The First Player (AlterGame Book #1) LitRPG Series

by Andrew Novak

  "Look, it's already getting dark," said Jack. "The day passed into evening unnoticed. Was it like that for you?"

  "It's getting dark? I didn't even notice the time! What's with Sartorius?"

  "We're meeting tomorrow night in a port on the Chand. Sartorius will make his way on horseback, but we'll have to go by foot. So, shall we leave Alterra?"

  "Yes, it's probably time already," Lisa nodded, with perceptible regret. "I even kinda... well, no, I hate to leave. It's nice playing with you. We're going to find an exit point? Then we'll need to go back to the road."

  And they turned toward the road. After the army passed, it was deserted. Before long, they reached a chapel where they could exit Alterra.

  As Jack and Lisa approached, the door swung open, and players tumbled out toward them. The same guild name appeared in the stats of all of them: Twilight. It seemed that this is where players who preferred to play later in the evening gathered and worked in unison. They left the game together so they could enter at the same time and in the same place.

  Jack backed up, clearing the way for the nighttime gamers. They were probably going to war with the necromancers, he thought. Warriors, mages, healers... Men and women left the chapel, stretched, exchanged greetings, adjusted their gear – that is, they moved the symbols around in the slots that visually displayed how the different items appeared in their hands or on their belts.

  More and more Twilight players flowed from the chapel. One dozen, two... It was getting crowded on the road. Jack was about to suggest that they go farther down the road until they found another chapel. Or until all these night owls were gone...

  And then one of those just entering Alterra roared:

  "Look! It's her! It's the one they're offering a thousand gold for!"

  Chapter Twelve. Double Count

  ELOISE DIDN'T have time to think about what would come of her popularity, at night, on a deserted road, but Jack didn't give her time to think. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the bushes.

  "Where's the 'wipe'?" he whispered. "I bought it for you!"

  "I used some of them, but I was trying to save them. They're expensive! One of them just ended and I still haven't put another on!"

  They were already fleeing, followed by the crowd of Twilights. Shouts came from behind:

  "Over here, hurry!"

  "Hey, does anyone see them?"

  "Where do we go?"

  One thing that Alterra undeniably excelled at over reality was that here, you could run without losing your breath and still be able to talk.

  "Why are we running?" Eloise asked.

  "Because there are a lot of them! Did you see how many poured out of that chapel? And how many more might there be? They just kept coming and coming!"

  "But we could just jump out of Alterra. Yeah, they'll fine us five gold. We'll survive."

  "And where will we respawn? In the same chapel, along with the Twilights? That situation would be no better and we'd just waste time. Better to just escape."

  "Maybe we can take these guys? I could show 'em."

  "You will," Jack promised. "The greedy bastards need to be punished."

  Since they had rushed off right away, they managed to break away from their pursuers. Now the Twilights were scouring the forest and calling to each other in the darkness. Nights in Alterra were such that visibility wasn't bad, but just not in the forest. To be sure their pursuers had fallen back, Jack stopped.

  "Stop! Take cover behind a tree and be ready. Now we're going to need your necromancy skill."

  "For what?"

  "When we have fresh corpses, raise one. Make it stand here and tell anyone who comes close that we ran that way. Got it?"

  Eloise's unnaturally white face shone in the darkness, so he would have to carry out the first part of his plan on his own. Jack withdrew Shadow of the King, crouched down, and held the weapon in front of his body. The darkness emanating from the blade actually helped to conceal him. So when a trio of Twilights emerged from the darkness, he took care of them with a couple of strokes of the sword. They didn't have time to utter a sound.

  Another, larger group was already breaking through the thickets and Jack began to doubt his idea would even work. But Eloise handled it perfectly. She popped out from behind the tree, it seemed, even before the dead pursuers hit the ground. Selecting one, she made some complicated pass with her hands over the body and the player, instead of fading into the darkness as was expected of a good corpse, it slowly, as if straining, stood up.

