In an instant the darkness was replaced with bright light. That was one thing I hated about diving into VR games, the darkness lasted just long enough for your mind’s eyes to adjust to the darkness then bam, let there be light. Immediately instinct kicked in and the light dimmed, responding to my mind’s command to lessen the light. That was the best part of VR; your mind worked faster than anything and would take care of things such as brightness in an instant.
It was just that initial burst of light that would make your mind recoil.
The word ‘loading’ appeared in the middle of my vision with a rapidly increasing number off to the side. When 100% showed on screen everything went black once more. Then began the music, the game’s introduction cinematic was about to begin. Various instruments chimed in creating a mystical atmosphere as the darkness parted to show a single continent on a world of blue seas.
That continent was Ithilianial, the Elven blessed land of life. Like a bird, my vision flew through the clouds to the lands below, showing forests, lakes, rivers, mountains and above all, cities of crystal. Massive spires reaching into the very skies as thousands of Elves walked beneath them. The music was calm and cheery, reflecting the easygoing pace of local life. Then the gongs began, clashing harshly against flutes and violins.
The sky darkened and people looked about with fear. Children cried as mothers and fathers bent over to hush them. Ash fell from the sky and quickly coated the land like black snow. In the distance a massive figure could be seen lumbering towards the city. Infernos as large as tidal waves were left in the beast’s wake. As the camera closed the distance on the Titanic figure you could see lava flowing out of cracks in the giant’s stone body. It fixed its gaze upon the crystal city in the distance, held out an arm and closed its hand into a fist.
Small meteors fell from the sky, colliding into the city and creating innumerable explosions that shook the very earth and sent the crystal spires hurtling towards the ground.
The camera then shifted to a creature emerging from the ocean just off the coast of the continent. One giant serpent-like head followed by eleven more screeched high into the air. Waves surged at the beast’s emergence, crashing onto the shores and washing away entire coastal cities in an instant. Giant beams of water shot from the beasts’ mouths as they roared once more into the sky.
Once more the camera shifted, showing a winged serpent flying high over the land. Every flap of the beast’s wings would make the storms that followed in its wake intensify. As they were now, rocks broke from the very earth and were sent hurtling in every direction as lightning split the very ground. Multiple tornados could be seen in the distance that formed into one massive super twister, the size of which dwarfed entire mountain ranges.
The destruction lasted for only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Slowly the camera panned out until you could see the entire world. Massive storms from the wind serpent crowded the sky, the ocean washed over the land, and the fires spread unmitigated. Then all at once the whole planet shook. The land splintered and broke apart until it settled into the current day formation of three continents.
The storms dissipated, the waters receded and the fires were extinguished. But the land had changed. The camera panned back to get a closer view of one continent, but there was nothing to see. The world looked to have been wiped clean. No signs of life or remains of the once proud cities. Then the camera moved to a single forest, inside which a hundred Elves stared fearfully at the world outside. A single elf stepped forth from the forest in which they had hid and turned to the group. The screen faded once more to black, but the man’s voice carried into my ears.
“They will return.”
And then in large golden letters formed in the darkness, Reckoning.
One by one the letters faded as the darkness receded showing a marble pedestal standing alone in a grass field. The sky a deep blue, dotted with clouds in the distance. Along the horizon I could spy the snow-capped peaks of mountains. I mentally selected the pedestal and a screen popped up asking if I wished to create a character. ‘Yes’ I confirmed in my mind. The interface changed; on the left side of my vision was the selection of playable races, from the typical Human to the gilled Aqamari. When I selected a race a preview of the race showed up atop the pedestal and their descriptions were in a box below the pedestal.
I already knew what I wanted however and selected a Human. Atop the pedestal stood a slightly buff human male standing at six feet tall with long blonde hair and blue eyes wearing clothes akin to robes and sandals.
I never was the most adventurous person after all, most comfortable in my own skin. So that’s what I did, I chose male and made him about five feet and nine inches. As for a hairstyle I chose a shaved head akin to a military haircut and gave myself brown eyes. I then changed my hair color from the base blonde to a dark brown.
I gave my character a quick once-over before deciding to lessen the muscle mass. I don’t like being too bulky in games and there would be enough people running around with a close resemblance to Conan the Barbarian.
