Ten yards down the cave tunnel, Thane licked blood off his lips, wondering how much further he needed to walk to be granted a quest. Ten yards later, an interface box decorated with wax and lit candles took up over a third of his view.

New Quest: Things that Squeak in the Night

You have stumbled on a Kobold Homestead. Will you flee or dare to raid them?

Rewards: 500 EXP, 25 gold

Quest descriptions never lied, sometimes hundreds of words long at higher levels. Skipping over them was foolhardy; they often gave away key information, such as in this case. A Homestead was a level one settlement, usually with a population of ten to twenty on average for Kobolds. This settlement was a few days old at most, probably less than a day. How fortunate.

Thane nodded away the prompt and continued onward in bolstered confidence, wielding his staff one-handed, which cut its damage to thirty-five percent. A wand would be better. Wands were better in general in his opinion, more versatile. Gritting teeth, he cut mana to his Lamp, sent it to his inventory, and waited for his eyes to adjust. He could barely see the outline of stalagmites.

Down the tunnel, the ground glowed pale yellow.

He gripped his Staff tighter and sneaked forward.

Then a game alert made him flinch.

GM_Cade has sent you a friend request. Do you accept?

Nice timing. Thane accepted, and immediately the chatbox appeared.

GM_Cade (To Unknown NPC): OMG!

Thane hurried out of the cave, hid behind a craggy rock, and began typing letters. He found he was able to do so with far greater speed and precision than before. He was one with the machines now.

Unknown NPC: Hey bro, relax. I’m just raiding a Kobold Homestead. What else do you suggest?

It took Cade over a minute to reply.

GM_Cade: I thought we almost lost you again. First during the operation, one of the robo arms kind of glitched and cut a blood vessel. Then when we brought you out of sedation, there was a massive calibration error in the brain server. How painful was it?

Unknown NPC: Nah, no pain at all, but the UPLOAD COMPLETE message froze for a few minutes.

GM_Cade: What? Are you sure? The readout indicated you were in excruciating discomfort.

Unknown NPC: Well, my emotions were way out of whack. But everything’s fine now. I feel just like myself. Except hungry for blood, you know?

GM_Cade: Okay, but if you notice anything weird, let me know ASAP. We’re still fixing stuff.

Unknown NPC: Fixing what?

Cade didn’t reply for thirty seconds, during which something moved at the cave’s entrance. Just a small lizard.

GM_Cade: Your name for one. It caused a null error.

Unknown NPC: What does a null exactly mean?

Thane sniffed in a touch of anxiety while Cade typed.

GM_Cade: Your name was generated by the overworld AI. We thought it was fine, but it’s actually a primitive string, which is why it’s in a different font. It caused a null error on our Earth-side interfaces.

Rereading twice, Thane understood the gist. His brother wasn’t inside Eventide, communicating from a computer on Earth, and he was terrible at simplifying technical details down to laymen terms as usual.

Unknown NPC: Okay, I get you. Can you change it?

GM_Cade: That’s what I’m working on right now. Have you run into any players?

Surprise whipped up Thane’s spine.

Unknown NPC: No, aren’t you watching me?

GM_Cade: You’re not using the game client like everyone else is, and you’re not an NPC either. It turns out the game server doesn’t have implementation to monitor what you are. I implemented chat functionality just then.

Another message bumped into the chatbox before Thane finished typing a reply.

GM_Cade: Where are you?

Unknown NPC: A desert in low-level wilderness, like you said. Maybe the Seidrac Desert. There’s a player settlement nearby.

GM_Cade: OMG. No wonder!

Unknown NPC: I take it something else also broke?

GM_Cade: Yeap, you were supposed to spawn in Uravale Forest near a Spring and Gold Mine. No players around for dozens of miles.

Damn, that would’ve been the perfect start. Absolutely perfect. Thane breathed through annoyance.

Unknown NPC: Can you port me there? After I raid these Kobolds, that is.

GM_Cade: Not yet, and I don’t think we’ll have that functionality implemented for a while at least. It’s not a high priority, says my team lead.

Thane’s eyes flicked to the cave as a Kobold’s snout appeared. Beady eyes peeked, and like a deer it froze in the sight of all the blood and gore, its whiskers quivering. Its friend’s half-dissolved corpse was apparently too much for its scripted sentience to handle. Was this Kobold going to faint?

Easy shot.

Thane aimed, fired a high-power Mana Bolt, and the Kobold tumbled backward in silent death, blood squirting from a hole in its forehead. Running at top speed, he grabbed its body as it started rolling down the cave, then ran back out. He filled his Enchanted Flask before looting. Gray light erased the corpse, deposited only two items into his inventory.

Kobold Bones

Quality: 54 (Poor)

Iron Pickaxe (two-handed)

Durability: 63/100

Quality: 74 (Poor)

Physical Damage: 7

Mining Damage: 16

Poor-quality bones weren’t worth the inventory slot. He threw the skeleton aside. The narrow puncture in the skull and blood loss had heavily penalized looting magic, far too much. A Butchery was needed as soon as possible.The chatbox vibrated.

GM_Cade: Do you have a spawn point?

GM_Cade: Thane?

GM_Cade: Hey, what’s happening? Are you there?

Unknown NPC: Had to kill a Kobold. My spawn’s a Granite Coffin. I can’t carry it. It’s pretty big and fancy.

Forty seconds passed.

GM_Cade: Ugh, it was supposed to be a small wood coffin. We think what happened was the overworld AI had plans for that area in Uravale, so it intervened during your character creation.

Such plans included monsters or dungeons scheduled to spawn. And natural disasters among other dynamic world effects.

Unknown NPC: That doesn’t explain the coffin.

