Chapter 2: Newb Planet

Murphy respawned in the Beginner Village. Unlike his first time, the village was mostly just smouldering rubble. It appears that the Bandit Group had stuck around and were busy drinking and chatting at an open fire pit. There also seemed to be a few more new bandits.

Murphy presumed that these new bandits were the bandits that he was supposed to help the little village girl defend from.

After a brief glance about the place, he decided to go and see if they had any quests. Normally in these sorts of games he’d have thought he would have been thrown into some long serial quest that was essentially the main story line of the game.

However, he instead found himself standing in a smouldering village without the slightest clue what he should be doing. As such, he presumed that because he killed the villagers, the main quest line hadn’t been able to start.

That only left the bandits. As he approached them they quietened slightly, until the Old Bandit Leader smiled brightly and welcomed him over.

“Haha! Well if it isn’t the young bloodletter. We were just discussing your ruthless rescue of us brothers with these fellows from the guild hall.”

Amongst the new comers was a very suspicious looking fellow with oily black hair and thin twisty moustache. He wore something resembling magician robes, which were black as the night, and had half a dozen flasks or phials filled with colourful liquids strapped to his belt. He looked like a cliché bad guy.

Seeing this fellow, Murphy suddenly realised he was most likely about to get sucked into the evil side of the main story line and become a bad guy. Everything about this felt wrong and definitely did not want to start doing the evil story line.

With that in mind, he simply nodded in acknowledgement, then stiffly turned away and decided to leave. Hoping in his heart that he could find somewhere else to join the good guy main story line.

“Hey!”

Ah shit! That evil guy is calling me. Does that mean that because of the mistake with the villagers I’m suddenly going to be forced onto the evil quest line. This is bullshit! What kind of crappy game is this!

Wheww ... It’s alright. Just calm down. It’s going to be fine. Just smile and politely decline if he wants to give you a quest.

“Oh? Yes, can I help you somehow?” Very polite! Nicely done!

“You’re a newbie, right? You haven’t had an instructor teach you the ropes yet, right?”

Instructor? Teach me the ropes? What the hell? Don’t tell me this guy is meant to be my tutorial guide. Damnit! Why is my tutorial guide a god damn evil guy!

“Ahh. No not yet. Is there a town nearby with an instructor?” Please say yes, please say yes.

“Heh heh, you’re in luck kid. I happen to be the instructor for the Bandit Guild. Because you helped our brothers and killed all these villager fellows, I’ve no doubt you’ll fit in great with us!”

Damnit! God damn! Why me? Mother fucker! Wheew. Ok just politely decline to join the bandit group.

“Uhhmm ... well you see, I don’t really plan on joining the bandit guild...”

“Kill him.”

Uhk! What? I only said I don’t want to join the bandit guild! What the hell! You’re going to immediately kill me for that?! What the fuck kind of game is this?!

With a single command from the evil looking instructor, I now had to fight off not only the handful of bandits that recently came, but also the entire bandit group of nearly 20 that I had just rescued.

Making the situation, and my feelings, worse, was the fact that the bandits I rescued didn’t even bat an eye. Without reservation, they simply stood up and drew their weapons with sinister gazes. From what I could gather, they all looked at me like I was creepy pervert anyway.

Those cold gazes hurt the most. Then almost as quickly seemed to feel good. Ahh ... how cruel this special trait is. It might just send me mad eventually.

Seeing everything devolving into a brawl, I now had no other choice than to enter combat. I pulled my trusty broken dagger from my belt and readied myself.

The bandit group charged as a single entity. Waving their swords very threateningly and and calling me names like pervert and creepy. The first to arrive swung his sword for my neck. His strike was very wide and open.

Taking advantage of the wind up for such a strike, I slid up close and stabbed my broken knife into his neck. Using his limp body as a shield, I pushed forward to the next closest bandit and threw my bandit shield at him.

