Level Up- The Knockout

by Dan Sugralinov

  “Pipe down, Doug,” said Timothy. “You know Steve. He’s always asking for it. And he gets what he asks for.”

  “But I saw this shorty hit him with a bar stool! A bar stool, I tell ya!”

  Mike was aware that his life was on the line. Timothy would just have to raise a finger to leave Hagen out cold. So he went to the bar, took a swig of beer, and told Doug,

  “You call me shorty? I’m not that much shorter than you,” he paused, then added unexpectedly for himself, “Shithead.”

  Damn, using this word turned out to be a lot of fun. Deservedly, too—not in a bullying way, the way Goretsky did it, but for a reason.

  Timothy grinned at Hagen. “Don’t get too uppity, short stuff.”

  “Yeah, Tim! Get him! He ain’t got no respect for you!”

  “The wings are ready,” Chuck announced suddenly. “You did order wings, right? I have two buckets right here!”

  “Ah!” Timothy turned around and headed for the table, casually telling Doug, “He’s all yours. Work it out between yourselves... shitheads.”

  The rest of the truckers laughed and followed Timothy, moving Steve to a different sofa. He had already come to and sat up, feeling his face gingerly, with no idea of what had happened. Chuck brought him some ice and napkins, and hurried back to the bar, reluctant to miss the sight of Hagen fighting a guy who looked just like his carbon copy.

  Hagen sat there calmly, sipping his beer.

  Doug was at a loss to see his friends desert him. “Like... Let’s step outside, you asshole!”

  “No need,” Hagen nonchalantly took a few peanuts from the bowl. “I can kick your ass right here.”

  “Don’t get me angry, you bastard!”

  “I could tell you the same,” Hagen cracked a peanut with his teeth, deliberately making a loud crunch.

  The sound made Doug give a start and step back.

  Hagen rose suddenly. Doug twitched again, but remained standing. He kept fiddling with his shirt sleeve, rolling it up and then down again.

  Hagen pushed a bar stool toward Doug. “So? Wanna hit me with a chair? Like your friend?”

  “I will if I want to.”

  Hagen leaned his head aside, intending to make a popping sound like some other fighters, but he didn’t quite manage it. However, it turned out to be enough.

  “Oh, screw you,” Doug said. “I have no time for this shit. I don’t want to miss the game because of you.”

  He turned around and went to his table, cheering the players on the screen exaggeratedly.

  Hagen had been about to get back to his place when a new system message nearly made him drop down.

  You’ve dealt critical verbal damage!

  Psychological Victory: 100%

  Congratulations! You’ve defeated an opponent in a fair fight!

  You’ve received a new level!

  Current level: 5

  Characteristic points available: 1

  Skill points available: 1

  Then something quite unexpected happened.

  You’ve unblocked a new skill: Insight I

  Skill type: Passive

  Now you can connect to the universal infospace in order to see your data and that of the world around you, within the limits of your skill level.

  Insight? What could that be? Hagen looked around himself as if there was someone who could explain things to him.

  It was only then that he noticed himself trembling, his shirt soaked with sweat as if he’d just come in from the rain. Some psychological victory... It sure didn’t come easy.

  Chuck stepped out from behind the bar and sat next to Hagen, stroking his mustache with renewed effort.

  “That was something, kid. Not only did you knock out that idiot; you just had to raise your eyebrows at his girlfriend to make her run away whimpering. I’ve seen lots of stuff in my life—it’s part of the package when you run a bar. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Yeah? Why is that?” Hagen asked irrelevantly.

  Everything just piled up on him — Insight, whatever it was, some sort of a psychological victory, and Lexie staying silent. He had still been coming to terms with his fight against Gonzalo, and all of this looked like a right clusterfuck.

  “It’s really a jolly and welcoming sort of place,” Chuck continued. “But some of the patrons are anything but jolly, and they bring everybody else down.”

  “Really sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t you sir me! I ain’t no sir. Just call me Chuck.”

  “All right, Chuck.”

  Chuck munched on his lips. “What I’m saying is... Need a job? I could do with someone who can pack a punch like you.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Son, it should be obvious. A security guard job. A bouncer. I’m planning to bring the strippers back. I sure used to rake in the greenbacks those days. But it’s risky without security, which is why I’m looking for folks.”

  “Me? A bouncer?” Hagen imagined himself trying to throw a mean drunk out on his ass. Someone well over six foot and well-muscled, like the human mountain he’d seen earlier. “You have a great sense of humor, Chuck! A bouncer! Ha-ha-ha!”

  “Don’t laugh. Think about it. You won’t be on your own, obviously. You can find yourself an assistant.”

  “Thanks, but I already have a job.”

  Chuck stood up, picked up a broom, and started sweeping the peanuts from the floor. “As you wish. I just wanted to suggest it. But keep it in mind, anyway. Oh, and say hi to your uncle for me.”

  “I sure will.”

  Hagen had placed a few crumpled bills on the bar and left. He really needed a quiet place to see what all this Insight business might be about.

