My consciousness returned, harsh and sudden, like the onset of winter for the snow removal services. At some point I realized that I was lying on the floor in a fetal position, shaking from the cold and the memory of the nightmare I had just gone through. I opened my eyes and saw a view worthy of the most illustrious impressionists: a bloodied floor covered with clumps of dirt, and Petrovich with his glassy eyes and torn-up throat. The digger, wedged between the table and the cabinet, rocking back and forth and mumbling something unintelligible and nonsensical. The underside of the table covered in congealed snot. A totally disgusting sight.
Quest received: “Road to the Citadel”. Reach the headquarters for the forces of your class. Coordinates of the Citadel are indicated on your map.
The location map icon started blinking compellingly, informing me of new data available. However, new information was not useful at all: the map was still covered in dark fog, obscuring the map from me. The Citadel was marked on the map with a small flag, and if I figured out their scaling correctly the central base of the Paladins was somewhere on the other side of the world relative to where I was right now.
“I can’t really figure it out — did you become a vampire or not?” — a derisive voice sounded, making me shift into a vertical position. I did not have the strength to stand, so I simply sat up, leaning my back against the wall of the trailer, and tried to look around. I was not able to accomplish the latter though: the amount of physical work required to sit up made me dizzy and breathless, as if I were an untrained runner having to cover a distance of a hundred meters in full battle rattle. In the midst of the multicolored sparks and fireworks in front of my eyes I practically saw a question come from my body: — “What have I turned into if I am choking just from trying to sit?! This is what they call 25% of normal?” An eternity went by before I could think clearly and finally was able to look around. And then my jaw practically dropped. In the door, wearing steel armor shining brightly in the light of moon and stars, there was a cat, standing there with his paws crossed on his chest and smiling sardonically. His sharp teeth were bared for all to see. More precisely, it was a man with a cat’s head, paws and tail. As far as I recalled, felines were unable to stand on their hind paws so naturally, shoulder leaning against the doorframe.
“I will ask the question once again — did you become a vampire?” the cat repeated.
“Vanish!” I managed to squeak hoarsely. My thoughts were preparing to waltz again against the backdrop of multicolored circles, but I was suppressing the dizziness. I was able to anchor myself by a simple question: why was my mind perceiving a person who entered as a cat? Did my mind decide to follow the way of the digger who was still rocking back and forth and mumbling nonsensically?
“I will for sure. But later. So, are you a vampire?”
“No.” Since the hallucination was not going to vanish, I decided to respond to it. Of course, it is not quite normal to talk to your imaginary companion, but I was not concerned with “normalcy” at the moment.
“But you did drink blood?”
“I did.”
“Did you receive an offer to change your race?”
“I did.”
“But you remained human. Why?”
“Salt is bad for you,” I grumbled.
“Well, that’s an option too,” the cat chuckled. “Anyway, it’s time to get you out of this pit; we’ll figure out what to do with you at the Citadel. I hope you received the quest at least?”
“Yes.”
“Well, at least something. Want to see something funny? Of course you do, you can’t avoid it anyway. Look here! That’s you!”
A mirror appeared in front of me – a huge one, hanging in the air unsupported. I should have been surprised by an object appearing out of nowhere, but this minor issue faded into the background. A head was staring at me from the mirror – ugly, bloodied, dried to the point of resembling a mummy – and in it were two bright blue eyes.
“Aren’t you a beauty!” the cat commented sarcastically. “Even if someone on Earth were to remember you, they would definitely fail to recognize you now. Congratulations, brother Paladin! I have completely blotted you out of this world. My quest is complete! … Wait.. Something is not right…”
“What do you mean by ‘blotted out’?” I asked the contemplating cat with surprise, having temporarily forgotten my horrible appearance.
“It means that… Right! We have a living witness right here! I was starting to think that I had missed something, and here he is, rocking coolly right here.”
