---Richard---
Richard woke up to a change in the sound surrounding him. The hum was high pitched now – the blimp switching to different engines or some shit just as it began to land.
He stood – once more finding his rest had been peaceful despite not having a proper bed – and made his way over to the railing to look down.
Before him, down below and in all directions, there was an industrial city. Incredibly similar to Ser in theme but greater in scope. It was less contained – less squished together.
Factories littered the landscape – at least three separate areas within view had truly massive smokestacks belching grey, orange and purplish smoke into the air.
Tracks ran everywhere – small trains with mining carts or passenger carriages shifted from building to building or whizzed around corners like a theme park.
How do I go about hitching a ride on one – not the slow passenger ones, the cracked up amphetaminecarts…that was bad. Don’t be proud of that one.
Walled-off areas had welders re-applying copper and bronze plates onto machines and buildings.
Reminds me of that time in my co-op I walked a plant. Similar but as if they are allergic to steel.
…and more citizen-focused sectors were visible, blended throughout everything. Parks and shops and houses located in and amongst the love letter to industry instead of in their own separate area.
The blimp touched down onto a large raised platform – even as several workers dragged fucking massive hoses over the grounds towards them. Several faint clicks rang out as they attached them to some bottom part of the passenger carriage and then retreated quickly like rats.
Richard watched more workers rush to bring a ramp over and begin setting up the offloading system.
Jump off?
Done.
Richard skipped the wait by crossing the deck and vaulting the railing on the far side. He fell around thirty feet down and landed lightly – or at least as lightly as one could. He was unharmed and the ground seemed unbroken.
…It wasn’t a super hero landing sadly.
Standing up Richard quickly glanced around.
No ones watching, might as well pick a direction and start exploring?
…
Richard found himself in a gun shop.
Not a general weapons store, a shop that sold nothing but guns of all shapes and sizes. It was close to the blimp and stood out with cool sign – Richard had to check it out. See if he could swap out his hammer.
In the background a man with a mechanical arm watched his every move. Relaxed but exuding a dangerous air like nothing Richard could do would affect him.
Each gun sat on a shelf with a little plaque explaining what it did in English.
T Series. Lumox rifle. (3) Aether/shot. 18 Aether capacity. 1,500c T Series. Lumox tracer. (1) Aether slot while active. 1400c UCZ Series. General purpose mini cannon. 12mm rounds. 350c UCZ Series. General purpose cannon. 44mm rounds. 350c K Series. Enhanced cannon. (1) Aether/shot. 12mm rounds. 1 Aether capacity. 550c UKFZ Series. Detonation pistols. Optional (1) Aether/shot. 9 Aether Capacity. 1,200c CK – Prawn Gun. (2) Aether/Shot. 1,500c DC – Acid lobber. (2) Aether/Shot. 1900c KZ Series. Piercing Rifle. 4mm rounds. 900c KZ Series. Shotgun. Scatter rounds. 500c DR Series. Velvet Kiss. (6) Aether/shot. 32 Aether Capacity. 99,000c ...
Staring at the letters confused Richard for a moment but after looking around he found a legend at the end of the wall.
S400-Rating:
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U – Utility.
K – Kinetic.
T – Thermal.
D – Dissolution.
C – Chemical.
R – Nonstandard/Rare damage.
N – Non-lethal.
Z – No Aether cost.
…he couldn’t tell what ‘aether’ meant. Other than that, it seemed to be separating out damage types? And indicating utility?
He had a bag of chips from the muggers – and assumed the ‘c’ on the price tag stood for chips…he had a bunch?
Handing the bag to the man with a mechanical arm, Richard fingered his translator.
“Hey buddy, I’m new in town. What can this buy me? And what’s Aether?” Richard asked.
Grunting then fiddling with a tab on his arm the man sent a series of messages across without speaking.
Your translator seems to be a custom model. It’s not coming across well and you don’t have a custom receiver – could tell you were new without the mention. Just got in from out in the boonies did you?