I then began putting on the finishing touch, creating a tattoo that began as a small circle at the back of the hand just before the knuckle and sent straight lines up my arm, shoulder, neck and face that ended at my right eye. Nothing fancy, just simple straight lines colored an earthy brown, like lines of power that led from my brain to my hand. It helped set the image of the kind of character I wanted to play, a Geomancer, a magician capable of controlling the very earth itself. Though with my own unique twist to the concept of course.
I looked my character over with a critical eye, feeling that there was something missing. After a few moments I mentally bonked myself on the head, I needed a beard. Otherwise I’d never hear the end of being called “baby-faced” by my father. I selected a short full beard that included sideburns. Perfect. I mentally pressed the accept button and my vision shifted to show me a map of the world.
“Please choose your starting continent and country.” A melodious voice spoke in my ears. I quickly selected the continent of Lidana and then selected the Gerheld Empire as my starting country. After selecting the country my characters ragged clothing changed into a nice set of brown pants, a tan work shirt with the golden symbol of a hawk over the right breast and well-worn leather boots. Apparently the main colors of Gerheld were brown and gold. That suited me just fine.
“Please enter your character’s name.”
Oh boy, the biggest obstacle in gaming history, the name. My dad has always agreed with me that this is the hardest part when it comes to gaming. Challenges can always be overcome, but a name is forever. Like everyone else, I wanted something that stuck and was recognizable. I thought about Rocky at first. I make no claims on being the best at naming. Just as I finished typing out Rocky a scene flashed in my mind. My dad stood in a town shouting ‘Adrian!’ over and over and over. That name was out.
I thought about using Geomancer, but it just didn’t feel right. Who names themselves what they are? I then shortened it to Geo and began to think. It was short and sweet, a good nickname. I liked it, more than I would have thought actually. I hit enter and breathed a sigh of relief when it was accepted. Now I just had one worry left, what the hell kind of name did my dad choose? If I knew him well it was both subtle and offensive.
I was taken right back to the original screen with the pedestal, only now the character I created stood upon it. Below the pedestal was the name and level, Geo – Level 1, just another fresh-faced adventurer ready to seek fame and fortune. I selected my character and chose yes when the popup asked if I wanted to enter the game world.
The screen quickly went black before showing the world of Patelle in the distance. Then, like a shooting star, I surged towards it. I’m not normally an adrenaline junkie, but when I broke through the atmosphere and plummeted towards the Gerheld Empire, the wind ripping through my hair and buffeting my body I whooped and hollered as loud as I could.
The ground rushed to meet me. As I plummeted I could make out mountain ranges, forests and the occasional river and lake. After free-falling for almost two minutes I was almost at the Gerheld starting city of Orhu. I began to make out buildings, streets and then people below. I cringed and braced myself for impact as I plummeted every nearer to the ground. But before I splattered on the street my speed slowed rapidly until I hovered above the cobbled stones and then dropped to my feet. What. An. Entrance.
All around the street I currently stood were buildings of stone and wood, with multitudes of people staring, pointing and whispering. As well they should, I had just made a god-like entrance. I focused on a few of them. They all had unique names such as Alec Fardeneli and Jessiah Makelo. ‘Must be NPCs.’ I thought to myself but their reactions seemed so…human compared to previous games I’ve played. Must have been that latest tech in AI research and development Claymore gushed about in interviews and touched upon in the manual.
Heavy footsteps from behind forced me to turn my attention away from the people in front of me. But what I saw made me put my palm on my face. There before me stood at a staggering seven feet tall, skin as black as night with muscles that threatened to tear through his starting clothes. Fangs jutting from his slightly extended lower jaw. An Orc. Not just any Orc.
“Hey pipsqueak.”
Dad.
In retrospect, perhaps the NPCs weren’t standing around bewildered by my appearance, but that of this…monster. I looked at his name tag and wanted to face-palm harder.
“Musclewizard…really?”
My father then, in an instant, grinned and flexed. As he flexed a fireball flew from his large chest and hit an NPC in the street who then screamed at the top of their lungs before collapsing. Nearby NPCs rushed to help up their fallen friend and scurried away.
