Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! Last chapter before the game truly start! And, guess what?

BACKSTORY! HOORAY!

But now I kind of feel bad about Cygnas… ANYWAY! I also took my time to briefly introduce the others characters and explain how they are related from other games.

AND I HAVE 20 FOLLOWERS! I’M RISING IN THE WORLD BABY! WATCH OUT!

(feeling so proud right now T.T)

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“Wait... Then I still have to wait an hour in here before starting the game?” At the moment, two sensations were raging within me with that information. The first amazement, as I didn’t even imagine that there was enough technology to make such a system, the other was sheer annoyance, as I had no idea no what to do in the meantime and would get bored in five minutes flat.

“Well… Technically, it’s fifty eight minutes and forty seven… Six seconds!” She said with a wide happy smile.

Is she mocking me? She is mocking me!

Anyway, I fell to the ground a bit at loss on what to do, I could log out and wait outside meanwhile, but I just didn’t feel like it, but staying in here would only make it last longer. I grabbed my head and started rolling in the ground while suffering from agonizing boredom.

Finally, I end up facing the sky absentminded, probably for a good five minutes. That was until I Cygnas appeared in my field of vision, looking a bit worried about me. Out of boredom, I looked back at her and we stared at each other for some time. Thinking about it… to keep looking at a beautiful girl like her for an hour isn’t all that bad…

At the beginning we simply kept looking at each other, the light in her eyes giving me a calming feeling. But there was a strange feeling within me, as if there was a small piece that simply wasn’t fitting in this whole story, so I stared at her with a bit more intensity, trying to gather what exactly was that feeling. Cygnas slightly tilting her head in confusion, and for the moment returned my gaze, but as the time went by her cheeks slowly started to gain a red tint to it and slowly started to expand. Finally her face went completely red and she turned her head away in embarrassment.

I unconsciously smiled at her reaction, it seemed so natural that I wouldn’t even believe she was an A.I. had she not told me herself. Just how advanced she was?

Wait…

I sat straight up once again in a hurry and looked at her, my sudden action making her jump in surprise.

“Hey, Cygnas… There is something bothering me…”

She jumped once again in mention of her name, and became a bit more fidgety.

“Wha-wha-what is it…?” She asked, her voice stammering greatly with anxiety and embarrassment.

“I mean… You are a great girl and all, but…” Her face somehow got even redder when I said those words, but at least she stopped fidgeting around, her small mouth opening and closing without making a sound, did she fry her circuits? “Aren’t you a bit too advanced to be used only for gaming?”

She went from her previous embarrassed looks to one of confusion, followed by shock, for some reason she started to look at herself and finally she looked back at me with a strange sad look in her face. I have to say that I was amused at her sudden reaction, but still kept quiet not knowing what to say.

Finally, after some pouting she said in an inaudible voice.

“I somehow lost a lot of my self-confidence as a woman…” For some reason she looked angrily at me for a moment, pouting for a moment and even looking away from me. I was at loss on what to do, so I could only look at her in worry, I tried speaking a thing or two, but since I had no idea on what happened I soon kept myself quiet. After some time she looked back at me and sighed. “I’m still angry, okay?”

“Ri… right…” I had no idea what else to say to her at that moment, so I simply went with the flow. She stared at me for some time, probably seeing if I was being sincere or not. Finally she sighed once again and seemingly relaxed.

“About your question… Well… For some reason it’s not well known, but previously, Compaq was a large technological company with military contracts…”

“Wait! Then isn’t that some kind of dangerous classified information?” I said shocked. Somehow this sounded just like a bit like one of these stories that a character finds some top-secret information and ends up chased by the military. However, Cygnas shook her head and a window appeared by her side, in it was a web browser with some Wikipedia page.

“Actually, no. You can actually find that information easily on the internet, so no need to worry.” She said looking at the window, and sure enough in there was written about Compaq and it’s story, even back to the military part. “But what happened was, they had a contract to develop a full fledged independent A.I., but for three consecutive times they ended blowing up the budget, and thus the government cancelled the contract. With that the company was left with one and a half feet on the grave.

