Chaper 2 – Parallebrium
His family had taken a few moments to register what had just happened when Green suddenly came down and left just like that.
“Wa-wa… Green??” Ivy was the first to recover.
They had all just been staring at the point where Green stood moments before blankly.
The first time he had really talked in days and he just came and left like that, no wonder everyone was shocked.
“Wait just a second, he didn’t even say hi, where in the world is he going??”
“… I don’t know?” everyone shrugged their shoulders helplessly.
Ivy had already stormed out of the room after Green but soon came back with dropped shoulders. She just shook her head, motioning she didn’t catch him anymore.
The discussion went on in that fashion, first with everyone complaining how he had left, then speculations where he had gone, questions how he had suddenly snapped out of it and finally a dead silence. This circle repeated endlessly, they fidgeted around nervously and complained why he hadn’t come back yet and the circle repeated.
Currently they were sitting in the living room in silence again.
“It’s getting late.” It was a statement. It was 11 pm and the sisters couldn’t keep their parents from worrying anymore. Their mother seemed close to exploding while their father sat there with a grave expression.
The atmosphere spoke more than words ever could.
‘You are SOO grounded when you come back, Green. So hurry before it gets any worse…’
The sisters were thinking this nervously. They had backed off from their parents slowly, not wanting to stand out and get hit by those sparks they had started to send off.
‘Somebody heeeellpp!’
Then the doorbell rang and their mother got up and was about to hurry and open it faster than a furious Rottweiler. But her husband was even faster. He held her back with his arm and motioned her to wait.
He walked to the door slowly, opening it calmly and stepped out.
“Green.” Was the only greeting he gave.
“…” Green just stayed quiet. From his father’s attitude and atmosphere he could guess what was going to follow next. In a way this suited him just fine. Green had expected a similar greeting for when he came home, seeing as he hadn’t told them where he was going and stayed calm.
“You have nothing to say for yourself?” His father stared at him intensely.
There was still no response. Then he slowly walked over to him at the front gate.
“I thought we had taught you better than that.” With those words he hit Green squarely in the face.
Only once but he could taste blood. Despite that Green didn’t react at all, he simply looked at his father with expressionless eyes. He had never hit him before, but that didn’t matter at the moment.
“You have no idea just how worried your mother and your sisters were this last few days, do you. And then you pull something like this. Let me tell you this. I don’t care where you were. But you’re grounded until I tell you otherwise, got it?”
With those words he simply turned around without waiting for any response from Green and walked back inside, leaving the door open.
Green simply stood there for a while. Two old ladies from the neighbourhood had watched the spectacle and were now giggling amongst themselves but the only words he could make out were “How unsightly” and “about time”. He didn’t turn around to look at them and simply walked inside, taking off his sneakers and jacket and headed towards his room, but as expected he got stopped when he walked past the livingroom.
“GREEN!!! WHERE IN THE WORLD DID YOU GO!?”
He looked at his mother expressionlessly.
“Since when do I need to tell you where I go when I go out?” He finally said expressionlessly
“T-that’s… but we didn’t even know when you’d be back!”
“That’s true. I didn’t know either.”
“Huh?? How can you not know?? If you don’t know who would??”
“Look, I just needed some space, alright?” Green tried to keep calm as he talked to her so he wouldn’t agitate her more.
Then suddenly his dad who had watched the exchange quietly for a while voiced out.
“That’s no way to be talking to your mother.”
“What did I say?”
“It’s what you didn’t say. An apology is in order.”
“Ah… sorry.”
“…”
He left them speechless. Where did their honest and kind son go? What had happened to their beloved Green they always doted on?
Since they didn’t say anything else he continued on to his room. A bitter feeling welled up inside him despite himself.
When he entered the room he swiftly switched on his computer. While he was waiting for it to finish its loading sequence his gaze fell onto his mobile. Looking at it normally the black folding phone was a very old model, but he had tinkered on it quite a bit, adding quite a few new functions in the past. Now it wouldn’t lose to any of the new mobiles. Sure, he didn’t have a touch screen, but who needed that. Instead he had optimized the voice command system.
He flipped it open and quickly called up the missed calls, not in the mood to talk to his phone today.
He had 20 missed phone calls made by his family today. Except for that there hadn’t been any calls at all since the last day he went to school.
It seems not even his friends bothered with him anymore. Or maybe he never had any. They hadn’t even been to his grandparents’ funeral. In fact since he had had to leave them to surf by themselves the last time he hadn’t heard from anyone.
Silently he closed his phone again. His PC had finished the starting sequence.
If you’re wondering why this took so long, it’s because Green intended it to. He had built the PC in a way that it would always check for errors or problems in the system and the hardware during every start-up. This way he could fix them as soon as possible.
