Arthur and Kès formed a party and added me to it, just as we had always played MMO style games. The weird thing, and this nagged at me for some time, was that I felt… compelled to play. It wasn’t that I wanted to particularly get on with things; it was more a case of my sixth sense telling me I had to play it. While Arthur and I often shared unique abilities, my sixth sense was worlds ahead of his, much as his leadership skills made mine look paltry.
I once tried to explain to him the gut feelings I got about things, and he just looked at me like I was spouting nonsense. Which, I guess to someone who has no background or frame of reference, it may have sounded like nonsense. But I knew to trust that instinct, it would serve me well.
Enough about that though, you’re likely wondering what the game was like. Well, after getting all the excess wording out of the way and opening the awesome treasure boxes I had gotten, I was shocked by how realistic the surroundings were. Trees that actually looked like trees, grass textures that made you wonder if they animated each blade, and I had to wander for a bit to see, but the water textures were so real I got a little thirsty.
The area in the game was fairly similar to most fantasy based MMORPGs; lots of trees, a hut in the forest with an NPC, and lots of level 1 and level 2 monsters. The tutorial quests were also standard fare; go kill 10 of these, collect 5 of that, harvest 6 of this from those monsters there, and head to the local big city. Nothing new, but all of it was basic learning and levelling.
By the time we hit the first large town, Camelot, we were doing rather well level wise. Since our import of the training data gave us each boosted XP gain, a four level increase in the span of twenty minutes was all but assured. Maybe Kès was more on the nose about this being a cheat than I gave him credit for…
“Hey, Morgana, what did your loot boxes give you?” Arthur asked.
I looked over at him, noting the look of indecision on his face.
“Um… I got a set of twinned daggers that boosts my magic damage by 400% when my HP hits half, a set of mana regenerating light armor, a talisman that recovers my HP over time, and a ring that I need to have appraised.” I told him.
Kès laughed, “Man, all I got were a chest plate that boosted my HP and a hammer that deals more damage as I get hurt.”
I could feel more than hear Arthur’s mind going. He must have gotten a weird item or something that was making him pick on or the other. Knowing him, he wanted to avoid doubling up on skills in the party, which was a decent strategy. On the other hand, he might be maximising the damage output by doubling up on another skill set to make us a force to be reckoned with so long as the enemy didn’t hit our weakness.
I angled the camera to look at his character, I figured I’d see what was going to happen one way or the other, so why not make sure I have a front row seat. Then his avatar’s weapon changed, from a silver one-handed longsword to a mismatched set of longswords. That’s not cliché, a leader with two swords and no shield, it’s totally something that never happens… I sighed because I couldn’t lie to myself that hard.
“So… you gonna share that later?” I asked him.
“It’s bound to y avatar unfortunately. After 500 uses it will dissipate and I’ll have the dual wield skill permanently. I’d assume that means other people could get it as loot… rare loot. And who knows, maybe it extends to more than just swords.” Arthur shrugged off the joking request.
Kès chimed in, “How cool would it be to see me swinging double hammers? I can see it now…”
I shook my head, these two and their optimism…
“One of you wanna pass the pizza this way?” I asked, finally feeling hungry enough to want to dig in.
“Did anybody else forget that we had this mountain of food?” Kès joked as he popped open the lid on the top box.
Arthur shrugged and got up to grab plates. “I just wasn’t thinking about it. You know how it is, getting into a new game tends to distract a person.”
As we loaded ourselves up and began to chow down, I noticed something that should have been glaring when I first sat down to play.
“Guys, did you notice there’s no BGM in this game?”
Both boys shook their heads, apparently as oblivious as I had been. It was odd now that I thought about it, so I poked around the UI settings for anything related to sound. What I found instead of the basic sounds and BGM settings were plug-ins for just about every media player app on just about every OS.
“It looks like it’s a bring your own jams kind of game. That’s kind of innovative, a little lazy, but also really cool as a concept.” Arthur said as he discovered the same thing I had.
I immediately fired up my media app and located my favourite game sound track to play when doing just about anything. It felt right, it did what I needed for getting into the groove, and as a bonus it would bother Arthur after about an hour.
We spent another three hours grinding levels, completing quests, and getting a feel for the way the characters played and moved before we determined it was time to call it a day. Which really just meant we were going to binge sci-fi movies until we passed out on the sofa, the joys of being young and all that.
I wandered upstairs early, feeling the drain of waking up this morning first. I knew Arthur and Kès would likely fall asleep after the next movie, and the TV was set to shut down in about three hours, so I didn’t have to worry too much about anything going wrong.
I checked my phone, which I had once again accidentally left on silent, and saw a message from a number I didn’t recognize.
I’ll beat you at the tournament, and then you’ll have to go out with me. –Jak O’Lantrn
Welp, time to get a new phone number.
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