Level One God

On pure impulse, I ran toward the screaming pair of people. Sure, I was dealing with a minor stab wound, but old habits died hard. I was used to coming to people’s rescue, even on my worst days.

And then I saw what had them running.

A mushroom the size of a three-story house pulled itself out of the trees and into the clearing. A swarm of spider things with leathery wings burst into the air, swirling and then flying away from the beast.

The running man and woman looked dressed for a Renaissance fair, clad in leather armor with linked chain mail and medieval style weapons: a man in chain armor with an axe and a woman in leather with a bow. The huge mushroom shook itself like a great, wet dog. Pustules on its pale yellow flesh burst and a small army of dog-sized mushrooms landed, rushing the screaming pair.

The woman fired off a barrage of arrows that exploded with strange, white light. Each explosion reduced one of the smaller mushrooms to ribbons, but there were too many.

The man raised a giant axe, but the mushrooms split in half to reveal rows of teeth. They fired long, frog-like tongues out. The tongues connected with a wet slapping sound, and then the mushrooms flung the pair back toward the beast looming over it all. It split, revealing a gaping mouth.

The two people flipped through the air like ragdolls and vanished inside the mouth. The whole exchange had taken only seconds.

I wasn’t going to wait for those things to spot me, so I ran as fast as I could.

When I reached the trees at the edge of the clearing, I was panting, and my side felt like it was splitting in two. The wound from the knife in my chest thumped painfully with every heartbeat. Cautiously, I looked around, then crept through the trees as carefully as possible.

I caught my breath and jogged some more, having to slow my pace once I was in the trees to avoid catching a root and eating dirt.

I eventually crouched and gasped for breath in the shade of a huge rock formation. I replayed what I’d just seen, shaking my head. If I had any small part of my mind that was clinging to doubt, the death of those two people and the sight of the four nightmare creatures blasted it away.

I set my jaw and started walking. I was wearing patched-together dead gnome clothes and clutching two pint-sized knives between the thumb and forefinger of my hands, but I had to keep moving.

I was probably in shock, and the last thing I needed was to sit down and let all the terror drown me. If I was moving, I was doing something. If I was doing something, I was in control.

It took a while, but my body eventually stopped pumping me to the brim with fight-or-flight chemicals. My breathing returned to normal, my heart stopped pounding, and I could think straight.

I needed to find a town or a city. At the very least, I needed to find a house. Since I was heading roughly in the direction the gnome had come from, I thought my chances of that were decent. There was a chance I’d run into some kind of nest of those things, but I also didn’t want to go in the direction of that mushroom.

The forest around me was dense. Without the sun beating directly on me like in the clearing, it was even a little chilly, especially considering my lack of proper clothes. I couldn’t be certain, but the vegetation seemed distinctly non-Earthlike. The trees looked familiar enough, though. My dad would’ve known. He was a stickler for details like that. I could almost picture him arguing with my sister now—she’d probably call them pine trees just to piss him off, and he’d go on a long rant about how wrong she was.

And they both lived, grew old, and died over 300 years ago.

Something deep in me felt like it fractured, just slightly. I ignored it and kept walking.

I picked my way through thick bushes, sometimes circling wide so I didn’t have to drag my mostly bare skin through prickly vegetation. I was in a calm stretch of open, thinner trees when I remembered what I was about to do before hearing screams.

I prompted my helmet to show me the notifications.

A wall of text appeared, which I resized so I could safely continue walking and looking out for nasty creatures.

[Common Accomplishment] Sleep for (4) consecutive days without waking. [Reward - Common Bed Token]

[Rare Accomplishment] Sleep for (8) consecutive days without waking. [Reward - Rare Bed Token]

[Epic Accomplishment] Sleep for (100) consecutive days without waking. [Reward - Epic Bed Token]

[Legendary Accomplishment] Sleep for (300) consecutive days without waking. [Reward - Legendary Bed Token]

[Cursed Accomplishment] Sleep for (300) consecutive years without waking. [Reward - Cursed Bed Token] “Congratulations. You’re the first ever to earn this accomplishment! Hi, by the way. We always get to watch, but we have never been allowed to send messages before. Exciting, right? Anyway, the others will be waking soon. Still, you were technically the first ever to earn this one, even if it’s just by a few minutes. All the others will get a cursed token for the final tier, too. Bad for them, good for you. Right?”

“What the hell?” I whispered aloud, my voice sounding far too loud in the quiet woods. And what was I supposed to do with all those beds?