  To his fellow guild members, he gestured with his hand:

  "That way, they ran that way! I... I dropped my dagger here! Now..."

  Eloise, controlling the dead man, didn't even have to finish the sentence. Howling joyfully, the Twilights rushed off in pursuit. Jack jumped out of the darkness behind them, engaged Dash, caught up with them and started hitting them from behind. During the fighting, a new group of Twilights hurrying toward the cries found him. But Eloise met them with a cone of green flame.

  The rod she had stolen from Ruger turned out to be a powerful weapon. In addition to the fact that the stream of radiance was deadly, it made the dying players scream in pain. Jack, wielding the black sword, didn't have much time to think but still, somewhere at the edge of his consciousness, the thought that this was a perk of playing a necromancer. Their weapons caused suffering. Alterra generally removed the most painful sensations, but not in this case. In truth, only players with very specific tendencies played necromancers.

  Jack lost count of the number of players felled by Shadow of the King and the green flame. It seemed like they would never end. The howl of dying Twilights attracted more and more groups. At first they had been scattered throughout the forest, but now they hurried toward the sound.

  After fending off another attack, Jack retreated and gulped down some elixirs. He tried to protect Eloise, who had a smaller reserve of hit points, so he took some damage himself. He had hoped that the pursuers had wandered off too far in the woods, but now they were converging again in one place.

  "There's some kind of wall behind us," Eloise informed him when they managed to finish off a new wave of attackers. "Let's move back there?"

  Jack turned and ran. Behind him, the Twilights stomped and shouted. The fugitives ran to the wall and turned to run along it, looking for an entrance. There it was – a gateway stripped of its half-doors. It appeared to be ruins of some kind.

  They ran into the walled-in space. Definitely ruins. The light from Shadris outlined the uneven, broken silhouette of the walls and empty window openings. It was dark here. Almost as dark as inside the forest. And then at the base of the walls, two little lights appeared. Then another pair, and another, and another. The creatures were small, judging from the height of their eyes. But there were a bunch of them.

  Jack mentally cursed. They had fallen into some kind of dungeon. But he didn't have time to scold himself because the Twilights had arrived. Pushing Eloise out of the way, he moved so that neither the gate, beyond which he could hear their pursuers were shouting, nor the new threat would be at his back

  A player peeked in the gate and looked around. But the creatures with luminous eyes surged from the ruins into the yard. Jack brought his sword up but remained where he was, recognizing the raspy voices of goblins. The throng of tiny creatures flew past him.

  Lines ran under his field of view, displaying translations of goblin speech:

  "The Dark Servant, protect, protect, protect..."

  "Eloise, wait," he said in a low voice to the girl, who was trying to lean out from behind his shoulder, brandishing the rod.

  "They're goblins," she whispered.

  "They're on our side. You'll see for yourself, just don't get involved."

  The goblins at the gate were attacking the Twilights. Sparks of magical fire flashed, weapons glistened, and players cried out. More and more of the beasts rushed from the ruins, and the Twilights retreated.

  Attention! You have sl
ain more than ten opponents in battle.

  You receive +1 XP.

  You have 43 XP.

  Earn 7 XP to unlock new skills.

  Attention! You have received a total of 10 XP while performing Service to the Dark quests.

  You have gained the first Dark Ability: Leader.

  You have the ability to form a party of five dark units and control them. Continue to perform quests for the Service to the Dark and receive Dark Abilities for every 10 XP. Earn 10 XP to unlock a new Dark Skill.

  Powerful! thought Jack. Did that mean that now for every ten points of experience there would be two skills instead of one? That was power, make no mistake. He paraphrased the information messages for Lisa and she was delighted. She rejoiced in everything Jack did, and his heart somehow became strangely warmer. It was an unusual sensation.

  Meanwhile, the goblins, having driven the Twilights away, had returned to the ruins and circled Jack and Lisa. Everywhere they looked were pairs of dimly glowing, green eyes.