He swiftly opened his browser and started on his research. His fingers were flying over his keyboard quickly and soon he had found nearly all the information released about the game. After all it wasn’t released yet so not that much was available.
As the psychiatrist has explained the game allowed a lot of freedom. The programmes or AIs that controlled and ran the game were given a lot of freedom. It could even be said they were self-aware. Therefore looking at them as normal NPCs would be a huge mistake. The system continuously gathered information. So did its inhabitants. They would adapt to your actions and react accordingly. This also included monsters, of course.
But Green had never been that interested in games so he decided not to think too much about it.
The first thing he found out was about time conversion. Since people from all around the world would be playing in the same place it had been decided that the game needed to have a time conversion so nobody had to play only during the night in the game. Therefore 24 hours in reality would equal 6 whole days in the game. This was deemed and tested a safe amount. This meant time for people playing the game had extended 6-fold. This alone was already amazing to Green.
There hadn’t been any information on races on the website, but Green assumed everyone would be human in this case.
The developers had informed the public that there was a nearly unlimited amount of professions and classes in the game. You could only have 1 class at a time. They also shared that there are different tiers of classes one could become and that some classes could be changed later. Then again some couldn’t, but they didn’t go into any specifics, only giving the basic classes most games have as examples. This included blacksmiths, tailors or fishermen but also magicians, warriors or hunters. They gave a basic explanation of each class, but for Green the names alone were pretty self-explanatory.
As for professions, you could have up to 5. This was basically your ‘job’ in the game, or rather referred to special passive skills that support your character. That said it doesn’t include all passive skills. It just refers to basic skills needed for your profession.
For example ‘Sword Mastery’ as a passive skill automatically fills one Profession slot with the ‘Swordsman’ profession, whereas the passive skill ‘Iron Skin’ that increases your endurance and vitality doesn’t give you any profession.
There was also a warning attached to this system. Some compatible professions may merge at a certain level and evolve into a more useful profession. And some professions that aren’t compatible with your class would be very hard to advance. So a magician trying to advance his swordsmanship would have a way harder time than a warrior doing the same.
Other than that professions worked the same way as normal skills. As far as he could tell the number of skills one could learn wasn’t limited. But some skills could only be learned if you fulfilled special requirements. This could include being of a certain profession or even class. But to be as good as one could be one had to fully master their skills.
Skills could be mastered through repeatedly using them. So through producing swords blacksmiths could advance their blacksmithing skills. There were a few stages to this mastery. You started at the ‘ ‘Basic’ stage and went on to ‘Beginner’, ‘Intermediate’, ‘Advanced’, ‘Master’, ‘Grand Master’ and finally ‘Legendary’. Should you fail a lot skill mastery would go down, sometimes even reaching the ‘Bad’ or ‘Horrible’ stage.
There were also different attributes called stats that the character had.
The character was born with only Intelligence and Strength (INT and STR). In addition to these the user had to create all other attributes himself. There were many ways to create them but apart from this information nothing else was disclosed online.
Finally the last information he found on stats was that you could gain stats throughout the game, but also through progress. This referred to gaining experience with your character. If you gained enough experience (exp) your character would level up. With every level (lvl) you gain some stats would advance automatically and you would also gain 10 points to allocate to your stats yourself.
There was currently no information on a lvl or stat limit but Green assumed more info would be made public the closer the game was to its official launch the day after tomorrow.
Green had finished his research and it was the middle of the night. His watch jumped to 3.30 am just when he stretched, satisfied with the information he had gathered. He had worked in complete darkness, on one hand too engrossed to be bothered by the darkness, on the other hand he wouldn’t have turned on the lights as to not alert his family he was still up this late.
He decided it was time to get some rest. He would think more about it tomorrow.
[The next day]
Green got woken up by his sister. Apparently the hardware for the game as well as the game itself had arrived. He swiftly hot up and headed downstairs with her, not bothered by the fact he was still wearing his worn out pyjamas and greeted the deliverymen. Then he guided them up to his room. He asked them to install the cocoon on the corner next to the computer. It had been empty anyways since he removed the oversized surfboard from its place there.
Yea, he put his board into the basement since he couldn’t bear looking at it.
They put down the hardware and started connecting and installing the device. The cocoon had the shape of a black egg lying inside a leathery cushion on a stand. You opened the upper half of the cocoon and lay inside while you used the full immersion technology in a slightly tilted position, your head higher than your feet.
The cocoon would monitor your body’s condition at all times and alert you should anything be wrong with it. It would also massage your muscles to keep them warm and keep them from deteriorating. Nevertheless it was advised to work out at least 2 times a week to keep healthy.
To connect to the game he’d have to install the game onto his pc, then connect the cocoon to his PC and enter the world of Parallebrium through the helmet connected to the cocoon.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
They spent the rest of the day installing and calibrating the hardware. Then he installed the game in the evening.
