Origin ARS 5 (16 page)

Truth be told, the building was full of these
little noises. The hellions were used to minor noises and due to
the way the world worked, they were unaware that they had an
intruder in their midst.

The hellion sighed loudly then glanced at
another security feed. A glowing crystalline orb on the desk in
front of him shifted color as the image on screen changed to a
close-in view of the cafeteria. "Meat... So, hungry."

He was so embroiled with his desire to eat
sweet, sweet, meat that he did not notice the overhead grate slide
open then hang down ominously. He certainly did not notice it when
Scott slipped halfway out of the low ceiling. However, he did
notice it when two powerful arms snaked around his neck and
snatched his oversized ass up into the air slightly.

The hellion tried to scream. He beat at the
arms holding him in the air by his neck, but he could get no
leverage. His feet dangled uselessly just a few inches off the
ground.

Scott dropped the monster after a he held it
aloft for a full minute. He swiftly rolled out of the large opening
in the ceiling, an obvious security oversight that he had exploited
several times now, and landed on the floor with grace and
skill.

He wasted no time. Scott placed his palm
against the monster's forehead and began to concentrate. A soft
blue glow formed around his hand. Several seconds passed and the
air temperature began to drop drastically in the immediate area.
Soon the flesh of the monster's head began to take on a darker
color. Frost and then ice began to form along its face.

Scott sighed loudly after he spent the better
part of a minute directing elemental water in the form of ice to do
his bidding. He stomped downward with his booted foot and the
hellion's head shattered in a gruesome display.

He stood up then glanced at his palm. "Not
quite there, yet." It took too long to generate the icing effect.
It was not like the freeze spell that he had used on the casual
server. That particular spell had been his go to spell for much of
his early career as a sorcerer.

Ranged attack spells were particularly
difficult for him to create at the moment. However, he had learned
that he could create minor elemental effects if he created simple
touch-spells
. He called the power that he had just used,
[Grasp of Winter]
.

Scott set about looting the corpse of his
latest security office victim. He had taken out a few of the
hellions in this manner once he had discovered an easily accessible
entry into the building's ventilation system. Much like the overly
large air ducts in a typical videogame, the ducts in this building
were quite spacious.

He checked the security footage and counted
all of the remaining hellions. There were twelve of them scattered
throughout the building. Recently, Scott had begun to whittle down
their numbers in anticipation of his final push. He could feel that
he was close to the point where he would not be able to do much
more in this location. Before that happened, he wanted to get the
number of remaining monsters down to one or two.

Scott noticed that four of the monsters were
milling around in the employee lounge on the first floor. He
grinned. That was not unexpected as he normally found at least one
or two of them there.

Despite the tempting nature of so many
monsters packed together in a single room, he had other prey in
mind. He zoomed-in on the chief director's office on the third
floor. There was a single hellion, slightly larger than the rest,
sitting in the director's comfortable office chair.

Scott had slain the
boss
several times
now. He had developed a method of attack through trial and error
that nearly always worked. Each time the boss had died, the number
of hellions left had decreased by one. He suspected that whatever
hellion was next in line for the title got to be the boss since the
old one had died. Their memories of events were always reset if
Scott
died or returned to his safe room.

The main reason that he primarily focused on
killing the boss and the hellion in the security room was that they
both granted him something beyond a removal of monsters from his
quest. The security room hellion granted him access to the monitors
so that he would know the displayed location of the hellions. The
boss dropped better loot, mostly in coinage, but still it was a
chance at better loot!

From the moment that he had discovered his
current method of attack, he had exclusively killed only the
security room guard and the boss. He did occasionally farm the
other hellions for experience and things to analyze, but he only
killed those specific monsters.

Scott hopped back up into the ceiling then
moved quietly along his chosen route. He had to stop now and then
to wait for roaming hellions to continue walking away. They tended
to be more alert than the stationary ones. They
would
notice
creaking metal and other things.

He slipped out of the ducts then climbed the
stairs to the third floor, and entered a different set of ducts at
the top of the stairs. It was more efficient, as the other set of
ducts was like a labyrinth due to improbably placed grates and fans
that seemingly had no purpose other than to make his life
difficult. The ventilation shaft that he used now led up to the
ceiling and allowed him to take a straight route to the director's
room.

Once he arrived, Scott stretched out quietly
and listened for a while. The boss always started the same
conversation whenever he arrived. He was on the phone with the city
government, negotiating for the release of hostages that they did
not even have. He had been through every room in the place,
including the hidden basement sub-level. He had found nothing but
hellions to contend with. Though, the secret basement level
occasionally spawned a random useful crate. He typically looted it
for food and water after killing the boss.

Scott listened attentively to the
conversation as the hellion spoke about killing and eating one
hostage every hour till his demands were met. These guys were
disturbing on so many levels.

After the call ended, Scott listened for the
movement of heavy boots on the carpeted floor. The boss always did
the exact same thing after the phone call ended.

The hidden sorcerous assassin reached into
his bag and pulled out a smiling grenade. He quietly opened the
grate in front of him, and then casually tossed the grenade over
toward the Boss' location.

The hellion boss gazed impassively out of the
overly large glass window. He was fearless despite the possibility
of snipers, or perhaps too stupid to realize that standing in front
of a window is the best way to get shot by the police when you were
an armed hostage taker.

The sound of the grenade hitting the floor
nearby caused the hellion to look down. His eyes opened in
surprise. He had just enough time to exclaim, "Oh Shit!" and throw
his arms up before the smiling face on the grenade grew three
sizes.

