Back in the Game Read online

  “I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. On another note, when were pistols allowed in the game?” I asked, grinning from my ignorance.

  Brock raised his brow. “You can use different weapons depending on the era you’re playing in. As you can imagine in an era of gunpowder like New Calandor, the Range Niche is going to take every advantage of that by using pistols.”

  How could I have spent an entire month here and not have asked that? I guess I didn’t get to another era until the last day. But that does raise the question . . .

  “How many eras are there?”

  “Only the two for now.” Brock shrugged. “But I’ve heard a rumor that there’s a third era dungeon the game designers are creating somewhere in the world.”

  “More or less modern?”

  “It’s just a rumor, but I have a hunch that it’s something sci-fi.” Brock’s eyes shot forward as though he had heard something, and he stopped. “Other players . . . up ahead.”

  I peered into the darkness and could just see the group emerging from the shadows ahead of us. The echoes of their laughter bounced off the cave as their avatars made shadows on the walls.

  From their lack of gear, the majority of them looked like they had only been in the game for a few weeks and were pushing their luck in a Tertiatier dungeon. All but one.

  I would have recognized that Rhino Leather vest from a mile away.

  “This is not good,” Brock murmured.

  The group of players stopped and stared at us apprehensively.

  As our own party caught up with us, the only joyous tone in the group was Siena calling, “Oh, Data! Guiding another set of newbies, eh?”

  Chapter 4: Treasure Hunt

  Around us the gentle waves rocked the bridge we were standing on. The ruins of shipwrecked boats went further ahead of us from where the second party had come from, but that was far from my notice. The tension in the air between Brock and Data was thick. Besides the fact that Brock had left Wona, there didn’t seem to be any real reason for the animosity between them.

  “Datalent,” Brock said stiffly.

  “Brock,” Data returned but then smirked. “Or do you still go by Brockodile?”

  “Call me what you want and you’d still be wrong.”

  “And you would still be a coward!”

  Siena stepped between them, as though a fight was about break out. “Settle down you two. Besides Data, I don’t think you’d want to seem unprofessional in front of your new clients, am I right?”

  Data inclined his head and eyed me up and down. “Tsh, you’re back in the Dream State faster than I would’ve imagined, Noah.”

  “I had unfinished business here.”

  “Your video evidence against Wona?” His shook his head. “It doesn’t exist.”

  He sounds confident. Wona must have been scouring the Dream State code looking for a Transfer Orb with videos hidden on it.

  David raised a hand like he was in class. “We can prove it, it’s in the—”

  “Shut up, David!” Brock shouted.

  Chloe grinned, as though hearing someone else telling David to shut up for a change was amusing to her. It was obvious that Brock didn’t want Data to know where the orb was in case he told Wona so they could get rid of it. Brock trusted him about as far as he could throw him.

  I stepped forward to stand with Siena. “Listen, Data. I can see you’re busy right now, but once we’re finished here, we’ll be able to get our hands on the orb. If you meet us in New Calandor after we’re done, we’ll be able to show you ourselves.”

  Brock raised his hands at me. “Noah, you can’t—”

  “Brock, I get Data’s point of view. He has a code that he stands by and I know that his loyalty is not blind, but conditional.” I caught Data’s eyes and he nodded in agreement. “He wouldn’t work for murderers, not knowingly anyway. So how about it, Data?”

  Data shrugged. “I have nothing pressing I have to do after this. I guess I could humor you for a few minutes. I’ll meet you at the Chevalier Café in two hours. It shouldn’t take you that long to get through this place.”

  I nodded and our group passed one another as civilly as if there wasn’t a single item we wanted from each other. Keri breathed out a sigh of relief as she went around one of the Heavies in the group.

  “Wow . . . that was . . .”

  “Yeah,” Chloe said as she came to my side. “And I thought waiting for pirates to ambush us was tense.”

  David pointed ahead of us to the boat we were about to cross. “Hey . . . pirate ship.”

