First Login (The World Book 1)

by Jason Cheek

“When the Clan was first gifted BrokenFang Hold, we had healers with us, but only a Master can teach an apprentice. None of the Priests of Light in our Clan were high enough to share their knowledge with the others. As they passed on over the years, we’ve had no healers to replace their losses for our people.” Chiara finished watching the flames sadly.

  “Is that normal?” I asked pushing the old Elf for answers. Obviously, there were politics involved, and I needed to understand what was at the heart of the issue if I was going to find an answer to the problem. “I thought everyone was free to learn whatever they wanted to within The World.”

  “Previously the Priests of Light had always taught their blessings of healing to all that asked, but that changed once House of Kayden was gifted BrokenFang Hold. The High Priest in Amyalneas forbade any of his priests or priestesses from teaching their gifts to the practitioners of the Dark Arcane arts. They said this was because the two magic’s were incompatible with one another. Since we had Dark Mages that could use the healing light, we knew this to be false, but the High Priest refused to rescind his edict. We had always hoped that the High Priest was alone in his dislike of our clan, but after our reception by the Light Elves outside of Delonshire during our plight, I fear this hatred for our magic goes deeper than we ever thought possible.” Chiara clenched her fists in anger as she spoke.

  “I’ll have to see if I can come up with a better answer for this issue,” I said with an angry frown. Seeing Chiara’s questioning look, I explained. “I don’t believe that the Priests of Light can deny a request from a newfar to learn their art. I’ll look into this as soon as I find myself in a city.” Giving her shoulder a soft squeeze, I stood up ready to go. “It’s time I get back to work. Thank you again for making sure I ate Chiara.”

  “Aye, I’ll just have to keep a watch over you as I do with the rest of my children.” Chiara grumped even though a smile came to her lips. “Just watch yourself at the edge of the woods. The wolf packs are even more dangerous at night, and it’s already getting dark.”

  “Yes, Grandma Chiara.” I laughed seeing the old woman’s face light up at my term of endearment. I was dropping my skewers off with Mariona when the painfully shy Elf addressed me.

  “I hope you enjoyed the meal, Sir Ironwolf.”

  “Mariona that was the best-grilled wolf steak I’ve ever eaten in my life.” I said truthfully, giving the blushing cook her skewers back. I didn’t bother to tell her that was the first time I’d ever eaten grilled wolf steaks before. She didn’t need to know that. In all honesty, the meat was surprisingly good. With a parting smile, I headed back to my work still bemused at the girl’s reaction to my presence.

  Chiara hadn’t lied when she’d warned me about watching out for the wolves. By the time I’d made it back to the edge of the forest, the sky was twilight, but the shadows under the trees were pitch black. I was picking up the next tree to drag back to camp when the wolf pack attacked. This time there was no warning. One second I was picking up the tree and the next I was being buried under a pile of ferocious Large Gray Wolves.

  Luckily the shield on my back protected my neck and head enough to stop the worst damage. Also, the tree trunk itself offered decent protection and limited the wolves’ approach of attack. Still, the ferocity of the assault in the dark hit me like a waking nightmare. Pushing myself up, I was able to knock off the wolf snapping at the back of my head and whip out both of axe blades. Throwing my back against the tree, I lashed out two-fisted at my attackers. It seemed like an eternity that I fought against the dark hairy monsters, but as the number of my attackers began to thin, I was able to drop the Rockjaw chopper and unlimber my shield. Still, it was another half an hour of fighting before the last furry beast fell.

  Leaning back against the fallen tree, I clutched my axe and shield to my chest gasping for breath as I tried to still the thundering heart beating in my chest. The wolf attack had scared me as bad as any horror film I’d watched as a kid growing up. It was like turning around and finding Freddy Krueger standing behind me in a darkened room suddenly trying to rip my heart out.

  Shaking off the lingering fear and the rubbery feeling in my limbs, I sheathed my weapons and shouldered my shield. Stumbling around in the dark, I found ten of the dead wolves and threw them over the trunk of the tree I was originally going to drag back to camp. There were more bodies, but they’d have to wait for my next trip. Getting the bodies positioned so they wouldn’t fall off, I lugged my load back to camp barely noticing the extra weight.

