《Eschadrion - a System Apocalypse LitRPG》 01 - Open Beta ¡®Okay, guys!¡¯ L0rdM1LFL0v3r, our PC - Platoon Commander shouted. ¡®It¡¯s a quick in and out. We breach the walls, loot the base and leave. The OutbackKillas are an Australian Corp so they should be all asleep.¡¯ ¡®Unless we have a rat,¡¯ Tortulfan69 grumbled. That was a very good point. Spies were a constant problem in Eschadrion, a new MMOFPS that seemed to want to appeal to the same player base as EVE Online - hardcore gamers unafraid of risking their progress for potential profit. After seeing the initial meteoric rise, Eschadrion quickly lost a lot of its player base, as most gamers couldn''t cope with permanently losing all of their equipment and some experience points upon death. Me¡­ as a veteran space pirate with over thirteen hundred kills, a paltry amount in comparison to some of the veterans and most of them in fleets, decided to give it a shot. I burnt myself out in EVE during the pandemic, but I often felt that itch to return, so when Eschadrion¡¯s Open Beta dropped out of nowhere the previous November, I gave it a shot and quickly became hooked. The problem was¡­ the game devs were copying EVE a tad too much, as, like in the space game, you weren''t limited by the amount of toons and accounts, though you weren''t allowed to multi-box. I imagined this was mostly there to prevent botting as playing an FPS on multiple accounts at the same time was far more difficult than Spreadsheets Online, but in this particular player base, someone WOULD figure it out; I had very little doubt about that. In fact, there were anecdotes, likely urban legends, about people trying to figure that out and going insane in the process, but I imagined this would make the actual fucking news and wouldn''t be limited to vague forum posts about workmate¡¯s uncle¡¯s sister¡¯s neighbour¡¯s cousin¡¯s drug dealer¡¯s son suffering from that. This was not an issue for me, as I was always a single toon player, but the usual problem of alts quickly arose, leading to the Eschadrion corps having more complicated hiring procedures than the fucking CIA. ¡®We sent out a ping about this op ten minutes beforehand and did not advertise it anywhere,¡¯ the PC stressed. ¡®Even if there is a spy, waking the Killas at five in the morning will be hard.¡¯ I rarely took part in flashforms, especially on weekdays, but I was at the HQ at the time and had half an hour to kill, so here I was, sitting on our dropship listening to L0rdM1LFL0v3r¡¯s droning about the tactical details of our operations. I hated it whenever L0rdM1LFL0v3r ran ops. He talked too fucking much. It was just a bloody smash-and-grab on an isolated outpost at the edge of their Sov¡­ not a siege of the Killas HQ. Given it was the middle of the night in AUTZ, chances there would be more than two or three players there were negligible. Normally, we wouldn''t even bother striking at such an insignificant target, but we had projects of our own to build, and stealing the resources from the Killas was a more fun way of getting those. Not really paying attention to L0rdM1LFL0v3r, I looked at our platoon comp. It was a true hodgepodge. A Paladin, Two Warriors, only one Medic - a techie and not a magic user, which made it even less optimal for an op like this, a Gunner, a Scout and me - a Witch.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. It will have to do. Eschadrion was a weird mix of fantasy and science fiction set in a post-apocalyptic world. You had futuristic tech like the dropship; it cost us a pretty penny, by the way, and at the same time, you could have L0rdM1LFL0v3r - a warrior in ornate plate armour riding on it. Guns were a fairly limited resource, so the services of PhoenixWing - our Gunner- were in high demand. He and his heavy machine gun would be our trump card. Being a Witch, my job was easy - nuke or disrupt whatever the PC told me to, so tactical deets had little use for me since, for the duration, I was L0rdM1LFL0v3r¡¯s little bitch anyway. Suddenly, I heard the quiet chirp of an incoming message. Happy for a distraction, I muted the voice chat and opened it. It was from HellSynth666, also known as Lydia, my IRL friend, who got me