Continue Online The Complete Series Read online

  “You think it’s that easy? I give you a quest, and you get a reward?”

  “Isn’t it? What kind of game is this?”

  The younger man’s words made me smile. “What kind of game” seemed to be a common question.

  “Bah. This isn’t a game; this is deadly serious. You want something”—I stood up to the best of Old Man Carver’s ability. That was a slow, painful process full of barely suppressed grunts—“you earn it.”

  “It’s only a map. I need that, and I need directions to the weapons hall.”

  “Yeah. Swinging a sword sounds like the move of a future Champion.” My sarcastic barb cost me a few points. Oh. That was because William Carver had been a sword-swinger. I had insulted my own past.

  “No, daggers—I’m going to be an assassin,” he said while frowning.

  I rolled my eyes. What kind of player announces himself to an NPC like that? Maybe a swift punch in the face would allow me to claim to be a Monk. Yeah. We were four sentences into our interaction and I had labeled him as an idiot. Old Man Carver was really rubbing off on me. Four weeks of this and I would have trouble unwinding back to my happy spot. At least Carver wasn’t a drunk, according to the first few years of his life. Behind us, someone was walking animals along the path. Inspiration grabbed me.

  “Fine. I’ll give you a task worthy of your future occupation.” I tried not to laugh.

  “Good.”

  “Go moo at that”—I used [Identification] on the creature. It looked like a cow and the description wasn’t too far off—“bovine over there. Do it until I’m satisfied, and you’ll get your map.”

  Part of me felt euphoric when a pop-up box appeared in front of the new player. Sure enough, my actions had generated another quest. Similar to the girl who had cleaned up the beach. She had been way more polite.

  “A cow. Are you serious?” The new player thought it was a cow too.

  Spots, a few extra horns, slightly odd hind legs, still a cow. The new player didn’t have an [Identification] skill like me. According to the game text, the creature was called something else. I ignored the in-game race and filed it away as [Future Beef Patty].

  “Dead serious. Show me you have the determination to follow through, and I’ll even throw in a contact for your assassin class.” I deadpanned the response and lost another percentage point.

  “Fine.”

  I would never be satisfied with his attempt at mooing to the cow.

  “Carver, are you really going to let that child become an assassin?” There was a deep male voice that had crept up behind me.

  I tried not to act disturbed.

  Turning slightly revealed a guard. His armor was far more outstanding than the other guards’ were. They looked very cookie-cutter, and the man standing next to me was clearly unique. Embellishments adorned his shoulders and similar etchings were on everything down to the heavy boots.

  I briefly read the descriptions popping up on my display while chewing at a lip. The new player had run off down the road chasing [Future Beef Patty].

  Name: [Future Beef Patty]

  Details: This is the description given to a passing bovine. The name is entirely in William (Old Man) Carver’s imagination.

  “Wyl,” I uttered the same type of greeting I’d used with Mylia. Sure enough, my flat utterance of a name earned me a point.

  “Carver.”

  Further reading identified this man as a Guard Captain. Surprisingly, he was fairly high ranked for this town. My [Identification] display had a window with a funny shield-and-sword combination. The symbol was outlined with a wreath and two stars. It was the same sort of nonsense I had seen on military general uniforms.

  “Doubt he has the stomach to follow through. Too much pride,” I said. That player didn’t seem like the type able to handle my demeaning task.

  “We can hope.” Wyl nodded with a large grin.

  “Doubt he follows orders either. Not like your boy Dayl,” I said the name and felt conflicted about how many names had a y in them. Maybe it was a regional thing.

  “My son’s a good man,” Wyl said.

  His son constantly said “my father says.” Calling him a good man seemed misleading. Not my family though. Old Man Carver might be blunt, but he seemed secretive enough to not speak these conclusions out loud.

  “Mh. He’s got a long ways to go.” I was absently staring after the player who’d run off into the distance. He seemed to be waving in panic, trying to get the man escorting [Future Beef Patty] to slow down.

