CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER SIX - Cumbersome Heroics

It was a pretty pitiful consolation prize for slaughtering a miniature army, but Cody was sure he'd completed the stupid woodling quest. He'd completed it three times over, most likely, but that guard at the gates probably wasn't in the business of rewarding overachievers on the king's dollar.

He lay sprawled out upon the ground, taking ragged breaths like a dog in the summer heat. Woodling corpses decorated the thick woods around him, stacked atop one another and sat against trees like gruesome Halloween props, mutilated and covered in blood. As for him ( well, he was sure he didn't look much better than his foes.

His eyes drifted to the health bar in the corner of his vision.

[297 / 600 HP]

Over half his health had been claimed by the little beasts and the vicious war they waged upon his legs. Had he remembered that woodlings weren't able to reach anything past his waist, he would have bought chainmail leggings instead of a shirt. Now his default peasant hose were more hole than fabric and looked as though they'd been soaked in red dye.

That was the kicker about combat in Gates Online: sure, a player got more health as he leveled up, but low-level creatures could still chip away at him by focusing on the places he wasn't wearing armor. And if there were forty-seven of these aforementioned creatures all attacking him at once, it was safe to say that he'd be getting a couple bruises.

The pain was the real issue, though. Thanks to his malicious headset, Cody could feel every laceration and stab wound as though they were real. That was the primary reason why he was lying on the ground, sprawled out like a bearskin rug.

[298 / 600 HP]

"Yes," he muttered. "Come back to your home, sweet health points."

His HP regeneration was the standard fifty percent per hour that every player boasted. Perks and equipment could get it higher, but those were both a little beyond his reach right now. After all, he barely had pants anymore.

He opened his chat menu and sent a message to his party, instructing them to regroup at his location. Only a minute later, they all came walking into the gory scene he had painted, looking very uneasy. Each of them had their weapons at the ready, eyeing the woodling bodies as though they might pop up and seek vengeance upon them.

Misty was the first to see him. She gasped and ran to his side, then did what any person would to someone they had met just a few hours ago — she set his head on her lap and ran a hand through his hair.

"Poor baby," she said, using the tone one might reserve for a cute infant or fluffy pet. "You got hurt protecting us. Do you need mommy to heal you?"

Cody would have issued her a witty retort, but the colossal pair of breasts looming over his face had reduced him to a pseudo-vegetative state. He could, however, still manage to stare.

"Oh, man, is that why you wanted to be a healer?" Greg asked, looking as though he'd swallowed something foul. "You've got a weird mommy-nurse fetish?"

"Shut up," she all but growled. "Don't ruin this for me."

Sax frowned. "This seems morally questionable."

"Yeah, getting some bad vibes from it," Sweaty said. "Also a little offended you didn't do it when you healed me."

Misty sighed and looked down at Cody. "Are you into this or do you just want me to heal you?"

"I think I'll just take the healing for now, Mist."

She pressed the wand against his leg and a faint glow covered his wounds. His health jumped up a cool forty points, and her mana — he watched it in the corner of his vision — got bumped down all the way to zero. Healing Sweaty's ankles had already brought it below halfway.

Cody stood to his feet, much to the disappointment of Mommy Misty. His legs still felt as though they'd been dipped in lava, but lying around and moaning wouldn't help anything.

"Alright, guys," he began, "I'm going to loot the woodlings I killed. If any of you managed to get any of them, you should go ahead and do the same. After that, we'll have our post-battle assessment."

"I shot one in the kneecap, but I'm not sure which one," Eddy said.

"It'll have sparkles coming off its corpse."

Cody looted his victims in the surrounding woods — all forty-seven of them. After he finished with them, he looted the eighteen he had killed in the camp.

[The following items have been added to your inventory:

+ 164 talons

+ 54 [Lesser Woodling Head] - quest item]

In the twenty minutes it took to handle the looting, his wounds had gone from torturous to merely biting. In another ten, they'd all be healed, and he and his party could set off to find more enemies.

Not until they settled some things, though.

Cody clapped his hands. "Okay, gang, gather around, gather around. Post-battle assessment time."

The party looked shameful as they formed a semicircle around him, like a gathering of children who had been caught stealing from the cookie jar. Appropriately, too, as their performances had been somewhere between outrageously bad and wholly pathetic. Melk was the only real contributor aside from himself, and he was rightfully the least guilty-looking of them.