Seconds later my father was tackled to the ground by guards wearing chainmail armor and leather caps. Unable to contain his excitement he burst out laughing. The three guards were having trouble attempting to hold him down. I heard the clinking of chainmail in the distance. A pair of guards were running towards the scene. Now I had to diffuse the situation before it escalated.
Knowing my dad, he wanted to escalate it as far as he could.
“You’ll never take me alive, coppers!”
On second thought, maybe I should just watch. From a safe distance. I started to walk to the side of the street away from my father.
“Wait, son where are you going? Avenge meeeeee!” He yelled as I kept walking away. I glanced back in time to see another two guards leap on top of him to help secure him. But with a roar he broke free and sprinted off down the street, knocking over as many people as he could that were too slow to get out of the way.
“After that beast!” A guard yelled and the five took off in hot pursuit, their armor clinking as they chased the wild beast I call a father. Good luck men, you’ll need it.
Hearing the rushing of wind I looked into the sky to see more and more people plummeting to the ground. I guess we were no longer alone. All at once, Elves, Humans, a few Aqamari and Misawi and a handful of Undead landed in the street not far from where I stood.
“Woohoo!”
“Amazing!”
“What an entrance!”
“Can I delete my character and go again?”
Everyone was filled with such energy after their drops from the heavens. Even I harbored the urge to do another sky-dive. Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie after all and I just never knew it. I mentally shrugged to myself and walked down the street west, towards where my father ran off to. All the while more and more players dropped from the sky.
As I walked I decided to check my status and tinker with my interface a bit to rearrange my quickslot spells, bag bar, chatbox, minimap, and my own status.
Name: Geo
Level: 1
Experience: 0/500
Health: 200
Mana: 100
Energy: 100
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 10
I looked for my resistances but couldn’t find them, until I checked the box on the interface that said ‘Show Advanced Stats’. 5% resistances across the board, not bad. I closed my in-depth status box and started to rearrange my interface.
I changed the bag bar to be vertical instead of horizontal and moved it off to the right most part of my forward-facing vision. The quickslot spell bar was turned from one bar of twelve buttons into two bars of ten each. I shrunk them to about 60% original size and put in the bottom middle of my vision.
The chatbox went into the lower left part with the minimap above it. As for my status, I placed my status bars just above the quickslot bars aligned to the left, whereas my target’s status would be displayed aligned to the right above them. The status bars were different from usual games, having five different bars for health, energy, mana, hunger and thirst. Health was red, energy yellow, mana blue, hunger orange and thirst cyan.
It felt good having a clean, efficient interface to work with, and while it may feel distracting at first, I’d eventually grow used to it. Now with that done it was time to check my skill book to see what I had to work with.
Fireball – Cost: 10 mana.
Cast Time: 2 seconds.
Deals 20 fire damage to your target. (Rank 0/3)
Quick Strike- Cost: 10 energy.
Cooldown 5 seconds.
Instantly strikes your target with your current weapon for 110% weapon damage. (Rank 0/3)
So you only started with two skills? Guess there isn’t much to work with off the bat. My dreams of being a master of earth and stone will have to be put on hold until I can find some element-appropriate abilities, shame.
As I walked down the westward street I caught movement in my eye in a nearby alley. Yes that shadow was definitely waving at me. I walked over to it.
“Coppers ain’t got me yet. Buncha rookies didn’t want to check the slums but their captain forced them into a quick search. I had to hide in a rickety old house owned by some half blind old woman who enjoyed the company. She seems your type; want me to hook you two up?” Damnit dad.
“Nah I’ve got other plans when it comes to women.” I responded, giving off the impression that I had things in the works. I could see the gears turning in his virtual head.
“Getting after that secretary at your workplace eh? Atta boy.” He beamed with pride. I smiled in return; let him think what he will. At least he did me a favor, now I knew that the south-western section of the city was the “affordable housing” section of the city. Together we began to trek back towards the town center where we landed.
“So what’s the plan old man? Go outside, collect bear asses and hand them in for cash or what?” I inquired, wondering what the old man planned on doing.
“Hmm, think I’ll join the Gerheld military.” I nearly stopped in my tracks. That’s what I had planned to do.
“I was thinking the same thing. Join the military, raise the country’s reputation with ourselves then when we finally have a castle it’ll be guarded by guards we can trust.”
“Not to mention make a guild along the way, inviting loads of players and sorting through them little by little to see whose got the potential to do some serious damage. Before long we should be a driving force behind Gerheld’s military campaign.”
“Then once this continent is conquered we focus our attention on another continent and repeat the process until the world is ours.”
“Then we kill the emperor and take over.” That’s my dad, thinking big like always.
“Can we even take over?” I asked, moving out of the way of a group of Misawi running to get out of the city.
“Why not, guilds can lay claim to land, potentially forming their own countries you know. Didn’t you read the website?”
“Only a little.”
“Damn, and I was just starting to be proud of you boy for thinking like me. You’ve still got a ways to go until you’ve reached the level of master like yours truly.”
“I am NOT playing that old Battletoads game dad.”
“You’ll never get anywhere in life with that attitude.” He scoffed.
I snorted, “Whatever, lets scout out this city since we’ll be here awhile. We’ll need to know what shops, inns and temples are here and where they are before we should move on to military work.”
“Well there’s nothing but dirt and busted homes in the south-west, those slums are almost as bad as New Jersey.” I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Decided on a profession yet boy?”
“Alchemy, you?”
“Leatherworker.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, “Not tailoring for better casting gear?”
“Who said anything about casting?”
“Um, your name? Musclewizards flex to cast spells after all.”
“Yeah but the only spell I know how to cast is my fist.”
“Ah so you’ll be a Monk style class then.”
“Right my boy. And you’ll be a Geomancer based on your name then.”
“With a twist, yeah. Instead of some backseat caster I’m thinking of a heavily armored tank mage.”
“I’m interested to see how it turns out.”
“Yeah, if it doesn’t work out though there’s always respec potions.”
Shops lined the northern section of the road. I spied many stores with signs that displayed they were alchemists, jewelers or blacksmiths. It wasn’t long before I found a stone building with a book designed on a sign hanging above the doorway. “Let’s head in here, it could be a library of sorts or someplace we can buy spell books to learn more spells.”
“Good eye.” Together we entered the store, a bell ringing as we opened the door.
“Welcome Touched Ones to this humble store of one Mafarino Diheno, book collector extraordinaire! May I perhaps interest you in a book containing the history of our fair world from legend to fact? Or perhaps a book outlining the history of the Gerheld Empire from its humble beginnings to the current day Empire? I have many books for all kinds of customers!”
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I looked at the energetic man standing behind the counter who waved his hands emphatically as he spoke. He wore a brown robe with gold trimming and a wide-brimmed, tan colored hate with a white feather stuck into the left side. His long white beard swayed with his motions. His face covered in wrinkles but his green eyes shone sharply with determination.
“Do you have any tomes that teach magic spells?” I spoke hastily, wary of what my dad may say to the man. The man in turn threw up his hands,
“Good heavens no! The only vendors of magic tomes belong to the empire itself! Only members of the military or government can purchase them from a private vendor of such items.”
“Ah, we’ll be leaving then, farewell.” Together my father and I turned to leave, just as we reached the door the man whispered and shouted,
“Wait, wait!”
We turned to look at the man who seemed to fidget as his eyes darted to the windows looking outside. Finding the coast clear he waved us over. As we neared he laid out a set of tomes on the counter.
“Normally I wouldn’t show these to just anybody. But I know that you are no friends of the law.” He nodded towards my father. My head began to hurt. My father’s attack on a citizen was enough for this man to show us his illegal goods? I’m going to need to take a painkiller or two once I log off just to deal with this.
“Yeah, fuck the police.” My dad responded. The man gave my father a questioning look before shaking his head.
“I have here five tomes of spells and skills. You’re free to inspect them but they’re each worth fifty silver if you wish to purchase them.”
I quickly picked up one tome after another to study their contents.
Tome of Summon Elemental – Cost: 200 Mana.
Cast Time: 3 seconds.
Summons an elemental of wind, water, earth or fire to protect the caster for 30 seconds. (Rank 0/3)
Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Tome of Rapid Strikes – Cost: 50 energy
You push yourself to the limit, increasing attack speed by 30% for 10 seconds. (Rank 0/3)
Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Tome of Barrier – Cost: 150 Mana
Cast Time: Instant
You create a barrier in front of you, blocking all magic and ranged attacks for 10 seconds. (Rank 0/3)
Cooldown: 5 minutes.
Tome of Precision – Cost: 50 Energy
You perfect your inner focus for a short time, increasing critical strike chance by 15% for 10 seconds. (Rank 0/3)
Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Tome of Reflect - Cost: 25 Energy
You use your weapon or shield to reflect the next spell cast against you. (Rank 0/3)
Cooldown: 45 seconds.
An interesting set of skills, but what really caught my eye was the Barrier and Summon Elemental tomes. Shame I didn’t have any money with me, I’d have bought them instantly. Oh well, perhaps some other time.
“Thanks for letting us window shop, but we’re new here and haven’t got a single coin to either of our names.”
“Speak for yourself boy.” My father said, reaching into his bag and pulling out five gold coins and slammed them onto the counter. “I’ll take them all.”
“I…how?” Was all I could muster. My dad turned to me with a toothy grin.
“Well that half blind old woman wasn’t using them so I decided to help myself. She said something along the lines of, ‘take a few coins for yourself sonny. Old Lady Binti won’t be needin’ all of them.’ Such a nice lady, you really should hook up with her.”
“That’s more than a few coins…” I mumbled, watching my dad purchase all five tomes with ease.
“Th-thank you for your patronage!” The man exclaimed with glee, possibly overjoyed to finally dump his illegal goods and wipe his hands clean. My dad pocketed the tomes and exited the store.
“Let us know if you ‘acquire’ some new tomes.” I nodded to the man who nodded back.
“Indeed! You’ll be the first to know, young master!” He waved me off as I exited the building to join with my father.
Once more back out in the street my father turned to me, “Which tomes you want boy?”
“Barrier and Summon Elemental please.”
“Here you go, pay me back when you can.” He tossed me the two tomes which I caught. I quickly opened the tome of Summon Elemental. Energy flew from the book’s pages, rapidly flipping from one page to the next, filling me with knowledge. The effect only lasted a few seconds, and when it was over I had the ability to summon an elemental of a random element.
“Thanks old man.” I responded, doing the same to the barrier skill. Both skills were currently out of my league to cast, but just having them was a fine boon. Just as I finished learning the second spell and my father used his tomes a group of three guards rushed towards us. My father walked into the shadows to the side of the bookstore, blending in completely. The guards ran by without so much as looking at us.
“Why do you think they were in such a hurry?” My father asked with amusement.
“Shall we find out?” I suggested knowing full well it was something my father did.
“You go ahead boy, I’ll see if I can find where we can join the military. Probably up at that castle.” He pointed to the north, towards a castle that stood atop a small hill within the city’s walls.
“Sounds good, stay out of trouble old man.”
“Me? Trouble? Never.” He spoke indignantly before marching off towards the direction of the city’s hilltop castle. I myself followed the guards who rushed by eastward to the central plaza. There the three guards were caught between saluting a man in full chainmail with wore a golden sash across his chest. He gazed stone-faced in the plaza at the men catching their breath from their run.
“Care to run that by me one more time boys?” He spoke in a commanding tone.
“Yes…sir…” One guard spoke, taking a deep breath before continuing, “We chased the Touched One into the slums, but he had given us the slip. However when we combed through the area we found a single house with a broken down front door. “The man took another gasp of air before continuing.
“Upon inspection of the home we discovered an old woman lying on the ground. We found that she had suffered severe trauma brought about by repeated strikes to the head as there were multiple black and blue bruises all around her head. We summoned a healer to help the woman recover. When she was able to respond to our questions all she could mention was that she saw ‘eyes and teeth’. We assume it was our original assailant.”
Dad. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. I groaned, running the events by in my head. In less than an hour he had attacked a citizen, escaped the local guards, broken into a house, beaten an old woman to unconsciousness and robbed her. It was horrible…but why wasn’t I surprised?
“Alright men, take a description to the barracks, we’ll post wanted signs throughout the city to capture this criminal on the loose. Dismissed!” The captain finished with a salute and was rewarded with three salutes in response and a “Sir!” in unison. The three guards then rushed off towards the castle. The captain noticed me staring and rubbing my head. “May I help you citizen?” Upon closer inspection of me his mouth opened before he caught himself.
