The First Day

It was a Monday; I do remember it like it was yesterday. The most awaited day in my life; the day when the world’s first fully immersive virtual reality game hit the markets. Though I already got my copy of the game just a month after they run the beta tests, yet I was excited as it would be the first time I’d been running the retail version of the software.

The game was called Blade Work Saga, and though I was not a gaming freak as some of my friends were I always loved being part of something ‘FIRST’. One of my gaming freak friends got his hands on a spare copy of the game and gave it to me. The game was made by ACM Technologies; the same company who made the Soul Box; a fully immersive VR kit which was already a chartbuster in terms of sales. The kit was released on Christmas last year, and made the company stand on riches.

The game was scheduled to release on September 17, 2046 9:00 AM GMT; meaning according to the time here in India it would be 2:30 PM that day. Though I was in High School, my mother did not allow me to compromise study for games; she was the strictest person in terms of discipline, not allowing me any unnecessary leaves from school.

That day, I woke up as usual 6:00 AM in the morning, got a warm shower and rushed to school. The day seemed to me very long and time looked like someone dilated it using a black hole. I had already done a little bit of research about the game; the creator’s name was Aya Shua, he had featured twice in the Time’s magazine. He was one of the key designers of the Soul Box as well.

After school, I rushed home on my bicycle as I didn’t want to be late for the release. On reaching home, I ran inside my room and quickly unboxed the packing of the Soul Box. I already got it on New Year but didn’t bother much about unpacking and checking out how it looked. After bringing it out I saw the digital watch on my wall, it read 1:50 PM. I had 40 minutes before the game launches. My mother was at work, father came home only in holidays and my little sister just went off for her math’s tuitions and won’t be back until 8 PM, after her Chess Coaching.

So, I chose to browse the net and study more about the Soul Box and the game. I got a blog written by Aya regarding the Soul Box, it read:

‘The Soul Box is actually based on basic Biology and a little application of quantum physics. It uses two electromagnetic fields to isolate the most important part of the Nervous System, i.e. the brain. The fields lie as co-centric spheres engulfing the whole face, though their effect in front of the face and around it is negligible; they grow really strong inside; strong enough to tap and terminate even the strongest electrical signals inside the nerves entering the brain.’

I looked at the gear of Soul Box thinking, ‘This little guy has no doubt a lot of power.’ Anyways, the time was 2:15 PM and I readied the gear. First step, connect the power source to a 220V AC plug. Next, put on the gear and lock it. The gear itself was very simple; a head gear consisting of two collar mikes and a central support column rushing from just above the eyebrows to behind the neck along with two hand-gloves like gear.

After going through it, the next step was the calibration. First came, a series of commands like touching the toes, shoulders; more sort of a PT exercise and then the mental calibration. I was asked to lie down or sit in a comfortable posture and as I did, everything went blank. Slowly as my eyes adjusted, a triangle of sight came and went green; then came the triangle of touch; then the triangle of taste followed by the triangles of smell and hearing and all went green. Then all triangles joined to form a pentagon and a message displayed Mental Calibration Complete.

Next I inserted the Game Cartridge in the small slot in the Soul Box and it was ready. I waited for the clock to tick until 2:29 PM and geared up the Soul Box, since the calibrations were complete I didn’t need the gloves, so I unplugged them and laid on the bed ready to start the game just as the clock struck 2:30.

The last minute passed and I uttered the start-up command, “Begin Connection” and again everything went blank. I felt like floating in space without the requirement of air. Suddenly, all sorts of flashing lights came out; it was the introductory animation of Blade Work Saga. I entered my User ID-Naperjet and Password, and after entering details about my avatar I proceeded further.

It was a pity that the game had no options to change the appearance of the player, may be due to it being the first of its kind; the developers couldn’t just add enough facial data for all the players, so they contended with their real faces but fortunately the builds were variable. I chose the one closest to my real life build. And then lights flashed ON and OFF, I closed my eyes and suddenly everything seemed bright and then stabilized.

I opened my eyes, and saw myself standing in a bustling square of a big city. It was the City of Starting; I didn’t come here before so I took a tour of the city. My friend once told me that it was spread out in nine small islands spread across a giant lake connected with a bridge. Indeed there were nine islands arranged like blocks in a 3X3 Rubix Cube, the middle one was the square, the three in the north were Volintron Castle, the ones in direct east and west were markets while rest were the residential zones with inns and rented rooms.

I killed a small boar like monster and shouted, “Yah! Can’t defeat me that easy! Ha…Ha…” I took a look at the gained currency and items. The currency was called something like Dor. I was donning the light starter equipment called cloth armor and small iron sword. Suddenly, I heard a shriek, “Aaaaaah…!” I turned around and ran towards the source of sound. I found a girl with brown long hair and blue eyes; running away from the same boar like monster. I could not help but giggle, it caught attention of the girl who turned towards me and shouted, “Hey you! What would you take to get this beast away from me?”

