Chapter 5

“Anything you want, uh... what's your name?” Namey asked.

“Brian,” Ben said, treating 'Namey' the way he would treat anyone who was so clearly insane. “And you're serious?” Ben just had to know, he just had to, because he already knew exactly what game this was; The red and black pyramid was clearly Namey's choice for his Plus item.

“Right, Brian,” Namey looked left and right, holding himself like a guy expecting the cops will show up any minute, ‘but this is our chance to make some real fucking money, Brian, take the deal, quick!’

Ben, also known as Brian, was imagining Namey getting arrested and telling the cops that Ben was the real boss of the whole operation, and that ‘Ben had slipped that huge bag of crystal meth into his jacket, officer.’

Namey had to have taken the pyramid, which held the official name of The Worm Enclosure. Why was it called that, well I’ll tell; because inside the pyramid was, in the exact words of The System, “The most wretched and abysmally wicked creature in existence”, The Worm. For as long as the holder took care of The Worm, it would grant him the greatest power of all.

The power to grant wishes, or more specifically, the “Dark Wish” ability.

It really did work, the wishes were actually granted…. they just weren’t free. Let's say a level twenty warrior class wishes for a very powerful magical ax. The warrior would get the ax, and it would be very powerful and very magical. It would look sinister and edgy in some way, but it would function just fine.

Then, at some point in the future, the caster would activate the Dark Wish, after it had finished seeping into the person and extract its price. The accumulated power of twenty levels would leave the warrior and be given to the one who granted the Dark Wish. Unfortunately, for the warrior, it didn't stop there. The wish would then begin to consume and change their bodies, transferring even more power to the caster, until the warrior was completely transformed into a demon.

The size of the wish determined how low on the demonic hierarchy the person would end up. Standard Dark Wish? They end up an imp. Extremely large Dark Wish? They might end up as hell slime. A wish even larger than that? They’d become something not even worth describing, something which would make you unclean to have seen, even for a moment.

Why would anyone accept such an awful deal, aside from being completely duped? Because, there was a way out. Once the hypothetical warrior got their badass ax, they also got a new ability courtesy of their new Lord, capital 'L'.

Lesser Dark Wish. It's not as powerful as Dark Wish, but it gets the job done. The warrior would only have to grant, for an ax like that, the Dark Wishes of five others. Once that happened, when the time came to pay up, those five other people would pay their own bill, and the warrior's too. Those five people, naturally, also have a way out, their brand new, obviously beta-tested Lesser Dark Wish ability.

But what if the Warrior isn't just stupid, but a complete asshole? Once he starts granting wishes above the threshold of his debt, he starts gaining power in the same way as the original caster.

What does the original caster get out of this? The Worm will whisper in his ear, telling him what will happen the exact moment he triggers the Dark Wish. In addition to incredible power in the form of stolen experience and stats, the caster will be transformed into a greater demonic lifeform.

If they grant a Dark Wish and trigger the ability as soon as they are able to, they would become an imp. While that may seem like a downgrade, a 20+ level imp is nothing to sneer at. If they waited a bit, let it spread around, they would make it to Lesser Demon, which is pretty strong.

If they played their cards right, gathered themselves an aggressive core group who were dedicated to gaining powerful demonic powers, who were ruthless in their exploitation of others...

The little fucker might transform all the way into a Demon King, with a complete court of Arch-Demons, greater demons, an army of lesser demons, and a legion of imps at their disposal.

So, The Worm. Why did it do that? If it was so powerful, why allow itself to be used like that? The answer was simple; The worm was ugly, weak, and required the one who was caring for it to personally attend to it every day.

The Worm could have been powerful, but instead it chose to be pathetic and sickly for a reason that only makes sense to the incredibly wicked; it wanted to have the most powerful being in the world waiting on it hand and foot, to have the whole planet tremble in fear at the slightest twitch of its flaccid and pale body.

Ben, naturally, had not chosen The Worm Enclosure as his Plus item.

Namey was still talking, he seemed incapable of understanding that even though Ben was occasionally nodding and giving encouraging noises, he clearly wasn't interested. Ben coughed and started to talk, and Namey instantly went quiet to listen.

“Oh, won't that turn me into a demon under your control? Right, won't it?”

“No, it won't do that. It's free, a free wish. Come on, don't you want a full set of legendary, powerful armor? I can snap my fingers and give it to you like that!” Namey snapped his fingers and gave Ben an expectant look.

“No, I'm good.”

