I marched over to Malfin the Wise as fast as I could without knocking people over. When I was about 20 feet away, I suddenly smashed into a brick wall and fell backwards onto my butt. That actually hurt! I was hoping that my passive, [Immune To Pain] meant that I didn’t feel pain, big surprise that was a lie.

Vice Inc. had made Dreamscape with 90% realism. The other 10% was the fact that you couldn’t actually die in real life if you died in the game, and the pain that was experienced in the game was more of an intense pressure. But what I had just experienced was more than just pressure.

I looked up to see that the brick wall that I had run into wasn’t actually a brick wall, but a 7 ft. dark green orc with biceps that were bigger than my thighs.

Lvl 1 Sorcerer

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” the bag of muscles growled at me.

“Oh thank goodness, I was worried for a second there.”

“wha…” he gave a puzzled expression.

“I was worried that walls had the ability to move in this game.” I stood up and ran past the puzzled orc towards Malfin the Wise.

An [Orc] was the worst spellcaster race in Dreamscape due to their passive, [Brawn over brains]. I guess they are technically the second worst race, because apparently the [Undead] can be spellcasters.

[Brawn over brains] The orcs value strength of the body over the strength of the mind. Strength increased by 3% and intelligence decreased by 2%.

I walked up to Malfin the Wise and bowed respectfully.

“Teacher, I need your help.”

He looked into my eyes as if he was staring into my soul. His face was stern and he said nothing. I stood there at a loss with no idea what to do.

“Teacher, I need your help.” I repeated.

“Ah yes, what can I do for you old sorcerer?” He lifted his eyebrows signifying that he had regained his senses.

Old! I was 19 years old! This bag of bones would probably trip over his beard and fall down a flight of stairs, but he was calling me old!

I hesitated in my response but then proceeded, “Teacher, I don’t know what to do. I am undead and I don’t have the ability to manipulate mana. Yet, I am a sorcerer, how can this be?

“Well, you’re not going to be a very good sorcerer now are you!” he broke into laughter, which slowly evolved into snorting. My mouth hung open and I just stood there in a daze.

“So, there is nothing that you can do to help me?” I pleaded.

He finally stopped laughing and wiped the tears from his eyes. “In life, there are always two options. You can either do something, or you can do nothing.”

What is this, an ancient Chinese proverb or something?

A quick dinging sound rang in my ears as a light blue text box appeared in front of me.

Quest: Do Something (A rank)

Malfin the Wise suggests you do something about your current situation.

Rewards: ???

Do you accept?

WTF! Malfin is titled as ‘the Wise’, but his wisdom literally consists of telling me to do something! What a whack job! I almost yelled my displeasure at the top of my lungs, but then my eyes fell on the ‘A rank’.

A quest is a task that a player or a group of players can complete in order to obtain a reward. Quests are one of the most important ways that a character can gain experience and equipment.

Quests are ranked from least to most difficult as follows: E->D->C->B->A->S->SS->SSS.

Quests are graded based on their difficulty, but the rewards received from higher difficulty quests were also better. Many of the higher difficulty quests required groups of players to complete.

Based on our current level we should only being doing E and D rank quests, so what was this A ranked quest doing here?

While inquisitively staring at Malfin the Wise, I accepted the quest.

“I accept”

“Wonderful, good luck to you old sorcerer.” He immediately turned around and began walking towards the entrance.

“I am not that old!” I shouted, as he was trodded away. I doubt he heard me though; he on the other hand was pretty ancient.

I turned around and began scanning the room- it was almost completely empty. There were a few odd stragglers that were talking to every NPC in hopes of trying to receive a quest.

NPC stands for non-person character. The computer program through artificial intelligence controls the NPCs.

I stood there for a moment trying to recall all of what had taken place so far. I had been forced to play one of the most difficult classes, the [Sorcerer]. That was fine and all, but my race was preventing me from actually being able to do anything useful.

At the same time, Malfin the Wise had given me an A ranked quest to ‘Do Something’, so did that mean that there was a way for me to use mana as an undead? Well there must be! There is no way that Dreamscape would give me a class-race combination that wouldn’t work!

I excitedly ran out of the room, I was going to have to try to figure out how to use mana.

I ran through some various hallways and corridors before I finally stepped outside into the sunlight, it was blinding. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the glaring rays of the sun. Wow! This game was so realistic!

You have discovered [New Hope Village]

To my left was the rest of the small town of New Hope Village, while in front of me and all to my right was a huge field with various trees scattered throughout. I said the word, “Map,” and a map appeared in front of me. Most of the menu features in the game were voice activated.

