Lands of Punishment
Story by DragonMasterX on SoFurry
Particular commission for Giza
Stormy is back, and he's been fired from his job! With a newly acquired wealth of time in his paws, this time he's trying out the hottest fantasy VR MMORPG. Just like any other game, he jumps into his new identity, completely unaware that fate has an entirely different class in mind for him to assume the mantle of.
This 64-page sci-fi thriller is sure to keep you on your toes.
This is a commission for Giza
Warning: This story contains corruption, transformation, growth, muscle and cock expansion.
Stormy the wolf belongs to their player.
Jun the cat belongs to his player.
Lands of Punishment, by DragonMasterX.
Prologue
IlluTech had just climbed the highest step on big tech. Their most recent hit VR MMO, Lands of Punishment (LOP), had taken the world by a storm. The fantasy adventure with hyper-realistic, sprawling landscapes and awe-inspiring creature designs instantly captured the imagination of the millions of players on launch day, a number which only grew by the day until it had left every other popular game at the time in the dust.
Fully realized, developed and published by IlluTech, LOP used its state-of-the-art proprietary VR hardware consisting of sensory suits and chambers known as 'pods' to allow a seamless and totally safe transition from reality to the game world.
You're living a second life in LOP. It's like you're actually there!
There's something for everyone. It's not all doom and gloom despite the name!
As a big fan of fishing, it feels so relaxing. Even the birds come visit depending on the weather!
Trying to find all the little details between player interaction, the environment and even the creatures are so satisfying.
_ _
With favorable reviews across the board drowning out negativity and inviting more people to allow themselves to become immersed, within one month LOP had become a mainstay IP in the gaming industry. Communities formed all over the world with its current 60 million strong and growing player-base. After its first year, content expansions had become regular every other month.
Haters and other detractors had doomed LOP to instant commercial failure due to the custom IlluTech hardware being so expensive, but that didn't stop the most dedicated of gamers and streamers from obtaining and immediately recommending everyone get an IlluPod, suit and visor set. Those that couldn't afford the tech weren't left in the dust, however. With LOP's growing success, malls and stores all over the globe had soon started renting out space at their storefronts to feature pods for public gaming. With a comparatively modest monthly subscription to the game, the advent of virtual reality arcades was now here.
One could explore, fight, take on quests and unravel mysteries in the land, building their player character in various ways. LOP's popularity was in great part thanks to its inclusive approach: Even though the main goal was to choose and join one of the many warring factions tearing apart the vast majority of the land and find a way to stop or facilitate the revival of the Dragon God, one could join the game to serve non-combative purposes and enjoy PvP-free zones.
Opening shops, fishing, farming, mining, blacksmithing, bartending… Even those that tried the game out simply to sightsee to get 'whisked away to fantasy' could get tours from more experienced players offering escorts to protect them from unwanted battles; the sky was the limit! And as such, to many, LOP had become not just a mere escape from reality, but a welcome hangout spot for both hardcore and casual gamers to enjoy themselves no matter their skill level or proclivities.
- The one and true punishment of LOP is not giving yourself the chance to experience it for yourself!
The latest review from a popular videogame streamer showed up large and bright on the gigantic LED screens plastered across downtown. IlluTech paid good money to promote the game as well as its various products around the clock. Commuters would frequently see the ads on their way to and from school and work, ensuring word of the company was always in the public's mouth; especially in the city where IlluTech HQ was based at!
Stormy sighed as he got off the bus, carefully dragging his feet down the humid walkway since it had been rainy as of late. Fishing his smartphone out of his back pocket, he navigated to his chat app where the latest messages with his ex-boss were. “Severance my ass…" the young adult wolf bitterly growled at the numbers present in the conversation. He put the device away before he felt the urge to throw it away. He also had to pay attention to traffic since many were returning from their jobs.
Stopping at the well-traveled intersection, Stormy looked out at the city skyline. IlluTech HQ was the tallest building; the biggest skyscraper present. It could be seen from nearly anywhere in town, but that open intersection gave the impression the building was swallowing the setting sun behind it. “At least I got LOP, I guess…" he murmured to himself, resuming his walk after the traffic light had given its permission.
Stormy had been playing the VR MMO for a couple of weeks now. He had jumped into it with a small group of acquaintances he had made in a previous online game with similar themes. Ever since the older game had fallen to obscurity in the face of LOP's insane popularity, Stormy, along with many, had jumped ship.
Because of Stormy's job taking him well into the late hours of the afternoon on most days until now however, he had fallen significantly behind everyone else. Thanks to the recent downsizing in the company Stormy used to work for, he now found himself with considerably more free time while he was between jobs.
“Yo, he's here," a bespectacled hare alerted the other two people waiting outside of their preferred arcade. A tall goat and a vixen turned away from their respective phones to greet Stormy.
“Sorry I'm late," said the wolf.
The group's meeting place was at one of the local malls. Consisting of two floors, it wasn't a particularly large building; it didn't even have a food court like most malls in town. The truth was the reason people started going back to it was due to the three storefronts which had been turned into VR arcades, offering IlluPods which allowed people to connect to their LOP accounts for an hourly fee.
“Why are you late, anyway?" the vixen huffed, arms folded under her decent sized chest. She wasn't built like a model, but she was cute. “Thought I heard you were a NEET like these two losers now."
“Who're you calling a NEET, Emi?" the hare took offense with a frown, “Jeez. Being a self-employed artist is a job, y'know."
“Isn't your stream falling behind in numbers, anyway?" the tall goat teased. He was probably the most athletic-looking person in the group. Stormy himself was lanky in build, androgynous for a lupine, which made his comparably small 5'4" height be dwarfed by the goat by a whole foot.
“Shaddup, Luke!" Emi snapped at the goat, “It's only hit a brief lil' hitch since I'm getting all caught up in LOP. Would be a lot faster if our party wasn't so pathetic, Stormy!"
“Dude, singling him out like that is a bit unfair, don'tcha think?" the hare complained, “It's not like he had the time to join us to grind levels until now. It'll be okay now though, right, man?"
“Thanks, Razor," Stormy said to the hare. “Places I left my resume at were pretty far apart. Been riding the bus all day," he explained, looking a bit tired. “I'm good to play now though. Could use the distraction for sure."
“You're physically going around dropping CVs like it's the 2000s?" Luke questioned with a raised eyebrow as the group turned to head into the arcade.
“You wouldn't know about making a good impression on a potential employer, would you, Daddy's boy?" Razor snickered. Luke only laughed.
“Hey, don't hate on the money. Just because I'm taking a break from college doesn't mean I gotta rush into any job," the goat walked up to the counter, taking care of reserving the four pods for his group. They were all led to the back of the arcade where they could put on their sensory suits.
Stormy climbed into the changing booth to get undressed. His reflection was looking pretty miserable, but at least he could now have fun. The last couple days had actually been entertaining since without his job he was starting to get more game time to level his character up and catch up on quests. He recalled Luke telling him the previous day they needed Stormy to do a special quest to properly be on his way, so he made a mental note to ask for the details after they logged in.
After zipping the suit up, Stormy patted it down and made sure his tail was not getting caught anywhere. It was a pretty comfortable body-suit, the neoprene adjusting to its wearer's proportions with appropriate amount of stretchiness. The arcade kept rotating those suits with proper maintenance and cleaning, so they always felt good to wear.
Once they were all dressed, Stormy and his gang split to different corners of the arcade where they could climb into their respective pods. IlluPods were connected to the internet via high-speed wireless, their VR helmets plugged and secured into the pod itself, locked in to prevent theft. Since the user was sitting down inside of their individual pod, their chair's armrest provided the buttons and trackpads for the controls. After putting the VR helmet on, biometric authentication allowed the user to instantly access their account.
Stormy entered without issue. As the LOP splash screen briefly welcomed him, he saw a familiar white light engulf everything and do away with reality as he knew it…
Chapter 1: A prank gone wrong
When Stormy's visual feed stabilized, the boundless aquamarine sky above Fauce's main square was the first thing to greet him. Only at experience level 7 so far, Stormy's character shared the same spawn point as every other rookie player character in the game.
In LOP, Fauce was a beginner friendly town populated almost entirely by helpful Non-Player Characters who offered direction and tutorials to those starting out. While a fair number of merchant-type player characters set up shop in Fauce's streets to deal with others who were at lower levels, far away towns had most of the player-manned stores as they were much larger in space.
The first thing Stormy did was collect his daily log-in prize: A pitiable amount of gold and common ingredients for low level potions which were immediately added to his inventory after he read and closed the magic message that brought them. With a quick key-combination he enabled comms for the party comprised of himself and his friends.
“Yo, Stormy," said Razor's disembodied voice. The HUD showed a miniature of his character's mugshot on the top right to let Stormy know he was talking. As long as they were in the party, they could communicate from anywhere in the game world. “We're over at Jaunt for the event. You gonna be okay on your own right?"
Stormy recalled a big event going on the next town over. Even though the road between Fauce and Jaunt wasn't particularly perilous, the timed quest required those undertaking it to be above level 10.
“Don't worry, Razor. If anything, he's built to run away from danger," Luke assured. Although it came off like a jab, Stormy had picked the rogue class for his character, so the smartass had a point. “Speaking of which, you remember to save the coords I gave you last time?"
“I put a pin on my map," Stormy said as he took out and unrolled the magic map every player was given at the start of their adventure. As they explored the game world, it filled itself out, but one could pin points of interest in the area where it still was foggy, just as Stormy had. “So, you said I just gotta make it to the end of this place and that's where I'll find that NPC with the quest for an EXP booster, right?"
“Yep!" said Luke giddily, “Sadly the NPC's shy, so he won't show up if we go in as a party, so you'll have to leave the party to go at it solo. You're not scared, are ya?"
“I'm not a kid," Stormy responded with a grumpy pout.
“What's that?" Luke raised his voice, “Couldn't hear ya."
“Nuh-nothing," Stormy stuttered, quickly returning to the matter at hand. “Still, it's nice you guys found me this secret quest. Might even be able to grind up to 10 before the event at Jaunt's over."
“I wouldn't count on it," Emi's voice joined in, “It'll be an 'Easter egg' hunt over here. Up to three parties can get the gold booster."
“Wait, seriously? Easter egg hunt?" Stormy scoffed in disbelief, “Why do I have to be level 10 for that?"
“Finding the wrong types of eggs spawns a high-level mob. With sub-level 10 armor, that thing will one shot a noob like you," Razor explained, “You know the bigger the party the more HP mini-bosses and bosses have, right? Need the DPS to take care of it fast so we aren't slowed down."
“He means you're dead weight, Stormy!" Emi rudely cut in. “So, hurry up and go level your puny ass up. And you two better pull your weight, I'm not leaving this event without first prize!"
“There is literally no difference between rewards no matter who finds the right egg first, though…" Razor mumbled.
“Bragging rights, yo?!" Emi loudly insisted. She was pretty intense in real life, but her competitive side truly seemed to take over every time she logged in.
“No-lifers really have it rough," Luke laughed, followed by Stormy and Razor. Emi didn't seem offended in the slightest, however. “Anyway, shit's about to start. You go on ahead and make sure you don't form a different party, alright, Stormy?"
“Sure, thanks again," Stormy said, and added: “Good luck with your dumb egg hunt," before signing off the party chat. His character left the party.
Noobs were always told to avoid the mountainous area southwest of Fauce. Even NPC guards were posted along the dour and otherwise empty roads to warn them of high-level creatures too dangerous for inexperienced adventurers. Stormy ignored all three instances of warnings, the marshlands awaiting him.
Get through the marsh. Don't have to fight all encounters. Just be careful with the giant toads and you should be okay.
_ _
Luke's warnings replayed in Stormy's head as he came out into the somber woods leading into the marshlands. He turned to look back at the otherwise sunny road leading back to the safety of Fauce and sighed. “Game sure knows how to set the mood. No one comes around this swamp, do they?" he huffed, starting to pat himself down to double check everything was in order.
A puddle nearby reflected his avatar. Stormy was always surprised at how on-point LOP was with his realistic looking character model. At character creation, one could choose to customize and build their avatar from scratch or have the game generate one based on the personal data collected during the registration process. Without the time or the patience to fiddle with the game's avatar creation tools, Stormy was a short and lean wolf in-game as well, except he had added a cool looking scar crossing down from left to right over his snout.
Being only level 7, Stormy was still dressed in his usual rogue attire. In the previous MMO he had played and nearly all others he usually took upon tank roles, but this time instead of great swords and shields, his character was holding a couple of sharp bowie knives. Although the multiple bags and holsters across his outfit were mostly empty, he had a large stock of healing potions he had collected between quest starter quest rewards, purchasing and crafting them. “I'm so ready for this," he assured himself.
Stormy was so not ready for that.
The marshlands were a cruel and unforgiving place. From merely the first five minutes of exploration, Stormy was able to tell this place was hell. Not just the gloomy atmosphere and the constant threat of impending danger, but the unique mechanics present in the terrain as well.
“Movement speed penalty? This muck I'm standing on is everywhere!" Stormy grumbled as he found himself dragging his feet, slowing his movement down to a crawl even though he was one of the fastest classes in the game. As a result, getting away from battles became a pipe dream, forcing him to fight with each and every encounter.
Local foes were comprised of traditional enemies like goblins, kobolds and lizard men. They were of higher level than Stormy had been used to, but he found his attacks and skills connecting, so he figured to go all out offensively. His health dropped fast, but the stock of potions in his inventory were keeping him topped off for the most part. “I'll buy more with all the gold I'm getting from these…" he paused to check his coin bag after a victory. It was empty.
“Nyeheh! Nyeheheh!" cried out a fast-running goblin with a shiny sparkling turban on his head. In his arms were Stormy's gold coins, which clued him in.
“Crap! Are you kidding me?! Thing's running away with my money!" Stormy turned to chase after the goblin bandit, but unlike himself, the monster didn't seem as impeded by the swampy water. Before long the goblin was out of his sight. “Oh fffuuu… it ran away! And my HP's going down fast now too! Hold on. Poison buildup…? I didn't bring any antidotes with me!"
Between special monsters pickpocketing him whenever he was distracted fighting and the status effects constantly wearing him down, Stormy began to realize why no one ever came to the marshlands. It was a miserable place. After half hour of fighting, he was barely close to his next experience level, and what little gold the cheap monsters dropped continued getting taken from him by fast pickpockets.
During another a lull in combat, Stormy quickly checked his magic map which displayed a 170m distance between himself and his custom pin. It was still some ways to go, but he had already consumed all of his dozens of small potions given to him by the tutorial, and the larger ones he had bought and crafted numbered in the single digits already. “Damn Luke! He knew exactly where he was sending me off to! This NPC better give me an EXP doubler for this crap!" he groaned, deciding to power through the horde of giant poisonous toads and lizard men that awaited him.
When Stormy came out on the other side of the marshlands, his health was steadily declining from the constantly reapplied poison coursing through his virtual self's veins. He had to drink the last of his potions just to stave off death. “This dang place doesn't even drop materials to craft antidotes, who designed it?!" Stormy whined to himself, lamenting the fact his material bag was overflowing with crafting resources to make poison knives and venom coatings for his weapons, but nothing to actually cure his status ailment. “At least I'm close to my goal now, I guess…"
Stormy double, triple and quadruple checked his map. The coordinates Luke had given him were on point. He double checked his personal correspondence with Luke to make sure the digits were right. “There's no NPC here… There's no… augh!" Stormy held his head with a growl of annoyance.
Walking out from the gloomy woods at the exit of the swamp, the rogue wolf could only see the base of the mountain range overlooking Fauce. “No NPCs, no creatures, not even a treasure chest. Is this for real…?" he sighed, taking a few steps closer to the side of the mountain before he heard a clink. Stormy glanced down at his feet, realizing he had kicked a green bottle over. Underneath the bottle were some multicolored lights that seemed awfully familiar to him.
It was a player glyph. Messages could be left by other gamers to help, comment or just tease other players. The player icon attached to the player glyph looked even more awfully familiar to Stormy. It was Luke's. As if dreading something, Stormy hesitantly interacted with the glyph's light to open the message, which showed a spectacular firework display before writing a floating message in sparkly rainbow letters:
GOOD JOB D O R K!! With a crude ASCII of a wolf at the end.
Stormy stood there, gradually taking poison damage from the overtime ticks. He finally identified the bottle as a player-discarded item; an antidote vial. His fabulous prize, probably left by Luke himself. When the realization hit in, Stormy's eloquence hit an all-time high.
“SONUVA…!" the wolf yelled into the air, causing tree-perched ravens nearby to fly off. With a grumble, Stormy frantically accessed the menu to request to join Emi's party one, two, seven times in a row. He was being denied; they were probably still mid-event. Stormy could mentally picture all of them laughing their asses off at the prank they had pulled on him.
A defeated sigh left him. This wasn't the first time they had played a prank like these. Work or LOP, he seemed to be the butt of a joke. But Stormy wasn't going to let this compound with the real-life failure. He was here to enjoy himself. Even if he had been rudely used as a tool of amusement for others.
First things first. Stormy had to stop the poison lest he dropped dead and lost what little EXP he had accrued, as well as the pathetic amount of gold he had managed to keep on his person. Without thinking, he reached over to the discarded antidote while taking a couple steps closer. But something was wrong. His feet caught on the terrain, preventing him from moving.
“Huh?" Stormy looked down. It was flat ground he was standing on. “Why am I not moving closer to the thing…?" he huffed, taking a step back before resuming his walk forwards. This time, his right foot sank right into the rocky ground of the mountain side. “The hell is up with this janky terrain?!" he growled, trying to pull his foot out only for it to phase further into the ground.
Stormy tried using his hands to pull his leg out, using all of his might. Although he managed to free his foot, he stumbled forwards, tripping over a seemingly invisible obstacle. His feet crashed into the antidote bottle again, sending it flying into the mountainside. But that was the last of Stormy's worries: He fell into the mountainside himself as well.
And it swallowed him whole.
Chapter 2: Only a Game
Erratic visuals kept Stormy guessing as he felt himself stumble and roll into a tight and cramped space. The tunnel offered off-tone synthwave colors, and although the wolf could tell he was moving forwards, he was also constantly colliding against and phasing through something he could not see. It felt like he was getting squeezed between two walls closing in on him, but instead of getting squashed like a bug underfoot, he cartoonishly launched through as if the walls hadn't been there to begin with.
After what seemed like an eternity of being weirdly stuck in the terrain inside the mountain, the wolf finally crashed into an open area. Breaking his fall with his hands, the confused rogue quickly got up to his feet and scanned his dark surroundings. The off-tone synthwave colors were still behind him, as if painting the cavern walls on that side with his point of ingress. On the opposite side, a large passage seemed to lead further into the cave.
“What the fu…?" Stormy trailed off, unsure of how to react. He looked back at the vibrant colors behind him and resumed his observation of the dank depths of that cave ahead. The contrast was so off-putting. “Is this a glitch…?" the wolf asked himself while carefully stepping away from the throbbing wall and closer to the more normal-looking tunnel.
The corridors were dark and the lights coming from the glitched wall didn't reach far. Fortunately, every player regardless of class had the option to summon a small wisp of light by consuming mana; the in-game flashlight for dark areas. Stormy held his light wisp out on his right palm to illuminate the path ahead. It seemed to keep winding and he couldn't see anything that stood out to him: No enemies, interactable objects, nothing.
“Where the heck is this?" Stormy pulled out his magic map to double check his coordinates. His player pin was gone from the map, as if he was nowhere to be found. The numbers of his personal coordinates were constantly shifting, sometimes turning into letters, sometimes into symbols such as @ or #. Nonsensical data.
“Game's totally borked," Stormy mused to himself, putting his map away before making his way back to the entrance where the visual glitch was. “I don't know where I am, but this must be where I came from, right…?" he thought aloud. Even though he was conscious of being inside of a virtual reality environment, the off-color, constantly shifting wall gave such an eerie impression it was enough to make him shiver.
“It's just a game, Stormy," the wolf reminded himself. He thought about it and resolved to touch the glitched wall. At first, he felt resistance, but with only a bit of pressure his arm was swallowed up to the elbow. “Gah!" he startled, leaping back and holding his unharmed arm as if it had just been violated. “It did nothing," he assured himself, even though he felt disgusted, as if he had put his arm somewhere slimy and unpleasant, “It did nothing…" he repeated, and approached the glitch once more.
This time, he put both hands into the wall, followed by his face and then the rest of his body. It took him a few seconds of stepping through invisible, shifting objects, but eventually his visual feed normalized and he could once again see the creepy woods leading back into the marshland from earlier. “I really am clipping through…" he chuckled as he looked down only to realize it was just his head popping out through the mountainside, “…what a dumb bug."
Stormy amused himself by pushing himself in and out of the mountain a few more times before a warning popped up. His HP were about to run out. “Oh, crud, the poison!" he cried out, pulling himself back into the cavern. Recalling himself kicking the phial of antidote during his earlier stumble, the rogue scrambled inside of the cave, using his light wisp to check every nook and cranny for the item.
“It had to have come inside with me, how far did I kick it?!" Stormy whined as he crawled through the empty winding corridors. Before long, the area started widening out into large chamber made of stone. Stormy's eyes found the item he had been hunting at the feet of a statue in the center. “There it is!" he celebrated, dashing with his dwindling virtual health in the single digits before skidding to a stop, swiping the phial off the ground and drinking it all in one gulp.
On his last hit point, Stormy's status healed. His accumulated EXP and gold were safe. Before he could relax however, the wolf finally became cognizant of the statue he was squatting in front of. Big clawed feet, long spindly legs and arms, sharp clawed hands, large wings at its back and a grim expression. It seemed unlike any statue he had seen before in LOP.
Stormy fell to his butt, gasping as the terrifying visage of the monster before him. “Tormentor Gargoyle…?" he read the title above the creature aloud. “I'm in a dungeon?!"
The rogue scrambled to get his bowie knives ready, rolling back and taking his fighting stance. “I'm on ONE freaking HP, geez, I can't solo a boss no matter how you slice it!" he was already lamenting the hour he had spent running that fool's errand. But before Stormy could further stress out, he realized one important detail about the monster in front of him.
