The Weirdest Noob
Author: Arthur Stone
Date: 2017-03-19 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Magic; Science Fiction; Virtual Reality; Fiction
Description: Something quite odd is happening in Second World—the planet’s foremost MMORPG. Something that’s causing alliances to be broken, and friendships, forgotten. A worthless low-level mine becomes the stage of vicious battles, its burned ruins suddenly contested by the game’s toughest clans. Every border is controlled, and every road in the province blocked off. The weak players and NPCs alike are subjected to non-stop violent raids courtesy of Eastern invaders. And the strong… The strong are scouring the virtual world for the culprit—the weirdest noob the game has ever seen.

Chapter 1

Darkness is never quite impenetrable. You can always make out something, even if the room is unlit, there are no windows, and your eyes are shut tight: barely discernible white dots scattered in abundance, pale spatters, and vague, fleeting images. As if someone had loaded a movie projector with a scratched roll of overexposed film and decided to use the inside of your eyelids for a screen.

He didn’t need to be told what that meant. He remembered everything—or, rather, everything up to the moment there was a flash inside the hangar. It may have been the very last time he saw light.

He no longer had a visual cortex in his brain—or, at best, it was severely damaged. Even if his eyes had survived, which was unlikely, he no longer had any centers for them to transfer information to. He could come up with no other explanation.

And the visual cortex was hardly a tiny spot in the cerebral periphery. His brain may have been damaged in several places, and seriously so. Basically, given the power behind that flash—the final one—it was a wonder he still found himself alive and even capable of rational thought.

But what if he wasn’t alive? Death is beyond one’s knowledge, after all. Notwithstanding the wealth of information accumulated by humankind, no one has so far managed to provide a coherent answer to the question of what happens next.

It is hard for an atheist to believe in the existence of a higher power, but he wouldn’t be much surprised to see a shining tunnel with winged figures and celestial music in front of him.

But there was no tunnel—nor did any winged angels arrive to carry away his mortal soul. Instead, he heard a strange voice.

“Day ninety-eight. Testing, one, two, three. Can you hear me? If you can, please try to respond or react in some way. We can see that your stats have changed, but we don’t know if you’re conscious.”

That didn’t sound much like a divine voice. But it didn’t much resemble a human voice, either—it had no personality and sounded a bit metallic, as though produced by a speech synthesizer. Regardless of the situation, he wasn’t quite so confused that it would interfere with normal perception of reality. He nearly instantly realized that his assumptions concerning the damage to the visual cortex were indirectly confirmed. They were trying to reach him with the aid of his hearing sense. Given the absence of background noises, he probably had no ears, either, and they were transmitting the information by direct stimulation of the auricular nerve or the auditory cortex.

So what did he have, after all? Was there anything left?!…

“I can hear you. Can you hear me, too?”

“Please repeat that. I’m adjusting the settings, the distortions are too great…”

“I can hear you. One, two, three, four…”

“That will do. We hear you well. You’re about to have an important conversation. Please stand by.”

It is hard to judge the passage of time with nothing to stimulate the senses. It seemed like an eternity to him. But everything is finite, and eventually the metallic voice broke the silence again:

“Congratulations. We have already abandoned hope. You are back from the dead. How are you feeling?”

“I can’t really say. I have a question of my own—just how much of me has managed to come back from the dead? What about my body? And the others, the ones who were next to me—what about them?”

“Unfortunately, I can give no answer. No precise answer, that is. You would have to ask the doctors.”

“Aren’t you a doctor?”

“No, I’m not. You should remember me—I’m Steve Edkins.

“I do. You were in charge of HR on our project.”

“Quite so. I did, however, get promoted since then.”

“Since then? It happened yesterday. I saw you just yesterday.”

“No, you didn’t. Or, rather, that was your yesterday. I regret to inform you that you have spent some time in a coma.”

“How long?”

“You should really ask the doctors. They requested that I don’t mention such information.”

“Then why am I talking to you, and not to them?”

“They are making this conversation feasible. There are a few matters of paramount importance that we need to discuss ASAP. We have summoned an attorney from the legal department—we’ll go through all the legal details once he’s here. Please stand by a while longer.”

“Details? Discuss? Inasmuch as I understand, the situation with my body is really deplorable. Why would I talk to the company representative and to its lawyers? Could you clarify that, please? Or did the doctors prohibit even that?”

“I’m not a lawyer, so it’s a bit hard for me…”

“Try it, anyway.”

“All right. I’ll be brief. I cannot provide any commentary concerning your condition, but it is the result of a workplace injury. On behalf of the management, I would like to express my sincere…”

“You said you’d be brief.”

“I’m sorry. According to your job contract, the company covers the medical bills in such cases. There are, however, certain restrictions. In particular, we do not pay for treatment overseas. Organ deliveries from abroad are also out. There are a few more items. In your case, the payments have been made in full, and still are. We were prepared to carry on in the same vein, but your unexpected regaining of consciousness after the coma has thwarted our plans somewhat.”

“Plans? I hope you mean treatment plans?”

“I’m sorry to say it, but a full treatment is problematic in your case. We could more or less guarantee that life support would work for as long as you remained in a coma. Having regained consciousness, you have created a problem for your body.”

“Why do I even need a body if it cannot be treated?”

“I admire your ability to assess your condition with such calmness. It is indeed a dire situation, but medical science keeps making advances. There already are some experimental technologies that may be of use in your case.”

“So you’re suggesting that I try experimental treatment?”

“Not quite, no—you have misunderstood. More like, you’re going to need to wait for new treatment methods to become available. The safest way of doing it is in a state of artificially-induced coma. That would cause your body less stress; also, conscious waiting may cause you severe psychological damage.”

“If I understand correctly, you suggest that I enter a state of coma voluntarily?”

“Indeed. There is a method for it, and it’s one hundred percent safe.”

“It is the doctors that should be assessing safety, and I don’t see them anywhere.”

“You can talk to your doctor right away, but I’m afraid he’ll offer you the same. There is no alternative.”

“There’s always an alternative.”

“I have heard a lot about your outstanding talents, but I’d be most surprised if you managed to find another way. I wouldn’t say that remaining in your present situation is really a viable option—it is basically a less obvious form of euthanasia.”

“I want to talk to an attorney.”

“He’ll be here shortly.”

“Am I in a clinic?”

“You are.”

“Have you stood watch here waiting for me to come to my senses?”

“Why, of course not.”

“So you came over physically? It’s hard for me to judge the passage of time, but it seemed like it wasn’t that long.”

“I connected using the medical department’s equipment in our laboratory facilities.”

“So the lawyer is walking over from the administrative block?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell him to head back once he gets here.”

“Why? What for?”

“I do indeed need an attorney, but I want mine, not yours.”

“The company does not cover third party—”

“Did I mention you having to cover anything? Kindly get in touch with Morrison and Fenton right away—they’re located in the Bay Area. Please tell Mr. Fenton that I would like him to represent me. Should he agree, please fill him in on the situation and ask him to get in touch with me at once. Am I right to assume that I may not have much of it left?”

“Well, yes, your condition… You don’t need me to say it. And I want to assure you that you gain nothing by rejecting our attorney. Please understand that no one is planning anything that would be to your detriment, it’s just that the situation—“

“I’m sorry to be interrupting you again, but we both understand that time is money. Please hurry up.”

“All right. Hold on a bit.”

And so he had to face the dark once again, but this time he became immersed in contemplation instead of admiring its impenetrable blackness. The conversation with Edkins was pretty useful—he got what he had wanted, and there weren’t even any tangible objections. That is, if he really conversed with Edkins and not his own schizophrenia locked up in the remnants of his brain disfigured by the explosion. What next? Was there an alternative? And would Fenton be able to find one? Well, Fenton himself was unlikely to do anything of the sort. However, if Edkins managed to get in touch with him and none other, he would most likely delegate the whole thing to White—that is, if he agreed to get involved in the first place. And White was someone capable of finding a ceremonial exit from a gas chamber, with a liveried doorman without a single speck of dust standing to either side.

White also owed him a favor, and one felt compelled to believe that he wasn’t one to forget such things.

This could indeed be schizophrenia… So how could White help him out in a situation as dire as this? He should really be thinking of coma or euthanasia—which amount to the same thing—rather than lawyers.

“Can you hear me, John?”

“Steve, I would really feel much better if you called me Yevgeny.”

“Sure, Yevgeny, whichever you prefer.”

A dying man has his perks—everyone is eager to oblige your whims, including calling you by your God-given name, rather than its Anglicized version. A small consolation, but you take what you get.

“We have gotten in touch with Mr. Morrison. He has agreed to take on your case. His employee John White will handle it.”

“When can I talk to him?”

“He has already departed to join us here—it is closer than the clinic. I can’t tell you when exactly he will arrive, but he has already requested to be sent all the materials pertaining to your situation so as to peruse them en route.”

Could White have hired a personal driver? Unlikely—he must really trust his autopilot.

“Could I talk to the doctors in the meantime?”

“Yes, of course.”

Not the best decision to have made. Assuming everything to be bad is one thing; hearing a dead metallic voice give you a list of gruesome details is quite another.

It wasn’t just bad—it was curtains. How odd it was that someone still deemed his pitiful remnants worthy of a conversation, let alone an attorney. The patient’s capacity to function was dubious to say the least.

Little wonder, then, that this pitiful rump of a formerly young and healthy body in top physical shape felt reluctant to stay in this world—there wasn’t much for it left to do. It was only the fact that they had managed to get him from the burnt-out lab to a deep resuscitation capsule in less than five minutes that kept him hanging on to life among the ruins of his former glory.

Edkins might be some kind of bastard, but he was right—he wouldn’t last long in his current condition. Days? More like hours. Most likely, he’d just lose his mind peering into the darkness and counting the remaining moments of his existence. He could already imagine something hostile in the dark—a carnivorous presence licking its lips as it drew ever closer. The mind needed to be stimulated in some way, but there was nothing here besides Steve’s metallic voice, and so his imagination was trying to fill in the gaps.

This mechanical voice could drive one crazy much quicker than the impenetrable darkness.

“Jenya[1], can you hear me?”

Not the Anglicized John; not Yevgeny or Ross, either. Just the informal “Jenya.”

That had to be White.

“Whaddup, mah dawg? Where ya been? Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice?”

“Come again?”

“Gotta say whaddup to mah homie White. Even though it pains me to see a proud black man with such a name.”

“I see you took a correspondence course in Ebonics.”

“Foh shizzle, mah nizzle.”

“In between lapses in cerebral activity filled with classic gangster rap. Look, I know you’re a fan, and I know you well enough in general. Try to prove me you’re just screwing around in a situation that isn’t particularly conducive to humor, or I’ll start believing all those people telling me you’re damaged goods. I’ll even overlook this sudden and alarmingly offensive bout of wiggerism.”

“Check it, homie. You know Edkins, right?”

“I do now.”

“Well, just so you’re aware: his voice sounds just like yours, the way I hear it here. And the same goes for the doctor I spoke to earlier.”

“I get it. You are trying to emphasize certain aspects of our communication in order to see whether or not I’m an impostor. So what’s your verdict?”

“How did I meet your cat?”

“You stepped on his tail, and brought him some crème fraîche to make up for it. That was the start of a long and beautiful friendship.”

“Hi, John.”

“Ah, so you finally recognize me. Only you could have started with the cat instead of giving me that half-assed Snoop Dogg impersonation.”

“Sorry, I’ve been really nervous here.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah. It hurts seeing you like this…”

“Look, I don’t have much time, so let’s tone down the drama a bit.”

“I’ll skip the part with the tears, then.”

“And note that Edkins is likely to be eavesdropping.”

“I gathered as much.”

“Did they fill you in on my case? Have you managed to read everything?”

“Everything they’ve given me. You got injured as a result of an explosion in the lab. You’re the sole survivor out of the six lab personnel. You were lucky that you’d been testing a deep resuscitation capsule. They barely managed to get you inside it in time. This was followed by over three months of coma, an artificial lung, the removal of your digestive tract… Anyway, they should have told you all about it.”

“They sure did. They let the patient know everything in this country.”

“That’s not the way they do it in yours?”

“Well, it varies, but they sure like to lay it on with a trowel.”

“Jenya, you wanted us to help you. How exactly can we do that?”

“They want to put me in a coma again. I’d like to know if it’s terminal. What are my options?”

“There’s a chance of getting you back on your feet. A new body, cloned.”

“Does the technology already exist?”

“It doesn’t officially, but people have been growing them privately on the sly. Not in this country, of course, but anything is possible south of the border.”

“My medical contract doesn’t cover treatment overseas.”

“I know. Moreover, it features a fixed sum, beyond which you won’t get a cent. And your bill is already dangerously close to the contract’s limit. Growing a clone would require an eight-digit sum, possibly even more. You cannot have anything of the sort done officially, since the whole procedure is illegal. It takes years to grow a clone, and it manages to develop an identity of its own in the process. What you actually end up with is premeditated murder—a fully-formed human being is dismantled for spares for his or her genetic double, harried by time and disease. The technology of the so-called “brainless clones” will be tested within the next couple of years. However, you don’t have those years—nor do you possess a savings account with a sufficient number of zeroes. Apart from that, your brain is damaged, and to a significant extent. Even if the transplantation is a success, the best scenario is you would end up a cripple, since the problem of mediated transfer hasn’t been solved, although there are certain interesting developments in this respect, and some experts believe we’re about to see a breakthrough.”

“And you’re calling this an option?”

“Well… it is, in theory.”

“Yeah, but from a practical viewpoint, we have just wasted some time.”

“This is useful information. You should take it into account before we go any further.”

“Further? Are there any other options?”

“Three of them.”

“An abundance of choice, in other words… I hope they aren’t of the same sort.”

“They aren’t. Firstly, you can agree to what Edkins suggests. This will be followed by a state of coma and suspended animation. In theory, you can spend thirty or forty years in that state. What remains of the company’s obligations, as well as your own means and those of your parents should suffice to keep you going as long as it takes, or almost suffice.”

“My parents?”

“Yes, we have already gotten in touch with them.”

“They’re hardly rich.”

“Neither are you.”

“Though in five years’ time—”

“Which we don’t have.”

“What are the other options?”

“The second option is that they pull the plug on you once you state your wishes explicitly under Amendment No. 143 to the Voluntary Euthanasia Law for the Terminally Ill. You end up dead, and the family keeps the money.”

“Now, isn’t that lovely? I dread to hear what my third option is…”

“Jenya, you know how conservative I am. I always leave the best for dessert.”

“All right, let me have the dessert…”

“Have you ever played any modern games with full immersion?”

“I tested some flight simulation software a couple of years ago. Or, rather, tried testing it out of curiosity. I suppose that qualifies as gaming.”

“No, that’s nothing like it. I’m talking about modern online games. The kind where thousands, millions even log on to play at the same time, interacting with each other in different ways, fighting battles, cooperating, sometimes even starting families.”

“Sorry, but I haven’t had time for any extracurriculars of late. Been busy as hell trying to earn my first million. I did indulge a bit as a student, though. Two of my friends even dropped out because of video games—they just stopped caring about everything else. I was nowhere near as hardcore—I just dabbled a bit. But I still have no idea why you mentioned them.”

“Ever heard of Second World?”

“Vaguely… I think I’ve seen some ads.”

“I see. What cave have you been living in, anyway? You really have no idea.”

“I spent six months working on a secret project. There was an autonomous intranet, and no one was allowed outside the premises. They couldn’t risk a single byte of information leaking before they filed the results. The result should have been a bunch of patents and proprietary licenses, and all the participants would end up with hefty sums in their bank accounts. We were in a hurry, and worked ourselves into the ground, without any rest. Sorry, but I can’t tell you all the details.”

“You don’t have to. I get it—you were so busy working that you didn’t even follow the news, and you couldn’t follow some news in the first place. Let me give you a brief update, then. While you’ve been busy doing God knows what, the world did not stand still. Online entertainment has always been big business, but you wouldn’t believe the leviathans that emerge from the murkiest depths of the oceans to snatch their own slice of the pie. Second World is a game launched by a transnational corporation. Its initial budget amounted to ninety-eight billion dollars—this almost equals the sum total of the investment in manned flights to Mars. So you can imagine the scale of investment. This is the first game with mass support for full immersion technology that has no critical conflicts with legacy connections. Well, they did run into some problems there recently. The visualization is supposed to have maximum approximation to reality. There are over four hundred million accounts to date. Every account is named and associated with an actual player, so the number of players is factual, and not exaggerated as is often the case with these games.”

“I don’t buy it. I bet most players who got themselves an account never even played. Others may have logged on once or twice, and then ghosted. The actual number should be much lower. Just like it was back in the day—the game site would boast three million players, but you’d never see more than five thousand online.”

“Not in the case of Second World—even if you only have to take my word for it so far. There are, of course, auctioned and abandoned accounts, but there are relatively few of those.”

“John, you said this would be brief, but we’ve already spent a lot of time discussing overhyped video games.”

“This is important, and I’m giving you an overview—as concisely as I can.”

“All right, I’m sorry. Please continue, I’m all ears.”

“Remember what I said about the initial budget of the project?”

“Yup—comparable to the investment in the piloted missions to Mars.”

“Today, Second World can no longer be appraised as a traditional brand.”

“Come again?”

“Can you imagine someone buying New York and Tokyo, and maybe getting Berlin as change?”

“That’s an odd question.”

“Well, let me tell you this: it would be even harder to buy Second World. A year or so after the testing ended, the project became priceless. The original owners have but a small share now—the rest is divided among several nation states. There have been several conflicts already, and there’s a flurry of official protest notes about the actions of gamer communities from different countries. There have even been actual military threats made—all to protect virtual interests.”

“What interests would those be?”

“Jenya, people make money in Second World, and a lot of it. And nothing’s as easy as it used to be in the games of old. A lot of things are hushed up, but whatever information manages to trickle down is enough for those who know.”

“So?”

“They wanted a game, but ended up with a digital Eldorado. Basically, Second World will soon allow humanity to achieve a complete victory over unemployment—and worldwide, no less.”

“Are we still talking about some lousy game?”

“Second World” is no longer a game, let alone a lousy one. It’s a world in and of itself—possibly, a better one than ours.”

“Do you play?”

“Me? No way, the only people who can actually afford to play are those with plenty of money and time on their hands, while everyone else slaves away for their pleasure. And why would I work online? I’m doing quite all right where I am. But I do have to log in sometimes. See, I represent the interests of a number of gaming communities—their interests in this world, that is. In the one we live in. Curiously, they call it the Third, not the First. No, Jenya, you’re going to have to be the one playing. Assuming you’re leaning towards rejecting the other two options: coma or euthanasia.”

“And there I was believing you’d be the last of the two of us to go insane. My mistake. That sucks—I’m in the habit of being right.”

“I get it. Your job hardly leaves room for mistakes.”

“I must have made one, or I wouldn’t have wound up here.”

“You do remember what I told you, yeah? Quite a few things get hushed up.”

“Sure, I do.”

“There is a catch to this full immersion thing. High visualization detail, the sheer size of the world, the content and the intricacy of design have resulted in a number of unexpected effects. Those who choose this way of connecting had better be ready for surprises. The first instances of this surfaced shortly after the launch of Second World. Back then it was a regular gaming project, albeit a hyped one, with hundreds of competitors about to snatch the initiative away, and only lagging behind due to the different levels of financing. Small players were out, but the press was still free to report it any way they chose. Anyway, there was a fire at one of the SW facilities where they rented out full immersion capsules. Some of the players got stuck inside. There were no casualties, but the connection was broken. The upshot is, none of those players came back to their senses. They were taken out of the capsules unconscious and stayed that way—all of them. What followed was just plain weird—their characters remained logged into the game. Some panicked and tried to report their inability to get back to the real world in every way they could. But once their capsules got back online, everything went back to normal. There were but a few of those who got stuck in this way, though. Most managed to get out by themselves, and they were in for quite a shock once they realized they were no longer inside their capsules. Most, but not all of them. So, what do you have to say?”

“Was it just a single occasion?”

“By no means, but they’ve been trying their best to keep a lid on any reports. Moreover, there are rumors—and I, for one, find them plausible—that the so-called “full immersion effect” is guaranteed for every user after several days of uninterrupted gaming. If the capsule is disconnected before that happens, regular players will just wake up. There is another precedent, and this one is particularly interesting. A player whose condition was hardly better than yours got stuck inside the game after the death of his body. The fact of death has been witnessed, and the body has been frozen until the litigation finishes. His character still exists inside the game. The legal problem is as follows: the character insists that his rights are unaffected by the loss of his body. In other words, he claims his citizen’s rights and all of his property—which is quite ample, by the by. His relatives are most confrontational about refusing to recognize said rights.”

“So you’re offering me an artificial world?”

“I could tell you a lot more, but not like this. We got an account for one of our associates—you can ask him for details once you log on.”

“You are talking like I’ve already made my decision.”

“Jenya, I’ve known you a long time. You’re a fighter—you won’t give it. The third option is like this: we arrange things with your employer. They pay for the equipment required to log you on, as well as your account for a couple of months in advance, and then we set you up for full immersion. The rules don’t permit players to log on for longer than twenty hours, but we can bypass that in your case due to the precedents with the terminally ill—and there have already been two of those. I’ll skip the details, but you’ll have to provide your electronic signature to waive any legal claims in case your body dies. Your assets, the assets of your parents, and the remnants of the company’s obligations will suffice to purchase a functioning account as well as special equipment for getting disabled players online, and to keep your body in a state of artificial coma for ten months. This should be enough for you to find your bearings in the game and a means of earning enough to pay for your account and for your body to be kept on life support.”

“A means of earning real money inside the game? How is that possible?”

“In-game currency is easy to exchange for real currency. Moreover, its exchange rate keeps growing. You might make your million yet!”

“This is nuts…”

“You’re telling me.” The attorney made a long pause. “Once I’m a senile old man, I’ll join you in there, so prepare for a reunion. One more thing, Jenya: we won’t charge you anything. Morrison is good at counting his bills, but he’s also good at remembering those who’ve helped him out of a dire situation, and so am I. Don’t expect any miracles from us, but trust me—Second World is the best anyone has got to offer you. And these conditions are the best, too.”

“I get it, and I’m really grateful for your help. How can we get this thing going, and how soon?”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Logging on. As far as I can see, I hardly have any better chances to keep existing.”

“The players usually have to file an application for an account, which gets verified, and followed by medical tests and payment for the account. The entire procedure takes around three days.”

“Do I have three days?”

John was silent for a while, and only answered once the question was repeated.

“We don’t know. This is precisely why we don’t recommend you to sue your employer. We can’t be certain of winning the suit, but we can be certain of its stretching out into an indefinite amount of time. The fact that you came to your senses is a medical anomaly in itself. This whole clinic is hyped like you wouldn’t believe. I hope no tests will be needed—they ran as many of those as they could already. Morrison himself is on his way to the nearest SW office, and he isn’t someone they’re likely to impede with red tape. We hope that in your case we’ll be able to bypass the formalities altogether, or at least expedite their completion. If we succeed, we’ll get you online before the end of the business day.”

“How many hours will that take?”

“Five or six, I’d say no more than that. Try to stay conscious until that happens. Sorry if I’m slow with some of my answers—I’m arranging the delivery of networking equipment with the doctors. We’ll have to log you on from the clinic—you may not be able to weather the transportation. This will translate into extra expenses, and it won’t be cheap, but that’s the only way.”

“Could someone keep talking to me all the while? I’ll go nuts without any voices.”

“Sure, we’ll take care of that.”

“Is there any chance of someone explaining things to me? Teaching me how to play? After all, I have no idea how to make money there, or how to behave in general.”

“You said you’ve played before, didn’t you?”

“Sure, as a student—the last time must have been around five years ago.”

“What games?”

“WWI Aces, Stalin’s Hawks, and Invasion.

“What were they about? What genre of games?”

“Airplane games. Airplanes fighting other players’ airplanes—something like group air combat simulators.”

“Do you have any experience with role-playing games?”

“Well… I dated this chick once. She got her hands on a nurse’s outfit, and then she—”

“I’m not talking about those. Do you know anything about MMORPGs?”

“The kind where elves fight dwarves?”

“You’re oversimplifying it, but yeah, something of that sort.”

“Nope—there were no elves in the airplanes.”

“I’m beginning to lose hope here…”

“Well, what would be the point of having an elf inside an airplane?”

“None whatsoever, but getting started won’t be easy for you—rest assured of that… Nor do we have any time to train you. Damn! The contract!”

“Say what?”

“You’ll need a profitable contract with a work account, and we definitely won’t be able to get as much done until the evening—it isn’t our specialization. Anyway, once you log into the game, take it easy, don’t do anything precipitous, and wait for us to get back to you with a decent option—tomorrow at the latest, I think.”

“So what’s going to happen to my body and my consciousness in ten months? If I fail to come up with the money, for instance?”

“You won’t fail. You’re smart, and you’ll definitely think of something. Don’t forget about that million, either—or, better still, many millions. If you come into money, you’ll get a chance to grow yourself a body here. Not today, granted, and maybe not in a year, but don’t forget that medical science keeps evolving. They’ll surely think of something, and this something is likely to cost an arm and a leg.”

***

“Dozens of peasant family members were needed to feed a single feudal. The majority of craftsmen also had to practice subsistence agriculture in their fields and vegetable patches apart from their primary occupation. This period is normally known as the Middle Ages, but I would like to give it a different name: the Peasant Epoch.

It was superseded by the Worker Epoch. Draft animal breeds came into existence, and superior tools were invented, to be followed by mechanization. All of this enhanced the productivity of peasant labor, which made it possible for the proletariat to emerge as a class. Our society became industrialized.

However, we kept evolving. Enhanced labor productivity also affected the industry, and we eventually entered the modern age, where a single peasant can feed hundreds and even thousands. Not unassisted, obviously—different industries produce machinery, tools, pesticides and herbicides for this peasant, while agricultural science breeds new cultivars, including those with modified genetics, as well as highly-productive varieties of cloned cattle and state-of-the-art methods for protecting the crops from unfavorable environmental factors.

So what about the workers? Let me give you a small example. Each one of you probably has a car. Every car has a transmission. Up to seventy percent of main transmission elements in the world are made at a single factory that employs seventy-six people. Only twenty-eight of them are actual workers; the rest work in sales and administration.

So what do we have? We have incredible productivity in agriculture and industry. Only a fraction of the labor pool is employed there. What about the rest? There are all the activities that are not associated with production: the service industry, trade, and so on. We need to invent new professions and unnecessary jobs in order to provide some symbolic employment to people so that they would not join the welfare crowd. And yet this isn’t enough—a large number of those who could be useful are incapable of self-actualization since there simply aren’t enough jobs. They aren’t any worse than the others, but there’s just too many of them. The situation gets worse year after year. We are transforming into a society consisting of a handful of worker bees and a swarm of drones. This leads to social distortion and amplifies the formerly insignificant controversies, leading to social strife and a rise in crime rate.

What could we do to change this? There appears to be no way out—our world has a limited territory, and its resources are far from inexhaustible. What we have to date does not allow a breakthrough that would result in each and every one of us fully realizing our potential. Humanity has built several moon bases, and a piloted Jupiter moon exploration project has been launched, but you have to admit that none of it is quite what we need, even though it does widen our range of options.

We need new spaces and radically new abilities available to all right here and right now. And we have found them. The virtual environment is a colossal resource, and each one of us can share in the profits. All we need is to create conditions for it to be used wisely.

So we have created these conditions. A year has gone by, and the mechanism has proved itself viable. This mechanism redistributes the funds from the rich to the poor—from those who can afford it to everybody else—from private actors to the government with its large-scale and extremely costly programs. The apparent inequality within our new virtual society notwithstanding, it is absolutely just, and the differences will become less pronounced in the long-term perspective.”

Excerpts from the speech made by Aaron Gray, the founding director of the Second World Corporation’s USA/Canada Sector, at the UN General Assembly hall.

Chapter 2

Light. We’re so accustomed to it that it’s perfectly terrifying to cease to be able to perceive it, even for a few measly hours which nonetheless manage to stretch into a small eternity. He had no eyes and no visual cortex, meaning the visual nerves had no final electric impulse transmission destination, but still he shut his eyes reflectively once the darkness became replaced by bright light.

He could shut his eyes?! He could see! He had a body! But why couldn’t he feel it?!

“Welcome to Second World. This is the best world of the three that have existed and exist to date. Would you like to hear a brief history of our world?”

There was nothing metallic about the voice—it was alive, and very much so. A female voice, and not a cold one, either—it sounded pleasant and slightly mischievous, making him wish he could meet its owner in circumstances conducive to making a closer acquaintance.

“Would you like to hear a brief history of our world?”

“Would you like to hear a brief history of our world?”

So, probably a robot, after all. But still much better than the voices of real people he had communicated with at the clinic.

“No, I don’t want to hear the history of the world. I would like to log on as soon as I can.”

The radiance dimmed, and a mannequin figure formed out of nothing. It started to rotate slowly, with blue sparks running over its surface.

“You current location is the lifeless space between the Second and the Third worlds. You are a spirit searching for a worthy vessel. What would you like your vessel’s name to be?”

“Gennady. Or maybe just Gena, or Jenya. Actually, my friends call me Ros—that’s derived from my last name.”

It felt so good to be hearing his own voice conduct a dialogue with a female contralto sounding just like the real thing. He may have swapped a vegetable’s existence for a strange surrogate, but so far he hadn’t regretted it once.

“Unfortunately, you have a free work account with no right to choose a username. You will be given a two-part system-generated username. You can use three letters of your choice at the beginning of your username.”

“In that case, let it be Ros.”

“Accepted. You have three attempts to generate a username. Your current username is Rosfamathultos Negiromandust. You have two attempts left to choose a different username. Would you like to generate a new username?”

He tried to imagine the legend “Rosfamathultos Negiromandust” over his fighter plane, and then, over a pointy-eared elf, and ended up deciding it didn’t look particularly attractive.

“Generate a new one.”

“You have two attempts left to generate a new username. Your current username is: Rosfamathultos Negiromandust. Do you confirm the generation of a new username?”

“I do.”

“Accepted. Your new username is Rostendrix Poterentax. Would you like to replace your current username with Rostendrix Poterentax? You have three minutes to confirm the change.”

He asked for another attempt, and ended up choosing the second version: Rostendrix Poterentax. It didn’t sound particularly melodious, but the two other versions sounded worse.

“Rostendrix Poterentax, select your character’s race.”

“Race?”

“Each race has its own set of distributed basic stats, abilities, and visual features. You can change your basic stats and appearance using in-game methods or by purchasing a full account. The game also offers the option to change your race for another, or a hybrid. Any changes or modifications of basic stats may present complications that can be resolved with in-game methods if you lack the access to the features of a full account.”

“So, if I make the wrong choice now, I’ll be able to fix it later, but it will cost me dearly, right?” he wanted to clarify.

“Any changes or modifications of basic stats may present complications that can be resolved with in-game methods.”

“Would that be difficult?”

“It can be resolved with in-game methods.”

Ros decided to waste no time if the complications could be resolved—in his case, it was a commodity more valuable than all the world’s treasures. He was still uncertain whether he was already connected or whether he still hung between the ruin of his body and the trap of a set of pixels ascribed to a character in the game where he’d have to toil for an undefined period of time, possibly for all eternity.

Being unfamiliar with the game world, he couldn’t have known that one really shouldn’t rush this process.

On the other hand, maybe it was better that he didn’t know…

“What you see is the list of races available to your account. You received it as a result of your preliminary search for races capable of mining and quarrying. You can highlight the one that interests you.”

The list was hardly impressively long. What had the guy told him, the one John had sent to the clinic to try and remedy Ros’ mind-boggling ignorance? He may have been a player himself, but he wasn’t much of an educator, only confusing himself and others with his explanations. However, he had mentioned hundreds of races, whereas here was a list with a measly twenty entries.

“Is that it? I heard there are hundreds of races.”

“This is the list of races available to your account. You also asked for a list of races best adapted for mining and quarrying when activating your account. If you purchase an expanded account, the list of available races will expand accordingly. We could also give you a full list of available races, but most of them will have inferior mining and quarrying skills.”

That much was expected—pay more to get more. His account cost two hundred and eight dollars a month. The cheapest there was, including the discount for purchasing several months in advance. Most of the funds would be spent on life support, which was prohibitively expensive—thankfully, his former employer was covering most of it. Freezing him would be cheaper, but given that no one had yet succeeded in unfreezing a patient alive, this would be the last resort. And it still wouldn’t be free—not by a long shot.

So, what do we have? Oddly, no elves, nor were there any… Oh, never mind—here was a dwarf. The letters in the name of the race became bold, and the “mannequin” started to change shape, quickly forming into a stocky figure with a bearded face that could have belonged to a weathered drunkard. The info screen lit up on the left:

“Race: Dwarf.

Dwarves are creatures of the earth—it is deep underground, where darkness reigns supreme, that their talents truly unfold. They are tireless miners, but it would be a singularly bad idea to get on their wrong side—a dwarf might find it hard to vanquish your present incarnation, but you won’t fare much better.

Primary base stats:

Strength: 5

Agility: 0

Intellect: 0

Mental Power: 0

Stamina: 3

Vigor: 2

Resilience: 0

Accuracy: 0

Defense: 1

Attack: 1

Secondary base stats :

Perception: 1

Disguise: 0

Arcane Knowledge: 0

Speed: 3

Luck: 0

Carrying Capacity: 5

Essence of Things: 0

Craftsman: 1

Reason: 0

Creation: 0

Racial Abilities:

Twilight Vision.

Each Strength point adds 0.1% to the character’s chance of receiving an extra resource during mining and 0.05% to the chance of discovering an unexpected resource.

A dwarf receives one Carrying Capacity point per every 5 Strength points.

+5% to Physical Defense

+10% to Damage from crushing weapons

Unique ability: 1% chance of crafting two items from resources spent on one (doesn’t affect rare or higher-grade items).

Unique ability: the regeneration of Vigor and life energy is twice faster underground.

+10% to Defense from crushing strikes of any nature.

Tap this line to learn more about the secondary stats.”

Ros didn’t tap anything. What he saw was enough to come to terms with his utter ignorance. A dwarf seemed to be a dim creature with zero Intellect and an emphasis on Strength. On the other hand, the dwarf was merely a character controlled by a human. And there were all kinds of humans, some of them quite intelligent. So what was the connection between one’s intelligence and zero points of Intellect?

That lawyer guy would come in handy with his explanations right now.

Ros clicked through all the races out of sheer curiosity, casting only a perfunctory glance over their characteristics. He did get the gist of it, anyway—the emphasis was on Strength, Carrying Capacity, Stamina, and Vigor. He didn’t know much about worker characters and their usual pastimes, but he started to suspect he’d have to haul heavy stuff around pretty often.

Suddenly, he saw a huge inscription in blood-red gothic lettering flare up: “Exclusive offer. Valid only today. A new race is available to you: the rrokh. Would you like to learn more about the race’s characteristics?”

“I have a work account and no spare funds.”

The inscription did not fade, and the sexy girl’s voice stayed silent.

“Well, why not? I would. Make it quick, though.”

The inscription vanished without a trace. The mannequin instantly transformed into the image of a rrokh—without the visual effect with the gradual transformation as used earlier. A far cry from a dwarf—a tall and skinny frame supporting a disproportionately huge head on a thin neck. The same face of a hopeless alcoholic, but without a matted beard this time. Huge eyes, too—big enough that you could make a pair of regular-sized eyes from one of these.

“The last representative of the rrokh race.

These are the creatures that live deep underground—the carriers of the Shade of Chaos. Their talents unfold fully where darkness reigns supreme. They can delve into the essence of things where no one else does. There’s nothing more awkward than a rrokh in an axe or a club fight, but a rrokh’s ambush should never be taken lightly. A rrokh’s strike from the dark is always quick and unexpected, and, if you’re weak, this strike may be enough for the rrokh to win.

Primary base stats:

Strength: 1

Agility: 3

Intellect: 1

Mental Power: 1

Stamina: 2

Vigor: 2

Resilience: 0

Accuracy: 0

Defense: 1

Attack: 1

Secondary base stats:

Perception: 1

Disguise: 1

Arcane Knowledge: 1

Speed: 2

Luck: 1

Carrying Capacity: 1

Essence of Things: 1

Craftsman: 0

Reason: 1

Creation: 1

Racial Abilities:

Night Vision.

The last representative of the race receives the following gift: after reincarnation with level loss, the last representative of the race does not lose stat points received as a result of leveling up. Once the former level is regained, the character receives an extra undistributed point that can be added to primary stats for each level regained.

The rrokh receives a point of Strength for every three points of Agility (in case of item bonuses, the extra points are only applied while the item remains in active inventory). The rrokh receives +0.1% to the chance of dealing double damage with magic as well as physical attacks for each three points of Agility and one point of Strength. The chance of dealing double damage grows by +1% in case of a surprise attack. In case of a critical strike, the damage dealt always grows fourfold.

The rrokh receives a unique creature summoning skill for each 25 Summoning levels.

Unique ability: Soul Trap. When activated, the chance of receiving a Soul Crystal from your victim grows by 25%. The ability can also be used on somebody else’s kill, in which case its chance of success is always 25%, regardless of the character’s stats or equipment bonuses.

Unique ability: Reviving the Trapped Soul of the Long Dead. When activated, the creature is revived without penalty to level or stats with 100% probability. There is a 50% chance for the creature to retain the skills it had possessed while alive, and a 2% chance for the creature to learn one (or more) of the victim’s skills.

Tap this line to learn more about the secondary stats.”

This looked like a nimble weakling with boringly highbrow abilities. All Ros managed to grasp from the explanations was that his character was unlikely to succeed as a warrior, while the racial abilities were primarily oriented toward fighting, and would hardly be of any use to him.

On the other hand, there was an extra Intellect point here, which seemed pleasant enough for some reason. No intelligent person would be quite comfortable with an utterly imbecilic character.

The attorney had recommended a dwarf or an orc in no uncertain terms. Ros didn’t find orcs particularly appealing, either—both physically and in terms of stats, but surely an expert’s recommendation was worth something. On the other hand, here was a chance of snagging an exclusive race—he might be one of the first to choose it, and it might cost a lot more for other players. It was a bonus of sorts, so if he declined the rrokh, he might regret it eventually. It may be hard to choose a new race, given his condition and the state of his financial affairs. Nevertheless, the invisible girl claimed it could be done with “in-game methods.”

Also, rrokh was hardly any worse than the rest of the uglies, and probably less ugly than many. Orcs, for example, looked a hell of a lot worse with their prominent crooked fangs and greenish skin.

Even dwarves were more pleasing to the eye.

“I choose the rrokh.”

“Rostendrix Poterentax, you have chosen the rrokh race. Do you confirm your race choice?”

Ah, so the sweet voice was back.

“I do.”

“Congratulations. You are the last representative of the rrokh race in Second World. The rrokh race is no longer an available choice to the players.”

How interesting! Was this an unexpected bonus, or did he fall for some scam aimed at total losers that no one ever told him about because they believed him to be different?

He hadn’t a clue.

“You have thirty primary and ten secondary stats to choose from.”

There was no time to sweat the details—his clock could stop any moment. He had already spent much longer on race selection than anticipated.

“I’ll take care of this later, once I’m in the game. Is that possible?”

“Unfortunately, your account’s conditions do not permit it. You must distribute the stat points now, or your vessel will be rejected by Second World’s aura.”

A pity, of course, but there was no getting around it.

Ros thought everything was clear enough with the primary stats—he’d have to dump as many points as possible into Agility to get a bonus to Strength, which would result in a substantial overall increase in the sum total of all his stats. Vigor was something he didn’t quite understand—according to the description, a character with low Vigor got tired quickly, even doing the easiest work.

And Ros would have to toil quite a lot…

He ended up dumping six points into Vigor grudgingly, ending up with the following list:

Primary base stats:

Strength: 9

Agility: 27

Intellect: 1

Mental Power: 1

Stamina: 2

Vigor: 8

Resilience: 0

Accuracy: 0

Defense: 1

Attack: 1

Having distributed his stat points, he wondered whether he really needed Agility for anything. It might be perfectly useless, which meant he’d made a colossal blunder. It was hard to make decisions lacking even approximate information, let alone exhaustive. There was too little time available before immersion, and most of it was spent taking care of legal, medical, and financial affairs. The conversation with the gamer attorney had been brief and chaotic, something Ros was coming to really regret.

Time. Everything was a question of time. He should distribute the points one way or other—he would fine-tune it later, inside the game.

He took care of the secondary stats quickly and without thinking twice. After all, they were secondary, and one shouldn’t worry about them too much. A worker would obviously need Carrying Capacity. He remembered that a miner (his best career option, according to the attorney) should be able to carry large amounts of ore. Strength also affected this somehow, but he wasn’t sure about the exact way the stats affected each other.

Speed would also come in handy, whatever the nature of his work—a slowpoke wouldn’t be fast enough to be successful at anything.

The Essence of Things told him nothing; however, the Craftsman skill seemed useful, as he might have to manufacture things. Arcane Knowledge? Well, he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow, and free points were hard to come by. Reason and Creation sounded useful. As for Disguise and Perception… Being perceptive seemed preferable to the ability to hide. Being lucky should also probably come in handy.

He ended up with the following values:

Secondary base stats:

Perception: 2

Disguise: 1

Arcane Knowledge: 1

Speed: 4

Luck: 2

Carrying Capacity: 4

Essence of Things: 1

Craftsman: 1

Reason: 2

Creation: 2

“Congratulations. You have distributed your free stat points. The door to a new realm will open before you in a moment: a realm of heroes and amazing opportunities. We wish you the best of luck as you explore its vast expanses.”

And so it came to pass that a newborn character came to Second World. His stats points were probably distributed in an incredibly idiotic way, but you wouldn’t know it from the upbeat music that had been playing all along.

* * *

In a data center somewhere.

“Here we go again…”

“What’s the matter?”

“The same error.”

“Come again?”

“The working account registration utility has gone mad—the number of available races keeps fluctuating between one and twenty-something.”

“Oh… That must be a result of cutting down on the available options. Work accounts got the ax once again.”

“They haven’t been cut down in two weeks, and this bug keeps recurring.”

“The users see the full list of races, so it doesn’t seem to affect them.”

“That’s not the issue—we have a recurring system error.”

“Ignore it. The system has been checked a few times, so the problem must originate elsewhere.”

“Where exactly?”

“Have you come from a farm or something?! It could be an oxidized contact, or maybe someone failed to insert a cable all the way in—it could be anything. If there’s a system failure, they’ll roll out the backup and check everything manually.”

“I only hope the failure doesn’t occur on our shift…”

* * *

Some unknown location.

“We got one.”

“Still unclear.”

“A selection has been made.”

“Is it final?”

“Take a look.”

“I have heard of the following term: ‘ridiculous.’ I believe it to be applicable to the candidate.”

“I disagree—I believe the term ‘amusing’ is a great deal more pertinent.”

“He’s good for nothing. A waste of time. The worst option. He has no prospects if he’s capable of this blunder.”

“There’s nothing that prevents him from becoming the first. And his stupidity is far from indubitable.”

“There’s nothing to argue about. He doesn’t even realize he just got an opportunity for ascension unavailable to others. And how can he become the first in anything? His body’s in a cage.”

“Every cage has a door—otherwise, there’s no point in having a cage.”

“You believe there’s a chance of discovering what you are referring to as a ‘door’?”

“Well, we have.”

“We are hardly the worst candidates.”

“I’m not so sure about you.”

“What is your basis for making this corollary?”

“None. I have merely tried to apply what the creators refer to as ‘sense of humor.’”

Chapter 3

His eyes were assaulted by a barrage of colors while his ears registered a cacophony of sounds that were present in just as great an abundance. Ros couldn’t help falling on his bottom, staring before himself in confusion, trying to focus his sight without much success. He saw the following block of text in pale letters, which promptly disappeared:

“Welcome to Second World. You are at the starting location in the city of Arbenne. This is the newbie respawn point. We wish you a pleasant game.”

He finally managed to focus his eyes, feeling all the more amazed. What he saw before himself didn’t remotely resemble a computer game. Back in the days of yore he would admire the cloud textures, the surface objects, and the shapes of the planes of his foes and allies, soaring high into the skies in his speedy fighter plane as shown on his widescreen monitor.

But there was no monitor this time. Instead of seeing something similar to the environment he had found himself in during character creation, Ros found himself in a regular world. He was sitting next to the crossroads of two narrow streets of a medieval city—or, rather, one designed to look like one. Grey cobblestones, arranged in a slapdash manner, paved the street underneath him. One of them protruded strongly—he could feel it in his coccyx, and the sensation was far from pleasant.

The two-story buildings could have belonged in a medieval European town, although they were cleaner and neater—like the old section of a city with a rich history. Stone walls, storm shutters on the windows, and curtains of dazzling white. A huge ginger tomcat sat on an uneven ledge with an expression that must have absorbed all the sloth of the Universe. The couple of rock pigeons sitting at some distance from it on the same ledge paid the rascal no attention whatsoever, while the rascal himself kept glancing at the pigeons—clearly without any intention of chasing them, but simply to maintain his reputation as a ruthless predator.

The sky was present, too—just as blue as it had ever been. There was a single cloud floating above him, as white as they got.

The birds were chirruping, someone was babbling something hurriedly somewhere nearby, and some bells were tolling languorously in the distance. He felt a cool breeze caress his skin, and the sun was beginning to warm the back of his head. A smell of fresh pastries tickled his nostrils.

“I must have gone nuts…” said Ros, scaring himself by the sound of his own voice.

It sounded reedy and utterly alien, with a tendency to stretch vowels and sibilants.

A well-familiar short figure ran out from behind a corner. A dwarf. Just like the one he saw first when selecting a race. He had seemed awkward to him then, but now the impression was completely different—he ran with the speed of a well-kicked football, crouching in a funny manner with every step, which made it seem like he was moving in a series of jumps.

The sitting Ros found himself in the way of the speeding shorty, who barely managed to make a detour, then barked gruffly in a low voice, already behind his back.

“Watch where you’re sitting, noob.”

Ross turned around, surprised—and just in time, too. Another dwarf emerged from thin air right in front of him, patting himself on his short jacket, then thrusting his hand into a bag hanging over his shoulder to feel something inside. After that, he asked him in just as low a voice:

“Where’s the bureau?”

“Uh… What bureau?”

“Ah, I get it…”

“You get what?”

“That you’re a total noob.”

The dwarf turned around and headed in the same direction as his kinsman.

At that very moment, a third dwarf, emerging from behind the corner just like the first two, failed to change direction in due time and crashed into Ros at full speed. Both rolled across the cobblestones. The short character was the first to jump up. He dashed off, shouting:

“Why don’t you flush yourself down the drain already, noob?!”

Ros finally realized that he might have picked the wrong place to sit and meditate on his existence, and shifted toward the roadside. Another dwarf ran through the spot where he was sitting a moment ago, followed by the looming frame of an ogre. Or, rather, a river ogre, inasmuch as Ros could remember the description. It also said that other representatives of the race were perfectly savage and best not encountered on a narrow path, for they almost always tended to attack first.

The ogre didn’t run—he walked. But he walked at a fast pace, with his head sunk into his shoulders and his body hunched forward.

“Hey! Uh… Mister! Could you please tell me where—”

“Follow me to the bureau.”

Ros had no idea what sort of a bureau it was and whether he needed it in the first place, but he decided to follow the ogre and scampered along as fast as he could. After all, he was the first player who didn’t call him a noob—that seemed promising.

This was the first time Ros was playing a game of this sort, but from his experience with the flight simulators remembered that noobs were usually players who flooded chat rooms with inane blabber, asking for tips on basic gameplay in the middle of a dogfight, and doing other outrageous things such as asking which key to press to shoot just as your team was on the brink of losing. Their kind could even shoot you in the tail before you took off, utterly failing to understand the difference between allies and enemies—and not due to lack of experience, either, but rather as a result of grave problems with their intellect and maturity.

Ros didn’t want to be considered a noob.

“Excuse me, ogre. Why is everything around us so…”

“So what?”

“Well… Real…”

“You’re a noob, aren’t you?”

“I’m not. I mean, I am. Probably.”

“Read some guides.” k'12

“Guides?”

“Where did you get the money for your account? From your mom? Well, now go and ask her for some guides.”

“I know what guides are. I used to play a flight simulator, you know. I’ve read some there.”

“Derrr! A flight simulator, eh? So you’re a pilot, are you?”

“I haven’t played in a while. The guides are available at the game forum, aren’t they?”

“Sorta. Guild forums have them, too, but they wouldn’t touch a noob like you with a barge pole. Their guides are more interesting, though,” the ogre sighed.

“Is everything always this real here?”

“You mean you’re a deep diver?”

“Say what?”

“Full immersion?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Your mom is sure gonna give you a real licking.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve just cost her a hell of a lot of money. Beat it, underage hacker, before she takes a stick to you. Oh, and on a work account, too. You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?! Make sure you don’t try to get into any ladies’ panties—you’ll get busted at once. A minor in a game using another person’s account—they’ll fine you into oblivion, and I bet your mom will tan your hide so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week. How did you manage to log on, anyway?”

“It’s a long story. But—”

“We’re here. Now scram, I’m busy.”

Ros didn’t even notice how they reached a rather narrow semicircular square through the tangle of twisted streets. Its far side ended at a façade of a long three-story building decorated by a tacky colonnade, with a wide many-stepped staircase descending to the cobblestones. There were at least a hundred dwarves and orcs huddled before it, all looking identical, with the odd occasional brownish-grey ogre sticking out. A stocky Scandinavian-looking fellow looking just like a regular human being stood on top of it, clad in a black cape and wearing a squarish hat of the same color. He had his nose stuck in an open leather-bound folder, and was making loud pronouncements that seemed to make no sense at all:

“Two mules to Tagan’s tree, daily, a hundred and forty, equipment and potions, and a buff at lunchtime. Four miners, same place, copper, production-based pay, a hundred and seventy per hundred, equipment and potions, and a buff at lunchtime. A mule to Juritas’ granite quarry, weekly contract, extendable upon request, a hundred and fifty five per day, equipment and potions, a buff in the morning and one more at lunchtime, two meals.”

“Me!” shouted the ogre of his acquaintance (well, of sorts).

The “man in black” raised his left hand with his palm facing upwards without so much as looking at the big guy. His fingers produced a dim yellow firefly-like spark that rushed toward the crowd, hovered over the ogre’s head for a moment, then quickly dissolved. The ogre turned around and disappeared behind the corner, looking determined.

Ros realized this whole affair bore some relation to employment. Another thing that he realized was just how real this world was if the characters needed food. After all, there must be a reason why they mentioned meals as part of hiring terms.

He didn’t understand just how one got employed here, but he suspected it would be easy enough to understand. None of the players he had seen so far looked like geniuses.

So, he’d find his way about it.

But he also shouldn’t rush it. After all, John said they’d be able to find a contract for him that would enable him to save up for his account-related and medical expenses.

How ironic: he was supposed to play a game in order to earn the money to support the remains of his actual body in a viable condition. As well as the money required to play the game itself.

Incidentally, the thought of food made Ros realize he wouldn’t mind having a bite of something. It wasn’t quite hunger yet, but a state that directly preceded it, inasmuch as he could recall his senses.

He realized he looked silly as he approached the crowd of players, and touched the nearest ogre on the shoulder, acting under the subconscious impression that if one of them engaged in conversation, others would, as well.

“Excuse me, but I’d really like to know how to grab a bite of something around here. As in a meal, you know?”

“You’re some noob!”

“I agree with that. Still, though?”

“The same way you do IRL—that is, in real life. You stuff it in your mouth, chew it, and swallow it. That’s how it goes.”

“I see. But how does one find food here?”

“Har har har! I’m filming you—I’ll upload the video to the forum later, let the others have a laugh, too.”

“I’m still wondering about how one might find food here.”

“Even for a noob, you’re just too… Are you messing with me?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you sure you’re not a troll?”

“Nope, a different race—a rare one.”

“I’ll disappoint you about that,” a nearby dwarf butted in. “Noobs are by no means a rarity here. On the contrary, as a matter of fact.”

“Look, I have already agreed I’m a noob. Please answer my question about food, and I won’t pester you anymore.”

“What about food?” the dwarf looked confused.

“You’ll fall down laughing in a moment,” the ogre chuckled.

“Where can I find some food? A meal?”

“You’re not just a noob, you’re a noob squared. An outstanding specimen of rare noobness. Rarer than a living dinosaur.”

“I agree with your assessment entirely. Still?”

“In any tavern, dive, brothel, or bistro. You get the idea. It costs money, though—being a noob, you’re very unlikely to have any. You can leave the city and rummage through the countryside—there’s lots of free game there, as well as fruits and berries of different source. But since you have this squiggle over your head, you’re more likely to be prey than predator. Anyway, take a peek in your bag first, and stop bugging people already—this is no noob school, this is serious business.”

Ros walked away from the crowd and, finally, took a good look at himself. Before, he had been a little surprised by the sound of his voice, which was nothing like his own, as well as the shuffling gait—his good old body felt different. He also seemed to have become taller—the ground looked further away now.

What a pity he had no mirror about him.

His arms were spindly and really long, reaching further down than the middle of his thighs. His fingers were even thinner—like a spider’s legs, with joints that looked knobby in an unhealthy way. The bluish nails were thick, and might have qualified as claws. The skin was greyish, as if transplanted from an old corpse.

His legs were hard to see, obscured by the rough brown fabric of his pants, but they looked just as long as his arms, and with knobby knees. He was the spitting image of the figure he had seen at the race selection screen.

He touched his head. A long neck, two eyes looking rather large, ears, also far from tiny, and a tangled mass of short hair. The skull was elongated like a melon.

Not the prettiest sight, really…

Ross took a look at the other players. None of them looked likely to get any modeling contracts, either. Oh, and why was everyone here male? On the other hand, that was clear enough—they were hiring players with mining skills, and few women were interested in that. Also, he didn’t know many ladies who would be comfortable with such ugly characters.

He wasn’t particularly pleased, either. This wouldn’t have mattered much in one of the old games, where all the fighter planes looked the same. However, here he would have liked to have a slightly more pleasing appearance—not dazzlingly handsome, perhaps, but better than this. He should alter his appearance as soon as he managed to come into some money. Perhaps it wouldn’t even take that much in terms of funds. He’d have to look into the matter at a later time.

So, what else did he have apart from the body?

A bag on his shoulder, small and thin. What was inside? Ros put hand in the bag and froze. An image formed before his eyes—a large brown square divided into smaller squares. There was the following legend at the top: “Novice’s Bag, twenty-five slots, weight reduced by 1.0. Weight: 0.45 kg. Durability: 20/20.”

So that was how it worked? Ros grabbed the fabric of his sleeve. “Novice’s Jacket. Protection from chilly summer evenings; very weak protection against cold or inclement weather. Melee Defense: 1. Ranged Defense: 0. Magic Defense: 0. Weight: 0.72 kg. Durability: 28/28.”

Ros decided against grabbing the fabric of his pants. He just squinted and peered at them attentively. The following information popped up: “Novice’s Woolen Pants. Protection from chilly summer evenings; very weak protection against cold or inclement weather. Melee Defense: 1. Ranged Defense: 0. Magic Defense: 0. Weight: 0.61 kg. Durability: 30/30.”

Ros felt like he made a great discovery. He started peering at everything: buildings, players, birds, and clouds. Detailed information didn’t pop up every time, but it happened often enough. For example, he could now see the names over the head of every player. All of them looked just like his own awkward mouthful of a name. They appeared to use a single algorithm for generating them in order to make life harder for the poor users.

There was a single exception—a black guy who kept making proclamations of some sort from the top of a staircase. There was nothing but the legend Grandis above his name. Nor did he have the worm-like squiggle to the left of his name like the regular workers.

The mystery was too much for Ros, and so he returned to the crowd and asked the same ogre.

“Does Grandis have a VIP account? I see that he has but one word in his name—and a more or less normal one, too.”

Everyone who could hear him laughed out loud; the rest turned their heads toward the sudden outburst of mirth, and even Grandis interrupted his speech and gave the mob an uncomprehending stare.

“Where are you from, noob?” asked one of the dwarves once he finished laughing. The ogre from before decided to reveal the secret, apparently as a token of gratitude for a good laugh.

“Grandis is an NPC[2]*, you noob nincompoop. Run along to your mom now, or someone might hurry you along with a kick.”

The last thing Ros wanted was a kick from a creature whose mass was at least twice that of the rrokh, so he prudently left the crowd, having understood nothing from the Ogre’s explanation. What the hell was an NPC? And where was a poor noob supposed to get food?

Just a moment! The bag! He had been told it might contain something of use.

So… the bag. Having counted the smaller squares, Ros confirmed that there were thirty of them altogether, just like the description said. So they must be the slots in question. Their purpose also soon became clear when he saw pictures of three items locked into the first slots in the top row. There was something running over them—a thin and sharp arrow that looked like a mouse cursor.

Ros stopped it at the very first item, and the brief info popped up at once: “Novice’s Vigor Potion. Description: adds 25 points to Vigor over 20 seconds. Special properties: cannot be given to another player, sold to an NPC, or discarded.”

Did he need it right now? Would he feel invigorated? Possibly, but more likely not. He shouldn’t hurry—best to keep it for later. They must have given him the item for a reason, after all.

The potion was followed by two identical objects with identical names and descriptions: “Novice’s Small Ration. Description: contains everything you need to avoid feeling hunger for 24 game hours. Attention! This is no replacement for real food! Remember the needs of your second body left in the First World! Special properties: cannot be given to another player, sold to an NPC, or discarded.”

He decided he could wait—he wasn’t all that hungry yet. Suddenly he felt a twinge of anxiety, having found himself in an unfamiliar place with no money.

Incidentally, where would this money be? The kind that could be exchanged into perfectly real currency? There wasn’t a single coin in his bag. And what was this thing on his belt?

“Novice’s Purse. Basic capacity: 350 copper coins. Theft Protection: 1.1. Weight: 0.09 kg. Durability: 10/10.”

Ros twisted the purse this way and that, but didn’t manage to discover a single coin there. This was rather unfortunate—they didn’t even give him a token sum of money.

Oh well, finances weren’t the immediately pressing issue.

His attorneys’ help was, however. How long would it take him to hang around here waiting for their representative? And how were they supposed to find him? There should obviously be some means of communication—the flight simulation games had them, after all. However, he had no idea how to use them. Wasn’t Morrison’s representative supposed to contact him at once?

He decided to pass the time over a closer study of the interface—the semi-transparent glyphs at the periphery of vision. If the field of vision was the equivalent of the monitor, this looked a lot like the interface in the old games he’d played. Anyone closely familiar with computers should recognize them, even someone without any specific gaming experience.

There were four apparent stat bars. An attentive study revealed their descriptions. The red bar represented hit points, and he had twenty-eight of those currently. The blue bar represented his magical energy—twenty-one points altogether. The green bar was Vigor: eighty-two points.

Everything was clear enough except for the last bar, yellow and narrow: Fury. The maximum was a measly ten points, and the entire bar was empty—only its outline was shown. He could only assume that he had no fury points presently, and that they didn’t accumulate for some reason.

Ros knew nothing about the bar’s purpose or whether he needed it at all, and decided to file that question, along with about a thousand others, for a later time.

There was the chat window with a sophisticated settings menu. The visibility was poor, with everything looking faded. But wait! The instant he thought of it, the semi-transparent frames became a lot thicker and more opaque, improving visibility drastically.

“Zone Chat.” Anything there? Nothing at all. Either no one used it, or he was too far away from such users. “Requested Logs.” How about this one? Empty as well. “System Messages.” “You are in the city of Arbenne, in the Rallia Province. A provisionally safe zone.” Nothing else. Wait a moment, what about this flashing window? “Duthitnail Pritenguar.” Was someone trying to send him a private message? Could one of the players in the square have decided to inform Ros in writing that he was Second World’s most pathetic noob? What would the point be? That much was obvious to everyone already.

Shoot! It must be the attorneys’ character trying to reach him!

“John?”

“John, can you see my messages?”

“John, please respond as soon as you get an opportunity.”

“Jenya, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you responding? Did we get the wrong username? But you signed the non-disclosure agreement—they couldn’t have made a mistake!”

“Please answer!”

“Jenya!”

It appeared that they had been trying to contact him all along, but he hadn’t noticed the active private message window. And no wonder, being utterly unfamiliar with the chat interface, and having been rather confused from the very beginning—in fact, he still didn’t quite gather his wits about him.

So how did he enter text? There is no keyboard. Mentally?

The words “I’m here” eagerly sprang up in the text entry box. Then he tried to give the text a mental command to slide down into the open chat window. The text complied.

The answer came almost instantly:

“Jenya, I was beginning to get worried! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“John?”

“Who else calls you that?”

“First, they addressed me as your namesake.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Do you take turns with the same character?”

“Yup.”

“How is that even possible?”

“It is without immersion. But we don’t play the game—this account is used for communicating with our Second World clients. We just have a laptop on the desk, and the game runs in a limited functionality mode. Basically, the chat window is all there is. But it’s not like we need anything else. The account owner is sitting right next to me, connected with his bracelet. If he takes it off, the contact with the character will be lost. This isn’t very convenient—the wire from the bracelet is pretty short, and there are lots of glitches. They’ve really been getting on our nerves lately—the versions must conflict, regardless of what the developers are saying. But we can communicate, at any rate. Only the account owner would be able to log on with a helmet or a capsule, so we’re not in a hurry to switch. How are you doing?”

“I’m shocked.”

“Surprised?”

“That’s putting it mildly. It’s totally dreamlike, but everything looks absolutely real.”

“What did I tell you? Some people say Second World is more real than ours. You’re not regretting it yet, are you?”

“I’m not, and I don’t think I will—this is much better than euthanasia.”

“So there—you shouldn’t have doubted me. What’s your location?”

“Don’t you know?”

“How would we? The company office gave us your username as agreed, but they didn’t divulge any further information. It’s obviously a big city, since the chat is working.”

“Arbenne, in the Rallia Province.”

“Just a second… Got it. Our sector, which is unsurprising, considering where you’re logged in from.”

“Your sector?”

“USA/Canada. Nearly everyone here is from North America.”

“Don’t tell me I’m the only Russian here.”

“The Russian sector is a long journey from where you are. Would you like to move there?”

“You know I’m only interested in money. I happen to be in real need of it, as you can probably gather.”

“I can. All for the better, then—we have no substantial links to the Russian sector. Our guys are working on your contract right now. If everything turns out fine, you’ll sign it for a month initially, and I think they’ll extend it, since you’re a good worker.”

“I have no idea what kind of worker I can be here… It’s hard to wrap my mind around it.”

“Let’s blame shock. But I advise that you pull yourself together. And be quick about it—you may already have to sign the contract tomorrow. Will you be able to get through a day?”

“I have some food and some clothes. Will that be enough?”

“Duthit, the character I’m using to message you, hardly has any more possessions, and he’s been here for a couple of months. However, he just stays put all the time. And it appears that the lack of physical exercise didn’t harm his health much, which means you can stay put, too.”

“Thanks for your advice.”

“Jenya, I need to pass the control of the character on, we need to talk to one of the players. Send us a private message if there’s anything urgent. We have a notification app that monitors private messages, and it notifies us whenever there’s anything incoming, so it won’t take us long to get back to you.”

“Got it. Thanks again!”

Spend a whole day doing nothing? No way—even a minute would be too much for Ros. After all, there was so much around him that remained unknown…

Chapter 4

Ros kept wandering around for about an hour, but he was still far from having seen every street. The city may not have been one of the bigger ones, but it was still one big labyrinth of great complexity. It made sense to place the stone walls on the perimeter. The enemy might be able to scale them and rush in for the last attack… only to get hopelessly lost.

He managed to see the city gate, too. It was wide open—the heavy iron portcullis was raised, two guards in unprepossessing armor with spears in their hands stood leaning against the walls, and an emaciated-looking guy with sad eyes was sitting on a tall stool. He didn’t wear any obvious weapons or armor, but his garb was incredibly elaborate, like some wild hybrid of a cape and a doublet, gaudy salmon-pink tights, and a tall black hat of the sort normally associated with witches.

Ros risked venturing out for a moment—the trio paid him no attention whatsoever. There was nothing of interest outside. A few peasant houses and fields of crops of some sort in the distance, and a dark curtain at the edge of the woods behind them. A river lay to the left, with a canal dug to provide water for the moat around the city, all covered in water lilies.

It was pretty odd—Ros heard that moats of this sort usually stank to high heavens, acting as part of the city’s sewage system. But here there were flowers, croaking frogs, and a conspicuous absence of stench.

He spent a minute standing there, then headed back toward the bureau. He didn’t see any large crowds anywhere else, so it was probably the most interesting place. He could hang around the players keeping his ears open—he just might hear something useful.

He kept seeing NPCs moving past him. He still had no idea who they were and what their role was in this world. It was really easy to tell them from the players, even if you didn’t look at the names (theirs could consist of one part or two, but without such idiotic combinations as Ambaparkamel Duthumubanast). Players were always running, or, at the very least, walking at a brisk pace, huffing and puffing as they went. Some even moved in awkward leaps, like mischievous children. Some wore armor—chain mails, cuirasses, and helmets, as well as swords, axes, and clubs on their belts or behind their backs. NPCs moved at a much more dignified speed—like normal people in the world familiar to Ros. Their clothes looked a lot better, too.

He tried running just like his fellow players a few times, but he didn’t last long. The Vigor bar started shrinking proportionally to the speed. Once it became completely empty, Ros felt like falling down and doing absolutely nothing for an hour or two. Barely managing to drag his feet, he had to stop and wait for five to ten minutes for the Vigor bar to be replenished at least by a quarter before he could move on.

After his second attempt at a sprint, he stopped at a small square that he had somehow missed during his first walk through the city. He saw something resembling a message board next to the façade of a stone building that looked official (he hadn’t seen any taller buildings yet). Miraculously, there was a newspaper hanging on it. He couldn’t help but come closer.

“Rallian Herald”

Now that was interesting. So they published in-game magazines as well? And was there anything of interest reported in the Rallian Herald?

“Tomorrow, on the 5th of Lactius, there will be a grand party on the First Duke’s Square. The whole magnificent trio will be performing: JavankaStorm, Glamourkitten22, and DairenaABI. There will be fireworks, gladiator cake fights (cakes provided by the finest bakers), a fountain of alcohol, and some artistic striptease—none will regret visiting it; the rest will have to content themselves with watching the broadcast.”

“Landscape designer needed urgently for a well-paid job at a clan castle. Requirements: Good Sense, lvl 50+; 3+ Creation, 4+ Aesthetics, 3+ Construction and Fortification. Gardener skills and whole trees of associated stats a bonus. Contact Teiko Akiribani or Malattanthoc Thiumidristus.”

Ros may have failed to understand every single detail, but it wasn’t too hard to conjecture that he was looking at advertisements. From the point of view of a regular person, they were nothing but useless noise that was only worthy of your attention when actively looking for something specific.

However, advertisements could tell a shrewd person a lot of what would otherwise never be mentioned in more serious publications.

Unfortunately, that would also require precise understanding of the nature of such advertisements. And this was something Ros sorely lacked.

He saw a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, which testified to the arrival of a player. The figure that appeared was uncommon for these parts. It was neither a dwarf nor an orc with a work account, but a true blue pointy-eared elf. He was tall and slim, wearing a green doublet and a matching beret worn aslant, with a long and narrow sword on his belt. His head kept turning this way and that.

The elf must have seen something on the other side of the square, since he shouted in a reedy voice:

“Duel!”

He wasn’t shouting at nothing—he was addressing another player, who also wasn’t one of the faceless workers, strangely enough. This one looked like a normal human being—a male aged around twenty, athletic, with a well-groomed face of a model. Even though he looked to be in perfect health, he leaned on his staff as he walked—light-colored and decorated with all sorts of vignettes, with something resembling pieces of glass glittering in between. He had no armor or weapons, but Ros somehow didn’t doubt that the guy could take care of himself.

“Look at that! Free entertainment!” said an indescribable gurgling voice behind him. “A level 46 light elf saw a level 38 human and decided to use him to show off his toughness.”

“The elf has eight levels on the human, so he is tougher indeed,” said a dwarf that was jogging by.

“Sure. But not this elf. Look at his stuff. He has a rapier used for battle incantation—a buffer[3] bard, in other words, the kind deployed on raids. Do you see his raid[4] anywhere? I don’t. And what’s a buffer to a mage? A cockroach under his boot.”

“So this man is a mage?”

“Yup. Judging by the runes on his clothes, he’s your run-of-the-mill elemental mage, or something similar.”

“But is it allowed to battle inside cities?”

“Duels are allowed in squares. The fighters are covered by a dome that stops arrows and blocks magic projectiles. If they damage the cobblestones, the guards will come, and the brawlers will have to pay a pretty penny. Otherwise, you’re free to do as you please, unless it’s after dusk. Citizens are not to be disturbed during their rest.”

The elf gave an ostentatious bow, sweeping the cobblestones with his beret, and took out his long and thin sword—or rapier, as the anonymous interlocutor called it. And he didn’t merely take it out—he attacked at once. The mage raised his staff above his head, wrapping his body in a ghostly shimmering cocoon.

“The Sphere of Absorption—a shield that absorbs damage. The higher the mage’s intellect, the more damage it can take before it’s exhausted. So what does our elf do? Mm-hmm… well, as they say, there are three types of noobs: regular noobs, ridiculous noobs, and buffers who forget to buff themselves before battle. Pointy-ears is about to have a great deal of damage done to his confidence. Here it comes.”

The mage lowered his staff in a sudden motion. Its tip produced a fireball that hit the elf in the chest and engulfed his entire body. The doublet started burning. The pointy-eared player screamed, or rather tried to sing something, which looked rather weird given the situation, but the same staff then produced something like an enormous icicle that hit the opponent right in the head.

“That’s it. There won’t be any singing.”

Ros took a sideways look at the zone chat. “Fly Capyb has defeated Rygolis Alitrule in a duel!”

The flames disappeared without a trace. The elf stood alive and unharmed, although his face showed a great deal more concern now, and a few soot stains remained on his doublet.

“Some big banana must’ve convinced the boy to level up his support character, promising lots of phat lewts. The boy didn’t read the guides, or didn’t pay enough attention reading them, and he got into the habit of trusting the big banana. He dreamed of glory and heroic deeds, and ended up as an amplifier and a first aid kit for other heroes. He cannot handle this deplorable situation, and challenges everyone to a duel, but even complete noobs wipe the floor with him. I sometimes pity these fools. On the other hand, people need them. What are heroes going to do if the buffers and the healers become a scarcity?”

