Level Up: The Knockout
by Dan Sugralinov and Max Lagno
Release - January 9, 2019
Pre-order now - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JH4Y38Y
Chapter One. The Hallucination.
“I used to be an adventurer like you.
Then I took an arrow in the knee.”
Skyrim
EVEN THOUGH Mike Björnstad Hagen was partly of Scandinavian
extraction, he resembled a Viking roughly the same way a Chihuahua resembles a
Great Dane. He had a variety of nicknames such as “Crybaby Mikey,” “Little Mikey,” “Mikey the Wimp,” or even “Hey, you cocksucker!” No one has ever referred to him as “Mr. Hagen.”
The only time it almost happened was during a visit to a bank Mike had visited once in hope of getting a
mortgage loan. “I'm so sorry, Mr. Hagen, but your loan
request has not been approved,” said
the man behind the counter without so much as trying to refrain from grinning smugly.
Mike would have smashed his face gladly if he only knew how to fight.
A home... A dream of a home of his own, one he
could share with little Jessie, was all that had kept him going for three years. Then
Jessica had deserted him for a trucker thug from
Arizona — or was it Texas? At that point, it
didn't really matter anymore.
What did matter, however, was that Hagen had dated no one for the following five
years, and the reason certainly wasn't his pining for Jessica — there was none. It was just that no one
ever found him interesting enough, including Sheila, a glum Goth girl covered in tattoos, who worked in the shop across the road. The shop sold
comics, and Hagen would frequent it to buy fresh issues of Rat Queens and Extremity.
There was an occasion when Mike had had quite a few at Chuck's Bar and managed to get brave enough to invite her to see a movie — another installation of The Avengers. That was when Hagen had the temerity to declaim, feeling brave and
cocksure, “Girlfriend, how about taking that
glorious body of yours out with the coolest guy in the neighborhood?”
Sheila was flabbergasted. “Cool?
You, of all people?”
She then gave him the textbook phrase about him
being the last man on the planet and her utter reluctance to spend any amount
of time with
him even in that scenario.
Mike didn't wait for her to finish the sentence. Hit by the realization of him having been
rejected, his brain instantly launched the
standard coping mechanism Hagen had developed back in grammar school whenever he’d been called a freak and gotten pelted by a barrage of leftovers at the school
canteen: “See no evil, hear no evil.”
He barely managed to move his legs, which seemed like foreign objects, as he left the comic shop never to return. Thenceforth, he had to order his comics online which isn't quite the same thing as everybody knows.
Hagen didn't bear any grudges against Sheila. But how could he ever
visit her shop again? That would be the worst humiliation one could possibly
think of.
Then there was the evening when he’d come home from work — a Friday right after Thanksgiving.
However, a family holiday seemed like any other day to Hagen. He'd never seen
his father, and his mother had
passed away a couple of years back.
Hagen's mother was the only person in his life he'd ever truly loved.
Some might have called her love overbearing, but Baby Mickey could never even
think of it
like that.
She was his mother, after all — as
well as his friend, and the most interesting person to talk to. Jessie tried to
claim this part
— it seemed like a
success for a while
— but then she
walked out on him. When Hagen returned to his mother after his first “life cruise,” as his Uncle Pete had put it, mother was already deathly ill.
The doctors said her treatment would have a thirty-percent chance of success,
but there wasn't any money to pay the medical expenses, anyway. Another thing
was that he'd have to go to Philadelphia. How could he possibly? His job and
his home would never let him. Nor would anybody else.
Hagen's mother died in terrible pain, and he spent all her last days
with her — holding her hand unable to hold back his tears.
Mike spent the first year after her death as though he were trying to
learn how to live again. He's gotten used to cooking, and tried to wash his own
clothes and wake up on time, with varying success. The mother who had always
taken care of her son was gone. There was no one to take
her place, so it was the second time ever Hagen decided something for himself
as an adult (the first one being moving in with Jessie).
He wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t let himself crack under pressure. He
would have no specific objectives; he’d go with the flow, but he would definitely stay alive.
So he eventually managed to cope with it. Mother's cooking was replaced
by Chinese takeaways. Once a week, Hagen would go to the Laundromat, and the
alarm clock would wake him up every morning. Life seemed to have gotten back to normal but he still missed his mother a lot.
The only imaginable relative Hagen knew was Uncle Pete, Mom's elder brother. Uncle Pete used to
be in the US Armed Forces. He'd been through campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan;
the few times he’d visited Hagen and his mother, he did
everything he could to be a male presence and help with his nephew's
upbringing, but without any success. So Uncle Pete decided to skip the particulars and stick to enforce the
three rules he considered important for every man: the ability to hold one's
ground, to help one's mother, and to keep from whining, whatever the
circumstances may be.
He failed in every case.
