Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 038 - Part 2

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With Great Expectation

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The Enclave

“Welcome back, you two,” Behana said, leaning back in her chair. “How was class?”

“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 semester of intro classes to get through.”

Stella groaned.

“Look on the bright side, Stell,” Dassah said, putting her books away in her bookshelf. “At least you’ll have TheirWorld.”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “TheirWorld! Oh, Bahena, you simply must join us!”

“Yes,” Bahena said, though Dassah couldn’t sense any excitement in her voice. “It seems I will be.”

Stella’s face lit up. “Really? Yes! One of us! One of us!”

Bahena chuckled. “Well, it’s nice to touch base, but I have a lunch date with my brother. Will you two be going out?”

“I’m just gonna be in the lounge,” Stella said. “I have a tutoring session.”

“I’ll be staying here,” Dassah told them. “I have some things that I need to look up.”

“Well, have fun, the both of you,” Bahena told them, taking her leave.

Stella looked over at Dassah with a cross look on her face. “You’d better be looking up how to get out of the tutorial…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dassah said. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, today should be the last day. Cut me some slack - I am just trying to finish up this quest chain. If it leads to a special class, chances are the extra time will have been worth it!”

“Promise?” Stella pouted.

“Promise.”

“Good!” she explained, slamming her desk with the palm of her hand. “That’s what I like to hear. Commitment. Make it happen! I shall await you with great expectation!”

“Don’t you have a tutoring session to get to?”

“I do.”

“Git.”

Stella went and got her lunch for from the fridge and waved her goodbye.

Dassah sighed. “Alone at last,” she said to herself. Getting herself a cup of coffee, she honed her thoughts back in on TheirWorld.

Would she really be out of the tutorial tonight? She wasn’t so sure - but she definitely hoped so. She wasn’t sure how much more her heart could take. Going back to her desk, she pulled up her monitor screens and did a search for

It was fairly 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 recieve is something that is meant to be added to your character 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.

It was a fairly simple system. But it seems there are exceptions… Dassah smiled as she stumbled across a board which 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. 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, I will say that 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 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 have a small community that has already sent several complaints about it.”

With that, 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 then Wise.

Still, she thought to herself. I’ll have Jormund and Dawl at least. A warm feeling grew in her heart. As far as she was concerned, those were the important ones, along with Alta Noin and possibly Grimhai.

With that, 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 message boards, Dassah packed herself up to go to teach her next class. Even if she only had two more classes to get through, it was two too long.

Grinning, she left her desk. Finally, she thought. After this, I’ll finally be able to enter the main game… She didn’t care about Stella and her plans.

She was ready to make her own great adventure.