Jim's PoV

After almost getting bombed from above Jim started moving a lot more carefully as he began to exit the city. He was getting really close to the point of exiting the game and giving it another try. Why did real life have to translate into dirty and filthy! Definitely need some changes. Maybe he could just add a 2D bathing house into the original gaming files for each city? Maybe he could add some working plumbing too. This is a game dammit! Why did that stuff even have to exist? Jim tried to think of a way he could make it so that the creatures in this game would not need to perform that function, but most of his game was created from linking databases together and drawing parallels between that and the world of the game. It would be a real headache to try to weed just that part out.

As Jim was tip-toeing through the street he noticed that there was what seemed like red paint plastered all over his armor. At first he was hoping that maybe the armor had gone over some kind of evolution because he had killed the final boss, but who ever did the paint job really sucked at it. It wasn't symmetrical at all! And that was when his eyes landed on a small chunk that seemed to be jammed into one of the crevices in his armor. He hesitantly looked it over, and it didn't take him long to reconsider what that red paint might be. What was now in his gauntleted hand was clearly a tooth. After doing the tongue on teeth dance he quickly came to the conclusion that he still had all his teeth. Then his mind went back to that brief flash of red when he had cut through First Minister Zed before the credits had started rolling. Dropping the tooth with distaste Jim picked up the pace and quickly left the city. As he left the gate guards watched him silently as he exited the city.

Jim sighed and started making his way north. It was weird walking around with no sense of smell. The next major area in the game was a set of caves that needed to be navigated through, but on the way there was a decently large river. That should take care of his stink problem. He was outside walking on the road through a beautiful field with a light breeze. Feeling the wind on his face but not being able to inhale and smell the outdoors was a real downer. Operation "dunk in the river" was about to commence. Bumping up the sight slider a bit his binocular mode could make out the bridge that spanned the river. Damn, everything was so far away.

It was taking a long time so Jim got bored. While looking around in his menu it took him awhile to realize the number of gil he had increased. Interesting, He must have got it from killing Zed. Scanning through his inventory it seemed nothing else had changed. Still the proof that his gil count could go over the original max limit was promising. Theoretically then the next time around he should be able to give himself anything without limit. Not that it would be necessary but it was still fun to know it was possible. Mind wandering he thought of drowning a city in gold coins. City of gold! He could make a real one! What would the NPCs do? Images of NPCs lining up scooping gold coins into brown sacks and carrying them over their shoulder passed through his mind. It could be just like that real time strategy game with humans vs orcs!

He started fiddling with the menu options some more and almost forgot that he had a spell! The game was very basic when it came to magic, everything was randomized. When you first started the game you would get one random tier one spell. Any successful spell cast had a chance of granting a new spell to the user. The higher rank the spell the lower the chance to get it. Also many spells required the character to learn one spell first before it could unlock a new tree of spells. It made for very different playthroughs each time and kept the game fresh. One game your main character would be the guy with a massive sword and beefy armor, and the next he would be the party's main healer. He could even grow unlucky enough to be useless and be kicked off the team. It just depended on what spells he learned. There were plenty of abysmally bad spells, so generally those characters ended up being melee if they had decent strength or just flat out ignored and replaced once you had extra characters.

With anticipation Jim opened up the correct menu to find that his spell was Sense Lv1. What a useless piece of crap. If it had been a normal game this would have been an immediate reset. It was the absolute worst out of all of the tier one spells. They consisted of: Lightning, Fire, Ice, Heal or Sense. Out of the five, three could do damage at range, one could heal, and one was utter garbage. After all who needed sense when you had the officially licensed strategy guide memorized? Mentally he tried to console himself that heal would have lackluster results as well, but then he realized his mana pool was massive. Even if the heal didn't restore a lot of health, he could have cast it over a hundred times in one go easily. Which meant he could have quickly learned a new spell. Damned sense spell. Sense was a spell that when casted it would tell the player information about the target. But it could only be cast on each target once. Which meant if he wanted a new spell he would have to keep casting it over and over on every target he could find. Harnessing the powers of fire and lightning would have to wait. Eventually he would learn a new spell that was actually good. He was only level one right now. Glumly Jim looked over the sense spell. Best to start using it so he can learn something new and leave this in the dustbin of history.

Using the Sense spell on himself he found the same information that he could have gotten in his status menu. It listed his level, health, mana, strength, agility, stamina and magic. It also listed that he was healthy. Seeing the massively overpowered numbers listed he tried to imagine why the hell he would ever need to use this piece of garbage spell. Unfortunately if he wanted better magical powers he would have to use it. He couldn't exactly fire himself if he got better party members.

As Jim was glaring at the readout he could hear something clank against his armored thigh. Jim excitedly looked around and found two wolves attacking him! Finally a chance to try out combat! He really wanted another spell besides sense so he took his time to cast it on the two wolves. One of them was labeled as a “Lv2 Starving Wolf Male” and the other “Lv2 Starving Wolf Female”. Their stats were basically nothing compared to what he had. He even noticed that their health wasn't even at max, for some reason they were both at half life already. Their pathetic stats was further emphasised by their emaciated bodies. He could clearly see the outline of their rib cages as well as patches of fur that were missing. The pair looked worse than any stray dog he had ever seen. Ugly creatures. With the chore of casting Sense completed he eagerly lifted his massive sword and brought it down heavily on the male wolf.

Jim lost his focus for a bit because the wolf exploded in a red mist. Lifting his visor so that he could wipe his eyes he could see that the other was trying to run away. What was it with this world and things running away? He started running and easily caught up to the creature in seconds. With all that agility he was really damn quick. Soon he was bringing his overly large sword down a second time.

The weapon was already in motion when he realized the wolf was on its back with his belly up and whining. In the last fraction of a second he saw that the wolf was actually urinating on itself when the sword met the creature. A familiar red mist enveloped him again. As the events caught up with him in his mind he was confused. Why was a game creature rolling over in fear and submission like that? Why was there so much blood and gore?

Lost in his confusion he started to hear a low pitched whining not too far away. Around the first red spot in the grass he saw two small figures. He hesitantly used sense and read the dialog box next to them. It said “Lv1 Starving Wolf Cub Female” and “Lv1 Starving Wolf Cub Male”. The sight of the cute computerized cubs mourning their lost parents made the taste of bile fill the back of his throat. As he was gazing at them a prompt appeared exclaiming “Congratulations, you have learned a new spell!”

He felt sick. Jim didn't want to keep playing this game anymore.