Chapter 16

The Interview

When the countdown hit zero the Screen Queen was already standing in front of another camera for her opening remarks.

“Welcome all of my lovely fans to the hottest interview of the year! Today we have the three top players from MythArc’s new game that has taken the world by storm, Age of Adventure! I’m sure you all saw the Highlight Reel, it was epic in all kinds of ways, but the coolest part had to be the final fight with three intrepid heroes facing off against a possessed Kobold King! Today you lucked out since we have those same heroes here with us to talk and answer some questions. From the Gallant Knight to the Holy Maid and the incredible Element Brawler, yup they have been named by the public already folks. That just shows how popular they really are. Without further ado let’s get to it!”

The broadcast switched to show Dave, Kate, and I at our desks as Delilah sat down at hers. She must have gotten some information from MythArc about the fight, there is no way she would know that was a Kobold King otherwise. It seemed they didn’t tell her everything though, she didn’t seem to know we had no business surviving that encounter. I smiled; I think I can work with this.

“First off I want to thank you three for agreeing to this interview, I’m sure you are making the day of millions of fans around the world right now.”

Kate turned a touch green at this statement.

“My first question is for all of you, don’t worry it’s an easy one. Have you all been playing since launch day?”

Dave and Kate looked uncertain about who should answer so I rescued them.

“Yes we have, in fact I met EpicDave here during my warrior quest and Katenip during my mage one. She already had her mop too.”

“Oh really? That’s something I wanted to ask you about Katenip, how did you come to use bubbles, and what made you choose a mop as a weapon?”

Kate visibly gathered herself before answering, “Well my starter sword got stolen from me while I was playing with it at the start, and the man at the Mage Guild let me have his old mop since he felt sorry for me. It seemed to have some minor self-cleaning enchantment on it or something because fighting with it gave me an affinity for water and soap. From there I learned about mana from Mr. Lazarus and just sort of fell into using bubbles I guess. I think they’re pretty.” She turned a bit red from admitting her sword mishap. “I still use a mop because it is the only thing I have found that works as a focus for soap mana.”

“Oh, Lazarus, you are the one that taught her? How did you become so good at mana use? Unlike other skills that can carry over from real life or other games that one is supposedly unique to AoA.”

I give her my best mysterious smile, “I know a few martial arts, some of the ideas of energy and movement transfer over. Well, they transfer enough that the explanations I found in-game made a lot of sense to me. Who knows I might just be a natural?” That was a pretty line of bullshit but it wasn’t untrue either.

“Well, that is certainly interesting to hear. Now I have a question for EpicDave, you have a very eclectic way of speaking in-game, what’s the reasoning behind that? Are you playing it up for the cameras perhaps?” She had a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she asked that question. Oh, this would be fun.

Her question totally backfired the moment Dave started speaking in perfectly clear English. “That isn’t an affectation, the translation software is just inadequate. I grew up in several countries and speak over a dozen languages fluently, many more I speak passably. I tend to think in more than one language at a time. Sadly the software is unable to keep up and it mangles everything I say unless I focus specifically on one language. I have had this problem ever since the autotranslation package was released.”

Delilah managed to rally from her surprise with poise. “Well, aren’t you the language expert, impressive. You must have a real nimble tongue to speak so many of them so well. Maybe after the show, you can give me a demonstration?” Dave spluttered at both her comment and her sultry wink before turning a rather alarming shade of red.

With that, she turned her sharp tongue on me and Kate. “So we all saw how you tried to rush to Katenip’s rescue at the end of the fight, is there any chance this is a budding romance? Oh, that would be just darling, the Bubble Princess and her Elemental Hero! The tabloids would have a field day! Please tell me it’s true.”

Kate passed right by red and looked like an albino codfish out of water, struggling to breathe. My face probably did something interesting as well, hell she was less than half my age! Mental age at least. She could be my damn kid for god’s sake. I tried very hard not to be insulted since no one actually knew I was mentally 45.

“I would thank you not to imply that I would prey on children Ms.Sky, she is 17.” I growled at her.

“Woah sorry sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, I thought she was older. I just thought it would be cute you know.” she backpedaled.

I glared, not just any glare, the same glare I had used to cow demons and giants. “I will forgive you once, and only once.”

The uncomfortable pause that followed was suddenly shattered by Kate managing her first words since Delilah implied we had a relationship, “I’m single!”

You could have heard a pin drop. Kate just hid her head in her hands.

