He hated them.

  He hated them all.

  They had hurt him. Again and again. Making fun of him, bullying him every day.

  Day after day he went home with bruises. Only to get more of them.

  No one liked him. Not his family, not his teachers and not even his comrades. Everybody was awful with him.

  One day he snapped.

  He took his father’s guns and went to school with them.

  There he killed a lot of people.

  The other students who had bullied him. The teachers who had done nothing but watched and walked away. Even his parents before leaving the house.

  When the cops had come to arrest him, he didn’t let them do. He ran in the corridor, he ran in the staircase, he tripped on a cartridge and fell backward.

  The newspapers and TV news talked about the stupid death of the crazy Mickey Rat, the boy who had slip on his own cartridge after his massive killing at his high school. They never mention how he had been abused and bullied all his life, focusing only on his love for video games.

  Mickey woke in a white room without walls. In this were only a desk and two chair.

  After a bit of time, a strange man appeared. He looked like an undertaker, a cliché one, and presented himself as the Administrator Arnold. Arnold talked with a voice that you could almost see it written in Times New Roman.

  He explained to Mickey that he had died and that he would be sent on another world to win a strange game for a God. The God whom had chosen him was Koran, God of Hatred, Blood and Slaughter. One of the more powerful God of Jezoi.

  The only thing that Mickey really get was that he had been chosen as a Champion by a God. He had to kill other Champions to win. He would be very powerful. And this world was like a video game.

  Mickey said goodbye to Arnold with a smile on his face.

  Mickey was floating in a dark and endless space. And just when he started to think he was in hell and he had dreamed his meeting with Arnold, a blue panel popped in front of him.

  ‘Great! I’m not crazy! Well, I am, I killed a lot of people, and only crazy people do that. But I didn’t completely lose my mind.’

  Bing!

  ‘Fifty thousand Skill Points. Is that a lot? It looks like it is.’

  The prices were very low compared to how much Points Mickey had, and there was a lot of choices.

  Curious, Mick click on the Half-blood option. It allowed him to choose two races. If he was willing to pay the higher priced one half more points. So, if he chose a race at 1,000 Points and another at 500, it would cost him a total of 2,000 Points.

  Mickey was done with human race. He immediately chose draconic in the Half-blood option, making it cost 2,250 Points. After that he hesitated between the devil and the demon options, what could be the difference between the two of them? From what he knew of the Bible, they were many demons, but only one devil. He chose devil.

  After a quick bit of mathematics, Mickey concluded he could buy all of them and still had a lot of point for the final step. He didn’t bat an eye and did it.

  He still had 34,500 Points to go.

  There was a lot of choice, and Mickey had largely enough to buy every Skills on the list. It would even let him with a lot of wasted points.

  He had taken the most expensive options each time and he wouldn’t be able to use so much Points. That was a shame. But he would probably be really powerful.

  Complete black came back.

  A sudden white light blinded Mick and scattered almost immediately. He was standing in a big circle burned in stone, in the middle was a triangular shape with some symbol.

  But he didn’t had the time to look at them, all around him little red men were looking at him with surprise in their eyes. They had yellow eyes, small and sharp teeth and wore nothing else than loincloths.

  Mickey looked at them.

  They looked at him. Hatred taking place of the fear.

  The former human grinned at them. He knew what hatred was.

  The dozen of little red men grabbed their weapons. Small and rusted daggers.

  And the fight began.

  They jumped at him while he maked a step forward and kicked one of them sending him flying backward. Three of them landed on his back and manage to strike him with their blades. Unfortunately for them, the scales on Mick’s body were too hard.

  Mick grabbed one of them with his right clawed hand and throw him at the other. He reproduced the moves with the two others little red men on his back, knocking out two more.

  One of his opponent managed to pass under his arms and slash at him in the groin. Luckily for him, this area had weakest scales. Unluckily for him, Mick grabbed him with his two hands and slam him hard on is knee.

  The Champion turned to looked at the opponents still behind him. In the movement, he unintentionally swinged his tail and threw two of them on the ground.

  Looking at the three remaining little red men he roared. And they flee.

  Taking a bit of time to look around him, Mick saw he was in a room he supposed was underground. It was rather a big room, something like ten by twelve meters, the roof was at three meters. The little men had fled by the only entrance in the room, a small and dark corridor. The light in the room came from two torches behind him.

  Mick had appeared in the middle of the room, right in front of an altar, between the torches. On the altar was a lot of blood stain, of different age. Tied to the side of the altar was a small and shivering bag.

  Mick came closer to it and opened the bag.

  Inside was a little creature strangely looking like the little men. But this one had a light blue skin, and really dark blue eyes. It was undoubtedly a female, as indicated the breast. And she was visibly terrified by Mick.

  “Calm down little girl. I won’t harm you. Well maybe I will, but not now. I have questions for you before.”

  The little blue girl screamed and tried to crawl away from him. It was difficult, she was still partly in the bag, and her hands were bind together.

  Mick let her do.

  “Shit, she don’t understand what I’m saying. I will have to learn the local language. But for now, let's look at those status, it’s a world like a game right? I’ve read stories like that on the internet. Status!”

  ‘Woah! That’s a long status! Well, with all those Skills, it’s normal I guess. There is a lot of them. I’ll have to do tests. But first, these Familiar Skill, let’s see what kind of familiar I’ll get. How do I activate it? I focus on it I guess.’

  ‘Lot of fairies in there, I don’t want a fucking fairy as my familiar. I’m not a pussy now, I’m a fucking devil dragon! I need something suited for me.’

  Mick quickly put aside any thought about choosing a fairy or a simple animal. It let him with three options: an imp, a stymph or a whisper. He also remarked that the choices were corresponding with his Skill Trees, meaning that the three choices he was considering were respectively coming from his Devil +, Slaughter + and Death Skill Trees. Thinking that a plus in the name of a Skill Tree was probably a good thing, Mick decided to not summon a whisper.

  Having to choose between an imp, supposedly a little creature who enjoys messing around, and a stymph, whatever it was. Mick choose the option that would certainly get him the most fearful of the two, the one coming with the Slaughter + Skill Tree, the stymph.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure of my choice. Bring the thing, I’m curious to see what it is.’ Mickey thought has he choose yes.

  A little red spark appeared out of nowhere, it grew with metallic glints till it take the form of a bird. A fist sized bird. With a “pop” sound the light let place to a strange bird. It was a bird of prey, but a small one. It had red and grey feather all over its body and his beak and claws looked like they were made in metal. It has normal yellow eyes for a bird of prey. If Mick knew more about birds, he could have known it was some kind of falcon, but a kind unknown on Earth.

  ‘Wow, nice bird. I made the good choice.’

  Mick raised his arm and the bird flew right to him and rested on it.

  “Hey little guy, you need a name, every pets need names. How will I call you? Rest assure it will not be something like an old and dead scientist or worse, an historian. But first, tell me, are you a boy or a girl?”

  The bird looked at him strangely, it seems it understood the question but couldn’t answer it. It was just a bird after all.

  “Right, you can’t talk, well deploy your left wing if you're a boy and the right one if you're a girl.” The stymph moved a wing. “Okay, so you’re a girl. Fine. What do you think of Heop? You like it? I’ve just made it, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Qwaaak!” made the strange bird.

  “So, it means you accept it. Good.”

  Hearing a sound coming from the corridor, Mick turned to face it and said:

  “Now, it’s time to take care of the little red fuckers.”