Welcome to Arcanum Online

Ethan blinked at the hovering screen in front of him, the only feature to be seen in the endless white void he found himself floating in. Almost as soon as he’d registered the words written on it, it vanished, replaced by another.

Please select your character options. Note that you may only have one character at a time in this game.

This time the screen displayed a replica of Ethan beneath the text, along with several options and sliders.

He looked at the image of himself that the machine his real body was hooked up to had created. College had definitely done a number on him. So had his internship. In fact, life in general had obliterated any trace of the vaguely athletic young man he’d once been.

He tended to play female characters in MMOs - if only because he found the absurdly skimpy ‘armor’ they got at high levels hilariously over the top - but those were third person view games. When he played in first person, he preferred to look more like himself, with a few minor alterations to make himself seem in better shape. With that in mind, he quickly adjusted a handful of sliders, making his face and body somewhat thinner and his muscles more defined. To his surprise, the result looked almost perfect immediately, as if the bizarre helmet he’d spent 3 thousand dollars on was reading his mind. Which, come to think of it, was probably closer to the truth than he wanted to think about.

A mere twenty minutes of excessive attention to detail later, his avatar was complete!

That’s when he remembered that this game did not, in fact, force him to play as a human. He tapped the ‘Species’ button, and a flashing notification appeared.

WARNING! If you change species, all modifications made to your avatar thus far will be lost!

Do you still wish to proceed?

{Yes} {No}

Ethan suppressed a sigh. He’d been afraid of that. He was too proud of the heroic avatar he’d constructed to throw away all that work and start again, so he’d just have to make due with being human. He tapped the {No} option and quickly keyed in a name for his character.

Character Creation Complete!

Name: Ether Diros

Species: Human

Class: Adventurer (Lvl 1)

HP: 10

MP: 10

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 10

Vitality: 10

Willpower: 10

Active Effects:

[Adaptive]

[Aegis of the World Tree]

Skills:

Once more, the screen disappeared on its own almost as soon as he finished reading it. There was a sudden, blinding flash of light….

Then he fell.

His knees hit the ground as gravity suddenly asserted itself. The world slowly came into focus as he blinked away the faint spots that obscured his vision. Ethan could vaguely remember his friend Asher ranting about how spectacular the visuals in the game were, back when he’d been involved in the beta. For months, he’d been convinced that his friend was exaggerating, caught up in the craze that always seemed to dominate his attention whenever a new game was released.

He’d been wrong. If anything, Asher had been holding back.

Ethan stood atop a large hill in the center of a truly massive grassland, where brilliant flowers of every color imaginable dotting the landscape in the distance. For a moment, he was confused - why couldn’t he feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, when he could clearly feel the grass beneath his feet? Then, he looked up to see the massive boughs of an enormous tree stretching high above him, sheltering him from the sun with its emerald foliage.

Vines of all kinds hung loose from the boughs and crawled their way up the trunk, but huge as they themselves were they paled in comparison to the enormous… oak? Maple? It was a familiar looking tree, to be sure, but he couldn’t quite place it for some reason. It was simply absurd! The tree must’ve been taller than most skyscrapers, and it shone with a faint bluish light that seemed to come from deep within it. Crystalline, shimmering flowers bloomed amongst its boughs, and a few of them, nearly the size of a person, shone at the base of the tree, glimmering faintly.

He wasn’t sure just how long he’d stared, awestruck by the majestic sight before him.It must’ve been at least a couple of minutes, though, considering the menu that appeared to shake him to his senses.

Congratulations!

By staring resolutely at one thing for a frankly excessive length of time,

you've attained [Identify] Lvl 1!

You sure had a lot of time on your hands, huh?

Well, looks like it paid off!

[Yggdrasil, the World Tree] Lvl ???

This massive tree calls to all souls, offering shelter and rebirth.

As a Chosen of Yggdrasil, you can respawn here if you’re slain, after a short while.

Those without its blessing are not so fortunate.

