Player Killer Killer
Chapter 20
"Urgh." I groan, opening my eyes slowly and sitting up. I check my surroundings: trees; grass; and a small campfire crackling away about a metre's distance from where I lie. It's night-time and all is silent except for the fire. "Oh good, you're awake." I hear someone say and I jump to my feet, checking my hip... good, the Marmatrix is still there. "There's no need to be so uptight, it's only me." I see Marine standing a couple of metres away. "I see. Where are we?" I ask, regaining composure and trying to get a grasp on the situation.
"When the geyser went off, you were knocked out by something or other." Marine tells me "When we hit the water I got to your body before anyone else could and swum away."
"Oh... well, thank you." I say a little awkwardly, it can be slightly disturbing to hear about other people handling your body when you yourself are not aware of them. "Um, isn't it hard to swim in armour?"
"It is, but we weren't terribly far from the shore, also, I'm a good swimmer." She adds the last pert with a proud smirk. "Well... that's fortunate."
"So, Rin, what do you intend to do now?" Marine asks me and I pause to think.
"Well, I don't want to risk being seen with a red marker, so I'll probably stay in this area for the next week and wait it out." I reply, opening my inventory to check my resources. Hmm, I'm going to need more food. "Marine, what items do you have?" I ask and she sniggers with grim humour.
"I have nothing except for what I'm wearing, a sword and a shield, everything else was stolen when I was captured." She informs me and, after a moment's thought, I come to a decision.
"Alright, well, here's two health potions, for gradual use, a crystal, for a crisis, an agility crystal, 'cause you never know, and some jerky." I say, rattling off this list of items as I hand them to her from my inventory, she looks stunned. "Um... wow. I didn't know you were this nice... or nice at all, for that matter." She tells me and I fail to stop my cheeks gaining a pinkish hue.
"I have my moments." I mutter, I've never really known how to take compliments... or backhanded ones while we're on the topic. "What kind of jerky is it?" She asks, snapping me from my thoughts.
"Um, bear, I believe... that's okay, right?"
"Yeah, thanks." She responds gratefully.
"Marine, are you in a guild?" I ask after five minutes of calm silence and she nods her head in reply.
"Yes, I'm in Angelic Light." She tells me and I have to do a double-take.
"Angelic Light? You mean the front-line saviour-guild?" I ask incredulously. I call them a saviour guild because just after clearing floor forty-eight, there were significantly less people fighting on the front lines until they stepped in, this shortage of people is largely due to death worms and other monsters that rarely went for dealing damage, preferring to go straight for the kill. Angelic Light was originally a guild that spent their time on the first fifteen floors, scoring a lot of easy experience. They joined the front lines on floor forty-nine, bringing more than fifty players to ease the burden on the remaining front-liners.
"Yes, I am. Why is that so hard to believe?" She queries with a prideful undertone.
"Oh, nothing in particular." I lie, trying not to think of her level. "So if you weren't here you'd be up there fighting level eighty dragons and the like?"
"No, I wouldn't be fighting, I use a lot of area-of-effect potions to weaken the enemy and heal and buff our members." She tells me. I see, so she's predominantly a support player, I must say, there is something comforting about having someone watch your back while providing small differences. "So, what do you do to train?" I inquire.
"I do a lot of alchemy to make the potions I need." She responds.
"That doesn't sound too dangerous. How were you captured? Surely you'd only have to leave safe zones on floor-clearing days? And even then you'd be surrounded by powerful players."
"...Herb picking."
"What?"
"Wild herbs are superior to bought herbs, I was out picking herbs on this floor when they stunned and grabbed me."
"Ah."
"I think I've shared enough for now," Marine tells me "why don't you tell me why you're so hell-bent on killing player killers?" My mental defensive wall rise to protect my secrets.
"They deserve it." I say, completely pokerfaced.
"Does it have something to do with the player Poh mentioned, this 'Shiniki'?" She pries and my whole face twitched violently. "Maybe just a bit." I reply, my voice jumping a whole two octaves.
"Was he a friend of yours?"
"He is." I answer with emphasis and Marine pauses for a minute.
"I'm sorry for your loss." She apologises and I scowl at her.
"He's alive, now shut up and let me enjoy my denial." I snap. Ah, the good old familiar territory of being rude, how I've missed you these last couple of minutes.
After a couple of minutes, Marine breaks the silence that had re-established itself between us. "Rin, are we friends?" She asks and I sigh contemplatively.
"I don't know, are we? We haven't known each other long, and we don't really know much about each other, so maybe not..." I trail off towards the end awkwardly.
"Right." There is silence once more, but again, she breaks it. "What are you going to do once your marker is green again?"
