Marty’s POV

“Phoebe, have I ever told you you’re a badass?” I asked, stunned by her evolution. “Because you are definitely a badass.”

“No, but I won’t argue that point.” She said slightly glumly, obviously still upset about losing some of her NPC friends in the game. “No, the important part is this, who wants to help me hunt those bastards down?”

We all looked at each other before Derrick took the lead. “I have no idea where I am, or else I would love to Phoebe. Trolls don’t really make maps. Or anything, for that matter.”

“You know about my timed quest to find the bugbear encampment, I can try and find you and help after that’s done.” Jon said.

“Think you can be back in a month?” Phoebe asked, hope written on her face.

“It’s possible, I’ll do what I can to make it there. Who knows, maybe the evolved monsters have some form of fast travel like the sun eagle towers the light guys get to enjoy. But why do I only have a month?”

“Because in a month I get my three nights of unlimited transformation time silly.” She said before turning to me, “And you Marty? Want in on a little mayhem?”

“It warms my heart that you would ask Phoebe, but I honestly I haven’t even found my way to the surface. I wasn’t even aware we had a connection for a while, until that group of players showed up the other day. They were also a good bit higher level than me.”

“Don’t sweat it hun, can you imagine the trouble we can cause, just the two of us?” Jon interjected. “Look at it this way, none of my curses are divine in origin, so I can both heal you and debuff the enemy at the same time. I imagine this is an outcome those developers never thought of.”

“*Sniff* You would exploit *sniff, sniff* a loophole for me?” She asked, fake sniffling and pouting at Jon.

“Every chance I get hun.” Jon smiled.

“*Hork* Get a room you two.” Derrick fake puked, while I watched smiling.

“Jealous Derrick?” Jon retorted.

“Not one bit.”

“Please don’t get started again you two.” Phoebe looked slightly embarrassed.

“They do this a lot?” I asked.

“If we don’t stop them, there’s a hundred percent chance of them taking things too far. Oh god, they are already at the one upper bedroom eyes stage.” Shaking her head, she grabbed Jon by the face and forcefully broke his staring contest. “We are going home, sitting on the couch with a tub of virtual ice cream and watching bad sci fi movies for the rest of the night. Your only job is to make sure I never run out of the following: ice cream, chocolate sauce, maraschino cherries, and cuddles. Will you take this mission?”

“Consider it done. What is the lady’s movie of choice?”

“Hmmm, since I am now an amalgamation of apex predator and beast, let’s do this. Any movie that mixes an apex predator and some form of natural disaster. There’s a plethora of ones to choose from, and they all have bad graphics.” Standing up, the two made a mad dash out of the café, giggling like schoolchildren.

“They do that often?” I asked.

“It’s how they met. They were doing an all weekend marathon of that set of movies with tornadoes and sharks. I still can’t believe they ended up making 15 of those things.”

“Heh, I think I saw a few of those. They had more cameos than an internet novel.”

“Ha! Brilliant. Between that and the casting of certain roles, I couldn’t agree more. Namely mad scientist father Gary Busey. He is one of the few people that just seemed made for roles like that.”

“Probably the hair.” I nodded. “Well, I’m not quite tired yet. What games can we introduce to this place?”

“Ever played pickleball?”

“Never even heard of it. What is it?”

“The greatest game ever!” He said, showing a bit of fanaticism in his eyes. “So it’s basically a cross between tennis and ping pong. The net is only knee height, and you use large paddles.”

“Let’s set it up!” I said, fairly excited to see where this would go. We ended up playing for a few hours, before we both got tired enough to sleep. I had to admit, it was possibly one of the greatest games ever.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I woke up in the morning, and spent an hour or so going over the offer the company had left. Seeing nothing wrong with it, I went ahead and signed it. As I sent it off, I noticed an email from Emily.

