The Luckless: A MMORPG and LitRPG Online Adventure (Second Age of Retha Book 1) Read online

  It had to be Bryce. A prank of this caliber had his thumbprint all over it.

  As one of the community managers for EC, he would be one of the only people who had access to her profile. Most likely he made a note that convinced that scruffy game architect into signing her up for a Retha experience even though she had made it clear she wanted Sky’s End! Bryce was also the only person she knew who could have gotten one of his company buddies to register such an embarrassing character—because that’s what the elf dancer was, embarrassing.

  As Kit stomped along, the walk gave her time to glance over a little more of her character information. The pink hair was bad enough—although Bryce had at least made it an attractive, dusty-golden-pink, like champagne—but he had gone the extra mile to make her look as newb-like as possible, and had given her elf a black swirly tattoo—a trait that was meant to be limited to several tribes of magic-using humans—on her left cheekbone. He must have used her body scan as the base for the rest of the image, though, as her character sported her same dark eyes and eyebrows that arched a little too sarcastically for fashion, and a heart-shaped face. The extra height he had added, though, kept throwing her off.

  She scrunched her nose and checked her map again, taking a moment to glance back at the tiny village she had left behind. She had spawned just outside one of the starter villages, where EC corralled all players for their character’s first five levels.

  The villages had only the bare bones, as they were meant to be constantly repopulated by new players, not returning ones. So if Kit wanted to get out of this special torture Bryce had arranged for her, she needed to get to the nearest legal town. If she had been playing in a rented unit from the comfort of her apartment, she could have just logged off, but as she was in full submersion, she had to manually log off by visiting a village and talking to the right NPC—or non-player-character.

  “Killing Bryce would be too kind,” Kit decided as the breeze played with her gauzy skirt. “I’m going to systematically break his spirit.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief when she spotted her goal—Vippa, a small trading post town. “Almost free!”

  Her elf ears twitched, picking up rustling bushes. Kit slowed her ruthless march and peered suspiciously at a couple of leafy hedges that edged the road. As she slipped past them, they shook, and out popped a glob of something that looked like a soccer ball-sized gob of grape jelly—a monster called gelata.

  Kit jumped to the side, but the gelatinous creature rammed into her with a surprising amount of force given that it was basically a land jellyfish.

  Kit yipped and almost fell flat on her face, but she was able to correct her step at the last moment. It did nothing to save her health bar—the green bar indicating her health level that hovered near the top of her field of vision.

  The single hit from the gelata sliced a third of the green bar off. Kit’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Grumbling, she turned a spiteful eye at the gelata, which rolled toward her again. This time she was better prepared and jumped to the side to avoid it.

  Her evade bought her some time, and she quickly opened up her character panel, fumbling through her skills. “What starter skills do I have…nothing?” Kit stared in horror at the blank space that was her skill list. There were a few race skills and starter skills—like basic cooking—but no attack skills.

  The gelata made a suctioning noise as it adjusted itself for another pass.

  “But I at least must have a weapon…right?” Kit fumblingly exited out of her skill list, opened up her inventory, and flicked over to her weapons slot. “Nothing?! Not even a club?”

  Kit would have sworn with great vigor, but as Chronicles of Retha was marketed to all ages, swear words were immediately bleeped out. (Players who persisted in using them were eventually muted—unable to make a sound.)

  So instead, Kit had to get creative to sneak around the language-rule. “Crabcakes and quinoa—this is rubbish!”

  The gelata rolled toward Kit, who was grateful for the chance to vent some of her frustration as she stomped on the thing.

  It bulged like a water balloon, but ruthlessly advanced, grazing her leg with another stinging blow.

  Kit scrambled a few feet, retreating as her health bar dropped by another third. “This is pathetic. It’s so embarrassing I want to cry.” She crouched briefly, then jumped directly on top of the glob. She had to jump up and down several times to deliver enough damage for it to pop, then fade away.

  Kit brought up her character panel, screwing up her mouth into an ugly frown. She had gotten a few measly experience points from the gelata, but her low health was more concerning. “I don’t believe this. I’m level five; I have no weapons, no skills, and I can barely kill a Jell-o jiggler.”

  Kit had never been a big fan of elves—they stuck out too much and were always harping on about the stink of shadows—but she knew there were some serious advantages to the race. The same could not be said of the dancer class—at least not these days, evidently.

  EC offered a wide variety of character classes to choose from, but strictly speaking, they were divided up into five basic types: healers, melee fighters, tanks (who could soak up damage but dole little of it in return), magic fighters, and support classes.

  Dancers fell into the support class. They could increase their friends’ stats, trip up enemies, and more. Back when Kit had played the game, they were prized for conducting large-scale raids and completing dungeons, and she had loved the few dancers that were a part of her guild. But now most submersion games catered to small-group content rather than large-group content, making the dancer with its lack of damage or healing traits less useful when there were only a few slots to fill. (The change in content was one of the many reasons why Kit no longer played MMORPGs.) Moreover, dancers had an extremely low number of attack skills as their specialty was support. For a damage junkie like Kit, that was the worst.

  Kit twitched her skirt in irritation.

