We walked as a group towards a copse of trees. There hadn’t been much discussion. Slade and Max decided that we needed to start exploring, and off they went. I exchanged exasperated looks with Emma, and there was little we could do but follow. It wasn’t like there was much else to aim for. The plains were vast and wide.


    Slade was in the lead. He’d managed to stop freaking out about being stabbed and was now on a mission to find weapons and armor. His arm was healed, but his T-shirt was a mess. It was covered in dried blood. Max had also given him the goblin spear he looted. I figured it was only a matter of time before Slade tore a strip off his T-shirt and wore it as a headband to complete his apocalyptic adventurer look.


    “One thing is certain,” Slade declared. “This game sucks.”


    I wasn’t strong enough to keep my mouth shut, “Only ‘cuz you got stabbed.”


    “Oh no. It''s not that. It’s the pacing. We pop in and get hit with a combat tutorial right off the bat. No weapons, no warning, pretty standard stuff.” He stretched his arms wide, “But look at what we’re doing now. Walking. For what? Thirty minutes? The pacing is all wrong.”


    “If you want some excitement, I could stab you again.” I offered.


    “Maybe,” Emma said, “the designers want us to think about it.”


    “How do you mean?” I asked.


    Emma continued but seemed a little flustered, having to explain, “When we signed up, it was for an exploration game. The trainers mentioned bug reporting a lot but kept emphasizing that it was an exploration game. Maybe this game has been modeled to give us time to reflect on things.”


    “They said it was an exploration game?” Slade asked.


    Irritated, I replied, “Did you pay attention to anything that was said in training?”


    “Yeah,” Slade shot back. “Five hundred thousand dollars.”


    I had to admit that was the most memorable part for me as well. With half a million dollars, my life would change dramatically. I could buy a house, travel the world, and not worry about a job for a long time.


    “I think she’s right,” Max said. “This is so highly polished already. Bug testing is a cover, something else is at work here.”


    I was irritated again, “Kane hid the death bit. That’s pretty freaking big, I don’t know that we need any more conspiracies than that.”


    “Why hide it?” Slade asked. “Look at this. I know plenty of dudes that would risk death to play something like this.”


    “It''s not exactly a great marketing pitch that players will die,” I replied.


    Slade shrugged, “Meh. Sort of adds to the excitement once you wrap your head around it.”


    “No, games are about making mistakes and learning from them. We don’t get that in this one. Everything has to be perfect from the get-go.”


    “Not perfect,” Slade said. “Just good enough to get by.”


    We walked in silence for a bit. Emma and Max got me thinking. Sadly, Slade was the only one who actually seemed to want to have a conversation, and his contributions weren’t exactly thought-provoking.


    One thing Max had been right about was that I was no longer interested in finding bugs. With my life on the line, survival and getting the hell out were my top concerns.


    We made it to the cluster of trees, and a message popped up;


    Achievement: Discovered a new area


    The thicket of trees wasn’t huge, maybe the size of a soccer field, a hundred yards across at most. I didn’t like that we couldn’t really see into it. Anything could be hidden in there. Slade, however, kept walking, either too cocky or too dumb to realize this could easily become another stabbing incident.


    Movement off to the left edge made me stop and squint. Two of the lizard creatures the goblins had been riding were chewing at bushes near the edge about fifty yards away. I was actually a little surprised to have spotted them at all. Their green scales blended in with the trees and shrubs quite well.


    I pointed to the lizards, “Goblin mounts!”


    We all stopped. Slade spun, holding his spear out, ready to ward anything off. Max crouched and vanished while Emma bumped into me.


    Gripping my spear, I scanned the tree line we’d nearly entered. “I don’t see any goblins.”


    “Where’d you go?” Slade hissed.


    “Right here,” I whispered back at him, annoyed as he looked right past me. Glancing down, I saw that my arms and the spear were harder to see now. Emma was crouched next to me but easy to see.


    Still crouched, I moved forward until I was next to Slade.


    “You and Max keep vanishing.” He reported.


    It only took a second of thought to realize the advantage that it gave us. “Stay here. I’ll scout this out.”


    I crept into the trees, staying in the bushes as much as possible. They parted easily, offering no resistance as I moved through them. I couldn’t see as far, but I figured anything that helped me stay hidden was better than being out in the open.


    When I was about ten yards in front of Slade, I stopped and looked all the way around me. There was a shadowy blue outline to my left, crouched down and holding what looked like the outline of a katana. That had to be Max. We were both stealthing our way forward into the trees.Stolen novel; please report.


    Returning my gaze deep into the thicket, I squinted, looking for anything out of place. And there they were, more goblins up ahead. Leaving the bush, I made my way over to Max. As I got closer, the blue outline filled in, and I could see him clearly. Well, not quite clearly. He was still shadowy, and my gaze easily slipped off him, but I knew he was there just in front of me.


    “There’s four goblins ahead,” I whispered.


    Max nodded, “Me and you can take them.”


    “What? No! Are you crazy?” I hissed back, “We need the others.”


    “I don’t think we do.” He said. And with that, he started moving towards the goblins.


    I wanted to grab and stop him, but honestly, I was surprised that good ole quiet Max was this intent on anything. Usually, he just followed Slade around. Right now, he was being positively suicidal.


    My choices were simple. I could return and get Slade’s help, leaving Max to fight 4 goblins alone. I was certain the result would be death for Max. I could try to stop Max, but that would almost certainly alert the goblins and kill us both. Finally, I could follow Max and help out as best I could. At least, we’d have the element of surprise on our side.


    I followed Max, moving as quickly as possible without making noise. He stopped and held up a hand, so I guessed he wanted me to stay put for a moment. Then, he slunk off, circling around.