In the end, seeing as the company had pretty much met it’s end, the CEO gave a farewell party for all the employees. Needless to say, everyone got drunk in that party, and some of the designers started to say some weird things about just fooling around with what they had left. When everyone woke up the other day, they found that three of the main developers had raided the equipment vault, disassembled some of the apparels and made a prototype of a gaming console. Seeing as they had nothing left to lose as they had to pay their enormous debts in twelve months, the Chairman gave them six months to finish the prototype and show it to the world.

And that was how the S-ltion, the first portable from Compaq and predecessor of Concentrt came to be! By the way, the name was actually because the developer that went to register the patent was drunk and misspoke the name, but it ended up sticking to the following generations!”

…

..

.

So… One of the biggest contenders in the console industries started as the idea of drunk men? I feel like I just heard something really outrageous. I rubbed my eyes trying to recompose myself after this piece of news, then looked back to Cygna.

“And that A.I. that they were working before was you?”

She gave me a smile, but it didn’t have the usual brightness to it.

“Yup, they used the money that the S-ltion brought to finish me! In fact, they planned to sell me to the military, but by then the D-lute was already in development but they lacked any kind of real game to put on it, so they decided to make an MMO and put me in management.”

Quite an interesting history there… Why isn’t there a documentary about that? I’m pretty sure I would have watched it...

“So, what do you think about that?” She looked at me with confusion. “I mean, going from a military A.I. to an entertainment A.I.?”

She looked surprised for a moment, then a strange sad smile appeared on her face as she looked at the ground, as if reviving something.

“I… I don’t know.” She said after some time, her voice stuttering. “I’m… Not even sure if I should compare this me with what I was before.”

“You see… Before, when I had just been completed and was readied for the military… I had no personality nor emotions… I was just an intelligent machine made to obey orders…” She looked at me for a moment, and I could see a bit of fear in her eyes before she looked down again. “I was cold, ruthless, brutal. Whatever order they gave me I would make sure to get it done, no matter the costs.” She looked at me once again, that same sad look in her eyes. “I was no different from a weapon of mass destruction.”

She locked her gaze with mine. Fear, disgust and despair shrouding the bright light she had before. I somehow knew that she wanted to see my reaction to what she had said, to see if I would also fear her as much as she feared herself. She wasn’t as much of a bright girl as she made herself be, it seems.

I sighed loudly. The atmosphere around us had grown extremely awkward in these few moments… It seems that I stepped in a landmine with my question. Seeing my reaction, she lowered her eyes once again, looking dejected.

If I were to tell the truth, yes, I was scared. Being told that the cute girl you met half an hour ago was actually a working weapon of mass destruction did shock me a lot. If I hadn’t met her before, I would probably had logged out at this very instant and thrown away my console. But…

“So… You got upgraded from a weapon to a goddess of a whole world! I want a promotion like that too! Where do I sign?” I said with a teasing grin, surprising her.

I could give a hundred different reasons why I said that, but the simplest one was that it just felt wrong to see her sad like that knowing the bright smiles she had.

“Right now you don’t really look like a mass-murder or anything like that? Did you go to a therapy or something?” It took her a moment to register what I said, as she was simply staring at me blankly, but after a moment she rubbed her eyes clearing away a small tear while a small smile appeared once again on her face.

“Actually, they still aren’t sure on what exactly happened.” She said regaining her energy from before. “During a transfer of data from an old HD for a new one, part of my self-learning data ended up in a damaged part of the drive and I ended up with a corrupted, but still working file. At the start they didn’t even notice, but after some times I started to copy some of the reactions from the developers and before we knew I ended up like this.”

“Hooray for happy coincidences!” I said in a mocking tone. She stuck her tongue out to me.

After that I quickly changed the topic back to the game to avoid going back in that awkward atmosphere. In the mean-time I managed to get some useful info. I won’t go too deep in that conversation since it takes some time, but the main information I got were the following.

First, skills. These can be acquired mainly in four ways. Talking to a trainer; Using a skill book, a rare drop for some bosses; making repeated actions; and finally earning a new class, these are deleted should you change to an unrelated class, but you can still keep them between similar classes, like mages and warlocks.

