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Victor Wolf

I rarely left the Great Game now, but that was true of all of us that had become players. We were the first wave of new kind of existence. Because only a small portion of humanity on earth could currently access the Great Game, non-players did not really understand that they would become extinct. Only those with DNA markers that allowed then entrance to the Great Game would ultimately survive. It was evolution, of the most vicious kind. Only the strong would survive and the strong were those who could access this new world. The old must give way to the new.

I walked through District 6 like a King. The masses parted around me like Moses parting the ocean. Most of them were not even aware of how they made way for me. They thought themselves free, building a life in Great Game as part of one of the most powerful corporations on earth.

But this was not earth, it was the Great Game, and here things were different. My path of Technomancy had opened up new possibilities, things I had thought were not possible. My obsession, my unrelenting pain had spawned something unique as I unlocked the only class of its kind - The Slave Master.

My Class and Skills were all geared around a single trait, to infect and controls others via my Technomancy. Though only level 60 the sheer power and scalability of my Class had already proved themselves a thousand times over. Every person in the city of District 6 was infected by my nannite viruses and I fed of them and the information they provided like a parasite.

It had not taken me long to become the single strongest stakeholder in the sheltered part of the Great Game that earth humans had access to. It was a flexing of power that was necessary as the sole surviving heir to the company.

I had to show that the wolf still had teeth.

I strolled into my command centre and jacked into the network and began to oversee my growing Empire. I didn’t fool myself that I had real power, I had already developed contacts outside of the restricted zone we inhabited. There were billions of humans from other galaxies with Empires so large it was impossible to imagine. Even a minor kingdom in the Great Game could crush us if they wished and only 100 years existed before the Warden would remove our protection.

Indeed, it was probably possible for a single individual of sufficient strength to wipe out the entire restricted zone.

This was the primary obsession that drove me. The quest for power. The enemy was coming while humanity squabbled amongst itself desperate to leverage of this new world the Warden opened up for us.

The enemy was silent. It had no face. But it was coming. And when it came, I would survive.

My second obsession had been with me almost as long. I nurtured it, fed it. I let it grow deep in my bones so that it never totally left me. A reminder of the weak man I once was and the blindness that had led to the death of my whole family.

A hard edged hatred rose in my almost slipping out of my control and a nearby guard collapsed in spasm behind me as my emotions overflowed accidentley into his neural network.

I pulled out a small thin knife I kept for just this occasion and thrust it directly straight into my arm.

Pain. Oh how I relished it. That sweet distraction from my reality within reality. The irony, that I could leave my word into a virtual world and yet my suffering simply accompanied me.

I glanced over at the guard who had collapsed on the floor as I rubbed my temples. Through the skills unlocked by my Class I had gained an increasingly sophisticated understanding of nannite applications. Though we were in a virtual world and some of the physics that seemed to apply did not exist in reality, much of the concepts were applicable.

I already had entire teams of scientists working in the real world on what I called nannite hijacking, sophisticated methods of mind control via tech.

“Sir” a voice interrupted my thoughts. I glanced over at No 2 who stood waiting patiently. His gaze rested neutrally somewhere above me head, he was most definitely NOT looking at the thin knife sticking out of my arm, or the collapsed guard on the floor.

I removed the knife and cleaned the blood off on my jacket before gesturing No 2 to report.

“We received a transmission from Misiki. Braizo Nakamura survived the transition and spawned in Misiki’s territory. She reports he accessed a teleportation array and has transmitted the coordinates she believes it leads to.”

“And the Uncle?” I asked.

“He went dark after visiting Nakamura in prison. We have no leads.”

I sat back as a mix of emotions to complicated to label passed through me. I had been so close to assassinating him in his maximum security prison. After years of effort I had finally gained influence over the Comptroller, but just as I closed in someone, I suspected the Uncle, had requested his DNA be scanned. Once he was found to be a compatible to enter the Great Game is was out of my hands. Not even I was willing to wrestle with the Warden rules.

“Have we verified the location?” I asked.

“Yes it has been verified by our agent in Misiki’s entourage. Location is approximately 1.2 months distant. Our agent also reported that Nakamura was strangely weak for a new user, substantially weaker than a normal level 1 by a large margin.”

“Nakamura is most dangerous when he is weak. You know how he killed my family No 2?” I said calmly.

“Not the specifics Sir, those were kept out of the media.”

“It was rather ingenious really. He killed them with a single finger strike through the eye and into the brain. This was a 14 year old boy at the time, a techno cripple. He just walked into my home and killed everyone I loved with a single finger.”

“I did not know Sir.”

“So no, I don’t put much faith in any report of him being weak. Being weak is his strength and it is preciously what makes him dangerous.”

