War of Eternity: Ring a Ling- 3 day shipping

Shhhhh, don't tell people about the MC dying. They will read too far into it.

Ow, Lee thought as he took a deep breath. Ow, ow, ow. The sensation of pain continued up and down the side of his chest as his wincing caused him to drag another breath of air in sharply and irritate the situation further. He reached over with his right hand to cover the wound. “I’m still alive?” he asked aloud, regretting the choice to use air right away.

“Surprise to me too,” a voice laughed from his side. It took him a second to recognize the voice as Wolfe, his friend, but his eyes still hadn’t come into focus enough to actually see his buddy.

“What . . .?” Lee did his best to look around, using his left hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes, and blinked a few times in an effort to dispel the blurry, hazy vision. “What happened?”

“No one really knows here either, other than the fact you managed to get famous before me. What’s with that, anyway? Aren’t I, with my dashingly handsome face and beautifully chiseled jaw, supposed to stand in front of your spotlight?”

“You mean the spotlight, right?” Lee tried to correct Wolfe’s improper use of a turn of phrase.

Wolfe just doubled down on his joke. “No. The big one can be taken by others. I’m only handsome enough to steal attention away from an ugly kid like you. I mean, you know that’s why we’re friends, right? So I can go to a bar and look great next to you?”

Lee chuckled at his friend’s twisted sense of humor, but the second his chest expanded the stabbing pain was back. Jerk, Lee thought. It wasn’t the fact that his friend had called him ugly--it was a common enough insult that the two habitually hurled back and forth at one another when they hung out anyway--but that the long-running joke had amused him enough to make him laugh.

“So what . . .?” Lee looked around at the hospital room. He was guessing that all of those stupid premiums had gone to good use for once since they had placed him in a private room, but he was a little disappointed that his mom, dad and the rest of his family weren’t there. Lee tried to get his bearings, even though he knew full well he was on a bed in a hospital with a breeze scooting down his exposed backside as he tilted his head forward to look around. There was a vase with a few flowers, a ‘get better soon’ card stuck to it with his parents’ signatures, several empty cups of gelatinous food stuff on a tray near Wolfe, a few empty chairs with coats on them and an open window with an ashtray beside it.

You really shouldn’t move too much. I think that hospital gown was built for a petite woman at best. If you start moving about, you’re going to get arrested for indecent exposure and crimes against humanity,” Wolfe chided, urging him not to try and get up.

“Ah . . .” Yeah, I guessed as much. “So where was I? How did I end up here?” More importantly, how and why am I not dead in the other world?

“Not too sure, Mr. Meme. We were hoping you could fill in the details about how you got your wounds, but the long and the short of how you ended up here is Harambe.” Wolfe shrugged, pulled a cup of gelatin dessert from his pocket and grabbed the plastic spoon out of one of the empty cups.

“Harambe?” Lee winced. No, don’t laugh. It still hurts, he reminded himself.

“Yeah, Harambe,” Wolfe chortled. “That’s exactly what was reported, and there is security camera footage to back it up.”

“Back what up?” Lee asked, unable to piece together what his friend was hinting around at.

“Well, sometime early in the morning a couple days back, a giant, massive, like five-hundred-pound gorilla came bursting through the streets and into the hospital holding you. He dropped you right at the front desk and bolted.” Wolfe’s chortle evolved into a full laugh as he told the story. “Everyone was apparently so shocked that they didn’t even react until after the gorilla was gone.”

“Gorilla? Did they find it? Is it okay?”

“Well, coincidentally, there were a few cops on the scene before Gorilla Joe showed up, but after the actual Harambe incident, none of them wanted to be the guy who shot Harambe Two, so they tried to tail it instead and see where it was going after it busted out of the hospital like a superhero crushing through a toy movie set.”

“And? Did they find out where it went?” Lee already knew the answer before Wolfe’s head even started to shake.

“No, it turned around into a back alley and vanished. Either way, everyone on the Internet went crazy over the security camera footage when it was released. Your parents have been fighting off the news stations day and night to keep your room empty of reporters and police who are curious about how you ended up with a stab wound and broken ribs. Which, seriously, how did that happen?”

“Some violent, messed-up game.” Lee did his best not to lie--he wasn’t that good at it anyway. “Not something I want to go through twice,” he said, moving a hand to his side where the wound was. He had no memory of being carried about by an overgrown ape, but he clearly remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness. For some strange reason, he was having mixed feelings about how at peace he had felt right before he was certain he would die.

“You need to pick your girls better.” Wolfe shook his head as he misinterpreted Lee’s words. “I mean, you take off from work, and you end up spending most of the days in a hospital? What kinda play was she into that there was a gorilla close enough to rescue you? I swear, man, why don’t you just let me hook you up with a normal girl?”

Wolfe continued on for a few minutes, but Lee had stopped paying close attention to him. Something in the room had caught his eye instead. There was a small blue jay sitting on the windowsill, staring at him and studying his every move as if it were a geek, and he was an easter-egg-stuffed trailer on you BlueTube.

“Actually, now that you’re famous, you might not even need my help. You just might be able to score with a decent girl, even with that mirror-breaking face of yours. I might just not-- Hey, are you there?” Wolfe finally noticed that Lee wasn’t putting any effort into the conversation. “What are you looking at?” Wolfe turned to see the small bird that had captivated Lee. “Oh, yeah, that guy has been there for a few days, too. Your dad tried to shoo it off when he went to sneak a smoke earlier, but the thing just doesn’t move. Maybe you should take it as a pet after you get better.”

“Maybe, but . . .” Lee closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to think of an appropriate lie that he could pull off. “I was just looking at the sky. Sorry, I’m still in a bit of pain. Do you mind opening the window and letting me get some fresh air?”

“Sure.” Wolfe shrugged as he got up and did just that. “Need anything else?”

“Is there a taco place nearby? I could definitely go for a double chalupa with extra cheese and ground beef,” Lee joked. He would have laughed at his own bad joke, but he knew it would hurt too much to make it worth it.

