“And what, exactly, was that?”

Hara stood, hands on her hips, watching Maya with a judgmental glower.

Maya glanced around the battlefield with a frown, avoiding the lizardine woman’s gaze, and sheathed her no-longer-flaming sword.

“Fighting? Leveling? The whole point of what we’re doing here?”

“Flailing, more like. Have you never learned to use a sword?”

“Um, of course I can. You swing it at enemies, and it deals damage. It’s not like we need to hit weak points or anything specific, right?”

Hara looked even more judgmental, if that were possible. “How have you reached tier two with this kind of attitude?”

Maya shrugged and started looting the bodies. Despite the slightly scorched appearance, the loot - what little there was - gave no indication of having endured fire damage.

“Stop. First, my luck is higher, so you’re wasting resources with every corpse you touch. Second, stop avoiding the question. Did you skip the tutorial?”

“No! I did the magic and economics and ranged weapons sections. And talked to the weird priestess lady. And the nature sprite.”

“So, everything except close-combat fighting. The one thing that every character regardless of build is guaranteed to need at one point or another?”

Maya felt herself blushing. “Um. When you put it that way, it sounds a lot worse. But I mostly rely on magic, I don’t need—”

“How much stamina do you have?”

“Uhh. . . 284?”

“And how much of that do you use in an average fight?”

“Not a lot. Maybe a third if it’s a hard fight.”

“And how often do you run out of energy?”

Maya grimaced, beginning to see Hara’s point. “Very often.”

“Then you’re clearly utilizing your resources ineffectively. Do you disagree?”

“No.”

“You’re tier 2 now, so you’ve unlocked an alt slot. Go and make a new character, play the melee section of the tutorial, and come back here when you’re sure you know what you’re doing. I’ll be waiting.”

“Bu— what? That could take days! You’re just going to sit here that whole time?”

Hara regarded her flatly. “It’s a virtual reality. Time is virtual. The tutorial doesn’t count as part of the game. You’ll be back in less than an hour, unless you’re really really slow on the uptake.”

Maya blushed again and mumbled assent, then quickly logged out before Hara could criticize her again.

Select World 9352.

Welcome back, player 9352-113-7.

Create new character, Maya thought pointedly.

Character creation loaded. As a permanent player, you gain a random stat bonus. +10 Momentum.

Then the familiar creation interface appeared, her sprite character already loaded in.

Maya mentally shrugged, tweaked a couple colours, then set Mayon Windheart as his name and chose continue.

The familiar tutorial area appeared around her, an open plaza with its statues and colour-veiled doors.

She took a step forward and immediately felt the difference. Mayon was shorter than Maya had been and felt off-balance without the air dragging against arm-feathers, instead catching on his iridescent wings. She fluttered them experimentally, hoping to take off, but they seemed as aesthetically-constrained as her harpy’s arms. She couldn’t remember seeing any sprites flying around in-game either, so she doubted it could be a case of her doing it wrong.

She wondered if there were a way to modify Wind Whisper or Wind Word to be strong enough to lift her and enable free flight. Surely it wouldn’t be impossible to take to the skies someday, somehow. Right?

But for now, she had a long overdue appointment with a scary vampire who wanted to beat her up in melee combat.

Mayon took a deep breath and walked toward it. She’d invaded Domitius’s stronghold. She’d defied the Trickster to his face. She could handle one tutorial trainer with a bit of a sinister attitude.

She hesitated halfway. If the tutorial was outside normal time, she didn’t have to go directly to the melee part. She’d been meaning to learn how to use a bow. And she could always use more practice with throwing knives.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more the tutorial seemed like an ideal training ground. Outside the game’s standard timeflow. Even if she couldn’t learn high-power spells or super special attacks, she could definitely improve her basics to a decent level.

After all, without her Throw Knife ability she still missed a vast proportion of the time. Spend a few weeks training here, and she could improve her freeform abilities to something resembling competence.

And best yet, it was all done under Domitius’s orders, so she couldn’t even get in trouble for shirking. Well, Hara’s, but it amounted to the same thing.

She took a step, then paused again.

Although. . .

She headed for the magic area instead, surprised by the wave of nostalgia at the appearance of the area. The open-air plaza gleamed with rays of golden light, illuminating the sprite standing in the center of the area. The avatar of magic this time took the form of a stately sprite, his semi-transluscent golden wings reminiscent of a luna moth’s in shape, tipped with white.

“Another student. It has been long since so many have come before me. May I ask your name?”

“Mayon Windheart. I am already familiar with the nature of magic, but can you teach me any spells?”

“Certainly. I will teach you a spell to begin advancing your understanding of my power. Here, take this, very gently. Do not move too quickly, or it will break apart.”

