JESSIE : LEVEL 2
DAY 7 : G-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, AGNI, YEAR 1
TOWN OF ALL BEGINNINGS 4 : BENCH 2 : CHAT
Kicking a stone, Jessica the Racist Human Stone Kicker watched it soar into the open sky.
Moments after it disappeared, a squawk could be heard in the far distance. As many moments after that, a crash came from the same direction. Then what sounded like an avalanche.
Finally, that same disembodied voice yelled in her ear again, overlayed on itself four times with three of them being identical.
“BINGBONG!!! YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 50!!! THROUGH GREAT STRIFE AND LONG STRUGGLE, YOU HAVE GROWN STRONGER!!! AS A STONE KICKER, YOU GAIN 100 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE TO ATTRIBUTES INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 1!!! YOU ALSO GET 100% ADVANCEMENT TO THE CULTIVATION STAGE OF YOUR CHOICE!!! FUCK BITCHES!!! GET MONEY!!! CHEW BUBBLEGUM!!!”
“BINGBONG!!! YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 51!!! THROUGH GREAT STRIFE AND LONG STRUGGLE, YOU HAVE GROWN STRONGER!!! AS A STONE KICKER, YOU GAIN 100 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE TO ATTRIBUTES INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 1!!! YOU ALSO GET 100% ADVANCEMENT TO THE CULTIVATION STAGE OF YOUR CHOICE!!! FUCK BITCHES!!! GET MONEY!!! CHEW BUBBLEGUM!!!”
And so on until…
“BINGBONG!!! YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 52!!! THROUGH GREAT STRIFE AND LONG STRUGGLE, YOU HAVE GROWN STRONGER!!! AS A STONE KICKER, YOU GAIN 100 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE TO ATTRIBUTES INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 1!!! YOU ALSO GET 100% ADVANCEMENT TO THE CULTIVATION STAGE OF YOUR CHOICE!!! FUCK BITCHES!!! GET MONEY!!! CHEW BUBBLEGUM!!!”
“FEAT ACCOMPLISHED!!! KILL TWO STONES WITH ONE BIRD!!!”
What the fuck just happened?
Distracted by the question of what the fuck just happened, Jessica tripped over a pipe. She fell to the ground. And fell. And flailed around. And fell. And braced herself. And fell. And shut her eyes. And fell.
When I open them again, I find myself standing upright and surrounded by a familiar vertical tunnel of rising prismatic light.
[ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED - MONSTER KILLER: TOOK A MONSTER FROM FULL TO 0 HP WITH NO ASSISTANCE — REWARD: TARGETING A MONSTER NOW DISPLAYS ITS HEALTH BAR — XP: 32 ]
Groaning in remembrance of my most recent death, I break out into a cold sweat.
[ PRIMARY WEAPON EQUIPPED: STEEL LONGSWORD — DAMAGE: 11 PHY ]
In a just-as-sudden dissipation of the momentary adrenaline rush, I let out a pressurized sigh of relief at the sheathed sword appearing on my waist. Apparently, my only weapon came back on respawn instead of staying where I threw it at that spider.
With a wave of exhaustion filling the vacuum left by said adrenaline, I vacate the respawn point and head straight for that same bench from last time. I reach it only to discover, to my horror, that it’s already full. Mentally unprepared to do anything else just now, I stand there. And I wait. And stare.
Either from sheer awkwardness, or some appointment he has, the guy sitting on one of the bench seats eventually gets up.
Wasting no time, I practically butt-tackle the newly vacant cushioned sit space before anyone else has even the slightest chance of taking what is, after all, my seat. As I mentally celebrate the minor victory, I look around at the passing crowd.
Most are on their way to or from here or there. In other words, minding their own business. But I still spot a few distinctly tired-looking people eyeing me disdainfully after I took what they clearly thought was their seat.
I can’t help a sly smirk while I self-contradictorily hope for, and against, telepathy being a thing. Gotta be faster than that, bitches…
An unexpected voice comes from right next to me. “Hi there. I’m… That is… My name is Pliskin. Iroquois Pliskin.”
I jump at the voice coming from both a different direction, and much closer than I expected. Craning my neck over, I rediscover that there is, in fact, someone else on this bench… I really don’t want to talk right now. But he’s just sitting there. God this is awkward… Fuck it. I smile at him as non-awkwardly as I can manage. But I know in my heart that it’s futile. “Hi Ear… Uh, koy..?” With a shake of my head, I abandon all hope of pronouncing the guy’s first name. “Hi, Pliskin.”