"I'll probably go back to hunting them down. Try and finish the job this time around." I reply tiredly.
"Well, seeing as you won't be doing anything important-" She starts.
"Hey!" I protest loudly, but she ignored me.
"-maybe you could help me level up some more?" She poses this question to me with a small smile.
"What? How?"
"Well, you weren't very happy with my level back there, and I'm sure you know some spots where someone of my... calibre could level up quickly." She explains.
"W-well I'm sure I can give you a list of places-" I begin, but she cuts me off.
"No, you have to come with me, I'm bad with direction anyway."
"Urgh, okay, I will... You'd better not be playing up to stereotype there, it's 2021; the stigma's just about gone." I concede with a weak, last-minute accusation that ends up being muttered.
A message box appears in front of my eyes: Accept [Marine]'s friend request? "What?" I mutter, looking over at Marine; did she make a mistake? "If we're going to meet up in a week, I'll need to know where you are." She explains and I narrow my eyes.
"I thought you said you were bad with directions?" I parrot her suspiciously.
"I am, but I can follow a map." She replies simply.
"Then I could just show you where on the map the spots are!"
"You're not getting out of this, Rin, I won't let you. You may be fast, but you can't run away from everything." Marine scolds, oh boy, I've had this talk before from several people.
"It worked for the Roadrunner." I mutter irritably, poking the 'accept' button.
"It's about midnight," I say, taking note of the time "I'll keep watch until morning, you get some sleep."
"Okay, thanks." Marine says gratefully and lies on the ground. Sleep is very important in this game, I mean, it's important in real life as well, but especially here. Sometimes it's hard for us players to remember that we are playing this game with only our brains, and it's hard to care about staying alive after ninety-six hours straight without sleep, not to mention the de-buffs it brings with it. Now that I think about it, my real body must be hospitalised or something, because hunger and thirst are an illusion here, but even so, the brain needs nourishment, hydration, all that important good stuff. I make a mental note to hug whoever has been taking care of my body and file it away next to my promise to Shino to see the real sky again.
I circle around our small camp, picking up sticks to use as fuel for the fire, but if I get desperate, I do have a rather powerful fire potion that burns for a long time. I put my findings in a pile, and then remembering I have a cushion in my inventory, I place it on the ground and sit in relative comfort... and certifiable boredom. I pull an apple out an apple from my inventory and munch away at it, I'd like to say that if I close my eyes and imagine, that I can taste a real apple's juice and consistency, but I can't. More accurately I can taste the sadness in the ones and zeroes.
I draw my rapier and have a look at its stats... hmm, the durability's taken a toll. I go to my inventory and scroll to the bottom to find my whetstone and slowly run it along the blade. This activity doesn't actually sharpen my blade, but it does restore the weapon's 'health.' A quiet grating sound joins the noise of the fire and the combination is rather soothing. I find myself at ease within a couple of seconds. After a few minutes, I stop and return the whetstone to my inventory and exchange it for a bladder of oil and a rag. I soak the rag in oil and run it along the metal. In real life, this would prevent the blade from collecting any rust, in here it increases the effectiveness of the sword's durability stat, the durability of the durability, if you will.
The boring yet tense hours pass. I stay on watch to make sure that nothing happens, but at the same time I'm hoping something does happen to break the monotony. Eventually, light starts to filter through the leaves of the surrounding trees and Marine begins to stir as the light makes uneven patterns on her body. "Morning." She says drearily.
"Brilliant observation." I reply before I can stop myself and she casts me a withering glare, but I remain unfazed. After a short argument, which I lose, I end up walking Marine to the road that leads straight to the nearest town. Not wishing to be seen, I melted back behind the tree-line as she walked away.
"Right." I mutter, rubbing my hands together. I'm alone again, but now I don't have to do things while making sure I'm protecting Marine at the same time. After checking my inventory I confirm that I have two days worth of food left, of course, it's two days if I stick to three small portions each day, I could probably last the week if I tried. However, I do not intend to resort to this option again, for I have a more favourable alternative: there's a big-arse lake about two-hundred metres away, and in this game, where there's a lot of water, there's a lot of fish.
I recall Marine saying something about there being good herbs on this floor, hmm. Okay, I may be unable to move around for a week, but I plan to be far from stagnant, I can use this week to focus solely on alchemy, fishing and cooking, maybe with a side of hunting and trapping as well. When a player levels up a skill, they gain an experience reward, this number gets bigger with every level, but every tenth level, the player gets what's called a percentage reward. This reward is still experience, but rather than a set number of points, it gives the player a percentage of their experience requirement to level up. This system can actually be disadvantageous at lower levels if the percentage is less than the previous set reward, but at level seventy-six, one percent is about twelve-thousand, so things are looking up.
