CHAPTER 4
“Ooh, buddy, gotta keep an eye on that Raise Skeleton spell’s duration, yo! Ha ha ha!”
“Ok, here we go. Let’s see how he handles this. While he reloads, let’s cross a couple things off the checklist.“
*pause*
“Ok, fire when ready.”
“First kill.”
“Check.”
“First spell casting backlash by failed attempt.”
“Okaaay...Check.”
“First successful attempt at spell casting.”
“Check-eroo.”
“First skill acquired.”
“Mmm, check-ity-check-check on that one, as well. Let’s see what he thinks of his “Master” perk now.”
“And final one, but obviously the most important-”
“First blood frenzy, beating a forest creature to death with his bare hands in a haze of self-loathing, self-recrimination, and self-aggrandizement?”
“C’mon, man.”
“Ok fine, Mr. I Beat Myself With My Bare hands in Self-Loathing, Self--”
“Shut up. Checklist. First death.”
“First death. Check.”
*PAUSE*
“That will have to do for now. Let’s see how well he handles it.”
***AWAITING INTEGRATION***
My eyes snap open in panic, my breath catches in my throat, and the sounds of nature reverberate all around me.
For about one one-hundredth of a second.
Then a scream of terror erupts from my throat in a torrent. It’s so loud I can almost feel my vocal chords ripping free from their moorings in my neck. A great gulp of air gets sucked in, and I begin to thrash around, flailing and kicking every limb I have to free myself of the forest rats covering me and eating me alive. After a few seconds I realize I can see, and after another few seconds, I realize there are no rats. I am back in the campsite again.
My frantic motions slow then stop as I take in my surroundings, and finally I stop moving altogether. I simply lay there, heart pounding, trying to wrap my head around what just happened. Did I just...did I just fucking die? Was I just eaten alive by a nest of rats?
Slowly, fearfully, my hands go to my face, terrified of what they are going to find; a missing nose, or even a crater where my newly-ruggedly handsome face once was. But no, my nose is there. No scars, no blood. And no pain. I look down at my legs and hands, expecting to see chunks torn from my legs and knuckle bones jutting out from horrific angles after the way the forest rat crunched my hand in its mouth, but...nothing. Not a single mark on me.
And then I get pissed. Like, really pissed.
Because yet again, one of those motherfucking blue screens has popped up in front of my vision.
YOU HAVE DIED!
Pentamria is an unforgiving land, dangerous and hostile! You have been slain by an ALPHA BULL FOREST RAT! Your skills were insufficient to achieve victory! However, for reasons unknown to you, you have been reborn! Consider carefully your mistakes and learn from them, or you will be doomed to repeat them!
Due to your….
There’s more to it, but I don’t care. It’s a big one, covering almost everything in my field of vision, and I don’t even bother to read the entire prompt before I backhand it away in anger. Instead of closing out, I see it minimize off to the right side of my “screen”, where a small, red box with a gold exclamation mark begins to quietly pulse at the outskirts of my vision.
I jump up to my feet, absently noting that the black robe is gone, as are the rats, and I’m back in the clearing sporting a loin cloth and not much else. I stare into the sky in a red haze of fury. That’s it, I’m done with this shit. I slam my eyes shut so I can focus on my interface, and my eyes roam around in the dark looking for something very specific. I see it, and mentally click on the small, stylized representation of a gear in lower right corner next to the blue globe of mana. An options menu pops up, and I navigate through a few menus until I find the one I’m looking for.
NOTIFICATIONS
Select which notifications you would like to appear automatically and which you would like to access manually:
Under that is a list of types of notifications. I barely glance at the list as I clear them all of checkmarks. Every damn one. Combat logs, skill levelings, quest notifications, system notifications, conversation history, everything. On a whim, I reselect combat logs, as those notifications have appeared in the small chat window to the bottom left of my field of view as a running report rather than an annoying (and apparently deadly) notification window. Gives new meaning to the blue screen of death, I think with a snort as I dismiss it. As soon as it minimizes, another screen pops up, and panic courses through my veins.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHANGE YOUR AVATAR?
YES NO
“No-no-no-NO!” I scream, my voice edging on hysteria, and the screen dutifully vanishes into the ether or wherever those damn things come from. I just got finished being literally torn apart by rats, the last thing I need is to be figuratively torn apart by the system again! I look as perfect as I did right after the last time I suffered excruciating agony with the creation of my avatar, so I’m not about to relive that. I’m happy with my Rock/Statham looks, but even if I looked like Steve Buscemi after he’d been run over by a lawn mower, I wouldn’t change it. Not after that last experience of being remade. It appears that I have respawned back in the clearing, fully restored and whole. But I’m still pissed.
