My choice was made for me as two more men stepped forward, trying to surround me. I dodged the first punch by ducking and blocked a kick with my left forearm. I used the same hand to clout the one who’d missed me between his legs. He immediately hunched forward, bringing his chin exactly where my elbow wanted it.
Two out. Three to go. The one who’d actually managed to land a kick on me was now above me and he pounded my gut. I felt my breath escape me, but the hit wasn’t half as bad as I expected it to be. At last, those early mornings lifting weights at the gym were paying off. I lunged at him, bringing his head down to meet my knee. Another crack and he was on his back holding his bleeding nose as well.
Two left.
Before I was able to properly examine the two remaining assholes, a swift flow of cold wind almost swept me off my feet. It was only when I steadied myself and turned back to the two men that I saw the wind create a small swirling ball in front of them.
What the fuck is this now? Rasengan?
The moment I wasted pondering whether I was dreaming was enough for the man to bring his hands forward and launch the spinning ball of compressed air at me. The force with which I was hit sent me flying several feet back, claiming half of the air in my lungs at the moment of impact and the other half when I hit the asphalt.
“What the hells, man?” shouted the second corporate thug, who was still standing. “Why would you attack him like that?”
“Yeah, we could’ve taken him,” another voice said. “Why would you bring him to this side?”
“He took three of you out,” my aggressor snapped back at them as I managed to pick myself up. “The bastard had it coming.”
My body didn’t hurt and there was no blood on the back of my head when I checked it, but I must have suffered a concussion. Amid the sun’s last rays reflecting on the restaurant’s windows, Louie’s barks, and the screams of bystanders, I was seeing things that made no sense. The periphery of my vision was somehow clouded. No, not clouded. It was cluttered with… words. Words and numbers.
I tried to focus my eyes on the person who was responsible for my injury, as he seemed to be preparing another of his wind spheres, but I was distracted by more words hovering above his head.
Name: ???
Race: Human
Class: Mage
Level: 11
What the actual fuck?
I was able to jump to the side just in time to avoid his attack, but before I could shout at them, I saw the shadow of someone holding a long object in his hands. I felt a sudden pressure on the back of my head and dropped to the ground, face-first. My vision flashed white as my brain registered the pain and for a second all I could see was what looked like a red and blue bar on the periphery of my vision. The red one was half-empty while the blue was still full.
I could now hear laughs around me, while Louie’s barking felt distant. I tried to pick myself up but only managed to stumble and fall on my back. Once my vision returned, there were several completely opaque windows of text obscuring my view.
Name: Alexander MacFie
Race: Human
Class: ???
Level: 1
HP : 72/126
MP: 38/38
XP : 0.00%
STR: 40
DEX: 30
CON: 43
INT: 21
WIS: 11
MEN: 25
Battle Stats
Max HP: 126
Max MP: 38
Physical Attack: 4
Physical Defense: 72
Accuracy: 33
Critical: 44
Attack Speed: 330
Magic Attack: 3
Magic Defense: 47
Evasion: 33
Speed: 126
Casting Speed: 213
HP Regen. : 3.4/minute
MP Regen. : 1.1/minute
Without even running my eyes over everything, I realized I had somehow absorbed all the information. It was as if the moment my eyes glanced at each of the floating windows, I remembered what was written on them. I tried swiping across them with my hands to force them to go away. It was no surprise when my fingers didn’t seem to touch them at all, but the windows quickly disappeared as I blinked hard in frustration. They cleared my views just in time for me to see the sole of a squeaky-clean brown leather shoe land on my face.
Once again, I fell to the ground, yet this time I felt more kicks immediately after. On my shoulders. My stomach. My face. It felt as if a herd of cattle was stampeding over me. The taste of blood on my lips made my anger resurface, and I grabbed a leg and bit down hard on it.
“The motherfucker bit me!” he said as I spat out a piece of his trousers with some flesh and blood attached.
“You think this is enough, you bastards?” I shouted as I attempted to push myself up, legs and arms shaking.
Another strike on my back with the long object brought me down to the hot pavement again. My vision became dark red and all I could think of was myself jumping on them and locking my hands around their necks.
“I’ll fuckin’ rip you…” was all I managed to say before another kick on my forehead turned me on my back.
“I’ll…” The blood in my mouth forced me to swallow the rest of my sentence as the kicks kept landing…
2
Smokers outside the hospital doors
I woke up in a strange bed. I could barely lift the eyelid of my left eye and the right wouldn’t move at all. My vision was still blurry and my arms hurt when I moved them to my face. At least I thought it was my face. It was swollen and covered in scabs.
“The fight,” I whispered as I remembered. This threw me into a fit of coughing.
Once I had cleared the dried tears on my one working eye, I noticed I was in a hospital ward. If I was here, then where was…
“Louie,” I croaked and looked around me.
