“That’s a mean black eye you’ve got there,” James said. “Hold still. Just gonna take a quick look.”
James examined Grey’s black eye. It still hurt, but the pain was dulled overtime. They were sitting on a bench at the far back of the school, hidden from the classes they probably should have been in already.
“So you told the teachers?” James asked.
Grey nodded.
“And nothing happened?”
Grey nodded.
“I don’t know what school you came from before, but you’re clearly not used to how things work here yet,” James took his hands off Grey’s face. “Teachers aren’t paid enough to care about victims around here. Then again, I heard the people who fought you weren’t in great condition either.”
Grey smirked. They were glad the self defence lessons from years ago had stuck in their mind.
“Can you still talk? What’s your name?”
“Grey,” they replied, their voice slightly hoarse. They knew better than to talk much while in shock.
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m James. Where did you move here from, Grey?”
“Iowa.”
James looked confused. “You don’t sound like you’re from…” his voice trailed off, he thought for a second, and then smiled vacantly. “No point asking questions now. Welcome to the club. Wanna be friends?”
Grey looked surprised. “I’ve…never had a friend before.”
“First time for everything, right? I’ll take you to meet Patrick and Amelia later. I think you’ll get on great.”
Grey, despite everything, smiled back. That was when everything changed for them.
Even back then, Grey had always been the only person in their friend group who could keep a decent sleep schedule. They wouldn’t have said they were physically fit, but they always made sure they weren’t tired, ate a balanced diet and got decent exercise. They hadn’t experienced insomnia a lot, but unfortunately for them, this was one of those nights.
They were turning everything that had happened between James and Oblivia over in their head. Even though James had thought the loud tavern had obscured their conversation, and Amelia had been drinking too heavily to care, Grey had hung on every word.
“Zombie dragon…” they muttered. They tried to remember what James had said had happened, and drew a blank. He was clearly too distressed to be making it up, but none of them could remember it at all, and there’s no way they’d forget. They tried to work through everything they remember happening after leaving the volcano, hoping they’d stumble into the right answer.
“We crash landed in the forest, we walked with Delarius, we fought that...giant chicken? I guess it was weird, but the game can do dumb stuff if it wants to. And then we were in the tavern…wait, when did we…?”
They racked their brains for when they left the forest, but they forgot. Had something else really happened like James thought? And then there was how James had acted when they left the barracks, like he’d heard a deafening noise. Could it be that James had really heard something they couldn’t?
They sighed, certain they were overthinking everything and just needed some sleep. Then something else popped into his head.
Listen to me. There are only five people in the history of this game who have figured out how to raise that stat by even one point. All of them did it after the base game, and none of them play the game anymore.
“What’s the point of a stat almost no one has raised?” Grey wondered. It might have been a mechanic that was scrapped and the devs kept it as an Easter egg, but something seemed off about it. It also made Grey worried for James' safety: even though Oblivia’s warning sounded like it came out of a creepypasta, they still didn’t want anything bad to befall James. They chuckled as they realised the irony of them wanting to be the one to protect James: all their life it had been the other way around.
“I wonder if there’s a way to look up Sable Online players…” They muttered to themselves.
“All Sable Online players have their stats displayed on SableOnline.ko/PlayerFinder!”
Grey nearly leapt out of their skin as they heard the voice of their digital assistant, who they'd named Barry. A bright blue digital smile illuminated the room which they’d deliberately made tastefully dark.
“I swear I switched you off,” they growled, punching the power button on the dull grey dome shape before collapsing back onto the bed. “But thanks anyway.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
They wrapped their HoloBracer around their wrist and slid the projector open, creating a holographic interface reminiscent of the smartphones that had recently become popular retro antiques, but large enough to cover their entire hand. They swiped in the air, typing in the URL and opening up the page, listing all of Sable Online’s currently active users. It had a fairly rudimentary search function, allowing you to specify players of a certain class or level, who had joined at a certain date, and who were currently playing the game. Unfortunately there was no way to search by stat, which would have made Grey’s job a whole lot easier. Out of interest, Grey searched up Amelia’s player name.
GlassAngel
Online
Level 4
Level 4 Saber
Joined 26th May 2048
Free to Play
Next to her stat line and basic info was her 3D model, suspended in free space away from the flat text and stuck in a basic t pose.
“Of course they’re still playing,” Grey muttered as they nonchalantly spun the model around. When they’d heard about Sable Online’s models taking an idealised version of the user and making it an avatar, they never thought it would work. Most VR games just had default avatars for the players to possess. Grey was shocked how much better it felt to inhabit a body that was closer to their own, and how well most of their friends’ forms were replicated. The hazy hard light projection of the HoloBracer didn’t capture how realistic Amelia had looked in game either.
After a few moments twirling the model, lost in thought, Grey realised they had gotten off track. They proceeded to look up Knight Oblivia.
KnightOblivia
Offline, last seen 1 hour ago
Level 60
Level 60 Saber
Joined 17th February 2045
Founder
“If she’s only level 60, that means she only has the first expansion and not the second,” they said to themselves, “even though she played the game on launch. She really must be focused on just PvP. I didn’t even know PvP on Sable Online was that popular.”
As they examined the cold, black steel of her lithe avatar a little, they noticed something about her stats that surprised him a little.
INT: 1
“So James isn’t the only one,” they sighed in relief. If James wasn’t the only one with this stat, then it was just a normal part of the game. What Oblivia said was likely just speculative nonsense, right?
Right?
Regardless, there was one last user Grey wanted to look up. He put SoulArmoury in the search engine, the name of the old man they met outside Haelshire.
Username not found.
Grey tilted their head. They were sure they wrote the username right. Maybe it was an i instead of a l for some reason?
Username not found.
“Well, that’s not good.”
Finally, Grey quickly searched up zombie dragons in Sable Online. The only thing that came up was an ultimate ability for the Necromancer class that summoned a Dracolich. There wasn’t any naturally occurring enemy that fitted James’ description, least of all one that showed up in the starting area. The more they examined everything that had happened on their last visit to Sable Online, the less everything made sense.
“You seem to be in severe distress,” Barry said again, startling Grey. “Do you need me to call them?”
“What? No! I’m not severely distressed, and that’s severely overkill! Stop asking that so often, just turn yourself off for once!” Grey said to it. It shut down immediately. They’d remember to unplug it at the wall next time.
Grey sighed, switched off their HoloBracer and tossed it aside. They had played this game for just over 6 hours, and in that time their best friend was ranting about zombie dragons who had the power to alter minds, one of the stats was completely useless and seemed to be a boolean, one of the users was trying to make them believe conspiracy theories about said stat, and they had met a user who didn’t exist. Grey pulled the sheets over them and put on a nightmask before declaring their thoughts on the matter.
“Fuck this game, man.”
James Stats: Level: 4 HP: 300/300 STR: 15 DEF: 15 DEX: 5 SPL: 15 INT: 1
Amelia Stats: Level: 4 HP: 200/200 STR: 25 DEF: 5 DEX: 10 SPL: 5 INT: 0
Gungnir Stats: Level: 5 HP: 100/100 STR: 30 DEF: 5 DEX: 10 SPL: 5 INT: 0
Lambda Stats: Level: 5 HP: 150/150 STR: 10 DEF: 5 DEX: 5 SPL: 15 INT: 0
