A New World (Gamer, Book 1) (6 page)

The woman grins at him and then taps the side
of her head.

"You can still use search in-game. You just
need to concentrate on which search engine you want to use and it
will appear in your vision,” she says. "Everything I just told you
is available on the internet if you know where to look and know the
right passwords.

Harry concentrates and the oldest search
engine of them all, Google, appears in the middle of his vision. He
looks at that search bar for a second and then shakes his head so
it disappears. There is obviously a lot about the game that he
needs to learn.

"So you know who I am and why I’m here, but
who are you? Just some thief looking for a free meal?"

She laughs and takes a puff of her
pipe.

"Most of the people who don’t know me call me
Killer Extreme, which is a name I took on a long time ago in my bad
old days. You can call me Axel."

"And why are you here, Axel? You don't seem
like the type that has gambling debts and nutcases knocking on your
door."

She passes Harry the pipe and he takes a puff
as he waits for her answer.

"I’m probably what you would describe as a
‘nutcase’ too. I represent a small population of around 1% who play
these sorts of games in their testing stage for the kick they give
us. For me this game is the ultimate adventure,” she says with a
look of excitement on her face. “Back in the real world, if I jump
out of my apartment’s window then the medical robots will just put
me back together. Here if things bug out, it’s instant death. I’m
on the edge of dying all the time and that floats my
boat.”

“
You should have picked Daredevil
for your game name.”

Axel smiles.

“
I’ve been Killer Extreme for too
long now. I don’t think I could go back to living a real world
life, if such a life even really exists anymore.

Real life.
The world of 2222 isn’t
pretty, perhaps the world never was, almost no one leaves their
houses. Everything they need is a request away. There are huge
masses of bored or poor people, who can’t afford real world
experiences, which are often less pleasant than the Sensory Input
World one’s anyway. It’s a different life from what Harry learned
about in school: infinitely better and infinitely worse at the same
time. Axel and Harry are just a product of that; a world they lost
faith in; a world so boring that risking your life in a game for
fun or money is better than living in a world that isn’t very nice
anyway.

Harry gets up and looks around the forest to
try to get away from the thoughts that he tries very hard to hide
from. There are a few pigs nearby and he can see a small bear
wandering through the woods in the distance. He is pretty sure that
he is not going to be able to get back to town without some
help.

"Are you going back to town?"

“
Not really. Do you want some
help?”

“
That would be very generous of
you.”

“
Generous? It’ll cost you one
silver.”

He looks back at her and then jerks his thumb
at the farm in the distance.

"The farmer nearly killed us because you were
eating his sandwich. Don’t you think you owe me for that
one?”

She stands up and strolls over to him,
stopping to run her finger down his chest to the belly
button.

"You've got balls, I can see that,” she says,
making Harry blush, “but it will still cost you a
silver."

Harry sighs and then pops one out of the air
to throw to her. She catches it and then begins walking in a
direction just off from where the farm is.

About half way to the town by the small map
that Harry which Axel shows him how to summon, they are attacked by
a large black bear that charges out of the woods at
them.

Harry starts to run, but Axel stands firm as
it charges towards her. She pulls off her bow and casually drawers
out an arrow to nock and fire in one clean movement.

The arrow slams into big bear’s paw and its
stumbles off to the side slightly. It skips past Harry as it slips
by and another arrow takes it in its rear leg. After a few more
meters it falls to its side, unable to move with two legs gone, and
Axel walks over to fire an arrow straight into its
chest.

Harry watches as a small window opens in front
of her telling her that she has gained a very tiny amount of
experience points and a few gory bits of animal meat.

The bear puts out one final growl and then
lays its head down to the dirt. The woman bends down, drawing a
knife and begins cutting the creature's skin off. Harry looks away,
but it doesn't take long for him to look back curiously at what the
woman's doing. The bear’s skin comes away relatively easily and all
that remains underneath as she pulls it away is pixilated red that
could be flesh or a tomato, it’s hard to tell. It’s almost
comically pleasant for an act that would normally be very
messy.

She pulls away the fur and the creature slowly
disappears as Harry watches her pocket the entire fur without any
obvious signs that anything out of the ordinary has
happened.

"That's absolutely amazing. How did you learn
to do that so easily?"

The woman glances at him.

"You don’t know? I’m a hunter class with
leanings towards the combat skill tree. Skinning is one of the
things that I learned early on to finance the cost of the 1000 plus
arrows I go through each day.”

"Wow.
A class
. How do you get one of
those? Can you buy it with enough gold?"

"You don’t know about classes yet?"

The woman looks at him as if he is stupid
(which perhaps he is, depending on what she knows and what he
doesn’t.)

The woman concentrates hard on Harry and then
gives a little sigh.

"I see you didn’t choose one when the
opportunity was given," she says.

Harry copies how she looks at him and focuses
hard on her. Immediately little graphs and a series of numbers with
different abbreviations appear beside her. The display shows him
exactly what type of armor she is wearing and somehow he recognizes
the items, even though he's never seen them in his entire
life.

"When you begin the game, there's a quest
where you go to the abbey and talk to the priest. He asks you what
you want to be in the future and you tell him. He then assigns you
a class and you play that class until around level 20 where you can
pick a second specialization or change to another. I know that
sounds complicated, but what I'm trying to say is you have missed
your chance until level 20 and that is seriously not
good.”

"Why?" Harry asks.

The woman straps on her bow and checks her
arrows before continuing to walk.

"Those who don't choose a class are called
No Class
. It might seem obvious what that means, but the
implications are quite far reaching. Without a class you don't gain
the free stats bonuses and skills that other players get for
choosing a class to train in,” she explains as she walks. “Because
you didn't choose one in the beginning, you have 19 more levels
without any training or stats increase that you don’t achieve
yourself.

She stops and looks at him.

“
I’m sorry if this sounds harsh,
but you need to be really nuts or really good at gaming to choose
that choice. It’s like learning things from scratch for real in the
real world. Everything you gain is your own hard work – your own
skills, strength, speed, and so on. At the low levels that can be
hell. At the high levels more or less so depending on how good you
are. You've made a really bad decision in my opinion and I feel
really sorry for you."

Harry takes it all in, but it doesn't quite
make sense to him yet. Not picking a class doesn’t sound that bad,
but considering how skilled this woman is as a hunter class
choosing one does seem handy. Anyway, how bad could being a no
class be?

The woman seems to sense his question and
looks up to the sky for a moment.

"What you are going to experience is going to
be quite different from what others in the game experience. These
VR games insert memories and skills into our minds that are
connected to our game avatar and account. When I log in I will have
a huge variety of skills that I’ve gained during the game. You, on
the other hand, will actually have to learn the skills you need to
survive.”

She points to his legs.

“
It’s one of the reasons you're so
slow. You haven't learnt to run more perfectly than you know in the
real world; hence, it is harder with your low stats to keep up with
me. You also are significantly handicapped by your level’s general
weakness, which makes you much weaker than you are in real life.
That’s also going to be hard to fix as you must improve through
exercise and control. It’s going to take more time and that’s time
you don’t have with your problems outside of this game.”

She stops for a moment and looks Harry in the
eyes.

"The no classes I’ve known generally restart
the game and begin again once the novelty wears off.
However, we
are testers, Harry
. We can’t change out. You are stuck like
this.”

"I see what you are saying. I’ll have to fight
for every single piece of gold that I get during this game.
However, it’s too late. I don’t have a choice anymore.”

"Fair enough," Axel says. “At least you know
what you have ahead of you.”

They keep walking until the town eventually
comes into view. Harry stops at the edge with the woman and turns
to look back at the forest. The game has only just begun and he has
already made a huge mistake that might just end up sending him back
to the real world where the real monsters are waiting to collect
their money or throw him out of his apartments 3,000 story window.
He is not too inclined to dying and so he makes a decision. It is a
decision that is going to define his entire experience in the world
of
Avenger Flex II
.

Pig Killer Elite

Level 5, 4 Gold, 2 Silver, 9
Copper. 3 days since the birth of Sally.

The pig leaps through the air and Harry rolls
across the ground to avoid its attack. He brings around The Pig
Killer 2000, which is basically a very solid stick, and slams it
into the beast's knees. It rolls over, but its friend is ready and
charges in from the opposite side trying to catch Harry off
balance.

He comes around and smashes his hand out into
the pig’s snout, causing it to scream in pain. It's a surefire way
to slow the pigs down and the best move he has learned over the
three days that he's been fighting and living with the
pigs.

His health gauge dissipates slightly and his
hand aches from the strike. Yesterday, he saw a magic user working
the pigs for the Sally quest. The man fired off a beam of energy
and took out the pigs in seconds. Harry was envious, but the man
was nice enough when he asked him how he made that amazing blast of
light. Apparently, the magic users have their own starting area off
to the west. Harry thought he might like to make the trudge to
learn some of this magic, but he’s stuck here with the
pigs.

He smacks that stunned beast in the face again
and jumps over top of another charging at him, kicking it in the
side as he does. It slides out of the way as the final pig in the
pack attacks.

It leaps on top of him, pushing its tusks
towards his chest. He manages to tear the beast’s head to the side
slightly, enough for him to get a knee up into its groin. It falls
over to the side and he comes up and jabs the end of his Pig Killer
2000 into its throat before coming forward and slamming the front
of the hard piece of wood into the pig’s head again and
again.

He spins and notes that there is only one left
and it is tottering about in a pained fashion. He quickly puts it
out of its misery with a sharp strike to the ribs and the little
screen that indicates he has loot appears in front of him. He
quickly throws out anything he doesn't want, which is pretty much
most of what the pig’s drop and settles down to skin the
beasts.

This is an art that he has had to learn from
scratch and it has been rather unpleasant. Apparently, without
training, you get to see a few things that most people would rather
not see. Harry has seen enough pig insides now to be used to it
and, since the skill appeared in his skill tab, he hasn’t seen
anything but pixels, which is a welcome change.

Cutting as carefully as he can, he
concentrates on improving his precision, which seems to be the way
to get better skins.

He carefully wobbles his knife around the last
piece of hide and the final skin comes off. Skinning the others, he
ends up with two pieces that are too mangled to sell and one that
he might be able to sell to an NPC, who take anything most of the
time.

Someone claps loudly in the distance and he
glances back. Axel has kept in constant contact with him over the
last few days, giving little bits of advice here and there. It's
been a real help and probably one of the only reasons why Harry has
survived this long without being chucked out of the
game.