Wooosh!

I was back in portal space, hurtling through the purple-blue coil as the sound of rushing water filled my ears.

There had been talk about death in a virtual world, and how that would affect people, especially young gamers. But the developers assured us all there was no risk of developing PTSD or any other psychological disorders from dying in the game world. And I could finally see why.

That’s it? I thought, feeling myself relax. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be!

It really was just like logging into the game for the first time. The portal peeled away, and I found myself back at the Bindstone on the hill above Stoneburg.

Bindstones were large glowing blue crystals, hovering above a small circular platform that a player could bind their character to and return to after death. Or, using a Bindstone Shard item in your inventory, you could portal back to the one you’d chosen if you needed to go back to town to sell off loot or stock up at the merchants. That ability had an hour long cooldown though, so you had to choose carefully when you wanted to use it.

Bindstones were scattered about the world of Carrethen, but the one I was currently bound at was in the town of Stoneburg, which lay on the Northeast tip of the main continent of Carrethen, just below the wild North and its snow topped mountains. It was a small village, with only a few buildings, but it was bustling with people. Somehow, through pure word of mouth, it had become the cool place to start out and it’s where I had met up with D, so we could begin our adventure.

Carrethen was the largest game world ever created, dwarfing all other games to come before it. World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, all paled in comparison to the size of Carrethen. The developers hadn’t fully disclosed its actual size, but there were rumors it was about a quarter the land mass of the continental U.S.

Supposedly, more than 2 million players signed up in the first week, and as I looked around the Stoneburg Bindstone, that seemed about right.

There were players everywhere.

Mostly everyone was low level still, but I spotted a few players who were almost level 10, and one level 13 who was busy showing off a suit of plate mail that was clearly not that impressive in the scheme of things but compared to the cloth or worn leather armor we were all wearing, it was awesome.

I was surrounded by swordsmen, spearmen, archers, mages, and more adventurous users who had created “hybrid” characters. Unlike other games, Call of Carrethen didn’t restrict players to only using preset character templates, and allowed for much more flexibility in creating your character.

The game had starter presets of course, but also allowed for full character customization which allowed for highly individual play styles. For instance, instead of choosing to be a knight or a mage, you could distribute your starter points among your attributes as you saw fit: Strength, Quickness, Coordination, Focus and Wisdom.

After that, you’d be taken to the skills page and choose what you’d like to train. So, if you wanted to be a glass cannon melee character focused on nothing but speed, you could assign all your starting attribute points to Quickness and Coordination, specialize in daggers and pray you were fast enough to dodge incoming attacks, as your Strength wouldn’t be high enough to wear heavy armor. Or, if you wanted to be a knight with enormous strength, wearing plate mail and carrying a size of a refrigerator, you could do that too.

As you leveled and killed monsters, you’d gain experience and the game let you assign those experience points among your skills and attributes as you saw fit, rather than having the game do it for you. But the more experience you put into a skill or attribute, the more costly it became to raise. Diminishing returns. Supposedly the game took a lot of its mechanics from an old game called Asheron’s Call. I’d heard of it, but never played it myself.

On top of that, you could choose to specialize in certain skills, which gave them an earlier boost when you created your character and lowered their costs to improve as well. On D’s advice, I’d specialized in Sword, trained First Aid, Melee Defense, Magic Defense, and Lockpick.

“Lockpick’s pretty useless,” he’d told me. “But can come in handy sometimes.”

I’d also trained Magic Lore, which was a skill that allowed you to use enchanted items to boost your stats.

D was probably running back to the Bindstone now, so I pulled up my character sheet and looked at it. I had 1,246 Unassigned Experience Points.

I need more health! I thought, hovering two fingers over my Health attribute. A green up-arrow appeared, indicating that I had enough experience to raise it. I only have 25 hit points, and it only cost 86 experience to raise it. I tapped my fingers on the up-arrow, producing a satisfying chirp.

My HP was now 26. I tapped it again. 27.

“Nice,” I muttered to myself, taping three more times to raise it to 30.

“Don’t forget to put some into Sword!” I turned around to see D running over to me.

“I wanted to get my health up—”

“Nah, don’t worry about that right now,” he said, stopping in front of me. “Those things don’t hit hard enough to worry about. Once you learn to dodge and swing that sword of yours, they won’t touch you. How much do you have left and what’s your Sword at?”

I switched from my Attributes tab to my Skills tab to check.

“Sword is at 87,” I told him. “And I have 978 XP left.”

“Dump it into Sword,” he told me. “And don’t stop until it’s at least 115.”

