Otherlife Dreams: The Selfless Hero Trilogy Read online

  Unable to log into GMHub.

  Unable to log into GMHub.

  Unable to log into GMHub.

  Unable to log into GMHub.

  Unable to log into GMHub.

  Loading into coordinates 0, 0, 0.

  You gain Spawn Invulnerability

  Plains Wolf uses Tackle on you

  Plains Wolf damages you for 149 points of damage

  You are invulnerable

  Spawn Invulnerability has ended

  Plains Wolf bites you for 92 points of damage

  You punch a Plains Wolf for 1 damage of damage

  You use Distract on Plains Wolf

  Plains Wolf is distracted

  Once he had read through the log, he realized he should be dead already. Checking against the help manual, he discovered everyone had one hundred hit points regardless of class or race it all came down to how much you could mitigate. It didn’t matter if it was through armor, resistances, or skills. Runner definitely wouldn’t do much of that with only one point of constitution, starter armor, and level one skills. If it had been a few seconds later his spawn invulnerability wouldn’t have soaked up that damage and he would already be a corpse.

  Throwing up a thank you to the Random Number God, he sorted out his starter gear into what he could use immediately and what he couldn’t. A simple sword and a simple shield went into his equipment slots, followed by pulling on a sturdy leather tunic, leggings, arm guards, gloves, belt, and boots. Everything else stayed in the backpack to clear the regular inventory screen until he could do a proper audit later and sell the duplicates.

  Now suitably attired for a night out with his dear friend Yeller, all that was left was figuring out how to end this without becoming a meal. Initializing the ability section of his HUD, he was unsurprised to find it was not what he would have expected. Every page in his ability book was filled with level one abilities. Given that he had every skill available, it would seem he was given the equipment that every level one character started with. All of them. Every class. Going over his quick slots, he found Distract to be the first skill there. Cure was in the second position. Highlighting Cure, the display box came up and confirmed what he expected. It was the level one healing ability for the Healer starting class. Distract was a level one Rogue ability.

  With a mental flick of his attention he targeted himself and cast Cure. Turning his attention to the social pane, he gauged the results.

  You cast Cure on yourself

  You gain thirty hit points

  Fifteen mana points fell out of his full mana bar as his health bar refilled. Nodding to himself, he paused, and considered the situation anew. He definitely wanted his health back, but it might be a waste to spend all his mana just to find out it didn’t regenerate while in combat. After a few seconds, the bar started to refill. It came back at about two points per second which wasn’t great but it surely wasn’t terrible either. Casting the skill twice more he brought himself up to ninety-eight hit points. Going back to his ability book he read over what was available to him while his mana refilled.

  A few minutes passed before he felt like he had sorted the book into three usable categories: Combat, non-combat, and crap. Only a few things ended up in crap, which were primarily less powered or duplicates of other abilities that a different class already had.

  Opening the non-combat section he tapped the entry at the top, Strengthen, and then cast it on himself.

  You cast Strengthen on yourself

  You feel stronger

  Twenty points of mana for fifteen strength for fifteen minutes was far from prohibitive. Activating four more buffs, he was out of mana but now had increased armor, agility, dexterity, and constitution. At a guess he was probably just barely a true level one now. Maybe a level two since he was able to wear heavier starting gear than others.

  As for combat abilities, he was torn between Regeneration or Fireblast. Targeting the wolf below him with a swift glance, he cast Fireblast. The wolf burst into flames and let out a surprised yelp before whimpering and running in a circle around the tree, settling down in very nearly the same spot it had just vacated. The small amount of damage done was instantly healed as the AI realized Runner was in a place that couldn’t be reached. There would be no cheesing the system with being in an inaccessible area.

  With a dismissive gesture he closed his ability book, contemplating the wolf at the bottom of the tree. In the middle of his contemplation the world became gray, like a historical drama attempting to simulate black and white movies. Everything stopped. There was no sound. Try as he might, Runner wasn’t able to activate a single window or move. Panic set in and his mind raced. Then even his ability to think wound down, like a toy’s energy cell running out of power. Only surface thoughts floated by, and even those were far distant things, almost like clouds in a distant sky.

  In this limbo, Runner simply was. As the world was, and as the wolf was.

  The world exploded into color and sound as it roared back to life. The sun above seemed to proclaim victory as if it had banished the gray alone. The wind picked up, the tree in which Runner sat swaying gently.

  A scratching sound below drew his eyes to the wolf. Scrabbling at the base of the tree the wolf eyed him anew as it clawed at the bark, trying to reach up to get at his perch. No longer patiently waiting as if cycling its AI commands, but actively trying to get to him. The eyes of the wolf were what made him nervous now. Before, they had a creepy doll like quality, hazy and unfocused. Otherlife was one of the newest MMOs out there, the bleeding edge of technology. It combined sleep, time dilation, and entertainment. Even it had limits though. Eyes that were alive and full of hunger, that wanted nothing more to tear his throat out, gazed up at him hungrily.