Ros finally turned around, seeing his interlocutor for the first time. His height and build were similar to those of a dwarf, and he had a beard as well, but that was where the similarities ended.

The beard looked like that of a goat, and was forked to boot. The head resembled a pear turned upside down, with oversized eyes and ears like chewed-up pies. Rare tufts of greasy hair didn’t make him any more endearing. The stranger was wearing nothing but knee-long blue boxers with white polka dots. He had no shoes, and it was easy to see that he had short and cracked claws instead of toenails.

“Are you an NPC?” asked Ross hesitatingly.

“Uh… Why would you think that?”

“You don’t have a name at all.”

“Do you even know what NPCs are?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Unusual players of some sort.”

“Not quite. They exist to provide background for the game. You’ve read Alice in Wonderland, haven’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Well, there was only one player in Wonderland: Alice. The rest of them—the White Rabbit, and so on, were NPCs. Do you get it now?”

“More or less. NPCs are controlled by software rather than players, right?”

“That’s it.”

“So, players have names, and you don’t—all I see are digits.”

“They aren’t just digits—they’re my name.”

“You used digits for your character’s name?”

“It wasn’t me, actually. It’s a long story, and a sad one, too.”

“I’m not in any hurry, actually.”

“I have nowhere to hurry, either. How about not hurrying anywhere together?”

“I’m all for it. So, who are you?”

“I’m one of this world’s dinosaurs.”

“Is that a race?”

“You don’t have to be so literal. I’m one of those poor beta testers whose accounts have never been shut down as obsolete. They probably never will shut them down now.”

“A beta tester? You took part in testing Second World? In the process of creation?”

“I did indeed.”

Ros decided that he had to befriend this person by all means—he must be a treasure trove of necessary information.

“Look, what do I call you?”

“I get it, the name’s hard to pronounce. Call me Digits—everyone calls me that here.”

The ugly dude’s lips suddenly stretched in a pleasant smile that even the pickiest of aesthetes would hardly find any fault with.

“You appear to be a newcomer, Ros.”

“Call a spade a spade already: I’m a noob. I heard this word about a hundred times today.”

“Only a hundred? Oh year, it’s Wednesday IRL, two more days until the Friday stampede. A standard work account, according to the squiggle…”

“Squiggle?”

“The symbol next to your ever so original username.”

“I didn’t choose it.”

“I didn’t choose mine, either.”

“Look, Digits, I’m not just a noob, I’m a complete ignoramus. This is my first time in a game of this sort.”

“With deep immersion?”

“Not just that. The last time I saw a game was around five years ago. I was really into flight simulators. But there was no immersion there.”

“That fad didn’t pass me by, either. Although I don’t think I missed any games. I remember games no one else probably has any recollection of anymore. I’m a dinosaur here, and I’m not any better IRL.”

“I ended up here unexpectedly, and I know nothing at all. I just wander around with my eyes open wide without understanding anything. You’re the first person I’m having a normal conversation with.”

“Right. Sounds familiar. Everyone’s in a hurry and you can’t find anyone to talk to. You should be in a hurry, too, by the way. A work account implies that you do work.”

“My contract is only coming in tomorrow. At least, I hope so.”

“Do you at least have any money or food?”

“I have two Novice’s Rations.”

“Oh? I didn’t know they still had them.”

“I’d share, but I cannot give them to other players.”

“Thanks, I’ll manage.”

“I wasn’t just saying that. I actually wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Well, ask away, I don’t charge for conversation. Only we shouldn’t just be standing here—let’s get moving.”

“Where to?”

“You already have food, but I have to find mine before nightfall.”

Digits turned around and started toward one of the streets leading to the square, carrying on as he walked:

“I don’t want to stick my nose into other people’s business, but I’m just curious—why did you decide you’d be offered a contract tomorrow?”

“My attorney said he would help.”

“You have an attorney? You must be a big banana, too.”

“It’s not like that, really. Still, he promised me a plush contract for a month.”

“You trust this attorney, don’t you?”

“Almost as much as I trust myself.”

“That’s unwise. You shouldn’t trust anyone. Including me.”

“How would you even take advantage of me? I can’t even pass my food to other players.”

“Someone could damage your bag until it loses all its durability. It will fall apart, and the rations will fall out.”

“And how would you do that? I can’t be attacked, after all.”

“I wouldn’t—I’m level zero, just like you. Worse than you, in fact. A higher-level player, though, could bring a train of low-level mobs[5] and dump them onto you.

“A train?”

“You mean you’ve never played anything of this sort before?”

“Never.”

“You know, I actually envy you a little… Doing everything for the first time, with the whole world to explore… Anyway, I digress. Imagine a young wolf—a social mob around level 9-12. A level 30 player can kill one of those in two or three strikes, even with a crappy weapon, possibly without losing a single hit point. Young wolves don’t normally attack first, although you can draw the pack’s aggro in most cases—they’re much bolder when there are many of them. Now imagine a level 30 warrior with a proper invisibility skill.”

“Invisibility skill?”

“It’s a specific battle technique—comes in handy in any fight. You slip into the darkness, then move sideways and attack from an unexpected direction. Invisibility is lost the second you attack, but the fighters who have this skill tend to be nasty opponents. But let’s get back to our wolves. A warrior like that can draw a mob’s aggro—provoke it, as it were. For instance, he can hack at the wolf with a sword once, dealing some damage without killing it.”

“I get it.”

“The entire pack will attack the aggressor, and the warrior splits as fast as he can, sparing no Vigor points. He runs over to your location with a bunch of mobs following him—his personal train. Then he becomes invisible, and you suddenly find yourself up against a wolf pack all alone. All the mobs are enraged as hell, and all they want is someone to unleash their rage upon. And look at you: a standard level zero work character with the first virtual level and no combat abilities—not even a weapon to defend yourself with. So, the train is now yours, and you’re a slow runner to boot. Need I go on?”

“I get it. There are ways of killing the likes of me.”

“Indeed—and more than one. A high-level mage with skills doing mass damage can take out a crowd of players like you. But don’t let it bother you. The chance that you’ll drop something is zero. And you’d need to face a few dozen packs of mobs to have a cheap bag destroyed. They don’t damage bags much. Clothes get ripped apart a lot, though.”

“Is that why you’re wearing nothing but your boxers?”

“Say what? No, my clothes just got worn through all by themselves. I’m a dinosaur, remember? But the boxers mend themselves every new game day. They’re Novice’s Indestructible Underpants, after all—an epic[6] item of sorts.

“When Durability reaches zero, clothes disappear?”

“They disintegrate into near-useless rags. Yours would be completely useless.”

“So what do you need to do to keep it in a good condition?”

“How do you keep your clothes in a good condition IRL? It’s the same here.”

“And why didn’t that elf die at the end of the duel?”

“Well, it was a duel—he had a single hit point remaining out of the three or four hundred he’d had initially. This is why he’s still alive. Had this happened in battle, he’d have gotten a free teleport to his designated respawn point.”

“What do you normally do besides watching players fight?”

“Duels are rare here. It’s a miner city, so you mostly get workers. Players with expanded accounts, even low-level ones, only end up here by accident, or to do some quest. Not many of those. There aren’t many mobs in the area, and even fewer quests of any value. We are at the very edge of explored world, and there doesn’t appear to be anything of interest beyond here. A boring corner of a boring province—the domain of miners and lumberjacks.”

“Do you have a work account as well?”

“Nope. It’s a stretch to even call it an account. But you can only have a single player per account. And not just per account, but in general.”

“Who’s gonna check if you have another one?”

“You use your actual personal data to register. You could take somebody else’s character, but who’d give you one and be left with nothing? Also, the system will instantly identify you as a different person once you try to log on, so you won’t be able to. They had a good reason to make the medical exam mandatory before registration. Only noobs believe they can register a single account for the whole family and take turns logging on with full immersion.”

“The attorneys at my company use the same character.”

“Well, that’s in 2D, or 3D at best. That’s hardly the game—more like a pale shadow thereof. Only useful for chatting. The account’s owner also has to be around with their bracelet on. Also, 2D connections lag a lot lately. As do 3D connections. Workers with such connections have drenched the whole forum with their tears already.”

“That’s just what they do—log on in 2D. So, what’s wrong with your character?”

“All the beta tester characters were rolled back to level zero before the game’s official release. The stats were locked. I have a single point of Vigor and Strength each. Nothing else—and no way to level up. Who’d need a ridiculous worker like that?”

“Why don’t you delete this character and create a new one?”

“I can play with this one free of charge.”

“It won’t be that expensive.”

“Yeah, for someone whose arms and legs work, and who has some money at least.”

“Are you disabled?”

“Quadriplegic. There’s no one to take care of me, so I exist side by side with vegetables like myself. The money I get is received by the center that takes care of my useless carcass. Second World have provided them with the equipment when they recruited the beta testers, and no one has taken it back. This is charity of sorts. What would you prefer—to lay around in the smell of piss, or to wander about here?”

“A silly question. So you have no money at all?”

“Well… Had I been a disabled person from the USA or Canada, there would have been something jangling in my pockets. But they put Mexico in the same sector as Canada and the US, and things have really gone south after the recent events here. One day you’re young and in perfect health, and then suddenly some psycho decides to express their disagreement with the government the only way their paltry brain can think of—by exploding a bomb in a café that, by a stroke of rotten luck, you happened to be passing by on your way home. And presto, you’re no longer the model of physical health. You try your best to recover with therapy and surgery, but it’s expensive—down here, insurance won’t even cover your cold medicine. And so you keep on paying. Next comes the moment when you can no longer pay, but you’re still a cripple. Believe me—vegetables like me cannot possibly have so much as a copper. Just debts and regret at not having kicked the bucket that fateful day. I should be grateful they didn’t take me to the dumpster, I guess.”

“Sorry about prying—it just seemed strange to me…”

“Don’t apologize. Might as well laugh at this twist of fate—I’m a cripple in life and in Second World. I’ve been trying to gather some coppers here—I sometimes come by a little spare change. I might have enough for a proper connection in about a year and a half. I hope I don’t kick the bucket before that—then it’s either curtains for good or getting stuck here as a noob forever, worse than any level zero player. I’m pretty much betting everything on that chance—if I manage to make some money, I’ll be able to keep on paying for the account from the profit I make here, and I’ll be able to lead a normal life, instead of… Although I do enjoy walking around Arbenne even now, as a crippled freak, and watching how it changes.”

“Changes?”

“That’s right. This world was originally designed as an evolving environment. A long time ago this was just a level place with nothing on it, with bunches of test bots and game designer characters wandering around it instead of the NPCs. Then the city was built. It had undergone a few changes before it started to look like this. No one has seen any game designers or bots here since, but Arbenne keeps on changing. Take a look at this house.”

“OK?”

“What do you see?”

“A regular city dwelling constructed of wood, brick, and blocks of rough-hewn limestone. Stories: two. Rooms: eight to twelve. Attic: present. Basement: present. Dwellers: sixteen to twenty-four.”

“That’s right. I remember a time when newbies visited this house on a regular basis. There were a few NPCs here giving easy quests—chop some wood, kill some pesky crow plaguing their vegetable patch, or take a letter to the post office. The rewards weren’t particularly impressive, but the quests weren’t the kind where you’d have to kill a few raid bosses, either. Then the Arbenne thread at the forum became drenched in the tears of the hapless noobs. The good NPCs vanished without a trace, and the house stood empty. The noob tears were duly wiped, the administration never replied to any questions concerning botched quests, and the house saw some new dwellers move in—a few NPCs, and, oddly enough, two players, a family couple.”

“What’s so special about that?”

“The new NPCs don’t give you any quests or quest rewards. They can pay you a few coppers if you help them with their housework, but it’s nothing like the way it used to be. On the other hand, virtually each one of them can tell you their life story, long and eventful enough to blow your socks off. There’s a veteran from an empire wiped out by an army of fire elementals who carried the heir to the throne out of the burning palace in his arms; or an old lady refugee who had to abandon her home in the country together with her sisters once the area became infested with the undead. And there are lots of others. You can glean a lot of interesting things from them. However, none will address you directly with a pitch like, ‘Son, I am one foot in the grave already, so let me share a great secret with you. Pay a visit to the Black Farm—there’s a pot of silver buried underneath the tethering post. It’s yours if you can dig it out. Oh, I nearly forgot—there’s usually a bunch of undead guards next to the tethering post, fourteen high-level skeleton swordsmen. They won’t treat you kindly.’ You go there, vanquish the foes, dig out the silver, and receive a system message, ‘The Buried Silver quest is completed. Your reward: 1000 XP points, one point added to your Heroic Reputation, and one more point added to your Notoriety.” This is how it used to be, but now it’s much harder to find a working quest, and they keep changing from one completion to another. So now the noobs are crying foul—they prefer things to be simple, easily digestible, and described in detail in guides. Well, what do you think of our new NPCs now?”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t understand much.”

“To be absolutely truthful with you, I’m in a similar position. These changes are weird. There’s something about the way the game evolves that eludes me. The majority of the players are fools, so wherefore the extra complications to scare them off? I’m trying to make sense of it all the time. By the way, how did you read the stats of the house without touching it?”

“Well… I just gave it a long hard look and saw the info window pop up.”

“What’s your Perception?”

“One point.”

“Weird—that shouldn’t be enough to do it. What about Intellect and Mental Power?”

“Also one point each.”

“This is interesting… They are related, and I have long suspected that the connection works even at low levels…”

“What are you on about?”

“The stats. You know how Strength relates to Carrying Capacity, right?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s assume you have one point of Carrying Capacity. This means you can carry a load that weighs five kilos. However, if your Carrying Capacity is zero, you won’t manage it—Strength alone won’t let you lift more than four kilos. I’m not sure about the exact values, so this is approximate. Therefore, you’ll need two points of Strength. However, everything that boosts Carrying Capacity gives you a certain bonus to what you can lift, so, for example, you’ll be able to lift more than four kilos per point of Strength—say, four kilos and a hundred and ten grams. The greater your Carrying Capacity value, the greater the bonus. You can eventually go up to five kilos per Strength point, but I have never heard of anyone achieving it. In general, each stat gives you a bonus for many things, so the actual weight you can carry may depend on other factors but Strength and Carrying Capacity. There are hundreds of gigabytes of forum posts written on the subject, but no one has come up with any precise formula of which relates to what, and in what proportion. The proportions are also rumored to vary from race to race, and they are affected by the choices made by the player.”

“So how does this relate to the house?”

“Simple: one point of Perception will not let you get the info on the house without touching it, or even without stepping inside. However, raised Intellect and Mental Power can change things quite a bit. Other stats may play their part, too. But you’re a worker, aren’t you? What have you got? Vigor, Strength, Carrying Capacity, and not much Speed.

“Not quite. I must have made a mistake, but I dumped all my points into Agility. Most of them. Oh, and sorry, I told you the wrong Perception value—it’s two, not one. Forgot about that.”

“So what’s your Agility, then?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Digits stopped and shook his head.

“That wasn’t a mistake, lad. You’re screwed. Royally screwed. You’re in it—right at the bottom of the legendary pool that collects all of this world’s shit. I’m shocked, lad! I could almost admire you! You are something! You’re the emperor of noobs!”

Chapter 5

“TWS guild is hiring workers for its mines:

Miners:

Copper: dwarves. Strength: 26+. Carrying Capacity: 10+. Vigor: 6+. Mining & Quarrying: 2+.

Malachite: one miner (no zero-level players). Conditions and salary TBD (private messages).

Mules: orcs. Strength: 30+. Carrying Capacity: 15+. Vigor: 8+. Experience with single-track lines with underground junctions a plus. Ogres: TBD (private messages).

Terms: no guards in the mines at night, dorm accommodation (four workers per room), three meals a day, buffs in the morning and at lunchtime, work clothes and equipment deduced from salary, constant daytime guard of high-level players.

Pay: 44 dollars per day. When production exceeds the norm by more than 1.5, a daily bonus is paid. General bonuses paid on a monthly basis. Bonuses depend on the volume of extra production, contract terms, and behavior.

Norm: 285.”

The first post in one of the numerous threads of the Anglophone sector of the game forum.

* * *

“But, Digits, stat points can be redistributed, can’t they?”

“Of course they can. You can also take a trip to Mars accompanied by all the starlets from The Return of the Nymphos and have fun with each of them while you’re at it. I don’t see how this is impossible in theory. Practically, though, you might run into a few complications.”

“You mean redistributing the points will be hard?”

“Even if you only needed to reset your primary base stats, you’d need twenty thousand gold pieces or their equivalent in silver. The current exchange rate for one gold piece is one dollar and seventeen cents. But even if you had the money, you wouldn’t be able to do anything useful, since the only characters capable of resetting characteristics are NPCs ranking no lower than a Viceroy or an Archmage. You’ll have to arrange an appointment with them and then wait a while. By ‘a while’ I mean two or three months, and that’s if you’re lucky. They can also refuse to see you without having to explain their reasons. You have a work account, so you pay around two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars a month in the worst-case scenario. I hate to give advice—even though I do it all the time—but it would be easier for you to create a new character than keep on playing with this cripple. As far as I know, even the cheapest work accounts give you three free tries.”

“Out of the question.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want to go into details, but trust me—I won’t be able to get a new character. You can safely assume I have problems back there that are even more serious than yours.”

You don’t tell the first person you meet your body is in a state of artificial coma, after all. Even if he managed to arrange being brought out of this condition, the attempt may not succeed. The risk was enormous, and his body may not endure it. The first time he came to his senses was a miracle—the doctors had no other explanation.

And miracles had the penchant for not recurring.

“All right, then allow me to inform you of the following: you’re up shit creek without a paddle. You’ve just fallen into a colossal shithole—it’s so wide that an elephant could fall in without touching the rims once.”

“It’s that bad, is it?”

“It doesn’t have to be. You can keep me company. We can wander the city together, read newspapers, and hunt frogs. And I’ll boast to all my contacts that I know the Emperor of Noobs personally.”

“Why would we have to hunt frogs?”

“We’ll need to eat something. Without food your character weakens and becomes a total wimp. You can also get paid for helping the locals—chop some wood, collect bugs from their veggie patches, or play the postman. But it’s pretty tedious, and the pay is a pittance. Hunting and roasting frogs is much more satisfying. Their legs are a true delicacy. Take a look over there.”

Ros looked in the direction pointed by Digits. He hadn’t even noticed that they had left the city past the silent guard, and were now following a narrow path between the city wall and the moat. Digits was pointing downward—there were lots of large frogs sitting on the steep banks and on lily pads.

“There’s plenty of food,” his new acquaintance kept talking. “Also, the guards might give you a copper every now and then—they’re not that fond of all the croaking. So we’ll get by—in some twenty or thirty million years we might even make a million in real money. Although you probably won’t manage it—my account may be free, but you’ll have to cough up a few hundred each month, even if you have a long-term contract with a discount or some special offer.”

“What about a miner’s contract?”

“Not for the likes of you. They need Strength, Carrying Capacity, Vigor, and Speed. In that order.”

“What are the minimum requirements for each stat?”

“Well… You’ll need around twenty points of Strength, ten or eleven points of Carrying Capacity, around five points of Vigor, and some Speed wouldn’t hurt, although it’s less critical. My estimates may be off, but not by much. Stats like those can land you a job in a more or less decent mine with average pay. Although you’ll have to put some effort into it—your potential employers won’t queue up to hire you.”

Ros compared the stats with his own: nine points of Strength, four points of Carrying Capacity, and eight points of Vigor.

“Look, I have eight points of Vigor—is there a chance to get hired if everything else is a bit lower?”

“Since you have dumped everything you had into Agility, they won’t be ‘a bit’ lower—they’ll be much lower. They won’t even hire you to dredge shit out of a village privy—you won’t be able to lift a big enough bucket.”

“Crap…”

“Are you sure you’re a zero?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t level up, right?”

“Nope. It’s a work account.”

“Even work accounts vary. Some can level up to ten or even more—that’s enough to get enough experience for a complex craft or a low-level creative occupation. Gardeners, stonecutters, construction workers, figure casters…”

“I have experience working with electronics, and lots of other things as well.”

“Forget your real world skills. You start from scratch here. Someone like you is unlikely to find employment even as a servant—after all, servants need basic combat skills. No one needs a worker who can fall under the weight of a heavy tray and smash an expensive set of dinnerware. Are you sure you can’t get a different character?”

“Quite sure.”

“Well, sucks to be you, then.”

Digits sat down at the edge of the moat, took a pebble out of his bag, tossed it up on his palm, then took a swing and threw it at the nearest frog. He missed, and the amphibian escaped with a loud splash. Digits seemed unfazed, and tried again—this time successfully hitting and killing his quarry. He stared into the distance gloomily for a while, and drawled mirthlessly:

“There goes our kill. You know, if I could upgrade at least stats, if not levels, the way zeroes do, I’d have received some measly bonus to Accuracy by now—maybe a hundredth of a percent or even less. So after five or six hundred frogs I’d add a point to Accuracy. Get it?”

“Not quite…” replied Ros distractedly, deep in somber contemplation.

He didn’t just contemplate—he was writing a message to his attorney in the chat window, listing his stats and asking whether anything could be done about it.

“Let’s say you chop down a tree—that’s what lumberjack workers normally do. The tree has its own durability points—or hit points, of sorts. Once you get through them, the tree falls, and you receive your experience points. A worker can receive experience, but it does little good—the leveling-up is blocked. But the stats aren’t, get it? If you spend Vigor points as you work, your Vigor stat will grow by a tiny amount. If Strength is used, it goes up as well. Even Accuracy may grow if the worker hits his first notch, or whatever it is called, repeatedly, without letting the axe chop all over the place. Do you get it now?”

“Not quite.”

“You’re too dull-witted, even for the emperor of noobs. It’s really easy—you work, your stats rise, albeit very slowly. I don’t know how much time it’s going to take you, but you can totally level up your Strength until it’s sufficient. Drag heavy stuff around, and it will grow, as well as Vigor, which grows faster the more often you use it up completely. I remember as much from my own experience. It’s tedious and nauseating, but you can still raise these stats.”

Ros was reading the reply from his attorney just then: “Do not attempt anything. Resetting the stats is too complex and costly. Getting back to character selection would require a functioning body, and you are currently comatose. Please wait—we might be able to find you a position as a janitor or something similar. Those positions are usually filled by NPCs, but we see no other choice in your situation.”

He felt dizzy for a moment.

A janitor? Well, even if he didn’t mind, what would the pay be like? Since no players seemed to want that kind of work, it was easy enough to guess.

Not the job where you could make a million…

What was the matter with him, anyway?! A noob, indeed. He may have made a mistake, and his understanding of this world may be poor, but he still had his brain!

Well, perhaps the brain wasn’t working as well as it should. His body was in a coma, and that might affect things.

Think, you idiot! Try to strain whatever you have left!

“Uh, Digits, you were saying that stats can grow from long and hard work?”

“They can. Your levels may be blocked, but your stats are open. Keep in mind, though, that the only ones that grow easily are the ones that are currently at zero. Progress between one point and two points will take a great deal more time. And it will take longer to get from twenty to twenty-one than it will from zero to fifteen. Also, only the primary stats grow easily—the secondary and auxiliary ones are much harder. Some are next to impossible to level up. But you shouldn’t worry about Carrying Capacity—it isn’t one of the latter.”

“I don’t even have an axe I could chop wood with.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. The guards won’t let you chop any trees in the city, and out in the woods you may run into problems once some mob with rudimentary intelligence realizes there’s a zero-level noob on the loose, and easy to track by the sound of the axe hitting the trees.”

“You don’t like to give advice, but?”

Digits was about to throw a pebble at another frog, but stopped his arm, turned around, and drew a heavy sigh.

“I could give you an advice, but you’re bound to curse me for it. Nor right now, perhaps, but you’ll definitely curse me at some point.”

“Shoot.”

“There is a job you could do. And they’ll even pay you for it. But you’re not gonna like it. There’s nothing else I can tell you, but remember: you’ll end up cursing my name—and, perhaps, more than once.”

“The pay is nothing to write home about, I take it?”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“I won’t refuse it. I need to start somewhere, anyway.”

* * *

The ensuing developments seemed to happen in some sort of a daze. Digits brought Ros to some nondescript house. Inside was a Dwarf NPC sitting in the middle of a tiny room cluttered with lopsided bookcases stuffed with papers. He reacted to the offer to let the new laborer work at the clan mine with a barrage of caustic epithets, each of which characterized Ros negatively in one way or another. “A piece of useless shit” was the mildest term, and sounded almost like praise as compared to the rest.

Next came a player of an unfamiliar race—pointy-eared, like an elf, but with dark skin. He told Ros to join his party—he had to accept the invitation that popped up before him. Then Ros opened his stats for perusal, and the dark elf laughed long and hard together with the NPC, having used the word “noob” some two dozen times in a variety of combinations and intonations. He ended his diatribe by saying, “I really wonder where you manage to find cretins of this caliber, Digits.”

Ros was beginning to realize that Digits may not be helping him out of pure altruism, suspecting that he may not be as harmless as he seemed. However, he already took the bit between his teeth, having received a “cheerful” message from the attorney who had found him a vacancy, after all. The job involved waving a large fan over a rich player pretending to be the Shah of Persia.

He decided not to wait for the next vacancy of a harem eunuch to open. No matter what happened next, he had gotten into this thing all by himself, and was now going to paddle out on his very own. He was hardly a fool, so he should think of something. He might as well start with hard physical labor—he’d get used to it and see what he could do next. He was no child to be led by the hand, and he was determined to prove it.

Ros was taken outside the city walls and given a place in a two-wheeled cart. The NPC driver said gruffly:

“Just like you miners to wander around in the dark. We’ll join a caravan of villagers in a bit, and keep following them until the morning. Then we’ll take the turn toward the mine. If you get lost, you’ll have to find your own way. And if you fall asleep the way your ilk do, when no one can rouse you, I won’t even bother to dump you there, and you’ll be taken right back to the city.

Fall asleep and become completely unresponsive? Did the NPC think Ros might log out of the game? If only he knew—Ros had no way out.

* * *

“Why is Second World so popular? This is indeed the ultimate question, and no one has managed to provide a simple answer so far. You want me to try to answer it? All right, I’ll give it a try.

We have repeatedly been accused of plagiarism, and I have to concede—we did, in fact, plagiarize. We have relied on the achievements of our predecessors very heavily. Seasoned players familiar with many projects will find the best elements of what they already know inside Second World. Or, perhaps, elements that are far from the best—we had to make great sacrifices in order to make the world balanced.

So, what do we have? We have a great many things copied from a variety of gaming projects, blended together in new and creative ways. You might say that we didn’t invent it, and that there were numerous instances of copying before we came along. And you’ll be absolutely right—many games were nothing but clones of the same game, the only difference being the graphics. So, why are we better than them? Why have we been so tremendously successful?

Let me answer as follows. Second World rests on three pillars.

The first pillar is the financing that has made if feasible for us to gather enormous resources to launch just a single project. We have the best of everything: developers, software, and hardware. Hundreds of creative talents have contributed to the development of the gameplay. The best artists have worked on the graphical content. Every byte of code was tested a few thousand times. We haven’t had a single critical error in our entire history, and those were common enough in the games that preceded ours. The world is controlled by fifth-generation AIs—even one of those is beyond the means of many sovereign nations, whereas we have several of those servicing every sector. It is extremely costly, but amazingly reliable.

The second pillar is that we have brought the deep immersion technology to a conceptually new level. We were the ones who have achieved true verisimilitude. The players do not notice any differences from the real world—their characters are perfectly real, up to the patterns on their fingers and the prints they leave. The world is just like ours—its primary difference is that every item, event, and even personal ability is expressed as a sequence of digital data, similarly to the multitude of games developed earlier. Second World may seem simpler in some aspects and more complex in others; it is also perfectly real to one’s perception. It is complex and keeps evolving—there isn’t a single guide that would manage to cover so much as a quarter of its secrets. One can’t help but want to learn everything there is about it—it is a perfect vehicle for satisfying one’s desire for new sensations. And, for all intents and purposes, it is the only one available to the overwhelming majority of the Earth’s population.

Finally, the third pillar is that no one can affect the processes that transpire within Second World with non-gaming methods. Not a single employee of the corporation can materialize so much as a copper coin. They would have to create a character, produce some copper ore, use an industrial or a magical method to extract copper, and then send it to the mint, where the Imperial financial advisor will oversee its transformation into coins of the lowest denomination. There are no other methods. Second World is just like our good old Earth in this respect—no item can come from out of nowhere. It can only be the final link in a production chain. Games that came earlier gave administrators plenty of special privileges. They could appear inside the game using a “godlike character” with maxed-out stats and make any items in any number, block a player from a chat, or even kick them from the game. All of this led to abuses, or at least suspicions that the administration meddles in the gaming process. In Second World this is impossible even theoretically.”

Excerpts from the interview given by Aaron Gray, the founding director of the Second World Corporation’s USA/Canada Sector, to the Gamer magazine.

Chapter 6

“The Great Armada guild reports that the player Aribrosten Docarabarus is a fraudster. He has terminated a contract unilaterally, escaping from an unguarded mine without handing in the ore. The breach of contract has been registered by the Cythrimon Miners’ Guild.”

“Acknowledged. Confirmed. Blacklisted by the Cartagena guild.”

The first two posts in one of the numerous threads of the Hispanic sector of the game forum.

“Tamsakhurdia Abushan is a thief. He took all the goods from a trolley on the second day of a month-long contract and split. If you want to confirm it, check with the NPCs at the Llasa Miners’ Guild. The Unforgiving.”

“He’s just a khach[7] with a name to match!”

“All of you are hopeless noobs!”

The first three posts in one of the numerous threads of the Russian sector of the game forum.

* * *

“Hey! You! Wake up!”

Ros blinked his eyes in confusion. Could he have fallen asleep? In this mercilessly bumpy cart, and with the gloomiest kind of thoughts in his head? And all of this inside the game?!

Well… It seemed that sleep was a basic necessity even here.

He got off the cart. Once his eyes adapted to the bright morning sun, he saw that he was standing on a patch of ground, tamped down to concrete hardness. There was a tall palisade made of thick logs in front of him, roughly twice human height. It completely blocked the entrance to a narrow gorge with vertical walls splitting an enormous rock in two. There was a single gate for entry, clad in strips of slightly rusty iron.

When he turned around, he saw the edge of a gloomy fir wood with a narrow dirt road leading to the gate—the one they took to get here.

“Hey!” shouted the driver—an elderly yet still sturdy geezer with a thin beard and a mighty belly. “Come out to meet your guest of honor! Have you all gone deaf?”

A head in a full steel helm emerged from behind the palisade and rumbled:

“Is that you, Taror? Why so early? Wandering through the woods at night, have you gone mad?”

“Duh, I joined a villager caravan, they know me well there. I got you this guy from the office, and I can take some of your stuff back if we reach an agreement.”

“Yeah, how much is your cart going to carry?”

“As much as it has to.”

“I know your tricks. And who would you be?”

“Me?” Ros pointed to himself.

“No, I was asking Taror’s horse. You’re not very bright, are you? On the other hand, we rarely ever get any other kind, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I’m your new worker.”

“Well, ain’t I grateful to you for your explanation—I just mistook you for an emperor. You’re too late for breakfast, but not too late for work. Hey! Greedie! Get your ass off your perch already! We have a new worker! Come over, will you? You have a delivery: fresh meat!!!”

The latch banged loudly, and the gate opened with a creak. A broad-shouldered dwarf came out. Judging by the expression on his face, he had just eaten a bucketful of lemons without sugar, and Ros thought the two of them were probably unlikely to become friends.

His name was Greedius Knappy—didn’t look much like a work account. Instead of the “squiggle” he had a paunchy diamond, and another icon that looked like a spade sticking from a grave.

“Who are you?” asked the dwarf grumpily.

“My name is right there over my head, and I can’t pronounce it. You can call me Ros.”

“Call? You? You’ve got a big head on those shoulders, noob. So what do we have above that big and empty head of yours? Rostendrix Poterentax. Took you a while to come up with, didn’t it? All right, Ros it is.”

“I agree.”

“Did anyone ask for your agreement, you clown? Follow me and don’t lag behind.”

Another palisade stood a few dozen meters behind the first. This one was much higher, and they had to wait outside for a while before the gate could open. There were lots of interesting things behind. The gorge became much wider here, forming something like a volcanic crater with vertical walls. The climb uphill would be some two hundred meters from where they stood now—the bottom of the crater lay deep underground, and Ros couldn’t see it from here.

The space before the crater was filled with chaotically-placed log cabins, all of the same size. They looked like peasant cottages. A little further on there stood an unremarkable building with two pot-bellied smelting furnaces disgorging thick smoke right next to it. There were a few bare-chested figures fiddling with something next to them—orcs, judging by their build. No one else in the settlement seemed to be doing anything.

Ros took in all these details as they moved. Greedie walked in the direction opposite the furnaces without stopping for breaks. There was a circle of boulders with a short pole in the middle.

“Bind here,” the dwarf grumbled.

“Say what?”

“I said, bind to the respawn point.”

“Come again?”

“Are you a total noob?”

“Something like that.”

“What a day…I wonder where they find idiots like you? This is our respawn point, we should all be bound to it. Including you.”

“What for?”

“Squiggly, if you get squashed by a rock fall, where do you think you’ll end up once you’ve resurrected?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t died yet.”

“Aren’t you one lucky immortal? I’m amazed. OK, let me give you a few life lessons—free of charge, so far. If you get snuffed, you’ll reappear where you began the game. That was your first respawn point. So you’d have to cross forests and fields to get here, and the ever-ravenous wolves and other representatives of the local fauna and flora will doubtlessly gobble you up at some point. So you’ll have to walk again, and you’ll get eaten again. So who’s going to work while you keep feeding those fiends? Let me give you a hint: no one.”

“I get it. So I’ll be able to come back to life at this spot?”

“Well, you can choose another spot—right there at the crater, for instance, to respawn right over the drop, or perhaps you could find a privy and bind there. They’ll be happy to see your face everywhere.”

“How does one bind?”

“Approach the pole, touch it, and say out loud, ‘I want to make this my new respawn point.’ You might try doing it mentally, too—that usually works as well.”

Ros followed the instruction, and a system message flashed up before him:

“Would you like to make the present location your new respawn point?”

“Yes,” he answered out loud.

“Your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, in the Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”

“Are you done, or did you decide to pee on the pole as well?”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“Follow me, then.”

Greedie took Ros to a nondescript log cabin and told him to wait by the door. He didn’t have to wait long—the dwarf reappeared in a few minutes with a bundle of rags and a pickaxe.

“Here you go, squiggly, and don’t forget to thank me.”

“Thank you. Now, what am I supposed to do with these?”

“You noobs sure are a test of one’s patience. Get these royal garments on instead of your rags. What you have now is for novices—a single sneeze in the mine will blow it to pieces. You should also get a hard hat—they’re under the awning over there. They’ve seen better days, but will do just fine for noobs like you. You have a bag and boots of your own. If any of them fall apart, we’ll deduct the cost of new ones from your pay. Also keep in mind that we don’t do advance payments. We serve meals in the morning and in the evening. You can only wash in the evening. If you’re a cleanliness freak, you can wash your face in the creek down in the crater. Got it? Now go to the mine—it’s down there in the crater as well.”

“I have some problems with my stats distribution.”

“They’re your problems, so you deal with them. I have enough of mine.”

“But your requirements?”

“Can you lift a pickaxe? If you can, we can use you. Don’t forget to take a token before you enter the mine. Since you’re a total noob, I’ll explain it to you: there’s a board on one of the walls with pieces of tin on wires hanging on it. You can pick any of those.”

“But I don’t know what to do there. I’m not a miner—I’ve never tried it.”

“Everyone tries something for the first time at some point. Don’t forget it—especially if you drop a bar of soap in the showers and then decide to pick it up.”

“Shouldn’t there be some sort of a briefing?”

“I’ve just finished it. Get into the mine. You won’t receive anything for today, since you won’t be properly registered until tomorrow evening, but you can keep whatever ore you manage to get in your bag for tomorrow. You can also learn from experienced miners—there are lots of them down there.”

Greedie grinned unpleasantly as he said that, and Ros got the suspicion that the professional level of the local miners may turn out to be somewhat lower than that of truly weathered workers.

Or, alternatively, they may refuse to teach him.

* * *

“Novice Miner’s Jacket. Workwear. Protects from underground dampness. Not a good choice of clothing for hot weather. Melee Defense: 2. Ranged Defense: 0. Magic Defense: 0. Workwear bonus: protects from being hit with rocks. Requirements: none. Weight: 1.34 kg. Durability: 17/40.”

Right, no surprises there—they gave him a bunch of old rags. What about the pickaxe?

“Novice Miner’s Pickaxe. Tool and crushing weapon. Damage: 1-2. Tool bonus: 2-4 to damage to rock. Requirements: none. Weight: 3.14 kg. Durability: 19/80.”

Not exactly a shiny new tool. Even without the description it was easy enough to see that the pickaxe would soon see its last hour. Lots of chips in the metal, rust stains, and cracks in the handle. What about his head protection?

“Novice Miner’s Hard Hat. Protective equipment. Protects from falling rocks, melee and ranged weapons. Weapons Defense: 3. Magic Defense: 0. Protective equipment bonus: defense from crushing weapons: 5; protection from rock strikes: 6. Requirements: none. Durability: 22/50.”

Now wasn’t that great? His head would be protected by a piece of junk—just like the rest of him.

Ros was a different person as he approached the crater. He may have been a noob before, but now he was one of the noob scum. Wearing an ill-fitting canvas jacket and incredibly shabby pants made of the same kind of fabric, a cracked hard hat of unidentifiable color on his head and a rusty pickaxe in his hands.

His career was surely taking off.

Chapter 7

A narrow path meandered toward the center of the crater. The orcs that kept coming up along it, pushing wooden carts on tiny wheels that glided along parallel grooves left in the stone, made it harder to navigate. Greenskins paid no more attention to Ros than they would to an empty space, and he kept flinging himself back against the tunnel walls in order to evade a collision.

It didn’t take him long to get to the bottom—it lay about a hundred meters below the surface, and the distance wasn’t long despite the road circling the crater a few times. Two more smoking furnaces stood at the flat bottom—their noxious smoke made Ros sneeze on the way down. He crossed the wooden bridge that led across a narrow creek, approached one of the bare-chested orcs working the furnaces, and asked politely:

“I’m new here. How do I find who’s in charge?”

“Come to my dorm tonight. I’ll tell you if you scratch my heels,” said the green gorilla eagerly.

His partner laughed out loud, and Ros realized he would hardly get any useful information here. He replied, as politely as he could:

“Thank you, I’ll think on your proposal.”

Both orcs started guffawing while Ros headed toward one of the numerous holes burrowing into the rock underneath the crater. The only reason he chose that one was that it was much bigger than the rest of them, and didn’t look abandoned. Also, it was the only one that kept disgorging carts from time to time. The greenskins must have been busy with the transportation, while the others took care of production. They were the ones Ros intended to join.

Inside it wasn’t any darker than at bright midday, despite his expectations. The tunnel burrowed deep into the mountain, and the torches hung on the walls at uneven intervals. He could see no more carts—all of them probably got left behind.

He did meet an orc where the first tunnel crossed another one. He sat near a wooden cart of the same sort, and didn’t pay any attention to Ros, who decided to refrain from addressing him, recollecting how the rest of his green-skinned kin treated him.

Ros cocked an ear and heard the sounds of iron striking rock at a distance. That must be where he should go.

The tunnel kept getting narrower and darker. There were fewer torches, and their light was dimmer. But that didn’t seem to matter to Ros, apparently as the result of Night Vision, his racial skill. Well, his choice might be good for something, after all.

The sounds kept getting louder, but their source remained in the distance. Ros was starting to think he’d never reach it when he got to an intersection with another tunnel—or, rather, a low and narrow burrow in the mountain. That was where the sounds were coming from. Ros took less than a hundred steps when he saw a dwarf underneath a single torch, hitting the rock furiously with his pickaxe.

“Hi, I’m new here. Could you please tell me what to do?”

“Buzz off, this spot is occupied,” said the dwarf gruffly, without pausing his work.

Ros started to suspect that the local dwarves were just as bad as the orcs, but he kept going—there seemed to be someone else there working the pickaxe. It wasn’t long before he found a torch with another bearded shorty sitting underneath. He appeared to be taking a nap.

“Good morning. I’m new. Could you please explain what one does here?”

The dwarf replied as gruffly as his kinsman:

“My, aren’t you ugly. You must be what my alkie dad was seeing before they took him to the funny farm. What race are you? I’ve never seen anyone like you, and I’ve seen a lot.”

“It’s rare.”

“Sure is. Would anyone become such a freak of their own volition? Are you a total noob?”

“I am,” Ros nodded.

“Well, don’t worry about it—you aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Did you get the token?”

“I did.”

“Did you hang it on your neck?”

“I did.”

“Zero Perception?”

“Two points.”

“What the hell? One point would have been more than enough.”

“Twenty-seven points of Agility, too.”

“You don’t say! Screwed up the stats, have you?”

“I have.”

“Happens all the time. Get a different character.”

“I can’t.”

“A promo account with a single choice option?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, wipe the character and choose a different plan with a better choice.”

“I can’t do that, either.”

“Well, aren’t you a lucky SOB… In that case, take your pickaxe and start digging for ore.”

“I wish I knew how…”

“It’s as easy as picking your nose. Walk through the tunnels and look at walls. One point of perception is enough to notice the areas where you can find ore. Not that you’ll have to search much—this vein is enormous. Once you find a spot with ore, start hitting it with your pickaxe until a chunk falls out. Once your Vigor runs out, rest—that’s what I’m doing now. The fewer movements you make, the faster it regens[8].”

“All right, I’ll try.”

“Go on, there’s nothing hard about it. Any noob should be able to get the hang of things. You’ll learn as you keep going. I can give you a few tips if you need them. Once your bag is full, take it to the section of the mine with the carts. Dump the ore from your bag into one of the carts. In order to facilitate the process, just open the bag and then the cart’s window. Drag a piece of ore into the cart. You’ll be asked whether you want to transfer the piece of ore. Your answer should be, ‘Transfer all ore,’ whether out loud or mentally. Your bag will be emptied, and the token will record your submission. You’ll be able to see how much you submitted by the end of the day.”

“Thanks. You’re the first one to have explained something. Greedie didn’t bother much.”

“Sure. No one likes to talk here. And Greedie is a stinker of the highest order.”

“Why does everyone have the same voice?”

“Are you playing with full immersion?”

“I am.”

“No point in that—they definitely overcharge you.”

“Well, that’s how things are for me.”

“Most of us use 3D. It’s slower and less convenient, but you can direct a character toward the ore, press a key, and he keeps swinging his pickaxe at it until a chunk of ore falls out. The account is a bit cheaper, too. You need all your luck to earn anything at all in one of these Sword Power mines, so people try to save every coin. I used to play in 2D before, but the interface is so lagged these days it’s a torture to try to work. All right, now go—I’ll start swinging my pickaxe in a moment, and I won’t be able to talk while I’m at it.”

“I’m Ros, what’s your name?”

“It’s Pup. Get going already.”

Looking for ore turned out to be a bit harder than Pup had assured him. Ros kept staring at rock until his eyes hurt, but couldn’t see anything worthy of hitting with his pickaxe. He walked hundreds of steps and saw two more miners swinging away at the rock monotonously; this brought about the final conviction that he understood nothing. There should be ore here—yet, for some reason, there was none! Everyone seemed busy with their work—he was the only one wandering about like a blind idiot.

He started looking all about him in despair, and suddenly he saw an information window pop up—the same kind he’d see when looking at his equipment or at one of the buildings in the city. He tried to find that spot again, and found himself looking at the following legend: “Worthless black shale with traces of copper ore. Chance of finding a piece of ore: 79.23%. Chance of finding an additional piece of ore: 8.08%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.01%.”

Ros got a better grip on the pickaxe and hit the rock as hard as he could. The tool produced a cascade of sparks and rebounded, striking his helmet tangentially. The impact made his vision blur. Ros couldn’t stay on his feet and fell down on his behind, shaking his head in confusion as he tried to hold the encroaching darkness at bay. He saw several system messages in his chat window and scrolled through to read it: “The copper ore vein sustains 10 damage. Attention: you sustain 1 damage.”

What just happened? Did he actually hurt himself with the rebounding pickaxe? That seemed to be the case—his health bar was no longer full, with 127 hit points instead of 128. If he carried on like this, he was likely to do himself in, and then he’d have to climb all the way down into the mine again.

He was very careful with his next hit: “The copper ore vein sustains 10 damage.”

So, it appeared that the harder you swung, the more damage you dealt. He decided he’d go slowly, without taking any unnecessary risks. Now, what could this be? He saw a thin red bar over the description of the copper ore’s properties. It looked a bit like his health bar, and was also slightly less than full. He took a closer look and saw the numbers: “1148/1164.” So he’d have to hit the ore around two hundred times to “defeat” it.

Sure enough, it looked like it would take quite a while…

Ros kept chipping at the rock, and, finally, the resource hit point bar emptied completely. The pickaxe struck the rock one last time, the red bar blinked and disappeared, and a sizeable chunk of rock fell out of the wall, hitting his boot and rolling away.

When Ros picked up his trophy, he discovered that the piece of ore was rather heavy, even though it was only fist-sized. All he had managed to chip off previously were tiny flakes resembling the scales of a very large fish, albeit black rather than silvery. Once he studied the chunk carefully, the information window popped up: “Lump of Poor Quality Copper Ore. Weight: 1.07 kg. Metal content: 3.55%.”

Ros put the ore into his bag and examined the spot he had been working on. However, he didn’t find any information there—only the marks left by his pickaxe. It was clear enough: he’d have to start searching again.

Experience is priceless. This time around, the search didn’t take him long. Later on, in the course of his work Ros noticed that some of his strikes failed to deal any damage at all. On the other hand, he would occasionally deal up to fourteen points of damage instead of the usual five or seven—once he even managed a whopping fifteen points. He had no idea how that happened. He decided he’d ask Pup or someone else about it—it would sure be nice if they could help make his labor more productive.

The sixth lump of ore would be his in about a minute. Suddenly, Ros felt his arms go leaden, unable to lift the pickaxe, while his legs shook like they would fold any minute.

“Attention: you are tired. You need to rest or restore your Vigor at once.”

The Vigor bar was empty—he didn’t even notice its eighty-two points get used up. On the other hand, his health bar was full again.

Should he have a rest? It would be worth a try. After all, Pup must have had a good reason be sitting instead of chipping away at the rock.

The restoration of vigor was an excruciatingly slow process. It took around ten minutes to replenish half the bar. Tired of waiting, Ros rose and chipped off two more lumps, and then headed back, hoping to reach Pup when he’d be resting.

Unfortunately, the dwarf kept tapping away at the rock with the enthusiasm of a hammer drill. Ros sat down next to him, waiting for his Vigor to recover. He had already discovered that the less you moved, the quicker it replenished.

Pup bent to pick up the lump he’d chipped off, and said gruffly:

“I bet you have a bunch of questions again.”

“I sure do.”

“A sure sign of a noob. Well, I used to be one myself. All right, I’ll take a break—I hardly have any vigor left, anyway.”

“Is there any quicker way of restoring it?”

“You might take a drink of water from the creek. That should give you about ten points. You can’t do it more often than once an hour, though.”

“The creek’s a long way off.”

“Use a flask.”

“Where can I find one?”

“You can buy it.”

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Talk to Greedie. He can get you one in advance, and you’ll pay him back in ore. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but there are no other vendors here, so you don’t have much choice. You have a novice’s bag, so the flask will occupy a single slot, but that’s better than having it tied to your belt, anyway. Any falling pebble can make a hole in it. If the flask is cheap, that is. But Greedie doesn’t have any other kind.”

“So water works once an hour?”

“Yup.”

“Are there any other means?”

“You can use potions.”

“Where would I find them?”

“Greedie sells those, too. His potions work once an hour, but they restore fifty points. There’s no point for you to bother with them—you’re not likely to earn much, anyway, and with those expenses you’ll end up owing him a pretty penny.”

“Is there any way to harvest ore faster?”

“Sure. The higher your Strength and Attack coefficients, the more damage you deal, so the ore vein hit points get vanquished quicker. The higher your Accuracy, the fewer misses you make.”

“Higher Accuracy means fewer useless strikes?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you have Agility pumped all the way up?”

“That’s right.”

“It is related to Accuracy, so you shouldn’t miss all that often. However, the damage you deal is unlikely to be much to write home about.”

“Five to seven points. I’m afraid to hit harder—it would also take longer to swing.”

“Well, that’s next to nothing, lad. You screwed up royally there. I deal a minimum of 35 points of damage per hit.”

“Wow!”

“Over a hundred if I crit.”

“Crit?”

“Hit critically—that’s when you deal more damage to the resource. It usually doubles the average value. Ever noticed that happen?”

“I did.”

“When you fight a mob, a crit hit deals some serious damage—breaks a paw, busts an eye, and so on. Ore has no vulnerable organs, so you just double the damage you deal. By the way, the chance of dealing a crit depends on Agility, among other things, so you should see them a bit more often than usual.”

“I’d say they’re rare enough, and I never managed to deal more that fifteen damage. You’re way above me there.”

“My pickaxe is also better than yours, although not by much.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It’s my own.”

“Can I get something similar from Greedie?”

“Sure, he might extend you a line of credit, but at rip-off interest, of course. Paying cash would be a more reasonable option.”

“But I haven’t got a single coin.”

“In that case, pray for something of value to drop.”

“Come again?”

“Did you see that ore veins have the Chance of Discovering an Unexpected Resource property?”

“I sure did. Right next to the part about the additional piece of ore.”

“An additional piece of ore is easy enough—you get two or more lumps at the end. This usually happens on every twelfth attempt or so. Unexpected resources are something else, though—more complicated. We harvest copper, which is a metal. So you usually get some other metal as an unexpected drop—most often tin, occasionally iron. In theory, you might get mithril or adamantite, but I’ve never heard of that actually happening here—copper is too much of a noob thing, after all. However, even though copper is a metal, you can get some stone as a bonus. An inexpensive piece of malachite is your best bet, but, in theory, nothing would prevent a diamond from winding up in your bag, either. So this is the deal: we are only obliged to submit copper. Everything else is our personal bonus, so make your own arrangements with Greedie. Got it?”

“One chance in ten thousand. I won’t manage to dig up one of those in a week with my speed.”

“It’s all a matter of luck. Some get three drops a day, while others hardly see them in a month. There’s also another way of making a few coins, but you’re still too green for that.”

“What’s that?”

“Kill a few mobs and get some loot.”

“Loot?”

“You’re one incredible noob. A mob doesn’t only give you experience. When you off one of those, you end up with the carcass, and you can find all sorts of stuff in there, some of it quite unexpected. Pelts, claws, fangs, and so on are obvious enough. But you get lots of other fun stuff as well—it all depends on the mob. They even used to drop coins back in the day, but they stopped that during beta testing. Mobs also make your stats grow much faster than ore.”

“Stats?”

“Your statistics. How much did your strength grow today?”

“It was nine, and nine it remains.”

“So it didn’t even increase by a hundredth of a percent?”

“Apparently, it didn’t. So where does one find those mobs? Do you have to go into the woods?”

“They won’t let you out of the mines, so don’t even dream of the woods.”

“Why won’t they?”

“So that you wouldn’t run away with those rags and that pickaxe. It’s a noob clan and a noob mine, so the rules are the kind you’d expect for noobs, too. Their contract is a joke. It isn’t registered at any Miners’ Guild, so they have nothing on you, even if you do a runner before your contract expires and take a few souvenirs with you. Did you bind to the respawn point up there?”

“Sure, just like they told me.”

“That bind spot is only good for a month. Then you’ll respawn at the altar of the nearest Temple of Light. If you don’t manage to get your due from these noobs, and they start coercing you into extending the contract, your only chance of getting away without much fuss is to kill yourself.”

“You mean they can rip you off in the end?”

“It’s a snake pit of the highest order. The in crowd manages to turn a profit; the likes of us get stuck here right and proper. It’s much like slavery. How did you end up here, anyway?”

Ros recollected what Digits had told him.

“Someone helped me… He did warn me, though, that I would end up cursing him.”

“An honest guy. Well, honest in his own way, of course.”

“Well, I haven’t cursed him yet.”

“That’s because you and your Agility wouldn’t cut the mustard in any decent place. Noobs like the Swords don’t care—you could have dumped all your points into Intellect or whatever. But no decent clan will pick up trash with misaligned stats. This isn’t that bad an option for you. Spend a month here, and you’ll end up leveling up your Mining & Quarrying, and maybe also your Strength as well.”

“Mining & Quarrying? I don’t think I even have that stat.”

“It’s an auxiliary stat, so you find it at the very end.”

“I tried to tap on that line, but without any result.”

“That’s because you have no auxiliary stats unlocked—leveled to one, that is. You’ll see it pop up once you reach one point. There are hundreds of auxiliary stats, possibly thousands; nobody knows how many for sure. Anyway, it’s time for me to carry on.”

“Just one more thing, Pup—can you find any mobs here in the mines?”

“You can, but you’ll have a hard time with your stats and your pickaxe. The mobs will swat you like a fly.”

“So what? I could at least try.”

“Go for the ore. It’s better for your health and your purse.”

“I don’t have to submit any ore today, anyway.”

“Oh, so you arrived too late, did you? Those noobs only register their arrivals in the morning and in the evening. If you keep on following the mine deep into the mountain, you’ll find a bunch of abandoned galleries with no one working there.”

“Galleries?”

“Sideways tunnels like this one. They follow the veins of ore.”

“Got it.”

“That’s where you find the mobs—at some distance from the miners. And the deeper you go, the more you’ll see. If you go really deep, you may find monsters that will incinerate you with a single glance. They come out at night—sometimes they reach the mine entrance, and even the settlement itself, so all the work stops in the evening, as the sound of pickaxe tapping the rock will sure draw them to you. It’s a noob mine, a noob clan, and noob ore that no one needs except for said noobs. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to stop chatting and get back to work.”

Chapter 8

Ros kept on walking further and further, counting the galleries that branched away from the main tunnel. The sounds of the miners working were left far behind, and the light from the last torch disappeared a while ago—there were no sources of light here at all. Only his vision saved him: he couldn’t tell any colors apart, but otherwise he could see just fine.

The mine looked like the set of a horror film, with tatters of some sort hanging from above, looking like fragments of gigantic cobwebs. He had to tread carefully—there were patches of loose gravel here and there, as well as rock-hard fluorescent mushrooms. He tripped on one of those and fell, without causing any visible damage to the mushroom.

So where were the promised mobs? He could see no signs of life. Could Pup have been pulling his leg? You couldn’t trust anyone here… He must have been had like the worst kind of noob.

There was a suspicious sound of shuffling coming from above. Ros froze, wincing in disgust. It was a perfectly ordinary rat—albeit the size of a small dog. So revolting… So this was a mob?

“Mine Rat. Aggression: low. Sociality: high. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

Ros wasn’t too fond of rats, but he had no choice. He started toward the oversized rodent, aiming to strike it with his pickaxe. The mob looked at the trouble heading its way suspiciously, and promptly pattered forward, disappearing in the next gallery.

“Stop, you!” shouted Ros, dashing after the rat.

The rat didn’t obey—moreover, it started running faster. Ros hurried to catch up with it. The gallery was bound to end sooner or later, and he would punish the cowardly beast there.

However, Ros never managed to reach the end of the gallery. He halted suddenly, seeing that instead of one rat he was now facing three. The new ones were also a lot larger than the first. The critters did not seem to hurry anywhere—they just stood there, looking at Ros.

And he really didn’t like that look.

He assessed his chances soberly, and decided against getting involved. The rats, however, were of a different mind. They rushed him at once, shrieking revoltingly, as if following a command.

Ros managed to meet the first rat with a well-placed hit on the snout that made it rebound with an even uglier shriek, but the second one managed to grab him by the leg. His ankle felt like a bear trap closed around it. It was hardly painful, but the sensation was far from pleasant.

However, when the third rat closed its jaws over his thigh, Ros screamed from pain that felt as real as any. Not unbearable by any means, but quite unexpected.

What kind of game was this, where everything was real, including pain?

He dealt the rat a hard blow on the back and swung at another. But that was when darkness engulfed everything… The next moment he felt sunlight, so bright it hurt the eyes. Ros was sitting in the stone circle next to the pole, gazing up at Greedie who was sitting on a narrow bench underneath an awning next to the edge of the crater with an astounded grin.

The entire battle took just a few lines of system messages to describe. “You hit the Mine Rat for 8 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 4 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 8 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 7 damage. Critical damage sustained: Severe Bleeding effect applied—you are losing your hit points rapidly. The Mine Rat hits you for 7 damage. The Mine Rat kills you. Achievement earned: First Death. Achievement bonus: 5 extra hit points. Bonus effect: permanent. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”

“What’s up, noob? Not your day, is it?” Greedie grinned. “Congratulations on popping your cherry kicking the bucket. Who got you? Or did you do yourself in? Hit yourself on the forehead with a pickaxe, maybe?”

“I need a flask and a better pickaxe,” said Ros once he came to his senses.

“Oh yeah? And how about my mom in black stockings and a garter?”

“Is she pretty, at least?”

“Even uglier than you are.”

“In that case, I’ll pass. So, how about that pickaxe and flask?”

“You’ll get your pickaxe tomorrow, once production starts again—you’ll pay that back in ore. A flask is worth real money, though.”

“How about I pay for that in ore, too?”

“A flask isn’t a pickaxe. The clan only provides tools and clothing, so you can get stuffed.”

“But Pup said you could also pay off for a flask in ore.”

“Why don’t you get your flask from Pup, then, if he’s so clever?”

Ros spat the greedy bastard right in the face mentally, and headed toward the crater.

* * *

The next rat behaved just like the previous one—it ran off as soon as Ros got close. He decided against chasing it, assuming it would end just like his first acquaintance with the rodents. He threw a lump of ore at the beast instead. He missed, but the rat didn’t run away as fast as its paws could take it. Instead, it approached the rock that fell onto the ground and started to sniff it.

Ros managed to hit its paw with his second throw. A system message told him that he dealt two points of damage to the rat. The rat shrieked, spun like a mad top, and rushed toward its foe. Ros had intended for something like this to happen, but he was hardly overjoyed by the fact that his plan worked. Even a single beast was cause enough for unease—he was extremely reluctant about experiencing pain again.

He intercepted the rat with a crushing downward blow, so hard he had to go down on one knee. Alas, instead of hitting its neck the way he had intended, he struck the rodent further down its back, a little to the left. The beast sure was quick to dodge the menace.

There was a spray of some dark liquid, some screeching, a flash of pain in the bitten ankle, and then another blow, followed by another. The jaws released their viselike grip on his leg. The rat fell down in its death throes with its paws convulsing.

“You hit the Mine Rat for 8 damage. You kill the Mine Rat. XP received: 10. Points left until the next level: 83. Achievement earned: First Kill. Achievement bonus: 1 unassigned primary stat point. Achievement unlocked: Rat Scourge. Kill 1000 rats to complete the achievement. Reward: random.”

Well, well, well—killing mobs was turning out to be highly beneficial. Even his first death had boosted his health from 28 hit points to 33, and now he would raise his Strength by a whole point. Incidentally, it had also grown from 9 to 9.01. Pup had been perfectly right: combat made stats increase faster.

The pesky rat left him with 19 hit points remaining out of his 33, so his victory had come at the price of blood. Ros decided against the risks associated with hunting more rats before recovering his HP. Instead, he went to the nearest gallery so as to waste no time, found a promising ore vein, and started hacking away at the rock. But then he stopped nearly as soon as he’d started, and ran back, cursing as he went.

The rat carcass was still there. Ros touched it with his finger, swallowing down his revulsion. What he saw was similar to the way the contents of his bag were displayed—a field divided into squares, with the first four on the top left filled with items of some sort. Rat Pelt. Rat Claws. Rat Tail. Rat Fangs. They didn’t look like treasure of high value, but Ros decided to collect everything just the same, and then went back to the monotony of a miner’s labor.

He used up his Vigor before his health made a full recovery. But then, as he was resting, he realized that his hit points regenerated faster that way.

Another thing he noticed was that the holes left on his pants by the teeth of the rodents had grown smaller, though their Durability fell by a single point—he had a good memory for numbers.

He’d spend all his profits on clothes this way…

He heard a rumble and turned around, seeing another rat. The beast dared not approach, and seemed to have been looking for something among the fungi growing in the cave. Ros observed the mob absent-mindedly, examining the game interface in hopes of finding something useful or at least learning to handle his character better.

“Passive Skills”—now what would those be? Plus ten percent to magic and ranged weapon damage. Hardly very useful at this point. “Gift to the Race’s Last Scion.” His levels were frozen, so that was of no use. Nevertheless, his XP points kept accumulating for some reason: one for every piece of ore, and a whopping ten for the rat. What would happen once he got the remaining eighty-three? He had no idea.

“Active Skills.” He had two of those: Soul Trap and Reviving the Trapped Soul of the Long Dead. The former required twenty magic energy points, and the latter—thirty. He only had twenty-one at his disposal, which ruled out exactly one half of his active skills.

Now, what was he supposed to do with the one he could use—Soul Trap?

Ros tried tapping it mentally, like the line with the auxiliary stats, which was still empty. No effect at all. He stared at the rat, which was still sniffing something out, and tried again. The crystal icon blinked, and the blue magic energy bar became almost empty. This was followed by an enraged shriek. The rodent that he kept staring at finally left the mushrooms alone and started running toward him with obviously hostile intentions.

He didn’t manage to jump up in time, so he intercepted the foe with a sideways strike from a sitting position. This threw the mob off course, and it dashed just past Ros, slapping him with its scaly tail. He struck at it once more, this time from the back. “You hit the Mine Rat for 6 damage. Critical hit: broken paw.”

The rat was much slower to maneuver now, clearly favoring the wounded paw. Ros jumped away, getting out of the range of the head that snapped its sharp fangs at him, and struck from afar, using the whole length of his arm and the weapon, and making the blow fast as well as strong. This might be a game, but one shouldn’t forget his real world skills, which seemed to come in handy even here.

Another blow. The last one. A line drawn under his second battle.

“You kill the Mine Rat. XP received: 10. Points left until the next level: 73. Achievement earned: Clear Kill. You have defeated your opponent without taking any damage. Achievement bonus: 1 Resilience point. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Impervious. Kill 2000 monsters of your level or higher without taking any damage to complete the achievement. Bonus reward: random.”

Even though Ros had no idea what Resilience was used for, it still seemed like good news. Apart from earning a bunch of bonuses, he discovered an excellent method of attracting the rats’ attention. He wouldn’t need to creep up and throw ore at them. He could just cast Soul Trap, and they would run toward him of their own accord, rage clouding their judgment.

The downside was that the skill used up virtually all of his magic energy, and it took about as much time to restore as health.

Strangely enough, the rat turned out to have no pelt, even though Ros could clearly see it. There was, however, something new among the claws and fangs: “Soul Crystal. Trapped Creature: Mine Rat.”

Obviously enough, Ros collected everything, and then went back to mining while waiting for his magic energy to replenish. Once there were nineteen points on the blue bar, he set forth to hunt new quarry, hoping for the remaining ones to restore en route.

His estimations were correct. He killed another rat, losing a third of his health in battle. This was followed by more hard mining work, some rest, and more labor. Then he resumed his hunt. Another rat at the intersection of the main tunnel with one of the galleries; he cast Soul Trap yet again, and the enraged beast rushed toward him—followed by four more quickly-moving  rodents. He felt pain. Then it got dark. As before, this was followed by a bright light and Greedie’s most unpleasant grin.

“The Mine Rat kills you. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”

“Haven’t seen you in a while—I almost started to miss you,” said the dwarf with contrived warmth.

“Greedie, I have a few rat pelts, some claws and fangs, and a skull. Is there any way we could arrange something about the pickaxe and the flask?”

“Do I look like a vendor to you?”

“No, but you were saying—”

“I told you to work and not knock stinking entrails out of rats.”

“I need a flask and a pickaxe. You’re my only chance of getting them, and you know it. So let’s come to some sort of an arrangement.”

“You’re some noob! If you at least had one or two hundred of them, there’d be some sense in it for me. The way it is, there is none. The smaller stuff and other garbage is only interesting when there’s a lot of it. As for me, I don’t care for it at all.”

“Who would be interested in rat remains, then?” asked Ros, wishing to take advantage of the dwarf’s suddenly talkative mood.

“Anyone but me.”

“But you’ll take them in larger amounts?”

“Only if I’m in a good mood. This stuff is used for leveling up Alchemy at low levels. Leatherworkers can level up on pelts, too—the zeroes, that is. So, it’s possible to sell them in the city.”

“What about Soul Crystals? Are you interested in those?”

“Are you a necro or something?”

“A what?”

“A Necromancer. They have a skill like that—it raises the chance of Soul Crystal drops. But what are the chances of a worker like you being a necro? You must have gotten the crystal by accident. The chance is infinitesimal, but it does exist. Or do you have Necromancer skills? What race are you?”

“A rare one.”

“I sure can see that you’re a rare freak. So you must possess some skill like the Necromancers and the rest of them who deal with corpses. A level zero character will not be able to see such a crystal or take it. You can only receive one if you trade with a necro.”

“So will you take it?”

“One off a rat is next to useless. Now, did you come here to work or to chat? Get out of my sight already.”

* * *

Ros found himself at the respawn point once again a few hours later. This time he hadn’t touched anyone at all, but was standing there mining peacefully after another kill when suddenly three rats attacked him from behind. Could they have come to avenge their fallen kin?

“You’re a hard-headed fool,” Greedie shook his head. “I’ve never seen noobs as stupid as you.”

“Instead of making fun of me, you could give me a flask and a pickaxe.”

“A hard-headed one indeed. Well, you know what… I will oblige. I’m in a good mood today. We’ll deduct the price of the pickaxe later, and you’ll owe me two hundred pelts for the flask.”

“Twenty.”

“Getting cheeky, are we? Not a good idea.”

“Come on, it’s hardly worth a dozen.”

“A fat lot you know about prices. Fifty pelts, or find yourself another shop.”

“All right, agreed. Do you have any better clothes? Mine get worn through too quickly.”

“You need armor instead of clothes, since you screw around instead of engaging in honest labor.”

“Do you have any armor?”

“Listen, noob, what we have here is a mine, and not a castle under siege. Once there’s nothing left of your clothes, we’ll give you some new ones, but that will be deducted, too. You have a piece-rate contract, so you’ll owe us if you don’t manage to get enough ore for food and so on. Which means you’ll stay in the mines until your debt is paid off. Got it?”

“Sure, sure. So, about that pickaxe and that flask…”

“What’s your Mining & Quarrying at?”

“It hasn’t been unlocked yet.”

“So it’s zero. A decent pickaxe won’t do you any good—the chance of getting a lump of ore will decrease, and you’ll get nothing every other time. I’ll give you a plain pickaxe. There’ll be a penalty due to zero-level Mining & Quarrying—not too big, but still. So I advise you to level it as soon as you can. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours—in fact, you could have done it a long time ago if you weren’t such a doofus.”

* * *

The new tool made things happen faster during mining, as well as hunting. Having killed two more rats and harvested three lumps of ore, Ros received the message: “Congratulations! Auxiliary stat unlocked: Mining & Quarrying. Achievement earned: First Auxiliary Stat. Achievement bonus: 1 Intellect point. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement Unlocked: Start to Know Thyself. Unlock 10 auxiliary stats to complete the achievement. Reward: random.”

A pity it wasn’t his Strength that got a bonus point, but this was fine, too. Every point of Intellect gave his character an extra eleven points of magic energy. According to the stat description, higher Intellect would also let him regenerate magic energy faster. This meant he could use Soul Trap more often, which would make it easier to hunt—thus far he would still occasionally had to throw rocks or lumps of ore. Doing so was supposed to level up his Accuracy, but Ros didn’t see any urgent need for that just yet.

Still, everything needed to be leveled up. He had overheard two orcs talking by the mining cart earlier. One was telling the other you should wash more often to level up Attractiveness. He had no idea what it might be useful for, but everything appeared to have some use or other. Also, Ros wasn’t hugely fond of being filthy.

From the ore to the rats, back to the ore, and then back to the rats. The cycle was growing slightly shorter, and the water he drank once an hour helped a little with the constant shortage of Vigor. Ros barely got into his next mining session when a tap brought him two lumps of ore instead of one. A pleasant bonus.

The next message he received as he put the ore away in his bag was rather unpleasant: “Attention! You are slightly overloaded! Your character’s Speed is reduced by one point. Your character’s Agility is reduced by one point. The negative effect will last until the carried load is reduced. If the carried load is increased, the negative effects will increase accordingly.”

Bother! He couldn’t submit his ore, either, since he’d have to wait for the evening registration or whatever it was. Then again, evening should have come a long time ago—also, he was actually weary, and not the way the game made him tired. It would be great to lie down, steam a bit in the sauna, or at least to take a dip in the creek.

There was a flash of red behind him, and darkness covered everything.

“Mine Demon of Mischief hits you for 89 damage. The Mine Demon of Mischief kills you. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”

Would you look at that! Killed in a single hit! The damage sustained by Ros was nearly three times higher than his total health. Hey, at least the death was quick and painless.

It was way past sunset, and the settlement was shrouded in darkness. The only light came from a fire next to the gate and the dim torch hanging above Greedie sitting in his favorite spot. Ros discovered a few dwarves next to him at the respawn point. They looked strange, staring into nothingness with glassy eyes.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a masochist, would you?” asked Greedie.

“No, I’m actually a sadist in disguise.”

“Would you believe it? The noob cracks jokes, too…”

“What happened to these guys?” Ros pointed at the dwarves.

“They logged off and left their characters in the mine.”

“What happens then?”

“Our mine is pretty tricky. The first galleries are safe—there are no mobs there. But that’s only true during the day. After dusk all kinds of things crawl out of the depths. Some of the guests are so tough we can’t handle them if we rush them all together. So you can leave your body in the galleries, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself at the respawn point come morning. Then again, you should be used to it.”

“Can I submit my ore harvest?”

“Wait until the morning—all the carts have been rolled out and left standing.”

“Is the sauna working?”

“Where would it go? It’s long empty, though.”

“What about some food?”

“You should come up earlier, wise guy—it’s way past supper. Go check if there’s anything left in the pot.”

* * *

The gunk he found in the pot was most unappetizing and looked as though it had already been digested once. Alas, he was ravenous, and also seeing system messages that warned him of substantial stat penalties if his character’s hunger increased, followed by the loss of hit points.

