[Initiating Player Review]
[Icarus – Level 19]
[Game/Class: The Godfeather – Heir of the Don]
[Beginning Report]
Icarus gasped and leaned against the brick wall, glitter pouring from a wound in his shoulder. With his fingers—cursed, feathered fingers—he grabbed the kebab protruding from the wound and yanked it out. Sparkles pulsed from the wound, even more than before, accompanied by falling numbers.
Behind him, the fracas of the ForkKnife and Immortal Kombat clash raged. Icarus gritted his teeth, a sensation that was still weird given that he also had a beak thanks to his Godfeather class. He applied a medkit to his wound, and his HP regenerated quickly. The glittering stopped, but the pain remained.
Icarus had nearly escaped. Radon had zapped most of the Players, including many of his fellow Godfeathers. The Godfeather game granted multiple attempts—multiple lives—so several of his fellow Players who’d gone down weren’t truly dead, but each death transported them back to the family’s headquarters in Seaboard City.
Even so, he was alone, underpowered compared to the two titans still duking it out, and had no real path to winning this conflict.
Icarus had to accept the reality: he had to cut his losses. Erik and Sync were gone, and he didn’t have the resources to follow them. That had been his last medkit, and he couldn’t risk getting killed—not unless it would actually achieve something.
Worst of all, Icarus would need to report his failure to the Godfeather himself. Again. If he didn’t resolve this debacle soon, he might lose his position as Heir of the Don. If he meant to achieve his goals, he needed to hold onto that.
“You lightning-brained buffoon!” Gordo Rameses bellowed.
Icarus had taken cover around a corner, but the sounds of battle had calmed, so he risked a look.
Gordo Rameses stood over Radon, who lay before him, a sour expression on his face, breathing heavily. One of his arms was bent at a horrific angle behind his back, mangled. Glitter from multiple wounds marred both of them, but Gordo appeared to have triumphed.
“Culinary school’s back in session.” The huge golden chef’s knife in Gordo Rameses’ hand gleamed and sparkled as he stalked closer to Radon. “And today, we’re gonna learn how to quarter an electric chicken.”
“I don’t—think so,” Radon grunted with evident pain.
A look of pure malevolence overtook Gordo Rameses’ face, but as he raised his knife for a final blow, lightning pooled in the hand of Radon’s mangled arm. Icarus’s eyes widened as the arm snapped back into place and whipped forward, hurling a maelstrom of electricity into Gordo’s exposed chest.
The God of Chefs tried to block the blow with his ankh staff, but the lightning completely overwhelmed his defenses. The impact sent Gordo rocketing toward Icarus’s position, and he skidded to a halt only a few feet away.
Gordo Rameses’ body sizzled, now charred and thoroughly covered with glitter. He no longer held his knife or his ankh, but to Icarus’s surprise, he wasn’t dead. Then again, he was a level-90 god-tier NPC.
Gordo Rameses turned his head toward Icarus and mustered enough strength for a smile. His teeth were still, somehow, impeccably white.
“Now… that’s how… you properly…” he winced, “…blacken your protein.”
Ever the opportunist, Icarus drew his revolver, pulled back the hammer, and fired a single round straight at Gordo Rameses’ head. The chef’s body burst into a glorious plume of sparkles and assorted kitchen utensils, all of which promptly faded until nothing of him remained.
Lucretia announced the result:
[Feud Resolved: ForkKnife has lost to Immortal Kombat.]
Then followed a sprinkling of very nice notifications:
| Status Attained: Godkiller |
| Reward: +$5,000 AllCash |
| +10,000 XP |
| Level Up x5 |
As the new bonuses flickered down Icarus’s HUD, a colorless light flashed in front of him, and Radon materialized where Gordo Rameses had just been.
Icarus stepped back and raised his revolver, but a lightning bolt zapped it from his hand, causing damage. He squawked and clutched at his feathery hand, which smoked and sparkled with glitter, and glared at Radon.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Go on,” Icarus said. “Do it.”
“You must first face your fears if you are to conquer them,” Radon said as if reciting pre-written dialogue. Then again, he was an NPC, so that was totally possible. “You, Icarus, are afraid you’re a fake, so you’ll rush into any fight just to prove you’re not. You’ll fight bravely enough, but foolishly... carelessly... and you’ll be beaten.”
Even though it was just random NPC dialogue, it struck a con-chord inside of Icarus. He’d never admit it, though.
“You don’t know anything. You don’t know me at all,” he protested. “What you don’t know could fill a book!”
“Oh, you,” Radon said dismissively. “You fear your own destiny. You already fled it once when you came here. It has brought you guilt for the death of your—”
“Stop! Enough!” Icarus snapped. “I don’t gotta stand here and listen to you. ‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation. Either whack me, or let me go.”
“My dominions are well known to me.” Radon lifted his chin. “There is no honor in killing one so… weak. Go now, before I change my mind.”
Icarus didn’t think twice. He slipped past Radon, who only turned his head to watch as Icarus headed toward the stadium exit.
Icarus’s direction was clear: get that class-stealing glitch who always seemed to slip from his grasp. If he had her WHIM, there was no telling what he could accomplish. As a bonus, Erik Shaw would get his comeuppance, too.
“I have looked into your soul,” Radon said, and Icarus paused at the doors. “The Great Tournament was too much responsibility. But vengeance… that’s so much simpler.”
Icarus pushed the door open and left all this nonsense behind him. He had bigger fish to filet.
