by Max Lagno
* * *
Pondering the peculiarities of human preference, I walked through the square as if through a battlefield. The closer I got to the respawn point, the more I found police corpses, robot wreckages, twisted carriages and other evidence of Vildana’s decision to drop her Reputation to unexplored depths.
There were two types of respawn towers in Adam Online: local ones installed in a zone when it was created, and structures that players can buy or craft in their own user-controlled zone by leveling up the corresponding skills.
Solo players may not have had much need in towers like that, but guilds found them essential. The role of engineer was the rarest in a guild. Mostly because being an engineer was intolerably boring for most players. Engineers had no outstanding combat skills. Well, apart from the ability to create replicators that could produce combat mechanisms to go into battle in the engineer’s place.
In my nerd days, when I leveled up as a Weaponsmith, I tried out the engineer’s path and abandoned it. Even I found it boring to build towns, research new types of buildings, solve infrastructure problems... When I crafted weapons, I could at least look forward to using them in battle. The engineer’s joy came from building a cool town with a flourishing and profitable economy. Then watching from a safe distance while an enemy guild destroys the town.
While I walked to the tower, two new players appeared on the square. They forgot all about reading their stats and gazed in amazement at the slaughter. One of them rushed to search the dead policemen. He was obviously a newbie. Dead cops didn’t have anything valuable except the occasional medkit, baton or a weapon that couldn’t be used by players until they themselves joined the police and unlocked their armory.
I kept expecting to see Vildana’s corpse, but I only found the remains of her axe scattered around the savaged body of a large police robot. A flashing light still span on its head, casting blue and red reflections on the slaughter.
Fresh police arrived on the square, but there was nobody left to catch. Vildana had gone to Rim One, where she doubtlessly continued her killing spree.
Time for me to go too. I took out my tablet and initiated the teleport. A map of Rim One opened up with four available teleport destinations: Liberty City, the Rim One Arena, the Swiftville zone and the town of Fortunagrad, the refuge of all players who liked to wallow in vice, drugs and everything they were missing in real life.
I chose Liberty City. It was a huge city, each district with its own respawn tower. But only two towers were available to me on the map. A local one almost at the center of the city, and the one closest to the key icon on 119th Street. I chose the second tower.
Are you sure you want to leave Rim Zero? All open quests will disappear. You remember that nobody can come back to Rim Zero, right?
Yeah, yeah. We’ll just forget about the fact that dozens of high-ranked Black Wave guild members somehow appeared there recently.
Finally! Everyone here was getting sick of you.
Time spent in Rim Zero: 62 hours and 34 minutes.
I pressed confirm again. The respawn tower grew in size, pulling me towards it. Then it folded into a spiral-like tunnel within which I first flew upwards, then began to fall. The tunnel ended and expanded back into the respawn tower. This time the one in Liberty City.
Magnificent skyscrapers stretched into a sky full of flying machines and zeppelins. I clicked my heels on the paving of the square. The sounds of a big city filled my ears.
* * *
Liberty City was a huge place, completely different from the provincial Town Zero. It was home to a multitude of players and millions of NPCs. It had thousands of zones of all kinds. From the skyscrapers of Luxor District, which was in itself a city within a city, located on an island, to the dirty slums of Stanton District. There were sometimes wars between gangs in the slums, and the police kept out of it, pretending as if nothing was happening. In the rich and clean districts, on the other hand, even carrying a weapon was considered disorderly conduct.
Suddenly I realized that I was experiencing the same feelings as I had long ago, when I first found myself there. I was eighteen years old and making my first foray into the virtual world through a taharration pod instead of a gyrosphere. I was stunned by the majesty and beauty of Liberty City. Even training in Rim Zero did nothing to temper the shock. The sheer scale of the city was overbearing, it made my head spin.
Just like the first time, I was at a loss. I wanted to just run over to the park and take a boat ride on the lake. Or just dive in. Or maybe go to one of the shopping malls? That’s right, I had money, I needed to spend it on upgrades! Or... ha-ha, how could I forget? I had to go to the Redlight Splash district! It had brothels, street bars, and I had enough money to order a whole orgy... I didn’t have to mention that it was the lack of fantastically amazing virtual sex that depressed me most of all in real life. It was the first thing I thought of when I recalled Adam Online.
But sex was something that could be earned, especially in Adam. Improve your appearance and you could attract female NPCs or players. Maybe I should just forget everything and go get high in some dive in Little Holland... Or...
Wait!
I slapped my face, causing my tablet to squawk immediately.
Damage taken: -1.
Why was I thinking about all these different districts? Why street bars and orgies? Get a grip, Leonarm. You’re not some noob. You just forgot how alluring it can be when a whole world of fun spreads out before you. You knew it would pull you in, make you forget about time and your mission. Months could go by in an endless frenzy of pleasure. Even running out of money wouldn’t stop it. There were always plenty of quests to earn more...
I hit myself again.
Some fancy-looking guy in a white frock coat and a top hat walked by. The gentleman wore rings full of precious stones on his fingers.
“Hitting yourself, are you?” he asked, raising his hat in a polite gesture. “Want some help? I can beat the living daylights out of you if you like.”
I still hadn’t recovered from the shock. “Get gone before I beat you,” I snapped at him without thinking.
The gentleman suddenly disappeared from view, revealing the respawn tower stretching infinitely into the sky. The morning sun lit up a gigantic zeppelin advertisement for Tenshot. Several jets streaked through the blue sky, leaving a white trail behind them. It was so calm, so peaceful.
Only the pain in my skull kept me from enjoying the peace. There were also animated stars spinning around my head. Looked like this gentleman was something of a joker. He’d added an Aftereffect to his punch.
The gentleman reappeared above me, blotting out the peaceful sky. “Now I’ll teach you how to talk to strangers,” he said, rolling up the sleeves of his white frock coat.
I raised my hand to shield myself from his strikes when I heard a policeman shout,
“Stop fighting at once, sir!”
The gentleman kicked me in the side and ran away. I saw the policeman: holding his cap, he darted off to chase after the combative gentleman.
I sat on the ground, took out my tablet and scratched my throbbing head.
Welcome to Liberty City, the citadel of freedom.
End of Book One
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About the Author
Max Lagno was born in the city of Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, where he graduated from the local art college as easel painter.
Max has been writing for as long as he could remember but he never showed his work to anyone until the age of 30 nor did he upload his stories to the Internet. His first two novels were regular mainstream fiction. It took Max some time to reinvent himself and his art in order to return to his roots: action-packed science fiction adventure.
His first experience with computer games dates back to his childhood in the 1980s. Karateka, Street Fighter and other such titles have shaped his first LitRPG novel, Level Up: The Knockout. He knows the world of 8-bit games like the palm of his hand, having developed a strong dislike for the old-school 2-bit games in favor of shooters or open-world games.
* * *
[1] Saxaul: a desert shrub common in Kazakhstan
[2] Taharration: from the Arabic word Tahara, the ritual cleansing of body and soul
[3] Grisha is a pet form of the Russian male name Grigory
[4] The Viatichi: a Dark-Age kingdom of Eastern Slavs, predecessors of the Russians
[5] Venyov Parish (now Venyovsky District): historically, the site of the legendary capital of the Viatichi’s medieval kingdom which was situated in the vicinity of the Russian town of Venyov.