Start The Game (LitRPG series Galactogon: Book #1) by Vasily Mahanenko

Chapter 1. Getting to know Galactogon

Welcome, recruit!

The Qualian Empire has entrusted you with a great responsibility! Strive to be the best, purchase upgrades for your ship and...

A huge, semitransparent sheet appeared before my eyes, telling me how wonderful and carefree life for players in the empire was; however, I instantly waved it away. I hadn't the slightest interest in working for the Qualians and the word "purchase" made me instantly lose any and all interest in the text. The main thing for me at the moment was to play through the tutorial and then flee back to reality—where my educational resources awaited me.

The starting point for new players in Galactogon was not particularly astounding—a landing platform with a spaceship, from which the new recruits emerged. Who we were and how we appeared in this world wasn't important. A player stepping out onto the training planet of any empire became any ordinary recruit without any specific allegiance. At least that's what the helpful notification bobbing before my eyes told me. Kind of dumb, that...About two hundred yards ahead of me stood a large building in the direction of which, along sun-soaked pavement, trudged a stream of new recruits. Hardly had I gotten a good look at this building when a window popped up titled "Allocation Center."

And this window provided me with my first few tips about the game:

First—that each in-game item has its own attributes. For example, the allocation center had a Durability stat expressed as a percentage. There was probably some setting to show the absolute value in units, but for now this would do for me. And, it should be said that Durability was not the most interesting attribute of the building. More than anything else, I was happy to see among the attributes the line: "Building class: N/A." From this first window ran a line to point number two:

Objects in the game have their own levels, which meant that, logically, players did too. To make sure, I opened my character menu and...Oh boy. This was just getting better and better...What stood out most was the utter lack of stats and slots for clothes. In fact, the menu had nothing at all in it besides a brief description of the character's history (dating from my emergence from the spaceship) and a separate tab for inventory. That's all! Aside from that, this little panel, which to a Runlustian was the end-all-be-all, contained nothing at all! Though that's not true—there was also a 3-D projection of the character, which I could rotate from side to side and even use to correct my default posture—as well as a line which read 0.0 GC. Unless I was mistaken, this was an image of myself and a counter for how many Galactogon Credits I had.

Third—an object's or item's attributes will automatically pop up when you look at the object long enough. This was a bad thing. Looking closely at the players marching dutifully to the allocation center, I managed to confirm my hunch—extended attention indeed showed me the stats of nine recruits, utterly obscuring my field of view. What was worse was that none of the players' stats told me anything useful—just their names and occupations. And yet, this one panel took up a vast amount of space. Opening my notebook, I made a note to myself to look in the game settings for a way to turn off the attributes pop-ups. When I needed them, I would open the attributes panel myself.

Fourth—when in the somatic interface...

"What's the holdup?" someone yelled behind me and—rudely interrupting my contemplation of life, the universe and everything—landed a vicious kick to the small of my back, sending me flying several yards forward...

Damage taken: 5%. Health remaining: 95%.

Fourth—unlike Runlustia, the player is allowed to do damage to another player using nothing but their own body. And again, in this case, the damage is reflected in percentages...Somewhere, there's got to be a setting for this as well. But that isn't the main thing. The main thing is that I managed to stay on my feet, keeping my balance. This gave rise to a new tip: