-20 Karma.

Ignoring the notification, Carey sprang to his feet, right hand crossing his belly to grab his dagger.

Three bars, with numbers inside them, appeared above the merchant’s head. Red, Green, and Blue, one on top of the other. They remained mostly tiny and invisible throughout the fight, except when Carey chose to study them.

HP: 135/135

SP: 120/120

LP: 35/35

Compared to Carey, the guy was a walking tank. But he was Level 3, which didn’t seem too bad.

In a flash, the merchant pulled out a dagger of his own. He brandished it, though his expression—furrowed brow, pursed lips—showed not anger but something akin to regret.

“You don’t want to do this, traveler,” he said. “Just hand it over. No one has to get hurt.”

His dagger was made of steel. Naturally, a steel dagger would have a higher damage rating than one made of copper. Carey was screwed.

Damn it. This was a mistake. But I can’t give up that Araband...

“Just leave me alone, NPC,” Carey said. “You’re not even real.”

The merchant flinched at that, then shook his head.

“Insults won’t affect an enemy’s concentration,” he said. “You’d be better off not speaking at all during a fight, unless it’s to communicate with your teammates.”

“What?” Carey was so confused he almost lowered his dagger. “Wait a minute, is this a tutorial?”

“Swing at me,” the merchant said. “Don’t worry, just do it.”

Hoping for the best, Carey jabbed his dagger at the man’s sternum. The merchant easily blocked it. When Carey lunged forward a second time, the man blocked the attack again and took the opportunity to ram his shoulder into Carey, staggering him.

“See how I did that?” the merchant said. “After a successful block, you can try to stagger an opponent. Now you try.”

The merchant stabbed at Carey with his dagger, managing a successful strike that made him see red momentarily.

“Ow!”

Carey stumbled backward. The pain had been like a bee sting times twenty. A “-10” symbol floated away at the bottom of his vision. A chunk of the red HP bar disappeared.

“Damn it,” Carey said. “Be careful!”

“If you run into a Low Brother—that’s a member of the Tenefraterni, or Dark Brotherhood—I doubt asking him to be careful is going to get you anywhere besides an early grave.”

The merchant struck at him again. Carey parried the steel blade with his own copper one. The sound of metal clanging against metal filled the clearing, as realistic as could be.

“In case you are one of those detail-oriented types,” the merchant said, cracking a half smile, “you can pull up your activity log at any time. Down in the bottom left corner. See it?”

Carey willed it open. The box showed white-on-dark-blue text, the lines short summaries of his latest actions.

Traveling Merchant staggered Player

Traveling Merchant stabbed Player for 10 attack damage

Player blocked Traveling Merchant’s strike

“Now, ram into me,” the merchant said. “Quickly!”

Still reeling from the weirdly cold, buzzing feeling of being stabbed by a virtual blade—pain was pain, even here, just electrical signals in the brain—Carey took time to collect himself.

“Hurry!”

“Damn it, I know, old man.” Carey sighed gruffly, getting into position. “You asked for it.”

“Remember. Stay on your feet or risk an Attack of Opportunity. Don’t ever give your enemy the chance.”

“Hmph,” Carey murmured, surprised to feel the hot, shuddering, vibrating sensation in his shoulder quickly fading. “So, pain exists here as a sort of punishment, but it’s not meant to cripple a player.”

“Player? My friend, this isn’t a game. Pain is pain. Avoid it or the distraction will get you killed.”

“Point taken.”

There was at least one benefit to fighting inside a virtual world, regardless of the potential for pain and death. Carey found that his physical limitations in the real world did not exist here—at least not quite in the same way.

He was a much better and more confident fighter here, probably because he knew there was no risk of breaking a limb or having his intestines cut from his belly. The pain sucked, but it was more uncomfortable than agonizing, and it went away quickly. Plus, his body just felt different—like he could fight a battle forever and not get tired.

