I sigh, thinking back to the good old days. Levelling up my character and battling with my friends in the endgame raids. Now to do it all over again. Whilst it excites me, I am sad to see all that we have accomplished amount to virtually nothing.
Clicking the ‘Send Bought Items to Inventory’ button, I close the Auction House window and look around. It looks like I’ve shuffled to nearly the front of the queue already, with Kazzrak already walking inside only wearing his tighty-whities. Thinking this is a good idea, I open up my character screen and select the ‘Unequip All’ button, and in a flash, I’m also looking down at my purple junk holder.
I quickly decide to equip my pre-set tuxedo suit, and it’s already my turn, so I nod at the guards with a smile and head inside the open archway. Inside the massive bank, there are dozens of tellers open. It’s not like the bored NPCs behind the counters really even do anything. I walk up to a free teller and smile at the lady before opening my bank tab in my display. All the game mechanics require is for you to be in the vicinity.
A timer starts ticking down at the top of my vision from sixty seconds. Crap, hurry, hurry.
Stacks upon stacks of resources and random crap I have accumulated over the years stare back at me when I open every tab I can. Ok, let’s quicken this up. Firstly, I select the blinking new tab labelled ‘DSR2 Bank’ and open it beside my bank tab. Next, I open my inventory and add all my gear to it. I then select the ‘Auto Sort’ function and select the ‘Equipment’ tab.
Now I am seeing all my loot organised from Legendary in orange, Epic in purple, Rare in blue, Uncommon in green and Common in white. I have a total of eleven legendary gear items. Many months on frickin’ long-ass quest chains to get some of the best items available to warriors in the game. Four of them I just bought for peanuts, so I’m not complaining.
On impulse I shove all the Legendaries into the new section and open the Auction House again. Search parameters: Item rarity: Legendary; Item class: All; Item level: Max.
Fifteen pieces of equipment are the only ones that have popped up. It seems other people are doing the same thing I am, and before I can click on them to see what they are, six of the items are sold and disappear from the listings.
Shit!
I don’t think about it, I just click ‘Buy All’ and then ‘Send Bought Items to Inventory’.
I dismiss the Auction House and select the nine Legendaries that are left, moving them over to the ‘DSR2 Bank’ tab. Well, that’s all of the slots, I guess.
My timer has twenty seconds left, but I just wish my belongings goodbye as I stare at them with a couple of tears slipping out of the corners of my eyes. My chest starts constricting of its own accord, and I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate, which is a feeling that sucks, I assure you.
It’s crazy to think, but in a moment of clarity, I realise that these items aren’t just a special collection of coding in a computer. They are my home. My blood, sweat and tears have gone into collecting them for nigh on seven years now. It’s a similar feeling to the one I had when two men in sharp-looking army fatigues knocked on my auntie’s door eighteen years ago.
That was the day I found out my home was gone forever. I found out the details years later, but right at that moment all I knew was that my family weren’t going to come home.
Ever.
I was going to be alone. My mom, and dad and little brother weren’t coming back and I couldn’t see them again. It had crushed my tiny heart.
It’s so damn hard to have to willingly give up my home. Sure, I have a few bells and whistles in real life and a cute girlfriend, but this game, right here, is where I found my family again. Especially with all the other crap I’ve been through.
I’m sure it sounds stupid; I know it sounds stupid. But I can’t help feeling that the home I built here is going away, and I’ll never get it back to the way it was.
Wiping my eyes with my forearm, I dismiss all my open windows and nod at the lady teller before stiffening my spine and walking stiff legged out into the sunshine. Maybe the guy who was thrown out earlier felt the same way. For some reason my eyes are all blurry, and I blink a few times before they clear again. I don’t even notice that tears are streaming freely.
I wander down to the bottom of the stairs, where Kazzrak and Dosan are waiting.
They both seem to also have a glimmer in their eyes and are studiously not looking up at me. So I also decidedly ignore their faces and say loudly, “Well, that’s done, then! Time to log out and start again!”