Hagen would get hysterical at any experience of physical pain, and
preferred to give up or run away at once instead of “holding his ground,” even though he'd always dreamed of
learning to fight like the famous Mighty Mouse — Demetrious Johnson, the UFC flyweight
champion. Yes, the very wrestler that had managed to become a champion eleven times with his height — less than five foot three, and weighing under 126 pounds.
Poor puny Hagen often imagined himself as Johnson's true heir. Crybaby
Hagen. Height, five foot two. Weight, just a little over 123 pounds. And a UFC
champion nonetheless! Such an unfunny joke.
Helping his Mom? Oh, that was so boring. So much more
fun playing video games or reading comics.
Not that his mother ever demanded anything of the sort from her only child,
anyway.
And as
for keeping from whining — Hagen
tried as hard as he could, but without much success. What could he do if his
first reaction to a hurtful comment had always been tears? Hagen was nearly thirty at that point but he would still sometimes find himself unable to
hold them back. Just to think of that dumb customer with his damned laptop — a certain Mr. Goretsky. Hagen was the
only person who’d any idea about computers in the shop
selling digital devices where he worked. Each time Mr. Goretsky would have
another virus infect his hard drive browsing through illegal adult sites,
there'd be just a single person to sort it out. Namely, Baby Mikey. And Mr.
Goretsky had gotten his Self-Importance and Asshole skills up to a level
sufficient to blame Hagen for the
infection each and every time.
So, the Friday Mr. Goretsky visited the shop again, he didn't guard his
words in the least. Apart from the fact that he had onion and garlic on his
breath, which almost made Hagen throw up, he erupted with expletives. The
mildest expressions he used were “dumb
freak” and “pimply bastard,” although there were plenty more
epithets and characteristics. It must be fun to be as badass when you're six foot tall and your
forearms are wider then my legs, thought Hagen, feeling the levee breaking and the
tears running down his cheeks. It wasn't his best day all in all, Friday or no Friday.
Feeling utterly discombobulated, Hagen headed right for Chuck's Bar. His main objective was to
get into a state of complete inebriation; the secondary one was fueled by the hope of picking up a chick against all odds. Anyone at all. Just
someone moist enough for him to stick it in. He'd even managed to notice a
likely candidate sitting on a bar stool and downing straight whiskey like there
was no tomorrow. Still, he never gathered enough courage to approach her, although he was fully intending to. And once his ass finally left the chair, it
was already too late. The lady in question guffawed at the stupid joke of some
smug bastard wearing a suit and tie in the most vulgar manner.
So Hagen got fueled up with rotgut and headed homeward, wallowing in
self-pity. He spent some time playing his favorite MMA fighter game on the PlayStation in his bachelor's lair
imagining himself kicking seven shades of
shit out of that bastard Goretsky, after which he watched a horror B-movie on his cable
for a while, then
just
passed out.
He woke up almost at midnight to take a piss.
That was when everything started to happen.
The distance between the sofa and his bathroom would normally take some
five steps — it was a cheap rented apartment, after
all — but Mike still stumbled on his way. He
never knew himself to be particularly agile, but crossing a completely level
floor to reach the bathroom hadn't ever been a problem, no matter how drunk.
However, when he rose from the sofa and headed toward the can this time, the world seemed to blink. Hagen
felt himself
hanging in the
nothingness of the universe for a few seconds, feeling no gravity, smells,
sounds, lights, or air entering and leaving his lungs.
He didn't even have any awareness of his own existence. He felt
enshrouded in utter darkness.
Once the world around him returned, his body continued with a series of panic-induced commands given
by the brain: his diaphragm spasmed,
his arms started to wave, and his legs eventually attempted to take one step after another. As a result,
Hagen fell to the floor, bruising his
chin
rather badly in
the process and
almost biting his tongue.
It
took him a while to decide to rise, feeling the kind of vertigo anyone who'd
ever had more liquor than they could hold would recognize quite well. There
were white dots in his vision which formed
themselves into strange symbols resembling the runes from The Predator. Hagen went silent, trying to keep
himself from throwing up. He lay down on his back and closed his eyes, waiting
for the white dots to stop moving so chaotically, but to no avail.
He tried to blink until they went away, and then tried to rub them out
with his hands, but the shining dots clearly weren't of a physical nature. They
disappeared some ten minutes later.
Hagen managed to catch his breath. Then he got up gingerly and made a few slow, deliberate steps, trying to ensure his feet wouldn't fail him on his way to the business that had woken him up
originally.
Then he went back to his room, got undressed, and fell asleep, leaving
his clothes on the floor.
*
* *
HE WOKE the next morning feeling parched as hell. It was Saturday, and he didn't
have to go to work.
He cracked his joints as he stretched out, and headed toward the fridge.
He polished off a carton of OJ in a few gulps and started to think about heading down to the supermarket for some supplies.
He sat
down at his kitchen table, half of which was covered in computer parts such as
video, RAM, and Ethernet cards. That’s when he realized something was wrong. And it wasn't the headache from the six
pints of beer he’d drunk last night.
