The stranger seemed surprised by such a reasonable response. Although Fen was filthy from head to toe, the man stretched out his hand:
“My name is Du Mochou. But everyone calls me Du Crooked Tooth.”
Hiding his smile, Du watched as the boy tried to keep hold of the canister under his elbow. Finally, Fen gave up and put the container on the ground to shake Du’s hand. It was narrow and childlike, but his handshake was strong.
“My name’s Fen Xiaoguang. But everyone apart from my parents calls me Mogwai.”
“Your parents are refugees?” Du asked, already knowing the answer. “How old are you?”
Fen nodded:
“Yes, we’re from Harbin. I turned fourteen a month ago.”
“Fourteen?” Du Mochou echoed in surprise. “I never would have thought. Well… That changes things. Where is your father? I must speak with him.”
“That way,” the boy said, pointing the way and explaining how to find his father.
Crooked Tooth mussed Fen’s hair, shaking out some dried mud, then left. Fen’s ribs hurt and his arms were bruised, but the conversation with the stranger still put him in a good mood. Mr. Mochou was the first person apart from his mom and dad to show any interest in him, and he didn’t even yell.
That evening, at an unusually filling dinner, his parents were happy and looked at their son lovingly. They had met with Crooked Tooth. The father didn’t say what he and Du had spoken about, but from that day, the boys stopped beating Fen. Later he learned that his father no longer had to pay ‘taxes’ to the local crime boss, who, as it turned out, was called Du Mochou.
The next morning, four gruff men brought an immersion capsule to the Xiaoguang family hovel. A stooping technician connected it, configured it and left. The boy had to figure everything else out himself. But the capsule, although old, dented and worn, with intragel long overdue for replacement, unveiled a new world to Fen.
He figured out Du’s motives several years later. Crooked Tooth, who had had his eye on dominion over the virtual spaces for some time, approached everything from the foundations. No, he didn’t play the game and he had no plans even to create his own clan, but Du knew for certain: there was money in Dis. A lot of it. Far more than could be collected in protection money from the inwinova and the low-class citizens and their sorry excuses for businesses.
Du crafted his own street gang, took away teenagers and children and raised them so that they, as adults, never even thought of betraying him. They all owed Crooked Tooth, and terrible things happened to those who tried to leave him. The chicks could fly the nest and go all the way to Mars, but they must never forget who gave them their wings. And spare a share of their profits for Mr. Mochou, because for many of them, he had become a second father. Or just replaced the first.
Crooked Tooth had decided to apply the same method to the new territory of Disgardium. The method required investing in equipment, but that wasn’t a problem. Debtors paid Du Mochou not only in phoenixes, but in whatever they had. Capsules, for example.
The one given to Fen was not only old, it also didn’t function correctly. The pain filter didn’t work and the old intragel made his skin itch, but Fen was still overjoyed. With Mr. Mochou’s blessing, Fen’s parents let him play as much as he wanted. Fen took full advantage with no sense of moderation. Sometimes, after exiting the game, he fell asleep right in his capsule, curled up into a ball, and after waking up, he quickly wolfed down some UNBs and went straight back into Dis.
Mogwai discovered the Resilience skill on his very first day. He was no stranger to pain, and to tell the truth, had even come to enjoy it. At first, the boy didn’t seek to level up or complete quests. Quests were obligations, and Mogwai liked freedom: the ability to roam where he wanted and do what he wanted. But, feeling a strange pleasure from all kinds of pain, for the first weeks he just explored the sandbox and deliberately subjected himself to the attacks of various mobs, from toothy rabbits to nightmarish ghouls. The former bit him with their small teeth and scratched him, the latter emitted the cold of the grave and slowly strangled him. In the end, Mogwai always died, but when he revived, he continued his experiments.
His Resilience grew with every hour he spent in Dis. Mogwai remained at level 1, but through experimenting and exploring the sandbox, he had reached its edges with the strongest mobs, at level 27. Stealth helped there.
After a giant level 21 tarantula failed to finish off the daring noob with one bite, Mogwai suddenly realized something. Unlike in real life, it was advantageous to be killed in Dis: it made him stronger. Harder. Recognizing that he could, in addition to just letting the mobs hit him, fight back in order to level up his combat skills, Mogwai armed himself with a Rusty Knife with 1-2 damage, taken from a mob’s corpse that someone had forgotten to loot. Ninety-nine strikes out of a hundred missed, but the hundredth leveled up the skill.
Players laughed at him then too, seeing how he was already months in and still not above level 1, but Mogwai just smiled to himself in response. The greater the difference between him and the mob dealing damage to him, the faster his Resilience grew. Reaching level two under these conditions only meant slowing his progress toward eventual superiority over those foolish players. And he was more than used to mockery and insult.
In the ninth month of
