I woke up to the familiar scene of tubes and wiring, and hastily disengaged myself from the immersion’s rig electrodes. Snakingly, I rose up from the embracing pod chamber and stumbled to the hardwood floor. I walked into the kitchen, filled myself a glass of water and drank deeply, nourishing my dehydrated body.

Now that I was back in the calm familiar surroundings of my house, my thoughts began racing, replaying the incident in my mind over again, causing my anger to flare back up and dark thoughts of vengeance to surge through my mind.

***

The glass of water I drank had a small calming effect on me. I went outside to the small porch of my apartment and took a few deep breaths of the cool pleasant breeze of the night’s air. I watched the people walking by in the street, while my thoughts continued racing in my head.

What would I do now?! Was the most immediate question. I’ve become dependent on the game that much was clear. For me, it was more than just a fun way to pass the time; it was my home, my primary income source, where I had many friends…

Friends! I thought in bitterness. My former guild members were no friends of mine! None of them came through or tried to help me when I needed it the most.

Vatras... that bastard and his friends found an effective way to perform a coupe. The transformation had many effects other than simply turning me into a goblin physically.

I was actually turned into an unplayable race, a Monster Race which was incompatible with the many rules governing players. Monster Race characters couldn’t be the head of a player's guild, so I was kicked out. My level was reset, I lost all of my abilities, all of my player's contacts, even my character name. Thought what hurt the most was losing all my skills and by association, their Masteries. Without them, I didn’t have any viable way of earning enough gold to get by anymore...

The epic curse they had used on me, has only been performed on players a handful of times in the past, and in each case, the cursed players, founding their new character utterly unplayable, preferred to delete their characters and start anew, which was exactly what Vatras was expecting of me to do.

Deleting a character meant, of course, losing everything the character possessed, which was bad enough. But in my case, it was worse.

I had Mastery title in several popular spells, and in a few other less popular ones. Though I lost the skills themselves, The Masteries were still tied to me, as the first person who discovered those skills. No one else could have gained the Mastery as long as I held it. Deleting my character had much greater repercussions.

Deleting the character would effectively free up those Masteries, and they will automatically be assigned to the next player in line who acquired them. Which, in my case, was that bastard, Vatras. He and his two buddies were my first pupils, they each knew all my spells, and would probably be getting at least one or two Masteries each.

I’ll be a dead man for real before I give them this satisfaction! I thought furiously. I will not delete my ugly, miserable new goblin character like they hoped I would! Somehow, I’ll find a way to play him and make him powerful. I will make them rue the moment they decided to betray me! I will have my revenge!

Those childish, vindictive and unrealistic thoughts served their purpose, as I finally managed to calm down. I chuckled at the mental image of a goblin, holding down a powerful player on his knees and spanking him in public. It was a near impossible undertaking, but I made up my mind to take it regardless.

I quickly grabbed a light snack to refuel my body for another short immersion session and re-entered the capsule. I took another long calming breath, the stress management techniques I learned in my teens really helped here.

Then I logged back into the game.

***

I quickly went through the login sequence and found myself back at the cave I just logged out from.

The cave was empty. The only exit was through a tunnel the other goblins had gone through, so I followed it. I soon found myself at a much larger cavern. It was full of goblins. Goblins warriors, goblins workers, and running between them small goblin children, about 30 individuals in total. A couple of young goblins brawled over the floor a few meters away from me, but no one seemed to care, so I ignored them as well and continued scanning the cave.

Not too far from me, I saw a fat, busty, elderly goblin female stirring a huge cauldron of something that smelled delicious. I approached her, and carefully peeked inside. A lovely stew of what appeared to be potatoes and some dark meat was stirring slowly in the cauldron. I breathed the delicious aroma in and sighed in relief. I half expected to see dead rats and rotten cabbages floating in the stew, but instead, the aromatic liquid seemed genuinely well made. In fact, I’d wager that even a self-respecting elf wouldn’t turn a nose on it. Not that there was much chance for any self-respecting elf to appear inside the cave for any kind of stew-tasting-expedition.

