As expected, the quest directed them up towards the castle. Moving through the city reminded Kaldalis a lot of his first visit. The place wasn’t well-organized, and trying to move directly towards where they knew the castle kept running them into dead ends, or streets that curved off to one side of the other. There was plenty of interest to see: some of the dead ends held interesting little curio shops, or open air markets. Often, when the street angled away from where they were going, it led them to NPCs who had a glowing rainbow outline, indicating that they had quests to offer. Considering the size of the city and the number of quests they saw, it would have been unreasonable to pick them all up.

Kaldalis was about ready to do what he did the last time when he needed to get to the docks, and find a beggar to pay to guide them. But Reno and Ess were having a grand time exploring the city, so he didn’t want to interrupt. For some reason the graffiti and grime clinging to the buildings didn’t seem to bother them. The prevalence of beggars in the dark corners of the streets went unnoticed. As much as it all disillusioned him to the big city life, he didn’t want to break the illusion.

Despite the Italian appearance of the city’s architecture, when they reached the castle it was a much more traditional English design. There were tall and imposing walls, with cylindrical towers at the corners. The castle was surrounded by the city on all sides, and so while it had tall walls, there was no moat or barricade. The portcullis at the front stood open, and Kaldalis and his friends weren’t the only people passing in and out of the castle grounds. There were workmen and merchants moving in and out with goods and construction materials.

From the portcullis, Kaldalis could see that there was work being done on the keep, expanding it off of the oceanward wall. A huge area of the castle’s bailey was sectioned off and filled with scaffolding, stacked stone, and a half-dozen men mixing mortar, with more working on constructing a new wall. It looked like quite the undertaking, and Kaldalis figured it was probably part of the larger story they were about to become embroiled in.

He also hoped that the kingdom had plans to pay the masons for their work here. Kaldalis knew from experience that unpaid masons were more trouble than a king might expect.

Steward Sapani was an elderly Suyon woman with darker green skin, closer to the color of an olive than the yellower tone of the other Suyon they’d met. She was arguing energetically with a merchant when Kaldalis and his friends approached, and so they waited out of the way until the discussion was finished. The merchant had apparently signed a contract with the kingdom to provide the cement and sand for the mortar, and was disputing the payment details.

Without the contract in hand to compare the terms to the argument, it went a little over Kaldalis’s head, but to the accountant brain beneath, the Steward seemed to have the right of it: the merchant would be paid according to the stipulations of the contract, no more than that, and no earlier than that. And any renegotiation of the contract might not be as favorable to the merchant as the kingdom had been in its moment of direst need for supplemental mortar.

Eventually the merchant gave up, and Kaldalis and his friends were able to approach.

“More fresh blood,” the Steward remarked upon seeing them. “Excellent. This era has more needs for your profession than ever. With the war a distant memory, it’s long past time to turn eyes inward, and answer the dangers within Zara that threaten our people. And nothing is a better cure for such dangers than adventurers.” She held out a hand. “I believe I have something to get you started, but first I need your chit.”

The three of them handed over their chits. Reno and Ess had slips of paper for theirs, while Kaldalis’ was a thin wooden token. Despite the difference, the Steward took all three, and doled out to each of them ten crescents. It was… Not a lot of money. But Kaldalis figured that to someone just starting out and looking to procure potions and food, it might be enough. And without any frame of reference, he didn’t know how much of an enticement it might be to regular NPCs to pursue this course of employment rather than more ordinary jobs.

“Now, before you venture out into the wilds,” the Steward said, “we need to ensure that your training is complete. Report to Quartermaster Lukesong as soon as you can.” She pointed across the castle’s bailey. They would have to walk around the construction, but Kaldalis could see the bhogad man she was pointing at. Kaldalis’s quest updated, instructing him to head over to talk to the man.

“Thanks for taking our chit,” Reno said with a big chit-eating grin.

“Yeah,” the woman said with a much different, more exhausted tone, “I’ve never heard that one before.” She gave a dismissive gesture, sending them away.

“Alright,” Kaldalis said as they started to go around the construction. “Let’s see what this tutorial has to offer.”

