Stepping out of the Magic Association, Elijah saw the world in a whole new light. This world was full of people who had spent years of real-world time grinding and levelling. Even some of the lower-level players could be high-level players, or particularly wealthy ones, using alt accounts. And here he was, at level one, even lower on the totem pole than someone newer than him who had managed to clear their tutorial dungeon. He felt like a tiny fish in a very large pond.
They had been walking for a few minutes when Nicholas finally spoke. “Hey man. Why the dour face? You don't have to log out already, do you?”
Elijah shook his head. “No, I'm set up to keep playing for a couple of months, at least.”
“Oh! Nice dude. Long immersion pods are great. The ?rest of the party has them too, so that'll work out well for questing together. Though I'll warn you now, Bo, our rogue, likes to log out fairly often.”
Elijah laughed. “That's pretty spot on for a rogue to disappear all the time.”
Nicholas stopped in his tracks and fixed Elijah with a crooked grin. “You know? I'd never really thought about it that way, but you are totally right!”
The large man stopped and stared directly at Elijah. “You still didn’t answer my question. What’s got you looking all upset?”
Elijah had to consider his answer. He felt awkward about dumping his concerns onto other people. In an unusual moment of trust, he decided to trust the man with his worries. “I’m getting into this game so late, I feel like I’m so far behind the curve that there is no way I can really catch up.”
Nicholas smiled at him. “Well, you aren’t alone. Nobody in the party is experienced with this game. Sure, we might not be super powerful, but the fun of the game is getting to experience it with friends regardless of how strong you are.”
Elijah nodded his head. He was happy that Nicholas hadn’t laughed at him, and he was right. He wanted to make new friends and experience everything this game had in store for him.
They arrived at a large Queen Anne-style mansion that reminded Elijah of the Painted Lady house in his hometown of Cleveland. The left front corner was a tower that rose high into the sky, and the front porch rounded the corner and towards the back of the right side. Angles that would usually be sharp were rounded, accentuated by the sharp lines of windows. Elijah looked at the architecture in wonderment. Yes, it was all digital, but he could see the craftsmanship of the artist who designed it all the same.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Nicholas said, seeing Elijah’s eyes taking in the sight. “And I know what you’re thinking, but no, my brother didn’t pay for it. Our party got lucky drops in the last dungeon. We managed to afford this place with the loot we sold.”
“That must have been some loot!”
Nicholas laughed as he pushed the door open and led Elijah inside. Immediately he was surrounded by three other players. All of them were staring at him wide-eyed and curious.
[Player]
Name: Benjamin
Class: Mage | Level: 2
~~~
[Player]
Name: Bo
Class: Rogue | Level: 3
~~~
[Player]
Name: Sasha
Class: White Mage | Level: 4
He was equally ?curious about the woman’s class. Based upon the purple glimmer of the class' name, he guessed it was a ‘Master’ tier class.
“No way,” The thin looking mage, Benjamin, said as he eyed the name box above Elijah’s head. “You said your brother found us a unique recruit. Not that he found us a unique recruit.”
The emphasis Benjamin put on the second ‘unique’ unnerved Elijah slightly. His eyes glanced around, trying to ignore the analytical way the mage was examining him. His eyes caught Bo, the rogue, who was standing off to one side, staring at Elijah. Although his expression was neutral, the way Bo looked at him made him nervous. He’d always been suspicious of players who took on the role of rogue, and the way this man was eyeing him wasn’t helping that bias.
The sole woman, Sasha, stepped between Benjamin and Elijah, pushing the mage back. “Ben, he’s not a piece of meat. Give him some space.”
She turned to face Elijah, and his heart skipped a beat. This game didn’t allow players to change their appearance from their real-world appearance, and Elijah immediately recognized her.
“You… You’re Sasha Bjornsdotter!”
She blushed heavily and turned her face away from him. Nicholas saved her further embarrassment as he put a hand on Elijah’s shoulder. “Not here she’s not. Here she’s just Sasha, our level 4 White Mage. If that’s going to be a problem, then I don’t care what my brother recommended, you can leave.”
He noticed Bo had moved from his position against the wall, standing almost protectively close to Sasha. Elijah shook his head, taking another glance at the woman. “No, no. I’m sorry. It just caught me off guard.”
He couldn’t believe it. His luck just kept stacking today, getting the FIVR pod, the tutorial pick, the unique class, and now he was standing in the same room, albeit virtually, with one of his favorite actresses. They were around the same age, and he’d watched her go from acting in children’s shows and movies to gritty crime dramas as an adult.
