“What happened before we all resurrected?” Arthur insisted.

  Johan passed his hand through his hair. He had shown so much energy while walking through the woods. Encouraging everybody. Getting to know them. But now the exhaustion seemed to have finally reached him.

  “Each general appeared in the temple of his god.”

  “What?” Arthur insisted. “Whose temple?”

  “I don’t really understand the specifics. They were never explained. But each general has been chosen by a god of this world. And we appeared in the temple of the god who chose us.”

  “But why?”

  Johan raised his arms, getting up from his chair.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a wager among them. They didn’t give us any explanation.”

  He walked from one side of the tent to the other and started explaining.

  “So we each appeared in our god’s temple. When I first opened my eyes, I found myself sitting on a wooden bench, my head slightly tilted, my chin resting on my closed hands, as if I had been praying, or thinking deeply. And in front of me, there was a massive statue of some sort of military leader, raising his sword towards the ceiling.”

  “There were two other generals sitting next to me—at that point I didn’t know who they were, but later I learned they were Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan. We were sitting on the first bench of a beautiful cathedral, made of pure marble, with golden statues depicting heroes and painted murals with epic scenes of battle.”

  “It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. And as you’ll have guessed, I was scared shitless.”

  “And suddenly a soft, raspy voice started talking behind us. And I looked back, and there, sitting on the bench behind ours, there was a man, a very old man, older than time, older than anything I had ever seen, dressed in a worn-out black tunic that covered his whole body.”

  “His eyes never left the statue with the raised sword, standing in the middle of the cathedral, where the altar should have been. And he started talking, and his tone was the one you would use in confession, when whispering your sins to God, begging for His forgiveness.”

  “And he told us that we were the punishment; we were the consequence; that we had been chosen to inflict a new apocalypse on the infidel people of Terastes…”

  “For their heresy they shall be punished, for their pride they shall be humbled, for their daring to dream of freedom they shall suffer… he said.”

  “And then he added: For reminding the gods of their own sins, they shall see their children burn… And his voice almost broke when he said it. And he never stopped looking at the massive statue of the man with the raised sword.”

  “And I honestly was hyperventilating. Shaking to the point that the bench we were sitting on was trembling. That’s when I lost Genghis Khan’s respect, by the way. You should have seen his look of contempt. Julius Caesar was a little kinder, and he put a hand on my shoulder to try to comfort me. And we kept listening to the strange speech of the old man…”

  Johan paused, shaking his head at the memory. His voice had gone low and hoarse. Mark interrupted for a question:

  “So, the generals you appeared with were Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar? You actually know them?”

  “Yes, I appeared with Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan—and yes, I do know them. We were all chosen by the same god. I didn’t know back then, but it was unique for a god to only have three chosen generals. From what I saw afterward, the average was more like twenty generals per god.”

  “So the old man continued talking, and in a tone a little bit less formal, he said that we should spend a few days getting used to everything, to understand the Laws written on the stone; and he got up and walked out of the cathedral, his steps echoing in the tall ceilings. And he was gone; and then, and only then, we could move. Suddenly we could get up from the bench, explore the cathedral.”

  “After spending a couple of minutes exploring the cathedral and realizing it was empty, we left. To be more accurate, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe anymore. I started running away as fast as possible. I slammed my shoulder into the cathedral’s massive doors—and found myself in a giant, echoing catacomb.”

  “And I mean absolutely giant—it was so filled with temples that they got lost in the distance. The god that had chosen me had the newest temple, and it was standing at the highest point. It was as if each temple was constructed next to the last. And the farther you moved down, the more consumed by time they were. Some of the temples, especially at the end of the line… They weren’t buildings anymore—they were fossils, half-swallowed by the stone and time itself.”

  “Some temples had already collapsed. And nobody resurrected in the collapsed temples. I found that interesting, but…”

  “Focus on the Laws, maybe?”, Mark said, already invested in the story.

  “Oh, yeah. Sure,” Johan seemed to be enjoying having an interested audience. “Well, the Laws were at the depths of the catacomb. We were the farthest ones away from them. And the people who walked out of the older temples were the closest ones. The Laws were massive. They dwarfed everything—the temples included. And they were… changing. Slowly. Always changing.”

