I woke up the next morning with a few plans floating around in my head, but I currently didn’t have the ability to pull any of them off. I got up, made my morning cup of tea, and trawled the forums for a while, searching for anything interesting. The only thing that caught my eye was someone had found a mob that wasn’t one of those weird creatures, probably one of the species that had survived the invaders that Alva had told me about. It was a giant bear instead, not with any of the features that made most the mobs seem bizarre in a way, but it was blindingly fast for its size, and horrifyingly strong. I watched as one of its paws smashed into a warrior with his shield up, only to be sent flying back and slam into a tree. The fight didn’t last long, maybe five minutes, and ended with the entire party wiped. I finished off my morning cup of tea, slapped on my VR helmet, and hopped into game.

As the temple that I was becoming quite familiar with appeared around me in an instant, I kept my balance for once, and instantly started walking over to the weapons shop I’d seen before. When I arrived, this time I could hear hammering from the back, and seeing as nobody was around, I figured that the dwarf owner had to be in the back. I went around, looking at the items while I waited. There was everything from greatsword looking items to katanas to the spears I was slowly getting familiar with. There were even a couple of sets of plate armor on stands in prominent positions. They were made with a variety of materials, some seeming to have been made with bones, and one of the armor pieces looking to be made from giant scales rather than steel or bronze. It didn’t take long until the hammering stopped, and the owner came out from the back.

“Back for that spear already boy? I figured you’d take quite a while longer.”

“Not today” I sighed, I did want that spear. “I actually wanted to see how much I could get for these.” I started pulling out the items I’d gotten out of the more clueless players I had fought, and a grin started growing on the dwarfs face as I did.

“Had a busy day I see. It’s sad to see you travelers fighting among yourselves, but seeing as how they dropped their items, they must have incurred the wrath of the goddess for being the first to go after you. Glad to see you gave more than you got. I can get you a silver for each of them, two for the staves.” I thanked him, handing over the items and getting 9 silver in return.

“I was also wondering where I could go to get some decent armor and was wondering how much it would run me.”

“Well I’d suggest heading left down the street, and taking your first right. That’ll be Merin’s shop, she’s probably your best bet for leathers and cloth. You can probably get a decent set or warg leathers for 3 gold.”

“That cheap? That’s practically nothing!”

“Well warg skin isn’t exactly expensive, especially with you travelers running around hunting everything that moves. The traders are appreciating the clear roads, and the crafters have so much warg skin and orb fur they don’t know what to do with it. The guild used to sell the stuff for double the price before you guys showed up, now they’re just trying to get rid of it. Besides, she has her apprentices to all the orb and warg crafting. It’s practically slave labor anyway.” He chuckled, metal may not have gone down in price, but I’m sure he was doing a bustling business himself with all the players running around.

“Oh, I was wondering why I haven’t seen any dwarves other than yourself around.”

Golrag laughed “What is it with you silly travelers and thinking I’m a dwarf, I’m a bonafide human, you won’t see any dwarves down here aside from the occasional trading caravan. And before you ask, the elves went missing when the invaders appeared, we don’t even know if there are any left.”

I flushed in embarrassment, he was around 4’5, had a massive build, and a bright red beard down to his chest, I couldn’t think of him as anything aside from a dwarf, even though he’d told me otherwise.

Just as I was thinking of leaving, a pair of players walked in. I looked back, and started. One of them was Mr. White Knight from yesterday. I’d just sold his sword to the very person he was planning to buy from, making me grin at the coincidence. Figuring that at the very least I could try and get some information from him, I went up to ask.

“Hello again Mr. White Knight. I was wondering who Lily was, why does she seem to have an army at her beck and call?”

He started in surprise, glaring at me before sighing and getting a sort of defeated look in his face. “She’s the daughter of a CEO and a minor ViewTube celebrity, Most the people are simply trying to get on her good side before she inherits the family business, and the other half just want to look good in front of their idol.”

I stood up a bit straighter in surprise, wondering why he was being properly cooperative.

“And you?” I asked

“I’ve known her since she was small. All I heard was some guy had been terribly rude to her, and didn’t learn what had actually happened until a while after. Sorry about that by the way, I should’ve expected it to be something like that. She’s sort of let her popularity get to her head about some things, and I should be trying to rein her in a bit.”

I shrugged, I was still going to knock her down a peg with what she’d done to me, but at least now I had a little information on her. I thanked him for his information, and mentioned he could maybe buy his own sword back from Golrag here, then headed off to sell off the rest of the loot I had acquired. I arrived at the guild, first heading inside to grab the orb quest off the board. I still had the one I’d taken for wargs, so I went outside to stand in one of the lines.

The large open space was as busy as usual, with much fewer people wearing beginner gear. I hadn’t been grinding out money like these people seemed to be, wearing leather armor over their noob clothes, a few even having steel weapons, and most the warriors having upgraded their wooden shields to bronze. Here and there were people who were probably the original adventurers of the land, outfitted in full plate, or having extremely fancy staves with brightly colored robes.

I handed over the damaged warg skins, which got me one and a half copper each, and the warg teeth, which got me a copper each. Along with the herbs and the quest rewards, It came to 2 gold one silver and two copper, my best take so far. I left, squeezing out of the square, and headed over to the mages college, I needed to get some aoe capabilities, and something a bit scarier than my force bolt for single target. I was sure that force bolt would probably do plenty of damage with enough wisdom, but it just wasn’t cutting it at the moment.

Arriving there, the rune covered structure looking as imposing as always, I walked in and got in the line behind some mages, only one of whom had upgraded from his beginner staff, me not fitting in with my spear. Once I’d arrived at the counter, I looked over to see a different man than the one I’d seen last time at the counter.

