Chapter 23

Hard Talk

The next day I found myself in a private room at my favorite inn, sitting at a table with Kate, Dave, and Angel.

“Well, isn’t this fun?” Angel said. “We finally get to learn the secrets of our glorious leader.”

Coming from the one who has been with us the least amount of time, the word ‘finally’ was amusing.

I cleared my throat and started talking. Hope this works.

“Well, as you know, I am a bit more knowledgeable about AoA than is easily explained. Kate thought I was a beta tester, but there weren’t any betas for this game. My story is unbelievable, and downright ridiculous really. I didn’t say anything because I’m sure no one will believe me.”

“Oh, don’t say that Lazarus, I’m sure it’s not that silly.” Kate said. Ha, let’s see how long you keep that attitude.

“I’m from the future.” There we go, bomb dropped…. And no one is saying anything. Dave just nodded, Angel chuckled, and Kate looked expectant. As I thought, they don’t believe me, hell I wouldn’t believe me and I know me, maybe that’s why I wouldn’t believe me…. Damn, my thinking is getting messed up again.

“Seriously guys, I don’t know how it happened, but one moment I was in the game and the next it was Launch Day again. Whatever happened let my mind come back a few years. Maybe something happened with the servers or something, I don’t really know, but they were supposedly hooking up some quantum computer prototype to the core system soon, or they will be. Damn, time travel tense is confusing. Best I can figure is that there was an accident and my mind in-game got shunted backwards.”

That was the revised story Santa helped me come up with last night. There was some research on quantum super computers being done now, and he figured a quantum link between past and future minds and an accident might make enough sense to bullshit the matter. It actually made a kind of sense. If the game hadn’t absorbed the world, making it impossible, then I would believe that story with enough evidence… maybe.

“I know so much about the game because I’ve been playing it for over a year. The fact that the game acts as a real world is why I want to inform people. Cities were lost due to stupid mistakes and careless assumptions. Entire regions of the world became wastelands due to player led armies fighting over egos.” That part was true, so many idiots squabbling for meaningless power caused so much destruction. “I figured with a better, more community focused start, the game world might survive better. This really is a world, you can be friends with the NPCs, they can have kids, they can die… MythArc is hands off about it, the company policy is that if the players ruin the world, it’s up to the players to fix it, if they can’t it just becomes a different genre, post-apocalyptic.”

That was the company stance officially. The real reason is that it locked them out after a couple months. Once the Merge started, nothing really worked right. They even lost contact with the AI that ran the game by the end of the year, for months before that they couldn’t get it to accept commands.

I was pretty sure my conviction showed on my face, Angel stopped chuckling and Dave looked serious. Kate just looked confused.

“If thas true then that changes… huh, I guess that changes nothin don’t it?” Dave said. He wasn’t wrong.

Angel spoke up, “Well dahling, I can’t tell if you 're crazy or just in a crazy situation. What does it matter? I’m an actress, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a director or choreographer that wasn’t all there, some of my favorite people, really. The world’s mad, so we might as well enjoy it. Just for my curiosity, do you have any proof?”

“I would think his proof would be tha info he has, can’t rightly know so much about the game without either inside information or playing it before. With the interview ah know he don’t work fer MythArc. They announced a policy that no one that worked for them would play for the first two months, so no one would have an advantage or something. I can’t imagine they would have let him go on an interview without checking for any ties to an employee either.”

Dave brought up good points. Better ones than I had, really. Kate was still quiet, though.

“I see your point Davy, anyway we’ve seen dear Laz make enough mistakes that he is clearly not a mastermind type. While I find the whole notion of time travel a bit fanciful, who am I to say what’s possible? I’m a queen of the stage, not a scientist. Truly, what does it matter? If there is some big conspiracy that he isn’t telling us, well, it’s Lazzy, I’m sure he has a good reason. If not, well, he told us the truth, should we condemn him for it being hard to believe? If we do, what does it change? All it does is cost us a friend.”

