CHAPTER 1: NO TUTORIAL
Out of the black, a "this is not a loading screen screen" appeared. The main reason it instantly became clear that what he was staring at, was a "this is not a loading screen screen" rather than a classic loading screen, were the words in bold and not at all reassuring letters proclaiming the message:
"This is not a loading screen."
The words started fading in, presenting a highly recognizable old-school text crawl with glittering stars in the background and were followed by:
"WinWoTech is proud to present you with what is likely going to be known as the greatest gaming experience of all times.
Before we let you witness this for yourself, we want to express in plain and simple terms, that life isn't fair. Sometimes those who deserve to win lose and those who deserve defeat win.
So before you get any ideas about fairness or a level playing field, we want to make it clear from the very beginning, that the deck is very much stacked against you, so don't waste any time feeling sorry for yourself and get a move on.
Finally, you should know that while a tutorial was initially created to help guide you through this new experience, we decided it would be in everybody's but mostly our own best interest to get rid of it and to let you explore things on your own."
The text faded away, and nothing happened.
Not for a handful of heartbeats.
"I bet this came directly from the High Council," Aiden thought to himself. "It even sounds like old MadDog himself wrote this. Only a left-handed monkey wrench like him would come up with the idea of going through the effort of creating a tutorial, only to throw it away, with the sole purpose of telling people he'd done just that."
For a brief moment, he wasn't sure if he should be delighted or terrified with what he had just read.
It was common knowledge that the three founders of WinWoTech had rejected all formal and common nomenclatures upon creating their company. Instead of naming their board of directors anything normal like it would have been done in any other company, they decided to call it the "High Council" which was an acronym that stood for: The Highly Intellectual Gamers' and Heroes' Council of Outstanding Nerdy, Strategic, and Intriguing Lore.
One theory fondly shared by many ROTA historians suggested, that the three founders who were only ever known by their gamer tags MadDog, Jester and Phenara, created ROTA as a result of wanting a game of their own design that transcended all other experiences, where they could hang out, and relive their glory days together.
Aiden interrupted the admiration he held for the High Council and dared to take a look around and quickly realised that he was floating in space.
Above his head, he could see an amazing display of what appeared to be twin moons intertwining their orbits. The first and larger of the two had a silvery grey light with hues of pale blue scattered across its surface. Passing in front of it, the second one struck Aiden with its deep notes of crimson and onyx. Gazing at this heavenly display, he could feel that the larger of the two whispered subtle notes of peace and understanding, while the second one radiated with bold and unapologetic energy, which invoked thoughts of primal chaos and hidden secrets in Aiden's mind.
He stared at the celestial bodies and fondly whispered to himself as much as to the two moons, "It's old MadDog alright. Only he would put you two up there".
His glance fell downwards, where he saw a large planet that instantly gave him the impression that an omnipotent cosmic being, or a well-paid and highly dedicated team of game designers, which as Aiden thought about it was much more likely, had seen the beauty of Earth and decided to do it all again, but on an epic scale, putting the original to shame. While the many azure-coloured waters did remind him of Earth, the shapes and colours of the landmasses caused him to gaze wide-eyed.
Massive continents painted a tapestry of colours that defied all earthly norms. Verdant greens melded seamlessly into rich ochres and fiery reds, forming intricate patterns.
"If there aren't any dragons, or at least one dark lord down there, I'm going to be severely disappointed". He thought to himself as he took in the vast scenery that lay before him.
New location discovered: The World of Mythendel!
"What?" He thought as he read the system prompt on his screen. "Mythendel? That's a horrible name!"
He was about to comment to nobody in particular, that he thought that every fantasy world ever created had a stupid name when suddenly, the world started getting a lot closer in very little time.
His screen started to shake violently, as his surroundings blurred and twisted. An irresistible force tugged at him and sent him hurling towards Mythendel.
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He found himself in the middle of a twirling roil of pure energy shining with the light of a million stars. With each passing moment, he had the impression that his speed was ever increasing at an exponential rate leaving him wondering what would happen when he'd enter the planet's atmosphere.
He didn't have to wait for very long to find out.
He broke through the invisible threshold between space and sky with a shockwave that cracked like cosmic thunder. A violent, deep and resonant boom burst all around him, abruptly altering his trajectory from that of a serene, steady fall to that of a panicked flail of a nerd who is likely to understand how the sperm whale felt—far sooner than he ever imagined he would.
In a fascinating transformation, the inky blackness of the cosmos abruptly yielded to the riot of spinning colours and sounds of Mythendel's atmosphere.
A deafening screeching noise made him realise that he had been screaming the moment his plummet began. He tried to alter this by not screaming, but instead, he opted to increase his volume even more, just in case local surface dwellers might not have heard him.
In an act of desperate indignity, he managed to hurl a couple of words in all directions, "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! First I'm gonna puke and then I'm gonna die!!"
It took longer than he'd ever been willing to admit, but he eventually realised that while he seemed to be plummeting to his death, he was indeed, not dead yet. He calmed his relentless screaming and after much trial and error managed to correct his wild spinning to that of a controlled fall.
Once he had successfully stilled his nerves to the point of being able to form a cohesive thought, he had a look at his immediate surroundings and noticed that he wasn't the only one trapped in a roil of energy. He saw at least a few dozen all around him, each of them transporting a figure towards the surface of Mythendel.