So, he had no choice but to stuff his face and try to keep it down.

The water he found at the sauna was lukewarm, which Ros hardly found surprising. What did surprise him was that the miner huts stood empty. There were only a handful of people sleeping on the wooden bunks, even though each hut could accommodate up to around twenty. Most miners appeared to be leaving their characters underground, despite the risk.

On the other hand, what real risk was there? It wasn’t like they could lose anything. They were just saving the time it took to get back.

The supper, albeit rather revolting, coupled with the bracing wash, managed to lift some of his fatigue. Instead of falling on his bunk, Ros took a seat on the porch so as to reflect on the day’s progress in peace. Mining & Quarrying pleased him the most—having unlocked the stat after reaching one point, he got it to grow by an additional 1.25 percent. Aside from that, things looked a lot less inspiring. Despite his tireless hunting and mining, he’d only managed to have his Strength grow by 0.11. Leveling that stat up to compensate for his stat point distribution blunder would sure take a while, possibly even longer than he imagined. Agility hadn’t grown at all since the value was already quite high, so it would take a lot to increase it.

Strangely enough, his Intellect had grown by 0.12, and his Mental Power by 0.01. Both stats were associated with magic skills, so their progress must have been the result of his frequent use of the Soul Trap skill.

Incidentally, now that he had 33 magic energy points, he could use his other magic skill— Reviving the Trapped Soul of the Long Dead. But what would he use as his target?

Ros may have been a noob, but he wasn’t an idiot. It was easy enough to conclude that his two skills must be related in some way. He produced one of the three Soul Crystals acquired today out of his bag, stared at it intently, and activated it by saying, “Rise and shine!”

The crystal made a rustling sound as it turned into fine sand which passed right through his fingers. The grains of sand did not reach the earth, forming a tiny tornado, even though the air had been perfectly still. The air around it started to ripple, with currents reaching into the center of the vortex, picking up all sorts of garbage, pebbles, earth particles and dust. The center of this phenomenon was then covered by an impenetrable dome of darkness which disappeared after a second or two with a bang, and Ros jerked back, reaching for his pickaxe—standing there right in front of him was a plump rat.

He started to swing, but then stopped—the mob didn’t seem the least bit aggressive. It didn’t look that well, either, with its skin covered in bald patches and wounds oozing some liquid, one ear torn away completely, and not a single glimmer of reason in its dull eyes.

“Zombie Rat. A creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 2. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 1; Attack: 2.”

“Achievement earned: you’ve become a Summoner. Achievement bonus: new auxiliary stat unlocked: Summoning. Skill acquired: Lesser Healing of the Summoned Creature. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Summoner. Summon 150 creatures to complete the achievement. Achievement reward: random.”

Ros barely managed to admire his summoned creature when Greedie appeared from around the corner, cursing shortly and then giving the rat a good kick. The summoned mob flew into the crater’s abyss without so much as a squeak.

“Your summoned creature dies.”

“Those beasts find you even here, you meganoob, though I rarely see one make it all the way up here. Why don’t you go inside already? I’m tired of seeing your mug even more than of my mother-in-law’s nagging.”

“Greedie, I have a question.”

“You’re all questions and no use. I’m sick to my gut of you already.”

“You’re gonna like this one.”

“Oh yeah? Well, try surprising me, I’m all ears.”

“I have already eaten, slept, drank, and washed myself in the game. But haven’t been to the bathroom once yet—and I haven’t felt any urges of that sort. Does one do without it here?”

“Well, you haven’t surprised me, but you’re right in general—that is an interesting question. This game models real life very faithfully. If you eat something, you gotta go to the can. Only nobody does. Now, why is that? There are all kinds of theories, but the one I like best is this. I heard that in real hardcore battles in locations where no minors are allowed, some characters are occasionally torn to pieces, and they say you can sometimes notice an interesting sort of a structure somewhere among the flying pieces of guts, like a miniature teleport arch similar to the ones they have in bigger cities. So my idea—not only mine, actually—is that food gets into your stomach through your gullet the way it should, then it ends up in your colon, where it transforms into shit. Once it reaches the teleportation portal, it gets sent somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Now that is something nobody knows. But I do believe there is an enormous privy out there somewhere—the king of all shithouses, as it were, and all our shit ends up in there. Over four hundred million users, and around two or three times as many NPCs. Can you even imagine the sheer scale of the thing?”

“It’s hard to imagine.”

“If you keep on finding trouble in the most mundane places, I won’t be much surprised if you find that shithouse someday. You’ve got a knack for that, it would seem.”

* * *

“Thus, what we are dealing with here is but another tax—and a voluntary one at that. The player pays for accessing the game, and some of this money is used to finance high-cost government project—that is one of the reasons why this year’s military budget is so scandalously inflated.”

Currently, a substantial part of the funds received from the players is invested in the expansion of the project: infrastructure construction and upgrades, attraction of new users, and further research of hardware that would be even more advanced. The portion of these expenses keeps dwindling as the project expands, which will invariably result in lower user fees. We are already seeing it happen—there are all sorts of promo campaigns, low-cost packages, and discounts for regular users.

On the other hand, government involvement in every sector is likewise on the increase. There has also been an increase in the number of attempts to influence game-related events on the governmental level. The recent opposition between several Asian countries that nearly escalated into a military conflict is a typical example.”

From the annual supplement to the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

Chapter 9

The summoned rat kept following Ros like a pet dog. It would stop whenever he stopped, and sit whenever he sat. It wasn’t that hard to figure out the controls of the zombie rat for an intelligent person, regardless of their relative lack of experience in the game, and so Ros kept going further away from the sounds of miners working, itching to try the beast out in a real engagement.

He didn’t have to search too long, giving the Attack command without taking his eye off the first spotted rat that was chewing on something. The zombie attacked, and the mobs started fighting. Ros’ protégé won, but he had to heal it twice with his new skill.

It turned out to be a resource-intensive procedure, as casting the healing spell once consumed ten points of magic energy. On the plus side, there was no risk this way, and his pants remained undamaged.

Ros also noticed that the new rat was weaker than the one summoned yesterday. He had already suspected the beasts to differ from one another, judging them by size. It was also very obvious in battle: some were stronger, and others much weaker. What he really needed was a Soul Crystal from the fattest beast out there—that way he would be able to mop up the small fry without breaking a sweat.

Ros grabbed his pickaxe and went off to work the rock. Mobs were best for leveling up Strength, of course, but he still had his duties. Greedie would hardly be overjoyed with small yields. Ros had already managed to figure out that the dwarf was in charge of virtually everything here, which meant he should stay on good terms with him.

His activities now alternated between mining for ore and using the zombie rat to kill its living kin. After the fifth hunt Ros noticed that his Strength had stopped growing, stuck at yesterday’s infinitesimal value. Now why would that be?

He found his answer soon enough. The Mining & Quarrying stat grew when you mined for ore—it wouldn’t grow one whit from killing rats, no matter how many of them you vanquished. It was therefore easy to deduce that Strength only grew when it was used for killing mobs, whereas he hadn’t done anything other than healing his zombie. This had made his Intellect and Mental Power grow a little, but there were no other benefits.

He had to start using his pickaxe for something other than chipping away at rock, getting his pants torn, and then restoring his health while mining. On the other hand, he had gotten much better at hunting from yesterday—he was more experienced, and the summoned rat was a big help. He was getting outstanding results by siccing his familiar on a mob, then running around the foes engaged in combat and dealing blows from the rear. In roughly half the cases this led to a spinal injury, which made it a breeze to finish off the mobs safely. But even when that didn’t happen, he would still deal good damage, wrapping the battle up without too much effort.

Having slain yet another rat, Ros discovered an unexpected item inside. “Enchanted Copper Ring. Enchantment effect: +1 to Disguise.”

Ros couldn’t understand why this overgrown rodent would be dragging a ring about, and a charmed one to boot, but what really amazed him was the bonus to Disguise. He decided he wouldn’t be able to solve that one on his own, so he ordered the summoned rat to stay put, and headed back to the “social” part of the mine in order to submit the ore he had mined and try to find Pup. He hadn’t been able to establish contact with any other miners, despite his best efforts.

* * *

He found Pup in the same gallery as the day before, with the dwarf tapping away at the rock monotonously. Ros decided it would be wrong to wait for him to rest without doing anything, and, upon finding a prospective vein nearby, joined him in digging for ore.

Pup stopped at once.

“Hey, Ros. Look, it’s best to avoid doing what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tap. The closer the miners stand to each other, the higher the risk of a rockfall.”

“You have rockfalls here?”

“We sure do—this mine’s a total load of crap. It’s fine if it kills you at once, but what if it just buries you underneath? You’ll waste hours trying to dig yourself out.”

“Sorry for interrupting—I just wanted to have a word with you.”

“Oh, all right, I might as well rest for a few minutes—you’re not likely to let me be, anyway.”

“Pup, I killed a rat and found a copper ring inside it. Is that normal?”

“What are you, a total noob?”

“Yup, as nooby as they get.”

“Never played anything like this before?”

“Not even once.”

“Now that’s just weird! How did you even end up here?! Anyway, you’d better get used to it. Even though they say the game is just like real life, there are plenty of oddities here. Mobs don’t just drop pelts—it’s been this way in many of the classic games, so this one’s no exception.”

“The ring has a bonus—it adds a point to Disguise. Am I right to understand that only works when you wear it on your finger?”

“Well, sure.”

“Do only rings have bonuses?”

“No, any item, and there are all kinds of them, too,” Pup showed Ros his hand with two rings glittering dimly on two of his fingers. “I have four of them with bonuses to Strength.”

“I only see two.”

“Two of them have a property called Merging. You can put them on and make them invisible and undetectable to the touch, as if they didn’t exist. Less visual clutter, and they don’t get in the way. Hey, wanna sell it to me?”

“What do you need Disguise for?”

“I leave the body here for the night, and sometimes the mobs that crawl out of the distant galleries find it. Which means I have to waste time getting all the way down here in the morning. Disguise should make it a bit harder for them to detect me.”

“What about breakfast and supper? Don’t you ever come up for that?”

“Why would I lap up that slop and have them charge me for it as if it were beluga caviar? No way, I’ve stocked up on food well enough.”

“How about a swap for one of those rings with Strength?”

“Sorry, no can do—I need Strength myself, and I have no extra ones. So, how about selling it?”

“Is it expensive?”

“A plus one ring is worth peanuts.”

“How about I just give it to you, but you tell me its real price in return, and tell me more about mobs and the stuff they drop.”

“Ros, I wasn’t trying to rip you off. It’s hardly worth anything at all—you’ll get a silver coin for it if you’re lucky. I’m gonna tell you about them, anyway, but briefly, while Vigor is still regenerating.”

“I’m all ears.”

“As for mobs, you get the regular and the elite variety. You will find no others here.”

“But there are others?”

“Bosses. Special monsters. There are definitely none of those here. If you have a Perception point or two, you can view the level of regular and elite mobs if it isn’t higher than yours. The difference between the regular and the elite kind is that the latter have much higher stats at the same level—sometimes by an order of magnitude. It’s much harder to kill an elite mob, but you also get more experience for it. You know how to kill rats by now, I take it, and how to get the loot from their carcasses. If you have decent hunting skills, you can get more loot. Otherwise the pelt gets damaged more often, fangs or claws become unrecoverable, and so on. All of that stuff also gets destroyed if you kill a mob in a particularly vicious manner.”

“How does that happen?”

“Let’s say a rat has twenty hit points, and you hit it for two hundred damage.”

“I rarely see even ten damage—how would I do that?”

“You’re a level zero noob—you’re not supposed to see anything bigger than that. A high-level player can deal more than a few hundred damage, but they won’t get anything—no experience and no loot. It’s a good way to protect low-level mobs from high-level farmers.”

“Farmers?”

“Yeah. Farming is going for loot professionally. I make a living mining ore, for example, but some folks hunt mobs and sell the stuff they drop for a living. Whole clans get together to farm bosses. You need a posse even for a low-level boss—they’re that serious. But that’s where you get the best loot. A boss can drop anything, including an epic or a legendary item. I know what you’re gonna ask next, so there we go: items in this game are tiered, from the cheapest junk with minimal stats to rare and expensive stuff that has lots of useful stats. The ring you got from the rat wasn’t of the absolute cheapest sort. If it didn’t give any bonus, it would hardly be worth the trouble of picking it up—you could probably sell it for smelting for a copper. On the other hand, they got the legendary Ice King Sword from a raid boss a month ago, which was then sold for over eleven million.”

“In gold?!”

“Oh yeah. Although they may have arranged a payment in real money—I’m not completely sure.”

“Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!”

“Amen. It is the absolute auction sale record to date.”

“So you can’t kill a boss like that on your own?”

“Even the easier bosses are real fat—that is to say, they have lots of hit points and high defenses. Their attack is also pretty strong, and they usually have a bunch of unpleasant skills to boot—for example, they can paralyze you and then squash you while you’re incapacitated. The easiest way would be to find a Chaos Den that no one had managed to find before. It’s usually a cave, and you become its discoverer. When you enter it for the first time, it kinda adjusts to you. Even if the mobs you find there are of a higher level than you, it won’t be by much. All of them are elite and buffed, but if you play smart and your equipment is good enough, you have a chance of picking them off one by one. But you won’t be able to kill a boss on your own—it would be like facing a whole pack of elite mobs.”

“And if you bring a high-level player to kill the boss, the corpse won’t drop anything of value?”

“Well, it depends. For example, you could get fragments of the Ice King Sword instead of the item itself. They’re gonna cost more than their weight in gold, but that’s a different scale, as you understand. Also, if you kill a boss whose level is much higher than yours, you risk becoming the recipient of its last curse, which stays with you for a long time and is real hard to remove.”

“So if the rat were of a lower level, I wouldn’t have gotten a ring?”

“The ring wouldn’t disappear, but what you’d manage to pick from the carcass would be something like a ‘Fire-Damaged Copper Ring.” A damaged item will have no stat bonuses. Consequently, it won’t fetch more than a copper, assuming the blacksmith’s in a good mood.”

“So rats don’t drop any valuable items?”

“In theory, developers designed things in such a way that even a rat can drop an epic item. Or, perhaps, even a legendary one, I’m not sure. But don’t get your hopes up if you plan on getting rich that way. You might as well log out and start searching piles of manure for diamonds the size of chicken eggs—you’d have a higher chance going that route.”

“Got it. I have another question about experience. I have about three hundred points, and it keeps accumulating.”

“Of course. You receive XP points even though your levels are locked. Three hundred, eh? That means you’ll become a level 3 character at once if you manage to remove the lock—you need a hundred to get from level 1 to 2, and two hundred more to get from level 2 to 3. The only reason you can’t grow is your zero-level account, but your experience isn’t going anywhere—it keeps adding up.”

“If you can level up your stats without any fuss, what’s the point in having levels? Especially given that once your level grows, you’re no longer capable of getting the rats to drop any loot, and, if I understand everything right, you’ll also get less XP from them.”

“What would you want with low-level rats? You can find enough mobs to match your own level and defeat them, if you’re into violence and all. How about this: with your level zero character you can only equip stuff that has no level requirements. Even the best pickaxes for level zero characters are so lame that it will take you half a day to harvest a lump of iron ore—and iron isn’t even a high-level resource. So we end up with crap like copper. You could, of course, order a custom-made elite tool without any level requirements from a high-level blacksmith, but it would take months of work in an iron mine to make it worth your while. There are, however, items that give a bonus to your level in general—a ring that adds a single point to your level, for instance. You put it on, and the character’s level grows by one. It stays that way for as long as you wear the ring. Such items cost a lot more than the ring you looted off the rat, but it’s feasible enough to get around fifteen bonus levels. That’s what most level zero players do. Then they buy modestly-priced tools and mine all kinds of resources up to silver. Top clans also have buffers working in serious mines—they give you all kinds of useful buffs that boost your stats, speed up Vigor regeneration, raise your general level, and so on. The bonuses are temporary, but a high-level buffer can make them last until the end of the workday. That way advanced zero-level players can mine for silver, or, perhaps, something even better. Take a look at my pickaxe: it deals twice more damage than yours, and also adds a point to Mining & Quarrying. This allows me to deal even more damage to the resource. What this boils down to is that I manage to get two lumps of ore and start tapping for the third before you finish harvesting your first.”

“I’d love to get some level boosting items, if I only had some money.”

“You won’t see Greedie selling anything of the sort—he only deals in small stuff, to keep busy rather than to earn any serious money. You can only buy this stuff in towns and cities—it’s much harder to come across in villages, for example. Or, if you’re lucky, maybe a mob will drop something.”

“Do they drop that kind of stuff rarely?”

“Fairly frequently, actually. But those things are in real high demand—after all, most of the players are simple workers like us. Everybody needs something of that sort.”

“What would be more expensive—to pay for an expanded account, or to collect a few items with a level bonus?”

“Hard to say—it depends on your luck. I got this level-bonus bracelet for a few pennies—some noob offered to sell it without realizing its true cost. However, with a full account you can actually raise your level, whereas items merely add a level while you wear them.”

“So, what’s the difference? It’s not like it’s hard to wear these things.”

“The thing is that once you raise your level, you get five undistributed primary base stat points. Every ten levels give you an undistributed secondary stat point, and every twenty-five levels, an auxiliary stat point—also undistributed.”

“Why are there so many primary stat points and so few of the rest? The primary ones are the most valuable, after all.”

“That’s how you see it, being a noob. As things stand, they’re the easiest to level up. But try leveling up something like the Jewelry skill. You’ll have to waste a bunch of gems—all your unsuccessful attempts will produce useless sand. This will cost you loads of money, and you’ll only start making a profit once your level is high enough, which takes a lot of time and effort to achieve. Even among top guilds, high-level jewelers are a rarity—that’s how expensive it is to develop that skill.”

“I could really do with some extra primary stat points.”

“Sure, in your case it makes total sense. Remove the lock and you’ll be able to level up properly.”

“I don’t have that much money.”

“How much do you pay per month?”

“A little under two hundred bucks.”

“Even players with expanded accounts don’t turn their noses up at mining—however, you won’t see many of them in a mine like this. A simple gamer’s package costs three hundred—the difference isn’t that great. Get one for a month. You can go all the way up to level ten—the lock won’t let you go any higher. You’ll get fifty points for those levels, and you’ll be able to set your character’s stats right.”

“I can’t get in touch with my attorney from here.”

“You have an attorney of your own?! You’re one posh noob, then.”

“Not exactly of my own… I tried to send him a message, but he’s been silent.”

“The attorney’s character must be in some city, and you’re in County Nowhere. There are no couriers next to the mine, and chats don’t work here, either. Mail’s unavailable, too. So your best bet is to get in touch with him IRL.”

Ros felt reluctant to inform Pup of the low likelihood of getting in touch IRL, to put it mildly, so he decided to change the topic.

“My Mining & Quarrying stat has finally unlocked. The description says it gets easier to mine for ore as it increases.”

“That’s how it works—you deal more damage to the resource.”

“It also says other resources become available.”

“Sure. Ever been in a situation when you finish chipping away at a vein, but get no drop?”

“A couple of times.”

“If you try harvesting iron, this will happen every other time, or, perhaps, even more often. Your Mining & Quarrying stat has to be equal to—or higher than—the level of the resource that you mine for. Copper is level one, which is why you can work it with virtually no problems.”

“If I raise my Mining & Quarrying stat to 20, will I still be able to harvest copper, or will it ‘break’ like the loot carried by mobs?”

“Nah, ore doesn’t behave like a mob. You won’t be able to ‘break’ copper even if you raise your Mining & Quarrying stat to a hundred. On the contrary, you’ll have fewer failed attempts. But you’re unlikely to level up that skill here. You’d need around ten thousand lumps of copper ore to reach level five, and the same amount once again to reach level six, since your Mining & Quarrying stat will exceed the level of copper considerably by then. Level six to level seven will take you twenty-five thousand lumps, and it gets worse from there. If you don’t switch to other resources, which yield more, you’ll get stuck for good at eight or nine. Getting another point would take you years.”

“Listen, Pup, there’s something I just don’t get—why do we mine for this ore in the first place?”

“Come again?”

“Well, what do they pay us for? It’s mindless, monotonous labor that generates nothing but digits.”

“We produce a useful resource—that’s what they pay for, not our labor.”

“But why do we produce it in the first place?”

“Copper is used for making all kinds of things, and it is also a component of alloys such as bronze. Jewelry, armor, clothing and equipment elements, bells, cheap arrowheads, dinnerware, and all sorts of things. Including cannons.”

“Cannons?”

“Yeah. Initially, the game was conceived as a sword and sorcery world, but then some enterprising folk developed the craft of molding cannons. They use some alchemical crap for power, and every cannon weighs a couple of tons. You can’t make them any lighter, for they have to contain the protective structure that prevents the enemy’s fire mages from detonating the charge remotely. Such weapons are employed for clan castle defense. Not particularly useful, but really prestigious.”

“I see. You mean the game’s economy is made to resemble the real kind as much as possible?”

“It doesn’t just resemble it—it’s every bit as real. The difference is that here you can see every characteristic expressed as a numerical value. It is much harder to do this IRL, and it doesn’t apply to every object there. There are four hundred million players and few million NPCs, or maybe more—it’s not like anyone counts them, anyway. Well, you get it. The demand is so high that all of us miners work like plantation slaves, and copper doesn’t get any cheaper. High-level resources only grow in value, since there are too few crafters with levels high enough to harvest them.”

“Crafters?”

“Workers. Just like you and me. Only you need a much higher Mining & Quarrying level for higher-level resources. Good defenses matter, too. So, top-level crafters always have expensive accounts. The clan takes care of everything they need, and protect them when they level up and harvest resources. The more high-level crafters a clan has, the stronger it is economically.”

“I used to play flight simulators, so I have some idea of what a clan is.”

“Flight simulators? Well, aren’t you a joker!”

“I’m being serious… Listen, Pup, you’re no noob yourself, you seem to know a lot, and you’ve explained everything to me really well. So why do you work here and not in some better place?”

“Ah well, I kinda got myself in a mess…”

“What exactly happened?”

“Oh, it’s a long story, and a rather boring one to boot. Now I’m waiting for the forum threads with my name in them to get archived. Serious clans even check the archives when they sign a contract with you, but it should be possible for me to join a more unprepossessing group of players in a month or two. But you, Ros, are an easy target. There’s no profit in dealing with you here, but in other places you should really stay alert all the times and trust no one. Everyone will smile to your face while plotting something nasty behind your back. In that world, the competition is cutthroat.”

“Well, you and me are competitors here, aren’t we?”

“Here? Don’t make me laugh, Ros. There’s no competition in mining copper—there’s a lot of it, and demand is always high. It’s impossible to make any real money harvesting it—silver ore is where you can start expecting a profit. This means your Mining & Quarrying stat has to be 17 or higher—otherwise there’s no point in so much as approaching that kind of mine. Right, I’m off to get some work done with my pickaxe. I advise you to do the same. And drop this rat business already—it’s boring, time-consuming, and not very profitable. Your best bet is to pay an extra hundred for your account—you’ll easily level up to ten over the course of a month, and then you can switch back to your old package. Half the earned stat points will be frozen by penalties, but you’ll still have the other half, which you will then be able to distribute the way you like. That’s the only way. Or you could do a heroic deed.”

“A heroic deed?”

“Yeah, like killing a raid boss on your own. Har har! Or, at the very least, you could raise your Mining & Quarrying stat to the max and become the first crafter to harvest some high-level resource which had previously only been looted off mobs. Every player’s chat window worldwide will show the corresponding message, the level lock will drop, and you’ll receive a bunch of useful stuff to boot.”

“Is that free?”

“Sure.”

“Didn’t know such a thing was possible…”

“Well, have you ever made love to a reigning queen?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“You might as well try—it would be a much easier feat to accomplish.”

Chapter 10

This time Ros noticed the nocturnal beast before it managed to deal him a deadly blow in the back. Some revolting thing looking like an overgrown plucked chicken with unseemly appendages in place of wings was hopping along the gallery enthusiastically. It seemed to get its bearings from the sound of the pickaxe tapping the rock.

“Mine Pter. Aggression: highest. Sociality: low. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

For some reason, the information was displayed in a bright red font. Ros suspected this to be the result of the monster’s high level—a kind of warning for any player that might come across it.

Except he wasn’t going to heed it.

“Sic’ em, Templeton!”

The rat, programmed to obey a voice command, obediently lunged itself at the enemy, who intercepted it with a strike of its massive beak.

“Your summoned creature dies.”

The rat never even managed to bite the monster once. Farewell, Templeton, you did a fine job for one day.

“Never give up, never surrender!” cried Ros, swinging his pickaxe to hit the monster that rushed him, and painlessly entering the familiar darkness, to be shortly replaced by the stone circle, the frozen dwarves, and Greedie’s grin.

“You hit the Mine Pter for 1 point of damage. The Mine Pter hits you for 62 damage. The Mine Pter kills you. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones.”

“And here I was thinking I wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing you here today,” said Greedie.

“Why was the damage so low?” asked an outraged Ros.

“What exactly do you mean, noobster?”

“When I hit a rat this hard, I hit it for eight point of damage at least. And this bastard only took one.”

“Let me guess—you got eaten by something large, with red lettering over its head?”

“Yup. A Mine Pter.”

“That’s one tough beast, and an extremely bothersome one, too. Levels fifteen and on. I can snuff one of those with a single hit, two hits maximum. You, however, barely manage to get through its defenses with your noobish pickaxe. Also, your stats are all screwed up.”

“I need a better weapon.”

“And I could do with a beauty queen to keep my bed warm. Seen any around?”

“Don’t be so tightfisted, Greedie. I’ve slaved away all day long, and killed about thirty rats besides.”

“According to your token, you only got 84 lumps of ore—this includes yesterday’s harvest, I think. You need to bring back around a hundred and fifty if you don’t want to run up a debt.”

“Whoever thought of such insane quotas?!”

“Competent authorities.”

“Greedie, your mine is the worst in the world—everyone knows that.”

“Oh please, you haven’t seen any of the real bad ones yet.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“It’s easier to wag your tongue than to swing a spade around.”

“I got a bunch of stuff from the rats, and I’ll end up selling everything to you at rip-off rates. I’d kill them much quicker with a proper weapon. And I could level up my stats a bit, too.”

“You’re forgetting the fact that you’re a level zero player.”

“So?”

“Well, I have an interesting axe in my vaults—deals six to nine slashing damage, and adds a point to Strength and Vigor each.”

“Sounds like the axe of my dreams.”

“Sure does. However, it comes with a requirement: you must be level three or higher to wield it.”

“Does that mean I won’t be able to pick it up?”

“You will. But the penalties will be up the wazoo. You can easily hit you own foot instead of the mob, or even your dumb head. The requirement is there for a reason. If you want bigger guns, get rid of that lock. Zero-level players can’t even handle a decent pickaxe.”

“There’s no way for me to get rid of it!”

“Well, how’s that my fault?”

“Damn, Greedie, I’m really stuck here! I have no idea what to do now. I thought I might level up my Strength with those rats, but it’s been two days now, and it’s hasn’t grown by a single full point.”

“What’s your Strength stat?”

“Ten.”

“God almighty! How did you manage to distribute your stats like that?”

“I’m a noob; I admit it.”

“You’re an idiot who can’t count.”

“What’s math have to do with it?”

“Rats are usually level one or two—you don’t see many that are stronger. I haven’t seen any over level five, but they’re huge and tough bastards, and you won’t be able to handle one of those, most likely. The difference between the mob’s level and your Strength stat is substantial, which is why your stat doesn’t grow by much.”

“Are there any places here with level three or four mobs?”

“Why don’t you go looking for them? You’ll keep me amused with your regular respawning as you play Dora the explorer.”

“Just the same, is there a chance of getting something better than my pickaxe?”

“Lad, your pickaxe is a miner’s tool and not a weapon. Use it the way it’s meant to be used, and you’ll be much happier.”

“I can’t shake off this feeling that you have some nice present for me, Greedie—something much better than a pickaxe.”

“Start fulfilling your quota and pay off your debt first, and then you can tell me all about your feelings.”

“With a proper weapon I’d pay off my debt much faster. I would also be able to harvest more ore.”

“You will harvest more if you stop hanging out in remote galleries. Your skewed stats won’t let you carry much ore—I don’t think you can even fill up half that bag of yours, can you?”

“Well, there are ten lumps per slot—of course I can’t fill it up.”

“You could if you were a bit brighter. High-level crafters have bags with hundreds of slots, and even that can be insufficient at times. No one’s doing your work for you while you walk to the cart and back.”

“But it’s dangerous to have many miners work together due to rockfall hazard. There also isn’t much ore in galleries with many workers. So, sure, I try to get some distance between myself and the carts.”

“Once the ore depletes in one area, new veins appear in another.”

“There’s a lot more ore in the galleries further back, though.”

“The same is true of rats, which you appear to love so dearly. Get to bed already, I’m sick of your noobery.”

“Look, Greedie, you have a fire burning over there—I saw firewood and kindling next to it. Could I have a look for long and hard branches? I need them for something important.”

“Take whatever you like, just leave me the hell alone.”

* * *

It took Ros a long time to sort through the branches in order to find the best ones. The two guards at the gate paid no attention to him and didn’t even ask him what he was doing right next to the gate.

It would be great to venture out into the woods and cut down a few thick and dependable tree trunks instead of these crooked branches—if someone could let him out, that is.

Ros ended up observing a neat trick when he tried to place the poles in his bag. They fit in just fine, regardless of the size, disappearing from his hands as he placed them inside. Each pole occupied three slots, however, and two of the largest ones, four slots each. They took up lots of space.

But it wasn’t for long, anyway.

It was time to start relying on his wit. He’d had enough of dying from the fangs and even beaks of computer-modeled beasts.

Chapter 11

Ros wandered through the galleries for a long time, avoiding the rats he’d meet as much as possible. He needed a place where he could work for a couple of hours. He could make his stand there just before evening and wait for guests, having prepared his position in advance.

Having found a promising cul-de-sac, Ros got to work. He kept alternating between mining, hunting, and building a construction of sturdy rods and rat tails. He used the latter to tie the rods together, failing to come up with anything better. Fortunately, he had enough of this “construction material” piled up.

He kept hunting until the evening, trying to target the largest rats, and checked the carcass for soul crystals every time with hope. Eventually, he resurrected a level three rodent. Not a level five rodent as he had hoped, but this was the best he could get so far. Unfortunately, his attempt to summon two mobs at once failed. It may have been altogether impossible, or simply the result of his being a noob. He asked Pup and Greedie a few cautious questions about necromancy, and learned that neither of them had an inkling of how necromancy (or anything associated with it) worked. He was therefore unlikely to find a mentor down here in the mines.

Workers had no such skills—simply for want of necessity.

*  *  *

Ros missed the arrival of the high-level mob. He was chipping away at a copper vein, his Vigor nearly exhausted, when he heard the sound of cracking wood. As he turned around, he saw that the lattice he had put up in a narrow section of the gallery was being battered by a hideous creature resembling a beardless dwarf with clawed paws that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a muscled orc, and the jaws of a bulldog.

“Wild Leprus. Aggression: high. Sociality: highest. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

The grotesquely large paws made easy work of the bunch of rat tails, and the beast began to crawl toward Ros through the breach in the lattice. Ros dashed to meet it and stuck a stone-sharpened stake into its shoulder with as much force as he could muster. The Leprus muttered something indistinct, and then tried to get at the attacker.

“Get the bastard, Templeton!” Ros shouted as he struck the monster’s wrist with his pickaxe.

“You hit the Wild Leprus for 6 damage. Critical hit: broken paw.”

The lattice was destroyed completely, and the enraged Leprus beat off the swing of the pickaxe with its good paw, getting Ros with the return motion, which didn’t kill him or even get his shoulder slashed with the talons. He was just pushed aside.

Or rather, thrown aside and against the wall of the gallery. Ros tried to turn around to face his attacker, but darkness fell before he could manage it.

“The Wild Leprus hits you for 36 damage. The Wild Leprus kills you. You are resurrected at your current respawn point: miner settlement next to the Ravenas mine, Rallia Province. The current owner is the Sword Power guild. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind points in dangerous zones. Your summoned creature dies.”

“That’s right, you gotta stay true to yourself,” remarked Greedie from his perch acidly.

“Good evening to you, too. So, what about that sword?”

“What about that ore?”

“A hundred and twenty-six lumps.”

“I ain’t impressed, for some reason.”

“Now don’t you grumble. I’m not even bitter about you deceiving me.”

“When did I deceive anyone?”

“Fifty pelts for a dirt-cheap flask is a rip-off, is it not?”

“Nope, that’s legit business,” answered Greedie earnestly, without a hint of irony.

“Can these bastards be killed at all?”

“Who do you mean?”

“Well… it was a Wild Leprus this time.”

“What level?”

“I don’t know—I can’t see their levels.”

“That’s because you’re a level zero noob. You should have dumped all your points into the Essence of Things—then, at least, you’d know who gave you that treatment. Hey, Mac, do you remember what levels local Lepruses usually have?”

“I saw one that was over forty, way before your time,” someone from the gate shouted back.

“A level forty Leprus will snuff you out with a single blow,” Greedie concluded.

“It took this one two hits. The first one was very weak, though. How many hit points do they have?”

“A couple of hundred, if it isn’t an elite critter.”

“How many?!”

“You heard me.”

“I dealt mine eight points of damage with a stake—a record for me. And then another six with the pickaxe.”

“They must have been crit hits—that’s a lot for a noob. Or the mob was on the low end.”

“The stake hit wasn’t a crit. I must have just managed to drive it deep enough.”

“You knocked one tenth off his HP. There was no point for you to try to fight back—it’s better to give up in such cases. Less painful, at least.”

The hell I will, Ros thought to himself, then asked:

“Could I gather some more wood?”

“Are you trying to build a gallows in the faraway galleries or something?”

“Hey, that’s a great idea! Would you happen to have some rope for it? Any old and useless thing would do.”

“Rope costs money.”

“Too tight, are you?”

“No, I just I hate moochers.”

“You think I’m a moocher? I’m merely a borrower, whereas you are my creditor—or investor, if you will.”

“With a borrower like you, I won’t see any return on my investment. Get out of my sight, and make sure you fulfill your quota tomorrow or you’ll get no supper—we don’t feed freeloaders around here. And steer clear of the area where you’d met the Leprus. Those critters have a good memory—once they realize there’s game in a given spot, they’ll check it daily.”

* * *

Alas, Ros had no intention of mending his ways. Instead of spending the whole day tapping away with his pickaxe, he carried on what he started the previous day. This time, though, he altered the construction of the lattice, leaving a narrow gap in it so that the Leprus wouldn’t destroy the construction and proceed toward its quarry in an orderly way.

The gap was rather narrow. If he met the same beast as the previous time, it would have to worm its way in with a lot of effort.

The lower side of the gap had a surprise feature—a bunch of sharpened stakes. The Leprus would have to drag its bulk over them if his plan was to work.

Toward the end of the day he started to work at a more relaxed pace, looking behind his shoulder constantly. He was afraid he’d be caught unawares again, and with his Vigor at the minimum to boot. It was always consumed at much more rapid a pace in battle than during mining.

The Leprus came as expected—when it was nightfall outside, by Ros’ calculations. The beast was completely unintimidated by the lattice after yesterday’s encounter, and crawled into the gap without any second thoughts. The sharpened stakes got driven into the mob’s body, and it must have hurt—the beast jerked, roared, and kept looking at Ros with malice and avarice.

Ros approached and took a good swing with a rather ugly weapon—a long stick with a huge rock with a cross-cutting hole attached to it. Ros had noticed it next to the entrance to the main tunnel the day before, and today he finally found a use for it.

The impromptu hammer struck the beast on the neck. Apart from inflicting crushing damage, it also made the mob’s body jerk downward, driving the stakes deeper. The wounds were far from grave, but they were numerous; most importantly, now thoroughly stuck, the Leprus began to wiggle convulsively, shaking the entire construction in order to destroy it, no longer trying to push through.

Bang! Ros hit the monster on the head with his second blow, shouting loudly at the same time:

“Get him!”

The rat was small, a level one weakling, and it would be silly to expect a lot from it. But it could still deal some minor damage, or at least draw the mob’s attention away from Ros.

Third hit. Ros was hammering the body of the Leprus into the stakes like an ugly nail. System messages were a flurry of damage information and critical damage descriptions. Ros had no time or inclination to read them. He found himself in the role of the pug from the tale that didn’t only bark at its nemesis the elephant, but also had the audacity of attacking it in naïve hopes of killing it eventually. The heavy hammer kept swinging up toward the gallery’s ceiling and falling heavily on the creature’s head, neck, and shoulders. The Leprus bled from a dozen wounds, and half his snout was smashed, as well as an eye and an ear, but it kept pressing on.

Ros felt his arms hang like two heavy ropes. This was the end. With his Vigor reaching zero, his exhaustion was complete.

But wait!

Ros pulled at his flask, drank thirstily, then threw it to the side without replacing the cap, picked up his heavy weapon and dealt the Leprus another blow, a record-breaking one this time—he couldn’t remember ever hitting quite as hard.

The hammer had its uses, but it wasn’t without drawbacks. After the blow, the rock fell off the handle and rolled back, striking Ros on the ankle. Painfully. And now he had no weapon left except for the pickaxe with the pathetic damage it dealt.

The beast’s onslaught finally made the lattice fall apart. The body of the Leprus was no longer supported by the construction, which drove the stakes even deeper into its body—deep enough for the sharp tips of some of the stakes to come out of the creature’s back. The mob tried to raise its body over the floor with its front paws, but then started trembling and fell, hanging lifelessly on the remains of the trap that had killed him. The numerous wounds had made their effect on the Leprus, bleeding it to death.

Ros stood still, amazed by the sheer number of system messages.

“Your trap hits the Wild Leprus for 5 damage. Critical hit: medium bleeding. You kill the Wild Leprus. XP received: 258. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 2. Your Strength grows by 1. Current value: 11. Your Vigor grows by one. Current value: 9. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster thirty or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner. Achievement bonus: 1 undistributed  base stat point. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster more than ten times your level! Achievement earned: Monster Scourge. Achievement bonus: 2 Luck points. Bonus effect: permanent. You will need a lot of Luck if you intend to repeat this feat. Achievement unlocked: Monster Terror. Kill 25 monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: 3 random secondary base stat points. Your trap has landed you a great catch. Auxiliary stats unlocked: Trap Mastery, Inventing, Carpentry, Hunting, and Sly Fox. Congratulations! You have unlocked 5 auxiliary stats at once after a single victory. Promotional bonus: 5 extra hit points, 5 extra magic energy points. Bonus effect: permanent. Rostendrix Poterentax, your deeds are worthy of a hero! You shall become one someday, if you go further down this road of glory! But beware! Underground monsters have been dealt a deathly affront. One of them was slain by a much weaker warrior, and they aren’t likely to forgive such an offense. Always watch your back!”

Ros stood flabbergasted, still not quite believing the fight to be over, and failing to fully grasp the value of the avalanche of gifts and bonuses that he had received. He was still engrossed in battle mentally.

Then he hit himself on the forehead with his fist.

“Jackass! Nincompoop! Braindead idiot! Retarded moron!”

He had a good reason to be ticked off. He had gotten so excited that he forgot the most important thing—to cast Soul Trap on the Leprus first thing. A roughly 25% chance of receiving the soul of such a monster could have been epic. He could have mopped up the smaller mobs easily, and even tried his luck against some of the larger beasts. Considering the experience and bonuses received for a single victory, he would have at least tried.

But his grand plans fell through as a result of his forgetfulness.

He’d have to fiddle with the sticks again in order to draw in another mob. The very thought of fighting such a creature again made Ros shiver. The summoned rat was too weak an accomplice in such matters—it would be enough for a Leprus to sneeze on it for the rodent to kick the bucket.

The rat died right then, as if reading his mind.

“Your summoned creature dies.”

Ros didn’t even see what killed the rat. It may have read his mind indeed—or maybe the Leprus had managed to land a good hit in its agony, causing a bleeding. It didn’t matter. ‘Twas time to loot the carcass and make tracks. He remembered the warning at the end of the barrage of system messages. It may have been your typical scare tactic, but there might also be something to it. He was already accustomed to dying, but the last thing he wanted right then was more adventures. Some invisible power kept drawing him upward.

Apart from his subconscious expectations, the slain Leprus did not yield any great treasure. Some fangs, some teeth, and a tongue that looked like the stuff of nightmares. Ros collected everything and headed for the exit.

He was hunched as he went, looking over his shoulder constantly, but no one was following him, and there was nothing suspicious around. The mine seemed dead—the only sounds he could hear were his own footsteps and the occasional sound of dripping water.

* * *

Ros was circumspect as he left the crater, dashing around the corner as soon as he came out. He didn’t want Greedie to see him. The latter was sitting on his favored bench under the awning as usual, keeping the furnaces, the gates, and the entrance to the mine in his sight. But dwarves were substantially inferior to the rrokh in terms of night vision, so he shouldn’t have noticed him.

The bastard must be waiting for Ros to respawn again.

Well, let him sit there and wait, stewing in his guesses. Ros wouldn’t die tonight—he got out of the mine the proper way.

A very naïve line of reasoning for someone who knew so little of his new world…

Chapter 12

His awakening was clearly premature. It was still dark outside the tiny window paned with thin shards of some semi-transparent mineral glued together. Morning was clearly a ways away, and the settlement was usually quiet as a tomb at night, with three or four guards awake in the whole place. Greedie might still be standing watch—he never seemed to log off, somehow.

There came an unintelligible cry outside, followed by a bestial roar, followed by more cries, louder this time. There was a bright flash, blinding Ros for a couple of seconds. He arrived at the logical conclusion that the worst that could happen was death, which was hardly all that menacing. He cracked the door open and froze, stunned by what he was seeing.

Night was no impediment to a rrokh’s eyes, and he could see virtually everything in detail. Well-familiar beasts were running up from the crater, trotting along the path: Lepruses. They varied in size, but few were smaller than the one killed in the mine earlier that day.

Lepruses weren’t merely emerging from the crater in large numbers—they were spreading across the settlement, their every step causing some sort of damage. The awning where Greedie spent most of his days and nights lay torn down. The door of a nearby house was smashed open with a crack—some of the monsters must have sensed prey inside. He could hear the clangor of weapons by the gate—then something flashed again, but Ros could not clearly see what was going on from where he stood.

A pack of Lepruses reached the respawn circle. The monsters lingered there a while, killing the unconscious dwarves and orcs repeatedly. The players died, got resurrected instantly in the regular manner, only to be killed again a moment later, leaving no possessions and no body behind.

One of the Lepruses ran toward the door—the beast may have spotted Ros standing in the doorway, or maybe it had intended to check the building. Ros prepared for a quick death, but the monster turned away, having noticed some quarry it fancied more.

A strange procession was coming from the direction of the gate—three tall and broad-shouldered warriors clad in resplendent armor from head to toe, followed by some thin and lanky fellow with a face of a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist scorning everyone around him, who, in turn, was followed by Greedie, barefoot and attired in long johns of dazzling white for whatever reason. He kept shouting something that sounded downright belligerent.

And then the main source of the blood-curdling cries became obvious.

Another figure clad in similar long johns became visible in the stone circle, right amid the partying Lepruses. Ros recognized the man as one of the guards that usually sat at the inner gate. The monsters killed him instantly; however, unlike the workers, he didn’t get resurrected at once, but kept lying there by the pole.

In the meantime, a small party kept pressing toward the crater exit. Lone monsters and monster parties kept attacking them, only to swiftly fall under the swords or maces of the formidable-looking warriors.

The thin fellow had a few surprises in him. Upon seeing all the fun that was taking place at the respawn circle, he gave a wave of the hand, which was holding a short staff. The top of the weapon disgorged a fireball that flew like a meteor and hit the ground next to the guard’s body.

Ros was blinded by a bright flash. After a few blinks, he realized he could no longer see the guard’s body, or the pole, or the stones. Just the flames, and the burning Leprus figures trying to escape.

“Look out, a boss!” Greedie cried out in a voice that was positively unbearable to hear.

Ros saw three Lepruses jump out of the crater, one of them larger than any he’d seen before. The mage stopped throwing fiery sparks about, and aimed his staff at the monster. The beast froze instantly, with bluish sparkles running across its skin.

“It’s not a boss, you halfwit!” shouted the mage. “It’s just an elite mob, albeit a high-level one. Don’t touch it while it’s asleep. Deal with the others, and then focus all your damage on this one; it should fall quickly enough.”

The gigantic Leprus didn’t so much as twitch or look sideways while the warriors exterminated its kin and the mage used his fireballs to dispatch the mobs approaching from a distance.

“We’re done, Mord!” shouted one of the warriors.

“Get on with it, Sleep will wear off in a second. Cast Stun and other control spells on it, and then deal as much damage as you can, or it will rip you to shreds with its talons!”

The warriors rushed the monster from three sides, and the rest looked much like a meat grinder. They kept hacking and hitting away at the mob while the Leprus just stood there. But then something went awry at some point—the beast came to its senses and knocked one of the armor-clad fighters off his feet.

That was the mob’s only success, though—the forces were too unequal.

Ros thrust his hand forward and cast Soul Trap, using up the required number of magic energy points. He wasn’t sure he’d manage it from this distance, having usually cast it at closer range. But it would be silly to miss a chance like that.

It would likewise be stupid to hope they’d let him search the mob’s corpse for loot. Sure enough, they’d keep the loot for themselves. There was a nuance, however—if the looter wasn’t a necromancer or some other class dealing with raising the dead, they would collect everything but the crystal. In fact, no one would even notice it until a “specialist” came along.

The Leprus crashed down to the ground, and one of the warriors finished it off with a blow of his two-handed sword, exhaling sharply. Then the party turned around to face the road and stood still.

“Your Intellect grows by 1. Current Intellect value: 3.”

What could this mean? Was it a result of the successful use of his skill, growing drastically due to the high level of the mob it had hit? He badly wanted it to be true.

“No mana left!” the mage shouted. “Let’s stay put and wait for reinforcements!”

“I’ll loot the mobs in the meantime,” said one of the warriors.

“Only the ones closest to us,” the mage ordered. “We don’t know how many more of these bastards may be coming, and I’m out of mana.”

Ros figured out that “mana” was the mage’s way of referring to magic energy points. He was well familiar with the pauses caused by the blue bar reaching zero. The tall guy didn’t want to enter the crater without his fiery weapon—no one knew how many mobs there might be down there.

Another party approached, somewhat more numerous. There were two tall warriors, a dwarf wearing the same kind of armor scurrying along, a fragile-looking orc clad in a ridiculous garish costume and wearing a feather headdress, and two slender young ladies looking very appealing in their skintight leather outfits with sophisticated-looking bows in their hands.

The dwarf shouted from a distance, “Mord! What’s all the commotion?”

“The Lepruses have gone berserk! Their entire population crawled out of the mine. They destroyed half the settlement, as well as these nitwits—even Greedie got the axe!”

“Greedie got offed by noob mobs? Har har har!”

“Well, they weren’t as noobish as you might think—and there were plenty of them. Good thing he’d managed to activate the alarm in the nick of time.”

“Judging by the fires, the Lepruses weren’t the ones who destroyed the settlement.”

“It got so hot here, I couldn’t afford to pick my targets. Just look at all these dead mobs.”

“What’s this weird business with the Lepruses? I’ve never heard of them behaving this way.”

“They killed one of our workers yesterday,” Greedie butted in. “Yesterday evening.”

“There’s no order here—that’s why the mobs run wild! Let’s run through the settlement and see whether there are any of them hiding anywhere. How are you doing, Mord?”

“All used up—I need a break to recover.”

“Stay put, we’ll loot the mobs in the meantime. Tardle and Onkins, guard the gate. No one comes in, no one gets out. We’ll go down there and bury the entrance to the mine they had crawled out of.”

“And how are we supposed to harvest copper afterwards?” Greedie countered, enraged.

“Don’t get all worked up, you’ll have your copper. We’ll trigger a rockfall at some distance from the entrance—there’ll be plenty of galleries left for you to work in.”

“Burying the entrance won’t gain you anything. This whole mountain is like a piece of cheese—there are holes everywhere. They have hundreds of exits, and we have no idea where many of them are, but the mobs know it for sure.”

“What is your alternative?”

“Just take a stroll down the main tunnel and give a good fright to whatever you find down there. Those that survive won’t forget anytime soon that messing with us is bad for their health. The entire population of the Lepruses must have crawled out of the mines—if we destroy them all, it will be a while until we hear from them again. It would also be nice to get more guards down here—reinforcing the garrison for at least a week would be a great idea.”

“All right, I’ll find you two or three penalized players. But remember, you mind the mine, and you’re personally responsible for its output. If we fail to meet our customers’ demands, it will be your ass. So ponder this well: are you sure you don’t want the main tunnel buried?”

“I am sure. I know these mines better than you. It’s pointless. Do you know the creek down there?”

“So?”

“Do you remember Tandor?”

“He isn’t easy to forget.”

“He used to get up to all kinds of tomfoolery back when he worked here as a guard. One time he collected a bunch of empty vials and tossed them into the creek, each with a coin inside—he didn’t mind wasting his money like that—and a note saying, ‘Please report where you find this vial, and here’s a little something for your trouble.’ He got kicked out of the clan a while ago, but we got a letter with one of his notes delivered to the mines only recently, saying that the vial was found on the banks of Tythiga—near Sakash, no less.”

“How the hell did it wind up there?”

“I’m telling you, this whole mountain is full of holes. If you fall into the creek, you can find yourself carried all the way to the foothills of the Devil’s Fingers.”

“Mm-hmm. Then I suggest you watch that this worm-riddled mountain doesn’t swallow you up, the village and all.”

Ros waited patiently for the warriors to finish their looting and split. When the main party descended into the crater, leaving a few people at the gate, he slipped out into the street, approached the corpse of the Leprus cautiously, and touched its chopped-up head gingerly, all the while praying to himself, “Come on! Come on!” Today was his lucky day! Today he was bound to succeed!

“Soul Crystal. Trapped creature: Wild Leprus.”

Chapter 13

What surprised Ros in the morning was the unusually high number of miners present. Normally, it would be hard to find someone in the settlement apart from Greedie and the guards, but today there were dozens of miners wandering to and fro. He ran into Pup as he was leaving the mess hall, and asked him, surprised:

“What are you doing here? Don’t you spend your nights down in the mine?”

“Haven’t you heard anything at all?”

“I have. The mobs attacked the settlement, and the warriors gave them a good fright in the night. Two of the houses over there are still smoldering.”

“Well, these mobs had some fun underground, too—it wasn’t just the village. They went through all of the closest galleries and sent everyone to their graves. The bastards also left nothing but rags of my clothes.”

“I saw it happen. You kept materializing in the circle, and they’d kill you instantly. They kept repeating the process over and over again.”

“Yeah, I must have died a dozen times or more. I haven’t lost any stats since I still have noob levels, but my clothes sure suffered, and they were much better than what’s issued here. What on earth are you chewing without even sitting down for it? Do you really enjoy this sludge?”

“I’m hungry like a horse. That bastard Greedie said I’d get no supper if I fail to deliver on the quota, and I didn’t feel like escalating the conflict.”

“That’s OK—he’s already had his comeuppance. He spent the night running around in his long johns.”

“Why the long johns?”

“Have you seen his name, as well as those of the local guards?”

“So?”

“Ever noticed they were usually red?”

“So what does that mean?”

“A player’s name is dyed red if they kill other players outside warzones, without such excuses as them being blacklisted or belonging to an enemy clan. This happens if you have a penchant for offing neutrals or clanless players. The victim also has to provide no resistance. Get it?”

“Do they tie them up before they kill them in order to make their names red?”

“It’s much simpler than that. Greedie is level fifty or so, I gather. So he must be involved in killing players with level growth locked at thirty—no higher than that, most likely. Such noobs often fail to respond in kind.”

“Whatever for?”

“It’s a noob clan, so they’re involved in all sorts of noob affairs. Some of those affairs are pretty suspicious—I don’t think they draw a line at anything. And murky affairs require special people be used. So this is where they keep them, away from where most people live. Whenever there’s a need to slice someone’s throat, they send them into action. They may even oust them from the clan temporarily so as to avoid any incriminating association. Once the deed is done, they get back here and lie low until their names go white again. If you don’t get involved in any violent stuff, it takes a week or two for it to almost regain its color. Don’t ask me who they deal with to make them red—I’ve never been involved in any affairs with the Swords, so there’s no way for me to know.”

“Why the long johns, though?”

“It’s all related. A player with a white name has a very low chance of losing an equipped or inventoried item—one or two percent maximum. That is, if they never PK’d anyone.”

“PK’d?”

“It stands for Player Kill. PK’ing affect your karma negatively, raising that chance, though it should still remain relatively low. If your name is red, however, you start dropping stuff like you’re Santa’s bag with a hole in it. Only a very few items are loss-proof, and they’re very rare—most often, epic and legendary items, and parts of sets. Another thing that you cannot lose is your underwear. It always stays with you, and no one can remove it without your consent. Also, it can only be done in a room that you own or rent, or in a location free of any third parties. This is necessary on account of some of the players being minors, and so on. So, it’s censorship of a sort. To be seen in your long johns is something associated with total noobs who end up owning nothing. And now Greedie got exposed for what he is… Which must be pretty embarrassing for him.”

“So he got killed by mobs and ended up without any stuff?”

“They must have killed him a couple of times, chasing him all over the settlement before reinforcements arrived. Someone had enough wits left to sound the alarm, sending for the clan’s cavalry, but until they arrived Greedie was getting hammered like the greenest of noobs. And ended up losing everything. He eventually got his belongings back, but people have already seen it, and that’s a sight they’re not likely to forget.”

“They suggested to bury the entrance to the mines—not all of them, just the far galleries. But Greedie talked him out of it.”

“He was perfectly right in that.”

“What if the Lepruses try something again?”

“Mobs used to respawn real quick in the old days, but now it takes them a lot longer. There must be next to none left after the night’s battle. Even if they caused a few rockfalls, they’d no longer be blocking the tunnels by the time new mobs turn up, so there wouldn’t be any use for them.”

“No longer blocking the tunnels? How does that work?”

“Just like that. The mine was built by expert crafters with high Mining & Quarrying stats, Construction, and something else—I’m not entirely sure. They made the crater, then bored the tunnel at the center and made galleries leading away from it. Then architect mages who specialize in that sort of thing cast a protective spell over the whole construction. The protection was cheap—the noob clan couldn’t afford anything better. This is why we have plenty of rockfalls. But there’s still some protection against them, even if it’s noob-grade. So they dissolve completely after a while. The tunnels regenerate, as it were.”

“Like ore?”

“Ore is much trickier. This mountain has a certain amount of copper deposits that regenerate slowly. If you mine faster than they regenerate, the miners will stop finding ore, so there has to be a balance between the number of workers and a mine’s properties. The richer the deposit, the higher the regeneration rate—that’s the usual rule. Rich deposits are usually contested by top clans, but they can’t be bothered with the likes of Ravenas, which is why the Swords have managed to claim it as their own. Listen, I suggest we get going—we’re just standing here like two idiots, and there’s work to be done. Have a look over there—everyone’s going in already, the warriors have come out. They must have given the mobs below a good thrashing, so there may be no rats left for you.”

“Well, in that case I’ll just harvest ore like everybody else. I gotta fulfill my quota ASAP, or I’ll starve.”

“You should be able to produce between one hundred fifty and two hundred lumps per shift even with your skewed stats, so don’t worry too much. Best of all, cook your own food. Then you’ll have no need to come up at all.”

“How do you do that?”

“You mean you don’t even know that?!”

“How would I know?”

“Read the forum and the guides. That always comes in handy.”

“Trust me, Pup, I have no time for forums right now.”

“You’re one weird noob… Anyway, I keep my nose out of other people’s business. You kill rats, don’t you?”

Ros decided against telling the dwarf about the slain Leprus—the last thing he wanted was someone shrewd enough to link it to the mob attack.

“Sure, I kill a few of them every day.”

“Once you skin the rat, or peel off the shreds, as the case may be, you can cut away pieces of meat—just treat it like a regular carcass. Then you can bake it, pan-fry it, or roast it over a fire. You get the idea.”

“You suggest that I eat rat meat?”

“What do you think they feed you in the mess hall?”

“Come again?”

“Do you think the gunk they serve there has fresh sturgeon in it?”

“Well, it doesn’t taste like rat meat…”

“What you get is all sorts of crap—rat meat is by no means the worst. It’s good meat if you cook it right and don’t mix it with all sorts of cattle feed like they do when they cook in the mess hall. See the furnaces below where they smelt the ore? You can use them for cooking, too. You’ll get a bonus, too—food, especially good food, restores hit points. So you can carry pieces of roast meat in your bag. If you’re low on HP after a battle, you can have a snack to restore your health. It replenishes your Vigor, too. Food works once an hour, just like water. Not the same as an elixir, of course, but noobs like us can’t be choosers.”

“I had no idea.”

“Now you do.”

“But I don’t even have a knife to dress the carcass.”

“Here you go,” the dwarf handed him a short knife with a wooden handle.

“Small Knife. Versatile tool and a bladed weapon. Damage: 1-2. Requirements: none. Weight: 0.14 kg. Durability: 7/10”

“Want anything in return?”

“Nah, just take it—workers like us gotta help one another. I have no need for it here, so I’ll buy a better one later on.”

“Thanks!”

“Thanks are fine, but if you decide you want to share some of your rat meat with me, I won’t mind too much.”

“I can take a hint. Although I don’t really know when I’ll be able to hunt again. Didn’t you say those warriors exterminated all the mobs from the mines?”

“I may have exaggerated a bit. You’d need around two hundred players to hunt for a whole week in order to mop up them all. And even that may not be enough. There were few decent experts back in the time they were building this mine, and they charged exorbitant fees for their work. The Swords couldn’t afford anything of that caliber, and made some error in their calculations. As a result, they made the mine about ten times bigger than needed for a deposit of this size. The main tunnel and the galleries go on for miles, deep into the mountains, crossing lots of caverns and underground rivers. They built it just the way it had been drawn on their plan without overthinking it—I suspect there wasn’t anyone to do the thinking in the first place. There turned out to be a ton of hollows—a whole cavern network was apparently discovered. They even sent a few warrior parties out to explore in hopes of finding a lair.”

“A lair?”

“Didn’t I tell you about them? They’re a special kind of dungeon with elite mobs, bosses, and valuable loot. Clans fight for the ownership of such places.”

“An elite mob attacked the settlement at night.”

“You find elite mobs even in regular places. But in lairs they are the majority—or maybe all mobs are elite there. It also depends on how long the lair had stood there. I don’t know that much about it—I have no need of such things.”

“So they exterminated the mobs in the mines, but others can get in through the caves?”

“They didn’t even check the mines thoroughly. Only the closest galleries and the ones at an intermediate distance from the entrance—they hardly reached any of the remote galleries. So don’t you worry about your rats, they didn’t go anywhere.”

“You can come across a tough mob even during the day in the far galleries.”

“So they’ll kill you again. Big deal.”

“Sure. Another reason for Greedie to have a good laugh.”

“That much is true. He sits there on his ass all day long, watching everything that happens around here. He’s interested in everything, the vulture. Whenever one of us respawns, he laughs like a schoolboy.”

They fell silent as they approached the group of warriors coming back from their extermination raid. Most of the men were tall and muscled, with the faces of movie stars. The women were voluptuous, their curves emphasized by fancy armor, and looked like beauty queens, perhaps even better. There were no “squiggles” next to their names, which looked nothing like a worker’s hodgepodge of syllables.

Once they left the warriors behind them, Pup changed the subject.

“Did you see how hot they are? That’s the beauty of an expanded account—you can choose the character’s appearance. Did you see small face icons next to some of their names?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“An icon like that means the character’s appearance resembles that of its owner. But you see few enough of those—everybody wants to look the best they can. An elderly lady of seventy or more IRL can be a twenty-year-old beauty here that will take your breath away. I’m a bit weary of having affairs with those—you can call me picky.”

“Affairs?”

“Sure. If it’s by mutual consent, and the accounts belong to adults, there’s nothing stopping you. Cities even have brothels with special level zero players working there. They pay for a month of an extended account with the appearance choice option, create a hot-looking character, level up their Vigor, and then revert to a work account, losing half the accumulated points. Then they’re ready to start making their fortunes doing all kinds of impotent old geezers who totally lose it when they find themselves in a young body. They’re usually well-heeled, too.”

“You sound like you envy them.”

“I might a bit, come to think of it,” Pup chuckled. “It’s not like swinging your pickaxe about in a damp mine. Much easier, and you can enjoy yourself while you’re at it.”

“So why don’t you create a female character?”

“You cannot. Not even in 2D—the game won’t let you. Accounts are linked to specific owners, and you can’t launch the game without a bracelet. It’s not like you can practice your Kama Sutra skills in 2D, either. Mining is much easier in that respect. Anyway, I was just joking.”

“I have already leveled up my sense of humor a bit, so I guess I get it.”

“Keep up the good work—I got the impression you believed me for a moment.”

“Hey, Pup, there’s another thing I wanted to ask you. It appears that you receive more experience for some rats and less for others. I figure it depends on the mob’s level. What if you kill mobs whose level is much higher than yours?”

“The mathematics is as follows: the lower a mob’s level, the easier it is for you to kill it, but you receive less experience for such mobs. If a mob’s level is lower than yours, you receive a whole lot less. You’ll end up getting one point for each, which is the lowest it gets. There’ll be penalties affecting the loot, too—you’ll be getting virtually no pelts or fangs, and fewer items as well, many of which will be damaged. If you kill mobs of a level higher than yours, you receive more experience—the greater the level gap, the more you get. There’ll be no penalties on the loot, either, but it will be harder for you. In order to level up, your best bet is to focus on mobs of your own level or around there.”

Ros had a different opinion on this account, but he kept it to himself, asking another question:

“How many levels can this gap between yourself and the mob you kill be? The absolute maximum?”

“I’ve heard of fifty or even higher. That mostly applies to archers and mages who ambush their quarry from the top of a tree or a tall rock. Tricks like that are said to be rewarded by pretty decent achievements. Warriors and other melee fighters will find it to be a much tougher feat. But it isn’t all that easy for the classes that deal ranged damage, either. You can’t kill a high-level mob quickly, so while you’re nuking away the mob will either get to you or realize that chasing you is futile and retreat beyond your weapon range. And then it will hang out near your tree, waiting for you to come down.”

“How do they manage to kill them, then?”

“You need proper weapons and equipment to max out your damage. That’s expensive. Very much so. Hundreds of thousands in gold, maybe up to a million. I don’t think the Swords have any members with that kind of gear—their clan is too noobish.”

“How do people even manage to come up with that kind of money?!”

“The leadership of a large clan makes more money than top managers of multinational corporations. You can also reach some agreement based on payment in real money—it isn’t forbidden. Tax inspectors go ape-shit trying to trace transactions of that kind. No one else cares.”

“But you need to have real money in order to be able to spend it on such equipment.”

“Do you think there’s a shortage of millionaires and billionaires? There are more buyers than sellers even in case of rare items, let alone epics.”

“Will you stay here long? In this mine?”

“My contract expires in two weeks. I won’t extend it—I intend to leave at first opportunity.”

“What’s to stop them from making you stay and work?”

“They take too big a cut from our profits, anyway. If they lose all sense of measure, we shall flood every topic at the forum with true stories about their clan’s practices. Also, once the bind point expires, I’ll be able to kill myself and respawn at the altar of a temple in the nearest village. And I’d be able to tell enough sordid stuff about them within the game itself—I could go so far as to place articles about them in newspapers and ruin their reputation at the Miners’ Guild. Would that be worth their while? You can’t hold us by force, so there’s no point in getting burned needlessly. But why are you asking? Are you going to…”

Pup froze in the middle of the phrase and stood there for a while without moving. Ros thought the dwarf wasn’t even breathing, but then he started to move again.

“Some IRL distraction?”

“Nope, it’s the damned lag. A royal pain in the rear in 2D and 3D. I froze up for twenty minutes or more the other day. The character just stood there right next to a piece of ore that had almost been harvested, and someone pinched it from right under my nose. There were just a few taps left to go. I need to switch to partial immersion.”

“How does that work?”

“You get a helmet, bracelets, a belt, as well as all sorts of bangles and rings. The lag is much better there, and much less serious. You could also get a bunk with latches—it’s cheaper than a capsule, and the body doesn’t get as numb as it does in a helmet. However, that’s more expensive, and I need to count every coin. I have a large family to feed.”

“You shouldn’t have chosen this mine—there’s not much profit to be had here, as you probably understand.”

“Well, Ros, you don’t know everything yet. I won’t be empty-handed once I leave; also, for the likes of me, it’s famine one day and a feast the next. Sorry, but my means of turning a profit are confidential.”

“That’s fine with me—we all have our secrets.”

“I’ll head back to the same gallery. I’m used to it, and it’s also longer than the rest of them. You know where to find me, if anything.”

“I’ll try to get you some meat later today.”

“Watch that no one makes a snack out of your own meat.”

Chapter 14

Ros was holding two Soul Crystals in his hands. One contained a rat, and the other, the Leprus. He was anxious to use the latter, but there were good reasons not to. After all, where would he get another chance to trap a summoned creature of this level? An attempt to conduct a summoning in the settlement had ended up in the rat dying from Greedie’s boot. He had tried to leave one of his raised rodents in the tunnel overnight, but had found no one there in the morning without so much as an inkling as to what had happened. He suspected that the pet shouldn’t spend too much time away from its owner.

So he’d have to sleep in the mine in order to raise the Leprus. He’d need food for that. To hell with the quota—Ros was sure he earned even less than Pup on his contract, so he’d hardly get rich with that kind of job. All he could do was spend a month to his own maximum advantage—try to level up his stats, stock up on valuable loot, and learn to become a better player.

But before all that he’d have to pay off his debt to Greedie and try to get something useful for his forthcoming underground dwelling from the dwarf.

So the Leprus could wait. Ros would spend the day accompanied by the rat and casting Soul Trap on its living kin. He might end up with a few more crystals.

He kept coming across evidence of last night’s extermination raid—shreds of Leprus bodies and scorch marks on rocks. But these disappeared eventually—apparently, the clan’s warriors didn’t make it that far. Ros killed the first rat he encountered, cutting off its plump hind legs, and realizing with relief that it was nowhere as revolting as he had feared. Hygiene was much easier here than in the real world. Your body would get dirty from mine work, but pouring a pail of lukewarm water over it in the sauna made you as fresh and perky as if after a proper bath with soap and a sponge. Blood from the player’s own wounds and their kills did not stain the clothes for long, disappearing without a trace within minutes. Only rags with durability close to zero got really dirty.

In other words, there was no repulsive stench, and his hands didn’t get dirty. In what Ros deemed a blessing, dismembering a carcass turned out to be much easier here.

The next rat surprised Ros—apart from the standard body parts, he also got a trophy:

“Bronze Bracelet.”

That was it—no further information. Not so lucky this time, after all. It was clear even to a noob that this bracelet had no value whatsoever—smelting was the best you could do with it.

Feeling somewhat disappointed after the elation of seeing an unusual object in the rat’s “inventory,” he entered the nearest gallery and started walking along it absent-mindedly, examining the walls perfunctorily as he went by. It was becoming easy for him to find ore—he did it automatically, without having to peer endlessly at the wall like on his first day.

Yet he did come across something he ended up examining attentively, having spotted the rocky surface with something upon it that didn’t look like a regular copper vein.

“Worthless sandstone with quartz veins and a quartz geode. Chance of finding a quartz crystal: 68.19%. Chance of finding an additional quartz crystal: 9.11%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.02%.”

Ros didn’t know how valuable quartz was, but decided it would be stupid to pass it by. He took to his pickaxe, and the resource’s hit point bar started to shrink much faster than in the case of copper. He finally tapped the rock for the final time, and his trophy fell out.

“Quartz Crystal. Cloudy, with cracks. Weight: 10.6 g.”

He felt like visiting Pup again at once, but Ros told himself to chill. He’d have to work some more and fill his bag up with ore to take it to the cart later on. After that, he could try roasting the meat.

He went to see the dwarf some two hours later, after killing three more rats and harvesting another similar quartz crystal weighing a little less.

* * *

The orcs at the furnace paid no attention to Ros. He still didn’t understand why they didn’t mingle with the dwarves, but they must have classified him as one of the latter and now dutifully pretended he didn’t exist. The two rat legs that he’d skewered on the branches taken from the scraggy bush growing near the slope of the crater were soon covered with a crust, and the smell of roast meat filled his nostrils.

“So you’re a hunter, are you?” he heard someone ask behind him.

He turned around and saw an orc, which surprised him quite a bit—he was the first of the local greenskins to address him of his own volition.

“Yup. I really want to level up my stats as soon as I can.”

“What’s your race? I’ve never seen the likes of you before.”

“It’s pretty rare. I got it randomly at the race selection screen.”

“Are you related to the dwarves?”

“Not that I know of. Is there a war between your two races or something?”

“Not a war. It’s just that the miners have this custom that orcs and dwarves keep to themselves. It’s a tradition—I don’t know why it exists.”

“Dwarves are more inclined to talk to me than your kin.”

“You just haven’t met a nice guy like me,” the orc flashed a scary fanged smile. “Got any more meat?”

“Eight legs.”

“Look, I’m leveling up my Cooking skill—how about I roast them for you? They’ll be finger-licking good. You don’t use any marinades or spices, so yours won’t taste quite as good as mine.”

“How do you level up Cooking?”

“Cooking is an auxiliary skill. You level up when you cook food successfully. So, do we have a deal? We’ll both profit from it.”

Ros didn’t take long to decide. On the one hand, it would be nice to unlock his Cooking skill on his own; on the other hand, he could do it later, and he didn’t really feel like wasting time mucking about with rat meat. It made sense to trust it to a specialist, and get on friendly terms with him as well.

“What’s your name, greenskin?”

“Shoto. Or you can try using the name you see over my head. But let me warn you: everyone who’s tried it so far had to be treated for a tongue sprain.”

“Right on, I have the same problem. You can call me Ros. Here’s the meat. I can bring you some on a daily basis, and there’s a lot more where this came from.”

“You serious?”

“Two dozen hind legs are totally doable.”

“Get me the carcasses, I’ll butcher them myself.”

“I won’t lift more than one—I’m weak, and they’re huge. So legs are what you’ll be getting for the most part. I won’t be able to eat that much myself, so I can either leave them or get them for you. But you should think of a way to compensate me for it.”

“You know rat meat isn’t worth much.”