I pouted slyly and said, “Turn around and hit it with a weapon art, its HP is already at 60% a critical hit would…” “Stop it you idiot, help me.” She yelled. Tired of it I readied my sword for a simple one hit weapon art called Incline and shouted, “Get out of the way” and ran towards the boar and unleashed the art. I didn’t stop there and turned around for a simple slash. The combo whittled down the last bit of HP from the boar, giving me some items and dor along with huge amount of EXP. The weapon arts were replacement of magic in BWS; using weapon arts requires you to move in a particular manner like lifting your sword upwards till the shoulder and it will mark the initiation of the weapon art, in this case it was the Incline.

I gave an easy smile on the girl who was panting due to her sprint and asked, “You are a total newbie, why did you… Wait a sec, you don’t seem like you have played any games before?” Now that my vision focused on her, I could not disagree to the fact that she had the most beautiful avatar in the game. She gave a gritted look and picked her weapon, it was a Rapier class one handed sword and pointed it towards me, “Yeah, this is my first video game. But don’t consider me a weakling; I can easily take on guys like you.” I ignored the latter part and turned around to leave.

Suddenly, I felt a bit uneasy and got a little side, just then a flash of light passed brushing me. I laughed out to my limits and said, “Was that a Linear? Seriously I didn’t expect a weapon art to miss a target.” The girl was in the final stage of rage, sensing it I called out for player menu and challenged her for a 1v1 Duel, which she accepted in ‘Full Decisive Mode’.

I joked, “You are no weakling, if you are brave enough to accept the challenge in full decisive. Did you know what that meant?” Now the girl’s name was displayed right above her, along with her player cursor, it read Liza. She gave an awkward look and said, “Who cares as long as it is a decisive duel.” I sighed and looked at the countdown timer; it was a full 90 sec timer for full decisive battle.

As the countdown hit zero, she charged at me with her thrusting weapon; I took a side step and it missed. It can be said as a characteristic of rapiers that they cannot slash through an opponent easily, even if tried the damage was not great. I readied my sword and charged towards her, making it look like an upward attack, she readied her rapier to block it at neck level. She fell for my feint, in the mid of the charge I switched my grip opting for a reverse handed one and struck her from below.

It wasn’t a weapon art, so the damage wouldn’t be enough to kill a player in a single blow but it was a critical hit and she lost 30% of her health going down to yellow. I asked her, “I guess you should resign or I’ll just have to parry your attacks for another 1 min and it’ll be over.” She was surprised, “You sure you won’t kill me here.” I nodded in negative. She shouted the resign command and turned towards me, “You are good, Naperjet. Would you teach me how to play?” Her expression was less like a request, more like an order.

“Heyaa! You are gone for dead.” Liza shouted before slaying another boar. She had hunted down half a dozen of boars with a few minutes of coaching. Liza opened her menu and said, “I’ll take off for today. My parents must be back from work by now, if they found out that I’m here; I’ve got a lecture back home.” After sometime of searching the menu, she asked, “Where’s the log out button supposed to be?”

I was taken aback, I knew that a no log out game is a large bug; but I myself didn’t know where the log out button’s supposed to be. I called out my menu and even after searching each tab and sub-tab, I couldn’t find one. “May be there’s some other way to log out, like the resign command. I remember, in some earlier AR games, they didn’t allow us to log out unless we were in a declared safe zone.”

We were speechless; already we were too far from the main starting city so we had to start a walk from there to the town. The return journey was awfully long and painful as there were no monsters to kill for fun. Suddenly… something strange struck my mind, we were in the middle of a hunting field and no monster popped out. It looked quite strange to me because as far as I knew from my friend is that the spawning rate in hunting fields was never 0. The empty field was just starting to worry me when…

Liza was resting under a tree and suddenly a strange white light engulfed her and she vanished. “What was that?” I murmured, before I could think of anything else the light surrounded me again, I closed my eyes thinking I was being forcibly logged out. I opened my eyes and saw that I was not in my room but at the main square of the starting city.

The whole atmosphere was in the sunset tinge when silver tiles began appearing all over the place. Someone shouted, “It’s a system announcement, may be they have fixed the log out button.” A giant hologram of a man came out, he had a long robe and there was a missing face.

“Welcome to the world of Blade Work Saga, players. My name is Aya Shua; I am currently the only GM of Blade Work Saga or as you call it BWS. As of now, you all must be wondering about the missing log out command from your menu. Well, let me make it clear; the log out button is missing not because of any bug, but it is a feature of this world.

You all have lived your own life like you wished; wasting precious family time in online games. You all lived your lives like a game, so now I’ve decided to let you live this game like your life. Let’s be clear on a few points, when the game began at 9:00 AM GMT there were 5 million players logged in this game. Now the servers of BWS have been sealed inside out, meaning no one can come inside or outside.

