Chapter SevenDrill Sergeant

In late February Jeong assembled the first training group.

"These are my ten best. We'll start by training them and they will be your captains." Jeong went down the line and gave each of their names. All but one were Chinese. All but one were male.

"This is Daun. She's Korean. Her English is the best in the group and she fights up front. You'll like her."

"Hello, Daun." Rat smiled. Daun smiled back. She was short and square, with her hair tied back hard and a shield on her back that was too big for her, and she sized Rat up like a basilisk.

"So we're in China right now?" asked Rat.

"No. In Korea, in the mountains outside of Hongcheon City," Jeong said.

"Oh, I see."

"Yes. Mostly orcs, goblins and mountain trolls around here. Basilisks, too, up the mountain a little ways."

"Alright. Well, basilisk essence is worth some money, and the goblin casters usually drop some essence, too."

"Yes. We thought about farming the basilisk but it isn't efficient. They kill our farmers too often. So we mostly harvest the troll essence here."

"Well, maybe we can change that."

"I hope so."

"Do they speak English?"

"Yes, enough. Gamer speak."

"Good enough," said Rat. "I think I can handle it from here."

"Okay. I'm going to go practice. Good luck. Message me if you need anything." Jeong disappeared in a puff of smoke. Rat realized that he had also been using a Link the whole time, and was probably back in Seoul.

She stood in the middle of ten strangers who were all looking at her. Correction– they were all looking at him. A tall bearded man in a green cloak with a longbow on his back and a legendary dagger strapped to his leg, who was, according to the world rankings, the second best player alive, and who was lying on a bed in the dark five thousand miles away with a helmet full of pins on. She cleared her throat. It came out through the Link as a low rumble.

"Alright, let's move. Spread out ten meters apart, and keep an eye peeled for tracks. Message me in party chat if you see any mobs." Rat beckoned her squad forward. I could get used to leading noobs around.

The squad trudged up the mountain in loose formation, until someone messaged her, "5 goblin, neast". Rat replied "group up all." They rallied together and saw fresh footprints in the mud.

"Let's go find them."

The squad followed the tracks, moving quickly to catch up with the mobs in front of them. Once they were within range, they looked at Rat.

"So, what's your strategy?" Rat asked.

Daun spoke up before anyone else had a chance. "I'll charge with the tanks. Casters and archers follow my lead."

"That will work since there's ten of you, but what if there were only two or three of you?" asked Rat.

"We would die. What would you do?" responded Daun, curtly.

"I want to know what you would do if I wasn't here."

"We could draw them out," suggested one of the Chinese players.

"Yes, that could work. But if they've got a healer or some kind of caster, it could get tricky. You've got to take him out first."

"Okay," said Daun. "How about you, knife boy, you go to the right. You, bow, go to the left. Hide in trees. I get their attention and draw them back here. Knife, you sneak up and kill caster when I draw the others away. Bow, start shooting at them when they get close to me. Once casters are dead I fight and you come help."

"I like that plan. The rest of you will stay here and watch. I don't want to have to wait for you to rez if you die, so come back here if you get into trouble and we'll help you out," Rat said.

They set out to execute the plan. Daun pulled them. Knife dispatched the shaman with a backstab attack. Bow wounded one of the goblins and drew it away from Daun, who continued to run around, leading the other three back toward her comrades. Bow and Knife dispatched the wounded goblin and drew their bows on the remaining three. Daun held them off while the other two picked them off with arrows. Daun took a blow to the side and nearly got hit by one of Knife's arrows, but otherwise it was an easy victory.

Rat smiled. "See? A little bit of strategy is all it takes. I want you all to practice this same strategy."

They continued on up the mountain for a couple of hours, repeating variations of the strategy: distraction, dispatching of any magic users, picking off the main pack, fighting hand-to-hand when the numbers were even. Goblin and orc warbands appeared every twenty minutes or so and were handled much more quickly each time, although the party had to intervene numerous times to keep players from dying. Rat checked the time– she was off the hook, Jeong would be back any minute. Then a message came in to the party chat. "basilisk swest".

"Have any of you ever taken on a basilisk before?" asked Rat. Everyone nodded yes. "And did you kill it?" Everyone shook their heads.

"Basilisks have a lot of armor. Even though there are ten of you, it could wipe the whole party out. On the other hand, I've soloed a dragon. Similar problem, except it flew and breathed fire. So it's doable, you just have to be smart and be patient."

"How did you kill the dragon by yourself?" asked Daun.

"Look at the basilisk. Where is it vulnerable?"

"The eyes," Daun said.

"Yes, good. Anywhere around their body between the legs is good to strike at, but they'll turn and stomp on you if they can see you. They're a lot easier to take down once they're blind."

