Gleam of Darkness

by Elian Tars

  I returned to our little camp and looked around. Figures were running in the distance, and Jonna’s limp looked pretty funny. Well, at least she was walking on her own, thank God.

  I crouched down so that if the deserters decided to turn around, they would not see my head sticking up above the tall grass. Let them think I had died, feeding the wolves and giving them the opportunity to escape.

  I had no desire to catch up with the young ladies. It was their choice. I may even be pleased if they made it to town alive. I couldn’t hold it against them, although it did bother me a little… There was some resentment. Next time, I should think twice about helping someone.

  Oh well. In some way, I was even glad that I didn’t have to hide my skills now. The voice was right; I shouldn’t expose myself to the Darkness unnecessarily. Just look at how Una reacted when the healing didn’t work. Remembering the look on the girl’s face, I thought that I might’ve seen terror in her eyes… Interesting. How would the public react once they saw the black smoke of Tranquility of Darkness? I better not check.

  Also, the people would certainly be jealous of my newly revealed way of pumping up my stats. As I understood it, even the NPCs could up their level out here. After all, with the first wolf, I had shared my experience with Una. Given the fact how hardcore this game was, you had to fight for every ounce of experience. The looming chance to quickly raise some levels without much loss appeared in front of me. But before that, I needed to restore all of my status bars.

  I looked around and went toward the nearby lonely tree. I circled the trunk, jumped up, grabbed the lower branch and pulled myself up. Making sure the next branch would also hold me, I moved on top of it.

  Even from this height I could see the Black Wolf slowly shuffling through the grass. I praised myself for being cautious and tried to get comfortable; I needed to stay here for an hour.

  While recovering, I once again scrolled through the interfaces, inspected the logs and started thinking about where I was. Was there an exit? There was a faint hope that there was a problem with the faulty virtual capsule. And after the tech support fixed it, they would be able to get me out of this morbid game. But, on the other hand, I had been here for about twelve hours now, and nothing had been done about it yet…

  Do not despair and do not panic! I remembered my personal credo.

  That’s right. Right now, I needed to make the most of my newfound opportunities to survive, grow stronger and learn about this world. There were no other options. Although I had often heard people say that if you got lost, you should just sit your ass down and wait to be found. But no one guaranteed that the rescuers would get to you before you die of thirst, hunger, go crazy, freeze to death or became a snack for the wild animals…

  So, let’s start gathering some information. Fortunately, I have one interesting book in my inventory.

  The acceleration of regeneration, as it turned out, lasted about twelve minutes. Updating it as necessary, I plunged into the study of The Small Encyclopedia of Lloyd Koala. The style was florid and technical. I received the reading skills automatically, as well as the knowledge of the local language, when I had logged into the game, so I could read the letters. I also understood the words, although, as it turned out, not all of them. It took a while to understand what each sentence meant, as I had to read them over and over again.

  There was no table of contents, no meaningful headlines. I tried to sift through it, just so I could understand what sections were actually in the Encyclopedia. In the end, I spat in annoyance and started reading from the very beginning. I learned that the world had been created by Gods, and got stuck on the list of these Gods with the descriptions of their appearance and abilities.

  As soon as my stat bars filled back up, I put the boring book away and looked around. This time there were no wolves around, so I climbed down and headed toward the forest, ducking so I couldn’t be seen above the grass.

  The first predator that caught my eye was standing at the edge of the forest, completely exposed, moving its muzzle from side to side. As soon as I saw it, I extended my right hand, activating Tranquility of Darkness. The black smoke coming from my fingers cleared some thirty feet before it even reached the wolf. I assumed the spell had a range, expecting a system message if I couldn’t reach the target with it. But I hadn’t expected such a set up.

  Roaring, the wolf instantly saw from which side it was being attacked and jumped at me. All I could do was to run, to buy myself time until the cooldown of my only active magical ability was up.

