I think I hate sailing.

Though Calvin had said the trip should take three weeks, I closed my eyes once and slept in the gentle rocking of the waves - ha! That didn’t last long - and was woken up ten seconds later by the whole fucking ship nearly flipping upside down. From what I could hear over the creaking of the weathered wooden hull and the sickening ringing in my ears, claps of thunder boomed above us every dozen seconds. This must be one of those perpetual storms Calvin mentioned, that surrounded Wraeclast and made the journey more dangerous. At least the game provided a time-skip so the tutorial could be completed in one play session, not to mention sparing players weeks of boring days in a cell on a ship.

Back to the present; while I was distracting myself from my nausea, the ship continued to buck like an angry bull while sailors scrambled frantically on deck. It was hard to tell if they were trying to prevent the ship from capsizing, or if they were just desperately struggling not to fall overboard. I could hear screams and pounding footsteps, and was that a splash? Whatever they were doing, I don’t think it was working.

It was difficult to care, either way. All my attention was on the ceiling of my tiny cell, and the disturbing way it approached and retreated - or was that me being tossed up toward it? I might have been shrieking in fear, but I also might have been fighting back my rising bile. What can I say, it’s all a bit blurry. I don’t mind the gap in my memory here, and it’s not important. What IS important is the cracking noise I heard, clearly different from rolls of thunder and even drowning out the raging sea, followed shortly by a sharp salty breeze.

“Oh, fuckin’ hell!” I could barely hear Calvin curse in the chaos. That was certainly an eloquent way to respond to the front half of the ship breaking away from the rest, exposing us to the elements; at this point, we had front row seats to watch the storm rip the first half of our vessel to shreds. We didn’t get to enjoy the show for long, as our half of the ruined ship quickly lost its remaining balance and tipped into the sea. My vision went dark, and the noise of the raging sea slowly dulled.

I felt the sensation of water on my face, and instinctively held my breath for a few seconds. All the adrenaline in my system soon overrode that, and I drew in a shaky gasp, only to be startled that I could breathe normally. The sounds of the storm had faded entirely, so I was just floating in this dark and silent not-ocean waiting for something to happen.

I was only a little disappointed when the next thing I saw was one of those text panels.

This concludes the tutorial.

If you choose to continue now, normal damage will be enabled.

Alternatively, you can summon the menu by saying “Menu” out loud to log out and access other options.

Looks like all that havoc was a scripted event…I don’t know at what point I stopped thinking of it as a game, but I took a solid five minutes to breathe deeply and try to calm down. For now, I just have to decide whether or not to continue to the main game immediately. My first impulse is to jump right in, but I know that I’m already considerably stressed, and should probably take at least a short break. The forums all recommended ways to remind yourself that it’s just a virtual game and not reality, but I didn’t remember any reliable methods off the top of my head. On top of that, didn’t that upgrade disc say to install after completing the tutorial? I was wary of it for sure, but I paid so much extra for it that I might as well get my money’s worth. I owe it to my bank account!

Decision made, I called out “Menu,” and sure enough a panel just like the others appeared in front of me. The only options listed were Friend List, Settings, and Log Out…I suppose it’s sufficient for a game that holds itself to the “highest standard of virtual reality,” or something.

I didn’t pay the sparse menu any more mind, and hit “Log Out.” The sensation of water faded from my skin, and the panel faded into darkness that was steadily lightening into gray. After a fun few seconds of staring into the formless mist, I heard a ding in my ear to signal that it was safe to remove the visor. Supposedly, it was safe to remove the visor without fully powering down in emergency situations, but it definitely seemed too reckless to forcefully interrupt an electrical signal directly to the nervous system. I might not be Safety McSafetyface, but I’ll pass on being paralyzed for a few extra seconds in reality!

Visor safely removed, I took a minute to just lie on my bed, soaking in the familiarity of my room. A glance at the digital clock on my nightstand told me that my whole ordeal in the tutorial only took 4 hours; not even half one of my previous intense gaming sessions. Nevertheless, I felt exhausted, and would have just gone right to sleep if my stomach hadn’t loudly threatened me for skipping two meals  earlier. “Uuugh,” I moaned melodramatically, hoping Luna would take pity on me and offer consolation cuddles. She ignored my plight splendidly.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Enough fooling around. I pulled myself out of my comfy bed and shuffled over to my small kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. The lazy man’s dinner! Or every meal, if necessary.

