The Tournament

“Ladies and gentleman, gamers everywhere! The final battle you have all been waiting for,” the announcer’s deep voice reverberated through the Roman-styled coliseum, his excitement apparent to everyone.

“This week-long tournament, which has been brought to you by Xeniax Game Studios and the Federation’s number one energy drink, Brutal Energy, features the last two teams that have made it through, winning all of their fights so far, Team Braek… versus… Team Shadowwwww!”

The loud roars from the thousands of players that purchased tickets for tonight’s final fight of the tournament thundered throughout the coliseum. This final fight between the two teams was being broadcast around the world and beyond, even to the various space stations that orbited the both the planet as well as the moon. Even though this was a virtual-reality, or VR, game, this tournament was styled after an e-sports game, since the game, called The World of the Veil, was the most popular game of all time.

Xeniax Game Studios created The Veil in 2071, and through it’s use of ultra-realistic virtual graphics, artificial intelligence, and immersive VR equipment, the game attracted hundreds of millions of players world-wide. The Veil also featured a full-featured economy which rivaled the total output of Earth.

Due to the rapid popularity of the game, the Federation, which was established in 2045 after World War III as the world’s singular government, decided that players could be forcibly logged out of the game should the safety restrictions and biological measurement suite decided that the player was in danger, or if they exceeded 12 hours of playing time. It was feared that people would become so addicted to this level of hyper-immersion that they would forgo their necessary biological functions, such as eating.

Nevertheless, almost everyone on the planet, and beyond, played the game, all inter-mingling with each other and participating in the world, either solo, in a group, or even in raids. There was also plenty of player versus player combat which spread over multiple continents in the game world, which was roughly twice as large as the planet.

“Leah, let’s go over the statistics before the match starts, shall we, my little foxy lady,” the announcer asked.

“Call me your foxy lady again Trevor, and I’ll claw out your intestines from your backside,” Leah so kindly informed Trevor with a hiss to her voice.

“But yes, let’s go over this match and see how these two teams stand up against each other. As you know, Team Braek is the crowd’s favorite, since they have the most balanced group that we’ve seen in this tournament.”

“Sure, they have the most balanced group, filling all 6 of the group slots, but we can’t just disregard Team Shadow. Even outnumbered, those two have shown us all what proper planning and use of the terrain can accomplish,” countered Trevor.

“That much is true Trevor, although Team Braek, which I have to confess, is my favorite to win, isn’t slouching on their tactics either. Their previous match even showed this, when their paladin was sent in to be bait, only for the last three to be mezzed with a long duration area of effect, which allowed their berserker to go into unrestricted melee and for their wizard to nuke the rest of them, resulting in a zero-fatality win for Team Braek.”

“Leah, Leah, Leah. Don’t you see though? Even though Team Shadow is only comprised of a shaman and an assassin, the shaman hasn’t even needed to heal the Assassin. From what we’ve seen so far in this entire tournament, the shaman hasn’t even needed to do anything but run around!”

“Alright people, we’ve looked at both teams, which are currently tied with 49 wins and 0 losses each, we will now go back to Russ, who is bringing us the action from inside of Horack’s Coliseum. Russ, how is it looking down there?”

“Thanks Leah! I’m here in the Coliseum reporting on tonight’s match. There is an air of exhilaration as both teams are now entering the arena with a cash prize of 100,000 Federal credits riding on this single match.”

“As usual, Team Shadow is in their single line formation, with ShadowBlood, who is an unbelievable level 149 assassin, in front of Kiliman, a level 98 shaman. As we all know, there are very few people that can even reach level 120, and there is no one that has reached the maximum level of 150,” Russ reported.

He continued on, “We can see Team Braek coming into view now. It seems that they are in a dual pillar formation, with Horfast, the level 125 paladin, and TwinAxe, the level 115 berserker leading in front. Their two healers are bringing up the middle of the formation. Jukes, a level 112 cleric, and Qumore, a level 90 shaman. In the rear, we have the two mages, the level 116 wizard, Links, and level 114 illusionist, Dreamz.”

A deep, loud voice echoed through the coliseum, “Denizens, you have proven yourselves worthy of this battle. HOWEVER,” the voice yelled, “only one of your teams can become the champions of the arena. This battle will be fought to the death.”