I paused then as thought back to the situation that was unfolding. So many variables. Clearly the Uncle had gotten to Misiki. Bribery wouldn’t be enough to risk his wrath, it must have been something else. Something Rand Corp didn’t want known, something dirty enough to make her think it was worth the price for his silence.

Double confirmation on location could also be false bait. I could lead an army to capture Nakamura only to find myself annilated. My agent was in Misiki’s employ had already turned on one master, he could easily do so to me as well.

“Can we get other independent confirmations.?” I asked.

“Of Nakamura’s destination and location we cannot. But of the fact that Nakamura is in the game we have 6 independent reports from other agents who personally witnessed him spawn.”

I thought it through then decided to play it safe. Though every fibre of my being wanted me to leap out of the chair and rush to the coordinates provided, I was better than that. Nakamura was a user now. Though he could log out it was mandatory that he continue to play. He was going nowhere.

“Bring me 3 disposables and I will download my command profile into them so I can remote control if I need to.” Disposable were what i called other Users whose system i had fully taken over. It gave me the ability to completely control them remotely if i chose to. Though, it did cause permanent damage to the host.

“Classes and levels?” No 2 asked with an eyebrow arched.

“Level 30. A Sniper, Tracker and a Marine.”

“No Gundam Mech?”

“No they are too rare. I don’t know the lay of the land yet and how deep Misiki’s interest is. Let the disposals probe, if they find Nakamura, they are to capture and bring him to me. I don’t want him killed, though they can hurt him as much as they need to. I want his first of many deaths to come directly from my hand.”

“And Misiki? She will be wondering what your next move is. She will be preparing for your wrath for not handing Nakamura over.”

“As she should.” I tapped my fingers on arm for a moment while thinking. “Let’s keep it psychological while I plan out how to extract my pound of flesh for her defiance. I am sending you a message, have one of our agents bring this to her attention – personally.”

“Yes Sir.” No 2 replied as he went to withdraw.

“Oh and one last thing No 2. Send an agent down to the Red Sun spawn city. Something doesn’t feel right down there from the information I am getting. It’s an itch I need scratched. I need eyes.”

No 2 nodded his head as he withdrew silently.

I sat back and put my feet up on the console as the guard who had been passed out finally began to wake up groaning. I almost laughed giddily for a moment I was enjoying myself that much in anticipation.

Nakamura your time will come soon.

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Misiki

It was the end to a long dangerous day. I had seen Braizo Nakamura off at the teleporter and finished the days worth of administration. Though he seemed weak, insanely so he still had a reek of danger to him. He was a very unsettling young man.

I saw it as soon as I entered my bedroom, but of course that was the intention. I stared at it for awhile and raised my arm to call for someone to clean it off, but then I stopped. Better to leave it their as a reminder to keep me sharp.

It was a typical and yet disturbing play by Victor. Four simple words spray painted on the wall above my bed.

Bad Wolf is Coming.

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Braizo Nakamura

Teleporting was an unusual experience, technically speaking I assumed it was the simple transfer of my consciousness from part of the VR world to another, but it felt like so much more. It was like I could feel my real body breaking down to its subatomic parts and then being reconstituted somewhere else.

Intelligence +2

Vitality +2

Interesting. I thought, it seemed there was some correlation between insight and the intelligence stat. First things first I took in my surroundings with great care, barely moving at first and just listening.

I put no faith at all in Misiki’s words that no one had been here before and that they did not know where I was. I did not think she had deliberately sent me to my death, but her motives and goals were unclear. No doubt she was playing both sides and against the middle and my corpse would be the consequence.

I slowly moved around the ruins. At a glance they looked far more dilapidated than the Roman ruins I spawned in. The designed on masonry that was buried and obscured by thick jungle vines looked almost Aztec in origin.

In fact the whole place looked liked something out of an old video game called Tomb Raider. The way I saw it I was between a rock and a hard place currently. If I ventured too far from the teleporter array virtually any animal or creature would be able to kill me. At the same time I had to operate under the conclusion that Misiki had betrayed my location to Victor. If I was wrong in this assumption I would just be an untrusting fool, if I was right my paranoia would have saved my life. So I would err on the side of caution and assume my location was revealed and it was only a matter of time before I would have to flee or fight for my life.

If I adapted the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs to my current circumstance then I was in level 1 and level 2.

Level 1 – Physical survival needs. I had ample food and water for the next week or so in the bag Misiki had given me. Though I would need to source water and food in the near future.

Level 2 – Physical safety needs. When a person if fearful, all concentration goes into calming the fear. My long term safety needs were out of my control, but in the short term I needed to secure the area from threat.

Satisfied at my immediate plan I canvased the surrounding area and found a series of interconnected caves and tunnels that led up to the teleportation array. Hearing a rushing sound in the distance I followed the noise until I came to a large open cave with a huge hole in the roof where light poured in. a sandy small beach had formed next to a small lake of fresh water which ran down through the cave and disappeared deeper into the interior.