"Don't worry, I won't bite. I really just want to ask one question." Cody paused to look at all of them. "What the hell is wrong with all of you? Why do you all suck?"

"That's technically two questions," Greg said.

"And we're technically in a PvP zone, so I'd watch the sass."

"I killed four of them," Melk said.

"Yes, you're the only one who did well, Melk. I was sort of expecting the same performance from everyone." He held up a hand before any of them could retort. "I get that it was your first battle. Nerves got the best of you, and that's understandable. But holy Christ, guys, I figured you'd be able to get at least one of the little creeps."

"I did get one of them," Sweaty said.

"You also got your ankles slashed and would've gotten stabbed to death if I hadn't saved you. Honestly, you might've done the worst out of everyone."

"But I did get one of them."

"Yeah, well getting a bronze medal when everyone else forfeited isn't all that impressive. Alright, listen, folks — I think we need to do some training before we try grinding again. Eddy, have you even fired a bow before? I saw a blind archer on YouTube once, and he had better aim than you."

Eddy looked abashed. "No, only in video games."

"Then why the hell did you buy one?"

"Well, I — I thought it'd be cool."

"It might've been if you didn't take a half-hour just to knock an arrow." Cody pointed to Greg and Sax. "And you two: all you have to do is make a jab with those staves, and they do the rest. It couldn't be easier. Genuinely, I struggle to think of a way in which it could."

"Maybe if the magic missiles honed in on the enemy," Sax offered.

"I wasn't asking for suggestions, Sax, but thank you. Maybe when we die and reincarnate I'll make another game and give the players honing magic missiles."

"At least I didn't run off into the woods," Greg muttered.

"Fair point. Misty, what the hell?"

The party turned to stare at Misty. She looked about ready to cry, squeezing her wand against her bosom as though it were a teddy bear. It was a pretty ridiculous state for someone who had volunteered to fight monsters to be in.

Still, Cody didn't really feel like seeing waterworks at the moment.

"Okay, it's fine. It's fine, really. Everyone's alive. Greg, Sax, Eddy — form a row, please. The rest of you form one as well. It's training montage time." He checked his clock. "We can squeeze in thirty minutes. After that, we're going after some more woodlings."

His party split themselves into two rows.

"Eddy, I want you working on your accuracy and speed. You bought a few hundred arrows, so let 'em fly. Greg and Sax, I need you guys just focusing on aiming. No need for mages to cast quickly."

"What are we aiming at?" Sax asked.

"The tent. Tear that thing up and we'll move to a smaller target. Now, for you guys with melee weapons, I want you to demolish every crate and barrel in the camp. Get comfortable with your blades. Really go wild."

"Can't I just practice healing?" Misty asked.

"What, by slapping people with your wand?" Cody shook his head. "No, even healers have to get their hands dirty every now and then. You can learn some offensive spells later, but for now, go poke some stuff with your party members."

The training montage kicked off like a lame horse, offering Cody the most pitiful display of combat ability that had ever been seen. Melk was a budding warlord, and Greg and Sax had managed to figure out their staves, but as for the other three — liquefied garbage given human form. Eddy was slower than the US Postal Service with his bow, and Sweaty swung a sword like only an effete, beta-male incel could. Misty was the worst, issuing out halfhearted jabs and looking as sulky as she could manage.

"My god, we're all going to die," Cody muttered.

"What did you say?" Melk asked.

Cody waved the question away. "Nothing, Melk, nothing. Hey, Misty, I get you're trying to brood — and you're doing at a great job at it, too — but I'd really appreciate if you took this a little more seriously. And Sweaty, put your whole body into your swings. Watch how Melk does it."

When the thirty minutes was up, Cody was sure that they'd manage to achieve honorable deaths in their next battle. If nothing else, their performance would be better than it had been earlier.

"Alright, guys, training's over with. It'll get dark soon, so we should go find a woodling party to crash. Everyone ready?"

He got mixed replies — one boisterous affirmation, two restrained yeses, and three uneasy mumbles. It made no difference to him; his question had been rhetorical. This sorry crew was going to grind whether they felt ready to or not: such was the price of eagerly enlisting for battle and disregarding his warnings.

"Great. Fall in behind me. This path seems as good as any, so we're sticking to it."

They hopped back on the dirt path and trudged through the darkening gut of the Everwoods. Things had begun to take on a gloomy look, and the party no longer seemed to have the same enthusiasm that it did before. Rather, everyone seemed on edge, staying as silent as the dead and throwing wary glances at harmless woodland critters as they skittered by.

