"Hey, idiot, listen to me because now things are getting serious."
The voice came so dry and so abrupt that Mike didn't even need to turn his face to feel that, if that system had a body, it was pointing a finger in his face with the same conviction as a sergeant cursing a recruit before ordering everyone to run in the rain. He remained kneeling on the black rocky elevation, his rifle firmly on his shoulder, his eye darting from the valley of dry bushes to the far line where the kobolds moved like malicious ants around rotten things. The wind was now stronger, dragging dust in low ribbons across the cracked earth. The sun, or whatever served as the sun on that gigantic planet, was now more inclined, making the shadows long and treacherous, good for those who knew how to hide, even better for those who knew how to hunt.
"Everything in this game," the voice continued, "is like your world's Hunger Games, that badly made movie. Except here nobody pretends to care about a moral lesson at the end. Here the goal is audience ratings, measured suffering, character growth, juicy betrayal, satisfied sponsor, and a clean body off the stage before the next camera rolls."
Mike didn't answer. His right eye remained on the target, but his attention had already spread in layers. Kobolds in the distance. A smaller red dot behind a rock to the left. Another moving near a patch of low grass. The tactical map pulsed in the corner of his vision like a second instinct.
"Your map isn't for long distances," the voice said. "Get that out of your head now before you trust it like a new car idiot trusting a bad GPS. Useful reading range: two hundred meters. Two hundred. Beyond that, it starts to become misinterpretation, echo, blur, partial signature, or nothing at all. You want long-range vision, you conquer. You buy. You evolve. You adapt. Or you climb a better hill and use what you have in your skull."
A new window appeared in the left corner of Mike's view. Clean. Direct. Unadorned.
TACTICAL MARKING CONFIGURATION:
BLUE: FRIEND
YELLOW: ALLY
BLACK: PERSON MARKED AS AN ENEMY
NOTE: KNOWING THE NAME IS NECESSARY FOR ADVANCED PERSONAL MARKING
The voice clicked his tongue inside his head. "Blue for friend. A real friend, the rare kind. Yellow for ally, that useful person while it suits you. Black for people you've decided are your enemy. But here comes the fun part. To mark an individual person, you have to know their name. Real name. Not a nickname shouted in desperation. Name. The system works with identity, not your social laziness."
Mike glanced at the map and, purely out of organizational habit, let Nina's image flash through his mind. The woman with the injured arm. Dry face, quick reading, useful warning. No friendship. But temporary usefulness.
Name identified?
NINA
MARK AS:
[YELLOW]
Mike mentally confirmed it. On the map, a small yellow dot appeared on the right edge of the reading, carefully moving away.
"Good," said the voice. "You learn quickly when the reward is continuing to breathe."
Mike adjusted the position of the stock on his shoulder and finally looked at the bottom line of the instrument panel. A discreet bar blinked in dull red.
Magazine Ammunition: 2
The voice almost growled. "Second, idiot, see if you still have ammunition in the magazine, clip, comb, as some imbeciles say comb, hahaha, reload, idiot."
Mike was already pulling a spare magazine from the equipment strapped to his body. The movement was automatic, clean, quick. Thumb, snap, dry click, subtle confirming jolt. The old, almost empty magazine went into a side pocket, still useful later.
Magazine Ammunition: 5
Reservations available: 55
"Better," the voice said. "It was driving me crazy. Dying because you forgot an almost empty magazine after pretending to be competent would be the kind of irony I could even respect, but I'd rather not."
Mike ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek once, tasting the dry, stifled dust and gunpowder. The silenced barrel still trembled barely, reflecting a distorted beam of light. Further down, one of the red dots intensified for a second and then disappeared behind a rock.
"The redder the point appears on the map," the voice continued, "the worse it is. I'm not just talking about proximity. I'm talking about threat mass, aggressiveness, perception of hostility, energy density, that whole soup the program uses to transform danger into visual language. Light red, manageable problem. Dark red, think again. Thick, saturated red, shining like sin on a holy day… run or prepare for a decision that will divide your life into before and after."
Mike zoomed in a little on the tactical map. A stronger point pulsed at the two-hundred-meter limit, near a fold in the terrain covered by dry bushes and low stones. Almost at the edge of the reading. He couldn't see what it was just by sighting, not yet. But the point was more heavily charged than the goblins and boars had been.
"What is that?"
