Faceless by James Krake

Author:James Krake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summers Entertainment LLC

13

Sticks and Stones

2140/09/06

Elliot felt like everything he had ever learned in his life had been wiped away, made useless, by stomping around in [The Faceless Well].

What the hell do other people see in this crap?

All he needed was to know was why the developer had been deleted from the system and why he had indulged the lack of identity by wearing a mask. Getting the recordings the man had made in Steppe Up was as close to speaking with him as he could get, and that meant finding them in the game.

Elliot kept reminding himself of that as he wandered through the town of [The Faceless Well]. The monster-hiding well waited for him, like the center of the whole world, while he went looking for something like a quest explanation, a hidden treasure chest, a talkative non-player character.

He didn’t get so much as an auditory chime to clue him in.

The first weapon he picked up, if it could be called that, was nothing but a hefty stick with a knot at one end. It felt like a proper cudgel in his hand, but there was stat block to explain its capabilities. The only thing that made it special was that he could actually pick it up at all.

The world looked real, but trampling through the grass left no impression. The rocks sat as firmly as iron in the ground. Even the flimsiest of wooden walls couldn’t be budged; their physics had all been disabled.

He gave the improvised cudgel a few swings, knocking it against rocks and timber, feeling the weight. Just to be sure, he smashed in the head of one of the faceless mannequins that populated the simulated world. It worked well enough for an unmoving, unresisting target; but…

Can’t kill a fucking squid with a bludgeon though, can I?

The sun overhead shone across the world from a static spot, no matter when he logged in or how much time he spent in it. Some simulations would tinker with the flow of time, but this one had frozen it entirely. It made gauging the passage of time a dull nightmare.

The cottage stolen from B:GONE was the strangest of them all. The inside was empty, not even with enough supports to hold up the roof. It looked like everything had been stolen from the insides. The whole building sat beside the road as nothing but a shell; a facade.

It was the building next to the cottage that seemed to finally have fruit for him. That was the smithy he had noticed before getting sucked in by the well. The structure was meandering and felt half complete. Where he expected walls, there were only a few columns an an overhanging awning of thatch. The stone furnace was the mightiest feature in it, sitting stouter in the middle than any bakery oven he could imagine. The heat of the coals radiated out and dried his skin as he approached; a delicate sensation to simulate.

Two mannequins stood in the smithy, toiling over shapes of iron.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.