Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds Read Free

charged at the short bearded man with a yell.
    He only made it a few steps before electricity crawled over the sword and it vanished from his hands.
    Toby looked down to find it back in his own hand.
    Very weird quest.
    The small bearded man laughed. “Oh, you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you Paul? No. You’re going to have to work for it.”
    The armored man gritted his teeth. The others in the room were nearly all back on their feet now. The short bearded man kept on laughing as he vanished from sight.
    But his voice didn’t.
    “Good day, fresh denizens of the Proving Grounds! Welcome to the early access period! You may have noticed the downtime last night that prevented us from getting the server up on time. We do apologize for that, but we were putting the last touches our spectacular pre-launch event!”
    The people about the room were mumbling to each other. The armored man was pointing and biting off orders. They looked at Toby every now and then.
    “The event has already begun.” The small bearded man’s voice continued. “The early access week will be like nothing that comes again after, so enjoy it! Tell your friends! An empire will rise or fall before your eyes, and before your blades! There are some rules, of course. You get one character for now, just to reduce clutter, and should that character die your account is locked out for the rest of the early access period. So be careful! Of course, if you don’t care for these rules there’s only one thing you need to do. Find and kill the barbarian warlord Tobin Ironblood. He seeks to conquer these lands for his own ends and you, good people, are all that stands in his way! End his reign and the restrictions on characters and death are ended as well. Oh, and one last thing. Open Player Versus Player combat has been engaged for the duration of the event. So watch yourselves. Begin!”
    A loud gong sounded from everywhere and nowhere. A local sound, played in both ears.
    “Did he just say…” Toby tilted his head as he looked around the room. “Does everyone get this quest, or am I really the one guy? Because that sounded like I am the one guy. And that kinda sounded like everyone and their grandma is going to be gunning for me. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. And I’m level one.”
    The armored man turned back to Toby. He shook his head. “Listen to be. This is important.”
    The alarm on his desk beeped.
    It was 1:30 p.m.
    Damn, he must have spent more time in the character creator than he thought.
    “Yeah, I’ll have to get a rain check on that one. Time for work.”
    He brought up the main menu.
    “Hey, wait, you can’t just-”
    The logout button turned gray as Toby let go of it. The headset yanked on his ears a bit as he removed it. He gently laid it back on the floor and mumbled about crazy quests.

2
    He got to the shop a bit late.
    Mr. Stevens hadn’t noticed. Toby wandered in and set down his backpack in the by his station in the back. The monitor showed him pressing orders. Of which there were three. Not much to do.
    Good. He should have a few minutes to look up whatever the hell that quest had been about. And maybe to read up on the barbarian and the other classes. He might pick something else.
    Er, or not. The voice had said he only gets one during early access. Pity. He wished he’d put more thought into it now. Of course the voice had also said he was the supreme leader of evil that everyone else was trying to overthrow. That must have been some kind of bug. Every player heard their own name or something.
    There was no reason to single him out. Nothing that made him special. He hadn’t even bought the collector’s edition. Granted, he probably would have if they had been in stock…
    There was a TV on the side of the room with the break table. Mr. Stevens kept it tuned to the twenty for hour news cycle of everything is bad and we’re all going to die unless you stay tuned in. Toby generally tried to ignore it.