Copyright © 2016 by Luke Chmilenko
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Interlude
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Interlude
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Lyrian’s Character Sheet at the End of Book 1
Afterword
The Land
Acknowledgements
Few novels are created in a vacuum and this one is no exception. I would like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to those who have helped shape this novel into what it is today.
To my wife Christina, for encouraging and supporting my desire to write this story. Without you, this story would have never even started.
To Robert Ciechanowski and Vera Chmilenko for your endless patience in reviewing, editing and providing feedback. Your hard work and diligence has helped find countless errors and continuity mistakes that I’ve managed to hide in this novel.
To ‘The Gang’, you are all awesome.
To my parents, for encouraging a lifelong obsession with reading and for indulging me every time I packed five books to tie me over a two day vacation.
To all my readers on Royal Road Legends, your support and feedback over the last five months has been nothing short of amazing, it’s because of all of you that this story has finally made it out of my head and into the world.
The cover of this book was created by Ana Cruz, you can see more of her work here: http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/AnaCruzArts
Chapter 1
Sunday, February 3rd, 2047 - 6:43 am
24-Hour Fitness – Augmented Reality Exercise Simulator (ARES)
“Rah!” I let out a loud grunt as I swung my fist through the air, feeling the telltale buzz of my haptic glove shoot up my arm as my fist passed through the jaw of the shimmering opponent in front of me. A heartbeat later the simulation reeled backwards as I quickly followed up with a combination of punches, breaking through my virtual opponent’s defense.
I ducked under a wild punch, feeling a slight buzz in my headgear, telling me the attack had barely grazed the side of my head. My leg shot forward, landing a vicious strike against the simulated boxer’s side, sending him crashing into the ground. I raised my fist to strike down at my fallen opponent when the program paused itself, a sudden buzzing sound filling my ears as a message scrolled across the Augmented Reality goggles I wore.
INCOMING CALL: PETER
ACCEPT? / REJECT?
“Ugh, Peter has to be the only person who still uses a phone to call people.” With a small grunt of annoyance, I sucked in a deep breath, feeling sweat run down my back as I forced myself upright. I cleared my throat before answering the call. “Accept.”
“Peter?” I said after my earpiece beeped, indicating the line was connected.
“Yo, Marc.” The voice behind the phone sounded rushed, excited. “Where are you?”
“Eh? I’m exercising in the ARES at my gym. What’s up? You’re up pretty early for you, is everything okay?” I asked, concerned. Peter was one of my best friends, but he was a night owl. Having him awake this early in the morning was unusual.
“The ARES?” Peter sounded confused for a moment. “Oh right, that Augmented Reality training thing!”
“Yeah, and I was winning too.” I breathed, letting some of the annoyance creep into my voice. “What’s up? You okay?”
“Yeah man, I’m fucking great! I’m calling because I’ve got news! Huge news!” He paused for a moment to take a breath. “Creative Tech just announced a new title, this time; it’s a VRMMORPG!”
“Sweet shit Peter! Did you just call me for that?!” I said rolling my eyes, as I looked at the frozen simulation in front of me. “Announcing means they’re still years away from a product, and VR is a flop. VisionQuest tried it, failed miserably, and that was in development for fifteen years! Hell, the best they could do with their tech was to repurpose it for these ARES rooms anyway.”
“Why all the hype now?” I asked, while internally thinking ‘Why are you calling me about this?’
“Because they are releasing tomorrow.” I could hear the smugness in Peter’s voice.
“What?! How?!”
“I know right?” Peter spoke quickly, excitement evident in his voice. “The only bit of information we have is that there’s a stream scheduled for noon today, and that more information will be available afterwards. A ton of hype has started building on the net about it already and the news has only been out less than an hour.”
I looked at the frozen simulation before me, remembering the slight delay that all ARES had. I sighed and began stripping my haptic gloves off. “Alright man, color me interested, I’ve been looking for a new fix anyway. What’s the game called?”
“Ascend Online.”
***
Five hours later my condo was the site of an impromptu gathering. After taking a quick nap, Peter brought over our entire gaming group: Deckard, Misha, Heron, and Zach to watch the upcoming stream together.
The six of us had been friends all our lives, having met in early grade school and consistently staying in touch as the years went by. During our University years, when we all scattered to different cities to pursue our studies, games kept us together. Between late night marathons to traditional MMORPG launch day rush-to-the-level-cap sprints, the long distances between us were bridged. There was rarely a day we didn’t speak to one another in some way, shape or form.
