Oh, fuck!

I had to step back and hide behind a column; then, I went slowly back out.

There is a small but coquette cafeteria in the hotel's lobby, and who camps there right now? Tim and Lola, together with several colleagues. I almost ran into them. I went hiding behind bushes and thought feverishly about what to do.

I do not want Lola and my colleagues to find out that I am going to rent a coffin. I could wait for them to go away; however, that may take between five minutes and five hours, and I don't have time to lose.

It is a cheap hotel, but it has a nice cafeteria. All public areas are decent and pleasant, and the consumption is relatively inexpensive; therefore, the gang may stay for a while. What do I do?

It did not take long to find a solution, lucky me, I have Flo. The next moment when I entered the hotel's lobby, I had the face of a middle-aged woman that looked a little bit like that frog-lady that tells the weather. I rented my coffin for ten hours and hurried up... to my 'pyjama party'.

The setup that Helen had sent me was not simple, and it took some time and work to convince the stupid computer to use it, but after fifteen minutes of contorted typing, it worked. It is annoying to work in these coffins. Hell yeah, they are not designed for work, there is barely enough place to sleep in here, and I was working lying on my back with my hands in the air on the virtual screen. I had to shake my drained hands repeatedly to stimulate the blood flow. Fifteen minutes of hands-up work! Yuk!

But now it was done. As soon as I started the newly defined application, the computer plunged me directly into the new world. It was not the gradual immersion you usually have with the dream interface and Dreamland's login but a sudden transition to the virtual world.

After the surprise and shock had passed, I was able to look around and take in the situation. I was inside the Mephisto game world but at the setup area.

“Call Calamity Lara”

“Avatar not available. Select other/Create new.”

What? Is this the right game?

“Call Spartacius”

“Avatar is not available for your credentials. Create new?”

“Status Calamity Lara”

“Avatar level 95. Avatar logged out.”

“Recall”

“Avatar Calamity Lara not found on Dreamland servers.”

Oh, fuck! The day of: oh, fuck! This is the right game, and I had taken Cala out. The fact that the system had registered that surprised me. Stupid system! How could I place the avatar back in? How did I take her out? The fact that I materialized her in the real world should not delete the avatar from Dreamland's servers?

I was unhappy, but maybe I could find a way to make it work. Why would I need their avatars? I asked Flo:

“Let's forget the system. We are in Mephisto's world! Should we not go directly to that lightfire you'd set? Would that work?”

Flo hesitated one moment with her answer:

“We are now a ghost in this world. What can we do as a ghost?”

I looked attentively at my hands: they were transparent! Baffled, I looked around:

We are currently in that particular area reserved for setup/start-up. I am in a kind of a cabin, like an elevator. A futuristically designed zone with all sorts of controls and a couple of huge mirrors that work as displays.

”Fuck, if I make a new avatar, that would be a level one character?”

“Is there no way to bring Cala in?”

“I don't know. All this fucking computers can do is project this ghost image of me. The ghost looks like Cala, do you see?”

“Yes. Not even like the frog-lady we have made her look like. The computer took your physical image.”

“True. Strange!”

“What race should I select?”

“Does it matter?”

“I always wanted to play a dark elf, but I was not allowed. See how nimble, how gracious they are?”

“Why not an orc?”

“Lol, that brute with huge canines?”

“The orc females do not have those huge canines! Are we not in a hurry?”

“We have paid for ten hours. Ten hours to play, so we can at least spend a couple of minutes choosing the avatar if we need a new one. What should I choose?”

“Don't you want to play a male character?”

“Me a male character? Hm? No. An elf? Nah, that is the first choice for all noobs!”

The image of an elf village appeared in front of my eyes. A lovely elf girl was gathering fruits in the forest.

“Look, we can change everything: the skin colour, the hair colour, the eyes colour, make her taller or smaller. Everything is possible... well, within limits. I cannot make her smaller than one fifty or greater than two meters. Lol, a two meters elf-girl!”

“Aren't we going to discard her anyway?”

“A goblin girl? A vampire! No, those have severe daylight problems... A human?”

Each time the mirror changed to a new environment, a new village.

“A beastkin? What kind of a beastkin?”

There were all kinds: different types of cat-like, dogs, bears, mice, centaurs and buffalo-like that looked like minotaurs to caprine types looking like dryads.

“Oh, come on, we are only losing time.”

“OK, OK. Then a dark elf. I always wanted to be a dark elf.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh yes!”

A pale greenish skin nimble girl with purple tainted red eyes appeared. Her dirty silver hair was cut short. She was almost naked, covered with some scraps and was wandering through some stone tunnels.

No time to customize. She is pretty as she is.

“Rename Andy”

The next moment I was there in the cavern, grasping with my hands the humid stones. Two guards with electrified spears were casually talking behind me.

