Chapter 1: Legendary Hangover Michael Petrov woke up to the sound of screaming and the worst headache he'd had in at least three days. He rolled over on his couch—when had he gotten home?—and squinted at the wall clock. Seven in the morning. On a Tuesday. He'd been drinking since Friday afternoon, which meant this was either a very dedicated bender or he'd lost track of time again. Probably both. The screaming continued outside. Mrs. Kowalski from 3B, unless he missed his guess. She was always screaming about something. Stray cats, broken elevators, kids playing too loud. This time it sounded more urgent than usual, but Michael had learned a long time ago that other people's problems were exactly that—other people's. He sat up and immediately regretted it. The room tilted at an angle that physics shouldn't allow. His mouth tasted like he'd been chewing on a wool sock that had been marinated in battery acid. Standard Tuesday, really. Then a blue screen appeared in front of his face. Michael blinked. The screen stayed there, hovering in the air like some kind of cheap hologram from a sci-fi movie. He waved his hand through it. Nothing happened. The screen just kept floating there with text on it that he couldn't quite focus on because his eyes weren't cooperating yet. "Blyat," he muttered and rubbed his face with both hands. When he looked again, the screen was still there. Either he'd finally drunk enough to start hallucinating, or something very strange was happening. He forced his eyes to focus on the text: **SYSTEM INTEGRATION COMPLETE** **WELCOME TO THE SYSTEM, USER: MICHAEL PETROV** **ACCESSING AKASHIC RECORDS...** **ANALYZING FATE STREAM...** **RANK ASSIGNED: LEGENDARY** Michael stared at the words. Legendary. He'd always been legendary, obviously. Best drinker in his entire battalion. Could outdrink men twice his size and still complete a field exercise the next morning. Well, complete it while vomiting occasionally, but he'd never failed to finish. More text appeared: **WARNING: INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS** **MONSTERS NOW SPAWNING WORLDWIDE** **SURVIVE. ADAPT. LEVEL UP.** The screaming outside got louder. Something crashed, maybe a car. Maybe Mrs. Kowalski had finally snapped and was throwing furniture off her balcony again. Michael dismissed the screen with a thought—how did he do that?—and stood up. His apartment looked the same as always. Empty vodka bottles on the counter, three of them. His sergeant's uniform jacket hung over a chair as he'd been too drunk to hang it properly. His boots were by the door, which was progress since usually he kicked them off wherever he happened to be standing. He walked to the window and looked down at the street four floors below. A green thing was eating Mrs. Kowalski's poodle. Michael blinked again. The green thing was still there. About three feet tall, wrinkled skin like a raisin that had been left in the sun too long, ears that stuck out sideways, and very sharp teeth that were currently tearing into the poodle while Mrs. Kowalski hit it with her purse. "Huh," Michael said. The blue screen appeared again: **GOBLIN - LEVEL 1** **RANK: COMMON** **THREAT LEVEL: LOW** "Goblin," Michael said out loud. He'd played enough video games during his mandatory off-duty hours to recognize the concept. Small, stupid, killed easily. Usually came in groups. He looked down the street. There were more of them. At least a dozen, maybe more. They were breaking into cars, smashing windows, chasing people who ran screaming in various directions. Michael's phone buzzed on the coffee table. He picked it up and saw seventeen missed calls from his commanding officer, twenty-three text messages in the unit group chat, and one message from his mother asking if he'd eaten breakfast. The most recent message in the group chat read: "MONSTERS EVERYWHERE. BASE COMPROMISED. SURVIVE. THAT'S AN ORDER." "Well, shit," Michael said. He opened his mother's message and typed back: "Yes, mama. I ate. Stay inside. Lock doors." Then he opened his emergency cabinet—every good Russian kept an emergency cabinet—and pulled out a fresh bottle of vodka. Beluga Noble, which he'd been saving for a special occasion. If goblins eating poodles didn't count as special, nothing did. He cracked the seal and took a long drink straight from the bottle. The blue screen flashed so bright he almost dropped the vodka: **CONSUMPTION DETECTED: VODKA (HIGH QUALITY)** **CLASS REQUIREMENTS MET** **ASSIGNING CLASS...