Level 1 > 2
Strength 20 > 22
Endurance 20 > 22
Agility 20 > 22
Chi 20 > 22
Sustenance 20 > 22
Focus 20 > 22
Vitality 20 > 22
Resonance 20 > 22
Conviction 25 > 27
HP 300 > 330
Aether 240 > 264
[New Skill!]
Ability: Sprint
Rank: 1
Tooltip: A burst of speed that lasts 3 seconds
Cast Time: Instant
Cost: 3% Aether
Cooldown: 10 seconds
[Mastery Shard: +1]
The messages barely registered. He was too focused on the cellar door being prised open, the final kobold struggling to climb back outside. It seemed the door was too heavy for it to push fully, so it had the door perched between its head and shoulder, placing its club on the grass outside, as it dug its other hand into the soil and dragged itself out.
It managed to get half its body outside. It wouldn’t get any further.
Caleb crouched beside it as it turned its head slowly, aware of his presence.
You have to do this. It will come back with more if you don’t.
He placed his left hand on the back of the kobold’s head and stabbed it several times in the neck, before drawing the blade against its jugular. Then he pushed it back as it grasped at its neck.
It fell back into the cellar, the door slamming closed behind it.
+74 XP
Caleb stood, his heart beating against his ribcage as he forced his breathing to slow down.
He knew this wasn’t a game, even as his HUD faded away. The body he inhabited was far more real than the virtual avatar he was used to. It was far more responsive, moving as he wanted it to move. There was no lag in his actions. He glanced to his shoulder, the shafts of the two arrows still sticking through the leather. He’d felt the pain of those arrows as they’d pierced his flesh. The right side near his hip still throbbed from the blow of the club. There were dull aches in his muscles as they recovered from being in a slumber all these months.
This was his body. As real as the one lying in a bed back at Claire’s house.
He looked around at the bodies of the five dead kobolds.
He knew they had been real. He’d felt the resistance of their skin and the way he’d needed to lean into the blade to drive it into their flesh. Heard the squelch as the blade dug in, the cracking of bones, the whimper of their death knells.
And yet, he hadn’t hesitated. What did that say about him?
He bent down, grabbed some fallen leaves. Used them to wipe the blood from the dagger and wherever blood had spattered onto his clothes.
Better to not think about it. This was the world. The reality. He’d been in similar positions before. His drug addiction had inevitably led to stints in prison. That’s all this place was. A prison.
He examined the dagger in his hands, holding it to the light, inspecting it for any remaining specks of blood but it looked clean. As he sheathed it and stood up, another quest notification pinged.
[Quest: Kobold Trouble]
There is a kobold village nearby!
Soon, they’ll wonder where their brethren are.
You can choose to ignore them.
Or you can choose to get rid of them.
Rewards:
9s 16b
XP: 1,050
- If you ignore them, they may hunt you.
[Accept: Yes | No]
The quests read much like they did in-game, with that frivolous personality from whoever had written them. They acted much like the game too—generating in response to player actions, making each player’s route to max different. It had been a major reason for the game’s popularity—everyone getting different quests and rewards, making each person’s experience unique.
That’s what he had to do. Treat this world like the game he had spent much of the past two years playing. Alive or not, the kobolds were just mobs. He needed to navigate Cytheria like the game. Grab quests, kill mobs, maximise XP. But he needed to be careful.
Six million players had already died. Others were still trapped. He wasn’t about to be among them. What was important was Jasper. He needed to do whatever was necessary to survive and find his son.
He accepted the quest and checked his map for the location marker. A few miles away, to the northwest.
“HUD On.”
There were three options for the HUD. On; Off; Combat. Caleb preferred it to be off or to show when he was in combat, but he needed to understand how it worked. In the game, a level up would usually restore his health to full, but those arrows were still sticking out of his shoulder and he could still feel every dull ache and throb in his body.
His health and aether bars faintly appeared in the top left of his vision. His aether bar was full as would be expected, but the health bar was a tenth reduced.
He looked at the arrows, one in his shoulder at the side, the other protruding from his bicep. He wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the shaft in his shoulder, using it to guide his fingers to the base where it was lodged into his flesh. He gritted his teeth, letting out a muted grunt as he pulled the arrow free and chucked it to the floor. Immediately, he could feel the blood trickling under his shirt and tunic. He did the same with the other arrow in his bicep.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Minor health potion.”
A small vial of liquid appeared in his hand, its colour a faint shade of pink. He chugged the liquid, a refreshing broth that tasted like a watery berry smoothie. He tossed the vial away, but nothing happened. His health bar didn’t increase. The faint throbbing in his shoulder and bicep didn’t go away. The blood continued to trickle.
He wasn’t sure whether the health potion didn’t work or if he had done something wrong. Or maybe it just wasn’t strong enough. There were eight tiers of potion strength in the game. Maybe he needed to use a more powerful one. He checked his inventory. He had plenty of each type. It couldn’t hurt. Might as well try the strongest.
“Exalted health potion.”
The vial was no bigger than the minor health potion but the liquid inside was a dark shade of red, even darker than blood. He put it to his lips. It was refreshing but where the minor potion was watery, this was as thick as a stew, the taste of berries much stronger and it had a hint of alcohol. It was closer to a rich wine.
He tossed the vial away, but again nothing. Maybe he was doing something wrong or could it just be that potions didn’t work? He sighed, his eyes on the empty vials. Another anomaly. He was so used to them disappearing in the game. He quickly bent down, picked them up and deposited them to his inventory. They might come in handy at some point.
He dismissed his inventory and set his HUD back to combat as he placed his left hand on his right shoulder and rotated his right arm. He grimaced as the open wounds stretched. The shoulder and arm were a little stiff but not enough to hamper him.