  “Now you’re pointing out the obvious, too?” Chloe asked in exasperation.

  “Well, we’re here for treasure, aren’t we? You’d think maybe there’d be some inside their ship.”

  Brock shook his head. “There’s a trick with Pirate Cove. If you don’t touch any of the chests until the end and open the final chests in the right order, you get a far greater haul than anything you might get during the dungeon.”

  “So it’s like the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin?” Keri asked. “Touch anything but the lamp and . . . lava?”

  “Similar, but not quite.” Brock corrected. “More like no Moola.”

  There was a rough sniggering noise from the hull of the ship. From the massive hole in its side, three pirates emerged wielding jagged sabers. One had an eye patch, one had a peg leg and one even had lace sticking out from his cuffs.

  “Mine!” Siena called, running as she swung out her blade.

  She cut them down like driftwood and each of them dropped a flintlock pistol or saber after they had vanished. The guns went to Brock, the swords to Siena.

  We continued through the cove. More pirate lackeys appeared but were taken out by Chloe, eager not to be outdone by Brock’s Range skills again. The bridge crossing the water ended a meter from the rocks and everyone turned to look at me. I grinned as I realized why. It had been a while since I used any of my magic.

  I knelt down to the water and rubbed my hand in a clockwise direction while thinking of the water freezing. Instead of a wall of ice appearing in front of us, a bridge of veining ice spread horizontally over the water’s surface.

  “Thanks!” Siena called and bolted across it.

  We followed her, coming through shadows into an open hollow in the cove. What Brock said about being tempted by the other treasure suddenly made sense, and I realized Keri’s Cave of Wonders analogy was closer to the mark than Brock gave her credit for. Mounds of gold coins, cups and gemstone-encrusted armor filled the cave.

  Although we all stopped to gaze at the bounty of riches, no one looked as keen to rifle through it as Siena. I didn’t know if the coins were actual Moola, but if they were, I found it hard to believe that the chest game Brock wanted to play at the end of this dungeon would provide us with more than the mountains of stuff in this room.

  Through the hollow was a red throw rug that led to a gold-plated chair, and on it was the dungeon’s boss. The pirate sat on the chair like it was a throne. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a large feather and a long red coat with high boots. When my gaze passed over him, a scroll unraveled to reveal the dungeon boss’s name was “The Captain.” On his hip was a flintlock pistol and a long rapier.

  He looks a bit ragged, but who wouldn’t be after getting shipwrecked in such a place?

  “Get in front of us, David!” Siena called.

  “Why me?”

  “Because your armor can block the bullets,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes.

  “Oh yeah,” David moved in front.

  As he approached, the Captain drew both weapons, and went into a wide stance, pistol in his right hand, sword in his left.

  He called a fierce, “Yar, Matey!”

  Instead of firing, he lunged forward, stabbing his rapier into the gap in David’s armor, between the plates covering his chest and arm. Using the blade to spin David behind him, the Captain faced us and raised his pistol. On instinct, I raised an Ice Wall in front
of us to block the bullets. Brock and Chloe went to either side of the wall and began hitting him with arrows and throwing knives before Siena leapt over the wall, Ruby Edge dancing.

  The Captain raised his blade and parried Siena’s swift strikes with immaculate fencing skills. My first surprise that the boss could block such blows by a Color Blade was overcome by the fact that he could fire a second volley at us. There was something about his weapon that made him able to fire his pistol more than once.

  I keep forgetting that this is a Tertiatier boss!

  Keri had finished healing David and used a shield spell to block the bullets as I summoned dual Crystal Blades into my hands. I charged in to assist Siena in the melee. The Captain spun and shattered my blades without so much of a backwards glance before shooting Siena. The bullet caught in her chainmail, but the impact still blew her back and took a chunk of her Hit Points. Fortunately, the boss had forgotten about David.

