by K.A. Rose
Stage 01:
Pretty Please
Kite liked collecting keywords.
Mia had once told him that it was impossible to
fully document the fields and dungeons of The World, because theoretically
there were an infinite number of fields. It was well within the realm of
possibility to map out all the fields formable with the keywords you were
provided with, but every player started out with different keywords, and
you had to trade them to access even more different dungeons.
Say you had fifteen keywords for Parts A, B, and
C. 15 x 15 x 15 was 15^3 was 3375 possible fields, and that was just with
what you started with. No one yet had managed to collect all keywords for
all parts, but it was rumored there were thousands for each.
Clearly, the programmers had a lot of time on their
hands. Because while it was a given that the field features were randomly
generated (even if the portal map was looped), the dungeons were all consciously
designed. These did not regenerate with each access, and did not differ
from player to player. So someone, probably multiple someones, had actually
sat around and plotted out these thousands, millions of stages.
And they actually had to ask why this fascinated
him...
Granted, yes, by now they were well acclimated to
some of the stranger aspects of The World. It was a given that there
was some component to its design that was not fully evident to CC Corp,
and that there were parts that functioned under their own power independent
of outside programming. But Kite believed that for the most part this only
held true for the supposed core of The World, not its outlying regions
that most players were exposed to. This included the innumerable dungeons,
their fields, portals, and Gott Statues. There was a logic to this.
It was Mistral that had proven the key point in
his discovery, most surprisingly. A dungeon she requested he accompany
her to had the Part B keyword "of." When he finished it, he returned to
the root town and considered how this enabled several hundred more fields
by its simple existence. Not that it proved very exciting for most of the
experimentation; "Bursting of Aqua Field" was a boring grassland, "Chosen
of Nothingness" just had a lot of those annoying Magic Box monsters.
He tried them all.
Everyone in The World was asked to have a
goal. Some played to emulate high-level characters they admired. Some wanted
a particular legendary item. Some collected Golden Grunties, not to use,
just to hold on to and show off to classmates.
Following 'the Ordeal,' Kite's ambition was...
...to map the entire World.
"Delta server? That's just a bunch of n00b dungeons,
isn't it?"
"Like you care about EXP."
"M4h n4hh... There's different degrees of acing
a dungeon. There's some pride in kicking ass in Sigma, d3sh0."
"From what I've heard, you used to love hanging
around the 'newbie dungeons.'"
"P3ch44... You weren't just about to go digging
up the past, were you?"
"If you put me to it," said Kite, presently at the
end of his reserves of patience. "And quit using l33t. You sound like a
jackass."
Sora swung back and forth by his feet from the rock
outcropping. Upside-down, his long isolated locks of hair swung like floppy
bunny ears, not the most intimidating presence on the net.
"Heh, sorry. Fell back into old habits. I hacked
into an American server earlier."
"Didn't figure your English was up to snuff."
"Theirs isn't either. We met about halfway."
It made a decent kind of sense.
Just as abruptly as they had departed on a tangent,
Kite brought them back on topic. "I'm on the last set of keywords now,
but I haven't found anything weird yet. Maybe twenty or thirty to go through."
"It's a good thing you're limited to Delta on this,
or you'd be at it 'til Judgement Day."
"So you don't know anything, then?"
"Sadly, fountainhead of information that I am these
days... B.T.'s really good at datamining; why don't you go see her?"
"She sent me to you."
"Really? Ch3333333hhh..."
Sora hated to be a tool in other people's irony.
This much Kite was able to deduce. If anyone was going to be ironic, Sora
felt it ought to be him.
Kite stood up. His character type wasn't tall, but
neither was the outcrop from which Sora had been hanging, and now the other
Twin Blade was facing his navel. This didn't last long. Sora jumped down
soon after and rolled upright. He still made his own sound-effects.
Now once again Kite was craning his head to look
up at him. Sora had gone for the lanky ninja-type Twin Blade, but even
that he had stretched out a little (as much as parameters allowed) so that
the effect in the end was that of a rolled-out thin creature all blade
and purple turtleneck. It was just barely humanoid, but then, Kite had
hung around with creatures far less.
Sora was one of the few PCs Kite knew that were
left around after 'the Ordeal.' It wasn't to say that most of Kite's old
allies had up and disappeared, but peace is not half as unifying as war.