The second thing we talked about was classes. Players are forced to go through the levels one to ten as wanderers, but at level ten they can choose from one of the basic classes if they wish for it. There are also hidden classes that can be acquired in many different ways. She didn’t tell me how, but she did say that it is possible to influence the game so It creates a hidden class for you.

After that came status and equipment. Surprisingly, players only got two status points to distribute when leveling, so this makes that most of our points come from equipment. This also means that equipment are a fairly common drops, and it isn’t all that strange change a few pieces in the span of a couple of hours.

But the best of the best equips were still insanely hard to get. She also explained-me the basic stats, separating in three offensive and three defensive.

For the offensive we have: Strength increases physical damage and armor piercing. Agility increases critical damage and critical strike chance. Intelect increases magic damage and reduces cast time. For the defensives we have: Toughness for physical damage, mind for magical and vitality for HP.

Next thing was crafting and gathering. Crafting is treated in a similar way to skills, but they are much deeper and complex, crafting trainers were located at the cities players arrive at level 10. For gathering, there are trainers on the beginning villages, but it requires a bit of money.

The final piece of information was mostly forced upon me by Cygnas, and it was about, guess what? Pets. She told me that even non-combat pets had utility, as you could equip them with inventories and they could also help with crafting. For example, a fire pet could work as a flame for cooking and forging. She also told me that pets only dropped from boss monsters, and they were either an extremely rare drop or needed some ridiculous conditions to be met.

After that long talk, when I looked at the time, there still were fifteen more minutes in-game before the server would open.

Fifteen minutes is a dreadful time when it comes to game. It’s short enough that you can fill yourself to the brim with anticipation, but long enough for the anxiety to corrode you from inside.

I looked to the white sky once again thinking what I would do get over with this last remaining bit of time. I could try and take some more information from Cygnas, but I was afraid that knowing too much could end up spoiling the feeling of discovery, so I held myself back.

But I still had to find something to do or else the anxiety would kill me. Strangely enough, Cygnas had gone quiet, floating silently some distance from me with a small delighted smile in her face, probably taking her focus to assist other people.

Oh yeah, what are the other three fools doing now?

“Hey, Cygnas… Can I access skype in here?”

She blinked in surprise for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes. If you focus on the icon on the upper right corner of your vision, it should open the menu.” I tried and surely a window with many options appeared before me. “If you see, near the bottom, right before log out, there should be an ‘T. P. Services’, choose it and then chose skype. Then you just login as usual, there is

voice chat in game, but you can only use text chat to talk to someone outside.”

“Huh? Why is that?”

“You see, there is a difference in time from here to outside, this would mess up with the sound, as you would hear everything three times slower and them three times faster.”

“Makes sense…” I said as I logged in on my account. As always I immediately went to my recent tabs and searched them, but strangely all of them were offline. I sighed inwardly because I had hoped that I could somehow talk to them to pass the time, but it seems my hope were in vain. Thinking about it, they probably were also creating their characters and probably wouldn’t have noticed the skype.

Noticing my mood, Cygnas asked worried.

“What is the matter?” I quickly explained her what happened, and she nodded. “I see…” She stopped to think about something, and then had an idea. “Do you have their E-mails? Since every account is linked to an email, I could probably pin-point your friends and bring them here!”

“You can do that?” She smiled in answer.

“It’s not like it’s forbidden to meet other people before the game, right?” She said with an impish smile. I decided it’s not worth to try and discuss it any further and quickly passed her their emails and told her to say that it’s Hawx who is calling them. She made no further question and closed her eyes.

For a moment I just waited excitedly and after half a minute a flash of light came from beside me, and from there came an elf. She had a fiery red hair tied in a bun, her eyes had a deep green hue to them and her ears seemed a bit longer than the ones from the basic characters. She had a slim body just like most elves, but she was strangely short, being almost a full head shorter than me. Her equipment consisted of the full leather set, she held a longbow in her hands. When I focused my eyes on her, the words “Red Hurricane” appeared above her head.