There was an object looking like a desktop icon in his field of vision,
and it wouldn't go away. He’d
noticed it after waking up, but his initial assumption had been that it was
just something in his eye or on his eyelashes — a bit of lint, perhaps.
Mike blinked, but the bit of lint didn't go away. If anything, it seemed to have gotten larger. He
thought he needed to wash his face, so off to the bathroom he went.
As Mike splashed some water over his face, he decided to shave. He didn't do it often — there was no reason to waste time on
scraping his face with a razor, after all.
But why do it today? The
very urge surprised
him.
He rubbed some shaving gel on his hand and started applying it to his
face, looking at himself in the mirror.
That was when it hit him. There were two lines of text hovering over his
head with its thinning fair hair. It looked like the kind of stuff you'd expect to see in some damn computer game.
Mike “Crybaby” Hagen. Age: 29
Level 1
Hagen ran his hand through the space above his
head, his face covered in foam. The hand passed through the text without
feeling any resistance. Could this be a practical joke of some sort? He looked
at the mirror carefully, but found no signs of anyone tampering with it.
What could it possibly be, then? A hallucination?
Suddenly
Mike had a morbid idea that made him back away from the mirror. His legs buckled under him, causing him to collapse
in a heap to the floor.
Could it be cancer?
The kind his mother had?
And what would happen then? He wasn't even thirty yet. He hadn't really managed to get any worthy
experience in his life and come to know the joys it could bring. He'd been
thinking everything was still ahead of him — that he would have time enough to get as strong as Mighty Mouse.
And what about women? He's never had anyone but Jessie. The thought that
his time had run out and that he'd never get to know anyone intimately until
the end of what would be a very short life made Hagen cry without making a
single sound.
Then he started to bawl uncontrollably — but his mother was no longer there to hug him and comfort him, and it felt
like his very life poured out of him as tears went by. A dark depressive state
came upon him. Hagen no longer had any wish to do anything anymore, so he just
washed away his tears and the froth, rubbed his face with a towel, and went
back to bed. He closed his eyes and stayed like that until evening came, unable
either to fall asleep or get up.
Long after sundown, Hagen realized he could stay that way no more. His
body felt numb; his muscles ached
for some exercise, and his brain finally switched from thoughts about imminent
death to the basic instincts — namely,
thirst, hunger, and sheer lust for life. His wish to stay alive made him grit
his teeth, and he decided to find out what was really going on.
He got out of bed and stood up,
staring into the darkness of his apartment. Still, no matter which way Hagen looked, some 3D object remained at the periphery of his vision. He seemed to be watching a movie in 3D, but he wasn't
wearing any 3D glasses.
He focused his sight on the object and noticed its reaction. The icon,
flat until then, started to rotate like a Christmas tree bauble spinning at the touch of a cat's paw,
transforming into
a cube with a
human head silhouette at each side. Viewed from a certain angle, it actually resembled Hagen himself.
The young
man reached for the cube. As if accepting his invitation, it floated towards his palm and became
larger. Hagen touched it with his fingertips and felt some sort of tangible
response. The cube blinked and turned into
a window. Even if it was a hallucination, it was really top-drawer.
The window that appeared featured a topless Hagen in 3D wearing trunks.
It was a ridiculous sight. He was thin, all ribs, but the expression on his
face was one of pure malice. There was a text bar underneath Hagen. The active
tab had two columns. The first one had the following written in it:
Mike “Crybaby” Hagen
Age: 29
Level:
1
Health:
4000
pt.
Battles/victories: 0/0
Weight: 123 lbs
Height: 5’2”
Mike read through the text, studying every line.
As he focused, he
saw pop-ups with prompts
explaining the meaning of each of them. There was also some extra
info for the first line — his
ethnicity, nationality, as well as place of birth and current residence.
The second prompt
explained the process of leveling up. Experience grew in combat, no matter
what kind — a street fight or a training match would
both count for something. The only condition
was that the opponent could not be a minor. One had to have as many victories
as one had on the current level to get to the next one. Defeats did not give
any XP points, but nor did they take any away. Victory over a stronger opponent
made the progress faster, but there were no details on just how much faster.
The second line appeared to reflect physical stats.
Main stats:
Strength:
1
Agility:
2
Stamina:
4
Hagen browsed the entire list, focusing his attention at each item as they
came along.
The Strength stat equals 10% of the overall average for human strength.
It affects the damage one deals.
The Agility stat equals 10% of the overall average for human agility.
It affects the precision of your attacks and your chances to evade those
of your opponent.
The Stamina stat equals 10% of the overall average for human stamina.
It affects health and its regeneration, as well as the fatigue rate during physical
activity.
All of the above made it clear that Hagen was very weak — ten times weaker than any average human
being, five times less agile, and had two and half times less agility. But he’d known this ever since he’d been a snotty kid. Tell me something I don't know, he thought.
