Total Immersion: Dark World: A LitRPG Adventure

by S. J. Larsson

  “Well…” I start to explain, but I’m cut off before I can.

  First, you have to know that Elis Lea Dungeon is deep under The Forest of the Undead, home of my tombstone, and it’s supposedly full of dark, twisted things that happened when White Elves and Nuudles first practiced their magics together. Let’s just say things went very badly, and that’s why this dungeon exists. It’s like being in a Dr. Seuss dungeon where the creatures want to eat you painfully.

  Suddenly, this thing explodes out of the center of the gray stone floor, making rocks and soil fly everywhere. I’m so small, I don’t have to duck or dodge, and keep my eyes glued to the enormous being coming out of the hole in the middle of the battle arena floor.

  As the dust settles, I can see it clearly. It’s assessing us, trying to figure out who to get first. At least, I think that’s what it’s doing. It’s covered with fur like the Moogs, but not brown. Purple. It has two nubs for legs and feet like Moogs, but where Moogs have two visible eyes on top of their mounds of bodies, this thing has an antenna thickly holding a wildly spinning eyeball, with two irises containing pupils.

  This mob can see everywhere. What is it? I crane my neck back. Its name reads Tinicity.

  Days, like usual, doesn’t waste time on doing his job.

  Days uses Invoke Inner Demon.

  The eyeball stops spinning and both irises move to one side of the gooey sphere, glaring into Days’ soul.

  Tiniticy uses Earth Freeze.

  Man, Earth Freeze is a rumored spell-gone-wrong of Elf divine magic colliding with Nuudle rune magic. It’s said to kill in AoE everything within a twenty-selcos radius.

  “Days, everyone, get back!” I yell. Most moves and spells are instant, but some take time. This one is taking time. The air is frosty, and we’re all exhaling white.

  “How do we get away from this cold?” Sorry calls to me.

  “Twenty selcos away! Move back!”

  I dash to the farthest wall and step into temperate air. I look back.

  Dammit, they couldn’t hear me. They’re all hitting Tinicity as it uses this spell, not knowing what it is.

  How do I? Has studying runes gotten me some history lessons? Or is it listening to Simple talk about her books over Siren Ale?

  No, Simple doesn’t know or hasn’t figured out what this is.

  I’ve got to do something.

  I multi-target everyone in my party except Djinn and me.

  Sid commands First Wish.

  In four green puffs of mist and sparkles, my team is gone just as the floor in the twenty-selco radius cracks from the cold.

  It dropped so fast, and Djinn had gotten them at the last minute.

  “Djinn, what now?”

  “I suggest your newly acquired Comfort Ring,” he calls over his shoulder, still hitting the thing on the side, unaffected by the absolute zero Tinicity created. “First Wish?”

  “I need the Mystic move. Think!” I beg.

  “You’re the master. I cannot think for myself,” he calls out casually, dodging a Jelly Blow from Tinicity. It’s completely focused on Djinn, so I relax a little in my safe zone. “If I warp it to HP, it’ll be under us again, right?”

  “Seems that way.” He slaps the eyeball, and it bobs to the left. Tinicity drops 9% HP.

  Tinicity uses Sword of Ice Rune. Tinicity gains an enchanted weapon.

  The furry giant monstrosity grows a solid ice sword out of the side of its body facing Djinn and stabs him in the gut with it. His eight-pack pokes in.

  “Ow!” Djinn hits the eyeball again.

  Sid casts Contemplation. Djinn gains Protection.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m going to unsummon you. I have an idea.”

  “Might not be a good idea, Master. If you get one lick of what you call hate, you’ll be ice-stone dead.”

  I think for a minute. “Trust me. I have a plan.”

  Sid commands First Wish.

  Tinicity is warped to Home Point.

  It vanishes, but it’s already rumbling in the hole in the middle of the floor. I don’t have much time.

  “Wish me luck,” I say to Djinn. He cocks an eyebrow at me and gives a thumbs-up.

  Sid dismisses Djinn.

  Tinicity is rising from the hole, eye leaning toward me, both pupils dilating as they fix on me in that one terrible, cold eyeball on a hairless stem.