The Tormentor was stuck in a peculiar pose. Standing upright which was odd considering the inverted-knee shape of its legs. Its arms were stretched out diagonally away from it, which Stormy could judge was a perfect 45-degree angle for both. Most importantly: The creature wasn't moving. It was recognized as a boss monster by Stormy's HUD, but it wasn't attacking, or snarling, or even looking alive.
Stormy kept a tight grip on his weapons, but began to relax a little, eventually dropping his guard. “It's like an honest-to-goodness statue," he remarked, getting closer for a more detailed look. The wolf couldn't help but smirk when it became apparent the creature looked massive due to its huge bat-like-wings, but it couldn't have been taller than his own character model. “A pretty pathetic-looking one at that…" he snickered, even though moments ago he had felt compelled to run for it. In fact, the more the player observed the boss enemy and its chamber, the more other aberrant details became apparent.
LOP was an exceedingly polished game, which had earned it more accolades than it knew what to do with. The chamber Stormy found himself in was just a boxed-in environment with no exit except where he had come from. Stone slabs that made up its surfaces had segments where the stone looked masterfully carved and others where the resolution became pixelated. Arcane symbols appeared ominous on some bricks and like placeholder doodles on the rest. And there was nothing else present in terms of decoration. No cobwebs, old candle holders, altars, or even the loose insect or arachnid to set the abandoned crypt mood, either. The lack of ambient music and any other sound effect however definitely was adding to the creepy factor.
Feeling relatively safe, Stormy put his knives away. “There isn't even an exit here, and the tunnel I came in from just leads back to that empty cavern…" he sighed, looking back at the winding corridors he had come in from and then back at the Tormentor. Stormy recalled Razor once telling him about unfinished content still being present in the game code. “This must be an unfinished dungeon that never made it to this version of the game, huh? This is one heck of a finding! IlluTech's pretty good about keeping things hush about their programs."
Although Stormy knew his gaming adventure wasn't going the way he had hoped, he still had stumbled upon something big. “Wonder if I'm the first one…" the wolf thought to himself, getting the idea to get evidence of his findings. He found out that he could engage Photo Mode, so he started to tour the chamber, shooting pictures of the glitchy walls and bugged out environment.
When Stormy came back to snap a picture of the Tormentor Gargoyle, however, something made him stop. “Can't get the boss' name in-frame?" he grumbled, trying to step back and then forwards again in order to frame the frozen enemy once more. Stormy repeated the same step over and over, but every time the creature's title appeared, it would immediately vanish again. Slowing down, Stormy began to notice a strange fading effect on the letters above the Gargoyle, “Maybe this is the sweet spot…"
But before the wolf could find that sweet spot, his right foot snagged into the ground. “ Again with the terrain? This janky piece of…" Stormy was about to swear when his growling turned into a sharp, meek squeak. He noticed a strange amount of viscosity around his foot that he hadn't before. It wasn't that his foot had clipped into the ground, but that something had clung to his foot.
Bringing the light wisp down, Stormy saw a bunch of red, green and blue swirling about his foot. It had all come together in erratic patterns, forming what seemed to be some sort of blob. His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, “The heck? An enemy?!" he cried out, ready to brandish his weapons to defend himself. But Stormy found himself immobilized, frozen much like the Tormentor Gargoyle. Like someone paralyzed in real life, he was completely aware of what was going on, but his character would not respond to his commands any longer.
Stuck like that, Stormy could only watch as the blob clung up his ankle and began to do away with the colors of his character's foot and leg up to the knee, as well as the boots and pants he was equipped with. The panicked wolf couldn't find an explanation for what was going on. There was no enemy proximity alert.
“Does this mean this thing is not an enemy? My HP's still at one and I'm not getting status ailments but I can't move!" Stormy screamed in his head at his own impotence. Menus would not open. The game wasn't responding at all. “Is this another bugged out piece of code or something?!"
Before long, the blob had finally separated from the tile shared by Stormy and the Tormentor. The multicolored entity seemed to take over Stormy, eventually seeping into his character's body. “It's getting absorbed into me! Why…?" the wolf began to pant, gasping as fear bubbled up in his heart.
Why can I feel it inside of me…?!
_ _
It was like something had wormed inside of Stormy. Unlike anything he had ever felt in and outside of the game. The strange sensation crawled up, higher and higher. He felt it on the back of his leg's thigh, passing over his hips and finally climbing up his spine. It jolted up Stormy's back with a surprisingly cold snap, practically mimicking the regular goosebump. But it only stopped when it got to the wolf's head, penetrating his skull, stopping dead center. At that point, everything went white for Stormy.
After the blinding flash, something felt different. Stormy hastily patted himself down, realizing his character was back to his normal looks. But seeing the horrible statue before him and being inside this chamber suddenly felt claustrophobic to him. “S-Screw this place, I'm out!" the wolf said, and as soon as he realized his virtual limbs were responding again, he scrambled back through the corridors and outside through the mountainside.
The unfinished dungeon sat silent and empty once more. Its sole inhabitant had not budged one inch from its eternal resting place.
Stormy's head was throbbing. There was a deep ringing inside of his ears. “Head's burning up, feels like it's gonna burst…!" he whimpered, holding his head. “Is it supposed to hurt? It can't hurt. This is just a game, isn't it?" his mind raced, “Out. Off. Gotta log off…"
With the menus working as they were supposed to again, Stormy didn't give it more thought and rushed to log out. LOP bid him farewell as usual with everything going white. The wolf climbed out of his pod a little too fast after the headset had come off and he tripped over himself, falling over with a thud.
“…happened…?" Stormy could hear a distant voice as he attempted to push himself off the floor. His vision was blurry at first, but the neon lights of the arcade stinging his eyes forced him to blink until he had found his bearings again. Standing over him was a hyena. Stormy recalled her as one of the familiar arcade attendants, the one who usually collected sensory suits from players who were done. “Yo. What happened? You okay, shorty?" she repeated.
The ringing in his ears seemed to melt away. Stormy could clearly hear again. The pain was gone as well. He knew he was not okay, but he reflexively nodded anyway, not wanting to cause a panic. “Yuh-yeah…"
“You've been here a lot lately. Already forgot to wait until the pod fully opens for ya, lil' guy?" the attendant sighed, offering her hand to help Stormy up. He shyly took it, ears splayed from embarrassment. The hyena couldn't have been two, maybe three inches taller than him at most. Getting reminded he was short for a wolf wasn't something he could smile to. “Anyway, be careful. They'll kill me if you rip up one of the suits during my shift, 'mmkay?"
As the attendant sashayed away, Stormy finally grew mindful of his surroundings. “I'm back, and I feel fine…" he said to himself, gently touching his right cheek and his forehead. Slowly he patted himself down, as if dreading something terrible had happened to him. But there was nothing wrong. Of course there wasn't. If he had come out with a fractured skull or a popped eyeball, even that hyena wouldn't have been her usual sassy self.
Stormy was normal as he could have been. Although still a little lightheaded, he felt just fine. As if that searing agony in his brain had been but a moment of fiction in his mind. “It's just a game…" he repeated to himself, aloud, in a reassuring manner. Before he could get his thoughts in order however, a hand swatted his back and made him stumble forwards. He quickly turned around, tail hiding between his legs and ears splaying.
“Of course it's just a game! See? He knows how to take a joke!" Luke said, standing before Stormy with Razor and an extra-grumpy Emi next to him. “You're not really mad, right?"
“You logged off suddenly," Razor frowned, “Thought Luke had pissed you off with his dumb prank, so I told him to come apologize."
“Why am I here?" Emi huffed, “I wanna go back to gold farming for my special mount."
“Nobody told you to log off," Razor sighed, “Besides, weren't you the one to tell us you were worried Stormy might quit?"
“I didn't use the word worry," Emi corrected, “Plus once we're all high enough level, we need at least four people to start a guild, remember? It's just a pain in the ass to start looking for new people for that, get me?"
“I'm okay," Stormy said without much enthusiasm, his ears and tail starting to stand again.
“Well, if you're okay then what are we all doing? You two dumbasses are done picking on the noob, right? So, let's go grind! Double time!" Emi clapped her hands, but the goat ignored her.
“You don't look okay, dude," Luke remarked, stepping closer to Stormy, who bashfully backed away from the taller male. “Saw you take a nasty slip there. Hurt your head or something?"
Almost on instinct, Stormy brought his hand to his temple. “That was nothing," the wolf shook his head, suddenly remembering every last thing he had experienced since he had clipped into the mountainside. “Hey, can… Can LOP make you feel pain?"
There was a shared silence between the three others. Even Emi who had turned around ready to walk back to her pod turned to exchange looks between Luke and Razor. Eventually they all burst out laughing.
Emi had a big smirk on her face all of a sudden. “What's going on, noobster? Did you just get rejected online…?"
“No, not that!" Stormy blushed, his voice cracking and falling silent under the other two's laughter. He swallowed and grunted the next words out: “Like actual, physical pain."
“What, you got slapped so hard it got to you or…?" Luke, who was still laughing, stopped to clear his throat and give an actual response when he realized Stormy didn't look any less serious. “You're yanking my chain, right? LOP would go under in a second flat if something like that could happen."
Razor, ever the nerd, entertained the inquiry. “All you get is light haptic feedback from each conditioned collision in-game. Even when you're taking damage all the game does is let you know where the hit is coming from by setting off the low-power electrodes on your body suit…"
“Not the body, sorry," Stormy interrupted, shifting the way he was holding his hand to his head to press his index to his forehead, “I got a nasty headache when something…" he paused, unsure if he wanted to tap into the details, “…attacked me."
“Headset uses the same type of electrodes on the inner lining of the suit. Even less power, too, of course," Razor shrugged. “You went to the swamp, right? None of the beasties there go for the head though…"
Stormy realized he was getting nowhere, so he up and blurted it out: “I found a weird-ass place in-game and I got pulled into a secret dungeon, and then I got attacked by a weird thing and it made me feel nauseous, and then the headache and…"
“Whoa whoa, hold up! Mile-a-second over there, buddy," Luke tried calming Stormy down with a gesture of his hands. “Back up a moment. Secret dungeon? Didn't you go the coordinates I…?"
“Yeah, I fell for your stupid prank," Stormy intercepted with a grumble.
“Told you he'd be mad," Razor mumbled up to Luke.
“It's hard to explain," Stormy continued, “I think I found a collision bug or something at the mountain near the place you sent me to. Clipped through the terrain, and then I saw a lot of weird colors. There was this boss I've never seen before called the Tormentor, and it was stuck in this pose and…" he stopped himself when he realized the stares he was getting ever since he mentioned weird colors. “No, it's not…"
“Bwahaha!" Emi blurted out a laugh, but she kept her voice on the low while holding her sides, “Bold of the noob to come play high as a kite. No wonder he tripped out of his pod!"
“Dude, I'm not tripping. I mean, I just tripped, but…" Stormy was getting flustered, “Look, I'm not high. I'm telling you I got a searing headache when I visited that place. You want me to show you? Party-up again and teleport to me!"
Tilting his glasses, Razor puffed his cheeks out, “…you two really gotta stop teasing him," he said as he watched the wolf stomp back to and climb into his pod.
“Weren't you the one who dropped that antidote next to Luke's glyph?" Emi teased the hare, who glared at the vixen. “That was more the final insult than help, and you know it, hehe! Let's go, I wanna see what's this all about."
Blushing, Razor turned his face away from Emi and walked back to his own pod while the others did the same. “I thought he'd get a laugh too," he grumbled quietly, putting his headset back on.
When everyone had logged in, Emi, the party leader, added Stormy back in. In LOP, a relatively cheap but level-restricted consumable could be used to instantly teleport to any party member anywhere in the game world. Emi, Luke and Razor's characters arrived before Stormy's in pillars of blue light.
Luke's character was an even larger version of his real-life self. A simply towering, seven feet brute of a fighter half-dressed in light armor which showed off his rippling physique. Bulking up skills had made his muscle mass even bulgier.
In contrast, Razor and Emi didn't look very different physically than they did out of the game, following Stormy in the way they had created their characters. The main difference was Emi's character had long, flowing pink hair with blue tips, replicating the virtual avatar she chose for her VR streams. Brand recognition, as Stormy recalled.
Razor was playing a support class that resembled some sort of priest. Upon noticing Stormy's health, he didn't waste time waving his staff and casting a spell which gradually replenished the wolf rogue's hit points back to maximum.
“Oh, thanks," said Stormy, who watched the green colored effect tint his vision for a moment.
Emi, dressed in her sorceress garb, skidded two inches above the floor, levitating with a spell. “So, where's the bug?" she impatiently demanded. “You're not gonna waste our time, Stormy, right?"
Stormy didn't talk back. Walking over to Luke's glyph, he looked at the mountainside to gauge distance. Luke couldn't help but snicker when he saw his message pop up by Stormy, but his expression changed when he saw the rogue push on against the mountain and disappear.
“Holy #@!*!" Luke cried out, rushing over to the point Stormy had been standing on followed by his other two friends. “Where…?"
“Right here!" said Stormy's head as it popped back out on its own.
“AHHH!" the burly goat backed up, flinching after the surprise. “Jesus, man. Trying to give me a heart attack or something?"
“It really is a collision bug, wow," Razor said, idly kicking the invisible wall crossing over the mountain's base and watching his foot warble about.
“Wait, you said there's a dungeon beyond here? Think we're the first ones to find it?!" Emi's eyes lit up. Without waiting for the others, she jumped into the mountain, disappearing into it. Luke calmly walked in, followed by Razor who was a bit hesitant at first but didn't want to be left behind.
Stormy gave them the short tour. The big space connecting the outside and the inside of the dungeon via that visual glitch with the off-color synthwave wall quickly convinced them of Stormy's claim that he wasn't on drugs. The winding corridors, the half-finished boss chamber and the immobile boss were next.
“#@!*'s broke, yo," Emi said, boldly poking the statue-like enemy in the center of the chamber, “Man, this is one lackluster dungeon."
“Looks unfinished," Luke commented, getting a laugh at the literal 'placeholder' named slates over the half-rendered tiles.
“I can't speak about the dungeon itself, but this thing rings a bell…" Razor said while dutifully examining the statue in the center. “Tormentor… Tormentor… Ah! Tormentor Gargoyle, right!" the priest hare seemed to have hit upon something.
“You know this thing, Razor?" Stormy asked.
“Just what I got off that sub-glareit where they leak stuff," Razor mentioned, “IlluTech's pretty solid about leaks, so not many things fall through the cracks. But the name of this guy was brought up a few months back by a notorious dataminer; post got taken down and the guy got taken to court and everything. Real shitshow if you ask me…"
“Razor, you nerd. The deets on Mr. Chuckles over here?" Emi said, pointing at the Gargoyle's default grimace. After excusing himself, Razor clued everyone in on the Tormentor's true identity. An event boss meant to be included in the base game but that had never made it in. The code had been too complicated to integrate. The hare grew especially excited when talking about the supposed fight mechanics. “Really?" Emi asked skeptical, “A fear status effect sounds kinda cool. Think it'll get introduced in a future patch?"
Razor shrugged, “Your guess is as good as mine. Apparently, the more players affected, the stronger the Tormentor gets. So, this might not even be his final form™. Guess it doesn't matter since it doesn't look like they plan on adding this pretty boy back in."
“Sounds like it could've been a pain in the @$# to fight," Luke mentioned, finally giving a once over to the immobile enemy. He chuckled, looking down at the large winged creature since he towered practically two feet taller than it. “Though then again, nothing that won't go down if I just punch it real hard."
“You really commit to the bit with your class, huh?" Razor teased. Stormy finally spoke again.
“Guys, what do we do? I'm alright now, but this place got me a really bad headache," the wolf said. “Can't find that weird slime I told you about, either…"
“There's nothing around here. Razor said his danger sense isn't getting triggered," Luke argued, “And it clearly wasn't a trap 'cause your trap sense isn't getting triggered either, right?"
Stormy nodded, but he wasn't in full agreement. “Look, trap sense didn't activate the whole time I was here but that doesn't mean…"
“Ugh!" Emi impatiently groaned, “This place is boring. It's not getting us EXP, gold or rare gear. Let's just submit a bug report and be done with it. We don't have all night, you know!"
Razor sighed. “It's not rare for some VR players to experience vertigo or similar effects, Stormy. Maybe you ate something that didn't agree with you. Plus, you've been stressed over the job thing lately, right? Let's do as Emi says and get outta here."
“Great," Luke silenced any one of Stormy's potential protests and pushed him along, “Let's geddouttahere, place gives me the creeps anyway!"
Coordinates and pictures were pooled into a standard bug report, which was mailed off as soon as the party walked out. While Emi lamented the fact they had wasted time they could've used to farm for more rewards and grow stronger, Razor placated her by saying sometimes the server admin authorizes game masters to reward players with nifty in-game bonuses for finding and reporting bugs. Luke and Stormy were in doubt considering how little forthcoming IlluTech could be with admitting to bugs. Patches hardly included notices of any bugfixes that weren't frame rate and stability improvements after all.
The party's conversation grew animated over Stormy's finding. Emi wouldn't shut up about the special mount she and Razor had been saving up to buy. Luke kept goading her about useless items and making Stormy snicker in the back. They weren't the friendliest group, but they were sufficiently tight. And while they chatted, Razor prepared a return spell to transport them all back to Fauce so they didn't have to go through the swamp. But something odd happened which made the hare give a long, hard stare at his staff. “Huh?"
“What gives, Razor?" Emi pouted, “Beam us away already!"
“The skill is locked…" Razor mumbled. Stormy came up to inspect the priest's status.
“You're all full of mana too…" the wolf confirmed, “Did you lock the command somehow…?"
Well, well, well…! What do we have here?
_ _
The party flinched. Even Emi was on edge all of a sudden as she heard the unfamiliar fifth voice in the air. “Ah crap, don't tell me…!" the vixen spread her arms out, the tome in her holster floating and opening down the middle in front of her. Looking out around the party, she noticed there was a big red circle surrounding them.
Luke growled as he seemed to have noticed the same detail on the terrain. “We're standing on it."
“What are we standing on?" Stormy asked, looking around and taking a few steps towards the trees to get a better look.
“Wait, you idiot!" Emi cried out. Stormy didn't have the time to react before a hail of small blades started embedding themselves on his torso and limbs.
“Ah!" the wolf gasped in shock, feeling his character taking damage rapidly. As Stormy stumbled back, Razor brought his staff up and started channeling a healing spell.
Oh ho…! No, you don't!
_ _
“GAH!" Razor yelped as he was suddenly doused in a strange liquid. In the next moment, the lights gathering at his staff vanished. “I'm sealed! Hey, he's getting us from…!"
Before Razor could finish giving directions, Luke was speeding off to hit one of the trees leading into the swamp. “I got it!" he called out, his battle axe slamming onto the trunk which made its leaves fall. A black figure jumped into the next, but Emi cast a fireball that burned the foliage, forcing the swift silhouette to leap down to the ground.
Hunched over, a dark-garbed figure with glowing blue beacons for eyes was glaring at the party. “Heh! You're not bad, but you got a weakling and a noob with you, don'tcha?"
“Just our luck, a P f#@!ing K ," Emi said, reading the other player's name aloud: “Kylester69. I've heard of you, punk. The hell are you doing here? Don't you kill noobs outside of Fauce and hoof it when they call for help?"
“Player Killer?!" Stormy gasped, scrambling to get his bowie knives up before he suddenly felt himself collapsing to one knee. His character wasn't responding as well as he wanted it to. “What…? Oh crap, stunned?! Really?! That's so cheap!"
“Haha! Dumb@$#es. What's the matter, puppy boy? Caught wind of you coming here earlier, but didn't think you were playing with buddies! Need 'em to protect your weaksauce @$#?" the PK taunted, and without missing a beat closed the distance between Emi, Razor and Stormy. “Your tank sucks, too!"
“Ah, #@!*!" Luke turned around, but the PK was running way faster than his character.
Stormy could only watch as the PK prepared to deal the finishing blow. But he was furious at all that taunting, and tried his best at stepping forwards in an attempt at slashing at the incoming foe, ignoring the fact Emi was charging a spell.
Razor got in the way, using his emergency shoulder bashing skill against the ninja-like player with the intention to prevent him from getting too close to the advancing Stormy and messing up Emi's area of effect. However, a series of slices put the physically weak priest out of commission. Stormy saw a bunch of shiny objects pop up around Razor before he found himself on the ground after a quick follow-up stab from the PK.
“#@!* you!" Emi yelled, holding her hands out with lightning bolts streaming out from her fingertips. The PK was singed by electricity, but he backflipped away before Luke could cut him down from behind.
“Ah crud, he got them…" Luke looked extra bummed he had missed his attack, his axe embedded into the ground next to Stormy and Razor's lifeless bodies. “Wait, the loot!"
“Looking for this, #@!wipe?" the PK bounced a little bag overflowing with gold. “Your noob really had nothing on him, but to think you'd bring along a loaded priest with ya, too! Can't believe my luck! Hahaha! Whoa!" the ninja ducked to avoid another one of Emi's fireballs.
“That's my gold! Hey! Give it back!" Razor yelled, even though his character's model was immobile. “Don't let him get away, Luke!"
With a grunt, Luke bolted after the PK. A monstrous swing cut the ninja in half, but before Luke could celebrate, the PK's irritating voice could be heard giggling from farther away.
“Gotta love shadow clones! Gyahaha! Where are you aiming, you dumb$#!#? Why're you such a dumb@$#?" the PK teased, stashing away the stolen loot before standing straight and quickly working on some hand seals. His feet began to glow a lime green. “Anyway, 2v1 against DPSs is too much even for me. So long and thanks for the money, suckers!"
“No! #@!*#@!*#@!*!" Emi swore her lungs out, making it rain fire and lightning on the PK but in the next instant he was already dashing back into the swamp. #@!*ing troll! Go back to your momma, kid, you're way past your... ah never mind!
