The First Player (AlterGame Book #1) LitRPG Series

by Andrew Novak

  Lisa forced him to see a doctor. A real, educated doctor had settled in the Cluster called Greenpoint. He was an alpha, but for some reason, had moved away from New Atruim to treat omegas. Sven went to him and the doctor told him the name of a medication that would help. Not a cure, but at least it would manage the symptoms. It was a hellish word that Sven couldn't pronounce and the doctor wrote it down on a piece of paper. But what good was the word if they couldn't get the medicine? Lisa looked everywhere, and someone connected with smugglers said they could help. But the price!

  At sixteen, she joined Alterra. But what could a girl without connections or patrons earn? She began working as a laborer on an NPC farmstead, tried to work as a laundress, raised her Herbalist skill...

  Once, in a small town where she collected forest herbs, she fell victim to a raid from Nightmare. The necromancers occasionally invaded Maxitor and organized cheerful entertainment to soothe their souls – which meant killing anyone they could get their hands on. It was considered especially cool to raise fresh corpses before they had begun to melt and shift to the rez point. High-level necromancers could take control of someone else's character for a short time, and then they would have contests to see who could make a zombie do more outlandish and disgusting things.

  At that point, Lisa had just passed the tenth-level mark, with quite a bit of difficulty, and gotten her first skill – Healing. She was horrified: now they would send her to respawn and take experience away for the death. Then bye-bye skill... But something else happened. She caught the attention of Ruger, who was commanding the raiders. Something about Lisa's in-game appearance interested the necromancer. He even condescended to ask why she played an Areut. She blurted out – from fear, probably – that it was none of his business. It should have been irrelevant for the necromancer, as the dead from all the races came out the same.

  Ruger liked this. He asked what she wanted for serving in his castle. Lisa had had only one thing in mind: the medication with a terrible name, and Ruger promised it without hesitation. He said he would arrange for delivery himself, that she wouldn't have to worry. They would bring it directly to their trailer.

  She left with the marauders to the despotic Nightmare and began her service in the castle of Ruger Eckerhart.

  He paid for corrections to Lisa's character appearance, so she got the strange matte, white skin and long, thick hair. The real Lisa had her hair cut short, and after the prodding with the defender's electroshocker, it was sticking out in all directions in untidy tufts.

  She was scared to even imagine how many panbucks went toward her new guise. Changes to in-game appearance in Alterra was a terribly expensive treat. Ruger Eckerhart had paid for everything, no hesitation. He was an alpha. What else was there to say? When it came to satisfying his whims, money was of no consequence. He went in for any expense without a second thought. That is, he generally didn't think. That's how he remade Eloise the way he liked.

  During the time she was free from her duties, Lisa studied the dark arts of necromancy, but this wasn't what her master required from her. Her primary duty was to participate in rituals that the master arranged for himself, his friends, and sometimes for the Despot. As a rule, the rituals ended with Lisa's death, each time in a new and especially sophisticated manner. That was her job – to serve as a victim.

  Experience points were taken for the death. For a successfully completed ritual, a few were gained, but not many, because the role of sacrifice was considered secondary. When Ruger did not require her services, Lisa studied the necromancers' arts twice as diligently, again and again mastering spells. In the end, her level didn't just decrease, but slowly grew.

  If it weren't for the constant deaths, service under Ruger would have been quite bearable, at least because he didn't require anything besides work. However, the dying was unpleasant, and occasionally actually painful. And for some ritual executions, she was required to undress.

  "At first, I dreaded that Ruger would sooner or later want me to... well, you know?" Lisa stared at Jack with her huge eyes, and he hurriedly assured the girl that he understood. "But no, nothing like that. He only liked killing. I often wondered why he needs it. Maybe he's really a freak or crippled? And he can't get anywhere with women? Once, he mentioned that he would only calm down when he'd killed as many players in Alterra as he'd killed in real life. I was afraid to ask who he is."

  "Good call," nodded Jack. "No need to ask about such things. Well, how did you dare steal the Corrupted Book from him?"

  Lisa turned away and said quietly:

  "Sven died a week ago. I don't need the medication anymore."

  Jack at a loss. He should say something... but what? People died all the time in the ghetto. In the Blighted Wasteland, it was commonplace. Jack simply didn't know what to say to console her. He'd always been a loner and had never lost a loved one. Therefore he didn't say anything, just pressed the girl to himself tighter. She readily leaned against his shoulder. Then she started to sniffle. Jack finally began to feel embarrassed and hurried to continue the conversation:

  "So, you stole the book, ran away from Ruger's castle to Maxitown, and found a man who was willing to fork over a decent amount for such a rarity?"

  "Uh-huh," sighed Lisa. "I arranged it with Sartorius in advance."

  He wiped her nose with her dirty fist and looked at Jack.

  "Actually, I was going to give that money to you."

  "Great! I've got nothing against that. So what do you need a Walker for?"

  Lisa was silent, and then very seriously said:

  "To get away from here. I was going to hire a Walker, the best, and everyone named you. Everyone I asked. They gave me a few names, but everyone said unanimously that only you could be trusted. Jack the Tramp never disappointed and always kept his word."

