2.5

“I yield! I yield!” - the most common response to Vafruther the Song Warrior opening his mouth.

Matt dashed towards the bushes.

“Hey come out you little bitch!” he yelled as he cast Vicious Mockery.

“Stop hiding and get your ass kicked like a man!”

Matt heard something crystallizing, before three balls of blue shot out of the bushes and curved towards him.

‘There he is,’ Matt thought as he stomped a foot in the ground, and without a second thought, dashed forward. All three magic missiles passed harmlessly above him.

“Your aim is so shit that I’m actually glad I’m the target!”

“Will you shut the fuck up!” Matt heard a female voice yell as the third Vicious Mockery made them rise from the bushes.

Matt smiled, “Gotcha.”

The mage paled, suddenly realising that she had given away her position and made herself a larger target.

“Blade-”

She was only a few meters away, he could make it.

“-Ward,”

With both hands, Matt swung his halberd at the mage, only for the edge to be stopped by a translucent barrier.

The mage began rapidly making hand gestures. Matt let go of his halberd, shifting all his weight to his left foot.

He commanded aura to flow to his right hand. ‘Swift Strike.’

But he was too far away, his fist could not make it. Three balls of blue energy coalesced around the mage’s hand.

“DECS!”

As his fist flew, Matt opened his hand at the last possible moment, throwing the sporage forward. His weight already shifted to his left foot, he fell to the side. No longer blocking Dustin’s sight and fulfilling sporage’s activation requirement.

The shroom exploded in mid-air.

“DECS!”

The mushroom man took a step backwards, half-turning towards his ally and making sure he had a hand trained on the archer. Peaches perked his ears up, hearing the slight whisper the mushroom uttered in magic.

Turning to the devil, he saw that it had dropped to the ground and rolled away, just in time to avoid the sudden yellow dust. Quickly, the devil jumped back up, then delivered an uppercut to the elf mage’s sneezing face, knocking her to the ground.

The mushroom mage was behind a tree now, growing more of those odd magical mushrooms, apparently content to let his companion take out the other mage. His opponent, the archer stood hesitantly, he could easily go around the spore barrier the mushroom mage had constructed but was likely debating whether or not to save his ally.

Peaches shook his head. As expected of a pick-up group. They were more or less already done for, and with the debacle with Sardines last night, Peaches had better things to do than watch over failed puppets. He needed to give more people ‘quests’.

Scratching the back of his ear with a hind leg, the giant rodent jumped down from its perch on a tree. Scuttling through the bush and far away from the fight.

Matt clocked the girl in the chin, briefly lifting up the woman before she fell to the ground.

Matt jumped back a few steps, assuming a boxer position, cautiously watched the downed mage. It’s been a while since he threw a punch like that. He might’ve put in way more power than intended or failed to knock them out. Though even a light punch to the chin was usually enough, but he had to be sure, otherwise, Declan wouldn’t let him live this down for weeks.

Seeing no reaction when he poked the mage with his toe, Matt doubled back, grabbing the halberd that he picked up as an impulse.

Declan probably would’ve killed the mage to make sure she’s no longer a threat, saying that’ll she’ll respawn anyways. But Matt wasn’t that type of person, he had already won against her after all.

He glanced at the archer, who had already started running away, then at Declan, who was now emerging from a cloud of spores.

Declan shook his head.

Matt stopped a few meters from him.

“Good job,” Declan began, pulling off the mushrooms he created, “you knocked her out?”

Matt nodded, resting his halberd on his shoulder.

Declan nodded in agreement, “Good, there wasn’t a reason for this attack, at least I don’t think there is, so questioning her would be our next course of action.”

“Questioning?” Matt started, his mind immediately jumped to torture, though Declan wasn’t the type to do that, probably. Better make sure, “It better not be torture or some shit.”

“Nah,” Declan replied, “far too unreliable, she could just lie to us and even if she did tell the truth, we’ll just give someone a lasting grudge against us. No point.”

Matt sighed, that was probably the best he’ll get from him, “Then how do we do this?”

Declan held his hand to his chin, “Hmm…” he quickly glanced at the handful of shrooms he created, then at his halberd, and finally towards him.

“How high is your charisma stat?” Declan asked.

