Jerod had now lost his fourth online game in a row and he was tilted, upset and off balance from his losses, unable to play the game well. When Jerod played while tilted, he played harder and with more intensity, which, invariably, made him make more mistakes and more bad decisions. It was a funny paradox he had ruminated on before, the idea that when he tried to play harder, he performed much poorer.
Jerod had known he was tilted, too, after the third game, and while his personal rule was to quit once he recognized the signs of it, tilting, by definition, gave him poor judgment skills. So he played another game, intent on fixing his error and securing at least one W for that day.
He lost of course, quite badly this time, with his random online teammates berating him for his mindless aggressive plays and unorthodox strategies that doomed their side. Classic symptoms of his tilted mind.
Now Jerod had reached the final level of tilt. Instead of becoming more emotional and rage bound, Jerod’s final stages of being upset actually shut him down, becoming quiet and contemplative, stony faced and dead serious.
He was still tilted, but his frustration, angst, and anger now sizzled beneath the surface, and on top was simple cold calculation. In this stage of frustration he felt as though he was living in a third person perspective, analyzing himself and his surroundings with a detached care, all the while his thought processes were still afflicted with irrationality.
As the closing screen of the game appeared on his computer, he ignored it and studied his right hand as if observing an interesting specimen. He curled and uncurled his fingers, feeling the muscles contract on his arm connecting to the tendons as they curved around his knuckles. Inside of Jerod a roiling angst and anger bubbled and stirred, an explosive energy demanding to get released. He made a fist, feeling how much pressure he could put into it before it started to hurt, then feeling that hurt, observing where and how it worked.
While doing this, he considered his day, seeing now that he had been tilted already, tilted before he had even gotten home from work that day, the office job where he categorized expenses and paid bills, assisting his boss at the small manufacturing plant in town. It was a good stable job, but he had been given a project he was unfamiliar with and expectations he didn’t feel like he could match up to. The stress from the unforeseen work followed him home. He had felt a win or two at his favorite game would alleviate it, but his losses compounded the problem instead.
But no, thinking back on it, he was tilted before he had even arrived at work, tilted before he had woken up, tilted even before the weekend ended yesterday.
Several events had occurred over the two day weekend, relational family issues, house issues, all small things that he couldn’t understand and couldn’t fix. The damn fan in the bathroom stopped working and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to repair or replace it. Or his sister, escalating old grievances against the parents for seemingly no other purpose than to instigate and harass.
But all those common problems pale in comparison to the kind, yet hurtful, words of his now ex-girlfriend, who had dumped him not yet a month ago, their year long relationship coming to an end like a car sputtering on fumes. The truth was he had been tilted for weeks. Month maybe.
Now he was 28 years old and single, all his attempted relationships ending at the woman's behest. In the future there would only be increasing struggles to find new partners in the ever decreasing available market of eligible women with each passing year.
Rejection hurt, it caused him to feel unwanted, unworthy, undesirable, and worthless. He knew this because he had looked it up online after his second girlfriend had dumped him.
And now, four games down, a project at work he felt overwhelmed by, and family strain looming over the horizon, Jerod gazed clinically down at the tendons on his hand moving as he willed them to do. He wondered at the marvelous engineering of the human body, and then he got philosophical, asking how it was that man made his will upon the world.
Jerod could move his hand, he could grasp things, he could move things, he could make things happen, so, why then, did it feel like so much of his life was outside his control? Beyond his abilities? In his current irrational mind, he felt that all his efforts were fruitless in every aspect of his life and he struggled to find a way to validate his existence.
Life was so ambiguous, and every action he could take had unknown factors that modified the end result into random unexpected ways. It was impossible to do anything concrete in the world, all endings could be twisted toward an unfortunate end.
And now, all the jagged pieces of his life were coming together in a crystal clear pattern, like a puzzle finally all locking into place.
Jerod was a loser, in the strongest, most definitive meaning of the word. The word displayed across the monitor in front of him too, granting him cosmic insight into his own soul.