“You didn’t know anything about this Marcus?” Deckard asked me as I sat down on the couch with a cup of coffee.
“Nah… nothing, no reviews requests or leaks… not even a peep.” I shook my head as I took a sip of my drink and looked for a place to set my mug down. I made my living as an independent game designer and freelancer, and had just finished a major project. Unfortunately that meant that there were half-finished doodles of artwork, maps, and notes scattered around the room that I had yet to clean up and organize. Apparently, I was still one of the few people left that thought better on paper before moving to a digital tablet.
“Hold this.” I gave Deckard my mug as I quickly stacked a pile of papers on top of one another, and found a spot to put my cup down.
“How could they have made a game in a vacuum without anyone getting wind of it?” Zach asked while pulling a gaming forum up on his phone.
“Well… like my right hand on a Sunday night -” Heron began before a flying tissue box hit him on the side of the head.
“No,” Misha said.
“Quiet! It’s starting!” Almost as soon as Peter arrived he had commandeered the monitor I had mounted on the wal
l and brought up a timer leading to the stream.
00:00:04
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
00:00:00
We all watched as a black screen replaced the countdown, it gradually faded into a first person perspective of someone traveling through a forest accompanied by a wistful and soothing music score. The detail in the scene was breathtaking, indistinguishable from real life. The stream followed our mystery protagonist, as it showcased the scenery of the surrounding forest.
“Is this… a live action trailer?” Deckard asked before we all shushed him down.
The musical score suddenly changed as a growl broke the serenity of the scene, and the perspective spun quickly to see a massive gray wolf leap upon the protagonist knocking them to the ground. We saw arms attempting to hold the wolf at bay, as the vicious wolf snarled and snapped at our – the protagonist’s face. The massive maw of the wolf was all we could see.
I heard someone whisper, “Oh shit.”
The music took on a more desperate tone, the arms were appearing to get weaker as the fight went on, and the wolf inched closer to the screen. We could see the saliva covering the wolf’s teeth as it moved in for the kill.
Two arrows suddenly burst into the wolf’s head with a spray of blood, and the protagonist shoves the dead wolf off. A leather gloved hand enters the scene and helps the protagonist up.
“It’s not safe out here. You should be more careful,” a smooth voice admonishes, before the perspective shifts to reveal a leather clad man carrying a large bow. “Come with me.”
The scene and musical score changes to a montage of travel, showing the protagonist stumbling after the man. In a moment the forest is gone, showing a rolling grassland with something massive in the distance. The view pans around generously, showing merchants carrying goods on a cart, another showing a distant farmhouse with people working in the field.
“We’re here.” The man’s smooth voice causes the protagonist to look forward once more.
A massive medieval city now took up the screen; there were hundreds of people milling about as the view panned around in a circle. Huge muscle bound Orcs inspected weapons while haggling with a Smith; a human woman held bread in both hands while shouting to passersby’s, all while a trio of elves walked by girded in gleaming armor.
The view stopped on the man we had been following, and he greeted us with a smile. “Welcome home, Adventurer.”
The screen focused on the man for a heartbeat, before it cut to black and displayed:
Ascend Online
02/04/47 – 8:00 am
19:54:59
“Hoooly shit!” Heron exclaimed just as the second countdown began. “That was incredible!”
“Nothing like VisionQuest!” Peter said with a grin. “Though it didn’t tell us that much…”
“That was a disaster…” Misha replied, then indicated the screen “But that… fuck! That was… awesome!”
“It looked so real.” Zach shook his head. “I hope it wasn’t fake… are we sure it wasn’t live action?”
“Shit, it was glorious!” Deckard grunted. “Bring up their website. How do we get in on this?”
“Sure.” I nodded as I enabled the sync feature on my tablet, automatically casting everything on my phone to the monitor. A quick search brought up Ascend Online’s website. It was bare at best. It featured a repeat of the stream we just watched, with the countdown taking over the majority of the page. There were only two small paragraphs of information on the page.
Ascend Online is a fantasy based, full immersion VRMMORPG. To find out how to join us for our upcoming worldwide release, please click here!
To curb meta-gaming, the Ascend Online development staff has decided against providing an excessive amount of information at the start of the game. We have prepared a basic Primer on the world information to better coordinate the initial game start with friends and guild members. Please click here for more details!