Pliskin visibly deflates.
Is he bummed I gave up on pronouncing it? “Hey look… Sorry man, I just haven’t heard a name like that before. Where does it come from?”
He sighs. “Oh, never mind. Just a dumb joke that fell flat. My real name's Mich.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Mkay… Just 'Mich'?”
Mich raises an eyebrow right back. “Just 'Jessie'?”
I blink at him. “That's… Fair, I guess…” Hold on a fucking sec… “Wait, no. Who told you my name?” My eyes are drawn suspiciously towards the nearby mayor’s office.
Following my gaze, Mich seems to read my mind before vehemently shaking his head. “No, no, nothing like that. I take it you’re new?”
Feeling distinctly more like myself in this moment than any other since I came to this world, I roll my eyes. “No, I’m just stupid.” Why do I feel like I’m talking to Thomas..?
Mich seems to blow right past my snarky sarcasm turned vacant stare. “Could you do me a favor..? Try to target me.”
Now what in the fuck is that supposed to-
[ HERO TARGETED: MICH ]
I flinch back at the sudden appearance of a distinct blue outline around the guy. If the popup isn’t answer enough, his name is also not only glowing, but floating above his head.
I just stare at it. “Oh… That definitely would’ve been good to know earlier…” From my sitting position, I stare whimsically up into the clear blue sky. “Huh… Guess I really am just stupid…”
“I think we both know that’s not true.”
“And how would you know that? I could be stupid… You don’t know.”
Mich shrugs. “Just a hunch, I guess.”
I slump into my half of the bench. “Oh, whatever… Sorry for biting your head off about it at any rate… I’m a little on-edge right now. I know you’re just trying to be nice.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Alright, cards on the table. As you’ve clearly guessed, there’s a lot I don’t know. And I’d like to know more. Hell, I’d even like to know what to ask. But I don’t even know enough to have specific questions.”
Mich smiles in a way that seems more nostalgic than anything. “If you don’t know enough to be specific, there’s nothing wrong with being vague.”
“Hm… Okay, here’s one. Got any tips for a dumbass who doesn’t know her ass from her elbow in this place?”
Mich chuckles. But he does seem to take the question seriously, clearly thinking it through before still only kind of answering. “How about I answer your question with another question..? I saw you walk over from the spawnpoint. So then you just came back to life again, right?”
“You could say that… You could also say it’s why I just called myself a dumbass.”
“So I take it that you’ve experienced a serious injury? In Heaven, I mean?”
I wince at the thought of a pancake. “You could say that…”
“Was it painful?”
“You could say that…”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Did you know about the system setting for Pain Intensity?”
“You could say th… What?”
“It means how severe-”
I hold out a forestalling hand as the slider appears in my view at the thought.
[ PAIN INTENSITY: 20% ]
So the default is twenty? That’d explain why getting bitten by giant spiders only ‘stung’. And probably why I was able to function at all with crushed legs… But just how low can this go?
[ PAIN INTENSITY: 0% ]
Oh. But how does that even..? In a kind of fascinated trance, I draw my sword with one hand and grip the blade with my other. Not giving myself time to chicken out, I hold my breath and slide it along the edge to try and cause a visible injury. Miraculously succeeding, I feel the pressure of the blade as it slices a thin gash across the whole of my palm.
[ HP: 219/256 ]
I just stare in fascination at the wound slowly closing over as my HP inches back to full. This is so weird. I feel something happening, but it doesn’t hurt at all. It just kind of ‘itches’. “Well, I’ll be damned…”
Mich winces in sympathy pain as he watches. “Oh no… Don’t do that.”
I look up at him with a wry grin. “Guess that hurt you more than me, huh?”
“No… No, I’d say that pretty thoroughly hurt you more than… Wait, did you turn your pain intensity off?”
I beam at him. “Sure did.”
Mich groans. “That’s not what I was going for. I was thinking more along the lines of 5% instead of 20. Even 1% would be, literally, infinitely better. You really shouldn’t turn it all the way off. Pain is important. It’s like an automatic security system for our bodies to tell us when something’s wrong. Not feeling it at all is dangerous. Especially in the long term. You could die from a severely painful infection you didn’t even know you’d had for years.”