  His mace swung into the Captain’s back and he was spun one way by Brock’s arrow and the other way by Chloe’s throwing knives. He was fighting on the back foot, and like many bosses, this was when the Captain tried something desperate. He leapt to one of the hills of coins and kicked them at us, yelling, “Ya filthy landlubbers!”

  “Dodge them!” Brock yelled. “Otherwise this is all pointless!”

  Keri used another shield spell to block the coins from hitting David but the Captain then jumped to another pile of loot. He sprayed them at us from all angles and it was only thanks to my speed that I managed to dodge the coins kicked my way.

  “There’s a space clear of treasure up ahead!” Brock called and we ran toward the chair.

  Siena kicked it down to reveal an empty space at the back of the cove. From the five chests spread out around the space, I could see this was the end of the dungeon.

  “En guarde, lassie!”

  I turned to see the Captain engage with Siena and David once again, and seeing the boss’s Hit Points reaching the one-third mark, decided it was time to finish him off.

  “Everyone get back!”

  They spun to me in confusion, but leapt back from the Captain. I crossed one arm over my chest and flicked it out, spreading Wildfire throughout the cove. It seemed Brock still had some gunpowder left in his inventory, for he threw a bag of it at the Captain. Like a grenade, it exploded as soon as it hit the fire, blowing away the last of the boss’s Hit Points. We had won.

  “Yo ho . . . yo ho . . . off to Davy Jones’ Locker I go,” the Captain sang. When the fire dispersed into the air, so did he with an explosion of light.

  Having left, a green and red parrot flew in and perched on the tipped over chair, peering at us as we entered the hollow together.

  “Is it just me, or are Tertiatier Dungeons getting easier?” Chloe asked.

  “We do have Brock and Siena with us,” David said as Keri went to work recovering his Hit Points.

  As though hearing his name, Brock walked through, calling, “Don’t touch those chests!”

  “We weren’t going to!” Chloe yelled back. “Don’t you think pointing out the obvious so much is a bit insulting? Like insinuating we’re too dumb to remember something you said from, like, five minutes ago?”

  “It’s better than risking wasting more time doing this dungeon over again.” Brock pointed to the chest furthest away. “But considering you did listen to me, you can do that chest on the end. Noah, David, Keri, you do the other three.”

  Siena’s brow furrowed. “Why do I get left out?”

  “Because I know how impatient you get with these kinds of things,” Brock exclaimed. “Besides, I saw the way you were looking at those piles of treasure. It must have taken you a great deal of willpower not to pick up some of that pretty armor.”

  “Oh, whatever!” she scoffed.

  We each moved to our different chests and awaited Brock’s instructions. We turned to him, his expression focused on remembering what order they were supposed to be opened in.

  “When I say your name, quickly open and close your chest, alright?” Brock asked and all four of us nodded.

  “Okay. Noah!”

  I quickly opened my chest, seeing that there was nothing inside before closing it again.

  “Chloe!”

  Chloe followed suit, barely lifting the chest’s lid before closing it again.

  “Keri!”

  On the end opposite from Chloe, Keri opened and shut her chest.

  “Chloe!”

  Chloe’s lips pursed at being asked to open hers again, but did as she was told.

  Brock opened and shut his own chest before calling, “David!”

  David opened his lid right up before slamming it shut. I went next, and then Keri and Chloe again before Brock lifted his own lid and a trumpeted fanfare played over the background.

  — ACQUIRED 10,000 MOOLA —

  Wow, that’s a lot of Moola, but wait . . . was it just me, or did everyone get that much?

  My eyes widened in realization. “Did you all just get ten thousand Moola as well?”

  “Holy cow!” Keri cried.

  “Yeah . . .” David said in amazement. “Hah! That’s some secret, Brock!”

  “Is that enough to get the Transfer Orb?” Chloe asked.

  “With the Moola Noah and I already have . . . it should be.”

  Brock and I both nodded, while David looked up as though trying to remember what price had been displayed on the auction house wall.

