Chaos Unchained- The Mad Smith Read online

  Five o’clock. Time to leave. Time to live. Eddie saved his code, then saved it again because he was obsessive like that, shut down his workstation, and bolted for the door. He glanced inside the cubicles, and unsurprisingly, found the marketing team already gone. They had probably left more than ten minutes ago, skipping out early as always because their work ethic was linked to their superficial social ethic.

  “You delving as soon as you get home?” Ben, his fellow coder, asked as he pulled on his jacket while speed walking toward the exit.

  Eddie grinned and nodded. “You know it! Thirty minutes from now, I’ll be embracing the sweet release from the meat world and delving into the magical, somewhat unknown digital life that is Quantum Mortalis.”

  “Man, you’re so lucky to have been a beta tester. It’ll probably take me three hours just to roll up my character. I can’t believe how little information there is on the gamer boards and QM’s FAQ page.”

  Eddie clapped Ben on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. The only thing you need to figure out is your name, base class, and race. Beyond that, it’s all learn as you go.”

  Ben grinned. “OK, so maybe only two hours then.” Ben’s smile vanished. “Hey, did you hear they fired Edison Pushard yesterday?”

  Eddie’s mouth gaped open as he tried to process the news. “What? That’s crazy! Where did you hear this?”

  “Just came out on the message boards. QT tried to keep it secret, but someone leaked it. I guess he tried to sabotage the game with some kind of malicious code, but they caught it.”

  “What kind of code?”

  Ben shrugged. “They didn’t say.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Quantum Mortalis is Edison’s child. More than that. I’d bet everything I have that he’d set a packed school bus on fire before doing anything to hurt his game.”

  “They said it wasn’t meant to crash the game, only that it was, quote, ‘a case of artistic differences.’”

  “That sounds more plausible. He was obsessive about his brainchild. If the big wigs tried to mess with his vision I could see him going off the rails.”

  Ben nodded. “I guess that’s what they tried to do and that’s what he did.”

  “Has Edison said anything?”

  “Nope. No one has heard a thing from him. I imagine he’s pretty tied up with NDAs. Everyone at QT is. If they find out who leaked this info they’ll crucify them.”

  “Whatever. As long as the game launches on time. That’s all I care about. See you in Mortalia!”

  “Wait!” Ben called after him. “Where are you starting?”

  “Oh yeah, I guess that would be a good thing to know if we want to play together.”

  Another thing that set QM apart from any game ever made was that it was a true full world simulation. Other games let you cross kingdoms and oceans in a few minutes because of a lack of computing power and to let players explore the world without being bogged down with mundane things like travel times. A person could circumnavigate the largest VR worlds in a few hours of uninterrupted travel.

  QM was huge, however. Its quantum mainframe created a true simulation of an entire planet with everything from individual grains of sand to ecosystems and weather patterns. It would take months in game to travel around the globe, and that was without taking into consideration the numerous obstacles you would encounter.

  Just traveling to the neighboring kingdom could take weeks. It was how the game could support millions of players without it draining resources that would have to be unrealistically respawned time and again. It was literally a world within a world.

  “Ambercross, in Truale,” Eddie replied.

  “Awesome, see you there!”

  Eddie unchained his electric bicycle and full-throttled it all the way back to his apartment. It was small and the cheapest he could rent that was close to work and in a halfway decent neighborhood. He had planned his finances down to the dollar so he could afford QT’s subscription, live a meat life devoid of most kinds of deprivation, and still have a solid retirement plan.

  He was a programmer by both profession and soul, and he scripted his real life every bit as exacting as the game code he wrote. Everything was bug free. Well, almost everything. There were variables he had no control over like Donte and his mouth-breathing ilk.

  Eddie tossed his bike helmet onto the loveseat that was rarely used since he disliked company, powered on the VR workstation, and wolfed down a hotpocket for dinner while the system booted and ran its mandatory self-diagnostics.

