“There should be enough goblins outside their lair that you can retrieve the gold ingots,” she said. “Though if you are able to gather some companions about you, you might discover that you’re able to delve into their lair and stop their corruption from spreading!”

  “Right,” I said. “So we’ve got a fetch quest with a touch of gathering items, and on top of that you need a dungeon cleared if I can get some other newbies together to help out.”

  Again her face screwed up like she was confused, but I waved a dismissive hand. She was, after all, an NPC. It’s not like I expected all that much from an NPC.

  “Whatever,” I said. “You sit here sending people out on your fetch quests, and I’ll go off and save your world’s little problem. I’ll be doing that a lot with my blades!”

  I did a little twirl of my blades. Sure they weren’t all that impressive at the moment considering I was in a starter zone, but that animation was pretty awesome. It had to be an animation considering I didn’t have the ability to do that on my own.

  The girl frowned that time, then she made a rude gesture. I blinked a couple of times. That was a lot more thought than I would’ve figured an NPC would give to being insulted. Almost like she could understand that I was insulting her, and she didn’t care for it.

  “Whatever,” I muttered, turning to walk off in the direction of the fetch quest.

  The next half hour or so was the kind of mind-numbing stuff someone would expect from questing in a starter zone. Goblins started coming up and attacking me, and I did my best to relieve them of their lives and their possessions.

  Though there was something odd about these goblins. I was expecting little hunched over things that made growling noises and were barely able to rub two neurons together to make a thought, but these things were different. Like we’re talking they were muscular and tough, and they looked more human than goblin, for all that they had green skin.

  And all of them looked like they would be more than happy to stick me like a pincushion. I dodged and did my damage dealing thing, but the more I fought them the more I was starting to realize that being a pure DPS class kind of sucked in terms of being able to get a good rhythm going.

  It was almost enough to make me want to go back out and go to the trouble of creating a new character. One that had some armor and the ability to actually stand up against attacking monsters without losing like 90% of HP in every attack with all the waiting that involved.

  I sighed as I got closer to what I assumed was the goblin lair they’d been talking about. The goblins were getting thicker, not just coming out of the tall grass to attack me, and I figured it was getting close to the moment when I would have to turn around if I couldn’t find anyone out here adventuring.

  Then the sounds of combat up ahead perked up my ears. I grinned as I realized that maybe I wouldn’t have to run quite as far as I thought initially.

  “Well hello there,” I said as I rounded a bend in the packed dirt trail that conveniently led to the goblin lair for all that this place was supposed to be off the beaten path.

  I saw a party up ahead. There was a guy who was clearly a fighter or tank of some sort wielding a two-handed sword like it meant business. He had a group of about five goblins around him doing their best to beat the shit out of him.

  The guy was definitely well muscled and attractive. Not that I’d ever particularly been into that sort of thing. The girl that was with him was nothing short of breathtaking though. She was obviously an elf of some sort. I had no idea how she got in a human starter area, but she was a looker. She had the lithe frame that all elves seemed to have if the character creation was anything to go on, but the female model was definitely a lot easier on the eyes than the male models I’d been looking at since the game was gender locked.

  “Hello nurse,” I muttered to myself, bringing to mind an ancient compliment.

  There was another guy next to them. He looked like he was a mage of some sort. He was wailing on the goblins while the tank held their interest and the girl did her healing thing, occasionally blessing the tank with bouts of holy energy that topped off his hit points.

  Clearly these three had come up with a minimally viable group composition, and they were going to town with that group.

  I grinned as I approached them and waited for them to finish their business with the goblins. Then it occurred to me that they had a few goblins on them, so it’s not like it would hurt anything to maybe take one of them off their hands, right?

  Before I could really think about what I was doing, or whether or not they’d be pissed off at me for essentially kill stealing a trash mob, I slammed my blade into one of them that was at full health and peeled it off.

  4

  Kill Steal

  The reaction from the goblin was immediate and more than a little violent. The thing whirled around and slammed me with a massive war hammer it’d been carrying in its beefy arms. Beefy arms that were covered in muscle and looked like the kind of arms I didn’t want wielding a weapon against me.

  Though I noticed, now that I was up a little closer, that the hot elf chick was looking at those goblins with some interest. I suppose they might be good looking if you were into that sort of thing, which I most definitely wasn’t thank you very much.

  “What the fuck are you doing you kill stealing little prick?” the warrior shouted as he continued trying to attack the other monsters.

  He did something that must’ve been a taunt. Like he was shouting some words that I could almost understand, and a moment later the goblin that’d been turning and getting ready to kill my ass was turning back on that dude and looking like it was getting ready to kick his ass instead.

  For all that it didn’t have a prayer of kicking his ass. Stupid fucking goblin.

  “I’m just trying to help you guys out,” I growled, not liking that I sounded like a whining child who wasn’t happy that the big kids weren’t letting me come out and play.

