Magic? Anton thought as he looked at the woman’s sneer. He had seen that kind of sneer on a woman’s face once before. He’d come home from work early one day and found his girlfriend getting railed by the mailman. It was so cliché. With cameras everywhere you’d think he would have gotten in trouble, but no. He timed that stop with his lunch hour and railed her while on his lunch. When Anton had walked in on them in his apartment they’d been in his bed. She’d looked at him with a grin like the bitch in front of him had right now and then sat there on top of the mailman while she wiggled her hips and started to berate Anton.
He’d been so angry, that he’d turned and walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. Never one for inaction, he’d walked into the living room over to his computer desk, grabbed his computer and monitor his car keys, and walked out of the house. He walked down to his car put the computers inside and drove south. At the time he’d lived in North Dakota just south of Fargo. He’d had a relatively good job in an auto parts store with the she bitch from hell.
While he was driving south he’d called his boss, told him what had happened, and quit. The boss wasn’t happy but understood. Anton had been sure he probably laughed his ass off after they’d hung up their phones. He didn’t care. Anton had driven southeast toward Minneapolis, over to Madison, and was going to stop at Rockford but decided to keep on going. During the middle of the night, he went through the Chicago area without problems, down through Indianapolis, and finally stopped near Nashville Tennessee in the early morning.
She wasn’t on any of his bank accounts and all of his checkbooks, spare checks and such were in a safety deposit box in the West Fargo Bank branch in Fargo. He’d dodged a bullet there. He rented a hotel room at the Marriot and then hooked into the net with his laptop. He had the computer he’d grabbed out of the apartment, which was also his, but his work computer had all of his prewritten letters, as getting up and moving quickly seemed to be something he kept on doing. The first time had been when he was 20. The second time was when he was 25. The time he was thinking about with the she bitch had been the third time just six months ago. He opened the folder with the prewritten letter to his lawyer and sent him an email instructing him to take care of his affairs immediately. His lawyer already had notarized letters just in case so he should be able to handle everything for him.
Most people wouldn’t bother, but he’d grown up in the system. He always made sure to pay those bills that the government would come after him for. Something he didn’t let people know was that he had money, a lot of money in a trust fund his parents had left him. It wasn’t a lot of money but he could pull out about $5,0000 a month and not spend any of the principal, which was what he’d done. With the email sent, he hadn’t had to worry about anything. He went to sleep, woke up, and made it to Orlando Florida the next day. That drive had ultimately led him to this moment where he was looking at a woman who was smiling evilly as she wiggled her fingers.
Anton had no idea what she was doing until he saw a portal, not unlike the one the beam from the Pillar shot through. As Anton Watched a red ball of energy formed in her hand and then shot through the portal beside her and out of the one above his head. As soon as the red ball of energy was through the portal it closed and slammed into the ground not five feet in front of him. The good news, it didn’t hit him. The bad news is it was a goddamn fireball. Like from that Dungeons and Dragons Role Playing Game (RPG) he’d played as a teenager with the other kids in foster care. It hit the ground and exploded hitting everyone on this side of the barrier that was protecting the woman.
Time seemed to slow down as the energy wave washed foward. Alpha One turned his back on the fireball and slammed into him, the blast propelling them both back down the hallway with Alpha One on top of him. Anton checked himself and then realized something was off. Alpha One was lying on top of him but it didn’t feel like there was a full-sized man on top of him.
Anton asked, “Alpha One, you okay?” When he got no response he asked again, “Alpha One?” When he didn’t answer a second time, Anton gently pushed Alpha One to move him off of himself and realized that both of his weapons had been wedged between their armor. Even so, Alpha One was much lighter than he should have been.
As Alpha One slid off to the side Anto immediately found out why. The entire backside of Alpha One was gone. All that was left was a cauterized mass of flesh sitting inside the front part of the armor. It looked almost like someone had taken a knife and sliced him in half. Alpha One was most assuredly dead.
Anton looked over the armor. Counting for the armor he was wearing being wedged up Alpha One’s armor, it looked like everywhere that had been within a foot of himself had not been affected by the fireball, including his own Armor. Anything further than a foot away had been disintegrated or scorched. So maybe that ability Anti-Mage did do something after all. Anton was pretty sure if this was what the fireball did to Alpha One the rest of the team was dead and that bitch whose smile reminded him of his whore of an ex-girlfriend was probably up to no good.
