by Ros Per
So, the fighters that I’d just killed had been tasked with waiting for the replication of their comrades, so they could go after me alongside them. Replication takes twelve hours, so another couple of hours were left for me to get to the outpost. With this in mind, I began to pack the removed weapons and ammunition into one compact heap, tying it all down with the straps that I’d taken from the captives after their death. After putting all the trophies in order, I arranged them near the hole, and put two offensive grenades under them, without the rings. I don’t think I'll be back for the trophies, there's almost no profit to be made from this trash. But anyone that did try to get them would get a nasty surprise.
Once again looking around and taking off the banner at the entrance, I climbed up through the hole. I moved very slowly, keeping still and looking around after literally every meter of space I covered since, after all, I surely wasn’t the only one clever enough to set traps. When there were twenty meters left until I got to the exit, I had to turn off the night vision device: the light was too bright for me to handle. I waited for about ten minutes, remaining in place until my eyes were accustomed to the dim light coming from the street, and only then did I continue to walk forward. Fortunately, there were no more traps, like ambushes at the exit, left, so I quickly reached the gate of the outpost. Approaching the gate, I noticed a new section of the fence on the left, which was being put up under the supervision of a mobile group. It seems that the players have already cleared the territory a little, and the commander of the fort had decided to start expanding.
At first, I’d decided to go to the research center, but after just thirty meters, I abruptly changed my direction and, going slightly faster, I caught up to the scrawny observer who’d followed me around before I’d left the outpost, catching him by the scruff of the neck.
- Well hello, The Knee!
- What’s up, bro? What? It wasn’t me! I was deceived!
- "Shut up!" I snapped at him. "Tell Alckor that Volper is upset by the trick his guys pulled. He can ask his goons just how upset I am. Also tell him that if I don’t receive an apology within 10 hours, an apology that satisfies me and makes me feel better, I won’t just be upset, I’ll be very angry with him and his cronies. You understood me?
- “Yeahhh!” – He nodded. "I’ll tell him everything!"
- “Now, you can go!” - and I released my grip on his neck, giving him the opportunity to escape, which he immediately made use of.
My plan was something I’d come up with on the spot, upon seeing The Knee. It's not a sure thing, of course, that it’ll work, but maybe something would happen soon. The only problem was that I needed to unlock my skills’ progression; I hoped I’d have enough time for that. After setting a timer in the interface, I hurried to the research center, but after getting halfway there, I stopped again. On the left, in the new part of the outpost’s territory, there was now a small, one-story building, with a large sign that read "Beaver’s" above the entrance. For about three minutes, I was stuck staring at the sign, trying to understand what had appealed to me about it, and only then did it occur to me that only a player could be named Beaver.
Hmmm ... and now the players have become entrepreneurs - only a couple of days have passed, and he’s already managed to find enough money to open a bar, and also somehow gotten the approval to do so from the commander of the fort. Having finally reached the research center, I asked them to call Carso. It was nice to see the various expressions flit across his face when he saw me: surprise, disappointment, discontent, irritation, and anger. All this was evident on his face for a while, but after just a few seconds, he got his act together and came up to me.
- Hi! - He offered his hand to me. "As I understand it, you’ve come to fulfill your part of the contract?"
- Yup! - I confirmed, laying out the equipment on the counter in front of him. - Server, I ask that you confirm the fact I upheld the agreement on my end, - Carso’s grimace was so pleasing to me, heaven on earth.
Attention! You have fulfilled your part of the contract concluded between you and Gerion Carso.
I wonder if the system has at least one message that doesn’t begin with the word "Attention!" I think it’s overused. Saying goodbye to Carso, I headed to the bar, hoping that I could eat something more edible than dry soup there. When I reached the bar and seated myself behind one of the remote tables, with my back to the wall, I put my backpack next to me and placed the Safirot on top of it. Ordering the first dish, I could hardly stop myself from ordering a couple of bottles of something alcoholic - I felt so bad. I’d never liked this part of the job. Afterward, you feel like a freak, and there's a constant reminder of that fact that will regularly haunt your gaze. Sighing heavily, I opened the system messages again:
Attention! You have received the "Torture" skill
Attention! You have received the "Vivisection/ dissection" skill
Attention! You have received the "Interrogation" skill
Attention! You have received the "Intimidation" skill
Attention! You have received the “Inflicting injuries on another person" skill
And all these skills had been trained up to twenty-five percent, and now required confirmation of my status by a class 3 specialist. The most depressing things about all of this: firstly, the system hadn’t given me a red level, which means that, from its point of view, I’d acted without violating the laws. And it’s a very unpleasant realization, knowing you are playing (well, in my case, living) in a world where such actions are considered perfectly alright, if you’re killing criminals. The second thing was the last message from the system:
Congratulations! You have earned the achievement "Executioner"!
