Bel spent the next hour searching through the houses and other buildings in the village. Half hoping that he’d find another survivor, and the other half hoping that he’d find something useful like armor. Porvo had been right, though. The entire population had been killed, and the ones that had done it had gone through and looted everything they could find.
While there wasn’t any equipment left behind, there was a corpse of one of the men, at least Bel assumed it was one of the men. Human, like seemingly everyone else, he had blond hair that had grown sticky and clumped with dark blood. He was wearing leather armor and a plate chest, similar to how Nim had been equipped. Whatever weapon he’d had had been stripped, likely by his comrades, but his armor was all there.
Bel crouched down to the man and moved him around as much as he could to get an idea of how to remove the armor. It was a convoluted criss-cross of straps and buckles hidden beneath leather flaps and steel plate. Every time he thought he’d made progress, he’d find another latch that held him back. It took about ten minutes for him to realize that even if he were able to undo all the bullshit holding the armor on the man, there was no way in hell he was going to put it on himself without at least six other hands and a gallon of lube. With a sigh of defeat, he stood back up and gave Meph a head scratch.
“So much for my cosplay fantasies.”
He looked over at Nim, Porvo, and Gracious again, but the only armor they had was what Nim wore, and it was the same as this fallen mercenary. Without the option of any protection, Bel decided his best chance was to race the King’s men back to the camp and hope he arrived in time to come up with a plan. He looked down at the fallen man one last time. There was a patch—some kind of insignia—on the right pauldron. Bel bent down and snatched it off. It was deep blue with gold trim. He turned it in his hand, trying to figure out the shape. It was a bar, but ripped at one end. Not ripped in the conflict, but as a stylistic choice. He rotated it some more while looking down at it, and it suddenly made sense. Held at an angle, it looked just like a ripped movie ticket. Bel looked at his shirt—his Blockbuster shirt—and it was damn near identical. The blue wasn’t exact, and it was gold instead of yellow, but it was the same fucking design. He shoved the patch into his pockets.
What the fuck?
He left the man and slowly walked back to the center of town and the funeral pyre. Something in him told him he should pay his respects to the dead, for whatever it was worth. He looked at each of the faces, one at a time, and took them all in. This was important—necessary. He imagined what their life was like a day ago. How many of them were married? How many hoped to be. What were their jobs? Were they happy? Was there a nosey neighbor that was spoiling the fun for others? Was there a lie that one of them told another that they’d hoped to be forgiven for? Did they look up at the three moons with the same feeling of awe that he had? He studied each of them like he used to with the pictures in the Glass Slipper entryway. There were so many stories. None of them would be finished. He had to stop himself when he got to the charred face of a child.
“FUCK!”
He clenched his fists and looked up at the bright sky and all the soft pillowy clouds that drifted across it. It was such a beautiful day. It was a day for picnics and lawn mowing and afternoon beers with friends.
He looked back to the smoldering dead.
“FUCK!”
He just started screaming at the top of his lungs for as long as they would push out air, and when they stopped, he still tried. He tried until specks of white-gray shit floated around the edge of his vision. He tried until his knees buckled and he nearly fell. He tried until he couldn’t any more.
Meph stayed on his shoulders the entire time. The snake was a silent comfort to him. Meph was the only thing he had left. The only evidence that at one time he’d been a normal person. Just a fucking line cook in fucking Portland with a fucking great partner that did too much for his fucking lame ass. All he had was Meph.
He let his hands loosen and fall to his sides and composed himself. He looked back to the dead and spoke to them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, and I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry that you died. I’m sorry for my part in it. I’m sorry that I can’t say that to you in a way you’ll hear.” He paused, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “I promise you, though, that I’ll do better. I promise you. I’m sorry I wasn’t better this time. I’m sorry it’s too late for you.”
Bel turned away from the fire. He looked over at the corpses of Porvo, Nim, and Gracious and his lips drew into a snarl. “Fuck you.” He let out a deep breath.
“Ok, Meph. I’m done with this shit. No more fucking around. I haven’t been taking this seriously, and I need to change that. Fuck waiting for someone to hold my hand and walk me through this shit.”
Meph tightened up on his shoulders and flitted his tongue. Bel let it all go. He pushed aside his former life, all of his struggles, and all the bullshit that came with it. If it’s a game they want, he’ll play.
“Ok. First up, I need information.” He pulled out his phone. It had only been a night since he’d last looked at it, but so much had happened that it felt like a week. He unlocked it and smirked when he saw the battery still read 100 percent.
On the home screen it was still the same four icons: Map, Stats, Inventory, and Wiki. He started with the first, and tapped on the Map icon.
The app opened and showed him the island again, though now with more of it uncovered as he’d been walking. It also showed a marker for the village, but no name. To the north, he could also see the beach where the camp was located, just south of the forest where he’d woken up. Other than that, though, there wasn’t anything new. He closed the app and tapped on Inventory, since he was familiar with that one, too, already.
It opened and showed the same listings as before, though with one addition, his Dirk, named “Tier 0 Dirk, Level 2”. Bel tapped on it, and more information followed.