  Sid summons Keres.

  She flows quickly from my chest, and she looks wickedly excited once she sees Tinicity.

  “Oh, Master, you have brought me to a fine feed. I was starving so. How may I begin?” she hisses, drool oozing out of her huge, needle-toothed mouth. I wince.

  Sid uses Special Ability: Seizure.

  Sid commands Devour.

  Keres zooms into the wall of cold that stops living tissue and everything that is alive. She glances back over her shoulder before launching onto Tinicity, smiles, and mouths the words, “Thank you.”

  I look away until she’s ended Tinicity, and then wait a little longer while she finishes feeding.

  Sid dismisses Keres.

  Tinicity’s shredded corpse has disappeared, the cold is gone, and I can’t stomach a conversation with even Djinn right now because of my choice with Keres.

  I walk to the hole Tinicity came from and look down.

  There’s a scroll in the dirt and rubble. I hop down a few levels deep into the hole. I can barely see, but the scroll glows softly, guiding me to it at the very deepest part of Tinicity’s sleeping place.

  I pick up the scroll. Open it. Select it in my interface menu and use it.

  Sid learns Summon Within. Sid can now cast Summon Within.

  Yes.

  I summon Djinn, but I’m still somewhat disturbed by what I did with Keres. Oni’s swallow wasn’t an option; I’d be setting that thing loose on God knows who.

  I ask him, “Okay just to give me a warp?”

  “Sure, Young Master Sid. You have the spell?”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  “No Comfort Ring, or am I your Comfort Ring?”

  He gets me. He says nothing else.

  I target myself.

  Sid commands First Wish.

  Sid is warped to Home Point.

  ~

  I’m sitting in a muddy puddle next to my tombstone under a Nuudle-sized umbrella. Finally made one by leveling woodworking a little. With wood at 20 and my cloth so high, an umbrella can be made. By me.

  Calla hasn’t come still. I wonder if it’s because of how I used Keres. When I’m honest with myself, I knew I had to use Keres. She was hungry, and I was cornered. I also don’t feel guilty. I realize I’m glad none of my friends saw that, though. I’d told them I used the Counts.

  I think Days is right about my being a Mystic at heart. He says it’s because my summons are my main focus when it comes to catering to each of their peculiar ways, even over battlemates. As a Maniac, that’s just plain selfish. But as a Mystic, I see no other way to be, and don’t want to be any other way.

  Summon Within—Mystic deals high Spirit Damage to target, random + with CON stat.

  Doesn’t say “cast once a day.” Should, but doesn’t. Is my Mystic spell collection complete?

  What exactly is Spirit Damage?

  I haven’t used it yet, knowing what it feels like from Shell doing it.

  I’m at the graveyard every day, and every night I walk to the Temple of Nuudlel and sleep in my bedroll on the floor next to the eternally awake NPC Master Gronai, who says he likes the company. In the mornings, we study runes and scrollmaking. I’ve showed him Simple’s red leather book, which he was quite excited about, but neither of us have had any luck making definitive sense of it. Some of the pictures show my summons with a Nuudle who looks a lot like me—same marking on the forehead, too—and I find it creepy.

  After such sessions, I’m back at the graveyard. Same drill, just waiting for Calla. I don’t talk in guild chat. I don’t do anything but try to figure out how I get t
he Ananta battle quest.

  About two weeks into my obsessive behavior, on a drizzly day near sunset as I’m about to walk south, I see Anella, about ten graves northeast of me, standing in front of a grand tomb with a proud, gothic White Elf figure on top. Not many graves are tombs, and no tombs have such ornate statues. It’s not a gargoyled-up figure, either.

  Anella wouldn’t let me see this if she didn’t want me to, so I get up and walk over to her, and then tip my umbrella up to shield her back. I look at the front of the gray marble tomb.

  It reads, “Anella Portabella.”

  “That you?” I ask her.

  “Yeah.”

  I’m relieved that she answers. Yep, she wants to tell me something, but if I don’t approach this fragile woman carefully, she’ll literally Scatter.