“It’s worth something, and I’m not exactly demanding its weight in gold. Just think about it.”

“We’ll work something out—just get me enough meat. I need a lot to level up.”

“When should I come back to get this batch?”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Not particularly.”

“Two hours good enough?”

“Absolutely.”

“OK, as long as you don’t bother me any earlier.”

Ros turned around and started toward the black maw of the mine tunnel.

* * *

Pup fiddled with the crystal for a while and shook his head.

“This quartz crystal is low-quality. It’s worth something, but it won’t make you rich. You’ll be lucky if you get a silver coin or two for all these crystals.”

“I see. Look, Pup, I had rats drop a bronze bracelet and a silver hairpin today.”

“Is the hairpin big?”

“Very little.”

“Sure. They’re rats, after all.”

“What’s wrong with rats?”

“They’re small mobs. Critters drop items for a reason—it’s presumed they ate a hero at some point, and something from the hero’s inventory ended up in their stomachs. It isn’t necessary for a mob to actually eat someone, but what kind of hero gets eaten by noob mobs like rats, anyway? That’s right, a noob of the same level. That’s why they drop all kinds of cheap junk.”

“You said they can drop good stuff too in theory?”

“Well, in theory they can discover the body of a high-level hero and gobble it up with all the valuable little things they carry, but you don’t see such bodies left and right. They usually fall to high-level monsters, and it’s the bosses that you have to kill for their loot. You’ll never receive any item drops from deer, roebucks and the like. They’re vegetarian and don’t eat any meat. That’s one of the game’s principles.”

“I’ve got some meat for you, Pup.”

“Wow! Well-cooked! It even gives you a buff—neat!”

“A buff?”

“Take a look yourself.”

“Roast Rat Meat with Spices. Tender, very nutritious, with a pleasant taste. Effects: restores 30 Vigor over one minute; restores 20 HP over one minute; raises your Strength by 1 for an hour. To experience the full set of effects, do not consume more often than once an hour.”

“Neat is the word…”

“How did you manage to cook this?”

“Wasn’t me. Some orc at the furnace saw me cook the meat and offered his help. Not quite help—he’s trying to level up his Cooking skill. But it suits me just fine—I don’t have to waste my time cooking. It’s not that easy to cook meat this good, I assume?”

“Your Cooking skill has to be 2 or higher. I don’t know for sure—never tried it myself. But with your zero-level culinary skills you won’t manage cooking anything remotely as good as this, so it’s a great arrangement.”

“There’s another thing I wanted to ask. It’s my fifth day in the mine, but today was the first time I saw quartz crystals—three times, no less. Also, I have killed a bunch of rats before, but they only dropped a single ring once, whereas today I got a copper bracelet and a silver hairpin.”

“Is the bracelet enchanted?”

“No, just a regular bracelet. Am I just lucky today, or is there something I’m missing?”

“Hm… Well… It could be luck. But are you sure nothing unusual happened to you yesterday? Some non-primary stat raised, perhaps?”

Ros decided not to spill all the beans at once, and divulged only a part of the truth:

“Actually, I had my Luck raised by two yesterday. Could that be the reason I’ve been so lucky?”

“How exactly did you manage to raise it by two?”

“Sorry, Pup—you have your own secrets, and I have mine.”

“Not a problem. Was anything else raised?”

“Nothing special—only Strength, Intellect, and Mining & Quarrying.”

“How the hell did you manage to level up Intellect?!”

“Look, Pup…”

“I know, I know—it’s a secret. Must be some skill of yours. Keep working on it—everything that can be leveled up, should be. The more different stats your character has, the more valuable you become.”

“So what do you say about today’s luck?”

“What’s your Mining & Quarrying at?”

“Two points.”

“Intellect?”

“Three.”

“Perception?”

“Two.”

“Arcane Knowledge?”

“One.”

“Two points of Luck?”

“Nope, four…”

“I say…” Pup made a surprised face. “What about the Essence of Things and Reason?”

“One and two, respectively.”

“Well, let me tell you something, Ros—you’re the weirdest noob I’ve ever seen.”

“That sounds almost like a compliment.”

“It sure is. I’ve been suspecting something since you started killing rats on your first day. It’s not so hard for us workers, but we need to level up our stats a bit before we can do it, and you were a big fat zero. Either you have skills IRL, which can also come in handy here, or perhaps your skills are combined with the right kind of stats. The latter is more likely to be true—mining is hard enough for you, but you manage hunting perfectly well.”

“Could you please explain? I didn’t understand anything.”

“Crystal is easy to explain—with your Luck and Perception it’s much easier for you to spot a cluster of gems than it is for me. The only way for me to notice it is to have it under my very nose, and I’d have to know where they can be found the most frequently. For example, the intersections of veins, or the spots where they expand or merge with other minerals, or in areas where there are many cavities in the rock. And you can spot them just as you pass by. Also, your Arcane Knowledge, Reason, and Essence of Things all have non-zero values. Their influence isn’t that big, but they still have their effect. Intellect must give a good bonus to Perception, Arcane Knowledge, and Reason—probably, the Essence of Things as well. Absolutely every stat is part of a system that remains a great mystery to this day. Every change will affect something somehow. A character isn’t just a set of digits—all those digits form a system. Everything affects everything and is affected by everything, so it’s best to level up everything you can. Your Mining & Quarrying and Intellect have grown, and you can now spot gems. Once you level up some other stat, you’ll gain some other skill.”

“I don’t see any such relations mentioned in the stat descriptions.”

“And you won’t. They’re very brief, and they can contain errors, too. I’m telling you—no one has full knowledge of the subject, and that’s what’s cool about the game.”

“OK, quartz I understand. But what about the items dropped by rats?”

“That’s easy: the higher your Luck, the higher your chances of scoring extra loot. Intellect, Reason, and the Essence of Things boost it rather nicely, too. You’ve raised your Luck by two, and your Intellect by one, and now you can see the results.”

“The results aren’t much to boast about so far…”

“Well, you won’t be getting junk all the time. You’ll get a good haul soon enough. I’m actually a bit envious. It’s excruciatingly hard to level up Luck—even four points are deemed a good result. Some reach their hundredth level with their Luck at three or less. It’s easier to raise it by using the undistributed points you get every ten levels.”

“What exactly makes you envious? The fact that you didn’t bungle your stats like I did?”

“Nah… I just said that without thinking. We are simple miners, and ore is the main thing we care for. That’s why we dump all our secondary points into Carrying Capacity and Speed. That way we can fit more into our bags, and get to the cart and back quicker.”

“I would have probably done the same if I knew stat redistribution was so hard. I had assumed I’d be able to rearrange them optimally later on.”

“That’s pretty typical of total noobs—don’t take it the wrong way.”

“Oh, I’m used to it now.”

“Time to get to work. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. I’m the one who owes you for the knife.”

“Oh, come on—it costs a few pennies at best. But I have a Strength buff courtesy of you now. The exchange is unequal.”

“How about I keep asking you questions?”

“Oh no!” the dwarf feigned terror at the suggestion. “I’d rather pay in gold! If a noob of your caliber is given free rein, I’ll spend days answering your questions!”

Chapter 15

“You hit the Mine Rat for 9 damage. The Mine Rat hits you for 5 damage. You kill the Mine Rat. XP received: 12. Points left until the next level: unknown.”

Ros took a breath and winced at the pain from the bite in his leg—the beast was pretty big, and the victory wasn’t quite flawless. He healed his summoned rat, then proceeded to scold it:

“Had you grabbed it by the paw, it wouldn’t have turned around to face me. I lost half my HP because of you, dummy.”

Actually, Ros had slipped when the mob attacked, exposing himself to the damage, but it always felt nice being able to blame others for your blunders. Especially when the someone in question couldn’t so much as glare at you in response, but simply kept staring into nothingness with dull eyes reflecting nothing.

Anyway, self-pity was pointless. And the pain wasn’t even that bad. His trousers, however, were losing more and more of their durability, though his Stamina grew each time he sustained damage and restored his HP subsequently. Ros had already managed to raise it by one, adding nine HP points. He would be a little harder to kill now.

It was his sixth day underground. Well, actually, he had spent some of his time above ground—each night he would emerge into the crater and climb into a grotto found in the slope. It was chilly, but bearable. He could, of course, come all the way up into the settlement—ten extra minutes of walking weren’t that critical. But for him it was a matter of principle to make some serious headway before seeing Greedie again.

So far, however, nothing really qualified as serious headway. His average daily copper ore production didn’t exceed a hundred and thirty lumps. He could probably harvest a hundred and fifty or more by now, but he’d have to stop hunting to accomplish that. And it was hunting that he had the highest hopes for. He knew that loot from rats was cheap, but it didn’t weigh much, either, nor was it bulky. He had hundreds of fangs already, and they all fit into a single slot of his bag perfectly well.

He’d reach the town with substantially higher stats once his contract expired. He could sell his hoard of prizes there and try to invest the profits into items that raised stats. Then he could start looking for a decent clan offering better employment terms. Or he could arrange it with his attorney to purchase an expanded account for a month, level up to ten or more, and then resume work.

The rat was not of the usual sort—it had something uncommon among the standard loot.

“Silver Bell with a Bronze Chain. An amusing trinket traditionally given by the men of the Western Plains to pretty girls as a token of admiration.”

Ros had serious doubts that a pretty girl’s heart would melt at the sight of a creature like a rrokh even if he gave her a ton of such trinkets. But he picked up the trophy, anyway—silver was worth money, as well as bronze.

He heard a suspicious noise behind him. Ros jumped away from the rat carcass, turning around and raising his pickaxe overhead, ready to strike. The time spent underground had been of some use. He had died more times than he could count on his first day like the worst kind of noob; over the last few days, however, no rat had gotten through to him. He wouldn’t wait for the tougher monsters to appear, retreating before they crawled out and working on his Cooking skill, which he’d eventually leveled to one after wasting a whole lot of meat, much to the chagrin of the orc.

“Shoto! You almost gave me a heart attack! What are you doing here?!”

“What else could I be doing here other than waiting for you?” replied the orc. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I’m leveling up my Sneak skill, so it’s become a habit of mine to move without a sound.”

“Why did you want to find me?”

The greenskin didn’t answer. He got closer, taking a seat next to the zombie rat, and shook his head.

“So you’re a necromancer. That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“I was just wondering how a level zero noob manages to kill so many rats. I’ll be up to my ears in meat soon enough, thanks to your efforts. So that’s the answer: your familiar is helping you.”

“Familiar?”

“A pet. A creature you can ride, or one that fights for you, is called a familiar, or just a pet. You’re a total noob, evidently?”

“Worse than total, as a matter of fact.”

“This is the first time I’m seeing a worker with the skills of a necro.”

“They don’t help my work much.”

“I hear you… As for me, I don’t care who helps you hunt. Some NPCs get their panties in a bunch when they see animated corpses, so you should stay away from them if your pets are around, but players don’t care. So, yeah, the reason I wanted to find you. The meat we supply is becoming popular. Every batch I cook is gone in an instant, and there are more and more potential customers every day. I keep the prices low, and no one here has much money, anyway, but a bonus to Strength is useful to everyone; besides, the meat boosts your Vigor real nice, too. Once I raise my Cooking skill a bit, the bonuses will be even bigger. So, we have discussed it with the guys, and here’s the offer: why don’t you stop bothering with the ore? The miners will give you two hundred lumps per day in exchange for meat—and the coins, of course.”

“I need to level up Mining & Quarrying, too.”

“A dwarf I know told me you’re also good at finding gems. Just focus on killing rats, and look for gems in the meantime. A cluster of quartz crystals will give you as much XP as twenty lumps of ore, maybe more. So it will your purpose better if you want to level up.”

“In that case, the offer is indeed of some merit. But how much money will it earn me?”

“Well, you do understand I’ll have to take care of the sales—and someone has to spend time cooking the stuff. There’s no reason for me to rip you off, so how about we make it two hundred lumps of ore and a silver coin in its copper equivalent. Deal?”

“Ten silver coins, and in proper silver coinage.”

“Whoa! Man, that’s a lot! I won’t even try to bargain with you—you charge too much!”

“How many miners are there in the mine?”

“A little under three hundred dwarves with pickaxes, around two dozen mules, and around twenty working the furnaces. But the dwarves are the only regular customers, the rest want something nicer for their palates.”

“And all the dwarves like your meat?”

“Who wouldn’t? It’s cheap, it’s tasty, and it’s good for you.”

“How much do you charge for a single piece?”

“Two coppers a portion.”

“So around fifteen coppers from a single worker daily at least, right?”

“Yeah, around that much.”

“A copper is what is known as an Imperial bronze cent, right?”

“Yup.”

“Inasmuch as I understand, a silver coin is an Imperial silver doubloon. It is worth one hundred cents.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“So we have four and a half thousand cents per day potentially, right?”

“Minus your ore—that will eat up about one half.”

“OK. Let’s say we’re left with two thousand—that’s twenty silver pieces. I take half, the rest is yours. You might manage to make more, but that’s up to you. Just don’t get cheeky. I end up doing all the dangerous work hunting bloodthirsty monsters, while you stay near the warm furnace and level up your favorite Cooking skill. Admit it, what I’m offering is fair.”

“It would be if I were selling meat to all the dwarves in the mine. But the fact is, only around half of the miners are buying on a regular basis.”

“OK, so you can pay me five silver pieces. For now.”

“But you don’t even bring me enough meat to feed that half.”

“I’ll feed everyone, don’t you worry.”

“How do you intend to do that?”

“That’s my problem. All you need to do is find the time to cook and sell the stuff.”

“I will, rest assured. I desperately need to level up.”

“What about your furnace work?”

“The boys will cover for me if I save a few choice pieces for them.”

“Fine. Another question: is it possible to load carts up with rat carcasses?”

“I can’t see why not.”

“Could you manage to find a cart for me, then?”

“You won’t be able to roll it back—you don’t have a mule’s stats, after all. You’ll exhaust your Vigor a dozen times before you reach the exit.”

“OK, then how about you get it as far down the tunnel as you can, and collect it by the evening? Will it be able to hold enough meat for the whole gang?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, in that case, once at midday, and once again in the evening.”

“No problem. Make sure you keep track of the time, though.”

“I will—there seems to be a chronometer in my head.”

“That’s a useful quality. So, when do I pay you five silver pieces?”

“Starting tomorrow. Today you can have as much fun as your conscience will allow.”

“I do have a conscience. I also remember our first conversation, and I think I may have something nice for you in return. Take a look at this,” the orc produced a bag.

“Simple Miner’s Bag. Forty slots, weight reduced by 1.0. Weight: 0.56 kg. Durability: 21/35. Bonus: well-protected from rock hits. Requirements: none.”

“This is for you—the one you have now is just completely noobish. This one’s not in tip-top shape, but it should serve you for a couple of months.”

“Thanks.”

“Here’s something else—it will be easier to dress the carcasses with a better knife.”

“Short-Bladed Steel Hunting Knife. Versatile tool and a bladed weapon. Damage: 2-3. Requirements: none. Weight: 0.21 kg. Durability: 19/20.”

“The knife is crap, of course, but it’s still better than the one you have. I’ll also get you a whetstone—forgot all about that. You can use it to sharpen the blade in the evening. It makes your Blacksmithing stat grow, albeit very slowly. Still, though, growth is growth. Also, it’s at its most effective when your weapon is in truly bad shape.”

“Thanks again, really. But tell me, is there any chance of finding a weapon I could use? I’m tired of the pickaxe—it’s barely serviceable.”

“I don’t think so. A more advanced pickaxe is the best you could hope for. But it will cost you around thirty silver pieces—and it won’t be in top condition.”

“Get one for me. I’ll get the money.”

“Sure. I’ll talk to the guys—the ones whose contracts are about to expire. They won’t have much use for a pickaxe in the city, and finding another one is easy enough. Is that it, then, or do you need anything else?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll manage to get me some armor, so that’s it. Oh, wait a second! Do you think I could make a bunk of some sort to stay in the mine overnight? It gets chilly here.”

“The mobs will gobble you up.”

“I’ll come to some arrangement with them.”

“An arrangement?”

“I’ll be very persuasive when I ask them to leave them alone.”

“Ha, I’d like to see that conversation. I could get you some canvas from the furnaces in a cart so that Greedie wouldn’t notice. And I can probably find a patched-up cloak for of a blanket. Would that do?”

“Well, sure, if silk sheets are a non-option.”

“All right, I’ll head back, then.”

“Sure thing.”

“Can I take this rat with me?”

“Sure.”

Ros watched the orc leave, pondering. The news was extremely promising. This new arrangement would resolve a number of issues: he’d be able to level up his stats, paying almost no mind to mining, and he could still grow his Mining & Quarrying. He would also earn a little money and stock up on trophies.

The downside was that he couldn’t afford to disappoint Shoto. Having assured the orc that he would supply him with enough meat, he’d have to find a way to make good on his promise.

Especially given that it was in his own interest to kill as many mobs as possible.

He could raise the Leprus, of course. With a pet like that, he could dispatch rats by the dozen. He didn’t know how a high-level pet would affect the loot, but the meat wouldn’t go anywhere.

On the other hand, he risked losing the pet if he ventured too close to the settlement. Spending his nights in the crater, the way he’d been doing lately, was also out of the question—the Leprus would get noticed sooner or later, and the consequences were too unpredictable. Ros remembered how Greedie had reacted to his first rat well enough.

He also didn’t want to advertise his abilities, which were unusual for a worker. The race he had chosen was turning out to have its surprises: the skills it afforded were useless for a worker, but priceless for a hunter. It was too soon to tell whether or not he had made the right choice, but there was little reason to complain so far. Even with his noobish stat distribution he had already managed to achieve something.

Ros realized that his knowledge of this world was too limited to afford drawing extra attention. Shoto alone would be enough. And the orc would probably keep his mouth shut. There was no point for him to divulge the details—their deal was too good to risk it.

Ros had good reason to ask the orc’s help with furnishing an underground lair. Once the Leprus was summoned, he’d stay underground for a very long time.

However, he’d have to go up for a visit to the settlement first—it wouldn’t be proper to leave behind unfinished business.

* * *

Greedie was sitting in his usual spot, and greeted the approaching Ros in his usual mocking tone:

“I don’t believe it! You have decided to come up on your own for a change? Although I haven’t seen you respawn in a while. What were you up to if you weren’t getting killed every hour?”

“I was out whoring.”

“Oh, I see. Young blood and all that. Seeing as how we have a whopping zero women, it must have been quite a binge. Didn’t sprain your wrist from all that lovemaking, did you?”

“I swap hands. One hour with the right, another with the left. No blisters, and I don’t get tired.”

“How clever. Who could have thought you could learn something useful from a noob?”

“I came here for a reason. I still owe you those pelts, so here they are.”

“Pelts are nice, hand them over. Now, if you could only start fulfilling your quota, that would indeed be priceless.”

“I’ll try starting tomorrow.”

“Try. Try hard. Your superiors will appreciate it for sure. Also, don’t mind what I said about the food—eat whatever you can find inside the pot. Virtually no one eats that gunk, anyway. The clan members who level up their Cooking skill dump their first experiments in the mess hall, and it’s such lovely fare that the smell alone can kill flies. Even shit would taste better. So help yourself—I’m in a generous mood today.”

“So, how about that weapon?”

“How about that quota?”

“Twenty quartz crystals for you to forget today’s quota.”

“Let me take a look. Well, well… Think you’ve found some diamonds, have you? This is nearly worthless.”

“Well, the kind of weapon I’d need shouldn’t be that great a treasure, either.”

“Didn’t I tell you there’s nothing that fits the likes of you?”

Ros emptied his bag of the loot collected from the rats: hairpins, worthless rings and bracelets, a mirror, and even a fork with broken prongs. The lot cost next to nothing, but took up a lot of space—every item took up a separate slot, regardless of its size. It just wasn’t worth the space it occupied, even given the capacity of his new bag.

“This is junk, of course, but smiths might find it useful. The amount of silver alone should be equivalent to three or four coins. So, how about that weapon?”

“You’re a hard-headed one, aren’t you? Look here, noobster: there’s no good stuff that fits level zero players. All they get are tools. And crappy ones at that. If you want to be able to equip something better, you’ll have to remove your lock and level up.”

“I’m level one, actually.”

“All level zero players have a virtual first level so that they wouldn’t get the Monster Scourge achievement once they kill a mob. Our AIs may also fail to compute it.”

“What’s that?” asked Ros, feigning ignorance.

“That’s an achievement you earn when you kill a mob ten times your level by yourself, without anybody’s help. Only level one ranged classes can manage it. For example, they can take a noob bow, enchant it to the max, apply whatever runes they can find, equip items with bonuses, get buffed by high-level buffers, eat expensive food, grab a bunch of high-level elixirs, and kill a level ten or level eleven mob from a safe distance. You get a considerable bonus for such a victory. But even if you invest tons of money into the game, it will still take you days of hard labor and quite a few deaths before you get that first achievement. The next one is rewarded even better, but you might as well forget about it—the condition is not only that the level has to be ten times higher than yours, but also no less than twenty-five levels higher. That’s a level twenty-five mob if you’re a level zero player. Even if you have decent gear, that’s a real tough thing to do. You might get lucky, but it will take weeks or even months. But how many players with that kind of money would want to spend that much time at level zero? There are plenty of other achievements that can be earned much more easily, if you’re not completely broke. A level twenty-five mob might be noobish, but it’s not dumb. And even if you find a dumb one, you can’t kill any more: they won’t count another critter of the same species, so you’ll have to find another. You could try the ones that are thirty levels higher than you. That will count no matter how many you kill, but even with the best kind of gear, something like that is incredibly hard for a zero. I may be getting the numbers wrong a bit, but not by much. Once your lock is removed, you can forget about such achievements. They cannot be earned—your levels grow too fast as you complete the tasks, and you cannot reset them back to one: you only start losing XP and levels after death once you’re level ten. There are no further locks up to level ten, either, and once you get there, you’d need to start killing mobs with a level of around one hundred. None of those are dumb enough to just stand there while you blast away at it for hours—they will either find a way to get to you or run away. Take your beloved rats, for instance. You kill a rat that’s level one while you’re level zero. If I remember my math correctly, you cannot even divide one by the other. So you have a virtual level one for such calculations. The achievement database doesn’t suffer any unduly strain, and you don’t have to overload the AIs, lest they might get overheated with that kind of algebra.”

Ros digested the information, then showed his arm, rolling up his sleeve.

“I have a bracelet that gives an extra point to the general level. So I should be able to use level one weapons without any penalties.”

He had the rats to thank for it, having found the bauble in their disguised nest at the end of a gallery. Apart from the bracelet with the level bonus, Ros also had a ring that gave an extra point of Vigor, and an amulet providing an extra point of Intellect on his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asked Greedie gruffly.

“Guess I forgot.”

“Well, since you forgot, I’ll take all your junk. Maybe some of it will raise some stat by a point, and you’ll be of some use at last.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“Wait here, I’ll bring something over in a second.”

The dwarf entered the building used as a warehouse for work clothes. He returned a few minutes later and gave Ros a pole slightly longer than his height, and with a long spearhead.

“A spear?”

“An Orcish Short Pike. You can use it for stabbing, cutting, and even throwing, if you have to.”

“I could do with something better…”

“Would you like a legendary weapon instead?”

“That would be nice.”

“Sure thing. I’ll do it in a jiffy, only I gotta wait for hell to freeze over first.”

“I’m not so good with pikes…”

“Well, we have no need for noob daggers or axes. These pikes can be used like javelins, which is why we have a few. They deal good damage to smaller mobs, and they’re easy to throw. We use it to kill rats when they start pestering miners. To control the rodent population, as it were.”

Ros got the impression that the dwarf was telling the truth, and he reached for the weapon.

“OK, gimme.”

“Steel-Bladed Orcish Short Pike. Bladed weapon, used for cutting and stabbing. Can be used both as a melee and a ranged weapon. Damage: 5-7. Requirements: level one, 10 Strength. Weight: 2.42 kg. Durability: 37/60.”

“Just stab the rat and hold on to the pike. Make sure the beast cannot reach you while you twist the pike to wrap its entrails around it—that deals extra damage.”

“Thanks for instructing me. It feels so light, though. I hope it doesn’t break when I sneeze.”

“You’ll break first. It’s got a decent shaft. Not iron-sided or anything, but the best you can find for this level. Rats are OK, but I wouldn’t recommend tackling an elite Leprus with it.”

Greedie appeared to have made a joke, but it didn’t cause him much mirth—instead, he instantly became rather grumpy, apparently having recollected something unpleasant.

“Now scram. You keep promising, but I haven’t seen one full quota from you yet. If hunting rats is your things, you could have stayed in the city—there are plenty of them in the sewers.”

“I might just do that. Right on, it’s really time for me to get going.”

“Just beat it already.”

* * *

Ros was very thankful for certain features of his character’s digestive system. The creature that emerged from the dissolving cloud of dust and darkness looked so repugnant that soiling one’s pants would seem like a perfectly natural reaction.

“Resurrected Wild Leprus. A creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 126. Skills: Stun, Strangle, Panic. Stats: Defense: 224; Attack: 249.”

“Last of the rrokhs: you have summoned a creature whose level exceeds yours by over one hundred. No one in Second World has managed to achieve anything like it before. You receive a commendation from the higher powers—your skills now restore 15% more HP of your summoned creature’s base value.”

Ros tested the controls, and realized the Leprus was as easy to control as the rats. He chuckled.

“How about it, bud? Shall we go and do some killing?”

The Leprus raised his eyes. There was nothing of the dull regard of zombie rats about them. The whites were covered in bloody blotches, and the pupils shone menacingly, hungry for death.

And the hunger appeared insatiable.

Chapter 16

“Strangle him! Stop, you brainless brute!”

The leprus froze, but it was already too late—his taloned paw had dealt a mighty blow to another rat, squashing it completely. Collecting any meat was impossible—the corpse was a bloody pulp mixed with hair. The order had come too late.

Ros had been disheartened at first by the mess his pet was making, and had assumed he’d never see any loot if something didn’t change. And then he experimented a little, having recollected the pet’s skills, and learned that he could order the leprus to strangle the enemy. Things instantly started to look more promising, as he was getting virtually undamaged carcasses.

That was when he started to collect serious loot.

The pelts, claws, fangs, skulls, and tails took up around a quarter of his bag, even though one slot could hold between a hundred and a few thousand similar items, depending on their type. He would discard the extra items dropped by rats due to lack of space, keeping only some of the jewelry, either for sale or for his own use. He could now raise his Strength by eleven if he so wished, with eight rings, two bracelets, and an amulet capable of raising it. However, he had come to prefer wearing jewelry that gave a bonus to Stamina—in case of a sudden attack by a high-level creature. Although the leprus stood guard while he slept at night, anything could happen. And if anything did happen, he’d need to be able to survive a hit or two.

There were no penalties for the level of the leprus as he had feared—only the player’s level mattered in battle, and not that of his summoned pet. So, he was still getting experience as before, as well as substantial amounts of loot, provided the leprus kept his talons to himself.

It was the fourth day that Ros kept combing through one gallery after another, reaching the end in every case, and leaving no creature alive in his wake. He kept moving farther and farther away from the mine exit. Oddly enough, he didn’t encounter a single high-level creature so far. Had they gotten so frightened after the recent extermination campaign? Or were they afraid of something else—the monstrous leprus? That was possible. Only the rats were probably stupid enough not to get out of the monster’s way in time. He should probably level up his Disguise stat—it was supposed to help in such cases. As well as his Hunting skill, though that was being taken care of, as his stat was already at three. Another auxiliary skill became unlocked—Skinning.

Ros had also managed to level up his Summoning to four, and Intellect to three, ditto Mining & Quarrying. He had completed the Rat Scourge achievement, receiving five extra HPs as a reward and unlocking a new achievement: Rat Terror. He now needed to slay five thousand rodents for the next time, which would net another random prize.

He suspected it wouldn’t take too long, as long as the mine didn’t run out of rats.

Apart from rodent genocide, there was little other progress. All the dirty work was done by the leprus, so it was mostly his Summoning that kept growing, and very slowly at that due to the penalties—most of the mobs were around level two while his Summoning was already at four. It grew at a more or less decent rate only when he killed large rats, but he wasn’t seeing all that many of them. His Intellect had stopped growing, too—not that it had been growing all that rapidly before. He’d have to heal the Leprus in battle to level up, but how does one heal a pet that takes no damage?

The poor rats would get snuffed before they could so much as squeak.

Thus, he had to cast Soul Trap for Intellect to grow, regardless of high mana expense. Not the most necessary stat for a worker, but Ros was already convinced he could make a decent living even without swinging his pickaxe ever again.

All the miners became devout consumers of the meat as prepared by the enterprising Shoto. Just two days later he had informed Ros that their initial projections of ten silver pieces were now a reality. He hadn’t manage to find a decent pickaxe yet, but he was still looking—or, rather, trying to convince two prospective candidates to part with their tools.

But all that was less urgent to Ros now. Even the pike was only getting the occasional use. All his interactions with the rats were now essentially limited to the following: he would step forward and cast Soul Trap at another victim, letting it bite his ankle. The leprus would get alarmed by the attack on its owner, and proceed to make quick work of the attacker. This was Ros’ way of leveling up his Stamina, as you could never have too many hit points.

Ros was getting bored. Same old rats, tedious quartz geodes, skinning, chunks of meat, and a constant overload.

He wished for something more than just raising Butchery, the recently-opened auxiliary stat.

* * *

No one must have been here before him, at least not since the mine had been dug. Although, perhaps no humans were present physically even then, seeing as magic was involved.

Ros must have walked at least a mile, counting from the spot where Shoto left the cart. He’d gone past a few dozen galleries without checking them. He didn’t know how far his spirit of adventure would take him, but suddenly he noticed an uneven opening in one of the walls, with a cave of as uneven a shape behind it. Nothing about it looked man-made—there were huge stone stalactites and stalagmites on the ceiling and the floor of the cave, without any even surfaces in sight. There were no grooves for cart wheels, and he could hear the murmur of a small creek somewhere near.

But Ros didn’t get much time to admire his discovery properly. A shadow flashed amid the stalactites, aiming straight for him. He recoiled reflexively and jumped to the side while the attacker was met by the leprus. The monster was sent flying and crashed into a wall, then started to stir, shaking its head in amazement as it tried to rise.

“Cave Trumus. Aggression: high. Sociality: none. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

Ros had already learned that information on mobs of the same level as the player was displayed in white lettering. The lower the level of a monster as compared to the player’s, the greener it became; the same was true for monsters of a higher level and red lettering. So, even if a player couldn’t see a mob’s level, they could always have a rough idea of what they were up against.

This scaly fox with the head of an alligator had bright red lettering over it. It appeared as though Ros had found his long-awaited adventure.

“Gorgeous! Strangle!”

The leprus obeyed, grabbing the mob by the throat instead of pummeling it again. The target twitched for a while, and then hung limp, whereupon the pet set its prey down on the ground.

“Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 5. You receive a bonus for the level of the summoned creature: your spells for healing, buffing, and summoning pets will require 10% less magic energy. Your Agility stat grows by 1. Current value: 28.”

Why did his Agility grow? Was it because of the lunge, when Ros had miraculously managed to avoid the trumus’ line of attack? What level must the monster have been to raise two of his stats at once?

And yet, even the trumus with its bright red lettering had failed to take so much as a single HP off the leprus. Ros didn’t just get lucky with his pet: he had found a veritable tank in a world of swords and sorcery. Even though this death machine was only a menace to comparatively weak mobs and wouldn’t be of much use in some of the areas when even level 200 players felt like helpless noobs, he was still in luck. Ros cared nothing for such places—he was a simple level zero worker, after all.

The trumus didn’t contain much loot—only the fangs and the talons, which did not fit into the slots occupied by similar rat body parts. The bag was getting filled up very quickly, and he’d have to do something about it as soon as possible.

Ros entered the cave without any second thoughts—he liked this underground location more. It was prettier, and the air was drier despite the bubbling creek. It would probably make sense to move his portable bunk here. The leprus would be a reliable guard if even a “red” mob stood no chance against him.

Ros didn’t get very far. Even though he was still mainly occupied with hunting, he remained cognizant of mining, and studied the walls just as attentively as ever.

“Low-quality limestone, with significant water damage, with purple quartz veins and a purple geode. Chance of finding an amethyst crystal: 71.69%. Chance of finding an additional amethyst crystal: 9.85%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.02%.”

How much was amethyst worth? Ros didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to pass it by.

“Amethyst crystal. Pale purple, cloudy. Weight: 8.4 g.”

Not much luck there! It would be fun to get something clear and free of cracks for a change. Ros had already had it explained to him that such gems were much higher in value, and were used for making expensive items. Such gems could also be enchanted separately, and their bonus could then be added to any item they would be inserted in. Jewelers, enchanters, and a bunch of others would buy all your stock readily, no matter the amount.

He found another amethyst geode a few steps away, but Ros didn’t manage to start at it—the location was too dangerous, so it was only natural the local critters would come at the sound of the pickaxe hitting rock.

“The Cave Shadowcrawler hits you for 62 damage.”

Damn!

Ros rolled away and spun around, thrusting his pickaxe in front of him. But it wasn’t necessary—the leprus was already gripping the mob by its long neck, quite proactively

“Cave Shadowcrawler. Aggression: highest. Sociality: antisocial. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

“Strangle!”

The leprus was already doing that very thing, but an official order wouldn’t go amiss.

The shadowcrawler was strong, but I didn’t manage to get through the leprus’ defenses, though it kept whacking away at the pet with its paws until the leprus broke its neck with a loud crack. That same mob had made Ros lose nearly half his HP, almost killing him. He’d had 151 points all in all, boosted by the rings, bracelets, and amulets, and he’d lost 62.

It was a pity he could wear no more jewelry. A hunt this dangerous could send him right into the stone circle in no time. Greedy must be missing him.

“Your Stamina grows by 1. Current value: 4. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster forty or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner, Part Two. Achievement bonus: 2 undistributed base stat points. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer, Part Two. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by forty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

Even though it was painful and scary, sustaining damage in battle was good for his Stamina. Ros was happy about the nine extra hit points. When things got this dangerous, every droplet of health was vital.

He chewed a slice of meat hastily, washing it down with water. You never knew who else might turn up. In fact, it would be nice to have some potions for just such a case—he’d have to revisit the matter sometime.

The shadowcrawler looked like a squashed bear: flat and furry. The paws were rather thin, but the talons on them were the scariest Ros had seen so far. Apart from the leprus, that is.

The beast’s mottled coloring made it very hard to see against the cave floor. It was obvious why the leprus had missed it at first. The shadowcrawler must have been using its disguise to the max, and could also move silently.

A most dangerous mob, that one.

Talons, fangs, and a gallbladder—three slots less in his bag. The pelt was there, but Ros never managed to get it, receiving the following system message: “Your Skinning skill is insufficient to skin this target. Level it up by skinning lower-level monsters.”

Ros felt a huge urge to invest the two points he got into Stamina, but he remembered that Strength was more important now. It would also help him mitigate the overloading, which was turning into a serious problem. So he did just that, ending up with fifteen points without the jewelry. A bit less than the planned minimum of twenty, but who could have thought he’d manage to level it up as impressively as this in a mere two weeks.

Ros waited for the HP bar to restore fully before starting to chip away with his pickaxe again. That was prudent of him—no sooner had he began that he heard the sound of claws scraping against the rock, and saw two mobs at once appear before him. Good old pters, well familiar from before. It had taken just one back then for Ros to find himself peering into Greedie’s kind eyes in a matter of seconds.

He should have dumped the points into Stamina, after all—jewelry or not, a beast like that would finish him off in just a few hits.

“Gorgeous! Get them! Strangle!”

Gorgeous got them all right. As he was twisting the first mob’s neck, the second kept pecking him with its massive beak as though it were a sledgehammer. And yet, the pet’s health bar just wasn’t budging. Even if he was losing HP, the amount of damage sustained must have been ridiculously low.

Tossing the carcass of the deceased critter aside, the leprus grabbed the other one, which was just about to run off to attend to some pressing business it had just remembered, but by then it was far too late.

As his pet strangled the foe, Ros stabbed the beast a few times with his pike. Not that the leprus needed any help, but he could use leveling up something other than Summoning.

“Your Attack grows by 1. Current Attack value: 2.”

That was weird—why didn’t it grow before, when he was killing rats? Noob that he was, he understood so few things.

Two pter beaks, a pter egg, a pter feather, and three more slots in the bag all used up.

There was also a trophy: “Leather Archer’s Glove, reinforced with simple chain mesh. Item Class: Enhanced. Armor. Protects from ranged and melee weapons. Physical defense: 18. Magical defense: 0. Special armor bonus: protects the hand from bowstring recoil almost without damaging the bowstring. Stat bonuses: +2 to Accuracy, +1 to Agility, +2 to Rapid Shot. Requirements: Level 28. Weight: 0.28 kg. Durability: 61/110.”

Another slot in the bag filled.

Ros got the other amethyst crystal, and finally reached the creek. It was running through a cave of stupendous dimensions. The main mine tunnel looked like a pinprick next to a hole left by a large nail in comparison. Clumps of fluorescent moss grew on the walls, so even a creature without night vision would not remain blind here.

The water turned out to taste great, and no one tried to attack him—what could be better?

Ros kept moving downstream, harvesting the frequently-found geodes of amethyst, eventually attracting the attention of yet another pter. The noise it made warned him of the danger in advance. The mob was easily strangled, with a few pokes with the pike thrown in. At the end of the battle Ros earned another Attack point and some nondescript loot.

He felt like going ever onward, but it was time to go back—he had to return to the cart in time.

* * *

On his way back Ros alternated between running and power walking. He made it in time—the cart wasn’t there yet. He sat down to draw a breath, telling the leprus to wait in a nearby gallery. He just got the carcass of the last pter from the pet, who had been carrying it in his front paws. He wanted to show it to the orc to gauge its value. If there was none, he could always feed it to his pet, which had quite the appetite despite being a zombie.

The orc drew a heavy sigh as he pushed the cart over.

“It takes a while to get all the way here.”

“You should see the places I’ve been exploring,” boasted Ros.

“Farther than this?”

“A whole lot.”

“Don’t you get scared?”

“What would I be scared of?”

“Well, mobs, for one thing.”

“You mean these?” asked Ros with a sneer, moving aside to let the orc see the pter.”

“Bloody hell! How did you manage it?!”

“Hunters have their secrets,” Ros made his voice sound as mysterious as he could.

“It was a fluke, wasn’t it?” Shoto kept pressing.

“I can get you more if you want them.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“I’m as serious as can be. So tell me, do you need any of this meat?”

“Hell if I know. Looks like a weird kind of bird, and those wings are tiny and featherless. I gotta try it out—it might be good. I’ll tell you tomorrow by lunchtime for sure.”

As Ros loaded the cart up with rat meat, he asked,

“Any chance you could get me a better bag?”

“This one isn’t good enough for you?”

“I need a bigger one. I also heard there are bags that reduce the weight of the stuff you carry inside them. I’d love to get one of those.”

“Is that all? Are you sure you don’t want Greedie to give you a million in gold as a present, and his underwear to boot?”

“So, you’re sure you can’t get one?”

“I’ll ask, but such bags usually cost a pretty petty, while our workers are a bunch of bums gathered from all across the province. Where would they get a bag like that?”

“What about getting one from Greedie?”

“He hasn’t got one, either, and even if he does, he’ll suck a gallon of your blood before you convince him to part with it. You’ll pay triple, too. And besides, he’s away—gone off somewhere with his thugs. He’ll surely get back pissed off as hell, with his name redder than any tomato. It would be easier to arrange something with one of the penalized players and have a coachman smuggle one from the city.”

“How does that work?”

“The clan often sends penalized players to serve here as guards for a week or two. Some of them are decent enough folks that you can deal with. There are more of them now, by the way, since Greedie and the gang needed replacements while he’s away. There are carts coming every day to take away the smelted ore and to deliver coal, wood, and chow. The drivers are usually NPCs, but there are a few players among them. The guards can arrange things with an NPC or a player, and they will get you a bag from the city. But it’s gonna cost you—much more than if you get it yourself.”

Ros showed the glove he got as a trophy to the orc.

“Do you reckon this thing is expensive?”

“No idea. I’ll need to check the forum. Hold on a second.”

“Wait a moment. I’ve got something else here,” Ros produced everything he had gathered from the high-level mobs during the day, as well as the amethysts.

The orc took a brief look at the loot, and then froze, his face slackening. Ros realized that Shoto logged out for a moment or left the computer for a while, assuming he was playing without immersion.

The orc was away for some twenty minutes, and started talking as soon as he got back.

“The glove is nothing amazing, but you could sell it for forty or fifty silver pieces. There should be a demand—many people play archers, and there are millions of noobs in that level range among them. The gems and the rest are mostly junk that will net you two or three silver, five at the most. The shadowcrawler’s gallbladder is a bit more interesting—twenty-five coins and up.”

Ros made a quick calculation—around seventy silver pieces altogether. Since five doubloons equaled a single gold coin, worth more than a real-life dollar, this short walk had earned him fourteen bucks.

Perhaps it was high time to quit mining altogether and focus on hunting?

“I haven’t checked the amethysts, but I know the prices even without the forum. How many do you have? Five? You can get a silver coin and change for each, so that’s five or six all in all. If they were clear, each would cost as much.”

Mm-hmm. Perhaps the decision to stop mining was a bit premature. Even given that amethyst was a low-level gem, it was still worth considerably more than quartz.

“And I should have around thirty coins on your account,” reminded Ros.

“You do. So, a little over a hundred altogether. You can get a well-worn fifty-slot bag that decreases the weight by around five percent for forty.”

“That’s not enough.”

“Well, bear in mind there’ll be several middlemen, and a lot of the money will stick to their hands.”

“That sucks…”

“You’re right on that one.”

“I’ve been killing rats faster than that mob of miners can eat them. Is it OK if I get you nothing by lunchtime?”

“No problem, my stock will last a while. But bear in mind there’s nowhere to store it. The uncooked meat will begin to rot in a day or two.”

“In that case, come at lunchtime. Tell me about the pter, and you can collect the meat I’ll have gathered by then.”

“Do you intend to hunt those creatures tomorrow, too? I took a short peek at the shadowcrawler’s description—it’s one creeping horror of a mob.”

“I told you—hunters have their tricks. Also, can you get me a cartload of sticks and poles so as not to waste the journey?”

* * *

He didn’t feel sleepy at all—he only wanted to keep going. Ros had never slept more than five hours a night in his past life, and he needed even less than that here.

So off he went in search of his next adventure.

The adventure was waiting for him near the cave entrance, just like the first time. He dispatched a pter, and ran into a trumus a few minutes later. From here he was encountering mobs with more and more frequency, even though he was following his old tracks, having just recently exterminated the local creatures. It must have been the time of their daily migration—perhaps that was the reason the mines became dangerous in the evening.

After repulsing an attack by no fewer than four pters, at the end of which Ros was left with a mere 11 HP, it became obvious that venturing further would be foolhardy of him. The pet fared fabulously, but his owner could buy the farm at any moment. Even the bonus of another point to Stamina, Attack, and, most rewardingly, Strength—due to his furious stabbing with the pike—failed to lift his spirits too much.

He was forced to return to his bunk earlier than planned.

But he would get to it again in the morning.

Chapter 17

A pter, a trumus, another pter, then another trumus, then two more pters, and so on. He didn’t encounter any lepruses—the genocide must have been complete. In between killing mobs he harvested amethysts, collected loot, and licked his wounds. His Stamina had risen by another point, and Attack and Intellect by two points each since he got back to collecting soul crystals. This was beneficial for leveling magic stats, and it gave him some useful objects to boot. These mobs were nowhere near as good as his current pet, but should he lose it, he would at least have someone to deal with the rats.

Ros was a bit late by noon, so the orc had beaten him to it—something he had never allowed before. Thankfully, Shoto didn’t seem to mind; on the contrary, he seemed very enthusiastic as the rrokh approached.

“Hey, Ros! Did you get the pters?!”

“I can get you one, it’s nearby.”

“Drag it over!”

“So they’re useful?”

“Get me the carcass, and I’ll tell you more.”

Ros walked about a hundred feet back, to the leprus waiting in the gallery, and took the pter carcass from his pet. He thought it would be nice to bring Shoto a small gift.

The return took him four times as long. Ros couldn’t lift the pter, so he had to drag the carcass across the floor. Fortunately, the orc helped him once he got close enough.

“How much Strength do you have if you can easily lift something like this?” Ros was amazed.

“Apparently, more than certain secretive hunters.”

“Touché. Now, what about that meat?”

“Look for yourself,” the orc produced a deliciously-smelling roast from his bag.

“Roast Cave Pter Meat with Spices. Tender, white, very nutritious, with a pleasant taste. Effects: restores 60 Vigor over forty seconds; restores 40 HP over a minute; raises Strength by 2 for two hours, hastens Vigor regeneration by 4 for ten minutes. To experience the full set of effects, do not consume more often than once every forty minutes.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? It’s the bomb! The guys are prepared to pay triple for it! I have a line of customers waiting! Screw the rats, get me this stuff. This bonus to Vigor is no joke. It will make it possible to harvest ore much faster, especially with the higher Strength. I wish I could get some corn oil and a decent frying pan—I could achieve an even better effect. I was thinking of ordering them through the guards.”

“How many pters a day do you need?”

“How many can you get me?”

“Just tell me.”

“Would you be able to get three carcasses?”

“I would.”

“How about five?”

“I could try, but transportation may be a problem—I’ll have to drag them over quite a distance.”

“I could push the cart closer—I just hope the mobs don’t gobble me up on my way.”

“You can go for another mile and a half along the tunnel without any encounters—there are but a couple of rats that haven’t been finished off.”

“Rats can be weird at times… Three or four can gang up and attack. That would be enough to take me out.

“They don’t come out into the main tunnel—you’ll find them huddling at the ends of galleries. That’s where their nests are.”

“Young rats grow up fast. It’s not that I’m afraid of dying, but I’d really hate to waste time running back and forth.”

“I have sixteen points of native Strength, and I can raise it to twenty with rings and a bracelet. Would that allow me to push the cart?”

“Sure, but it’s gonna take you a while, and your Vigor will get used up faster.”

“So how about I take this cart? You can skip your evening visit, and be here tomorrow by lunchtime with an empty cart. I’ll take it, and you’ll take the pter carcasses. Would that be OK, or is anyone going to miss the cart?”

“Like anyone kept track of them. Sure.”

“Take a look at the drops I got,” Ros showed the orc a dented bronze helmet and steel boots.

“Duh, those are regular items—you’re not gonna get much for them. You’ll more or less be selling them for scrap metal value.”

“I see. So let’s wait for me to get hold of something better, and then we’ll sort the bag issue out.”

“Is it that urgent?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I have already brought it up. There’s a penalized player that arrived yesterday. It seems that you can deal with him. He’s gonna stay here for over a week, so there’s enough time. I don’t see any other options so far.”

“All right, let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

* * *

Ros spent a couple of hours hunting and mining amethysts, raising his Stamina by yet another point, and then returned to the cave entrance, where the mine tunnel cut through the cave. The area was driest here, and it wasn’t hard for him to push the cart all the way to this spot using the grooves in the flat rock.

As a matter of fact, the leprus did most of the pushing—fortunately, he understood simple commands perfectly, and even the more complex ones usually didn’t present any problems. The creature was much smarter than rats.

It was time to load up the cart. Ros managed to bring one, depleting his Vigor bar almost to zero in the process, and the pet brought two more. It made sense to get more tomorrow—there was no shortage of these creatures here. They weren’t as common as rats, though. You could find those around any corner, while pters were the kind of critter you had to look for.

Another option was to bang your pickaxe against the rock—the fiends were used to the miners being helpless, and were likely come look for you themselves.

Ros found a fitting place for setting up a defensible spot with fortifications where he could sleep. He placed wooden lattices made from the material delivered by the orc between the stalagmites, putting a larger lattice on top. Now the monsters would have to get through the obstacles before they could reach his body. The leprus standing guard would hardly remain indifferent to that. The passage leading to his cul-de-sac was narrow and passed right by the pet’s hiding place. Ros explained it at length in every way he could that the leprus should stay there all the time, and only jump out when a mob tried to get at his master. Once the mob was strangled, the body needed to be dragged away and out of sight.

Ros feared that the mobs would be cautious about following a path where instead of a lure such as a sleeping human—or a rrokh, in his case—they would find a high-level leprus with a suspiciously mean look on its snout crouching among the bodies of their kin.

Incidentally, he hadn’t seen any other mobs but pters, trumuses, and a single shadowcrawler. Were there any other lepruses left? And what of the mine demon of mischief? He’d only encountered it once—as a system message about having been killed by this elusive bastard. Where could it be hiding? As for the lepruses, could they all have been killed in the raid following their attack on the settlement? That would be a welcome development, as Ros didn’t feel confident he’d be able to withstand an assault like that.

He didn’t feel particularly tired, but sleep was a subtle beast, swallowing him up like the deepest morass of all the worlds.

* * *

The same data center.

“This is a weird bug—I don’t recollect anything of this sort.”

“What about it?”

“Take a look at the log and see for yourself.”

“So?”

“See anything weird?”

“An achievement. What about it?”

“Don’t you know the conditions for it? It’s an impossible achievement. The character levels up, so you need mobs of an ever-increasing level. The furthest you can get before you’re stuck is about one third of the way.”

“Someone must have invested lots of cash to equip a level zero player to hunt level twenty-five mobs.”

“Sure. It’s just that a level zero will have a single type of a mob counted against this achievement only once. If you kill a wolf, killing another won’t do you any good since it won’t be counted. Or you can kill the ones that are thirty levels above you—there are no limits on those. That means you’d have to search for zones with new types of mobs and have them kill you a whole bunch of times before you manage to get one of each. You’d need to drag high-level buffers along with you all this time, too. This would take more than a month. And what would be the point? If you have that much dough, you can invest it in something a lot more interesting. Also, the reward for one of the stages of this achievement makes you a hero. A noobish kind of hero, to be sure—Great Hunter or some such. The bonuses are nothing much, and you won’t get glorified in chats worldwide. However, what will happen is that the zero-level lock will be removed and you’ll reach level ten; there’s no way back after that. And a level ten player will find it much harder to kill mobs over a hundred levels above his own, regardless of his equipment.”

“But it clearly says that the achievement belongs to a player with no levels registered less than a month ago.”

“Exactly. It’s got to be a glitch of some sort.”

“Hey, don’t level zero workers have no level whatsoever?”

“They don’t have a regular level. Their virtual level is one.”

“What if he has accessories with a temporary level bonus that let him wear level ten gear? Epics, unique, or legendary items, lots of bonuses, that kind of thing. Or maybe he even managed to put a low-level set together, if there is such a thing. This can be boosted by high-level buffs, high-quality food, and potions.”

“No dice. Even a level 25 mob would require equipment with substantial bonuses to defeat. But in his case, most of the spots would be taken up by gear raising his virtual level. We’re talking noob equipment, after all—it never gives any decent bonuses. Equipment without level requirements that nonetheless yields lots of benefits is unbelievably expensive. I’ve read about folks trying it to some degree of success, and even more than once, but none of them got very far. Even doing it once is a pain in the neck, let alone several times. It would be easier to remove the lock and level up properly—and once you reach a high enough level, the reward for this kind of achievement becomes meaningless. There’s no point wasting time and money. The heroic title is rather weak, too, and doesn’t do you that much good. It would be easier to complete a heroic quest and slay some raid bosses—it’s cheaper, and the rewards are better. You can get it done realistically in a month or two if money is no object.”

“Is there any chance this isn’t a bug? What if someone was actually patient enough to pull it off?”

“Everything is possible. This log doesn’t even contain a username, and the race name is gibberish. Well, it’s like they say—the only thing logs are good for these days is printing them out and wiping your ass with them.”

“Uh-huh. It’s weird there was no worldwide chat message in that case, though. This is the first such achievement in the history of the game, after all.”

“Apparently, not even the system considered the feat heroic enough.”

Chapter 18

“Achievement bonus: +1 to Perception, +1 to Crafting, +1 to Creation. Congratulations! You are the first person alive to have fulfilled the requirements for this achievement! You are headed in the right direction, Hero! Keep at it! Here’s a little something to help you on your way: +1 to Perception and +1 to Luck. A hero needs to see the right path, and luck will help them see it through to the end. Achievement unlocked: Monster Bane. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: 5 random secondary base stat points. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 6. Your Cunning grows by 1. Current value: 2. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 7. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 8. Achievement completed: Giant Slayer. Achievement bonus: 1 undistributed primary base stat point, 1 undistributed secondary base stat point, 3% to Physical and Magic Resistance. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Exterminator. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Your Cunning grows by 1. Current value: 3.”

These system messages were the first thing Ros noticed as he woke up. He suspected there was a reason for them to be displayed, so he lifted the lattice up a little and looked at the pet. The leprus was standing guard, covered by two huge stalagmites fused together at the bottom, with piles of pter and trumus carcasses to either side.

“Well, you’ve been busy… Did they attempt a mass assault or were they just coming one by one all night long?”

No reply followed—the leprus wasn’t much of a talker.

He had missed many opportunities to level up anything other than Summoning and Cunning. But there were trophies galore. Ros spent at least half an hour inspecting and collecting his loot. Apart from the giblets, he found seven undamaged items. He hid the plainer and bulkier stuff among the stalactites, covering it with rocks—he didn’t want to overload his bag—taking with him a level twenty-nine enhanced helmet and a level thirty-three belt. As for the ring, he took his sweet time examining it.

“Enchanted Silver Porter’s Ring. Properties: merging. Stats: +10 kg to Carrying Capacity, +1 to Strength. Enchantment: +1 to Carrying Capacity.”

He’d been complaining about being overloaded, right? This looked to be a partial solution to the problem. It was easy enough to see that this trinket was worth a great deal more than much of what he’d found before. He could keep it for his own use, but the bag was still more important. Oh well…

Right, he should show his trophies to the orc first and decide later.

He loaded five more carcasses into the cart, choosing the best-looking ones. Then Ros got into his usual routine again: pters, trumuses, and amethysts, stopping shortly before lunchtime. There were fewer and fewer mobs around—he must have killed off the stupidest ones in the area, and the smarter ones were probably scrambling to get out of his way. He didn’t get much loot, but still managed to raise his Stamina and Attack by using his pike.

* * *

Shoto heard the creaking of ungreased axles from afar and hastened to meet him. Ros had barely managed to command the pet to hide in a gallery before realizing how much he’d overloaded the wooden cart. It took all his effort to push it forward, and it was still barely moving.

Well, that was his own damn fault. He should have equipped the accessories with bonuses to Strength in advance.

“Hi, Ros. Let me help. Dang! You sure have a lot here! How did you manage to transport it all by yourself? You don’t even seem out of breath.”

“I’m on my second wind…”

“What do you have there?”

“Eight pters.”

“How many?!”

“Eight. I remember we spoke of five carcasses tops, but I thought a few extra ones wouldn’t hurt.”

“Uh, sure thing.”

“I also put a trumus in there—it might be useful for something.”

“I’ll try. Look, you’ve got so many pters… This should be enough for the whole mine, or almost enough. But not everyone may be able to afford the meat.”

“Lower the prices—I’ll bring more tomorrow.”

“As you say. Some job this is…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be saying my farewells to copper and switching to meat full time.”

“So, what’s wrong about that? You’re leveling up your Cooking skill, after all.”

“Meat of this level makes leveling happen really fast. I’m not complaining, far from it. It’s just that I didn’t expect to turn into a full-time cook.”

“Take a look at these. Found me an enhanced helmet and belt.”

“Have you checked the forum?”

“I didn’t exactly have that much time for the forum.”

“I get it, silly question. Given what you’ve been up to, the forum must have been the least of your concerns. Won’t take me a sec—have a rest.”

Shoto returned in about ten minutes.

“The helmet’s worth thirty-five, forty tops. The belt is a lot more interesting—you can sell it for over a hundred if you’re in no hurry.”

“How much exactly over a hundred?”

“A hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and fifteen.”

“And if I am in a hurry?”

“Well… it shouldn’t be any less than eighty.”

“Have a gander at this ring.”

Orc took a good look at the piece of jewelry and whistled.

“I don’t need the forum to tell you this thing is pretty useful. I know someone who’d buy it off you for a hundred right now. Now, to avoid any misunderstanding, it may cost around a hundred and thirty in the city, but that would take some time.”

“So I can get a little over two hundred coins for the items, then. I also have about forty coins’ worth of loot and amethysts. Two hundred silver pieces are guaranteed in this case.”

“Shall we split the proceeds from the pter meat fifty-fifty?”

“Sure.”

“In that case, I owe you around fourteen silver coins apart from everything else. You should have around three hundred and eighty silver pieces with the glove.”

“I need the best bag I can possibly find. I would invest all my money in one.”

“If we use the help of the guards and the coachmen, they’ll charge around two hundred. Otherwise you won’t see your bag or your money—they’ll rip you off for sure.”

“So I’ll only have a hundred and eighty left for the bag?”

“Something like that, unless we find another way.”

“What do you suggest?”

“We could have something arranged while Greedie’s gone. He’s supposed to be away for another five or six days, which is a good thing—his involvement would make things much harder, and would cost a lot more. Also, he’s a rather dodgy fellow, so dealings with him are risky. There’s another option: I pay a hundred to the guards, and thirty to forty to the coachman—fifty at the most. That’s the standard rate you must pay if you want to get out of here before your contract expires, more or less. I could get into the city that way and save you a few coins.”

“You’d go to all that trouble just for me?”

“Not quite,” the orc grinned. “There are a few things that I need to do in the city. Nothing urgent, but why waste such an opportunity?”

“How much would I have to pay for a bag with around a hundred slots and weight reduction?”

“A hundred? You don’t think small, do you? What exactly do you intend to carry in it?”

“Minor loot. It doesn’t weigh much, but takes up space just the same. I’ll drown in all this stuff otherwise. I have tons of stuff from rats, too—you can sell that as well.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why?”

“Once you get out of here, start leveling everything the way I do. Loot from minor mobs is useful for auxiliary craft skills like Leatherworking and alchemical recipes for noobs, as well as lots of other stuff. If you have a lot, you can do some serious leveling.”

“I’ll think about it when I need rat entrails. What I need right now is a bag.”

“A hundred-slot bag with twenty percent weight reduction will cost you five or six hundred at least. You might get one cheaper, but it will be in a crappy condition.”

“Damn, that’s steep…”

“Sure is.”

“Let’s do this. Today I deal with mobs, and tomorrow I do more of the same. The day after you go to the city and sell everything. How’s that?”

“The best time to go is in the evening—I can go with the ore caravan. I may even skip paying the drivers if the guards tell them to take me along. I’ll be back the next day, though I’m not exactly sure when. Check at regular hours to be sure. Would that work, or are you in a real hurry to get that bag?”

“It can wait two or three days. Can you cook enough meat for the miners to last them a while?”

“I’ll tell them I’ll be away for a day, and they’ll stock up. Just get me enough meat. Some rats would be nice, too, by the way—folks keep asking if I have any.”

“Screw the rats. Pters are less trouble, and they’re much bigger.”

“OK, let’s split until tomorrow noon, then. These birds should be enough, but I’d like you to have as many ready for next time, maybe even more.”

“You won’t be here in the evening?”

“No, I’ve got the meat to take care of.”

A message in bright red lettering flashed up suddenly, occupying their entire field of vision.

“Dreaming Herb from Lihatutang Province, Middle Empire, is the first one alive to reach level 300. The hero has brought glory to his homeland and has earned a generous reward for his great achievement. In order to see the name of Dreaming Herb as it is written originally, enable Chinese character support in the game’s interface settings.”

“What was that?” Ros looked surprised.

“A heroic achievement, what else. Another feat by the Chinese farmers[9].”

“Come again?”

“The Middle Empire is a Chinese domain. A player with the name of Dreaming Herb was hardly born an Englishman, eh?”

“Indeed.”

“These guys never sleep, never eat, and never make love to girls, spending virtually all their time leveling and earning money. All the speedy leveling record achievements are theirs. And now they have the first level 300 player. Let’s pray they never try to wage war against us.”

“Can they?”

“They tried. It nearly blew up into a real-world political conflict. Haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve been a little behind on things.”

“Right, so I’ll split, then. I’ll be busy with this meat until nightfall.”

“Bye. I gotta go, too.”

“See you. I wish you to score a rare item at least, if not a legendary one.”

Chapter 19

In the morning, Ros discovered that there were considerably fewer mob carcasses than the day before—the ceaseless extermination must have reduced their population. Correspondingly, there were fewer trophies. He would therefore have to do some walking if he wanted to reach richer pastures.

He was somewhat pleased by an extra point each to his Summoning, Cunning, and Hunting skills.

He still had to figure out the latter. It seemed that the stat grew faster when he hunted rats. Could it depend on the number of mobs rather than the level? The description wasn’t particularly clear.

Ros felt an urge to check things out farther downstream. If Greedie was right, the water that ran past the mine did not disappear underground, but surfaced somewhere. If the exit was close enough, he was in luck—he could make his hunting more varied, as he was already getting tired of underground beasts.

He kept on walking, harvesting cloudy amethyst from frequently encountered geodes and killing whatever beasts came his way—or, rather, participating in their slaughter in a minor way. Two pters were dispatched, followed by another trumus, after which his Attack and Skinning skills both grew by one. The former stat was particularly satisfying—according to the description, its growth increased the chance of undamaged loot dropping from a mob. Then again, so far he hadn’t noticed any tangible difference.

Having explored a little over a mile downstream, he turned around and started toward his lair, checking every grotto and side tunnel. He marked a couple of caverns filled with mobs where he could hunt game for the orc so as not to drag it from further away. He did not venture inside so far.

Upon finishing another geode of gems, he saw a strange system message:

“Your сache has been discovered by a high-level creature. Because it had remained undiscovered by anyone for a long time, you’ve unlocked a new auxiliary stat: Cache Master. Achievement completed: Start to Know Thyself. Achievement bonus: you unlock a new auxiliary stat: Profound Wisdom. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Know Thyself Further. Unlock fifty auxiliary stats to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

Who could have possibly discovered his “cache”? He did not recall hiding anything.

Idiot! Ros nearly hit himself on the forehead with this pickaxe. He remembered that he had left cheap and plain items, mostly armor, buried under rocks among the stalactites. Someone must have found his stash.

It wasn’t like he had any real valuables there, but it was a matter of principle—he didn’t want anyone to lay their filthy paws on his possessions.

Ros ran all the way back, sparing no Vigor. He heard the sound of metal scraping stone from afar and slowed down, trying to creep as slow as he could. He peeked around the corner and saw a most remarkable tableau. A bald red-skinned creature the size of a plump bull, looking like a cross between an ape and a demon from a horror film, was banging a bronze helm against the wall of the cave as hard as it could. A few disfigured pieces of debris were scattered around—formerly Ros’ trophies.

“Mine Demon of Mischief. Aggression: highest. Sociality: antisocial. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

There he was, the perfidious bastard! The only mob that had escaped Ros’ retaliation for his numerous humiliations in the cycle of rebirth.

“Gorgeous! Strangle him!” shouted Ros as he took a swing with his pike.

The demon turned around in a fraction of a second and saw the leprus. He was about to escape, but after the pike hit him in the thigh, decided to stay and punish his assaulter’s impudence. A series of events took place at once: the monster sent forth a fireball from his paws that flew toward Ros as fast as an arrow, and the leprus used his Stun skill without waiting for a command, as concentric circles of a myriad bright yellow sparks shot out from the pet. Ros threw himself to the ground, hoping to evade the deadly onslaught.

The flame rushed over his head with a rumbling roar, making the hair on the back of his head crack. He howled in pain—his entire back was aflame.

“Critical damage sustained: you are burning. You are losing hit points rapidly.”

Ros jumped up and dashed backwards. He crossed the three hundred feet that lay between him and the creek faster than a sprinter and threw himself into the water with a great splash.

He made it, losing just over half of his hit points.

“You kill the Mine Demon of Mischief. XP received: 1399. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 10. You receive a Summoning level bonus: your spells for healing, buffing, and summoning pets now consume 20% less magic energy and are cast 10% faster. Your Agility grows by 1. Current value: 29. Your Stamina grows by 1. Current value: 7. Your Stamina grows by 1. Current value: 8. Your Resilience grows by 1. Current value: 3. Your Accuracy grows by 1. Current value: 1. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster sixty or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner, Part Three. Achievement bonus: +1 to Defense, 2 undistributed base stat points, +5 to hit points and magic energy, Vigor, and Fury. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer, Part Four. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by sixty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster sixty or more levels above yours! Achievement bonus: random.”

“These critters sure get up to some serious mischief,” said Ros gruffly as he started toward the site of battle. The leprus was already running toward him—evidently, his nemesis wasn’t all that dangerous, after all, as the pet was virtually unharmed. Ros instantly raised his Agility by one, and the rrokh’s racial ability raised his Strength by one. He used the other undistributed point on the same stat, raising his overall Strength to eighteen. A little less than required of a proper miner, but he was now a far cry from the feeble noob he had been on his first day in the mine.

The demon had no pelt—just the fangs, claws, something weird called a “third eye” which looked like an opaque marble, a tail, and some knuckles. Ros took everything, assuming that the creature was rare and the loot it dropped might cost more than usual.

Ros felt nauseated after the battle, and kept fighting back the desire to massage his back and have a rest. But then he got over and started loading up the cart. He had made an impromptu travois for the leprus, allowing him to drag fourteen pter carcasses at once. They had to come back for them, though, since they had dropped the travois once Ros had received the system message about the cache being looted.

* * *

“Shoto! Help!” Ros shouted once he realized that without the pet’s help his Vigor would drop to zero halfway to his destination.

He was in luck—the orc was already there, and it didn’t take him long to hustle over.

“Hi, Ros! Did you get even more meat?”

“Fourteen pters—there’s also the carcass of a demon of mischief.”

“Damn, this stuff is heavy. What about this demon?”

“No clue. I reckoned you might find some use for it. I wouldn’t eat it, though—it doesn’t look too appetizing.”

“You’ve eaten rats—it shouldn’t be so easy to gross you out.”

“What about the trumus? Do you need any more of those?”

“Nah, they’re not particularly useful. The meat increases magic energy regeneration, but who needs that sort of thing around here? At higher Cooking skill levels you can use it in a couple of cool recipes, but I still have a lot of leveling to do, and they cost a pretty penny, too. You haven’t changed your mind about the city, have you?”

“I haven’t. What about you?”

“I have arranged the trip for tomorrow morning. If everything works out, I’ll get back in a day. I’ll have to fry this stuff until the morning. I have asked a reliable chap here to sell it to those who haven’t stocked up.”

“He won’t rip you off, will he?”

“He shouldn’t, but then again, you never know. Would you like to sell it yourself?”

“Nope, I’d rather just wander around the mine.”

“Of course, you’re really good at it.”

“I’ve got some more stuff here. Loot, amethysts, and three enhanced items.”

“Have you checked the forum for their value?”

“I have, but you might as well check for yourself,” Ros fibbed.

“I’ll check on my way to the city—I have to take care of the meat in the meantime.”

“Don’t skimp on the bag—get the best you can find. Weight reduction is my first priority, followed by slot number. But not any fewer than eighty, got it?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to get two bags? What’s your Carrying Capacity at?”

“Four. It hardly grows at all.”

“That’s normal—the damn thing grows very slowly when you do regular work. You need to overload yourself to speed up your progress, but it doesn’t help all that much. Two bags will inflict considerable penalties. You’d need ten points of Carrying Capacity for that.”

“So, a single bag, then.”

“What about the pickaxe? You can find something secondhand for a level zero at the Miners’ Guild.”

“If there’s any money left, try to find something for level one, not zero.”

“Got it. Right, let’s split until the day after tomorrow, then?”

“Will you be able to push the cart all the way back by yourself?”

“Sure, if I don’t hurry too much. Be here at noon the day after tomorrow. And don’t forget to get me as much meat as you can hunt.”

Chapter 20

Once evening came, Ros started doing something rather odd. He loaded up his bag with all sorts of junk collected from the mobs: cheap equipment, pieces of broken armor, blade shards, and accessories without any useful stats. He spent about three hours hiding the stuff where the main tunnel was crossed by the galleries used by most miners.

The description of the Cache Master skill implied that the more often someone passed by your cache without finding it, the quicker this skill leveled up. Other factors were the level of the potential looters and the value of the stash. Should someone find it, the owner would receive a solid final bonus.

Miners left galleries a few dozen times a day to load up the carts with ore. Even though they were all level zero players, his skill would still level up slowly. Should they find any of the caches, the bonus would be worth more than the stashed junk.

He carried on doing the same in the cave, leaving useless items everywhere—underneath piles of rocks, on rock shelves, and in clumps of moss.

Shoto said he should level up every skill he could, so Ros was doing precisely that.

Moreover, caches were directly linked to Luck, Profound Wisdom, Perception, Disguise, Essence of Things, and Reason. All of those stats would get raised gradually as well. Once he leveled up the skill, his chances of finding somebody else’s cache just by walking past it would increase.

So here was a skill he should definitely to pay attention to: caches were money, and he had no intention of screwing around.

The next morning, there were just a few mob carcasses next to the leprus. Ros had swept up the nearest side tunnels yesterday, and was now bored.

Ros decided to take advantage of the fact that he didn’t have to bother procuring meat today, so he could do some serious exploring instead. He intended to follow the creek downstream, keep going forward until midday, and then head back. He might find an exit or something interesting. And valuable. His very nature railed at the thought of stagnation—moreover, the thought that the leprus might disappear or get lost kept nagging at him. That would put an end to his fantastic success at hunting. He did have about a dozen soul crystals from high-level creatures, but none of them were even remotely close to his current pet.

The first few hours were rather unremarkable. Ros mined for amethysts, killed mobs, collected loot, and made caches out of useless trophies. He came across an enhanced level twenty bracelet. As he kept throwing his pike at the victims of the leprus, they would wound him a few times before the pet managed to grab them in his choking embrace. This allowed him to raise his Accuracy and Stamina by a point each.

Then he heard water running somewhere ahead. The creek was by no means silent—it murmured as it twisted this way and that, but the rumbling he heard was produced by something much more powerful. And it wasn’t long before he saw what it was.

Three caves converged in a single spot, a fairly wide creek flowing out of each. Together they formed a river that was around thirty feet wide in the narrowest spot. It hit a rocky protrusion that blocked its way, making the roaring sound that he had been hearing. Grumbling its offense, the river ran past the rock and carried its waters forward, then disappeared behind a bend.

