Fire & Blood

Outskirts of Monstinopolis

Apophis had now been riding his motorcycle for several hours.

He was approaching the Azof Strait, which served as a link between the continents of Terresa and Aurora. Specifically, he was approaching Monstinopolis, a huge city with territory on both sides of the strait.

However, when he arrived at the entrance of the city, he saw a line of players and NPCs waiting to enter.

He sped to the front of the line on his motorcycle, earning a handful of angry protests from those in line, but was eventually stopped by a dozen lvl 3 players at the gate, all armed with low-level machine guns.

"Hello, friends," the chief sentry was saying. "Welcome to Outpost 58 of Monstinopolis. This city is currently under the control of our guild, The Avengers. Please pay the toll of 250 GC and have a safe stay in our city!"

During the downfall of the Republic of Tyo, many player-run guilds in Apophis's first life had quickly filled the power vacuums appearing across the nation. 

In some places, the guilds only forced NPCs to pay protection money. Most, though, were extraordinarily greedy and charged more and more fees all the time. This, of course, included tolls for entry into cities.

After all, why bother to spend time grinding low-level quests for Galactic Coins? It was far more lucrative to racketeer players with no means of resistance.

It might not result in any EXP, but every Galactic Coin had the potential to be turned into the real-world global currency of credits, and that was quite appealing to the guilds who only existed for the sake of profit.

When he heard this demand for an entry fee, Apophis smirked. "I'd rather shove a stick up my ass than give you a single coin!"

The head sentry glared at him.

Though Apophis's level was visible, nobody else had come anywhere close to LvL5 yet. This sentry would have no idea of the power gap between them. 

"Oh," the guild member said, "a fool who thinks his higher level means he doesn't have to play by the rules! Look, you sniveling bastard, either you give me 1,000 GC or we'll slaughter you on the spot! You'll lose your money and your level."

The other players in line shuffled around in interest, happy that someone had the balls to stand up to this brute. Someone even pulled up the in-game view capture menu and started recording.

Apophis stared at the head sentry for a long moment.

Then he grabbed him by the face and burned him alive.

The sentry screamed at the top of his lungs! Though Horus's simulated pain was nothing close to what the player would have experienced in the real world, it was still quite horrible!

The other eleven sentries, startled and scared, began shooting their pathetically weak weapons, none of which did much to their target.

Apophis retaliated with a swirling, 180-degree fire screen that burned eight players at once, then dispatched the last three with fire-infused punches!

The players waiting in line were impressed.

"Is this what class abilities look like?" they asked each other. "He's so powerful!"

But more importantly, everyone was baffled as to the identity of this player who'd already reached LvL 5. The majority of players, after all, were still either LvL 1 or LvL 2. Only the top players had managed to grind so effectively that they'd reached LvL 3.

The in-game video capture of the fight was quickly posted on the Horus forums, triggering massive hype about this mysterious player known as "Apophis."

Many people hypothesized that he was a professional MMORPG player backed by one of the new SuperGuilds. Of course, it wasn't long before people made the connection to the first time Apophis had been mentioned on the forums…

As Apophis walked through Monstinopolis, he received hundreds of private messages from other players.

"Hey big brother! Crazy fight. Wow."

"Hey, you want to join my guild?"

"Do you have a special technique for grinding?"

Apophis ignored all the incoming messages, focused solely on his goal. He was only an hour away from the Zetark bunker, which none of the other players had even the slightest idea existed.

All the hype and discussion was like background noise to him.