I hadn’t seen any dangerous animals, but thinking back to similar earth environments I would need to be careful of snakes and other smaller poisonous animals, perhaps even larger predators.

Taking a swig of water from a container in my bag, I sat down cross legged and relaxed. It was the first time I had a moment to think outside the panic of surviving and entering the game. Three years had passed since the day I had killed Victors family. Prison gave you a lot of time to think. I had no regrets over what I had done, but I had matured, prison had aged me. At the time of the killings I was 14, a fanatic adhering to the training and philosophy Uncle had taught me. A philosophy that had taken me from the streets and given me purpose even though society had no place for a techno cripple like me.

I wasn’t so much blind as…….blunt. I lacked nuance, I had seen the world as black and white instead of the grey that it was. Prison had starved my senses and I felt them opening back up already. Shit I hated to admit it but even the danger of potentially losing my life was more exciting than the slow death of life in a tiny cell.

It was hard to truly describe what isolation in prison was like. You got tired of living, but were still scared of dying.

Now I was back in the game, literally and figuratively. I could feel the rush again as my mind was forced to work overtime to survive, I loved that feeling of having that keen edge.

Slowly I calmed my breath and started breathing according a set of Qi gong exercises I routinely practiced. Slowly circulating my breath in and out of my body I felt my mind calm and empty.

You have created a new statPerceptionImproves the range and sensitivity of your senses

Yes! I smiled as I saw the status notification pop up. It seems stats were not as limiting as I had depressingly thought. While I could not learn skills or obtain a class I could develop my current stats and acquire new stat categories like perception. The best thing was, all stats were completely passive. As long as they were raised i would naturally grow proportionally more powerful. A whole new world began to open in my mind.

Most users I would assume level their stats as a byproduct of gaining levels, obtaining and leveling skills and via class bonuses. Who in their right mind would simply grind stats? I could only assume the law of diminishing returns applied and that stats got harder and harder to raise as you leveled and there was some sort of innate cap.

The return on investment for time would always be to develop the skills and class bonuses. But with my Unique Status’s I gained stat points pretty much twice as fast for double the amount.

In a lot of ways this counteracted the penalty of being forever locked at level 1. I assumed when you leveled up you gained increases to stats, an effect i could duplicate through hard work grinding and the second bonus was that higher levels unlocked increasingly powerful skills and class bonuses - which i was unable to access anyway.

The true unknown power i had which could only be tested by trial and error was that my genetic ceiling had been removed as part of the unique status He who fights with monsters.

In the real world we are all limited by our genetic make up. No one can endlessly improve their strength, even through tech. There is always a ceiling of genetic potential. The only question is how close can you get to your full genetic potential. If my genetic ceiling was removed, in the context of the Great Game this might mean that theoretically i had no limit i could raise my stats, no final stopping put where diminishing returns on stats became a complete dead end.

I wonder how far this road could take me? Reality soon put a damper on my enthusiasm though. I had gone down this road in reality already, I had thought my advanced training methods and sheer discipline would allow me to build a physical body as strong as a tech enhanced one. I had been wrong. Wrong by such a large margin that I was simply a joke, nothing but trash.

Still in this scenario with my life on the line I didn’t really have any other option than to simply continue with the routine I had developed my whole life and see how the Great Game reacted to it. No doubt my body was not even anywhere close to being able to execute the advanced moves I had spent years building up to in real life, so I had to begin with the basics.

And with that I stood and breathed deeply and began to shake my body loose before moving through some gentle forms of Tai Chi. After around 30 minutes of Tai Chi i was rewarded as my body grew.

Vitality +2

Endurance +2

Speed +2

Strength +2

I could literally feel my body growing more powerful with each notification. After I finished Tai Chi I started a light stretching routine that was a mix of Yoga and Western gymnastics. The flexibility of my body was awful and my hamstrings were rigid, preventing me from completed all but the simplest of stretches.

Over the next hour though my body began to heat up and loosen and I slowly worked myself deeper into the stretches.

You have created a new statFlexibility Improves your range of motion

As I stared at the second new stat I had created I began to realize just how deep the rabbit hole went.

Quickly I began to do basic strength training exercises, push ups, handstands, rows, squats. Over the course of the next hour my stats increased considerably.

Strength +2

Strength +2

Strength +2

Strength +2

As I sat taking a brief pause between exercises I reconsidered my Unique Status. in particular what does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Now that I had leveled my health somewhat by raising my vitality, I walked up to the wall of the cave and punched it.

You receive 2 points of damage

You receive 2 points of damage

You receive 2 points of damage

You receive 2 points of damage

You receive 2 points of damage

You receive 2 points of damage

You have created a new statResilience reduces all physical damage taken

I smiled as my hand bled. Now we’re talking.