The orc was a green giant. He must have been at least 7 feet tall, and 500 pounds of pure muscle. In contrast, I stood every bit of 5 foot 9 inches, weighing in at a whopping 180 pounds with maybe 20% body fat, give or take. In other words, I needed to defuse this situation before the orc was within grabbing distance or I was well and truly fucked. The problem with that plan was that the orc had no interest in being defused. I raised my hands as he approached.
“Woah. Easy there, big fella. I’m sorry about that. I was just doing a little target practice. I didn’t mean to hit you.”
He paid no attention to my words as he continued to stomp his big green feet in my direction. His every step made small vibrations in the ground which strengthened the closer he came to me. By the time he was standing in front of me, the ground seemed to vibrate just from his aura alone. I craned my neck to look up at him and lowered my hands. He seemed to size me up, and snorted.
“Nothing but a runt,” he said. I scarcely heard the insult as I was paying extra special attention to the intimidatingly sharp tusks which jutted up from his bottom lip at that moment. I was so dazed by the sight of them that I didn’t even react in time to stop him from snatching my gun away from me.
“You’re not even worth killing.”
His voice was deep and rumbling, with a strange accent I’d never heard before. It struck me as slightly Scottish sounding, if that Scotsman were drunk and using a synthesizer to lower his voice three octaves. There was a grittiness to it, as well, like the man was on a diet of river stones and broken beer bottles. His physique put every gym bro on planet Earth to shame, though, so I knew he was getting his fair share of protein. Plus, I highly doubted those tusks were for munching on kale and okra.
He looked at the gun, my gun, that was now in his hand looking like a child’s toy water pistol. My gaze followed his. He turned the thing over, this way and that and snorted again, completely unimpressed. I suppose I would be too, if someone had shot me and all it did was leave a small bruise and tiny abrasion on my skin.
“Tiny man with a tiny weapon. I’ve never seen one of these before.”
He didn’t appear to be talking to me, but rather to himself, assessing the situation. In fact, he was barely even acknowledging my existence.
“I imagine most things are small to you. Look…just give me my gun back, and I’ll leave you alone. We can go our separate ways and you’ll never see me or my underpowered weaponry again.”
That, unfortunately, brought his attention back to me. He growled, his yellow eyes glowing for a moment.
“Do not speak to me, human. You are beneath me. And this “gun” is mine, now. You’ve scared off my prey in the middle of a proving hunt with your racket. On top of that, you struck me. By rights, I should kill you where you stand. But, killing such a weakling would dishonor my blade.”
“OK, first of all…rude,” I said, my annoyance starting to get the better of me. “Secondly, you can’t have my gun. It’s mine and I need it.”
The orc just turned on his heels and just walked away.
“Hey! Vkr…Vic…” I stuttered, realizing that I honestly had no idea how to pronounce the dickhead’s name.
“Shrek, I swear to god, if you don’t give me back my gun.”
Vrk’shryk spun around again and bent down to come face to face with me.
“What? What will happen if I don’t give you back this piece of trash, human?”
I stared at him for a moment, seething. The guy was nothing more than a fantasy world bully. Earth was crawling with guys just like this. I couldn’t stand them back home and I was becoming increasingly aware that I wouldn’t be able to stand them here, either. He may have been big and green and terrifying, but at the core of him he was the same as any frat boy jock asshole from upstate. I found to my surprise that my hands had balled themselves into fists and my jaw was clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack.
“Well? What are you going to do?” he asked, and it struck me. A memory so stupid that it made me laugh right in that pig-nosed idiot’s face. He did not appreciate my mirth. A snarl curled his lip and a rumble began to swell in his throat. Even with his anger building mere inches from my face, I decided the opportunity was too good to pass up. I had to do it.
“I will fuck your mother. How about that?”
I didn’t see his punch coming. I didn’t feel it land. All I noticed was that I was no longer on my feet, my health bar was dropping, and my sight was dimming. All I could do as I lay there losing consciousness was to smile and watch him walk away with my gun in his hand, as the world faded to black.
My health was at around 50% when I awoke an hour or so later, and my head was throbbing in pain. I groaned and felt my face with one hand as I pushed myself to my feet with the other. My left eye was swollen shut, and I winced in pain as I gingerly explored the area with my fingertips. I was obviously no doctor, but I was of the decidedly unprofessional opinion that my jaw was broken and Shrek had likely fractured my orbital socket.