He was sitting in his little pillow-bed by my side. He was too short to climb on the bed, so he was reaching up to me on his two short hind legs, his tail wagging like crazy.
“I’m good, buddy,” I said. I reached down to try and lift him onto my bed but turning my torso sent daggers of pain down my back.
Instead, I tried to steady my breathing as if that would lessen the pain. I looked forward and inhaled deeply, scratching Louie behind the ears for comfort. Another piercing stab, just below my chest this time, stopped me from completely filling my lungs with air. It looked like focusing on my breathing wasn’t enough to do the trick, so I would have to find something else instead.
It was only natural that someone had called the police, given how many people must have seen the fight. That would explain my being here, but how exactly did Louie’s pillow from the office end up next to me?
I tried to pull myself up on the bed to rearrange one of the two large pillows behind me to keep me sitting upright. I remembered somebody once had said that the pain cowers away if you don’t think about it. That pain is but a terror of the mind. Fuck that guy.
There was a highly reflective metal tray on an empty bed opposite mine and I used it to try and assess the damage as best as I could without standing up.
Well, am I not a pleasant sight to behold?
My long hair covered most of the injuries on the left side of my face, but what I could see didn’t actually look that bad. I mean I would have expected pieces missing, but it was mostly there. In fact, there was quite a bit more of it and in different colors than usual since it was swollen, but the bruise-purple seemed to complement my blue eyes.
The left side, however, looked dreadful. It wasn’t any more swollen per se. The damage on the face was actually less, considering I could still see, but something far more horrible had taken place. There was a large patch on the side of my head where my hair had been completely shaved off. I looked like fucking Skrillex!
This was, of course, the only way they would have been able to stitch my head but I would’ve appreciated
a less radical look. After all, how you look is what you are in this world. That’s why I’d always tried to avoid attention.
Now that my eyes had adjusted fully to the low light coming in from the single small incandescent lamp in the room, I noticed a red and blue bar on the edges of my vision again. When I tried to focus on them, they became more apparent and I could read some figures on them.
HP : 19/126
MP: 38/38
What the fuck is this again? Did I suffer brain damage?
I’d never even heard of anything like it. It looked more like a disease of the mind than anything a hit on the head might have caused.
Is this how it was going to be then? For the past three years, I would have liked nothing more than to lose my mind, but I pulled through. And now a fight broke me?
Focusing my sight on my periphery, I saw more hovering windows starting to creep to the center of my view. Before I had enough time to examine them, however, the door to the room opened and in came Leo holding my phone in his hands and one of Louie’s favorite chew toys. Immediately, I waved my hands to the side, trying to swoop the imaginary texts away, as if he’d be able to see them too.
“Are you sending me away?” Leo asked playfully. “I thought you called for me, sire!”
“I was just trying to avoid seeing your ugly face,” I replied jokingly.
“My ugly face?” he said, surprised. “Dude, have you seen yourself? They really messed you up. Besides, I’m a half-elf myself.”
“You should see the other guys. And if you’re a half-elf, I’m the fucking king of Westeros.”
“Your Majesty,” he said, feigning a curtsy as he handed me my phone. “Speaking of the other guys. The police will come by sometime later to ask you about them. Did you really get into a fight with five people?”
“Knocked out three of them, too! I guess it was you who brought Louie here?”
“Yeah, man. One of the bystanders called me because I was the most recent call on your phone. The last time you called me was years ago. Do you actually delete all your calls?”
Three years and two months ago to be exact. Sure, I delete all the calls I make. It’s definitely not that I haven’t made any calls since then.
“I made a little app that auto-deletes them. No big deal,” I replied nonchalantly.
“They told me you were attacked and left beaten up. At first, I had trouble believing that someone took you down, but five of them… what the hell were you thinking, man?”
“They stepped on Louie’s tail. On purpose!”
“That’s your excuse for picking a fight with five people?”
“I mean… they also looked like fintech corporate lackeys.”
Leo chuckled but soon his smile was replaced by a more serious expression. “This isn’t healthy, you know,” he said and raised his finger as I inhaled, obviously preparing myself to interrupt him. “Shut up. Let me finish. I know you’re hurting. But it’s been more than three years. You’re destroying your life.”
If this remark had come from anybody other than Leo, I would’ve lashed back with something like “trying to fix my issues won’t help with your inability to solve your own problems caused by your parents”. Leo though, was different. He actually cared. He always had. And I appreciated his honesty. Perhaps not enough to repay it in the same currency. No. Never enough to reveal to him that my life needed no destroying and I just didn’t care if people saw it anymore.
“You’re right,” I replied as somberly as I could. “I do have Louie to take care of.”
Which technically wasn’t a lie. Louie was the main—the only—reason I wouldn’t just stop getting out of bed in the morning.
“Anyway,” Leo said, trying to lighten the atmosphere and blow away the awkwardness. “You were a hot mess when they picked you up. The doctors treated you and gave you a CT scan. They said you’re fine and your wounds will heal, apart from the six stitches on your head.”
