Chapter 1: New Game

You ever do something you know you’ll regret immediately? Something so obviously and absolutely stupid, you question your own intelligence even as you’re actively following through with your terrible decision?

Well, I doubt anyone can top my single-digit IQ play of the day; especially today. You see, unlike people with functioning survival instincts, I decided to play the hero during the mall shooting which I just so unfortunately happened to be caught up in.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, honestly. One second I was minding my own business, walking around and trying to kill some time before it was time to go to the company holiday party, and in the next, there were rapid loud bangs going off right next to me and people screaming all around me. It took a couple moments, but I quickly found the shooter; he had been just a couple dozen steps away and looking away, with his back towards me as he gunned down the people in front of him.

Instead of running, as I’d previously imagined I would have done in that exact situation, I charged the psycho instead. I was close enough that I didn’t manage to get up to my maximum sprinting speed, but as a 6’3” 210-pound guy who regularly lifted weights that didn’t change the fact that I still hit the considerably smaller man like a runaway semi.

Unfortunately, just tackling the guy didn’t knock him out and in the process of trying to take the gun away from him, I got shot in the gut. I didn’t even notice at the time as we were both on the floor and I was probably hyped up on enough adrenaline to get away from a chasing cheetah.

In the end, I managed to take away the pistol and subsequently unload its remaining ammunition onto the lunatic until it was completely empty; long after he had stopped moving. Having gone to a shooting range pretty often in my adolescence I knew just enough to get the magazine to drop and on its slide lock before I tossed it away.

One moment, I’m trying to catch my breath, waiting for the ringing in my ears to stop and the thundering pulse of my heart to slow, and in the next I’m lying down in an ambulance. One of the paramedics is saying something to me, but I can barely hear them, let alone understand them.

Then, I blink and I’m in a different room, in a different bed, with a bunch of doctors in scrubs operating on me. I blink again and I go from lying down to standing, and just to keep my confusion as high as possible there’s a holographic screen in front of me claiming that I died.

[Game Over]
[You Died]
[Continue?]
[Yes/No]

“Is this supposed to be the afterlife?” I ask the void.

When to no one’s surprise I am met with silence, I decide to humor the macabre screen. After just a little bit of thinking, I decide it’s just as likely that I’m dead as it is that I’m just dreaming all of this up while in a coma at the hospital.

‘Dead or not, what else can I do but roll with the punches?’ I think before confirming the “No” that isn’t greyed out and struck through on the holographic screen.

[Starting New Game+]
[Choose Difficulty: Boring, Pussy, Mid, Impressive, Unforgiving]

“These are… some of the difficulties of all time,” I snort to myself before choosing the “Pussy” difficulty.

First and foremost, I was not completely convinced this wasn’t real, so on the off chance that this wasn’t a dream and I was literally getting the chance to determine how easy my next life would be, I wanted it to be relatively easy. Secondly, I was more than a little wary of the potential metric this “difficulty” was being determined by. Going off context clues, it seemed to me like my next life might be comparable to that of some type of action game. The classifications sounded more like Doom than Call of Duty, so I’d much rather be called a bitch by some arbitrary system or omnipotent being than die like one just to appeal to my ego.

[Choose Goldfinger: Divine Artifact, Boundless Martial Art, Extreme Physique…]

“Oh… Shit,” I muttered as I looked through the options. “So this is a ‘Reincarnated In A Chinese Web Novel’ type of deal, huh.”

There was no one around to ask, but as I read through all the “cheats” I could accept, the answer became less and less certain. I came to that conclusion when after going through a bunch of stereotypical “Goldfinger—” the standard cheat of a protagonist in one of those aforementioned Chinese Web Novels — I began to read through powers-ups, abilities, and techniques from outside Chinese media.

When I found Gamer as an option, I almost couldn’t stop my finger from smashing into the holographic screen without a second thought. I didn’t stop it, anyway, but that was a conscious decision on my part; The Gamer as a power set was just way too notorious for its propensity to create absolute monsters in the realm of fanfictions to pass up on.

[Choose Flaw: Terrible Unavoidable Origins, Sealed Goldfinger, Post-Reincarnation Memory Wipe…]

And this was where the other shoe dropped because, of course, I can’t just have nice things. Whatever. At least, I could pick exactly how I was going to be shafted in my next life, dream, or whatever else.

It took a while as I tried to read through many of the countless options, but after I scrolled past hundreds, I decided to just go with Randomized World. Out of all the options, it seemed the least likely to blow up in my face considering the difficult setting I chose. Moreover, with the Gamer power, as long as I didn’t immediately die, I could probably quickly grind my way up to invincibility in just about any fictional setting.

