“Do you already know which class you want to play as?” Nate asked.
“Yep,” Vlad said. “I’m gonna play as Damage.”
Nate glanced at me and shifted his gaze to the Russian guy. “There may be a little problem with that.”
“What do you mean?” Vlad asked, his brow furrowed.
“I want to play as Damage too,” I said.
“Can’t we both play as Damage?” Vlad asked.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I mean, there can obviously be only four persons on the team. And there are also only four classes. So I think it’s safe to assume that two teammates can’t pick the same class.”
“Is that right, Echo?” Nate asked.
“That’s correct,” the AI replied immediately. “In order to achieve the best result possible, the team has to be well balanced. If one of you picks the Damage class, none of the rest of you will be able to pick the same class. There has to be one Damage, one Flanker, one Front Line, and one Support on a four-person team.”
Vlad watched me silently for a second, then shook his head.
“Well, you are out of luck then, buddy,” he said. “Because I’m gonna play as Damage. Period.”
“Oh, really?” I asked. “What makes you think you’ll get to pick Damage?”
“Because I said so,” Vlad claimed as he clenched his fists and took a step toward me. “You got a problem with that?”
“Actually, I do,” I said as I stepped closer to the guy.
For a moment, we just stared daggers at each other in silence.
Nate sighed and said, “Guys, we are all grown-ups here, so let’s act as such.”
Vlad did not reply. He kept glaring at me. Seeing that he was not going to back up, I continued to stare at him too.
“Guys, instead of fighting over this, you can just toss a coin,” Nate suggested. “It’d be smart and fair, don’t you think?”
Vlad did not reply. It was obvious that he was very stubborn and was not going to let it go. Or he was waiting for me to back away first. I decided to heed Nate’s advice, so I took a few steps backward so I stood next to him. I turned my head to look at Nate.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Let’s flip a coin. Have you got one?”
Before Nate could reply, Vlad shook his head once and said, “No deal.”
Both Nate and I looked at him.
“What the heck are you talking about?” I said.
“I should be playing as Damage,” Vlad said.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Why you and not me?”
“Look,” Vlad said, “the damage class was always my main. For example, I always played as a mage in WoW. In other video games, I always played as a damage dealer too. So this class is very familiar to me. I know how to play as a damage dealer very well.”
I did not reply. Vlad must have realized that I was not very good at playing as Damage, because a small smile touched his lips, and he asked, “And what about you? What class is your main in MMORPGs?”
I considered lying but decided to tell the truth instead.
“To be honest, I prefer competitive first-person shooters and looter shooters to MMORPGs,” I said. “Like Call of Duty or Borderlands. That’s why I bought this game, The Weaponized. Sure, I played some MMORPGs but never got into the genre. However, I enjoy playing single-player-oriented role-playing games like Fallout or Skyrim.”
Vlad’s smile became wide and nasty. He said in an annoyingly smug voice, “See? That’s why I’m not going to let you pick Damage.”
Anger rose in me. It really aggravated me that he was going to take the Damage class away from me so rudely.
“Besides,” Vlad said, “it’s not going to be fair if you get to pick a class first.”
“What do you mean by that?” I said through clenched teeth.
“Think about it,” Vlad said. “I was the third to wake up in this place, right?”
“So?”
“So it won’t be fair if you get to pick a class first,” Vlad said.
“I don’t follow your logic,” I said.
“Are you dumb or what?” Vlad sighed. “Who was the first one to wake up in this place?”
“It was me,” I replied. “So?”
“See?” Vlad said. “You have an advantage over me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “What sort of advantage do you think I acquired over you by waking up in this place before you did?”
“How should I know?” He asked as he shrugged his shoulders. “After all, it was you who ended up being here first, not me. You’ve been longer here than I have, so you’ve had more time to examine this place. You might’ve learned some secrets about this place that you could use to your advantage later on.”
I shook my head. “This is nonsense. I know as much about this place as you do.”
“That’s what you say,” Vlad said. “But I don’t have a reason to take your word for it. After all, I barely know you, don’t I?”
I was getting pissed by the second.
Sure, I wanted to play as Damage too, but at the same time, I was fine with letting Vlad pick it. If he was really good at playing as Damage, he could have this class.
The way he was treating me was really annoying, though. With that, I was not fine.
Balling my hands into fists again, I stepped toward Vlad. I was eager to punch him as hard as I could to wipe his smug smirk off his face.
When I was about to take another step toward the blond Russian, Nate put his hand on my shoulder.
“Wait, David,” he said.
I stopped and looked over my shoulder at him. “What?”
“The heck with him,” Nate said. “Let him have it.”
It kind of hurt that Nate was trying to get me to let Vlad have the Damage class instead of backing me up. I felt betrayed. It made me even angrier.
“He can have it all right,” I said. “I’m only going to beat him to a pulp, that’s all.”