  A line of translation ran in front of Jack's eyes:

  "Dark Servant, Dark Servant, help our brothers."

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Our brothers, five of our brothers! They found a box in the dungeon. A strange box, a beautiful box! Not seen one like it before, never! They started to open it, something clicked, and our five brothers were inside!"

  "What do you mean, inside?"

  "Inside the box, the strange box, beautiful box! We can't open! Help us!"

  Attention! You receive the quest "Open the box".

  Reward: 5 goblins

  Accept/Reject

  Ah, the game had promised Jack a group of five dark units as a reward for the XP collected in Service to the Dark. Surely this was it.

  "Give me your box," Jack held out his hand.

  One of the goblins approached and placed the carved box into his palm. No keyhole. Jack couldn't even see the gap between the lid and sides, no matter how many times he turned the thing in front of his eyes. It looked like a solid piece of carved bone. Jack slid his finger along the carved lines.

  The recesses and hollows on this thing formed an intricate pattern. In the center of the lid was a goblin face with its tongue sticking out. Around it were grooves, along which slid tiny square tiles marked with strange icons. These squares could be moved, changing their places, to arrange them in a different order. So Jack tried it. As soon as the tiles with the icons moved under his fingers, the game delighted him with a prompt:

  Form the word "service" in the ancient goblin language.

  Jack scratched his head. Seemed that the goblins had written language. He pushed the tiles along the grooves. Changed the places of a few pieces. Nothing happened. There were twelve letters here and four free cells under the face. It seemed to be a four-letter word, but Jack didn't even know whether the whole goblin alphabet was represented in the puzzle. Not to mention what the sounds of the letters were. A puzzle...

  Unable to think of anything, he called up Egghead in chat. Fortunately, he was in the game and within reach.

  Oh, hello, he responded. Haven't heard from you in a while. Did you escape from Maxitor? You're with Eloise now? The one everyone's looking for?

  Jack immediately took the bull by the horns:

  I need a specialist's advice. How do you spell the word 'service' in the goblin language?

  Do the goblins have a language? And writing?

  That tells me that you don't know the answer.

  I don't know it yet. But I have somewhere to look. Why do you need this word?

  Jack briefly described the puzzle and added that he had received it as a reward in a quest.

  I've never seen such boxes, Egghead was clearly interested. What's in it?

  This already sounded like haggling. Jack perked up. If Egghead named his price, then he had goods to offer. The answer to the puzzle.

  I'll tell you as soon as I can get it open. So far, I have only the box and the task to form the word 'service'.

  Five minutes passed before Egghead replied.

  Here's the deal. The goblins served Azeroth, as the game legends go. The word 'service' was written on their banners and I have a picture. The first letter looks like an oblique cross, crossed in the middle by a squiggle. You do remember that you promised to tell me about the contents of the box? And where you found it?

  Jack found a symbol that fit the description and put it in the first free cell. The box gently shivered. Whoa! Now we were getting somewhere. Then he brought up the map of Alterra, located the coordinates and sent them to Egghead.

  Found it here. Tell me what the second letter looks like...

  For the second reply, he had to answer Egghead's question, How did you get there? For the third letter, he had to describe in detail the exterior of the box... When all four cells were filled, a rounded knob popped out under Jack's left hand, which was holding the box. Not on the lid, but on the side that Jack thought was the bottom. When Jack pressed it, the box shuddered in his hands, something clicked, a light blinked, and the number of goblins standing before Jack and Lisa grew. Naturally, it grew by exactly five heads.

  The newcomers began to chirp, which the lines of running text translated as exuberant gratitude. The five brothers solemnly declared that they were henceforth the faithful servants to the Dark Servant and were ready to travel with him in the crowded, uncomfortable box.

  You have a party of five dark units at your disposal. Level and pet abilities will grow proportionally with your experience. Pets must be regularly fed and released from the box. A scroll with detailed instructions has been placed in your inventory.

