The system was trying to convince me to kill the other players. With a quest like that, with that reward, it obviously wanted the map to be completed. Apparently it wasn’t particular on who did it either: a player or the hunters.

There was no way I was going to hunt down and kill 10,000 people. Especially not for such a sketchy sounding reward. Vast cosmic power sounded like something out of an anime. What the hell did that even mean.

Maybe I’d turn into a god… or maybe I’d be able to go home. That was the first time I’d thought about my wife since this thing started.

I’d put her out of my mind because everything was so overwhelming and I had to fight to survive. Actually, that was a lie. I’d been enjoying myself. Not all the time, not when I accidentally killed Brad. But, in all honesty, parts of this had been fun so far.

Who could blame me? Back home I had a boring job and a relatively boring life. I loved my wife and I had friends but outside of working and having a drink on the weekend what was there really to look forward to, to strive for?

I felt bad even thinking it but part of me didn’t want to go home. Not yet at least. I was a terrible person. My wife was back home probably thinking I was dead. She’d have to give birth and raise our child alone and I had the audacity to be enjoying traipsing round a tropical jungle collecting loot.

I hoped she was still on earth. The thought of her being in this place with child sent chills down my spine.

I looked around the room again as the thoughts slowly settled down and I saw something I’d almost forgotten about.

Loot Chrysus Cultist?

Y/N

I mentally clicked yes. I needed all the help I could get and the dead hunter was 7 levels above me. Surely he’d drop something useful.

You have received a new item:

Robe of Chrysus

Whilst wearing this robe you’ll be more likely to loot gold from enemies. You will also look like a member of the Order of Chrysus and you won’t be naked anymore so that’s a bonus!

+10 Defence

The idea of wearing the clothes of a man I’d just killed didn’t sit well with me. However, the idea of having a defence stat and looting gold from enemies was overwhelmingly good.

Not to mention looking like a hunter would give me certain benefits. I still didn’t know what lay beyond the door to this room. No one had come to check on the screams but that didn’t mean there wasn’t other hunters out there.

For all I knew the room was soundproofed.

I went into my inventory and selected the robe and like magic it appeared on my torso.

I stood up and it hung down to my ankles, which means it must have resized itself by magic when I looted it because I was a few feet taller than its previous owner.

It was crimson and came with a hood. The material was also really soft, like walking around with a freshly washed pillow strapped to your chest.

Overall, I was pretty chuffed with the prize. It was probably the best loot I had. The only real issue was that it didn’t come with a belt so I was forced to wear it open.

I wasn’t sure that was going to bode too well for me as a disguise considering my chest and cock sock were on full show. It might do the trick from behind though and I could always hold it closed with my hand and hope for the best.

It did strike me as a little odd that the cloak wasn’t half destroyed. The one the cultist had been wearing was mostly disintegrated by the acid. Had the system repaired it for me? I couldn’t tell, I’d have to file it away as system fuckery for now and move on.

Next I tried to open my loot boxes but I got a strange error message.

*WARNING*

Action not possible. Loot boxes may only be opened in a safe area.

That was odd, but it also confirmed the existence of safe rooms. I wondered where they were. Did this mean there were towns too? I couldn’t wait to find out but for now I had more important things to attend to, like not dying at the hands of creepy cultists.

With the loot boxes unavailable for the moment there was just one more thing to do before I could leave the room. Assign my free stat points.

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I had 5 of them to distribute and I had a good idea of what I was going to do with them. I needed to gain an idea of what stats actually affected after all. So naturally, since I had 5 different stats and 5 stat points I’d put a single point into each stat and see what changes happened, if any.

After doing that I immediately checked my stat sheet.

Status Sheet:

Name: Kaleb Akabane

Race: Outworlder

Level: 5

Map Pieces: 2/10,000

HP: 19/36

Stamina: 32/36

Strength: 6

Agility: 12

Perception: 8

Vitality: 6

Intelligence: 7

Personal Skills: Speak English Damnit!

Combat Skills: Bow (lvl 2), Novice Bowman, Dagger (lvl 3), Dhampir Dagger

The first thing I noticed was that I had three new sections on my stat sheet. The first filled me with dread. The stat sheet now told me how many map pieces I had. That damned quest.

I tried to ignore it and move on. The other two sections were more useful. They showed my combat skills and their relative levels and something called Personal Skills which currently only showed my language affinity. From that I had to assume personal skills were passive skills and buffs.

The other thing I noticed was the changes that came with the stat additions. When I added a point to my vitality stat my HP went up by 1 point which I guess made sense. In most video games back home vitality related directly to health.

It seemed that the strength stat effected my stamina. I’d have been willing to guess that it also effected how hard I could hit something since that’s what logic would dictate, but I couldn’t be sure.

Thus far my stamina hadn’t ever dropped too low but it was good to know how to increase it. I was certain that I’d eventually need more in tougher fights.