Vlad was short and skinny. Sure, I was not exactly a bodybuilder either, but I should not have trouble beating him up. As a kid, I had been a boxer. I had never become a professional of course, yet thanks to my past boxing experience, I could handle myself pretty well.
The Russian guy must have realized the same thing because his smirk disappeared. He jumped back and brought his fists up.
“I’m not going down without swinging, you hear me, asshole?” He snarled at me. “I’m very good at fighting.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
I tried to shake Nate’s hand off my shoulder, but the British guy did not release me. His grip on my shoulder tightened instead.
“Let it go, mate,” he said softly. “He doesn’t worth it. Be smarter than him. Don’t let him drag you down to his level.”
I stopped and glanced at Vlad. He was still waiting for me to come closer to him, his fists held in front of his face in an awkward position. It was obvious that unlike me, he had never been a boxer. To his credit, he was not going to give up without a fight.
“Let it go, David,” Nate repeated. “Don’t let your anger cloud your thinking, mate.”
I wanted to play as Damage. What I was going to get instead was Flanker, a class that I did not really understand. Sure, a Flanker warrior was supposed to attack enemies from flanks rather than making a direct attack, this much was obvious.
However, the exact tactic of playing as a Flanker was not clear to me. Should I attack enemies from flanks all the time? Could I stay closer to my teammates or should I always try to flank our enemies? And how exactly should I act? Wait in shadows until my Active Ability recharged, attack enemies, use my Blink ability to quickly get away, and then repeat the process? Or should I be constantly attacking our enemies?
Having no health bar did not help either. I did not know how much health a Flanker had—or the other classes for that matter—because the class descriptions did not reveal this
information. So I did not know how much damage a Flanker could take. Due to that, it was hard to come up with a beneficial tactic beforehand. I figured I would have to devise a tactic on the fly.
And by the way, there being no mentioning of how much health each class had further deepened my suspicion that it was real life, and not a video game.
So if Vlad was telling the truth, if he was really good at playing as a damage dealer, then I was fine with letting him play as Damage. What really annoyed me, however, was his attitude. Vlad was a jerk. There was not the shadow of a doubt about that. I wanted to get into a fight with him. I wanted to let off some steam.
Yet Nate was right. Vlad was not worth it. The hell with him.
Having managed to rein in my anger, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Okay. Screw him.”
Nate waited a moment, and when he made sure I had calmed down and was not going to suddenly charge at Vlad, he said, “Way to go, mate. You’re such a great example for others.”
Nate gave my shoulder an approving squeeze before finally taking his hand away.
“And you,” Nate said as he turned his head to look at Vlad. “Listen to me very carefully now. David has not only let you have the Damage class, but he also spared you some real serious beating. You should be really thankful to him for that. However, the next time you’re being such an arsehole, I’m not stopping David from doing a number on you. Remember that. I might even join him in beating you up.”
“Of course, you two Americans teamed up against me, a harmless Russian guy,” Vlad sighed. “Why am I not surprised by that? And for what he was going to rough me up? For trying to do what was best for the team? As I said, I’m really good at playing damage dealers, so it’d be really stupid not to let me pick this class.”
“First of all, I’m British, not American,” Nate said. “Is that so hard to remember?”
With a dismissive shrug of his shoulders, Vlad said, “Whatever.”
“We speak with different accents,” Nate said. “Do you really can’t tell them apart?”
“You both kinda sound the same to my ears,” Nate said as he shrugged his shoulders again.
Nate wanted to say something else but then must have decided against it. He went silent for a second, then changed the subject.
“Second, David wasn’t going to take the Damage class from you, Nate continued. “He was going to beat you up for being such an intolerable arsehole.”
Vlad began to say something but was interrupted by a ringing sound.
“The fuck was that?” The blond Russian said, looking around the room for the source of the sound.
“The fourth and the last teammate has just arrived,” Nate said.
“Finally,” Vlad said.
Nate and I walked around the Russian guy and stepped to the fourth teleportation chamber that sat along the same wall as Vlad’s pod.
When we looked down through the now transparent lid, we saw that the fourth teammate was a girl. She was in her early twenties, and she was quite attractive. Her blond hair was so short they barely reached her shoulders.
The girl looked scared. She whipped her head left and right, studying her surroundings and feeling the inside walls of her teleportation chamber with her hands.
She then noticed us. Her eyes went wide when she saw us staring down at her.
Vlad walked to us and looked down at her too.
“So this is a girl,” Vlad said as his gaze roamed her petite body. “And she’s quite cute. It’ll be nice to have her around. We can have some fun with her every now and then, guys.”
Nate suddenly whirled around to face him. “Nobody’s touching her. Is that clear? Don’t even mention it again, you hear?”
“So you decided to take a role of a knight in shining armor,” Vlad said disapprovingly. “I see.”
Nate took a step forward, which made Vlad jump back. Nate was almost two heads higher than the Russian guy and way stronger than him. Actually, Nate looked strong enough to be capable of crushing Vlad’s skull to a pulp with his bare hands.
