other for a moment before someone said, “Uh, everyone check their level yet?”

Vale was snapped back to the present and checked his stats. As a bandit, he had fairly lackluster stats, a 4 in every category, pretty bad. His level was 9, the same as the average player level in the game right now. All of his new skills were hidden. They’d be given to him in the middle of combat, or in the case of sensory skills, he might get them any time.

“I’m level nine,” he said, and soon the other members of this little group all chimed in. They were the same.

Right now he was playing as an NPC. And like any other player in the skin of an NPC or monster, his private messaging function was turned off.

Right on cue, he got a quest:

Kill three players, [or (special quest) kill five town guards], or disrupt ten quests.

And

Collect 2,000 gold.

Reward: 20% XP boost for 1 week or 2 levels, whichever happens first.

A new quest will be awarded after completion.

All XP earned will be transferred to your main character at 50% efficiency.

Vale grinned. When he was lower level and had died…things didn’t go well. He usually barely finished a quest or two. But even though this time he would only be able to play as a bandit for a few hours versus an entire week, he was confident he’d be much more efficient.

And based on his surroundings, he thought he knew where he was. If he was right, he wouldn’t even need to feel conflicted about screwing over other players. Something he’d learned about himself over the last few weeks was that he really, really didn’t like Abyssal Ones players. Hunting Abyssal Ones players would just be payback.

Where he’d spawned was perfect. If he was right, Innsmouth was to the north.

“Any streamers here? You don’t need to reveal your names or anything,” said Vale.

Nobody replied, just looked at him. He spread his hands and lied, “Well, I’m not a streamer either, but I have an idea of how we can finish at least one or two quests.”

One of the other would-be bandits hefted her axe and said, “I’m listening.” She had a big scar on her face and a mullet.

“Me too,” said a big, bearded man. His voice was familiar. He was the person who asked about levels.

“Good,” said Vale. “We should have gotten the same quest. The game does that so we’ll work together. So you all got the one to kill three players or five guards for the pvp quest, right?” The other players nodded. “Alright. Good. But before we start, does anyone have a weapon they really suck with? Does anyone need to trade?”

“We can trade?” asked a middle aged man with a physicaldex of 8. Of course, the 'dex wouldn't matter since the game randomized everyone's appearance as a bandit. It could use aspects of your character or the player, but the bandit character shouldn't be recognizable. “I’ve been dead a lot and I never knew that!”

“Yeah, you can trade weapons.” Vale smiled. “There really actually aren’t any rules for us at all. It’s actually one major reason I think my plan will work.”

He bent down, grabbed a stick, and began outlining his scheme.

Bandit Moonlighting

Vale led his little group through the forest. The brine smell in the air was getting stronger. Before long, the trees thinned and they saw the distant ocean. The scrubby grey shore line was just as Vale remembered it.

“How did you know where we were?” asked a woman in the group. She carried a pair of daggers like she knew how to use them.

“It’s the moss,” said Vale. “This is the only area in the Euro continent with Dagger Moss. It’s used in low-level magical reagents.”

“He’s right,” said a man in the back. “I didn’t even notice before. But what do you mean, ‘low level?’ I was still using this stuff like one or two levels ago.”

Vale made a non-committal noise and reminded himself that most players were still not even level 10 yet. Now that he thought about it, it was even less of a mystery why the new alien-race players had been demolishing human players so quickly.

The group walked in silence for a while. Everyone’s nerves were tight. The sounds of a ringing anvil and other audible signs of civilization were cropping up, but if Vale was right, it wouldn’t be human.

At the edge of some trees, the group peered through and saw a farm at the very outskirts of a strange-looking town. Sure enough, they only saw one biped wandering around and it wasn’t human. This was an Abyssal One settlement.

“Okay, everyone knows the plan right? Don’t get caught, don’t do anything to set off any alarms. We’ll meet up at the rendezvous area ASAP.”

One of the group, the woman with a mullet chuckled. “This is kind of funny. Every other time I’ve been a bandit, we’ve just run around looking for someone to kill, but this just might work. It’ll be one hell of a story if we all knock the quest out before dying!”

Vale quirked a smile as the others nodded. He wondered who the mullet woman was in-game with her normal character. Maybe like him, she was a streamer. He wouldn’t know unless this operation popped up on someone else’s stream in the future. By long tradition, nobody had shared their character names or much of any particulars.

The game was usually pretty good about not putting mortal enemies together in the bandit quests or mini games, but it was still possible. And in situations where the players had to work together, finding out that the player that just killed you was in arm’s reach was usually not helpful for group cohesion.

Vale had to admit to himself that nicer, less aggressive players would never choose to do bandit duty, either. If Bart died, he’d be hanging out in the gambling hall.

The bandits all eyed each other for a few more seconds before coming to an unspoken agreement at once. There wasn’t anything else to talk about, so they all went their separate ways.

Vale decided to go the long way around and stuck to the woods. Crawling around in mud wasn’t on his to-do list as a bandit. One other bandit was going the same direction as him but kept their distance.

Everyone in their group had a very simple task. They had to find batteries. Once that was done, they had to meet up again, all while staying undetected. Vale wasn’t too worried about the first part of the plan, though. Player towns like this one were not exactly high security until something actually happened. In fact, unless they were in the wilderness or on a quest, most players in town were liable to have their interfaces open, be talking to an NPC, or they could be researching something.

The tricky part of this step of the plan was finding batteries in the first place. Vale wasn’t sure if the Abyssal Ones even had many batteries. They definitely used rifles and other black powder firearms, but he wasn’t sure about the level of their other technology. Most of his interactions with them had been violent.

It turned out he had nothing to worry about. The other inhuman races might have tentacles or fly or other weirdness, but the Abyssal Ones’ towns seemed pretty close to human-looking other than weird growths, creepy shrines, and blacked-out buildings that might have human women held as prisoners.

The press and various websites had had a field day after finding out about that. Lovecraft fans had been stoked that the game adhered so closely to the lore from the old books. No matter how heated the arguments got about it on the ‘net, the developers, Yggdrasil, had never publicly responded.

Influencers had opined that if people were angry about the Abyssal Ones, they could roll a human character to kill them. The controversy had actually made the game grow even further.

Vale blinked and came back to the present. It felt like ever since he’d had his Monarch Stone stolen, he’d begun spacing out more. Luckily, he’d already found a battery. Near a shack by the edge of the forest was a crafting station a player had put in place. Nothing there was valuable so they didn’t even have it locked up. Luckily, they had it rigged up to work at night, too. The battery was barely large enough for his purposes, powering some sort of lantern. He nabbed it and moved to the predetermined shack.

When he arrived, another bandit was already there, crouching down, hiding. The rest of them trickled in over the next half hour. Nobody spoke. After they were all gathered, two of them kept watch at the door and through gaps in the walls. The Abyssal Ones mostly stayed inside their decrepit buildings with the odd player here and there wandering around. The players weren’t paying attention. And luckily, SOO was the sort of game that didn’t show a big, floating red name above enemies’ heads unless you already knew they were there or were looking for them.

After another half hour, Vale motioned everyone to stab a hole in their battery. This part was tricky because it was time-dependent. “You ready?” hissed Vale.

“Yeah,” whispered a thin, shifty-looking bandit. He’d volunteered to set the inn on fire.

Their shack hideout had been chosen because of how close it was to the inn.

The thin pyromaniac slipped out the rickety door and Vale watched as best he could through a crack in the shed. It looked like the man had found an oily rag somewhere. Sure enough, he set a small fire to the side of the inn and hurried back.

It was hard to see into the inn, especially through the cracks in the shed. The distant glass was leaded, foggy, and dirty. But as the smoke grew, soon enough, movement could be seen. Vale’s plan partially hinged on the fact that whenever a building in a settlement or town caught fire, if there wasn’t a fire department, players would get an impromptu quest. These quests were generally to form a water line and put the fire out. Only after the fire was out would the system give quests to track down the fire starter if it’d been caused by arson.

The group of bandits were tense, silent as the minutes ticked by. By the time they could actually smell the smoke, flames were licking up the side of the inn. Vale breathed a sigh of relief as hideous Abyssal Ones jogged to form a line between the fire and the nearest well.

Vale signaled and everyone in their group used a weapon to puncture their crude batteries. Then they all poured everything they could from inside into a bucket that Vale had ready for this purpose.

He mentally started a five-minute timer through his user interface even though he didn’t think it’d be an issue.

Then Vale snuck out of the shed, heading right, going the long way around. The fire was spreading on the inn and Abyssal Ones who weren’t fighting the fire gawked. Nobody saw Vale. He quickly sprinted across the street, down a briney, trash-strewn alleyway, and crouched behind a rotten crate, watching the line of Abyssal Ones as they passed up buckets full of water, and passed back empty ones.

He did a double take at one point. A mouse that scurried across the alley had looked like it had a tentacle growing out of its back.

Vale had to choose the right moment to act but he only had a few minutes. While he watched, he examined the town itself more than he’d had time to before. Mold occupied every nook and cranny. Darkness seemed to settle over the town like a shroud, with dark clouds hanging overhead and seemingly not moving. The Abyssal Ones looked much like he’d always remembered–a mashup of man and fish. An occasional variant existed that showed aspects of some other aquatic life–most of them were likely players.

The buildings were mostly squat, old-looking, and unkempt.

Vale felt the time was right a minute later and jumped forward. He swung his bucket in a flat arc, dusting at least six Abyssal Ones with the mixture, but maybe more. Then he lunged forward with his rapier, neatly skewering one of the creatures through the neck. Bandits had very low-level martial abilities, just enough not to impede players from using their weapons.

With a loud DING! He suddenly saw and had access to three skills. [Line Slash,] [Bleed,] and [Sprint.]

He was familiar with all three skills so he didn’t waste any time. [Line Slash] could be used in a circle around the fighter, or in a literal line. Vale did the latter and also activated [Bleed,] at the same time, applying a damage-over-time debuff. The attack hit over half a dozen grouped-up Abyssal ones.  Both skills were powerful, and both had a long cooldown. After he made his move, before the enemy could react, he grabbed a garbage can lid from the refuse pile behind him and threw it at the ground.

All the bandits hiding in the nearby shack across the street flew out with a bloodthirsty scream. The racket Vale made had been a signal, and also had been meant to help the bandits find where he was faster. As the Abyssal Ones were off-balance, the bandits fell upon them.

It was glorious.

Normally, a bandit quest for kills was very difficult to accomplish because the game only counted kills a player had actually participated in. This could be a problem, even if an effort were made to let more bandits get damage on each foe. For one, fights were often difficult and unpredictable. Also, it was hard to get every member of a group to apply damage. Even if that happened, sometimes the game would only give credit to the person who delivered the killing blow.

Statuses were much harder to apply, but also a much more consistent way for multiple players to get credit for a kill. Also, bandit quests made skills random. Status-applying skills were rare.

However, in SOO, there was usually a time limit of five minutes after which something that was picked up belonged to the bearer. So effectively, every member of the group had stolen a battery, made it “theirs,” then poured some acid in the bucket. It hadn’t been 5 minutes so Vale didn’t “own” the caustic soup yet. As a result, every Abyssal One he’d dusted had gotten an “Acid” status that the game recognized every member of the group for giving.

If the group had acted the way players normally played bandits, a few members of their group might have finished the quest before being killed, but most wouldn't. This time was different. Vale heard the ding of the quest being completed in no time, and he knew the others would have heard it, too.

“Run away!” he shouted. “If you can log out and survive, you’ll get an XP bonus!”

Cooperation time was over. Just like that, it was every man for himself. The Abyssal Ones might have been caught completely by surprise during the ambush, but now they’d figured out they were under attack. Vale had three of them chasing after him.

The last skill he got that he hadn’t activated quite yet was his trump card.

He ran his ass off and had almost made it to the woods before there was a muffled whumf behind him. The next thing he knew, a net with weighted corners was enveloping him. He tried to use [Sprint], the skill he’d been saving for an emergency, but the net blocked his activation.

Shit shit shit!

The Abyssal Ones got closer, raising their weapons. In desperation, without actually thinking it’d work, he snarled and used his go-to <Wind Slash> spell. He wasn’t sure who was more surprised when the magic coalesced, blowing his enemies off their feet. The net he’d been tangled in was just…gone. Magical pressure had shredded it or blasted it away.

Vale didn’t waste time, he turned and ran. As soon as he hit the woodline he hid in a big fern and logged out. He was shaking.

What the hell just happened?

This time when he wound up in the SOO lobby he logged out and sent a message to Bart to meet him when he could.

Now back in his own skin, Trent went to the kitchen, grabbed some chips, and sat down to think. It would be easy to explain away what had just happened as a glitch, but something about it had jogged a memory he’d been either too busy or too tired to really dust off and examine over the last few weeks.

He was thinking about the time he’d somehow used magic from SOO outside the game…in one of his VR classes. Part of him had convinced himself that he’d imagined the entire thing, but now he wasn’t sure.

He needed to talk to Steve about it.

Conspiracy Train

While Trent was waiting for Steve to stop playing as Bart in SOO, to get off his ass and come talk to him, he thought about what had just happened. He controlled his frustration. Part of him knew it was just anxiety. It might be a while before his friend saw his message and found a good time to log, after all.

When a character was dead in SOO, they weren’t supposed to communicate with living characters. The gag was to prevent cheating–mostly reporting locations of enemy players while playing as bandits or monsters. Of course, Yggdrasil Entertainment couldn’t monitor out of game communications. But the sheer inconvenience of sending and receiving out-of-game communications made lack of PMs a good way to prevent cheating.

Trent leaned his face on his palms. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he hadn’t misremembered. He’d used magic in his VR class. So maybe his earlier assumption that Yggdrasil couldn’t monitor communications might not be accurate. After all, Yggdrasil shouldn’t have anything to do with a college classroom program. No matter what angle he thought about it from, it shouldn’t have been possible.

He did a quick web search about people being seen using SOO powers in classrooms, but didn’t turn up anything. There weren’t any accounts of people saying they’d done so, either. This seemed odd the more he thought about it. What about what had happened with him? Nobody had talked about it or had given an eyewitness account to one of the gaming gossip blogs?

What the hell was going on? Actually, what did he even really know about Yggdrasil Entertainment other than they were the super talented and advanced developers of SOO? Their CEO’s name is… Simon Smith or something, right? Actually, I’m not sure.

He suddenly felt like he wasn’t alone and glanced up. Florinia was drying her hand with a towel. She had a small smile and seemed amused that she’d startled him. Trent was already in a bad mood and seeing Florinia didn’t help. He’d had a niggling suspicion for a while that she was a tease, just stringing him along. She always managed to avoid actually being asked out, always had an excuse not to spend time with him one on one. Meanwhile, sometimes she’d just turn up like this when he was alone and act interested. It wasn’t like he always approached her. Trent was aware he couldn’t always read the room right, but he was sure that she only flirted back when others couldn’t see. He didn’t understand why she seemed to be bipolar with how she interacted with him.

Trent wasn’t even swayed by how she’d changed clothes from the last time he’d seen her. She was even showing cleavage now.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Her smile fell and her eyes flickered. “That’s it? No hello? What’s your problem today?”

“My problem is I want a straight answer. No more games. Do you want to go out with me? Yes or no?”

She stared at him for a full three seconds, expression not changing. Then without a word she turned and walked away.

“Well that fucking figures,” Trent muttered under his breath.

He stewed for a few minutes before sighing and letting his thoughts drift again. Trying to figure out girls was something he might never accomplish. Thinking that way helped.

Maybe I should do some brainstorming. He pulled up a word processing program on his persocom to take notes. Maybe it would help him organize his thoughts or even figure out some sort of pattern. He might have some insights.

Trent hadn’t written anything by the time Steve showed up. He’d been drawing one continuous blank and his finger resting on the keyboard had just made a few lines of “dddd.”

His friend settled in across the table from him and sipped on a bottle of water. “I brought you one, too,” he said. He passed it over.

Trent opened it gratefully, realizing how thirsty he really was.

Steve asked, “So what was so important that you couldn’t just send me an email, or wait until you were alive again? You only have a few more hours. Hell, Abbey died too. She’s just gambling until she can come back. We all figured that after everyone is back we can actually plan our first combat mission. Not get caught with our pants down. Me and Minerva have been practicing with our elemental magic.” His voice betrayed his excitement.

Trent made a brushing gesture with his hand. He paused for a while, trying to decide how to explain what was bothering him. Ultimately he decided to just tell Steve about what happened and let his friend draw his own conclusions.

His friend was silent as Trent talked. After he was done, Steve tapped a finger on the table and looked around to make sure they were still alone. Nobody was in sight.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re sure. If you weren’t sure, you wouldn’t have told me.”

“Thanks for that, I guess,” sighed Trent.

“So, it kind of seems that none of this would be that big of a deal if it only happened in the game. Like, using one of your player skills as a bandit is weird, and probably a bug, but like… not that big of a deal.” He ruefully scratched his head. “For you, that is. The Abyssal Ones players probably didn’t appreciate it.”

“Yeah.” Trent laughed. They probably thought he’d gotten some sort of OP random skill.

“The real issue is that it reminded you of what happened before, and kind of created some wacked-out questions.” Steve shook his head. “Speaking of questions, how the hell do you forget about using magic in class, anyway?”

“It wasn’t long after that when I got shot at IRL, dude.”

“Oh yeah. Hmmm. See, the thing is, this is not the first time I’ve heard something like this.”

“Really?” His friend had Trent’s full attention.

“Yeah. It isn’t really common, and kind of usually only pops up on conspiracy sites or horror pasta groups, but it’s out there. Back in the day, before persocoms, people were worried about their cell phones listening in on them and giving them ads on social media or whatever. So nowadays if someone online says they were able to do something that shouldn’t be possible in a VR setting, other people usually say it’s just an extension of this old privacy fear.”

“Dude, where the hell do you hang out online?” Trent shook his head. Not only was Steve a gamer, he’s a conspiracy theorist? He was looking at his friend with fresh eyes.