Now he just had to go to sleep and tomorrow at 11 am the servers would open.
[The next day]
Green had gotten up at 9 am and had some breakfast. Then he went out running along the beach for an hour.
When he had a short break in the shades of some trees below the road, panting from running at full speed for 20 minutes, it happened.
His friends were passing by above him on the road, laughing and discussing loudly.
“Hey, let’s go to the beach later.”
“Hell yea, the annoying one’s gone so I’m in!”
“Hey, hey, since when were you so enthusiastic?”
“Well, I don’t have to pretend to have fun anymore so of course I’d be.”
“Yea, true, it always seemed forced when Green was around, didn’t it.”
“Ya, to be honest I’m pretty happy he’s gone.”
“You said it.”
He had heard enough.
Green got up and stretched. Then he ran back home, telling himself it was better this way. He sprinted all the way, ignoring his heavy breath. Then he walked up and down the road in front of their entrance a few times to relax his muscles before going up to take a quick shower.
His expression that had become messed up when he had overheard his friends earlier was fixed again now, replaced by a mask of expressionlessness.
When he entered his room again and started up his computer he still had 5 minutes before the launch.
Not knowing what else to do he decided to just connect now.
Sighing he lay down inside the cocoon and put the helmet on, pressing the button on the side of it to signal he was ready. The cocoon confirmed everything was in order and slowly shut itself. A few moments later he got blinded by a bright light, pulling him into the virtual reality. His eyes slowly adjusted again and to his surprise he already found himself lying in the blue room that was the desktop of his computer.
Without getting up he called out.
“System, execute Parallebrium. Destination: Desktop”
A pleasant female voice answered him.
“Program found. Executing Parallebrium.”
Just as she finished the blue room around him seemed to break apart like a papercube and he found himself in complete darkness.
Then the same voice greeted him once more.
“The scan of your iris and fingerprints has confirmed you are a new user. Would you like to create an account?”
“Yes.”
He chose an accountname and put in all relevant information needed for his game account, then the voice finally said.
“Parallebrium has not yet opened. The game will launch at 11:00 am local time. Would you like to wait?”
“Yes.”
As soon as he replied some transparent numbers appeared in front of his eyes, counting down from 50.
He had had great timing, only 50 seconds before the game would launch.
He relaxed and watched as the numbers counted down to 0.
Then he suddenly felt a strong force pull on his body and he felt like he was falling. He looked ahead and found instead of in a black space he was now floating in the universe. He was being pulled towards a planet surrounded by white mist. Or clouds?
When he got close to the clouds he slowed down and finally his body softly landed on the clouds. Gravity had returned, but he didn’t break through the clouds, rather it felt like he was standing on a mountain of feathers.
As he marvelled at his surroundings he suddenly heard an amused little cough behind him.
He quickly turned around and found a small boy looking at him with a big smile. Rather than a boy… it was more like an angel? He had long white wings on his back and was wearing a white tunic that reached down to his knees. His curly blond hair was kept short and seemed almost like a halo around his head. He had a very kind expression on his face.
“Welcome to Parallebrium, Green!”
“U-uhm, thank you.”
“I see you already looked around a little, do you like it up here?”
“Yes I do, the view is really mind-bowing” Green truthfully said, which put a satisfied expression on the angel’s face who could tell he wasn’t just trying to flatter him but truly meant what he said. Then he added
“but may I ask who you are? You see I’m a little confused.”
“Ahh, sorry about that. My name is Michael, I serve the goddess Heka who has created this world. We have received word that children from a different world would soon be visiting our world to answer our call for help and thus she has sent me and many other angels here to assist you in getting used to our world.”
“Ahh, I see, thank you for your guidance.”
“No problem at all, I’m always happy to assist a polite person.”
“Ah, that reminds me. May I know how you knew my name?”
“Ah, the goddess receives the names and some basic information on all the ones who volunteered to help us.”
Green was a bit confused at the answer but then he figured it must have been the account creation.
“I see, that explains a lot, thank you.”
After a short pause the angel Michael finally smiled and asked
“Then, shall we get started?”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Green had decided it was safe to treat everyone as human here. And he would try not to offend anyone for the time being.
“Alright then, let me start with my explanations.” Michael beamed as he excitedly started talking about their world. Green already knew many of the things he was told but still listened to everything attentively. There could always be something he had missed. He nodded every once in a while, motioning he had understood what he was told and threw in the occasional question.
At the end the angel quietly said.
“Since you listened to me so attentively I will give you some additional information about this world. The planet is not just inhabited by human beings as you might have guessed from my presence. Since you will be reborn into this world you may choose to live as any of the races of the world. I shall allow you to choose your race yourself.”