“Yeah, no problem at all. I’ll go get you something right away.” His best friend in this world started heading to the door without a single complaint at the sudden request.

He really is a good guy, Lee thought, feeling bad for tricking him.

“Oh!” Wolfe stopped right at the door, turned and said, “But don’t move around. At all. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the doctor said your insides are incredibly messed up. If you had showed up at the hospital a second later, you’d probably be dead. They said there was only a thirty percent chance you’d pull through and that only time will be able to stabilize the rest they couldn’t fix up. You’ve had some severe internal bleeding, organ damage and some other fancy-schmancy, high-falutin words for injuries that still aren’t healed, so don’t get out of that bed unless you have to. There is a button next to you, so if you need to use the restroom or something, just press it and let a nurse help you out. Try to get the redhead with the tattoo on her back if you can, she was looking like a strawbe--”

“Go on. I got it,” Lee said, quickly interrupting his friend before he could go into too much lascivious detail about the staff.

“I’m just saying . . .” Wolfe grinned and gave Lee another wink before finally leaving.

It wasn’t more than a minute after Wolfe had left that the bird flew inside the room. As soon as it left the windowsill, it began changing into a monkey which landed in the chair Wolfe had just vacated so neatly it looked like it had been levitated into position.

The monkey grinned broadly. “Welcome back from the dead.”

“I take it I have you to thank for carrying me here?”

“You take it right, so learn to worship the correct deity for once, you ungrateful little whipper snapper,” Augustus chided.

“How though?” Lee questioned. “I thought you said that I would be dead for good if I died in the other world”. He was starting to hope that his assumptions about Augustus--that the drunken deity had lied about more than just how much intelligence Lee had--were spot on. Maybe death in that world wasn’t the end after all.

“Oh, yeah, it is. If you had died. Luckily, you stopped trying to fight it and passed out first. Damage doesn’t work the same in this world as it does there, so I was able to transport you back and get you to a hospital before you croaked.”

“Wait, why is it lucky that I passed out?” Lee wondered.

“Don’t you remember? When you’re passed out or when you’re asleep, I can warp you back to this reality. It’s what I did last time, so I did the same this time. You might not have noticed the prompts because you were blathering on and on like an idiot, but when you closed your eyes and went to sleep, you had seven new NPC followers. Since every two followers equals a twenty-four hour reprieve back into your own world at your level of faith, it meant that you had a three-day hometown visit stored up. I just assumed your answer to ‘would you like to go home again?’ was ‘yes’ and warped you back.” Augustus explained the whole thing matter-of-factly, and when he was finished, he pulled a bottle of sake from thin air and began drinking it. “And, oh my Me, I’ve never been so long without you, baby,” he crooned lovingly, stroking the wooden container.

“Huh?” Lee was shocked, partly by the explanation and partly by Augustus’ reaction to the liquor.

“What?” Augustus’s monkey face contorted. “What are you judging?! I had to watch to make sure you’d be okay, and given the fact that your relatives and relations have occupied this room twenty-four seven in shifts, I couldn’t very well just pull out a glass and drink in front of them. Do you know how ridiculous that would look? A blue jay drinking blue vodka?”

“And you worry about looking ridiculous?” Lee couldn’t stop himself from laughing this time. Even at his rib cage’s expense, the idea of Augustus, the shapeshifting drunk, being worried about appearances was just too much.

“Well, I am kind of trying to keep a low profile.” The monkey pointed to the TV that was muted hanging in the corner of the room. “They’ve already been freaking out enough over my first visit to the hospital. Didn’t want to give them more material during my second one.”

“Why did you save me, though?” Lee asked, remembering how harsh and distant the god had been during their first meeting. It certainly hadn’t been the clichéd ‘Hero! We’ve summoned you to defeat a demon lord!’ sort of meeting that he always read about in his translated Eastern Light Novels or the overly-exposed, heavily descriptive scenarios he was familiar with from his favorite western novels. No, it had been a ‘Go get me followers, you loser’ and nothing more. As such, the ‘why’ behind Augustus’s actions was still confusing for Lee. “And why weren’t you helping others out? Don’t you have other heralds you have to be watching over?” Lee pressed on with more questions despite the fact that the talking was not helping his situation with the pain.

“Why did I save you? For someone so smart, you really aren’t that quick on the pick up. Maybe I was right. Maybe the game system lied to you and your intelligence really is a big fat zero. Kid, you’re the only herald I have. Haven’t you figured it out yet?” The monkey laughed snidely.

“Figured it out?” Lee did his best to recall the events that had gone on in the other world. He started going over the facts in his head, but he didn’t feel like he would get anywhere as long as he was still missing something. Wait, he wants me to recruit NPCs, players don’t matter, and I’m an NPC. What am I missing? Yeah, that’s right! It is a game world . . . and there was another herald there, probably doing the same thing I was doing for a different god . . . “So War of Eternity is a game for followers . . .” Lee mumbled to himself as he puzzled it out. “It’s a game gods play to get followers, and . . . I’m an NPC.”

“Hmph. Their level five score might not have been off, but you’re still kinda slow. Look . . .” The drunken primate leaned forward in his chair and said, “I’m going to tell you a secret the other heralds haven’t figured out yet.” The monkey’s wicked grin was suddenly just as scary as the sight of Miller hoisting one of his victim’s into the air and watching as the body was impaled on his spear. It sent a chill down Lee’s spine as the full-toothed, smiling face leaned forward until it was within inches of Lee’s own. “I’m the player, and you’re the stupid hero I am playing to win the game.”

Lee glowered. Not because he thought that Augustus was lying to him--he had come to the same conclusion just moments before being told--but because of the implications it held. “But . . . why? Why can’t you just use your own avatar to go down there and win the game? And if you were picking an avatar, why me?”