  Dropping the wolves into a pile at the makeshift barricade, I nodded to the NPCs standing watch. Both men’s eyes widen in surprise at the amount of wolf bodies I piled up next to them before I headed back for my next load. I’m sure the story of me slaughtering the wolf packs at night while I worked would go through the camp like wildfire in the morning. I was all for it if it helped to keep everyone’s morale up. It made sense to me now why Ilana had set the Goblins to guard the perimeter. Otherwise, there was no telling what would have happened to the NPCs during the night.

  In all the work took me another ten hours to complete. By the time I’d dragged the last tree back to camp, it was just past one in the morning, and I’d slaughtered another three wolf packs in which I’d learned Power Attack I, gained another level and acquired an additional three points in strength and one point in stamina. Obviously, chopping down trees and dragging them thirty yards back to camp while fighting packs of wolves was a good way to increase your base stats. By now the pile of wolves outside the barricade was seventy-six bodies high.

  Nodding tiredly to Dalyor and Klaern, the two watchmen I’d gotten to know over the evening, I sat back against the pile of logs looking up at the night’s sky. The bluish moon was only a sliver hanging on the horizon and for as far as the eye could see there was nothing but a sea of stars overhead. My breath steamed in the chill as I took in the amazing sight. The world was absolutely beautiful. I’d have to take some more time to enjoy the sight when I wasn’t so exhausted. Feeling my eyes sagging shut from exhaustion, I triggered the logout sequence. Slowly the game’s world gave away to the low flickering red light of my lava lamp as the pod popped open and I removed my headset.

  Grabbing the big gulp plastic cup full of water on my desk, I drained the glass in one go as I stumbled out of my computer room to the bathroom. Splashing water on my face, I made my way to the kitchen and pulled out the leftover cold rotisserie chicken and potato salad from the night before. Filling my plastic cup full of water, I sat down and wolfed down my dinner. My arms shook from muscle strain, and my body felt like someone had tried to beat me to death. Even the fingers of my hands ached every time I picked up my cup of water.

  I’d played almost nineteen hours straight. Nothing new for me and a new game. Pro-gamers regularly put in eighteen hours days to keep their skills up, but this was the first time my body was receiving a physical workout at the same time I was playing. Also, I’d never played a game that sucked me in like The World. One day of gameplay felt like an entire weak.

  The NPCs reacting to me like real people only helped to complete the immersion of the virtual world. While I was interacting with the various digital personalities in-game, I’d completely forgotten that they were just digital code. The look of horror on the children faces during the raid had torn at my heart. The atrocities that had been carried out on my people had driven me into a rage like nothing I’d felt before in my life.

  I’d initially thought the fight with the Goblins had been the most incredible adrenaline rush that I’d ever experienced in my life until the attack by the wolf packs at night. Fighting through those hair-raising shadowy monsters in the dark was like living through the most intense horror moving I’d ever watched in my life. I’d be having nightmares from that alone for the next month.

  Chuckling at my exaggeration, I rubbed my burning eyes. The absolute feeling of horror and dread that the wolf attacks had initially instilled in me had quickly faded away. By the third at
tack, I’d become somewhat numb to the intensity of the emotions. By the fourth attack, I was wanting the fuckers to stop coming after me so I could finish dragging the logs back to camp and log out. Besides, I’d gotten pretty good at killing the bastards and was close to my next level.

  The pain still sucked, but instead of making me more afraid, it just pissed me the fuck off. If I’d know I’d have been getting that many wolf skins, I would have just gone with the teepee ideal I’d initially had instead of building the longhouses. Hopefully, one of the refugees could repair my current leather armor or at the minimum make me a new set, since my leather armor was trashed from the constant fighting.