"If I knew 100%, I would tell you. At this level, I can only give you a scent, not a face. It could be a low-level elite. It could be an ambushed enemy. It could be an overlapping group. Could it be a lousy little general? No. Not yet. If it were, the map wouldn't be blinking. It would be screaming."
Mike kept the doubt to himself and did what he did best with doubt. He didn't force a solution. He simply put it on the right shelf to return to later.
"And here we go," the voice continued, changing the subject with the irritating agility of someone who has spent a thousand years cursing a lot of people. "This planet is ten times bigger than your Sun. Does that give you an idea of its size?"
Mike remained silent for a second longer than usual. The sentence didn't quite fit in his head right away. Not because he lacked imagination. But because too much scale is something the human brain knows and doesn't feel at the same time.
"Bigger than Earth," he said.
"Ten times bigger," the voice corrected. "Your little world fits here like a pretentious neighborhood. This planet has continents that would make your ocean look like a giant lake. It has entire biomes that kill without any monsters. It has mountain ranges that even the show might not properly explore. It has deserts where you enter and disappear from the narrative for three months, if you don't die in three hours. It has seas, glaciers, swamps, forests that swallow sound. And yes, it has cities."
Mike finally shifted his gaze from the valley for a second. Not to the sky. To the horizon. To that impossible line between black mountains, distant vegetation, and a curvature of the world so vast it seemed to lie to the eye. The planet had already seemed vast. Now it seemed obscene.
"Cities?" he repeated.
"There are cities that are somewhat neutral, there are neutral cities, and there are places that are called cities because someone insisted on it, but in practice it's just a market with walls and bad people doing calculations. In the somewhat neutral cities, you can't kill. In theory. In practice, you can, if you don't get caught. It's like many decent cities in your world, only with more honesty in the hypocrisy. There, exchange happens, commerce flows, services appear, people eat, sleep, negotiate, betray, marry, sell ammunition, sell bodies, sell information, sell maps, sell debt, sell fake medicine, buy protection, buy tickets, buy meat of dubious origin, just like a normal city, with the added bonus that everyone knows they could die on the way out."
Mike looked at the horizon again, but now trying to see something beyond that immediate piece of the map. City meant partial shelter. Market. Information. Too many people. Too many ambushes. Too much control. But also fuel, tools, parts, food, maintenance. One part of him, the part trained by his old life, was already beginning to piece together a logical route. Another part, new, shaped by the Assassin, registered that city also meant name. Name meant marking. Marking meant better organized hunting.
"And there are completely neutral cities," the voice said, "where you can't kill and you can't do anything bad inside. Not even steal properly. Not even pull a gun without a good reason. Not even threaten, depending on the rules of the place. These usually have security that would make many governments weep with envy. Once you enter, you respect the rules. If you break the rules, you disappear. And when I say disappear, I'm not using a pretty figure of speech."
Mike nodded once at the wind. "Highway?"
The voice seemed amused. "There you go. Your head still thinks about travel the right way. Yes. Highways. Roads. And on them there are gas stations. Like those in your world where they sell everything. Dry bread, milk, car parts, bad coffee, medicine, Chinese knives, batteries, shampoo, that kind of stuff. Except here, guess how they pay. Hahahaha. Mana stone."
Mike let the name spin in his head. Mana stone. Crystal. Currency. Fuel of the economy of that planetary circus.
"Part of the problem has a price tag," he said.
"Almost everything. And what is priceless, someone will invent later. Mana crystals buy fuel, ammunition, passage, inventory space, information, shelter, items, food, upgrades, favors, silence, and betrayal in installments. Learn this early. Mana stones here are more important than gold, state currency, and morale combined."
The panel automatically opened a new, brief tab, as if reacting to the topic.
BASIC ECONOMY IDENTIFIED:
MANA CRYSTAL
USE:
BUSINESS
SUPPLY
SERVICES
SYSTEM STORES
INVENTORY EXPANSION
PURCHASE OF AMMUNITION
HIGH LOGISTICS VALUE
Below, in smaller print:
OBSERVATION:
Urban areas vary in safety and cost.
Mike closed the flap with a brief thought and turned his gaze back to the optics. The most intense red dot at the two-hundred-meter limit was still there. Closer now? No. Just clearer because of the pause in the wind.
