Chapter One
I was so excited I could hardly breathe. As the shuttle pulled to a stop outside FuzeTek, I couldn’t help but think how smooth the tracks were here. Back in Grosthorne Section 8 the grids were so ill-maintained that the shuttles groaned as they lumbered into their stops. I guessed that the city officials didn’t want to spend money on the upkeep of the poor sectors. FuzeTek’s headquarters were in the middle of the tech district, and things were different here.
As excited as I was, I couldn’t help feeling that a shadow hung over me. I thought about the tests I’d taken the day before, and I got a feeling of anxiety in my stomach. My dad put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Try not to think about the JQ tests,” he said.
I nodded. “I know, but I can’t help feeling I flunked them.”
“It’s your birthday, Eric. You’re twenty-one. Try to forget about it for today. You’re a Templeton, and Templetons don’t brood on things they can’t change.”
That was easy for him to say. The day before, I’d taken the Job Qualification tests. These weren’t just meaningless exams. The JQ tests were used to measure your intelligence and job aptitude, and the state used your scores to allocate you a career. If you did well you were okay; you’d become a doctor or a professor. Somebody with prospects. Do badly, and you were sentenced to a life of menial labour where your prospects were slim. I had screwed them up, and that meant two things. One, I would shortly be enrolled into the army for a couple of years of national service. Two, after that I’d begin a career that payed little and had nowhere to climb.
I guess that I shouldn’t have expected more. The Templeton family had always been a poor one. My mum had scored in the lower percentile on her JQ tests, and as such she’d worked as a waitress all her life. Not that there was anything wrong with that, because every job had value. It just meant that she’d never earn more than minimum wage.
My dad was different. He was the most intelligent person I knew, which made it strange that at twenty-one, he’d also flunked his JQ tests. He’d been a hospital porter all his life, and he’d always been bitter about it. He always insisted that something had happened to his test results. He knew that he’d aced them, but the when the scores came back, he was well below average.
“They switched my scores,” he always used to say. “There was some mix-up in the office, and they switched my scores with someone else’s.”
The state wasn’t above administrative mistakes, and it was clear to everyone how clever Dad was. The problem was that if you wanted to retake the tests you had to pay CR-15,000, which was well beyond his means.
It was a crooked system. Everyone knew it. If you were rich, it didn’t matter how poor your JQ scores were because you could just pay CR-250,000 and then pick whatever profession you liked. For poor families like mine, your only hope at changing your destiny was to earn your fortune in Re:Fuze.
We got off the shuttle and walked toward the FuzeTek building. As we went through the automatic doors I couldn’t help feeling butterflies in my stomach. This was it. My dream was going to come true. As we stepped inside the office, I heard a voice come from a speaker above me.
‘Re:Fuze began as an educational tool. The total immersion game was soon adopted by the military and after that, the world saw its true value. Re:Fuze spread worldwide, and its in-game economy soon became bigger than the one outside of it.’
I already knew that. The government invested a lot into Re:Fuze, and they reaped more than their fair share of rewards. Money earned in the game was taxed by the state, and the proceeds were used to expand the army, fuel businesses, and to make the nation great. Pity none of it filtered down to the likes of my family. Over the decades Re:Fuze had become so important that when someone was in-game, they were given a pardon on their national service and their career designation was put on hold until their time in the game ended.
I wondered where Thomas was right now. My older brother had joined the game three years earlier, and none of us had seen him since. I hoped that he was doing well and making lots of CR in Re:Fuze, but I also couldn’t help asking myself why he’d never sent money back home. Players could stay in their game cocoons for up to a year at a time, after which they had to take a rest for two weeks. If he was still playing, why hadn’t he bothered to get in touch with us? Part of me missed my brother, but a larger part was angry at him. Mad that he’d never tried to contact us, angry that he’d never sent any CR back to my parents.
The office had a reception desk and a bank of chairs. Beyond them was a steel door with a sign on it that read ‘No unauthorised entry’. The room smelled of bleach as if it had just been cleaned. We sat down in the reception area and waited for someone to call us. As the minutes ticked by I felt my stomach turn to water. I looked at my parents. My mum had a magazine in front of her, and she scanned each page intently. My dad sat with his legs crossed, and he impatiently drummed his fingers on his thigh.
I couldn’t help but feel guilty. Just like they had with Thomas, my parents had spent years saving up so that I could play Re:Fuze. I knew that my mum had done it because it was something I’d always wanted. My dad’s reasons were different. He knew about the riches you could earn in the game if you were good at it, and he saw my entry into it as an investment. I just hoped I could repay him. I hoped I could go in-game, level up, and earn enough CR to set us up for life. The weight of expectation was so heavy I could feel it on my shoulders already.
