Suddenly, I found myself in impossibly serene surroundings: harps were playing, a choir of angelic voices was singing, and a gentle breeze blew through the air. My comfortable chair and I were otherwise alone in this endless white void as a feeling of calm spread through me. This place was just so peaceful that it made me relaxed, made me compliant.
I stood up slowly, and it was one of the most challenging achievements of my life. Well, not that that word really applied anymore. Another chair joined me in the void, and I soon found myself crossing my arms at the old man sitting in it. The long, white beard and grandfatherly appearance were so spot on that I wondered why we weren’t sitting on clouds instead. Maybe he’d start throwing lightning or handing down commandments.
“Lawrence Schlager! You handsome son of a bitch, fancy meeting you here!”
I decided I didn’t care much for the idea of God a long time ago, and it didn’t look like he was trying to change my mind.
“Nice place you got here, though a little empty for my tastes.”
I decided to poke the potentially omnipotent being before me a little bit, just to get a lay of the land.
“So, whose god are you? Am I dealing with Mr. Loves Everyone, or is this more of a pillar of salt kind of situation?” I asked with a hint of a smile on my face, despite the circumstances. “Or would you rather I call you Captain Thunderbolts?”
He waved me off as he continued to look up at me from an admittedly very comfortable position. Perhaps I too should sit—
No, none of that. Dead or alive, I remain my own person, not some puppet to be controlled.
“Oh, see that’s why I chose you in the first place! Pity about your untimely demise, of course, but not to worry. You have a whole life ahead of you in the next world.”
Wait a minute. This old man and his beard looked vaguely familiar. If I replaced those glowing white robes of his with something more mundane, adding in a truckers hat…
“Hey! You’re the one who was driving the truck! You killed me!”
God, the murderer, smiled and tried to wave me down.
“Now, now, let’s not get bogged down on who killed whom. The important part is—”
“You killed me,” I said. Interrupting god was a bit of a power play, but I wasn’t exactly happy about this situation. In fact, I had a laundry list of problems with it. “What about my life? My cat? Who will feed him?”
“Ah, don’t worry your pretty little head about that,” god assured me. “You left plenty of food out for him when you died.”
“What do you—“
Oh. I got it. That’s fucking disgusting.
“That’s dark, god. Real dark. But you are aware that I died outside, right? Since you’re the one who killed me, I assume you would. Some omnipotent god you are, don’t even know that Teddy is an indoor cat.”
He shrugged at me, clearly unphased by how I was talking to him. At least he could have given me the satisfaction of being annoyed. That would be nice. I’d have enjoyed that.
He pulled on his beard, smiling up at me without even a hint of shame.
“Oh my sweet, not-so-innocent Law, life is dark. Besides, getting that reaction out of you was all I could ask for. Now onto more serious matters. Our time draws short—“
“Because of my aforementioned rotting corpse?”
“Ahem,” he looked at me pointedly, a frown on his face. I was starting to bother him. Finally, some progress.
“As I was saying, we have limited time and I need to describe your job to you.”
“Do I have to accept it?” I asked the most relevant question for this situation before asking the obvious follow up. “And what’s the pay situation in heaven? Do you pay in harps or what? Cuz I’m not seeing anything of value up here.”
Now he was looking a little off his game. Just a little, but it brought a smile to my face nonetheless.
“In my infinite generosity,” I coughed, but he just kept going, “I will give you the opportunity to live another life in my service. Afterwards, your reward will be a third life, free to do whatever the fuck your horrible little mind can conjure up before enjoying my paradise up here. Of course, I also intend to give you a little boost to get started since you will be at the bottom of the totem pole in a rather dangerous world.”
“Wait,” I stopped him. This was way too much to process, and I was having a hard time keeping up. “Are you saying that you murdered me because you had a job for me and didn’t want to wait until I died naturally? That this job involves you sending me to another, more dangerous world with just ‘a little boost’ despite you needing me to do your job? What, does it make too much sense to make me even stronger? Is your main goal just to jerk me around?”
“Calm your spiritual titties, young man, there’s no need to whine about it.” God was shockingly bad at diplomacy, as it turned out. “You were gonna die eventually anyway, so no harm no foul.”
“Excuse me?!”
Now I was starting to get mad.
“Besides, your talents are wasted in such a peaceful world. A hardworking, violently predispositioned individual like yourself never would have made it in office life. Six months in and you were already pulling your hair out! Really you should be thanking me.”
