MafiaNoble
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Okay, I have no idea what got into my ADHD filled mind when I just started writing about this. I had just finished reading " Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra: World Conquest Starts with the Civilization of Ruin vol 1 " and... Done this? Honestly it's more of a random project then a proper one, I tend to write things, then drop somewhere along the lines and just continue working on it way later on or just start on something completely new. Bad habit, I know but old habits die hard.
I'm just going to drop what I made thus far, background details and stuff are lacking, I know, I often have trouble writing and describing those, besides that, I haven't truly worked back over them all to edit things, aka making sure the small details match and all that type of stuff. Feel free to take this as inspiration for your own version or join into the current version. I would find it funny to see more similar stuff going around on scribblehub. Maybe different authors could copy the concept and make their own versions? Bit like how " the gamer " does it, with a bunch of authors having the same MC going down different paths or routes, who knows. Just random idea's that I write out as they pop into my head.
(C1) A choice:
Regaining his consciousness in a whitish space, Richard, a 23 year Dutchmen of Spanish decent who was still a little fuzzy in the head, inspected his body to find it in some type of translucent form.
Memories of the knife in his gut flashed back into his mind and he couldn't help but burst out laughing, either he was dead and the whole afterlife BS he never believed in was real, or he was going absolutely crazy. Maybe he was comatsoe in the hospital and was going super hard on a extra large dosage of morphine.
" Geez, I hope I don't have to deal with another broken one. "
Being interrupted from his sudden giggle fit by a surprisingly beautiful voice, Richard looked up and came face to face with what he could only describe as an angelic being. She sat on top of a floating, golden throne in this whitish space and Richard couldn't help but giggle again, thinking how gold apparently had some type of value or at least fashionable appeal to the afterlife or whatever the fuck this was.
Was this where all the gold that dissapeared within churches went to? unlikely, or so Richard thought.
Richard snapped out of it for a moment.
" Sorry, this is just my way of processing everything. "
" I see... Some humans do tend to laugh their problems off, although I don't quite sense the despair in your laugh, that those individuals usually have. It's more like you just, find the situation surreal but don't really care beyond that. "
Richard couldn't help but shrug, although he wasn't sure how well his translucent form transmitted that gesture, or if it even held the same meaning in whatever this place was.
" We all die at some point "
Richard has been suffering from a heavy case of Paget's bone disease all his life and although he never quite reached the point of wanting to take his own life, he didn't attach quite as much value to his life as a normal person either.
He didn't have much of a family, he was dumped at a orphanage and never really was chosen for adoption. Why would he when there were perfectly healthy alternatives available? He knew he'd never land a job, given his condition yet still had to go to school, as is obligated by Dutch law. He finished his high school, was deemed medically unfit for work and lived off social benefits.
The constant pain of his bones deforming, cracking and just growing into his very flesh couldn't be stopped by the painkillers he was issued, so his pain was merely damped. He had a hard time making friends since he couldn't quite engage in all the activities a normal person could, so although he had some friends, they were severely limited.
All in all he spent most of his time at his house, killing time thru reading, playing games and watching random shit. At the end of the day, killing time like that was only fun for so long, at some point you simply got tired of gaming, reading or watching stuff.
So when someone attempted to rob him, he wasn't particularly afraid of his life, besides, what are the chances someone actually stabs you when he threatens to do just that? This was the Netherlands, not America and most people here were simply bluffing when it came down to it.
Besides, even when stabbed, who leaves a person for death and turns armed robbery into murder? That's just stupid, and he couldn't help but laugh at the fact it actually happened, like, what are the chances?
" Mortals indeed do. "
Richard nodded at that, once again not sure if the gesture was properly transmitted in this weird form he was currently in. " So, are you the almighty one, god hims... Herself in the flesh here to judge me? "
She smiled softly " Not quite. You've never been religious, never prayed or engaged in a religious ritual. In short, none of the gods could make a claim on your soul, meaning you can't exactly be judged. "
Fact that there were multiple gods aside, the thing Richard was more curious about was " Then what am I doing here? "
To which the angelic being responded " Unclaimed souls are allocated thru a lottery system, to the various gods that hold dominion over a realm. You've been randomly given to Siddhartha Gautama, who, luckily for you, gives most souls a chance at reincarnation. Anyway, none of that matters for you, what's important is that you can either re-enter his cycle, being reborn without any previous memories, entering the cycle clean in attempt to gain enlightenment thru meditation, separating yourself from the mortal desires and all that yada yada or we can reincarnate you into a more exciting chosen world, with all your memories in tact and some cool fantasy system, like in those books you've read. "
" .... You don't sound very.. divine, do you? "
" Don't give me that nonsense, I'm not much more then a empowered soul, a minor sinner that could live her next few cycles in misery due to negative karma, or do.... this for one cycle and consider my sins forgiven. "
" Okay, that explains a thing or t " noticing the beings glare, Richard didn't finish his sentence and instead coughed. " Anyway, what's the whole chosen world reincarnation thing about? It'd like to go for a magical fantasy world, preferably medieval with classes and all that typical isekai stuff. "
Richard has always been fond of fantasy world books in which someone reincarnates and just enjoys a wonderful magical world filled with adventure and magic.
"Yeah, about that. I have this first come, first serve type of thing going here, so long story short, I only have two worlds available for you. In one you get reborn into more of a sci-fi world that's part of a wider galaxy that's being invaded by alien forces. You'll get a fancy system that makes you stronger as you kill living entities, I can even reincarnate you as the child of a prominent family which should make your military career easier, officer spot guaranteed. Once you are done with your mandatory military service you can explore all the exciting things that universe has to offer the other option is some boring RTS type game in which other reincarnatee's are likely to try and kill you. "
Those weren't the choices Richard was hoping for and what was up with that ' first come first serve ' bs, was he supposed to just die earlier?
" Can I wait until new options are available? "
The girl shook her head " No, you can't. I don't want you all over my floor for a entire cycle, Although if you make significant contributions into the first suggested world i'll promise to keep a few of those typical fantasy world options free for your next cycle.
That seemed a awful lot like a bribe to Richard, not that he minded. He never was much of a RTS player anyway so he guessed the first option would've been best anyway, if he gets another chance in a world he'd like to afterwards that'd be a great deal. Hell, getting to life a second life not to mention a guaranteed third with his memories in tact was already great. He however didn't want to blindly agree, without knowing more details about his options.
"So, can you provide some more details on both options? "
"Ofcourse, you see this first world is on the backfoot in a constant war against invading alien forces, you'll go there and do your part in ensuring human life doesn't cease to exist over there, ofcourse you get a fancy system with a ton of unique abilities. After your obligatory military service you can do whatever you want in this exciting new sci-fi universe. You could even desert and become a space pirate or smuggler or whatever, it'd recommend doing your 4 years though, the connections and benefits that come from the prominent family I can reincarnate you into would do you great.
The other world is some poor world of typical fantasy that's been selected to act as a playgrounds for the gods. Bunch of sods get send into it with a unique military system, allowing them to spawn in units and weaponry from around the WW2 era. There'll be other reincarnates out there trying to kill you. "
Okay, Richard wasn't the best at RTS he didn't play it as much and whenever he did he'd just get shrekked by a chinese guy with a pre-made strategy in mind. He liked games in which he could just go as he went, without the need to make strict battle plans beforehand to have a chance at winning.
The first world, although likely just as brutal, maybe more brutal considering he'd be a officer himself instead off the overall commander, at least allowed him to be the unique player. The main character of the book, so to say, with his own unique system that gave him a edge over the others. The second world would just make him ' one of many ' not to mention the first world gave him a choice for his next cycle, assuming he made contributions to said world.
"Okay, so how will we proceed if I choose that first world? "
The angelic being smiled at that " I'll just reincarnate you into the womb of the Matriarch of a prominent military family, don't worry though, you won't be conscious until your birth. There's just this one thing, really, i'm sure a open minded guy such as yourself won't mind... The world is a matriarchy, so if you want that officers life instead of becoming a common laborer or foot soldiers, we're going to have to. " She didn't finish her sentence but she did make a scissor gesture with her fingers, as if she was cutting something.
" Wha...t? "
"Ah, don't worry, I won't actually cut anything off, you'd just be reborn as a girl, it's completely painless. "
" .... "
Richard was simply speechless.
"Ah, not so open minded after all? Are you sure? Being a woman can be a lot of fun, lots of small orgasms instead of a one big one y'know? "
Richard was quite satisfied with his male identity and if he was being reborn, especially with his old memories in tact, he'd prefer to continue down that road. Just the idea of dealing with monthly cramps, having guys hit on you or just child birth by itself made his skin crawl.
"About that second wor- "
He wasn't able to finish his sentence when the angelic being interrupted him " Wait a moment, we can still reincarnate you as a male on that first world. You'd likely start out as a foot soldier but you can still build yourself a nice career. With the help of the system you'd surely become a prime specimen of a man, I have no doubt a high ranking officer will pick you to become her husband. Maybe you'd even be allowed to seed other girls, doesn't that idea arouse you? A strong beautiful wife which you can serve and impregnate? "
What was up with all the sex talk? It's not like that's all guys think about. Richard respect for this angelic being was rapidly declining.
" I don't really have those... preferences. "
Richard wasn't some type of stereotypical alpha male that considered himself superior to the female sex, requiring to always be the dominant one in order to deal with some hidden insecurity issue. That however didn't mean he wanted to become someone's bitch either, he'd been ignored and shunned enough in his last life, he didn't need any more of that in his next.
The angelic being remained quiet for some time, as if hoping he'd change his mind but after a akward silence she'd released a sigh " Very well then, the second world will allow you to make your own character, decide what sex it is and so on, as if it were a game. You can build units and conquer the world or not. It's really up to the player what they do, although we do actively stimulate you people to murder each other. "
She shrugged as if it really wasn't her problem before she continued on. " If you kill another player they die, just like you'd do in your own world, so there's no respawning. When starting out you can choose a theme for your faction and a few special perks/traits. If you remove another player from the game you can steal one of his perks/traits. So players that actually seek out and kill other players will have a greater benefits over other players as time moves on. You can also choose to be a pacifist, it's really up to you. "
Richard nodded at that. " You said something about it being a magical world? To which the girl responded.
" Yes, it's a typical world of medieval fantasy with magic a couple of gods will push people such as yourself onto it as players who will have the ability to bring forth units and weaponry from around your worlds ww2 era at the cost of mana. It's mostly a amusement project of a few gods, don't worry though, every soul that perishes in that world due to their intervention is offered a more positive judgement. You can see it as.... bringing people closer to god, or heaven or all that yadayada. "
So, they'd basically go and invade a medieval world of magic with tanks and guns for the amusement of a few gods? "Okay, It'd like to go there then, if possible. "
Richard would prefer going over there and just seeing what'll happen when he died, he could technically just pray to Siddhartha Gautama so that being could make a claim onto his soul, which means worst case he'd just get reincarnated again without his old memories after death. He'd at least have the satisfaction of knowing live goes on, there isn't some black void or eternal sleep waiting for him that way.
The girl nodded at that " Very well, we'll set you up and once that's done we'll put you in a statis until all involved parties are done throwing the souls they want at this world. You won't notice a thing, you'd just find yourself suddenly starting out at some point when everyone ready, fair start to all and all that. "
Richard nodded at that after which the angelic being waved her hand and his vision suddenly turned in some type of character creation menu.
==========
(C2) Character & faction creation
'This is bizarre '
was the first thing that went thru Richard's mind when his vision changed to some form of character creation menu. He could literally select his gender and see his translucent shape change in reaction. Clicking the female option caused his chest to swell up and the sensation of something shrinking between his legs to appear, which was disturbing to say the least.
'What is a hermaphrodite even? '
clicking the option out of curiosity he noticed something growing back between his legs, in addition to the previous changes made. Not being particularly interested in having both sexes, Richard switched back to his original male shape.
He could select a skin color, after which his translucent form changed into one of flesh and bones. He was happy to see that there was some form of censoring, covering his privates from the girl above him.