In that moment of confusion, I once again slid forward aiming for the neck. After this bandit became limp, I made a roll to dodge a chopping strike from the side. At the same time, I borrowed bandit number two’s sword.

With a real sword in hand, my weapon arts training from Uncle Calligso came rushing back to me. Without reserve, I went on a rampage. 5 bandits, 10 bandits, 21 bandits.

By the time there were only a handful of bandits left, my body was covered in amazing feeling cuts and bruises. Every time I moved my exhausted and sore muscles screamed at me in joy. Sigh ... I really hate this special trait.

The final four bandits were spread out and showing very guarded stances. They were waiting for me to approach them. One of them, the evil instructor who hadn’t made any moves until now, finally acted. He pulled a few strange phials from his belt.

Seeing this action, the other three bandits all suddenly had worried expressions. Before they could say anything or run, the evil instructor threw those phials onto the ground, smashing them open. A purple fog suddenly formed and spread out from the liquids on the ground.

In less than a second everyone was enveloped in the fog. The bandits all started rasping for breath and collapsed onto the ground while violently jerking around. The evil instructor pulled another phial from his belt and drank it as he quickly retreated out from the fog.

I, as opposed to everyone else, fell too my knees powerlessly for a different reason. My whole body was tingly like a had pins and needles. My skin, flesh and even my bones had a throbbing pleasant ache like when you take a hot bath with sore tight muscles.

That wasn’t the only thing of mine that was throbbing, but ignoring that for the moment, my body was limp because it felt too good. Having every inch of my body suddenly feeling amazing to the point that I was almost delirious, was very disconcerting.

My throat and lungs bore the brunt of it though. Whatever this stuff was, it was powerful enough to overwhelm my Hurts So Good when it made direct contact. My eyes nose and mouth were stinging somewhat and my lungs and throat felt like they were on fire.

All I could do was sit there and wait as my body occasionally shuddered outside of my control. Unfortunately, even my Please Sir trait couldn’t seem to keep up with the rapid deuteriation of my insides. If anything, it only slowed the poison fog down so that I didn’t die quickly like the other bandits and instead had the joy of suffering from a very prolonged death.

Eventually, I was still quietly suffering even after the poison fog had been dispersed by the wind. The evil instructor just watched on with a stunned expression as my hips occasionally thrust into the air and my body slowly decomposed from the inside out.

It looked like he wanted to laugh madly at my slow demise, but was instead greatly disgusted by my reaction to such a vile and deadly poison.

After a very long time of this, at least an hour, I finally died. I then suffered the experience of dying all over again, only this time I was slightly more composed than the first time. I found myself on the floor of my bedroom sweating profusely.

I was now somewhat glad that I hadn’t finished that bowl of cereal, otherwise it would have all ended up on the carpet of my floor.

Taking a moment to recompose myself again, I stared hard at my Key. I felt a great deal of trepidation and fear about going back into the game, however at the same time, my fury and anger at that evil instructor was ablaze to the heavens.

With vengeance in mind, I stood up and reached out to grab my Key.

Murphy found himself back in the white space, which he somehow intuitively knew was his ‘Status Space’. Presumably that blinding flash of light in the beginning had uploaded some knowledge or something into his head.

Right now, he had no way to explain it. He already accepted that he simply couldn’t fathom the depth of technology that was behind this game. Everything so far had already blown his mind and he simply chose to roll with it. After all, it was just a game. If it became too invasive, he could just quit, right?

Having returned to his Status Space, Murphy took a moment to peruse his inventory and status. Starting with his inventory he sorted everything by what he perceived to be most valuable to least valuable. He then picked out the equipment that was in the best state of repair and would fit him. When he was done, he surveyed his floating body that had everything equipped.

He then sighed dejectedly and questioned why the gods were so cruel. Everything he was wearing was bandit equipment. If he tried to walk into a city wearing this he’d be arrested on the spot. He also hated the idea of being labelled a bandit. If he actually wore this stuff, he felt he would be taking the first step towards being evil.

