*'Doki'*

Something wasn't right. I mean, I could feel the wind, every blade of grass on the ground, I could feel every breath I took... But... I was in a game, right?

The last thing I remember, the game I had waited a year for, was just released. It was by my favorite company, Underscore Gaming. I had watched their alpha, beta and demos on their page, but... Could they really make something this realistic? It seemed too much for a developer to make. I mean, there was a headset, especially made for the game. It cost way too much for what it was, though. It was basically a helmet, with a screen projecting the game in front of my eyes. There were also gloves, and a mic, which was the means of navigating, and playing, the game. But... How the hell can you explain this!?

I'm usually not into this type of game, but I heard the game would try to be hard, and was given a deal on the game, so playing it immediately wasn't that big of a deal. It's not like I had anything better to do anyway...

At first, I spawned in some kind of village. It was your average village. Apart from the villagers seemed jacked, and not in the normal way; they all had similar builds, however, they seemed to be able to just punch trees down, and some did in front of me. Did this mean the lumberjack industry was a no go?

They seemed settled into their patterns. Without the formerly mentioned aspects, you could see this as a stereotypical, cozy village. It had about... fifty, no, seventy buildings in total. I mean, some of these buildings were massive, at least ten of them had more than 7 stories. Some looked like inns, others looked like private residences. There was definitely your generic, Feudal-esk fantasy theme to the buildings, I mean, there was one building, with multiple anvils, which I assumed to be a blacksmith.

'Wait! Why the hell was there a blacksmith?' I though confused...

Looking around, I wasn't alone, being utterly confused. A couple people were yelling at the locals, trying their darnedest to remain calm... But I guess the stress got to them. It seemed that the locals were just as confused as us.

There was one guy; who seemed like a high-ranking local. He was, well, elderly for lack of a better term; and seemed to spew out this aura of wisdom and prestige. He was looking at us, talking to two or three people around him. We were definitely standing out. I was starting to think that they were judging us...

Then, at that moment, I met his eyes. I didn't see scorn or that much confusion in these eyes. More a sense of annoyance, and... Was this fear? The conflicts from before were still happening, though... So we didn't meet eyes for long.

The elderly man sighed, the breathed heavily in, and exclaimed 'Silence' in a loud, dramatic voice. All the locals instantly froze, the others quickly followed. Oh boy, time for a long and dull lecture... Still, I listened in case anything actually interesting was said.

He continued, "I don't know who these... Visitors... are. But randomly becoming hostile won't help anyone. They all seem far too confused and disorientated to talk this over now, and, similar things have been going on all around the island. So I suggest, since it's already 7 pm, we let them stay in the hotel, and let the issue rest 'til tomorrow."

He paused, then, looking at the villagers who still seem confused and annoyed, said "Look. I know that this is confusing. And none of you even knew this was happening. I heard about instances of this, far larger than the mere seventeen people here, happening from towns and cities throughout the week. Hell, I was discussing what to do with the two hundred plus 'visitors' from Skimmington at the last council meeting, and was thinking of hosting a couple here."

There was a moment of silence, then the villagers who seemed defiant at first, well... most of them at least, sighed and let out a collective 'Okay' in a long, drawn-out breath. Of course, some were still glaring at us, but I felt the situation had been diffused.

Without a further ado, the elderly man exclaimed "Well. I know this is sudden to you all, but welcome to the town of Simpson. I am the mayor, Jilbert M. Simpson. I know you're probably tired and confused, but please wait for us to find the necessary accommodation for you."

He then turned to the two people next to him, seemingly asking them to check out the local hostels and inns, so the two ran off without much hesitation.

Mr. Simpson continued, "I apologize for this. We can only afford to have you stay rent free for today, and that's because I'm personally requesting the inn owners to do this. However, tomorrow we'll show you around, as a gage to see your usefulness. If you're useful enough and can earn your place in this town, we'll happily welcome you as official residents. By the way, are there any questions right now? I'll try to answer you questions during your stay, so don't feel rushed now."