Additional content and information will be added to this page as the game progresses. We hope to see you in game soon!
“Full Immersion?” I asked aloud.
“Who cares?! Get the Primer!” Misha yelled at me, her expression already wild.
“Listen to the woman, Marc! Heron already has it up on his phone!” Deckard joined in.
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it!” I impatiently grunted as I brought up the Primer on the big screen. “Hold onto your socks.”
Everyone ended up staying at my apartment that night.
Chapter 2
Monday, February 4th, 2047 – 7:30 am
Creative Technologies Incorporated (CTI) – Player Housing Complex
I was grinning in mad anticipation as the six of us walked through the main doors of CTI. Everything was a blur since I loaded the Primer last night. Six hundred pages long, it detailed an incredible wealth of lore and background to the game world – without revealing a single scrap of information when it came to mechanics, gameplay or even what to expect from the game itself. We spent the better part of the day (and night) reading and debating the little information that we could parse from it.
“Calling group three-eighty-four. Calling group three-eighty-four. Please proceed to Processing,” a crisp voice called over the lobby speakers. Already a massive crowd had formed within the building’s lobby as groups of prospective players all milled about until their group number was called.
Geez! There has to be close to two thousand people here! I looked around the lobby, seeing Peter waving us onwards.
“That’s us!” Peter called as he pointed towards a sign hanging on the other side of the room. “Over there! That sign says Processing! We’ll need to push our way through!”
The first thing that the Primer explained to us was that Ascend Online didn’t use the traditional Virtual Reality (VR) as we understood it. We wouldn’t be expected to throw on a VR headset, place a few sensors on us and play. That was what VisionQuest tried to do about ten years ago – the development cost and the odd disconnect between body and game never attracted a large enough player base to keep it afloat, and it flopped. Hard.
Ascend Online was pioneering Full Immersion Virtual Reality (FIVR) technology, which thanks to the recent advances in nanotechnology, we would be able to experience a video game directly – without having to rely on a screen, headset or computer. All the information would be fed directly into our brain through the use of Nanobots or Nanites while our physical bodies were placed into a sort of artificial hibernation. From our perspective, our new reality would be one of the game world.
The one downside to this level of immersion was the overhead required. Because we needed constant monitoring during our unconscious state, we needed to play the game from within a capsule or pod, housed at a CTI Player Housing Facility. The pod would regularly inject our comatose bodies with the required nanites to maintain our connection with Ascend Online universe, as well as provide the needed nutrients to keep our physical bodies alive. It wouldn’t do to let players die while they were playing your game, right?
“Ow!” I yelped as an elbow accidently jabbed itself into my ribs as we pushed through the dense crowd.
I can’t believe just how many people are here! I was a little taken aback at how popular Ascend Online was shaping up to me, becoming a little concerned about the potential economic and social impact of the game. As I pushed through the crowd I noticed that nearly everyone was around my age or younger, only spotting a handful of prospects appearing to be in their fifties or older.
Figures that there are mostly younger people here, it’s not like they have anything better to do, I thought to myself bitterly as I received a second elbow to the ribs. Society as a whole was in the middle of a massive overpopulation crisis, with close to ten billion souls now clinging to life here on Mother Terra, which only exacerbated an already rampant unemployment problem as very few of the ‘Millennial’ generation was choosing to retire.
&nb
sp; I really couldn’t blame people my parent’s age for wanting and needing to continue working. In the last ten years since Nanotechnology became commercially available, modern science had been working overtime to catch up on the last six decades of promises. Things like cancer, heart disease, and even obesity were starting to be ailments of the past. Some early studies were even predicting that we might be able to get a few extra decades of life with the right mix of Nanites in our blood - if you could afford to pay for them of course.
What’s an extra five or ten years of working compared against living another eighty in near perfect health? I thought to myself and I shoved through the last bit of the crowd. It just means the rest of us younger people will need to wait even longer to get into the job market.
“Group 384?” a woman queried as we approached, bringing me back into the moment. “Six of you in total? I will need to see your IDs, of course.”
“Yep, six of us are all here,” I said as I presented my ID.
“Perfect! My name is Carol, and on behalf of CTI I am excited to get you all oriented and into the game world.” Carol quickly scanned our IDs and made a note on her tablet. “I see you have all signed and submitted your Terms of Use forms and everything else seems to be in order. Please follow me, we will need to register you with Security and then we’ll get you settled in your section.”
Ascend Online Page 1