  “Don’t I know it.” Wyl sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. His fingers clanked as they worked between armor chunks to get to irritated skin.

  “Why the sudden visit, Wyl?” I knew from the various system messages that the guard captain rarely came down to the beach. Not even for Old Man Carver’s wise council.

  “One of the Priestesses of Selena has requested your presence.”

  Who-lena? What? Judging by the name, this was one of the Voices. No one else would have temples in this world. “Now?”

  “Now,” Wyl confirmed.

  “What about our future sword-for-hire there?” I lifted the cane a little and waved it toward the new player.

  He was shouting in the distance. His voice sounded vaguely hoarse from here. That could have been a trick of William Carver’s faded hearing.

  “I’ll leave a guard for him with a few more tasks. Something to hopefully deter that stupid assassin idea.”

  “Good luck. The boy seems addle-brained,” I said.

  “It’s fine. If that’s truly what he wants to do, we can’t stop him. Travelers are hard to control.” Wyl gave a wide grin and shrugged.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “That you would. It takes a rare man to suffer their bewildered demands. I don’t know where they get half the fool notions they have.”

  I snorted. To me, a player posing as an NPC, it was extremely clear where most of their “fool notions” came from. Other games and a world of informational boxes had served to brainwash this latest generation.

  “Come on, Carver. I’ll walk you up to the temple,” Wyl said.

  I grumbled. This would surely be another bout of aches and pains. Actually voicing my complaints out loud wouldn’t be a character-appropriate thing to do. That silly little bar reinforcing my actions was the only thing standing between me and answers about my fiancée.

  Session Nine — Priestess Peach

  I liked these trees. Two major types littered the city. Tall ones that spiraled up high were typically clustered together near grassy areas. Everywhere else, especially over pathways, were trees with large branching canopies. They stretched across twenty and thirty-foot gulfs toward each other. Overhead, they twined together, creating a spotty patchwork of leaves.

  “How’s retirement been treating you, Carver?” Wyl’s questioning tone implied a long-term relationship. How did a computer program account for all these possible interactions between NPCs?

  “It’s peaceful,” I said without inflection. My score went neither up nor down.

  He looked at the item in my hands. Carver’s Journal was still tucked under an arm and the cane was still death-gripped. Behind us, the [Messenger’s Pet] tried to figure out ways into [Coo-Coo Rill] nests. Silly creature. I had no idea why it bothered following me so much.

  “Can’t imagine it myself. I have a feeling I’ll be doing this until I die.”

  “Mh. Probably.” NPCs were likely to do the same role their entire lives, depending on how this whole situation was set up. How would this game act in five or ten years? Would they get older?

  I should focus on playing and not worry about the future. I had four weeks of strangeness to get through first. Time-warping ratios were kind of nice in terms of vacation.

  “Planning any new adventures?”

  “Just one more.” Words came out of my mouth unbidden. What the heck? I hadn’t meant to say that at all. My impulse control was either crap or
the computer had talked for me.

  “You’ve got plenty left in you, Carver,” Wyl said.

  Was this tied to the Old Man Carver quest? Cue a seemingly random pop-up box. Now I was assigned another secondary goal on top of the first one.

  Secondary Goal: Old Man Carver has expressed his desire to take one last adventure before passing. Find something worthy of Carver’s legacy before the end of four weeks. Doing one last adventure will greatly increase your progress as Old Man Carver. This will help settle his spirit during passing.

  Reward: Significant progress toward your completion (dependent upon the adventure)

  Note: This adventure must be recognized by others as worthy of Carver.

  Great. I had to figure out something about a girl who liked to mess with me and pretend to be obtuse. While sitting on a bench most of the day. While trying to find one last adventure. On top of that was ignoring real life, learning vague game rules, and not building my own character.

  At least Old Man Carver’s little stories amused me.

  The new player and Guard Captain had interrupted me during Carver’s recounting of a fight with a strange horse thing. He said it would shift colors to blend in with the background, all to sneak up and kick him with its hind legs. I was waiting to see how it ended.

