The Dragon's Revenge Read online

  [Channel Dragonattack] ‘We’ll keep it simple. Everyone rolls once in this channel, random 1000. Highest picks, then the next, until there is no loot left.’

  The game had a random number generator. You just had to type /roll 1000 and everyone would see your name accompanied by a result between 001 and 999. Soon the raid channel was full of these rolls. Irritatingly, a female shaman rolled in local chat instead of the channel and even though she got a 734, which probably was enough to win something, I had to insist she rolled again.

  The rules were clear, I told myself, and if you start to make exceptions, you create a lot of ill will instead of disappointing just one person. I sincerely hoped she’d do as well with her roll in the raid channel but, sadly, she only got 460, which wasn’t going to be enough.

  Having left my own roll until last, I hesitated and then did something I knew at the time was utterly wrong and equally stupid. The highest roll by a warrior was 811. Among the loot was a shield with amazing stats and the Diamond Shield ability as a triggered effect. It was absolutely made for Raitha, but she’d only gotten a 303. So instead of rolling, I triggered a macro that was completely illegal and I chose my score. The number 813 appeared in the channel by my name.

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘Whoot nice!’

  I was amused to hear such enthusiastic slang from Raitha, who was usually extremely articulate and well-spoken.

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘That’s a new shield for you, my old friend,’ I told her.

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘This cannot be. You must pick something for yourself; you deserve it.’

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘It’s yours.’ I put all the insistence I could into my voice. ‘This is exactly what you need. We can take any boss now, with you geared up with this shield.’

  There were plenty of whoops and congratulations for me, but I already felt sick. My cheating was crazy on so many levels. Firstly, I might well have rolled a win, fair and square. Or I might have asked the raid to award the shield to Raitha and probably everyone was so fired up and delighted with the result, they would have agreed. Instead, I’d let greed get the better of me.

  Of course, I had my justifications: it had been my raid; the shield would be wasted on some pick-up warrior we might never see again; it was only a game; smart players outsmarted the rules. That kind of thing. But cheating the loot role was wrong and already it soured the sweet taste of victory I had been experiencing.

  Suddenly, I wished I could turn back time just ten seconds. Just to let me make another choice. Let me roll fairly.

  It was stupid to even own that macro to tempt me. I should have deleted it years ago. I was never very good at resisting temptation. Ask my mum. She’d long ago learned not to keep any treats around the house. If I found a bar of chocolate or some crisps, I just couldn’t help it, I devoured them at once, even though I knew they were hers. And I always felt bad. But this was a thousand times worse.

  I’d made a bad choice. Now I knew how it felt to have cheated these wonderful people who had fought so well as a team, I would try never to do anything like it again. This, I resolved with complete sincerity and resolution. And even while calling out the names of the winners, I deleted the macro and then cleared it out of my computer’s bin. It was gone for good.

  We had reached my turn to choose.

  [Channel Dragonattack] ‘I pick the Shield of the Dragonslayer and I invite Raitha to loot it.’

  Again, there were cheers at this, cheers that did not lift me as they should have.

  Most of the items in the dragon’s treasure were Fastened. The good news about Fastened items was that you could never lose them. If you died, they remained on your body to be reclaimed after resurrection. If you were a victim of PvP combat, the item would never be available to the winner to loot. The bad news was you couldn’t trade or sell Fastened gear. So whoever picked up a Fastened item got it and that was that. When it was no use any more, all you could do was delete it or, if you were sentimental, as I was about some items, keep it in your game bank storage as a souvenir.

  That’s why I didn’t just loot the shield and toss it to Raitha, she had to obtain it herself.

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘I’m choked, my dear friend. I really am. This is the best day ever.’

  With the new shield on her left arm - gleaming silver, with a dragon emblem in purple - Raitha came and stood before me, clasping my shoulder with her right hand. [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘You’re the best comrade anyone could want.’ Her soft voice, nearly a whisper, was tearful.

  [Channel Tyro/Raitha] ‘You too,’ I replied.

