Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (40 page)

“I’m out!” Awesome Jr. shouted.

This damned monster was trying to close line me like I was some toddler in its way. Boots dug into the ground. Jarring rippled every portion of my damaged body. My ankle threatened to buckle, and my stupid health bar dropped quickly for every second I strained against the arm’s force.

“Beth!” I almost screamed between gritted teeth.

“It’s going!” she shouted.

I heard a sharpening hum. Light flared and the creature gave a roar. The pressure on my arms fell away and I stumbled. My body turned just enough to see the creature’s chest with large holes poking through.

I fell forward into the messages. They shattered through my visor and vanished into a splash of light. The armor slid away and someone ran over, their footsteps drowned out by my beating heart.

The beast was sinking into its pit while groaning loudly. A hand sat there curled in a claw of protest as the sinking continued. Finally, no part of the beast of shadows remained. A bottle was being shoved into my face to drink. My eyes were locked on the pit where our attacker’s entry into the world refused to close up. It sat there like an ugly scar on the land of
[Arcadia]
. A notice that even if we fought our actions would do nothing more than stave off eventual destruction.

“Drink this, Hermes. It’ll help,” the young man said.

Cool liquid soothed my throat as it went down. Awesome Jr. was cradling my head and trying to lift me up. My head throbbed and everything hurt. His potion filled part of my health bar and one or two pains went away. I still felt dizzy and nothing was in focus.

The thought occurred to me again. These small abyssal holes wouldn’t close up.

“I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve ever fought.”

“I’ve fought bigger.” I thought of the eyeball on that
[Leviathan]
. It had been absolutely insane in size. Putting our recent combat into perspective helped me move easier. Some of the fog lifted from my head. It might have been Awesome Jr.’s potion.

“How did you get here so fast?” My breath was running short. One foot shuffled in front of the other as I looked over the edge. Part of me was terrified a grasping hand would come up in an overtime boss mode fight, but nothing happened. Only black emptiness existed down there.

I took a breath as another scary thought occurred to me. Was that pit, which had tried to swallow us all, a part of the fear that King Nero had before? He spoke of a black abyss. Did he mean deletion? Or did the Voices bring him back with a healthy fear of what may come? Deletion would be death to a digital creature.

“There’s a trail of destruction through the woods, plus nothing tried to stop me. I picked off a few of the wolves for easy skills,” Beth said.

My head slowly turned around to see my niece. She wore a proud look. I smiled weakly and kept huffing.

“That was some spell.” I tried to give credit where it was due. “And those potions helped.” My hand turned to a weak thumbs up for the young man.

“Yeah! Wow, I wish I could learn real magic. That would be awesome. Or that sword, or those movement things. I’m jealous. You’re even better with them than last time.”

“I’ve had some practice since then. But how did you even get here?” I stared at the other man.

“I found her. I and the others split up, you remember them right? SweetPea, HotPants”

“And Shadow.” I nodded. James had mentioned there were a ton of players named Shadow around this world.

“Yeah. It’s awesome,” he muttered. A second later he flinched and looked behind him, but no one was there. The movement made me laugh, he probably expected HotPants to bonk him on the head. Part of me expected it too after seeing that very scene multiple times.

“Convict, are you alive!?” a rougher sounding male shouted from farther away.

“It’s Hermes!” I waved. Wyl and I needed to have a serious talk. We all did, about this event with the pit and what roles we had all been assigned. “We’re all clear!”

Wyl walked slowly in our direction, and the three of us met him halfway. He stared at the ground in wonder while shaking his head. Around us, the formerly lush forest was missing huge swaths of trees. Roots were in clumps and dirt had been sheared off at a completely flat angle. “Someone needs to tell me what happened.”

“A giant monster.” Awesome Jr. leapt into the conversation. “Hermes here was fighting it, I haven’t seen anyone take that kind of damage in a long time.”

“Yeah. That last blow, I thought for sure we were fucked,” Beth said with a confusing curse word. I raised an eyebrow at her and my niece looked down and blushed slightly.

“I know some of it, but anything I share will sound insane, and we need to get somewhere safe.” My head tilted and eyes scanned around. There was no knocking or other signs of wildlife.

“Does this have to do with Auntie?” Beth asked from behind me. Her face pinched a bit around the eyes.

I tried to smile for her. It felt fake but the system provided a notice about my
[Acting]
skills kicking in. Maybe that’s how I got them in the first place, by being good at pretending everything was alright.

“You’re hiding something,” Beth said. “I can tell.”

“Now’s not really the time, and we’ve got a long road ahead of us.”

Both the teens tried to get information out of me after that. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. That fight had been hell and everything ached. Their constant stream of questions were ignored and eventually they talked amongst themselves about their characters.

Wyl walked along parallel to me. His eyes kept turning toward the other two and his face would scrunch up. Each time the sickening feeling in my gut grew. I tried to distract myself with thoughts of Xin and ways to grow as a player.

What would I do if we fought one of those monsters together? Would she have the strength to combat them on her character? Could we escape anywhere safely if those things were following me? That knocking sound had been centered nearby the entire time.

Hours later and Wyl stopped walking as fast. Awesome Jr. said we should make a camp and I couldn’t bring myself to argue. It was late in the night back in reality. Beth should have been asleep but she had pushed through. Wyl couldn’t last much longer.

Dusk was the only one who appeared to have boundless energy. He winged around a few additional laps even once we stopped to make camp. I set about the fire while Beth pulled out food. At some point, I ended up sitting down while staring at a small but warm fire. Crumbs from a sandwich sat in my hand.

