War Aeternus: The Beginning

by Charles Dean

  I’ve got a day, one day, here before I get pulled back. I have to make this count, Lee thought, trying to create a mental list of all the things he might do if he only had twenty-four hours left to live. As far as he was concerned, that was the best way to treat his current situation. After all, there was no telling what would happen once he was forced back into that other world.

  The first thing he did was grab a taxi, hoping to save time as he made his way to the supermarket. While he was in the car, he made sure to call every loved one and friend he could think of—which unsurprisingly didn’t take long—and tried to tell them he loved them without sounding creepy. It turned out to be a lot harder than he had anticipated. It was impossible to prognosticate how someone might react to a random and first-time-ever ‘I love you’ call during work hours on a weekday, but he imagined that the normal reaction from a family member would presumably be to assume a terminal illness or worse.

  When he finally got home, after loading up on his favorite foods from the store and having a few awkward conversations with his parents, he hopped on his computer and loaded up his usual MMO out of reflex. No! Not that! Lee chastised himself as he closed the game. It was only a reactionary habit, but it was a habit that was hard to ignore. I’ve only got twenty-four hours in a sophisticated world with infinite amounts of knowledge at my disposal, he thought, staring at the computer. I need to learn as much as I can now so that I won’t be at a complete disadvantage when I go back. He popped open his BlueFox browser and began considering what survival or cooking videos he might need.

  Wait. Lee paused, thinking about the pound of premium bacon and the four pounds of strip steak he had next to it in his fridge. It definitely wasn’t his normal Chinese takeout, but he planned on devouring everything with abandon at dinner. I need to learn how to do this. Bacon will be the key to everything! His mouth watered as he thought of a diabolical plan.

  These backwater NPCs barely have any of the modern man’s cooking technology. None of them know all that we’ve gained through the years. Most importantly, they have no bacon. He grinned ear to ear as he started to realize what his ticket home would be. Early people of faith didn’t spread the religion through sword point or even miracles. They did it through food. Lots and lots of bread and wine were what brought the religion of today into existence. Bread and wine wouldn’t be that helpful to people who weren't starving, but caffeine and bacon would. There isn’t a single person who isn’t susceptible to a good and proper addictive substance like caffeine. Lee’s mind lit up as he thought about how easy it would be to create a cult-like coffee shop with the absence of competition. But how do I get coffee or tea in the other world?

  He was disappointed as he checked Bloogle and found that even sugar, his last great hope, would take over a year to mature into anything harvestable. So, even if I found a way to bring them over, I’d still be shafted with no reliable mechanism for repeating the process over and over again. So, what to do . . .

  Lee weighed his options on how he was going to handle this conundrum, and in the end, he spent so long watching instructional videos and, reading articles about survival tips that he completely lost track of time. He had even flipped through his old BlueManScouts survival handbook—a book he had assured his mother he’d never need again after he quit to join computer camp. Around eight at night, his phone rang.

  Crap. Lee looked at his phone. It was one of his two friends, Wolfe, calling him. He could tell from the time stamp on the computer that he was already missing raid night. Wolfe hadn’t answered earlier when he made his phone calls, but now that it was time for gaming, he wasn’t going to let it go without at least finding out why Lee wasn’t already logged on and ready to go.

  “What’s up?” Lee asked as he grabbed his phone.

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m surrounded by ten angry dwarves and an elf that looks like she might stab me before they get a chance.” Wolfe skipped all the standard phatic communication that went with phone call etiquette and tore into him. “They’re all wondering why my wonderful buddy, The LawlfulCringe, isn’t on yet.”

  “Oh, sorry about that.” Lee ran through his list of standard excuses as he tried to figure one out. “It’s just . . . umm . . . You see, I’ve not been feeling well. Don’t really feel up to gaming tonight.” He went with the least inventive but most reliable excuse available.

  “Yeah, I heard about that from your mom. She called me up asking if you were terminal or something. She said you spouted a bunch of mushy stuff like someone had a gun to your head was about to shoot you. She called your work, and they told her that you took off sick, so she called me afterward to see what was going on, but I didn’t know anything either. Man, you gotta do better than this. Is everything really okay? You’re not being held hostage or something?”

  “No, I’m not being held hostage. I just don’t feel like play tonight,” Lee insisted. I’ve spent hours watching survival videos and cooking videos, but I still don’t feel prepared enough to try out half these cooking techniques, and I doubt I could even come close to setting up a tent in the woods.

  “Well, if you are, and you’re on speaker phone, just tell me the thing you fear most in the whole wide world,” Wolfe pressed. Even though his tone was serious, Lee could swear he heard a smile through the phone.

  “Lag?” Lee answered.

  “Yeah, that sounds like you. So, what’s the deal, man? Don’t tell me you’re burnt out. We’re not switching MMOs again, are we?” Wolfe asked. It was common for Lee to get tired of a game once it had reached that point where the end-game content was more time-released stat boost and less exploration, adventure or challenge. After everything became ‘easy peasy,’ there really wasn’t a point to it anymore.

