Pay-To-Win Patriarch Chapter 1 (First Draft)

For those who've been paying attention to the the story poll pinned to the top of the page you might recognize this story from nowhere because it's not one of the options. This idea came to me as a spur of inspiration and I'd like to know your thoughts. Cheers!

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Gamers beware. If you rage too much at your game, the game might just take offense to that.

For Jasper Cropsey, it had been a typical day. Go to work. Die a little more inside. Come back home and indulge in sin to let the walking corpse that was his body rest. Repeat. Jasper’s vice of choice was video games, specifically of the mobile variety, because he hated having money, apparently.

Miraculous Refinement Sim dressed itself up as a management game where the player slowly built up a school and recruited students to raise them into fine scholars of culture and combat. In practice, however, all the player did was turn normal, well-adjusted people into homicidal maniacs. Or maybe they were always homicidal maniacs, and the player just enabled them? Whatever the truth was, the reason Jasper spent his evenings raising loot goblins for profit was thanks to a skeevy ad he found on social media. He couldn’t remember what exactly the ad was about but it had to have been very convincing because he’d downloaded the game straight after and regretted that decision ever since.

The game called his students things like Outer Disciples and Inner Disciples, and as a whole, they were called Martial Artists. Jasper called them ADHD crows on crack. Unlike in other management games where you ostensibly had some control over the NPCs you oversaw, in Miraculous Refinement Sim, your students were always after the next shiny thing and woe to anyone who got in their way—especially the player. If the school’s growth didn’t satisfy the needs of the disciples, both real and imagined, then they were liable to abscond with the treasury or sell out the school to rivals. These little bastards would tolerate no slight, either.

If the lowest Outer Disciple with a Trash-Tier talent who fancied himself a Heavenly Emperor didn’t receive the schools targeted training and the hand of the most beautiful inner disciple in marriage on the first day he joined, then he was likely to consider it an insult and betray you at a critical moment or worse, actually be a Heavenly Emperor who’d be none too pleased he wasn’t catered to hand and foot. Of course, on the flip side, it was more than likely that if you did as the Trash-Tier wanted, they would live up to the name and waste everything invested in them. They’d probably even run away, too, leaving the school poorer and with more offended disciples than before.

Offensive. That was the best way to describe the game. Everyone was offended all the time and then went to offend others because they were offended, only to be offended when the people they offended offended them back. It was offensive squared. A circle of offense. A living creature that endlessly offended and was offended in turn to the point the question of the chicken and the egg became moot because the chicken killed the egg’s dog when the egg refused to be an omelet after calling the chicken’s mother a factory hen.

More than once, he’d had a game end when one of his idiot disciples went off on an adventure, killed someone’s uncle’s nephew’s grandson, and brought the resulting blood feud back to the sect because they suddenly remembered that sharing is caring. The only consolation to those losses was the end screen, where any surviving disciples swore to avenge the school. Funny how none of them seemed to think of the sect before they went and got it destroyed.

That wasn’t the only way to see all of one’s hard work lost in an instant. Monster invasions, wars, random natural disasters, disease, the Netherworld expelling their unionizing ghosts back to the living, a disciple who secretly assassinated their senior right before an important tournament that would decide ownership of the sect because he was jealous that he didn’t get the nicer room that had three windows instead of one…. that last one was admittedly just Jasper being bitter. Pettiness was the name of the game, unfortunately. Once, he’d rejected an Inner Disciple’s request for a precious one-of-a-kind material she needed because he needed it to build a Wonder that would better benefit her and the school in the long run. That Inner Disciple hadn’t done anything then and quietly trained until Jasper eventually forget he denied her in the first place. Then on the eve of the Wonder’s completion, she revealed she became an Immortal, opened his build menu, and canceled his construction before flying off.

It was a bad time to have been playing his game while on the job. His blowup in the furniture department was so loud that a quarter of that year’s customer complaints came from that day alone. Whoever designed this game was deeply disturbed and evil and had a special place reserved for them in hell as Employee of the Year.

Anyway, Ten out of Ten. Game of the Year.

