'Less than one hour to go before the game truly starts' I thought to myself as I observe the the arch inside my shard space slowly becoming illuminated with a blue light. As I sit cross legged in front of the arch, I play around with a tiny match flame that hovers just above my right index finger. Moving my hand left and right, the flame follows with its burner tail fading off into the opposite direction. The match flame consumed a total of 10 MP a minute which was low compared to my starter pool of 100MP. This meant I could use the match flame for 11 minutes before going dry if I considered the MP regeneration. Extinguishing the flame, I checked my status, they look something like this:
> * ID: A15479C
> * Name: Jason
> * HP: 100
> * HPR: 1/min
> * MP: 100
> * MPR: 1/min
> * KI: 100%
> * STR: 8
> * DEX: 8
> * INT: 8
> * PER: 8
The ID is unchangeable and is basically a server assigned number to your character. The game does not allow you to change this unless some extreme circumstance happens in which case the company is fully prepared to reimburse you. Names could be changed only once monthly or as much as you got the item called a [Rename Ticket]. Next is HP and MP which show much much damage I can take and how much magic I can use before running out. The regeneration rates, HPR and MPR, are pretty low at a value of per minute but I suppose that in the game there would be things available to increase it.
KI is a funny stat being represented as a percentage rather than a flat value and when I was browsing through the website and forum posts and speculations, I gathered that it would change based on how often the player received damage, performed actions and things like that. At 100% KI, external damage is reduced to 10% of its normal value whilst at 0% KI you take 150% damage. I'm guessing KI is some sort of guard percentage stat to help balance off high damage players might do later in the game in both PvP and PvE.
Lastly it was the common RPG stats in which there were only four: STR, DEX, INT and PER. STR influences how physically strong my character is as well as how tough it is. DEX refers to my nimbleness, INT to intelligence and magic ability and PER is my perceptivity which determines how frequent I land a critical hit as well as the monster drop rate. All four stats have hidden effects to them that both operate in sync between each other and awaken at intervals of 10s up to a maximum of 100 in each.
After a while, the countdown had now reached into the seconds.
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
The arch itself emitted a powerful pulse of blue light after which a few seconds later, a swirling vortex could be seen in the center of it. As I got up to make my way through it, the vortex rippled and something small popped out of it and was harshly ejected onto the translucent floor. It got up a few seconds after, shook its head and then looked around before noticing me observing it and approached.
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"Excuse me mister." said the tiny glowing humanoid thing hovering in front my face in a child-like voice, "are you A15479C - Jason?"
"Eh? Oh yeah I am." I responded a little slow because I still wasn't used to the ID number yet.
"I'm Novir, nice to meet you!" replied the tiny floating human
"Nice to meet you too I guess." said me to this thing of which after thinking for a few seconds back to that commercial I saw last week, I asked, "you're one of those faerie things right?"
"Yup, I've been assigned to watch over you by the faerie queen."
I see, this is the faerie that guy on the commercial was talking about. As I stood there thinking idle thoughts, the faerie waved its tiny hands in front of my face to try to get my attention.
"Jason? Are you there? Hellooooo?"
"Annoying..."
I really disliked having my thoughts disrupted like that. It was one of the reasons I'm currently living alone.
"You can't just space out on others when they're talking to you Jason. That's wrong..."
"So what are we supposed to be doing then? Seeing as you're my guide and all that." I said trying to progress things as quickly as possible.
The faerie thing put it's left hand on it's chin and right hand on it's elbow, assuming a thoughtful pose before getting surprised and continuing, "I'm supposed to guide you along with the other shard-h to Zera so let's go." It said as it flew behind me and began pushing me, much to it's hilarious failure, towards the arch portal. I helped by simply walking.
After passing through the portal, I found myself standing on a landing platform with several other silhouettes and their accompanying faerie. Voices could be heard from some of them whilst at the bottom right corner of my vision I could see a dialogue bubble that if focused on would open up a text chat box commonly in chat rooms. Eventually their character models loaded and the silhouettes progressively became identifiable.
"C'mon!" Said Novir who then proceeded to fly ahead of me whilst I moved forward calmly examining the surroundings.
The wide central pathway leading from the arch into the city ahead of me was constructed with translucent luminous blue hexagonal plates that rippled with pulses of light as I walked across them. The sides of the pathway were lined with vegetation such as trees and shrubs but was not so dense that the daylight sky adorned with auroras could not be seen.
As we neared the city, I took note of the players who were discussing various skill builds and few others who had developed codes other than the simple match flame which the developers had previously released. Nothing eventful really happened other than that.
The city walls that grew larger as we got nearer looked modular in its solid black hexagonal plate design with the grooves that separate each plate giving off the same blue light as the light of the central pathway. The walls extended far above our heads and at certain points on the walls, watch towers which made the whole thing seem militaristic could be seen.
The central pathway appeared to continue through the city walls and as I was contemplating how to enter, Novir flew closer to me.
"Why did Jason stop?"
"No matter how I look at it, there's no way I'm going through a wall."
"You can do it, look over there!" said Novir who proceeded to direct my attention towards another player who approached the wall and to my surprise, the wall molded away from the player whilst at the same time enclosed behind her.
"You can do it too!" said Novir whom I can guess was feeling proud for pointing that out.
"I guess I can..." I replied as I, alongside the other players moved towards entering the city.