Marty,

The developers in charge of game management were extremely happy with your analysis of your newest trap. I’ll start off by saying they agree that it doesn’t need to be nerfed, but they are going to make some modifications to make it more realistic. The biggest issue is the massive block of steel that formed the base. One of the guys put it into a steel weight calculator, and got just under 12,000 pounds for the block alone. We realized you would indeed need a weight that substantial to counter the expected momentum you were going to face, so we have a workaround to be implemented in the next patch. We will be introducing one time use antigravity enchantments. These will be free to attach to the traps that would weigh over 100 pounds. Essentially, you get to carry around the traps until you place them. Once placed, the enchantment is destroyed.

We also realize that there are potential loopholes, so please let us know what you think of this solution before implementation. The designers are also looking to add other monster type specific traps in the future. An example that is going to be introduced is the bladed net, loosely based on your bladed wire by the way. Any winged monster caught in the trap would take an extra 20% damage, and would lose the ability to fly for a half hour or until it received a major healing spell.

Thanks,

Emily

My eyes lit up at the thought of a bladed net. Hmmm, could I modify that somehow to take out those overgrown crayfish? Probably not, they had pretty good armor. Wait, they should know about that to keep a good balance.

Emily,

I am more than happy with the proposed changes to the trap I designed, but I already see an issue. What would happen if some enterprising gamer were to throw a trap and activate it mid-air? It would have a phenomenal amount of energy and would be too easy to abuse. I think you need something like a 30 second delay. Once the trap is placed and activated, the anti-gravity is shut off. For the next thirty seconds, the trap is unable to do any damage.

I also love the idea of the bladed net, but want to point out an issue with it before it is deployed in game. I recently came across a monster called the crayclaw. A bladed net would be highly ineffective in doing damage to it, so you might need a damage reducer based upon the amount and type of armor whatever is being trapped is equipped with.

Thanks,

Marty

Feeling better about how things were shaping up, I decided to head into the game and see what I could make of Djarleen’s riddle.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Finally logged in, I looked over what I had written. Djarleen claimed they were blind, but mana sensed at 30 feet. Would they only see things with some form of mana in them then? I needed to test this. I ate a quick breakfast ration, bought a few of the special delivery bolts I had Dharkiss make for the pyrophoria potions, and headed out. Half an hour later, I was a safe distance away from a crayclaw.

“Ok, time for tests.” I muttered to myself, taking aim with a normal crossbow bolt. I fired it, completely missing the crayclaw. The bolt went a few feet in front of the head, and the creature gave absolutely no reaction. Perfect. It won’t react to anything with no mana in it. Next experiment, load one of the specialized bolts with a mana potion. I took aim, but ran into a major problem. I didn’t have the range to get it as close as the previous bolt. Shrugging, I took aim instead at the creature itself, knowing I would be several feet short in the attack. Then I remembered the power of that claw blast, and aimed in front of the creature. Exhaling, I fired. The bolt flew, and when it crossed what I assumed was the 30 foot detection radius, the crayclaw twitched one of its antennae, then gave a powerful flip of its tail and jetted away. I followed, and found it sixty feet away from where it started.

“Hmm, it blindly jets away from danger? I wonder how long it has to recharge?” For the next several minutes, I would fire a mana infused bolt at the crayclaw. The claw attack could be performed every thirty seconds, and the jet escape once every five minutes. Smiling, I came up with a plan. Time to see if I could get it to work.

I walked around, making sure I didn’t accidentally blunder into a different creature’s aggro radius. Once I was behind and slightly to the left side of the crayclaw, I pulled out a mana potion. I threw it at an incredibly high arc, aiming for it to enter the detection radius and fall straight in front of the crayclaw. My biggest hope would be the falling mana potion would resemble the dropping attack of the giant toads that fought the crayclaws, and sure enough the crayclaw made a hasty retreat. “BATTER UP!” I cried, swinging my hammer at the passing legs, shattering the back two, heavily cracking the third one, and missing the fourth and final leg on that side. Shaking my hand from the sting of the impact, I looked at the partially crippled creature.