A tall, rough-looking man, wearing rusted armor that emphasized his chest, was the first to respond. "Here. If you mind my asking, is this town know for anything in particular?"

Obviously baffled, Mr. Simpson replied "Um... I guess we're known mainly for our hotels. We have a strong farming industry, and raiding industry, but we're known in Forth Island as a resting spot for adventurers."

Then a taller, and more lanky person nearby asked "Raiding? What, like going to a dungeon and slaying a dragon kind?"

Still baffled, Mr Simpson stated "I don't really understand the question, but if helps, Raiding insists of a party or clan going into a dungeon, beating the boss, and going back, there are many raid sites, and since official dungeons are ruled by deities, you just respawn and try again. These 'deities' refill all the rooms almost instantaneously. But that's just common sense. I mean, it's an easy way for people to get money, items, and certain foods/ ingredients, and is a very big part of our lives."

He stopped, noticing that everyone seemed to have a question to asked. So about ten of the seventeen people asked in unison "Wait... What?!?!? You can die, and just re-spawn?!"

Mr. Simpson sighed, with a resigned face, and stated "Yes, you can re-spawn, as long as you die in an area protected by a deity, which includes most towns, cities, and dungeons, you can re-spawn. This is the main reason I don't want to send you out without us teaching you about this world. You can very easily die for good outside the deity's protection. This entire island is protected by one such deity, but if you were to go somewhere like the continent, or the unnamed desert, that won't be the case."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

'Ah...' I thought. 'So this is the PK counter-measure system, it makes sense for the NPC's to be stating such fantasy-esk things that help make game mechanics like re-spawning seem 'realistic'.'

And reminded by the fact this is a game, I looked at my interface. I was just dragged into this situation, but looking at this I could clearly see why there was a lot of chaos.

There was no log-out system, and since this game used brain-waves. It's a concept I should have learned in high-school, but gave up at the talk of individual neurons. It basically meant the people were literally trapped, as there was now no in-game feature to stop the game. This meant we could not control our bodies outside, so the chance of starving to death whilst trying to find a way out is high. Hell, the chance of suffocation in real life existed. Well, no wonder they're so happy to know this game didn't have perma-death.

I wasn't particularly bothered by this, though... The world was boring, practically everything anyone does is under watch from the government, our protection's led to a lack of freedom... I spent most of my real life inside my room, playing games anyway... Hell, this could be an excuse to go outside or be social.

...

Ha ha ha! Maybe it takes being forced into a fictional world to actually do so... Ha.

Whilst thinking about that, Mr. Simpson had left already, and came back and announced. "Sorry, but there are only 7 rooms free at the inn, they're two single beds in each, but this means that only 14 people can stay there. We've talked to people around town, and have found accommodation for the other 3, but we still need to decide who is staying where."

With a group of 17 complete strangers, this took a while, but eventually the decision was made, and I ended up staying with another male user by the name of LOD in the inn.

-

I was in the hotel room, with LOD, and just woke up. Since we were strangers, and we both were really tired by the end of the sorting process, there wasn't really a chance for an introduction, so before we headed off, I decided to introduce myself to LOD.

I'm like the most antisocial person, so this didn't really surprise me. It's just this is the first time I've played an MMORPG, and I want to see how hard being a party leader really is... So this 'LOD' will become the first subject in this test of mine. It sounds like it's challenging from the people I've heard who preach about it.

"Hey, LOD. I think it's time to introduce ourselves. I mean, I can see your name, but we haven't talked to each other yet, so I don't know anything about you, and vice versa."

"I guess. You especially, I mean you pretty much passed out when we were told where our room was, so there wasn't really a chance to talk. I'm LOD, an assassin who's major is Servant, I don't know what that means, though... Oh, and my minor is Crafting. I know Smithing, Woodwork and Alchemy are sub-classes too, but I thought that a generic approach to making things was better. How about you."

