Infinite Leveling

  Flint Lovewell was a solitary man, with no more passion left in life. In his early thirties, he no longer enjoyed anything. Video games, movies, music, books, he hardly found any enjoyment in anything for very long. He’d also essentially given up on having a real relationship.

  But one day, he found an old game on the web. A hack and slash action rpg that promised to have infinite leveling and infinite content. It was some sort of procedurally generated thing, at least at end game. It was abandonware, and it was old enough that it should run on his crappy pc.

  Thankfully, it ran well, and his computer seemed to get any sort of virus. He found himself enjoying it a lot, despite the dated graphics. It had a great artstyle, and the combat felt good too. Usually, he could enjoy something for maybe a few hours, or days, before he was bored with it. But with this, he kept going.

  First weeks, and then months. Flint explored the world, several worlds or dimensions, whatever they were supposed to be. He killed an innumerable amount of enemies, and gained hundreds, then thousands of levels. He spent time on the skill system, the gearing, and somehow he never got bored with it.

  When the company cut the hours at his slightly above minimum wage office job to avoid paying him insurance and benefits as a full time worker, he didn’t care. That just meant he had more time to play the game as a part time worker.

  After a few years playing Aeons of Eternity, he started reaching further and further, over level nine thousand. He could barely find anyone talking about the game, and no one seemed to have gone past the first few thousand levels. He couldn’t really find much useful information about it.

  He lost himself in the worlds, and in a way, felt as if he’d finally cured his depression. If you could really call spending most of his free time playing an old action rpg a good thing. But it was better than he felt the last few years before playing it.

  Eventually, he reached level ten thousand, and received a special message.

  [Congratulations, you have been chosen for bla bla bla, tonight bla bla bla.]

  He usually skipped dialogue, not that there was much in this particular game, or most action rpg’s, but he wasn’t really interested in the story. He continued playing for a bit, and then went to bed.

  When he went to sleep, he dreamed that he was in some strange void flecked with stars. It sort of looked like the character creation screen for Aeons of Eternity. Strangely, nothing seemed to be happening. He just stood there, and eventually started to look around.

  It was a very realistic dream, though not very exciting. Soon he found a large book on some weird altar, and approached it. He opened it up and looked through the first few pages.

  The character sheet.

  Flint Lovewell

  Strength 2

  Dexterity 1

  Constitution 1

  Power 2

  Energy 1

  Spirit 1

  Strength affected how much damage you dealt with physical attacks, not just melee, ranged weapons, like bows and throwing weapons.

  Dexterity affected your accuracy, dodge chance, things like that, and your chance to deal, as well as avoid, a critical strike. At least with physical attacks.

  Constitution increased your health and physical stamina, which was really just for running and dodge rolling, as well as giving slight increases to physical protection and resistance to poison and venom and everything. It wasn’t really worth investing a whole lot into.

  Power was like strength but for magic, it increased the damage of all of your spells.

  Energy was essentially mana, just used to use any special abilities and cast spells. And of course, since this is an action rpg, you just want enough energy and energy regeneration to spam your main ability and occasionally a few other abilities. Not really something you want to put a whole lot of points into, unless you’re using some kind of crazy build.

  Spirit increased your resistance to magic and most elemental attacks, but at low rates, similar to constitution for physical attacks, it also increased your energy regeneration slightly, and is required in higher amounts to equip more powerful enchanted items, and it affected the amount of enchanted items your character could have equipped at once. It didn’t require a high investment to be fully equipped however, but he couldn’t really remember the values needed, having long since passed them.

  3 points available.

  This game makes the early game pretty difficult, your character starts out sort of weak, you’re basically just killing sort of large rats and slow zombies and everything, until you start leveling up enough to start fighting stronger enemies.

  Flint put a point in strength, dexterity, and constitution. He wanted to be able to hit hard enough to actually hurt the enemy, and not take forever to kill them, to have enough accuracy to actually hit them in the first place, and to have enough hp to avoid getting killed in a couple of hits.

  Even if this is a dream, he might as well try to make a good build.

  On the next page, he got to choose a class. The class you start with really just determined your starting location on the starting skill tree. Well, more of a collection of grids and orbs and such really.

  Soldier or rogue? He didn’t feel like using some dodge heavy build where you had to worry about taking a few too many hits early on when he was just playing this in his dreams, so he chose soldier. Obviously there were other choices, but they focused on magic damage, healing, ranged damage, and summoning pets and such. Not really his playstyle. And he wasn’t into the classes that transformed into things either really.

  He went to the next page, which had a very detailed drawing of the starting area for soldiers going over two pages. It was a bit hard to see, and he didn’t know how he’d move it around to see further past the initial starting area. As soon as he though this, the page was projected in front of him, almost as if it was a kind of star map.