Snorting, I fold my arms. “I just got eaten by spiders. Before that, everything below my knees was crushed flat. And now I’m here. Perfectly fine and safe and whole. Well, I did get more XP Debt… But you’ll have to forgive me for not worrying so much about the whole ‘infection issue’.”
Mich sighs. “I guess this is Heaven. Or something…”
I relax at how easy that was. Not like I’m about to turn pain back on no matter how ‘useful’ it supposedly is. Hoping not to have to keep defending my life choices, I hurry to change the subject to something decidedly less controversial. “So what’s your take on that, anyway? Was there a religion that actually talked about…” I gesture all around, pausing my hand to point at a tiny ice bear so far away that it has to be the size of a country. I get momentarily distracted by how It’s fast asleep in the crook of an even larger, snow-covered mountain just above the lowest line of clouds in front of an even taller blue barrier. But before too long, I come back to both myself, and my point. “This?”
Mich blinks at the bear as though seeing it for the first time. “Huh… Yeah, I’m not certain anyone back on Earth was quite right about…” He gestures around and off towards the bear itself. “This… But I can recognize bits and pieces here and there.” He looks over at the shining respawn point. “I can kind of see the similarities between that, and the idea of something like pearly gates. But yeah, Spawncampers don’t exactly make a great allegory for Saint Peter…”
I involuntarily clench my hand, putting the thigh it’s resting on in an iron grip. “You saw him too?”
“Who, Peter?”
“What? No, the spawncamper.”
“Spawncampers. Decidedly plural. In fact, mine were a rather large group. But you’re saying you only saw one? By himself? How’d that go?”
Gleeful at any invitation to bitch about Oneshot, I turn to Mich and eagerly spill all the tea about that fucker.
Mich just sits there, listening to the whole thing before following up. “So… How does that make you feel?”
I suddenly can’t focus on anything besides my feet as they dangle over the edge of our shared bench. “I dunno… I guess I feel bad for the guy who got killed?”
“I’m gonna venture a guess and say you don’t really know how killing works here?”
“I mean… You kill someone and they die…” I trail off after that. I really don’t know much now that I think about it.
He nods. “That’s technically correct. But it’s also not. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re immortal.”
I look flatly at him. And then to the light show of a respawn point I just came from for the second time. “Yeah, I think I got that.”
“Then it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that so is everyone else. Even still, killing is anything but incentivized. Or at least, attacking first. I don’t entirely understand how it all works myself. But the long and the short of it is that if you attack someone first and then either you kill them or they kill you, they get one of your items.”
“What? How is that supposed to be fair?”
“Whoever attacks first loses. Sounds pretty fair to me.”
“Then what item do you lose?”
“As far as I understand, it’s random.” He shrugs. “Or maybe not. I’ve never actually killed anyone in Heaven, so I don’t really know. But since you both respawn eight hours later, the instigator is always the one who loses in the end. So if what sounds like a Wandering Maxlevel did kill you back there, I imagine you’d have a pretty sweet item to show for it. As, I also imagine, does that other guy he killed. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that, by the way.”
I still for a moment before cocking my head at him. “Oh, I don’t. I couldn’t do anything about the guy. He was clearly working on some crazy bullshit that I still can’t comprehend. And that was before I even knew punching did damage… Or really about damage numbers at all. Not that I’m any kind of expert now. But I at least know enough not to blame myself for being unable to stop him. I do still feel bad for that guy though… He got taken out for basically just showing up and falling over. He didn’t deserve that. Every death I’ve had, I at least earned the old fashion way. With honest, stupid incompetence. I mean-”
Mich seems more and more nonplussed about something the longer I ramble. Finally, he interrupts my aimless word vomit. “Wait, something doesn’t add up. How’d he get past your blanket?”
I look down at the brown tarp thing I never bothered unequipping. Then back up at Mich. “What about it?”
“I mean back when you first arrived and it was all white and glowing and granting invincibility and whatnot.”
“Yyyeah… I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
Without moving, an angelic equivalent to the brown sack I’m wearing appears around Mich’s shoulders. “Like this. When you first got here, that Old Blanket item you’re wearing should’ve looked like this until you dealt overt damage to something.”
I blink at the glowey-tarp. “I never had that…”
“Never?”
