“The secret to getting ahead is getting started”

- Mark Twain

For the second time in 48 hours, I awoke to an unfamiliar setting. This time, it was on a stone altar in what seemed to be some kind of a temple. The sounds of gasps reached my ears, and I opened my eyes to see a man in white robes staring at me with wide eyes.

“Welcome Immortal, to the land of Mythos. The gods have heralded us of your arrival, promising a time of great change. We welcome you with open arms,” the man said, spreading his arms.

“Thank you, kind man,” I replied, trying to sound official, “I arrive with the highest hopes and ambitions. May our time here bring you joy and happiness.”

As I got down off of the altar, a bright light flashed and Gabriel appeared on the altar as well. I helped him off and another light flashed, revealing Tom. The process repeated several times, more and more Immortals appearing. I didn’t know any of the new Immortals appearing past our little group, so it was a little awkward once I realized we were all naked. People of all different colors emerged from the altar, looking around in wonder. After about 50 people came through, the wave of immortals stopped and the priest had a slightly strained smile on his face. A verbal command sent several young men and women scurrying about to find clothes, pushing cloth and linen garments into our arms. Several of the Immortals rushed out of the temple immediately after clothing themselves, much to the priest’s distress. He muttered to himself about hasty little shits, but smiled broadly to me as I approached.

“Ah hello, Immortal. You were the first to come through, no?” He asked.

“Yes, Father. My name is Zero, and I was wondering if you had anything in the way of weapons that my friends and I might use,” I replied.

“Ah yes,” the priest nodded knowingly, “do you have anything in particular in mind?”

I looked back at my friends, standing around chatting amongst themselves, and thought about it for a moment. “We’ll need three staffs, some throwing knives, a bit of rope, a bow and some arrows, two swords, a knife, and a few gold coins if you can spare them.”

The priest pondered my request for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I suppose I can manage that. 10 gold coins per person should tide you over for a few days, but you’ll need to get out there and start making money soon. I normally wouldn’t be so generous, but you’re the first to approach me and you were the first to come through to the world.”

I silently rejoiced. He’d basically told me that the reason he was helping me was pure luck!

“In our world, I am something of a leader, so I feel that perhaps the gods recognized this by sending me in front of the others as a guide,” I lied, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff by asking around.

“Well, Zero, it is a pleasure to meet a respectful man such as yourself. I hope that all Immortals are like you,” he complimented me as a burly Immortal shouldered his way past me and addressed the cleric.

“Hey, priest, I need some armor and weapons,” he demanded. The cleric looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“Well, young fellow, as I just finished telling Zero here, the Temple is a place of peace. Therefore, we have no weapons or armor of any kind. If you’d like, I could spare a silver coin for your troubles?”

The oaf squinted his eyes at the tiny cleric. “I bet your ass is holding out on me, and I’m gonna find what you’re not showing!” He bellowed, thundering past the cleric with a shove, searching for the doors in the Temple. I snaked out a hand, grabbing his arm and proclaiming loudly for my friends to hear, “Halt, behemoth! The Temple of-” here I faltered, looking at the priest out the corner of my eye. Darnley, he mouthed silently. “The Temple of Darnley is under the protection of my friends and I. Any who act against this Temple act against me and mine. Let it be known,” I said grandly, motioning for my friends to stand beside me. The large immortal stared at us for a moment, then muttered something about it being unfair and wandered out the exit. A few other Immortals meandered out the doors, and a few shot us ugly looks as they left. I knew we’d have trouble soon.

The priest motioned for us to follow him back further into the temple, and we obliged.

“What the hell were you doing?” Tom hissed at me as we walked down the hall. “Improvising,” I shrugged.

The priest, who told us his name was Silas, led us into a small room with stone shelves lined with rusted armaments and trinkets. I grabbed a staff and tossed another each to Gabriel and Tom. Aaron and Rich each picked up a sword and gave it an experimental wave. Seemingly satisfied, they buckled out scabbards and belt, sheathing their new weapons. Greg slipped a bow and quiver over his shoulder, and Drew did the same with a bandolier of throwing knives. I noticed that several were missing, but there were 12 slots total. Father Silas counted out ten gold coins for each of us, and we thanked him.

