Chapter 4: The Arena

“Hey – stop!”

Miguel raced back over towards his bench as the ratty-faced man turned, fiddling with the crossbow’s mechanism.

Seriously, is this asshole going to shoot me here, with my own bow?

But whether that was the man’s intention or not, he didn’t get a chance, for Miguel sped forward, ducking low, and bowled into him. The strike knocked the thief from his feet.

The crossbow hit the ground, while the man himself was slammed back against the wall and bench and then rolled off to the side, groaning.

That speed stat was a good investment, Miguel thought to himself, and maybe the high strength is useful, too.

Out loud, he called: “You're a thieving piece of shit!”

Hastily, Miguel grabbed up his other items, as the ratty-faced man picked himself up and scuttled away without a backwards glance.

Miguel then stooped to pick the crossbow, and began stroking it carefully, checking for damage. The cord was still intact, and while overall it looked a little scuffed, the weapon seemed undamaged. He couldn’t say for sure whether it had been scuffed before or not.

He placed it back on the bench, vowing to keep a closer eye in it from now on. There was a mirror on the wall behind the bench, and he now glanced at his reflection. A bruise had rapidly appeared on his face, but he otherwise looked exactly as he did in real life – short spiky hair, dark stubble that was on the verge of becoming a beard and moustache, and green eyes.

As he looked past his own reflection to the vast square room beyond, he saw that the wavy-haired woman was sauntering over, and he turned, eyeing her cautiously.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, stopping. “I guess you could be a decent enough ally. And we all need to start somewhere, right?”

Start somewhere?

Ha.

Damned with faint praise.

Miguel chuckled softly, not entirely sure if she was serious about the proposition or not, and then focused on putting on his belt pouches, while keeping an eye on the crossbow.

Meanwhile, the woman sat on his bench, and began to look at the bow. “It’s scraped a little at the edge there...”

“Hands off,” said Miguel.

She stood, raising her hands. “No problem.”

“Sorry. What’s your name, anyway?”

“I am Chloe,” she replied. “Chloe Králová. Pleased to meet you.”

Miguel, meanwhile, was finishing strapping on the chest-plate. It looked and felt better than he had expected – not shiny but strong, and a comfortable fit.

Calming, he realized that the tension of the near-theft had made him unnecessarily cold in his responses.

Really, this was a good opportunity...

“So you agree?” he said. “About a temporary alliance?”

“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “It can only ever be temporary.”

He chuckled. “Hey – I don’t have my crossbow ammo.”

“Noob. It doesn’t come separately. There are packs of ammo that you collect, and once you equip one it’s built into the weapon after that. The benefits of a virtual game. Who has time for fiddling about with crossbow bolts?”

He shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“You don’t need to worry about storing weapons, either. Just call up the one you want, like ‘equip crossbow’, or ‘unequip’, that kind of thing.”

“Thank you. I thought it was something like that.” He noticed that the light in the vast room was beginning to dim.

“And now it looks like we are up,” said Chloe.

Miguel muttered to himself:

Equip crossbow

And the weapon appeared in his hands.

Just then, the distant-sounding disembodied voice rang out again:

“Contenders!”

All of the players looked up, some eying each other warily, others looking around for a speaker that wasn’t there. Miguel was sure that all of them could hear the same thing.

“Welcome to Demon Hunters,” continued the voice. “You are now being streamed for the watching publikum. It is too late to turn back.”

Miguel glanced sideways at Chloe. She looked focused, alert, and was gripping her spear with both hands.

“We now begin the first trial. Be aware that while defeat is not always the end, outright death of your in-game avatar means ejection and failure in this contest.”

There was a slight pause, and then:

“That means that you will not be able to enter the full version of the show. Even if we decide to repeat this contest, you will be blocked from reapplying. There are no second chances.”

As he listened, Miguel checked his crossbow yet again. Was he ready for what came next, he asked himself?

Perhaps.

As ready as he could be.

Chloe had been right – people who avidly watched the show were at a great advantage, and he had been an idiot to overlook that.

He just hoped that his years of gaming had left him with flexible-enough skills to cope with whatever they might decide to throw at him. A game is a game... right?

The voice then spoke again:

“In a moment you will see a countdown begin. The landscape around you will transform. Remember – from that point onwards, the first trial has begun, and everything around you is potentially a threat. This is a game of monsters and demons. The environment may contain hazards, too.”

There was another slight pause, and Miguel looked down at the crossbow in his hand. It seemed a feeble thing, really, against demons and the like.

On a hunch, he muttered, “Unequip crossbow,” and felt it swing around to hang from his shoulders instead. Good. Better to be ready to run – that was his strongest stat, after all.

“This is it, contenders,” said the voice. “Good luck.”

On that last word, the surroundings did indeed begin to shimmer and fade. Hunching over, ready to move, Miguel glanced around.

The broader area was large, green and flat, not unlike a baseball field, but in the center was some kind of pit – it was impossible to see into it from where Miguel was. Further away, surrounding them on all sides in a ring, there were jagged rocky hills and low cliffs; some caves could also be seen.