  One thing was clear, though—Hagen’s psychological victory wasn’t just over Doug; it was over himself as well. As well as his ingrained cowardice that had been poisoning his life all along.

  Chapter 12. A Stupid, Ugly, and Callous Loser

  Finish Him!

  Mortal Kombat

  ON HIS WAY HOME Mike had to fight several urges to stop the car and start acquainting himself with the new features of the interface. He’d be much more at ease at home, after all. He also suspected that something had changed inside him—something that seemed to have made him a magnet for trouble.

  Hagen chuckled as he stopped at an intersection, waiting for the green light. What if all the conflicts that he’d had since receiving the interface were a means to catch up with everything he’d missed out on? Like paying back for all the fights, skirmishes, and insults that he had been evading all his life?

  Right then some irritated driver honked from behind. Hagen raised his collar, just like Gonzalo had taught him. Then he leaned out of the window and gave them the finger.

  Would he have dared to do it before? Technically, yes. And he’d done it. However, he’d do it in such a way that the addressee would never see his finger. One never knew, after all.

  Once inside the apartment, Mike pulled off his jacket. A belated feeling of terror made him shiver.

  How could he have acted so irresponsibly? What if Steve had turned out to be the same level as the human mountain? In that case, Hagen would have been the one lying on the sofa in the bar with an ice pack on his face. If he had survived in the first place, that is.

  What could have given him such confidence? It must have been the beer.

  Hagen fell onto his own sofa and shut his eyes.

  So, what benefits would he get from the mysterious Insight skill at Level 1? The interface icon was inactive, requiring the investment of a characteristic point. Once he’d used it, the icon flashed up, and the characteristics tab opened.

  It was accompanied by the following system message:

  User’s auxiliary characteristics have been calculated:

  Intellect: 6

  Perception: 5

  Luck: 1

  Charisma: 1

  Mike stared at his stats, going red as a beet. Not that he hadn’t al
ways been aware of having been a good-for-nothing ugly loser. However, having had that confirmed in so blatant a manner left his self-confidence in shreds. Intellect seemed to have been developed more or less well, but that would be only logical—otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to repair complex devices. However, Hagen harbored a suspicion that six was a very low number, anyway. He’d never been a stellar pupil, and he’d earned the nickname “slowpoke” for a good reason. So he had no need for anyone else to tell him he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact, he wasn’t particularly sharp at all, period.

  The virtual assistant’s explanation seemed rather nebulous, and Hagen was anything but an avid reader. He would read slowly, and often forget the beginning of a sentence by the time he’d reach its end. At any rate, he would usually read comic books, instruction manuals, and dialogs between characters in video games (pressing the Skip button more often than not).

  Thus, he got completely lost as he pored over the characteristic descriptions over and again.

  Luck is a characteristic that represents the user’s average good vs. bad decision ratio in battle as well as in everyday life. The good and bad luck values depend on the positive or negative consequences of the user’s decisions.

  It boosts one’s chance of dealing critical damage or strike home regardless of the opponent’s block.

  “Fuck, what do they even mean?” Hagen exclaimed. “Why would something as simple as luck have to be explained in such a twisted way? And who is this ‘user’? Is it me?”

  The interface developers didn’t seem a particularly courteous lot. A user of what? True, he may have used some of the equipment he’d repaired in the shop to play video games a few times, but how had they found out about it?

  Mike decided not to bother and continued exploring the interface.

  A characteristic’s description could be expanded for more detail, but, as Hagen had expected, the detailed versions were even vaguer. Once thing was for certain—at his current level, a single Luck point would give him a 1% higher chance to punch through an opponent’s block. Not much, but luck was like that in general—who could really quantify it? This 1% difference could prove decisive in a battle—then again, it might not.

  Intellect summarizes your effectiveness in battle as well as in everyday life.

  It increases the speed of learning new abilities and developing skills.

  It also affects the effectiveness of decisions made in battle.

  Hagen had secretly hoped that a beefed-up Intellect would make him a genius. A well-developed brain could make one’s owner rich, and Mike was well aware of it. He could get into cryptocurrencies, the stock exchange, or investment—or, maybe, become like the guy in Limitless who had discovered NZT-48, the magic pill.

  If it wasn’t finance, it would be science. The eggheads seemed to have good salaries the last time he’d checked. And they didn’t have to risk their lives in the ring, either—they probably cooked meth in those spotless and sterile labs of theirs.

  Wouldn’t that be cool?

  Still, every characteristic here was related to fighting skills exclusively.

  Even Charisma mattered in fights. Its properties turned out a bit different from what Hagen had expected, but he could understand the description well enough.

  Charisma controls the correlation between what one says and one’s facial expressions, gestures, and body language in general.

  It affects the power of verbal and psychological attacks.

  Mike had pondered the properties of this stat for a while before he realized how it worked. Basically, with leveled-up Charisma he could just frown menacingly to make a coward like Steve run away with his tail between his legs.

