1. Adventurous Online

“Welcome to Adventurous Online. The stakes have been raised in this version of the game. And there’s no reset-button.”

The words woke Waldina up. Her breathing was fast and unsteady. She closed her eyes to focus on calming down for a moment. It was just a dream, she kept repeating to herself. Nothing more, nothing less. Now she just had to get out of the bed, drink a glass of water and depending on the time, she’d continue sleeping.

Except the view before her eyes was not from her ever familiar room.

Waldina sat up in a green lush meadow. The warm breeze ruffled her long hair. Around her there was just green meadow for as far as eyes could tell. Perhaps somewhere in the horizon there was a forest, but she couldn’t be too sure about that. What she was sure about, however, was the fact that she was not at home. On top of that the view was not exactly a familiar one either. She was sure she hadn’t drunk any alcohol last night… So how on earth did she end up in the middle of nowhere without any memories of the events?

Sigh.

After a moment’s consideration she stood up and just then she noticed the strange clothing she had on. She was wearing low, sneakers like shoes. Her body was adorned with some kind of short black dress, which had a high cut on her right side. It revealed small black shorts. She also had weaponbelt around her right thigh. The weaponbelt held a few shurikens and daggers. On her left hand she found a small bracelet, which was glowing purple light.

Speaking of purple… Her hair was not its usual brown color but instead it had a deep purple color all over. The combination was rather familiar for Waldina, but she couldn’t figure out why. It was almost as if…

“Aaargh.” Sudden memories from the past got Waldina to crouch back to the ground and cover her face. It couldn’t be. She hadn’t played any games for a while now, and especially not the one she used to play in her teen years Adventurous Online, AO. But all of these elements reminded her of her past favorite game’s main character’s customized look.

Many rather embarrassing memories sprung back to her mind. Back in the day she had been hopelessly into all things ninja. And it really showed on her character type choices. In the world of AO ninjas were a rarely played character type, mostly for their difficult techniques and impracticability. In short ninjas just weren’t optimal for anything important in this game. In Waldina’s opinion ninjas were obviously great at everything, though that didn’t change the facts.

Nowadays she tried to hide her ninja fanaticism. It was a part of her and her history, but she found it a tad bit embarrassing and thus didn’t want others to find out about it.

However Waldina’s secretly exposed (though she was alone in the grassy meadow) love towards ninjas wasn’t exactly the most embarrassing part - though it was part of it. The worst embarrassment came from the reminder of her rather lively roleplaying history. In the past she loved loved roleplaying almost more than ninjas and that was a lot. Aaand it definitely showed in both her playstyle and communication. In AO she was known as a hardcore roleplayer. Later on, as a grown and working adult those memories just felt increasingly not flattering. They just didn’t fit her classy image - if you could call it classy but that was a whole another debate we don’t want to get into here.

Ahhhhh. Oh how she was ashamed of her teenself. Not to mention her past need to prove to anyone that ninjas were as good - if not better - as all the other character types. Not that she still didn’t feel like that. She just didn’t voice those opinions.

The memories got Waldina to roll over in the grass while covering her face. After her embarrassment toned down she started to feel the tiniest bit excited. She hadn’t had such an interesting dream in a while. She may have overgrown her love for roleplay and may be hiding her ninja fanaticism. But right now she was beginning to feel too excited about what was happening. She rarely got to dream about her youth and fueled by that excitement she decided to use this opportunity to its fullest.

Waldina lifted her left wrist to her eye level to better check her bracelet that in AO doubled as a character logbook which contained all the basic information about the current character. As she pressed the bracelet’s shining button she was overcome with nostalgia. Before her eyes there was all sorts of information about her beloved character.

“The screen” showed information about her character’s status, level, skills and other basic information needed for gameplay. On the left side there was a row of icons which led to other useful views, such as objectives, tasks, map of the world and inventory. The screen was only missing chat and friendlist which was rather puzzling, but perhaps the dream just couldn’t be that realistic.

For a while Waldina kept checking the information available via the bracelet. Then she noticed her character’s level and she definitely did not like what she saw. The dream had for whatever reason decided to give her the lowest possible level. Even her character name was her real name aka Waldina and not that of her roleplaying name, Cyril. For a dream those abnormalities felt weirdly strange. The differences were almost too specific.

As if this was not a dream.

The words Waldina had heard as she woke up echoed in her mind. She saw the tiniest bit of change for this to not be a mere dream. But ending up in a different world - that of a familiar gameworld - was so absurdly fictional that it simply couldn’t be possible. Not to mention how much of a cliché it would be to end up in the world of a nostalgic favorite videogame. It just wasn’t a thing that happened to the people like Waldina. Her kind worked until the age of seventy whilst dreaming of paradise, winning the lottery - and ending up in a fictional fantasy world. They usually didn’t end up achieving those things.

She shrugged and chose to believe in the power of the dream for a moment longer. Ignorance is a bliss, Waldina decided with a satisfied smile on her face. At the end of the day it meant little whether it was a dream or not as there was nothing she could do for it at the moment. The truth would reveal itself in due time.

Determinedly Waldina checked the map from her bracelet and judged her current location. Behind the endless meadow was the game’s starting town Inizio. Usually the way would be packed with tutorial monsters. As she couldn’t be sure of many things as of now she had to come up with a couple of plans around the factors she could make sure of.

First she checked the objectives assigned to her character and read the information regarding her first job. The bracelet only showed one job and it was that of a first stage-exam. It was a rather familiar job to her. It was about fighting against the redwolf Vermell. If this world was anything like AO, one level 1 ninja could not take Vermell down. That meant she’d need to grind up those levels if she wanted to face Vermell.

Vermell was located east from the city of Inizio which was coincidentally the farthest point from Waldina’s current location. On the other hand this meant she could work up on her level on the way to the city and from thereafter to Vermell. She was hopeful that defeating Vermell would at the very least give her some reassurance on whether she was locked in a dream or not.

In the game of Adventurous online after every stage-exam the player was rewarded with information and valuable materials. At the age of the internet additional information acquired from the game was not really that necessary as all the needed information was always available via network connection. But here right now she didn’t have access to the network so additional information was of most importance.

Waldina looked through her character’s equipment and other stuff and frowned deeply. Each and every one of her special equipment was long gone. Her current character was a beginner in every meaning of the word. Even her equipment matched that. In addition to leveling up she’d need to gather more powerful weapons if she wanted to even try to face Vermell.

And so Waldina stood up from the grass and headed to Inizio. Staying put wondering what ifs didn’t help her and mostly likely wouldn’t give her the much needed answers. Besides trying and fighting against some starting monsters could be a lot of fun - at least more than moping around offered.