  I have a lot of things I could say, but instead make a joke. “You love mushrooms a whole lot, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes. I certainly do.” She smiles. I’ve never seen her smile.

  “And Anella because it rhymes?”

  She lets out a low chuckle. “Yes. I did it to make my sister laugh.”

  “You play with your sister? Here?”

  “No, I played with her in Elora. Not for long, but it was nice when we did.”

  “You haven’t seen her since you came to Dark World?”

  She pauses, still gazing at her tomb. “Yes, I have seen her, but she hasn’t seen me.”

  “If you’re both here, why won’t you let her see you?” I’m keeping it as basic as I can.

  “She’s in Elora still.”

  Oh. Now the air feels tense. She’s been to Elora… from Dark World. Isn’t that what she all but said? I think quickly and decide to change the subject. “If you’re a Siren, why is your tomb in this forest instead of in the Marana Sea? In a Siren graveyard?”

  “Oh, it all was so long ago. I’d bore you.”

  “No, I spend half my days getting rune lessons from an NPC and I find that interesting, even though I have no real clue what I’m learning. Go ahead, tell me.”

  She shifts and meets my eyes, head tilting down and silver hair clinging to her, soaking wet, all over the front of her black robes. “The Sirens were the first race after Ananta ended the last age. Then the other races came. The Sirens learned about them and had considered them controlling and dangerous, so they moved to the seas. So magical are they that they transformed their bodies into adapting to living underwater with a few Weather spells. They created the spawning caves.”

  “I didn’t know all that.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a long time, but that’s what happened.”

  “Does that mean, if your tomb is here, that you’ve been in Dark World since the Sirens first lived in Nuudle Territory?”

  Her black eyes narrow and glint red with a flash of nearby lightning. “Yes,” she whispers.

  It hits me. “Anella, were you the first player to ever come to Dark World?” I say it gently, asking, even though I know the answer.

  She holds my gaze and nods.

  I look away, feeling such sympathy for her. How long ago was it? What does that mean? I can’t think of coming here and having no players at all to talk to and figure stuff out with. I have no words, so I don’t speak.

  She turns and stares at her grave. “I was a very sad person in Elora. I was very sick. Maybe I still am, but in a different way. A situational way. I came here the same way you did, but I don’t think yours was by choice.”

  I don’t understand. Does that mean she knew about Dark World and somehow… Oh. She killed herself. I get it, and my mouth snaps shut before I say it aloud.

  I sense she appreciates my not doing so, because she smiles down at me. “You’re a good player.”

  Now’s my chance. “Anella, why have you always helped me?”

  Her eyes widen. “Because I have paid attention. I have been watching. I learned you would come to my own graveyard, and I’ve been watching for you and watching what you do. There is something I want to do for you, but you must know it is because you are the One True Mystic, the one who frees us all. I know it, but don’t ask me how.” Her tone of voice tells me she’s serious about that last part, but I don’t know what any of it means.

  I ask, “What do you want to do for me?”

  “Go to where the Player Hall of Fame should be in Elora but isn’t in Dark World. There, you will find answers. You only need to know when you want to be.”

  “When? What do you mean? Like, put it in a scroll or something?”

  She looks at me like I slapped her. I have no idea why.

  “I will see you again, Mystic Sid. You will free us.”

  Anella casts Scatter.

  There she goes, all over the place. Skittish girl, and what a sad story. I know there’s so much more, but I doubt if Anella will ever be in the right state of mind to verbalize her massive history with Dark World.

  Still, I think she just told me where to go to get to Elora. What else could she have been doing? Anella has always done right by me, every time, even if she does like to end conversations by shattering into a million pieces.

  I use my Comfort Ring, and next I’m at the Kila Crystal in Cashmere. From there, I hop in the sea for a short swim across to Sheala, which isn’t even a city yet in Dark World. It’s more of a town, and as I approach at a sidestroke, I see the Player Hall of Fame’s jagged, white, thin chunk of earth sprouting up in the middle of the village of Sheala, in no way touched by sentient hands, and groan. I’ll have to climb that.

  It’s worth it.