  He supposed that a dream responding to your thoughts made sense. He had limited starting options, but from what he could remember it seemed like the same skills from the game. He had three points to work with.

  He put the first point into his default attack replacement, an ability that cost one energy. Momentum. It was simple, and it worked with any melee weapon. You attack, and then as you keep attacking, you swing faster and deal slightly more damage. He put an extra two points into it to upgrade its damage.

  Strangely, he didn’t see any points for his health, or his energy. Maybe he just didn’t want to do math in his dream, or maybe it’s because he didn’t know the formula,not exactly. Either way it didn’t matter.

  Starting gear was a sword and a shield, standard for soldier, and very basic hemphen armor. Which doesn’t really seem like armor.

  Then the story. You enter the town of bla bla bla, The village has been under attack lately by so on and so forth. With sword and shield in hand, you seek to help the villagers as they rebuild and bla bla bla.

  After turning the page again, the world goes dark. Well, it was pretty dark anyway, but much darker. Then Flint opens his eyes to the warm sunlight gently falling down the leaves of a large tree above him.

  He could feel very soft grass under his hands. He was laying on the ground, with a folded up cloth underneath his head. When he sat up, he seemed to be in some sort of garden.

  His shield lay beside him, and his sword was sheathed at his hip. He thought this dream felt realer than anything he’d ever experienced. His sight even seemed better than it was in real life. Which wasn’t hard, he couldn’t see anything very well past his arm’s reach without glasses. And he didn’t often enjoy wearing glasses.

  He also noticed a young woman sitting on a bench in the shade. She smiled and approached him. He was still impressed by his amazing vision, being able to see all of the detail of her face from so far away, even her eye color.

  The blonde woman with blue eyes came close to him.

  “I’m glad to see you’re finally awake. They said you just marched into town looking half asleep, didn’t say a word to anyone, and just layed down. You must be a pretty heavy sleeper, no one could wake you up. I stayed here to make sure you were alright until you woke up.”

  Flint couldn’t remember this person, or anyone really. He stood up wordlessly and looked down at her. She was nearly a foot shorter than he was.

  “Was that yours?” He asked, gesturing to the folded sheet he’d been using as a pillow.

  “Yes, I just thought you could use something to lay on. I figured you were warm enough out here already, and I didn’t want to wake you, since you seemed to be sleeping so peacefully. Or at least we hoped you were sleeping peacefully.”

  Flint stared into her blue eyes, studying the details, everything looked so real. It felt strange not speaking, even if it was a dream. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She said, “So..” She continued. “What brings you out here?”

  “The village has been attacked hasn’t it?”

  “Well, yes sir, many terrible things are happening out there, and this village isn’t exactly safe anymore, so we don’t get many visitors, not that we got many visitors before. Were you attacked coming here?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “No, I just woke up here. I don’t know how I got to this world really, if any of this is real. And I didn’t pay attention to the story. I just know the village is being attacked by some monsters, and I’m here to stop them.”

  There was visible confusion on her face as he told her, but that was quickly replaced with what looked to be a hopeful smile as he told her he’d help.

  He continued. “Do you have anything easy to start with? I just woke up.”

  “Easy?” She asked.

  “To kill.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that sir, if you talk to the mayor or the town guard, I’m sure they could tell you more. And of course, we could always use more guards around for when we get attacked.”

  “Could you take me to them? I’d like to kill something before the town is attacked. It’s safer for everyone that way.”

  “Stopping the monsters before they attack would be preferable, but it’s very dangerous out there, especially at night.”

  “I’ll come back before nightfall then.” He said as he picked up his shield. Afterward he followed the young woman, who was probably in her late teens or early twenties, he couldn’t tell. While he followed her he messed with the straps on his medium sized shield. Some kind of kite shield, which he finally strapped onto his left arm.

  They came to a large wooden building in the center of town, or what he would assume to be the center of town. It looked a bit different from what he remembered. Inside, there were a few men standing around a large map on a large table, discussing plans. The most sharp dressed among them, and one of the older men, he assumed to be the mayor. The rest he assumed were likely some kind of militia or town guard based on the rough clothing and the weapons at their sides.

  “Ah, Mary, and the young soldier’s finally awakened.” Said the mayor. Or at least, probably the mayor.

  “Yes sir, he said he’s here to help fight the monsters!”

  “Oh, that’s good news. So, what’s your name, young man?”

  “Lovewell, Flint Lovewell.” Said Flint, mostly because he found it amusing, but partially because he didn’t know how one was meant to introduce themselves in an old timey medieval fantasy world. He assumed this was reasonable.