  Throwing the empty cartons away and dropping the rest of my mess in the dishwasher, I made my way to the bedroom. Peeling off my suit off, I dropped into bed with a sigh and pulled the blankets over my head. Within seconds I was asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  (Tuesday, April 22nd/Day Two of The World)

  The beeping alarm going off at six in the morning slowly dragged me back to consciousness. Shaking off my drowsiness, I staggered out of bed and headed to the shower. I could have used a little bit more than four hours of sleep, but I was so keyed up to jump back into the game that my excitement drove away any feelings of exhaustion that I might have had otherwise. Turning the water on as hot as I could stand it, I leaned my forehead against the glass and let the heat soak into my aching muscles for a few minutes, before washing up and getting ready.

  Letting myself air-dry, I pulled out my laptop as I fixed up a large breakfast: A six-egg cheesy, ham omelet with tomatoes, mushrooms, and onion, six slices of bacon and two potatoes cooked up into home-fries. I quickly sent out an update to the guild that I was message blocked until I made it into the nearest city as I quickly wrote up a summary of everything that had happened on my first day.

  Going through everyone’s messages from the night before, I could only laugh as I ate. The first email I opened was a long chain from Hefe who was all butthurt because he’d been forced to reroll his character. He’d logged in first thing in the morning and was slaughtered by a bunch of trolls within the first five minutes of the game. He’d respawned back at his body only to be hacked to death once again. Supposedly he’d tried ten more times with the same results, but it was hard to know with Hefe.

  He always talked a lot of shit when things didn’t work out the way he expected, so you always had to read between the lines with him. Anyway, Hefe decided to reroll his character, but to do so, he had to go take another P&M exam if he wanted to keep his extra stats. Unbelievable enough, he’d somehow managed to knock the exam out Monday evening with enough time to come back home and recreated his character. This time instead of logging back in on Nightmare as a Light Elf, he’d switched over to the Advance-realism mode and had joined AJ, Jill, and Krystal in the Dark Elf newbie zone.

  Sometimes with Hefe, all you could do was laugh. In many ways, he was the Guild’s very own Leroy Jenkins. Unlike the other pro-players in the guild or a true pro-gamer, Hefe received the majority of his living expenses from Mommy and Daddy. Surprisingly enough, he did have a decent following on his media channel. Although, it wasn’t because he was a particularly great gamer. No, it was mainly due to all of the crazy situations he found himself in. Sometimes people asked why we kept Hefe in the guild but to know him was to love him. Hefe was just a big, goofy, teddy bear that everyone liked as long as they weren’t teaming with him too much. He was actually a pretty good FPS player, but MMORPGs always gave him problems, even though he liked playing them.

  From this point on Hefe’s story became somewhat convoluted as AJ’s and Krystal’s angry emails cussing him out as an idiot started showing up in the middle of his continuing saga. The email chain went quickly downhill from there until Jill joined in on the discussion. With one email she cleared up the entire story and had everyone rolling about Hefe’s true adventures, except for AJ and Krystal who were still pissed to the Nth degree.

  The three of them had just hit level three when Hefe gave them a call before rejoining the game with his new Level 0 character. After the trolls, he didn’t want to be alone in the game this time around. The team went ahead and sent him an invite when he logged back in but told him to go ahead and start working on the low level rats near the training area’s entrance to the underground city while they took a shot at the first mini-boss. Afterward, they’d planned on going back and picking him up to help him level.

  This is where the confusion apparently happened in what they said and what Hefe heard. AJ, Krystal, and Jill had just managed to get the Level 3 Elite Rat Boss down to about a third of its health, when Hefe suddenly came running up to them with a train of almost a hundred level 0, 1, 2 & 3 normal rats. The screenshot and short video Jill had attached to the email was unreal. The only reason Hefe hadn’t died as he’d ran through the entire training area towards them with rats hanging off his arms, legs, and back was because of the extra Hit Points he’d received from taking the P&M exam. It let him live just long enough to die right as he reached them.

  The story didn’t end there. As soon as AJ, Krystal, and Jill saw Hefe’s train of mobs, they took off running for the gates of the city heading back in the direction Hefe had come from. Unfortunately, those corridors had respawned new mobs after Hefe had run through, so by the time the three of them had reached the gates covered in enraged rats, they’d wiped the entire training area. Everyone was either dead or in the process of dying covered in ferocious, pissed-off rats. It finally ended when the city guards got involved, but even then it took mustering the entire on-duty watch before they managed to get the situation under control.

