Chapter 10: A Village and a Level

Submachine guns were invented for trench warfare: spitting out tons of bullets in close quarters.  They’ve come a long ways since then but still don’t have the accuracy of a rifle.  Short barrels, rapid kickback.  Though, I suppose given Fred’s increase in strength, he could control the kickback better.  And he’d already demonstrated precise shooting.  Mainly I worried about him accidentally hitting the villagers if there was a hand-to-hand battle going on.  Mistakes happen, bullets ricochet.  And Fred seemed a little too eager.

I was tired, wishing for a bed – we probably all were – but dawn was well behind us when a cloud of thick, grey smoke wafted over the hills in the direction of the village.

“We must hurry!” said Lane, as he took off to run.

We broke into a jog, but just as we started a bell rang out, and all of us stopped.

THE SAOGHAL GAMEWORLD SERVICE HAS RETURNED.  BECAUSE OF THE INCONVENIENCE CAUSED, ENOUGH EXPERIENCE POINTS WILL BE GRANTED TO RAISE YOU TO THE MIDPOINT OF YOUR NEXT LEVEL.

Another bell sound.  I said to the voice out loud, “What does that mean?  What do you mean by ‘Gameworld’?”

No answer.

The world took on a rosy hue, faded to gold, and then returned to normal.  I suddenly felt refreshed, almost like I’d had a good sleep.  An ok nap, maybe.  A higher pitched bell sounded.

CONGRATULATIONS!  YOU ARE NOW A LEVEL 2 EXPLORER AND HAVE TWO POINTS TO SPEND.  OPEN YOUR STATS TO DO SO AT ANY TIME.

“Spend on what?  How do I open my stats?  Voice!  This really isn’t helpful!”

No answer.

The others had begun walking.  Except Lane, who paused, stared at the sky, and then rushed off toward his hometown.

“Guys!”  I shouted, “Let’s work through this later.  We have to get to that village!”

Fred patted his gun, and said, “Strength and stamina.”  A grin took over his face, “On it, Boss!”  As he turned and jogged off, Ave caught up to him, they looked at each other, talking.

I caught up to Bent, “Hey, what do you think the points are spent on?”

“Innate traits, skills, that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean?  Where do we see these?”

“I spent mine on intellect and mind.  Though maybe I should have gone with body.  So far, we’ve only encountered enemies that cause physical damage.”

I just stared at him.  “What are you talking about?”

“Hold up,” shouted Fred, fist up for us to stop.

I shook my head.  He should have just signaled, not shouted.

But then he shouted again, “Looks deserted.  Houses on fire.  Come!”  And ran off toward the village.

I rubbed my eyes.  “Bent, could you explain-”

He’d gone on ahead.  Fred and Ave, taking the lead, Lane nowhere in sight.  The farmhouse nearest the road, burning away, and the few next to it, more by the river, all on fire.  No one was attempting to put them out, no people around at all.  Chickens ran past us on the road, cows and sheep wandered by the river.

The bell rang out again:

SAVE THE VILLAGE QUEST: FAILED.  100 XP FOR YOUR ATTEMPT.  NEW QUEST!  RETRIBUTION.

I stopped.  That message implied the destruction of this village was our fault.  If we’d ignored the drop and continued on to the troglodyte encampment, we’d have protected the village.  “Marci,” I turned, but I somehow missed that she was with the rest of the group, ahead of me.  I wanted to run this by someone, hear their thoughts.

Because I kept coming up with disturbing thoughts.  If the voice was giving us quests, was it also giving the monsters quests?  Did it direct them to this village?

***

There’d been a fight.  Blood stains, no longer fresh, on the road here and there, near the houses, most of which were on fire.  In between the burning rubble, along the streets, bodies of the villagers.  Or, parts of them.  An arm hacked off here, a body missing its legs.  Tuffs of hair.

Half an hour later, we stood at the back of the village hall, the largest of the few remaining buildings left. 

“Lane,” I asked the villager, “you think they’re inside?”

He stared at the ground.  “Yeah.  They sleep in daytime.”

“And the rest of the villagers?”

He crossed his arms.  “Fled or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Inside.”

I shared a glance with Marci.  Hopefully they were still alive inside and hopefully, not being prepared as meals.  “Lane, you stay here.”  I raised my gun, “Two by two formation, Ave and Fred, you take point.  Dylan, Bent, follow.  Marci and I will bring up the rear.  Let’s go.”

Dylan pulled the door open, Fred and Ave entered, moving methodologically, guns up and ready.  We passed through the back room.  Dry goods, grains, salt, sugar, lining one side, cooking pots, dishes, cutlery the other.  Fred and Ave stood ready at the next door, just past the kitchen.  I nodded.

Ave opened it slowly, then gasped.  Fred looked at her, took hold of the door, opened further, enough for him to see inside, his body blocking the frame.  Went stiff.  Breathed out slowly.  Cocked his head.  Ave entered, Fred entered, gunfire, gunfire, gunfire.

Dylan threw the door open.

Four bodies, hanging upside down, entirely without skin.  I closed my eyes, turning away and feeling sick, but didn’t retch.  Someone was, though.  Dylan when I looked up.  Somehow the short bursts of gunfire faded into the background.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about Fred’s accuracy.

***

I didn’t have words.  Wondered if I was failing as a leader, staring at all the dead troglodytes lying around the room.  Fred and Ave had systematically executed each and every last one of them, some thirty of the creatures.