A strategy has been developed to take advantage of the percentage reward that involves purposely neglecting to train various skills to essentially over-train them later and roll around in the experience points like an obnoxious billionaire rolls around in their money. Now, I'd like to say that I'm intentionally using this strategy, but really, it's an accident, because seriously, there are not many people who go into an MMORPG with the mentality of "I'm gonna be the best damn fisherman there ever was, I'm gonna catch 'em a-" well, I'm sure you get the idea.
I observe the lake from the trees; I can see the waterfall on the other side of it. The beach continues for about twenty metres from the water-line, and then there's about another ten metres of grass before there are any trees. Using the leftovers from the fire Marine started, I set up the camp fire in the space between the sand and trees and move my firewood pile to sit next to it. I pull what cooking equipment I have out of my inventory, which consists entirely of a low-quality sad little bronze pot, and half fill it with lake water (thankfully it never occurred to the developers to include salt-water) and sit it next to the currently unlit camp fire.
I am hit with a moment of revelation as I think about fishing: I lack the rod to do so. Hmm, this may be difficult. Oh wait, no, hang on, I'll just use the same method as every civilisation ever prior to the invention of the most basic fishing rod: throw something sharp at the fish. With my cape and boots in my inventory and my pants rolled up to my thighs, I stand knee-deep in the lake, the Marmatrix – the weapon I got from defeating a boss, the key to a high-floor treasure trove – is held gracelessly in my hand above my head like a spear. "Come out, come out you slippery little bitches, I know you're in there." I mutter to myself.
I worked out pretty quickly that (surprise) the Marmatrix is neither elegant nor aerodynamic when sent flying through the air. I did manage to spear (or should I say sword?) a fish after an hour, however it did nothing for my fishing stat. I spent the middle hours of the day cooking the fish in my pot, which took a long time because (a) the pot is small, (b) the fire is small, (c) the fish only just fits in the pot and (d) because at the current point in time, when it comes to cooking, I'm a royal flop. Are you even supposed to cook a fish in a pot?
With the burnt fish in my inventory (I really wanted to make sure it was cooked), I start scouring the forest for herbs. This forest is surprisingly abundant, but then again, I've never actively looked for any in the first place, so the amount that there are shouldn't really seem irregular. After gathering together a small collection of various herbs, I head back to my camp site. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that cooking food and brewing up potions of unknown qualities in the same pot is a health hazard. It that is the case, too bad so sad, I'm doing it.
This game may be a death trap, but at least the programmers were nice enough to provide the creator of potions with an infinite amount of small glass vials to store their concoctions in. Unfortunately the potions I ended up making were neither potent nor useful; I think the most advanced one is the Potion of Discolouration, which will make an object change colour for a short time, something that provides no use when it comes to killing player killers. Maybe I should just drop them around the forest for some adventurer to stumble across and be disappointed in what they thought could be treasure.
The previously mentioned activities take up the rest of the daylight hours and now I'm lying on my back, staring at the sky. Or, more accurately, where the sky would be if there wasn't floor twenty-four directly above me. There are crystals hanging from the ceiling, probably to simulate stars while maintaining the game's lore, but they aren't pretty; they disgust me. I used to waste time with Shino staring at the sky, but that past time has been completely robbed of me now, with neither friend nor sky present.
A tear runs down my face and I make no move to wipe it away. With Marine gone I can cry all I want and I won't have to worry about being judged. Personally, I feel that Shino being killed by mistake only adds insult to my still being alive, and unlike every other insult I've been on the receiving end of in my life, this one burns and there's nothing I can do to stop the pain. I know that I need to move on, but I don't think that I can, maybe because I don't want to. I don't feel that to forgive and forget is the right thing to do; there is no doubt in my mind that to kill those who prey on the weak is what I should be doing. Maybe I'll be able to pursue something else once I've eradicated my personal vendetta, I don't know.
I think that at some point I fell asleep, I don't know, maybe I just stared into nothing without a thought in my mind, regardless of what happened, it's morning now. I'll spare you the boring details and cut it short, my day consisted of rapier-fishing, herb gathering, shoddy potion making, stick gathering, cooking with questionable apparatus and getting pissed at the roof. This process repeated itself for three days, boring as all hell, but I started to get some decent experience income, which was nice, especially when my level jumped to seventy-seven.
