“Why?” My head was spinning, unable to get a grip on what was going on.
“Because I don’t need them anymore! I sold myself to Verloven to get noa, and now I can’t move without him telling me to. Can’t breathe, can’t fart. The game is always watching, damn it. And believe me, this was the only way. Of the two of us, you’re the only one who’s been able to hunt those rocks down, so you’re the one who has to keep going.”
“I’m not just leaving you.” I looked over at Verloven, but the old man was indifferent. “How much to buy him back?”
“Three personified units of noa, but I’ll tell you right now that I won’t take that deal. The general has a bone to pick with this player, and it’ll be very happy to get him as a gift. Even I’m interested to see what they’ll do with personified noa.”
“Mark, let’s wrap this up. You can be angry later,” Grust said. He stepped closer, and I instantly bent over double in agonizing pain. My partner groaned next to me. The world around me blurred, only to regain clarity three hours later. Checking my phone — I’d appeared in the world clutching it in my hand — I read the message on the screen:
You received 108 levels from personified noa Grust Kilvan.
108 free points available.
Current level: 109.
***
54000 coins received.
“I didn’t have that many coins — sorry about that. Your things are over there by the bench. I tossed mine in my storage. Let’s see, what else… Oh, I had some little stuff left over, so I sent it over to you, too. Maybe, there will be something you can use. All right, this is see you later — I’m sure we’ll be doing just that. No?”
Grust gave me a scrutinizing gaze, after which he nodded and turned away. I wanted to jump toward him, stop him, but I banged into an invisible field. The small platform he was standing on flew into the air, picked up speed, and flew right into the village.
“You’ll get ten noa!” I yelled, turning to Verloven. “Don’t do this!”
“The general has already been informed, Mark Derwin, and Grust Kilvan will be shipped to where it is in a few hours. It’s a done deal. In the next release, I’m going to get three locations, and you need to make your peace with this,” the function replied impassively. “But we have a deal. I need to tell you about levels and trials.”
Access to trials received.
The next dose of information I got just served to strengthen my conviction that the game needed to go. As it turned out, the levels players got for completing missions, killing larvae, beating dungeons, and everything else meant nothing. At least, they meant nothing after level 100, which was when attributes could start climbing past 15. And trials were how you built your advantage over the players around you once you’d reached level 100. The function didn’t know exactly what they would hold for me, though it assured me I wouldn’t be able to die even if I wanted to. Players who went through the trials could lose some of their levels but pick up additional attributes that gave them a better chance of surviving — tougher skin capable of withstanding fire or hits from energy weapons, steel bones that didn’t break even when you fell from a hundred meters up, multiple hearts to boost metabolism and back each other up in case something went wrong, and anything else you could imagine. There was no limit to how drastically you could change your body. The important thing was that your level could drop every time you went through a trial. Also, there was one more bit of unpleasant news: you could lose levels you didn’t lock in. The simplest example of that was transferring them to another player, something like personified noa or a close relative. But another option was as a penalty for failing missions. I hadn’t had to deal with that, but Verloven told me it was a big problem for players. There were also special skills and equipment that let you steal weapons. Not everyone had them, however. Regardless, locking your levels in meant officially declaring yourself a mutant and deciding how you wanted to mutate, primarily by picking a class. That made sense — I’d been wondering why my character in the prerelease had been a stalker, while I personally hadn’t gotten a class. You had to modify yourself and choose the direction you wanted to mutate in less by picking the right attributes and skills, and more by beating trials and locking in levels.
“You can go through trials whenever you want. The most time they take is eight hours. And with that, Mark Derwin, you know all about the levels and how to use them. I’m glad you were able to complete my mission.”
Clear the location completely complete.
Level +1 (110).
“In that case, get out of here. Tsarter has already submitted an extradition request for you, and I can’t hold them off much longer. You have 24 hours. Use them wisely.”
“Wait a second! You said personified noa glows in the ether. How am I supposed to hide?”
“Answering that question was not part of our deal.” The old man started away.
“If you do answer it, you’ll get noa in a month. That’ll give you four locations in the next release.”
“A week,” Verloven replied sternly. I nodded, a poor negotiator in that moment — I would have agreed to anything.
“You need the closure and introversion attributes as well as the inner harmony skill. If the average value of those three is higher than your opponent’s perception, they won’t notice you. You have a week to bring me a stone, and if you don’t, you’ll find out what real penalties are. See you soon, Mark Derwin.”
The old man walked away, and I pulled up my status table on my phone, grinding my teeth in frustration. I was starting all over.