To make the game feel more like your life, here’s a gift for you. In your menu, from now on the time of real world will not be shown; only Arcadian Standard Time will be shown. All of you from now onwards will have only one life, meaning if your HP falls to 0, you’ll die here and in the real world.”

‘Is he bluffing?’ I wondered ‘The moment my mother will know that I am struck here she would sever the power connection and I’ll be back in the real world.’

“The Soul Box has an in-built killing program, which is activated now; if your HP runs 0 or if anyone tries to tamper with the Soul Box or the server of BWS, the electromagnetic fields engulfing your brains will change their frequencies to match the resonant frequencies of Infrared and Microwaves. However, the Soul Box has 2 internal batteries, the first one lasting 3 hours while second one lasting 4 hours. This feature however lasts only once and can be used only for one time after that they would be of no use.

All this information right now is being broadcasted live through the internet and media. As of now many parents, friends and relatives of players have tried to ignore this warning; as a result... There are one thousand six hundred and forty two players less now than there were at the launch of the game.

There is no need to worry about your physical bodies back in the real world. The current state of the game and today’s fatalities is known to the whole world. The danger that someone will forcefully remove your Soul Box is already much diminished. The seven hour battery backup should provide enough time for your physical bodies to be transported to hospitals and other long-term care facilities with proper security, eliminating concerns over your physical well-being. You may rest assured…and focus on conquering the game.

The only way out of this game is by clearing all the 1000 stages of the game. Once the 1000^th Stage Master is defeated all remaining players would be logged out immediately. I declare that all that is happening here is not for any ransom or something like that.

This concludes the official tutorial for Blade Work Saga. Good Luck Players; you’ll need it.”

“He is really crazy… No one can do like that” these voices came from the crowd; there was yelling, begging, sobbing and all sorts of emotion. But I didn’t have the time for that. I knew that Shua will not bluff, and he did have a greater reason for that; most of the people here were hard-core gamers who used to play games for hours, for them life was nothing more than a game. Shua just reversed the trend, now this game was their… not just their but our life. My own life was now just a number, I glanced on the top-left side of my vision the number showed 1093/1093 and my level was 1.

I ran across the square and found Liza, took her hand and rushed inside the residential zone. She was clearly terrified, “What the GM said was true?” I had no answer, nor was I interested in the answer. I spoke slowly, “We have 2 choices right now, wait until some help comes or fight our way out. What would you choose?” She stood up, readying her rapier, “What’s the next plan?” She seriously did have nerves of steel, I must say that.

We left the town as soon as possible; I could feel my senses accelerated. After we went through the forests, hunting down monsters that came in our way and leveling up twice en-route; we camped for a little while in the Hevin Woods. Our aim was to reach Hevin, a small village across the woods by sun down, which was almost an hour away.

Our encounters in the Hevin woods were near zero, but it still contained some powerful wolf monsters. It took us around 50 mins to reach Hevin. Hevin was a safe-zone, a place where your HP regenerates automatically and can never decrease. On seeing the safe-zone message, we got some relief and then checked our stats. We both had grown up to level-3 and had 8 build points to invest. Liza invested 6 in agility, 1 in vitality and 1 in strength; while I invested 3 in agility, 2 in vitality and 3 in strength. We both had 2 empty ability slots also, Liza didn’t fill them immediately but I filled them right with Search and Hiding abilities.

“What are these things anyway? I know agility means speed, but how would they affect us.” Liza asked me childishly. I was immediately taken aback, “You didn’t know about these builds and invested your points in them?” I sighed, though there was an option that allowed you to reset the investment in starting levels. I continued, “Anyways, Agility means how much fast you can run, evade and swing the sword. Vitality means how much attack you can tank and strength means how much damage increment can be there.”

She appeared confused mostly may be to my latter explanation. I was no teacher so I opened the stats window of my sword and explained, “You see the DPS of this sword is a range from 10-73. It means at minimum strength you deal 10 DPS while 73 for maximum strength required. Beyond that Strength stat, this weapon becomes useless” showing her all the stats.

Next up we went inside the village and found ourselves an inn. Officially, we were group members; a group is just a collection of player ranging from 2 to 10, group members have common temporary storage apart from personal storage. Every 10 hours, the temporary storage was divided equally by the system itself or if players do it before hand.

It was night; my menu showed me the time of 9:45 PM. I ventured out of the inn and found all NPC’s to stand out as usual. I took out my map and looked around for quests, there were 2 quests in the village; each marked by a Silver (!) mark. I reached both quest locations and accepted them. They were single quests required to be done by a single player. Liza was fast asleep in the inn and I ran as fast as I could towards the other end of Hevin woods. The first quest was a slaughter one, requiring me to kill 13 Howling Wolves. Strangely enough, the wolves were now in an exceeding quantity. Moreover, when its HP dropped in yellow; it howled gathering 2 more wolves.