This wasn’t true, of course—he still had a Stamina bar to worry about. Running out of Stamina meant running out of fuel and probably opened him up to all sorts of penalties. And yet, in the game world, he didn’t feel like an out-of-shape nerd carrying a beer gut on a set of bad knees and flat feet.

Here, he could fight. In fact, he felt like a warrior-in-training, on his way to uncovering a hidden potential he’d never known was inside himself.

“One more thing,” the merchant said, raising his blade above his head. “When I strike at you, try sidestepping around me. As long as your focus is on me, you’ll be locked on. Let’s try it three times.”

“I can sidestep and evade attacks?” Carey asked. “Like in Dark Souls?”

“Er… yes, though I would not advise having a dark soul. Like I tell my children, that is how the Low Mages find you.”

The merchant swiped, rather unenthusiastically and predictably, at Carey. This part was simple enough. As if he were playing with a controller, Carey imagined himself—with a quick jerk of his leg muscles to make it feel realistic—pressing a button at the exact moment the blade began to fall.

Success! His body swung around the merchant in a curving sweep, allowing him to easily evade the attack. He did it again and found himself behind the merchant, in a position to strike. This must have been one of those “Attacks of Opportunity.”

Should he do it? Or wait for instruction?

In a flash, the merchant was facing him, teeth bared as he thrust his blade into Carey’s chest.

“Son of a bitch,” Carey said.

His Health bar registered a loss of 15 points. His Stamina bar had also been reduced. It sat at about 60 percent now.

“Oh, so that’s how it is,” the merchant said, grinning suddenly. “Well, your mother was a whore.”

“Whoa, what the f—That’s not what I was trying to—you know what? Never mind. Hit me again.”

As the merchant drew back his weapon to strike again, a light flashed by his wrist, a quickly rotating crystalline flash of yellow, like a citrine gemstone full of sunlight, spinning on an invisible bracelet.

“Whoa, did you see—”

Carey’s voice was cut off by the merchant’s attack—a critical strike that drained him of 22 HP.

“Should’ve blocked, damn it,” Carey said with a groan, pain rippling through him momentarily. “Hey, did you happen to see that flash of light?”

The merchant was nodding, his expression somewhere between a smile and a pained grimace. “I’m sorry I had to do that, Carey. But it was a lesson required for your survival. That flash of light is what’s called a ‘Strike Signal.’ It means that the next attack is unblockable, and the only way to avoid it is to evade it, do you understand?”

Carey nodded. “I’ve seen that sort of thing before. I just have to dodge or get out of the way at exactly the right moment.”

“Yes, that’s correct. Let’s try it again.”

Carey paid extra attention and reacted as quickly as he could. When he saw the next flashing Strike Signal, he sidestepped to get out of the way. The game pushed him along, effectively sliding him around the merchant until he was somewhat behind the man, and his next opportunity opened up.

The merchant was finishing his strike, about to turn, when Carey slashed at him.

Player slashes at Traveling Merchant for 17 attack damage

“Very nice,” the merchant said, wiping a sheen of sweat off his forehead. “You saw the opportunity to strike when I wasn’t ready.”

“Clear as day, my man.”

They continued practicing. At one point, Carey’s Stamina bar hung at around 20 percent. But what happened once it was empty?

I’ll worry about that later.

He launched himself into a flurry of attacks. The merchant evaded or blocked most of them, obviously a skillful fighter—at least compared to his opponent. A few of Carey’s attacks hit their mark, reducing the merchant’s HP. As the man evaded or blocked, his Stamina bar drained—but Carey’s drained more quickly, probably because of his lower level and beginner-level skills.

Eventually, the symptoms of low Stamina began to show themselves. His vision dimmed and became shaky. The wind chilled the sweat on his forehead. A light pant turned into labored breaths. Exhaustion set into his muscles and bones, just as crippling as in real life.

Carey backed away from the merchant, who was also breathing hard as his Stamina recovered.

“Very good,” the merchant said. “Not every fight will be over in a matter of minutes. Save your energy; use it wisely. Increasing your Constitution attribute will grant you more Health and Stamina.”

“Good to know.”

