A New World (Gamer, Book 1) (2 page)

He walks back over to where his dagger is
stuck in the tree and pushes his foot into the bark, so he can yank
on the handle, twisting and turning to get it to come out. It takes
a good five minutes and when he gets back the pig is starting to
look a little transparent. He rushes over to it and tries stabbing
it with his weapon. It has no effect whatsoever and the beast
disappears without a trace.

Harry cries out in frustration and looks
around for another pig to take his anger out on. There is none
around and he is going to have to trudge into the forest if he
wants to find more.

He steps inside and notes someone standing
behind a tree.

Another player? Maybe I can ask for
help?

He walks over and looks around the tree. There
is a player completely dressed in black with only his eyes showing
through the black mask he is wearing. He is flicking a dagger in
his hand and watching the trees in front of him.

"Excuse me..."

The black dressed man spins the dagger around
and deftly positions it straight on Harry's jugular. It digs in a
little and Harry's life gauge starts to slowly sink down from its
now half full state to a point where very shortly it will be
absolutely nothing.

"Open a trade panel or die."

"Please don’t kill me.”

“
Do as I say and you’ll stay in
the land of the living.”

Harry stares at the man. It’s crazy but he’s
getting robbed in the game world.

“
Open a trade panel.”

The man forces the dagger in harder and makes
Harry’s life disappear at an even faster rate.

“
I don’t know what that is," Harry
admits.

The man draws the knife away and gives Harry
an annoyed look.

"Look up and concentrate on the button on the
far right hand side with the two people and a bag."

Harry does and a small double window opens
up.

"Okay. Now put all of your gold and gear on
that panel and push okay."

"I don’t want to..."

The man grabs Harry by the front of his cloth
tunic and drags him straight up to his face. He can feel the
hotness of the man's breath on his skin and it doesn't feel very
nice.

"Do it or die. It's your choice."

He groans and drags all of his gold over
before focusing on the items in a box labeled
inventory
to
the side.

"The dagger too."

Harry looks at him and starts to
shake.

"I didn’t receive it."

The thief rolls his eyes and starts to pat the
front of his head lightly with the palm of his hand.

"You're such a
newbie
. Look at your
inventory and then look at the
special items
category
."

Harry does and a screen appears. A small bag
comes into his focus and he stares at it for a moment. A thought
opens it and he finds out that he has somehow magically received
his two gold and crystal dagger.

"So that’s how it works," he
mumbles.

"Hurry up and put them in the trade window
before I stab you for being so stupid."

Harry does, regretfully, and then pushes
okay
. The thief grins and then drops two copper coins on the
ground.

"For your trouble."

He reaches down and picks them up. They
disappear in his hands.

"Now time for that other thing."

The thief steps forward and stabs him in the
guts. There's no blood, just a nasty cracking sound as flesh, bone,
and muscle yield to the strength of virtual steel. Harry gives the
man a wordless cry of loss, but it is already too late. He is
fading and the electric shock is already coming on.

*****

1 Copper Remaining…

The world slowly turns from blackness into
light. He looks around and groans when he sees where he
is.

"Welcome back, Gold Hunter! You have
successfully reached the starting zone! Enjoy your adventures and
go into the light!"

Harry gives the overly happy priest the finger
and walks out the door. There is a small courtyard outside and he
can see the farm in the distance.

"I seriously give up. This is not
funny."

He stomps his feet a few times and then
considers punching the front of the church. However, the sight of
the angry looking priest standing in the doorway with his eyes
glowing red in a way that is positively buggy stops him
mid-strike.

“
Maybe another time,” he mutters
as he skitters away.

Harry decides that getting killed in the
starting zone with only one copper to his name is not a good plan
and turns to jog towards the signpost that sits off the main
road.

When he gets there, he’s wheezing and feeling
as unfit as ever. His real body is lying in the Sleep Tech Economy
(a refurbished model that is at least 10 years older than it says),
which his mother brought him on his twentieth birthday. The white
tube-like device allows him to stay one month in the virtual world
for every day that passes in the real world. It's time that he
sorely needs with his problems back home and even three days seems
too long, knowing what waits back on the other side.

"This is seriously ridiculous."

Harry is 25 years old, of unknown employment
status, and loves cheap food (if the stim shots he sustains himself
on can be called ‘food’) and the occasional tube of intoxicants. He
is unfit and in serious need of medical insurance, but he can run
at least a few flights of stairs in real life, usually when
escaping after doing something very stupid.

What he is experiencing right now is about the
equivalent of a very fat man trying to run that very same flight of
stairs. It's not funny and it’s not pleasant. It seems to add to
the annoyance that has become the deal he's made with The Company
(The ones who run the game and are paying the testers to test
it.)

He looks at the sign for a minute, trying to
figure out what each of the words on it mean. To the north is
something called
Asabald
, to the south
The Lurks
, to
the east is
Starter’s Town
and the West is
The
Abbey
.

Harry decides on the town as it seems the
safest of options and starts to trudge down the road. When he gets
to the town, a small group of children run across his way and
disappear around the back of a large cottage. They aren’t human and
they barely notice him.

He stops and looks around the small town. It’s
made up of several buildings, one of them looks like a blacksmith
and the others to seem to be the houses of the NPCs that live
here.