Across the room there was a hissing sound, and then the steel doors opened. A man stepped through them. He wore a white lab coat, and his hair was tied back tightly into a pony tail. He stopped, looked around the room, and then saw me.
“Eric Templeton?” he said.
I tried to speak, but I was so nervous my throat felt like it had closed. Instead I just nodded.
“Come this way,” he said, and beckoned me with his finger.
We followed him through the steel doors and into the heart of the FuzeTek building. It was a labyrinth of pure white coloured walls and cold floors that made our footsteps echo. As we followed him through the maze he spoke to us without turning to look.
“You’ll start in Blundow,” he said. “That’s where all the newbies spawn. There’s no PK-ing in Blundow, so don’t worry about that. Yet.”
“PK-ing?” said mum, with confusion in her voice.
“Player-Killing,” said the techie. “Other players can’t kill you in Blundow. It’s necessary, because in Re:Fuze, all death is permanent. If a player kills you, you’re gone. If a dragon spawn incinerates you, it’s game over. Bye bye character, bye bye all those lovely CRs you saved up to buy your login.”
He led us to the end of a corridor and opened a door. When we stepped inside, I gasped. It was a large room filled with oval-shaped cocoons. They had monitors in front of them, and clear tubes fastened into holes on the side. A milky-white liquid flowed through one tube into the cocoon, and a brown liquid flowed out through another. On the monitors I saw lines of text. I glanced at one of them.
Name: Balrog878
Class: Warrior
Level: 16
There were over fifty cocoons in total, all with monitors displaying the character names of the people inside them. All of a sudden a red beacon lit above one cocoon. A siren rang out, and a monitor flashed red.
“We’ve got a death,” shouted a technician. Pens rattled in the pocket of his lab coat as he ran across the room.
A few more technicians ran over to the cocoon and waited. There was a hissing sound, and the cocoon slowly started to
open. When it opened fully, a large man with long brown hair stumbled out. He fell onto the floor and vomited.
“Ignore him,” said the techie. “He died at level four, somehow. Hopefully that won’t happen to you.”
The large man pushed himself up off the floor. His eyes were dazed, and he blinked as he looked around the room. The realisation of his character’s death seemed to hit him, and his face drained of colour.
“Let me back in,” he said. “It was a mistake. I cast a healing spell but it didn’t work, for some reason. You’ve got to let me back in.”
A female technician shook her head. “No refunds, no re-entry,” she said.
“But I spent my last CR getting in here. Please, you’ve got to let me go back.”
The techie put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me forward. “Your cocoon’s over here,” he said.
We crossed the room until we stood in front of a cocoon. This one was open. The inside was dark and made of plastic, and a musty smell came from it. The tech faced me.
“You’ll need to join a guild by level 5,” he said. “You have to leave Blundow at level 5, and then you’ll go onto the main map. Player killing is allowed on all areas on the map, so you won’t survive without being in a guild.”
“Why does being in a guild help?” asked Dad.
The techie gave a patronising smile. “The four guilds hate each other, but after the Great War, they have a treaty. The pact says that guild members won’t attack each other without an official battle or without provocation. Lone wanders have no such protective treaties.”
I stood and looked at the cocoon. I had spent so long fantasising about this but stood there, ready to play, I realised I was scared. What if I played poorly? What if I couldn’t earn enough CR in-game? What would my dad think?
“Come on, Eric,” said the techie. “I’ve got another five entries to manage this morning.”
With shaky legs I climbed into the cocoon. I stepped inside and leaned back against the casing. It felt dark inside, even though it wasn’t closed yet. A pair of goggles dropped down from the ceiling.
“Open wide,” said the techie.
I opened my mouth, and a tube shot out of the side of the cocoon and went into my mouth and straight down my throat. I felt my gag reflex activate and wanted to retch, but I fought against the feeling. Metal clamps suddenly snapped down on my arms and legs and held me in place. I felt liquid pour from the tube and into my throat, and I felt like I couldn’t swallow it. I was drowning. I was going to die.
I started to feel light-headed. I struggled to breathe, but as the faintness took over, I stopped fighting. A pleasant, warm feeling started to swim through me, and it gave way to euphoria. Suddenly it was like I was on a beach with my eyes closed while sun beat down on my face. I felt the goggles clamp over my eyes. As my vision started to fade, I heard a voice somewhere beyond me. It was my dad’s.
“Bring us back CR,” he said, his voice growing quieter. “Do it for the family.”
There was a loud cracking sound, and then an explosion of light. Reality disappeared, and I found myself looking at a screen that took up the whole of my vision. It took me a few seconds to realise that it was my character screen.
I felt my heart thump in my chest. This was it. I was finally in Re:Fuze. I looked at my character screen.