  The best part of the whole video was the look of absolute terror on Hefe’s face, besides the fact that it had to be one of the most truly impressive trains that I’d ever seen. Pulling up Google, I did a quick search. Unbelievably the video had already gone viral. There were already video spoofs on Youtube with people yelling out Heeeefffeee Beatudown as they tried to copy Hefe’s train of death.

  Another quick check showed Hefe’s media channel blowing up with hits. Jill and Krystal were a quick second. Not that it was a surprise to either woman. On the other hand, AJ’s channel wasn’t getting anywhere near as many hits from the event which was probably half the reason he was so pissed off. That and AJ hated dying, especially since he ran from the Dwarven beginning area all the way to the Dark Elf starting area to meet up with the girls because he didn’t want to be a gay Dark Elf.

  I saved a copy of the video and sent a quick reminder for everyone to take the in-game training whenever it was offered in the email chain. The rest of the emails were pretty straightforward. There were two quick updates from Domenic and Mike saying that their Nightmare starts were hard as hell, but they were still working through them. Domenic thought he might be on a Paladin quest, but it was still too early to tell. Mike thought he was in some sort of thief or assassin type of house and like Domenic wasn’t sure where it was leading. The main thing was that they still hadn’t wiped, which gave us three chances to at least get one of the Nightmare starts completed. Unlike me, at least both of them had some possible guild help close by to give them a hand.

  I gave a brief rundown of my situation. Not that there was much to say. I knew Domenic would be interested in the crafting information I’d figured out so far, so I included as much as I could on what I’d accomplished in-game. Mike would be interested in increasing his stats, but not if he had to craft and build stuff, that just wasn’t his style. Maybe he could figure out another way to get the attribute increases, since know it was possible was half the battle. Sending my response off, I did a quick scan of the remaining emails. It was all pretty straightforward. I dropped a quick note to Danielle and Kitty answering a few general questions and sent another guild-wide email asking for someone to look into what it took to form a guild in-game since I hadn’t made it to a city yet.

  Looking at the clock, I swore at the time. I was going to be startin
g a half an hour later than I’d planned. Normally, I tried to log into the game just as the sun was starting to rise. Throwing everything in the dishwasher, I turned the machine on and jumped into my suit. Within five minutes, I’d refilled the plastic Big Gulp cup with water and was starting up my egg.

  The transition to the game came quickly as I suddenly felt my stiff body sitting on the cold hard ground. Standing up, I stretched looking out towards the glorious reds and yellows of the morning sunrise as the sun peaked above the trees of the meadow. I’d have to remember to find a bed inside a warm building next time as I hopped up and down to get my circulation moving to warm up quicker. I felt the sun loosen up the kinks in my muscles as I turned around and entered the House of Kayden camp.

  “Sir Startum, it’s good to see you’re back.” The grizzled guard standing at the entrance to the camp said as he saw me approach. I recognized him and the younger guard from the night before. “Lady Chiara said you were going to build us a place to get out of the snow.”

  “Morning Klaern.” I nodded to the older Elf. “Morning Dalyor. Any word on Lady Ilana?”

  “I believe she still hasn’t woken up yet, Sir. “ Klaern said as both guards pointedly eyed the unmoving zombies standing guard around the perimeter.

  “By chance, can either of you direct me to Lady Chiara?”

  “She should be eating breakfast, Sir,” Klaern said pointing towards the cook fires. As I began walking past, the old Elf called out to me. “Sir Startum, if you need anything please let us know.”

  Seeing the earnest look in both Elves’ eyes, I nodded my thanks and headed towards the delicious smell of grilled wolf meat. Greeting Mariona and getting two skewers in return, I turned towards the seated NPCs only to see Chiara heading towards me.

  “Morning Chiara.”

  “It’s good to see you are still among the living this morning, Startum.” The old woman said looking pointedly at my shredded leathers. “Klaern said you had a busy evening.”