“Know what else is good?” the merchant asked as he dropped to one knee like a knight showing reverence to his king. “Go ahead, mirror my actions.”

Carey lowered one knee to the grass. He let his body come to rest.

Immediately, his Stamina began to rise.

“Sweetness,” Carey said, taking a deep breath and blowing it pleasantly through his lips. “Oh, that’s the melody. I don’t know about you, good sir, but I’m done fighting for today.”

The merchant’s face broke into a grin. He had a pleasant personality, one of those faces that always looked to be on the verge of smiling. Carey wondered if he could recruit the NPC and convince him to come along. Couldn’t hurt to have an extra fighter.

EXPERIENCE GAINED: 125 points (125/500 to next level)

“Keep the Araband,” the merchant said. “You need it more than I do.”

Carey wanted to jump up and down like a kid unwrapping a sleek new Xbox on Christmas morning. Instead, he cleared his throat and dipped his head in gratitude.

“This has been great, really. I’m indebted to you, Mr. Merchant.”

“Please. Call me Lothos. And your name?”

“Carey.”

The man rose to his feet and smiled down at Carey. Tall and broad, like a lumberjack from the cover of one of those weird romance novels you could buy at Rite-Aid (not that Carey had ever bought one, but he had perused a few out of curiosity, and one of them once had shown a lumberjack in a plaid shirt halfway open to reveal a chest that rippled with muscle, six-pack abs like a washboard, and Carey had nearly tossed it to the floor in disgust. Lothos sort of looked like that guy).

“Carey is your name for now,” the man said, “but soon, you will choose your real name—the name that will grace the history books of Astros forever.”

“You mean, DrollTr—”

A loud crashing noise erupted nearby. Lothos ducked his head, looking around for the source, while Carey fell to a crouch with his arms shielding his head. He’d never liked random loud noises, especially those that sounded like a small house had just fallen from the sky.

“What was that?” Carey asked, keeping his voice down.

“I don’t know,” the merchant said. “Come. Let’s take a look.”

Was this part of the tutorial? The noise had been pretty friggin’ loud, not like a game event at all, but more like something big breaking in a way it should not have.

Crouch-walking, Carey followed Lothos through the woods, trying to step silently across sun-dappled leaves and dry twigs. Wind rustled the tree boughs and Carey shivered, not from the cold but from a surge of emotion he couldn’t name—a weird, electrifying combination of mystery, foreboding, and anticipation. Like reaching the top of a rollercoaster, about to plunge down a hundred miles of track along the side of a mountain.

“It has to be close,” Carey whispered. “It was so loud.”

Lothos shushed him and stopped behind a thick tree. “There. Look.”

A clearing lay just beyond a thin mass of trees and bushes. Carey could barely see into it. He heard a snort and saw winged horses, still tethered to a carriage which now lay in ruins. They were not white-winged horses, but red-eyed, evil-looking cousins with hair as black as coal.

“Black levathons,” Carey said. “That’s ominous.”

“The necromancer’s preferred mount,” Lothos explained. “Bred to withstand Blood Ether magic.”

The wrecked carriage was not a fancy one, nor did the horses look particularly well-groomed. Clearly, these were not aristocrats or important politicians that had fallen from the sky. Made of simple planks of wood, the carriage barely held together, the wheels having been crushed by the impact.

Voices rose from the clearing, not far from the carriage. Then two young boys came into view.

“How did you not see it, Roland? That’s the part I’m trying to understand.”

They looked like teenagers. Could they be other players?

“You try navigating one of these things when a bird flies into your face and nearly claws your eyes out, Ultar.”

“That’s why you cast a spell at it,” Ultar snapped.

Roland made fists and thrust his chest forward in a threatening gesture. “At a bird that came out of nowhere? Flying at top speed right into my face? You try casting a spell at a split-second’s notice, Mr. Piss-My-Mat.”

