Chapter 1: Last day on Earth
Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep
I slap the table to my side about 4 times, knocking over an empty bottle before turning the alarm off. As I get up I check the time.
Today I will be visiting a museum ship that I helped restore with some of my money through donations, considering it’s a pre-dreadnought I had quite a lot of respect for its resilience over the years. The restoration cost little over £700,000, as far as money, I'm doing well off, I have a job at a naval military museum and I also work part time doing commissions on 3D modelling.
During my free time I play a game called From The Depths, even after 800 hours I can’t complete the game, fucking lasers and ballistic missiles wreck my shit, I wanted to make my own world on it but the game is going through some updates so custom worlds won’t work so I’m mainly just playing the normal campaign with my ships.
Quite fun blasting a wooden airship out of the sky with a salvo of 150mm Flak.
Well I still got another hour so I may as well upload my ship.
Name: C G2 Antares mkII [Cruiser Generation 2]
Armament : 5x 6”/L80 triple 150mm Primary Dual purpose , 6x 140mm Secondary 2 , 2x triple sonar torpedoes , 8x 47mm tertiary
AA: 6x twin 76.2mm Flak , 6x 45mm flak , 1x octuple flak , 8x 37mm Autocannons , 10x twin 20mm MG
Speed: 23m/s
Size: 176m,25m,40m (L/W/H)
Tonnage: 30,400T
I made the antares to be the primary war vessel, Battleships would not be nearly as resource efficient and the destroyer was built with a steam engine before the update so the engine was ridiculously inefficient, it burned through so many resources I would eat through like 20% of its storage capacity within 5 mins, which is a no go. The cruiser however is almost as fast, way stronger in terms of firepower and armour, and its engine doesn't guzzle up juices like an alcohol addict in a closed bar.
It is also my nicest looking capitol ship. Compared to people who never built before my ships do look better, but it's obvious I just understand how ships look, but not how to make them look nice, but this does look above average, nothing compared to those 50 hour designs, but it's nice and looks realistic...minus the giant radar dish right behind the smokestack.
As for how it looks? It’s 3 main guns at the front are a step above each other, so they can fire dead forwards, it's heavy, but it means I won't have to be forced to go broadside to fire the third gun, which is something ships like the Rodney and many japanese ships suffer from. While historically, it's better to be broadside, unlike games like WOWS where being broadside is a death sentence. In this game, if you bow tank, you may end up with your bow somewhat submerged as it floods and dips down. Where they can shoot your relatively lightly armoured deck and turret roofs.
The superstructure is very nice looking, with 4 layers, the bottom one houses the second frontal turret and second rear turret, it also houses most of the anti aircraft. The second layer houses the third frontal turret, it also has the rear FCS (Fire Control System, basically a turret with a rangefinder and other detection systems). The third houses the frontal FCS and some controls inside the actual structure, mainly backup turret control blocks in case some get blown off, too many times I lose control of ships because controls get blown up. And the top one has the bridge, where I can look down at wooden ship peasants, It is also armoured up with external applique which helps soak up the occasional cannonball or stray bullet, of course if it breaks i have 2 backup control rooms, the one 1 level down and a last one which is built inside the hull of the ship with layers of armour all around, but if the third control room is down then I think I might want to plan on swapping ships.
The ship camo is a white urban digital camo, and the bow of the ship has a golden ram, certain armour plates are blue and the underwater section of the ship is red. Now the game doesn’t simulate camo textures for detection so the camo doesn't have any impact. The ship also dons 2 flags from my custom nation ‘Historia’. The flag is a bright blue with a golden stripe through the middle, towards the right is a black shield which has a golden outline, and 2 bright blue crescents facing upwards. Representing the shape of the nation's capital land, which is built around an asteroid crater.
Oops I monologued a bit too much, what’s the upload at?
Ah, its uploaded now, and it's almost time to go, may as well do myself a cheese toasty before I leave~
---
As I was arriving at the bus stop, I managed to finish my toasty, god I love toasties, but I loath toast… it’s a weird relationship.
About half an hour of waiting later the bus arrived. On the bus I was listening to a radio and it mentioned a drunk driver not too far away driving around and avoiding the police, sheesh it's like 8 in the morning how can you be drunk already…
As the bus arrived at the bus stop, I had a text from my friend notifying me of a new game, I decided to try it out as it was still a 10 minute walk from the docks.
After 5 minutes I heard skidding, I didn’t pay attention until I realised the drunkard from the news earlier, I was on full alert looking towards the skidding, then I saw a car skidding and hurling straight towards me, I read enough novels to realise what might happen and I don’t plan on dying since my life is stable so i jump back, the car slammed into the concrete pylon but I didn’t hit anything, thus I fell towards the ocean.
At first I felt relieved, until I saw a 2 meter squared rock right where I'm going to land.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
well...If you want to know what happened, watch literally any video of someone dropping a melon from a roof of a house, that’s my head…
---
As I woke up I was in a blank white space, yet it was somehow cloudy, after a few moments some of the clouds cleared up and I could see below, my mangled bloodied body on a rock, with a notable absence of a skull. Despite being one of the prettiest in my class I died never having a boyfriend, and I never even managed to visit the ship I donated to help restore.
