Metropolis - Goldilocks

Monday, May 11th, 2089 | 11:08am

Chris felt like a marionette being walked down the hall. She was so numb, her mind wasn’t even able to process the final end of her conversation with Suerte. She vaguely remembered speaking about prison politics and the groups to watch out for, but her mind had been too preoccupied with the revelation of Tiny’s deception to focus properly. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, so she’d clung to the hope of a misunderstanding to the bitter end.

But after three more portraits, one of Suerte, one of Yaz and one of Doris… she knew for sure she’d been duped. Caught in the middle of a panic attack waiting to happen, she was too dazed to notice when the guard led her back to a capsule and before she knew it, she was back in the game. Standing once more in the familiar, arid surroundings of Durrenheim, Aya weighed her options. She could despair over the fact that life had just proven to her that there was absolutely no one in her corner, or she could get it together and work.

She must have been standing motionless for a while because Henry made the decision for her when he pecked her quite painfully in the shin.

“What the— OUCH!” she screamed. She glared at Henry, but after a moment’s hesitation, she simply ignored him and really let out a scream.

“AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

By the time she ran out of breath, she was panting hard, but when she recovered, she felt like the weight of the revelation had been lifted off of her. Leaning forward, hands on her thighs, Aya sighed. She needed to get her head back in the game. There was nothing she could do about Tiny right then and there and she’d have to wait until that night to act.

Shaking her head, Aya gathered her things and got back to work. Throughout the day, her thoughts kept returning to Tiny, but the more she thought about it, the less she knew what to do about it. She had no idea who Tiny was with or what her motivation was. Her cellmate could be associated with the Warden, but Aya didn’t think that was the case. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she thought that the behind-the-scenes role that Suerte had roped her into was actually only a distraction from what was going on behind that. She couldn’t help feeling like there was a bigger war going on, a war that made even the Warden its pawn.

When Aya almost lost an eye to a Spinethift, she realized she was letting her worries become a distraction. Over the course of the morning and part of the early afternoon, she was able to level up to twelve, finally catching up to what she’d claimed to have achieved. Following the same routine of solo-hunting, she managed to plateau before reaching level thirteen. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t seem to gain any more stat points.

Running harder, hitting harder, dodging faster, climbing higher, sneaking more quietly… everything just wasn’t enough to get her the stats she wanted. She kept trying for a while, but eventually she realized she was beating a dead horse. If she wanted to get new results, she was going to have to try new methods. Gathering her things, Aya decided it was a time to take a break from leveling and check on the business. She’d kept an eye on it through PMs and chats, but she hadn’t been back to Durrenheim to check on the blacksmiths since the day before.

Approaching the town, she found the same traveling merchant she’d been using all day. His name was Fiddles and although his prices weren’t quite as favorable as actual market prices, selling to him meant that she didn’t have to go into town herself and waste her precious time haggling over different wares to different vendors. Unfortunately, it also meant that her Contract points hadn’t grown much in the previous day either, but seeing as she’d gained quite a few the day before with the various deals she’d made, she didn’t feel too bad about it. In addition, she knew that she couldn’t spread herself too thin, not when the real goal was raising her level. Having a massive number of Contract points wasn’t going to help her do that, so she could focus on it when she actually needed some. And seeing as she knew how to write her own Contracts now, she didn’t think she’d be calling on her useless Gatekeeper any time soon.

Lost in thought, Aya didn’t even notice when the guards stationed outside of the city gates simultaneously lowered their spears to block her path. Caught off guard, she jumped back and crouched down into her attack stance. She took a moment to take in what was happening and forced herself to relax. Her body had moved on its own, a testament to how hard she’d been working.

She straightened her posture and took in the two guards. They had the same hate-filled glare that had been directed at her since the moment she was imprisoned. The guards seemed to be more affected by her negative reputation with Durrenheim than the residents. She sighed under her breath, not wanting to give the guards any more reason to hold her in contempt.

“Sorry,” she said in a polite tone. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” the guard on the right said. “As one of Durrenheim’s official enemies, you are no longer allowed to set foot into Durrenheim.”

