Chapter 3

What the Fuck!

Star awoke the next morning to a hand gently shaking him awake. Star looked up at the older man who gestured to the table off to the side of the room. “I’ve made a small breakfast... I left some for you. Once you’ve eaten, come outside and I will show you the way to the roads. From there it will be your choice of where to go.” Star stood, looked to the table and the bowl of unidentifiable meal that it contained and shook his head.

“I appreciate the gesture, old man, but I have food on me. I would really appreciate it if you just told me where I am and what is going on.” Star said, reaching into his pocket and extracting his WarPad. He fiddled with it for a few seconds and selected a French MRE and it popped into the air before him. He quickly grabbed it and began prepping it. Star looked up at the old man who was looking at him in complete and utter shock as he started munching on some of the saltine crackers that came with the MRE.

“You’re a wizard! What in all the heavens are you doing out here? I didn't mean to be rude to you earlier but the way you were talking last night led me to believe that you were suffering from the side effects of a Moss binge!” The old man nearly cried.

Star looked at the old man and saw genuine fear in his eyes. He was fairly certain that he was still in the game, but this NPC’s reaction to his WarPad purchase was too strange. “I am not sure what this Moss you speak of is. But I am not offended by your behavior. Like I said before, I don’t know where I am, and I am not on any drugs. I just need to contact management and get them to log me out.” Star said, fiddling with his WarPad and trying to use the contact feature. Still nothing came up.

The old man looked bewildered as Star ran through the options in his WarPad. He clicked out of the options and went to the load-out menu. He was currently in a civilian load-out with no weapons. It was a plain leather jacket with a white undershirt, and denim jeans. Star clicked on his favorite scouting load-out which he had painstakingly customized throughout his years of playing the game. It was an adaptable combat uniform that offered little in the way of armor values, but could blend in in most environments. Star confirmed his selection and felt his clothing shift and the weight of his weapons and magazines settle into place on him. The feeling was very familiar and Star found comfort in having his weapons on him again. He had a basic nine mil glock with a nineteen round magazine in a leg holster. His belt was laden with extra magazines for both his handgun and the M-4 Variant that was slung on his back, two frag grenades, two smoke, and two incendiaries. He also had three combat knives on his person. One in a boot sheath, one at his waist, and one strapped to his chest.

Satisfied with his gear Star looked to the old man who was looking at him like he had grown tree heads and was belching hellfire. “So you were saying you could point me towards a town?” He asked casually, hoping that the old man wouldn’t faint.

The old man nodded mechanically and made his way out the door. Star followed behind and got his first look at the world around him. It was a beautiful place, they seemed to be in the foothills of a massive mountain range. The small hunting cabin was set in a clearing with a well, what looked to be an outhouse, and a smokehouse. The temperature outside was probably in the low seventies if he had to guess and the evergreen forest surrounding the cabin looked as idyllic as they came. ‘This is definitely not a game map I’ve been on before.’ Star muttered to himself as he followed the old man towards the forest to the southeast of his cabin.

“I’ve been out here for nearly fifteen years! And in all that time the scenery has never become lesser in my mind than the first day I started building that cabin.” The old man said, gesturing to the mountains and forest. He seemed to have collected himself somewhat since the shock of seeing Star use “Magic”.

“I am afraid that I do not know the state of affairs in the town nearest here. They are beastkin and good folk as far as I could tell you. They haven’t bothered me since I moved out here but their town is about thirty miles from here. The road is well traveled though, and it passes close by, only about five miles away. I occasionally run across the odd merchant or traveler that got lost in the woods when they stopped for the night nearby and decided to have a little moss party before getting to town. Hence my earlier assumption that you were one of those self same individuals.” The old man said as he continued walking towards the road.

Star just followed the man silently. Not really caring for the backstory. He played Warfare Online for the excitement and action, the blood and the pain. Story time was not what he wanted. So he followed the man in silence.

