4:09pm, The Nineteenth Day

The first length of the boat ride wasn’t smooth, by any stretch of the imagination. The waters were as swift as they were cold, and on more than one occasion Kyoura, Artel, and Svite’s boat in front of me tipped way too much towards the river, only stopping when the mage stuck his oar out to righten it once more. We didn’t regret taking them however, for Kyoura spotted more than one ambushing golem lying in wait along the dry path for unaware adventurers.

As well, once I was confident enough in the mage’s superb boating skills to look, I found that the waters were even more eye-catching up close. Small crystals that I didn’t notice before were drifting in the current, their dim colored glows only visible for seconds before they were pulled under again by the river current. As we began to reach calmer waters more of these came up for longer, showering the caverns walls in a kaidelacope of colors.

After around an hour of gentle waters, I found myself staring over into space when Svite called for a rest. Just ahead, I could hear the gentle sound of Svite and Kyoura talking and laughing, and I found myself idly wondering how long they’d known each other. The mage in front of me sat with his head perched on his right hand, idly swirling a few strands of his hair as he stared out at the river.

Now would be a good time to get some more information. The mage struck me as someone who paid attention, but I hadn’t had time to speak with him at all yet. There wouldn’t be a better time than now at any rate. Turning to him, I opened my mouth before swiftly closing it again.

He never told me his name. I really didn’t want to ask either, since we’d already been together for hours now. After a second of agonizing over if I wanted to ask or not, I decided that it didn’t really matter. I’ll probably hear it from the others eventually anyway.

“So you guys spent more time in Paelgard than I did; how dangerous do you think it is? Are people just going about normal game activities?”

The mage curiously glanced at me before responding. I guess he still might not believe that Artel and I just ran off the first day.

“The town is safe.” He said. “Most of the players we haven’t lost are friendly. Most.”

I stared at a small green crystal as it floated alongside us. How do you lose players? Like they wandered off from Paelgard?

“Of those who are trying to organize, I would put Gabriel and his group as the most famous players right now.” The mage scooped a black crystal out of the water to study it. “Though ‘infamous’ is probably the better word.”

“Are they a questing group?” I asked

The mage shrugged unhelpfully. “In a way.”

I switched tact. “Are they pvpers then?” Unskilled players who attacked others could be an annoyance, but if any players had gotten good at it, it could be a massive headache when questing out of town. The respawn penalty was awfully punitive in Finkar.

The mage didn’t respond for a second, but when he did he almost didn’t sound like he believed his own words.

“And how could they continue to do that? There would be nowhere to hide. We still haven’t breached the pass down from the plateau. And the plateau isn’t really that large.”

What does that mean? Why would they have to hide? Confusion flew through my mind as I asked the mage as much. People would just respawn in the town after a short period of time. They wouldn’t even lose anything sequestered in their inventory, so I couldn’t really see why they would be forced to hide, especially in a non-pvp zone like Paelgard. When he turned around however, I could feel my heart drop upon gazing on the assured look upon his face.

“They would be lynched by proper players in town, and as long as players haven’t respawned I’m inclined to agree.”

…

Six months ago, in the beta test of Finkar, the penalty for dying was a huge complaint among testers. In that version of the game, dying meant two things. The first was that you lost all equipped items including non banked money and everything not hidden in your menu. The second was that the dead character would not respawn until two days later in-game, after which it would appear at the cathedral in the nearest town. Apparently this system only came about as a compromise between the development team and Novita’s company board. The developers had apparently wanted characters to be deleted on death, which the board had vetoed for obvious reasons.

There was one more peculiar quirk of Finkar. Due to the complicated nature of the accelerated time, in the beta it was not possible to log out at any time unless either an emergency exit was necessary, which would require a GM’s approval, or if the player was manually logged out by someone who had access to the player's headset. Whenever a player wanted to dive into Finkar, it would have to be in increments of an hour real time, or one week inside Finkar. When first announced of course, this ‘feature’ was rightfully demonized and almost killed the game before launch. Because of course who would join a game from which you couldn’t easily leave?

Novita’s marketing team finally put this issue to rest however, when they revealed the countless safety systems and army of GMs prepared to help with any problem in countless interviews and advertisements. Indeed, the dialogue eventually shifted from ‘stuck in a game with no way out’ to ‘an hour with the headset on at the very most with innumerable safeties’. Soon enough, players were once again flocking to the most ambitious game ever conceptualized- a life in the fantastical territory of Finkar run at one hundred and sixty eight times real time.

