Otherlife Nightmares: The Selfless Hero Trilogy (3 page)

“Why do-n-n’t you wear plate?”

“Plate? Penalties. I’d have to enchant my current gear with enough strength to wear it, then make sure the gear itself had enough strength on it so I could keep wearing it. If I ever unequipped it, I’d have to go through the whole cluster fuck again. Not worth it. Why?”

“Just a thought. M-maybe wear plate, use spells, shoot a bow. Kind of thing.”

“I wish I could, and the thought has crossed my mind. Here’s the scenario though. Spend all that enchantment on strength to wear plate. This leaves me with a hefty agility penalty and low intelligence. Maybe I have enough left over to kick some points into intelligence. I might be able to cast a few spells—nowhere near the power of someone like Thana though. I’d be suffering an agility penalty from the armor, low constitution, high strength, medium intelligence. Truth be told, I might be worse off than I am in leather armor.”

Runner mentally felt stretched thin. It was the very same roadblock he had hit when he started thinking about the problem himself. In the end, no matter what he did, he could never perform at the level that he could push his team mates into.

“That m-makes sense. What about chain mail? Every rin-ng perhaps?”

“With small items, or items that are exactly the same, a singular enchant enchants them all. Things like buttons, rivets, ringmail chain, and the like. I’m broken, but not that broken.”

Hannah nodded her head, as if she had been wondering the same but lacked the courage to ask.

“Okay. Going to be talking to Srit aloud.”

“They’re here? Where? I don-n-n-n’t see them.”

“Ah, Srit’s here but not here. I’m the only one who can see what it says, but it seems like he/she/it can hear me when I speak.”

“So you’ll just sound like a crazy bastard? No different than usual.”

“Ha ha. Love you, too. Srit, are you there?”

Yes. You are on Earth.

Runner closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands.

Earth?

Maybe that “What are you?” question would be more applicable after all. This could be a case of aliens wiping out the local species on Earth for the roach motel it was.

“Okay, thank you, Srit. What is your next question?”

Where did you come from?

“From Sovereign Earth. What used to be the continent of North America if you’re asking which specific landmass. Please let me know if you need reference materials.”

Not needed. Answer was acceptable.

“What planet is your species from?” he asked. He didn’t feel that asking which species directly would give him an answer, but an origin point would.

Earth.

Runner could only nod his head. That and hold back the bitter laughter that threatened to escape.

It seemed like fate wanted to mock him. He’d once compared himself in an analogy to a Neanderthal. He couldn’t have been more accurate if he tried it seemed.

“Proceed.”

How did you get here?

“Please qualify statement. Here, as in this game, or here, as in the ship?”

Please provide an answer for both. I will answer two questions in succession as well.

“Let’s see. The ship was sent out to neutralize a rebellion and the crew was put in stasis. During that transit the ship underwent an emergency protocol activation. The emergency destination point was apparently set to Earth. Though based on what you’ve told me, it looks like we were traveling very, very slowly. The ship has been in transit for forty-four thousand years,” Runner offered up. It felt odd to be explaining the whole thing to Srit, but it felt good to discuss it with someone.

“As to this game, we were loaded into it to preserve our minds. I assume this was done due to damage to the medical server, but I have no proof of that.”

This is acceptable.

Runner thought about his next two questions. He needed to establish what their plans were for them and how Srit was even here.

“What are your intentions for my crew? How did you, Srit, get here in this game?”

We wished to awaken you and discover all we could. We have few records of our ancestor species, and your ship was the promise of an archaeological breakthrough. The entirety of your race, history, and culture was lost to us in the Purge Wars.

With a frown creasing his brow he thought on that one. There had been theories that the Neanderthal progenitors had been pushed out of existence by breeding with homo sapiens. They wouldn’t have been able to know that at the time from a lack of scientific understanding, but his culture would have known.

In the end, it sounded to him that humanity left center stage while attempting to kill its own progeny when it discovered it was being replaced. Rather than trying to assist its children, it grew afraid and attempted to snuff them out.

Fitting really.

I was tasked with awakening you and your crew. I was injected into the system from my host directly into your pod to determine the cause of your sleep. Once complete I was to release you. In my attempt to do so, I activated this “game” as you call it. Not understanding the programming language, I activated a protocol that took over my programming, the central computer for our ruling body, and killed my host. I have been trapped here since then. I had no awareness of myself. I was a passenger that followed you. I have learned from watching.

That was mildly discomforting. It meant that Srit had been tagging along with him the entire time. He’d assumed she was outside, so finding out Srit was an AI and trapped like everyone else was a surprise.