“Wha—!? Enemies?” Aya asked, confused. “I’m not an enemy… you guys have seen me walk in and out many times. I mean, I was just here yesterday… I remember seeing y—”

“Hmph,” the other scoffed. “That was then and this is now. You were just within acceptable range, but we knew that you’d eventually slip up. And that you did,” he said with a feral grin on his face.

Not knowing what he could mean, Aya brought up her Durrenheim reputation points.

[-5008]

Her eyes widened. The last time she’d looked at them, they’d been -5000. Confused she scrolled through the notifications until she found the reason for her reduced reputation.

[Known Black-Market Interaction.]

“Wha—?!”

The left guard chuckled malevolently before adding, “That’s what you get for being a traitor of the empire.”

“A… but what did I do?!”

“Oh, don’t play coy,” the right guard said. “You know exactly what you did.” He stared at a point behind her.

Confused, Aya turned around to find what he was looking at. The only thing in direct line of sight was Fiddler’s stand. The vendor stood there, obliviously peddling his wares to another player. Aya frowned until it finally dawned on her what the guard meant.

“Wait,” she said, needing to make sure. “You mean Fiddler is the black market?”

The guard sneered at her, giving her a glare that said more than words could. He thought she was lying but before she could defend herself, the same player that had just been at Fiddler’s stand walked by her and the guards and into Durrenheim.

Aya’s mouth fell open at the blatant act of discrimination.

“But he just—”

“And?” the guard asked, completely unfazed. “He’s not a treacherous thief.”

Aya wanted to say more but both guards were staring ahead, intent on ignoring anything she said. She tried getting their attention for another minute before she tried walking in again. This time, their refusal to let her in was also accompanied by a ten point reputation drop. Aya sighed and decided to give up for the time being.

She brought up the forums on city reputations and found what she was looking for almost immediately. All cities had a particular threshold that allowed people in and out. Some cities wouldn’t let you in if your reputation was below -100 and others below -500. Durrenheim’s threshold was obviously set at -5000 or she wouldn’t have been able to come and go as she wanted the day before.

Had she known, she would have been more careful. But as it stood, she’d have to find a way to better her reputation without actually setting foot into the city. She sighed, knowing she’d just added another thing to the already massive list of tasks she had ahead of her. Still needing a break from the leveling process, she walked over to the city wall and sat down, her back against it.

[Durrenheim Reputation: -5. Disrespect of Public Property.]

Aya cringed and looked over at the guards’ direction. Their hate-filled eyes glanced away the second her eyes fell on them. Biting her lip, she stopped herself from yelling in frustration and walked away from the city boundaries. She found a boulder about fifty yards out and took a seat. It let her observe the guards, the city gates, Fiddlers’ stand and all the players that were walking in and out of Durrenheim.

She took ten minutes to check in with all the people that were working for her at that moment. She wished she could check in with the blacksmiths in person but at least with the Contract she knew that they couldn’t be cheating her, at least, not by a lot. They reported that the first weapons and metal items were being completed. Unfortunately, Ackman still needed another day to finish the shop.

Aya’s eyes veered toward Fiddles at the thought. Her own shop wouldn’t be working for another day, but perhaps they could have a test run with the traveling merchant. She mulled the thought over some more as she finished making inquiries with all the participants of the plan. The haulers had just delivered their second haul of purified metal. Aya grinned at the blacksmiths’ reactions. None of them could believe how pure the metal was when it arrived and, other than Xavier, she doubted any of them even knew how she was doing it.

All of them were excited at the prices they’d be able to charge for such prime product but Aya kept reminding them that they wouldn’t be able to overcharge, at least not like Serving Time did. She was still waiting on Donovan’s report but the kid wasn’t answering her when she PM’d him. The only reply she’d gotten from him so far was “I will let you know when I am finished.” That had been almost a whole day ago. Aya couldn’t help worrying about the kid even when she knew he could take better care of himself than she could.