I used Analyze on the female:

Well, she seemed like a relatively high-level goblin, probably had the Cook skill to boot, that would explain the out-of-place delicious smelling stew. As I approached her, a young goblin stood in my way, a quick Analyze showed:

“Hey, you!” Bek snapped at me “Go Away, food not for you, only clan eat Guba’s stew!”

I considered the stupid creature in front of me. On the one hand, I didn’t want to get into any troubles, on the other… goblins were reputed to be warlike creatures, and it seemed like I had to carve a place for myself in their hierarchical structure if I wanted to survive and improve my new character. So, in that case… I flipped my hand which still held the bone dagger, and smashed its hilt into Bek’s temple. He didn’t see it coming, and the blow took him completely by surprise. He crumbled to the floor under my feet, unconscious. I carefully looked around me, a few goblins looked my way, but none of them seemed to be bothered by what I just did”

Nice, seems my assumption was correct, pure brawn played a high significant in the goblin social structure.

Guba also seemed unperturbed by our little skirmish. She was watching me, her fat belly extending far beneath her shirt, and her sagging bosom dropped and lay neatly on top of it. She was extremely ugly. “So, you’ll be the new visitor, eh? A bit scrawny aren’t you? Care for some stew?” She asked in a shrill voice. Her accent almost sounded a bit dwarfish.

I nodded, and she quickly filled a piece of bark plate using a wooden ladle and handed it to me. I carefully tilted the plate to my mouth and my eyes widen in surprise, it was as delicious as it smelled. I look at her, “this stew is amazing, how did you learn to make it”?

She snorted unladylike but seemed flattered. “Been the clan's head cook for over 10 years, fed almost 5 generations myself now, so I learned a few things along the way”. I was confused. To my knowledge, a goblin generation was about two years, if what she said was accurate, that meant that she was the human equivalent of 120 years old! no wonder she’s so saggy!

“Actually,” she continued “You arrived in a good time. I’m almost out of meat, and Tika, my huntress, can barely supply the clan's demand on her own. You seem to be a strapping lad, if you can bring back 10 pieces of raw meat, I’ll reward you one of my special dishes.”

Guba asked you to collect and bring back 10 pieces of meat, as Tika, the huntress can't provide the clan's need on her own.

Current meat in inventory: 0/10

Quest Type: simple, chain

Reward: improved reputation, 100xp, Guba’s special dish>

Sweet! a unique quest from the chieftain, and a chain quest from the cook! That is a pretty good haul for 10 minutes of game time! I thought in satisfaction.

There were five different ranks of quests one could acquire: simple, advanced, rare, unique and epic.

Simple quests were usually of the 'go there, bring that, kill this' variety. For example; deliver a package, kill X wolves, etc. Their reward was usually equally unimpressive; A few coins at most or a level appropriate standard piece of equipment and little XP.

Advanced quests were usually more complex; find a traitor, perform spy duty etc. They offered somewhat better rewards than simple quests.

Rare quests were a step above that, usually something that could affect a large group of people, and impact the surrounding area to some degree.

Unique quests were quests which tied directly to the player so that no other player could get the exact same quest, and their rewards were far better and tailored for the player who completed them.

Epic quest usually involved extremely powerful enemies and bosses, they were the rarest but offered the best rewards in the game.

There were also Secret tiered quests, but they were very rare and hard to acquire.

Chain quest could apply to any of the quests types and meant that the quest had phases, which you had to complete in order. Chain quest improved the rewards as you progressed from phase to phase.

So basically, I was looking at two not overly complex quests with a decent payback upon completion.

