Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

of the steel mace and the wooden shield strapped to his left arm. He learned all he needed to know in those swings.

Jacob was awkward and unbalanced with the weapon. He had difficulty controlling it the way his mind knew he could. As a new player, all of his skills would be at 0. And as Alice said, he wouldn’t get the benefit of his years of training.

Though he remembered how to use many weapons, his body had no muscle memory and it lacked the strength and speed he was used to. This is going to take me a while to get acclimatized.

While practicing wouldn’t increase his skills before the game started, it would help him to realign his expectations to what his younger body was capable of. Overextending himself would only leave him wide open to a fatal counterattack.

Before he knew it, the darkness began to break and fade away. The countdown clock hit zero and its gong shivered reality like a pebble tossed into a still pond.

The Pyresouls Online Competition Will Now Commence.

Good Luck.

5

Cold, groggy, and aching all over, Jacob opened his eyes. His cheek was pressed against the cold dewy grass and his gaze looked straight out onto a series of mountains so high up that the land below was hidden beneath a sea of leaden clouds.

This was the beginning of Pyresouls Online. The game’s equivalent of a “safe” tutorial zone. The enemies around here were weak and sluggish but could still kill you. He had barely managed to make it to his first Pyre alive.

The forums were filled with the salt and rage of players who managed to die before lighting their first Pyre. They were kicked out of the game. Without a Pyre, whenever you died you didn’t come back.

Just like on Earth after the Collapse.

Jacob drew in a deep breath and pushed his gloved palms against the slick grass. He knew what the area was, it was the same for everybody. An equal starting ground.

Same, but segmented. Like most of Pyresouls Online each player inhabited a reflection of Lormar. At first, Altis explained it as a sort of instancing they did to lighten the load on the servers.

But after the horrors that came out of Pyresouls and took over the world… Jacob wasn’t so sure that was the whole story. In either case, players were largely segmented from one another. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands of players all standing in the exact spot Jacob was.

They could affect the game world in some ways and it would ripple across the entire world. Cause enough of a change and it reflected everywhere. If a player in another shard (as they were called) caused a large enough rockslide, it would appear in everybody’s reflection of Lormar.

As odd as it was, it prevented the beginning from becoming a madhouse of players slaughtering each other or steamrolling the monsters. It made every threat of Lormar much more real and the lonely, oppressive atmosphere of the world was keenly felt without a party of people at your side.

Rising to his feet, he took a look around just to be sure. As he remembered, it was the same scene of aged carnage. He awoke at the edge of a mountain village that had met a terrible end. The houses were cold charred husks. Blackened bodies littered the grassy paths that wound between the broken shells of buildings.

The name of the area flashed across his sight.

Shrouded Village

It was hard to tell how long ago the damage was. It could have been months or years.

Time moved strangely in Lormar.

Was this once a real place, instead of just a game world? He passed by a lump of charcoal in the shape of a young man. He knelt down by it, examining it. Was this once a man who died protecting his village and not just some fancy graphics and code?

Were all the demons and beasts he fought real creatures that lived in this world?

Jacob was just standing up again and about to turn away when he saw a glint of light from the burned husk. He readied his mace and took a hesitant step back, but when nothing happened he lowered it and approached again.

What was that?

As the sun peeked out through the ceiling of iron-gray clouds overhead, he saw the glint again. Jacob crouched and dismissed his shield to ash, reaching out with his left hand to the corpse’s chest.

At the slightest hint of pressure the man’s body broke apart into ash and blew away on the ever-present mournful wind.

In its place was a familiar sight. A sapphire-blue wisp. He had never seen this before. Alec didn’t even know of it.

Reaching out to it, he wondered how many people just ran by the beginning zone without any thought in their mind other than getting to the end as fast as possible? How many secrets and useful items would they have missed?

You gain [Soul of a Loving Father].

Souls like this were different than the typical Souls received from defeating enemies. Named Souls were items that could be stowed away and used later.

Jacob got up and kept an eye out for anything else unusual as he moved deeper into the mountains, keeping in mind the narrow path he would need to traverse to the north and the two Vacant that would be guarding it.

After lighting the first Pyre, death became a deeply frightening (and painful) but common occurrence. When you died, two very important things happened.

First, you dropped all of the Souls and Anima you had on you at the site of your death. Second, you respawned back at the last Pyre you rested at. If you died again, the Souls and Anima you dropped were lost.

Those unlucky enough to die at a Crossing - an area filled with players and no instancing - often found their Souls already claimed by another player who passed by the site of their death.

Losing Souls was the equivalent of losing your Experience Points in