LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.

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Chapter Forty-Three

3-6: Level Up

INVENTORY:

* SMOOTH STONE

Max presses his finger against the keyhole-shaped-like-a-door, and it swings inward. Inside, something heavy ker-thunks, and the entire door-shaped-like-a-keyhole creaks open. Max himself was the key.

The room inside is littered with objects hovering just a bit above the ground, slowly spinning. Max’s HUD lights up:

LEVEL UP

Near the door is a medkit. Max touches it and his bruises from the lion are gone. Even the claw marks in his armor vanish. Behind it is a bottle of red medicine, which clinks into his inventory.

In the middle of the room sits a blurry ball of energy. Max collects that too. His inventory reflects it as a Skills Package. And at the far end of the room, he sees red armor and a magnificent sword. They hum as Max approaches, leaping off the ground, onto his body and into his hand. Max takes a practice swing, and energy beams arc off of it, splashing against the granite at the far end of the room.

Max can’t help but strike a heroic pose. Daisy’s giggle snaps him back to the moment. Only one thing to do here: find the trophy and get out. Hemera can’t be far behind.

This tower has no stairs leading upward, though there’s obviously a higher level. The glinting edge of another spinning power up peeks over the ledge above. Max looks for signs of an elevator. Perhaps if he stands in just the right spot? The floor is solid; he works his way around, leaning on each individual brick to see if it will move.

“Whatever are you doing?” Daisy asks.

Max looks at the platform above. “Trying to get up there.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Max says. “That’s all you have to say?” He toes the next brick, and it wiggles a little. “Wait, I think I’ve got something.”

He stoops down to inspect. In fact, it’s not a brick at all, only a facade as thin as a piece of cardboard. He pulls it away. Pulsating light, swinging through all the colors of the rainbow, beams out. The adjoining tiles come away like puzzle pieces, leaving a hole just big enough to reach through.

There’s something down there. A tiny cartoon brain, slowly spinning in the air. Max takes it.

IQ INCREASED

IQ? In pen-and-paper games, he’d encountered the case where his character was noticeably smarter (or stupider) than the player underneath, but it always seemed an exercise in futility, or at least for players with low-level acting skills. This was different. The system couldn’t just tell him he was smarter. It couldn’t roll a saving throw against intelligence for figuring things out—could it?

Het struggled to remember the question that Molly had asked the Eigenthief. What’s 555 times 80486? Forty-four million, six… Whoa. How did he do that? How was that even possible?

“Deploy skills package,” he says. “Deploy” wasn’t an available command in any of the modem games he had played. But now he knows to use it.

“Inventory.”

INVENTORY:

* SMOOTH STONE

SKILLS:

* TELEPORT

Max smiles. So that’s how to get to the upper platform. It’s almost disappointing—game levels are usually designed to require a series of incremental advancements, rather than allowing a jump directly to the end goal.

“Look out,” Daisy screams, but she’s knocked flat by the new entrant to the room.

PLAYER TWO HAS ENTERED THE GAME

Hemera. “There are two-hundred and fifty-six of these castles,” she says. “Thanks for leading me to the right one.”

“Huh. I had no idea. I got it on the first try,” Max says. Don’t get cocky. The most important thing is to get the trophy. He’s never used the teleport skill before, but that’s the thing about being granted a skill, right? It’s supposed to just work. Max imagines himself on the upper platform.

He feels his body stretch into filament, while at the same time, space around him flattens until it’s close enough for him to step across. But instead of landing on the upper platform, he smashes against an invisible barrier about half way up, breaking the teleport. He finds himself high in the air, only to plummet back to the ground.

“Not so fast,” Hemera says. She wields an ornate staff—a carved metal rod with a crystal bauble on the end. It looks less intimidating than the mace she wielded earlier—until the end lights up with electrical fire.