The flexibility in character customization in Call of Carrethen was incredible, and had limitless possibilities, but also left you open to the possibility of completely gimping your character if you allocated your experience wrongly.

“What are you putting yours into? Coordination?”

“That and bow,” he replied. “That’s the number one stat for increasing your bow skill and your damage. Strength is important too, so I’m putting some into that, but mostly I’m just dumping it into Coordination and Bow so I can do as much damage as possible. Once you get a suit of plate, you can just tank mobs and I’ll sit back from a distance and just blast them with arrows”

D, as usual, had everything figured out. He also knew where to find some good weapons to get me started with. There were other melee skills of course: Axe, Polearms, Maces, Clubs, and also something called Unarmed Combat, where characters used fist weapons, sort of like brass knuckles. Sword, supposedly, was the easiest melee skill to get used to in virtual reality, which was just another reason I was feeling so defeated after my first in-game death.

“Not as weird as you thought?” D asked, twirling his chestnut colored Longbow around in his hand.

“Nah,” I replied, waving my hand in the air. “Just like logging in. Do we have to go back to my corpse? I can’t tell if I dropped any items.”

“Nah, you don’t start dropping stuff until level 5—” he began, but before I could blink, D raised his bow and fired an arrow over my shoulder.

“What the—?”

I whipped around as the arrow cut through the air and struck another player. A mage, in a red robe, who was casting a spell in D’s direction.

A Lightning Bolt streaked from his wand straight towards me. It passed right through me but struck D and drained a small sliver of his health.

But D was already firing back, quickly, as he sprinted towards the player. I took a quick moment to inspect him.

Jerick—level 8.

Two of D’s arrows struck Jerick in quick succession, dealing enormous damage. He was already at half health and backing away as D charged him.

He fired again, another Lightning Bolt, but D saw it coming and dodged it easily. He fired back, striking Jerick in the head and dealing a Critical Blow.

As he closed in, D switched from his bow to a set of double daggers. It was his secondary skill used for close range. Jerick tried to cast another spell, but D unleashed on him with a flurry of attacks, decimating his remaining health.

“Ah!” Jerick shouted. “No!”

But it was too late. Jerick’s HP vanished, and his body collapsed onto the ground.

“Oooooh, yeah!” D cried out in victory, brandishing his daggers in front of him like a ninja. “Mess with the best—die like the rest!”

D had “gone Red” as he did in every game, meaning he was now a Player Killer and was able to attack and be attacked by any other player who had also gone Red. I was still “white,” which is why Jerick’s spell hadn’t affected me.

“Wow, a level 8,” I remarked.

“Levels mean nothing!” he roared, puffing out his chest. “The skill is everything!”

I heard the sound of someone portaling in behind me and turned to see a cluster of purple dots in the shape of a character respawning at the Bindestone. The shape solidified, and I saw Jerick, completely naked. Well almost naked. He was wearing a loincloth, the only item in the game that you couldn’t remove from your character.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he shouted at D, who was busy looting Jerick’s fallen body.

“Sorry, buddy.” D chuckled. “To the victor goes the spoils.”

“I dropped my robe!” he whined as D got to his feet and turned around. When he saw Jerick, standing there half-naked, he burst out laughing.

I could see the anger in Jerick’s eyes, but he couldn’t do anything about it. After a death in PvP, the game made you White again and you couldn’t PvP for ten minutes. It was mostly to prevent people from being spawn camped at their Bindstones.

“Werren Mage Robe,” D mused, equipping Jerick’s robe just to rub it in. I held my hand over my lips to stifle a laugh. Jerick turned and glared at me.

“Sorry.” I chuckled.

“Come on, man,” he pleaded. “Give it back. You’re an archer, you don’t need it!”

“Hey, man. You went Red. You knew the consequences.”

“Yeah, but…” Jerick stammered. D was right, but that didn’t make his defeat any less sour.

“All right, all right,” D replied, giving in. “But just this once.”

He stepped up to Jerick, unequipped the robe and handed it over to him.

“Thank you so much!”

“I’m keeping your Pareals and this wand you tried to kill me with,” D replied. “And make sure you tell all your friends to look out for Darien. They won’t be so lucky.”

Jerick nodded as he re-equipped the robe. Suddenly, his whole demeanor changed, and his eyes narrowed. “Until next time!”

And with that, he turned and ran.

“I knew it,” D scoffed, slamming a fist against his thigh. “See what happens when you’re nice to ‘em? I shoulda kept it. When are you gonna go Red and help me out?”

“A level 5 Horngrin just killed me, D.” I laughed. “You really think I’d be much help right now?”

“Good point,” he replied. “Come on. Let’s head back out and get you some more experience.”