That… was a hell of a lot more insightful than I had expected from her. Although from context clues, I guessed her actual age to be mid 50s to 60s, so it could just be the wisdom of years shining through her diva persona. Kate was still quiet, though.

“Kate, what do you think about all this?” Dave asked. I could see the concern on his face.

We all waited for her reply, and after gathering her thoughts, she spoke up.

“This is weird, unbelievable, and crazy. I don’t really believe it, but Lazarus isn’t a bad guy, even if he is hiding stuff from us. Really, we haven’t known each other for very long. Why should he completely trust us? Maybe I just don’t believe it because I don’t really get quantum mechanics, but I just have a feeling this isn’t right. Time travel… it’s been a fantasy for so long. I don’t think anyone really has a place to start on research for it. I don’t know, accepting time travel feels like accepting magic is real or something.”

Damn, she has no idea how right she is. Good instincts on that kid. In for a rude awakening when magic crosses over, though.

Kate continued, “I want to believe you, Mr. Lazarus. I just can’t right now. Angel has a point though; we’ve trusted you this far and had a great time playing AoA. Why let something like a few secrets get in the way of that? Most people keep their information hidden online and in other games. It’s not like this is all that different.”

It was clear she was struggling to put her feelings into words and felt like she was making a hash of it in the process. I thought she was doing a rather good job.

Maybe I had built this up in my mind more than necessary. In the future people would take keeping secrets as the life and death matter that it would be, now, well, it was anything but a life and death matter to a bunch of gamers. They probably found it more unusual that I felt the need to either explain or make up a story than if I had just said it was none of their business.

Santa, Violet, and I had all missed the obvious. No one cared right now. There had been no need to come up with a believable story at all. I could have gotten away with saying ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ and that would have been the end of it. This was still a game, and the world treated it as such. Just like any game, friends you make in it would barely be called acquaintances by many in the real world.

I will admit that there is a certain separation between people when you don’t know their actual names, or even what country they live in. As odd as it may seem to others, gamers can still form friendships without actually knowing much about each other, and we accept secrets as a part of life. We were fools to forget such an ingrained part of gamer life. You need not know everything to be friends.

“Thanks for your trust or… lack of concern, I guess. Anyway, I wanted to tell you all that I’m going to try to take out a very dangerous monster that could destroy the city tomorrow. Before you ask, I’m not bringing you guys with me. I assembled a group of people with real live combat experience to do this with me. The enemy is nasty, and you really can’t die to him. It would make everything worse. In the meantime, I have presents.”

I pulled out the booklets that Santa and I wrote last night and handed them out. I rewrote the one Santa made, since we weren’t ready to reveal another time traveler. I handed Katenip instructions on how to train to get the skill Sense Water and gave AngelOfMusic instructions for Soul Sense. EpicDave got a special booklet, the training on how to unlock the Soul stat.

“These are some skills or in Dave’s case, a Stat that I think would benefit each of you. The training is hard and will probably take you a while, but each of them should be very helpful in the future.”

I gestured to Kate first, “If you can learn to sense the water around you then you will eventually be able to control it, or even convert it into bubbles.”

Next, I pointed to Angel, “Sensing souls is the first step on the road to cursing them, a very powerful and dangerous type of magic. It interacts very badly with humans so once you learn it you should never use it on a player.”

Finally, I looked at Dave, “The Soul stat is a powerful thing, it can be used to form an Aura and gives a defense against many enchantment effects. That isn’t why I want you to unlock it, though. One of the next steps in a warrior’s growth is forming a Combat Style, beyond that is a Heart, and beyond even that is a Domain. If you unlock the Soul stat, you will have a leg up on forming a Heart and a Domain when you get to them. More immediately, the process of unlocking it will help you form a Combat Style afterwards. Warrior and Rogue classes are odd in the way they can achieve the supernatural through skill and determination, they can do magical things without a drop of mana. Of course, adding mana can still supercharge things.”