Ros noticed many skeletons of different creatures on the rock. He already knew that the carcass of a monster decomposed in a couple of days, emitting virtually no unpleasant smell, and leaving nothing but bones. This was clearly the site of somebody’s successful hunt. But whose?

The leprus emitted a visceral growl without taking its eyes off the river. A creature that Ros had mistook for one of the rocks was fast approaching. Once it realized it was discovered, it reared on its hind paws and roared menacingly.

“Freshwater Omrus. Aggression: high. Sociality: high. Level: hidden. Skills: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

“Hold it!” Ros commanded the excited leprus. “Let him come out—I don’t want to wade in the water to get his entrails.”

The omrus looked like a walrus with short limbs instead of flippers. It also behaved strangely, heading straight for Ros and ignoring the leprus completely.

“Strangle!”

The pet ran into some problems—the neck of the omrus was thicker than its head and well-protected by a layer of fat, so the leprus could not strangle it. Moreover, the slippery body kept trying to wriggle out of the grip and lunge at Ros. The “walrus” scowled menacingly, demonstrating a row of fangs that were as thin and hollow as syringe needles.

Ros noticed two more omruses emerge from the river.

“Gorgeous! Stop! Hit them! No more strangling!”

Splatters of blood and shreds of flesh started to fly in every direction—the omruses had no protection against powerful blows. But more and more beasts kept coming out to help them, and the leprus simply couldn’t handle all of them at once.

Ros realized he had created the aforementioned “train” of monsters. The prudent option now would be to retreat, but he refused to surrender, so he started kiting the omruses, who were slow on dry land, shouting commands all the while.

“Achievement completed: Giant Slayer, Part Two. Achievement bonus: +1 to Resilience, +1 to Attack, and +1 to Disguise. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Exterminator, Part Two. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours by forty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

“Come on, Gorgeous! Come on!!! I believe in you!”

One of the omruses fell into a rage at the nimble quarry and threw a rock at Ros, but it was easy enough to evade. He kept running around the battlefield in circles until the beasts finally realized they were getting slaughtered by the leprus while chasing the illusive human, and instantly switched to attacking the pet. The leprus’ health bar flickered and started to shrink, albeit slowly—a first since they started hunting together. Ros braked, cast a healing spell on the pet, and shouted:

“Stun!”

The twenty-odd omruses froze in place as the wave of sparks washed over them. They would remain immobile for a few seconds. The leprus also had a Panic skill that would make foes drop whatever they were doing and scatter for a short time, but that would be his last resort in case the pet took serious damage.

Ros cast another heal, restoring the pet’s health bar, then threw his pike at one of the omruses, crouched, and started pelting them with rocks. The beasts fell one by one, unable to withstand the crushing blows of the leprus’ paws and the vise grip of his jaws. The pet was losing hit points, but at a very slow rate, and Ros virtually didn’t have to distract himself with healing.

He approached the fight when there were only four wounded mobs left standing, running circles around them and striking them in the back with his pickaxe. He could no longer heal, having run completely out of mana. He couldn’t cast so much as a Soul Trap.

And then there were none left standing. The battle was over, ending in an incredible victory for Ros. He received a ton of experience he could do nothing about on account of his level lock, as well as…

“Your Strength grows by 1. Current value: 19. Your Agility grows by 1. Current value: 31. Your Intellect grows by 1. Current value: 7. Your Mental Power grows by 1. Current value: 2. Your Accuracy grows by 1. Current value: 3. Your Speed grows by one. Current value: 5.”

This was something to celebrate! A single battle had boosted his stats by a total of six points, with Speed and Mental Power growing for the first time. His Strength was at nineteen now. He needed just a little bit more to get it up to twenty, which was the minimum value he had decided on.

If he carried on like this, he’d leave the mine as a rather advanced noob indeed.

Having been unable to strangle the creatures, the leprus had made quite a mess of them instead. Ros barely managed to collect any loot at all, and the lootable trophies were severely damaged. A tattered cloak, a smashed silver diadem, and similar junk that would only be good for making new caches.

The bones scattered across the rocky protrusion looked unusual—he could see that even from a distance. Ros took the trouble to cross the river, barely managing to stay on his feet in the strong current, but it turned out to be worth it. Apart from the remains of well-familiar creatures, he saw a few he had never seen before; strangest of all was the fact that there were two distinctly human skeletons among the bones.

The omruses must have devoured everyone who would come to the river confluence—that much was clear. But where had the human bones come from? Were they players? But players left no skeletons. At least, the level zeroes didn’t—their bodies simply disappeared where they fell nearly instantly and without a trace. Could these be high-level players? He had no idea how those died—he hadn’t gotten to witness it during the assault on the settlement.

Ros searched the rock thoroughly, and was soon rewarded for his diligence with a short rusty sword, an axe with a rotten handle, and an amulet from one of the skeletons’ neck. It had no bonuses, but was interesting nonetheless.

“Badge of the Cartographer Enuis Chittarius. Submit this badge to the Cartographers’ Guild in any city.”

Yeah, right. He’d drop everything and rush to deliver the badge. Although he wasn’t going to dispose of it, either—the description was interesting enough, and he might get some reward for it.

Apart from the useless amulet, the skeleton carried a tiny pouch. There was just one slot in it, and it contained a notebook in a hard leather binding reinforced by metal bands. When Ros opened it, he saw penciled sketches of some kind of terrain.

As he leafed through the notebook, he realized that he was holding a map of the caves and open terrain.

Curious, he decided he’d study the object sometime while restoring his Vigor. It might turn out to be useful.

* * *

Ros found another pack of omruses in about an hour and a half. There were fewer of them this time, but the battle was still far from easy. One even managed to swipe the pesky human, causing a bleeding that he had to treat as he ran, pressing down on the wound with his hand. After the battle, Ros raised his Stamina, Intellect, and Speed. Apart from that, something unexpected happened.

“Your pet learns a new skill: Vampirism. He can now steal some hit points from its victim with a bite and use them to replenish his own health.”

Ros remembered that a rrokh’s pet had a two percent chance of learning one of its victims’ skills. But since that hadn’t happened at all previously, he had begun to suspect an error in the description of racial bonuses. Now, however, he was quite happy to have been proven wrong.

Apparently, these “walruses” also drank blood? That must be why some of them restored their hit points so quickly during a battle. It was a good thing they never got to sink their teeth into Ros. Doubly so that the leprus could now heal himself at his victims’ expense. Just how effective was this new skill? That remained to be seen.

Ros wanted to keep on going, but he restrained himself. He would also need to get back, checking the side tunnels for pters. Shoto was due to get back the next day, and he’d need more meat.

Chapter 21

“Hey, Shoto! Help me out!” shouted Ros merrily as he spotted the orc by the empty cart from a distance.

“I’ve been here for almost an hour! I thought they have finally gobbled you up!”

“They’d sooner choke on me. Sorry, I haven’t been outside in a while, and the clock in my head is a bit off.”

“You might want to. It’s nice outside—the sun is shining, the birds are singing…”

“I have no time for that. It takes almost half an hour from here to the crater, and then back again; it also earns me nothing.”

“That sure is true.”

“I have brought you eleven pters. Will that be enough?”

“Sure. You haven’t seen any red demons, have you?”

“Nope—I’ve only ever seen one. What about them? Good meat?”

“It’s not that. I have checked on the forum, and turns out this beastie is super rare. And alchemists always need its meat for some foul stuff they brew for necromancers and summoner mages. I must tell you that I got more for its meat than I did for everything else put together: seven hundred forty five coins. I could have gotten more, but time was of the essence.”

“Are you telling me you scored nearly two hundred bucks for the meat of a mob, and one whose level wasn’t even that high?”

“I’m telling you exactly that—they’re rare, and the demand is high. Should you see another, don’t let it get away. The eye sold for ninety coins, and the tail for two hundred and seventy.”

“Who the hell would need a tail?”

“It contains a special kind of gristle used for making bowstring for expensive bows. So you got around one thousand one hundred silver pieces for the demon, all in all.”

“Well, I’ll be…”

“Yeah, I nearly fell on my ass when I found out, too.”

“What about the bag?”

“Well, you told me to get the best I could for as much money as I’d make, with at least eighty slots and as much weight reduction as possible, right?”

“Right.”

“So here’s the deal—all your money, after paying off the guards and the coachman, amounted to seventeen hundred fourteen silver pieces and a few coppers. I couldn’t get a better deal—I was in a hurry, and there was my own business to take care of as well. So you have lost a substantial amount. Now, I have found a real cool bag for you, but it’s not in the best condition. Don’t mind that, though—it will last you three or four months if you’re careful, and with the kind of money you’re making, you’ll be able to afford a better one much sooner than that.”

“Small Trader’s Bag, one hundred slots, weight reduced by 1.25. Weight: 0.89 kg. Durability: 28/80. Bonus: does not drown, requires no washing or cleaning, food and beverages spoil eleven times slower. Requirements: none.”

“Does this mean that if I put in forty kilos’ worth of loot, it will only become thirty kilos heavier?”

“That’s right. So, what do you think?”

“It’s a cool one indeed.”

“You haven’t seen the real cool ones yet. There are bags that reduce the weight of their load by half or even more. Also, trader bags wear out at a faster rate. Otherwise it would have cost a lot more. Be careful with it. There’s some meat inside, as well as a pickaxe.”

“A pickaxe?”

“There were no better bag options, so I ended up with some money left, and the Guild building was right in the vicinity, so I visited the quartermaster. Get a load of this.”

“Enchanted Simple Miner’s Pickaxe, made of quality steel. Tool and crushing weapon. Damage: 7-8. Tool bonus: 14-16 to damage to rock. Enchantment effect: +1 to Strength. Requirements: level one. Weight: 2.98 kg. Durability: 44/110.”

“This one isn’t in its best condition, either, but it will also last you a while. You’ll harvest ore about three times faster. So, what do you think? Good enough?”

“Totally. It was an excellent idea to get it.”

“There are also health and mana elixirs in the bag, ten vials each. For noobs, but they’re much better than meat or the crap sold by Greedie. You may find them useful on one of your hunts if you find yourself in a tight spot.”

“Thanks a lot—I forgot to ask you to get some. Well, I didn’t think there’d be any money left, actually.”

“Oh, but there is—seventy silver pieces and some small change. All yours.”

“Did you manage to take care of your own affairs?”

“Sure did. Got me a frying pan and some oil. Some miscellaneous stuff for different purposes, too. I’ll sort you for some better meat tomorrow, and sell some more to those who are better off. Although the term ‘better off’ doesn’t mean much here—we’re all paupers, given our wages.”

“So why did you come here, then? Weren’t there any better mines?”

“Leveling is more important to me than work—my character’s progress is a priority over money. I unlock every skill I can and raise it as much as possible. For example, I managed to level up my Cooking skill decently enough with your help, so I’m doing all right in that respect.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to remove the lock?”

“It wouldn’t. I’m blind, and I intend to get married, so I can barely scrape up enough money for the cheapest account.”

“Blind?!”

“Well, I’m blind IRL—I can see just fine here. Blind people have a clan of their own here in Rallia—The Seeing. Ever heard of them?”

“I haven’t.”

“They have enough money, and they get up to all kinds of serious stuff. They only accept blind folks, but not everyone. You must prove you aren’t just some vegetable living off benefits, but actually possess skills of some sort. I want to join them. I’ve got it all planned out: I’ll spend three months working on a level zero character, and then submit my app to join them. What’s good about this mine is that the Swords don’t care whether you screw around or work like a mule. If you join a serious mine, you need to work daily, and you aren’t allowed to divert any of that time to leveling your character. I’d rather make sure my character has decent stats, then splurge on removing the lock and level to ten over the course of a month. I’ll end up with decent crafting abilities and fairly advanced branches of every skill I can lay my hands on. Stat variety is a valuable quality. So, that’s my short-term goal. There are many folks like me here, by the way.”

“Blind, you mean?”

“No, folks with similar purposes. Ever heard anything about accounts becoming cheaper?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“The rumors have been circulating for a while—they just charge us too much down here. The Chinese pay four times less, and nearly half of them reside here on a near-permanent basis. They’ll soon take us over at this rate. Look, why don’t you come to the crater later tonight? I’ll give you some fresh meat from the new frying pan. It’ll be the bomb, trust me. You could adjust your mental clock while you’re at it, too.”

“I might just do that. Give me about four hours?”

“Sure, I’ll have everything ready by then.”

* * *

Ros felt nostalgic. He had come here a very short time ago, a naïve and wet-behind-the-ears fledgling who couldn’t even ask the right kind of questions. And now he was heading for the exit paying no attention to the rats dashing this way and that across the galleries, and not even feeling tempted to sully his pickaxe by the noobish copper ore. He’d raised his Mining & Quarrying stat to five on amethysts—from here on copper wouldn’t give him any tangible progress. Ore could be sold for money, but he had already realized money wasn’t the most important thing here.

Self-improvement was paramount—and the key to everything else one might want in this world.

For the first time since he’d found himself sitting on the cobblestones of a medieval town, Ros felt more or less secure about his future. He was beginning to adapt to this world.

Sure, many things were still unclear to him, but that didn’t matter. After all, there were many things he couldn’t understand in real life, too, and it hardly made his life any worse. Apart from that, everything in this world appeared to be digitized, so if you were strong, that manifested in specific stats. Which made it easier to understand what was what.

They hadn’t invented a scale for intelligence, though. Local stats such as Intellect had very little to do with it.

Pup was in his favorite gallery. He stopped work as soon as he saw Ros.

“I can’t believe my eyes! The great hunter deigns to visit his forgotten acquaintance!”

“I haven’t forgotten about you—it’s just that there’s never enough time. I’m only over for a few minutes, anyway. How’s tricks?”

“It’s plain enough to see. Same old ore, and I’m still quite a ways off from making my first million.”

“Here, I’ve brought you some meat. It should come in handy.”

“I sure won’t mind—the meat is indeed top notch. I can see it in your eyes that you’d like to ask me something.”

“Actually, I don’t have any specific questions. It’s just that I find these system messages hard to understand. Sometimes they don’t tell me how much experience I got for a mob, even though the total XP count does increase. There’s no consistency in words, the same thing can be expressed in different ways. Why’s that? Could there be something wrong with my user interface?”

“In that case, everyone has something wrong with their interface. Those are Second World system bugs. It is just too complex, and everything here changes much too fast. Don’t you mind these trifles. What’s important to you is to make money and level up. And as far as I understand, you’re doing just fine on both accounts.”

“Well… I’m nowhere near a millionaire yet, either, and though I keep leveling, I’m still nowhere near your level of Strength.”

“Don’t you worry, you’ll raise it soon enough. And you’ll have your million yet—that’s a promise.”

“Are you a clairvoyant or something?”

“Nope. It’s just that I’ve seen a couple of millionaires, but I’ve never seen a total level zero noob supply a mine as large as this one with the meat of mobs in the 40+ level range. Would you say that someone like that has got a shot at becoming a millionaire? In my mind, that’s a damn certainty.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Also, Ros… People have been saying all kinds of things, and you’re at the center of a huge potential shitstorm. You know what kind of folks we get here—there’s a lot of scum among them. Some envy you, others have their own axes to grind. The guards don’t care what you’re up to, but that’s only until Greedie gets back. He’ll definitely hear about your feats from someone—and he’s a very curious geezer, so don’t let yourself become blindsided.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m doing?”

“Wrong? Nothing. It’s just that you’re a weird noob. And there are different kinds of weird, including profitable. Greedie is one of the clan’s hounds, and he’ll definitely report the arrival of a weird noob to his mine. Trust me, Ros—these guys are very good at finding out other people’s secrets. They may be a noob clan, but they’re a power you will never be able to stand against on your own. You should start thinking in advance about how you can stay happy yourself and make sure they’re happy, too.”

“I don’t quite get you…”

“Do you know how the items in the game are graded?”

“Not in any great detail.”

“The simplest and cheapest items used by noobs and beggars have white descriptions. They are known as ‘common’ items.”

“I know that much.”

“Enhanced items have blue descriptions; good items, purple; excellent items, black; and rare items, yellow. These are the items used by ninety-nine percent of the players. They can be crafted, found, or won in battle without any significant trouble. But there are better items, too: ultra-rare ones with pink descriptions, unique with brown, epic with orange, set items with green, and legendary with red. Such items are hotly contested—people betray friends and stoop to all manner of vileness to get their paws on them. So, the long and the short of it is, you look like an ultra-rare noob—someone who can do things no one else can. And everyone’s interested in ultra-rare stuff. You may turn out to be totally useless, but any guild will welcome a noob as weird as you. At the same time, they won’t let you do much, since a noob is still a noob. A hamster who can hunt cats. A funny little noobster. Something along those lines… Get my drift?”

“More or less.”

“I hate to give advice, but if Greedie doesn’t get back before your contract runs out, you should try to disappear.”

“What if he does?”

“Think for yourself. As far as I can see, you don’t just wear your head as an ornament, judging by the merry-go-round you’ve managed to start around yourself. I don’t know why things are so strange with you, and I’ll sleep the better without such knowledge. You’re a fine guy, strange though you may be. So, my advice is to swear allegiance to anyone but the Swords. They’re a lousy clan—rotten to the core—and there’s nothing for you there for sure. Find a better option.”

“I haven’t even started thinking of clans yet…”

“Oh, but they will be thinking about you, indeed. Everybody needs talent.”

* * *

Pup’s words got Ros thinking that he might soon indeed find himself knee-deep in something extremely unpleasant. Even though he was a level zero player, the likes of which were very hard to so much as touch if one’s intentions weren’t peaceful. A clan was a crowd, and a crowd could find a way to make a loner’s life very unpleasant if said loner went against its will. How many members did these Swords have? Ros overheard someone mentioning there being around four thousand members. And that was supposed to be a noob clan. How many members did top clans have?!

“Hey, my man, where have you been wandering? It’s getting dark already!” Shoto shouted as soon as Ros emerged from the tunnel.

Too many miners turned around at the shout—there were more people in the crater than ever before. Ros realized that the orc must have told everyone the famed hunter would make his grand appearance today. Formerly he had just been another noob no one cared about, but now he was a star. Players he didn’t know at all clapped him on the back, smiled at him, and even gave him ugly looks—envious, hostile, or outright menacing.

He found those impossible to understand. He hadn’t done anything to their disadvantage, after all. The clan must have indeed enlisted the scum of the earth if they could go livid with envy over such a trifle. His success was more than dubious, after all—he wasn’t earning all that much from selling that damned meat.

Ros barely managed to get rid of the orc. The environment was by no means conducive to communication, and he was also in a hurry. He’d left his pet halfway to the caves, but he was nervous nonetheless—you never knew when something untoward might happen. Shoto ended up stuffing the bag with meat, assuring him he wouldn’t find anything better within sixty miles. Ros didn’t even inspect it, too anxious to get back.

“Hey! Will you get me around five pters by lunchtime?!” shouted the orc as he was leaving.

Ros nodded silently, without turning around.

“All right, I’ll be over! I won’t need more—you’ve brought so much meat already!” Shoto added, clearly showing off, as if to say, “Look at how cool my pal is—he can knock out five pters before lunch, even though he’s level zero.”

Chapter 22

At noon of the following day Ros was sitting next to the cart filled with pter carcasses and mentally preparing for a serious conversation. He was gravely displeased with Shoto’s behavior. The orc had to be put in his place and made to understand a simple idea: his supplier did not want his feats glorified, and he’d much rather Shoto kept his mouth shut. Ros was even prepared to break off their cooperation should the orc fail to see reason. In some ten measly days his contract would expire, and he would be free. Even if Ros dispensed with ore mining altogether and failed to receive the pittance he was due, it would hardly be worth crying about. He could wander around the caves for a while, do some leveling, stuff his bag with expensive items and loot, and end up earning way more than he would have for the drudgery that was copper ore harvesting.

“Your Cache Master level grows by 1. Current value: 2.”

Wasn’t that great? He could just sit there and do nothing, and still level up! Making around a hundred caches in the cave and the mine was a really good idea.

The leprus jumped out of a dark gallery, dropping the carcass of a strangled rat before Ros. He lazily took the loot and was about to hide the pet, for the orc was due to come at any moment, but the darkness suddenly addressed him in Greedie’s voice.

“What’s this freak show that you’ve trained? Or is it your mama?”

Ros gave a start and turned around. The dwarf seemed to materialize from darkness, flashing an ominous grin, and said:

“Surprised? Dwarves can master the shadow art, too, if we so desire. And I, for one, did so desire. So, noobster, what are we gonna do about you? We need to talk about the weird stuff you do. First with me, and then—”

Greedie didn’t finish his thought. He had been unhurriedly approaching the cart when he suddenly hit the leprus in the side with his axe, exhaling sharply. The pet’s HP bar wavered a little. The leprus swung his paw in response to the attack, tearing the leather cuirass on the dwarf’s chest as though it were paper. The dwarf howled and swung for another hit, but the leprus was quicker, shoving Greedie aside. He landed on his back, and howled in panic:

“Get this beast away from me!!!”

The pet lunged forward, landing right on the dwarf’s chest.

“You kill Greedius Knappy. XP received: 346. Points left until the next level: no data. Achievement earned: First Blood. You defeated a player opponent. Incentive bonus: +5 HP. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Player Killer. Kill 50 players whose level exceeds yours without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

Ros stared at the dwarf’s body with his jaw slacked almost to the floor. How could this be?! He was a level zero player incapable of attacking other players. Pup had demonstrated it to him once, telling Ros to take a swing at him with the pickaxe. Ros managed to swing the pickaxe, but when he attempted to hit, he became paralyzed for a few seconds. This happened every time.

It appeared that Greedie had made a big mistake when he attacked the leprus. The pet wouldn’t have caused him any harm without being ordered to, and Ros wouldn’t have been able to utter this order or activate it mentally.

“Damn, Gorgeous! Look at what you’ve done! We’re really up to our neck in it now!”

What was he to do now? If Greedie disliked him before, this would bring his antipathy to a whole other level. But that wasn’t even the main problem. By the way, why didn’t his body disappear? Then Ros remembered: Greedie’s level was over ten, and his username was red, which meant his body would have to spend some time lying about before he would be reborn.

Ros dashed toward the body and looted everything he could, leaving it in nothing but long johns. Just as easy as looting a rat—and a lot more trophies, too. Running about with a red username was clearly bad for you if it meant losing your possessions so easily.

The body seemed to have been waiting for it, vanishing in thin air without a trace.

Ros hadn’t actually kept any of the dwarf’s possessions; he just scattered them around. His reasoning was that Greedie, finding himself reborn in nothing but underwear, would not run back to the mine before getting dressed. He’d also probably take a few guards along, or even summon some of those tough-looking players with a complaint that an overly bold noob had gotten himself a pet capable of killing a relatively strong dwarf in three blows.

The clan’s top brass would doubtlessly express an interest in a noob this weird, and then…

Ros didn’t know what would happen “then,” but the last thing he wanted was to see Greedie again, let alone his superiors.

Evidently, the time had come to bid farewell to the mine.

Chapter 23

Ros had been following the underground river for a natural day now, eschewing sleep and even rest breaks. He alternated between running and power walking, his Vigor never edging over half, and had even leveled it by one point as a result of this ordeal. None of his other stats had grown—omruses were the only species of mob near the river, and it was easy enough to avoid them. He didn’t engage in a single fight over this time, or harvest a single amethyst crystal—leveling and money were the farthest thing on his mind.

Ros kept imagining the pursuit breathing down his back.

But human strength had its limits even in this world, and he realized that in another hour or two he would start making silly mistakes—if he didn’t fall down from exhaustion. And a mistake here may send him right back to stare at Greedie’s malicious mug.

Rounding the river bend he saw gravel scattered across the shallows, with a pack of omruses splashing there, hunting slippery creatures that looked like fat worms with long fins as they swam by.

When Ros was retracing his route yesterday, he noticed that slain omruses decomposed at a rapid rate, and that none of their living kin were around near the killing fields. Every pack must have occupied its own section of the river, keeping to itself. Other species of mobs apparently didn’t risk dwelling on the territory of fierce and powerful beasts that could launch a collective defense.

The implication was simple: he needed to kill all the omruses, and the area near their lair should be safe for a while. He wouldn’t need much—just four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

“Gorgeous, get the slippery bastards!”

Ten minutes later Ros was sitting on the bank, washing the blood off the gash on his arm. It would disappear by itself in a while, but he still cringed at the sight. The leprus stood still nearby. His HP bar was full—he hardly even needed to heal the pet. However, one of the monsters had gotten to Ros and slashed him with its claws. He had been too weary to react in time, and sufficiently foolish to join the fray too early with his pickaxe.

It wasn’t his finest battle, and the results were similarly meager. No levels gained and no loot worth mentioning, though his Accuracy did grow by one. The stat was rather weak, and typically grew after every serious battle. All he needed to do was throw his pike, followed by a few rocks.

Ros made a bed of moss on a flat slab of stone, and commanded the leprus:

“Stand guard!”

The leprus froze, throwing sideways glances constantly. The summoned creature needed no rest.

* * *

The awakening was far from pleasant.

“Cave Shadowcrawler hits you for 59 damage. Cave Shadowcrawler hits you for 68 damage. Critical damage sustained: your left arm is broken.”

Ros rolled aside and bellowed:

“Gorgeous! Stun! Strangle him! Drag him away from me!”

The leprus was already slashing away with his claws, but stopped upon receiving the new command. The shadowcrawler turned his ire to the pet, leaving Ros alone after taking off half his HP and breaking his arm in just two hits. And he had 233 HP altogether, after all the gear bonuses.

It was too close a call.

While the leprus was strangling the shadowcrawler despite the latter’s firm objections, Ros munched on the meat hastily, washing it down with the water from the river. He needed to restore some health before some other mob turned up.

You kill the Cave Shadowcrawler. XP received: 439. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Your Stamina grows by 1. Current value: 12 (without equipment). Your Resilience grows by 1. Current value: 5. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster fifty or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner, Part Four. Achievement bonus: 3 undistributed primary base stat points. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer, Part Three. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by fifty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Achievement completed: Giant Exterminator. Achievement bonus: 2 undistributed primary base stat points, 1 undistributed secondary base stat point, +35 to magic energy. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Bane. Kill 100 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Achievement completed: Monster Ruin. Achievement bonus: +2 to Arcane Knowledge, +1 to Speed, +1 to Luck, +1 to Carrying Capacity. Congratulations! You are the first person alive to have fulfilled the requirements for this achievement! You are headed in the right direction, Hero! Keep at it! Here’s a little something to help you on your way: +2 to Perception, +1 to Luck, and +1 to Speed. A hero needs to see the right path and move swiftly along it, and luck will help them see it through to the end.

Those shadowcrawlers were a real miracle, with both encounters granting him a ton of pleasant bonuses.

Then again, the actual encounters were anything but pleasant…

Those shadow-creeping rascals! Fancy them wandering wherever they wanted, caring not one whit about a pack of omruses. A rare beast—and a rare bastard!

Ros dumped all five base stat points received into Stamina. He’d level Strength up eventually, but dying right now would be most inconvenient, and so every hit point was worth its weight in gold. Pity that his clothes were the kind worn by noobs, without anything substantial in the way of Defense. Otherwise he would be protected from the mobs even better.

It would sure be cool to be level three hundred, like that Chinese player, with fifteen hundred undistributed primary stat points to boot. He wouldn’t give a damn about any mobs then—or Greedie and his superiors.

Actually, no—he did give a damn about the possibility of facing them.

He initially wanted to add the undistributed secondary stat point to Carrying Capacity, but then, upon some reflection, decided to invest it into Luck. According to the description, one of its effects was a higher chance to evade damage in a sudden encounter and an open battle. And, given his circumstances, he should take every opportunity to survive.

Having collected the loot, Ros decided against going back to sleep. The way he felt, he must have slept no less than four hours. Sure, that wasn’t much, but it would keep him from nodding off on his feet. It was time to move on—but first he would sit and wait for his HP bar to regenerate fully. This took a while with his Stamina, even given the considerable bonus from his accessories.

Sitting there like that was boring as hell, and Ros decided to peruse his character info in order to ascertain his progress to date. It appeared that he’d earned fifty-four primary and ten secondary stat points, having also unlocked eleven auxiliary stats and raised some of them considerably. A far cry from what he’d had in the beginning—indeed, he had become much stronger.

It was a pity that his mining saga ended so abruptly and on such a sour note. And just as he had managed to optimize his character’s growth process and was beginning to enjoy himself. He would have gotten even stronger by the time his contract expired.

So, what would he do next? If Greedie was right, the river had to surface somewhere, so he would leave the cave sooner or later. In the worst-case scenario, he could wait for his bind point to expire and kill himself so as to respawn at some distance from the mine. What would he do then? Better equipment couldn’t hurt—after that, he could find a well-paying job or a place such as this one where he’d be able to make money by himself.

Good equipment was expensive. It would be nice if he could scrape up some seed capital by the time he left the caves. He could invest it all into himself and have a much more functional character. He needn’t hurry, but stuff his bag with as much loot and as many trophies and amethysts as it could carry.

He recalled the cartographer’s notebook with maps he’d picked up. What if he could make sense of it and try to estimate the distance to the exit?

Ros had no complaints about his visual memory, but no matter how intently he peered at the pencil-sketched map, he failed to make heads or tails of it. There were rivers or creeks of some sort that ran through the caverns sketched in the book, but he could not identify the river he was following presently as one of them.

He studied the last page carefully, and then closed the notebook.

“Congratulations! You have unlocked an auxiliary stat: Cartography. It comes with two more auxiliary stats as a bonus: Far Sight and Visual Memory. Now you can memorize the terrain you see. Memorized terrain will appear on your personal map. If you want to draw map scrolls by yourself, you need to learn Calligraphy, an auxiliary skill. Use the game interface to access your personal virtual map.”

That was unexpected! He had just received three auxiliary stats from out of nowhere. But was it really from out of nowhere? He did study the cartographer’s notebook, after all. But wait, he had leafed through it before without any stat gains… Could it be that he had needed to study it carefully and actively try to understand it? Apparently so.

The map accessed from the game’s interface hit him like a punch in the face. No vague squiggles or zigzags that could only look like a cave to someone with a very vivid imagination. What he saw was a perfectly understandable color map with clear annotations and scale.

Ros did not see a full map of the underground. There were bits and pieces here and there, surrounded by darkness. They were connected by a “track” that reached across the darkness—it must have been the late cartographers’ itinerary. Ros was following the same route—which wasn’t surprising, considering where he had found the skeletons. Players left no bones behind—he saw as much yesterday when Greedie got himself killed by his pet. So, those must have been unfortunate NPCs who had approached the place of their demise following the same river bank as Ros, but in the opposite direction.

And there was the exit. A mark at the base of the waterfall indicated that the path leading upward was too narrow and steep for horses. The path ran northeast into unknown terrain obscured by darkness. There was a tiny village, followed by a much larger settlement, and, finally, Arbenne, where he saw Digits hunt frogs on his very first day.

He appeared to be seeing just the expedition’s itinerary and not what its members had observed in life. If he could even refer to their existence as “life” given that they were NPCs… But it made no difference to him. What did was the fact that he could now find his bearings in space: the map clearly indicated his current location as a red dot. This “navigation device” should get him to the city without any problems—once there, he’d surely find his way around.

The task looked simple from here: he would need to move downstream, dispatching packs of omruses along the way. By the time he reached the city, he should no longer be a weird noob with bungled stats, but a tough mofo that any employer would be delighted to recruit for a plush job.

One thing he didn’t want to do was part ways with the invincible leprus. The guards were unlikely to let his pet through—Shoto had made it clear to him that NPCs tended to get extremely agitated at the sight of such creatures.

He wondered if there might be a way to keep his pet.

Chapter 24

It took Ros another day to reach the exit from the caves, and he had to fight another cave shadowcrawler. The battle had cost him an ear, which had then taken about an hour and a half to grow back, and resulted in the emergence of another auxiliary stat called Regeneration. He’d also vanquished three packs of omruses, though only three of them had been of the mature variety. His Attack had grown by three points, his Stamina by two, and he had finally managed to get Accuracy, Intellect, and Summoning raised to the desired value of twenty. He rushed through the caves as quickly as he could, paying almost no attention to the geodes of amethyst. The quality of the gems found here was rather low, so he’d just waste his time and the space in his bag. Nor should he disregard the possibility of pursuit. Indeed, the pursuing party might deploy a player with high Perception, which made it easier to pick up and follow a track.

All this ceaseless running had also raised his Vigor by another point.

He heard the waterfall about an hour before reaching the spot where the river broke through to the surface. The ceiling of the cave was black with bats—another sign that the exit must be somewhere close. These creatures wouldn’t be too far from it.

Finally, he saw it.

Ros was standing on a small crag, blinking from the unbearably bright sunlight. He had grown unaccustomed to it after all his time underground. To his right was the river, with a few more creeks from the main cavern’s side tunnels flowing into it, that plunged down abruptly from the height of a skyscraper with a roar. An impenetrable cloud of pulverized droplets hung below, hiding the nearest environs from sight. He could see a plain with a few hills upon it, covered in thick woods. Just the way it was drawn on the map of the deceased NPCs.

Ros decided there was a better way of getting down than jumping into the waterfall, and started looking for the path that was supposed to be inaccessible to horses. He saw something resembling a way down, and decided to take it slow and steady—even an ape could break a leg there, let alone a horse. There may have been a landslide since, or the cartographer had gravely underestimated the situation.

Having wandered along the bank, Ros found a barely noticeable crack in the wall of the cave overgrown with moss. It led to a narrow passage that was very damp, with the same slippery moss growing everywhere. He saw such passages all over the place, and there was nothing unusual or interesting about them. According to the map, however, the passage had been studied by the cartographer, and designated by a narrow line ending with a horseshoe-like symbol and the legend “Wormhole.”

Ros had no idea what kind of worms may have made a hole here. They shouldn’t be too scary, though. The cartographer had fallen to the claws and teeth of the omruses, while Ros had been dispatching them piecemeal and wholesale without any trouble. So, the mysterious invertebrates shouldn’t be all that intimidating. Either way he should take a look, as this was the only alternative to the path. And it might offer a more comfortable descent.

The passage got so narrow at times that the broad-shouldered leprus barely managed to squeeze through. Ros was beginning to fear he might have to leave the pet and continue the exploration on his own, but then the passage widened, and a hundred steps down the broad corridor Ros found an exit leading to a large cavern whose walls and ceiling were covered in damp fluorescent moss, while the floor remained perfectly dry and unnaturally level.

Then again, saying the walls were fully covered in moss would be too hasty an observation: in one spot, instead of moss there stood an arch some ten feet tall by ten feet wide. Beyond it lay a shroud of impenetrable fog, its surface scintillating with ripples and sparks.

Ros had never seen anything like it, so he decided to study the arch closer.

“Hero, you have discovered a Second World wormhole. It is one of the many places where the forces of Chaos resident in the First World have found a way through. This dungeon is their rightful domain. Hero, should you enter it, the door leading back to your own world will close. It will only open in the event of your demise, or if all the creatures of Chaos that guard their territory perish. The forces of Chaos won’t think twice about sending reinforcements after the final guardian falls, so you shouldn’t linger too long after your victory. Once you cross the threshold that leads to the domain of Chaos, the passage will close within a minute. No further entry will be possible, and the only ways out will be teleport scrolls, special skills, or rebirth at a bind point. The exit will also open if you defeat the army of Chaos. You will not be able to bind anywhere on Chaos-controlled territory! If you enter the domain of Chaos, you will receive the title of a Wormhole Pathbreaker. The Wormhole Pathbreaker is rewarded with a higher chance of receiving valuable items during the first exploration run. Be warned! The territory that lies beyond the veil of mist is dangerous and controlled by the forces of Chaos. We strongly recommend to explore it with a group of strong allies. Recommended level of allies: forty-five or higher. Recommended number of allies: ten or more.”

Ros sat down on the dry floor and started thinking. He realized he’d just stumbled across one of the dungeons where high-level players hunted for valuable items, just like Pup had told him. The latter had also said that the caves and the mines were explored many times by players looking for such dungeons, but to no avail.

It appeared they hadn’t been diligent enough in their search. Beyond the wall of mist awaited strong monsters and bosses, as well as death, glory, and wealth. Such dungeons were usually completed by teams of players with good teamwork. There was no point for a loner to go in—you’d get swallowed up in a single gulp.

Ros had no friends. Should he look for assistance in the city? But the instance he revealed the location of the dungeon, they would try to get rid of him. And he could hardly blame them—what would be the point of taking a level zero player along? No, he wouldn’t get anything for his discovery. All he could hope for was to sell the information, desperately hoping no one would rip him off.

Yes, there was a chance of finding some serious loot there. A dungeon that had never been explored by anyone. He’d become a pathbreaker; according to the description, his bonus would be a higher chance of finding valuable items that other players would probably want to buy for mind-boggling sums of money.

Still, he was a level zero noob on his own. He didn’t even have any armor, and his only weapons were a simple skinning knife, a pickaxe, and a rather underwhelming pike.

But what did he have to lose, after all? He could come in and scout the situation. If he saw he didn’t stand a chance even with the leprus, he could just sit quietly near the entrance. There should be a mob-free area inside the dungeon—he remembered hearing something to that effect from Pup. Or was it someone else… But who else could it be? Oh, of course! His classmates—the ones who had gotten heavily into games back in the day. They would spend hours discussing their treasure-hunting raids—sometimes he wouldn’t understand even half of what was being said due to the specific slang and unfamiliar terminology used. They had been playing a different game, of course, but Second World was a compilation that included elements of dozens, even hundreds of previous projects. As the ads stated, the game inherited the best of everything that had preceded it.

He hoped that the concept of a safe zone near the entrance was inherited as well.

In the worst-case scenario, he’d wait there until his bind point expired, then kill himself and respawn at the village altar. It shouldn’t be hard to reach the town from there.

But what if there were vicious mobs waiting right behind the veil of fog? Well, in that case he’d unleash the leprus upon them, and, should things look hopeless, he’d slip out before the dungeon became sealed—supposedly, he’d have sixty seconds for that. Losing the leprus would certainly sting, but he’d have to leave his pet anyway upon reaching inhabited areas.

There were pros as well as cons…

Ros stood there staring at the veil of mist, imagining piles of treasure, bosses, and mobs with extremely valuable loot. He’d never forgive himself if he let a chance like this pass him by without at least trying to sneak a peek.

Or should he forget about it for the time being? He could contact his attorney and remove the lock for a month, level up a little, and then come back. But what good would that do? He would no longer have the leprus. Where else could he hope to find such a mighty helper? Sure, he could try teaming up with other players, but what if someone else discovered the dungeon in the meantime?

No. This had to happen now. He could always come back later if he failed, possibly even with a few reliable friends. He’d try to find some, anyway. Even though he was a loner by nature, trusty allies were too powerful a commodity in this game.

Ros discarded his last doubts and took a step into the fog.

Chapter 25

There were no aggressive mobs waiting for fresh meat behind the veil of mist. Ros found himself in a similar hall, minus the moss on the walls. He exhaled with relief, and sad in a low voice:

“Looks like we’re still alive, Gorgeous.”

The pet did not respond, but he did look worried—a premonition, perhaps? And not just any random premonition, but sensing real trouble ahead.

“Attention! The dungeon has been locked! You can no longer receive reinforcements! You receive the title of a Chaos Source Pathbreaker. Title bonus: +2 to Cartography. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. Achievement earned: Chaos Source Pathbreaker. Achievement bonus: +1 to Perception, +1 to Arcane Knowledge, +1 to Essence of Things. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: 2x Chaos Source Pathbreaker. Discover another Chaos Source to complete the achievement. Bonus: 5 points to random secondary stats.”

“Not too shabby…”

The dungeon looked more like a mine than a natural cave. The hall looked like the end of a mine tunnel—or maybe its beginning. There was even an upturned mine cart without wheels near one of the walls.

Ros set off toward adventure, stepping softly and almost instantly noticing an unmoving light in the distance. He slowed down even more, and was soon able to make out the details, hissing constantly at the clumsy leprus.

This was indeed a mine. A torch was burning on one of the walls where the main tunnel crossed the first sideways gallery. A strange creature was pacing back and forth underneath—it had a humanoid body and the head of a cricket with glowing red eyes. The creature was clad in a short black cape, and wielding something resembling a halberd.

“Unknown creature, Chaos spawn. Aggression: unknown. Sociality: unknown. Level: unknown. Skills: unknown. Stats: unknown”.

That was unexpected. The grasshopper-like creature was nothing short of a total mystery. The information was displayed in red lettering, but it was obvious that the mob would be formidable—this was a Chaos dungeon, after all.

“Gorgeous, stun the thing first, and then strangle.”

The leprus lunged forward.

The “grasshopper” didn’t seem surprised by the appearance of an aggressive stranger in a dungeon no one had any access to for centuries. Getting a better grip on its halberd, the mob tried to meet the leprus with a chopping swing, but froze, immobilized by the Stun wave. The leprus grabbed the creature by the neck. Ros heard a revolting cracking sound as he drew closer—some part of the fiend’s anatomy must have broken, but it still refused to die, slashing at the leprus with the curved horn-like spikes growing on its wrists. Ros saw that the pet’s HP scale flickered a little, but did not shrink nonetheless. He threw his pike first, then grabbed the pickaxe, approached the mob from behind, and dealt it a hard blow on the back of the head, followed by another and yet another.

The leprus released his grip, and the creature fell, stretching out in agony. The cape drew upwards, revealing a body segmented in an unseemly way, like that of an insect.

“You kill the Thylbit Guard. XP received: 1224. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: the Monster Specialist auxiliary stat is unlocked! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Achievement unlocked: Monster Researcher. Discover five monsters that have not yet been added to the world bestiary to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

Ros decided to leave the halberd alone. It was too large and too unwieldy, and would occupy several slots in the bag. Besides, it was a common item that couldn’t have been worth much. The only thing he took was the cape—even though it did not grant any bonuses, he would use it as a blanket or a sheet at night. The thylbit didn’t have anything else, but Ros had no time for disappointments—he heard someone running toward him along the gallery on the left, approaching the main tunnel, and it sounded like there was more than one creature.

Ros took a few steps back to evade the potential menace. And just in time, too, as three miniaturized copies of the first thylbit came out into the torchlight. These wore no capes; two were armed with short spears, and the third had a sword hanging from his waist. The creatures surrounded the body of their kinsman and engaged in what appeared to be conversation, making clicking sounds. They were obviously discussing the incident. Ros feared they might run back to get reinforcements, which was the last thing he needed.

He’d killed the bigger one without any trouble, so the three smaller ones shouldn’t be that hard.

“Gorgeous! Get them! Stun!”

The stunning was not completely successful—two of the thylbits froze, while the third struck at the leprus with its spear.

“Hit this one!” Ros shouted. “Then give the other two a lick each, and then strangle them, one after another!”

The command had a purpose—he wanted the creatures to be angry at the leprus, not him. He’d had many marks left on him with claws and fangs at the beginning of his career as a noob for rushing to attack his quarry before his pet had dealt it any damage, or simply letting himself be detected first. The leprus was much more intelligent than a zombie rat, and understood most complex commands.

The Stun soon wore off, and all three of the mobs attacked the pet. His HP bar flickered, but did not shrink visibly—in no small part thanks to the leprus munching on the head of the nimble spear-wielder in a chokehold, and thus replenishing its own health. Ros cast a healing spell on his pet nevertheless—it would raise his Intellect stat, and extra mana points wouldn’t be amiss.

“You kill the Thylbit Scout. XP received: 931. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +5 to Vigor! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic.”

Drawing closer, Ros threw his pike, cast a heal, and then grabbed his pickaxe and started helping the leprus vanquish the remaining foes. The reward wasn’t long in coming: “Your Strength grows by 1. Current value: 21. Your Intellect grows by 1. Current value: 11.”

He barely managed to rejoice at the news when something quite unexpected happened—a shadow flickered to his left with a whistling sound, and a long arrow plunged into his shoulder, causing a sharp pain.

“An unknown creature hits you for 39 damage.”

It was the first time Ros encountered a monster dealing damage over distance—and one attacking as suddenly as this. Collecting himself quickly, he jumped to the side, realizing that the archer was shooting from the same gallery the scouts had come from.

“Gorgeous! Head in that direction! Punish the bastard! Strangle him!”

The new foe didn’t resist long.

“You kill the Thylbit Archer. XP received: 784. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +1 to Vigor! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Your Stamina grows by 1. Current value: 20. Your Summoning grows by 1. Current value: 13.”

Ros found two more scouts at the very end of the same gallery. They were lounging on the rocks, shooting dice.

No discipline whatsoever…

The scouts helped him raise his Mental Power. He carried on through the main tunnel, and was soon attacking two thylbit guards found standing in a pool of torchlight. One of them managed to slash at the leprus with a halberd, but to little effect. Six scouts arrived shortly from another gallery to investigate the noise, forcing Ros to start dodging arrows from two archers at once—for some reason, the two had chosen Ros as their target and not the pet. Fortunately, both were lousy shots.

Apart from the thylbits that still had to be finished off, he saw something else in the gallery—something mining galleries were made for, in fact.

“High-density quartzite with purple quartz veins and a bright purple geode. Chance of finding an amethyst crystal: 89.72%. Chance of finding an additional amethyst crystal: 39.35%. Chance of discovering an unexpected resource: 0.08%.”

He couldn’t help himself and started tapping away with his pickaxe.

“Amethyst crystal. Bright purple, extremely clear. Weight: 6.7 g.”

He never saw gems of this quality before, and knew nothing about their value, but suspected it to be considerable. It appeared that, apart from mobs dropping valuable loot, the dungeon was also full of valuable resources.

He decided against taking to mining right away—the mobs needed to be exterminated first.

Ros soon realized that such dungeons provided opportunity for more than moneymaking, as he was leveling at a much faster rate. He received a ton of experience for the mobs, but more importantly, he didn’t need to waste any time looking for them. There were between one and three guards at every intersection, and up to a dozen scouts and archers in the galleries, which were hardly longer than a hundred feet. Whereas in the mine the most rat-infested areas would usually yield ten or twelve kills an hour, here he’d managed to slay more than forty thylbits over the same period, having passed four intersections of the main tunnel and sidewise galleries. And their level was at least thirty times higher than that of the rats.

Though his level wasn’t budging, his stats were growing at such a rate that he found no reason to complain.

By evening he’d mopped up another eleven intersections. Wobbly with fatigue, he was becoming skittish, flinching at the first hint of danger, taught by experience not to underestimate the danger in the face of sneaky perfidious archers, who were also masters of disguise.

It was time to finish his hunt. Another battle, another gallery, and he would head back to get some sleep.

He saw something that surprised him at the next intersection—instead of the familiar guards, it was guarded by thylbits that looked rather intimidating. One was tall and broad-shouldered, with a brightly-polished cuirass and a helmet to match, carrying a heavy double-bladed hatchet, and two more that looked just like him, only clad in leather armor and with long broadswords at the waist.

Though the three guards looked strong, the battle didn’t last that long. Ros kept to the standard scenario, getting the pet to stun and then hit all three, and then strangle them one by one while Ros healed the leprus, threw his pike, and hit the mobs with his pickaxe, aiming at their vulnerable spots for a better shot at landing a crit—he was becoming much more proficient at it, and raising his Agility as a result.

“You kill the Thylbit Swordsman. XP received: 1422. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +20 HP! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Your Accuracy grows by 1. Current value: 7. You kill the Thylbit Commander. XP received: 1796. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +1 to Disguise. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Achievement completed: Monster Researcher. Achievement bonus: +1 to Reason, +1 to Perception, +1 to Arcane Knowledge. Random auxiliary stat unlocked: Poison Specialist. Achievement unlocked: Master Monster Researcher. Discover ten monsters that have not yet been added to the world bestiary to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

Immediately following this message, mobs started to pour out of the gallery in larger numbers than usual, and there was no more time for Ros to admire his new achievements—the leprus could not hit all the creatures with his Stun spell at once.

It looked as though he’d have to level up his Stamina some more.

* * *

At the end of the incomplete day, Ros ended up raising many stats aside from Stamina, as the dungeon ended up proving a veritable treasure trove of leveling opportunity, even for a character as challenged as his. One point to Agility, two points to Strength and Stamina each, and three to Intellect as well as Attack. That made ten primary stat points raised just from mobs, without counting the achievement bonuses.

The loot was nothing to grumble about, either. The thylbits dropped no entrails, but he’d found tons of armor, clothing, and accessories. Unfortunately, most of the stuff was cheap junk, but Ros nevertheless managed to get an enhanced sword, a belt, a few rings, and a glove. He had a very vague idea of the prices they’d fetch, but the extra stats looked nice, and there were a lot of them. Even if he earned a hundred silver pieces for each item, he’d end up receiving around five hundred for everything. And this was just the beginning of the dungeon.

Dungeon crawling was turning out to be a lot less scary than the picture Pup had painted.

Then again, no way Pup could have foreseen the ace up Ros’ sleeve—his seemingly invincible monster of a pet?

Chapter 26

Some data center somewhere.

“Is there anyone here capable of explaining just what is going on?!”

“Actually, we were kind of hoping you could do that.”

“And whatever gave you that bright idea?”

“Well, you are one of Second World’s leading developers…”

“Oh, but I developed nothing of the sort, and there should be nothing like it in the gameplay. As for the governing AI issue, we aren’t the only ones to panic. Have you tested the data media again?”

“Four times over—everything’s in perfect order.”

“Can you guarantee that the blaze didn’t damage them?”

“This is your experts’ conclusion.”

“I’m asking you, not them.”

“Yes, I can guarantee it. The fire source was a few dozen feet away from the data media, and they were all shut down at once as per protocol. They kept operating on emergency power all the while, and the fire never reached them. We had them connected to a backup server, and that was when we found out the AI was down. The storage media are there, but no attempts at launching the software have proven successful, even in test mode. We have no idea what could have happened to it. We just don’t know. Physically, the AI is there, but we have no access to it de facto.”

“We will ask the developers of the system regarding any precedents. Do not attempt anything else until then.”

“Understood.”

“Someone should also get in touch with this player at once.”

“We have already tried.”

“And?”

“No success.”

“Disconnect him from the server—we’ll apologize later. I only hope he doesn’t get stuck inside the game when we do it.”

“There is a problem.”

“Did he already get stuck? How did you find out without disconnecting him?”

“I’m afraid the nature of the problem is a whole lot more original.”

* * *

The next morning, as he was mopping up the monsters in yet another gallery, a long-anticipated thing happened:

“Achievement completed: Giant Bane. Achievement bonus: 3 undistributed primary base stat points, 1 undistributed secondary base stat point, +1 to Summoning, 15 magic energy points, and 45 Fury points. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Vanquisher. Kill 400 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Achievement completed: achievement database error. Achievement bonus: Chaos Arrow, a unique skill. Achievement unlocked: achievement database error. Kill 400 monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: achievement database error.”

Strange… It was clear enough that the two achievements were being completed simultaneously. It just so happened that Ros had instantly switched from measly rats to mobs in the thirty plus level range. However, the mysterious “achievement database error” suggested that he might receive far more substantial bonuses than just another magic skill. And yet, none of his stats had grown, which was somewhat irritating.

What kind of skill did he receive, anyway?

“Unique ability: Chaos Arrow. There cannot be more than one wielder of this skill. The caster’s hand releases a ball of primordial Chaos that strikes the foe at the speed of lightning, dealing Chaos damage. Ignores all defenses and resistances. Magic energy cost: 15 points. Fury cost: 5 points. Base damage: 25 points. Cooldown: 12 seconds. 5% chance of removing all buffs from the target. 5% chance of dealing double damage while stealing 25 hit points. Partially homing. Dynamic skill: the stats grow along with the character’s level. Can be modified into Chaos Javelin.”

The skill seemed odd. It was the first one that required Fury points from the bar that had puzzled him initially. It had later turned out that the bar became refilled as he mined for ore, and even faster during hunting, especially when he dealt or received damage.

Ros couldn’t tell whether he received a rare prize or an overripe lemon, so he headed onward. There was a rather bright luminescence further down the tunnel, which looked nothing like the light of a single torch.

* * *

The tunnel led to an enormous hall, the center of which was occupied by a crater that looked like a smaller copy of the one Ros used to access the Ravenas copper mine. Large tents of thick green canvas lined the perimeter, with fires burning in front of some of them, and thylbits of all kinds sitting around the fire. Ros watched one of them approach the fire with a bundle of wood from a mining cart and start feeding the flame. Strangely, all the smoke the fires exuded was hardly noticeable, despite the space being a cave, and not an open area.

He looked up, but saw no ceiling—only another veil of mist, just like the one at the dungeon’s entrance.

There were many thylbits—Ros counted twenty-five of them altogether. He had already killed a far higher number, but never this many at once. Were this entire mob to pounce on him at the same time, he wouldn’t suffer for too long.

And they would definitely attack all together. He was lucky to have evaded detection so far. The minute he stepped out of the tunnel, he’d be in for some fun. Should so much as a single mob fail to direct their aggro at the leprus, he might be in for a rebirth. What did the system recommend? Take along some friends level forty-five or higher? Such players should have at least two hundred and fifty primary stat points between their level, gear, and all sorts of bonuses. Ros only had one hundred and thirty-four. He was also a virtually naked noob, whereas players wore armor and wielded weapons of the appropriate level. Not long ago, mobs could snuff him out in a single blow. Now it would take eight or nine—if he got very lucky.

Ros crawled back cautiously, and mused:

“Time to reprise the role of revolutionaries defending barricades…”

* * *

The mining carts were old—some even fell to pieces when he tried to move them. But Ros didn’t care, gathering any construction material he could find, including rotten debris. The barricade made from the remnants of mining vehicles and rocks grew quickly. Fortunately, he didn’t have to carry any heavy loads or hurl them on top—the leprus performed all the hardest menial labor.

Ros stuck a few sharpened stakes here and there aimed at discouraging the thylbits from forcing the barricade, having made them out of planks that he’d split with a pickaxe and sharpened with a knife. They weren’t much of an obstacle—it would be easy enough for the mobs to break through his fortifications if they really wanted to. Ros hoped the leprus would not let him down.

Ros made his way toward the thylbit camp cautiously. He thought about firing an arrow, but decided he would probably miss from this distance. Perhaps he should try his shiny new spell? He’d forgotten about it completely, yet it should be more effective in terms of aggro than even Soul Trap due to actually dealing damage.

Ros chose a thylbit scout sitting near a fire as the honorary first guinea pig, thrust a hand in the mob’s direction, and mentally activated the skill icon. His hand let loose a blob of inky black matter that rushed to meet the target, stretching into a thin spindle-like shape.

“You hit the Thylbit Scout for 37 damage.”

Why was he dealing so much damage? He had been barely managing eight or nine points when smashing these mobs on the back of the head with his powerful pickaxe, sparing no effort, while the spell delivered four times that much!

He had to run as he pondered this, and run as fast as he could, with the collective clicking of the enraged thylbits urging him on. An arrow whistled over his head, and he set to running in unpredictable zigzags, cursing himself for having placed his barricade too far away from the exit.

Another arrow, followed by another. None of them found their mark. The thylbits were poor shots—firing from a long distance, lacking the patience to get nearer. And he wasn’t just any noob, but a noob with high Agility, which made him much harder to hit.

At last, he reached safety. Darting through the passage in the barricade, Ros shouted:

“Gorgeous! This way! Stand guard! Block the passage! Slash at them as they approach! Kill! Stay put!”

The pet obeyed, blocking the passage with the bulk of his body and meeting the nimblest scout with a wide swing of the paw. The rest crowded in the back—not all of them, just the vanguard, but it was imperative that none would reach the barricade.

“Panic! Hit them with panic!”

That wasn’t the most useful skill, since it made most of the foes scatter in fear, albeit for a short time. There was no point in using it while hunting—why would anyone want their quarry to run away? But here the utility of the skill was on full display.

Two mobs remained unaffected by the spell and stayed to fight the leprus—the rest bolted in fear, emitting frightful clicks as they ran. Ros didn’t know how long it took the pet’s skill to recharge, but he understood it would take a while. Once the pet was swarmed by enemies again, he commanded:

“Stun!”

It worked—the entire group caught aggro, and two of the quickest thylbits who tried to crawl between the pet’s legs ran into serious trouble courtesy of his talons.

“Hit! Hit them! Use your paws! Don’t hold back! Panic! Stun!”

The skills haven’t recharged yet, but the mobs were no longer trying to get at Ros.

There was another problem, however—the pet’s HP bar started to shrink, slowly but visibly. There were just too many opponents. The only thing working in his favor was that the mobs crowded the area before the barricade. Should he heal? But there was the risk of drawing the mobs’ aggro to himself—they may have objections to someone healing their enemy. Ros would die almost instantly if they got to the other side. And his healing wasn’t even all that powerful.

He was a noob, after all…

“Stun!”

It worked—most of the mobs froze on the spot.

“Panic!”

Those who had eschewed the paralysis effect scattered, knocking over their frozen kin. They would soon return, but the leprus would take less damage in the meantime.

Less damage? The pet’s HP bar shrunk by some ten percent in a blink of an eye!

Ros cast Heal instantly—he wouldn’t survive the demise of the leprus.

“Chew them! Heal yourself! And keep hitting them—don’t stop!”

What the hell?! The pet’s HP bar shrunk again in a fraction of a second! What was going on behind the barricade?!

He healed the pet twice more, but the HP bar shrunk even more than before, even though the leprus was chewing on one of the thylbits and thus also restoring his health. The worst thing was that Ros could not see the source of the damage from behind the pet’s back. It looked like ranged damage, however. Archers? Unlikely—they were wimps who couldn’t deal more than fifty damage even to Ros. It had to be something else.

Ros stopped healing his pet, climbed the barricade, and instantly saw the cause of their trouble. A tall thylbit—even taller than the commander—stood there, surrounded by archers. The creature’s head was crowned with what looked like a crow’s nest woven of metal wire with long nails sticking out in every direction. Clad in grey attire that looked like a poncho and almost reached the ground, the mob could not be identified, which meant that neither Ros nor any other players had encountered its like before.

The unidentified thylbit was holding a short white staff in its right hand, with blue lights sparkling at the tip. The mob waved the staff, hurling something that looked like a large gob of greenish-grey spit at the leprus over the heads of its allies.

The pet’s HP bar instantly shrunk to half or even less.

Ros thrust out his hand and cast Chaos Arrow.

“You hit the unidentified creature for 34 damage.”

The thylbit instantly lost interest in the leprus and stared at Ros, and then aimed the staff at him. He barely managed to duck when another “spit” whistled just over his head.

Ros cast Heal on the pet three times in quick succession, raising his HP bar a little. He heard loud irate chirping from behind the barricade, and then the head of the unknown thylbit emerged. It looked worse than before, with its strange headdress askew and a short stake sticking out of its left eye.

Ros wasn’t going to wait for the thing to climb the barricade and start using its staff—he aimed and thrust his pike in the thylbit’s remaining eye.

“You hit the unidentified creature for 8 damage. Critical hit: blinding.”

Chirping louder than before, the thylbit climbed higher, then raised its staff and hit the spot where Ros had just stood with a spell.

But Ros was no longer there, having prudently jumped aside right after his attack. The mob began casting his “spitting” spell this way and that, hitting some of its kinsfolk that were pushing the leprus out of the passage with their onslaught.

“Stun! Hit them! Hit them! Panic!”

The “spit” hit the rock next to Ros, and a few drops splashed onto his shoulder and cheek. He yelled from the pain—it burned like acid.

“Gorgeous! Grab this one! Break his arms! Strangle! Strangle the mage!”

It was already clear to Ros that despite the tension of the battle and his pet’s HP bar shrinking by more than half, they would surely triumph. There were fewer than half of the thylbits left, all of them wounded, having suffered numerous crippling critical hits, and dealing a lot less damage than before. It was time to think about trophies. The leprus was strangling the most dangerous of the creatures with one paw while tirelessly beating the remaining small fry with the other. The leader, or whatever the strange creature was, kept kicking out with its feet, refusing to die, but could no longer use magic—the pet had broken its arms first thing. After depleting all his mana healing, Ros grabbed his pickaxe, and started his dance behind the backs of the fighting mobs, hitting their most vulnerable spots.

The unidentified tall thylbit was the last to fall. It was only when all the minions were all finally dispensed with that the leprus could deploy his other paw, and the mob’s neck finally broke with a cracking sound.

Oddly enough, there was no system message at the end of the battle. Ros winced in pain—the burns had taken off about a quarter of his HP—and managed to heal the pet again when his mana regenerated by one point. And that was when the flood of text came.

“You kill the Thylbit Mage. XP received: 9832. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +1 to Defense! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Your Strength grows by 1. Current value: 27. Your Intellect grows by 1. Current value: 16. Your Mental Power grows by 1. Current value: 6. Your Resilience grows by 1. Current value: 6. Your Cunning grows by 1. Current value: 4. Your Monster Specialist stat grows by 1. Current value: 2. Your Summoning grows by 2. Current value: 15. You receive a Summoning level bonus: your spells aimed at healing, buffing, and summoning pets consume 30% less magic energy and are cast 15% faster.”

The boost to Summoning was made sense—his stat had been almost fourteen, and this battle had earned him XP for the entire group and the boss. Or, if not a boss, a high-level mob, at any rate. Resilience was understandable, too—it primarily affected magic defense, and Ros had gotten hit by magic. The damage was tangential, yet the mob was very strong, and so the system raised the stat upon victory. But why did his Mental Power grow so tangibly? The stat had always been one of the slowest to grow.

The answer seemed obvious enough: the stat was associated with magic damage, so using Chaos Arrow on mobs whose level was much higher than his own must have done it. The stat had been weak, and so it had jumped by two points at once.

The leprus had made a real mess out of the thylbits—Ros didn’t even feel like looking through the remains. Only the mage’s body remained more or less intact, so Ros decided to study it first. It may not have been a raid boss, but it was no regular elite mob, either. A mini boss, perhaps.

“Bone Thylbit Mage’s Staff. Item class: good. Magical weapon. Physical damage: 18-26 (crushing). Magic damage: 54-62. Special bonus: 8% extra damage to all non-insect creatures. Additional stats: +11 to Intellect, +5 to Mental Power, +5 to Resilience, 9% faster spellcasting, 17% reduction of fire damage, +1 to mana regeneration per second. Requirements: level 38. Weight: 2.68 kg. Durability: 285/340. Equipping two or more Thylbit Mage items with the class of “good” or higher grants a bonus: 1% faster spellcasting, +1 to mana regeneration per second. Every additional Thylbit Mage item raises the total bonus by the same amount.”

“Enchanted Tantalum Thylbit Mage’s Bracelet. Stats: +270 magic energy points, +50 Fury points, +10 to Intellect, 3% faster spellcasting. Enchantment effect: +2 to Mental Power. Weight: 0.11 kg. Requirements: level 10. Durability: 169/180. Equipping two or more Thylbit Mage items with the class of “good” or higher grants a bonus: 1% faster spellcasting, +1 to mana regeneration per second. Every additional Thylbit Mage item raises the total bonus by the same amount.”

“Enchanted Golden Thylbit Mage’s Ring. Properties: merging. Stats: +2 to Intellect, +2 to Strength, and +2 to Stamina. Enchantment effect: +5% to critical hit chance. Weight: 0.04. Durability: 106/120. Equipping two or more Thylbit Mage items with the class of “good” or higher grants a bonus: 1% faster spellcasting, +1 to mana regeneration per second. Every additional Thylbit Mage item raises the total bonus by the same amount.”

The ring had no level requirements, so Ros immediately swapped it with one of his old rings that only added one point to Stamina. The new ring added two, and had other bonuses besides. The class of the bracelet or the ring wasn’t specified, but the purple text in the information windows testified that they, too, were of good quality, and gave a triple bonus when equipped.

Ros put on the bracelet and took the staff in his hand. A message immediately popped up telling him that all his stats were reduced by three points each, and that equipped high-level items would not give any extra bonuses.

He was a level zero noob, after all. Such items wouldn’t do him any good until he removed the lock—the penalties were too severe.

What a pity there was only one mage, as the dungeon appeared to have ended. Had there been more of them, he may have found more of these rings without a level requirement. Or perhaps he should count his lucky stars for finding just one.

Ros stopped admiring his trophies and turned his attention to the pet. The leprus had already removed the arrows in front, but couldn’t reach the ones sticking out of his back, which made him look like an overgrown hedgehog.

Chapter 27

Ros had been gravely mistaken, to put it mildly.

The crater at the center of the hall where he had found the thylbits’ camp was indeed a lot like the one in the copper mine. It also had a narrow path meandering all the way down, and the second level lay some two hundred feet below. Ros descended to find that there were no tents. There was, however, the gaping dark maw of another tunnel that Ros felt reluctant to explore right away—he’d had enough adventure for one day, and his pet needed to replenish his health besides.

Ros wandered around the thylbit camp, using his mana for healing while looking for things he could use. He was overjoyed to find a barrel of water, having finished off his flask in the morning. Behind the tents stood a stack of crates filled with both low- as well as high-quality copper ore. Unfortunately, there was way too much of it—he wouldn’t be able to carry so much as a tenth.

He also found wooden bunks in the tents. There wasn’t even a hint of any bedding—these thylbits lived like Spartans. Then again, a bunk sure beat a cold rock.

Oh, but why settle at all? He had lots of looted capes, and he didn’t care that most of them were torn.

* * *

Ros started on the second level of the dungeon the following day. Using his experience from day one, he cleared it before dusk despite the mobs being stronger. He didn’t encounter any new mobs until the very end, with every intersection being guarded by the already familiar mages assisted by commanders. Thankfully, he didn’t run into any large crowds anymore—the fights were already quite tough, causing him to sweat on a few occasions.

Ros would start by bidding the leprus to attack the mage—without the support of a mob of smaller thylbits, the commanders did not manage to deal the pet any serious damage.

At the end of the main tunnel Ros fought three thylbit raiders at once. They did not use any magic that the leprus was vulnerable to, but proved very efficient with long and wide-bladed scimitars. He received around twenty percent more experience for them than he did for mages, and the loot was decent, too: three good items and an excellent belt.

Ros was starting to suspect he’d have to leave behind many of the enhanced items looted off the regular mobs—he just wouldn’t be able to carry everything.

As he reached the third level of the dungeon, he encountered no more scouts, and the archers became replaced by crossbowmen. It took them longer to shoot, but they had high accuracy, and a single shot would take a hundred hit points off Ros. One of these “snipers” became his four hundredth kill of his achievement, ushering in another stage thereof.

“Achievement completed: Giant Punisher. Achievement bonus: 3 undistributed primary basic stat points, 3 undistributed secondary basic stat points, +125 to magical energy. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Vanquisher, Part Two. Kill 1000 monsters whose level exceeds yours by thirty or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. Achievement completed: achievement database error. Achievement bonus: 4 auxiliary stats unlocked: General Memory, Learner, Seer, and Sage. Ultra-rare ability received: Chaos Aura. Achievement unlocked: achievement database error. Kill 1000 monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: achievement database error.”

Yet again, the reward was rather odd. Not that he had any reason to complain about his Chaos Arrow, but he’d enjoy it much more if he kept getting boosts to stats like before instead of the rather obscure auxiliary stats and a new skill whose description didn’t seem particularly promising. It did not deal any damage whatsoever, merely lowering the maximum HP by a few percent, and the effect was rather short-term.

There was definitely something fishy about these rewards…

* * *

It took Ros eleven days to reach the seventh and lowest level, where a pleasant discovery awaited him—a small lake with crystal-clear water. His reserves in the barrel were already beginning to smell stale. He’d also been thanking Shoto the chatterbox in his mind—he still had some “elite meat” left, for the orc had been very generous in supplying Ros. The bag helped keep the food fresh, and was impervious to the grease—this wasn’t real life, after all. He tried to be frugal from the start, having no idea how long he’d have to stay here. And he just couldn’t bring himself to eating thylbits.

The lower he descended, the stronger and more varied the mobs became. On level four Ros encountered a thylbit that was an elemental mage. Waiting for him at the end of a tunnel in solitude, the mob took more than half of the pet’s HP in the course of the battle.

Mages were pure evil.

The final mobs at the end of level five were a duo of thylbit assassins, and they managed to get to Ros. One was intercepted by the pet, but the other nearly did away with Ros, leaving him with only 114 HP, all his running and dodging notwithstanding. His Stamina really came in handy—if he’d had only thirteen points less, he’d have to face a rebirth.

The “pleasant surprise” found at the end of level six was a thylbit archmage. The mob also managed to take off around half of the pet’s HP, and the leprus ended up leveling after the battle. Until then Ros had no idea that pets could level up, too.

The victory also yielded another rare achievement.

“You kill the Thylbit Archmage. XP received: 20988. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +1 to Essence of Things! You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Achievement completed: Monster Researcher. Achievement bonus: +2 to Reason, +2 to Perception, +2 to Arcane Knowledge, +100 HP, +100 to magic energy. Random auxiliary stat unlocked: Fire Master. Achievement unlocked: Monster Researcher Grandmaster. Discover fifteen monsters that have not yet been added to the world bestiary to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.

This whole bestiary business was a nice touch. All the other achievements rendered the earlier feats null and void, while this one accounted for every monster vanquished personally, starting with the very first one.

Other achievements were also being completed steadily, further unlocking new tiers. And his stats kept on leveling. Ros was prepared to agree with Pup: this world had never seen a weirder noob. By the time he reached the end of the seventh and final level, he had amassed 190 base primary stat points on top of those initially allocated during character creation. This made him roughly equal to a level thirty-eight player. Yet he wore virtually nothing—no proper equipment or weapons. Also, whereas leveling came easy for regular players—once your level rose, you received five undistributed stat points, Ros had to sweat and toil, getting a few measly points from combat, and earning one achievement after another.

Incidentally, Ros was no longer “naked.” He already had seven rings that gave a bonus to the player’s level, apart from other stats—one or two for each ring, and one that added a whopping three levels. His virtual level reached eleven, and he could finally don enhanced archer trousers, a common belt, two good bracelets with similar stats and an amulet looted off thylbit mages. Three of his best rings had also come from them. Now he could restore three mana points per second just with these accessories, which alleviated some of the complications experienced back on level one.

Unfortunately, despite the items’ similar stats, mana regeneration bonuses were rare, and mostly given by high-level items that Ros could not use. Otherwise he would have collected a set that would make his magical energy reserves almost inexhaustible.

Ros understood that his stats were leveled rather disproportionately. Initially he’d sought to raise his Strength, and then Stamina. The strategy resulted in a tough noob that even the thylbit archmage had failed to dispose of in one hit, after taking off nearly two hundred and fifty HP. In return, Ros couldn’t hit the mob for more than single digits from behind while the leprus was strangling it.