Stormy, finally having enough with the beeps from the profanity filter, decided to quickly slide the option to 'off'. Curious about what had just transpired, he finally asked: “He can just take our dropped money…?"
“Only in PvP zones, which we walked into without realizing," Luke said, “And only if you've dealt the killing blow on that player."
Emi put a hand to her face, “Any area outside towns is PvP enabled, but you gotta hang out at a Bloodthirsty Stare area to get pulled into a player battle. We got chumped for not paying attention."
“So, he just trapped us? That's so damn cheap!" Stormy groaned in protest, “I mean, I only had 64g, so I guess it's not that bad…"
“Yeah, it's not that bad. Why did I even try saving you?" Razor sarcastically groaned out loud.
“…how much did he take, Razor?" Emi cautiously asked.
“…I don't wanna say," the hare groaned, “But I'm like one week behind on getting the special mount, now."
“Ouch," Luke and Emi said at once. Stormy felt something sink in the pit of his stomach. “We were distracted," Luke admitted.
“Stupid fucking PKs put a bad taste in my mouth," Emi said, reaching into her pocket before starting to channel a five-second-long spell through leaf-looking items. One after the other, life was returned to Stormy and Razor's bodies. Razor didn't even look at Stormy before immediately logging off.
“Ah, damn, wait. I'm sorry!" Stormy called out a little too late.
“Tsk," Emi puffed an annoyed sigh out, “Guess the mood's shot for tonight. That kid's probably running back to his dumbass guild already. Won't do much for us to go after him right now. See what I mean about being dead weight though, Stormy? If you're gonna roll with us, you gotta start getting your ass in gear and get stronger."
“Whoa, hey, Emi. Though I guess you were asking for in without minding your own strength, Stormy," Luke rationalized, but was giving Emi a disapproving look all the same. “Look, Stormy's still a puny little dork, but he'll catch up in no time and when we make a guild, we'll take this war back to that PK asshole, right? Him and his guild too!"
“True," Emi folded her arms and nodded to herself. “Good on you for volunteering, Luke. You're on babysitting duty tomorrow. Gonna help Stormy power level so we can all move on already, got it?"
“Wait, what? Why me?" Luke's shoulders sagged.
“'cause I'm gonna help Razor farm his money back tomorrow. Dweeb's probably so upset he's gonna tell me he's gonna quit and pull all that drama shit he likes doing every time things don't go his way," Emi rolled her eyes, mumbling something about depositing gold in banks. “Just leave him to me. And start grinding early tomorrow, got it?"
Stormy was quiet throughout the whole thing. The disgust he felt at the Player Killer's actions and his own impotence were starting to combine into loathing. Emi was right about one thing though: No one was in the mood to continue playing that night after that. After teleporting back to Fauce and logging off, they all decided to split up for the evening. They paid for their time at the arcade's counter and returned their suits.
“It's just a game…" the wolf repeated in his mind as he walked away from the mall storefront by himself, stopping to turn around and look at the few IlluPods still in use by the late-night players. Stormy thought back to the strangeness in the unfinished dungeon, his fists clenching inside the pockets of his jacket. “Only a game."
Isn't it?
_ _
Chapter 3: A taste of power
The next day, Stormy and Luke got together at the usual spot a little earlier than usual. Luke wasn't of the mind to passively watch over Stormy as he killed rats and slimes to slowly grind his level up, so instead they formed a two-man party which the goat fighter led up the steep slopes of Mt. Ore.
The open area was located north of the advanced town of Jaunt, necessary to cross in order to reach the next three cities of the game. Although it was called a mountain, the place was a series of interconnected valleys and quarries, its peril made evident by the nests and caves housing dangerously hostile monsters.
Vicious ogres in particular called the quarries their home. Level 20 enemies which were a joke for a buff and tough level 29 fighter like Luke, and well out of Stormy's reach. He figured the fastest way to get Stormy to accumulate enough experience to get his level up quick would be for him to back him up as the wolf rogue got the killing blows.
“Crazy how hard it's coming down out there, but it's bright and sunny out there," Luke observed as he half-mindedly pumped his arm up every so often. The fighter's Flexing Aura endowed those in the same party with a temporary enhancement to their burst damage, while at the same time drawing the aggression of nearby enemies. This strategy allowed Stormy to keep up with the ogres' large pool of health without having to worry too much about dealing with their attacks as the majority of the mobs came after Luke. But Stormy wasn't scot free, since Luke's ability had a short duration and once it was spent, the enemies would always attempt to pick off the character with the lowest maximum HP.
“This takes forever. Are you sure you can't help me soften them up? Buff please!" Stormy groaned in frustration, still getting used to keeping track of his dynamic stat boosts, including the venomous weapon coating he had imbued his bowie knives with, as well as the cooldown on his dodge skills. Without Razor healing them, they had to rely on potions so Stormy couldn't afford taking direct hits.
“Gee, I would," Luke shrugged and stuck a different, beef-exposing pose. Flexing Aura didn't require him to go that hard to activate its effect, but the goat really liked to show off. “But you know I'll just OHKO them with just a punch right? Kill-steals aren't a big deal when you're closer in level. But if I don't let you have most of the damage contribution, you'll hardly get any EXP. You're so shmol, Stormy. Hurry up so we can move on."
“You're the one that's gigantic, dude," Stormy groaned, “Anyway, I'm level 9 now, so your idea's working, I guess… Buff!" he reminded, doing his best to stay quick on his feet whenever the absent-minded goat forgot to flex. Luke's idea was for Stormy to kill enough ogres until the special level 25 monster, the Ogre Chieftain, showed up.
When the Chieftain showed up, Stormy and Luke were immediately able to tell. He was bigger, burlier and uglier than any other ogre the wolf rogue had slain so far. Wearing armor made of bone and rocks, he wielded a club that was almost as large as Stormy's character was tall. To further set the Chieftain apart from the other ogres, his skin was a pale blue rather than red.
“Holy shit, this thing is huge!" Stormy exclaimed, taking a few steps back while making sure to top his health off with a potion.
“That's what she said, hah!" Luke poked fun at the impressionable wolf. Of course, it hadn't been long since he had managed to take the Chieftain on by himself, but that was after three other victories seized with Emi and Razor supporting him. Now that he was above its level, he considered the mini-boss less of a threat.
“Are you gonna help or are you gonna keep staring at your arms?" Stormy squeaked, ducking to avoid a heavy swing of the Chieftain's club. The air itself seemed to shudder as the weapon zoomed above him. “This thing is gonna take me out in one blow if it hits!"
Luke had another stupid dirty joke at the ready, but he left it in his pocket. Seeing as though his protégé was flustered, he decided to step in, charging the Chieftain and deflecting the next club swing with his own battle axe. “Stick behind him and throw poison daggers at him," Luke instructed.
Poison ticks adding to his pathetic damage output had been the only reason Stormy had seen the ogres fall before, so it stood to reason this would give him good damage contribution, especially if Luke kept tanking. Thankfully, Stormy had an important surplus of his class' favored projectiles, owed to his foray in the swamp on the previous day. “It's working, I think!"
“Keep at it. This muscle-head is all bark once you get the parry-timing down, haha!" Luke laughed as he continued to deflect swings, flexing every so often so that the continually spawning ogres did not go after Stormy. “How're you liking your security detail, huh? Maybe I should charge you for this service, since you're wasting my time with these trash mobs!"
Stormy sighed, “Again. It's not my fault you guys were no-lifing while I was doing overtime… back when I had a job anyway," he added a bit bitterly.
“At least try be a little thankful! How about a burger for your hero, huh?" Luke insisted, glancing back at Stormy with a smarmy little grin.
“It's not like you're hurting for the funds for one…" Stormy mumbled, starting to get tired of Luke's incessant boisterous attitude.
“What was that?" Luke yawned, “Man, this is such a boring area. At least you should get like 3 or 4 level-ups from killing big blue 'n ugly! Jeez, look at this dude. That's a face only a mother could love, heh!"
Stormy's poison knife barrage had suddenly stopped. Luke was about to ask what was going on when he heard a loud rumbling over the constant clash of the Chieftain's club and his axe. Before he knew what was going on, the smaller ogres and even the Chieftain all leapt several paces back, breaking up into two rows as a mighty roar called attention to the skies.
Luke joined Stormy in widening his eyes as a fast-moving object crashed in the area with a spectacular amount of dust kicking up. The party reflexively braced to avoid being knocked by the incoming gusts of wind. Even the bulkier Luke felt himself budging backwards. When the dust particles finally cleared, a looming presence cast its menacing shadow over both the rogue and the fighter.
Dark purple skinned. Muscles on top of muscles. Heavy armor and weapons far too large for any humanoid to wield in each hand. The new ogre that had appeared dwarfed both the suddenly submissive Chieftain and he certainly made Luke look small. Stormy couldn't believe at the number he was looking at.
Stormy began to stammer, “Luh-luh-level 35 Ogre Overlord?! Dude what the heck, it's higher level than you are!"
Luke came to from his flinching eventually, looking up at the 10ft. tall beast and visibly shivering. He broke through it, however, and put on a brave face. “I was hoping this thing wasn't gonna show up. Guess we were taking too long with the Chieftain after all…"
“What? Luke, that thing is stronger than you are!" Stormy said, shivering when he crossed eyes with the bloody-red gaze from the Overlord's skull-shaped helmet. It definitely was setting the mood only a massive boss monster could. The Chieftain and the rest of the ogres weren't even moving! “Let's get out of here!"
“Run away? As if!" Luke argued, holstering his battle axe before smashing his fists together with a grin, “We kill this, even I'll get a bunch of levels! Good thing I got all these boosters with me," the goat said, visibly tensing. Stormy got several notifications of his fellow party member using three Strength-Up Pills in a row. Orange-red pillars of light rose all around Luke in quick succession as his body bulged with new, hardened bulk. With his mass drastically increasing from the boosters' enhancement, Luke added a couple extra inches to his height as well. His right hand brandished his axe once more, with greater ease and prowess than before no less. His left thumbed up at Stormy as he glanced back with a grin, “Just stand back and leave it all to a real…"
“Luke!" Stormy yelled, pointing ahead at the lumbering Overlord suddenly coming up in front of the bulked-up fighter. Before Luke could turn around, his face met the rocky ground. The Overlord's gigantic blades smashed down on him instead of cleaving. His health dropped from roughly 95% to 0 in that instant.
“…man?" Luke's voice cracked at the end, realizing he could no longer move his dead character. “Ahh crap! What's with this damage?!"
“You only boosted your damage, not your defense, duh!" Stormy said, scrambling to reach for his item pouch.
“Hey, shaddup and rez me! He got me, but these are timed boosters, I can still use them if I come back! C'mon, leaf me!" Luke desperately said. “It despawns if it kills us both, Stormy. C'mon!"
Stormy only had one of the game's resurrection items. Since not everybody in the game played Healer like Razor did, 'World-Tree Leaves' or just 'leaves' were a must when adventuring as a party in a dangerous dungeon. However, an interruptible 5-second-long casting period was necessary to use it. Before Stormy could even begin the process, he found himself surrounded, and his vision was replaced with the pectoral balcony of the ogre Overlord's chest looming above him.
“No time…" Stormy resolved, putting his leaf away and wielding his envenomed bowie knives once again.
Luke shouted: “What are you doing?! Aw, for real?! Stormy, don't be an idiot and rez me!"
Stormy used every last skill in his arsenal. He knew it was futile, but he couldn't just stand there! Venom attacks, exposing weakness, armor piercing, and the kitchen sink as well.
“Aw crap, you really are useless…" Luke groaned in assumed defeat. The boss' gargantuan health bar hadn't so much as received a chink.
Stormy's ears reflexively folded as he looked at the huge monsters in front and around him. He was going to lose again. Luke was going to blame him for losing experience and money. Just like with Razor. “I'm useless?" the wolf repeated in his head. He had gotten cut down from his job. Was it because he was useless, too? The bully had taken Razor out because of his uselessness, too. Did he just exist to be a punching bag?
The Overlord's dual cleavers of oversized proportions rose above his comparatively tiny skull helmet. It looked down at Stormy to aim the incoming, decisive blow.
As Stormy looked up at the Overlord's menacing stare, a strange feeling overcame the wolf. His heart began to race and his mind felt surprisingly clear. Anxiety was giving way to loathing. But far beyond hating himself, Stormy was focusing on the Overlord. In the wolf's mind, the Overlord was that Player Killer from yesterday. A bully putting fear in him. Just as he was about to give up, the intensity in his glare grew, and without him realizing it, his character's irises flashed three different colors one after another. Red, then blue, then green, then back to normal as he closed them, awaiting his humiliation.
SLAM! Clatter…
“Dude, what the fuck…?" Stormy heard Luke gasp aloud.
The dual cleavers hit the ground so hard they sunk into it. Stormy sighed, expecting to hear the beeping countdown post party-wipe to teleport him back to Fauce; preparing to say good-bye to all the gold and EXP he had thus far accumulated since his last level up. But no such thing happened. In fact, his HP bar was still full and green when he opened his eyes again and saw his HUD.
“Huh…?"
To the sides of Stormy were the ends of those massive cleavers. It now dawned on him that each was almost twice his character's size. But the size of the weapons wasn't what had Stormy confused. It was the fact they weren't being wielded any longer. In truth, none of the ogres that had surrounded him to cut off his escape earlier, not even the Chieftain were holding their weapons or shields. They had all been dropped, as if to mimic the Overlord's suddenly trepid demeanor.
The mountain of muscles that had been bearing its fearsome largeness until just now was visibly shaking. Arms bent and hands held out in defense, the Overlord took several rumbling steps backwards before he started making the quarry quake with his again surprisingly fast and stomping mobility. Stormy saw the ogres break line and run away alongside their fearful leaders and was left alone with Luke's corpse.
Before the wolf rogue could question anything, a strange new feeling overcame him. He gasped, suddenly short of breath. Stormy could feel his body filling with energy, his mind becoming overwhelmed with a rush of pleasure heretofore unknown to him. His character glowed before there was a powerful burst of light.
Stormy was left standing there after the swell of power died down. Staring at his open hands, he couldn't believe how pleasant that strange inner burst had felt. He couldn't put it into words yet, but it had felt similar to the satiety he felt when eating his favorite food. “I've never felt this when playing LOP before…" he mused to himself. Before he could put more thought to it however, Luke's shouting snapped him back to the game.
“Hey, get me back up already!"
Fishing the World Tree Leaf out of his item pouch, Stormy wasted no time in channeling the resurrection item into his party member. Luke was back on his feet in no time. He approached to look at Stormy as if appraising him.
“Whoa! Dude, you gained like 10 levels from that! How the heck did you…?" Luke scratched his head, “I didn't know the ogres were that weak to poison! Or venom… whatever! Anyway, that was awesome! But isn't kinda cheap your class has that big of an advantage at level 9?" his enthusiasm seemed to die a little as he came into a realization, “Augh. I could've had some of that sweet EXP if I hadn't been dead, too…"
“Maybe if you hadn't been flexing instead of fighting…" Stormy mumbled with a flat stare across his face.
“Hey, psychological play is important! Even if our enemy is a bunch of pixels!" Luke said, posing with those oversized muscles again.
“They seemed more intimidated by me than you, though," Stormy pointed out with a little grin and a wag of his tail. He felt oddly proud of the baleful glare Luke was giving him.
“Why, you little twerp! Don't make me undo the party and kick your…" Luke began, but before he could finish his sentence, a voiced announcement ran through the arcade's local network intercom.
ATTENTION PLAYERS: Bad storm coming in. We'll be closing soon for tonight. Please log out in the next minute. Repeat…
_ _
“Whoa, must be getting really bad out there," Luke looked more surprised than he looked upset.
“It's a Friday night too," Stormy pouted, feeling cheated after wanting to check all of his drastically increased parameters and go through his skill trees. “I know I heard the owner of these stores barely spends a dime. Weren't they redoing the wiring just a week or so ago?"
“Cheapskate probably doesn't even wanna buy a portable generator…" Luke added with a sigh, “Let's just go. Don't wanna get in trouble. That attendant lady's stare creeps me out…" he said and finally logged off.
Before going after Luke, Stormy quickly glanced down at his open hands, carefully furling and unfurling his fingers, as if testing them. Between visual and haptic feedback, the difference between real and virtual life was practically already nil, but right now, unlike any previous time, the wolf could feel his character like he could himself. Residual energy from the level up burst earlier made the wolf sad he probably had no time to attempt it again for tonight. But he was still curious about it.
“What just happened?" Stormy asked no one in particular since he was alone in the empty quarry; puzzled about the development he'd had with the powerful boss. “I didn't even beat those enemies. My poison wasn't doing anything… was it?" he wondered aloud, finding himself licking his lips for an unfamiliar yet not displeasing aftertaste. A lingering sensation that kept tickling at the back of his head.
As the local intercom began to blare again, Stormy let out a puff of air and finally decided to log off. Since he and Luke had been playing for a couple of hours, they were joined by Emi and Razor who had just jumped out from their own session.
“Man, we just got on, too!" Emi complained as she came out of the changing room after returning her sensory suit. “You two level up?" she immediately demanded.
“I'm up to 19," Stormy softly said after stepping out, himself. The vixen gave Stormy a look that seemed to be sizing him up half-heartedly. Her paws at her hips, she nodded with approval.
“Guess that'll do for tonight. You're over halfway close to us," Emi nodded. “Good, almost out of noob territory, Stormy. Okay, I dunno about you people, but I'm outta here before the sky starts roaring at me," she said, grabbing her umbrella. Stormy and the rest joined her.
As they walked down the streets, the group heard the increasingly frequent pitter patter of the rain at their feet and the thundering clouds above them. Luke was hungry so he stopped at the store to buy some candy, which Emi demanded some of. Razor was still looking awfully quiet.
Sensing his chance, Stormy approached the hare and said: “Hey, Razor, sorry again about yesterday. Can I get you a chocolate bar or something?" the wolf asked, although he only got a barely-enthused 'okay' in return.
Despite the simplicity of a task like buying a snack, Stormy always dreaded dealing with the shop keep. The usual corner store they bought snacks from was manned by a grumpy, sarcastic badger that seemed to always have something to say about anyone coming by. It was a wonder his attitude kept getting him customers, but it was also true it was the only convenience store that remained open late at night on that part of the 'hood.
“Tell your girlfriend to hurry up and choose, horn-boy," the shopkeeper said to Luke, who had Emi next to him hovering over all the candy under the transparent countertop.
“Pfft. He wishes," Emi rolled her eyes over an offended Luke, turning back to the counter. “Hmph. All you got is crappy third-rate candy though, where's the good stuff?" Emi demanded, the grumpy vixen a sweets connoisseur.
“Well, ladeeda, Majesty. Didn't realize I was dealing with Queen of Candyland. You're gonna stuff yourself with chocolate either way, so pay, take your pick and get the hell outta my sight," the extra grumpy badger said.
Although Emi was the type to get into a heated argument with just about anybody, Luke stopped her and paid for three different brands of chocolate to get out of the embarrassing situation. “Thanks," the goat said before pulling Emi away and letting Stormy walk in.
“Sheesh, maybe the rain's got him angry or something," the wolf thought. He wasn't in the mood to deal with the badger's attitude, but a quick sideways glance to Razor made him sack up. As Stormy turned to look at the shopkeeper in the eye, he noticed the badger was looking away from him.
“What'll it be?" the shopkeeper was sounding gruff as ever, but for some reason he wasn't looking as sarcastic as he had a few moments ago when dealing with the fiery Emi.
“I'll have the chocolate wafers, uhh, you like those right, Razor?" Stormy called out without breaking eye-contact. Razor responded positive although absentmindedly, focused on his phone. Surprisingly, the badger gave Stormy his snack without so much as a grunt. He seemed awfully intent on looking sideways into his store. “Maybe he's tired, or expecting someone…" the wolf reasoned. After paying, Stormy rejoined the group and they were all on their way back home through the rainy streets.
“Thanks," Razor said after taking Stormy's gift. With a sly grin, he added: “You shouldn't let me take advantage of you like this, y'know?"
Stormy had been half expecting the response. In the previous game they had played, Razor could show to have an explosive temper at times, but he never carried grudges for long. “Whatever. It's third-rate candy, anyway."
“Looks like it's gonna clear up by tomorrow," Luke said as they came to the intersection where they usually split at, “You guys coming in early to make up for tonight?"
“Can't. Saturday stream 'til late," Emi shrugged, “I'll probably come around at the same time."
Razor nodded, speaking amidst a bunch of chocolate wafers in his cheeks, “Gotta finish some commsh, myshelf." After swallowing, he added: “Need to grind actual money and the backlog's catching up to me."
“Looks like it'll be the two of us again tomorrow, Luke," Stormy smiled, deciding to be cheeky after remembering how their session had gone. “Will I have security detail again?"
Luke seemed to pick up on the smugness in that quiet little smile on the wolf's expression. The tall goat shrugged, “We'll go to the next area. I'll show you how it's done, noob."
The goat's taunting did little to dissuade Stormy's unwitting smile. He was already wondering if he would be able to feel as good as he had felt when the big boss monster had run away from him earlier. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Part of him thought it had just been nerves, but the same part of him making him eagerly smile looked forwards to another session in LOP already.
Chapter 4: A taste of Fear
As promised by the weather forecast apps, Saturday opened with nary a cloud in sight. Getting to the old mall after lunch was the easy part for most people, but getting an open pod at the online arcade was significantly harder during the weekends at those hours. LOP had gotten so popular that the bigger places in town overflowed with players coming in and out, and those impatient would inevitably come to the less-known out-of-the-way hangouts. Luke and Stormy both knew that, so they each had a couple of hotdogs at the stand across their mall's street before securing their spots and logging in.
Luke and Stormy spawned back in Mt. Ore's quarry, still in party. First, they moved to a safe spot in the area. While Luke looked something up, Stormy took the chance to catch up with all the level-up related things he hadn't been able to the previous night. After getting through stat point distribution and picking out new and enhanced skills for his rogue, Stormy felt compelled to scroll through the options.