But first thing first, I had to take some time and study the character I got stuck with…

I took my meal over to a quiet corner, sat down and opened my character screen, simply by thinking: character sheet

Level: 1 (5%)

Race: Monster Race [Goblin]

Attributes: [1 points available]

Physical 1 Mental 0 Social -1

Skills:

Murphy’s Bitch 1 (10%) (mastery) Analyze 1 (40%)

….>

I read each line carefully and frowned. This character sheet was a bit different than what I was used to. The first thing that popped into my mind was the race, usually, a player saw his main race followed by sub-race, if any, in a bracket. So there can be ‘Elf [High]’ or ‘Dwarf [Deep]’, each subtype was clearly part of a greater unique race. But now, it seems that my main race was considered to be ‘Monster Race’, and ‘Goblin’ was only my sub-race. That strongly hinted that the game mechanics considered all monsters as the same race...

I shrugged. I assumed it would be easier, in many respects, for the game engine to handle. For instance, they can share common language maybe? Or use items with race restriction more easily? Ah well, I couldn’t see that it really affected me right away, so I continued reading.

The attributes were another unusual thing. Usually, a 1st level player only had one available point to assign. But here, I had 1 point already invested in Physical, and -1 at Social… I guessed that was simply a race modifier, it stands to reason that goblins who were a warlike people would have a higher affinity for the Physical attribute, which was somewhat balanced by the -1 given to social. Which was also pretty obvious, as goblin were considered as an ugly and undesired creature.

That was definitely a small advantage. I could, in theory, invest my free point in Physical and effectively be equal to a 2nd level character in terms of brute strength. However, that would be foolish, as a goblin I was small and relatively fragile, no matter how strong I’ll get, larger opponents, which was pretty much everyone else, would always be physically stronger in a 1:1 confrontation. Besides, my real advantage lay in my personal experience with NEO. I knew the game and its rules as the back of my hands (better even, as I didn’t spend much time in the last few years watching my RL hand). I knew how characters were built, how they progress, and what strategy to employ when fighting different kinds of monsters, how to exploit weaknesses and most importantly, how to use magic.

Brute physical strength is nice, but it’s not the way to achieve true power. But even if I’ll never increase my Physical attribute, a single point is always nice; at the very least it gave me a little advantage by increasing my hit points and physical resistance.

Now, for skills… Murphy’s Bitch was a real wacko deal. Guy must have been drinking, or whatever a super intelligent quantum based AI was doing for fun, which was the equivalent of drinking. Still, I could see the skill’s advantages.

Behind all the clever wording, it seemed to me like it was basically the Luck attribute that was so common in other RPG games. In any case, it was a passive skill, so I didn’t have to worry about it, and it could definitely prove useful from time to time, especially with the ‘Mastery’ title I had in it. The (*) mark meant it was not dependent in any of my attributes, which was excellent, it meant there was no upper-level cap and it could theoretically be raised to level 100 even if I’ll remain only a level 1 creature.

***

Skill levels also worked differently in NEO than in other games.

The first 10 skill levels were considered as a Novice rank. Once a player had broken through the 10th skill level, his skill rank would be upgraded to Apprentice, which also improved the skill’s capabilities. At skill level 51, your rank would advance to Expert, a Master at level 101, and a Grandmaster at level 201. Which also meant you had to be a level 190 character at the minimum, with 191 points in a single attribute, before you could attain that rank.

For example; The Lumberjacking skill was dependent on the ‘Physical’ attribute. A starting player with 1 point in Physical could train his Lumberjacking skill to level 11. Afterward, he’ll need to raise his Physical attribute to level 2, only then he could increase the skill level to 12.

***

I gained the Analyze skill after I carefully scrutinized everyone around me. It was similarly to how a player can learn the Lumberjack skill by repeatedly hitting trees with an ax.

Analyze, however, was worth its weight in gold. I was willing to bet that each new skill level increases its effective range by 1 meter, and probably upgraded the data quality shown every 5 or maybe 10 skill levels. I didn’t get the Mastery title for that skill, but I guessed that stand to reason. NPCs and boss-ranked monsters had to have a method of reading some information about players. It was safe to assume that many of them had this skill. And now I was the only player in existence who also had it.

