I did as he asked and opened my Quest submenu, but the screen only displayed one quest.
Tutorial World Quest:
Defeat the Tutorial Boss.
Just one guy? It couldn’t be that easy. He probably summoned minions or had some other bullshit mechanic.
World-first reward:
10 Common chests.
5 Uncommon chests.
1 Rare chest.
10,000 credits.
“Okay, done reading.”
I wiped my greasy hands off on BatMan’s shirt as I made my way back to the pew I’d woken up on. Thankfully, someone had removed my leather jacket and tucked it under my head as a pillow after the hit-and-run.
I slipped it on, glad I hadn’t been wearing it when that HATE dumbass shot me full of holes.
“Breaking the first rule is how you earned your Universe-first achievement,” my manager said. “You killed another player before the second expansion. No one’s ever pulled that off. And I already checked; they still have PvP disabled.”
“What do you mean PvP is disabled? You literally watched me kill those people. Did they not count as players since they didn’t pick a class?”
“My guess is you didn’t count as a player. You Know Who controlled you like an NPC. I think that’s how you got around all the protections. It was the perfect storm. You spawned in without enough Intellect to control yourself. You Know Who flipped you over to a temporary NPC. Then it had you attack the nearest players, who just happened to be a bunch of classless humans.”
I chuckled at the grim irony.
“And it serves DungeonCore right for putting the CEO’s nephew in charge of class design. That kid’s got no clue what he’s doing.” He lowered his voice. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this… He got the NPC and hero classes mixed up. But instead of admitting fault and fixing it, they gave him a pat on the back, called it a novel idea, and turned it into a feature.”
I stopped midway to the priest.
“Hold the franking phone. Are you telling me I’m stuck as a rotting level one corpse because of… nepotism?!”
My manager shushed me. “Keep it down. They could be watching…”
I rarely listened when people told me what to do, but something in his voice made me think twice before telling him off. Whatever it was, it scared him.
He cleared his throat and said, “Besides, it’s not our fault their botched class design had unforeseen consequences. Especially since we benefit from those consequences. Take the win, Frank; You Know Who rarely sides with the players.”
He said “we” a lot. It started to irk me.
He continued, “Who knows? Maybe we’ll catch a couple more breaks before they patch it all.”
“So, you got a name?” I grew tired of not knowing.
“Uh… humans aren’t able to pronounce it.”
“Try me,” I said.
And then I got what I asked for.
I winced as he spoke in what could only be called the devil’s digital tongue.
My hands shot up, desperate to cover my ears. A futile attempt because the sound came from inside my head. I couldn’t tune it out. There were at least a dozen fax machines, all in heat, screeching to high heaven in my mind.
I couldn’t move. I could barely think.
“Stop!” I screamed, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing over all the shrieking.
The first moment of silence nearly dropped me to my knees when he finally stopped.
That’s about when the ringing started. I worked my jaw from side to side to get it to stop.
“Frank me, man. That was horrible,” I said, wiggling a finger in my ear out of habit.
“I warned you.”
He did, but he didn’t need to be a dick about it.
“You got a nickname that doesn’t require me to speak… dial-up?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not calling you manager for the rest of this shitty World Dungeon. That’s for damn sure.”
His next question sounded hesitant. “Do you have any suggestions?”
What does he mean, suggestions? We’d just met. All he was to me was just some dick yammering away in my head. I knew nothing about the guy, so I answered honestly.
“No.”
He tried a different tactic. “What was the name of your best friend growing up?”
What in the psychology is up with this guy? Why does he—
I caught myself. Ranting wouldn’t get me anywhere. I just answered his stupid question.
“…Didn’t have one.”
“That’s…” His voice trailed off.
Thankfully, he dropped it. “Never mind. Just—just pick something you can pronounce.”
I picked the first thing that came to mind.
“Asshat.”
“Frank, that’s not a name. That’s a curse word…” He sounded disappointed that I wasn’t taking this seriously, but I couldn’t care less.
“What?” I asked. “I call people that all the time.”
My manager sighed. “I’m not answering to that. Pick something else.”
“Well, I’d like to call you frankface, but your stupid profanity filter won’t even let me say frankface.”
“It’s not my filter. It’s You Know Who’s.” Frankface sighed.
“Dick,” I said, feeling clever.
“Dick?” he repeated.
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I think he went and looked it up. “Sounds like a proper Earth name. I love it.”
“You love… Dick?” I almost snorted.
“Yes, call me Dick.”
