The Worst Start Possible
I always preferred to have the worst start possible. I was 22 when I opened my first business with $200 in my pocket. Three years later, it was netting me five-figure profits (that's not bragging — and in any case, one year after its initial success I left it to my first wife).
When we played soccer as children, I always joined the weaker team. When I played video games, I always chose the hardest difficulty mode, like sk_nightmare in the classic Doom or Hell in Diablo, if you know what I mean. If a game had no difficulty levels — like Mario, for instance — I just made an agreement with myself that I only had one life. I must have some flaw in my thinking which makes me love challenges to the point where I have to create them for myself if none are available.
I joined the Zerg in StarCraft simply because all the strongest players in my country preferred Protoss and Terrans. I've been supporting the Alliance ever since the vanilla days of WoW, simply because most Russian players opted for the Horde. If you think that was easy, you've never lost dozens of battlegrounds in a row. And still, there was a moment around the end of the Cataclysm era when I became #1. In the world. #1 among all the millions of players fighting Deathwing (for those who find that hard to believe, I can always support this fact with a couple of historical screenshots from WoWProgress). Having thus reached my then-maximum, I lost all interest in the game and continued playing casually as new add-ons came out, without getting involved in any complex raids.
So it stood to reason that when I started writing my first LitRPG, Restart (Level Up Book 1), I did my best to put Phil, the MC, under the worst starting conditions possible. He does nothing but moan; he's penniless, but he doesn't make any attempt to find a job. His wife leaves him. And to top it all, his clan — which is the pinnacle of his existence — isn't even #1 on their server. The lower the start, the more exciting the road uphill.
That's probably why the book struck a chord with readers who radically differed in their opinions. Those who'd expected an escapism trip were most upset when they realized that my hero's grim reality had no place for magic, elves or dragons. And those who'd soldiered on through the drawn-out first chapters were now impatient for sequels. I'm eternally grateful to both. Level Up was my first book translated into English, and the English-language readership's reactions were totally new to me, so each one of your reviews was vitally important.
Then I introduced my new readers to the world of Disgardium. As a matter of fact, I used to win mathematics championships in the past, and I have professional training in programming, as well as two master's degrees: one in economics and the other in business management. All of this allowed me to come up with two worlds: the real world of the 2070s where my new MC lives, and the game world with its math, mechanics and "threat system." Predictably, out of the affinity I seem to have for losers, I once again gave my MC the worst start possible. He doesn't have a super-powerful AI helping him every step of the way; his VR pod is below average, and even the superpower he receives has the potential of becoming his curse (in fact, it IS his curse — or two, even).
And then there's World 99 — where I seem to have surpassed myself in making life hell for my hero, seventeen-year-old Luca. Not only does he live in a medieval hole, he's also a quadriplegic. His mother is a washerwoman who struggles to feed him and his sister. His gladiator father was killed in the Arena. And in the very first chapter, Luca himself accidentally gets killed by some lowlife bullies. At this point, a strange entity takes hold of him, turning him into some kind of Venom. Although the world he lives in isn't a game, and even though there's no mention of VR capsules or the like anywhere in the book, this is still LitRPG, complete with leveling and karma points which can buy you new talents and abilities (provided you're lucky enough to lay your hands on them). Plus a whole new world the hero has to conquer in order to save his mother, his sister and all the good people who deserve a better lot.
→ Start from the very bottom: World 99.