Looking to head to the dungeon? You have 683 chips here – enough to buy something to defend yourself but not enough to get any of the good stuff.
If you haven’t broken a skill yet you want to look at the ‘Z’ series. With your budget and no Aether slot there’s plenty of options. I can give you a list if you want? Just confirm if you want me to collect them, it’s a pain.
Yes No
Richard tapped the ‘no’ option – the shopkeeper shaking his head slightly at the physical movement – then asked again.
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“I have a skill, how would I go about breaking it? What does an Aether slot mean? What does breaking a skill entail?”
Grimacing and tapping his arm a few times, the shopkeeper responded while shoving his money back.
I’m not a tourist booth or info broker. Delvers association has a Breaking setup. Think you can afford it with this much cash. Could also find a crackpot and participate in one of their experiments – think many break skills for free as they test out new setups? Come again if you are looking to buy something.
Richard stared at the dismissal. Kind of rude but he didn’t actually care, mans’ had a job.
Collecting his bag of chips Richard left the shop and stood in the street for a moment.
“How would I even find those places?”
…
Seras conflicted the fuck out of Richard. He had started off trying to find a place to see what breaking his skill entailed – then quickly dissolved to simply exploring once more.
On one end of the scale, he loved the aesthetic – this was more his kind of fantasy. He had initially gone into engineering because he liked machines and understanding how things worked…and this place seemed tailor made towards that part of him.
On the other end, the more he walked around, the more it felt like a copy of the world he was trying to get away from. He had become disillusioned with his job prospects, and he was quickly becoming disillusioned with the city he had traveled to.
Sweat shops and abused mechanics or workers in teeny tiny elevators being sent up and down shafts. Men in old-fashioned looking suits down at everyone from glass windowed towers – Richard could practically hear their posh voices tittering and calling everyone peasants.
After walking about for over an hour, Richard jumped on an ore cart careening around a bend at ground level. The ten minute trip he had after that point was like a roller coaster without safety rules – he kept having to duck under and around metal beams. Near the end of his trip, he ended up jumping off – he saw his ride was heading for a factory – and that landing actually hurt despite his defenses.
🚂 Achievement get: Minecart Ride. (rare)
Description: Ride the delivery system.
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Stat: +2 Body Power
Stat: +1 Fear Defense.
🚉 Achievement get: This is my exit (rare)
Description: Jump off a vehicle moving over five times as fast as you can run, then land on rock solid ground and survive mostly unscathed.
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Stat: +5 Body Bludgeoning defense
The trip had blasted past more atrocities and abuses than he had cared to see. Suits whipped coal-covered workers in what looked like a kennel. A man was grabbed off a street and shoved into a windowless vehicle. Soot-covered people bowed as a family with frills and fancy clothing walked past. In ten minutes Richard saw over a dozen small acts of injustice. Of someone abusing their power. Of something bad happening to the poors' and being ignored. None of the events stood out against each other, but together they built slowly into a picture of oppression.
There were barely any players here – he had seen maybe two in the past hour of wandering – but he also found it harder to see everyone as NPCs.
His mind was conflicted and confused by everything. Richard wanted to go back to those initial moments of crystal clear clarity. That moment he felt when he entered the tutorial and knew without a doubt this world was a game and he could do whatever he wanted – he could just have fun without worrying about consequences or boring morality.
He knew this was all a fabrication. He fucking knew it was a fake city full of fake people acting out a twisted play of the industrial era with Victorian aesthetics.
And yet he didn’t ‘feel’ that anymore and he hadn’t felt that way for days. Everything feeling ‘real’ had felt like shackles on him. Holding him back from going wild – from acting on his first thoughts. It's why he hadn’t pushed anyone into the pit or popped the blimp he had flown in on – no matter how funny the sound and reaction might have been.
Back in…well he couldn’t really consider earth ‘reality’ anymore – back in the ‘old world’ – he had played plenty of ‘pranks’ over the course of his life. Pranks others found funny. Pranks only he found funny. One or two pranks others found funny, but he didn’t care for.