Steve shrugged. “It’s really not that fringe. Like, even though people don’t talk about it as much anymore, the fact remains that deep dive VR tech kind of just sprang up overnight in the past…and was even safe, ready for prime time. Do you know how improbable that is, much less from some small, no-name company? Everyone just kind of let it pass, calling it a massive achievement from a small, talented team…probably because it has benefited everyone. The news compared it to the big breakout tech companies that popularized smartphones, but it’s really not the same. And the smartphones companies became famous, just like other tech companies with breakthroughs. Their CEOs were household names. Meanwhile, do you even know the name of the company that invented the tech for deep dive VR? What about persocoms?”

“Uh, no. But I don’t really pay attention to that stuff. Other people know, right?”

“Sure, but it’s not commonly talked about, or promoted. Think about that. Some companies get constant news time, but the companies that have transformed communication, business, and entertainment as we know it are MIA. Very little is even known about those companies. Kind of like…” Steve lifted a questioning eyebrow.

Trent got it. “Like Yggdrasil Entertainment.”

“Nailed it. So even though your stories don’t seem really well connected at first, and some people might just ignore you…For one thing, you’re my friend. Second, you’re not creative enough to come up with a crazy story like this–”

“Thanks…I think.” Trent gave him the finger.

Steve smiled and continued, “Third and last, the world has been changing, society seems to be getting worse, nobody has money, but entertainment keeps getting better and better. Think about it. Even though we have huge social problems, regular people aren’t consistently pushing for any kind of change or relief because everyone just always stays home, playing games or watching people play games. And there is so much money involved in the VR industry…it’s insane. The mob and criminals are involved, but politicians need to be, too. The fact that having a literal computer in our brains was approved so fast is wild. It can take years for a single drug to be approved for…stomach cramps or something. Meanwhile: head computers.

“Then there’s the fact that eyewitness accounts seem to be suppressed, like what happened with you. Someone who isn’t online virtually much might not care that you were able to use an ability from a completely unrelated game in your classroom, but the fact you could, if true, means everything is far more connected than anyone knew before. That was a government program you were in. I can come up with dozens of questions just based on that.

“And scariest? This stuff is in our brains. Is it changing us? Can it? Before, the answer was a big no with an eye roll. Like, anyone who even suggested it was called crazy. In VR, you can literally throw around magic in a video game where you play a character, but if you are still able to do the same thing in a separate, older, government program where you are showing up as yourself? People used to be afraid their smartphones were listening to them. Our entire lives are in VR now. Without privacy… If everything is connected, maybe controlled by the same people…” He let his words hang.

Trent stared. “Dude, you’re both scarier, and smarter than I thought,” he said.

“Thanks…I think.” Steve gave him the finger.

The two of them sat for a minute just sipping water in silence before Steve said, “You know what we need to do now, right?”

“No, what?”

“We gotta Dive, join a study program for our college together. We still have access. After I create one and we join, you gotta try to use magic.”

Trent slowly nodded. He stood. “Alright. I’ll go to my room. Let’s do it.”

“I’ll meet you online.”

***

An hour later, Trent had tried many, many times to use wind magic, or any other skills from SOO in a private study room but nothing worked.

Trent was mentally tired. “I’ve tried everything.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe we can try it again later. Just…keep an eye out. If anything else happens, tell me. And don’t send any emails about it.”

“That’s paranoid.”

“True, but are you in a big hurry to send an email about it?”

“No,” said Trent.

They shared a nod. The two of them Surfaced to take a nap before the rest of their team grouped up again to work.

Working With Friends for Fun and Violence

Vale stood in a giant hangar with his team, the Mitochondria behind them. He made another mark on the blackboard, dropped his virtual chalk and crossed his arms before it hit the floor.

He’d done his homework the night before and some before getting up. Now he was ready to work. The XP boost he’d gotten from his bandit quest would be a nice bump. This was going to be a big day.

The Mitochondria was going to war. So was the Niven.

Vale thought “Niven” was a weird name for a ship, but as the crew of the Mitochondria, he couldn’t really throw stones. The Niven’s crew was in the hangar as well, standing in front of the second Vermillion Entertainment ship. The company had instructed them to support Vale’s team for the day.

“Alright, any questions?” asked Vale.

“Yeah,” said Abbey. “Team One and Team Two sound dry. And it’s too easy to figure out if an enemy ever overhears us. Shouldn’t we have team names or call signs or something?”

“Is that really important?” asked Vale.

“It doez make sense,” opined Minerva. “We are entertainers, yes? Let us add spice.” Beside her, Brutus shrugged.

“When are we ever going to use call signs?” he muttered. Vale sighed and turned to Rose, the leader of the other team. He still hadn’t properly met her in real life, but now he knew her character’s name.  Rose Bellamy was an Armsman Guard. Vale wasn’t always great with names, so he was focusing right now on remembering Rose, and Miriam Johns, their team’s Priest. Unlike Constantine, Miriam had chosen the True Believer path, not Arms Brother. This meant she’d actually be much better at buffing her team and resisting SAN attacks but would be far less useful dealing any damage.

Both women were the tall blondes of their group. There was also a black chick, a redhead, and an Indian chick in their group, too. Vale thought the blonde players looked like the types to be most pissed if he forgot their names, so they were the highest priority to remember.

“Rose, what do you think? I really want to get going, so one way or another, let’s figure this out,” said Vale. The plan was really simple. Thankfully. After being surprised and getting killed the day before, he couldn’t wait to get some payback.

“I think…” she said and looked at her four teammates. Their team was still one person short of the max number. Her teammates all nodded, so she continued, “We want to be called Girl Party.”

“That sounds like a porno,” said Vale. They all glared at him and he shrugged. “Don’t get mad at me. You’re shooting the messenger. ‘Girl Party?’ Fuck. Fine, whatever. You all will be Party One through Party Five. Rose, you’re GP One. Miriam, you’ll be number two if you don’t mind.”

“Why am I number two?” asked Miriam.

Vale almost just told the truth, it was because he could remember her name and didn’t feel like reading his notes or squinting to see the others’ character data. Instead he said, “Because the core of every team is the healer or the characters that help resist SAN attacks.”

Without waiting to hear their response, he turned back to Abbey. Voice resigned, he asked, “What are we? I’m assuming you want a team name, too.”

“You don’t want any say?” asked Bart.

“Hell no. I don’t care. The streams just list us individually or identify our group by all of our names.”

“Wow, you are being spicy this morning. I died yesterday too. Chill out,” said Abbey.

Surprisingly, it was Constantine who came to his aid. “Hey, I wanna get going too and we could talk about this stuff on the ships. I don’t think all the disrespect is necessary.” But then he looked up. “That goes for you too, Vale.”

Traitor. Vale rolled his eyes. “Alright.” He waved at the screen in front of him that only he could see. “Tell me what we’re called or I’m just going to enter in that we’re the Musketeers.”

“That’s a horrible name. Wait, you can do that? It’s official?”

“Yes. The function actually came out with the expansion. Any group that’s together more than a week can name the group itself.”

“How the hell did I miss that?” wondered Bart out loud.

“Probably for the same reason I did,” said Vale. “It doesn’t matter and we were bored as fuck training for a week.”

Brutus snorted a laugh.

Abbey must have known she was losing momentum because she blurted out, “Let’s call our group Eldritch Alligators.”

“What? Why?”

“Think about it. Before we sign off, we can be like, ‘See you later, alligator!’” said Abbey. Then the steampunk girl struck a pose with her fingers in a “V” next to her eye.

Vale was tempted to scoff, and he thought the name was stupid, but the reality was Abbey was a major draw for all of their streams. Fans loved her. Minerva, too. If their resident firearms nut wanted to act like a cog-loving chihuahua on crack, it might actually make them all more money. Besides, it wasn’t his own pride he was throwing away.

“Fine. I’ll enter it in. We can figure out which ‘Gator’ we are on the way.”

Abbey looked like she was going to make the pose again, but thankfully, Bart put a hand on her shoulder and gently shook his head. She shrugged. “Boring,” she grumbled.

Vale really didn’t understand what his friend saw in her. If it wasn’t for the gun skills she’d taught him over the last few weeks IRL and her general competence in-game, she would have been a little too weird to handle.

***

“We are getting close.” Minerva was on the radio. She was in communications with PVP teams on the front lines as well as the Herterz brothers down below.

“Good,” said Vale. “We won’t have long to make this work, so is everyone focused?”

Everyone nodded. Nobody got offended. On long, boring rides some players would open a screen and scroll social media. It was unlikely that anyone in this group would be doing something like that. They were all professionals. He knew Bart had been making potions. It didn’t hurt to make sure, though.

“Cool. Get ready. Flying Eels and whatnot will be our biggest threat.”

Bart frowned. “You know, it's too bad the game only lets us have one team and a crew on board each airship. It'd be great if we could have another team with guns to keep those damn things off of us.”

“Hell yeah! Gunslingers like me!” said Abbey.

Vale grimaced. “I think one Abbey is more than enough."

“Hey! Wanna get shot?"

"There is more of that winning personality."

"Look who's talking!?"

"I swear you guys act like you're related sometimes," sighed Bart.

At the front of the ship, Constantine called back, "I can see fighting!" Brutus and Minerva were standing right behind him and tensed like they could be attacked any moment.

They were probably right.

"Everyone take your positions! You hear that, Herterz brothers?"

"Loud and clear, boss," came George’s reply over the ship’s coms.

Before she moved to her own position, Abigail eyed the deck and said, “You know, I have an idea for dealing with flying attacks, but it’s gonna take me a while. I’ll have to find the blueprint, too. I just heard about it a few days ago—” She mumbled to herself as she began pouring powder into a gun barrel.

Vale moved back to the rail and looked below. He silently whistled. The human forces had finally gotten their shit together, halting the inhuman player advance. They’d rediscovered trench warfare.

Even with a shorter respawn time, they’d made it costly as hell for the enemy to advance anymore.

A series of complicated and expansive trenches practically covered the area around the human town of Plysmuth. Since the enemy had ways to fly and sneak behind enemy lines, it seemed the defenders were taking no chances.

Plysmuth was basically the gateway city into the heart of the American/European server cities. Mountain ranges on both sides made this area an ideal choke point.

Bunkers dotted the defenses. From the air, it all looked like a game of connect-the-dots with occasional explosions or smoke from fires destroying the illusion.

The city's walls brimmed with holy and eldritch energy shields. Any enemies trying to attack the city directly would bounce off and be dealt with by the NPCs and players in the trenches. At least in theory.

Across no man's land, on the enemy side, there were trenches too. They had some notable differences from the human side. A few lines of fortifications were being manned by Abyssal Ones, but they were bigger and nowhere near as expansive. Behind the trenches were earthen barriers protecting their artillery. There were also what looked like hills and holes behind them.

Brutus was the first to figure it out. “The flying players and NPCs must shelter underground before attacking,” he shouted over the noise of the wind. “The holes and hills have to be protective bunkers they wait in. It might be like their Forward Observation Bases that we use for crafting and accessing the auction house and stuff.”

Vale nodded. He didn’t see any flying enemies at all but he knew they had to be around. Brutus’ theory made sense.

He wished they could get some more information. Unfortunately, putting down to talk to the defenders would be a bad idea right now. Both sides had big guns, flak weapons, and cannons pointed at each other. The Herterz brothers were already making evasive maneuvers to avoid getting hit with big shells from the Abyssal Ones.

Simple messages could be transmitted with the defenders below, almost like a Morse shorthand system. Vale ordered, “Ask the defenders really quick if they know what the hills are.”

Bart nodded and moved to the radio. After a short wait, he said, “They don’t know what we are talking about. We can see more than they can from the air. The enemy is on a hill.”

“Damn, it was worth a try.” Vale tapped his chin with a finger as a crazy plan started to form. “Tell the defenders to shoot their big guns like crazy after we attack, when we’ve turned around and are heading back. I have an idea.”

Bart nodded again. Then Vale ordered George to pour on the speed and head over enemy lines. Mentally, Vale rubbed his hands together. There was some danger involved with this maneuver, after all this was PVP. But the battle was huge, and both the Mitochondria and the Niven were moving quickly. Hopefully, the enemy wouldn’t have time to react. In fact, the lack of flying enemies was already proof that the plan was working so far.

Of course, this sort of daring plan would probably only work once, but that would be enough. Vale was hoping to get his team enough XP from this battle to get a firm advantage for the rest of the war. Other players had been levelling for longer, but now Vale’s team had an airship. Airships in general were completely new to most players. Everyone had known they were coming for at least a week, but most had probably not seen one already. Vale was counting on the element of surprise with the original plan. If he could pull off his wild-ass idea, it’d be entirely because he was able to catch the bad guys with their pants down.

He crossed his fingers.

Right now, only the Vermillion Entertainment ships were in the sky. They needed to make this attack count.

“Blitzkrieg the fuck out of them!” shouted Vale. Despite himself, he was grinning. This was a job, he was working, but he was also having a lot of fun.

It’d been a while. He’d missed it.

Dat XP

The Mitochondria near-silently zoomed over the battlefield. Giant exploding shells thundered in the sky as the Abyssal Ones frantically tried to adjust fire to hit them. Gusts of wind from the flak would have blown Vale off of his feet if he hadn’t been hanging onto a rail. It felt like all the enemy players were trying to shoot down the ship.

Meanwhile, the human defenders took advantage of the chaos, bombarding the Abyssal Ones with artillery. On the radio, Bart asked them not to charge out of the trenches yet. Hopefully, their flying enemies were waiting for the humans to do exactly that.  Maybe they could be tricked into not moving yet.

So far, so good. No Flying Eels or First Things in sight.

“If you haven’t already cast your buffs, do it now!” shouted Vale. Constantine nodded and his skin glowed briefly. Vale felt lighter. Minerva cursed a few mostly insulting, but somewhat encouraging lines, activating her [Embolden] skill to protect the group against SAN attacks. Brutus produced a consumable from somewhere, some kind of feathered fetish that he broke. Vale’s eyebrows went up as he realized he’d gotten an extra 10 HP.  Bart threw a potion on the ground, and Vale watched his stats. The smoke that briefly swirled around the ship resulted in a +1 to his Dexterity for half an hour. That must have been an expensive potion to make!

“Are you going to do anything?” Vale asked Abbey.

“No, don’t have group buffs. What about you?”

Vale shrugged. “Pretty much the same boat.”

“Guess we better DPS the shit out of everything, huh?” She held up a pistol and grinned.

Vale mutely nodded and felt grateful for his [Elemental Magic: Air]. Without it, his damage-dealing abilities in a situation like this would have been pretty bad without some of the creative solutions other Occultist players had experimented with. One Occultist streamer even used a bow! Using [Ancient Body Magic], she could use spells to buff her strength stat and shoot an incredibly powerful metal bow that a Technician had made for her. The play style was risky, and she wasn’t as accurate as a dedicated DPS class, but it definitely gave her extra utility on top of her normal magic and map-reading skills of her class.

Once the airship was deep over enemy lines, the attacks just stopped. The Abyssal Ones were trying to turn their guns. In the meantime, there was a respite. Speed was everything for this operation.

Above the enemy gun emplacements, both air ships split up, heading opposite directions.  Below them, behind the Abyssal Ones trenches, were the huge, protective berms made of dirt. Behind them were the enemy’s big guns. They were normally protected from human fire by their earthen shields, but right now, Vale’s team was directly above.

The game’s airships had guns that couldn’t directly kill players, but they could destroy equipment and emplacements. He briefly wished the brothers could effectively utilize the ship’s bombs, but they couldn’t yet and there was no point in wasting them.

“Now!” Vale ordered, and the Herterz brothers cut loose. Half the guns on the Mitochondria fired downwards, ravaging the enemy’s artillery guns and big cannons. From up above they were all sitting ducks. The destruction rippled outwards as fast as the Mitochondria could fly. Then the ship turned around and began to descend.

The original plan would have utilized Vale’s wind magic to help the team descend, but Abbey had suggested rappelling as an alternative. With her class, she could make a rig for everyone in very little time. Then after the team hit the ground, they were going to kill at least one or two handfuls of enemy players who’d been manning the artillery guns.

Keeping it simple was good. Allowing Vale to conserve mana was even better.

But now Vale called Abbey and Bart over. “New plan. Do you still have that grappling hook launcher thing?”

Before she answered, Abbey leaned over the railing to empty every cylinder of a big pepperbox revolver. The last few weeks had been profitable for her, and with the extra money she’d made a lot of new weapons. “Yeah.”

“Can you shoot any of Bart’s potions out of it? Or better yet, can he?”

She thought for a second. “No.”

“Shit.” Vale mentally changed his plan and asked Bart, “Can we throw your potions?”

“Yes, but they will be less powerful if anyone but me throws them.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Quick, give everyone as many poison gas potions as you have. And then give us explosive potions.” He raised his voice, making sure his team could hear him. “Get ready! We only have a couple minutes max, I think!”

Overhead, a few shells whizzed into the empty sky, but some of the bigger enemy guns had almost already been adjusted to target them. So far, there still weren’t any flying enemies, either. The small arms fire from below was only dangerous if one of them stuck their head over the side.

Abbey was being clever and watching down below using a handheld mirror in one hand. Her position next to a speaker was allowing her to give instructions to George Herterz, placing the ship directly above her target. She’d figured out her role without being told.

Meanwhile, Bartholomew ran around the deck, handing out potions as the ship continued to lower. Vale helped guide George right over one of the largest hills with a single hole in the center. By this time, the entire team had figured out what he was trying to do. Vale was grateful that everyone was quick on the uptake. It saved a lot of time.

“Throw the gas into the hole!” yelled Vale. Without hesitation, everyone threw their bottles below. Before the caustic projectiles even landed, he ordered, “Now toss the explosives!”

At least two gas bottles made it into the hole. About five seconds later, the explosion vials went off.

The team had figured a long time ago that using Bart’s potions from the air as bombs would usually be a waste of resources. The explosions were just not large enough to actually hit anything from high altitudes, and even if they did, it wouldn’t do enough damage to kill players before they got away.