Anton was thinking about what he could do when a slow flashing yellow Icon appeared on the visor of his helmet. He moved his head and his eyes. Nope, the icon didn’t move with his vision, it moved with his head so the icon was being displayed on the visor of the suit he was in. It didn’t say anything. Maybe it was something that showed battery usage or damage? There wasn’t anything he could do about it so he stood and picked up Alpha One’s handgun and submachine gun. He slung the submachine gun over his shoulder and let the gun slip behind him as he grabbed the Desert Eagle, a gun he was a little familiar with.
When he was sixteen, the foster family he’d been living with had given him one of the coolest birthday presents he’d ever received. His foster dad had taken him to a gun range and let him shoot his Desert Eagle. He’d been shown how to clean it, clear the weapon, and check the barrel without pointing the weapon at his head. Rule #1 never point a gun at something you don’t intend to shoot which meant never look down the barrel. His foster dad had shown him the safe way to check the weapon. It was still one of the happiest memories he had. He’d actually lived with them until he turned 18 and then moved on, though they had called once a year until he was 21 on his birthday. Lately, they’d call around Thanksgiving or Christmas. They hadn’t had a falling out. Dave and Sue Ellis lived near Minot and he’d moved over to Fargo, over four hours away so they hadn’t talked that often. After he’d moved to Orlando and then booked the job he had on the Odyssey. They still called once in a while but visits were a little harder to manage.
Anton looked over the weapon, popped out the clip to make sure it was full, and checked the chamber. Once that was done, he reloaded the weapon and started walking back toward the chamber with the pillar. When he made it to the entrance he looked to the left and the right and saw the eleven crumpled dead bodies of the squad that had brought him here. It also looked like the woman had been waiting for him as a black line of energy lanced out from her pointed finger as she called out, “Your friends died easily enough, now it’s your turn.”
The beam disappeared a foot in front of him, “You missed,” Anton said with disdain while he looked around. Anton noticed that all of the armor and weapons of the eleven other men were mangled and destroyed. It looked like the only weapons to survive that first fireball were the weapons that had been wedged between Alpha One and himself. While he was thinking five black bolts of energy left the woman’s right hand and flew across the room at him. As they disappeared in front of him she reached over and picked up a staff that had been resting against the pillar which glowed briefly.
“I don’t know what you’re doing to protect yourself. Fine, I can’t kill you with magic easily. My Force Wall should keep you at bay while I finish what I came here to do,” she said as she turned back to the terminal and pointedly ignored Anton.
Anton smiled. This bitch had just killed 12 men in front of him. He had no idea who she was but she reminded him of his ex which meant that she had at least 12 reasons to die and thirteen reasons for him to dislike her. Also, that yellowing flashing light in his vision was flashing faster so he should get a move on and attack her before it disappeared or something else happened.
Anton started walking forward as he said, “Lady, I don’t know who you are. Honestly, I don’t care. Strike number one was having a smile like my psycho slut bitch of an ex-girlfriend. Yes, that means I’m calling you a psycho slut bitch.”
His statement caused the woman to look up as he walked toward her, “Like what you think matters. You can’t do anything to me from that side of the Force Wall.”
Anton continued talking like she hadn’t said anything, “Strike number two was killing all of the soldiers. That was just fucked up. I don’t know which country you're from and I don’t care. You killed some of my fellow Americans.
“Americans? What is an American you pathetic mongrel? You’re just a human! Also, I’m not even from this planet, why do I care what you or these Americans think!” she spat out the word ‘Americans’ like it was a curse word. She also tossed a rock toward Anton which stopped dead and fell to the ground where the Force Wall was. Anton couldn’t see where the Force Wall was until she threw that rock which helped him gauge where it was. It also allowed him to gauge when she was going to react to him if what he thought was going to happen, happened.
Anton looked at the woman again and noticed that she had two nubs from pointy ears sticking through her hair and she kind of resembled what he thought an elf should look like, “Wait, are you an elf?” he asked as he stopped just short of the force wall while he also made sure the safety on the desert eagle handgun was off.
The woman huffed but didn’t say anything as she started pushing more buttons. At that moment anger flared in Anton. It started as a burning heat in the back of his shoulders that radiated up the back of his neck and saturated his skull from the back of his head forward until his vision narrowed and before he knew what was happening Anton walked forward.