“Thanks, man.”
“They did say they can’t do much about your face,” he continued in a serious tone, “but I reassured them that you were this ugly before getting beat up, so that’s fine.”
I smiled at his unexpected joke, but my mood darkened swiftly as I glanced up at the text that had appeared above his head.
Name: Leonardo DiFiore
Race: ???/Human
Class: Mystic
Level: ???
Mystic? Leo usually played warriors. I started to think that I should set some ground rules for my insanity.
“Are you okay?” Leo asked, worried. “Are you feeling dizzy? Should I call someone?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” I said. “I just remembered the dream I had before you arrived. People were walking around with levels and classes above their heads.”
I laughed it off and turned my head to face Louie who was now fast asleep on his little pillow, his paws twitching slightly. Hopefully, his dream was more pleasant. When I faced Leo again, he was still looking at me. He pressed his lips as though he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how.
“What?” I asked as he stood up and moved to the door. “No need to call anyone. I said I’m fine.”
Instead of calling a nurse, he closed the door and took a stool from the other end of the room. He placed it next to me, careful not to wake up Louie, and sat down.
“So you know I’m a mystic then?”
3
Inis Mona
Is this happening? Am I still dreaming?
No, the pain was still too real for a dream.
“Alex, I know you’re the person who will interrupt others with snarky comments and I love you for it, but I need you to shut up for once in your life and pay attention to what I’m about to tell you… because you’ll find it difficult to believe.”
“Okay,” was all I could bring myself to say. Surely this was some kind of pain drug-induced illusion?
“I understand that this is difficult to comprehend, but here goes nothing. There is a world. Another world, parallel to ours. Or rather our world, the Cosmos, is much smaller than the other one. The Apocosmos.”
Yep! Definitely the drugs kicking in.
“The Apocosmos is a different universe, with its own sets of rules and physics. The Cosmos and the Apocosmos exist next to each other, but most of the inhabitants of the Cosmos are blissfully unaware. Many of the fantasy stories and mythological worlds you’ve read about aren’t actually myths at all, but rather part of this second world. They are pieces of it that have seeped into ours via stories, art, or entertainment.”
I burst out laughing. I don’t think I had laughed in years. Funny what a few tiny molecules can do to a man once they enter his bloodstream.
“I know, it’s hard to believe…” he said, before I interrupted him.
“You really think I’m going to believe any of this is real? Come on, where are the cameras? Do you have one on your new specs? I’ve told you so many times that I hate birthday surprises. I don’t celebrate.”
“I wish this was a joke, Alex,” he replied completely seriously, before standing up and bringing his hands in front of his stomach.
Within a second, the same wind sphere I’d been attacked with materialized in front of him. Louie stirred on his little pillow, his sleep disturbed by the sudden gust of wind.
“That thing,” I almost shouted. “I was attacked by this Rasengan-like jutsu.”
“This isn’t Rasengan,” he replied with a smile as the winds in his hands died down. “This is called ‘Gale Blast’ and it’s one of the most basic offensive spells spellcasters learn. This is the reason why you can see numbers and levels and whatever other interfaces you might have noticed.”
He took a step forward and sat down next to me once more.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of Dark Energy before?”
“What the fuck does a theoretical form of energy have to do with your crazy talk?”
“Dark Energy is very much real, Alex. It’s what kee
ps this world and the Apocosmos apart. And the only way for somebody who isn’t born in the Apocosmos to become a part of it is if a member of the Apocosmos pulls them in. Those people who attacked you were most probably natives, and when they saw they couldn’t hurt you here, they decided to pull you in. I’m guessing that’s when you started seeing stats and hovering text blocks.”
“It is,” I admitted, at a loss over the explanation and his very convincing demonstration of magic. “What are all those numbers though?”
“Those stats are the logical interpretation of each creature’s significance in the world. The Dark Energy that runs through the worlds provides this information and manifests them for everyone.”
“So it’s a game world then?”
“It’s wrong to consider the Apocosmos a game world. I’d rather say that in the limited world you’re living in, games are modeled after the real world.”
“My limited world? Because you’re an Apocosmos native?”
“Dude, I wasn’t joking when I said I’m half-elf. My father is Italian, but my mother is an elf.”
“But the…” I tried to find the correct words. “She…”
“What? She doesn’t have pointy ears?” he said, seemingly frustrated. “That is such an ignorant thing to say. Not all elves fall into your stereotypes, mister human.”
“Um… sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
He interrupted me with a snicker. “She actually does but she hides them. You know, people would ask questions.” He smiled at me.
“So… let me get this straight,” I said and tried to sit more upright in my bed. “There is this Dark Energy and it keeps the two worlds apart? It also knows all this information about us and provides a way for us to see those stats?”
Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) Page 2