“Hello, I was looking to buy something a bit more powerful than force bolt, and maybe something with aoe capabilities.”

The man looked me over, a slight sneer coming to his face as he noticed my spear. “You can get the spell pattern for any of the tier one spells from the basic circles for five silver, but if you want something from tier two, you’ll need to pay one gold, same for anything outside the basic circles.”

“Circles?” I asked, unsure what he was talking about.

“The five basic circles are earth, water, fire, air, and force. The outer circles include anything outside of those, such as darkness or lightning. There’s also tiers of spells, higher tier spell patterns require more of the basic symbol for an element, in the case of ice, an oval, and a cross symbol for force. Tier two spells for example use two ovals to make their spell pattern, tier three require three and so forth.”

Figuring that my frostbite spell had served me well, I decided to ask about more ice spells. “Well would you have anything water based that you would suggest?”

“Well I’d assume you’re looking for ice rather than pure water, pure water is for healing, but It’s the subset within it that is used for battle.”

“Oh, well then yes please.” This was the first confirmation that I’d had about healing spells being in the game, but I figured it made sense, some of the raids would likely be impossible without any sort of healer existing within the game.

“I’d suggest ice spear and Ice shatter then. The first will be five silver and the second one gold.”

I handed over the money, and he went to the back room, returning with two scrolls. He handed them to me, and I started walking over to the training area to practice. I started off with trying Ice spear. The rune for it was an ovoid, with a diamond inside it, a line stretching to touch the bottom of the oval, and two small lines coming out of the top surfaces of it. It took me only a couple times of exploding myself before I managed to create the spell pattern correctly, seems my constant drawing in the air was giving me enough practice to not blow myself up as much. When I released it, it seemed to melt into the air, forming a jagged spear of ice, which flew towards the target, stabbing through the entire target.

This was definitely more impressive than force bolt. I then tried out Ice shatter, this one was two ovoid symbols attached by a line, with what looked to be random squiggles on the inside. After quite some more unsuccessful attempts, this time quite a few more than ice spear, with those squiggles causing me no end of trouble, I managed to properly make the pattern without getting knocked back by an explosion. It formed a small ball of light blue glowing energy, then floated down the field, far slower than my other spells had done, but when it impacted, there was a large crackling noise, and Ice spikes stabbed outwards in every direction, each one around a meter in length, looking like all the world like a sea urchin made of ice. The target was impaled through multiple parts of its body, and I could definitely see how useful this would be for closely grouped crowds of enemies.

As the ice melted unnaturally quickly, seeming to fade into mist rather than pool on the ground as water, I wondered how effective it would be. Facing one enemy, it probably wouldn’t be all too useful, only traveling about as fast as an underhanded thrown ball, giving the enemy plenty of time to dodge, and that’s not even accounting for the extra time it took to draw, being twice as much writing as my tier one spells. I then opened up my grimoire to see the mana costs of my new spells.

Grimoire

Stores all spell patterns you have learned

Spell Name

Mana cost

Force Bolt+

2+0.5*wis

Frostbite

5

Ice spear

10

Ice Shatter

20

They were both far more expensive than my basic force bolt, even with its mana multiplier. With my five wisdom, I’d only manage to get off five ice spears or two shatters. I shrugged. The first thing I would have to do was practice the spell until I’d memorized the spell patterns and could reliably draw them without the guide. For the rest of the day, I’d practice my new spells, every time I ran out of mana I’d meditate for a while.

It didn’t seem to increase my mana regeneration, but it definitely helped me pass the time, and I even got another point of wisdom out of it, giving me enough to cast ice shatter three times. I’d noticed this before, but unlike the physical stats which required me to sleep to get, wisdom was applied instantly, possibly because it was “realistic” to not gain the muscle until you’d waited a while. Once the sun was setting, I decided that it would be a good time to hop off, and logged out to take care of my bodily needs rather than sleep in game.

While I logged off, I wondered what happened to our in game bodies when we logged out. I hadn’t seen any bodies laying around where people may have logged off, so they had to disappear or something. I shrugged, sure there was some in game explanation on it, and went to go get some food. Taking off my VR helmet and hopping off of my bed, I went to the restroom and made myself some food, a grilled cheese in this case. I turned on the television in my small living room and flipped over to a game news streaming site to feed my quickly becoming unhealthy addiction to Sanity Online.

“With sanity online quickly becoming the most played game of the time, we’re looking to professor of VR technologies Tom Cumin.”

“Thank you, I’m here to talk about what makes Sanity Online the go-to game for anyone into VR right now. First of all, it’s the first large release we’ve had in nearly a decade, most companies trying to continue to milk their existing subscriber base. The next big reason is the lack of any subscription model. While most companies have exorbitant monthly fees to pay for their server upkeep, Sanity Online for some mystery reason only requires an - admittedly costly - entrance fee. This is heavily appealing, especially among the college age students who often aren’t sure of their income month to month.Then there is the fact that there are no microtransactions of any type, completely precluding any possibility of pay to win. However many experts are saying that either microtransactions or some form of subscription cost will have to come into play eventually, as server costs start to mount.

While there is an age limit, that’s seen as a good thing by a large portion of the playerbase, though it does prevent them from getting the money of younger gamers. The final reason of course, is the realism. While a good deal of players are calling it excessive, the fact that the non player characters seem to be alive is drawing in many people on its merit alone. From what I’ve seen it’s virtually impossible to discern a NPC from a player, the only real difference at this point is players are often still stuck in their starting gear.”

I turned off the tv, most of the information had been nothing new, but I did find it interesting how important the NPCs seeming real was. I’d been talking to them like a human, but I’d done that in every game, it tended to get better results from the more simplistic AI, so I wasn’t sure exactly how much better they were. Thinking I should probably do some testing, I decided to log back in.

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