Tommy

Tommy

First appearance: Crucible, chapter 1
Last appearance: Crucible, chapter 47
Appears in: Crucible

Latest status

Efficient, enthusiastic dungeon farmer, out-leveling his mother

Tommy is a young boy, the five-year-old son of Karen and one of the child mercenaries recruited into the Arts and Crafts guild. Armed with an explosive vest and an oversized dagger, he approaches the game’s violence with an unsettling childlike enthusiasm, treating dangerous missions and dungeon crawling alike as play. Impulsive and easily bored but eager for his mother’s approval, he adapts to the game’s systems with startling speed, quickly becoming a capable and efficient fighter in his own right.

Abilities

• Sprint skill — Book 8
• dual-dagger combat — Book 8
• fast, systematic combat against undead monsters — Book 8

Book 8: Crucible

Tommy is introduced as part of Karen’s group of child bombers, wearing a vest of fire mana gems that he must trigger himself after counting to ten Mississippis; he treats the mission as play, having already improved on a previous bombing run to managing six or seven seconds before pulling the trigger, and views other players as “loot pinatas” to stab. He is easily bored and impulsive, nearly attacking a player before the mission begins, though he cannot meet his mother’s eyes when caught misbehaving and beams with pride when he shows on his fingers that he counted correctly. Later, while digging through rubble in Crystal Reach with the guild’s other children, he holds his mother to her promise that he can stab things and competes with another child, Ryan, to reach a mausoleum first, only to be instantly distracted by a candy stand once inside; Karen observes that he is learning inside the game “too fast, arguably.” In a subsequent dungeon he treats the undead children he fights as playmates rather than threats and is the first of the group to level up, calling out to Karen for approval. By the dungeon’s later farming sessions he kills efficiently and without hesitation, standing amid mounds of undead corpses while chasing a snack reward tied to reaching level 460, and by this point he is leveling faster than his mother.

Status: Bored child bomber on a mission, weaponized by the Arts and Crafts guild → Efficient, enthusiastic dungeon farmer, out-leveling his mother

Karen: Starts the book as a bombing accomplice she has to keep distracted from boredom-driven mistakes, and ends it out-leveling her in the dungeon while still seeking her approval for every kill and level gained.

Ryan: Develops a competitive rivalry with fellow child Ryan over which of them reaches objectives first.

Key quote: “But Mommy, you promised I could stab things!”

Appears in

• Crucible — 4 chapters