For the very first launch of the game, players were supposed to be auto logged out after the end of the first week, with the first people logging in leaving on Sunday in-game. For reasons obvious to no one as far as I knew, this auto log out never happened. It seems like the safeties didn’t account for this problem either.

When Artel and I had dived into this dungeon on the first day of launch, we had both planned to spend at least two hours real time logged in. When the first week passed, we were so engrossed in the game that we almost didn’t notice the passing of the scheduled log out time. In addition, there was no messaging system in Finkar except to call GMs, so we didn’t hear from any of the few other friends we had in the game either. As for the town’s panicked reaction I was equally unaware until I had talked to Svite, though the reaction didn’t surprise me. Artel and I had overcome a similarly panicked few days as we came to terms with this new surprise.

If the game was suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a permadeath model, then the developers had finally gotten his original designs for the game, though turned to an even more extreme degree than even they probably wanted.

…

“I see.” I leaned away from the mage and sunk into the boat in thought. Dozens of near death experiences flashed through my mind as I remembered my time in the dungeon. There were so many risks I had chanced taking respawning for granted. Practically my entire style of glyphwork combat put me only three or four mistakes away from death, which greatly unnerved me. Was it pure luck that I was still here? How many players died thinking the same as I had?

I sat up and shook my head. This whole thing was ridiculous, there was no way the players controlling those avatars were simply dead. Novitas had spent millions convincing the populace that the machine controlling the game couldn’t kill a person no matter what. There was no way a glitch like that would be allowed to slip in. And there was no chance that Novitas made the decision on purpose, for what would the point be? The disappeared players must’ve simply respawned somewhere else.

“Wait. Why are people convinced that Novitas is just up and killing people? Couldn’t it just be kicking them out of the server or holding them in limbo until the time dilation period is done?”

The mage shook his head.

“I’m surprised you don’t know, but I suppose you wouldn’t having been locked in here.”

I leaned closer to the mage, the rainbow light seeming to grow dimmer as we floated down a darker portion of the caverns.

“Throughout the first week, GM communication outside of help tickets was almost nonexistent. Only one GM in the avatar of a pixie was in Paelgard, and after the first week he disappeared as well. The last thing he said to anyone before he left towards the north was a cryptic message about how the death penalty had changed to be much, much harsher.”

I raised an eyebrow. That was indeed pretty strong evidence that Novitas was doing this on purpose, but I couldn’t see the reason for having the GM run instead of just disappear.

“Did anybody follow him?” I asked. “I’d be pretty surprised if his avatar didn’t get lynched.”

The mage shook his head again. “No, he had limited flight capabilities, so no one has been able to find him again. No one who has come back to talk about it at least.”

He spun his oar idly as he talked. In front of us Svite and Kyoura were getting ready to start rowing again.

“Because of that however, a lot of people have been too spooked to go ahead and off themselves, especially since no one has been seen coming out of the church. Didn’t stop everyone though.”

“Even still, I refuse to believe that permadeath would be on.” I suddenly thought of an answer. “Didn’t you say earlier that a lot of people think that we’re still here because of a time dilation bug? Couldn’t that mean the respawn period would be changed from two days as well?”

The mage shrugged unhelpfully yet again. “I could see the logic in that, but would you be willing to put your life on it?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but quickly closed it again. Would I? As I thought about it, I realized that I couldn’t definitely agree that I would. Although I prided myself on betting on my gut feelings and deductions, I didn’t think I could go so far as to put my life on a gamble as unknown as that.

Would Artel? I looked past the mage to the boat in front of us. Her black hair outlined her against the blue crystal walls as she talked with the others. She probably would. She’s always taking stupider risks than even me. Like that time she…

I stopped as a sudden wave of dissonance came over me. What was that? I looked to my left and right, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Something was wrong though, I could just feel it.

Was it something involving Artel? I studied the figures in the boat ahead of me. Nothing came to mind as I watched though, and after a second Kyoura saw me looking and waved. Waving back, I pushed the incident from my mind.

I must be getting paranoid.

…

We tied the boats to the wooden dock and set up our tents on a dirt patch by the wall. The river was wide and moved lazily farther down into a short tunnel the boats couldn’t enter, so our aquatic journey was forced to end here.