    My gaze returned to the goblins. I inched closer. They were gathered around a small fire in the center of a tiny glade. They made guttural noises at each other that must have been a conversation. A weird thought hit me. What do goblins talk about around the water cooler? Do they have workplace gossip? What would even constitute goblin work?


    As I observed these crude little beings snarling and barking at each other, Max rushed out from the other side of the clearing, swinging his katana. He cut through one before they even knew what hit them, then stabbed another.


    The goblins shrieked and sprang up, weapons in hand. I meant to rush forward, but the thought of little goblin children missing their fathers made me freeze up. We were attacking without provocation. Maybe they would have invited us to their campfire if we''d approached with a greeting.


    Max screamed. I snapped out of my reverie in time to see him fall back against a thick tree, clutching his stomach. Two goblins thrust spears at him, their backs turned towards me. Worse still, I saw Max’s health bar, only a quarter filled. He was about to die.


    Without further thought, I rushed forward, holding the spear at my hip. As Max held them off feebly, I covered the last few yards and thrust my spear into the back of one of the goblins. The spear sunk into what I can only describe as something spongy. There was much more resistance than I thought, but the spear went deep.


    For a moment, I was afraid my weapon would be stuck in the creature. The goblin faded to a blue rotating cube in the blink of an eye.


    Lancing, burning pain ripped through my shoulder. I turned to see a spear point leaving my body. The last goblin shrieked, I screamed, Max howled. I backed away, thinking all the things Slade had yelled earlier. I’ve been stabbed, fuck, it hurts. A bar appeared at the bottom of my vision, then shortened by about a third. My life bar was there telling me how close I was to death.


    It''s one thing to stand on the edge of a roof and know the three-story fall will probably kill you. It is quite another to see someone actively trying to make you dead. The goblin and I eyed each other from behind spear points, knowing only one of us would walk away.


    Max fell forward from the tree. As he did, he stabbed his katana through the foot of the last goblin. It screeched and spun around to stab Max. I couldn’t just sit there and watch Max get killed, I lunged forward, my spear jabbing right through its side. There was some gurgling. Then it was just a floating cube.


    There was a loud chime, like a musical exclamation point, and the air around me filled with floating bits of light.


    Achievement: Level Two


    I looked over at Max and saw that he was in a column of light, with the same tiny stars dancing around him.


    Suddenly, a lot of crashing and thumping came through the trees. I turned with my spear, terrified and ready for any goblins. Slade burst into view, spear at the ready.


    “What in the holy hell!” Slade yelled.


    Emma came staggering behind him. Her eyes widened when she saw me. I looked down and saw blood ruining my University of Washington shirt. She rushed towards me, then went right past to Max. Kneeling down, she placed her hands on his stomach and began chanting.


    As Max’s wound healed, there was that musical chime again, and Emma was flooded with light and glowy floating bits.


    “Gratz.” Max said.


    Slade looked around frantically for more goblins, then noticed the glow fading from Emma. “What the heck was that?”


    “She just hit level two,” Max explained.


    “What the heck! Why am I still level one?” Slade said.


    His self-centeredness caused a wave of annoyance, and then there was that chime, and Slade glowed. He hooted, and Max congratulated him.


    Emma came over to me and placed her hands on my shoulder. The wound hurt, but honestly, I’d had worse before. I ground my teeth in silence as Emma covered it with a palm. As she murmured strange words, my shoulder heated up, a soothing warm kind of heat. When she lifted her hands away, there was a hole in my shirt, but the skin beneath was fine.


    “So, what exactly does level two mean?” I asked.


    Max, completely healed up now, said, “Check out your stats. It means new skills.”


    I blinked and opened my stats page. Sure enough, at the top, it showed;


    Victoria – Level 2 Hunter


    Tracking +1


    Nature Stealth +1


    Ranged Weapons +1


    Pet Level +1


    Choose next skill:


    Hunter’s Mark


    Nature Step


    Entangle Trap


    Who decided I was a Hunter? The thought of hunters actually gave me the skeevies. My mental image was of old dudes dressed like Elmer Fudd out shooting Bambi’s. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good profession when everything was trying to kill you.


    Fine, I decided, I like Hunter. Being able to go invisible and spot things before others seemed like good survival choices. A Hunter I was.


    I was surprised to see that I already had some skills, and they had also leveled up. The most surprising was Pet. Where did I get one of those? I was also keen on finding a ranged weapon, seeing that I now had bonuses to use them.


    The new skills were a mystery, so I had to read through the help about each one. The trap skill would allow me to set up traps that immobilized enemies, which sounded good but required preparation and prior knowledge that I would be in a fight. Nature Step would allow me to teleport closer or behind enemies, which seemed pretty good. I ultimately went with Hunter’s Mark. That would allow me to place a bright glowing target on an enemy, granting my allies a better chance to hit and damage. That sounded like an all-around winner for our little group.


    After selecting my new skill, I popped out of the menus. Everyone else was flipping their hands around, obviously still reading. I decided to scout out the rest of the copse while they were all busy.


    Moving through the brush, crouched down to practice my Nature Stealth, I spotted some yellow glowing outlines at the edge of the woods. These were definitely beasts of some sort. They were low to the ground and on four legs. I approached cautiously, watching as the glowing outlines filled into lizard critters, the ones the goblins rode.


    I didn’t have time to read up on pets. I didn’t want these guys to scatter, so I approached without knowing what I was doing. I held my hands out and low like I would to a stray dog and approached the lizards. I was damn near within touching range of three of them when they all turned, spotting me.


    “Easy there, wittle little lizard thingies,” I cooed, hoping the voice would calm them. It seemed to work at first, until it didn’t.


    All three snorted, lowering their heads and scratching their feet at the ground. Then they rushed at me.