I gasped as I was wrenched back into life by the power of the artifact, the burning ruins of Plainside flickering in my blurry vision. I was lying just where I’d been before, specks of ashes scattered over my body. I was just where… just where I’d… died?
I found that my memories were hazy. There’d been a dinner party, an attack, I’d…
Yes, I’d died, hadn’t I?
And yet here I was, lying on the dirty ground, surrounded by flames, with a headache bad enough to put any hangover to shame. Must be Meterday.
I pressed my hands to the ground beneath me, attempting to push myself upright, but found myself weak. The effort generated a fresh wave of nausea and my vision grew blurrier once more, and before I knew it, my head was hard against the ground. I’d passed out. Again.
Why was this so hard?
I brought up my stamina bar, making sure I wasn’t simply completely drained.
Stamina — 10 / 10
Ten out of what, now? Out of ten? That wasn’t right. I’d underinvested in Dexterity, sure, but it wasn’t like I’d never put any points into it. My stamina was in the four hundreds. It was—
And then I remembered the artifact. The one I’d been sent to retrieve. The one that had exhausted its last charge on me, in order to…
Respawning at Level 0 …
That’s what the notifications had said. But that couldn’t be. Saving someone from death was one thing, but to reset a life’s worth of progression? I must have imagined it, I thought. I must have been delirious. But if my maximum stamina was only ten, now, then… I swallowed back the fear, breathed deeply, and brought up my stat screen.
Level 0 Peasant
Race: Human
No! This couldn’t be! This—
Power Bars:
Health — 10 / 10
Mana — 10 / 10
Stamina — 10 / 10
Gods damn it! No! Death might have been better than—
Base Stats:
Vitality — 0
Intelligence — 0
Dexterity — 0
Strength — 0
Wisdom — 0
Charisma — 0
Gods, this hurt. Particularly that Charisma reset; I’d prided myself on a high Charisma, had worked hard at it over the years, because it was so important to my job. And what would happen now, with it so low? Would people pay any attention at all to anything I had to say? Would I be able to tell even the most innocent of lies? Would my skills—
Prostrate on the floor, surrounded by burning buildings, I gasped. My skills—surely not them too? Surely not all the abilities that I’d unlocked over the years?
I bit my tongue, finding it harder than I ever had before to open my skills menu, and pressed my eyes closed as I found the brief moment of courage required to do so.
Skills Menu:
[None]
If I’d had the energy, I might have cried. Or screamed. Probably I would’ve screamed, to be honest; that was more my speed. But as it was, with my stats so low, I was… weak. Too weak to stand, too weak even to scream.
I passed out once more.
* * *
When I next awoke, I was being dragged by the arms by two soldiers in shining heavy armour. I tried to speak, to ask them just what they thought they were doing, but upon opening my mouth, I found myself pass out again.
As I finally came to—with more energy, this time, than before—I found myself in a small, damp, dingy room. The floor was dusty stone, and there was a rickety bed in the corner, and bars across one wall.
No. I wasn’t in a room. I was in a jail.
I groaned with effort as I swung one leg over the side of the—actually ridiculously uncomfortable—bed, and then the other, before pushing myself upright. I sat still for a moment, willing myself to believe that this was just a bad dream, that this was just some horrific nightmare caused by the strength of that wine I’d crafted.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
But the world around me was too real, and the headache somehow realer. And the bed beneath me? Even at my worst, I wouldn’t imagine a bed so uncomfortable. Honestly, it was like whoever had made it had gone out of their way to make it uncomfortable. But perhaps that was just the reality of jails; I’d spent little time in them.
‘Hey!’ I tried calling out, but found that the words escaped as little more than a whisper. I coughed, finding my mouth and throat dry, before trying again.
It made little difference.
That being a bust, I tried a different strategy instead, banging on the metal bars with the base of my palm. And again. And again.
‘Let me out!’ I tried to cry, but managed again only a croak.
Finally, I got a reaction—but not from whoever was in charge of these cells. A woman in a cell opposite rolled out of bed and glared at me with deep brown eyes. ‘Will you cut that out? Some of us are trying to sleep.’
‘On these beds?’ I croaked back, but my voice was quiet enough that the women didn’t hear.
I sank back into bed, and tried, fruitlessly, to get comfortable.
Soldiers finally arrived a good few hours later, silently pulling me to my feet and dragging me towards the door—much as I remembered being dragged from the ruins of Plainside.
