Tutorial – New Game, New Genre, New Challenges
This is a game where you can only die once. You only have one life. Once you’re dead, that’s it so I have to make every move I make count. This is a battle royale and I’m on a team with my best friend and my wife. When we get dropped into the battle zone, we try to wait in the helicopters as long as we can while the air is being lit up with heavy artillery fire. The further in we go, the better chances we have at getting better gear.
A helicopter just got shot out of the sky, so we take that as our hint to jump. Our helicopter gets shot out of the sky as we exit it and we get blown in different directions into the burning and destroyed war zone below. We try to regroup in the sky, but the artillery fire prevents that. The artillery is so heavy in this area that I see and hear people being shot out of the sky. I open my parachute to land safely, however, my parachute gets shot and I crash through a roof. I’ve lost half my health, so I need healing items fast before anyone finds me. Lucky for me, I find some in a nearby turned over medical truck. Now to find my teammates and a good weapon.
My wife is the closest, so I go to her location first. I can see her on my digital map that I carry around along with my best friend. I can’t see anyone else until they start a fight with one of us. Ah crap, speaking of that, my wife is in a gunfight with a team of four. I have to get there fast. I’m weak since I’m a low level, but I am prestiged, so I do have my experience. When I get to the location, my wife is already dead. She’s taken out all but one of them who is currently arming himself to the teeth and organizing his inventory. Damn it. I thought we would make it to the end together, but I can’t cry over it now. I’ve taken cover in a small house. My luck hasn’t been good since I haven’t been able to find a weapon, but maybe my luck has changed.
These developers are crafty, so maybe I can find a secret weapon somewhere. Maybe it’s in this toilet? I have no other option, so I reach my hand into the depths of the murky toilet and pull out a special sniper rifle. It only has one shot in it, but it can hit anything and kill anyone in one shot. This is perfect. I position myself near the window and aim. Smile you, cunt. That’s right. That’s what you get for teaming up on a woman like her. Wow, she really gave them hell. All the armor they have are mostly broken and so are the weapons. Apparently, she used a gun with a weapon breaking status effect. She was good, but she didn’t plan on me getting their gear later, which I don’t blame her for. Still, I wish I had something I could use.
Luck isn’t on my side as I go to the other side of the map to find my best friend. No weapons, no gear, no traps, no medical supplies, nothing. All I find is a single flash grenade. When I get to my best friend’s location, I find him dead with three other players picking over his stuff. I can’t believe my entire team is dead. I guess I’ll have to win this by myself. The barrier that brings all contestants together is quickly closing in. This barrier can kill you within a matter of minutes and since it’s close by, I throw a flash grenade at the three players before booking it. I can hear them scream profanities at me as they die. Sorry, but that’s what you get when you mess with mine and me.
I don’t have much time to search around so I hope this next house I’m at has something. Oh, I think I found something use-ah damn it. It’s a powerful full-auto assault rifle modeled after an old M14. It can cut through armor and people like butter, but I’m stuck holding it up until I run out of ammo. The clip has thirty bullets in it, which is good for one and a half kill. After I run out of ammo, the gun is useless and can be loaded with any kind of ammo. I’ll have to be in a tight pinch for it to be useful in any capacity. Since I wasted so much time running around, I can’t look through any other place for gear, guns, or anything else to help me. There are only ten people left alive. There were a little over one hundred to begin with. It’s amazing how people will kill so many others to win.
The barrier will close us in on one location called Der Untoten. It reminds me of a zombies map from an old video game. I heard that this place is inspired by it and it’s updated for today’s standards. There’s a mine below the house that I use to enter it. Even though the barrier is close to the house, I don’t hear anyone walking around in here. I start to look through the house and the house barely looks like what it was inspired by. It’s more of an old dusty house than the bunker it’s inspired by.
Finally, I find a real gun in the house’s attic. It’s the KAP-4500, an automatic pistol inspired by the franchise that this house is inspired by. The gun itself is powerful, but I only have one fully loaded clip inside with two spare ones. There are ten other people left and it takes a little more than half a clip each to kill one. Fuck my life. The only thing that’s good about this special version of the gun is that people don’t know they’re being shot by my gun until they’re dead. They don’t hear the gun being shot nor do they see it firing nor do they feel or see the damage they are receiving until they die. It’d be good if I had something better to compliment it than my rifle. Ah! I hear people walking downstairs.
I slowly and I mean SLOWLY descend the stares with my only means of self-defense. I point the gun in all directions while walking then spastically look around when I take a step on the lower floor. Damn it. Being scared like this isn’t going to help. I loosen up my shoulders before heading into a sort of dining hall. There’s a large glass chandelier in the center of the room and stairs that lead down to a small glass table with fancy wooden chairs. My luck is bad again as I don’t find anything down here-! I point my gun at four people who casually enter the room. They’re better armed and geared up than I am. Wow, and they’re wearing anime type outfits and they modeled themselves after them too. What a bunch of weebos.