  Three seconds later, I released the black smoke into the furry beast again, and yet again it failed to work. With a swift jump, the wolf shortened the distance between us. I managed to dodge and immediately launched a counterattack, activating Power Strike. I pulled the pitchfork out from the beast’s bleeding side and quickly swung again but the enemy abruptly turned around and ripped through my thigh with its front claw, tearing at my flesh and drawing blood.

  I figured out that blood in this game could be triggered only by using skills and abilities. And the following system messages confirmed it:

  “Black Wolf” used a “Sweeping Strike” on you.

  You have received 50 points of damage.

  Tranquility of Darkness.

  Shit! It failed again!

  The wolf eyed me viciously, and then vanished for a moment. Finally! It looks like we’re falling back into an old pattern.

  As before, I didn’t have time to deflect the wolf’s snout, and I flew back. This time, I stayed on my feet, as the predator was already on my left side. My hand was bitten, and I felt a sharp pain. It looked like it was turning into a battle of attrition. The beast wouldn’t let me go, and I kept sending the black smoke toward it. After three misses, the long-awaited Tranquility took effect. I got the experience and the wolf finally stopped trying to bite my hand off.

  Climbing back up my tree, I found out that I had spent most of my mana before activating the accelerated regeneration. I pulled out the unfinished brew from the inventory and took a sip. Soon enough, I would grow hungry. I needed to do something about that as well. Maybe I should try going to town? Thanks to my level of synchronization with the body, I kind of knew the local geography a little. At least I knew which way to go to end up in this Ekheim.

  On the other hand, it would’ve been stupid to stop developing my stats now that I had a chance. To be among people, you needed to feel strong. And, right now, I was just a beggar at level seven, someone who would look like a bunch of wasted potential to others.

  What do I do about food, then? Heh… That’s simple enough, there’s a whole forest right in front of me. I had been alone in the woods before. As a child, I had only known about one edible plant, the strawberry. Now I knew that there were plenty more out here that I could eat.

  When my HP, energy and mana bars were full again, I climbed down the tree into the forest, on the lookout for wolves. This time, noticing the predator from a distance, I avoided it. Provisions were more important.

  Almost immediately, I saw huge thickets of burdock. Only here they were called something different: Green Burdock. Just what I needed.

  I pulled out the pitchfork, dug up about thirty plants, separated the roots, wiped the dirt off and placed them in my inventory. That’s when I learned that one inventory slot held twenty identical items. Also, for this weeding work, I was awarded with 5% growth in the synchronization with the body. Laughing at the thought that Bon had appreciated my agricultural impulse, I checked my stats. Just as I had expected, my intelligence had grown by one point.

  No matter how slowly I moved through the forest, I still ran into the same wolf. This bastard had been able to surprise me. After the usual jab with its snout, it attacked me from the right, not from the left. Instinctively, I defended myself by putting my hand up. And then I was horrified, because the spell would be activated by the right hand! It had been indicated in the GIFs!

  Luckily, I was able to repeat Tranquilit
y of Darkness with my left hand. And after a few failed attempts, the effect worked, and with this experience, I reached the next level.

  Leveling up awarded me only a single point to use on my stats, which increased my intelligence level. Unfortunately, the skill’s level did not increase.

  This time, I decided not to return to the field, but to climb one of the local trees. I restored all of the status bars, had a bite of the burdock root, finished the brew and went on to explore the forest.

  Still trying to avoid the wolves, some twenty minutes later, I came across a small creek. Feeling relieved, I washed my face and filled the empty bottle I had with fresh water. Well, I was now sure that I could get food and drink, which meant that I could return to my original goal — increasing my level.

  The next wolf I subdued easily. After that I again climbed a tree to recover.

  Agility increased by 1.

  And here was a nice bonus — the system had decided to reward me for role-playing as Tarzan; unexpected, but very encouraging.

