14

Dashing Hopes

At the edge of the fields, a crowd of meina fled as Rian stepped out. The footpath turned and followed a wooden fence lining the farm. Beyond it were the plains, where there was no sight of any other person, adventurer or otherwise.

“There’s really no one else here but me, huh?” Rian said.

“This farm is instanced,” Corvis said. “There are approximately twenty alternate versions. You just happened to land in one that had an off-worlder manning the farm.”

Rian nodded. Since this was one of the starting areas, he had expected it to be filled with new players, but it was strangely lonesome. Having everyone in one location for one quest wouldn’t be feasible, especially for a quest that one person could do on their own. It seemed rather odd how there were so many instances, and that they all blended together in the overworld.

“Are all the alternate versions of this place the same?” Rian said.

“No,” Corvis said, “only three of them are owned by non-adventuring players. The rest are NPCs.”

“And all of those NPCs are different?”

“Of course.”

“Then—” Rian blinked. “Which one’s the real one?”

Corvis opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. After a moment, he said, “The Undoing broke our world in many ways, but I don’t think that question should concern you. Right now, you should probably focus on your quest before you run out of time.”

“Oh shit.” He’d forgotten that the timer would start when he got here. He opened his menu and pulled up the quest: it was sitting at nine minutes remaining. He’d already wasted the first minute.

“It wouldn’t look good on one of Yindra’s newest and finest to fail his first quest,” Corvis said, smirking.

Rian drew his short sword and sprinted toward the nearest meina: he spotted a short-eared one nibbling on a stalk some ways down the path, but it fled into the fields when it heard him coming. The rustling of the stalks faded, and Rian swore under his breath, finding himself winded. He’d depleted his stamina already.

After letting himself recover, he kept up a jog around the outside of the fields. One meina after the other would occasionally stumble from out of the stalks, and Rian leapt upon them, thrusting the short sword ahead of their path of escape—simply the direction they were facing. It worked as before: they attempted to flee, only for the blade to connect and instantly slay them. He nabbed two kills.

You have gained experience! (+10)

You have gained experience! (+10)

LEVEL UP! (Lv. 2→3)

You have gained +10 Max HP! (126→136)

You have gained +10 Max MP! (114→124)

Available attribute points +2

Six to go. Eight minutes left. Easy so far. He took the time to scavenge two scraps of leather from their bodies.

The meina were avoiding the rainfall from the Zephyr, he noted, which effectively reduced the area he had to cover. He was already strong enough to kill them in one hit, so he brought up his stat page and put the two points into DEX. As when putting points into Strength, a ripple spread across his body—but instead of his muscles tightening, it felt like a deep, invigorating breath of fresh air. When he flexed his hands, he felt slightly lighter and more perceptive of himself than before, as if his awareness had expanded.

Weird, he thought. Wasn’t INT supposed to be the stat that increased perception in this game?

He went around the fields and picked off the creatures one-by-one, finding his stamina to last slightly longer than before. He skewered each meina as he encountered them, as none were particularly fast. There wasn’t any blood as he was expecting each time he plunged the sword into them, but there was enough resistance for him to feel the blade piercing through their flesh, and he was only slightly squeamish about it. He wasn’t the psychotically murderous type who found killing inherently enjoyable, but Mirage did manage to create an even balance between realism and the abstraction of a game—enough for him to feel as if things were real but also slightly off as if within a dream, and it was enough to shield him from the unseemly aspects of taking something’s life even if he knew it was virtual.

He was actually having fun, and Mirage was easier than he’d thought, as he found himself reflecting on the game as he went about fulfilling his quest.

As if to acknowledge his ease, it seemed the meina were getting faster, more nimble, the more he killed. He wondered if the game knew—that it scaled its own difficulty according to what it determined the player could handle; that it was capable of observing and adapting to him as much as he could adapt to it. The thought was awe-striking, only because he knew it was entirely possible.

Another two kills netted him another level, more points to spend, and two more leather scraps. After bringing his DEX stat up to 8, he listened for the other meina and heard them squeaking at intervals. They were all within the area of the farm, with none of the noises coming from the plains. By the sounds of their squeaks and the fact that none of them were dropping any gold, he suspected a limited number of them had spawned specifically for the quest.

He found a group of them gathered around a fallen stalk. With his stamina meter full, he charged toward them, only to see that they didn’t flee. They retreated for a moment, then lined up with each other on the footpath. When he swung across at them, hoping to nab all three at once, he only caught the middle one; the outer ones had dashed away. The single meina sighed as it fell, and Rian turned to watch the others.

They weren’t fleeing. They were flanking him.

And they were moving faster. Much faster than the ones he’d fought earlier.

The remaining two meina had split up and stopped a short distance away. He stepped toward one of them, and it held its ground. Its ears were folded back.

He readied his sword, took a quick step and lunged for it, driving the point forward. But by the time he’d begun to attack, the meina in front of him had dodged, and the other meina had scrambled up to him in a flurry of steps. As if they’d waited for him to strike first.