And it already was at 40% progression toward level 2. It should prove fairly easy to level seeing as all I had to do was simply Analyze everything in sight. The (M) marker next to it, indicated it was tied to the Mental attribute. Which meant I could currently only raise it up to level 10, at its Novice rank. If I wanted to raise it further, to Apprentice rank and above, I’ll have to invest points in Mental. But that shouldn’t present a problem. I have already come to the conclusion that my progression would rely on the path of the mage, which meant it heavily depended on the Mental attribute.

Well, No time like the present, I thought to myself and concentrated on Mental for a moment to invest the free point I had in it. I checked my character sheet again:

Level: 1 (5%)

Race: Monster Race [Goblin]

Attributes: [0 points available]

Physical 1 Mental 1 Social -1

Skills:

Murphy’s Bitch 1 (10%) (mastery) Analyze 1 (40%)

Pools:

Hit Points: 15 (1P X 10, 1M X 5 ) Mana: 15 (1P X 5, 1M X 10)

Effects:

Goblinoid (+1 Physical, -1 Social) Experience threshold -20%

>

I took a look at the Pools section. It contained the list of my calculated stats; replenishable resources, armor, etc. They could not be leveled up or trained directly. Their purpose was simply to display the summary of the character accumulated points in several areas. It seems that spending 1 point in Mental tripled my Pool, from 5 in total to 15, and only at level 1! That was 50% more than any other 1st level player.

Not bad at all! I smiled to myself I could get used to playing this character.

That reason for the extra mana was due to the fact that the Physical attribute was primarily tied to the Health pool and secondary to the Mana pool. So for every attribute point invested in Physical, it granted 10 HP and 5 MP (mana points).

Similarly, the Mental attribute was connected to mana as its primary pool, and to HP as it's secondary. That ensured that a warrior that only invested in Physical will still have some mana to draw on for various spell skills, and mages would have some HP to beef them up, as they invested primarily in Mental. Otherwise, a pure mage at level 100 will still have only the base 10 HP...

And lastly, the Effects. It was a placeholder for all the achievements, special bonuses, and general effects that were constantly applied to the character. And here, as I suspected was the reason for my Attribute modifiers. I had the very aptly named effect called Goblinoid. I snorted in derision. Apparently being a goblin was considered to be an Effect. Well, I guess that I was afflicted with Goblinoidism then... I chuckled on my own smartassness

But what the hell was that that last effect? -20% to experience!? What the hell!? That was a serious handicap! I didn’t get it. Wasn’t being a goblin bad enough on its own? Now I’ll have to suffer a penalty every time I earn some experience. That not fair!

In desperation, I opened my current experience bar, there! A measly 12xp damn it!

I paused. Wait a minute… I thought it over for a moment. Something didn’t add up. Then, I was hit with a sudden realization. Excitedly, I quickly scrolled back my system log messages. The only XP I had gained since logging in was the reward for knocking down that annoying goblin, Bek. There it was, right there in my view:

I started laughing. Startling in the process, a pair of goblin females that walked nearby. I checked my character sheet for the effect details again. It was an XP threshold! I thought with a grin. Not XP gain like I automatically assumed. I actually got a +20% experience! I guess the developers felt that goblins, which were considered mainly as fodder for low levels players and thus almost never had a chance to level up, had to have a little extra edge, so the requirement for XP for leveling was reduced by 20%, which in effect was translated to +20% in experience gain. What a lucky break! I could actually get to like this new character!

Smiling, I revisited the item I saved for last: my new name.

