First Steps In Another World

When the game faded back into play, Marcus found himself in the same room he was in during character creation, only this time, everything looked much larger than before. He held out his arms and grinned as he looked down at his red, black clawed hands wrapped in fingerless leather gloves, and arms extending out of a fur trimmed leather vest. Looking up, the guy had to stifle a laugh when he saw the metal handle of his maul towering over him. The thing was quite old and weathered, worn leather wrappings lined the handle and everything about it just screamed ‘starter weapon’. As his attention turned back to the room around him, the sound of footsteps could be heard coming from outside of his room, and made their way towards his door. Moments later, a knock could be heard before a prompt appeared hovering in the air, pointing to the door knob as it read ‘answer the door’. Naturally, Marcus waited, listening to the door getting knocked on over and over again. Sure, he could answer it, but why do that when he can just sit here and defy instructions?

“Hello, It’s me, Elena. I have some of your things here for you.” A female sounding stated.

Marcus was a little surprised when they spoke, but it still amused him to keep the NPC waiting before eventually replying. “What things?”

“Oh! Some of your belongings. There was a small mix-up with the luggage. Please, I promise it will not happen again.” Elena replied.

This time Marcus was genuinely surprised. It was an astonishingly accurate response. Maybe this game had more polish than he was giving it credit for. Still, now was not the time to be cooperative. If the NPC responded to his words, what might its limits be? At that, Marcus, now in the form of Ember, spoke a plethora of garbled nonsense at them.

“Umm, is everything okay in there? If you want I can just leave everything here for you.” Mercury replied.

Marcus stared at the door, unsure how to take that. Still, as much as he enjoyed messing with NPCs, he decided to give the poor AI a break for the time being and approached the door.

“Alright, I’m coming.” Marcus said, as he reached up to the door handle. With the full length of his stumpy arm, he was able to grab the handle, now getting a sense for the kinds of troubles he may face as such a small race.

Pulling the door open, Marcus found himself looking upward at a scaly creature with a wicked set of teeth. A tan scaled lizardfolk no doubt, resembling some sort of raptor. Above her head, just above the plumes of feathers, he could see the name ‘Elena’ written out in green. In their clawed hand they held a small backpack by the strap, the perfect size for a little Imp like himself. Marcus reached out and took it before pantomiming the act of putting it on his back, effectively snapping it to the back of his avatar.

“Apologies for the mixup. I know you’ve been waiting for your luggage for a little while now. Rest assured, everything should still be in there. Can’t let an adventurer go without the basics, can we?” Elena kindly apologized.

As Marcus looked up at her, he watched as a couple of pale thought bubbles appeared beside the NPC as if offering suggestions on what he could say to her next or even select one of them directly should he be too shy to speak. A quick glance told him that he could essentially leave things as they were or ask about his adventuring supplies. Narratively, as an adventurer, it would make sense that he would already know what all of it was, but in reality, he had no clue what the basics of this series consisted of.

“Umm, I’m afraid I’m a bit of an idiot and don’t know what my adventuring supplies are. Could you coach me through it?” Marcus asked, firing off a cheeky smirk.

“Oh dear, there’s no need to be so hard on yourself. You must be a new adventurer. Rest assured that we at the Santa Rio Ferry Company have given passage to many adventurers in our time and I can answer any questions about your gear you may have. I swear, the guild should learn to give better instructions when issuing out their kits. Do you have anything specifically you would like to ask me about?” Elena asked.

“Umm… Everything?” Marcus replied with a scowl.

“Oh, of course. Well, first thing’s first, your basic backpack comes with a minor magical holding space enchantment so you can store more gear in it than you would think at a glance. Every kit also comes with rations, water, healing potions, and basic camping supplies. though I imagine food and health restorative vials are fairly self explanatory. Your camping supplies will allow you to set up a cozy little reprieve outside of towns, but the most important part of your kit would be your codex. Try pulling that one out first.” Elena suggested.