Obviously, he wasn’t counting the whole incident with the beast people villagers that he’d slaughtered. That was an accident. Some things are unavoidable. He chose not to think back on it too much because he knew if he did he’d just keep replying the scene of that first beast villager tripping on a rock and him attacking him because he immediately assumed he was a bandit.

Murphy refused to admit he was totally in the wrong and being completely racist toward beast people. Therefore, he just blocked the whole thing out.

After assessing his equipment, he just sighed again then unequipped all the bandit armour. Leaving him with only some crappy villager clothes. Once he was re-equipped he was wearing a dirty cotton shirt and trousers with a simple leather tunic.

He had a leather belt equipped with a simple sword in a plain sheath and his little backpack. Because all the shoes that he had, that didn’t have the label ‘Bandit’ on them, had holes in them, he decided to just go barefoot.

He may hate his weird special trait but that doesn’t mean he can’t make use of it. If he just roughs it around everywhere barefoot he can let his feet slowly build up a god like endurance. Who knows, perhaps one day he could walk on lava barefoot.

The finishing touch to his adventuring ensemble was a little short bow and a quiver of arrows. With his outfit now complete, he turned his attention to his status.

First, he checked his overall status.

Murphy sighed in distress as he checked his main stats again. Now that he had the time to review them properly, he felt like his stats were all messed up to some epic proportions.

‘For starters, what the hell was going on with those last two stats? Cement? What the fuck is that supposed to represent. And his luck! Why the hell was his luck in such a negative! It looked like it had dropped even further into the negative after he’d killed all those innocent villagers.

‘Then there’s charisma. Did that drop by 0.3? What the actual fuck? I’d hardly even used the charisma stat! Wait, was the charisma stat dropping because of the shameless actions whenever I’m was in pain? Argh! That damn special trait is fuckin curse!’

Such were his thoughts on the matter. After a slightly more in depth review he discovered that his bodies resilience had sky rocketed. That nasty poison he’d been sucking up prior to his last death had given him stronger endurance stats in every part of his body.

Even his bones and muscles endurances had risen. Also, having to endure that whole escapade, his mental fortitude stat was leading his other endurance stats by miles. At this rate, his mental fortitude was going to outclass every state he had before he even finished the tutorial.

Finally, the titles. He’d only been in the game for a few hours and already had a title. Unfortunately, it was a very disturbing and unsavoury title. He was hoping that this ‘need’ would not be like the special traits and literally bend his psyche. He also hoped that if it was, that his special trait Please Sir could raise his endurance against this need before it could consume him.

After assessing himself once more, he respawned again. After looking around for a while he found the evil instructor busily looting his dead bandit friends while muttering in a vary disgruntled manner.

Murphy hid himself nearby then checked the surroundings. After assuring himself that no one else was nearby he snuck out and crept up behind the instructor. He pulled the broken dagger from his belt and quickly raised it to the instructor’s throat.

“Don’t move!”

The instructor was shocked. He quietly glanced at the sharp broken dagger pressed against his throat, then gulped.

“Heh, heh ... whoever you are, I’m sure we can work something out. I should tell you that if plan to kill and rob me, that would be a bad idea. My guild mates are already heading this way to meet me here and will be here any moment.”

Murphy furrowed his brow for a moment. He could just kill this guy and run but he needed someone who could tutor him on the game system. He also needed directions to the nearest town. With that in mind, he decided to risk it.

With his dagger still pressed to the fellow’s neck, Murphy reached around and started undoing the instructors belt.

“Hey what the damnation do you think you’re...”

Murphy’s dagger pressed into his throat a little more until a little trickle of blood started to flow. His hand continued its action as he defended his actions.

“Shhhh. Just calm down dude. It only hurts the first time ... wait no, I mean, I’m not going to hurt you, I’m just disarming you.”

A cold sweat broke out on the instructors back as Murphy finally got the claps free and took the man’s belt with all its nasty little potions on it. He then quickly shuffled back away and flicked his bow out before knocking an arrow.