“Armor Pierce… Corrosive Flask… Pickpocket…" the wolf stopped to wince at his miserable time back at the swamps, but continued on until he had hit the end of the list, “None of these mention doing anything special to boss monsters, or ogres for that matter…" Stormy mumbled, scratching his cheek curiously. “How do I do the thing again…?"
“Yo," Luke finally interrupted, “Let's move on. The lizard men up there in the valley give better EXP than the ogres."
“We're not trying for the Ogre Overlord again?" Stormy questioned, “Gave me a boatload of EXP."
Luke laughed, “Hey, it's too soon for you to get that cocky. Even I learned my lesson. No Razor means we take forever to rez. What if we make another mistake and this time you get one-shot before you can pull off that poison tactic, huh? I'm not gambling my EXP away."
“Guess that makes sense," Stormy said, although he was a bit disappointed. With the way Luke had been showing off last night, he didn't mind using him as a meat shield again. “It'll let me get used to all these new skills I got too. Double Pierce applies a defense debuff!" he smiled.
“Plus," Luke said as he guided Stormy up to the valley side, “We can make a game out of this."
“We're already playing a game?" Stormy quirked a brow as he came up next to the towering goat fighter. The reptilian hostiles ahead of them numbered in the tens of dozens, divided among clumps.
“A competition, man," Luke shrugged, “Just looking after you while you kill stuff is boring to me, y'know? So, let's see who can kill the most lizard men, alright? It's fair 'cause my buffs are party-wide, so you technically have the advantage."
Stormy frowned, immediately pointing out the contradiction in Luke's statement. “You're still like twice my level, though..." he sighed, “At least you'll be paying attention to something other than your muscles."
“Hey, these muscles kept you alive last night, didn't they?" Luke proudly posed, “Bodyguards are supposed to be confident."
“I guess bodyguards also die first, so you got that part right last night," Stormy snickered, getting flipped off by the smiling goat.
“You're so going down, puppy boy."
The lizard man hunting contest began in earnest and it was pretty close at the start. Between buffs from Luke and Stormy's new weakness-exploiting skills, the wolf finally felt like he had an edge on even the higher-level foes. But soon enough, the goat fighter was slicing through groups of lizard men with a single swing of his oversized axe. With every cluster of enemies that fell, his efficiency only grew.
“22!" Luke called out, following up with a laughing: “27!"
“Five at a time, what?!" Stormy turned to look at Luke beating his chest, a reddish aura rising up around him. “Oh drats. That's right, fighters get a damage buff if they keep killing mobs, don't they…?" his shoulders sagged, but he ignored the detail and rushed the next available group, only to see them totally ignore him in favor of going after Luke, feeding him even more victims for him to mow through. “Hey! Those were mine!"
“Sorry, can't hear you over these rising numbers, noobcakes!" Luke boomed with laughter, “38!"
It quickly dawned upon Stormy that Luke was unbeatable at taking out groups like that. It wasn't just raw strength; his abilities drew aggression away from others and brought it to himself. Perilous tactic during a tough boss like the Ogre Overlord, but definitely a way to creatively dominate at an extermination contest!
Before Stormy could get a single kill over 18, the valley had grown disturbingly quiet. Mobs weren't spawning anymore.
“Man, fighter really is the way to go when you want raw DPS, huh?" Luke grinned as he came up behind Stormy, looming his excessive stature over the thoroughly defeated wolf. “I feel better now. Yesterday was only a fluke. So, I was thinking a double bacon chicken sandwich for the winner?"
“Pfft, what? No way," Stormy argued, “You can't put a prize on a contest after it's over, genius."
“Hey, don't gimme that lip, shrimp," Luke said, holstering his battle axe before walking uncomfortably close to Stormy, practically bowling his face in-between the goat fighter's pecs. “Shmol boys don't argue with men."
“Men pick on smaller guys, then?" Stormy wanted to say, but he didn't have the guts to. Even though it was a virtual environment, the realistic intimidation of a much larger male lording their size over him was something the wolf was regrettably all too familiar with, and it was no less impactful in VR. “Hey, cut it out," Stormy said instead as he pulled away from Luke, but the latter pursued him until Stormy was cornered up against a rocky wall.
“What's the matter?" Luke teased, flexing all over the smaller wolf, “Man, you're a shorty out there, but you're outright tiny in-game. You'd think you'd have given yourself an extra foot of height or something during character creation. Guess rogues don't need to be a bigger target, but I hope you understand the difference between you and I now. Even if you were up to my level, I'd still mop the floor with your puny butt, heh."
Stormy huffed. He felt annoyed by the way Luke was bragging. He always did that when it came to competitions, whether it was talking smack to players on the enemy team or during 'friendly' contests. Maybe this was why he and Emi got along so well.
“C'mon, admit it," Luke insisted, dragging a foot back to slightly pivot to the side, showing off his incredible physique while flexing and kissing his swelling bicep. “Raw strength will always trump speed!"
Stormy could feel his fingers twitching in frustration. This was how it always went in any group he had ever belonged to. The smallest always got picked on. LOP was supposed to be a fantasy world, a place that needn't mimic his life. Much to Stormy's chagrin, Luke had a point: He should have been less lazy with his character during customization. But the boisterous way in which the goat was making his point muddied the message. “You're pissing me off, Luke," the wolf growled.
“Just teasin', man," Luke chuckled as he looked down at Stormy, blowing air through his nostrils. “Whoa. That's a scary face you're making," he further teased while Stormy glared up at him with irises flashing three different colors in quick succession. The visual glitch made Luke feel uneasy, but he didn't appreciate the harsh stare. “C'mon, I thought you could take a… joke…?"
As Luke's words trailed off, the goat finally cottoned on to the fact he no longer was having to lean in to speak with Stormy. At first, he took it as Stormy standing up straighter to make himself look big; a laughable notion given their sheer size difference. The goat responded by punching his fist against the wall above them, bearing himself down on the wolf even more, with his own expression tightening at him. “I get it, you're ticked off. Heck, I'd be mad too if I was that puny," he said, using a hand to gesture at Stormy being a whole head shorter. And then, before he could get another word in, Luke immediately froze.
In-game, Stormy was supposed to be at least two heads shorter than the goat. This contradiction of the facts as he knew them made Luke step away with a gasp of shock. “What the fuck…?"
The rage which had been bundling up inside of Stormy seemed to subside, and with Luke backing off he was able to tell there was a change occurring within him. He looked at his hands whose twitchy fingertips reminded him of the prelude to that burst of level ups on the previous day. It felt just as good. This time however, his shine was black, tingling with static and outlined with a faint dark purple surrounding it. Stormy wasn't the only one glowing this time. Luke was shining in the exact same ominous way, but he had yet to notice it.
Although, neither player was having their character level up this time, changes were manifesting in plain sight. Luke's words failed him as he saw something only possible for late to end-game classes, certainly not possible for a low-level rogue. Stormy's body was enlarging before his very eyes.
The wolf felt it, too. From deep within, the power coursing through his character, the energy that was making him feel so good, was pushing out against his virtual body. “I can feel it…" Stormy thought to himself, “I really can. I wasn't just imagining it last night, I'm getting stronger…!" he closed his open fists, feeling every muscle in his body tense, flex and bulge out at once.
“How're you doing that?!" Luke questioned as he saw the growth in his party member's muscles. LOP was a detail-intensive game, so outfits would reflect changes in the model's proportions. Since Stormy's rogue garbs were meant for those of lithe constitution, one could immediately tell when his arms started enlarging. Once loose sleeves had become tightly pressed against bulking biceps and triceps. Thickening quads and calves were making Stormy's leggings from skin-tight to painted on, rippling musculature becoming clearly defined against the fabric. And those were just the starting changes.
“I don't know," Stormy panted in response to Luke, clearly overwhelmed by sensations he shouldn't have been able to feel inside of the virtual environment. It felt like it was happening to him for real! “HP, Strength, Constitution… it's all going up even though my level isn't rising…?" he briefly checked his stats, but his focus wavered as another wave of pleasure washed him over. His whole body was throbbing, packing on new muscle while also growing larger overall.
“You don't know?" Luke repeated, shivering all over. Not just from shock but also envy. “You also did something weird yesterday…" he huffed, “Are you… You're not hacking, are you? C'mon, man, that's…!"
“I'm not sure what's going on right now," Stormy interrupted, his voice suddenly a couple octaves lower. Bulging some more, his shoulders broadened, the noise of bones popping and skin stretching becoming realistically loud. His growing body's convulsing made the wolf tilt his head forth, a big, sharp grin widening his maw as his eyes turned the same color of his aura. Dark purple and full of black static. “But I like it."
Luke couldn't believe what he was seeing. “That's Stormy…?" he asked himself, as if the character before him belonged to someone completely different to the meek wolf he had become acquainted with for the past two years. Even with the impressive graphic effects swirling about, all Luke could do was stare at Stormy's swelling form. The rogue was already looking as buff and tall as the standard brawler classes, and yet he didn't seem to be slowing down.
Stormy felt like a million bucks. All that unease had seemingly melted away. He felt incredibly powerful, and according to his rising stats, he was only becoming more physically impressive by the moment. The way Luke was staring made Stormy appreciate LOP's facial capture: The horror was plastered on the goat's face. His legs were shaking. He definitely was hating every second of this. It made the braggart look small. In fact, Luke was looking extra small right now. Stormy wanted to see just how much, so he drew closer with a big, almost menacing smile.
“Huh-hey, back off, dude…" Luke said while slowly backing away, but Stormy didn't back off, he seemed to be getting closer and closer, so close in fact that he was starting to appear larger. Indeed, Stormy was still visibly shuddering and growing taller inch by inch, but Luke didn't expect himself to have to starting looking up at the wolf. “Jesus, just how big are you gonna get…?"
There was a big smirk spreading Stormy's maw wide. Fangs sharper than usual bared as the rogue spoke in an even deeper tone: “You're not aware of it, are you?" he asked the confused Luke. “I'm getting nice and big, sure. But you are getting small now."
The words coming out of Stormy's mouth seemed to pierce Luke's very soul at that moment. “Wuh…?" he stammered without making any verbal sense. As he looked up at Stormy, the goat was filled with dread. He knew he had to look down at himself, to check himself out and ascertain the validity of Stormy's claim. And yet something in his brain was telling him not to do it. A part of his mind that wanted to protect him was begging him not to look down. But he couldn't bear to stare at the hulking-out wolf looming over him. Curiosity drowned every other thought.
Ah… aaaaaAAAAAH!
The screaming goat frantically patted himself down like someone desperately looking for a misplaced belonging. In this case, it was Luke's outrageously massive muscles. His fighter looked considerably scrawny. Thick cord once present everywhere on his fantastically blown-up form was now egregiously missing, leaving him with noodly limbs, a flat chest and stomach and a constitution a swimmer could make fun out of. Not only that, but Luke seemed to be also have lost a few inches of height as well, which explained why the slowly growing Stormy looked even huger from his perspective.
To his absolute terror, Luke was able to confirm what was happening by bringing up his stat window. His height, measured in centimeters, was gradually decreasing one centimeter after another. “My muscles and my size!" he cried aloud, watching his character's maximum health, strength and constitution being lowered. It was almost like his stats were getting sapped away!
“They do look better on me, don't they, Luke?" Stormy taunted from above, his reverberating voice carrying such force now that Luke felt something like a gust of wind hit him on the chest. The small, thin goat couldn't help stumbling back, watching in disbelief as Stormy closed a fist and curled his right arm up, biceps hugely bulging against the sleeves of his over-stretched rogue garbs.
“This isn't happening…" Luke shook his head like someone attempting to convince themselves they were in a dream. They were both inside of virtual reality, but everything was presented so accurately that the goat couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and real life. In Luke's mind, Stormy had truly just become a towering beast of a stud wolf while he was nothing but a beanpole of a fighter wearing incredibly oversized half-armor. “I'm the big one, you're small and puny…!" Luke bargained, clenching his teeth into a wavering smile. “I'm… I'm supposed to be big! And strong! The strongest, biggest! You… you don't look down on… you can't look down on me!"
Stormy heard growing desperation in Luke's voice. Any other day he would have felt bad, and he would've strived to encourage and help the goat calm down. But it was at that moment, with that strange power overwhelming him, that Stormy tasted something wonderful. It was his first taste of clear and inarguable superiority. But the flavor tickling his tongue and electrifying his pleasure receptors was something else altogether. He could sample it as it emanated from Luke like a cloud of sparkling black fog which only he seemed able to see.
The wolf could taste Luke's fear.
And what he was gorging on wasn't something as simple as Luke being scared of Stormy being so monstrously large. It went deeper than that. The way the goat's fear rolled over Stormy's tongue let him appreciate specific notes which allowed him to understand the complexity of Luke's wavering confidence and meek body language. And although Stormy was on the verge of discovering what the real deal was, all he cared about was satiating this new appetite with more.
“I can't help but look down right now, Luke," Stormy said, choosing every word carefully, speaking slowly in that baritone of his. With the goat visibly squirming, the intensity of his fear grew ever more delicious the closer Stormy got. With every passing moment, the wolf's features became more brutish and bestial: Fangs growing in size, paws turning into sharp claws, muscles exploding to bodybuilder-shaming proportions. His rogue garbs were looking painted on at this point, shifting off and on as they visually glitched, further giving off a maddening appearance to the hunched over mini-giant. “You are just so PUNY."
“Waaah… Nuh-no, quit it…!" Luke shouted, “Quit it! Stop! I'm scared!" he pleaded while grabbing his own head, falling to his knees as he shuddered. Their difference was even more egregious than it had been before the roles had reversed. Luke's character had dipped below five feet in height, while the rumbling Stormy flexed muscles on top of muscles at a staggering eight and a half foot tall. “I'll do anything, I swear! Please stop…!"
Licking his chops like a wild predator, Stormy realized that he wasn't growing any bigger and Luke any smaller. Whatever limit existed to this strange ability, it seemed to have been reached. Looking up from the short Luke to the comically oversized axe sagging down at the deflated fighter's back, Stormy got an idea. With one glance down at his own bowie knives, Stormy couldn't help but boom with laughter. “You should be the one using these butter knives. Why don't you give me your axe instead?"
Quickly nodding, Luke readily opened the trade window. It pleased Stormy to feel his goat friend submitting to his wishes, so after a swap, the giant wolf rogue was now equipped with Luke's massive battle axe. It looked like a regular double-bladed one-handed axe in Stormy's hand. The wolf swung it around faster than the eye could see, owed to his amazing strength.
Turning around, Stormy stomped off, letting out a mighty roar which seemed to bring the attention of every newly spawned lizard men to them. Hostile hissing further shook Luke as he had no idea how he was going to fight that growing army back with his puny arms and his new, small knives. His eyes widened with them seeing the beastly rogue taking on each individual, whether they came alone or in a group, cutting them down blindingly and brutally fast.
“Looks like I'm the new bodyguard, huh?" Stormy rested his axe over the shoulder, glancing back at the shivering Luke with his hand resting at the hip. “Just look at him…" the wolf stud laughed to himself, “…it's almost like he thinks I'm one of the monsters." Stormy thought, only aware of his increased strength and height, but not of the exaggerated features he was sporting in Luke's eyes.
Stormy was having the time of his life. While LOP penalized classes for using weapons they weren't proficient with, his strength requirements far exceeded the ones for the fighter's battle axe. With his bloated pool of HP and muscle-backed defense, the enemies coming at Stormy hardly bothered him. As he continued to tear them all down, he chose to learn strength-based techniques to add to his arsenal with the EXP he was swiftly amassing. Luke was being forced to watch Stormy be a better brute than he had been!
And the wolf had been having so much fun that he failed to notice a thin red circle forming around he and Luke. Except that this time, when a barrage of daggers came flying at the weakened Luke, Stormy swiftly stood in the way. Chip damage at best; the blades bounced off his pectorals and abdominals bulging against his glitching rogue garbs.
Well, well, well…! What do we have here? Oh? Have I not seen you two nerds before?
_ _
Emerging from a shadow on the corner of a boulder, a familiar black-garbed, blue-eyed figure revealed himself to be the same Player Killer from the other day. Stormy read the player handle aloud: “Kylester69."
“Woah, I recognize that squeaky voice. Ain't you that baby player from the other day? Got all fattened up, I see!" the PK goaded, tossing his kodachi blades up and down like they were kitchen knives.
Stormy could still remember the helplessness he had felt two days ago when that PK had come to ruin his group's fun with his underhanded tactics. He had a pretty good idea of why the assassin was here, but he still felt the urge to ask: “What are you doing here?"
“Lots of noobs come here to catch up to the advanced players," the PK explained, “The more hardcore ones spend hours and hours gaining levels here, and get overloaded with crafting mats, the odd rare drop but most importantly… all that accumulated gold." He giggled, “Bet you two are loaded with it too right now. You and… huh?"
Stormy noticed the PK hesitating when he looked past his bulk and over at Luke, then back at him and the two-handed weapon Stormy was holding in just one. “Fuck's up with you two? Wasn't that guy a meathead before?" the PK demanded, pointing his blade at Stormy, “Oh I see. No wonder you're still hanging around here. You remade your characters. Starting over, doing a lil' role reversal? How cute! Hehehe."
“Creep," Stormy thought to himself. But this time he wasn't anxious. His HP was full, and despite his added bulk his agility and speed hadn't suffered at all. With strength and constitution above Luke's, Stormy was sure he'd be able to handle anything this bastard might throw at him.
“But wow, you must've been here all day, huh?" the PK continued, “Never seen someone get that dummy buff before. Bet you're an idiot dumping all of his points in strength thinking 'big damage number good', huh?" Laughing out loud, the ninja backflipped into the air, and with a swing of his arm deployed a number of traps around Stormy and Luke. “Lemme show you why agility's better!"
Stormy glanced back at the shivering Luke. He was going to be useless for this confrontation. “Guy can be a dick sometimes, but I think he's learned his lesson already," the wolf thought, deciding he didn't need to be further humiliated. The first thing he did was turn around, scoop Luke off the ground and haul him over his shoulders before leaping away from the trap circle the PK had formed around them.
“What?" the surprised PK exclaimed as his stun circle trap went off a second after his prey had dodged it. “Dumb muscled-up Fighters don't move that fast!" he began firing another hail of daggers after Stormy, hoping to take Luke out with the majority of them.
Stormy didn't reply, turning to look at their opponent while backing away with fancy footwork in order to protect Luke from knives. He either avoided them or took the blows, but the sharpness of those knives simply wasn't enough to do more than further chip damage against the wolf's muscles. “That all you got?"
The cowl on the PK obscured most of his face, so one couldn't see him smiling. Among all the knives he had been chucking at Stormy, the ones aimed at his vitals were coated with a paralyzing agent. When Stormy realized what was going on, his feet were already not responding. All he could do was stand still, shielding Luke from the ongoing barrage of attacks. “Damn, this again…?" he grunted, glaring at the PK with fury.
“Common tactic, dumbass," the PK said as he approached to get a clearer shot, “Stun and paralysis are status effects. You subdue targets far too resistant to physical damage before attempting to take them down. I'd be in trouble if you were wearing resisting equipment, but it looks like you haven't made it to the town that sells 'em, huh? Lucky me! Now, I'm gonna take my time just…"
Stormy gritted his teeth, doing his best to shield the goat slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Every knife bouncing off him did away with a single unit of HP, and now that he couldn't dodge and the dozens upon dozens of blades were hitting their mark, his health was starting to steadily go down. It was certainly going to take time to do away with the bulk of that health bar, but before Stormy had to think of a counter-measure, he was distracted by an unexpected question.
“What the hell is that?" the PK asked, stopping.
“What is what?" Stormy questioned, unsure of what the ninja-like player was attempting. “Probably another one of his stupid tactics…" he thought. But the knives had stopped flying towards Stormy. The next ones the PK was about to throw fell to the ground instead and he took an unsteady step backwards. This was enough for Stormy to glance behind him, but to his surprise he found nothing of note. Looking back at the PK, he saw his kodachi catch fire; blue flames wreathing the blades all of a sudden. “Damn, I knew it!"
But as Stormy braced himself for an incoming melee attack, he realized the PK was swinging and none of the attacks were connecting. The PK was, after all, no less than 30ft. away from him. He wasn't throwing his blades at Stormy; he was using them to fight the air in front of him. “Fuh-fuck off!" he shouted, but Stormy could tell his anger wasn't directed at him. He seemed distracted by something else.
It was then that Stormy realized he could move again. His improved constitution hadn't been able to prevent paralysis, but it had certainly cut down the waiting time for the status effect to go away on its own. “Whatever he's up to, I'm tired of his mind games," the wolf had made his decision. Wasting no time, he set Luke back down, picked up his axe and rushed off to strike a powerful blow to his player opponent. But as he closed the distance, Stormy slowed down.
The PK wasn't acting. The more he swung, the less comprehensible his speech became. “…with your hairy butt… so many creepy legs! Gah! Guh-get away from me…!!" he was desperately frightened, backing away from Stormy and eventually dropping his main weapons like he had his knives earlier. The assassin's arms helplessly raised over his head as he let out a terrified scream, bracing a leg up and inevitably collapsing to his side, where he curled into a shivering ball. “They're all over me! They're eating meeeee…!" he cried.
“They're… eating you?" Stormy repeated in disbelief. If this was still some sort of elaborate trap, the guy deserved an acting award. The way he had fallen over made it look like he had been rushed by something clinging to his body, weighing him down. “What's eating you?"
“Are you fucking with me, asshole?!" the PK screamed at the top of his lungs, “Thu-the spiders, the fucking spiders! Don't you see 'em? They're everywhere. Why are they everywhere?! The caves they spawn in are in the Keep! Not here! Not… ahhh! Fuck!"
“Spiders?" Stormy couldn't help but stare at the squirming player. It looked so real. Like someone struggling with something beyond horror. “He's arachnophobe…" the wolf blurted out in realization just as something began to tickle his lips. Eyes wide with sudden excitement, Stormy's tongue slowly dragged over his wet maw. His tail wagged as he watched the PK surge with a familiar black aura. The more intense it grew, the more Stormy started to gorge on that delicious, manifested fear.
