Sera appeared in a village square. There were cobblestones under her feet and surrounding her was an ensemble of three storied half-timbered houses with sharply gabled roofs. Facing her in the middle of the square was a large round fountain with a statue of a knight on a rearing unicorn, his sword held gallantly aloft to defend against the dragon that coiled around a pedestal to loom over him. Behind him was the smaller figure of an archer aiming a flaming arrow at the dragon’s heart and a mage with flowing locks of hair, her face upturned to the heavens and her hands clasped over a jewel suspended in front of her chest. All four of the figures were locked in a fearsome battle, yet despite the grimace on the knight’s face and the vicious fangs in the dragon’s jaws, the scene before her looked oddly domestic and peaceful.

Young children ran about, laughing as they chased pigeons and played with their mother’s skirts. Older children danced between the rainbows in the tinkling water or climbed the statues, yelling and swinging wooden swords and shields at each other. Occasionally one of the women who were washing clothes, plaiting strings of flowers, or knitting in happy gossipy groups turned around and yelled at the children to come down or keep away from the road where horse drawn carriages and wagons thundered past. A couple of them even waved at her. Sera waved back, glad to find the locals were so friendly, then turned away from them and walked about the square, eager to explore more.

A cacophony of sounds and smells reached Sera’s ears and nose, bombarding her with a beguiling certainty that what she was seeing was real. Above the sound of the water, gentle conversation and children’s laughter, she could hear the whinnying of horses, the clip-clop of their hooves, the jangle of tack and harness, and soft, atmospheric lute playing from a nearby busker. More music spilled out from a tavern across the road, blending harmoniously with the busker’s but adding further notes from a cheery flute, a tambourine, and a drum whose beat made Sera want to pick up her heels and dance across the square. She gazed up at the upper level of the tavern, admiring the cascades of red flowers that dripped down from its flower boxes. The smell of freshly roasted beef and an onion soup lingered in the air, making her stomach growl. Was that even possible? To feel hunger in the game and to eat food?

She took a step towards the tavern, intent on finding out. Just as she reached out towards the doorknob, the door was flung open and a gigantic man who shouldn’t be able to fit through the door, let alone walk in the armour he was wearing, stormed out closely followed by a smaller sized person who wore black clothes of an indeterminable pattern. Sera blinked, trying to make her eyes pin down the second person. He seemed to slink from shadow to shadow with the ease of a snake. Every time she looked at him she found her gaze sliding so that she was staring at a cobblestone or a watering can instead. Odd.

She shifted her attention back to the large man. His eyes glowed a bright blue, matching the design on his silver armour, and left trails in the air as he whipped his head around to shout at his friend, “—could have told me earlier, I’ve been waiting for ages to get into that dungeon! Hurry up! I want a share of that loot!”

The pair began to run across the square, leaping in gigantic leaps that allowed them to pass over the heads of the women and children with ease. Sera peered back into the dark depths of the tavern. A signboard by the bar showed the price of items for sale and purchase as well as room rates, reminding Sera that she had absolutely no in-game money.

Without anything better to do, she turned heel and began to chase after the over-sized man and the sneaky man. No doubt they were players and knew how to go about earning money. She ducked around a washerwoman who seemed determined to make her acquaintance and followed the players. She found that she could run almost as fast as they could if she put her mind to it. After traversing down a few back alleys and streets, she came out into another square larger than the first.

This one looked quite military-like with long pennants waving sinuously in the wind and halberd carrying guards lining the entrances to several buildings. In the middle of the square were two stone figures holding a shield and spears. Between them circled a swirling mass of white-blue energy which players were disappearing into. There appeared to be a long queue jostling to enter it, fed by the huge variety of humanoid looking beings populating the rest of the square. Sera felt dizzy with the effort of taking in all the different types of characters. Most looked human or elfin, but quite a few had scales, fur, tails, hair of all colours of the rainbow, and animal-like heads and arms, and they all seemed to be accompanied by a plethora of pets and steeds of all kinds… and their clothes!

Once upon a time, when Sera had been in college, she had harboured the dream of making her own garments to wear. She had attempted to sew a budget version of a skirt based on a 3D image that kept bombarding her from an ad wall on her way to university, and what she had ended up with had been something resembling a bag with a hole in it. So she knew without a doubt from a cursory glance that the clothes these players were wearing were incredibly intricate and would have been extremely tough if not impossible to make in real life.