I’m smiling and start to laugh big chesty laughs while my heart breaks inside, because if I stop, I know that I’ll break down completely.
I keep repeating to myself that it’s just a game.
Just a game.
3
Eventually, I have to type in party chat a quick farewell and that I’ll see them later today before logging out. I have just been lying in bed for hours before finally nodding off without using the headgear. It was almost a surreal feeling. Sleeping without being awake in a different reality.
I dream of dragons, magical elements and fierce behemoth-sized beings. They were all fighting a growing darkness and trying to contain it. Something insubstantial that they didn’t have the power to touch. However, they could destroy the minions of the dark, the monstrosities that crawled out of the depths that I can’t even begin to describe. Magical fire, brimstone and may sent these hell spawn back into the depths. But the darkness crept forward still.
I jolt up and feel the cold sweat on my body and on the sheets. With my memory of the dream fading rapidly, all I can piece together is a vague fragment of a purple dragon.
Well then. My first dream in four months since I went on the camping trip and it sure was a doozy. I look to my left and see that Rosie is already up and out of bed. She probably went to the gym.
I pick up my phone from the bedside table and see that the time is 12:32. Or is she hanging out with her friends, seeing as how it’s her day off too? I send her a quick text asking her how her day is going, and what is she up to? I then say that I’m having the boys around for a BBQ tonight and that I have some awesome news.
No new messages, so I stretch and chuck on a pair of sweatpants and a singlet before making my way through the house out into the backyard. My place isn’t huge, but it is still pretty big compared to some of the dinky studio apartments I’ve lived in before. I have a two-car garage, a decent-sized living and entertainment area, four bedrooms, all the normal utilities, and a two-car shed out in the backyard taking up a quarter of the room.
Stepping out onto the turf, I shake out my arms and legs to loosen the muscles, which tightened in the chill of the morning. I mean, well, morning to me, but to everyone else it’s midday and still cold.
Slowly, at a tenth of my fastest speed, I move my body through a specific series of movements called forms to create a multiform movement called a kata. Keeping centred and calm is the best way to perform a kata; otherwise your movements will be more jerky than smooth, which causes loss of balance. Think only of the forms, nothing else.
After a good ten minutes of this, I have finished my normal set, so I move my form back to the beginning kata, upping my speed to a quarter of my fastest. I perform this sequence twice so that my body can properly warm up before moving on to half speed, repeating the forms four times.
When that is done, I move on to my max speed, keeping precision and balance, moving from form to form and performing the sequence eight times. I then change my form to a warm-down sequence and make my way through it four times so that my body doesn’t start seizing up with lactic acid later on.
With a healthy sweat worked up and my appetite now awake, I jump into the shower quickly. Then I chuck on a pair of shorts and a shirt and begin fixing myself some bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast. I also dice up a few pieces of fruit and toss them into the smoothie machine with a nut mix and some almond milk.
While my food is cooking, I make the slightly st
ressful call to the boss of the security company I work for. After a few terse moments of pleasantries, I just outright say I’m taking an extended sabbatical for a year and need to use the month of leave I have saved up.
The fellow on the other end is quite excitable, if you know what I mean, so I have to hold the phone away from my ear for a minute or two. After a while I just put him on speaker while I finish making my food. When I can get a word in edgewise, I inform him that I am a recipient of a Beta Chest for DSR2 and that my team and a manager from the venue will be also taking their leave.
To say he is happy for me would probably be a complete lie. Periodically I have to tap the mute button, due to him having a screaming match again. Rightly so, really. By the end of the conversation he is extremely excited for me. Deciding that the gauge that fills up while talking to him is well past its due, I politely end the conversation and say I’ll be in touch.
Taking my slightly warm food outside, I bring my tablet and open my book app before settling down on the comfy outside sofa and tucking into both the book and the food.
I’ve lost track of time completely after being sucked into the book when I hear the doorbell ring and a couple of laughs. I check the time on the tablet and, jeez, it’s already 18:10. Whoops.
“I’m round the back!” I call out to whoever is at the door.