“If you are deemed worthy, you will be one of the blessed of the deities. If you are not worthy, your sacrifice will not go ignored,” the voice continued. “Now.. FIGHT!” the voice roared.

The battle was as furious as it was quick, the assassin showing off the many abilities that he had, but had never shown before. Immediately after the command to fight, the assassin disappeared from everyone’s view.

Meanwhile, the paladin and berserker ran towards the shaman, however, the shaman just ran away, though after getting almost to the edge of the coliseum, the two players caught up with him, the paladin performing the ability, Slam, which stunned the shaman for a short time. However, the shaman immediately casted a Ward of Health, healing him slightly over time, and then casted Stone Skin, which reduced the damage that the two were doing to him. However, this ability came at a price, which was 5% of his mana each second, and it was on a 1 minute cool-down.

On the other side of the coliseum, there were two healers and two mages which looked to be furious, yelling. The two fighters were now out of range of their spells and started running towards them. However, before they got far, a figure appeared behind the cleric.

All four players stopped, three of them started wavering, their heads lowering, as if they were sleeping while standing up. A soft blue glow surrounded their feet, they were mezzed. The cleric though had a red glow around his feet, signifying that he was stunned.

The daggers which the assassin held morphed into a very different pair of daggers which one had a feint, sickly green glow around it, the other with a dull orange glow. The assassin plunged the daggers into the clerics back and swiftly moved to the clerics front, and plunged both daggers into the clerics stomach, and slicing outwards. The cleric fell, his health bar at 0.

The assassin sprinted towards the illusionist, and from her back, the assassin again morphed his daggers, new daggers that glowed appearing. Two attacks later, the illusionist’s health bar was also at 0%, and she fell, dead.

The assassin then killed Team Braek’s shaman, and lastly, their wizard. An angry voice could now be heard throughout the stadium, as there was now a metallic orb hovering over them.

“Fucking assassins,” before the wizard also died.

The crowd was greeted by a very evil looking grin. The grin telling everyone that this person loved killing and bathed in blood, before disappearing.

Invitation

Karen,

Xeniax Game Studios would like to congratulate you on your recent achievement for winning Horack’s Tournament. We have distributed 50,000 Federal credits to your account as part of your reward. In addition, you have been granted the title of “Horack’s Champion,” which will boost all of your stats and abilities by 25%.

We would also like to extend to you an invitation for you to become an alpha tester for our most recent immersive VR gear which we have in development. Please keep in mind though, that if you choose to accept to become a tester, we will ask you to sign a typical NDA, as we are currently awaiting for the patents to clear. We would love for you to test this revolutionary hardware, and expect excellent things from you in the future.

Regards,

Alfone Tillerman,

R&D Director

Xeniax Game Studios

Smiling to myself as I read the notification through my smart glasses, I muttered to myself, “Un-fucking-believable. Hell to the yes I want to be an alpha tester! Beats this shit of job, being a waitress at Hops all day long.”

Looking around the employee break room to make sure there was no one around, I started to respond to the message. Just as I sent the response, saying that I would be more than happy to apply to the position, my boss, who was an average, middle-aged man, walked into the break room, his eyes glaring at me through his black-rimmed glasses, the feint glow of his HUD slightly lighting the right side of his pock marked cheek.

“Karen, you know that you’re 4 minutes over your break, right? I need you out there now,” he said to me, shaking his head.

“Yes sir,” I meekly said while getting up from the white, plastic aluminum chair.

As I walked back into the kitchen to pick up the next order, I couldn’t imagine my luck. Working here while going to college, I could only afford the cheapest of the 6th generation of VR equipment to connect to the World of the Veil. Being how that the current equipment was 15th gen, my gear could be considered, well, antique would be putting it mildly. It was an old junker computer that I picked up from a pawn shop near my apartment, which had a cryo-cooled quantum processor. Not only that, it only had 500 zetabytes of storage, which was barely enough storage to run the game and necessary applications I needed for school. I had also upgraded the graphics card so that I could use a cheap, knock-off VR neural interface. That was the entire reason I had begged that shaman I knew of from one of the Harbinger raids to help me to enter the tournament. It actually made me smile when I thought about his response when I asked. It was priceless at how shocked he looked, thinking how crazy it was. But hey, at the end of the day, we did win.

Passing by my boss, he looked at me and frowned. “Karen, I know you have school, but you need to focus when you’re here at work. Not on other things, like playing around in VR. You kids need to remember that it’s just a game. It’s not like you’re one of those professional players, like that assassin who won that tournament.”