I reread the last personal message after the final achievement.

Is that you talking to me? I tried thinking the words directly to my helmet.

No response.

What did it mean about the others waking up soon, too? I was the first to ever prestige on Eros, but others were waking up soon? What would be the odds of that? Unless maybe we were all working together… I perked up a little at the thought, suddenly feeling less alone. It would make sense, after all. Why wouldn’t I have friends out there? Maybe the plan had been for them to come find me and fill in the missing gaps in my memory.

Then again, I had no idea if the others could pick a prestige path, too. If they did, who’s to say they didn’t all choose the same one as me?

It was too much to figure out now, so I focused on getting through my accomplishments. There were only two more.

[Common Accomplishment] Kill (1) tomte [Reward - Common Weapon Token] “So weird, right? Why are we rewarding you for cold-blooded murder? I told him it was weird. Did he care? No. He said it was ‘necessary’. He uses that word when he just wants to do something and doesn’t want to explain it. Go figure.”

“Cold-blooded?” I muttered. That asshole was trying to kill me… Still, I guessed I wouldn’t complain about the wording if it meant I got a reward. And “tomte”? It looked like a gnome to me, but I guessed I knew the official “Eros” term for them now.

[Common Accomplishment] Survive (1) attempted poisoning. [Reward - Common Armor Token] “I can see all kinds of statistics about this stuff. Sorry if I’m rambling, but I don’t usually get to communicate like this. It’s kind of fun. I feel like your personal cheerleader or something. Go Seraphel! Don’t fall flat on your face and die because billions of lives across multiple worlds probably depend on you getting as strong as possible again! Oops. I’m probably not supposed to talk about that. But come on, it’s not like you couldn’t guess as much, right? Why else would one of the nine most powerful people on Eros reset their progress for a little bit more power?

“Wow. Only 2% of Erosians survive their first poisoning? I guess being a mortal flesh bag is more dangerous than it looks.”

Billions of people across multiple worlds? The claim felt so unbelievable that I pushed it from my mind. “If you can hear me,” I said aloud, “Tell me who you are in the next message.” It was worth a shot, anyway. I was deeply curious to know more about the person or thing sending me those messages, but it also wasn’t at the top of my priority list.

I was trying to focus on things that directly linked to my survival. Like the fact that my helmet made me immune to poison, but didn’t stop me from getting the achievement for surviving a poisoning attempt. What was to stop me from poisoning myself over and over to get the highest reward?

And where were all these tokens I was supposedly earning? I patted my little tomte skirt as if I’d sewn pockets in it and expected them to jingle with tokens. I checked the tiny satchel where I’d stuffed the two knives.

Nothing.

“Where are my tokens?” I whispered.

Text appeared as if answering my question.

[Proceed to an Arcanery to claim your reward tokens. You may also read the traditional scrip detailing your accomplishments at that time.]

“Can I ask you other questions?” I tried

No response.

There must only have been certain scripted interactions the helmet could handle. I’d have to mess with it later to see if I could squeeze anything useful out of it. After all, I chose to leave this thing to myself along with…

Wait.

I pulled up the text detailing my prestige rewards, confirming something I’d totally glazed over the first time. It said I could pick two items to bring with me. Shit. Did I leave something in the grass back where I started? The idea of going back there turned my stomach, so I hesitated, trying to think of where else the other item could be.

Inventory.

A visual of a game-style grid appeared. There were three rows of boxes with five squares in each. The first box contained an image of an empty potion bottle with a golden border. I tried to focus on it and was rewarded with a kind of tooltip pop-up.

[Alchemist’s Kit. (?) (Gold)?]

I frowned at that. Alchemist’s Kit? And I supposed “Gold” was the rank. I remembered my prestige path saying I could keep two items of Gold rank or lower, but I didn’t really have any context to understand how powerful that made it. I thought about wanting the bottle in my hand, and it appeared out of thin air just above my palm. I fumbled it in surprise, bobbling the glass bottle from hand to hand, and then it fell directly on a sharp rock, shattering at my feet.

“Well, shit,” I said. I planted my hands on my hips, staring down at it in disappointment. With all the soft grass and piles of dead leaves to land on, it had to land on a goddamn rock?

Then, I realized the potion bottle icon had reappeared in my inventory grid. It was grayed out, though. New text appeared when I tried to focus on returning it to my hand.