The old stone building that I had just come out of, along with the rest of New Hope Village was detailed on the map, while everything else on the map was grayed out. Dreamscape highly encouraged exploration and adventure, so they wanted players to go out and experience the vast world that they had created. Sounds good to me!

Glancing out into the vast field, I saw that many of the new sorcerers were killing what looked like small boars. The boars had a bronze colored skin with two long tusks coming out of their mouth.

Lvl 2

Attack:25-35

Defense:2

Health:200

Rage:100

Skills: [Gore]

Description: A wild animal that roams through the fields near New Hope Village and is usually docile. Can be very ferocious when attacked or protecting their young.

While looking at the Boar’s stats I was quite impressed, I was also curious to see what the [Gore] ability was. Almost as if to answer my question, I heard a scream echo to my right, “Ahhhh.” I glanced over and saw a boar that had knocked over a player named .

The tusks of the boar then began emanating a red aura, and it rammed its razor sharp weapons deep into the player’s chest.

64!

What! 64 damage from a lvl 2 monster, that’s absurd! The player panicked and began running away, but the boar was relentless.

26!

25!

28!

The player then screamed for help, and nearby players quickly rushed over and bombarded the boar with [Arcane Missiles]. Although it may have seemed like a selfless act on the part of the players that assisted , the opposite was true.

In Dreamscape if players are not grouped together in what’s known as a party, then the player that does the most damage to a monster receives all of the experience and the loot dropped by the monster.

Loot is slang for anything the monster/player would leave behind such as money or equipment.

It was a common tactic in video games to wait for someone to begin fighting a monster, and then steal the kill by quickly doing more damage to the monster. A good portion of people wouldn’t outright steal a monster though, especially just a regular old boar in the starting village.

Later in the game, you could also just kill the other player outright by what’s known as PKing (Player Killing), but the game wouldn’t allow PKing in the starting regions of the game.

Dreamscape wanted players to get to lvl 10, and then choose one of the 5 main cities before it would allow players to kill each other.

Why would the game do this? It’s simple, they didn’t want everyone killing each other back to lvl 1 before they could enjoy the game.

Also, whenever you die there is a chance that you will drop either inventory items, or other gear that you have equipped. This then gives the other players a chance to steal any items on the player’s corpse.

The chance of dropping equipped gear was lower from what I had read on the forums. If a player lost their only weapon at the beginning of the game, it could be devastating.

I wanted to see if I truly had no combat capabilities, so I wandered around a little bit until I found a lvl 1 boar that no one else was attacking. Its stats were slightly weaker than the lvl 2 boar.

Nervously I walked within the striking range of [Arcane Missiles], which was 20 meters. Spell casters like myself specialized in long-range attacks.

I pulled out my tome and extended my right hand just like Malfin the Wise had.

“Arcane Missiles,” I said with some uneasiness in my voice. Unsurprisingly nothing happened. While holding the same posture as before, I tried the only other spell I knew, “[Mana Shield]”. Once again, nothing happened.

“Ugghh, what a load of crap!” In frustration I chunked my tome at the boar. It soared spectacularly through the air, landing squarely on the boar’s head.

2!

I had done 2 damage by throwing my book. This didn’t exactly blow my mind considering my physical attack damage was 1-3, so 2 fell evenly in the middle. What I didn’t realize, was that this caused the boar to come charging towards me!

It might just be because I have never had anything come charging at me with an intent to kill, but I froze in fear. Yes that’s right, I completely froze against a level 1 monster; my future gaming career wasn’t looking too bright. In my defense, I had a pretty crappy start with this whole manaless spell caster thing going on.

The boar charged strait into my abdomen and it felt like I had been hit with a sledgehammer. I was unprepared so I was completely knocked off my feet.

26!

I lay on the ground dazed, what in the world was happening? The boar’s tusk let off a familiar red glow as he prepared his only move, [Gore]. I rolled over on all fours and tried to escape. The boar took this opportunity to ram his tusk in a place where the sun don’t shine (if you know what I mean).

48!

I cried out in pain and asked God to save me. Unsurprisingly, it was a critical hit because that part of my body was indeed a weak spot. Tears formed in my eyes as I desperately began trying to kick the boar away. My foot hit his snout.

1!

Yup, that summarizes my damage output pretty well. So far I had done 3 damage to the boar, while it had done 74 damage to me. I only had 89 health left and things were looking pretty terrible. The kick to the face had temporarily dazed the boar, so I took this opportunity to run away.

With tears clouding my vision I ran strait into another lvl 1 boar.

1!

I had successfully done 1 whole damage with my shoulder, great. The boars then ganged up on me without mercy!

20!

19!

25!

14!

27!

The pain that I was feeling immediately subsided, because I died.