Something like a green jedi light saber from Star Wars appeared in the cat’s hands.
“O-Oomph!” the hallucination said matter-of-factly, as it moved its hand sharply. The sword went through the digger’s body smoothly and without resistance; the cat then smiled contentedly. My breath caught from seeing how the neatly removed head of the person who had been so withdrawn into his own world rolled on the floor, so I missed the moment when a light level-up halo standard in many games started forming around the Paladin. The cat grinned mockingly and concluded:
“Dear Archibald, I congratulate my dear self on my new level of 352! You have been striving for this goal for a long time, blah-blah-blah, fanfare and the like. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Wh-h-aat?” I stumbled through the question, as I was completely confused. All my attention was concentrated on the digger’s head that had rolled up to the wall and stopped. The cat had just killed a person just to complete some quest! Just so! In passing! Because he wanted to get some blasted experience points!
“What’s your name, pray tell?” Archibald repeated without concealing his mirth.
“Sergey.” The shock of the digger’s death was so huge that I forgot that I was surrounded by the game.
“For demons’ sake, what 'Sergey'?! Stop clinging to your past life! Forget about it! Nothing links you to that previous world anymore! The Sergey that you used to be is dead! Got that?”
“How can nothing link me to it? I have a sister, mother, friends…” I stumbled seeing the scowling face of the cat — “WHAT?!”
“Every time a new player appears,” the cat started to clarify, ignoring my attempts to stand up and grab him by the throat. This bastard killed my relatives! He is a dead man! I will destroy him even if I die trying! — “Head of class receives the quest for zeroization of the new recruit. He doesn’t do the quests himself, his status is above working in the fields; so there’s a lottery held among best players. Experience for kills, experience for quest completion, the loot – all goes to the lucky one. You were good loot, I have not seen such rich pickings in a long time. I can say for sure: you left lots of traces in your previous life. Normally the system generates a dozen or so targets, but in your case there were 32 NPCsdefined as mandatory targets, 67 as recommended and 91 as desirable. I got them all! That’s why, frankly speaking, I was a little late: one of my tasks was to pour some water down your throat after you spawned. But this way it worked out even better – I got two additional bodies for power leveling. The one that ran out of here ten minutes ago and this one. The System defined them as additional mandatory targets, so the experience… Quit thrashing! Get it, bro‒ you can’t do anything to me right now. After they appear the recruits are weak and dystrophic. If you decide you want to settle a score, I’ll be happy to accept your challenge. If you come back from the Academy, that is.”
“You are a dead man!” I growled with hatred, abandoning my attempts to stand up. The cat was right: at this stage there was nothing I could do to that freak. There was only one thing to do: remember him and wait for the right moment to avenge every person he killed!
“Of course I am a dead man‒ what else could I be? Because a fearsome nasty battle hamster which has a 99% probability of giving up the ghost in the Academy without the right of respawn is threatening to take revenge on me! My poor tail trembles in fear!” — The cat chuckled, then continued in a graver tone, "Get used to it, brother
: from now on you are a player. Everything that surrounded you before is just one of the game locations, and the people you considered to be independent creatures were merely NPCs controlled by the System. You think the 192 bodies I popped off will leave a blazing trail in the criminal reports? Ha! The System chose them as payment for converting you into a player; the system itself blotted… No, I really do enjoy the way you are looking at me! Hatred, determination, bloodthirstiness! Let’s do this: I will not say anything now about the specifics of becoming a player. Pass through the Academy. Survive, learn, become stronger, survive again and then we’ll see each other once more! My name is Archibald, a Catorian, level 352, Paladin, respawn point is Earth. If after the Academy you retain your itch for revenge, I am always at your service. By the way, someone formerly known as Sergey, you never introduced yourself.”
“Yari,” I growled angrily. “Remember this name, you freak. I will it remind you in the final moments of your life! I am Yari! Non-initiated, human, level 1, Paladin, no respawn point assigned yet.”
