Virtual Me- Valkyrie

by Michael Ocheskey

​The weapons shop was not really a shop, but a small shack with a note attached to the wall reading: This is a weapons shop. If you need to purchase new weapons or would like to sell a weapon, find a shop like this. Beginners please select from one of the three boxes.

  ​Somebody shoot me, I whined.

  ​Reading that sign, I finally understood Tutorial Village’s purpose. It was probably a place meant to help children who wished to play—age ten and up were allowed to play the game—and first-time role-playing gamers of all ages. Still, the sign stated the obvious so plainly that it was ridiculous. Anyone who couldn’t figure out that you bought and sold weapons at a weapons shop probably wouldn’t have figured out how to put the SRU-visor on in the first place.

  ​Putting the absurdity of the sign out of my mind, I stared down at the three boxes in front of me. None of them were labeled and all three were identical in size, shape, and color, dark blue. It reminded me of trying to guess which cup the coin was under. I really didn’t care what kind of weapon I received, but I was hoping for something light. I knew I wouldn’t be able to wield a battle axe or pike effectively. Not with a body designed for speed and flexibility instead of strength.

  ​I played a quick game of eeny-meeny-miny-moe and ended up on the middle box. I opened the box and waited for my eyes to adjust to the light radiating from within. A white light shown from one side and a red on the other, coalescing in the middle to a bright pink light. A golden figure eight etched itself into the pink light.

  ​I reached into the figure eight and felt metal bands. I began to pull and from the light grew a pair of metal gloves that appeared to be gauntlets, except more streamlined and flexible. They were made of an icy white metal that trailed up my forearms when I put them on, stopping just below my elbow, but the part that wrapped my hands was made of what felt like silk.

  ​I noticed a small button on the bottom of each palm, centered near my wrist. Using my middle and ring fingers I pressed both buttons and flinched when I heard the sound of metal rubbing metal. Regaining my composure, embarrassed for my little panic attack, I looked down at my hands again and found a dagger nine inches long sticking out from the back of each hand where the metal ended at my wrist. If I made a fist, there was about six inches of dagger that protruded. The other three inches of blade was trapped behind my hand where it would be useless for attack, but at least it would keep someone from cutting my hand fully off.

  ​This was a close-range weapon designed for an assassin or someone with high evasion and speed. I’d have to get incredibly close to my enemy, putting myself in considerable danger, if I wanted to do any harm with it. I couldn’t have picked a better beginner’s weapon. A fight in this game wouldn’t be exciting if it weren’t dangerous. I pressed the buttons again and watched as the blades retracted back up into the metal arm guard.

  ​I made my way to the other shops—the thief-guy was gone now—and found myself getting more agitated with each shop. None of the shops had anything at all inside them. Their shelves were empty and there were no shop personnel. They each had a sign similar to the weapons shop telling what the shop bought and sold. I got a surprise at the magic shop when I noticed a single book sitting on the shelf. Getting excited, I picked up the book and opened it.

  ​This is a magic book. Inside you will find different information about magic and/or spells. There are two types of magic books, instructional and practical. Instructional contains information and tips on how to use magic in general and/or information on different spells. Practical contain specific spell incantations and instructions for their use. This book is only for demonstration purposes and contains no other knowledge.

  ​That did it. I screamed in frustration and threw the book through the shop’s glassless window. As I stood there, huffing in fury, the book soared back through the window and repositioned itself neatly on the shelf, taunting me.

  ​The only building in Tutorial Village that served an actual purpose was the hospital. It had a single bed in the corner and the note said if you lay on the bed it will instantly heal any wounds players sustained. I needed to vent my frustration, so I crossed my arms, placing my fists against my upper arms, and pressed the buttons on my palms.

  ​I bellowed in real pain for the first time as the blades sank themselves deep into the flesh of my exposed upper arms.