It was definitely weird when a player first created a character you were asked to select a name for your character. You couldn’t proceed until you did. But it seems that since the transformation spell was an already an in-game process, it did not force you to select a new name immediately, and instead it had some unintelligible gibberish, probably machine code. I concentrated at the name field and a system message appeared:

I contemplated for a moment, and then I actively thought: GuildKiller

I guess it stands to reason, over 50 million players has joined the game since it’s launch, so the name pool must have dwindled considerably, I tried again: RevengeTheBastards

I tried, GoblinMayhem, GoblinRevenge, KillAllPlayers and even ScrewY’all. But to no avail, each one of the names was already taken. Screw that! I thought hotly. Well, there was no hurry to decide now.

I closed the messages with a bit of annoyance and started to think about my current situation.

I was tired, aside from the short, rage induced break I took, I’ve been logged on for almost 20 hours straight. It was definitely time to logout, get a break, clear my mind and start planning my new in-game future.

But before that, I had to first make sure of one more thing. I had to make sure I could reacquire my hard earned magic.

***

Magic worked differently from other skills. You could learn Lumberjacking by repeatedly chopping at a tree with an ax. But how do you learn fireball spell or healing magic out of repeated effort?

It took a while, but eventually, people manage to teach themselves magic skills. Those who were the first to learn a specific spell gained the Mastery title for it. It enabled them to simply grant the skill to others. Most such players sold their skills to other players, turning a nice profit. Much like I did when I first started playing.

True, no one felt the need to spill out 50 gold to learn from the Master Digger; a couple of minutes with a shovel would work just as well. But spells... spells were tricky. Players jealously guarded their secrets how to gain magic skills from scratch, and so the cost for learning from them was outrageous.

For example, the simple, most basic ‘Light’ spell would cost about 500 gold!

That also led to people spending a lot of Real Life money to buy in-game currency to afford such things. Six months after the game was released, it monthly net revenue averaged at around 20 Million USD. That also led to the logical scenario where rich players could sell their gold at a nice 10:1 ratio and live comfortably without actually needing a real life job to support them. Magic masters especially were filthy rich; they would spend about 10 minutes a day selling and teaching spells to other players for thousands of gold which allowed them to lead an easy and cushion life.

I was once such a lucky individual.

***

And I was just about to find if I could still teach myself magic.

In order to do that, I needed a quieter place.

I remembered seeing a small alcove when I passed the tunnel leading from the goblin cemetery and walked toward it.

I found the small alcove again, it was more of a niche really, about 2 meters deep, and it curved slightly so you couldn’t be viewed from the tunnel if someone would pass by. Yes, that would do just fine.

I sat there, cross-legged, with both hands resting easily on my knees and closed my eyes. Then I started to concentrate on my breathing. At first, I took a few deep breaths to center myself and then started a more rhythmic breathings, I learned to do in my teens. One quick inhale through my nose, followed by a slower exhale through my mouth. I immediately felt a bit more relax and continued concentrating more deeply in my breathings. Slowly my exhalation became longer and longer, each one reducing the stress and residual rage from my body as if it was a physical sludge lodged in my lungs, and breathing drained it away.

It was a meditation technique I learned in my teens, as a tool to be more calm and relaxed and to have better self-control. I was quite energetic as a youth...

After several minutes have passed, I felt completely relaxed, and my whole body felt loose and calm. I switched my concentration to my toes, feeling them, being aware of them without actually moving them. I imagined a low blue glow starting to emanate from them and imagined the sense of my toes as the source of the light. I then moved that feeling a bit higher in my body, becoming slowly aware to every extra centimeter of flesh... my foot… my legs... my upper body, and then my head. I held the feeling and awareness of every single part of my body firmly in mind, imagining the blue light now completely covering my body in an intense bright light. Ahh… what a blissful yet somehow energetic feeling!

I spent another unhurried minute just breathing and maintaining the blue aura, and when I felt ready, I started the hardest part.

I tried to control that aura. I firmly held onto the sense of radiating power, with my entire body. Then I tried to control it. Nothing happens at first, but that was to be expected. I concentrated harder and forced all the blue light to concentrate into my left palm. Slowly, the blue light started to drain from my legs, and head and flow into my palm as if it was sucked from my entire body, into my open palm. I could feel my palm actually heating up, as it absorbed the light. Then it was done. I open my eyes.