The subsequent explosion rocked the area and
sent the boss hurtling through the glass window with tremendous
force. Scott immediately hopped out and ran over to the door to the
room. He locked it with the deadbolt then trotted over to the
destroyed window and looked down. On the ground three stories below
he could see the dead hellion artfully arrayed on the stone.

Scott doubted that the fall could have killed
the beast, but he accepted it all the same. It had the feeling of
an end-scene from a movie or action game. Every time that he'd done
this, he had said something different after the fact. This time was
no different. He nodded to the boss then said, "Applesauce.
Bitch."

The body on the ground shimmered then
disappeared. A moment later it faded into sight in the room once
more. Scott immediately began to loot the corpse. It would not be
long before the nearby hellions raced toward the room now that the
fight was over.

"Aha. Special loot get!" exclaimed Scott
happily before he pulled a shotgun out of a hidden holster on the
boss' hip. It was a short-barreled weapon, but it was clearly some
sort of shotgun. He also looted all of the boss' equipment and
discovered two silver coins and several dozen copper coins.

Rapid pounding noises came from the door just
as Scott finished looting the corpse. He glanced down to see what
underwear the boss wore this time. It was a disturbing habit, but
he blamed the system. Each time he had slain the boss, he had
noticed that the deceased former hellion leader had worn different
comically styled underwear. The first time he had worn boxer shorts
with cute little ducks on them. Another time, it had been women's
panties; exceptionally lacey women's panties. This time they were
tight white briefs with a Hello Kitty themed print.

"Seriously? That exists here?" That little
cat popped up everywhere. Wait, was she a cat? He was fairly
certain that he'd read somewhere that she was actually supposed to
be a little girl who lived in London.

The pounding on the door became more
insistent. Scott had heard it all before, of course. It did not
bother him much to know that there were several angry demonic ogres
on the other side of that single door who wanted to eat his sweet
meats. "Yeah, that's right. She's a little girl. A little
British
girl."

He glanced at the images of the little girl
emblazoned on the hellion's underwear then rubbed his chin. "I
didn't know that little British girls had cat whiskers, but hey,
everyone has their own special thing I suppose."

"You in there meat?! I smell you! Come out,
meat!" shouted the hellions.

Scott glanced at the door for a moment then
frowned. "So noisy."

He sighed lightly then moved over to the
ventilation system and returned to his personal inter-office
highway. Scott was long gone by the time the hellions broke into
the room and discovered what sort of things their former boss had
been into.

Scott stopped by the sub-basement to loot the
crate and discovered several pieces of fruit, a candy bar, and a
bottle of water. "Sugar it is!" exclaimed Scott before heading back
to his safe room.

It could easily be said that he had made this
place his home. He no longer feared leaving his safe room in the
slightest. If he died, it merely meant that he had screwed up. He
endeavored not to do that same thing again in the future.

Currently, he had a very simple and easy
method of clearing out all of the hellions. As long as he killed
only the security hellion and the boss, he would finish the quest
in another five rotations.

Scott sat on his cot and drank from his
bottle of water. Food and water had not been an issue since he had
discovered that crate in the basement. Before that, he had
subsisted off of candy bars and the sodas he had taken from the
drink machine on the far end of the first floor. He had died a few
times trying to get to that life-saving elixir.

When he died and respawned here he was no
longer hungry. If he went a long period of time between deaths he
became hungry like a normal person. The cot seemed to slow that
process a bit, but he did eventually have to eat and drink.

"I'm done here, aren't I?" he asked the empty
room after a while. Every skill that he could increase in this
place had risen to at least thirty. He had started to develop a
rather nasty headache recently, and he had more loot than he could
carry in his bag by a wide margin.

Scott sighed. "Yeah, I should finish this
soon." It had been a lovely place to train, but his skills were not
increasing at all, and he was certain that he had reached his level
caps for both combat and skill levels. All he could really do at
this point was farm items and coins. If he did that for too much
longer he might reach a point where his headache became so severe
that he would not even be able to open his eyes or move around.

He performed his customary analysis of his
items, an action that caused his headache to increase slightly in
severity, and then set out to repeat his previous hunting actions.
It was time to end this dungeon crawl. He had developed boss
killing in this dungeon to a science. It did not take long before
he had finished off the hellions.

After the last boss hellion had been blown
out the window by a happy grenade, Scott looted the corpse and
checked the underwear. The last boss had worn a bright yellow
panties with the word
Sassy Girl
emblazoned on the back. "I
don't even..." said Scott before he took a shuddering step back
from the terrible visual image. Afterward something surprising
occurred. The phone rang.

He glanced around the room for a moment then
shrugged and picked up the receiver. The crystalline spheres on
either end of the device lit up as a familiar voice spoke to him
across the line.

"So, seems you finally finished the
tutorial." said Mid.

"I suppose, so. What happens now?" he asked
with a smile. It was nice to hear a voice that did not sound
interested in eating his sweet meats. Though, with Mid one could
never tell.

"Head back to the safe room and follow the
instructions that you find in the box there." said Mid before the
line went dead. Scott replaced the fantasy phone back onto its
cradle and the glowing sphere at the center of the device
dimmed.

Scott meandered his way through the transit
authority building without concern. He had killed everything in the
place already.

After he returned to his safe room, he
glanced at the mirror then checked the little box for further
information. There was a new letter waiting for him inside, along
with ten silver coins and a small light blue colored crystal.

Scott pocketed the money and the crystal then
read the letter. It was a congratulatory message on completing the
tutorial.