There was an eerie silence throughout the dimly lit room as the young man’s hands flew across his keyboard. Why had nobody ever told him how much work a system like this was?! Then again… since he was the first one to make a system this complex, he supposed nobody else could’ve known. He briefly pondered if he ought to try a different keyboard - one noisy enough to fill the silence with the clattering clickclack of his fingers striking each key - when a far less satisfying sound interrupted his solitude.

“Oh, Inovar!” The lovely young woman said in a singsong tone as she open his door with a huge smile on her face. “Can you do me a tiny little favor?”

“I’m not killing off all the players,” he replied in a monotone voice without looking at her. “Also, Melissa, you forgot to knock. Again.”

The beautiful woman brushed her long, dark hair out of her eyes, knocking a stray leaf out of it in the process. “Why bother?” She asked haughtily. “Afraid I’ll catch you doing something you shouldn’t?”

“It’s called ‘common courtesy’,” He replied dryly, his patience with her having run out long before she’d shown up. “I understand it might be a foreign concept to you, since you go out of your way to avoid civilized company, but the rest of us try showing each other some basic respect. Such as not filling my room with leaves you were too lazy to pick out of your hair before coming inside?!” He actually let a bit of irritation leak into his voice as she frowned at him.

“How rude! The player are being-”

“I already reduced the pain filters to a mere 10%,” I.T. replied sharply. “That’s as far as I’m willing to go to feed your sadism, Mel.”

“But they’re killing everything!” She actually began to tear up. “These MONSTERS are capturing innocent animals to use as targets for training, and some of them go out of their way to kill everything they see!”

“I warned you not to get so attached to your creations,” Inovar said, the heat leaving his voice as his shoulders slumped. “They were going to die one way or another, Mel. The system won’t allow anything to last forever. Things will calm down soon enough - people are starting to figure out how the system works, and players are reward motivated. Nobody is going to kill wolves and rabbits when a single Demon is worth hundreds of times as much EXP.” He pulled up a window and ran a search to prove his point, opening a live feed to a handful of players that were discussing the lack of rewards for fighting animals.

Ether checked the time as he counted his coin. The HUD showed the real world time as being 8 oclock - a full 3 hours after he logged in. With time passing 4 times faster in game, that would mean…

“Have we really been here for 12 hours?” he said in surprise.

Perseus nodded. “Downside to the realism focus of this game - and probably the reason for the time compression - is travel time. Nearly half of that was just getting there and back! Of course, it would’ve been a more productive ride back if someone had let me take out that wolf pack!”

Shar scowled. “You just wont shut up about that, will you?! They’re just animals! They weren’t hurting anyone, and the strongest member of the pack was still two levels lower than us. Why would we kill innocent creatures for no gain?”

Ether nodded. “I think you were the one who pointed out how slow respawn timers can be, Perseus,” he pointed out. “Fighting things several levels beneath us is stealing from newer players at best. At worst, it’s pointless violence. You wouldn’t even have a chance to enjoy a fight like that - it’d be over too quickly!”

Melissa scowled at I.T., tears still in her eyes. “Even then, the pale one was still sulking about missing his chance to murder innocent creatures!” She said with a pout. The system developer sighed. As infuriating as she was, Melissa was still a friend - perhaps his only friend, these days. The others barely even bothered to check in on him, and he was certain at least two of his peers at the company were only calling him by his initials because they’d forgotten his name. Again.

“I can’t penalize players for fighting animals,” he said resignedly, “but I can update a few things. How about I set up some new quests to reward people for more ecologically responsible actions? Protecting the wilds and such? I’ll even add bonus objectives to some quests to avoid hurting the wildlife.”

Melissa blinked away her tears, beaming at him. “That would be perfect!” She shouted, hugging him. “Thanks, Var! You’re the best!”

“No hugs!” He said, trying in vain to lean back out of the sudden embrace. “This is a hugless zone!”

As per usual, she ignored his protests. Honestly, he mostly complained out of habit at this point. She left after another minute or so of singing his praises, which he naturally pretended to brush off even as he drank in her every word.

He turned back towards the screens as the players he’d just been watching began to walk towards the root that emerged from the center of town.

“We have save points?!” The more muscular of the two men asked incredulously. “In an MMO?”

“Realism trumps all,” the skinny one replied with a shrug. “At least from the dev’s perspective. It’s a little bit of a hassle, but once we get a bit farther along, we can warp between the roots of the world tree, or warp back to the last one we touched, pretty easily, so it’s not too bad. Plus… you gotta admit, the logic behind this one’s pretty funny.” As he spoke, the trio stopped before the massive root near the center of town. The girl scowled at him.

