> Quote:26/9/2015. Felt like going back to some of my older chapters to see/fix anything that didn't make sense related to the newer chapters. Also some minor rewording. No massive changes though.
Nicholas was walking back home with his brand new Link, eager to play until his studies started since he had nothing better to do.
"They say even after a year people haven't discovered 5th of what Land of Irith held within it."
If you had never heard of Land of Irith before you probably would think he was lying, but the game in itself was a whole new world, even today the smartest people on earth couldn't say they had discovered even a 3rd of what human kind and earth had to offer so it wasn't out of question that a whole new world was not explored through and through in a shorter time.
He entered his apartment. The house had had 3 rooms kitchen, bedroom and the living room which were all clean and pretty empty.
"Guess I should eat something before I start fiddling with the Link" he thought as he put the box down on top of a table in the living room and strode to the kitchen.
In a short while Nicholas emerged from the kitchen with his lunch, a plate half full of mashed potatoes and some beef with garlic sauce. He then opened the Link box and found the manual for it and started reading while chowing down.
He finished eating and reading through the manuals in a moment but they didn't really hold any useful information other than the first installation which only consisted of "Wear the link, plug the cord in to a Link plug and follow the installation procedure".
As he Started up the system and put the equipment on he appeared in a room filled with blue windows which were circling around him and a panel in the middle of it, the panel was used to register the log in details and as he put in all of the needed details the blue windows shook and started to expand making the room bigger, in a moment a notice popped up.
"Your first installation is complete, this area is considered your "desktop" you will find any program you install in this area"
Without further waiting he took out the instruction paper for LoI and started acquire his own game and in a few moments another message appeared.
"Land of Irith has been added to the desktop".
Land of Irith system icon was a typical crossed swords with a shield on top, floating jumping and spinning slowly, he gestured towards the icon and it enveloped him.
Next thing Nicholas knew he was in a house with no windows and what looked to be wooden walls.
"Welcome to Land of Irith I'll be your guide to character creation" someone said from behind him.
A small flying sprite was floating in front of Nicholas, the sprite looked like a square block with wings and a smiley face on the front as its face.
"Hello I'm here to make a character" said Nicholas naively.
"Of course you are, you can only make one character and you can't get here if you have one" the sprite said and you could feel that the little block was rolling its nonexistent eyeballs as to mock him.
He wasn't fazed by this and continued on.
"So where should I start?" immediately the room was no longer what it was just moments ago, but instead a room filled with mirrors.
"First you need to decide a race to play as."
Nicholas swiped through the selection seeing a lot of race pictures yet nothing seemed to catch his eye until he landed on a specific portrait.
Dwarfs, the race which lives in deepest mountains and below. Their hunger for knowledge, battle and beer shaped the race to become the continent leaders in metal working.
Nicholas took a moment to look at the two dwarfs shown on the race card and deemed it was what he was looking for.
"Excellent moving on you can customize how you wish to look, you can be pretty specific on the details. Of course we could just scan you and use your real person as a base, but only around half of the people choose to do that" the sprite concluded.
Nicholas started to work on the dwarf avatar and ended up with a generic dwarf with long dark beard and long dark hair with tired eyes, he was about to say he was done, but then he slipped his finger on the gender button and the whole avatar changed. Surprised by the event he reached to put it back, but then he saw what the avatar had become, he didn't know what to think at first, but the new avatar started to feel even better than the old one so he delved further into modifying the female dwarf he was looking at. The end result was something to behold, a dwarf with medium length hair with the colour of grey, her eyes were green, her face was clear and had no wrinkles and gave the feeling of calmness, her body had modest curves with a slightly tanned skin. Nicholas locked the avatar in without realizing it.
"Ooh, she looks nice I'm glad this pervert at least has a better taste than the other ones"
The sprites half amazed half snarky comment made Nicholas realize that being a guy and making a female avatar probably did make him look like a pervert, but he didn't really care.
"So what is next Mr Sprite?"he said to prompt the sprite.
"Now i need to explain to you how character progression works in Land of Irith, basically everyone starts at the same point however through work and learning you can become anything you wish to be."
"Your character has no stats so to say, but by doing activities you can still increases the respective attribute, reading books makes you understand the subject better, doing pushups builds up your muscle and stamina and so on."
"You can also sleep in the game but as time moves slower in game its not advise-able to go without sleep for long periods but instead think of the sleep in game as naps."
The sprite was in its own world blabbering on, but it had lost Nicholas's interest at this point.
He started to gaze around the room which now that he noticed was different to the character creation room, the walls were made of stone and there were some paintings on the walls representing people, not to mention they looked majestic.
A figure standing on top of a pile of corpses was roaring at the heavens while pointing his sword towards the sky.
A man who looked like royalty sitting in a conference meeting, being stabbed in the back by a figure in the shadows.
A room lit up by what seemed to be candles that floated in the air around a person reading a book.
A person hiding in the bushes while readying his bow and a hawk flying off from his shoulder.
A cloaked figure standing in front of what appeared to be a general and his strategy meeting.
Nicholas stared at the paintings "These must be some typical paths for people to take just up for show."
After a few minutes of staring at paintings, Nicholas felt an impact on his shoulder.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"Hey are you listening?." the sprite wasn't amused when it was obviously being ignored.