Mayon accepted the small globe of magic, surprised by how tiny it seemed now. She’d definitely skewed her ideas of quantity with her recent antics.

Mayon began to raise it toward his mouth, but the avatar of magic held out a hand. “No, do not eat it. Magic is not good to consume, keep it in your hand.”

“But, Wind Whisper requires it in my mouth.”

“Wind Whisper? If you seek instruction of advanced techniques, seek a mage in the outer world. I am here to show you the basics, no more.”

“So, Spark then?”

“Yes, Spark. Do you know it already?”

Mayon slid the magic across his hand until his palm and fingers were lightly connected by trails of gleaming nothingness, then snapped his fingers to initiate the spell. A tiny Spark came to life, floating just above his palm.

“Indeed, you do. So I have nothing more to teach you.”

“But I have more to learn. May I have more magic to practice with, please? I would like to increase my speed.”

The avatar of magic smiled and nodded. “Indeed you may. I am pleased that you consider my power worth the effort of improvement. Most who come are satisfied with whatever they manage to obtain and give no thought to advancement.”

Mayon continued practicing Spark until he could perform it very quickly, which Maya solidified into an ability. If she ever decided to play as Mayon for real, it could come in handy. No point in not utilizing the resources while they were here.

Yet this time, the avatar of magic failed to offer any magic for later use, and any residuals that Mayon had on him slid off and returned to the avatar of magic upon leaving the room.

Next, she returned to the ranged combat area. The familiar antics of the felinis brothers made her feel immediately at home. She’d spent days here last time as Maya, and even more than the magic room she felt incredibly comfortable and nostalgic.

Had it really only been a week and a half since she started playing? It felt so much longer. Well, probably the fact that she hardly ever wasted time sleeping had something to do with that.

This time she chose to focus on archery and spent the next several days shooting at a target again and again and again, and again and again, and again and again and again.

Fortunately, the constant banter between the two teachers kept her practice from becoming too tedious. She fell easily into the rhythm of it all and actually managed to improve her aim from dreadful to only mostly dreadful.

She spent a while practicing firing as quickly as possible, trying to make some sort of arrow-flurry attack, but since she still missed at least three fourths of the time it was doomed to uselessness.

Well, possibly. She solidified it into an ability anyway, in case Mayon ever needed to confuse another player by missing them several times quickly. Not like it hurt anything having it on hand.

She paused for a few days, switching to knives for another period of time, and found to her surprise and pleasure that her times practicing as Maya actually did translate to something akin to muscle memory even with Mayon’s different physical shape. He wasn’t an instant prodigy or anything, but she wasn’t disappointed in his progress at all.

She got a decent Throw Knife ability out of it all, then switched to throwing multiple knives at once like Sevard had done. This proved significantly less successful. Mayon may have Maya’s progress as a boost, but Maya honestly hadn’t ever been that impressive when throwing freeform. Still, if she could stay here without taking up time in the real game world, this was probably the most efficient possible use of her time.

Mayon threw knives singly or in groups until she was thoroughly tired of it, then switched back to arrow shooting for another several days.

At least, Maya assumed it must be days. She’d lost track of time so thoroughly that it may have been longer.

Once Mayon could hit the target more than 50% of the time with either a bow or a thrown knife, she reluctantly acceded that the time to stop putting off melee combat had probably arrived. Though, maybe if she put in a bit more time, she could get that flurry attack working properly, maybe hit more than one or two times in a row?

What would it hurt to wait a little longer? She had all the time in the world, right?

She’d entirely stopped to notice the drag of Mayon’s wings, or his difference in height and shape from Maya’s harpy form. His movement was swift and confident, firing arrow after arrow into the target.

In fact. . .

Refilling the quiver from a bundle provided by the felinis teachers, Mayon took his position and began firing as fast as he could move. Which was still not very fast, not at level. . .

Maya brought his character sheet into focus.

Level 9.

Wait. Wait!

9?! She’d maxed Mayon’s tier-1 xp already? But not assigned any points. Well. She knew where to put them.

24 points to assign? All into momentum. That doubled Mayon’s speed, up from the 120% of his bonus from being permanent, all the way to 240%.

Wow.

Maybe Maya should have considered doing a bit more min-maxing and less generalizing. Dropping a whole tier’s worth of points into a single attribute made a pretty significant difference, seeing it all at once.

She’d always intended to put more into momentum eventually, but attunement and intelligence for will, energy, and ability slots kept stealing the show. Hmmmm. She really needed to make a plan and stick to it if she wanted to be effective, rather than arbitrarily deciding each level’s points at the time.

But maybe it didn’t matter? After all, equipment could compensate. If she put too many points in one thing, she just had to buy items in whatever else she would have preferred. Was there anything that could only be gained through actual points and not equipment? She’d have to look into that.