Anton passed through the wall as if it wasn’t there, made it to the elf, and grabbed the back of her neck as he pulled her toward him. As he started to yank her forward she struggled slightly and seemed to be a little stronger than Anton but the fact that he had surprised her gave him the second he needed. What she didn’t understand was why he’d grabbed the back of her neck. He was holding her toward him so she wouldn’t fly away from him as the desert eagle's barrel was pressed into her breastbone just above the inside curve of her left breast where her heart would be if she was human.
There was a muffled crack as Anton fired the weapon and blood sprayed from her back. He twisted the gun so the bullets would hit new parts of her chest without lifting the weapon. He pulled the trigger over and over until eight of the nine .357 magnum rounds had traveled into and through her body. As she started to sag, Anton brought the gun up under her chin as he looked into her eyes.
Anger flared in her eyes as blood trickled out of her mouth and she whispered, “Heros don’t kill…”
Anton, his anger still an unquenchable heat in his veins, said “I’m not the Hero,” and pulled the trigger sending the last .357 round through the bottom of her jaw, through the roof of her mouth, and up out of the top of her head. The spark in her eyes left and three message notifications entered his vision.
Congratulations You have killed a level 18 Mage. 1,800 XP awarded.
You have leveled from Level 0 to Level 1. You have earned four attribute points which can be distributed as you see fit.
You have also received one Skill Point.
While he’d never killed anyone before, he had to admit killing this person at this moment after what she’d just done felt good. Also, part of him wished he could have done that to the she bitch but he wasn’t a psycho. If she killed someone though...
Anton refocused his thoughts. Luckily for him, whatever mess the top of her head exploding had made was stopped by the armor and mask he was wearing. Anton dropped the elf to the ground and stepped over her to the console which seemed to have a countdown of some sort going on. He couldn’t read the numbers but it was pretty obvious it was a countdown. When the countdown switched to single digits he knew he was in the last 10 seconds. At the same moment, the rapidly flashing yellow icon changed to the number 10 in red which began counting down as well.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Both counters continued with the counter for the Pillar control panel being about a second ahead of the one in his mask. He didn’t want to touch the console and mess things up because of the way things went the last time he touched the Pillar. Also, there was no way for him to influence the counter in his mask. It seemed to be completely independent of anything else his mask did.
As the Pillar console seemed to reach zero when the symbols disappeared, a SYSTEM message filled his vision.
SYSTEM MESSAGE
SYSTEM INTEGRATION of the Nine Pillars Initiated
The Sixth Pillar has been designated as the Primary Pillar. Quantum Integration will establish 6th Pillar constructs as Primary, all others will be utilized to reset Entropy…
Everything went white. The only thing Anton could see was the SYSTEM Messages.
SYSTEM ERROR
!!!You have been Disintegrated!!!
SYSTEM ERROR
Pillar 10 Console Device destroyed at subatomic level.
Pillar 10 Damage
Pillar 10 Repair Commencing.
Data Loss nominal
Quantum Integration halted.
Quantum Integration backup plan initiated.
Please Wait
Please Wait
Please Wait
Unrecoverable ERROR
Quantum Integration Cancelled.
Quantum Separation is impossible.
Non-biological mass will be repurposed to fuel Quantum Separation and Transformation
SYSTEM Instances combined to fuel transformation.
SYSTEM Response “Multiple SYSTEM Coexistence during Entropy Reset” Initiated.
Temporal Hold Activated.
Temporal Hold deactivated
SYSTEM Interface 11.0.0.1 Activated.
Disorientation is to be expected. Please refrain from any sudden movements or rash actions.
During the initiation of the Entropy Shield, A catastrophic error occurred.
System Integrity Damage
System Reset Initiated
History of the SYSTEMS and Entropy Shield are available in the SYSTEM Library if you possess the required clearance level.
System 11.0.0.1 Change Log
All users reset.
All Classes removed
All Titles Removed.
Abilities are no longer automatic and must be unlocked. More than two abilities can be unlocked.
Class choices are no longer automatic and must be unlocked.
Skills have been reworked. Users earn 1 Skill Point per user level automatically as well as extra Skill Points as rewards or for other activities.
Skills can provide bonuses with specific combat and non-combat actions. See specific skill for details
Attributes remain the same
Secondary Attributes remain the same
Experience is awarded as follows:
Minimum Deduction: Target Level ¼ current level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = ¼ XP award.