  “Convenient much?” Chloe murmured.

  “Are we done here?” Siena asked, as though bored already.

  “We are, but you might want to go back and pick through what you avoided before.” Brock grinned when seeing the surprise on Siena’s face.

  “You mean . . . I can still . . . ?”

  Brock nodded and Siena squealed and rushed off to go wading through the shiny armor. Brock then pulled out a Transfer Orb and gestured for everyone to gather around him. It was just short of the two hours since we had told Data to wait, but that only gave us some time to find the Chevalier Café where he told us to meet him.

  “Ready?” Brock asked and we nodded.

  With a flash, the five of us passed through the opened Gateway from the dark, damp Pirate Cove into the brick streets of New Calandor.

  Chapter 5: Seeing is Believing

  Siena met back up with us in New Calandor and it only took us a few minutes to find the place Data had mentioned. The Chevalier Café was a two-storied bar with a high ceiling, glass chandelier and a mezzanine that advertised what looked like a flock of finely dressed peacocks, hosts and escort girls.

  We found Data waiting for us at the end of the polished wooden bar looking through his items. At least, I assumed he was by the way he was staring off into space. I moved through the different avatars in the bar toward him.

  “Data,” I said, Siena waving from behind me to get his attention.

  He looked down at us and his jaw tightened.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “Tsh, if I’m going out of my way to follow you free of charge, you better have something good to show me.”

  I inclined my head. “You’ll have to come and see for yourself. My friends just sacrificed a crap load of Moola to be able to buy it.”

  He nodded and got off his stool, murmuring as he passed, “Let’s make this quick.”

  The girls waited for us outside the bar, Brock and David having gone ahead to the auction house to buy the Transfer Orb. With the obvious grudge he held against Brock for leaving Wona after the betas died, we thought it would be better to have them apart until the evidence was in our grasp.

  “You were right, it didn’t take long for you to return to the Dream State. I was hoping for some peace and quiet before you got back,” Chloe said as we made our way through New Calandor to the Synth Square.

  We passed shops and other places for players to strategize before doing dungeons together. The area made me feel like I had gone back in time, even more so than G
alrinth from how true to the times it looked.

  “With how much you talk I could’ve sworn you liked loud, annoying noises.” I returned.

  Keri shrugged with a smile. “It explains why she hangs out with me, I guess.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” I sighed. “I was just talking out of my butt.”

  “Sounds familiar. I’ve missed this,” Data said sarcastically but then shook his head as though he really had. “How did your treatment go after you got out?”

  “Smoothly,” I lied. “I can’t say the same for the rehab center Wona put me in where they had me drugged up for the last month.”

  “Tsh, one unprovable claim after another.”

  We arrived at the Synth Square. Like all Synth Squares, there were multiple pathways going to the many stores in the area. The unique aspect to New Calandor’s square was that each path was blocked by tall sandstone walls, like the many-pathed junction of a Gothic maze.

  We followed the signs on the walls with arrows pointing to the synth shop where one could synthesize Resource Items into equipment, a weaver’s store for using the same items to make garments, the spell and abilities shop where players could buy spells and abilities unlocked in certain dungeons, and the Anonymous Auction Hall.

  We moved down the corridor into the hall, looking more like a barn here among the tall buildings than in Galrinth among the thatch-roofed cottages. Avatars were looking at each of the items being auctioned, shining like holograms on the walls. David shoved through the crowd, his face pale.

  “Noah, the orb’s gone!”

  “What?” I felt my heart skip a beat in my panic. “Did someone buy it?”

  I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

  “No. Whoever auctioned it just had it removed, which means whoever they are, they still have it.”

  Data sighed as though this couldn’t have been avoided. “Tsh, do you have the item’s code? If you do, I could find out where it is.”

  I nodded, remembering that Brock had a message with the exact code of the item.

  Brock suddenly stalked through the crowd from the direction of the panel, having obviously been listening in on us. “We’re not giving you the code!”