Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds (2 page)

If he didn’t get Tobin, he was going to be upset at them and their server shenanigans.

It was
his
name.

It was always
his
name.

Except those times it was somebody else’s name, but those didn’t count.

Character created.

Toby threw his hands up over his head and almost dropped the controller.

Awesome.

A warning popped up. He glanced at it. “Adjusting character height can lead to issues of disorientation when entering or exiting the game. If you experience any discomfort it is suggested you use a character of the height assigned by the blahdedy blah blah. Whatever. I didn’t change that.”

After dismissing the warning, the intro cinematic began. Open field, people charging. Been done. Toby mashed the buttons to get the movie to stop. If he heard it was good he’d go find it on the internet later. He didn’t have much time here. He’d set an alarm for one thirty, but he really should be moving before then.

A black screen faded in to show him a clearing very similar to the one he had created his character in, except now he was standing in the circle. He turned his head as he examined the area. Quest giver guy ahead, a wagon behind. So, implying he had traveled here from afar. Fair enough. He moved the character forward a few steps.

His headset freaked out. Static appeared on the screens for a few nausea inducing moments and the field in front of him was torn away. Another room appeared in its place.

“And here is your champion.”

He was in a large stone room now. The walls were lined with stained glass windows depicting all manner of scenes while much of the roof was gone, the building open to the sky. The room had a few expensive looking golden and silver objects lying around in the dust, forgotten. At the end of the long room stood a short bearded man in long robes. He held out a hand to Tobin.

What a weird quest. For a minute there he thought his ridiculously expensive headset was on the fritz. He’d scrimped for months to buy the stupid thing. It damned well better work right.

Then again, bleeding edge technology was pretty much known for its failures.

The little balding man was smiling. “Your last best hope.”

There were other people in the room. Some in fancy armor, others in robes with intricate patterns. All of them had glowing bits. It all looked like pretty high end gear. Strange, given that this was the start of the early access period. Nobody should have that sort of advantage yet.

NPCs. They must be. Part of the quest.

All of their faces turned to Toby. To
Tobin
.

The little man’s face was almost split in two from his stupid grin. Did they base these characters on people? That one looked like a bad random roll. Nobody would pick that.

“And he’s a barbarian, how perfect.” He lifted his right hand high over his head. “Then the choice is made.” A large sword materialized in the air over the little man’s head. His hand grasped the handle before he pulled it down before him. “I name you Soulbreaker, the only weapon that can cause me harm.”

The old man stepped forward and held the sword out before him.

“For you, Barbarian.”

His arm raised the sword so high it hung behind him before he hurtled it forward. The great sword whistled through the air as it flew. It lodged into the ground, standing out of the stone floor only a few feet from Tobin.

All eyes in the room remained on him.

Super strange quest… but he was pressed for time. He could look it up later.

He stepped forward and used the interact command on the sword. His visible arm in the game reached out and pulled it from the ground.

Its blade was made of some dark metal. It was almost black except where the light struck it. There it shined bright enough to hurt his eyes, brighter than any other metal in the room.

The little man was still grinning like an idiot. “One week. Show me what you can do.” He waved his arm before him.

All those present in the room were thrown to the ground, aside from the old man and Tobin. They fell backward, striking the stone floor, walls, and pillars.

Before they landed all of their shining gear disappeared. When they stood back up they were wearing things similar to Tobin. Simple materials. Rough metals. Ill fitting in places. No real extra details or odd colors. Very renaissance fair. Well, the more serious kind that frowns on people saying they’re vampires or fairies.

A man in rough wool clothing and a breastplate struggled to his feet and looked straight at Toby. “You there.” He pointed at the small bearded man. “Take him out. Now.” The man sported neatly trimmed hair and a Riker beard. Both were starting to gray.

“Uhh…” Toby shrugged. “Why? I’m sort of lost as to what’s going on in this quest. Do all new characters end up here? Because so far this…” He realized the futility of arguing with an NPC after he had already begun to do so.

The man charged at Toby, his face twisted with anger.

Toby backpedaled a step but the man closed and grabbed hold of the black sword. He yanked it from Toby’s grasp and charged at the short bearded man with a yell.

He only made it a few steps before electricity crawled over the sword and it vanished from his hands.

Toby looked down to find it back in his own hand.

Very weird quest.

The small bearded man laughed. “Oh, you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you Paul? No. You’re going to have to work for it.”

The armored man gritted his teeth. The others in the room were nearly all back on their feet now. The short bearded man kept on laughing as he vanished from sight.

But his voice didn’t.

“Good day, fresh denizens of the Proving Grounds! Welcome to the early access period! You may have noticed the downtime last night that prevented us from getting the server up on time. We do apologize for that, but we were putting the last touches our spectacular pre-launch event!”

The people about the room were mumbling to each other. The armored man was pointing and biting off orders. They looked at Toby every now and then.

“The event has already begun.” The small bearded man’s voice continued. “The early access week will be like nothing that comes again after, so enjoy it! Tell your friends! An empire will rise or fall before your eyes, and before your blades! There are some rules, of course. You get one character for now, just to reduce clutter, and should that character die your account is locked out for the rest of the early access period. So be careful! Of course, if you don’t care for these rules there’s only one thing you need to do. Find and kill the barbarian warlord Tobin Ironblood. He seeks to conquer these lands for his own ends and you, good people, are all that stands in his way! End his reign and the restrictions on characters and death are ended as well. Oh, and one last thing. Open Player Versus Player combat has been engaged for the duration of the event. So watch yourselves. Begin!”

A loud gong sounded from everywhere and nowhere. A local sound, played in both ears.

