Otherlife Dreams: The Selfless Hero Trilogy (2 page)

Looking down he found Yeller staring up at him unerringly with lifeless eyes. Resting his forehead on a branch in front of him, Runner took slow breaths to calm himself. With his health not regenerating he could only assume he was still in combat. That and the fact that Yeller wasn’t leaving. He let his eyes close and rested a few moments before lifting his head and began taking stock of his situation.

Alternating from a dark red color to a bright red, his health bar showed he had eight hit points left. Mana and stamina were both at one hundred, well and full, but those weren’t as life and death important as his hit points. Literally.

Calling up his inventory window, he grunted at the sheer amount of items. Pulling up his character sheet for more information he worked his way through the information available to him. Tapping each item and description one by one for a pop-up tip, he went through the definitions to figure out what he had to work with.

Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him from the attributes, they were all pretty standard traits to be expected of any role playing game. Strength, dexterity, agility, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and finally charisma. As he went through each to check the value he grew more depressed until he reached the bottom and felt his stomach clench then drop, his head swimming at the number that stared back at him. Charisma, it just had to be a non-combat attribute. All his points, unrecoverable and giving him the ability to fight, to actually become dangerous, had all been wasted on charisma.

“Charisma, sixty-four. Every single attribute is at one, but charisma. What am I supposed to do about you with charisma Yeller?” he asked the wolf staring up at him. “I don’t think asking you out for dinner and a holomovie will work. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a handsome animal but I just don’t swing that way.”

Laying his chin in his palm, he closed the character window and started sorting through his inventory. There were a number of tools, weapons, armor and clothing items, and a truly healthy amount of food. It made no sense just how much was stuffed into his inventory and it was far more than a starting character should have. Bulging to the very limit of what he could hold in the starter backpack. From skinning knife, to smiths hammer, to a frying pan. It was as if he had equipment for every class possible in there.

Wrenching open his skill window, he could only stare. Every skill was already listed and set to level one, from 1-Handed swords, and alcohol tolerance, to fishing. Runner could vaguely remember that Otherlife Dreams, in their marketing campaigns, boasted hundreds of pre-built skills and that, given enough server allocation, the game could generate more based on the players. The problem here was that they would need to be unlocked and that many of those skills were classified as “hidden” until unlocked. Which meant no one would really know if it was a valid skill until investing time into it. Scrolling through the list he was able to actually see hidden skills since they literally had an “H” in front of the name.

“Need to sort these,” Runner muttered.

Closing his skill window he re-opened his character window. There, under his name and level, was his class. While he had not been able to select one he had just assumed he could play whatever was given to him and make it work. Instead it seemed he had no class. In fact the entry where it should have been was just blank. It appeared as though he had a very glitched out character, and he truly didn’t know why. Or if he could fix it.

Selecting Yeller, its basic information popped up in a small box. Runner confirmed its level as thirteen, full health, and full stamina. Level one versus thirteen didn’t really sound like a prize fight to him. Not one he’d bet on at least.

Placing his palms together in the “call console” gesture, he reached up and expanded the window when the indicator presented itself.

/Status

Game Master: NorRun001 logged in

/Active Process Status

Permission Denied

/Permissions

Please enter Password: ***********

Invalid Password

/Permissions

Please enter Password: ***********

Invalid Password

/Permissions

Please enter Password: ***********

Invalid Password

/Permissions

Please enter Password: ***********

Invalid Password

User Locked

Please contact System Administrator

/System Status

Permission Denied

He angrily stabbed his index finger into the X in the top right. Rubbing his eyes, he was faced with the horrible realization that he could probably end this entire problem if he could just remember his password. If the message was true, the only way he would only get those memories back was by leveling up. He opened his eyes and found another console in place of the one he had just closed. The last response from the system in this new console differed from the one he had just entered. It was the ships system console he had interacted with back in the lobby. He brought up the main console again, and set them up side by side. He closed both again after confirming the other one was the console for the game itself. It should have been obvious they were two separate consoles, as the new one had listed him as a Game Master rather than a User. Pulling open the action logs from his social pane he went to the start, and low and behold, everything made a lot more sense.

Unable to log into GMHub.

Unable to log into GMHub.

Unable to log into GMHub.

Unable to log into GMHub.

Unable to log into GMHub.

Loading into coordinates 0, 0, 0.

You gain Spawn Invulnerability

Plains Wolf uses Tackle on you

Plains Wolf damages you for 149 points of damage

You are invulnerable

Spawn Invulnerability has ended

Plains Wolf bites you for 92 points of damage

You punch a Plains Wolf for 1 damage of damage

You use Distract on Plains Wolf

Plains Wolf is distracted

Once he had read through the log, he realized he should be dead already. Checking against the help manual, he discovered everyone had one hundred hit points regardless of class or race it all came down to how much you could mitigate. It didn’t matter if it was through armor, resistances, or skills. Runner definitely wouldn’t do much of that with only one point of constitution, starter armor, and level one skills. If it had been a few seconds later his spawn invulnerability wouldn’t have soaked up that damage and he would already be a corpse.