It took nearly two hours to reach the road, which turned out to be more of a worn dirt path meandering through the trees. Star accessed his store function on his WarPad and purchased a dozen water bottles and MRE’s then handed them to the old man, “These are thanks for showing me the way. You said to follow the road south right?” Star asked as he unloaded the food and water into the man's arms. The old man said nothing, he just nodded his head and Star thanked him again before swinging his M-4 around from its place on his back and began jogging southwards on the road.

As Star ran he marveled at the feeling of eating up miles of road without breaking a sweat. This body with all of its stats at 50 points was five times as strong, fast, and literally everything else about a human body as an Olympic athlete in every category. Ten in stats was basically what Warfare Online had calculated the maximum capacity for a human body was naturally. No human could ever achieve a flat ten in every stat in real life because there were certain variables that prevented that from being the case. Recovery times and types of exercises would never allow a natural human to achieve much more than about a six in most categories and a ten in one. At fifty in every category Star was superhuman and it was easily seen in the resting pace run he was making at the moment.

After traveling perhaps ten miles Star noticed a large plume of smoke on the horizon. Frowning Star picked up his pace and really began to fly towards his destination.

As Star ran the forest on either side of the road began to thin out and soon he was running down a lane that cut through cultivated fields of corn. He could now see the town itself and what he saw gave him pause. The houses were all on fire. Every building in the town -more like a village really- was ablaze. Most of the fires had already reduced the buildings to little more than smoldering piles of blackened wood. That however, was not what gave Star pause. What really made him question the wisdom of running towards the burning town was that he could see the townsfolk and what appeared to be a force of men wearing steel chest plates wielding swords, spears, and all manner of primitive weaponry herding the townsfolk farther south.

Star had yet to be spotted. So he quickly and quietly lowered himself to the ground and made himself be still as a statue. He peered down his 4x scope on his M-4 and observed what was going on from a safe distance.

What he saw was confusing and disturbing in the same note. The townsfolk were obviously not humans. They had animal traits like dog or bunny ears with corresponding tails, but other than those features they looked human. The reason that this was confusing was that Warfare Online never included fantasy elements, even in its modded servers. Star was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that he might not be in a game anymore, even if he was still in his game avatar's body. Disturbing was the fact that Star was able to make out shackles and collars around the beastkin’s wrists and necks. These people were being enslaved. Their capturers were all, most definitely, humans.

Star watched as the townsfolk were herded ever southwards and he trailed after them silently. As he stealthily followed he accessed his WarPad and swapped to his Assassination load-out. It was complete with a double silenced forty five caliber pistol that could hold ten rounds in its magazine, and a silenced fifty cal sniper rifle. Neither of the two guns had real life counterparts, they were gear that had been unique to the Warfare Online story modes and required a minimum 2000 hours spent in game to have acquired them. The rifle was barely louder than fart when fired and completely dark with no flash visible when fired. The silenced pistol was so silent that, when fired, the only sounds to be heard would be the bullet striking its target. The rest of the kit was a body armor made of dark leather layered with Kevlar and filled with interlocking ceramic plates that could take up to a forty five cal round before being penetrated. And to top that all off the headgear was a black helmet with a full face visor that had a multitude of visual enhancements incorporated in it ranging from infrared, to heat vision and even a sonar mode. Feeling well prepared for stalking, Star followed the procession of nearly two hundred people in complete silence.

Star followed the troop of soldiers who were guiding their captives ever further south. They stopped to make camp a few hours before the sun went down and Star took advantage of the pause to relieve himself and scarf down an MRE. He was very glad that wet wipes were a part of the consumables for sale in the store, and doubly glad that he was a premium member and had everything free. Otherwise Star was unsure how he would get by here in this world.