“Oh. Ok, well, do you have any advice for me about how to do it better next time?” Namey wasn't remotely apologetic about his behavior, his body language instantly shifting gears into a disinterested exit.

“Uh, don't be so obviously evil?” Ben said in surprise, a little shocked at the conversational whiplash.

“Hm. Good idea. Gotta go, Brian. I've got a lot of people to talk to,” he said with a flat face, then gave me an exaggerated wink, and walked off.

When Namey was well and truly gone, and Ben was sure he wasn't hiding around the corner, he breathed a sigh of relief, and put his shirt back on.

“I'm glad he didn't try and kill me,” Ben said, shaking his head. “That was, like, disturbing,” he continued, speaking only to himself. “Who hears 'your consciousness will be extinguished' and thinks 'that's for me!' I bet that guy was a school shooter or something, or planning one. Fuck, I should have attacked him, now that I think about it,” Ben said, stretching his body and warming it up like he was about to go to the gym. “That guy is going to seriously use that scammy ability and exploit as many people as he possibly can for his own personal gain, and the worst part is, he's completely incapable of feeling any guilt about it.”

Ben shook his head and started jogging in place, then continued stretching until he'd worked up a light sweat. Then he tried to steal the sign one last time, really throwing his back into pulling it off the floor. He didn't get it to budge, so with nothing left for him to do, he started walking.

The entire area, from floor to ceiling, was lined with blue tiles of the exact same size, perfectly arranged. There were no visible lights, but the area was well lit. Ben figured that if he was six feet tall, which he was, then that meant the tiles were about two by two in feet, because the top of his head was pretty close to the top of the third tile up.

Now that Ben was thinking about it and really examining his surroundings, he realized those were some big tiles. Four tiles across on the ground, five tiles going up, and four across the ceiling. Ben felt pretty sure he had a good grip on the exact dimensions of this hallway.

All of this is a very fancy way of saying there was literally nothing interesting about the hallway, and it was a very long walk. Eventually Ben made it to another room, this one with a visible distortion in the air, which Ben assumed was a portal to The World. In addition to the portal, the room had three exits, one off of each wall, not including the one Ben came through. When he approached the shimmering distortion, words appeared inside of it.

[The heart of the dark capital of the goblins]

Ben carefully sidestepped around the portal, and chose an exit at random.

This continued on for a while, and Ben passed up such attractive options as “Heart of a volcano”; “Lair of a flesh elemental”; “The endless desert”; and one simply labeled “Pain Zone”, without any explanation. He also came across a portal which said “Another Plus Player's portal network,” which was likely how Namey had come across him.

Ben couldn't say how long he'd been wandering, but eventually he ended up taking a piss through a portal labeled “A hostile king's throne room,” and much to Ben's delight, the liquid vanished upon contact with the portal.

He realized it was childish, but he'd been moving around for hours and every option he came across had been comically bad.

After that, Ben continued his walk; “A city in which you will be enslaved”, “Forest with a high chance of having body stolen by ghosts”; “No” and all it said was “No”; “Lost Continent, extreme danger”.

Ben got a little hungry, and he had worked up a sweat from the long walks. He was thirsty, but didn't have anything to drink. Finally, he was so exhausted he had to lay down and take a nap, and when he woke up, nothing had changed.

He started yelling incoherently when he woke up, hitting a wall and letting out some of his pent up frustration. Finally, he was gasping for air, and still very hungry, dehydrated, and in dirty clothes. Worse than any of that, though, was that he still had to get up, pick a hallway, and start walking again.

“The Legendary Treasure Horde of Durz, the Arch-Wizard, no possibility of escape”; “Frozen Wasteland”; “City of Thieves”; “The Last Dungeon, you will die”; “Your Dad would've thought this one was funny”; “Third Floor of Cactus Dungeon.”

Ben had been walking on autopilot, and his brain just registered that it had made a mistake. He was fortunate he hadn't gone too far and was able to retrace his steps back until he was standing in front of one of the endless portals available to him.

“Dad would have thought this one was funny,” Ben said, only now realizing that the only likely reason the portals were labeled the way they were was the Ring of Sacrifice and the absurd amount of humanity who had chosen to give everyone else a better shot in exchange for their lives.

Ben shut his eyes and said a silent prayer for them, and thanked them for what they did, then opened them and looked at the portal.

“Dad wouldn't have thought me dying was funny, I know that much. In theory, I could keep going and potentially find something better. . .” Ben trailed off and didn't finish. He could do that, but he'd already been in here for what must be close to twenty-four hours, a full day. He was still in pretty good shape, but that wasn't going to last much longer.