"So we shoot the eyes and then surround and attack?"

"Sounds like a good plan, Daun. You lead the charge. How many men do you need?"

"I can do it with four."

"Do you have a bow?"

"Yes, I am good with bow."

"Alright, take three then."

Daun pointed to Magic first, then Knife and Bow. "You three. Let's go." Rat had expected her to take another archer.

The basilisk was a massive beast, a lizard the size and shape of a rhinoceros, and it was eating a tree.

"Your swords won't do much good, not if he's kicking around a lot," said Rat. "You're going to need to get him in both eyes or he'll chase you down, and they are pretty quick. Don't turn your back if you have to run, you won't be able to dodge the acid. Try to sidestep. And watch out for the tail."

Daun got as close as she dared without being noticed. She drew an arrow and shouted "Fire!"

Her arrow went low and glanced off the basilisk's armor. Bow's arrow went into the basilisk's nostril, enraging it. The basilisk charged at Daun, who nocked another arrow and let it fly into the basilisk's mouth before diving to her left to avoid a massive wad of corrosive spit.

It kept coming. She dropped her bow, got her shield up, and felt the first impact lock her knees. The shield dissolved under the acid. She tried to run and found she couldn't.

Then she was invisible. Magic had remembered.

Bow put out one eye before the basilisk killed him. Daun retrieved her bow while the creature hunted the others. She could hear Rat giving instructions, but the words arrived too fast. She needed the beast to turn once more. She waited, with the string cutting into her glove, and shot the other eye as it came around.

The blind basilisk ran straight through her. Her vision went white. When it cleared, Magic and Knife were gone. Knife's dagger was still in the beast's flank, too shallow to have killed it.

Daun lay still until her suit released her legs. The basilisk circled, striking at the sound of arrows that had stopped. She crawled under its head, stood, and drove her sword between the scales above its breast. Then she dropped flat.

A claw went over her. The basilisk took two steps and fell. Daun stayed down until her own breathing slowed.

Rat and the rest of the party stood behind her. Jeong, too. "Not bad, not bad," Rat said. "How do you feel?"

"Tired. No more basilisks today."

Rat nodded. "So, what did you learn?"

"Don't charge when the first shot misses."

Rat laughed. "What else?"

"And tell me one thing at a time. I can't listen to a whole lesson when it's standing on me."

Between training for competition and training Jeong's crews, Rat had racked up more than fourteen hours a day in-game for a whole week. She'd brought Daun and the other farmers (who she still referred to by their weapon or class) up to a very respectable level of play, and had spent the last day watching as they split off into twos and dispatched packs of orcs seven strong. Daun had learned from her previous mistakes and had, after numerous frustrating deaths, managed to beat a basilisk on her own. As they walked back to town on their last day, Rat hung back with her.

"Why do they call you Rat?" asked Daun.

"I call myself that," Rat replied.

"Why?"

"It's complicated. It's like a tattoo. It's a way of telling the world who I am."

"You tell the world you live in sewers?"

"I tell the world that I am misunderstood. Rats can be very sweet, smart and resourceful. They haven't always lived in the sewer."

"I see."

"And what about Daun?"

"My mother says it means being who you ought to be. She has quite a few ideas about who that is."

"I think it's worthy of you." Rat smiled at her.

"Ha!"

"Hey Daun." Rat bit her lower lip.

"What is it?"

"I'm going to ask Jeong if I can keep you around while I train the next group. I'll give you half of my cut for the week, and if you do a good job I'll try to convince him to give you your own groups to train. Would that be alright with you?"

Daun beamed. "Yes! Thank you so much!"

"Don't thank me. You're the one who's going to be walking noobs up a mountain."

"I will walk them very fast."

Rat had a day off from training while the next group of farmers was assembled. She took the bus to Vancouver to go thrift shopping.

For the past week her mind had been focused entirely on the game. Even when she closed her eyes to sleep, battles raged on the insides of her eyelids. Now her thoughts wandered. She thumbed through the racks of shirts carelessly. She couldn't stop thinking about Daun. I wonder what she looks like in real life? And what's her story? Did I just give up half my money so that I could see her again?

Daun thought she was a man. Rat took a shirt off the rail and held it against herself, then put it back. She could tell her. In the game the ranger could stand there and say it, while Rat sat alone in the cabin. She put the shirt over her arm. At the counter she added a second one and a pair of boots that almost fit. Four dollars for the shirts.

On the bus home she remembered the mysterious item she'd looted from the dragon's lair in Alius. What the hell is a Mind's Eye for? She opened her inventory and looked at the purple nameplate. She ran a few more searches and still came back with nothing.