Jesus, I thought, the guy hit me one time and damn near killed me. Even worse, he probably wasn’t even trying particularly hard. That was more than a little demoralizing. At least I could see that my health was already starting to tick back upward. It had only been a few minutes since I had woken up and my health was already up a point. Looking around with Environmental Mapping, I tried to see if I could locate where Shrek had gone. I’d never used the ability in this way before but it seemed logical enough, so I figured it was worth a shot. Sure enough, after a bit of searching, I picked up a small red dot slowly making its way southward through the forest. Looking ahead, I could see that there was a clearing to the southwest but my map didn’t have any info on what lay beyond the regions immediately touching my safezone.
Probably because I’ve never gone there, if this works anything like the videogames, I figured. I swiped out of the Environmental Mapping UI and noticed that I had a few notifications.
I cringed at The System making the same goofy Rocky Balboa jokes that every dork in the Upper East Side had made, back on Earth. That was incredibly lame, but on the other hand, I supposed it was kind of cool that the achievements were personalized. Either way, I couldn’t really complain. Gaining the point to my constitution increased my health back up to 75%, and I’d never complain about stat boosts, anyway. But what my mind was really stuck on at that moment was the quest I’d received. It was fairly straightforward – go get my gun back. Fair enough. The rewards were excellent, too. But, how exactly had I asked for a massive orc to punch me in the face and steal my gun? The System was being vague and weird and I didn’t like it one bit.
I glanced back at the Environmental Mapping tab and frowned. Shrek was getting further and further away with every second I stood here debating. I decided to just start jogging in his general direction and figure out my plan on the way. The first thing I needed to do was to have a closer look at the one weapon I had left – The Blade of Seredh.
Damage scales with…conviction? I had no idea what that meant. I thought back to my fight with the Burrow Tyrant, trying to recall what I’d felt while using the Blade. The longer I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that the only thing on my mind in that moment had been survival. I supposed that counted as conviction. I was very committed to the idea of not dying so maybe that was enough to give the dagger a power boost.
Another thought occurred to me as I jogged through the forest in pursuit of my lost weapon: I’d never run for this long in my life. I absolutely loathed cardio training in my previous life. I was realizing in real time the power of stat progression and learning that it was likely to be a highly addictive pursuit. I only had a measly three points in Constitution at this point but it had raised both my overall health as well as my stamina to levels that were basically superhuman compared to Earthly standards.
A quick glance at Environmental Mapping and I could tell I was catching up with the orc. I engaged Fade, just in case he happened to be in possession of any abilities that might alert him to my presence. I wasn’t entirely sure if Fade was strong enough to slip detection skills, but it certainly couldn’t hurt my odds. Once I saw the Fade effect was active, I decided to really push myself and see where my limits currently were. So, I picked up the pace from a jog to a run that felt to be about half the intensity I probably could have managed. I did that for half an hour straight.
Insane, I thought. I could have broken every marathon record I’d ever heard of with relative ease, and I was only just scratching the surface of what I’d eventually be able to do in this world. My experiment complete, I slowed to a jog again and took another glance at my map. I was getting pretty close to catching up to Shrek entirely. I decided it was probably best not to take too many chances, so I slowed down to a brisk walk. It made me feel like a grandma in one of those old malls that were half shut-down and would likely be all-the-way shut down if it weren’t for the senior exercisers keeping the lingering businesses afloat. But, it kept me at a safe distance and it gave me time to think…something I sorely needed, because I didn’t have the faintest clue of what I was going to do when I caught up to the big, green moron.
As I approached the edge of the forest, it occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t have to worry so much about what to do when I caught up with Shrek. I had much, much bigger problems to deal with if I was going to get my gun back. Staring from the shadowy protection of the tree line, I gaped in horror at the massive orc settlement that occupied a large portion of the clearing ahead. In fact, calling it a settlement was doing it a disservice – the thing sprawled out like a mid-sized Earth city without the cars and skyscrapers.
I could see Shrek lumbering down the road that led to the city and knew that I’d have to follow him in. Just as soon as the cooldown on Fade wears off… I never finished the thought, because I honestly had no idea what I was going to do when I got down there. My brain was too busy imagining all the Shrek-sized orcs wandering around inside those city limits. It was a terrifying thought. But, my time was up – the cooldown on Fade had expired. So, I reactivated it and started walking along the same road Shrek had taken. Every nervous step led me that much closer to an entire city full of giant orc warriors. I may have actually peed a little.