“When gods are contrary
They stand by no one.” – Virigil, The Aeneid
Zach woke up from his sleep to the sharp pinpricks of pain going down his back and ass. He had been having his favorite dream of winning the lottery and relaxing every day on an Ireland beach-front property and somehow the newest VR Actress had decided to give up her celebrity status and marry him. As the smell of pine began to sting his nose, he rolled over and reached for his cheap faux fleece blanket that he had bought at one of the mega stores. “Uggghhhh…Computer another five minutes.” Zach commanded to his AI house computer, hoping that another five minutes of sleep would make him ready for the rest of the day. His hand started waving about searching for his blanket, as a cold stiff breeze made his naked body shiver. As goose bumps arose across his flesh, his mind dragged itself from the foggy awareness to realization that something was wrong.
A loud fart cut through the quiet forest air, as Zach sat up feeling pine needles fall from his naked form. Zach’s head turned left and right trying to find where the loud squawk of some unknown creature in the forest had come from. Seeing a pine needle covered forest area he began to realize he wasn’t in his small apartment anymore. Wild foliage and deadfall greeted him, instead of his vintage Batman lamp and HiDef Viewing Wall. Adrenaline began to pump into his blood and he stood up quickly, looking around him in bewilderment. “What the fuck!?” Zach said.
For a few minutes, Zach just looked around at the forest. When he was eight, his teacher had taken the entire class to one of the last national parks around New York City. The location he was in felt somewhat similar, but he knew that was impossible as he was supposed to be in his bed sleeping until the AI unit woke him up and he went to work at his VR terminal. Additionally, he should be wearing his Deadpool pajamas and weighting around 380 lbs., instead of being completely naked and sporting an athletic build. As Zach shuffled in place, forest debris fell off his naked form and he realized that the pain and aches of his 36-year-old body could no longer be felt. In fact, for the first time in 20 years he felt like running, jumping, doing something physically exhausting just because he could.
Zach finally took a long hard look at himself and realized that his fat stretch-marks and pasty skin were gone. In fact, even the scar from his pancreas replacement surgery was gone, and he had had that since his was eighteen. Using his hands to knock off the rest of the forest debris from his back and ass, Zach finally saw a tree stump with clothes neatly folded on top of it. Walking over to it, sharp twigs and stones poked up from the forest floor, biting into his feet. “Fuck!” Zach cursed as another twig seemed to jump up and stab him in the instep of his foot. Once he made it over to the stump, Zach quickly pulled on the grayish white shirt and pants as fast has he could. The cloth felt strange on his skin, it was slightly cooler to the touch and a little rougher than the spun, recycled plastic threads that he was used to.
After putting on the pants, Zach saw there were three more items underneath the clothes. One item was a pair of what looked like leather moccasins. The second item was a leather belt with a dagger in its sheath attached to it. Lastly, a stainless-steel-looking cylinder with strange lettering and pictures etched around the shaft was next to the mundane items. Zach put on the moccasins and belt on just out of habit, even though the antler hilt of the dagger felt strange to him, he still buckled the belt around his waist. Finally, he picked up the cylinder with his right hand, and as he did so a blue screen seemed to appear in front of him.
Zach touched the edge of the blue screen and felt the slick cool touch of glass. Licking his lips in thought, the gamer’s urge to check his stats first scream at him. However, like any good player he needed information about the game he was playing first in order to make decisions about his character. Zach pressed the introduction option and hoped that it wasn’t some boring background fluff.
“Ok first off, just because I spent most of my time reading litrpg and fantasy fiction doesn’t mean I was a loser. I had a couple of girlfriends over the years and quite a few friends that I talked with! Sure, I never got married or had kids, but with my salary and the state of the world it just seemed like a bad idea. I mean… come on! It was never the right moment…” Zach yelled at the message on the screen. He had led a good life; sure, he had wanted family and a little house, but it wasn’t like he just sat on his ass and did nothing. He spent the next ten minutes or so thinking over his previous life and finally came to the realization that whether it was good or not, he had second chance. One in which he could truly control his own future, instead of being a slave to money, marketing and assholes.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Deciding to see where he was starting from, before checking the store, he reviewed his [Character Screen], [Skills], and [Spells].
“Well, I truly have a blank state to start with.” Zach said to himself. “I guess 10 is average human stats, and it makes sense that if I am facing a giant my strength would be lower against him, compared to fighting a rabbit. Why I don’t have any skills is a surprise, I mean sure knowing twelve computer languages isn’t very helpful, but if the introduction is to be believed and this world works like my favorite books, then I should just start doing tasks and I will pick up skills. Thankfully, it seems that with this spell, I’ll never lose my Grimoire.” Zach had the strong suspicion that his [Grimoire] was more important than just some interface that he could look at, but without further information he wasn’t going to use his spell over and over again hoping to unlock a secret ability.
Taking a seat on the tree stump, Zach backed out of the menu and pressed the [Divine Shop] option. Another simple menu popped up on his Grimoire.
“Well,” Zach spoke out loud, “everything seems pretty simple. Let’s see what is behind door number one.” Pressing [Character Enhancements], Zach saw the screen flood with options. The first few choices weren’t really a surprise, for 10 DP he could increase a stat by 1. For a 1000 DP, he could change his name or race, which seemed like an insane cost for a name change but as he focused on the option, and its description appeared.
Realizing that an apparently simple name change wasn’t so simple, Zach continued to peruse the options. Items like [Iron Stomach], [Elemental Resistances], [Natural Armor], and even different types of [Vision] were available and in bright white. Other items like [Magical Aptitude] or [Flying] were greyed out due to unmet requirements or costing several thousand DP. As he started checking other options he realized this was going to take a while.
Zach spent the next few hours going over the options and items available. [Skills] were cheap costing 10 points to learn, and 1 point to increase it per level up to level 25, the problem was that there were thousands of skills and some were special skills that required prerequisite levels related ones. [Spells] covered cultivation techniques, as well as offensive and defensive magic. Of course, cultivation techniques like [Dragon’s Wind] cost 500 points allowing him to gain character enhancements and spells along with increasing his mana pool. While a spell like [Flaming Arrow] may have costed him 100 points, it wouldn’t increase his mana pool. The [Items] tab was as close to infinite as possible, featuring everything from a wooden spoon to a [Scaling Demigod Weapon].
However, what caught Zach’s imagination were the last three menus in the item store. It seemed like Grimoire Upgrades were cheap but extremely useful. An example was the [Automatic Map Drawing Upgrade] for 20 points. It would add a map drawing feature that linked with his eyes, constantly updating the map with his location and adding details that his skills and enhancements recognized. Additionally, once he purchased that upgrade he could obtain the [Transfer Maps] feature, which would add details to his maps from existing hand drawn maps or through pressing it to another Grimoire. In addition to providing a messaging service, it seemed that the [Grimoire] could also create magical contracts or be used as a storage device thanks to an extradimensional pocket.
On the other hand, the [Bloodlines] option only had one item available for purchase, but it would open hundreds of other options.
Lastly, the sections [Divine Favors, Blessings, and Curses] held hundreds of items that were all greyed out due to their cost being in the thousands. Still, one caught his eye.
Sighing, Zach went back to [Bloodline Upgrades] and selected [Grimoire Companion Bloodline]. Knowing that he needed as much help as possible, he grimaced at the cost and highlighted the item. A small prompt asked if he was sure and he hit yes.
