Chapter 2 – Restart

A dark vortex of death mana forms above a decrepit altar, deep inside the Morag’L forest. The chaotic energy spins wildly for a few moments, until a pale, completely naked dark elf drops from it, landing flat on his ass on top of the cold stone altar.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” I scream as I jump to my feet and roughly massage my buttocks. “I can’t believe they kept a fucking rogue hidden for that fucking long.” I curse as I start pacing aimlessly around the altar. “Fuck!” With a final yell, I drop to my knees and bury my face in my hands.

“After all that hard work… three whole months of grinding; gone in an instant.” I mutter, pinching the bridge of my nose as I clench my eyes shut. “Fuuuuuck.”

Fearing the worst, I open up my inventory, already dreading what I will find.

…

Nothing. Those bastards took everything. All my gold, items, and carefully collected materials needed to resurrect my minions. Even my fucking starter robes. Why the fuck would they do that!? They’re only worth like five coppers…

“FUUUUUCK!” I punch the air with all my might. “This. Stupid. Fucking. Hard. Ass. Game.” I punctuate every word with a punch. “It’s fucking impossible.” I sigh, as I let my body fall backwards, the withered grass doing little to soften my fall.

[You take 1 Falling Damage.]

“Yeah, fuck you too.”

With a final disappointed sigh, I open up the menu and log out.

I open my eyes to complete darkness. A low mechanical humming sound lessens in my ear as my gaming capsule shuts down. Taking the helmet and cuirass off, I open the plastic door and step out. My muscles are cramping from lack of use, which almost causes me to trip head over heels.

“Tssk. I suppose I spent too long logged in again.” I mutter to no one in particular as I perform a few light exercises to get the blood flow going. Staying connected to the game for twenty hours per day is starting to take a toll on my body, as the lack of exercise is slowly making my muscles degrade to only a shell of their former self.

The game company only recommends a maximum of twelve hours of playtime per day, but as any self-respecting gamer out there, I blatantly ignore the health warnings in favor of more game time. I’ve been waiting my whole life for full dive VRMMOs, and I sure as hell ain’t going to let a few cautionary doctors tell me how to live my life.

My eyes wander over towards the capsule stowed away in the corner of my one-room studio apartment. It’s a marvelous piece of technology really, able to synergize the human mind with virtual reality, allowing for the mind to experience any physical or psychological stimuli possible, just like in real life. It’s the technological marvel every gaming nerd has been waiting for for a century. We use it for pretty much anything these days. We can go to work, entertain ourselves, and even have physical contact with other human beings without ever needing to leave our apartments. With the development of high-grade artificial intelligence, creating content for this virtual reality became easy, and it didn’t take long for the first VRMMO game to be released only three months ago. A day I had been anticipating since I was six years old.

They didn’t quite manage to create time dilation technology yet, but staying connected at least manages to artificially mimic sleeping, which completely eliminates the need for sleep in its entirety. I only need to log out for about four hours per day to take care of my bodily needs and go for a run so I don’t end up in an early grave because of my new lifestyle.

Aah, yes. My new lifestyle. My father would throw a fit if he knew what I am doing. Three months ago when the game first released, I quit my decently paid job as an office clerk, cancelled the lease on my downtown apartment, bought the best long term capsule on the market and rented a crappy one-room studio apartment in one of the shadier parts of town just so I could follow my long-time dream of gaming for a living.

A dream that might as well have been shattered fifteen minutes ago…

I had one shot at being one of the top-earners in Ascendance Unlimited, and I blew it. Big time. I could have been one of the top-level rankers in the game, attempting to race to the top of the leaderboards and be among the first to sell high-level equipment and crafting materials for an absurd amount of money until the main gaming population caught up. That option is long gone by now. Even if I rerolled a new character, I would never be able to catch up to the current top-ranking players. They have a three month lead on me after all.