“Because then the others could use theirs too. Come on! Do you really think it would be fair if a bunch of deities with their special powers wrecked a world of mortals in their war? No, this is the game of conquest, destruction, manipulation and politics. We can pull your strings, but the game must be played--at least in terms of execution--by mortals.” Augustus gave Lee some room as he leaned back in his chair again, once more taking another swig of his drink. “Look at the bright side though. Doesn’t the character you play in most games become stronger than the chump behind the controller?”

Didn’t he just say he couldn’t go down there because it wouldn’t be fair if gods interfered? And now he’s implying that I’ll become stronger than a god if I keep playing? Lee wasn’t enjoying the convoluted nonsense that was coming out of this shapeshifter’s mouth. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? I can name at least ten people off the top of my head that are stronger, better at fighting, and more charismatic than me. That red-headed MMA guy that’s always on TV, for instance. He’d have been perfect.”

“Because, Luke . . . I am your father.” Augustus made the obvious reference in an exaggerated, respiratory-heavy voice while waving one of his hands and covering his face with the other.

“Huh? No, my dad is--” Lee felt his throat clench up and his brain try to roll as he contemplated the possibility that this jerk was telling the truth.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t do the nasty with your mom or anything,” the monkey laughed. “I mean to say you’re just a super-distant relative of mine from the last time I visited this planet to have drinks and party with some Greek deity and his stupid followers. I must have knocked up over thirty women that night. For some reason, out of all the children I’ve had on all the different worlds, your genetic strand has remained close enough to mine that there is a good chance I could pass as your dad if you were to take a paternity test today. So, I guess, in a sense, I could claim to be your dad. So what do you say, want to jump into the family business and help me design a giant moon-sized planet destroyer?”

“Can we skip the easy-to-target-and-bomb ventilation shaft?” Lee played along with the joke as a way to stall out any real response. He was trying to figure out how much of what had just been told to him was true and how much was just another one of the alcoholic’s lies. I can’t really be related to this guy, can I?

“That depends. Do you think you can prevent a space wizard from still finding a way to warp the bomb into the middle anyway? ‘Cause if you can’t stop that, there’s no point in worrying about anything else.” Augustus shrugged and slouched down in the chair. “Look, jokes aside, the players, us gods, are only able to use our descendents--specifically those who have a close enough genetic match to pass as a relative only separated by three or four generations--to be our heralds.”

“But if you can go about having thirty or forty kids in one trip, shouldn’t there be a ton of options for you to pick from?”

“Well . . . about that.” Augustus scowled. “The kids closest to matching my lineage tend to be terrible at having children of their own. Something about them being too smart for their own good? Honestly, you’re not much better yourself. You’re a grown man with a good job, a decent physique, and you haven’t even bothered to pick up a girl in a while, much less an actual marriage prospect. Which--and by the way, it pains me to say this--but . . . you’re the only one who ended up being a close genetic match to me.”

So it’s one of those ‘the dad had a bunch of kids but never became a grandfather’ stories. Lee wasn’t entirely sure whether he should laugh at Augustus’s poor luck or feel bad about the fact he was also one of the good-for-nothing, no-wife descendants. “Wait . . . If I have the genes of a god, shouldn’t I be more  . . . godlike? Or just divine or something?” Lee wondered.

“Yeah . . . Uhh . . . That’s not how it works. You may have been blessed with a few slivers of my amazing and awesome intellectual capacity . . .” The primate changed into a large parrot and puffed out its chest, frilling its feathers. “But other than that, no. Sorry. You only have the capacity for being divine. Think of this and every existence as being a fancy game--because it pretty much is--where the only thing that separates a person from being a god is whether or not the creator modded their stats to make them one. Although, it’s a good thing no one is born a god, since once you become one, you need followers and faithful or else you just sort of cease to exist.”

“So there are no benefits to being the biological heir to a god?” Lee actually felt kind of let down by that fact, even though he had just found out he may or may not be related to an actual deity.

“Hey! Didn’t I say you got some of my smarts? Come on!” Augustus snapped. “Even someone with only an iota of my masterful and all-knowing intelligence like you should be able to see how awesome it is to be born from a divine lineage with my great and powerful attribute.”

“Attribute?”

“Well, we might not pass on our divinity, but each god who has a child passes on some degree of his natural ability. As you can guess, mine is intelligence.” The parrot puffed up even more, so much so that Lee thought for a minute it would turn into a blowfish. “The attribute is strong at first, but after several generations, it is gradually bred out. As such, the strength of the attribute is based on how closely related one is to the god who began his lineage.”  

“So I gained intelligence from you, and because of that, I gain intelligence faster in the game?” Lee guessed, hoping to get more specific clarification.

“Yeah. That’s about the sum of it. It’s the best attribute there is if you ask me.” The parrot shifted into a coati. “After all, even the smallest of animals with the right bit of wit can outdo the greatest of monsters.”

“What are some of the other herald abilities?” Lee had a feeling that his intelligence probably wouldn’t save him from anything until much later on. Sure, intelligence gave him a real advantage in learning skills and becoming better at combat-oriented fighting styles, but that didn’t mean it would amount to a lick of good against someone like his spear-wielding barbarian buddy, Miller, who had even greater strength than he did smarts.

The little, raccoon-like creature shrugged. “I don’t know. They vary a lot, and some of them are barely noticeable, and some won’t even show up at all. I remember one herald--he was one of the last three remaining heralds in the last game--who hasn’t used his ability even once even though it’s really over powered.”

“What is his ability?”

“His farts can knock out his foes. It’s kinda hilarious, though, because he hooked up and started a family with his battle buddy, this weirdly-attractive giant, and since they’ve been together since his first adventure in the land, he’s too worried about his image to use his talent. I’ve heard from the god he’s representing that he does know how and what his power is, as he accidentally used his special fart once on a date in his homeworld, but that incident was the main reason why the poor kid is too traumatized to do it now--even if it means saving himself in a life or death fight.”

Lee might have been a grown man, but he was still immature enough to appreciate the story and started to chuckle--only to be reminded about his ribs.

