A New World (Gamer, Book 1) (3 page)

He tries to stand up, but his body doesn't
seem to want to do it. He begins to crawl away until he finds a
pair of sandaled feet and a gray robe in front of him.

"Any monsters you encounter from now on will
take double the amount of coin from you if you die. You will need
to be extra careful for the next twenty-four hours or
so."

The feet vanish and there is a clap of
thunder. Harry lies in the dirt, looking at the blacksmiths in the
distance. The ground is wet and nasty in the most unpleasant of
ways, but so far the first day of his three months – 89 days – has
been pretty horrible.

“
It’s just not my day today," he
moans as he slowly pushes himself up and goes to sit naked on the
steps of the blacksmith's front door.

I just have to wait for someone to come so
I can finish this quest and then find somewhere to hide until this
is all over
. It’s a good strategy, but it looks like the wait
is going to be quite awhile with the number of players that have
headed through the town since he arrived.

A Series Of Unfortunate
Events

Still 1 copper remaining, afflicted
by GM Goldie Lock’s curse: ‘Broken Piggy Bank’.

Losing a day like this was definitely not a
part of the plan. Poor old Harry knows that if he goes out there
into the wilderness then he is going to be eaten by a bear,
clobbered by another pig, or much worse, in the first few moments
of that very short lived adventure. That said, he is feeling really
hungry and has been sitting on these steps for almost three hours
now. There’s a warm looking inn across the road, but the innkeeper
has already called him a freeloader and told him to get out until
he has some money to spend. Somehow it reminds him of his
mother.

He sees a player trudging his way from the
starting zone. The man has slightly better gear in comparison to
what Harry is wearing, which consists of absolutely nothing, and
seems well muscled.

"Can you help me? I've lost everything and I
just need a little bit help with one quest."

The player doesn't even stop to look at him.
He just keeps on trudging by, heading for the woods and the
violence that waits there.

Harry sighs and sits back down on the steps
again to continue his waiting. He's been sitting here for much too
long and he still has twenty one hours or more before the curse
that he’s afflicted with times out.

He looks up and the gauges slip into his
vision again. He’s spent the last three hours flipping through the
different tabs and seeing what they do. It's quite surprising how
easy things are to figure out once you take the time to actually
look over them. Harry is getting to be a bit of an expert at
checking his gold tab and it’s almost become a minutely obsession
given the boredom of waiting for help.

Another player comes into view. This one is
coming from the other direction and seems to be riding what looks
to be a small pony.

He comes to the edge of town and slips of his
ride. It is not much of a drop considering he is much taller than
the small beast and he stops to pat it before letting it wander off
to stand in front of the inn (almost like an auto parking car for
those that enjoy old world technology from back in the
mid-2000s.)

Harry notes the fineness of the man's clothes
and the quality of his weapons. He is hardly an expert in these
things, but this one looks more successful than the other people he
has seen making their way through this town. Much more.

"Excuse me. Can you help me with
something?"

The man looks over and then a small grin comes
onto his face. He has shifty eyes and a weaselly face that is well
hidden beneath a small pointed brown cap. He is not the sort of guy
that Harry would normally choose to ask for a favor, but business
is business and this game has some rather serious real world
implications waiting if Harry doesn’t make enough money to deal
with them.

"Which quest are you on?" the man asks
bluntly.

Harry points back into the blacksmiths and
explains the quest.

"A hammering competition? What's the
reward?"

Harry opens his quest book and flips through a
few pages. There are two
‘accepted quests’
in there: The
first one involved talking to a priest in the Abbey and the second
one is the unfinished
‘Save Sally’
quest from
before.

He pushes a button labeled
‘quest
requests
’ and the details of the one quest that Harry has
learned about appears: the ‘
Big Muscle Hammer Competition’
.
He turns the book around to show the man. The player doesn't seem
very impressed, but he also doesn't seem deterred
either.

"I'll help you with the quest, but you have to
give me 90% of the gold and we can talk about the weapon
later."

Harry stares hard at the man and thinks about
just how unlucky he is to find himself in need of asking for help
from the greediest player ever. However, he realizes he has no
choice and if he wants to stay in the game, even ten percent of the
gold is enough to keep him going for a little while
longer.

“
Alright. I’ll take that
deal.”

The man pulls out a piece of paper from his
front pocket and stares at it intently. Words form on the page and
a little box appears at the bottom with
‘Do you accept? Yes or
no?’

It’s one of the typical contracts that people
sign on the outside. A few thoughts and a run through a legal
dictionary and away you go, instant contract – binding inside the
VR world and without.

Harry looks it over and finds the terms
exactly as stated. He clicks
yes
and a copy immediately
appears in the air. He plucks it from its position in front of him
and focuses on his inventory. A small letter slot appears in the
air, as he has no pockets, and he slips it in. The slot disappears
and he checks to ensure the entry in his inventory has been created
just to make sure that it's there and then beckons to the man to
lead the way into the smith’s.

The NPC looks up with a big smile and begins
his usual speal about the quest he has on offer. Harry opens his
quest book and shares the quest with the other player.

The other man stands there staring at him for
a moment as if expecting something and Harry ends up asking,
"What?"

"Aren't you going to start a group? We need to
be linked before we can do this quest together."

This is just another thing that Harry hasn't
learnt yet and he feels almost ashamed that he doesn't know
something so simple and obviously important.

