My ‘nap’ ended up consisting of twelve solid hours of sleep which left me waking up at five AM Tuesday morning feeling refreshed and not quite as sore as I had been since the accident. Maybe it was the comfortable bed or the simple peace of mind that I was no longer just drifting after the events of last week, but I felt better than I had in some time as I rose to my feet and stretched.

The first thing on my agenda was freshening up in the bathroom as much as I was capable. I didn’t get a shower, as I had no other clothes with me to change into, but that would come later after I got the rest of my things both from the hotel and Janet’s apartment. I refused to call that place our apartment anymore after what she did, and honestly most of the stuff left there could burn for all I cared with the exception of a few things.

Once finished in the bathroom, I grabbed up the AR display that wirelessly connected to the computer and decided to head downstairs to the kitchen for some food. The AR display was a simple pyramidal shape that weighed about ten pounds and was roughly ten inches a side at the base of the device with a flat bottom to rest on a desk or table.

As soon as I exited from my room and closed the door behind me, the flat voice of Jensen greeted me from the hidden speakers set in the hallway. “Good morning Dale. Today’s weather is clear with a high temperature of seventy-one degrees. Sunrise will be in eleven minutes with sunset at eight forty-one PM. Is there anything I can help you with this morning?”

I chuckled at the AI and shook my head. In the three years I had spent with Janet, even she had never greeted me so warmly in the morning and thinking back on the time we spent together made me realize just what a toxic person she truly was. Or maybe that was just my bitterness peeking out…

“Good morning Jensen, thank you for the report. As of right now, I think I am alright.” I paused my speech as I got to the elevator and a thought hit me. “Actually, wait. Maybe there is something… You said you can pass a message on to Carl, the head of security, right?” I hit the elevator call button and the door slid open right away for me to step inside and select the first floor.

“That is correct Dale. I can relay a message to just about anyone in the Dumadine Technology ladder, with the exception of President Willcot himself and a few select others. Should I compose a message to Carl Striggan for you?”

“I would appreciate that Jensen, thank you. Please ask him if he would be able to arrange for a person or two to accompany me to collect my belongings from the hotel I was staying at as well as my ex’s apartment. I have no timeframe in mind and can go at his convenience.” The car slowed to a stop and the door slid open to allow me to head into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast while I talked with Jensen. “Also, please add in the link to my pers-com if you would. That way Carl can get a hold of me easily. I don’t want to impose and keep using you as a middle man, as it were.” I chuckled as I opened one door of a huge stainless steel industrial refrigerator to examine the contents.

“Of course, Dale. Though I would like to point out that I have no objections to being used in such a way. My processing power is well above and beyond what is needed when all ten immersion units are running full power, and at the moment with nothing happening I must admit I am quite bored.”

I paused in the process of pulling a carton of eggs out of the fridge in thought. An AI that got bored? Then again, I supposed it was a possibility seeing as they were programmed with a basic sense of emotion for at least an understanding basis. “Well, don’t feel too bad about it Jensen. I am sure I will have lots of questions for you as I am studying up here this morning.” I went back to fixing myself some breakfast as I spoke. “Also, any idea of when the rest of the players are going to be showing up here?”

“As of this moment, there are five others who have signed on, three of which will be moving in within the next couple days with the other two holding off until the day before launch. The remaining four candidates are scheduled for approach later this morning with word of their decisions coming in as soon as they are available. If your room isn’t up to your satisfaction, I would suggest changing the assignment as soon as possible or the rest of the team will be taking up residence shortly.”

The large stove top flared to life as I turned a burner on to cook my eggs, scrambled, and tossed in a few strips of bacon for good measure. “Nah, I am good with the room I am in Jensen. Thanks. While I am cooking and eating, how about you tell me some things. Starting with the immersion device itself, preferably. How does it work roughly?”

“I would first like to remind you that the details of the immersion device are highly confidential under the terms of your NDA and contract to Dumadine Technology. That aside, the device closely resembles an MRI machine in all appearances. The player wears a cap with diodes and sensors then lays on a sliding table that will retract into the immersion device where the combination of cap and machine coordinate to intercept and translate the player’s brainwaves into digital signals to be used in the game. At the same time the machine will also translate game features back into the player body to a degree which is what allows the person to feel like they are actually experiencing what happens.”

