Chapter 12

Theon woke to the sound of himself laughing, whooping, and yee-hawing like a cowboy. He grinned to himself about that. As the fog lifted from his addled brain he noticed the familiar sound of a siren blaring, and the unfamiliar sound of repetitive thunder.

His vision came in slowly, like someone was slowly increasing the light in a dark room. It was daytime, and he could see the road in front of him. He thought that was odd, he should be in bed he surmised.

He listened to the siren as he focused, he remembered the orcs and the wargs chasing him. It seemed like them and the sound of a siren was forever linked in his mind. Before the thoughts began surfacing in his mind, he hoped for just an instant that it was all just a dream.

It wasn’t of course, he could see his arms outstretched holding onto the steering-wheel of what must have been a cop car. The sense of déjà vu was briefly nauseating before he heard a familiar raspy voice.

“You all right there, kid? Don’t throw up! I just took a bath and got some new clothes! You good to take control? Don’t slow down.”

“You took a bath in my body?” Theon asked indignantly, he felt violated.

Theon looked down at himself, he was wearing a nice pair of black leather motorcycle pants with built-in knee pads and a black t-shirt with a bullet proof vest over it. In the passenger seat he could see a black leather jacket that looked like a match for his pants. On top of it was another shotgun just like the one he’d had before. On the floorboard there were cases of what he guessed were shotgun shells.

“Eyes on the road kid!” Vasuki yelled.

Theon cringed at the noises, he was still waking up. The thunder and siren weren’t helping either. “What the hell is that thunder?” Theon asked as he switched off the siren.

“Oh that? That’s the dinosaur.”

Theon laughed at first but then stopped. He knew that wasn’t a joke because he could see two massive legs in his rear-view mirror. Sweat started to form on Theon’s brow and he swiped the hair from his eyes as he pressed the accelerator all the way down.

“What are you doing? I got him for you kid!”

Theon scoffed, “Oh wow thanks! I let you use my body and the next thing I know, I wake up and a dinosaur is chasing me!”

“Well you need levels, and that thing is level 53. If we work together I bet we can take it down easily. We’ll probably level up more than twice from that!”

“There’s no way I’m fighting that, you’re suicidal! My goal is to not die, and fighting a dinosaur, I don’t even know what to say about that.”

“Look kid you’ve got a real opportunity here, and I don’t just mean the dinosaur. This game thing, it’s a huge advantage. I only know of a couple thousand worlds with a system like this and only a couple hundred that have something like aethermancy!

“That’s not to mention the fact that I still don’t know the full limitations of this game. Just take the psychic stat, doesn’t that imply that you can use psychic powers? No matter how dull you are, you can’t tell me that doesn’t sound at least a little appealing.”

Theon frowned as he slowed the car down again. “What’s aethermancy?” he asked.

“After we kill the dinosaur! Here’s my plan, one of us drives the other shoots! Teamwork kid, that’s how you stay alive! So, which do you want to do?”

“How is that even supposed to work?” Theon asked. “I can only see in one direction!”

“Well, I’ll control one eye and you can control the other, we’ll tilt your head like so. Simple really. So, which will it be?”

Theon groaned, “I’ll drive I guess. But if this does anything freaky to me we’re gonna stop immediately!”

“You’re not a morning person, are you? Well, technically it’s afternoon but still. Okay, I’m taking the left side grab the shotgun!”

Theon shook his head as he grabbed the shotgun and put it in his left hand. He couldn’t help himself though and he smirked a little. He felt a mix of emotions about his circumstances but most of it was positive.

Before he had just been a ghost in the world, a nobody. Earlier when he had passed out he was tired, hungry, filthy and depressed. Now he felt clean, fed, clothed, he had a new police cruiser, and he was hunting dinosaurs.

Sure, he had a parasite that was probably warping his brain. It was probably making him feel this exhilaration. The world was totally screwed up, people were dying everywhere and there was some Quest for Access that threatened to destroy the Earth. You must take the good with the bad sometimes though, he figured.