  ​Pressing the buttons again, I felt the blades retract as blood raced down my skin. I jumped into the bed as fast as I could and was enveloped in a white light for the briefest of seconds. When the light vanished, the pain, blood, and wounds were gone.

  ​While others might have called me crazy for injuring myself, I felt it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was sure that it would help to save my life. Now that I knew what the virtual pain felt like I wouldn’t get distracted by it in a battle. I always knew that I’d play with the pain feature set to its highest level because pain is the body’s alert system.

  ​Playing without pain would mean that someone could sneak up behind you and stick a dagger in your back and you wouldn’t realize it until you bled to death. Unlike other games, there wasn’t a health meter that went from zero to one-hundred percent. Instead, there was a damage chart that told you where you were injured, but only if you opened up the statistics page by saying, “stats.”

  ​The stats command would place a holographic window in front of your eyes describing everything important about your character: name, any damage on your body, magical energy, experience, and a detailed list of what you’ve killed and how many. The downside was that the screen obstructed your vision. It wasn't something that was meant to be kept open while you were actively playing but used while idle.

  ​While I still didn’t understand the purpose of some of the statistics features, I understood some of the basics. Looking at my own stats, I had no damage, no magical energy, no experience, and no kills.

  ​Health in this game wasn’t determined the same as other games. There were no hit points where you were allowed to suffer a certain amount of damage before dying. Instead, if it killed you in reality it killed you here. A stab wound like when I stabbed myself wasn’t fatal, but if not tended to it would kill me from blood loss. Getting stabbed in the chest with a sword would kill you, not take a few health points away from you. In this game you could die with a single attack if you weren’t careful.

  ​This made fighting a real challenge in this world. It was no longer a stand-still-and-swing-your-sword type of battle. A player had to know how to fight and be good at it or they’d die quickly.

  ​As for magical energy, I didn’t know how it worked yet, but I did know that the reason I didn’t have any was because magic had to be taught. There were no player-types like mages, knights, priests, and whatnot. A player started out as nothing and developed into whatever they wanted to be. They could choose to use magic, fight like a warrior, do both, or do neither. I wanted to learn magic, which was why I got so frustrated after reading that poor excuse for a magic book.

  ​When it came to the rest of the statistics, I wasn’t sure what purpose they served, unless it was just like a trophy system. Unlike other games, your character didn’t level up. You didn’t receive bonuses for reaching a higher level or getting a certain amount of experience. There were no items in the game that required a certain amount of experience or level to use, just the right amount of money to buy them. My guess was that the kill count and experience, which only totaled combat experience based on kills, were like badges of honor.

  ​I assumed the SimTech personnel only put these features in the game so that hardcore role-playing gamers would have a piece of their old games in this new one.

  First Quest

  ​After leaving the hospital I made my way toward the town’s gate. Tutorial Village had irritated me to no end and I couldn’t wait to leave and never return. Once through the generic gate, the scenery around me shifted from a mediocre scene of wheat and corn fields to a lustrous meadow.

  ​The
village had disappeared, leaving only a gate behind with a sign above reading Tutorial Village Entrance. The scenery had shifted to a dazzling plain filled with wildflowers and the occasional fruit tree. The fruit on the trees looked like an apple, was yellow-orange, and smelled like a banana. I plucked one from a tree and bit into it. It tasted like fruit punch. I later learned it was called Wispy Fruit, named after the mist wisps who'd created it with their magic.

  ​I made my way west from Tutorial Village and about thirty minutes later I was in front of a medium-sized village. The village was scattered with clay and wooden houses. The sign above the village entrance identified it as Melodia. As I approached the village my ears began to tingle from the sounds that drifted on the wind.

  ​Music echoed from every corner of the small town. Lively children ran around enjoying their games as street musicians blended flutes, violins, drums, and a cacophony of other instruments into a tapestry of sound that gave me goose bumps, the good kind.