“I think it’s cool,” she muttered. “Returning to Yggdrasil to rest when you log out is way more interesting than just standing in place for days at a time or just fading out of existence.”

As they tapped at their menus, the two men froze as a massive flower bloomed over each of them, quickly folding over them and attaching to the root before vanishing. As the petals faded, no trace was left of the characters.

I.T. nodded to himself in satisfaction. That animation took weeks of work to perfect, both him and Melissa pulling several all-nighters to get the details spot on. Not to mention the work on the backup system he had to do, recording and duplicating the character data in multiple places to ensure they’d stay safe! Still… he didn’t mind.

All in all, it had been a typical busy, boring and long day at work… but it was good work, and that was enough to satisfy him, at least for now.

Sharlette tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable. She hadn’t gotten proper sleep in days! Her brain screamed at her, begging for the sweet silence of a good night’s rest, but her body refused to comply. Again.

It was hardly her fault, though. How was she supposed to go to bed after what had happened that day? The party had logged off hours ago, but she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the fight against that Demon. She could still feel the flames clinging to her skin, the feeling of something wrong trying to tear at her, grasping at something just out of reach.

She thought about trying to reach out to someone, to talk to a friend or a relative about all of this. That was the healthy thing to do, right? To rely on others when you reached your limit, and ask for help?

The only problem was that she didn’t have any friends. Not anymore. As for family, she hadn’t seen her father or little brother in years - not since her mother had died. She was alone. She could always try to contact them, but…

Her internal debate lasted nearly an hour before she lost her patience - both with herself, and with her failure to fall asleep. She walked down to her kitchen and started pulling bags of flour, bowls, whisks and various spices. If she didn’t have anyone to talk to, she’d let the smell of baking bread keep her company.

It was only 6 AM when Ether - no, Ethan - woke up. He shook his head in disbelief. For some reason, the hours he’d spent in Arcanum Online hadn’t tired him out the way they probably should have. If anything, he’d felt energized, and had stayed up another few hours researching what information was actually available about the game. There wasn’t much out there, in spite of the game’s popularity. The company behind the game, Innovation Technology, had made actually viewing the source code nigh-impossible, and with the way the game kept growing and changing, the anecdotal accounts of players were rarely helpful.

There were a few things he’d learned, though. First, he’d confirmed everything that Perseus had told him about classes - they gave small stat boosts each level and usually provided a skill or two. Second, he was able to learn about something Perseus hadn’t mentioned; procedurally generated “soul skills”. The details were still hazy, with the game having only been out for a month or so, but apparently people had found that once you passed level 25, you unlocked a “soul skill” unique to you - and it did mean unique. Some had effects that gave similar end results, but of the hundreds of thousands of players AO had gained, not a single instance of duplicate skills had been found. Ethan had spent a while looking through some of the examples, but eventually he forced himself to pull away and do some more productive research. After all, if none of those skills were ever duplicated, then he wasn’t going to end up with one of them - which was more than could be said of his third big discovery.

He had been able to track down a list of all known classes and their requirements, which he spent the vast majority of his time last night looking over.

Two immediately stuck out to him.

Mage

A caster of passing skill.

+10 Willpower

+1 Willpower per Level past 10

Learn 3 Spells upon Gaining Class

Chance of gaining a new Random Spell when Leveling

Spellblade

A student of swords and spells alike.

+4 Dexterity

+4 Strength

+3 Willpower

+1 Free Stat point per level past 10

Learn 1 Spell and 1 Skill upon Gaining Class

Small Chance of learning a new Spell or Skill when Leveling

Both options offered a chance to learn new abilities for free, simply by leveling - something only available to a few classes, from what he understood - but they weren’t guaranteed past the first selection, and there was an opportunity cost. Most classes, like [Rogue], gained unique benefits that suited them, such as an increase to damage when attacking unseen. His class options traded those flat bonuses for more skills.

Both of the classes spoke to Ether, called to him in different ways. Magic was something unique to the game, and the possibilities of it made his head spin. Plus, he’d keep practicing skills and close combat tricks either way, and Willpower, boosting MP as it did, would help with any playstyle. To top it all off, if Lilly had set up her build for Violet the way she usually did, they’d have all the muscle they needed right there!

But the free stat point could let him completely customize his growth, and a more versatile character could be more valuable in the long run than a full caster.

He wasn’t going to figure anything out quite yet, and it was nearly 7 by the time he finished breakfast, so he decided to jump into the game and sort it out when he actually hit level 10.

Which, at the rate things had been going, could be very, very soon.

He slipped the heavy helmet over his head as he lay down in bed and flipped the switch on the side of it. A flash of multicolored light seared his eyes as the world faded away around him.

Hello, Ether!

Welcome back to Arcanum Online!