GM_Cade: It has limited creative control.

GM_Cade: I have to go.

Thane typed frantically.

Your recipient is either offline or blocking your messages

“Ah, shit,” Thane exhaled.

He had wanted to ask about trading items from his Orcish character to this one. Another player with his account’s login details could do it, but that was account sharing in violation of the terms of service—rule eight. A player from his guild had been instantly suspended for a week for sharing his account with his girlfriend, even though they had used the same VR pod. It was rumored that the overworld AI monitored rule-breaking and issued automatic suspensions. Synaptic was very tight-lipped about their detection systems, understandably.

Sighing, Thane kicked a stone. It bounced off a rock onto mushy remains of the first Kobold he had killed. For the heck of it, he crouched and laid a palm on its intact leg and looted.

Skill scroll, please.

Gray light erased the remains, leaving behind a roll of papyrus tied with dirty yarn. He nearly mistook it for a skill scroll. It was a quest item. It refused an Examine. He untied two knots, saved the yarn, and struggled to read an unusually messy scrawl that was in fact a map. The symbols for shrubs and rock formations were similar to uppercase letters under and over a wavy line—a river, maybe the same dry river his coffin was inside. This was a Treasure Scroll, an uncommon bonus drop when looting. The Kobold hadn’t been carrying it.

On the map, between two Ms was a bold, stylized X. Further left was a taller, skinny X that was neither bold nor stylized. Thane assumed the skinny X was that hourglass rock formation. A slanted N looked fairly similar to an arched rock thirty yards from the hourglass, but on the map they were half an inch apart. The bold X was a thousand yards away.

For five minutes he ran, following landmarks to a low point in the landscape. He jumped into a wide ditch, directly between the Ms. The balls of his feet sank into mud, and his left toes hit something solid. He hauled out a rusty iron chest.

Treasure Chest on my first day, he thought, whistling in disbelief, head shaking. For sure, this was booby-trapped.

But he had nothing to lose. He stowed his Staff into his inventory, then traced fingers under the lid, felt around bolts for a key hole. He found none. He gently pulled on the lid. The iron budged slightly—no lock. Definitely booby-trapped.

This is going to hurt.

Braced for a fiery explosion, he yanked the chest open. Greenish-brown gas expanded into a rising plume. Poison. He stopped breathing, covered his nostrils, but the poison gas magically found a way into his body. Nausea made the world spin. Reduced pain skewered his gut. He fell onto his knees, coughed green fluid, vomited black liquid.

A second before his health drained to zero, he snatched a Brass Key and second Treasure Scroll from the chest. All faded to black.

Serene peace put him at ease.

You have died! Since you are under level 10, you have not lost any experience points. Respawning in 59 seconds…

A deathless character was a madman’s dream anyway. He watched seconds count down until his body materialized sideways. He was in his coffin again. He didn’t mind. He pried open the lid, his fingers and wrists straining to the limit. Soil and thorned pieces of shrub annoyingly fell inside. He stepped out, fixed up the camouflage, and retrieved the second Treasure Scroll from his inventory.

The hourglass rock formation was near the center of this map. The river wasn’t drawn, but mountains and hills were. A stylized X marked the second tallest mountain’s peak, four hundred yards above ground. A tough climb. He partly wanted to abandon this wild goose chase and go raid those Kobolds, but the possible reward may very well be a powerful skill scroll or a legendary weapon. He was allowed to hope.

He dusted off his pants, then jogged uphill.

Climbing was one of his least favorite parts of the game. Although he didn’t encounter another snake, this mountain offered few footholds and was vertical for vast stretches. In the end, it had taken hours of the night to reach the peak. Inside a crevice, an iron chest was waiting for him. He hooked it out with the Iron Pickaxe.

To his relief, the Brass Key fit.

The rusty lid creaked open, revealing a third Treasure Scroll and an Iron Key.

Eyes rolling, he untied the Scroll and scanned the faded symbols under waning moonlight, dark clouds blowing in. The stylized X was on the dry river next to an upside-down T.

The chest was right next to his coffin.

He smirked. Real funny. Real funny. The overworld AI—the gods—must’ve received a humor patch. He scrunched the map into a tight ball and threw it over the edge. Jumping, he raced it to the ground. Gale force wind lashed his face while he fell, and he passed the paper ball partway down. The landing was a quick death, less painful than inhaling poison.

Once again, he was a carefree spirit in absolute darkness.

You have died! Since you are under level 10, you have not lost any experience points, and since you have died within the last three hours, your respawn timer is twice as long. Respawning in 119 seconds…

Thane heaved out of his coffin and fixed its camouflage. He then sprinted downhill, his throat starting to burn, his hunger rising above 36% and his mana decaying under 62/108. Temptation won his hand; he drank two ounces of chilled Kobold blood from his Flask. The flavor was stale, hardly satisfying.

At the marked location, he dug with the Pickaxe, unearthed a foot of hardened soil before striking metal. He yanked out a rustier iron chest. He stabbed in the Iron Key and twisted.

Inside waited yet another Treasure Scroll and a Steel Key.

“Fuck,” he spat, swiping.

Inside the Scroll was a wand, as though the gods answered his earlier prayer. The handle and scabbard were plain black leather, but the rod— Oh, the rod was beautiful, polished Darksteel tapered to a stabbing point. His reflected crimson eyes maniacally stared back.

Chimera-Heartstring Darksteel Wand (one-handed)

Durability: 99/100

Quality: 243 (Good)

Physical Damage: 8

Magic Damage: 25

+2 Mysticism

+1 Dexterity

A low whistle blew through his cracked lips. He equipped his prize, replacing the Oak Staff. Now, he was ready to slaughter a Homestead of Kobolds.