Anya, Fuzzy, Lockie and Blake open the side gate and waltz onto my patio before settling into the rest of the comfy seats. They place the shopping bags they brought with them on the little coffee table in front of me.
“You don’t look at your phone much, do you?” Fuzzy asks, looking pointedly at the bags.
“Eh?” I glance at my upside-down phone and pick it up. My expression turns guilty when I realise I have five missed calls and a few texts. “Whoops.” I feel a bit disheartened as I read the single text from Rosie.
“I’m chilling with my friends at the shops. If you want to have a boys’ night, ok, I’ll see you tomorrow then. If the news is about the game, I don’t want to know because you know I don’t care. Bye.”
I pull my attention away from my phone as I realise Fuzzy is talking. “Ah, that’s ok, seeing as how you weren’t there, you didn’t get a say in what alcohol we bought.” Fuzzy grins as he pulls out a bottle of Jack. He gets up with a spring in his step and heads into the kitchen. “I’ll get the glasses and granite cubes!”
Grimacing, I sigh. “Awesome, can’t wait.”
I have never really gotten over my want of throwing up spirits. When I was eighteen, the girlfriend I had at the time decided to buy me a litre bottle of Bundaberg Rum and a two-litre bottle of Coke. She started unbuttoning her top and dared me to drink it as fast as I could and I would get a prize. Well, the incentive was there, so I chugged it down in ten minutes, and for the next couple of hours I had a great time. Then, because I was a rookie in the drinking department, this being my first time, I decided that throwing it all up would be bad.
Why waste all that money for it to go down the drain? Oh, how I was wishing for the next three days I had just chucked up. I was living in butt-fuck nowhere, so I was curled up in bed with alcohol poisoning for the better part of three days. I strongly suggest you don’t follow in my footsteps.
For the next four years, all I wanted to do when trying to drink spirits, or even smelling them, was hurl. Except vodka and black sambuca, I could drink those fine. Nowadays, I don’t want to immediately hurl, but I do feel a bit queasy when I drink the stronger spirits. This is why I usually stick to cider.
Yeah, yeah, I’m a pansy. Boohoo.
“Guess I’ll get the meat on. Anya, want to help me with the firepit?” Lockie gets up and walks over to the shed with Anya, opening it, and they pull out a wide but shallow metal cylinder with a flat bottom on four legs. They put it on a concrete section of the patio that doesn’t have a covering. Anya pulls out a folding bench and places it near the firepit.
“So, what did you guys get?” I ask, looking into the bags.
“Oh, the usual. Premium sausages, steaks and rissoles. We didn’t get any salads. Fuzzy was supposed to, but he disappeared to the Bottle O,” Lockie says as he comes over and starts taking out the meat, putting it on the bench.
Blake jumps up and dashes off into the house, yelling behind him, “I’ll get the utensils and stuff!”
I look after Blake, then look back at Lockie. “That kid has got some extra energy today.”
Lockie laughs. “You should too. In less than six hours we are all going to be testing out the never-before-seen places of DSR2. So rare that the general public aren’t even allowed to go there. I can definitely see why he has so much energy.”
A loud crash sounds from behind Lockie, and he jumps half a foot in the air. Anya dropped the stack of wood logs she had pulled from the shed while we were talking into the metal firepit.
Chuckling to herself, she goes about setting up the logs in a way that will allow the entire area of the firepit to be heated at once, so that when we put the mesh grill on top, we can cook everything at once. After she sets the logs in an even crisscross pattern, she places the kindling underneath.
Holding out the matchbox, Anya says, “Donald, you going to do the honours tonight?”
I groan as I stand up and stretch as high as I can to loosen up the muscles that I haven’t moved in hours before walking over and taking the outstretched matchbox. “Alrighty then. Go and get the grill while we wait for Fuzzy.”
Looking around, I don’t see him out yet, which is odd. “Fuzzy! Stop deep throating Jack and get out here!”
Lockie chuckles beside me and I hear Blake pissing himself inside. Looks like they both started without us, as I thought. I hear a muffled, “Phrasing!” from the shed.