The most important thing was that in order to get to Level 3, all he
needed was a single victory over any opponent. Every level-up gave Hagen an ability point as well as a stat point which could be used to up his Strength,
Agility, or Stamina.
Thus, ability levels could be leveled up in other ways but training, and
upping Strength did not necessarily require a gym.
Once he managed to process that, he switched to the second tab.
It turned out to be inactive, with a silhouette of an attacking Hagen on it.
Mike tapped it without thinking and saw a series of icons with different
abilities depicted on them. They were: Punch, Uppercut, Low Kick, Medium Kick,
High Kick, Clinching, and Grappling. All the icons were gray with a lock
displayed above them. The only one with color was Punch. It had the number 1 displayed in the bottom right corner
over a green icon.
Hagen focused
on it. A prompt bubble popped up over it.
Punch: Level 1.
Damage: 100.
You have to use the ability more often to level it up.
Below it was a progress bar at 2%.
Everything had too much detail to be a hallucination caused by an
unquiet mind. The periphery of Hagen's consciousness registered the fact that
he would have to see a doctor on Monday for a check. It wouldn't hurt, at any
rate.
Hagen had a sudden brainwave and assumed what he considered to be a
fighter's stance; then he started throwing punches at the air. His right hand,
then his left, then the right, and then the left one again. He tried to imitate
shadowboxing, made about a hundred punches, stumbled over a gamepad that lay under his feet, and got sweaty and exhausted as a
result. However, it was worth it: the progress bar had reached the 3% mark.
Hagen kept punching the air until late at night, only making breaks for snacks and
visits to the bathroom. His low Stamina stat revealed itself in full — he would get tired easily. In the left corner of his vision, underneath the icon with his face showing his current level (which was 1),
he also saw the HP and Vigor stats.
Vigor was the very thing he kept running out of. He grew so tired he was
barely able to raise his fist. HP points were perfectly real, too — Michael found that out for himself as he
punched the wall. His hand felt acute pain. The system message below told him
he’d taken 100 damage points, and his HP bar had shrunk.
Hagen leveled his Punch ability up to 2 by midnight. Flame erupted from
his fists. It may have been virtual, but it looked terrifyingly real. It made his
hands warm, but it didn't burn, so Mike didn't even get any time to panic. He
was sweating all over and looking at his hands with sheer delight. The flames were gradually dying down.
Then he saw a system message appear right before his eyes.
Congratulations! You’ve received a new skill level!
Skill name:
Punch
Hagen opened the stat window to make sure the ability level had in fact grown.
Punch:
Level 2
Damage: 200
You have to use the ability more often to level it up
Thus, the level-up allowed him to deal more damage.
That was incredible!
Mike was as
excited as any
gamer who'd ever leveled up
their character in a video game. The rays of the rising sun were already peeking through the gap between his
curtains, and there he stood, punching air obdurately, pissed off by the fact
that he'd have to throw a hundred punches more to level up again. Two hundred
punches amounted to one percent of his ability growth. The first level had taken just a hundred. The third one would
take three times as much.
However, those weren't the only features of the System, which was the
term Hagen had invented to describe the new guest in
his mind. He’d woken up famished in the middle of the night.
There were no nutritious items in his fridge, so he’d had to order a takeaway from a pizza
joint open 24/7. His starved body was in urgent need of calories, after all. So
Mike ordered two Mexicanas at once, and went at them like a cat finding a pot
of cream as soon he’d shut the door after the delivery man.
Once he’d finished his meal (he’d polished off everything there was, including the
bits of topping stuck to the bottom of the box, up to the very last slice of
olive), the System gave him another notification,
Calories consumed: 2,536. Proteins: 7.4
oz. Fats: 6 oz. Carbohydrates: 12.6 oz.
The Hunger debuff that had been hovering somewhere on the upper right of his vision had now disappeared. However, he got a new one:
Sleep Deprivation. That lowered his Vigor by 25%.
By the morning, the Sleep Deprivation debuff reached
Level 2, lowering his Vigor by 50%. Mike started to get tired faster, and had
to take more breaks to restore himself. By
sunrise, when the Punch progress bar reached 67%, Sleep Deprivation suddenly
reached Level 4, reducing Vigor by 99% and giving Hagen
another debuff by the name of Fatigue.
This debuff did not lower any stats. However, it stopped the regeneration of Vigor
completely. Thus, he had to go to sleep eventually.
Hagen wasn't disappointed too much, at
any rate. His whole body hurt, his arms felt numb, and his eyes felt full of
sand. He fell asleep the instant his
head touched the pillow.
Chapter Two. Good Afternoon, Mr.
Goretsky!
“The world is full of suffering, then you
die.”
GTA Vice City
Stories
ON MONDAY Hagen went to the clinic to tell the doctor about his
inexplicable hallucinations. The doctor hummed and hawed in a bewildered way
for a while, and then told him to get an MRI. It didn’t find any pathological symptoms related to
Hagen's brain. Therefore, the doctor's diagnosis was “stress from overwork.” He prescribed him a course of mild
sedatives and recommended him to take a break from work.
