Fool's Play: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG, page 1
Fool’s Play
Book 1 of System Apocalypse: Kismet
An Apocalyptic LitRPG
By
Tao Wong & David R Packer
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Fool’s Play
Copyright © 2023 Tao Wong and David R. Packer. All Rights reserved.
Copyright © 2023 Cover Designer Sarah Anderson
Published by Starlit Publishing
PO Box 30035
High Park PO
Toronto, ON
M6P 3K0
Canada
www.starlitpublishing.com
Ebook ISBN: 9781778551543
Paperback ISBN: 9781778551550
Hardcover ISBN: 9781778551567
Books in the System Apocalypse Universe
Main Storyline
Life in the North
Redeemer of the Dead
The Cost of Survival
Cities in Chains
Coast on Fire
World Unbound
Stars Awoken
Rebel Star
Stars Asunder
Broken Council
Forbidden Zone
System Finale
System Apocalypse: Kismet
Fool’s Play
Fool’s Bond
System Apocalypse – Relentless
A Fist Full of Credits
Dungeon World Drifters
Apocalypse Grit
System Apocalypse: Australia
Town Under
Flat Out
Bloody Oath
Anthologies & Short stories
System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology Volume 1
System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology Volume 2
Valentines in an Apocalypse
A New Script
Daily Jobs, Coffee and an Awfully Big Adventure
Adventures in Clothing
Questing for Titles
Blue Screens of Death
My Grandmother’s Tea Club
The Great Black Sea
Growing Up – Apocalypse Style
Interdimensional Window SHOPping
A Game of Koopash (Newsletter exclusive)
Lana’s story (Newsletter exclusive)
Debts and Dances (Newsletter exclusive)
A Tense Meeting (Newsletter exclusive)
Comic Series
The System Apocalypse Comics (7 Issues)
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Authors Note
About the Authors
About the Publisher
Glossary
Chapter One
The cavern was warm—a pleasant change from the snow-covered mountain meadow outside—and Fool smiled as he walked around the first bend. He couldn’t remember if these were properly called “burrows” or “warrens,” but whatever they were, they were much larger than they used to be.
Probably just as musty smelling though. He’d always loved marmots. The hoary marmots in the British Columbia interior were his favorites when he was a kid. He’d loved to walk around them, because they just didn’t care about people. You could walk right up to them and sit next to them, and they’d keep on doing whatever it was they were doing, as if you were invisible.
He’d tried to share that awesome experience once. Decades ago, with someone he loved. She’d laughed. It had been a happy time, but all that was gone now.
So much gone and changed. The System had hit the world like a tidal wave of rage and sorrow and cleared out most of everyone’s lives.
Fool had been ahead of the curve on that. He’d had a manic drive to succeed, but that turned to being manic after a few years, then he’d started to lose touch with reality sometimes. Lost his career, lost his friends, lost his family. Two decades of living as best he could after that. Managed to hold on to his car for the first six months, and after that?
When he came back to the real world, it had been a different world. He’d learned to make what friends he could. He’d learned to scrabble to survive, and to fight for a sense of any kind of continuity. Most people he knew had given up, making it day to day. But not Fool. No matter where his brain or life left, he always fought for the hope of a better future.
Eventually it came, thanks to the same thing that had taken the lives of billions of others. The System came. At first, he thought it was another hallucination. Then there was the voice, whispering a promise of what he’d longed for. Somehow it differed from the other voices, and he listened to it. He’d struggled for the first few days, then Jackal had showed up and helped Fool on his way to sanity. But that voice was still there sometimes. Only now Fool could see it was one of many Skills, assigned by the System. Sort of.
Fool knew he should use his System-assigned Skills to navigate this cave, to search for any hidden monsters or to protect himself from threats, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He’d been gifted those Skills, and he resented that. Things like that always came with a price. And in some ways, he knew he still didn’t trust that all of this was real. Some part of him still wondered if he wasn’t stuck in a hallucination.
That was stupid, of course. He knew the flavors of the mind-lies, and these weren’t them. These days, magic was as real as cars used to be. So were monsters. Everything had changed.
Like the Hoary Marmots. The cave was warm from them. Even as they hibernated, they still gave off heat and that musty animal smell. Before the System, they had been big rodents, about the size of a chihuahua, but a lot fatter and cuter. Now?
He walked up to the closest one and ran his hands through its fur. It was like petting a bus, but softer. He gave himself a moment and leaned into the side of the beast, letting the comfort and memory fill one little broken part inside him.