He played around with the settings a bit, pumping up his muscle, enchanting his form and generally just shaping himself into the stereotypical beautiful character he enjoyed playing as. It was only after he gave himself the typical blonde haired blue eyed features that he wondered what other players would do?
Instead of making himself absolutely beautiful, should he make himself as small as possible to make bullets less likely to hit him? Or maybe blend in?
" What does the average person in this world look like? "
The woman's eyes twinkled in amusement as she reacted to Richards inquiry " You'd be surprised how few people make inquiries like that, instead of turning themselves into gorgeous sex bombs. "
She casually flicked her finger to make what Richard could only describe as some type of holographic, translucent picture appear.
" This is how the average peasant looks like thanks to the influence of magic "
Looking at the given example, Richard couldn't help but think that it was better then he'd expected. The lack of self care supplements in said time periods gave him the assumption that everyone would be uglier. Then there was the fact that labour and just the way of life in general was a lot harder in said time period and the public available amenities were just a lot less generous. But apparently magic, healing magic in particular took care of some of those problems.
The average peasant looked healthy, although more skinny then average. The skin looked soft and their hair, although usually unkempt and a little greasy didn't look terrible. Making up his mind, Richard shortened his character intimidating height, changed his beautiful blonde hair colour into a more average brown and selected a pair of grey eyes instead of the beautiful blue he previously had.
All in all he edited his character to be more average, the only thing he artificially enchanted was... something else. He was after all, still a guy and given the chance he had to mess around with that particular ' length ' setting.
After he looked more like a normal peasant he continued on to his faction settings and choices. There were three factions to choose from, namely the USA, Wehrmacht and Soviet union. Richard wondered why there weren't more factions like, for example, the British or something but decided to put senseless thoughts aside and move on.
The USA had a bigger focus on specialized units and a better logistical setup. Their units spawned with better then average equipment and training and their officers were better in preventing morale loss, not to mention that besides the average ' officer ' they could also train captains with special abilities.
The Wehrmacht had it's own set of specialized units similar to the Americans but didn't enjoy the same logistical benefits, they paid a higher price for what was essentially the same unit equipment as the Americans and Instead of receiving better trained units right from the get go their units were more average, they however had a experience boost and those that survived battle improved more rapidly. Besides that, they had bonuses to their mechanized units allowing their vehicles and aircraft to be maintained at a lower cost.
Richard could see the benefits to both, USA was more of a allrounder that had a easier time sustaining damage since they could spawn new squads that were on average better trained then other squads. Their officers and boosts to morale gave them a easier time holding out in difficult sitautions.
The Wehrmacht on the other hand, paid a heavier price for equipment then the Americans did and their units didn't spawn with as much training, they however gained experience quicker and in combination with their lower upkeep for vehicles and aircraft had a easier time creating mechanized brigades. The infantry that survived and leveled could eventually end up as a more elite force that supported their panzer infantry and less experienced units.
Both of these were nice, but at the end of the day Richards attention was drawn to the Soviet Union. The Soviet's had weaker units on average, far less trained and equipped not to mention their mechanized units were just not on par with the other faction. They however enjoyed a buff that doubled their resource gain and their overall production. The entire faction just screamed quantity over quality and although that wasn't always great, Richard felt it allowed him to make far more mistakes.
Losing a squad of infantry wouldn't hurt as much if it was cheaper and easy to replace. Besides having double the production rates and resource gain would be great for playing defensive.
Last but not least, the Soviets had a communism perk which allowed them to essentially remove the salary upkeep of units which really drove home the spam nature of the faction.
[Communism]
The angelic being had briefly explained how the game worked earlier. Instead of complicated resource nodes and production chains you only really needed Mana. So instead of needing to collect oil and set up a refinery, you could just have your engineers build a oil refinery which would then drain mana from you to generate oil, assuming enough workers staffed the building.
Same with units, players could generate units at special buildings, said units would then just appear out of thin air. She had explained that they weren't lifeless dolls and were just like other people, the souls of sinners were used to make them. She had reassured Richard that this was all on a voluntary basis, sinners essentially made their souls available for this, choosing it as a sort of punishment over whatever the fuck sinners normally go thru.
So yeah, units were like normal people except that they had their memories wiped and instead got basic knowledge, suitable for that specific unit. Besides of generating units out of thin air you could also convert the normal inhabitants of that world.
If you met certain requirements to recruit them and spend the mana you could train them into units, this was cheaper to do. The problem with communism in this regard was that this world made use of a monetary system. The typical copper - silver - gold coins system was in affect and the Wehrmach and American factions were able to make use of this. They could use local currency instead of mana to convert units or pay their troop wage. So they essentially had a secondary resource to make use off.
There was also the risk of converted units or even self made units, simply losing loyalty because a better amenities were available elsewhere which could make preventing rebellion and holding ground more tricky.
But, like mentioned earlier, players had unique perks and traits to pick from and after scrolling thru the available perk list for the Soviet union he found one that balanced this nicely.
[Stalins resolve]
The downside to this perk was that units affected by fear wouldn't take initiatives out of their own volition anymore, which made his reliance on officers or other skilled staff to guide his troops that more important. The Soviet units favoured quantity over quality to begin with though, so the fact that troops affected by fear were less flexible without the correct guidance went with the trope of lesser quality nicely.
Secondly, although Richard still looked at this as if it was game right now, he realized that the moment he was down to earth so to say, looking at it as if it was all a game would become a whole lot harder. Warfare was a brutal thing, especially with a faction type that took quantity over quality. Making use of this factions strong points meant throwing units into the meat grinder and without a perk Richard simply wouldn't have the stomach for that.
That left him with two perk slots and although there were very nice abilities, ranging from specific buffs to specialized units, he settled for the ability to respawn next. Although this perk came with the downside of not being able to rebuild your HQ and dying when your HQ was destroyed the pro's outweighed the cons in his opinion. He wanted to make use of the soviet buffs to build up concentrated defenses and work on spam anyway, so not having to worry about a stray bullet ending the game for him was very nice.
Ofcourse he could also just stay safe and safe himself a very precious perk point, the player was able to spawn things in. Everyone had a standard ability called [emergency production] which allowed them to spawn pretty much anything they want, at the cost of a 100% price increase. Being able to make use of that on the front lines was just a cheat, especially since he didn't worry about getting shellshocked thanks to his stalins resolve perk.
[respawn]
The last choice was very, very hard. He really wanted both [Partisans] and [Fanatics] but he only had one perk point left.
[Partisans]
The Partisan effect would just make invasion a logistical nightmare, unless the player himself is in the front line and ready to pay a very heft resource price to resupply his troops it'd just be terrible to keep supply lines secure when the citizens of the area your occupying are trying to make things difficult.
Not to mention that Partisan activity in the area would make it far harder for other players to try and stimulate rebellion uprises and make use of the fact that communist units may lose loyalty when better amenities are available elsewhere.
In the end however he decided to settle for [Fanatics]
[Fanatics]
The Fanatics perk would ensure that he had units that wouldn't be affected by the fear stat, basically, he needed officers that would be happy to take initiative when they presented themselves. A army that couldn't innovate was one that was bound to lose eventually. Besides that, knowing that key figures in your army wouldn't turn on you was a godsend.
Last but not least, he could go for the classic soviet tactic of putting a blocking unit behind advancing units to maw down units that break rank and flee. Which hopefully generated enough fear to ensure units did what they needed to, even when morale collapsed.
After all, quantity over quality doesn't work if the lesser quality mass off troops turns tail and run.
The tactic was absolutely savage but it was the only way Richard saw himself being able to work out the key weaknesses in the soviet faction.
Making up his mind Richard doubled down on his options and after a last bit of back and forth between him and the angelic being, finally lost his consciousness
=================
(C3) Waking up.
Richard was asleep, or so he thought? There was a weird box floating into his mind, asking him to select a playername. Something the units could refer to him by, he briefly wondered if he should go for a typical toxic gaming name like YahMom but being called that constantly would get old quickly.
He tried out the typical " Joseph Stalin " name but ofcourse, it was already taken. He tried settling for just " Joseph " which worked. Once that was done he had to select his faction name, he knew the standard name was likely to be already taken and just settled for " The People's Union " directly, which worked.
Last but not least he needed to make a flag, he settled on a red flag with golden embroilment rather then a star or a sickle he opted for grain as his emblem, which had two rifles crossed in front of it.
Once that was done he lost conscious momentarily and woke up later, he was laying on the ground in the middle of a forest. He got off the ground and dusted off his uniform, oh, that's right. He had a uniform on now, didn't he?
He checked it out and found himself to be wearing some type of soviet officers outfit. The outfit was completed with a fancy belt and overcoat. To his left side he felt the weight of a handgun, he wasn't familiar with the model. next to the gun was a pouch that held a canteen, to his other side there was a pouch with three magazines attached to his belt as well as a sword, which based on the look was more for ceremonial purposes then anything.
'No binocular? '
Richard, or well, Joseph had expected there to be a binocular or something of the sort, since he apparently went with a officer vibe there however was nothing of the sort. He shrugged, moving on, and took a walk around.
Honestly, the fact he could actually just walk around like this, without any form of pain was already amazing. There were no pieces of sharp bone constantly pressing into his flesh as he moved, which was already a great start in this new world. He fiddled around with his features, ignoring the [Emergency production] for the time being due to it's increased cost, he eventually found the building tab.
He only had 250 mana, so he couldn't exactly afford much in the way of buildings. Luckily the HQ was available for free and knowing it could be moved, since he read that in his [respawn] perk he decided to just dump that onto the ground the moment he found a suitable place.
The moment he came into a small opening, a river running thru it he decided to just plop it down. and although this seemed fairly careless, he didn't want to pay double the cost to spawn a scout thru [emergency production] and this forest had good cover. So he figured he might as well set up here, while remaining hidden and move later on. In most games a scout could be recruited from the HQ and even if that wasn't the case here, he was sure there should be some type of starters unit that could do the scouts job in a pinch. So making up his mind he plopped it down on this suitable spot. To his surprise, he had to select a type of HQ first, he didn't even know there were different types.
<Select HQ type>
Max first checked out what the [Reinforce] did.
[Reinforce]: When a squad faces losses they can [Reinforce] themselves at the building they're recruited from at the mana cost of a individual unit or by the player directly for a 100% cost increase, in order to replenish their numbers.
So basically the forward operations HQ would make unit replenishment cheaper. That was nice, especially since the soviet's focussed on unit spam, but at the end of the day, losing his HQ meant dying for Joseph which made him more inclined to the defensive HQ for the sole reason of it being underground.
The defensive boosts were a little vague, same with the Administrative HQ's boost to domestic affairs, there were no details to it. Either way, whatever bonus he could get to defensive measures to his HQ and/or the region it was located in was something Joseph was happy to take. The safer his HQ was the easier it was for him to run around doing whatever he wanted with a lesser risk of suddenly dying because his HQ got bombed off the face of the earth.
So he selected the Territorial defense HQ and watched in amazement as the structure started to form. The ground in front of him turned a translucent blue, exactly like he had been in that afterlife or whatever it was.
Joseph patiently waited for the building to finish ' building ' but after 15 minutes he realized this was going to take a while. He wasn't sure whether this magical ability was just limited in this world, not being the almighty god power he saw it as, or if this was some sort of counter against players abusing the building feature to just plop a HQ down and using it as a forward operation base behind enemy lines.
As the building slowly did its magical thing, Joseph decided to stroll around, he didn't have much better to do. He hadn't played many RTS games but those he did always had starter units that could be recruited from the HQ. In some games you started with some scouts or some type of hero but for most that wasn't the case.
He just hoped he didn't have a Chinese neighbor playing the soviet union that'll come in and annihilate him while he was setting things up. Some annoying strategy like using the [Emergency production] feature all players had to use their starters mana to spawn troops with a 100% cost increase, just to make some cheap kills off other players that were setting up, stealing a trait/perk point in the process.
The strategy had it's appeals but with a limited number of mana (250) he didn't think players would actually go for it. No one knew whether or not players even spawned in the same region, and how many of them there were for that matter.
