Chapter 9

In Reel Life

After logging out I once again visited the bathroom and made some dinner, before checking online for what people had been saying about Age Of Adventure. As I ate my burritos at my computer I scrolled through post after post complaining about the pain settings, or lack of them, and the fact you didn’t instantly learn skills. I chuckled, the unofficial tagline of the game was ‘Get good or die’ in the future. All those people that loved the idea of acrobatic rogues now had to learn how to actually perform those feats, sure the stats would help them but there would be a lot of people falling on their asses and then deciding to be warriors because their normal play style was too difficult. I know tons of people liked to play rogues but in this game, it was truly one of the harder paths, it relied on skill, skill, and more skill. Pretty much every class-path that was mainly rogue was based on skill. Archers, thieves, assassins, bards, they all needed you to learn a lot of skills to be effective. The only harder path was that of the mage since you had to up your Int stat to even be able to grasp the intricacies of most magic, mages are the career academic’s dream, and most people’s nightmare. The number of books you have to study and the mind-twisting equations of energy mechanics you have to learn, well pure mage is not for the faint of heart that’s for sure. Originally, I picked cultist for a reason, okay a couple of reasons, I was in a dark place back then and wanted to spread my feelings to the world, but the more practical reason was that the low and mid-level magics were much easier to learn, there is a significant aspect of emotion and willpower in most of the cultist paths but unless you venture into rituals then the math is at least easier.

More people were talking about the cool quests and classes, or even the crafting system that required actual crafting. Praise for the realism of the game was everywhere and MythArc had announced its Highlight Reel to be released on the morning of the fourth day. I wondered how Katenip and EpicDave would react to being famous, that would be funny. I set up a streaming page in advance and sent an email to my boss that I was quitting. It was better to get more game time in and free up the rest of my time, I had enough savings to last a couple of months or so, and by that time I should have streaming income.

I saw people asking for advice and tips on classes, and the basics of a wiki were already set up. I spent a bit of time correcting the info that had been posted before going to bed. I had another two days of training to do tomorrow.

I spawned into the druid forest right next to a girl playing with a tiny owl, my presence scared the owl and it flew up to hide in her hair. “Sorry about that, I logged out here last night, have a good day miss.” I went on my way and found a pond to commune with. It took a while to establish a connection to water but I managed it, I then made a campfire and tried to talk to the flames. I had thought this would be the easiest blessing to get, but it turned out to be the hardest, I formed the connection faster than the others but actually understanding the flame was hard. Fire burns things, but that level of understanding wasn’t enough. I needed to learn from the fire how it burned to make room for new life before I could gain its blessing.

With the four basic elements covered I figured it was time to delve deeper into the druid versions of elemental magic, something very different from the mage versions. With mages, you might get a rockblast, stone armor, or entomb spell, for druids you get things like strength of the earth, stoneskin, and hardening. Druid magic focuses more on the properties of a subject while mage magic tends towards outward expressions of magic, there are plenty of exceptions but that is the general trend.

When I booked some time with an earth trainer I left a note for Caelus about the vamp lab, I figured he would want to know. The old geezer might have been around when they were too, maybe he was even the one that buried them. Either way, the threat was dealt with, so I didn’t really care anymore.

I picked up the basics from the earth teacher pretty quickly, leaning on my past magical knowledge really helped, even though this wasn’t my field of expertise. My real field of expertise was a good bit more gruesome, I once intervened in a battle between two small armies and ripped the bones out of a thousand men with one spell. It stopped the battle, but both sides decided to attack me, so I had to use those bones to beat the crap out of them.

I took a break from training at lunch to wander around the city, reacquaint myself with the various locations, check on the noobs, that sort of thing. In the graveyard I found an old man whacking skeletons with a stick by the name of IcyDeadPeople. Oh shit, I think he was the first to die during the merge.