That wouldn’t be a problem for me, but at that point, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was short for Dickhead.
“Alright, now time to get out of here.”
“Frank, there’s only one brain left. You shouldn’t let it go to waste. Intellect is really powerful. The more you have, the higher your Cognitive Load. That’s what determines how many abilities you can slot at the same time.”
I sighed and asked, “What’s Cognitive Load?”
“It’s usually one of the more important stats for casters—”
I interrupted to clarify. “So you’re saying I could be a mage zombie, like a lich?”
“No, not exactly. Liches are an entirely different class. Casters use it to equip their spells that they’ve unlocked. It gives them more options in combat.”
“You mean versatility?”
“Exactly!”
“Since you’re stuck at level one, any new attacks or abilities you discover will require you to slot them into your Cognitive Load to use them. Normally, players can’t increase their Cognitive Load. Which is why I tunnel-visioned so hard on Zombie—sorry about that.”
I waved his apology away as I stared down at the priest. He’d made a mess, bleeding out all over the carpet.
“Can’t change what’s been done. No sense bitching about it now. Unless… that’s an option? Changing my class, I mean.”
“Technically, it is. There’s a class-swap token in the QoL, but you won’t be able to afford it for at least a few expansions, and it’ll reset you back to level one.”
“Another microtransaction…” I grumbled.
I had a lot of questions: What’s a Lair? How do I discover more attacks? What attacks do I currently have? I needed to know it all and more, but prioritizing what I needed to learn first was also important. Dickhead was right; there might be more ways to cheat the System. I just needed to figure it out first.
“I’ve seen the rewards for a World-first achievement, but what does the Universe-first one get me?”
“We can’t check until you’re inside your Lair.”
And we’re back to the stupid Lair again.
That’s not what I wanted to hear.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it is or how to get there?”
Dickhead rattled off an itinerary. “First, we need to get to town, buy a hearthrune, and set your hearth at the local tavern. But we can’t even do that until you’ve finished eating.”
Speaking of stuffing my face, I’d eaten several brains now, but didn’t feel full. My gut didn’t even look distended. I also checked the gunshot wounds in my chest. They had closed completely. Same as the ones in my shoulder, leg, and arm.
I grinned and asked, “Do I have super regeneration, like Wolverine?”
“Ah, no. You’re actually decaying. Constantly. It’s one of your traits. But consuming human brains restores your Vitality.”
“Where are you seeing all this stuff?”
“The character sheet in your Menu.”
I was sick of learning things piecemeal.
“You could’ve led with that, Dick.”
He walked me through the Menu as I begrudgingly knelt beside the priest. An intrusive thought told me to call him GodFather, and I let out a grim snicker. Just like that, two fictional role models dead by my hands.
I reviewed my character sheet screen with Dickhead. The first section listed my class traits I’d gained for choosing zombie. It was mostly good stuff. Mostly.
Traits:
Super Strength - level 2
Your starting Strength gains +20.
Super Toughness - level 1
Your starting Toughness gains +10.
Food for Thought
You restore up to 40% of your Vitality for every human brain consumed.
You gain 1 Intellect for every human brain consumed while at 90% Vitality or higher.
Dead Ends
Your physical pain is reduced by 99%.
Decaying
You lose 1% of your maximum Vitality every four hours.
Undead
You have no Constitution.
Your Strength is used in place of Constitution for all calculations.
*You do not automatically die when your Vitality reaches zero.
I stopped to ask, “Hey Dick, what does the little asterisk mean on the Undead trait?”
“Let me check…” he said. “Oh, that means there’s more information in the back-end. This one says you can still die by other means.”
“Other means? Like what?”
“Keep reading. You’ll see.”
Uncirculated
You have no heartbeat.
You have no circulation.
You don’t need to breathe.
You are immune to all diseases and infections.
You are vulnerable to parasites.
Deathgrip
Your Grappling skill gains +5.
Rigor Motive
Your stiff limbs reduce your Dexterity by 20%.
Creeper
Your sprinting, running, and walking speeds are reduced by 20%.
No Rest for the Dead
You do not consume Mana from sprinting, running, or walking.
Dead Weight
You cannot float.
Headcase
You take triple damage from headshots.
You die from taking a headshot while at negative Vitality.
“Shit, okay. So I can’t completely ignore Vitality…”
“No, but you can wear a helmet. That’ll remove the increased damage, at least.”
Dummy Thick
Your Intellect is reduced to 1 on spawn or re-spawn.