  With the rest of the loot distributed, people were leaving the raid and unclipping from the game. It was time for me to go too, if I was to make it to school for English.

  [Channel Dragonattack] ‘Later all. See you on the next one.’

  This prompted another round of congratulatory messages, but I just unclipped with a tightness in my chest and stomach that made me feel a little nauseous.

  From muscled warrior to angular, skinny teenager: I was back in the real world. A world that seemed greyscale in comparison to the vivid colours of Epic. Even though I’d timed the raid to allow me to make it to class on time, I was behind schedule. Perhaps, deep down, I hadn’t expected to win, because it was the assignment of loot that had caused me to spend a bit too long in the game. At least my satchel was ready; I’d prepared it last night.

  As I jogged past the rows of red-brick terraced housing, keeping an eye out for dog dirt on the cracked paving stones, I groped inside my satchel and pulled out a breakfast bar. That, plus my water, would have to do until lunch.

  St Dominic’s Secondary School. It had a picture of the saint on the gable end, which faced all those (like me) who hurried towards the school from the west. With arms wide and a welcoming smile, the saint seemed to want to gather in all the young men and women of the community. Lovely. And utterly deceptive. Inside the building there was no sense of community. It was a Hobbesian nightmare of all against all, with the authorities encouraging our divisions out of fear we’d otherwise turn on them.

  Mind you, the adults did have genuine concerns. The bigger boys wouldn’t hesitate to strike a teacher. They didn’t care about reports and exam results. They had nothing to lose. And when the kids did unite, which happened from time to time around some grievance, well, we would be pretty good at challenging the staff. Like when some of the Sixth Year took the wheels off Mr Jameson’s car and left it standing on bricks.

  I had Jameson now for English and just got in the door ahead of him. As quickly as I could, I took my seat and pulled out the books and biro that I’d need.

  Beside me, a friend of mine, Jules, leaned in close. ‘Well done!’ she whispered. ‘You took down Mikarkathat?’

  The question brought back the positive feeling I’d gotten from this morning’s events and I found my blood was still liquid gold. ‘Yeah. How did you know?’

  From a flash of her phone, before Jules hurriedly put it in her desk, I could see that a video of the raid already had over ten thousand views. When I put up the official recording with my commentary, I’d be disappointed with anything less than a million in the first week.

  ‘You were awesome.’ Jules gave me the thumbs up just as Jameson called us to order.

  ‘Lower Sixth, you are fortunate today we have a visitor.’

  This announcement was greeted with a few cheers, signalling the pleasure of some that we wouldn’t have to wade through any of Moby Dick today. Unfolding himself from his official teaching pose, Jameson stood up and stepped towards the door, which he opened. Our English teacher wanted to be considered as elegant and sophisticated. Why else would he wear a waistcoat every school day? And move around with such studied motions? And have unnecessarily large round glasses?

  ‘Mr Watson has come from Yuno Industries to talk to you about entrepreneurship.’ The way that Jameson said the word ‘entrepreneurship’ made it clear he despised the term. But I was wide awake an
d scrutinising our visitor attentively. Yuno were the designers, manufacturers and administrators of Epic.

  A moment later, Mr Watson rolled in through the door and across to the front of the class. He was one of those overweight, middle-aged men who worked out. So his upper body was strong and his muscled arms swung out wide from his sides as he walked. Broad face, made broader by a red, orange and white beard; blue, penetrating eyes looking at us over a pair of rectangular, somewhat racy, purple spectacles; white shirt; jeans; and casual shoes. It was impossible to guess where he stood in the company hierarchy. Not at the bottom. The sales reps all wore ties.

  ‘Over to you, Mr Watson.’ Resuming his chair, Jameson gave a vague, disapproving wave of his hand and turned his attention to an envelope from which he extracted a piece of paper.

  ‘Hello.’ Mr Watson had an American accent. This was surprising. I bumped him up a bit more in the company hierarchy. ‘Young men and women, please indulge me.’ He smiled with what seemed to be real warmth and peered around the room. ‘Write down something you’d really like to own. Please, pick up your pens and write something. Anything. A Ferrari? A horse? A house? Please, write it down.’

