Wings followed the floating arrows through the maze of hallways and corridors and corridors pretending to vestibules looking like antechambers. Remarkably, she ran into neither guards nor servants. Eventually, she found herself in a sitting room of some kind. Couple sofas and a low table for fancy tea and cakes or what have you, that sort of place (look every castle has at least one I don’t think I need to tell you how expensive the wood panelling is or what shape the molding takes, it’s not important). (ahem). The floating arrows were gone which left Wings with a puzzled sort of expression on her face as she looked around the very much not a public park.
As she passes over a wall she notices that the candle holder on the wall has these floating golden sparkles coming off it.
“Oh, come on. That’s just easy mode.” Wings say as she walks over and turns the holder. With a soft click a door sized piece of the wall right next to her swings open a little revealing a passageway. A secret passageway, even.
She opens the door and looks down the passage. “Dark. Makes sense.” Wings grabs the candle, currently dripping wax on the floor, from the tilted holder. “Probably should’a taken that out first. Oh well, dude was a ponce anyway.”
With a shrug of her shoulders Wings enters the secret tunnel and closes the secret door behind her resulting in another click as the secret mechanism locks the secret entrance closed. “Needed a cool sound effect.” She says to no one.
Would you like to enable atmospheric auditory enhancements to your experience? Yes / No
“Maybe later.”
Some boring minutes of walking through a dimly lit tunnel pass before she reaches the end and is faced with a blank wall. One of the floating arrows, which she’s not sure whether or not other people can see, is half inside the wall pointing forwards. So, she pushes and the wall swings open easily and soundlessly.
She steps out into a nice public park abutted against the inner wall of the city and blows out the candle. It’s nothing more than a few trees, bushes, and grass (which appears to be food for someone’s goat judging by the round pellets of turd lying around). There’s a bench nearby so she goes over and sits down, the wall closing behind her on its own.
Hidden Quest Complete - Escape the Castle Reward: Transdimensional UI
Use the Mental Command [Menu] to display the root TUI menu.
Quest - Explore The Transdimensional UI Reward - First Real Quest
Wings read through the messages then, just as in previous FIVR environments, used the mental command.
[Menu]
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Stats - WIP
Special Skills - WIP
Titles - WIP
Inventory
Quests
Map
Journal
Personal Wiki
Internet Browser
Music
Options
Support
As Wings explored the TUI menus she didn’t learn much of anything new. Inventory wasn’t some magical space to store things it was just a list of what she had on her at the time. Which is how she learned that Donald had given her 3 gold, 24 silver, and 18 copper coins (also she helpfully learned that the conversion ratio was 1:100 on each). Quests was just like a game’s list of quests and only held the one she just got. Map was a scale correct but simplified top down view, though it did have a search function that was nice. Journal was just a nice private place to make notes. Her personal wiki was empty but would probably come in handy later. The internet browser was connected to her old world’s internet, she could even access her email if she wanted. Support had two options; she could [Call a SAI] or submit a message to them if she didn’t need that in person interaction.
However, it was Options that turned out to be the most interesting of the lot. She could customize the whole TUI; like what color the windows would be, what kind of notifications she would get and when, all sorts of sound effects, and even craft macros. Some functionality was marked as WIP as well, but she didn’t blame the SAI. They probably had their hands full dealing with the local gods.
Music was her favorite though. It was an entire library of all music from Earth as well as the native planet, which she learned was called Elba and also meant dirt. Both sections were constantly updating though, from the aggregates, she could see that Earth’s was updating faster. Elena decided to play a list of popular chillstep since the familiarity of constant music brought her some measure of peace and security in this new world.
Quest Complete - Explore the Transdimensional UI Reward: First Real Quest
New Quest: Show This World Who’s Boss Objective: Create a weapon better than what you could buy. Reward: Empath Skill Tree Unlocked, Empath Skill: Perceive Intent
“Neat” Wings said with a smile. She had played an Empath in previous games and it was handy. She wondered for a moment how it would work in a real world where the SAI didn’t have access to everyone’s minds but then she realized something. “Wait, if I’ve been in a real world the whole time, then why could I see the SAI avatars?” She considered using the Support to get an answer then decided she kinda didn’t really care right now. The answer wasn’t going to change how she did things and she had stuff to do.
It wasn’t going to change that her family thought she was dead.
Elena shakes her head and stands up.
“No time for that,” she says and opens the journal to write a list.
* Copper ribbon, lots
* Rice paper, several
* Oil, less than a bucket
* Copper wire, spool, multiple gages
* Nails, several
* Wood, 2”x4”x4’
* Access to forge and tools
* Knife, sturdy
* Lodgings
* Backpack
* Sealant, resin?
* Arrows/Bolts and quiver
“Time to go shopping.” Wings says.