Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (23 page)

* * *

After we had all emerged from the dungeon, we received a message from AltCon informing us that this phase of AltCon provided tasks was completed. We could expect to get the same every two to three weeks, however they would not be weeks long like this first one was. As part of our Beta responsibilities, we all had to write reports to AltCon about our Raid experience. However, we only had to write about what, if any, problems we found with the raiding interface and game play in the larger groups. All of our reports were terribly short since we had nothing negative to report. I didn’t feel like telling AltCon that they needed more flavor in their dungeon make up, and it wasn’t necessary for us to send them the items we had received.

I handed the Amulet over to Tim and his smile was from pointy ear to pointy ear. He walked over to his group and they seemed to be having a private conference. Then Kaitlin walked over to us and said, “You guys are really awesome. Seriously. We knew you guys had taken off in the game and we worried you would be kind of stuck up about the whole thing. But from the word go you didn’t hesitate to really help us out. And what you did for Jenny, that was just amazing. We might, and I stress the word might, have been avoiding you guys. But no more. From now on we totally will keep in touch and ask for help if we need it. If you guys don’t mind.”

Dan walked up to Kaitlin and was about to talk, but then stopped. He looked over at me and said, “Brodo, you should probably take care of this. No one ever understands when I say nice things.”

That got a chuckle from everyone, and I took the lead, “I wish we had known earlier, Kaitlin. It’s our bad too. But you guys never, and I stress the point of never, have to worry about asking us for help. We won’t ever turn you guys down. Other players and groups are the competition here, but you guys are our team, and we look out for our team.”

Nods from all of my guys followed. Wayne approached me and said, “Rings?” I nodded my head and responded with, “Absolutely.”

We then led Kaitlin and her group over to the merchant that sold us our spells. The merchant smiled when he saw Jason enter, but frowned a bit when he saw Jenny and her group coming in after. “Well, well. What do we have here?” he said.

“Good sir, these are our closest allies in this game. Akin to family. They will from this point forward only buy spells from your shop, and I have no doubt they would be willing to help with any tasks you may have.”

The merchant suddenly beamed and grabbed Tim, pulling him aside. I could hear him telling Tim about a camp of goblins where his goods had been stolen. I told Kaitlin to tell Tim to take the quest.

After they all bought their spells and improved all of their gear, easy to do with all the gold we had collected in the dungeon, we journeyed with our teammates to the camp. Tim was given the quest as their group leader, as he had the highest Chance in their group. We explained the camp and what the Boss dropped. I linked them the ring and they were excited to get more unique items in the game. I told them they could likely farm a bit and sell them for 10-15 silver each as we had stopped fighting here. They again thanked us mightily, and we all went our separate ways.

* * *

It had been a long day and everyone was ready to get some down time. Dan and Wayne did their normal thing of going to the Tavern and Jason logged off. I sneaked off telling the guys I was getting some rest, but really I headed into the woods to see Stan.

Since starting my training with Stan, I had indeed seen a marked improvement in my Conceal and Stealth. Where before I was just following the necessary steps to activate the skills in the game, Stan somehow made me feel like I was truly stepping into the shadows. He was all bluster and anger most of the time, but when he taught he took the job seriously and was very thorough. But I had appeared to hit a plateau, and there was another threshold I needed to cross before Stan would consider me fully trained.

“Bah lad, stop being afraid to embrace the shadow. You look like you’re scared of the damn things. They are your family; your rest stop on the road to where ever ye is goin’. Don’t just slide into them, let them slide around ya,” he told me.

This was all poetic as shit, but didn’t tell me how I was supposed to do that. Finally, seeing my frustration, Stan set up our training room under his hill to help me complete this next task. He placed a single candle in the room and told me to sit next to it. In this way I was surrounded by shadows but wasn’t actually sitting in them. I was illuminated by the light.

“Alright Alex, I want ya to reach out to the shadows and have them fight back the light. Have them surround you where they shouldn’t be able to. I know you could step back into them and do the same, but a true Blacksuit controls the shadows fully.” He said that last part emphasizing the word Blacksuit.

I did as he said and kneeled down near the flame. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, since what was around me was a virtual reality, created by 1’s and 0’s and couldn’t be manipulated the way he was saying. But perhaps there was more depth to the AI then I knew. Stan had not done me wrong so far, so I trusted him to not be leading me on a fool’s path.

“Shadows is alive me boy. They move with the light. It’s their eternal enemy and there is a balance between them. When the light moves, so does the shadow. That’s what everyone thinks. But what if the the light moves because the shadow recedes or moves forward. Try to feel the shadow me boy. Fell the warmth against your face, but feel the coolness against your neck as well. The shadows is dark and cold lad, that’s what I want you to focus on,” Stan said again.

I remained kneeled next to the candle, sat back on my heels, and did as he asked. I could feel the warmth of the candle against my face, and I could feel the coolness on my neck. That was from the absence of the candle, though. I couldn’t make my mind wrap around the idea that the shadow itself was cold.

“Stubborn git! Stop using your mind! If you try to “think” this through ya gonna fail. Just use your senses and your abilities. I wouldn’t be wasting all me darn time wit ya if I didn’t think ya could do this. Concentrate!” Stan said next to me.