One of Richard’s biggest fundamental problems was not knowing where lines were – he often went a bit ‘too far’ without knowing where the ‘line’ he had crossed had been. Despite that, he had always managed to stay above some sort of boundary. The place 'he thought' the fabled ‘line’ was.
Any pranks that broke rules – most of them – were never too illegal. Petty crimes rather than something serious. None of his pranks ever crippled or maimed anyone.
You know, a basic level of decency that you had to follow to fit into society. Stuff that was fine to do in games but frowned upon in reality. Sure his lines were much further than others, sure they were self-imposed – not ones he cared about on principle…but they did exist.
Now…well the posh ‘nobles’ or maybe just ‘businessmen’ pissed him off enough to want to kill them all. The overworked NPCs and polluted air. Everything about this place made him want to burn it to the fucking ground. He wanted to pull the skyrim game of stacking bodies into a giant pile. He wanted to set up a newton's cradle with hanging suits and see how much momentum was maintained with inelastic ‘bodies’.
…he was a bit angrier than he needed to be.
Richard knew he was projecting how he felt people acted in the old world onto these cartoonishly grim dark characters…he understood that.
Richard’s mind shifted in that moment and suddenly everything was clear again. He was no longer waffling about things being fake and not mattering or real and having consequences.
He just knew he wanted to break this society – real or fake. They were real enough for him to care and fake enough for him to stop caring. Real enough for him to be mad. Not real enough for him to feel like he had to hold back.
…
Richard startled when he heard a loud bang. Near the end of the street a rich looking couple was exploding in colourful sparks and bangs. Screaming rang out as he jogged towards the disturbance. Getting closer Richard saw a pair of players give each other animated high-fives and celebrate their exploits.
“Did you get the achievement? Reverse pickpocket some lit fireworks?”
“Of course. That sights almost as beautiful as the lump of stats it just gave me.”
They seem fun? Wonder if I should join their group.
Richard stepped towards their backs but paused at their next words.
“Beautiful as that sluts’ tits earlier. I’m telling you – you have to fuck an NPC bro. They are basically fleshlights you can do whatever you want to them in this game – pick any of them off the street like I did, it's not like they are people.” The first player laughed nudging his friends side conspiratorily.
Richard continued walking.
He should have figured. He was horrible at picking friends – anyone he was drawn to had something wrong with them. This pair might not have been that bad, but they had suddenly reminded him of his last friend group. The college group he had left.
Richard’s problem with gaining friends was incredibly simple. He had, among other things, a dark sense of humor and was drawn to people with similar tastes. He then ignored any warning signs they gave off until they were slamming them into his fucking face.
It was like his college friend group.
Sure, they got his sense of humor…
Sure, they had been willing to vandalize the dean’s office at a moment's notice…
Sure, they laughed and he had felt like he belonged for a bit…he knew they had his back…he knew they made life more fun.
…But then he started realizing their ‘jokes’ weren’t jokes anymore. One was ranting misogynistically, but it wasn’t the same standard dark humor – they actually wanted to rape a classmate and wanted to know how to go about it without getting caught. Another had a thing for children that when played straight made Richard…well made him realize them being fucked up wasn’t funny anymore. Every joke about lolis was a red flag because of course it was. How had he not seen that?
He had gone back through every conversation they had had, every joke he had laughed at and none of them had aged well. Not when his memory retroactively turned them into confessions instead of shocking, unexpected, and thus hilarious statements. It turned out he was the only one using humor to make fun of shitty things – they were trying to see what they could get away with.
He couldn’t look past it – he couldn’t continue hanging out with them. Any of them, any of the times.
This happened in school, it happened when he made troll friends in games. Every single actual friend he had ever made…It made him realize maybe he shouldn’t make friends.
He wanted friends. Richard wasn’t antisocial or introverted. He liked being around people, he liked attention, he liked being social.
But he shouldn’t have them.
I’m better off alone.