[Please wait. Item not ready]

Was it some kind of reusable potion bottle? I wondered if I could fill it up and throw it at people like a poison bomb. That seemed handy but not quite as awesome as a poison-resisting, text-generating, helpful helmet. I supposed I just had to trust my former self, though.

Then again, the name implied it was more than a potion bottle. The word “alchemy” made me think of matter transformation. I felt a jolt of excitement. Could I use this thing to make potions? Maybe it would magically turn raw ingredients into powerful elixirs… I was probably dreaming, but I resolved to give it a test soon.

I walked for a while, thinking of the movie Memento. The former me should’ve considered tattooing clues on my arms. If he had written it in a small enough print, he could’ve provided me with an entire strategy guide like in the early days of the internet. Then again, I would’ve settled for a map to the nearest water source at the moment.

Actually, maybe Total Recall was the more accurate movie reference. Except I got to know I used to be a badass, while he was oblivious. And he got to keep the awesome combat instincts while I… well, I hadn’t done so badly. In fact, I’d actually handled everything surprisingly well to this point. Maybe some hard-earned instincts from this Seraphel guy had lingered.

Then again, I figured Seraphel would’ve caught that potion bottle instead of letting it shatter. So maybe muscle memory was included in the definition of “progress reset.”

And why the hell had I changed my name, anyway?

I alternated between looking out for deadly beasts, walking, resting, and waiting for the potion bottle to stop being gray. It was a few minutes before it lit up again.

I stuck out both hands and willed it out of my inventory. The bottle snapped into place above my hands, hanging for an instant before gravity kicked in, and it thumped softly on my palms.

So insane. I stared at it briefly, letting myself nerd out for just a bit to appreciate how crazy this was. Then, I decided to see if I could use it to make a potion. But I’d need herbs of some kind to do that.

I was searching for herbs when I realized I could focus on objects in the world and get a kind of tooltip for them, just like the objects in my inventory.

[Tree. ?]

[Bush. ?]

[Rock. ?]

I picked up a rock the size of my palm. I supposedly had a divine ability to delete items, right? I didn’t imagine it would be something I could use to save my ass in a pinch, so I might as well test it and see if I could make it work.

I frowned at the rock, squeezing it in my hand until my knuckles went white. I gritted my teeth, eyes bulging. “Delete,” I commanded through gritted teeth.

And I look like a total idiot.

I shook my head, chuckling and dropping the rock. Maybe I could find somebody to explain how to actually activate my ability. If there was a trick to it, I didn’t know what it was.

I paused. Maybe…

I looked at the rock again, focusing. Instead of trying to command whatever was operating the tooltips within my helmet, I focused within myself. I couldn’t say how, but there was an instinctual tug in my chest. I followed it, then saw the rock start to tremble.

Then a slash of violet light cut across existence itself, burning a painful after-image across my vision. Purple sparks fired away from the spot where the rock was, landing to sizzle in the grass, lighting tiny black fires where they landed. The air smelled of burnt hair and smoke.

And the rock was gone.

I smirked, raising my hands high to the air. Bow before me, people of this weird ass planet. For I can delete your rocks. Once every two days. Restrictions may apply.

With that settled, I returned to my search for ingredients.

I would’ve expected things that looked like they’d make a potion under every rock, rotten log, and bush. Instead, it took me a surprisingly long time to find a single flower I thought might be a reagent. It was pink with fuzzy white hairs all along the stem.

[Flower. (Common)?]

Real helpful. But it had a rarity tag, unlike the other things I’d seen. I decided that meant it was worth collecting.

I stuffed the pink flower inside my bottle. A cork was fastened to the top with a metal wire, which I used to close the bottle before giving it a shake.

Nothing happened.

But I wasn’t giving up hope yet. After all, a potion probably needed some kind of liquid.

I had always enjoyed chemistry and science classes in school. The idea of getting to screw around with a whole host of herbs and reagents to make magical potions almost had me forgetting just how terrifying this all was. Almost.

I froze in my tracks when sudden movement caught my attention.

A dark shape rose up from a nearby tree without a sound. It drifted, gliding through the air, then latched on to a tree right above me. I watched it scuttle upwards with jerky, unnaturally fast movements.

Had that thing been following me?

A chill ran up my back. I felt noticed—like it knew I was watching it. In a blur of motion, it let go of the tree and sliced downward, its leathery wings pulled in tight to its body. I saw several long, hairy legs clustered together and trailing the rapidly approaching shape.