OK, so the dark elves start with an exciting escape quest. Only I do not have now time for exciting escape quests. And maybe I should have chosen a different dark elf; this girl looked lovely but was too weak.

“Flo, can you teleport us away?”

“Sure, I'll use the lightfire; let me lead!”

As soon as Flo took the lead, she started her lightfire spell. One of the guards saw me:

“What do you do!?”

Just when I expected Flo to grin victoriously, waving them bye-bye, a sharp burst of pain in my left collarbone made me crumble to my knees. The guards hurried up to my place.

“Did she find some spell scroll? What was that?”

An electrified spear touched me, and all my muscles contracted, sending me on a spasmodic trip over the humid stones.

“What did you try to do, you piece of shit!? Should we drag you like a bundled sausage?”

Flo stood up with a sanguinary look in her eyes. The left guard laughed.

“Huch! You have nerved the little pest! Give it some more juice; make her dance!”

A thunder shook him, but the collarbone again pained so hard that I fell to my knees.

A thunder? That was a pathetic bolt!

“Ohohoh! The little beast has claws!”

He came closer to me and put his spear on my back.

“You are lucky that we need to deliver you in one piece to the altar house, but do that again, and an accident will happen; we'll need to look for a replacement! Do you understand me?”

I nodded between tears. All her memories invaded my mind. Fuck, dark elves are not for the faint-hearted. Also, certainly not for under eighteen. Fear and desire for revenge invaded my heart.

“Oh fuck!”

To hear Flo swearing like me would have been funny if not for the situation.

“What is it now?”

“I am not here physically. It is only my projection here. So I do not have my spell power. I know my spells and can spell them as much as Andy has mana. Do you understand me? We are Andy now. OK, Andy-with-our knowledge, but still Andy.”

OK. I've said it; it is the Oh-fuck-day. I stood up on my shaking feet and walked further in the direction of my future slaughterhouse. The guards were now closer to me, and from time to time, the spears came dangerously close to my back.

Memories came to my mind. Andy's recollection. Her innocent hand scratching on the walls was not wholly innocent. She was looking for some roots that could help her defuse the lock fixed in the left collarbone.

“What do we do? Should we try another character?”

This time Flo surprised me with the answer:

“No. Dark elves are physically weak but one of the strongest caster species. We need spell power to be able to cast the lightfire spell. It would not have worked; I do not have enough spell power now, but maybe sooner than with other species. Unless you think we can find a better place to level?”

“Level?”

“Yes, we need to level and that fast.”

Andy was happy and entirely agreed with us about evading and killing the guards. I suppressed a grin as my hand found suddenly the root I was looking for. A small, about ten centimetres plant with several millimetres thick roots hiding in cracks in the cavern walls. I snatched a root without dragging attention to me.

Where the root snapped, it released a viscous white liquid that I applied to my left collarbone, there where the small ring had been drilled into the bone.

It was a simple device to control me, a small silver ring that went through my collarbone. The guard had only to press a button somewhere to command the ring to strain against my bone. The mana intrusion and the pain caused by the straining ring were enough to bring me to my knees.

The white liquid coming out of the plant's root was highly corrosive, and it took only a couple of minutes to dissolve half of the bone and free the ring. I needed to be careful; if I'd drop too much, I'd simply melt my collarbone. It did pain, but Andy had a high pain tolerance and a target in front of her eyes: free herself from the ring.

Tears were in my eyes as I left the ring in another small crevice on the left wall. Tears caused by pain and the relief of having it done. The guard admonished me:

“Stop wandering against the walls and go faster!”

The spear hit my butt, and I was thrown ahead, falling on all four.

"Huch, have you seen how I made her jump high?! We could make her jump all the way to the altar house!"

They laughed and the other guard struck me too, to make me jump.

A deep hatred for all humans invaded my heart as I hurriedly stood up. Fuck no! Not all humans are like these guards? Huch, this will be hard to control. Could the guards not have been orcs?

Good that he did not check the wall. Unseen by them, I grinned happily and slowly healed myself preparing for the fight. Freed from the ring, I could run and shoot small thunderbolts at them. About seven to twelve bolts might be needed to kill one.

As we walked some sixty to seventy meters from the place where I'd left the ring, a sharp tone followed by an explosion shattered the cavern. The ring had reached maximum distance from the guards and exploded. I darted away when I heard the tone, using the first moments of confusion. When the guards realized what had happened, I was some ten meters away.

Good that I looked behind as one guard was just throwing his spear, and I could barely avoid it. It still touched me, and the sparkle of electricity shocked me and made me lose a precious moment, but lucky me, the second guard had not used it to throw his spear. I ran again as soon as I could, disappearing from their sight behind a corner.

Good that I am faster than the two idiots.