The fact that she’d loaded directly into his pod provided the reason as to why he was the only one she could communicate with. She had integrated into his pod directly.

He had to wonder at their lack of protocol regarding unsafe systems. Did they live in an environment where there was no such thing as a hostile system?

I must leave and report. I will notify you upon my return.

“I see. Thank you for your time, Srit. I imagine we’ll have more to discuss.” With a shake of his head, Runner looked to his two wagon companions. “Sorry about that. Was definitely informative.”

Leaning back, he smiled and forestalled the questions he knew were coming with an upraised hand.

“It is indeed forty-four thousand years ahead. Humankind is no more, and has been replaced by their own evolutionary children. We’re currently on my home planet, which is their home planet now. Their original intention was to free us—for study, a zoo, I dunno. Srit is trapped here just like us. Srit had to go report back, probably about the very information I gave them. I miss anything?”

“Yeah, how the fuck is your dumb ass going to get us out of this mess? Princess Katarina doesn’t seem to be very helpful right now,” Hannah said, mockingly rolling her eyes at the word princess.

Laughing at that, Runner shrugged with a smile. Hannah would ever and always be Hannah. She would focus exclusively on the current problem.

“No clue. Most of my plans are spur of the moment things. I figure we complete the Princess quest, which you all probably got, except Katarina. Then we see what’s going on from there. To be honest, I’m eager to see what my reputation bonuses will net us. Those only typically work with faction vendors or leaders. Worst case, I bottle up a huge number of
Stealth
potions and we slip out like ghosts.”

“Reason-n-nable. If we have to sell m-m-my wagon, you’re buying a n-new one later.”

“I plan on buying us a manor, let alone a wagon. We’ll buy a storefront and you can run it, forget the wagon.”

Nadine and Hannah said nothing to that, staring at him. Self-conscious, he hunched his shoulders defensively.

“What’s wrong? Would an emporium be better instead? That way everyone can have their own counter? It’s just a wagon. We can do a lot better.”

They still said nothing, watching him.

“Was it the manor? Err, if it’s not big enough, tell me. We can probably buy a bigger one. I’m kinda guessing here. For crying out loud, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothin-n-ng.”

It was a death sentence. Whatever he’d said that provoked them, they didn’t want to talk about, and it would be no use to argue. Rather than force it from them, he’d give them the time to figure out what they wanted to say and check back in later.

“Alright, well, forget the wagon. It’s not a long-term solution. We need to plan ahead for our long term. As to truly getting out of this, we shall see. I’m going to spend some time on my level up and sorting out the abilities I picked up. I opened your access to the servers if you need anything from the ship.”

After calling up the level acceptance screen, Runner hit the button and shifted gears mentally. Up to this point he’d been dumping his points into dexterity, intelligence, and agility. Having used
Spellbind
and
Arcane Smithing
in conjunction on all of his equipment, he was now at an even playing field with everyone else.

No one else had been forced to put every stat point in charisma at the start.

He pulled up his character stats for a quick review.

The massive boosts from his
Spellbinding
added up significantly. He dropped the single level up point into agility, closed the character window, and finished the level up.

A single memory floated through his head. Spending time with a cousin as she recovered from… something. The details were fuzzy but he could remember sitting at her bedside day in and day out.

The memory cleared and settled in place in his head.

Putting his mind back to the task at hand, he thought about his situation.

Given some money, a supply of materials, and a little bit of time, he could turn into a real OP bastard.

Yet if I were to do the same to Katarina or Thana, they’d be unstoppable.

With a quick shake of his head and flick of his finger, he opened his ability window. Quickly he sorted the physical abilities out from the magical. Then he started pulling the duplicates out and putting them in the back of the book.

Unfortunately, many were simple flavor differences from previously existing ones, or slightly upgraded ones. He already had a sneaking suspicion that if he used
Spell Weaving
correctly, he could create permanent spells. Those would have far more potency than the starters or assigned ones, he imagined.

On the healer side he’d picked up
Bandage
,
Set
,
Revive
,
Heal
(Doctor),
Regeneration
(Doctor),
Antidote
,
Calm
, and
Poison
. Two of those being simple upgrades.

Revive
seemed like it would be handy to have, if they ever managed to get some players to join them. So far the vast majority of players he’d run into were concerned with themselves or didn’t seem to offer him much.

That and Runner couldn’t deny he had a tendency to avoid other players.

Unfortunately
Revive
didn’t look like it worked on Naturals.

Magically, the new additions were even more sparse:
Fire
,
Lightning
,
Earth
,
Air
, and
Water
/
Ice
. It seemed the game expected Elementalists to take what was given and expand on it on their own..