Ready Player None

Chapter 11.3 - Wyett "Hungry Like The Wolf"

A new entry on my list of coding potentially related to the ticket party?

I wrote the search, and hadn't changed it, and it included a filter for coding that dated from the exact time of the original announcement. It shouldn't be possible for something "new" to appear, and yet there it was. The only explanations I can come up with is that it either it was previously protected from searching, or I had been upgraded in privileges. Whatever.

The zone was a starter world so ancient the scripts probably had dust on them. I was already aware that a ticket puzzle had been placed here; a waterfall tunnel that had led to a painfully easy quest that was solved in minutes on the very first attempt. Lucky them. But this new entry was an NPC that was at least partially mobile, and was currently be found near the central mountains of this zone. Flying was allowed here, thank you OASIS, so I quickly approached the listed location on my mint green pocket pegasus. Her name is Lady, by the way.

The sight was confusing. The NPC appeared for all intents to be a player; normal tag, normal markings, and inspection showed a race, class, and level. He was killing bats. I didn't know the exact benefit a level 28 warrior would get from killing a level 2 bat, but it had a lot of zeroes between the decimal point and the first number.

I double-checked, and the bats were not new. The black and windowed tower they circled around wasn't new. None of this related to the ticket party. The only thing new here was the player-NPC, named James. Since I had nothing to worry about from someone of his level, I disregarded the player-combat-enabled flag of Luconica and strode forward with weapons stashed away.

"Hi there, James! You're really teaching those bats a lesson!"

With his body still facing away from me, locked in combat, his head swiveled unnaturally over his shoulder to see who had addressed him.

Like a predator cat spotting a wounded gazelle, he abandoned the bats and tracked directly towards me. His deadly intent was clear, despite our level difference. No problem, little boy, you'll figure out that you can't hurt me soon enough, then we'll talk like civilized folk.

His sword met my defenses, and was stopped in place. I expected a look of surprise on his face, but his expression didn't change. He prepared a magical attack, probably something elemental. He looked like a earth type. It didn't matter; my resistances to all types of magic were many times greater than what I'd need for this guy.

And then he killed me.

What the holy hell. I was hit with exactly 1 point more than my health, with divine magic.

"Excellent! Your death was worth much more experience than the bats," Jame said, in a very youthful male voice.

Divine magic wasn't available to player characters, and hitting for max health plus one was a developer trick, not the randomly generated number of a normal attack. "What you just did isn't possible. Are you a system programmer?" I asked.

"No, I am not a programmer, although I know some of them. Are you going to respawn? You can do that. I would like to kill you again," he said. He did seem to be an honest sort, at least.

"I'm not moving until I understand how you were able to hit me. Not even 'that hard', just.. 'at all'. You're level 28."

"I have learned about the many forms of damage, and how to review the data structure of enemies before attacking them to find their weaknesses. Bats are particularly vulnerable to edged weapons, but I have to kill 17,000 to reach level 29. You are resistant to all forms of physical and magical combat, but you seem to have no ability to lessen divine or infernal damage. The experience I gained from your death was equivalent to 9,047 bats. I would really like to kill you again."