Chapter 9: Allegedly
Elijah’s stomach growled.
It was a strange feeling, being hungry in a game, but Sasha took his hand and led him to a food vendor.
“The devs programmed a lot of things into the game that most people wouldn’t even think of. Supposedly, they had some major issues back during the launch of people playing for months at a time and then forgetting that they need to eat once they were back in the real world. So they patched in hunger to fix that.”
She purchased two strange meat skewers. It looked roughly like a lizard, but smelled a lot like pork. He took one skewer from her and examined it.
[Item]
Lizard on a Stick
Description: A strange lizard-like vermin. Caught, skewered and cooked.
Effect: +50% Hunger
He looked at the creature on the stick and grimaced. “This says it’s ?vermin.”
“If you don’t want to eat it, that’s fine,” she huffed at him and tried to take it back from him, but he held it out of her reach. “It’s the best bang for your buck in this starter town.”
“No, no. Sorry, I didn’t mean to complain,” he told her, pushing her hand away with his free hand.
She huffed at him again and turned to continue walking along the rooftop. “Good, it’s not every day that a girl pays for the guy on a first date.”
Elijah stumbled and nearly dropped his food at her words. “A... a uhhh… date?”
She turned to face him with a big grin on her face and laughed. “Sure, we’re a guy and a girl hanging out. Why couldn’t it be a date?”
She stepped closer to him, her staff between them the only thing stopping their bodies from touching. He was blushing fiercely now. His mind raced to all the times he’d fantasized about getting to talk to Sasha Bjornsdotter. He never imagined she’d be asking him on a date.
His heart sank when she began laughing. Not a cruel laugh, Elijah could sense a bit of discomfort played off through humor. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to lead you on. That was cruel of me,” she told him, taking a few steps back. “I just meant as friends.”
He deflated slightly, but tried to keep his emotions out of his voice. “What? Oh no, I totally got what you meant.”
He tried to play it off, but it was obvious that he was flustered and frustrated. She was about to respond when a large man stepped between them, brandishing a wicked-looking scimitar at Elijah.
[Player]
Name: Roderick
Class: Guardian | Level: 27
“Why are you bothering this pretty young lady, punk?” He sneered, pushing Elijah back with a balled fist. Unbidden, his debug menu activated.
[DEBUG VIEW: RODERICK]
Roderick2267 {
Player_ID: 1287273851
Class: PLAYER
Respawn_Timer: 120s
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: PLAYER_LOOT_DEFAULT
Despawn_Trigger: TIMER
Faction_Tag: PLAYER_HERO, TANK_GUILD
XP_Multiplier: (Default_1.0)
Stats [
Level: 27 (8923 / 9730 XP)
Health: 445 / 445
Mana: 0 / 0
Strength: 23 (Beginner)
Intelligence: 1 (Beginner)
Dexterity: 18 (Apprentice)
Constitution: 89 (Master)
]
}
Force Logout?
1) Confirm
2) Cancel
He had purposely gone in and deactivated his ability to prevent it from popping up itself while in the crowded market. So why had it suddenly turned itself back on? And what was going on with Roderick’s stats?
“Well, punk? You going to say anything or keep standing there like a moron?” Roderick sneered, pushing him backwards again. Elijah could hear Sasha saying something, but Roderick paid her no mind. And Elijah was too focused on the new box that had popped up in his vision.
[Item]
Tank Master Gauntlets
Rank: Master
Damage Reduction: +67%
Condition: 50/100
Enchantments:
debug{
Strengthen[Legendary,STAT_STR_BUFF += 20
Stoic[Apprentice,DR_PERC += 20]
}
Things were making sense in Elijah’s mind, but he needed one more data point. So he did something stupid. He reached forward and smacked at the man’s sword. The tips of his fingers just barely grazed the edge of the blade as Roderick moved it into a striking position. He had tried to activate an attack, perhaps out of instinct. The system reacted, causing Roderick to stutter in place and reset back to a relaxed standing posture. Elijah had been right about PvP being disabled, and it interested him to see how the game handled attempts at it in safe zones.
Though it wasn’t as interesting as what Elijah saw in the third box he had called up.
[Item]
Wicked Scimitar
Rank: Journeyman
Damage: 25-35
Strength Requirement: 20+
Condition: 50/100
Enchantments:
debug{
Bane[Apprentice,PREFERRED_ENEMY,CLASS_SLIME]
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Bolstering[Legendary,STAT_CON_BUFF += 20]
}
A strength requirement. That was new.
“Just because you’re higher level doesn’t mean you have the right to be an asshole,” Sasha was screaming at him when Elijah finally tuned back into what was going on around him. Roderick didn’t seem impressed by her screaming and looked as if he was going to take the first opportunity to make some stupid comment. Sasha, for her part, sounded like she was about to work up to a tirade when Elijah finally spoke.
“Sasha? Why don’t you let me handle this?” Elijah said calmly. Both Sasha and Roderick looked over at him. Sasha backed away a step. He had the same face as when he’d figured out he could boost her ‘Turn Undead’ spell. Roderick, the poor sot, had no idea what Elijah was capable of.
“Oh, is the nerd finally going to speak? What makes you think you have anything to say that I should listen to?” he mocked.
Elijah smirked. “I was just going to say, that you have about ten seconds until my ability comes off of cooldown, then you’re going to regret being anywhere near me.”
“Pfft, you may have some fancy legendary class, but there ain’t nothing you can do to me.” The man retorted, turning to more fully face Elijah again.
“Three… Two… One…” Elijah held his fingers up and snapped them the same second he made his changes on his menu. The snap wasn’t necessary, but it added quite a bit of drama.
