It was Lawrence's first day off since what felt like forever, and around two weeks after Wakening Season came to an end.
Well, to be fair, he had plenty of days off. At least from his official work. And he had just started the 'idle' part of the year, where he used all the money he got from programming to live until he had to work again. The problem was that being a wannabe criminal mastermind ate up most of his free time. Between meetings with Christiane, who went to his house in regular intervals to report; dealing with Johnny, who started calling him the last couple of days to check on his progress (Lawrence made a point that he was doing fine and he shouldn't continue to be insistent) he felt drained lately.
Today was his day to change that. He would have a nice day of doing absolutely nothing but idling.
"Now, where should I start...?" He was currently siting on his favorite (and only) studio chair. The first thought that came to him was going downstairs and drinking some coffee, but then he decided not to. Coffee was great, but it didn't help much in the relaxing department. As of today, he wouldn't drink any. If sleep felt like paying him a visit, then so be it.
After a bit of pondering, he decided to light on his computer and play something. Something online, he decided. It was a long time since he interacted with other people that weren't Mika, Christiane, Johnny or any of his subordinates. And none of it was for pleasure.
Browsing with Glasses, he decided to look for new online RPG games. Somewhere to relax meant a friendly community and easy enough game mechanics. Putting it all jumbled together on the search bar, he pressed the enter bar and waited for magic to work.
He used that time to idle. About the strange (but cute) cat from the other night, about the weird dream he had about Mika and Mrs. Rose, a nice lady from next door (he thought like he was supposed to forget it somewhy) and other casual things that had happened to him in the past few weeks.
Inevitably, he found himself thinking of Laurent. Truth be told, he missed his brother a bit. Would it be out of his place to pay him a visit? Or encourage Laurent to pay him one?
Well, all of that would have to wait. The deep, dark universe of the Internet awaited him.
He looked at the results list from his search, carefully inspecting the names before anything. Everything that looked too little original was immediately discarded. Things like Strange Tales, Empire of whatever, Epic stuff, Shadows, Dark, Wars, and so on. All the names that kept repeating themselves were immediately discarded. The commonest words in this kind of games was Legends. Legends of Something. The Who Cares of Legends. Legends this, Legends that. By the time half of the list was discarded, Lawrence had grown sick of the word.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Then, like a light of hope illuminating the path to a pleasant MMORPG experience, a name caught his eyes.
"'Forge Craft Online', huh?"
He liked the name. It had a nice ring to it. Something that loosened up his tongue after so much near-plagiarist naming. He decided to take a look at the game.
The synopsis was simple. You were a village kid who spend their life learning the way of the smith in the local forge. Once you were old enough, you decided to abandon your village and turn into a wandering blacksmith
Unlike the usual games Lawrence had seen, where fighting was the main theme and forging your own stuff was just an extra this game did things backwards. Your main goal was to forge stuff, and you fought just as a way to earn extra materials. You could play the whole game without killing a fly though. It was a really interesting idea. And since Lawrence always like games where you could craft your own weapons, he decided to give it a try.
After downloading the game, creating his account and adjusting the settings where he wanted them, he clicked the login button, bubbling up in expectation
"Create your own character" he read. He could do that.
The game's graphic were surprisingly good. They looked quite good, without ruining the purpose of escaping the real life with exaggerated realism. It also gave you a lot of options related to character creation. As the retailer he was, Lawrence made sure every single bit of his avatar resembled his own idea for him.
He ended up with a young male of about sixteen years, tall and a maybe slimmer than normal. Slightly tanned skin, as he thought spending a life in a village would make porcelain white practically impossible. Ash gray short hair, with emerald green eyes and the mouth always curled up in a smirk. Sharp features and a slightly built up body, not more than what he thought a rough life would grant someone with. As it turned out, you could choose different races for your character. Instead of picking a dwarf or a human, he decided to go for an unorthodox race: dryads. Shards of the elder treant's will, who could mate and have offspring among them. Not the highest predefined forging skills, but their close connection to nature would help with material recollection and, for pacifists (like him, at least in this game), a calming aura that allowed to avoid hostile situations.
He liked his own creation. He used the keys to look at him from every possible angle, and he finally felt satisfied. Then the time to name his character came.
"How should I call you...?" He looked at the self-confident dryad boy staring back at him. It felt a little too alive, but that made it even more interesting.
"Hmmm... I think Allen is fine" he said. Yeah, his avatar definitively looked like an Allen.
With that , character creation was done, and it was the time to delve into the game.