“Fifteen-” there was a moment where Matt’s brain misfired as he fully registered Declan’s words and more importantly, the context in which he asked them. “No,” he firmly stated.

Declan raised an eyebrow at him in confusion.

“I’ve seen enough shitty dramas to know where this is going,” Matt replied firmly.

“Really? Please explain,” Declan replied in a cold, dry voice.

“You want me to…” Matt vaguely gestured at the girl lying on the ground.

“What exactly?” Declan asked again.

Matt glared at him, “You know what I’m-” he noticed that the corner of Declan’s ‘lips’ were slightly curved, that fucker was smirking. Without warning, Matt grabbed his halberd and swung it upwards in a wide arc. Declan took a step to the left, dodging the axe-side of the halberd as it struck the ground harmlessly.

Declan didn’t bother hiding his smirk anymore, “Should I find a rose to hold between your mouth? Perhaps you should pose like one of those models?”

“Fuck you,” Matt sighed.

“More seriously though,” Declan said, “I have a theory that charisma can work on stuff like persuasion, good time as any to figure if it’s true.”

“Oh, you are not going to brush that off now,” Matt replied, lifting his halberd.

Declan sighed as if annoyed, “I know you want to fight me and will look for any excuse to do so, but can it be after we get the semi-important shit done?”

“That coming from the guy who was messing around a moment ago?” Matt sarcastically replied though he rested the halberd back on his shoulder. That fight was… unsatisfying, he had pretty much defeated her the moment he got into close range.

“Come on,” Declan said as he grabbed his dropped bag, then knelt down beside the downed mage.

He gently lifted the girl into a sitting position, then proceeded to gently shake her by the shoulders.

Matt opened his mouth, then shut it. Deciding to silently watch Declan trying to wake the girl.

Eventually, the girl made a grunting sound and opened an unfocused eye. “Hello?” Declan asked, unsuccessfully snapping his fingers in front of her face, he looked irritated at his hands for a moment, before continuing, “Anyone home right now?”

Her eyes slowly focused seeing the person in front of her.

Then she screamed.

In a flurry of panic, the girl slapped Declan’s hands off her, then scurried away from him.

“Holy shit you have an ugly face!” the girl exclaimed.

“Well, that’s just rude,” Matt pointed out.

Declan sighed, “Look, can we skip over the part where you panic and try to kill us again and to the part where we can have a civilised discussion?”

“You guys are players?” the girl asked.

“Yeah,” Matt replied, “you need a better ambush strategy by the way, and a better teammate, the guy abandoned you instantly.”

“First off you should’ve focused him,” Declan gestured at Matt, “he’s the squishiest of the two of us, you needed a better plan-”

“Honestly, I’m kinda insulted at how bad it was,” Matt cut in.

“Look, shit strategy, not important,” Declan cut back in, “All I want to know. Is why did you attack us?”

Matt dragged me through the morning sun as we headed back to the mall.

What the mage said had… annoying implications.

‘A large rat gave us a quest to kill you because you were grinding rat mobs.’

Neither Matt nor I had killed a single mob since entering Gaia. Was the group I killed the same as well? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. This whole thing reeked of manipulation and some kind of plot. The question is, for what purpose and who could be doing this?

Eve was an obvious answer, the rats presented an easy and repeatable quest in a world that seems devoid of NPCs, so there's the incentive for this being a game, though I could probably blame everything that happens in this virtual world on her. It’d be like blaming life on the sun.

Considering the general power level of all the other players I met, it was unlikely to be the work of a player, even if it was some kind of specialised class like creature tamer or something. There were at least three rats with human-level intelligence spreading this kill quest after all. Unless it was something like druid’s shapeshifting? A powerful skill but stuck on a class that had a fair amount of drawbacks and conditions to be fulfilled. That means someone managed to stumble upon a class with a powerful skill, managed to fulfil a bunch of conditions and took control of several rats with extremely high intelligence.

Not impossible. The druid’s shapeshifting power was basically an infinite scaling ability. Commanding a few rats would be minor in comparison, though that is assuming that there are only three rats involved in all this. However, there was no way there could be a lot of rats if it was a player. Regardless of what Eve says about this being a second world, our classes and stats run off of tabletop RPG logic, which means it’s all going to be balanced somehow. If there’s a class that can do this, there’s going to be conditions and drawbacks on it just like a druid.

