Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series by Dan Sugralinov (best free e reader .txt) 📗

Oyama and I would meet again then too. For now… It was time to take all this Serendipity to she who favors the brave before I spilled it.

 Interlude 1. Veratrix

IF CHARACTERS were born like they were generated in the game, then Veratrix Furtado would have come into this world with negative stats.

He was born with dwarfism from a mutation in his XRCC4 gene caused by pollution, mostly in the form of heightened background radiation — so said the doctors. A more thorough doctor would have found contributing factors: the parents’ alcoholism, additional genetic pathologies and trauma during birth. Veratrix was born hunchbacked: his spine was deformed and his shoulder blades askew, not in line with his ribs. His mental retardation was observed later.

He knew no other life but the only one he’d ever had, in Cali Bottom. To a citizen, such a life would seem sad and wretched, but it was fine for Veratrix. It was all he knew. It wasn’t even bad, especially after he moved in with grandpa.

That night, his parents’ tiny room was filled with a crowd of their friends, all fellow alcoholics. God alone knew what they were celebrating. Maybe nothing. Having a reason to drink was a privilege of the rich. The poor needed no reason. Veratrix, who always cried and killed the mood, was taken to spend the night with his grandpa Harold, not yet old back then.

On purpose or by accident, the night’s drinking ended in a fire in which the boy’s parents and neighbors all died. Harold took his grandson in. The boy was nine when he was orphaned.

Public schooling was available only to citizen children, so Veratrix’s grandfather taught him. The alphabet, basic arithmetic, how society and the world are built. He learned some things from the internet, some from the other children the boy played with on the roof. Played… Of course, he was bullied for his clumsiness and birth defects, called a tadpole, but Trixie, as he was nicknamed, just thought that was how things were. It just happened. It wasn’t in his power to change anything.

He grew, and each day was the same as the last. Ordinary. Veratrix sat for hours on the roof, trying to imagine what was beyond the horizon. Was there another life in the world, or was all that he’d seen in films only a dream?

As a teenager, he began to look at girls. Something drew him to them, something inside — strange and pleasing — demanded exit. Once, in thrall to this all-encompassing desire, he lay in wait for his neighbor Becky in the corridor. At nearly twenty, the girl had already been married, was raising a son and was in search of a new boyfriend.

Seeing nothing but fat white legs gleaming in the darkness, Trixie embraced them and pressed his whole body against them, greedily inhaling the magnetic scent. He had no idea this was sexual assault; he felt nothing but boundless tenderness, after all.

Punishment came quickly. First Becky herself beat the ‘gross hunchback’ after freeing herself, then so did her boyfriends when they found out, then her father. Bruised ribs, a bloody mess in place of a face, a cracked skull — this was what Trixie got from his first romantic adventure. But he remembered those few seconds of happiness for long years, and regretted nothing.

Grandpa had explained what had happened and why, then strictly forbade him from ever touching girls, young women or any women at all.

“Otherwise an hour later, you’ll be flying head-first off the roof,” Harold added. “Got it?”

Trixie did get it. For him, grandpa’s word was always law. That incident remained his only attempt to interact with the opposite sex in real life.

Soon after Trixie got better, a lone invalid moved into their building. He wasn’t yet old, but almost never emerged from his apartment.

Harold Furtado liked to know everyone he shared a roof with, so he went to see the new neighbor. He turned out to be a former space pilot, paralyzed from a crash. His name was Andrew Clayton. And he was in sore need of a helping hand.

Harold sent his grandson to him. Trixie helped Clayton happily, and Clayton shared his UNBs with the boy. The two, united in their outcast status even in Cali Bottom, became friends. The dwarf spent whole days with him, helping him around the house and absorbing information.

Clayton had plenty to tell Veratrix. The dwarf held his breath as he listened to the pilot’s stories of a completely different world: of space, other cities and an endless ocean, of his studies at the space academy, of war, women and friends. He understood little; some concepts and ideas just wouldn’t fit into his limited world-view, but Andrew explained it all carefully, showing Trixie holovideos from the internet and old films from the start of the century, to which non-citizens had unlimited access.

At the same time, Dis came onto the scene. Snowstorm decorated the sky over Cali Bottom with colorful adverts and offers of free capsules for working in the game. Nobody believed it was true. The only thing the government gave non-citizens for free was beatings. Only a few people from the living complex where Trixie lived took the risk and put in an application. The next day, all of them received immersion capsules, detailed manuals and step-by-step instructions on how to find work in Dis.

Once the pioneers had withdrawn their earnings, every family ordered capsules. Then many encountered a problem: the capsule systems took up almost all the free space in the non-citizens’ tiny cells. A ‘tomb,’ as the capsules were called, could just fit into a residency, though it would be crowded, but no more than one. Harold also ordered one, having decided that there was no such thing as too much work.

Creaking, old man Furtado said you can’t teach an old dog new