I groaned, put the rickshaw in my inventory, and followed him through the damaged hull. The inside was lined with iridescent metal, giving the illusion of water. I searched for crates or boxes or anything else I could loot, to try to find any advantage, but the basement-dwellers had already plundered it.
“Didn’t you carry any weapons onboard?” I asked. “Any resources at all?”
“Military power isn’t exactly our area of expertise. Plus, this venture was diplomatic in nature. Bringing a bunch of weapons would send the wrong signal.”
The crew’s quarters had once been built to hold water, but it had fractured in the crash, leaving only sporadic puddles in the space. It made me wonder about Silas and his ability to function just fine, seemingly, without water.
If they don’t actually need water, then why did they bring it in the first place? I shook my head. Why am I looking for logic in an intellectual graveyard? Just finish the objective.
“No, no!” Silas quickly scaled the wall toward another area of the ship.
I activated the Suction Limbs feature of my boxers, which was pretty darn cool in practice, and a one-minute timer began to count down. I followed him to a circular room with a large dead terminal in the center. Silas hopped up on it and began looking through the various slots and electric ports.
“You know, the fact you had water on board probably didn’t help the circuitry.”
He glanced up at me, then shrugged. “And you saying rubbish like that after the fact doesn’t help much, either.”
By now I was beyond annoyed, so I again reminded myself he wasn’t real.
Then why am I low-key mad that we’re still stuck together?
As I folded my arms and leaned against the wall, my Suction Limbs ability deactivated, and a cooldown notification of one hour activated. An hour cooldown for one minute of ability seemed like a miserable trade, but it would probably get better as the boxers leveled up. If I kept using them, maybe they’d level up faster.
I sighed at Silas. “I’m waiting.”
“Oh, sod it! It’s not here!”
“What are you looking for?”
“The Starmap for the Nautilus!”
I rubbed my forehead with my hand-toes—my fingers. “And why is this my problem? I was just supposed to get you from A to B. Why do you need the Starmap?”
He thrust all eight of his tentacles into the air. “It’s not just about alpha to beta; that map was our only way home! The entire Karjok race is now stuck here without knowing our home planet’s location…”
“That’s stupid. How can you not remember where it is? You lived there.”
“Imagine I snatched you off this planet, flung you millions of light-years into an infinite void with no east, west, north, or south, until you crash-landed on a foreign world. Then I said, ‘yeah, just fly around. You’ll find it eventually.’ Do you think you would?”
He slumped on the terminal with a thousand-yard stare, his tentacles dangling limp and defeated. His ocean-teal eyes became glossy.
Over the last hour, I’d been reduced to my absolute lowest, only to somehow sink even lower and lower as time passed. I refused to lower that bar even further by feeling a shred of sympathy or anything resembling sadness at the sight of a sad NPC octopus.
“Now my people are scattered here, and trapped… and landbound. Neptune forbid!” He shook a tentacle at the sky, some of which we could actually see through the holes in the hull. “Haven’t we suffered enough? Sure, a lot of it was our own fault, I’ll grant you, but still? Why do your tsunamis break over us unendingly? Have we displeased you?”
I pinched my eyes shut while Silas continued his unending lament. I had to remind myself this wasn’t going to last forever. Soon I’d complete the mission, he’d be gone, I’d find a way out of here, and be back on top.
Wait… maybe Brando is here. He was gonna log in after me. I bet he’d know how to get out.
Silas huffed. “Well, enough of feeling sorry for myself. I gotta find Chancellor Hachem and Myrmidon Bingley. They’ll know what to do. What do you say, mate?”
I shook off my wandering thoughts, some of which had circled back to Sydney’s shapely posterior. “What do you mean, ‘what do I say?’ This was the job. I’m done. Give me the AllCash.”
“Look, gathering my people and finding a way home will be a lot harder than I originally thought. I have no idea where Chancellor Hachem and the rest of my people are. Probably scattered throughout the city or beyond.
“Now, you’ve got your own problems, I can tell. It’s painfully obvious, seeing how we met… and your general attitude toward everything. But what’s say we team up? You and me, working together to figure this out? Can’t say why, but I like the cut of your jib, even if you’re a bit of a sad sack sometimes.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
I narrowed my eyes as a prompt appeared in my interface:
| Recruit Silas as a companion |
| Accept? |
“Oh, you’re an NPC companion. That makes a lot more sense.” Complete with lots of boring backstory and side missions. A frivolous feature designed to give sad, lonely gamers a virtual friend.
It explained Silas’s robust dialogue and ever-unfolding side-quests. Most of my parents’ closest friends had been RPG companions with whom they’d developed unhealthy bonds, so the idea of letting one of them latch onto me didn’t sit well.
Do I really want this thing around me all the time?
I really had to think about that one. From a gaming perspective, though, it might actually make sense to keep him around.
He can heal and maybe do other things. He did bail me out of a bind, and he potentially saved my life more than once. If I’m gonna get outta here, I need every advantage I can get…
I had to fight a part of myself, a part of my history, to accept his offer, knowing it would bond him as my companion. I selected “Yes” before I changed my mind again.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Bloody brilliant, mate!” Silas hopped onto my shoulder, and the objective to help him explore the Nautilus was completed. It gave me XP, $10 AllCash, and logged Silas as my companion.
