“So.” Eli sat on his couch across from Derrick and Selena, the living room table between them with a paper and pen set out in front of each of them.

“You’re really going to give me your old Simbox?” Derrick asked excitedly.

“Of course, once the new ones arrive. He said they’d be here in two days or so.”

“It’s perfect, exactly when exams end!” Derrick cheered.

“That means you’ve got two days to get Spoody ready!” Jillian called from the kitchen, in the process of making a plate of snacks for them.

“Guys, focus. This is serious.” Eli snapped back, and they all went silent, concentrating on their papers.

“We could… try like, a theme. RedArcher, BlackAssassin, BlueHealer?”

“That’s probably the worst naming idea I’ve ever heard.” Eli groaned at Derrick.

“Oh that’s rich, coming from the guy who just took the S of his last name.”

“What’s wrong with Winter?”

“It’s a season, not a name.”

“What about you, Selena, Silentwire is a cool name, you can think of some for us right?”

“Uhm… I’m really bad at names, I just do anagrams of stu-” She started to reply, but immediately threw her hand over her mouth, trying to pull the words back in as her face turned bright red.

“Really? What’s Silentwire an anagram of?” Derrick asked as he started to write the letters down.

“Ah, nothing, that one’s not an anagram.” She quickly replied, but it was too late, Derrick had figured it out. She hung her head in absolute embarrassment. “I was, I was… in a hurry…” Both Derrick and Eli had very different reactions. Derrick looked slightly creeped out, but Eli, uninterested in her name, looked as though a lightbulb flicked on in his head.

“That’s genius. I’ll be Renwit.” Eli wrote it down on the paper proudly. Derrick quickly hit him over the head with his own paper.

“Terrible! Who the heck wants to watch a guy named Renwit? Both of you, stop with the damn anagrams.” Derrick snapped at them.

“Blah, whatever, thinking like this is silly. He said the next time we log in, the customization should be available. You guys should log in so we can meet inside, I’m still worried about Orm.” Eli stood up, frustrated with the name planning.

“O-okay.” Selena stood up and shuffled towards the exit. Derrick followed behind with a skip in his step.

“Two more days and no more Sim Center!” He hummed.

“W-wait, here, I made little celebration snacks.” Jillian stood in the hallway to intercept them. “You have to take one, even if you are leaving.” She held out a tray with small colored cookies, one blue, one red, and one green.

“Don’t touch the blue one, it’s my favorite color.” Eli warned them both, to which his mother looked at him disapprovingly.

“T-thanks.” Selena took the green one, and Derrick thanked her as well. The two waved Eli off and headed outside.

“I’m so proud of you sweetie.” Jillian handed out the blue cookie to Eli and he ate it in a single bite.

“Honestly, I didn’t do anything special. I feel like we scammed that guy.” Eli replied with guilt.

“Well, either way, it seems you can just play relaxed now with your friends, without worrying about you-know-what, and making money, and all that stuff.” She smiled.

“Oh I’m still gonna make money. Next goal, make enough for you to retire early, so you can make me these cookies all day.” Eli replied as he headed up the stairs.

“That’s not retirement, I’m not going to be your cookie slave no matter how much you make.” She shouted back. “If you pick a weird name, I’m pretending I don’t know you.” The last words Eli heard before sitting in the Simbox and closing it.

When Eli entered the simulation, unlike usual where he was put straight into the game world, instead he had a message on his screen.

Request for Character Re-Customization has been accepted for one time use. Any changes made will be permanent once you re-enter the game.

Changing starting islands or class is not possible. In the event of a racial change, you will be forced back to the nearest respawn point.

[ACCEPT]

After hitting accept he was at the character customization screen once more, his avatar hovered in front of him with all of its equipment on. It felt weirdly like looking in a mirror, but not quite himself.

The first thing he changed was easy, he flicked his hair color over to blonde. Then he started tweaking the length to make it a bit longer and spikier. He spent more time on it then he’d ever admit, and still wasn’t happy with the results, but eventually he found a presets menu and scanned through the options until he found a short stylized version of his usual hair.

Next, he made himself slightly taller, then shorter, then taller again, before settling back to his actual height - he decided it’d be too difficult to learn to control a body that wasn’t the same size as his original.

He zoomed in on his face, knowing that he had to change the features somehow or he’d be too easily recognizable. He tweaked his eyes and jawline to try and look more handsome, then shrunk his nose a bit - he didn’t like how big his nose was in real life anyway. Feeling satisfied, he zoomed out and nodded at his masterpiece.

The name box however was still empty, and Eli dreaded looking at it, flashing to let him know it was waiting for input.

“A name for someone at the top. Gotta be interesting, but short and easy to say…” he thought to himself as he tapped his fingers on each other. He started looking around for words on his screen to come up with ideas. Customize, Kalmoore, Human, Race, Style, for some reason the letter R stood out to him and he typed it in first. He resisted the urge to fill in the rest as Renwit though.

Rain, Run, Ron, Rit, Rust, Ryne. He typed them all in, slowly getting more and more frustrated, until suddenly the Simbox communicator opened from his mother.

“Having trouble with a name still?” She said as she watched him from the observation screen.

