through the battling warriors. The Paladin was still cleaving Goblins in twain. The Dwarf Twins were fighting to protect the Enchanter, who in turn was casting spells, fireballs exploding with little mushroom clouds like atomic bombs, and the Halfling was hanging around in the background and throwing flaming bottles of oil at the Goblins.
If they were still in the room when the Dark Goddess showed up, they were all going to become extinct.
BJ didn’t much care—he’d gotten what he came for, and if none of his party survived, there wouldn’t be any argument over how to split the loot.
Besides, the Orb of Healing was unsplittable.
“Let’s try restarting your computer,” BJ said. “If you still have a problem, call me back.”
The Elven Mage ducked through the Gothic arch at the far end of the room and ran past the splintered bodies of two Guardian Gargoyles. Behind him, he heard the chiming chords that accompanied the appearance of the Dark Goddess, followed by the sounds of a lot of dying.
Stupid noobs, BJ thought. And when the Dark Goddess disapparated, he could reenter the room and pick up the gold and possessions of his deceased companions.
That Fire Sword would come in handy . . . for somebody.
BJ had just made anywhere between six hundred and a thousand dollars— real dollars, not the virtual gold pieces used in the game. More if he could pick up the Fire Sword.
BJ had played the Adventure of the Orb so many times that he could practically do it with his eyes closed. He could do it with perfect competence even when performing his customer service job. But though the adventure was by now tedious in the extreme, the tedium was worth it in terms of income.
The fact was that there were a lot of players who didn’t want to play the lower levels of online games like World of Cinnabar. They wanted to start powerful characters right away and were willing to pay—pay real money—for those characters and for powerful magic items like the Orb of Healing. It was against the rules of the World of Cinnabar for money to be exchanged for these virtual items, but there was no practical way for game administrators—or those of any other MMORPG—to police eBay or the many other auction sites.
The Orb alone, when auctioned online, would net BJ at least three hundred dollars. His Level Twelve Elven Mage, with all its loot and gear, would net him another three hundred. If he was lucky, the auction could go higher.
Not bad for the thirty online hours it had taken to raise the Mage to his present level—even if competition from a thousand Chinese boiler-room gold farms had depressed prices.
And besides, BJ’s old Chevy needed a new set of tires. And a paint job, but the tires came first.
BJ’s job with Spud paid him enough to cover his nine-year-old car and an apartment that smelled both of mildew and of his ursoid roommate, a UCLA dropout and fellow Spud employee named Jacen—whose parents had named him, incidentally, after a character in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
When he reflected on his apartment and his car and his job with Spud and compared it with what Charlie had, it made him want to sneak over to Santa Monica and slash Charlie’s tires.
If he could actually come up with a Spell of Invisibility, he would do exactly that.
But until then, it looked as if he was stuck with having to toil at the gold farm in order to make ends meet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
This Is Not the Whole Story
At sixteen hundred hours, Dagmar was on the roof of the hotel. The top two floors were a series of suites and penthouses, and Dagmar needed a special key card to go there. She’d had to get off the elevator a floor below and go up the stairs. To keep the riffraff out, the top two floors had the same key card locks as the elevator, but the roof door was not so equipped.
By this time she was completely familiar with the hotel stairs. She’d followed Tomer Zan’s instructions and found her six escape routes
If they were still in the room when the Dark Goddess showed up, they were all going to become extinct.
BJ didn’t much care—he’d gotten what he came for, and if none of his party survived, there wouldn’t be any argument over how to split the loot.
Besides, the Orb of Healing was unsplittable.
“Let’s try restarting your computer,” BJ said. “If you still have a problem, call me back.”
The Elven Mage ducked through the Gothic arch at the far end of the room and ran past the splintered bodies of two Guardian Gargoyles. Behind him, he heard the chiming chords that accompanied the appearance of the Dark Goddess, followed by the sounds of a lot of dying.
Stupid noobs, BJ thought. And when the Dark Goddess disapparated, he could reenter the room and pick up the gold and possessions of his deceased companions.
That Fire Sword would come in handy . . . for somebody.
BJ had just made anywhere between six hundred and a thousand dollars— real dollars, not the virtual gold pieces used in the game. More if he could pick up the Fire Sword.
BJ had played the Adventure of the Orb so many times that he could practically do it with his eyes closed. He could do it with perfect competence even when performing his customer service job. But though the adventure was by now tedious in the extreme, the tedium was worth it in terms of income.
The fact was that there were a lot of players who didn’t want to play the lower levels of online games like World of Cinnabar. They wanted to start powerful characters right away and were willing to pay—pay real money—for those characters and for powerful magic items like the Orb of Healing. It was against the rules of the World of Cinnabar for money to be exchanged for these virtual items, but there was no practical way for game administrators—or those of any other MMORPG—to police eBay or the many other auction sites.
The Orb alone, when auctioned online, would net BJ at least three hundred dollars. His Level Twelve Elven Mage, with all its loot and gear, would net him another three hundred. If he was lucky, the auction could go higher.
Not bad for the thirty online hours it had taken to raise the Mage to his present level—even if competition from a thousand Chinese boiler-room gold farms had depressed prices.
And besides, BJ’s old Chevy needed a new set of tires. And a paint job, but the tires came first.
BJ’s job with Spud paid him enough to cover his nine-year-old car and an apartment that smelled both of mildew and of his ursoid roommate, a UCLA dropout and fellow Spud employee named Jacen—whose parents had named him, incidentally, after a character in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
When he reflected on his apartment and his car and his job with Spud and compared it with what Charlie had, it made him want to sneak over to Santa Monica and slash Charlie’s tires.
If he could actually come up with a Spell of Invisibility, he would do exactly that.
But until then, it looked as if he was stuck with having to toil at the gold farm in order to make ends meet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
This Is Not the Whole Story
At sixteen hundred hours, Dagmar was on the roof of the hotel. The top two floors were a series of suites and penthouses, and Dagmar needed a special key card to go there. She’d had to get off the elevator a floor below and go up the stairs. To keep the riffraff out, the top two floors had the same key card locks as the elevator, but the roof door was not so equipped.
By this time she was completely familiar with the hotel stairs. She’d followed Tomer Zan’s instructions and found her six escape routes
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