Deciding not to worry about things beyond her control, Aya got up, dusted off her clothes and went to pay Fiddles another visit. The man drove a hard bargain, wanting 25% of all profits just for placing the goods. Eventually she pushed him down to 10% with the caveat that he could sell at whatever price he wished as long as he paid her upfront. It went a little against what she’d been telling the blacksmiths herself, but at least this way she’d be able to see what players were willing to pay for the goods without sullying her own name.

If she started selling goods at one price but then suddenly upped it, it wouldn’t look good for her brand. The travelling merchant on the other hand, didn’t have to worry about his reputation since he would be traveling on soon anyway. It was actually a perfect trial run and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it herself. Unfortunately, the fifteen minutes of negotiation also resulted in her losing another twenty reputation points with the city. She sighed, knowing the guards were punishing her for no good reason.

She looked up the city reputation guidelines and although there was a chance for the ‘black market’ to affect your reputation, the chances were very slim. Usually, the unbiased AI would dock a point once every ten times, but here she was getting points docked left and right in massive proportions. It was like the poverty cycle, but instead of poverty she was dealing with bad reputation. She sighed and glared at the city gates, just in time to see a group of players walking out.

It wasn’t uncommon to see groups of players, but for some reason, they caught her eye. All of them seemed to be warrior-type players, a very unbalanced team. She’d gotten so used to seeing mixed types of players that she’d subconsciously registered what a balanced team looked like. This team was missing a ranged player, a scout and a healer… in fact, they were missing everything but the tank and that, they had too many of.

She pursed her lips in consideration. Aya would probably fit into the scout category, though her type could eventually become a ranged character if she wanted it to as well. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any good ranged attacks yet. It was definitely something she should work on, probably the next thing she should work on. Her character would never have the strength to compete with the warriors of the group…

Aya froze in place as she considered the situation. She was about to go back to leveling, having done as much as she could on her own but… Perhaps that wasn’t the best solution. Slowly, she approached the group, trying to hear their conversation before she decided whether or not she should pursue the idea that had seeped into her mind. She stayed just close enough so that she could hear the conversation, then directed all of her attention toward Henry and talked to him in a very low soothing tone about nothing at all in case any of the players noticed her.

“… when he comes back,” she heard the tallest of them say. He was a large blue ogre and he had a massive spiked mace over his shoulder. The weapon was crude in make, a testament to his still-low level, but she wasn’t about to get on the guy’s bad side for fun. Aya took a step back, listening for the response in the group.

“Well, we can’t just wait around,” one of the two human warriors said. “Let’s just go do some dungeon hunting.”

“Dude, none of us have any ranged attacks whatsoever.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Or are you scared?”

A bout of ribbing ensued. It was obvious that the group of three had been friends for quite some time, and going by their joking manner she guessed them to be around Rin’s age. Aya’s heart tightened in her chest, but she approached them anyway.

“Hey…” she started and realized, with sudden awkwardness, she didn’t really know how to approach them. They all turned to look at her. As usual, the first thing they noticed was the convict symbol hovering above their head, but she didn’t let it discourage her. “So, I couldn’t help but overhear…”

She stumbled on her words when she realized just how creepy she sounded. It was looking harder and harder to recover from the situation and their leery expressions weren’t very encouraging.

Aya coughed to clear her throat and then said, “You guys need a scout and I need a party…”

The combined reaction was a frown of distrust.

“Before you guys turn me away,” she said, quickly taking out one of her Contracts. “We can sign a Contract so you know I’m not trying to pull one over on you… All I want is to train.”

They looked at each other, clearly communicating something she wasn’t aware of.

“And what makes you think we want to have anything to do with you?” the female human warrior asked.

“Nothing, but…” Aya said. “You guys want to level and with this Contract I promise I won’t be taking any EXP from you guys. All I want is a part of the loot.”

Some eyebrows rose in surprise, but skepticism was still the main emotion emanating from the group.

“There will be 4 of us right?” Aya said and when they nodded in response, she added, “In that case I’ll want a fair 20% of the loot.”