“All right,” Vasuki said. “I think your part is harder, you have to bring him up to the left side, so I can shoot him.”

Theon’s grin faltered as he though about what failure would mean.

“You got this kid, I’ll let you know if you need to pull away. He’s not that fast, about thirty miles per hour.”

Theon pulled the cruiser to the right and slowed down. He watched in his rear-view mirror as the massive scaly legs drifted to the left. He couldn’t control the left side of his body and his head was more or less locked in position. He could move it a little, but it was like moving in molasses.

“Slower!” Vasuki yelled.

Theon slowed down more, he looked at the speedometer, he was going twenty-five miles per hour now.

He heard the shotgun bark before Vasuki screamed, “Oh shit kid! Go!”

Vasuki pulled the shotgun back in the car before a massive head swooped down. Theon punched the accelerator down and swerved to the right to avoid it as he heard it bellow. He couldn’t really see it, but he could smell its breath. It was like rotten eggs and garbage.

“This is a bad idea!” Theon shouted over the noise that was rattling his bones.

“Nonsense, we just need a method. We do it again just like we did before. You pull back, I shoot, then you take off again just like you did this time. Oh yeah, and pump this in between.”

Theon slipped his hand off the wheel just long enough to pump the shotgun that was held in front of him. He slowed down the cruiser again and they repeated what they’d done before. After the sixth shot Theon had to grab a case of shells and put it in his lap. Vasuki was able to load it with just one hand after he’d wedge the shotgun between Theon’s legs.

It took twenty-one shots before the dinosaur stopped its chase. Vasuki had managed to shoot out its eyes. Theon wasn’t sure if that was a testament to his marksmanship or if the dinosaur had just been getting way too close.

“The honor is yours kid,” Vasuki said as Theon turned the cruiser around to where the dinosaur had collapsed.

Theon nodded as he felt himself regain control over his entire body. He pulled up a couple hundred feet from the dinosaur and checked the shotgun was fully loaded. He cautiously made his way up to the dinosaur while pointing his shotgun at it. It was still breathing but its eyes were leaked out down its face. It had multiple wounds all over its body, mostly its face though.

“I shot inside its mouth and everything! You should get a lot of experience for this,” Vasuki said.

“How did you know it was level fifty-three anyways?” Theon asked.

“Just look at it and wonder what level it is.”

Theon did, and a new screen appeared.

Name: Giganotosaurus

Level: 53

“To bad it doesn’t show its health,” Theon said.

“Yeah, you’d probably have to purchase something at the marketplace for that. Same with all those greyed out sections on your HUD. Actually, now that I think about it, I bet if you focused on a greyed-out section you’d be presented with options to activate it.”

“A mini-map would be nice, especially if it let me see enemies through walls. Anyways, where do you think I should shoot this thing for a kill shot?” Theon asked as he gestured with his shotgun at the dinosaur.

“Eye holes, the optic nerve has to connect with the brain. Might take a couple shots to get through the bone there though.”

Theon took one last long look at the dinosaur. Standing upright it was probably about three stories tall but lying down on its belly it was about as tall as him at its head. He felt bad for it, even though it had been chasing him for about half an hour trying to eat him it didn’t seem evil. It seemed pathetic with its eyes shot out and holes leaking blood all over its body.

“It can still eat us with one bite kid. C’mon put it out of its misery and think about all the people’s lives you just saved from being eaten.”

“Good point,” Theon said.

He leveled his shotgun at the massive eye cavity, it was somewhere between the size of a softball and a basketball. Theon pulled the trigger and pumped the shotgun until he’d emptied all the rounds into the Giganotosaurus.

He jumped back expecting it to try and bite him, but it let out a shuddering breath and then fell still. Its eye cavity was now a fountain of blood and it was pouring out all over the street.

“Good job kid, what level are you now?”

Theon’s stats page came up as he thought about it.