“You sons of bitches didn’t tell me I was going to die!” I roar, livid beyond description. I begin to pace the small clearing, spit flying from my mouth as my tirade continues. I wave my hands dismissively as I rant, shouting, “I know I didn’t really read all that fine print shit you had me sign, but I sure as balls don’t remember anything about being eaten alive by the R.O.U.S.’s from Princess Fuggin’ Bride!” I cease my stomping around and yell even louder, “And I know I would have remembered being told I would feel every single bite and scratch as I died!” My breaths come in ragged gasps, my heart racing so hard it hurts; when I look down, I can actually see my chest pulsing in time with the hammering pressure in my head. In hindsight, I suppose it is a bit ridiculous to play a game where I can feel the cool breeze on my skin and the ground beneath my feet, and not expect to feel the other things, like a rat chewing on your intestines as you helplessly lay there and suffer. But, “surprisingly”, that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“How...how is this possible?” I ask myself now, quiet and terrified. My anger is passing, slowly being replaced by a combination of confusion and wonder and more confusion. Am I immortal? I think. Somehow, I am not only completely whole, but I feel...different. In a good way. Immediately, images of Christopher Lambert waving a sword around, cutting off people’s heads to the screaming vocals of Freddy Mercury pumping in the background.
“If I can’t die,” I ask aloud, knowing I am not going to get an answer, “then what the hell am I? Am I a god?” Another thought strikes me as I stand there befuddled, and I tentatively voice it out to the world. “Am I...God?”
The annoying, pulsing death notification icon flashing on the side of my vision finally gets the best of me, and I move my eyes to look at it. The blue screen flashes back, this time I read the entire thing:
YOU HAVE DIED!
Pentamria is an unforgiving land, dangerous and hostile! You have been slain by an ALPHA BULL FOREST RAT! Your skills were insufficient to achieve victory! However, for reasons unknown to you, you have been reborn! Consider carefully your mistakes and learn from them, or you will be doomed to repeat them!
Due to your MASTER perk, you retain all skills and special abilities earned in your previous life, but none of the class abilities, spells, or experience points gained. This includes any ability points, perks or experience points not yet spent during your previous life. Also, due to your MASTER perk, your death has increased your toughness in almost every way!
+1 to all STATS
CONFIRM
I set aside my rage long enough to really look at the prompt. Ignoring the absurdity of it all, the fact that I felt myself die, felt myself get literally eaten alive, I instinctively go back to my gaming roots and the concept of respawning. In just about every game ever made, on death you are “reborn” in a manner of speaking. Various games have various consequences for death. Some cause a percentage of experience point loss, some require that you respawn in spirit form and run back to your corpse to resurrect, and some even force you to restart the quest, resetting like it never took place.
Some games, the ones I really couldn’t stand playing, have a “hardcore” mode, where death means exactly that; your character is dead and you have to start all over. You lose all stats, skills, classes, everything. In fact, that particular character is gone for good and you must recreate a new one. Some of the more cheeky games even had a graveyard of sorts that you could visit, showing the characters and their levels when they met their ultimate demise. And therein lies the rub with me. If I’m going to put in the time on a character, I don’t want to lose it all. The first few times I tried a hardcore character and got killed, I was furious. Especially if it was because the game lagged, or some other dumbass in an MMO did something moronic and caused a party wipe.
No, I play games because real life is not fun, and to have to worry about losing everything because somebody else screwed up? No thanks. I’m here for an escape, not to be reminded that I’m a fat, friendless loser who’d rather plug his brain into a computer than face reality. Games are fun, real life sucks hairy bean bag.
This game, however, seems to have certain aspects of both, in that I have lost almost everything, but at least I seem to retain my skills.
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The class stuff is easy to understand, if a bit disconcerting. They could just remove that bit of programming from my brain’s knowledge. They did put it there, after all, so it makes sense they could just delete it. But what I’ve earned, my growth, is something ingrained in my true knowledge. My soul? If there is such a thing? No, I don’t believe in that. My mind, I guess. It would be the distinction between my brain and my mind, I conclude. My brain is the physical object in question, while my mind is that intangible thing, that sum of my experiences, which is why I can still remember my life before my integration into Pentamria. If I had access to a computer in this world, I could still perform an upgrade because I had that skill to begin with. It’s in my knowledge bank, my “wheelhouse”, so to speak.