Throwing up a thank you to the Random Number God, he sorted out his starter gear into what he could use immediately and what he couldn’t. A simple sword and a simple shield went into his equipment slots, followed by pulling on a sturdy leather tunic, leggings, arm guards, gloves, belt, and boots. Everything else stayed in the backpack to clear the regular inventory screen until he could do a proper audit later and sell the duplicates.

Now suitably attired for a night out with his dear friend Yeller, all that was left was figuring out how to end this without becoming a meal. Initializing the ability section of his HUD, he was unsurprised to find it was not what he would have expected. Every page in his ability book was filled with level one abilities. Given that he had every skill available, it would seem he was given the equipment that every level one character started with. All of them. Every class. Going over his quick slots, he found Distract to be the first skill there. Cure was in the second position. Highlighting Cure, the display box came up and confirmed what he expected. It was the level one healing ability for the Healer starting class. Distract was a level one Rogue ability.

With a mental flick of his attention he targeted himself and cast Cure. Turning his attention to the social pane, he gauged the results.

You cast Cure on yourself

You gain thirty hit points

Fifteen mana points fell out of his full mana bar as his health bar refilled. Nodding to himself, he paused, and considered the situation anew. He definitely wanted his health back, but it might be a waste to spend all his mana just to find out it didn’t regenerate while in combat. After a few seconds, the bar started to refill. It came back at about two points per second which wasn’t great but it surely wasn’t terrible either. Casting the skill twice more he brought himself up to ninety-eight hit points. Going back to his ability book he read over what was available to him while his mana refilled.

A few minutes passed before he felt like he had sorted the book into three usable categories: Combat, non-combat, and crap. Only a few things ended up in crap, which were primarily less powered or duplicates of other abilities that a different class already had.

Opening the non-combat section he tapped the entry at the top, Strengthen, and then cast it on himself.

You cast Strengthen on yourself

You feel stronger

Twenty points of mana for fifteen strength for fifteen minutes was far from prohibitive. Activating four more buffs, he was out of mana but now had increased armor, agility, dexterity, and constitution. At a guess he was probably just barely a true level one now. Maybe a level two since he was able to wear heavier starting gear than others.

As for combat abilities, he was torn between Regeneration or Fireblast. Targeting the wolf below him with a swift glance, he cast Fireblast. The wolf burst into flames and let out a surprised yelp before whimpering and running in a circle around the tree, settling down in very nearly the same spot it had just vacated. The small amount of damage done was instantly healed as the AI realized Runner was in a place that couldn’t be reached. There would be no cheesing the system with being in an inaccessible area.

With a dismissive gesture he closed his ability book, contemplating the wolf at the bottom of the tree. In the middle of his contemplation the world became gray, like a historical drama attempting to simulate black and white movies. Everything stopped. There was no sound. Try as he might, Runner wasn’t able to activate a single window or move. Panic set in and his mind raced. Then even his ability to think wound down, like a toy’s energy cell running out of power. Only surface thoughts floated by, and even those were far distant things, almost like clouds in a distant sky.

In this limbo, Runner simply was. As the world was, and as the wolf was.

The world exploded into color and sound as it roared back to life. The sun above seemed to proclaim victory as if it had banished the gray alone. The wind picked up, the tree in which Runner sat swaying gently.

A scratching sound below drew his eyes to the wolf. Scrabbling at the base of the tree the wolf eyed him anew as it clawed at the bark, trying to reach up to get at his perch. No longer patiently waiting as if cycling its AI commands, but actively trying to get to him. The eyes of the wolf were what made him nervous now. Before, they had a creepy doll like quality, hazy and unfocused. Otherlife was one of the newest MMOs out there, the bleeding edge of technology. It combined sleep, time dilation, and entertainment. Even it had limits though. Eyes that were alive and full of hunger, that wanted nothing more to tear his throat out, gazed up at him hungrily.

Runner opened the console, desperately hoping for an answer. Unfortunately, there was nothing visible in the console for Otherlife Dreams, which seemed correct, as he wasn’t able to log into his admin account completely. Moving to the ships systems console he tapped the up arrow a few times to retrieve all previous commands he found what he was looking for.

User §┌îτ has logged in

User §┌îτ has paused the server

User §┌îτ has started patch σ\q.’Ç

Patch σ\q.’Ç completed

Resource allocation program has been automatically activated

User §┌îτ has logged out

User §┌îτ has logged in

Allocation program has finished. Resource allocation has found an additional 4,179,821,031% available assets.

User §┌îτ has attempted to cancel the program.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Permissions request from User §┌îτ received. Logged to inbox.

Response from User NorRun001 timed out, proceeding with Allocation program.

User §┌îτ is now away

Allocation complete, server reloading with new resources.

Server reload complete, server unpausing.

There was a fuzzy memory oozing by in his empty head that told him one of the biggest draws of Otherlife Dreams was that it would take whatever resources was given to it. It would then use those resources to develop emergent game features, quests, and AI behavior. Four billion percent additional resources would make the game pretty damn advanced. Deep in his heart, Runner quailed. Two hundred percent would have been unprecedented; a gigantic leap in technology. This was simply incomprehensible. He had to consider just who this
§┌îτ
was and where such massive resources had come from. Had their target planet jumped ahead in the technology race? Were they now in enemy hands? Had an engineer on Earth accidentally hooked them up to a mainframe and misunderstood what Otherlife Dreams was?