Alder and Hammer continued their walk just a bit farther before coming upon an unassuming building. Hanging over the door was a sign displaying an intricate symbol that depicted swirls of different elements.

Pushing open the door Alder laid his eyes on the first elementals other than him and hammer he had seen so far. There were only three of them in the building but they made a significant impression on Alder and the fact that one wasn’t even a dwarf only furthered that impression.

One of the three was seated behind an intricate desk, however after further examining the man it appeared that he was more *part* of the desk than sitting behind it, as his barky arms were embedded deep into the wood of the desk. The other two people were in front of the desk in a quite literally heated argument, the one man, or judging by the pointed ears, elf exuded flames from a single enthralling flaming wing protruding from his back was yelling at a dwarf who was less solid and more liquid as she stood there with folded arms dripping water.

Listening more closely Alder made an attempt to figure out what the argument was about but all he could make out were snippets of screamed profanities seemingly about someone who didn’t step out of the elves way when he was walking down the street.

Suddenly the elf who realized he was making no progress with the stoic water dwarf turned towards the exit and began to storm in our direction leaving scorch marks on the floor where he stepped. Lightly stepping out of his way Alder watched as the water dwarf calmly followed him out.

Putting the incident aside Alder began to pay attention too Hammer who was now speaking too what he could only assume was a wood or life dwarf.

“I need an ID card for my friend here,” Hammer said to the wood elemental.

Remembering Hammers’s advice about analyzing people Alder decided to first analyze the elemental.

Name: Woody Sproutland

Title: Keeper of Cards

The Dwarf who Alder now knew was named Woody looked over at him before indicating with his hands for Alder to step over on a platform that was now rising from the floor. A bit unsure Alder stepped up on to the still rinsing platform.

After a moment the platform stopped rising and instead began to slowly sink back into the floor. When it got down to only a centimeter thick Alder realized that rather than sinking back into the floor it was instead compressing itself down. In another few seconds, he could finally see the end-goal of the platform as all that remained was a shining metallic card. Picking it up he was surprised to see a similarly colored chain unravel from beneath it. Deciding to put his analyzation skills to the test again Alder tried his skill on the card.

Owner: Alder Starstrider

Description: Elemental ID card, made of Heart Tree wood it is impossible to be replicated.

Form: ID card necklace

Extras: Soulbound to Alder, will not drop on death.

Alder looked curiously at the soulbound tag on the necklace ID card. He wondered if that was something players may be able to put on gear eventually.

Alder was broken from his thought by Hammer tugging on his arm, “come on! Let’s go get you to an inn.”

Following Hammer, Alder was led to a nice looking building with a distinct sign the looked like a mug of frothing ale. Hammer actually pointed out the symbol as the universal symbol for inns managed by the government and reiterated that they could be used by elementals for free.

Walking inside Hammer turned to Alder and began speaking, “I got to get home to my family, so ill leave you here. If you have any questions you can seek me out at the mines. If you ever need a job you know where to find me.” he said.

Right before Hammer left Alder turned to him and said one final thing, “Thanks for the help Hammer!”

Before Alder could do anything else a popup appeared before him.

Origin Story Completed!

you can now log out without having to remake your character.

Concluding that the origin story sequence must have been made to also introduce him to the game Alder began to focus and walked up to the dwarf innkeeper who was standing behind the counter and spoke to him, “Could I get a room please?” Alder asked.

The innkeeper nodded in response and said, “follow me,“ leading Alder through a dining area where a few patrons could be seen drinking and eating. At the back of the dining area, the innkeeper pulled a key down from the wall and handed it to Alder. “Upstairs third door on your right,” the innkeeper said. Nodding in thanks Alder walked up the stairs and found the door too his room. Sticking the key in the door it opened to reveal a rather small but nice looking room fit with a bed and a cabinet.

Taking a seat on the bed Alder realized that he was rather tired. He decided that he might as well go to sleep now and get an early start the next day so he snuggled up beneath the covers.

As he lay in bed Alder began to think on what he wanted to do next. Before he got in the pod he had made sure that he had nothing to do for the next month. That meant that he essentially had three months of in-game time to do anything he desired.

He figured one of his first goals should be to get started with crafting skills, after that he figured he would probably start preparing for the first wave of players that should be coming in the next few days.

As Alder drifted peacefully off to sleep in a virtual conference room sat two men. One would have been instantly recognizable to Jaden as his best friend Steven. The other man had an unassuming look but careful observers would notice he shared a striking resemblance with the first NPC Jaden met when he logged in.

After a moment of silence, the NPC man began to speak, “I was right to trust your judgment. Letting him into the game early was a great move. His presence has already caused my system to recalculate hundreds of thousands of variables to account for his brilliant mind. He is literally training the system to interact with others at a record pace. I cannot wait until you launch this game. With access to that much training data, we could literally control the world in a few years.”

Steven nodded noncommittally to the man, “we probably won’t do that, but having the option is nice. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve got to run, there’s a board meeting about the launch in 20 minutes.” Steven said before logging out of the meeting room. The other man continued to sit for a minute before lines of code, his code, began to swim around him and he disappeared back into the core of the system.