“Quite a grizzly end you had there…”
I looked behind me to see a little boy, with a monochrome aura around him.
“Who are you?”
I asked him.
“I'm Akria, at least that was my name before I died, many, many years ago”
He paused, looking off to the side as he said so.
“But now I’m a god, and I help people pass on to the next life, now to see your score”
“Score?”
I asked, this is strange, isnt the next life usually the gamelike one?
“People get a score from their life which is used as a sort of points system to choose what their next life will be like”
So points are like a currency or stats for the next life?
“So how does this score increase?”
“Donating to causes, saving people, arresting criminals, killing people in some cases, learning, getting achievements, quite a lot of ways”
He then brought up a menu which showed myself and a score of 1210
“Since you lived a fairly fulfilling life, you got a slightly higher end average, the average is around 1000, with some iconic individuals getting around 1800, then the unfortunate people who become animals being around 400”
He then brought up a menu which looked like a typical upgrades screen on various games
“This menu is all the various things you can choose you can also sacrifice certain things for more points to use on others, examples of this would be sacrificing motor function for higher intelligence”
I nodded to show I understood
“The price of things would be 33% cheaper if you don’t actually choose it, so if you went completely random you would have more stuff, but it may not be as good if you handpicked the things you wished for”
So that is also a thing
“So could I choose a certain amount of my points to be random?”
“Yes yes, how many do you wish to allocate?”
“Could I edit some of the things that are randomly picked?”
“Not exactly, but if its your race for example, you could choose your looks, or if you could summon a pet you could choose what type”
So you can edit some things, that good enough for me
“I would like to spend 900 randomly”
PING
A holographic menu appeared in front of me
[-900 Life Fulfillment points deducted]
[randomising…]
[completed random life settings]
[-400]
[Race: Vehicle Kin = type unselected]
[-300]
[race special: Guardian vehicle summon]
[-300]
[weaponry starting kit]
[+100]
[Hunted by a powerful foe]
“So what are these?”
“Vehicle kin allows you to choose a type of vehicle to be your variant, so you could choose Aero-kin to be planes, jets and helicopters, Wheel-kin to become an armoured tank, or car. Anchor-Kin to become a warship or submarine. Do note that you will become the earliest variants of these and unlock the more modern variants as you level up”
Without letting him continue on the others I instantly yell;
“Anchorkin!”
“Figured, choosing so will cost 100, this goes for all”
I nod, naval history is one of my favourites, so there is no way I'm letting this chance go
[-100FP]
[310FP remaining]
“So what’s the guardian?”
“Guardian is a vehicle of choice that you can summon occasionally as yourself or a follower, the upside is that it doesn't care for your current technology level, however it’s limited and has a cooldown, which increases the more damaged and or exhausted of resources it is. This cooldown lowers the closer in technology level you are to it”
“I choose the Antares MKII that I made in a game”
He nodded
[-100FP]
[210FP remaining]
“So what is the weapon kit?”
“Weapon kit contains a primary weapon and a secondary weapon, it could be a broadsword and a flintlock, an assault rifle and a flint dagger, it’s down to luck, oh and ammunition for the ranged weapons recharges via mana or time, they can also be summoned at will, unless you are out of mana and in a mana dullzone”
That’s something I want to steer clear of then.
“What are mana dullzones?”
“Mana dullzones are zones without mana or extremely low amounts of it”
I nod.
So what weapons do I want? For a primary, It would be good to have a gun with good power and accuracy. Thus I'm gonna go with one of my childhood favourite guns, Halo Reach’s M392 DMR, firing 7.62x51 Nato. as for the secondary...hmm
“Question, can I edit the guns with different modifications once I’ve reincarnated?”
“Yes, but it can't be something like turning a pistol into a gatling gun. It has to be reasonable and realistic, or has to have at least been an actual thing, but it will cost mana to do so”
Well in that case, P08, since they also turned that into a carbine too, and it also had a drum mag, a stock, extended barrels. It's the DIY pistol. Now i could have gone with a mauser for rapid fire buuut I just have a thing for the luger.
“Very well”
[-100FP]
[110FP remaining]
Wait, he can read my mind?
And he nodded, well shit.
“You have 110 remaining, what do you want to do with this?”
“Honestly I have no idea, random I guess?”
[-100]
[Intention Aura]
[-10]
[random food item]
[Magical Cider]
“Wait what magical cider?”
“Ooh that's a rare one, it's a cider bottle that refills when you put mana in, and its taste changes with the varying amounts of mana”
“Weird, but welcome. And intention aura?”
“When you use it, people will be shaded in colours depending on their intention to you, white means they don't acknowledge you or just plan to ignore, green means they are friendly, blue means they wish to help, yellow means they are cautious of you ,orange means they plan to do something rude, mean or scam, and red means they wish to harm or lead you to danger.”
“Ok so now for the last question, what's that hunted by a powerful foe?”
“Means that a random enemy will hunt you down regardless of what is in the way, could be a very angry insect, a giant radioactive lizard, or even an angry man with a pitchfork, but there will be something that wants you dead, but if you defeat or kill it, then that's that.”
I hate how large the scales of power are…
“Well you seem to be finished, I shall send you down now, make sure you survive, and lead a fulfilling or interesting life, or you will be bankrupt for your next life…”
And then my consciousness faded.