Soulstone: Awakening (World of Ruul Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “I think they sell those shirts to nerds who want to part with their hard earned money, yes,” Ivan said, glaring at me. “And don’t even think about rolling that die you fucking nitwit. You have the best starting stats of anyone in the game right now. Don’t ruin it.”

  “I have to go for it,” I said, kneeling down beside my lucky die and picking it up. It felt hot in my hands although I didn’t know why. I brought it to my lips and kissed it for good luck. I wasn’t a pretty lady, but it’d have to do. “If I don’t, I’ll always wonder what could have been. I can’t live with that.”

  “You should live with that,” Ivan replied as I let the dice go. It tumbled through the air like a baby bird taking flight for the first time, and as it did, my heart hammered so hard in my chest, I thought I might die.

  Thunder boomed overhead in the empty sky, and the stats interface seemed to flicker around the edges as my die struck the ground, twenty side up one more time.

  “Holy fuck!” Ivan said, his head swiveling from the die to me and back again. “Holy fuck, holy fuck.”

  I was in agreement as I watched my eighteen vanish in a puff of smoke to be replaced by a twenty. I had somehow rolled all twenties, and I watched in amazement as my five stat boxes were filled with my perfect score. Awesome.

  Totally. Fucking. Awesome.

  4

  “You don’t even fucking get how fucking over-powered you are right now, do you?” Ivan asked, but I was too busy staring at my new surroundings to respond.

  I was in the newbie starting town of Ruul, and while I knew it was virtual, it felt real as hell. Non-player characters bustled through the crowded town square, moving to and fro on pre-programmed missions, but they looked so real, I had a hard time believing they were just NPCs.

  Crystal clear water spurted from the massive marble fountain in the middle of the square while people with various carts hawked goods. Massive buildings of wood and stone lined the cobblestone streets as I turned around in amazement.

  “This is insane. It’s like someone took the Town of Silver Gables in Titan Gate and made it real.” I took a deep breath, still in awe. “I mean, I know you said Titan Gate was modeled off of this, but still…”

  “Yeah, The Town of Silver Gables was impressive twenty times, ago,” Ivan replied, fluttering in front of me and poking me in the chest with one stubby blue finger. “Now listen so I can explain exactly why you should be impressed by your stats.”

  “Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes at the bug creature. Part of me didn’t understand how he couldn’t just stand here gaping, but then I remembered he wasn’t fully immersed. He didn’t experience the smells and sounds like I did. It almost made me feel bad for him until I remembered he kept my brain in a fucking jar.

  “So, if you’re done being a princess, open your stat window and we’ll go through each one, okay?” Ivan said as I took a deep breath, inhaling the cold crisp air and turned my gaze onto the flying bug fairy. Then I realized I had no idea how to do what he wanted me to do.

  “Um, how do I check my stats and stuff?” I asked, feeling my cheeks flush with heat. I was such a newbie, how the hell did they expect me to do this? No, that was the wrong attitude. I had to focus. Back in Titan Gate, the newbie town was known for telling you absolutely everything you needed to know in mind numbing tedium. It made me hope this town would be similar.

  “Just think of the menu you want, and it will open in your peripheral vision like you were wearing a HUD in one of those science fiction movies.” Ivan sighed and pulled out his flask as he spoke. “You can even open the help menu that way or record stuff, so long as you remember. The recordings aren’t really necessary though because I record everything you do, anyway.”

  “Okay, that’s not at all creepy…” I murmured feeling equal parts invaded and relieved. Still, I was glad I wouldn’t have to write stuff down and that there’d be someone else to help with quests and the like. I was never good at keeping track of how many gnome nut sacks I needed for a particular scavenger quest.

  I took a deep breath, marveling at how fresh it tasted and thought about my inventory. Instantly, a window devoid of gear showed up. It was weird because while I could see the menu clearly, it wasn’t blocking my sight at all. Well, that was neat.