  Life wasn't fair, thought Jack. The alpha Sartorius got an amazing blonde housekeeper, and he got goblins. Until yesterday, before meeting Lisa, Jack would have felt sorry for himself. But now, not so much. Let him have goblins. They had already rescued him more than once, so it would be useful to have them at hand.

  The only thing left to sort out was how to squeeze the five of them back into their prison. After a little experimenting, it worked. But Jack immediately released the five, bidding them to romp around for a while before the road.

  Then Jack sent a message to Egghead.

  There were five goblins in the box. How do you like your reward?

  The goblins were enthralled by Lisa. Rather, not the goblins themselves, but those sworn to Jack.

  "This is all great, of course, but how are we going to exit the game?" he began to wonder out loud. "We can't go back to that chapel. And we'd have to go along the road to find another, if there's a new one to find.”

  "Why can't we go back?" Lisa asked, surprised.

  "That's most likely the rez point for the Twilights. Imagine how pleased they'll be to see us again."

  "Yeah, that's true. The chapel is off limits. Maybe, to hell with it and let’s just give up five gold for the fine?"

  The goblins, all of them, were still lingering and were listening to the conversation. They turned their heads in puzzlement as to who would speak next. Then one of them stepped forward and hesitantly broke in.

  "Dark Servant, this way, this way!"

  The goblin backed away, pointing with its paw into the darkness and clearly asking them to follow him. The others nodded sweetly and grinned. Jack went a dozen steps, turned a corner and saw a strip of dim light shining through a partially opened door. This place, where they fought the last skirmish with the Twilights, was the ruins of a large castle or a small town. And among the buildings there was a chapel with a rounded cupola. A fully-functional exit point from Alterra, judging by the oil lamp burning inside. It could be assumed that these ruins were a quest location, but Jack and Lisa only needed the exit point right now.

  After a day out in Alterra, with its bright colors and noisy events, real life seemed dull and gray, but Jack and Lisa were alone together. And reality for them was almost as rich and beautiful as the game. A little better, even.

  Jack woke to a knock on the door. He s
lid his hand under the pillow and felt for the grip of the revolver. Lisa sat up in the bed and yawned. An amazingly careless creature, thought Jack. Lisa was being hunted by defenders and she absolutely did not worry when someone came knocking at the door.

  It looked like her faith in Jack was limitless. She thought nothing could happen to her while Jack was near. Though, if it were the defenders, they wouldn't have knocked. They would have kicked in the door. Jack threw his cloak on, shoved the revolver into a pocket, and went to open the door. Carl was standing on his doorstep.

  "Peter sent me," the burly man explained. "He said, 'Don't write to him about what happened the other day in the Shell. Nothing important by mail.'"

  "Got it," Jack nodded. "What, was there some kind of fuss?"

  "The opposite. No fuss, nothing. That defender raid was unofficial. They weren't given the order, so there won't be any fuss. That means, don't get comfortable. If there was one unofficial raid, then there may be others."

  "Got that, too. Listen, Carl, why did Peter send you?”

  "Because I'm big and dumb, so I won't say too much," Jack saw a smile for the second time on Carl's grim face. "Questioning me is useless. But you understand everything, right?"

  "I understand very well everything you didn't say out loud. Tell Shifty that I appreciate his concern."

  Then Jack ordered Lisa to stay put and went to buy something to eat. He had enough money and he was going to stock up on all the necessities, so they could travel the Chand without distraction.

  When he returned, he found that Lisa had managed to tidy his hovel and not ruin anything. Jack couldn't stand when his stuff wasn't where he tossed it.

  However, by some miracle, his guest had collected and laid out his equipment and trophies from the Wasteland so that it wasn't in the way. Necromancer magic, no doubt. He also realized that she, like him, couldn't wait to play. All right, then! And then she started talking some nonsense – leave this place forever, and thus leave Alterra... Well, he'd have to come up with something. But it was time to dive into virt. The goblins were tired of waiting.