  “Nah, nothing like that. I should be around for it next weekend, but . . .” Lee paused. Wait, Wolfe is the type of guy who knows everything about anything. His job is apparently mind-numbingly boring, the kind of job where ‘hurry up and wait’ was the go-to motto, so he spent most of his days reading websites or watching BlueTube documentaries to pass the time. More than likely, he’ll know a lot more about what I need than I do.

  “Hey, Wolfe, while I got you on the phone, would there ever be a case where people wouldn’t have cured and smoked meats?” Lee inquired. He still found the whole thing to be rather weird. A single Bloogle search showed that smoked and cured meats had been around longer than most every other part of society and were found from one end of the world to the other.

  “Oh, are you talking about that weird health craze some areas are starting? It’s super hard to find good meats in some places with everything under the sun giving you cancer,” Wolfe informed him. “I suppose, one day in the future, smoked-meat eaters will go the way of smokers in big cities—herded to the outskirts and banned from buying it without paying a huge tax.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Lee couldn’t believe his ears. A world without bacon may exist one day? He shuddered at the thought.

  “As sure as I liketh the big behinds, I am and forever will be incapable of telling falsehoods to my brothers,” Wolfe joked. He was the type of guy who would laugh at his own silly, archaic and outplayed references more than the people he was making the joke for, and this was no exception.

  “Dang, that sucks. I don’t know if I could live without bacon,” Lee said. And while I can teach them how to make it, properly curing the meat and smoking it may take a lot of valuable time away from missions.

  “Or fried chicken,” Wolfe added.

  “Huh?” Lee’s ears perked up.

  “You know, since trans fats are supposedly awful for you, a lot of people have stopped eating fried foods too. Not our kind of people—sane people with functioning taste buds—but other people have. Heck, I have a friend who won’t eat any type of meat unless it has been grilled with proper room for the fat to run off it.”

  “That’s . . . That’s very helpful.” If t the game was made by a bunch of health nuts who didn’t include cu
red and smoked meats, there is no way they’d add fried food. Not to mention, frying chicken is super easy. I got it right my first time after watching a BlueTube Southern instructional video when I was in college. This will be a home run for sure! If they have meat, and they have candles, they have rendered fats into oil already. I won’t have to do any work to get my hands on it.

  “No problem. Though, I have no idea how that’s gonna be helpful. Are you thinking of opening up a few fast chicken joints before they go out of business? Shorting some stocks?” Wolfe laughed from the other end of the phone, but Lee didn’t feel like playing into his jokes. Instead, he wrapped up the call as quickly as he could and opened up several browsers on the subject.

  He spent the rest of the night studying everything he could find on how to fry chicken, how to prepare bacon, and anything else he could get his hands on in terms of fried vegetables and the like. He thought it would be fun to try a Japanese tempura recipe, but he didn’t have enough of the ingredients on hand. The last thing he wanted was to go back into the world tomorrow with unseasoned or unskilled hands. Making a fool of himself was something he simply couldn’t afford.

  After Lee was satisfied with his knowledge on the subject, he retired to the kitchen, made himself a fat steak and then passed out in his bed.

  He didn’t fail to take Augustus’s warning about needing a full night of sleep lightly and did his best to pass out, but given all that had happened, it wasn’t as easy as it usually was.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had slept for, but when he woke up, he was already in the colosseum, fully dressed in yesterday’s work clothes, and staring at a koala sipping a tiny teacup as it returned his gaze.

  Chapter 4

  Name: Lee

  Race: Human

  Class: Herald - None

  Level: 5

  Health: 140/140

  EXP: 41/750

  Primary Stats:

  Power 15

  Toughness 15

  Spirit 15

  Secondary Stats:

  Charisma 5

  Courage 5

  Deceit 1

  Intelligence 23

  Honor 1

  Faith 1

  Skills:

  Unarmed Combat: Initiate Level 1

  Swordplay: Initiate Level 1

  Sneak: Initiate Level 2

  Divine Skills:

  Golem Sculpting: Initiate Level 4

  Appreciative Drunk: Initiate Level 2

  “You know, you surprise me, Lee.” The koala made creepily-direct eye contact with Lee as he sipped his teacup. “I gave you twenty-four hours. I let you do whatever you wanted, and you chose to spend it watching BlueTube, eating by yourself, avoiding games and not even having a single drink. You do know that even prison inmates get a better send-off than that, right?”

  “I didn’t want to be unprepared for today or tomorrow or whenever it is chronologically that you’re sending me back, I guess,” Lee answered with a shrug. “Why does it bother you? What business is it of yours how I spend my time?”

  The koala pulled out a fancy chain and watch and polished it for a moment before putting it back and then sighed. “You’re a servant of the God of Alcohol and Crafts, and you didn’t make anything or drink anything. It was just painful to watch. I almost used some of my dwindling influence to create a power outage just so you’d get out of your chair.”

  Nerd hate, huh? From the God of Crafts? Lee grimaced. He had dealt with those ‘Go outside cause it’s awesome, healthy, and good for you!’ people as a child, and he still harbored resentment toward them for pushing their preference for skin cancer on him. If not for those kinds of people, he would have had plenty of time to practice and been able to absolutely crush his friend Paul as a kid in Alley Fighter. “Look, I just needed to make sure I had a game plan, a way to start your religion. Why are you so upset about that?”

