Hero
Page 43
Main skills and abilities:
Learning Skills: 13 ((a primary skill currently undergoing Optimization: +2)
Empathy: 11
Boxing: 11
Reading: 10
Vending: 9
Communication Skills: 9
MS Word: 8
Creative Writing: 8
Running: 8
PC skills: 8
Russian language skills: 7
Marketing: 7
Leadership: 7
Decision making: 7
Online search: 6
Cooking: 6
Self-Discipline: 6
Erudition: 6
MS Excel: 6
Intuition: 6
Walking: 6
Speed Typing: 5
SMM: 5
Self Control: 5
Poker Playing: 5
Power of Persuasion: 5
Plan-making: 5
Hand-to-hand combat: 5
Perseverance: 5
Company Management: 5
Seduction: 4
Deception: 4
Athletics: 4
Manners: 3
English language skills: 3
Firearms: 3
Bladed Weapons: 3
Public Speaking: 3
Map Reading: 3
Self-Defense: 3
Car Driving: 2
Pushbike Riding: 2
Swimming: 2
DIY Skills: 2
First Aid Skills: 2
Singing: 2
Fishing: 2
.............
Photography: 4 (a secondary skill currently undergoing Optimization: -4)
Environmental safety index: Yellow
Afterword from the Author
THANK YOU so much for reading this book! I hope it hasn’t been too much drudgery (not counting the few days Phil spent trying to launch his agency).
For me personally, it was a rather complex moment. In the book’s original version, I made Phil confront crime and corruption and face some sadistic junkies. Lots of tension! Shedloads of righteous anger! An interface-assisted Dark Knight against universal evil!
It was a good job my Russian readers stopped me just in time. I followed their advice and deleted the evil-fighting storyline entirely. Because fighting evil isn’t so much about punishing the crime — it’s rather about bringing good into this world. So that was the path Phil took in the end: probably not the most obvious decision but definitely less destructive.
Having said that, the third book of the series — The Final Trial — is going to kick butt big time. It’s the last book in the Level Up trilogy describing Phil’s adventures in the 21st century. The book is currently being translated and will be out as soon as humanly possible without compromising the translation’s quality.
In the meantime, I’m working on Book Four: Level Up 4. The Selection. Also, to make sure you didn’t get too bored waiting, I’m going to release another Level Up book: The Knockout which is the story of Mike Hagen, an American guy and the ultimate underdog who also receives an augmented-reality interface from the future. He too is a main character in the Level Up world who’s going to befriend Phil in The Final Trial.
Just like Phil Panfilov in this book, Mike “Crybaby” Hagen will be chosen to receive an AR interface. The only difference being, his lifelong passion has been all-in wrestling — probably because he’s too scared of pain to fight in real life — so the interface will adapt accordingly.
Will Mike be able to put it to good use? And will it help him to get out of the sad hole he calls his life?
Level Up: The Knockout will be released on Amazon on January 9 2019.
The book’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dansugralinovslevelup
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New Release!
A Song of Shadow (The Bard from Barliona Book #2) LitRPG series
by Eugenia Dmitrieva & Vasily Mahanenko
Hero (Level Up Book #2) LitRPG Series
by Dan Sugralinov
New Pre-orders!