  The neural interface was actually rather simple. Its only purpose was to transmit and receive the electrical signals between his brain and the workstation. The workstation and QM’s quantum supercomputer and AI did all the heavy lifting.

  The interminable diagnostic time reminded him of the stories his grandfather told him about having to game on a Commodore 64. Eddie could not imagine how such a primitive system could ever be entertaining. It was practically prehistoric. Like comparing 3D 8k video to a cave painting.

  Eddie licked his fingers clean when all the lights on his VR station and neural link turned green. He lay on his bed with its expensive custom forming gel mattress and pillow, slipped on the neural link helmet, and closed his eyes.

  It took only a few seconds before words began appearing against the black backdrop.

  Initializing Neural Link…

  Neural Link Initialized…

  Connecting to Server…

  Server Connection Established…

  Welcome Back, Eddie Shinkle…

  Please Choose From the Following Options:

  Settings.

  Personal Profile.

  Game Profile.

  Delve.

  Eddie mentally clicked on Delve.

  Analyzing REM Pattern…

  REM Pattern Established…

  Initiating REM…

  Good Delving, Eddie…

  Eddie felt a moment of sleepy haze invade his mind before the world resolved back into focus. Instead of his room, he now stared at an options screen with your somewhat typical fantasy backdrop. A message below the list of options read:

  Welcome to Quantum Mortalis. Beta version characters are unavailable. Please create a new character.

  Eddie clicked on the highlighted Create New Character option. The screen winked away and was replaced by another. On the left side was a list of character options. The right two-thirds of the screen displayed a generic ragdoll silhouette.

  Eddie knew exactly what he was going to make, but he scrolled through the options anyway just to make sure they had not added any new features or made changes to the old ones. He clicked on Race and the ragdoll changed into a male human with default settings.

  Human: Humans are the most common race in Mortalia and can be found all across the globe.

  Base Attributes: Humans have no racial modifiers to their base attributes of five.

  Racial Bonuses: Humans are the most flexible of all the races. As such, they are allowed to distribute their secondary attribute point wherever they like instead of having to choose their secondary attribute upon character creation.

  Racial Affinities: Fast learners. Humans are the most adaptable race in Mortalia with very few limits. Their mental flexibility allows them to become nearly any class and class combination. Humans gain a permanent 20% bonus to all experience and skill progression.

  Eddie glanced over the typical fantasy trope races like elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and their multi-racial options, but nothing had changed to make him reconsider his choices.

  He was going to make a human arcane archer. Eddie always enjoyed playing hybrid classes, warriors capable of wielding magic like his Templar or mages who could also hold their own with weapons. They wouldn’t be the best at either magic or melee, but their flexibility created game options and opportunities pure classes could never achieve.

  In the more traditional RPG games this would usually handicap a player to some degree, but the
unique gaming experience VR provided, particularly the new fully immersive VR and its vastly more flexible combat system, it was far less of a disability. Eddie thought it even gave him an advantage over most pure classes.

  Old MMORPGs used a crude system that relied almost entirely upon level, hit points, DPS (or damage per second,) and resistances to determine combat effectiveness. That was far less important given how QM handled combat and death. A skilled player could kill mobs or even players of higher levels with the right application of abilities and their own intelligence and gaming skills.

  Cavemen didn’t often attack mammoths with their crappy spears. They herded them over cliffs or into pit traps. Similar techniques often worked in Quantum Mortalis. While hit points and level were important, they were not the be all and end all measure of your power. Power came from the skills you gained and how you applied them. A player who put one or two skills to excellent use could easily beat a player with a dozen skills poorly utilized, and Eddie knew how to use his skills to their fullest.

  He took a little longer to read over the four bestial races available as player characters even though he knew he would never play one unless they received some serious racial abilities that outweighed the 20% bonus to all advancement humans got. He really doubted they did.

