The moment I touched the genie's hand, I felt myself disappear. It was a strange feeling, not entirely unpleasant, as if my body quickly turned into air. I tried to blink my eyes, only to realize that I didn't have eyes anymore. Or eyelids to blink, at least. I could still see, though all I saw at the moment was darkness occasionally disturbed by colorful patterns of light.
After an indeterminable interval (time didn't appear to have meaning in my current state), a familiar landscape faded into view. KGO's login screen. After a moment of panicking if I would still remember my old password, I noticed that I could already progress to the character selection screen. Phew! It would have been embarrassing to have to ask the genie for my password.
Speaking of which, where did he go? I looked around – apparently I could still do that (oh wow, when you look away from the login screen background you see clipped 3D models and endless sky, weird!). He wasn't to be seen. Great, maybe I shouldn't have trusted him. Too late now.
With no other options in sight, I touched the character creation button. That is, I attempted to move my nonexistent hand toward it, and despite nothing moving at all the button lit up and activated. Creepy. At least I can interact with the game interface, though.
The view faded to black, to be replaced with a stone gallery occupied by game characters of different classes. Oh, the nostalgia! To my now spoiled eyes, the models looked jagged and pointy. Darn, I used to think the world of these graphics! Still, the colors and animations aren't so bad.
Without a doubt in my mind, I selected the priestess character. Gender-locked, of course (did I mention the word Korean anywhere in this story?), but the only class with healing abilities. Not to mention badass holy magic. Of all the characters I'd played, priestesses definitely fit my play style best.
Selecting my favorite face from the whopping three pre-programmed choices, the lack of option paralysis made me smile. Next, the game presented me with a text field and asked for a character name. If I had cheeks, they would color with my memory of the names I chose when I originally played the game. No, thank you! In my defense, I really thought they were cool at the time.
I considered for a moment, then entered "Laila". Looking at it, it looked... happy. Joyful. It spoke to me. I selected the OK button. A dialog appeared, warning me that I was about to finalize my choices. I selected "Confirm". The view faded to black again, and then I lost consciousness.
I woke up in a dizzying spin, flashes of light all around me. I landed on my feet and almost keeled over. The sudden literal jump into existence was overwhelming. Blinking my eyes, I tried to focus on the object in the center of my vision. It was a bush, texture artifacts clearly showing at the edges of its leaves. Ah, the good old days.
Staring at the greenery, I took some time to come to my senses. I remembered the spawning animation from when I played the game in the past. It just never occurred to me how disorienting it would be to begin existence that way as a real person. Or a game character avatar. Or a spirit inhabiting one, at least.
After a bit more time, I felt that I was getting my bearings, though something still felt off. Looking around, I realized that everything seemed too tall. And the ground was too close. Wait, of course! Game characters in KGO were about five foot six in height, about a head smaller than my real height. This feels weird.
I shook it off and looked down at myself. I was wearing a plain dress, white with a few black lines here and there. Long ribbons of white cloth were wound around my feet and ankles. My hands looked absolutely ridiculous. They had thumbs, but the other “fingers” were separated only by black lines, not actual space. It should feel strange, but it didn’t. In fact, it didn’t feel at all. Nothing of my whole avatar did. Hm. I guess the game wasn’t programmed with sensory input in mind other than vision and sound.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Speaking of sound, the game music actually played in the background. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. That was going to get annoying in a hurry. I tried to access the game options dialog, only to realize in horror that KGO’s sound settings were in the launcher, not the actual game. In other words, you had to shut down the game to change volume. Great! This was going to be a long day.
*****
A few minutes later, I had walked around the city and “talked” to a few NPC’s. Starting without any money or items to my name, there was no buying and selling to do, and all the NPCs just displayed their default speech blurbs when I tried to interact with them. True to its name, Korean Grindfest Online never had any quests to speak of, so there really wasn’t anything to do but to leave the city and slay some monsters. Doing so would give me experience, money and items. If I got lucky, maybe even an item that I could use.
Walking to the city gates, I passed the two guards that always stood there and never fought any monsters. Game logic. Monsters never get close to the city gates, but there are guards posted anyway. Perhaps it’s related to the concept of having a banana in your ear to scare off crocodiles.
Outside the city, rolling grasslands stretched out to the horizon (the horizon being the maximum drawing distance, which was clearly visible at about 200 feet). The moment I stepped on the grass, the city music faded out and a funk-like battle music started playing. Though it was annoying that I couldn’t turn it off, after all those years the tune still did it for me. I ran away from the city for a while until I heard a cute sound behind me.
I turned around and saw a light brown ball of fur with large black eyes, long ears and two big rodent’s teeth sticking out of its mouth. It was hopping toward me, occasionally repeating the cute sound. My game knowledge identified it as a Rabbit, one of the low-level monsters. All monsters in KGO attack on sight, no matter what. Looking at the creature from a first-person perspective instead of a third-person one, though, it seemed a crime to harm it. On an impulse, I held out my arms to give it a hug. Bad idea.
Instead of hopping into my open arms, it bumped into my upper legs, and some red particle effects that were supposedly meant to look like blood sprang from my avatar. “Hey!” I yelled, only to be answered by another bump and more damage. “Alright, you asked for it!” I said, and hit its face with my hands (though I’m not sure they qualify as hands with the fingers glued together). The rabbit flinched in pain but immediately attacked again. I heard another one approaching behind me. I shook my head. What did I expect? Just like the old days.
Lulled into a trance by the music and the repetitive fighting, I quickly dispatched the Rabbit and five of its friends. One of them dropped a potion, which I immediately drank to restore my largely depleted HP, and two of the others dropped gold coins. As I focused on the seventh one, a familiar noise very close behind me stopped me in my tracks. It was the attack cry of a Lesser Wolf, the strongest monster in the area immediately outside the city. It only spawned every 60 monsters or so, but apparently it had just spawned right on my back. And I was unarmored. And without potions. And a priestess, possibly the most vulnerable class. And still level 1. CRAP!
I started running, but three bites of the monster had already brought my hp down to the danger zone. It ran after me, in eery silence as most monsters do not have footstep sounds in KGO. As I reached the edge of the monster-free zone surrounding the city, I heard another attack cry about ten feet behind me, and my character yelped and fell on her face. By all that is thought up after at least three glasses of beer at 2am or later, WHY did the game’s battle system have to count that as a hit?! Stupid old game shenanigans!
Lying on my face, all I could see were about four pixels of ground texture. They seemed far too bright; like most entities in KGO, my character only cast a fixed circle of shadow, which was now centered beneath my belly and too small to encompass my head and lower legs. As I lay considering this, a sudden feeling of dread put a cold hand around my heart. Did I just doom myself by dying before reaching level 120?