“Other Reason?” Leo looked at him with confusion

“You just said you invited me for a couple of reasons, and only gave one. Which was you wanted to help me, what’s the other reason?”

“Oh right. EAB has been deleting all information about old Underworld off the net. Not many E-sport celebrities from old Underworld still alive out there, after the war.” Leo left the thought hanging in the air. Then continued “Right. You do know it’s been over 2 decades."

"A lot has happened since, what do you think I remember from Underworld?” Mark retorted

“I’m hoping between the two of us we can remember enough secrets and tips to give us a leg up.”

Bliss interrupted the conversation as she delivered a plate of peanut butter sandwiches. “What’s Underworld?”

“A game” Mark’s answer was short.

Leo looked mischievous and smiled then spoke up, “Did you know your old man was an E-sport celebrity in Underworld?”

“What? No way! Dad hates games.” Bliss made a face and looked skeptical.

Mark just sat back and let Leo talk. Leo gave him a glance almost as if to see what Mark would do, seeing no response from Mark his smile grew and he started speaking excitedly. “Yes way! He was fantastic, the youngest world champion in the 2119 PVP tournament, he was just two years older then you at the time. We had been playing underworld for 5 years at that point, the game was 51 years old. This was before F.B.E.V.R. We played jumping around in rooms with full body suits and headsets. He was a mighty mage…”

“Shaman” Mark interrupted, “If my class was anything it was a shaman.”

Bliss looked confused a moment “What’s the difference? And why the confusion?”

Leo pipped up “Well you see Underworld was an interesting title for its nearly infinite possibilities. The game did provide “templates” when making characters, the templates had fixed progression and skill or magic trees, on the whole they were rather easy to play, without messing up your character. However, if you played Underworld with one of those template characters your potential as an esport star was pretty limited. A lot of people believed even though the risk of mucking up was much much higher, that the best way to build a character was to play classless. Organically growing your character. It was slower and took a lot of effort, furthermore with the shear size of Underworld, even at 50 years old new combinations called the “best” were showing up all the time. For example, your Dad started out as some sort of Aztec like priest thing, then smeared his character with all sorts of weird classes and skill trees and somehow hit on a magical formula which resulted in a pretty overpowered shaman type build.”

Mark made a face and spoke up, “It was part accident at the start, but don’t listen to Leo, it was mostly planned after I figured out the strengths and weaknesses of those first few skills. There were loads of documents laying around at the time that made making that character pretty easy to accomplish. The real trick was figuring out which worked with what, and not taking some skill tree at level 40 which would be worthless at 1000. I still don’t think that build was perfect…” he trailed off.

Leo grinned. “Anyway, your old man was pretty good. I wasn’t too bad myself, I mean we started LM-STARS together before we turned 18 thanks to the money, we were making with raid videos. Got a decent workshop going as well. I was playing as a type of Jaguar Warrior. Well at least that was the closest “template” to what my character was.”

“Jaguar? A cat?” Bliss looked confused.

“Aztec warrior. See the game recreated earth. And depending on where you started different classes and abilities were available to you through the template system, furthermore those skills were available to the classless players as well. We both started in Tenochtitlan, in the Aztec empire. For example, a traditional mage would probably want to start in London England. We both started in Tenochtitlan because of Spanish class. Your dad’s Spanish teacher wanted him to play the game to learn better Spanish. Of course, the game had a translation program, but he played with it off. I joined him since, well, you know I already spoke Spanish so it wasn’t a big deal. The Americas were a good place to start for people wanting horse warriors, tankers, musketeers, sailors or support mages like shaman. I ended up with some sort of Jaguar warrior variant. Was a pretty good tanker as a result of some of the shamanic magic I ended up learning. Other places of the world had other specialties, but generally they were all balanced out. For example, someone starting in Boston, could get a good DPS class like a musketeer, a good tanker class like an Iroquois warrior, or a good buff/magic class like a priest or shaman. Every major hub city had similar “template” classes available, and generally those template classes were rather balanced. In Tenochtitlan there was more a leaning on blood magic but the basic result was similar, you had DPS and Tank warriors and healing or buff shamans, and Curse magic as a type of specialty, sort of like how musketeers were the Boston specialty.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Bliss listened quietly then asked “But what was the goal?”