[Now Loading New Player Instance: ETA 59… 58… 57…]

Welp, with the countdown quickly approaching zero, I had little to do but hope I didn’t suddenly find myself on the Ninth Circle of Hell or somewhere worse, like Brockton Bay. Best case scenario was that I was dropped into some parallel world to Earth — I was thinking something along the lines of a Sports Anime or the setting for a Late Night Sitcom — but I would be grateful for just about anything so long as I didn’t appear right in the heat of some tense situation or imminent danger.

Eventually, my time was up and the countdown reached zero. A moment later, my vision was temporarily blinded by an all-consuming white light and then I was standing at the peak of a mountain.

Immediately, I felt the biting cold winds against my bare skin and my first thoughts were a string of incoherent curses. What god-forsaken monster would spawn me at the top of a freaking mountain without clothes? I couldn’t even appreciate the beauty of the sights all around me as I was more concerned about stopping the painful tick damage I received every single second from being exposed to the elements.

[Health: 991/1000]

[Health 975/1000]

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Cold Resistance Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: You can now proudly claim to be part of the “Shorts and T-Shirt While It’s Freezing” club.]

Yeah, that was nice and all, but my Health was still ticking down; only it was now once every ten seconds instead of every second. It was a marked improvement, but I would still eventually die if I didn’t do something productive, like hike down the mountain or somehow figure out how to make myself clothes out of thin air. I didn’t have much faith in the latter over the former, so down the mountain I went.

I kept an eye on my health all the while and occasionally saw it jump up a point before summarily losing a couple more. After a while I calculated the rate of my Health Regeneration to be one point every minute or 0.1% per minute; kind of a bummer, but then again I had just started out.

By the time my Health hit 900/1,000 I decided that I probably wouldn’t make it down the mountain in time if I kept walking. That left me with two options: Attempt to climb down the steep mountain faces or jog/run down the relatively tame incline I’d been previously walking. Given, I had literally no experience with rock climbing, I chose to jog and later run when I figured out that neither could exhaust me.

[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Name: Sprint Lvl 1 | +10 Exp]
[Description: Makes use of those Stamina Points and move marginally faster.]
[Active Cost: 10 Stamina per Second]

I activated my first Active Skill and learned two things. One, I had 1,000 Total Stamina just like I’d started out with 1,000 Health. Two, Level 1 Sprinting was kind of useless. I mean, technically I knew that any boost was good, but the effect it had on my running speed was 5% tops. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too long to level up the Skill to the point where it was much more useful.

I kept the Sprint Skill on until my Stamina reached 500 then stopped to measure its regeneration rate. I was immensely pleased to see it quickly recover at a rate of around 2 per second; a factor of 120 times that of my Health Regeneration.

To keep myself relatively prepared for any sudden, hostile encounters, I let my Stamina fully recover then trained up my Sprinting Skill until I was back down to half my total Stamina before rinsing and repeating the cycle. I still didn’t have a clue as to what kind of world I was in, so I thought it prudent to not just dump all my energy into grinding carelessly.

After a while, the cold damage I previously received once every 10 seconds dropped down to a rate of once every 20 seconds, then once every forty seconds.

[Skill Level Up!]
[Name: Sprint Lvl 1 → 2 | +20 Exp]
[Description: You can now put those Crocs into Sports Mode.]
[Active Cost: Level 1 - 8 Stamina per Second | Level 2 - 20 Stamina per Second]

Eventually, I stopped taking cold damage entirely. My only question then was, “Now what?”

Author's Note

I tried to continue writing for Equistria's Inventor, I even managed to write out a few more chapters... But ultimately my acoustic tendencies led me to write out this much more "mathematically involved" story. I wrote the first couple thousand words, thinking I'd get bored or tired like I always did when working on a story that features Gamer or System Mechanics. But, well... It's been a week since I started and I haven't been able to stop. I'm up to over 30,000 words and done with the first "major arc" of this story.

I can't really make any guarantees that I'll be able to complete it. So far my track record for that has been Oh for One, but hopefully, I can keep a few people entertained for a little while. I'll be posting small (~1500-2000 word) Chapters up to Chapter 16 over the next couple days; those I've already completely drafted and only need to be proofread. But anything else will depend entirely on whether I can complete another story arc and keep the writing streak I've had going.

Anyway, Christmas Eve, Happy Holidays... Or Whatever Else.