  Saurian: Saurians are a warm-blooded reptilian race scattered across the world of Mortalia and are found in three distinct ecosystems depending on subspecies. Igneous saurians live in rocky, arid climates and are most often found in cave systems and desert canyons. Arboreal saurians live in forests, and aquatic saurians inhabit either swamplands or coastal regions depending upon their sect. Aquatic saurians are the only species that have a tail. All saurians are considered barbaric races.

  Base Attributes: Base attributes are dependent upon subspecies. Igneous Saurians get +1 Strength, +1 Body, and -1 Mind. Arboreal saurians get +2 Agility and -1 Mind. Aquatic saurians get +1 Strength, +2 Body, and -2 Mind. All saurians receive -2 charisma to all higher humanoid races, -1 charisma to all lower humanoid races, and +1 to all reptilian races.

  Racial Abilities:

  Eddie skimmed over their racial abilities and found that none of them had changed. They all had a bite attack that could be venomous if the racial trait was chosen. Saurians had the largest list of racial traits available, and most subspecies specific traits were available regardless of chosen type. The player would simply be considered a mixed breed. Saurians were not able to create mixed breeds outside their species, so no half-elf half-saurians.

  Racial Affinities:

  Racial affinities were largely dependent upon subspecies just as their attribute bonuses were. Eddie did not see anything to change his mind about being human, but if he ever decided to play a lower-humanoid character, saurians definitely had the most interesting abilities. It was all academic because Eddie did not see himself ever playing some kind of beast man.

  The same held true for simians, rattakins, and felonians. Simians were ape-like humanoids, also considered a barbarian race. They made excellent melee classes with significant bonuses to strength and body with similar negative adjustments to Mind and Charisma. Their racial abilities made them great climbers. They were limited to melee classes and the only magic class they could choose was shaman, as it was with all four bestial races.

  Rattakin were rat-like humanoids and almost exclusively thieving rogue characters. With exceptional bonuses to dexterity, climbing, trap detection, and sneakiness, playing them as any other class would be stupid, at least in his mind.

  Felonians were cat people. For some reason, everyone wanted cat races in MMORPGs these days. They had good night vision and bonuses to dexterity, climbing, sneak, and unarmed combat. It was the go-to race for people wanting to play DPS rogues.

  As Eddie expected, none of the racial abilities were enough to make him give up the 20% advancement bonus being a human gave him. He played to be the best and did not care about what he considered cosmetic roleplaying. The only escapism he wanted from his meat life was the ability to kick the crap out of people like Donte.

  Eddie made his choice, allocated his ten unused skill points, and selected his base class. Quantum Mortalis was unusual in that a player did not choose their subclass through a menu option. They gained their subclass automatically through their actions or by finding someone to train them.

  As long as a person was smart and planned accordingly, it was not difficult to make sure you got the subclass you wanted. Players received two skill points upon character creation to help guide them toward their desired subclass.

  Eddie selected scout as his base class using a rogue template. All rogue templates started with the small blades and stealth skill, except for scouts, which got the bow skill instead of small blades.

  Most rogue-type players used their free skill points on surprise attack, lock picking, or pickpocket, but Eddie chose small blades. He was not going to be a thief or an assassin. His was a ranged, sustained DPS build. He allocated five of his ten free attribute points into Mind so he met the ten base point minimum for wielding magic and having a magical subclass right away.

  He chose rogue for his base class template even though a player could be an archer with a warrior template. Although the warrior base class gave him 15 hit points every level, a warrior’s primary attribute was Strength. That would have severely handicapped his bow skill. As a rogue-based scout, he would raise his agility to ten by level three with just the free attribute points he got every level.

  His Templar required a base of ten in strength and Mind to attain the class, not to mention dedicating himself to one of the game’s pantheons and completing a quest to prove his devotion. It was one of the more difficult subclasses to get, but the trouble was worth it for players who wanted both high attack and defense with several magical buffs to bolster both those attributes as well as some healing spells.