  She added seriously,

  "What you just did – that was a very good confirmation. I know this for certain: no other omega would have done something like that. No one would've dared to fight defenders for me."

  "Well..." Jack was slightly embarrassed, which happened infrequently. "I did it for the Corrupted Book."

  "You don't even believe in it!" Lisa retorted.

  "I don't believe," Jack sighed. "But I haven't figured out where I'm supposed to take you in the Blighted Wasteland?"

  "Not 'in' – 'through'," the girl corrected. "I wanted you to take me through the Wasteland to the other side."

  "Even more fun! To what other side? There's nothing beyond the Blighted Wasteland. They stretch... well, how to say this? In short, nobody's ever crossed them. It's impossible."

  "How? How can it be impossible..."

  Jack saw that she was confused and began to explain:

  "Listen, I don't know where you got the idea that there is another land beyond the Blighted Wasteland. There's nothing. Nobody's ever been there. The Blighted Wasteland is just that – the further you go, the more dangerous it is, and you find animals of all sorts, and diseases. The air out there is poisonous or something. You simply can't survive out there. You just wait to cry, ah? It's not so bad. You have money, you'll live. Two thousand gold. You can convert it to panbucks. It'll last you a while. Do the quests with me and Sartorius. We have something big in the works. Raise your level, unlock skills, and then I'll take you on a journey. I've dreamt for a long time about going somewhere. Just in Alterra, not in real life. We're locked in here in reality. The ocean on one side, by the Wasteland on the other. There's nowhere to go. But Alterra is huge, boundless. It's beautiful, there... hey, hold on! "

  Jack only just realized what Lisa's decision meant.

  "You're, what, going to go away from New Atrium? But Alterra is only here. There's no connection deep in the Wasteland. How can you give it up? Real life – it only happens there."

  Lisa was silent. She had already thought better of crying, but was sitting motionless and gazing at the concave concrete wall of their shelter.

  "Sven said... he always told me: we would
earn money to buy supplies and hire an experienced guide, and then leave. He promised me for many years. I believed him, and that means that he just... just knew he was going to die and wouldn't have to keep his promise. He lied to me, so I wouldn't lose hope. He lied, promised me for so many years... You're telling me that Alterra is real life? For you, maybe. But I died seventeen times. For me, that game was death, not life."

  "You'll see that you're wrong. When we go to do the quests for the Service to the Dark...”

  "Sven lied to me, and now you?"

  "Well, there now!" Jack peeked out from the shelter.

  The airship couldn't be heard, the rats were rustling in their labyrinth below, and a couple were even darting around in the open. Which meant the rats didn't smell danger. They could leave. Especially since it was already growing dark.

  "Let's go, everything's calmed down. Now, I'm not going to persuade you. We're just going to go to my place now, and I'll give you a console. I just got a spare. We'll enter the game together, read the Corrupted Book, get the new quest and complete it. Well, and we'll see what to do from there."

  The spare console had come in handy, but a different problem arose – Lisa didn't have anything to change into. He could fit three girls of Lisa's size into any one of his shirts. Still, she chose something and, after changing, looked like a solid heap of clothes. They somehow settled in next to his cot and simultaneously entered the game.

  Sartorius was there. He was burning with impatience – the draft of the guild Charter was ready! Of course, he didn't spend today fighting with defenders and hiding in landfill. The whole day for him had been a long, painful wait. The mage wanted to get right down to business and he definitely demonstrated his impatience while Jack was reading the long document. When he finished, Sartorius asked jealously,

  "Well, does it sound good? Or are there some flaws?"

  "The main flaw is that it's too long," Eloise declared.

  But Jack saw that the alpha had done excellent work. All the tiniest details were taken into account, possible issues explained in advance. Was it long? Yes, very. Jack himself didn't have the patience to go over so many items and paragraphs. But on the other hand, it would pay off if unforeseen circumstances suddenly arose.

  When the agreement was signed by all the participants, they assigned positions. Sartorius, as promised, became the Master. Jack, of course, was the Deputy. The third rank in the guild was called Officer, which went to Lisa. She took the great honor with complete indifference. In this case, as the girl noted, there was no difference between an Officer and a Member. If there had been Members, then it would be another thing...

  "There will be!" Jack promised confidently, retrieving the Tear from his inventory. "And now, let's get down to it."

  Sartorius handed him the Corrupted Book, and Jack began to read. Looking at the page through the Tear was awkward at first, then he adjusted. And the ancient history of Alterra began to unfold before him. Only at first did it feel like that this was the fabrication of the writers, some people who wrote their legends before the Gendemic, and who were now all long dead. The story had already captured him by the second page and Jack was involuntarily carried away, as if he were rediscovering his own history. As though he really were a descendant of a conqueror who overtook Stoglav with a sword in his hand. After the Gendemic, the real world was stripped of its own history, but Alterra's fictional history was even better than the real one.

