NOVEL WEB Game Assistant
Aditya looked around as he drank some water to calm down.
His legs are a bit tired and even his arms are a bit aching. Maybe due to the heavy swinging of the hammer.
His clothes are already drenched in sweat and he felt like his lungs just pumped air into a bicycle tire. He couldn’t breathe normally for a few minutes. After he finally calmed down and thanked the shop keeper, he got out of the street to the intersection where he found an auto-rickshaw to go directly back to his college.
He didn’t even bother to bargain the price as he got on it. He is still nervous. But as the auto-rickshaw started and he looked outside…
“Bro, Wait. Wait.” He yelled at the driver.
“What is it?”
Aditya got off and said.
“Just wait for a second, I will be right back.” With that, he ran into the store nearby and came back in two minutes with two shopping bags. They are filled with mosquito repellent, mosquito coils, and mosquito spray.
He sat down in the Auto-rickshaw and said.
“We can go now.”
The driver started it back. Within twenty minutes he is back at the college campus.
He is exactly in time for dinner. But he was in no mood for that, he just ran to his room and picked up his towel, soap, and other toiletries before he ran off to the bathroom for a nice long shower.
He came back and wore some shorts, lit up a mosquito coil, applied some repellant to the exposed parts of his skin, and laid down the bed with the spray can right beside him.
He finally relaxed and looked at the ceiling as he thought of what he had just gone through. He didn’t know how to make sense of it. Half of his mind is telling him that this must all be an imagination It might even be an adverse effect of his obsession with the mosquitoes and their deaths.
The other half is telling him that it is all real. The muscle aches are the proof of that. He does not know what to think of this.
“Interface.”
He muttered under his breath and the glowing holographic screen appeared above his face obstructing his view of the ceiling.
*Sigh… I really wish this was a hallucination. I would rather be crazy than this being real.”
He muttered and looked at the Panel.
[NAME: ADITYA
AGE: 17
GENDER: MALE
RANK: 90
ATTRIBUTES
SKILLS
INVENTORY
ROUNDS PLAYED: 1
KILLS:5
POINTS:5
SHOP
GAME ASSISTANT
REWARDS
COUNT DOWN FOR THE NEXT ROUND: 04:22:42:50]
Most of it did not change since the first time he saw it, except for the few new additions and some minor changes. For example,
He looked at the countdown and gulped in nervousness before shifting his focus to the GAME ASSITANT and the REWARDS.
Both words are glowing with neon green color and he clicked on the REWARDS button first.
The interface changed.
[ROUND 1 CLEAR REWARD]
This is the only thing present there. He clicked on it. The words disappeared and a system notification appeared.
[OBTAINED AN ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE.
INVENTORY UNLOCKED.]
He then went back to the first interface and clicked on the inventory. An inventory section like a video-game inventory appeared, but he was immediately disappointed by what he saw. There is only a single slot unlocked. The rest of the slots all have a locked symbol on it.
Even the first slot that was unlocked was occupied with the ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE.
He clicked on that to trigger a prompt.
[UNABLE TO USE WITHOUT THE GAME ASSISTANT]
Aditya frowned and went back to click on the GAME ASSITANT button.
Suddenly, the screen glowed and it scattered into small light particles. Then the light particles gathered to form a small human silhouette of an old man.
He is wearing an old-fashioned Indian traditional dress with a white shirt and a dhoti. His body looked robust and he had a short silver beard. He has a brown skin tone that looks extremely tanned. He looked like an old farmer.
He looked at Aditya with a scrutinizing gaze while Aditya looked at him.
[I am Ram, your game assistant]
After a brief silence, the small human silhouette finally opened his mouth.
“I am Aditya.”
[You must have a lot of questions.]
Ram spoke and Aditya sighed in exhaustion.
[Okay, then. I will explain what situation you are currently in.
You are selected to be a player of the Game of Extermination. The first round you have played is also the selection round for all the shortlisted players. Out of all of them, only a hundred were selected,
Only the hundred are qualified to play the next rounds.
Every now and then, you would be summoned to the game world by the Game manager who puts you through the round.