Which makes me wonder, however, What is a memory or experience but data stored somehow in the spongy mass crammed into our cranium? And seeing how mine is currently stuffed with electrodes and such, their access to my brain allows them to place perks and spells in there. So, technically, wouldn’t they have access to my *mind*, as well? I decide that no, they don’t. If they did, I think they would have blocked the pain from avatar creation, if not the pain from being eaten alive.
After consideration, I suppose all that makes sense. I mean, if I earned the Unarmed Combat skill by beating a rat to death with my fists and feet, how would they take that experience and ability away from me? I can still remember how I moved, how I kicked. Hell, I even learned from one fight to the next that placing my kick is important so I didn’t end up on my ass again.
Even though I ended up on my ass again, anyways.
So what other skills are there? I wonder. Unarmed Combat is a pretty basic gaming skill, after all, as well as Long Blade, Short Blade, various armor skills, etc., but who knows what this game has. I remember as a kid the first games I used to play had these manuals, sometimes more than a hundred pages, that I loved to read. Sometimes I would read the entire thing cover to cover before I even played the game. Of course, that might have been because back in those days it took an hour or longer to load the damn thing from a DVD-ROM, but that’s beside the point. “So where’s my damn manual?” I scream at the sky. Then I chuckle a bit, because unless they have access to my thoughts, they are probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind. First I scream I don’t want one, then I scream that I do, I tell myself. Fug ‘em.
I focus back on the last part of the prompt that catches my attention, and that’s the stat point boost...for dying?
Are you telling me I get *rewarded* for dying? I ask myself. The metagamer in me considers the implications. If I die ten more times, does that mean I get ten more stat points? For each stat? What about a hundred times? Not that I would go out and sacrifice myself to the forest rat gods a hundred times just so I could bench press a car. I don’t think I could handle being eaten alive a hundred times, slowly consumed one bite at a time, by a swarm of rats without losing my mind. Hell, after my last experience I’d question my sanity for doing it once.
Which is why, when next I leave the clearing, I go in search of something bigger. Go big or go home, I tell myself. Oh wait, I *can’t* go home.
I leave from the same place I did on my last foray, and once I clear the edge of the campsite, I glance back to ensure the campsite is gone. The staff in my hand does a decent job of clearing the low-hanging branches from my path as I run through the forest, looking for something large and toothy to kill me.
Now *there’s* a thought no one has probably ever considered before, I chastise myself. My current reincarnation, a psionicist named “Bob” wearing tan robes and not much else, has but a single mental stun ability, and a single point in Unarmed Combat thanks to my first go-round. Am I really doing this? I think to myself. To take my mind off the absurdity of it all, I decide to add to it by singing “The Wheels on the Bus” at the top of my lungs as I run.
I figure this could work two-fold, as it would scare away any of the lesser creatures and draw any greater predators to the area. I glance on my mini-map as I run, seeing that I’m coming up on a wide river. A thought crosses my mind once I see the white froth of a quite impressive run of whitewater rapids; this is definitely not the calm, soothing stream I passed in my previous life. I skid to a stop, a bit confused. I know I ran in the same general direction, and yes, as I look north (according to my map and compass), there’s the twin mountain peaks that jut suddenly from the landscape. They look much closer this time, however, and the stream is now a raging river that would impress anyone that had rafted the Grand Canyon.
My thoughts are interrupted by a low, rumbling, groaning growl I hear to my left. Suddenly I know the definition of the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Standing on the edge of the stream, half in and half out of the water, is a bear. But how boring would that be if it was just a regular grizzly bear? No, this monstrosity is roughly seven feet tall at the shoulder, brindled black and brown like a tiger, and has sharp, bony ridges protruding out over his shadowed eyes. He (She? Does it really matter what gender is of the bear that mauls you to death?) turns to me. It doesn’t see the Master, or even Bob the Psionicist. All he sees is a threat to his fishing grounds, and so he acts like any other apex predator in its territory.
He charges.
In a vaguely deja vu manner, the world slows to a crawl as he turns to attack. However, instead of the beginnings of a spell being cast like my previous experience, this must be the moment I’ve heard people speak of at the end of their life. The stories you hear about when there is a train bearing down on someone, and life slows to a crawl as they see the crush of inevitable death rushing towards them. Obviously, we know of those moments because people are able to speak of them, usually due to someone or something coming along at the last moment and saving them from their demise.