"How is there any sunlight here?" Sax's voice broke the uneasy silence, making everyone jump.

"What do you mean?" Misty asked.

"The trees are hundreds of feet tall and form a fairly dense canopy. That any sunlight should be reaching us seems impossible." He gestured to the dense helpings of flora around them. "These plants seem equally as unlikely. How would their leaves capture any energy?"

The party looked to Cody for an explanation.

"Didn't I say earlier that monsters could hear us?" He sighed. "Alright, fine, here's the rub: I knew the players would be irritated with a perpetually dark forest, so I made the canopy translucent. That means light can go through it, Melk. As for the biology of the plants, just remember that this is a video game; they don't grow or need food or anything like that. They have health bars so you can destroy them — that's it, really."

"Do they respawn?" Sweaty asked.

"Yes. My goal was to give players the ability to shape the world as they saw fit, but I didn't want them building a moat around around Odes or anything stupid like that. Unless a player purchases land, he can't permanently alter it. Well, not unless — " He halted and held up a hand to stop the party.

The chatter of woodlings could be heard in the distance, faint enough for one to wonder if it was a trick of the wind. But there were no winds in the Everwoods. It was a perpetually calm and quiet place, even during a storm.

"Stay close, gang. I think it's time for us to make some new friends."

They kept down the path for a minute, then pressed through a heap of jungly flora when the chatter became louder. A large glade opened up to them, slammed full of woodlings. Their campsite was much the same as the last, cluttered with junk and miserably shabby tents, but that was all just a backdrop for the centerpiece.

In the middle of the glade were three NPCs — two men and a woman — each gagged and tied to a wooden post. They seemed about as comfortable as anyone could be in such a situation, squirming, crying, and generally just looking miserable. Woodlings danced around them, chanting in the gobbledygook that passed for their language.

It was the standard, procedurally generated hostage-rescue setup. The only thing off about it was the camp size — it was rather large to be so close to Odes. Just large in general, really. But with all the bugs Cody had been witness to, he wasn't too surprised the game had tossed balancing out the window when the servers booted up, it seemed.

"Holy shit, are those people?" Eddy whispered.

"No, they're NPCs," Cody said. "They don't have usernames. Plus, one of them is a quest-giver — see the question mark over her head?"

"We have to save them," Melk said, his tone like iron.

Sax seemed wary. "There must be a hundred woodlings, and I only have enough mana to cast twenty magic missiles."

"Party chat, guys," Sweaty urged them.

[Godmelk: we must save them

BigEddy: yeah pal we heard u

ADMIN_UberCody: u guys are still shit. too dangerous

SweatyBowls: wow thx

MistyEX: ouch

GregHamster5: he is right tho. we will prob die

Sax0bonez: Let's find a smaller camp.

Godmelk: no we cant let them die

SweatyBowls: bruh they r npcs

Godmelk: ex machina

BigEddy: oh ffs they aren't even robots

GregHamster5: that movie was overrated

ADMIN_UberCody: no it wasnt

Sax0bonez: I enjoyed it.

MistyEX: look woodlings are hurting them]

The party turned their attention back to the NPCs. Sure enough, one of them was getting his neck carved open by a woodling's cruel, hooked knife. It was a pretty gruesome scene, and the NPC's futile struggle and death was, perhaps, just a little too convincing. Definitely convincing enough to earn the game a 'rated M' sticker. Cody noticed the woodling seemed to be enjoying itself, though, so not everyone was having a bad time.

Melk took a step forward and drew his sword from its sheathe. Thankfully, the satisfying schwing it made didn't alert the woodlings. His desperate charge into the midst of their numbers did, however.

"He's Leroy Jenkins-ing us," Sweaty hissed.

"Oh, we are so dead," Greg groaned.

"No we aren't." Cody drew his own sword. "You guys stay here, take out as many of them as you can. Run back to the main road if they overwhelm you. I'm going to help Melk."

Cody bolted after Melk, cutting down two woodlings without even a pause. Thankfully, the bulk of them had yet to realize what was happening and hadn't jumped on the suicidal Norwegian.

There was some consolation in the fact that the most capable member of his party was the one who had strayed. Melk had already managed to take down one of the woodlings with a nice gut thrust and another with a solid sideswipe. Like the romantic he was, though, he decided to end his combo to free the NPCs. It was hardly good timing for such a maneuver; they would be safer on the posts than they would be running unarmed about a woodling camp.