While the glitched rogue gorged himself, he finally began to see them. They were all over Kylester69. Mounted over him, crawling with their big, spindly legs and fuzzy torsos. Huge spiders the size of motorcycles. Some were biting into him while the rest spun webbing to bind him while he curled in the fetal position. While Stormy personally found it disgusting to see, the fear it instilled upon the PK was a most delicious morsel to snack on.
“Stop it… stop it! Ahhh! Stop iiiiiiiit…!" the PK begged and screamed, “Yuh-you! This is your doing, isn't it?!" he desperately cried out at Stormy, “I'm sorry! I'm sorry I killed you the other day!"
“And my friend?" Stormy added with a smile.
“Aahh-and your friend yes! Sorry I was a dick," the PK sobbed pathetically, continuously disappearing under the giant spiders crawling all over him, “Sorry, I'm sorry! I'll… just stop this. Please, here! It's all I have…!"
Stormy saw a trade window pop up. In accepting it, he saw a rather generous sum of gold being offered. Way more than he had ever seen. Probably what the PK had taken from him, Razor and a bunch of other victims. Confirmation was sent immediately by Kylester69, and all Stormy had to do was confirm, himself. The wolf's coffers were instantly bloated with way more than anyone with his playtime should have all of a sudden. The PK had truly given him every last bit of gold in his account.
“Just leave me alone, freak! I-I mean…" the PK stuttered, “I'll… just go, if you let me. I don't want no more spiders. Just call them off!"
Stormy was still thinking about all the gold he'd received. There was a big grin on his face, like someone who had just exacted justice. He felt satisfied. Before he could even ask himself if he could will the spiders to go away, they seemed to vanish from sight, freeing the PK to crawl away from the towering wolf.
“What kind of hack was that…?" the PK whimpered. He was still shaking all over, “Miss me with that shit. You don't come near me again…!"
“You're the one who keeps getting in my way," Stormy reminded, taking a step forth which made the PK squeal.
“Yuh-yes, sorry! I… won't do that again, I… I'll stop bothering you. I won't bother anyone again! I'll even stay mum about the hax, I promise. If you don't believe me just…" the PK paused. Stormy received a friend request, which he ignored for the time being. “You can check on me if you want. Anytime! Just don't send those things after me again, alright? LOP is all I got…"
The more the PK spoke, the more pathetic he sounded. Stormy felt something rising in his chest. It was pleasure, although slightly different from the burst of energy he started feeling earlier whenever he leveled up. It was purely an emotional response. Someplace between pride and fulfilment. The wolf had never honestly had an opportunity to look down upon others, and right now, it was one of the best feelings in the world. Now he could understand why someone like Luke acted the way he did. Or why this PK preyed upon those weaker than himself.
Speaking with authority, Stormy told the cowering assassin: “ Get the hell away from my sight, weakling."
With a rapid series of nods and a whispered “Thank you!" Kylester69 went on to disappear in a pillar of blue light; teleported away.
Satisfied with the results, Stormy turned around to face Luke, his eyes stilll on his inventory window. “Dude, you won't believe all the gold that…"
“Guh-get away from me!" Luke interrupted, kicking pebbles as he dragged himself away from Stormy. “What you did to him…? What the fuck is going on, Stormy? Are you really hacking? Thu-this isn't funny, man…!"
“It's alright," Stormy reassured, “Just taught him a lesson."
“A lesson? He was shitting his pants! Just like…" Luke choked up, glancing down at himself with a squirming shiver.
Stormy offered Luke a quiet smile. “You learned a lesson today too though, didn't you?" he reminded, although the goat's reaction was well beyond what Stormy expected. Luke reeled from Stormy as if he had seen the maw of a hungry beast snap down on him. With all that had happened so far, the wolf had to imagine that was what Luke was seeing, since Stormy couldn't look at himself.
“Fuh-fuck this shit, I'm outta here! All done with this monster crap!" Luke said, his character vanishing in a blue light. But he hadn't teleported. Being on each other's friend list allowed Stormy to tell Luke had just logged off.
“He was really terrified," Stormy thought to himself, “If I let him go though, he might start running his mouth… things could get complicated," he sighed, and decided to log off as well.
Back in the real world, Stormy carefully stepped out of his pod. He took a few cautionary steps on the ground, adjusting to the rude shift in perspective. He was no longer the hulking stud he had turned into inside of LOP after all, but the comparatively androgynous-looking five-foot-four wolf he'd always been. It had all been so realistic that it now felt surreal to be back outside.
But before Stormy could put more thought into it, he crossed eyes with the fast-walking Luke. He seemed to be headed to the changing rooms when he realized Stormy was looking at him. “Yo, Luke, hey!" Stormy called him over, but the goat freaked out. “Wait a minute!"
“Nuh-not again. Get away man!" Luke yelled before turning to the arcade's exit and dashing out. “Stay away from me…!"
Stormy flinched as he saw the goat run away from him in such dramatic fashion. “Again…?" he questioned aloud. The deranged look Stormy was given suggested something was wrong, but it wasn't anything Stormy could see. He patted himself all around, once again confirming he was back to normal. The reflection on the arcade's surprisingly well-waxed tiled floor also proved as much. “But we're back in the real world, aren't we…? Ugh. I really can't let him be like this," he resolved, and without putting thought to anything else he ran after Luke.
The wolf couldn't remember the last time he had to run after someone; let alone sprint at all. It probably had been all the way back during PE at high-school. There was no doubt someone as physically active as Luke had the speed advantage. “It's much easier to move in LOP…" Stormy panted with regret as he pushed himself. Fortunately for him, the goat seemed erratic and despite the openness of the street he never turned back to see Stormy giving chase. “Gonna hide in that alley, probably. Got'cha!"
A tall wall at the end of the alleyway forced Luke to skid to a stop. His lungs were burning as he had suddenly demanded a lot of oxygenation with that explosive dash after spending so many hours sitting down playing LOP. “Guhh… gaaahh… haaaaah…!" Luke panted, uselessly clawing at the brick wall in his attempt to keep his balance against it. The only reason he noticed Stormy at all was due to the wolf panting just as if not louder. Of course, to Luke the noises were patently different. “No…" he begged, hyperventilating as he shifted around with his back against the wall. “Quit snarling at me, man, you're gonna scare the crap out of me like that!"
As Stormy tried to calm his breathing, he couldn't help but quirk a brow at his friend's pleading. “I'm not snarling at him," he paused, immediately thinking back to his reaction back at the arcade, and the one in-game. “Could it be…?"
Luke dropped to his knees, whimpering at Stormy. “Dude, please! I'm sorry I said all those mean things about you, I take it all back! Just… just don't make me small. I hate it. I hate it more than anything!"
As amusing as it was to watch a 6'4" giant like Luke kneeling before someone a whole foot shorter, Stormy's head was racing with something other than irony. “He's terrified of being small and weak, that's why he teased me so much with that. He was projecting his insecurities all along…" the wolf reasoned, “And that PK's arachnophobia triggered all those spiders appearing and scaring him out of his wits too."
“I gotta get out of here!" Luke was suddenly on his feet, ready to make a mad dash. The expression in his eyes was almost entirely blank. He was going to plow through Stormy like a truck through a soccer goalpost. If not for the fact Stormy cleaved his stare on him and commanded him not to.
“Stop!" the wolf said, loud and clear, having reacted to the danger of being run over. Stormy gasped as Luke reeled back and fell to his butt with a whimper. When he realized what he had done, Stormy's outstretched arm fell limp and all he could do was stare at the shaking Luke. More than a goat, he looked like a terrified little lamb. The way he was shaking prompted Stormy to lick his lips in that familiar after-taste-y way.
“Don't…" Luke's voice cracked, “Stormy, I'm afraid, man… Please quit tormenting me, I'll do anything!"
It then hit the wolf. That specific word Luke had used made it so obvious to Stormy all of a sudden. “Tormenting. Tormentor. Like the Gargoyle in that glitchy dungeon?!" he thought, realizing that in all cases Stormy had triggered fear, he had become benefitted in some way. In the latest case with the PK, Stormy had yet to check his character's stats, but this all seemed to go in line with what Razor had explained a couple of days ago.
Stormy couldn't help but start laughing to himself all of a sudden. “Ha…! Hahahaha!" he couldn't believe what was happening. It was too much. “That slime-y thing, the migraine... Did it give me some sort of power? But then why is Luke acting this way outside the game? Unless…"
Luke was still sitting, legs trembling. He was looking up at Stormy like one stares at a nightmarish monster. When Stormy took a step closer, Luke braced, reeling like someone expecting an incoming blow. Through more pathetic whimpering, the goat was still peering over his arm at his tormentor. The harder Stormy glared at him, the bigger of a mess Luke became.
Before his terrified friend pissed himself, Stormy decided to stop. He had confirmed what he needed to know: Luke was reacting to his stare much like he had back in LOP; perhaps because of what had happened back in LOP. But now something else occurred to the wolf: “Was he serious?" he briefly thought, wasting no time in addressing Luke properly: “Did you say you'd do anything?"
Luke shyly nodded. There was bashfulness in his agreement, but not a shred of insincerity.
In the next couple of minutes, the couple of gamers were standing next to the concession stand across the street. A fat, juicy double-patty cheeseburger was a pleasure above simple hotdogs. One which Stormy could no longer treat himself to as often as he liked thanks to his lack of a job. Getting someone as cheap as Luke to spot him one merely by asking for it was a new kind of pleasure Stormy hoped he'd be able to indulge in every so often from now on.
“He's loaded, it'll be okay…" the wolf reassured himself in his mind, licking the overflowing cheese off his fingers while paying the goat a side-glance. Luke looked normal as far as he could tell, having put in the order without a stutter. But every time they crossed eyes, Luke's pupils seemed to shrink a little, and his body appeared to tense up in an almost imperceptible way. Stormy could pick up on these details in the same mysterious way as he could continue to taste the vestiges of the goat's fear like some sort of appetite-whetting condiment.
Stormy briefly entertained the fantasy of having Luke buy him more food to test just how far that newly formed loyalty could be pushed, but the wolf was feeling pretty full. “Hey, you don't mind spotting me at the arcade today, do you? Kind of short on cash and all…"
“Sure, anything for ya, man," Luke readily agreed, thumbing back over the street, “Are we heading back to the arcade now?"
Stormy smiled to himself, sufficiently convinced about Luke's submissiveness. Thinking back to that PK however, he couldn't help but wonder how many more people he could affect with this sweet power of his. “Oh yeah. We're definitely going back…" he paused, throwing his empty burger wrapper into the trash bin while walking side by side with the tall goat, “Hey, Luke?"
“Yeah?" Luke said without looking down at Stormy.
“I was thinking about it," Stormy seemed pensive, “Let's not mention anything about this to anyone unless I tell you to. Got it?"
“Of course! Yeah," Luke nodded with a little scoff, “Who needs to invite drama, right? Not me!"
“Right," Stormy's smile grew as they crossed back through the storefront's double doors. But before they could go back to their pods, someone stood in front of them as an obstacle.
It was the arcade's clerk, the hyena girl, and she looked none-too-pleased with the two runaways. Her arms were folded and she was impatiently tapping her long fingernails over her sleeve. “Nice of you to drop back in. You boys grow a conscience and decided to come back after playin' and dashin'?"
It dawned on Stormy that in all the commotion, he hadn't stopped to think of how their little escapade could've been seen. With a little stammer, he formulated a response: “Muh-my friend here and I had a disagreement in LOP and it got heated, so we went out for some fresh air. Had a chat to cool our heads off, yeah?" he nudged the passive Luke, who seemed to spring into the conversation practically on demand.
“That's right! We were just having a talk, is all," the goat parroted with a nod, “We play here every day. We wouldn't wanna get banned for skipping on our tab or anything!"
Tapping her foot on the floor as she listened to their stories, the gruff hyena rolled her eyes, “Look, they don't pay me to listen to knuckleheads' lame stories. If you don't wanna get banned, maybe don't storm outta the place with company property," she said pointing at the sensory suits Stormy and Luke were still wearing. “Next time you pull a stunt like this is definitely gonna be the last. I officially got my eyes on you two from now on, got it?"
Stormy examined himself with a light shrug of his shoulders, realizing after all this time that he was still dressed in neoprene. “It's such a good fit that I didn't realize I was still wearing it. I'm either really used to it or…" he put a hand at his chest, rubbing over the elastic, form-fitting neoprene with a delighted huff, “…I guess I really like it enough to walk around in it all day at this point," the wolf said while looking up at the taller hyena.
“Ugh," the impatient clerk slapped her face and focused on Stormy, “Didn't you hear a word I just said? Like it all you want, that thing is my responsibility and if you think I'm not gonna drag your ass to the laundromat if you even put a single dollop of cheese on the…" she trailed off.
Stormy tilted his head sideways when the hyena grew quiet. She sighed and looked away from him.
“Whu-whatever," she finally said, as if admitting defeat and turning around, “Maybe if I talk to the manager, he'd let you loan it out or something. If you like it that much. Freaks…" she muttered, finally sauntering away back to her counter. From there, she hollered: “If you're gonna play, get back in the pods! It's still a Saturday, you know!"
Stormy and Luke split off. As the wolf climbed into his IlluPod, he couldn't stop smiling to himself.
Life was about to get a lot more fun.
Chapter 5: The Tormentor
When Stormy returned to LOP, the first thing he noticed was his character and Luke's didn't look different from their usual self. He wasn't a towering mass of muscles; let alone the beast he had appeared to Luke earlier. And Luke himself was back to being a stupidly engorged mountain of testosterone, although he didn't seem as eager to flex and brag.
On the other hand, Stormy noticed he was still carrying around the battle axe the goat Fighter had traded him, and it continued to feel as lightweight as a bowie knife to him. One glance at his stats revealed that Stormy's health, strength and constitution had remained as high as they had before logging off, but he definitely saw more changes. Dexterity and Agility were up as well, though not at the degree the other stats had raised.
“That PK was an assassin class, wasn't he?" Stormy reminded himself, concluding that their stat difference wouldn't be as egregious as with a Fighter's. He turned to Luke. “Hey, let's trade. You can have your axe back."
“You sure?" Luke tilted his head, but he didn't reject Stormy's trade request. “…thanks," he said, swinging his reclaimed battle axe before holstering it at his back. Stormy noted how Luke wasn't having trouble with the handling, which surmised to him that the goat's strength score itself hadn't been permanently affected.
“Your stats okay?"
“Yeah, I think so," Luke rolled his shoulders, “You uh… you okay, man?"
Stormy raised an eyebrow. Luke didn't seem at all concerned, which stuck out as odd to Stormy who had witnessed his entire breakdown only moments before. The wolf didn't even entertain the notion it all had been a hallucination. At first, he considered relogging might have reset everything to how it had been before, but his eyes weren't lying: His stats were severely engorged beyond what they should be. Luke seemed to be deferential. And most importantly: Stormy's account was loaded with the gold received from the PK.
“Emi's asking to join the party. Razor too," Luke said, snapping Stormy back from his thoughts. The wolf thought to push the 'allow' buttons, but he didn't see them.
“Well? Let them." Stormy said, although it occurred to him that Luke had bothered to ask for his permission before letting them in.
“Yo, where have you two dorks been?" Emi's voice joined alongside her portrait.
“You just got here. Why are you calling us dorks already?" Luke sighed.
Emi curtly replied: “'cause you're dorks," and quickly added: “Hey, Stormy, you over level 15 already, right? Join us for the gold booster event at Jaunt. They're relaunching it for those that didn't make it last time."
Razor finally joined in: “With a four-man party, it should be over even faster. And to make use of the booster, Emi and I found a sweet gold farming spot near Heights. That's the north-eastern town, Stormy. Dragon Apostle territory. Level 30-40 mobs, but you'll be able to handle it with all of us!"
Stormy smiled and nodded to Luke, who got their porterstones ready. “Counting on you all."
“Quit babbling and come to us! We're at Jaunt already. You got portstones don'tcha?" Emi hurried. She didn't have to wait for long before the party was reunited, and went on to have a relatively normal Saturday evening of gaming in LOP.
One the one hand, Stormy was glad that his and Luke's in-game appearances had reset; it had saved him the hassle of having to come up with explanations. On the other, he was no longer as certain about the permanency of his new abilities of persuasion, so before he attempted anything else, he decided to take on an experimental approach.
For the next three days, Stormy would stick close to Luke, observing his mannerisms as well as testing his obedience in subtle ways, both in and outside of LOP. These tests took the form of requests such as asking for rare items in the interest of helping a noob, or favors such as buying Stormy's groceries for the week. To Emi and Razor's surprise, Luke had no problem “spotting a pal".
“What's up with those two being so chummy with each other?"
“They've been spending the last few days grinding together, Emi."
“So? Oh. You think they're dicking each other?"
“What? No! Get your head out of the gutter. I mean, they're probably getting to know each other better and stuff as they play, that's all. …probably."
“Heheh. You're totally imagining iiiiit."
While Emi and Razor gossiped, Stormy continued his observations. At first, the wolf thought Luke had completely forgotten about their 'chat' in the alleyway. But with the nervous glances the goat kept giving him every so often, as if he was wary of something, Stormy could tell it was deeply ingrained. In fact, the more intensely he stared at the goat, the more bashful he grew. But no matter what, Luke never slipped up about what truly was going on. There was always an excuse or a plausible explanation for his erratic behavior, but never one misspoken word about the truth.
Stormy now understood that Luke's thoughts were being guided by his fear of upsetting him. Put differently, the avoidance of facing his fears by keeping Stormy happy was all that seemed to matter to Luke. But tasting Luke's fear was something he could no longer relish as much. His submissive obedience was welcome, and even amusing, but it was no longer enough. And yet Stormy couldn't stop thinking about it. The more he thought about it, the hungrier the wolf grew.
He couldn't help but wonder what the deepest, darkest fears of his other two friends were.
“Can't believe they haven't patched this place out yet," Razor said as he clipped into the half-finished dungeon inside of the mountain cradling the marshlands. “Think we should send another bug report?" he asked Stormy who was walking in after him.
“I already did," the wolf lied, walking past the priest hare to guide him through the winding tunnels into the Tormentor's chamber. His hood was on. “Hurry, the thing I wanna show you is over here."
“Is it another glitch?" Razor inquired, looking around attentively, “Place looks empty as before, except for the 'ol weirdo gargoyle, I guess. Actually, speaking of weird, what's up with Luke?"
“What about him?" Stormy stopped besides the Tormentor Gargoyle without turning around.
“Thought you might know something since you've been playing a lot with him," Razor said, “I mean, he's been kinda distant, and jittery too. And then outta nowhere he tries to take on the no-healer two-man Orc Overlord challenge with Emi? Not that she needs any excuse to try hard…" he laughed at the end, “…but Luke doesn't do those. He likes having insurance; that means a priest. I just find it weird that…"
“I asked him to take Emi along," Stormy intercepted. “Truth is, I wanted to be alone with you, Razor."
Razor was silent for a few seconds. “Uhh… okay?" the hare fidgeted a little, tapping the floor with his staff. With the wolf saying nothing, Razor started feeling awkward. “Did you have something to show or tell me then? Wait. Whatever it is, Emi can't be here, so either you're embarrassed about it or you're trying to surprise her and Luke is in on it."
Stormy slowly turned around with a smile. As he did, Razor saw a trade window pop up.
“Huh? What's all this for…?" Razor's eyes widened to the number of gold pieces being offered. “Holy Jesus!" he exclaimed, “This is…"
“I asked Luke about the mount you guys have been trying to buy," Stormy explained, “When we ran into that PK last week, he took a ton of gold from you. You wouldn't have died if I hadn't been so careless, so…"
“This is a lot!" Razor spoke in disbelief at the immediate confirmation Stormy sent, with Razor needing only confirm on his side of the trade to receive Stormy's gold. “I can just have this…? It's like three times what I lost. How did you even get this much in such a short time?"
“I've been no-lifing the game, remember?" Stormy grinned under his hood, shrugging playfully. “Let's just say I've been experimenting with ways to get ahead fast."
“Psh, you'll have to show me," Razor clicked on the confirmation, gleefully accepting the donation. “Man, though. Were you still thinking I was mad at you or something? Haha. It's not like you had to pay me back or anything."
“Oh, that wasn't me paying you back, Razor," Stormy pulled his hood back, revealing his flashing triple-colored stare. “I'm just paying you in advance for being my little guinea pig."
Razor's grip on his healing staff tightened involuntarily. The way Stormy was staring at him was making him uncomfortable, but more than anything, it felt like weight was piling on him because of it. Before he could ask what was going on, Razor felt vibrations running across the floor, causing him to look down. Looking away from Stormy, the hare could swear the walls and the ceiling were rumbling as well. “Okay, you've officially lost me," he said with a dismissive little laugh. But he couldn't go on dismissing what he was witnessing when he confirmed that the surface of the walls was looking like it was knocking pebbles and glitchy dust off it. “Is… is that a tremor?"
“I don't feel anything," Stormy replied to his question.
“You don't see it?" Razor insisted, turning in the direction of the vibrating wall where the dust was sliding off and leaning in to double check. “Ah!" he flinched as he saw the chamber's wall suddenly lurching. “This place moves?! Stormy, the…" he quickly turned around to look for the wolf, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Razor's heart sunk. He had to swipe at his staff to prevent it from falling after his tense hands let go of it. “Stormy?" he called out, standing in the center of the rumbling chamber. “What did you do?" he asked, trying his hardest to ignore the moving walls, terrified of even looking up, “Where'd you go?!" he demanded, taking a step away from the statue of the gargoyle in the direction of the exit, only to stop when he realized the exit into the winding passage seemed to no longer be there.
The hare slowly backed away, hugging his staff while looking to his left and then to his right. Razor double checked his compass; the exit had always been to the East in the chamber. But there was only a wall there. And on the West, and on the North, and of course, on the South also. “An illusion? Stormy, are you playing a prank on me?!" he spoke aloud, half-relieved. Razor bounced back to where he knew the exit was. “Very funny!" he sarcastically shouted, reaching out to tap the eastern wall with his staff to dispel illusions.