I had finished cooking while Jensen explained and sat down at a cafeteria style table to eat by the time he finished. “Jensen, that sounds remarkably dangerous… How much testing have they done on these machines?” Truly, the device sounded like it would actually effect his real body depending on what happened in the game itself, and that seemed a bit on the reckless side.

“The device has been fully tested over the course of the last six months and approved by several government agencies on top of that. While it is true that your real body is involved in the process, the percentage of transfer into the body is minimal. After your first couple sessions in the game, a person may experience muscle fatigue from the transfer, but it is only a mild case in all reported events and the occurrences dwindle down the more a person immerses themselves in the device and gets used to the sensations.”

Well, that made some sense. This was the first unit of its type and I didn’t think they would be able to fully replicate the sensations without having some relation to a physical body on the first incarnation. Well, a little pain never killed me yet and this looked to be well worth the cost. “Alright Jensen, thanks. I think I understand as much as I can about it for the moment until I actually see the device and get hooked up to it.”

I spent the next ten minutes eating and making small talk with the AI who was my only companion for the time being. After everything was cleaned up and put away, I was distracted by a message on my pers-com. The AR screen popped up and I saw it was Carl, having just clocked in and gotten the message from Jensen. He was looking for the addresses of both my hotel room and apartment and that he was going to send people out to gather my things for me so I didn’t have to be bothered. That was fine by me, as I really didn’t want to run into my ex anyway, and I sent him what he needed as well as a list of essentials from Janet’s place that I really cared about. I informed him that beyond my clothes and that other short list the rest could stay behind.

His reply came quickly, and stated that he would have it taken care of before lunch time and to expect a few boxes of things to be delivered to the ground floor of my new apartment building. I quickly thanked him and set about closing the AR screens and moved into the common area to settle onto a couch with my AR display. It was time to get down to business and do some serious research!

Moving out into the larger room full of couches, I settled in on one of the larger sofas and placed the AR display on my lap and brought the main screen up in front of me. Several icons greeted my sight including the Realm of Infinity information manual, which I opened up right away to start reading. It looked like a version set up for hard mode players, which suited me fine since that is what I will be playing on anyway.

* * * * *

Thank you for playing Realm of Infinity!

Step into a world full of magic and adventure containing several warring factions, one of which you will be allying yourself with in order to further your progress along with. There are no alignment scores in RoI, so moral actions will not reflect upon your stats in a harsh way. On the other hand, each faction has its own goals and methods with all of your decisions factoring in real time how the game in its entirety will advance, so choose how you play wisely!

All players will go through a basic trial at the beginning of the game before being given the option of choosing a faction to join for your adventures. Fear not though, as you can change factions throughout the game depending on your choices in how you handle the relations with each faction. Bonuses to skills and stats are available the higher you climb in faction ranks, so be wary of changing sides too often or such benefits may become beyond you.

Stats and skills in RoI are important, but one of the main factors of your power will lie with your Fairy Companions. All players will have access to the same skill set when dealing with weapon skills and abilities, however all magic within the game can only be performed by making a contract with a Fairy Companion. Causal account players will start the game with a common quality Fairy of their choice from the basic elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Infernal or Celestial with a total limit of two Fairy contracts active at any given time. For example, one may have a Fire type Fairy and an Earth type Fairy, but if they wish to attain a Water type Fairy, they would have to choose one of their current Companions to dismiss in order to attain the new one.

For those with a hard mode account, you will not have the option of attaining a Fairy Companion at the start of the game. In exchange for forsaking this starting perk however, hard mode player’s contract limit is set to three at any given time. This can allow a player to have many more options to their power sets and skills and can be a large edge when dealing with the trials of RoI in comparison to the casual account.

In addition to the aforementioned differences, hard mode accounts will also suffer a much higher penalty to their character upon death. Unlike a casual account, hard mode players will lose all of their non-soulbound equipment and items upon death if not picked up by another player or NPC within one hour of death. Consequentially, you will not respawn for ninety minutes upon death and a four hour debuff is suffered by the character upon respawn and will stack if the player dies again before the debuff expires.

