“At this stage of fatigue, the user may disregard this advisory and resume play. However, at higher levels, Techson Numerix’s legal obligations, as outlined in the User Licensing Agreement, may necessitate user ejection from the virtual environment.”
“Should the player elect to continue, Techson Numerix assumes no liability for any loss of progress, in-game assets, or avatar death resulting from exhaustion-impaired performance.”
I brought up the clock, 11:45. I’d been up since 6:00, final day it may have been, there was still a lot to take care of and wrap up. My car’s boot now had a couple of boxes of books, notes and folders that I would need to go through at some point to see what I wanted to keep. I looked over at my avatar. That had been a good session. I was tempted… really, really tempted to dive back in and play some more… No, the smart move was to log off, go to bed, and hit the full game when fully awake.
I really didn’t want to do the smart move…
I opened up chat and saw most of my friend group had already logged off for the night. Apparently Jacobs and Co got exhausted on the last boss in the dungeon, and between that and the dungeon’s lockout timer, had decided to call it a night and start early the next day.
I forced myself up and headed for bed. Now I wasn’t riding a huge storm in a wooden ship…and the adrenaline wasn’t surging…I really was starting to doze off.
It took me a while to get to sleep. I kept replaying the storm in my head. The feel of the spray. The sensation of falling as we rode the wave down. And then the crash of water splashing across the whole of the ship. Even before the Kraken, that was easily one of the top experiences of my life. With the Kraken? What a tutorial...
My alarm went off at 6:00 again. I was already awake. I remembered to turn it off this time, not just reset it. I contemplated rolling over, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep any more.
The bacon in the airfryer, eggs on the hob, I soon had the makings of a breakfast of champions, and today that would be me. At least that is what I told myself.
I browsed the news, mostly it was things that I had no interest in. Another ‘celebrity’ doing something inane, and the press making out like it was worthy of attention. Or a politician being caught in their lies. Most of the streamers were playing older games or Velkaria. A few on the tutorial ships, seemingly grinding the same activities. There was a couple swimming around in some underwater area, mostly trying to avoid big fish to gather different things. One was trying to fight with a spear. Didn’t seem all that successful, but his viewers seemed to be bigging him up.
I brought up our group chat, expecting them to all be asleep. The normal state of affairs before eight on a Saturday, only to find half of them awake and indicators marking them as online, and in a fight.
Vaxil: I completed the tutorial last night. Epic experience! AI suggested I should call it a night before progressing; you were all offline, so I took its advice. I’m going to head up and get in game.
As I entered the lobby, Jacobs gave my message a thumbs up before responding.
Jacobs: DM me once you are in game! Jacobs Von Jacobs the III
My Avatar was where I had left her, lying down head to one side, as I laid down into the outline, moving my arms to match hers, I realised she was lying at an angle. Her head was slightly higher than her feet. I closed my eyes.
And felt sand along my cheek. Water lapping my ankles. There were the chirps of birds, the crash of waves, and the beating heat of the sun upon my back. I blinked my eyes open, and rolled over onto my back. Above me, glorious blue sky, the occasional cloud drifting by.
I carefully sat up and looked around. From the seaweed and other detritus around me, I had washed up on this shore at high tide, and the water had receded. The beach was that glorious white sand you see in any advertisement or show where they want that desert island look. I could see the waves crashing a few hundred metres out where some rocks were poking up out of the water. To the left, the beach seemed to curve around into the sea, before then cutting back out of sight. A few metres from the top of the detritus, the foliage of a dense forest started. To my right, about 100 metres away, the beach was cut by the flow of water from a stream.
Wasn’t I supposed to be underwater?
I brought up the interface to find a cascade of notifications waiting for me.
‘The power of a great storm tempered your body. Constitution increased’
[Tutorial Completed, Welcome to Velkaria.]
The following subsystems are now available:
[Social] [Titles] [Journal] [Map]
[Joiningchat… there is 1 player in this chat]
I mentally selected the [map] screen, it was mostly foggy, there was a small patch of white sand, blue sea and some specs of green trees. A small arrow pointed upwards. I turned my head, the whole map rotated, keeping the arrow pointing up…I sighed. I hated rotating maps in games. Hopefully, there was an option somewhere to fix that.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The [Journal] screen was pretty simple; it was basically a quest journal. At the top, under the title of ‘Main Quest’ was ‘The Great Voyage to the New World.’ Inside it had a series of sub-quests, the first, ‘Survive the ocean crossing’, was crossed out. The second was entitled ‘Get to landing.’ Focusing on it, it expanded to say, ‘The journey across the waves from your homeland was long and perilous. You were unlucky that your ship sank when you were so close to your destination. Fortune didn’t entirely abandon you, though, as you survived the storm and found yourself alone on an unknown island. Somehow, you need to find your way to Landing and report your survival.’ Under that was just ‘????’. My guess was that this was a multipart quest; I assumed that would be confirmed when I got to Landing.