It leapt and bit down on his ankle.

You have taken 21 damage! (HP: 125/146)

He’d expected and imagined it to hurt, but it didn’t actually hurt at all—it was nothing more than a slight pressure against his foot, and yet he winced anyway.

As he kicked out his leg to rid it of the creature, the meina let go and scurried off with the other through the crops at a blistering pace.

He chased after them down an adjacent path, not wanting to run through the crops themselves; he worried that there could be a penalty for damaging them, with Jensen deducting it from the rewards of the quest.

He staggered his run between a jog and a sprint to conserve stamina. At first he watched his stamina bar, then realized he could pay attention to his breathing instead. It was working: he was keeping up his pace indefinitely, backing off when he felt winded and charging forward when his breathing was slow.

“By the way,” Corvis said. The tapered ends of his suit jacket trailed out behind him in the wind as he floated alongside. “You should probably invest your skill point into something.”

“Skill point?” He hadn’t even known that Beginner skills were a thing, much less that he was accruing points to spend on them. He slid to a halt and opened his menu, and sure enough it was there: a “skills” icon, shaped like a fist.

“You should have one point, I believe,” Corvis said.

Rian opened the skills menu. There were four Beginner skills, and he had one unallocated point to spend on them. He did a double take at it. “Wait, why didn’t I get a notification about the point? I’ve leveled like three times already!”

“That’s the point you started with,” Corvis said. “You only get one more at level five.”

Ugh. He should’ve expected this—Corvis not telling him about things until the very last moment. This was probably another part of the tutorial he’d missed.

He looked over the skills again. Okay, decisions. Gotta do this quickly.

Dash. Energy Strike. Heal. Critical Back-Attack.

He didn’t bother looking at the skills’ information for more than a second. It was obvious which one he wanted. He glanced over at the remaining two meina who were pacing back and forth, watching, almost as if they were conferring with each other.

He spent the point.

You have learned a new skill: Dash.

Achievement unlocked: “It All Begins Here” (Learned a Beginner skill)

A sense of potential surged through him. It felt as if something had rearranged itself in his mind, and now there was something else available to him, like he’d suddenly grown an extra limb.

He merely thought about using the skill, and the game reciprocated as he kicked off into a sprint: before he even knew what was happening, he was hovering just above the ground and careening through the air, the wind against his ears blocking out all other sounds. It was more intense than he’d anticipated, with the sense of his body moving faster than he’d thought possible—faster than an all-out sprint.

An icon appeared at the bottom of his HUD: a picture of a figure, dashing forward. On the icon was a rapidly decreasing number: the cooldown of the skill itself. Four seconds.

As the skill ended a fraction of a second later, almost all his momentum vanished as his feet met the ground again. He tried to swing his sword, but upon coming out of the dash, the motion felt clunky and unnatural. As the meina easily evaded his lumbering swing, he realized what had happened.

During the dash, he couldn’t move his body at all. It was only when it ended that he could move again, which threw off his instinctual timing for the swing and gave his target a chance to evade. Trying it again, he found that he could even cancel his dash when he wanted to, letting himself land early and retain even more of his momentum than usual, but it hardly made a difference. At this level it seemed more of a positional tool than an offensive one.

That was, unless…

He adjusted himself, holding the blade forward to aim its point. One meina appeared out of the fields and attempted to cross the footpath between one field of stalks to another. He used the skill again, propelling himself forward, and his sword connected in the middle of the dash, slaying the creature instantly as he passed by it.

So he was wrong, he thought—wrong in the best way possible. It wasn’t that he couldn’t attack out of it, but that he could attack with the dash itself.

One creature left. Two minutes remaining on the quest timer.

The last meina—one with a scar over its left eye—stepped from out of the fields and onto the path as if to face him. It immediately turned around and sprinted away.

Rian chased after, only to find that it was the fastest of them yet. Even with staggering his run speed, and after sheathing his sword so he could pump both his arms to run faster, it was still outrunning him. He began to dash toward it, finding that there wasn’t any cost in activating the skill. His stamina even recharged during the movement itself, allowing him to alternate between sprinting and dashing at a constant pace. But it didn’t seem like he was gaining any ground on the final target.

What the hell? There’s no way I can catch it!

Already the both of them had run past the rain clouds and to the edge of the farm on the opposite side, toward the forests. Rian followed the creature as it weaved a path through the foliage, jumping through bushes and underneath fallen trees propped against moss-covered boulders. So much for everything being confined to the farm, he thought. Thankfully, meina seemed incapable of climbing. If it could’ve escaped up a tree, there was probably no way he could complete the quest.

He dashed through a bush, and up ahead there was a clearing. The forest opened to a glade, and in the center of it was the scarred meina, sitting, looking up at something.

Kneeling beside it was a suit of armor, but the plating was a soft beige color and roundly shaped, textured like clay or stone.