A choked sound slipped from my throat as I grasped what I was seeing.

It looked like a flying tarantula with claws on each of its hairy legs. Only it was the size of a cat instead of a bug. The wings were now splayed wide—maybe two feet from end to end—and all of its legs were spread out like a face-hugger from the Alien movies.

A helpful text box was sitting at the corner of my vision. I willed it out of my way, only catching a few words of the paragraph as I focused on ducking its first flying pass at my head.

[Razorclasp - Level 3] “These winged arachnids are really more like gliders than flyers. They crawl up tall trees, then drift down in search of prey. Razorclasps digest their meals by spraying a superheated, caustic liquid from their anus. This way, they can eat prey that would otherwise be too large for their relatively small bodies. This message was definitely not written by your cheerleader.”

The only part that registered was the part about superheated butt juice.

I chucked my potion bottle at it when it came for another attack, but missed. I fell to my stomach to avoid the snap of its claws when it wooshed over my head with a flap of veiny wings. Its dangling legs all ended in razor-sharp talons, which snapped together with a bony clink right where my head was.

With a pounding heart, I got to my feet and tried to form a plan.

The flying spider thing wants to stab and slash your head off, so don’t let it?

It was an uninspiring plan, but I didn’t have time. It was already banking hard and knifing through the air toward me again. All eight of its legs were pulled back like it was ready to strike.

I wasn’t taking it out of the air with the small tomte knife, and my potion was on cooldown. But maybe…

I watched it get closer. I could see the black hairs rustling along its thick, segmented legs.

Closer… I saw the sharp teeth at the base where the legs met, thick and deadly enough to remove my whole arm if it wanted to. I didn’t move this time, even when it was on a collision course with my face.

I yanked the helmet off my head, clutching it by one horn. At the last second, I swung it overhand at the razorclasp. I missed impaling it on the horn, but it slammed into the rounded top of the helmet with a thump.

It fell to the ground on its back, hairy legs twitching and scrabbling as it tried to right itself. Before I could think to be terrified, I took the bottom of the helmet in both hands, raised it over my head, and slammed it horn-first into the creature.

Warm, yellow, mucus-like liquid burst out of the punctured carapace. The legs curled in, trying to grip at the helmet with their clawed tips. Boney talons dug into my forearm, but I pulled away, raising the helmet and slamming it down again and again until the razorclasp finally stopped twitching.

Panting for breath, I stared down at the mangled corpse.

It was like a bat and a tarantula had an angry, red-legged baby. One of the big horns had jammed straight into the razorclasp’s mouth, where it was now leaking bubbly yellow ichor.

It seemed dead, but I wasn’t about to forget the threat of digestive liquid spraying out of its anus at me.

Adrenaline was still thumping through me, making my body feel twitchy and hot. I glanced around, suddenly even more certain this place was dangerous as hell. What if I hadn’t been looking when that thing attacked?

Gross or not, I slid the filthy helmet back on my head, trying to ignore the feeling of the sticky yellow gunk dripping on my shoulders.

Better to be disgusted than dead, I supposed.

Fresh text waited for me once the helmet was on.

You’ve reached level 5!

[1] Unread Accomplishment. Read now?

Level 5… It was such an odd concept. I couldn’t say if I felt magically stronger because of the improved levels. I tested my muscles, jumped once or twice, and then shrugged. Maybe it happened in very, very small increments? More likely, there was just too much I didn’t understand, and worrying over it for now was no use.

I started walking again, looking up and behind me every few seconds at first. I was still terrified, yes. But I also felt a little budding sense of accomplishment. I’d survived. Twice. It hadn’t been pretty, but I was beginning to imagine that maybe I really could do this. Maybe the resourcefulness and ability to think on my feet from working in the ambulance translated here.

Whether my confidence was slightly boosted or not, I still wouldn’t let my guard down.

I kept half an eye out for herbs, another half an eye for razorclasps, and one pair of tensed buttcheeks primed for whatever else might be in these woods.

Gingerly, I touched the places where the creature scratched and sliced me. None of them felt too deep, but the one on my back hurt the worst—assuming I wasn’t counting the stab wound from the tomte, that is.

On a whim, I tried to pull up some kind of combat notifications. I was surprised to find a quick list of what attacked me, the initial tooltip I’d been shown, and the fact that I resisted something called “Razor Venom.”