  What did I really want? A chance to go back in time and roll for raid loot properly? A better house for my mum and me? There was no way I was going to write anything that would make me embarrassed if it were read out. At last, I put down ‘A Sickle of Entropy’. This was an ugly-looking Epic weapon with a strong Slow effect. There were only two in the game and both in control of guild players. I’d love one for my raids. While Raitha was building up aggro on the boss mobs, I could keep them slowed. The weapon would have made Mikarkathat a much easier kill.

  ‘All done?’ asked Mr Watson. ‘Let’s hear a few.’ He pointed to a boy in a Liverpool kit: Seanie Howlin. Bad choice. ‘What did you write?’

  ‘A Glock Seventeen, Gen Four.’

  ‘The gun?’

  ‘Right.’

  At his table, although still concentrating on the letter in his hands, Jameson shook his head in dismay and disapproval, either at the mention of guns or at the sniggers that broke out.

  Mr Watson did not seem troubled. ‘Thank you. And you?’ It was Amy Pringle’s turn.

  ‘A washing machine.’

  ‘About time,’ muttered Conor Pearson, our most hurtful wag. He got his giggles, but not from me. The fact that Amy often came to school in stale, unwashed clothes was no reflection on her but the desperate state of her home. I’d been there.

  ‘Perfect,’ Mr Watson ignored the unrest and, having failed to learn anything about the hazards of asking questions of members of my class, looked directly at me. ‘And how about you, young man?’

  Slowly, I crunched up the paper and shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘A boy who has everything?’ Now he looked straight at me through his fashionable glasses with eyes that were surprisingly blue. Two of my class chortled, which was annoying. They’d rather put me down than unite against this stranger.

  ‘Well, moving on.’ Mr Watson began to walk back and forth, gesturing with his arms as he talked. ‘You all - most of you - have your goals. The crucial question is how are you going to get them? Some of you might have written down items that can be bought after a period of work and saving. That’s fine. But for serious ambitions, like a house, you just aren’t going to get there by work alone.

  ‘This is where being an entrepreneur comes in. Now, being an entrepreneur is all very well if you go to an expensive school and your parents can get you started in whatever market you have in mind. Right?’

  Now he had our attention. We were acutely aware of the fact we were bottom of the heap. But we weren’t used to people saying so. In fact, the line from the teachers was that we were all just as talented, smart and so on as anyone else. It was just that our disadvantaged backgrounds meant we didn’t perform as well academically.

  That was the line. The truth was, what talents we had were in the direction of subversion, troublemaking and petty crime.

  ‘Well, I’m here today to tell you that you all have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs. Because Epic Two is only weeks away from launch and we’ve done something that we think is quite profound: we’ve linked the game currency to Blackcoin. Anyone can earn Blackcoin by playing the game and we anticipate that the early players, especially those who concentrate on crafting and trading, will not only earn fortunes in the game, but that these will be transferred here, to the real world.’

  Several hands went up. Mr Watson paused, looking pleased, and pointed to Jules.

  ‘You mean, your gold, or whatever, can be traded for Blackcoin? Like, if you loot a boss mob, how much Blackcoin will that be worth?’

  ‘I do mean that. Let’s face it. Whether we at Yuno approved or not, we know that some players would farm gold and sell it for real money. That happens in every online game. In Epic Two, we are going to embrace that fact and control it. You’ll be playing for cash. The exact exchange rate will fluctuate, of course, but I imagine if you kill a top boss, like Mikarkathat, that would be worth at least two Blackcoin.’

  Blackcoin was a crypto currency, each unit of which was trading for about two-hundred and fifty dollars. My raid would have earned five hundred dollars by this new system. Not bad. But why had he mentioned Mikarkathat? That could not have been a coincidence.

