“Whenever you speak to other species,” the young professor at the front of the room was saying, “You must stop thinking about their cultures in terms of your own. Human, valkyrian, earar, tivarys, et cetera. Each species has hundreds—sometimes thousands—of subcultures. Each is defined by environmental and biological differences that vary from climate to climate and race to race. Fundamentally, it is easy to say that we are all people. We all have a soul, we have the basic needs of life; eating, sleeping, et cetera—but, questions around Moral and Cultural Relativism aside, we cannot communicate with one another knowing only this, lest you shall lose your life being ‘polite.’”
After logging off the night before, she and the other beta testers had received notice that they would be starting to attend regular cultural exchange classes. Attendance was mandatory, much to Stella’s chagrin. Dassah didn’t mind so much at first; the courseload was light, and it gave her a chance to get out of the apartment, but the first few classes they’d attended were just a rehashing of what they’d done in orientation.
Yawning, Dassah scribbled down some notes about what the teacher was saying, even though it seemed more like common sense. It would not have been the first test she failed because she relied on common sense.
“I think we need to start teaching the phrase ‘No shit, Sherlock’ to our esteemed peers,” Stella growled from next to her. “All this was covered in orientation, too. Stupid, pointless required intro classes. This is the third class they’ve gone on about this shit.”
“‘This shit’ is kinda what the whole class is about,” Dassah mumbled back at her.
“Yeah. Social Survival, 101: Don’t insult people with your existence,” she replied. “Hey, wanna ditch? I could go for coffee more than a lecture on how Earar speak softly ‘cause they have giant fucking ears.”
Mildly horrified, Dassah said, “I really don’t think that that’s at all what this lecture is going to be about.”
“I’m summarizing.”
“The class is only for another twenty minutes...”
“You’re killing me, Das,” the blonde young woman whined.
“Excuse me,” the teacher went with a tense voice, and Dassah looked up to see her staring at them. “Do you have something to add to the discussion?”
Dassah flushed and looked down at her notes.
“We were just discussing some of the biological differences between humans, bats, and earar,” Stella said happily. “The fact that they seem so closely related to Earthian bats makes them a lot more relatable than, say, the jikak, who bare a resemblance to a kind of Earthian livestock, but share no traits with them at all.”
The teacher clicked her tongue and said, “It is true that you occasionally run into cases where you can use your inherent knowledge to....”
Stella snorted and turned back to Dassah. “You really should learn how to throw other teachers off the scent of mutiny.”
“More like she didn’t want to waste any more time on you,” Dassah muttered.
“Oh, fine,” Stella said, rolling her eyes. “But after this, you are telling me how you are still in the goddamn tutorial.”
Dassah waved her off and looked down at her watch. Fifteen minutes, she thought to herself, looking at the teacher - who, as per Stella’s prediction, was going on about Earar ears. The young woman beside her gave her a cocky grin, but instead of being a pest, she started messing with her console.
After scribbling down some more notes, she checked her smartwatch for notifications. Hmm? Dongsaeng? Dassah pulled up a screen for her KiTTalk App.
> -Elric: Noona! Hisashiburi, ne? Choushi wa dou? Daijoubu desu ka?
> -Dassah: Hai ~ Hai! Genki, genki. Dongsaeng?
> -Elric: Genki desu~! :D. Noona, have you started to play TheirWorld yet? I am waiting for you! :D
> -Dassah: Haha. Yes. I will hopefully finish the tutorial soon. Stella is already through. Our roommate Bahena, will be joining us, too.
> -Elric: Ohhhh. That sounds fun! How is work?
> -Dassah: Meh. It’s work. I live with a garule woman now.
> -Elric: Oh! How is that? I work with one to—he’s very funny!
> -Dassah: It’s... interesting, haha. I am too intimidated by her... T-T
> -Elric: I’m sure she’s very nice! Have courage, Noona!
> -Dassah: I think so, haha. Thanks :)
> -Elric: I have to go to class now—I’ll talk to you later! Hopefully, we can play together soon! See you!
