[Ananas]: and then banana shocked digger so he doesnt run his mouth and tell the peace-keepers that she hid energy crystals
[Camelot]: Wait. Just got a note.
[Camelot]: The update finished.
[Ananas]: no stopping you now i guess
[Ananas]: still would have been nice playing unlimited progression together
[Camelot]: Sorry but you know I was never one for the dog race.
[Ananas]: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
[Ananas]: I DID IT FOR THE STATS ITS IDEAL FOR TRACKING ON GROUND
[Ananas]: ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
[Ananas]: you better give me report i might join you later if up doesn't work out for me
[Camelot]: Are you sure? Heard there is money to be had by selling your credits. If you try the same with gold in PAO you're going to be banned.
[Ananas]: as if
[Camelot]: It's your funeral. Let's talk tomorrow.
[Ananas]: by
Arthur closed the chat and hovered over the icon representing Path Ascension Online. He set his keyboard down besides the bed, lied down and willed the game to start.
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Arthur looked around and he saw darkness. No. Worse. Nothingness. He was an incorporeal entity floating in a void. Did he float? Did he fall? He had no way of knowing. But from one moment to the next something changed. He felt something. He felt a soft pressure. Pressure on his back and on the backside of his head. The feeling spread along his arms and legs until it arrived at the ends of his limbs. Suddenly he realised that he was lying on something soft.
One by one dots of light started appearing in Arthur's vision. He followed the appearance of each dot with his eyes. At first the dots appeared slowly, barley one every five seconds. The speed increased rapidly, after only three minutes there appeared two lights every second. Quickly it appeared to him, that the dots are stars and that they are part of a moonless night sky.
Arthur could make out a slight humming that seemed to come from inside his own head. The humming started transforming, instead of being an incomprehensible noise it tuned into the beat of his own heart, the churning of his blood, the slight twitches of his muscles, his shallow breathing and finally him audibly swallowing down the spit that accumulated in his mouth.
The swallowing only heightened something else that was still missing. Arthur's mouth fell numb. Numb in a way that usually speaks of a burnt tongue. Shortly after noticing it he started tasting something weird, both sour and bitter. Simultaneously he started smelling a rather rancid odour with a whiff of citrus. Just as quickly as taste and smell returned they once again faded away.
Arthur was now just laying on his back waiting if something else was going to happen. Nothing happened. He tried moving his head and to his surprise it worked though with just the smallest of delays. Excited he tried to take in his surroundings, but it was sadly to dark anything but the ruff shapes hiding the starlight. Still he endeavoured to stand up, realising in the process just how soft the ground he was standing on truly was. Just in this moment the horizon started lighting up with the morning sun, finally allowing Arthur to see around himself and what he saw surprised him.
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Arthur stood on a cloud, probably. It has been roughly half an hour since the sun rose over the horizon, allowing him to see his surroundings clearly. Since then he had clumsily climbed a small hill near his arrival point. Standing on top he was thinking that this adjustment period was quite a bit longer than usual. Well, he was told that it would take longer than usual to adjust to PAO but this was just ridiculous. Usually he would just need to do some light stretches and he would be able to start. But on the other hand in this game the adjustment was supposed to be a one time event, still he just wished he could jump right into character creation.
Looking into the distance Arthur searched for something different in the endless sea of white. Not finding anything but other even taller cloud hills he decided to climb a hill twice the height of his current one. After one hour of continuous walking and climbing he finally arrived on top off the new hill. Throughout the hour his movement started to stabilise and finally feel entirely natural. Encouraged by his progress he started running and jumping off small ledges intermittently. Shortly before reaching the summit Arthur started feeling the strain of his actions feeling short on breath.
Taking in his surroundings Arthur finally saw something other than white. He saw a door in the distance. Wishing to see if there was more to the place he kept looking around suddenly realising that no matter in what direction he looked, the door was always at the same distance from him no matter what. Guessing his time here was over he started climbing down the hill the door always staying in his sight but coming closer. Suddenly he had an idea and started going backwards without turning his head. The door still came closer, but no longer was he going towards the door, but the door was coming to him. After confirming that it didn't matter in what direction he went he started just goofing around by walking in random pattern, falling over a few times.
Finally Arthur stood before the door. It was a simple door without any special markings, just a plain brown rectangle floating a few centimetres off the ground. Even the knob was plain iron, not even shiny. He decided to just open it and revealed a white room behind it. Taking a few steps backwards to take in the whole door Arthur stumbles over something hovering of the ground and falls over backwards.
Finding himself lying on his back Arthur observed his surroundings shortly before realising that he somehow fell into the room behind the door. The door that has been in front of him when he walked backwards. The door that was now gone.
Taking a closer look there was something in the room, a mirror. After standing up he walked over to look into the mirror. As he observed his reflection he was suddenly compelled to touch the surface.
Welcome to character creation
Here you will create your avatar for your stay in Path Ascension Online.