“Hah! Stings, doesn’t it?” Augustus taunted. “They had some fancy painkillers hooked up to you, but I figured taking them out would wake you up quicker and make it much funnier to watch. It took some effort, but I managed to get regular IV fluid where there should have been morphine and some candy pellets into that bottle of painkillers the nurse set by you.” The coati cackled incessantly as he told Lee about his predicament.

“Why would you do something like that?”

“I mean, I told you that you only had level seven faith, right? Well, you have less than seven hours until you’re getting warped back to the other world, like it or not, so waking you up to explain what happened just seemed like a good idea.”

“Wait, wait, wait. What about the other players in the game?” Lee still had one burning question, and given the honesty that his patron was exhibiting at the moment, he felt that he might never know the answer if he didn’t press now. “If you guys are the players, and we’re the heroes you send off in some weirdly-twisted gladiator game, then why are there players like Miller? Or the two thugs I killed earlier?”

“Oh, those are players in name only. Those stupid self-serving idiots never realized that they’re actually the NPCs of the game. It just makes them even better cannon fodder if you ask me. They’re just people from random worlds that were given the technology to go into one of the game servers so it wouldn’t be easy on the heralds. They’re there to be used and to act as obstacles. The creator thought it would be funny to add a bunch of loose cannon elements that might kill off the heralds for no reason better than a few gold coins. In fact, out of the last twenty servers, as the creator calls them, that have been set up . . . eight of them lost all of their heralds to those filthy cretins without a single divine ability.” The coati shifted into a jaguar and crossed its arms grumpily, sitting on its rear in a very un-feline fashion as if it were a person.

“I see . . .” Lee nodded. If Augustus wasn’t lying--and he was beginning to think that this might actually be the case for once--then Lee finally had an understanding of the game world. So the NPCs are the resources you need to grow, the heralds are the playable characters, the gods are the actual players, and those labeled as players in the game are the wild cards sent to kill us.

“Well, I’m glad you do because all this talking and waiting has made me thirsty. I’m going to be going now.”

“Then why did you wait?” Lee asked.

“The same reason I’m actually telling you this stuff now: because if you die, it’s over. I was able to save you once, but that won’t happen again. Ever. You’re done for if this happens a second time. You can’t be transported to your world while in battle. You must be sleeping in order for me to transport you, and you must have the appropriate amount of faith. Even then, under all those conditions, there is still only a 1% chance that your faith will allow for a miracle and give me the ability to warp you without your consent,” Augustus explained. “Basically, you got super lucky this time. Out of a hundred times, I’d only be able to save you the same way once.”

That’s right, faith did say it would allow a miracle . . . Lee sighed softly without drawing in too much air. “Alright, noted. So how long till the next warp?”

“Didn’t you listen earlier? Idiot. You’ve got seven hours left. Make the best of them.” The jaguar slid out of his seat and walked to the window, but rather than turning into a bird and flying away, it just disappeared altogether, one strangely shaped pixel at a time.

“Are you still looking at the-- Oh, it flew away.” Wolfe walked into the room moments later, carrying bags of greasy food and sporting a goofy grin. “I’m telling you, man, if staring out the window instead of playing on your phone is your attempt at pulling off the quiet and aloof contemplative look for the ladies, you need to commit to it. You really need to double down and keep quiet all the time. When you finally do say something, you just need to remember and say something weird and vague, sort of like an old man trying to sound smart when commenting about the state of modern society.” Wolfe chuckled at his own joke as he dropped the bags of food on the small tray and began digging through them.

“Is that all?” Lee asked, holding out his hand and ready to grab some food.

“Well, that and the fact that you should wait until there are actually ladies around. It won’t do you a bit of good if there aren’t any nearby to actually see you pull it off.” Wolfe twisted his head to look out the window. “Then again, if you’re having trouble with an easy chick like the one on the sill, then I don’t know how you’re going to manage it with the smarter ones.”

“It took some effort to actually get rid of it.” Lee tried to play off his shock from Augustus’s revelations as he snatched the bag of food Wolfe had tossed him. So if I’m essentially just a pocket mob--one of those animal’s that’s not a dog because dog fighting is immoral--that the gods are using to battle each other in a videogame, and Augustus is my trainer . . . shouldn’t he be giving me more moves? Training me up to be stronger? Teaching me how to fight the battle for him? The more Lee thought about Augustus’s explanation, the more questions he had, but Augustus was already gone. It was one of the most annoying parts of being a brooder with a quick tongue: he would always come up with the best ‘ah ha!’ and ‘gotchya!’ comebacks after the target of his wit had already left the room. Similarly, he couldn’t stop the flood of questions from cropping up now that there was no one around to answer them. Well, I guess he did give me that book . . . and he did sort of teach me how to fight using that stupid zombie. I suppose that’s better than nothing.

“Yo!” Wolfe snapped his fingers in front of Lee’s face, pulling him out of his thoughts. “It’s just a bird, man. You don’t have to act all gloomy and overly macho like you just went through a harsh breakup . . . You’ll have plenty more of those in the future when your BlueTube fame dies out, and the girls realize how much better looking I am.” Wolfe added the last line after a pause as he plopped back in his chair and pulled some food of his own from a bag.

“Well, anyway, thanks for the food, man,” Lee said, unwrapping his chalupa and taking a huge bite from it.

The two of them talked for a while, even if it did agitate Lee’s ribs. Then, after an hour of joking around and making fun of random pop stars, blaming certain countries for the existence of certain awful celebrities and of course gossiping about people in their online guild, Lee’s parents filed in and broke up the conversation. Of course, they were incredibly relieved to see him. They made a few calls to let the rest of the family know, at which point a few other relatives and friends began ducking their head in just to get the brownie points of a visit under their belts before departing just as quickly as they arrived.

It took almost three hours for the hubbub of his waking up again to die out, a reporter to try to sneak in, and a few nurses to finish asking for autographed pictures. The picture was a still frame captured from one of the CCTVs and showed the giant Augustus in gorilla form princess carrying him into the ER. They all seemed to get a real kick out of it.