“I won’t tell you again, you little maggot. I was in a meditative trance, like Brother Welt ordered. You don’t break a trance like that to get up and go to the toilet. Now, go see if you can fix it. Don’t make me report this to Headmaster Fellox. And make sure the slaves are still alive.”

Slaves?

Leaves crunched as Roland approached the ruined wagon. As he got closer, Carey could tell he was just a kid, no older than fifteen or sixteen, with sickly pale skin, a mop of curly brown hair, and a wiry frame draped in a black robe.

Lvl. 2 Low Mage Apprentice

HP: 62/62

SP: 45/45

LP: 120/120

“Apprentices to the dark ones,” Lothos hissed. “Killing them will prevent the future deaths of my kinsmen. I cannot let them live.”

Carey nodded absently. He assumed a Low Mage was some sort of villain specializing in dark magic—not Luminether but Blood Ether, clearly. In RPGs, mages typically wore robes and used scrolls and spell tomes to cast magical attacks. Black robes were usually a bad sign.

“But… but he’s just a kid,” Carey said.

The merchant gave a breathy chuckle. “Childhood would not stop him from burning you alive with one of his spells. Or sending a cloud of stinging hornets into your face.”

“I see.”

Ultar, a.k.a. Mr. Piss-My-Mat, joined Roland, who was already studying the wreckage. A few inches shorter than Roland, with regal blond waves of hair that nearly touched the collar of his cloak, the apprentice nevertheless walked with a puffed-up chest and shoulders, like it made him taller than everyone else simply to think himself so.

Lvl. 4 Low Mage Head Apprentice

HP: 90/90

SP: 64/64

LP: 185/185

“Did you check on the slaves?” Ultar asked Roland.

“You check on them.” Roland pointed toward the opposite end of the clearing. “I put them right over there.”

Carey followed where the kid was pointing.

Despite masses of bushes partially hiding them from view, Carey spotted three children. They were only slightly younger than the two apprentices, down on their knees and facing each other in what resembled a sad little prayer circle. Carey rose on tiptoes to get a better angle.

They were literally just little kids! Faces smudged, clothes tattered, the oldest-looking one couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. The only girl in the group had twigs and leaves stuck in her hair. Staring down at the ground, as if in fearful deference, each child’s wrists had been bound together with twine.

“But why would children be used as—”

“Test subjects,” Lothos said, darkly. “To be used in necromantic spell casting. The Low Mage teachers kill these children, slit their throats, and the apprentices practice raising them from the dead. And worse.”

“They turn them into zombies?”

Lothos shot him a confused look. “I don’t know what a zomty is, but no—these children are on their way to becoming Risen Ones.”

“Oh.” Carey shrugged. “You mean undead.”

“Yes… I suppose.”

“Well? Are you going to stop them?”

“No, no, no, my dear man.” Lothos grinned at Carey. “We’re going to stop them.”

“Oh.”

Carey had played enough stealth-action games in his life to be able to follow Lothos through this next exercise with no hesitation.

“Touch the crystal on the Araband. Quickly.”

A tap of his fingertips was all it took.

Carey watched as floating, semi-transparent, blue-tinted menus appeared in his vision. He could scroll through them easily enough with a mere wave of his hand. He could even lighten or darken them with a thought.

One was an inventory screen which showed a list of items and their stats. Taking up one half was a realistic rendering of his own body, clad in the shirt, pants, and armor he’d found in the hut, the Araband’s gold glittering across his forehead.

“You won’t be able to remove the Araband anymore.”

“Really?”

Carey tried to take it off, both by pulling on it and by willing it back into his inventory. But it was like trying to remove your own nose.

“At least I won’t lose it.”

“Here. Take this,” the merchant said.

As Carey’s focus changed, the menus slid away, vacuumed back into the Araband’s crystal. The merchant held out a long strip of leather, which was bulky in some parts. The item’s name appeared above it.

Leather Belt of Access.

The belt sported a row of button-sealed pockets.

“Cool,” Carey said, taking it in both hands. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Put it on. Quickly.”

“Yes, yes. I understand time is of the essence.”