** **CLASS ASSIGNED: THE VODKA DRINKER** **TYPE: UNKNOWN** **GRADE: LEGENDARY** **RARITY: UNIQUE** Michael lowered the bottle and read the screen more carefully this time. Vodka Drinker. As a class. He'd been training for this his whole life without even realizing it. **NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: LIQUID COURAGE (LEVEL 1)** **EFFECT: CONSUME VODKA TO TEMPORARILY BOOST ALL PHYSICAL STATS. DURATION AND MAGNITUDE INCREASE WITH ALCOHOL QUALITY AND QUANTITY.** **CURRENT BONUS: +15 TO STRENGTH, AGILITY, AND ENDURANCE FOR 10 MINUTES** More text appeared: **STATUS SCREEN AVAILABLE. FOCUS ON "STATUS" TO VIEW FULL DETAILS.** Michael thought "Status" and the screen changed: **NAME: MICHAEL PETROV** **LEVEL: 1** **RANK: LEGENDARY** **CLASS: THE VODKA DRINKER (UNIQUE)** **XP: 0/500** **PASSIVE ABILITIES:** - CHOOSE 3 SPECIAL PASSIVE ABILITIES (PENDING SELECTION) **CHARACTERISTICS:** - STRENGTH: 15 - AGILITY: 12 - ENDURANCE: 18 - INTELLECT: 10 - WISDOM: 8 **MANA: 100/100** **MANA REGENERATION: 4 PER MINUTE** **CLASS ABILITIES:** - LIQUID COURAGE (LEVEL 1) - ACTIVE - (SKILL TREE AVAILABLE - 25 ABILITY POINTS AVAILABLE) **AFFINITIES:** - ALCOHOL: ABSOLUTE - CHAOS: GREAT He had twenty-five ability points already. The screen mentioned something about legendary ranks getting different amounts per level, but he couldn't remember the details because his head still hurt. Michael took another drink and watched as his stats shifted on the screen. Strength went up to thirty. Agility to twenty-seven. Endurance to thirty-three. He could feel it too, which was weird. The headache receded. His vision sharpened. His muscles stopped aching. "Now this," he said to his empty apartment, "is useful." The window exploded inward. Glass sprayed across his living room as a goblin crashed through, landed on his coffee table, and immediately scrambled to its feet while making a sound like a cat being strangled. It had a rusty knife in one hand and what looked like a chicken leg in the other. Michael and the goblin stared at each other for a moment. The goblin took a bite of the chicken leg. Michael took another drink of vodka. Then the goblin shrieked and lunged at him with the knife, and Michael's body moved before his brain fully processed what was happening. He sidestepped—when had he become that fast?—and the goblin stumbled past him and crashed into the wall. Michael looked at the vodka bottle in his hand. It was heavy. Glass. Good Russian craftsmanship. He'd paid forty euros for it, which was a lot, but now it seemed like a reasonable investment. The goblin turned around and charged again. Michael swung the bottle and connected with the side of its head. The impact made a very satisfying sound, like a hammer hitting a melon. The goblin went down hard and didn't get back up. **GOBLIN DEFEATED** **XP GAINED: 5** **XP: 5/500** Five experience points. He needed five hundred to reach level two. That meant he'd need to kill... Michael tried to do the math but his brain was still catching up with the fact that he'd just killed something with a vodka bottle. The goblin had a health bar floating over it earlier, he realized. Red, almost empty, now gone completely. He hadn't noticed during the fight as everything happened too fast. Michael looked down at the body. Green blood was leaking onto his floor. Mrs. Petrov was going to be very angry about the stains. Then he remembered that Mrs. Petrov was his mother and she didn't live here, and also there were goblins outside eating poodles, so floor stains were probably not the priority right now. He checked his stats again. The Liquid Courage buff was still active. Nine minutes remaining. His hands weren't shaking anymore. His headache was completely gone. He felt better than he had in years, actually, which was strange because he'd just been attacked by a fantasy creature in his own apartment. The vodka bottle had a crack in it now. Liquid was leaking out slowly. Michael sighed and took another drink before it all wasted, then set it down on the counter next to the empty bottles from last night. He needed a better weapon. The bottle had worked, but it was one goblin and he'd gotten lucky. Outside there were dozens of them, maybe more by now. Michael walked to his bedroom