Wolfe had stayed mostly silent and remained planted in the chair while Lee’s parents and relatives showed up, but as soon as the nurses began filtering in, he jumped up to make sure he could properly chat them up as they took selfies with the ‘meme kid.’ Lee watched the clock the entire time, counting down the seconds as the large hand on the clock ticked around. He knew that his time was growing shorter, and he couldn’t help but think, I have to get clothes.

He was painfully aware that his hospital gown wasn’t going to afford his already poor charisma any bonus points in the other world. Shannon and Ling were both already judging me for my suit. If I return in this . . . Ugh. I’m never going to hear the end of it. He kept his ears perked up through each and every conversation, listening for any way to ask, ‘Hey, can I go home and put on real clothes yet?’

When he finally got around to asking the question, interjecting it into a lull in the conversation about the usefulness of peeling grapes versus freezing them, they all shot it down vehemently.

“No way in hell you’re leaving that hospital bed until you’re all healed up,” his dad insisted.

“Gotta agree with the grand poobah,” Wolfe agreed, resoundly failing to ‘help a bro out,’ as he often put it. “An extra day in the bed this week will prevent having to pay for three more next week.”

“If you try to leave, I’ll stab you until you have a reason to stay,” his mother replied in the closed-eyed, big-smiled, creepily-calm voice she used when making threats.

Lee tried to protest, but it eventually became clear that he wasn’t going to get anywhere.

He even tried to sneak out when negotiations failed, but the second his family wasn’t paying attention and he tried to stand up despite the pain it caused him, a doctor came in and told him that it’d be at least six weeks before he would be fully healed, so he should really just lay back, relax, and remember to breathe no matter how much it hurt. The doctor insisted that he wasn’t just trying to torture one of his patients, that it was good to stretch out the tissue or something, but Lee wished the doctor could try taking deep breaths with the guy’s ribs and lungs in the state his were currently in.

And so, when the seven hours finally ticked by, Lee was practically counting down the seconds in a mix of dread and anticipation with bated breath. Half of him was looking forward to finally being able to stretch his legs again, but he had that pressing concern of how it was going to go over with him showing up in a medieval world with swords and arrows and knives and a thousand other things designed to kill, maim and torture a fellow while wearing only a hospital gown and a rib brace. To make the anticipation even worse, he didn’t know exactly when the seventh hour ended, only that there were seven hours left. Luckily for him, the droning conversation from his parents and family was so monotone and dull that it eased his nerves and let him finally relax as he waited for the end to come when he would be warped back into the game world.

-----

When the warp finally occurred, and he once more found himself back in the slave quarters, the gauze and wrapping from the hospital covered his bare chest, and he was wearing pants. He wanted to smack Augustus. I was worrying the entire time, and you were just going to change my clothes anyway?! He wanted to shout, but before he could even grumble at the shape shifting voyeur, he became aware of all the NPCs staring at him. No one said a single word, they just stared.

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted seven people to your religion. Faith has increased by 7. Current Faith: 10.

Wait, what’s going on? Am I still dying? Lee panicked, looking to see if the broken ribs were still causing damage over time. Forty seven hit points . . . Not much, considering it took me over seventy-two hours and that’s all I managed to recover. Still, not bad, either, and they’re not going down anymore, are they? Lee waited for a few seconds in silence as he watched his hit points for any change, not trusting that a blue box would warn him in time. At this point, seeing he was perfectly fine, he let out a deep breath, dusted off his leather pants, and stood up.

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted four people to your religion. Faith has increased by 4. Current Faith: 14.

The silence persisted as no one said a word while Lee checked his inventory. He was happy to find the rest of his equipment still there, and put it on while everyone watched in silence. Lee was almost certain that there wasn’t a single one of them that was even blinking as he adjusted his shirt, debating whether or not he should tuck in his leather armor top.

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted five people to your religion. Faith has increased by 5. Current Faith: 19.

Finally, someone broke the awkward silence, much to Lee’s relief, until he realised what that person had said.

“NECROMANCER!!!” One of the slaves yelled from the crowd. “He’s one of those skeletons that’s been BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD!” the annoying man continued to bellow before a loud smacking sound rang out and his voice went silent.

“You idiot!” a familiar voice screeched. As soon as the smack had occurred and the voice had begun to yell, the man, somewhere near the back, was quickly jolted from the crowd and unto the floor as the slap sent him sprawling, the crowd moving to make way for the falling man in the process and revealing the victim and assailant at the same time. “How dare you associate a great and mighty miracle of our Lord Augustus, raising his chosen, one with something so simple and twisted as necromancy!”

“Thanks, Miller.” Lee wasn’t sure if it was depression, anxiety, or embarrassment that was causing his oncoming headache as he stared at the crowd.

“That’s right! It’s a miracle!” one of the slaves got down on her knees and bowed her head. “Praise be!”

“An act of God!” another man shouted. The rude man accusing him and Miller had apparently broken a dam, and one after another, the crowd began to shout random things over each other. Lee couldn’t understand it all, but he caught several bits.

“The divine has come down and restored him to shape. The chosen one, blessed by the Deity himself!” came an exclamation from a woman in the front.

“Praise be Augustus and the undying herald!” arose a shout from an old man.

One person was even shouting “HE MUST BE DIVINE! HE MUST BE ONE OF THEM!” over and over again, pulling on his buddy’s shoulders as he did so.

Your party has massacred 43 people. Your party has been awarded 52 silver, 5 sturdy leather boots, 9 sturdy leather armor pants, 6 sturdy leather armor chest pieces, 8 sturdy leather armor wrist guards, 11 short swords, 15 tower shields, and 4 sturdy leather armor helmets.  Your share is 26 silver, 2 sturdy leather boots, 5 sturdy leather armor pants, 3 sturdy leather armor chest pieces, 4 sturdy leather armor wrist guards, 6 short swords, 7 tower shields and 2 sturdy leather armor helmets.  

