I was again hit by a flash bang of light, but this time something was different. This time my silver eyes adjusted to the light and saw a large array of colors. After focusing further, I saw that a cluster of the colors in my sight were 3 elves. One being a male that looked to have reached the epitome of happiness, another being a beautiful lady who looked as if she had climbed a mountain while carrying another mountain on her back, and finally a pregnant lady whose face glowed with sweat.
“Congratulations Lady Súliel, it’s a boy!” said the pregnant one.
The blast of light made my eyes tear and my undeveloped throat could only cry. However, that seemed to have the effect of relieving some of the burden on the pregnant one’s face.
“He’s healthy too” she said with a relieved sigh.
“Praise Galadhien for granting us one of the chosen children!” shouted the man.
“Shh, Lhosben. Don’t scare the child… Thank you, Arodeth, for your assistance. Without you, my boy Gray would have been man-handled by my husband for sure. I will be sure to assist you during your birth too” said my mother, Súliel.
“You owe me nothing but a smile. Still, I won’t deny that your child would have been put in a precarious position if your simple, battle-hungry husband were to have attended to him” sighed Arodeth.
“Preposterous! A child of my blood will have the endless tenacity of a cockroach... Huh? There’s a symbol on the boy” pointed out Lhosben. As I could barely move my head, I’d have to take his word for it. Weird though, did I have a symbol during character creation?
“…!” A look of alarm appeared on Arodeth’s face as she looked closer. “This is… this is symbol the ancients tattooed themselves with!”
“That can’t be… Arodeth, what does it mean?” Súliel asked nervously.
“Well… I’m honestly not entirely sure. What I am positive about is that it is currently inactive. It was supposed to bestow its wearer a random blessing or curse from the gods when activated” Nice, I guess giving a god a paradox was a good idea after all.
“Don’t worry about it; I would think of it as a simple birthmark. I’ll be back to check on you two later. Lhosben, make sure to treat your wife and son with proper care while I’m gone. For now though, rest. You deserve it” she said before leaving.
“My son will grow like a weed, he needs no special care!” Lhosben shouted loudly.
“Please stop comparing our son to vile things dear. I will take Arodeth’s advice and rest. Take Gray and help him do the same” she said handing me to him. A compelling urge to sleep hit me lack a sack of bricks, but before I closed my eyes, a status window appeared.
Because you are currently in your growth period, your status options are locked. Your current body’s need for sleep requires about 4 hours of in-game rest. Time remaining: 3:43:37
Four hours in-game time would be about one hour real-world time. After logging out, I carefully put away the NVR like it was a sacred treasure made of glass. Unsurprisingly, the whole intro took up 20 minutes real-world time. I found it strange for the game to require you to stop playing for an hour but didn’t mind it much; what type of devout follower ever questions their idol?
Stolen story; please report.
Following my light snack and removal of previous snacks, I scourged the internet for any and every piece of information related to Adria and found something interesting: there is no tutorial. Several people posted videos of their intro online in order to gain some revenue from Y*utube, and trust me, they did. With how popular a game like this is, most videos garnered views easily in the millions. Yet, no matter which video I picked, they all omitted the same thing; the scene where the AI for the guide asks (?) you to join her for the tutorial… Oh well, if it’s important it’ll come back to bite me later.
Comparing and contrasting videos, I came to a conclusion that the “body’s need for sleep” requirement was something put in by the game to make it so that the player wouldn’t be stuck in a house or cave until morning. Depending on where the game randomly spawned you, the time necessary for rest could be anything from nonexistent to 3 whole hours. I guess I was lucky in that regard to only get one hour.
Being rich, I had access to every piece of workout equipment I ever saw. Not only that, I’d been taught by great masters of martial arts and been taught how to wield a sword from a varied amount of cultures… Well, I attempted to learn how to defend myself with their styles at least.
Talentless. Those type of thoughts are what I felt directed towards me in their eyes. It would never come out of their mouths because of the paycheck that feeds them, but I knew it was there. I was not ignorant; I knew that the only type of fighting style that I could ever manage was…
*BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!* rang the alarm I’d placed to snap me back to attention. I put it 15 minutes before the break ended so I had time to shower off the sweat I’d built up from the machines. Reverently, I slowly put on the NVR helm and booted the game.
Your current body’s need for sleep requires about 1 minute of in-game rest. Time remaining: 00:00:47
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Spoiler :
Author's note: I thought this chap wasn't enough to warrant it being an entirely new chap so I made it 1.5. Also, if you thought I wrote this to share the concentrated happiness I had trapped in my head to the world, you were wrong. [th_084_.gif] lol, sorry. I'm using this to improve my writing skills (which would explain the shortness of the "chapters") and would really love it if you guys pointed out flaws here and there. Thanks for reading, my next update will be 9/27/14.
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