Relieving himself had been a massive surprise and the thing that had finally convinced him that this was all real. Warfare Online had never had nudity or actual biological functions in the game. Yet when Star had unzipped his pants and seen his own junk flopping between his legs he had fully realized that he was not in Kansas anymore. Though he had to say that this body was a significant upgrade over his real life body. His own body had been skinny, weak, and short, at only about 5’5. Star’s game character body was a hulking six foot six inches tall weighing in at nearly two hundred and eighty pounds of pure unadulterated muscle. His avatar had a high fade of sandy blonde hair with emerald green eyes and was tattooed across most of his body in a complex tribal pattern that had simply looked badass as hell when he had created the character. And Star was definitely not gonna complain about the significantly improved dick size.

Shaking himself out of the strange direction his thoughts were going down, Star waited for the sun to settle behind the horizon and for darkness to truly set in. His visor automatically switching to night vision mode and painting the world in various shades of green as he made his way silently through the underbrush and approached the camp sight where he could hear women wailing and men laughing.

Then Star witnessed something that he knew was a thing, but it had always been an academic sort of knowledge. The soldiers were dragging various women from the group that they were holding captive and pulling them into their tents. Star could hear what was happening behind the fabrics of the tents and though his vision was currently painted green from the night visions, his world suddenly turned red. A rage that he had never known before enveloped his being and all he could envision in his mind was those soldiers dragging one of his sisters or his mother into one of those tents. The image in his mind caused his blood to rage and suddenly Star found his Silenced pistol in his right hand, and a tactical knife in his left.

Against Star’s own better judgment, and even looking back on this event in future Star wondered why he did this instead of just throwing a bunch of flash bangs into the camp and then mowing them down with a machine gun, Star leapt onto one of the sentries and drove the tactical knife into his throat with such force that he felt the mans vertebrae shatter from the knife's sudden intrusion into the space that they had previously occupied.

Star didn’t even bother to try and make the kill silently. Instead he turned to the next guard who was just registering the fact that they were under attack and aimed at his face. Star lifted his silenced pistol, took aim and pulled the trigger in a motion so practiced that there was no possibility of his aim faltering. He felt the recoil of his silent weapon going off and saw a spray of blood and gore showering out of the back of the now dead soldier's head. Star spun to the side and quickly put two rounds through another soldier's chest, the rounds tearing through the steel chest plate like tissue paper.

That made three soldiers dead in as many seconds. But Star was far from being done. He roared an enraged battle cry that tore through the camp and ensured that everyone in the camp was now aware of the fact that he was there, and he was pissed. Unloading round after round into any soldier that dared present themselves as a target. Star reloaded again and again. Running from one end of the camp to the other all the while screaming in rage and bringing death to every single one of the armored men. They did not stand a chance in hell against his modern weaponry and significantly overpowered body.

It felt like hours had passed when Star finally stopped seeing red, but as he began to calm down and think rationally he realized that he had already slaughtered the entire enemy force. He could hear the prisoners crying and he knew his next step was to liberate them and hopefully help them with rebuilding their town if they needed it.

Star walked towards the place where all of the beastkin were shackled together to posts in the ground and noticed that someone was making noise in one of the tents that he hadn’t noticed before. He grabbed the flap and opened it, revealing a man holding a knife to the throat of a naked woman.

“Don’t move!” The man screamed, “Move and I’ll kill her!”

Star looked the situation over for a second then whipped his pistol up faster than the man could even begin to react and shot the hand that was holding the blade up to the woman’s neck. The mans hand practically exploded showering the woman’s chest in blood and chunks of flesh. The knife dropped from his ruined hand and fell to the ground with a dull thud as the man fell onto his backside screaming in agony.

Star shoved the woman out of the way and jumped onto the fallen man and began pummeling him with his fists. The man's screaming became strangled gurgles as Star continued beating in his face. Finally the man stopped moving altogether and Star sat back and looked towards the woman who was now covered in a sheet. She was looking at him with trepidation and relief showing in equal measures on her fair face.

Star reached up and removed his helmet and night vision goggles, popping them into his inventory. Facing the woman he said the only thing he could think to say. “I’m Star and I’m here to help.”

Star did not hear her reply as he suddenly heard a man shout in the distance, “What the Fuck!”