A lot of things changed after the merge, one of them being the addition of a Memorial Wall to the main cathedral of any large city. When players died it listed the name and class along with the cause of death. At first, most people checked it often to make sure no one they knew died, after a few years though we almost never looked at it, it was too painful. This guy had the distinction of being the first name on the list.

I restrained the skeleton that was attacking him and asked what was wrong. In the voice of a teenager he told me he was trying to get the undead to follow commands so he could be a necromancer……trying to train undead like dogs, that was one of the stupidest things I had heard of in a long time. The voice gave away the fact that he was a kid, I wonder why he didn’t change that setting when he made an old man character that looked to be in his 70s. Yeah, I had to save him from this stupidity, I gave him some tips on using mana and dark magic and gave him a gold to get some fucking lessons on real necromancy. It’s a powerful path but it starts out weak, I can totally see how he died first. Necromancy can go really wrong if you don’t know what you are doing, and this kid didn’t seem like he would have learned much by the time of the merge.

After sending him on his way I looked in on the warriors, the training yards were full of people using all sorts of weapons. I saw WonderJim sparing using that double-headed spear of his, he must have been training pretty much this entire time since he didn’t suck. I bought a Willstone from the guild and went on my way, the stone was a fairly decent training aid for honing Will and building KI in the early levels.

Checking in with the mages and nabbing a dozen intro-level magic books on various subjects was pretty quick. I didn’t really need to take lessons in mage magic, the books should be enough for me to figure things out. I did make sure to pick up a book on barrier magics, it might be useful for Kate.

I made my way into the plaza to eat my lunch, and people watch. It was amusing seeing the player names at the start of the game, during the merge most people had no idea what was happening and a lot of them put their real names in when prompted. This wasn’t a bad idea or anything, but it did skew the ratio of entertaining gamer handles for years to come. It only switched back when many of the regular people died.

Looking around at the people milling around, talking, or putting on performances I got to see sights of peace and laughter that were all too rare in my final years. I saw a couple holding hands on a bench named ‘Turtle’ and ‘Dove’, I saw a bard singing called ‘IdlePoppy’, and I saw a couple of people that might just be the beginning of The Guild of Many Hats ‘Pointyhatman’ and ‘Sombrero’. Two guys in robes were haggling over a mana stone, ‘CheeseLove’ and ‘AshOyster’. No one I actually recognized, but it was fun to see all the strange names in a time of happiness all the same. Well, no rest for the wicked and all that. Better get back to shoring up my basics, I tipped the performers and walked back to the Flower District to stock up on some potions and an alchemy text or two. Just a day and a half of game time before the Reel hits and the game takes the world by storm.

I spent the rest of the day reading various books in the druid grove, reviewing basic combat runes, and dabbling in nature magic. I met with Kate and Dave for breakfast the next day and gave some of the books to Kate, after brushing off her thanks I gave Dave the Willstone and told him how to use it. The rest of the morning I spent building up a foundation in a handful of druid practices. It was weird being at the level of a novice but it would pay off in the end, probably.

The last part of the day I spent mostly in the graveyard dungeon, testing out different magics on zombies in the first and second room. I never went further since I was just training. Dungeons had the nice feature of resetting every time you left, well it was nice if you could manage the entire dungeon or just wanted stuff from the beginning of it. In most cases it was frustrating and a pain in the ass. They would also repopulate if you stayed in them too long…..okay dungeons were a fucking nuisance but this happened to work out for my purposes.

Logging out at the end of the real day once again led me to my computer searching the forums. I found that MythArc had put out an announcement about NPCs and the fact that they don’t come back when killed. Shit, I forgot about that entirely…I could have sent out a post about that day one, who knows how many lives that would have saved. I forgot that a lot of gamers right now are assholes, it’s not real so they like to play the villain or the murderer or something. Most of those types either shape up or die once the merge happens and their lives are actually on the line. Well, I knew I wasn’t going to get everything right, I just have to move past this and do better. Like not forgetting about the fucking murderers.