  “What does the Priestess want?”

  “No idea. But I figured I’d best come fetch you before one of those fresh-faced Travelers did. You get enough of them already.” Wyl smiled a lot.

  “Mh.” Noncommittal grunts were the way to respond.

  “Why did you volunteer to be a guide anyway?”

  Some of the information I knew after reading Old Man Carver’s dossier and other pop-ups. Carver had started being a guide as soon as Travelers started showing up. He—I—had also settled in this town right around the same time.

  “Something to do.” That lost me points.

  “You killed a dragon by yourself, and call guiding new Travelers something to do?”

  Stupid spoilers! He’d ruined the end of Carver’s Journals for me and left me confused in the process. I couldn’t respond with a good reason because I barely knew Carver. It was impossible to believe that a game touted for its realism had dwindled down each NPC to a few basic personality traits. From my progress bar’s reaction, Carver was very realistic and not a simple cardboard cutout.

  That made me lose step for a moment, literally. I stumbled over nothing and nearly fell flat on my face. Wyl’s quick actions kept me somewhat upright, but my shoulder paid the price. A fresh wave of pain piled on top of the general hell that Carver’s every movement was. Turned out there was no pain setting to turn down this whole mess.

  “Gah.” I had to stop.

  Wyl got me to a bench, and I tried to control my near collapse. How the heck could Carver go on an adventure like this? I should just fail that onus and hope everything else was good enough.

  “Rest a few. I’ll let the Priestesses know of our delay.”

  I nodded hastily and tried to control my heart rate and breathing. A clenching in my chest wouldn’t let go. Wyl walked away and left me clutching my chest. A simulated heart attack was racking my virtual body. That was what this must be. This was a dimmed-down version of Carver’s heart seizing up.

  It hurt.

  Goodness, it hurt.

  Why wouldn’t this end?

  After a few minutes, the pain passed and all the air in the world felt thin. My arm shook and legs quivered. What had brought this on? Had the original Carver died from this? Even one-fifth of the feedback had disabled all coherent thought.

  “I’m getting old.” Admitting weakness normally went against the persona being projected, but I lost no points from my admission.

  Focusing on something other than pain would keep me going. Move forward, never back. I used the time to weigh my understandings of Carver in case Wyl asked me for my motivation again. To help get into the mind of the man I posed as, I cracked open the Journal and resumed reading.

  Old Man Carver’s eyes moved slower than I liked. Reading the letters felt hard to focus on. Some of them mixed up and required rereading. After too much concentration, I found out that Carver had managed to tame the horse and took him on the next adventure.

  Some of the wording threw me off though. The way he spoke about things didn’t feel like a denizen from this world. There were no citations about his childhood. The date stamps were from years ago, but judging by Carver’s age, they basically started at about fifty.

  I checked the cover again—this was Volume One. Slowly my eyes retraced the latest strange passage.

  Michelle learned a great technique from his training. I had to wait two days for him to return to the shop so I could see it in action. The way he swung the hammer down almost made me switch focus. Too bad time is short; the doctors have only cleared me for another year or two tops.

  I’m stubborn enough to live beyond that, I don’t care what they say. Every moment counts. Old age is horse-shit. All this power and we can’t fix a bum ticker.

  That was out of place. A bum ticker? Was this a weird translation issue?

  “Are you ready to go, Carver?” Wyl had returned.

  Slow sighing preceded me putting the book away. Afterward, I nodded, and Wyl was kind enough not to ask any questions. He could see my struggling.

  Halfway up the hill, the guard captain asked again. Why did I, or Carver, act as a guide to new players? I had no clear-cut answer. For several slow steps, I pondered life’s biggest question. What would Carver do? I could tattoo that on my arm, or maybe a bracelet—WWCD. Reminder bracelets would be a new fad for all the residents of our fine city of [Haven Valley].

  I had been in-game for around twenty-four hours. Things didn’t even feel high-paced. Sitting on a bench for hours and throwing acorns at a tiny dragon was a pleasant way to pass the time. Reading some misadventures was fun too. None of those hurt my progress. I could safely say that Carver didn’t have problems idling time away. Not that his biography talked about the boring parts.