  “Well mister Lovewell, I’m the duke of this town, and the surrounding area. What sort of monsters have you slain? We’re glad to have any sort of help we can get, I’d just like to know everyone’s level of experience.”

  “I’ve killed pretty much everything, but that was in a video game. That’s kind of like controlling an avatar in an alternate world. Anyway, after a couple of years I got to level ten thousand, then there was a weird message and I woke up here. After I made a new character, which is myself, in some kind of celestial void.”

  There was silence for a moment, and the mayor finally spoke. “So you’re a powerful sorcerer?”

  “No, I’m a soldier. I don’t have any magic.”

  “Right, were you injured on the way here sir?” Asked the mayor, or the duke, close enough.

  “No, I wasn’t in this world really, not until I woke up. I guess my body just walked here when I was making a character, or a build really. Probably for story reasons.”

  “Right.” The duke said, again. “Is the doctor available?” He asked one of the men near him.

  “No, he died last week sir.” Said the old man.

  “What about the nurse?”

  “She was killed by the doctor after he died. He turned undead unfortunately.”

  “Well, I suppose we’re not equipped to help anyone with much of anything. Do you have any healing potions at least?” Asked the mayor.

  Flint looked at his waist and felt around in some small empty pouches on either side of his belt. Unfortunately, there was nothing in them, hence being referred to as empty.

  “Nah, it’s fine, I’ll just pick some up from the monsters.”

  The duke looked slightly confused. “Most monsters don’t really have potions sir, not any that I’ve seen around these parts anyway.”

  “Oh, well it’s kind of cheating anyway, I’ll just hope I heal enough on my own.” Flint didn’t usually bother getting potions, he preferred using his skills, like a warcry or something, in addition to high life regeneration of course. Early on though it was generally a good idea to have some potions, but of course those cost money, and you started without any. So it was usually better to just get potions from early monsters and treasure chests. Maybe from destroying barrels and boxes, that sort of stuff.

  “Yes.” Said the duke, looking somewhat concerned over the turn of this conversation. “But perhaps you would allow our herbalist to give you one anyway, before you head out?”

  “Sure, if it’s free, I don’t have any gold.”

  “Well, we don’t have very high quality potions, so the healing effect won’t be very strong, and the toxicity will be somewhat higher than the sort we used to make with better ingredients, so try not to take more than one or two quaffs at any time of the day. We’re tight on supplies, but we can give you at least one potion if you’ve come to help us fight the monsters and such Lockwell.”

  “Lovewell.” Flint corrected.

  “Yes, sorry. There’s a lot on my mind. I’d forgotten we don’t have any more doctors or nurses. On account of our doctor eating our nurse.”

  “Alright, so can I get a map with some monster locations or something?”

  With that a few of the men worked on a crude map of the area, circling areas that were likely full of dangerous beasts, and monsters and such, and drawing paths that were presumably safer than the rest when he needed to get back. Presumably so he knew which pathways weren’t worth the time to walk down.

  Flint found the talk about toxicity somewhat strange, but he guessed that was how cooldowns worked, at least with potions. And apparently they were quite long cooldowns if he couldn’t take more than one or two drinks every couple of hours.

  After taking the map, he followed Mary to the herbalist and was handed a glass vial with some dark red liquid. He put it in his pouch on the left, since he used to keep health potions on the left, and mana potions on the right side in the video game.

  Just a bit after, before he was going to leave Mary and the town, one of the men from the meeting, or whatever it was, came up to them.

  “Sorry sir, we were so caught up in everything, we forgot to ask, what are your rates for your work?”

  “Rates?” Flint asked, confused.

  “What do you charge for the work you’ll be doing sir?” The man asked him.

  “I don’t really charge anything, I just go out and kill stuff.”

  Now the man looked somewhat confused. “But you need to eat and sleep don’t you?” He asked.

  “I don’t know, probably. I’ve only been here for a day, I don’t really know all the systems and mechanics and everything. Not in this world anyway.”

  “Right, so you would presumably want food and a place to sleep when you return at least? Perhaps maintenance on your weapon, your clothing repaired if it’s torn?” The man asked.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Great, then we’ll have that ready when you return. I’ll figure out the details sir, and now I’ll leave you to your adventuring.” The man departed quickly, as if he were in a rush to go somewhere.

  Mary led him to the edge of the village, and then he continued on a beaten path toward the forest. Before he left the path, he was attacked. A zombie came shambling towards him. He could hear Mary scream in the distance. He turned to look, she was alright thankfully. She was just screaming because of the zombie apparently.