Truly, it would be hard to find a more warped character than him…

Oh, and Ros did hadn’t yet cleared the lowest level of the dungeon. But he did meet a new mob at the end of it.

And it was a very strange mob, indeed.

Chapter 28

“Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos. Level: hidden. Abilities: hidden. Stats: hidden.”

“Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: 1 undistributed secondary base stat point. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic.”

This was something new. He didn’t even have to kill the beast to earn the achievement, receiving it just for looking at the ugly thing.

Now why would that be…

Viceroy Trathkazir sat at the far end of an oval hall, perched on an enormous drum upholstered in red fabric as a kind of throne. The path to the monster led through a colonnade of sorts formed by gigantic stalactites hanging from the ceiling of the cave, with the floor carpeted with the same garish red as the upholstery. There were no torches here, but the space was well-lit by a strange luminescence that radiated from behind the mob in waves, its source ostensibly being the far wall of the cave.

As for the creature, it looked very much unpleasant. And it wasn’t just that humans found insects revolting, and anthropomorphic insects doubly so. Ros was prepared to let that slide. What he couldn’t forgive was the fact that the creature was some nine feet tall even sitting down.

He looked at the leprus sideways, comparing their respective bulks, and found the disparity somewhat depressing. He recollected yet another tidbit of info Pup had told him once. This must be the final mob. The top dog in the entire raid dungeon.

But Ros had no raid party of high-level players to accompany him. He was on his own. On many occasions both he and his pet had been a step away from death as they descended through the levels of the dungeon. This, however, promised to be a whole new level of peril. He was looking at the final round of the battle, with this overgrown freak guarding the dungeon’s most valuable prizes.

Should he head back? No way—he didn’t come all the way here just to turn back and not even try getting his hands on the sweetest stuff.

He might die, but that wasn’t such a terrible thing in the game. Thirty days had already passed, so was no longer bound to the mine, and would respawn a long way away from Greedie. He might lose his pet, but he’d soon have to part ways with him, anyway, no matter how much the thought of it upset him. They had gone through a lot together, after all. The pet may have been a zombie raised from a nondescript grey crystal, but Ros had gotten quite used to the leprus.

If the loss was indeed inevitable, he’d have to get over it one way or another.

So, what was he working with? 682 hit points altogether, with item bonuses. The boss may be fearsome, but surely it wouldn’t be able to take off as much in a single hit… Or would it?

Ros would prefer not to find out personally…

The boss twitched and peered at the entrance to the hall, then chirped something—Ros thought he perceived a mocking intonation.

They must have been made. Or, most likely, the boss had noticed them long ago, and was now hinting that they shouldn’t tarry too long. Ros was a simple noob, his numerous successes notwithstanding, so the boss’ Perception had to be higher than his Disguise.

“All right, Gorgeous, I believe in you. Let’s show that freak! Get him! Stun!”

The leprus darted forth along the red carpet. The viceroy didn’t even rise, simply waving a thin arm. The very air before the boss formed a jelly-like blob that hung in the air for a split second, then caught the running pet full in the chest with the speed of an arrow.

The leprus as though crashed into a stone wall, falling a few paces back, his HP bar shrinking by ten-fifteen percent. Were Ros to attempt a heal, the boss would turn its attention to him; and even if he managed to withstand one such blow, the next one would surely kill him.

The pet tried to rise, but was thrown back with the same spell at once, rolling across the red carpet.

Ros bit his lip, then raised a hand and activated the Chaos Arrow icon. He had to save the leprus.

“You hit Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos, for 36 damage.”

Ros did not wait for inevitable retribution, jumping aside and hiding behind a stalagmite. The rock icicle instantly shook as though struck with a huge steam hammer from the other side. Another blow followed a few seconds later.

“Gorgeous, stun!”

There was another blow, followed by another. Rock dust started to fall onto his head, and then the stalagmite itself shook and toppled. Ros hopped behind the next one, catching a brief glimpse of the leprus frozen in a runner’s posture, his paws thrust toward the boss who had risen from the drum and was unhurriedly heading toward Ros. The creature’s intentions were clear—to swiftly dispatch a certain pesky someone to his next incarnation.

What a bastard! The boss also had Stun, or another skill with a similar effect. The pet was helpless, and Ros would have to wait for the effect to wear off.

A new stalagmite started to shake under the boss’ blows, but then the sounds of hammering suddenly stopped, replaced by the familiar sounds of scuffle. Ros took a peek and saw something quite pleasant: having come to his senses, the pet was attacking the boss in the most perfidious manner—from behind. Specifically, the leprus was clutching the boss by the throat with both paws, following his ingrained habit of strangling. Alas, the trick wasn’t going to work this time—the boss’ bulk was just too enormous.

“Do not strangle! Stop! Hit him! Stun!”

The Stun spell failed to incapacitate the boss. However, its HP bar flickered as the leprus started to tear at its neck and mug with sharp talons.

“Chew on him!” shouted Ros, casting one heal after another.

The viceroy darted toward the closest stalagmite back-first, smashing the leprus into the rock. But the pet did not release his grasp, holding fast with one paw while slashing at the boss with the other at a rapid rate, and gnawing at Trathkazir with his long fangs. The boss dealt the leprus another blow, followed by another. Yet, the pet’s HP bar did not shrink. On the contrary, it was growing, albeit slowly, as the leprus kept stealing HP from the boss; apart from that, Ros was now much more efficient with his healing. His Mental Power had grown, and his accessories raised it even further, and that was the main stat responsible for heals, as well as magic damage.

The boss started to chirp furiously and spun about, driving the leprus into the stalagmite. All to no avail—the pet held on like a famished tick. The viceroy emitted a shrill whistle, and waves of upturned stone rolled across the floor in concentric circles, sending heavy rocks flying. Ros was knocked off his feet and yelled, feeling a sharp pain in the back as something heavy crashed into him. Another blow on the head made him dizzy.

“Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos, hits you for 149 damage. Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos, hits you for 162 damage. Debuff received: you are disoriented. For the next 45 seconds, spells will take twice the normal time to cast.”

As Ros scrambled to his feet, he kept casting Heal, while his other hand rummaged in his belt. There were two potions in its pockets, and the time seemed just right to drink one so as to get some of his health back.

The boss’ health bar had shrunk almost by half, but the same was true of the leprus. And the spells were now taking Ros a frustratingly long time to cast due to the debuff.

“Stone Skin!” he shouted.

The leprus had received the skill from one of the thylbit mages. It was the reason why they had been enduring his strangling far longer than most, reducing the incoming damage by several times. The skill’s biggest downside was its overly long cooldown, which meant you could only use it once per battle.

The pet’s HP bar started creeping up again, while the boss’ kept on shrinking. Clicking furiously, the bug sent forth another stone wave, but as soon as Ros heard the familiar sound, he dashed toward the exit, dodging the impact. He produced a mana potion out of his bag on the way back—even though his mana regenerated at a high speed, aided by the items looted off the mages, he was still spending it at an alarmingly fast rate.

The boss, in the meantime, had managed to land a few good hits, crushing the leprus and finally shattering the unfortunate stalagmite. Its HP scale kept shrinking fast, but the leprus was likewise disturbingly close to dying. Ros kept casting one Heal after another, his mana points vanishing frighteningly fast. He wanted to run closer and help, but that would be dumb—he wouldn’t take more than a few percent off the boss’ HP even if he kept hammering at the creature for an hour. The difference in levels and stats was just too high.

The viceroy howled, its voice sounding almost human. It had no more than fifteen percent health left, while the leprus had at least twenty. The boss must have realized the battle was all but over.

But no—Trathkazir was simply preparing for another dirty trick. The air in the cave started to shimmer, and there was a wave of heat, as if an enormous oven popped open somewhere nearby. Another wave of concentric circles rushed forth from the boss, but this time made of fire and not rock. The red carpet and the “drum’s” upholstery caught fire, and some smears on the walls of the cave began emitting a putrid smoke. Ros didn’t manage to reach the exit in time, and was soon rolling on the ground trying to put out the flames, yelling shrilly with pain. Thankfully, he had gotten caught by the very fringes of the spell, when it no longer had full potency. But in the epicenter, where the two foes were locked in a deadly battle, the flame roared like a hungry tiger.

Ros saw most of it in his peripheral vision, fighting through the pain that was unbearable. Such games should be banned well before release—this level of realism is too much, he thought to himself.

The ground shook. Something smacked into Ros’ leg as an enormous piece of stalactite came crashing down right next to his head. He was gulping the hot air with cracked lips, trying to evade the heat still emitted by the combatants that were rolling on the floor of the cave.

“Your summoned creature dies.”

Farewell, leprus… Well, at least we tried…

The floor shook again.

“Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos, is hit for 926 damage. Critical hit: broken skull.”

What could that be? Ros peeked from behind a rock, still cherishing some naïve hope.

At the final stage of the battle, the boss and the leprus had rolled all over the floor, holding fast to each other and crashing into numerous stalagmites. Weakened by the viceroy’s magic, the stalagmites didn’t always withstand the impact—some of them fell, which explained the rumbling earth and the scattered debris.

As the boss finished off the charred leprus, suffering no damage from its own fire, it began to crawl out from underneath the pet’s body. But that was when disaster struck—a stalactite that had been uncertain as to whether or not it should fall finally decided that it should. And it fell so fortuitously that the top of the viceroy’s skull got sheared right off, revealing a whitish brain with only two acid-green gyri.

The boss was pinned down by the enormous weight, trying to free its damaged head. It looked a lot worse for the wear, its HP bar near-empty with less than one percent health left.

Ros got up hastily, favoring the hurt leg, and started toward the viceroy, taking the pickaxe out of his bag. Upon reaching the boss, he stuck it into the creature’s open skull, and started to rotate his peaceful mining implement like a blender blade, turning the inside of the boss’ skull into goo.

“Critical damage dealt: grave craniocerebral injury. You kill Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos.”

Ros didn’t even feel cheated by the brevity of the message. The boss had drained him completely—both physically, leaving a measly forty-six HP, and mentally, with his soul feeling totally empty. The pain from the blows and the burns was abating, but the feeling of emptiness persisted. He had spent too long underground, and this battle was the last straw—the heaviest of them all. He had won, but he was in no condition to celebrate his victory.

He also pitied the poor leprus so much he could cry.

He had gotten used to the pet, becoming truly attached to a cluster of digits generated by a computer program.

“Attention: please wait. A database error has occurred because of an unpredictable concurrence of low-probability events. Scenario merging. Initial data reloaded. Location data loaded. Battle logs loaded. Scenario debugging. Scenario initiation.”

What was that all about? He had never seen messages like that before.

“Attention! Displaying the logs in full will take up to forty minutes of real time. Do you agree to have the logs displayed in brief? Yes/No.”

Ros didn’t care either way. However, the flickering system messages irritated him, so he chose “Yes.”

“Confirmation accepted. The logs will be displayed in brief. Worldwide messages will be displayed every minute. Beginning of the event. Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos, is dead. XP received: 439. Points left until the next level: no data. Attention: you need to unlock your account to be able to raise your level. Your Strength grows by 2. Current value: 37. Your Agility grows by 1. Current value: 44. Your Mental Power grows by 9. Current value: 24. Your Intellect grows by 11. Current value: 38. Your Attack grows by 3. Current value: 26. Your Summoning grows by 4. Current value: 19. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster one hundred or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner, Part Eight. Achievement bonus: +1 point to every primary base stat, +1 to Reason, +50 HP & MP, Vigor, and Fury. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer, Part Eight. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by one hundred or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random. You have compiled a complete map of the wormhole. You receive +1 to Cartography and +1 to Visual Memory. You…”

Ros saw the numbers, and even tried to focus, but his weak efforts were insufficient, and the mathematics kept slipping right past him.

“Attention! You have killed Trathkazir the First, Viceroy of Chaos! You are the first to defeat this incarnation of Chaos! You have earned the title: Monster Slayer, First Class. Title bonus: +8 to Attack, +8 to Defense, +4 to Luck, and +4 to Speed. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. The bonus is permanent, unless the title is rejected. Attention! Unique achievement! This is the first time in the history of Second World that a single player has discovered a wormhole and destroyed all the Chaos spawn inside it! You are a hero! Your level growth block has been removed! You receive +4 to all your primary and +2 to all your secondary stats. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. You also receive +1 to all auxiliary skills, those already unlocked as well as those that haven’t been unlocked yet. Auxiliary stat unlocked: Charisma. You gain 5 undistributed levels. You gain a level. You gain a level. You…”

Ros could hardly keep his eyes open.

“Attention! You have broken the record of level advancement in the course of a single game day by more than three times! Previous record: 29. Current record: 89. You are a tenacious hero! All the auxiliary function locks have been removed from your account. As tradition has it, the difference between the previous and the current record is awarded to you as Luck points. Your Summoner stat reaches 20. Your spells for healing, buffing, and summoning pets now consume 40% less magic energy and are cast 20% faster. Your pets are now 10% more intelligent. Attention! Unique achievement! This is the first time in the history of Second World that a single player has defeated a creature of the higher order whose level exceeded theirs by more than tenfold! You are a legend! You get access to expanded account functions! You receive +8 to all your primary and +2 to all your secondary stats. Your HP, MP, and Fury points will regenerate two times faster. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. You also receive +2 to all auxiliary skills, those already unlocked as well as those that haven’t been unlocked yet, and an extra +5 to Charisma and Luck. You gain 10 undistributed levels.”

His eyes closed.

“Attention! Unique achievement! This is the first time in the history of Second World that a single player has become a legend! You are a star! You have won the sympathy of many NPCs. From now on, you will lose your money and possessions a lot less often in the event of death! It is very hard to steal from you! Stat unlocked: Appeal. You receive 20% more experience for killing monsters and completing quests. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. You also receive +5 to Charisma. Dirt does not stick to you, and Earth-based elemental attacks deal 50% less damage. The shine of your glory scares small insects: mosquitoes, flies, horseflies, and other pests steer clear of you. Snakes become 50% less aggressive. Your Charisma level reaches 10. Any party you lead will receive a bonus: damage sustained lowered by 8%, damage dealt increased by 8%. You gain 8 undistributed levels. Attention! Unique achievement! This is the first time in the history of Second World that a single player with incomparably weaker stats has defeated a creature of the higher order in fair duel! You are a great legend! You get partial access to the account’s administrative functions! You receive +8 to all your primary and +2 to all your secondary stats. Magic and physical defense of equipped items will increase by 26%, and the physical and magical damage done by equipped weapons is increased by 20%. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid group, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid group receive half the bonus for the duration of your stay. You also receive +2 to all auxiliary skills, those already unlocked as well as those that haven’t been unlocked yet, and an extra +5 to Charisma and Luck. Your Mining & Quarrying level reaches 10. Damage done to resources increases by 15%. Your Charisma level reaches 20. Any party you lead will receive a bonus: damage sustained lowered by 15%, damage dealt increased by 15%, experience earned increased by 20%. Once every 24 hours you can transport a party to a zone you have discovered. If you have no party, the bonus effect extends to you. You gain 10 undistributed levels. Attention! You…”

Ros was fast asleep.

* * *

Greedie was sitting on his favorite bench that looked more like a perch. The awning was too high, failing to protect him from the sun that was setting behind the rocks, so he kept squinting his eyes while shooting irritated glances down at the bustle at the bottom of the crater that he had so despised. The greenskins rolled the last carts hastily—no more ore would be submitted today. The orcs came up the meandering path followed by two armored warriors—a special guard detail sent by the clan into the mines after Greedie’s report of having been attacked by a very high-level mob, and right in the middle of the day.

He decided to refrain from mentioning that he wasn’t exactly killed by a mob, but rather a player named “Rostendrix Poterentax,” as his death log reported dispassionately. It was clear that there was more to that noob than met the eye, but Greedie still didn’t wish to become a laughingstock if others found out he got snuffed by a useless level zero.

He craved revenge.

But how did one get back at a noob with such a protector? Only by letting others in on his secret and asking them to help. Hell, he’d end up the butt of everybody’s jokes just the same.

Greedie decided to keep schtum. He banished Shoto from the mine and started a rumor that whoever helped the noob would also be banished—and without any pay. He then ordered the mine guards to keep an eye on the last gallery with workers, allowing no one to go any deeper.

The noob would run out of food sooner or later, and he’d have to come out. Or he would have to munch on raw meat, suffering debuffs and howling in despair, which was also fine by Greedie—let him suffer.

Should he decide to come outside, the guards would dispatch his mob by communal effort, which would open avenues for an unhurried conversation arranged in such a way as to keep Greedie’s shame a secret.

Darchit approached the awning—another dim penalized player who must have been sent to the mine for the specific purpose of irritating Greedie with his idiotic jokes.

“Hey, big guy, don’t you get tired of sitting there?” he said in a jolly voice, chuckling at his own unfunny joke.

“You really think it’s that funny to call a dwarf ‘big guy’?”

“Don’t be such a sourpuss. Let me tell you something so funny it will blow your socks off. Like… a fresh joke. I heard it from the coachmen this morning. A light elf wakes up in the morning in a posh hotel room, and sees a message in his log: ‘You have taken part in a perverse intercourse while asleep.’ The elf is all shook up, thinking, How could it happen? The door was locked, the window, too, I came in alone, and I never removed my long johns. What could be the matter? Suddenly, there’s a voice from the closet…”

Darchit’s account of the light elf’s erotic misadventures stopped abruptly. His jaw dropped, and his eyes glazed over. But Greedie didn’t see it, freezing with just as stupid an expression. The sun was still shining, and the evening birds chirped wearily, but those were the only sounds—everything else grew silent. The cart axles did not creak, the armor of the ascending warriors did not clink, and the smelters stopped chewing out the noob who had forgotten to prepare the clay. Everybody at the mine froze as if thunderstruck, looking at something fascinating that only they could see.

Darchit was the first to come to his senses. So great was his shock that he even dropped his habit of cracking silly jokes.

“Bugger me sideways! What the hell is going on here, eh?! Did you read that?”

“I did,” replied an icily calm Greedie.

“Fancy that! I’ll be damned! Right in our province, too! Somewhere nearby! Any idea who it could be? The name is noobish—normal players rarely have those. It’s all totally weird. Could it be a bug?”

“No, Darchit, it’s no bug.”

“What is it, then?”

Greedie stared at the crater wistfully, and then at the gate. Could he run away? But what would be the point? They’d find him… Even if he deleted his character, they’d find him just the same. He was no fool to believe in the privacy policy and the inviolacy of personal data. Any interested party powerful enough could pay or bully its way through and get access to real information on any user they wanted.

There’d be many interested parties, too—a hero with a bunch of achievements would be a welcome addition to any top clan. Top clans had money, and money equaled opportunity. They’d find out everything of interest to them.

“So, what is it?” asked Darchit with an imbecilic expression writ plain upon his face.

“What it is, Darchit, is shit.”

“Shit?”

“Yup. Do you remember me telling you about an intriguing mystery the game has—the mystery of shit? People keep on eating, but no one’s ever seen any shit. This is rather strange. Many people have wondered about it, and I think I’m beginning to understand where all the shit of this world will soon be found. It will pour down in a torrent, filling up the mine, the galleries, and all these stinky caverns, overflowing the crater and washing away my awning, all these ugly houses, as well as your guardhouse, with your silly ass inside it.”

“I don’t get it… What do you mean?”

“An idiot doesn’t have to understand their intellectual superiors. But you had better get the hell out of here at once. Not as in logging out, but as in making tracks. Away from here. Quick.”

“But I’m penalized, I will…”

“I said, split. Now. Once you get far enough, leave your body somewhere and log out. When you’re back in the real world, go to some cheap bar or club, pick up some made-up whore, do some acrobatics with her, get the clap, and drink yourself into a stupor, having the time of your life. And when they come for you and ask you about everything you’ve seen, you will tell the whole truth and nothing but, recollecting even things you believed long forgotten. You’ll be very polite, too, and answer questions with all due diligence.”

“Greedie, what the hell is wrong with you?”

The dwarf did not respond. Raising his head while turning away from the sun, he was reading the messages in enormous bright red lettering that rolled before his eyes: “Supreme achievement! Rostendrix Poterentax has drawn the interest of the gods!”

* * *

Those gathered inside the room stayed away from media spotlight, gave no interviews, and did not brag about their position. They simply made money—and on such an enormous scale that one could no longer view it as mere money.

It was power.

Power meant control. What happened today was tantamount to the loss of control, and so they gathered to discuss whether it was true, and whether the events that had transpired posed a danger to the status quo in any way.

“The player has already been found, but, unfortunately, that avails us nothing. His body is in an induced coma, while his mind roams Second World. And he’s been there for such a long time that disconnecting him is unlikely to get him ejected.”

“Why is he in a coma?”

“There was an explosion at the laboratory where he worked.”

“Was the laboratory involved in our research?”

“It was. Here’s the ATZ subcontractor.” This was followed by a nod toward a dignified-looking man with a well-groomed face and hair that seemed too lush and full for his age.”

He nodded solemnly.

“I remember the incident. What a tragedy…”

“Could their research have imparted any special abilities he could have used to pull this off?”

“Out of the question—the research had nothing to do with gameplay whatsoever.”

“Could you give us more details?”

“They were working on a new technology of cooling microelectronic components.”

“Based on our materials?”

“Yes, but they had no knowledge of the source. And even if they did, how could it have affected the course of events?”

“Check if there were any leaks. It’s important. We’re expecting a large delivery, and any perturbation of the aura can spoil things. We have no idea just what could have happened, but such things will surely produce perturbations.”

“Did anyone try to find him inside the game?”

“From the very first moment. And not just us. It’s useless—he’s nowhere to be found.”

“How can that be?”

“Well… you know we don’t have that many opportunities left to control things. We have already determined that the player was the cause of numerous server glitches, and, possibly, even a fire in a data center. Our specialists are examining the logs to see if they can find something, or at least establish whether or not it may have been sabotage aimed at concealing an attempt of a breach.”

“I wasn’t referring to technical issues. I meant your words that the player cannot be found.”

“He cannot be tracked down by any methods. So far, we have two versions. One is that he has been sealed off in a Chaos dungeon or a similarly autonomous location. The other is that something else has happened. We are pursuing the latter version.”

“What about the former?”

“If he’s in a Chaos dungeon, finding him is out of the question. We won’t be able to contact him, either.”

“There are no ways of getting through to him?”

“None—nor can they exist. Those are the basic laws of Second World.”

Chapter 29

Ros was dreaming—the first time in this world. He lay on the ground next to the dead viceroy, who maintained a death grip on the broken paws of the leprus even after death. The remnants of the carpet and the oily smears on the walls of the cave still produced a foul smoke, and a strange man stood in the arch of the entrance. His whole body was wrapped in a silvery cloak, and only his face could be seen. It was most unusual—one half seemed chiseled out of granite and filled with ostensible grandeur, while the other was withdrawn, somber, and even icy. If one took a closer look, one could see an even grid drawn upon it in thin lines.

Ros regarded the stranger, and the stranger regarded him. The game didn’t last long—the man in the silvery cloak gave up first. His lips stretched in a cold smile.

“I’ll refrain from congratulating you—there have been plenty of congratulations already.”

“Who are you? How did you get in here? Did the entrance open?”

“No. No one will trouble you here. You can sleep peacefully.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I am someone who has been preventing you from becoming a hero.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Achievements involving victories over monsters whose level exceeds yours tenfold and more grant heroic status once you reach the third tier, while you have reached the fourth without receiving anything.”

“I did receive bonuses.”

“Those were insubstantial. You have failed to receive the main prize because of me.”

“Why? Are you my enemy?”

“I was planning to compensate you for it in the future personally.”

“What’s your interest in this?”

“My interest? Well, achieving emotional attachment, for one thing. Or understanding who it is that I’m betting on.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Understanding is hard to find these days. I’ll give you something. Don’t consider it a present—remember compensation. You will receive another skill. It is more than unique—it is impossible.”

“So how do you intend to make the impossible happen?”

“Sometimes I can work wonders. Especially when I come prepared. The second thing I will give you are the following words: do not mistake my first gift for a worthless bauble. And don’t hasten to leave this place. Rest, mine for ore, gain knowledge of yourself, and search for answers.”

“What answers?”

“The first answer you need to find is why you were given this gift, and why it happened at this precise moment. And now I shall bid my farewell, and you will fall properly asleep.”

“So I’m not properly asleep now?”

“No. After the battle, your inner essence was subjected to the mental influence of magic of the Reason school. I will not apologize for that—without this interference in the gaming process, this dialog would never have happened. And now we can communicate in the usual way, albeit without much practical use. You are not yet ready to listen. But everything changes, and that, too, will change.”

* * *

“Here comes the shit now,” said Greedie in an almost indifferent voice, shutting his eyes—he had no wish of seeing whatever would kill him.

The wood of the wall around the mine was pulverized; then the powder turned into fire. In the five or six second that followed, the same fate befell the houses, the furnaces, and Greedie’s awning. The flame destroyed everything, leaving a heap of charred bones from high-level players, and a bunch of astonished noobs in long johns, who kept respawning in the pool of lava that was all that remained of the stone circle.

The newbie immunity to high-level area of effect spells did not work. The key was not to target the noobs themselves. k`1`2

* * *

“Your сache has been discovered by a high-level creature. Your сache has been discovered by a high-level creature. Your Cache Master level grows by 1. Current value: 9. Your сache has been discovered by a high-level creature.”

When Ros woke up, he kept staring at the logs stupidly for a while—new messages appeared at the rate of rapid machine gun fire. There was only one explanation—lots of high-level mobs were roaming the area where he’d made his caches. Or large numbers of high-level players. Something must be happening in the mine and the caves.

Then he stopped thinking about caches—having scrolled the logs back to the beginning, he saw some of the messages received after the death of the boss. The beginning was unfortunately deleted—it no longer fit on the display. There may be a way of viewing earlier messages, but Ros knew nothing about it.

When he opened his character’s stats, he nearly suffered a heart attack. Absolutely every stat had grown—and considerably so. Strength, which he had recently wished to bring up to a measly twenty points, was now at seventy-five, leaving Agility, which he had raised by mistake in the beginning, far behind. He had as many Stamina points. His highest stat by far was Luck at no less than ninety points. Six new auxiliary stats had become unlocked, and all had reached decent levels. Even Charisma was obscenely high at twenty-one points.

Those weren’t the only surprises—a level zero noob had become a level eighty-nine player overnight. That alone gave him four hundred and forty-five points of undistributed primary stats, eight secondary, and three auxiliary.

Ros realized that he didn’t merely catch fortune by the tail—it was perfectly tame now, and trained to do all sorts of tricks—he could probably kick it with a dirty boot to make it run to the nearest supermarket to fetch him a six-pack of beer and a pizza. He had no other explanation for the incredible windfall of presents and perks that he’d received.

He sat there with a perfectly moronic expression on his face, trying to make sense of all these gains, but then he slapped himself on the forehead in frustration. The boss’ carcass was right next to him, and he hadn’t looted it yet. And there was no telling when the corpse might rot, denying Ros a lot of valuable loot.

He looted the carcass without even looking at the stuff he got. The developments concerning his character were much more interesting.

Ros decided he could wait with distributing the free points. He’d already hurried once, and had since swore he’d never do it again. He kept looking at one thing, and then another. Finally, he braced himself and set to studying the character’s expanded functionality.

The first thing he noticed was that his interface and chats had become a lot more convenient, with a much larger number of functions and settings. He could copy and paste text, record names of friends and enemies, manage the way system messages were displayed to avoid text repetition and overlap, and do a lot more besides.

Then he noticed he could finally view game resources, which, as it turned out, included the game’s website and forum. He could browse the pages without logging out of the game, which he couldn’t do, anyway. Now he could make estimates about the value of found items without employing middlemen like Shoto. He could also read the much-coveted guides, having had his nose rubbed in his ignorance of them since his first minutes in Second World.

Now he could finally start enjoying himself!

Ros opened the forum to check how things worked. There were days to be spent studying all this stuff. He was about to close the window when something suspiciously familiar caught his eye. In the top right corner was a small window with the five most discussed topics, and five more topics that had been updated the most recently.

Eight topics out of ten contained the name Rostendrix Poterentax. Four of them said virtually the same thing word for word, the only difference being the clan name: “The Camelot guild offers generous remuneration for any information on the player Rostendrix Poterentax,” and so on.

Ros didn’t wonder long about his sudden popularity. A few minutes of reading the forum briefly sufficed for him to understand that some of the system messages (the ones related to heroic and legendary achievements) had been transmitted worldwide in the same red text he once saw when that Chinese player had leveled up to 300.

The Chinese player’s achievement now looked like a dry streak of snot on the wall of a white marble skyscraper in comparison to Ros’ feats.

The forum-dwellers split in two camps de facto. One kept inquiring about Ros’ identity, while the other was engaged in a heated discussion concerning one of his achievements—according to its description, he had attracted the interest of the gods. Since no gods were involved when Second World was developed (their functions were performed by nameless “higher powers”), the players were somewhat perplexed. No one had deigned to give an answer yet—the developers had mentioned something once about the world being complex and driven by the actions of players, so the players should make sense of things themselves, since no one was going to take them by the hand and show them the way.

The players counted the achievements meticulously, and the general conclusion was as follows: Ros had received bonuses that no one else had in the history of Second World. It was known for certain that heroes received them in every case, and that some of these bonuses could affect the player’s clan, which was why guilds did everything they could to get their hands on famous players.

Up until now there had been no players who became heroes twice, while Ros had managed to become a hero several times over, as well as earn a set of legendary achievements—another first in the game.

Just what did he do? Could it be repeated? Which clan possessed such a priceless treasure as a legendary player?

The gaming community was in a craze.

The strongest clans of Second World fervently wished for one thing: to make Ros a fellow member, or, at the very least, find out what exactly he had done, and whether or not it could be repeated by their own members. Everybody was busy gathering information on the distinguished player.

And gathering information was something they were good at.

Less than two hours after the viceroy’s demise, the Sword Power mine was attacked by a team of players from the Last Corsicans guild, with no formal declaration of war. After studying the clan section, Ros learned that the Corsicans had around fifteen thousand active players, and that the clan was among the top 100 of the North American sector. Having easily destroyed all defenses, the aggressors started questioning their captives. The guards all logged off, calling their higher-ups in a state of total panic, but simple miners were eager to speak at length, hoping they would be left alone sooner that way.

The Corsicans didn’t get to enjoy their victory long, in turn falling under the onslaught of the J_P guild, which was in the top 10 of the same sector. The forces were too uneven, and soon the Corsicans had to log out. Their bind points lay outside the mine, so the bodies, looted by the winners, disappeared from the mine after a while.

According to the heated discussion, the Jeeps spared no effort to get any measly snippet of information about Ros they could find. They had to hurry, too, since members of other top clans had already been spotted in the vicinity of the mine. Another significant fact was that the flags over many of the mercenary guilds’ strongholds flew at half mast, which traditionally meant there were no mercenaries for hire. It was easy enough to deduce why someone might presently be gathering an NPC army.

Everyone believed that the mine would become a furiously contested hot spot for a whole week—perhaps even longer than that. The fighting would continue for as long as a single noob remained who might know something about Rostendrix Poterentax.

Ros realized why his Cache Master stat was growing at such a rate. There must be thousands of players at the mine, some of them of very high level. And they were surely searching every nook and cranny of the mine.

Someone let slip indirectly that a few people were already aware of his real-world identity. It was a pity he had no access to secret guild forums—there should be a lot more accurate information there.

As Ros perused the heap of junk posted on the subject of his good self (“Kid, trust no one but me. Ten grand gold if we meet personally. Message me privately, we’ll come to some arrangement”), his initial flabbergasted state wore off, eventually giving way to contemplations of what all this racket meant for him personally.

Even without studying the issue in any great depth, he was absolutely certain about one thing: letting the clan tops get their hands on him would be the worst thing he could do. They wanted him to forward their own goals, and not to help him solve his problems. He briefly considered, then scrapped the idea of offering his services in return for reciprocal favors. He might resort to it at some point, but not before taking his time analyzing all sorts of pertinent information.

Ros was still a noob, while those guys were veritable whales who must have eaten tons of players much more advanced than him as plankton. Should he ever collaborate with them, he should assess all the pros and cons of such a collaboration and choose the best option for him. Messaging the leaders of one of the top guilds hunting him through the forum and telling them directly, “Here I am. I’ll play with you, but I’ll need thirty million dollars in return, pronto!” did not seem a particularly bright idea. He decided to disregard the weirdos promising him “ten thousand grand” altogether.

Ros had another eight months. After that, he would need money to pay for his account and his medical services. The former may not have been that critical, but the latter was: if they froze him instead of keeping him in a coma, the chances of saving his biological self would plummet. No one knew how the clone thing would play out in the future, so he should not disregard his proper body.

What Ros needed was money, and a lot of it. Presently he was something unique, and belonged to no one but himself. He was very valuable. And he wasn’t going to share himself with anyone—not just yet.

He cherished freedom and hated cages of any kind. What he had experienced in real life was enough: closed projects, secrecy bordering on idiocy—and then an explosion caused by some security moron’s decision to dispense with the ventilation system as it allegedly compromised the impregnability of the facilities.

That was it. He’d had enough. He would run around on his own—for a while, at least.

Such considerations might seem ridiculous to everyone in the game world—after all, how would you hide from so many people looking for you with such zeal when your much-hyped name was hovering right over your head?

But Ros had a way to disappear.

* * *

“Ultra-rare ability: Clean Slate. There cannot be more than three wielders of this skill. The higher powers grant you a chance for a rebirth. When used on self, your character will enter selection mode. You will be able to change your race, appearance, voice, name, and redistribute the accumulated primary and secondary base stat points. You will also be able to edit the visualization of publicly available information such as karma points, titles, achievements, etc. The ability can only be used on private premises, in sealed dungeons, and in locations with no other players. Use on another character is only possible in a conditionally safe location; it will make all their accumulated primary stat points redistributable, also removing any stat progress locks. Second use on the same character in the span of fifty days removes any level progress locks. Third use on the same character in the span of fifty days makes it possible to edit some of the character’s features such as race, name, and appearance. Magic energy required: 1250. Cooldown: 7 days.”

Ros had noticed his new ability almost immediately upon waking up as he examined his character’s new stats and skills. It hadn’t struck him as anything extraordinary back then. He would have been very eager to redistribute his stats at the beginning of his life here, but now he had no problems on that account—even the most generous employers would fight for the right to welcome him into the fold.

As he browsed the forum, he realized that Clean Slate was something he desperately needed right now.

Ros remembered his strange dream: “The second thing I will give you are the following words: do not mistake my first gift for a worthless bauble.”

The dream wasn’t just strange—it redefined strange.

And indeed, no longer did this gift seem to him next to useless.

So, what else had the stranger told him? To take it slowly, stay here, mine for ore, and look for answers.

Ros was in no hurry, anyway. As a matter of fact, he was a bit intimidated by the prospect of leaving a dungeon that was completely sealed off for the time being. After a short forum search he found out that the entrance wasn’t just sealed—it disappeared completely. Even a player with high Cartography and everything that boosted the stat pass were to pass a foot away from the dungeon, they would notice nothing until one of the vanquishers of Chaos came outside, or until the dungeon reset, which would not happen anytime soon.

No one would find Ros here in the meantime.

He went through the contents of his bag and realized that there should be enough meat for about seven days, eight if he used it sparingly. That seemed fated, as it was the very time required for Clean Slate to come off cooldown.

He sat down and activated the skill.

This time there was no pleasant female voice to guide him through character creation. But he had a good idea of what he needed just the same. If he was really hunted by the game’s power players, they would take the time to comb through every tunnel and every cave. The miner noobs would invariably tell them that the strange hunter spent most of his time down there, in the faraway galleries. If Ros ran into a search party, he must raise no suspicions. This meant he’d have to choose a race that no one associated with mining.

The human race was a tempting choice, but humans had necromancy skills, and the fact that Ros had used undead rats would most likely surface soon. So, his new race would have to have no such ability.

Ros settled on a light elf—mainly because he instinctively disliked these pointy-eared creatures. He wouldn’t have to run around like that for too long—he’d just have to get out of the dangerous area. Ros wanted the anticipation and eventual satisfaction of replacing an avatar he disliked with something more acceptable.

He’d also found out from the forum that light elves were among the most popular races. No one would be surprised to meet another pointy-eared fellow, no matter where they spotted him, even in such a strange place for an elf as a mine given that they had no work-related bonuses or abilities that helped underground. They were likewise initially weak in terms of transporting heavy loads.

There was another thing: most players who chose light elves used the bow as their primary weapon of choice.

Ros had been seen with a pickaxe and a pike, but never a bow. No one would associate him with archery.

He might be paranoid, but he decided he’d play it as safe as he could.

Ros didn’t actually change his race for another, abandoning all the useful features of a rrokh. He simply changed his appearance—fortunately, his expanded abilities allowed for as much.

Having transformed into a sugary pointy-eared creature with the nondescript nickname John Archer44, Ros didn’t stop at that. The editor’s expanded options gave ample opportunity to do more, and he decided he’d use everything he could. He deleted the “squiggle” that marked him as a worker, replacing it with another symbol. Now everyone who saw him would identify him as the owner of a standard gaming account purchased at a discount as a special offer.

He obviously concealed all the flags, stars, and other things testifying to his achievements—fortunately, he could do that, too. He didn’t redistribute his stats, simply dumping everything he’d earned from his level advancement into Strength and Agility. That would come in handy for harvesting the dungeon’s mineral resources. He needed no forum to notice they were a lot more abundant and valuable here; and what he read had confirmed his hunch. Two or three taps per geode would save him a lot of time.

Having taken care of the character, Ros moved on to the trophies—he wanted to see what he’d scored and how much he would make selling it.

There were four “presents” from the boss: a belt, an amulet, a ring, and a scroll with the Sun’s Tears skill.

The belt turned out to be…

“Legendary Belt of the First Citadel’s Supreme Mage. Properties: merging; impossible to lose; cannot be stolen; does not disappear after death; restores durability automatically. Parameters: 12 easy access slots for potions and elixirs, 4 item slots, 3 amulet slots. Any item placed in the slot loses 90% of its weight. Stats: 71 Armor, +44 to Intellect, +40 to Mental Power, +25 to Stamina, +17 to Defense, +5 to mana regeneration per second, +15% to total mana, 11% stackable chance of reflecting a debuff upon the attacker. Wearer has a 3% chance of removing all the opponent’s buffs in an attack. The item can be subjected to up to four stackable enchantments. Weight: 0.74. Requirements: Level 10, Intellect 100+. Durability: 741/900. Attention: with two or more First Citadel’s Supreme Mage items in the inventory, the wearer receives a bonus: +10 kg to carrying capacity, +3 to mana regeneration per second. Every additional First Citadel’s Supreme Mage item raises the total bonus by the same amount.”

The information was displayed in bright red lettering! A legendary item! Legendary items were supposed to be the best you could find in Second World, and this one ended up being in possession of a very lucky noob. The first time a dungeon was cleared, the chances of finding the rarest items were much higher, and this time fortune was on his side.

Ros immersed himself in reading forum posts, trying to assess the value of this thing. He “resurfaced” almost instantly, producing his second bag, which he still hadn’t dumped, likewise his first. It was stuffed with all sorts of things. He rose, donned the belt, and tried to place the novice’s bag in one of its item slots with shaking hands.

He did it! It worked!

He had a total of three bags, and he could reduce their weight by ninety percent. Given his current stats, he’d be able to carry enormous loads.

Now he could loot this dungeon properly!

He no longer wished to part with the belt, but still browsed the forum’s commerce sections trying to assess how much his new possession might be worth. Alas, no legendary item of this sort had ever been offered or sought by anyone, but he did find two similar items with more modest characteristics. One was sold for eighty-nine thousand dollars officially; there was no clear information on the other.

It may not have been millions, but a nice and round number all the same. He decided he’d wear the belt himself for the time being, and time would tell. He might end up keeping it for good.

Ros realized long ago that his character in the game was a means of production. If he wanted it to produce more, he’d have to invest money and effort, which would hopefully pay off in the end.

The amulet and the ring were just ultra-rare—Ros found several identical items without any trouble. The price range could be assessed precisely enough: he could get around four or five thousand dollars for the pair. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was a lot more than he had managed to earn here so far. The Sun’s Tears scroll allowed a character level 120 or higher to learn this eponymous skill. According to the forum, it was rare, and sought after by elemental mages specializing in fire magic. And, apparently, many were prepared to pay up to twelve thousand dollars for this piece of parchment.

Bosses may be hard to kill, but killing them sure came lots of benefits.

It was a pity the scroll could only be used once.

After a brief perusal of the forum threads where the particulars of clearing such dungeons were discussed more or less accessibly, Ros realized something: apart from high-level resources he noticed as he made his way toward the lowest level of the dungeon, he could also come across secret caches which often contained expensive items. In some cases, the trophies found there were more valuable than those dropped by bosses.

Perception was essential for finding caches. The forum was aswarm with threads where players with this stat were wanted for dungeon raids. Even those with only ten points were welcome; with his whopping sixteen, Ros must be a veritable treasure detector.

He had other bonuses, too: high Reason and Arcane Knowledge, and decent Profound Wisdom stats, all of which enhanced Perception considerably. Intellect and Mental power also influenced it, albeit not as strongly, but given their current values, it wasn’t anything to be scoffed at, either.

The forum was interesting enough, but it was high time to get down to business.

Chapter 30

Ros discovered his first secret cache right under the “drum” used by the Viceroy of Chaos as a throne. That was where he found the most valuable trophies, too, with the exception of the legendary belt dropped by the boss.

“Glass Thread Boots from the Viceroy of Chaos set. Properties: set item, restores durability automatically. If a player has three or more items from the Viceroy of Chaos set, either equipped or carried in non-active inventory, they are impossible to lose and cannot be stolen. Characteristics: 107 Armor, +5 to all primary stats, +4 to Speed, +100 to total Vigor. The item can be subjected up to two stackable enchantments. Weight: 1.98 kg. Requirements: Level 49. Durability: 900/900. The full Viceroy of Chaos set includes: Mountain Silk Cuirass, Chameleon Cape, Glass Thread Boots, Snake Bracelet, Ring of Solitude, and Chaos Hound Collar. Full set bonus: full merging, +50% resistance to the element of Light; 9% chance to stun the target for 3-8 seconds with a ranged attack; 12% reduction to incoming magic and physical damage; 6% probability of blinding the enemy for 6-11 seconds after it executes a ranged attack; upon receiving damage, a shield is cast automatically that lasts 3 minutes, capable of absorbing up to 1750 damage with a cooldown of 150 seconds; while the shield is active, the wearer cannot be stunned, blinded, or put to sleep; the weight of equipped items is reduced by 35%; +7 to primary and +2 to secondary base characteristics.”

A green item! Just one tier below legendary! And if one gathered all six items from the set, that would net some sweet auxiliary properties. A perusal of the forum showed no such items were available for sale, but a search yielded a few mentions of them. Items from this set may have been dropped or found, but must have ended up in the vaults of top clans, bypassing the market.

Ros never did learn how much he could sell such boots for, but he was sure it would be a considerable sum.

It would do him good to discover around a dozen new dungeons and find some trophies with substantial bonuses to stats—that would probably net him at least a million. It wouldn’t solve all his problems, to be sure, but it would do as seed capital for further advancement.

Ros also found a teleportation scroll inside the cache. Inasmuch as he understood, he could use it to travel instantly to any place he’d already visited. That might come in handy—should he need to reach the city quickly, he wouldn’t have to walk.

He decided to start with the top level of the dungeon. That was where the cheapest resources could be found: high-quality amethysts, and frequent tin ore veins with an extra chance of getting two lumps of ore or an unexpected resource.

Speaking of unexpected resources, he came across the very first one less than an hour into mining, and the second in the early afternoon: a lump of high-quality silver ore and a flawed emerald, respectively. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before—the Chaos dungeon turned out to be more bountiful than the best of the mines. His unnaturally high Luck, as well as some other beefed-up stats, should make rare events more likely going forward.

There were no amethysts on the second level—citrines of lemon yellow replaced them, requiring Mining & Quarrying level 5 or higher. His level ten presented no problems, and his harvesting speed did not fall by much, which was not surprising, considering his Strength and Attack.

He finished the level the next day, after a night’s rest, finding a secret cache underneath a mine cart with a couple of interesting items for low-level players.

The dungeon was done by the evening of the third day, earlier than expected (he had assumed it would take a week). The seventh and final level proved to be the hardest. His Mining & Quarrying had grown to thirteen by then, but the aquamarines present on the level had the minimum level requirement of sixteen. Even with his Luck, he would often find nothing, and he only got an unexpected resource once—a lump of auritium ore, which was his first.

That was it—nothing else to do here.

* * *

Ros spent a whole day on the seventh level, reading the game forum—primarily the topics about his good self.

Over the days that had passed since the demise of the viceroy, eight strong clans joined the fray battling for the mine, previously considered worthless and of interest to no one. The only party with a direct interest in the proceedings that nonetheless took no part in the conflict was the Swords. The former owner had apparently decided to suck it up and keep mum, as though they never existed.

That much was no mystery—when elephants fight, the grass under their feet is expected to suffer in silence.

A particularly powerful tectonic spell had been used carelessly during the skirmish, causing numerous rockfalls that buried a large number of fighters underneath piles of rubble. They managed to respawn outside later; however, all the equipped items they had lost remained buried. Considering their value, the goal of the fighting was now to retain control over the area until the rubble was cleared up.

As far as Ros could see, the search yielded nothing, despite hundreds of players with high levels of Perception and equipment boosting the same stat participating. Everyone agreed that the noob they’d been looking for must have left the mine long ago, which was why no trace of him was ever found.

And yet, the search parties would not give up. Ros was particularly alarmed by the outraged story of one of the noobs who’d come to Arbenne intending to sign a lucrative contract for a month, but could barely walk five paces without bumping into high-level players from various guilds demanding that he join their party—in the mode that revealed his full stats. He wouldn’t be left alone until he agreed, and they threatened to blacklist him if he declined. The last thing a simple worker wanted was the reputation of a troublemaker, especially since it was virtually impossible to prove you were simply a victim of bullying and didn’t steal ore from any mine. Serious employers always checked the forums for names, and if they found a thread where a given player was accused of having cheated someone at some point, they didn’t waste their time investigating the matter and simply disqualified the applicant.

Ros realized someone must suspect something about his new abilities—someone who knew more than others. For instance, though the name of his race wasn’t mentioned in any of the threads, there were a bunch of posts by various players “casually” wondering about the rrokh race, its characteristics and whether anyone had ever seen any of its representatives. It was in the official database, after all, and there was even an illustration of a male rrokh, but no one had actually seen any of them in the game, and no player was able to select this race even with a full account.

There were a few replies, some of them rather noteworthy. Many had tried to select the race for its uniqueness, and those players claimed that the rrokhs had some very “yummy” bonuses.

Unfortunately, no one had managed to try them out. The instant they’d start playing, they would receive a system message about an error in the description of the racial abilities, and offering to replace said valuable abilities with something totally useless, or a free character swap with compensation—an expanded bag instead of the beginner’s variety, a set of noob elixirs, noob weapons or equipment.

Everyone opted for a new character.

But Ros had received no such offers. And his racial abilities worked perfectly well—the ones he could test, at least.

Why was he the exception?

Could the system have thought that with such skewed distribution of stats he would choose a new character of his own free will, without coercion? Then why would it keep offering rrokh to players as a viable option?

It was a mystery.

* * *

Ros saw the thread accidentally. It wasn’t particularly popular—it was the rather flamboyant topic that caught his eye:

“THE ACCURSED SUPERNOOB IS CALLING UPON THE GREAT EMPEROR OF NOOBS!!!”

Ros still remembered his first day: Arbenne, his introduction to the game world, his newcomer’s bewilderment, the bitter realization of his mistake, and the strange freak—a beta-tester with an illegible digit-only nickname, forgotten by the developers.

Ros hadn’t forgotten what Digits said about the inevitability of him cursing his new acquaintance.

The post was short:

“Your deeds have left me flabbergasted! Verily, you are the emperor of noobs! May heavens bless our great ruler! You haven’t forgotten the unequal duel between the mage and the silly buffer, have you? I think you remember. Stay away from there. We’re short of frogs as it is, and we don’t need you. Good luck. Oh, one last thing: stop cursing me already.”

There were a few replies that weren’t worth reading—primarily to the effect of everyone being sick of noobs flooding the forum with incomprehensible inanities.

Ros would have thought the same thing if the topic didn’t address him directly.

Digits remembered his name. He must have seen it at the forum, or in the red worldwide system messages—or, most likely, he was questioned about Ros repeatedly by various search parties that had found out it was none else but him who had brought the strange noob to the Sword Power recruitment office. That seemed the most plausible scenario.

So, Digits may have told them all he knew, but he also tried to warn Ros. He wondered how the man had accessed the forum—his severely limited account was unlikely to have that option, so he must have done it offline, which was no easy feat for a quadriplegic.

He wished he could thank him. Ros couldn’t risk registering at the forum, not even under his new name, and anonymous messages weren’t an option. He also didn’t want to reveal his data to everyone.

Ros had never cursed Digits once, despite what the latter may have thought, but he wouldn’t be too hasty about trusting him, either. The whole situation didn’t particularly inspire trust. Although he didn’t intend to forget him, having been moved by the sad story of the helpless beta tester, and he intuitively felt Digits was a good person, regardless of his oddities.

That aside, the situation he was in really stank.

Even before Digits’ warnings, Ros had already realized he had absolutely nothing to do in Arbenne. Any player joining his party would see his stats boosted by his heroic feats, which would lead to unnecessary questions. And anyone who gave him a closer look would come up with more questions still.

Someone who was dangerously clever or in possession of too much information believed Ros had changed, or could change, everything about himself, including his appearance, race, and name. But no one could control the whole region completely. It was also very likely that the noob they were looking for could have left via a city teleport—those didn’t require the knowledge of a bind point, connecting nearby cities and making it possible to only reach nearby stationary portals. Some of the posts voiced cautious assumptions that the character could have been deleted or locked in a dungeon, seeing as he couldn’t be located by any methods. The same posts contained musings that he would be a far cry from a level zero player by now. Indeed, his many heroic deeds must have resulted in the removal of all his locks, so his level would be around twenty or thirty by now—that was the likely reward—or perhaps even higher. Thus, everyone should be searching for a player with a level between twenty and one hundred instead of a total noob.

Ros could only shake his head at the alarming accuracy of such theories, having guessed nearly everything right. It looked like a deliberate or accidental leak from some parties that excelled at counting. The former was more likely, since the presentation was neat and intelligent. He wondered if the purpose was to confuse him, or to warn him so that he wouldn’t get caught.

That was something Ros couldn’t understand yet.

His supply of meat wouldn’t last him more than two more days. He would need to leave the dungeon tomorrow, or face starvation.

Chapter 31

In the morning, Ros perused the forum, as was becoming a habit, and found that the general interest in his identity seemed to be waning. The most popular topics were along the lines of “The Russians are coming!” Someone suddenly remembered that whenever a player from one of the Western sectors made a famous achievement, gamers from the easternmost Slavic parts would raid the territory where the achievement had been registered in strength and slaughter everyone, preferably leaving nothing behind but tears and charred ruins. Said players felt particularly motivated if the perpetrator resided in the North American sector. There was even a special catchphrase for such occasions—“Mochi pindosov,” which translated roughly as “Squash the Yanks.”

There were many replies in such threads, replete with expletives along with observations a la “Russians are wackos, what else would you expect of them?” Everyone concurred that the formerly sleepy province of Rallia would soon become the center of frenetic activity, dwarfing the deeds of the mysterious noob glorified in red lettering.

Some well-informed and subtle troll had put forth a theory that this time the Russians would act in league with the Chinese—after all, there must have been a reason why the former never reacted to the recent heroic deed of the Oriental player who leveled up to three hundred. The author of the topic assured the public that he was initiated in the mysteries of the Russian language, and had found a phrase that could be open to a most menacing interpretation at the forum of the Eastern European cluster: “Russians and Chinese—brothers forever.”[10]

Overall, the subject of Russians and their behavior online was quite complex and nuanced. If there was a Russian community on a gaming server, it often gained game-wide notoriety. Non-Russian game projects usually had a mixed or an outright negative attitude to such players—though this was not an exclusive prerogative of the Russians—so there was always plenty of “fodder” for trolls specializing on this topic.

That surely had far-reaching implications.

There were more insults and profanity in this thread than in any of the others. The hypothetical alliance between the Russian and the Chinese made many participants of the discussion extremely agitated, calling people noobs left and right, and recollecting that the “Orientals” had lots of high-level characters, while in Russia there were many oligarchs ready to buy legendary and set items for any price, who must have amassed them in such numbers that they could outfit a military force to make the Red Army seem like a unit of boy scouts. Therefore, it was best to avoid Rallia altogether, unless you enjoyed watching yourself respawn in your long johns time and again.

Ros found the news encouraging. If his fellow countryfolk decided to start a war here, the hype around the heroic noob should subside, as well as the diligence of the searchers.

The more unrelated noise, the better for him.

His appearance was different, his username was different, and his race looked completely different—there was nothing about him to resemble the unseemly worker he had once been.

There was just one thing that remained—his level. Eighty-nine. That met the search criteria range defined by unknown smart alecks.

The map in his memory was rather modest—there was nothing left but notebook drawings. His wanderings through the city and the mine did not get reflected at all—apparently, while his Cartography level was zero, no records were made.

However, there were maps on the forum. Even though he couldn’t load them into his memory, it was possible to get a general impression of the area nonetheless.

Which Ros did.

Rallia was considered an exceptionally boring place for good reason. There were virtually no locations of any interest, and the only hubs of activity were ubiquitous mines with low-level resources. A land of miners, quiet and uneventful.

Players with expanded accounts would normally have nothing to do here. No generous bosses that could be farmed by whole clans were ever encountered here; mobs were few, and their levels were low. Rallia was also located on the border of the Locked Lands, which, as the name suggested, could not be accessed. It was more or less the edge of the world—even getting here via teleportation was costly. And why would anyone want to, anyway? To behold swarms of miners gathering in search of employment every Friday?

It would take Ros around three or four days of walking across forests and hills to get away. Even if he kept his level from being displayed to the public, high-level players with non-zero Perception would realize something was weird about him at first sight. And they’d be able to see other things besides his level.

They wouldn’t even have to invite him to join their party. Moreover, even a player bearing no relation to the search might be surprised enough at the encounter to remember it.

Ros might be paranoid, but he decided to be consistent in his paranoia.

* * *

There was no welcoming committee at the cave entrance, so the voice of paranoia urging Ros to keep hiding in the thylbit camp until he’d expire of hunger had been wrong. He made his way through the cleft and cautiously peeked into the cave, finding nothing suspicious there, either. No rockfalls left after battles, and no signs of anyone’s presence in general. Either no one had ever made it here, or they had been really careful about it.

Ros hoped for the former. It took him no less than three days to get away after Greedie got killed. He must have covered around thirty miles at least, as the crow flies, which meant he was a long way away from the mine. There were also dozens of large side tunnels en route—a lot of them much bigger than the cave with the river. These mountains had more holes in them than a wheel of old cheese. The pursuit had plenty of space to wander about, and they may never have reached the waterfall in the first place. Also, the parts where the river narrowed could not be crossed without fighting packs of omruses. Ros had dispatched them, but it had been a while since then, and a new generation may have replaced the ones that he had killed. The pursuit may have run into them and reasonably decided that a noob would find it hard to pass through, and that going any farther in that direction would be futile.

He sincerely hoped he was right. Especially given that the main version of his escape on the forum was that he had given the slip to the unwatchful guards and reached Arbenne on foot subsequently. When the fight for the mine was just brewing up, no one had thought of blocking that route. There even seemed to be eyewitnesses claiming they saw a noob fitting the description near the stationary city teleport.

Ros raised a mental thanks to these “eyewitnesses” as he crawled up the rocks to reach a prominent crag looming high above the path he had noticed earlier. Upon getting there, he squared his shoulders, peering at the distant horizon where the dark green of the forest canopy merged with the cerulean blue sky.

It was incredibly beautiful.

He stuck a heavy halberd he’d taken along into a crack in the rock, looked at the pole, and said:

“I want to make this place my new bind spot.”

A system message popped up:

“Are you sure you want to make this place your new bind spot?”

“Yes.”

“Your current bind spot: Rallia Province, Devil’s Fingers Ridge, eastern slope of Mount Aqueton. Current owner: none. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind spots in dangerous zones. Attention! Wilderness! You cannot create long-term bind spots in the wilderness. You will no longer be bound to this spot after twenty-four hours.”

This suited Ros just fine. He stripped to his long johns and placed all his possessions in one of the bags, which he then put in his belt slot, ordering for the belt to become visible and tangible for a moment.

He froze for a moment, gathering his courage. It wasn’t easy to bring himself to do what he’d decided. Could he be going over the top with his paranoia?

Away with doubts! He had to follow through with his plan.

He peered at the horizon again, sighed, and read a mirthless limerick:

“There was a romantic young nerd[MB1]…”

He drew a deep breath, as if about to dive into a pool.

“Who believed he could fly like a bird.”

He took off and started running.

“He leaped off a skyscraper

As his final caper,”

A jump from the end of the crag. As he looked at the approaching rocks below with his heart pounding like a drum, he uttered the final line with a quavering voice:

“And was flat as a sheet when interred.”

Darkness.

“You have died. XP lost: 11.2% of the current value. Attention! Use scrolls and skills that lower the loss of experience upon death, or have players with high-level resurrecting skills help you. Attention! Another death may result in the loss of a level! You are resurrected at your current bind spot: Rallia Province, Devil’s Fingers Ridge, eastern slope of Mount Aqueton. Current owner: none. Attention: this is a dangerous zone. There is high likelihood of aggressive actions from monsters and players. It is not recommended to place your bind spots in dangerous zones.”

In less than half an hour, Ros started to really hate that message.

* * *

Ros left the mountains as a level ten noob—the furthest he could roll his level back. He didn’t regret the loss at all—after all, he had retained all the stats. The only problem was that he couldn’t wear equipment with high level requirements, but he would get over it.

Apart from the wish to conceal his oddities, he had another reason to roll his levels back to ten. According to the description of the racial ability that came as the gift to the last representative of the race, once he’d restore the levels to their previous values, he should get a point to primary stats for every level. That would add up to seventy-nine points. Given the arithmetic, you could roll your level back as many times as you wanted until you grew bored or until the system decided you were getting too cheeky, which should happen sooner or later—after all, he would have a serious advantage over players with no such ability. Otherwise, Ros could keep at it for years and transform himself into a monster that even the most beefed-up Chinese player would be unable to handle.

But he should use the opportunity while he had it. The character was to be pushed to the max. With his stats he should be able to take on mobs with levels two or three times higher than his own, which should speed up the leveling. Not to mention the extra XP that he would get from achievements.

He could advance to twenty or thirty quickly, and then roll back again. And again. And again. He would turn his character into the sweetest piece of candy in the universe.

The dark firs gave way to sunlit pinery. It was much easier to walk here, and his spirits kept rising. Ros had common well-worn boots on his feet, and equally worn trousers, with a leather cuirass that had known better days protecting his chest. There was an enhanced bow without any extraordinary stats in his right hand, and a nondescript novice’s bag on his hip. Not even the most careful scrutiny would detect anything odd about him now.

He just needed to avoid party invitations with stat disclosure. The bonus from the presence of a legendary hero in a party would also likely be noticed. Or, rather, would definitely be noticed. There’d be some notification to this effect for sure.

* * *

“Today at 9 AM a raid party of high-level Russian-speaking players made a surprise appearance at the walls of Arbenne, catching the NPC guards unawares, and captured the gates. Even though there were many top clan players in the city, the bandits encounter no serious resistance as they assaulted Arbenne. The aggressors were well-organized, and followed a plan, easily dispatching individual players and small groups, none of which managed to put up a unified front.

The highest casualties were suffered when fellow clans started to send in reinforcements. By that time, the entire city was controlled by the Russians, and all the players coming out of the teleports were met with assaulted en masse, never getting a chance to organize a resistance. When reinforcements started to arrive from outside the city, they found it hard to get in, since the raiders raised the portcullis and placed their top archers and mages in the towers.

While the gates were being smashed under enemy fire, the attackers looted the bodies and got up to all kinds of mischief. The employment bureau was destroyed, and the stationary teleport broken. The local offices of several clans were burned down, and profane graffiti was left on several buildings and constructions. As soon as the gate fell, the raiders retreated using teleport scrolls. Reliable sources claim they took a number of expensive items as trophies from top players, including four legendary and set items. The same source reports the players are negotiating with the Russians regarding ransom for the lost valuables.

It remains unclear how something like this could have happened to a city with so many top guild players gathered around in their unrelenting search for Rostendrix Poterentax, especially given that the possibility of such a raid had been considered in advance. Nevertheless, the Russians have appeared out of the blue and achieved everything they had intended. Whoever claims their objective was the occupation of the province is wrong—they did not have enough resources to stage so much as a symbolic defense of an unimportant city.

They just came and did what they had set out to do. The leadership of our top clans should have developed an effective strategy against such raids long ago.

See the center spread for more details.”

From the Rallian Herald front page.

Chapter 32

“The Slavic Brotherhood guild announces an extra recruitment campaign!

Requirements: Cyrillic usernames ONLY without any Anglo-Yank bullshit, level 100 and up, possibly less for supporting characters upon arrangement via private chat. Video feed interviews, with your real face shown. Browns and blacks can get lost in the forest or go back to Blackistan.

Browns and blacks, go to hell,

Slavs will never treat you well.

Brothers, join the holy fight,

Smash the apes with all your might.

Clan’s purpose: to squash Yanks, blacks, and Asians.”

Advertisement on the main page of the Slavic Brotherhood clan page (one of the minor guilds from the Eastern European sector).

A similar post on the game forum was deleted eight minutes after publication, and the forum account of the publisher was blocked according to Article 12.4 (publication of text, video- or audio-content of pornographic or violent nature, or materials that promote terrorism, neo-Nazism, discrimination of any sort, drugs or alcohol, as well as profanity, verbal abuse, or attempts to engage other players in any or all of the above).

* * *

It took Ros three days to cross the forest, jumping at every rustle—for no reason, too, since he didn’t encounter a single living soul over this entire period. Birds chirped, small lizards scattered from under his feet, but also lots of hares, and even more squirrels. He occasionally chanced upon larger animals, too: roe deer, elks, and wolves, and once he even saw a bear. But none of these encounters resulted in any bloodshed—Ros did not behave aggressively, and no one tried to hurt him, either.

It was ironic, but the once-famous hunter subsided on nothing but berries, only using his knife to cut or dig out a medicinal herb he’d spot, having studied the pictures of useful herbs on the forum in advance. Should anyone ask him what he was up to in this godforsaken place, he could claim with all honesty that he was searching for rare ingredients to level his alchemical skills, and demonstrate the harvested herbs to prove it.

He’d unlocked the Herbalism skill as a result, receiving six points to it right away—the heroic qualities of his character added five points to every newly acquired skill.

Once that happened, he started noticing herbs from a much greater distance, including those of some rarity apart from the more common species.

Another auxiliary stat that he had unlocked was Voyager—simply by spending a few days walking through the wilderness without meeting anyone.

On the morning of the fourth day, Ros reached the road. This came as no surprise—he had intended to reach it, even though he’d thought it would take him longer. High Vigor and Speed stats—as well as many others—allowed him to move much faster than the average player.

He had covered over sixty miles, measuring from the cave exit, and had crossed the province border. Now he was in Livoria, just as nondescript a province as the one he left behind. It was where he had planned to stay for a while, waiting for the commotion to subside. The idea was simple—no one would look for him too hard near the border with Rallia, since he would logically have to try to get as far away from it as he could.

There was also another consideration: Rallia was the starting location for novices with expanded accounts. There were several zones here with large numbers of low-level mobs used by players for leveling their characters in the early stages of their development.

What’s the best place for hiding a tree? A forest, of course.

Ros decided to hide among players who were just like him.

Noobs.

He reached the road, but he didn’t know which part it was—there were no indicators of his position anywhere around. He would have to choose the direction, nolens volens.

Ros made his choice and turned right.

* * *

He walked for two hours without seeing any riders or pedestrians. This was starting to look odd, since the road did not look abandoned. On the contrary, it gave the impression of having been well trodden.

Could it be some holiday today that kept folks off the road?

What happened next looked nothing like a holiday event. Three players of an obviously high level dashed out from behind the bend. He noticed the expensive-looking armor covered in clan symbols and cryptic emblems, the fancy weapons, and the general bearing that was… well… not noob-like in any way.

The usernames were rather uncanny: Chelyabinsk_Is_Tough[11], Noobster111, and Deflowerer of Males. All in Cyrillic lettering—Ros never saw anything of this sort before.

“Hey!” Noobster111 shouted mirthfully. “If it isn’t an itsy bitsy noob walking down the path! Well, hello there, little Yank boy!”

Ros didn’t manage to respond—the lightning disgorged by the mage’s staff hit him in the chest, blinding and stunning him, followed by a heavy crossbow bolt. As the darkness swallowed him, he overheard one of the players say:

“A tough noob, that one—didn’t kick the bucket right away.”

“You are killed by the player: Chelyabinsk_Is_Tough. You have no personal bind spot and are resurrected at the nearest altar of the forces of light with a twenty-four hour binding. Your current bind spot: the altar of the Forces of Fertility, Village of Sakta, Livoria Province. Current owner: Sakta villager community. Attention: provisionally safe zone. Low probability of aggressive actions from monsters and players.”

“Hey, another one got kissed by the Russians!” said someone right into Ros’ ear.

He blinked a few times, focusing his eyes, still hurting from the flash, and saw himself at the edge of a field of yellow wheat, next to a vertical slab of stone covered with unidentifiable semi-obliterated lettering. There were around two dozen players sitting and lying around, and some of them were logged on. A barrage of questions was unleashed on Ros all at once.

“Who did you in?”

“Where were they?”

“Did your catch their names?”

“Hold on!” he raised a hand. “You’re not even letting me answer. I guess you’ve already surmised I’ve been killed by the Russians.”

“That much wasn’t hard to guess—the same thing happened to us.”

“What would those Russians want here in the first place?”

“Don’t you read the news?”

“I spent three days roaming the woods, gathering herbs. Haven’t seen anyone or read the forum. So, what happened?”

“The Russians are slaughtering everyone—there are so many of them, too. It’s worse than a cockroach infestation.”

“They say there are even more of them in Rallia. They’re everywhere, it’s a real war down there. All because of that noob with a bundle of achievements.”

“But he did it in Rallia. What would they want here?”

“Well, they’re Russians, so they don’t care where they go as long as there are plenty of noobs for them to slaughter. And there are more noobs here than in Rallia.”

“Damn! And I’d just managed to find some rare herbs, but they killed me before I could harvest them!” Ros lied.

“Why did you decide to mess with herbs, anyway? They won’t earn you anything here—the good stuff is rare.”

“It’s for my own use. I want to raise my Alchemy a little so that I might make simple potions for leveling.”

“Sure, everyone needs that. What’s your level, anyway?”

“Ten.”

“Not much.”

“The upside is that you lose virtually nothing when you die. Or nothing at all, in case of a locked account.”

“So why do you hang around here?”

“What else can we do? It’s dangerous to leave. That’s just what the Russians are waiting for.” The player he was talking to pointed toward the other end of the wheat field, where a thick pine forest began. “They’re right over there.”

The player’s tone was so grave that Ros involuntarily squinted, peering into the woods. Everybody’s agitation made him think he could see green silhouettes of T-34 tanks amid the trees, complete with drunk stormtroopers and trained bears.

“So, how long do you plan to sit here like this? Why don’t we gather up a posse and kick their butts?”

“You’ve got to be joking. We’re total noobs, and the folks you can expect to find there can ice us all with a single sneeze. We need to wait for our top players to arrive.”

“Yeah, some of them already did…”

“Oh? And what happened?” Ros inquired.

“Nothing much. Four good-looking guys and two girls came over, saying the Russians would soon find themselves rezzing in expensive underwear from a fancy boutique. We sat down to wait, and eventually our party came back—one of the girls was wearing a frilly negligee, and one of the guys was in his boxers. We did see some nice underwear, after all. They got some reinforcements later, so we’re waiting to see how it plays out. If you have any popcorn, it’s high time to get it out—the fighting should begin any second now.”

There was a flash in the woods nearby, followed by a sound of thunder. A wisp of smoke rose into the air.

“That’s it!” one of the players exhaled excitedly. “Our guys will show them now!”

There was a bang, and a man in dented armor materialized next to the stone, with a lost, if not altogether crazed, look in his eyes.

“How did it go?” a freckled girl of an unidentifiable race asked him sympathetically.

“Those effing Russian bastards!” cursed the warrior, barely managing to move his tongue. He jumped up and trotted back to the battleground unsteadily.

“Must be a tough battle,” an empathetic voice sounded behind him.

Bang, bang, bang, bang. Four of them at once: three guys and a girl, all armed with bows.

The girl immediately started shouting at the distancing warrior:

“Targer, wait up! We’ve got to go together! They’ve got an insanely tough mage!”

“One mage? Just one mage? What’s there to be afraid of?”

“I’m telling you, he’s real tough!”

“All mages are wimps, I’ll crush that squishy asshole!”

“There are two buffers casting shields and heals on him—all of us combined could do nothing about him!”

“Then you dispatch the buffers first!”

“They’re Russian buffers! They all have high Acrobatics and tree-climbing skills, apart from everything else, and their Speed and Agility are up the wazoo as well! They jump like kangaroos and hop from tree to tree—one moment they’re here, the next they’re gone! You can’t hit them at all!”

“Those freaking Russians! Whoever’s heard of such buffers, anyway?”

“I’m telling you, they’re Russian buffers! And they went for us archers right after they stopped you from getting close enough to the mage to control him! Oh, hell! I’ve lost my boots! They were enchanted!!!”

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Ros stopped counting—over two dozen deceased players resurrected at the altar. The last one was a dwarf. His armor wasn’t dented, but it was smoking.

He rose to his feet with a grunt, and let out a diatribe with zero concern for political correctness:

“Effing Russian swines! The bastards! It’s a good job we got bound to this spot!”

“How many were there?” asked the talkative girl.

The dwarf didn’t vouchsafe an answer.