Sasha turned back and smiled at him. “It’s fine. These guys are just protective of me. The last time we let someone join, he was a bit of a creep.”
“A bit?” Benjamin laughed. “That dude was ready to lick your boots for a chance to get close to you. I’m glad we left him on the other side of the continent.”
The rest of the party, except the rogue, laughed. Nicholas nodded to Elijah once the laughter had died down. “In this party, we’re all equals. Doesn’t matter who we are in the real world, or what we’ve done. What matters is that we watch each other's backs and work on getting stronger.”
Elijah nodded. He could empathise with Sasha, just wanting to play an awesome game without everyone treating her differently. That made him like her even more.
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Eyeing her name box again, he finally asked the question that had been burning in his mind since the moment he saw it. “So what's up with your class? It’s marked as ‘Master’ rank, right? What’s a ‘White Mage’?”
“Oh,” she said, immediately losing any sense of embarrassment from Elijah recognizing her real-life persona. “It’s really cool! I started off by getting the choice to be a medic. It’s fairly common for people to get it as their fifth option, but not many people take it.”
She chanted a few words under her breath, and a soft golden light bloomed in her palm.
[Spell]
Cure Wound
Level: 4
Description:
CURE_WOUND{
SPELL_ID: CURE_WOUND_LOW
ENCHANTMENT: HEAL_PLAYER_ALLY_LOW
SPECIAL: NULL
COST: 5
}
Elijah hadn’t even consciously meant for his Reality Warp skill to activate as the glow of the light touched his skin; it was becoming an instinctual reaction.
Sasha continued, “On our third dungeon raid, we came across a really powerful healer. When we killed him, he dropped a ‘Tome of the White Mage’. We had no idea what it was, so we asked Alastor.”
Bo finally spoke, his voice grave and rough. “Yeah, dude was so mad. Apparently, it took him ages to find one on his first playthrough. Needed it for some kind of class quest. And here’s Sasha parading it around like it’s a couple of copper coins.”
“So it’s an advanced healer class?” Elijah asked.
She nodded ?and smiled. “So what about you?”
Nicholas’ hand rested on his shoulder again, and the large man leaned down. He smiled. “It’s okay. Forget what my brother said for a minute. You can trust these three.”
Elijah hadn’t wanted to tell them how he got his class, but this at least gave him an out. He could give them a hint of the truth, while still keeping them in the dark about the true nature of his class. “I got the Prisoner option as my tutorial.” All three gasped at his words. “I didn’t know how much of a big deal it was until Alastor told me. As for my class, I’m not entirely sure how I got it. I guess I just got crazy lucky like you guys did.”
Benjamin looked over his name box again, then lowered his eyes to meet Elijah’s. “I can sense that your class is magic-based, but since it’s unique, I can’t get a feel for what it does.”
He told them the same lie that he had told Alastor earlier.
At the mention of being able to potentially buff equipment, Bo pulled out a small dagger and handed it to Elijah. “I want to see. I got this in a loot drop from a boss. It’s ‘Basic’ tier, so I’m curious if you can do anything to it.”
Elijah took the dagger in his hand, pretending to turn it over and examine it closely as he activated his skill.
[Item]
Dagger
Rank: Basic
Damage: 5-6
Condition: 47/100
Enchantments:
debug{
Striking[Basic,DMG_RANGE+2]
}
He tried to add the self-repair enchantment he’d noticed earlier on the pauldrons of the passing high-level player he had bumped against outside the Magic Association, but the item wasn’t able to hold more than one enchantment as ‘Basic’ tier.
“I can add a self-repair enchantment to this, but it’ll remove the damage buff,” he told Bo. “That’s all I can do right now. I need to gain access to more equipment to unlock other enchantments.” Not completely a lie. He needed access to them so he could learn the specific enchantment names.
Bo nodded his head. “Do it.”
Elijah held the knife up and pushed his other hand forward towards it, typing out the new enchantment in his mind. When his hand came away, the item changed.
[Item]
Dagger
Rank: Basic
Damage: 3-4
Condition: 47/100
Enchantments:
debug{
SelfRep[Basic,COND_IMPROVE_SELF]
}
Bo gasped as Elijah handed it back to him, looking over the weapon with awe in his eyes. “Nic?”
“Yeah, Bo?”