Huh. A learn by doing system? Some older games had tried to do something similar, but they always ended up tying abilities and skills to specific pieces of gear, rather than leaving them as part of the base system. Ethan could do without the snarky text though. That would get old fast, especially once his friends started -

Private message from [Perseus] :

The game does half the work for you.

How did it take you this long to finish character creation?!

Meet me in the starting town directly north-east from spawn.

Don’t fight anything until you get there - you’ll be useless without a weapon.

Well… more useless.

-Asher

Ethan had guessed who Perseus was long before he reached the signature. “Asshole,” he muttered out loud as he fiddled with the menu. It was only after 5 minutes of fumbling, trying to send a scathing reply, that the second message appeared.

You need a Scroll of Message to reply, btw.

The game loves its “realism”.

>:)

-Asher

Ethan resolutely swore to punch Asher in his smug face as soon as he reached town, and set off down the hill.

The town in question wasn’t all that far, and Ethan could’ve made decent time if he simply jogged his way there. In real life, he would’ve probably just walked, just to annoy Asher. But this wasn’t real life - and he wanted to see what would happen if he pushed the limits of his digital body.

The answer, as it turned out, was that he’d get tired, stumble, trip over his own feet while trying to avoid a rabbit and fall face first into the grass after about 25 seconds.

Congratulations!

By running yourself to the point of collapse, you’ve attained [Running] Lvl 1!

You sure can run fast … for a few seconds.

Hasn’t anyone ever told you that life’s a marathon, not a race?

He could only pray that this was just a bit of poor luck on his part and not the beginning of an excessively snarky pattern. The good news was that he could immediately feel the difference in how long he could keep running, and managed to make much better time than he’d been expecting at first.

Of course, that was still far too slow for some people. “Took you long enough,” a familiar voice called as he approached the gates. Ethan glanced in the direction of the voice with a broad smile. “Ash!”

Asher looked similarly to his normal self - a tall, skinny, pale fellow with messy black hair. He’d made his normally brown eyes amber, with vertical catlike pupils, but beyond that, he hadn’t changed much. Even the perpetual dark bags beneath his eyes were still there, as if his character shared his horrendous sleep habits.

“Perseus,” he corrected. “Remember, we go by character names online. Don’t want to get doxed. Speaking of… is that really what you went with? Again?”

Ethan - no, Ether - scowled. “What’s wrong with it?”

“This is the name you’ve used for your main in every game we’ve played for the last decade!” Perseus replied, throwing his hands up. “I’ll admit it made you easy to message, but a little variety wouldn’t kill you! Besides, doesn’t it bother you to have a name that’s so close to your real one?”

“Asher-” he began.

“Perseus.” his best friend corrected.

“Dickhead,” Ether replied dryly. “First, unlike you, I don’t believe birds are drones trying to steal my credit card information. Second, at least I look like I did as a high school senior - you look like yourself with fancy colored contacts.”

Perseus chuckled as he turned to walk away, gesturing for Ether to follow. “For the record,” he called over his shoulder. “The birds are government drones, so they already know your credit card info. It’s the squirrels that want your wallet. Now come on, we gotta hurry if we wanna catch up to Lilly!”

Ether blinked. “Lilly’s ahead of us?”

“She called out sick to play while we were at work,” Perseus said without turning back or slowing down. “She’s hit level 10, and picked her class.”

Racing to keep up with his lanky friend, Ether frowned. “Why doesn’t she just come back to help us cruise through the tutorial zone?”

“Because she can’t,” the taller man replied. “Remember what I told you about the tutorial fields being locked to high level characters in the Beta? Well, that wasn’t just a testing feature - it’s in full force. If your level has multiple digits, then once you leave, you can’t get back in.”

Ether’s frown turned into a scowl. “What a dick move! The whole fun of an MMO is to play with other people! Why level gate the whole zone that way?”

Perseus shrugged. “The lore says the Yggdrasil - that’s the big glowy tree, by the way - is kinda self aware. It hates seeing things die, so anyone that levels past 10 is forced to leave, since combat is the only way to level up. Kinda funny, actually.” Perseus pulled himself up to his full height, puffing out his chest and deepening his voice as he mocked the peculiar lore decision. “‘No killing because it makes the big tree sad! Unless the quest says so, then it’s fine!’”