Marcus did as she asked, reaching to his backpack and pantomiming the motions of grabbing it, which of course, allowed him to actually do so in the real game. As the pack popped off of his back and into his hand he hovered his free hand over the top, a grid styled inventory space popped up showing him everything in his backpack. It was no more than the food and other supplies mentioned before as well as a thick, black leather book adorned with frayed edges and scorch marks. Hovering his hand over the icon confirmed that this was indeed his codex which he proceeded to grab, moving it from the pack and into his hand.

“Excellent. The Codex is a special and essential tool for a proper adventurer. It should also be worth mentioning that to access it in the future, all you need to do is hold your hand over your bag and say, or even whisper the word ‘Codex’ and it should appear in your hand. Now then, as for what makes it so essential, that handy magic book keeps track of everything for you! All you need to do to navigate it is to tug on one of the tabs on the side and the book will open right to that section. You can also speak the section you are looking for into the codex and it will open directly to the section you’re looking for. That codex will keep track of all your adventuring information, your statistics, your condition, and you can even consult it when you feel you’re ready to grow stronger. Of course, it’s more than just your own physical data. You can use it to keep track of all the friends you make on your journey and all the quests you take on. Also, if you’re the scholarly type, you can even find data on monsters and objects you encounter or places that you visit. You may need to encounter or even fight them a few times to get all the information you’re looking for. Of course, there’s yet much more to your codex, but I’ll let you experiment with it. Now, is there anything else?” Elena explained.

Marcus looked at the codex, flipping it open to see that it immediately opened to the page featuring his image and his stats. Nothing exceptionally noteworthy here yet, but it was good to know how it worked.

“Got it. So, how much further until we get to Santa Rio, and what kind of monsters can I fight there?” Marcus asked.

“Oh, it shouldn’t be too terribly long now. As for what you’ll encounter around the town… The Eldritch Lord of Calamity’s magic did a number on the surrounding plants and wildlife. Things are mostly under control now, but you should be wary of Hound Spiders and Sun Scourges. They can be dangerous for unprepared adventurers.” Elena explained.

“Right, right… and what are those?” Marcus asked, wishing now that he had at least taken another look at the series so he’d actually understand what was happening.

“Of course. Hound spiders are oversized spiders that scurry about and hunt like wolves. Their forelegs have become sharp as spear tips and they like to ambush people from the trees. Of course, being spiders, they are also equipped with the ability to fire off webs and inject their targets with venom. Good to be wary of them. Sun Scourges meanwhile are horribly mutated sunflowers. They shoot seeds that can cling onto and sometimes even dig into skin. Up close, their heads have gotten jagged and heavy so they can give you a good bludgeon. They are only active during the day while the sun’s out however, The hotter it is, the more aggressive they are. They can be quite docile in the rain or at night, and their seeds can be cooked and safely eaten.” Elena clarified.

“Ah, gotcha… Well, I think that’s everything. All set now thanks.” Marcus declared with a dismissive wave of his little clawed hand before turning around and making his way back into his room.

“Of course. Good luck on your journey adventurer!” Wished the kindly lizardfolk.

Marcus meanwhile was already eager to get out of the tutorial. As soon as Elena left, he proceeded to make his way back out of the room to scour the deck of the ship he was on. It was quite compact here, the ship making the most of its space to fit a number of cabins into this deck. A handful of NPCs could be seen about the place, coming in and out of doorways or having conversations among each other. Marcus wandered to his right, an open door beside him. His natural concept of respect and privacy not applying to this virtual world, he turned his head to peer in. All he was met with however was a green skinned elf with maple leaf hair chatting it up with a tall bulky humanoid. Marcus recalled them as a goliath while in the character creation screen. They also possessed green names above their heads, just like everyone else Marcus had seen so far, denoting them as NPCs if his color to name correlations were accurate.