Shaking his head like he was disappointed with me, he went back to the cashier’s check out kiosk while I glared at him.

“I really wish I knew who he was in the Veil,” I thought.

The rest of the evening went by as expected. I wasn’t the most attractive waitress at Hops by far, but it seemed that the clients all had a thing for brushing up against my legs or my ass. Any time I tried to say anything, my boss just glared at me for “upsetting the customers.” That was one of the reasons why I played as a man inside of the Veil, I was just so damned tired of the sexual harassment, both in the Real and in the Veil.

Three days later, I walked up to a small building which reminded me of an office building from the early 2000’s. There was a small parking lot, which only a few vehicles were parked in, and a short, chubby man standing by what looked like, the entrance to the building.

As I neared the entrance of the building, the man waved and started walking towards me.

“You must be Karen,” he said, as he got close enough so I could hear him.

“My name’s Tom, and I’m the supervisor here at section X, which, as you know, is one of the R&D facilities for XGS.”

Not wanting to meet his eyes, I instead looked at his shoes. He was wearing the latest designers, even though they looked a little scuffed. I greeted him as well.

“Hi Tom, from the application, I guess I’m supposed to be an alpha tester?” I asked.

Tom looked at me and grinned. “Ah, yes, but before that, let’s go inside. I’ll need to have you fill out some forms, and also get your biochip scanned before we can talk. Most of this stuff is extremely hush-hush, if you know what I mean,” he said as he turned around to walk back into the building.

The light of a scanner passed over him, after which, a mechanical female voice rang out, “Thomas Ferrar, access granted. Karen Faulkner, access granted temporarily while awaiting permanent employee contract.”

Three hours later, after what seemed like hundreds of papers that I actually had to sign manually, and not too mention the biochip and medical scans, I now sat in front of both Tom and another individual wearing the standard, white lab coat. Between us was a large composite table that could easily fit another 10 people.

“So, Karen, this is Wuang, and he is our lead developer here. I’ll let you two talk while I start processing your paperwork for permanent employment with us. Personally, though, I have to say, your performance at the tournament was mind blowing, and between us, I might have to start up my own assassin,” Tom said with a laugh as he got out of the chair and left the room.

Looking over to Wuang, he seemed to stare at me, curiosity filling his dark eyes. Judging by the dark shadows under his eyes, it looked as if hardly ever slept, which was normal for those types of people, I mused to myself.

“Yes, Karen. As you know, or maybe you don’t, which I really don’t care one way or the other, we’re currently testing a new, totally immersive, virtual machine. The reason why we had to scan your biochip and medicals was due to the interface for it. You see, we’ve found a way to forcefully use quantum entanglement to entangle the brain’s neurons to our own set of electrons. This technology allows the player to become truly immersed into the game,” Wuang said excitedly.

“Um, sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied anxiously, hoping that my lack of understanding quantum mechanics wouldn’t instantly forbid me from participating. Even after all of my tutoring in high school, for some reason, I just could not wrap my head around the spookiness of how the quantum realm really worked. Newtonian physics though, well, that was easy.

“Oh, okay, well then,” he started, his excitement faltering.

“Mmm, I suppose we can still make this work. What we’ll have you do is, instead of creating a new character altogether, we’ll just have you create a new rogue and then have you specialize as an assassin. Since the interface isn’t yet totally complete, this should work for you as, from what we’ve seen in the tournament, you’re an expert when it comes to that class,” Wuang explained as he stood up.

“Now, if you’ll follow me to the lab, we’ll get you hooked in.”

I looked around as we entered the lab. Even in our own school’s computer lab, I had never seen such a mess of wires, computers thrown about, and people walking around. This seemed, well, to me it seemed chaotic to say the least. In the center of the lab, there was a wide, donut looking machine with a bed going through it and what sounded like a low hum coming from it.

Wuang saw me looking at it suspiciously and said, “That is the new machine we’re working on. Eventually, we will get it miniaturized, but this is in specifications to a design that the Federation’s Human Exploration of Deep Space branch requested. Of course though, instead of connecting to a private quantum server that they will use, we will just use what we have.”