The Mind's Eye was a small scepter with an eyeball on top, but it had no interface, and it was too small to bash a troll's head in with. Rat didn't like spending money in the game– she felt that if she was spending money to buy items then she was just another sucker on the wrong side of the game. Then again, she didn't have an identify scroll and probably wasn't going to find one. Mages might drop them, but out in the woods mages were pretty rare.

Rat opened her inventory and grabbed her tradestone. She found a scroll in Vancouver for $28, plus $7 for delivery by bird. Two days' rent. Annoying, she thought. Then again, the Mind's Eye was probably worth a lot more than that, and her rent was more than covered by the Korean operation.

The bird awoke Rat, who had dozed off. She pulled her frames off to rub her eyes, then put them back on and grabbed the scroll. She looked up the incantation on the web, and then pulled the Mind's Eye out of her inventory.

"I novicum. No, wait, I nocivum." The scroll smoked in her hand as writing started to burn into the parchment. She read it.

Legendary Scepter. Soulbound.

No information available. Please consult tech support.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Hey, uh, Jeff, we've got a situation," the head of tech support said.

"Oh?" Jeff stopped typing. "Whatcha got?"

Jeff liked her well enough in person, but a video call always spelled trouble.

"Well, a player killed the Aether Dragon."

"So what's the problem?"

"They did it solo."

"Okay, I don't follow."

"Well, we don't get all the details from you content guys, but the internal release notes mention that you added some really rare drops for players who quest solo in Alius."

"Yeah, we ended up taking all the good stuff out."

"Well, I've got a player asking about a Mind's Eye. She tried a scroll on it and got the tech support message."

Jeff put his face in his hands. "That's still there from our in-house beta. Nobody ever killed the dragon by themselves, it must have been overlooked. Who's the player?"

"Rat. She's a highly ranked competitive player."

"I know who Rat is." He was quiet for a second. "I'm going to kick this up to Richard. He'll want to know. Is she online now?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Hang on."

Rat had gone into Alius to work off her annoyance. She was halfway up a hill fighting blue wolves when a player came toward her and the wolves all went to sleep.

She recognized him from the party stream. It was the High Elf in the gold clothes, although she had never seen a gold nameplate before. She lowered her bow.

"You're Rat?"

"Depends who's asking."

"Richard Lee. I run the place."

He offered his hand. She shook it, and watched his fingers close around hers. They could shake hands in Alius, even though they were both ghosts. It was still strange to watch it happen without feeling anything through her retail Link.

"I hear you've got something of ours."

"I killed the dragon. It was in the box."

"I know. You didn't do anything wrong. We left something in the loot table that should have been taken out. Can I see it?"

She held out the scepter. He looked at the eye for a while and asked Jeff whether it was the one from the beta.

"That's it," Jeff said over the channel.

"We used it for the game masters," Richard explained. "It lets you see what another character sees. Players or NPCs."

"Any player?"

"Yes. We turned the back end off a year ago. You can keep the item. You earned it."

"How many of them are there?"

"Just yours. We've removed the drop."

Jeff said he wanted to revoke the old service key as well. Richard told him to do it in the next maintenance window.

"The view's off now," Richard told Rat.

"I should hope so."

"I watched the recording of your fight," Richard said. "Four hours. You made her land where you wanted her to land."

"That's how you kill a dragon."

"Nobody else seems to know that. Have you ever thought about working on the game? We could use somebody who knows how to break it like you do."

"I've got a job," said Rat.

"I'm sure you do." He nodded to her, and to the sleeping wolves, and turned to mist.

The wolves woke up. Rat shot them.

That night, in a kitchen in Sausalito, Max put a cup of tea in front of Richard and sat down across from him.

"Atom's kidneys haven't recovered from the crash," said Max. "The heart injury is making the support harder. People can live for years with locked-in syndrome. That isn't what's shortening his time. We have to deal with the other damage."

"So, what are you saying, Max?"

"I want a renal specialist on the team, and someone who can argue with my perfusion model. We may have a year. I don't want to use it waiting."

"Are you sure that's even feasible?"

"The preliminary work has been very promising. It might take years to perfect, maybe even a decade or more to get a product to market. But we don't need perfection. If Atom's body fails, I want to have a backup plan."

Richard bit his lip. "Whatever you need, Max, it's yours."

"Thanks, Richard."

"No. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Max."

"Yeah?"

"We have to keep this a secret. Really, really secret. A lot of people are going to want this. And I don't know what the legality is, frankly I'm afraid to ask."

"I asked," said Max. "The lawyer wants the full protocol. I haven't sent it."

Richard moved the cup away from the papers. "Send it."

"They may tell us to stop."

He did not answer that.