Chapter 8: Book 1, Chapter 8: The Price of The Road

"I have to accept this?" He hit enter, his heart racing. "Whatever, fuck me, I guess." he cursed.

Shane lowered his head as they approached. This IS the game I worked on, right? So why, in my own game, do I feel the kind of anxiety I usually feel when meeting real people? He thought to himself. As if to answer, he heard a rough male voice address him.

"You seem lost, friend."

Shane lifted his head to meet the gaze of a rugged, bearded older man in his forties. He was dressed in leather and fur armor, with a spiky mace adorning his side. The two people behind him were wearing similar armor and weapons to match. From a visual standpoint, they looked like real people wearing medieval gear. Shane immediately knew these people were bandits from their gear and body language alone, even without the quest screen's heads-up. Right down to the individual stitches and clogged pores, which ironically didn't help his social anxiety.

"I appreciate your concern, sir, but I'm simply taking a break while I make my way towards Krooth."

The bandit warrior studied Shane, looking him up and down, a faint smile appearing through his thick beard.

"I don't know. It looks like you could use a few bodyguards," he said, pointing to the bloody stains on Shane's tattered novice shirt. "We can help you, for a modest fee, of course, and we'll need to be paid in advance." the two behind him chuckled as if the man in front of them told a humorous anecdote.

Shane's anxiety began to fade as the familiar bullying tactics from his past as a schoolboy roused his gamer's spirit. He instinctually wanted to rebel, and in a way that would certainly not win him any favors. These bandits and people like them always tended to get under his skin with how they would trap people into submission with the threat of violence or worse.

Shane met their grins with one of his own, "I'm afraid I don't need assistance from the likes of you," and gave them a single, defiant middle finger.

The man standing before Shane scowled disapprovingly as the bandits behind him began brandishing their weapons.

"Well, if you're going to pass here without our help, you'll have to pay a traveler's tax, you know, to keep the roads nice." the bandit said with a smile returning.

Shane gestured to the road on both sides of the bandits as he stood atop the rock. "If you're charging a tax to keep the road 'nice,' I'm afraid you guys are pretty shit at it."

"That's pretty rude; you know we highwaymen take pride in—"

Shane held up his hand to interrupt, "do you know how often I nearly tripped over a rock or tree root? Too many for you bumpkins to charge anything!"

By the time Shane had finished, the bandit he had addressed had his mace in hand and charged the rock Shane was perched on.

"You don't want to pay the tax? Then you can pay with your BLOOD!" the bandit roared savagely as he quickly bolted up the rock.

The bandits behind their leader had also begun to move, with the woman brandishing a bow and taking aim at Shane. There wasn't even a second to react as the bandit's mace came hammering down. He raised his shortsword to block with one hand and was only successful in slightly altering the mace's swing trajectory. It came barreling down and smashed against Shane's shin at an odd angle.

Pain exploded across the whole of his left leg, feeling like ten steel-toed boots with spikes kicking his shin all at once. His stats came into focus In less than the time it took him to blink.

HP: 105/145 (-40)
Mana: 27/102
Fatigue: 10/118

It looks like it's time to bring in the reinforcements, he thought while jumping off the far end of the boulder he was on to create distance. Shane began to circle the boulder to the left as the two melee-focused bandits charged from the right. He bolted across the road as fast as his speed stat would allow while also summoning his three skeletons when he noticed the female bandit from the corner of his eye. She had been ready for him.

A longbow like hers would take a second or two to nock the arrow and aim at a target. Shane's mistake was thinking she had already fired the first arrow she had prepared. He watched in great horror as she aimed for where he would be and let the arrow fly. A split second later, the arrow connected with his shoulder. Pain radiated to his chest as he observed his health dip under ninety.

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After crossing the road, Shane dove behind a tree, only peering out behind cover long enough to study how his summoned minions would engage the enemy. In his mind, he designated them as simply "Mage," "Tank," and "Rogue." It took only a brief moment before his Skeleton crew was with him and supporting him. Both Tank and Rogue engaged the bandits as Mage hung back with Shane and healed his wounds using a minor healing spell.

