New unblocked system skill available: Heroism.
Skill type: Passive
Allows the user to unblock his or her heroic abilities.
Skill points available: 1
Accept / Decline
My drowsiness disappeared as if by the sweep of an ogre’s paw. Yes, please! Accept!
Chapter Twenty-Four. The Hero
“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
NO, I DIDN’T awake a superhero. Not even a normal hero. But unlike the days before, this morning I unhesitantly sprang from my bed the moment I realized I was awake.
Because today I could become a Hero.
How did I know, might you ask?
Last night, the moment I’d pressed Accept I’d been granted access to the skill’s full description,
You’ve activated a new skill: Heroism.
Skill type: Passive
Allows the user to unblock his or her heroic abilities.
There are ten abilities which humanity can bestow on its most worthy specimens. All of them were considered a myth during the Dark Era (the times preceding the discovery of the Universal Information Field). Their carriers were branded as “superheroes” whose names only belonged in songs and legends.
Humanity’s progress has turned these achievements into reality.
Still, as the Law of Equilibrium requires, the Commonwealth of Sentient Races can only grant heroic abilities to a limited number of human beings whose social status levels are the highest. Each of them receives the title of Hero.
Warning! The restrictions and requirements for unblocking heroic abilities are calculated on an individual case-by-case basis, taking into consideration the current average social status levels in each particular segment of our Galaxy.
Warning! The user’s successful leveling up of Heroism which has resulted in his or her outstanding services to humanity can be rewarded by the system. Similarly, criminal abuse of heroic abilities can result in its being blocked again.
Warning! As you level up Heroism, its requirements regarding the unblocking of heroic abilities and the number of abilities which can be used simultaneously may vary.
Warning! In accordance with the Anti-Munchkin Act, a user can only unblock one heroic ability per every twenty social status levels gained.
I summoned Martha and buried myself in research. I had too many questions about this. A new tab appeared in my skill window, entitled Heroic Abilities. Just reading through it had plunged me into a dreamy wistful trance.
You’d think that by then, nothing could surprise me. Still, I was deeply shaken. Everything that had happened to me before could still be explained rationally (sort of), either by saying I was off my trolley or by suspecting I’d accidentally fallen prey to some classified military research. But this...
The entire list of superhero abilities was divided into several tiers. The more awesome the ability, the higher the requirements for its potential user.
Realistically, I could hope to acquire the first one of the two tier-one abilities:
Tier 1
Ability name: Lie Detection
Ability type: Passive, Heroic
Considerably increases the user's ability to detect a person’s insincerity
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 1+
- Social status: level 10+
- Empathy: level 5+
- Communication Skills: level 5+
- Perception: level 10+
- Charisma: level 10+
- Luck: level 10+
- Intellect: level 20+
All I needed was to bring my Perception, Luck and Intellect up — and make level 10 in social status, of course. And that was it! No one would ever fool me again! Or at least as long as I had this interface in my head.
The second ability was something I knew intimately from my gaming experience. My rogue used to be an expert in it. Suddenly I was dying to acquire it.
Tier 1
Ability name: Stealth and Vanish
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Allows the user to activate the Stealth system module in order to become invisible to all creatures around him or herself for a minimum duration of 15 sec, depending on their Spirit numbers. Can be used in combat.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 1+
- Social Status: level 10+
- Strength: level 10+
- Agility: level 10+
- Perception: level 10+
- Stamina: level 10+
- Luck: level 10+
Cooldown: 1 hr.
Stealth and Vanish rolled into one! This ability could do wonders in combat. Dammit! Just having to choose between the two was already giving me a headache. Knowing that I couldn’t have both in the nearest future was a torture. Imagine what I felt when I finished studying the list.
I asked Martha whether it was normal that my first heroic abilities only required social status level 10. According to her, yes, it was perfectly normal. Firstly, because our society wasn’t yet improvement-oriented. Unlike our descendants, we basically lived simply to satisfy our own consumerist needs. We wanted good food, lots of rest and quality entertainment. Which was why there weren’t that many high-level individuals among us. Currently, the average social status level on the planet hovered just below 9. Which turned level 10 into some sort of litmus test pinpointing such a person as one of the best half of our society as opposed to at least four billion of his or her fellow Terrans.
Secondly, both first-tier skills appeared to have purely defensive functions. The first one was pretty self-explanatory. It allowed the user to detect any lie or insincerity in others, thus preventing him or her from suffering damage, moral or financial as well as physical.
And as for the second skill...
“Martha, in theory I could use Stealth just to sneak into a bank vault, couldn’t I? Come to think of it, I could penetrate any kind of public function. Or peep at girls in the gym locker room. I could eavesdrop on all sorts of confidential conversations...”