A pop-up with a Companion Tutorial obscured my vision with a rundown on how to gain affinity with companions, their perks and Skill Trees, and all that crap. I skimmed through until it closed.
My personal codex updated with ten gigabytes of Karjok lore. It wasn’t much overall, but still… great use of storage space.
A new objective appeared in my menu:
| Objective: Help Silas discover the whereabouts of Chancellor Hachem and Myrmidon Bingley |
| Location: Unknown |
| Time Limit: None |
It didn’t mark anything on my map, and since it was effectively a side-quest, I’d only pursue it while doing other missions. I had no intention of focusing on it enough to actually complete it. I’d find a way out of here long before then.
“Well, what’s next?” Silas asked.
“Get out there, do some level-grinding, don’t die, and figure out how to get out of the AllVerse,” I muttered. As much as I hated it, I recalled the tips and strategies my father had imparted when gaming.
“Too many people go for the easy rewards. Better to grind and save up, then buy over-leveled gear and dominate.”
If only he could’ve applied that sage wisdom to real life. Not that it mattered, anymore; we’d all endured the consequences of his abysmal real-life strategies. In the end, though, I’d managed to apply the concept in my real life, and it had made me a billionaire.
A billionaire stuck in his own creation, but a billionaire nonetheless.
A frightening thought hit me, and I froze near the damage-pocked inner hull of the Nautilus. What if… what if Dad is playing one of these games right now? What if he’s in here somewhere?
“So what if he is?” I muttered and hopped out onto the battered street.
Forget him.
“Come again, mate? You seemed lost in a flashback.”
“Doesn’t matter. Alright, let’s go back and look for fares.” Another thought occurred to me. “Hey, Silas, do you know anything about Players that can steal classes or abilities?”
If there were more Players like that blonde chick, I wanted to avoid them.
Silas rubbed his head with a tentacle. “Doesn’t crack any coral for me. Maybe ask one of your fares?”
I nodded and deployed the rickshaw, running through the warzone more confidently. With my useless-but-imposing rifle, black ballistic vest, stupid Octo-Boxers, and utility gloves, I probably looked like I’d raided a military surplus store that also sold swim trunks. But even with all my added gear, I could run a little faster thanks to the added point in speed.
A group of soldiers dressed in WWII gear stood near a blown-out tank. They flagged me down. The commander was an NPC, which seemed unusual given that the rest of the soldiers were Hall of Duty Players.
“You there!” one of them yelled in a generic drill-sergeant-with-a-southern-accent voice. “You for hire?”
“Well, if you need a ride, yes.”
A pop-up appeared with the mission to safely escort the soldiers to another battlefield. It paid 100 XP and $200 AllCash, so I accepted.
The soldiers hopped out of the tank and piled onto the rickshaw. Red words appeared in my vision, reading:
| WARNING: Weight limit exceeded. |
| -2 to Speed and Endurance. Rickshaw cannot jump. |
I sighed, but I started moving. Unlike before, I felt slower and fatigued while I ran.
Sometimes, the soldiers fired off the back of the rickshaw at threats we passed. It sort of made up for my diminished speed, but I doubted I was any safer as a result.
“Got a question for you,” I yelled over my shoulder.
“No fraternizing in combat zones!” the sergeant roared. “Tip of the spear, edge of the knife. Can’t afford such distractions, even if the driver is well-toned and strong as an ox.”
One of the Players scoffed. “It’s fine, dude. He doesn’t actually stop you from talking. He just rants. What’s up?”
“Have you heard of a class or a game where the Player can steal other classes?”
“No thieves in the Corps!” the sergeant barked. “In my day, we’d cut their hands off and make ’em carry water buckets with their bleeding nubs.”
“That’s… graphic,” Silas said. “You know, I saw signs for something called a ‘Counseling Simulator’ a few streets back. I think this guy should try it out. Preferably before he maims anyone else.”
“Haven’t heard of anything like that,” the Player answered. “No class can do that, to my knowledge. I think there’s something in the rules about it, too. Why?”
I started to breathe heavily from the exertion of pulling this thing. “Never… mind. Have any of you… died yet?”
“Not yet. Well, Mackn’Mee over here did, but he’s got three attempts from locking into Hall of Duty.”
Mackn’Mee huffed. “Hall of Duty is where it’s at. Don’t need to play that other nerd spit.”
The first Player narrowed his eyes. “Now that you mention it, some Players never come back. At least, not that I’ve seen.”
“And… have any of you… tried to quit?” I said between panting breaths.
“You should shut it and breathe,” Silas whispered in my ear. “Wheezing all over the place is a bad look for our business.”
Oh, so now it’s our business? I didn’t say it aloud, but I shook my head at the Karjok’s audacity.
Mackn’Mee laughed. “Bro, why would we quit? We all just got here after a year of waiting for this world to launch.”
I rolled my eyes. I should just stop asking that question. Every time someone answered, part of me died inside, even though it meant my bank account got fatter.
We finally neared the battlefield drop-off location on the edge of the Painbow Seven area, beyond which the idyllic version of Seaboard City rested. But as we drew in closer, my full attention snapped to the periphery of the area where an ashen-blonde Player was fighting some of the FPS Players.
She wore a familiar leather jacket, a wide-brimmed fedora, and held a whip in one hand and a revolver in the other.
That was my muscle-forging gear.
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break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.