“Did he just say…” Toby tilted his head as he looked around the room. “Does everyone get this quest, or am I really the one guy? Because that sounded like I am the one guy. And that kinda sounded like everyone and their grandma is going to be gunning for me. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. And I’m level one.”

The armored man turned back to Toby. He shook his head. “Listen to be. This is important.”

The alarm on his desk beeped.

It was 1:30 p.m.

Damn, he must have spent more time in the character creator than he thought.

“Yeah, I’ll have to get a rain check on that one. Time for work.”

He brought up the main menu.

“Hey, wait, you can’t just-”

The logout button turned gray as Toby let go of it. The headset yanked on his ears a bit as he removed it. He gently laid it back on the floor and mumbled about crazy quests.

2

He got to the shop a bit late.

Mr. Stevens hadn’t noticed. Toby wandered in and set down his backpack in the by his station in the back. The monitor showed him pressing orders. Of which there were three. Not much to do.

Good. He should have a few minutes to look up whatever the hell that quest had been about. And maybe to read up on the barbarian and the other classes. He might pick something else.

Er, or not. The voice had said he only gets one during early access. Pity. He wished he’d put more thought into it now. Of course the voice had
also
said he was the supreme leader of evil that everyone else was trying to overthrow. That must have been some kind of bug. Every player heard their own name or something.

There was no reason to single him out. Nothing that made him special. He hadn’t even bought the collector’s edition. Granted, he probably would have if they had been in stock…

There was a TV on the side of the room with the break table. Mr. Stevens kept it tuned to the twenty for hour news cycle of everything is bad and we’re all going to die unless you stay tuned in. Toby generally tried to ignore it. Mostly because things never ended up being quite that bad and so far the world hadn’t even exploded once. Disappointing given the frequency of the claim.

Right now they were talking about an explosion in a building downtown. People investigating. Experts saying it was most likely faulty wiring, though some were quick to jump on the terrorism bandwagon. Always room on the terrorism bandwagon.

“Well that sucks.” Toby murmured to himself. It was a nice looking building. Fortunately it had been empty at the time as the explosion happened after hours and seemed contained to just a few floors.

It took less than three hours to clear the order queue. Really just a few tweaks to existing designs based on customer feedback and setting them to print. He didn’t have to turn a crank to move material along or anything.

Mr. Stevens was snoring softly at the break table in the corner. He was a tiny asian man whose name was not Stevens, but he found it easier for people to pronounce without annoying or patronizing him. He’d tried to tell people Steve was his first name, but people being polite and formal turned it into a surname and he had just run with it after awhile. All of this was before Toby’s time. Hell, before he was born. Seemed rude to call him anything else, no matter what he signed to paychecks.

At this hour, even with so little to do, this was a busy day.

He took his phone out and sent Mitchel a text asking if he had made it in yet. The phone beeped a minute or two later.

Mitchel: yeah

Real talkative, Mitchel. He must be enjoying himself. Toby let him know he was a few hours out yet, but he’d be along later.

Mitchel: cool. name?

Toby turned the monitor a bit and brought up a browser window. He typed in the Proving Grounds website, but it came back with a message about scheduled maintenance. Huh. Lousy time for it. Did the server issues extended that far? He’d certainly hope they prioritized getting the game running over the website and forums. Well… he’d prefer that if he was actually able to play. Brave New World Entertainment’s own site was down as well.
And
their forums.

All resources being poured into keeping the game running, perhaps? Ugh.

Annoying.

For him.

Right now.

Fortunately there were fan sites that seemed to be in working order. The best one he could find was slow, but that was probably due to heavy traffic. He jumped to the barbarian entry. High hit points, high stamina, high speed, minimal to fair defense, strong offense, no magic, no stealth, no real ranged capability… mostly they hit things. So, a slightly better than glass cannon. Lots of hit points but no real defense to keep those from going away. Problematic. Especially given the current rule of one character and being removed from the early access if they died.

Huh. Looked to be a page on that. Updated only a few minutes ago. Scratch that, constantly being updated. There were entry notes showing an update every ten minutes or so for hours now.

The rules were laid out in a bullet point style. One character, no dying, open PVP, players facing the threat of a growing empire, and all of it ended if the leader was taken down. About what he recalled.

The unique title of “Kingslayer” being up for grabs was new.

Of course, the fact that Tobin Ironblood was listed as the dictator caught his attention. How in the world…?

He refreshed the page. Maybe it was a bug. Or maybe there had been a few names said and his was one of them? Or some bugged NPC was using the name. Surely it wasn’t really set up like that. He had no chance in hell of surviving an angry mob of PVP enabled jerks trying to take him down.

Wait… updates on the location of Tobin Ironblood… he was in the ruins of Morblina, in a church. Apparently the PVP rules didn’t extend into the building. There weren’t many areas like that, apparently. Most of them seemed to be places of worship. Highlander rules.

It would seem the world lacked settlements until players created them, but the building blocks for those were often the few safe areas.

Another page… about a new faction forming in support of the Ironblood empire. Players choosing instead to support his claim to sovereignty.

Weird.

Toby glanced aside at Mr. Stevens. If this was all the afternoon and evening were to hold, he might as well go home.

Then again he wasn’t exactly a salary employee. He’d stick it out, head home, and then try to log in again.

The bell on the front door rang.

Toby leaned in his chair a bit. He couldn’t see the front room from his station. Mr. Stevens was already standing up. He grumbled something about caffeine as he wandered out to the counter.

There were muffled voices. Probably just a new order.

The official Proving Ground forums were still down, but there were other places to look. Social media. More fan sites. Video game news outlets. There was some chatter, but most of it was second hand. Confused reports. A lot of people upset about the rules set in place, even if they were temporary.