I chuckle at that and continue, staring into Dave’s eyes to drive the point home. “As a warrior you need to figure out a method of fighting that fits you, down to your very soul, it has to resonate so strongly with you it lets you do the impossible. This goes beyond mere stamina skills. This is why a high-level warrior is feared when a mage could simply blast them from a distance, or a priest smite them. When your very combat style lets you parry spells and slice three times for each swing of your sword. When your blade can rend enhancement spells and curse your foe with the remains. When a thrust from your spear stretches and stabs around corners. All these things can be done by a warrior with the right Style. A Style is the mark of a true warrior, many of the players playing warriors will never develop one of their own and will have to learn from a book or teacher. The most powerful Styles are the ones you create yourself.”

Dave nodded and pocketed his booklet, he understood. Most players didn’t have a prayer of making a custom Style this early… I had a feeling Dave could do it, if only because I didn’t tell him it was hard.

While Angel started to look through her booklet, Kate objected to being left out, I knew she would.

“Why can’t we go with you? You’ve said it yourself: we are probably some of the strongest players in the game. What could be that bad Lazarus? These other people can’t have higher stats than us, right?”

Well, at least she was now feeling hurt about being left behind instead of lied to, so…. progress?

“You out class them in stats, no question, so does Dave. Angel is still catching up. What you don’t have yet is combat instincts. These people have all been in true life or death situations. They have fought for their lives and the lives of their friends. You are picking it up a lot faster than I would have thought, but you still have a long way to go before you reach the level of a soldier, situational awareness, the flow of a battle, that gut instinct that keeps you alive by the skin of your teeth. It can be learned here in AoA where the pain is real, but the risk of death teaches it faster. After the mission I’ll introduce you, I think you’d like them, well some of them anyway. They came into the game with the skills and instincts you are still learning, and this boss requires those instincts. There is no other way to fight it.”

Okay, that was a lie. A regular party could fight the Shadow King, but at least one of them would die and drag shades back into the real world with them. The team I assembled plus Santa was the best shot at avoiding real-world casualties. I would try to follow up on that idea, though. It would be amusing to introduce Kate to Cuddles, Rose, Doc and Dollface. I might need to hit Shin, but that would just be a bonus.

Her face clearly showed what she thought of my reasoning, it was stupid and unfair. I understood, she was still a teenager after all. More than that, she was right. Unfair or not, it was necessary; I didn’t want to see one of my new friends get hurt. Soldiers already put their lives on the line, and it pained me that I was volunteering them for a combat tour without telling them. A death against the Shadow King and his guard was a death sentence. I couldn’t put a civilian in that position, not yet, not if I could avoid it. Hell, I would fight the bastard with just Santa for backup if I thought the others would go for it. If I had known he would get here so early, that’s exactly what I’d have done. Too late now though, the others were involved and there would be no dissuading them, even if they knew the true risks. Especially if they knew the true risks.

Dave and Angel accepted my explanation and took their leave to train or do other things. They understood the difference between a soldier and a civilian, and accepted that I just hadn’t invited them on this particular expedition. Kate stayed sitting at the table, staring at the booklet I’d given her, looking through it really, at some distant pain only she could see.

Before leaving, I put my hand on her shoulder, “It’s okay kid, I’m not ditching you for new friends or something. This just isn’t a battle you’re ready for. Simple as that. In time I bet you’ll be able to wipe the floor with hardened veterans, but you aren’t there yet. Cheer up, this isn’t your fight, but afterwards how about we investigate the Drakefall Pass, or go beyond the Shiverwoods into the caves of the Frostfangs, or even venture out of Embervale altogether? We’ll do something epic and fun, I promise.”

Kate nodded but didn’t look at me, I sighed and walked away. I had squad training to get to soon. Looking back, I saw a determined look on her face. Why did I get the feeling that pep talk was gonna bite me in the ass?