The tutorial quests that followed were disorienting and disappointing. The entire time Kaldalis had been in this world, everyone had danced around the actual in-game mechanics. In the tutorial, though, all the details that everyone avoided saying were explicitly spelled out.

Lukesong, the quartermaster, told them all about their weapons. Most of it was stuff he already knew - either from inference or experience. Obviously, spear-wielders were aerial combatants with great potential against groups of enemies. Obviously, dagger-wielders were high-speed hit-and-run experts, excelling in brief high-damage bursts. Obviously, greatsword-wielders were aggressive berserkers, discarding any out-of-combat utility to be real beasts in fights.

What was worse, though, was the specifics. Greatswords did 20% more damage than other weapons per hit, to account for their 20% slower swing speed. Daggers did 75% of other weapon’s damage to account for their increased attack speed letting them launch 25% more attacks per second. Putting numbers to it all felt strangely artificial. It was destroying his immersion. Rundan went from an experience to just another VR MMO.

It made him feel like Dylan again, not Kaldalis.

After being told about weapons, they were sent to the library, where an elderly Talsar with grey scales and milky-white eyes told them about elemental and debuff Affinities. It was interesting information, but nothing they didn’t already know. Debuffs corresponded to elements, but the association didn’t mean anything stats-wise for adventurers. It did mean that enemy Affinities could be guessed at. Enemies would always have a high Affinity stat focused on the element or debuff that they employed. But they would usually have lower Affinity - and thus weaker defense - against an opposing element or debuff.

Kaldalis knew from experience that it wasn’t an exact science like that. There were enemies - like the Jormongumo and the Syncoresi - who had no elemental affinity. And there were enemies - like the Globin - who hadn’t seemed that much more resistant to the debuff of the same element that they were affiliated with. But he didn’t blame the old man for glossing over the edge cases. The systems were a bit obscure, and the way the stat system worked meant that it was relatively unimportant. It was a nice story to impress newer players with the system, but it wasn’t necessarily reflected by the gameplay he’d experienced.

The tutorial next took them to a muscular Human who taught them about sparring, and exchanged blows with each of them in turn. When they beat him in the extremely scripted-feeling fight, he puffed out his chest and explained that “real fighting” was entirely different, and he’d take them easily in hand-to-hand combat, which didn’t require consent to engage in, but was proportionately less deadly.

Kaldalis thought it was odd that War Weapons didn’t earn a mention here, but it seemed like they probably existed in a fuzzy legal space in this world. Considering the ridiculous experience total he received from “killing” Onirioago, it also seemed a prudent choice to keep them secret. Especially since this part of the tutorial was being administered by an annoying blowhard of a character.

Despite his disillusionment with the tutorial, Reno and Ess were having a blast. The tutorial conversations had little challenges to keep players engaged. In addition to the sparring match with the guard captain, the Quartermaster had them run around and gather sample weapons for him to demonstrate with. The librarian sent them to collect books on the different subjects he spoke about. In all three cases, Reno and Ess experimented with loopholes, making their own fun out of seeing what the Quartermaster would say if they filched other items from around the castle bailey, and climbing over the bookshelves to look at the titles on the spines of the other books in the library. Unlike Kaldalis, they had also skilled up several weapons, and while sparring the guard captain they swapped between weapons to match up favorably against his weapon choice for the fight.

He found himself feeling pangs of jealousy at their fun, and while he tried, he just couldn’t shake how immersion-breaking the whole thing was.

After the sparring, they were sent to speak with groundskeeper Wilpenhem, a crusty old Vathon who told them about the dangers of the enemies outside of the city, who needed to be dealt with. The most pressing was a small scaled beast called a Fossorianole. They lived underground and would steal tubers and other vegetables from the farms outside of town. He needed ten of them killed for the sake of the farmers’ livelihoods.

Kaldalis expected that the situation would improve once they got to the job itself. The tutorial could certainly suck the fun out of overexplaining random details, but when they were actually going out to fight monsters, everything would be back to normal.

Right?