With tree days until my red marker goes back to green, something happens to break up my new routine. This 'something' comes in the form of another player. "Yah! Your money or your life!" They yell, shattering the quiet of the forest, jumping down from the branches of a tree, brandishing a hand axe threateningly. I'm not taken by surprise; I've purposely been procrastinating around this tree for five minutes waiting for them to make a move. They're not very quiet either, I could hear breathing ten metres away over the serenity of the trees. As they yell, I whip out my rapier and hold it to their neck. "Couldn't have said it better myself." I respond, turning the tables before they have a chance to go against me.
"You didn't think this out very well," I say condescendingly "why don't you identify yourself?" The player doesn't respond, instead spitting at my feet with a foul expression. I move my arm ever so slightly, pushing my blade into their neck, nowhere near enough to kill them, but enough to inflict some damage. Being labelled as a yellow player only lasts for a day, and it's a lot easier to explain than a red marker, what I'm saying is that this small attack by me doesn't affect my sentence. "When someone holds a blade to your neck, you should be inclined to answer their questions." I tell them, but again they stay silent. "I say 'should' because you're clearly too stupid to recognise this." They grit their teeth and look away, but otherwise stay close-mouthed.
"Let's see... Jassonack and, ah, you're a red player, I see." I say, looking up at their name.
"Tch, so are you." Jassonack responds rudely, good, he's talking now.
"You wouldn't happen to be in a player killing guild, now would you?" I ask, ignoring his statement.
"Tch."
"Which one? Laughing Coffin? Shadowmare? Knights of the Dark? Some other one I don't yet know about? Tell me!" I snap loudly as I say the last part.
"What's mm affiliation mean to you?"
"Mild interest really, you won't live to see tomorrow regardless." I reply offhandedly.
"We're the same, what's the point in killing me?" Jassonack asks.
"I'm going to pretend that you didn't just compare the two of us and ask again: who are you with?" I respond coolly.
"And I'm not going to answer you."
"Well then, goodbye." I bring my blade back and swing it around, but something clicks in my mind and I stop my rapier as it is ten centimetres from murder.
"Due to my current situation, killing you would be most disadvantageous." I tell Jassonack.
"What?" He asks. If I kill him now, my sentence as a red player will be renewed for another week, if I killed him... well, let's just say I can already feel the spot on my cheek where the back of Marine's hand will undoubtedly meet. "Fortunately for you, I have an appointment, killing you would make you even more of an inconvenience to me than you already are."
"I don't give a crap."
"You're right; it shouldn't matter to you because you are still not long for this world."
"Hmm?"
"Oh never you mind, you don't give a crap, remember?" With this I punch his face with the Marmatrix's hilt and grab him by the hair while he's off-balance and drag him to the beach.
I throw Jassonack onto the sand and stomp on his lower back when he tries to get up. "Now, I'm going to give you an opportunity to empty your inventory; an opportunity to be useful to someone in your last moments." I explain impatiently.
"Tch, why should I do anything for you?" Jassonack spits.
"Put it this way," I say, raising my foot and stomping down on him numerous times, he can't feel the pain, but it does make him splutter uncontrollably "it's not a choice you have. I'm taking your stuff."
Sitting on top of Jassonack, I perform what could quite possibly be the most casual daylight robbery in the history of crime. "Hmm," I muse as I scroll through his stuff "I can see why you didn't want to give me your things; they suck watermelons."
"What does that even mean?"
"Shh, I'm robbing you."
"You make it sound like you're going to a freaking supermarket!"
"Two health potions, one agility potion, five poisoned darts... sorry, you were saying something? Never mind, I don't care."
"God damn you, let me go!"
"Hush like a good little bitch." I reply, pushing his head down into the sand. Ah power.
I 'confiscate' a few potions, the darts and all the documents he has before standing again. "Urgh, finally." Jassonack grunts.
"Alright, time to die." I say merrily.
"You said you couldn't kill me!"
"Correct, but did you know that drowning counts as the environment killing you, not me?" I inform him, and he tries to get up again, but I kick him in the gut and he lands in the shallows. "No!" He cries out as he thrashes wildly to stand up, but I leap in after him, grabbing him by the back of the neck and squeezing hard. "Argh!" He yells.
"Tell me, how many perished at your hand before you tried to add me to your list?" I ask.
"Let me go, you bastard!" Comes the eloquently phrased reply.
"TELL ME! HOW MANY?!" I thunder and his attitude changes dramatically.
"Please... please stop... I don't want to die..." Jassonack is crying now, but his tears are vapours of steam to my fire. "How... many?" I ask again, slowly this time. He whimpers a bit before finally forming a word.
"T-three..."
"That's all you needed to say, now go down quietly with the remnants of your dignity." I say, forcing his head beneath the water. He doesn't struggle; he's accepted his fate.
I lie on my back, staring at the despised night roof crystals as my camp fire crackles away. "That came too naturally." I mutter unhappily.