6

The bar’s door was just that; a door. It was made of polished heavy wood and looked kind of fancy, but other than that, there was nothing really special about it as far as Hunter could tell. Just an ordinary door. He grabbed the bronze doorknob and pulled it open, and…

Ah, shit.

On the other side there was nothing but a wall of semi-opaque, churning and shimmering fog. Whatever illusion of verisimilitude the whole experience had had thus far went the way of the dodo real fast, Hunter thought. Unsure of what he was supposed to do, he simply held his breath, stepped through the fog wall, and hoped for the best.

Just like that, he found himself falling through a void, once more just a handful of jumbled senses. He thought he saw impossible colors–colors he later found out he had no way of recalling or describing. He thought he heard bells tolling somewhere in the distance, their timbre rich and powerful, and was overpowered by as smell of ozone and camphor. Then he was underwater, with no way to tell which way was up or down. And then he was Hunter again, body and all. His face broke the surface of dark waters, and he took a deep breath of cool, stale air.

“What the–”

A notification window popped right in the middle of his field of view, startling him.

Hunter had no idea what that meant. He simply willed it away. Faux-Grimm had been right; it had come natural to him.

It took him a moment to find his bearings. He was standing in a waist-deep pool of water, somewhere at the bottom of a cave of some sort. He blinked a few times, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the pitch-black darkness around him. The only light in the cave was coming from a vertical opening somewhere above, like a crevasse leading outside.

Hunter hated the dark. He wasn’t afraid of it or anything, he just found it a huge pain in the behind. That’s why one of first things he looked for when choosing the race and class of his game characters was a way to make light, or at least the ability to see in the dark. In fact, that wasn’t a bad idea at all. Hunter willed his eyes to adjust to the dark, and…

Nothing.

Nada.

He was just about to feel silly for taking Faux-Grimm’s tip so literally, when another notification popped up before him.

Improvised. Low-Light Vision allows you to see in dim- and low-light conditions, but not total darkness. Higher ranks increase vision distance and clarity.

“Now we’re talking”, Hunter said to himself. He willed himself to learn this Low-Light Vision ability, and the notification was replaced by a dialogue window.

Do you wish to spend one Inspiration to learn Low-Light Vision? Your current Inspiration quality is 3.

He didn’t have the slightest idea what this Inspiration quality was, but in his current situation Low-Light Vision sounded too good to pass up. He willed “yes”.

Your Low-Light Vision has increased to 1. Your Inspiration quality is now 2.

As it turned out, a single rank in Low-Light Vision didn’t mean one hell of a lot. To Hunter, everything around him still looked almost pitch black. The only difference was that he could now also see the faint outlines of the objects around him, like thin, silvery lines of starlight. For now, that was enough.

He took another look at the place. It was a cave alright, with natural-looking walls of stone and a steep incline that led all the way up to an opening. Fortunately, there was a flight of uneven steps leading upwards, hewn by some unknown hand straight from the living rock. Hunter wasn’t exactly sure he’d be able to climb to the top without them; judging from the water and the cool moisture in the air, he kind of expected everything to be wet and slippery.

He half-swam, half-waded to the base of the steps and climbed out of the water. His clothes and shoes were soaked–which made him realize he actually had clothes and shoes on in the first place, and they felt different from the too-perfect t-shirt and sweatpants he was wearing just a minute before. Weird.

Not too eager to just stand around in the dark, he started climbing the steps towards the light at the top. Just as soon as he stepped out of the water, he felt something like the low hum of colossal engines running deep underground. It was a kind of vibration resonating through his bones, making him uncomfortably aware of the fillings in his teeth. Other than that, the rock under his feet felt as stable as, well, rock.

Fortunately, the steps’ outlines made the climb easier than he had any reason to expect. That Low-Light Vision ability had indeed been a good idea. He was halfway up when another notification popped up.

Your Low-Light Vision has increased to 2.

Cool. That probably meant skills gained ranks the more he used them, and Hunter loved games that worked like that. There was nothing like a random little skill bump here and there to keep his spirits up when he grinded his life away to get that next level or that rare item drop.

The steps’ outlines became easier to see the closer he got to the light. It wasn’t long before he’d almost made it to the top, and he squinted to look through the opening above. There wasn’t much he could see from where he stood; just a shard of the brightest, bluest sky he’d ever seen. Kind of hesitant to step out in some unknown place half-blind, Hunter decided to spend a couple of minutes waiting for his vision to adjust to the daylight.

It was also a pretty good opportunity to inspect his new self, he realized. His body still felt just a tiny bit off, but he was getting accustomed to it pretty fast. He had apparently picked up some new threads somewhere along the way; brownish-colored wool trousers, a matching tunic, and a shirt that felt like rough-hewn cotton. He was also wearing leather boots. Elderpyre was all about medieval fabrics and earth tones, it looked like. Unfortunately, everything was soaking wet from his dive in that underwater pool, and he was starting to shiver. The cold breeze that blew in from the opening was quickly turning him into a Hunter-flavored popsicle. Half-blind or not, he needed to get out in the sun–and fast. He squinted a bit more, put up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and stepped through the opening.

Just as he did, another notification greeted him, informing him he’d entered a new area.

The view was so breathtaking Hunter barely noticed it. The vista before him had left him speechless. As an inner-city kid, born and bred, the closest to nature he’d been growing up was the park near his house. The only place he’d seen such natural beauty before was old National Geographic documentaries.

He was standing by a rocky outcropping on the side of a crag, and his high vantage point gave him a bird’s eye view of the surrounding land. There were rolling hills and thick woodlands as far as the eye could see, a sea of greens and browns, contrasted only by the vibrant blue of the sky above. There was something wild about this place, something untamed. And it looked so… real. Even the air was different, crisper, purer, untainted. Hunter could hardly believe it all was nothing but a simulation–just a stream of ones and zeroes projected in his brain.

He sat down on a flat rock, took in the view, and waited for his clothes to dry in the sun. If the Elderpyre in-game time was the same as the time in the real world, it should be nearing midday. It sure looked that way, judging from how high the sun was in the sky.

“So, if the sun’s there, that means east is that way, west, south… and north must be that way” Hunter mused out loud.

Your Survival has increased to 1.

A new skill, simply from figuring out which way was which?

Interesting.

If this was a survival-type game, then the first order of business would be to find shelter. If it was already chilly outside this time of day, Hunter didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the night without shelter and a campfire. Fortunately, he was already on a high place; getting a feel for the lay of the land shouldn’t be too difficult.

He scanned the rolling woodlands for points of interest, and three stood immediately out; a standing stone in the middle of a clearing near the base of the crag, a log cabin near a creek a few miles away, and a what looked like a smattering of small buildings just beyond the edge of the forest, somewhere far away in the distance. He made a mental note to check all three, which immediately triggered a new notification.

Investigate points of interest around the Brennai Weald. (0/3)

Well, damn.

Maybe that was what Faux-Grimm meant when he said that the player’s goal was whatever they decided it to be. An automated, self-tracking to-do list? Hunter approved. Making lists of goals and milestones was pretty much the only way he could focus his motivation and get stuff done. When it came to slacking, he really put the pro in procrastination.

Would there also be some kind of reward upon completing this task, like a quest of sorts? There was only one way to find out.

The closest of the three points of interest was the clearing, so that’s what he’d check out first. Then he’d head out to the log cabin. Nobody was rushing him, though. He stretched his limbs in the sun and stifled a yawn. Yeah, nobody was rushing him. He might as well enjoy himself a bit. After his stint counting the cracks in the ceiling of a dirty cell, however brief it had turned out to be, he could really use it.