A certain list of conditions and objectives will be provided to you at the start of every round. If you don’t finish them, you will either be dead or you can choose to do a penalty round which would give you a chance to get out of the risk of being eliminated.
In every round, you would be able to get points for clearing the objectives.
In general, the most direct way to get points would be to exterminate the targets. Each target that was exterminated will give you a same number of points as its danger level.
Do you understand till now?]
Aditya was in a bit of a daze as he listened to the old man speak. He didn’t even know what to say or do for all the explanations, but he knew that it is a lot of information to digest.
“Why am I selected?”
[I cannot answer the question without the Game Manager’s permission.]
“Okay then, how many times do I have to play until the game is finished?”
[I cannot answer the question without the Game Manager’s permission.]
Aditya became a bit frustrated and said.
“Then what the fuck can you even do as the Game assistant if you cannot even answer these questions?”
At this outburst, the Old man didn’t even have a change of expression. He didn’t even mind the profanities and just explained as if it was a normal question.
[As a game assistant I have a few functions with which I can assist you.
One of them is to answer your doubts regarding the game.
The second function is ‘Player’s Chat.’ I can give you access to the chat room that connects you with the rest of the players in the world.
The third function is to open the ‘Trade channel’ in which you could trade with the other players across the world.
The rest of the functions will be unlocked as you progress.]
Aditya sighed and asked.
“What is this ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE?”
[You can choose an attribute and this package will help you improve it. It will put you through a task or a test that would help you enhance your attributes permanently. The gains would depend on how much effort you put into the tests.]
Aditya thought for a moment and nodded in understanding before asking.
“What are the points for?”
[Points are your in-game currency. You can buy things in the shop with the coins and you can exchange them for things with the other as well.]
“Open SHOP.”
Aditya asked and Ram snapped his fingers making the interface change to the shop interface.
There are not many things to buy.
There are only four items on the list.
STRENGTH ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE: 10 Points
AGILITY ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE: 10 Points
ENDURANCE ATTRIBUTE IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE: 10 Points
PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES IMPROVEMENT PACKAGE: 40 Points
He looked at his points and couldn’t help but feel dirt poor. He only had five points and he almost lost his life getting them.
“Why am I so fucking poor? Who would be able to afford these?”
He muttered under his breath.
[Maybe, a higher-ranked player.]
Ram said from the side making Aditya frown.
He looked at his rank which showed 90. Considering that there are only a hundred players in the game it is pretty bad. But thinking of how he had to deal with those mosquitoes and all he got was five points, he couldn’t even fathom what the first-ranked players had gone through.
“How does the ranking system work? Will a player with the most points will rank first?”
[No, the player with the most kills will be ranked first]
Aditya frowned and asked.
“How is that fair? From what you said, the danger levels of the things we have to kill will increase and with the increase in the danger level, the points will also increase. If a person only killed one Level 10 insect, he would get ten points, and a person who kills five Level 1 monsters will get five kills. But the latter would be ranked higher than the former. That is a completely unfair system. Why is it like that?”
[For now, the ranking system is set for the number of Kills and there is a possibility that it might change. So, it is better to be patient.]
“Does that mean, the ranking system will change in the future?”
[That is for you to find out by yourself.]
“Okay then, what is the use of this ranking?”
[There will be some special perks in special situations. The higher the rank the better your perks will be. And the lower your ranking is the closer you are to elimination.]
Aditya was stunned and asked.
“What do you mean the closer you are to elimination?”
[You must wait and find out.]
“Come on give me some info, Old man. I am very close to the last rank. There are only ten members between him and me. I need to know this.”
[As I said, you need to wait and find out young man.]
Aditya wanted to blow his top off. But he was too tired to do that and just sat up as he drank some water. He also ate some snacks that were packed in his luggage.
He then looked around to see that other beds were all occupied as well.
His new roommates have arrived, and he figured they would be having dinner now. He had half a mind to wait for them so that he could socialize, but he was way too exhausted both mentally and physically to do that.
He finished the chips and went back to the bed to get some sleep.