No. In my hubris, I attempted to pursue a much riskier path. The fun and unique aspect of Ascendance Unlimited is that it caters to several different playstyles. You can take on life as an adventurer, a soldier, a craftsman, a merchant, or even an evil Villain. Anything is possible. The hardest path of them all is to play the role of a Villain. The path offers one of the most unique and rewarding styles of gaming I could ever have imagined, but also the most punishing of them all. Their characters are pretty much overpowered and should be able to easily defeat up to eight or ten other players of similar levels on their own.

The difference from regular players, however, is that you are pretty much fair game to every other player out there. Unlike other players who only lose about twenty percent of their gold if they are killed, the Villains lose everything. Every single piece of gold and item in your inventory is lootable by your murderer. And it’s not like you can store your valuables in a bank like ordinary players. No. You have to lug your crap around everywhere you go or store them in hiding places accessible by anyone who can find it. You can’t even group up with other players; forever destined to be a loner.

To add insult to injury, Villain classes have a constant bounty on their heads. Anyone who kills you, or contribute to killing you will gain a hefty amount of renown points, which unlocks more rare quests and connections with the NPCs of the world. The hunt for villainous players has become a sort of a sport for regular players, mercilessly hunting us down wherever we go. The game only allows us to have a single playable character at a time, so there’s no way for us to store our valuables on alternative characters.

We could technically try to conceal our identities, as there are skills and items out there that hide our classes, but there is one loophole. There is no way for us to change our gaming ID. So as soon as a player discovers that we play as a villainous character, our gaming ID is posted online on special websites to prevent us from ever being able to hide from a player again. It makes things way harder, as a single slip up will alert your existence to every bounty hunter in the game.

Which is probably what just happened to my Necromancer just now. There is no way this bastard Daniel didn’t note down my gaming ID and are currently hanging it out to dry in some gaming forum somewhere.

Fuck.

I should have never rolled a Necromancer character. It’s the most powerful of all the villainous classes, but it’s also the harshest of them all. I may be able to deal with a huge amount of similar-leveled players at once, but it comes at a price. Resurrecting and training up my undead minions is a long and tedious process, and the class has no access to stealth abilities and hardly any defensive skills. One single stray arrow or sneaky rogue is all it takes to end my miserable existence; which is exactly what just happened.

If only my raid had succeeded. I would only have needed to perform a couple of those raids to soar up in levels and items. I would have become a mighty existence within the game, but that dream is fading every passing day. It would take me close to a month to train up a new batch of skeletons. A month would take too long. By then, the general gaming population will have reached level forty, which would put me too far behind them all. There would just be no way for me to efficiently sack even the weakest of villages without risking total annihilation by some random player, which would set me back even further.

Fuck.

I gently pinch the bridge of my nose. I should never have allowed myself to play as a Necromancer. The temptation just grew too big. Necromancers are just so freaking awesome…

What do I have to show for it? For my hubris? I won’t be able to make enough money to pay for rent anymore. Hell, I only have enough in my bank account to live on for one more month. Are you aware of how fucked I am? There is no way to bounce back from this. I will just end up being a weak forest magician forever, stuck in an eternal loop of grinding levels deep in some god awful forest. It’s too late for me to become a regular top-ranker. It would take me years to catch up, assuming I ever could.

I sigh. What other paths are there? I suppose I could always try my luck as a crafter; spending the remainder of my savings to purchase materials and grind skill levels day in and day out, hoping for some high-level guild to recruit me and sponsor my development, earning me a steady salary in exchange for exclusive access to my goods. That’s probably my best option to make a living off this game, but it would also be the worst way for me to enjoy it. It would be boring as shit, really. What sort of fun and adventure would a crafter have? I would never really have a challenge other than trying to perfect my art, and that would quickly grow boring for someone like me. I like to have options and perform magnificent feats. More magnificent than laboring for twenty hours a day, trying to hammer together some legendary grade item three years down the road.

Which really only narrows it down to either keep playing on my Necromancer or reroll a different Villain character with better earning potential and hope for the best. But could I do that though? I spent twenty hours a day for three months on my Necromancer. Could I really just give that up to create an equally fucked up character? What if it fails? It would just set me back even further than I already am. If that fails, I would have to give up on my dream and get a new job. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but a shattered dream can do more damage to one's soul than swallowing one’s pride.