And she has a skills package of her own. She points the staff at her feet and takes a step upward, on an invisible support. Then another, towering over Max. She looks him in the eye and smiles. The visage sends a chill down Max’s spine. “I have to admit, I didn’t think force fields would’ve been that useful, but I see now how wrong I was.”

When she points the business end of her staff at his face, his hair stands on end. Then a sudden, crushing force wracks his body as if someone slammed the gravity dial up to eleven. Max’s head cracks against the tiles. He pushes with all his might, but it’s not enough. Millimeter by millimeter, he loses the battle. Some desperate, rational corner of his mind notices Hemera’s invisible pedestal sinking—she can’t maintain two force fields at the same time.

The crushing intensifies, grinding his elbows into the stone floor. He can’t breathe. Can barely even think. Wrists about to snap. Through the surging panic and pain, he sets up the teleport again. If she can only maintain one force field at a time, there’s a chance that…

Again his body extrudes into a streamer, the world flattens, and he’s able to step around Hemera’s force field like a school of eels swarming through a shark cage.

Gasping for breath, he materializes on the upper platform, dizzied by the brief trip. For the first few seconds, all he sees is a swirl of spots wandering around in his eyes. Gradually, blurry shapes come into focus.

One of the shapes is the final trophy, an object the size of a Rubik’s cube, noticeably pixelated, gently spinning and glowing with a primary yellow intensity.

But another of the blurry things is Hemera, hoisting herself onto the platform. No! The platform is only a narrow ledge along one segment of the curve of the tower. Hemera’s approach puts her in better position than Max.

Can’t let her get it. Only a second to do something. What else was in his inventory? He still had one— “Use smooth stone.” It appears in his hand. He hurls it as hard as he can. His aim isn’t as good as with the lion, but it grazes her head. With an indignant noise, she stumbles and lands hard, but doesn’t fall all the way down.

Stars whirl in Max’s vision when he scrambles to his feet, but he manages to remain upright and moving long enough step over Hemera and reach the item. The final trophy makes a satisfying sound as it clinks into his inventory.

He did it.

Then the floor crumbles beneath him.

Hard to say which hurts worse: crashing through the floor to tumble down to the level below, or getting hit on the head by tumbling loose bricks. The heaviest bricks pin down Max’s legs. He can’t move. And his sword landed outside of his grasp. Somehow, though, he didn’t fall all the way to the bottom of the castle. Hemera, sparking flames sprouting from the business end of her staff, hovers in the air, gently settling down upon—nothing.

There’s an invisible floor here. And not one of Hemera’s force fields. The game designers put this here. Why?

Plenty of time to worry about that when mortal threat is less imminent. Speaking of which, an electrical corona builds up on Hemera’s weapon.

Max teleports himself just left of the rubble pile. The sudden lack of pressure on his legs causes a rebound pain, and everything goes red around the edges for a second.

The ground trembles as the rubble pile where Max had been just a second ago explodes, brick shards flying through a shower of electrical sparks. There’s got to be a better strategy than running until she wears him down. Hemera rounds on him and makes eye contact. The hate seeps through her eyes with such intensity that Max has to look away. Hate is one thing Max has never accepted. It might bring great strength, but it makes you rot from the inside.

The building crackle of energy on her weapon drowns out all other sound. The crisp after-thunderstorm whiff of ozone makes Max want to throw up. He looks for a safe place, but safety’s in short supply at the moment. The hairs on his arms stand. Only a fraction of a second left before—

Max teleports to the spot immediately behind Hemera. He deploys the last available item in his inventory, the red medicine bottle, and smashes it against Hemera’s hand holding the staff. The glass shatters impressively, breaking into razor shards that drive into her fingers. She screams and drops her weapon. Red potion runs down her arm in sheets, indistinguishable from blood.

Max snatches the weapon for himself. He’s expecting it to feel powerful, electric, but it only feels heavy. He calls up inventory, but no new skills are listed. The staff doesn’t even appear on an inventory line, which means the game assigns no special significance to it. No different than picking up a spoon or any other mundane item.