“Gentlemen, I appreciated your display of bravery up there in front of everyone. While I am not recognizing you as an official branch of the clergy, I am telling you that I, Father Silas, chief Cleric of the Temple in Darnley, consider you a friend. I will support you in your endeavors and help you to succeed. In return, I ask that you uphold your promise of helping this temple and this town.”

We talked for a moment longer, and Father Silas guided us out into the street.

“If you’re looking for adventure, I’d recommend the forest north of here. The south gets a little dicey, and there’s goblin encampments to the west. The east is relatively docile, but I know that if you travel far enough, you’ll reach the sea and the desert afterwards. If you need a place to sleep, you can rent a room at the Sleepy Dragon Inn for a decent price. It’s not as elaborate as the Gilded Pegasus, but it’ll keep your pockets full.”

We thanked him for the information and elected to head into the northern forest. A half hour later, we stood at the edge of a pleasant looking forest.

“I feel like the pleasant aroma and cheerful ambiance is a tad misleading. Something tells me that this will be fairly dangerous. It’d be best if we stuck together,” Tom declared. The rest of us agreed, and we set off into the trees.

It wasn’t too long before we encountered something. Drew heard a soft crunching noise and suggested we try to be stealthy. We crouched down, attempting to move quietly over the dirt and grass. Soon enough, we came upon a massive bear lumbering through the woods. Greg immediately tried to climb a tree, but fell off after a few seconds. The bear stopped and turned towards us, fixing beady black eyes on our group.

“Quick, surround it!” I yelled, rushing to get my staff in position. Rich and Aaron moved to flank, and it charged us. I jabbed my staff into its face as it rushed towards me, and I could feel that it did 9 damage, but the bear continued rampaging towards me, bowling both Tom and I over. I hit the ground and a chunk fell out of my health bar; I was down to almost 60%. Assuming I started with 110 based on my constitution, the bear had done 44 damage with a single hit! I quickly got to my feet, and saw Rich cast a spell to restore a bit of the lost health. I dropped my staff and cast [Mana Bolt], my black energy rocketing towards the animal. As my spell hit, I saw an arrow land in its side quickly followed by a throwing knife. The bear roared, and I had to imagine it was almost dead by now. I launched another mana bolt as it came rushing towards me. I leapt to the side and it thundered past, crashing into Greg as he launched another arrow into its face. It bit down on his shoulder, savagely ripping off huge chunks of flesh. Greg let out a scream as he went down, but the bear smashed down on his head, abruptly cutting off the noise.

Rich, Gabriel, and I launched more mana bolts at the bear, and by this point it was looking pretty rough; it had scorch marks on its fur from the magical attacks as well as blood oozing from the knives and arrow in its hide. The monstrous carnivore turned on me, bearing down once again. It was too close for me to dodge, and I steeled myself for the pain of death. It never came, because Aaron jumped in front of me at the last second, burying his sword into the bear’s eye. Aaron staggered back as the corpse fell, wrenching his sword from his grasp.

“Well…” I began, “that was certainly a bit intense.”

“Greg freaking DIED!” Tom shouted, shoving me to the ground, “Can you imagine how painful that was for him? What if he suffers from PTSD?”

I didn’t really want to think about that, but I couldn’t believe the game would allow that.

“Relax, the AI has access to our brains. I’m sure they wouldn’t let their utopia society have PTSD. That would discourage adventure and the dangerous lifestyle we are obviously encouraged to lead,” I proclaimed confidently despite my underlying fears. On the other hand, this would be an interesting experiment. Greg could tell us exactly what happened after death in the game. Aaron stepped forward to intervene.

“Well where there’s a bear there’s a cave, and where there’s a cave there’s spoils. That was a level 4 Cave Bear, so it’s bound to have at least a little loot.”

Something he said made me pause, “Wait, how do you know it was level 4?”

The others stared at me for a moment like I’d grown a second head. “Didn’t Telles tell you? If you focus on a creature or object and think Identify, you’ll get rudimentary information about that thing. For example, you can usually see a level that is no more than 20 above yours.”

“Well is there anything else I should know about the basic mechanics of the game?” I asked irritably. I felt foolish that I hadn’t thought to ask about ways to gather information. It was a resource in battle like any other, and could turn the tide of battle more than any weapon.