Elijah figured his ability likely wouldn’t let him affect any of the enchantments on this man’s equipment, not until he reached a higher level, but there was a stat that he could change rather simply.
Condition.
In the same moment that he snapped his fingers, he had set the gauntlet’s condition to 0. The Master tier equipment crumbled to dust before the sound of the snap had finished echoing.
With the removal of his gauntlets, Elijah knew that his strength stat would plummet to a measly three. Sure enough, the scimitar seemed too heavy to hold for Roderick, and it tumbled to the rooftop, landing tip down beneath the hard surface.
The stats made much more sense on the debug screen now.
He still had an insane constitution stat of sixty-nine, but with a strength of only three he would likely struggle to wield any weapons larger than a dagger, let alone a heavy shield. Not a very good look for a tank class.
“Why you little... I don’t know how you managed to do that, but I’ll get you for this!”
Elijah responded by holding his fingers in position to snap again and glaring dangerously at the man. “Run along now, or I may be tempted to reset your XP to zero along with all your stats.”
Roderick’s face was a mixture of both disbelief and fear. To Elijah’s relief, he didn’t call his bluff and quickly scurried off out of sight.
Sasha grabbed his hand and led him away from the scene of the confrontation. “What the hell was that, Elijah?” she hissed, looking to see if anyone had noticed them.
“I really can’t stand bullies.”
“The countdown, though? Since when does your ability have a cooldown?”
“It doesn’t, but I’m not a monster, Sasha. I wanted to give him the chance to consider what he was doing and back down.”
She stopped and looked him over. A smile crossed her face. “No, I suppose you aren’t. Anyway, I’m glad you stuck up for yourself; maybe this time will teach Roderick not to mess with the guys I hang out with.”
“This time?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I didn’t say anything of the sort. Nope, nope, not at all.” She started walking again, a jovial step in her stride. “He totally didn’t mess with me around Benjamin.”
“Wait, what could Benjamin do to someone like Roderick?”
“Allegedly, he only allegedly did anything. And he allegedly learned that a ‘Thunderclap’ spell can send a level 20-something guardian flying off the edge of a rooftop. Even in a safe zone.”
Elijah laughed, imagining the scrawny mage taking on the hulking man. “So you set me up! You knew ?Roderick would try his luck again.”
“Allegedly! Just like you only allegedly disintegrated his most valuable item.”
“You are a monster, Sasha!” He laughed as he hurried to catch back up with her.
She stopped a few paces later, and her eyes seemed to glaze over. She stood there for a solid minute while Elijah kept watch. For any dangers, obviously, he definitely wasn’t spending the time thinking about how beautiful she was.
Her eyes refocused, and Elijah had to pretend he had been keeping himself occupied looking over a nearby market stall. Her smirk told him she knew exactly what he had been staring at. “You’re paying for lunch next time.”
He tugged out his pockets, showing her they were empty. “With what money do you expect me to do that with?”
“The money you’re getting from the sale of that sword. I just got done talking to Alastor. He’s coming by right now to grab it. His guild is purchasing it from you for quite a nice sum.”
A Journeyman-tier sword with a Legendary-tier constitution buff was an expensive item. Add in Sasha’s promise to send Alastor over her view of what had happened for his stream, and it had netted Elijah a hefty sum.
One-hundred and fifty thousand gold was a solid amount in most cities of the game; here in a starter town like Nethy, it meant Elijah could live like a king. He didn’t care to, obviously, but it was nice to have options. Even after giving Sasha fifty-thousand, which she had tried to refuse, but he did so anyway, and buying up a large stack of enchanted gear, he still had over fifty-thousand gold. He planned on donating it to the party coffers, but would have to wait until Nicholas logged in for that.
He sat in his room in the party’s mansion, surrounded by the faint glow of enchantment. His eyes weren’t focused on that though; they focused on the menu screens that populated his vision.
[Level Up]
Class: Reality Warper has reached level 6!
~~~
[NOTICE]
You have 3 unallocated stat points.
~~~
[Level Up]
Skill: Reality Warp has reached level 6!
He’d found that giving items certain enchantments for the first time gave him a solid amount of experience. It differed for every item, even items of the same type, such as swords. It was as if each item resonated with a certain enchantment, and it was rarely ever the enchantment the item had started with.
“Boss done now?” Bitter Root huffed as he set a breastplate into the pile of correctly enchanted gear. He’d summoned his familiar to help so that he didn’t have to keep getting up to grab the next item.
“Yeah, we’re done for now,” he told the Goblin. “Thank you for your help.”
“No problem, boss. Me happy help. Keep me out of terror place. It horrible there.”
“Wait, what? You’re saying that when you’re unsummoned you go somewhere terrifying?” Elijah asked, horrified at the thought that he was sending this creature, even if he was just an AI construct, to some hellscape.
“Nah, me kidding boss. Me just go back home to cave.” Bitter Root laughed.
“Asshole.” Elijah whispered and cancelled the link to his summon causing him to vanish in a flash of mana. “Stats.”
He assigned his unallocated points and looked over his new sheet.
[CHARACTER STATS]
Name: Elijah
Class: Reality Warper
Level: 6 (388 / 512 XP)
Health: 50 / 50
Mana: 20 / 20
Strength: 5 (Beginner)
Intelligence: 4 (Beginner)
Dexterity: 8 (Beginner)
Constitution: 10 (Apprentice)
Skills:
- Reality Warp - 6
- Summon Familiar - 3
His friends were going to be jealous. He was now the highest-levelled player in the party, but he figured they’d get over that when he gifted them a huge jump in power via enchanted items.
His ‘Summon Familiar’ had also gone up; he hadn’t realized that his skill level was directly tied to Bitter Root’s level. He wondered how much havoc a level 100 goblin could wreak.