Or so he felt, as he suffered from high tension, stress, and anxiety. Excessive melodrama was another symptom of extreme tilt.
Still watching his moving hand, Jerod suddenly felt the need for some sort of control in the form of violence. Pure, unambiguous, taxing, violence.
For the usually mild mannered, pale and thin accountant, the feeling was strangely exhilarating.
Jerod glanced across the hall in the lobby of his ancestral home from where his computer sat over to the highlighted glass display featured prominently in the entrance of the manor. In it hung an ancient armor set his honored ancestors wore as they protected the city from the monsters that prowled outside the city walls. The helmet, and breastplate, and other pieces of armor that Jerod did not know the name of, gleamed in the LED lights that were eternally lit around the case, letting all who walked into the house know exactly what kind of history lay there.
Not that many people entered the family manor these days, in its prime it was located at the perfect spot for administration work and strategic defense, but the passing of time and the advancement of technology was cruel and city protectors were no longer needed in the same capacity these days. The location of the manor was too far out of downtown for casual visits, sitting practically as part of the city wall.
Monsters still prowled around outside though, spawning from ambient mana and instead of human guardians wielding blades in protection of the city simple mana nets and dispersion shots alleviated the existential threat of monsters to mere annoyances for the modern man. Jerod had not seen a real monster outside of movies and had never left the comforts of his modern city, as he knew was the same for basically everybody.
But as Jerod viewed the armor, he felt it was looking back at him, begging to be used once again in righteous destruction. His ancestors were mighty guardians of the city, protecting its people for hundreds of years, that respect still a part of the culture as much of his extended family used it for political power.
He wondered what his ancestors would think of him if they saw him now, a weak, spineless, worthless kid, hiding out in the shadows of the ancestral home.
Jerod flexed his hands again.
Then he stood up, leaving his computer screen still at the game page, and moved over to the case holding the armor.
The walk across the marble floor felt unnaturally loud to his pounding ears. He came up to the case and unlocked it from the side, the front glass door swinging open and the LED light momentarily blinding him as it swung by. His thoughts were focused on one thing.
If there was a single act out there that could only be considered good, worthy, and righteous, it was the slaying of monsters. Monsters killed and consumed with little to no sentience, monsters were a plague that had killed humanity for thousands of years and while the tools of the modern day lessened the threat they posed, Jerod knew that a few people still died each year, carelessness usually the cause.
But Jerod felt the need for unrestrained violence, so, therefore, monsters were going to die tonight.
Jerod donned the armor on, something that he and all family members of his generation had been taught as kids from their traditional and strict patriarch at the time. After the old geezer finally passed the family stopped doing that, the position of patriarch was an outdated title anyway, the family no longer operated like that.
Jerod barely remembered his old lessons and he fumbled with the straps and pieces, struggling to recall what he had been taught. What he remembered clearly at least was that the piece was still a fully functional set of spirit armor, hence its priceless value. Much like the modern appliances that operated on TAI ambient manna that the TAI production plants generated in the city by converting generic ambient mana, the spirit armor and its ancient enchantments operated from the generic ambient mana that was still prevalent, if much less so these days, in the city. Theoretically, the armor should still be in top shape, as if it had not just spent the last hundred years collecting dust in the family manor.
Jerod finally got the last piece on and stood there, feeling accomplished. The armor was heavy, heavier than expected, but it made him feel safe and secure. And powerful. He wondered briefly what he looked like wearing it, probably like a gangly kid, wearing his father’s armor. he decided he should not let anybody see him or know what he was doing, in the back of his mind he knew it was dumb and reckless.
After he finished checking his armor over, he reached out for the last item, the sword. It looked exactly like he thought it would, the black sheet adorned with no decorations. Holding the sheath up, he pulled a few inches of the sword out, the gleaning steel blade reflecting in the dim LED lighting.
The only thing Jerod knew about using a sword was that you were to poke the pointy end at the monster.
He also knew it was exceedingly dangerous for an amateur to try to use it, they would more likely hurt themselves with it than be anywhere near effective. That was why, after looking longingly at it, with a sigh, he put it back in its case. He closed it up and moved on downstairs, to where he knew a collection of the ancient armory still stood.
