Heat is obvious, stepped through the other side of the rift and it was bearing down at me. Something like walking into a freezer, but the direct opposite.
Dryness was different cause its not something you normally think about. How wet is the air? I couldn’t tell you in any other situation, but taking my first coughing breath and feeling it sap the moisture off my tongue. I can say with authority:Dry as shit.
But who cares about any of that? Its a new world! With magic and swords no less! I mean I only had hint’s of how it was like, guilds only started going public last year. But still! I was so excited I didn’t even feel like punching Castel in the gut!
“Huh.. I really felt like this would be.. A bit more inspiring.”
The annoying assholes tone was a tad deflated.. And honestly. I got it.
Looking around us there wasn’t any super impressive vistas, distant mountains or clearly magical landscapes. It was just sand. Pale yellow sand. Reaching out in all directions, even behind the obsidian lake of the rift we just came in through.
The horizon cut off surprisingly close, pale blue sky clashing against the rim of this sandy little world. I had heard about this much at least.
Alius was something like a tower in structure, or the opposite of that, a dungeon. Every layer led into another one below with a completely disparate biome. Apparently it got more dangerous the lower you went, standard video game logic.
“So this is the top huh.. Well, can’t wait to see the rest of it.”
I spoke mostly to hear myself talk. I was more than content to let people like Castel go off when there's other people around.
“True enough. I’ll see you around Nerian..”
I turned to face him. Pale blue eyes, wind tossed golden hair, not a spot of acne or rash anywhere to be found on him. And still in a similar monkey suit to me, though it suited him better. We shared a quiet moment. How long did the two of us dream of doing this? Standing here?... Probably since the day the rifts appeared.
“Or failing that, I'll at least smell you.”
Before I got a chance to quip back he took off, dashing a few steps then sliding down the side of the dune. Asshole. I wanted to do that…
There was really only one place to go. A sandy little town that looked the very picture of some ancient Egyptian shithole. Worn down stone buildings and sand bleached clothes stood baking under the burning sun. Just waiting to be disturbed by two fresh college dropouts. What an adventure.
---
Despite all appearances, this was definitely a starting town in a rpg. Everywhere I went people, who looked like normal people by the way, gave nearly unsolicited advice and lore about Alius. I suppose I should have listened carefully, but its a fantasy world! I’ve been living for this for as long as I can remember! I’m gonna skip to the fun stuff.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
So now we have a bit of an altercation, I already did the basic starting fetch quest and returned to the quest desk. But for some reason. There's still a holdup.
“I really don’t think you're ready fledgling, Quests are dangerous you know?”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a bit. Dangerous? The scroll he's refusing to hand over is literally labeled ‘weak rat extermination’. I ran past guards with guns strapped to every nook and cranny of their god given bodies to get here, I wasn’t drawing the line at rodents.
“What do you want me to say? I’ve been around town, I’ve got a weapon. What else do I have to do to be ready?”
The bulky, gruff man looked kinda suspicious in the first place, crew cut, the white vest shirt he wore seemed a size too small to conceal a beer belly, but at the same time he had biceps almost pouring out of the armholes, one of those square faces with a messed up nose that just screams ‘i'm gonna mess you up’
“Have you even swung that thing around? I just really don’t think-”
“Yes! I swung the sword and everything. Listen. Are you gonna give me the quest or do I have to go figure the way off this sandy shithole and start somewhere else? Cause I don’t have time for this.”
I mean, it wasn't JUST impatience that made me take the short route on learning the lay of the place, the whole dark forest and golden text box thing made it pretty clear that things were gonna come crashing down, maybe literally. Sometime in the near future. So lengthy intro sections aren't really on my list of things to do.
The man glowered at me for a bit. Or maybe that's just how his face always looked. But eventually, he reached out and dropped the scroll on my side of the sandstone counter front. Picking it up an icon popped up in the lavender window to my right.
“Thank you, I’ll see you around.”
I turned and walked away from the brooding dude. I don’t know what his problem was. But it's hard to stay mad when you're dealing with amazing stuff. Like this window. For now i'm keeping it open which is a bit hard. But basically it's like a video game interaction point. So long as I focus I can do all sorts of things. Change its size, move it around in my field of view, even change the color theme if I try.
||Inventory: Water skin. Quest ‘extermination request’. Other-world Clothing. Blunt sword||
Not terribly descriptive, but the menu had symbols so I didn't need to hover and get the description in the first place. It's not super convenient as of yet, but there was always ways to exploit these kinds of things. So what I've got so far:
1 There's no auto storage, you might think with something like this I can just decide to put something away and have it disappear into some pocket plane but its really just a display of things inside my pockets and on my person.
2 There's no auto withdraw, basically the same as the first point, I have to physically reach around and grab whatever I need to get.
3 The inventory only displays items I choose to consciously pick up. I'm not totally sure of this one, but it seems like it's not acquiring things like sand which keep piling up in my clothes.
And last and most importantly
4 The inventory has more functions that I haven't unlocked yet. This I found out by accident, when trying to get more specific information on my ‘blunt sword’ I ended up dragging its icon outside of the inventory screen, only to get a popup window saying ‘You haven’t acquired this ability’ So that means there MUST be skills that do affect the inventory.
Besides an inventory there's also a status screen, but it seems pretty much worthless at this stage. All it does is list my name and where an hp bar should be. It just says ‘tepid’ but I’ve got high hopes that I’ll get skills for this too.
Now, the only reason I haven’t jumped into this quest, which apparently works something like an instanced mission from a MMO. Is because there's a single NPC in the starting town who has things I very much want to know. I'm swinging by the Sandy little building they’re in now.
Peering through the empty window frame, I catch a glimpse of blonde hair through the various beads and cloths hanging in the mysterious looking room.
Of course Castel beat me to it. If there's anyone in town you need to talk too, it's the lady in there. But the services of the fabled ‘Cast tutor’ aren't something that can be shared at the same time.
I really, truly. From the deepest part of my soul. Want to learn some magic. What screams fantasy adventure more than magic? Nothing. And besides, I have the potential bonus, from my best guess, that should give me some boosts with growth, and magic ALWAYS scales amazingly in places like this.
I was really hoping by the time I got ready I’d get another shot at starting my magical exploration. But no dice. Well, nobody ever said being a spellsword wasn’t cool too. I’ll just have to shelf the spell part for a bit.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the scroll. It was sealed with something that I couldn’t quite call wax, it seemed more solid than that, not quite engraved, not quite pressed with the ‘weak rat extermination’ label in a way that held it shut.
So all I needed to do was pull the label off and open it aand it's all dark.