Target Level 1/3 current Level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = 1/3 XP award.
Target Level ½ current level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = 1/2 XP award.
Base XP award: 100 XP per Level
Target level 2 times current level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = 2x XP award
Target level 3 times current level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = 3x XP award
Maximum Bonus: Target level 4 times current level (Class Levels are not used for this comparison) = 4x XP award
User Level is 1,000 XP per new level.
User level 0 = 0 – 999 XP
User level 1 = 1,000 -1,999 XP
User Level 2 = 2,000 – 3,999 XP,
etc…
User Level Maximum removed.
Class levels do not require XP. Each User Level can be utilized to increase a Class Level for any unlocked classes that the User desires. For example, A User at Level 10 could have a Fighter Class at Level 5 and a Rogue Class at Level 5. To earn another Class level they would need to increase their User level to 11 and increase their class level by 1 in the class of their choice, so long as they meet the prerequisites, if any.
Additional Notes:
A SYSTEM Shop will be available in any City with a population of at least 100,000
Entropy Shield Protocol Prevents Labyrinth connections from forming.
Mana Overflow Protocol “Dungeons” Active.
You have Respawned
You have Died
Anton looked around, He’d seen the message that he’d died. He checked his Personal Information again and noted that his XP was at zero. That sucked, he’d just earned 1,800 only to have that SYSTEM ERROR wipe out that gain. Also, everything was still white, what the hell was going on? He kept an eye on the clock the SYSTEM provided and 14 seconds later received another message.
You have Respawned
You have Died
Anton checked and sure enough, he still had the abilities Anti-Mage and Legendary. Maybe that hadn’t been reset because he was technically dead and under the influence of an ability during the SYSTEM reset? If so, he’d dodged a bullet there for sure. It would have sucked to give up two legendary abilities. 14 seconds later he respawned and died again. What the hell had happened?
As he thought that he pulled up his Combat log. He’d been looking at his messages but he hadn’t checked his Combat Log. The first thing he noticed was that none of the spells that had been cast at him showed up on the log. If it didn’t affect him his Combat Log didn’t record it. That was good to know. Thought it could be bad if someone tried to snipe him from behind with a spell. He’d never get the notification that a spell had been cast at him so he wouldn’t know. He refocused on the Combat Log
You have grabbed a female Elf by the back of the head
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 6 points of damage
Critical Hit! You have shot a female Elf at point-blank range for 12 points of damage
Congratulations You have killed a level 18 Mage. 1,800 XP awarded.
You have leveled from Level 0 to Level 1. You have earned four attribute points which can be distributed as you see fit.
You have also received one Skill Point.
You have been destroyed by a tactical nuclear device 30 feet behind you.
You have Respawned
You have taken ERROR heat and radiation Damage
You have Died
You have Respawned
You have taken ERROR heat and radiation Damage
You have Died
You have Respawned
You have taken ERROR heat and radiation Damage
You have Died
You have Respawned
You have taken ERROR heat and radiation Damage
You have Died
Well shit, He was almost dead center on the blast sight of a thermonuclear explosion. No wonder he was dying over and over. How long was that going to last Just then he received a new message
Congratulations! You have died 10 times, Title Unlocked, "I Ain’t Worried". Attribute Efficiency for all Attributes increased by 10%
Anton opened his Personal Information again and noticed that a new category next to each attribute had been added, “Efficiency” and each attribute now had three entries.
Attributes
Strength 9, 10%, 10
Agility 10, 10%, 11
Dexterity 10, 10%, 11
Endurance 11, 10%, 12
Constitution 14, 10%, 15
Perception 10, 10%, 11
Intelligence 8, 10%, 9
Wisdom 8, 10%, 9
Willpower 8, 10%, 9
Charisma 8, 10%, 9
Luck 10, 10%, 11
??? 0, 10%, 0
So dying 10 times had given him a bonus to all of his attributes that he could see. While 10% didn’t seem like a lot and it only looked like he’d gained 11 total attributes once he started leveling that 10% would get bigger and bigger. At 20 points it would be +2 per attribute. At 30 points it would be +3 per attribute. Though that’s not what he was thinking about. What he was thinking about right now was the fact that the heat and radiation in this place was killing him every 14 seconds, if he kept dying and coming back, would that bonus keep increasing? If yes, how long would this room continue to be deadly to him so he could keep increasing that bonus?