“Alright, whatever. I just can’t believe a stupid Manticore killed them,” said the female again.
“Yeah, well... Let’s just find the Manticore, kill it, and then keep looking for the Bladed Noose Tree; that damn root’s gotta be somewhere,” the leader said as the pair of legs that were standing next to Van began to walk away. There was a great deal of commotion for some time before the party finally seemed to vanish from earshot.
“Are you kidding me?” Van asked as he stood up. “They were with another party! Another party looking for the same root we’re looking for! And you murdered their buddies! Murdered them! Without cause!”
Sang shrugged. “I bet we can take them, too, if we have to.”
“This isn’t Murder Spree Simulator, Sang! This is a game about cooperation and teamwork! You just blew our big chance to make friends with these people. They had the same agenda we did!”
“Yeah, but they would have taken the only root! Then what?” Sang replied.
“Joint quests don’t work like that; everyone gets their own reward,” Van replied. Sang shrugged off the comment and just continued to walk.
“Look, maybe it was a poor judgement call, but at the same time, we have some better items and a leg up on the competition. Maybe we should stage an ambush and take them out.”
“Take them out? First off, there aren’t two of us in this fight. My character is weak, dumb, and practically useless in a fight! I can’t fight worth a hill of beans, so it would be you versus three. Secondly, there is no way in hell I’m agreeing to killing more innocent players.”
“Innocent? They’re going to want angry, violent revenge on us for killing members of their team. So, if we take them out now, we won’t have to deal with them later,” Sang replied.
“I understand the ruthlessness of your logic, I do, but at the same time, I don’t think we have a legitimate chance of doing it. I don’t think you can kill three people on your own. We don’t know who they are or what their stats are, and they wouldn’t be low on Health when we met them. They’d be fully prepared to fight, and we’d get torn up.”
Sang nodded after another moment’s consideration. “I can understand your concerns, I guess. Well, if we meet them, use your flute to enchant them and I’ll pick off one of them. Then we retreat into the woods and figure it out from there.”
“We’re not picking anyone off!” Van said as he walked through the jungle. He was growing nervous and worried about the sheer amount of problems Sang was causing. After their jumping those players, it was only a matter of time before their buddies found out. Then it would be a case of search–and-destroy, and Van knew they didn’t have a chance against a group of experienced players who were no doubt loaded to the brim with powerful artifacts, magical weapons, and other nasty things that would kill them relatively easily. He had to figure out some way to rein Sang in; if she didn’t recognize that it was dangerous to mess with other players out in the wild zones, they’d probably end up in a lot more trouble than they were already in. After all, if players were feeling particularly vengeful, they could even hire a bounty hunter—someone paid to follow and kill targets in any area without punishment. Bounty hunters weren’t cheap, but were often a great way to get rid of people who you didn’t like or who had screwed another player over. They were usually pretty high level and would have very little trouble with killing Sang and himself. This only added to the pressure that Van was feeling in the moment.
As they walked on together in the stillness of the jungle, a loud shout came from the bushes. It was a decidedly human-sounding voice.
“Help! Help!” the person called. It was feminine, but Van could tell there was something off about it.
“What’s that all about?” Sang asked, pointing toward a cluster of bushes that was next to a banana tree. The voice seemed to be coming from inside of the bushes themselves.
“Dunno,” Van said as he glanced at the rustling leaves.
“Help! Help!” the bushes seemed to cry out again.
Sang crossed her arms. “I’m not use to plants talking... is this some kind of side quest, or a trap or what?”
Van shrugged. He had never been particularly a jungle dweller, preferring instead to explore the dark recesses of the mountains and cavern areas. Jungles were full of weirdness, and it seemed that whenever the developers made a new jungle area, there was always a higher number of traps and surprises waiting for unsuspecting players. He preferred the mountains, where most of the quests and side jobs were based around survival and fighting against the elements.
“Well,” Van said, “let’s just ignore it.”
“I think I heard some people talking over there,” called a voice from the distance. It was the feminine voice that Van had heard earlier from the group.
“This way!” said the voice of the leader of the group of three.
“Crap—hide!” Sang insisted as she turned translucent and leapt into the bushes. Van had no time to hide, though, and nor did he have the skills, so he was left completely out in the open as three players ran into to the small clearing he was standing within.
“Help! Help!” said the bush.
“Who are you?” asked the woman. Her name was Savorn and she was a Level 10 ranger. Her bow was instantly trained on Van. Next to Savorn were Pullmin the Knight and Ace the Mage, both Level 11s. Van could see that all three were immediately suspicious of him.
“Ummm, hi!” Van said, expecting his next moments to be full of intense agony as arrows and magic crashed into his face.
“Who are you and what are you doing here? Don’t you know this area is controlled and patrolled by the Junglefoot Guild?” asked Pullmin. His sword was drawn and Van could see that the weapon itself would deal around 100 damage per hit, and also caused a character’s move speed to decrease by 25%, meaning that he had very little chance of running away at this point.
“Sorry, no, I didn’t know any kind of guild was in charge of this place!” Van replied, putting emphasis on the world ‘guild’ to try and communicate to Sang that she had just successfully made enemies with not only a party of fellow players, but also an entire community of them.
“Well, we don’t allow people to traverse our jungle without paying dues or tribute. If you want membership, there’s a formal process for that, as well,” Pullmin said as he strolled up to Van.
“Have you seen any Manticores around here?” asked the wizard.
Van shook his head frantically. “No, not at all.”
“Curious... so why do you have Manticore meat in your inventory then?” asked the ranger.
“Oh, well, we saw one a while back, but nothing in this area,” Van said; he was beginning to sweat a little, which was curious... it meant that the game had detected that he was nervous enough for it to actually impact his character.
“Interesting,” Pullmin said as he slowly walked in a circle around Van. “Are you alone?”
“Oh yeah, just out here, doing my lonely bard thing,” he replied.
“But you just said ‘we’ a minute ago,” Savorn said. She looked exceptionally suspicious of Van now.
“Oh right, right. That was my friend, but she logged out,” Van said. He was wondering if it would be easier just to be stabbed at this point instead of having to deal with this kind of interrogation.
“What class was she?” asked the wizard as he leaned against his staff. They didn’t seem to be on high alert, but that was probably because they knew they easily outnumbered Van.
“Oh, she’s a barbarian,” Van said. “Big spiked club.”
“Not a ranger?” Pullmin asked.