  Unfortunately, my inventory revealed I had no items to speak of, which would make everything more difficult. Man, why couldn’t I have started with a couple daggers or something? Closing my inventory, I glanced at Ivan who fluttered next to me with increasing impatience.

  I understood why he was annoyed with me since I was being particularly newbie, and while I was anxious to get on with my mission of finding his soul stones so I could save the world and get my body back, dying was decidedly permanent. I, on the other hand, was accustomed to living, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to get a little info from the cricket on my proverbial shoulder before I pissed him off too much.

  “Well, here’s the thing. The primary goal of this whole game, aside from gathering the soul stones, is to level up. Its total grinding porn. That said, the reason why leveling is so special is you get to add a single stat point every time you level after fifty. To put this in fucking perspective, at level forty-nine it takes three to five hours to make one percent of the experience required to level up.” He shook his head. “You already have twenty in every stat so you’ll always be ahead of everyone. In addition, a twenty in a starting stat gives a crazy bonus. For instance, because you have twenty in strength, you will always do an extra four percent damage. For always.”

  “Oh, cool,” I said, suddenly filled with elation. I’d always be stronger than someone of equal level, and if I planned to win and get my body back, that wouldn’t hurt. Not a damned bit. Hell, at this rate, I was going to have my body back before lunch. “What do the rest of the stat bonuses do?”

  “Your twenty in dexterity gives you an additional four percent chance to hit and dodge. The constitution bonus rolls an extra eight-sider on top of your normal twenty-sider every level for health gain. Same thing with your wisdom giving you more mana, the resource used to cast spells.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe my good stats were wasted on me. “Your intelligence means all those spells and skills will do four percent more damage. Always.”

  “Wow…” I said, swallowing hard. Those were some awesome bonuses. “So, uh what do I do now?”

  I resisted the urge to flex, but it was hard because I wanted to get started leveling up. I had a good starting character, but I still knew next to nothing about the world, and I had no items to speak of. While it resembled Titan Gate and some of the things here were bound to be similar, I had literally blown through the starting area of Titan Gate in minutes because one of my high-level friends had helped me, so I didn’t remember it very well. Still, I was doubting it would have helped anyway since this place was three dimensional and immersive and I’d just played Titan Gate on a computer screen. Sure, it’d had great graphics, but it was nothing like this.

  I was also pretty sure that if I played this like it was Titan Gate, I’d likely overlook something in a rush. I couldn’t do that. Not if I wanted to find the soul stones and get back home. Besides, hadn’t the first bread crumb in Ready Player One been in the starting zone? Slow and steady was best, especially since I was on a virtual scavenger hunt.

  “I’d suggest you go hit scare crows until you’re level five. That’s when they stop giving experience.” Ivan smiled at me. “That should take you a couple days. So once we get there, I’ll buzz off for a bit. We’ve got another player to get introduced.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “A boring plan.”

  “You want to stay alive, right?” he asked, already buzzing away from me. I followed behind him, amazed at all the sights and smells. I passed by a bakery that literally smelled like fresh baked apple pie. The stones felt real beneath my feet, and the wind real on my skin. It was insane.

  I even tossed in a couple jumping jacks just
for good measure, but stopped when Ivan glanced at me sidelong and muttered, “newb.”

  Still, by the time we reached the gates at the far side of town, I’d had my fills of sights and sounds of the town and was ready to get on with the game. It was time to find some gear and start leveling up so I could complete the mission.

  Unfortunately, that was going to be a bit harder than I’d anticipated since my inventory was lacking in basics like food, water, and money, and I had no weapon to speak of. Even Titan Gate had let you start with basic equipment, but this was particularly stark. No. I was going to have to find a way to get basic items, otherwise, I’d just be stuck in town while whatever guarded the soul stones sat in their caves and cackled maniacally.

  “So, uh, how do I kill things with no weapon?” I asked as we passed through the shoulder-high gates. “Because that seems like a pretty necessary item to have.”

