Respawn: Lives 1-5 (Respawn LitRPG series Book 1)

by Arthur Stone

  “How?”

  “Something like magic. I told you, the Continent has some very unrealistic laws.”

  “What I meant is, how did you get it? That stone. From the hair salon?”

  “Ha-ha. I’ve been carrying it for a while now. Best item I have that respawns with me.”

  “Wait, so you can keep some stuff even when you kick the bucket?”

  “Every ten levels, you get one spot for a bound item. It’s very hard to remove a bound item from someone, and when you die, you revive with the item. Well, not really with them, and not right away. There are some complications. Only small bound items like this are available for immediate use. But that’s the gist of it.”

  “So why are we in luck?”

  “Because there are four immunes here, not five, including the two of us. All of the immunes we killed are transferred to one of the regions’ clusters about to be loaded in. Well, you and I are here, but Globe’s people went somewhere else. Otherwise there would be at least five immunes here. Since two plus three is five. Remember math?”

  “Who cares if they end up here, though? Pretty big city. I doubt they could find us.”

  “Oh no, they’d find us. They could even pull it off under these circumstances by checking all the fresh clusters. Some have a very regular reset schedule, known down to the very second. They’ll visit those first, and if we’re unlucky enough to be there, we’re good as theirs.”

  “Wait, why would they bother looking for us? So if you end up killing someone in a battle, their friends go digging through all the fresh clusters just to find you and put you down again? That’s harsh.”

  “No, there’s always somebody getting killed. It’s the Continent. It’s always easier to die here that to survive. Usually they won’t hunt you down, though, just grab you if you turn up nearby. Most people aren’t reds like Globes. They’re decent. Well, relatively speaking.”

  “Reds? What the hell are those?”

  “You’ve seen the Humanity stat, right?”

  “And?”

  “If you do something stupid—send someone to respawn for no reason, or even kill a neutral digi, your Humanity goes down. If you kill infecteds and reds, it goes up. People that go negative are called reds. It’s another borrow from gaming, plus the font in their information box becomes red. The lower your Humanity, the more problems you have in this world. It reduces your XP gained, gives you stat penalties, and kills off some opportunities you could get otherwise. Globe’s people are reds.”

  “I knew something was wrong with them. Some kind of masochists.”

  “What? Moron. Masochists have nothing to do with it.”

  “Why not? They like causing themselves more problems. As if this world didn’t have enough problems for them already.”

  “Being a red has some advantages, though. The razers don’t touch them. As a rule. But you have to be red as a tomato for that protection.”

  “Razers?”

  “Enough talking about all these bad people,” snapped Kitty with a frown. “We have to get going.”

  “Great. I was starting to think the plan was to hide here during the zombie invasion.”

  “Shit, Rocky, get the word zombie out of your head! I’ve figured out the layout. Standard city plan. We need to stock up on a few things and head north.”

  “Another river with a bridge?”

  “Not a very wide river, and that’s good. The sea lies to the south, and where the sea is, the razers are. We have to stay away from them.”

  “Who are razers?”

  “Later, I’ll tell you later,” she replied absentmindedly as she stood. “Enough chatting. We have a lot to do, and your idiocy is slowing us down.”

  Female logic. She was the one who had pushed the conversation, but of course it was his fault.

  “Give me your money,” the girl demanded.

  “If you’re going to rob me, at least be nice about it.”

  “Do it before I rob you for real.”

  “Fine, here. What are you looking to buy? A cast for your face seems like a good idea.”

  Kitty counted the confiscated bills, ignoring Rocky’s remark.

  “We need vodka.”

  “What!?” Rocky couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Vodka first. Then everything else.”

  Rocky shook his head, “I would have never guessed, Kitty. Never in my life.”

  “Then quit guessing. You’re bad at it. I told you, I don’t drink. I wonder if the shooting is actually compensation for your shit memory.”

  “Then why do you need vodka?”

  “Because I can’t live without it. And neither can you.”