One of the boys speaks up and says, “You don’t have to worry about us. We’re going to wait for everyone else to show up here before we act.”
I ask them, “Heh. You guys are pretty confident that you’ll win. Who else is on your team?”
“Do you know the winners of the last battle royale?”
“What a team to be on.”
The team laughs. They then casually hang around the stairs even though I could kill them all, so I might as well. First, I take out the girl closest to me then the boy next to him. They do say ladies first after all. Even though two of their teammates dropped within seconds of each other, the other two don’t fight back. They must know what I’m doing by now.
As I shoot down the second to last person, the last girl looks at me with a smile and says, “Our friends will win the competition for us. It doesn’t matter what you do because we’ll win in the end.”
Cheeky bitch. I gun her down with my last bullets. Okay, now these people have to have something I could-damn it! Yup. They weren’t lying. These two girls are the winners from the last battle royale. They’re decked out in advanced gear and weapons that make them look more like cyborgs than human. I thought I saw them get shot out of the sky, but I guess they really did land in the furthest drop zone with the best gear. Just like their friends, these girls are dressed up as anime characters. I back up the stairs as they slowly approach me.
“Give up. You don’t stand a chance against us,” one of the girls say.
“We can see what you have,” the other says, “You might be able to kill one of us before you die.”
Damn. That’s one of the perks of being one of the best of the best. They know what I have on me. Unfortunately, my prestige doesn’t give me an equally good ability. There’s only one thing I can do. I leap downstairs as they start firing at me. In the next room, I find three pens, two breakable and the other is unbreakable. They’re supposed to be used as distractions and not as real weapons. Whelp. I guess it’s better than nothing. I barge through the room and into the entrance.
“Woah!” a girl with boobs way too big says.
It’s probably a guy playing as a girl. I’m pretty sure a normal girl wouldn’t increase her boob size by two hundred percent. They are just way too big. Okay, I gotta focus. The rest of the people are here but are just resting here for some reason. Maybe they’re all a team? Whatever the case is, I run into the basement and into the mine.
“Hey, what’s going on with you two?” I hear a man say before he and everyone upstairs gets slaughtered.
I only have one shot at this. As I hear the two girls coming after me, I double back then get in between them. They take out their giant fist melee weapon and are about to hit me. This is it! I stab one breakable pen into one of their eyes and now they’re blinded. I then drop myself to the floor, so they hit each other. They’re stunned by the system and lay paralyzed on the floor.
One of them looks up and me and says, “How did you-?! You’re…?!”
“So you recognize me? I’m glad someone finally does.”
The other one says, “You’re Kaylen or Cazzuto Salvatori! You’re the Bloody Swordsman from Rule Humanity Online!”
“That’s right ladies.” I take out my unbreakable pen. “Unfortunately for you, I’ll have to sign my autograph all over you.”
“No, don’t! Don’t embarrass us like this!”
“I wish I didn’t too, but I don’t have any other weapon so…”
They scream in terror, “No! Stop! You’re a psycho!”
“Only idiots say video games make you psychotic. I’m sorry about this, but I’ll try to make this as quick as possible.”
I begin to quickly stab them with my pen while using my special skill, one million stabs. It’s one of the special perks I have. I think the move itself might also be a reference to another video game with the same move. My prestige as both an experienced player and survivor of the Rule Humanity Online incident has given me a ton of special skills when it comes to melee weapons. I manage to kill both girls with my pen within ten seconds. That should be it. The royale isn’t over yet? Oh? I hear someone upstairs.
“What happened?” a male player says, “Did you guys get him-?”
The man stares at me in shock in terror with my pen of terror.
I say in an attempted terrifying voice, “If you don’t want to end up like them, then I suggest killing yourself.”
“Ah!” the man turns his gun on himself and shoots.
I win. That’s it. After all of the struggling and close calls, I finally win the battle royale. I hope you’re proud of me Angel and Kerano. The game ends and I’m transported back to the main hub of the game where I’m greeted by a crowd of people who cheer for me. Angel and Kerano come out of the crowd to meet me.
“We’ve finally won! I knew you would clutch it!” Kerano says.
“You did great, Kaylen,” Angel says.
“Thanks, guys. It’s about time we won a battle royale in this game. It’s all thanks to my mindset going into it.”
“You treated it like an actual life or death game kind of like…”
I guess I was acting a bit overdramatic.
“Yeah,” I say, “Just like Rule Humanity Online, but that was three years ago, so let’s just leave it behind us, okay?”
“Right. So do you guys want to go spending all that money we just won? I’ve been dying to get new armor and equipment.”
“Yeah, let’s go. We still have an hour to kill before we have to pick up our kids from the daycare.”
