Chapter 4 - Portal Gate

Ryan rushed home in his AI-8 SUV.

“Wheatley, is this the fastest route?” Ryan asked. “This will be the best weekend ever!” he thought to himself, “I can’t wait to see it, Winter Reach! We finally get to enter The Forged Realms!”

“We are currently on the fastest route navigating home, sir, and we will arrive in eleven minutes based on current traffic and weather.” Wheatley said.

“Thanks! Don’t call me sir, call me Ryan.”

After they had pulled into the driveway, Ryan saw the hard plastic white case sitting on the driveway sitting right in front of the garage door, on the side that read “The Forged Realms”. Ryan hopped out of the car to go investigate the new pod.

“Wheatley, open the garage door please,”

“Opening the door now Ryan.” Wheatley said, as the gauge door quietly slide up opening revealing a clean, mostly empty garage with white walls.

Ryan pushed the crate into the garage as it was slightly taller than he was if laying down, and four feet wide. Ryan’s heart pumped with excitement as he opened the crate. As he glanced inside, he saw a recliner like pod with a clean, sleek look. The pod was completely white, with smooth panels on the exterior, with the inside seat cushions and padding all black. Ryan noticed that the seat, head, arm and leg rests looked as if they were going to be pretty comfortable at a reclined and fully support bodily position while playing. On the side of the pod was The Forged Realms logo and read “The Forged Realms Portal Gate”. Ryan removed all the create panels to stand the Portal Gate upright in the garage. Ryan noticed now inside the pod on the right-hand side wall there was a full touch screen for user control and monitoring. He inspected the virtual reality headset, vital monitors with cables, as well as his a VR body suite to wear while playing. Apparently, this was part of helping the fully immersive experience for all senses.

The pod was like a recliner that sat back with full leg and foot elevation support, just like a recliner. Ryan picked up the instruction card he found for the initial setup.

“Wheatley,” Ryan said, “scan this barcode here so that you can walk me through the setup.”

“Scanning Ryan, I just took a snapshot with my home cameras. I am now downloading the interface instructions in order to follow the setup protocol.”

“Please navigate me through the setup so we can get this completed as soon as possible.” Ryan said.

“The scan and download have completed.” Wheatley said.

Wheatley walked Ryan through the setup and initial configuration of the set pod, as Ryan found a perfect spot in the living room to place and power the Portal Gate.

As Ryan powered the Portal Gate, there were white and blue all round the rims and edges of the pod lighting up as the touchscreen booting up as it was going through the loading boot sequence.

“Ryan, the Portal Gate is now initializing.” Wheatley said, “this process should take a few minutes as it is going to pull its system update of the latest version of code.”

“Oh, man!” Ryan said, “I hope this doesn’t take too long to load! You know how new firmware and code updates can be sometimes! We need to get in the game as soon as possible to get to Winter Reach.”

Loading BIOS….

TFG-BOIS V1.1

11%…… Completed.

25%…… Completed.

43%…… Completed.

92%…… Completed.

Loading Completed!…

Launching OS!…

System Initiating Update…

8%…… Completed.

32%…… Completed.

73%…… Completed.

98%…… Completed.

Update Complete!…

Welcome to The Forged Realms!…

“Look at the digital screen, Ryan,” Wheatley said. “The game is now loading are you ready to strap in and enter The Forged Realms?”

“YES! I have waited long enough, lets do this thing.” Ryan said, as he heart was beating with excitement.

“Okay Ryan, here are the games welcome notifications.” Wheatley said as he read them around through the house and Portal Gate sound system.

Welcome to The Forged Realms!

Congratulations on setting up your very first Forged Realms Portal Gate and on release day! What a historic day for the world of VRMMOs. If you are reading this, you are one of our launch release preordered customers. We want to first express our sincere gratitude to you for your support and for being a part of the community, as well as among the first players to even enter The Forged Realms! You are a loyal member of The Forged Realms! This is truly an outstanding achievement and marks a historic day for us all. We are grateful to share this moment with you, and all of our fans like you, who will enjoy our great world of The Forged Realms.

As you embark on this new epic adventure in The Forged Realms, you are going to find and discover new realms, new lands, new quests and adventures, new enemies of many kinds, new magical elements and gaming systems, which will all be live happening in real time right before your eyes. This is going to be a fully immersive reality adventure like you have never seen or experienced before, in which you will truly believe and think it’s your own real life in which you are living as your character. You will not even remember that you exist as the person outside of the game while you are in The Forged Realms. Everything around you, your surroundings, will be totally real to you, you will experience all the senses being able to see, touch, taste, smell, and hear all that is going on around you. You will experience the authentic emotions of your character, senses, and yes, even physical pain as well if you so consent. You will not remember who you are while you are playing. You will fully believe you are the character you create in The Forged Realms. Therefore, we are requiring all of our players to sign this liability and legal waiver prior to entering The Forged Realms. If you agree to these terms and conditions, you will enter The Forged Realms via this Portal Gate. After which you will access the character creation platform as a first step to create your character in which you will become after you enter The Forged Realms.

As a Thank You for preordering the Collector’s Edition you will also receive a level bonus, you Character will begin in The Forged Realms at level 5! Congratulations!

First step here are the terms and conditions and legal waiver displayed on the screen. Do you agree and sign your name on the waiver of all liability?

“Yes,” Ryan said, now feeling nervous about what he was actually getting himself into, now that it was finally time to enter the world.

You answered “Yes.” Is this correct and are you sure that you give your confirmation of this response? This confirmation cannot be undone.