He was kidding, but also not. He’d probably have better feelings for the game though if it weren’t such a blatant cash grab. Oh, they said it was free to play and that you could collect the cash shop currency in-game, but that bullshit excuse was never true. If you just relied on what you collected in the game, then your school had the chance to be better than mediocre. If you actually wanted to feel like your suffering had any meaning then you had to be prepared to fork over cash for the Spirit Stones the shop used as currency. Talent boosters, quality disciples, treasures, guardian beasts, and a suspiciously creative variety of highly-priced Heavenly Punishments that a player could rain down whenever their disciples pissed them off, which was always. After that pissant Immortal canceled his build, Jasper had forked over a solid hundred to blast his whole sect to ashes with lightning, brought them all back to life, burned them, brought them back again, then sentenced them to eternal damnation with a strongly worded letter to the Underworld judges.

Money well spent, in his opinion, if he ignored the bloody tears his bank account cried and the way his wallet begged for mercy. His credit cards didn’t seem to have an issue, at least.

Still, Jasper tried to avoid whaling like that often since he still had to pay for the unfortunate necessities of life like this month’s rent, food, and next month’s rent. That didn’t mean he stopped playing. Oh no, that would be healthy. Jokes aside, though, Miraculous Refinement Sim was a game where the good parts made you wish it was better, and the bad parts made you wish there was something else. Unfortunately for him, Miraculous Refinement Sim was the only game of its kind that scratched his specific itch of wanting to ride herd on a bunch of super-powered cats that hate you. Until a company recognized the massive value in pleasing him specifically, he wasn’t likely to get another game like it in the near future.

Today he was in a good mood, though, and he wasn’t trying to test it, so when he opened up the app, he resolutely ignored the sandbox mode and selected the scenarios instead. The scenarios of Miraculous Refinement Sim were developer-created missions where the player had to fulfill specific objectives and criteria in return for Spirit Stone rewards and cosmetic trophies. Depending on the month, there might be something easy, like defending the last bastion of humanity against the endless invasion of hell, or more difficult things, like reconciling two schools fighting over a treasure they claimed the other stole.

“Oh? Is this my lucky day?” The scenarios had been refreshed, and three new banners unfurled like scrolls across his screen, Junior You Dare, Toad Lusting After Swan Meat, and Immortal Ozymandias Seeking New Manager. He resolutely ignored the first two dumpster fires and selected on the third. It was the first time he’d seen an Immortal scenario before.

Immortal Ozymandias has created and led Forever Eternal School for a hundred years. The school has been the focus of the Immortal’s undivided attention, and he’s focused all his efforts on ensuring the facilities are state-of-the-art and creating a positive learning environment for all the talented disciples the school is proud to call its own. Immortal Ozymandias is now seeking a new manager to help realize his vision for the school and to take over the day-to-day affairs so that he may pursue other his other interests. Those interested, please apply below.

“Is this a scenario or a solicitation?” For something involving an Immortal, it sounded… mundane? Corporate even. Were the developers having a lark? On the other hand, he’d never seen an Immortal School before. He chose not to accept the job offer and took a peek at Junior You Dare.

You have killed Martial Emperor Million Death Slaughter’s wife’s pet Nine-Headed Cat—

Yeah no. Job it is. Jasper pressed the large gold Apply button, and soon after, another scroll unfurled across his screen, saying Hired beneath which was a loading bar.

He snorted. “At least this guy actually has the openings he says he does.”

The loading screen quickly cleared, and a cutscene began. Immortal Ozymandias was the first thing the camera zoomed in on. He was an imposing man, as if someone had taken the most severe and crotchety teacher Jasper ever had in school and turned them into a Confucian scholar from a Hong Kong martial arts flick. He was a seven-foot man with a six-foot beard. He sat midair atop a mountain peak, his legs folded in a meditative pose, and he ran a hand down his snowy white beard as he looked grandly looked down upon the world. The camera slowly panned out and revealed the mountain in its entirety and the small collection of buildings erected on its slope.

“Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair,” Immortal Ozymandias spoke.

Well, Jasper looked, and he was more underwhelmed than despairing. The Forever Eternal School wasn’t as grand as he’d been expecting it to be, and unless those buildings were bigger on the inside, it didn’t look like there were that many students. Maybe this Immortal preferred being lowkey? The cutscene faded, and the familiar interface appeared along with his objectives:

1. Grow the Forever Eternal School to become one of the Top Ten Schools in the World.
2. Nurture Five Immortal Disciples.