Due to the much higher level and greater number of enemies killed at once, your party has received a massacre EXP bonus. Your share of the massacre bonus is 5000 EXP.

You are now level 9. You need 1280 Experience to reach level ten. Your level increase has boosted all primary stats by 4. Your current power, toughness, spirit, reflex, coordination, concentration and accuracy have been adjusted to 19.

“Look, I didn’t die. I just . . .” Lee, while doing his best to ignore the status message, held up his hands defeatedly as the crowd pressed closer around him. “I just . . .” He tried to come up with an explanation, but he knew it wouldn’t matter. The group had gone from mute and quiet to talking so loudly that even if he were to let the fast food he had eaten earlier in the day have a voice too, no one would hear it.

Miller came forward and slammed the butt of his spear on the floor, silencing the crowd. “Quiet!” he yelled so loudly Lee was certain the air had vibrated from the force. The crowd cowered back, giving both Lee and Miller each some distance. Miller addressed the crowd: “The great Lord Augustus told him exactly how the battle would unfold before our fight even started. Augustus directed Lee to defeat our enemies with fire. The mighty Augustus has clearly chosen him for a reason, so--”

“It’s because he died for us!” one of the younger girls standing near a cot near Lee interrupted Miller and shouted, answering his unasked question. She stepped closer to Lee without ever breaking eye contact, her sparkling violet irises locked on his. “He died to give us our freedom. He was willing to sacrifice everything to save just a few souls that didn’t even follow his god . . . So, his . . . The god Augustus must have been moved.”

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted a person to your religion. Faith has increased by 1. Current Faith: 20.

“Yeah.” A far less attractive man whose beer belly had stood the test of physical slave labor stepped forward. “He died for us, and we couldn’t even lift a hand to help him.” The surly goat of a man kicked the bed next to him in frustration. “Filth! That’s all we are. Filth who rejected even a God’s miracle!”

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted three people to your religion. Faith has increased by 3. Current Faith: 23.

“No, look, it’s just . . .” Lee was ready to reject their aclaims again, but then an idea popped into his head. “It’s just that I couldn’t bear to imagine you all suffering, going through life as slaves and being so mistreated . . .” Lee paused. He wanted to say, ‘fellow human beings,’ but they weren’t all human. The slaves were of mixed races and likely mixed origins. “By your fellow man,” he said at last, finally settling on a word that he hoped no one in the crowd was so ultra politically correct they’d get mad at him for using. “It horrified me, so I had to stop it.”

“You could have told me how things were going to turn out if you knew in advance,” Miller said with a slightly accusatory tone.

“You knew?” Ling asked, ducking her head and pushing past Miller. “You knew you would die? If . . . if you knew you would die, why would you do it?” she asked softly. “Why would you risk the end of your life for people you’ve never met before?” Ling repeated, adding confidence and volume until it became a loud and clear question.

That’s right. She was there. She helped me with those guys chasing me. I didn’t plan on dying. I just got super cocky because most of the fights were easy and going the same way, so when I ended up being gutted and passing out, I just tried to look cool one last time so my death wouldn’t be completely pathetic. Yet, the words that came out of his mouth were totally different. Stealing his favorite part of his actual religion from back home, he said, “Please don’t hold me up to any higher standard, and don’t treat me as divine. I didn’t sacrifice much. Death isn’t something awful for the faithful.”

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted one person to your religion. Faith has increased by 1. Current Faith: 24.

“What do you mean?” Miller’s earnest curiosity made Lee feel bad about all the lies he was spinning.

“Why wouldn’t you be afraid?” the younger girl who had spoken up earlier asked, edging even closer to him.

“I’m just saying: please don’t think that my dying for you was such a big thing. I knew it would be painful--and it really was--but I also knew that if I died in service to Augustus,”--Oh please, actual God, don’t kill me for such blasphemy, and Augustus stop laughing if you’re watching this. You know I’m lying, so don’t get any ideas--“then I would be rewarded in heaven.”

“Heaven?” a few of the people asked simultaneously, Miller and Ling included.

“Yes, if you die in service to your fellow man, if you die doing the right thing in Augustus’s name, then you don’t really die. Your body perishes”--I hate being a thief. Stealing, especially from an actual God, is not right, Lee--“but your soul, that which makes you who you are, will go to another world. It’ll go there, and you will walk among the faithful as those of wicked hearts and minds, those whose faith was tested and failed, their souls are sent to a cell of utter solitude, where there is nothing. Not even pain can distract one from their loneliness. Their soul crumbles under the agony of solitude, and who they are is twisted and misshapen until the person who committed the crimes to warrant the punishment may as well have never existed in the first place. Once who they were dies completely, they might get another chance.”

“Then . . . why doesn’t everyone who is faithful just kill themselves?” the young girl asked, proving more and more inquisitive.

Lee shook his head. “‘Cause that’s a straight ticket to the worst punishment the afterlife has to offer. It’s worse than being stuck in a torture chamber with the most talented and sadistic man holding the instruments.”

“So, when you died for us, you knew you wouldn’t actually die? You thought you’d just go to heaven?” the man with the beer gut asked.

“Well, there is the problem. I don’t know if I’ve been a good enough person to make it up there.” Lee shrugged. “I mean, for all I know, I could have ended up in Hell, getting the worst punishments a god has to offer for an entire eternity. Even now, I’m not a one-hundred percent sure where I’ll go when I actually die.”

“But you said death wasn’t something to fear for the faithful?” the girl pried further.

“Well . . .” Lee was beginning to understand why parents always answered a child’s questions with ‘because I said so’ as he tried to find a way to get out of this endless loop of questions. “I may be the herald for Augustus, spreading the word of a god, but even I must be careful of my actions and doubt that I have proven myself as one of the faithful. That’s why I’m not entirely sure I’m a great and religious man: I’m just a nobody, a regular joe shmoe, and I just do what’s right and hope that I’ll go to a better place when I pass on for good.”

Your actions and deeds have successfully converted two people to your religion. Faith has increased by 2. Current Faith: 26.