“Is it safe?” I asked, getting a little bit nervous. If HEoDS requested this type of machine, it must mean that they were planning a venture to Alpha Centauri, which everyone said wouldn’t be possible due to the psychological effects of being in cryo-stasis. Wuang just laughed, humor flashing in his eyes.

“Yes Karen, it is perfectly safe. It allows the player to use all of their senses in the game, though it will block anything that causes pain, instead, making it seem like a dull throb so that players have some type of feedback from their environment.”

“How long will I be in the game for? This does seem a bit excessive if I’ll only be in the game for an hour or so,” I asked Wuang.

“We modified the game a little bit for our research purposes. The characters that we make here in the R&D department don’t show their log in time to the administrators due to the sensitivity of the project. But to answer your question, we’ll leave you in the game for 12 hours, that way you’ll be able to get a few levels before we need to pull you out and get your feedback.”

I nodded my agreement, since it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle. I could always wait to use the bathroom and eat afterwards. Unfortunately, I was used to having only one meal a day due to the low wages that I received from Hops.

“Alright now, go ahead and lay down, close your eyes, and prepare for the most exhilarating time of your life,” he urged me, while pointing towards the bed.

Walking over to the table and laying down on it as Wuang instructed me to do, I thought about his words as I closed my eyes, “Well, he said it was safe. Most famous words ever I guess,” as I fell asleep.

Raven

Opening my eyes, I looked around at what seemed like a graveyard. There was a broken wooden fence surrounding the area, a layer of fog over top the grass. Even though I was in a spectral form, I could feel the humidity of this place. In the center of my view, there was a character pedestal made of stone. That is where my character would stand.

“The character selection area, but why does it feel so, I don’t know, creepy?” I thought to myself. Perhaps it was the fact that my main character, which I worked so hard on after all these years was absent, or was it something else? Thinking that it might be the VR interface messing with my emotions, I continued on with the character creation process.

“Create character,” I said after shaking my head to clear my thoughts.

As the character creation menu appeared in front of me, I was faced with a number of choices. This part of the creation phase would allow me to create my race. I was faced with several choices:

“I know that Wuang said to stick with the rogue/assassin class since this rig doesn’t have the full interface working yet, but let’s try something a little bit different this time, since I need to remake my character.” I thought to myself, feeling myself grin.

Still thinking as to what stats I wanted to min/max from the start, I looked through the various races and what their initial stats were. My main character, being apart of the human race, did have some minor quirks that irritated me at times. Quickly scrolling through the various races, I got through to the Dark Elf race and looked their starting stats:

“Not bad, they have both 15 dexterity and 15 agility just from their race. Resists are ok, 10 in slashing and poison, 5 in everything else but soul damage,” I thought to myself.

Looking through the other races, I decided to go back to the Dark Elf race. After selecting it, what now appeared on the Character Pedestal was an average looking woman that looked like she had a very dark tan and had long, blueish black hair with black eyes that tilted a bit upwards. She also had long, elven ears that ended at almost a point.

However, what surprised me the most, was the fact that she looked almost exactly like myself, if I was a Dark Elf. I wasn’t exactly sure if this a feature of the new interface or if the interface was missing the character customization sliders. It might have been due to the fact that it wasn’t designed for players in the Veil, but instead it was designed for deep space colonists. I decided to continue on with the character creation, figuring it must be something to help with maintaining psychological equilibrium or something.

“Ok, so I know I’m going to need high agility for crits and attack speed, and also dexterity for dodging and evading. However, this race starts out with pretty high agility and dexterity anyways, and I have 25 points to spend. Mmm. Let’s go with 10 into strength for a total of 15, another 10 into vitality, and 5 in agility. At least that should help in the beginning. I wish that I could get more into agility, but at least this is fairly balanced. As for the deity I should worship, definitely Noctis. The benefits are far better than who I selected with Shadowblood,” I thought to myself, reading the screen showing that if I worshiped Noctis, I would gain 10% higher agility and that I would move faster in stealth by 5%.

Looking at the last field that I needed to finish before I could create my new character, which I had always thought was the most important, was the name. I looked at a mirror image of myself, if I was a Dark Elf at least, for quite some time before I whispered, “Raven.”

“Character creation confirmed. Character name confirmed. Welcome to the World of the Veil. Enjoy your stay, Raven,” the system said aloud, in a semi-robotic voice which obviously could not be mistaken as human.

As the world faded into darkness, I once again felt as if I was falling asleep.