I continued to shower her with examples of the skill’s illegal use. I suppose it was understandable. Every one of us must have dreamt of being invisible at some point in their lives.
“Phil,” she interrupted me, “judging by your logs, you’ve already performed a number of socially meaningful actions. So do you think the program can tell such an action from an illegal one?”
“I suppose so.”
“Exactly. Only this time the penalties will be much much higher. The Commonwealth of Sentient Races can protect itself from any internal threat, trust me.”
Okay. In any case, all I could do was drool impotently over it. There was no way I could meet the skill’s requirements before the license expired.
The second tier of superskills turned its owner into a demigod. Not permanently, no. And still, wouldn’t you have loved to have become a demigod, if only for a few brief seconds? Provided the timing was right, of course.
Tier 2
Ability name: Regeneration
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Removes all negative effects from the user, such as Disease, Curse, Poisoning, Bleeding or Exposure to Radiation. Accelerates Recovery and improves Confidence, Self-Control, Satisfaction, Vigor, Mood and Willpower. The acceleration rates depend on the user’s Spirit numbers.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 2+
- Social status: level 20+
- Meditation: level 5+
- All main characteristics: levels 20+.
Cooldown: 1 to 14 days depending on the gravity of the damage to the user’s body.
Basically, this was absolute health. All you had to do was keep activating it every time the cooldown expired, and you could expect to live compos mentis until the ripe old age of 200 — or at least until the time when they learned how to make human beings truly immortal, by organ cloning o
r using some sort of rejuvenating elixir.
And just think of the possibilities it offered to all kinds of hazardous occupations!
Still, for someone like me it was truly irrelevant. I was going to lose all of my system skills and abilities in less than a year, anyway.
But still, as a seasoned damager, I loved the next superskill on the list:
Tier 2
Ability name: Sprint
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Ability class: Combat
Accelerates the user 100% by modifying his or her Metabolism and Perception for the duration of 5 seconds.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 2+
- Social status: level 20+
- Agility: level 20+
- Strength: level 20+
- Stamina: level 20+
- Perception: level 20+
Cooldown: 30 min
Can you imagine? This wasn’t just about being able to move twice as fast. This ability gave you a different perception of time. It would allow anyone — even me with my clumsy blows and the agility of a quadriplegic — to defeat a mixed martial arts champion in the ring. Okay, maybe not a champion and not in the ring even, but it would give you a fair chance in a street fight. That would leave Fatso no chance of winning, that’s for sure.
Forget fighting: this ability could make me a valuable asset in any sport, soccer even. I could spend the entire game standing motionlessly on the opponent’s half of the pitch until the moment was just right, then I’d activate it and score a perfect goal. Ten seconds were more than enough to thread my way past the frozen players. With only a thirty-minute cooldown, I was guaranteed to score at least three goals in each game. That was more than Ronaldo and Messi ever could!
The third second-tier ability was tailor-made for the Hunter class.
Tier 2
Ability name: Taming
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Greatly increases your chances of taming any non-sentient creature and turning it into your pet. The progressive leveling of the ability allows you to activate your pets’ abilities and increase the number of commands. The number of the tamed creatures depends on your Spirit numbers.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 2+
- Social status: level 20+
- Taming: level 5+
- Empathy: level 5+
- Stamina: level 20+
- Strength: level 20+
Cooldown: 24 hrs.
It would have been great to tame some cool creature like a shark, a lion or a giant python. Still, at the moment I had my hands full with Richie and Boris, thank you very much. This ability could have come in very handy in some RPG world where you could use a motley crew of pets to help you cleanse dungeons. But in real life? A zoo? A circus? I couldn’t think of much else.
If Tier 2 still seemed remotely doable, Tier 3 required the kind of stats I couldn’t ever hope to achieve. The descriptions of the abilities themselves appeared so fantastical I didn’t even bother to try to apply them to myself. I just heaved a sigh after disappointed sigh as I imagined myself using them to help my family and the whole world.
Strangely enough, by the time I’d reached that tier, I’d somehow stopped thinking of how I could benefit from them. On the contrary: I kept asking myself how I could help other people by using them. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t going to obliterate all crime or bestow law and order on the entire country. All I wanted to do was to make the world a tiny bit better.
That got me thinking. In all those superhero movies, there’s always an evil overlord bent on thwarting the hero’s efforts. And who were the evil overlords of the real world?
Okay, so let’s presume I’d become a new Superman. A flying legend who wears his underpants on the outside, invulnerable and almighty. So I’d go and make quick work of all the scum of this world, eliminating drug cartels, blowing up terrorists’ dens and feeding all the dictators to the dogs. I’d bag all the pedophiles, murderers and corrupted officials and take them to a desert island in the middle of the ocean to play hunger games.
