Chapter 3
Search Results
Ethan materialized at the foot entrance to the cave he found inside his personal world. He checked his doublet and examined the damage on his sword. Those spiders took their fair share of swatting to put down, though their hard exoskeletons nicked the edge of his blade in several areas. He needed to construct a new one eventually or find some way to repair his current hunk of metal. The elves usually managed the forging process whenever he traveled to the city, but it was so far away and time was short.
Ethan tapped his foot while he checked his search results. No new entries yet. Darn. Merrick said he’d show, but Ethan had been waiting for nearly an hour now with no sign of him. He might as well have slayed the spider queen himself for all the time he spent thumbing through queries.
He thought about waiting a while longer when an idea struck him. Ethan brought up his email account and browsed through the new messages. Sure enough, Merrick sent a surprise note addressed to him. Ethan tapped his interface, and the message popped up big enough for him to read, though moments after he laid eyes on it, he closed the app and threw his sword into the dirt.
“Not you too,” Ethan said as he laid down on the grass.
He stared up at the cloud formations and allowed his eyes to wander from collection to puffy collection. His world was virtually infinite, but none of it mattered if he couldn’t share the experience with others. Owen kicked it for six months and never returned once he recovered. Lori, as far as he heard, continued to deal with some symptoms. Merrick was special though. A level 6o super hero was something to be proud of, but it didn’t matter if he was a friend or not or how long it took him to recover. The fear of stasis shock would keep him offline permanently. Ethan stood up and grabbed hold of his weapon. He took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh, calmly walking toward the cave entrance.
“Guess it’s just me.”
Sword in hand, he drudged down into the depths of the cave. Since he was level 64, he now had the lamp spell, so he emanated rays from his body that lit up the cavern walls and revealed each crack as if daylight penetrated the rock itself. Most spiders fled from his presence, and the ones that ventured too close met the sharp end of his sword.
He walked through winding, segmented corridors until he arrived at a large chamber with a damp smell that reminded him of eggs. Sulfur, he thought. Spider eggs smelled like sulfur and sure enough, he saw what appeared to be stacks of the devils clustered against the walls of the chamber. He prepared a fire spell to draw out the queen and let it loose in a blaze that charred the eggs. A faint shrieking sound echoed from the depths of one corridor on the opposite end while spider eggs continued to burn. White webbed clusters turned to ashen remains while drones rushed at him. Ethan hacked away with his sword at the braver spiders as they attempted to defend their lair, but each met the same end, a severed thorax and wriggling legs.
Ethan stopped swinging once the drones fell back. Their tiny legs scurried out of the way as they climbed through makeshift holes and burrows. A fierce scream boomed from the far corridor and a cluster of spiny legs stuck out of it, attached to a blue and black beast with nine silver eyes and two massive mandibles jutting from its mouth.
“Bring it on!” Ethan shouted.
He charged in headfirst and struck the creature, attempting to cleave through one of her legs, but his sword cracked in two after making contact, and it threw Ethan off guard. He stumbled forward as the spider queen reached down to grab him. Ethan couldn’t react quick enough and fell into her spiny hands. Drat! He couldn’t charge a spell like this, and his weapon was ill equipped to penetrate her thick exoskeleton. Ethan experienced the unsightly sensation of being swallowed completely before his stasis sim logged him off. The gut of the spider queen disappeared into the dark behind his eyelids, and he opened them for the first time in hours. So much for a late night kick.
Once his fine motor movements returned, he pulled off the neural interface and stood up from his desk. Quiet practically permeated his bedroom, except for the whipping chill of a cold night’s air whistling though a cracked open window by his bed. No wonder his skin crawled. It was freezing.
Ethan walked over and reached across his bed to shut it, but the window made a creak that sounded like spider queen herself. He stopped. Visions cropped up, realistic imagery, and he lost control of himself as he spiraled backwards into his game. Ethan’s body planted itself inside the cave in a glitch-filled puzzle pieced together from his fragmented memories. It was as if his mind laid frozen in an oil painting of his world. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. Nothing … for fifteen hours.
Ethan woke up in a cold sweat, his body lurched over his bed with the window still cracked open. However, this time, the sun hung high, and the air carried an aroma of morning dew and flowers. He glanced over at his clock the moment he could lift his head to check the time. 9:36am, it read. Barely enough time to shower and pack his books before heading to class. A hundred and one thoughts that are more important could have run through his mind, but they didn’t. Go to class first, he told himself. He could see a doctor afterwards. It was nothing. A temporary relapse due to his emotional state. Ethan left his room and packed his bags.