Still munching on a large bowlful of Cheerios, I opened the Path of Exile forums on my smartphone. I wonder what all the other players thought of that crazy tutorial? All the tutorials were single-player instances, naturally, since it would be a breach of privacy to show players to each other before they’d created their avatars.

Reading down the latest posts, I frowned around a spoonful of cereal. All the thread titles I was seeing said things like “No stats? WTF?” or “Creepy old man in tutorial!!” and even one that said “I think I died in the tutorial” that I just had to snicker at. Nobody was bothering to post anything like a review, or even a complete retelling of their experience. I did wonder a little about the girl claiming that an NPC inmate called her “girly” and “tried to bribe her with stale bread,” and laughed at the thought of an oversensitive Barbie doll getting offended at good ol’ Calvin. I hope he survived that shipwreck…he’s an NPC, but this game doesn’t pull any punches.

I’m slightly surprised that nobody had posted anything like a screenshot, or even an image of their avatar. In cases like mine, I was just swept away by the atmosphere and tension of the tutorial and completely forgot that such functions were even available, but some of the complaints on the forum didn’t give that kind of vibe. Maybe the screenshot function wasn’t available in the tutorial? Whatever, I’ll see what other players look like once I join the main game.

Putting my empty cereal bowl in the sink to wash later, I wandered back into my room. The upgrade disc was sitting innocently on top of the mess I’d made of the packaging, and I gave it a long, distrustful glare.

“You’re too mysterious,” I accused it. The disc had nothing to say for itself.

I picked up the disc, holding it closer to my face as though the proximity would allow me to read directly into the code. Nope, just a fancy etched design with the King Studio logo, the Path of Exile title, and a subtitle confirming that it was indeed an upgrade disc. With a shrug, I replaced the original installation disc in the console with the upgrade disc, and closed the cover. The lights in the skull lit up yellow, which the manual said meant the console was reading and executing the disc. Whatever this upgrade was, it was being written into my creepy Necronomicon-console now.

Since I couldn’t log back in until the upgrade finished installing, I had some time to kill. Ah, well. I might as well just play a different game in the meantime. Being a long-time gamer girl meant having quite an impressive hoard of all types of games, especially the offline sort. I fetched and booted up my old copy of Monster Hunter Gen, and settled onto my couch for a few quests.

-

Seven quests, two new pieces of equipment, and several straight minutes of playing with my in-game pet Moofy, I finally remembered that I was waiting for the upgrade installation to finish. Sure enough, when I raced to my room to check, the lights on the console had turned off. Shit, I got too into Monster Hunter and spent six hours in a different game…I’m not sure why I felt guilty, but I hurriedly saved my Monster Hunter game and turned it off.

Hm, it’s about two in the morning now…I think I’ll sleep before re-entering Path of Exile, so I can properly experience the game and the upgrade. I pulled the upgrade disc from my console and slid it back into its clear plastic sleeve -- was the underside always that dark? I do have the lights off in here, and it’s been a while since my last real gaming session, so it might just be my tired eyes playing tricks on me. Unconcerned, I set the disc back on the empty console box and flopped onto my fluffy mattress. Tomorrow I have a day off from work because my boss is also a huge gamer; he scheduled me, himself,  and two of my other gamer co-workers time off so I can sleep in and still have all day to play. I thought I would have trouble getting to sleep from excitement to play, but I drifted off almost immediately.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi there, Author here!

I'm not used to leaving Author's Notes so I'll try to be concise. First of all, thank you so much for reading this!! I'm pretty shy about sharing my work, so the fact that people have seen this is really amazing. This chapter fought back while I was writing it, which is why editing it into something presentable took so long. On that note, please leave a comment if you catch an error or have a suggestion! I'm always looking for constructive criticism.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

-Anya Lee (aka Doodlehero)