into Eschadrion to begin with. Mana, I know you are on an op, so I will keep it brief. Check the game announcement board. It is finally happening. L. My heart started pounding harder. ¡°It¡± could only mean one thing. The full release of Eschadrion. I have been waiting for weeks for that. The Open Beta had all sorts of stupid limitations, so I was hyped to see what manner of crazy spells I would be getting now. The message on the board was a simple countdown. Five minutes until release? What? That was both par for the course and insanely weird. Eschatology Entertainment, the devs, usually dropped updates out of the blue, giving only a short warning in advance on the global chat. This time around¡­ this didn''t happen. That was super weird. The op wouldn''t be happening if we knew this was happening. I unmuted the chat to let the platoon know about the update, only to hear Wade - PhoenixWing already doing so. Lydia must have sent him a heads-up too, as he was the third and final member of our small gang of people who knew each other IRL. We worked in the same office and often went to dinner or drinks together. Sometimes, we even had Eschadrion sleepover game nights, which by all accounts shouldn''t have been possible since only one instance of the games could be run from the same IP. But¡­ when different players did that¡­ It worked fine. It wasn''t just us - other people reported that too. The devs were silent on the matter, and this worked for people living under the same roof too. There were dozens of theories about how exactly that worked, from AI scraping to some sort of biometric identification. Most of that would be a violation of GDPR, but I didn''t think anybody would report ¡°Hey¡­ the game is letting me and my wife play at the same time¡± to the Personal Data Protection Inspectorate. The voice chat filled with excitement about the game¡¯s impending release. ¡®Okay, guys,¡¯ L0rsM1LFL0v3r began. ¡®We¡¯ll l-¡¯ Suddenly, the power went out. NO! Did the Killas hire someone to cut off electricity? I looked through my window. The whole city was dark. There was no usual glow of light pollution on the horizon. Just¡­ the starry sky. It was beautiful. How long had it been since I had seen it like that? Not since¡­ that visit to the countryside¡­ twelve years ago. Time sure flies. I looked back at my screen. Yeah. Perhaps it is for the best. Could use a break and do some stargazing. A message suddenly appeared on it in white block letters. SYSTEM INITIATED THANK YOU FOR PLAYING THE BETA VERSION OF ESCHADRION. ROLLING OUT A FULL VERSION NOW LEVEL CAP HAS BEEN REMOVED TOTAL NUMBER OF BETA PLAYERS: 15 734 087 TOTAL NUMBER OF BETA PLAYERS WHO REACHED LEVEL CAP: 53 224 SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: AS A BETA HAS BEEN AVAILABLE FOR MORE THAN 30 DAYS TUTORIAL HAS BEEN DISABLED HAVE FUN! 02 - Full Release I furrowed my brow. How is the screen showing things despite there being no power? I looked outside the window to double-check and saw that¡­ the text moved along with my vision, appearing exactly where my sight focused. ¡®What the fuck?¡¯ I muttered. I never heard of Internet withdrawal causing hallucinations. Like¡­ it has been what a minute too? The text disappeared and was replaced with another message. TRANSFERRING SYSTEM NOTIFICATIONS TO THE COMM DEVICE A beeping sound came from the direction of my computer. I looked towards it and saw that something had started to materialise there. It looked like my smartphone¡­ just larger and with three buttons below the screen. I picked it up with a shaking hand, and immediately, an electric current ran through my body. Messages started to appear on the screen. Eschadrion Earth System Version 1.0 initialised. Synchronising with user: Mana Schmidt Open Beta account detected: TheDarkSorceress34 Analysing account progression¡­ AS A REWARD FOR PLAYING DURING THE BETA AND REACHING THE LEVEL CAP YOU RECEIVE: The screen briefly went dark before being replaced with the standard Android interface. All of my apps were still there, just shuffled off to a different page, leaving only three ones I hadn¡¯t seen before on the screen. Character Sheet Store Notifications I checked the first one.