  Chapter 14

  Life Five: Unsmooth Criminal

  Rocky didn’t remember the past, but he had a strong sense that decent people didn’t mix alcoholic drinks on playgrounds. That’s exactly what Kitty was doing, and judging by her purposeful movements, she was not feeling any remorse.

  Why was she mixing a drink? There was no way she was satisfying an urge. Not only because she had stated twice that she didn’t drink but also because, for some reason, Rocky believed everything she had said at their strange meeting at the crossroads.

  First, Kitty pulled something out of the tiny pocket of her tight shorts. He would have assumed a poppy seed couldn’t even fit in there, but she produced a grape-shaped item that looked like a casually polished green decorative stone. She threw it into a plastic cup, splashed in a bit of vodka, and began to shake it.

  One minute later, she poured the resulting sludge into another glass, covered it with a strip of gauze folded several times, filtered the liquid—that’s what Rocky assumed she was doing, anyway—and then discarded the gauze immediately after.

  As he watched Kitty pour the green vodka solution into a plastic bottle containing some sugary beverage, he remembered something similar. “I’ve seen this before. Something like it, anyway.”

  “You’ve seen a playground before?” She snorted.

  “No, come on, I mean what you put in the vodka. I pull similar spheres out of that thing that sticks out of the back of the monsters’ heads. Some serious soldiers took it out. They had guns that you could barely face if you had a tank. But still, they left one of their own behind. I outlived him, but not by option. Ran out of options, and bam, back in the dorm.”

  “Well, well, I guess even morons have adventures sometimes,” Kitty said, absentmindedly again, as she shook the plastic bottle.

  Rocky wanted to tell her how, on his own initiated he had swallowed the things he had taken from the expired beast’s sac, those orbs which had sent him back to the dorm at record speed. But that might just prompt more mockery. Perhaps his ridiculous act would make Kitty find a name even worse than “moron.” At least it would add a little variety. But he would still have trouble answering in kind. She was just so beautiful that he had a genuinely hard time convincing his tongue to be rude to her.

  What a strange character.

  Kitty lifted the bottle to Rocky’s eye level. “See that?”

  “I’m lame, not blind.”

  “Remember how it looks, how it smells. This is life. Our life. Spore solution. Some call it lifejuice, others lifewater. There are many names for it, but the point of each is the same. Without it, we don’t live. Bring up your meters and you’ll see your spore balance meter. Got it?”

  Rocky applied what Kitty had taught him about navigating the menu. It took him a bit, but eventually he nodded. “Alright, I’m looking at it. What next?”

  “How many points does it have at maximum?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And what’s it at now?”

  “Eight.”

  “The max is always ten for zeroes, and each time you level up, it goes up by one. You can pump it more with stars and some achievements, but I doubt you’ll run into that anytime soon. When you revive, your Health, Stamina, and Continent Spirit are refilled entirely, and your Spore Balance, Thirst, and Hunger go
up to seventy to ninety percent full. The exact number is picked randomly. Your Pleasure goes to between sixty and seventy.” Pleasure? “You have to keep an eye on all of these meters. If you forget, as time passes you’ll realize that something has fallen badly. Trust me. For example, once your spore balance drops to half, you start to get penalized, and the penalties increase with time.”

  “What penalties?”

  “Your stats start dropping. You’ll feel weak and tired and you’ll be slower and less agile. Eventually it will get so bad that you can barely move your legs. When your spore balance hits zero, you’ll lose consciousness. You’ll lie there for a few hours, then get sent to respawn. Unless something finds you first, of course. High-calorie foods like us don’t usually lie around unnoticed for long.”

  “And I’m guessing you can bump up your spore balance with that stuff in the bottle.”

  “Hey, it’s another good guess! That’s number two for you. Yes, one small swallow is equal to about one spore balance point. You can’t drink a bunch for the future, though. The scale goes red and starts penalizing you. I guess the Continent doesn’t like greedy people. That green thing I used was called a spore. They come from the sacs that developed infecteds grow on the backs of their heads. I guess you already know about the sporesacs.”