His employers didn't mind — it
was the first vacation Mike had taken
in three years, so he suddenly became
free for three weeks. As Hagen was leaving the shop, he saw Mr. Goretsky
looking for his notebook and not finding it. “I really wouldn't advise you to visit
any illegal sites within the next three weeks,” he thought with pure Schadenfreude.
A system message popped up in the air right above Goretsky.
Gregor
“Moose” Goretsky. Age: 38
Level 4
HP: 22000
Battles/victories: 9/6
Weight: 251 lbs
Height: 6’ 3”
Hell's bells! was the first thought to cross Mike's
mind. Five times my HP!
Goretsky's Stamina equaled 16. However, Hagen didn't manage to check out
any other stats. He tried to open the window with the big man's profile, but
the system kept sending him the same incomprehensible message:
The current level of your Insight skill
is insufficient to access the information you’ve requested.
He had never
come across this skill before but he decided to definitely sort it out later on.
Mike could already see he didn’t stand a chance against the man. Even given his double damage, he'd
have to deal an opponent like this around eighty punches minimum, which was
simply a non-option.
“So
there you are, shithead!”
Hagen was so lost in his thoughts he missed the fact that Mr. Goretsky had finally found him. He loomed over Mike,
who had hunched his back by sheer
force of habit, grinning at him lopsidedly. “Get your finger out and give my laptop
back, you dumbass!”
Hagen tried to make his face look as friendly as possible.
“Good
afternoon, Mr. Goretsky!”
“If
you try my patience for another three minutes, it won't be as good for you! Get
my laptop back at once! This time we'll examine it carefully to see just how
well you fixed it!”
“I'm
on vacation, Mr. Goretsky. Please address one of my colleagues with this issue.”
Hagen kept thinking about how much he'd have to level up his Punch skill to knock
out a giant like the Moose with a single blow. Math had always been a strong suit of Mike's, so
he instantly made the calculation: he'd have to level up to 160, which would
take him some ten years of daily twelve-hour practice. However, he was basing his
calculations on his current level of Strength, which could be leveled up as
well...
“Hey,
you little geek! Did your brain freeze? Do I have to punch your lights out to
reboot you, slowpoke?”
Hagen came back to his senses only to see Goretsky's face a few inches
from his own. He was getting a full load of spittle on his nose alongside the barrage of expletives.
Hagen wiped his face automatically. Other sales personnel and a few
customers came out as they heard the shouting, but no one made any effort to intervene even though they observed the tableau
with some concern. Someone called the manager.
Mike gathered
up what remained of his self-esteem and said,
his voice quavering with hurt, “I'm
sorry, Mr. Goretsky, but you should stop giving me all that verbal abuse. I am
technically not a DigiMart employee at the moment, since I am on vacation.
Please try another colleague of mine.”
“Are
you that dumb? I don't give a shit!” Goretsky
spat out. “You work at the shop, I gave you my
laptop. So you're the one who’s
supposed to fix it, and you're the one responsible!”
“I am
sorry, Mr. Goretsky,” said Lexie, the senior sales executive.
“Allow me to serve you.” She took the Moose by the arm. “Just give me your receipt, and I'll fetch the appliance in question at once.”
The Moose looked at Lexie with appreciation and grinned. He was
certainly pleased by the replacement.
“You're
lucky to have such cute girls work at your store, you slug,” were the Moose's parting words to Hagen.
Lexa gave Mike a barely noticeable gesture as she turned her head around
and led the boorish customer away, allowing him
to leave. Mike nodded in response and headed toward
the exit, feeling the blood rush to his face and ears.
“None
of this is ever, ever, ever likely to end well,” he kept muttering.
It was bad luck indeed for the peak of his humiliation to have coincided with the arrival of Lexie — the only co-worker who'd never treated Hagen like a piece
of shit. She appreciated him for his ability to find any defect in any computer
in a minimum amount of time, and always
managed to find a kind word for him, praising him for his work. She was three
years younger than him, after all, and already a senior sales executive. Really
pretty, too. Such a pity he had no chance with her.
And still
he forgot all about Lexie once he got outside. Hagen now had a goal, digitized and perfectly understandable.
His greatest desire ever was to learn to fight now — a desire even greater than that he'd
felt for Jessie after their first date. Actually, it wasn't even fighting that
he wanted. It would be painful, after all. What he'd ever really wanted was to
knock out any opponent with a single punch without letting the fight go on for
too long. Just like that Irish Traveler Mickey did in Guy Ritchie’s movie. His endurance wasn't that great, after
all. Hagen imagined Goretsky punching him on the nose and shuddered.
After the night Mike spent leveling up his Punch ability, he only woke
up in the late afternoon. He was completely exhausted, for every muscle in his
untrained body ached. His mood, however, was unexpectedly good. He tried to
level up the ability, but his body reacted with acute pain. Mike didn't know what to do,
so he kept on studying the interface.