Attributes:
Strength: 30
Dexterity: 8 reduced from (10) due to Rigor Motive
Toughness: 20
Constitution: Null
Intellect: 6 increased from (1) due to Food for Thought
Perception: 10
Willpower: 10
Fortitude: 10
Vitality: 100% (715/715)
Mana: 100% (122/122)
“Is Vitality my hit points?” I asked.
“Your life force, basically.”
I also noted that zombies had very little mana.
Movement (tiles per second):
Walk Speed: 0.8 reduced from (1) due to Creeper
Run Speed: 1.6 reduced from (2) due to Creeper
Sprint Speed: 3.2 reduced from (4) due to Creeper
Climbing Speed: 0.5
Burrowing Speed: Null
Swimming Speed: Null
Flying Speed: Null
I wasn’t familiar with the unit of measurement, so I asked, “What’s a tile?”
“In American terms? Roughly five feet.”
“But why tiles?”
“It’s just how You Know Who measures everything.”
Attacks:
Improvised Strike
A wild melee attack using any untrained body part or nearby object that can be picked up.
Has reduced accuracy.
Bite
A basic melee attack using your mouth.
Punch
A basic melee attack using one hand.
Kick
A basic melee attack using one leg.
Grapple
A basic melee attack using at least one hand or leg.
Does no damage.
Grappled opponents cannot move unless they can carry you.
Grappled opponents are easier to hit.
Actions:
Skullcracker
NCA
Requires a grappled head.
Cleanly rips off the top of a skull.
I recognized that acronym. It meant I couldn’t use the ability in combat.
“What good is an attack that I can’t use in combat? Is it for stealth killing?”
“It’s not an attack. I think you’re supposed to use it after you’ve killed them.”
“Why didn’t the System use it then?”
“It was working with almost no Intellect, remember?”
I grunted, still painted with Feral Frank’s fallout. I remembered all right.
Then I finished reading the rest of my character sheet. There wasn’t much.
Class Level Cap:
Level 1
Class Progression and Unlocks:
None. You chose poorly.
“Well, frank you too,” I said, exiting the Menu.
With nothing left to distract myself with, I stared down at GodFather. I’d stalled long enough. I reached down and took hold of his head in the crook of my arm.
That’s when something triggered in my mind. It felt like a subconscious prompt. I knew exactly how Skullcracker worked now.
An inch-long bony shard protruded from the tips of each finger, like micro-Wolverine claws.
Badass, I thought. Wish I could use this in combat…
I slammed my hand down on the top of his head, fingers first, burying the shards deep into his skull. With all the grip I’d ever need, I yanked my hand back. A crack formed as I pulled, spreading from my thumb to index finger before racing through the other contact points.
The top of his skull gave way with a pop. It broke off in one sheet, an imperfect circle, revealing my prize inside—forty-eight ounces of intricately folded, gray paté.
“Goddamn, that was a lot easier.” I hesitated, reflecting on my poor word choice, and then picked GodFather’s brain.
Dickhead was unusually quiet.
“No more nuggets of wisdom?” I asked between bites. Eating didn’t occupy my mind very well, and I usually did it while I worked or watched TV. Being bored was the worst.
“Sorry, I’m just going through all the back-end changes. Gods, DungeonCore really made a mess this time.” His voice trailed off as his mind wandered. “… But if I think of players as NPCs and NPCs as the heroes…”
I left Dickhead to figure his shit out and explored my Main Menu. There was a lot. Categories at the top, each one leading to a submenu of even more submenus. Dickhead had shown me enough to be dangerous.
I was supposed to finish my meal, and then we’d head into town. But I wasn’t very good at following directions. Instead, I took another bite and searched for information about the Lair.
I found it, but there wasn’t much on the screen. It was blank except for something called a gravekey.
Gravekey (NCA: 4 hours)
I wondered if that was the hearth-thingy Dickhead had mentioned.
Did they spell it wrong? I tapped on it to learn more.
“Frank?! What are—”
A System message interrupted him.
[Exiting the Tutorial. Please wait…]
Everything went dark as I blipped out of existence.
? Summoner's Ascent [A System Apocalypse LitRPG] ?
by Dice
Apocalypse... Ashton returned back home, to just a few moments after he left.
[The [Tutorial] has begun!]
Summoner.
System Apocalypse in a world trying its best to survive. Join Ashton in this Progression Fantasy to see if he'll outsmart the council this time around!
Mo/Tu/Thu/Fri at 6pm GMT+2 and will be roughly around 2000 words a chapter.