  It takes so long that I’m completely dry of seawater and sweated through so much that I need to get clean again by the time I scrape and heave myself to the top of the massive natural structure.

  I’m surprised it’s completely flat up here. Only a sentient being could have done that.

  Before I explore, I collapse on the ground and just breathe. I feel god-awful.

  Sid summons Varengan.

  I wave at my glorious bird summon as he twitters at me after forming.

  Sid commands Gentle Flight.

  “Thanks.”

  He twitters some more, and I let him fly about, watching him explore, and then dismiss him. I’m full of energy again now, and it’s time to scope out this place.

  The ground is white, smooth and sanded mountaintop, perfectly flat. I bet if I put a level on it, it’d say flat. Only a White Elf could have done this, and with magic. An NPC? Or a player?

  I walk to the center where I’m thinking the Player Hall of Fame would be in Elora, but keep looking around everywhere in case I miss something.

  The breeze up here is nice, and my black Nuudle hair, salty from sweat and sea, blows all around. It came out of its ponytail while I climbed.

  As I reach the center of the spire, I see something glinting in the moonlight just in front of me.

  I rush to it, then stop dead.

  In the stone rests a mirror disc, exactly like one I’ve seen before. Like the one at the entrance to the Player Hall of Fame, but this one has a different inscription. A Link to the Future.

  Somehow, I can use this to get to Elora. My Elora. This is what Anella was trying to tell me to find. Why does she want me to go there? What’s there that she thinks I should see or find out?

  I kneel down and put my hand through it. Feels just like the one in Elora.

  Anella had said I needed to know when I wanted to go. So, what I think is going on is that this mirror disk is a portal through time in this game. This existence. This simple story that is everything.

  How do I tell it when I want to be?

  I pull out some scrolls and read the runes on them. I hate using scrolls not knowing for sure what they do. It’s such a waste because they take so long to make, and if they end up being useless when I use them, that’s four hours of work gone.

  None of them seem like they’d help.

  I sit and trace my fingers through the weightless space of the mirrored surface. The moons glint
back up at me with secrets from the mirror disc’s reflection.

  Maybe I need to think of my when. My when being when I was in Elora.

  Imagine it, picture it.

  So, I do, and close my eyes while still trailing my fingertips through the weird-feeling space of the mirror disc. None of my memories seem right, almost like Dark World experiences wiped out Elora times. I focus harder, and then, of course, Silvia comes to mind. What would she be doing right now in Elora in my time? In our time?

  I try to picture her. She could be tossing out mad heals in a dungeon run. She could be clothcrafting or wandmaking. Lying in the grass south of the Mantle of Bliss to regenerate her magic ability. She even could be floating by herself at our Sheala shipwreck in Siren Territory.

  I smile at that and picture it clearly. Her long hair flowing around her head in the deep sea. Her smile after a swim. Then I imagine myself next to her, but she can’t see me. I need to say something, do something so she’ll see me.

  I feel something tighten on my fingertips, a pulling sensation.

  I open my eyes and look down. The mirror disc has changed.

  Now, I see a bright blue sky, no clouds, and the hems of players’ pants, robes and armor walking by. Some fingers and feet stick out at me, then pull away. I hear a muffled laughing coming from the changed disc.

  I bend over and peek from across the side of it to get a view of inside the Hall of Fame. I see the Player Hall of Fame… and yes, oh yes. I can see the tiniest hint of my shrine within.

  This is it. That’s my time in Elora, right? It has to be. I guess all I had to do was emotionally connect to a specific person in my old time, and that’s how I chose when.

  I stick my hand all the way into the gap. I feel hot air on the other side.

  Okay, so I’m going to have to step through this… and be upside-down? How’s this going to work?

  I don’t give a shit. I’m going.

  I stand up and go all out. I jump in feet first with my hands up high above me.

  As I fall in—Through? Between? Apart?—I’m flipped all around. I get sick to my stomach as gravity changes in my core. I can’t remember seeing anything when I went through, but I become aware again a moment later, lying on the ground right in the entrance to the Player Hall of Fame in Elora.