  However, my mood was spoiled in the next battle. It all started as usual: I saw the wolf, crept up to a safe distance and launched the black smoke. First there was no effect, so I had to run. The second time, nothing happened again, so we went at it. I circled around the predator, dodging. It disappeared, hit me with its snout and I flew away. I noticed its shadow on the left and put out my hand in time:

  You have received 30 points of damage.

  Minor injury received.

  “A-a-a!!!” I screamed in pain, forgetting to activate Tranquility of Darkness.

  Every attack had used to hurt, but what I felt right at that moment was excruciating. Usually, after such attacks, even with abilities being used, the pain would’ve been much weaker and it would fade away quickly. But this injury continued to burn and torment me.

  Clenching my teeth, I released the black smoke. I did it again three seconds later. The wolf calmed down and opened its jaw, and I collapsed onto the grass, clutching my injured hand.

  After the usual skills there would be blood, but the wound healed quickly. This injury was not about to disappear. A piece of torn skin was dangling from my arm. I tore off the sleeve of my dirty shirt and wrapped it around my forearm.

  Climbing even the lowest branch was a real test. I overcame it with great difficulty and my endurance was even boosted for it. Having settled on the thick branch, I began to repeatedly cast Tranquility until my regeneration increased. Only after that did I relax a little.

  Chapter 6

  Gloominess

  This time, I spent more than two hours sitting on the branch. Even though my HP had been completely full for a long time now, my wound was still there. Well, at least it stopped bleeding, scabbed over and was beginning to hurt a little less.

  I wondered when this “minor injury” would finally go away. Was it going to heal on its own or would I need to look for some kind of special treatment to get rid of it? Or maybe it would disappear only after I respawn? Although… that would be far too harsh for something that had been labeled as “minor”.

  On the other hand, respawning had to bring the body back to its original state, right? As soon as I thought that, the quite irrational idea of grinding experience until I died popped into my head. Well, why not? 10% of my rebirth energy wasn’t exactly the largest fee to pay for full healing.

  But I still had no idea about how I could replenish this energy. And I wasn’t too familiar with the penalties for death, either. So, that meant that these kinds of radical treatment methods should definitely be left as a last resort.

  However, I really wanted to continue grinding experience. Getting to level 10 seemed very tempting. After all, it was a milestone level. Most games would periodically give bonuses for reaching certain levels. In addition, level 10 would unlock a number of personality skills for me, plus, I would finally be able to find out what kind of a ring I had inherited, thanks to Una.

  Getting down from the tree with an injured hand wasn’t very pleasant, but what could I do? I had to stoically endure the pain. While battling another wolf, I realized that I couldn’t hold the trident with both hands, and when the predator managed to latch on to my injured arm, my scream of pain was heard for miles around.

  But I still managed to win and return to the tree.

  Forty minutes later, I dealt with another hairy opponent. During these endless fights, for the first time since I had begun fighting them, some kind of progress happened. I don’t know why, maybe I had gotten used to fighting the wolves — I was fighting representatives of the same species and the set of skills they had was limited and identical, after all — or maybe my brain had gotten tired of enduring constant pain and was using additional resources to prevent it. Whatever the reason, the fact remained that I had finally won a battle against a Black Wolf without getting caught by its Deadly Grip. And besides the experience, I also got +1 agility as a reward.

  During the next battle, another beast was able to bite down on my hand; that had been my bad. But after finding the next wolf – the ninth one that day, if I wasn’t mistaken — I was able to evade its Deadly Grip. And after calming it down, I reached level 9. What a symbolic coincidence that was!

  I was sitting up in the tree, chewing the burdock root and drinking water while looking around. At least three wolves were prowling nearby. All of them had already fought me, and now they appeared to be outlined gray, meaning they were now neutral animals. As I understood it, in this game, there were three possible colors: there was red (enemies, of course); the aforementioned gray; and green, whose members weren’t assembled by standard game conventions. It’s funny, this didn’t apply to “friends”, otherwise Bon’s father, Chief Jason, would’ve been “green”, and not “grey”.

