The Last Player Standing: A Dystopian LitRPG Novel Read online

  The Last Player Standing

  Alexey Volkov

  Table of contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  LITRPG

  GAMELIT SOCIETY

  Prologue

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” Jennifer exclaimed, tears welling up in her beautiful hazel eyes.

  “I’m going to be just fine, Jen,” I replied as calmly as I could manage.

  “No, you are not,” my girlfriend cried out, desperately fighting back the unwelcome tears.

  “Listen, Jen,” I said trying to keep my cool, “I’ve got it all under control and––”

  “You have no idea what you’re gonna get yourself into,” she interrupted me. “There are going to be one thousand people in the game, but only one of them will survive.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I asked forcing myself to smile.

  “The probability that you’ll be the last man standing is point one percent,” Jen continued totally ignoring my remark. “In other words, your chances of winning are extremely slim, Jason. No way you can survive, don’t you see?”

  “You’re a smart girl,” I replied, a sincere smile on my lips now. “But you’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I used to play virtual reality video games as a teenager,” I said. “My father–– Before my father disappeared, he often gave me money so I could use pay public pods to play virtual reality games. Since he was very rich, I played a lot. So I’m an experienced player.”

  Jennifer scoffed at my statement. “Do you really think you’re the only person with gaming experience?”

  “Virtual reality video games are very expensive so––”

  Jennifer interrupted me again, “I bet there are going to be plenty of experienced players in Battle Royale Online. It’s silly to think you’ve got some sort of advantage over the others.”

  I simply clammed up for a few moments, looking my girlfriend in the eye. Then I said, “Jen, I have to do it. Whether you like it or not, I have to. You know about my mom, don’t you? It’s nearly the end of the month. If I don’t pay, they’ll shut off her life support.”

  “So you don’t have enough money? Why didn’t you tell me, Jason? Geez. If you’re short of money, I can always help you out, don’t you know that?”

  “I’m not talking about the monthly payments, Jen. It’s almost five months since the car crash. You know what it means, right?”

  Jennifer looked confused. “Is it already? I totally forgot about it. I was going to keep a record of it and accumulate some money but––”

  “Don’t sweat it, Jen,” I said softly. “You have enough problems of your own in your life.”

  “I know but––”

  “Not that you would’ve been able to pay for the operation. It’s too expensive. Between our salaries, we couldn’t have afforded the operation even if we’ve been saving money for it for a year.”

  Jennifer’s face hardened with displeasure a bit. “So this is why you decided to get yourself killed in this stupid game, Battle Royale Online, right?”

  “Yes. I mean no. I mean I’m not going to die, Jen. I’m going to win and get one million dollars. It’s more than enough to cover the operation.”

  “Just listen to yourself,” Jennifer said raising her voice. She had a sweet disposition and hardly ever raised her voice. Maybe only when she was really upset or angry. Not that I had ever seen her angry. Not once.

  As Jennifer leaned her head forward, a strand of raven hair fell out from her ear and across her beautiful face. Frowning, she tucked it back into place with her left hand.

  “You’re being very silly, Jason,” she stated. “Experienced player or not, you need a lot of luck to win Battle Royale Online. This game’s like Russian roulette, considering.”

  “Jen, my mom’s in a coma,” I said still trying to reason with my girlfriend. “You know my mom, right? She’s very quiet and kind. And they’re going to deactivate her life support. They’re going to kill her, Jen. As far as the law is concerned, being in a coma makes you dead weight. Given the current state of affairs in the world, it’s not surprising at all.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Jennifer replied quietly. “Your mom is amazing. I’ve never met such a wonderful person like her.”

  “If I don’t pay for the operation by the beginning of the next month, my mom will be dead,” I continued on. “This is why I’m going to play this game. There’s no other way to get such an enormous sum they ask for the surgery.”

  “Jason, listen to me, please,” she appealed to me. “Do you think your mom would be pleased if you got yourself killed in this game, trying to get money for the operation? You’re only twenty-two years old. Do you really think your mom would approve your decision to run such a huge risk of getting killed?”

  She had a point. However, I had once lost my dad and I wasn’t keen on losing my mom too.

  “Jason, listen to me very carefully,” Jen said. “You think each player has an even chance of winning?”

  “Certainly, because––”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” she cut me off. “There will be hackers and cheaters in the game.”

  I couldn’t help scoffing at that.

  “Jen, you’re being naïve. This game––”

  “No, Jason,” Jennifer interrupted me. “It is you who is being naïve here. You don’t know everything about this game.”

  “So do you.”

  “There are going to be cheaters in the game,” she said in an urgent tone of voice. “This much I know.”

  “And how exactly do you know this, Jen?”

  “I heard someone say it once.”

  “But it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”

  Jennifer looked like she was about to say something, but then she closed her mouth and just looked me in the eye with a pleading expression on her face.