  Bacchus told about how the war between dragons and demons went on with varying degrees of success. He casually mentioned geographical names and names of generals, and to Jack it seemed as if he had known all of it, but just forgot, and now was remembering with pleasure. Still, Alterra was an ingenious invention.

  He drew in and absorbed the details of the ancient war, and the battles between the demons and dragons began to appear even more real than his own fights in his youth with the kids from Queens and Brooklyn.

  The demons of Azeroth led the barbarian war tribes, their devotees, into war. The names of the tribes were familiar to Jack from quests. According to game legend, these savages, NPCs still lived on Stoglav and worship their gods, who were actually demons, the subjects of Azeroth. The demons fell in that long war, but the NPCs still worshiped the idols that depicted them. You could get quests in Svetlograd in which you demolish the savages' pagan shrines and destroy a statue of a demon.

  Demon worshipers, Bacchus wrote, were so many, that the dragons suffered defeat after defeat. Their nests were ruined, more and more territories were subordinated to Azeroth. But the Dragon God, the father and ruler of the dragon tribe, led the Areut people, the sea nomads, to assist.

  The Areuts left their boats and became dragon riders. This union strengthened both, and so now the army of the Dragon God pressed the savage demon worshipers. From there, Bacchus began writing in more detail because his time had come to play his part in history.

  His Majesty Azeroth, my mighty ruler, called me and ordered me to build a ship, to which no equal had been seen in Alterra.

  "Bacchus, my servant," said the King, "build me a ship that will carry me like the wind to Gaerthon. I plan to give my winged enemy a great battle, the last battle! The troops under my command are already converging on the field, and the dragons are gathering their strength"

  "That's it!" Sartorius cried out excitedly, unable to restrain himself. "I've been waiting for this for so many years. The opportunity to get to Gaerthon, to the keys of the Great Mysteries! A ship, flying like the wind, I had been hoping to find something like this! But read, Jack, read! You'll see, Bacchus built this ship. We just have to find it. Read! It'll certainly say next how to find Bacchus's ship."

  Jack shook his head. It was funny how Sartorius was coming undone. And he continued:

  "I will not suffer defeat," the King told me. "If my army overcomes the Dragon God, I will forever be the lord of Stoglav, and no one will threaten my rule. If my army is defeated, then I will make it so that my enemy will never rule the continent. I will fly across the ocean to Gaerthon and, when I appear before my light half, all of creation will collapse."

  "What light half?" Eloise asked. "What the hell? Creation... what will be destroyed?"

  Jack also did not understand what "light half" meant. He continued to read:

  "Light and darkness cannot converge, and if they are forced, Alterra will convulse and perish. Either I will be the victor, or the world will die! Why exist in a world in which I am not victorious?"

  He stopped reading for a second and glanced at Sartorius. He was sitting, tense, in an uncomfortable position. And was all ears. Well, it was clear. Those mind games that he had told about were the meaning behind the old version of Alterra. Light and darkness, the foundations of the universe... really, who in the modern world could worry about such trifles? Now, people – omegas, at least – were concerned with much more important problems. For example, where to get the next batch of dope.

  "A faithful servant to my King, I went to the coast, to the Castle Dagon, where I began building the ship. So that the enemy did not interfere with my work, I covered Castle Dagon with great and terrible spells. No one could enter or even discover the secret shipyard.

  Using the great powers of magic, taught to me by the King, I built a schooner capable of reaching Gaerthon, my homeland, abandoned forever to the service of the greatest of the greatest. I sacrificed one thousand captive Areuts, performing dark and terrible rituals. The souls of the people who gave their lives on the black altar fed the schooner, ran through it from the keel to the top of the mast. The helm and sails of the schooner were filled with the power of the dead. Now my creation was able to soar like the wind and obey the captain, like an obedient slave.

  Meanwhile, King Azeroth sent his army against the Dragon God and his minions. He himself remained in his capital, beautiful and black, like the night sky. A terrible Necroportal was positioned in the King's palace, capable of delivering him directly to Dagon, where my schooner was waitin
g. It remained only to wait for the outcome of the great battle.

  But the cunning Dragon God pounced from the sky on the capital of my King. When the battle waged between the dragons and demons, while thousands and thousands of soldiers were killing one another, he attacked the greatest of overlords. The Dragon God destroyed the capital and again ascended into the sky, leaving no survivors in the black city. And there was no one to tell about how Azeroth faced the Dragon God. My great King disappeared. No one saw him after the Dragon God attacked the capital. There was no one to climb aboard the schooner, and my work was in vain. I have nothing more to live for, and I will not stay in this world longer than necessary to write this book. Know this, descendant, know about this great feat of Bacchus, the faithful servant to the King of Demons, Azeroth.

  Jack set the Corrupted Book aside, and immediately lines of information messages crawled across his vision, obscuring it.

  Attention! Quest progression in "Service to the Dark".

  Enter the ruined capital of King Azeroth. Find the terrible Necroportal connecting the palace of Azeroth to the castle of Dagon.

  Attention! You are the first player to read the Corrupted Book of Bacchus.