Manifest Destiny

The zombie fell to the ground and the person who killed it walked forward, lowering himself to inspect its body. He clicked his tongue as stood up. He looked over at Isaac.

"Hey, help me bury this body." The man spoke. He was wearing a police uniform and had a clean-shaven face.

Isaac looked above him and saw a hovering blue name. 'DefiantTomato.'

Isaac forced himself to cough to not laugh at the name and he muttered a quick, "Sure." Then he started walking forward with vigor.

The man, supposedly a lawman, grabbed the zombie's arms and Isaac grabbed their legs.

"Alright, we're gonna take it over there by the edge of town." He pointed with his chin to a direction down the street they were on. Isaac nodded and they lifted the body. They headed in the direction when the man asked something.

"So, you look like a new player, how are you finding the game so far?" The man asked in a slightly strained voice.

"Well, my friend described it as realistic, so imagine my dismay to see a zombie and a magic flaming arrow in the first minute of playing."

"Hah! Well, your friend isn't entirely wrong, he just wasn't exactly right. There are a lot of realistic things, like diseases and eating, but there's also the magical world. It interacts with our world in a realistic way too. Well… as realistic as magic feasibly can." The two of them turned down an alley with muddy path.

He continued, "Like that flaming arrow that I used a moment ago, it'll cauterize any wounds it inflicts so people don't take bleed damage which is a major downside for a weapon. It is useful for zombies though because flames do bonus damage against undead."

"That's a lot to take in." Isaac muttered.

"You'll get used to it." The man chuckled, "Anyway, I'll give you a tip. Your name is grey right now meaning you have neutral karma. Usually only new people have that because it's hard to keep it in the middle like that. So be careful of people trying to scam you."

"You're not gonna try to scam me?"

The man chuckled, "No, I'm a lawman. I'd get into trouble if I did that. Just look out for people with red names, they usually are outlaws or just bad people in general."

"Got it." Isaac said, considering that his name would eventually turn red for all to see.

"You can get a mask or a bandana to cover your face if you need to go incognito, but most people will assume you're a criminal if you do that. It's because it hides your name and karma level and there's little reason to do that unless you're doing something suspicious."

"I see." Isaac mumbled.

They reached a small grassy knoll with a large tree on top, and they put down the body.

"Alright, I'm going to go see Father Marco and bring him out here. You can go now, take my information as payment for helping me." DefiantTomato said with a laugh.

Isaac nodded his head and left. He took one last glance at the zombie and began walking around the small town. The buildings were all made of wood besides the very select few made of brick. People bustled about with that vast majority having names above their head. Isaac assumed the ones that didn't were NPCs.

Isaac then grew confused. What was he supposed to do now? He looked around before deciding to try and open the menu to see if there was a quest tab.

After a moment, he called out for the menu in his head, and it appeared floating in the game world. He skimmed through it quickly and noticed the number of statistics beneath to his name.

[Username: Black Coyote]

[Character Name: Isaac Day]

[Class: Outlaw]

[Reputation: 0, Neutral]

[Level: 0]

[Health: 100/100] [Fatigue: 0/100]

[Mana Level: 0] [Mana: 0/0]

[Strength: 16]

[Endurance: 12]

[Agility: 9]

[Reflex: 17]

At the top of his name, it had a few different tabs to bring him to other menus as well.

[Quests] [Abilities] [Crafting] and [Map] were listed. Before checking the quest tab, he went to look at the map.

"Holy shit." He mumbled.

The map just kept zooming out further and further. Just how many people were playing this game to require a map to be this big? It didn't seem to be empty space either, there were tons of small towns and decently sized cities.

He pressed the quest tab only to find a single mission available for him.

[Getting Started]

[Every criminal has their first crime. Make sure yours is befitting of a future legend. Holdup a Person, a General Store, or a Bank. From left to right, the difficulty increases as well as the rewards gained.]

Isaac started thinking about and it and wondered what to do. Obviously, he wanted to rob a bank, but he had no idea how hard it was to do that. He assumed that since he was in a starter town, it couldn't be too hard.

Either way, Isaac decided to scope out the bank before he did anything. If he needed help, he could also always just ask Roscoe.

Isaac began walking around the town trying to find the bank. The map was extreme in its detail, but as far as Isaac could tell, it would only mark the building's he headed into. Meaning he had to explore the town by himself using the various signs to get around.

Eventually he came to a stop at a board with a few small posters nailed to it. He inspected it and noticed that it was a real time chart of the top players. There were three different sections. An outlaw section that displayed the players with the most amount of money stolen. And lawmen and bounty hunters were the two other sections, both listed the number of criminals apprehended or killed. The top player of each section had a hand drawn portrait of their character, the outlaw however, had their face covered.

There didn't seem to be a section dedicated to the civilians so Isaac assumed the developers considered it the most boring of all the classes you could pick. Isaac looked at the board and noticed two names that stood out on both the outlaw and bounty hunter charts.

For the outlaw chart, it was someone simply going by King. They had at least three times the amount of money than the rest. They currently sat at six thousand dollars. It didn't seem like that much to Isaac, but then again, the game had been out for around a week.

Isaac frowned; the low amount of money must have meant the currency here is accurate to what it used to be in the late 1800s. He didn't know how much he'd have to make to get a decent amount of money. Six thousand had to be a lot though when calculating for inflation.

The bounty hunter chart had another player that stood out: Jollygator. They had a frightening number of kills. It seemed they never bother with capturing criminals, just killing them. Isaac stood in front of the board absorbing the new information.

After another minute, he turned and started looking for the bank again. Giving up after a while, he asked an NPC and was given directions. This was pretty surprising for him; he hadn't seen a game with NPC with near sentient level intelligence.