Status table
Name
Mark Derwin
Coins
6444830
Level
110
Titles and ranks
Title: Hero
Ranks: Bandit Bane, Lone Wolf, Stone Wall
Attributes
Strength
1
Stamina
1
Agility
1
Skills
Before ducking into the store, I checked my inventory. All that was left of Ulbaron was the name — it needed major repairs, though my phone couldn’t say how many coins that would cost. I was missing device repair. Valkyrie and Raptor were in better condition but still damaged. Only Fang was ready to go, though I was going to need a mountain of new attributes before I could use it. And it didn’t look like I had enough coins for that.
Grust hadn’t left me anything useful, either. It was all for the transport he’d been dreaming of building. Seven items totaled five million, so I sold them without a second thought. I needed coins right then, and even the 50% commission didn’t bother me. Having 8.9 million in my wallet was getting somewhere. That would let me do some leveling-up, though I continued studying myself before I got to work on that. The penalties were gone. There were no sanctions, no tough response, none of that, though my loot coefficient was still six. That meant every hit, every bite monsters tagged me with would cost six protection points instead of the usual one. I’m going to have to figure something out for that. Another bit of good news was that I once again had unfettered access to the store, level five items included. It’s a good idea to run into the general’s spawn and hack their phones every once in a while.
And that was the end of my exploration into the new me. The next step was the trial, and I hit the button without giving it too much thought. The area around me swirled away, giving place to a small room. There was a chair I immediately sat down in as well as a tablet on a stand.
“Mark Derwin, welcome to your trial,” said a mechanical, emotionless voice as the tablet turned on. There were three large buttons on the screen: Select class, Trial, and Exit. I just sat there, waiting for more instructions. There was no point jumping right in without knowing what I was up against.
“Introduction begun,” the voice finally said. “Trials are how players confirm the skills they’ve received and select how they want to progress through th
e game. Trials lock in levels and keep players from losing them to penalties. Trials give you a chance to survive. To continue, you need to select a class. Tap the Select class button on the tablet in front of you.”
Introductions were always good, but I wasn’t sure it would have been possible to dumb that one down anymore. There was no new information there whatsoever. But deciding that tapping the button wouldn’t change anything, I went ahead and did just that.
“Analyzing your gameplay… Selecting optimum class… Identifying optimum character progression…”
“I want to select my own class!” My indignation practically took my breath away. “None of your random selections!”
“Character class selected.” The game didn’t seem to pay me any notice. “There are two recommendations for you: infiltrator and stalker. Would you like to find out more about them?”
“I want to select my own class!” I repeated emphatically. “It’s my right!”
Once again, nobody cared what I thought.
“Infiltrator is a stealth class specializing in getting into enemy locations unnoticed and taking targets out there with improvised devices. There is minimal participation in open combat. The match with your past gameplay is 78%. Stalker is a stealth class specializing in hunting the unknown, while also being capable of standing up to fearsome opponents one on one. The match with your past gameplay is 56%. To read more about the class particulars, see the descriptions in the tablet.”
The Select class button disappeared, replaced by Infiltrator and Stalker. I folded my arms across my chest to show that I wasn’t about to make a choice until I had a look at the complete list of classes. But the game had its own ideas.
“You were unable to select a class on your own, so you were assigned the one with the best match. Your class is now infiltrator. Take some time to read up on your class description.”
“No, stop it!” I yelped, but it was too late. The Stalker button disappeared.
“Are you sure you want to exit the trial?” the emotionless voice asked, pouring oil on the fire. I was getting hotter. Apparently, I needed to let off some steam after respawning.
“I don’t want to leave the trial! What I want is for you to stop forcing classes on me that I didn’t pick myself!” I yelled, though I didn’t get a very satisfactory reply.
“Your class is infiltrator. Take some time to read up on your class description.”
That time, the button on the tablet started blinking, insisting I tap it. Instead, I smashed a fist into the stand and shrieked in pain. The stand looked none the worse for wear; my fist crunched, and my fingers started swelling and turning blue. But the pain at least cleared my head and let me start thinking rationally. What am I so upset about? Is the infiltrator class so bad? Either way, I wasn’t the kind to stand there with a machinegun taking on all comers. I much preferred sneaking in unnoticed, getting the job done, seeing what was what, taking what I needed, and getting the hell out of there once everything was demolished. And if being an infiltrator helped with that, I was down for it. Screw it. What does the description say?