In the absence of any definitive tension, friendships and even gaming interest
had waned and dissolved. Many didn't access anymore, and the few that did
kept a safe distance. And of course, there were some Kite was glad to avoid
anyway...
Sora, though, didn't run. Tsukasa and her gang had
expected him to quite readily, based on their understanding of his psyche.
"He's damaged," Bear had said simply, and
then nothing more.
But Sora was strong. Well, he had every reason to
be. He had more experience under his belt (+15 Evade) than most players
combined, and that extended well past levels and stats. His knowledge of
The
World was unimitably vast, to the extent that Kite treated him as something
of a mentor.
Not the most pleasant one, granted. Some mentors
aren't.
"If that's all of that for the day," Sora said,
drawing Kite out of his ponderous daze, "was there a leveler you wanted
to hit? 'Cause otherwise I'm gonna log out for the night."
The smaller Twin Blade shrugged. "I maxed out recently,
so there isn't much of a point."
"Suit yourself." Then, just as spontaneously as
he start and stopped his sentences, Sora went into a jump with a "Ch00-p4h!"
and was out of sight.
Back in the root town, Kite tried calling BlackRose
again.
She'd put on an Away message now.
"Hi, you've reached BlackRose's inbox. Unfortunately
I'm in college these days so I can't waste my time on games much. If it's
something really important, phone. If you don't know it, tough cookies,
it probably wasn't all that important in the first place. Bye."
Well, that was sweet.
Not for the first time, Kite wondered if perhaps
he was the only one among the old clique that genuinely cared for the well-being
of The World. Had they honestly forgotten all they had seen, and
been privy too? Was Kite the only one, in the end, to refuse to believe
that the events to transpire here would go away as soon as he logged out?
Kite still felt he had an obligation to the game.
There was a saying, wasn't there, that if you save
a man he is in your charge for the rest of your days? Kite had saved
The
World. Now he was The World's protector. Or so he wished was
the case. In all honesty, he didn't know.
So what was it now, this single-minded devotion
to mapping a presumably unmappable dungeon? To find it and dissect it?
Because it was there. For all he knew, based on the BBS, it could be another
threat, or it could be a hoax. But he had to keep trying.
He did keyword combinations in Mac Anu for another
hour. They were all very low-level dungeons hardly worth note. In the end
the greatest reward was a Gott Statue bearing a Golden Grunty. His HP was
maxed out already; he put it in his storebox with the others. Even A-20
wasn't around these days to mooch things from him.
Afterward he tried BlackRose again. Nothing.
He called Natsume. Natsume had been nice. She had
been sweet. He'd liked playing with her.
No response.
He was halfway tempted to go on down the list and
try everyone, but there was something desperate and impersonal about that.
Plus, he didn't know what he'd do if someone like Nuke Usagimaru or Piros
said yes.
It was very late now, outside in the real world.
He had school tomorrow. Hell, he had homework to do still. He was in high
school now; if he didn't keep his grades up and get into Tokyo U in the
next few years, his mother would probably disown him. Not that Kite would
feel too good about it either, granted.
Maybe a few more keywords...
He saved first, out of habit left over from the
days when dying was an actual danger as opposed to some dim, vague concept,
and opened up the keyword menu.
Part A Keyword: House.
Part B Keyword: of.
Part C Keyword:
Kite's thumb hovered over the directional keys of his controller. Technically the next C part to check was Sand Trap, but the one just after that was a plural noun, actually creating a halfway coherent phrase. A rarity. It was a violation of the rules he held for himself in mapping, but, he figured, just this once. One stupid low-level dungeon just to satisfy myself, then I'll go do my homework.
Part A Keyword: House.
Part B Keyword: of.
Part C Keyword: Leaves.
For a second, Kite thought his visor glitched, as
the screen flickered. The font of "House"
had shifted to bright blue on its own accord.
Peh. His visor was malfunctioning. Great. Like he
really needed another game expense now.
The Chaos Gate activated.
>>Delta House of Leaves
>>Element: Wood
>>Level: 2
>>Confirm?
He pressed the Confirm key on his control pad.
There again, the flicker. But it was gone just as
soon as it had come. And he was warped to the field.
End Stage 01.