  But why did he go to the beach day after day to wait for new players? Oh. There was an easy out here.

  “You know I don’t give away answers for free, Wyl; you earn it.” Ding, there were a few new percentage points on my progress bar. Score one for reasonable deductions.

  “Hah. Stubborn old man.”

  “Until the day I die,” I agreed with a slightly pleased tone. The comment got me another point. Of course Carver was proud of being a hardheaded mule. Slowly but surely, I was learning to be someone else.

  All at once disturbed, I logged out of my ARC and held very still as shaking overtook my senses.

  I didn’t want to let go, and for a moment, it had felt as though that was exactly what was happening. Counting backward from sixty happened more than once. Then breathing, pinching the bridge of my nose, rubbing my earlobes. All those things were techniques to try to calm myself. Each one helped me return to my happy place and not feel like the world was falling apart.

  A message on my ARC distracted me. I put it on play.

  “Uncle Grant! It’s been, like, a week. I know you’re playing. Where are you? I want to visit! Send me a message in-game, I’ll tell you all the best hunting spots! You haven’t played until you’ve been in a fight with the wolves in this game. They’re super heart-thumping. User name Thorny!”

  I about died giggling. Trust my niece to brighten my day with something blissfully out of place. My laughing convulsions kept going until both eyes watered. Beth was a little crazy. Her friend probably had some other similarly silly name. I would have to think of a good name for myself, but nothing like Thorny. Goodness. Knowing my niece, she had found some awkwardly matching title to go with the name.

  That half-demon skin she had, coupled with what I’d seen from the Temptress Voice, painted a gloomy picture for Beth’s mother. I wondered exactly how much Liz was kept in the loop. Of course, given the way Liz was as a teen, the apple didn’t fall far fro
m the tree. I remember avoiding Mom and Dad as much as possible when Liz was up to her antics. There was no way I would explain what my older twin was up to.

  Okay. Those thoughts of times past put me in a better mood. I cleaned up, grabbed a drink, relieved the pressure on my bladder, and popped back into Continue.

  Autopilot had me up the hill and panting for breath. All around an easier way to travel, but I lost a few points for not performing the actions myself. Neat. Even after the deduction, I did well enough to get a bonus. Hopefully this would help me figure out some additional information. Though quests never made sense to me. Why would an NPC with so much power and skill ask a player to help them with something difficult? Often times the player was a lower level than the quest giver.

  Reward: For reaching 25% completion, you will gain access to William Carver’s skills. Over the course of his life, he has gained a large number of abilities and secret bits of knowledge.

  Unlocked: William (Old Man) Carver’s Rank one skills are all displayed and can be actively used.

  Progress: 28%

  I mean, Old Man Carver was old. Old, old, old, old, old. It made sense if I, posing as him, asked players to do things. Unless some of these skills were as neat as they looked. Titles ranged across the board. These traits were fairly self-explanatory. [Truth Sense: Verbal specialist], [Weapon Focus: Bladed], [Retired Grand Explorer]. One made me really snort, [Stubborn as a Mule].

  I only looked at a few of the items, scanning this way and that to trigger the displays for information. Hopefully, no NPCs would think me mentally ill, considering I basically possessed William Carver. The thought of being some sort of skin-walker made me throw up a bit in my mouth. I played it off as having a sour taste.

  “We’re here, Carver. I’ve got to get back to my duties. Will you be okay?”

  I waved the man off and stood there waiting, both hands on my cane and trying to hold steady while thoughts dripped through.

  This place was pretty. It sat overlooking the ocean, much like my bench but far higher up. We’d crisscrossed a few times up a painful incline that only had benches at the curves. Around me there seemed to be a few rooms and a downstairs of some sort. Things were a bit fuzzy in Carver-land, so I couldn’t be sure. There seemed to be no male priests here. After a few minutes, I was extremely sure of that.