Delilah laughed, “Honey with all the boys watching this you won’t be for long.” She turned serious for a moment, “I do want to apologize miss Katenip, for some reason your status as a minor was not included in my brief.” She then turned to the camera directly and said, “To all you wonderful viewers out there I want to be clear that I in no way endorse such things.” Her smile returned, “On the bright side this means you are both available, you are available are you not Mr. Lazarus?” she finished with a coy smile.

Damn she is good, an apology and a distraction tailored to fans. “I think I will refrain from answering that Ms. Sky.”

“Well let’s move on shall we, could you all tell us more about the fight with that boss? It looked like you might have been out of your depth at some points of the fight, was it really that strong? How did you find such a creature anyway, was it the result of an epic quest line or random chance? I’m sure our viewers are dying to know!”

And she was back to the rapid-fire interrogation. Dave decided to take this one. “We just stumbled upon it actually. We were exploring an old mine and it collapsed, then we needed to find a way out of the creepy place we fell into.”

Kate picked up the story from there, “The collapse was my fault, explosions are a bad idea in old mines. It was a miracle we survived really, without Lazarus forming a rock shell to protect us we wouldn’t have even had a chance.” Her face twisted in disgust, “The place we landed was really nasty though, some ancient blood lab or something. It was really creepy.”

I picked up the end of the tale, “We only found the Kobold King when we found the way out, the kobolds had dug into the ritual room. The King wouldn’t have been too bad of a fight. That Blood Phantom that it accidentally unleashed was an Epic Boss though and way above our level. If Kate didn’t have magic that was particularly good at removing evil and blood we would probably have died. Blood Phantoms seem to be particularly vulnerable to soap mana. A lot of creatures actually have weaknesses that can generate an instant kill, figuring them out can be tricky though. This makes some of the more unusual magics invaluable and as Kate demonstrates they can also be very powerful.”

“Well, you certainly are a font of knowledge aren’t you Mr. Lazarus, how did you manage to learn so much in such a short time?”

With the most deadpan voice I could manage, I lied my ass off, “I asked the NPC’s. They really are the best source of information you can find. I compiled what I learned with a few friends from other games and that gave birth to the information packets I’ve been releasing.”

Delilah homed in on the topic of unusual magics next, just as I hoped. “Wow, such an untapped resource. You heard it here folks, ask the NPC’s if you are stuck, if you want information, or maybe just if you want to chat. It obviously has benefits. Speaking of those benefits can you tell us more of what you learned about unusual magics from the NPCs?”

I smiled, “Sure thing. It all stems from Affinities and Blessings. Doing odd things can get you some weird ones but that should let you start to play around with mana attuned to that particular force. You can of course get access to new mana types by experimenting with mana, but it is supposedly much harder than if you already have a bit of an Affinity to work with. I have been told Blessings work similarly, but I haven’t really explored them as much myself.”

I gestured to the side where Dave’s screen was. “Dave is a perfect example of the second hidden type of Affinities. Body Affinities. These affinities can be used by those not actually looking to take up magic to great effect. Dave, you want to explain this part?”

“No, you can do it, Lazarus.”

“Okay then, Dave got his metal Affinity by eating metal, eating enough got him the metal affinity but the way he got it made it a Body Affinity. I haven’t found any way to directly view Body Affinities yet, but it could be out there. Anyway, with that he unlocked classes giving him a body as strong as metal.”

I take a breath and pull up a piece of iron and a block of wood on my holodesk. “Ingesting odd things like metal or wood can help you build an affinity with them, but it will likely hurt or make you sick, possibly both. Immersing yourself in odd stuff can accomplish the same thing. These methods get you the hidden Body version of the Affinity, it won’t show up but eating metal to get to a level 5 Affinity will give different benefits than attuning your mana and using Metal Magic to get the same level 5 Affinity. For things like wind, you could try eating wind crystals or filling mana gems with wind and eating them. This game really rewards experimentation and thinking outside the box.”

Swiping my hand to disperse the projections I continue, “I share more in-depth knowledge of this and other topics on my streaming channel. As a side note, there may be something like Body Affinities for Blessings, but I haven’t figured that out yet.” Well, that was only half bullshit, there was certainly a Body version of Blessings, but they were poorly understood even in my old timeline and sometimes hard to tell apart from regular Blessings. I really couldn’t help people understand them much, hopefully, the mystery will make people investigate soon.

In the future we got a handle on Body Affinities a couple of years from now, this led to a phase of elemental warriors, some of them quite odd like the Clothbody Barbarian, that was one strange man. With this information widespread at the start, people could hopefully make the most of the first year where affinities were easier to get. Oh damn, I should mention that, so people don’t put off experimenting.