The camera panned back up to Immortal Ozymandias, who sagely nodded his head at the screen. “Good luck, manager. I have high expectations for you.”

Jasper ignored him and went straight to the resources tab. He had to plan and use what he had very carefully if he wanted to have any chance of beating—

He froze. He tabbed out of the resource menu and opened it again. He rubbed his eyes and sank back into his bed. Nothing. There was nothing. The treasury was empty. No gold or treasures greeted him. The store room was the same. It wasn’t even maxed out on the most mundane wood and stone, let alone the more valuable materials like jade bricks and Phoenixwood.

He opened the buildings list. “Why the fuck does an Immortal School have Tier 1 buildings?”

He opened the geomancy map. “Deadly Feng Shui? Did you do this on fucking purpose?”

He opened the disciple menu. He was immediately greeted by 12 sick and dying disciples thanks to the Deadly Feng Shui modifier. “Two inner disciples in the Martial Apprentice Realm? And none of the Outer Disciples are close to finishing the Foundation stage? And they’re all Trash-Tier? How the fuck does an Immortal not have any S-Rank disciples?”

Fearing the worst, he opened the School’s Reputation ranking. “999,999!?”

Jasper looked back at the objectives, then back to the school. A notification popped up.

New Event: School Guardian Beast.

Stone-faced, Jasper pressed the notification, and the camera zoomed over to a mangy yellow dog lying in front of the school’s gate. Its ribs were clearly visible through every heave of its chest. The dog breathed once, twice, three times, and then fell still.

Disastrous Event: School Guardian Beast Dies.

He pulled the camera back to Immortal Ozymandias and tried selecting him. Despite his furious tapping, the only thing that changed was the Immortal looking annoyed.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. How the hell is this supposed to be winnable? I wasn’t expecting an easy start, but I was at least expecting something.” He knew the developers liked to trigger their players, but this was too much. The only possibility was that he was supposed to rely on Ozymandias’s help to fix the school. He waited and let the time tick by for the Immortal to do something, anything, to help give him a fighting chance.

Disastrous Event: Disciple Died of Illness

Disastrous Event: Disciple Suffered Mana Deviation And Burned To Death

While he waited for Immortal Ozymandias, he went and readjusted the Feng Shui. Depending on how buildings and the furniture and decorations within them were arranged it would create positive or negative effects on the energy contained within and affect the School overall should it get too bad. This meant making sure the Five Elements of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood were in balance and properly arranged in the directions of North, East, West, and South. Unfortunately, Immortal Jackass decided to place his disciple’s Dormitories facing the south and filled them with so many Fire aspected decorations that the disciples were literally burning to death in their sleep.

Disastrous Event: Disciple Died of Exhaustion

Disastrous Event: A Plague Has Broken Out In The School

Disastrous Event: All Disciples Have Died

Failure

The camera panned back up to the disappointed face of Immortal Ozymandias. “I expected more from you. Is this how you manage a school?”

“Man fuck you. Useless sack of shit. Don’t bitch at me when you don’t know what you’re fucking doing.” He should have just gone to sandbox mode. At least he’d only have to deal with his own fuck-ups. “Stupid fucking scenario.”

Immortal Ozymandias reddened with anger, and a vein popped on his temple. “Do you think it’s so easy, you little bastard?”

What the fuck?

Jasper instinctually pressed the screen again, right on the Immortal’s face.

“You little shit!” Immortal Ozymandias grabbed the screen, and Jasper’s phone deformed and rippled like disturbed water as an entire arm reached through his phone and grabbed him by the neck.

“Fuc—” He dropped his phone and clutched the arm choking him, but his phone did not fall, and the arm did not budge.

Through the portal, across a distance that could only be called dimensional, Immortal Ozymandias locked eyes with him and sneered. “I’d like to see you do better, bastard.”

Jasper Cropsey, gamer, retail worker, and debt-laden college graduate, was dragged through a portal to who-knew-where by who-the-fuck-knows and disappeared.