I looked down and saw that my left palm was glowing with a blue radiating power! Success!!!

I then realized what weird picture I was making; a small foul goblin, sitting down in the lotus position and executing Hindu chakra meditation techniques. I chuckled and then started laughing in earnest. The laughter drained away any residual bad feeling I might have still had, and now I felt completely cleansed and in control.

Wait for it... I thought. And sure enough...

All life is suffused with magical mana, through the power of your awareness, and strength of will, you learned how to actively access your own mana reserve and wield in in various ways. Further increase of this skill will allow for a higher mana pool, faster regeneration, and stronger mana using spells. Mana discipline.

Current level 1 (0%): Pool: +10, Regen: +1% of base, Spell effect: +1%>

And that was my biggest secret when I was playing as Arladen. That’s how I taught myself magic. This skill was the secret to learning mana discipline spells. It allowed you to manipulate mana by using your will alone. When used in specific ways, new spells could be acquired in a relative ease.

But something was amiss... I frowned as I noticed the distinct absence of the Mastery title. What is going on? I wondered. I had the Mastery for this skill when I played as Arladen, after all, I should have it now that I’ve relearned it. The only reason I could think off for the missing Mastery title was that back then, the skill didn't have the 'monster race' descriptor next to it. Damn, that's a setback I thought to myself. Maybe it meant… I frowned again, thinking of the related implications.

Could it be that all skills actually existed in 2 copies? One for players and one for monsters? I guess that made some sense. It means that strong monsters or bosses wouldn’t monopolize the entire skills masteries, and they’ll be available for players as well. When I thought about it, I realized that there were probably 3 copies for each skill. NPC’s also appeared to have their masteries, great NPC archmages existed before players even started to play the game, and they sure had some masteries to their name. And yet, players still manage to learn the same spells and gain the Mastery title for them. I sighed, that also probably meant that the Mastery title for every new skill I’ll learn was already taken by some monster. And unless I could come up with a completely new, never seen before skill... Well, nothing I could have done about it now.

And now for the second part, I thought expectantly.

I easily accessed my mana pool with my mind. It was a neat feat, that was normally quite difficult, but three years’ worth of experience of using this ability, made it like a second nature to me. I redirected a portion of my mana outside of my body, and a softly glowing blue ball of energy appeared in front of my head. I laid both hands on the glowing ball and started to stretch and force it into shape. Using both my hands and my will, I easily reshaped the ethereal substance into a new form. An arrow shape began to emerge from it. I critically examined my creation, and then smoothed it a little bit more, until a glowing blue arrow of pure force floated in front of me. I gathered my will once more, and flexed it like a muscle, sending the arrow flying ahead at a tremendous speed. The arrow connected with the small piece of rock I was aiming at and blasted it into rubbles.

You can create an arrow out of pure mana and lunch it to strike your enemies!

Note I: Some creatures might be resistant to Mana Arrow, while others might be especially susceptible to it.

Note II: as a mana discipline spell, more mana can be channeled to further increase the effectiveness of the spell.

Current level 1: Arrows per cast: 1, damage: 5-10, mana cost: 5>

Done and done! I thought happily to myself.

I just relearned the first spell I’ve ever invented. It had served me well for years, both during my adventuring days - combating monsters, and with my economic status - as people were ready to pay a lot to be able to blast things with their sheer will.

Satisfied my test was successful, I now had all the information I required, so I decided to log out for now.

I had to take some time to carefully plan my character future and to figure out what my long strategy should be. Both would probably require some time and a clean head, I was definitely too tired for that at the moment. A good sleep in my own bed, and then dedicate some time to figure out my future… maybe sit on my couch at the balcony with a cold beer.

Logout I thought, and my view became dark again.