The techie shrugged. “A death is a death. Game over.”
I gritted my teeth together. I was so angry I felt I could grind them into dust. “I want to see the manager.”
Mum stepped forward with her arms outstretched, as if I was a child and she wanted to hug me. “Come on, Eric. Let’s go home.”
I looked at the tech. It was clear from his cocky manner that he had no interest in helping me. Then I saw a shape in his pocket. Square at the bottom, and tubular at the top. I knew it could be only one thing; a cylo-hit.
I looked at him. It was time for my real-life charisma skills to come into play. I leaned in so close I could smell his minty breath.
“How about you get the manager yourself?” I said. “Or I go and find him and tell him what you have in your pocket?”
The techie’s smile dropped. He patted the pocket of his trousers, and then realised what he had so carelessly left in it. Cylo-hits had been outlawed a year earlier, though that hadn’t made it any harder to get hold of the artificial high.
The techie sighed and then touched his ear. His earpiece flashed red, and he spoke aloud.
“Mr. Marvers,” he said. “I’ve got a kid here. There was a glitch with his spawn, and it sent him into the Plains of Jordan. No, no, he’s a level 0. What? Come on, Marvers, he’s a newbie. This is our mistake. Damn, okay.”
The red light on his earpiece faded, and the techie looked at me with a resigned expression.
“It’s a no,” he said. “Death is permanent.”
***
In the weeks that followed I thought my anger would fade, but if anything it grew. Every time I looked at my dad I could read the disappointment in his expression, though I know he tried to hide it. I’d watch him leave for work and I’d see how hunched his shoulders were, as if a great weight had been placed on them. I had been his only hope of respite from a job he hated, and I had failed.
I knew that I should have tried to forget about the game and start thinking about my upcoming national service. Rather than focussing on Re:Fuze, my time would have been better spent improving my real-life skills. National service was no joke, and it was so physical that some recruits died in basic training. I knew I should have been exercising and getting fit.
Instead, I spent my time burning our net credits to research the game. I tried to remember what Herelius, Battan and Dyzmal had been conspiring about in the cave, but it was difficult. I wished I had access to the console log history of my time in the game, but I knew from watching the news that FuzeTek never surrendered them, not even to the agencies of the state.
I thought back. They had mentioned Halons, but I knew that the Halons were just a guild. So what else had they talked about? A name popped into my head, and as soon as it did I felt my thoughts turn dark. I remembered Herelius’ words.
‘Is it possible?” he had said. ‘Can we bring Necrolor back?’
I read about how Necrolor was one of the first players to ever go into the game, and that he was already level fifty by the time it finished its beta stage. As the decades wore on, he levelled up to the point that he was the strongest character in the game.
He started out on the Guardian side, but gradually slid into Chaos. The two terms were meters of how good your actions were in Re:Fuze. Do a good deed and you get Guardian points. Do something bad, Chaos. Necrolor fell so far into the darkness that his Chaos points were almost as high as his character level. Shortly after that he founded the Serpent guild, and under his rule they became the most powerful and chaotic force in the world.
They started acquiring territory by taking it by force from the NPCs and other guilds that held it. With most of the game world conquered, they demanded impossibly high tributes from those who wanted to cross their lands. If you couldn’t pay, you died.
This pushed the Halon and Merc guilds into an alliance for the first time, and they slowly fought back against the Serpents. Even with their combined might they still couldn’t overpower the Serpents, and things came to a head in a battle on the Plains of Jordan. It was a battle that lasted weeks, and almost every player in the game was involved on one side or another. Finally the Serpents were within an inch of victory, which would have given them control of the whole game map.
At the last minute, the Greyes, a notoriously secretive guild, came to the aid of the Halons and Mercs. Their strange abilities turned the tide of battle, and Necrolor and the Serpents were defeated. Necrolor was killed, but his body was never found.
Shortly after, the Serpents were given amnesty as long as they agreed to follow game laws. Their territory was taken from them and divided up between the Halons and the Mercs, though the Greyes refused any offers of extra territory and retreated to their own hidden lands. Ever since then there had been small skirmishes between the guilds, but no wars.
It was said that Necrolor was gone, but some thought that he might respawn. That, however, was just a legend. Something the older players told the newbies to scare them as they left Blundow for the first time.
Reading it filled me with anger. I thought back to Herelius and his friends in the cave near the Plains, and I wanted to smash things. How could they do that to me? I was a level 0, a nobody. Why couldn’t they have just let me live? Didn’t they know how much it cost to get a login for Re:Fuze? Didn’t they realise how hard my parents had to work to save the CR?