He inspected his [emergency production] and saw that spawning a [scout] costed him a whopping 100 mana. He assumed, or at the very least hoped, that his HQ would have [scout] recruitment available, which meant it'd be half the cost of emergency production. That would make the price 50 mana, which was a lot less impacting for his limited supply.
Then again, as he looked around he saw [conscripts] in there as well, which were a lot bloody cheaper and came with more units as well. He decided to compare the two.
(100) Scouts: Scouts specialize in the exploration and mapping of territory. They're more likely to notice ambushes, tracks or irregularities in the terrain, have a easier time remaining hidden and move more efficiently thru difficult terrain.
Unit count: 2
Equipment: Tokarev TT-33 (handgun)- standard scout equipment
Moving on he decided to check out the co... His actions were interrupted by the sudden rustling of nearby bushes, deciding to be cautious he froze, dropping what he was previously doing in favour of paying more attention to his surroundings.
The rustling noise increased, causing Joseph to draw his gun and pull the top of the black piece of metal back, pulling the slide and letting it go. The satisfying click signified the fact that there was a bullet in the chamber, making Joseph feel a lot safer.
It was only now that he realized it was actually the first time he held a gun, which made him wonder why it all felt so familiar? He did it all with practised ease, as if he'd done it a thousand times already.
When some ugly green thing came rushing out of the bushes from his right, followed by five smaller equally ugly green things, he didn't hesitate. He aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger, causing a loud sound that was equally alien yet strangely familiar to be released. By the point he fully registered the sound the first of the ugly green things had already dropped dead.
The sound of birds taking off from the tree branches around him made him wonder whether or not this was wise, had he potentially given his position away to other players or perhaps the locals that lived in this area? A gun was all nice, but a single magazine didn't do much against a calvary charge, unless the sound would scare the horses or the front horses falling would trip the rest up.
Okay, maybe it did something, but he'd doubted that he'd be able to face off against a properly trained medieval unit on his lonesome.
As the biggest of the green ugly fuckers dropped dead the rest reacted with a mixture of confusion, shock and fear. The front two apparently weren't sure what to do, and kept charging on, the two behind it simply froze in shock while the last one just ran straight away.
He shot the two that continued coming after him, which snapped the two behind them out of it, who in turn followed the example of the fifth and fled. Joseph didn't waste any more bullets on them, although he could spawn in more thru [emergency production] it all came at the cost of mana. Something he didn't really want to waste right now.
He walked over to the corpses, carefully checking if nothing else was around. He was careful to avoid to growing pool of crimson red that was forming under the creatures. He didn't want any blood stains on his fancy officer boots.
He was happy to see that the [Stalins Resolve] perk was working, he felt absolutely nothing as he looked into the lifeless eyes of these creatures. Now that he was thinking about it, weren't they goblins? They looked a whole lot different when he looked down at them with his own eyes, rather then one a PC screen or thru the description on a book page.
They were the typical green bastards and if he had to guess, the bigger one would probably be a hob goblin? he wasn't sure, it had stood at about 150 CM tall while most of the others varied between 90 to 110 CM.
He couldn't help but wonder if it was edible, it didn't look particularly appealing, especially since they were humanoid but if they were edible, it would provide a easy early game food source that would allow him to safe on mana, which he had no idea how to produce yet.
Joseph took a moment to blink his eyes, in a mixture of surprise and realization. Was the first thing he thought about, when murdering green humanoid looking little monsters, whether or not their still warm corpses were edible? Joseph never was the type to particularly care about other peoples problems, something that had to do with his neglected upbringing as a orphan, but this was extreme, even for him. Not that he minded, he was glad to be so efficient but the fact that he could be just that surprised him.
' Stalins resolve huh? '
He put the matter out of his mind and went back to the goblins as potential food situation.
After all, in most games and fantasy works these creatures often reproduced quickly and came in large groups, using swarming tactics not unlike that of his soviet faction. He moved on to the next fucker, this one had fallen face down which exposed a ominously looking red crystal around his nape, which instantly peeked Joseph's curiosity.
He grabbed his sword and carefully picked the crystal from the nape, picking the blood stained crystal up he was immediately hit with a option.
[Absorb goblin crystal?]
>Yes
>No
He selected yes and watched his mana go up to 252 which made him instantly regret not shooting the other goblins when he had the chance. Interestingly, the crystal didn't shatter or disappear but simply turned grey. He went back to the first big one, and flopped his body over to be greeted by a similar looking crystal, although slightly bigger.
[Absorb hob-goblin crystal?]
>Yes
>No
This one gave 4 which brought his mana up to 256, which instantly made him wonder whether or not this were the default rates or if this was affected by the Soviet's unique boost to their resource gain. He was also curious if there were more creatures that generated mana like this, his free hand reflexively shot up to his own nape. No crystal there, which was great. The last thing this world needed was players who were stimulated to commit genocide in order to farm mana. Well, that was assuming the normal locals didn't produce crystals in their neck. He hoped not.
To ensure that monsters did, or at the very least goblins, and this wasn't just a twice in a roll lucky fluke, he went to the third and found yet again another crystal which brought his total up to 258. He could bring a new magazine into existence for a single mana, which meant the normal price if made thru a correct facility would be 0,5 mana which meant that hunting these things would provide for a excellent early mana source.
He'd have to make sure he didn't overhunt them, lest he wants to ruin his only known source of mana. As far as goblins as a potential food source went, he wasn't yet desperate enough to try that out himself. He'd let a unlucky sod try that out, see if it was edible or not.
Thinking about unluck sods, the conscripts came to mind again. Continuing where he previously left off he decided to check those out.
He pocketed his grey crystals and moved on.
======
(C4) HQ
Having made up his mind to continue where he left off, Joseph went to check out the conscripts thru the [emergency production] feature.
(70)Conscripts: Conscripts are a cheap and weak unit which makes up the backbone off the Soviet army. Although inferiorly trained and equipped compared to other factions, they're cheaper and have the unique ability to [reinforce] other squads which makes them a cheap way to keep units replenished along the front lines.
Unit count: 6x Conscript
Equipment: 6x Mosin-Nagant - standard field equipment.
Keeping in mind that the unit has a 100% increase due to [emergency production], that'll put their normal unit cost at 35 which seemed dirt cheap. A machine gun squad was, for example, 500 in emergency production meaning the normal cost was 250.
That meant he could spawn 7 squads of conscripts for the same price which was crazy. Of course a machine gunner in a good position could easily mow down seven such squads, but that changed when they were surrounded or swarmed. More importantly, that reinforce option allowed him to basically use them as cheap replacement units.
If he could turn a conscript into a scout by reinforcing a scout squad that lost a single unit, that'll mean he'd lost a single conscript instead of having to reinforce the scout unit for the individual scout price of 25 mana. If he then reinforced the conscript squad itself, assuming that's possible. he'd lose a little less then 6 mana, which was a absolute game changer.
If this worked like he think it did, like he absolutely hoped it did, it would explain why the Soviets are such a excellent spam unit. He just had to ensure the inferiorly trained units didn't turn tail and run and would instead continue doing their job on the front, acting as meat shields and reinforcing more experienced units where needed.
Nodding to himself in satisfaction he made his way back with a lengthy detour, on his way he didn't come across any other animals or monsters. He assumed that was due to the earlier gunshots scaring wildlife, which, he guessed included monsters in this world.
On his way back he came across a walnut tree, which he collected some walnuts from, cracking them open with his sword, he now had something to snack on. It was also, while he walked back, that he noticed one new flashing icon on his game interface, or whatever he was supposed to call the weird options, almost game like buttons with which he could go thru the [emergency production] or building features.
A typical message showed up, accompanying the hammer icon which featured his building options and the warning icon of [emergency production].
Clicking the message icon he came face to face with notifications.
[You've successfully killed a hob goblin y.....]
[You've successfully killed a goblin y....]
He got XP notifications, except that he didn't actually get any XP, the message stated he was already max lvl which was yet another thing he had to look into. Besides that, he noticed, thru a notification that his HQ had finished constructing, so he continued on in that direction.
As he did so he was eventually greeted by the entrance of his new HQ. It wasn't some fancy oaken door, no, it was a trench line going downwards. As he moved deeper into the structure, he passed some thick metal doors, which after checking, he saw could be closed and barred from the inside. There was a small hole inside, allowing the barrel of a machine gun to pass thru.
The hole was
Joseph had honestly expected some typical HQ building that contained a command post and perhaps some quarters for practicality sake, but it was far more then that. The thing was a fortress, everything was bloody reinforced, there were no fancy wooden floors, instead there was concrete. Weaponized concrete, or at least Joseph liked to imagine so, considering the whole vibe the bunker gave off.
There was a command center, quarters for not just Officers but a number of soldiers as well. Storage facilities, with a separated bunker for a storage of ammunition. A armory, cafeteria, a small medical bay, as well as the necessary life support to feed such a underground structure.
There was a generator room, that produced the electricity required to keep the facility running, lights hung on the concrete ceilings, illuminating the otherwise, creepy looking tunnels within the bunker complex.
He however smelled no gasoline within the generator room, neither did it make sense that the taps in quarters produced water out of thin air, they were in the middle of a random forest and couldn't possibly be connected to any waterlines.
Not to mention that the air was fresh and he didn't see any ventilation or air purification systems around the entrance, it all screamed bloody magic. He checked his mana bar and noticed a negative -50 (daily) mana drain on it. Probably the upkeep cost of the structure.
He passed by a empty communication center and went straight to the command center. There was a fancy wooden oak table, although it stilll seemed to scream practicality over comfort. It was large, capable of holding a multitude of maps, there was even a box with war figurines ready to use on top of it not that it was much good without a map.
Joseph grabbed himself a chair at the head and the table and finally decided to interact with the HQ's interface.
There he could finally see the HQ perks/traits. The previous description of the ' territorial defense HQ ' were a little vague, only stating that it gave defensive boosts. So it was great to see what boosts were actually given.
[Entrenchment]
All trenches and/or structures attached to the HQ thru trench lines will receive a 50% bonus to their structural integrity.
[Fortified region]
Fortifications within the region are 50% cheaper.
[Regional defense commander]
Allows you to spawn one special, high ranking Officier, whose first spawning is free. its possible to enable/disable the sharing of traits with this specific officier when you spawn him. The potential for trait sharing isn't possible with anyone but this one officier, unless the trait specifies it works for units other then the player.
Looking over the HQ's interface and going to the officier tabs, Joseph indeed saw that the Major's 500 mana price had been crossed out and replaced with a ' free ' bar.
The major however was the lowest of the high ranking officiers, there were a a whole bunch of them, each one increasing its price by 250 mana.
There was
-
Interestingly, there weren't any junior officiers. Considering normal units could get XP he wondered if standard troops had the potential to turn into junior officiers.
Putting the thought aside for now, he decided to spawn the major, not before using his [Fanatic] on the recruitment option though.
[Fanatics]
Luckily a 100% increase to ' free ' remained ' free ' he was a little afraid that the normal price of 500 would be doubled, which needless to say, wasn't affordable to him at the moment.
Considering that the unit was 100% loyal now, he didn't worry about enabling the perk sharing ability. If this officier literally copied all his perks, including the default player perks like [Emergency creation] it might be possible for him to replace the player himself.
That was a scary though and Joseph considered it all the more plausible considering that there was literally the option to disable perk sharing when spawning said unique officier. Why would you be able to disable perks if it couldn't have any negative consequences?
Speaking of consequences, Joseph wondered how the respawning perk would interact with the officier. Would he keep his memories? It would be amazing to send a high ranking Officier to intercept a assault and, if it, upon his death would just respawn at the HQ with all knowledge in tact, ready to prepare the final defenses.
Would things like XP be saved? Assuming that he could even level up like he thought they could. Joseph decided to simply go for it and spawn him, and the moment he did, that same translucent sphere came in front of him, in the shape of a humanoid instead of a building entrance this time.
There wasn't any bizarre sight of the translucent humanoid sphere slowly turning into flesh and bones, No. One moment it was a translucent humanoid sphere, the next there stood a bombshell of a blond haired and blue eyed lady.