“Yes,” Ryan said.

“Thank you! We have registered your consent and waiver confirmation and response as ‘Yes’.”

When you enter the game to the initial character creation platform, you will get to create and build your character.

You will get to select your character’s class, race, background, and some other special skills, professions and abilities prior to entering The Forged Realms. As far as spawning into the world, you will receive an initial map based on the race you become determines your spawn and starting point. We will also list the maps in your Forged Realms LitRPG novel. For example, if you chose a Dwarf race, you will spawn close to Winter Reach up on a mountain pass near the watch tower named “Horn Watch”. You will spawn on the stone platform spawn point in the Icewind Mountains. Once you have completed with your character creation, you will enter The Forged Realms. You will see an archway entrance portal standing in front of you with an active image in the middle of it. When you are ready to enter the world, just walk or run straight into this Portal Gate.

Ryan put on the new VR body suit, hooked up all vital and body monitor cords and connections to the Portal Gate. “Are you monitoring all this now, Wheatley?”

“Yes Ryan, I am now monitoring the Portal Gate and your body suit and all connections.”

“Thank you, Whitley,” Ryan said, “it’s finally time. I can’t believe it! It’s finally time to enter The Forged Realms.”

“Yes Ryan, and the Portal Gate is now fully operational to enter and play!” Wheatley said.

“Wheatley, call Leah and get her on the phone for me. I want to make sure they’re all ready to hop in game for character creation.”

“Calling Leah now.” Wheatley said as he dialed Leah’s house.

“Hey Ryan!” Leah said, with an excited tone in her voice.

“Hey Leah!”

“Did you get your Portal Gate all setup and updated?” Leah said.

“Yeah, I’ve got it all set up, updated, and it’s ready to go! How about you? Did your setup go okay?”

“Yep,” Leah said, as Ryan heard her messing with stuff while she was talking. “It just finished the update as well, got my waiver and all that signed and I’m ready to go.”

“Ryan,” Wheatley said.

“Oh, hand on a sec Leah, Wheatley is talking to me. What’s up Wheatley?” Ryad said, as he glanced at the digital screen to see what may be happening with the Portal Gate.

“We just received a group message to the house,” Wheatley said, “From Dale, and Ella, Leah, Will, and Yourself are all recipients of the group chat message.”

“What does it say?” Ryan said.

Wheatley read the group chat message thread:

From Dale:

To: Ryan, Leah, Ella, and Will

“Hey guys, you all ready to go with your Portal Gates all setup and updated and ready to play?”

“Wheatley,” Ryan said. “Tell him that Leah and I are ready to go now.”

“Yea, I am ready.” Leah added, still connected to the call with Ryan. “I just received the message too Ryan, lets do this!”

Wheatley messaged the group chat thread:

From Ryan:

To: Dale, Leah, Ella, and Will

“Leah and I are ready to go now.” The group text read.

“Message sent Ryan,” Wheatley Said.

Wheatley read the group chat message thread:

From Leah:

To: Ryan, Dale, Ella, and Will

“Yep, ready to go.”

Wheatley read the group chat message thread:

From Will:

To: Ryan, Dale, Ella, and Leah

“I’m ready to go too.”

Wheatley read the group chat message thread:

From Ella:

To: Ryan, Dale, Will, and Leah

“Ready.”

Wheatley read the group chat message thread:

From Dale:

To: Ryan, Ella, Will, and Leah

“Awesome, I’ll start and see you guys at Winter Reach soon! Let’s all put in to join Ryan’s Winter Reach Guild so that our characters will party up in the game and story! See ya there guys. Bye.”

“The group chat message thread has been terminated by Dale.” Wheatley said.

“Perfect.” Ryan said. “Leah, lets do it. I’ll get started creating my character and the guild and I’ll see ya in The Forged Realms and at Winter Reach, okay?!”

“Oh, my gosh Ryan!” Leah said, “Yea okay, let’s do it!” again Ryan hearing the nervous excitement in her voice.

“It’s going to be okay Leah.” Ryan said, “see ya soon. To Winter Reach!”

“Okay, bye. To Winter Reach.” Leah said.

“Wheatley, disconnect call.” Ryan said.

“The call was disconnected.” Wheatley said.

Ryan, as he was all connected and in his VR body suit, climbed into the pod Portal Gate and put on the VR headset.

“Well, okay, Wheatley,” Ryan said, as he inspected himself and his body suit to make sure he had correctly secured all the cable connections. “Watch over the house as I’m in game OK, as well as my health and vitals.”

“Don’t worry, Ryan,” Wheatley said in his AI flat tone. “I will watch over and monitor the house and all systems. I will also activate and monitor our security systems while you are in The Forged Realms, sir. Have a wonderful full immersive virtual reality experience Ryan.”

“Thank’s Wheatley and thank you for taking care of the house monitoring everything, including myself!”

As Ryan sat back and reclined in the Portal Gate pod he glanced down the digital touch and voice activation enabled screen to see the text which read.

When you are ready to enter The Forged Realms, just speak the command; “Portal Gate, Enter The Forged Realms Now.”

“I am fully synced with The Portal Gate. Ryan, you are ready to go.” Wheatley said.

“Thanks Wheatley.” Ryan said. “See you soon, at least I think.”

Ryan took a deep breath and let out an enormous sigh. And then spoke the command. “Portal Gate, Enter The Forged Realms Now!”

Suddenly Ryan, overtaken by a bright flash of light which consumed him and all sense of his current surroundings, as all things seemed to vanish away into the distance as if they never existed.