He looked around at Chloe, and as he did so, saw that the ratty-faced man was back, and was approaching her, keeping low as he walked. There was a short sword in the man’s hand. It looked rusty – or perhaps it was just made of bronze.

“Look out,” shouted Miguel, stepping back to get a clear line of sight for a shot and then remembering that he was no longer holding the crossbow.

“Damn.”

Equip crossbow.

The ratty man raised the sword and paused, ready to bring it downwards towards Chloe’s head.

But this gave Miguel enough time. His crossbow jolted and a bolt arced towards the man, hitting him in the shoulder. With a yelp, the man ducked down, and then turned to run, still clutching his sword.

Notification: You have gained 10 XP

Miguel hadn’t expected to see notifications on the basis of things that he had done, especially when there was no actual kill. That could be useful – but at present, he had no idea what the XP were worth, or what he could use them for.

“This way, Miguel – and thanks,” shouted Chloe, turning and running past him towards the edge of the game area. He looked around, beginning to move after her.

“Come on,” she continued, gesturing and then pointing ahead as he quickly caught up. “We’re going to want to go towards the raised ground – trust me.”

“To the hills?”

“To the caves among the hills. We need to find somewhere that’s defensible.”

The crossbow was feeling cumbersome, and so Miguel spoke the command to disarm it again, and it slid behind him effortlessly once more.

As Chloe continued to sprint towards the caves, he hurried along too, keeping close beside her, and looking from side to side for any other people who might decide to spring out at them.

The other contenders had spread in every direction across the wide-open area, but immediately ahead of them another scuffle was taking place. A muscular man with a completely bald head and a goatee beard had struck out with a short sword towards a female contestant.

She parried with her own sword, but he then leaped forward and hacked in the direction of her face, hitting her full force in the throat. She fell to the ground, and the bald man moved in for the kill, standing over her.

Miguel, running full pace towards the conflict, opened his mouth and roared. “Baaaacckkk!”

Miguel could see that beside him, Chloe was readying her spear. The man with the short sword turned, looking at them in shock at the unexpected attack, and then turned and fled away off to their left, looping back towards the center of the arena. Miguel briefly considered pursuing or shooting the man in the back, but instead stooped to check on the victim.

“Hey, are you all right?” he said, crouching.

But it was immediately obvious to him that she was not; the woman lay in a pool of blood, her neck hacked open by the man’s last blow; life was quickly leaving her digital avatar.

If you could call it life, Miguel reminded himself.

“Take her stuff,” said Chloe, who was standing with her arms folded, looking down.

“What?”

She gave a firm nod in response. “Come on, we're gonna need to do that here. If you wanna survive – ally.”

He hesitated for a moment. He knew that she was right, but taking things from a dead player – albeit it just a digital avatar – just didn’t feel right.

“Hurry up,” she said, glancing around for more rival contenders. “Don’t be so sentimental, or I’ll have to stick this spear into you.”

With a sigh, he took the woman’s leather helmet, her short sword – a curved, katana-type blade – and her backpack. He then leaned forward and rolled the body over onto its face. It somehow seemed more respectful.

Notification: You have gained 5 XP

With that Miguel stood, and the pair of them began to move on towards the hills once again.

Just then, there was a roar from the left. Miguel’s head snapped around to look, and he saw that the pit in the middle of the green area was now obscured by something bulbous and hideous – an enormous creature had crawled out of it and was writhing around, no more than a hundred yards away. It looks rather like a gigantic centipede, with a long fat body and gnashing hooked jaws.

“Shit,” muttered Chloe.

They could also see that other creatures of the same kind were behind it, crawling from the same pit and moving off in different directions. Who knew how many more might come? But the one that had their attention was the closest one, which had very distinctly begun moving towards themselves.

“I hope you're a fast runner,” said Miguel, as he spun and once again began to sprint towards the hills, this time straining for his full speed.

“And I hope you’re good with that crossbow,” she called out.

“So far, I’m one for one. But I’ve never used a bow in the real world. Every game is a bit different.”

She pointed ahead – they were now just fifty yards away from hills. “Look – there’s a cave there, to the left of that smooth cliff. We can hope that it’s too small for them to follow us.”

Miguel nodded, and then glanced over his shoulder, still running. The centipede creature was much faster than it looked, and was closing on them fast.

He couldn’t see any of the other contestants moving close by. That meant that he and Chloe were its principle targets, surely.

But then the monstrous centipede slowed, and stopped to chew the body of the woman that they had left behind.

Miguel paused, too, noticing that there were little silver drones above them now, each no larger than a baseball. Presumably these were streaming everything, giving the watching audience clear views of everything that was happening. Why that was necessary when the whole thing was happening inside a simulation, he wasn’t entirely sure.

“Well, the first thing the audience saw was of the two of us stripping the body of a dead woman,” he murmured, “and leaving her in a pool of blood ready to be eaten. Not a great start in terms of our popularity. Here it is a case of...”

“Hurry the hell up, for God’s sake,” interrupted Chloe, whacking him on the side before he had a chance to complete his thought.

She began to move diagonally towards the cave she had pointed to.

Miguel took one last glance, which was enough to see that the horrendous creature had finished feeding on the corpse; it reared and turned towards them.