“…” Green was speechless. He hadn’t read anything about the races of the game. Should he just go with human? No, he didn’t want to be human anymore.
Michael smiled at him drily, aware how overwhelming all of this must be and just silently waited for Green to grasp everything.
Green finally remembered some old novels he read.
“Say, Michael… on this planet, are there any dwarves? And elves?”
“Yes, both of these races inhabit our planet. There are many types of each though, so you’ll have to be more specific if you would like to pick them as your race.”
“Hmm, is it possible to be a half?”
“Hmm? Of course, but that’s a rather unique combination. You do realize the races have a strong dislike for each other?”
“Ah, yes, there was that… but are there any types of elves and dwarves that would be compatible? For a Halfling?”
The angel pondered for a while and then said carefully
“There is one… but this will be quite difficult for you, are you sure?”
“Yes please.”
“Very well then, please step closer. I will need to imbue your choice into your chest. You will be half Moonlight Elf and half Mithril Dwarf. Both focus a lot on delicate, swift and accurate movements. Seeing as you chose a combination that combines two enemy races you will start in a rather deserted area. You may also often experience animosity from both dwarfs and elves, so be prepared.”
As he said that he was gathering black and white energy in his hands and then with a loud clash he combined them into a bright energy ball the colour of clouds that gave off electric sparks.
“This may hurt a bit, but please bear with me.”
Green simply nodded.
Then the angel took a deep breath and sprinted towards Green, his wings supporting his sudden acceleration. He took the energy into his right hand and as he reached him he reached out with it, using the momentum he had built up to push the crackling energy ball into Green’s body.
As the energy entered his body Green gasped. It felt like an electric current ran through his body.
He endured the feeling with gritted teeth before the feeling slowly faded, leaving him lying on top of the clouds, looking up into the worried face of Michael.
“Are you alright?” the angel timidly asked.
“Yea, I’m fine.” Green got up and tested his limbs. Everything working as it should. Then he added “Thank you.”
A relieved expression spread on the angel’s face.
“Then please tell me, Green. What do you want to be called in this world?” he finally asked.
“Hmmm… Umi.”
“Umi? As in ‘the sea’?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you’re a guy? The name sounds like a girl’s?” the angel confirmed one last time.
“Yes, since I like the sea. Also the name can be both male and female.”
“I see.” The angel closed his eyes and glowed slightly as he used his powers to set Green’s new name.
“This concludes everything we have to do today. Thank you once more for trying to help us, Green, no, Umi. I will be watching over your fate from now on. Your class and professions will be decided while you live in this world. I wish you luck and wish you well.”
“Thank you very much for your guidance, Michael. I am grateful for your help and I also wish you well. And until we meet again!”
“Indeed.”, the angel smiled gently “Now please close your eyes, Umi.”
“Alright, but… before that.”
“?” The angel tilted his head.
“Would you be my first friend in this world?” Even Umi himself didn’t know why he asked this but he had deemed that the angel before him was different than the humans he had met until now. More innocent and pure. Someone he could trust without worrying.
“…!” The angel simply started at him, speechless.
Patiently Umi waited for his response silently.
“Ah…” the angel finally let out a sound like that. Nobody had ever asked him this before. In fact not even the angels themselves were close enough to be called friends, yet this stranger from another world had asked him.
Indescribable feelings were welling up inside the small angel as he nodded.
“Yes, I would like that.”
Archangel Michael has been added to your friend list.
“!” He jumped slightly as that notice appeared before him. “Thank you Michael, I am glad you are my first friend in this world. Let’s meet again.”
“Yes…!”
Then Umi closed his eyes and soon felt two tiny fingers touch his closed eyelids, and then his consciousness faded.
[Meanwhile, back in his house]
Ivy and Lettuce were discussing energetically.
“Do you think Green is getting better? He seemed so out of it before yesterday…”
“I can’t say, really. Because the last few days it seems like I don’t even know him anymore… I’m worried. You know… he just got this game… should he be playing it alone?”
“Hmm, you’re right; maybe … do you want to start playing?”
“Huh?”
“I’m serious, Ivy. Let’s play that game. We’ll play it and meet Green there and see how he’s doing outside of home, ok?”
“Uhm… alright. Let’s ask if they’d let us order it.”
“Great, so what’s that game about?”
“… I don’t know.”
“…”
Thus the sisters started their own research on Parallebrum. Of course their mother who was worried about her son herself instantly agreed to the idea, ordering 3 additional cocoons. Of course one additional one for herself.
The delivery would take one week. During this time the 3 women could be seen crowding around the computer screen, researching the game they knew nothing about.
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Hey there, I was moving today so I had a lot of time to write in the train.
I hope you enjoyed this new chapter (this time a whole one WHOOHOOO XD)
See you next time :shy: