Author's note: I swear. If that's a problem to you, don't read this fan fiction.
Martin Busby approached his new capsule with a little fear. This new game was the first that allowed players to experience pain, and though everything else about the game was amazing, he disliked that. Martin was bullied in school and driven to the point he attempted suicide. All those he thought as friends had turned their backs on him, so he refused to go back to school anymore. He was too afraid to face them. Luckily for him Royal Road was a new technology that allowed people to step into a completely different world and have an accelerated new life. This technology was tried and tested for the game, and a school opened for children to attend it inside virtual reality.
This school was still an experimental one, so except him, very few people applied as it was not yet widely recognized. This of course meant that those who completed it had no way of telling weather they would be accepted in the work force or by colleges. The biggest benefit of the school was its time (speed up as in royal road), and the possibility of exchange students. One benefit they did not want to use for commercialization was no drug sale.
Royal road was already several months in progress in Korea, however it was just coming to the rest of the world. Martin’s parents told him to make use of the opportunity to make new friends in the game and start socializing with people again, so he would not turn in to a recluse.
So now he was just standing in front of the capsule and remembering how he was betrayed. He still wanted to stay away from people as much as possible for the time being, and because of that Martin decided he would stick around NPC’s.
“Welcome to Royal Road” an annoyingly jolly voice said.
“Scans indicate you are a new user. The creation process for your new avatar will now begin. Please select your race. You may choose from those you see before you.”
Various distorted copies of himself appeared before him, and the only one that was the exact copy was the human version. Martin started walking left and right looking at the details of the copies. All of them had similar raggedy clothes on, and you could group them in five groups. The dwarf group appeared too short and stocky for his liking so he ignored them immediately. The beast-men group looked freaky, so he disregarded them too (as he planned on not sticking out too much). The human group looked ok, and he was planning on taking one of them when he saw the wood elf. He looked very close to Martin’s appearance and apart from the elongated ears without earlobes and unusual eyes the only difference was a darker skin tone. The bottom line was that the wood elf version of Martin looked cool so he went with that.
“Please select your avatar’s name and starting point in the game” The annoying voice continued.
“Dwyn for my character name…. and I want to start somewhere with few players”
“Welcome to Royal Road Dwyn and we hope you have fun” The voice said it’s goodbye and everything around him first flashed and then faded into a forrest meadow surrounded by wooden huts and mud houses.
Dwyn was confused at first, because what he saw on the forums were big cities as player starting points, and this was obviously an undeveloped village. He then remembered his starting point criteria and it made sense that nobody wanted to start here.
He had no idea what to do, so he took a walk to see the village in all its glory. The best buildings were tree houses, and they were above the ground by approximately 15 meters. Most of the bottom ones were there for storage and farmers, while the warriors and ‘mayor, I guess?’ lived in the tree houses. The village hall was a hollowed out tree that connected the upper and lower village. There were a few hundred wood elves living in here. The village was called Welay (which Dwyn would later find out was shortened for *western leaf way*).
The village had an animal fence to keep its livestock inside, ant whatever forest they were in, surrounded it in every direction.
‘I should take a walk through the forest’ Dwyn thought and when he tried to go over the fence, it became clear to him that he was considered livestock. Basically he was entangled in the fence that started growing around the hand he grabbed it with.
Slightly alarmed and very annoyed, Dwyn untangled himself from the fence and watched it return to it’s original shape. He heard someone snickering behind him, and turned his attention towards an old wood elf that was grinning at him.
‘Stupid wrinkly old bastard, shouldn’t you warn me about this!’ Dwyn kept his face expression neutral and walked towards the still laughing elf.
“Excuse me sir” Dwyn said to the old elf though he just wanted to slap him. “Is that fence normally like that?”
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“Nope, and that means you must be a freedman, and thus grounded here for a month.” He said and put his pipe back in his mouth and started smoking.
‘A month!? In a small village like this?’ Dwyn cleared his throat to regain the attention of the old man that was about to leave.
“Well what should I do until then?”
“How should I know, go farm or something” And with that he left.
‘Stupid rotten old $/&#%”#( on a stinking /”&”#%$...’ Dwyn quickly lost his patience, and thinking that since the old elf was a NPC he wouldn’t be hurting anybody he picked up a fist sized rock and threw it at the offender’s head.
“OOWW” ~Thud~ The old man went down and didn’t get up again.
‘Oh shit, ohh shit… wait he’s breathing, better get out of here before anyone sees me’
With the hiding skills of a polar bear in the dessert he quickly left that side of the village drawing many questioning looks form the locals. After calming down Dwyn decided that since he doesn’t have a lot of useful and exciting things to do, he could raise hell and enjoy the show, after all, he had a lot of stress to vent.
With that in mind he started studying the village. ‘It would be easy to set loose the chickens, but that would only be a minor annoyance. Let’s see uptown.’
‘This is huge’ Dwyn thought as he entered the village hall and ascended the spiral stairs up. ‘If I cause any trouble here, they’ll catch me immediately. These bridges between tree houses seem pretty unstable …mmmm… I don’t want to kill anyone.’ He walked among the houses and a lot of elves that lived there mostly ignored him. He then found what he was looking for.
‘What’s that cart, and what are the buckets the shabby looking keeps filling them with?’ He then took a few steps closer, and smelt it before he could see. ‘Ugh, right, no sewers.’
The elves then put the cart on a wooden platform supported by two ropes and lowered it to a farmer below who took the cart and replaced it with an empty one that smelled no better.
‘If I could cut one of the ropes, I could cause the crap cart to turn over and rain crap all over the one below. Sweet.’ He started giggling and rubbing his hands together. ‘First I’ll need a knife or something, and then just wait for the right time.’
So he spent the next few hours looking for a knife. As he couldn’t find or afford one he got frustrated again and logged out for the day. He then went on the internet looking for advice. What he found was that he could use a sharp rock for his scheme. He also read that wood elves have exceptionally good eyesight and would probably be able to see him hanging on a branch above the crap cart with a sharp object.
‘Maybe I could weaken the rope before, and…. then…. whatever’
He had no more time for royal road today because he had to get to the class for today, and it was great. He was the only one in his year, and as it was the first day, he didn’t have to do much. It’s only real downside in Martin’s opinion was that he had no chance of going unnoticed and would have to study regularly.
The next day he logged in and went looking for a sharp stone. In less than half an hour he was watching the elves on sewer duty to see how much time he had between poo lifts. It appeared to depend on the digestion of the entire upper village, but their fastest filling time was half an hour.
‘Aaaand, now that you have an empty cart it’s my turn to shine’ He climbed the tree to where the rope was thrown over a smoothed branch, and started cutting. After he got halfway through he heard a ~ding~ sound and got a message.
Through performing a special action, you have created the skill sabotage.
“Cool, show sabotage info”
Sabotage Beginner lv. 1Allows you to sabotage simple devices and structures you fully understand.
As you gain proficiency, you will be able to sabotage more complex things, and your precision with sabotaging will increase.
Activate the skill by holding something and saying “sabotage”
‘All right, now this feels like an adventure’ “Sabotage”
You have successfully sabotaged the left rope of the small lift. It will break on medium loads.
‘The cart should be heavier than a medium load, time to hide.’