She made a note in Mayon’s journal, then remembered that it wouldn’t be accessible to Maya once she switched characters.

Well, this was the tutorial after all. Maybe she could ask someone?

“I seem to have maxed tier 1 experience,” Mayon said aloud. “Who should I talk to about the best way to use my stat points?”

“Momentum,” said the knife-thrower, at the same moment the archer said, “Intelligence.”

They looked at each other and grinned. “With a secondary focus on Intelligence,” “on Momentum, naturally.”

“It’s most important to move quickly, as long as you can continue attacking without stopping,” said the knife-thrower. “Even two or three different attacks should be enough to prevent any wasted time in combat.”

“A steady attack rhythm can only do so much damage, variation helps to actually increase the overall speed,” declared the archer. “The more variety in attacks the more flexibly you can adapt to the combat’s situations. Moving quickly is important, but having something to do with the time you save is of greater import.”

“The faster you are, the less essential it is to continue increasing the number of attacks,” contested the knife-thrower. “There’s no practical difference between having four or five attacks to choose from, while being able to move faster is always an improvement.”

“Past a certain point, moving quickly provides only minimal return for the investment. Attacks can only be made so fast, and more versatility is always useful.”

“But additional skills are no help when firing for long periods of time. It’s better to have a few attacks you can use and continue doing so for long enough—”

“Got it,” Maya said, interrupting before they could continue the argument. The felinii gave one final glare at each other, but it was the familiar glare of people long used to each other and fully aware that neither would change the other’s mind, entirely without animosity.

“I think I’ll look for second opinions,” she said. “I’ll be back in a while.”

Mayon walked to the magic area, and repeated the question to the avatar of magic. His response was unsurprising, in retrospect.

“Attunement and focus are most important, of course. One must have both the will to act and the necessary connection to power. Those most attuned to magic are best capable of learning its ways and pursuing its secrets.”

“And I suppose the economics guy would say flexibility, and the warrior strength?”

“Naturally. Those who follow lesser disciplines would pursue lesser aims and advocate their paths in their ignorance.”

“I wonder what the priestess would say?” Mayon mused, barely audible.

But the avatar of magic must have heard, because he scoffed and answered, “Control; what else are deities for?”

Maya bristled at that. “Hope, guidance, protection - any number of things.”

The avatar of magic shook his head. “That sounds like no deity I’ve ever heard of.”

“Well, that’s just the ones in the game—”

The avatar of magic frowned, wings fluttering irritably.

After being around enough NPCs with a more relaxed stance on the whole ‘pretend we aren’t virtual or in a game’ thing, she’d forgotten how much the tutorial people wanted to ignore that fact.

Maya couldn’t think of any way to say ‘everyone here is made up’ with sufficient levels of subtlety, so she gave up and returned to the previous point.

“God is goodness and love, but. . . I guess you would have no way to know that.”

“Which god is this that you speak of? I have never really looked into the various deities, they all seem equally self-centered and manipulative in one way or another.”

“Well, that’s probably just for narrative reasons. There has to be something interesting happening. . .” Mayon’s voice trailed off as Maya realized that she’d slipped back into talking about the game as a fictional construct again, then growled in frustration, wings fluttering. “These gods in this world are not like the one I know from my world.”

But even as she said it, Maya felt guilty. Even when she’d been alive, she’d hardly been the most devout. And now that she lived in this game, she couldn’t recall even thinking about God more than once or twice.

Was there something she ought to be doing here, some greater purpose to her continued existence? It couldn’t be simple coincidence that she’d been allowed to live on past her untimely demise.

And now she was back thinking about herself again. She really was bad at this.

“I know there are many worlds,” the avatar of magic said, breaking Maya out of her thoughts. “But I have never heard of anyone like this.”

“It’s not important,” Mayon said. “I mean, it is, but I don’t think talking to you about it would really matter.” She closed his eyes for a moment, bowed her head.

‘If there’s some deeper purpose to all this,’ she whispered in her mind, ‘please show me. I never really figured out who I’m meant to be anyway, and now it’s even harder to tell. But if you can still hear me, even as a digital reproduction in a virtual world, just. . . let this all work out to your plan.’

She wasn’t sure if she was doing it right, but it made her feel a bit better. If God had a plan for her, it would work out somehow. She didn’t have to worry about it. And if not, if she was somehow outside his jurisdiction now. . . worrying wouldn’t help anyway. Best to just get on with living and do her best.

“Strange,” mused the avatar of magic. “Usually religious people are more than happy to spout their rhetoric at me with the slightest provocation.”