  Hagen recollected how UFC fighters would often start the bout with insults and menaces once they’d get in the ring. All that exchange of expletives was primarily for the audience’s sake, of course, but Hagen, having already had experience in a real ring, understood that any fighting show is ultimately based on the fighters’ skill. That meant that psychological attacks or the ability to evade them also constituted an important part of the battle.

  Steve “Jobs” the peanut-muncher would confirm this.

  Mike also came to the realization that Charisma was one of the few characteristics that would help him have better relationships with people in everyday life. It had taken him a while to get through the expanded version, but he eventually came across the following passage:

  Some of the most important physiological features that human beings rely on to assess other human beings are changes in the expression of one’s eyes and the movement of one’s lips, eyebrows, hands, feet, neck, and shoulders. These features transmit the most information, and each of them has a code that is read subconsciously. A discrepancy between a person’s actual state and their mimics or gestures can lead to misunderstandings or provoke conflicts.

  The system explained his low Charisma thus:

  Your technique of emotional self-expression is so poor that the people you communicate with, not only fail to understand what exactly you are trying to convey but also become hostile toward your behavior.

  The text was in red to drive the point home.

  There was nothing new about that. Hagen had no illusions about his looks—he had already assessed them in detail with the aid of an old analogue interface commonly referred to as “mirror.”

  It was just like Uncle Peter had been telling him. Each time he’d visit, he would invariably give Mike a series of training sessions.

  “Why are you looking at the floor? Is your head too heavy, perhaps? You should look directly at the person you are talking to! And why do you move your lips when someone’s talking to you? It looks like you’re swearing under your breath. With god as my witness, Mikey, you really make me want to cuff you or give you an atomic wedgie!”

  “Shithead,” Mike whispered. He was quite certain that his uncle had pronounced that word inside his head.

  Perception was an average value based on the sharpness of his senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. It somehow affected one’s reaction, the chance of evading an attack, and the chance of dealing critical damage, but there was no further information.

  The interface was all about fighting skills. He was on his own in the real world.

  Hagen thought he should have gotten into Sims instead. Then his interface would probably focus on leveling up social skills.

  As for the rest, anyway, it was nothing special if you didn’t mind the numbers—just like any other game. He’d just need to find out how to level up Charisma, Luck, and Intellect.

  Quite a few new skills and abilities became available, too. There were so many Hagen felt at a loss. Where would he find the time to learn them all? Or would he just have to choose a class and focus on the most relevant ones? But he didn’t see any classes anywhere.

  Having finished with the characteristics, he moved on to Insight. The very first line of the description made him give a start and open his eyes wide.

  Identification of objects that affect the user’s characteristics.

  Identification of people and other living things.

  Informs the user of their disposition towards him.

  He looked around the room, and his gaze fell on his uncle’s crumpled jacket lying on the sofa nearby.

  Military Jacket

  +3 to Charisma

  +30% to Confidence

  Durability: 36/100

  So that’s why he’d felt so confident fighting the truckers. Hagen hastened to smooth out the jacket and placed it carefully on the table.

  This was an object of some value! However, its condition was pitiful—he’d have to sew on the missing buttons, fix the lining, and replace the tattered fabric inside the pockets. He’d need to reinforce the collar with some leather or something, too—it had almost gotten worn through.

  Damn! He’d had no idea whether the object’s properties would survive the repairs.

  Hagen proceed
ed to study every single object in the room maniacally, but saw no further system messages. He’d been thinking he would be able to see the properties of every little trinket—weight, value, and so on, the way one does in certain games. It was possible that Augmented Reality! Platform only showed the descriptions of items that came with bonuses, which was perfectly logical—who would want to read the meaningless stats of regular objects in the first place?

  Hagen approached the cabinet where he’d kept the PSP. He no longer felt nostalgic—fighting games were no fun anymore. Why would he want to waste time on them, anyway? He could go to Ochoa’s hall every evening and spar until he’d be blue in the face—or, rather, until one of the fighters would get knocked out. Or he could go to Chuck’s Bar and wait for another group of cocky truckers. Or just wander through unsafe neighborhoods in search of a random encounter with street thugs. Come to think of it, the latter was a lousy option—they would most likely have knives or guns on them. Hagen didn’t have any ways of countering that yet.

  The following text popped up over the gaming console:

  PSP-1000 (very old but still functional)

  Object class: Talisman

  +2 to Luck

  Effective range: 1700 feet

  Weight: 7.8 oz

  Durability: 12/100

  Value: No commercial value in its current condition

  Would you like to use this object as your talisman?

  Of course he would.

  Hagen panicked for a moment: what if there had been other valuable objects among the stuff he had donated to charity? On the other hand, even if his mom’s dress would have given him +10 to Intellect, he could hardly wear it in a boxing ring.

  He put the jacket on and placed the PSP in his inner pocket. He instantly noticed the growth in Charisma and Luck. It would feel silly walking around wearing this jacket all the time with a heavy portable console in his pocket, but Hagen was certain it would be worth it.