  Having sated my hunger and thirst, I opened the stats menu. As usual, I increased my intelligence and then moved on to the skills menu, where another unallocated point had also appeared. I didn’t have to think about what to do with it for long; I had decided on it a long time ago. The only right decision for now would be to increase the level of Tranquility of Darkness. In the end, 20 MP was now being spent to cast the spell, and the chance of it working was 20%.

  The upgrade made things go quicker. Once, I was even able to “calm” the wolf during the first attack, even before the predator had noticed me. I felt like the star of a good old “Press A to win” meme. I was pressing the same button over and over again for the sake of victory. But what else could I do? The method was working. It was scary to think about how other players gained experience in this game. Considering the local rate of regeneration, an honest exchange of attacks with a mob was surely a long and dull process. Although, they must have had their own tricks up their sleeves.

  But this game was actually tough! The pain in my left forearm was driving me nuts! It wasn’t so sharp anymore, but it ached… and ached… and ached… If I could’ve logged out of the game, I would have probably not gone back in for a long time. In my opinion, excessive realism had been an error on the programmers’ part. And this hardcore way of upgrading things… A game should make you happy, help you relax after a hard day’s work… not make you spend all of your strength and energy on it.

  But what if this isn’t a game? A terrifying thought occurred to me. This wasn’t the first time that had happened, by the way. The same as before, I tried to get this thought out of my head. If I was in an actual parallel world, where the natural order of things included the elements of an MMORPG… No-no-no! I’m not ready to think about that. Time dilation only happened in fairy tales. Everything else was just a glitch related to a new game and an experimental capsule. Any game can be beaten, any failure can be corrected. In real life, everything is much more complicated…

  After driving away the disturbing thoughts, I noticed the sixteenth wolf of the day, and, moving my right hand forward, I attacked it with black smoke. The effect didn’t trigger and the wolf growled as it jumped at me. I dodged aside, and after three seconds
, repeated the spell. The beast only snorted and disappeared from sight. I instantly moved my center of gravity to my left leg, angling my body toward that side. The predator flashed past me like an arrow, striking my stomach with its nose. Getting some distance between us, I activated Tranquility of Darkness again.

  You have defeated the “Black Wolf”.

  XP received: 394

  Level up!

  Current level: 10

  You have reached the level 10 mark. All the critical negative effects afflicting you have been removed, up to a slight degree of severity. All stats have been increased by 2.

  As I was reading these cherished lines, I felt the pain in my forearm beginning to lessen. After a couple of seconds, the pain had completely disappeared, and I quickly removed the bloody bandage.

  “Yes! Alright!” Allowing my emotions to spill out, I cried out, solemnly clenching my fists. I now sported a barely visible scar in the place where a dreadful bite had once been.

  Heh! It had been worth it to endure the pain and not give up! I had been right about not needing to look for a city and doctors.

  Continuing to mentally praise myself, I climbed up a pine tree and opened my inventory. I couldn’t wait to explore all the bonuses I had obtained with this new level, but I decided to start with the ring.

  It looked like a plain, iron, completely unremarkable ring, and it was as thin as a wire. But as soon as I had examined it and wished to know more about it, my eyes grew wide at what I saw:

  The ring of the Rascal

  Unique item

  Agility: +5

  Effect 1: Allows you to change your name. Recharges in 72 hours.

  Effect 2: Allows you to learn the “Blind Eye” skill.

  An interesting item; it would suit some kind of “robber” in an ordinary MMORPG. But, apparently, there were no standard classes here. So I figured having it wouldn’t hurt.

  I put the ring on my finger and started thinking. Where had Bon’s father found something like this? Judging by the set of items Una found in the basement, the chief had clearly been ready to run off: a stash of money and jewelry, the ability to change one’s name, the Encyclopedia… Maybe there had been something else as well? Did I not shake the healer down well enough? Admittedly, the girl could’ve missed something. It would be ideal to look through the ashes again... But that would come later, since the upgrading process had started.