Basic Details
Name Mana Schmidt Nickname TheDarkSorceress34
Gender Woman Age 34
Level 0 (100/500 exp) Perk Points 0
Class - Advanced Class -
Skills
Name Level
None N/A
No surprises there. I was shocked at how quickly I was accepting this, but what could you do? I wasn¡¯t the one to deny the evidence of my eyes. A white four in a red circle appeared on the store icon. I tapped it and was greeted by a neat and colourful online store screen with multiple item categories of items to choose from. Two of them were marked with numbers - ¡°Weapons¡± and ¡°Redeem¡±. Before looking into those, out of curiosity I opened the armour section and checked whether my sexy witch¡¯s clothes were there, but the magic robes subsection only contained basic levelled items, while my set was dungeon loot. That''s a shame. I liked it. Though, strutting around the real world in an equivalent of a "Slutty Witch" Halloween costume...If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Additionally, even the basic level thirty robes cost over five-hundred thousand credits and I had zero. At least in the open beta getting this much was like pulling teeth. That fancy dropship we had cost over seven million and it took the whole corp a month to grind that much. The devs said those would be craftable in the full version, which right made A LOT of sense now. I browsed through the vehicle section and saw that you could still buy those. So¡­ probably at one point money would rule the world again. Assuming there will be a world to rule over. I was starting to suspect that the setting was post-apocalyptic for a reason. Eschadrion was a brutal game with a massive learning cliff. Making it to the level cap took serious skill and effort. To progress past level five, you needed to develop a class. Classes in Eschadrion were based on the weapon you wielded. As all skills had to be levelled manually, it was best to focus on one weapon which determined what abilities and spells you could use. There were multiple sub-trees for each weapon too. Like, my eventual in-game choice were the magic staves. Using them, I could develop offensive, defensive, healing and ¡°utility¡± spells. I focused on offense and utility during the beta which made me a Witch. Apparently, the full version would have advanced classes too. One previewed that interested me was the Mesmer, which you would unlock if you had sufficiently developed the Illusion branch of the utility spells. In general, getting a class requires you to jump through some hoops, but the bonuses were worth it. For one, Witch-associated stuff cost less mana to use and had increasingly better results. You had to work for that too, as each level up after getting a class would require you to develop your class skills higher, eventually throwing in some off-class skills for good measure. Level thirty of Witch required me to have ten fully developed ¡°Witch¡± spells, five further on level eighty, as well as ten non-Witch spells on level 50 and at least three general skills at max level. It was well worth it power-wise, but took forever, which is why¡­ what¡­ third of a per cent of players made it? I hit it a week before, myself. Just the fact I knew all of this gave me a massive advantage over¡­ pretty much the entire humanity. So with that in mind, I opened the Weapons menu. A message popped up: Congratulations You have an active ¡°Free Weapon Voucher¡± You can select any item of which you meet the level and skill requirements Right now, that meant the most basic stuff. I quickly scrolled to the magic staves and found what I was looking for. Item: Basic Magic Staff Category: Weapon Rarity: Normal Quality: Normal Durability: 50/50 Effects: Yeah! It is still a ¡°Training Wheel¡± item. That was a very informal name for the equipment category that lets you get into a particular weapon tree without having to invest the precious Perk Points to unlock them. If I used this staff for each five proficiency points I got, I would earn a single perk point to spend on abilities from the tree. Each level up granted general ones you could allocate anywhere. Perk Point vouchers were also rare dungeon loot and occasional quest rewards. Though given how I haven''t seen a ¡°Quest¡± app maybe that avenue was closed. The staff normally cost fifty credits, which kinda made spending a voucher on it a waste, but on the other hand, I¡¯d rather have it than a kitchen knife for defence. Alas, it is rather hard to level up when you are dead. I wasn¡¯t quite sure whether you could respawn now and I had no intention of testing it. I had a suspicion that the equipment permaloss was the game teaching you that dying = bad. So with a very heavy heart, I bought the weapon and it materialised on my desk. It was a simple two-metre-long wooden staff with a green gem on one of the ends. Shit just coming into existence is going to take a while to get used to. Then I went to the Redeem menu and grabbed the three health potions which soon joined my new weapon on the desk. I gave the store another quick gander and saw you could get more potions from there. Basic Lessers only, but that matched what was possible in the game. Better ones, including higher-quality Lessers, had to be crafted. Hey¡­ weren''t those brewed from some plants not found on Earth? I hope this doesn''t mean what I think it means. I looked for alchemical recipes in the store and found, to my eternal annoyance, that I couldn''t check the ingredients, which didn''t bode well for our poor ecosystem. I couldn''t buy those either because the shop lacked the ¡°pay with debit card¡± option. Just as I was about to turn the store off my phone began to vibrate and I saw an incoming call from Lydia. However, caller ID has shown her in-game nick rather than what I had her saved under. ¡®Talk to me, El,¡¯ I said, with a shakiness in my voice that surprised me upon picking up. ¡®Or should I say HellSynth666?¡¯ ¡®So it is not just me?¡¯ she asked in a similarly terrified voice. ¡®I am not imagining it?¡¯ ¡®The magic staff on my desk says ¡°no¡±.¡¯ ¡®So the vouchers really work? I thought¡­¡¯ ¡®They do.¡¯ ¡®Will need to go through the available options then. Especially since¡­ have you checked the notifications?¡¯ ¡®Not yet. I have been dicking around the store.¡¯ ¡®Then do and call me back, please. I need to know if you¡®ve come to the same conclusions.¡¯ She disconnected. This was a common thing for Lydia. She rarely gave people preconceptions about things she wanted their honest input on, so I opened the notifications app and after scrolling past the item redemption stuff I got to one that told me we were all fucked. Zone security status downgrades from GREEN to YELLOW in: 1 HOUR 58 MINUTES 21 SECONDS