She edged closer to a girl, one of the few who was near the front of the queue and was making steady progress towards the portal. She had what Sera could identify immediately as a template face. It was too generic with high cheekbones, perfect skin, large green eyes fringed with impossibly long lashes, tapered ears and a narrow pointed chin that looked like it could have cut steel. Her garments looked as if they must have been glued onto her skin— the fabric that stretched over her voluptuous bosom was shiny and fragile, and consisted of two narrow strips of green cloth carefully arranged and laced together so they held a hood up behind her head while traveling down her torso to reveal a generous glimpse of cleavage and tummy under criss-crossed laces. The bottom half of the cloth blended into a skirt with carefully cut edges that flared whenever she moved. She wore high boots, carried a staff with a glowing green gem on the top and wore bands around her arms, strips of leather around her hands and had a falcon sitting on her shoulder. When she detected Sera’s gaze, she swiveled her hips and gave her a seductive look, then without breaking eye contact, she elbowed a warrior who was trying to sneak past to cut her line in the queue, smiled mischievously at Sera, and dove straight into the center of the portal.

“Hey, get out of the way, noob!”

Sera fell to the floor, her arms reflexively curling about her stomach. She noticed a line in the periphery of her vision pulse but she had no time to look at it as the man who had hit her shoved her again. “Go level up before you get in the way here. Dungeons aren’t for noobs!”

“Hey, take it easy,” Sera replied. The ache in her knees and side was so dull she barely felt any pain, but she still glared at the man. He was clad in armour that was strapped onto his shoulders and forearms and had patches of red and silver zigzags on it. The rest of his body was bare but covered with enough tattoos to make it look like he was clothed. He carried a broadsword that was as tall as Sera and as wide around as the man’s own hips. “I’m just watching.”

“Training grounds are that way,” he said in a gruff voice, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Scat!” He glared at her with template blue eyes and jerked a very superman-like chin with a dimple in it, making hair that fell too perfectly in honey-brown locks to his shoulders move in fluid, elegant waves.

Sera sighed and scrambled out of his way, then watched as he leaped over her and tried to elbow his way to the front of the queue. Several squabbles broke out and by the time he reached the portal, it had spiraled to a close. “Dammit!”

Several players immediately began to voice their dissatisfaction and challenges for fights began to float above the crowd. Sera gazed at the player versus player (PVP) notification bubbles that appeared above matched players who then began to leap out of the square in pairs, clearly intent on fighting each other elsewhere. She reached a hand up to block the glare in her eyes. When it passed through the player’s torso something popped up over his head.

‘Incinderfella, Undead Warlock, Level 83.’

Sera blinked, then moved her hand to cover her own chest. A panel popped into view in front of her, superimposing her vision.

‘Serares. Human (No Class), Level 1’

There was a small figure at the bottom level of the panel and she tapped on it. The panel expanded to a larger size and displayed her body with spaces over the appendages, along with side panels where she could see vague outlines of basic armour, clothes or other equipment that she could use to equip herself. With the exception of the clothes she was wearing, it was all dismally empty.

What did she expect? She was in an MMORPG after all. Sera had never played one, but she knew how they worked. You took on a character, fought, collected loot and quested your way through the levels until you… well, until you were done. It was supposed to be fun, at least according to Gilbert and everyone else who worked on the game in Elysium. Sera herself, since she had only been attached to Elysium through the marketing division, had not actually given the game a go, despite Gilbert’s glowing endorsements for it. Perhaps because of that. She had enjoyed watching the trailer videos and coming up with ways to reach more customers and sell the virtual world of Elysia to them, but she had never quite understood what immersing one’s self in it involved. It hadn’t been part of her job requirements to actually play the game, and she hadn’t wanted to… risk disappointing Gilbert yet again.

Now that the square was clearing up, Sera decided she had better find something else to do. Taking the alleyway the aggressive player had gestured towards, she began to make her way through the streets to find the training ground for new players.

It turned out to be a sort of obstacle course near some long buildings that looked like army barracks. There were dummies set up on one side of the field with bullseyes painted on them. Several players were either whacking at the straw men with what looked like dull swords, or using spears or bows and arrows to pepper them so they appeared stuck like pin cushions. Sera approached a man who kept consulting his list while looking out over the other new players.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m new. What am I supposed to do to get started?”

The portly man turned to her. He was an NPC, or non-player character, and wore the barest of leather armour. He had a frown on his face and mopped sweat from his brow as he sized her from head to toe. “Oh, hello there, young journeywoman. You may begin your training by using these basic weapons to practice swordplay, archery or spearwork.”

“Will it cost me anything?”