I have no such luck.
His sofa cushion-sized paws throw up great splashes of water that catch in the morning sun, and I can see more droplets cascading off his pelt as he runs at me. Muscles ripple underneath the wet fur, and generally it appears as if I have a modest two-bedroom house barrelling towards me with the intent to shred me to pieces.
Not many people know this, and it’s only because I studied biology and some basic neurology in my second sophomore year of college, but the human brain is broken up into three main parts. Sure, there’s dozens of various parts of your brain that control things individually, such as your hearing, your sight, and your sense of smell, but there’s really only three main parts of your brain. The outer shell of your brain is called the “Neo-Cortex”, also commonly referred to as “the human brain.” It’s what controls all the higher functions we need to call ourselves, well...human. Rationality, logic, s’mores, things like that.
The middle portion is the part the neocortex evolved over, called the “Limbic System” or “mammalian brain.” It is mostly responsible for our emotions and feelings. Most mammals have fully developed versions of these, which is why dogs love people, how dolphins can imprint or attach themselves to certain humans, and why women watch The Bachelor.
The third and innermost part of the brain is called the “Reptilian Complex.” This portion of the brain is little more than a feral cat living in the wilds. It’s where instinct and such comes from. That uncomfortable feeling you get when you sense someone staring at you, and when you look, that group of bullies are indeed staring at you. Whispering and plotting to stick your head in the toilet after Dozer has taken a shit in it then flushing, giving you a Dookie Swirl. That kind of fear. It is a holdover from when humans were just branching out from the ancestral tree, and there were sabertooths and shit looking to kill you. The slightest sound, the barest change in the smell on the wind. Indicators that you were about to be something’s second breakfast, or elevensies snack.
So it’s in that moment that a billion years or whatever of evolution takes over. Despite my desire to get stronger by dying, my neo-cortex and my limbic system decide to take a smoke break, and my reptilian brain assumes control.
I run like a little bitch.
Of course the monstrosity behind me covers twice as much ground as I do in half the time, and so I get about six steps before I get hit. Claws the size of scythes rake my right side and back, sending my body spinning ass-over-tea-kettle into a tree. If the swipe didn’t kill me (which, unfortunately, it doesn’t), the impact of the tree should have. Just as unfortunately, I end up wrapping myself backwards around the trunk, and I hear the sickening crunch of bones as my pelvis and lower back snaps. I crash to the ground like a rag doll. My legs belong to someone else now, or might as well, because I look down at them and have no idea how to make them work. My right arm is pinned underneath me at an impossible angle, and the coppery smell of blood overwhelms my senses. I look down at my shoulder, and I see what looks like a dislocated chicken bone exposed, the skin torn back from it in ragged strips. I try to scream, but it is quickly blasted from my lungs as the bear pounces on me from ten yards away. My ribs break like dry tinder, puncturing both lungs and shredding my heart as three tons of pissed-off ursine fury land on me.
It’s much quicker than last time, but it’s worse because this time I have to watch.
***AWAITING INTEGRATION***
My eyes snap open in panic, my breath catches in my throat, and the sounds of nature reverberate all around me.
For about one one-hundredth of a second.
Then a deep, shuddering breath racks my body as I breathe in, trying to fill my crushed and pulped lungs with air. My eyes snap open and my body lurches involuntarily into a sitting position, back arched and head back. My mouth gapes open as I struggle against the pressure that is no longer there, and of course my lungs work perfectly now that I have respawned in my faithful campsite. I take a moment to gather my wits about me as the predictable screen pops up in my field of vision.
YOU HAVE DIED!
Pentamria is an unforgiving land, dangerous and hostile! You have been slain by a DIRE BEAR! Your skills were insufficient to achieve victory! However, for reasons unknown to you, you have been reborn! Consider carefully your mistakes and learn from them, or you will be doomed to repeat them!
Due to your MASTER perk, you retain all skills earned in your previous life, but none of the spells, abilities, or experience points gained. This includes any spell points, ability points, perks or experience points not yet spent during your previous life. Also due to your MASTER perk, your death has increased your toughness in almost every way!
+1 to all STATS
CONFIRM
I have now figured out at least two things.