“Well, I’m not most people. I’ve always found proselytizing more off-putting than anything. If I’m meant to make a difference in someone’s life, it’s far more likely to be by my actions than any attempts at persuasion.”

“And how is that working out for you?”

Mayon shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I can only hope and pray that my influence is a positive one. But I know I’ll make mistakes, so I can only hope and pray I never am the cause of irreparable harm. I don’t want to be the one to drive anyone away from the truth. Isn’t it safer to leave the greater risk to people who actually know what they’re doing?”

“I have found that those who are most sure of what they’re doing tend to be going about it quite incorrectly.”

Mayon laughed. “Hah, true. But still. I’m hardly certain of what I believe myself, let alone confident enough to tell others. I feel sure there’s a creator, that if God is evil or indifferent then the world as it is could not exist, but what if I’m wrong? What if I were to go all in proclaiming an elaborate deception? And people listened to me? Far better to put myself in a position to do as little damage as possible.”

“Well, an unusual priest for an unusual god," the avatar said dismissively. "But this is not why I am here, nor why you have come. Have you more questions?”

“No." Then she remembered that there was something more Mayon could potentially gain here. "Yes. May I have more magic to practice with?”

“Certainly.” A small amount of magic appeared hovering in midair.

Mayon raised a hand. “More than that, please.”

“Spark does not require any more than this.”

“I wish to practice other spells I have learned, heard tell of, or created. Surely you would encourage such practices?”

“My role is to teach you the basics, not provide unlimited resources.”

“The arrows never run out. There are sufficient knives to throw for weeks on end without stopping to reload. I know.”

Still, the avatar of magic hesitated. Maya instinctively glanced at Mayon’s character sheet to see if his luck was bad, but there was no line for luck anywhere. Of course not. He wasn’t a trickster, after all. It would be exactly 0. Or 1. Whatever the default was for ordinary players.

“Please?”

“Two.” A second small ball of magic appeared beside the first. “You may have a total of 8 drams of magic at any time, so long as you remain here to practice with it.”

“Thank you.”

Mayon immediately set about learning Wind Whisper, Frost Whisper, and Flame Whisper. It proved to be. . . almost impossible, actually. Without luck guiding his motions, even movements which felt to Maya completely instinctive evaded Mayon’s attempts.

How hard could it be to exhale into cupped hands, then push the spell out while igniting the magic into a tiny inferno?

Apparently very, very difficult. No wonder the mage academy hadn’t discovered an endless multitude of spells and their permutations. Without luck, this was ridiculously hard!

Maya persisted, day after day, sometimes taking a break to return to ranged practice in between sessions spent repeating the same movements with slight variations while the avatar of magic watched in silence. She really wished he’d give her some advice, but he insisted that Spark was the only spell he was qualified to teach - though she knew this to be false, since he’d been the one to teach Wind Whisper to Maya in the first place.

She’d even more completely lost track of time by now. She still used ‘days’ as rough approximations, but honestly even toward the beginning the structure was tenuous at best. Day and night were dependent upon the area which she entered, not any sort of actual weather cycle. The rooms’ lighting remained the same day after day.

She never had to sleep, never worried about food, so what was there to stop her from just practicing for as long as it took?

Finally, maybe two weeks later, Mayon successfully cast Wind Whisper. She immediately solidified the ability for later use, then tried to modify it into its frost and flame variations.

This proved, once again, nearly impossible.

But she knew it worked. With little more than sheer stubbornness driving her onward, she persisted.

In the meantime, between practicing magic and bowmanship and throwing knives, she spent some time visiting the economics teacher again. He was the same as before, though his information seemed a bit different this time around. He mentioned Cydrin by name, for instance, as one of the three most powerful people in the world.

But his information remained unhelpfully vague, and somewhat inaccurate. She tried to question him more deeply about Domitius, but he simply repeated the same overview in different ways or with slightly different wording.

Eventually, she tired of that, and made her way to the red curtain of light. She’d avoided it for as long as possible, probably much longer than was reasonable, but the time had finally come. One way or another, she had to learn close combat fighting.

Mayon Windheart Average Male Sprite Level: 9 Affinities: Absorptive Mental Tier: 1 Class: None Total Base Equipment Modifiers Strength: 7 8 0 -1 Momentum: 40 42 0 -2 Agility: 8 8 0 0 Control: 11 8 0 3 Attunement: 11 8 0 3 Focus: 10 8 0 2 Intelligence: 8 8 0 0 Flexibility: 12 8 0 4 Unassigned: 0 Health: 80 of 80 Will: 20 of 20 Stamina: 136 of 136 Energy: 81 of 81 Speed: 240% Switch penalty: -49%, 9.9 secs Stealth: 90% Chain bonus: +13% Awareness: 69% Cooldown: 94% Max abilities: 2