Fuzzy and Blake waddle out of the house, carrying an assortment of utensils and glasses with the granite stones he took from my freezer.
“What?” Fuzzy looks at me innocently before he can’t hold a straight face anymore and starts grinning like a maniac. “So I had a few sips. At least I shared with Blake here.”
Dropping the plates, cutlery, tongs and BBQ sauce on the table, Blake turns to Fuzzy. “Don’t you bring me into this.”
Anya comes back over with the grill and places it on top of the firepit.
Looking at the bottle of Jack that Fuzzy is pouring into the glasses, I frown. “Damn, dude, how much Jack did you guzzle?”
Chuckling, Anya points at me. “Phrasing!”
“There’s plenty to go around.” Finished pouring the glasses, Fuzzy hands them out to us, and we stand around the firepit, waiting for me to light it so we can get warm in the chilly air.
Blake glances inside before asking, “Is Rosie going to join us? I didn’t see her inside.”
I look at my phone back next to the sofa before sighing. “Nope. She’s hanging with her friends tonight and doesn’t want to intrude on our boys’ night.”
“You know she doesn’t like us, right?” asks Fuzzy. Always one to speak his mind, he is.
I shrug my shoulders with a hopeless expression. “It’s not you guys, it’s the game. Rosie has a conspiracy theory against DSR, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. It’s just the elephant in the room, I suppose.”
Anya puts a hurt expression on her face and whines, “But I thought I was the elephant in the room.”
We all laugh at that and it clears the sombre atmosphere that has begun to build up.
“Right! Let’s get warm, shall we?” I pop open the box, pull out three long matches and strike them in one go. They fizzle as the chemicals combine and then flare into a large flame. I drop them through the mesh at key points so they drop onto the kindling. Just as the kindling starts to burn, we raise our glasses and chink them together over the firepit before yelling, “Cheers!”
As the fire starts to chew into the logs at a healthy rate, we chat about the good old times. About the raiding and levelling we have done together and with the rest of the guild.
“Wait, w
ait, wait! Check this out.” Anya holds up a hand while digging in her pocket for her phone, and starts to scroll through it. “I was reminiscing through my old saved files back before I met up with you guys in-game and found this.”
She brings up a video on her phone and flicks it with a specific motion to the flat-screen TV mounted to the wall of the house.
Anya’s character, Ifalna, a tall brunette woman wearing an exquisite suit, is standing in the centre of the screen. The words ‘Ifalna’s Guild Application’ are written across the top in an elegant script.
The video starts playing automatically on the TV.
“Hello, prospective guild mates,” Ifalna says to the camera in a silky voice. “Look at your healer, now back to me, now back to your healer, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he stopped prancing around in a dress and blowing his mana load within ten seconds, he could heal like me.”
The camera slowly pans closer. “Look down, now back up; where are you? You’re standing in fire, violating the first rule of raiding. What’s that weapon in your hand? I had one, but I sold it. It’s the shitty sword you should have replaced five levels ago.”
She flourishes the weapon in her hands. “Check again, it’s now a Mithril Longsword enchanted with Blackfire! Anything is possible with a competent healer and enchanter in your party.”
The camera pans out to show her astride a pale ethereal steed. “I’m on a Spectral Warhorse.”
We all burst out into fits of laughter when it finishes playing. It was basically a knock-off of a cologne commercial from years ago. I’m wiping tears away a good five minutes later and sitting back in the sofa in my usual spot. Lockie has gotten up after falling over and starts laying out the meat on the grill, as the fire is starting to really munch on those logs now.
Blake is taking in huge lungfuls of air. “I-I’ve never seen that before. So good! So good!”
Fuzzy has gone around and my glass is miraculously full again.
We laugh and joke around as we eat and drink once the meat has finished cooking. Damn tasty, that’s for sure. The fire keeps the chill away as we continue to bring up various stories that we have had with each other and without.
Dream Stream Reality: Publisher's Pack Books 1-2: (A LitRPG Adventure) Page 5