Needless to say the ' him ' in the perk description was inaccurate, it should clearly say ' she ' unless there was a hidden surprise somewhere. The military uniform that clung tightly against her chest made him doubt that, though.
Upon seeing him, the major sprang to attention, saluting him with a greeting.
" Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph."
==============
(C5) Major Natasha. - This is a WIP chapter which i'm just churnign stuff out on,I still have to edit it,probably split it off into a new chapter somewhere etc.
" Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph."
The words were simple, but the look and voice conveyed her message clearly. It was a question for further instructions which took Joseph a moment to realize. He was distracted by the thick Russian accent and bizarre situation, honestly, this was so game like.
Instead of a random male officer like he expected based on the interface description, he got a stereotypical, beautiful bombshell of a lady to assist him. She spoke English, even though she appeared to be Russian, given the accent.
It reminded him of how Nazi's in war movies always spoke English with thick German accents. It was a relief though,since Joseph didn't speak a word of Russian.
" At ease, comrade, major. "
Joseph was surprised to hear that he himself had a thick Russian accent as well. He hadn't truly spoken aloud yet, so it came as a bit of a surprise. The major however, upon hearing those words, relaxed her stance. Another curious thing Joseph noted was that she already knew his name.
" What's your name, comrade, Major? "
Joseph wasn't sure whether the whole ' comrade ' stuff was necessary, but it felt surprisingly natural to speak in such a manner, if he ignored the fact his own voice had a thick Russian accent now, which made it sound a little foreign to him. It would probably just take a little getting used to.
As the girl began to speak, she once again saluted him, although this time it was a lot more casual.
" Major, Natasha (back name), at your service. " at the time she finished with her back name she casually lowered her salute, while finishing the rest of her sentence.
Joseph nodded in affirmation after which he asked " May I say, comrade Natasha "
addressing her with her full title constantly and vica versa seemed like a waste of time. The major nodded after which she responded " it would be my honor, comrade, Supreme commander, Joseph. "
Joseph held up his hand, smiling as he did so. " Then please, call me ' comrade Joseph ' as well. "
The girl hesitated for only a moment after which she followed up. " Very well, comrade, Joseph. I think it's a little informal but it'd be honored to do just that... Can I be of service to you? "
Honestly, Joseph still remained rather curious about the interface referring to her as a ' he '. Did this mean the interface wasn't always accurate? Or perhaps it was just the general way to refer to a officer, just like someone may call a car a he or she, even though it's genderless.
Trying to sate some of that curiosity, Joseph asked, perhaps a bit insensitively.
" Do you perhaps identify as a male, comrade, Natasha? " Her name didn't sound particularly masculine, so he assumed not.
Natasha herself seemed confused by the question.
" I do not, Comrade Joseph. I feel perfectly... Feminine. "
" Then, forgive me for the insensitive question.. Do you happen to have male genitalia. "
There was a short moment of silence after which he got his answer.
" Would you like to check for yourself? "
Seeing her right eyebrow, which was raised in amusement, not to mention that twinkle in her eye, Joseph couldn't help but chuckle. If she could be cheeky then he could rest easy he hadn't offended her. He also had his answer now, there was no way she'd joke with him like that if she was packing.
Speaking of packing, she was packing a gun on her side. Not to mention a sword, her entire outfit was similar to his, save for the insignia at her shoulder which depicted the rank of Major.
Unlike him however, she had come into existence with a backpack which once again made Joseph curious.
" What's in there? "
She looked behind her for a moment, as if finally realizing that she was wearing a big bag of cloth on her back and answered, as if it was self explanatory.
" A extra officers outfit, extra shirts, a wash-bin, three day of officer rations and some other items. It's all standard issue, safe for the extra woman essentials. "
Joseph assumed those extra essentials to be tampons and the like, he wasn't going to ask for confirmation though. He had asked enough insensitive questions for one day.
" That's great, I'm curious, since the interface said you shared my abilities and perks. Are you capable of using the [Emergency production] feature? " He knew for a fact that's meant to be a player perk.
" Let me see.... Yes, here it is. " Natasha opened it with practiced ease, letting instinct guide her.
Joseph nodded in affirmation " What about the HQ interface, are you able to recruit conscripts and can you make them [Fanatics] while your at it? "
Joseph had seen that both Conscripts, Field Engineers and a number of officers were recruitable from the HQ interface.
Natasha looked it over for a moment after which she responded. " Yes I can, although I don't have enough mana at the moment. I have a gut feeling every high ranking officer can recruit units though. "
Joseph was curious yet again, where her gut feelings some type of instinct she spawned with? How accurate was it? Not to mention, did this mean his mana resource wasn't a global pool but was only accessible to him exclusively?
Thinking back to those grey crystals, he picked one to see if he could fill it back up. As he thought about it, a notification appeared.
[Fill empty mana crystal?]
>Yes
>No
Interestingly enough, it was no longer a ' monster crystal ' and had instead turned into a ' empty crystal' he selected yes and tried to fill it with mana, unlike the two to four that was in it earlier he could put a whopping 10 mana in it before he couldn't anymore.
Now that he thought about it, a conscript squad was 35 and he only had 3 empty crystals. Which meant she wouldn't have enough either way, so instead of filling the other two he handed this one over.
" Can you absorb that somehow? "
She picked the crystal up and found that she could indeed absorb, it with she signified with a nod. " Yes I can. "
Interestingly enough, this time around, the crystal had become blue instead of red, when he filled it with mana. He watched as she absorbed the crystal, until it turned into its previous grey husk.
If she could absorb mana from crystals, could Joseph perhaps transfer it to her as well? He gently held out his hand, as if waiting for a handshake and Natasha, understanding he wanted to try something gave her his hand. He saw that he could indeed transfer mana, but what surprised him much more was Natasha's statement.
" I can absorb mana from you. "
" Try it "
While saying so, Joseph tried to mentally deny the transfer of mana, he wanted to know if it was possible to object/prevent it from happening. It didn't matter how much he tried to resist, he felt another 10 mana draining for him as easily as when he filled the crystal
" Do you want me to continue? " Natasha asked, to which Joseph answered.
" Yes. Go for the full 70 so you can spawn a squad of fanatic conscripts. "
She did just that, sucking out mana until she had enough for a full fanatic conscripts squad, upon Joseph instructions she interacted with the HQ interface, something Joseph tried blocking but couldn't.
If every high ranking officer could spawn units, he'd have to be careful that he didn't get a mutiny or something on hand.
As Natasha spawned the conscripts, she watched in amazement as 6 humanoid, transculent blue spheres spawned in front of her. She hadn't yet seen the process herself.
Seeing her like that, Joseph couldn't help but think she looked like her age right now. Joseph had geen 22 when he died as Richard and Natasha seemed of a similar age as himself.
It's just that she didn't quite look it when she acted as a professional soldier, ofcourse there was that tease earlier but she had seemed so confident and in control of it that she simply came across more maturily, as if she was older then him even though she wasn't.
" it's a fascinating sight, isn't it? "
Upon hearing Joseph's word Natasha snapped out of it, bringing to bear her previous, more professional look.
" It sure is, comrade Joseph. "
The conscripts spawned, each of them had their rifle, and standard equipment on while having a large cloth army dufflebag on their back.
" Line up. "
Upon hearing Joseph's words and glancing at his Insignia they did just that. They lined up and saluted him.
" Comrade supreme commander. "
Curiously enough they didn't use his name like Natasha did. Did they simply not know it because Joseph hadn't spawned them? Or had this something to do with rank, were they simply to low to adres the Supreme commander of what was essentially a Soviet like army on Suriname basis.
" Do you know my name, Conscript. "
" Negative, sir. "
" It's, Joseph. "
" Understood, Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph. "
He was already interested in testing out how the [Fanatic] perk worked now that Natasha spawned them and seeing how they didn't know his name, that interest only Intensified.
The Fanatic skill description mentioned the player specifically. Was this another case of the interface being unreliable?
[Fanatics]
- In return for a 100% price increase a unit may be generated with the [Fanatic] perk. Fanatics are complete loyalists that fully trust their player and are ready to carry out their every single order.
Not every officier could make use of said perk, Only Natasha could make use of all his special perks and abilities, because she was a unique officier obtained thru one of the Territorial Defense HQ benefits. But that didn't make her a player.
Deciding to simply test it out, Joseph decided to draw a gun on Natasha. Instantly the conscripts reacted, some quicker then others.
Natasha was initially confused but reacted quickly enough.
" Ho- " she didn't get to finish her sentence as Joseph was shot straight thru his head.
He had taken a negative reaction into account, but he imagined that if push came to shove they'd just threaten him. He didn't expect them to just shoot the Supreme commander of their army, point blank with zero hesitation. Especially not while he had Natasha under gunshot.
Not that his assumptions did him much good as his dead body collapsed upon the cold concrete floor of the bunker while pieces of mushy brain and blood splattered around.
***
As Joseph regained consciousness, the memory of what previously transpired instantly assaulted his mind, and he was instantly thankful himself for picking the [respawn perk]
[respawn]
- The player gets the ability to respawn, meaning that death is no longer permanent.
- -When the HQ is destroyed the player permanently dies as well.
- -Rebuilding the HQ is no longer possible. Moving the HQ is possible but the player isn't able to respawn while the HQ is being moved.
He hasn't even been playing this so called ' game ' of the gods and said perk already paid itself off.
He was once again standing into the command center of his HQ and the first thing he noticed was that it felt a lot cooler, just as this sensation hit him he noticed his surroundings.
Two conscripts were scrubbing the last of the blood off the floor, while three others were lined up against the wall, their backs straight.
Natasha was sitting at the head of the commands centers oak table, next to a nicely folded up set of clothes, looking way more pissed off then someone that shared his [Stalin resolve] perk should.
As she finally noticed him, at the same time he realized he respawned bloody naked, she stood up and addressed him.
" Joseph! "
She still looked pissed, just a lot less intensely. Joseph felt he could describe her as just ' angry ' now.
Even though Joseph himself was a virgin, standing naked in a room full of people, of which a single one was a stunning beauty of the opposite sex. He wasn't awkward, the sensation just didn't register.
Instead he moved on to the clothes, which he assumed were for him. Upon noticing the insignia he realized it wasn't just for him, it was the set he was wearing when he got shot.
The fabric was slightly moist, it was clearly cleaned but since it was only moist and not soaking wet he couldn't help but wonder how long he was out for.
" How long was I gone? "
Natasha, who still looked angry responded surprisingly professionally
" Three hours, Comrade, Supreme commander, Joseph. "
Apparently she had slipped when she previously called out to him, at least Joseph assumed as much considering he was addressed with his full title this time around.
He calmly dressed himself while looking around. Sporting only five of the six Conscript he couldn't help but feel like twelve mana just got wasted. Assuming the guy that shot him wasn't just elsewhere currently.
" Where's the guy that shot me? "
" Executed. "
" I see... How did the rest respond to that? " Upon asking he looked over to the lined up men, each of which avoided eye contact.
" They accepted itwith reluctance, sir. "
I'm just going to drop what I made thus far, background details and stuff are lacking, I know, I often have trouble writing and describing those, besides that, I haven't truly worked back over them all to edit things, aka making sure the small details match and all that type of stuff. Feel free to take this as inspiration for your own version or join into the current version. I would find it funny to see more similar stuff going around on scribblehub. Maybe different authors could copy the concept and make their own versions? Bit like how " the gamer " does it, with a bunch of authors having the same MC going down different paths or routes, who knows. Just random idea's that I write out as they pop into my head.
(C1) A choice:
Regaining his consciousness in a whitish space, Richard, a 23 year Dutchmen of Spanish decent who was still a little fuzzy in the head, inspected his body to find it in some type of translucent form.
Memories of the knife in his gut flashed back into his mind and he couldn't help but burst out laughing, either he was dead and the whole afterlife BS he never believed in was real, or he was going absolutely crazy. Maybe he was comatsoe in the hospital and was going super hard on a extra large dosage of morphine.
