Continue Online (Book 1, Memories) (42 page)

“
It’s
only illegal in some countries, America hasn’t banned it. Go
us!”

A
casual flip through showed a lot of random tidbits of information.
Skills of all sorts were outlined along with tips about navigating
the world. Quest ideas and conversational keywords were printed out
next to an entire section on dungeon handling. Oh look, tips on party
compositions.

“
This
is actually kind of useful.” Though Carver’s maps in his
house were probably way more detailed than anything user made.
Especially something handed around like a bootleg from the seventies.

“
It’s
the other world's Bible.”

“
I
thought this game was meant to be extremely realistic though. Doesn’t
all this, what does this say, dungeon crystals, isn’t that
unrealistic?” There was an entire set of information on how
reaching the final level and boss had rewards.

“
It
is a game. The realism is how you interact with it, the way the world
changes as players do things. Look up the interface bonuses, or the
last guild wars event.”

“
Mh?”

“
Good
Lord. I’m going to kick you out if you keep blabbing about that
game.” Liz said. She was busy assaulting her steak and potatoes
with ever increasing force.

“
You
should play too, mom!” Beth shouted.

“
No
thanks, I have enough realism living in reality.” Her mother
responded.

“
Say
that after you do a backflip off a wall and high kick a man in the
face. Bet you’ve never done that.” My niece moved both
her hands with back and forth action punches.

Liz
actually laughed.
“
Got
close, kicked Edward in the balls, you remember that sleaze?”

“
I
have no idea what you saw in him.” Beth wrinkled her nose.

“
Well
you know, it wasn’t about his personality, it was about what he
had in between his…”

I
suddenly embedded every ounce of my attention into ruffling pages and
reading more information. Oh look, certain key NPCs could be
resurrected, but only under specific circumstances. Wide scale
battles with the blessing of certain Voices would help them resurrect
as well, or win arena tournaments. How neat was that? Some NPCs that
seemed impossible to kill were tied to legendary quest lines that
were still mostly theorized.

Politics
changed the landscape as players built up towns, invested gold, or
completed group events. The guild wars event my niece talked about
had completely removed one kingdom from the map and established two
towns at the base of a mountain range. According to the aftermath
notes the mountains in question were higher level. I cut in between
my family’s commentary of their latest boy troubles with a very
important question.

“
There
aren’t levels are there?”

“
For
players? Not really. It’s a matter of skills coming together
and those build up your stats. That’s in the book. Then those
skills combine to a theoretical evaluation of what you can do, called
Paths.”

“
This
guy’s note says he’s a Rank One, Tank Path?”

“B
asic
meat shield, there’s branches into the other classic titles and
roles, Paladin, Knight, Sentinel, they’re all about what you’d
expect. Damage dealers and craftsman have their own rankings.”

Beth
was going back for a second helping while chattering away. My sister
was busy miming words to her food while shaking her head back and
forth.

“
That’s
neat.”

“
My
best is Rank fifteen, All-Star, of the Caster Path.” Beth was
excitedly sharing around a mouthful of food. Table manners had never
been a big thing to Liz, and clearly her daughter inherited the same
mentality.

“
And
that is…”

“
Balanced
mage, I completed a few awesome quests, soloed a boss or two and got
the All-Star title. I like the flashy effects. Whoosh! Fireball!”
She pantomimed using both hands to cast something away from her.

“
Aren’t
you the pro.”

“
Uh
huh!” My niece flashed a smile and bobbed her head.

The
information in here was intense. More page flipping ensued. It looked
like people had donated walls of notes and hand written scribbles.
This wasn’t anything like a printed document or online guide.
It felt practically grade school.

“
Why
do the ranks go up instead of down?”

“
Then
people would fight for number one, not that they don’t.”

“
Boys.”
I feigned all the female exhaustion available to me. My sister had
uttered this very tone more than once over the years.

“
Nah,
the highest Warrior Path is actually a girl, I think, she was a few
months ago anyway. I met her during Rosemarie’s Siege. That
woman held back a dragon that was so big…”

“
Really?”
Old Man Carver was a
[Dragon
Slayer]
so
part of me was professionally interested. A woman playing a tank type
character and holding one back was very neat sounding.