They both laughed at that.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Ether said, entering a poor imitation of a boxing stance and punching the air - nearly hitting his obnoxious friend in the process. “Show me where I can pick up some gear and a few quests. I wanna see what combat’s like in this game!”

“Way ahead of ya,” his friend responded, lazily tossing him a small backpack. “They give out starter kits here, and I know you well enough to grab this one.”

[Spellblade Starting Kit]

A Bag of Lesser Inventory, crafted by members of the Elysium Guild.

These kits contain:

A dagger

Basic Leather Armor

A Map

A Scroll of Message

A Scroll of [Shock]

These packs would be worth a sizeable amount of gold, but Elysium hands them out for free to new Chosen in the town of Alfam. They’re much beloved by Chosen and Natives alike!

“Wait, a guild is responsible for this?” Ether asked in astonishment. “I would’ve thought these were handled by npc’s, if not just given out when you first spawn in!”

“Npc’s do make those,” Perseus responded lazily as he turned towards the town. “The whole town is almost exclusively npc’s - or Natives, if you wanna use the official term - but everyone in town is part of Elysium.”

“Npc’s can be in guilds?”

Perseus nodded. “That’s the secret behind Elysium’s crazy high member count. They’re the second largest guild in the game, but a good 80% of ‘em are Natives. Not that you should count them out just because of that, though - the Chosen on their side are pretty damn strong. But hey, are you here for a guild history lesson, or are you here to fight?!”

The smug, skinny man gestured towards a large wooden pen, where a wild boar was charging a young woman. She was short - barely more than 5 feet tall - and armed only with what looked like a carving knife, but she stood her ground as the wild beast shot towards her, squealing in rage.

“Not to sound like a broken record but what the hell?” Ether hissed to his pale companion. He kept his eyes locked on the battle in front of him as he spoke, watching as the girl leapt over the menacing beast, kicking off its back and twisting mid air to land facing it.

“So glad you asked, my young apprentice -”

“I ordered my exposition with the smug bullshit on the side, thank you very much.”

“Fiiiiine,” Perseus drawled with a pout. “If you insist on ruining my fun-”

“I do.”

He was only half listening, his attention held by the battle. Identify told him the girl was level 1, like him. How did she manage to maneuver around the boar so easily? The young woman rolled out of the way of yet another wild charge, this time slashing as she did. She seemed to be attacking only when she dodged it, striking at the safest possible moment. It didn’t sound like the best strategy to him, but then, it seemed to be working, so what did he know?

Perseus scowled at his oldest friends. “Why are we even friends?” he complained petulantly.

“Lack of options,” Ether said smugly, tearing his eyes off the battle just long enough to lock eyes with the leather-clad human beanpole. “Nobody else would put up with you.”

[Perseus] has smacked the shit outta you for 1 blunt damage

After smacking Ether on the back of the head, the beta tester continued. “This is how Elysium trains new Chosen. They show you how to hold a weapon, drill you a bit to make sure you know which end is the pointy one, and teach you a single skill or spell. After that…”

Perseus gestured towards the nervous looking girl as she left yet another slice along the side of the raging beast. The boar squealed in pain at its latest wound even as the young woman raised her empty left hand. “[Flash Fry]!” The girl called out, closing her hand to form a tight fist as she did. A ring of fire suddenly appeared around her target, before quickly shifting to form a dome that enveloped it completely. The squeals from within the dome grew more frantic for a moment… then suddenly stopped. The dome flared one last time, disappearing with a flash of light and heat, and leaving only a thoroughly roasted boar behind. The small crowd surrounding the pen clapped as the girl rose to her feet, but she stumbled almost immediately, nearly falling. Two of the cheering onlookers leapt over the wooden fence and picked her up, carrying her out of the makeshift arena.

“Welcome to Lazuros,” Perseus said to his awestruck best friend.

Ether could only nod by way of response.