  “What were the Laws?” insisted Mark.

  “They weren’t written with words. It was something deeper. Half math, half music? I cannot explain it, not really. I shouldn’t have been capable of even understanding them…”

  Johan seemed to have an idea.

  “Actually, you’re the only ones who have spoken with somebody from another army, so I’m sure you must have noticed that we’re all speaking the same language, right? Like, that’s fucking crazy. We are thinking in the same language as Roman people. I was speaking normally with generals who were born four thousand years before me. That’s fascinating. Language shapes our minds and our thinking, so only God knows the consequences of this change.”

  “Well, for some fucking reason, I could read those Laws; all the generals could. At least the most basic Laws. The most complex ones made my nose bleed. I’m sure a genius could spend all his life studying those forms and only scrape the surface. But even if I could read the basic stuff, I couldn’t understand it. Like, all the things I was reading made no sense. They were absurd.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “No sense at all. It talked about Levels and Classes and Skills, and how each person couldn’t hold more than a hundred Levels, and it talked about death not being possible to cage, and shit like that. It made no sense. And yet, I spent so many hours staring at it. More than anybody. The changing nature of the puzzle was hypnotic…. Brutal. There was something cruel in those Laws…”

  “During those few days, I met many generals. And I realized what I was facing against—they were the greatest generals in the history of our world. I was the only one who had never fought a war, never killed a man. So why was I chosen?”

  “And then a few days later, the old man came back, and it was time to choose the men in my army. Each of us would be able to choose two thousand men among the people who had served with us. Many generals took days deciding. I just picked everybody I was offered and walked out, feeling disgusted with myself for condemning you all to slaughter.”

  “Well, some hours later I went to sleep in a cot in the cathedral of my god, and just before I fell asleep, I felt a voice deep within my soul:

  [Level 1 - General of the Apocalypse Unlocked]

  [Basic Morale Unlocked]”

  “I wasn’t the only one. When I left my temple, I saw many other generals discussing the voices. Some were scared. Others curious. And everybody was trying to understand what the voices meant. Of course, I understood it at once; I have played enough RPGs. So I ignored them all, and ran all the way to the depths of the catacombs, to look again at the Laws.”

  Johan looked at them, as if trying to make them realize the importance of what he had seen.

  “Understand that at that point I had been terrified. I was sure that I was going to be killed as soon as I resurrected.”

  “And I arrived at the depths of the cave, and I looked up, and I fell to my knees, because I saw our salvation.”

  “There was a hard limit of a hundred Levels… No creature can have more than a hundred levels. Until this point, I hadn’t understood what it meant. Now I knew there had to be Classes and Skills in the world I was going to… And more important… Before, I had seen a symbol I understood, although not having the context, I couldn’t understand its significance.”

  “What symbol?” asked Arthur, frowning.

  “The most beautiful one. The dream of every businessman. The hook that destroys every victim of a Ponzi scheme… Exponential growth. The beautiful hockey stick starting at zero and growing exponentially towards the impossible dream… towards glorious infinity.”

  Mark and Arthur looked at each other with some confusion. Tobias interjected himself for the first time. He had been listening from a side of the tent.

  “Imagine something that’s constantly being multiplied by two. Starting on one, it would be one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred twenty-eight, and in no time at all you would reach millions, then billions, then trillions.”

  “Yes! Exactly! And I understood what it meant…”

  “What? What did it mean?” Mark asked.

  “It meant victory! It meant our fucking victory!”

  “What? Why?”

  “Levels must provide exponential growth! Like, the difference in power between a level 10 and a 20 will be much smaller than the difference in power of a level 40 and a level 50. The higher you reach, the more power you’ll get with every level you acquire. This is our edge!”

  “When the other generals think about a level 90 [Archer], they think of a very precise archer, who can throw an arrow half a mile in the distance. You know, the best archer in history. When I think about a level 90 [Archer], I think about somebody who might throw arrows ten miles away, arrows that explode and take down fighter jets. You understand? They lack the proper perspective on this.”