Loose remains of wooden crates were scattered around the gravelly beach, nothing useful in any of them. The walls continued far above to a point, telling us that we were still in the middle canyon portion of the dungeon, though that was to be expected with the size of the place. To the east the canyon kept going for several hundred meters before turning right, while behind us the intersected river canyon continued back for several kilometers at the least.

Despite spending all day in the canyons, I felt uneasy underneath their mind-boggling height. It seemed to me that at any time something could come flying down without us knowing, an indefensible flank we would always be vulnerable from. It especially made me anxious when the party decided to camp on the bank instead of finding a cave to sleep in, though I couldn’t very well use the excuse of unseen cave flyers as an excuse to change their minds.

We set up a campfire and rolled boulders next to it to rest against as we relaxed. While the mage began cooking everyone else got out hobbies and projects. Svite pulled out a simple leather bound book and started reading, while Artel simply did routine maintenance on her weapon. Beside me, Kyoura started drawing on a notebook while taking clandestine glances at her party members. I sat down next to the tent and pulled out the journal I had found earlier.

Opening my menu and navigating to the Paelgard Manual, I began to search through the list of twenty languages in Finkar. I checked the journal against each one, comparing the script styles and how the letters looked. Finally finding it under the name ‘Syslical’ I was disappointed to learn from the short blurb that the language used to be the dominant language of a kingdom on the plateau, but was now considered dead, with little other information given about it.

I closed the manual and sighed. The manuals you got only gave you information that npcs in your starting town would know, in addition to basic game mechanics. Everything not necessary had to be personally learned or experienced, and dead languages were included in that. The description meant that it would be hard if not impossible to find someone who could read it in Paelgard.

I skimmed through the book trying to get any idea if it was actually important or not before giving up and throwing it in my inventory again. In all likelihood it probably wasn’t too important, but having a mystery in my hands that I couldn’t currently solve didn’t feel right.

Just in time, the mage finished his stew and filled four bowls to pass out. Taking mine in my hands and digging in, I found that I couldn’t remember ever tasting something so delicious before. Quickly I scarfed it down and retrieved seconds and then thirds when that ran out.

“God damn, this is amazing.” I praised.

Kyoura and Svite laughed while the mage looked incredulously at me.

“Honsol, this is just potatoes, water and salt.”

“Then it's the most delicious potatoes, water, and salt I’ve ever had!”

He scoffed. “I’ll need to cook you my clams stew some time if you think this is good.”

“They have clams in Paelgard?” I asked.

“I’m not sure where they come from.” Kyoura chuckled. “But yeah they do. Or at least something that tastes like clams.”

“Then I’m going to hold you guys to that.”

We talked around the fire for a while about various out of game topics before Svite called for a volunteer to take first watch. Not too eager to sleep under the canyon, I jumped at the chance. Before everyone pulled into sleeping bags however, Kyoura stopped us.

“Svite, why don’t you play a song on the violin before we turn in?” Kyoura gestured to me. “Hans hasn’t heard you yet.”

“You play violin?”

Svite shot an exasperated look at Kyoura. “I’m not too great, but I can play some basic songs.”

“He normally plays some every night we’re traveling.” Kyoura nudged him. “Come on, Svite.”

He sighed as he opened his inventory. Scrolling through it, he tapped on a square to materialize a worn violin, the lacquer peeling in a few places. Taking the bow in hand, he looked at us.

“What song?” He glanced at Kyoura’s raised hand. “And don’t say Renvalt.”

Kyoura lowered her hand at his dismissal of the notoriously technical song.

“Something after 2030 preferably.”

“Renvalt is…”

“After 2031 then.”

“How about ‘City by the Shore’” The mage suggested. “I’ve seen you play that before.”

Svite simply nodded and launched into the song. As the upbeat intro started I was amazed at how quickly he was able to play despite playing it from memory. As the bow flowed across the neck I closed my eyes, almost imagining that I was in the middle of a concert hall.

It reminded me of memories from back in the US when my father would take my sister and I to the rare concert in the town park before he was conscripted. We would always eat out afterwards at one of the local restaurants and talk about whatever for hours. Though my sister and I never grew apart, my father was never the same after, especially after I moved out for college.

Just as the song slowed down and the last note died out I realized I was left with a nostalgic sadness I couldn’t quite explain. I missed my friends and even the rest of my family despite my somewhat thorny relationship with them. I could only resolve to visit them as soon as possible after everything was done and over with.

I hope we aren’t stuck in Finkar for too much longer.