To Razor's horror, not only did the spell do nothing, but his staff got pushed off his hands by the advancing wall. “I-is this…?" he glanced back at this floored equipment, shyly shuffling closer to it to pick it back up only for him to errantly look up.
Razor's eyes bulged. His pupils shrank to pinholes. The ceiling of the chamber was looking awfully low. Too low in fact. Like it was bearing down on him. His chest began to rise and fall with dramatic pumps, the hare starting to hyperventilate. “Traps like these aren't featured in the game code," he tried to reason it out with a shaky smile. “They never announced… ever…" his heart sank again, remembering where he was. It was the half-finished dungeon. “Fuck no, I'm outta here!"
The hare tried to pick up his staff to cast a return spell, but when he swiped at the ground, he realized his weapon was gone. Razor spun in place, desperately looking for his staff only to realize that the walls were starting to close in on him as well, and fast. He gave up on looking for porterstones in his inventory. “Fuck. Fuck! That's it, this isn't funny anymore!"
Razor hurriedly opened his menu to look for the log-off button, but the menu closed before he could tap it. “The fuck?" he looked up at the shaking ceiling again and quickly opened the menu, but it closed itself again. On the next try, the menu didn't even pop up. “Wuh-why isn't it working?!"
There was another way to log off, but it carried data-loss risks. Razor was so unconcerned with the risks however that he brought his shaky hands up to the sides of his head, triple tapping on his head. This specific motion was used to shut the headset off in real life. “Doesn't work…?" the hare's heart skipped a beat. No matter how many times he tried the motion, it was the same result. “Duh-damnit, I must be too nervous to do it right. Am I too slow? Too fast…?" he winced, arms falling to his side and hanging limp. All he could do was stare up as the reality of his hopeless entrapment dawned upon him.
“Out…" Razor babbled, backing away from the eastern wall which was starting to push up against him, leading him back to the center of the room where the other walls were devouring what little space remained in the chamber. Fingers trembled, feet dragging along the floor, his breathing becoming more and more laborious. “Let me out!" he finally screamed.
Claustrophobia had set in. Razor could no longer think about magic or technology. The walls were closing in. He was already boxed in and was going to be crushed; in other words, he was going to die. “Please let me out! Stormy this isn't fucking funny anymore!" he raged out this time, smashing his fist on the eastern wall, shoulder bashing it and even clawing it while bawling. “I'm sorry! Is this about that prank? I'm sorry Luke and I pranked you!"
But it didn't matter how much Razor yelled or how hard he flailed. The implacable surface pushing against him inevitably forced Razor to back up to the center of the chamber. There was no sight of the statue anymore, but the terrified priest couldn't even bring himself to question its absence. Crouching, Razor grabbed and pulled down on his ears. “The walls are closing in! But this isn't real. It's not real. Calm down… calm down! It's not…" he sobbed, eventually breaking out into tears: “I can't… I can't do it! I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die! Help! Help me, help! Please, I…!"
Razor broke down, falling to the side and curling up. The minuscule space he was located in was beginning to cradle him. “Save me… someone save me…! I'll do anything…! Ah… Aaaaaaaah!"
Stormy's tongue dragged over his salivating mouth with a loud smack. “The walls, huh?" the wolf looked up from his friend who had curled up into the fetal position and wouldn't stop sobbing and shaking. His eyes went back to normal when he looked back down at Razor. “Sorry about all that," he said half-heartedly, walking closer and stopping when the hare desperately threw his arms around Stormy's legs.
“Suh-sorry. I'm so sorry," Razor repeated in mumbles, his eyes frozen in place, not looking anywhere in particular. Hugging himself against Stormy was more an anchor than relief to him right now.
“Went a little too hard this time, it looks like…" Stormy thought to himself, crouching down to gently pat Razor's back. With a smile, he said: “Don't worry, Razor. It'll be fine. We'll be nice to each other from now on, won't we?"
Razor didn't even look up. He just nodded. Once. Twice. Three times. He seemed desperate to communicate his agreement to Stormy, to acknowledge what to him was a command. “I'll do anything for you. Just save me, please…"
“Good boy." Stormy praised. He was thinking about getting Razor out from the chamber because with his allegiance there was no point in torturing him further. But before he could encourage the hare to stand up, an unexpected voice rang out.
“What's going on here?"
Stormy turned around to see Emi and Luke joining them in the chamber. He sighed at the goat who seemed to be averting his shameful gaze. “Thought I told you to keep her busy."
Luke stopped walking, barely able to keep his eyes focused forwards. “I'm sorry," he stammered, “We were done quicker than I expected and she… uh…"
“Hold on a minute!" The vixen raised her voice, glaring back at Luke before directing her furious gaze upon Stormy. “Told him to…?" Emi repeated with a puzzled yet upset frown.
Razor was still hugging Stormy, clinging to him as hard as he could. “Suh-sorry. Please…"
Emi looked down and took a few steps closer, “What's up with him? Razor, hey!" she shouted, but the mumbling hare wasn't even registering her voice. “What in the Kentucky Fried Fuck is going on here, dork? You better have an answer!"
Things were starting to get complicated. Stormy had been hoping to privately approach Emi later, but this wasn't exactly a bad chance. He was simply glutted with Razor's fear, but his appetite only seemed to be increasing. “I do!" he finally said to the sorceress.
“Cute," Emi said in response to the perky answer. She looked annoyed, and when she was annoyed, she always looked people in the eye to exert her dominance. “Why is Razor sobbing like a baby on the floor? What did you do? And why is Luke acting like he owes you something?"
“I guess you could say they both owe me something," Stormy licked his chops, chuckling and shrugging. “Isn't that right, Luke?"
“What?" Emi perked up when she saw the notice of her last party member, Luke, abandoning her party, thus disbanding it. “What're you dumbasses playing at? You trying to get a rise outta me or something?!"
“Kind of," Stormy rolled his eyes, beckoning with a hand and patting Razor with another. Emi's frustration grew as Luke walked past her and stood behind Stormy alongside the hare. “They know who they want the new party leader to be. Sorry you had to find out this way, but they like me better."
Emi began snarling, but as her expression hardened she began to grin. “I didn't think you had the stones, Stormy. Always so shy and pathetic, getting dragged around like a mutt with nowhere else to go. Trying to flip yourself around, asshole? And you!" she glared at Luke and Razor, “You two are pathetic. Why are you letting him boss you around when he's so puny both in and out of LOP?"
“Sorry, Emi," Razor shyly said: “I'm gonna listen to Stormy from now on."
“You have no idea what he can do, man," Luke added with a shiver, “Just let him call the shots, Emi. For your own good."
Emi's eyes froze in place and she couldn't help but stare. “For my…? Pffft! Ahahaha!" she burst out laughing. “You idiots really gonna commit to the bit, aren't you? Fine! I'll play along."
Stormy remained quiet as Emi set up a dueling area, the red ring extending around for all of them to see. “I get it, Stormy, I really do. You've been getting cocky since you've been gaining levels and clearing content. I dunno what you did to those two to get them so scared, but it ain't gonna work on me." She held her hands up, magical energies coursing through her fingertips as the tome hanging from her holster separated and began floating on its own in front of her. “I'm gonna beat your ass with mana orbs until you're begging to lick my boots. You two better stay away from this!"
Much to Emi's chagrin, her hollering didn't seem to affect Luke or Razor. It was like she didn't exist to them, which was especially grating considering the PvP-enabled area meant it was free for all right now. Before she could stress about numbers and strategy however, she saw Stormy nod back at the goat and the hare, who quietly stepped back. It was like watching a bad zombie movie. More infuriating than it was scary. And yet the vixen couldn't deny she was feeling a shiver running up her spine.
Emi allowed her anger to continue exploding. “Did he buy you out, Luke? Pathetic. And what, did he get some dirt on you, Razor? Is it the same I got?" the angry fox stomped her foot forwards, “Oh, this is good. You think you can just up and betray me after all I did for you two losers in Path of Redemption?" she turned to look at Stormy, her ears folding back as she bared her fangs at him.
“You're making quite the scary face right now, Emi." Stormy said with a calm smile as he took a few steps closer into the red ring. “I've always thought those spells you fling look cool as heck. Makes me kinda regret picking rogue."
Emi knew all about getting under people's skin. She knew Stormy was trying to manipulate her. “I see. You read some self-help book written by some random high-profile asshole and now you think you're better than everyone, is that it?" Upon getting silence from her opponent, Emi's down-facing right hand opened with magical energy coalescing into spherical form under it. “How about I show you how cool it looks when I'm using your face as target practice, dummy?"
“Go right ahead." Stormy opened his arms out in a welcoming gesture that made Emi growl. He hadn't even taken his weapons out yet; obviously taunting her. Following Emi's hand motions, the mana orb flew threw the air, smashing into the wolf's face with a resounding blast.
“Hah! Direct hit. That's what you get!" Emi celebrated, wasting no time in summoning a couple more orbs to fight with. But something was off. Although the hit sound had confirmed an accurate headshot, the damage numbers jumping off her foe's head were disappointing to say the least. “Razor, you cheeky little bastard…! Did you cast Mind Aura on him to help?!"
“You didn't see me cast it, did you?" Razor said, making Emi wince; in LOP the name of player skills displayed above their heads so it was hard to be stealthy about support. She double checked the number inside of the icon next to Stormy's health bar. There was no doubt it said 'Lv. 18'.
“Doesn't make sense! You can't have that much magic damage reduction at your level. Rogues don't get good magic defense armor options 'til they promote to assassin!" the sorceress complained. She then paused as another alternative formed in her mind: “Unless your Spirit stat is…"
“Pretty high," Stormy agreed. His character had certainly taken damage from Emi's attack, but the bloated health score and his regeneration made it negligible at best.
Emi's mana orbs dispelled. She huffed: “Fuck you. You're cheating, aren't you? You think I won't report your ass, Stormy?" the vixen held a hand up, fingertips crackling with electricity. “But before I do, how about you taste this little number?" she grinned, drinking a yellow potion with her free hand.
Stormy saw a blade of white energy coming down at him like a cleaver. It sliced through his character, dropping his health by a large chunk. Emi had commanded magic in the form of a gigantic weapon and it had managed to get through his defenses!
“How'd you like that? Piercing Mana Blade is pretty weak normally, but it ignores Spirit," Emi explained, tossing the empty phial she had been holding behind her. “Add a serious Magic up buff, and I can chump your cheating butt, no problem!"
“Always so competitive…" Stormy couldn't help but chuckle. He was taking out a healing potion when Emi went for a second slice. Only this time, Stormy stuck his hand out and slapped the Piercing Mana Blade away like it was made of paper.
Upon witnessing the casual way the wolf had gotten rid of her empowered spell, Emi let out a squeak. “Wuh-what?! Tha-tha-that's Magic Deflect. How? You may have the Dexterity and Agility but you don't have the Magic stat to learn that!"
“I don't?" Stormy let out a little gasp of pleasure after he was done restoring his health. He thumbed over his lips and tongue-flicked the taste of fear from his fingertip, giving Emi a half-lidded stare and a predatory smile. “You sure your magic isn't weak?"
“The fuck?!" Emi brought her arms up, conjuring two Piercing Mana Blades at once, “Who are you calling weak, mutt-face? I'm…" she trailed off. The vixen had been about to slice the wolf in half when she noticed something was off about Stormy's model.
While he had been standing still until now, Emi could now see the rogue's feet were dangling in the air, separated from the floor by a few inches. Swirls of blue magic energy had begun creeping up from the ground to spin around the wolf. The chevrons under Stormy's eyes which he shared with his real-life counterpart brightly glowed. There was suddenly a lot of pressure inside of the buggy half-finished dungeon.
Emi gasped, the shock causing magic blades to waver. “Magic Aura. Magic Empowerment. Mental Charge…" she enumerated each swelling effect benefitting the levitating Stormy. “How…? I'm four Magic points away from learning that one!" The vixen shivered. “You're shameless. Are you hacking the game right now?! You're gonna get thrown out! Banned!"
“Don't be so butthurt, Emi," Stormy brought an arm up, causing a water torrent to geyser off the ground before it crystallized into an ice pillar. “That's the beauty of LOP, isn't it? You start out as one class, but you can eventually learn all the things. Can't say I'm hacking just because I'm playing the game, right?"
“That's…" Emi couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Are you serious right now? Do you think that's fair?!" she cried out, making sure Luke and Razor heard her. They seemed mesmerized with the floating rogue pulling off increasingly more complex feats of wizardry which Emi had only been planning to learn so far. “Hey! I'm right here!" she insisted with an uncharacteristic whimper.
Stormy completely ignored Emi as she dashed past him to reach and grab onto Luke, shaking him. “Quit playing his stupid ass game, you muscle-headed dumbasswich! Just showing off his script or whatever it is to…" she stopped when Luke wasn't looking away from Stormy; it truly was like she wasn't there. “Razor! You ungrateful fuck!" she yelled, “I commission you for my livestream art every month! How dare you…" Emi reached out with her hands to grab Razor too, but not only was the hare completely taken in by Stormy's magic display; her hands didn't connect.
“Huh…?"
Emi tried grabbing Razor. Again. And again. But her hands never made it to his shoulders. Or arms. Or anywhere on his body. A disgusting feeling crept up the vixen's spine as she gradually looked down only to realize she could see through her fingers. Horrified, Emi began to shake her hands as if they had been covered in foul mud, but all she saw was less of her hands.
Unable to believe what she was seeing, Emi quickly stepped away from Razor and checked out her character model in the stat screen. That's where Emi realized she had become transparent. “The shit…?" she gasped, closing the menu and turning to Stormy who was now playing with dancing flames to amuse the other two knuckleheads, “What have you done to me?! That's it! I'm reporting you for hacking, you hear me?!"
It was unclear whether Stormy had heard Emi or not. He seemed to be having way too much fun with his newfound magic. The vixen opened the menus and selected the “Contact GM" button, furiously writing her message, adding pictures and Stormy's player name to a hacking report. LOP staff usually cracked down on cheaters pretty fast.
But that night, no one showed up. Emi quickly realized that her message hadn't even been read. So, she copied and pasted the same report over. And over. And over again. “Come on…! Isn't anyone working here?!" she cried out. On her fifth attempt, a red text warning appeared which made something sank to the pit of her stomach.
This user is currently ignoring you.
“A GM is ignoring me?" Emi laughed to herself, “Why would…?" she paused, looking at her smiling friends, “Hey! GMs can't ignore players, can they? They're supposed to…" she didn't even finish her sentence. “Guys…! Fuck! Whatever!"
Infuriated, Emi began to message her other in-game contacts to ask about making a report for her. But every one of her fellow players returned the same ubiquitous message without fail.
This user is currently ignoring you.
This user is currently ignoring you.
This user is currently ignoring you.
Emi couldn't communicate with anyone. Her gang hadn't just demoted her from her leadership role, they were acting like she didn't exist. “They're ignoring me too?" the vixen was suddenly feeling tired. Her legs slid to the side as she hit the chamber floor with her knees and butt. “Like I'm not here, no matter how loud I scream! I can't get noticed, I can't…! But I'm here!" she yelled angrily, slamming a fist down on the ground.
“Are you?" Stormy's voice addressed Emi as he hovered above her. The fox girl's breathing had become accelerated. “Your magic doesn't look as impressive anymore. Your voice barely carries any weight now. Hell, I can hardly see you anymore, Emi. It's like you're not there."
“No!" Emi shouted at Stormy, looking at her disappearing hands. Her body was beginning to fade. “No! Nononono! Stop this. Stop this right now!" she demanded, “You can't make me disappear! I work hard to get noticed. I've worked up to three hundred thousand subs, all of it without even showing my tits! What has a nobody like you done?!"
“Who are you?" Stormy's question hit Emi harder than any punch to the gut. It all began escalating inside of her mind from that point. Painful, long-buried memories brought Emi back to the days where she dreaded going to school where she was constantly bullied by her classmates. Back to her house where her older and younger sisters got all the attention. She had been passed up for job interviews so many times she had given it up. Streaming and games were her life now.
“Stop it…" Emi sobbed, feeling so weak she began to sprawl against the floor. The sinking feeling in her stomach grew worse as she felt her lightness of her body draw her further and further into the floor, as if she was truly phasing through concrete. “I'm going to disappear again! Please stop!" she cried out, her anxiety spiraling as she saw her account numbers plummeting, her chatrooms emptying, her name simply vanishing from the internet after she had clawed so hard to get out of obscurity.
“Stormy! Please! What do you want?!" the sinking sorceress let out a drowned scream as she was devoured by the shadows.
Help meeeeeeee…!
_ _
Stormy had never felt so satisfied in his life. Patting his stomach before exiting out of his pod, he stretched his limbs like someone who had just woken up from a fantastic dream. He turned around to see his three friends join him. Although Luke didn't seem any different, Emi and Razor appeared especially downtrodden.
“What's the matter?" Stormy asked, finally snapping all three to attention.
“Nothing!" Razor stood up straighter than an arrow.
“All good." Luke casually nodded.
“Need anything?" Emi stepped forth; hands joined together in earnest.
Their reactions were a refreshing change from the usual group's dynamic. Emi was usually the one dragging everyone around, so with everyone looking expectantly at Stormy as if they couldn't go on without his approval filled him with a sense of importance that he couldn't get enough of. Emi's eagerness to serve in particular tickled him. “Could use some grub, actually. Know any good recipes?"
“Ahh…" Emi stumbled a little, blushing.
“She lives off almost exclusively off ramen and cheap pizza," Razor teased from behind, getting an instantaneous glare from the vixen that made the hare jump behind Luke for protection. “What I mean is, uhh… I could cook for you, Stormy! I-if you want…"
“Why don't you cook for everyone, Razor?" Stormy added, “It could be a little party for all of us."
“Uhh, sure!" Razor quickly agreed.
“Not gonna say no to actual homemade food but," Luke scratched his head, “Party? We celebrating something?"
“Dumbass!" Emi focused her annoyance on Luke next, “Of course we're celebrating Stormy being our new party leader. Right?" she turned to look at the wolf for confirmation.
Even though Stormy shot Emi a nod, Luke still protested. “Hey, can it!" he said to the vixen. “I'm not the one who can't cook to save his life, here!"
“Razor's gonna be the cook, so what are you gonna do, horn-boy?" Emi contested with her usual competitive fire. Luke's glare intensified, but he took out his smart phone and shook it in place.
“I'm getting Stormy's tab for tonight. And ordering dessert to go with Razor's feast," Luke finished with a grin.
Emi tapped the floor impatiently. “You've been spotting him for the last three nights. Let me do it tonight!"
“Soh-rry, no can do. I called dibs," Luke sneered, getting a growl from the fox girl.
“In that case, uh…" Emi turned to Stormy, “Oh hey, you probably have to get some laundry done, right? Let me do it for you!"
The offer came so out of left field, especially from someone as aspersive and tomboyish as Emi that it took Stormy by surprise. “Calm down, guys. You're gonna give me a headache. Let's just have fun tonight, alright?"
Almost as if by sheer force of will, Stormy's words combined with his stare seemed to make all three flinch and agree unanimously. The wolf could still hardly believe how successful his experiment had been. The aftertaste of their fear still lingered in the wolf's mouth. A mixture between sweet and sour, like some sort of forbidden fruit. And Stormy was already eager for more.
“How long until they start feeling stale like Luke, though?" Stormy thought, looking at his group as they turned around to head off to the changing rooms as if he was examining three different vending machines. Luke was the dispenser whose flavor had become no less fulfilling yet unexciting, while the other two surely had some more for him to squeeze out of. But for how long?
A feast and a celebration to crown his supernatural achievement was fine and all, but Stormy's appetite had become just as unnatural. The fear dancing on his tongue, the dominance empowering him, and of course, the alien feeling of power coursing through his veins whenever his character improved beyond its natural limits. It had become as inextricable to his being as his addiction to it all. Stormy could tell. Soon enough, even his group of friends wasn't going to be enough for the Tormentor inside of him.
With his experimentation concluded, the question was no longer “Can I really do it?" but “How can I get more dispenser friends?" now.
Walking out the arcade's double doors in deep thought, Stormy was hit by a chilly gust of wind that reminded him of the speed with which he could now move in-game. If his stats continued rising, how long until he was faster than the wind itself? And then it hit him.
Stormy still had that friend invite from the assassin PK back in LOP. A PK who, according to Emi, belonged to an established guild full of people. A plan was formulating at the forefront of his mind. It was high time he carried on Emi's original goal of increasing their party's numbers. “I'll friend that guy tomorrow and convince him to bring me to…"
But the wolf's train of thought was derailed by a familiar yet unexpected voice shouting after him: “Hey, you!" As the wolf turned around to face her, the usual hyena clerk puffed her cheeks, “Seriously? Were you going to walk out with the sensory suit on again?"
Looking down at himself, Stormy confirmed the accusation. It was something so minor to him, yet he was clearly upsetting the taller clerk. He looked at her intensely and a contrastingly soft smile. “I really like it," he said, just like last time. Unlike last time, he didn't feel like making excuses.
“Buy yourself one then. You're making it really hard to…" the hyena sighed, getting ready for another lecture when she felt the strangest feeling of dread running up her spine like an especially bad goosebump. “…ahh." She stumbled.
“Yes?" Stormy tilted his head, reflexively softening his gaze, which seemed to allow the clerk to regain her eloquence.
“I was going to threaten to get you banned if you didn't go change out of the suit right now," the hyena's uneasy demeanor surprised Stormy. She seemed perturbed, eyes constantly breaking contact with his. It was almost like she was staring directly at an overwhelmingly bright light which was as hurtful as it was attractive.
The wolf recognized that demeanor. His heart jumped with elation. Stormy decided to mimic his in-game visual movements, this time consciously staring daggers into the clerk's eyes. “What are you going to do now?" he softly asked the squeaking clerk, watching her visibly squirm. Stormy wasn't imagining it: She was terrified of him.
“I-I think…" the hyena stammered until Stormy softened his gaze again. “It's okay if my manager doesn't find out. It's just you, after all, right?"