" Geez, I hope I don't have to deal with another broken one. "
Being interrupted from his sudden giggle fit by a surprisingly beautiful voice, Richard looked up and came face to face with what he could only describe as an angelic being. She sat on top of a floating, golden throne in this whitish space and Richard couldn't help but giggle again, thinking how gold apparently had some type of value or at least fashionable appeal to the afterlife or whatever the fuck this was.
Was this where all the gold that dissapeared within churches went to? unlikely, or so Richard thought.
Richard snapped out of it for a moment.
" Sorry, this is just my way of processing everything. "
" I see... Some humans do tend to laugh their problems off, although I don't quite sense the despair in your laugh, that those individuals usually have. It's more like you just, find the situation surreal but don't really care beyond that. "
Richard couldn't help but shrug, although he wasn't sure how well his translucent form transmitted that gesture, or if it even held the same meaning in whatever this place was.
" We all die at some point "
Richard has been suffering from a heavy case of Paget's bone disease all his life and although he never quite reached the point of wanting to take his own life, he didn't attach quite as much value to his life as a normal person either.
He didn't have much of a family, he was dumped at a orphanage and never really was chosen for adoption. Why would he when there were perfectly healthy alternatives available? He knew he'd never land a job, given his condition yet still had to go to school, as is obligated by Dutch law. He finished his high school, was deemed medically unfit for work and lived off social benefits.
The constant pain of his bones deforming, cracking and just growing into his very flesh couldn't be stopped by the painkillers he was issued, so his pain was merely damped. He had a hard time making friends since he couldn't quite engage in all the activities a normal person could, so although he had some friends, they were severely limited.
All in all he spent most of his time at his house, killing time thru reading, playing games and watching random shit. At the end of the day, killing time like that was only fun for so long, at some point you simply got tired of gaming, reading or watching stuff.
So when someone attempted to rob him, he wasn't particularly afraid of his life, besides, what are the chances someone actually stabs you when he threatens to do just that? This was the Netherlands, not America and most people here were simply bluffing when it came down to it.
Besides, even when stabbed, who leaves a person for death and turns armed robbery into murder? That's just stupid, and he couldn't help but laugh at the fact it actually happened, like, what are the chances?
" Mortals indeed do. "
Richard nodded at that, once again not sure if the gesture was properly transmitted in this weird form he was currently in. " So, are you the almighty one, god hims... Herself in the flesh here to judge me? "
She smiled softly " Not quite. You've never been religious, never prayed or engaged in a religious ritual. In short, none of the gods could make a claim on your soul, meaning you can't exactly be judged. "
Fact that there were multiple gods aside, the thing Richard was more curious about was " Then what am I doing here? "
To which the angelic being responded " Unclaimed souls are allocated thru a lottery system, to the various gods that hold dominion over a realm. You've been randomly given to Siddhartha Gautama, who, luckily for you, gives most souls a chance at reincarnation. Anyway, none of that matters for you, what's important is that you can either re-enter his cycle, being reborn without any previous memories, entering the cycle clean in attempt to gain enlightenment thru meditation, separating yourself from the mortal desires and all that yada yada or we can reincarnate you into a more exciting chosen world, with all your memories in tact and some cool fantasy system, like in those books you've read. "
" .... You don't sound very.. divine, do you? "
" Don't give me that nonsense, I'm not much more then a empowered soul, a minor sinner that could live her next few cycles in misery due to negative karma, or do.... this for one cycle and consider my sins forgiven. "
" Okay, that explains a thing or t " noticing the beings glare, Richard didn't finish his sentence and instead coughed. " Anyway, what's the whole chosen world reincarnation thing about? It'd like to go for a magical fantasy world, preferably medieval with classes and all that typical isekai stuff. "
Richard has always been fond of fantasy world books in which someone reincarnates and just enjoys a wonderful magical world filled with adventure and magic.
"Yeah, about that. I have this first come, first serve type of thing going here, so long story short, I only have two worlds available for you. In one you get reborn into more of a sci-fi world that's part of a wider galaxy that's being invaded by alien forces. You'll get a fancy system that makes you stronger as you kill living entities, I can even reincarnate you as the child of a prominent family which should make your military career easier, officer spot guaranteed. Once you are done with your mandatory military service you can explore all the exciting things that universe has to offer the other option is some boring RTS type game in which other reincarnatee's are likely to try and kill you. "
Those weren't the choices Richard was hoping for and what was up with that ' first come first serve ' bs, was he supposed to just die earlier?
" Can I wait until new options are available? "
The girl shook her head " No, you can't. I don't want you all over my floor for a entire cycle, Although if you make significant contributions into the first suggested world i'll promise to keep a few of those typical fantasy world options free for your next cycle.
That seemed a awful lot like a bribe to Richard, not that he minded. He never was much of a RTS player anyway so he guessed the first option would've been best anyway, if he gets another chance in a world he'd like to afterwards that'd be a great deal. Hell, getting to life a second life not to mention a guaranteed third with his memories in tact was already great. He however didn't want to blindly agree, without knowing more details about his options.
"So, can you provide some more details on both options? "
"Ofcourse, you see this first world is on the backfoot in a constant war against invading alien forces, you'll go there and do your part in ensuring human life doesn't cease to exist over there, ofcourse you get a fancy system with a ton of unique abilities. After your obligatory military service you can do whatever you want in this exciting new sci-fi universe. You could even desert and become a space pirate or smuggler or whatever, it'd recommend doing your 4 years though, the connections and benefits that come from the prominent family I can reincarnate you into would do you great.
The other world is some poor world of typical fantasy that's been selected to act as a playgrounds for the gods. Bunch of sods get send into it with a unique military system, allowing them to spawn in units and weaponry from around the WW2 era. There'll be other reincarnates out there trying to kill you. "
Okay, Richard wasn't the best at RTS he didn't play it as much and whenever he did he'd just get shrekked by a chinese guy with a pre-made strategy in mind. He liked games in which he could just go as he went, without the need to make strict battle plans beforehand to have a chance at winning.
The first world, although likely just as brutal, maybe more brutal considering he'd be a officer himself instead off the overall commander, at least allowed him to be the unique player. The main character of the book, so to say, with his own unique system that gave him a edge over the others. The second world would just make him ' one of many ' not to mention the first world gave him a choice for his next cycle, assuming he made contributions to said world.
"Okay, so how will we proceed if I choose that first world? "
The angelic being smiled at that " I'll just reincarnate you into the womb of the Matriarch of a prominent military family, don't worry though, you won't be conscious until your birth. There's just this one thing, really, i'm sure a open minded guy such as yourself won't mind... The world is a matriarchy, so if you want that officers life instead of becoming a common laborer or foot soldiers, we're going to have to. " She didn't finish her sentence but she did make a scissor gesture with her fingers, as if she was cutting something.
" Wha...t? "
"Ah, don't worry, I won't actually cut anything off, you'd just be reborn as a girl, it's completely painless. "
" .... "
Richard was simply speechless.
"Ah, not so open minded after all? Are you sure? Being a woman can be a lot of fun, lots of small orgasms instead of a one big one y'know? "
Richard was quite satisfied with his male identity and if he was being reborn, especially with his old memories in tact, he'd prefer to continue down that road. Just the idea of dealing with monthly cramps, having guys hit on you or just child birth by itself made his skin crawl.
"About that second wor- "
He wasn't able to finish his sentence when the angelic being interrupted him " Wait a moment, we can still reincarnate you as a male on that first world. You'd likely start out as a foot soldier but you can still build yourself a nice career. With the help of the system you'd surely become a prime specimen of a man, I have no doubt a high ranking officer will pick you to become her husband. Maybe you'd even be allowed to seed other girls, doesn't that idea arouse you? A strong beautiful wife which you can serve and impregnate? "
What was up with all the sex talk? It's not like that's all guys think about. Richard respect for this angelic being was rapidly declining.
" I don't really have those... preferences. "
Richard wasn't some type of stereotypical alpha male that considered himself superior to the female sex, requiring to always be the dominant one in order to deal with some hidden insecurity issue. That however didn't mean he wanted to become someone's bitch either, he'd been ignored and shunned enough in his last life, he didn't need any more of that in his next.
The angelic being remained quiet for some time, as if hoping he'd change his mind but after a akward silence she'd released a sigh " Very well then, the second world will allow you to make your own character, decide what sex it is and so on, as if it were a game. You can build units and conquer the world or not. It's really up to the player what they do, although we do actively stimulate you people to murder each other. "
She shrugged as if it really wasn't her problem before she continued on. " If you kill another player they die, just like you'd do in your own world, so there's no respawning. When starting out you can choose a theme for your faction and a few special perks/traits. If you remove another player from the game you can steal one of his perks/traits. So players that actually seek out and kill other players will have a greater benefits over other players as time moves on. You can also choose to be a pacifist, it's really up to you. "
Richard nodded at that. " You said something about it being a magical world? To which the girl responded.
" Yes, it's a typical world of medieval fantasy with magic a couple of gods will push people such as yourself onto it as players who will have the ability to bring forth units and weaponry from around your worlds ww2 era at the cost of mana. It's mostly a amusement project of a few gods, don't worry though, every soul that perishes in that world due to their intervention is offered a more positive judgement. You can see it as.... bringing people closer to god, or heaven or all that yadayada. "
So, they'd basically go and invade a medieval world of magic with tanks and guns for the amusement of a few gods? "Okay, It'd like to go there then, if possible. "
Richard would prefer going over there and just seeing what'll happen when he died, he could technically just pray to Siddhartha Gautama so that being could make a claim onto his soul, which means worst case he'd just get reincarnated again without his old memories after death. He'd at least have the satisfaction of knowing live goes on, there isn't some black void or eternal sleep waiting for him that way.
The girl nodded at that " Very well, we'll set you up and once that's done we'll put you in a statis until all involved parties are done throwing the souls they want at this world. You won't notice a thing, you'd just find yourself suddenly starting out at some point when everyone ready, fair start to all and all that. "
Richard nodded at that after which the angelic being waved her hand and his vision suddenly turned in some type of character creation menu.
==========
(C2) Character & faction creation
'This is bizarre '
was the first thing that went thru Richard's mind when his vision changed to some form of character creation menu. He could literally select his gender and see his translucent shape change in reaction. Clicking the female option caused his chest to swell up and the sensation of something shrinking between his legs to appear, which was disturbing to say the least.
'What is a hermaphrodite even? '
clicking the option out of curiosity he noticed something growing back between his legs, in addition to the previous changes made. Not being particularly interested in having both sexes, Richard switched back to his original male shape.
He could select a skin color, after which his translucent form changed into one of flesh and bones. He was happy to see that there was some form of censoring, covering his privates from the girl above him.
He played around with the settings a bit, pumping up his muscle, enchanting his form and generally just shaping himself into the stereotypical beautiful character he enjoyed playing as. It was only after he gave himself the typical blonde haired blue eyed features that he wondered what other players would do?
Instead of making himself absolutely beautiful, should he make himself as small as possible to make bullets less likely to hit him? Or maybe blend in?
" What does the average person in this world look like? "
The woman's eyes twinkled in amusement as she reacted to Richards inquiry " You'd be surprised how few people make inquiries like that, instead of turning themselves into gorgeous sex bombs. "
She casually flicked her finger to make what Richard could only describe as some type of holographic, translucent picture appear.
" This is how the average peasant looks like thanks to the influence of magic "
Looking at the given example, Richard couldn't help but think that it was better then he'd expected. The lack of self care supplements in said time periods gave him the assumption that everyone would be uglier. Then there was the fact that labour and just the way of life in general was a lot harder in said time period and the public available amenities were just a lot less generous. But apparently magic, healing magic in particular took care of some of those problems.
The average peasant looked healthy, although more skinny then average. The skin looked soft and their hair, although usually unkempt and a little greasy didn't look terrible. Making up his mind, Richard shortened his character intimidating height, changed his beautiful blonde hair colour into a more average brown and selected a pair of grey eyes instead of the beautiful blue he previously had.
All in all he edited his character to be more average, the only thing he artificially enchanted was... something else. He was after all, still a guy and given the chance he had to mess around with that particular ' length ' setting.