  The bushes rustled some more, and to Kit’s horror, five more rainbow-colored gelata rolled into the road. Kit stared at them. An air bubble popped on the surface of one of the gelata.

  “Nope!” Gripping her skirt, Kit sprinted toward the town of Vippa, the five gelata bouncing after her. If one gelata almost killed me, five will take me down in a second! She heard a sucking noise behind her, and groaned as a wad of jelly struck the back of her head, making her health drop a few points. “That’s not fair! How come they can throw things when I don’t even have a basic bludgeon skill?” One of the gelata almost caught up, and Kit forced herself to run faster.

  The colorful gelata lost interest in Kit when she was a stone’s throw from Vippa. Kit was tempted to throw a rock after the globs as they rolled off, but the last thing she wanted was to bring them back. She took a moment to collect herself and noticed that at least she wasn’t panting heavily like she usually did when playing Retha. Must be the elf stamina—it is a nice trait, she admitted grudgingly as she glided the last few feet into town.

  Vippa was a circular-shaped town corralled in by a rough wooden wall, but it burst with a wide variety of shops and colorful flags. The air was liberally spiced with the scent of hay, horses, and fried food. It was mostly filled with NPCs—shopkeepers, guards, and the like—but Vippa was a popular starting point for quests and raids as it was a short distance away from Luminos, the capital of Retha, so a fair number of players gathered in the streets as well.

  Kit had to walk the circle twice before she could remember where the Fibbit stall was.

  To “further the experience,” EC had created Fibbit Services, an in-game company that served all players’ more technical problems: from logging off full submersion players, to filing the necessary forms and paperwork to create guilds, and even providing teleportation gates to other cities.

  Vippa was small, so its Fibbit station was little more than a stall, and it had only two NPCs stationed behind it.

  Kit headed for it, weaving her way
between a huge crusader and a slender illusionist. She was close enough to the Fibbit stall to touch the counter when someone cleared their throat behind her.

  “Kitten Lovemuch?”

  Another wave of fury with Bryce—who had given her character the ridiculous name—washed over Kit as she spun around. “Yeah?”

  Two town guards narrowed their eyes as they studied her. One—an older guard with a thick mustache nodded. “It’s her. Take her out.”

  Kit scratched her head. “Um…what?”

  Mustache’s companion—a young man—unsheathed a short sword and stabbed Kit in the shoulder.

  Kit grit her teeth—it was quite painful until the attack dropped the last remaining bit of her health bar and made her collapse. “You as—” She didn’t have time to finish the curse word before her sight went fuzzy, then black, and she died.

  Kit snapped upright, respawning on the very hill she had first woken up on when logging in. “What the heck was that?” She furrowed her brow in concentration as she reviewed her memory. There was no way around it. Two NPC guards had killed her in broad daylight. “But guards only kill anyone affiliated with the Court of the Rogue…” she trailed off, deep in thought. “Display character panel.”

  Her character panel popped up. This time Kit flicked past the image of her character and instead activated the social panel. A list popped up, displaying Kit’s reputation and kinship levels with the various races of Retha, as well as the different factions.

  Her eyebrow twitched as she took in the stats. “BRYCE!”

  She was going to murder her cousin.

  It hadn’t been bad enough that he made her a stereotypical elf with the horrible class of dancer; instead, he had manipulated her character’s reputation level as well.

  Reputation was usually about gaining favor with specific races—although there were certain races that did not get along, like elves and dwarves—but it also involved social balance. For instance, it was incredibly difficult for a player to be allied with the Imperials—the good NPCs, like city guards—as well as the Court of the Rogue—assassins, smugglers and the like. (In fact, back when Kit had played Retha frequently, only a handful of players had ever managed the feat.)

  But Bryce hadn’t positively manipulated her reputation level, oh no.

  He had made her into a social outcast, so she was hated by both the Imperials and the Court of Rogue. And they weren’t all! Dwarves and elves disapproved of her as well!

  She sighed. He must have gotten away with the obvious manipulation through the excuse that he’s trying to break the algorithms that run the game.

  As an EC employee, Bryce was given a lot of sweet bonuses, but all EC employees were forbidden by contract to create characters that were positively manipulated. (So, he couldn’t create a level 110 monk with the best equipment in the game.) The company didn’t have the same rules, however, in creating terrible characters. In fact, EC encouraged employees to create characters with awful stats, just to see how the game reacted. (Kit had learned this when—one of the few times she agreed to play a multiplayer game after leaving Retha instead of a single-person game—she played Dragon Rider with Bryce. He had logged into the game with a pyro dragon that could only fly over water and a rider that was afraid of heights.)

  Kit tapped the little question mark located next to her elf kinship bar. “How can my own people dislike me?”

  Another transparent screen popped up.

  Elf Reputation is low due to selected character class.

  Kit groaned. “Of course! I forgot, elves think the dancer class is below them. Not that I blame them.”

  The tranquil and reserved nature of Retha’s elves meant they thought dancers—with their flashy spells and horrid armor—were an embarrassment to one of their kind. Instead, if you wanted to be an elf and a support character, you could take up the class of bard, songstress, engineer, or many others.