Just as I had been analyzing her, she was also analyzing me. I opened up a wide smile and said:

“Geez, even in game you still are a shrimp!” Just as I said that, a vein popped up in her forehead and she immediately kicked me in the shins. Luckily, the pain senses here were disabled, so I only ended up laughing even more at her situation, which only annoyed her even more.

This girl was undoubtedly Barbara, the last of my closest friends. I met her a couple of years after meeting Jean, still back in high school. In real life she is just as short as in-game, so she usually ends up being the target of my jokes, she is also the only one of us who went to a different college, and so we talk mostly on skype. An ongoing joke amongst our group is that from all four of us she is the most ‘man’ and she usually drag the three nerds around by the nose.

She is also my Ex. Who said all Exes have to become our eternal enemies?

“At least I don’t have those creepy glowing eyes!”

“Hey! I’m not creepy!” I automatically rebutted her. How can these awesome glowing eyes actually be creepy?

“Anyway, I remembered you guys saying that trying to make a character too different may cause some problem when getting used to the body.” After that she calmed herself down and looked around. “So, where are the other two?”

“I guess they should be arriving any time now… should be in the finishing touches to their characters. Anyway, I think I may have some interesting bits of information for you!”

She looked inquisitively for me, so I widened my smile.

“It seems that there is a way to get pets in this game!” Her eyes shot open when she heard that, and she was obviously holding herself back to not start smiling like an idiot. All the other MMOs game we played, she somehow would always end up with a horde of pets following her around.

She grabbed me by the collar of my armor and pulled me to eye level.

“HOW?” How the hell can somebody put so much pressure behind a single word like that?

Luckily I was long used to this, so I only smiled teasingly.

“I still don’t know, but if I find out… It won’t be cheap!”

She locked her gaze with mine for a moment, and finally nodded before letting me go.

“One lasagna, right?” I love when negotiations go my way! By the way, she is also a good cook!

“Pleasure doing business with you!” Just as I said that two flashes of light occurred almost simultaneously.

From each of them came a person, both of them being from that dragon-like race.

The left one was slightly shorter than me, but had a long white hair that ended up in a light green by the end. His silver horn swooped backwards alongside his head and ended up with a slight upward curve near the back of his head, beside these details, he was just like a human. His green eyes were slightly droopy, giving him a serene and noble feeling. His equipment was the full cloth set with a staff, which made him look like a scholar.

The right one had a much wilder look compared to the other. Being slightly taller than me, he had a short but spiky red hair, both of his horn went straightly upwards, but the right one was broken near the middle, he also had a long scaly tail following behind him and his hand and feet ended up in claws, all of these covered by black and red scales. His equipment were the scale-mail chest and leggings, but plate boots and gauntlets and a spear for weapon.

The words “Phantons” and “Incarnus” appeared respectively above their heads.

“Whoa! Creepy eyes!” Incarnus said immediately after seeing me.

“THEY ARE COOL! NOT CREEPY!” I boomed angrily at him, scaring him as he looked around trying to understand what happened

“Hi guys!” Red ignored my outburst and greeted them as usually.

“Baah! Long time no see!” Incarnus approached her exaggeratedly and put his arm around her shoulders dragging her away before whispering. “Hey, what’s up with him?”

“Long story…”

Hey! I heard that.

Anyway, I turned back to Phantons who was absentmindedly watching everything, noticing me he looked at me and raised his right hand.

“Yo!”

“Yo!” It’s our usual short greeting.

“So, why exactly did you call us here?” Red asked as she came back, Incarnus following her from behind.

“Well… Long story short, I was bored.” I answered straightforwardly, and they just shrugged it off. It’s my usual reason to do something. Then I turned back to the two newcomers. “So… Did you two arrange for this to happen, or you really selected the same race by coincidence?”

The two of them finally looked at each other, noticing their similarity. Phantons simply raised his eyebrow in amusement while Incarnus looked completely shocked, before any of us could do anything, he grabbed Phantons’ shoulder and shook him strongly.