Carey touched the belt to his waist. Immediately, it slid its length around his waist and tightened. When he tapped his fingertips against one of the pockets, the buttoned flap popped open.

The menu that unfolded in the lower part of his vision was a strip of rectangular squares, a half-dozen total. All were empty except for one, which contained the Minor Nectar potions from his inventory. He didn’t actually have to touch the pockets to open the menu—like everything else, it only took a thought to make it appear.

“Quick-access inventory slots,” Carey said. “Sweet!”

Lothos jabbed a finger against his lips for silence. He edged forward, crouching low, until their faces were only inches apart.

“Aid items will appear automatically in any empty slot. It is easy to forget sometimes what you have stored. This will help you choose items quickly, in moments of duress. Try thinking about adding an item.”

Carey tipped him a grateful nod and followed the advice.

Well, I’ll be damned.

He imagined his dagger filling one of the quick-access slots. The icon appeared instantly in one of the boxes. Just looking at it, with the intent to quickly examine the weapon, caused its basic stats to pop up. The real dagger still hung on his belt.

“Now what?”

With a piercing look of pure hatred, Lothos went back to studying the two apprentices.

“Now,” he said, “we hunt.”

***

The merchant’s advice was simple.

I’ll draw one. Wait for them to separate. Stealth-attack the other.

Carey kept repeating it in his head. They had split up, Lothos sneaking around the clearing to attack from the other direction.

Before leaving, Lothos had shown him how to enter “sneak mode,” which turned out to be super easy—all Carey had to do was crouch slightly and fill himself with the desire not to be noticed. Sneak mode remained passively active, even if his attention shifted away from it, until he either stood up straight or consciously decided to exit.

He again marveled that, in this world, he could remain crouched without hurting or tiring out his knees. It was almost like hovering around on a floating cushion.

The game made it obvious whenever he was sneaking. Sound and light shifted slightly, reality surrounding him and his target becoming dimmer, like a camera lens changing its depth of field, sharpening an object in the foreground and blurring everything else.

All noise was muffled, except the sound of his enemy crunching leaves (loudly) and sighing (weirdly loud, like it was happening inside his ears) in frustration as he labored over the broken wagon.

Spying on him, Carey felt like a predator from that movie—what was it called? Oh yeah, Predator. A primal hunter, perfectly adapted to his environment, instinctively hunting a pesky human traveler who had wandered onto his planet.

Hiding at the opposite edge of the clearing, Lothos emitted a quick, sharp whistle. The apprentices snapped their heads up to search for the source.

“Did you hear that?” Roland asked.

Ultar extended a claw-shaped hand, making a brightly lit, sizzling fireball suddenly appear above his palm.

Whoa. So cool.

“I’ll go see,” Ultar volunteered.

“Be careful.”

Ultar’s voice came out a harsh whisper. “Go stroke Valcyona’s tail, maggot.”

As Ultar crept away, holding the fireball in front of him as if to light his path, Carey heard the other apprentice mumble, “Go piss in your robe, Mr. Piss-My-Mat.”

Carey would have chuckled had he not been so deeply in the zone.

Thankfully, Lothos’s whistle had called away one of the apprentices. Carey was certain the tutorial would not have pitted him against Ultar. There was no way he could take on a Level 4 prick like him. Not when he was only Level 0.

(Weird thing about this game, having players start at zero. Why not start them at one and go from there? … Whatever.)

“Here goes,” Carey whispered to himself. “Don’t be a wuss.”

His feet crunched softly against dry leaves as he—very slowly—crept toward Roland. He tried to focus on the aural and visual cues made possible by the way sneak mode altered his perception. It was like he used to do all the time as a gamer, infiltrating enemy bases in Far Cry and Fallout.

Focusing on these elements took his mind off the fact that he was about to murder a teenage boy. In cold blood.

Roland’s just a bunch of code, an NPC like the ones that live inside my PlayStation.

Carey raised the dagger. He could hear the boy breathing.

… Right?

Metallic light glinted as Carey struck.

… And missed.