True Hero

One moment, a huge eight letter inscription was floating in front of my eyes, and the next, I was in the woods. It turned out that I had missed the beauty of nature. Grass, trees, a flock of birds overhead—none of these things could be found in the new world. The wind ruffled my hair, and it was something incredible, compared to the anthill of the modern human city. I breathed in deeply, soaking in the beauty of everything around me.

A while later, I checked my attributes. The Warrior path, ten health points, twenty points of strength—everything was as I had planned. My gaze settled on the possible size of my future detachment: one cell, no more than one kind of troop, no more than ten creatures. With my absolute zero intelligence, it was quite logical. On the other hand, I hadn't had the opportunity to recruit even this low number.

Suddenly, I realized that I had almost forgotten to check how great my strength was now. L.i.c.k.i.n.g my lips in anticipation, I came up to the nearest tree, swung, and hit it with all my might. Something cracked, both in the tree, and in my hand. A small dent had appeared on the tree's bark, but as for me, I had the bad luck of managing to break my arm or something to that effect. Oddly enough, I didn't feel any pain at all. It was strange, since it was said that I should experience all sensations as I would normally feel them, in real life. I thought the only possible explanation had to be my zero intelligence. The nervous system generated by the game was so simple that it must not have been able to transmit all the signals needed to the brain.

It turned out that I had become something like a troll—strong, dull, and with thick skin. With a crack, I set the dislocated joint. It was a good time to evaluate my prospects. Suddenly, I heard something make a crunch from beside the tree.

Cautiously, I tried to find out what it was.

Because of the foliage, it took me some time to notice a huge, dead branch resting against the trunk of a nearby forest giant. When I had hit the tree, I had made it shake violently. A branch had fallen against the next trunk, and I then heard a crunch. For some reason, I thought this club would make a good weapon for me. With my low health points, I should keep enemies at a distance.

It took a dozen strikes, and I had to set my joints three times, but I was finally holding the giant branch in my hands. After I had finished, I thought that maybe it would have been easier to just climb up and break off a branch. And then I wondered whether this body could affect the how my brain worked. However, the dead branch did appear to have some obvious advantages. It was lighter, and it would not be changing its shape in the future. Moreover, it had turned black due to its age, and the black club looked solid enough. Every time I had seen a video about this game, the players had had armies of Light creatures - angels, monks, elves and so on. Maybe I should be a dark lord.

After swinging the club of darkness a couple of times from side to side to get used to the weight of it, I finally looked around. There was a path leading to the right, opposite the setting sun. It was the main road, and, most likely, if I did go north, I would reach the starting point assigned to each player, where they would begin forming the backbone of their army. There was no reason to visit that place—with my inability to recruit troops, it was a better bet to immediately move to the territory of a neighbor. This was my great plan—sneaking up to the enemy's camp and killing him stealthily. My twenty points of strength made me believe that one blow should be enough. The next step of my plan was to repeat this until my enemies started tightening their security and it stopped working. If I had chosen the path of a magician, I couldn't have done this; it took time to hire and train troops. As for me, I was already a dangerous combatant. I hoped that if I managed to gather the resources of several settlements for my own use, I could try to achieve something on a global scale.

I turned my back on the path and went deeper into the forest. If my newbie territory was to the north, then I should come across another player heading south. Despite the absence of a road, it was a pleasant walk. Either the forest was not dense enough to stop my advance, or I was simply too tough and strong for it to hinder me.

About half an hour had passed since I entered the game and still nothing had happened. I was beginning to feel like a bit of an oddity. Was my behavior so unusual?

At that moment, I heard a grunting sort of growl, and a huge figure appeared from the foliage. The huge creature was standing ahead of me, fast and agile despite its height, and holding a giant cudgel in one hand. It seemed that the monster was almost dancing, with how fluid its movements were. The system highlighted the information about it:

Insomniac Troll, level 5

I imagined what one of these future directors of the Eurasian branch would do, if they were in my place. Would they run away, or get into a fight? Most likely, they would not have come here without an army capable of winning the fight for them. That would be the logical, reasonable, and worthy plan of action for the future director. But since this troll and I were both right here, in this place, my options were limited.

I took a deep breath and sighed; maybe I was too stressed. Thinking about all this certainly wasn't going to do me much good.

For some reason, the troll wasn't in a hurry to attack. He stood still, then suddenly started beating a nearby tree with his cudgel. What was I supposed to do? I also had a club, and it was even black. Now the two trees were shaking from our echoing blows, and it should be noted that I was doing it better. My huge tree was making a louder rattling noise.

"Gr-gr." The troll stopped and looked at me with some respect. "Stranger—a strong warrior."

It was a very clever remark from the monster who was rattling a tree with a piece of wood. To be fair, I probably didn't look much better.

"I'm not a stranger. They call me the Dark Lord," I decided to reply, getting a headstart on my legend. Maybe it was not the best moment, but you couldn't immediately agree with an opponent in these kinds of situations. Your image played an important role, and the part of a stranger was not something that would help me establish control.

"What Dark Lords are doing?" asked the monster in a loud voice. If he hadn't been growling every time he was pronouncing the 'L' sound, I would've said that he was interested, and maybe even slightly intrigued with me.

"Well, usually, the goal is to take over the world." The truth was a most powerful weapon in this case. Then an idea came to my mind. "What do you think about helping me? Trolls are strong warriors, after all."

My woolly interlocutor immediately straightened up, and unconcealed pride shone in his eyes. "All right, I agree to serve Dark Lord, to help him. To take over the world. It should be interesting."

You have gained the skill 'Leadership'

You can increase the number of your subordinate units, due to your good leadership and charisma.