Critical hits in SOO could result in instant death, at least for now. Game analysts had been speculating for the last year that at high levels, single-hit KOs would no longer be possible. But explosions almost never killed players outright–especially not ones as relatively small as Bart’s.

This situation was completely different, though.

Peppering the hole with the little bombs was just enough to collapse the vertical tunnel after the vials were already down inside. This resulted in a cloud of poison covering the entire collapsed bunker.

Now Vale just had to hope his plan worked. “Go go go!” he shouted. The Mitochondria began to rise at the same time as Flying Eels boiled up out of a distant mound. Below them, the bunker they’d attacked continued to smoke with noxious gas.

“Gun it, George!” screamed Abbey.

“Balls to the wall!” ordered Vale. “Everyone go all out! We need to get out of here!”

The Mitochondria was picking up speed. Abbey drew her gigantic Howdah pistol, her legendary weapon reward from the Hygon quest. Then as fast as she could, she fired shot after exploding shot into the closing mass of Flying Eels. Each projectile cost mana so she unfortunately couldn’t keep it up forever.

Vale delivered massive <Wind Slash> attacks. Brutus had gotten a crossbow from somewhere and was shooting it as fast as he could. Minerva carefully aimed before delivering rock spikes that she generated above an open palm. Bart launched a giant fireball.

None of the Flying Eels died, but they fell back in waves, presumably to heal. Vale gritted his teeth. As the air ship made its escape to friendly lines, it passed over the line of guns that had been frantically trying to turn to bear on them. A terrible wave of thunder came from below as the Abyssal Ones crews tried to take down the air ship, but it was moving just barely too fast. Giant explosions rocked the ship’s bow as it sped back towards safety.

The Niven was almost directly abreast of them two hundred years to one side. It took a bit of damage, but still moved forward under its own power. The ship’s hull belched smoke.

“Someone tell our allies to attack! The guns are down and that one nest or bunker thing we just took out is still out of service!” crowed Vale.

“I will tell zem,” announced Minerva.

Suddenly, notifications popped up for Vale. He closed most of them so they wouldn’t block his vision, but he’d caught a glimpse of them. He checked his combat logs and smiled. Several enemy players had been killed. They were First Things! Vale was earning a butt ton of experience. The gas idea had worked!

A new notification and a ring caught his attention. He’d just leveled up. “Holy crap!” he whispered.

And he still had an XP buff from his bandit quest!

Vale grinned. The battle wasn’t over yet, but this day was already off to a great start!

Fire from the humans began peppering the sky again behind the Mitochondria. XP notifications kept flashing, popping up. It was absolute chaos.

Vale loved it. He hadn’t had this much fun playing the game in a while.

Finger Game

Vale made a frustrated frown before asking, “See anything?”

“Nope.”

“Shit.”

While Vale talked to Abbey, Brutus and Minerva were not even pretending to pay attention. The two of them were sparring slowly, more for practice than an actual duel. Everyone else was letting them have half of the ship to themselves for their training.

Across the deck from Vale, Abbey sat against her railing and fiddled with an eye piece. The gadget had a thin tube that led over the side of the airship and was attached to something like a telescope. She was watching the ground below.

Constantine drummed his fingers on the rails. He said, “This is unfortunate, but the gravy train really did have to end.” This was an old conversation, one they’d had many times over the last few days.

It’d been over a week since their mission at the front lines when the team had cleared out an entire group of First Things all by themselves.

“I wish it hadn’t ended so fast,” grumbled Bart. “That was the fastest I’ve ever leveled, ever.”

“All of us,” said Vale. With a mental command, he called up his stat sheet and glanced at it.

Name: Vale dePardon

Class: Occultist

Subclass: Explorer

Hero Class: *At level 20*

Legendary Class: Air Adept

Level: 18

Experience: 2854354

XP to next level: 345656

Stamina: 88/88

HP: 88/88

Mana: 141/141

Stats: (Total/Original/Level Ups/Bonuses)

Strength: 6/2/2/2

Agility: 12/3/6/3

Endurance: 6/4/2/0

Intelligence: 11/7/1/3

Willpower: 9/6/1/2

Luck: 18/8/6/4

Class Skills: Fencing, Ancient Body Magic, Paranoia, Ancient Occult Lore, Map Reading/Cartography, Elemental Magic: Air, Spirit of Adventure, Mystic Alignment

Permanent Bonus Source: Mystic Clover (Luck +3), World Tree Tithe

(Int -5), World Tree Boon (Int +8, Agi +3), Hygon Light Power (Luck +1, Str +2), Ring of the Unknown Saint (Will +2) Auras and Status: Mystic. A mysterious status that confers additional magical mastery. Not compatible with tech skills.

When he’d leveled up to 17, he’d put the stat point in Intelligence, ensuring he’d get more mana per level. He’d done this because so many battles now were being fought using magic alone. He needed more gas in the tank. Now his mana capacity was truly becoming respectable.

His latest stat point he’d put into Luck. It was almost a compulsion, now. During quiet moments, he wondered if he was doing the right thing with his Luck stat strategy, but these doubts were nothing new. He’d been asking himself that question for a year.

Ultimately, the reason he’d chosen to put yet another point in Luck, and the reason why he didn’t regret it, was remembering all the fortunate quests and items he’d bumped into. His team was a powerhouse now in part because of the hidden quest he’d found. They would have never even learned of Lord Hygon’s existence without it.

And Vale could really use another fancy quest. Unfortunately, these sorts of things couldn’t be forced, though. All he could do was wait for good fortune to find him…and raise his Luck stat some more.

After hitting level 18, he’d gotten the ability to choose another class skill, but he still hadn’t made up his mind about that. He’d almost chosen a few different skills to help out with this time on the Mitochondria.

Attacking ranged for long periods of time was quickly being proven a weakness of his build, but at the same time, he wasn’t really getting hit much, either. His Dexterity was high enough that he had passive bonuses to avoid damage at long ranges, and his Luck stat might have helped, too. So he wasn’t in huge amounts of danger during most flying shootouts, but he wanted to hit back. And being hard to hit didn’t mean he was invulnerable. After all, he’d died on his first trip on the Mitochondria.

Not for the first time, he’d been tempted to take [Basic Technology] to shoot guns better in-game. Vale really didn’t want to be a gunslinger, though. That wasn’t his style of play.

He’d even considered taking [Soul of the Dark], which would give extra darkness damage to all of his attacks, and make him more resistant to SAN damage, but would also lower his stats and slowly drain his health in sunlight. He decided it wasn’t worth it.

Ultimately, Vale decided to hold off on taking a skill at all. New skill lists that would open up once he got his Hero Class were not visible now. He was hoping that saving up two skills might give him an advantage in two more levels. Unfortunately, his team–the unfortunately named Alligators–had seen an end to the gold rush of XP they’d been enjoying a week earlier. Otherwise Vale would have already hit level 20 by now.

Their very first battle had been a complete success. The enemy casualties had been so bad, they’d withdrawn away from Plysmuth. They hadn’t left, though. Just given up ground.

The enemy had learned fast. Now all the flying Beasties–the Allies’ new name for all the attacking, inhuman players–had multiple openings and escape routes out of their underground forward bases. Big battles were a death trap now for airships and flying Beasties if they went too high up. Both sides had invested a lot of resources in weapons to clear the skies.

As a result, the Mitochondria had been steering clear of the front lines. Instead, they scoured the countryside, trying to find enemy resupply convoys on small groups to ambush. They hadn’t had much luck for almost a full day.

And Abbey was itching for everyone to try out her new guns.

Three crank-handle gatling guns stood on the deck of the Mitochondria, one to each side, and one at the rear. In theory, the guns would allow other members of the team without solid distance damage to help Abbey shoot down flying Beasties. Building the things had cost Abigail a fortune, and the ammo was expensive enough that she wouldn’t let them waste it.

Vale scratched his chin as he imagined what it’d be like to get his Hero Class. Just hitting his subclass had given him a huge boost in power. Now that he was only two levels away, the game had listed the Hero Classes he could choose: Scholar, Treasure Hunter, Magic Researcher, and Ruins Seeker.

The first two choices, Scholar and Treasure Hunter, were standard choices for his Occultist class and Explorer subclass. Most players would only get two Hero Class choices, two for each subclass. Vale had another two more because of his Legendary Class.

All of the choices sounded super cool, but the game didn’t really tell him what the differences were. Just based on the names, he reasoned the extra two choices were variations of the first two but with more supernatural flair.

Vale was jerked out of his thoughts by a repeated question. He hadn’t heard the words, just the upward intonation. Sure enough, when he glanced up, Bart, Abbey, and Constantine were looking at him. “Earth to Vale, you there?” asked Abbey.

“Yeah, what’s up.”

“I will tell you again, for the third time, that I just saw a group traveling below. They aren’t using the roads, but I caught movement in the trees. I couldn’t get a clear look at who or even what they were. Do you want to check it out?”

Not like anything else is going on, thought Vale. “Yeah,” he said. “If it’s nothing, we can kill some wildlife for a little bit of XP, maybe do some quick gathering for herbs and mats, and take a little break before searching again.”

“Sounds good,” said Bart.

“You need to tell them?” asked Constantine. He hooked a thumb at the fighting siblings.

“Nah. They don’t really care as long as we get XP and have decent stream content. But if you want to interrupt them…”

Abbey shook her head.

“You hear all that, George?” Vale directed the question at a speaker for their pilot.

“Sure did! Heading down. Abbey, just please guide us to wherever you saw what you saw.”

“No problem.”

Vale fingered the hilt of his sword. He absently rubbed a thumb on the guard and wondered why he was feeling so strange today.

***

“What the hell? The footprints just vanish.” Abbey stood with her hands on her hips. She’d just holstered the legendary howdah pistol.

“Someone wuz definitely here,” agreed Minerva. The beautiful warrior stalked around. She found where each set of prints disappeared and glared at them as if to intimidate them into spilling their secrets. “Some prints iz boots, but some iz clawed feet. Beasties.”

Vale nodded. He crossed his arms and carefully scanned the surrounding forest. Part of him wanted to just leave since they hadn’t found any easy XP. All the forest monsters were already dead, too. Whoever had just come through here had cleaned them out. But as he stood there next to vanishing footprints, he thought of how the Beasties had been somehow getting mystery resupplies at the front lines.

Crafting bullets and all sorts of other war consumables took a lot of materials. There had to be a huge supply train, but nobody had found it yet. Some of the Allies even believed there was an underground tunnel somewhere.

Vale glanced over at Minerva again. She really was a beautiful woman. The fact that she really looked like that in real life was shocking. She was so gorgeous, Vale didn’t even feel nervous or flirty around her, either in game or out of it.

His eyes suddenly widened as a crazy possibility crossed his mind. “Everyone, chill out for a minute. I’m going to look at something.”

To one side, where he’d been silently on guard, Brutus shrugged. Constantine did the same.

Vale sat on his butt and leaned against a tree before calling up a mental map with the [Map Reading/Cartography] skill. He’d gotten the idea when he’d remembered how he’d met Minerva. She’d been hiding in the Great Maze.

What if the Beasties were somehow using the Great Maze?

He frowned as he looked at his data, and compared it to the partial Great Maze maps he’d bought or found before. Nothing was adding up. The nearest entrance to the Great Maze should be a half mile away.

What if it’s different for Beasties, though? he wondered. While in the Great Maze, nobody had ever seen a Beastie player before. Maybe they had their own Great Maze, or at least their own access points. Maybe.

He briefly wondered why more Beastie players didn’t post online guides or talk about their game experiences. Maybe the non-human races just attracted fewer loudmouth players. Just to be thorough, Vale did a quick search in the message boards but couldn’t find anything about a Beastie version of the Great Maze. He didn’t find anything.

“Does anyone have any Beastie parts in their storage?”

“Gross,” said Abbey.

“No judgement. Anyone?” asked Vale.

Bart slowly raised a hand. “I have an Abyssal One finger, I think.” He shrugged at Abbey. “Alchemy stuff.”

“Alright, that might work.” Vale quickly made a circle of salt on the ground. “Go ahead and toss it in the circle. I need to do some spellwork before getting an answer to a question I haven’t even really completely framed yet.”

“Are you going to do ritual magic?” asked Constantine. “That’s expensive. Like, expensive mats. You sure about this?”

“Hell fucking no,” laughed Vale. “But I mean, Abbey built our gatling guns. That wasn’t cheap. Besides, if this works, you all will chip in on my mats, right?”

“We will what?” asked Minerva. She cocked an eyebrow.

“I said if it works. If.” Vale waved dismissively at all of them. “Alright, let me work. I’m gonna try something nobody has ever done.”

“What?” asked Bart.

“I’m going to figure out if the Beasties have their own entrances to the Great Maze. Or something like it.”

Bart groaned. “I hope not. The Great Maze? That place sucks.”

“I’ve never actually been to the Great Maze with this character,” said Constantine. “It’s the kind of place you really can’t go to without a group or at least a plan and some money. Instanced, endgame content will probably be in the Great Maze.”

Bart and Constantine began a conversation about the SOO endgame speculations in the forums. Vale tuned them out and began scribing mystical patterns with glowing powder on the ground, all radiating out from the dismembered finger on the forest floor.

Leaning on the Lady

Vale wiped his forehead and studied his handiwork with a critical eye. He’d never enabled his sweat filter in the game, but the gesture felt appropriate. All the sigils and whorls he’d put together reminded him of the spell he’d created…what felt a lifetime ago that led to the World Tree. Of course, that spell working had mostly spelled out, “Travel.” This one was more about, “Searching.”

Things had changed a lot. Back then he’d made the World Tree spell, it’d taken him months to get all the components together for the spell. Now he could just casually pull them out of his storage.

“Alright, everyone stand back!” He glanced around and none of his team were even anywhere close. “Oh.” Constantine and Brutus were playing a card game. Abbey was playing some sort of shooting game with the Herterz brothers–she was on the ground, they were on the ship. Bartholomew was brewing potions.

Vale started as he looked directly behind him and saw Minerva. She had her hands on her hips as she studied him and the spell working on the forest floor. “It iz done?”

“Ah, yes.” Vale cleared his throat, held out a hand, and activated the spell.

All the powder on the ground flashed like colored gunsmoke. Ethereal energies swirled around the woods, stirring the leaves on the ground. Vale had made this spell using a few different techniques he’d picked up over the last year through study and from his skills.

When the spell resolved, Vale frowned. “What iz wrong?” asked Minerva. “Did you solve ze mystery?”

“Sort of,” said Vale absently. He pointed in three different directions for her benefit. Nobody but him could see the results of his spell. To him, plain as day, were three glowing doorways that all had a line of text hovering over them. They read:

Path to the Chaos Maze.

“There are three possible directions the actual portal could be, all near the end of the vanished footprints. Human doorways to the Great Maze are usually an actual door, or at least on something solid…like a wall. But in this case...”

“Three of them? So which is it?”

“That’s the problem,” said Vale. The other members of the group were ambling over to hear the discussion after seeing the flash of light. Vale read the system message he’d just gotten.

Congratulations on completing your discernment spell!

Future attempts to cast this spell will require 50% less materials.

Would you like to name your spell?

Vale chose, YES.

What would you like to name your spell?

He pondered for a second before deciding on, Maze Search. Once he’d chosen the name, the spell was added to known spells under his [Map Reading/Cartography] skill. This raised his eyebrows–it was a first for him.

But most of his attention was still on the doorways he’d created. After focusing on them, he read,

Possible gateway to Chaos Maze. One of three.

One choice for the caster.

If the wrong door is chosen, all doors will vanish.

Warning! Chaos Maze is dangerous for Human Players!

Vale muttered under his breath. Even with a 50% decrease in material requirements, he’d need to go back to a city first before trying to cast the spell again. It might not work another time, either. Ritual magic like this was always risky in the game.

His entire team watched him as he thought about the problem, wondering what he should do. At one point he was tempted to explain the situation, but he knew most of the Gators wouldn’t understand, and the rest would just tell him to flip a coin.

He blinked. That’s it! “Anyone have a die?”

Bart blinked. “Die? Are we in danger?”

“No, yes, I don’t know. Fuck. I need a die. You know, like dice?”

“Oh, I have some. Game stuff,” said Abbey. “One second.”

“Why don’t you just use your persocom and run a random program, or even a dedicated dice program?” asked Bart.

Vale just waved his friend’s question away and waited patiently. He was still keeping his high Luck stat on a need to know basis. Luckily, nobody asked any more questions. Eventually Abbey handed him a 6-sided die. Vale said out loud, “Alright. If I roll a one or a two, I will take door number one. If I roll a three or a four, I will take door number two. If I roll a five or a six, I will take door number three.” He paused for dramatic effect.

In real life, luck was just probability. But in the game world, maybe his high Luck stat could actually help.

“Dude, you are really weird sometimes,” said Bart.

“Takes one to know one, fuckface.”

Bart chuckled as Vale dropped the die to the ground. It landed on three.

“Door number two it is!” He walked across his spent magical working and touched the ethereal door. The moment he did, he got a new system notification:

Portal to the Chaos Maze has been successfully opened! As a human, this access point will remain for one week.

XP awarded.

Congratulations for being the second human player to access the Chaos Maze.

Proceed at your own risk.

Ding!

Level up!

Vale’s eyes widened. “Dude.”

“What?” asked Bart.

“Can you guys see the portal now?” Vale pointed to the gently spiraling mystic tear in reality.

Everyone shook their heads except for Constantine. “I can see something, like a big fuzzy circle. It feels…bad. Like the feeling the game gives you before going into a high-level zone. But…dirty, too.”

“Well that doesn’t sound fucking ominous,” said Abbey.

Vale coughed. “Oh yeah, I just leveled up, too.”

“What!?” Bart’s jaw dropped.

Brutus shook his head. “He must maintain his level advantage. Otherwise he will need to admit that I am the better player.”

“No, we all already know that,” said Abbey in an offhand tone of voice. “Don’t get me wrong, Vale.  You’re one of the best. It’s just, well, Brutus is Brutus. And now Minerva has a legendary class, too. The two of them are like the children of the gods or something.”