“Wow. For the god who loves carnage so much that he had us burn dozens of men alive, to have a herald who is so modest despite his amazing abilities . . . This truly inspires a man. I swear, here and now, that I shall serve both the great god Augustus, who rewards those who die in his name, and the herald who bathes in the blood of evil bastards by morning, dies to save a common slave in the afternoon, and rises again because he cannot leave his job unfinished in the evening! Rising from the dead like that . . . You’re not just a herald. You’re like the very son of the god himself!”

“That’s right! What other herald has ever risen from the dead?” a man in the back, previously quiet even when everyone else was talking earlier, tacked on almost immediately. “Who else could accomplish that but the son of a god?”

You have gained 1 Personal Follower.

New Status Created: Nouveau Divinity

Divine Titles: None

Divinity Abilities:

1. Hidden
2. Hidden
3. Locked
4. Locked

Number of personal followers: 1

Each Personal Faith will increase the Nouveau Divinity’s Divine powers, as well as provide new abilities and powers as the Nouveau Divinity grows.

“Wait, no!” Lee once more threw both his hands up in protest. “No, no listen, I’m not the son of god or anything. I’m just a regular man, a regular man who follows Augustus.”

“That modesty, Lee, come on, don’t go trying to pull the wool over my eyes. That book, that food you’ve brought to us, those clothes you were wearing when I first met you, the fact you rose from the dead . . . You’re divinity come to earth!” Miller insisted, closing the distance between them and throwing an arm over Lee’s shoulder.

“Tonight, I shall honor your father the god with alcohol, and you with more alcohol! And then tomorrow, we shall paint the town red in his name, and then drink in yours! Or maybe we can do it the other way around. Are you the violent one or is he? Which one of you wanted me to burn people alive?” Miller was way too happy for a man whose expression, paint the town red, likely meant more along the lines of killing enough people to cover the town in blood and not just another way to talk about more drinking.

Five people now believe that you yourself are a Deity. Your personal Faith has increased by 5. Current Personal Faith: 6.

What are you talking about, which one of us wanted you to burn people alive? You’re the one who made the promise, and I just took advantage of that. “I guess the one that wanted you to burn them would be me?” Lee figured rolling into the violence might be better than going with the alcohol. As much as he could appreciate a good beer with his games, he didn’t want to know what would happen if people started forcefully offering him a drink in every single city he went to.

Seven people now believe that you yourself are a Deity. Your personal Faith has increased by 7. Current Personal Faith: 13.

“That’s right. You didn’t even keep up with me that well last night. You must not have much of his blood to not be able to drink well as the son of a god of alcohol should,” Miller laughed.

I tried to tell you he isn’t my father! Lee complained internally. Or maybe the fact that I am not sure if Augustus is telling the truth and that if what he says is true--then genetically he might as well be--is preventing me from being able to lie properly? Can Miller actually tell when I’m lying? Lee’s opinion of his comrade momentarily rose until he remembered how easily he had duped the firbolg so many times before. No, no he’s just an idiot who likes to role play the world in his own little, fun fantasy, regardless of what reality might say.

“Lee.” Ling came up too, standing beside the young girl in front of him with a face that seemed to be twisted like waves in the ocean as mixed emotions scattered across it. “Don’t do that again. Don’t go off and do something you know will get you killed when you still haven’t accounted for what you did to me.”

“What I--” Lee wanted to ask what he did to her, but before he could, Miller just squeezed him even tighter with the arm he had thrown around him earlier.

“That’s my boy! Only in town for two days and he already got with one of the beauties. Maybe you have your dad’s genes after all!” he laughed, slapping one of his legs with his free hand.

Five people now believe that you yourself are a Deity. Your personal Faith has increased by 5. Current Personal Faith: 18.

“Hey! Don’t take that the wrong way!” Lee protested, but given that Ling was just studying him and not offering any objection herself, it seemed as if the entire crowd, Miller included, had already taken it for fact.

“Now, our Son of God, the umm . . . The one of Fire and Rebirth, has had a long day with the dying and all. What do you folks say about making our way back to town?” Miller asked. “I bet after living out here in this dump, you all want to get back to a warm bed and your loved ones, am I right?”

Three people now believe that you yourself are a Deity. Your personal Faith has increased by 3. Current Personal Faith: 21.

The crowd all either nodded, said yes, or voiced some other word that meant the same thing.

“Then I guess that settles that,” Miller said. “Let’s go back to town, and tomorrow, we’ll kill and burn some more evil doers in the name of Lee!”

While the others voiced a ‘hear hear now,’ the young girl in front of Lee just stepped closer to him. “Please, One of Fire, please save my father.”

Huh? “Is he not here? Is he further in the mines?” Lee asked, looking around. Wait, where is that little bugger, Ethan, Lee reached out with his mind to see where his little mouse golem was, only to discover that the mouse was still outside, perched atop the roof of the building looking around. He had missed the commotion entirely as his eyes searched for any sign of an incoming potential threat.

Little Ethan, do you see any life from the direction of the mines? Lee asked his mouse, but the little creature only shook its head.

“He’s with the bad ones. He went with them so they wouldn’t hurt me more. Please, get him back,” the girl pleaded. “He’s the only family I have left.”

“What bad ones? Where?” Lee asked, still using Ethan to try and find a clue about what she was talking about.

“She means the other herald, your holiness,” a tall, dark-haired woman stepped out from the crowd of former slaves. “They, they were beating her until he went with them, saying he’d convert.”

Another herald? Lee frowned. So that means there is another, likely-actual child of a god here. “If he went with them after converting, why were you all left here?”

“Because the herald needed weapons for his army,” the woman answered.

“Yeah, those bastards were stealing townsfolk and making us either convert to their stupid god or mine all day long until we converted. That shaft leads down toward a ruby mine, where they’d have us dig out gems and then they’d sell them for gear, equipment, rations--whatever the herald needed,” the beer-gutted man answered.