I decided to be a bit more proactive, I made an anonymous account and posted under the name Oracle. I told people that the game was really another world and that it was real. I advised them to spread as much knowledge about it as they could in case of invasion so we would be prepared. That seemed to be a decent blend of crackpot conspiracy and fact, enough it might catch attention at least. All I could do was put it out there and see what happened, I stuck the post in at least a dozen different sites and forums.

I did some minor work on my info packet and set it to release under the name ‘Lazarus’ an hour after the Highlight Reel aired. That should be enough time for the interest to build and for people to go seeking more information, the more people that were interested and passed on the packet the better.

I got to bed earlier than usual, I was both terrified and excited about the Reel, it would be the first opportunity to see events and players from around the world and see if anything had changed. It would also let me see a couple old friends and enemies. I had mixed feelings about that. Only a couple of future powerhouses should be on it, along with some great crafters, but those that made the Reel would set the tone as inspiring figures for at least a year.

Waking early and getting my breakfast I sat in front of my viewscreen in my living room to watch the Reel. MythArc had done some masterful PR on this thing, they managed to get most channels to air the video at the same time, news channels, gardening channels, it didn’t matter. Everyone would soon see a whole new world….. the Age of Adventure would begin.

As the clock hit 9 the screen went black, an anvil started to reveal itself out of the growing harsh light of a forge. A hammer came down upon the glowing bar of steel. Clang. A toned arm pulled a long leather glove on. Clang. Leather boots were laced up. Clang. Straps on a cuirass tightened. Clang. A sword slammed home into its sheath. Sparks hiss. A quiver is tossed over a shoulder and secured. Clang. A coin is tossed to a shopkeeper as a cloak is donned. Clang. A cloaked figure leaves the shop, emerging in a crowded city of white stone. Age of Adventure flashes across the screen in gilded letters. The Reel has begun.

Having set the tone, the video went on to show players in all sorts of situations, a hulking smith named ‘Hammered’ forging a gleaming blade, a beautiful weaver called ‘Spindle’ at a loom making a beautiful tapestry, and a wiry alchemist named ‘AcidTrip’ adding herbs to a bubbling cauldron surrounded by glass equipment. From crafters it moved on to show a field of monks training in tandem practicing katas, then warriors sparring, and mages forming arcane symbols in the air out of light in some sort of classroom. Rogues pickpocketing each other, druids growing trees, and cultists carving ritual circles followed, with a hall full of priests treating wounded with holy light finishing out the display of basic classes.

The next segment was a mix of combat and professions, carpenters, glassblowers, dancers, and scribes were just a few of the professions mixed in between the scenes of players fighting various starting level monsters. It then switched to the part I was looking forward to, the scenes of top players.

It started with a tall man in bright clothing at some sort of party, chatting and relieving nobles of their jewels and gold with a smile as he walked through the crowd. ‘FriendZone’ a thief and conman along with just being an asshole.

The next scene was a man in classic knight armor with glowing green wind whirling around him as he fought a young ogre, he launched pale green wind blades at it as he danced out of its reach, helped along with gusts from his constant gale. “Knightingale” a bit arrogant and overly competitive but an amazing swordsman and fighter, he would go on to acquire the moniker Storm Knight by the time of the merge and be widely acknowledged as the strongest player in the game at the time.

Next up was a cloaked archer standing on a branch high up in a tree. Coming right at him was a flock of Ironbeak Crows, steel beaks and talons gleaming in the evening sun. The archer rapidly shot down the entire flock over 30 seconds, each shot a kill, every arrow hitting the eye of a bird. I smiled, it was my old pal ‘SnowFox’ better known in the future as Deadeye. Best damn archer I have ever seen. I probably wouldn’t meet him again any time soon, he liked to range far from the city and hunt solo. He also admitted many years later that he was the adventurer in the intro of the Reel, we teased him mercilessly for that for years. He died collapsing the Pass of Kol’buran on the remnants of the Frozen One’s army after he ran out of arrows. He held the pass for a week by himself before that though, bought us the time we needed to end the frozen fucker once and for all.