Shane noticed how the arrow in his shoulder was slowly pushed out to make way for new muscle and skin underneath.

"Thanks, Mage, really glad you're on my side," the skeletal minion made no response as it finished its healing spell. Its gaze shifted from Shane's shoulder to its fellow minions trading blows in the open of the road. Shane flexed his right arm; it was still sore but fine for the present task.

"Alright, Mage, back me up!" This was the first time he'd seen his skeleton crew fight as a whole, and it was impressive. An extended study of the bandits showed their strength level to be white, with the bandit who addressed him earlier being yellow. White meant they were around his level of ability. Yellow could mean trouble.

This proved true when the yellow-aura bandit managed to break Tank's shield with a series of heavy blows from his mace. Meanwhile, Rogue had landed a couple of shallow stabs between the two other bandits. The half-full red bars above their fur-cloaked heads reflected the damage they took and the blood they were currently losing. While referring to the stronger bandit as "Yellow" in his mind, Shane mentally directed Rogue to assist Tank, while Mage helped him take care of the two bleeding bandits.

Yellow's bandit cohorts were slowly seeping blood from stab wounds to their stomachs. Shane moved closer and addressed both of them at once. "Is all of this worth trying to bully money out of someone like me?" he asked earnestly.

The woman glanced to her bleeding companion and then back to Shane.

"We fight and steal for the greater good," the man next to her nodded in agreement, grimacing through the pain of his wounds.

"Except I haven't done anything to you," he looked away awkwardly. "Outside of a petty insult or two. So why target me?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You're going to Krooth? If so, that makes you a part of what we stand against. I can never understand why you would want to be controlled."

Controlled? That statement threw Shane for a loop. If he were back home, actually playing the game, this kind of development would immediately suck him in. Now, all it did was fill him with questions.

Am I that out of the loop here? He wondered. Shane did a lot of his own developing for Endless Veil in what could only be described as a bubble—only seeing the game in action during specific tests related to his AI Director.

Shane's job was to make an intelligent AI system that would use data from the player and every NPC on top of most objects and some buildings. This data would then be used with a predictive algorithm. The algorithm would predict the player's intent by cross-referencing the player's visual, audio, and locational data with the same data of everything else nearby. Doing so would allow the AI director to create procedurally infinite, context-sensitive quests based on what the system would predict of the player.

Combine that technology with machine learning for NPC dialogue and a varied, flexible behavior system. On top of procedural generation for much of the game's world, you then have Endless Veil. This meant that a simple bandit camp could have much more going on than previous games in the same genre.

"What do you assume I stand for by wanting to visit Krooth?" It wasn't easy to keep in mind that what he was talking to wasn't a real person.

"Oh please, don't pretend like you don't know what goes on there." she scoffed.

He honestly didn't; Krooth had always been a fascinating city, but it was essentially an ordinary city to his knowledge. If something was wrong with the quest's generation concerning game content he hadn't personally explored, a colleague from a different part of the team would work with him to find a solution. He was confident most, if not all were found. Shane wished he had more time to test his systems further into the game, even if they were redundant if only to avoid unpleasant surprises like this.

He didn't see himself getting out of this by playing along, so he decided to see what the AI would be capable of responding to. He chose to be truthful but to keep it relatively simple.

"The truth is I'm from another world that I died in. I was a part of a large team of people that helped make this world. When I died in that world, I woke up here of all places. Even though I helped make this world, I was in the dark about many developments, like what's happening in Krooth currently. So if something bad is going down in Krooth, believe me when I say I don't know of it and am not a part of it."

The two bandits he had been addressing stared at him with a frozen gaze. Shane looked between them, expecting a response, but nothing came. He looked behind him and saw his minions and the stronger bandit down the road, and they were just as equally unmoving. Except for himself, time itself seemed to freeze.

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