Big, soft, warm creature. A good dozen of them in this cave, all fast asleep. At least until winter ended for good. It had already started down at the base of the mountain. They’d sleep for another week or two at least.
His fingers pulled out of the fur, and the thick, downy undercoat came out in a mat in his hand. He held it up to his nose and took a deep whiff. Musky, but underneath that was the unique smell of the big creature. A delicate aroma that tickled the back of his nose and reminded him of baby powder.
The Hoary Marmots were the perfect example of the good that balanced out the bad of the System, as far as Fool was concerned. They were still monsters, giant and terrifying. The warning squeak they used to have had evolved into a shattering sonic attack that was loud enough to kill. But the System hadn’t really changed their essential character that much. They still would happily ignore you if you wandered amongst them. You just really didn’t want to upset them now. They sure weren’t endangered animals anymore.
Fool considered the luxurious fur for a moment, then raked his fingers through the big creature’s side a few more times. He stuffed the clumps into his pockets. It had much less value than an actual pelt—which could fetch an extremely tidy sum—but there were a few Crafters in McBride who could make use of even these small amounts. Especially one or two of the cute ladies. Every bit helped.
He took one more looked around the warren, but it all looked cozy and secure. Mission accomplished. He pulled the old, non-System radio out of his pocket and clicked it twice. That was the signal to Jackal that everything was okay. Then he froze.
Three clicks in his earpiece. That was Jackal’s signal for trouble outside. For a moment, Fool thought about grabbing another handful of underfur, but Jackal wouldn’t have signaled if it wasn’t something urgent, so he turned around and started his way out of the warren.
The view outside was still epic. They were near the peak, in the Sunbeam Ecological Reserve, and from here, Fool could look down across the whole valley, and up and down the entire mountain ranges on either side. Everything was still mostly sheathed in winter white, and the air was crisp and clear. An absolute silence only added to the majesty.
Heaven.
Fool took an extra moment to take it in, feeling his nostrils and the back of his throat burn with the cleansing cold. He saw Jackal i
The big man was crouched on one of the tallest piles of rocks. His skin was almost the color of the bark on the scattered trees that clung to life this high in the mountains, and he’d chosen a darker green outfit. Hunched down low, Jackal looked just like one of the folded-over high mountain pines.
Jackal motioned to Fool, telling him to move low.
A good sign. Fool had half expected to come out in the middle of a firefight. Jackal wasn’t quick to sound an alarm and was capable of handling almost any physical situation by himself.
Which made Fool curious. Something threatening enough that Jackal had wanted to warn him about it? And there was still time to head over to Jackal, twenty meters away, but he needed to stay low and not attract attention? Fool’s imagination was in overdrive as he did a low shuffle over to his partner.
Trolls? Giants? Dragons? What could be in the area? Whatever it was, it was probably what they’d been sent up to find.
They’d gotten back from their most recent mission for the Foundation and were directed up the mountain right away. The water supply for McBride had been showing a spike in bacteria. Not much of a problem normally. Good old-fashioned chlorine handled most of the critters that infested the local water, and a fancy System filter the city had sprung for took care of the rest. But old habits died hard, and the worry about the usual filtration methods not working wasn’t a minor worry. Having undrinkable water wasn’t on anyone’s fun list.
The town’s water supply came from a single stream that flowed down from multiple sources in the mountains. The increased bacteria came from fecal matter, or other biological processes like decay. This was unchanged even in the System world. Things still had to break down into component parts, and that worked at the Mana level as well as the pre-System level.
So something was pooping or dying in larger than normal numbers in the watershed area. The Foundation sent teams out to reconnoiter. They had sent Jackal and Fool up to the Ecological Reserve to check on the Marmots, to see if they’d suddenly had a population explosion or if something else had moved in.
Fool made it to Jackal, who had slowly been making his way down from his perch. The look on Jackal’s face wasn’t good.
“Spiders,” was all he said.
That was enough to make Fool’s stomach lurch. He’d always had a bit of a phobia but had mostly dealt with it. And the System had honestly helped with that. The problem was that the Cariboo Mountains seemed to be a favored spot for spiders, and mutations amongst the pre-existing population had come fast and hard. And not all for the bad. Like the Marmots, the Jumping Spiders and False Widows had grown large, but not entirely vicious. Most of the other species though… larger and nastier. Big problems. The first year of the System had seen almost all local resources devoted to cleansing those infestations.