He smiled at me, and I just about lost it.
“You took away my life, my family, my friends, my everything to make me your indentured servant, and I should thank you? Fuck that! You want me to do something for you and can’t even be fucked to give me a proper power up for it! No, that’s unacceptable. You’re god, I get it, I can’t say no. But if you don’t give me something incredible then I’ll be back here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
I was in my element now. The geezer had given me leverage, and that’s all I ever needed to get what I wanted. He had a job and decided I was the best candidate for it. If that was the case, then I was the negotiator here, not him.
“Hey, now—“
“No, if you want something from someone, you ask politely. Since that’s the window for you, the only alternative is better payment. I owe you less than nothing, so if you want me to do your precious little task in this other world of yours, then you better make me a real offer.”
He scratched his head as I leaned back, glowering at him.
“I was planning on making it easier for someone who was hard working to get ahead. Given my limited powers there, I can’t do too much more than that.”
“Then send me somewhere else first.”
God looked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. I had to check my reflection in his bald head just to make sure that didn’t happen.
“Some god you are... Listen, you said my reward would be a third life, yea? So you can pluck me from a world and send me to another just like that. I also assume I get to stay me when I go over or this whole thing would be a waste of time.”
He nodded, knowing better than to interrupt me. Good, it was about time he realized who was in charge here.
“Then just send me somewhere you have a ton of power over. Give me the ability to improve endlessly. Make it so that no matter what it is, I can improve at it with no limits. Then I can accomplish anything, no matter how ridiculous, so long as I have enough time.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
God lit up at that one, jumping to his feet in excitement.
“Brilliant! Man, I knew I chose the right guy for this. You really were made in my image.”
So did that mean he was the Christian god or the Hebrew one?
“Time’s running out. Get as strong as you can first, and then I’ll send you where the danger is. After that, you’ll kill all the other gods and make me the overgod. Good plan, Law!”
Other gods? Suck it, Catholic school! All those years wasted praying to the one true god just for there to be a dozen more.
“Wait did you say I’m supposed to kill—“
“Time’s up.”
The world flashed white.
I was lying in a grass field before I knew it, and the unique prickling on my asscheeks told me everything I needed to know.
“I’m naked aren’t I?”
That god really was a jackass.
Sitting up and looking around at my surroundings just revealed more of the same. I was in an empty field with suspiciously mowed grass and shockingly few trees. Nothing else as far as my eyes could see. Plucking a blade from the ground wasn’t any easier than it had been on Earth, so god didn’t give me super strength right off the bat. Surely there was something though.
A line of text with no background suddenly appeared in my vision, which was unfortunately pointed towards the very bright sky. Looking away revealed that the text didn’t actually follow my line of sight, but instead it just stayed there, hanging in the air where I’d been looking before.
“God, your game has some serious bugs in it.”
Fortunately, I was able to put my hand behind the text which allowed me to read it.
Welcome to world 3fdp4790uz67b31l55qw!
Wow, really rolls of the tongue. But if that’s the case, then surely there’s some kind of command to pull up the information I need, right?
“Stats. Status. Character. Inventory.”
Nothing happened. I was going to need to be more clever than that to figure this one out. Maybe it really was just some buggy client, and I needed to find the exact right phrase to open up the menu. Or maybe…
“Menu. Oh it worked.”
Character
Settings
Quit Game
“God, why would you give me such a dangerous option from the get go? Please don’t encourage me to kill myself so soon after I got my second life. Thanks.”
As badly as I wanted to know more about myself and what was going on here, the ability to peek at life’s settings was just too tempting to pass up.
“Settings.”
Difficulty
Controls
Graphics
Who the hell let’s you choose your difficulty in life? What does that even look like? Does easy mode reincarnate me into the crown prince of a nation or something?
“Difficulty.”
Survival mode: On
Experience gain: 1%
Loot abundance: 1%
These are some shitty defaults. Let’s just mess around with them a little bit, not like I want it to be too easy.
Survival mode: Off
Experience gain: 100%
Loot abundance: 100%
I lied. If I have to start over from scratch and work for some psychopath of a god, then I might as well give myself as many advantages as possible.
Turning off the survival mode immediately made me feel less tired and got rid of my slight thirst, so that was neat. Hopefully it didn’t just remove the feeling though, otherwise I’d keel over dead in a couple days and not know why. That’s scary as hell.
“Now, let’s peek at those controls.”