> -Dassah: Hopefully, your classes are more interesting than mine! See you!
Dassah smiled and put her messages away, putting her attention back on the class. Elric was a good kid. He was several years her junior, but he was a kind individual, full of energy and high spirits, even if he was a bit shy. She’d met him, along with Stella, during orientation. They weren’t quite as close as she and Stella, as they were both on the shyer side, but they had kept in touch on and off. They both had hoped TheirWorld would give them more opportunities to meet each other.
“What are you grinning about over there?” Stella asked, poking Dassah’s cheek.
“Nothing,” Dassah mumbled.
“Stop the mumbling and speak, woman,” Stella told her. “Class is over. Thank the gods.”
Gathering up her books and papers, Dassah sighed. “Sometimes, Stella, nothing means nothing,” she said. “But if you must know, I was talking to Elric. He was asking after our progress with TheirWorld.”
Stella’s eyes seemed to light up at the prospect of a male addition. “Oh! The cute one!”
“...for his sake, I am not going to encourage that.”
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“How exciting!” Stella clapped her hands together. “Remind me. Is he fair game, or is he yours?”
Dassah rolled her eyes. “When it comes to you, none of my friends are ‘fair game.’”
“Such a pity,” she went as they started walking back to their office. “I guess I’ll just have to see, then! On to the real question of the day: How in God’s name are you still in the bloody tutorial!”
Sighing, Dassah said, “I got... caught up in things.”
“‘Caught up in things’?” the young woman repeated. “You have been in the tutorial—the tutorial, mind you, which should have taken 3 hours at the most—for almost a week! And you played all weekend! I’ve literally seen Bahena’s brother more than I’ve seen you! What the hell!”
“Does it matter?” Dassah asked. She may have been taking her dear, sweet time in the tutorial, but it was dear sweet time that she wouldn’t have to take later when she entered the main game. “It suits me. Isn’t that what’s important?”
Pushing the academy door open, Stella scoffed at her a few times before she pointed at Dassah with her long, intricately decorated fingernails and said: “Get your act together! I got you into the game to do two things: Play with you and have you participate in the hunt for Silver Hound! If you can’t even get past the start in a week, how long is it going to take you to get out of the first zone!”
“Just walk, would you?” Dassah asked, annoyed. “Hunting Silver Hound is your own business. I never intend to help you with that.”
“Oh, you will,” Stella grinned and pushed open the door, letting Dassah go out first. Bahena was waiting for them outside, and they went to get lunch at the shopping mall near their apartment.
“How was class?” she asked as they walked.
“It sucked,” Stella told her with a smile. “But, hey, only two more months till tests!”
Chuckling, Bahena told her, “Don’t get too excited. You’ve got at least one more set of intro classes to get through.”
Stella groaned.
“Look on the bright side, Stell,” Dassah said. “At least you’ll have TheirWorld.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “TheirWorld! Oh, Bahena, are you any closer to getting to Terora?”
“Yes,” Bahena said, though Dassah couldn’t sense any excitement in her voice. “I’ll be there soon, and while Sav is finishing up a quest line in his tutorial, he’ll be along soon, too.”
Stella’s face lit up. “Really? Yes! One of us! One of us! Wait,” she stopped with a frown. “Your brother is still in the tutorial too? Is he nuts like Dassah?”
Bahena chuckled but shook her head. “No, he’s just busy. He works in the Gathori biodome, so he can only play when they don’t need him on site.”
“Ohh,” Stella nodded. “That makes sense.”
They talked a little more about their plans in the main game. Dassah listened, quietly downloading the information to memory as they went on. Terora was one of the main cities of the Rose Clan and specialized in magic.
“You ended up in the Rose Clan?” Dassah asked.
Stella nodded. “After the tutorial, you have to go through another fate selection kind of thing, and it gave options based on what I did or took an interest in. Even though I started in a Mist Clan territory, it shifted my story so that I moved to the Rose Clan’s territory for professional reasons.”