  Kit rolled her shoulders back. “No matter, I shouldn’t ever see many elves anyway—and even if they disapprove, I don’t think they’ll shoot me on sight. But if both the Imperials and the Court of the Rogue hate me, how on earth am I going to get into a town that has a Fibbit Services location and log off?”

  She rubbed her shoulder—although physically she was fully healed, her brain still screamed at the memory of being stabbed—and stared at the starter village. It didn’t have a full service Fibbit desk, but it did have a teleportation gate. “I could buy a ride through a teleportation gate and pop out in the middle of a city. But can I get to the desk and ask to log off before the guards see me?”

  Once again, Kit stood and brushed off the gauzy material of her skirt. She heaved a sigh as she set off down the grassy hill, making her way to the thatched roof cottages.

  The starting area was little more than a handful of cottages arranged in a ring. There was a blacksmith (so players could buy weapons and armor) a food vender who was busy dipping apples in a vat of candy coating, and a few villagers. Chickens and children alike ran through the dirt streets, and at the far end there was a Fibbit stall—where tickets were sold to use the teleportation gate—and a post box where players could retrieve mailed packages.

  The area swarmed with new players—many of them wore nondescript clothes as they hadn’t yet reached level five, which was when they were allowed to choose their character class.

  Kit in her orange dancer outfit and pink hair stuck out like a flame as she edged her way through the crowd, finally popping out by the desk.

  “Greetings, customer!” the Fibbit stall attendant chirped. “How can I help you?”

  Kit fanned her face with a hand and adjusted a shoulder strap of her belly shirt. “I’d like to purchase a ticket for the teleportation gate, please.”

  The stall attendant smiled and tipped her head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, valued customer.”

  Kit’s stomach dropped to her toes in dread. Had Bryce gotten her banned from Fibbit Services as well? “Why not?”

  The attendant raised a finger and pointed to the sky. “Heroes must reach level ten before they are allowed access to Retha’s teleportation gates.”

  Kit ran a hand through her hair and was tempted to pull it, because it seriously couldn’t cause her more pain than Bryce had already plunked her in. “But I thought it was allowed at level five?”

  “It was level five a number of years ago,” the NPC acknowledged. “But the minimum was changed last year.” The attendant continued, ignoring the shriveled look Kit was giving her. “We at Fibbit Services apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you.”

  Kit stopped assaulting her head and turned around, propping her elbows up on the counter as she stared at the chaotic swirl of her fellow players. “Well that bites. What am I supposed to do now?”

  The question was meant to be rhetorical, but the attendant answered her anyway. “You may enter the Aridus Plains and begin fighting monsters, if you choose, or you can check with the Heroes’ Representative. He’s hanging about the blacksmith’s shop and likely has a few errands you can run for experience and loot. Or—”

  The NPC stopped mid-word, her voice dragged out in a tinny sound. Kit tried to move, but found she couldn’t, and she noticed all the players were frozen in the middle of an action.

  Lag. Kit reasoned. A lot of players must be online.

  Whenever EC experienced an influx of players, the game sometimes worked slower as the servers adjusted.

  Sure enough, after a few more moments, the world exploded into action again. The attendant talked on, and the other NPCs continued with their business, but, Kit was surprised to see, many of the players had suddenly disappeared.

  Kit frowned and brought up her character panel, her eyes settling on the dimmed community tab.

  In order to foster comradeship, EC had created a cohesive community where players and staff members alike posted and interacted. Players could post recorded footage from their gameplay, create guides and walkthroughs, and access the many d
atabases EC provided. It could be accessed both in and out of game, but while most used it like a social network offline, in-game it was an invaluable resource that players could refer to when searching for information on certain quests, skills, and more.

  The dim color of the tab signaled it was offline and unavailable—which was not shocking. It usually went down when the servers lagged.

  “Yep, must have been the lag,” Kit decided. She turned around and nodded to the attendant. “Thanks for your help.”

  The attendant waved farewell as Kit wandered through the now significantly less populated village. If she had to guess, the lag and subsequent surge had knocked at least 80% of the players out of the game.

  “Maybe it affected everyone using rental units at home,” Kit muttered. “It’s a shame it didn’t affect me—I could be off this character, then.”

  Kit brought up the world map and was trying to estimate how long it would take her to walk to Luminos—the capital of Retha—when a computerized voice rang through the village circle.

  “Attention, Heroes. Retha is currently experiencing server difficulties. Log off capabilities are temporarily unavailable. Thank you for your patience.”

  “Oh that’s just fabulous,” Kit grumbled—but even she knew this was one thing she couldn’t blame on Bryce.

  One of the few remaining players—a woodland elf—cheered. “This means we get more game time,” she said.

  “As long as we don’t have to pay extra for it,” a guy still in the beginner armor (cotton clothes) grumbled.

  Kit suspected the logout function wouldn’t be down for more than a few minutes, so she ignored the impromptu assembly and continued with her exit strategy.

  She instead approached the food vendor—a grandmotherly woman who had a sweet smile and a critical eye for bartering—and spent a few minutes haggling for what few food rations she could afford. (She was not going to walk all the way to Luminos just to die by a gelata once within sight of the massive city.)