“We need to go on a raid and get this man more unlocks.”
Less than ten minutes later, the five of them were going over a map of various dungeons in the area. It was updated in real time. Grey swirling circles meant that a team was currently delving the dungeon’s depths, a red cross meant that it had been cleared recently and was still taking time to respawn, and green hash marks for ones that teams had dibs on but were still homing in on.
“Is this a game item, or did somebody make it?” Elijah asked.
Sasha had the answer for him, whereas he had expected Nicholas to answer.
“It’s technically a celestial-tier artifact. The ‘Celestial’ players wind up with dozens of these things from running the celestial content. Most people can’t afford them, but all the major associations and guilds have at least one copy. We have ours thanks to Alastor buying one for us from one of his Celestial contacts. Not sure which of them it was, but not sure it matters..”
“Seems like all the good dungeons around Nethy are already cleared or being cleared,” Sasha said, studying the map intently after answering him.
Benjamin grunted and pointed at a dungeon far off from the city. “We could always try the Dragontooth King’s Abandoned Fort again.”
Bo groaned at the suggestion. “No, come on, man. You know I hate that place, it has so many traps.”
“You’re a Rogue; traps are part of your specialty,” Benjamin retorted.
The shady man grinned evilly at the Mage. “And you’re a mage, that means your specialty is being turned into a pincushion by the annoyed Rogue.”
The exchange unnerved Elijah, even more so than being near the sketchy Rogue, but the way the others reacted, or in this case didn’t react, to the exchange told him it was relatively normal for their party.
“You’re the one who said we need to get Elijah some more unlocks. That place has a ton of enchanted loot,” Nicholas reminded him.
Bo still wasn’t done complaining. “But it’s all low-level basic stuff.”
Nicholas shook his head. “Does that matter? If I understand correctly, the level doesn’t matter to Elijah’s powers, just the enchantment.” He looked to Elijah for confirmation, who nodded his head in agreement.
“Alright, as team leader; I’m saying we go to the Dragontooth King’s Abandoned Fort.”
Sasha and Benjamin cheered, while Bo continued to grumble in annoyance. Elijah just kept staring at the map.
“If I’m judging the distance correctly, it’ll take, what? Four days to get there?”
Nicholas looked at him in confusion. “Huh? Oh, right. I keep forgetting you don’t know anything about the game yet.”
“See, most magic users specialize right out of the gate. They wind up with a ton of options to choose from by the time their tutorials end. Fire mage, earth mage, water mage, even some rare ones like elementalist or necromancer, but if they stick to the path of pure mage, or neglect to pick one like our boy Benjamin--”
Benjamin blew a raspberry at the Fighter, but Nicholas ignored him. “If they stick to a pure mage, they get access to some cool powers. Show him, Ben.”
Benjamin walked into the clear area in the middle of the room and began moving his hands through the air. The air crackled with electricity, centering on the mage. The electricity sparked against the skin of the party members, but it felt more like a tickle than pain.
A glow began rising from the floor, forming a bubble of magic. The skin of the spell shone and shimmered like that of a soap bubble. It grew until it formed a perfect half sphere on the floor about six feet across.
Benjamin collapsed as the chant finished, his breath coming heavy and ragged. Bo was there to catch him, earning points in Elijah’s book. Even if they fought and argued, the rogue’s instinctual act to take care of his teammate showed the man’s true character, at least in part. Benjamin pulled out a blue vial from his pack and chugged the contents. After a few seconds, Bo helped the mage back to his feet as the rest of the party gathered around.
Benjamin grimaced at Elijah. “That spell takes every point of mana I have. For the record, I don’t recommend draining yourself entirely. It feels like you haven’t slept in a week, and it’s even worse if you wind up with death sickness while recovering.”
“So you guys can just teleport anywhere on the map?”
“Nah, it’s only possible for me to open a bubble somewhere I’ve already been. At least until it reaches the ‘Legendary’ tier. Then it can also target anywhere within a few miles radius of me.”
Nicholas stepped towards the bubble. “Alright guys, if it’s anything like last time, then there will be low-level mobs guarding the fort. We go together on three.”
“One.”
“Two.”
Nicholas jumped through the portal before ever saying three, causing Bo to swear.
“Experience hog!” Bo shouted and jumped through, followed closely by Sasha.
Benjamin turned to look at Elijah and winked. “You’ll get used to it.” And then he pushed Elijah through the portal.