  We didn’t say anything for a few seconds, silently looking at each other. My girlfriend seemed to be on the verge of breaking into tears.

  Finally, I broke the silence.

  “I’m going to play the game, Jen,” I said in a firm and confident voice. “I have to.”

  She couldn’t take it anymore. Her eyes watered again and tears streaked down her face contorted with anguish.

  “Jason, don’t!”

  Jennifer rushed forward, bumped into me, and threw her slender arms around my body. I felt her body tremble against mine with quiet sobs. I put my left arm around my girlfriend and stroked her jet-black hair with my right hand.

  “There, there,” I said having no idea what else to say.

  Her soft cheek pressed against mine and I felt her tears rolling down my neck, getting the shoulder of my T-shirt all wet.

  We just stood there for a few more minutes, embracing each other. Then I tried to gently push my girlfriend back, but she didn’t let me go. Instead, her arms squeezed me tighter while her body pressed to mine even harder.

  “Jen, I have to go.”

  “I won’t let you,” she sniffled, shaking her head vigorously and disheveling her beautiful hair.

  I leaned down and kissed her passionately. Jennifer clung to me in emotional desperation, her nails digging into my arms.
/>   “Jen, I gotta go,” I said breaking our kiss. “You can’t stop me. You know that, right?”

  As Jennifer kissed me again, I tasted the salt of her tears in my mouth. With her body pressing against mine, I felt her heart pounding in her chest.

  “I love you,” she muttered.

  “I love you too,” I replied. “I’m going to be all right, Jen. Don’t worry.”

  Suddenly, she withdrew her lips from mine and pulled back from me. She wiped the tears from her face and looked me in the eye.

  “Get going,” she said firmly. She looked very confident all of a sudden.

  I wasn’t sure why but the change in her behavior and mood bothered me.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. Now go, Jason.”

  Now that Jennifer had finally decided to let me go, I was reluctant to go away. Something was clearly on her mind and it ate away at me.

  “Go, Jason,” she urged me, “before I begin bawling again.”

  Jennifer looked so miserable I wanted to do something to make her feel a little better. I took her hand in mine, but she quickly removed it from my grasp and stepped back.

  “Please, Jason, go,” she pleaded, her voice breaking, “before I change my mind.”

  Feeling a sudden urge to get moving, I spun around and crossed the room. Reaching the door, I stopped and looked over my shoulder at Jennifer. She stood still in the middle of the room, watching me, her eyes watering again. I wondered if she was going to bawl her eyes out once I was out of sight. My heart sank within me but I forced myself to shake off the depressing feeling.

  I removed my jacket from a hunger, slipped it on, and went out.

  Once in the street, I got surrounded by a swarm of people bustling around. I got my bearings and merged with the foot traffic, heading for home.

  As always, the city was crowded to the bursting point, the sidewalks jammed with people dressed in all kinds of clothing. Every parking lot was full, every parking spot along the curbs was taken, and vehicles were triple-parked at fire hydrants almost everywhere. The air was filled with the constant din of car engines revving, feet scuffing, and people talking.

  It started to drizzle and a strong wind blew in from the west. Turning the collar of my jacket up against the cold, I continued on.

  Then I got a feeling that I was being followed. Not that I actually spotted someone dogging me. It was only a hunch. I had developed something along the lines of spidey sense over the years of living in this dangerous world and I had come to heed it. Paying attention to it was often a matter of living and dying.

  I gingerly looked around without making myself too obvious about it but failed to spot whoever was dogging me. Yet the feeling didn’t go away.

  I earned more than an average citizen did but always tried to conceal it so that not to stand out in a crowd. I never showed off in order to avoid getting in trouble. I wore plain clothes and didn’t have too expensive gadgets. However, just as I developed the capability to tell if I was being followed, there were experienced muggers who had a strong, full-fledged instinct to spot a potentially wealthy person. That was just the way it went.

  When I spied a mouth to a dark alley, I weaved my way through the crowd and dived inside. After taking a few steps into the alley, I came to a stop and turned around. It wasn’t long before I made out the pounding of running feet on the sidewalk. I didn’t have to wait long. Seconds later two men came into view. They stopped dead in their tracks at the mouth of the alley when they saw me standing there watching them. They clearly didn’t expect me to have the guts to encounter them.

  “You there,” one of them barked at me, “gimme that bag of yours and we won’t beat you up.”

  I had a small leather shoulder bag slung across my back. It was shabby and frayed but there was a pretty expensive cell phone inside it. Somehow, those two muggers sensed it was worth robbing me.

  “Okay, okay,” I said throwing my left hand up in a gesture intended to placate them. “I’ll give ya the bag. Just don’t hurt me, please.”

  “Yeah. Hand it over if you don’t want us to brain you.”

  Still holding my left hand in front of me to distract the muggers, I reached around and inside my jacket with my right.

  However, the motion alerted one of the two thugs.