His eyes rolled maniacally when he noticed another couple of icons he’d not seen before. He stared at them and “dragged and dropped” them onto the panel. One of them had
the legend saying
“Program
Features.” When Hagen opened it, he saw the
following.
Augmented Reality!7.2
Home Edition
Copyright © First Martian Company, Ltd. 2101-2118
All rights reserved
Registered owner:
Michael Björnstad Hagen.
S/N S2L-7702B-1412010
One-year single user license
Account type: Premium
Activation
date: 04/24/2018, 09:00
Expiration
date: 04/24/2019, 08:59
A Google search revealed nothing about either the First Martian Company or the
Augmented Reality! platform.
However, it didn't take Hagen long to figure things out. He'd read too many
comics to be surprised by something like this. It was pretty obvious: he’d somehow acquired an augmented reality interface from the
future. Just how it had happened didn't matter at the moment. Mike could easily
imagine every Earthling having an
interface of this sort in the twenty-second century. Judging by the name of the
company that had developed it, every Martian would have them, too.
The main thing he realized was as follows: time, too, was at a premium. He'd have to make full
use of each and every day to make his dream come true.
He spent about an hour exploring the Settings tab to configure the
interface just the way he liked it. There were lots of cool little features,
including a
built-in alarm clock
that would wake you gently during your lightest sleep stage when waking up would be the least
stressful, as well as making all sorts of data visible in one's field of view.
The latter included quite a few useful things — the time, one's heartbeat rate, the
temperature outside, calories used up since awakening, and lots more that one
could theoretically look up on
one's smartphone, but the augmented reality interface made it so much easier.
Mike also brought the progress bars of the main stats into his field of
vision — namely, Strength, Agility, and Stamina.
He spent about half an hour shadowboxing, trying to disregard the pain, and
noticed that they had
grown as
well. Not at the same rate as the Punch ability, but it was something nevertheless.
He had the most success with Stamina. Hagen noticed that it would build
up the most rapidly when he trained when his staying power was at his lowest — when he'd have to gasp for breath,
trying to overcome the pain in his chest and the feeling of heaviness in his
shoulders.
There were two more main icons — Check for Updates and Tech Support, but whenever he'd tap on either, they'd
give the following error message:
Impossible to establish connection with the updates server.
It appears to be unavailable.
Please check your Universal
Infospace connection settings.
Universal infospace? For real? A future internet?
Once Hagen had
finished
exploring the interface, he got back to his training. He put on a music channel
on the TV and went on with kicking seven shades of shit out of his invisible opponent,
imagining it to be Goretsky. He kept at it until late night when he reached a state of complete exhaustion. He
took a shower and slept through the day; he probably wouldn't wake even if
someone set his bed on fire.
This was his Sunday. He visited the clinic on
Monday, then kept on shadowboxing at home, trying to
progress as fast as possible. Tuesday was spent in the exact same manner.
Wednesday evening Hagen suddenly
had a bright idea and made
a discovery.
He used a pillow from his sofa to form a punch bag of sorts, hanging it
on the hook to replace the rather tasteless painting portraying a female
gorilla in an evening dress and a hat. The name of the painting was Sunset on the Atlantic Coast, but it was all tacky rectangles in
psychedelic colors. Hagen could never see the sunset — just the gorilla.
It turned out that the ability leveled up much faster if he punched the
pillow instead of the air.
By the end of the same day, Hagen leveled up his Punch ability to Level
8 and became capable of dealing up to 1600 damage points, since his Power
finally leveled up as well. That was when he realized that his best bet would
be to train at a boxing gym. There was one just downed the street, owned by an
old Mexican.
*
* *
HAGEN TURNED UP at the Roosevelt Street boxing gym early
on Sunday. Mr. Guillermo Ochoa didn't bat an eyelid when the puny lad arrived at his gym. In fact, Mr. Ochoa stayed as
cool as a
cucumber
even when Hagen declared his intent to train at the gym. However, when this
feeble hobbit whom you could pierce with a straw, with his pencil neck, messy fair hair, colorless fair eyebrows and eyelashes, made it clear he wished to train for at
least twelve hours every day, it was too much for old Ochoa. He started to
laugh out loud.
The young man didn't seem perturbed by it. He patiently waited for the boxing gym's
owner to finish laughing, his cerulean blue eyes staring directly at Ochoa without one iota of irritation. He was
irritated, though. The old man was seventy years old, and he could read people
well enough. The Mexican laughed so hard that snot flew from his large broken nose. But the young man
stayed perfectly
calm, regardless.
Once the old man had stopped
laughing, Hagen took a wad of crumpled dollar bills out of his back pocket. “Would this be enough for the first
month, Mr. Ochoa?”
The old man got serious. He counted the money and nodded. “This will be enough for three months.
And if you help me with cleaning the gym every evening, you can train for half a year,” Ochoa offered him his hand. “Welcome to my boxing gym, kid... Eh, what's your name, then?”