Next, a slip of a girl with jet black hair and a bleached wooden staff stood before a bone studded dire bear. She called forth a dozen tiny balls of light with white feathered wings that swarmed the bear and shot bolts of holy energy at it. The bear couldn’t hit the fast lights and eventually succumbed to the unending barrage. ‘FeatherSky’ a stuck-up princess type that became a powerful summoner, not the best but pretty good. She always got on my nerves but her angelic summons were useful; she never answered the question of if they were actual angels or just celestial spirits of some sort.

The following scene was gruesome, it showed a man in a white cloak slaughtering a bunch of civilians in an alley, he then took out a paint brush and used their blood to paint a portrait of a beautiful woman on the wall. ‘Studio’ sort of a tragic story that one, he was an art gallery owner that played the game to destress and let out his artistic side, he didn’t realize the ‘npc’s wouldn’t respawn and took out his frustrations on them. When he found out he stopped but that first time made it onto the Reel and marked him forever in most people’s eyes as a psychopath. To be fair he did have a mental breakdown after the merge and he learned these were real people, that broke the guy, he became an artist of blood that sought out evil wherever he could and destroyed it, constantly trying to make up for his crimes.

The next one was worse, a bare-chested man wielding twin morningstars and a skull mask obliterated a small trading caravan. His spiked weapons tore the people apart and he laughed as the blood fountained around him. This was a true monster. ‘Meatpaste’ was his name and he was an infamous murderer until we finally managed to track him down and end him. Sadly, there was nothing I could do about him right now, he could both respawn and was a long distance away from me.

After that scene, it switched to showing a dark forest, where a gentleman with a top hat and cane fought a massive wolf. He sent blades of shadow from the ground and tripped the wolf with its own shadow, making pithy comments the entire time. ‘TopHatman’ the excessively classy future leader of the Guild of Many Hats. Not a bad guy but could grate on the nerves after a while.

Shifting to a dimly lit vault of treasure a figure in black cloth and a silver mask could be seen looting the place. They left the room bare of all save stone and mage lights before melting into the shadows and disappearing. ‘Enigma’ the best fucking rogue in the game hands down, when I returned no one had been able to actually see them for 5 years, even when Enigma was standing right in front of them. The popular theory was that they unlocked some odd extra stat and a class to go with it. Hell, we never even figured out Enigma’s gender. Nice enough person the couple times I worked with them, and a damn fine assassin. I’m fairly certain they had so many backstab damage multipliers that they might have even been able to kill me in one hit if it landed. I chuckled remembering one time I tossed Enigma at a Behemoth Boss, I could barely tell I was holding anything and aiming was a bitch, but the thing just toppled over afterward and a minute later I heard Enigma tell me ‘nice throw’. Good times.

The next scene was a frozen mountaintop where a burly short guy was kicking the ass of a creature of animated rock and bone with his bare fists. Some sort of rock fiend was my guess, getting a look at the guy’s name gave me a shock. ‘FistOfSanta’ should not be on this Reel… at all… he took over six months to decide on the monk path last time from what he told me. Watching him fight I couldn’t deny this was Santa though, the moves were too clean for a new player, the mana boosts timed perfectly, and the control over ice energy impeccable as his final hit straight up flash froze the monster and shattered it to pieces. What’s more, he looked at his fists with a disappointed frown before it cut to the next scene. Holy fucking hell, I wasn’t alone… Santa came back in time too. Fuck, I had no way to contact him at all except dropping a post online and hoping he saw it and responded. It seems unlike me he started to walk the same path that he had before, possibly with an upgrade or two. FistOfSanta was a monk of extreme power, and a friend through some tough times, I hadn’t seen him in a year since he went to train himself or something. Maybe he knows what the hell happened to send us back.