It was in bad shape on the left side, but it was taking aim at me with that overgrown right claw. Though I managed to hit the deck in time, I still took a bit of damage simply from the near miss of the attack. Jumping to my feet, I circled to the creatures left, smiling as that third leg shattered under its weight as it tried to keep me in a place where it could attack. As it fell, I charged in, shattering the last leg on the left side. After that, the crayclaw was helpless. The tail escape couldn’t drag it far enough away, and as long as I stayed behind the shoulder joint of the claws it couldn’t attack me.

I didn’t want to damage the magic sensing organ with a shockwave attack, so I used my hammer to physically crush a plate on its back and started slashing at the tender flesh underneath with my scythe. After a minute of this pummeling, the crayclaw died. I didn’t want to study these creatures, as they weren’t that prevalent. The loot wasn’t too bad either. I ended up with a low quality carapace piece, a piece of tail meat, and a high quality magic sensing organ.

The magic sensing organ was an odd piece. It was a sphere that would easily fit in the palm of my hand, covered in strange bands of an elastic material. Out of the top were three long antennae, each ending in a small, smooth orb. Two would face out the front of the crayclaw, while the third would face out the back and give it full 1080-degree coverage (spherical vision). Those designers sure did a good job on this, it really looked like an alien organ. Placing it in my inventory, I headed out for some more hunting.

The next five crayclaws fell in a similar manner, though it was annoying to lose a mana potion for each kill. I suppose that it was a good exchange for killing a creature while taking no damage. The loot wasn’t spectacular, and I knew it was going to be a grind for me to get what I needed to become a variant. Each kill gave either giant claw or tail meat, and more often than not a low quality carapace. I could probably increase the quality by not smashing through it, but it didn’t bother me as I was going to sell them all anyway. I also came away with two egg pouches, and wondered what giant crawfish caviar would taste like. The most annoying part was that I only got one more high quality magic sensing organ. This grind is going to be annoying. If I wanted to use the best items, and I was going to use the best, I would need 1000 high quality magic sensing organs. For the final transformation, I would need ten perfect magic sensing organs. Each of which would be crafted from ten superior magic sensing organs, which come from, you guessed it, ten high quality magic sensing organs. At one magic sensing organ per five crayclaws, I was about to embark on a 5000 kill genocide.

The next creature I came across was one of the thunder-ram toads. It was sideways to me, and I took a bit of time to study it. The eyes were raised above the head, and were mostly facing forward. Almost a mix of a predator and prey setup. Completely guessing, but it would be able to see just slightly past 180 degrees, and have issues with something close up. I had no idea on its range, so at roughly 40 feet I took aim and fired at one of the eyes. It saw the danger, and flinched enough that the bolt dug a furrow through its cheek instead of blinding it. As I was switching weapons, it did something I really should have expected and fired its tongue at me. The blow knocked me down, and also stuck my left arm across my chest. I’ll admit, I started to panic for a bit as it was dragging me back, but I was a bit heavier than its usual prey and was able to calm myself. Halfway there, I used the same [Keen edge] technique that decapitated the mage and sliced through the tongue.

Thinking myself out of danger, I started working on getting the tongue unstuck from my chest and arm. That is, until I saw sparks of electricity on the ceiling above me. “Fuck me.” I managed to get out, before the toad rocketed down from the ceiling and smashed into me.

You have died

Death takes his toll of 10% experience towards the next level and your equipment loses 10% durability. You have also lost one kill towards your weekly quota.

Current kills: 6/7

I woke up in the barracks again, and was wondering about my kill count. Did they consider the kills from all of those players as part of my quota even if I didn’t deliver the final blow? That could be useful, I wonder if I could use it to kill steal? Things to consider as I headed off to see Dharkiss and get my equipment repaired. At least I could channel my mana to repair my weapon.