I want this. I want this more than anything. But in the meantime, am I willing to risk my dream to walk this path once again? Will my dream die if I have to give up and beg to get my job back? I don’t know. It shouldn’t, but it just feels like it will. As if I let myself down. I want to stand at the top; to be the best. I don’t think I could ever be satisfied being just a regular player; unable and incapable of catching up to the top rankers. I don’t want to be a player who tried and failed and then proceeds to just be a nobody like everyone else.

Hell fucking no I can’t.

I will be the best. No matter the cost.

But first of all, I need to take care of the essentials. I grab my phone and notice there’s a text message from my father. I chuckle lightly. Who bothers sending text messages anymore? He may be old-school, but he does so with class. He’s asking me if it went well at work last night. A sharp jolt of pain pushes against my chest as I grit my teeth. I hate lying to him, but it’s for the best. He wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing.

With a deep sigh, I text him a quick reply telling him it went like usual, and that I might be up for a raise soon because I have worked so hard. It’s not a big lie, but it’s big enough for him not to inquire too much into my life situation. I take a little moment to collect myself. I may need to tell him the truth soon, but first, I have a lot of work to do.

Like most great things in life, it starts in the bathroom. Walking in, I open up a browser and start reading up on all the other Villain characters in the game while I shake hands with the president and deliver a statement to congress for about half an hour. If you know what I mean.

There is a wide variety of villainous characters available to play, each and every one of them subject to the ingame purge. Reading up on the class statistics, it actually doesn’t seem like a single villainous character has managed to pass level forty-one yet. Hell, it seems like I’m actually among the top thirty villainous players in the entire game so far, which goes to show how brutal the game is. The top-rankers in the game have already started pushing into the late fifties, which means it’s most likely impossible for us bad guys to ever hope to challenge the top guilds on our own. The level disparity is just too big. But what if there was a way…

My eyes scan a list of the available Villain characters. What I need is a class with adaptability and decent stealth abilities. Something to counter the obvious weakness of my previous failure highlighted. I also need to find a way to make money and level up while staying relatively incognito. Sacking villages as a power-tripping mage with an army of undead in tow isn’t exactly what I would call subtle.

I obviously rule out the Necromancer class, as well as the Warlock class. The Warlock class is basically the same as a Necromancer, except they use demons instead of the undead. I’m not sure why they bothered to add such similar classes, and I only chose to play as a Necromancer because undead is way cooler than demons.

Witch Doctor and Plague Bringer are also out of the question. They may be flashy characters with a lot of potentials to cause mayhem, but they also severely lack subtlety. I would stand out like a sore thumb if I was ever discovered by any players. These two classes are actually among the less popular Villain characters, as their rate of survivability is pitifully low. I also discard a few other hopeless classes until I’m left with only one viable choice. The Thief Lord.

While sharing some similarities with the Necromancer, it is also a vastly different class. The class is based upon recruiting and maintaining a criminal gang, performing petty crime and carve their way to the top among the dark back alleys of a city. The Thief Lord is actually the individually weakest of all the villainous characters when it comes to combat, unable to stand up to even a single party of players in a straight-up battle. What makes up for it though, is a great set of abilities for concealment and stealth, as well as powerful short time buffs. Played right, the Thief Lord can be incredibly strong, but it takes a lot of preparation and planning to fully utilize its strength.

The Thief Lord is actually the second most popular of all the villainous characters, only slightly behind the Necromancer. It is also the most hunted of all the villains, as a Thief Lord is forced to set up shop much closer to home. It would be a disaster for the leading guilds if they had to take away valuable manpower away from the frontlines to hunt down Thief Lords who constantly raid and pillage their crafters and resource gatherers at the heart of their operations. Since they are the only villainous class that is limited to play within the confines of a city, the Thief Lord is considered public enemy number one. They are the sole reason players with a high Perception attribute periodically patrol every major city hub, trying to root out any concealed Thief Lords out there. If any Thief Lords are discovered, they are hunted down without remorse. You would be a fool to keep playing one if you were ever discovered.

...

I guess I’m that fool.