He entered the bank and looked around. The tellers were all players and a few people in the line were also players. He just walked around observing what the players were doing when four men entered wearing masks.

The one in the lead raised their revolver to the ceiling and fired a round. A loud crack rang out and echoed in the small brick building, deafening nearly everyone. Some dust and debris fell from the ceiling and the men spread throughout the room.

"Everybody get down! Down now!" They all yelled in similar variations.

Isaac lowered himself to the floor with his hands raised. The lead man jumped up onto the counter separating the bank tellers and citizens. He lowered his gun and demanded money from the teller.

The teller quickly opened a small register and took out a stack of cash, handing it over. The other's started doing something similar. They were all shivering in fear, but Isaac couldn't understand why, it was just a game after all.

The man jumped down from the counter and fired another round and demanded the safe to be opened. He aimed his revolver directly in the face of a bank teller as he did so.

"I- I don't know the code sir! The only man who can open it comes by before closing to help store the cash! Nobody here can open it!"

The outlaw smashed his revolver against the side of man's head in anger and the teller collapsed. The outlaw angrily slid himself over the counter and joined the rest of his companions.

The furthest most player turned to open the door, but he was shot, and half of his head was blown into nonexistence. The glass shattered and fell to the floor along with his body. The other three ducked in panic.

"I was hopin' the Cobra Gang would show their stupid faces." A voice yelled from outside, slightly muffled by the building.

"Is that you Jerome Puckett?!" One of the outlaws yelled.

"That I be. You lot got a bounty of ten dollars each, that's a pretty penny."

Hearing this, Isaac's eyes practically turned to dollar signs. This game was realistic enough, surely if he didn't have a bounty, he could collect the bounties of others.

His hand went to his revolver, and he slowly pulled it out. He raised it and emptied the six-round chamber into the bodies. Two bullets each.

They collapsed to the floor and quickly died. But one still clung to life.

"You… little… shit…" He struggled to speak up as he weakly raised his revolver towards Isaac. Thinking quickly, Isaac drew his knife and threw it at the man.

He didn't hold out hope that he would actually manage to kill him like that, so at the same timed he dodged to the side and waited for the eventual bullet.

"Someone mind explainin' what's happenin' in there?" The voice from the outside yelled after a moment of silence.

Isaac peeked around his cover and noticed his knife was planted into the man's eye socket. Isaac was pleased with himself, slightly disgusted by where the knife landed, but still pleased.

Isaac shouted outside, "I got 'em all!"

"Like I'm gonna believe that. Step outside!"

"I really did! I can show you the bodies! I'll put them near the door and raise my hands."

The other person thought for a moment before accepting the deal, "Alright, just open the door slowly."

Isaac got up and reloaded his revolver just in case. He wasn't adjusted to not using a speed loader to reload revolvers, so it took him a moment to do it. Especially because the cylinder didn't swing out, instead he had to push out the casings individually with a rod.

After struggling, he finally managed to get it done and he was down six bullets. Meaning he only had twelve left in total. Isaac checked his gun one last time before holstering it. He then quickly pushed the bodies over to the door and opened it slowly. His hands were raised far above his head.

As the door opened, he saw a handful of lawmen and a single bounty hunter standing in the middle of them all.

"Well, I'll be damned, you weren't kidding." The bounty hunter, presumably Jerome, said. His name was a slight purple.

'Maybe if you do a lot of the opposite karmic actions, your name instead of being grey to show true neutrality, will be purple to show you're a wild card.' Isaac theorized to himself.

"Alright, you can put your hands down." An NPC, presumably the town's sheriff stepped forward. "Jenkins, Dale, go get the bodies. You sir, come down here. Let's head on down to the station, we'll fix you up right proper with the reward money. Hell, maybe even deposit it at the bank." He said with a toothy smile. His teeth, however, were extremely crooked and yellow.

Isaac lowered his hands and walked forward down the steps. The sheriff told the other lawmen to head into the building and check up on the civilians. As Isaac walked past Jerome, the man nodded slightly.

Isaac and the sheriff quickly went to the station and Isaac was given forty dollars. Isaac left the police station with a satisfied expression and decided to log off. He opened the menu and navigated to the proper place to quit.

Quickly, the world faded away and he opened his eyes, revealing a dark room.

Floating in front of him were holograms only he could see, projecting directly onto his eyes. The date was displayed.

October 6th, 2091.

2:21 A.M.

Isaac stretched and looked around the room. Roscoe was sitting at the computer programming something with his headphones on, so Isaac went to the bathroom.

After Isaac left the bathroom, Roscoe finally noticed and looked up at him, asking, "So how was it?"

"It was nice, wouldn't call it realistic though." Isaac's eyes narrowed and Roscoe felt his soul leave his body. Then Isaac shrugged and continued, "It's fine though. Hey, I made forty dollars!"

"What? forty?!" Roscoe said with a surprised expression.

"Is that a lot?"

Roscoe turned around and started typing away at his computer.

"Hey, what's this game called anyway?" Isaac asked.

Roscoe paused for a moment and answered, "Manifest Destiny."

The two were silent until Roscoe finally turned around. He turned the computer screen towards Isaac and began speaking, "The game takes place in an alternate universe set sometime in 1881. It's 2091 now, meaning 210 years have passed. You've got to account for that much inflation."

"So how much did I get?"

"Approximately eight grand."

Isaac froze. Since everything was super expensive nowadays, it wasn't an insane amount. But eight grand was eight grand. He got that in one sitting, granted he was pretty lucky this time.

"Hell yeah!" He clenched his fist, "How do I spend it?"

"You've got to deposit it in the in-game bank. If it's in the bank, it's also harder for it to get stolen. Wait… What class did you pick?"

"Outlaw."

"I should've known you pick that…" Roscoe sighed, "I'm a bounty hunter."