After he looked more like a normal peasant he continued on to his faction settings and choices. There were three factions to choose from, namely the USA, Wehrmacht and Soviet union. Richard wondered why there weren't more factions like, for example, the British or something but decided to put senseless thoughts aside and move on.
The USA had a bigger focus on specialized units and a better logistical setup. Their units spawned with better then average equipment and training and their officers were better in preventing morale loss, not to mention that besides the average ' officer ' they could also train captains with special abilities.
The Wehrmacht had it's own set of specialized units similar to the Americans but didn't enjoy the same logistical benefits, they paid a higher price for what was essentially the same unit equipment as the Americans and Instead of receiving better trained units right from the get go their units were more average, they however had a experience boost and those that survived battle improved more rapidly. Besides that, they had bonuses to their mechanized units allowing their vehicles and aircraft to be maintained at a lower cost.
Richard could see the benefits to both, USA was more of a allrounder that had a easier time sustaining damage since they could spawn new squads that were on average better trained then other squads. Their officers and boosts to morale gave them a easier time holding out in difficult sitautions.
The Wehrmacht on the other hand, paid a heavier price for equipment then the Americans did and their units didn't spawn with as much training, they however gained experience quicker and in combination with their lower upkeep for vehicles and aircraft had a easier time creating mechanized brigades. The infantry that survived and leveled could eventually end up as a more elite force that supported their panzer infantry and less experienced units.
Both of these were nice, but at the end of the day Richards attention was drawn to the Soviet Union. The Soviet's had weaker units on average, far less trained and equipped not to mention their mechanized units were just not on par with the other faction. They however enjoyed a buff that doubled their resource gain and their overall production. The entire faction just screamed quantity over quality and although that wasn't always great, Richard felt it allowed him to make far more mistakes.
Losing a squad of infantry wouldn't hurt as much if it was cheaper and easy to replace. Besides having double the production rates and resource gain would be great for playing defensive.
Last but not least, the Soviets had a communism perk which allowed them to essentially remove the salary upkeep of units which really drove home the spam nature of the faction.
[Communism]
- + Units don't require salary upkeep.
- + Converted units can be made into communists, they don't require salary upkeep.
- - Units lose loyalty quicker if better amenities are available elsewhere.
- - Converted units that lose welfare due to the switch to communism are more likely to break rank or dessert.
The angelic being had briefly explained how the game worked earlier. Instead of complicated resource nodes and production chains you only really needed Mana. So instead of needing to collect oil and set up a refinery, you could just have your engineers build a oil refinery which would then drain mana from you to generate oil, assuming enough workers staffed the building.
Same with units, players could generate units at special buildings, said units would then just appear out of thin air. She had explained that they weren't lifeless dolls and were just like other people, the souls of sinners were used to make them. She had reassured Richard that this was all on a voluntary basis, sinners essentially made their souls available for this, choosing it as a sort of punishment over whatever the fuck sinners normally go thru.
So yeah, units were like normal people except that they had their memories wiped and instead got basic knowledge, suitable for that specific unit. Besides of generating units out of thin air you could also convert the normal inhabitants of that world.
If you met certain requirements to recruit them and spend the mana you could train them into units, this was cheaper to do. The problem with communism in this regard was that this world made use of a monetary system. The typical copper - silver - gold coins system was in affect and the Wehrmach and American factions were able to make use of this. They could use local currency instead of mana to convert units or pay their troop wage. So they essentially had a secondary resource to make use off.
There was also the risk of converted units or even self made units, simply losing loyalty because a better amenities were available elsewhere which could make preventing rebellion and holding ground more tricky.
But, like mentioned earlier, players had unique perks and traits to pick from and after scrolling thru the available perk list for the Soviet union he found one that balanced this nicely.
[Stalins resolve]
- +player becomes immune to negative status effects to the mind. Allowing him to commit the most horrendous of acts without batting an eye.
- +Units will unlock a fear bar, if units fear their superior officers or the player enough they're less likely to break rank, desert or betray the faction out of fear for consequences.
- -Units affected by fear are less likely to grab opportunities or take initiatives, they follow orders and that's it.
The downside to this perk was that units affected by fear wouldn't take initiatives out of their own volition anymore, which made his reliance on officers or other skilled staff to guide his troops that more important. The Soviet units favoured quantity over quality to begin with though, so the fact that troops affected by fear were less flexible without the correct guidance went with the trope of lesser quality nicely.
Secondly, although Richard still looked at this as if it was game right now, he realized that the moment he was down to earth so to say, looking at it as if it was all a game would become a whole lot harder. Warfare was a brutal thing, especially with a faction type that took quantity over quality. Making use of this factions strong points meant throwing units into the meat grinder and without a perk Richard simply wouldn't have the stomach for that.
That left him with two perk slots and although there were very nice abilities, ranging from specific buffs to specialized units, he settled for the ability to respawn next. Although this perk came with the downside of not being able to rebuild your HQ and dying when your HQ was destroyed the pro's outweighed the cons in his opinion. He wanted to make use of the soviet buffs to build up concentrated defenses and work on spam anyway, so not having to worry about a stray bullet ending the game for him was very nice.
Ofcourse he could also just stay safe and safe himself a very precious perk point, the player was able to spawn things in. Everyone had a standard ability called [emergency production] which allowed them to spawn pretty much anything they want, at the cost of a 100% price increase. Being able to make use of that on the front lines was just a cheat, especially since he didn't worry about getting shellshocked thanks to his stalins resolve perk.
[respawn]
- The player gets the ability to respawn, meaning that death is no longer permanent.
- -When the HQ is destroyed the player permanently dies as well.
- -Rebuilding the HQ is no longer possible. Moving the HQ is possible but the player isn't able to respawn while the HQ is being moved.
The last choice was very, very hard. He really wanted both [Partisans] and [Fanatics] but he only had one perk point left.
[Partisans]
- unlocks the miscellaneous unit [Partisan]. Citizens that believe in the communist ideology are automatically converted into partisans. It's also possible to manually convert citizens to partisans at the cost of 20 mana
- The presence of Partisan's in a area increase the effectiveness of the porpoganda center and operations of the secret police.
- When invaded by a foreign faction Partisan's will take up arms to resist invasion or engage in sabotage actions. The actions of Partisan's can be influenced by the players, thru, for example, the secret police.
- When not engaging in any activities partisans act as normal non player affiliated citizens with a pro communism sentiment.
- - Partisans aren't necessarily as loyal to the player as the ideology itself. Partisans may become less effective when invaded by a faction that shares the communist ideology. Effect of partisans against fellow communist factions can be increased thru external factors such as propaganda.
The Partisan effect would just make invasion a logistical nightmare, unless the player himself is in the front line and ready to pay a very heft resource price to resupply his troops it'd just be terrible to keep supply lines secure when the citizens of the area your occupying are trying to make things difficult.
Not to mention that Partisan activity in the area would make it far harder for other players to try and stimulate rebellion uprises and make use of the fact that communist units may lose loyalty when better amenities are available elsewhere.
In the end however he decided to settle for [Fanatics]
[Fanatics]
- In return for a 100% price increase a unit may be generated with the [Fanatic] perk. Fanatics are complete loyalists that fully trust their player and are ready to carry out their every single order.
The Fanatics perk would ensure that he had units that wouldn't be affected by the fear stat, basically, he needed officers that would be happy to take initiative when they presented themselves. A army that couldn't innovate was one that was bound to lose eventually. Besides that, knowing that key figures in your army wouldn't turn on you was a godsend.
Last but not least, he could go for the classic soviet tactic of putting a blocking unit behind advancing units to maw down units that break rank and flee. Which hopefully generated enough fear to ensure units did what they needed to, even when morale collapsed.
After all, quantity over quality doesn't work if the lesser quality mass off troops turns tail and run.
The tactic was absolutely savage but it was the only way Richard saw himself being able to work out the key weaknesses in the soviet faction.
Making up his mind Richard doubled down on his options and after a last bit of back and forth between him and the angelic being, finally lost his consciousness
=================
(C3) Waking up.
Richard was asleep, or so he thought? There was a weird box floating into his mind, asking him to select a playername. Something the units could refer to him by, he briefly wondered if he should go for a typical toxic gaming name like YahMom but being called that constantly would get old quickly.
He tried out the typical " Joseph Stalin " name but ofcourse, it was already taken. He tried settling for just " Joseph " which worked. Once that was done he had to select his faction name, he knew the standard name was likely to be already taken and just settled for " The People's Union " directly, which worked.
Last but not least he needed to make a flag, he settled on a red flag with golden embroilment rather then a star or a sickle he opted for grain as his emblem, which had two rifles crossed in front of it.
Once that was done he lost conscious momentarily and woke up later, he was laying on the ground in the middle of a forest. He got off the ground and dusted off his uniform, oh, that's right. He had a uniform on now, didn't he?
He checked it out and found himself to be wearing some type of soviet officers outfit. The outfit was completed with a fancy belt and overcoat. To his left side he felt the weight of a handgun, he wasn't familiar with the model. next to the gun was a pouch that held a canteen, to his other side there was a pouch with three magazines attached to his belt as well as a sword, which based on the look was more for ceremonial purposes then anything.
'No binocular? '
Richard, or well, Joseph had expected there to be a binocular or something of the sort, since he apparently went with a officer vibe there however was nothing of the sort. He shrugged, moving on, and took a walk around.
Honestly, the fact he could actually just walk around like this, without any form of pain was already amazing. There were no pieces of sharp bone constantly pressing into his flesh as he moved, which was already a great start in this new world. He fiddled around with his features, ignoring the [Emergency production] for the time being due to it's increased cost, he eventually found the building tab.
He only had 250 mana, so he couldn't exactly afford much in the way of buildings. Luckily the HQ was available for free and knowing it could be moved, since he read that in his [respawn] perk he decided to just dump that onto the ground the moment he found a suitable place.
The moment he came into a small opening, a river running thru it he decided to just plop it down. and although this seemed fairly careless, he didn't want to pay double the cost to spawn a scout thru [emergency production] and this forest had good cover. So he figured he might as well set up here, while remaining hidden and move later on. In most games a scout could be recruited from the HQ and even if that wasn't the case here, he was sure there should be some type of starters unit that could do the scouts job in a pinch. So making up his mind he plopped it down on this suitable spot. To his surprise, he had to select a type of HQ first, he didn't even know there were different types.
<Select HQ type>
- Administrative HQ: A beautiful building that hosts a variety of offices and gives a boost to the domestic affairs of the region it's located in.
- Forward operations HQ: A cheaper to move HQ that acts as a forward operation base, giving a discount on [reinforce] cost's and providing the same recruitment possibilities as a [Barracks].
- Territorial defense HQ: A HQ that acts as a underground command post which provides a boost to the defensive capabilities to the region in which it's located.
Max first checked out what the [Reinforce] did.
[Reinforce]: When a squad faces losses they can [Reinforce] themselves at the building they're recruited from at the mana cost of a individual unit or by the player directly for a 100% cost increase, in order to replenish their numbers.
So basically the forward operations HQ would make unit replenishment cheaper. That was nice, especially since the soviet's focussed on unit spam, but at the end of the day, losing his HQ meant dying for Joseph which made him more inclined to the defensive HQ for the sole reason of it being underground.
The defensive boosts were a little vague, same with the Administrative HQ's boost to domestic affairs, there were no details to it. Either way, whatever bonus he could get to defensive measures to his HQ and/or the region it was located in was something Joseph was happy to take. The safer his HQ was the easier it was for him to run around doing whatever he wanted with a lesser risk of suddenly dying because his HQ got bombed off the face of the earth.
So he selected the Territorial defense HQ and watched in amazement as the structure started to form. The ground in front of him turned a translucent blue, exactly like he had been in that afterlife or whatever it was.
Joseph patiently waited for the building to finish ' building ' but after 15 minutes he realized this was going to take a while. He wasn't sure whether this magical ability was just limited in this world, not being the almighty god power he saw it as, or if this was some sort of counter against players abusing the building feature to just plop a HQ down and using it as a forward operation base behind enemy lines.