But even so, Radon’s words lingered in Icarus’s mind.
And no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake them.
* * *
I found myself chuckling. “I really wanted to see Gordo fight Radon. And hopefully whoever won took out Icarus, too.”
“Now that I’m a Godfeather, I can see some of the game’s baseline info. Even if Icarus was killed, he gets a limited number of lives with that game, and since he attained the Heir of the Don class, he might get even more.” Sync sighed. “But yeah, that’s a mashup I never expected. It’s also very concerning, though.”
“For more than one reason, I’m sure,” I agreed, “but why exactly?”
“Did you notice how the game zones of the city had order and structure before I accessed the Data Point? The separate games interacted with each other like we designed them to, but on a sensible level. Every time I dig into the code within the AllVerse, it scrambles that working order badly. Then Lucretia targets us—me—as an offender. It’ll likely get worse as we acquire more Relics.”
I sighed. “It’s not like there’s another option. As much as I like being prepared, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it. Speaking of which, we need a plan for getting into the Godfeathers’ headquarters.” I narrowed my eyes. “Give me a bit and I can come up with something good. There’s gotta be a way to use your, uh, current feathered condition to our advantage.”
“There is,” Sync said. “I have a plan.”
“Well, I’m all ears.”
“And I’m all tentacles,” Silas said. “Plus a poison gland, an ink sac, lots of squishy bits, and a beak.”
“You can’t access the headquarters in any way without permission from the Players or NPCs in charge,” Sync said. “That’s how factions work, or are supposed to. So we’ll give them what they want, I slip in, see if I can collect my own bounty, and let them capture me. Then I can get you access.”
I winced. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“It’s the best option,” she countered. “It’s the only option. There’s no other way in. They don’t know yet that they can’t steal my WHIM, so I’ll act like I can surrender it. Once I’m inside, I can likely tweak things to our advantage and let you in, maybe before they realize what I’m doing. Then we find the Relic and escape. If I do this right, I’ll have another $15,000 AllCash when it’s all said and done, too. We’ll need that.”
“My dear,” Silas said, “while I have all confidence in you, it hinges on Erik’s sense of altruism. While he’s come a long way in character and reliability, he has much further to go. Still, your plan does have a certain genius to it… I wonder why more criminals don’t turn themselves in for the reward. It’s so obvious.”
I didn’t like the plan either, but for different reasons. A lot of them.
“It’s a terrible plan. Take it from someone who’s an expert in business negotiations. First of all, it’s tenuous and has no guarantees. We don’t even know what we’re looking for in a skyscraper full of Godfeathers, other than it’s some mystery item containing a piece of code. Worst of all, you could get—”
I stopped myself short. The words caught in my throat.
Sync tilted her head. “Could get what?”
I clenched my jaw and looked away. She was putting herself in a really bad spot and could get hurt or killed.
Weird. I wanted to throw her off a building before… still kinda do sometimes. But now…
The likelihood of her getting harmed bothered me, and to my surprise, it went beyond simply hurting my chances of getting out of the AllVerse. The same feeling I had when I’d learned about Brando’s son gnawed at me now, and I hated it.
What was happening to me in here?
I huffed the thoughts away and refocused on the conversation. “You don’t know for sure if you can collect your own bounty, and if we mess up, there goes my—our ticket outta here. Besides, they seem intent on taking me out, too. Let’s just give it some more thought, mmkay? This is so half-baked.”
“You want out? This is the way out. You never had a problem with me risking my life before, so why are you fighting me on this? Yes, it’s risky. But the fact remains: The Relic we need is in the Godfeathers’ stronghold, and finding those fragments and using them against Lucretia is the only way to get us out of here.
“We need to get into the Godfeathers’ stronghold at some point anyway, and sooner is better than later, before they get a chance to regroup. So let’s work with what we’ve got.” She held up her WHIM. “Once we’re in, I should be able to find the Relic.”
“I know I’m up for it!” Silas declared. “Those feathered goons attacked the Karjok. We taught them a hard lesson once, but I don’t think they’ve quite got the message: You mess with the ocean, you get the waves. Quite literally, I suppose, as that is how tides work. Hmm, you mess with the ocean you… get the salt! Get salty! No, not quite good enough… I’ll think of something better. Give me a moment.”
I rubbed my temples and groaned. “Once you start hacking, won’t that send the game into a giant mess that wants to kill us? Like every other time Lucretia catches on to what you’re doing?”
“Definitely, but she already knows and is probably prepared for us anyway. This is her world, not ours, and she’s in control, but she still has to follow certain rules, and those rules are the only thing keeping her from taking us out directly. That’s why she hasn’t just thrown meteors at us, or blown up a building we were in, or caused a cave-in to bury us back in the subway tunnels in SimpCity.
“We have a chance, even if it’s slim. I’m willing to do this, but only if you’re fully committed and on board. I’ll have to trust you, which is honestly one of the tougher parts of this for me,” Sync admitted. “But I told you right from the beginning: I’m not going to stop until I shut Lucretia down, free the people trapped here in the AllVerse, and end the danger. I have to. So… are you in?”
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break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.
In the desolate desert of the North American Sector, the government harvests the Soul Energy of siblings Eos and Maxima in secret.
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The answers they seek lie behind one word—!
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A grizzled ex-mech pilot is drawn back into the Everwar, a decades-long conflict raging across Jupiter’s moonscape.
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Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.
