Chapter 2

Being in life or death situations was the new norm for every player who was sucked into, ‘The Fortuna Circle’ game. Each day was a struggle to survive. Not only did players still need to eat, sleep, and find shelter; but they also needed to survive zombies, hellhounds, and thousands of other monsters the game had. 

Worst of all, no one had any idea how much time was passing in the real world, or if we could ever return.

Most players had the same story. They had received an invitation to participate in a beta testing. All beta testers were to sign in on the same day and at the same time. 

If you didn't make it in time your account would not load and you would be disqualified from being a beta tester. 

Looking back on it, this was probably designed to stop players from realizing what was going to happen. We all just thought it was a way to check for bugs and see if we could crash the system.

Thousands of players took off work or school to be sure they could attend. Determined to make their account at least so they could play later.

Everything seemed fine at first, nothing was out of the ordinary. The only strange thing was the character creator.

When you logged in, the system took a picture of you. Your character was then styled directly off of the real you. There was no way to change it. A lot of players grumbled about this aspect because it limited their play and their ability to be anonymous in PVP. 

I didn't really mind, but it was a bummer. I normally would have spent a few hours designing my character. 

The character creator did have something special though.

The attributes window.

You were able to completely modify your attributes and special skills!

Strength 

Dexterity 

Intelligence 

Wisdom 

Constitution 

Charisma 

And one bonus slot. 

Every character in the game received a bonus attribute or skill that no one else in the game had. It was called the Special Attribute. It was completely unique to their character and completely random.

Each character started with 5 points in each slot, and was given 50 points to spend as they would like.

Before you could choose your slots, a message popped up for everyone, “Your class in the game will be decided based on your choices." 

So we couldn't even choose our own class. Everything was decided based on how you spent our points. 

Most players tried to evenly distribute their attributes and put a few extra in their special attribute. Or they went heavy into strength if they wanted to be a warrior class, wisdom for mage, dexterity for rogue, etc.

There wasn't much information on the classes actually, so everyone just made guesses. 

The consensus was that most players had done pretty much the same thing. 

Most players.

I actually don't know of any player who did what I did. At least no one admitted it. 

We all knew that we were only allowed to create one character at this time, so a balanced character was your best option for getting through the game.

 Maybe it was also because most players had abilities like elemental control, extra speed, strength, flight, things like that; no one seemed to feel the need to go all in on one thing.

But…mine was luck.

When I first saw it I didn't really understand what that meant. Would my attacks hit more often? Would I find more gold when looting? There were a lot of possibilities, and this was a beta game anyway. So why not find out how far it will go?

I started adding points to my luck attribute, and each time the bar just kept growing. It didn't seem to have a cap on how many points I could put in. 

After depositing all 50 points, a message popped up. “Would you like to take points from your other attributes and add them to ‘luck’?" 

That seemed dangerous, I didn't want to have too hard of a time with the first level. I decided to leave points in intelligence, wisdom, and constitution. It would only let me go down to one point in the other areas. So my ‘luck’ was now at 62 points. 

I was not prepared for what happened next.

When we finished the character creator we were sent to a separate room. A message popped up that said:

Welcome player!

This is day 1 in ‘The Fortuna Circle.’

You will be permitted to leave this room once all players have selected their character attributes. 

Things to know for this world:

1. The game will automatically save after each action- actions can not be undone.

2. NPCs in game are meant to help you with your quest. They can be killed and will not respawn.

3. Resources are not infinite. Players can grow and cultivate resources to create more.

4. Players' individual skills are not viewable by other characters unless you allow access. 

5. To win the game, you must find all three Ancient Artifacts and deposit them at the Sacred Temple.

And that was it.

After that point no one received another notice or message from the system.

It would have been nice for some more information on the artifacts, maybe some information on the world state, a cut scene describing what the game was about. Anything would have been nice. Unfortunately, we didn't get that. 

At some point the final player must have joined and everyone was able to leave their room.

 The rooms were basically apartment buildings. Everyone had their own. It was especially nice that only they could enter too, unless you invited someone in. It essentially was your own little base to store things and hide. 

Each building was in a different town. We had all been separated out into ten different towns at random. 

Each town was very similar and different all at the same time. They all had the necessities like food stores, weapons, armor shops, and apothecaries. But each town also has a specialty shop.

 Depending on where you spawned, you got a discount at the stores in your town, so it was obvious they wanted characters to stay close to home.

 I just really wish I had not landed in 'Fire Swamp'. 

No one knows what Fireswamps specialty shop was. By the time most of us reached that part of the town, the store had burned down. The smoke and ash could be seen from across town.

When we all arrived at the site it seemed obvious who had been responsible for it. A group of players stood in front of the wreckage and were cackling like hyenas. 

That same group went on to wreck half of the town. Luckily, they saved everyone in the game the trouble of discovering how twisted this game really is.

After destroying the town they turned to PVP (Player vs Player) battles to test their skills, making the entire town their battlefield. If it wasn't already destroyed or on fire, it was now.

Everyone did a decent job of either running, hiding, or fighting. The mayhem they created leveled the town even more. It was obvious that this town was either done for or would need rebuilt entirely. 

Another group of players actually banded together and took out the hyenas, but that's when everyone realized what was going on.

Their bodies didn't disappear like in most games. They didn't respawn anywhere on the map. And getting hurt HURT. 

Within the first hour of launch one town was destroyed, thirty characters were killed, and everyone from Fireswamp realized we were trapped. 

We all tried to log out. We tried everything we could think of. It was no use.

Pretty quickly, the town was abandoned and groups dispatched to the nine remaining towns to tell them what had happened.

These groups would later be called The Refugees of Fireswamp. They would be active in various guilds formed, and work tirelessly to create some semblance of order.

Everyone in the game made an attempt to log out once word got out, but no one wanted to volunteer to see if dying in game was the exit. There didn't seem like there was a way to relay that message anyway. 

In one sense, I was lucky. I witnessed everything first hand, so I realized the severity of the situation right away. Had I not watched everything happen, I probably would have done things differently that first day.

Fireswamp was also abandoned, so it made for a decent base of operations. I was able to hide out and avoid other players. Any resources left in the town were basically free and I was able to hoard them in my apartment. 

My plan was to wait it out. Let someone else find the “Ancient Artifacts." I would just consider this a vacation from the real world for now. 

That's what I thought at least. 

Until a certain wild Hellhound thought I looked awfully delicious. 

Until I was chased nearly to the brink of death.

Until I had to hide in a claustrophobia inducing "cave.”

Until said cave’s entrance collapsed. Trapping me and a certain rogue inside. 

Vacations are not supposed to be this stressful.