“Mikey,” said the young man as he shook the
Mexican's hand. “But you can call me Hagen, if you like.”
“So,
it's Little Mikey, then? All right. When would you like to get started? If you think that-”
“Could
I start right now?” Hagen interrupted him.
The
old man chuckled. “Right now?”
“Yes,
right now,” the hobbit repeated.
Ochoa scrutinized Mike from head to toe, gave a whistle, then swept his hand theatrically around the empty gym. “The gym is all yours, young man! The
locker room is that way.”
Hagen may have imagined it, but it seemed like there was something
respectful in the way the old man addressed him. That was the first time in his life someone's ever spoken to him that way, and he liked it.
Five minutes later, having changed, Hagen started throwing punches at the punch bag with enormous enthusiasm. The huge aloha shorts that hung below his knees
revealed legs so thin one could circle one's fingers
around them. The oversize tee sleeves reached all the way down to his elbows, and his
clumsy punches couldn't move the bag an inch. Nothing but the sullen look in
his fierce blue eyes could convince anyone that puny Little Mickey was really
meaning it.
So, by the end of the day, Ochoa took pity of the lad and started to
teach him how to punch for real.
*
* *
BY THE END of the second week at the gym, Hagen's physical and
mental condition
had improved
considerably. As
it had turned out, his Premium account came with a triple leveling booster to
all skills and stats. Mike found out about it in the Help section. The virtual helper was
miles ahead of Siri. It had no problems with
recognizing voice commands, and responded immediately. This is how Hagen found
out that whenever a battle ability reached a level divisible by ten, he would
get an extra skill. Punch, for example, would give him a 50% chance of
canceling any of his opponent's blocks at Level 10. By level 30, this would be guaranteed.
At any rate, Hagen saw it for himself by the end of the first week of
training, when his only ability finally reached Level 10.
Apart from the boxing ring and the boxing bag, Ochoa's gym turned out to
have barbells and dumbbells. That's what the old man made him use on the second
day, teaching him a few exercises that would develop different muscle groups. Aided by an intense workout routine with
weights, this
training made
his Strength grow much faster and gave him an enormous appetite.
Hagen consumed huge amounts of meat, chicken, and fish; then it dawned on him that he could just buy an enormous
jar of powdered protein. He'd been drinking at least three protein shakes every
day since, not to mention eating regular food.
Training made him hungry all the time, even at night — he would wake up and make himself a shake which he'd gulp down and fall asleep
again.
In two weeks, he gained a couple of pounds and even managed to grow
taller, for whatever reason.
By the end of his leave, his stats were as follows:
Mike “Crybaby” Hagen. Age: 29
Level 1
HP: 9000
Battles/victories: 0/0
Weight: 135 lbs
Height: 5’
3”
Main stats:
Strength: 5
Agility: 4
Stamina: 9
Hagen managed to level up all his stats and put on eleven pounds. He
became stronger, and the beefed-up Stamina increased his chances to survive,
giving him more time to throw a
game-changing punch.
The only stat that grew very slowly was Agility.
He didn't discover any new moves, so he decided to focus on leveling up
Punch, the only ability in his arsenal. No matter how his opponent would dodge,
Hagen's higher level would eventually let him throw lightning-fast punches no
one could possibly escape.
Punch: Level 16
Damage: 8000
+50% to the probability of ignoring any block
You have to use the ability more often to level it up
This amazing ability to do damage was a direct result of his increased
Strength. At Level 1, Hagen would only manage to deal 1600
points of damage (a hundred points for every level of the ability). But those
1600 points became multiplied by five, and eight thousand points were already
something. He could knock himself out in a punch or two, regardless of his
leveled-up Stamina. As for his older self — the one that didn't have the interface — he could swat it like a fly.
On the last day of his leave, Hagen approached the owner of the gym. “My time off is about to end, Mr. Ochoa. I have to
go back to work. As soon as I finish in the
evening, I'll be right here.”
The old man shrugged. “You
can come whenever you want, kid.”
“Thank
you, Mr. Ochoa! I'm done for today...”
“Hold
on a second, kid,” Guillermo interrupted him, pointing to
the corner of the gym where a Latino guy with a nondescript face was
shadowboxing. “How about a match with Juan? He's a
newbie, too, although he's been here for over half a year. But he doesn't do it
the way you do. He comes around three times a week, and sometimes skips his
training altogether. Everybody else I have here is tough as nails, and I can't
find him a proper partner for the life of me.”
“We
can try,” said Hagen, shrugging.
He took a closer look at Juan and saw the following:
Juan Manuel Guerrero. Age: 26
Level 3
HP: 13000
Battles/victories: 7/5
Weight: 172 lbs
Height: 6 foot
“All
right. Wait,” Ochoa said and went toward Mike's
sparring-partner-to-be.