Finding a Body (The Dark Herbalist Book #4) LitRPG series
by Michael Atamanov
El Diablo (A Supernatural Thriller)
by G. Zotov
Level Up: The Knockout (Book #1) LitRPG Series
by Dan Sugralinov
MORE LITRPG, SCI FI AND FANTASY BOOKS AND SERIES PUBLISHED BY
MAGIC DOME BOOKS:
Mirror World LitRPG Series Books 1, 2, 3 and 4
by Alexey Osadchuk
The Way of the Shaman LitRPG Series Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7
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The Hour of Pain (The Way of the Shaman Bonus Story)
by Vasily Mahanenko
Dark Paladin LitRPG Series Books 1, 2 and 3
by Vasily Mahanenko
Start the Game! LitRPG Series (Galactogon Book #1)
by Vasily Mahanenko
The Bard from Barliona LitRPG Series Book 1 and 2
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Level Up LitRPG Series Book 1 and 2
by Dan Sugralinov
Reality Benders LitRPG Series Books 1, 2 and 3
by Michael Atamanov
Perimeter Defense LitRPG Series Books 1, 2, 3 and 4
by Michael Atamanov
The Dark Herbalist LitRPG Series Books 1, 2 and 3
by Michael Atamanov
Phantom Server LitRPG Series Books 1, 2 and 3
by Andrei Livadny
The Neuro LitRPG Series Books 1, 2 and 3
by Andrei Livadny
Point Apocalypse (a near-future action thriller)
by Alex Bobl
The Lag: a LitRPG Fantasy
by A. Bobl and A. Levitsky
You’re in Game! Anthology Issues 1 and 2
LitRPG Stories from Bestselling Authors
Expansion: The History of the Galaxy. A Space Saga Series
Books 1, 2 and 3
by A. Livadny
Citadel World Dystopian Series Books 1 and 2
by Kir Lukovkin
Moskau (an alternative history thriller)
by G. Zotov
El Diablo (A Supernatural Thriller)
by G. Zotov
The Sublime Electricity Books 1, 2, 3 and 4
A steampunk crime mystery by Pavel Kornev
Leopold Orso and the Case of the Bloody Tree (Sublime Electricity: The Prequel)
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More books and series are coming out soon!
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About the Author
DAN SUGRALINOV grew up in a small working-class town on the Russian border with Kazakhstan. It’s a miracle he survived his childhood games of hide-and-seek in the surrounding building sites complete with perilous rebar structures and flooded foundation pits.
Ever since he learned to read at the age of five, he couldn’t put a book down. Reluctant to earn himself the name of a conceited nerd, he concentrated on playing soccer which allowed him to become friends with the town’s toughest kids.
In 1995, he graduated with honors, entering the St Petersburg Academy of Engineering and Economics where he studied business creation. He must have done something right because in the years that followed, he first worked on TV and radio just to get the taste of it, then opened his first successful business followed by several more. In between, he started writing and playing video games, winning the St Petersburg Mortal Kombat championship and becoming runner-up for Starcraft and Warcraft 3. He is a 14-times champion in Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3 as well as the world’s ex-#1 in the World of Warcraft.
In 2004, he wrote his first motivational novella The Bricks which to date has garnered him over 3,000,000 readers online alone.
In 2014, Russia’s leading publishers of business literature Mann, Ivanov & Ferber published a revised and extended edition of his book, The Bricks 2.0.
In 2015, Dan discovered the existence of LitRPG. He devoured everything that had been written in that genre until he finally decided he too could write similar books.
In summer 2017, he published his first book in the subgenre of RealRPG: Level Up.
Dan Sugralinov is a consummate gamer, a multiple MMORPG champion and the world’s ex-#1 in the World of Warcraft. He is also a successful businessman and author of books on marketing and business organization. His first LitRPG series Level Up took Russia by storm in 2017. The English translation of the series is about to be released on Amazon in its entirety.
* * *
[1] Dimedrol: a sedating antihistamine drug popular with Russian criminals
[2] $75 a month which is extremely cheap even by Russian standards
[3] Borsch: Russian beetroot soup
[4] A steambath house is a Russian version of a sauna heated with a wood burner, common in the Russian countryside. It is a small one-story log hut usually located some distance from the main house, normally at the back of the garden, preferably close to a source of water such as a river or a stream.
[5] About $0.70 per square foot
[6] About $350 a month
[7] Pelmeni: Russian meat dumplings, a popular and much loved dish. Can be bought readymade in supermarkets but every Russian cook worth his or her salt have their own family recipe.