Another player jogs through and stops to laugh
at Harry as he looks around trying to figure out what to do next.
Harry looks at him in annoyance and then asks, "What?"

The man covers a smile and points at Harry’s
body. Harry looks down and for the very first time realizes that
he's not wearing any clothing. All of his dangling bits are
revealed for all to see and it's anatomically correct enough to
make him wish he had taken his death instead of allowing himself to
be robbed like this.

The other player throws him a pair of shorts,
which land on the ground in front of him. Harry picks them up and
tries to put it on, but the shorts disappear before he can manage
it.

The other player starts laughing again and
Harry starts moving towards him with a no nonsense look in his
eyes. He’s bright red already and is clear not pleased.

The player points upwards and a series of
buttons appear at the top of Harry’s view. There is a bunch of
strange looking ones and the player squints and runs his fingers
along them until he stops near to one particular one.

"This is why I love newbies," the player says
before clapping Harry on the shoulder. "This is your inventory
button. It's how you put things on your body."

He slaps Harry on the back hard enough to send
him forward a bit and then strides off into town without another
word. Harry looks at him for a second and then quickly makes the
necessary changes. In no time at all, he is wearing a bright pink
pair of boxer shorts with hearts in all the wrong places. He is
quite certain on inspecting them that he looks much sillier than he
feels – which is quite silly by the way his stomach is knotting up
at the idea of someone actually seeing him like this.

He enters the town and starts looking into
buildings one by one. The people who live here are all dressed in
fantasy type outfits. They look like your regular village folk, but
some of them have a faintly different feel that Harry can't quite
understand, but knows is there.

He stops in front of the blacksmith and looks
up into the building. It is a large wooden place with the big stone
chimney and a wide open door. Smoke is pouring out from the top of
the doorframe and the chimney seems to be at full steam.

He walks inside and finds the room bright
enough to see everything in detail. There’s a roaring fire and two
men pound away at a long piece of steel that looks like it might be
some type of weapon.

The smith on the right has that strange feel
about him and Harry walks up to him to tap him on the
shoulder.

The man's eyes glow red as he turns his head
slowly and stares at Harry.

"Please don’t hurt me. I just want to ask a
question."

The smith twists around as if he is resisting
something deep down inside and looks at Harry for a little while
before smiling widely and going into overly happy NPC mode – much
like every other NPC Harry has talked to so far.

"Good sir! It is wonderful to meet a fine
strong lad like you on this fair day. We have a competition for
just the likes of you, but you will need a partner to enter and I
see you have none."

Harry looks at the man for a moment and
decides this is the best thing he’s heard since getting here. A
competition sounds like something easy and he really needs an easy
win or two to regain some of the confidence from being robbed and
left naked to walk through the forest.

"What kind of competition is it? And how much
gold does it pay?"

The NPC gets a strange look and then a
document materializes in front of Harry. He reaches out and flicks
through the first two pages, scanning as he reads and finds that
the competition is very simple.

All he needs to do is beat the smiths in a
hammering competition and he will receive a special item and a
mystery bag of gold.

Harry looks over the competition information
and then back at the smith.

"I'll be back. Neither of you go
anywhere."

The NPC turns back to his work without another
word. It doesn’t seem to care what Harry has to say and Harry
doesn't really care if it doesn’t.

He walks outside and sees a large powerful
looking woman with a long grey set of robes on and a powerful
looking crown on her head. She is standing at the edge of the town
staring at a tree.

Is that really a woman?
As he draws
nearer, he starts to note just how thick the lady is. She has silky
gold hair and painted lips, but the features are all wrong. It’s
like someone with poor eyesight drew a man and then tried to
superimpose an image of a woman over top. This one has
cross-dresser written all over them, but Harry is undeterred. He
needs the gold after all if he wants to buy himself a little more
survival time.

Harry smiles his most friendly smile and
strides in the direction of the other player.

I bet she's strong
, he thinks as he
comes within a meter of the muscular woman, who looks over at him
with a grimace on her face.

"Can you help me with a quest?"

The woman stares at him and then glances down
at his pink shorts.

"I'm sorry. Are you asking me for
help?"

Harry looks around.

"Who else would I be asking? There’s no one
else about."

The gray robed figure starts to burn with a
yellow gold aura. Her body seems to emanate power and Harry
instinctively realizes that he's in big trouble.

"You dare to ask me to help you with your
little quest? Do you know how busy we are?" the woman says with her
slightly nasal yet masculine voice.

"I was just..."

The woman grabs Harry's pink shorts, giving
them a yank and tearing them away.

"I am
GM Goldie Locks
and you in deep
trouble,
Gold Hunter
."

She reaches up into the air and the clouds
start to form together with electricity bursting between
them.

"For the crime of nudity in public, I will be
enforcing the strictest of punishments. Prepare to meet your
maker!

Harry screams and starts to run, but GM Goldie
Locks doesn't care about distance.

Electricity surges from the sky and slams down
on to Harry's head. He spins around a few times and then is coated
in a greenish light. His head is forced up by some strange force
and his life bar appears. It’s half gone and there’s a greenish
glow around it that makes him feel sick to his stomach for some
reason. That’s when a small message appears and ‘
Half of your
worldly monies has been deducted for misconduct’
is displayed
in front of him in red blood dripping letters. He has one coin
left. It’s all that stands between him and the end of the
game.