“Pardon my insolence Touched One, I didn’t recognize you at first.” He bowed, “How may I help you?” His voiced was filled with respect, a good man this captain. I liked him, so I returned his bow which made him audibly gasp. Calm down dude, where I come from respect is returned with respect. Most of the time at least.
“I was just wondering if there was a way to join the Gerheld Empire officially, perhaps as a member of its army or such.” He looked as if he couldn’t believe his own ears.
“Y-yes Touched One! If you head up to the castle and ask for an audience with General Ledric he will send you to officer training right away!” He saluted once more then motioned me closer to whisper something to me. I leaned in, giving him my ear, “Between you and me…most of these Touched don’t seem to be interested in our fair country. You’re the first to have asked about joining us. In the coming days we’ll need the help of every hand available.” He regretful look crossed his face as he scanned the crowd of players.
Indeed, most of the other players seemed to be running off into the fields to fight whatever they found there to level up. Others simply walked around, engaging themselves in exploring the big city. I nodded in response, “That’s why I asked, my father and I wish to be of service to the Gerheld Empire.”
“It pleases me greatly to hear these words.” He bowed once more, “I’m sure you’ll rise through the ranks easily, the Touched are on a whole different level than us mortal men and women. If I may speak freely…” I nodded, “I fear they may end up destroying this world as the Titans did ages ago. There has been a recent report of a Touched Orc in our fair city causing chaos that only reinforces my belief.”
“I’ll bring him to justice sir…”
“Dehaven, Captain Moross Dehaven.” He gave me another bow, “I’d appreciate it greatly if you were to help apprehend this Orc. I’m sure you would be rewarded by the constable himself as well.”
Quest Revealed:
Apprehend the player Musclewizard.
Reward: 10 gold coins, 500 experience and 200 reputation with the city of Orhu.
I happily accepted the quest, after all if I was the one who was wanted my father would have no qualms with capturing and turning me in for a reward. Though he’d probably bust me out of the slammer soon after. Family sticks together through thick and thin. I gave Captain Dehaven a quick salute before turning towards the castle to meet this General Ledric.
That was when the chaos started.
Barreling full bore from the main northern street that led directly towards the hilltop castle was a creature as black as night heading straight towards the main plaza. As the being closed the distance to the plaza I could see sunlight reflecting off of metal that clung to his body. I squint my eyes to help me see that it was my father with two guards holding onto his arms in an attempt to bring him down. What he was yelling was currently inaudible.
Captain Dehaven drew his sword as he noticed the commotion, but I held out a hand to stop him. “Wait a minute; let’s see what this is about.” He reluctantly sheathed his sword and stood in a watchful position. His hand near his blade just in case.
As my father closed the distance the words he was yelling became clearer.
“We can’t log out! If you die in the game you die in real life! We can’t log out! If you die in the game you die in real life!”
Not stopping even as another group of three guards blocked his path. He plowed right through them with the force of a freight train, sending them flying as he took off towards the fields.
“What the hell was he yelling about?” The captain asked me with a questioning stare.
“I don’t know…” I trailed off as I inspected my interface, looking for the log out button. It was there in the bottom left, but it was greyed out. I wasn’t able to interact with it. “Shit.” I spoke aloud, unable to stop myself.
“What?” The captain asked quickly turning his head to me away from watching my father.
“…Nothing.” I responded, watching the chatbox fill with increasingly frantic posts exclaiming about how we couldn’t log out and that if we die in the game we’ll die in real life. The logout thing was true enough, but as for dying in real life…that had to be my dad messing with everyone, right?
Just as I finished that thought lightning erupted from the sky and struck the plaza not far from where I currently stood. Everyone turned to stare at a giant man in dark robes standing where the lightning had struck. His name appeared as ‘GM Gokanis’ in all gold letters. “My my, so they finally discovered they can’t log out.” He spoke bemused.
With a wave of his hand the entire plaza became crowded. Very crowded. More players than I had originally seen were packed within the plaza. The crowd murmured at once wondering what was going on. Some mentioned that they had come from other cities and didn’t recognize this one. Apparently this was all the players that had signed on.