“Well you can think the word Notification to see the actual notifications that get minimized during combat.”

What. The. Hell. How could I not know that? I tried it, and something popped up:

Congratulations!

You have reached level 2 for slaying a [Cave Bear]!

Because of your behavior during the fight, you have been awarded one point to Dexterity, and given 4 points to distribute between stats.

2% to next level

Without my friends’ information, I may never have realized I’d leveled up! I quickly dumped a point into Constitution and the last 3 into Wisdom. Afterwards, I checked my character sheet:

Status Sheet (Nathan/Zero)

Stats (Level 2):

Constitution: 12

Dexterity: 12

Wisdom: 15

Intelligence: 12

Charisma: 11

Strength: 10

Qualities:

Determined

Creative

Abilities:

Dark Resilience: Your innermost thoughts have revealed a desire for evil, and some greater power has granted you resistance to the horrific sights and sounds of this world.

Skills (level)

Reading (6) Writing (3) Poetry (2) Inspirational Leader (4)

Spellcasting (1) Mana Bolt (1) Summon Minor Elemental (1)

Not bad! I was pretty okay with my progress so far. I’d picked up three skills in the tutorial, and I was already level 2! I’d increased my control limit to 5, and my overall health was now 120. I didn’t plan on increasing my health too much, but I figured it would be important right now. It was interesting that I received a stat point based on how I leveled up. Presumably, I’d received a stat point in Dexterity because I was unable to dodge. Perhaps if I bottomed out my mana, I would have received a point to Intelligence. My mana regeneration was now 0.75mp/sec, which meant I could cast Mana Bolt with a net loss of 6.5 mana, because it cost 10 and I could regenerate 4.5 mana before the cooldown wore off.

“Did you guys level up too?” I asked. Everyone nodded.

Aaron urged us to look around for a cave, and we all nodded. We scoured the surrounding area for about 20 minutes before we found a cave. Drew raised a hand, indicating silence and caution was needed. He crept forward into the cave, and his body seemed slightly harder to focus on. This must be the form of stealth that the game used.

A moment later, he returned and guided us a few meters away.

“There’s two people in there grabbing loot,” he whispered, “what should we do?”

“Kill them,” I said, “we’ve decided to play the villains, so I think that means it’s safe to loot their corpses without going against our morals.”

Tom immediately disagreed, “Think about how horrible Greg’s death was! How could we put someone else through that.”

I walked forward and punched Tom in the face. He gasped and stumbled backwards, but overall he didn’t seem too worse for wear.

“See? The game mutes the pain pretty substantially.” Tom glared at me but didn’t say anything else.

“We don’t know how high of levels they have-” I began, but Drew cut me off.

“Both are level 2. I checked,” Andrew said before I could finish. I was lucky to have such competent friends.

“Then let’s kill them!” Gabe whispered loudly.

“Fine, should we just bait and surround them?” Tom asked, referencing a common tactic we used in other games. I nodded, and Andrew ran inside the cave. We heard a shout, the wet thud of a blade against meat, then Andrew came back outside.

“Well, they didn’t have any weapons so I just killed them,” he said simply. Nobody knew what to say to that, so we just walked inside to check out the loot. I was impressed; we got 40 gold in addition to a small barbed blade that Drew took. We high-fived and headed back towards the town. I was a little nervous about Greg, and I didn’t know when he’d respawn, but I was sure that whatever happened, we could conquer it.

As we approached the outskirts of the town, Greg walked out to us with a frown on his face.

“You guys let me die and then didn’t even come back for me!” He said, clearly irritated. I tossed him a pouch with 20 gold in it.

“That’s for your trouble. What happened when you died? Did it hurt?” I asked, dismissing his irritation.

“It hurt for a moment, but honestly not as bad as I expected. When I died, I was told how long it would take for me to respawn if no resurrection magic was used, and then given the option to create a new character with a different spawn point.”

This was huge! “Alright, we need to go about systematically destroying the playerbase in this town. We’ll post sentries at the entrances to the town and slaughter anyone that enters. Then, when they respawn, we’ll just kill them until they decide to respawn as a new character.”

Once again, nobody knew quite how to respawn, so we just nodded in acceptance of this fact and moved back towards the forest to grind. After about an hour, we decided to head back to the village and get a room and some food.