Name: Please Choose
Race: Please Choose
Class: Please Choose
Ability #1: To be learned
Ability #2: To be learned
Ability #3: To be learned
Please allocate 10 stat points:
Strength:
Agility:
Intelligence:
Endurance:
Charisma:
HP:
Mana:
Stamina:
Skills (out of 100)
To be learned
Ongoing Stats:
Guardian:
Chaos:
Viewers:
Suddenly I felt like I was back in my JQ exam looking at a mass of information and struggling to take any of it in. I needed to calm down. This was the most important section of the game, I knew. If I screwed up my character, it could lead to problems further down the road. I scanned through each section and worked through it bit by bit.
For my name, I wanted something that sounded mean. Something that made people worried when they saw me. So what could I pick? The Tank? No, that sounded corny, like one of the old-days wrestlers. If I was choosing a name like that I might as well equip my character with a fake tan and Lycra shorts. Okay, what about Dark Lord? I typed it in, but the name wasn’t available. A text box appeared on the right side of my vision.
Name already chosen. How about Dark Lord 5007?
Did that mean there were already 5006 Dark Lords running around the map? Not very original, and certainly not scary. Besides, a name like Dark Lord would make me sound like I was thirteen years old. I needed something original.
Then it hit me. When we were growing up, Thomas and I were obsessed with Greek mythology and the Greek gods. We’d watch films about them and read books about them. It seemed like another world, one full of heroes and magic.
I had it. I knew what my name would be. I type it into the screen.
Name: Chimera.
The Chimera was a monster from Greek mythology. It was a lion that had the head of a goat and a tail of a snake, and it breathed fire. If anyone in Re:Fuze knew what the name meant, it would give them the right impression.
With my name settled, I moved onto race. That was easy – human. Next was class. I needed something powerful and good at combat, but something that was also adaptable. I thought about warrior, but there would be lots of those. Instead, I settled on paladin.
There were three ability slots, but the game wouldn’t let me choose those yet. I wondered if those were something that I would have to unlock. The next thing I was able to choose was my core stats. The creation screen would let me allocate ten points to my core attributes.
I needed a character build that was strong, but that could also use magic. That being the case, I decided to ignore the charisma and agility attributes. After all, I didn’t plan on doing much trading or becoming proficient with a bow. Plus, I was charismatic enough in real life so I didn't need extra points. Yeah, right. Maybe one of my abilities would be big-headedness.
I loaded the ten points onto strength, endurance and intellect. With those selected, I saw my hit points, mana and stamina fields populate. My first step in game would be to improve those, either by levelling up or buying new equipment.
The skill area was similar to the abilities. Nothing was populated, and instead each skill just said ‘to be learned.’ Finally, there was a section titled ‘Ongoing stats.’
Chaos:
Guardian:
Viewers:
I didn’t know what the Chaos and Guardian stats were, so I didn’t know how important they were. I guessed that I would just have to find out. I did, however, know what ‘Viewers’ meant. In the real world, people who didn’t play Re:Fuze liked to spend their time watching it. Not me, of course, since I couldn’t afford the CR needed to get a feed subscription.
People would watch real-time feeds of characters in the game. The highly-viewed characters sometimes got send gifts in-game by the people watching from the outside. Somehow, I was going to have to get people to watch me play. But how?
That was a problem for another day. Now, it was time to enter Re:Fuze. At the bottom of the screen was a ‘confirm’ button, and I knew that pressing it would enter me into the game. For a second I was scared to do it. After waiting so long to play Re:Fuze, I felt my nerves get the better of me.
I thought of my parents outside. They were counting on me to do well in the game. This wasn’t something that I was playing for enjoyment; I needed to earn enough CR to get my family out of the Grosthorne sector. I needed to be successful enough that I didn’t have to worry about my national service or my JQ scores.
I took a deep breath. With a firing pulse and shaky fingers, I pressed the ‘complete’ button. There was a zap of light, and my vision faded to black.
Chapter Two
‘Did you know? 30% of players die without leaving Blundow. Remember to rest and heal!
I read the inspiring message as the game loaded, and I resolved that there was no way I was going to be one of the 30% of newbies who died without ever seeing the main map. It shouldn’t have been difficult; I just needed to stay calm. If I took too much damage I would heal. I wouldn’t take any risks.
Colours burst onto the screen, and I found myself stood in a barren field. A breeze blew in the air. I heard it whistle as it went by, and then I felt the cold wind snake up my arms. I couldn’t believe how real it felt. I knew that the cocoons had sensation amplifiers, but I never believed it could be so…realistic. I saw birds swoop in the air, and I watched as each individual blade of grass moved in a different way to the others under the blowing of the breeze.
Difficulty: Legendary (LitRPG Series Book 1) (Difficulty:Legendary) Page 1