“My brother and I were in the Treasure Territory for the tutorial,” Bahena mentioned. “But I ended up in the Jade Territory. I’m headed to Terora to become a mage!”
“A mage?” Dassah asked, surprised.
“Shocking, right?” Stella laughed. “I thought for sure she’d be a front liner!”
“Who said I won’t be, still!” Bahena said.
They chattered on a bit longer about their plans before they parted. Bahena went to go pester her brother again—it was no wonder the poor man was still in the tutorial if he was that busy and had his sister taking up the rest of his free time—while Stella had a fan meeting for Silver Hound to attend that was far more pressing than TheirWorld.
Finally earning some peace and quiet, Dassah returned home and flopped on her bed.
Dassah sighed. “Alone at last,” she said to herself. She thought about taking a nap, but she thought better of it and got herself a cup of coffee before honing her thoughts back in on TheirWorld.
Would she be out of the tutorial tonight? She wasn’t so sure—but she hoped so. She wasn’t sure how much more her heart could take. Returning to her desk, she pulled up her monitor screens and searched for
It was pretty common knowledge that the Graduation in the tutorial was almost a literal graduation. It was a ceremony performed for the player by eight select people in the town. However, Dassah had developed little to no relationship with the che aside from Mrs. Noin, Dawl, Jormund, and maybe Grimhai. But if spirits are eligible... Even then, the two spirits she should have had the highest relationship with were dead now. A sudden feeling of emptiness created a pit in her stomach. Stupid game.
Most of the posts and pages she searched through gave the same basic information: After a player completes the lessons given by the local school, they can graduate. Then, the eight NPCs who have the highest relationship with them will perform a graduation ceremony, offering you gifts that are a form of character progression. Each gift you receive is something that is meant to be added to your character's story in the time gap between the tutorial and the main game. When graduation ends, you will be forced into a kind of dream state where you will meet the second fate and make other character decisions and be forced to log off for twelve hours.
That must be what Stella was talking about.
It was a fairly simple system. But it seems there are exceptions... Dassah smiled as she stumbled across a board that included the Veil-kind.
The original poster seemed to have the same concerns as her: ‘My best friends in the tutorial were spirits, but none attended my graduation. Do they not count as possible attendees?’
While the debate was largely people talking about how it was rather difficult to get close to spirits in the tutorial, one person wrote:
“It is hard, but definitely not impossible—and it’s a fair question since the two factions are very different from one another in terms of quests. My experience has led me to think that the game expects more and more people to choose the Veil Sight path, putting the Che and the Veil as equal fractions rather than the majority Che population we have now. I’m a Veil player, and I can safely say that there are plenty of questlines that try to pit the Veil against the Che, or require them to specifically seek the other out.
“I can also tell you that spirits count in the relationships for the graduation, as three of the eight people who attended my ceremony were spirits. After being in the main game, the Veil relationships are a lot harder to build than Che relationships, though. I spent almost no time with the Che in the tutorial, but I still had Che-people attend my ceremony who I had only talked to once or twice, so depending on how things go, your relationships with spirits may be high but not high enough to have them attend. It seems to be a weird, unbalanced system that will likely see changes in future updates. I gather there are a bunch of testers that have already sent several complaints about it.”
Several posters came in with similar stories.
Should I not expect any spirits, then? If Tik-Tak or Reili had been alive still, maybe she would have expected them. Her experience with the others had been limited, and if what she read was true, she was probably more likely to see Master Qii than Wise.
Still, she thought to herself. I’ll have Jormund and Dawl, at least. As far as she was concerned, those were the important ones, along with Alta Noin and possibly Grimhai.
Dassah flipped through a few more boards, looking for information on the possible rewards for graduation, but was disappointed with many of them. It was only the tutorial, after all.
After spending an hour surfing through comments, Dassah went to her office and started filling out some of the reports she had due for Varier Co. After an hour, she was able to step back into the equipment room.
Finally, she thought, tapping the top of her pod. After this, I’ll finally be able to enter the main game. She didn’t really care about Stella and Bahena’s plans.
She was ready to make her own great adventure.