“
Yeah.
We got the spell caster controlling the dragon while she held it
back.”

“
All
this shop talk is boring me.” Liz got up with a clank of dishes
and went to their newfangled dish washer. Similar to the tried and
true from twenty years ago, but it sorted dishes on its own, rinsed
those pesky dirty ones twice, soaked some items and all around did
wonders on crusty cheese. Mother still complained about cleaning.

“
Anyway,
Continue is meant to be more about living a life of adventure doing
things you can’t do here, not about being the best. There’s
too many people in the world to bother for number one. Most people
use the rankings to help with group quests.”

“
I’ve
seen quests.”

“
I’d
hope so. Just about anything can be construed as a quest. You’d
be a terrible gamer if you hadn’t gotten at least one.”

“
Oh
the one I’ve got is a doozey.” My head shook back and
forth slowly as my current mission details came to mind.

“
Can
I hear?”

“
Nope.”
How would anyone sane explain the quest I’d been given? Pose as
an NPC, guide new players, figure out a mystery connection to a
random woman, do one last adventure. Explain that convoluted
situation to my niece? Negative! “But maybe you can help me.
This quest has a few side goals.”

“
Oh,
totally worth doing. Unless it’s a trick one.” She said.

“
Trick
one?” I dug through the notes for anything on quest tips. There
was a little in there about what skills were useful in certain
situations. Social skills and NPC interact mattered as much as the
combat skills did. More than one piece of advice said to work on both
sides of the coin. Players who spent all their time in the woods
training were often terrible at finding out secret routes through
quests. Or so the notes said.

“
Yeah.
Some quests I guess have optional side routes, but there’s
like, layers, or secret resolutions. You ever read a book about this
stuff?”

“
No,”
I said.

“
Okay,
so some players have read a lot about virtual reality games, like,
generations ago there were tons of theories on how they’d pan
out, good fiction stuff right?”

I
nodded.

“
Yeah.
In these stories, the protagonist would get a difficult task, and
make progress only to find out the possible repercussions, and try to
do something like…” She faded out completely with a
blank look on her face.

“
Earth
to Beth.” I waved a hand in front of her face. Beth looked lost
in thought.

“
Okay.”
The call of earth finally grabbed my niece's attention. “Here’s
a real example from the Altheme Providences.” Hey, that was
vaguely near Old Man Carver's current location. “A few years
ago in-game, someone was trying to kill a princess. Only she’s
in another castle, and the one the players were protecting was a body
double.”

“
Sounds
like a bad movie plot.” The table we sat at was big enough for
four people. Neither one of us had moved much as Beth chattered away
and I asked questions.

“
Most
quests are, but high school wasn’t much better.”

“
You
still passed with good grades!”

“
Yes,
mom!” Beth shouted back.

“
Anyway,
they protected the double because hey, quest says so, someone points
out she’s not really the princess, yet killers keep coming.
Turns out she’s really a half-sister, which is why she can be a
body double. Players discovered this, wham, bam, kingdom gets flipped
upside down.”

“
Still
a bad movie plot.” I sighed and tried to scan over more notes.
There were some things in here about skills and how they linked
together. Apparently any weapon skill merged with a body-building
skill qualified the player as a Rank One Warrior Path.

“
It
gets worse, and this really happened to one of my friends!” She
slammed her hands down on the table in excitement.

“
The
trials and tribulations we must suffer.”

“
In
the end, it turned out that the first princess was trying to kill the
second princess to remove any possible conflict when the king passed.
She fails, territory splits into two, total civil war.”

“
Okay.”
The last of my potatoes were finally gone. “It’s still a
bad movie.”

“
Anyway,
about eight months later in-game and a ton of quests, the first
princess is killed in a big war. For real dead, corpse validated.”

“
Ouch.”
Liz was extra annoyed at our conversation by now and snatched my
empty plate away from the table.

“
Yep.
Super ouch. All of this was decided by mostly players too, their
quests and actions impacted everything for hundreds of miles.”
Beth eyed her mom and hastily shoveled a few more bites down.

“
That
is kind of neat.”

“
Yep!
And had the players doing this quest failed to protect the second
princess, the one who was a body double at first, this kingdom would
have stayed fine.” Her words were half a mumble around the
latest batch of food.