Wyl sat off to one side and sharpened a sword. I thought it was the same one he had stolen from a player back at the
[Abyss of Light]
. He was exceptionally skilled at disarming people and stealing their weapons.

“Here, let me do that,” the younger man said to Wyl. “I take care of the weapons and armor for my group, so I’ve got a lot of practice.”

“What’s your skill at?” Thorny asked over the soft grinding noise.

Wyl chose not to respond and handed the sword over. The young teen and his ugly green cloak sat there calmly inspecting the blade for nicks. He lifted it to eye level, one hand on the hilt as the blade rested across the back of his arm.

“Five, as of last week. I ended up polishing an entire stockpile of items for Shadow’s small army,” he said while squinting.

“An army? Your guild member has an army?”

“Oh yeah. The League of Shadows. I kid you not, an army of players named Shadow, or something close.” Awesome Jr. smiled as he set down the blade. Cloth and a tiny whetstone came out of his player inventory.

“All of them are like, vigilante justice player killers who are hell-bent on making sure no guilds try to monopolize dungeons and stuff.”

I watched them talk while feeling absolutely numb. Dusk stalked around the fire a few times staring into its depths before wandering over. His face looked a bit haggard and scratches showed up in multiple places.

“Seriously? That guy is in charge of all of them?”

“Yeah. But some are like, ShadeX or Nightfall, or other stupid names. They’ve got close to two hundred players in the guild, nearly all with sneaking skills or rogues. A month ago, before we joined up, they dismantled the entire High Rollers leadership in four days.” Awesome paused his weapon caretaking and lifted one hand. It crossed his neck with a cutting motion as his tongue stuck out to the side. “They snuck into their base and offed players and autopilots alike then kept griefing them for four Earth days.”

“Jeez.” Beth whistled. She knew exactly what questions to ask. My own method of dealing with other players had devolved to smile, nod, and hand them a letter.

Fingers clasped over the tube for a moment. There were no messages inside or in my inventory. Based on what that Voice of Faith and Sanctuary had said, most of them were probably busy trying to keep the world from falling apart. Except for Mezo anyway, it made sense that she might not care at all. It was the end of the world and she was probably trying to convince all the other Voices to join her in a lust filled hurrah.

“But still, getting an army of players? Was that a unique quest? How did they even agree to that?” My niece scooted closer with an excited look.

My eyes closed and I wondered what SweetPea might think. Beth and her were clearly different people. Girls got jealous often didn’t they? I didn’t remember that ever being a problem with Xin. How would she feel finding out I had tried to date someone once after her passing? Such thoughts kept me silent and introspective while the other two chatted away.

“I guess. I think it started from his old trainer in Haven Valley, plus that guy is like, always grinding out skills while SweetPea and I have to go to school.” He shrugged then put away the stone and inspected Wyl’s sword again. “HotPants might know more, but I think she was doing some monk training style stuff. Like, zen waterfall face the sunrise stuff. God knows she could use meditation.”

“Really?” Beth pulled out another chunk of food and offered it around. Wyl shook his head slightly, but Dusk felt comfortable enough to take a bit from her hand.

“Yeah. She’s angry like, all the time.” Awesome Jr. kept talking and flipped the sword over. “The game even changed her hair color because of the prolonged rage usage. Apparently if you hold onto rage abilities for more than an hour it starts shifting to red? I dunno. I can’t get upset enough to trigger it.”

I wondered if Wyl remembered Awesome Jr. The young babbling teen hadn’t been one of his charges. Shadow and HotPants had. Either way, none of it triggered a reaction of out the guard captain. Likewise Awesome Jr. didn’t pry about Wyl’s current situation so far from home.

It felt weird. Almost like the guard captain was extremely annoyed with Travelers. How exactly had he ended up as a convict caretaker? Dealing with people who committed crimes against people in his world might have only been the latest leg of a series of turns.

“Yeah. I have another friend who follows a berserker path, at Rank five they get an aura, and at like twenty it’ll light up a room and they start grinding their teeth,” Beth said while waving her hands.

They kept conversing back and forth about game mechanics and my own mind continued to drift. Wyl looked like he was lost watching the Travelers talk, then walked over near me and conked out six feet away. I stared at the back of his head and sighed. Locals couldn’t keep up with Travelers in terms of energy. We could go for days in their view of things.

Dusk had also fallen asleep at some point across my legs. He reminded me of Mister Snuffles, who had used to sleep next to me in bed when I was small. I could have logged out but wanted to sit here and think.

I held the blade in my hand and stared at it. My gift from William Carver. The
[Red Imp]
inherited abilities of
[Blink]
and
[Awareness Heightening]
. My two skills from
[Gait of Bowman]
. Those tools were damned near perfect for the fighting style I had engaged in. A hand crept up to my throat and felt it.
[Breath of Flame]
was another strangely useful item. Did the online world adapt them to me, or did I learn to use the skills given? Had the Voices known what abilities to give me in anticipation?

What about
[NPC Conspiracy]
? They had given me an ability that might be truly broken and put limited uses on it. There were reasons behind these actions that didn’t make any sense.

Xin wasn’t here, but we would meet soon. Wyl was okay. I lay back and tried not to doze off completely. Some players, like Requiem, could sleep while logged into the ARC. I always preferred to disconnect completely.

Awesome Jr. was sitting near the fire facing sideways. He had two vials of liquid out and shook them every few seconds.

“So, do you have a way to get to Xin?” I finally asked. Beth and Awesome Jr. had been sending tells back and forth regarding this before.