Leo continued “Well, eventually you’d hit level 500, and the battlefield of Underworld would open for you. This was where Epic level questing would happen, in sort of a semi story mode, eventually if you weren’t totally incompetent, you’d become level 1000, and gain the status in the game as a demigod. There was a lot of content for level 1000 characters to gain “Epic Perks”, and a ranked PVP arena unlocked for any level 1000 player, which was the main e-sport draw in the game’s late stages. Your dad won the solo championship in 2119, becoming no.1 out of 100 million competitors. Our LM-STARS workshop ended up finishing 2nd in the 8-man team PVP in that same year, after finishing 7th the year before.”

Mark interrupted “There will be a rush to level 1000, even if all the information about the game is lost, the big workshops will want to open up the arena as fast as possible and gain the title of first world champion.”

Leo laughed, “They can try. My main concern is you won’t be able to keep up with us. If I recall you were pretty slow to level up.”

Bliss frowned in confusion then spoke up “It almost sounds like you’re going to play Underworld again dad?”

Mark nodded and Leo spoke up “That’s why I came out here, to invite him to join up with LM-STARS in Underworld again.”

Mark almost laughed at the confused look on his girl’s face then felt a bit of bitterness at not discussing this with her before telling Leo he’d go, then said “We’ll be moving up to Phoenix, and I’ll be gaming full time. I know a new school for your senior year will be… “

“YES! I’ll do it. When do we go?” Bliss cut him off. She didn’t look slightly upset at leaving Arizona City, and her friends her behind. Her quick response took him back a moment.

Leo jumped up and shook Mark’s hand again. “Great, now this is decided I’ll get going. Start packing up. I’ll get the ball rolling on my end.”

Mark didn’t even get a chance to reply as Leo’s car started to move before his door even closed. “You heard him, I guess we have some packing to do.”

Bliss wasn’t that easy to direct, she started to ask Mark all sorts of questions about Underworld and his time as an E-sports celebrity. He answered her questions awkwardly, he wasn’t used to her asking about his past. Eventually he escaped her bombardment of questions long enough to call in to work and report his injury and inability to come in the following day.

They both got a little packing done before turning in at a very late (for Mark) 1am. He had a lot to do the following day such as withdrawing Bliss from school and transfering her somewhere in Phoenix. Eventually he found himself sitting on his bed, half undressed holding a photo album. Pictured of his old high school friends, war buddies, and ex-wife, when they were happier. His hand however was on a picture which was posted on the front page of ESPN when he won the PVP title. In the photo was a painted well-muscled Aztec male with a huge feathered headdress and bone necklace, his body was painted and tattooed and, in the caption, it said “Insanity! World first support build in 22 years win’s Underworld PVP solo title, what’s next for the champion?”

A small smile touched his lips as he looked at the old digital avatar of what was once one of the most famous figures in underworld’s history. His eyes then turned to the picture next to it with Leo, his mother and father, and his ex-wife all together around his pvp championship trophy in his old home, at the celebration party.

He pondered thinking about that day ‘that was the last time we were all in one place wasn’t it?’ Lori had been his high school sweetheart, they were neighbors growing up, and would get married 4 years after this picture, during the war. His parents would die when in the second year of the war there was a limited nuclear exchange, his home town of Los Angeles had been nuked along side Mexico City and Toronto. Leo never fought in the war. His size and poor physical fitness disqualified him, of course his parents were wealthy enough to pull some strings to keep him out of service.

He flipped the page in the book and came to the first photo which included Bliss, she was 2 and crying in his arms, it was the first time he saw her, Lori insisted on a family photo. He was wearing a dirty tanker’s uniform. He had been fighting on the front lines for almost 8 years at that point, the happy young man long gone, he looked almost as miserable as the crying little girl in his arms.

The next photo was with him and Bliss after her mother dumped her on him 7 years ago. She was miserable in that photo too. He didn’t know it at the time, he hardly knew he at all, but she was barely keeping her tears in all the time back then. It took him years to recognize that look on her face. The forced smile, the way her eyes squinted. The photo album had many more pictures of him and his girl none of them were particularly happy memories. He couldn’t afford happy memories. That forced smile on her face in many of those photos started to hurt his heart, and he put away the album.

He never wanted to see that look on her face again. He stretched his arms then laid down, his knees aching as always, as he looked forward to tomorrow for the first time in years.