One thing I have confirmed, I think, is why the colors are different on the names of animals. Green means “You got this, bro” and yellow means “Are you sure?”. I doubt they would jump directly to red, so there’s probably an orange that means “Watch out, this is a REALLY bad idea,” then red means “What kind of flowers do you want sent to your closed-casket funeral?”
And two, I am a complete moron. Dying sucks. Like, it really, really sucks. I can still feel the terrifying dead-weight of my legs when the tree broke my back. I can still feel the shards of bone puncturing my lungs, and the futile effort of trying to breathe in through my ruined organs. And I can still feel the paralyzing fear of the sensation of my life quite literally leaving my body as the bear crunched down on my head.
So the next time I leave the camp, I decide that I’m going to find a better way to commit suicide.
As Bob 2, I run from the camp in the same direction I have the previous two times. Sue me, I think to myself, I’m not going to waste time coming up with a kickass name if I’m just going to die. I am hoping to find a set of cliffs or a nice high tree where I can leap from. I figure if I go head first I can snap my neck and end it quick enough so I don’t feel any pain. I also want to validate something hovering in the back of my mind. Having been this direction twice before and finding two different terrains, I’m pretty sure I’m being dropped off in random locations each time I exit the campsite. Apparently it doesn’t really matter what direction I run in, because I’m going to see something new each time.
Even with my suspicions, it’s quite a shock when I exit the campsite and find that I’m less than a hundred yards from the edge of the forest. Well, at least I assume it is the edge, because on my mini map the green mass surrounding me comes to an abrupt end, and on top of that, sunlight seems to be much brighter up ahead of me. As I walk forward, the trees begin to thin out and sure enough I can see a grassy field in between the trunks. I come to the edge of the forest, and for the first time, I get a real glimpse of the surrounding lands of Pentamria.
What lays out in front of me causes an even bigger shock than the edge of the forest. I see a valley and...farms. A road snakes through the grass, leading to a quaint little bridge spanning a waterfall, which in turn feeds a river leading to a sprawling mountain lake. But there’s something else that grabs my attention.
People. They are still too far away to see genders, but there are several with scythes clearing fields, some in closer to the house feeding what appear to be chickens, and one even leading a massive oxen-like animal pulling a plow. I say oxen-like because unless the person behind it is a child, the beast must be a good 8 feet tall, and the horns span nearly twice that.
Despite the obvious natural behavior of the people ahead of me, I have a completely irrational reaction to seeing these other humans.
I get furious.
Of course I’ve played games with people in it; most of them are usually nothing more than digital characters in the game itself, but some are other human players in MMO games. With the former, they are nothing more than quest givers or targets to be killed, and with the latter mere annoyances either to be tolerated or even scorned on broadcast chat, so why is it that these people bring out this rush of emotion? This is a game, one that I’m still in the process of seeing more than a percent of a percent of a percent of (if my suspicions are correct), so why is it that I’m suddenly angry at these interlopers, these intruders into my world?
My world of killer rats, dire bears, and suicidal cliff dives trying to game the system, I think sourly to myself. What on earth are you jealous of, that they’re happy? That they’re farming?
Or is it that they’re in my head? The associated pang of anger makes it feel like I’ve struck a nerve with that thought. These people are literally and figuratively in my head. In a way, this is a violation more personal and threatening than sticking electrodes in my head and uploading my brain into a computer. Hell, this is potentially worse than a Dookie Swirl.
Three decades and more of frustration, resentment, and misery bubble to the surface. All the people that ruined my life flash before my vision. Whether it’s my alcoholic father, my absentee mother, the assholes in school, the assholes at every job I’ve ever had, I am buried in a cascade of rage and fury at these people who dare to be inside my brain. I came here to get AWAY from people, not to have to deal with them! my mind screams.
Thirty years of self-preservation kick in, and I shrink back into the shadows of the forest. Once again my inner voices gibber at me to protect myself from these people, these potential threats.
What threats? I suddenly chastise myself. They’re fuggin’ farmers, you pansy! What are you so afraid of?
It is beyond ludicrous to be angry at the presence of others in my game. These are merely NPC’s, or Non-Player Characters, computer programs that in essence are no more than 1’s and 0’s of code made digital flesh. For that matter, I realize suddenly, that’s all *I* am. If I needed proof of that, I needn’t look any further than the fact that I just died twice within the last hour or so of my life.
And it’s with this thought in mind that I turn and charge back into the forest, looking to die again.