“Vale beat me in a duel,” said Minerva.

“Yeah, but could he beat you now?”

“No. Probably not. But still, he haz still beat me in a duel. Who elze has?” Minerva raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Would you like to try, Artificer?”

“Uh, no.”

Vale really appreciated the assist. He wasn’t sure why Minerva had come to his defense, but he was not going to complain. The rest are traitors, he thought. To change the subject and stop wasting time, he said, “We can all go into the portal now. It should be dangerous but we should probably make this snappy. We only have a week until the exit disappears and I need to go through all this bullshit to find any new portal like this. The system says only one other person has opened a portal to this weird place before.”

“Weird place? It is not the Great Maze?” asked Brutus.

“No. It’s something called the Chaos Maze. Based on context I think it’s the Great Maze for Beasties.”

Abbey made a face. “Chaos Maze? Now that really sounds fucking ominous.”

“Sound like a lot of XP to me,” said Constantine. He had a savage grin, and Vale was reminded that their newest member was a dedicated min-maxer and power gamer. He had been pulling his own weight without a problem despite being lower level, and he was likely getting close to actually catching up in level now.

With that thought in mind, Vale dropped his new stat point in Agility. If they were going to be heading into danger on foot, he wanted more speed. That done, he complained out loud, “Do we really need to call ourselves the Alligators?”

Bart looked him in the eyes with a blank expression. “I think we do. Yes.”

Vale gave him a flat look, but his friend just turned and walked toward where Vale had pointed the second portal to be. He was a little off, though. “It’s this way,” said Vale, and walked forward. He turned and shouted, “Hey, Herterz bros, you got our backs while we explore this thing?”

Rivera Herterz waved a hand from the deck of the ship. “No problem. We’ll just sit here and cap any critters that spawn or move into the area. The big guns are a little overkill but should debuff them enough for us to kill even high-level mobs.”

“Good. So it won’t be a waste of time for you guys?”

George gave a big, sloppy salute. “No way. Free XP. Go do your thing. If you take too long, we might be higher level than you by the time you come out, though.”

Vale grinned. He stood before the portal, and took a quick once-over of his inventory. Then he said, “Constantine, Minerva, we might have some serious SAN attacks after going through this thing. Be ready.”

“Already on it, Boss,” said Constantine.

Boss…? Vale mouthed the word and shrugged. He paused and said, “Everyone keep it quiet when we’re through here, like we did before the rat dungeon a few weeks ago. We’re going into the unknown and I really don’t want to die. If I’m dead again, I might not get such a badass XP buff this time around.”

Brutus grunted. “The XP buff again.”

“What?”

“You’re bragging,” said Bart.

“Yes, he is,” agreed Brutus.

“Well pardon me to hell for, you know, dying, and making the most of it.” Vale frowned.

“Yeah, that sucked, but now you’re bragging.” Bart had that same non-expression on his face again.

That was when Vale realized they were just messing with him. “Whatever. Fuck you guys. Don’t be jelly that I just hit level 19.” Vale made the most infuriating grin he knew how.

Bart’s poker face finally cracked and he laughed. Vale rolled his eyes and stepped through the fuzzy magical anomaly. Before the portal made his vision go dark, he turned and saw the rest of his team following him.

The Chaos Maze

Vale stepped into a nightmare.

The portion of the Great Maze he’d entered in the past to meet Minerva, where she’d been hiding, had been a jungle.

This was different.

Where he entered the Chaos Maze was like a horror painting. The trees were thick, black, and apparently all dead. If they were living, they must have been some masochist plants. Most of them had patches of dark slime. Vines hung from the limbs. They were knotty and veined, like umbilical cords.

After a few breaths, he realized all the trees looked like skeletal hands reaching out from the earth, sometimes grasping each other.

Three different light sources hung in the sky but they were all extremely dim, painting the landscape in twilight. Little rustling noises sounded in the dead-looking undergrowth.  Vale didn’t know if it was animals, the wind, or even monsters about to attack. He tensed himself but nothing happened. The noises continued.

In the distance to one side was a giant tree that had been cut down. It took him a while to realize just how far away the tree really was, and that it must have been immense. He could see the dead trunk over the gnarled vegetation around him.

Nobody spoke. As Vale silently studied his surroundings, he got hit by a SAN attack. Just a single point. Without anyone asking, Constantine raised a hand and yellow light briefly covered everyone’s forehead. Vale figured that he’d just gotten some sort of protection.

The wet, moldy, steaming undergrowth clearly showed where the group they were tracking had gone. They eventually vanished amongst the mulch, but the general direction could be made out. Vale looked around once, counting everyone in his group, meeting his eyes. Then he jerked his head and began following the footprints.

Everyone moved slowly. Vale activated his [Map Reading/Cartography] skill to begin recording a more detailed map than the regular player interface would offer. Since he’d leveled up, mapping the way back to the exit was not a problem.

Unfortunately, everything else was.

The air felt heavy. His nerves were standing on end. Five minutes after entering the Chaos Maze, everyone was still keeping quiet. Bart hadn’t even cracked some wiseass comment. Abbey hadn’t complained.

“This is terrible,” whispered Constantine. Vale just nodded. He’d played VR horror games before when he’d been young, but they’d been sort of crude and paled in comparison to what he was seeing right now. Just standing in this place made his skin crawl.

The trees, or whatever they were, began to thin and the Gators walked through a large field of dark grasses. Some were shaped like crab legs and poked at their boots. The field turned marshy, like it wanted to be a swamp. On the other end of the field to the side, a glass-still pond of water stood. The surface rippled for a few seconds before something came out of it. Something huge.

Vale didn’t turn fast enough and suffered a massive SAN attack. He bent over, staring at the ground, head throbbing. “What the hell was that?” he wheezed.

It’d been something like a tentacle, but…wrong. He’d never experienced anything like this before. Some small part of his mind that still clung to rational thought checked his stats and saw he’d lost 80% of his health.

Suddenly, he felt a cool hand on his shoulder. A second later, some of the pain began to fade and his health ticked back at a crawl. Constantine’s glowing hand pulled away and the Priest moved to Bart.

“Nobody look at that thing,” choked out Vale.

“Yeah,” said Abbey weakly. “Can it reach us?”

Bart drew in deep breaths. “No, don’t think so.”

To one side, Minerva was on her knees, forehead to the floor. In accented English, she chanted, “Shithead asshole motherfuckers…” over and over again, like a mantra. She was using her [Embolden] skill. Maybe it was helping.

Everything grew still again. There was silence other than harsh breathing and whispers for a time. The tableau was interrupted with Bart’s whispered, “What the fuck?” Then louder, “What the fuck!?”

Nobody looked behind them in case whatever it was was still back there. Eventually, Constantine glanced. His face turned white and he almost immediately closed his eyes.

“It’s still there?” asked Vale.

“Yeah.”

“How is this even remotely fair?” said Abigail. “I just almost died, just from looking at something! It’s still sort of seared into my eyeballs. How is this possible in a VR game? I feel like I need to throw up. Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know, but let’s get the hell out of here for now,” said Vale.

“Agreed.” Brutus began walking as he spoke.

Everyone in the group popped potions as they walked, restoring health. This put less drain on Constantine. The Priest had already proven his worth on this little adventure.

Up ahead, Brutus called out, “Another pond.” A moment later, he said, “The water has movement. Everyone look to the left.”

Vale didn’t even ask any questions, he just turned his head.

The Gators proceeded this way until they left the swampy area and moved back into some trees. There wasn’t really a clear path. Instead, multiple paths crossed all over the place. Vale checked his compass, and the needle spun like a top–useless. Luckily, his mental map was working just fine. Escaping shouldn’t be a problem as long as they didn’t run into…a thing again.

That thought made him incredibly nervous, so when his party actually ran into a small group of enemies, Vale almost screamed. Instead, his feet seemed to move on their own and he launched himself forward at the same time as Minerva. Brutus and Constantine followed, the priest fixing the long bayonet to his big rifle.

Out of long practice, Vale used his [Ancient Body Magic] skill to cast <Arm Speed>, <Leg Speed>, <Superior Aim>, <Enhanced Reflexes>, and <Explosive Speed.> He lunged, going for a critical hit at the throat, but the Abyssal One he was targeting pivoted to the side at the last second and punched Vale in the head.

Vale saw stars.

He went down rolling and sprang back to his feet. Holy shit that took 41 HP! That was almost half of his available hit points. Normally a blow to the head, especially such a heavy one would have caused the [Dazed] effect, but <Enhanced Reflexes> had helped Vale pull back at the last second, nullifying the debuff.

Without all of his buffs, he would have died.

“Try to keep it quiet,” he hissed loudly. “Be careful, though. Fuckers are strong.”

Minerva was dueling with a second Abyssal One, its cutlass meeting her saber with a clash of steel. She moved with almost inhuman precision, graceful as an Olympian. The Abyssal One barely gave any ground, though.

The last Abyssal One stayed at the rear and the fish man’s fingers began to glow. One of the beastie’s hands leveled like it was about to cast a spell, but it abruptly jerked it back with a gurgled yelp. A spray of blood made a trail from the Abyssal One’s punctured palm.

Vale had heard the pop behind him, and turned to see a very smug-looking Abigail reloading some sort of big, silenced pistol. “Did you know that you can silence a black powder pistol? Not many do.”

Vale’s enemy had a pair of batons out now. One crackled with energy.

All three Abyssal Ones gurgled as they fought. Vale took a glancing blow to the shoulder and chugged a health potion when he got a chance, but they worked slowly. His health was still dangerously low the entire time he fought. The skirmish was savage.

Only two of the Abyssal Ones were players according to Vale’s interface–one was an NPC. All three were hard as hell to kill. Finally, when the last one was down, Vale fell on his ass and leaned against a slimy not-tree. “I have never fought such a tough Abyssal One player.”

“Yeah, no kidding. There were only three of them, six of us, and they gave us a lot of trouble.” Abbey sat too. “At least I leveled up.”

“Grats,” said Vale tiredly.

Constantine moved from person to person in the group, casting restoration spells and checking their conditions. “To be fair, we couldn’t use firearms or any flashy magic. Big explosions and lots of noise is kind of what we all usually do. We were not at full power. Luckily, they didn’t have any guns and Abbey was able to keep their mage off balance.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Abbey conceded.

Minerva poked at the bodies. “It iz still the same PVP event rulez. No looting of ze bodies.”

“Damn. I bet they had good stuff, too,” said Bart. He had dark blood on his sword cane that he was cleaning off with a conjured handkerchief. The game didn’t force you to clean weapons like that, but Bart liked it for the immersion now. Vale thought he was a weirdo.

“I guess the decision to try being sneaky was a good one,” said Vale. Everyone nodded. Then a minute later, without talking about it, they all got up and moved on. They had to be quick, now. If the group they’d just found was a patrol, or even on a quest, they might be missed soon. An army of these super fish men would kill them D-E-D, dead.

The creepy undergrowth grew thicker, and Vale could hear something in the distance, like thumping. He met Brutus’ eyes and the big man nodded. They all moved in the direction of the noise but stayed extra quiet, moving cautiously.

What Vale saw at the end of the tree line made him slowly get down and press his entire body to the ground. His eyes were huge. Everyone else was doing the same. Nobody made a peep. If they did, they were all going to die.

Past the treeline was a clearing. From this vantage point, Vale could see clearly worn trails leading to it, and there were even roads connected to them. Misshapen…things, like oxen with shells, pulled crude wooden carts laden with crates of bullets and artillery shells. Abyssal Ones scurried to and fro, checking the carts.

As Vale watched, a school of Flying Eels silently glided along above a trail, heading across the valley. A handful of First Things glided around as well, but their purpose was less obvious. None of them were paying attention, at least not in Vale’s direction or the alarm would already be sounded. The creepy, inhuman-looking things occasionally lowered to the ground, moving tentacles and too-long limbs to adjust some sort of crystal arrays. What looked like several altars were covered in blood.

But what had drawn Vale’s attention and made his heart drop was the giant monstrosity half covered by earth. The top of its head and shoulders poked out of the ground like a grotesque, living iceberg. Teams of Abyssal Ones and even some Undead moved around methodically, moving dirt, slowly uncovering the thing. A team of First Things worked to plug wires into its head.

The monster itself was…indescribable. It was like the boss monster Hygon, but mixed with an octopus and a lizard, and at least five times larger. Even at this distance, the creature asleep, Vale still got hit by small SAN attacks.

Suddenly, a quest prompt popped up in his vision. He focused on it.

You have discovered the secret resting place of Hil’Goena, the Woe of Ziggurats!

Hil’Goena is being woken up! The more human players are nearby, the faster Hil’Goena will awaken!

You have discovered a secret quest! Quest Grade: Mythic.

Quest: Protector of Ziggurats

Find a way to defeat Hil’Goena when they wake up!

Use the riddle to find a beginning. There are many beginnings, but this may be one.

In the town of Gabenz

Shaper of the immutable

At a fire by the sea

Come find me

Vale stared for a few seconds before dismissing the screen and turning his head, averting his vision. The SAN attacks were starting to add up and that was a problem. They couldn’t afford for Constantine to do anything to reverse the damage from SAN attacks, not this close to so many enemies. Vale saw dozens, maybe hundreds of beasties. Based on the fight the Gators had just won, most of these players wouldn’t be pushovers, either.

He reasoned that the beasties must be sending their fodder out to actually fight the war, probably for easy XP. It looked like their elites were here, working on this unnatural thing. Even if he hadn’t seen the quest, Vale would have been able to gather that Hil’Goena was a tactical weapon, like an atom bomb.

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Bart whispered.

Vale nodded and began slowly crawling backwards. They needed to get the hell out of here, fast. If any beasties discovered them, they were all dead, and even worse, the enemy would know they’d been discovered. He wanted to keep the element of surprise.

The team realized what he was doing and followed.

Part of Vale was horrified. The war hadn’t been going well for humans to begin with. But it looked like the inhuman side hadn’t even pulled out the stops yet. But another part of Vale was excited. Maybe this was it, his chance, a crazy opportunity like the quest chain he’d found that had led to Hygon.

He needed to get back to the Mitochondria and have a little chat with everyone.

If he was right, they could head straight to the first piece of this obvious quest chain. He might have already solved the riddle.

Ziggurat Bros

“So where is it then?” Abbey looked spent and for once, she sat in her chair correctly instead of sprawled all over it or cross legged. The Gators were seated around a table that the Herterz brothers had summoned to the deck for them. As the crew of the ship, they could do that.

None of the Gators wanted to meet in the little meeting room inside the ship. It was too cramped for so many people.

Instead of answering immediately, Vale asked, “Are we still heading in the direction I asked, George? To Gabenz?”

“We sure are! Right now Hans is on the helm so I can be here to listen in on your meeting.”

“Alright. Luckily, Gabenz is a town I am very, very familiar with. It’s kind of funny that I keep going back there. Anyway, I think we need to visit a blacksmith.”

“A blacksmith?” Brutus frowned. “The blacksmiths in Gabenz are in the middle and near the edge of the city. The poem said something about being near the ocean, or by the water.”

Abbey nodded. “Yeah. It’s true the whole town is by the water, but that feels too general and too easy.”

Vale gave a knowing smile. “There are two hidden blacksmiths in Gabenz.”

Several members of the group all said, “What?” at once.

Vale nodded. “Maps are useful. You can find maps in books, too. My skills help. I found old maps of different cities in the past with merchants and stuff I’d never seen before. The truth is I didn’t really usually go to the hidden blacksmiths because they’re either too specialized or too expensive. But one is right by the ocean, next to a bar. They sell super expensive socketed hilts and other components for crafting recipes we are not even high level enough to find yet.”

“No wonder we didn’t know about it,” said Bart.

“Alright. Let’s go see this blacksmith of yours,” said Abbey. “You get that, George? And you guys are watching the airspace too, right? If we get ambushed again by Flying Eels, they are gonna get a big surprise this time.”

“Yes and yes,” said George with a smile.

The ship creaked quietly as it flew. Vale put his palms on the table and sighed. “So…the Chaos Maze.”

“Yes,” said Minerva quietly. “That iz an awful place.”

“You can say that again,” said Bart.

“That iz an awful place.”

“Ha. Funny.”

Vale grinned at Minerva and her eyes twinkled. For some reason his breath caught for a moment and he coughed to cover it. “The SAN dangers in that place were an eye opener.”

“No, it was fucked up is what it was,” said Abbey. She waved a pepperbox revolver for emphasis. “Like, this is a game. But in that place I felt like someone had just kicked me in the gut, like I was going through my family being killed. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever really felt. How the hell can they get off doing that to us in a game? Like, how the hell is it even possible?!”

“And yet you’re still playing, Babe,” said Bart.

“Well, it’s my job now. But yeah.”

Vale rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. Anyone else have any questions that none of us have answers for?”

Bart grinned and raised his hand. “Oh fearless leader, how are we going to kill that big thing, Hil’Goena?”

Vale crossed his arms. “I’m not sure. So how about I delegate you to figure it out. Alone.”

“No way, oh great, powerful leader! You are level 19 after all! If only one of us goes, it should be you!”

Vale gave him the finger.

Bart laughed, obviously finding the entire exchange hilarious and Vale even cracked a smile. He said, “I’m gonna read a few books and maybe do some crafting while we travel, so leave me alone before we get there unless it’s important, okay?”

“Your word is our command, your worship,” said Bart. This time even Brutus grinned.

Vale ignored them. He had some reading to do about magic circles.

***

The shop was the same as Vale remembered, just a little run-down wooden building next to a dive bar. “Celebration,” was the name of the bar. Like most pseudo-Victorian bars in SOO, it was dark, smokey, and had a painted sign. Next to it, the blacksmith shop looked more like a shed—no lights, no sign.

NPC bar patrons on the patio watched curiously as the Gators approached the blacksmith shop. “Are you sure this is the place?” asked Bart.

Vale gave him a withering look. He said, “No, it’s a toy store.”

“Ha. Fine, fine.”