I knew I had to get back, somehow. I had to get back into the game and kill Herelius. Even if I had to stay in a cocoon for a decade I would do it. The question was, how?
The prospect of getting a login didn’t look likely. My national service started to loom close, and this was compounded by the news my dad gave us one night. He came back from work with a broken arm after a hydraulic safety latch had failed and crushed his arm, and he wasn’t going to be able to work for at least six months. The problem was, he didn’t have health insurance and his employer gave no sick pay. We were screwed.
I researched all kinds of ways to get back into the game. I found black market dealers who sold logins, but I knew that most of them were fake. I discovered one place that bought life force for CR, meaning that they would buy weeks and months of your life from you for cash. At first this looked like a possibility, but then I did the maths.
They paid CR5 for an hour of your life. A genuine Re:Fuze login cost CR15,000, which meant that I would have to sell 3000 hours, or 125 days, of my life to get back in. I just couldn’t do it.
One afternoon I sat in my room in front of my monitor. The sky outside was grey, and rain fell from heavy clouds and splattered the pavements. The streets were empty, and darkness was falling. I looked up at the monitor. I was researching exercise regimes. I figured that if I was going to have to do military service, then I might as well get fit.
As I looked up a regime that involved 1000 sit ups a day and wondered how I’d ever get that fit, the screen went blank and a warning flashed.
Net Credits depleted. Please top up.
Damn it. I left my room and went downstairs. My mum and dad sat in front of the television, neither of them speaking to the other. Dad was always in a mood these days, but I couldn’t blame him. Every time I looked at him I felt a sense of shame, and I knew that my failure had put us in this situation.
I was going to ask him to top up the credit, when I thought better of it. Just as I turned to go back upstairs, I looked at the front door. A letter was on the floor. This was strange, because physical mail was hardly ever used these days. Gone were the days of writing letters and having the postman deliver them.
I walked over to it and picked up the envelope. I turned it over and saw that my name was written on the back.
In the living room across from me, Mum turned her head to look at me.
“What’s that?” she said.
I don’t know why, but I felt like I should hide the envelope. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m going out for a bit.”
“Where?”
I needed an excuse. “For a run. Can’t t
urn up to national service coughing like a cylo-smoker.”
I went outside into the pouring rain and let the front door slam behind me. As I walked down the street, a shuttle rushed by and swept a puddle of rainwater onto the pavement, drenching my shoes. I walked on with squelchy feet until I got to the shuttle stop. It was empty, and there was a street light beside it. Like all the lights in my sector, this one flickered and seemed like it would die at any minute.
I carefully opened the envelope. There was a piece of paper inside it, with three sentences on it.
Username: Janus
Password: Sanuj01
20.15.4232.789
My heart started to beat faster. I looked around me, as if someone might be looking over my shoulder. Instinctively, I knew what this was. It was a user name and password for Re:Fuze.
A rush of happiness filled me, but it quickly gave way to confusion. Who would send me a login? This wasn’t like posting a Christmas card through someone’s door; these things were worth thousands of CR. So who would do it? The person who sent it had to meet two requirements, I knew.
One: they had to be able to afford to buy a login.
Two: They had to both know me and like me enough to send it to my house.
So who would do that? Had the techie taken pity on me? Even if he had, techs didn’t earn enough to be giving away CR15,000. Who was it, then?
Then it hit me. Was it Thomas? Had he sent me the login?
A shuttle pulled up at the stop. The doors made a wheezing noise as they opened, and a spectacled driver stared at me.
“You getting on, or what?”
“Are you going by FuzeTek?” I said.
The driver nodded. I got on the shuttle, the login paper tightly clutched in my hand, my pulse racing too fast for my body to keep up.
By the time the shuttle stopped at FuzeTek I was a bundle of energy, and I practically leapt off the shuttle. I sprinted across the road and toward the FuzeTek offices. I ran inside, and stopped at the reception desk.
The man behind the desk frowned at me. “Aren’t you the guy who was in here a few weeks ago? The only who died at level 0?”
I nodded, feeling a burning shame in my face. “I’ve got a login,” I said.
“Pass me the details.”
The receptionist looked up the username and password on his computer. I paced around the reception room, glancing at the steel doors every time they hissed open and expecting the tech to appear and lead me to the cocoon.
The receptionist coughed, and then beckoned me over.
“When’s the tech coming?” I said.
He shook his head. He folded the paper and slid it across the desk.
“Never. This login isn’t registered here.”
“It has to be. I have a username and password.”
“Good for you. But they’re not registered to any of our cocoons, so we can’t let you in.”
I was going to argue, but I remembered where it had gotten me earlier, and my faith in my real-life charisma was falling by the second. Downcast, I screwed the paper up in my hand and walked out of the office.