Name: Dirk
Tier: 0
Level: 2
Stat Class: Strength/Dexterity
Binding: Bound
Weight: 200 grams
Composition: Blade (99.99% steel, .001% Aetherium), Grip: (98% leather, 2% natural wax)
Creator: Berylmar Horal,
Tothers, Leigh
Bel read it all over carefully. It gave a lot more information on the dagger than it had on the ring. To double check that hadn’t changed, he went and looked at it, too. It still had the same basic information, but Bel noticed the Aetherium content of the ring was much higher than that of the dagger, at 3% against the dirk’s .001%. He filed that away as something to look into later.
He closed the dagger screen again and noticed at the bottom of the list another new item: Insignia of the Army of Tothers.
Tothers, Bel remembered, was the capital of the Leigh Archipelago, and also where the person who made his dagger was located. All good leads to follow up on when he wrapped up things here.
He went back to the home screen and looked at the two other icons: Stats and Wiki. Of the two, Stats terrified him the most. All of this felt too real to him, and he wasn’t sure why. He was afraid that when he opened it, it would give him a character sheet like D&D and he would see all his flaws and shortcomings in black and white. He held his breath and tapped the icon.
It was everything he feared.
The first section broke down his base information:
Name: Michael Belmont Graham
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Gender: Male
Classification: Humanoid
Species: Human (Earth)
Age: 37
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 182 lbs
Hair color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Skin tone: Pale Peach
Bel laughed at the “Pale Peach” description. White would have sufficed. Pale Peach seemed like a jab at his Portland tan. He tapped on the NEXT button at the bottom of the page and a new screen loaded.
Combat Aspects
Archetype: None
Subversion: None
Tier: 0
Strength Proficiency: 0
Equipment: Tier 0 Dirk, Level 2
Constitution Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Dexterity Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Composure Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Wisdom Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Willpower Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Bel looked over each of the stats one by one. They were pretty standard, and laid out across from each other in pairs, denoting that one was an offensive stat, and the other a defensive stat. He paid special attention to the fact that the Dirk showed as equipment, but his regular clothes didn’t. Making a quick assumption, he figured it must have something to do with the knife being partially made of Aetherium. He tapped on the NEXT icon again.
Social Aspects
Charisma Proficiency: 0
Equipment: None
Insight Proficiency: 0
Equipment: Ring of the Concordant
Companions & Familiars
Name: Mephisto
Classification: Common Serpent 80%, Bestial 19%, Vulgare <1%
Species: Ball Python (Earth)
Gender: Male
Length: 10’ 2”
Weight: 5.23 kilograms
Tier 1
[More…]
And that was it. Three pages that summed up everything about him. He looked it all over and laughed. It was all a game. Just one big fucking game. He scrolled through the list several more times, and he got the distinct feeling that this was all laid out in a way to make sense to him, as though this app were translating much more complex ideas into simple concepts for him. He shook his head. It was way too much to think about at the moment.
The only things that stood out to him were the equipment listings, and the bit about Meph. The dagger was equipped under Strength, and the ring under Insight. He tapped on the dagger and it brought him back to the Inventory app. It was listed as a Strength/Dexterity weapon. He flipped back to the Stats app and held his thumb on the dagger. It moved with his finger. He slid it down to Dexterity, and it locked in place. He did it again, and tried to drag it to Wisdom, but it just returned to Dexterity when he removed his thumb.
He looked over the listing for Meph next. The app listed him as Tier 1, and Bel had to wonder if that’s why the snake had grown so much over the course of the night. He tapped on [More…] and it loaded a whole new sheet that looked the same as his, though it listed Meph’s Strength, Dexterity and Insight as Proficiency 1. There were also no equipment listings for him. Bel was pretty sure he understood why.
“Fucking wild.” He ran a hand across Meph on his back. “You’re getting big, bud.” He thought back to Yillie’s words earlier.
“When you fought the Behemoth, you stood no chance. It should have easily killed you, but you moved with the speed of someone a tier higher.”
There was something to that. Moved with the speed of someone a tier higher. Did it have something to do with Meph? Was it part of the bond?
Meph curled up tight across Bel’s shoulders and Bel pressed his head backwards against the snake’s newly larger body.
He also noted that Meph’s classification was 80% Common Serpent, 19% Bestial, and less than 1% Vulgare. He tapped on Bestial, and it loaded up a new page, but it was mostly blank with the only text being, “Once you have reclaimed your kingdom, GASPAR’s functionality will be further unlocked.” A tap on Vulgare returned the same blank result with the same text.
Bestial he could make an inference from. Meph was a snake. Snakes are kinda beasts. It links up. Vulgare, though, that was a weird one. If he went with the root being “vulgar” then it had two meanings. The first being the adjective meaning of someone who is gross and obscene. Bel smirked. If Meph was vulgar, what did that make him?
The second meaning, though, was slightly more interesting. As a noun, vulgar is a common person or language, and the only reason he knew that was because the fire-and-brimstone pastor at his church had called Non-Christian’s a vulgar mob, and then had to retract his words and explain that he meant the other vulgar, as though that made it better. It had always stuck with Bel after hearing it; the vulgar mob. In either case, neither made much sense, and with no more information, it was all conjecture in his head, anyway.