  “I’ve bumped into them,” Rocky replied vaguely. He really didn’t want to tell the story of how he had sent himself screaming back to the dorm with his own hands. Or his own stupid mouth, rather, though his hands had played a supporting role.

  “Infecteds just starting out get something like a wart on the backs of their heads. It’s useless. Nothing good inside. But as the ghouls develop, it grows into something like an empty mushroom or half a peeled orange. Over time the shell hardens, but not too much. On even the most advanced creatures, you can puncture it without too much effort. Once you do, that’s the end. None of them can survive that. It’s the monsters’ Achilles’ heel. The strongest monsters grow a bony defensive plate around the sac. You can’t punch through that, not even with a good weapon. But there’s always one spot that is left unprotected. The sac needs an outlet. I’m not exactly sure why, but people say it spreads spores, so the creatures are always infecting everything around them, all the time. You saw what I did to make the sporejuice. Don’t forget it. A little alcohol—strong stuff, sixty proof at least—to dissolve the spore in, then filter, then mix it with something. Usually they do one part sporecohol to ten parts mixer, but I do less.”

  “Because you don’t like alcohol. But you still have to drink it.” Rocky smirked.

  Kitty pointed to the bottle. “It’s not very strong. Equivalent of less than one glass of light beer per day. But consider me an alcoholic if you want. Morons make mistakes. It’s nothing I can’t forgive.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be insulting. So one glass of this per day?”

  “Sometimes more, sometimes less. If you exert yourself or are wounded, your spore needs can go up considerably. Here, take three swallows of that. Small swallows, and not too quickly.”

  “It’s safe to drink filth yanked from zombie heads? With unwashed hands, no less?”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, forget the damn Z word! Just drink it, moron. And quit it with the faces. It’s just mushroom juice. Sure, it grows on infecteds, but without that stuff, you won’t make it a week. Spores are our universal currency, accepted everywhere. Alright, well, that’s all you can handle for now. You’re too stupid to absorb any more. Has your meter gone up?”

  “Yeah, all the way up to eleven. I feel like a fresh robot, oiled up, refilled with gas, all that.”

  “We’re still people. What you see and feel is coming in from outside. An external force, acting on us. You won’t find any physical changes in your body. Just consider those meters and stats and everything like magic. Magic that you have to follow in this world. Anyway, you ready to go?

  “Where to now? Want to grab some whiskey?”

  “You’re sick in the head, seriously. ‘Whiskey.’ No, we need to eat something, something expensive and filling. That will fill up your Hunger and even boost your Pleasure. Delicacies are good for that.

  “Could we do that somewhere else? You know, not in this city.”

  “What’s wrong with the city?”

  “Soon the zom—uh, infecteds will be here. I’ve seen that before, and I don’t like it.”

  “Hold your horses, this city is nice and open. No rivers blocking it in. In this place, the attacks don’t usually hit for a while. Plus, we can’t leave until I get a call.”

  “A call?” Rocky rubbed his jaw. “Remember, the power’s out, and nobody’s phone is working. Besides, I don’t want to ask where you’re hiding your phone in that outfit. The answer might be embarrassing.”

  Even a dime would stick out from inside her tiny, extremely tight clothes like a raised manhole cover on the road. Kitty’s face became a study in the negative emotional contortions evoked by unwanted sexual undertones. “God, you’re such a moron. Enough of the gawking! It’s not a telephone call, but it’s an important call. We have to wait for it. That’s why we haven’t been in a hurry. But I’m not keeping you back. You can go where you want. I’d recommend you go south. That’s the quickest way to get to respawn, which I’m assuming is what you’re going for.”

  Rock threw up his hands. “Geez, quit riding me! Remember you were like me once.”

  Kitty shook her head. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “But...”