  Runner opened the console, desperately hoping for an answer. Unfortunately, there was nothing visible in the console for Otherlife Dreams, which seemed correct, as he wasn’t able to log into his admin account completely. Moving to the ships systems console he tapped the up arrow a few times to retrieve all previous commands he found what he was looking for.

  User §┌îτ has logged in

  User §┌îτ has paused the server

  User §┌îτ has started patch σq.’Ç

  Patch σq.’Ç completed

  Resource allocation program has been automatically activated

  User §┌îτ has logged out

  User §┌îτ has logged in

  Allocation program has finished. Resource allocation has found an additional 4,179,821,031% available assets.

  User §┌îτ has attempted to cancel the program.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

  Response from User NorRun001 timed out, proceeding with Allocation program.

  User §┌îτ is now away

  Allocation complete, server reloading with new resources.

  Server reload complete, server unpausing.

  There was a fuzzy memory oozing by in his empty head that told him one of the biggest draws of Otherlife Dreams was that it would take whatever resources was given to it. It would then use those resources to develop emergent game features, quests, and AI behavior. Four billion percent additional resources would make the game pretty damn advanced. Deep in his heart, Runner quailed. Two hundred percent would have been unprecedented; a gigantic leap in technology. This was simply incomprehensible. He had to consider just who this §┌îτ was and where such massive resources had come from. Had their target planet jumped ahead in the technology race? Were they now
in enemy hands? Had an engineer on Earth accidentally hooked them up to a mainframe and misunderstood what Otherlife Dreams was?

  “I’m not alone,” he murmured to the wolf. “Beyond you that is, Yeller.”

  With a casual wave of his hand he flagged all seven requests from the unknown user, declined them, and deleted them.

  “IT doesn’t just grant privileges all willy nilly. We ask them why they need it…then deny them anyways,” his face twisting into a shit eating grin. Nodding to himself, he typed up a response, then sent it over to user §┌îτ and hoped a response would be swift in return. With any luck they were an engineer from the government outside and could help. Help somehow. He really wasn’t even sure what was going on. This of course was all well and good, but didn’t solve his immediate problem Yeller.

  Even with the buffs and gear he was quite a bit under the ability to fight the damn mutt one on one.

  Murmuring nonsense to no one in particular, he eased his way through the skill list, character sheet, and his abilities one more time. Once more he came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t much more he could do to even the odds. Even with an additional level or two this confrontation would probably be lost through sheer level difference. With a growl of irritation he threw a Fireblast at Yeller. He felt a little better watching it smolder and run around below, but it didn’t accomplish anything. The missing hit points quickly filled back up after a few seconds when the system confirmed Runner was unreachable. Drawing his sword with his right hand he briefly considered hurling it at the animal. No, he’d probably break the damned thing.

  He reared back screaming, ready to throw another Fireblast, but almost fell out of the tree as his foot slipped. Wrapping himself around the a large tree limb he hung on for dear life and tried not to stab himself with his own sword. Gripping the trunk, he watched as the Fireblast played over the sword. When his foot slipped his mind had wavered and instead the Fireblast had been launched without a target. Apparently he had come very close to scorching himself…or the tree, but by sheer luck it had struck the sword instead.

  “Wouldn’t that be just ironic. Burn yourself to death, with your own fire, and the tree you’re in. Fan-fucking-tastic, really.”

  After a few seconds the fire died. The sword seemed unharmed despite its fiery ordeal. It had burned longer than he expected, as metals weren’t the most flammable of substances. The main effect has disappeared almost instantly when it hit Yeller, though the damage over time effect had continued.

  Releasing his death grip on the trunk he settled himself on a branch, using it for a bench. He lightly set the sword tip against another limb that was a little lower than his seat. He contemplated the blade as he rotated the hilt slowly.

  With a deliberate slowness, he reached down with his left hand, and cast Fireblast with a fingertip against the simple steel. Once more it burned for a few seconds before going out. He would swear that it lasted a moment longer. He cast it three more times, watching as the fire lingered longer each time.

  Tuning out the incessant scratching and low growls of Yeller, Runner concentrated on this new found mystery.

  Runner let his mana bar refill and then cast Fireblast into the blade five times more, draining his mana bar. He was sure of it now. The blade remained lit longer each time. It was on the third cycle when he received a pop-up notification.

  You have developed the ability Enchant.

  Simple steel sword gains Fireblast.

  Cong-

  Thrilled, but concerned at the same time, Runner was overjoyed that something happened. It didn’t feel quite right that creating a unique skill should be this easy, or quick. Unwilling to get lost in it, or to spurn this glorious gift, he wrote it off for later.

  “Alright then, let’s do this shit!” he shouted. Minimizing the notification screen he steadied himself and found the right ability in the list. Runner quickly cast Vitality on every piece of equipment he had, other than his sword and shield, and confirmed that all of these enchantments were stacking. They were on a timer. They were actively adding their bonuses one on top of the other. He now had a glorious constitution of one hundred and six. He gave his shield the Stoneskin attribute just for some extra mitigation. Pushing himself to a standing position in the tree he found that he had nothing else he could do. Well, I could stay in the tree until my food runs out but that just seems cowardly.