The man shook his head, “No, this basic training along with the bag and the map you have on your person are free. They are given to all journeymen and -women to help you start out.

“How useful is this training?” Sera had no intention of hacking away at a dummy for no reason whatsoever. She much preferred to explore this new world and if possible, not focus on mundane tasks. “Will I be paid if I train?”

“Not a penny,” the man said, shaking his head. “But it will help you if you choose to take on quests outside villages and cities because you will need to know how to fight to survive in the wilderness. Taking quests will earn you money. Alternatively, you may apprentice yourself at schools, there are plenty of those in this area. Learning skills and crafts, and making items can also earn you money to spend. Otherwise, you may visit the auction house to exchange goods for money or vice versa, or indulge in some hunting, gathering or mining and sell what you obtain from that in the auction house or the market.”

He gestured to the long winding street that passed by the training grounds. It led up the hill to another square that looked like a marketplace, with stalls and people lingering around as they perused their wares. Sera turned and looked at the lower end of the street. It was too winding and too far to be seen clearly from this point. All along the whole stretch were large buildings that Sera had taken to be shops or houses or a combination of both. But now that she looked at them more carefully she could see that some were more oddly shaped than others and had wooden signboards hung on poles sticking out of their facades. On each of the painted wooden plaques were images. Among those she could make out from this distance were stylistic renderings of weapons, armour, inkwells and feather quills, bunches of plants, and even a faint paw print. Some of the humbler abodes looked quite domestic with images of food or sewing implements.

Sera gave the man a nod in thanks and he turned to assume the same position he had been in before Sera approached. With another considering look at the training grounds, Sera turned away and began to wander down the street while she thought about what the man had said.

Aside from the advice on earning money and questing, he had mentioned that she possessed a bag and a map. Sera glanced up to the top right and saw the same transparent globe she had seen earlier. She tapped on it and it filled her vision, unrolling into a weathered scroll with continents inked in black on it. Most of the map consisted of darkened areas, but there was a spot of colour that indicated the town she was in. It was called Hearthwilde, and was a relatively small town on the outskirts of Glenwark Kingdom according to the label on the map. Sera made an outward pinching gesture with her fingers and zoomed further into the map until it enlarged into a map of the town.

Apparently she was in the artisans and merchant’s quadrant, which lay adjacent to the soldier’s quarters. At the opposite end of the map was the Keep, which sat further up the winding hill road she had seen, right on the edge of a cliff top with a river bend cradling it on the other side. In the middle of the town was the square she had appeared in. Sera scanned the map until she found a nearby gate where she could exit into the surrounding wilderness. Then she minimised the map and opened her bag. She had seven slots in it and one was already taken up by a stone etched with the emblem of Hearthwilde—an image of a firelit hearth overrun with thorny vines. She tapped on it and was informed that it was a Recalling Stone that would allow her to return to the large inn in the town’s square if she needed to teleport to a safe area. She glanced about her again, noting how she was surrounded by mostly NPCs.

All the other players—aside from the other newbies hacking away at the dummies—must be outside the town proper. That was obviously where all the fun was. Sera glanced uncertainly back towards the training grounds, recalling the initialising sequence she had gone through. She had been scared out of her wits by her impromptu skydiving experience, and she knew from all the video clips she had seen of Elysia that dangerous monsters lurked in the wilderness and dungeons.

But what was the worst that could happen?

All right, MMORPGs normally involved a lot of violence, and Elysia’s pioneering virtual reality version involved total immersion with an almost full spectrum of physical sensation. But it wasn’t going to truly, physically hurt her. The pain she had felt from the man shoving her had not been that bad. And if she came across something truly terrifying and dangerous, she could run. She would definitely not be poking her nose into a dungeon, but if she did happen to die in this world, then she would just regenerate in the Church of Lost Souls or the equivalent church in this kingdom and continue on her way.

She had nothing to lose, considering she probably had precious few hours left from the complimentary nanites that Elysium had given her for her trial. Best to use the time wisely and see as much of Elysia as possible before it ran out.

Sera turned back to the training grounds and picked up one of the swords from the barrel of weapons next to the trainer. A silver notification appeared before her:

Training Longsword

Two-handed sword with a bit of rust, a slightly chipped blade and dull tip. Useful for hacking away at straw dummies and exerting blunt force trauma but not much else.

Item Level: 1 - 5

Class: So common, your grandma probably has one.

Damage: 10 - 15

Durability: 3/12

The trainer gave her a glance out of the corners of his eyes but didn’t say a word when she fastened the sword to her belt and began walking away down the street, in the direction of the gate.