David sat on the ground, breathing heavily as he tried not to stare at the creature next to him. He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to see what he’d done.

It was gruesome, with multiple bullet holes still leaking blood into a pool on the ground around him and steadily seeping towards his boots. He avoided looking at that, too.

It was too real.

Too realistic.

Players, actual real players, would have a mature content filter applied to such things. They would not clearly see the results of their actions, and for them, it would be less real. It would be easy for them to do this. For them this was just a game.

Not him, though. He had not had the option to apply such a filter, and truth be told, he had not thought that it was worth the time it would take to code one into his interface. He hadn’t even begun to predict what this would be like.

David sincerely regretted that now.

He could still feel the phantom pain of his injuries, his hand pressed to his chest as he stared fearfully at the forest just to the side of the bear.

He could feel the tears in his jacket, his shirt ripped to shreds underneath. A few minutes ago, he had been on the verge of death. The absolute edge of his existence. Deep down, his emotions felt the same as when he had sat on the edge of his pod for hours, working up the courage to enter the game. He had been about to die then, too.

Yet no marks marred his body, in fact, physically, he felt much better. His body felt stronger. More resilient. The fog that affected him now seemed thinner, if only slightly. He shuddered as he fought to remain lucid, to press on from the trauma and maintain his awareness of his surroundings. It took him a few minutes to lift his head, eyes shifting from their frozen gaze, no longer avoiding the sight before him.

It was easier than he’d thought, to look at it. He felt nothing as he looked at its hulking form, now peacefully resting in a large pool of bloodied leaves and clods of dirt. Slowly, he stood up, almost as if he was in a daze, and approached the creature. He bent to look at it, sizing up the damage, when he suddenly felt the urge to vomit.

He hadn’t eaten since starting the game, and nothing came out when his body heaved.

He shakily rose to his feet once more, unsteady hands reaching for the dagger still embedded in its single, massive eye. His hands wrapped around the grip, and he pulled it out, wishing he had done it faster as he felt the inside of its skull grate against the blade. He almost dropped it as he dry-heaved again, before stumbling away from it a few steps and falling to his knees.

He was in shock, he knew that.

He dropped the knife in the dirt, raising his hands in front of him as he stared. They were clean, unbroken. Before he had leveled up they had been covered in blood, his left wrist had been violently shattered. A pervading numbness suffused his body as the adrenaline finally stopped pumping through his veins, the incredibly euphoric feeling that leveling gave him fading all too quickly.

This was the fog like never before.

Funnily enough, the fog could be seen as his body’s protective mechanism, shutting him off from his emotions and leaving him empty when he had been deep in the depths of sadness and despair. Now, however, it shielded him from the horror of what he had just lived through.

Within the fog, he didn’t feel afraid.

His hands slowly fell to his sides, and he stood up. Something called out within him, telling him to retrieve his things, to leave the area. The idea of not being near the bear suited him just fine, so he got up and began to look for his pistol, discarded somewhere in the brush. He turned to look around the body, but stopped when he saw a small, glowing orb floating over the bear. It emitted a soft light, too bright to see its source but not illuminating his surroundings. Instinctively, as if in a trance, He approached the body, his hand reaching out to touch the orb, which instantly disappeared. A notification icon flashed across the bottom of his vision, but he felt no desire to look at it. The notion that he needed to collect his things and leave was the only thought that penetrated the fog, and he ignored all else, mechanically circling the dead bear, stepping over large clods of earth that had been ripped free from the ground by the bear’s claws. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t find the pistol, there was too much brush on the ground, and though he walked in slow, mechanical circles, its location remained a mystery. He gave up on it, instead returning to the dagger he had dropped. He didn’t want to look at or touch it any more, so he put it in his inventory.

Hopefully that would clean it.

He began to walk away then, when he stopped. He felt a tugging sensation in his body, just barely seeping through the thick fog in his mind. He followed it with a dull curiosity, and a mana echo pulsed out from him and into his surroundings.

