“No?” he said, eyeing me sidelong and chewing his cud. “Look inward, not your body, not your mind.”
I tried not to think of my body or my brain, and let my thoughts disperse. After a moment I began to feel...something. It was faint but promised power like a quiet but distant waterfall.
“What is that?” I asked. Then I took in a startled breath when the small speck of strange power that I had found blazed brighter within me.
“That, my friend, is magic. Learn to know and trust that feeling, but also how to control the urge for more.”
I hardly heard him, so enamored was I with the power churning within me. “What do I do with it?” I asked.
“Release it, what else? Now pay attention and do exactly as I do with my hands.”
I watched him like a hawk as he got into a kind of tai-chi defensive pose. He then brought his hands near each other in front of his chest and touched each thumb to the opposite pinky. He looked like he was holding an invisible ball, which he cocked back in his right hand. A fiery glow began to burn in his palm, and I nearly shit myself with excitement.
I struck the tai-chi pose, brought my thumbs and pinkies together, and cocked back my right arm, keeping my pinkies and thumbs in contact. A spark of flame like that which I felt burning within me appeared in the middle of the space between my hands. As I watched, it grew bigger, until it was the size of a softball in my hand. The flames didn’t burn me, but I was getting nervous, it was getting too big, too powerful.
“What do I do now?” I yelled nervously.
“Let it go!”
I thrust my hands forward and the fireball erupted from my palms like a rocket, blowing back my hair and sailing in an arc for one hundred feet before exploding down the road.
“Holy shit!” I said breathlessly as I stared at my red, glowing hands.
“Impressive,” he said with a nod of approval. “That was a fireball. You can practice more later. Now I will teach you Arcane Lightning.”
“Epic,” I said breathlessly.
“Excuse me?”
“It means this is fracking awesome,” I explained.
“Yes, well, this is just the beginning, my eager young friend. Now place your hands like this,” the trainer said as he pressed his hands together like he was in prayer.
I mimicked the pose and watched as he rolled his hands forward in a complete loop back to prayer pose.
“Careful not to break contact,” he said as he showed me again.
“Alright,” I said as I licked my lips.
I brought my hands together in prayer pose, then slowly turned them, first pressing the thumbs together, then the knuckles, bottom of the hands, and back to prayer pose. Once my palms settled back together, my hands erupted with crackling lightning.
“Holy shit balls!”
I could feel the incredible power surging in between my pressed palms. My teeth chattered a bit as the spell grew in strength, and I imagined my shaggy hair standing on end.
“What are you waiting for?” the trainer asked. “Shoot it at something.”
“How?” I asked as the lightning crackled and hissed in my hands.
“Push out from your chest with both hands.”
I focused on the big evergreen on the right side of the road and let loose my lightning, throwing it like a basketball chest pass. The lightning exploded from my palms and shot across the road, followed by the deafening boom of thunder. The tree that I had aimed at was rocked by a dozen biting arcs of lightning, and to my amazement, it went up like a dried out Christmas tree.
“That was impressive for a first time, but also stupid. Now you have no mana left,” said the trainer. “Look at your mana bar.”
“Huh?” I said, glancing around.
“Near your brow, there should be a green health bar and a blue mana bar.”
“Oh yeah, I see it,” I said, noticing how faint the blue mana bar was. I felt different too, like I had just taken a magical dump or something.
“Yup, no mana, and here comes some bad news,” said the trainer with a chuckle as he pointed down the road. “Nice knowing you, kid.”
He disappeared, and I turned around to find four horsemen coming my way.
“Bravo, young lad,” said the lead man.
The group was a dangerous looking lot, and I instinctively knew that they weren’t looking to make friends. The leader’s face began to glow as I fixed my gaze on him, and holographic words appeared above his head.
Name: Mad Morgan (NPC)
Race: Human
Class: Highwayman
Level: 14
Health: 100%
Mana: 0%
Armor: 250
Stamina: 300
Strength: 300
Speed: 250
Vitality: 300
Spirit: 100
Arcane Knowledge: 0
There was also a green health bar above his head, and at the moment it was full. A quick scan of his posse showed me levels of 12 and higher. There was an ice mage with clear blue eyes who cocked her head at me and smirked, a cleric with an impressive looking staff that glowed so bright it was hard to look at, and lastly a rogue with about two dozen daggers strapped to his black leather armor.
When I read the name above the group I let out a chuckle.
“What’s so funny, eh magey?” Mad Morgan asked as he got down from his horse.
“Mad Morgan and the Creepers, eh?” I said affably.
“That’s the name, don’t wear it out,” said the lead thug.
My mana was climbing very slowly, and I needed to buy myself some time. “I like your name, you think I could join your little group?”
Mad Morgan scoffed as he sauntered over to me while his crew fanned out. He wore tarnished silver armor that looked to have seen about a thousand battles. He was an NPC, or non-player character, but his green eyes were alive with insight and self-awareness, and I gulped when I remembered that the NPC’s in Rebirth Online had been programmed to think that they were as real as the world around them.