  Not that I thought that was going to do me a damn bit of good.

  “You can fuck off,” the guy said with a laugh as he lobbed the head off of one of the goblins. “We don’t need your kind of help, noob.”

  I bristled at the accusation, for all that it was pretty much true. I was a noob in this game, and the fact that I hadn’t read the situation right here was only a reminder of that. I sighed and walked off just a bit to watch the rest of the fireworks.

  They made short work of the goblins after that. It didn’t take long at all for the warrior to pull them down while the mage did the DPS and the hot elf chick did the healing stuff.

  It made me wish I had a group like that. Though I had hopes, at least. We were close enough to the goblin lair entrance that I could see it. Both because getting close to the thing had revealed it through the fog of war on my map, and because it was showing up on the minimap as clear as day now.

  When the last goblin was dead I walked over and stuck my hand out to the warrior, because the handsome dude seemed like he was the one who was in charge of this shindig.

  Only he looked down at me like I was some sort of disgusting creature and he’d rather not see me at all.

  “What the fuck do you want, noob?” he growled.

  Okay, not the best start to our time together in the game, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were a lot of people who got off to bad starts and it all worked out in the end. Sure this asshole seemed a lot more standoffish than any other asshole I’d ever met before, but I could try.

  “I was thinking that maybe we could group up?” I said. “I see you guys were maybe thinking of heading into the goblin lair, and another bit of DPS might help out.”

  The guy shook his head and muttered something under his breath. The mage and the hot elf with her healing abilities also looked like they were almost embarrassed for me, and that more than anything set me off and made me feel more than a little embarrassed.

  I certainly wondered what the fuck I was doing standing out here in front of all these people trying to group with them when they clearly didn’t want anything to do with me.

  “You’re crazy,” the warrior said. “If you think we need another useless Bladedancer then you really don’t know much about this game, do you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” the elf chick said, speaking up for the first time since I ran into this group of merry pricks. “Stealth DPS characters are a dime a dozen in this game. Good luck getting anything with a shit character like that.”

  Her voice was so loaded with hatred and disdain that it took me back just a little. I mean sure I knew, on some level, that stealth was usually a popular class choice that tended to draw in the kind of player who wanted to look like a badass.

  I also figured there was always room for good DPS, though, and I’d been pretty good at dealing damage once upon a time. Though it didn’t look like it was needed here.

  Fuck.

  “Well y’all can go fuck yourselves then,” I said, the words escaping my lips before I could really stop and think about what I was saying.

  The blow was so immediate, and so surprising, that it took me a moment to even realize what had happened. The first indication that something not quite so good had hit me was that I was staring down at the packed dirt trail leading to the goblin lair. The second idea I had that something was wrong was the rather hungry looking goblin eyes staring at me from the other side of some underbrush.

  “Have fun noob,” the asshole warrior said. “Maybe we’ll see you around, but probably not with a stupid fucking class like Bladedancer.”

  The fucker had hit me. My cheek was stinging. It felt like I’d taken a hit in the real world and the pain was only now starting to settle in as a throbbing dull ache that was really going to fucking hurt.

  At least it would’ve been the kind of dull and throbbing ache that would’ve really hurt if I’d had time to think about that pain. Unfortunately no sooner had I had time to seriously consider what’d just happened than those goblin eyes staring out at me from the underbrush suddenly got a hell of a lot closer.

  I had a moment to see the muscular goblin leaning over me. Leering down at me with the kind of look that said this wasn’t going to be very pleasant for yours truly. Then a moment later a sword came down and connected with my neck, severing the digital equivalent of the life giving artery that would be there in my real neck.

  It certainly felt like that fucker had just stabbed me in an honest-to-fuck life giving part of my body. I could feel the life seeping out of me as I was hit with a critical amount of damage, and I knew it wasn’t going to be long before I was a goner.

  With my last breath I lifted up my hand and flipped the bird in the general direction of those assholes who’d disappeared after hitting me and leaving me for dead at the mercy of a bunch of fucking goblins. I couldn’t be sure that they would see it, but at the very least I figured they might.

  That would have to be good enough, damn it. Because darkness was closing in around me, and there was no fucking way I was going to be able to make it out of this as the goblin started stabbing other parts of my body with that sword and really going to town.

  At least I wasn’t going to be conscious enough to feel that bit. Darkness closed in around me.

  5

  Quest Completion

  Something seemed very off about the world all around me. Like everything was sort of pale and washed out, and there was a dull green glow to everything.

  It took me a moment to remember where I was. The last couple of moments had sort of disappeared from my mind, and as those memories started coming back I found myself wishing that maybe they’d stayed the fuck out of my head.