In the crowd I could hear my father repeatedly yelling “We can’t log out, if you die in the game you die in real life!” The GM pointed to where my father pushed through the crowd, unwilling to let the guards that currently clinging to him take him down. Immediately his voice was muted just as more guards jumped onto him, finally bringing down the beast of Orhu.
“We don’t need that kind of hysteria.” The GM chuckled, shaking his head and smiling. “Greetings everyone,” his voice carried easily through the crowd of thousands, silencing the murmurs. “My name is Game Master Gokanis, by now a few of you have found that you cannot log out of Reckoning. This in itself isn’t a problem as the login servers are down. See, we were doing a prelaunch test about an hour ago which opened the login servers for a few minutes. And you all are very impatient people.” He beamed, waving his hand.
You have received the title: The Impatient
Laughter rolled like a wave through the crowd, one voice yelled out above the others.
“I just wanted to play the game!”
“And play you will LampLord, don’t you worry. With the login servers down nobody can get in or out of Reckoning, but this isn’t a problem. If any of you really need to get out of the game just say so and I’ll forcibly boot you from the game, allowing you to go back to normal until the game launches in…” He glanced at his wrist like he was checking a watch.
“Two hours and fifteen minutes. Ah, a word before any of you clamor to get out. We’ll be doing a world reset in about thirty minutes. When that happens all of you will be booted from the game and be forced to wait until the original launch time. Your accounts will keep the impatient title though, a reward for being such fans.”
Cheers erupted from the crowd. I merely grinned, I liked this company. The GM waved his hand once more, light erupted from the crowd. Alerts popped all over my screen.
You have reached level 100!
You have received the Tyrant King’s set!
You have received Ageless Regalia set!
You have received Night’s Bane set!
Along with many, many others such as receiving max level weapons, potions and every spell in the game. Looking at my skill book there were 20 spells per page and over 10,000 pages. It was mind-boggling. Everyone was shouting in a frenzy, giddy with their new powers.
“Now I don’t think any of you will want to be forcibly logged out for this, so let’s have some fun shall we?” Bright light once more enveloped us. When it faded we were all in a strange place where the ground was charred black and ash fell from the sky. In the distance was a massive giant.
“You have five minutes to prepare to fight Moroloch, Titan of Fire! Hurry up!”
Shouts erupted from the crowd as everyone threw on armor and weapons at random and attempted to throw skills onto their bars. I was no different throwing on a set called Shazem’s Focus, a set that increased my spell power by a crazy amount. I then placed as many offensive spells as I could on my bars and equipped a staff as the giant drew ever-nearer. All around me players decked themselves out in top end armor and roared into the air as the Titan closed the distance. Before long I could make out the obsidian stones that his body was made of. Lava flowed out of cracks, trailing fire as he lumbered towards our rag-tag army.
With a shout, players wielding melee weapons charged towards the giant who could dwarf the very mountains. Arrows launched in an arc to intercept the Titan. Spells from Ice beams and Water Bolts to Meteors falling from the sky and pillars of earth erupting from the ground collided with Moroloch. The Titan roared with fury as his health dropped by .2%. With a sweep of his arm, lava erupted from the earth, burning the melee that rushed ahead. A few seconds later the melee line was dead. Us ranged lasted a few seconds more until a wave of Meteors fell from the sky directly in our midst.
I was greeted with a popup on a faded grey screen.
You have died. Respawn at bind point?
I hit yes, and found myself back in Orhu with everyone else. The GM tsk’d his mouth with a grin, “Looks like you mighty adventurers aren’t so mighty after all!” We all yelled at him for another go at the Titan. “Very well!” Once more we were enveloped in light and teleported.
Three minutes later we were right back in Orhu yelling to go again, laughing all the while. We had done better this time, splitting into smaller groups to attack from multiple angles. The GM laughed and complied. This cycle of death repeated over and over until our time was up and the game was reset, kicking us back into our bodies in the real world.
Lying in my bed I blinked a few times to get my bearings. What a rush! What fun! I wanted to go again. I needed to go again. I looked at my clock, an hour and forty minutes to go. My phone rang, obviously my dad. I picked up. We yelled together.
“That was fucking awesome!”
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Free talk zone.
Whew this was a fun chapter to write, enjoy!
As always, comments appreciated. They help me feel warm and fuzzy.