Oh right, this is a game. Let's see, MythOfMen had a class system, similar to many other MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), there were the following classes, assassin, Samurai, Tank, Battle-Mage, Healer, Pirate, Martial-artist, Succubus, and Ghost. LOD said he's an assassin, so I assume he's a glass cannon, with a low defense and total HP (hit points), he should have a high speed and a very high damage output. I'm not really sure, because I haven't seen him in action yet, but the assassin class should be similar to assassin or shinobi in other games.

And the class list did say a bit about the play-style optimal for each class, so that much should be true. I skimmed through them, though... It plays far differently than my class should be, so I think making our attacks as efficient as possible could take the time to fully plan out. But I first have to seem nice so this guy wants to join me. I'm only half-faking this right now, so it shouldn't be too hard.

And to explain that 'Major' and 'Minor' nonsense LOD was talking about was his sub-classes. You could only pick two out of a very exhaustive list, and you could only level one of them up to max, being the major, and the other one you could only level to half the max of the subclass, being the minor. He said his major was 'Servant', I can only guess that it raises the sound level of your party or some sort of telepathy that notifies when players around you need help. I have a feeling it could be very useful in combat, but I have no clue to the legitimacy of it. As for crafting, as LOD said, we can pretty much assume that it's a way of making low tier objects from raw material from each discipline, like how enchanting should add additional effects to any sort of weapon, but not be able to be used on something that's not a weapon of a certain caliber.

"Doki?"

LOD caught me in the middle of a daze.

"Oh, sorry. And sorry about last night too, it's must have been a bother carrying me to the bed, when you were probably just as tired as I was."

"It's fine, it's not like you're a tank or anything. You're not that heavy. Anyway, continue."

"Oh, yeah. I'm DokiDoki19, I'm a Succubus who majors as a Preacher, and minors as a Herbalist"

"A Succubus huh... Doesn't that mean you're hp is ridiculously low?"

From what I remember from the description, succubus class is a class with standard armor, speed and such, but has a low base hp, but when it deals damage, it gains the hp from the person. I'm not really sure how this works, if there's specified weapons, or just me who get these benefits, but I assumed there would be arts that take some of my hp and give it to others, like a healer, without the mp cost, and that I'd get some AOE skills I could use to bind and gain hp from multiple enemies at once.

Whilst I'm talking about weapons, I might as well talk about them. From the interface I was looking at you get weapon affinity, in certain classes, like the samurai, would only be able to use certain weapons, whilst I can use any really, like bows, swords, and staves. I gather from the tree-like diagrams that to get skills and achievements with these, like a rapid fire for a bow, I need to fulfill certain tasks, or get enough experience with the weapon.

The window for weapons is different to class and sub-classes, and I believe the game uses voice commands, so there's no need of a short list of skills. but I think that blindly spamming skills is not a good idea, so I'll refrain from doing much fighting until I know what's up. Also, another thing to note, this game doesn't use the traditional 'mana', it uses 'Affinity Points' instead.

"Doki..."

LOD caught me in a daze again. Paying attention to conversations is usually too boring for me... So instead I think about anything else I can...

"Oops, sorry."

"... It's fine, so is your hp low?"

"It's about 30/30 right now, why?"

"Ha, My hp is 90/90." ~Grumble~ "Oh... Sorry, but mind if we continue this conversation as we get food?"

"I don't mind. But where? I mean, the mayor was kind enough to give us a thousand coins, but we're new to the area, and don't even know what foods are here."

"Let's just wander around until we find a good shop. Starving to death deciding on a hierarchy of food would be plain sad."

"Sorry, I'm used to having impatient siblings, so I feel a compulsion to over-plan everything." I lied, I like to plan things precisely because I like to... That's the entire reason.

"Also, about the word 'sorry'. Let's make a deal that every time you say it five times in one conversation with me, you have to buy me breakfast because words loses meaning when you repeat them too much." I agree, I mainly say 'sorry' as a blank word anyway... I'm an Angleterian... So I'm programmed to say 'Sorry' whenever I possibly can... And I really want to seem polite to try out this 'party' concept I've heard so much about...

"Oh, sorry... Ah!"

"And you owe me breakfast."

"Fine. Well then LOD, let's go and have a good day."

"Yep."

So with LOD, I left in search of food.