Without a moment’s hesitation, the knight launched a mighty swing of its blade, unleashing a brilliant beam of energy aimed directly at Rosalind and Jasper. Before she could even take a split-second to react, the beam collided with her, and Rosalind was violently flung backwards, crashing painfully into the ground.
Shit. That actually hurt. A lot.
As she lay there, immobile…
She heard the sound of heavy boots crunching on grass drawing closer and closer. She struggled to regain her composure. Every few seconds, the approaching footsteps jolted her out of her daydream.
I was just hit by an attack.
The steps grew louder, as she stared up at the surprisingly beautiful sight of the star-studded night sky she’d suddenly become privy to. She always thought about how lightyears worked, and how the night sky was really like a painting of the universe thousands of years ago; that many of the stars she was seeing could’ve long since burned out by now.
Wait, I need to focus. This isn’t the end, right? This can’t be. It’s too sudden.
Fighting to stay conscious, she focused on each painful and raspy breath that was entering and exiting her body. She brought her attention to her bones - none broken, as far as she could tell. She’d been knocked back like a ragdoll by the knight’s attack, but she was still here.
She lifted her head, depriving herself from the comforting view of the stars that she was eerily getting a bit too accustomed to. As she did, something unexpected materialized into her field of view.
As if painted on the right side of her vision, there was a small, circular map with a quest indicator. It was blinking.
To her left, a menu superimposed itself over her view. It listed the following options:
MAGIC
ITEMS
ABILITIES
FULL MENU
It was a sight she recognized, after years of working at the XPeriential company and manipulating the universal backend and its myriad possibilities.
This is it, she realized. The interface.
As surprised as she was to see the user interface she had coded with her team years back when they were first designing the game (seemingly appearing out of thin air), she was even more shocked to find that she was actually getting up from the ground with little to no effort. The pain in her body was still there, but there was something else inside her too - a sort of inner vitality, a potent energy, something giving her life.
The knight was closing in, mere steps away, blade bared, but Rosalind’s attention was elsewhere - she turned towards the other victim of the knight’s assault.
Jasper.
He was lying prone, face-first in the ground, still entombed in his ridiculous full suit of armor, having seemingly taken the brunt of the attack. Had it not been for the blood he was coughing up between pained exhales, she would’ve assumed he was dead. He wasn’t a goner just yet, but he was certainly flirting with the grim reaper.
Rose understood that there was no time to ruminate on what to do next - there was a split-second decision in front of her, and she needed to act decisively. If her activation as a ‘player’, interface and all, helped her recover from the knight’s attack, even just a little bit, then she needed to do something for Jasper immediately.
She extended her hand towards the collapsed literature professor who had incidentally picked the worst day ever to start LARPing. Instantly, a text box appeared in her field of vision, nestled between the quest map and the action command menu, asking her the following question:
ADD [JASPER WHITMORE] TO YOUR PARTY?
While the map and the menu remained impervious to her actions (they continued to overlay her entire view), she could feel a tangible weight as she gently hovered her fingers over the two options presented beneath the question: 'Yes' and 'No'.
Without hesitation, she selected ‘Yes’. The textbox in her view transformed to display a new alert, paired with a triumphant chime effect resonating in her ears:
[JASPER WHITMORE] HAS BEEN ADDED TO YOUR PARTY!
The LARPing group, now secured at a safe distance in the forest, looked out with concern as the Knight reached Rosalind.
The knight loomed over her, as a potent guitar riff, accompanied by pulsing electronic undertones, filled the ears of Rosalind. From a distance, to the spectators in the forest, it echoed like the distant strains of a concert. But it wasn't. It was the battle theme, and Rosalind recognized it was time for her first encounter - the tutorial boss.
She observed as the interface projected onto her vision started shifting; now, the action commands menu on the left side of her view updated with new commands, including ‘attack’, ‘item’, and ‘defend’. On the right side of her vision, there was now a grid that displayed her and Jasper’s Names, their Health Points (HP), and their Magic Points (MP). Perfectly positioned at a calculated distance, the mighty knight stood still, with a cursor pointing right at him.
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She looked down at her hand as a large, fantastical staff materialized out of thin air into her grasp.
The enemy knight stood stationary, occasionally cycling through an idle animation where he inspected his blade with his free hand. Rosalind noticed her own body subtly waving back and forth, her staff swinging with her movement. Man, my idle battle animation is… kind of generic, she thought to herself.
She took a moment to do some mental math out loud, taking stock of the situation.