He pulled his attention from the room and did another cursory scan of the area, focused solely on the color of the names above everyone’s heads. Each and every one of them were green, and they all seemed to be behaving like normal people as opposed to the comparative nonsensical sprinting around and jump spamming that players tend to do. He was disappointed to say the least. Either this game somehow had nobody playing it on launch day, or this ship ride was entirely instanced for him. Resigned to the fact that this tutorial didn’t have anything he cared about in it, he resigned to making sure to complete it as fast as possible.

Looking for some guidance he flipped open his codex and pulled the tab for the quest section. Indeed, there it was. Beneath the section for ‘Primary Quests’ read ‘Onward to New Horizons’ With the objective reading "Explore the ship or press onward to the main deck". Well, that seemed simple enough. The main deck sounded like where he was supposed to go, but he couldn’t help but imagine the developers hiding something further down. Ready to go, he nearly closed the codex before noticing the tab to the bestiary. Curiously, he tugged on it which brought him to the entry on the Hound Spider. Though it only seemed to repeat what Elena already told him, he found it interesting that NPCs could unlock articles if asked about them. Seeing as standing around and staring at his codex was of course getting him nowhere though, he shut the book and returned it to his pack.

In a rush, though not enough so that he could resist the potential for extra treasure, he decided to make his way down to the cargo hold. As he went, the NPCs around him politely greeted him, but he paid them no mind. Elena was a mandatory tutorial element but anything else he felt he could easily figure out as he went. Besides, he didn’t care to be tutorialed upon anymore, not when his friends would be out there waiting for him. Ignoring the greetings and calls of every NPC who addressed him, Marcus made his way down the stairs to the cargo hold. Although there were fewer NPCs down here, there was certainly an abundance of cargo. Barrels, crates, and burlap sacks were all stacked to the ceiling and fastened to the walls. He reached out and grabbed hold of a nearby barrel. Unfortunately, it remained stuck fast and he didn’t seem to even be able to open the thing. Still, he didn’t really need to as he proceeded to pull himself atop it. At least it was climbable, and gave him a clear view of most of the cargo hold. Eyes scouring the tops of many wooden containers, his eyes finally landed upon it. He was right! There was hidden loot down here after all! A beautiful… Well, actually a pretty dingy looking wooden chest sat at the very end of the room behind all manner of clutter. Even if the barrels here couldn’t be opened, Marcus’s gamer instincts told him that no Dev would have such a conspicuous treasure chest sitting around for it to be unopenable. Eagerly, Marcus scurried across the cargo, the long, spaded tail of his avatar thunking along the wooden surfaces as he went, until he finally reached it. Without a care of whether or not the game would consider this stealing or if any NPCs were aware of what he was doing, he reached out and popped open that chest.

Though the inside turned out to not be anything particularly special, Marcus couldn’t quite describe just how satisfying it was to loot a chest in VR. The feeling of reaching out and grabbing the healing potions, scrolls, and lockpicks from within just brought him a visceral sense of satisfaction. Who knew finding treasure in a video game could become even more satisfying just by letting you use your own hands to grab it! He was quick to stow the items in his pack before turning and leaving the chest behind, its lid wide open.

On his way back up to the middle deck, Marcus actually found himself a little surprised. His first time through, the NPCs had made it a point to greet him, but this time around, they only sent him cursory glances. Perhaps they were set to only greet players a single time in order to avoid becoming annoying, which clashed with his assumption that he could get them to spam their greetings if he just continued walking past them… Well, so much for that idea. All that was left now was to get himself to the top deck and see what it was he would need to do up there.

As he climbed the wooden steps to the upper deck however, the avatar of Ember was nearly knocked off of his feet as a sudden crash sent him stumbling into the railing. Marcus turned around, looking down towards the NPCs on the deck below who seemed every bit as baffled as he was, even to the point of hearing a shriek come from somewhere deeper in the ship. Turning back around, he could see uniformed guards of various races drawing cutlasses as they shouted.

“Sahuagin! We are under attack by sahuagin!” they shouted, waving their sabers and doing their best to get more non combatants below deck.