Conditions: By means of afflicting pain, make the victim give you the information you are interested in.
Your Reward: In certain circles, you can always find a well-paid job.
So, that's enough to consider, here’s my meal. I can finally relax and analyze the information. Let's start with what I know: Carso was the one who put a hit out on me. I don’t have any real proof, but the wording of the orders clearly pointed to that. The criminals were supposed to follow me and find out where I would go and, on my way back, by any means necessary, take everything I had on me away. That’s what he’d promised them a reward of fifty thousand for. Although I only have my own hunch that Carso is to be blamed, I will give him hell regardless. I’d also learned that the local criminal gang was led by someone nicknamed "Alckor ".
The gang wasn’t very big, only 37 people, but it was successfully operating in our outpost. After the recent successful attack on the convoy, which had been delivering supplies to outposts, they’d received two replication capsules and enough supplies for them as trophies. To the delight of the bandits, Alckor had somehow been able to get a programmer who reconfigured their replicas exclusively for this replicator, in exchange for a second capsule.
Now Alckor is obsessed with increasing the number of people in the gang to 100. They have ammunition in abundance. And now, with the appearance of the replicator, he has the opportunity to turn the consumable resource called "man" into a self-replenishing one. If you take into account that he’s already had a dozen applicants for the gang from the ranks of players, then something must be done about him.
So, what else have we have here? The general composition of the gaming world… Judging by the stories of the captives, the city has sixteen tiers in total. Although the 16th remains in question, my informants knew about it through word of mouth: they said that the government and the richest people of Alfarome live there. Now: the tiers are habitable only from the sixth level and higher, and the sixth and the seventh levels are the poor districts. In the eighth and ninth, ordinary workers live, those who work hard to feed themselves and their families. The tenth and eleventh are the territory of companies, and there are various mid-level clerks living there, and those who can afford a more or less average cost of living. The twelfth and thirteenth are occupied by indi
viduals who have achieved a lot in life and are paid good wages and have good jobs. But only the elite live at the fourteenth and fifteenth level, the ones who can afford to wipe their ass with toilet paper made up of a hundred thousand credits per roll.
I don’t know how things are on the upper levels, but from the sixth to the ninth, they lead a miserable existence, that much I can say for sure. Even if there are high-tech devices in the city, they simply don’t have enough money to buy them. Therefore, for the most part, they have to live in conditions similar to the 20th century, while having to endure constantly seeing high-tech devices that could facilitate a better life for them, while not having the opportunity to use them. Moreover, they are still under total surveillance and control, with virtually all spheres of their lives being regulated. The only salvation from poverty, for them, is to have a child.
When a pregnancy is confirmed, the biological parents are treated in hospitals that are almost on the highest level; they also get substantial monthly payments provided by the government, and in general, they get a huge number of benefits and rewards. The problem is that for the time being - for reasons I don’t understand - they have huge problems with the continuation of the family. As I understand it, on average, out of three hundred couples, only a single family can have a child. Local people explain this in different ways. Of course, I understand that the game developers have simply restricted the number of NPCs in the game, but from the logical point of view, I am more inclined to think that the problem arose because of the use of replications services, which somehow deteriorate reproductive abilities.
I arrived at this conclusion using the information that local people undergo a respawn procedure in the replicator that lasts twelve hours, while losing some of their skills in random order, from five to ten percent, and they can lose up to three skills at a time. Moreover, if you believe the words of the goons I’d captured, they feel that they have a chunk of memory erased during respawn. So, I can assume that the replication is not performed fully, and somewhere in the process of replicating, the gene responsible for reproduction simply disappears.
What other useful information did I learn from them? Yeah, about skills and statistics... Regarding stats, as it turns out, everything is quite simple: they show the state of your body at that moment, and they can still be increased. And there are many ways to increase them: various stimulants that temporarily increase the attributes, technological implants as well, both internal and external. Even biological implants can be installed in your body. Well, the hardest way is to push the body hard for a period. For example, you can raise your strength by one point in a couple of weeks of regularly visiting the gym, and working out a lot.
But with the skills, everything is much more complicated. They develop exclusively through practical use. I get that, however, the main problem with that is that almost every action requires its special skill. By practicing with a submachine gun, I will not be more successful at using a gun or a rifle. From a real life point of view, everything about that is logical, because the technique for shooting is different, as is the recoil, the grip, and other features. But, devs, why have you incorporated all of this into the game world? I can’t grasp it.