  Although the gate was banded in black metal, like the walls, it appeared to be made of felled trees of different widths with sharpened points. A pair of guards stood on both the inside and outside of the gates, one armed with a spear and the other with a bow. Their silvery armor glinted in the sunlight, and made me wish I had gear like the guards, since in most games, guards were strong to help ward off attacks on new players.

  “Hello,” I said, waving at the guards as we passed by.

  “Good luck,” the archer said, and the spearman cordially nodded his head in my direction.

  “Are you seriously talking to NPCs?” Ivan asked, shaking his head as we moved a little ways away from the guards and found another fenced in area. This one was only waist-high, and inside I could see about ten scarecrows lined up on spinning wooden poles.

  “Why not?” I asked, shrugging at him. “Haven’t you ever read Alterworld? That dude had it good because he talked to NPCs.”

  “Whatever you say. If you want to build up a friendship with a computer program, be my guest,” Ivan replied, giving me the same look my ex-girlfriend always had during an argument in which I was wrong even though I knew I was right.

  As we entered the training area, I noticed several wooden swords in a rack on the far end, and as I looked at them, Ivan smiled at me.

  “Are those to use on the dummies?” I asked, not wanting to take one and get shot full of arrows by the guards for stealing. After all, here an arrow to the knee would end my adventure in a hurry.

  “Yeah, but if you try to take them out of the training area, they’ll burst into flames.” His gaze darkened. “Don’t do it. Third degree burns are not fun, even with the pain threshold turned way down.” He hovered by the entrances as he spoke, slowly backing away and turning like he wanted to leave.

  “All right,” I said, shrugging at him. “I’ll just be here then.”

  “Have fun, I’ll check on you in a bit.” With those words, Ivan vanished from sight, leaving me alone in the training area.

  It was strangely eerie because there were trees and brush just a few meters beyond the fence, and while I knew it wasn’t real, I could hear things rustling in the distance. Hopefully, they wouldn’t come in here, but you never knew what would happen in games. I mean, I could die here, and it wasn’t even a real place. Still, as I kicked at the dirt with the toe of my work boot, it certainly felt real. Crazy.

  I couldn’t imagine how much people would pay to actually play a game like this. Part of me was sort of excited. Sure, I’d been kidnapped and they’d torn my brain out of my skull to get me here, but at the same time, I got to try out a VR MMO. That was pretty fucking cool.

  A smile I couldn’t stop crossed my face as I headed toward the pile of wooden swords. If I wasn’t here now, what else would I do, anyway? I’d mostly just play Titan Gate and pretend to think about studying. This was way more fun than that, you know, assuming I didn’t die.

  As I stopped in front of the swords, I realized there were two kinds. One was a long bokken-style sword while the other was a basic short sword. I’d never really used either in real life but decided to go with the wooden katana since I was pretty sure using a katana would be awesome.

  I picked up a bokken and held it in my hands. The weapon was heavier than I expected, but not unwieldly, probably thanks to my twenty strength. Either way, as I hefted it, I knew spending some time here would be beneficial, if a little boring because I had no idea how to use it. I mean, okay, I’d watched my fair share of samurai flicks, but that was hardly the same.

  “All right scarecrow, I’m not sure why you said those things about my mother, but you’re going to pay!” I growled as I moved to the closest dummy and swung the bokken like I was trying to hit a homerun. The wooden blade struck the scarecrow with a loud thwack. The force of the impact rang down my arms, causing the blade to jostle in my hands so hard, I actually dropped it.

  “Ow! Fuck!” I cried as my experience bar went up one percent. I wrung out my hands as I glared daggers at the scarecrow. It stood there mocking me, and as it did, I knew this was going to take a while. Still, I didn’t have a better plan, especially since I couldn’t take the wooden sword out of the training area so I knelt and picked up the sword in my throbbing hands. This time I tried a tentative swing, making sure I kept my hands together on the hilt of the blade. This swing still rang down my arms, but it hurt less, and like before, I gained another percent.

  “Well, this is going to take a while,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans before readying for another swing.