I already knew the main portion, which made it much more interesting to read about what you could do with the class. There were several different versions — finally, something I could pick for myself. I could be a pure infiltrator, though there were other options, too: scout infiltrator, demolitions infiltrator, sniper infiltrator, and lots more. Each one had a percentage next to it that showed how well it matched the way I’d been playing the game to date. The best match was demolitions infiltrator. Following that was scout, mechanic, and a whole cohort of narrow specializations I didn’t even pull up. Demolitions, scout, or mechanic. The differences between the three were nothing to sneeze at. While demolitions infiltrators focused on building a fortress out of their skin and bones that could stand up to accidental detonations, scouts went with flexibility and elastic bones so they could squeeze through narrow openings. Definitely not for me. I could just imagine how my body would get longer, deform, and turn into a slender snake. Chills ran down my spine. The mechanic option was no good, too — it used mechanical implants to strengthen the body. No, I’m not about to look like Nine.
“Demolitions,” I said, making up my mind and tapping the button. The other options disappeared, leaving me with a list of upgrades: steel bones, impenetrable skin, reinforced internal organs, and adaptive vision.
Each of them had a value from zero to 100, only I had no way to get them higher. My invisible interlocutor correctly diagnosed my confusion and explained.
“To level-up your attributes, you need to beat trials. The minimum number of levels you can have to begin a trial is fifty. If you’re successful, those levels will be locked in, and you’ll have five free points you can spend on your attributes — one for each ten levels you lock in. If you’re unsuccessful, you’ll only get points for the levels you were able to protect, the rest lost to the game. You’ll also be penalized the attribute points in that case. Would you like to begin a trial?”
“No!” I shouted far too emotionally. It wasn’t the time for stupid, pointless risks. If there was a chance I could lose 50 levels, I wasn’t going to be touching the trials until I’d gotten to at least level 151. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to use my named items, and they were all I had in the world.
“Thank you for visiting the trial functionality. Note that you can avail yourself of it at any time. Leaving in 3… 2… 1…”
The space around me swirled once again. The walls disappeared, and there was Verloven’s gazebo. The old man was gone, presumably off to enjoy the sight of Grust being experimented on. As I looked around, however, I suddenly noticed that something had changed. Every object, every building, every tree looked strange, unnatural. Leaning more on my intuition than what I knew, I pointed my phone at the nearest building and turned on the camera. Bingo! I could see what had changed — there was a point on the wall that was only visible through my phone. A shiver ran through my body. Somehow, I knew that was where I needed to place explosives if I wanted to wipe out the building entirely. And every more or less large structure around me had points like that. Some had two, some had them on the inside — my phone drilled right through the outer walls. Of course, it was hard to tell how useful that would prove.
The last thing I needed to do was get to work on myself.
Agility +1 (2)
My first attribute syringe took me out of the conscious world for the usual eight hours. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. Damn it… Time was flying by like a crazed rabbit. I had just five days to complete Olsen’s assignment, eight to save my sister. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that — I couldn’t leave the location until I was stronger. The Tsarter fighters were waiting for me right outside the border.
Device repair +50 (50).
Closure +90 (90).
Introversion +90 (90).
Inner harmony +90 (90).
The first thing I did was boost my device repair so I could take care of my named items, and then I made sure I could hide that I was made of noa. Nine had found Grust in just a couple minutes, making those attributes and skills must-haves. I even decided to take them as high as I could possibly afford. It wasn’t the time to worry about expenses, not when I needed to stay hidden. Sure, it took 2.5 million coins, but I pulled the trigger. Safety first.
Ten minutes later, my device repair was up and running, and I checked to see what the damage was.
Valkyrie and Raptor weren’t in bad shape. My skill told me they were each going to take just three hundred thousand to fix. Without a second thought, I spent the money. The problem was Ulbaron. Both the outfit and the devices integrated into it had taken heavy damage, and all I could do was sigh heavily when I saw it was going to take twelve million to repair it all. It found a spot in my virtual storage. There were quite a few options for armor in the store, though I went with a simple BRO-III outfit for thirty-four thousand, a BRO-III helmet for another fifty,
and level five universal armor good for up to 500 hits that cost a million and a half. Finally, I was feeling more secure. The requirements were laughable — I was going to have them all met by the time I got myself to where I could use my named items.
All I had left was 4.27 million, which made my next choices tricky. Which of my three devices was I going to prioritize? Fang, Valkyrie, or Raptor? Although, that was easy — Valkyrie was what I couldn’t live without. The rest would come later.
Pistol shooting +70 (70).
Agility +58 (60).
Strength +59 (60).
Monster knowledge +70 (70).
Perception +60 (60).
Resilience +60 (60).
Device control +60 (60).
Pearl of the South (World of the Changed Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 7