Name:

Theon Osman

Race:

Human

Gender:

Male

Title:

None

Level:

23

Unspent Points:

12

Health:

80/80

Mana:

140/140

Stamina:

80/80

Strength:

10

Vitality:

8

Endurance:

8

Dexterity:

11

Agility:

10

Intelligence:

11

Willpower:

10

Psychic:

14

Perception:

12

Charisma:

7

Luck:

0

Theon gasped, “I gained twelve levels?!”

“Five levels from the dinosaur, you were eighteen.”

Theon made his way back to the police cruiser before slipping in and shutting the door. He started loading the shotgun as he asked, “So that means the orcs you killed yesterday gave me eight levels.”

“Wrong and wrong. The orcs got you to level fourteen, and it’s still the same day. You slept for about four hours I think.”

Theon set the shotgun in his lap as he put the cruiser in drive. He had about a quarter tank of gas left so he planned to get more.

“Okay so while I was asleep for four hours you got four levels. I want to know everything you did while I was asleep, and what you killed to get four levels. You didn’t kill any people, did you?”

Vasuki raspberried before saying quickly, “Just one.”

Theon took his foot off the accelerator, “What do you mean ‘just one’?!”

“Look kid, it was him or us. My motto is: if they try to kill me, I reciprocate. If they don’t, well I still reciprocate, in like.”

Theon sighed, his head was pounding. He put his foot back on the accelerator and said, “Start at the moment I fell asleep. Actually, start just before I fell asleep, you didn’t put me to sleep, did you?”

Vasuki raspberried again, “Nope, you passed out. You were lucky I was there to take control too, cause this monster called a high elf came and I had to stab it with the sword. Damn good thing he didn’t shoot me with his bow since I was out of bullets.”

Theon gasped, “That could have been a good elf!”

“Yeah but he was covered in blood, besides he wasn’t human. It had to be some sort of monster brought by this game. That got me a level. That was when I noticed how dirty and hungry I felt, so I broke into some lady’s house.

“She wouldn’t unlock the door, so I had to break a window with the sword. I ate some food from inside her refrigerator, then I went inside the bathroom and took a bath.”

Theon asked, “Wait, what did you do to the lady?!”

“What are you talking about? I couldn’t even get to her, she locked herself in a room and kept screaming about how she was calling the police. Anyways, where was I? Oh, the bath, it felt very refreshing. The clothes you had were too worn out, so I left them there. All her clothes were women’s clothes and they weren’t protective at all.

“So, my next goal was armor, I took her keys, they were hanging on a hook by the door. It was a minivan, didn’t feel strong enough but I managed to find some stores. That’s where I got the armor.”

Theon looked down at his pants, he realized he wasn’t wearing any underwear. “You did all that naked didn’t you?”

“Of course, then I went to the police station, I had to find the map to the city. I got you a new car like the one you had yesterday. The last one blew up. Then I got more weapons, bullets, and that armor. The rest are in the back.”

Theon turned his head and looked in the back. It was full of guns, ammo, vests, his old sword, and a bow with a quiver of arrows.

Theon shook his head as he pulled into the gas station and up to an unoccupied pump. There were other people hurriedly getting fuel and leaving just as fast, but they didn’t seem to give Theon more than a few quick glances.

He took the key out of the ignition and got out.

“So, are you happy? I can still use your body when you sleep right.”

Theon just sighed and shook his head. “Shit, I don’t have my card to get gas.”

Theon noticed he was still holding his shotgun as he walked into the gas station. There was no one behind the register and there were a few people stealing everything they could. Theon moved around the counter up to the register.

“Shit, what pump were we at?” Theon asked.

A few of the people in the store turned and looked at Theon, before returning to their pilfering.

“Three,” Vasuki said.

It took Theon a little while, but he was finally able to start pump three. He was wearing combat boots and they crunched the broken glass as he exited the gas station.

“You did a good job,” Theon said. “Just be sure not to kill any people if you can help it. And please, no more running around naked. No more breaking into occupied houses if it can be helped either. What would you have done to that lady if she hadn’t locked herself in a room?”

“I’m happy to hear that. As far as the lady went, if I thought she was a threat, I would have killed her, otherwise I would have left her. I already told you my motto.”

