“Urubriel? You want to start in the Southern Elflands?” Chris asked Yaz while keeping her eyes forward.

She felt a bead of sweat accumulate at the base of her neck before it slid, haltingly, down her spine. The heat of the sun was becoming more and more noticeable with each passing second. Her skin was so sensitive it felt every single one of the sun’s rays individually. It felt like her senses were going into overdrive, more active than she had ever experienced them. Chris felt another pinch of a budding headache as she was overwhelmed by the feeling of a non-existent humid morning wind and the smell of drying dew on pine in the morning.

Ignoring as best she could, she tried to focus on Yaz’s high-pitched voice. “I figured it would let me skip the early grinding stages since I already know where all the good quests are, the NPCs I need to be talking to, the best hunting areas—”

“Could be.” Chris cut her off, already slight aggravated due to the excessive amounts of sensory data being crammed into her brain because of the b-link. She laced the annoyance into her voice in an attempt make her speech even more authentic. “But as far as I know, it’s already a saturated starting location. If you really want to get the best rewards, you need to start somewhere you won’t have to compete for the beginner mobs…” Chris said.

She had come across some gamer slang dictionary the night before and now counted her blessings, hoping the few words she remembered, like mob, would be enough to carry her through the farce. Knowing, by virtue of Doris, that her poker face didn’t fool anyone, she used the excuse of the single file to keep her eyes forward as they slowly followed the guard down the hall.

Chris waited, her breath catching in her throat, to see if the girl would go for the carefully laid out bait. As two seconds stretched into three and four, she couldn’t help but think that she might have said something that gave her away. Going through the words she had chosen in her mind, all she could figure was that she must have used the word ‘mob’ wrong.

‘And I don’t get it. Mob is just a creature in the game that you kill for… experience and... potential items that they may drop… right!? I mean…’

“Well, what is a good starting place, then?” Yaz said, relieving Chris’s mental freak out. “The only places I can think of that people don’t go to are the High Plains and Western Orc Marshes. And you can’t mean for—”

“I can.” Chris said while turning around to give Yaz her rendition of a self-assured smirk.

“You can’t be serious!” Yaz said, eyes wide. “You have to be an Orc to survive those Marshes at low-levels. And the High Plains are—”

“Virtually unexplored.” Chris said as if she couldn’t wait to explore it herself.

“And with good reason!” Yaz said, completely ignoring the tone of voice Chris had used. “It’s suicide to start there. All you are going to do is work yourself into a leveling dead end. I had a friend who tried starting in Durrenheim. There are no quests to speak of and she like… died of terminal dehydration within a week. As far as I know it hasn’t rained there in like… four months. And for those that don’t die from the get-go, I’ve heard it pretty much goes downhill from the moment you start.”

Chris gave her a confident smile before asking in a lecturing tone, “And when was the last time Era placed an insurmountable obstacle in the game?” Without waiting for an answer she turned her attention back to the guard who was opening what looked to be like the last door in their path. Chris knew she was bluffing way past her means, having absolutely no clue about the internal machinations of the game, but what she had meant was for the most part true.

The night before she had taken Tiny’s advice, trying to prepare for Era as much as she could in advance. Other than the obvious character creation, it had struck her how important starting location seemed for success, particularly initial success. After looking at stories from some of the top players, she had come to the conclusion that they triumphed because they stood out in some way or another. She had also noticed that most of those players started out in initially unfavorable or unpopular areas. Chris had concluded that they had not only diminished the competition, but also given themselves a larger playing field.

Knowing that she had to become a good player as quickly as possible, she had decided to pursue the same route. Unfortunately, her search for the unpopular starting areas had yielded the exact locations Yaz had just mentioned. The way the girl offhandedly knew information that had taken Chris quite some time to discover went a long way in showing how much catching up she had in front of her. After researching both the Western Orc Marshes and the High Plains, Chris knew that the three beginning locations at the Marshes were completely out of the question.

The majority of players that tried to play in the Marshes as anything other than an Orc died within the first twenty four hours because of the racial conflict that plagued the region. This had made the entire area increasingly unpopular over the four months since it had been discovered. At first everyone wanted to have a go at the new race, but it had soon revealed itself that the Orcs had a ridiculously slow start. Even slower than the Dragonir race, which only picked up after level fifty or so.

Although it had paid off for most of the players that worked through the slow Orc start, Chris knew it wasn’t the race for her. She didn’t have four months or twenty in-game months to prove she could be a good player. She needed to hit the ground running, making the High Plains her only starting choice. It was a very unpopular area because of it’s high altitude, harsh climate and increasing density of Underworld mobs. A horrible mix for a starting location, but it would have to do.

Chris looked back at Yaz, knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep the charade up in game. So far she seemed to have bought the act, but as soon as Yaz saw her in action, or lack thereof, she would find out the truth. In fact, she needed to cut her conversation with the girl as short as possible to minimize the chances of a slip-up. Which was why Chris was glad, albeit a little concerned, when Yaz took a while to reply.

“Wow. I guess you are right.” She said when hey were about to enter the [VR REHABILITATION AREA]. “I had never really taken the time to consider that.” Yaz added with a hint of amazement.

