And so, the first face Mumu saw when he emerged from the Pod he appeared in after being pulled into the light of the God in Waiting was that of the one who would hold his fate.
It was a boy who looked like the default protagonist in GOG.
He had pure white hair, pale skin and grey eyes that were lined with tears and rain from the dark cloudy skies above.
He was also clad in a grey jumpsuit and, according to the lore of the game, he was a clone who had just escaped a secret facility near the border where the armies of the Saints and Cultists were at a tense standstill.
During the normal sequence of events, the player, one of the clones, managed to escape the clutches of their creators and, after sneaking through a scrapyard, they would find their first KVL in a Pod.
One sent from above as if it was a gift from the gods themselves.
The thing is, the rarity of one’s first KVL wasn’t guaranteed.
“Hey! Hey, you! Can you hear me?” The boy fearfully called while shaking a disoriented Mumu.
“Hands off, pal.” Mumu yawned while stretching her arms.
“We have to get out of here! It is not safe!” Boy’s words were a desperate whisper but Mumu knew that, if this really was like the world of GOG, they wouldn’t get attacked until they reached the edge of the scrapyard so she dismissively waved her hands.
“Alright, alright. Gimme a second.” She groaned in the same way an older person would as she stepped out of her Pod, even though her movements were light and painless.
She looked around and saw that she was indeed in the same scrapyard from the game, only it felt entirely real.
She looked herself over and saw that she was still in her slender, feminine form.
The boy muttered all kinds of things while she moved her arms and legs experimentally, after which she took deep, painless breaths.
She then nodded to herself while placing her hands on her hips.
Either she was still in her hospital bed back on earth and was having a really realistic dream or, more excitingly, she had indeed finally died and had somehow been reborn in the world of GOG.
She didn’t even know how to begin to make sense of it, but it felt right.
As if… this was where she was always meant to end up.
BUT WHY WAS SHE A ONE-STAR KVL AND NOT THE PROTAGONIST?!
She looked her stats over again and frowned because it just didn’t make sense.
“Hey, are you listening?”
Mumu finally turned her clear gaze to the man.
The label on his jumpsuit read “115”, so she decided to call him that.
- Name: 115
- Title: None
- Race: Human
- Age: 19
- Gender: Male
- Class: ??
- Affiliation: None
- Actuality Level: 1
Attributes
- Health Points (HP): 100/100
- Realstone Shards: 0
- Damage Reduction (DR): 5%
- Affinity: (PHY)
Combat Statistics
- Physical Damage (PHY): 1
- Fire Damage (FIR): 0
- Frost Damage (FRO): 0
- Divine Damage (DIV): 0
- Malignant Damage (MAL): 0
Skills:
Equipment:
“What?”
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“This-This place is not safe! They w-will hurt us if they catch us.”
Mumu felt a wave of sympathy after realizing that the boy, if they really were in the world of GOG, had experienced an unimaginable amount of pain and urgently wanted to be free, so she decided to help her with that before anything.
“Alright. Let’s go—”
Mumu let out a terrified scream as something suddenly shot through 115’s arm, tearing it off and sending the young man crashing backward.
Mumu looked to the south and saw, hovering above the hills of rust and metal, two Patrol Drones that were rapidly approaching.
- Name: Patrol Drone
- Title: None
- Race: Automaton
- Age: ??
- Gender: None
- Class: ??
- Affiliation: Cultist
- Actuality Level: 1
Attributes
- Health Points (HP): 250/250
- Realstone Shards: 0
- Damage Reduction (DR): 5%
- Affinity: (PHY)
Combat Statistics
- Physical Damage (PHY): 15
- Fire Damage (FIR): 0
- Frost Damage (FRO): 0
- Divine Damage (DIV): 0
- Malignant Damage (MAL): 15
Skills:
Equipment:
Mumu froze as the sounds of gunfire filled the air.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening.
The Drones were supposed to wait by the edge of the zone.
Why were they actively hunting 115?
Would they want to kill her too?
Mumu’s eyes shook as she saw bullets striking the ground near the boy.
She bit her teeth and, before she could think any further about anything, she grabbed a bleeding 115 and threw him into her pearlescent Pod which she immediately closed.
She then closed her eyes and flinched as the drones reached the Pod which they began shooting at, but since it was made from materials that were otherworldly, it took no visible damage.
Mumu would have let out a relieved sigh, but she knew that things were different now.
She couldn’t treat the drones as simple bots in a game.
They had most likely reported the situation to their masters and more trouble would come soon if nothing was done.
But what could she do?
She could wrap her mind around having to fight a human, but these were machines that were built to kill.