He needed water, and he needed to eat, and if he stayed in this place much longer, he might go insane.

He ran his tongue across his upper set of teeth, scrunched his face at the portal, then blew a raspberry and scowled. This was it, he realized. Once he stepped through, things were going to try and kill him. The System hadn't given him details, but he had told him this.

“The World is like this; you've played video games before, haven't you? Imagine living in a place where you can get attacked by monsters three times going to the store to buy bread. That's what it's like out there.”

Then Ben had asked why humanity was there in the first place, and The System had said he'd placed all the information he would need in the human-exclusive primordial ruins.

Ben knew he was stalling, because he was man enough to admit he was scared. He'd never been in a life or death fight before, he'd been a city employee! The scariest thing he ever had to do was tell homeless people to scram so he could clean up all their garbage. Nobody had ever pulled a knife on him or tackled him or anything!

Still stalling.

“Have a damn adventure,” Ben said squeezing his eyes shut so tight he saw lights. He opened them and let the spots clear, took a deep breath, and stepped through the portal.

Ben experienced that unique human emotion that one feels when they take a step down a flight of stairs, and realize a step is missing, and their foot starts to fall and take the whole body with it.

One moment, he was in the maddeningly monotonous maze that had been driving him mad, and the next, he was falling through the air, heading towards a vast body of water. The air felt fresh, but Ben only had time to enjoy it for a few moments before he plunged into the ocean, going deep before rising to the surface like a cork.

Ben was frantically thanking God that he could swim, and he treaded water. It was like this: his hair was thick with water and hung flat; he tasted salt and had water in his ears and in his eyes; his shoes suddenly felt like a terrible weight on his body, and so did his clothes. Still, the important parts were above the ocean, so he really didn't have too much to complain about. Ben's head was on a swivel, metaphorically, as he took in his surroundings.

The sky above him? Blue, check. The water? Also blue, and for some reason Ben's brain reminded him that the ocean primarily got its color from the sky, so check. Sun? Yellow, check. Moon that looked exactly like Earth's moon? Check, and, was that actually Earth's moon? Guess The System felt like doing a little pilfering, and it's not like anyone was going to miss it anymore.

If it wasn't for the fact that he was in a completely unknown location in the middle of an ocean, he'd feel pretty good. The water was a comfortable temperature, and the air smelled nice, and the sun felt good on the parts of his body that weren't underwater.

Ben swam one way and scanned the horizon, then swam the other way and scanned in that direction as well. Then Ben did the same thing to his left and his right before treading water with an expression that was trying not to be worried; his eyebrows were up and he was smiling and laughing lightly, but anyone would be able to tell he was starting to panic.

“Wow, there's really nothing out here at all! I'm really in the middle of the ocean, aren't I? Well, FUCK!” Ben shouted, then slapped the water in front of him with an arm, sending out a glittering spray. Ben stayed in that spot for just a little while, mentally cataloging his available resources, which was basically nothing useful in this situation.

Ben started swimming, and continued swimming for exactly one minute and three seconds before he realized something horrible.

He was not in shape for swimming, and he was most likely going to die out here if he didn't find land. Sure, he'd been hitting the gym in preparation for a vacation to Hawaii, and sure, he'd been running. But swimming was a completely different beast than running, something Ben was starting to become soberingly aware of.

“I've just got to think,” Ben said aloud, doing his best to keep his head from dipping under the water. “I've just got to figure this out,” because his dad wouldn't have thought this was funny unless there was a solution.

“I shouldn't have picked the fucking bag of holding!” Ben shouted, suddenly thinking of his, at the time, extremely practical decision to select the black hole with the glowing purple edges. What he should have done was re-rolled the items till he got the one...

Wait, but it wasn't a Bag of Holding, not really, was it? Ben had only thought of it like that because he was familiar with the concept, but calling it that, and thinking of it like that, only covered thirty, possibly thirty-five percent of what it actually was.

The System had called it the Utility Pocket, and told him that, like all the other Plus items he was handing out, it pushed the boundaries of what he could introduce into The World without upsetting its balance.

The first thing he'd been told was that the edges were soft and pliable, and would never cut anything, no matter how hard he tried to find a way to make it happen.

“First rule; either it goes in, in one piece, or it doesn't go in at all. Second rule; using the pocket will consume your mana until it's gone, then it will consume your physical energy, and finally, it will consume your life-force. Don't worry, when about half of your mana is gone, you will stop using it, trust me,” The System had said, then winked at him in an exaggerated way.