“Нu-uhh,” Archibald drawled, scratching his head in a purely human gesture. Then he swept the supper of the now dead cemetery custodians off the table to the floor, settled in the cleaned space as if it were a throne, shook his head as if deep in thought and continued: “It looks like we still have to take a brief tour into the game. Otherwise you don’t stand a chance of coming back from the Academy. Who will then take revenge on me? The game interface has a button for recording conversations; press it.”
“Where is it?” I gave up after a minute of fruitless attempts to figure out the status bar. The icons available to me were player description, map, personal inventory, book of spells, list of quests – and not a single hint at recording conversations.
“I see,” grinned the cat. “Have you ever played games before?”
“I have. A lot.”
“Doesn’t show though. You should be able to see the standard player status bar at the bottom of your field of vision. Do you see it?”
“I do. But it doesn't have means to record conversations.”
“Don’t hurry. You need to call up the status bar properties. Imagine that you are using a computer mouse. To activate the icons you were using the left button, now you need to be working with the right one. Surprise me, my future enemy. Beginner players master this task after just a couple…”
Archibald fell silent without clarifying: a couple of what? But I was not interested in these technicalities. Unless the cat was lying, the status bar is interactive. Which opens up a lot of possibilities for changing its settings and using it. Who said that it reacts only to two buttons? What if I had not a two-button, but a three-button mouse? Or a four-button one? Would the bar react differently to each button? As if confirming my words a rectangular semi-transparent box appeared in front of me: status bar properties. The panel contained twelve buttons, only two of which were available to me: descriptions and additional options. The rest were covered with a freakish looking icon showing a scowling skull with three red eyes.
“Judging from your joyful squeak” — Archibald continued, noticing my reaction — “you have discovered properties. Very good. As I already mentioned, it takes new players a couple of months. You will have to fiddle with the descriptions yourself; now open the additional options. There will be three options available to you: recording, calculator and system time. Drag recording to the main bar – you need to use this thing all the time.”
“What for?” I could not help asking as I was performing the sequence suggested to me. The cat was not lying: at the first level only three options were available to me out of a huge list. The rest were locked by the same scary skull. “If this is a game, the system itself should keep the records.”
“Did you turn on the recording?” Archibald responded with a question, waited for me to nod in confirmation and continued: “Remember, my future enemy, the game could not care less about you, about me or about all the players generally, perhaps with the exception of the Emperor. It never does anything on its own initiative. No recording, no conflict resolution, no constraints on using magic – the game does not control what it has created. Even more so – it would never create anything that would require its control. Players should be responsible for their fate themselves. If you want to revisit some points of the game, turn on the video. If you want to have remote access to trading, use the auctions. If you want something else, take care of it yourself. Don’t rely on the system.”
“The scary three-eyed skull covering most of the buttons: what is this? Or who is this?” I asked once Archibald fell silent.
“That’s an unusual question from a former NPC to whom the prospect of immortality has opened. Is that the only thing that concerns you at the moment?”
“No, but you have already delighted me with the statement that you will only tell me the information necessary for survival in some Academy. What’s the point of asking you something that you are not going to tell? The skull is obviously not part of the data that you are hiding.”
“That’s logical.” Archibald nodded and started swinging his legs. “The skull is the emblem of the Emperor. Who is the only player with moderator powers.Do I need to tell you what powers those are? Once you reach a certain level the skulls will disappear. Now to the most important thing. Remember, Yari, information on your personal attributes is your most guarded secret. Never tell it to anyone, under any circumstances. Especially to warlocks. Particularly if the warlock is an elf. Have you ever read the Bible? Remember those guys‒demons‒mentioned there? They were extremely unlucky in disclosing personal data; they had, like, the worst luck ever. One of the elven warlocks, Solomon, destroyed their whole race practically single-handed. Acting through a front man whose name was not even retained in history, Solomon captured a minor demon, found out its name – Ornia‒subdued it, and then through Ornia captured first the head of the demons‒Baal‒ and then another 70 great princes from his clan. The captives were interrogated, chained, then forced to do the hardest labor; then, once Solomon was tired of dealing with them, the great demon princes together with the great hosts of their servants were imprisoned in a copper vessel and thrown into Chaos. If you are ever interested, you will find the details of this abominable affair in the grimoire “Solomon’s Covenant”.