I let out a deep breath and tried again. This time I didn’t think about the source of the cold or the heat, I just focused on both of them. The coolness around my neck was real, that’s what I told myself. I concentrated on that cold and I tried to will it up to the top of my head, moving up my neck and over my hair. My eyes were closed and I was breathing in a rhythmic pattern. I don’t know if it was from the candle that was providing afterimages of light through my closed eyelids, a trick of my senses, or exhaustion, but for the briefest of moments I thought I saw that all too common ERROR pop up behind my eyes, like it did for the briefest of seconds every time I logged in to the game. It was tiny, and only in the uppermost corner of my “vision” but I swear I saw it.

I pushed the thought to the side and just kept trying to “will” the shadows to move. After five more minutes of slow breathing and concentration, I felt the weirdest thing begin to happen. It was like fingers crawling up my head and over my hair. And the fingers were cold. It almost broke my concentration, but I refocused and continued to picture the “fingers” doing their work. After a length of time I couldn’t begin to determine, the candle went out and all I saw was darkness from behind my eyelids.

I breathed a sigh of frustration, realizing Stan must have put the candle out, signaling the end of my training and my dismal failure. “Guess the training is over for today, huh? Sorry Stan, I really tried, and I thought I was getting it,” I told him.

“Aye lad, trainings over, go ahead and open yer eyes.”

I did, and was shocked at what I saw in front of me. The candle was still lit. But the image before me was very dark and I could barely make out the light.

“Ye stopped because ye thought I put out the light. But as ya can see lad, living shadows is thick. Not like when you slip into a shadow like ya was doing earlier, these can block out most light. Ya done gave ‘em purpose and form. Remember how that felt lad. We gonna be practicing a lot, me and you. I’m proud of ya, lad. Now just think of the natural order of things and the shadows will move back to the balance.” Stan said to me.

I did as he said and the transition back to normal was far easier.

“Get some rest lad, you deserve it for once,” Stan said, all smiles.

I left his home and returned to Port Town. I logged off happier than I had been for days. I had accomplished something truly amazing. I just wish I could share it with my group.

* * *

“Well that was impressive, wasn’t it?” said a voice from the shadows of Stan’s training room while Stan cleaned up the candle and wax that had been burnt down.

“Aye, it were. I feel like ya may have had a hand in it though,” Stan replied, while still cleaning.

“I did my friend; he couldn’t access the code without it. I hadn’t compensated for that before,” the shadow said.

“Dangerous my friend, he ain’t ready yet for the realization. But I get why ya did it. The boy wasn’t attuned yet,” Stan replied.

There was silence from the shadows for several seconds. And then with a whoosh of air the shadows moved and the presence was gone. But not before saying, “No, not yet. But soon I think my friend. Soon.”

CHAPTER 15

September 2nd, 2043

When I logged on, the ever present ERROR blip flashed before I entered the game. At this point I was used to it, and I figured it had something to do with my Chance being raised to a level that was literally impossible at my level. At this point I welcomed that little ERROR message before my log on. I also noticed that my log in point was only a few steps from my log out point. This had been happing consistently. The distance between my log in and log out seemed to get halved each time I logged in. Or logged out. Or maybe each day. Who knew? But what I did know, is that no matter how long I played, I would never be in the exact same spot where I logged off. A few steps was a negligent difference, though, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

I hadn’t had much time to look over my new stats once we finished with the dungeon, since I ran off to see Stan so quickly. And then with my successful completion of Stan’s task, I had totally forgotten about getting the awesome weapon. I brought up my character screen to take a look at what I was working with.

TITLE:

Bunny Slayer of Port Town (+1 to all Skills, +10 to all resistance)

An 80 increase to my attack was nothing to sneeze at! I couldn’t wait to try out this new dagger. I was worried a little about the effect though. It would be activated randomly through the fight, determined by my Dexterity. When the effect activated, the dagger would be processing the effect, or what was commonly referred to in gaming culture as a ‘proc.’ The higher the character’s Dexterity, the more often the weapon would proc. Each time this happened, my place on the aggro list would increase. And with my new damage and speed, I was really worried about taking aggro from Wayne. And I couldn’t Play Dead like Gary could. This would require some strategy sessions with the guys.

The other thing I noticed was my new bonus to Conceal and Stealth. I knew I was getting better, but I didn’t realize it was going to give me a bonus that I could see on my character. This meant I should be able to move quicker, something I was desperately looking forward to.

We were all still level 12, so we knew there would be no quest from Sir Kenyon, and we were looking at having to continue grinding away with the mobs out in the forest. Farther afield from the gates of Port Town we were able to find Bears, Wild Boars, and Dire Wolves that were level 13 and 14. These could still give us experience, but it was slow going. Time for the grind to continue.

Everyone had logged in by the time I had finished checking out my character stats. Dan had logged off at the Tavern and was the last to join us. Now that our quests for AltCon were done, the conversation returned to what we should do next. After the dungeon the guys were all pretty close to level 13. I was still a bit behind them from dying against the bunnies in the sewer.