‘Bugsaw’ was the next featured player. A buff man of average size wearing a breastplate, legplates, and a helmet. Covering large parts of his body as he brawled with a forest troll were vines, vines with wicked gleaming thorns that were moving along his body at an astounding speed. The fast-moving thorns turned the man into a human chainsaw, every punch he threw dug massive chunks of flesh out of the troll and meeting its punches with his own shredded its hands. He finished the troll by dodging around it and leaping onto its back, he then just sort of sunk into it as bloody chunks flew. Wow, haven’t seen Bugsy in ages, at one point he will be neck and neck with Knightingale for the strongest player spot. Bugsaw is a serious man and very competitive about fighting, but a good guy at heart. Once he starts adding actual bug elements to his class, he becomes a nightmare to fight. Come to think of it I tossed him at a small army of gibberlings once, I guess I have tossed more of my old friends than I thought.

The scene of a blood and vine covered man switched to showing a whirlwind of bones fighting a young minotaur on a rocky plain. While the player’s appearance couldn’t be made out his player tag was visible, ‘BoneZord’. The whirlwind sent a flurry of skulls screaming at the face of the beast and then solidified into a giant maw, biting its head clean off. Huh, I forgot about that guy, he must have died somewhere since I don’t remember him doing anything important. Which is surprising since that is some serious power for just 5 game days of play and no future knowledge. Maybe an assassin got him or something.

The next location was a lovely forest glade, with autumn leaves on the ground and a small pool of water. Three Bronze Orcs sat around a campfire cooking a pair of humans on spits. Bronze orcs are a variant that has veins of bronze running through their skin, they are much stronger than a normal orc although they are fairly weak compared to other variant types. A woman walked slowly into the clearing, lilac hair and deep purple eyes transformed her already good looks, into a striking and somewhat otherworldly beauty. The orcs got ready to fight and brandished swords and axes, she didn’t care. When she was twenty feet from the orcs they lifted into the air as she pointed her palms at them. Throwing her hands to the sides the limbs of the orcs were ripped off. Clenching her hands, the maimed orcs were crushed like soda cans and then dropped to the floor. The two bodies floated off the fire and a hole dug itself near the pond. The spits removed themselves and the two were carefully laid down in the hole before it filled itself in. The last moment of the scene was an arm floating in the water. This was ‘VioletOne’, one of the most powerful telekinetics in the world. While she was supposed to show up on the Reel she wasn’t supposed to be this good or fight these orcs, she originally fought some plant creature or something. I guess Violet was another time traveler, I wasn’t really sure how to feel about that, on the one hand, it was great there was another powerhouse on the side of humanity, on the other she was my ex…… shit I will have to reach out to her anyway.

Before I could dwell too much on the feelings she brought up, the scene changed to a young blond woman of about 26 in a leather apron with a toolbelt and a large wrench, walking through a peaceful forest. She finds a strange flower shaped like a champagne flute filled with dew, the flower has blue and pink petals and golden veins on a silver stem. She kneels and brings her soot-streaked face towards the flower and drinks the dew. Her body erupts in gold and silver light as she shrinks along with all that she is wearing and grows pale fairy wings. This is ‘TinkerBella’ the world’s first race change. The first human Pixie. She was also a kick-ass magitech engineer but that wasn’t what made her famous.

The final scene was of a group of three, fighting a giant kobold and a blood phantom. The fight was the highlight of the Reel and it showed the entire thing from start to finish. I smiled, here we go, the ticket to the big leagues. To fame and fortune, for as long as it may last. The ticket to getting my info packet spread far and wide. After Kate’s explosive finisher the words “Welcome to the Age of Adventure, choose your path, and your destiny. A new Age has begun…..” covered the screen. The rest of the image faded but the words stayed for a few more moments, golden letters on a black field, beckoning all to join a world of wonder. They weren’t wrong, a new age had begun, just not the one they were hoping for.