And then what? I mean, seriously? Would it make anyone happier? If we took actual human beings — like Vicky, Alik or Fatso, — would their lives become better for it?
At this point, an idea struck me. A really good one. I hurried to put it on my to-do list, then promptly put it out of my mind. Because the list of superskills kept unfolding. And what I saw on it would have made all those LitRPG-based “inner greedy pigs” drop to the floor and die with envy. Imagine how I was supposed to feel, a useless thirty-two-year-old who’d only very recently considered it the epitome of luck whenever he’d managed to lay his hands on a couple of purple pixels.
Tier 3
Ability name: Foresight
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Allows you to transport yourself to a new reality model for the duration of 15 seconds, then return to the skill activation starting point.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 3+
- Social status: level 30+
- Intuition: level 10+
- Meditation: level 10+
- Perception: level 30+
- Intellect: level 30+
Cooldown: 24 hrs.
Never mind it was only fifteen seconds. True, you could only use it once every twenty-four hours — so what? This was a cheat to end all cheats. Other admittedly awesome things like Flight or Invisibility didn’t even come near. Imagine being able to find out the exact outcome of your every word or action. Think of all the things I’d have done differently in the past had I had access to this highly useful skill.
I used to have this friend once. At the time, casinos were still legal in Russia, so we took full advantage of the fact. That day, he’d won a little. While me, I’d lost every penny. We’d drunk a lot. I was itching to either win all my money back and go home or just lose everything and also go home.
So I’d talked him into lending me all the money he’d had on him. It was early morning and that was the only money he had. I bet everything on red and it came up zero.
Later, I’d never managed to pay him back. He kept reminding me, and then one day he just struck me off his list of friends.
I knew I couldn’t win his friendship back. The least I could do was pay him what I owed him. This too was now an item on my task list.
Some other time, we were driving back from a fishing trip. We were both drunk. I wasn’t keeping my eyes on the road and managed to run over a kitten. We stopped to check on him.
What we saw came back to haunt me in my dreams for years afterwards. The kitten kept silently opening and closing his mouth. He was probably calling for his mom.
The next day, I brought Boris home.
I also used to cadge money off my old grandma (on Mom’s side). She used to live in a small studio apartment. For as long as I remembered, she’d always given me little presents on her pension payment days. First it was sweets, replaced by children’s books and toys as I grew older. By the end of high school, she usually gave me money.
That day, I needed some money in order to take a girl to the movies. Naturally, there were other costs, like buying her flowers and taking her to a café afterwards. Gran said she didn’t have any. I didn’t believe her. I yelled at her. I was full of spite. The next night, she died of a heart attack.
I wouldn’t have even needed all of the fifteen seconds of the Foresight skill. Five seconds would have been plenty to notice her quivering mouth and a single tear rolling down her cheek. Five seconds, more than enough to regret my words and actions and to hate myself. My throat still seized every time I remembered I hadn’t even bothered to apologize. I hadn’t given her a hug — no, I was furious at the sight of her tears thinking she was putting up a good show. How could I? Great God, Phily, how could you?
Phily... That’s where Kira had gotten the habit of calling me so.
I kept reminiscing, remembering other occ
asions when I should have stayed instead of leaving; when I should have spoken up instead of staying safely silent, as well as those when I should have bitten my tongue and shut up. All the times when I’d succumbed to my urge for instant gratification and equally instantly regretted it, as well as times when I should have followed my impulses rather than regretting my reluctance until this very day.
True, not all of those things could have been rectified with Foresight. Still, I could have righted quite a few wrongs.
A sympathetic Martha watched my self-flagellation session. Richie whined in confusion. Still, it brought me some sort of relief.
A new system message popped up,
Congratulations! Your Spirit has improved!
+100% to Spirit
You’ve received 1000 pt. XP for successfully leveling up a secondary characteristic!
After this, I finally forced myself to go back home where I continued going through the list, yawning and trying to keep my eyes open.
Tier 3
Ability name: Berserker
Ability type: Active, Heroic
Triples all your main characteristics for the duration of 15 seconds.
Unblocking requirements:
- Heroism: level 3+
- Social status: level 30+
- All main characteristics: levels 25+
- Spirit: 300%+
Cooldown: 24 hrs.
This was basically God mode for a duration of fifteen seconds. With it, you could set new world records in any sport or make scientific breakthroughs. You could become a champion in virtually anything. No idea what could happen if you tripled your Luck, Perception or Charisma, but it wouldn’t be too bad, that’s for sure.
Judging by the emphasis placed on the first word — “Triples” — this factor could probably grow as you continued to level up. In which case, the skill’s duration was likely to grow too.
Restart (Level Up Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 32