I sat on a bench outside the offices. The rain gushed down and soaked through the already-thin lining of my coat, but I didn’t care. What was the point in anything? My national service was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. Whoever had sent me the note was probably playing a joke on me.
I unscrewed it and looked at it for one final time. That’s when I saw it.
Username: Janus
Password: Sanuj01
20.15.4232.789
There wasn’t just a username and a password, there were numbers too. But what were they? Coordinates?
I needed to get onto the net. I got up from the bench and went back into the FuzeTek waiting area. In the corner was a computer unit that was free to use. I waited until the receptionist’s phone rang, and when he was busy talking, I walked across the room and to the computer.
I quickly brought up a website that searched coordinates and gave their location on a map. With shaking fingers, I typed in the number. I felt the suspense build in my chest until I thought I couldn’t take it anymore.
The website searched, and then flashed a message.
Coordinates incorrect. No matches found.
So if they weren’t coordinates, then what were they?
Hang on. How could I be so stupid? Of course they weren’t coordinates!
I brought up another website. This time, it was one that traced IP addresses. I keyed in the numbers from the paper and took a deep breath. A few seconds later, a message popped up, and I exhaled in relief.
A map displayed on the screen, showing the exact location of the IP address. Even better, it was just a few streets away from me.
I sprinted out of the office and down the street, ignoring the rain that drenched my hair and washed my hair product down into my eyes, making them sting. My hurried footsteps splashed water up from the pavement and all over my trousers, but I didn’t care.
I stopped outside the address that the website had listed. It was a grubby shop, and the front window was boarded up. I leaned forward and peered through a crack that the boards didn’t cover, and I saw nothing but an empty room covered in dust.
Was it all a joke, then? Did someone hate me that much that they’d go to such an effort to play a trick on me?
Then I saw something in the alleyway beside the shop. There was a stone stairway that seemed to lead down. I walked through the alley and stood at the top of the stairs and saw that they went into a basement. Gripping the handrail, I knew I had to follow the stairs. I couldn’t turn back, not now.
Taking a deep breath, I started to walk down.
Chapter Four
I opened the door to find a small, dark room. The floor was covered in dust and loose stones, and there wasn’t an inch of light to illuminate it. I felt around the wall to my left and touched a light switch. Flicking it, I saw that the room was bare, save for one thing. In the centre, was a cocoon.
The plastic was faded and dirt lined the surface. Two tubes stuck out from it and led to a metallic unit in the corner of the room. There was a monitor attached to the side of the cocoon, with a red L.E.D glowing on it.
I walked over to the cocoon. On the floor in front of it there was an envelope. I bent down and picked it up, and I saw that my name was written on it.
My skin tingled. I felt the same nerves as I had the morning of my JQ exams, a sense of dread mixed with anticipation. I opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper, and I read the words.
Find Ozreal.
I leaned forward and touched the cocoon, and then it hissed and slowly started to move, like a clam inching open at the touch of a finger. A damp, rotten smell hit me. It must have been years since the cocoon had been used, but inside there was a screen that was lit up. I looked around me. I suspected some kind of trap and I knew I should have been wary, but my excitement got the better of me. I stepped inside the cocoon and sat down. Just for a minute, I told myself. Then I’ll get back out.
No sooner had I sat down than the cocoon slammed shut, trapping me inside. It was pitch black save for the glow of the screen. Fear ran through me.
State username and password.
I read the login details from the sheet. As soon as I finished, I heard a snapping sound, and the touch of something cold on my wrists. I realised that metal clamps had fastened me in, and shortly after two more slammed shut on my legs.
There was nothing for it now. I was trapped. Something made a whirring noise, and a tube protruded through a hole in front of me. I knew what was coming next. In my mind, I heard the techie’s voice from weeks earlier.
“Open wide.”
I opened my mouth and felt the tube wind into it. It snaked down my throat, filling it until I couldn’t swallow, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Keep calm, I thought. You’ve been through this before.
The sensation passed and like before, it gave way to a warm feelin
g and then euphoria. My vision faded, and minutes later, I found myself staring at a character creation screen.
Name: Janus
Race: Human
Class: Tinker
Ability #1: To be learned
Ability #2: To be learned
Ability #3: To be learned
Strength: 1
Agility: 3
Intelligence:3
Endurance: 1
Charisma:2
HP: 95
Mana: 180
Stamina: 75
Skills (out of 100)
Explosives
Knife Play
Blade Sharpen
Ongoing Stats:
Guardian:
Chaos:
Viewers: 0
Difficulty: Legendary (LitRPG Series Book 1) (Difficulty:Legendary) Page 3