“Good to meet you,” I said as I extended my hand. “The name’s Samson--”
A heartbeat later the rogue popped up behind me and stabbed me in the side. My enchanted robe took part of the blow, but pain still shot through my side.
The ice mage suddenly unleashed an icy blue shard from her left hand that slammed into my gut. My robes took the brunt of the spell, but the breath burst out of me explosively. The cleric raised a palm to the sky, and I was suddenly encased in shadow.
Unholy Fury
Losing 2 armor per second
10 second duration
My armor steadily decreased as I tried to defend myself. I drew my sword and spun as I swung, trying to get the rogue away from me, but he ducked the blade and came up with a dagger in each hand. He struck like a cobra, stabbing each blade into my stomach.
This time, the robes didn’t stop it.
I let out an unintelligible scream of surprise and pain, and Mad Morgan punched me in the face with his metal gauntlet. Stars danced in my vision, and even my interface glitched for a moment as big letters and numbers dominated my view.
Health 70%
The rogue stabbed me again, decreasing my health by another 15%. Then the two men backed away from me, laughing. I tried to retaliate with my fireball, but my mana was still too low, and my hands didn’t seem to want to work right. I glanced up from my smoking palm and groaned when I saw the ice mage unleash a ball of writhing blue snowflakes that streaked across the road and hit me in the chest.
Cold like I had never felt ripped through the enchantments of my robe and gripped my bones. I froze, barely registering that I had actually been turned into ice, and slowly toppled over.
FROZEN!
I couldn’t move a muscle, and my mind screamed at my body to do something, just as it had done for the last year. I might as well have been strapped to another hospital bed.
Warning: Health 10%
Mad Morgan laughed as h
e and his cronies circled me and began kicking the living shit out of me. They didn’t stop until my health was down to 2%. By then the cleric’s curse and the ice mage’s spell had worn off, and they went through my wet pockets as I lay there shivering and close to death.
“What do we have here?” Mad Morgan asked mockingly as he held up a glowing pouch that he had plucked from one of the many pockets in my backpack.
He opened it up, and the golden glow of the contents illuminated his grinning face.
“That’s mine,” I managed to croak.
“Not anymore it ain’t,” Mad Morgan said as he closed the sack containing all my gold. He knelt down beside me, his face an inch from my own. Then he smiled, and the worst morning breath I’d ever smelled sailed straight up my nostrils.
“Holy, s-s-shit. Did you eat a cat t-t-turd?” I asked between shivers.
He shared an overzealous laugh with his cronies, produced a dagger, and stabbed me in the heart.
Pain shot through my chest and I tried to cry out, but I had no voice. A familiar paralysis overcame me, and lights streaked across my vision. I had the sickening feeling of falling as the lights flashed by, and then everything went black.
You have died
When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in a decrepit old cemetery.
“What the hell?”
I looked down at my body, and nearly shit myself when I found it translucent.
“Holy shit,” I said as I looked through my hands. “I’m a ghost!”
I glanced around at the cemetery as I spun in a slow circle. The bright sunshine had been replaced by thick fog and gloom, the once blue sky was now churning with dark clouds, and the forests that had been bright and full of life were now dead and littered with fleeting shadows.
“Alright, calm down, Sam. All you’ve got to do is find your body,” I told myself, then tried to bring up my interface.
Nothing happened.
As I glanced around at the macabre landscape I regretted never looking at my map of the area. I tried to remember which way I had come from, but it was no use. There was no sun to guide me, and I didn’t know any landmarks. I stepped out of the graveyard and looked around.
60…
59…
58…
“What the hell?” I tapped at the numbers counting down in front of me, but they couldn’t be interacted with. “What the hell happens when it gets to zero?” I yelled skyward.
“This the first time you’ve ever died?” floated a voiced from behind me. It sounded like it came to my ears through water and was a bit hard to understand.
I spun around and found a short male dwarf staring back at me with translucent hands on hips.
“Uh...yeah,” I confessed. “And I don’t know where my body is.”
“Well then, where did ye die?”
“On the road.”.
“Yeah, that helps a lot.” The dwarf rolled his eyes. “Then how did ye die?”
“Ah! I know that at least,” I said with a small laugh. “It was a highwayman, Mad--”
“Mad Morgan, right.” The dwarf chuckled and pointed behind me. “The road is through there, turn right when you get to it.”
“Thanks...:”
“Flint Ironshaft,” said the dwarf ghost, before turning in the other direction.
“Wait, Flint. What is this countdown in my field of view?”
“That’s how long you can hold spirit form. What’s it say?”
“Twenty-five,” I told him.
“Well then,” he said with a laugh. “You better haul ass.”
I didn’t ask him what would happen if the countdown were to reach zero. Instead I yelled a thanks over my shoulder and began running in the direction that he had mentioned.