[8] About $15,000
[9] About $1500
[10] VK — VKontakte (“In Touch”), a popular Russian social media site similar to Facebook
[11] Izhevsk: A provincial Russian city used here as an example of a far-off backwater
[12] Forshmak: a popular Jewish dish
[13] A line from Eugene Onegin (1833), a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s biggest poets. Translation by James E. Falen
[14] Two rubles is about $0.03
[15] The Experts’ Club: The participants in the popular Russian intellectual TV quiz show Chto? Gde? Kogda? (What? Where? When?) which at the time of writing had been running for over 40 years. Some of the game participants — like Anatoly Vasserman in his signature combat vest with a grotesque multitude of pockets — have become household names in Russia due to their ability to either know or work out the answer to any question in any branch of human knowledge, no matter how tricky or arcane.
[16] About $750
[17] About $600
[18] About $450
[19] Olga “Lola” Shvedova, Phil’s doctor from Book 1
[20] Like many non-native Russian speakers from the Caucasus region, Vazgen uses the Russian word “Da” — meaning “Yes” — as a meaningless parasite word to add more emotion to his statements.
[21] Naeel (also spelt as Nail) is a Muslim name popular with Russian Tatars. The author alludes to the conflicts between criminal gangs of various Muslim diasporas in Russian towns.
[22] About $300
[23] About $450
[24] SMM: Social Media Marketing
[25] Over $15,000
[26] Kalmyk: a native of Kalmykia, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation. Both ethnicities have some Mongol roots so confusing a Kalmyk for a Kazakh is a bit like confusing a Chinese for a Japanese.
[27] About $100
[28] Veles: the second most important god in the Slavic pagan tradition, the patron god of herdsmen and the lord of the underworld.
[29] CoC — Clash of Clans, a mobile strategy video game
[30] About $150
[31] In the 1990s, gaming halls were legal in Russia, mushrooming virtually on every street corner and open to everyone
[32] Over $30,000
[33] Analgin: an over-the-counter painkiller popular in Russia
[34] In Russia, handshakes are common between men but not between men and women. If the man and woman are friends or relatives they might exchange a hug and/or a peck on the cheek but if they don’t know each other very well, they avoid any tactile contact, limiting themselves to a nod and a smile.
[35] Elena Molokhovets was the author of bestselling Russian 19th century books on cookery and housekeeping.
[36] Petrograd: the name of St Petersburg between 1914 and 1924 which was then replaced by Leningrad until 1991 when the city was renamed St. Petersburg once again.
[37] About $1,200
[38] In Russia, visitors in most hospitals are allowed to bring food and snacks for the patients
[39] About $1,500
[40] Solyanka : a rich traditional Russian soup which is a staple in most Russian restaurants
[41] About $3,000
[42] Face control : the Russian night club practice where a bouncer uses his trained eye in determining which of the public belong to the “right crowd” and deserve to be admitted.
[43] An excerpt from Blood Group, a cult Russian rock song by the 1980s Russian band Kino
[44] About $7,000
[45] About $30,300
[46] Anastasia means “Resurrected” in Greek
[47] About $900
[48] Modern Russian traffic lights come with an electronic countdown showing how many seconds are left till the change of lights.
[49] Traditionally, Russians change into casual house clothes when they arrive home after a day’s work — both for comfort and to mark the difference between work and leisure.
[50] Durak (Fool): a Russian card game
[51] The lines from a poem by the leading Russian poet Sergei Yesenin which was later made into a song by the popular Russian rock band Mongol Shuudan. (Translated by Alec Vagapov)
[52] Disposable plastic shoe protectors are obligatory for visitors and outpatients in most Russian medical institutions.
[53] In winter, Russian cars need to be warmed up by letting the motor run for several minutes.
[54] The course of school training in Russia lasts 11 years
[55] About $60
[56] About $6,200
[57] About $3,000
[58] Over $15,000
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