A nervous smile was all Stormy needed from her. Satisfied, he chose to free her from his torment. As if the hyena had been released from an invisible set of bindings, she backed away slowly before turning around to leave only to crash into an incoming Luke.
“Whoa! You okay lady?" Luke asked, gently pushing the shivering hyena away from him.
“I- yes!" the clerk straightened her uniform, standing up straight with a grin. “Thanks for the business tonight. Just hurrying to fetch your friend's clothes for him. Don't want him going home without them, right? Hehe!"
“Looks like someone got laid last night," Emi scoffed with a hand at her hip as she watched the clerk dash off into the changing rooms, “Whoever it was, they sure got rid of the stick up her ass but good."
“Could you get any crasser? Sheesh," Razor sighed, with Luke snickering at Emi's back. When she inevitably started taking it out on the goat, Razor turned to Stormy. “Got the stuff you want me to cook at home, or do we need to go grocery shopping first?"
“Pantries are full," Stormy mused aloud with a nod. Luke had made sure of that. Rather, it was more accurate to say Stormy had made sure Luke did that for him. With the hyena bringing his clothes back, the wolf chose to wear them over his neoprene suit. He didn't need to wear it; he liked how it felt against his body and that was enough for him to take it. Waving the clerk good-bye, he told his gang: “Let's hurry home. I'm starving."
Stormy was a wolf who had gone his entire life afraid of stepping on people's toes. From his timidity to his size, he had always strived get out of people's way to avoid conflict and humiliation. No matter what he did, though, embarrassment and bullying never failed to find him; that was why his ex-boss had gotten rid of him first, and why he got picked on. Work or LOP, reality or virtuality; it seemed like he had been destined to be a loser. He had always been too afraid to fight back.
But Stormy didn't have to be afraid of life now. Not anymore.
Chapter 6: Dominance
The party was a small event, which suited Stormy just fine. He hadn't expected Luke, Emi and Razor to step over each other trying to please him, but Stormy couldn't say he disliked it. Outside of birthdays during his childhood, he couldn't recall the last time anyone had honored; tried so hard for him. The whole time he was eating and listening to his friends, he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have more people like them around. People eager to be with him, earnest about making him happy. Feeding his new appetite with their intimidated, meek gazes.
That was why Stormy didn't waste any time. On the very next day, as soon as he logged into LOP, he decided to pay a visit to his new in-game friend, Kylester69. The assassin seemed surprised when Stormy showed up before him, but his reaction was pretty much as expected.
“You said I could keep tabs on you," Stormy said as he confronted the renowned former-PK. The black garbed player was fidgeting, hands rubbing together in an appeasing gesture.
“O-of course! A-and I haven't told anyone!" the former-PK reassured. “Is that why you're here? Or-or… Are you checking up on me to make sure I haven't killed any players?"
Stormy shook his head, “I don't care about that anymore. But I want you to join my party," he said, further surprising the former-PK.
“Sure! Send the invite over, I'll go anywhere with you!" the assassin said. And just like that, Stormy's party included a fifth person now. “Where are we headed? Are you trying to farm some epic loot? Maybe legendary? I could ask a higher-level guild member to spare me some deets!"
The information was well received by Stormy, but what truly grabbed him was the phrase 'higher level'. “I'd like to meet that one in person. Call 'em over."
“O-oh! Yeah, don't need to waste time. Just a sec!"
A lumbering dark knight wearing an insanely detailed armor set showed up moments later. Their name had so many symbols arranged in such peculiar manner that Stormy didn't even bother learning it.
“New recruit?" the dark knight's somber, deep tone suggested a voice modulator. His presence was commanding, and Stormy couldn't quit marveling at the glossy onyx armor pieces he was decked in.
The former-PK didn't get a word in before Stormy stepped in, looking up at the high-level guild member. “I need people guiding me around. Why don't you join my party?"
“Join your party?" the dark knight scoffed dismissively before glaring down at Stormy with his eyes lighting up a crimson red within the obscurity of his helmet. “Do you know who you're talking to, noob? The Devil Flame is in the top ten most powerful guilds in LOP and I'm ranked fourth in it. You should be begging for my attention and offering all your belongings to me," he pointed his blade down at Stormy threateningly.
Although Stormy couldn't deny the intimidating aura of the dark knight, he didn't relent. He was imposing himself for sure, but the wolf's head felt clearer than ever. All he had to do was glare back. And then he got to feed off the knight's phobia, gaining even more virtual power for himself.
It turned out Kylester69 had not been lying about this dark knight's stats. His health, mana, strength, constitution, dexterity, magic and spirit had all been higher than anything Stormy had seen until now. With his friends' and the assassin's stats endowing him, he had become a magically enhanced speedy power house of a rogue. By the time he was done with the dark knight, his character's stats had skyrocketed further.
The once tall and mighty knight had fallen to his side, reduced to a squirming ball of sobbing and whimpers. It was a most pathetic sight to Stormy, who kept hearing that deep, modulated voice stammer. “Whu-who the fuck are you…?"
“Your new best friend." Stormy grinned, getting a quick nod from the thoroughly intimidated dark knight. The wolf accepted his incoming friend request. “So, you said you were the fourth best player in your guild, didn't you?" he asked aloud, licking his lips in anticipation.
And just like that, Stormy's party size grew to 6. Over the course of the rest of the day, the number steadily climbed. 7, 8, 9… by late afternoon the most elite of Devil's Flame had joined up. These new friends brought Stormy's group to prohibitively dangerous areas where he and his lower level friends could quest and amass loot at an unprecedented rate. Emi was the happiest at how fast their experience levels were climbing. But no one was happier than Stormy, whose appetite only seemed to grow with every new friend request he received.
Over the course of the next few days, Stormy's character rapidly increased in power. Upon hitting level 40, he was finally in promotion range. A rogue's choices at that point were to upgrade into an assassin or a ninja; the fastest yet among the frailest classes in the game.
But there was a third option for any class willing to grind up to level 50 and do a special quest. Physical-oriented classes could do the special quest to obtain the dragon slayer class, while those of the magical persuasion could become dragon summoners. Jack-of-all-trade classes with access to all armor and weapon types, as well as stat bases to cover all the bases of the physical and magical spectrum respectively.
The quest for the dragon slayer class brought Stormy's party to a special dungeon in a volcanic area. Although the danger level for it was around 50, Stormy's inflated stats had emboldened him to tackle the challenge on his own. He made everybody wait outside while he braved the innards of the fire dragon's caves all by himself.
Dude, I get he's strong, but nobody's ever done this quest solo as a rogue of all things.
Lava cavern mobs were laughably easy to Stormy, who commanded ice and water magic stronger than any sorcerer. Stacking regenerative and defensive buffs on himself gave the wolf the stamina and resistance necessary to survive and even thrive in the constantly hazardous dungeon. And he took it up another notch by forgoing the stealth attack opportunity on the gigantic feral lava dragon boss at the center of the volcano.
The creature was some 40ft. tall, 100ft. long beast. A wyrm of simply colossal size meant to be raided by a party as large as Stormy had formed. But he wasn't here to raid or even fight. The moment the dragon became aware of the wolf's presence, he put his weapons away and blasted the additional mobs away with a double cast of his most powerful and deadly blizzards.
Stepping over the lava like it wasn't even there, Stormy stabbed the dragon's eyes with his dominating glare. The creature which was about to unleash its wrath upon the sole adventurer soon began to wail and cry, twisting and squirming as if in deep agony before retreating deep into the magma.
The danger indicator finally vanished, and Stormy felt himself wreathed in that same pleasant energy he had so grown accustomed to. Experience points meant to be distributed among no less than twelve concurrent players were all exclusively siphoned by Stormy, resulting in a burst of levels accumulating one after the other. The bliss couldn't compare to all the fresh fear he had tasted in recent days, but it was no less satisfying. Data was, after all, limited.
He did it… He really pulled it off!
How many levels was that?! Huh-hey! Let us back in your party, man!
Heh, I taught that guy all he knows!
Shut up, Luke. You did not.
The quest had been completed. When Stormy came back out of the volcano decked out in dragon slayer armor, mask and golden twin-bladed poles in each hand, his group and all the new party recruits didn't just gawk. At level 60, he was equal with the Devil Flames' elites, except his stats far exceeded theirs now. All those watching fell to their knees before Stormy's glowing black aura.
One by one, the solo hero added his followers back to the party until it was full again. He was still riding the high of that burst of level ups, wanting even more action. “Let's go raid more bosses!" he immediately ordered, pumping his right twin-blade into the air. Roaring with inspiration, the rest of the party got up to their feet, falling in line to follow their leader into battle. “We're pulling an all-nighter."
Stormy was quickly starting to feel like an in-game general. People weren't just scared of him, they now also respected him for his overwhelming might and the flashy combination of options he commanded as a dragon slayer; a class which wasn't meant to excel at anything. The wolf was having fun showing up LOP veterans in competitions and PvP. He didn't need his stare of torment to win anymore, which it made it extra delicious when he got to use it after fights and contests, earning himself more and more friend requests in the process.
Eventually, Stormy's party had became too numerous, the limit stopping him from recruiting more people after 20 individuals including himself. In recalling his original group's goal of building their own guild, Stormy had the idea to step up as the founder. Everyone in his friend list was only too giddy to join up, abandoning their guild for Stormy's and even bringing their friends along with the sole condition of sending a friend request to the newly minted guild master.
With every last Devil's Flame member poached, Stormy was allowed all the contribution necessary to make a spiffy base of operations which soon grew into a stronghold capable of competing with other major guilds in the land. And with sensational achievements under his belt such as having conquered the dragon slayer's trial solo, his overwhelming victories in PvP championships and forming an immensely popular clan in under a week, the wolf's name was becoming widespread as a charismatic leader and dedicated player.
The more attention Stormy drew to himself, the more he had to expand his guild to accommodate the influx of newly interested members. And the more people he surrounded himself with, the more delicious morsels he had to snack on day in and day out.
With his attention so divided amongst all those people, it didn't take long for the more obsessed online players to start reaching out to him in real life. Some nights, Stormy climbed out of his favorite IlluPod only to find his phone simply swamped with IMs from people wanting to meet him.
Hey! It's DinoGuard. Ex-FantasyMarines? Just wanted to tell you how awesome you are. Thanks for letting me join! Wanna meet up? Got some friends I'd love to introduce you to!
_ _
Yo! This is Stormy, right? Joined your clan earlier 'cuz of a friend. I actually work at the arcade downtown at the corner of Adams and the 17th. We have the newest IlluPod with extra cushions. Won't you come play here? Drinks on me. For all your friends too!
_ _
Individually, all these people had been brought to heel by the torment of their inescapable fear and were desperate to be on the wolf's good side. The notion of being found guilty of pissing Stormy off was deeply connected to being exposed to psychological torture. Their minds had become reconfigured by their extreme experiences, leading them to associate a happy Stormy to a sense of purpose. And a lack of disgusting creatures and apparitions, suppressed phobias, cruel traumas- the kind of terror that breaks one's will. The kind of terror Stormy had hopelessly become addicted to.
His buffet had extended into real-life.
And like those, more and more people were soon being brought into the fold. Because of word of mouth and an ever-increasing social media presence, Stormy was starting to get recognized everywhere he went. He would get invited to parties and galas, and if he didn't have anything to wear, they'd be supplied to him. There was always so much good food to try that Stormy hardly went for junk food or even back home to eat anymore. People would always remark about his size and meek appearance being a stark contrast from the cool and badass, unstoppable dragon slayer he had become in LOP, but all it took was a sideway glance to bring them back in line with the rest.
Both virtual and real life seemed to continuously level up for Stormy. After all, LOP catered to all sorts of players. From NEETs like his three original friends, to less-hardcore restaurant and cinema employees, and even store owners. The worship he got from them in-game translated to favors Stormy could get in real life. Free meals. Cleaning services. Movie tickets. Apartment refurbishing. Whatever Stormy wanted, he got.
And it was all thanks to his guild; the biggest one in LOP by far and only growing in size by the day. With over a thousand members, it was practically a kingdom at this point. It filled Stormy with pride, making him smile every time he looked at the name he had chosen for it. 'The Wolf Throne', for all who joined up existed solely to serve him.
He was the King.
In LOP, the midgame consisted of choosing a faction in relation to the main questline's war and engaging in PvP. Of the three cities available to advanced players, Divo was the only one not affiliated with or against the Dragon God.
The neutral city's sprawling streets were hit by a pillar of blue light. From it walked out a returning player. “This place looks even prettier than it did a month ago," Jun stopped to marvel at the buildings' sleek design, taking his time.
Before Jun had gotten caught up in a prohibitively busy project at work, he had progressed a fair bit into the game, even going as far as promoting to ninja and joining with friends to make a guild. There was something wrong with the latter, however.
It surprised Jun when he finally noticed the guild menu wasn't opening. Not because of a game malfunction, but because he was no longer part of one. “I guess I didn't tell them when I'd come back. But they wouldn't kick me," Jun thought with a pout as he opened the friend menu, “They said they were cool with me taking a break, didn't they?" Jun reminisced, growing increasingly worried until he saw on his notifications that his guild had been dissolved.
“Dissolved? They deleted it," Jun frowned, sighing as he finally realized their guild was no more. While scrolling through familiar player handles with the intention to message any of the ex-members, he noticed something peculiar. Every old member, even friends he had made who played without or in a different guild now belonged to the same one. “The Wolf Throne, huh?"
After taking a moment to look through those of his friends who were currently online, Jun chose to contact his old guild master. It was then that Jun learned what he had to do in order to join the hottest guild in LOP right now.
“So, this dude accepted my friend request already, where is he?" Jun impatiently paced back and forth on an empty pier in one of the game's port towns, his sole companion a decrepit lighthouse which served as a dungeon for lower-level players. The cat ninja could remember completing it several months ago, before he had to take a break.
“Pain in the butt to have to do this just for a guild invitation," the feline huffed, but he soon found himself distracted with the setting sun over the sea's horizon. It was easy to admit these computer-generated ocean-bound sunsets were just as, if not even better than the ones in real life.
“Sorry I took long." said a voice behind Jun suddenly.
Jun jumped and turned around, taking a few quick steps backwards. “I didn't notice when you arrived," he said to the player decked out in legendary-tier dragon slayer gear.
“Must've forgotten to turn off Phantom Step," Stormy explained, getting a good look at the new prospective recruit. A creamy white and brown furred cat ninja with short blonde hair, leanly built and with three red gash-like scars on the left side of his face. He was clad in a black full-body suit reminiscent of the neoprene sensory suit necessary to play LOP; a tight fit adding to the sleekness of the ninja class. Stormy thought it was a nice touch, having become a fan of neoprene in the past month. But he was here for a meal. “Are you ready to join my throne?" he asked.
Jun had been mesmerized by Stormy's appearance, especially the golden level 80 hovering above his player and guild names. Everything about the other player seemed over-the-top superior and flashy. Even the eyes behind his masked helmet appeared to be periodically flashing in different colors. “They must've raised the level cap…" the cat had been murmuring to himself when Stormy asked his question. The way he did so rubbed Jun the wrong way.
“His throne, huh? Must be one of those…" the cat was thinking about high-level braggarts that weren't absent from any videogame. But Jun said to himself: “Whatever." He had just come back to the game; he didn't want to spend his precious free time guild-hunting. “Yeah, sure," he finally said with a nod.
After ten awkwardly silent seconds, Jun spoke again: “Uhh… Dude, are you going to send the invite or…?" he trailed off, noticing his future guild-master was stepping back. “Hey, what's…?" Jun held his hand out at Stormy to get his attention, but before he could take a step forward, he felt his foot catching just around the ankle. “Ah!"
Looking down, Jun saw something snagged around his leg. It had stealthily crept up, coiling around him like a snake. Upon closer inspection, it looked like some sort of tendril. He couldn't shake it off, cursing and swearing as pulled his leg only to have it yanked back in place with equal force. “Hey! Help me out here!" Jun turned around to look for Stormy, but he was gone from sight. “Damnit! What the hell is this?!" he yelped, returning his attention to the tendril.
Jun's eyes tracked the length of that mysterious constrictor. He saw it go over the pier, meaning whatever creature had sent that tentacle to grab him was likely underwater. But that wasn't the detail that caught the cat's attention the most. No sooner than he had taken his kunai out in an effort to cut his way back to freedom, a couple of new tendrils emerged and lashed at his arms below the elbows. “Crap!" he cried out, the pressure on his wrists causing him to drop his blades to the ground. Finally, a fourth tentacle joined in to snag his free leg and Jun found himself suspended in the mid-air.
“Aw, dangit! Hey, where'd you go?! Did you bring me here just so I could get eaten by this… thing?!" Jun cried out. The more he looked at the monstrous tentacles however, the less convinced he was about them being part of an octopus, let alone any mollusk he was aware of. Their texture was surprisingly leathery, black in color and smooth-looking all over. “Suh-Stormy!" he stammered, breaking out in a cold sweat as he saw the fifth tendril rising well above him.
The cat's grey eyes were darting all over as more and more tentacles emerged from the strangely placid waters. The loneliness and silence were eerie. Other than Jun's grunts as he squirmed, all his fluffy ears could pick up were the organic throbs of those slick appendages. It soon dawned upon the feline that there was no one around. Nobody coming to save him. He was immobilized and useless, at the mercy of this beast, whatever it was!
Before Jun could even scream for help, one of the new tendrils slapped him across the face as it spun around his head, muffling his mouth and taking away his ability to speak. His immediate reflex was to use his hands to tear the tentacle covering his face off; a natural reaction. But all he got for his brute effort was the arm-holding tentacles to tighten in response.
It was a desperate situation for the restrained ninja. The more he fought, the more energetic his living bonds grew. They eventually began to pull his arms back, crossing them behind him and tying them together until Jun couldn't even think of moving them. In a similar manner, his suspended legs were forced to bend back until the balls of his feet were hitting his own rump. The tentacles looped around Jun's feet, below his bent knees and his thighs, ensuring his legs were practically glued together. Not even his tail was spared, the cat soon finding it bent half-way and uncomfortably pressed against itself with the tendril looping around his mid-section.
For a moment, he thought he could use his mouth to bite down on a tendril and give himself a chance, but all he got for his trouble was his jaw getting distended as the thicker part of the tentacle lodged itself into his mouth, keeping him gagged for good. No matter what Jun did, all he could feel now was the hopeless multi-area grips keeping him in cruel bondage. His breathing accelerated, his chest rising and falling fast. Deprived of speech, sight and movement, it seemed like all agency had been taken away from him…
As Stormy looked on from the same place he had been standing at for the past ten minutes, he noticed how Jun didn't stop with his squirming. It didn't matter how much those tendrils squeezed. Even when they brought the feline down to the ground, the restrained kitty didn't stop. “He's not even sobbing yet," the wolf thought to himself as he observed the struggling cat in greater detail. Even though Jun had clearly become disturbed by this experience, Stormy had yet been able to properly taste his fear. Something seemed to be getting in the way.
The tormentor approached his latest prey, curious about the soft noises he was making. “Is he moaning?" Stormy thought to himself, squatting to look at the squirming cat's flushing cheeks past the thick black tendril acting like a muffler around him. Jun's body-hugging suit was especially taut between the legs, where one could unfailingly notice the start of an erection. For the first time since he had gotten his powers, Stormy had seen something he had not thought until not to be possible.
Someone was getting horny off their fear. “Huh, scarousal is a thing, after all," the wolf concluded, unsure of how to feel about it. On the one hand, Jun's fear was perfectly valid as a morsel. On the other, no matter how helpless the cat, he was, ultimately, enjoying himself and the impact of dominating him was not the same as a result. “You're in, I guess," the wolf said with a shrug, tossing the guild invitation at Jun before turning around to leave the moaning kitty to his own devices.
“Mmmph…! Hnnnnggg…!" Jun squirmed in place, humping the air while drooling over his gag. Whatever this monster was, it would be a long time before he forgot about this pier.
It was much later while Stormy took care of more friend requests that he received a most interesting one. A few days before, he had found out through one of his informants that one of his newest members had been dating his ex-boss. After setting up a meeting and exposing his boss to his greatest fears and receiving yet another dutiful follower however, Stormy realized one important thing.
Whether it was a stranger like Jun or his ex-boss who he had always been annoyed at, it was all the same to him. He didn't care who it was that he was exposing to his powers anymore. The excitement was missing. Having these one-on-one encounters just wasn't doing it for Stormy anymore. They felt like they were beneath him and his power.
Stormy had achieved great things already. Consolidating his power as the strongest player in-game, expanding his guild to fame and recognition, his influence covering nearly every corner of the game world. Outside of the game, everything had become easier than ever. His unassuming appearance coupled with his well-developed power of torment-based persuasion allowed Stormy to choose whether he felt like getting fawned upon or left alone by those he had affected on a whim. He was never wanting for food or comforts, with him even having his own IlluPod installed at home by his more generous followers.
The wolf was now living a life most people would consider a dream. But the arrogant ambition of a King knew no bounds. 'Nearly every corner' of the game was simply not enough. Not for Stormy. He needed more and he needed it to be spectacular. The thought of going beyond his mental takeovers and pushing his ability to its very limit was getting the young wolf hard. Stormy yearned to give his kingdom a truly unforgettable show.
He would make all of the Lands of Punishment submit to him.
Finale
Over the next couple of days, Stormy got together with his more technical confidants, reunited by the ever-reliable Razor. People knew people who knew people. That was the true shape of Stormy's power: A web of intelligence spreading out worldwide and reaching to the specific talents he required for his master plan. With no shortage of programmers working around the clock for his sake, Stormy only needed to settle on a theme for his aggressive takeover.
And that was why, on the fateful day, huge screens of light began to manifest floating above every major city and locale in LOP. These displays were normally unavailable to the players, typically used by the staff to broadcast server-wide announcements. This time however, their broadcast was showing an area in the game considered to be a spoiler.
What's going on? What's that's place?
Yo, are the GMs announcing a new area? They cookin'!