After rolling his eyes, Vale considered for a moment. “I don’t think we’re all going to fit. Maybe two can come with me.”

“Screw that,” said Abbey. “We all got the quest and we might not get the next chain unless we’re there. And whatever the trigger is might not repeat. These aren’t normal quests. We’re all flying blind.”

“That’s a good point,” said Constantine.

Vale almost said something snarky, but they really did have a point this time. “Fine. We can all go.”

“I wuz not asking anyone for permission,” said Minerva. The beautiful woman sauntered forward and opened the door to the blacksmith like she owned the place. Vale grinned. Minerva had style.

“Showboat,” muttered Abbey. The rest of them followed.

Once inside the door, the gloom and dark-looking interior was revealed to just be an illusion. The shop was lit by candles inside and actually set up more like a jewelry store. Glass cases full of expensive-looking pieces of metal, inscribed gems, and settings all glittered between mysterious shadows. The only way to tell it truly was a blacksmith was the handful of incredible-looking swords and shields on the walls behind the far counter. Each artifact practically glowed with power.

The proprietor was a thin man with a seedy mustache and a gold monocle. His dirty vest was at odds with his gold cufflinks and the opulence of the merchandise surrounding him.

“Hey! The blacksmith, right? What do you know about–” began Bart, but Vale put a hand over his mouth.

“Everyone shut up. Let me do the talking.” When Abbey started to respond, he narrowed his eyes and said, “I’m serious. Nobody fuck this up.”

Apparently his tone was convincing enough because nobody tried to talk again. However, the proprietor gave him a disapproving look as he wiped a cabinet. “Profanity is often the calling card of a simple mind,” he said.

“Ah, I apologize, sir. Unfortunately, some of my heroic and true friends are from, uh, a simple upbringing and it’s easier to communicate with them in a harsh way.”

The thin man didn’t look like he completely bought the story, but he sniffed and came to the register anyway. “Have you come for anything in particular? I do not wish to be rude, but this shop is quite pricey. Perhaps your…friends…might be more comfortable at Celebration, the establishment next door.”

Sometimes Vale had a hard time believing the NPCs were not real people. The man in the dirty vest was giving off an absolute perfect vibe of snotty arrogance. The shop and the proprietor were exactly as Vale remembered. He knew this NPC’s weakness, though.

The man’s name was Simon Tilly. He had a sweet tooth.

Vale’s levelling efforts had been many and varied. At one point he’d realized that finding hidden shopkeepers and gaining some trust with them actually awarded a fair bit of XP. When he’d been lower level, it was actually more efficient than killing monsters. At the time, the bonus side effect was to help make him harder to find for Brutus, too.

“Excuse me, Simon, every time I come in here I am so impressed by how clean and…upright this place is. I remembered something you mentioned before, and I brought you a gift.” Vale took a chocolate bar wrapped in wax paper out of his inventory and set it on the counter with a grin.

“Oh my. Yes, I remember you now. Such a kind young man… Is that chocolate?”

“It sure is.”

“Well then, don’t mind if I do.” The thin man made the offering disappear behind the counter. Vale still wasn’t entirely sure if Simon was just the clerk, or also the blacksmith. It ultimately didn’t matter.

The system flashed:

Your reputation with Simon Tilly has increased.

Vale frowned. He wasn’t sure exactly whether Simon liked him enough to spill secrets, but SOO didn’t reward repeated gift giving on the same day. There wasn’t much use in stalling so he said, “Simon, I brought my friends to admire what you sell here, so we can be inspired and grow even more. But I am curious if you know about something. I know that you are a very educated man.”

“That is a noble motivation. And I’m listening.” The NPC cocked his head and pursed his lips.

“Well you see, I have found a very old, very…dangerous book in my travels. It mentioned several…forbidden subjects. First may I ask, do you recognize the name, ‘Chaos Maze?’”

Simon hissed and took a step back. His expression became guarded, but also something else. Vale thought he saw some warning, and maybe some curiosity. “I see it does mean something to you.”

“You should forget that name, forget whatever you might want to ask and just leave,” said Simon. He began to sweat and made a shooing gesture. “For your own good.”

“Unfortunately, I need to ask again. I have a mission.”

“Please don’t.”

Vale smiled sadly. “If you don’t tell me, the odds that something terrible will happen to me is a lot higher. What’s more, it will hurt others.”

Simon’s shirt was showing signs of his perspiration. “What do you mean?”

“I need to see if you recognize another name. Hil’Goena. Woe of Ziggurats.”

The man reacted like he’d been struck. His eyes grew wild and he began looking around like he expected an attack any moment. He put his hands to his head and made a panting noise before dashing to a display case. After retrieving a small box from behind the case, he practically shoved it into Vale’s hands. “Take it. Go go!” He wiped his upper lip with a trembling hand and whispered, “Seek the Mines of Loria. Now go!”

A screen popped up for Vale:

You have unlocked the second portion of, Protector of Ziggurats!

XP awarded!

Examine the clue you were given to find the next piece!

Vale grimaced. He was familiar with this sort of quest now after eventually finishing the chain that had led to killing Hygon, the Abyssal One boss.

The others in the group must have gotten the same prompt, because everyone’s focus grew fuzzy, focusing on things Vale couldn’t see. Behind them, Simon kept dry washing his hands. He grew more agitated by the second.

Suddenly, Vale’s eyes flew open as his [Paranoia] skill flashed an urgent alert across his vision. Vale didn’t know exactly the cause, but he knew it meant imminent danger.

“Oh shit, let’s go. Go, go!”

“Huh?” Bart blinked owlishly at him.

“Fuck, no time,” snarled Vale. He roughly shoved five points of mana into unfocused wind magic out of both palms. This created what was basically a giant leaf blower spell, blowing him backwards into his friends. His magic launched him hard enough to punch right through the wooden doorway. He took some damage, but not enough to be worried about. The rest of the Gators half-tumbled after him, grunting or cursing.

Vale didn’t waste time. He grabbed them and threw them into the street. Brutus, Constantine, and Minerva had caught on quickly and half rolled, half jogged on their own.

A moment later, something like green lightning flickered inside the blacksmith.

“Get down!” shouted Vale.

With a giant, eldritch fireball, the shop exploded. Flaming debris rained down and the startled bar patrons next door screamed.

All the Gators had barely made it out in time.

Chaos erupted in the streets, with NPCs flooding out of houses and businesses to gawk.

The group ran away from the commotion. Dealing with NPC police or other players wasn’t ideal. After they came to a stop in a handy alley, Abbey sat on her heels. She moaned and rubbed her shoulder. “Mines of Loria? I guess some dev out there enjoyed Lord of the Rings.”

“It is good we got the clue, but that was close. We all almost died,” said Brutus.

“Yeah, that was spicy,” said Constantine. “Are chain quests always like this with you guys?”

“Pretty much,” said Abbey.

“Yes,” said Brutus. “But this time we were here from the beginning. Now we will all get the maximum reward if we finish it.”

Vale sighed. “That legendary quest was a lot of work. Looks like Mythic quests might be a bigger pain in the ass.”

Brutus stretched. “Indeed. Now, Constantine, please cast a ward on me and a DOT heal.”

“Why?” Brutus frowned. “Actually, never mind.” The priest raised his hand and it glowed for a moment. Then without any further explanation, Brutus left, heading back the way they’d just come.

“He doesn’t really explain himself very often, does he?” asked Constantine.

Vale leaned the back of his head against the wall. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“He probably just went off to loot the burnt out shop, huh?” asked Constantine.

“Yup.” Vale close his eyes.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Vale couldn’t decide if he hoped the big man would find anything or not. His relationship with Brutus was…complicated.

Shadow Boxing

The training program generated two opponents. Trent quickly killed them both and they slowly faded to nothing. He moved his wrist, dipping the tip of his rapier and rolled his neck. It felt good to be training again.

This was a fencing program that Trent had used when he’d just started playing SOO. He could adjust the difficulty and number of his enemies, their weapons, the terrain, and other environmental hazards.

It’d been a long time since he’d decided to Dive into this training program, not least of which because most of his Dive time for almost a year had been spent in either school or SOO. Hell, nowadays all he did was play SOO. In the training program, the settings for his reaction, speed, and strength were actually keyed to his body in real life for this session, not his stats in SOO. Even though he wasn’t working out his body, he could develop refined muscle memory.

He was both a little startled by and very proud of how good he seemed to be now. Trent had always viewed himself as a decent fencer, but not Olympic level. He was solid, but that was it.

All the practice and constant fighting in SOO had changed things. It must have.

The same opponents that used to press him, even kill him a year ago were laughably easy to defeat now. Maybe he was an Olympic-level fencer now, or could be if he trained for it. Fencing for points with a foil was different than trying to kill with a steel rapier.

Actually, maybe the Olympians were all playing SOO and had gotten better too. That was a weird realization. Trent tried to focus on the training, but his mind kept wandering now. Instead of the random thought disappearing, it kept lingering.

He keyed up a new set of opponents. One was a man with a bushy beard and a wide-bladed hanger. The other was thin and bald with a spear.

Trent kept both at bay through a combination of footwork, light, exploratory strikes, and stance changes.

Suddenly, one of his virtual enemies committed. He came in low with a nasty upward cut aimed at Trent’s elbow. Trent dipped his hand, catching the hanger’s blade on his guard and accurately skewered his attacker through the armpit with a lunge.

The spear user tried to catch him unaware but Trent was not caught off guard. When the spear user thrust, Trent was able to retreat and flick out a parry at the last second. His rapier drew a glittering trail of blood from the man he’d just killed.

Then he snapped his guard up, staying light on the balls of his feet. Retreating from a spearman would be a great way to eventually die. Trent advanced. The spearman made a few quick, jabbing attacks that Trent mostly ignored. When his enemy finally went for a kill, going for a shot at Trent’s head, he explosively countered.

He parried the strike, allowing his opponent’s spear to whiff past his face. With his free hand he grabbed the spear shaft and took two quick steps forward. His enemy couldn’t keep up and was pulled off balance by Trent’s grip on the spear.

This time the kill wasn’t pretty–Trent just kept stabbing until the other man wasn’t moving anymore. The spearman had tried to defend himself with his arms, even tried to grab Trent’s rapier blade, but it hadn’t worked.

That done, it was time for another try of what Trent had actually opened this training program for.

He stepped back and concentrated, then slashed his sword blade. This time he even said the name of the ability out loud that he was trying to use. “Wind slash!” Nothing. Now he felt silly and kind of cartoonish. He’d been trying to use wind magic from SOO in different VR training programs for over an hour but nothing was working. Maybe I’m losing my mind, he thought. But he trusted his memory. There had to be an explanation for what he’d seen…what he’d done.

At least the fight itself hadn’t been bad. The last one wasn’t his cleanest kill, but he was still satisfied. Both of his opponents this time had been at maximum difficulty.

As the bodies faded, he thought about queuing up some more bad guys but decided not to. Instead, he sat on the simulated rocky ground of his fighting area and thought for a while.

Something other than his attempts to use wind magic was stressing him out. What else was bothering him so much?

He was…anxious. Like the feeling right before a storm hits. That was the best analogy he could come up with. A few things had been nagging at him for a while, but they hadn’t actually weighed on him like this. He tried to pinpoint when it’d started. Ever since he’d gone into the Chaos Maze, he just hadn’t felt…at peace ever since.

With a grunt of frustration, he stood up and commanded his persocom to Surface.

Trent woke up in his body and grabbed the bottle of water he’d set nearby. It was still a little cool. He chugged the entire thing, hit the bathroom, and went to the kitchen to make tea. There was a hot water dispenser that was always kept topped off, so he’d actually begun experimenting with tea and found he liked it.

It was relaxing and he needed it.

The entire team was taking half of the day off, but Trent didn’t see anyone else right now. That suited him just fine.

He wandered outside to a sitting area and sat at a park bench. If he wasn’t familiar with what the facility was used for, he might think it was some sort of office park with strangely tight security. Its nickname, “Rainbow Ranch,” was actually kind of funny. The entire Vermillion compound was surrounded with a very serious-looking fence. Guards patrolled the outside.

If Trent couldn’t leave whenever he wanted, it might have felt like a prison. A comfortable prison, but still a prison.

Vermillion wanted them all to have a guard with them if they left, too. A year ago, that would have bothered Trent. But after being shot at on a college campus, he just felt grateful.

He ran through the shooting again in his mind. The noises. Using cars for cover as he followed Rich and Stace to the van.

Why the hell were people shooting at gamers? He’d accepted it as a fact of reality for a while now, and it made sense why big streaming companies might want to make competition go away, permanently, but how were they getting away with it?

Trent started to get a headache.

He’d tried following up with the police about someone trying to murder him and about the threats made against his family. Vermillion Entertainment had kept track of it, too. Nothing had happened yet. No leads, no names, nothing.

In the distant past, the police never did anything about small crimes like…petty theft, but Trent figured someone, somewhere might care that a student was almost gunned down by a hitman in the college parking lot!

Over the last week, Trent had been watching the news, paying special attention to reports of violence against streamers and other mysterious disappearances. He’d done research and found that almost nobody ever got caught and charged for murders or disappearances lately despite the number of weird stories actually increasing. What was stranger was how nobody was really talking about it online other than a throwaway comment here or there.

It felt like everyone online was just acting like the entire world was a third world country now, but it didn’t make sense! Technology was at an all-time high. Hell, the entire world was playing a deep dive VR game!

“Hello.” Trent was jerked out of his thoughts by a voice and looked up to see Katya. As usual, the way Katya looked exactly like her character Minerva made his brain stutter for a moment. It was like he needed a second to remember where he was. Right now he was Trent, not Vale. It helped that Katya was wearing jeans, not Minerva’s armor.

She was holding a mug of her own.

“Hi.” The two of them just looked at each other for a few seconds before Trent awkwardly gestured at the table in front of him. “Want to sit?”

“Yes.” Katya gracefully took a seat and put both of her hands around the outside of her mug.

There were a few more moments of silence, but Trent decided not to break it. He’d never talked to Katya one-on-one like this, especially not outside the game. As usual, she was so beautiful that seeing her in person felt a little surreal, like he’d been transported to a movie where people were just better-looking than in real life.

But strangely enough, he wasn’t nervous or overly awkward-feeling. If anything, he actually felt fairly at ease.

Katya moved her mug around a few times, took a sip of her tea, and finally said, “Thank you.”

Trent blinked. “For what?”

“When I first met you, I waz angry. Scared. At first I did not want to join thiz group, but I have…found peace. Routine. It has been good for me.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.” Trent wasn’t sure what else to say and he didn’t really understand what she was talking about. He actually had wondered what was going on with her and her brother, so he blurted out, “I still don’t understand why you were hiding in a video game, though. Not really.”

Katya took a sip of tea and scratched her neck. She looked down at her hands long enough to be noticeable. Trent definitely felt tension. Both in and out of SOO, Katya was usually direct and confident. This was not normal behavior for her.

She tapped the table with her index finger slowly and said, “I should start from the beginning. Bear with me. I almost never talk about thiz.” She paused. “My father iz a powerful man. I believe in English you might call him a ‘crime boss.’ My brother Pavlo and I have different mothers. He and I are the only two children who have not been…devoured by my father’s business. We are still free, at least our minds.

“You might have noticed my accent. I know it iz strange. When I was young, I had to move many times. My father had many enemies and I could be used against him. My accent has no real home. My childhood waz neverending fear and rules, all in many places.

“One of the only ways I had to rebel when I waz a girl was with martial arts. My tutors hated it, which just made me embrace it more. Cutting targets with a sword made my mind sharp. Working out in the gym hurt, but it made me feel free. Powerful. Once I was almost forced to stop but I lied that I wanted to be a gymnast.”

She smiled but it fell quickly. “Pavlo escaped wiz friends years ago and worked abroad. He waz always…decisive. But he also had a different situation. His life waz more, how should I say, controlled, and he had more reason to leave it. I waz in a gilded cage for a long time. It waz more…tolerable.

“But things changed. The world changed. My skills could suddenly make more money. I waz more valuable.” She smirked without humor.

Trent thought he might understand. First it was persocoms. Then VR had exploded exponentially over the last few years. “Tech? Gaming?” he asked.

She waved a hand in acknowledgement. “Both. Being more valuable changed my life and opened my eyes. The part of my father’s business doing the best was suddenly something I could help with. I did not get a choice. They moved me from the countryside to the city. I waz given new handlers. None of my time waz my own anymore. I waz pushed hard, exposed to things I didn’t know about, some I pretended I did not see before. So I planned and I escaped. Then I waz chased. Just like Pavlo, I knew too much. I betrayed my family. Waz a loose end.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I am lucky that I waz able to escape with all the money I earned. It waz enough until I got here.”

Trent nodded. “What about hiding in the game, in the Great Maze? Worried about tracking? That’s what I figured.”

“Yes. Many businesses have agents in SOO and my father’s people are the same. Some of them have the in-game artifact to track players. It tells them where the target is playing from, at least down to the city.” She laughed grimly. “That damn artifact iz still in the game even after players complained about privacy. It makes no sense. Haz no reason to even exist. If my father found out what city I waz in, he would likely find me eventually.”

“I see. So that’s probably why it took your brother a while to help you move here, right? Maybe you were living somewhere remote?”

“Yes.”

Trent’s eyebrows scrunched together. “But if all this is the case, why did you fight me when we first met? Like, you were hiding in the Great Maze to get a Legendary Class, right? But your family was looking for you, so you had to be trying to be a streamer, right? Maybe as a way to make money in the future?”

She shook her head. “No. I waz just in hiding.”

Something tickled Trent’s mind. It was like looking at an optical illusion where he knew something was wrong, or something was deeper, but couldn’t put his finger on it. He squeezed his eyes shut and gently shook his head. Then before he could actually think about them, the words tumbled out of his mouth. “If you were hiding from your father and they could track you in the game, and you didn’t need money, why didn’t you just stop playing the game, then?”