In the distance, he thought he could see even more, many more than he could begin to count or even guess their numbers.
"Well at least being launched from space towards certain death is something that's happening to everyone, and not just the universe taking its frustrations out on me," he thought as he observed the other individuals who shared his current trajectory.
A few of them, like him, had managed to control their fall, while others were spinning and tumbling in ways that guaranteed that whatever it was they had had for breakfast that morning, was going to resurface at any moment.
He tried to get a notion of how long the rest of his fall was going to be. He looked towards his trajectory and noticed that he was above one of the larger continents that was quickly revealing more of itself to him as he got closer to its surface. From his current vantage point, he could see roaming green hills that stretched across the landscape, vast forests and distant mountain chains. He could see networks of rivers, large and small, feeding into lakes and fading out of sight as they spread across the continent.
It was a remarkable sight, but what stood out most of all to Aiden, was where the roil seemed to be taking him. Far down below he could see what appeared to be a vast, circular walled city. Even from a distance, it became immediately clear that the city lay in ruins.
He could see buildings with roofs that had caved in, clusters of trees growing in odd places as part of nature's attempt to reclaim the area for itself and in many places where buildings had once stood, Aiden could see nothing but rubble. In the centre of the ruined city, there was a large circular patch of green. It seemed more than suspicious to Aiden, and to make matters worse, he was headed straight towards it.
As his gaze focused on the green circle, he could feel an intense pressure building up all around him. His vision very suddenly started to shake again and he had the immediate suspicion that he was approaching what one might call the final descent of his journey.
His priorities instantaneously shifted from marvelling at the scenery to a frantic brainstorm as to how he was to survive the landing.
"Is this the first trial?" He thought with a slight panic. "Try to survive falling from space unassisted? If so, they weren't joking about life being unfair."
He felt at his person, hoping for a parachute to materialise out of thin air, but nothing happened.
"Perhaps", he thought, "the game placed something I can use in my inventory?"
He attempted the mental command to open his inventory. However, instead of the expected windows showing his character portrait, equipment and stored items, a system message flashed on his screen:
"Feature currently unavailable."
"That can't be right," he said, frustration evident in his voice. "I know they said things wouldn't be fair, but this?" he now began to shout at the sky, "This isn't just unfair, it's outright stupid!"
He gave the mental command to open his inventory three more times, and each time, he received the same system prompt.
In his panicked state, he didn't notice the shaking ending, nor did he realise that the pressure around him stopped building. For a brief moment, there was complete silence, except for Aiden ranting about his unfair circumstances.
A cataclysmic boom instantly silenced him. All of a sudden everything he had previously seen and felt lost all meaning. His previous shattering of the sonic barrier upon entering Mythendels atmosphere had against Aiden's expectations become an insignificant footnote. He was now shooting towards the planet's surface with a yet unprecedented speed, which implied that the laws of physics, including but not limited to the principle of terminal velocity, had been at least temporarily put to rest.
With wide eyes, he examined his user interface, desperately hoping to find a clue or shred of information that could prevent his demise within the first 10 minutes of what had been promised as an epic event.
The only thing he noticed was that the user interface was all wrong. There was still his health bar on the bottom left and his mana and stamina bars on the bottom right sides of his screen, but the space in between the health and mana bars that was usually filled with icons representing his character's skills was empty.
For a second, he thought he had figured it out. "A cinematic cutscene! That's it!" he shouted with relief, ready to fist-pump the air. But once he finished his train of thought he rejected the idea, "No! no, no, no stupid! If that were the case the whole user interface would be missing, not just the skill icons!"
As his speed kept increasing into the absurd, he noticed two things appear just above his health bar. Like a bolt shot through his brain, he experienced confusion, understanding, relief, excitement, embarrassment and even a little bit of shame more or less all at the same time.
Two icons appeared above his health bar. One had a cross with a halo above it, and the other had a shield with two warhammers crossing in front of it. They each radiated with warm silvery light and caused Aiden to grin like an idiot.
The first icon represented the immortality buff, ensuring that while he could take damage, his total health couldn't drop below 1. The second represented the invulnerability buff, causing him to be unable to suffer any sort of damage, loss of life or suffer any negative status effects while the buff was active.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," he shouted with a bright smile. "I'm falling! I’m falling with style!"
He instantly knew exactly how he wanted to land, realising he only had precious seconds to execute it. He had been attempting to belly fly ever since he entered Mythendel's atmosphere, keeping his torso parallel to the ground while angling his arms and legs.
He leaned backwards, pressing his arms and legs together and narrowed his eyes, focusing on the spot he would be landing on. He tried to anticipate the precise moment he would need to shift his weight to pull off the stunt he had in his mind.
He took one final breath, and with a sudden surge of overconfidence granted to him by his temporary god-mode, he threw all his weight forwards, tucked his arms and legs in, in an attempt to perform a somersault, but with a sudden grasp of terror, he instantly realised that he threw in far more force than needed for a single rotation.
His arms and legs flailed as he unsuccessfully tried to regain his balance just as he came down to meet the ground.
"Noooooo! Not like……"
All that followed was the sound of a tremendous force hitting the ground, a comically large amount of dust being thrown up by the sudden impact and a low moan filled with regret coming from the inside of a small crater in the ground.