Rian slowly approached. There was nothing inside the suit, as far as he could tell; the helm was empty and without a visor, and the chest plate looked more like a hollow ribcage. The entire thing was ancient with wear. Moss covered its shoulders.

The meina turned around to face Rian and sat. Even as he approached and calmly drew out his sword, the creature didn’t flee. It merely looked up at him and blinked.

Something glinted at the corner of Rian’s vision. Inside the suit of armor was a glass vial, attached to the interior of the ribcage. Hesitantly, he reached inside the suit. When his fingers met the glass, he wrapped his hand around it and gently pulled. He tried not to cringe at the feeling of removing something’s heart from its chest. The vial snapped off the front of the spine.

You have obtained (1) Ezre’s Thought.

He held the vial up to the sunlight, but it seemed completely empty. It probably wasn’t something terribly useful, given how early in the game it was. But this was clearly a special area; there was likely something valuable about the item. He made a mental note to consult the guild in a moment.

Pocketing the vial, he looked down at the meina, who continued to look at him dumbly.

“Sorry, buddy,” Rian said, gripping his sword with both hands. “Need the XP.”

He swung down at it carefully, controlled—as if to give it a swift death, though he knew it didn’t matter. The creature fell, sighing, as every meina before it. Its body dissolved into light, and out of the shining particles, a tendril of mist emerged and began to coalesce into a single gold coin.

Quest complete! (8/8 kills)

Return to Farmer Jensen for your reward.

Rian stood there and watched as the misty aura gathered and shifted into a golden color until a thought struck him.

None of the other meina had dropped any gold.

The mist began to harden into a shining sphere, then shot off into the air as if something had propelled it. Zipping around, it darted back and forth before colliding with the helm of the suit of armor.

And then something happened—something that told Rian right away that he was completely screwed.

A choir started singing.

Out of nowhere, orchestral music filled the glade. An HP bar appeared, spanning almost the width of his sight, as the suit of armor began to rise from its kneeling position. Standing, it faced him, and the mists that had come from the final meina then filled the armor’s helm and began to leak like rising steam. The mists inside the helm glowed to a point like a silver eye gazing at him.

Rian had stared at it long enough to trigger the inspect function.

Pyceian Runeknight (Level 85)

HP: 7041/7041

Difficulty: S+ (Unique)

“???”

He turned around and ran as fast as he could.

Yeah, no thanks!

A sound like grinding stones made him glance over his shoulder, and the suit of armor had raised a hand in the gesture for him to stop. Rian caught a glimpse of sunlight against something in its palm: a glass orb. It filled with light, and a blue line appeared along the air, aiming directly at him.

He knew exactly what was about to happen. He hesitated, then dashed away at an angle from the armor, but the line kept tracking him. The blue line then flickered ahead of him, and a massive beam of light shot out from the armor’s hand and careened toward him, reaching him in the middle of his dash.

His short sword exploded in his hand.

His eyes went wide as he saw what remained of it. Instinctively, he’d held his sword back—against his shoulder—to avoid wind resistance. The beam had caught its upper half, knocking his grip slightly, then piercing through and melting the entire blade off. The remains shattered into a spray of molten iron bouncing off the trees ahead.

Coming out of the dash, Rian stared in disbelief at the sword in his hand, barely anything more than a hilt now. Already the suit of armor was aiming for him again—a blue tracking beam appearing in the direction it was about to fire. Pointing directly at his chest.

Rian almost scrambled for the edge of the glade when a thought held him back. Something wasn’t right—aside from there somehow being a god damn level eighty-five boss near the starting zone.

He sprinted for the forests, watched his stamina gauge quickly plummet. The voices of the bodiless choir rose and fell in towering, chilling tones.

What was irking him was that he’d dashed at the right time before, but the beam had connected with him anyway—because it wasn’t actually aiming at him. It was aiming where he was going to go, rather than where he was.

The suit of armor was using the same tactic he’d used against the meina. Because it was being piloted by one of them. The final meina’s spirit was in control of that thing.

And now it was getting its revenge, using his own tactic against him.

His jaw slackened. Son of a bitch.

The tracking beam started to flicker, moving ahead of where he was going, and just as Rian’s stamina was about to run out, he dashed away.

He heard the beam fire behind him. He canceled his dash to retain his momentum, let his feet touch the ground again, and let the movement carry him—almost out of control—into a backwards fall. Grass and dirt tore up around him as he continued to slide, landing sideways and placing his empty hand against the ground to catch himself.

The beam of light screamed overhead, piercing through entire trees.

Without even stopping mid-slide, Rian pushed against the ground to spring himself back up and continued running into the forests. He passed by trees with giant molten holes through their trunks; some of them were starting to collapse behind him, filling the air with the sound of cracking wood. Steadily, the choir and orchestral music faded as he went, and the lingering HP bar faded from view, but he didn’t dare to look back.