The System seemed to like to repeat itself though, so everyone knew that at some point, the spiders would flare up again. The mountain range was filled with all kinds of damp caverns, caves, and tunnels. Ample space for monsters to breed in privacy.
Fool turned and looked, then wished he hadn’t.
Opiliones. Harvestmen. Nightmares.
Some part of him, deep inside, behind the gibbering, wanted to correct Jackal and tell him they weren’t real spiders. And they weren’t. Opiliones looked like spiders, eight gangly legs and all, but they didn’t have venom, and they had one less body segment. Mostly, they were just a big fat body with a head stuck on. And depending on the species, really bizarre eyes on stalks.
But Fool was looking at one that was heavily mutated, which didn’t help with its looks at all. The legs were of the usual form, all thin and gangly. The body was a flattened oval, and each segment looked like a slab of battleship armor, with a dull sheen that spoke of metal. Each segment was rimmed with spikes, for extra fun.
Big fangs. Huge. No venom dripping from them, just brute size. The thing was big enough, but those fangs were a third of the height of the creature, almost a meter long. And they narrowed right from the start, down to a wicked sharp needle point.
The real creepy thing though was the eyes. Three of them on this one. Wobbling all about on their stalks, like some sort of weird children’s toy. And they had a very unpleasant glow.
“Fuck,” Fool said. “This is gonna suck. Any more, or just the one?”
“Just one. So far,” Jackal said.
Small favor that. Fool turned and looked again. It was a few hundred meters away, up the slope, but heading right for them. Opiliones were mostly scavengers and had a fondness for caves. So, probably, this one and its pals had shown up and discovered sleeping Marmots were a ready snack. Well, time enough to look-see at this one and come up with a plan.
Fool put his resentment aside for a moment. It was time to use his System-bestowed Skills. Talent Scout would give him the basics of the beast.
Opilione (Level 48)
HP: 489/489
MP: 121/128
Conditions: None
Scout Notes: …
“Triple threat.” he said.
Jackal nodded. “Eye beams?”
“You got it. Damage, Mana Drain, Health Drain. Armored with a ton of Health too.”
“Plan?”
Fool chewed on that for a moment. He had a Skill that would help with this, and off-hand, he couldn’t think of a reason not to use it. And Jackal had the perfect Skill that would put him on top of the creature. Fool preferred not to use the System Skills, but he had no problem with other people using them.
“I’ll blind it, you jump on it. Between the eyes is the weak spot but get out of there as soon as you hit. Those eyes are nasty and can absolutely see every part on top. Head below after that, look for the joint between the body and head. Weak spot there too.”
“Got it. Now get your armor on. Still time.”
Fool swore, but Jackal ignored him. He’d really been hoping that Jackal would forget.
Fool didn’t enjoy fighting. Never had. He also couldn’t bring himself to spend any of the precious points that the System gave him on what he considered useless Skills, like combat ones.
But there was no arguing that the System favored fighters, and real growth came from kills. As he and Jackal had started to really push their Levels, they’d had to farm more and harder monsters to Level up. Fool had made do with buying ranged weapons when he had the funds… but now they were working for the Foundation, and money had become less of an issue. The Foundation didn’t like to lose assets. So they’d “gifted” him a fine set of protective gear and some rather skookum weapons.
While Fool wasn’t a staunch believer in the Foundations’ long-term goals, the short-term ones worked well enough. And the gear they supplied sure helped to make the job easier.
He stopped wasting precious seconds and activated the armor. It was sort of cool: instant-on armor. That part was acceptable. The close-fitting helmet still made him gag when it wrapped around his head though. No reason for it. His vision was still good, and he could probably breathe easier through the filtered air pumps, but his brain refused to believe that at some deep level.
As soon as that was done, he pulled out his latest toy—a very nice warhammer. Modeled after a lovely historical example, but with some delightful additions. Armor-piercing and Damage buffs, as well as Speed and Accuracy. Between the hammer and the armor’s buffs, he was almost as good as a fighter at two-thirds of his current Level. Almost. On a good day. For him.
Jackal had teased him about his choice of weapon, but Fool stuck to his hammer. His teenage years had been spent playing an old tabletop roleplaying game, and he’d never been able to let go of the idea that clerics weren’t allowed to use edged weapons. It wasn’t like his “god” cared, but Fool cared, so that’s what it was.
Besides, the hammer was satisfying. He had to admit he felt a very atavistic pleasure in swinging it around. The smooth steel shaft, the finely balanced brick on the end, even the braided leather strap that kept it on his hand if his grip failed. He’d grown to love the thing.