That’s at least better than the outcome I had imagined they were suffering. Lee tried to imagine an upside as he glanced toward the door. “Then do you know where they took the others?”

“No, but they kept maps, detailed ones at that. Every soldier was required to keep them near his bunk. I know because I stole one once trying to find out where we were, hoping to use that knowledge to escape in case one of them guards ever stopped paying attention,” the man said, and then his eyes darted to the ground before adding. “You can probably find plenty in the packs at either of the quarters, not that anyone will ever go to the mine one again though.”

“Why won’t anyone go back in the mine?” Lee asked, confidant that after the blazing inferno Miller and Lee had descended upon the one next to this building, it was unlikely that a cloth or paper map would survive.

“Well, some of the soldiers were using the quarters at the bottom of the shaft . . . until, while expanding a shaft near the quarters, we connected the shaft to a monster’s lair. Everyone abandoned that area, but some of the guards died running, so no one went back for their supplies,” the man explained.

Are you kidding me?! Monsters now, ones capable of scaring off an army that had at least forty soldiers plus however many guards and people that died down there? “Fine, I’ll do it,” he spoke before he could even finish coming up with a list of reasons it was a dumb idea. “If that’s where the map to this herald is, the map to where your father is, I’ll go find it.”

“Can we please do it in the morning, boss,” Miller looked over at Lee sympathetically. “I killed a lot of people, I need to go offer praise to your father at the tavern.”

“But what do you think the enemy’ll do when they see us all coming down to the town, their former captives now freed and talking with us?” Lee shot Miller’s idea down right away. It’s not that he didn’t want to have a cold beer and relax after all the pain. He just knew that at the moment, time was their friend.

“But--” This time it was Miller who protested, and Lee who wouldn’t even let him finish his sentence.

“But nothing. If we go down right now, we’ll announce to the other herald that we know his plan. We know where he is. We have freed his slaves and killed his army. So, for this, I must apologize.” Lee bowed his head toward the crowd of people he saved. “I will need you all to stay here too.”

“Wait, you’re not seriously going down into the mine, into the monster cavern by yourself?” The round-bellied man’s surprise was written across his face.

“Yeah, no, just, just forget I asked.” The girl whose dad was missing seemed to immediately regret her request.

“Didn’t I just teach you all? Death in the service of Augustus is not something to fear. Since your dad can only be rescued if we find the herald, and the fastest way to find the herald is a map down in those tunnels, then we’ll just have to go down there,” Lee stated as if it were a simple matter of fact.

“You’re insane, you know that?” Miller, the last person who should have ever accused anyone of being crazy, said to him.

“You can’t leave until!” Ling protested loudly, a face that looked less like a pouting

“Then just come with us.” Lee didn’t try to throw her off this time. Her arrows had saved his life, and he wouldn’t underestimate whatever potential enemies could kill them down below. There was still a part of his brain that kept saying, Don’t bring the girl. You’re going to get her killed, but at the end of the day, something about his whole life or death experience just moments ago--or three days ago depending on what timeline was being used--had given him a strange calm.

“Okay, but you better not do anything stupid that will get either of us killed,” she humphed.

Some part of him was still angry, but there was a deeper, truer part of him that felt almost vindicated by nearly dying--as if reaching the end of the road and almost embracing his final sleep had made the game so real that it became addicting in its own right. Is this what adrenaline junkies feel? No, it was too peaceful. I felt like I was going to sleep, not being thrown off a thirty-foot building. It wasn’t a heart-racing, splat-potential ending I avoided. It was just . . . an endless rest, so it isn’t the same. No, this was different, and as much as he wanted to put his finger on the feeling, he didn’t. He wanted to just carry on, truly treating the game world like what it was for the first time: a game. One I plan to win, he thought to himself and grinned. Too bad Wolfe isn’t here to get our guild a bunch of angry dwarven women again, he chuckled, causing the others to look at him strangely.

“He really just dazes off a lot, doesn’t he?” Miller said to Ling.

“You have no idea how weird it was during training,” she nodded.

“Also, asking him not to do anything stupid, there is just no point. He’s always trying to go about fights in a silly, roundabout fashion, trying to sneak up on people, trying to avoid confrontation. He just does thing in the most tedious, boring, and stupid manner sometimes,” Miller whispered to Ling, close enough for Lee to overhear it.

“I’m going too,” the beer-bellied man said as he pulled some boots over his feet. “You can’t navigate those tunnels without me, so don’t even try to argue. I’ll take you right to where the quarters are, I’ll make sure you get that map to the herald.”

“Well, in that case, what’s your name?” Lee asked, walking over to the man and sticking his hand out for an introduction.

“David.” The man took Lee’s hand in a shake. “Pleasure to meet you, holiness.”

Holiness? Oh, God, that’s going to get annoying to hear. “Just call me Lee, please,” he insisted.

“That would just be too dang rude of me. I can’t go around calling the very child of our god by his first name like some sort of chump” David shook his head at the idea. “Herald, Holiness, One of Fire and Rebirth, just . . . something right and proper for your title. Something that won’t make me feel like I’m doing you some sort of gross disservice.”

“Please do just stick with Lee though,” Lee insisted further. “Everyone, please stick with just calling me Lee.” He pushed further, already having conceded to the weird instant cult formation. Well, if I didn’t have any technology or schools to make me a skeptic, and I saw someone come back to life right in front of me . . . yeah, I might be in a cult too, he thought, not judging them at all for this behavior.

“Right, L-Lee.” David tripped a bit over the word at first. “Do you want to head out right now? Or do you need a few minutes to, uhhh, finish healing?”

Lee looked down at his wound, then over to Miller and Ling who both seemed to be just watching him while trying to figure out what to do themselves. Little Ethan, how ‘bout you? You want to head out right now or do you need a minute? He asked the final member of his party, only to have Little Ethan, who was now happily on top of the building they were all in, stand on his two back legs and throw some shadow punches in his own little ‘bring ‘em on!’ way. That settles it I guess. “Let’s just go now.” The last drawing board. The white board eraser nightmare