The halls he walked through were dark and unlit, the manor practically abandoned except for him these days. Moving out of his parents house felt like a necessity a few years ago if he ever wanted to successfully woo a woman, but purchasing a house was far outside his budget. The ancestral home had been mostly vacant and the family needed somebody to care for it. Jerod found himself volunteering for the position and while it had been somewhat lonely the first year, besides the occasional branch family member passing through, he soon found himself enjoying the quiet and dark rooms of the manor. Besides, the family actually had a cleaning service that kept the place up, so there was little work he actually had to do.
With a key in his hand, Jerod unlocked the ancestral vaults and nabbed for himself one of the spears there. While technically also spiritual equipment, these weapons were much less potent than the sword from the lobby. Jerod wasn’t about to go chase down a dragon though, the spear would be good enough to slay a single mana wolf, his goal for the night.
With the TAI power plants up and running these days, most of the natural ambient mana got converted into TAI mana that made up the modern power grid. With the natural ambient mana so low, it was impossible for any serious threats to spawn close to any cities, Jerod knew the only monsters that appeared around the walls anymore were the lowly spirit wolves. Weak and mostly ethereal, the spirit wolves were more annoying for their howls than for their actual threat.
Not that Jerod actually fought one before.
With the spear secured, Jerod made his way to the side door, which led directly out of the city walls. The ancestral manor was located right next to the main city wall, historically used to deliver troops outside when emergencies hit. Now, it was a convenient way for Jerod to sneak out of the city without being spotted by nosy policemen wondering why a grown man was wearing ancient armor at this time of night. Getting pulled into the station for questioning was the last thing Jerod wanted.
Before exiting the last door of the manor and stepping out into untamed wilderness outside the city walls, Jerod spotted an armed dispersal shot hanging from a hook next to the exit. The dispersal shot was the revolutionary invention that was single handedly responsible for ushering humans into the modern era. The device was simple in use, simply pointing the barrel of the weapon at a monster and pulling the trigger would cause a dispersal round to shoot out, dissolving any monster unfortunate enough to get hit. Easy to use with little training, once the production of these weapons had gone mainstream, dealing with monsters was no longer an elite affair, but one any farmer with a good aim could accomplish. This particular weapon was sleek and modern. Powered by TAI mana, the particular weapon was more than capable of dealing with any monster threat within miles of the city.
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Jerod hesitated upon seeing it though. He had cooled down considerably while equipping his armor, something he had known would happen which is why he had done it as fast as possible. He knew what he was doing was stupid, pointless, and reckless. Killing a single spirit wolf wouldn’t accomplish anything other than put him into needless risk. People still died to them, occasionally. Granted, none of the people who died were wearing top grade spirit armor, but still.
Jerod knew he should take the dispersal shot out with him, just in case, but he didn’t want to. Taking it felt like admitting this was all a mistake, that he should go back inside, put the armor back in the case before anybody saw it missing, and just go to bed and wake up tomorrow feeling better.
And then repeat the same actions that day, and everyday, for years and years to come. Nothing ever changing.
The thought frightened Jerod deeply.
Glaring at the offending modern weapon, Jerod then pointedly ignored it, finished strapping on his boots, and marched out the door, the back end of the spear he was carrying banging clumsily against the swinging door on his way out.
The automatic light on the ceiling stayed lit for another minute before detecting no further presence and promptly turning off. It stayed dark for another minute before the door burst open yet again, the light springing back into action. An armored hand reached through the door, grabbed the dispersal short and dragged it out into the dark, the person not stepping a single foot into the room. The light stayed on, the door swinging lightly as it closed, before it once again turned itself off, leaving the room in darkness.