“Why abominable?”
“Because humanity has never been framed so badly! Note the subtlety with which Solomon set it all up: he didn't capture a single demon himself. He acted either through a front man or through the demons themselves. What do you think, once the survivors of Baal’s clan decided to get to the bottom of it and punish those at fault: who bore the brunt of their righteous ire?"
“People?” I put forth a guess.
“Exactly! The elves appeared innocent; Solomon gained so much experience points for destroying 72 princes that he was able to take his grinning ass to another location, and only people were left behind high and dry to face the enraged demons. Hello, Priest player Innocent III and the Inquisition he created, looking for any manifestation of demonism under the pretext of eradicating heresy! Hello, the slaughter known to everyone as the Black Death epidemic, which was, in fact, a demonic ritual that took, around the 1340s, about 60 million NPCs and one third of all players on Earth. Hello… oh, there were a lot of things going on in those times! Just the “Malleus Maleficarum” counts for quite something! The priests, under the pretext of fighting the demons, started to kill their own dark brothers — maleficars and witches, as the priests wanted to increase their own numbers! That’s history, you can’t get away from it. So, the maximum you can tell other entities about yourself is name and class. Level, respawn point, race, properties, specialty, other information — all that must be hidden. Otherwise you will follow the path of the demon princes.
“What do you mean by 'increase their numbers'? How can the number of priests increase at the expense of witches?”
“Well… Ok, I’ll tell you that as well. At this time Earth hou
ses the headquarters of 42 classes. As you understand, a class may include more than one race. So. There are several ways to become a player. The first and most standard one: every month for each class the System independently selects the most suitable person and converts him into a non-initiated player. The class members do a little purge – normally 3-4 people‒ and transport the recruit to the headquarters, from which he is then transported to the Academy. If the recruit complies with the game requirements and finishes the Academy, he returns and becomes a full-fledged player. As I mentioned, about one out of every hundred returns.”
“Why?”
“Because if a player is killed he loses one level. Do you think the level 1 recruits have a lot to lose? Some classes developed a habit for power leveling their newbies before the Academy to level 3, the maximum allowed for non-initiated players, but it did not improve the survival rate. One out of a hundred. The other way to become a player is a kill. If the stars align the right way and an NPC kills a player, he will become a player himself. The killed player will return to respawn point and receive a quest 'Revenge'. The System does not like unplanned noobs so it tries to restore balance every way it can. If you return from the Academy you will have another enemy besides me. The third and currently most popular method is a player zeroization. The number of players is practically always stable. The newbies that come out of the Academy don’t affect the stats much, and your case is just unique. So. If, for example, a Paladin completely wipes out a Priest, then Paladins get a chance to turn one of their minions into a player. The minion they gain that way will go to the Academy and will finish it with a 100% guarantee: the System does not allow initiated players to die. By the way, had you become a vampire, the Academy would have been an unpleasant memory for you. Because of the third way of becoming a player: in the old times classes slaughtered each other like pigs. Priests, together with us, killed Witches, Maleficars, Warlocks, Mages and other magical classes. In turn, we were killed by the Blades, Warriors and Assassins. It was quite a slaughter. Finally a peace treaty was made to stop the mayhem that reigned on Earth, so for 600 years now there has been an armed neutrality between the classes. Well, that’s about all you need to know for now. You will learn the rest in the Academy. Oh yeah, one more thing! You already killed an NPC. Take this: that’s your rightful loot.”
The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 4