“You’d really better behave yourself, mate,” Nate said.
Vlad held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, I’m just kidding, guys. Geez. Can’t you recognize a joke? I always thought that you Americans loved laughing at every lame joke you heard.”
It seemed to me that Vlad kept calling Nate an American on purpose, trying to press his buttons. And him saying that we could have some fun with that girl had not sounded like a joke to me. Not at all. He was dead serious, that was for damn sure.
Nate just watched him for a second, then shook his head, having decided not to reply at all. He looked down at the girl lying in her teleportation chamber, then shifted his gaze to us.
“You guys should probably stay back for a bit,” Nate said as he waved us away. “She looks scared. It’s totally understandable. And us staring down at her like ravenous wolves at a lamb doesn’t help either.”
“Okay,” I said as I took a few steps backward. “No problem.”
Vlad glanced at me, then at Nate and shrugged. “Okay. Do your thing.”
He then backed up, too.
Nate stepped closer to the teleportation chamber and said something to the girl inside so quietly I did not make out his words. Vlad and I just watched him silently for a moment.
A few seconds later, the lid of the teleportation pod parted and the two halves slid into the walls of the pod. The girl sat up, and Nate held out his hand to her. She looked at it for a couple of seconds, then gripped it with one of hers, and Nate helped her out of her teleportation chamber.
The girl looked around, examining the room she had found herself in. Her gaze stopped on Vlad and me, and she took a step backward, lowering her gaze.
The girl was either very shy or just afraid of us. She must not have been afraid of Nate, however, because she stepped so close to him their bodies almost touched and it did not seem to concern her one bit.
Nate noticed her reaction and he said to us, “Guys, can you back up a little bit? Give the lady some room, will ya?”
“Sure,” I said. The girl looked nervous, so there was no reason to make her even uneasier.
“Okay,” Vlad said. “You can have her all by yourself. Who needs a pussy when you have a game that looks so realistic as this one, anyway?”
A shocked expression appeared on the girl’s face. She stepped behind Nate as if seeking protection.
His face turned red, and his hands balled into fists.
“You’d better watch what you’re saying,” he growled at the Russian.
Vlad grinned, pleased that he had managed to finally piss Nate off. But he did not say anything else. Seeing how angry Nate was at the moment, Vlad reasonably kept his mouth shut. He took a few steps backward until he drew level with me.
After shooting Vlad one more angry look, Nate turned his attention to the girl, who was much shorter than him, and spoke quietly to her. The girl listened to him talking, looking at him with wide-open eyes. She asked him short questions every now and then. While I could hear their voices, I could not make out their words. Yet it was easy to guess the topic of their conversation. Nate must have been explaining to the girl where we were and what was happening. While she was terrified of me and especially Vlad, she had clearly come to trust Nate already. He must have had a way with girls.
“Just watch him,” Vlad said quietly to me. “Now he’s pretending to be a knight in shining armor. But when that gal warms up to him a bit and lets her guard down, he’s gonna fuck her hard. That’s all he wants from her. Mark my words. I’ve got this guy’s number.”
Vlad was a really obnoxious person. I had no desire to talk to him whatsoever. Luckily, I did not have to, because I was saved by Echo.
“Warriors, I just want to give you a brief reminder,” the AI said. “Now that all the four teammates have arrived, each of you can pick a class.”
The Russian glanced at me
and grinned, “At last.”
Then Vlad’s expression changed as if he remembered something. He eyed me for a second, and when I began walking toward the Control Panel, he suddenly broke into a run.
The Russian raced across the room and skidded to a stop next to the Control Panel. He glanced at the holographic screen and tapped a button.
After that, he let out a sigh of relief as if he had barely been able to take care of some really important business before it would have been too late.
After I walked up to the Control Panel, he turned his head to look at me and said smugly, “You’re late, buddy. I’ve just picked the Damage class.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“I think you do,” he said caustically.
I wanted to ask him why I should care if we had already settled the matter but in the end, elected to simply ignore him.
I shifted my gaze to the holographic screen hovering above the round surface of the Control Panel. Since Vlad had already taken Damage, there were now three classes to choose from. I looked at the Flanker’s window.
There was a new line of text with two buttons on the window now.
(Do you want to choose the Flanker class: Yes/No)
I pressed the Yes button. Immediately, in my field of vision popped up a message.
> You have picked up the Flanker class.
As soon as I read the message, it was replaced by three other ones.
> You have received experience points!
> +10 exp
> Congratulations! You have just leveled up to level 1. You have 1 unused skill point.
When I read the message, it disappeared.
Nate and the girl walked to the Control Panel.
“I see you guys picked up your classes already,” Nate said, looking at the holographic screen hovering above the Control Panel.
Suddenly I realized I should have asked which class the girl wanted to play as before taking Flanker. She might have wanted to try it out.
“Sorry,” I said. “I picked Flanker. I should’ve waited for you guys to come here and discuss with you who would take which class.”
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 5