"Not yet, Melk, focus on the battle!"

Melk, naturally, didn't listen. Cody was half tempted to leave the party and join the woodlings' side; they would be a more agreeable lot, he wagered.

The woodlings had gotten past the initial shock of the ambush and were ready to dish out some pain, whipping the crooked daggers out of their sheaths and snarling like hungry hounds. Their first target was obviously Melk — the idiot who had decided to try and snatch their prisoners from them. That meant dozens of little blades were now poised to stab his feeble, level-1 body. Death, in a word.

"War cry!"

The two words put Cody in an awfully precarious decision. As he was in the center of the camp, dozens of woodlings had fallen within his skill's range. That might have been manageable had it not been for one fact: they had him surrounded from all angles.

He dished out wholesale slaughter to every customer, bargain-priced decapitations and Great Value amputations, but his legs once again became a woodling scratching post. It was unavoidable. With their superior numbers and his lack of 360-degree vision, stab wounds were like bread sticks at Olive Garden — even if he didn't want them, he was damn sure going to be served some.

"God, fuck, damn, shit!" he yelled, feeling their tiny blades cut at his legs.

[488 HP / 600 HP]

Melk had freed his precious NPCs, and he was now facing a half a dozen woodlings with his dumpster equipment. Cody was certain he'd be the recipient of more than a few ankle jabs, but maybe that would work as a deterrent against any further stupidity.

The rest of the party was actually performing fairly well, it seemed. They had their own miniature field of corpses that they were steadily adding to. Greg and Sax had mastered the complex maneuver of shoving their staves out in front of them, Eddy knocked his bow faster than an armless paraplegic, Sweaty was actually being a proper tank, and Misty hadn't abandoned everyone for a delightful forest stroll. All in all, things weren't so bad.

At least, they weren't until the wolves came along.

[Everwolf - LVL 4]

There were three of them — three massive, slavering hellhounds with yellow teeth and ragged, bramble-filled fur. Cody figured it went without saying that: yes, level fours like them weren't programmed to come so close to Odes. But what relevance did his programming even have anymore? Everything seemed to be disobeying it, after all.

"Run," Cody yelled to his party. "Back to Odes!"

Thankfully, they were in a listening mood for once. After cutting down a few more woodlings, the party promptly booked it back down the path. Whether they had finally developed some respect for his advice or they had simply seen the scary wolves, it was a welcome change.

The wolves were too busy converting woodlings into nonconsenting chew toys, so they didn't even bother to follow them. One of them had its watery eyes set upon Melk, however, and it wasn't a bad guess that it was thanks to his new NPC friends. The idiot had freed them both and was fending off a small group of woodlings. His own legs were a bloodied mess, and one look at his health bar told Cody just how precarious the situation was.

[43 / 100 HP]

"Melk, leave — "

A particularly nasty slash to his thigh shut him up, tearing away the last bit of fabric that was left of his hose. He turned his attention back to the throng of woodlings that still surrounded him, painting some more death with a few strokes of his sword. Their numbers had dwindled, but there were still dozens of them. And with the added threat of the wolves, things were getting ugly.

He ran for Melk, pushing through a chunk of the woodling encirclement at some cost to his health. A plan was forming in his head, but it was no more than a cheap framework, likely to fall apart at the first wind. Unfortunately, there wasn't any time to consider things if he wanted to keep his new friend alive.

Melk's few woodlings were easy to deal with, taken care of in just a few slashes. It was his own legion that was running to catch up to him that was the problem. Them and one of the wolves looking for bigger prey. A level four would take more than a single hit to slay.

"Ditch the baggage, Melk," Cody yelled, gesturing to the NPCs. "Run into the woods and get back on the path!"

Melk shook his head. "I won't leave them."

"Oh, for — take them with you, then! Just go!"

He took off into the woods, plunging into the underbrush like a hare. The NPCs followed closely behind him, and the wolf seemed eager to do the same.

"Taunt!"

The wolf snapped its ugly head toward him, whipping a rope of drool through the air with the sharp movement. Had Cody been a lesser man, he might have run into the woods like Melk did. As it was, he knew it wouldn't help anything. Running in the direction of the path or even toward Odes would lead the monsters to his friends. And running anywhere else would just land him in a fresh nest of woodlings.

His only option was to stand and fight. Totally alone and outnumbered. Without any stamina. Also without pants.

"What a shitty death."