Katya’s expression changed several times over the course of a few seconds. She looked like she was going to speak but fell silent instead. Finally she said, “I just wanted to play. But that does not make sense, does it?”

“Not really, no.” Trent sat still and watched Katya frown. Normally he would have dismissed this conversation as just quirky, and written off Katya as an obsessed gamer. But he was starting to think there might be more to it than that. “Katya, remember when persocoms first came out and all those religious groups were saying it was mind control, or the ‘Antichrist’ or whatever? Lots of people hated the idea.”

“Yes. Most of that iz gone now after persocoms are proven safe.”

Trent looked Katya in the eyes and debated with himself whether he should tell her what he’d been investigating lately. Finally, decision made, he glanced around furtively before gesturing for her to lean closer over the table. With a puzzled look, she moved nearer. Trent quietly said, “I’ve used SOO wind spells, like from my Legendary Class, in other programs twice now. Once in a college class. I keep thinking about it, and the most likely reason I can think of that makes sense is that my persocom is messing with my head.”

“What?! You used magic in school VR?”

“Yes. At least I think so. If I’m crazy I won’t know that I am, right?”

“That iz true. Hmm. I will not ask if you are sure, or at least sure of what you thought you saw or you would not tell me. And you said you are looking into it? Ah, yes. There have been other suspicious news storiez lately too, no? How odd to think about this.”

He nodded. “If the problem is the persocoms, it’s too late now,” Trent laughed. “We all have them in our heads.” He pointed to his temple.

“No, not necessarily too late. Awareness can help. Upgrades are software, not hardware. Maybe it’z a bug, or maybe only a few people have a bug. But…let us continue thiz conversation later. Your words ring true and I find myself curious. I will use my contacts to ask questions.”

“Contacts, eh? You have good ones?”

“Very good, yes.”

“Then you should also find out more about Yggdrasil Entertainment,” said Trent. “With everything going on, I’ve realized that there are a lot of big questions with no answers. Even what happened to us in the Chaos Maze just…doesn’t make sense. It’s one thing to feel pain in the game, but I really felt like if I’d looked at that thing, whatever it was, I would die. Maybe I would have just died in the game and had to play again as a bandit or whatever, but…it felt serious. I still sweat when I think about it.”

She shuddered. “Yes. Alright. I will do what I can.”

Trent suddenly got a crazy idea out of nowhere and once again, the words sort of just flew from his mouth. “Maybe we can start having lunch or dinner together and compare notes about things that don’t make sense? I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I hope nothing is super wrong with my persocom, but maybe it might be good to talk about it. And, oh, ah, don’t tell anyone else about this, okay?  I’ve only told Steve about this stuff. Probably only talking about this stuff in person is good too. No emails.”

Katya laughed, and the sound was carefree, earthy. Trent thought Katya’s laugh sounded like a steel drum. She asked, “Not a conspiracy theorist?” Trent opened his mouth but Katya beat him to the punch. “Paranoia has been my way of life for years, and you make sense.” Her eyes twinkled. “I did not like you much when we first met, Trent Noguero. But you are not weak, and you are not a fool.”

“So it’s not a problem that I’m a little paranoid?”

She stood and booped him on the nose with her index finger. “Perhaps I like paranoid men. A little bit of danger iz the spice of life, no?” Then she turned and walked away without looking back.

Trent felt like he’d just been hit between the eyes. What the hell just happened? He took his time to finish his tea.

He walked back into the main building with so much on his mind, it felt like his thoughts were covered in wool. Halfway through the den area, Florinia suddenly appeared across the room and smiled. “Oh Trent, do you think you can help me with–”

Trent didn’t even make eye contact with her, didn’t respond. He just kept walking back to his room. There was already too much to think about without adding more shit about Florinia.

He didn’t hear anything behind him. Ghosting the woman had left her speechless. As Trent closed his door behind him, he thought, Let her choke on that.

Despite his headache and heavy thoughts, he was actually in a great mood when he lay down for a nap and fell asleep.

Grinding the Chain

“This is such a long quest chain,” complained Abbey.

“Yeah, but at least we have the airship,” said Constantine.

Vale nodded at the priest. “True. It sure as hell beats walking. Ambushes aren’t even a problem anymore because of Abbey’s gatling guns.” The deck of the Mitochondria had a total of five crank-operated gatling guns now. It was only possible because the game recognized the airship as a fort.

“Now it’s just free XP,” Bart agreed. “Good job, Babe.” He winked at the steampunk girl.

Abbey waved a hand. “Yeah, well, I’ve wanted to arm a vehicle for a long time. If I’d had a minigun when I first met Vale on a stagecoach, that whole situation would have been less dicey.”

“Your big explodey pistol you have now would have been helpful too,” said Vale.

“That’s true. Big Bang is a problem solver.”

Vale mentally facepalmed and didn’t ask any questions. He really didn’t want to hear a long, drawn-out story about why Abbey had named her legendary weapon, “Big Bang.”

George Herterz’s voice came from one of the crude speakers on deck. “We are getting close to the map coordinates you gave us, Vale.”

“Alright, game time.” Vale stood and went to the side of the ship to look down. This portion of the quest chain was actually really dangerous. The location the last clue had pointed to was behind enemy lines.

Below the ship, the once-green forest was black with red flecks and purple vines on some of the trees. It was being transformed. The changes had already made it look alien.

He checked his quests that he was currently tracking:

Thank you for enjoying the Secret of the Old Ones Player versus Player event!

<Root Quest>

This is a dynamic, personalized quest that will always display at least two objectives. If objectives are completed, more will be added.

First objective: Kill 5 heroic NPC enemies in contested areas.

Second objective: Carry one high-priority shipment from an allied town to a spy outpost behind enemy lines.

Third objective: Take a side! Your actions in the upcoming conflicts will determine your allegiances. New factions will be created soon!

Quest reward: Varies

The third objective hadn’t changed, mostly because the human side hadn’t gotten their shit together and decided on any leaders yet. There were still no factions to actually choose from. Who was actually going to run the war was still contested. It was actually a miracle that the human players were still holding out.

His other two quests had changed every time he’d completed them, netting him some great XP and even a so-so enchanted ring that hadn’t been good for his build. He’d sold it in the auction house.

Then there was:

Heroic PVP Quest:

Make a difference!

As an individual or part of a team, make a serious contribution to the upcoming war efforts after factions are established.

Primary quest rewards: Varies

Secondary quest reward: PVP Purchase Token (PVPPT)

Vale smiled after reading this quest. He already had twelve PVPPTs. The buckler that he wanted to purchase would cost him twenty.

The last PVP-related quest was the biggest annoyance.

Rare Quest

Sky Battle (repeatable)

Destroy three other airships or capture one! Quest resets if your airship is destroyed.

Reward: Choice of arcane, mystic, mundane, martial, or spiritual reward package

Quest progress: 2 / 3

This quest had been a pain in the ass. There just weren’t enough airships, and since so many of the beasties could fly, their side seemed to rarely use them. One of the airships that the Gators had destroyed had actually been a group of pirates super into role playing. Half of them had seemed more interested in shouting, “Arrr!” and laughing than actually fighting. Vale still had no idea how they’d gotten ahold of an airship.

Weirdos, he thought.

Vale eyed his accumulated PVPPT again. It would still be a while before he could get the buckler he wanted. Maybe it was time to visit the auction house. He really did have a ton of money saved up. In the past he’d avoided the auction house because he’d been broke and it was just depressing. Things had changed, though. He needed to adapt.

That decided, he looked at his current quest:

Quest: Protector of Ziggurats

Find a way to defeat Hil’Goena when they wake up!

Quest grade: Mythic

Current quest title: Eradication.

The Eldritch Alligators had already knocked out a number of quests in this chain. A lot of them had been fetch quests that would have taken forever without the airship. A few involved mysteries and snooping around. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been many quests centered on combat yet, but this quest was likely going to be bloody.

Suddenly, a message flashed across Vale’s vision.

System Alert! Beeg Brazz Huevos has reached Level 20 and has chosen a Hero Class! Beeg Brazz Huevos is the first Hero Class player in Secret of the Old Ones!

There was a moment of silence.

“Beeg? Never heard of them,” said Brutus.

“How in the hell did someone level to 20 faster than Vale?” asked Constantine. “I was sure Vale was going to be the first to 20.”

“What I’m more curious about is how he’s kept his names despite the filters and the admins.” Bartholomew barked a laugh. “That player actually named themself Big Brass Balls. Classic.” Abbey smacked him with the back of her hand and frowned. The big man in the spiked outfit just cocked an eyebrow at her, made a face, and held her stare until she finally cracked a smile.

“It’s stupid,” she said.

“But also brilliant.”

“Maybe a little…if you’re a gamer and fucked in the head.”

“We’re all fucked in the head,” said Vale.

“Probably true!” came George’s voice from the ship’s speaker. “Also, we’re going down, my head-fucked passengers! Get ready!”

Vale nodded even though he knew their pilot wouldn’t be able to see him. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at this location. This time, the clues had been even more vague than usual.

“Remember a couple quests back when we had to kill those crabs?” asked Abbey.

Constantine answered. “That was very unpleasant.”

“Yeah, but at least Brutus got an item out of it,” said Bart. “The crab boss dropped that necklace.”

Vale grimaced. The drop had actually been pretty fantastic. While the necklace only had two stat bonuses, a +1 to Strength and +1 to Stamina, it also let the wearer use a defensive skill–[Magic Nullifier Field: Rage]. Basically, now Brutus could trade Stamina and a little bit of health to resist some magic damage and most movement-impairing effects.

For a player like Brutus with his build, it made him even more scary than he had been before. Now if he reacted in time, snares and other kiting abilities wouldn’t work on him. Nothing would slow him down.

“He’s basically Tryndamere now,” muttered Vale.

Abbey coughed and said, “Okay, the reward was good for the crabs, but the experience still sucked. Anyway, I was thinking about that, and that time we had to go fight the rats in the tunnel during the Hygon quest chain.

“When we were in that shop two quests back for this chain, remember what that old woman said? The Guardian of the Key is some sort of vermin. Gross. So if wherever we’re going has a bunch of creepy mobs that can swarm us, do you think we could just pull them out to the Mitochondria and take them out with the gatling guns?”

Everyone turned to Vale. He said, “Hmm,” and thought about it. “I don’t think the game would penalize us for it,” he said. “It’s worth a shot if we can kite a bunch outside. Maybe George can park the ship on the ground outside, too, so it makes no sound at all and doesn’t alert whatever it is.”

“We can do that!” came George’s voice over the deck speaker. “After I’m parked, me, Hans, and Rivera can all be on the ship’s guns, too. That way we can debuff them and do some damage while you guys mow them down.”

Vale nodded. “And you would get a bunch of XP too.”

“Yup!”

“Okay, let’s plan for it. We’ll try to make it happen.”

Constantine’s voice was thoughtful. “If it works, it would be a major exploit. We could probably double, or even triple our levelling using that method. Just find places with swarming mobs, kite them out, and mow them down.”

“It would cost a lot of money, though,” said Abbey with a frown. “Bullets are expensive.”

“Good thing you’re rich, Babe.” Bart patted her on the arm and gave a shit-eating grin.

Abbey began to retort but the ship shuddered as it reached the ground. George brought it into a skillful landing, and the Gators stayed silent as they disembarked, scanning the area for threats.

Their destination was an old temple carved directly into a cliff side. Over the pillars, demonic faces leered with different expressions. All were ugly.

“That style of face up there,” said Minerva. “I recognize it.” She drew her saber with a practiced motion and checked her brace of pistols.

“From where?” asked Brutus.

“The Great Maze. A ruin there had those faces and, ‘Death’ written all over.”

“How does that help us?” asked Brutus flatly. “We already know this will be dangerous.”

“It iz interesting.” Minerva turned to wink at Vale and giggled, a sound he’d never heard her make before. He smiled back at her.

Brutus seemed to notice their interaction but didn’t say anything. The big man just frowned and trudged up the steps to the temple.

Once inside, Abbey used a handful of gadgets she’d made for situations exactly like this one that searched for disarmed traps. The recipes to make the little rolling robots weren’t rare, but the material cost was too much for most Technicians to bear. Being rich had its perks.

The team’s magic abilities came in handy, too. At one point, they had to scale a sheer cliff wall, but it was so easy, the experience reminded Vale that every member of the Gators had a legendary class. Sometimes he legitimately forgot he was in one of the strongest SOO parties in the world.

Minerva made a series of steps and hand holds going up the cliff using [Elemental Magic: Earth]. She pulled them out like a narrow shelf. Creating rock steps like this was apparently as easy for her as generating gusts of wind were for Vale. The beautiful Mercenary was agile and strong enough to easily move up the rock face with the earthen blocks she’d created.

Then Bart used [Elemental Magic: Fire] to punch above each step, creating pockets for a climber’s toe to go in. This made it easier for less agile party members to scale the wall safely.

Vale actually thought some of the construction was a little unnecessary. Everyone in the group had fairly decent agility. Maybe his friends just wanted to show off their magic. He didn’t mind.

Pushing deeper into the temple took a while. There were small packs of what might have been giant mutant mice. Some of them had multiple heads, or even flickered as they moved. It was unnerving, but nothing that really triggered a SAN attack. The fights weren’t particularly hard for such a powerful team.

Vale was glad for any lucky break he could get.

Finally, the group approached what looked like a transition area to the last portion of the dungeon. Vale braced himself. He was expecting an absolute wave of rats or other small monsters. The entire team was ready to run like bats out of hell out to the airship.

They all crept forward with various degrees of stealth. On the left of the hallway was a stone wall. On the right-hand side were stone arches with nothing but pitch darkness beyond. Even though the hallway continued, Vale got the feeling that whatever they were looking for was in the large room or cavern to the right.

“Abbey, got a flare?” he whispered.

“Short or long?”

“Short. Just a few seconds.”

She nodded and took a small stick out of her equipment harness. Then she tapped it against the ground to make a red sparkler effect out of one end. She cocked her arm back and threw it into the darkness.

Nobody moved as the flare sailed forward, letting them see more of the truly massive chamber. Finally, it hit the stony ground, bounced once, twice, and lay still.

“I don’t see anything,” whispered Constantine.

Vale didn’t either at first, but then he sucked in a breath. “At the far side. It’s moving. Breathing.”

What he’d taken as a giant pile of boulders at first, as big as a hill, was alive.

Now that he knew what to look for, his mind was able to pick out more details, piercing the darkness. Finally, he was able to completely understand what he was looking at. It was vaguely mouse-like, similar to the monsters the group had killed getting here. But it was huge, the size of a house. It also had at least a dozen tentacles coming off of its back.

A giant title flashed over the thing: Guardian of the Key. Now that Vale was looking for it, he could see the top of an arch or a door behind the thing, probably where they’d get the next portion of the quest to resolve.

After the flare went out, several faint, sickly greenish glows that Vale had missed before were on the far side of the chamber, where the Guardian was. Each of the tentacles glowed beneath the ends.

All of the Gators very quietly and carefully retreated until they were halfway back to the entrance.

“So not lots of little things,” Abbey said softly. “One big thing.”

Bart swallowed and whispered, “I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“Do you ever get tired of that reference?” whispered Vale.

“Not when it’s appropriate, no.”

Vale tapped his foot on the ground while he thought, then told everyone, “We’re not gonna try to take this thing today. At least I don’t think we should.”

“Oh thank god!” said Bart.

Constantine asked, “Why not? If we win, great. If we lose, the lockout time is shorter than ever and this quest is related to the PVP event. We’ll know more about the Guardian of the Key when we come back.”

Vale shook his head. “That should be plan B. I want to stack the deck in our favor as much as we can before trying, just in case something changes after a failed attempt, or the game even tells other groups where this thing is.”

Constantine shook his head in surprise. “It can do that?”

“The game has done so before,” answered Brutus. “And the first group to kill a boss always gets the best rewards.”

“We might even lose the quest chain,” said Vale. “And not all bosses come back as repeatable. Like, after we killed Hygon, he was dead and gone.”

“Oh.”

Vale patted Constantine on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. At least we don’t need to level first before taking it. We should be okay. All the other quests have actually been pretty easy so far. Let’s get back to the Mitochondria and brainstorm.” He turned. “Everyone think of what you can do to prepare for a boss fight like this, every buff, everything. Imagine money doesn’t matter. Maybe I can ask Vermillion for an in-game money loan.”

“Will they do that?” asked Abbey.

“Maybe, maybe not, but it won’t hurt to ask. Besides, we’re all rich now.”

Bart smiled. “Damn straight.”

***

Vale asked the Herterz brothers to keep the Mitochondria on the ground. The guns erupted every once in a while, taking out a monster that wandered too near. Rivera stayed on the deck and used the gatling guns, finishing off the monsters his brothers weakened.

Meanwhile, the Gators had a meeting.

Everyone laid out what they could do to make the group stronger or provide more firepower and defense to the team during the boss fight.

Vale took notes, figuring how much of it they could do on their own, and how much it’d cost if they went all out. He planned to ask Vermillion Entertainment for in-game money to cover their expenses. Maybe he’d even send an email directly to Jacob Vermillion himself. This wasn’t going to be cheap, not if they were able to go all out.

“Alright” he said. “I think I got what I need. I’m going to send out the messages to Vermillion and let them know we need to move on this. I also need to ask Vermillion to hold onto the streaming content we made today, delay it if they can. We might need some extra time to get everything ready for the boss fight even if they give us the money we asked for.

“Luckily, we should be able to pop back over enemy lines to allied territory and get all this stuff ready. The problem is there is no point in going right this instant with the money we personally have. We’ll just have to go back and waste time if we get a gift-slash-loan. So it’ll be more efficient to know what we’re working with either way. Does everyone agree?”

“More or less, yeah,” said Bart. “I mean, we gotta buy that bigger boat. Because we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Constantine laughed. “Good one!” He made a fake apologetic expression. “Sorry, Vale.”

Vale sighed. “You guys are all so fucking hilarious I can sometimes barely contain myself. Anyway, we should probably log for now and get some rest. I’ll message everyone once I get an answer with at least a couple hours of heads up time, but that means we’re still on the clock. This isn’t a day off, more like a half day. We all on the same page?”

