PART ONE

A Message to All the Readers Who Hate Me

Let me guess. Your aunt gave you this book for Christmas. You're not a total pink so you smiled and said 'oh wow thanks' or maybe 'twelve lords a leaping how spiffing' if you're a Brit, or 'you heard aboot this guy that's why you're the cool aunt, eh?' if you're Canadian.

You never would have bought it yourself because you think it's a cash grab. You think I'm overexposed. Played out. I'm yesterday's news.

Truth is, I wrote the story on a Cloud Doc and shared it with a couple of friends to get their feedback. I didn't plan to actually publish it till I was dead, if ever. Who'd want to read about little ol' Billy-Bob from Poopsville, Ohio? I don't think my buddies had anything to do with the leak, but when it happened there was only one way to play it. Get it out there. It's my story, my words. It should have my name on it. You don't think I should make more money from what I did? No problemo, cowboy. Just message me in-game and I'll donate the twenty-two cents of royalties I got from your aunt to one of the following causes:

1) A shelter for hedgehogs.

2) That chick who rescues mustangs and restores their spirit in 45-second videos set to stirring music.

3) Those guys doing research into how BetterVerse can help Veterans with mental illnesses.

Enough virtue signalling. On with the story!

Preface to the First Scene

This is the part of the story where I take part in a thrilling fight and my weaknesses are exposed. If you need a visual reference, try the beginning of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Or the scene in Top Gun where [spoiler] and because of that, [spoiler] tries to [spoiler]. If you're alarmed there're no dungeons in this next bit, don't worry. This isn't one of those dungeon books where there's almost no dungeon.

The First Scene

"Behold," said the disembodied voice, "I am become death!"

Jack groaned, but Nikos spoke in perfect unison with the voice. "Destroyer of worlds. All who oppose me will burn in the crucible of my unholy fire!"

"I wish they'd write new dialogue," said Catalina. "I've heard this same speech twenty times."

"I like it," said Nikos. "It helps me learn English."

"You can learn useful words like crucible," I said, and was rewarded with laughter.

Jack straightened. "Incoming," he said.

18 Skeleton Warriors portalled into the room, surrounding us. Jack rushed ahead, using a taunt to get as much aggro onto him as possible. Nikos slipped into shadow and appeared behind a Skeleton, backstabbing him, but more importantly, drawing attention away from me. A handful of Skels turned and did that 'waaah' face they did when they were surprised. It was an impressive effect since they didn't actually have faces.

Behind me, Cat began blasting fireballs with one hand and stabbing with the other. "You get a fireball! You get a fireball!"

Nikos beamed. "I get that reference! Opera!"

"Oh-prah," I corrected.

He nodded, mouthing the correct pronunciation to himself while stabbing.

The last member of our team was Leonie. She was having connection problems. Australian internet is comically ship. She stood with her back to me, mostly motionless, but sometimes firing an arrow right into some poor Skel's noggin.

As for me, I stood, poised, magnificent, the perfect specimen of a man. Lithe, lean, leonine of face, tight of bun, projecting an aura of relaxed hyper-competence. So terrifying was I to the Skels that they all ignored me.

ALERT!

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR WARNING!

The fight was soon over, and Jack approached the coffin. (I forgot to mention we were in a graveyard. There was about two feet of fog everywhere, and sometimes hands would come out of the ground to grab our ankles. Sometimes the headstones would explode and a new wave of enemies would pour out of graves, crypts, or portals. You know. The usual.)

"Ha ha ha," said the voice. Nikos joined in. "At last a foe worthy of my attention. From hell's heart I stab at thee."

With that, the coffin opened, and out came the final boss. It was a muscly zombie-skeleton hybrid called a Bannerman. Basically a rip-off of the Draugr from Skyrim. This one was level 6, so pretty tough but simple enough for a team of five. It was well armoured in hard, all-black leather and its primary weapon was a black sword. We knew to expect some minor magical powers, lots of resistances, and one random trick up its sleeve.

Jack taunted him, and the Bannerman clambered out of his coffin and approached. We couldn't attack the creature until both his feet were out and he'd stood up and finished his entrance animation. People speculated that BV had spent so much money getting the motion capture right that they didn't want the things being fried while still in the coffin.

The Bannerman waved his sword around quite tediously, then he turned to show everyone in the group his magically shiny red eyes, then he cackled, then he said, "Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end." Then, finally, it was game on.

Crash! Jack smashed his shield into the BM. That's what I'm calling the Bannerman so that I don't have to keep typing it. Don't make me explain everything, please. Life's. Too. Short. So Jack used this tactic every now and then. His shield bash ability could make foes stumble, and if we could get the BM on the ground we could lay into him pretty good. It didn't work though. Instead, the BM resisted and gave Jack a pretty savage whack with his sword. Jack was momentarily out of action.

Leonie fired one good shot, but then her avatar froze. The BM span round, a tad upset at having an arrow sticking out the back of his neck, and fired a lightning blast at her. She fell to the ground. She should have been twitching and stuff but it seemed like the game was trying to save her bandwidth.

The BM cackled - he was winning. Nikos popped up behind him and stabbed two daggers into his back. Catastrophic damage! Catalina followed up by setting him on fire. The BM fell to one knee, doomed.

Nikos did his whole 'King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail' schtick - bowing and thanking God for our victory. It was a good joke, because in the film the Black Knight always comes back to fight, and so it always went in these quests.

As predicted, the BM cackled again, and now came the twist. This was the moment where the game designers proved themselves to be true sadists, for there were countless variations and you couldn't set up a squad to cover all the possibilities. "Wah wah waaah," cackled the BM. He turned to point to his coffin, where another Bannerman was getting out. This one was all-white. An inverted version of the original.

"Whoa," said Cat, "did we miss some lore?"

"There were those stones," I said, remembering some Rosetta Stone type scripts etched into various walls. None of us could work out the code or what we were supposed to do with them.

"No matter!" said Nikos. "Bloody the heart, bloody will be the end!" He rolled forward and stabbed his daggers into the albino Bannerman's thighs.

"Uh-oh," I said. Too hasty! The ABM hadn't finished his entrance - he finished by staring at me with green eyes - so Nikos's attack did funk all. ABM looked down at him in disbelief. It was almost with pity that he lifted his white sword and pushed it through my Greek friend's neck.

"Jack!" I yelled. His stun debuff ran out, and he raced at BM, and tackled him to the ground. They started wrestling.

Cat launched fireballs at ABM and kept her distance. "Immune!" she yelled, switching to her much weaker thunder blasts.

I did some quick mental calculations. Whatever happened, it was going to be close. Suddenly, we had the upper hand. Jack killed BM and ABM roared with rage. It launched a cold blast on Cat, and it hit her way harder than it should have. ABM strode over to a very weary Jack - I later learned BM had drained all his stamina - blocked one thrust, kicked Jack's sword away, and ran him through. He then went back to Cat and after a brief flurry, put her down.

Suddenly, I was alone.

A chill went through me, and it was not because of ABM's creepy laugh. It was the fact that I was now directly responsible for the failure or success of the quest. And that was bad news for all involved.

You see, dear reader, I was totally ship at BetterVerse.