Theon sighed with relief before asking, “Why is your voice so raspy anyways?”

“My voice is raspy? I don’t know, it’s your brain that’s interpreting it. I could probably change it if you want. We could trial and error until you find something you like.”

“No leave it,” Theon said as he set the gas nozzle in the police car and started pumping. “It suits you.”

“Thank you, also, I want to let you know, there’s a person watching you.”

“Probably because I’m talking to myself,” Theon muttered. “Who is it?”

“Outside the gas station last I saw, they were collecting loot but stopped when you left.”

Theon hadn’t even noticed, he had tunnel vision like he’d had his whole life. He took a better grip on his shotgun, so he could shoot if he needed to. He turned back to the gas station and saw a skinny middle-aged man with tattered and bloodied clothes watching him.

If it was a day ago, Theon would have thought the man homeless, but now he didn’t know. The man didn’t have any weapons, so Theon relaxed and turned back as he heard the gas pump click off. He went through the same motions he had countless times before, before returning to the driver’s seat.

“What’s aethermancy, Vasuki?” Theon asked as he started the car.

“The fifth element, I can show you if you want. You have to give me full control though.”

Theon tried not to grit his teeth as he hissed, “Fine.”

Theon felt his control slipping away as Vasuki took it from him. He could tell Vasuki was reveling in it as he made elaborate motions with his hands and arms as he got out of the cruiser. He was faced away from the gas station as Vasuki brought up his magic tab.

“These are the spells I figured out while you were asleep. You’ve got: pyromancy for fire, aeromancy is air, geomancy that’s earth, like dirt, hydromancy for water, those are the basic ones. Aethermancy is the fifth like I said. It controls things like gravity and light to keep it simple. Think laser beams and levitating!”

Vasuki raised Theon’s hand, there was a shrub of some kind in front of him. Theon looked around trying to see some effect for several moments until he saw one of the leaves smoking. He heard himself let out a gasp as his arm was lowered.

“See? I burned that with light, like a laser. It’s quite simple really, you just bend the light from all angles to concentrate it.”

Theon was about to ask what else he could do when the old man who was watching him walked up. Vasuki immediately turned to face him, his hand lifting the shotgun.

“Give me back control,” Theon said as the man put up his hands.

“Control? Sorry, I’ll go, just don’t shoot.” The man said in a surprisingly smooth voice.

Theon lowered the shotgun a little as he regained control. “No not you. Go ahead.” Theon motioned with the shotgun for the man to speak.

The mans eyes widened a little as Theon waved the shotgun, “I saw you, at least I think it was you. A dinosaur was chasing you.” The man motioned with one of his still raised hands to the cop car.

“Yeah that was me,” Theon said. “You can put your hands down, as long as you don’t attack me you’ll be fine.”

The man lowered his hands and let out a sigh of relief. “I was attacked,” the man waved at his clothes, “it was these demon things. I managed to get away but my wife’s still locked in our house.”

Theon nodded, it was an all too familiar story to him.

“If you could help me, I would really appreciate it,” the man blurted out quickly. “Anything really, one of your guns maybe?”

Theon took a glance at the pile of weapons in the back seat of his car. He noticed the exclamation point was blinking again and he brought it up with a thought.

Someone has asked you for help.

Do you accept? Y/N

Theon thought that was odd, apparently, people could create quests. Unless this was some sort of NPC. He doubted it was a fake person, but the orcs had been surprisingly realistic. Truthfully, he didn’t doubt that NPCs could be spawned into the world.

“This isn’t some sort of trick is it?” Theon asked more harshly than he meant to.

“No! Of course not.” The man raised his arms again and took a step back.

Theon sighed, “All right, get in.” Theon jerked his head towards the passenger side.

The man got in quickly, and Theon kept his shotgun close. He was kind of paranoid after Vasuki said someone had tried to kill him. Actually, now that he thought about it, Vasuki had omitted the details of that incident. He would have to remember to bring it up when they were alone.

“Name’s Ben, by the way. So what happened to the dinosaur?”