That's not a new area, noob! That's the Dragon God's ziggurat.
The vast majority reacted with shock and awe, naturally. It hadn't been long since the end-game area had released, so few guilds, let alone parties, had even had come close to confronting the current expansion's most powerful raid boss. His lair was being showcased from multiple angles in smaller picture-in-picture boxes on the screens while the biggest display showed a first-person view of the final dungeon's innards.
Is that who I think it is?
That mad lad's gonna solo DG too? Get outta here!
This ain't the lava dragon raid though. Just watch, he's finally gonna get his ass handed to himself. Or else he's cheatin'!
Nobody could see Stormy's face, but it was easy to recognize his heavily customized legendary gear whenever his arms came into view. Particle effects from his several effects and auras stacked to provide an iridescent glow. The King of the Wolf's Throne didn't make many public appearances nowadays, but when he did, conversation instantly became lively among gamers. His compact yet mysterious appearance observed by those swooning, his endgame build constantly discussed by min-max enjoyers, and of course, his thousands of followers eager to cheer him on in whatever venture he became mixed up in.
The final steps up the massive ziggurat had led Stormy into an open area with an altar. As he came out into the aerie, he turned around to glance down at the landscape surrounding the game's final dungeon. The Vortex Land was the central section of the game's continent, thus named due to the warping visuals if they weren't perfectly still and devoid of color. It was meant to represent the imprisonment of the Dragon God's immortal soul. That was as much as Stormy had ingratiated himself with lore wise.
All the wolf cared about was that this was the most difficult challenge LOP had to offer, and he was going to make it submit to him just like he had everything else. His dominance had to be absolute. Filled with purpose, Stormy turned to the altar again and sacrificed the special item necessary to summon Lands of Punishment's final boss at once.
An explosive yet ethereal wave spread out from the altar, the pressure of which altered the very air in front of Stormy. The deafening percussion of a beating heart combined with environmental stroboscopic effects to expose those witnessing the scene to the arrival of the final boss. Light cascaded in through the ceiling hole of the ziggurat, blinding the area momentarily.
Lone warrior, 'tis folly of the greatest degree to summon me without clear direction in your heart.
_ _
Stormy stood his ground as he saw the creature descend from cradling white lights. The Dragon God was a towering, imposing figure. Alabaster scales shining with blinding platinum sparkles, lean muscles rippling with power, majestic wings and horns, and a massive tail that looked just as dangerous as the rest of him. Once the bipedal dragon's large clawed feet hit the floor, Stormy could tell the impressive boss had at least ten feet on him.
_ _
Be you a foolish knave thinking themself a hunter? Mayhap a bold challenger merely here to test their mettle?
_ _
Stormy couldn't help but smile to himself at the presentation. “They not only accounted for someone not being part of a faction, but also addresses the fact I'm not in a party," he thought. “Just like Razor said though… he's hot."
Still mid-dialogue, the Dragon God's golden eyes sharpened as Stormy took a step forth. Reptilian pupils thinning out in response, the beefy dragon spread his arms out, grasping at the flowing magic currents surrounding them with his claws and wielding them in the form of double-headed spears. There was a threatening, beast-like snarl as the battle seemed to have started.
But just as epic orchestral music began to swell, the unexpected happened.
Hey! What gives?
What?! Why is he dropping his weapons?
The audience of LOP players was in confused uproar when the perspective of the main broadcast suddenly shifted to a side show featuring both the final boss and his challenger. The dragon slayer's blades had hit the floor, followed by his apparel. One by one, every piece of shiny, ultra-rare equipment Stormy had decked himself in was removed and unceremoniously discarded on the ground as if they had been junk items.
Isn't that the max level dragon slayer set? Why's he trashing it?!
That's gonna reduce his defense but also power, won't it?
Yeah, all that end-game stuff gives lots of stats and auto-buffs!
He planning on fighting naked? What a show-off!
_ _
Showing off was exactly what Stormy was doing. He was showing to everybody watching what his character looked like with nothing on. Even with all of his statistics maxed beyond what anyone at his level should have, his base character model was the same as always. An androgynous wolf of lithe build and short stature. Blue chevrons under his eyes, and the scar crossing down from left to right over his snout.
Of the ones who had yet to follow him, some thought it was a pathetic sight taking them away from the conquering dragon slayer everyone had come to see Stormy as. Others found his small frame cute and adorable. Everyone agreed it was weird as hell to see him tackle the game's biggest challenge with such compounding handicaps. But no one expected to see something else come off in such casual manner.
The image began to blur around Stormy's mid-section, obstructing what was his character discarding the last bit of normally unremovable clothing; his underwear. While nudity and lewd content was permitted in LOP thanks to its rating which forbade underage players from engaging, most people were usually restricted to taverns to engage in VR sex. Few would be seen stroking themselves off before the game's final boss.
Despite the blurred image, it was clear to everyone watching Stormy had grabbed his penis and was stroking himself to full size mid-broadcast, gratuitously showing off his six-incher to everyone's shock. Being a realistic graphical masterpiece of a game, many regretted that bit of censorship.
Most baffling still, the battle music seemed to be falling down in volume, eventually drowned out by the meaty sound of the wolf masturbating. Everyone was further shocked when they saw the Dragon God's battle stance waver and his spirit lances disappear. He fell to his knees before Stormy with a thud.
Yo, is this his special tech? Didn't know you could make DG kneel!
That's not the weapon I expected him to be using…
Fuck, this is actually hot.
Stormy's power and charm were impossible to resist. His mental ability had been evolving in parallel with the growth of his character. All it had taken was a harsh stare to get the Dragon God to grovel before him. But respect wasn't enough. This was the most powerful monster in the entire game. From the start, making the dragon fear him and acknowledge him sounded boring to Stormy, especially when he had seen the concept art for the hunky arrangement of pixels. That's why he had decided to take the theme of submission to a much sexier spin.
Knowing that everyone was watching him would have made the once shy and pathetic Stormy hesitate, but now it only made his dick throb. It was hard to think of this as a game when that scaly beefcake who had been looming over him like a larger-than-life deity was now on his hands and knees, a dash of pink tinting his handsome snout.
Letting his turgid member go, Stormy approached the Dragon God with a confident stride. Smirking at the once menacing figure, he stroked his hand along the passive scaly's snout. “You're no God," he spoke plainly and clearly for all to hear, “You belong to me , now."
Those heavy words carried into everyone's ears, causing a simultaneous heartbeat skip. The thought at the forefront of everyone's mind was: “Stormy's going to fuck the dragon."
Nobody seemed to dare question the logistics behind it. The wolf had become so intimidating that he had come to be in full control of a virtual avatar for a bunch of computer code. As disparate as the idea sounded, no one could argue with the facts when they all witnessed the censored blur move to the final boss' mouth.
It was soon not just visual but audio cues guiding everybody's imagination. Slick noise filled the broadcast when Stormy slid himself into the dragon's maw, wasting no time in lodging himself in. It was such a disparate image, with the significantly smaller partner using the larger one's face for his own relief.
Stormy sighed, feeling his digital partner's submission which was in itself a pleasure beyond the physical. He couldn't believe how real it felt at first though, but it soon made sense. If he could physically taste others' fears and becoming stronger by leveling up translated to pleasure, why would it be so farfetched to derive sexual gratification from engaging in virtual sex?
“No, this is right," Stormy reassured himself with a smirk as he began to rock his hips against the boss dragon. “You're gonna suck me off like the obedient little plaything you are."
And so, he did. The Dragon God hardly offered any resistance, influenced by Stormy's mental command to behave in the exact way he thought would be the most amusing and gratifying. Just like everybody else. Half-lidded golden eyes looked up at the wolf as the dragon's mouth closed around his cock, blowing him without reservation.
Feeling the creature's reptilian tongue, Stormy took note of how the length of his slick muscle looped multiple times as it tightened around his shaft. It was just as he was envisioning it, which was why the Dragon God was doing it, but it didn't make Stormy any less aroused. It felt so good that before long, Stormy had to hold himself against the studly God's snout to be able to rock his hips against the warmth of his maw.
Stormy couldn't believe it had taken him this long to enjoy this aspect of domination, and to have done it with something that wasn't a person no less! It was filling him with arousal and stoking the flames of his horniness, but it was no different from the empowering sensation he had felt from everybody whose wills he had broken.
The wolf could feel the power coursing through him. The Dragon God was, after all, defeated. Energy was welling up inside of him due to all the concomitant levels he was accumulating, but it was just so much experience that his character could no longer level up. So, instead, his stats began to rapidly climb to their maximum values. Once a limit was reached, the other stats lagging behind got the biggest boost. And yet even with everything maxed, Stormy would not stop becoming stronger.
Once having it easy due to the extreme size difference, the Dragon God's maw began to fill up with wolf meat, gradually stretching his jaw to accommodate Stormy's growing dick. It wasn't just his cock however: The wolf was starting to swell all over, growing taller by the second. Already he was seven feet tall, but his member seemed to be growing faster than the rest of him was.
Eventually, the dragon began to gag when Stormy's length went past the foot and half mark, but the wolf merely held onto the reptile's head, forcing him to keep it inside as it slid closer and closer to the giant's throat. The growing wolf wanted him to choke on his manhood, and people could tell by the way he was holding him down.
Observers watched as the once puny wolf closed the distance between himself and the dragon. Knowing the latter to have been nearly three of Stormy put together when they met made it all the more frightening when they began to realize the dragon slayer had already doubled his height.
Mass Enlargement? Bulk Aura? What is he doing now?
Must be some kinda hack! Player characters are limited to up to +50% size.
Isn't it kinda hot how he's getting bigger though…?
And it wasn't just his size and his dick. Much like in his early days as the new Tormentor with Luke, Stormy's mass was expanding where musculature was concerned as well. Stronger, thicker, more powerful. Arms and legs exploded with size, soon rivaling the Dragon God's in sheer beefiness alone. Marked abs began to emerge where only lean and flat furry skin used to be, pecs bulging out like slabs of raw strength. Shoulders widened, deltoids climbing to meet his bulging neckline. Fangs sharpened with Stormy's increasingly deeper growls; what his moans had turned into as his dick continued to expand inside of his lover's maw.
All the dragon could do was sputter and slobber over the enlarging Stormy's manhood, his long neck visibly bulging thanks to the two feet long wolf cock lodged inside. “Hnnnggh… grrrrr…!" the empowered and highly stimulated wolf roared, pumping his hips and smacking the underside of the Dragon God's neck with his swollen sac; each ball as big as a regular person's head by now. “You're making me so much stronger. I didn't expect it'd be this much power from dominating you! Keep it coming!" he demanded.
And the game obeyed. Much like with Luke before, Stormy's frame was not only growing bigger and more masculine, but also twisting into an increasingly feral state. He ended hunched over, jaws enlarging, teeth sharpening and widening, muscles continuously swelling with absurd levels of physical strength. Hair began to grow out of his scalp, a darker shade of his gray fur, turning into a gloriously voluminous mane as wild as his dire wolf appearance suggested. Unlike with Luke however, the bestial aspect wasn't a result of his exacerbated fear: Everybody watching had witnessed the radical transformation.
There was little next to no comment other than a few murmurs. Everyone was too stupefied by what had essentially been a feminine-looking wolf evolving into a monstrous stud of massive proportions. Even within what was available and permissive in LOP, this had been the first super sexually-charged transmogrification anyone had ever seen.
The way Stormy was fucking the Dragon God's face was so brutal and obscene that the official staff had to intervene. Unfortunately for the higher-ups scrambling to put this show to an end in an effort to save face, they could not get in touch with the server administrators, much less the GMs. They were all in Stormy's friend list and would not dare put their King's ambitions at risk.
All that the CEOs could hope for was the game's automatic censors which kicked in out of permitted zones to remain on for the time being. Some of them could simply not look away. They really had gone all out with the graphics.
Before Stormy could blow his load, however, he stopped himself and his partner, pulling that jaw-splitting, spit-dripping wolf cock out. “Lie down," the ordered in his bass baritone. Drooling what others could not decide was mostly salivation or pre-seminal fluid, the giant dragon sat up only to lie on his back, spreading his legs as a way to submit his tail hole to the mountain of testosterone that was claiming him.
Satisfied with the dragon's obedience, Stormy's massive fluffy tail wagged behind him in anticipation. He climbed his decreasingly impressive lover before sliding himself into his tight pucker, causing the deposed God to groan and throw his head back. Stormy's deepening growls grew in volume as he felt tightness claim his penetrating instrument. He and the Dragon God were now one.
The voices of LOP were all discussing this monstrous mating. Whether one preferred the pairing or not, no one could deny the sheer intensity of that domineering wolf. Looming large and in charge, Stormy did away with every anal limit using his oversized pipe. He held the dragon by his legs to keep him steady as he pounded away, each thrust becoming harsher and more calculated as a result of increasing resistance. Because even though Stormy's dick had stopped growing at almost as long as his own forearm, it kept getting proportionately bigger as a result of the wolf becoming taller and taller still!
Some cheered happily, others cried in terror. When was this going to end? How much bigger was that monstrous wolf going to get? Was the now pitiable Dragon God going to burst at the end of this? The bump in his stomach in the shape of Stormy's penis was plain for all to see even with the blurring effect on.
The truth was that Stormy was getting bored of his pathetically small lover. Already 20ft. tall and growing, Stormy had been expecting the outsized dragon to cower and beg, stutter and stammer helplessly at his sheer size. LOP's algorithms had certainly helped choose the proper expressions and movements for what Stormy was doing to his lover, but it couldn't reproduce a person's real feelings. The dragon looked overwhelmed, hopelessly charmed, dreamy-eyed, but it wasn't coming up with anything other than grunts or slutty moans at this point. The dramatic element was missing!
The bigger Stormy got, the more damage his sexual partner seemed to be sustaining. It wasn't going to be long before he became too big for the aerie of the ziggurat to properly fit both of them at this rate, too. That's why Stormy chose to put an end to this awfully convincing farce. “Fun as this has been, they're all sufficiently shocked and hanging onto my every move by now," the wolf thought, suddenly shoving the dragon off his immense, throbbing phallus.
Balling his meaty hands into fists, Stormy focused on all the power he had received from the final boss to accelerate his expansion. He shot up in size, becoming twice as big as the Dragon God, but still unsatisfied, he doubled that to an even 60ft. tall. His swelling body crashed past the stone halo hovering above the aerie, the floor cracking under his feet, his dick throbbing in the air and spurting censored wolf cum everywhere.
As the ziggurat's steps became disgustingly creamy, the now gargantuan wolf monster reached down to swipe his ex-lover off the floor. The dragon was lightly caked in a mix of sweat from exertion as well as his spooge, covering him in blurs as a result. “Time for you to serve your purpose, wimp." Stormy decreed with his large canine tongue hanging out.
And then, giving the exhausted and thoroughly fucked Dragon God one last look at Stormy's cavernous, drooling maw, the massive wolf proceeded to snap his jaws down on the most powerful being in LOP.
He ate him! Oh my God he did it!
Dude, sick! This is soooo metal!
This is sick, alright.
Stormy! Me next, eat meeeeee!
_ _
Varied reactions echoed through the lands as the broadcast showed the brutal execution, but Stormy didn't hear one word. He still had some business to take care of. With the Dragon God's statistics merged into his code, player limitations for stats further broke down for Stormy. With the stats of both the most powerful player and the most powerful creature in the land, Stormy began to flare up with size, exploding in all directions.
Violent rumblings spread along the Vortex Lands as the ziggurat fell before the giant growing wolf's rapidly expanding frame. His monstrous visage could soon be seen from across the kingdoms as Stormy's head pierced the clouds, the wolf's bulk smashing through the resurrection temple like it was made of weak cardboard. He roared in a display of pure power as he grew and grew, constantly pulsing with each growth spurt that made him double in size.
Soon enough, Stormy was stomping across the lands a truly monolithic being. Mountains were dwarfed by him. His breathing alone caused the artificial skies to become assaulted by whirlwinds with the very air glitching around the colossal King of the Wolf's Throne. Everyone watched as this beast tore the landscape apart merely by walking around, heading off to the closest mountain range simply to climb it as some sort of step to look down upon the game world from.
And once Stormy felt like he had truly seized every single person's attention, once he was certain all eyes were truly on his, he activated his ability. Red, green, blue. The giant wolf's eyes flashed, and his ears soon stood to attention to the millions of screams echoing in symphony just for him.
“The fear…" he said, licking his lips. “Ever so sweet!" Stormy laughed like a sugar addict being let inside a candy store. “All mine. Mine! Surrender to your fear. You all belong to me, your Tormentor King!" he declared with a flex of his immense muscles. The entirety of LOP and everyone watching this spectacle now belonged to him and him alone.
The depth of his monstrous voice now reached everywhere in the virtual continent. And as people writhed and cried out for salvation from their worst fears, they heard the quake-summoning words boom inside of their brains.
I AM YOUR GOD! Ahahaha…! MWA-HAHAHAHAHA!
_ _
Epilogue
It had been a week since the obscene episode had occurred in LOP.
Media outlets continued to ask for details, but people strangely could not remember much of the event. IlluTech refused to make a comment, ensuring investors that their servers were 100% protected from malicious hackers.
During the first few days after the incident was leaked it was theorized IlluTech's stocks were going to plummet but instead they continued to rise over time with a massive influx of new players. Of the shockingly few videos present, image and sound quality were so bad they were hardly usable. It was almost like people were actively trying to move away from the event, with interest steadily on the decline.
Those attempting to investigate by making a LOP account and going in-game to meet with more notorious players soon found themselves back in the real world without much to show for their trouble. Stranger still was their newly acquired taste for the hit videogame of which they would not shut up about, thus earning even more positive attention for the blockbuster VR MMO.
Truly, what should have been a PR disaster had only managed to further cement the big tech company as a leader in the online entertainment business. And it was time for its main contributor to get their due.
IlluTech's HQ was a truly massive place. Its edifications took over four entire blocks like some sort of mega business district. Each block represented a different wing of research and development for their tech and games, with a towering skyscraper built at the center of the street consolidating the company's power. Tours of each facility were few, and it was even harder for any low-level employee, let alone an unaffiliated civilian, to make it to the central building.
Security wasn't lax, as guards were paid well. The muscular bat at the southern ingress always made sure to earn his keep by stopping anyone no matter how legit they looked and asking about their business. When he saw an entirely unfamiliar character show up, he stood up from his booth, folding his beefy winged arms in an imposing manner.
“You, stop." The security guard said to the approaching figure. Lean, small, unassuming, yet suspiciously dressed. It amused the bat that the lanky wolf would choose to show up dressed in neoprene as if he had any business here. “You one of the new mo-cap guys or something?"
“Sorry," the wolf said, looking up at the taller bat. “I am new. But I'm not here to see you."
The lip on that androgynous canine made the bat huff, “Too bad, boy, 'cause everyone here has to see me first if they wanna…" he stammered, lowering his sunglasses with his pupils becoming filled with TV-static. “I didn't think it was you, sir," the guard immediately corrected himself with his large ears folding down. “I am so sorry. Please forgive me."
The wolf smiled in a friendly way without saying anything; the gentle look exuding a 'don't worry about it' vibe in spite of the short guy looking expectantly at the closed doors in his way. Stumbling back to his booth, the bat scrambled to buzz the newcomer in neoprene in. He held the door open and saluted the wolf as he walked into the main office building.
Fluffy tail swishing behind him, the lupine breathed in deep and looked around his surroundings. It was his very first time at IlluTech HQ. The ceilings were so unnecessarily tall everywhere he went, as if the building itself was trying to make people feel insignificant; an irony which made him chuckle.
That newcomer was garnering attention quick as his slow and measured, yet proud stride took him from room to room, skipping boring receptionists and additional security, on his way to the elevators. Even the biggest and largest among the staff seemed to reel and chose to stay away from the wolf in the sensory suit.
They would bow and even fall to their knees, singing their praises and offering him whatever comfort or amenities they thought would land them in his good graces. Every monitor in the security rooms fizzled with electric discharge whenever the wolf passed them by, arranging their black pixels into the shape of love-hearts to cover their screen with it. Technology itself seemed to bend backwards for him now.
But the wolf wasn't interested. All he wished was to meet with the CEO of the company. They would meet together at the penthouse.
IlluTech's president was currently the richest woman in the planet was a relatively young and attractive lioness, her bespectacled expression in direct contrast with her slightly unkempt appearance gave the idea that she was one of those eccentric geniuses who had become billionaire overnight and she had yet to assume the stuffy CEO mantle.
She was prostrated on the carpet in front of her desk when her secretary opened the door to her office. She already had been informed her friend from LOP was coming to visit.
“I'm so sorry," the CEO began without taking her face off the immaculate carpet, “If only I'd known you were coming today, my lord. I would've prepared a much warmer welcome for you."
Drawing closer, the wolf reached down to tilt the lioness head up by the chin. Her pupils were full of static, her cheeks flushed, tail tucked under her body. She was shaking. And yet she was smiling. “I was going to message you since I was in town, but I figured I'd drop in as a little surprise," he said. “Don't you like surprises?"
“Yuh-yes," IlluTech's CEO hastily responded, ears perking up, “Ouh-of course! They're so fun. You're so fun, my lord."
“Super fun," he casually went around the luxurious desk in the center of the office and sat down on the posh chair, spinning around twice before settling his feet down over the desk. “Won't it be fun for your customers when we surprise them, too?"
The CEO was silent for a moment, confusion strewn over her face as she looked back at the wolf. “Forgive me, but what surprise are you talking about?"
“You've been making so much money lately, haven't you?" the wolf asked aloud with a yawn, stopping the CEO from responding with a hand to let her know he was being rhetorical. “As a fan of LOP, I think it's high time to invest in making your hardware more accessible to consumers of all purchasing power."
“You want us to… cheapen the VR sets and IlluPods, muh-milord…?"
Sliding his feet down to the floor and leaning in on his new chair, he crossed his fingers above his eyes. Stormy's power-hungry gaze settled on the CEO with great purpose in each spoken word.
Let's talk about a home-version of Lands of Punishment, shall we?
_ _
The End.