Aya watched as the temptation for the obvious underbid grew among the group. She directed her attention towards Henry, pretending to have a conversation about some inane subject, giving them time to discuss her proposition. It wasn’t hard to pretend to talk to the bird, unfortunately. She’d gotten more and more into the habit of doing so. She sighed, wondering if the reason she approached the group wasn’t just because she needed some human interaction.

“Alright,” the female warrior said. “We’ll do it… after a trial run. We just want to make sure you’re not—”

“Taking advantage,” Aya finished, nodding. “I know, I know.”

She took out the Contract, and they all signed it after agreeing on the exact terms. Aya could tell from their gleeful expressions how stupid they thought she was. What they didn’t realize was how much easier they had just made her life. She’d always had to be so careful not to accidentally kill a beast in order not to get the EXP, and yet it was still sometimes unavoidable. She smiled, happy she’d be able to focus on simply gaining stats.

“So what level are you?” the orc warrior asked.

“Thirteen,” she answered, already anticipating their reaction.

“What!?” the female warrior screeched. “But we’re—”

“Around level fifteen right?” Aya asked.

“Wh— How did you? Oh…” the female warrior said. “This isn’t your first avatar, I get it. Gosh, you had me scared there for a second…”

“No,” Aya said shrugging. “This is my first and only avatar.”

“But then, how did you know our levels?”

“By your outfits,” Aya answered simply. She’d been observing other players in all the hunting locations she’d been over the last couple of days. By now, she knew exactly how strong the mobs of each area were and what kind of drops they gave. Going by the rudimentary mace the blue ogre was holding, she knew they’d beaten the main goblin tribe. It was quite an impressive feat, one she knew she wouldn’t be able to achieve on her own, at least not yet.

The female warrior looked down at her outfit in confusion. Aya smiled, knowing that the girl’s low-grade chain mail wasn’t giving anything away.

“I mean your orc buddy,” Aya clarified in amusement. “That mace is from the level eighteen goblin chieftain isn’t it?”

The girl’s mouth fell open in surprise and before she could ask anything else Aya added, “I said I’m a scout, remember?”

The girl’s mouth closed and she nodded. Aya could tell she was still skeptical, but at least the Contract guaranteed her a trial run before they could kick her out. The mismatched group continued on to one of the nearby dungeons and Aya’s abilities were soon put to the test. On her own, she hadn’t been able to use her Stealth skill as much as she liked and thus it was a little on the weak side at the beginning of their hunt. This soon changed. She used her Stealth skill almost non-stop, coming out of it only long enough to inflict the Bleed skill with all her might. It was the first time she did not have to worry about killing the enemy too fast. All of the EXP was automatically distributed between the three warriors even if they didn’t have a hand in killing the mob, it was win-win for everyone but the mobs they encountered.

Over time, the group started to warm up to her but the real points she scored with them were when she managed to bring down a Slither completely on her own. She could tell that the group was growing more and more impressed with her ability. The mobs she killed were usually around level sixteen; anything higher than that she just damaged before the tanks had their go at it. Aya continued to give her support throughout the battles, going in and out of Stealth mode to deliver a blow where she could. At first, she was a little awkward about it. She stepped on some toes and even got bit by one of the snake-like mobs that inhabited the dungeon. But with time, she got the hang of the right timing for each player and things started to work out. As the day wore on, there was less and less conversation between the group members, their entire focus directed on stripping the entire dungeon of mobs and their loot. They worked their way down the dungeon floors in a systematic fashion.

Aya plunged ahead, gave some wounding blows, lured smaller groups of mobs away when needed and spent some time looting whenever the tanks were in the final moments of battle. Unfortunately, the snake-like mobs didn’t bleed but instead gave off this foul-smelling, tar-like substance. Aya collected it nonetheless. She’d asked the warriors if they were interested in the blood, slime and skin of the mobs, but they’d turned away, revolted. She shrugged, figuring she’d gotten more out of the Contract than she’d hoped for.

The snake beasts of the dungeon looked like a snake version of a centaur, instead of having four legs their bodies transformed from humanoid to one long tail. Each floor of the dungeon had a prevalent species of lamia; their skin, size and attack patterns varied but their basic appearance was the same. There were, however, other types of creatures. They seemed subservient to the Slither beasts and would always attack first. Their attack patterns were a lot more crude and they were that much easier to get rid of. It worked perfectly because Aya could Bleed them while the others were occupied in finishing off the Slithers.