“Y-yeah.” He sighed back.

“When it comes to online names, the simplest are the easiest to remember. Winter wasn’t bad, try something similar, but not too obvious. At least, that’s what I would do.” She replied before closing the communication.

Eli erased the R and typed in Summer first, then erased it and typed in Priest, then Healer. Then he considered Eirene and quickly opened the game manual through the main menu in the character creation screen.

The Goddess Eirene is the goddess of peace, protection, and innocence. Her symbol is the golden star, Aegis, which shines in the sky all year round, and is said to be visible even on the darkest, stormiest of nights. It is meant to represent peace and protection to all life, in spite of the misdeeds of the few creatures led astray by the dark forces of the world.

“If I think about this too long, I’ll be stuck here all day.” He quickly entered Aegis into the name field, and hit accept multiple times until finally he was back into the gameworld, standing in the forest clearing just as he had left the day prior.

Glancing around, Aegis couldn’t find his party members, and his party interface had been cleared. It was sunny now, quiet save for the sound of the wind brushing through the trees and birds chirping about. He decided to take the time to open his menu and navigate to the livestreaming menu, and he had an option to begin live streaming and recording his gameplay, or saving the last 24 hours of footage from his character.

The on button was greyed out, next to it was written text about a pending application being processed for the Fanta-see Network, so he couldn’t use it, but was rather impressed how fast things were going. His attention was taken out of the menu by the sound of footsteps approaching, several sets coming towards him from the north. He felt the urge to try and hide, but he remembered that he wasn’t Winter anymore, and resisted it.

Out of the dense forest he eventually spotted the source of sound, a group of 7 players were approaching, all of them below level 10 - some of them Aegis recognized as members of the raiding party from the day previous. He did a quick calculation in his head and figured the raid had started just over 3 days ago, and curiosity got the better of him.

“Hey, excuse me, are you guys coming from the Darxon hideout?” Aegis asked them.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t go if I were you, good way to get locked out of the game for 6 hours.” The leading player replied.

“What happened?”

“There’s some big abyssal dog creature roaming around outside the hideout. Wiped the floor with us. I think the raid leader is going to keep trying, he returned to the keep already after his 3rd death, but most of the other players already gave up. We’re waiting for a high level player to hopefully come and help.”

“So the people in Orm are still in trouble, poisoned?”

“Yep. If you got one of the priest quests, I suggest you skip it for now. Guys at Averon are insane for putting something like that in a low level area.” He mumbled to himself as the group continued to walk beyond Aegis. He started to become restless, knowing he had to wait for his companions but eager to get to the hideout to see what was going on - he had a bad feeling about the villagers' wellbeing back in Orm.

Not wanting to idle about, he started making his way around the clearing using his woodcutting axe and herbalism skills to gather more resources for crafting until finally another player appeared behind him. [Lina - Level 11]. She glanced about for a moment before she spotted Aegis and waved awkwardly.

“Uhm… Eli?” She asked.

“Selena?” He replied, she nodded.

“You changed a lot!” She looked him up and down.

“You just changed your hair color to blue.”

“Y-yeah… but I don’t think anyone will know who I am anyway so it's okay.” She shrugged. “We have to wait for Derrick.”

“Yup. I’m just chopping.” He replied.

“Okay.” She sat cross legged on a rock and wiggled her toes, watching Aegis patiently. They didn’t need to wait long before the final character appeared within the clearing around them. [Darkshot - Level 9]. He had short black spiky hair, dark brown eyes, and an ungodly amount of tattoos and scars all over his face.

“Please don’t tell me you are Derrick.” Aegis rolled his eyes.

“I have evolved beyond Derrick, I am an absolute badass.”

“You look like you got run over by a streetsweeper.” Aegis replied.

“What are you talking about? Scars and tattoos are badass. I look like an experienced war veteran, shooting arrows from the darkness - Darkshot.”

“Aegis though? Really?”

“It’s the name of Eirene’s star.” Aegis replied proudly.

“It’s also a word in the english language, like Winter.”

“Whatever, I couldn’t think of something better. It’s good enough.” He huffed back.

“Well, then…” Derrick suddenly spoke in a narrator-type voice. “Are you going live yet?”

“Nope, still pending.”

“Okay good, I have time to practice my entrance.” Darkshot replied, he began doing dramatic turns and whispering random phrases to himself akin to something you’d find in a comic book. ‘Looking for me?’ ‘Don’t worry, I’m here now.’. Aegis ignored it and sent him and Lina a party invite.

“Aegis, Lina, and Darkshot. I guess it’s not bad.” Aegis shrugged. “I’ve got a quest I was working on before Keldan interrupted the other day… but I’ve heard the raiding party that went ahead of me to the hideout got wiped out. You guys okay with helping me out?”

“Mhm. I’m all done with my quests for a while.” Lina smiled as she hopped to her feet.

“Of course, we’re your armed escort right?! But I gotta ask, can you really not attack at all?”

“Nope, 0 damage from me, I’ll be the tank and the healer.”

“Roger.” Darkshot replied. “I’ve been waiting for this ever since you said you’d play. Onward, to our first dungeon crawl!” He cheered like a giddy school girl.