There was still so much that he didn’t understand, but he felt like with the stats laid out like a character sheet, he could start making some safe assumptions. He closed out the app and hesitantly tapped on Wiki.
The new app opened into a clone of the Wikipedia homepage. Bel let out an exasperated sigh. There was a featured article listed below the search bar: Nim Lakakahn. Bel tapped it and a new page loaded with a picture of a younger Nim on the right-hand side. He read the intro paragraph.
“Nim Lakakahn was the patron of the Lakakahn family of Tothers, Leigh, and second in command of the Black Lerabo Guild Sanctioned Hunter Party. His family fell to ruin in conflict with King Graham of Leigh and were…”
While Bel wanted to read further into the man’s history, there were more pressing matters. Each of the keywords on the page looked like a hyperlink, so he tapped King Graham of Leigh.
A new page opened, and Bel wasn’t sure if he should be happy or disappointed that there wasn’t a picture of the usurper. There was, however, an image that matched the insignia he pulled off the soldier, and by association, the blockbuster shirt he wore. It was positioned like a hanging banner, with the torn portion of the ticket at the bottom as though the banner was tattered and torn.
“King Michael Belmont Graham of Earth, Tier 0. Little is known of the elusive monarch of the Leigh Archipelago. On the third day of Florion, 236EW, King Graham claimed the throne, and continues to rule uncontested. His policies and laws have been called into question by other rulers as barbaric and oligarchical, with some calling him a Mythra puppet.”
Bel chuckled. He liked this version of Wikipedia. It wasn’t pulling punches. He tapped on Mythra. It felt strange reading his name in the third person, though, and he didn’t like it. Whoever had stolen it was going to have a lot to answer for.
A new page loaded, now with a logo for the Mythra Guild. It was a simple design with three red stars in a triangle pattern, with arching white lines between each that connected them in a distorted circle, all of which were on a blue background. It wasn’t hard to make the connection between it and the American flag based on color choice alone, but Bel knew better than to fall into the correlation and causation trap.
He read off the intro paragraph for the Guild.
“Guild Mythra, ranked sixth in the Great Guild Houses. Specializing in Entertainment, Music and Audio, as well as Spas and Mental Wellness Centers, Mythra has maintained its position as a mid-ranking guild for several millennia. Boasting just shy of 2.8 billion worlds under its banner and a total valuation of 72,781,395,349 Aether, it can account for 6 percent of the total wealth of the inhabited galaxy. However, in the last half of the century, Mythra has made surprising and aggressive changes to their investment strategies, chief among which is the early liquidation of many of their Tier 0 and Tier 1 worlds. These actions have led to discussions that Mythra may attempt a coup of a higher ranked Guild, though, at this point, it is only speculation.”
Bel stopped reading and reflected for a moment. Mythra was ringing a bell in his head, and he couldn’t remember—
He snapped his fingers. “That fucking judge!” He couldn’t remember the exact phrasing, but he remembered Balthazar mentioning the Mythra Guild as the owners of Earth, and that Earth had been part of a mining accident. Bel reread the page.
“…the early liquidation of many of their Tier 0 and Tier 1 worlds.”
Bel closed the app and slid the phone back in his pocket. That was it. The answer. One of the big Why's that he’d been pushing out of his mind. Why had the Earth been destroyed? Mythra. Liquidation. Putting it in such neutered terms only pissed him off more.
Liquidation. Just another word for wiping us out. Earth wasn’t an accident. It was an asset they dumped. All of this other shit—this Potential Sovereign shit—it was gonna get pinned to the wall right next to Fuck Up Mythra. Bel had no idea how he was gonna do that, but he figured everything has to start somewhere.
He looked back up at the blue sky. “Alright, that’s enough of that for now.” He ran a hand across Meph. “We’ve gotta book it if we are gonna beat the King’s men to the camp. You want to stay on my shoulder, or hop down and go on your own?”
Meph didn’t move.
“Shoulder snake it is.”
Bel looked around the village once more, back to the dead, and back to the three that he’d killed. The weight of it hadn’t hit him yet. He’d killed three people. Three bad people. Bel didn’t have any regrets. They brought it on themselves. His mind briefly turned to the murder at the Glass Slipper, and the man he’d chased. Would he have done the same to him? Bel figured he had his answer now.
The sky darkened above him, and he glanced up. The deep blue that had once dominated the horizon was being covered with roiling, black clouds that billowed in fast from the east. He bent down to the ground and ran his hands through the ash that had been building up at the base of the burning bodies. Once his hands were covered, he stood back up and rubbed it further into his palms and forearms while he looked up at the now overcast sky. If these fuckers wanted him dead, they were going to have to earn it.
“Storm’s comin’, Meph.”
Meph flitted his tongue.
Bel started a slow jog towards the outskirts, but stayed out of the forest. Open country would be quicker for movement. Once he was away from the smell of smoke, he pressed the muscles in his legs to move, and they responded with a burst of speed.