The blood she fed to Henry and the Slither-slime she stored away. This garnered her some even stranger looks from her warrior party but they chose not to comment. When all three of the warriors ganged up against a mob, it gave her no space to Stealth her way in so she fell back, worked on her Scribe skill and collected the loot that the warriors didn’t bother with. She just couldn’t help herself; years of scrounging every penny contributed to her hoarding tendencies and it made it so whenever the warriors were preoccupied she’d have to find small nooks and crannies to hide bundles of useless loot in.

Aya continued the habit she’d acquired of drawing out the route of wherever she was. Every now and then, she’d take a moment to sketch out a particular landmark, but mostly she just used it to keep track of beasts, their levels, their difficulty, the kind of loot they dropped and most importantly, where she’d hidden all of her stashes.The need to keep things hidden had just increased since she’d gone to prison and it had come to the point where she couldn’t trust anyone. She also wouldn’t be able to keep carrying all of it with her. Her character’s strength and endurance hadn’t grown enough to carry more than eighty pounds without severely slowing her down.

She tried to focus a little of her stat growth on strength, but it was hard when speed, agility and litheness were the most important aspects of the Stealth skill. In order to grow her strength without making herself slower, she decided to try something new. Not long after she’d just hidden another stash of ‘useless’ loot, she grabbed a couple stones and tied them around her right wrist using some old strips of cloth she had in her bundle. She’d learned to always keep some on hand. They were surprisingly useful, just like duct tape in the real world.

She repeated the process with her left wrist and did the same for her ankles, using bigger and heavier rocks. Satisfied, she tried walking and moving with her new contraptions. The first couple of steps were awkward, but when she tried jumping around a little with them, just to make sure the knots wouldn’t loosen, she was awarded with an almost immediate stat gain in strength. Aya grinned. It had been quite a while since she’d gotten a stat so easily. Satisfied, she got back to work and made a mental note to keep changing up her routine. The mechanics always awarded new and different ways of training, so she needed to learn to change things up more frequently if she wanted to reach a decent level by the weekend.

With her new methods and not needing to worry about her EXP, her stat gain once again skyrocketed. Without the constraint she’d needed to exert on all of her motions in order to not kill mobs directly, she moved faster, hit harder and reached farther. By the time they reached the last level of the dungeon, she finally got to 99% on her thirteen level stats.

The moment they entered the last level, Aya felt a shiver crawl up her spine. Until then, the place had been silent, but this level reverberated with low rattling noises. Aya didn’t even have to see the first Slither to know what was going on: they’d reached the rattlesnake level. Cringing and distracted, she activated her Stealth and stepped forward, ready to round up the next Slither, only to be bombarded by a volley of darts.

Eyes wide, Aya couldn’t do anything as the vast majority of them sailed past above her head. She yelped when she felt two hit her, one in the ear and one in the neck. Her hands were yanking them out before she had completely registered what was going on. Looking around, she tried to get help from one of her companions, but she was getting dizzier by the second. Her health was dropping rapidly and notifications were popping up left and right. She’d been poisoned. Why weren’t the warriors helping? Aya looked back to see their wary faces inspecting the ground. Ah, traps, they were checking for more of them. Her vision then gave out completely and she crumpled to the ground.

The moment she blacked out, all of the pain she’d been feeling was replaced by utter blankness. The only thing she could see was a large screened notification.

[Status: Unconscious]

Time Remaining: 00:02:18

With nothing else to do, she merely waited as the numbers counted down slowly, wondering if she would die before she woke up. Her health had already been critical when her vision gave out on her. If she died now… she wouldn’t be able to log into Era for a whole day. Twenty-four real world hours, the penalty for a death.

Chris sighed. If she died now, she was for sure not going to make the player cut by Friday and if that didn’t happen… Suerte’s words still reverberated clearly in her head, leaving no room for doubt about what would happen to both her and her sister.