He found the pistol, walked over to it, and put it in his inventory. He felt no elation over ending the search.

With his gear collected, he walked monotonously into the forest, following his map to the east.

—---------

As David walked, he slowly began to feel better. His mind came down from the fog like an addict from a drug induced haze. The forest, when it was not trying to kill you, had a distinct beauty to it. It made him feel more at peace as he took his slow, measured steps through the trees. David had spent the majority of his life in cities, rarely traveling, never exploring. Being surrounded by trees, by green things, by life, it was invigorating.

After almost an hour of walking he came to a stop, the path he had found led out of the forest in front of him, the trees gave way to a vast rolling plain. In the distance, a road cut through the plains, bisecting fields of wheat and corn as it cut through the earth, far down the road, the city of Entis was visible.

He sat down at the edge of the forest for a break, taking a deep breath. If he had to acknowledge how he felt now, he could only call it surreal.

The shock had faded with time, his hike allowing him to reach a certain equilibrium. Now that he was resting, taking deep, focused breaths, he felt the last of the fog start to fade. The feeling of emptiness didn’t quite leave him, but he felt he was ready to go over what had happened.

First, he had to praise himself. His caution had prevented him from being ambushed and subsequently mauled by the one-eyed bear. That was a positive, it showed that his preparations worked. He was on the right track. His decision to run away had been the right move too, it had given him time to draw his weapon and prepare himself. He could even go so far as to say his shooting had not been as terribly bad as he had thought it would be, though he had missed more than half of his first magazine as he hadn’t been ready for the deafening noise and recoil. He hadn’t even noticed that he pulled the trigger so quickly that he had hardly corrected for the recoil, leading to all but his first three shots to miss.

His second magazine, on the other hand, had hit with almost every single shot. It was hard to miss when a creature was directly on top of you.

His actions with the dagger had been better than he could’ve hoped, getting it out of his sheathe and stabbing it exactly where it would inflict a lethal blow.

Not bad.

Where he had messed up was his failure to test out if he could fire through his own Minor Force Shield. If he could do it safely, he could have summoned one before launching his second Mana Echo. This would have given him time to maneuver after he reloaded, perhaps he could have dived out of the way, or at least fired a few more shots before it crashed through his shield.

That too was a problem. It had instantly destroyed his shield, no trouble at all.

That meant it had done 100 dmg to it instantly, and the attack that had sent him flying the first time had been dampened by the shield. If the shield had not been there, he would have instantly died, as his HP was a mere 60. A pitiful amount compared to the damage the bear had been able to unleash. He had come too close to death.

With a sudden realization, he checked his notification feed for the fight, it showed his HP fall to 19 before he had killed the bear and leveled up.

Too close.

His notifications had another message after his level up announcement:

You have looted the Cyclops Bear, level 6.

You have received:

Bear pelt x 1

Bear claws x 20

Cyclops Eye x 1

Congratulations! You have earned a skill! Auto-loot, level 1.

Automatically presents loot to the user in the form of a glowing orb. Ability can collect damaged loot from creatures.

David felt a sad smile form on his face. That had been a work around for Alexy Romanov’s

obsession with realism. Originally, the player would have to collect their own loot from the bodies of their enemies, which meant they would be forced to get elbow deep in gore after every kill. Many NPCs who did not have the skill still had to do this, but the real problem came during testing. The developers in charge of testing the class system and its effects on the players discovered a rather terrifying class that would be awarded to players who had manually looted many creatures, the Skin Walker class. Knowing the name of the class had been enough for David to know that it was not something the players should have. Alexy had been unwilling to completely remove it from the game, so a compromise had been reached by giving all players the auto-loot skill, preventing them from easily accessing such a dangerous class.

It served an even better purpose, because if one leveled the skill up enough it would collect loot for you at a distance, making battlefields much more profitable.