Chris had worked out that, when a major event is going on in the game like a prolonged drought or a racial conflict, it was the system creating opportunities for the players to become involved in a quest. It seemed pretty straightforward to her, but she was glad it made her seem experienced since it drastically increased the chances of her plan.

Watching the guard carefully, Chris tried to gauge how much further they had to walk before they reached their destination, wondering how much time she could sacrifice before having to go on the offensive herself.

“Alright, so… Do you want to maybe team up?” Yaz said, walking straight into her trap. Chris couldn’t help the little victorious smile that graced her lips. Thankfully, her increasingly beloved single-file formation kept Yaz from seeing any of it.

“I don’t know…” Chris said with an air of reluctance.

“I am sure we could help each other out and everything. Do you already know where you want to start?” Yaz added quickly, visibly feeling pressured for time, as the guard finally stopped in front of a door labeled [CAPSULE BAY 51].

“I do… But I am not sure it is the best idea. I mean, don’t they take convict association in-game into account in their psych evaluations or something?” Chris said casually, pretending that the guard’s actions in securing the first convict in line weren’t rushing her at all.

“I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Plus, over breakfast I heard it’s different in this prison. Apparently, if you can prove you’re a good player nothing else matters and they let you play all day. You also get all sorts of benefits.” Yaz said, her words practically rolling over each other as she anxiously watched the guard secure two more prisoners.

Chris made a show of watching the guard place the locks into place after the next prisoner entered one of the vertical capsules arranged in a neat row. The room looked like a cryogenic storage unit. There were ten capsules arranged in neat intervals along the narrow but long room. Each capsule was cylindrical in shape and a meter in diameter, while being over two meters tall.

Chris thought the height was a bit of an exaggeration since humans rarely came in that size. She knew she was on the very short side of humanity, but it also seldomly stretched over two meters. A part of her mind went back to the man she had met the day she had been arrested. Although she couldn’t recall exactly what he looked like exactly, she remembered he had been very tall.

‘So maybe this height exaggeration does make sense after all… But still… It’s gonna make me feel like a pea inside a coke can.’

A restless arm movement brought Chris’s attention back to Yaz as the guard secured another prisoner.

“Oh. Really?” Chris asked, wondering if perhaps the girl had already managed to get some information on their new warden.

“Yea. I heard he let some girl buy off about a third of her sentence with game income.” She said impatiently as yet another prisoner was locked up.

Chris wanted to ask more, and castigated herself for running out of time, but figured she would be able to get the information from Yaz at some later point. It wasn’t like either of them were going anywhere anytime soon.

‘Not that I know how long she is in for… Or what for… But I don’t need or want to know.’

There was only one prisoner left between Chris and the guard, so she turned to Yaz and spoke in a commanding no-nonsense manner.

“Alright. Let’s team up. But we start in different places. You go Schliessheim and I’ll go Durrenheim. That way we won’t get in each other’s way in the initial stages of leveling. You know how bad it is when people team up in the beginning right?” Chris asked, not knowing at all and hoping Yaz didn’t either but took her word for it. “It takes what? About two-three weeks between the two? That should give us plenty of time to get through the initial grinding without getting in each other’s way.”

Chris’s words accelerated as she watched the guard put the last lock in place before she turned to her.

“We can talk particulars about joining up later.” She finished, glad she had been able to get all the words out in time, but even more glad it didn’t give her enough time to reply to Yaz’s following question.

“Alright. Schliessheim. What about character? Do you want me to go in any particular direction with race? Clan? God? What about education tree?”

Chris had no idea. She hadn’t come to a final decision about her own character, much less about what kind of character would go well with it. If she said anything and it was a horrible fit with her character she would either be found out as a fraud or thought of as an idiot, so she happily remained silent as the guard approached her. Pretending she kept her silence because of her.

The taller woman she hadn’t had time to analyze until that moment took her firmly by the arm, demonstrating quite clearly how she felt about convicts, to capsule 51-9. She then pressed a button Chris did not see that opened a door that spanned from the very top to the very bottom of the generic black capsule that mirrored its brothers and sisters in every way.

For a second the idea of being buried alive in a mass grave entered her head. She was hundreds of meters below earth and there was nothing on the outside of the capsule that even suggested a human was inside. The gleaming black metal left no means of identifying the person inside. With a consciously controlled expression of nonchalance she walked up to the capsule and then turned so she could reverse into it like she had seen all the other convicts do.

Seeing that Yaz was still watching her, waiting for some kind of response, she smiled brightly, shrugged and said, “Up to you.”

Relief flashed across her face before she smiled in return. The guard on the other hand, had no smiles left for Chris when she closed the capsule door in her face.

Chris was suddenly engulfed by complete darkness as she heard the clanking of the guard managing the lock. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for her before, but she was about to start freaking out when she felt multiple jets of cool air begin to blow on her face and body. They were imminently followed by a slight Vrrring sound that grew accompanied by the emergence of bluish white lights.

For a second it was a comfort not to be in total blackness anymore, but this sentiment soon passed as the light became a blinding, slightly painful glare. Chris immediately closed her eyes tightly, trying to keep the light at bay, but this didn’t help at all as it continued to grow in intensity until she heard a slight pop and was disconnected from her physical body.