“Turn around.”

The evil instructor turned around to see Murphy aiming at him with an arrow pulled back in the bow from about 10 meters away. It was far enough to not be taken off guard if the instructor rushes him, and close enough that he could instantly kill the instructor if he tries to start dodging.

“It’s time for you to instruct. I want to know how the game works.”

The instructor smiled wryly. Unfortunately, he was bound by certain rules. He couldn’t lie about the game. He wasn’t even able to skirt the truth or imply things that weren’t true. If a knew player asked for instruction, he was obligated to instruct. That was his purpose after all.

“Heh, well I don’t know how it works. No one does. I only know the basics, the rest of it you’re expected to learn as you go.”

Murphy furrowed his brow slightly.

“I see. So then, what can you tell me about stats, skill and traits?”

The instructor let out a long sigh. He then glanced around and ambled over to fallen tree to use as a seat. He then sat down rather dejectedly and looked back at the young man pointing a bow and arrow in his direction.

“Fine then you brat. I’ll tell you what I can. The basics are as follows. By now you’ve surely inspected your Status Space at least once. You know that you can determine the statistics of your body, mind and soul all in a single convenient and up to date place.

“You’ve died at least once, so you’ve probably come to terms with the possibility that you quite literally exist in this world while you’re playing the game and when you die the game system rescues your soul and body and puts it all back together before it ejects you back to your dimension.

“You’ve clearly also been playing with the inventory and you most likely were summoned with a special trait considering your ability to survive so long under the torture of my poison fog.”

At the mention of the poison fog, Murphy made a reflexive grimace. Just imagining experiencing it again made him feel delighted ... wait, made him feel disturbed ... or should have made him feel disturbed? That’s just how Hurts So Good works.

The Instructor continued with his lecture, none the wiser at the inner turmoil of Murphy over how exactly he felt about dying a slow torturous death by poisoning.

“So, let’s start with the Status Place. Should be a white world with all sorts of interesting figures about every aspect that is ‘you’. Stats are the broad term for your foundations. Things like strength and intelligence. You can view each of these broad stats in more detail all the way down to the methods you’ve used the most to increase them.

“The broad stats are the average of your body and reflect your overall status while specific stats, like reflexes in the agility status, are more specific. This means that if you have one part that is low, for example your whole body is very strong except your wrists, then it will drag you broad stats down.

“Skills are learnt through practice. The more you practice a skill, the more experience it accumulates. Some people have unique skills that are slightly abstract depending on their life experience and personality. Every time a skill levels up your get a modifier when using it. As an example, if you have level 10 cooking, then regardless of whether you cook a 5-course meal or a boiled egg, they will both taste 10 times better.

“New skills can also be learnt through practice. Most people start off with a handful of skills based on their life experiences before coming here. However, they generally have a lot of skills already that haven’t even been developed. They just don’t show up in the Status Space unless you specifically search them. Until they reach level 1, which is about 1000 experience, they will remain invisible.

“Skills and Stats have no limits. You can easily level these to infinity. Now onto special traits, these are usually earnt during gameplay or assigned when you’re first summoned. They are based on certain skills, stats and life experiences. They’re affects can vary wildly and as far as I know it’s almost as likely to meet two people with the exact same face from different dimension as it is for two people to have the exact same special trait.

“Next is dying. Here, on Newb Planet, you can die as many times as you like and explore as much as you want until you feel you’re ready to go out into the big bad game world. Usually at first you will be scooped up by some faction like the villagers or the bandits and complete a bunch of mission to help you get accustomed to everything.

“You don’t seem to be taking any of those routes and are clearly just a madman that enjoys killing people, so I won’t bother with discussing that too much. When you want to go kill some more people just head along the south road until you reach a city called Gateway. You can travel through there to start the game in earnest.