  While I thought about this and studied Mr Watson for any clues, Jules was looking insistently at me from under her cap, as if to say, Wow, this is awesome news. She was into Epic; we’d often talked about it. But her parents managed to keep her off the game and her druid was only in the thirties. I gave her a nod.

  The class now turned into something of a free for all, but in a way that must have surprised Jameson. In the whole year he’d been teaching his English lessons to us, he’d never seen so many hands up and so many of us wanting to know more about a subject he was teaching. Mr Watson was fielding questions left, right and centre, as my class tried to figure out the angles and whether it really might be worth their while to get in early on Epic 2. Even the non-gamers were interested in Blackcoin.

  Of course, I knew all about the coming game and as a raid leader and high-level character, I’d been offered an account in Epic 2 as a beta-tester. Most of us who were at the top of Epic weren’t interested. Truth be told, I’d been hoping Epic 2 would be postponed or even scrapped altogether. It had taken me four years of intense play to reach the place I was now, at the top of Epic. And still there were zones far too dangerous for me to adventure in. I wanted time to enjoy my status as an elite player. Not only would the launch of Epic 2 spoil that by requiring me to grind up to the top all over again, but I’d risk losing my game friends. And some of those friends, Raitha especially, were the best I had.

  My attention began to wander as I began to consider the options for my next raid. Probably, it would be the castle of King Ragnok the cloud giant. There was something of a logjam with that raid, both clerics and paladins needed drops from King Ragnok for top-end item quests. And I owed those clerics and paladins who turned up for Mikarkathat, big style.

  Then I heard my name. Jules, grinning broadly had just told Mr Watson that I’d just killed the toughest dragon in Epic.

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Watson smiled, looking right at me. ‘That’s why I’m here. If someone from this school can succeed at Epic, anyone can. It’s Tom Foster that has earned you all a free invite to beta-test Epic Two and get a head start in making some Blackcoin.’

  Everyone turned to look at me, which I hated. From the heat in my cheeks, I knew I must be blushing. At home, safely protected by the anonymity of my avatar, I could address hundreds and even thousands of people without a hint of embarrassment. Here, I couldn’t stand the attention of thirty. At least my classmates were all signalling respect and approval. Even Matt O’Keefe, who was always trying to pick a fight with me, was giving me the thumbs up. With a deep breath, I allowed myself to enjoy being praised for success in Epic.

  Chapte
r 3

  The Contract

  I was walking home at the end of the weirdest day in school. Lads who you knew were heading for a career among the crime gangs of Dublin and beyond had sought me out in the breaks, wanting to know how much outlay was needed for a decent Epic rig. The idea of earning Blackcoin had grabbed them. Explaining what they needed, writing everything down for them, had been a pleasure, for two reasons. One, because these were guys you wanted to be in with. Not too far in. But enough that they considered you one of their own. A fellow sharp, not a flat to be chewed up and spat out.

  Secondly, it felt good to be appreciated in school. In the virtual world or in the comments on my video channel, I’d become something of a star. There at least, I was treated with respect (at least, up until now. Damn, I shouldn’t have tampered with that loot roll). In school and on the streets of Cabra, I was no one. To my peers - and I knew how they thought - I was just a gamer kid, a bit on the small side, with slanted eyes and a freaky blue haircut. The fact that I might have given the whole school a head start in Epic 2 seemed to have impressed everyone, not just the other gamers. And by everyone I even mean the girls of my class, who otherwise had no interest in anyone their age.

  Today, therefore, my journey home was a cheerful one. Well, apart from that nagging regret about the loot roll. It was with real anticipation I looked forward to getting home to Mum and trying to explain why I was happy.

  A car drew alongside, the shaded rear window of an expensive Mercedes winding down with a purr as it pulled in to the kerb. It was Watson, being chauffer driven. Who was this guy?

  ‘Tom.’ He leaned forward to catch my eye with his blue stare. ‘Could I have a word please?’

  ‘You want me to get in?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  I laughed aloud. ‘You must be kidding. The number of times it’s been drilled into us: never get into a car with a stranger.’