He checked his stats, noticing that his WIS, CON, and PER stats had all increased by four, which was in line with the racial attributes he had tweaked before entering the game. He would get one stat point added to each of those stats every single time he leveled, allowing him to build up his most important stats without even investing in them. He also had twelve extra stat points to invest, three per level, which he used to increase his AGI by four, his CHAR by four, his WIS by two, and LCK by two.

David Apollo

RACE - HUMAN TYPE 1

CLASS - NONE

TITLES - NONE

TIER - I

SKILLS

(LIST)

ABILITIES

(LIST)

HP - 100

MP - 150

STAM - 50

LEVEL

STR

CON

AGI

PER

WIS

CHAR

LCK

5

7

10

6(+4)

9

13(+2)

3(+4)

2(+2)

His HP had increased to 100 and his MP had risen to 150. It was enough for three Minor Force Shields.

Still quite weak, but no longer as pitiful as before.

The stat increase had other effects on him too, something he had not known would be so profound. He hadn’t noticed it at first, when he was deeply in shock, but the four point increase to his WIS after killing the bear had drastically altered him. He felt it again when he added the two extra points, increasing WIS to 15. The fog, so thick in his mind, had seemed to get just a little thinner. A little less powerful. It was a change so small that others would never notice it, but for him, the fog was an old friend. He knew it well.

How could he not see the difference?

‘Changes in WIS directly increase the strength of my mind…’ He considered. If this was true then he almost wanted to abandon all other stats. He originally planned on raising his CHAR and LCK to acceptable levels so that they would not hinder him in everyday interaction, but if he could permanently leave the fog behind simply by maxing out his WIS stat…it was worth considering. That wasn’t to say that his other stat increases had done nothing. With more points in AGI, he felt lighter, more loose. He felt like he was able to walk just a little bit easier through the forest, and his PER increases had enhanced his eyesight, allowing him to notice more detail from his surroundings.

They were small changes, but they affected him in multiple ways. They were a simple, numerical depiction of his path to changing himself.

With every increase to those numbers, he would have taken one step further on the path to reaching his goals. He could feel it.

David felt that killing the bear had done more for him than just increase his level and stats. The truth was, the whole event had been so incredibly intense, he had felt so many emotions in such a brief span of time, it was like the polar opposite of the fog. When it came down to it, David truly did want to struggle to live, to survive. When his life was on the line his survival instinct was able to power through the fog, accomplishing incredible feats like creating the PMU and killing a level 6 Cyclops Bear as a level 1.

He spent some time reflecting on his feelings, asking himself how he felt about the whole thing.

‘Do I feel bad about the death of the bear?....Yes, but not so much as I thought I might…is this because it was trying to eat me, or is it due to my new persona, David Apollo?’

‘Is it okay that I only barely feel sorry for the bear?...again, yes. I think this is something I will need to get used to, better if it’s not forced.’

He sat still for a moment to consider how he had changed. The rush from leveling up coinciding with the immense relief from surviving had been a major change for David. He was so used to feeling depressed and hopeless that the opposing emotions had been like medicine for him.

He actually felt better.

Not good, of course, but perhaps he had clawed his way out of the depths of the fog, now only residing in its periphery.

He suddenly noticed the sun above his head had fallen further towards the horizon, indicating he didn’t have long before night time fell.

With a deep, emotional breath he stood up and started walking his way across the plain, cutting his way towards the road, and the city it led to.

—--------

David walked along the road for almost two hours, following it’s curve as it traversed the plains. Not long after he had set foot on the well made asphalt he had been startled to hear a rumbling noise behind him, nearly causing him to panic before a metal-clad truck crested the hill behind him, speeding around the curve and traveling past him before he could react.

‘It will take me another hour to reach the city like this… maybe I could hitchhike?’

He deeply considered it as he walked.

It should be easy.

He would stick his thumb out, the next truck would stop, offer him a ride, and then he would only have to introduce himself…share his backstory…talk about how his clothes were ripped…

‘Maybe I should just walk...’