"Yeh yeh you can become anything you want to if you put enough work into it I heard ya." Nicholas answered half assedly.
"Good now we can move on to the next part." the whole room disappeared and Nicholas was suddenly in a white room filled with all sorts of paths and pitfalls.
"So since you decided not to go with your own person you need to get accustomed to your virtual body." the sprite made something that sounded like a snap, and Nicholas fell down.
"What the?" confused as he was, he realized a lot of things had changed, he was feeling very uncomfortable as he tried to stand up.
"Good you can stand up! Not many can do that so easily after the change." the sprite was amused.
Confused at the situation Nicholas wanted to see what happened "You got a mirror or something?"
Suddenly a whole body mirror appeared in front of him and what he saw was the female dwarf he had just made in the reflection.
"This is amazing" he thought while moving his hands over his body.
"So after you're done with harassing yourself..." the sprite was no longer amused.
"We can start with the course. I'm giving you some tasks which by the end of the list should have you acquainted with your body at the proper level."
A system notice popped in front of Nicholas, or should he now have another name? It would be awkward to think of himself as Nicholas while in a woman's body inside the game Nicholas thought and agreed, from now on he was a woman inside the game and would be referred to as one once he got out of the character creation.
Once his head was clear of the confusion he took a look at the list of things to do, it looked like basic training but with him not being familiar with the new body it was going to take some time while he was getting used to the body, so he started right away.
Eventually his running and hopping around was interrupted.
"Finally"the sprite sighed as it had kept record of the dwarfs progression, he could now control his new body adequately and comfortably.
"So the last two things to do are give you a name and a spawn location"
A window appeared in front of Nicholas "choose a name", he had been thinking about fantasy names in case he ever got a link and got to play LoI ever since it came out so he had to run through his options, after a few minutes he picked one which seemed to fit the little dwarf.
"Aleyn"
"Congratulations, your character creation is done, choose a spawn location" after the message a map opened up, 3 points were lit up on the map indicating spawn points for beginning dwarf players.
He looked through the options and one peaked his interest more than the others, Ironedge. A small town just a few days worth of travel from the capital of Dwarves , the landscape was snowy and the town was at the foot of the mountains.
"I choose Ironedge"was the last thing he could say as he was moved to the location.
After coming back to her senses Aleyn noticed she was standing in the middle of a market, the crowd was lively, merchants were selling their things, adventurers were browsing, noticing people looking her way she decided to move to a quieter spot and get to know her equipment better.
She had spawned into the game with raggedy cloths with nothing but a rope holding her pants up, her boots werent really boots but cloth wrapped around her feet and tied with a rope. She had a backpack and a coin pouch which was empty, her backpack contained a piece of bread and a short sword.
"Not that grand is it.. Got to start from somewhere I guess." she thought and put the sword back in her backpack after examining it for a bit and then decided to gather more information about the town.
After asking around for what felt like an hour and going through most of the stores and inns, she had gotten an old crude map as a gift, a brand new one was way too expensive and luckily they were about to throw this one away since it was in that bad shape.
The town itself was moderately big, surrounded by a spruce forest with a couple of roads leaving from south east and south west. Deeming she was done with gathering information Aleyn wanted to experience a bit of the world before she would take a break and look for some starter tips on the internet.
She traveled outside of the town and headed east, she noticed many guards and a few adventurers looking but not bothering her.
The wind was blowing hard in the mountains and it ran straight into her bones.
"Maybe choosing the mountains wasn't the best idea" she thought.
"I'll rethink this after I get back to the town" she thought as she was turning back to head back to town, but then she heard a growl a couple of feet next to her and spotted the source.
A wolf with bright grey fur and massive teeth that couldn't exist in the real world was growling while looking straight at her.
"Great... there's no way I can fight that in this condition." she wasn't interested in chancing it either.
As she slowly stepped away the wolf kept on creeping towards her, even a moment of hesitation could get her killed right there so she did what any sane person without a plan would do. She ran.
After a minute of running away from the wolf it gave up and returned back the woods, Aleyn had survived her first fight, but she was exhausted and freezing though only a few minute walk from the town, it wasn't going to be a pleasant trip back.
With a bit of struggling she made it to the safety of the town, still exhausted still with the left overs of the freezing temperature which didn't make her feel any better.
She sat behind the blacksmiths, she had spotted the place earlier while gathering information about the town and as a stroke of luck it was located on the east side of the town, just where she was heading to.
Inside the blacksmiths quarters the bellows were blowing a nice warm breeze at her which was immediately absorbed by her cold skin. Few minutes of resting behind the blacksmith cured her coldness and exhaustion, she took a bite from her bread and then decided to call it a night.
Taking of his Link Nicholas noticed that he had barely spent two hours in game while it felt like he had been doing things for 6 hours at least.
"That sprite did mention that time moves slower in game, but it still feels odd" he turned off the Link, turned on the tv and whipped out his laptop searching for "beginner Land of Irith" as his keywords.
After few hours Nicholas turned off his laptop and tv and went to bed.
"Never would have imagined that a video game would be this exciting though" he thought while lying in the bed.
"Tomorrow I'll see if I can get some money for a night at the inn or something" was his last thought as he drifted into sleep.