The voice continued without ceremony. "About the wild boar meat. That line that appeared… 'WILD BOAR MEAT x20? NOT AVAILABLE. TARGET NOT EDIBLE.' And why? Either it was sick, or it wasn't bled, or the carcass was too damaged for the system to convert into good meat. You know how it is. An animal that doesn't bleed properly, a stressed animal, the meat tastes like iron, tastes like blood, tastes wrong. If I were you, I'd sell it to some hungry idiot. There's always one. And let's calibrate your brain. Each unit of meat there is basically a kilo. When I told you forty units of good meat, you got forty kilos of meat. Forty. You can eat it, sell it, dry it, trade it, cook it, smoke it, use it as bait, or as secondary currency at roadside stalls."
Mike felt the mental weight of the information. Forty kilos. It was more than a resource. It was potential influence. In a bad world, food becomes an argument.
"And fat," the voice continued, "I don't need to tell you that it can be used for weapons, for fire, for cooking, for leather, for makeshift waterproofing, for a whole whole shitload of things, or would you prefer I tell you?"
"I know what fat is for."
"Of course you know. You look like the kind of person who would tear the world apart if it increased the chances of tomorrow."
The wind picked up, whipping a thin layer of sand across the rock ahead. Mike blinked against the dust and used the moment to check the map again. Nina, the yellow dot, continued to move away to the right. More cautious now, perhaps because of the kobolds. Two smaller red dots moved near his former position, likely drawn by the smell of blood or the void left by other dead. A medium-sized red dot appeared and disappeared in an area of low rocks to the southwest. The most intense one was still unknown.
"And you don't think spiders are just small," the voice said suddenly. "There will be spiders the size of a dog. There will be snakes the size of normal snakes, only uglier. There will be snakes bigger than an anaconda and still level one. Insects aren't just small either. There will be big beetles, big wasps, big ants, big cockroaches, everything big. Here they messed with evolution. They pulled, stretched, seasoned it with mana, rage, and a desire to make the audience say 'holy shit'."
Mike didn't comment, but his mind stored the information the way a hidden sniper's position does. Not with immediate fear. With practical respect.
"For the show, this is fun," the voice added. "For you, it's the reason why aiming at the wrong ground can cost you half a leg."
A faint noise, like something scraping stone, came from the lower left. Mike moved only his eyes at first. Then his crosshairs slightly. Nothing. But the map showed a tiny, fast-moving red dot appearing and disappearing at the edge of the reading area.
"Another good thing," said the voice, still speaking while the world moved. "Language. You've done well with that. There's no language barrier anymore. Chinese people speak English. Russians speak Arabic. Brazilians speak Korean. It's automatic translation. The guy is still speaking in his own language, but you hear it in yours. If he lies beautifully, he'll lie translated with the same grace."
Mike frowned slightly. "Does everyone listen to me in English?"
"Not necessarily English. The program plays the already pre-digested sound in the receiver's language. You say what you say. The other person hears it in their language. Convenient, right? The production team learned early on that language barriers delay arguments, hinder alliances, and make advertising more difficult. Fluid communication leads to more interesting deaths."
As if the world wanted to illustrate the lesson, a scream came from the valley, from the opposite side where the kobolds were. Mike zoomed in and saw two men and a woman running in a zigzag pattern. Behind them, four creatures that looked like rats, but sick rats with diplomas in nightmares. As big as medium-sized dogs, hairless in several places, thick tails dragging dust, rusty metal teeth, paws too fast. One of the men fell. The woman turned to help him. Mistake. One of the monstrous rats jumped and bit the side of her arm, dragging a piece of flesh along with it. The other man kept running without even looking back.
"Giant rats," the voice commented, without emotion. "Classic low-level problem. They come easily, multiply quickly, bite nasty, can infect, can gnaw through leather, cloth, rope, backpacks, and morals."
Mike watched for another three seconds. He didn't interfere. Bad distance. Useless effort. No connection. The woman who tried to help the man fell soon after, swallowed up in a clumsy movement by the gray bodies.
The brightest red dot moved again.
"Are you going to tell me what that is or not?"
The voice fell silent for an unusually long moment. When it returned, it was less mocking. "Maybe a spider. Scattered signature, low, heavy in the center. But I don't have confirmation yet. And if it is what I think, you don't want to cross openly in front of it."
Mike adjusted his body position, shifting his weight slightly to his right leg. The sun now beat sideways on the carbon fiber barrel, revealing the hexagonal texture beneath the handguard like the technological skin of something living. Beautiful. Lethal. Familiar. A rare thing in a world that had taken everything from him in seconds.