The next section was entitled ‘Local Quests.’ It had a single quest:
‘Unknown island.’ ‘You have found yourself alone on an unknown island in an unknown archipelago. Explore the island and learn its secrets.’
The italics felt like they would get replaced once I learnt the name of this place.
The last section was entitled side quests, it also had a single quest ‘Survive’, and worryingly, its more detailed text was simply ‘Don’t die.’
Next, I opened up the [Titles] page. At the top, it said ‘no title selected, below that was a box with the following listed.
[Amateur Fisherman] [Amateur Staffman] [Basic Cook] [Ship Navigator] [Shipwrecked]
The first three were grey, the fourth was green and the last was golden.
When I focused on [Amateur Fisherman], instead of a pop-up I had expected, no title selected changed to say [Amateur Fisherman]. Beneath that a section appeared which said ‘Bonus: Fish are more likely to nibble.’
I tried selecting each one in turn and got:
Nodding to myself, I then opened up the [Social] screen. There were several tabs along the top of the page:, , , and . Only and were not muted and responded to my mental clicking.
looked like a simple chat window. On the left, at the top, it said ‘Unknown’ island, below it, there was just my name, and on the right, a window with a text input box. I entered ‘Hello’ into the box and mentally hit enter. The text appeared in the window above with my name and a time stamp.
Local chat, I said to myself. Oh, there is an options menu, I thought when I saw the small cog. There were options to leave and join channels, though there was only one at the moment. I could mute the chat, edit my block list, change fonts and font size, colour code players depending upon relationship, so I could make friends a different colour, for example…basically typical chat window stuff.
Switching to thetab, I was met with the passive-aggressive, ‘You have no friends’ line. So I mentally selected the ‘add friend’ button to correct that mistaken assertion. I have friends, goshdarnit, not just people who I’ve broken down to the point they grudgingly accept my presence.
‘Jacobs…: I’m almost back to the newbie gates, which one are you at?’
I got the message a few seconds after he accepted my friend invite.
‘Aenara…: Gate? I can’t see any gates. I’m on a beach near a stream…’ I responded.
‘Jacobs…: After the shipwreck, you either get lucky and swim, without being eaten, to one of the undersea gates or drown and respawn at one of the pillars.’ I responded by sending him a short video of me looking around.
A few seconds later, my HUD indicated an incoming phone call.
“What the absolute fuck, dude???!” screamed one of my oldest friends when I picked up.
“So…I’m not in the same place you guys are?”
“No, you really ain't. You also sound weird as a girl. You lucky fuck. We’re slaving it away down below the waves to earn enough faction to pay off our air bills and transit to the mainland, and you wake up on a desert island??? How?”
“Beats me, after the ship started going down, I took a deep breath before my head went under, cut the rope, securing me and got back up to the surface. Pulled some of the wreckage together, and it then faded to black. Logged in this morning and woke up here.”
“Wait, you weren’t below decks or manning the pumps when it went down?”
“No. I was next to the wheel throughout the storm. You were below decks?”
“Yeah, most of us were resting in hammocks when the storm hit. If you skipped the tutorial, you had to pump the bilge pumps. How did you get to the wheel? When the storm starts, they close all the hatches.”
“I joined the officers for dinner. The captain invited me to watch before the storm hit, but it came quicker than expected, so he secured me to the rails and himself with the helmsman to the wheel. Got a first-hand view of the whole thing. The Kraken, Dude, it was incredible.”
“What? Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask her…him.” Jacobs’ voice went quiet for a moment as if he was talking to someone else, before coming back, “Peachy asks if you can share the highlights reel to our group chat?”
“The what?” I asked.
“The highlights reel…I forgot you weren’t around when one of the streamers showed it off. It’s part of the streamer's tools. Think”
I followed his suggestion, and a screen popped up, ‘Relive and share your favourite moments in the game.’ There was a box with a list of all the major events I experienced from the tutorial, an icon for sorting and filtering, and at the moment it was sorted by zone and by time. I selected the one entitled ‘caught a fish’, and on the right, it showed a video of my experience catching the fish. I could switch to third person and watch it again as if I was looking over my shoulder. Scrolling down through the beats, ignoring an impatient Jacobs, I found the penultimate scene of my tutorial experience. It started with me looking at my hands as they gripped the rail and then up as a wave crashed over the bow. It finished with me taking a deep breath as I was dragged under. I hit the share button and watched a 'dot spiral' spin, and then the box next to the button had a web URL in it. I posted that to our friend chat.
I also shared the latest highlight of my game experience. This one, I selected the third person view. My avatar’s outfit hadn’t been as lucky as I in surviving. Trousers were now shorts, and the top had lost its midriff and sleeves. I doubt they would notice, though, the video’s focus was more on the environment; it just looked like my character was lying out on the beach sunbathing. Totally not intentional.