  “I’m not upset!” the Koala harrumphed, stamping his feet and shapeshifting into a fox. “You’re just being an idiot and insulting me. I gave you a book with the secrets to making literally anything possible in that world. Granted, it’s not going to be as step-by-step as those stupid videos you watched, but it’s the bible of all crafting. Why do you think it’s so thick? It’s the one magical item I gave you, so just learn how to use it and stop wasting your vacations.”

  “Wait, what? It’s magic?” Lee momentarily felt concerned about lending it to Miller, but that fear vanished instantly when he remembered that Miller was a fan of justice. It was highly unlikely that he’d lose or mistreat someone else’s property. “I have to hold onto it? Then how do I convert people? Don’t they need to read the good book to understand you and all that nonsense?”

  “What? No. They just need to worship the name Augustus and build their own image of how great I am in their head. The book is a set of guidelines to help you in your task, not something to give out whenever you feel like it or to the first guy you meet with a big spear!”

  “Hmm.” Lee didn’t feel like arguing, so he just nodded along and tried to think of another question. Augustus obviously didn’t want to give out too much information, so Lee had to be smart with what he asked. Even if the god wasn’t telling him everything, Lee had started to believe that there was more to things than met the eye. Augustus had asked him to only convert NPCs but originally complained that his main church base was either old or leaving the church to become players. That means that he originally subsisted on the faith of players alone. So why are NPCs important?

  Augustus changed shape again—back to a sloth—and sighed in irritation. “Enough of this. Are you ready to go back? I’ve already pulled the pound of bacon you bought on your shopping spree from your fridge and put it in your inventory.”

  “Wait!” Lee threw up both of his hands. “When do I get to come back this time? How many followers?”

  “Uhm . . . Get me two NPC followers, and I’ll give you another day. Get me ten, and I’ll give you a week. Your choice on when to cash in.”

  “And if I can get more? Is there ever a number I can reach that will let me stay in my world forever?”

  “You mean am I ever going to set you free from the eternal war? I mean, War of Eternity?” Augustus paused as if thinking for a moment. “How about a town? If you can convert enough NPCs to add up to a town the size of Satterfield, we’ll talk about it. Until then, two people is a day, and ten people is a week. I may change that later, but those are the terms for now. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Good, then are you ready to go back?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Sure. You’ve got around a minute left, so if you wanna sit and talk about your feelings, maybe mope some more or complain about something, you’re welcome to do that for another . . . forty-two seconds.”

  “Pass.” Lee gritted his teeth. He felt a vehemently-vitriolic chain of thoughts spring up toward the taunting deity, but he also knew that voicing them wouldn’t get him anywhere. Before he could even reconsider, he was once more warped through the darkness.

  Lee returned to the game world in exactly the same position he had left it: lying down in his bed and staring at the ceiling above him. It took a moment for him to adjust to seeing the world from two perspectives—his and Ethan’s—simultaneously, but overall, the process was rather painless, just jarring. He considered trying to get a little more rest before heading down to breakfast, but a growl from his stomach voted otherwise.

  Fine. He rose from his bed and straightened up a bit, looking down at his clothes as he did so. He wasn't usually one to sleep in clothes, but he had changed into a fresh set of threads since he knew Augustus was going to rip him into an alternate reality. He had been tempted to buy something medievalesque, or at least something passable for defense in this world, but the only way to get something like that would have been to order it online. Without the ability to wait two or three days for shipping, there just wasn’t any hope for it.

  Wait, I almost for
got! Lee went straight to his inventory and took out the leather boots he had gotten from the quest yesterday. Come on, prompt, tell me what these fancy fine leather boots do. Lee found himself grinning at the prospect of what his loot might be despite his circumstances. Even if he was in a potentially life-threatening scenario, he was still a gamer. There was nothing that could stop him from feeling some happiness during the item inspection.

  Fine leather boots offer 6 damage reduction over the surface they cover, reduce energy spent on travel by 15%, and increase the effectiveness of sneak by one rank when worn.

  Whoa, that's actually pretty good. I think? Lee stared at the boots for a moment before hastily putting them on. They don't look that bad, either. He knew all too well that he was still in the noob phase of this game. As players conquered dungeons and leveled up in most MMOs, their preference on gear would often become more and more influenced by aesthetics. It wasn't that they didn't care at the start of the game, it was just that the importance of one stat point far outweighed the need to look sharp. As a player became more powerful, he could afford to let a stat slip a tiny bit or pay the extra money needed so that he could look amazing while still being awesome. At the moment, though, Lee was at that stage where he was willing to run around in a purple tutu slapping people with a rainbow trout so long as it got the job done, and he could live another day.

  How about these? he asked the prompt while pulling out the leather pants and the gloves he had gotten from the midnight thieves and the cloth armor and bronze sword he had received from the bandits yesterday when he rescued Ling.

  Leather gloves offer 5 damage reduction over the surface they cover and increase grip strength on weapons.

  Leather pants offer 5 damage reduction over the surface they cover, reduce energy spent on travel by 15%, and increase the effectiveness of sneak by one rank when worn.