  “No buts. My Luck is only six. What’s yours again? You know how your Luck gets pumped, right? By dying stupidly. Or sometimes randomly, but that’s only in rare cases. So you’re very unlucky.”

  Rocky wanted to explain, of course, that this was only his fifth life, and that his Luck had jumped up for some unknown reason, but Kitty cut the conversation short, handed him the bottle, and went off to look for something. Maybe she was searching for that restaurant with those delicacies. He had no choice but to follow, ruminating on their pitiful prospects of affording a real city dinner. The unfrugal girl had blown all of their money on the most expensive bottle of vodka in town. They might have enough left for some bread. Without butter.

  * * *

  Kitty solved their financial predicament a couple of minutes later, increasing their material wealth via criminal means. She did it with ease and without a moment’s hesitation, too. This was clearly not the first time. Walking along one of the less-crowded streets, the girl suddenly yanked Rocky along by the arm, dragging him to the ATM and demanding, “Cover me.”

  “Cover you how? With what?” He was clueless.

  “Just give me cover so the digis don’t see what I’m doing.”

  Rocky wanted to ask what exactly that was, but stopped short when he saw for himself.

  Kitty was robbing the ATM somehow, grabbing wads of bills as they were churned out. There was no way she had a debit card. Nobody here would carry something like that, and even if she did, her tiny clothes would have no way of concealing it.

  He was unable to keep quiet. “How are you doing that? Some kind of magic trick?”

  “All immunes are psychics. Our skills vary. One of mine is telekinesis. It’s weak, but crafty. Helps out now and then, as you can see.”

  “Do I have that too?” said Rocky, trying to strain his mind and pull off some trick.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said all immunes are psychics.”

  “No, godson, you’re not an immune, just a moron. And none of the morons are psychics, so you’d better just resign yourself to that fact.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re always welcome. Excellent. Now we have money. There’s a Mexican restaurant just a block away. How do you like quesadillas?”

  “What if I don’t? Will we go somewhere else?”

  “Nope. I’m not crazy about Mexican myself, but by ‘like’ I meant ‘you’ll eat what you’re given.’”

  “Doubt it.”
<
br />   “You’ll never learn!”

  “It’s just that the police are on their way here. They’re about to notice you.”

  “I figured you could stand still and block everybody’s view. I figured that at least you could do that much. But no, I guess I overestimated your abilities in the stand-still department.”

  “I’m bigger than you, but I’m not a fricking twenty-foot wide blanket. Someone was bound to notice!”

  “On ‘three,’ we run,” ordered Kitty, trying to stuff a wad of bills into a merely symbolic pocket.

  “Oh yeah, we’ll just skip out of here. My leg is bad, remember?”

  “Ugh, I’ve regretted teaming up with you a hundred times now! You’re not just a moron. You’re a lame moron. Literally and figuratively! I have the worst luck with guys.”

  “Then run on your own, if you’re so pushy to dump me.”

  “Did you... Did you just say I’m the one who’s pushy?” The girl’s face reddened and frowned, but she made no move to break from the spot.

  “I’m Sergeant Gilbert,” a tense but confident voice said from behind Rocky. “What are you two doing here?”

  “Nothing special. Just getting some money out,” Kitty mumbled, fumbling with the noncompliant bunch of bills.

  “Show me your IDs. This ATM is out of order right now.”

  The lump was finally bulging in the girl’s pocket. She smiled contentedly and replied without a hint of discomfort. “You stupid digis always say the same thing. Do you really think I could fit ID in these pockets?”

  After criticizing the guards’ stupidity, Kitty—to their surprise and Rock’s both—upped the charges against her. With a sliding motion, she moved towards the pair of cops, quickly slamming the closest in the throat with her first and landing a juicy kick in the groin of the other.

  It took her no more than a second. Maybe one and a half. The hits were solid, too. She knocked both of them out of commission, one with a punch to the neck that dropped him to his knees with a grunt, and the other by stomping on his feet, leaving him unable to do anything but leap around screaming.