  ​Watching the people play, I fully understood what SimTech had meant when they boasted of highly advanced NPCs. They were no different from people from Earth. I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how many players were currently in Melodia or how many NPCs. I felt myself so fully immersed that I really felt I’d stepped into a town of living, breathing people.

  ​Finding my way around town proved more difficult than it should have been considering its size, but the challenge made the journey worth it. There were plenty of shops, but very few had obvious names. Apart from Berty’s Butchery it was impossible to determine which shop sold what without going inside.

  ​I found myself enjoying window shopping for the first time ever. I’d never cared about finding a deal, so I tended to get all my clothing, groceries, and other shopping done at one store and I never would have gone to a store without money in the real world. The excitement of the unknown led to me entering every shop I found in town just to see what they sold even though I was broke.

  ​The weapons and armor shops were interesting but didn’t really carry anything useful for my character. The armor they sold was for people who chose to fight with strength and let the heavy armor make up for their lack of evasion, likewise for the weapons. Most were too heavy for me to lift or too awkward to maneuver. I needed a well-balanced weapon that was light enough for me to lift and durable enough to last a while. I did find one weapon that might work, a katana with a wooden hilt and sheath, but it cost fifty gold pieces.

  ​My favorite shop was the magic shop. I spent a while examining the books. The cheapest book, An Introduction to All Things Magic, cost three hundred gold coins. Since there was no way I could afford it and I wouldn’t be able to get that much money any time soon, I tried to read it in the shop. I spent a few minutes trying to pry open the cover. When I couldn’t open it, I tried the surrounding books. None of the books would open. The only way to open them was to purchase them. Too bad there weren’t libraries where you could learn magic without buying.

  ​After I’d had my fill of window shopping, I moved inside town hall to study the quest board. There were no preprogrammed quests in this world. Quests could be posted by NPCs and players alike with rewards given by the person who posted the quest. Quests were designed so that only a certain amount of people could accept each quest.

  ​There was a quest for wolf hides posted by the tailor in town. According to the flyer, she needed ten hides and would pay two gold coins per hide. Each person was only allowed to collect one hide at a time. The flyer contained ten strips of paper with her contact information on them. A person could only take one contact strip and complete the quest. Then they could come back and grab another one if there were more. This would prevent people from negatively affecting the environment by massacring hundreds of wolves when only ten were needed. Once all ten strips were removed the flyer would disappear from the quest board.

  ​A quest that only one person could complete didn’t have contact slips. The person would just take the flyer. I say person, not player, because even NPCs could participate in quests.

  ​I hated doing quests in the previous games I’d played. I preferred to travel the worlds without following a story-line made up of quest upon quest and make my own adventures. Still, I needed cash, and this was the quickest way to get it. At least quests in this game weren’t progressive. Once you started one you weren’t required to complete multiple quests to follow a preprogrammed story.

  ​Most of the quests listed were simple with small rewards around fifty copper coins. One quest I came across had a reward of a hundred and fifty gold coins, so I paid special attention to the flyer.

  Gem Gathering

  Lesley Mintlock, local jeweler, in need of

  assistance. For further information

  contact Lesley at Rings and Things in Melodia.

  Reward: 150 Gold Coins

  ​That was strange. Why no description of what needed to be done? Gem Gathering? It didn’t sound too hard, but a hundred and fifty gold coins was an exceptional amount of money. My curiosity, and maybe my greed, got the best of me, so I took the flyer from the wall and trudged along toward Rings and Things at the other end of town.

  ​Rings and Things was a small jewelry shop at the far edge of town. It was so small that I hadn’t noticed it while window shopping. I entered and realized why it was so small. This wasn’t a shop for everyone. It was a shop for serious adventurers. All of the jewelry here was expensive and rare. There weren’t any general-purpose items in the shop at all. Every piece of jewelry was enchanted and served a unique purpose.