Shortcuts
How ironic, the shortcut menu is hidden behind an unnecessary menu. Whatever, let’s dig into this shit.
Character: not set
Quit game: not set
Skill activations
N/A
I think giving me the ability to set a pass phrase for suicide is a form of bullying. Now how do I set a shortcut?
“Character. Stats.”
Character: Stats
Quit game: not set
Skill activations
N/A
“Oh hey that worked, first try too. I’m pretty good at this, no wonder they paid me the big bucks.”
I sighed, remembering the job I didn’t miss and the people I did. That’s just how life goes sometimes. You work a job you hate with coworkers you like and then another job offer comes along and hits you like a truck.
“Whatever. Let’s get to the good stuff. Stats.”
Lawrence Schlager
Classes
None
Ability Scores
Strength: 12
Agility: 6
Resilience: 9
???: ???
Passive Skills
Infinite Scaling
Active Skills
None
Oh? That was a surprise. For one, I figured there’d be way more stats than this, no matter how low level I started out. Three just wasn’t enough no matter how you cut it. Maybe I could investigate the question marks to see if there’s more going on there?
Focusing really hard didn’t work. Saying the word ‘question mark’ out loud any number of times didn’t either. Eventually, I just gave the command for ability scores and got the full details.
Ability Scores: The measure of your basic abilities. As you gain more abilities, more scores become unlocked. Ability scores which cannot influence the world around you are not displayed.
Strength: A measure of your physical might. Influences the ability to exert force through the body.
Agility: A measure of speed, reflex, and nimbleness. This includes fine and coarse motor control.
Resilience: A measure of how much your body can tolerate. The higher the value, the more robust you become both externally and internally.
No additional ability scores currently available.
So it was like that after all. None of those seem like dump stats to me, sadly. Not that I have points to distribute in the first place. Regardless, I was a bit disappointed to learn that I couldn’t make myself smarter or wiser yet, but maybe I’d get that ability once I unlocked magic. A man could hope. I sure would be pissed if god went to all the effort to give me these stats and then throw me into some suburban world with guns and shit. That didn’t matter right now, though. It was time for the elephant in the room.
“Infinite scaling.”
Infinite Scaling: Normal limits on level and experience gain are removed. All limiters for ability score and skill progression are reduced. There are no upper limits for any of your abilities.
That’s crazy overpowered! Seems like god gave me what I wanted after all. So long as I put in some effort, I should be able to get unreasonably strong. Not that I know how hard it is to kill a god, or how many gods I need to kill in the first place, or where to find them… Yea I take it back, god really was a jackass.
“Whatever, better get a look around and see if we can’t find people. I don’t really love the idea of doing naked squats in a field, no matter how good my stat growth is.”
Since it would presumably help me improve my agility, I decided to jog rather than walk. Maybe that would bite me in the uncovered ass if this survival mode thing ended up being a hoax, but I had limited options. After a couple minutes of jogging, meat flapping in the wind, I still couldn’t see anything but grass and trees. That being said, something about the area I was jogging towards looked a little bit off to me.
I picked up the pace, running slightly faster towards the strange scenery off in the distance. It didn’t take long before I got closer and discovered the source of this mystery the hard way.
I ran directly into a wall, smashing my face into it and falling onto my ass as I cried out in pain. As I blinked the tears away from my eyes, I found a sentence floating in front of me. I still had to reach out to read it though, stupid buggy game.
Ability score “Health” unlocked!
“Great. Thank you. Stats.”
Lawrence Schlager
Classes
None
Ability Scores
Health: 80/100
Strength: 12
Agility: 6
Resilience: 9
???: ???
Passive Skills
Infinite Scaling
Active Skills
None
“Hey, those numbers went up pretty fast. That’s almost as interesting as the fact that I ran into a fucking invisible wall! What the hell, god?!”
Standing up, I reached out to the wall for support and grumbled slightly when it worked. As I looked at it more closely, I realized exactly what I was looking at.
In older movies, in the dark times before computers and CG, directors would use backdrops and drawings to give the illusion of scenery. Horror overwhelmed me as soon as I understood. That was the weirdness I’d noticed before, watercolor paintings masquerading as reality. God didn’t send me to a world where he happened to be stronger; he sent me to his test server. And, as I soon found out, it was only a square kilometer.
“I’m going to kill that fucker.”
Fine then. If he wanted me to kill all the gods, then I would make damn sure he’d get his wish.