Were the rats really just self-aware NPCs? Like Hendrix and all the other tutorial bots?

Hmm… Not enough information. I figure out anything definitive.

“Finished thinking?” Matt asked.

I grunted, “I’m really stumped on this rat thing, the most likely answer is that they’re self-aware like the tutorial bots.”

“That feels like it’s pushing the realism bit,”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “if Gaia is supposed to be a training world then there is no need to throw out such mind-fuckery and PVP quests so early on,” though conversely, it could be the good old teach a chick how to fly by throwing them off a cliff sorta thing.

No, if Eve’s end goal is for people to enjoy the world Giles created, then opening with something so difficult is just gonna scare people off. Unless she was looking for ‘quality’, not ‘quantity’? Weed out all the weak players so that all that's left are the hardcores? Also not impossible, she did throw me in the deep end with the tutorial. Though with how easily she can go through peoples’ minds, it would make more sense for her to only invite the hardcores instead of doing something so roundabout.

An unknown element then? Something like a player or an NPC? Given how smart the goblins were, I wouldn’t be surprised if an NPC would figure out how to manipulate players. The problem with that was how quickly they did it. Assuming Eve wanted to keep a semblance of new player friendliness, then she wouldn’t do something that would turn off so many people. PVP was fun for some players. Some. And Eve almost certainly knew this. This implies to a degree, a lack of control over the world she created or apathy to what happens in it.

“... Helloooooooooo?” I jumped up, startled, “We’re here,” Matt finished.

I glanced around, we were back at the entrance of the mall.

That was quick.

Mentally filing away the thoughts for later, I stood up.

“What now?” Matt asked.

I thought about it for a moment, then replied, “I have no idea, we have plenty of options ahead of us.”

“The rats are an obvious quest thread,” Matt agreed.

“Do you want to do that?” I asked.

He looked conflicted for a moment, thinking it over, before shaking his head, “Nah, the rat thing- and this whole world is just the side dish to Indiri right?”

I nodded my head.

“Let’s not get too stuck up in sidequests, I want to see how ‘real’ this other world is.”

“So we focus levelling and move in as soon as possible?” I asked, mostly as confirmation.

Matt nodded, “Sounds good.”

“Then first…” I murmured, glancing at my now activated Character Sheet, “I’m level 3 now, I need to get to a Wayshard to spec new class skills.”

“Great, I’ll check out the area, see if there are any good internal grind spots.”

“Before you do that,” I began, “can you find me in the real world…”

Name: Dustin

Classes: Fungalmancer Level 3 (UP)

Body

Strength: 8 (Enough to throw a rotten tomato)

Agility: 7 (Enough to dodge a rotten tomato thrown by a parapalegic gorilla)

Dexterity: 6 (Low enough that any tomatoes he chops will make professional chef and angry person Rordan Gamsey throw him into a soup)

Constitution: 18 (Enough to stomach so many rotten tomatoes that it becomes morally repugnant.)

Stamina: 10

Vitality: 12

Mind

Intelligence: 13 (Enough to know that tomato is a fruit)

Wisdom: 17 (Enough to know that tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad)

Charisma: 6 (Not enough to sell a tomato based fruit salad)

Soul

Will: 10

Aura: 10

Perception: 10

Racials:

Superior Darkvision, Fungal Body, Sun Sickness, Mana Dependency, Pacifying Spores, Innate Magic

Class Skills:

Fungalmancer: Grow Sporage

New Class skills and upgrades available, please visit your Class Trainer at any Way Shard.

Spells:

T0: Balm Spores, Spore Lights, Sneezing Spores, Acid Spit

T1: Mushroom Meal, Poison Spores

T2: Bark Skin

Available Spell Slots:

T0: 2 (New)

T1: 1 (New)

Equipment:

Leather Armour - One HP Potion - One MP Potion - Basic Wooden Staff - Two Basic Daggers - Herbalism Kit

Backpack - Tinder Box - Mess Kit - 50 days worth of rations

8 Gold Coins

Quests:

Murder the Murderhobos! (Complete)

Fleeing Morals (Active)

Impact Points: 7

IP Summary

+ 1 point for level up

+ 1 point for slight infamy