“Oh, I forgot to mention something I heard from the NPCs, supposedly new adventurers have an easier time gaining affinities. My guess is we are in some sort of grace period to get things started with a bang, either way, it would be good to take advantage of it while it lasts.”

Delilah picked up the conversation again, “Well there you go folks, Mr. Lazarus has a streaming site of his own. You wouldn’t happen to be trying to take my job would yah hun?” She asked with a wink and a smile.

“Now I have a question for all three of you about the pain settings. Pain may not be new in the gaming world, but it was never so realistic as it is in AoA. We have all heard that the pain feels real, and it has become quite controversial for a flagship game to go with full pain settings. What do you three think?”

Kate was first to speak up, ”Well I was surprised and scared at first, but it increases the immersion experience by a ton. It’s amazing how much pain exists in everyday life that we dismiss, like stubbing your toe or getting a splinter, but with those in the game, they just feel natural. Most of the time it’s really easy to forget I’m even in a game.”

Dave picked up the topic, “As the Tank, the pain is definitely a concern for me, but in a way, I feel that makes being a Tank even more honorable as a position. I am no longer just shielding my party from HP damage; I am shielding my friends from pain. Having high Constitution and HP also mitigates the pain somewhat, so I am feeling less pain than my friends would. Katenip is right, the realistic pain makes Age of Adventure feel like a true world instead of a game. Most people don’t like pain, but it is a part of reality and so in a realistic game it must be represented.”

Supposedly the pain settings were actually like that because they couldn’t make the rest of the sensations real without including pain, at least that is what an old friend told me she heard from someone that worked at MythArc that survived the Merge. It could just be a rumor. Oh, they were looking at me, guess I should put in my thoughts on the matter.

“I think that pain plays an important role in the game. This game drops you into a whole world with new rules and situations, the game gives you the freedom to become what you want to be. The price of that is that you have to work for it, you have to put in the blood, sweat, and tears to become a master swordsman because you are developing real skill. The skills you learn from the ground up are real and seem to carry over to the real world, well not the muscle memory part but the knowledge does. That’s very different for those system-given skills where the information fades because you are leaning on the system for it.”

I brought up some footage from the real, the ‘mundane’ stuff where people are exploring or crafting. “AoA is as close to another reality as we can get, with fresh starts for all. If there was no pain the gains wouldn’t be worth nearly as much, just like real life. This is so much more than a game; it is a second chance to control your destiny in a real living world. Removing pain would make it nice for those that just want to get a high score or something silly, but that isn’t what the game is about. It is right in the name, Adventure, a safe coddled adventure is no adventure at all, it’s a guided tour.”

Switching my holodesk to clips of adventure films I continue, “Think of all the adventure stories you love, all the movies you wish you could be a part of, there is risk there, there is risk in the real world as well just walking out your front door. What MythArc did was create a true Adventure for each and every one of us, it just waits for us to be brave enough to face it. If you don’t want pain, train, get skilled so you never get hit. Or build up a Con score so big nothing actually hurts. If you don’t want to risk fighting up close be a caster, crafter, or archer. If you are too afraid to figure out how to avoid the pain, then how can you call yourself an adventurer?”

I changed my tone to the one I used as a general facing down hordes from beyond reality. “As that old movie says, ‘Life is pain, anyone telling you otherwise is selling something', that is why AoA is a gaming marvel, it gives you a new life free of the chains of modern society or social status, free of the shackles imposed by circumstances of birth or family obligation, free of the limitations of the human form. Compared to that what is a little pain? You would feel the same in your mundane lives anyway. Now you have the chance to eliminate or mitigate pain along with the increased danger. So be a true adventurer, a hero, a legendary crafter, or an explorer of the most wondrous places you can find. The danger gives it meaning, the risk gives value to the rewards. Age of Adventure is not just a game, it’s a new life.”

Switching back to a normal tone I say, “Does anyone really care about pain settings now?”

Delilah’s face wore a strange expression, something between stunned awe, indignance, and anticipation. “Well after that speech I doubt it. Sorry dearies, but we are out of time for now, if we are lucky these fine gentlemen and wonderful young lady will give us another interview in the future. This is Delilah Sky signing off.”

The green light indicating we were live winked out, and Ms. Sky turned to me, “I think you just completely upstaged me at the end there Mr. Lazarus. Are you sure this was your first interview?”

I gave her a slight smile, “First one in this lifetime I assure you.”

My smile slipped as I realized Santa and Violet were going to give me so much shit for using my ‘War Voice’ for an interview. That was going to suck.