As the building slowly did its magical thing, Joseph decided to stroll around, he didn't have much better to do. He hadn't played many RTS games but those he did always had starter units that could be recruited from the HQ. In some games you started with some scouts or some type of hero but for most that wasn't the case.
He just hoped he didn't have a Chinese neighbor playing the soviet union that'll come in and annihilate him while he was setting things up. Some annoying strategy like using the [Emergency production] feature all players had to use their starters mana to spawn troops with a 100% cost increase, just to make some cheap kills off other players that were setting up, stealing a trait/perk point in the process.
The strategy had it's appeals but with a limited number of mana (250) he didn't think players would actually go for it. No one knew whether or not players even spawned in the same region, and how many of them there were for that matter.
He inspected his [emergency production] and saw that spawning a [scout] costed him a whopping 100 mana. He assumed, or at the very least hoped, that his HQ would have [scout] recruitment available, which meant it'd be half the cost of emergency production. That would make the price 50 mana, which was a lot less impacting for his limited supply.
Then again, as he looked around he saw [conscripts] in there as well, which were a lot bloody cheaper and came with more units as well. He decided to compare the two.
(100) Scouts: Scouts specialize in the exploration and mapping of territory. They're more likely to notice ambushes, tracks or irregularities in the terrain, have a easier time remaining hidden and move more efficiently thru difficult terrain.
Unit count: 2
Equipment: Tokarev TT-33 (handgun)- standard scout equipment
Moving on he decided to check out the co... His actions were interrupted by the sudden rustling of nearby bushes, deciding to be cautious he froze, dropping what he was previously doing in favour of paying more attention to his surroundings.
The rustling noise increased, causing Joseph to draw his gun and pull the top of the black piece of metal back, pulling the slide and letting it go. The satisfying click signified the fact that there was a bullet in the chamber, making Joseph feel a lot safer.
It was only now that he realized it was actually the first time he held a gun, which made him wonder why it all felt so familiar? He did it all with practised ease, as if he'd done it a thousand times already.
When some ugly green thing came rushing out of the bushes from his right, followed by five smaller equally ugly green things, he didn't hesitate. He aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger, causing a loud sound that was equally alien yet strangely familiar to be released. By the point he fully registered the sound the first of the ugly green things had already dropped dead.
The sound of birds taking off from the tree branches around him made him wonder whether or not this was wise, had he potentially given his position away to other players or perhaps the locals that lived in this area? A gun was all nice, but a single magazine didn't do much against a calvary charge, unless the sound would scare the horses or the front horses falling would trip the rest up.
Okay, maybe it did something, but he'd doubted that he'd be able to face off against a properly trained medieval unit on his lonesome.
As the biggest of the green ugly fuckers dropped dead the rest reacted with a mixture of confusion, shock and fear. The front two apparently weren't sure what to do, and kept charging on, the two behind it simply froze in shock while the last one just ran straight away.
He shot the two that continued coming after him, which snapped the two behind them out of it, who in turn followed the example of the fifth and fled. Joseph didn't waste any more bullets on them, although he could spawn in more thru [emergency production] it all came at the cost of mana. Something he didn't really want to waste right now.
He walked over to the corpses, carefully checking if nothing else was around. He was careful to avoid to growing pool of crimson red that was forming under the creatures. He didn't want any blood stains on his fancy officer boots.
He was happy to see that the [Stalins Resolve] perk was working, he felt absolutely nothing as he looked into the lifeless eyes of these creatures. Now that he was thinking about it, weren't they goblins? They looked a whole lot different when he looked down at them with his own eyes, rather then one a PC screen or thru the description on a book page.
They were the typical green bastards and if he had to guess, the bigger one would probably be a hob goblin? he wasn't sure, it had stood at about 150 CM tall while most of the others varied between 90 to 110 CM.
He couldn't help but wonder if it was edible, it didn't look particularly appealing, especially since they were humanoid but if they were edible, it would provide a easy early game food source that would allow him to safe on mana, which he had no idea how to produce yet.
Joseph took a moment to blink his eyes, in a mixture of surprise and realization. Was the first thing he thought about, when murdering green humanoid looking little monsters, whether or not their still warm corpses were edible? Joseph never was the type to particularly care about other peoples problems, something that had to do with his neglected upbringing as a orphan, but this was extreme, even for him. Not that he minded, he was glad to be so efficient but the fact that he could be just that surprised him.
' Stalins resolve huh? '
He put the matter out of his mind and went back to the goblins as potential food situation.
After all, in most games and fantasy works these creatures often reproduced quickly and came in large groups, using swarming tactics not unlike that of his soviet faction. He moved on to the next fucker, this one had fallen face down which exposed a ominously looking red crystal around his nape, which instantly peeked Joseph's curiosity.
He grabbed his sword and carefully picked the crystal from the nape, picking the blood stained crystal up he was immediately hit with a option.
[Absorb goblin crystal?]
>Yes
>No
He selected yes and watched his mana go up to 252 which made him instantly regret not shooting the other goblins when he had the chance. Interestingly, the crystal didn't shatter or disappear but simply turned grey. He went back to the first big one, and flopped his body over to be greeted by a similar looking crystal, although slightly bigger.
[Absorb hob-goblin crystal?]
>Yes
>No
This one gave 4 which brought his mana up to 256, which instantly made him wonder whether or not this were the default rates or if this was affected by the Soviet's unique boost to their resource gain. He was also curious if there were more creatures that generated mana like this, his free hand reflexively shot up to his own nape. No crystal there, which was great. The last thing this world needed was players who were stimulated to commit genocide in order to farm mana. Well, that was assuming the normal locals didn't produce crystals in their neck. He hoped not.
To ensure that monsters did, or at the very least goblins, and this wasn't just a twice in a roll lucky fluke, he went to the third and found yet again another crystal which brought his total up to 258. He could bring a new magazine into existence for a single mana, which meant the normal price if made thru a correct facility would be 0,5 mana which meant that hunting these things would provide for a excellent early mana source.
He'd have to make sure he didn't overhunt them, lest he wants to ruin his only known source of mana. As far as goblins as a potential food source went, he wasn't yet desperate enough to try that out himself. He'd let a unlucky sod try that out, see if it was edible or not.
Thinking about unluck sods, the conscripts came to mind again. Continuing where he previously left off he decided to check those out.
He pocketed his grey crystals and moved on.
======
(C4) HQ
Having made up his mind to continue where he left off, Joseph went to check out the conscripts thru the [emergency production] feature.
(70)Conscripts: Conscripts are a cheap and weak unit which makes up the backbone off the Soviet army. Although inferiorly trained and equipped compared to other factions, they're cheaper and have the unique ability to [reinforce] other squads which makes them a cheap way to keep units replenished along the front lines.
Unit count: 6x Conscript
Equipment: 6x Mosin-Nagant - standard field equipment.
Keeping in mind that the unit has a 100% increase due to [emergency production], that'll put their normal unit cost at 35 which seemed dirt cheap. A machine gun squad was, for example, 500 in emergency production meaning the normal cost was 250.
That meant he could spawn 7 squads of conscripts for the same price which was crazy. Of course a machine gunner in a good position could easily mow down seven such squads, but that changed when they were surrounded or swarmed. More importantly, that reinforce option allowed him to basically use them as cheap replacement units.
If he could turn a conscript into a scout by reinforcing a scout squad that lost a single unit, that'll mean he'd lost a single conscript instead of having to reinforce the scout unit for the individual scout price of 25 mana. If he then reinforced the conscript squad itself, assuming that's possible. he'd lose a little less then 6 mana, which was a absolute game changer.
If this worked like he think it did, like he absolutely hoped it did, it would explain why the Soviets are such a excellent spam unit. He just had to ensure the inferiorly trained units didn't turn tail and run and would instead continue doing their job on the front, acting as meat shields and reinforcing more experienced units where needed.
Nodding to himself in satisfaction he made his way back with a lengthy detour, on his way he didn't come across any other animals or monsters. He assumed that was due to the earlier gunshots scaring wildlife, which, he guessed included monsters in this world.
On his way back he came across a walnut tree, which he collected some walnuts from, cracking them open with his sword, he now had something to snack on. It was also, while he walked back, that he noticed one new flashing icon on his game interface, or whatever he was supposed to call the weird options, almost game like buttons with which he could go thru the [emergency production] or building features.
A typical message showed up, accompanying the hammer icon which featured his building options and the warning icon of [emergency production].
Clicking the message icon he came face to face with notifications.
[You've successfully killed a hob goblin y.....]
[You've successfully killed a goblin y....]
He got XP notifications, except that he didn't actually get any XP, the message stated he was already max lvl which was yet another thing he had to look into. Besides that, he noticed, thru a notification that his HQ had finished constructing, so he continued on in that direction.
As he did so he was eventually greeted by the entrance of his new HQ. It wasn't some fancy oaken door, no, it was a trench line going downwards. As he moved deeper into the structure, he passed some thick metal doors, which after checking, he saw could be closed and barred from the inside. There was a small hole inside, allowing the barrel of a machine gun to pass thru.
The hole was
Joseph had honestly expected some typical HQ building that contained a command post and perhaps some quarters for practicality sake, but it was far more then that. The thing was a fortress, everything was bloody reinforced, there were no fancy wooden floors, instead there was concrete. Weaponized concrete, or at least Joseph liked to imagine so, considering the whole vibe the bunker gave off.
There was a command center, quarters for not just Officers but a number of soldiers as well. Storage facilities, with a separated bunker for a storage of ammunition. A armory, cafeteria, a small medical bay, as well as the necessary life support to feed such a underground structure.
There was a generator room, that produced the electricity required to keep the facility running, lights hung on the concrete ceilings, illuminating the otherwise, creepy looking tunnels within the bunker complex.
He however smelled no gasoline within the generator room, neither did it make sense that the taps in quarters produced water out of thin air, they were in the middle of a random forest and couldn't possibly be connected to any waterlines.
Not to mention that the air was fresh and he didn't see any ventilation or air purification systems around the entrance, it all screamed bloody magic. He checked his mana bar and noticed a negative -50 (daily) mana drain on it. Probably the upkeep cost of the structure.
He passed by a empty communication center and went straight to the command center. There was a fancy wooden oak table, although it stilll seemed to scream practicality over comfort. It was large, capable of holding a multitude of maps, there was even a box with war figurines ready to use on top of it not that it was much good without a map.
Joseph grabbed himself a chair at the head and the table and finally decided to interact with the HQ's interface.
There he could finally see the HQ perks/traits. The previous description of the ' territorial defense HQ ' were a little vague, only stating that it gave defensive boosts. So it was great to see what boosts were actually given.
[Entrenchment]
All trenches and/or structures attached to the HQ thru trench lines will receive a 50% bonus to their structural integrity.
[Fortified region]
Fortifications within the region are 50% cheaper.
[Regional defense commander]
Allows you to spawn one special, high ranking Officier, whose first spawning is free. its possible to enable/disable the sharing of traits with this specific officier when you spawn him. The potential for trait sharing isn't possible with anyone but this one officier, unless the trait specifies it works for units other then the player.
Looking over the HQ's interface and going to the officier tabs, Joseph indeed saw that the Major's 500 mana price had been crossed out and replaced with a ' free ' bar.
The major however was the lowest of the high ranking officiers, there were a a whole bunch of them, each one increasing its price by 250 mana.
There was
-
Interestingly, there weren't any junior officiers. Considering normal units could get XP he wondered if standard troops had the potential to turn into junior officiers.
Putting the thought aside for now, he decided to spawn the major, not before using his [Fanatic] on the recruitment option though.
[Fanatics]
- In return for a 100% price increase a unit may be generated with the [Fanatic] perk. Fanatics are complete loyalists that fully trust their player and are ready to carry out their every single order.
Luckily a 100% increase to ' free ' remained ' free ' he was a little afraid that the normal price of 500 would be doubled, which needless to say, wasn't affordable to him at the moment.
Considering that the unit was 100% loyal now, he didn't worry about enabling the perk sharing ability. If this officier literally copied all his perks, including the default player perks like [Emergency creation] it might be possible for him to replace the player himself.