This game, After the Fall, came out two years after the Rule Humanity Online incident, where all of its players were trapped within it and forced to complete it lest they die of thirst or starvation. I was the one who beat the game alongside my friends. Unfortunately, the governments of the world didn’t catch the developers of the game, but that’s all behind us. This game is inspired by the lore of that previous game and makes it into a completely different game. Instead of a dark fantasy RPG, we’re playing a first-person shooter with role-playing elements in a sci-fi setting. It’s a great game that my friends and I have been playing for a while.
In this game, people can earn real money by winning tournaments, trading gear, helping others out, and even help repair the in-game systems from the inside. You can even bring your kids into the game and have them enrolled in a daycare where they can learn through games and make friends. Everything in here can make you a living. It’s honestly a paradise for gamers like me. This is how we make a living in a world where most low and middle tier paying jobs are mostly taken by androids and AI. College used to be the only (terrible) option, but now with this game, people who don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars can work honest jobs while enjoying themselves in a virtual world. The only things we need to do IRL is to eat and go to the bathroom. We can even sleep in the game without any negative side effects. I don’t think anything can ruin this present time we’re living in though I feel like thinking this will immediately turn things sour.
We arrive at the daycare after shopping for better gear. A woman, who’s volunteering as the daycare worker seems distressed for some reason. I would be too if I had to work with kids all day, but I’m feeling worried as well because of her.
She turns to us with a makeshift smile and says, “Oh, uh. Hi, Kaylen and Angel. I was just looking for Allen. He seems to have wandered off again. I’m sorry.”
I tell her, “I don’t blame him. I used to wander around too when I was little because the world around me seemed so wonderful. I’m sure he’s even more excited than I was because of how this place looks.”
Angel says, “We’ll look around the city. He couldn’t have wandered far like always.”
“Thank you, and I’m sorry for this happening again.”
“It’s no big deal. We’ll be able to find him,” I say as Angel and Kerano go to search for my son.
Angel elbows me then says, “We should take some time off playing-”
“Working.”
“Whatever. We should spend another week or so with Allen. He’s still a growing boy who needs his parents’ attention and teaching.”
“Alright. I don’t have a problem with that.”
“You’d think we do because of how many times we leave him in the daycare.”
“I do the same with my daughter,” Kerano comments.
“But at least your wife spends more time with your daughter while you earn money for them,” Angel responds.
“You don’t have to pick up for me, Kerano. I understand. Being a father really makes me want to settle down somewhere and just spend the rest of my life with the people I care about. I just want to earn as much as possible to make that happen.”
“We have enough now to do that for a little while.”
“I just wish it could last a little longer.”
“Me too, Kaylen.”
The three of us search for a while, but can’t find Allen anywhere, which is strange. Usually, we find him within five minutes of searching. Huh? What’s happening? The sky just turned red. This reminds me of…Oh no. Someone appears on the monitors scattered around the city.
It’s a cloaked figure in a half human half skull mask. They say, “We’re glad that you’re enjoying our game. Now that you have enough experience playing it, we have a new challenge for everyone. Watch.”
The floating mountain from the first game that was once just an easter egg is now lit up and a bridge comes out of the ocean to connect this piece of land to it. Who is this person? They have a voice that sounds like a mix of female and male voices.
“Complete all of the challenges in the mountain along with various other challenges that will be clear to you later in time to free everyone from this game.”
Free? You don’t mean…I can’t log out. Everyone around us tries to and can’t manage to as well. This is just like before. The three of us look at each other.
“Don’t panic guys,” I say, “We beat a game like this last time, and we can do it again.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Kerano says.
“Yeah.”
I can tell they’re uneasy, but they try to put a strong face on.
“Kaylen,” the mysterious figure says.
“Huh? Are you talking to me?”
“I am. You were the winner of the last game, so you’ll probably make it far if not win the game again. I just want to give you some motivation so we can meet a bit faster.”
The mysterious figure spawns in-Allen! They put a pistol to his head. Don’t you-FUCKER!
“You son of a bitch! Do you think you can just shoot my son and think you can get away with it you piece of fucking shit?!”
“Motherfucker! You’re dead! I’m going to beat the shit out of you for doing that!” Angel screams at the figure.
“Calm down, Kaylen. All of you have three lives, but you can earn more if you complete impossible level challenges. You can even earn lives for your friends. If you lose all of your lives, you will enter a coma until someone gives you a life. You have until you die of thirst or starvation in real life to complete the game, but knowing what happened last time, you’ll probably have all the time in the world. Good luck.”
That piece of shit is going to pay! I swear it.
“Oh, and Kaylen, here’s your son to show that’s there’s no bad blood between us.”
My son spawns in my arms with a scared and confused look on his face. I collapse to my knees and cry harder than I’ve ever before. I’m going to beat this game and make the people who did this pay. For the first time they trapped us. For the second time. And most importantly for shooting my son.
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