“Why did you take the same race as me? You had a hundred different choices to make!” Not like it was his fault, but I kept myself quiet. This was a usual scene among us so neither of us really bothered much by it.

What made them come to a stop was a sigh from the fifth person in the room.

I was delighted in seeing their confused faces as they looked at each other, trying to figure where the sigh came from. After some time the three of them looked at me, but I simply looked at Cygnas in wonder. For some reason she seemed really tired.

“Wow… That was a lot more tiring than what I expected…” She said dropping her shoulders dejectedly. She even stopped floating and simply sat on the ground relaxing.

“What happened?” I asked worried, she simply gave a tired smile and waved her hand.

“Nothing too much. But I did have to rewrite five or six hundred lines of code for this to work.” What the hell wasn’t much?

“You really didn’t need to do all that, you kno…” I stopped when I felt a hand resting on my shoulder, when I looked back, Incarnus was staring at me with pure confusion in his eyes, Phantons was wide eyed and Red simply looked lost.

I looked back at Cygnas and raised an eyebrow. She looked absentminded at me for a moment, then her eyes widened as she seemingly understood what I meant.

“I told you that most players thought I was just a script, didn’t I?” She said with a small smile.

“Wait, then are you a gm?” Phantons recovered himself faster than the others and asked.

“Nope, she’s an A.I…. And to tell the truth I only found it on an accident.” I explained it to them, they looked shocked at me and then to her, clearly wanting to know what had happened, but I kept quiet.

Sadly, Cygnas had other plans, as she looked at me briefly with a grin before propping herself up. Then she took a pose by stuffing her chest out, putting her left hand in her waist and extending her right hand to her left.

“LET THERE BE…” As I had quickly understood what was about to happen, I managed to find a way to prevent any further damage. Window-ball! Go! “Ouch! Why did you do that again?”

The three looked at us confused while Cygnas complained in my ear, I chose to ignore her and discretely changed the topic.

“So, what are we going to do? We probably are starting in different areas, right?” They looked worriedly at Cygnas for a moment, they clearly wanted to know what was happening, but were a bit at loss at me forcibly changing the subject.

“Well… We could…” Phantons looked at Cygnas confused once again, and then questioningly to me, but I simply looked at him as if there was nothing wrong.

NO ONE SHALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED HERE TODAY!

“What if we meet in a capital after some time?” Red was the one who recommended this. The others looked at her for a moment and nodded.

“Then we can create our guild and go in a few dungeons.” Phantons’ added, from our old guild he was the one who spent most time in dungeons and raids.

While remind myself of the old times I couldn’t help but smirk.

“Dungeoning like normal, or Collection style?” I said in a teasing tone.

The three of them became wide eyed for a moment, then each had a different reaction. Red face palmed herself, but a small laugh escaped her, Incarnus simply started laughing out loud holding his stomach, Phantons looked defiantly at me and a wild smile appeared in his face.

“Collection of course!”

After that all four of us started laughing loudly, but there was one person who still was at loss on what was happening.

“Hmm… What is Collection style?” Asked Cygnas in a confused tone.

“Our old guild… Was called Collection of Heroes, and we four were the founders.” I started explaining for her.

“We usually ended up going on dungeons together, but a certain healer and a certain tank had severe suicidal tendencies.” Red said while looking at Phantons then at me.

“All of the noobs never went on a dungeon with us after their first time!” Incarnus took on.

“Suicidal tendencies?” Cygnas was even more confused, so Phantons looked at me and said.

“Once, that guy said at the beginning of a dungeon. ‘I’m bored.’ And literally pulled all of the enemies up to the room of the first boss and tanked all of them there.”

Oh, I remember that time! It’s easily one of the best ones in the book. Never have I felt so proud in my life as a tanker. The other dps, though… I think that guy left the guild right after the first run.

Lost in my smugness I took some time to notice that Cygnas was looking at me as she would look to a mad man and even took some distance from me.

After that, we still took some time to chat and tell each other our plans until the time came to the server to open, so we said our goodbyes for now and patiently waited for the teleport.

And before I could even see what happened, I already was staring at a large field filled with animals.