  “Hey,” he snapped at me, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I placed my hand on the butt of my big pistol tucked into my waistband beneath my jacket. As I pulled it out, the thug reached for his hip, where I had spotted a telltale bulge of a gun beneath the man’s windbreaker. The other one followed suit. I brought my big .44 Magnum Desert Eagle up to eye level and stabilized my grip with my left hand.

  Before any mugger could train his gun on me, I sighted down the barrel of my pistol and put one thug in my sights. As my finger curled around the trigger and put pressure on it, the .44 roared and jumped in my hands and a blaze of flame flashed. The roar of the big handgun was like a thunderclap.

  The round slammed into the first thug’s face, completely obliterating it and exploding out the back of his head in a fountain of fleshy pieces of brain and fragments of bone. He was dead long before he collapsed to the sidewalk.

  I knew that it would take me some time to recover from the Desert Eagle’s considerable recoil. It would give the other thug enough time to pop a shot or two of his own. Being well aware of that, I shifted and dropped to a knee, taking aim at the other thug. The most important part in any shootout was always to stay calm and never let panic get into you. Sure, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it came with experience.

  His pistol already drawn, the man darted to the side, discharging his sidearm. The bullets zipped past me like angry hornets. Chips of stone and plaster dust erupted from the wall to my right as the slugs penetrated it, stitching a chaotic pattern across the wall. One of the bullets passed so close to my face that I felt its shock wave.

  I ducked, then reaimed, and squeezed the trigger once more. The pistol jumped in my hands again. The round struck the thug in the shoulder with sledgehammer force, spinning him around and hurling him to the ground. As I fired once more, a hole the size of a 50 cent coin ripped open in his chest.

  The thug landed faceup on the ground. He lay motionlessly as crimson soaked his windbreaker. His left leg kicked a few times, then his body tensed up for a moment before finally relaxing. The rain started to fill up the cavity in the chest of the man and the huge hole where the face of the other man had been.

  I got to my feet and tucked the .44 into the back of my pants.

  The rain increased, gathering up in the cracks in the sidewalk.

  Once passers-by realized I wasn’t going to gun down any more people, they huddled together again and continued to wander around, hurrying to get wherever they were heading. They stepped over the two dead bodies as if they were unanimated logs. Human life was extremely cheap these days. People had gotten so accustomed to seeing someone get killed right in front of them it didn’t bother them a bit nowadays.

  I reached into my bag, pulled out my cellphone, and dialed 911. On the other end of the line, a tired female voice answered on the second ring. “Hi there. What’s your emergency?”

  After I described the situation, the dispatcher promised that someone would show up. Eventually.

  Yet I knew it could be days before someone would finally get around to showing up and getting rid of the two corpses. Due to that, good etiquette demanded that if you stiffed some thug who had been planning to rob you, you should drag the corpse out of the way so it wasn’t an obstacle for passers-by.

  So I walked up to one of the body, took hold of it by the legs, and started to drag it into the alley. A middle-aged man emerged from the crowd and came to my aid. Bending over, he slid his hands under the corpse’s shoulders and together we half-carried, half-dragged the dead man toward a
Dumpster in the middle of the alley.

  “What’d they do?” The man asked. “Did they try to rob you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Figures.”

  He glanced at the gory mess where the man’s face had once been and grimaced. “Gross. You hit him smack-dab in the noggin. You’re a crack shot, huh?”

  I just shrugged my shoulders.

  We dropped the corpse near the Dumpster. The man looked me in the eye and said, “Mind, if I––”

  “Be my guest.”

  The man leaned over and searched the pockets of the corpse’s windbreaker but came up empty. “Dangit!”

  We heaved the corpse up and pushed it over the edge of the Dumpster. It dropped to its bottom with a thud. We returned to the other corpse. The man went through my victim’s pockets and found a wallet. He looked inside it and a wide smile formed on his lips.

  “There are almost two hundred bucks.” He looked up at me. “How do we split it?”

  “I don’t need it. You take it all.”

  “You sure? I mean you’re the one who stiffed these bastards so––”

  “Yep, I’m sure. Take it.”

  “Thanks so much, man.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  We disposed of the second dead body and went our separate ways. As I was navigating the crowded streets, I squinted, straining to see through the wall of the ever-increasing rain.

  By the year 2050 Earth had become overpopulated. Lots of scientists initially considered our planet’s maximum capacity to be about nine billion to ten billion people and thought Earth’s population would reach about nine billion people by 2050. It was thought that Earth couldn’t sustain a population of eleven billion. Scientists weren’t too far wrong from the truth.

  It was 2053 now and over thirteen billion lived on Earth. Or more accurately, desperately struggled for existence.

  More than 100 million people had been adding to the world’s population annually. Constant major medical achievements, increased birth rates, and the decline in mortality rates population always increased and eventually resulted in overpopulation.