I felt a fresh wave of appreciation towards the former me. I really knew what I was doing when I left myself this helmet, didn’t I? It made me even more hungry to figure out how the potion bottle worked. It must be a great tool if it was even half as useful as the helmet.

I read the accomplishment notification.

[Common Accomplishment] Kill (1) wild beast. [Reward - Common Survival Token] “Oh, by the way. I heard your question earlier. I’m not allowed to tell you who I am. You’ll just have to decide if that’s because I like to retain an air of alluring mystery or if it’s because somebody is absolutely no fun. I’ll give you a hint: both options might be correct! By the way, you did great back there. Apparently, people are not supposed to come out here alone when they’re as low-level as you. Do you know how far back I had to go in the records to find somebody who survived one of those things alone at your level? Have you considered finding friends? It really might improve your odds of survival. Not that you aren’t doing wonderful, of course. Really, you’re doing amazing. Keep it up!”

I shook my head. “Thanks?” I wasn’t even going to begin unpacking how weird it felt to be talking to… whoever that was. “And I’d love to find some people,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Trust me. I don’t want to be out here by myself, either.”

Of course, no answer came. It was like playing a slow, unpredictable game of telephone with my secret messenger.

I sighed and gave the dead creature a look. Loot everything, right? But it was just a mess of broken carapace, some kind of pink, spongy meat, and yellow gunk. I decided it was probably one of those cases where I could get away with not looting something and carried on.

I continued plucking anything that looked like it could be a potion ingredient as I walked, including a pretty cool mushroom that looked like dead people’s fingers. They smelled terrible, though, so I was extra relieved I could stash them in my inventory.

“Just throw the stinking dead people finger fungus in your magical, invisible inventory,” I muttered to myself. “How nice. You’re definitely not losing your mind.” I sighed. It was better not to think too hard about any of this. Levels, experience, floating text from my magical helmet, wild gnomes, and flying spiders? Totally normal. I just had to hope I wasn’t drooling and head-butting a padded wall somewhere, imagining everything.

But if I looked past the danger, I could imagine enjoying all of this. It was a whole new world. I could track my progress with levels and ranks. Presumably, I could find civilization and better equip myself with things like armor, weapons, and even classes. It was all completely wild and made me feel like I’d woken up inside a video game.

Then again, video games were something I enjoyed from the comfort of an office chair or my couch, soda to one side and a bag of snacks to the other. The stakes here couldn’t be more different. All I had to do was think about the two people I’d seen killed or imagine how one decision could’ve left me dead after my encounter with the tomte or the razorclasp.

The danger was real. The sadness at what I’d left behind and lost was real, too. But I was here. This was it, now. Maybe it made me crazy, but I had to admit I was more than a little excited by the possibilities of this new world. The gamer in me couldn’t help wanting to level up, get stronger, and test my capabilities here. On top of it all, I knew I apparently had a huge advantage over everybody else on Eros. The accomplishment had told me I was the first to activate a prestige mode. I could equip two classes. That had to be a good thing, along with all the other perks.

I was actually smiling as I walked now. And then my light mood evaporated when I heard a heavy crack and crunching, like something huge moving through the trees up ahead.

Fresh terror rose up in the back of my throat like bile. I rushed to the biggest tree I could find and used it to shield myself. I waited, watching wide-eyed as I waited to see what was coming.

It looked like several trees started to tip over simultaneously, but then I realized I was looking at legs. Long, twisted tendrils of wood were bending and creaking under heavy weight. My gaze drifted upward, but the tops of the trees completely obscured the rest of the creature.

Whatever it was, it must have been four or five stories tall. Judging by the spacing between the six legs, it was as long as a school bus.

I held my breath, not daring to move until it had passed and disappeared into the trees. I didn’t move until I strained my ears for sound and heard nothing for a long time.

I swallowed hard, then crept out from my hiding spot. All thoughts of searching for herbs or playing with my potion bottle evaporated for the moment. I could save my dreams of advancement and gaining power for later. Right now, I needed to survive, above all else. That meant keeping a low profile and finding something to eat or drink. I also very much wanted to get the hell out of this forest, especially if it meant finding a town or city.

I ran through a quick mental checklist.

Don’t die to a monster. Find something to drink. Find something to eat. Figure out how to make a potion so I can test out my probably badass “weapon,” AKA, potion bottle. Most importantly? Find a town. I had reward tokens waiting to claim, but I'd need to get myself to civilization to do it.