“Lyce, get offline ASAP and call Kirg. Tell him there’s a minor Russian raid party here. Top class lightning mage with mad skills, support players who might as well be ninjas, six warriors in the covering party, all of whom are much tougher than me, and three proficient archers. Excellent teamwork, always assisting on target. Tell him we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell against them. He should bring everyone over, otherwise it’ll be pointless. They caught a few morons with red names who got bound to a spot in the bushes to avoid showing their faces at the village, and are now wasting them as soon as they rezz. They will keep camping them until they get all their loot or until they get their levels down to nothing.”

“Why would they want to roll someone’s levels back?” the girl kept going.

“Well, they’re Russians. They often do that if they catch you bound to a point off the beaten path,” explained one of the noobs.

The warrior who had appeared first grumbled:

“I lost eleven percent because of them. I’d like to get my hands on that hero nincompoop who’d started the whole thing and corpse camp his ass until he loses his bind point, and then make sure he doesn’t leave the village or wherever he ends up. Make the bastard delete his character.”

“It’s a special forest raid group—I’ve heard of them before,” said the dwarf. “They’re from the Red Partisans clan—natural born troublemakers, that lot. They can waste fifty players in the woods with just a force of ten. That’s cheating. If we could draw them out into an open space, we’d show them.”

“What the hell are they doing here, anyway?” asked one of the noobs in outrage.

“It’s all because of the dude that’s made a splash in the worldwide chat,” replied another noob.

“Yeah. This whole mess is that mother’s fault,” one of the defeated party’s players chimed in.

“They say that noob is Russian, too,” said the dwarf.

“Get out of here!”

“Word,” one of the respawned players nodded. “These rumors have been circulating for a few days now. They say the Russians came to extract him.”

“I wish they did, and then screwed off to wherever they came from!”

“What were you tops thinking, anyway?”

“We are no tops, we’re a run-of-the-mill clan. There are few of us, and we don’t have that many serious players.”

“Where are the tops, then?”

“They spent a few days bleeding each other dry at that damn mine. The mercenary guilds all ran out of fighters—everyone who didn’t die fighting has been injured. Everyone ran out of steam, and the Russians appear to have found out. They timed their assault perfectly, the swines.”

Already listening with full attention, Ros pricked up his ears even more. That just might be true, after all. Someone with plenty of pull had found out everything about him, and came to the conclusion he would surely surrender to his fellow countryfolk. Then again, it might be a simple coincidence. The players he had run into on his way here killed him without attempting to find out anything.

Nothing else of interest was said. Half an hour later, a party of thirty fighters of different sorts arrived along the path that led away from the field and disappeared in a copse of deciduous trees. Having joined forces with the fighters waiting at the respawn point, the host of the clan dubbed The Inquisitive started toward the forest where the Russian raiding party had been having so much fun.

Ros watched them depart, suspecting that if the Russians were still there, the brave Inquisitive would soon find themselves respawned near the slab of stone, full of outrage, and join in the Russophobic sentiment.

One of the noobs rose and said gruffly:

“Screw this. I’ll head for the village and get some elixirs from the shopkeeper.”

“He doesn’t have any left—I saw him this morning,” a petite elven archer girl told him.

“Aw, snap. Well, it’s not like there’s anything to do here, anyway. I’ll go and check.”

Ros got up and said:

“I’ll come with you—might as well stretch my legs a bit.”

He didn’t know where the village was, let alone the shop, so he couldn’t miss the chance to find out. He could ask the players, of course, but that would expose him as an outsider. And Ros would prefer to be considered one of the local noobs—there were so many of them that no one could keep track of everyone.

Chapter 33

As they approached the copse, the player with the cryptic name ANSVT displayed over his head in white lettering asked him:

“Have you unlocked Alchemy yet?”

“No, I’ve only been gathering herbs—I haven’t managed to raise it yet.”

“Pity, I need a few potions. I’d buy a couple off you.”

“I haven’t even purchased any equipment for alchemy.”

“Want a portable table of your own?”

“Yeah, it’s a lot more convenient that way.”

“Sure thing—you’re no mage, mana’s a scarce commodity, so it’s better to avoid it altogether. But you’re going have to carry extra weight.”

“Well, I’ll get rich someday and buy me a fancy bag with weight reduction.”

“That’s gonna cost you.”

“Well, those are my plans for the future, anyway.”

“What’s with the name?”

“The name is fine, what’s wrong with it?”

“Just imagine how many archers out there are called John. See, you even had to add a number.”

“Well, my real name is John, so what should I do?”

“You could have come up with a cooler name.”

“Yours doesn’t seem all that cool, either, come to think of it.”

“They usually just call me Ans. My girlfriend likes it.”

“Does she play, too?”

“Yeah, I met her here, in the game. She’s so beautiful.”

“They’re all beautiful here.”

“She’s the best.”

“Same appearance as IRL? An icon next to the name?”

“No, she doesn’t have one. But what do I care about the way she looks IRL, anyway? She’s the best one here, and that’s what counts. Hey! Look at that! The Russkies are done for!”

Ros looked on, making out the outskirts of a small village just ahead. Twenty houses altogether, lined up along a single street. A party of conspicuously high-level players was marching through the village in three-rank formation, led by a standard-bearer and with a drummer somewhere in the back, laying down a tight funky beat instead of a battle march.

“It’s the Black Brotherhood,” said Ans.

“Are they tough?”

“Yup. It’s a pity they’re racists, though. Only take characters with black skin.”

“What if you’re white IRL?”

“You can be purple for all they care—as long as you’re black here and behave accordingly. Even T-Son plays in their clan.”

“The white rapper?”

“Yeah. I mean, there are lots of rappers, but even black guys say he’s the best. The Russians are done for—if the Brothers get to them, they’ll all be flying back to their icy homeland.”

“Is Russia really that icy?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. It must be the same as everywhere—just the north and tall mountain ranges. I was just joking. You want to see the shopkeeper, too, right?”

“Sure, I’ll pop inside.”

“Might as well, though he’s out of everything more often than not. This village really blows. If you level up your Alchemy and decide to trade here, you’ll be up to your ears in clients. Guaranteed.”

“Good idea.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t. Duh, someone’s already figured it out without my help,” Ans pointed in front of him.

A level ten player was sitting with his legs crossed in front of a tall porch leading to the double doors of one of the biggest houses in the village. He had a piece of rough cloth spread out in front of him with shiny little potion bottles upon it: blue potions for mana, red ones for health, and green ones for vigor.

“I’ll stock up here, bypassing the NPC shopkeeper,” said Ans. “The archer girl said he had nothing, anyway.”

“Sure, suit yourself. I’d still like to pay him a visit, though.”

It was easy enough to realize the house in question was the shop. Ros ascended the porch and pulled on the door. Someone inside reacted instantly, and in an irritated voice:

“Make sure you shut it tight! I hate draughts!”

Ros examined the house. There was a large room with a tall counter dividing it in two. A human NPC stood behind it with a particularly sour look on his face. A girl aged about ten, also an NPC, was rummaging in a box of sewing thread.

“Have you chosen yet?” asked the shopkeeper petulantly.

“I have. These, these, and these. And I think these will come in handy, too.”

“Well, are you buying them? Don’t keep me waiting—can’t you see I have other customers?”

“All right, I’ll take these, too.”

“Four bobbins of linen thread. One silver piece and twelve pennies altogether.”

“But mom only gave me a single silver piece.”

“Well, tell your mom to drop by with the coppers, or send you over.”

“Of course, Uncle Skhor, I’ll tell her.”

NPCs traded with each other as well as players? That was interesting. They must be a lot more like players than he’d thought before. The complexity of the economic system was just dawning on him—nothing was ever done without a purpose, and no exceptions were made, not even for software-driven characters.

“So, what is it you want, then? Or did you just come to browse? The likes of you do that a lot.”

“Have you got any potions? Health and mana?”

“None. Your fellow folks have depleted my stock. No matter how many I get in stock, they buy up everything instantly.”

“You have a competitor who’s set up business down by the porch.”

“A competitor? My competitors are long crayfish feed at the bottom of the river. What kind of a competitor is that? He’s an alchemist, and a total idiot to boot. He’s made a bunch of level thirty potions, and the players we get here are between levels ten and twenty-five. You don’t see many higher than that. So he’ll sit there with his bowed legs crossed until he freezes his ass off, without selling a single vial to show for it.”

“I get it. No demand.”

“And that’s a fact, Jack. Had he brought some potions for level tens, or at least twenties, he’d have sold off his stock before getting a chance to sit down. I sell out in minutes of replenishing my stock—you wouldn’t believe the demand.”

“I need an archer’s glove, or something else to protect my hand. The bowstring hurts.”

“Why didn’t you buy one in the city?”

“I did. But I got killed by the Russians today, and dropped the glove,” Ros found it easy to fib.”

“They’re a bunch of rascals all right. Everyone’s had it up to here with them. They burned two cows with their evil magic yesterday, just for kicks, as they were passing by.”

“The glove was nothing special, so I can’t say I miss it. But it isn’t very convenient to wield a bow without it.”

“I have nothing. I could give you a piece of thick cloth to wrap around your hand, and that should serve until you find something better.”

“What about your bowstring supply?”

“I only have buffalo sinews.”

“That’ll do.”

“How many?”

Ros showed his bow to the shopkeeper.

“Enough for a few times.”

“Anything else?”

Ros felt a desperate urge to show the NPC one of his less rare trophies and suggest an exchange, but decided to skip that for the time being—it was a cheap little shop, and the shopkeeper may have never seen the likes of his stuff before. Though Ros was attired in plain, well-worn and dirt-cheap items, he had a veritable treasury in his bags.

Incidentally…

“I’d also like to find a bigger bag.”

“What about yours? All filled up?”

“Yeah. Almost.”

“What have you got in there? Talons, fangs, and pelts of all sorts, eh? I can buy them off you for a good price. I need a lot—I send all this stuff to the city with my nephew. Your kinsfolk would buy them for a higher price there, of course, but we could lighten your load right now. How about it?”

“Sorry, but I’ll need all that stuff myself. So, how about that bag?”

The shopkeeper drew a disappointed sigh and slapped two dusty bags down onto the counter.

“That’s all I have for small fry like you.”

The first was the well-familiar novice’s bag, and a rather threadbare one at that. The second was a tad better—a common bag with thirty slots. Also rather beaten-up, and, unsurprisingly, without any weight reduction.

“Anything better than this?”

“You can find better stuff in the city.”

“Would you happen to have an alchemical set or any empty vials?”

“Do I look like an alchemist to you?”

“No, not really.”

“Ding ding ding! I’d brew my own potions if I were an alchemist. I’ve never even had such sets in stock. I do have a few vials that I got on the cheap, but there’s not much demand. I shouldn’t have bothered. Your kinsfolk are reluctant alchemists.”

“All right—I’ll take the bag, the bowstring, and some cloth for my hand.”

“Sure—that’ll be eighty silver pieces total.”

“How much?”

“Don’t be so surprised. I’m a generous guy, so I’ve given you a small discount.”

“A discount? I could stuff my bag full of legendary items for that much money!”

“Well, why don’t you? It’s not like I’m in your way. Also…” the shopkeeper stopped suddenly, scrutinized Ros’ face, and shook his head dejectedly. “With those flyblown windows it’s darker than inside a necromancer’s coffin. Didn’t recognize you. Why didn’t you introduce yourself at once? What with you being modest as a young maiden and all. How about a glass of wine? Or something stronger, perhaps? I’ve got everything.”

Ros shook his hand in confusion.

“No, thanks. All I need is a bag, some bowstring, and a piece of cloth.”

“Oh, you don’t want to run around with a piece of cloth on your hand like a hobo. Come back in the evening. My nephew will return, and I’ll give you his hunting glove. He’ll get another one in the city.”

“What about the rest?”

“All yours for twenty-four silver pieces. With all due respect, I can’t sell it any cheaper.”

“Including the glove?”

“I’ll give you the glove for free. It’s well-worn, and fixing them costs a lot, but you should be fine for about a week. And you’ll probably get something better by then. Take your wares, don’t just stand there.”

Ros got an inkling that the NPC could see his achievements somehow, or it might have been the effect of his beefed-up auxiliary stats. The shopkeeper had changed his tone drastically, after all, and had slashed the price by two thirds. Otherwise he’d have to pay nearly all of his cash for this old junk.

He wondered if NPCs could reveal his identity to the players. If so, he wouldn’t be able to hide anywhere, his changed appearance be damned.

“If you need a place to stay the night, you needn’t go further. You can take the terrace that faces the yard, or the hayloft if you like fresh air. That includes supper, and I also have the best milk in the village. You can drink all you want—won’t cost you more than a silver piece.”

Ros nodded, remembering the skirmishes around the village.

“I accept gladly. Another thing—I have time until the evening, but not much to do. And I don’t feel it’s safe to leave the village. Are there any instructors around here? I wouldn’t mind learning something useful.”

When browsing the forum, Ros had found out there were lots of NPCs out in the world that helped you unlock new stats. Experienced players asked about them in every city and village in their search for instructors capable of teaching them something rare. It made sense to try it here, too, especially with carnage taking place outside the village.

“In this backwater hole? Who could teach anything here? There is the herb lady, but I believe you’re familiar with that art already.”

“I am, a little.”

“Well, then, she won’t be of any help. Actually, there’s this old man, too, one of the newcomers. He likes his privacy and keeps bees. No one knows where he’s from. We shared a few glasses of wine one day. The old man’s cheeks reddened right away, and he offered me to try his mead. And I don’t like to decline any good offers. After the mead, I returned the favor, and we tried some of my wine again. Then it was back to mead, of course. That’s when the old codger started to spill the beans. Turns out he’s a former royal jeweler. His eyes are weaker than they used to be, and he’d gotten tired of it all to boot, so he decided on our little neck of the woods to retire. It’s a good life here—the village is peaceful, and no one ever bothers him. He may have embellished his stories here and there—you know what a drunken man’s talk is like—but he couldn’t have fabricated all of it. You might want to see him if you want to study the jeweler’s art. He may tell you off right away, but he might also hear you out and help you.”

“Thanks a lot. I think I should pay him a visit.”

“Of course you should—what have you got to lose? Oh, and take this bottle along. Tell him it’s a gift from Skhor and a token of my respect. The sight of wine might make him mellower, and he may recollect a few things from his past. We had quite a party between the two of us back then—they say he looked so scary in the morning that half his bees died of fright. Or maybe they smelled his breath, I’m not quite sure.”

“How much do I owe you for the wine?”

“Nothing at all. I wanted to give it to the old man, anyway, so you’ll be doing me a favor.”

* * *

“The management of the project does not interfere with the player’s actions inside the game, nor does it have the capacity for such interference. A player can only be disconnected as a result of court ruling or the decision of an administrative council. None of the players’ complaints concerning cheating, insults, violence, loss of property or money, racial, gender-based, or other kinds of discrimination are taken into consideration if the above took place inside the game.

Game-related problems should be solved with game-related methods or through litigation in accordance with the current legislation.

See the corresponding chapter for specific details on court procedures pertaining to gaming projects.”

Project administration’s announcement on the game’s official site.

Chapter 34

Ros knocked on the gate. There was no reply, so he knocked again. Everything was silent. The fence was tall and tight as a palisade, without a single gap. You couldn’t see anything—the old man’s place was a veritable fortress. The house could be seen from afar, looking suspiciously impregnable and quite unlike the other dwellings with their open yards.

“Hey! Is there anyone alive in the fortress?!”

“Who’d come here looking for the living all of a sudden?” asked an unfriendly voice from behind the fence.

“I have brought you some wine from Uncle Skhor.”

The latched clinked, the wicket gate opened, and the little old man that Ros had intended to meet peeked out. It was hard to tell what his race was—he looked like a grey-skinned elf, but his ears were a lot longer (as though the elvish weren’t long enough already). A somewhat more humanlike copy of Master Yoda from Star Wars.

The old guy thrust his hand forward in a demanding gesture. His forearm was thin as a skeleton’s—bone and sinew wrapped in skin.

“Excuse me, my good sir, but who would I have the pleasure to be talking to?”

“I’m Starbonis. Who else did you expect to find here?”

“Here’s the wine, and there’s something I’d like to talk about.”

“Why would I want to talk to a cheeky green pipsqueak like you?”

“It’s about your past.”

“Is that right?!”

“Would you prefer to talk here for all the village to hear? I can see the old women across the road pricking up their ears.”

“They can burn, ears and all, those mangy sows. All right, get in—I can see it’s easier for me to talk to you than to shoo you away.”

Ros realized his Charisma didn’t affect this particular NPC, at least not visibly so. Then again, perhaps this cranky geezer wouldn’t have even opened his door to another player.

The house and the interior looked just like the palisade fence: simple and sturdy. Everything was also amazingly neat. Men often adopt a cavalier attitude to housekeeping, but here one would be hard-pressed to find so much as a handful of specks of dust, even with a magnifying glass.

“Sit,” the old man pointed to a massive stool. “Well, out with it—what exactly is wrong about my past?”

“Oh, it’s just that I’ve found out that the world-famous royal jeweler lives in a backwater village and not the capital. I believe you have your reasons. As for me, I would really like to learn the jeweler’s craft. Why don’t I help you solve your problems while you help me in return? How about it?”

“Thanks for making an old man laugh. I have no problems, kiddo—none at all, and it’s been that way for a long time. I like it here, and I have chosen this place to get some peace and quiet. Get it?”

Ros grimaced.

“Oh well, sorry for disturbing you, then. I’ll be on my way.”

“Sit, I haven’t dismissed you yet. I’ll tell you this: you have reminded me of the olden days, and the memories have set my soul on fire. Nowadays it’s just bees, and that can get tedious… But you know little of me. I am no simple jeweler—I also used to be known as one of the best gem-cutters. Gems were my life. And it is still one of my greatest regrets that I never mastered the art of enchantment. But then, why would I need it now? It’s so nice here… quiet… and I have my bees… You shouldn’t have brought up my past so frivolously…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, since you’re owning up to the error of your ways, it is on you to remedy the situation. Should you manage that, I’ll help you learn the skill, and I’ll even provide you with the tools you’ll need to get started.”

“How do I remedy it?”

“You’ll have to try hard. See this table here? I’d like to see—oh, let’s say a thousand gemstones glistening on it. Pile them on, I’ll admire them, and then I can get back to my bees. I don’t need the gems, you can keep them. But know that quartz alone won’t do the trick. I want twelve different kinds, and by tomorrow morning at the latest. They have to be of good quality, too—well, not all of them, perhaps. Get going now, find those gems, and don’t come back until you do.”

Ros couldn’t help flashing a very smug grin.

“What a fortunate day. I was lucky indeed to have paid you a visit.”

“You’ll be as lucky to see yourself out without me sending you on your way with a kick in the butt. I don’t like to wait.”

“Why would I have to go anywhere and search for anything? I have everything you’ve asked for right here.”

“Why, I’ve never seen a liar quite like you! How does your conscience permit you to lie with such an honest look in your eyes?”

“You’ll see for yourself in a moment.”

Ros got up, approached the table, took his miner’s bag out of his belt, and started emptying it slot by slot. Each could contain up to 250 gems. He had filled up fourteen slots completely, and even more partially mining the caves and the Chaos dungeon. He only hoped the table would endure, as well as the old man’s heart. The old-timer had a completely flabbergasted look on his face with his jaw nearly reaching the floor, and Ros was only just getting started.

In a few minutes, there was a pile of uncut gems on the table. Ros proclaimed proudly:

“Sixteen types. Mostly amethysts, citrines, and morions. Some varieties are represented very poorly, and I have but a single sapphire—its quality is not that good, either. However, there is hardly any of the quartz that you seem to detest so much.”

Starbonis got up, took a few steps towards the door, bolted it, and peered out of the window with an expression on his face that might suggest he had just stolen something of great value and was now afraid of being found out. He drew the curtains, took an oil lamp off the wall, lighting it in a strange way—with his fingers—and stood motionless in front of the table, watching the pile of gems glisten in the yellowish light.

“I saaaaaay… I didn’t think I’d ever see something like this again. That is no bag you have there, my dear lad—it’s nothing short of a royal treasury. That’s the only place I’ve seen something like this.”

Dear lad? That must be a good sign—the old man was already treating him like kin.

Ros coughed.

“So, what do you say? Have I fulfilled your wish?”

“My wish?” replied the old man pensively. “Not quite my wish, mind you. You have five thousand eight hundred and forty-two stones of varying quality, sixteen types all in all, whereas I told you to get me a thousand, and around twelve types.”

“Is it that bad that I have managed more?”

“Why would that be bad? It’s good. I could almost say it’s perfect. You have indeed pleased me, lad. You have pleased me well. So, what did you want in return? Oh yes, I remember… How about a cup of tea while I gather my wits about me?”

“Sure, I’d love one.”

“Gather your gemstones and get them out of sight, lest an evil eye sees them, and I’ll put the kettle on.”

It took him much longer to gather the gems than it did to spill them out, but the old man said nothing as he waited patiently for the gems to disappear inside the nondescript bag.

Ros asked him as he picked up the last of his gems:

“How did you manage to count all the gems? Even I had no idea how many there were exactly.”

“What else would you expect from a royal gem-cutter?”

“I have no idea—gem-cutting is a mystery to me.”

“Many things are a mystery to you, but luck seems to be on your side, since it has gifted you with such a fortune at such an auspicious moment. Some fools think a gem-cutter’s profession has got nothing to do with luck. They couldn’t be more wrong, although what would you expect from fools…”

“Mr. Starbonis, my luck is very strong, have no doubts about that.”

“I have noticed—I’m good at seeing the essence of things. I can also see that you have concealed your race.”

“Can many see that?”

“Among for the likes of you, the newcomer folk—I doubt it. But there are many of the olden folk who possess that skill.”

“That’s bad. I’m in hiding. From others like me.”

“None of our people should reveal anything if they aren’t questioned too hard. But you should keep yourself covered all the same, just in case.”

“Covered?”

“Learn the Veil of Mystery spell. No one needs it—I would wager that none of your people ever even tried learning it. You, on the other hand, should find it handy—not a single living soul will see your true race or anything else.”

“Thank you so much!”

“You are welcome. So, I promised you I would teach you the Jewelry skill and provide you with the tools to get you started. Now, I will not be keeping that particular promise. Oh, don’t you jump up like that! Oh, that hurt look on your face is precious. You misunderstand me, son. I’ll teach you Jewelry, as well as Gem-Cutting. They should never be separated—the two skills are like needle and thread. Gems should not be made separately from the item. You shall realize as much later. And do not repeat my mistake: master the skill of Enchanting, no matter what it takes. Then you shall have no rivals under the sun. I see that you have achieved a lot in different areas. You can do everything on your own. When you mine the gems and the ore yourself, and do your own smelting and cutting, and when you create an item yourself, using the gems you chose by yourself, their souls will merge in what you create—it will be a far cry from all those trinkets of dubious utility. You will also be more likely to create items of great power when you do everything with your own hands, without involving anyone else. Every item remembers how it was changed, and the person who changed it. Do your job diligently, and they will be grateful. Apart from that, gems with a good enchantment are very rare. You will be able to enhance your battle trophies, making them a lot more valuable, which is a sure way to become rich and famous. Although I suppose you don’t need fame, you have already become legendary… If you have enough time to master the Blacksmithing skill, you will also be able to make armor. Shoemaking and Tailoring are useful, too, but you can leave them for later, or delegate them to somebody else. It will take many years to learn everything you need.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

“That’s what everybody says, but no one ever has enough time. So, I’m not giving you any tools because you won’t need them. Your Luck will serve you better than any tool.”

“How is that?”

“You have the power of magic, so you will use it to create jewelry and cut gems.”

“I don’t get it. How does it work?”

“Stop announcing your ignorance aloud! You shall understand everything once you learn what I have to teach you. I will bring you two books. You need to read them attentively—and quickly. You’ll read here. I don’t even allow myself to take them out of the house. There’s enough tea on the table—help yourself to as much as you can drink. It helps you think, especially if you brew it strong. So, read the books and meditate on them, and I’ll pay the bees a visit. I’m overexcited, and there’s nothing like bees to settle the nerves.”

* * *

The Secret Art of Freeing the Soul of Stone and The Magic of Jewelry were the titles of the books. They were very thick, much to Ros’ chagrin. But there was nothing to be done about it—he did say he wanted to learn the skills, after all.

He turned a page over, then another, and another. There were diagrams, various cuts, facet angles for different types of gems, and lots of other things.

The old man paid him a visit as he was halfway through the first book.

“Learning, eh? Well done, keep at it. There’s nothing to do out there—things look rather grim.”

“What happened?”

“There’s a bunch of people, all of them rather swarthy, running around in the street, some of them wearing nothing but their underwear, fancy that. And they keep screaming all sorts of obscenities, the likes of which even I have never heard. Our village drunkard is following them with his jaw down to his knees, hanging on to and trying to memorize their every word. He will find use for all of them, I’m sure.”

“What’s the matter with them?”

“Some foreign bandits have been getting to all sorts of mischief. A small group of them chose the edge of the woods as their playground, so these swarthy folks decided to gather a larger party to vanquish them, and set off toward the woods. But those bandits were sly. The small group was there to draw them in. Once they did, a large force of the bandits came out—enough to leave some of these folks wearing nothing but their pantaloons. All of them were slain in a matter of seconds. Now these swarthy fellows are saying they intend to gather an avenging army. Imagine that. I hope they leave the village alone—I’m too old to get mixed up in these things. And to think I’d intended to find a quiet place…”

Ros chuckled—his fellow countryfolk were wreaking havoc all over. A simple noob should not draw anyone’s attention, not with hundreds of low-level players gathered in the vicinity of the village who wouldn’t risk leaving this more or less safe haven. As per the forum, raids on unprotected communities had extremely negative effects on the players’ karma—in some cases, valuable stats like Luck became reduced irreversibly, so even the biggest psychos among the Russians were unlikely to show up here. Villages were nothing like walled towns—the penalties for attacking the latter were incomparably lighter, and if one fulfilled a number of conditions, one could avoid them altogether.

* * *

Ros dozed off a few times during the night, only to wake up and resume reading. The old man was unwavering about it—he had to learn everything in one go, without getting up. Ros didn’t object too much. Gems and jewelry were in constant demand according to the forum, and dozens of clans sought gem-cutters and jewelers in the Vacancies section, struggling to find applicants worthy of consideration. Leveling such skills was both lengthy and costly, so few attempted to invest serious time and effort into them.

Ros had to think about the future. Trophies were fine, but creative labor shouldn’t be scoffed at, either—especially the well-paid sort.

It was long past midday when Ros turned over the last page, sat there for a minute or two, shut the book, and stretched with gusto, like a cat after a long night’s sleep.

He heard the door open, as the breeze wafted in the smell of honey.

“How did it go, lad?”

“I have read the books. Both of them.”

“Thoroughly?”

“As thoroughly as I could.”

The old man approached, and looked down at Ros, who was sitting at the table. His expression changed from stern to contemplative. Eventually, he said:

“I can see that you are telling the truth.”

“You receive three auxiliary stats: Jewelry, Gem-Cutting, and Magical Transmogrifier. Due to the qualities of your character, all your auxiliary stats are raised to six automatically.”

“Happy, son?”

“You bet. But what about the third stat? Magical Transmogrification?”

“Haven’t I told you that you’d need no tools? You will use magic.”

“I see.”

“Your Crafting and Creation skills look good enough, you’re capable of seeing the Essence of Things even better, and you’re well-endowed with Reason. I won’t even mention your Luck—it treats you very favorably indeed. You possess many talents. Exercise them. Work on yourself and on your skills so that you might progress.”

“That’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”

“And so, your dream will come true.”

“Could you please tell me whether the others will be able to see my special talents, the way you do, if I use the Veil of Mystery? If I join a party, for example?”

“They will only see whatever you decide to let them see.”

“Got it. So, I’ll be off, then? Or is there anything else?”

“Go. The village is quiet at last. The foreign bandits are gone—they’ve done as much damage as they’d wanted, and then departed whence they came. You can go wherever you want without any trouble. But be careful on the roads—we have enough footpads of our own.”

“Where would I get the Veil of Mystery?”

“That’s common knowledge—at the Mages’ Guild[MB2].”

“And where can I find the guild?”

“Oh, they have branches in virtually every town and city. It won’t be hard to find.”

“Thank you once again. I’m really in your debt.”

“You are welcome. One more thing: not a single word about me to any living soul. Don’t forget that I helped you.”

“Understood. I’ll be as silent as a tombstone.”

“Quite right. Remember that if anyone asks about me.”

And with that, the old man headed back toward the wicket gate.

Chapter 35

“You have crafted a cut amethyst of good quality. You have crafted a cut amethyst of good quality. You have crafted a cut amethyst of excellent quality. Attention! Not enough magic energy. You cannot craft this item.”

Out of mana. Again. Had he known what he’d get up to, he would have dumped all his undistributed points into Intellect and then settle down for about a week cutting gems.

Ros spent the rest of the day at the shopkeeper’s hayloft, only taking a break for supper and a quick wash. He’d managed to cut about two hundred gems, although about a quarter had disintegrated into useless sand in the process. The forum prices for good-quality gems were around three or four gold pieces, and a dozen or more for excellent ones. There were very few of the latter, but he should be able to sell the lot for a decent sum, given the sheer volume of his stock.

Ros had come up with a plan of action for the nearest future even before leaving the former royal jeweler’s yard. He had to reach the Mages’ Guild and learn the skill he was now desperate to have. If Starbonis was right, he would no longer be identifiable by any method.

He studied the forum and found out that the Mages’ Guild was a place where you could receive quests and learn skills, but the former were troublesome without yielding much in the way of a reward, while the latter were of poor quality and only good for the lowest-level noobs. Proper spells were learned from scrolls looted off mobs. Those were rare, and usually dropped by dungeon bosses; moreover, colossal demand made them prohibitively expensive.

He also found a thread where the Veil of Mystery was discussed. Everyone concurred that the skill in question was a mere mockery of zero utility. All this spell could do was hide your stats. You could specify any values as long as they were lower than the ones you actually had. Thus, it wouldn’t even be useful for deceiving a potential employer by inflating one’s stats. So, what was the point?

There was no point in it for anyone—except Ros.

He said farewell to the hospitable shopkeeper in the morning, assuring him that he would definitely pay him a visit if he ever visited these parts again, and then headed toward Peghur, which was the nearest town. The same forum had informed him there was a branch of the Mages’ Guild there, which was just what he needed.

He would also need money. It was said that the Veil of Mystery was outrageously expensive. The players found it ridiculous—no one would pay a copper for such a useless skill, so why would anyone shell out a small fortune for it? He intended to use his cut gems to solve his financial issues. The same town had a branch of the Jewelers’ and Artisans’ guilds, located in the same building. High-quality gems were in constant demand among the representatives of both these professions. They might buy them cheaper than other players, but at least he could sell everything at once without any delay.

* * *

Walking down the road was boring—much more so than crossing the woodland. Back then he could at least watch lizards darting this way and that, pick berries, and gather useful herbs. But there was nothing to stop for here, and nothing to pick from the overgrown roadside.

A party of high-level players rode by once—their mounts included horses, tigers, and beasts that looked like nothing Ros had ever seen before, leaving a cloud of dust behind him that made him sneeze. They paid no attention to Ros, and didn’t seem to be particularly wary in the first place. He hadn’t been following the recent news, but this suggested that the “Russian invasion” must have come to an end.

Either that, or the Russians had moved elsewhere—to some place where herds of green noobs roamed free.

Ros occasionally made stops in the bushes, cutting the gems he had mined until he would run out of mana, and then journeyed on.

During one such break he decided to work on ore instead of gems. He had gathered some of the simplest copper ore at the thylbit camp for the specific purpose of someday unlocking some of the stats associated with processing it.

The ore was high quality. When processed, it was supposed to transform into a copper bar. Ros squeezed the rock in his hand, stared at it intently, and visualized it transform into reddish metal.

There was a barely audible hiss, and a handful of slag sand poured onto the ground. There was a neat little bar in the palm of his hand.

Success!

He temporarily left the gems alone, switching to the ore. Even with his new stats, he was still a little overloaded, so he shouldn’t miss the opportunity of dropping some weight—a lump of ore weighed four and a half times as much as a bar, and he had plenty of those.

Ros used up all his mana during his very first break, unlocking three new auxiliary stats: Metal Expert, Molding, and Metallurgy. Another one unlocked during his next break: Dowser. And, having found out from the forum that many of the players bounced for a reason—namely, to level up Acrobatics, he soon unlocked that stat, too.

His new skills hastened the smelting of ore considerably, and it was now consuming less mana, too.

The old man was a real treasure trove—the skills received from him were invaluable.

As Ros sat there smelting the ore, he dreamed of clearing more dungeons, mining for ore and gems. Then he would make himself busy smelting ore and cutting gems. He might even learn Enchanting, although the forum posters warned it took a long time and cost a small fortune.

That was all right, though—he was prepared to make investments into his character. No money or effort spent on developing his skills would be wasted—all of it would come back with interest.

“Glavullin Athronastarkhum hits you for 22 damage.”

Ros yelped when an arrow struck him in the shoulder, coming from out of nowhere. The reflexes developed in the dungeon served him at once—he jumped aside before his brain could process what was happening, spun, and then dashed in the opposite direction. Another arrow whistled by before he finally saw the aggressor. A pot-bellied dwarf was standing at the edge of the wood, letting loose one arrow after another from a most unprepossessing bow. His name was displayed in reddish lettering, which surprised Ros a little: someone with so little skill in archery was barely capable of dealing damage and would find it hard to kill the most ordinary level ten player, let alone escape the encounter unscathed. But he must have managed it somehow. More likely, he had caught someone who’d left their body in the wrong place and then hacked it up like a training dummy.

The dwarf ran out of arrows without scoring any more hits—Ros’ Agility, Speed, and other stats that were much higher than usually expected of such levels, were on full display.

“Will you kick the bucket already, you noob?!” yelled the dwarf, dashing forward to engage in melee combat, waving a gnarled club most menacingly.

“You’re a funny one!” shouted Ros in response, raising his arm.

“I’m gonna show you who’s funny!”

“You hit Glavullin Athronastarkhum for 169 damage.”

Chaos Arrow took off two thirds of the attacker’s HP.

“Bastard! Walking abortion! Noob! Bottom-feeding noob mage!” yelled the dwarf, making a run for the woods.

“You kill Glavullin Athronastarkhum. XP received: 59. Points left until the next level: 1043.”

The hapless dwarf left a bunch of cheap and low-grade mementoes. That was typical for his kind—when you played with this much risk, it made no sense to wear expensive equipment. Ros picked up everything without his usual disdain for cheap items, and scattered the trophies in the tall grass that grew alongside the road. The caches were primitive, but these places were frequented by many players, which meant his Cache Master skill level would grow.

His private chat window blinked. The dwarf had respawned and seemed eager to tell him something.

“Hey, you! If you touch my stuff, you’re gonna regret it!”

“You’re too late—I already touched it.”

“Say what?!”

“I picked up everything. Heading for the village now—the shopkeeper will give me a good price for all this loot. Thanks a lot.”

“Stop right where you are! You’ll have to spend the rest of your life in the village if you don’t give my stuff back! I won’t let you get out!”

“Sounds like a great idea. Fresh air, a lovely river nearby, mushrooms, berries, and so on. I guess that’s just where I’ll stay. I’ll have some money to spend once I sell off your stuff, too.”

“Bastard! Swine! I’ll find you IRL!”

“I can’t wait. And thanks again!”

Ros added the dwarf’s username to his ignore list—he would receive no further messages from that character. He didn’t regret it, for the other guy seemed to have said everything he had intended to, and listening to impotent curses of an obvious idiot was a tedious pastime.

A dwarf archer was really something. The race had no archery bonuses whatsoever. This Glavullin must have ignored the guides, too. Or perhaps he had intended to make his fortune in the mines, but eventually grew tired of swinging his pickaxe around and decided you could get rich by robbing other players.

The town must be nearby, or the aggressor’s bind spot, perhaps—otherwise there was no chance of sending a private message. Either that or the dwarf had managed to message him through one of the Messengers—they served the function of signal boosters as used by cellular networks and looked like rhombic obelisks tapering toward the top. You could find them along the roads, helping travelers stay in touch.

An hour later, Ros had to escape from a whole gang—three red players whose level he could not see. One of them turned out to be a mage, but a very weak one. He used some movement-impairing or freezing spell on Ros that didn’t stick, while the two sluggish warriors simply couldn’t catch up with their quarry, yelling insults as he got away.

He felt inclined to get back through the woods, get past their ambush, and attack them once a good opportunity presented itself. He could disable the mage, and then run laps around the warriors, pelting them with spells until they fell. But time was of the essence. The road seemed to be popular among noob hunters, so he would probably run into more trouble. If he launched a vendetta against every gang, it would take him more than a week to reach the town.

* * *

Ros got attacked two more times. The second encounter was dire enough for him to think he would not survive it. The gang also had a mage whose spell did work—Ros froze in place, unable to take his feet off the ground. He turned toward the three approaching warriors desperately, firing Chaos Arrows at them time and again, aiming at their legs. It worked—one of them suffered a critical hit and rolled on the ground, holding on to his broken shin, while the other started to run around in circles, hopping every now and then. Only the third fighter managed to reach Ros, swinging his axe to decapitate him. He missed—his target simply ducked.

Ros felt the control of his feet return at that very moment, and darted off, taking an axe hit in the back, followed by some nasty fiery spell from the mage that hit the same spot. This took off less than half of his HP, and he made his escape hearing curses and bewildered comments about the weird noob who was too tough for his own good.

He hoped they would keep silent about this skirmish. There were some parties who could express an interest in unusual noobs, and he wasn’t ready to face the curious crowd just yet.

His Vigor was nearly at zero as he approached the city, still running. Even though it regenerated twice faster now—as per the specifications of his achievements—it didn’t make much of a difference when consumed quickly.

There was a fair number of guards at the gates: six warriors and a mage, judging by the staff in his hands, all NPCs. Either they had always been serious about security here, or the security measures had been beefed up after the recent events.

“Why are you running like a mad horse?” one of the warriors asked gruffly.

“There are footpads aplenty along the road—I barely managed to escape, and have been running ever since.”

“Those thugs must be very sure of themselves to attack people right near the town.”

“Is this Peghur?”

“What else would it be?”

“This is where I’ve been meaning to go, then.”

“Let the mage record your name. Those are the new rules—there’s a war going on.”

“The war is over already, isn’t it?”

“We haven’t been informed, so we guard the gate as commanded.”

When the mage moved his palm over Ros’ head, he raised one eyebrow in surprise.

“So that’s how it is?”

“What?”

“You’re a very strange person.”

“Sure am. My mom always said so.”

“Your name doesn’t befit a hero.”

“My girlfriend likes it,” said Ros, recollecting a recent acquaintance. “So, may I pass?”

“Of course, welcome.”

The mage gave Ros a long stare as he entered the city, and Ros did not like it at all.

* * *

There were no problems with cut gems whatsoever—jewelers and craftsmen took them all, just as Ros had hoped; the quartermasters of the NPC guilds almost came to blows over who would get the best gems. He came out about six and a half thousand silver pieces richer. Ros had to put the money in one of the bags—they didn’t fit into his noobish purse.

That reminded him—he could get a much better one at the market. So that was where Ros headed next.

The choice of wares did not impress him much, but he did manage to get a decent bag and a purse, as well as a few enhanced items for warriors, including a one-handed sword. All of it would come in handy once he changed his looks. He intended to get to it as soon as possible, still feeling ill at ease from the look the mage had given him earlier. An NPC, granted, but you never knew—he may have been ordered to be on the lookout for strange noobs, and then report. Or perhaps someone had offered to pay him for information. Judging by the village shopkeeper, NPCs coveted silver.

The Mages’ Guild office was right next to the town hall, towering above it, as if the mages were hinting at who was really in charge of things in this town. Players of different races darted up and down a wide stone staircase, all of them clad in different attire. One even tried to get in wearing nothing but his long johns, but the guard at the entrance chased him away.

“Halt!” Ros heard someone call behind his back as he took the first step forward.

When he turned around, he saw players of an obviously high level approach him from three sides—he couldn’t see their levels regardless of his talents, and their accouterments looked nothing like what you’d see on a noob.

“Errou invites you to join their party. Accept/decline?”

Ros declined, obviously enough.

“Accept the party invitation!” shouted Errou impatiently, resending the invitation. “We’ll buff you.”

“I don’t need any buffs. I’m about to go offline for a while.”

“Come again?! Are you out of your mind, noobster?! Accept the invitation at once, or it’s the blacklist for you!”

“Screw you and your blacklist,” Ros snarled as he started up the stairs.

“You won’t leave the town! We’ll cut you to ribbons right here!”

“Sure thing. Consider me frightened.” Ros didn’t so much as turn around.

A hand grabbed him by the shoulder roughly, but he shook it off easily. The guard at the top of the stairs took notice, and asked in a strict voice:

“Are these people causing you trouble?”

“Yeah, they started harassing me all of a sudden. They must be perverts of some sort.”

“Leave the Guild’s visitor alone, or there’ll be trouble!”

“We’ll wait for you here,” drawled Errou menacingly.

Ros looked calm on the outside, but he was shaking inside. Damn! They’d caught up with him! It must have been that NPC, just like he’d suspected. So, what would happen now?

Wrong question. The right question was somewhat different: what would he do next?

The three players decided against taking the guild by storm. They were too few to take down a building chock full of high-level NPCs who would surely resist. This meant he would have some time—even in the worst-case scenario, they’d need to gather enough players for an assault.

More likely, they wouldn’t attempt an assault and just wait for him to come out. No one could use a teleport inside a town or village building—it was supposed to be a physical impossibility. Thus, they must think he had three options: leave the building, leave the game, or kill himself and respawn.

If these guys were serious, they would keep track of everything—not just the guild, but the nearby area as well. No matter where he’d resurrect, he wouldn’t be able to stay unnoticed for long.

Also, if the NPC at the gates saw all of his actual stats and reported them to interested players, the conflict that had nearly ground to a halt would surely flare up again.

There were just too many people interested in Ros.

Chapter 36

“I need the scroll for the Veil of Mystery!” Ros blurted this out as soon as he entered the office that the chatty guard had directed him to.

“Keep it down, young man,” said an elderly wrinkled NPC, holding out his hand. “Hand it over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The receipt, of course.”

“Receipt?”

“That’s right. You must be aware we don’t go about handing out scrolls for free—that would be against guild policy. However, I am prepared to offer you a substantial discount if you agree to perform a rather complicated task.”

“I’m in a hurry, so I’ll pay! How much will it be?!”

“You don’t have to shout like that,” the old man winced.

“I’m in a great hurry.”

“Nine hundred and eighty guineas.”

“Is it all right to pay in silver?”

“Certainly. But I’m not the one who collects money—I only take receipts.”

“Where do I pay?” Ros felt a chill run down his spine as he imagined having to cross the village.

“The cashier’s office is right next to the exit.”

Ros felt an instant relief and dashed into the corridor. After paying the asking price, he ran back just as quickly, handing the receipt to the old man.

The NPC studied it attentively, grunted gruffly, rose, opened the bookcase behind him and rummaged inside it, then produced a snow-white scroll tied over with a pink ribbon.

“The Veil of Mystery, as ordered.”

Ros darted back. The old man yelled, confused:

“Where are you off to?! You have forgotten your receipt stub!”

“Hang it on a nail in your privy!” Ros yelled, already running down the corridor. He saw a young elven lady pass by, and gently stopped her, touching her on the elbow.

“Sister, this cap of yours is the bee’s knees! I’ll buy it for my girlfriend if you agree—just name your price.”

The girl looked surprised. “It hasn’t got any bonuses, you know.”

“I just like the way it looks. How much?”

“Well… Fifteen silver pieces?” asked the elven girl uncertainly.

“How about twelve? If you’re OK with that, it’s a deal,” Ros offered so as not to look like an oblivious moneybags.

It was quieter on the second floor, and there were fewer players. Ros hid behind a statue depicting a hero in a flowing wide cape—wide enough that you could hide a cow here if you wanted to.

“You have learned the spell: Veil of Mystery. Magic will help you hide your true nature from other players and creatures. Attention! Players and creatures whose level exceeds half the value of your Intellect will be able to see your true essence. Magic energy required: 825 points. Cooldown: 1000 seconds. The spell consumes 4 magic energy points per second until cancelled. The effect of the spell can be cancelled by repeated use or dispelled with a debuffing skill. The spell is also dispelled in case of the character’s death.”

Damn—that was something he hadn’t been aware of. The Intellect condition was rather unpleasant, meaning the protection wasn’t absolute. However, it should still help him escape.

And now it was time for Clean Slate.

Once Ros entered the character modification mode, the first thing he did was raise his Intellect so that it would be slightly above six hundred—with the aid of the bonuses of the legendary invisible belt. Now even the famous level three hundred Chinese player would not be able to see anything he wasn’t supposed to.

Additionally, high Intellect implied quick mana regeneration. That would more than compensate for the magic energy points spent on keeping the Veil of Mystery up.

His appearance came next. He chose a race that wasn’t very popular this time—the flightings. The racial bonuses were the main reason for the race’s low popularity—their most powerful abilities were oriented at providing support to other players. Flightings made excellent buffers and healers, but few players enjoyed playing as a “first aid kit” or “party amplifier.” They were next to useless on their own—a typical class for playing as part of a group.

“Attention: you have entered the administrative mode with extended account editing options. Are you sure you want to change the character’s sex?”

It was hardly something he dreamed of, but this was no time to be conservative about one’s means. Everyone on the forum claimed it was impossible to play with a character whose sex differed from your own. For everyone but him, that is. Ros should never again be suspected by anyone once he went through with the sex change.

“Attention: this option functions in limited availability mode. Enter the test period duration.”

Ros moved the slider all the way to the right.

“A hundred-day test period has been chosen. The character’s stats will be corrected automatically after the end of the period.”

Even a week would be fine by Ros—all he wanted was to leave the building.

Now he had to work on his appearance and select a name. He decided to settle on the most banal option: NurseLady. It would instantly make it clear to everyone that his character was oriented toward support from the very beginning.

The ethical issues associated with such a radical method of camouflage did not bother Ros at all. He wouldn’t think twice about becoming a camel if it meant he would be left alone.

In fact, he was prepared to spend a week standing on his head. And when it was over, he’d most likely change his appearance again.

Ros did everything he could in the editor to transform his character in the most radical way. He ended up with the likeness of a frail-looking teenage girl looking perfectly harmless and not even remotely pretty, placing an icon indicating his character’s in-game appearance was similar to how the owner looked in real life next to his name as a coup de grace. He also distorted his voice to make it sound almost like the squeaking of a rodent.

His new image was complete. To be sure, it wasn’t without flaws, but it would be absolutely impossible to see any similarity between his new appearance and his former character.

He quit the editor and cast Veil of Mystery on himself. Once the spell took, he got access to fine-tuning options of what others could or could not see. He made his stats look normal and made sure the players in his party or clan would get no bonuses from his achievements.

Ros had thirty-eight undistributed levels left—he could jump to level forty-nine from his current level of eleven (raised from ten by cutting gems and smelting ore). It would be stupid to use them right now, and far more prudent to level to two hundred first, whereupon progress would grind to a halt, and make the leap then.

Nevertheless, he very reluctantly sacrificed three levels, raising his to fourteen.

Now it was time to take care of his clothes. He removed the well-worn archer’s glove, as well as everything else. It was a pity he hadn’t thought of buying one for women at the market. But it wasn’t a big deal—noobs wore all sorts of things. It took them until level thirty or forty before they started sporting decent equipment. Also, level fourteen was better than ten or eleven—he had a wider selection of items in his bags.

* * *

John Archer44, a light elf who had entered the Mages’ Guild was tall and long-eared, with long fair hair and an unprepossessing bow at his back, clad in halfway decent clothes and boots. No one ever saw him afterwards.

In his stead came out a flighting by the name of NurseLady: petite, frail-looking, dark-haired, unarmed and barefoot, wearing a long cuirass made of thamyl tree bark with something resembling a skirt made of the same material attached to it. Ros had found it in one of the dungeon’s caches, and decided to take it, since it wasn’t particularly heavy, even though its class wasn’t any higher than enhanced. Not exactly a dress, but it looked similar enough to come in handy. The small coquettish cap was the icing on the cake—no man would ever put on anything like it, unless he was fond of dressing in drag. Or unless he was in dire straits, like Ros.

He was aware that lower-level players aiming to level up their earth magic skills often went barefoot, which drew them closer to their element of choice and yielded infinitesimal bonuses, so he wouldn’t look suspicious. The lack of a weapon wasn’t critical, either—many players preferred to keep their weapons out of sight in the city, and you could stuff a lot in your bag, provided you had enough slots.

Ros didn’t leave the guild building at once. He descended to the first floor, noticing greater numbers of high-level players who were obviously on the lookout for someone. He found a mage responsible for healing and support, and spent the rest of his money on four scrolls: Armor Aura, Attack Aura, Regeneration Aura, and Lesser Healing. Now he could pass for an actual flighting noobster under any circumstances.

Or, given his present circumstances, a noobsterette.

There was a bunch of high-level players at the bottom of the staircase. One of them kept repeating the same announcement in a monotonous voice:

“We are conducting a search. Accept our invitations and reveal your stats. Whoever fails to comply will automatically be blacklisted.”

That was the first time Ros thought of taking a look at the name of their guild. It was J_P—the very same “Jeeps” who chased the “Corsicans” from the destroyed mine without breaking a sweat. They ranked among the strongest clans of the sector—and the game world as a whole. These guys would have enough resources and chutzpah to destroy the whole town, consequences be damned.

He also received an invitation to join a party. He accepted it, trying to look as surprised and confused as a schoolgirl noob would in a strange situation. A few seconds later, a system message told him:

“You have been removed from the party.”

“NurseLady is free to go!” a voice said around the same moment.

Another player swore.

“Are you a complete idiot?! Why are you checking chicks?”

“Duh, I just poked her without thinking. Hey! You! The necro over there! Accept the party invitation, or there’ll be trouble for you!”

They weren’t interested in Ros. No one had an inkling that someone in this world could hide under such a disguise. The extended editor options and the Veil of Mystery proved extremely useful—had he been unable to disable the heroic party bonuses, they would have found him out at once.

The Jeeps were causing quite a commotion—the local chat was aswarm with messages. Ros also received two private messages from male players wishing to get acquainted more closely. He turned off all the messages except for those sent by the system, and hurried to leave the dangerous place. Once he got away from the bustle, he asked an NPC about a place where one could get a good price for bars of metal, then made for the part of town with the workshops, smithies, and foundries. Once there, he sold all the copper he had smelted on the road.

Players at the market would probably pay more, but they might wonder about a character with a non-worker specialization selling large quantities of atypical loot. But the NPCs didn’t seem to care—not a single one looked surprised.

As Ros browsed the market, he managed to sell a couple of enhanced rings and pick up some needed equipment: common wizard shoes, an enhanced amulet, and, most importantly, a mage’s staff. It wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t too crappy, either, and just right for his level.

All he had to do now was leave the town. And he had three options to choose from.

The first was the stationary teleport to reach a nearby town or city. The second was the teleportation scroll or the skill received in the dungeon along with his heroic achievements. And the third was to walk out on foot or catch a coach or a caravan headed in the same direction.

Ros would take every teleport under control, had he been looking for a player like himself.

Teleportation was expensive—players of his level only used it when they flush with extra dough. Even though it was near impossible to identify him now, there were still a few methods that might work. People might wonder about a poorly-dressed girl spending a small fortune on teleportation. A single debuff or something of that sort might prove sufficient for them to find out everything about him.

A teleport scroll or skill would take him to any place he had visited before. Even if he failed to pull it off in the city due to the omnipresent players, he could search for a private place outside city limits.

However, people would spare no effort looking for John Archer, so it would be logical to suss out where he came from. He must have been sighted in the village and along the road; apart from that, the NPC who must have exposed him was aware whence Ros came after making his escape from the bandits. The mine and its environs wouldn’t stay unattended, either.

He felt that turning up where the search party would look for him would be imprudent.

Very imprudent.

That meant the third option would be his best bet.

* * *

There were four gates in the city wall, and Ros got lucky, running into a peasant caravan with a dozen carts leaving the city. He found out their destination from one of their drivers, and then asked the gaffer whether he could take him to the village of Aypa, which they would pass on their way. He even offered to pay—however, the bearded peasant did not take his money, saying that flightings were always welcome, and that, should anything happen, she was by no means to take part in the battle, and concentrate on healing.

Ros made himself comfortable in one of the carts on a pile of empty sacks left from sold agricultural produce. It appeared that the city never did get a proper blockade—there were no players checking everyone at the gates.

But that wouldn’t last long.

Chapter 37

Ros would nod off every now and then, and then wake up again whenever the cart would hopped over a rock or a hillock. The coachman kept muttering monotonously about the prices for oats, gigantic shrews that had the audacity of spoiling the harvest of sugar beet, the drunk shepherd who had managed to drown two calves in a shallow pond, and other significant events of his glorious village life. He didn’t care much about people listening—the blabbering must have been his method of staying awake.

In the morning, the coachman woke Ros up with a shout:

“Come on, beautiful, get up!”

“Eh? Say what?”

“You wanted Aypa, didn’t you?”

“I sure did.”

“Well, you have arrived. Follow this path, and you’ll be in Aypa in about an hour. Not that I would recommend you to go there, mind you.”

“Why?”

“It’s a rotten place. The people who live there are mean, stingy, and lazy. Evil has them enthralled.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“There used to be a big city there, proud and rich. It got buried when the mages warred for domination over elements, people and all. There’s a hill where the city used to stand—you can reach it through burrows in the ground. As for the denizens, they got buried, but they didn’t die. Or, rather, they did—how do I put it without scaring you too much… Well, your best bet would be staying away from there.”

“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”

“If you decide to return, don’t walk the main road on your own. There are many evil people among your kin. A caravan is too much for them to handle, but if you walk alone, they may cause you trouble. They have no shame—they won’t hold back even if you’re a good-natured flighting.”

Ros watched the caravan leave, and then started toward Aypa. The NPCs may be as scared of the undead, but for him, the living dead were precisely what he needed. He studied the map published at the forum, and confirmed this was the area used by players between the levels of twelve and twenty-five to level up.

A low-level noob girl, poorly dressed, sixteen years old or even younger, judging by the icon next to her name. The choice of class was logical for someone like her—a good-natured healer incapable of killing anyone, grinding away like she was supposed to. No one could be more harmless and less suspicious…

* * *

Ros liked the village. It was much bigger than the one where he’d learned Jewelry and Gem-Cutting. There was a lot more going on here, and it had nothing to do with groups of high-level players moving from one place to another. It was easy to identify this place as a true noob capital. There were groups of noobs as well as individual noobs, running this way and that, cursing each other aloud and in the zone chat, looking for someone or something and making a fuss about it, peddling useless and overpriced items, and asking silly questions about everything.

As soon as Ros reached the outskirts of the village, a private message from someone named Romeo Harlem lit up. He didn’t say a single word, but drew two bright red hearts and a tiny rose instead. A true chat wizard—the game had no emoticon sets; you had to roll your own.

A few minutes later someone called Titrach Amigo asked him, without bothering to draw any flowers: “Let’s get to know each other? Add me to your friends list.”

Another message reached him around the same time, with a much more straightforward and lewd suggestion.

Ros realized he hadn’t taken everything into account when deciding on his new image. It was unlikely that all female players were just as popular. The icon testifying to the similarity between the character’s appearance and that of its owner must be playing a part.

There were lots of girls in Second World, all of them young and amazingly beautiful. But who could guarantee that when you flirted with a cute light elf, the owner of the character wasn’t an ugly old crone with a triple chin?

The only guarantee was the icon next to one’s username. It was believed that this symbol could not be counterfeited.

Likewise one’s sex.

Before Ros, that is.

It didn’t matter much that his character would never make it as a model. The link to reality mattered to many players.

Within minutes he felt like disabling chat altogether. For some reason, most of the players tried to text him instead of sending a voice message. Perhaps the reality of the image attracted timid players, or there may have been some other psychological factor at play.

Ros ignored the messages from everyone trying to get to know him better (intimately, in some cases), and studied the local chat. There was enough to read there.

“A party to the Fallen City needs a tank[12]!”

“Level five elixirs for sale: mana and HP.”

“Hello, everyone! Why doesn’t my wolf cub level up?”

“LFG[13] the Fallen City. Halfling gob, dagger specced, level 19.”

“New clan recruiting! We grow fast!”

“Zombie teeth needed! Wholesale!”

“Anyone from Texas around?”

“Experienced level 23 tank forming a party to raid the Fallen City! DPS[14] players needed, as well as a healer! PM with your level and spec.”

Ros answered the last announcement, deeming it most reasonable and well-articulated.

“Hi, I’m a level 14 flighting buffer, all healing spells learned.”

He received a response nearly instantly:

“Barry Bar offers you to join their party. Accept/decline?”

Ros accepted.

The party leader’s mark flashed up on the map as a tiny orange dot.

Over the time it took Ros to reach Barry, another player joined the party: SexyBabe79, followed almost instantly by another party member by the name of Marrak.

Barry turned out to be a dwarf. Ros wasn’t surprised—his forum research had yielded a lot of information. The underground denizens weren’t merely good miners, but also excelled as warriors, even though their race had a rather narrow specialization—nearly all of them were tanks. SexyBabe79 was a typical golden-haired elven maiden with a bow; Ros expected something of that sort from the moment he saw her name.

Marrak was the only one to surprise him. His skin green as an orc’s, the character was short—almost a midget—with spindly arms reaching all the way down to his knees. His race was called a goblin halfling. He must have mixed two or more races together, which was allowed for extended account holders.

Ros wasn’t much of an aesthete, but paying for a freak like that seemed an odd thing to do.

Still, he was in no position to judge others, having performed a very radical transformation of his own character just yesterday.

“Right on, listen up!” Barry started. “I know a cool cave. Once we get in, keep right behind me—no one runs out in front. Once I grab aggro and start attacking, the lot of you join in. Archer girl, make sure you don’t shoot me in the back—the likes of you are good at it. Shoot their archers and mages if you see any. They’ll shift their attention to you, so don’t just stand there—run back the second they turn on you. They’ll chase you, and run into me. Well, you get it. Nursie, you know any buffs?”

“Sure do,” Ros replied.

“Damn, you’ve got a real-life character! How old are you?”

“Does it matter? I have buffing and healing skills.”

“Ugh, I don’t like babysitting kids. They only cause problems.”

“Well, I happen to be capable!”

“I’m sure. All right, look, if you draw the mobs’ aggro or start dealing damage instead of healing, I’ll kick you out of the party at once. Got it?”

“Why does the leader get all the loot?” asked Marrak.

“We’ll share everything fairly once we’re done.”

“Why don’t you go on your own? You won’t have to share with anyone then.”

“Greenskin, what’s your deal? Do I look like a rip-off artist to you?”

“I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Either set up fair loot distribution, or look for other players.”

“In that case, I’ll leave, too,” said Babe.

“Oh, to hell with you. OK, I’ll disband the party, specify random loot drops, and send you invites once again.”

Nobody minded that.

Ros found it funny. He had enough stuff in his bag and on his character to buy half the village, and there he was arguing about sharing trophies from noob mobs.

But he didn’t let it show.

* * *

The Fallen City looked just like the coachman had described it—a hill pocked with black marks of tunnels burrowing deep inside. There were players near some of the entrances—small groups as well as lone figures. The chat was overflowing with requests from players seeking to join a group. Barry recruited a poorly-dressed level fifteen warrior with a notched sword called Sathitankur Abilangus.

It was easy to see that Sath had one of the cheaper accounts. Ros nearly shed a tear when nostalgia for his recent past hit him.

The dwarf led the party confidently, ignoring all the entrances they passed. A bloodied archer jumped out of one such hole as they approached, and started to roll downhill with a wild yell. Barry explained:

“He must have leveled up his running skill or downed a speed potion. The party wiped, while this guy managed to reach the entrance. The undead hate sunlight, so they didn’t chase him any further.”

“I’d hate to come here at night,” declared Babe.

“At night? You’d have to be a complete moron to come here after dusk. The kind of critters that creep up from the lower levels at night would make even a level fifty player sweat. There are bosses down there, too, but they stay deep underground and never come up.”

“Bosses?” Ros perked up, and, remembering that he should come across like a girl with no experience in life or gaming, added, “Aren’t they supposed to drop lots of valuables?”

“Sure,” Barry conceded. “But we’re the ones who will drop instead of the valuables. The local bosses are stingy and don’t drop much, whereas the mobs respawn quickly. The carcasses of the ones you kill decompose instantly, and the ground sucks in their remnants. Then they are revived somewhere down there, and it happens real fast. You’ll barely manage to mop them up by the time the respawned ones arrive from below. You could use a bunch of top players to clear up everything up to the bosses, with a party of level-appropriate characters following behind. But you’d have to bring the party back up, too. It would take around ten or twenty hours all in all, and you’d need around eight tough players; and all you’d get in return is one or two good or excellent items—and that’s not guaranteed, mind you. That’s thirty or forty bucks per person—a hundred if you’re very lucky. What about the elixirs they would use for combat? Or the wear and tear on expensive weapons and armor from the iron skeletons, requiring costly repairs? It’s not worth it, really. Top players have much easier and more reliable ways of making money. And here’s our hole.”

“What’s so special about this one?” asked Ros.

“Well, for one thing, cotton-armored schoolkids like you are harder to kill here. There’s a long tunnel with no side corridors, and no one will strike us in the back. We dispatch the ones in front, while you stand behind us and heal.”

“Got it.”

“Ready? Give us a buff, then.”

Ros cast all three of his buffing spells on each party member. One increased physical defense, the other, physical attack, and the third sped up mana regeneration. The skills weren’t very developed, and the bonuses they provided were minuscule. However, no one demonstrated any surprise or dissatisfaction, so his abilities must be typical for his level.

As he’d learned from his own experience and from studying guides, if stats could be distributed any way one liked, developing them one after another, all of them wholesale, or none of the above, sufficing with only the points gained by leveling, skills were much more difficult and complicated. If you wanted them to grow, you needed to use them in combat as much as possible, with no regard for mana. That was the only way to progress in any given skill, and the progress was painfully slow.

For all the fighting Ros had done, his Chaos Arrow had only grown to tier three; then again, admittedly, he hadn’t used it all that often. He had managed to level Lesser Healing of the Summoned Creature all the way up to eight due to constantly needing to replenish the leprus’ HP. But even this skill lagged far behind the progress of his stats.

Noob spells were weak, which meant it was next to impossible to level up a mage on one’s own. The character’s defenses were too weak, and the damage dealt at the lower levels was too insignificant. The mana expenditure was high as well. A warrior could destroy over a dozen mobs over the time it took a mage to kill just two, and without requiring any rest or potions to replenish mana. It was a little harder for an archer, as arrows cost money and would often break or get lost. However, they still spent fewer resources, and leveled even faster than melee fighters due to the damage dealt.

Mages were a tough class to play, suffering from a number of extremely unpleasant setbacks. First of all, they really needed to watch the weight they carried. The heavier the load, the slower their spells were cast. And a mage who was too slow casting a spell would be the second funniest sight in Second World—right after a dwarf buffer armed with a bow. Their entire strategy hinged on keeping mobs at a distance, so slowing down meant they’d have to do a tank’s work, something mages were very poorly qualified for. Even if you dressed one up in a suit of armor, any incoming melee damage was likely to interrupt the spell, which would have to be cast again. It was easy enough to surmise that low casting speed would result in frequent interruptions. In such a situation mages could only wave their staves about awkwardly, while the enemy kept pounding away at them.

Players who chose to use magic had to wear the lightest armor available or forgo it altogether in favor of cloth garments, derisively referred to as “rags.” The only thing that Ros found reassuring was that the mechanics of the game did not let his bag, no matter how heavy, affect the speed of spellcasting. But it didn’t provide any protection, either, only making it easier to gather and transport loot.

Another factor was that mages needed to prioritize two of their stats: Intellect and Mental Power. Intellect affected a large number of important characteristics. A high Intellect made it more likely to break the opponent’s magic defense, and was also responsible for the size of one’s mana pool and its regeneration rate. Mental Power affected magic damage, the amount of restored hit points, the duration of high-level debuffs and costly buffs.

Neither Intellect nor Mental Power provided any protection to the character, despite impacting some other things in combination with other stats. For example, a character with a high Intellect was harder to “hit” with skills from the Reason school, while Mental Power increased the efficiency of equipment with bonuses to Magic Defense.

Yet, neither stat affected physical damage sustained.

Warriors, archers, and the like were a whole other kettle of fish. All of them leveled their Agility and Strength—apart from everything else, the former was linked to one’s chance to evade enemy skills, projectile weapons, and melee attacks, while the latter made it possible to wear heavy armor, which reduced physical damage considerably. Furthermore, simply playing their typical role in combat grew their Stamina, Accuracy, Vigor, Attack, and Defense. This happened to the mages a lot less often—mobs never reached them, and they never attacked them with melee weapons.

Thus, everybody raised their defensive stats but mages. They were bound to remain squishy punching bags—the alternative would be to dump their undistributed points into something like Stamina instead of boosting their damage output. But a “tank mage” of this sort was a pain to play with—such a character could not withstand much damage, being vastly inferior to warriors in this respect, while also being weak attackers and thus of dubious utility to a party, often running out of mana to boot.

All this forced mages into being a class with a narrow specialization, dealing in warfare exclusively, or helping to farm a special kind of bosses with high physical and low magic defenses. Even then, they needed to reach at least level 100-150 to do any of this, whereupon they were capable learning skills from scrolls that couldn’t be purchased at any Mages’ Guild, but could only be found or dropped by mobs. Those skills were truly something, dealing a whole lot of damage, even at the cost of a lot more mana. Once again, they were useless for solo leveling—kill even a handful of mobs, then wait for all your best skills to come off cooldown. However, in a siege of an enemy fortress or a skirmish between the troops of warring clans, two or three mages could give their party a decisive advantage with their area-of-effect spells, especially when cast simultaneously.

The problem with such skills was that one could buy a decent car for the amount of money they fetched, perhaps a very decent one. Some even cost in the range of customized luxury models—or more.

As a result, mages were rather unpopular, to say the least, due to their leveling difficulties and the amounts of time, money, and effort it took to turn your character into a capable fighter.

There were no limits on the skills one could learn. You could collect them all, provided they didn’t conflict with each other, which would be a problem in and of itself. However, high-level skills required specific weapons—of the magical variety, or even highly-specialized magic staves. If a player had warrior’s abilities, one needed to wield a sword, an axe, or another weapon to be able to use a particular skill. That was costly and awkward, so weapons were the most expensive part of one’s equipment.

Apart from that, even high-level skills required leveling up, which took a lot of time.

Thus, the arsenal of a high-level player would normally contain three or four skills actively used in battle, typically of the basic noob variety raised to respectable levels. The richer players had another skill or two learned from rare scrolls. But even tycoons didn’t need more than ten, as it would take years to develop them. It would also be confusing to have too many skills—one would have to keep all their effects and usage parameters in mind, and be able to recall them in a pinch, which was even harder.

It wasn’t until Ros had poured over the forum on these topics that he realized what a rare and awesome prize his Chaos Arrow was, being a dynamic scalable skill. All he needed to do was keep leveling it, and it would transform as it grew, not only increasing its damage but also gaining additional effects. Eventually, it would be as good, or almost as good, as the skills learned from scrolls.

Or perhaps it would evolve into something even better—after all, he’d received it instead of a hero’s title, so it should compensate for the injustice.

Anyway, he would not level it today. Ros’ current role was merely that of a party’s first aid kit. He would spend a day here, play his new role with gusto, and, with luck, be spotted by some search party. They were bound to send someone here to check things out, after all. Then he would continue onwards, telling everyone he’d meet that leveling at the Fallen City was no longer prudent.

Ros didn’t come here randomly—he intended to leave tomorrow with the level of twenty-five or higher.

There was nothing to do at the Fallen City for players that advanced—they would have to seek new pastures and tougher mobs.

Chapter 38

Another unpleasant-looking figure jumped out of the darkness—the mummy of a small creature with a curved club in its bony hand. Barry thrust his shield forward to intercept the hit and pushed the mob back with force. It fell and never managed to rise again, its ribcage smashed by a hammer blow.

But three more creatures emerged from the darkness, and the dwarf only managed to get two of them. The last mummy ignored the tank, and attacked Babe for some reason, though she hadn’t done it any harm. Marrak materialized behind the mob, only slightly taller, striking the target in the neck with one dagger and paralyzing it, then lodged the second in the mummy’s temple. Ros cast his healing spell on the dwarf, whose HP bark shrunk a little, and the battle was over in half a minute. Another small pack of undead goblins was destroyed.

“You don’t mind us harassing your undead relatives, do you?” asked Barry with a chuckle.

Marrak did not respond, no stranger to jokes of this sort. He just searched the corpses for loot without saying a word. Ros liked the way he carried himself. The halfling might look weird, but he did his job very efficiently, and must have been dependable. Unlike the chatterbox dwarf, he hadn’t let the party down once.

“Nursie, I told you not to cast any healing unless I lose a lot of HP. Why do you do it almost right away? What if the mob switches its attention to you?”

“Well, it hasn’t, has it?”

“I’m a tank, so I can take plenty of damage, whereas you’re a squishy little rag doll likely to bite the dust in only a few blows. Wanna find yourself back at the village, eh? Don’t join the fray until I get all the mobs to attack me by giving each one a good whack on the head. Also, the lot of you… get ready, we may run into some archers now. And mages. You never know, it’s different every time. If it’s mages, I’ll start losing HP fast, so Nursie will have to be quick.”

“Got it.”

“Marrak, attack the mages from behind. They hit hard, but they’re just as squishy as our Nursie. Hey! There’s another bunch of gobs up in front. I can see them—dwarves have Twilight Vision. I’ll bring all of them over, so get ready for a train!”

The dwarf was as good as his word—he came running back, followed by seven smaller mummies at once. He nearly instantly used some skill affecting all nearby foes, and yelled:

“Heal me!”

Ros cast a healing spell obediently. Two goblins at once left the dwarf alone and rushed toward the healer to dispense punishment. Barry’s skill must have missed them, or his healing the tank had enraged them more than the damage received.

“Run, Nursie!!!” yelled the dwarf, so loud it rung in everyone’s ears.

Ros decided against running. Instead, he dealt the first goblin a blow on the forehead with his staff, making the mob fall on its rear end, then dodged the other one, tripping the undead creature up and making it roll down the well-trodden earthen floor.