  “How do you know what the other generals think?”

  “I made fucking sure that they thought like that! War can be fought in many ways. And disinformation is one of them. It’s funny, but among all those legendary generals, I was the first one to start throwing some swings—even if they were not physical.”

  Johan realized the confusion of his audience.

  “I manipulated their expectations. I anchored them to a certain viewpoint. I told stories about video games in the future, in our future, and how somebody with a level 100 would be the best archer in the world. Not a superhuman one, mind you, I made sure they just thought about a very talented archer. You know, I talked about games like FIFA and shit like that, where the best player might have a level 94. And I worked really, really, fucking hard to make sure everybody kept their thinking linear. Small.”

  “At that point, I was becoming a little bit of the pet of many generals. Everybody knew I didn’t fit with them. But some of them liked to have me around. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it made them feel good to dwarf somebody, when they felt small compared to some of the legends they were constantly facing.”

  “I told them stories of how their empires ended, what happened with their children—some of this I made up, I always enjoyed history, but not to that level. I also listened to their war stories. You wouldn’t believe some of them. Honestly, I had the protagonists themselves in front of me, telling me the stories with all manner of details; and I still didn’t believe some of them. Like, some of those dudes might be legends, but they’re also full of shit. They love to brag.”

  “And I took advantage of their trust to manipulate their thinking and expectations.”

  “I acted like a bumbling fool. As if I didn’t know the value of secrets, the value of information. I acted all excited and told them all these little secrets about the world. At some point, there was a negotiation with the old man, to decide the equipment of our armies. And I asked him about Levels, and he told me that somebody with zero experience as a swordsman, if he gained five or ten levels on the Class—he would get some basic proficiency in it. I immediately shared it with everybody, almost jumping around with excitement.”

  “That got many generals interested. Who wouldn’t be tempted to have your soldier train for a few weeks and gain five levels in archery? Or maybe ten. Just enough to gain a basic proficiency that on Earth might have taken six months of basic training to achieve?”

  “So?” Arthur asked.

  “Don’t you get it? Eventually, they will realize that Pericles, the Athenian soldier can become a powerful [Mage]. But by that point he might already be a level twenty [Warrior]. And level eight [Archer]. A level three fucking [Cook]. And a level seven [Gambler].

  “And then his growth as a [Mage] will be slower, and his maximum potential stunted.”

  “And maybe they’ll say, well, we’ll forget about the [Mage] class, we’ll keep him specialized as a great [Warrior], but even that class will be stunned, because a big chunk of all his levels have been wasted making him a half decent archer, a mediocre cook, a degenerate gambler, and a mage aficionado.”

  Johan seemed to realize their disbelief. He insisted:

  “It’s our edge! This is why the fuck I had been chosen for this… I have actual knowledge on this shit! None of this will matter today. Or in a week. But I’m thinking about months from now. Or even years from now. It could mean everything when the endgame arrives.”

  “The endgame?”

  “Yeah. Shit will get much crazier than now.”

  Silence. Doubt. Johan made a last plea to try to convince them. One last attempt to protect his position as a leader:

  “I fell into despair. I succumbed to hopelessness. But not anymore. I refuse to become a fucking pawn to be discarded. I died too young on Earth, way before I achieved my true potential. I absolutely intend to achieve fucking greatness in this world. I’m not cannon fodder. We are not cannon fodder. This is a plan. This will work. We will thrive. We will win this fucking war. We will conquer this world. I promise you, guys. I didn’t bring you to be lambs to be slaughtered. Follow me, trust me, and I will give you glory.”

  There was silence in the tent. Mark remembered for a moment a voice in his headphones, the voice of a Swedish man who always had doubts about everything. About women. About work. About fucking video games… And now he was asking them without hesitation, without breaking eye contact, to follow him into a war against the most powerful generals in history…

  Arthur broke the silence. His sword was still leaning on the table. His previous threats hanging in the air.

  “It’s not enough, man,” he said. “What you have explained is... It’s not enough.”

  Because even now, with a sword aimed at your throat, you’re still lying to us, my beautiful Swedish friend, Mark thought. You motherfucker.