“Once you pass through you will start learning about the game for real. At that time, it will also unlock the Player Store, where you can purchase things only the players can get their hands on. Us little NPC (Non-Player-Character) fellows have no such luck.

“Um ... let’s see, then there’s your inventory. I’m sure you’ve got it mostly figured out but I’ll explain it anyway. It pretty much acts like a separate dimension. If you touch something inanimate in the world, you can suck it into your inventory. Similarly, you can will it, and suck something out from inventory.

“You probably haven’t picked up much yet, but once you do you’ll learn that everything has a weight value. The weight that something adds to your backpack is equivalent to the items weight divided by strength and endurance.

“The last thing for me to mention is the experience points. You’ve probably realised that every time you take some poor bastards life you receive experience points. These are essentially Player currency. It can be used to purchase from the Player Store and from what I understand has many other uses later.

“Once you leave the newb world it can also be used to directly increase certain skills or stats. However, that’s incredibly expensive as a latter investment. With every level in a stat or skill doubling the number of experience points needed for another level, you would need almost a million points to level something beyond level 10.”

By this point, Evil Instructor had run out of breath and was sweating profusely. His whole body was a tense as a coiled spring and his eyes were very worriedly staring at Murphy still holding the bow taught with a shaky arm.

It looked like his arm was losing its strength and could accidentally let go of the string at any moment. As if to prove that the instructor’s fears were valid, a bird flew by overhead and relieved itself mid-flight. The bird’s gift fluttered on the wind like a rain drop and eventually found its way to Murphy’s head.

At the time, Murphy was mostly absorbed in processing everything the instructor was saying and had almost completely forgotten about his hand holding the bow string because it had gone numb with that pleasant tingling feeling.

When the bird’s shit landed on his head, by pure reflex, Murphy lifted his hand to touch his hair where he felt something landing, letting go of the bow string in the process. When he realised his mistake, it was already too late.

The instructor now had an arrow protruding from his eye socket and a face filled with shock and disbelief. Murphy, somewhat stunned by this sudden strange turn of events, went to step towards the Instructor, only to hear the ‘crunch’ of glass shattering underfoot.

He didn’t even need to look down to realise he’d just stepped on the instructor’s belt by accident, because his body was already aching all over in pleasure and his vision was once again clouded with poisonous purple fog.

The valiant efforts of his Hurts So Good and Please Sire special traits kept him alive and suffering for almost two straight hours this time. Unfortunately, they still weren’t powerful enough to grant him total immunity.

He reappeared in his bedroom and smashed his hand on the floor in frustration. When he did, his face became strange and his eyes suddenly widened in shock.

NOOO!! What the hell! Why? Why does it feel so good! It should be hurting! It should be painful! Something is wrong! Don’t tell me ... my special traits have somehow followed me out of the game?

Wait! Whew. Just calm down. Think rationally for a second. Ok, let’s try open my Status Space. Open!

...

Shit! What the hell kind of twisted game is this?! Everything followed me through? All my stats and skills are still in effect outside of the game. Oh ... I wonder if that means...

Inventory! Hmm, well I guess that was too much wishful thinking. So, my game stats followed me out of the game, but I can’t open my inventory. My special traits also followed me out of the game. I wonder just how strong my endurance is now.

With all the poison I’ve ingested, the Thorns of Punishment incident, the damage from the bandit group and then from the troll smashing my body into pulp...

Time to test it out. First let’s head to the kitchen. Juwan is probably still home so I need to be quiet.

Sneak, sneak, sneak ... Skip the third stair form the top. That stair always squeaks. Okay, check that the coast is clear. Excellent. Now too the kitchen.

Sneak, sneak, sneak. Hmm, let’s not go to overboard. Let’s just start with trying to make a little cut. That knife is the sharpest so let’s use that one. Hmm ... nothing? What the hell? A bit more pressure. A bit more. Ahh ... it feels good. Pretty sure I’m just mincing the flesh in the finger now.

My skins indestructible! HAHAH! Invincible skin!