He headed towards the treeline in the direction of the location marker on his map, his eyes flickering a final time towards the kobold corpses. The corpses that should have disappeared but hadn’t.
The trees around him were spaced wide apart, the branches relatively bare as the leaves were still growing. They offered little cover as he strode across the undergrowth but it gave him an idea. He thought back to the ability he had gained—[Sprint].
He called up his skills as he walked.
Everyone got the first two abilities. [Lifesaver] was interesting. He’d seen [Disengage] before on other classes, although it might have been called something different. However, he didn’t know of a class that got a hundred percent damage immunity at level one, even if it was only for a short time with a punishing cooldown. It would still be enough to survive a bad situation temporarily.
The abilities didn’t seem to be class specific. In the game, players gained new abilities every two levels unique to the class. Assuming he gained abilities in the same way, he wondered what others he would get if they weren’t class specific.
As the grass crunched underneath, he spoke another command. “Mastery.”
[No Masteries available]
Well, that was helpful. Two [Mastery Shards] but no idea what they were for, though he suspected chips converted to shards and shards converted to orbs. Still, the mechanic should reveal itself at some point. Unless it was like the potions and didn’t work.
He sighed as he dismissed the screen and looked ahead. The village was several miles away and with the sparsity between the trees, it gave him an opportunity to test [Sprint]. He positioned himself so he wouldn’t run into obstacles.
[Sprint]
He felt a glowing warmth in the centre of his chest, spreading through him as something gathered around his lower half like a soft invisible cloud coiling between his legs. His calves prickled, a tingling sensation spreading through them like static discharge; warmth bloomed from his lower legs towards his thighs and feet. He waited, but nothing further happened. The effect lasted for all of three seconds, and as suddenly as it came, it disappeared.
He glanced down at his legs, then smiled at his own stupidity. He was expecting it to be like the game. Call the ability and let the game take over. You didn’t feel abilities in the game, just saw their effects. This was different. The sensation in his calves must have been the Aether flowing into him—giving him the power to [Sprint].
It was his decision to use it.
He waited for the cooldown, then activated the ability again.
This time, as soon as he felt that invisible pressure gather around his legs, he ran. Electricity crackled through his calves as the world seemed to lurch, skeletal trees blurring past at the edge of his vision. Then it was over, the sensation dissipating. He stumbled slightly as he settled into a jog.
He glanced over his shoulder, judging the distance he had covered. It looked like thirty, maybe thirty-five metres. No faster than an elite sprinter really, though his legs didn’t feel fatigued in any way. Probably an addition to make it easier at lower levels. Covering distance before level thirty had always been a pain, though now that Caleb thought about it, what would stop him from riding a mount now?
As soon as the cooldown was over, he [Sprinted] again, cool air rushing past him, before settling into a jog as he waited for the ability to be active again. He ran a fair way to the village in that manner. [Sprint] for three seconds, jog for ten, until his aether meter was fully depleted. When that happened, he decided to walk the rest of the way. He didn’t have many abilities, but he didn’t like the idea of going into a fight with anything other than a full meter.
As he walked, it occurred to him that he hadn’t had loot notifications from the kobold kills. In the game, looting was automatic. The devs had instituted a system that looted for the player and held the items in a large but not unlimited inventory separate to the player inventory. It allowed players to complete a sizeable amount of quests or mob kills without needing to decide which loot items to keep until they could make it to a town or city to trade their items. Once the player selected which loot to keep, the rest was discarded automatically.
He checked his notifications to make sure but found nothing. He checked his inventory just in case but still nothing. With the bodies not disappearing, he wondered if he needed to loot manually. Or maybe looting didn’t exist at all.
It wasn’t long before the village came into view through the trees. Caleb crouched low to the ground, wincing a little as a small jolt of pain shot through his right shoulder. He crawled carefully along the ground towards the edge of the treeline, peeking from behind a trunk.
Ahead of him stretched a couple of hundred metres of farmland leading to the village. There were no walls protecting the village, but instead, on the side closest to him, there were the charred timber frames of what had once been homes. They led to a modest two-storey town hall made of stone and mortar with a red slate-tiled roof, its two chimneys smokeless. A little beyond the town hall were another dozen thatched-roofed wooden houses huddled close together like a group of people sheltering from the cold. Those were still intact.
A large stream flowed gently past on the northern side of the village.
His eyes widened when he realised what he was looking at. This was no kobold village.
It was human.
He stayed where he was, crouched low to the ground as he ran his eyes over the village, looking for movement but the place looked abandoned. There were no farmers in the fields. No one washing their clothes by the stream or trying to catch fish for dinner. No signs of sheep grazing or chicken pecking. He glanced up overhead, the sun hanging halfway to the horizon. It was cold for spring, sure, but it seemed far too early for there to be no one around.
He brought his map up again and the yellow quest marker was practically on top of his black location marker. This was definitely the place.
He dismissed the map and skirted through the forest towards the stream, with the village to his left. When he had gone far enough, he broke through the treeline and ran towards the remains of the homes that had once stood. He could hear the gentle lapping of the stream thirty metres to his right as he burst across the open farmland, hoping the charred timber frames that still stood afforded him some cover from the town hall and the intact homes beyond. He used [Sprint] as often as he could to cover the two hundred or so metres to the village, until he found himself standing against a blackened, contorted timber beam at the backside of what had once been a home.
He continued on, stepping over the jagged edges of the rest of the wood that had made up the wall. He crouched as he scuttled across the ash and charred remains of furniture inside the building, and sidled up to the broken, scorched wall on the other side. He peeked around the edge. About fifteen metres ahead of him sat the town hall but his attention was immediately drawn to a wooden cage, outside the corner closest to him.
Inside was a woman, a child asleep at her feet as she gently stroked its head.