“We had lunch here,” I said to Marci.

A loud thunk as one of the flayed villagers was cut down.

“It’d probably be easier to raise this building than to bury each of the bodies.”

“Uh, I’ll . . . I’ll ask Lane.  It’s his village, their building.”

Another loud thunk.  Two more to go.

We still hadn’t let Lane in or even explained the situation.  Guess that was my job now.  I headed for the door but Bent caught my arm.

“Hey, we are off mission.  You know that, right?  We didn’t come here to help this one village out.”

“Yeah, I got that.”  I took a breath.  “It’s just . . . this is awful.  And I don’t know how to get back on mission.”

“Look, he’s going to ask you to find and protect the remaining villagers.  That’s how this quest line is going to go.”  He shook his head, “Well, a normal person would probably ask that, too.  But we’re in a game scenario, so you can expect that.”  He squeezed tighter, “We don’t have time for it.  We can’t fall deeper into the game.”

“Deeper?”

“Talk to him.  Explain what happened, but don’t take on any new quests.”

“Right.  Thanks, Bent.”  I looked back.  “The horror of it all.”

“Yeah.”

***

“It took the entire village a month to put up that building.  And we don’t have many left.  People or buildings.”

“There are a lot of bodies in there.”

“You said four villagers.”

“And some thirty or more trog-”

“I don’t care about them!  We’ll toss them into one of the burning buildings.”

A little girl who’d come out of hiding darted behind Lane’s legs.  Her face and dress were thoroughly covered in mud.  She must have been hiding from them under a house or something.  The poor girl.

Refocusing on Lane, I said, “That building has a lot of death in it.  I’m sorry, but we can’t stick around to clean it out.”

“We’ll make do.”

Dropping my gaze to the ground, I could understand his anger.  But we weren’t here for him.  We were here for the planet.  And the other planets that disappeared.  Our very way of life, if we didn’t want the entirety of humanity living their lives in some kind of twisted simulation.  I had to keep that foremost in mind.  “Alright.  We’ll help you get the bodies sorted, but then we have to get moving.”

“You mean to find the villagers who fled?”

I tried not to sigh, but breathed out anyways, “Lane, we have our own . . . quest that we have to get back to.  It’s important.”

“So are my people!”

“Yes, they are.  Look, use whatever money, uh, coin, comes from the troglodytes and hire yourself a real adventuring party or mercenaries.  I’m sorry, but we cannot stay here.”

“You agreed to help our village.”

“Our agreement wasn’t that broad.”

He raised his finger, pointing it at my chest, “If you leave us unprotected, all our lives are on you!”

“Look, why don’t you take Bent and Dylan and this little girl and see if there are any other survivors hiding about?  The rest of us will clear out the corpses.”

He scowled at me, but left.  The little girl gave me one look before trailing him.  My shoulders slumped a little.

***

“On three, ready?  One, two . . . three.”  With a grunt, Marci and I tossed the troglodyte into the flames.

“These guys are heavy!”

“For us, yeah.  Ave and Fred are making it look easy.”

“As if tossing bodies was an Olympic sport.  Well,” she half-smiled, “maybe with certain drinking games.”

I couldn’t help myself but laugh.  “Probably, probably a little too soon.  You think it’d be bad to stick around this village a while, help them get back on their feet?”

Marci brushed back her somehow not filthy hair, then met my gaze with her vibrant blue eyes, “I don’t know.  Truthfully, we don’t know where to go without Lane’s help.  If he wasn’t lying about the cave.”

“Which he probably was.  I just feel bad for these guys.”  Smoke wafted down the main street of the village, smelling too much like roasting pork.  I tried not to think about it

“I will need some time to scan the nanobots now that we’ve got the equipment for it.  Some downtime might be good.  Here is probably better than camping.  And we may need a home base.”

“A home base?  Yeah, maybe.  The thing Bent was worried about was, I don’t even know how to explain this, but developing the quest line.  Like, if we stay and help out, we’ll just get quest after quest here.”

She stopped, looked off into the distance, then focused her blue eyes on me, “I’m not sure that’s a real problem.  Wherever we go in this world, we’re likely to get some quest or other.  Might as well help out these people while we do it.  And, hey, wasn’t Bent all interested in leveling up before?”

“Yeah, he was.  I wonder what changed.”

“The problem will be if we get too into these quests.  If we make them our goal.  Because the game world definitely wants us to do that.”

“And the nanotech could be shaping our brains toward that goal.  I think, Marci, it’s shaping mine.  Back where, well, sorry, where Tak died, I could see the path the trog’s took.  It was so obvious to me where they’d walked, how fast, what direction.  I have never tracked even an animal prior to this planet.  Who needs tracking when your job is on a starship?”

“Mind is brain and the game is certainly changing our bodies.  I wonder how much time we have.  As us.  Before we, too, act like this is normal and believe in an imaginary past.”

“We have to give you that time, then, to analyze the nanobots.”  I gave her the most confident smile I could muster, but it certainly failed in the confidence part, “And it’s probably good to make friends, too.”

She put her hand on my arm, “Let’s stay for a couple days.  At least.  Better information will give us better choices.”

“True, true.  Maybe Lane’ll be happy we’re staying.  The rest of us can help out with the clean up.  I don’t even know how a village like this functions.”

“Good for your doctorate?”

“Yeah, probably.  I’ll, uh, take notes.  Help out with the chickens.”

“Now we have a plan.”