“This
guy won't be easy meat,”
thought Hagen to himself as he saw Juan Guerrero looking in his direction.
Guerrero was strong, with long arms, and half as many HP as Hagen. But one had
to start somewhere, after all. He couldn't just beat up old ladies in the
street to level up, could he?
Once the ongoing bout was over, Ochoa told the sparring partners to
leave the boxing ring and invited Guerrero and Hagen to take their place. They
bumped their boxing gloves together. Guerrero nodded, and Hagen returned the
nod.
“Ready?
Fight!” Ochoa gave the command.
The training fight began.
Guerrero was circling around Hagen, trying to get on his left side but
keeping his distance. Should he move closer? He might get hit. Should he wait
for his opponent to attack? In that case, would it be possible to block or dodge the punch?
Hagen kept on circling and trying to stay face to face with his opponent who kept running around. He waited for
his chance. A chance to deal a blow that might be his only opportunity in this
fight.
“Come on!” shouted Ochoa, trying to motivate the fighters. “Fight! Get
on with it!”
Hagen's
opponent started to attack. He moved his body around a lot to confuse the other fighter. But then came
the moment when Hagen realized he had to strike. He intuitively threw a punch
at the face of the attacker without even realizing what he was doing, trying to
block Guerrero's punch with his left hand at the same time. He nearly felt the
other man's boxing glove touch his, but then the contact was lost.
You’ve dealt damage: 8,000 (Punch)
Your opponent’s block has been overridden
Later, Mike
would see the next scene in his dreams in slo-mo
for a couple of nights in a row. There's him throwing the punch; there's the
fist that goes right through the poorly-executed counter-punch block and then proceeds to hit Guerrero right
on the jawbone. His opponent's head comes upwards first, inertia making a trail
of sweat drops in the air, and then the other man's feet leaves the floor as well.
That was how Hagen found out that if his strike dealt more damage than
50% of his opponent's HP, a knockout was guaranteed. That's exactly what
happened to
Guerrero. He was knocked out all right.
Hagen himself felt a rush of unbelievable pleasure. This was better than
any orgasm. That was how the System reacted to his first level-up.
Hagen was standing inside a column of light invisible to anyone but himself. He didn't hear what Ochoa was saying. However, he could clearly see the
following system message:
Congratulations! You’ve defeated your opponent in a fair fight!
Defeating an opponent whose level is higher than yours doubles the XP
received!
You’ve received +2 to your level!
Current level: 3
New system points of main characteristics available: 2
New system points of combat skills available: 2
As he
went to bed that
night,
Hagen consulted with the virtual assistant
and distributed the system points between Strength and Agility. First he wanted
to dump both into Strength, but it turned out that leveling up a stat by more
than one point at once would be lethally dangerous. The system gave an
absolutely clear warning about that.
Warning! We’ve detected an abnormal increase of your Strength
characteristic: +1 pt.
Your body will be restructured in keeping with the new reading (6) to
comply with your new metabolism and chronotropy values.
Changes required: accelerated growth of muscle tissue, sinews and
ligaments.
There was also a lot of stuff about raising the levels of intramuscular
phosphocreatine, glycogen, the internal mechanisms, intramuscular coordination,
and so on. However, there was a very clear warning in bold at the very bottom:
Warning!
The restructuring of your body functions requires a considerable amount
of nutrients. In order to avoid danger to your life, you’re strongly encouraged
to consume a minimum of 10 oz. animal protein, 3 lbs. of carbohydrates and 3
oz. of animal fats. A shortage of nutrients may result in body function
failure.
Warning!
Artificial characteristic boosting of more that 1 pt. at a time is
strictly forbidden! Severe danger of fatality!
A similar system message and warning followed when he added an extra
point to Agility:
Warning! We’ve detected an abnormal increase of your Agility
characteristic: +1 pt.
Your body will be restructured in keeping with the new reading (5) to
comply with your new motoric and coordination values.
Changes required: the restructuring of your central nervous system and
the increase in elasticity of your muscle tissue, sinews, ligaments and joints.
The warning of a possible lethal outcome followed this, too — as well as advice to eat as much
protein, fat, and carbohydrates as possible, accompanied by proper hydration.
So Hagen consumed an enormous amount of fried chicken and a few pizzas
over the next two hours, washing them down with plenty of soda and water.
As he was eating, he suddenly realized he was no longer frightened of
fighting Mr. Goretsky. As his Strength stat had grown, he could deal 9,600 points of damage which was more than enough to knock out
the Moose, the required amount being 50% of the latter's HP.
Then he fell asleep, smiling all the way to the Land of Nod. Tomorrow
would be the next day — the
first day of the rest of his life.
He would keep on training and leveling up, and eventually take part in an MMA
competition, and then... Who
knows? Perhaps, one day he might hold his champion's belt proudly above his head.
But that would take time. And as for tomorrow...
Hagen smiled again. Tomorrow he’d finally ask Lexie to hang out with him.
No comments :
Post a Comment