He spotted a pit covered with sticks and leaves. Enoch thanked his Perception build. Forest Gremlins made these traps. A mage or a fighter would have walked over it, then down into the spiky hole. That’s why they played in group with one player dedicated to Perception, usually a rogue or an archer. Enoch could only rely on himself.

He crouched and circled the pit carefully. Three silly hats hovered behind a boulder. Gremlins. Cute, wicked creatures. Long fur, brown or gray with patches of white. Around three feet tall. Stubby arms. Stubby legs. Long black claws. No clothes, only hats made of twigs, sometime leather. Stone age weapons with rare metal blades, neglected and rusted. Long pointed hears, wide nocturnal eyes. An unhealthy love for traps and ambushes. Enoch thanked the great algorithm that they hadn’t spotted him yet.

“Choo Choo, I’m a rock.”

Enoch looked at the golem core in complete disbelief, then switched to the gremlins. One pointed at him, the other two watched, apprehension and greed alternating in their eyes. No skill, no spell, no Strength, no Agility. He’d have to rely on his overall training. It sounded corny but veteran players turned into combat specialist after a while. Trained to kill and all that. It wouldn’t be his first tango, nor his last one.

He smacked the first furball straight in the face. Kicked the second one in the belly, toward the pit. Recovered to a defensive stance. Too slow, the third monster stuck a stone spear in his shoulder. [-12 Health].

He stepped back, looked at the little fellas. The chat went wild, he glimpsed a few lines and dismissed it.

“Not the gremlin, so cute.”

“Don’t do it.”

“They need a hug.”

“Kill them all. The buggers put traps everywhere. They don’t deserve to live.”

“Plop.” The spear wielding one jerked, wavered, his head tucked in, an animated rock on top of it. Enoch blinked. The creature fell forward. The rock flew to another face. A direct smack.

Enoch deflected a rusted dagger with his quarterstaff and kicked its wielder again. The pit already close, the second push brought the monster over it. The sticks broke, the furball disappeared. Pixels blasted from the hole in a shower of light. The game used a clever mix of visual effect to replace blood and gore. A good move, it had lowered the age requirement to twelve, widening the player base by a huge chunk.

The last gremlin surrendered. Enoch killed it clean. No time for complications. They complained in the chat, of course. He sat on the boulder where the monsters had tried to hide. Time for a little talk with his new friend.

“What in the name of your stupid, corrupted AI was that?

“Was what?”

“The random Choo Choo you blared while I was sneaking.”

“That’s actually in my protocol, but you didn’t use Sneak.”

“I don’t have the skill, yet we can be subtle, adopt a lower profile, and the most important part, stay silent.”

“Got it Enoch. No Choo Choo when you’re hunched.”

Facepalm. “That will do.”

Quite a stupid for an Intellect based artifact, not that Intellect meant Intelligence. That Attribute hadn’t survived the first generation of immersive VR games. High Intelligence characters should have been genius, yet they were still controlled by players with average capacities. Hence the pivot to Intellect to provide pure math and a photographic memory. The game could provide these abilities easily through the neural link. It didn’t have to force brains to become more intelligent.

He got up. Proceeded with the looting. Went to the pit, it was indeed full of spikes. Nasty. He fished out the gremlin’s corpse with his quarterstaff. Lined the bundle of matted fur beside his buddies and checked their tiny fanny packs.

He took the rusted dagger, two rations of dried nuts and a leather canteen half filled with water.

This tier of food wouldn’t give him any buff, but it would delay the Hungry or Thirsty debuff.

He thought aloud while he proceeded, “how about you simply stop shouting Choo Choo at random? Plenty of upsides, no downside,” said Enoch.

“Where would be the fun in that,” answered the core as he flew upward, swirled twice and shouted a jolly “Choo Choo.”

“Dork.” Tag | Little bro.

There he was. His little brother, forced to watch the game, mad about it. Well, he had a point. Enoch hit the butt of his quarterstaff to the ground, shook himself and moved on.

“We’ll follow their trails back to their lair, there should be enough mobs there for a quick level. Stay silent, keep low.”

“Your wish is my command.”

Choo Choo fell to the ground with a muffled thump, rolled behind his master. Enoch rolled his eye.