  ​Among them were a lavish set of earrings designed to cloak a person’s presence, a golden ring with a large, round onyx stone surrounded by small diamonds which could teleport the user anywhere within a fifty-foot radius instantly, and a jade bracelet which could temporarily harden your skin to a stone-like consistency.

  ​The vast array of jewelry was designed to aid adventurers in a multitude of ways, but there were drawbacks. The spells on many of the items were so complex that if you owned more than one piece of jewelry you could only use one of them at a time. Also, many of the items drew upon the owner’s magical energy, so a person had to learn magic before they could be of any use. Unfortunately, it seemed that would be some time in coming for me.

  ​The only items that didn’t require you to know magic were single use items that stored magic inside them. They would lose their magic and become normal jewelry after being activated.

  ​Behind the counter, Lesley Mintlock sat with his back to the door, staring into a large magnifying glass. His hands were moving slow, steady, and with purpose, setting a ruby into a golden ring. He was also whispering an incantation to himself, letting the words reverberate off the ring as he repeated the incantation like a chant. I waited in silence as he worked, not wanting to interrupt and possibly ruin his spell.

  ​After a few minutes the chanting stopped, the ruby set and glowing in the golden band.

  ​“Thank you for being patient.” Lesley spoke without turning around. “Most people would have barged in and interrupted me. That’s one of my most difficult spells and any loss of concentration would mean having to start from scratch. Ring, gem, and all.”

  ​I took an immediate liking to Lesley. He appeared kindly and was clearly a master at his craft.

  ​“So what can I help you with?” Lesley asked, finally turning toward me.

  ​He was an elderly man, old enough to be a grandfather. He had wrinkles throughout his face which became even more prominent when he smiled, but the wrinkles didn’t detract from his appearance. He reminded me of a thin, frail-looking Santa Claus.

  ​I held up the flyer. “My name is Valkyrie and I’m here to find out more about the quest you posted.”

  ​He laughed, a wheezing sound, and smiled again. “Are you sure, Valkyrie? It’ll be a dangerous road to travel. That’s why I’ve got such a high reward. Everyone who’s come to ask me about the quest so far has given me the fl
yer and walked away when they found out more.”

  ​“I’m sure. Can I hear more?”

  ​Lesley bent over and hoisted an empty backpack and pickaxe from behind the desk, setting them down on the counter between us.

  ​“I’m an old man now and can’t go get the gemstones I need for my jewelry any longer, so I need someone else to collect them for me. The problem...the cave where the gems are is home for some nasty beasts. The goblins are peaceable and have made their nests at the entrance and upper levels of the cave, but below them are really fierce monsters. Ogres, orcs, vampiric imps, and stone elementals.

  ​“The upper levels of the cave only have semiprecious stones like opal and onyx. It’s the middle and lower levels of the cave that hold the gemstones I need. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and chrystavite.”

  ​“What’s chrystavite?”

  ​“Chrystavite is a special gemstone that can only be found in a few places on Evanasia. It is the crystallized remains of an extinct creature known as a Chrylonian. It’s thought that Chrylonians were the ancestors of modern dragons. Their remains contain powerful magical properties and inserting a piece of their remains can form some of the strongest magical jewelry, armor, and weapons in existence. The problem is that most people never make it that far into the cave.

  ​“So here’s the deal. Bring me back some gemstones and you get the reward. You don’t have to get all the gemstones I want, but you have to get at least two of them, and a decent amount at that. Bring me the stones and you get a hundred and fifty gold coins.”

  ​I was about to agree when a thought occurred to me, a wild and crazy idea, but one that might just work. “How about we make a different deal, Lesley? If I can bring you some of your gemstones, I’ll take the hundred and fifty gold coins, but if I can bring you every gemstone you want, will you teach me to use magic? It’s expensive to learn from a shop, but you seem experienced enough to teach me. What do you think? If you teach me magic in exchange for getting all the gemstones you asked for, I won’t take the reward money. Learning magic is much more important to me than gold.”