“Third rule; you can resize the Utility Pocket with mana. You will consume mana to take objects into it, and you will consume mana to take objects out of it. Your mana pool determines how much material you can store, the more mana you can store in your body, the more you can fit in the Utility Pocket. The size of your mana pool also determines how large you can make the pocket, and to what degree you can change its shape.”

“Fourth rule; it's cheaper to reach into the Utility Pocket and pull something out than eject it. You can expend additional mana to eject something with more force. You can also use mana to create a suction effect.”

“Fifth rule; you can make more than one pocket, and this is again governed by the maximum size of your mana pool.”

“Sixth rule; the mana cost for all actions grows in proportion to the distance of the Utility Pocket from your heart. The most dangerous part of the Utility Pocket is its ability to cause instant death, should you be so foolish as to create an opening ten miles away.”

“Rule seven; there is no safety mechanism on the utility pocket, and it will not turn off before it kills you.”

“Rule eight;” At this point, Ben had started to wonder just how many rules this thing had, “if more than half of the outer edge of the utility pocket is in contact with your body, it is considered a part of you, and moving it around is close to free, mana wise. If it is not in contact with your body, you can still move it around in space, but you pay full price. Be careful trying to use this thing like a bug net to scoop things up, that's a good way to seriously hurt yourself.”

“Rule nine; if you create two utility pockets, you can transfer objects freely between them. Yes, Ben,” The System had said, clearly reading Ben's mind when he heard rule nine, “you can use the utility pocket as a way to extend your reach. You could even put your whole body through it, but that action will, without exception, completely drain all of your remaining mana, and deduct the cost directly from your physical energy.”

“Rule ten; this isn’t really a rule so much as some free advice, this is an extremely versatile item, which is why it has the word 'utility' in its name. A sword will always be a more efficient weapon, and an actual shield will always be a better shield, but you will never find an item with more ‘utility’, than this one. Feel free to experiment, and don't curse my name if you get killed because you were too focused on being a one-trick-pony.”

Ben was pulled from his memories by a wave that crashed over his head, bringing him back to reality.

“Not a bag of holding at all,” he said, pushing with his mind like he'd been doing it his whole life, and creating a small half dollar size hole in reality with what looked like little tentacles of purple light coming off of the edges.

Ben closed it and started re-framing the problem he was faced with. Before, his problem was that he couldn't swim forever and he was going to drown. Now?

“I just need to keep my head above the water and start moving forward,” he murmured, breathing hard, his arms and legs starting to burn with the effort of keeping afloat. Ben created another. . . pocket...he wasn't sure what to name it yet, and he wasn't about to start giving it any thought.

He created a pocket in front of his chest, about the size of a dinner plate and monitored how he felt for a moment, to see how it affected him. The pocket sat in the water, inert and fixed in space, looking like a tiny black hole on the surface of the water. Ben felt a barely perceptible strain on his mind, like the strain one might feel if someone asked them to remember a specific, small number and repeat it back to them in five minutes.

He took a deep, labored breath, and began to focus on the pocket, willing it to start taking in the water. A few things happened immediately; first, Ben felt the strain on his mind increase from remembering a two-digit number, to remembering a five-digit number; second, the water in front of him immediately dipped down towards the hole like it was a drain; and third, Ben started falling forward, towards the open utility pocket.

It happened so fast, a sudden lurch and then he was horizontal, rather than verticle, and his face was in the water. When he hit the hole, it folded a bit like fabric and went down with him, still taking in water, except at a faster rate the deeper it went. Ben was fortunate he had the sense of mind to close it, or he could have ended up in a much worse situation.

Ben righted himself and got back to the surface, spitting out saltwater and blinking until he could see properly again. Somewhere in his mind, he was aware of exactly how much water he was holding and had a more general awareness of how much more he could take in before he was at his limit.

He was at less than half capacity, which wasn't an insignificant amount at all.

Ben created another pocket, this one attached to his hand, and let the water out. It came out quickly enough and splashed against the surface of the ocean.

Then, Ben submerged his hand and pushed, giving the Utility Pouch some energy. The results were, again, immediate.

The water shot out in a fairly rapid jet, and by Newton's laws, did Ben suddenly find himself underwater again. This time he was rapidly spinning in a circle and couldn't tell up from down till he cut the power and let himself start to float.

His head broke the surface for what felt like the hundredth time that day, but unlike the last imaginary ninety-nine times, this time, he was smiling practically from ear to ear.

“Well, that worked,” he said, and started to experiment.