  5

  An hour later, I’d learned that I really hated hitting the scarecrow training dummy. My hands were blistered and bleeding, which seemed lame because it was virtual, but there it was. Worse, I learned that after getting about ten percent experience or so, the dummy would vanish, and I’d have to wait ten minutes for it to reappear. Granted, there were a few dummies, so usually one was always up. Usually.

  Still, as I stood there with my bleeding hands, clutching my wooden bokken, a sense of joy started to fill me. I was at ninety-eight percent. Two more “kills” and I’d be level two. It was sort of sad at how excited I was, but then again, this was my life now. While I’d had more than a few moments in my life where tremendous joy had brought the realization that my life was ultimately pointless, it was the small things, like having an extra slice of pie with dinner (or instead of dinner) that made life worth living.

  “You ready to give up the exp!” I shouted, lunging at the training dummy in front of me and striking it in the side with my bokken. The thud of impact raced up my arms as the blow sent the training dummy reeling into oblivion. Its wooden body shattered into a million iridescent shards of glowing energy that left me standing there facing a non-existent opponent. Worse, there were no more training dummies.

  As the experience bar in the periphery of my vision went up a single percent, I took a deep breath and tried to resist the urge to scream in frustration. Instead, I made my way over to the pile of training swords and looked them over for the millionth time. I wasn’t sure what good they would do, but I’d sort of wanted to take a pair of the short swords and try dual wielding like I had with my rogue in Titan Gate, only it wouldn’t do any good to take them outside. Scooping one short sword up anyway, I weighed it in my hand. It was definitely too heavy for me to manage one handed with my limited skill set. No, I was stuck with the katana for now.

  Sighing, I leaned against the fence and waited for a training dummy to spawn. One should have come back by now, but as I waited with toe-tapping impatience, none appeared. I kept glancing anxiously at my experience bar. I had half a mind to venture outside and find some kind of low level monster, but if I did, my bokken would explode, and call me crazy, but I wasn’t about to punch squirrels in the face if I could help it.

  “What gives,” I growled, glancing at my wrist like I had a watch. Oddly enough, the gesture made the time and date flash across my HUD. It was 11 AM on December the second. Neat, I guess. Well, at least I could keep track of how long I’d been here.

  Unfortunately, I still
had no idea how sleep and stuff worked here since I was a brain in a box, but I was betting it was similar to real life since I was exhausted and my arms ached. Even worse, my stomach growled angrily, but I’d yet to come across any food. Did you eat here? I mean, it probably didn’t matter since I was guessing whatever slurry they were using for my brain would keep me nourished, but I still felt hungry. After I leveled, I’d have to check that out.

  “What have you done to my brethren!” cried a gruff, angry voice from behind me, and I spun to find myself staring at a monstrous strawman. He looked sort of looked like the other training dummies, only he was at least twice as tall, standing maybe eleven feet and had arms and legs like saplings. In one hand he gripped a bone-handled metal scythe, and as he took an ominous step toward me, I realized he wasn’t anchored to the ground by a central post like the lifeless training dummies were.

  “Um… what?” I asked as the creature reared back and swung his scythe at me. I ducked just in time, barely avoiding becoming sashimi as the creature’s momentum, caused it to make a whirlwind with the blade that reminded me of the barbarian skill in Diablo II. The fight was strangely curious, reminding me of something I’d seen in Titan Gate.

  There had been one area that was designed to resemble a newbie zone, but it was one of the toughest places in the game. One of the enemies had been a scarecrow champion, and it had behaved a lot like this. The key to defeating it then was with fire spells since it was made of straw, but I was fresh out of fire. Still, there was one other secret. Because they had a long reach, if you could get in close, you could disarm them with a hit to the wrists.

  I’d have to try it because something told me if I ran away, the thing would chase me. I swallowed as the scarecrow champion righted itself and fixed its black as coal eyes on me. There was murder in those soulless eyes, and as I stared into them, my heart began to pound. Anxiety filled me. What if I died? No. I couldn’t let that happen. Mind over matter. I would win.