With that out of the way I cautiously exited the room and found myself in a posh looking corridor with a lovely, quilted red carpet. It was the softest thing my feet had touched all day.

The corridor was well lit and only led in a single direction. The room I’d been in was right at the end, which was probably lucky for me since the hunter had screamed bloody murder when I murdered him bloodily.

I chuckled to myself at my own joke as I tried to lighten my bleak mood a little. Then I closed the door behind me. The last thing I wanted was for some nosey cultist to walk past and notice the bodies lying around.

That was another thing. It seemed that humans didn’t turn into stardust when I looted them, unlike the monsters I’d killed previously. That was definitely going to be a problem eventually, but hopefully I’d find a way out of the cultist’s lair before it mattered.

They’d be sure to ask questions when they found one of their own dead and disrobed and their prisoner equally dead and missing his map tattoo.

The next thing I tried was accessing my weapons from my inventory. As I thought, now I was out of the prison room I could remove my dagger again. I kept it in my right hand, hidden under my robe and used my left hand to keep the robe shut. I also pulled my hood up to hide my face.

It was a pretty terrible disguise but from a distance I hoped it would do the trick.

With those things taken care of I set off down the lush, carpeted corridor. It was only a few short steps before I heard something and my blood chilled as someone rounded the corner.

He had his head down, nose stuffed in a large, black tome. I say he, but his face was covered by his hood so I couldn’t actually tell. He wore the same robes as me.

I took a breath and steeled my nerves as I continued walking. I needed to appear to be acting natural so I also put my head down and attempted to walk right past him.

I succeeded. He barely seemed to register my presence as we slipped by each other in the corridor.

“Is the new captive awake yet?” He asked.

I stopped.

He’d walked past me; I should have gotten away with it. If I spoke he’d surely know I wasn’t one of them. He must have thought I was the man I’d killed and if that was so then he’d know that my voice was much deeper than his.

I was also a lot taller so if I didn’t say anything and he actually looked up from his tome then he’d realise something was up.

Putting on my squeakiest voice and trying to mimic the hunter, I responded.

“He’s still unconscious. I’ll check on him again later.”

“Good.”

That was all the man offered before I heard his soft steps on the carpet as he continued on his way. I’d done it!

Before I could properly celebrate thought my heart skipped a beat. There were no other doors in the direction he was walking. He was going to enter the room.

I turned around quickly and saw the man approaching the door. He reached absently towards the handle, all whilst still reading his book. I had to do something.

Before I realised what I was doing I found myself walking towards him with my dagger outside of my robe. As he turned the handle I grabbed his mouth with my free hand and shoved my dagger into his throat. The last thing I needed was him screaming and if he was as high levelled as the hunter I wouldn’t win in a straight fight.

The man struggled for a few moments, trying to pry my fingers away from his mouth but I held on. At the same time I felt warmth flowing into me from the dagger, it must have been the healing effect. I checked my HUD to see that my HP was slowly filling back up.

Then the man went limp in my arms and I got another notification.

Congratulations! You have defeated:

Chrysus Mage Cultist (lvl 4)

It turned out he was actually weaker than me, which explained why he’d died so quickly – though most humans died if you stuck a dagger in their throat.

I didn’t get bonus experience or a level up from the kill but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t expect to level up every time I killed someone.

Every time I killed someone. The thought came so easily, was this my life now? Murdering cultists and taking names.

I casually dumped the body in the prison room and looted him, gaining a second robe which I kept in my inventory. It wasn’t like I could equip two of them at once after all.

Interestingly I also received 10 gold coins from looting him. The effect from the cloak was working and surely if I could loot coins then I could spend them. Though I had no idea where.

My HP had gone up from using the dagger but only by 2 points. The dagger awarded 10% of the damage inflicted in health points so that probably meant the dagger had done about 20 points of damage and the mage only had that much health.

That seemed pretty weak compared to my 36 max HP but maybe it was because he was a mage. I had no way of knowing so I left the room once again, closed the door and continued down the corridor.

When I reached the end I decided to take a right turn. I had no real reason for it, both directions looked pretty identical. I walked for a short while and luckily I didn’t bump into anyone. The lair seemed quite spacious, either that or this cult didn’t have many members.

As I walked I felt something strange in the air. It was hard to explain but it was like some kind of aura calling to me. I followed the direction, perhaps naively, and came to stand in front of an ornate, black door.

The door had a skull and crossbones etched into it in a fine, artistic carving. The aura didn’t feel foreboding or anything though. On the contrary it felt welcoming, like it wanted me to enter.

Maybe that was the trap, a false sense of security followed by unknown horrors and death. That would certainly make sense in the lair of an evil cult that wanted to skin me alive, but curiosity prevailed.

Throwing caution to the wind I opened the skull door.