A few moments later everyone Surfaced.

***

Back in his room, Trent fired off a few messages. He copied Jacob Vermillion and Julia Mills on the request for funding. It took him a while, but he typed up an outline of what the team had encountered, and why they needed extra gear.

That done, he felt a sudden wave of exhaustion. He really had been pushing himself hard lately. Now he was so close to level 20, beating this new boss should take him the rest of the way to leveling for sure.

It was a little annoying that someone had beat him to attaining a Hero Class, but that didn’t really reduce his excitement. He’d been chasing a Hero Class in SOO since he’d first started.

Trent was in a great mood, full of high hopes when he lay back and slept.

Shot in the Dark

Trent woke from a deep sleep. His room was dark except for a small, antique Harry Potter night light his mother had given him as a child. He normally took some time to completely get up, but he didn’t feel groggy at all.

Did I have a nightmare? he thought. Then he heard a pop, something like someone dropping a cinder block on concrete. It came from outside.

He had a weird feeling. Trent lay still and listened. He was tired but wide awake at the same time. Choosing to go back to sleep was an option but he ignored it. A couple of years ago, actually, even a year ago he would have dismissed it. Things were different now. He’d been playing SOO where his instincts were honed every day. In fact, he’d even been shot at before IRL…

Gunshots. Was that it? Maybe silenced?

A chill ran down his spine.

Trent got out of bed as quietly as he could and padded over to his desk. Part of him felt crazy for what he was doing, but part of him was ice cold, still listening, running through various scenarios–each crazier than the last. What had he heard?

He checked the time through his persocom. 3 AM. Nothing good ever happened at 3 AM, it seemed.

The desk drawer looked like it was full of odds and ends at first glance, but Trent took out the legal pad that covered what he’d squirreled away: a Beretta 92FS. The old 9mm pistol was the same one that Michelle had trained him to shoot with at the Rainbow Ranch’s compact little shooting range.

When Trent had found out he could just casually take the pistol with him back to his apartment, he’d been shocked. The freedom felt especially strange after coming from a college dorm where he might have gotten in trouble for having a box cutter. It still felt weird that nobody cared about him taking a pistol from the armory. He took it back to his room in a little range bag after each training session with Abbey. The guards never seemed to bat an eye.

There was even less concern about his real steel rapier on the wall–he’d ordered it online after receiving his first streamer paycheck. Ultimately, the Rainbow Ranch seemed completely dedicated to protecting its gamers from the outside world, but not too concerned about what happened inside.

Trent mechanically ran through the steps Michelle had taught him to check the pistol, ensuring it was unloaded and making it ready to be loaded. The slide was locked back to the rear. Trent still didn’t like guns very much, but he admired them now, and liked the act of shooting itself. It was calming. Holding the freshly cleaned pistol in his hand right now, in the dark, didn’t make him feel calm, though.

He randomly remembered Katya’s words to him, “Perhaps I like paranoid men.” He was tempted to giggle at the absurdity of what he was doing, loading a gun in the middle of the night.

Then he heard another two pops and his actions suddenly felt much less silly. He was scared, but also becoming more clear-headed by the second.

Thinking of Katya made him remember his friends. He sent a quick message to Steve:

<Did you hear that?>

He almost immediately got a system error:

Message not sent. Error 761.

Trent blinked. Error 761 meant no ‘net connection. It was relatively rare, but practically everyone in the world knew what it meant. That message also shouldn’t be possible right now unless all the satellites in space were somehow not working…or unless the compound was being jammed.

Something was very wrong. If he’d only heard noises, maybe he could have talked himself out of being freaked out. Now he was committed.

He swallowed as he noiselessly retrieved the loaded magazine from his drawer. Keeping the gun in his room had partially been in delayed response to his family being threatened. He’d never seriously expected to need it, especially in the compound. Even having an almost fully loaded magazine had seemed a little excessive.

Now he wished he’d loaded the entire thing and had spares. His mag only had thirteen rounds. Trent inserted the magazine into his pistol, then pulled back on the slide to load a round. He rotated the decocking lever, making the hammer fall forward with a “click” that usually made him nervous. Then he moved it back.

Right now he was too nervous to be nervous.

He put the gun on the desk where it would be accessible before throwing on some pants and slip-on shoes. The extra magazine went in one pocket and the gun went in his waistband under his t-shirt. Hiding a gun like this had always looked easy in the movies, but in practice, he felt hyper aware of the cold steel against his skin. He felt awkward moving with it.

Checking the windows didn’t help. His window had a terrible view and he couldn’t see much of the compound from it. The windows were also kind of small and would be hard to get out of, so he closed it back up.

Let’s do this. Hopefully it’s nothing. He slowly opened the door and stuck his head out. No noise, no lights. Before he left his room, he hesitated. What the hell? he thought. Slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible, he took his rapier off the wall. It was a pretty good reproduction of a historical weapon–expensive, but not enough to be outside the means of a regular person.

The sword was in a scabbard with a baldric. Trent settled it over his head and it felt right. Even though he could store weapons in his inventory now in SOO, he had spent a long time with a rapier on his hip, in-game. When he left his room, he instinctively moved to avoid hitting the frame with the sword. It was second nature to gently guide the pommel, angling the scabbard behind him.

He crept down the hall to Steve’s room and gently knocked. Nothing. Shit. He tried tapping. Still nothing. Impatient and worried, Trent used Steve’s code to open the door. His friend normally would get an alert that someone other than him had opened his room, but not with the ‘net down.

Trent entered the room expecting to see his friend’s big form sleeping under the covers, but the bed was empty. “Shit,” he whispered.

All the dorms had private bathrooms. Steve’s had no light under the doorway, so wasn’t where he was, either. There was only one other place he would probably be.

Michelle’s apartment was on the other side of the building. Of all the days for Steve to be at his girlfriend’s room…

Trent softly closed the door and tried the lights. Nothing. He heard another pop from outside. If he hadn’t been listening for it, he would not have noticed. Silencers. The guards in the perimeter shacks by the Rainbow Ranch entrances had thick windows in their booths. They likely would not have heard it.

Any lingering doubt in Trent’s mind that something serious was happening evaporated. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Before he went anywhere, he needed to have a conversation with himself.

Should he leave the building? Try to escape? He could probably open Steve’s window right now, squeeze himself through and try to sneak out. Despite not knowing what was happening, that was likely one of his best options. Plan A would be to make it to a guard shack, find out what was going on. Plan B would be to leave the compound and get far enough away to call for help.

Trent had changed a lot in the last year and especially in the last few months. Now he knew that having his head straight, knowing his purpose was important in stressful situations. A lot of people freeze when they encounter real violence. Trent thought about the situation, thought about everything Steve had done for him, he thought about how powerless he’d felt after his parents had been threatened.

“Don’t be a pussy,” he whispered to himself. “Time to get Steve.” He figured if Michelle was there, he’d help her, too. Or vice versa. She was annoying, but he privately had to admit she was his friend, a good one, too. And she was damn good with a gun.

Trent had learned that the most important people in life were the ones he trusted. And in the last few seconds, he’d learned something about himself. He was willing to put himself in danger for them.

Now that he had a goal, a mission, his heart stilled and he felt strangely at ease. It was just like being in the game. There were two ways he could go to reach Michelle’s room: the long way around that would take him through the living area and the kitchen, or the short way that would mean moving past the rear entrance.

Taking the shortest route was probably the best choice.

He padded down the hallway, keeping to the wall. The Rainbow Range compound was truly large, with multiple housing buildings surrounding the administration building. It felt like forever before Trent reached the back door. He paused when he saw a hole cut through the glass. Someone had let themselves in.

The hallway bended around so Trent couldn’t see the entrance to the next set of apartment doors.

When he heard soft scuffle sounds, Trent drew his pistol. He walked as lightly and stealthily as he knew how–the carpeted hallway helped. His head was clear but his heart was thumping as he rounded the corner and beheld a disturbing scene.

Two big men were carrying the unconscious body of Charles Allison. A third was standing guard, facing the opposite direction. He was holding a shotgun and wearing body armor. All of the intruders had masks. A dead Vermillion Entertainment guard was on the floor about halfway between Trent and the intruders. It looked like he’d been dragged there.

They hadn’t seen him yet. Trent didn’t make any jerky motions–the darkness of the hallway was helping but if he moved too fast the motion might give him away. He leaned against the wall, bracing himself.

Breathe. Ball of the finger on the trigger. Hold your breath. Don’t jerk the trigger. Don’t hold the pistol in a death grip, but don’t limp wrist it, either. He ran through the list of instructions that Michelle had drilled into his memory. Since the target wore armor, Trent would have to go for a headshot. Michelle always said most pistols would be stopped cold by most body armor. She also said trying for headshots was usually a bad idea, especially as a novice.

The scene and the moment seemed to narrow his field of view. He knew that his life would be completely different one way or another from this moment on.

Trent made his choice. His gun bucked in his hands and the shot was true. A cloud of blood puffed in front of the man’s face. From where he stood in the hallway, Trent couldn’t even see the hole he’d made in the back of the man’s head. As the mortally wounded figure collapsed, the other two dropped Charles to the ground, which was probably the worst thing they could have done.

Now Trent didn’t need to worry about accidentally hitting the team’s healer.

He opened up. This time he didn’t get the benefit of taking his time to line up a shot. He completely missed several times. Even so, both the remaining intruders were full of holes by the time Trent ran out of ammo.

If all three had been wearing armor, he might have been screwed.

He rushed forward, drawing his rapier and skewered every body on the ground except Charles for good measure. The resistance of his sword penetrating flesh was familiar from hours upon hours of playing SOO.

Trent glanced up and down the hallway as distant alarms began to sound. The muffled gunshots he’d heard earlier might not have tipped off the remaining guards, but opening up with a full mag of unsilenced 9mm in a building had. Good.

He didn’t see or hear any more armed invaders. Trent bent down to retrieve a pistol that one of the dead men had been reaching for. He got blood on his hands. His gorge rose, but he suppressed it. Now was not the time to lose his shit. The hardest thing to endure wasn’t the sights, but the smells. He put his t-shirt over his nose and mouth to block the slaughterhouse odors.

Charlie was out cold. Even slapping his new friend’s cheeks wouldn’t rouse the man. Trent had to move. He could hear more noises around the compound as people were waking up or reacting. Then there was an unmistakable series of gunshots somewhere else outside. Distant screams echoed.

A Glock was in his pocket as he dragged Charlie’s unconscious body to a nearby supply closet. Getting him over all the blood without touching the blood left him breathless. If he’d dragged the man through all the filth on the floor, his efforts would have left a trail. Trent closed the door to the closet and moved back to the bodies, stepping through spreading pools of blood. It got between his toes. He grabbed a few magazines of ammunition and ducked into Charles’ room, mostly closing the door behind him. The open crack would let him hear.

Trent’s plan had been to unload the bad guys’ bullets and transfer them over to his Beretta’s magazine, the pistol he was more familiar with. After dropping the Glock’s magazine, he pulled the slide back to clear the chamber. “Damn.” He’d discovered that the bullets were not the same size.

In the dim emergency lights that had come on overhead, he read, “.45acp” on the back of the bullet. Trent still didn’t know much about guns, but now he understood that these bullets were not going to work.

There was no option but to keep a hold of the unfamiliar weapon and hope for the best.

Suddenly, there were jogging footsteps outside.

“Shit,” he quietly cursed.

Trent stayed silent as the hurried footsteps stopped to survey the carnage outside the door. He heard some motion and movement. Then Pavlo’s voice said, “I think these are the same as the others. Definitely not Vermillion.” After that he rattled off a sentence or two in a different language. The person who answered was Katya, his sister. Her voice was unmistakable in any language.

“Hey, it’s me!” Trent hissed. “I’m coming out. Don’t freak out!”

When he pulled the door open and saw his teammates in the hallways, his jaw dropped. Katya already had a gun belt over one shoulder like a bandolier. She had what looked like a spacey-looking submachine gun in one hand with a silencer attached. Trent hadn’t even seen the gun before but the way it was covered in blood suggested it’d first belonged to one of the dead men.

Next to her foot on the floor was a baseball bat.

Pavlo had put on the armor from the first man Trent killed. It had pouches and ammo on the front. The big, European man was manipulating the shotgun that the dead man had been carrying. He turned and nodded at Trent. “Good work,” he said.

A thick string of blood dripped off one of the armor’s pouches to the floor.

Trent’s gorge rose again but he stomped on it. He took a deep breath, got himself under control.

That was when he noticed the blood on the baseball bat, and on a big kitchen knife that Pavlo had stowed in the webbing of his borrowed armor. He remembered what he’d just heard Pavlo say, “I think these are the same as the others…”

“Did you already, um, meet some of these guys?” asked Trent.

“Yes,” said Pavlo. He nodded his head in appreciation about something as he checked over the shotgun. “Killed three. They seem to be going from room to room. Had chloroform. We had a pistol but wanted to be quiet so we took them all before they knew what was happening. No time to use their radio or fire a shot. Risky, but it worked.”

Trent frowned. “You had a gun but didn’t use it?”

“No.” He looked confused at the question. “We were trying to be quiet. We did not know the situation.”

Trent could only shake his head in horrified, exhausted, shell-shocked bemusement. He was glad that these two were here. Some of his workmates and friends were truly some dangerous people. It was ironic how he’d run from Brutus for almost a year in SOO, only to feel comforted when the big bastard was around in the flesh, even weighed down with weapons.

“That iz the room of Charles you were in?” asked Katya. “Iz he there?”

“No. He was unconscious. I moved him to the closet over there. He’s still passed out.” Trent pointed.

“Ah. I can see some signs now,” said Pavlo. “Fine. We should stay here. Defensive location. Move all the weapons into the room then get Constantine.”

“Charles,” corrected Katya.

“Charles.”

They both turned and Trent blinked. “Wait, you mean me too?”

“Of course. It is a question of time. Vermillion is a large company, and the police will be on the way soon, as well. There is also hope right now.

“The fighting outside means the Rainbow Ranch is not overrun. Vermillion Entertainment is sure to have panic alarms at the guard shacks so we just need to survive long enough for them to arrive.”

Katya said, “Most importantly, they want uz alive. It means we will not need to worry about fires and such. Hopefully.”

Trent nodded. “That all makes sense, but I can’t stay.”

“Why?”

“I need to check on Steve.”

“His room iz by yours,” said Katya.

“Yeah, but he wasn’t there. Probably at Michelle’s.”

“Ah. Now I understand. She lives past our rooms from here.” Brutus held out his hand. “You have a Glock now, but you are still holding a Beretta. Are you out of ammunition?”

Trent glanced down at himself, at the gun visible in his waistband and the Beretta in his hand. “Yeah. The bad guys are using 45’s.”

“Better to suppress,” said Katya with a cock of her head at the gun in her hands.

“Do any of them have any 9 mil ammo? I’d prefer to keep my Beretta.”

“Glocks are simple,” said Pavlo.

“Yeah, well, so are kitchen knives,” he said, nodding at the knife in Pavlo’s armor, “but I’d like to keep my rapier. Don’t want to trade blades, either. This situation is fucked enough without trying out new weapons like I’m playing an FPS.”

“A rapier, yes. The way he iz wearing the sword makes me feel like we are in-game.” Katya’s murmur buzzed with amusement.

The woman was talking like it was a regular day at Rainbow Ranch despite being surrounded by bodies and blood on the floor. In that moment, what she’d confided before about her family and her past was real in a way it hadn’t been before.

Pavlo considered a moment before reaching into a pocket and handing Trent two full Beretta magazines. “One moment.” The big man took a Beretta 92, same as Trent’s, out of his back pocket, removed the magazine, and handed it to Trent as well. “Now give me the Glock.”

Trent wordlessly handed the plastic-feeling weapon over. Pavlo made it disappear as Trent reloaded his pistol.

“You aren’t going to try convincing me to stay?” asked Trent.

Pavlo shook his head. “No. Your mind is made up, and what you are doing is honorable. If I thought us going with you would help, I would go, too. But we must watch over Charles, and if more enemies come this way, they will fight us, not move up your ass.”

Katya approached, all sinuous grace as usual. She said, “You have come far from a cowardly ninja looter, yes?”

“I didn’t–”

She cut him off with a solid kiss. Trent was so surprised he froze up. “Be safe. Stay paranoid,” she said, eyeing his gun with approval. “Come back.”

Trent glanced up at Pavlo to see his reaction, but the big man was looking away, clearly ignoring them. There wasn’t anything left to do or say, so Trent met Katya’s eyes, exhaled, and moved off at a fast, quiet walk.

He could be a little dense, but if a woman kisses a man on the mouth like that, and has a look in her eyes that he’d just seen, chances were pretty good he might have a shot.

The situation was totally fucked. Trent was worried about his friend. He’d just killed people and had been surrounded by blood and death. But now he felt an odd kernel of excitement and hope.

Dammit, he was gonna live through this!

Getting Ahead

Trent crept forward. The Beretta was heavy in his hands but they were steady. Sounds of chaos continued outside. He kept listening for any signs of more intruders in this building but so far he couldn’t figure out what was going on at all. There were too many soft noises to parse. Alarms had abruptly cut off a few minutes before, but there were still sounds of fighting.

It abruptly occurred to him that if nobody answered the door at Michelle's room he might have trouble getting in. He didn’t know the code. Then again, if his friends were there, they’d likely answer.

He arrived at his destination and listened before knocking on the door. Nothing. He knocked again and his heart dropped as he noticed scratches in the floor. After a second to steel himself, he tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

The door swung open. Nobody was inside but there were signs of a struggle. At least one of Trent’s friends had gone down fighting.

It looked like the window to the room was still intact. He thought fast. Steve couldn’t have been abducted too long ago, maybe around the same time Trent killed the men kidnapping Charles. The bad guys were carrying a body or two, moving slow. Maybe he had a chance to catch up.

There was no way Steve wouldn’t do the same for him, and he owed it to his friend to save his weird, annoying girlfriend, too.