While the death debuff can be cleansed away with the proper spell or item, the second penalty to death cannot be negated via spells or items. Upon every death, five percent of the player’s total experience pool is put in ‘stasis’ and all experience gained thereafter will be applied to that total until such a time as it has been met or exceeded. Until the stasis experience is recovered, a player cannot advance their total experience pool in any way towards their current level via the use of items, completing quests, or killing mobs.

While death carries harsh penalties within Realm of Infinity for hard mode players, the difficulty is rewarded by having access to much better quality of rewards from quests as well as being able to receive more unique and ambitious quests from NPC’s of all variety. The game AIs are always generating quests to be given out to players, and no two people will ever experience the same game play, but only those playing in the harder difficulty will be granted access to certain chain quests that will have a much higher chance of affecting the game world to a large degree.

* * * * *

My thoughts on this system were starting to look up! Yeah, it looked like I had a lot of work ahead of me with the lack of magic to start the game, but the more I read up on the benefits of playing the hard mode account the more I was able to live with the down sides. I could see so many ways that even just having one additional Fairy when compared to a normal account can make a huge difference at the higher levels, which from what I gathered there was no level cap in the game and a person could grow indefinitely.

Information on the various factions within the game was nearly non-existent, which kind of irritated me. At the same time, it looked like the multiple AI inside of the game would offer me a choice of factions suited to me after doing this starting trial thing. I could understand DT wanting to keep some of this a mystery, but I wanted to know what I was getting into in that department!

The sound of people entering the building through the front door of the complex drew me out of my thoughts and I noticed the time in the corner of my AR screen showed ten-thirty already! Three men in Dumadine Technology security uniforms came into the common area and spotted me sprawled out on the couch as I was. Each of them carried a large box in their arms and none of the men looked familiar to me.

“Mr. Sullivan, good you are down here already. Mr. Striggan sent us to collect your things for you and I think we got everything you requested.” He shifted his load a little before nodding at the elevator. “Would you like us to carry this up to your room?”

I quickly dismissed the AR screen before me and set the display down on the low table between all of the couches to rise to my feet. “That would be great, thanks! Here, let me get the elevator and hold the door for you guys.”

After everything was deposited in my room, the security guys left me alone with my clothes and a few other things that I wanted from my ex’s place. I spent a good while putting everything away carefully followed by a nice hot shower now that I had clean clothes to change into when finished.

Clean and feeling refreshed after my shower, I decided to make myself something for lunch before diving back into more study. If I had spent that long reading into the game so far, I didn’t know when I was going to come up for air again and wanted to make sure I didn’t starve myself needlessly… I had a feeling there was going to be a lot of that when the game launched and didn’t need an early start on malnutrition.

While I was eating, I quickly sent off a message to Carl to thank him again for getting my stuff for me to which he replied that it wasn’t a problem and he was happy to help. I knew it was his job, but I still felt that he went out of his way to make sure I didn’t have to worry about it and I appreciated the gesture.

Maybe I could buy him a drink when he was off work to make it up to him as I saw there was a bar attached to the company cafeteria near the headquarters building. Dumadine was a huge company and had roughly six thousand people working on the premises, some of them living on the grounds just like I was now, and almost never leaving the walled compound.

With the necessity of food and hygiene out of the way, I once more got comfortable on the couch and brought the AR display back to my lap to read more about the game. Now that I had a good understanding of what the hard mode held for me, I wanted to check out the stat system and see where that went.

* * * * *

Stats within Realm of Infinity play an important part of a character’s development. All characters start the game with ten points in each stat (twenty points in each stat for hard mode accounts) and gain five additional points to place wherever the player wishes upon every level up. At level ten, and every ten levels thereafter, players gain an additional five stats to assign for a total of ten points at those benchmarks.

Factions can modify a player’s stat gains as well, with each faction offering a different bonus upon level-up. If a player decided to leave a faction and join another, all previous gains will remain as they are and the new faction bonus will apply upon leveling up once more. Obtaining a higher rank within a faction will also confer a higher faction bonus to your level-up boosts as well as some factions even adding to skill levels at the higher ranks within the hierarchy.