Theon nodded in acknowledgment as he started driving. “Theon, and I killed it.”

Ben motioned for him to make a left turn as Theon felt Vasuki in his mind. It was a strange sensation, and it was the first time he had noticed sensing anything coming from him. If he had to guess, he would say Vasuki felt upset.

“I didn’t do it alone though,” Theon added. The twisting in his mind started to settle down. “Vasuki helped me.”

Ben eyed Theon’s shotgun, “That’s incredible that you managed to kill it. I’m sorry to hear about Vasuki though.”

“Yeah me too,” Theon grinned.

Finally, Vasuki couldn’t stay quiet any longer, “What do you mean you’re sorry to hear about me!? It’s not fair, taking the credit like that!”

Theon chuckled, “Actually, Vasuki is still alive, he’s a parasite inside my brain.”

Ben quickly leaned against the passenger side door, pressing himself against it.

Theon faltered as he said, “Don’t worry it’s not contagious, at least I don’t think it is.”

Vasuki was laughing at this point, he paused just long enough to say, “Kid, ask him about the demons before we get there.”

“Right, Vasuki wants to know about the demons before we get there.”

Ben seemed to relax a little at this, “There little, with wings and a tail. I managed to kill one, individually they’re not very strong. There’s a lot of them though.”

Theon nodded, “Sounds like imps, how many are there?”

“I don’t know, at least twenty or thirty,” Ben grimaced.

Theon checked his notifications again before they arrived, there were two new quests. The one he’d gotten from Ben to kill the imps, which had the same reward as his first quest, one hundred credits per kill, there was a reward to find Ben’s wife alive, but it was ‘variable’. The second was a quest to kill a dragon that was supposed to be near some place called Palisade. He swiped the notifications closed.

“All right Ben,” Theon said as they approached the house. “I’m gonna give you a gun, don’t shoot me, and don’t shoot your house.” Ben gave him a quizzical look. “You might shoot your wife through the wall.”

Theon pulled over a few houses down and had Vasuki help decide what gun to give Ben. Vasuki wanted to give the man a beat-up rifle, but Theon turned that idea down. Instead he gave Ben another shotgun that was identical to his, he still had a few shotguns left so he wasn’t worried. He loaded Ben’s shotgun with six shells, then he pulled the sword out for himself as a backup. Vasuki made him put on his ‘armor’ which was really just a thick leather jacket that had built-in elbow pads.

“You can take the bow and arrows if you want.”

Ben nodded and thanked him for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Theon knew there were at least twenty or thirty imps, and between the two they didn’t have enough shells to take them all, so he stuffed his pockets with more shells. Vasuki threw a fit, but Theon let Ben fill his pockets too.

They were in front of the house now, but Theon still couldn’t see any imps. He had the shotgun in his right hand, and the sword in his left hand. It was sloppy, but his plan was to drop the sword if he had to shoot, and to pick up the sword if he needed it. He figured, it worked with the orcs, so it would probably work now too.

“Where was your wife the last time you saw her?” Theon asked.

Ben’s face was pale, and his smooth voice quavered as he said, “The last time I saw her was this morning, and she was in bed I think. Unless she got up to take a shower or get breakfast.”

Theon lowered his shotgun as he wondered what level Ben was.

Name: Ben Summers

Level: 2

“Did you distribute your points, Ben?”

Ben gave Theon a worried look, “What are you talking about? Look, if you don’t want to go inside I understand, and I appreciate everything you’ve done so far, really.”

“Think or say ‘stats page’ or ‘stats menu’ and it should appear.”

Bens eyes widened, “What does this mean?”

“The worlds like a game now, those numbers are representative of you in the real world. I think ten is average for humans, what do you think Vasuki?”

“Sounds reasonable,” Vasuki said. “Ha! Your charisma is seven. That would mean you’re uglier than average.”

Theon frowned as he turned his attention back to Ben, “Once you distribute your points, let’s go inside.”

“What did Vasuki say?” Ben asked.

“Nothing worth repeating,” Theon said as Vasuki laughed.