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Outside the city wall was much darker than Jerod had been expecting it to be. In fact, he actually hadn’t given the darkness all that much thought, but it was very dark and black with no moon out tonight to reflect any sunlight onto the land. There were several lights from up top the massive stone and concrete wall that made up the perimeter of the city, but the defense and watch given to watching the wilderness had long since deteriorated over the years. As the natural ambient mana reached lower and lower levels, the last time a serious threat had appeared from the wilderness was only in the memories of Jerod’s oldest living grandmother. For almost a century, no real threat had approached the city and any watch set along the wall was replaced by mana sensors that alerted the city officials to the presence of threats with an effective range of miles in the wilderness. There simply wasn’t a need for an attentive watch along the walls anymore, and Jerod knew that maintenance of the wall was falling out of priority these days as well.
The area just outside of the wall was cleared of any forest, or shrubbery, and anything at all, for hundreds of paces the land was simply scraggly grass and dirt. There was a growing movement in the city to extend the habitable land to outside the main city walls to help alleviate the housing demand in the city. The city was growing in population after all, and there was only so much room inside the walls. The traditionalists balked at the idea of building outside the safety of the city walls of course, the cultural importance of them seeming unable to fade from their minds even as the necessity of the walls diminished every year.
Officially, Jerod’s family opposed any expansion, but Jerod couldn’t care less. If there was perfectly usable land available, it made perfect sense to use it. Just build a small wall around the new land, there was no need to build the new wall as grand as the old one considering dragons no longer attacked the city. Heck, a solid fence was all that was really needed these days, something to keep the spirit wolves and other lesser creatures away.
And if that actually happened, you could just dismantle the current massive wall too, opening up even more space in the city, the archaic design no longer applicable in the modern age. It would make the ancestral home no longer sit out in the boonies anymore at least. Jerod knew the new cities getting built around the world were constructed with these new guidelines in mind, massive walls no longer necessary for safety in a populated place.
But Jerod wouldn’t be caught dead voicing those thoughts out loud to anybody, much less his family. Some battles were not worth fighting over.
Regardless, Jerod marched forward across the flat even terrain, away from the towering walls and lights from the city.
He had put the dispersal shot across his back, just in case things got dicey. The spear he carried in his hands felt heavy and unwieldy, especially in the thick gloves he wore. And while the helmet felt secure, it also blocked his peripheral vision, making him feel paranoid about his surroundings. The boots were heavy too, each step feeling like he was walking through shallow water.
Jerod marched out a hundred paces, the flat barren earth giving way to scraggly bushes and undergrowth. He swung his head from side to side constantly, looking for any sign of movement in the darkness.
Eventually he reached a point where the scraggly bushes directly in front of him became impassable brush without significant effort. If he wanted to keep moving forward he would have to move slightly to the left. Jerod paused, and stood still, appraising his options.
And then he paused some more.
As he stood there, the foolishness of his actions reluctantly dawned on him.
What the hell did he think he was playing at? Slaying spirit wolves for glory was a fantasy best left to kids to play out with their friends in the park, much like he did long ago.
In that moment he felt an incredible fool, an immature man unable to cope with his own problems, thinking a foray into the wilderness to kill a spirit wolf would somehow fix his insecurities.
If the family found out what he did with this armor, getting evicted from his current residence would be the least of his worries.
Jerod stayed still for a long time, unwilling to move forward with the reckless action, but equally unwilling to give up and return home a loser. Minutes dragged by in the quiet darkness, not even a breeze moving around to break up the silence. The land was barren and empty.
Jerod felt like crying.
Eventually, common sense won Jerod over. With a heavy sigh, Jerod turned and started trudging back, the bright lights of the city and wall clear in the distance. He needed to put everything back where it came from, the boots, the spear, especially the armor without a single thread out of place. Nobody was to be made aware of what he had tried to do tonight. The spear hung loosely in his right hand, dragging forlornly across the dirt.
Suddenly, something heavy slammed into his back unexpectedly, driving him forward into the dirt with an ungainly yelp and grunt, the wind getting knocked out of him momentarily. He wasn’t hurt though, the armor more than enough to keep him safe from such a fall. His first concern being panic at the dirt and scratches that now probably littered the once pristine armor. He rolled over onto his back quickly, only to realize what it was that had knocked him to the dirt in the first place.