  A high level Templar was nearly unbeatable in one on one combat and could take on most mobs that were several levels higher than they were. Eddie had even solo’d lower level bosses that were still powerful enough to give him a little XP and some loot. He had almost rolled another one, but he wanted a change of pace, so he chose a ranged combat class. He would be a bit of a glass cannon, but as long as he kept out of melee, he would be fine.

  He used the extensive looks interface to put the final touches on his character and double-checked everything before finalizing.

  Name: Riccon Greybow

  Race: Human

  Level: 1

  Experience: 0/300

  Base Class: Scout

  Subclass: None

  Fame: 0. Never heard of you.

  Infamy: 0. You don’t scare me.

  Attributes: As a scout, you gain +1 dexterity and one attribute point every level to use on the attribute of your choice. As a human, you may use the secondary attribute point you receive every other level where you like. You must have a minimum of 10 in the primary attribute or attributes to attain a subclass. You incur a -1% penalty per attribute point below ten and a +1% bonus for every point above 10 to associated skills and abilities.

  Health: 9 (As a scout, you gain 12 HP + base Body bonus per level.) Health regen: 1 HP + your Body bonus every minute out of combat. Base health regeneration: 0.7 HP every minute.

  Stamina: 40 (As a scout, your Base Stamina amount is 10 x your Body score.) Stamina regen: 2 SP + Body bonus every five seconds out of combat, ½ rate in combat. Base stamina regeneration: 1.7 SP every 5 seconds.

  Mana: 50 (As a scout, your Base Mana amount is 5 x your Mind attribute.) Mana regeneration: 1 MP + Mind bonus every five seconds. Base mana regeneration: 1 MP every five seconds.

  Strength: 5 (-5% attack when using melee weapons or unarmed combat)

  Agility: 8 (-2% attack when using ranged weapons. -2% to dodge, parry, and speed)

  Body: 7 (-3% physical resistance. -0.3 health and stamina regen. -3 HP per level up)

  Mind: 10 (+0% magical resistance and attack. +0% mana regen)


  Charisma: 5 (-5% barter and relationship with NPCs)

  Luck: 5 (Helps nudge the probability of any outcome one direction or another. Higher luck increases the chances of receiving random boons.)

  Physical Attack: -4% small blades, -5% all other.

  Ranged Attack: -1% Bows. -2% all other.

  Magical Attack: 0

  Combat Skills: You gain 1 skill point every level. As a human with no racial abilities, you also receive an additional skill point every 3 levels instead of a racial ability point.

  Bows: Level 1 Grade 0: You gain a 1% bonus to attack and damage when using bows. Rank: Initiate.

  Small Blades: Level 1 Grade 0: You gain a 1% bonus to attack and damage when using small blades. Rank: Initiate.

  Advanced Combat Skills:

  None

  Noncombat Skills:

  Stealth: Level 1 Grade 0: You gain a 1% bonus to your ability to avoid detection. Rank: Initiate.

  Unallocated Skill Points: 0

  Abilities and Traits:

  Advanced Perception, Tier 1: As a scout, you are adept at identifying the skills, strengths, and abilities of the people and creatures around you. Gain more details through continued study and increasing your ability level.

  Silent take down, Tier 1: Silently kill or disable an opponent. Must be undetected when initiating attack. Target’s rank can be no more than two levels higher than the attacker’s. All XP kill rewards reduced by 50% + the amount of target’s remaining HP after using silent takedown.

  Eddie, now Riccon Greybow, had a brief sensation of falling before something jabbed him in the shoulder. He opened his eyes as if he were just waking up for the day and looked around the gloomy interior of what appeared to be some kind of communal sleeping area. A grizzled man loomed over him with a walking stick in one hand.

  The man made to jab him again, but Riccon swatted the stick away with the back of his hand. He studied the paunchy, unshaven man as he glared up at him.