“Oh? Little brother, I thought you were at school? You stayed home today?”

Eeek...

“Heh ... hey Juwan. Yeah, I just wasn’t feeling too well after our spar this morning. Don’t mind me, I was just heading back to sleep some more.” So honest and natural. I nearly even fooled myself.

“Oh. Was I bit rough this morning? Hmm, well, you need to train harder little brother. You used to be so formidable, but now your just ... Let’s go and have another quick spar. Perhaps if you sweat it out for a bit you’ll feel better.”

Hmph! Who do you think you’re fooling huh? I know you just love having an excuse to beat me! I see through your charade you bastard.

“Ehh ... not this time Juwan. I really don’t think I can. Tomorrow! I promise to have a good long spar with your tomorrow.”

I then fled the scene like a thief in the night, leaving the super sharp kitchen knife on the bench. Ignoring the fake concern and bewilderment on Juwan’s face, I raced up the stairs to my room.

As I sat down on my bed and stared intensely at my Key, I got a message from Social on the DataStream. Closing my eyes, I Linked Up to the DataStream through my implant and used my mind to navigate to the Social area.

When I arrived, I found a message from Seelie reading; “I just tried the blood thing and it seemed to work. Should we make a public post in the Social and tell everyone about it?”

Without even considering it I replied; “No. Let them figure it out for themselves. Come around tonight and we’ll discuss our findings from the game.”

I then decided to just sit for a while a consider the implications of this ‘game’ ... before I got too far into my pondering, I slapped myself in the head for being an idiot. Why would I sit out here in the real world instead of going into the game?

4 minutes in the game is equivalent to 1 in the real world. I’m wasting time sitting out here. That thought in mind I reached out and grabbed my Key and willed myself back to the game.

Once again, I found myself in the now familiar white world of my Status Space. I checked my stats and skills then respawned into the beginner village. The moment I respawned system alerts started sounding out.

I couldn’t help but sigh as I tentatively checked my Status Space to investigate my new title.

Lone Wolf

Killed everyone in the beginner village, good or bad.

Bonus Stat and Skill growth when operating alone.
NPC’s will feel discomfort in working with you as a team

Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as the ‘Unstable’ moniker. Unfortunately, it’s only useful if I remain alone and most likely will limit my interactions with NPC’s. I couldn’t stop the sigh of dejection from slipping past my lips.

I then realised, thanks to the Hidden Quest: I Know What I’m Doing, that there must definitely have been another instructor, most likely part of the beast villagers that I ... was involved in an accident with.

After checking my status again, I then searched around the village until I found all the dead bandits. Without reservation, I robbed their corpses. Everything they had, I took. I even pilfered the Evil Instructors corpse and retrieved his belt of potions.

Finally, once I was finished, I felt a huge weight pressing down on me. That most likely meant that I’d picked up too much stuff. So I opened my inventory to start organising everything. Considering my propensity for being injured, the majority of the ratty cloth and fabric was ripped into bandages.

All the bandits leather armour was sorted through and assessed. Unfortunately, this game didn’t have anything like defence modifiers or anything on the equipment. Or if it did, I simply couldn’t view it yet. So I spent almost an hour sorting all the equipment and throwing out anything that ‘looked’ damaged or worn.

If I had some sort of skill like Identify or Inspect, then I could probably determine the quality and prices of most of these items. Unfortunately, I had no such skill.

Once that was done, I investigated the few interesting items I’d picked up since I started the game. The first was a hair pin. I didn’t remember picking it up, but it was a hair pin the little village girl had. I could tell it must have some interesting effect or attributes, but I just couldn’t guess what they were.

I kept it though, because it was light and probably will sell for a decent price.

The next was the sword of the Bandit Leader. It was clearly the best of all the blades I’d picked up in terms of both quality and craftsmanship. When I equipped it and gave it a few test swings, I discovered it was unusually sharp and very light in comparison to the simple swords of the other bandits.