A spirit wolf was getting up off the ground, having bounced off of Jerod from its impromptu tackle. Spitting and hissing with its monster rage, the beast found its feet and stood with all haste, turning and pouncing onto the still prone Jerod.
The spirit wolf’s signature ghostly white fangs gleamed in the darkness, those and its orange eyes the few visible parts on the wolf, especially in the night. The monster went straight for Jerod’s throat, its beastly instinct driving it to Jerod’s greatest vulnerability.
Jerod shrieked in an unmanly squeal as he ineffectually thrust his arms forward to protect himself from the murderous onslaught.
Thankfully, Jerod’s spirit armor was more than up to the task of defending against that level of attack, despite how unguarded Jerod had been acting. Otherwise, the city guard would have found Jerod’s ripped up and half eaten corpse lying along the brown dirt, staining the land red with his blood.
The wolf was unable to penetrate the armor's protection to get at Jerod’s apparent vulnerability, but not for lack of effort. The wolf snapped and clawed at face and neck with constant ferocity, each attack unable to get close to do any damage. Jerod screamed and screamed, all he saw was the maw and eyes of the mad beast, glaring hatefully down at him between its attempts at killing him.
Jerod was panicking, the frightening action beyond his wildest imaginations, he grasped and flailed against the wolf just as ineffectual as the wolf against him.
The wolf was unable to actually harm Jerod through the armor though and eventually Jerod was able to get a grip on himself. Still scared, adrenaline fueled arms found purchase on the fur of the monster and he was able to flip the much lighter spirit wolf off of him with a shout.
Jerod enjoyed the moment as a breather, free from the monster's fury, taking deep breaths and trying to get his bearings.
But the wolf pounced back on Jerod with renewed vigor only moments later, undeterred. Monsters never gave up and they never retreated, all fights were always to the death.
Jerod shouted and cursed at the wolf, trying to fend off the attacks with his arms, and the panic got replaced with violent rage. Jerod was able to grab the wolf’s fur once again and threw it to the ground. This time, he jumped onto it before it could attack again.
The wolf thrashed and snarled as it attempted to circumvent Jerod’s efforts at restraining it, but at the end of the day, Jerod’s weight alone was enough to restrain it. Now that Jerod was on the wolf, though, what the heck was he supposed to do with the snarling beast? Any letup on his part would have the wolf just pouncing at him again. Jerod’s spear was lost in the initial scuffle, lying somewhere out there in the dark and he wasn’t about to try to punch the creature to death.
Jerod shakily reached towards his back where the dispersal shot still clung to him. The wolf still howled and snarled and Jerod desperately tried to hold it steady while he grabbed the weapon. Three ineffectual attempts later and with mounting frustration, Jerod finally was able to pull the dispersal shot off his back and bring it around. He fumbled with the handle, fumbled with the grip, fumbled with the safety, and then fumbled with the trigger.
And after all that, straddling the struggling monster and holding its maw down with one hand and pointing the device at the beast's midsection with his other shaky hand, the blasted weapon simply wouldn’t fire despite Jerod’s numerous and increasingly vocal and desperate attempts.
After a solid fifteen failed trigger pulls and feeling his hold on the wolf wane while the beast struggled tirelessly, Jerod gave into his own animalistic fury. With an incoherent howl, Jerod released the wolf, the monster immediately twisting upwards and to try snapping at him, and grabbed the dispersal shot with both hands, bringing the butt end of the device down onto the monster’s face as hard as he could. The blow stunned both the wolf and Jerod with its ricochet, but Jerod regained his bearing faster and slammed the weapon down again and again, the impacts of the device hitting against the spirit flesh sounding and reverberating from Jerod’s arms throughout his body.
The wolf took the wild beating gracelessly, yowling and snarling as the monsters were want to do, but, after a short eternity, the fight was over. Jerod stopped hitting when his last strike slipped through the suddenly disintegrating monster and hit the dirt with a solid thump. Now “dead”, the former monster slowly dissolved into ambient mana from whence it came, the mana visible in its density before getting absorbed and dispersed evenly across the plains. The only evidence of the life and death struggle was the upheaved earth and the dirt covering the panting and shaking human as it kneeled on the ground.