What if they killed her?
What would happen then?
Mumu wasn’t sure but she felt as though she wouldn’t get another chance like this again so she needed to be careful.
She couldn’t recall if the character she appeared as was in GOG, but she did have an axe which, as if responding to her thoughts, appeared in her hand from a cloud of ominous black-red smoke.
The Profaned Axe, as it was called, was as low tier as weapons came with the only silver lining being that it also dealt Malignant Damage.
This was good because ordinary enemies without a (MAL) attribute took more (MAL) damage by a factor of 1.5x, and Malignant Damage also applied a debuff which ate away 10% of a target’s HP when applied, something Mumu knew like the back of her hand.
Her axe did 15DMG (PHY) and 15DMG (MAL), meaning that each hit she landed on the drones would go for 38DMG, which, unfortunately, would be reduced by 45% due to the high DR the drones had, but anything would die if you hit it enough times.
And so, after taking a deep breath, she dashed out of the Pod, leaving it closed as she landed beneath the hovering drones that had 250HP each.
She then dashed around the robots, testing just how fast her new legs could run and how much endurance she had.
Back on earth, she could barely jog for thirty seconds and, in GOG, the controls were stiff and unresponsive but now, she was sprinting through piles of scrap faster than the robots could turn and so most of their bullets struck the ground behind her.
She took cover, and her pointed ears perked up as the drones stopped firing.
It seemed as though they were trying to keep their guns from overheating, which served as an opening.
Mumu dashed out of cover, jumped almost two meters into the air and struck the top of the drone, lodging her axe into it and hanging from the robot which was around the size of a washing machine.
- Name: Patrol Drone 1
- Health Points (HP): 208/250 (MAL)
She had initially planned to quicky hit it and run around again but hadn’t expected her axe to get stuck in the drone, which wasn’t possible in game, so she instead fearfully held onto the drone just as the other one began firing again.
It struck its fellow drone thirty times before stopping to cool its guns again, but it had already damaged the first drone to the point that all Mumu needed to do was hit it once, and it fell to the ground as a pile of twisted metal.
Mumu landed near another heap of scrap which she hid behind as the second drone stared firing again and, just as before, when it stopped to cool, she bolted out from cover, jumped onto it and tried hitting its guns, which protruded from its pentagonal hull.
She succeeded, hitting both guns twice, damaging the two barrels and prompting the drone to spin wildly as it tried shaking her off.
- Name: Patrol Drone 2
- Health Points (HP): 191/250 (MAL)
Mumu hissed out every breath and her vision sharpened as she turned to her next target, the vents which the drone used to vent its internal heat.
She knew that it would take far too much time to hack away at its armour, so while hanging onto the drone, she hacked away at the vents, which bent inwards violently after Mumu’s fourth hit.
- Name: Patrol Drone 2
- Health Points (HP): 68/250 (MAL)
She jumped off of the drone and landed gracefully a few meters away.
The drone, in its malfunctioning frenzy, charged at Mumu as if to ram into her, but she easily jumped over it, letting it crash into the ground.
She turned to face the now stranded and overheating drone, slowly walking towards it and stepping on its now scarred hull.
In this moment, as fear, adrenaline and a burning will to live filled her mind, she stood triumphant.
Even if the victory was minor, she had earned it and… it felt good.
She hacked at the drone a few more times until it completely stopped moving and quickly shifted all of her focus back to 115 who she had left in the Pod.
She returned to his side and winced upon seeing that his grey tracksuit was soaked with his blood.
Mumu didn’t know much about medicine or first aid, so in a moment of sheer desperation, she gently picked up the unconscious boy and exited the pod.
More trouble was set to come if they didn’t leave the scrapyard, and so she began lightly jogging to the south as indicated by the compass that appeared at the top of her vision.
The reason why Mumu was heading south was because they were currently in Cultist territory and getting captured would mean a fate worse than death, so she needed to get to the parts of the world that were occupied by the forces of the Saints, which was in line with what was set to happen in GOG.
She looked at 115 as she ran and held him a little tighter as his skin grew paler.
She wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be okay, but things were so different that she didn’t even know where to begin.
She eventually arrived at the edge of scrapyard which sat on the edge of a cliff at the foot of which was a river. A river which went from the northern mountains to the far south and into Saint territory.
Now, in GOG, this is where the protagonist would take his first KVL and make a jump for it, but the cliff was forty meters tall, and Mumu was incredibly afraid of heights.
This fear, however, was superseded by the sound of incoming drones, and so, after taking a deep breath, she jumped into the river below, hoping she wouldn’t hit the bottom and die.