  “Ok Yeller, I believe I was just commenting that I was going to use your skull as a soup bowl. Going to cook you, turn you into soup, and eat you out of your own damn skull. Love me some soup. Yeller soup in a Yeller soup bowl.”

  Taking a firm grip on his sword, he leapt, aiming the point at the damned wolf even as he fell. If he could time it just right he could score a Flank attack and do double damage. The blade struck the wolf’s spine, nearly being wrenched from his grip as he landed awkwardly. Runner took a few steps away from the beast as the Flank attack completed.

  Settling himself into an attack position he tried to activate the basic Slash ability as Yeller spun to face him. The ability fired just in time to land before Yeller’s attack. As the ability finished Runner did his best to raise his shield while activating Block, fully expecting a counterattack.

  Just as the shield seemed to be in the right place, it impacted into his arm and shoulder. A worried upward glance to his health bar was all Runner could spare before he looked back to Yeller. With a feral grin spreading across his face, Runner addressed the wolf. “Oh puppy, puppy. Baaaaad dog. Bad.”

  Yeller’s health was down to ninety percent and his own health had grudgingly shed a few points. Stinking of burnt fur and still smoldering, the Plains Wolf was suffering the after effects from the fire enchanted blade. Runner watched the angry creature even as he went through the normal auto attack process to keep chipping away at its health. Trying to throw in a dodge while pulling his shield in line Runner did his best to mitigate every attack. Over confidence was the straightest path to becoming lunch. Preemptively casting Regeneration had definitely helped to keep his health in the upper green portion of the bar but he was by no means safe.

  Whenever Block was off cooldown he instantly used it to take care of the next attack and then immediately weaved his sword in for a Slash. Over time he was able to drag down Yeller’s health, bit by bit. Occasionally he was forced to top himself off with a Regeneration cast, and it took most of his concentration, but he didn’t feel as helpless as he had earlier.

  With a final thrust Yeller whimpered and keeled over dead. Runner ended the fight with thirty percent of his health left and only a little bit of mana. Every spell cast had been used to keep pushing his health up as high as possible. From the first attack to finishing blow the ordeal had taken around five minutes. Runner would swear it had been hours; and that it had been a battle between titans.

  Runner slammed his sword home into its sheath with a grunt. Tapping open the loot window he sorted through the pickups. Shattered teeth, a ruined wolf pelt, and meat, was all he was able to salvage. After taking everything, he closed the window and looked to the corpse. He briefly he considered hacking away the head to make a proper soup bowl, but found himself growing queasy at the thought. All in all, this was still just a game. A game with only one goal: level up, get his memories back, get the password, and get everyone out.

  “Maybe next time Yeller,” he suggested. Turning from the corpse, Runner once more surveyed the landscape and patted his tree. “Nice tree, good foliage. I dub thee Bastion. I’ll come back and cut you down so I can take you with me. Plenty of Wolves to go around. Much soup to make.”

  With that said Runner walked out into the field, enjoying the feeling of the warm sun on his face.

  Chapter 2 - Blackjack -

  07:43am Sovereign Earth time

  09/02/43

  Runner sat up, his groggy mind struggled to a state of wakefulness. Blinking away his dreams, held up a hand to block the morning light from his eyes. Grumbling, he clambered to his feet and hal
f walked, half stumbled, towards the bathroom to start the day. His bare feet on the grass rattled him back to reality, disappointment stretched his face as he looked down. “Oh.”

  Wiggling his toes in the grass Runner, contemplated them. Yesterday was coming back to him like the coming of the dawn, slow, sharp, and almost too bright. After fighting several more wolves, he had quite happened onto a road. Just beyond the road there was a small clearing that promised seclusion and safety. With night coming on quickly, he had been scrambling through the ability list on the hunt for something he swore he had seen earlier. When he found it, he smiled to himself in victory. Also at the prospect of sleeping safely, warm, and soundly. He’d tapped Campsite and Campfire abilities and read their information. One provided a twelve hour safe haven from the monsters of the world. It would warn him if any uninvited players attempted to enter as well. The other would gave him access to a fire pit that gave off warmth, morale, mental security, and a means to cook. Otherlife boasted actual temperature levels to reflect world location, time of day, and actual specific areas. A warm fire sounded sublime at the time, darkness was always a fear.

  An icon of an empty stomach dully flashed in his status tray. Next to it a blue thermometer paired its status giving him a lovely morning starting condition. Hungry and chilled. It hadn’t been important to him at first, until he confirmed he was losing fifteen percent of his stats due to hunger. An additional five percent was lost for the cold weather.

  He’d found Forage in his quest for the Campsite ability as well. On activating it, it surprisingly came back with a positive result. A root covered in dirt had been the prize, randomly pulled out of the ground.

  He had supposed it was edible at the time. Maybe. He really didn’t like the feeling of a virtual empty stomach, resenting the fact that such a large portion of his stats were missing. In the end, he ate it. It tasted exactly like one would expect. Wet dirt.