And then also the contents of Jerod’s stomach and he heaved it up into the forgiving ground next to him, the semi-liquid mercifully exiting the protection of his helmet without issue.
Coming down from the combat high, Jerod felt weak and exhausted, despite the fight taking no more and a few minutes at most. He felt drained, physically and emotionally, fighting back tears from exploding out of his face. He felt… He didn’t know what he felt. Too many emotions flooded his body, each pulling him in a different direction. He let himself fall to the dirt, enjoying the cool embrace of mother earth. He rested for a bit and caught his breath.
He wanted to stay there forever, lying on the ground and enjoying the wonderful land he was so blessed to be able to lay on, but slowly his thoughts turned back to the immeasurable disaster that surely awaited him once the family found out what he had done to their ancient armor.
Jerod got up slowly, a terrible dread filling his stomach now that his dinner was gone. He groaned, the muscles suddenly stiff and sore. A brief search found his blasted spear lying treacherously a few feet away from him, not that he was certain he would have been able to skewer the monster anyway. He carefully made his way back to the secret entrance, panicking momentarily at the large and secure looking lock on it, then feeling relief as he realized he hadn’t locked it on his way out, then again, panic, as he saw how monumentally stupid he was for not locking it on his way out.
He hung up the dispersal shot on its hook, noting briefly the slight dent it had on its hilt. He still had no idea why it hadn't fired, but it was something he would figure out at a later time. Right now, the only thing he wanted to do now was to go to bed and forget everything about the day.
His boots came off next, dusty and dirty from the travel, and he set them next to the bench. This was a staging area anyway, it was meant for such equipment. He could fix it up more tomorrow if need be.
Next was the spirit armor though, and he hesitated significantly before steeling himself and seeing what the damage was. Taking off the different pieces Jerod was able to recall how perfectly the armor protected him from the spirit wolf, thinking about the situation in a clearer light it was obvious he was never in any real danger. The wolf might as well have been attacking the city wall with his fangs and claws for all the good it did for it.
Jerod at last got all the armor off him, and inspecting the different piece, was astonished to see it looking as immaculate as when he first donned it a lifetime ago. Looking closer, Jerod could not spot a single dent, scratch, or abrasion on it, no evidence to the fight at all.
It…. it was a miracle!
Jerod stopped and thanked and praised every honored ancestor that ever existed in his family tree, his gratitude tempting him to run upstairs where the paintings of many of them hung so he could bow and scrape in person.
Moving as quickly and as stealthily as possible, Jerod transported the armor back to its resting place in the main lobby, hoping nobody had noticed its brief absence. The lobby was as still, dark, and silent as he had left it, the light from the computer monitor he left on dimly illuminating the corner of the room. He took that as a good sign and he hurried to the case that held the armor, the empty frame still lit from the LEDs.
He replaced the armor as delicately as he could while remaining in haste, but he was at the final sprint of his adventure. He felt emotionally fragile and giddy as he placed the last pieces back in their respective spots, practically cackling in glee as he saw himself getting away with his folly with none being the wiser.
Once finished, he stepped back and admired his work, once again praising the wisdom of his ancestors, nothing looked out of place on the ancient equipment.
Staring up at the beautiful armor, Jerod felt an immeasurable sense of accomplishment rise up in him. He realized that the deck of cards had been completely stacked in his favor, but he had done it, he slew a spirit beast by himself, just like the heroes of his ancestry.
Well, they probably did it with a lot less panic and screaming, but that didn’t discount what he did. The monster was dead, never to again threaten the city with its murderous fangs. And he totally did it, mission freaking accomplished.
Jerod wondered briefly if this was what losing his virginity would feel like.
Jerod left the lobby and made sure the spear was returned to its rightful place, the traitorous weapon getting a place in the furthest corner of the Amory. Then he showered and retired to bed, sleeping the sleep of the dead, all his worries far far away.