There are six main stats for character development within the game and are as follows:

Strength- (Str):

Adds partially towards your physical damage dealt with melee weapons as well as adding to a player’s total carrying capacity.

Dexterity- (Dex):

A higher Dex stat will allow you more easily hit your targets with both melee and ranged attacks as well as influencing the critical success chance of all physical damage.

Agility- (Agi):

Increasing this stat will allow a player to have a higher movement speed and dodge rate while also affecting the overall attack speed of melee and ranged weapons.

Fortitude- (Fort):

Just like it sounds, Fortitude adds to the overall health and energy pools at a set ratio of one Fort equaling ten health and five energy. Certain skills within the game also depend on the Fort stat to determine an addition to armor rating as well.

Intelligence- (Int):

A staple for anyone wishing to cast spells, Int determines mana pool totals, a ratio of ten mana per one Int, and also increasing the damage done with spells. Some spells within the game have area of effect (AoE) damage, and Int will increase the radius of such spells.

Willpower- (Will):

Willpower factors into the regen rates of health, mana and energy levels while in combat. Outside of combat players will regenerate all of their pools rather quickly, but to last during extended fights a player will need to invest themselves some into this stat.

All stats also have hidden features to them that are not listed in the descriptions and are left up to the players to figure out for themselves as the game progresses. All skills and spells in the game are linked to at least one stat, but some are controlled by more than one and can have varying results based on the ratio of the two or more stats linked to a skill or spell.

A new and important feature to this game involves two sets of level systems. The level most other players will be able to see in regards to your character is your experience level. The secondary level is based off of your stat points. Leveling up is not the only way to gain stats in the game, and you will find you can improve your stats through various activities. This can skew how powerful a character truly is and to show the actual applicable level of a character you can see your Stat Level (SL) to the right of your Player Level (PL).

With this system in mind, even an apparently low level player could very well be on par with another player many levels higher, and disregarding that knowledge may well have disastrous consequences. Those of true power should realize that it is a balance of PL, SL, and a good mix of skills and spells that will win the day over a purely high level.

When it comes to skills within Realm of Infinity, there is a near endless amount available for players to learn or discover. A mere fraction of the in game skill list is able to be taught, and the bulk of them are made to be discovered through actions of trial and error, or maybe even pure luck. Skills are all linked to one or more stats and have no requirements to learn them, but will perform better with the increase of the corresponding stat levels in addition to the level of the skill itself.

* * * * *

My jaw split wide with a yawn from reading over information for so long, and I noticed that the time had once again gotten away from me with a casual glance at the clock on my AR screen. Sinking myself into all of this studying was really starting to take a toll on my mental state as the floating screens wavered in and out of focus.

“Right, that is enough of this for now…” I closed out the windows and powered down the AR display, setting the device on the low table so I could stand and stretch my stiff body. Really, staying in the same position for most of the day wasn’t the best move on my part. “Jensen, you there?”

It was a dumb question, honestly, and the AI spoke up almost at once. “Of course, Dale. I am always available for the needs of you or any of the other residents here. What can I help you with, Dale?” I swear the AI actually almost sounded excited that I was talking to him now… Or maybe I was just getting too used to the programing and started to personalize him too much. Meh, whatever. Not like I had anyone else to talk to at the moment.

“Perfect! I am going to get some gym time in before I make dinner. Mind explaining some more things about the game for me? I am going cross-eyed from reading off of these damn AR screens so much!” I was already wearing a pair of loose shorts and tee shirt, so I didn’t need to change into appropriate clothes and headed directly towards the massive gym Dumadine had supplied for our use.

“Of course, Dale. Now that you have a good understanding of the basics of the game I am more than willing to fill in any details you are missing from your knowledge. What would you like to know about?”

Inside the gym room I made my way over to a treadmill. I needed to warm up some and loosen up my muscles before starting anything strenuous, so I started off at a fast walk and would slowly up the speed to a quick jog while speaking with Jensen. “Well, to start how about filling me in on these Fairies that the game mentions?”

