Chapter Thirty-Seven
The first person Alex saw after she returned to Gamemakers Hall was Martina, who was sitting in the arcade room reading a book. She set the book into her lap when she saw Alex.
"Hey, I thought you quit," said Martina.
"I thought I did too, but here I am." Alex glanced around the room. "Where's Bucket?"
Martina's shoulders deflated. "I don't know. He was supposed to meet me here a few days ago. He was really close to level eighty a month ago. I'm not sure why he's not out yet."
"I'm sure he'll be out soon," said Alex.
Martina touched her chin. "I hope."
After throwing her gear onto her bed, Alex returned to the room with the giant obsidian cube. She found a comfy spot and took a big breath.
There was a non-zero chance that the game wouldn't let her in. Either because Professor Marzio had blocked her access after she quit, or that deleveling to zero was considered permanent failure. Of the first, she assumed that Marzio couldn't be bothered to do anything for his students, so it was doubtful he'd blocked her. The second she would learn in a moment.
"Come on, no bees," said Alex as she touched the cool black surface and let the faez flood into her mind.
The world went black for longer than Alex thought it should, and she worried that being level zero had trapped her in a nebulous place between the game and the real world, but then she appeared in the high grass beneath the blood lemon tree.
The droopy awkward-limbed tree had three fruits. Sunlight drifted through the canopy, illuminating motes hanging in the air. A breeze rustled the multihued leaves, bringing with it the smells of life, while a blade of grass tickled her nose until she knocked it away.
Despite the struggle and pain she'd experienced in Gamemakers Online, she felt a real connection to the world inside the game.
"Now for the moment of truth," said Alex, bringing up her character sheet.
If her skills had atrophied with her deleveling, then she wasn't sure she had a chance at redemption, but if they'd stayed the same, she had a chance, however small.
Character: Alexandria Duke
Level: 0
Strength: 1
Intelligence: 1 (6)
Cunning: 1 (23)
Agility: 1 (2)
Endurance: 1 (3)
Charisma: 1
Class: (Arcane Mastermind)
Subclass: Undecided
Health: 10/10
Faez: 16/16
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Armor Class: 0
Fatigue: 0%
E*xp: 0 / 1
Skills:
Analyze: 35
One-handed Slashing: 1
Fire Spells: 2
Devious Device: 8
Sense Direction: 33
One-handed Whip: 11
Water Spells: 9
Cooking: 13
Stealth: 8
Climbing: 8
Air Spells: 32
Unique Skills:
Cunning Strategist: 6
Mastermind: 3
Spells:
Dewdrop Orb: 7
Minor Creation: 8
Transference: 24
Cloud Taunt: 38
Misdirection: 9
Wind Gust: 18
Heal Minions: 13
"Interesting," she said, noting that her skills had stayed the same despite the deleveling. That weird error had showed up again, but it disappeared after a second glance. Her stats had a secondary number, showing what she'd been before she lost the level. Alex pulled up a spell to see if those had changed too.
Cloud Taunt – Tier 4
Faez: 25 ? Duration: 1 minute
Dmg: 3-6 (Repeat Shock Damage every 15 seconds)
Effect: Enrages the creature to attack you.
"That proves the level as well as the skill level affects the damage. Not that that's worth a hill of beans," said Alex. "If I didn't have to reach level twenty in a month, this wouldn't be so bad."
She checked her gear next, finding the armor completely destroyed, but her weapons and Handysack intact. It was a setback, but not entirely unexpected. Mostly, she'd worried that her whip had been destroyed, but that was for aesthetic reasons rather than in-game strategy. At level zero, she wasn't going to be winning any one-on-one battles.
Before she reached her camp, a darting movement from above sent her into a defensive stance. The aerial nature suggested a return of the bees, but when she spied two brown shapes zipping towards her with fluttering wing movements, she cried out with joy.
The two fuzzy minions threw themselves in her arms, nuzzling against her shoulder, making clacking noises that she interpreted as happiness.
"Inky! Pinky!"
The former bloats looked more bat-like than ever.
"Where's Clyde?"
Alex received a mental image of the terrorbees descending on a camp in the Warsong Plain where they'd gone to hide. They'd killed Clyde before the terrorbees had been slaughtered in turn by the denizens of the camp.
"Oh, thank Merlin," said Alex. "I really hoped I wasn't going to have to deal with them."
Inky and Pinky sent double black cherry in agreement.
Before she could even wonder, a tiny squeak announced Axo's arrival. The brown shrew sat on the log, cleaning its paws.
"Hey Axo, sorry I've been gone so long. I hope you've managed without me," she said.
Before Alex could say anything else, the shrew bounded away, returning moments later with a pair of worms hanging out of its mouth. Axo dropped them at her feet and looked up at her with sad eyes.
A sense of orange-lime came from her minions, which she interpreted as laughter.
"That's very nice of you, Axo, but I'm full," she said.
The shrew grabbed the worms and disappeared back into the grasses. Alex hoped she hadn't hurt the little critter's feelings.
"Okay, let's take stock of our supplies. We have two adorable minions, a kick-ass whip, a bunch of spells I don't have the faez to use, a cooking pot, too many chimeric stones that I don't know what to do with, an Acceleration Bar, and my big brain."
Alex let out a little maniacal laugh. Whenever she took on an impossible challenge, there was an excitement that buoyed her above the inevitable despair. Solving a problem that no one else had before was like getting to be an explorer of a new land or the inventor of a new technology.
The strange thing was that the more impossible, the more her mind expanded to match the challenge. Simple problems generated simple answers, but when the issue grew so large that the mind couldn't quite comprehend, it created a joyful tension.
For the next day, Alex wandered around the eastern part of the Warped Forest, searching for inspiration in the landscape and her character sheet. How could she gain a ton of experience quickly without using a single spell? The tactics she'd used before were impossible without a pool of faez large enough, and given that she only had five hit points, she could die from running into a bramble bush.
Alex stood on the cliff, looking across the chasm at the Warsong Plain, musing how she might get across for the quest experience. 5,000 XP would get her back to level 1 and a quarter of the way to level 2, but she knew that was not the right direction.
Incremental progress wasn't going to work. She needed mountains of XP in a short time. Even if she could regain the levels she'd lost, she still needed time to figure out how to take on the Warped Mother.
"Anyway," said Alex, wandering away from the edge, "I'd probably just fall to my death if I tried to climb down with these skills."
Fall to my death.
The words hung in her mind like a big banner.
"Fall to my death," she said as a shiver passed through her. "That's the answer."
She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. Alex rushed back to camp, where her minions were waiting, sitting in their nests.
"Somebody needs to make a shitload of ropes."