Hemera laughs. “That’ll do you no good,” she says. “Only the one holding the majority of the trophies can wield it.”

“What happened to ‘it’s not personal, it’s only business’?” Max asks.

“Hmm. It seems I’ve taken a personal interest in you. Starting with a valuable lesson in how the world actually works.”

Max takes the moment of distraction to get a better look around. The piled rubble abruptly cuts off in a straight line, showing where the invisible floor drops off. Far below, Daisy waits, sitting primly on the cold floor, rubbing her head. The designer—dad—wouldn’t have laid out a level like this for no reason. There’s got to be a secret hidden nearby.

But first, he needs to deal with Hemera. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to hand over the trophies?” Max asks her. “So I can see for myself the magnificence of your overwrought piece of metal here?”

Her glare is answer enough. “Thought I’d at least ask,” Max says. Brave face, but he needs a better plan.

“Summon,” Hemera says.

That doesn’t sound good. “Summon what?” Max asks. A loud animal roar splits the air and rumbles the invisible floor. Another lion.

Where? Max steps back, and his foot slips off the hidden edge. He staggers, and thanks only to the weight of the staff, hurls his balance forward enough keep from toppling over the edge. He advances on the lion, swinging the heavy weapon like a club.

He makes crushing contact, but something else from his left knocks him clear off his feet. He flips over, landing awkwardly on his hip.

This again. He can only see the creatures on one side of his visual field. And there’s two of them. Teaming up. Max scans his head from side to side to see them both. The one he made contact with doesn’t seem hurt, only more annoyed.

Left. Right. Left. Right. The lions charge. As they converge, in the fraction of a second as Max feels their hot breath seeping through his red armor, he throws himself forward, over the ledge.

Above, he hears the two beasts knock the wind out of each other as they collide in mid-air. Their last-second course correction angled them toward the open space, and both of them fall past Max as they tumble to the solid floor below.

Max’s fingers ache, gripping the invisible edge, exactly where he visualized it. He looks up through the floor to see Hemera looking for him.

Then he sees the hidden part of this level. Underneath the floor, there’s another power-up, not visible from above—the floor is like one-way glass. That's why Hemera can’t see him—or could only see his fingers if she looks closely. The lions are only visible in certain conditions; the floor only seems invisible. The power-up is glimmering, swirling atom. Another skills package.

But it’s just out of reach. Max rocks back and forth, straining, reaching. His fingers tingle as they graze the edge of the item. He looks down—bad mistake. What’s left of the two lions made a huge mess below. His fingers slip, and he nearly joins them. He switches hands and swings again, kicking out with his feet. He makes contact.

The inventory sound catches Hemera’s attention, and she turns in Max’s direction. She notices the dangling fingers and stomps toward his vulnerable digits.

Max teleports to just behind Hemera, but she’s expecting it this time, and a sharp elbow catches Max in the nose. Blood gushes. He stumbles backward, dropping the staff over the edge.

Quick and thorough, Hemera follows with a brutal kick. Pain explodes through Max’s ribs as he scrambles away from the edge and flops over onto his side. Then he hears the fallen staff clang against the granite floor below. That was one long fall.

What happens next feels like a hot knife sinking into Max’s back. The explosion of pain fades into Hemera’s voice. “I’ve had enough of your games.” Suddenly she’s kneeling at his side. “Look at me.” She jams her cold fingers underneath his neck, forcing him to look at her.

They’re inches apart. “That’s right. I have the tools to expose your inventory. I want something—I take it. Game imitates life.” Everything’s blurry, so Max can’t tell exactly what the thing is in her hand that inflicted such damage; it’s metal and it looks bent. Max tries to teleport away, but nothing happens. His protective armor dissolves, now as useless as his former skills package, leaving him defenseless.

All that’s left is for her to rip the final trophy away from him.

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Copyright 2018, 2019 Micah Joel. All rights reserved.