  He turned back to the zombie. It was drawing closer, and Flint drew his longsword. He’d never used a sword before, but he gave it a try and swung at the zombie. The sword cut into its rotten flesh. The zombie made a weird noise and then swung its arms toward him. He stepped back slightly and avoided them.

  That was sort of unimpressive. He must have just used a basic attack. This time tried to use momentum, the skill, not the term, when he swung his sword. This time he felt something, just a little bit of energy was used, rather than stamina. He also felt the swing and more power, and it seemed like he swung just a bit faster. This time he cut deep, and followed up with another cut, then another. Soon it was like he was Dempsey rolling with a sword. The blows came faster, and harder, and soon he’d chopped the zombie into pieces. It was pretty easy considering he’d chopped its arms off pretty quickly.

  Thankfully his energy didn’t seem to be getting low. But he also felt a bit of a different sort of energy build up for a moment. Was it like experience? He closed his eyes and tried to focus on his status. He found himself in the dark room with the altar and the book. He looked at the first page and at the bottom was his condition. Well rested, well fed. Apparently he needed to eat, or else he might get a debuff for starving.

  That seems kind of unfair however. He didn’t need to sleep or eat in the game. And he didn’t even have an inventory, how was he going to carry a bunch of food around everywhere? Actually, didn’t he have an inventory? He saw what he had equipped in the book before he made his character, or build, and it looked like the normal inventory screen, pretty much.

  He flipped through the first few pages and found the inventory. There were a bunch of empty lines. Maybe he could store something in it? Before he could consider more of this abstract book based storage system in his mind, or in his soul, whatever, he heard screaming, and strange zombie-like noises.

  He opened his eyes, in reality, not in his mind, although this reality was possibly a dream, so words are relative, but he found the source of the screams. It was Mary, pointing at the zombies. There were two zombies, both slowly approaching him. Damn, he didn’t have the aoe upgrade for momentum yet. He’d have to try not just standing in front of them without moving. Possibly fighting them one on one.

  He walked up to the zombie on the left and started swinging with momentum. This time he tried not to waste extra swings, and he tried chopping its head off. It worked and the zombie fell down in two swings.

  He walked over to the other zombie and chopped its head off with one swing. The momentum stacks each lasted for a few seconds and stacked up to twenty five. They also gave you a small movement speed bonus to help you go between enemies and keep the stacks going. It was called momentum after all. It was only one percent movement speed per stack, but he still felt a bit faster.

  That was pretty nice, but he saw more zombies coming toward him from further down the trail, so he charged forward to try and keep his momentum going, literally and figuratively. Literally on multiple levels actually.

  There were five zombies near each other, and he bounced between them. It’s possible that aiming for something’s weak spots counts as a critical hit in this version of the game, and dexterity of course helps you with control, your speed and accuracy, hence helping you hit the weak spots and get a critical hit. But presumably you had to aim for something actually important, rather than just hitting them in the shins over and over again. Or maybe hitting them in the shins over and over again would eventually make them explode, and that’s how you’d really get a critical hit.

  As he carefully ran between the next ten zombies deeper in the forest and cut their heads off, he pondered this, and whether an enemy’s weak spots were just damage multipliers and critical hits were then separate multipliers that could be added to the multiplier. Does it stack with debuffs?

  He couldn’t really focus on these things as now he was fighting fifteen zombies, and more kept coming. Unfortunately a zombie lunged for him, and bit his shin quite forcefully. It tore through his hemphen pants quite easily. They must have had a very low armor value, though he could remember if he saw it in his inventory.

  He stabbed down at the zombie with momentum and cut its head off. Thankfully stabbing and slashing after slashing counted. More unfortunately however, the pain was excruciating, having a zombie chew on your bones is quite unpleasant, very painful actually. One of his least favorite things truthfully.

  He shouted in agony. He’d hoped there were some sort of pain reduction skills, or this would be pretty unfortunate playing a melee character. The pain did however confirm that this was mostly likely, and almost certainly real. Unless he was in a coma having his leg chewed on by a beaver or something. But that seemed unlikely. He didn’t have very good health insurance, and only basic dental. And he hadn’t seen a beaver in real life, so it seemed somewhat unlikely that a beaver had broken into his apartment and started biting his left leg, and his left leg specifically.

  Even more unfortunately, he was feeling low on energy, and a few dozen more zombies were coming. Fortunately however, as he killed the last few zombies of the previous group, he leveled up. And like in Aeons of Eternity, his energy had been fully restored when he leveled up. Unlike in the video game however, his health hadn’t been restored. If he was getting any sort of healing from leveling up it must have been a very slow sort of healing over time.

  He’d have a few points to spend to make this more bearable, if he could use them before while fighting, or right after killing the next few dozen zombies in front of him. Mary was still screaming, at least she was safe.