and opened his closet. His service pistol was in the lockbox on the top shelf, along with two magazines. He'd kept it after leaving active duty. His commanding officer owed him a favor and had overlooked the paperwork. Technically it was illegal, but Michael had learned a long time ago that technically and practically were two different things. He loaded the pistol and chambered a round. Seventeen shots. Probably not enough if things got bad, but better than a bottle. Another scream from outside, closer this time. Michael went back to the window and looked out. A goblin was trying to climb up the fire escape. Two more were breaking into the ground floor corner shop where Mr. Hassan sold cigarettes and lottery tickets. **NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: FIRST BLOOD** **OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT 10 GOBLINS (1/10)** **REWARD: 100 XP, RANDOM ITEM** A quest. Like a video game. Michael almost laughed, but his headache was starting to come back as the Liquid Courage buff wore off. He checked the timer. Seven minutes left. He picked up the cracked vodka bottle and finished what was left in three long swallows. The buff timer reset to ten minutes. His stats jumped back up. The headache disappeared again. This was the strangest hangover cure he'd ever experienced, and he'd tried everything from raw eggs to his grandmother's mystery soup that tasted like regret and smelled worse. Michael grabbed his jacket from the chair and put it on. If he was going to fight goblins, he might as well look professional. The sergeant stripes on his shoulder felt heavier than usual, or maybe that was just his imagination. He picked up another bottle from his emergency cabinet—Stolichnaya this time, cheaper but effective—and tucked it into his jacket pocket. The pistol went in his belt. He found his boots and put them on properly for the first time in three days. Someone pounded on his door. "Michael! Michael, are you in there?" It was Pavel from across the hall. Pavel worked in IT and complained about noise during the day for he worked night shifts. Michael opened the door. Pavel looked terrible. Blood on his shirt, scratch marks on his face, and absolutely terrified. "They're everywhere," Pavel said. He was breathing hard, like he'd been running. "Yuri is dead. They killed him in the stairwell. I barely—there are more coming up—" A goblin appeared at the end of the hallway behind Pavel. Then two more. Then four. Pavel turned around and made a sound that wasn't quite a scream but close to it. Michael pulled him inside and slammed the door. He could hear the goblins in the hallway now, their feet slapping on the tile floor, their weird strangled-cat voices getting louder. "Window," Pavel said. "We need to—" "Four floors up," Michael said. "You can jump if you want." He checked his pistol again. Seventeen shots. At least six goblins in the hallway, probably more. The math wasn't good, but the math was never good. The Liquid Courage buff had six minutes left. Michael handed Pavel the Stolichnaya bottle from his pocket. "What—" "Weapon," Michael said. "Or drink it. Your choice." Pavel stared at him like he'd gone insane. Maybe he had. Hard to tell anymore. The goblins hit the door. The wood shook but held. They hit it again. Michael's apartment door was solid—he'd replaced it himself after a incident involving an ex-girlfriend and a fire axe—but it wouldn't last forever. Michael walked to his window and looked down. The goblin on the fire escape was two floors below now, climbing up steadily. More were on the street. Some were fighting each other over scraps. Others were dragging people out of buildings. His phone buzzed again. Another message in the group chat: "Evacuation point Delta compromised. Recommend dispersal and guerrilla tactics. Good luck." Guerrilla tactics. Against goblins. In downtown Moscow. Michael's commanding officer had always been an optimist. The door cracked. Wood splintered. A goblin arm reached through the hole, waving a knife around randomly. Pavel screamed and threw the vodka bottle at the door. It smashed and liquid went everywhere. The goblin pulled its arm back. "That was forty euros," Michael said. "What?" "The vodka. Forty euros." Michael raised his pistol and aimed at the door. "Stay behind me." The door broke completely and goblins poured through. Michael fired.