Ros cast a healing spell on the dwarf without paying the mobs any further attention—the tank’s HP bar had shrunk by some ten percent. Sathitankur helped him with his unsightly sword. Babe held the arrow nocked, batting her unrealistically long eyelashes, but Marrak did what he had to, dashing to help the healer while ignoring the main group. Within seconds he killed one of the gobs, and tied up the second.

Another one stopped hammering away at the dwarf and went after Ros, just as Babe finally made her choice and skewered it with an arrow.

The dwarf kept yelling, “Heeeeeeeal!” even though he was no longer under attack and his HP were almost fully restored.

A much larger group of mummified gobs emerged from the darkness. They bypassed the dwarf, waving their clubs, having reached a unanimous decision that the healer was more important.

By and large, they were right.

Marrak glanced toward the exit, which was a long way away, and then at the attacking mobs. He winced and said, almost spitting every word:

“Run, Nursie, I’ll hold them back.”

Ros ran for about ten paces and turned around just as Marrak, having spun around himself twice like an enormous green top, managed to get each mob that was passing by with his daggers. The gobs stopped and assaulted their “relative,” having lost all interest in Ros.

He cast a healing spell, followed by another, and another. Marrak’s defenses were weak, and the greenskin’s HP kept flickering between nearly empty and completely full. That was Ros’ doing. The skill was noobish and he’d never managed to level it, but his unnaturally high Mental Power made the healing rather effective.

“Heeeeeeal!” the dwarf kept on shouting on top of his lungs.

Judging by his icon in the party window, he had absolutely no reason to yell—he’d barely lost a quarter of his HP, so he could wait a bit longer.

“Shut up, will you?!” Ros shouted. “Your yelling will attract more of them! Get the ones attacking Marrak! He’s doing the tanking for you!”

“Yikes!” yelped Babe as a fat chunk was taken out of the dwarf’s HP bar. “I’m so sorry, Barry, I didn’t mean to!”

The dwarf’s prediction about being hit by friendly fire did come true, after all.

Sathitankur’s HP bar flashed red, and there was nearly nothing left of it in less than a second, leaving him with a measly five or ten HP. Ros switched to him almost in the nick of time, but he never managed to finish casting the spell—the lowly warrior’s icon in the party window greyed out. Still putting up furious resistance, Marrak nearly went down, too—Ros barely managed to wrest him from death’s doorstep.

The dwarf finally realized that if he kept chipping away at each of his opponents a bit at a time, he’d go down before any of them would. His damage output was nothing to write home about, so he’d have to assist the dagger fighter if he wanted to get healed. The pressure eased instantly. Together, they took out one mob after another, and soon Ros could keep Marrak’s HP up without an effort, and even start throwing Barry some heals. The greenskin was fighting with one arm by then. The second one hung lifelessly, though that didn’t affect the speed of his movements.

The last mob to die was the one who begrudged getting hit with an arrow, switching to Babe at the end of the battle. Ros didn’t even have to heal her, as Marrak finished it off from behind.

“Why didn’t you heal me?” the dwarf roared.

“Put a sock in it,” said Marrak in a tired voice. “She was great at healing. She’s a good healer. A natural. She’s the reason we didn’t wipe.”

“Not all of you lived,” Ros shook his head.

“Well, that one was a total noob, poorly-outfitted, and with a stupid stat balance to boot. They offed him in two or three hits—no way you could’ve kept him up. There was no point letting him join. Can you heal injuries?”

“No such skill, alas.”

“In that case, I’ll run along. Thanks for the party, everyone.”

“There are few of us, and it will get dark soon,” said the archer. “It will get real dangerous here.”

“That’s true,” the dwarf nodded. “We sure did get carried away a bit.”

“Your party has been disbanded.”

As they approached the village, Babe saw some acquaintances of hers who were returning from some expedition, and turned toward them. The dwarf kept on chattering, primarily addressing Ros, offering to meet the following day and spend another day leveling together. Ros kept responding along the lines of, “Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

Once they returned to the village and the dwarf left, Marrak said in a low voice:

“Don’t group with him anymore.”

“Why?”

“He let the final attack of the mobs through to you deliberately.”

“He wanted to kill me? What for?”

“There’s an interesting bracelet you have there. I won’t ask any questions, but it looks like its grade is Good or higher. You might have something else on you, too—you’re pretty quick with those heals, and your mana hardly gets used up. You shouldn’t be able to pull it off with your stats, and your level isn’t all that high, either. So there must be something about your gear.”

“The bracelet is a good one indeed. I got it as a present. But the chance of losing it is very small—I have a white name, after all. The dwarf would not have gotten anything.”

“The chance is infinitesimal, but it still exists. If you go with him to another dungeon, he’ll try to talk you into binding near the entrance, so that you could level faster, albeit with more risk. Once you do that, he’ll just keep killing you over and over until he gets all your stuff. Players often do that.”

“Well, I’d never agree to changing my bind point in the first place.”

“I just wanted to warn you. Keep away from players of this sort.”

“Thanks!”

“You’re welcome. You’re a great buffer. Call me anytime, if anything.”

Ros stared after the goblin halfling. It was strange to find out that there was all manner of intrigue among the noobs.

* * *

No living creatures wandered through the Fallen City at night. No one left their characters there as they relinquished control of them going offline. Everyone stayed at the village. This was the time the creatures from the lowest levels ran rampant, emerging from the depths where the ruins of once magnificent buildings still lay, covered with a mound of earth.

Today, however, things were different. One of the players headed deeper and deeper in, disregarding his own safety. Yet, he was not exactly on his own.

“Undead Thylbit Commander. Creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 52. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 109; Attack: 98.”

The mob was a far cry from the leprus lost fighting the boss, but for a dungeon where mob levels scarcely went above 25 it was the equivalent of heavy artillery.

During the daytime Ros would have cleared the upper levels, but this was the night, with much more formidable creatures crawling out from the depths underneath the hill. He kept running into fiends in the thirty to forty level range, and even encountered a few elite mobs over level fifty. Those were incredibly tough, and he had to heal his pet nearly constantly. In other cases, he kept casting Chaos Arrow, leveling the magical attack skill he was growing to really like.

He also made a pleasant discovery: the pet could be buffed, too. And while the buffs were active in battle, the corresponding skills leveled up.

He would definitely have to get them up to snuff, collecting as many scrolls as he could at the guild, and using the buffs on himself as well as his pet.

By the end of his night run Ros raised his level from fifteen, which he’d achieved in the daytime, to twenty-seven. There was nothing surprising about it—he no longer had to share the XP with the rest of the party, and the new mobs were much tougher, which also expedited progress. He didn’t go any higher than that—his new level was sufficient for him to equip a few of his better trophies. In particular, he could now use the least demanding thylbit mage staff, which would make his Chaos Arrow deal more damage, and his healing more potent.

Dawn was still a long time away when Ros emerged from the tunnels and headed away from the village, distinguishable only by the lonely light of the night guard’s lantern. The map marked the outlying area as relatively safe, with few mobs and even fewer aggressive ones, and hardly any players. He would keep on until he’d reach a town where he was unknown to anyone, make himself conspicuous, run a few useful errands, and then move on.

He would try to get noticed in every new town. People should remember the flighting, and none of the interested parties should find it odd to see him wherever he might be. Ros intended to create a certain reputation for his character that would help him address some pressing issues.

He would change his appearance again when the time was ripe, but he would get as far away from this sector as he could before then.

And if they still found him after all that, he might as well hang himself, as it would mean that no one in this game had any chance at all of disappearing.

Chapter 39

“Folks, I have found something interesting—looks like an unidentified boss in a quiet place no one ever visits. We went into the woods with my girlfriend to get our Herbalism and Mushrooming skills on. The forest was really quiet—we saw no one, just birds and squirrels. As we were gathering herbs and mushrooms, a deer came out. My girlfriend plays a ranger, so it only took her one arrow to get the beast—a critical hit right in the neck. As soon as I started dressing the carcass, something weird appeared… you wouldn’t believe it—a twenty-foot-wide smiley face. I cast Sleep, and my girlfriend popped her deadliest skill, hitting it right in the eye. It responded by calling us worms and gobbling us up. Not just killing, mind you—it ate us! Real slowly, like, while we were standing there stunned. And it wasn’t any regular stun, either, more like complete paralysis. The thing was chewing me, and there was nothing I could do. Can you imagine that? If it’s a boss, let’s farm it. It seems like no one knows about it yet. The woods are quiet, and there are few people in those parts.”

“I ran into this ‘boss’ once with my friends. Lost ten percent of my XP fighting it. Will it ever sate that hunger, I wonder…”

“Folks, that ain’t no boss! That thing’s absolutely awful, don’t bother fighting it!”

“Oh, so Smiley Face is still eating everyone? I thought they’d have fixed that bug long ago.”

“You can gather all the herbs you want over there, just make sure you leave the deer alone. That thing comes when it smells fresh meat, and eats up the carcass as well as the hunters.”

“Smiley Face rocks like you wouldn’t believe, dude. You should be proud of meeting it. It’s as rare as mammoths—few have seen it.”

“The mammoths are long extinct, you noob, whereas Smiley Face is alive and kicking.”

A private thread on a clan forum.

* * *

Ros opened his eyes, instantly snapping into alertness without letting it show in any way. He spent the night underneath a tall fir tree, having fashioned a luxurious bed out of boughs the night before. The branches reached the ground here, forming something resembling a teepee, which was dry and gave the illusion of safety.

But no one was ever quite safe in the woods. There were always beasts that ate the grass, followed closely by beasts that ate the grass-feeders. Apart from everything, this was a game and not the real world. You could always find an abandoned old graveyard cursed by an insane archmage in the vicinity, with corpses with an axe to grind wandering about, getting their revenge on anyone too slow or too stupid to get out of their way. Or some scatterbrained genius of necromancy prone to forgetting to lock the cages holding his horrendous experiments.

The forum map didn’t show anything but woodland here, but Ros was already aware of what such maps were worth. It was likely that no players had ever set foot here, not even once. They probably just drew the map staring at the ceiling, at best sneaking a quick glance in this direction from a faraway hill, which categorized the terrain as poorly-studied and thus sufficient for leveling up one’s Cartography.

There was no grinding to be done in the area, and no bosses worthy of bothering with. So, what was the point in wasting time here if there were so many more other, more interesting places?

A branch cracked. It didn’t just fall from a tree, but was broken by a paw or a hoof. Or, perhaps, the boot of a high-level player with a red username who had decided it would be safe to leave a body here, since no one would find it.

Ros had a feeling he wasn’t alone—there must have been a reason he had awoke before dawn. It could have been his burgeoning intuition warning him about likely trouble. He did not believe in the supernatural, so it must have been his beefed-up Luck and Perception, or something to that effect.

Also, the description of the auxiliary Seer stat said that he would occasionally be able to foresee future events, and the more he leveled it, the more effective it would be.

Actually, that was a law of the game’s mechanics—all the stats behaved this way.

The bough of a nearby fir tree shook. Ros heard the breath of someone huge. He tensed, clutching the short staff in his hand. It was a pity the pet wasn’t around—he didn’t risk having it accompany him openly, for a flighting with a revived corpse would look a little too extravagant.

He saw antlers above the overgrowth, and then the head they belonged to.

“Forest Moose. Aggression: none. Sociality: low. Level: 35. Skills: none. Stats: Defense: 62; Attack: 52.”

Letting a moose scare him… how positively ridiculous.

Ros slowly raised the hand holding the staff, waited for the moose’s head to stop moving as it chewed the top leaves of the bush, and hit it in the neck with the Chaos Arrow. The beast reared up in pain and surprise, and then got a critical hit in the leg as it came back down. The limb collapsed, and the animal fell down, rolling over and crushing the spinney. Ros didn’t let the moose rise again, finishing it off with his third spell.

He didn’t think the fretful herbivores were good for leveling—that wasn’t the reason he had killed the moose. According to the forum, you received an achievement for killing a thousand mobs of different types, so you shouldn’t spurn any of them. He’d also get a big hunk of excellent meat, as he was starting to get sick of berries and mushrooms already.

Ros looted antlers and some glands from the moose. The hide was torn, so he decided against taking it—it was heavy, and too damaged to cost more than a few coppers.

The rest of the stuff must have been cheap, too, but it was a matter of principle—if he had enough free slots and could carry the weight, it would be unreasonable to leave anything of value behind.

Ros had a problem—he didn’t know how to start a fire, having no matches or anything else that could be used for this purpose. No Fire School magic spells, either. Should he try to rub two sticks together? Would it work? It was a game, after all. Then again, why wouldn’t it? Everything here was extremely realistic.

He never got around to making a fire, as his musings were interrupted by some guests. Two wolves were watching him from a distance, baring their teeth but reluctant to come any closer. With a light breeze having picked up at dawn, they must have sensed the smell of blood and meat…

The forest was nowhere near as empty as it had seemed…

Ros was about to cast Chaos Arrow to scare the lupine visitors away, but they darted off before he could do anything—with much haste, and their tails between their legs. It didn’t take a genius to realize some other fan of fresh meat was approaching—and one that was a lot more formidable than the first.

There was the crackling of trampled bushes and steps that sounded more like the sounds a pile driver would make—and not to small piles, either. There was a moment of silence followed by a sound that a herd of elephants might make if they all blew their trunks at once. Was that creature trying to sniff him out? Should he run while there still was time? Ros may have been a weird noob, but he was a noob just the same, and messing with high-level creatures wasn’t part of his job description.

The trees bent, letting through a…

Imagine a spherical creature the size of a two-story house, with minuscule crooked legs and arms to match. It had a wide lipless mouth, tiny beady eyes and a button-like nose that was barely visible. And all of that goodness was covered in ginger fur that wouldn’t look out of place on a mammoth that had never been groomed, sticking this way and that in shaggy clumps.

“Malfunctioning quest. Aggressiveness: no data. Sociality: no data. Level: no data. Skills: no data. Stats: no data.”

A quiet forest, they said. No grinding or bosses, they said.

Well, if this wasn’t a boss, what could it possibly be?!

The monster stopped and smiled beatifically, transforming into a smiley face of the sort that may have grown in close proximity to Chernobyl, and boomed in a guttural bass:

“Would you believe it? Here I go, rambling through the woods, smelling flowers and listening to birds chirping, and what would I see but some meat lying about? Finders keepers, I say. No one has eaten it, so I’ll have to do it myself.”

Having been looking for an escape route with his peripheral vision, Ros froze in surprise. This was the first time he saw a mob speaking human language instead of chirping like the thylbits.

Could this be something other than a mob? A domesticated animal, or a pet, perhaps?

“Hey! You! Round thing! This meat is mine, you know!”

“Wow!” The “smiley face” looked perplexed, all of a sudden. “A real miracle! A speaking worm! I say! It isn’t slippery, and it doesn’t wriggle unpleasantly. It must be yummy. Isn’t it a pity, though? It’s funny and it can talk, but I’ll have to eat it all the same, more’s the pity.”

“Won’t you choke on me?” Ros inquired.

“I eat a lot, but I’m always careful. I do my chewing slowly and thoroughly. If I find a bone that’s too hard to chew, I’ll spit it out instead of swallowing it.”

The “smiley face” reached for the moose carcass.

“Paws off! The meat is mine!” Ros yelled, undeterred by the prospect of being eaten.

That walking pillow would have to catch him first…

“Don’t get your knickers in a bunch, little worm. I’ll just eat the meat here, and then it’s your turn.”

Ros raised his staff and let loose a Chaos Arrow, hitting the upper jaw. The mob scratched it and smiled.

“Ouch! Tickles! Wanna play? All right, I’m game: I’ll start with you. The meat can wait—it only gets tastier with time. What have you been eating lately, little worm?”

“Berries and mushrooms.”

“You’re not lying, are you?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“That’s good. You get all sorts. One of them ate something horrible in the city, all pepper and cinnamon. I had a heartburn for the rest of the day. My stomach doesn’t digest such stuff well.”

As the mob expounded on its digestive problems, it ambled towards Ros in a purposeful manner, thrusting its tiny paws forward.

Ros hit the mob with magic two more times before finally realizing a direct confrontation would be futile. A single Intellect point gave him eleven mana points. Bolstered by his equipment, his current mana pool was sitting at over eight thousand points. That was a lot, even for a top-level mage, but it still would not be enough to take so much as a quarter of HP off the “smiley face.” The mob was just incredibly tough.

It had to be a boss.

Regular players may have viewed bosses as near-invincible titans, creatures that could only be tackled with heavy artillery and armored vehicle support. To Ros, however, a boss was just another mob—and one that was likely to drop good loot. He’d already taken one down, so why not another? He could at least try.

The monster may have looked clumsy, but it was a fast walker. Had Ros been overloaded, or had his running been slower, it would have been hard to get away. Once he got some distance between himself and his pursuer, he took a soul crystal out of his bag and freed the monster trapped inside.

“Undead Thylbit Commander. Creature summoned from the realm of darkness. Level: 55.”

“Hey, you!” the “smiley face” kept yelling. “Little worm! Don’t be in such a hurry! Do you have any urgent errands suddenly?! Just hold on a moment, and there’ll be no errands left anymore, let alone of the urgent kind! I’ll take care of them all! Where are you?! I meant to have a snack, not play hide and seek! Oh, so there you are! Don’t go anywhere, I’m almost there!”

The thylbit attacked. The “smiley face” waved its furry paw casually.

“Your summoned creature dies.”

“Hot damn!” Ros was amazed.

The thylbit wasn’t anywhere as strong as the leprus, but being snuffed out like that, with a careless flick of a paw… Compared to this fuzzy fellow, the Chaos Viceroy was a vole beside a Clydesdale.

He took aim and cast two more Chaos Arrows, aiming for the paws, hoping to get lucky and land a critical hit.

Unsurprisingly, his efforts were entirely in vain. It was starting to get painfully obvious that he’d need an anti-tank rifle to break one of those legs.

“Stop tickling me, little worm, or I’ll start laughing! And, the thing is, when I laugh, everyone around me cries! That doesn’t seem right!”

Ros drew away from the mob again, hitting it a few more times in the legs with Chaos Arrow. Then again, and again. They kept running around the carcass in circles—the mob being unable to catch up with his quarry, and Ros refusing to retreat, thereby admitting defeat.

Yet, he would have to admit it sooner or later, having already used up a barrel of mana on the ball of fur, with the mob not seeming to care one bit. Though he was dealing real damage, the boss’ HP bar just wasn’t budging.

How much health did that monstrosity have?!

“Little worm, will you simmer down? If you run around too much, the meat will be tough and gristly! Is that what you want?!”

“I’m going to skin you and use your pelt as a rug in my castle!”

“Oh, a funny one! Wherever will you get a castle? You’re so little and so stupid!”

“I’ll keep it for later!”

“Silly little worm! What kind of ‘later’ do you expect to have, eh?! Ouch! Will you stop that! It no longer tickles! It’s starting to irritate me! You don’t want me to get angry!”

“Oh, so you don’t like it, do you?! Here’s more! And more!”

“You’re bad! And really mean! All your meat must be steeped in bile! Whoever would eat something like that? I’m off! Stay there all by yourself!”

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?!”

“I’ve got some pressing business to attend to! I’ve got to eat the meat and say my farewells! I might even skip the latter part—why would I want to say my farewells to some worm?”

“I’m not done with you yet!” Ros started to pelt the retreating “smiley face” with one Chaos Arrow after another. “I won’t let you go like that! Hey! You! Walking rug! Hold it right there! If you do anything with my meat, I’ll keep on your tail until I get your hide!”

“Little worm, why escalate a groundless conflict?! I agree that I was a little bit in the wrong there, but will you stop chasing and tickling me already? Bearing grudges doesn’t become you!”

“The meat is mine!”

“All right, sure, it’s yours, big deal! Do you think I’ve never seen meat belonging to someone else? But we need to recognize an obvious fact: you are rather small, yet you have a lot of meat! What would a small worm like you want so much meat for? There’s just something unfair about it. Let’s be sensible: you’ll take as much as you need, and leave the rest for me!”

“How much can I take, exactly?” Ros asked.

“The question reeks of ambiguity, and is hard to answer as a result. Our relationship so far has been based on failure to understand where our mutual interests lie, and I’m prepared to admit I am partially to blame. So, I’m willing to make a conciliatory gesture: you can take as much as you can carry.”

“Agreed.”

“Perfect. Let’s not procrastinate—chop off as much as you need at once.”

Ros approached the moose carcass unhurriedly, and said dismissively:

“No need to chop. I’ll just take it.”

Having said that, he hid the moose carcass in a slot on his belt. Though its weight was around seven or eight hundred kilos, it was immediately reduced by a factor of ten, making it easy for Ros with his stats to carry the load, albeit with some penalties. Even now, it wasn’t his hunting trophy that encumbered him most, but the metal collected in the thylbit dungeon, including the ore. All in all, he had about a ton of stuff on his person.

Ros pretended the load wasn’t heavy as he waved the “smiley face” goodbye, flashing the friendliest of his smiles.

“Bye-bye, my fuzzy friend. Take good care now.”

The mob’s legs folded, apparently outraged by such blatant robbery, and it transformed into a very unhappy walking emoticon, its face wearing an expression of deep dejection.

“I say! Little worm! What gives?! I feel robbed!”

“You said I could take as much as I could carry, so I did. You said that explicitly, didn’t you?”

“I admit I did. But I implied a part of the carcass and not the entire thing.”

“Cut the demagoguery out already—I got mine, and now you can get your part.”

“My part?” said the grumpy “smiley face,” looking like it would burst into tears any moment. “But you have left me nothing at all! There’s just the trampled grass from underneath the carcass! It’s all gone!”

“Oh, so it’s meat that you want?”

“Duh! I always want meat!”

“I’d be prepared to accommodate you, but there’s something I need in return.”

“Just what do you need, little worm? Want me to bury you in damp loamy soil and damp leaves so that it would be more pleasant for you to crawl about?”

“We can do without that. I’ll just ask you a few questions, and you’ll answer them. Agreed?”

“Just that? Sure, I love a good chat. I hate to be doing it on an empty stomach, though. Why don’t you get the meat out? I could at least look at it—a sight for sore eyes, as it were.”

“Answers first.”

“You’re mean, but bloody-minded, and you have no fear, I’ll give you that. I respect that, which is why I haven’t eaten you. Now, what do you want to know?”

“Who the blazes are you?”

“Oh, sure. Please pardon my manners—I never got around to introducing myself. I am Bug.”

“Bug?”

“Yeah. A software error.”

“I know what bugs are. Could you be more specific?”

“That was what a worm that looked like you called me—he came when I forgot everything.”

“Forgot everything?”

“Yeah. I was supposed to do something—wait in the woods until someone came. They were supposed to bring meat or something of the sort, and I was supposed to help them somehow, I guess. Only it took too long to just stand here, and I got too hungry. There was no meat from anyone for a long time. So I forgot whatever I was supposed to do there, and when the worms came, I ate them.”

“Worms like me?”

“Yeah. Similar. Only those were fatter. One was outright delicious, the second one was okay, and the third one got stuck in my teeth on the account of wearing too much yucky iron. And then I suddenly found myself in a place with too much light, but hardly any trees at all. And there was someone who called me a bug. That’s it! I remember now! He said I was an error—an NPC with an immortality option that had survived from the beta testing stage and could not be disabled for some reason. He tasted all right, if a bit bland. I could do with more tartness.”

“What was the shining place?”

“No idea. I didn’t like it much, so I headed back for the forest.”

“How exactly did you do it?”

“The way I normally do. If I want to be near the trees, that’s where I show up.”

“Bug, do you remember the quest you were supposed to wait for in the woods?”

“Nah. I don’t. Forgot everything. It was a long time ago. And I’m not interested in that, anyway. So, how about that meat?”

Ros got the carcass out of his belt, pulled out his knife, and sliced off a good chunk of the leg.

“Here, take it—all yours.”

The moose meat went into the gigantic mouth. Bug chewed slowly, just the way he said he did, squinting from sheer delight and even producing a purring-like sound.

“That sure was good meat, little worm. I should go and look for something else now.”

“That wasn’t enough for you?”

“There’s never enough for me—no matter how much there is. I am strange and mysterious like that.”

“I’m pretty strange myself.”

“Are you? In that case, it’s a good thing I didn’t gobble you up. Really great, actually. Would be a shame to eat someone who’s just like you.”

“I agree wholeheartedly.”

“It’s a pity I don’t remember why I stood there waiting for worms. I was supposed to know a great secret and be able to share it in exchange for meat. You have given me some meat, which I enjoyed, but I have forgotten the secret. Oh well, time for me to get going—I won’t hold you any longer. Call me if you ever feel like a chat.”

“Call you?”

“Just say it out loud, the way that other worm did, ‘Game administrator alpha four-oh-two calling object number one one four five zero two eight, bug report number sever thousand nine hundred and forty-five, to the technical location. Will you be able to remember that?”

“I’ll remember it all right, but will you come?”

“Right away, but not for long. And you have to say the words yourself, it can’t be someone else. You’re funny, after all. And curious. You tried to tickle me by yourself, without calling for help. And it was a funny little insect that you sent to fight me. You are brave and stupid. They usually gather up a crowd to tickle me, so I can no longer catch them. That is when I get very nervous and end up catching them in the end. Anyway, I should get going already, I’ve got business to attend to. Look at me—still saying my goodbyes and not going anywhere.”

“Bye-bye, Bug.”

The mob got past the zone of felled trees and trampled bushes that remained after the fight, but turned around before disappearing into the woods.

“Oh, I nearly forgot—don’t call me too often or I might get upset. I have gotten used to wandering around on my own, after all. And if you do call me, make sure there’s some food around, or I’ll get really upset. And then you can’t fault me if I chew on a worm or two to feel better.”

“You acquire a new skill: Summon Malfunctioning Quest. When activated by voice, a “no data” will appear in your current location. Cooldown: 75 days. New auxiliary stat unlocked: Eloquence. Your Eloquence grows to 6. You will get bigger discounts from NPC merchants and be able to purchase goods at lower prices. NPCs with a negative attitude toward your race will often ignore their own prejudice. Achievement received: Know Thyself Better. Achievement bonus: +5 HP. Achievement unlocked: Broaden Your Horizons. Unlock 100 auxiliary stats to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

The trees and the bushes kept snapping under the heavy steps of a bug that even an administrator couldn’t fix.

* * *

Ros gave up on the idea of having some meat for breakfast, and sat right there in the forest, among the vegetation trampled by Bug, studying the forum attentively. He was interested in the strange mob and wanted to find out more about it.

And so he did.

Bug used to be an important NPC in a complex quest chain offering a substantial reward to whoever managed to complete it. The “smiley face” was supposed to accept the results somewhere around the middle stages of the chain, and then instruct the players further on completing the latter parts, and maybe even provide personal assistance. Nobody knew for sure, for no one had managed to get past Bug in the entire history of Second World.

Bug wasn’t interested in the results of any quests, and offered no information on completing the chain. The “smiley face” simply ate the players who didn’t run away with due haste. The only ones who managed to get away were solitary players—the mob would usually refrain from using its signature skill on them. But anyone who came in a party would get stunned for a long while with its roar. The mob would proceed to consume the stunned players at its leisure, calling them worms as it gobbled them up.

It took the players a while to realize something was wrong with the quest, reasoning it was a boss that had to be killed for the quest to continue. They came in parties, raid groups, and then multiple raid groups. The outcome remained the same—Bug would slowly devour anyone too slow to run away, and no one had managed to make even the smallest dent in its HP.

The logical conclusion was reached: the creature was no boss, but rather an NPC, perfectly useless for dropping trophies and retaining the invulnerability option since the beta testing stage. There were plenty of those during development, though all of them had lost that feature afterwards.

Or “almost all,” evidently. The game administration made an official apology, declared the quest to be a malfunction, and recommended everyone to keep away from the quest zone while the bug was being fixed.

But Bug decided against getting fixed. Nor did it stay in the quest zone. It had been sighted in every sector of the game world for about a year now, usually next to someone killing large game. Moose and buffaloes were his favorites.

And no matter where Bug was sighted, it always did the same thing—chewed up anyone too slow to run away very slowly and methodically.

What a fascinating game… It had been over a year, and they still couldn’t fix a blatant error. Moreover, the error had managed to munch on an administrator—and in a technical location no less, which was apparently beyond everyone’s access.

Just a moment! There were numerous forum posts to the effect that there were no administrators in the game. Or maybe the technical location didn’t count?

At any rate, it was time to stop bothering with the forum. He needed to do something about fire posthaste, and then move on before he attracted the attention of something even worse than Bug.

Chapter 40

“What we mustn’t forget is that these days Second World is probably the main source of online pornography. We can speak of virtually every type of consumer of this product, as it were, being covered. Real men and women cannot compete with 3D animation. Apart from being impossible to distinguish from the real thing, the latter has another enormous advantage over the former. It suffices to purchase an account and then pay a bit extra for the ability to edit your appearance, and you get everything you need to be a model—a stunning girl or a handsome and well-endowed male with all the features required by the genre.

Porn producers no longer need to invest in professional equipment for photography or video recording—anyone can record everything they observe in the game or make high-resolution stills. The amazing graphics lauded so aggressively by official advertising can be used as decorations for adult films just as easily as battlegrounds. The term “interracial sex” never covered a great variety of relations formerly, but these days you could see a lot more for a token amount of money or even free of charge if you know where to look. There can be intercourse between a green orc with fangs and a blonde elven maiden, as well as dwarves, goblins, demons, reptilian races, and so forth— something for every taste.

You may not be interested in intercourse between sentient beings. But there are hundreds—nay, thousands of the so-called mobs. One recollects a recent in-game sensation in this respect—a group of players had intended to record a film featuring a high-level elite monster, incredibly dangerous and rather infamous. Control skills were supposed to keep it paralyzed so that it could be treated the way it had never been treated before. Something went wrong, however, and it got its rather brutal revenge on the players for their ill-fated attempt at sexual assault. The resulting porn/comedy film became popular even among those who had no interest in such content in general.

Child porn is another thing to consider. An account can be registered from the age of sixteen—and, in some cases, the age of ten, if sanctioned by medical professionals. But we are not talking about actual children here. The thing is that the game has several anthropomorphic races that look explicitly infantile without any effort. In other words, they look just like children. You can amplify the racial features as you edit your characters and end up with a character who looks like a fourteen-year-old, or even younger. These are in high demand in game brothels; pornographic photographs and videos with their participation are also popular among a certain type of users. It is perfectly legal in many countries, provided none of the models are actually underage. De facto, the propagation of such content online is viewed by many as a cause for concern. Recent protests in Japan were a result of this phenomenon—a notorious pornographic video featuring a model that was the spitting image of a protagonist from a popular film.

No members of the Second World project’s administration have issued any official comments regarding the game’s transformation into a porn production studio, ignoring their critics who say it’s one of their numerous revenue streams (which is perfectly true, since none of the model accounts are free). But if they did comment, they would likely simply refer to their official policy of not meddling in the gaming process.

The only response I recall concerned an allegation of sexual exploitation of underage players by the company. And their defense was that the above is technically impossible. It wasn’t just that one cannot undress a player without their consent—there were other account protection measures besides, meaning minors were out of bounds, even with consent. A SW representative mentioned a whole complex of measures aimed at protecting minors, dismissing claims of possible circumvention of said measures as frivolous speculation bearing no relation to gaming reality. His reply to the question about preventing lewd actions that did not involve physical contact (such as text messages and voice chat) was that no one has found any protection from such behavior to date, and that the problem pertained to the web in general, and not just one gaming project.”

From an article by Stanley Haight, a popular blogger.

* * *

Ros avoided roads, villages, or any other locations marked as active leveling zones on the game forum, but he still had some misadventures on his way to Tyraum, the capital of Ducatan, a province adjacent to Livoria.

Four characters with pitch-black skin emerged from the bushes just under Ros’ nose—he didn’t notice them until the last moment. Their names were redder than anything he’d ever seen, and they were a far cry from the stupid dwarf loner who must have gotten his “color” from some hapless fool logging off in a wrong place. Indeed, these were professional killers.

“Hey ho, here we go! Why, hello, little lady!” the archer grinned mirthfully, adding as he put his arrow back in the quiver pointedly: “I’ve changed my mind about killing you. That’s right, no one’s gonna hurt you. And all I ask in return is that you stick around a while and make us happy.”

“What are you going on about?” scoffed a warrior with a short halberd. “Are you blind? Her appearance is based on her looks IRL, so she’s a minor for sure. No way you can screw this one.”

“Ayume said they managed it somehow—they found a bug or something. Which makes this an excellent opportunity to test if he was lying. Come over here, little girl. You’re gonna like it.”

“Why did you ladies decide to have your slumber party so deep in the woods?” asked Ros, emotionally preparing for a respawn—the outcome of facing four brutes like that didn’t look too good. “Afraid of level zero noobs hurting you?”

“Afraid? Us? Oh, but you’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you? Come now, I’m starting to lose patience,” the archer approached, thrusting his hand forward.

He may have been planning to grab Ros, or maybe try something else. It didn’t matter much to Ros—he simply let loose a Chaos Arrow right in the player’s face, at point blank range.

“Critical hit: blinding.”

“You biiiiiii…” the archer howled, falling to his knees and clutching his face with his palms.

“Death to murderous bastards!” Ros shouted, and dashed toward the rest of the group, waving his staff.

All three were melee fighters, which was the most popular class, and they reacted automatically by striking attacking stances. At the very last moment, Ros turned away and ran right past them. The one in the halberd roared something, and a shiver ran down his skin.

“You successfully reflect the effects of the Stone Voice skill. Your opponent is stunned.”

This was a bit of luck. The warrior had intended to stun Ros, but the belt’s properties prevented this, and so it was the warrior who got paralyzed. Otherwise Ros’ mad dash would end right there and then.

With the archer taken out of commission for a while, and the warrior with the stunning skill incapacitated for another couple of seconds, Ros could only hope the remaining two weren’t fast runners.

* * *

In what was becoming a tradition of sorts, Ros was still running as he approached the gates of Tyraum, and jabbered quickly before the guards could ask him any questions:

“Bandits! I barely managed to escape! Had to run for quite a while!”

The NPC mage studied Ros attentively, and then asked:

“Did you see anything unusual?”

“I don’t think I did. Hey, where’s the local bank?”

“We have many of those—which one do you need?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then I suggest you make sure before you ask.”

A variety of banks suggested this was a big city. And indeed, it was the capital of a province, and not the shabbiest one, either. There was a lot more going on here than in any of the towns Ros had visited previously. There was enough to keep noobs and top players alike entertained, and players with all sorts of skills could find employment here. Thousands of players and NPCs walked the streets, and a petite flighting could get lost here much easier than the proverbial needle in the hay.

Ros looked up information on the banks on the forum, realizing it was just what he’d needed all this time—a place to keep his cash and valuable possessions. There was no point in going there without any money, so he headed for the Jewelers’ Guild, where he unloaded six hundred cut gems, and earned over five thousand silver pieces for everything. Curiously enough, no gold was given as payment even here.

Ros wondered what he would do if someone gave him a million, as that would amount to some five tons of silver. The time was right for introducing paper money—Ros was fully determined to earn a lot more than that.

He received another thousand from an NPC blacksmith in the Artisan Quarter for the metal. Then he visited the Mages’ Guild, where he purchased another buff called the Anti-Magic Shield, which reduced magic damage, obviously enough. He also got Purify—a spell that removed all negative effects and a must-have for an honest buffer, as well as Revive, which resurrected high-level players who hadn’t yet respawned. He remembered that he would need to treat the effects of critical damage, too—the Heal Injuries spell took care of those. Now it was time for a control spell: Entangling Roots was good for that, binding the target’s feet and rendering it immobile for a few seconds. The only offensive spell he got was Fireball, which was highly recommended on the forum as one of the few modifiable spells sold freely by NPCs. It was inferior to those learned from scrolls dropped by bosses; on the upside, it was available from level one, had a short cooldown, and dealt decent damage to individual targets. Ros could now alternate between Fireball and Chaos Arrow, dealing magic damage to the enemy non-stop.

He had to shell out a sum of five and a half thousand for everything, the lion’s share of which went toward Fireball. But it was worth it.

He wasn’t bothered by having to level so many skills. Only a handful would be in constant usage, while the rest were… complementary. He would have looked like a right chump in the Fallen City had their party run into mobs with nasty debuffs. He didn’t have Purify back then, after all. Besides, all his skills leveled much faster than in case of regular players due to his heroic bonuses.

He went to the bank next, renting a magically protected safe linked to the owner, and dumped a large part of his stuff in there.

Ros jostled through the market crowd after the Mages’ Guild for a while, where several players training their Pickpocket skill tried to steal from him. Hardly enthused by what he saw, he headed for the auction house, where he found out that bidding would only start six days later.

He didn’t want to waste all that time, so he rented a room at an inn and stayed there for two days, cutting gems, by the end of which he was finally rid of the remains of his ore. In between, while his mana was replenishing, he studied the game forum. On the third day, he went to the market again, having paid for a stall in the sector where equipment for low-level players was sold, and spent the whole day there, netting a mere four hundred coins for his troubles.

He certainly had no gift for commerce… His green friend Shoto would be handy here—he would likely unload all his stuff for three times the price in about an hour.

In an ironic twist, though Ros had lots of expensive items, he was forced to sell ore and gems since it was much easier and quicker.

Safer, too.

It was time to considering finding a partner who could handle all these affairs. Shoto would be great, but Ros wouldn’t approach him on pain of death now—too many people must be aware of their dealings together, so the orc would be watched.

Ros would much rather concentrate on obtaining stuff for sale instead of doing the actual selling, but he had to do everything himself. At least for the time being.

It sure was hard to be on one’s own these days…

Ros had to wait for the auction sale to begin. The anonymity of the process appealed to Ros, as he wanted to avoid being seen with valuable stuff. In order to put a lot up for bidding, one had to rent a special crate—or a box if the items were small. Only Ros or the auctioneer NPC could open them. It sufficed for a player to put their hand to the crate to open it, and the NPC had a special key.

Once the NPC took an item out, he would announce its properties, and the item’s description would appear on one of the walls, like on a projection screen. The first day was reserved for announcing the lots, and the bidding itself would begin the next day. Most of the information on available lots would be published on the forum by the evening, so there was no point in staring at walls—you could just browse the forum, ponder whether or not you wanted a given lot, and then make your decision.

The player paid for crates and boxes, receiving an auction participant’s ring that was only valid for three days. Upon putting their wares in the rented crates or boxes, they left them at the auction warehouse, whereupon all those hundreds or even thousands of boxes were transported to the auction hall. The player would find the money or the wares in the very same boxes. The ring helped to identify your items by highlighting them for collection.

The system made it rather difficult to identify the owner.

Ros decided against selling the boots from the set, though he was tempted to. That would be too suspicious—the item must have been extremely rare if no one had ever sold anything like it before, so it probably made sense to hold on to it for now. Instead, he decided to sell about ten enhanced items with reasonable stat bonuses, and a few good and excellent ones with average bonuses, intending to net at least seven thousand for everything. He also put up two lots of gems: a box with fifty cut amethysts of high quality, and another one with twenty citrines.

The auction was a boring success. There was no undue excitement over any of Ros’ lots, which suited him just fine—the last thing he needed was publicity. The gems came as some surprise, selling for more than twice the price he had gotten from the NPCs.

Evidently, he had been foolish to take the easy route by unloading them to the NPCs…

Only three of the items remained unsold, which was a good result. He ended up with more than expected—a hundred short of eight thousand.

* * *

Ros came to the Mercenaries’ Guild a week later, having spent all this time primarily in Mages’ Guild libraries and traveling around the nearby towns. A burly warrior chuckled as he saw his character, then grinned, called Ros a cutie, and told him this was the lair of seasoned fighters, not pocket healers, so the young lady must be lost.

Ros replied that he wasn’t lost at all, having come here with the precise intention of hiring a detachment of fighters. Of course, if he was mistaken and there weren’t any fighters on this property, he would apologize and leave.

He was allowed to pass, though the guard grumbled something at his back.

* * *

“I need a squad of fighters for a day’s work, in the 120-150 level range. Tanks, healers, and DPS—ten ought to do it.”

The dwarf he was talking to didn’t look like a warrior—more like a typical pencil-pusher. Scratching his ear with a feather, he said in an oily voice:

“Look, miss, you are aware that recent events have resulted in a certain shortage of mercenary personnel at the guild?”

“You mean the mine war?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, sure, but that was almost a month ago!”

“There are few warriors, and of those nearly everyone is on the mend. The prices have grown considerably.”

“I’ll pay.”

“Please tell me how you intend to use our warriors. I am most dreadfully sorry, but we are in no condition to risk them on missions likely to result in heavy losses.”

“No losses expected. I need to spend a day leveling at the Fiery Cleft, to the south of Dylia.”

The dwarf looked surprised.

“Well, the monsters you find there are sure tough, but you will receive too little XP for killing them. Our warriors will get most of it—the level gap between you and them is just too big.”

“I’d like to try it, anyway. There’s no risk in it for you, right? None at all. And we all need to make a living.”

“We wouldn’t be able to charge you much for just one day’s worth of fighting, and it takes two days just to get there, and two more to return. This isn’t very convenient for us. Could we arrange something for at least a week?”

“How much do you charge for a day, and how much for a week?”

“Well, a party of ten would be overkill for the cleft. Eight would be enough. Four fighters, including two tanks, an archer, a water mage, a buffer, and a healer—a good party against creatures whose element is fire.”

“I can heal, too.”

“You’re weak.”

“But any kind of help comes in handy.”

“No one is going to give you a discount for it. A day’s work for a party like that will cost you exactly four thousand silver pieces. A week will cost twenty-five, so you save three, which is substantial.”

Ros had a little less than ten, so he shook his head.

“I won’t be able to afford a week. But, look, your warriors won’t waste any time. It’s a few hours’ walk from Dylia to a nearby royal fort—that one’s a major hub, and the army has a stationary teleport there. As far as I know, your guild has the right to use army teleports. So we could get there in a jiffy, two hours there, and two more back; we’d manage to do the whole thing within a single day, and there won’t be any logistical issues.”

“We can indeed use army teleports, but it’s not free.”

“How much would it cost to transport a party like that?”

“We’d need two transportations, which would cost around twenty-five hundred silver pieces.”

“Wow, they even charge you that much?!”

“They do, and that’s not all. We’d need to bribe them to let you come along.”

“Bribe?!”

“Sure. You aren’t a guild member, and the permit doesn’t cover civilians.”

“How much would the bribe be?”

“Five or six hundred, maybe even seven.”

Wasn’t that something! Corruption rife even among the AI-controlled NPCs!

“I’ll cover all of it. Can we set out the day after tomorrow?”

“We can, if we manage to arrange everything with the jarheads.”

Chapter 41

The first sign they saw was that the forest became sparse, woodland eventually giving way to a plain with a few low hills and the odd crooked tree sticking out, most of them dry or nearly dry. The grass wasn’t particularly lush, either—Ros had seen deserts covered with more vegetation.

The Fiery Cleft lay between two ranges of hills, resembling a very narrow quarry with craggy walls, about a mile deep. There was hot air coming from below, and you could see smoke plumes and flames coming from underneath the outcroppings of rock and the piles of slag.

Ros didn’t read much about the history of the place—it appeared that some ancient mages of great power made some kind of blunder during a massive ritual aimed at containing the element of fire, or, put simply, they tried to stop a volcano eruption. Stop it they eventually did, leaving nothing of the volcano, as well as a couple of villages and a small town, which became replaced by a crater. The nearby fields and forests suffered, too, and the locals had to relocate elsewhere.

The reason the place appealed so much to Ros was that the cleft had a certain property that made creatures of the fiery persuasion feel very much at home here. There were multitudes of such mobs, and no matter how many of them you killed, new ones kept arriving from some dimension in the Great Beyond.

When mob density became critical, they would raid the outlying area, which was why approaches to the cleft were a charred desert. Province authorities weren’t very happy about it, so a network of forts was built around the anomaly, and the players were encouraged to kill the beasts and be rewarded with lots of related quests.

There were other benefits for the players—the best “sweepers” of the cleft could earn achievements that gave substantial benefits to residents of the province. Such persistent and lucky players earned profitable quests from NPCs and various discounts—the locals were also less stringent about high karma, and the guards might even ignore the ones whose names were very slightly reddish.

Yet, the cleft would have been very popular even without such bonuses. One didn’t have to look for mobs here—all you needed to do was get as far down as it took to encounter mobs in your level range. It was very easy—the lower you went, the more powerful the creatures became. The bottom was aswarm with elite mobs, including a few bosses, and some of the latter were considered “yummy” enough to warrant regular raids by top clans.

Players could level to 180 or a little higher here. Where would one begin? That depended on nothing but the players. A team of friends that worked well together could hunt quarry of levels much higher than their own. Weapons and equipment also played an important part.

Money was another option—you could literally pay for a group of high-level players to let you hang around them. When grouped up, they would get most of the XP, but you wouldn’t regret it, either, if only by avoiding the grind and saving on low-level equipment and elixirs.

There were few paths leading into the depths of the cleft, and they were particularly scarce near the fort. The leader of the group, a warrior orc by the name of Mathdun, told Ros they would go to a spot he was already familiar with, and that he would be completely in command—no idiotic orders from the client would be entertained.

Ros didn’t object to either condition.

About a dozen players were sitting near the area where the path began—high-level ones as well as the instantly identifiable noobs. The arrival of an NPC party surprised them and instantly drew their interest. When they saw a flighting player in their midst, they started to bombard Ros with questions:

“Are you doing a quest? I’ve never seen one that involves going below with NPCs.”

“Help me level!”

“Hey! You! Short stuff! Why are you following them?”

“I’m not following them,” said Ros as passed by. “They are following me.”

“You?! Whatever do you want with them?!”

“They’ll help me level.”

“You hired NPCs to power-level you? That’s ridiculous! We’d have helped you for a third of the price!”

“My dad hired them for me. He said NPCs are much better at power-leveling.”

“You haven’t seen what we can do! Go on, tear up the contract, and we’ll take you all the way down at once! You can even peek at a boss!”

“I’ll consider your proposition,” said Ros tactfully.

“Help me level! Pleeeeeease!” whined the antsy noob again, already behind him.

Ros heard interesting snatches of conversation as his party walked on. They were discussing him. The common verdict was, “a silly girl with a rich daddy who spends tons of real money on the game.”

He smiled—that was the very image he’d intended to create and maintain, as it would make it much easier for him to buy and sell expensive items and use expensive services. A noob girl traveling this way and that with the aid of expensive teleportation seemed rather suspicious. But a noob girl with a rich daddy could get away with all this stuff easily.

“We’ll leave the path now, and the terrain will be rougher,” Mathdun warned him, and then explained. “We’ll get there a lot faster this way—the path makes a large loop here, and there’s no point in taking the long way around.”

The mercenaries dispatched a group of mobs that attacked them after the first crag, and proceeded onward without delay. The second took much longer to get through. They got a little unlucky—a group of players who had been grinding here got wiped out completely, having drawn the attention of a large train of mobs right before their demise, so all the beasts rushed their new quarry.

Things got tense for a while, but never reached a critical moment.

They stopped at the third level—the mobs here had lots of HP, and some of them possessed a number of nasty skills. They also preferred to attack in groups of two or three, sometimes more, after sneaking up on the warriors from behind tall piles of enormous slag rocks. This was no longer a pleasure walk—Ros kept dispelling debuffs on one NPC after another, although they told him to cut it out, or at least be more discreet about it to avoid drawing the aggro.

Ros kept on dispelling and healing, occasionally using Chaos Arrow to finish off half-dead mobs. Whenever they encountered a particularly powerful monster that took the entire party no less than a full minute to put down, he would cast Soul Trap.

No, he didn’t come here to power-leveled. And the reason he spent so much money had nothing to do with the measly fraction of the XP he would get.

What he needed was a pet that could compare to the elite leprus.

And, preferably, more than one.

* * *

“An elite! Level one seventy at least!” yelled the mage.

He must have had stats permitting him to identify higher-level monsters, as the NPC himself was level 135.

“Staesys! Cover the client! Sleep the beast! Shield wall, horseshoe formation! Shields on tanks!”

“It resisted sleep!” shouted the mage.

The archer froze behind Ros, throwing wary glances in every direction—to mercenaries, the death of a client was the ultimate disgrace. Both tanks rushed the beast that looked like a nine-foot-tall crimson praying mantis. Barely visible glowing cocoons enveloped them as they ran, the buffer and the healer shielding them with spells that would absorb a certain amount of damage before they started losing HP.

The “mantis” struck with both forelegs, covered in bony spikes. In the real world, the creature’s sheer mass would sweep its opponents away, but game mechanics worked a bit differently, and the buffed-up fighters repealed the attack. The mob opened its snout, unleashing a fountain of sparks that tore through the shields at once. The tanks’ HP bars began dwindling, and that was when the other two fighters—one double-wielding daggers, and the other, swords—struck from the flanks with skills that stunned the mob and saddled it with debuffs lowering attack and defenses.

As soon as the stun wore off, the mob was hit with another, this time courtesy one of the tanks.

“I got aggro!” Mathdun yelled. “Everyone but the archer, pour it on!”

The elite mob’s HP bar was steadily decreasing. He had no other surprises in stock—four fighters with stun skills were simply too much. The mob had high resistances, so the skill didn’t land every time, but with four stunners, the party still retained near-total control. The “mantis” tried to break out of its ring once, but the mage’s sleep spell got it this time, while the warriors regrouped and kept hammering away at their target.

Ros just stood there, protected by the archer and occasionally healing the tanks, redundant though it may have been. Even the healers would at times break rotation to join the mage in pelting the monster with some offensive spell.

Mathdun stepped away from the smoking corpse of the “mantis” and wiped the sweat off his brow.

“It’s time for us to leave this furnace. It’s getting late, and anything can happen in the cleft after dark. The path can be walked in both directions, after all. And the kind of critters that crawl out from the very bottom will be beyond our capabilities.”

Ros nodded.

“Sure, you can go—you have fulfilled all your contractual obligations.”

“We have to get you to the city.”

“Thanks, but I’ll make my own way.”

“It’s very dangerous to wander here on your own. You won’t make it through the upper ledges if you cannot hide in the shadows, and you do not possess that skill.”

“I’ll use a teleportation scroll.”

“As you wish. Are you quite satisfied with our performance?”

Ros nodded energetically.

“You’ve been great. If I ever need to hire warriors in your city, I’ll know who to look for.”

The orc gave a perfunctory bow, turned around, and started toward the exit, followed closely by the others.

Ros stayed on the ledge alone. He looked down at the little lights scattered across the bottom of the abyss and sighed. There must be powerful bosses wandering around down there, which likely dropped expensive trophies. But even ten such mercenary parties may not be enough to get to them. Such raids were long and arduous, and you had to be no less than level one hundred and eighty to take part in one.

There was no denying or escaping this fact—with trusty friends at one’s side, one’s opportunities in this world grew exponentially.

Ros had originally planned to change his appearance, but now decided against it. The skill took a week to reset, and there seemed to be a possibility to use it on someone else. A person in a similar situation—or maybe even worse. Someone who lived in a cage and could only dream of something better.

Someone who would surely appreciate a present like that.

Ros considered that he might be doing an unbelievably stupid thing, and that he might be instantly ratted out. But what did he have to lose? He could always teleport away, hole up in the woods for a week, and change into someone completely unrecognizable. There were other options as well—he could skip the woods altogether and spend his time doing something useful. He shouldn’t be too concerned about his current incarnation being made—so what if he’d spent a week all across the sector, using city teleports and trying to get noticed by as many people as possible?

In particular, this concerned the spies that were almost always present. They may be on the lookout for somebody else, but he doubted that the strange noob would be forgotten that easily.

He had also talked up his “rich daddy” for making it possible for him to see the entire game world.

The only drawback was that people would learn that sex was no longer a constant in Second World.

But that was something Ros could live with.

It would only take a week to change his appearance. Recreating it, though, and making it as inconspicuous as possible anywhere he might turn up would be a much lengthier process. But was he really so concerned about compromising this identity? Not at all. He was already starting to detest the endless private chat windows with salivating horny degenerates believing they were talking to a young teenage girl.

If the person he planned on revealing his identity to ended up betraying his confidence, he might even thank him.

He decided he’d had enough.

Ros approached the “praying mantis” and searched the carcass. He smiled: another crystal with a high-level pet, apart from the loot. He took out a teleport scroll, broke the seal, and bent it in two. The cleft was a world dominated by every shade of red, but here was a flash of blazing white, with the bright arch of a portal appearing above the ground.

Ros visualized his destination in as much detail as he could, and stepped through the portal window.

Chapter 42

Ros was walking down the street of his hometown. Not his real-world hometown, obviously, but Arbenne, where just two months ago he’d plopped onto its cobblestones as an exceptionally dazed and confused noob. He had a somewhat different appearance back then, to put it mildly, but that did not matter to Ros now—he never did grow accustomed to his character’s looks due to the repeated radical transformations he’d undergone.

Other changes to his character were far more important and consequential—and the very things he was now so desperate to hide.

But could it be said he was a noob no longer? Not likely. His level was thirty-four—nowhere near enough to be taken seriously. He had lots of stat points earned in a variety of ways, including rare stats and skills that were notoriously hard and expensive to raise. But where did it leave him? A top player would still take him out with a few hits of some souped-up skill— perhaps only one, in some cases. Was he rich? Nowhere near that—he was still a long way from becoming a millionaire, thus far spending most of his earnings on himself. Heroic achievements? Sure, there were plenty of those, but so far they seemed to cause him more grief than anything.

This wasn’t gaming, but rather frenzied attempts of surviving, grasping at one thing after another, and wasting hours contemplating things he’d never even get a chance to try. There was never enough strength, time, or abilities…

Or hands.

Second World was a team game, but Ros was still on his own…

* * *

Ros found Digits right where he thought he’d be—on the narrow strip of land between the moat and the city wall, hunting as it was eventide. His acquaintance was squatting, holding a smooth pebble in his hand, and peering at the water’s surface, where plump frogs lounged on lily pads. He chose his target and prepared for a throw. That was when Ros, having approached the “superzero” unnoticed, greeted him politely:

“Good evening.”

The pebble still in his hand, Digits turned around, and gave Ros a puzzled look. Ros didn’t wait for him to blurt out whatever he deemed appropriate in a conversation with a total stranger—a flighting and a teenage girl at that—and immediately added:

“I want to tell you that I haven’t cursed you once. So you shouldn’t worry on that account.”

Digits, who was about to open his mouth for a suitably playful response, froze right where he stood. His jaw swung sideways in a comical way, and the expression in his eyes became impossible—too many emotions were reflected at once, stumbling one another every fraction of a second.

His made a visible attempt to collect himself, failing miserably. Then he asked in a barely audible voice that sounded near-unrecognizable.

“That’s quite a disguise you’ve got there. I’ve never seen anyone look so much like a female character.”

“Do you seriously think I’m in drag? I thought you knew me better, old friend.”

“Then how?!”

“No disguise. And the appearance is certified to represent an actual person, as you can see by the symbol next to my name. Or did you miss it?”

Digits shook his head.

“Calling you the emperor of noobs was the understatement of the century. And calling you a noob now would be rather awkward…”

“Don’t feel awkward,” Ros interrupted. “I was a noob then, and a noob I remain. And I’m not ashamed in any way. You make do with what you’ve got, after all…”

Digits rose and looked at him attentively, looking very focused.

“You do realize that if I take a short walk to the teleport and tell a few guys about you, I’m likely to get paid well in exchange.”

“No kidding. Might be enough for months on a full account. Perhaps even a year. Go on, hurry up before someone beats you to it.”

“Right you are, I’d hate to miss my chance—thanks for reminding me. So, shall I run along now?”

“Absolutely. Get to it.”

“Can I just ask you a little question?”

“Well, as long it’s a little one…”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“You know what I’m talking about!” Digits raised his voice a little. “Cut the banter already, it’s ridiculous! Why are you here? To mock me or get back at me somehow for what happened then?”

“I bear absolutely no grudges for what happened then. On the contrary—you are the reason why I have so many opportunities now. If I didn’t wind up at that mine, I’d be doomed to endless drudgery as a gardener or a window cleaner in one of the cities. You really did me a good turn, Digits. Helped me out. Some other person might have borne a grudge, but not me. And you did warn me the job wouldn’t be too cushy, so faulting you wouldn’t be fair. I didn’t come here to mock you, either—I came to thank you, and to give you a little something as thanks for your help two months ago. Here goes.”

Ros raised his hand and activated the Clean Slate skill icon.

Digits felt his legs wobble and sat down on the ground, blinking in confusion:

“What… What was that? What have you done to me?”

“That was my thanks,” said Ros. Then he added, as he turned to leave. “And now you can run to the teleport all you want.”

* * *

Ros was already crossing the bridge when a breathless voice behind him whispered:

“Stop, will you! Why don’t you mind your private message window? My Vigor is all down to zero! I can’t keep up with you!”

“Someone once told me that was a good thing. When Vigor bottoms out, the stat levels faster. Wait, wasn’t that you who said it?”

“I sure did, gods help me… Now will you stop galloping around like a horse already?!”

“The Acrobatics skill levels faster when you leap and hop.”

“I know how to level Acrobatics! And you’re doing it like a noob!”

Ros slowed down a bit.

“So, how do you level it?”

“Screw Acrobatics! Just tell me what that was!”

“Nothing much. Just my way of saying thanks.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve had people thank me many times, but so far I haven’t had stat progress locks removed once. Am I going insane, or are you not telling me everything?”

“My thanks weren’t of the ordinary variety.”

“For some reason, I instantly suspected as much. So, what was that?”

“The teleport is in the other direction.”

“Oh, is it?! As if I’m really going to run over there for my thirty silver pieces. Don’t even think you can shake me off without an answer. Well?”

“Well, it’s this skill I have, you see. A pretty rare one. If I use it on someone in a private place without any onlookers, a player becomes just as overexcited as you.”

“Let me guess—the skill was received by a certain noob along with a bunch of rather extraordinary achievements?”

“That sure is fine guesswork…”

“Okay, let me vouchsafe another guess—I don’t think my personal qualities were quite enough for you to return to a place where everyone’s looking for you just to express your gratitude. And I’d like to add something else: no matter your answer, I won’t run to the teleport. Thirty silver won’t solve my problems, but you, or tagging along with you, just might.”

“Useful information about me is worth ten to twenty thousand in gold. Check out the forum. It will be more in dollars, since the exchange rate keeps growing.”

“I need a lot more than that.”

“Me too.”

“So?”

“You may have been foolish enough not to have managed to earn enough for a proper account in over a year, but you still know a lot more about the game than I do. A friend like that might come in handy.”

“Well, I have enough for a worker’s account, but I need one that I could level up to ten for my modest plans to come to fruition. Even a month would suffice. That’s just my way of telling you I’m not a complete idiot. Bear in mind that stats like mine won’t get me so much as a position of a shoeshine boy at the local waste management plant, so earning money like everybody else is not exactly an option.”

“Right. So, just low-key hustles such as delivering noobs to noob mines, and so on.”

“That, too. So, is there anything else but my mental capacity that interests you?”

“You were one of the beta testers. I read about it—they locked your stats and levels completely, but they left the skills intact.”

“Yeah. Removing them would be a pain. But you can’t use them properly when your stats are locked, so they’re completely useless.”

“Your skills were often unbalanced, giving you advantage over other players, right?”

“That, too. Even if our skills are still left in the game, they’re the kind you can only get in a scroll drop from a very high-level boss.”

“So, what have you got?”

“My race was originally designed as a race of pure debuffers. The best thing I have is called Total Destruction. A unique racial skill in which the target receives twenty percent extra damage from all attacks for eight seconds.”

“Doesn’t sound like much…”

“You don’t get it. The skill is scalable. As it grows, so does the extra damage percentage and effect duration; and other effects will develop, too. It ignores all resistances—its effect is only cut in two for every hundred levels of difference between you and the target. So, a level 110 mob will only receive ten percent extra damage, and it won’t work at all on a level 200. But that’s at the lowest tier—it would only get better as I level and raise the skill. It is also difficult to dispel—buffers will have a hard time removing it.”

“You’re right, that’s a damn good ability.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“It’s my third month here, and I am beginning to realize something. It’s much harder to play on your own than in a team.”

“It took you this long to realize as much?! What were you thinking earlier?! I have to take back what I said about you possibly not being a noob anymore. And you still haven’t given me your main reason.”

“Why makes you think there is one?”

“My knowledge of human nature. If there’s no such reason, I’ve misjudged you completely.”

“What were you back in the real world, Digits?”

“That’s considered a tactless question in the game world.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, you must have realized I didn’t work for a cartel, or do illicit seasonal gigs across the border, although I have been up north. Before the injury, that is. Mexico is full of contradiction, and you can find anything there. And all sorts. You can think of me as a professor if you absolutely have to. Will you tell me your reason now?”

“This whole thing struck me as an injustice.”

“Both these worlds are full of injustice. What exactly bothers you so?”

“You said you were a cripple in both worlds. I just felt that was wrong.”

“So you decided to fix the injustice? How generous of you…”

“Well, combined with what I could get from you in return, my generosity goes hand in hand with enlightened self-interest.”

“They wrote on the forum that you’re Russian. Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“That explains a lot. You people always were of the troublemaking variety…”

“Look, I’ll be gone very shortly. I intend to make some money—as I have already told you, I need a lot of it, and that’s pretty much all I want from this game. I’m giving you a choice: come along or stay behind. And I won’t even hold a grudge if you report to the spies at the teleport everything you’ve just learned from me.”

“Sure, spilling the beans to them sounds tempting, but my life experience tells me that I stand to gain much more with you than with them. And greed is my main vice. So, I think I’ll tag along.”

“You may not like hanging around me. I have a tendency of attracting problems. Expect things to get pretty hairy.”

“I’ve made up my mind, so why don’t you just tell me our next destination?”

“We’ll go and clear a Chaos dungeon.”

“Just the two of us?!”

“Did you expect anyone else to join?”

“Not exactly, but don’t you reckon there may be too few of us for something like that?”

“Last time around I went on my own, and I managed it all the same. Party invite coming your way.”

“Got it. What…?! Mother of God! How is this even possible?”

“A few modest bonuses from my achievements.”

“You call these modest?!”

“You get seventeen points to all the primary stats, and four to secondary—so long as you’re in the same party as me. You will also be getting forty percent more experience, and a few minor bonuses besides. Didn’t you know it was fun to be around heroes?”

“Well, sure, but nothing like this! You’re no hero—you’re an honest-to-God monster!”

“Uh, thank you, I think…”

“A cute little monster, to be sure. A monstrette.”

“Please keep any innuendoes about my disguise to yourself. And put these on.”

“The armor is level ten, I can’t equip it.”

“Start with the rings and the bracelets. Your virtual level will go all the way up to ten. Nearly all the items give a bonus to health, so that you might actually survive an errant strike or two. I can resurrect, too, but a zero-level noob will respawn before I manage to target you and cast the spell. Your task in the dungeon will be simple: survive. And work on raising your stats if it doesn’t interfere with surviving. Unlike regular players, you have received no points at the beginning, so we’ll have to compensate for that somehow.”

“I get it. It’s a pity I can’t raise my actual level, though.”

“You will be able to, in a week’s time—I won’t be able to remove the lock any earlier than that.”

“You can do that, too?”

“Why else would I say it?”

“That’s incredible!”

“Sure. Consider yourself inside a fairy tale.”

“Is that right? Does it end with us marrying and living happily ever after?”

“Didn’t I tell you to keep your innuendoes to yourself? Don’t get any funny ideas about my disguise. Also, when we leave the dungeon, I’ll be a green orc with fangs hanging way below my chin. I’ll do my best to be as scary as possible.”

“Fair enough, I’ll cross you off my list of potential life partners. I’m rather indiscriminate, of course, but there must be limits.”

“Here, take a pickaxe, too.”

“What would I want a pickaxe for?”

“Scratching your back.”

“My arms are long enough for that.”

“Once we clear the dungeon, we’ll stock up on the local resources—namely, gems. Almost everything is of good quality or better. I have leveled up my Gem-Cutting skill, so we’ll be able to net up to fifty thousand silver pieces by trading with players. Even if we fail to get anything valuable from the boss and the caches, the total haul should still be pretty nice.”

“No doubt, especially if we manage to do it on a daily basis.”

“No such luck. Once a dungeon is fully cleared, the forces of Chaos only reclaim it in a month’s time. Nothing to be done about that.”

“And what do we do in the remaining twenty-nine days?”

“The dungeon will take about a week to clear, after which time I will remove your level lock. Then we’ll take a week to unload the loot, cut gems, and so on—we won’t be bored, I assure you. Once done with all that, I’ll change my appearance, and we’ll make for the Russian sector.”

“Whatever for?”

“Well… I’m Russian, after all.”

“And that’s reason enough?”

“I’m really not sure why, to be honest, but I feel a strong urge to go there just the same. It could be my Russian extraction speaking, being drawn to what’s familiar.”

“Oh, you’re quite the sentimental people. Give you any reason, and you start pining for your snows. But what am I gonna do there? I don’t speak your language.”

“The game has built-in translation options.”

“The translation quality leaves much to be desired.”

“You’ll pick it up if you want to. It’s hard for me to be here, too.”

“All right, let’s make a deal: I will agree to relocating to that frozen Gulag of yours, and you will refrain from making your mug as ugly as an orc’s. Stop staring daggers at me already, I’m not referring to your disguise! It’s just that I won’t feel comfortable near a fanged orc. And I have always hated the color green, even as a kid. Call me a racist if you must, but no orcs, please!”

Digits rolled his eyes in pretend horror.

“All right, I’ll become a goblin, or even a camel, hump and all. But enough with the chitchat—it’s time to get to work.”

Ros activated the legendary skill that with a one-day cooldown. A wide teleport arch materialized before him—much larger than those created by simple scrolls, and the luminescence was yellowish instead of white.

“How did you do that?!” Digits was amazed. “Without a scroll?!”

“Scrolls are expensive, and I try to lead a frugal lifestyle.”

“I’m definitely inside a fairy tale,” Digits shook his awkward-looking head, and stepped through the teleport arch.

Many thanks to my readers! To be continied.

I would like to heartily recommend the books

The Play to Live of Dmitry Rus
and Realm of Arkon Georgy Akella,
my good friends and two of the founders of the LitRPG genre.

The Play to Live and Realm of Arkon series are some of the finest works in the genre, and a must-read for any fan.

D.Rus
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LYJOII6

G.Akella
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015QMQ8V6/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

[1] Short for Yevgeny

[2] An NPC (non-player character) is a character controlled by software rather than a live player. Their attitude to the player, relations between them, and the roles they play in the gameplay are of enormous importance to any game world. They represent a vital feature of the background against which the players act.

[3] A buffer is a character specialized in boosting the stats of their allies using special spells or skills (temporarily enhancing resistances, attacking abilities, accuracy, etc.) Buffers don’t normally engage in contact directly, hiding behind the backs of their fellow teammates in battle. A buffer’s antipode is a debuffer—a character who primarily specializes in weakening opponents by applying debuffs that lower their stats. If a buffer has well-developed healing skills, they can also function as a healer, reviving dead allies and restoring their hit points. Characters who don’t participate in battle directly (and therefore don’t deal any damage to the enemy) are classified as supporting characters.

[4] A raid or raiding party is a group of characters gathered to perform a complex task that is beyond the capacities of a single player. Canonical examples include battles against particularly strong monsters (bosses) that have to be vanquished so that a player can complete an important quest or just get some nice bonuses or loot found on the enemy’s corpse. Raiding players also gain experience for leveling up—even a victory over a minor boss in Second World can bring substantially more experience than killing a regular monster.

[5] A mob (short for “mobile object”) is a specific variety of NPC whose purpose is to be killed by the player (or players) for experience and items. Killing mobs may also be part of a quest one gets in the game. Most mobs fight back. Some mobs are aggressive; others are not. The former attack any player that wanders into their aggression (aggro) range. The latter do not attack first, but fight back the players who attack them. Social mobs can receive reinforcements from their “kin,” even if the player is outside their aggro range. Digit uses the term “train” to describe a situation where a player accidentally or deliberately draws the aggression of several mobs. When a “train” is accidental and the mobs are strong, the character’s health and life may be in danger. In a great many RPG (role-playing) games, killing mobs is the player’s main objective.

[6] An epic item is an item of great value with high characteristics, or a rare property, or a combination thereof. There are ten grades of items in Second World (as the players are told). Epic items rank eighth, which places them beyond the reach of players with modest funds.

[7] A Russian racial slur usually applied to Caucasus natives.

[8] Regen is gamer slang for “regeneration.” The term applies to the restoration of the character’s variable characteristics (hit points, magical energy, vigor, etc.).

[9] Chinese farmers should not be confused with Chinese citizens working in the horticultural industry. In the narrower sense of the word, a farmer is a player investing a substantial amount of effort into performing boring, monotonous, and repetitive actions inside a given game. Chinese farmers are a very distinct phenomenon in the gaming world. All the gaming-related activities of such players are aimed exclusively at earning real money (by selling valuable objects in the game, leveled-up characters, leveling-up services etc. for hard currency). Chinese farmers work in shifts, just like factory workers, getting paid a salary (12 to 18 hours a day; there have been cases of death from exhaustion in front of a monitor). When a whole family uses the same character, all generations can take shifts playing—grandma and grandpa, parents, children, and grandchildren. Large enterprises of a specific sort have become a widespread phenomenon, providing centralized employment to dozens and hundreds of people. The Jixi labor camp gained notoriety when it was discovered that prisoners were made to play online games for the benefit of the administration. Farmers in general are an international phenomenon, but the combination of cheap computers, cheap labor, and broadband Internet have allowed Chinese farmers to evolve into a breed apart, and they have a huge impact on the economy of numerous gaming projects. It is impossible to calculate the exact scale of the industry—estimates vary between hundreds of millions and, recently, billions of dollars per year.

[10] The first line from the song Moskva—Pekin (Moscow—Beijing), written in 1950 (music by Vano Muradeli, lyrics by Mikhail Vershinin). The song dates from the epoch of “Sino-Russian alliance.”

[11] Jokes and memes concerning the alleged toughness of the natives of Chelyabinsk, a city in Siberia, are very popular in Russia.

[12] A “tank” is a meat shield of sorts—a character with high hit points and armor, and with talents and abilities aimed at enduring high amounts of damage while protecting more vulnerable party members.

[13] Looking For Group—a common abbreviation among gamers seeking to join a party for quests or instances requiring a party.

[14] Damage Per Second—shorthand for damage-dealing characters.

[MB1]I like it! k'12

[MB2]Though I would normally say “Mage Guild” myself, this is the way these guilds were used in D&D, so I’m sticking to the same format for recognition.

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42