That was a scary though and Joseph considered it all the more plausible considering that there was literally the option to disable perk sharing when spawning said unique officier. Why would you be able to disable perks if it couldn't have any negative consequences?
Speaking of consequences, Joseph wondered how the respawning perk would interact with the officier. Would he keep his memories? It would be amazing to send a high ranking Officier to intercept a assault and, if it, upon his death would just respawn at the HQ with all knowledge in tact, ready to prepare the final defenses.
Would things like XP be saved? Assuming that he could even level up like he thought they could. Joseph decided to simply go for it and spawn him, and the moment he did, that same translucent sphere came in front of him, in the shape of a humanoid instead of a building entrance this time.
There wasn't any bizarre sight of the translucent humanoid sphere slowly turning into flesh and bones, No. One moment it was a translucent humanoid sphere, the next there stood a bombshell of a blond haired and blue eyed lady.
Needless to say the ' him ' in the perk description was inaccurate, it should clearly say ' she ' unless there was a hidden surprise somewhere. The military uniform that clung tightly against her chest made him doubt that, though.
Upon seeing him, the major sprang to attention, saluting him with a greeting.
" Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph."
==============
(C5) Major Natasha. - This is a WIP chapter which i'm just churnign stuff out on,I still have to edit it,probably split it off into a new chapter somewhere etc.
" Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph."
The words were simple, but the look and voice conveyed her message clearly. It was a question for further instructions which took Joseph a moment to realize. He was distracted by the thick Russian accent and bizarre situation, honestly, this was so game like.
Instead of a random male officer like he expected based on the interface description, he got a stereotypical, beautiful bombshell of a lady to assist him. She spoke English, even though she appeared to be Russian, given the accent.
It reminded him of how Nazi's in war movies always spoke English with thick German accents. It was a relief though,since Joseph didn't speak a word of Russian.
" At ease, comrade, major. "
Joseph was surprised to hear that he himself had a thick Russian accent as well. He hadn't truly spoken aloud yet, so it came as a bit of a surprise. The major however, upon hearing those words, relaxed her stance. Another curious thing Joseph noted was that she already knew his name.
" What's your name, comrade, Major? "
Joseph wasn't sure whether the whole ' comrade ' stuff was necessary, but it felt surprisingly natural to speak in such a manner, if he ignored the fact his own voice had a thick Russian accent now, which made it sound a little foreign to him. It would probably just take a little getting used to.
As the girl began to speak, she once again saluted him, although this time it was a lot more casual.
" Major, Natasha (back name), at your service. " at the time she finished with her back name she casually lowered her salute, while finishing the rest of her sentence.
Joseph nodded in affirmation after which he asked " May I say, comrade Natasha "
addressing her with her full title constantly and vica versa seemed like a waste of time. The major nodded after which she responded " it would be my honor, comrade, Supreme commander, Joseph. "
Joseph held up his hand, smiling as he did so. " Then please, call me ' comrade Joseph ' as well. "
The girl hesitated for only a moment after which she followed up. " Very well, comrade, Joseph. I think it's a little informal but it'd be honored to do just that... Can I be of service to you? "
Honestly, Joseph still remained rather curious about the interface referring to her as a ' he '. Did this mean the interface wasn't always accurate? Or perhaps it was just the general way to refer to a officer, just like someone may call a car a he or she, even though it's genderless.
Trying to sate some of that curiosity, Joseph asked, perhaps a bit insensitively.
" Do you perhaps identify as a male, comrade, Natasha? " Her name didn't sound particularly masculine, so he assumed not.
Natasha herself seemed confused by the question.
" I do not, Comrade Joseph. I feel perfectly... Feminine. "
" Then, forgive me for the insensitive question.. Do you happen to have male genitalia. "
There was a short moment of silence after which he got his answer.
" Would you like to check for yourself? "
Seeing her right eyebrow, which was raised in amusement, not to mention that twinkle in her eye, Joseph couldn't help but chuckle. If she could be cheeky then he could rest easy he hadn't offended her. He also had his answer now, there was no way she'd joke with him like that if she was packing.
Speaking of packing, she was packing a gun on her side. Not to mention a sword, her entire outfit was similar to his, save for the insignia at her shoulder which depicted the rank of Major.
Unlike him however, she had come into existence with a backpack which once again made Joseph curious.
" What's in there? "
She looked behind her for a moment, as if finally realizing that she was wearing a big bag of cloth on her back and answered, as if it was self explanatory.
" A extra officers outfit, extra shirts, a wash-bin, three day of officer rations and some other items. It's all standard issue, safe for the extra woman essentials. "
Joseph assumed those extra essentials to be tampons and the like, he wasn't going to ask for confirmation though. He had asked enough insensitive questions for one day.
" That's great, I'm curious, since the interface said you shared my abilities and perks. Are you capable of using the [Emergency production] feature? " He knew for a fact that's meant to be a player perk.
" Let me see.... Yes, here it is. " Natasha opened it with practiced ease, letting instinct guide her.
Joseph nodded in affirmation " What about the HQ interface, are you able to recruit conscripts and can you make them [Fanatics] while your at it? "
Joseph had seen that both Conscripts, Field Engineers and a number of officers were recruitable from the HQ interface.
Natasha looked it over for a moment after which she responded. " Yes I can, although I don't have enough mana at the moment. I have a gut feeling every high ranking officer can recruit units though. "
Joseph was curious yet again, where her gut feelings some type of instinct she spawned with? How accurate was it? Not to mention, did this mean his mana resource wasn't a global pool but was only accessible to him exclusively?
Thinking back to those grey crystals, he picked one to see if he could fill it back up. As he thought about it, a notification appeared.
[Fill empty mana crystal?]
>Yes
>No
Interestingly enough, it was no longer a ' monster crystal ' and had instead turned into a ' empty crystal' he selected yes and tried to fill it with mana, unlike the two to four that was in it earlier he could put a whopping 10 mana in it before he couldn't anymore.
Now that he thought about it, a conscript squad was 35 and he only had 3 empty crystals. Which meant she wouldn't have enough either way, so instead of filling the other two he handed this one over.
" Can you absorb that somehow? "
She picked the crystal up and found that she could indeed absorb, it with she signified with a nod. " Yes I can. "
Interestingly enough, this time around, the crystal had become blue instead of red, when he filled it with mana. He watched as she absorbed the crystal, until it turned into its previous grey husk.
If she could absorb mana from crystals, could Joseph perhaps transfer it to her as well? He gently held out his hand, as if waiting for a handshake and Natasha, understanding he wanted to try something gave her his hand. He saw that he could indeed transfer mana, but what surprised him much more was Natasha's statement.
" I can absorb mana from you. "
" Try it "
While saying so, Joseph tried to mentally deny the transfer of mana, he wanted to know if it was possible to object/prevent it from happening. It didn't matter how much he tried to resist, he felt another 10 mana draining for him as easily as when he filled the crystal
" Do you want me to continue? " Natasha asked, to which Joseph answered.
" Yes. Go for the full 70 so you can spawn a squad of fanatic conscripts. "
She did just that, sucking out mana until she had enough for a full fanatic conscripts squad, upon Joseph instructions she interacted with the HQ interface, something Joseph tried blocking but couldn't.
If every high ranking officer could spawn units, he'd have to be careful that he didn't get a mutiny or something on hand.
As Natasha spawned the conscripts, she watched in amazement as 6 humanoid, transculent blue spheres spawned in front of her. She hadn't yet seen the process herself.
Seeing her like that, Joseph couldn't help but think she looked like her age right now. Joseph had geen 22 when he died as Richard and Natasha seemed of a similar age as himself.
It's just that she didn't quite look it when she acted as a professional soldier, ofcourse there was that tease earlier but she had seemed so confident and in control of it that she simply came across more maturily, as if she was older then him even though she wasn't.
" it's a fascinating sight, isn't it? "
Upon hearing Joseph's word Natasha snapped out of it, bringing to bear her previous, more professional look.
" It sure is, comrade Joseph. "
The conscripts spawned, each of them had their rifle, and standard equipment on while having a large cloth army dufflebag on their back.
" Line up. "
Upon hearing Joseph's words and glancing at his Insignia they did just that. They lined up and saluted him.
" Comrade supreme commander. "
Curiously enough they didn't use his name like Natasha did. Did they simply not know it because Joseph hadn't spawned them? Or had this something to do with rank, were they simply to low to adres the Supreme commander of what was essentially a Soviet like army on Suriname basis.
" Do you know my name, Conscript. "
" Negative, sir. "
" It's, Joseph. "
" Understood, Comrade, supreme commander, Joseph. "
He was already interested in testing out how the [Fanatic] perk worked now that Natasha spawned them and seeing how they didn't know his name, that interest only Intensified.
The Fanatic skill description mentioned the player specifically. Was this another case of the interface being unreliable?
[Fanatics]
- In return for a 100% price increase a unit may be generated with the [Fanatic] perk. Fanatics are complete loyalists that fully trust their player and are ready to carry out their every single order.
Not every officier could make use of said perk, Only Natasha could make use of all his special perks and abilities, because she was a unique officier obtained thru one of the Territorial Defense HQ benefits. But that didn't make her a player.
Deciding to simply test it out, Joseph decided to draw a gun on Natasha. Instantly the conscripts reacted, some quicker then others.
Natasha was initially confused but reacted quickly enough.
" Ho- " she didn't get to finish her sentence as Joseph was shot straight thru his head.
He had taken a negative reaction into account, but he imagined that if push came to shove they'd just threaten him. He didn't expect them to just shoot the Supreme commander of their army, point blank with zero hesitation. Especially not while he had Natasha under gunshot.
Not that his assumptions did him much good as his dead body collapsed upon the cold concrete floor of the bunker while pieces of mushy brain and blood splattered around.
***
As Joseph regained consciousness, the memory of what previously transpired instantly assaulted his mind, and he was instantly thankful himself for picking the [respawn perk]
[respawn]
- The player gets the ability to respawn, meaning that death is no longer permanent.
- -When the HQ is destroyed the player permanently dies as well.
- -Rebuilding the HQ is no longer possible. Moving the HQ is possible but the player isn't able to respawn while the HQ is being moved.
He hasn't even been playing this so called ' game ' of the gods and said perk already paid itself off.
He was once again standing into the command center of his HQ and the first thing he noticed was that it felt a lot cooler, just as this sensation hit him he noticed his surroundings.
Two conscripts were scrubbing the last of the blood off the floor, while three others were lined up against the wall, their backs straight.
Natasha was sitting at the head of the commands centers oak table, next to a nicely folded up set of clothes, looking way more pissed off then someone that shared his [Stalin resolve] perk should.
As she finally noticed him, at the same time he realized he respawned bloody naked, she stood up and addressed him.
" Joseph! "
She still looked pissed, just a lot less intensely. Joseph felt he could describe her as just ' angry ' now.
Even though Joseph himself was a virgin, standing naked in a room full of people, of which a single one was a stunning beauty of the opposite sex. He wasn't awkward, the sensation just didn't register.
Instead he moved on to the clothes, which he assumed were for him. Upon noticing the insignia he realized it wasn't just for him, it was the set he was wearing when he got shot.
The fabric was slightly moist, it was clearly cleaned but since it was only moist and not soaking wet he couldn't help but wonder how long he was out for.
" How long was I gone? "
Natasha, who still looked angry responded surprisingly professionally
" Three hours, Comrade, Supreme commander, Joseph. "
Apparently she had slipped when she previously called out to him, at least Joseph assumed as much considering he was addressed with his full title this time around.
He calmly dressed himself while looking around. Sporting only five of the six Conscript he couldn't help but feel like twelve mana just got wasted. Assuming the guy that shot him wasn't just elsewhere currently.
" Where's the guy that shot me? "
" Executed. "
" I see... How did the rest respond to that? " Upon asking he looked over to the lined up men, each of which avoided eye contact.
" They accepted itwith reluctance, sir. "
Wall of texty text~. Too much for cat to read~. Please summarise~.