That sounded like too much work.

He was still considering it when the second truck drove past him, leaving him unable to decide in time about sticking his thumb out.

‘Okay, the next truck…next time…I’ll stick my thumb out. It's what David Apollo would do…’

He was hungry, he was tired, he was thirsty. He wanted to reach the city and get food and rest.

He could deal with a small introduction if that's what it took.

When the third truck came, he stuck his thumb out.

The truck slowed down a little, almost as if the multiple occupants were trying to get a good look at him, before honking and speeding away. They honked at him.

He allowed himself to feel slightly annoyed, but at this point he was only about twenty minutes from the city's border wall, so he continued on foot.

The closer he got to the wall the bigger it looked, and soon it towered over him as he looked up at it, noticing all the turreted weapons placed along its towers, their uniformed operators patrolling the heights.

Below that and directly in front of him stood one of the entrances to the city. It opened around the road, but in order to drive up to it one would have to traverse a large serpentine of concrete obstacles, in full view of the massively reinforced emplacements, bunkers, and towers overlooking the road. The footpath, on the other hand, became a narrow metal walkway with rails on either side of it, stretching for almost a hundred meters before it ended alongside the entrance to the tunnel through the walls. At the end of the road there was a conveyor setup with tracks that could pull parked cars forward with the press of a button, which was manned by a soldier in a glass faced guard house. Two of the trucks that had passed him were still on the conveyor belt, with the third presumably disappearing into the city. The first truck was empty, with their occupants standing in a line on the footpath while soldiers searched through the vehicle. ‘Security here is surprisingly tight…’ He thought to himself. He had to remember, this was the warrior city of Entis. The whole culture here was surrounded by the influence of the military and powerful warriors.

As David approached the back of the line, he noticed that there were more people in line than could fit in the vehicles, that meant others had walked, too. That was good because it would help him not stand out. As he came closer, he saw the occupants of the second truck exit their vehicle, heading to the back of the line for individual security checks. As they did, David’s eyes almost immediately locked onto a strangely noticeable, bald man with bulky shoulders and a squat posture. David wasn’t sure why the man was so noticeable, but as he approached he could hear the man grumbling to his companions “These f*cking security checks are always such b*llsh*t. Why do we have to do this awful sh*t every time!” He got progressively louder as his complaints droned on, cursing more and jostling the people in line with him.

…David was speechless.

‘What is up with that NPC?’

‘What’s wrong with the AI? Is this a glitch? Why is his mouth so foul!’

As the angry, foul mouthed bald man continued to complain , one of the passengers from the same vehicle turned and gave David an awkward smile as he joined the line. “Sorry friend, I didn’t stop for you” David was about to tell him not to worry about it when the bald man interjected “You don’t have to apologize Ben! You never know what kind of whack-job *sshole you could be picking up out there!” he jostled his elbow into the man as he said it ‘good-naturedly.’ David was unsure of how he was supposed to respond to that, so he simply stared at the driver of the truck, who was looking at the bald man oddly. The situation quickly became awkward, so David turned away and kept silent. He had no idea how he was supposed to interact with these people.

Meanwhile, as they waited, the bald man kept loudly complaining. He was really cursing up a storm! David had never heard anybody use so much profanity, and the weird thing about it was how much the other NPCs just seemed to accept it. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore as someone way further up the line called back and offered the bald man his spot. He accepted that invitation without a second thought, and David called out to him as he walked away “Aren’t you abandoning your friends?” The angry bald man looked over his shoulder at David as he walked away with a look of surprise. He jerked his thumb up over his shoulder, pointing at the group of people he was leaving.

“Who, you mean these guys? I don’t know those f*ckers. They picked me up when I was hitchhiking.”

The man smiled as he approached the front of the line, and soon disappeared through the front of the gate.

…’Didn’t he say something about picking up whack-jobs…?’