He looks up at the buttons above and flips
through the menus. There is one under
Groups
that has the
word
invite
flashing at him. He mentally focuses on it and a
small window opens.

"Shady Thief?" Harry asks, seeing the man's
name, "Isn't that a bit direct?"

"Well, my class is thief-assassin and so it
sort of suitable, don’t you think?"

"Oh, class? What exactly does
class
mean?"

The man rolls his eyes and puts his hand
up.

"If you don't know, I'm not telling. You have
to learn these things the hard way like everybody else. Now, if you
wouldn’t mind, shall we get on with this quest? I have other things
I need to do."

Harry looks at him angrily, but swallows his
feelings. He walks over to the anvil and waits. A long piece of
metal appears in front of him and Shady Thief goes over to pick up
a large hammer sitting by the forge. Harry copies and a small timer
clicks down in front of him. There is the sound of a lightning bolt
in the room and Harry jumps as the timer starts at 20 seconds and
ticks down.

"Get hitting," Shady Thief says, whacking his
hammer down on the steel.

The small room is filled with the sounds of
hammers clanging on metal. The place stinks of smoke and slow
burning steel and is roasting hot. Harry finds himself sweating in
seconds and he has to envy Shady, who seems to have almost
superhuman speed and power. Harry, himself, feels like he’s lifting
a 50kg hammer and slamming it down on a piece of super hard steel.
It's pretty much what's going on, but Shady makes it look like it's
much easier than it is. He is barely sweating and doesn't even seem
to notice the smell.

Harry glances back to the two smiths working
at full speed on their metal. There beating it like pros, but they
also seem to be under the same restrictions as Harry is
physically.

There's another clap of lightning and then
both pieces of steel teleport over to a table in the corner. The
smith’s go over and stare down at their handiwork proudly. There’s
is straight and narrow and could well be a sword blade. Harry and
Shady’s, on the other hand, is a wrecked mess of what could have
once been a nice piece of steel. It’s flat and looks like someone
very large has taken to it with a Blaster Hammer (
“Two seconds
to flat or your money back”
™). It doesn't look very good, but a
little floating smiley face appears over top of their ruined
metal.

The smiths look disappointed and one of them
picks up the steel to slam it down on the floor angrily. They go
back over to their forge and start whacking away. Harry notes that
the one who offered them the quest has a slight reddish look in his
eyes and Shady seems to notice too. They both head outside and jog
down to the edge of the town to slip behind a building. Harry looks
around the corner and sees the smiths standing at their doorway
with their big hammers in their hands. It is clear that they wish
to do violence, but Harry feels somewhat sure that they've got
away.

"So, you had better give me that sword
now."

Harry looks back and sees Shady with his arms
crossed and one hand close to a long knife that has somehow
suddenly appeared at his side.

"What are you talking about?" Harry says.
"What sword?”

A window opens showing the reward from the
quest. The sword in Harry’s inventory looks pretty nice and there
are some things bobbing around in his brain when he looks at it
that seem to scream
magic
and
expensive.

“
Me giving you that is not in our
contract."

Shady gives him a small grin and then brings
the contract out. He points to the very bottom of it and Harry
leans in close.

"What am I supposed to be seeing
here?"

"Look a little closer," Shady Thief
says.

He makes a sliding motion on the back of the
piece of paper and the text becomes much larger. It becomes
apparent that there is a small piece of writing at the bottom of
the contract that cannot be easily read unless inspected at
1,000,000% zoom.

"I either forfeit my 10% or give up the sword?
What sort of shady deal is that?"

The thief grins at him and puts out his hand.
Harry has two choices and one of them involves losing the coin that
will keep him alive. If he gives it up for the sword, he would be
taking a big risk. Harry knows that he has no idea how to use a
sword anyway. It’s not a hard choice to make.

"Alright, you win."

He opens a trade window and places the sword
in it. Shady immediately accepts and gives him a wicked
grin.

"You’ve got a lot to learn about testing
games, my friend. This is hardly the worst that can happen to you,”
he says. “Trust me on that."

Harry doesn't smiled back and wanders away
down the lane. He hears Shady Thief trotting off on his small pony
and grimaces. So far his first day testing this game has been
rather unpleasant and, given that it's his first time, if he didn't
have such a pressing problem back home that desperately required
cash then he wouldn't be here any longer than this
experience.

I guess I'm trapped here,
he thinks as
he stumbles into the small inn that he discovered
earlier.

He stops in front of the innkeeper and pays
the NPC the five copper she asks for, so he can slip into the one
and only room to lie down on the uncomfortable tiny bed. The room
is closet sized and extremely
intimate
(in a bad way). There
are no windows and it’s like being locked in a coffin. Somehow that
is not so different from Harry's life right now.

*****

Twenty-one hours later, Harry finds himself
back out at the farm, standing in front of the farmer. He has just
asked a very good question and is receiving an excellent
answer.

"So if you go just to the east of the farm,
you'll find the pigs are much easier to kill and have an excellent
drop rate of the flesh you require."

Harry lets out a cry of happiness and grabs
the man by both shoulders. The farmer gives him an angry look and
he immediately lets go.

"There is also a
special
quest
available at the moment, if you are interested, kind friend. I have
a bounty out on the
player
that destroyed my fence. I'm
paying three gold."

Harry starts to look uncomfortable. Three gold
is a lot of money for him and, considering he is the one who broke
the fence, it's quite possible that others have heard of the bounty
and are hunting him right now.