  Fuck that had hurt. A goblin stabbing me in the neck and really fucking my shit up wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time in any game, but it really wasn’t my idea of a good time in a game where all of that pain could be felt in real living color with all the pain receptors in my body screaming out in agony.

  Fuckity fuck.

  At least I couldn’t still feel that pain. I put my hand to my neck, but realized that I couldn’t actually touch my neck. That was good for freaking me the fuck out all over again, until I looked down and realized that my body was just a touch more ephemeral than it usually was.

  I looked around. Other spirits appeared around me and then ran off. I looke at my minimap, and sure enough there was an indicator on that map showing me where my body was. There was also a spirit hovering nearby, a spectral warrior in full plate armor who looked at me as though he was disappointed I’d failed and come to this graveyard, but I decided I didn’t want to take the penalty that came with resurrecting at a graveyard and set out to find my body.

  Besides, all my shit was on my body. I knew there was a chance someone might come through and steal that shit, but I had to at least try to get the gold that I’d been collecting.

  It didn’t take long to reach my body. I did a quick circuit of the trees first to make sure there weren’t any goblins lurking in there. The last thing I needed was to reappear over my body in a weakened state only to find myself getting double or triple teamed by a bunch of fucking goblin assholes.

  I sighed as I finally accepted the resurrection. I looked down at my body and leaned over it. Touched it and an inventory screen popped up, but there was nothing there.

  I stared for a long moment, and then there was a distant sound. Like a horn sounding and then being cut off. Quest text appeared in front of me to let me know that I’d failed the opening quest.

  Failed. The opening quest. The quest given to players in the fucking starter zone so they can cut their teeth, and I’d failed it because that ass fuck had decided he was going to punch me and mess around just a bit.

  I sighed and hoofed it back towards the keep. A couple of goblins got in my way on the way back, and for a moment I held out hope that maybe they might drop the gold ingots that I’d needed for the quest, but there was no such luck. No, it looked like once the quest had been failed there was no way for me to start it over short of starting it over.

  The nasty look I got from the woman as I reappeared in front of the keep told it all. She looked me up and down like I was scum, and I was feeling like it right about now. I was seriously wondering if I was cut out for this game if I couldn’t do something as simple as a starter zone quest.

  “I see you don’t have the materials that were asked for,” she said.

  “Yeah, about that,” I said. “I ran into some real assholes and…”

  “The price of failure is no reward,” she said. “Begone from my sight. You will find nothing here for you.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I groused. “I mean this is the starter zone. Aren’t you supposed to get on your knees and suck my cock because I’m a player?”

  This time the slap didn’t quite knock me to the ground, but it was clear that the woman didn’t appreciate my tone of voice. Stars danced in front of my vision for a moment as I tried to get a handle on what had just happened.

  I’d just been shut out of all the questing in this area. Which meant I was going to have to go and find quests elsewhere. I’d heard that this game could be brutal, but I’d never figured it would be brutal to the point that it would send me into a fail state for not doing one fucking quest.

  I flipped the woman off as well as I headed off down the path. I could see that there was a road leading off in that direction on the map, and there was a sign on the other side of the keep that told me I was heading for a town if I kept going in that direction.

  I figured that meant I was probably heading for a starter town. Maybe I’d royally fucked things up in the starter zone, but if there was a starter town out there somewhere then maybe there would be a little kinder to a gamer who was new to this game.

  Because so far that had been in short fucking supply. I took a deep breath. This game was supposed to be the most awesome thing to ever hit the video gaming community, damn it, and I was going to make the most of it.

  I wasn’t going to let one bad experience get me down. It was on to adventure, and better times ahead!

  6

  Starter Town

  The first sound that let me know I was in the presence of other players having a little bit of fun with one another was the laughter off in the distance. It’d taken me a little while to walk here, passed several times by people riding mounts that ranged from spectral ghost steeds to massive lions to even someone riding around on what looked like an elephant with enough tusks that it looked more like Cthulhu than an elephant.

  I was finally here, though, and I was going to see what there was to see. At the very least I figured there had to be someone around here who could point me to a quest hub or something.

  I stepped into the main artery running through the town and found players gathered all around just… talking. Dueling. Having a good time and not actually playing the game.

  I’d seen something like this before on an old role-playing server, but I guess there was something about having a game that was the next best thing to real life that made players more inclined to do this sort of thing even if they weren’t actually into role-playing.

  As I watched I saw a mage dueling with a strange class that I almost didn’t recognize. It was as though every time the mage tried to hit the person there was a shield of pure light that came up between the attacks and the beautiful half elf woman, and then she slammed back at him with a weapon that seemed to be made of pure light.

  My mouth watered. Both because of how hot that elf girl was, and because I was looking at higher level players delivering on the promise of what their class could do. I figured there was nothing to get someone excited about what kind of fun they could have in a game other than seeing other people having that fun after they’d been playing the game for a little while!