The second problem happens when you get the value of the skill to one hundred percent. You’d think that’s it, okay, you rock, and you get to aim the gun from a distance of fifty meters at a target three centimeters in diameter. Then you come across another person with the same gun, and they manage to shoot a tiny fly. And then you realize that you’ve just achieved the maximum technical attributes for the weapons, which have been specified by the factory that manufactured them. You start to practice shooting, for example, with pistols with a free breech mechanism. You get used to the gun when shooting it, you learn how the bullets act, according to the barrel cuts, and you start shooting at targets that are twice as far as stated by the manufacturer, but you still cannot shoot the fly, which just flies on by, anyway, despite your best efforts.
Then the third stage comes, and you begin to develop personal weapons. You select one single model of a pistol, according to the specialization that you’ve trained in, and you use that very item to sharpen your skills. Then, after several years of training with the same pistol, you really reach the target set before you and start to fire at different flies, hitting their wings. But again, there’s the problem. If you take another pistol into your hands, you cannot get the same result.
Moreover, the longer you use another weapon, the lower your personal weapon skill becomes. Again, I can see the same situation happening in the real world - you can either be a pro in one skill or a stable medium in many other skills. The only thing that I like is the opportunity to develop a skill on the training grounds, only the skills will grow a little more slowly. It would be very interesting to learn how real skills affect the speed of development in the game, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t get that information from the NPCs.
Another thing was the information I got about mobs and dungeons. Here, the plans of the administration are not quite so easily understood. It turns out that the mobs have no respawn here, only the natural reproduction of the population, according to the birth rate of each species. Mobs must be born naturally, then grow up a little bit, and after that, you have the opportunity to meet these creatures on the streets. And the level of all those creatures starts at zero. And the longer it lives, the higher its level will be, based on how many players or other creatures it kills, and how big and strong it grows during this time. Dungeons are not formed at all. The territory receives the dungeon status when, in a certain zone, the number of monsters exceeds a certain critical mark, but when one or several extremely dangerous high-level mobs settle down there, then, in general, we get a territory with the status of a "Lair".
Oh, yes, I completely forgot about the mutants. Mutants aren’t mobs, but humans with different mutations. They are persecuted by the law and are mercilessly killed, or are caught and taken in for further experiments. So mutants on the fifth level or higher are almost impossible to come across. By the way, all the captives were convinced that the mutants had their own government and quite a developed infrastructure. But these are only assumptions: they aren’t sure where they live at all. They had different opinions on this matter. It seems the devs had used a standard solution, simply creating an opposing side, for which you can also play, as well as one for the ordinary people. The Player(s) versus player(s) or PvP and factional in-fighting modes were created to cater to the desires of people who like to engage in that sort of thing.
Hmmm ... I’ve gotten a whole bunch of information, but it's unlikely that I'll be able to immediately sort everything out. The main thing I’d gotten out of what my captives had told me was that I haven’t developed my character properly nor fully. It’s necessary to, at the first opportunity, leave this outpost and move to where there are training centers, and where you can find good instructors. Even then, I’ll most likely need to join a good clan or a group of players, because it’s almost impossible to survive here alone. Well, you can survive, but achieving something worthwhile is highly unlikely. Again, I must first finish the maze I’d cleared. It may be possible to get a penny out of it or, if I’m lucky, get a good sum of money, and I also have to deal with Alckor. Then I can get out of here. Ok, Carso will send all the information to my neural interface, and I’ll think of how to get my revenge for his double cross later.
Having eaten the rest of my meal, I was already planning to leave, but two other players approached my table, standing at different corners of it. This looks like another pain in my ass. I’d had the suspicion that my character attracts various problems. Hardly have I dealt with one thing, when another one appears on the horizon. Here, it’s directly in front of me – I’m pressed for time, and yet two more troublesome people have appeared to bother me.
But no, there are three of them, there’s another one at the table where the guys who have just come up to me had been sitting. Trying to show that
I’m calm, I carefully put my left hand on the holster with the pistol, and leaned on the table with my right elbow. I was leaning a little forward, so that the palm of my right hand wasn’t far from the thigh holster - the one where the second pistol was. Cocking an eyebrow quizzically, I addressed them:
- Do you have a problem with me?
CHAPTER X: NO TIME TO REST
The player standing on my right raised his hands in a gesture conveying peaceful intentions, showing me his open palms.
- Hey man! We just came by to thank you for the first aid kit; it actually helped us a lot.
For a moment, I just blinked, looking from one to the other, and then it occurred to me. These were the guys who had been ambushed by the two PCs. I remembered them and felt relieved. It turns out that my paranoia makes me too suspicious sometimes, causing me to see a problem in every situation.
- Yes, I remember now. It’s OK. I had a spare kit, and I was already moving on to the outpost, so I decided to share with you.
- Thanks a lot! Others would’ve just left or killed us. It’s difficult to come across sane people nowadays, everyone thinks only about themselves or their party. Can we treat you to anything in gratitude for what you did? – he proposed, gesturing amiably at the bar.