They pulled me up a flight of steps, my legs struggling to keep up, and into a room somehow both darker and dingier than the jail cell. A bright oil lantern hung overhead. The pair of soldiers dumped—or practically threw—me into a wooden chair, and then stood over me, arms crossed. On their armour was a familiar badge—the golden sun of the Baron of Umlok.
‘Think you got some explaining to do, eh?’ one of the soldiers asked. A dwarf, though tall for his kind, and with muscles bulging enough that most taller races would avoid picking a fight.
‘I…’ I started.
The other guard, a human woman with a kind smile on her face, crouched down in front of me. ‘What’s your name? Let’s start with that.’
‘Styk.’
‘Styk? Styk what?’ the dwarf asked.
‘I just go by Styk.’ With every word I spoke, my voice returned an ounce more to me.
The dwarf blinked. ‘Fine.’
‘Tell us, Styk,’ the human said. ‘What happened back in Plainside?’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with me! I was just…’ What was I doing there? I searched my spotty memories. ‘I was just at a dinner party. With the Collector.’
At this, the dwarf laughed, and even the kinder soldier had a smirk cross her face. ‘Yes, mate,’ the dwarf said, ‘We didn’t think it was you.’
‘Just tell us who it was,’ the woman said. ‘What it was.’
‘It was… it was…’ But the words got lost in my throat. They wouldn’t believe my answer. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t believe it either. But what other choice did I have than to tell the truth?
‘Yes?’ the kind woman prompted.
I gulped. ‘It was a Player.’
The male soldier shook his head, rubbing his temple with his hand. ‘He’s an idiot,’ he muttered, turning away.
The woman licked her lips as she searched for the correct words. ‘Well, that can’t be, can it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because a Player would never—’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know how it sounds. And most Players wouldn’t, I know. Most of them are honourable. I’m just saying that this Player. This particular one… they’re a monster.’
The kinder soldier looked back at me, her eyes glazing over.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I asked.
‘I believe that you believe it,’ came the reply.
The rest of the interrogation went much along these lines, but the human soldier began to reveal her true colours more and more as time passed, the kind smile fading from her face and being replaced by an expression of frustration. But I stuck to my story—was it still a “story” when it was the truth?—despite any attempts to lead me to blame something or someone else, and eventually the pair grew tired of me.
They threw me back into my cell, where exhaustion soon overcame me, and I found that the bed wasn’t quite so uncomfortable after all.
* * *
I awoke to a wooden bowl being shoved through the gaps in my cell’s bars, one that contained a white substance of suspicious texture. Without thinking about my current lack of skills, I tried to engage my Identification skill to understand just how much eating this gruel would make me want to throw up. I narrowed my eyes, bringing the strange foodstuff into focus, and realised what it was—offcuts of meat mixed with old oats. Pet food, practically.
Identification unlocked!
This latest notification brought on the despair once more, acting as reminder that all my skills were gone. Well, all my skills but the most cursory of Identification. At level 0—not really a level in its own right—it didn’t even come with an ability.
I was about the only person alive who was both level 0 and had had their fourth birthday party. No, that wasn’t fair—even a four year old would have levelled Identification up a few times.
If anyone identified me, I was screwed. Anyone would be able to see that I was only level 0. That I was easy pickings. While most people out there wouldn’t take advantage of this power imbalance, a small handful would. And it wouldn’t be too long before I ran into one of them.
If I was ever released from this jail cell, at least.
Why was I even in here? The soldiers had made it perfectly clear that they didn’t think I did it. So surely I was just a witness. A victim, even. Surely not someone suitable for a jail cell.
Unless they thought me complicit, somehow.
At that moment, the penny dropped. Of course they didn’t think I’d done it—they would have identified me the moment they set their eyes on me. And they would’ve seen just what I had: a level 0 peasant.
What a fool I’d looked. No wonder they’d laughed.
Everything had been taken from me but my life. Escaping death was all well and good—how many had dreamed of such a thing?—but losing twenty-four years of progression was about as good as dying. I was screwed. I was—
At that moment, I noticed I had one more notification still waiting for me, glowing in the corner of my vision. With a frown, I brought it up.
My frown quickly faded.
Active Effect: Legacy of Sisyphus
Days remaining: 999 / 1,000
XP gain increased by +400%
‘Huh,’ I said. Maybe I wasn’t quite so screwed after all.
"Styk"
Level 0 Peasant
Base Stats:
Vitality — 0
Intelligence — 0
Dexterity — 0
Strength — 0
Wisdom — 0
Charisma — 0
Skills:
Identification — Level 0
Abilities:
[None]
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +400%