“Alright,” she muttered to herself while scrutinizing the knight, “You’re immobile, which means the game is still turn-based, and of course it’s my move first. You wrecked the manor and were able to physically hurt me and Jasper, which means whoever sabotaged the XPeriential Points launch was somehow able to bypass the insane security restrictions we’d set up with the game… and now, every single enemy and boss from the game can theoretically do real damage to people, places, and things on our planet. So… not great.”
Rosalind heard Jasper groan as he slowly rose to his feet. She exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Alright, he’s alive, that’s good. My class… What class am I? I know I’m a mage, but what kind specifically…”
Rosalind moved her free hand to navigate through the interactive menu options visible in her line of sight. She chose the ‘black magic’ option, and upon selection, a new menu of options appeared, displaying the spells ‘Fire’, ‘Blizzard’, and ‘Thunder’.
“Okay sweet, black mage, hell yes, I can work with this, alright -”
An incoherent, barely conscious Jasper had managed to stand upright, interrupting Rosalind. “Why is there upbeat electronic music playing?” he mumbled, while at the whim of his idle animation, which entailed him leaning forward with one arm in front of him, the other arm swinging by his side.
“Heyyyyyy buddy, glad you could make it!” she greeted.
Jasper shot Rosalind a confused look. “Why are we all standing around?”
Jasper swiveled to face the knight, who continued his idle animation, caressing his blade. “Why is this murderous medieval-man touching his blade over and over again in front of us? Why aren’t we being stabbed right now? Why am I… oscillating all weird?”
“Erm…”
“Wait, why am I seeing floating words all around me? Why is my name there? What are health points? What is all of this?!”
“Look, let’s just get out of this situation first, then I promise I’ll explain everything -”
“And why did my acquaintance send me a suit of armor before she died and provide no explanation for it?!” Jasper, getting increasingly emotional, interrupted
“...I guess a question to your question would be why you’re so hung up on what an acquaintance did?”
A groggy Jasper lowered his head, his arms continuing to sway rhythmically in his idle battle animation. “Shut up… I… I want to go home.”
Rosalind realized that, despite being 'in the battle', Jasper was still pretty out of it.
“We’ll get you home alright, we’ll get you home,” Rosalind said, attempting to refocus him.
She took in a deep inhale and weighed her options for the battle. “Look, I’m gonna level with you, we’re kind of in unknown territory right now. The thing we’re in at this exact moment is called a turn-based battle -”
“I don’t know what that means -”
The knight continued touching his blade in his idle animation.
“You, you don’t need to know what it means. Let’s just, like, zoom out for a sec, okay? So the game I helped develop, XPeriential Points, it launched, and I guess the launch got sabotaged, and now we need to beat up this guy -”
“But he’s massive, and he has a giant sword -”
“No, that’s not how it works. This is a video game… just in real life. Think more video-gamey,” Rosalind responded.
Jasper slightly lifted his head. He pondered for a moment. “So, we need to… stomp on his head?”
“That’s Super Mario Bros.”
“We need to pick up a turnip and throw it at him.”
“That’s Super Mario Bros 2.”
“Then I have absolutely no clue what you want me to do.”
Rosalind, adamant that she could somehow make this all work, held the idle knight’s gaze. It was time for her to make a move.
“Just follow my lead, okay? And do everything I say.”
Jasper, irked by the idle battle animation he was trapped in, caved as he stopped trying to make sense of what was unfolding around him.
“Alright,” Rosalind continued, assessing her situation and addressing the knight as if she were conversing with him, “You’re a tutorial boss, and while I wasn’t involved with the design of the tutorial, I can tell that you look pretty overpowered. So… I’d rather not risk it. After all, I really have no idea what would happen to us if we lost this fight.”
Rosalind navigated through the menu, returning to the ‘Black Magic’ command, and examined the different spells she could select from.
“I do remember that a lot of the designers were complaining about how unbalanced ‘Thunder’ was, so why don’t I go ahead and hit you with our most overpowered starting spell in the game.”
Rosalind selected ‘Thunder’ on her menu. Her body automatically moved, raising the staff in her right hand, as the caption ‘LIGHTNING’ materialized above the battlefield.
“Sure, why not,” Jasper muttered to himself, taking in the ridiculous scene in front of him.
As the staff radiated a vivid yellow glow, surrounded by luminescent particles, a slender bolt of lightning descended from what appeared to be the heavens, lighting up the vicinity around Rosalind and Jasper - visible to the spectators in the forest and triggering a symphony of “ooh’s” and “aah’s” in the distance, before striking the colossal knight, who recoiled as the bolt made contact.
“Now how do you like that?!” Rosalind shouted triumphantly.
The numbers indicating the damage inflicted to the knight appeared as text above him: 0.
Absolutely no damage.
“Shit,” Rosalind muttered.