There were two other exits to the building other than the back door Trent had passed earlier. He briefly thought about what might happen if a team or two of bad guys had come to get him in his room. He had no reason to think they hadn’t. They’d probably run into Katya and Pavlo after leaving his room. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he heard gunfire from inside the building back the way he’d come.

Trent paused for a second, torn, but ultimately ran forward. At least Katya was awake and armed. Steve was probably passed out, being carried around like a chunk of meat.

All of the old hurt, the fear, and pent-up rage he’d suppressed when his family had been threatened suddenly bubbled to the surface. That event had changed Trent forever. It left scars on his heart, and this was worse.

He ran. The next stretch of building had the exercise rooms, a conference room, and other rooms useful for high-level streamers. Rainbow Ranch dormitories, or apartments, were built around a central courtyard. A garden. This made the buildings large, but very simple to navigate.

When Trent was jogging past an alcove to a door to the garden, he was suddenly checked hard and slammed into a painful skid on the floor. He rolled to his feet and raised his pistol, but the man who’d rammed him shot him with a taser before he could bring the weapon to bear. Trent hissed in agony as his muscles locked up, his limbs twitching. He fell.

“Running around by yourself? If you were a guard you’d already be dead. Lucky for you we want you alive.” The man’s voice was gravelly. He moved forward slowly, removing zip ties from a back pocket.

Trent knew he shouldn’t be able to move, but he tried anyway. A second later, the invader’s widened eyes through his ski mask seemed to reflect the surprise that Trent felt. He’d drawn his sword and skewered the man through the chest. He really didn’t think it should have been possible right after getting tased, but he’d done it anyway.

The draw and lunge had been fast and clean, too.

His sword blade penetrated through the side of the man’s body, through the armpit, and had punctured one lung, maybe both.  The man tried to speak but he couldn’t. Bloody froth ran down the rapier blade.

Trent pulled his sword free of the dying, would-be captor. The man tried to talk but just clawed at his throat and side. The masked stranger must have seen Trent coming and had completely underestimated him. He still had his weapons holstered.

Suddenly, Trent heard gunshots on the other side of the nearest door, coming from in the garden. He picked up his Beretta from the ground, sheathed his sword, and charged.

Through the door, he stopped dead in his tracks. Then he rushed forward again.

Michelle was down, but breathing in pained grunts. She’d been shot. Two masked invaders were dead or dying near her. She had one of the invaders’ Glocks in her hand. Despite the obvious pain she was in, she swung the pistol over lightning fast and had already lined up a shot on Trent before she recognized him and relaxed.

Her shoulders slumped back. She held herself up with one hand in a half sitting position. The other hand was on her thigh where she’d been wounded. “Hey Trent, glad you could join the party.”

“Yeah,” he half whispered. There was a lot of blood on Michelle’s pajamas. He said louder, “What happened?”

“They came into my room. Steve struggled but when I realized we were screwed, I gave up. Pretended to breathe in the chloroform they held over my mouth and went limp. It’s the one thing they screwed up, not holding on my face long enough. Then when I got my chance, I stole a pistol from a belt and took out these guys that were carrying me.”

Her face looked green as she surveyed the carnage around her. A wave of revulsion moved across her face. Her arm trembled and she suddenly threw up. She wiped the back of her mouth with a hand. “They took Steve through the kitchen. We were behind them and one guy went to get you, I think. They could hear you running. That’s what I figure.”

“Yeah,” said Trent. “He almost got me, too.”

Michelle eyed his rapier on his belt and shook her head. “What the fuck is even happening right now? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fu–” Her voice trailed off from a whisper and Trent closed his eyes.

He couldn’t lose it right now. Seeing the normally bubbly and sarcastic Michelle reduced to this state was hitting him hard. At least her injury didn’t seem life threatening. He could imagine how she’d played unconscious, snatched a pistol when she had a chance, and had been shot by one of her kidnappers even as she’d killed them.

She wasn’t going anywhere now, though. At least not far.

“Shit,” said Trent out loud. “I could use your help.”

“Yeah, well, unless you have a wheelchair in your back pocket, I’m not going to be much help to anyone. I’m pretty sure the bullet broke my bone. It feels…lovely.” Her face was pale and she drew shaky breaths. “Glad it was my leg and not my chest, though.”

“Yeah, not much on your chest to stop a bullet, huh?” The words came out of his mouth on their own.

She drew a shaky laugh. “Fuck you, you pig. God you’re an ass, Trent. But thank you for coming when you did. I can’t ask you to do this, shouldn’t ask you. You’ve got a sword and a pistol you just learned how to use like a month ago. But…please go save Steve.”

“Got it.” Trent glanced down one more time. “You gonna be okay? Don’t bleed out. Steve would be sad.”

“I’ll manage. Just…go. At least distract the fucks in masks until help gets here. Oh, and Trent?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, I was ABI. You know, in-game. I had a little radio-controlled camera.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Steve said that story I did forced you into all of this. I’m sorry that I made your life harder before.”

“I know you were ABI,” he said. “Since I met you I’ve done more research about what Artificers can do. The class has a lot of versatility, and you’re one of the better players. And ABI hasn’t put anything else out since you joined us. If it wasn’t for Steve, I might have had more of a problem with everything after figuring it out. But… Well, you’re an annoying, crazy bitch, but as long as I can trust you, it’s all good. I decided I could a while ago. Trust you, that is.”

She drew a shaky breath. “Cool. Now please go save my man. He’s a better person than either of us.”

Trent nodded and moved.

He didn’t have to go far. Once he went through the doors leading directly to the kitchen area and down the hall, he stopped. The kitchen had people in it. And bodies. Two Vermillion Entertainment security guards were down, obviously dead. One of the intruders was down too, but alive. Another one of them was giving him medical aid.

An unconscious Steve was lying on the floor with some sort of webbing around him to make him easier to carry.

And standing over them all, leveling one of the spacey-looking, silenced submachine guns, was Florinia. “Hello, Trent,” she said sweetly. Unlike the intruders who were all dressed in black with masks on, Florinia was dressed like it was just a normal day. She was wearing jeans, a dark blouse, and a grey cardigan. The only things that spoiled the effect were the gun in her hands, the tactical belt around her hips, and the big backpack she wore.

“Hello, ‘Nia.’ We are still friends so I can call you that, right?”

Well, now I know how they were getting into our rooms so easily, thought Trent. He ignored Florinia’s gun and aimed his pistol at the man doing first aid.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said, and pointed her weapon at Steve’s head.

“That’s dirty,” said Trent.

“Yeah, well, what’s a girl gonna do?”

The kneeling man glared at her. “We have to take them alive!”

“Yeah, but if I have to kill one to take the other, I will.”

The masked man shrugged and went back to applying bandages to his wounded comrade. “It’s your show. Your call.” He tied off a bandage and said, “I don’t have a taser, you do. It’s in the backpack.”

“Here.” Without taking her eyes off Trent, Florinia removed her backpack, set it on the floor, and kicked it over. The masked man began to rummage around in it.

Florinia’s eyes were flat as she smiled. “Trent, throw your gun over there past the kitchen. Chuck it. Hard.”

Trent didn’t think he had a choice. Betting his own life might have been acceptable, but Steve was helpless, and Florinia’s gun was practically point blank from his temple. Trent grimaced and threw his pistol exactly as he’d been instructed.

“Good! That will make both of our lives easier.”

“What now?” asked Trent cautiously. He kept his hands away from his sword. At least he wasn’t completely unarmed.

“Now we need to make my life even easier.” She leveled her gun at him and looked through the sights in a very snappy, professional manner that suggested a high degree of training. “See, you just have to be alive. Nobody ever said anything about happy or healthy.” She dipped the barrel of her weapon slightly and pulled the trigger. Trent felt a flash of profound surprise before a sensation of pressure with no feeling hit his leg. The area was numb for a couple of seconds, and Trent’s leg began to buckle. He let it happen. Trying to stand right now would probably be bad, and if he went to the floor, maybe Florinia would stop shooting.

His mind seemed to be moving incredibly fast, his thoughts ultra-rational. Other than the stakes and the obvious fact that this was reality, it almost felt like he was in SOO, calling shots during a dungeon dive.

Trent considered his only weapon, his rapier, and realized that he should avoid lying on it. That meant he was gonna have to go down on his wounded leg.

He fell awkwardly to his right side. A moment later, pain like a burning sun lanced up his calf. It felt like a combination of his leg falling asleep, his flesh being burned, and a cramp. Tears sprang up in his eyes, but he held Florinia’s eyes with a fierce glare.

Florinia casually moved the barrel of her weapon from Trent, back to Steve’s head. “Can’t have you running away now, dear. You know, maybe some of this unpleasantness could have been avoided if you weren’t such a creepy dickhead. Then again, I would have had to keep pretending to like you, and that would be–” She made gagging noises.

Trent’s eyes went flat. “Are you being honest, Florinia? Maybe you’re just mad I wasn’t interested in your game playing, deceitful, trifling ass anymore. Speaking of your ass, it isn’t even that nice. Katya’s is way better. In fact, she’s hotter, smarter, and cooler in general.”

“Shut the fuck up, deadbeat.” She rolled her eyes but Trent noticed her trigger finger move ever so slightly. “People a hair away from dying probably shouldn’t talk shit. Worse, you’re throwing Steve’s life away, you selfish piece of trash.”

Trent’s heart fell but he didn’t show it. It’d be different if the gun was pointed at him, but it wasn’t. He bit off a retort, that it was rich for Florinia to throw around words like “selfish” when she was the one taking hostages. Instead, he just shrugged as best he could. The pain he was in made him shiver and ruined the effect a little bit.

Florinia turned to her uninjured team member. “Do you almost have that fucking taser? We don’t have all day. If we don’t get to extraction soon, we’re done.”

“Yeah, yeah. Here it is.”

While they spoke, Trent pulled his sword. He held it in a defiant guard as he lay awkwardly on the floor, bleeding from his gunshot wound.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” asked Florinia. She laughed and scoffed. “A sword? Fucking loser gamers.”

“Yeah, well, this loser gamer has been doing pretty well against you assholes so far tonight up until now,” spat Trent.

Florinia’s expression cooled. “Maybe. But now you’re done. End of the road. If you’d just stayed in your room and been knocked out like a good little delivery package, I would not have had to shoot you.”

Trent shook his head. “Who the hell are you, Florinia? Like, who are you really? Why are you doing this?”

She shrugged and her eyes went blank. It was unnerving how fast she seemed to change emotions and Trent suspected her entire personality before had been an act. She’d seemed so sweet and charming when he first met her at Vermillion headquarters.

Florinia said, “It really doesn’t matter, Trent. I’m being serious. None of this matters for you. You have no idea what is coming, and you don’t even know it, but you’re playing for the losing team. This world is full of braindead lemmings. Even with what the other side is doing for you, you have no hope. And even if we hadn’t come tonight, you would have just kept mindlessly playing your little game, and everyone else would have mindlessly kept watching until everything ended. You–”

“Commander, you should probably stop talking,” said the man approaching Trent. He had a taser in his hand now.

Florinia tsked, but said, “Agreed. Hurry up and subdue him. Tase the shit out of him then hit him with the chloroform. Maybe kick him a few times before that. Whatever. Once he’s out I’ll call another team over to help us. Hurry up, too. I’m watching this asshole and the door at the same time. Another two Vermillion mall cops could bumble their way in.”

The masked man nodded.

Trent thought furiously. What could he do? It was actually smart of Florinia to keep her gun held on Steve. Even if Trent had a hidden weapon, if he tried to pull it, she could just shoot his friend. The threat was effective.

But if he didn’t do something, both he and Steve were going to be kidnapped to God-knows-where, by God-knows-who. They might both be killed. Should he roll the dice? Did he even have any dice to roll?

Panic rose at the same time an ugly wave of anger exploded behind his eyes. All this bullshit, all this danger, and he just wanted to live his life. Why couldn’t people leave him alone!

In another few seconds, he was going to be tased. There was no realistic way that he could avoid or block the needles with his sword, and he didn’t have another gun. Hell, if he actually tried to lunge off his ass and attack the tase-man, Florinia might kill Steve. Then she’d just need to shoot his other leg or his hand. Maybe the only reason she hadn’t already was that it’d cause more inconvenience.

Trent didn’t have anything left to lose. In frustration, in desperation, he fell back on a futile gesture, a show of rebellion. Trent tried casting his signature spell, one all his own, that he’d created and used thousands of times in SOO. He slashed the blade of his rapier at Florinia from where he sat on the floor and snarled, “<Wind Slash>.”

Something actually happened. The moment the spell was triggered, Trent felt tired. A wave of compressed air manifested from the sword and flew across the room with a sharp crack. Florinia’s head snapped back and came off. Her finger reflexively pulled the trigger as her body fell, but it missed Steve’s head by a few inches.

Trent snarled in agony and rage. There was no time to process what just happened, no time to examine the implications. He held his free hand out at the shocked, masked thug and cast <Crushing Wind>. This wasn’t the game, so he fumbled a little with how much power to feed the spell with. Somehow, a combination of practice, intuition, and a feeling he couldn’t describe guided him.

With a surprised cry, the man was slammed into the floor, like a giant invisible hand was pushing him down. Trent shimmied forward as best he could, leaving a blood trail, and when he was close enough he started indiscriminately stabbing with his sword. His arm pumped like a deranged piston. He actually nailed his enemy through the hand, causing the taser to go flying.

At this point, it wasn’t a fight–it was a one-sided massacre but he didn’t stop until the man quit moving. Trent breathed heavily, feeling light headed from exertion, and glanced over at Florinia’s twitching corpse.

He’d just killed the woman he’d fantasized about, flirted with for weeks.

This time Trent puked. He couldn’t hold it in. His vomit mixed with his blood on the floor and he threw up some more.

Using the last shreds of rational thought he had left, he took the pistol, another Glock, from the man he’d just stabbed to death, sheathed his bloody sword, and painfully crawled back behind a counter to watch over Steve from cover.

A few minutes later, Michelle poked her head from around the corner of the hallway to the garden. He listlessly waved at her. Then she scooted over to him on her ass, leaving a truly horrific blood trail.

The two of them sat in silence, watching different directions, covering each other’s backs just like they regularly did in Secret of the Old Ones. Trent drew his rapier and laid it on the floor, just in case. This was their last stand.

***

About half an hour later, an army of Vermillion Entertainment guards and the local police stormed the building. They found an unconscious, red-headed Steven Peterson being watched over by his wounded best friend, Trent Noguero, and his near-unconscious girlfriend, Michelle Wong.

The Rainbow Ranch was covered in bodies, many of which had been killed by the resident gamers.

And when the cavalry arrived, before they announced who they were, a few of them saw Trent holding a sword, drawing it back. The young gamer had death in his eyes, and in that moment, the witnesses felt a thrill of fear. He was just holding a sword, his pistol was not even aimed at them, but most of them could sense that they might have just narrowly escaped destruction.

When they found the headless woman in the middle of the room, and the pile of hamburger that used to be a man, they all thought they now understood why they’d feared Trent’s rapier.

***

As he lay in the ambulance, Trent bared his teeth in a grin. Even if he told them the truth, would they believe it? Did he?

The entire way to the hospital, Trent kept replaying what Florinia had said in his head. The cryptic clues. What did everything going on have to do with SOO? Considering he’d just killed with magic IRL, any theory about his persocom somehow fooling him was no longer on the table.

And while part of him thought it was ridiculous to be forming some sort of wild conspiracy theory about a video game, another part of him kept a constant reminder that he’d just been shot, and more importantly, that a small group of gamers had just killed armed and trained thugs.

That thought haunted him, and was what he kept coming back to even as the staff at the hospital gave him something to put him out.

The last thing he thought before losing consciousness was, At least nobody threatened Mama this time.

When I wake up, I’m gonna figure all of this shit out. Not getting caught with my pants down again.

Something was happening, something big. Trent was done second guessing himself about it.

End of Airship Privateers,

---Book Two of Secret of the Old Ones

Trent’s adventures will be continued in the next book, World War!

Please read on for a note by the author, including multiple ways to connect on social media.

…And don’t forget to review this novel!

And don’t forget to join Blaise Corvin’s email list! You won’t get spammed, just told about new releases!

Mailing List Link

To Readers,

PLEASE, PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW!  You are wonderful and reviews are amazing for all authors, but especially indie authors like me. Your reviews help me pay the bills. Seriously. Amazon works sort of like Youtube in a way, so this is just like Youtubers asking for likes and comments. We fear and praise the algo.

Whew. That out of the way, let me post a link to my mailing list here. This is probably the most important thing for me to push these days since Amazon sucks at telling you about new releases, and Facebook only shows my posts to a few hundred people at a time. Email List Link. Sign up :)

1.  My website

If you’re interested in checking out my website, the URL is http://blaise-corvin.com/.  You can find news, Delvers LLC artwork, and maps.

2. These are my social media pages. Connect with me!

Twitter - @Blaise_Corvin
https://twitter.com/Blaise_Corvin

Facebook - Leave me a like on facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/BlaiseCorvinWriter/

Blaise Corvin Reader group (best place on FB for updates)

http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/

My Patreon!

http://www.patreon.com/BlaiseCorvin

3. Genre Facebook Groups:

GameLit Society

And

LitRPG Books

4. My email

If you want to drop me a line for any reason, you can email me at:

Blaise.Corvin.Art@gmail.com

I am very slow to reply to email, and I apologize for that ahead of time.

5. What do do about typos and such: Please email me or tell me on Facebook in a PM.

If anyone is curious about how the review system on Amazon works, you can see my blog post on the subject: How Book Reviews on Amazon Work

6. Until next time (--and please leave a review!--)

Thank you for joining me on this adventure!  I couldn’t do it without all the knowledge and encouragement I get on a daily basis from everyone I interact with.

I can’t wait to spend time with Trent again in World War!

:)

-BC

2020 and 2021 have been some of the most challenging years of my life. I know I am not alone in this.

Let’s make 2022 a good one.