“Nope. I think I’d remember…” I gesture to the sparkly thing. “That.” I shake my head. “I spawned in wearing exactly what I have on now. Minus the longsword, of course. And then that Oneshot asshole killed the other guy who came in right after me. His blanket-thingie wasn’t glowing either, by the way. Just as brown and useless as mine always was.”
Mich is looking at me wide-eyed now. “That’s… You know, I haven’t been here for all that long myself. But from everything I know about what’s supposed to happen… That isn’t.”
I realize something while reading through my own blanket’s description. “Hold on. Why do you have that thing though? You had it unequipped. I just saw you equip it. Doesn’t that turn it off?”
Mich chuckles. “As a matter of fact, yes. If I unequip it now, it’ll turn off. But it just so happens that for my bonus starting item, I chose a Mythic-rarity mod stone. I also ill-advisedly used it on the blanket before I unequipped it the first time. And now it’s rechargeable.”
“Oh. How do you go about getting one of those, then? I’d love a ghost blanket of my own.”
“Sorry kid, I don’t think you can now that the charge is already spent. Even if you can afford a Mythic Mod Stone. Which you can’t. Not if you’re a new arrival too.”
It’s long after the fact, but I feel suddenly robbed of the opportunity. “Well isn’t that some bullshit… Also, what was that about a starting bonus item? I didn’t get anything like that. Not besides the $100 anyway…”
Mich blows out a puff of air. “You just keep getting cheated out of stuff, don’t you? So then you didn’t see a bunch of items to choose from before the part where you spawned onto the hill with the spawncamper?”
Having been absentmindedly rocking back and forth in my seat, I freeze mid-rock. “I do remember. The items… There were so many…” I set my head in my hands and ineffectually scream into them. “I thought they were part of a tutorial! I didn’t know I could actually KEEP one!” I pointedly ignore the concerned looks I’m now getting from passersby and keep talking into my hands, transitioning to more of a mumble than a scream. “I thought I was supposed to study all the different items in the game. Right there and then. But I was so sick of the whole character creation loop by that point… So I bailed.”
Mich winces again, this time in sympathy buyer’s remorse. “Oh… Wow, I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“It’s alright…” I grumble to myself. “Bet there was a fucking katana in there, too…”
“Katana? Are you looking for one of those, then?”
I nod. “It’s a CLASS thing. All my Skills really need something like a katana to shine. And a longsword is close enough to technically work. But it’s really not for me. As for why a katana specifically… I just like them. Call it an affinity. Or a dream. Or whatever…”
Mich nods in approval. “That’s as good a reason as any. Best one I can think of as a matter of fact. Follow your passion and you’ll never go wrong.”
Connecting a few dots in my head, I realize something important. Very important. So important in fact, that I absolutely have to talk about it right now. So instead, I cut through traffic, and onto the first conversational subramp that my panicked mind can conjure as I sarcastically throw Mich a suspicious side-eye. “I mean… Pedophilia?”
Mich rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up.”
I puff myself up a little too proudly. “It’s what I do.” And I do feel better. Well, worse existentially… But at least I’m ready to give this whole dungeon thing another shot. “Whelp, I’ve got a ten-hour walk to run in two hours. Not gonna kill that fucker just sitting here like this.”
No judgment on Bench-Guy if he wants to stay on the bench. What else should you do here but whatever you want? For example…
I leap to my feet. “Whelp… Have a good one, man.” With that, I take off through the town entrance before he has a chance to reply.
From a good distance behind, I can still hear him calling after me. “REMEMBER TO USE YOUR BLESSINGS!!!”
My mouth twitches upwards as I run determinedly onward. Should I turn around and ask what the fuck he’s talking about? What, and backpedal on a half-decent exit? Blessings do sound useful… But the moment I think the word, all my questions are answered.
[ MOVEMENT BLESSING: VAULT ]
[ POWER BLESSING: DASH ]
In a diagonal-forward flash, I leap from the ground. Thankfully, this takes me out of the town’s sightlines right before I slam into a tree.
But not even that dulls my mood. Midway through that conversation, I thought of another question. One I didn’t ask. Shouldn’t my Crimson Tide have rolled in by now? But I didn’t have time to contemplate that unfortunate metaphor before it was forgotten in favor of a realization that overwhelmed all other thoughts. The thing I bailed on the conversation over, rather than talk about it with some random guy on a bench. The true reason for my smile.
I haven’t had to pee since I got here.