“Why you running? You’re a ghost, man, fly!” he yelled from behind me.
Fly? Could I really do that? And if so, how?
I leapt into the air, not knowing what else to do, and suddenly zipped through the trees like superman. When I reached the road I turned right, and nervously focused on the countdown.
9…
8…
7…
“Shit!” I yelled and flew with all my might down the well-worn road.
3…
I saw my body in the distance.
2…
Mad Morgan was standing over it, pissing on it.
1…
I redoubled my efforts, but I was too far away.
ZERO…
Chapter 3
When I opened my eyes, I expected to see Doctor Marks frowning down at me. Instead, I saw the long, knotted planks of a ceiling.
I sat up and instantly wished that I hadn’t. My head spun, and my stomach turned. I groaned as I took a quick look around and lay back down on the soft bed. In those few moments I had seen that I was inside a small cottage. There was a fireplace to my left, currently crackling with a few logs and making the air hot and thick. Herbs hung above the mantle, and something was simmering in a big pot hanging over the fire. By the scent in the air I could tell that it was some sort of vegetable soup. In front of the fireplace was a table, and to its right was a primitive kitchen. To the left of the fire place there was a stack of wood, a rocking chair, and a bookshelf with only three books. Directly across from me was a door, currently closed, and the window beside the bed showed me a twilight world.
“Hello?” I called, but no one answered.
I brought up my interface to see where the hell I was on the map, but I tapped on my character sheet by accident, and that’s when I noticed the bad news.
“What the hell! Level 9?” I yelled. I shook my head and cursed under my breath as I continued to scan the readout with growing apprehension.
When I saw that my armor was at zero I lifted the quilt and looked underneath, and my rock-hard morning wood smiled back at me.
Well, at least something was fully functional.
I hadn’t woken up to morning wood in over a year, and I should have been happy, but I was anything but. I hadn’t been in game for fifteen minutes and already I had gotten myself killed. What the hell was I doing introducing myself to a bunch of high-level NPC highwaymen anyway? I should have run away, or at least tried to get the jump on them. What a noob move that was.
And where the hell had the trainer gone off to?
I tried to shake off my anger and confusion. That was all in the past. Right now, I needed to heal up, find my gear, and get my money back from Mad Morgan and the other NPC assholes.
Just then the front door opened opposite the foot of my bed, and in walked the hottest elf that I had ever seen. Granted, I have only seen them in fantasy movies and games, but this one took the cake and the ice cream too. She stopped at the threshold clutching a glowing vial in one hand and the doorknob in the other. When she saw me, her eyes widened with devilish delight.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said with a smile.
She closed the door behind her, and I stole a quick glance at her ass. She wore a green cloak, but I could easily make out her pert tush beneath the canvas. The elf turned and drew her hood back, and two long ears twanged into position like a pair of door stoppers. She turned emerald eyes my way and shook out her curly auburn hair. Her lips were a bright pink, which contrasted with her bronze skin well, and she had the perkiest c-cups I had ever seen.
She noticed me checking her out, grinned, and strode toward the bed. I guessed that she was only a few inches shorter than my six feet.
“How you feeling? Looks like they did a number on you,” she said as her eyes moved slowly over my body.
I bunched up the blanket over my saluting soldier in what I thought was a nonchalant way and rubbed my neck with my left hand.
“I feel like I died,” I said with a laugh.
“You did die,” she reminded me. “My name’s Anastacia, but you can call me Anna.”
“Hi, Anna,” I said and shook her hand. “My name’s--”
“Samson Sullivan, level 9, y
ou’re a human fire mage, and currently your stats suck,” she said.
I realized that she must have read my stats, but I was confused as to why I couldn’t see hers.
“You’re not an NPC, right? So why can’t I see your stats?”
“Shielding ward,” said Anna. “You can get one in town for about 5 gold, but the price goes up with every level, and it only lasts a week. Anything they can do to suck up our earnings, right? Of course, the higher level you are, the less you need a shielding ward. At higher levels you actually want people to know, but at these low levels you’re better off getting one. Less chance of getting ganked. But it looks like you can’t afford anything right now.”
“I had a shit ton of gold,” I said and glanced around for my things.
“I didn’t take anything,” she said and shook her head. “There wasn’t anything to steal anyway.”
“Shit, they even took my clothes?”
“You died, my friend. When you die, whoever kills you can loot everything if they want. Whoever programmed Mad Morgan must have had a sense of humor. The only way to avoid your items being looted is to bind them to yourself, but that shit’s expensive and not worth it until you get legendary items.”
She noticed that I didn’t know these relatively huge details, but then again, neither did anyone else. We got a crash course in how the game worked before entering, but the designers mostly wanted us to figure out the world on our own.
“Did you, perhaps, stash some stuff away?” she asked.
“No, I just got here. I spawned, went for a jog, talked to a trainer, and then got jumped by Mad Morgan and the Creepers five minutes later.”
“You went for a jog?”
Rebirth Online Page 2