“Very well. From what I saw that you read, you know what purpose Fairies serve in the game, and that you will be starting without any. What you didn’t get to is the fact that the Fairies are ranked just like gear with a quality. Normal, Special, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Divine and Unique. The names are also color coded just like gear too, in the order of: white, green, blue, purple, orange, silver and red.”

A frown crossed my face as something nagged at me. “Wait. Unique? How does that work? Do they have special abilities or such to make them unique and better than some of the others?” There was a small suspicion of mine that I wanted to see if Jensen was able to confirm.

“While that is true, it is not the entirety of the whole. Normal through Epic Fairies within the game will mostly be of the basic elements with more branching power as the rarity of the Fairy rises. Starting at the Legendary levels, the Fairies become less standard and have powers over other less common things.

“A simple example would be a Normal Fairy of fire being able to grant you a fireball spell. A Special Fairy of the same element would be able to grant the fireball spell as well as a flame pillar that you can drop onto an enemy from above. A Rare Fairy would then be able to do more with fire in addition to the previous spells, such as being able to raise the temperature evenly throughout an entire room or area. An Epic Fairy would then have even more control over the element, to the point that you can start harnessing attacks of that element directed at you and allow you to either negate or redirect the spells of fire sent at you.”

“I see… So basically, the higher the rarity, the more it can do with the element it is affiliated to? So, what about when they start getting into the Legendary ranks?” There could only be so much that they can manipulate if at the Epic level they would already allow a player to negate attacks of that element…

“Starting at the Legendary rarity, things start to get interesting. While there are still Legendary and higher Fairies of the six basic elements, only at this rank do they start branching out with different abilities over what that have control of. For instance, you could plausibly find a Legendary Fairy with the power over gravity and attain spells associated with that. This is a rough example, however, as Dumadine Technology has kept the exact specifics of the game under tight lock and key. The basics are accurate to the best of my knowledge though.”

Oh Damn! Now that is what I am talking about! Most games I have ever played to date only gave players the options of basic elements for magic, and while effective in the short term, the repetition of casting the same spells over and over with everyone you come across knowing the exact same spells got old real fast.

Hold up though… That covered Legendary, but what about Divine and Unique? I would assume that they are going in order of power, so I was curious how much more powerful the highest two tiers would be. “Okay, Legendary rarity is where the real technical details will start coming in, but how about the last two?”

“Divine quality Fairies are just as they sound. They are as close to gods among Fairies as they can be and are incredibly powerful in their control over whatever affinity they have. It would be on par with total control of the element or affinity within their zone of control. To elaborate, let us go with a Divine Air Fairy. Such a companion would be able to grant the player the ability to suck the air right out of an area, and if targeted at another player could potentially cause them to suffocate. While immensely powerful, they are incredibly rare at the same time and I summarize that there are only a few Divine rarity Fairies of each affinity available in the game.

“Unique Fairies are a bit outside of the norm. From what I have been able to gather, there are no Unique Fairies of the six basic elements. They also fall completely outside of the normal rarity power level as they are obtained at a weak level, but as they grow in level they can become even more powerful than Divine quality Fairies. In truth, I haven’t been able to gain much information on Unique Fairies and equipment within the game thus far.”

“No problem, Jensen. Thanks for the info!” I turned my attention inward as I thought over what I had learned. It seemed I really had a lot of work ahead of me, and I was eager to get into the game more than ever now! I picked up that Fairies leveled up alongside of the player, without actually impacting the player’s overall experience gain thankfully, and that the higher the level Fairy, the more spells that could grant the holder of the contract.

Actually, come to think of it, nothing really talked about those contracts in detail. The developers must want to keep that a mystery to people for the time being, I guessed. Warmed up now from the treadmill, I moved off the machine and made my way over to the free weights to start working out in earnest, my mind floating in the clouds as I imagined a character that wasn’t restricted by anything like a class or job and could learn anything I wanted without having to roll a dozen different characters. Granted, if I wanted to be among the top players in the game I would need to specialize in something, but just having the option to change my mind in the middle of the game was sure nice!