The quest requirement was fulfilled in 10 mins, but till that time I was surrounded by nearly a dozen of them. Since there was no way to kill them all, I thought of using the Hiding ability. The dark environment supported the ability and I hid myself in the darkest crook present. The hide stat was at 85% and remained constant there. The environment cleared within 5 mins, and I proceeded towards the next quest.

The next one required me to collect 5 Boar Leather, dropped by the Brawling Boar in the Hunting ground. I opened my inventory as noted that I already had 4 of these, “So that leaves me 1 less.” I looked around for a small boar, which would be easy to kill. My search radius found one and rushed towards it, only to realize that the little one was a trap; which led to me surrounded by quite a number of the boars. My search radius showed me that I was surrounded by 10 while another dozen of boars were approaching from all sides.

“That would take some time.” I whispered to myself and charged at the nearest boar unleashing the area effective weapon art Incline. I didn’t get a critical hit, but it still reduced the HP of the 3 charging boars to 0. Without paying heed to the rewards window or the quest update, I continued my onslaught; but to my bad luck their back-up arrived when I was still attacked by 3 original boars. That made the odds at 15 against 1, though they were all level 1 mobs and I had leveled up to 4 they could easily overwhelm me by their sheer numbers.

Surrounded and attacked, slowly my HP was falling into yellow and then into the red zone of danger. Only 10% of HP was left and there were still 6 boars to finish off. ‘Let’s try something new’ I thought and gave a massive jump, jump heights were decided by both Strength and Agility stats. Since I invested equally in them, the jump height was nearly 10 feet. At the maximum height, I readied my sword for another weapon art Erected Slash; I just got the art when my proficiency with the weapon increased to 10.

The art was an area effective but the damage was not too great. It would kill the 4 nearest to the impact and stun the rest ones for minimum 10 secs. The art hit all the boars simultaneously, to my surprise 5 boars disintegrated while the last one had HP in red zone. A simple slash attack and it was done. ‘It’s over’ I sighed nearly dropping to my knees, exhausted. I took a look at my sword, the battle took quite a strain on it and its durability ran at 20%.

I stood to my feet and again rushed towards Hevin, I utilized my Search and Hiding abilities to avoid as many monsters as I could. My HP was at 5% and a single hit would be enough reduce it to 0. I finally reached Hevin and saw Liza standing at the gate, red with rage. My HP had begun to heal, and looking at my tarnished armor and weapons she yelled, “What the heck were you doing?” “Well… um… I was just doing” suddenly I stopped and thinking something I asked, “Weren’t you asleep at the inn? How’d you know that I was outside?”

My HP now was maxed up, Liza told me that she was awakened by nightmares and then she saw my HP go down from 100% to 5% and she came out looking for me. We went back to the quest NPC’s and got our rewards. Out of the endless dor, EXP and items; I was particularly interested in two rewards. The slaughter quest gave me an Annealed Bow, a C-class weapon and the collection quest gave me a Gunmetal Sword. I gave the Annealed Bow to Liza.

She was surprised by my concern, I simply said, “This is a death game anyway, so survival comes first. Your rapier skills are good, but since you are afraid to come in front. Why don’t you try archery skills? I think they would give you the same speed benefit with a better range.” She didn’t say anything, after the announcement by Shua; she was too terrified to face any monster here. She thanked me and swapped her primary weapon from Iron Rapier to Annealed Bow.

She left for her room in the inn, and I left for mine. The time on the clock showed Dram 1, 0001 11:45 PM. I laid on my bed thinking, ‘Did my mom try to pull out the Soul Box? No it can’t be! If it were like that then I would have been deleted from here, the only reason I am living here is because my family totally adhered to Shua’s warning.

I want to meet up with them. I want to meet up with sister, with my mother, with my dad. Till today afternoon, I felt their presence just as a measure of annoyance, but now after realizing that I am a prisoner, after my close brush with death in the hunting ground; now I wanted to go back to them, go back and cry in the arms of my mom.

I want to meet up with them. But that was not something that could be allowed. After all, the multiple electromagnetic fields let out by the Soul Box severed my consciousness from the real world completely, imprisoning me within this world.’

The First Stage

It has been 25 days since this game of death began, and now clearing even the first stage seemed impossible. We already lost about four thousand players in this game, and we are nowhere close to find our way to the next stage. The underground dungeon’s entrance though has been found but we still just manage to go round and round in the dungeon with no clues of the Stage Master.

The clearers, a group of players who constantly pushed the front lines, i.e. who explored the unknown regions are mapped them; were stationed in Alwen, a small city near the entrance of the dungeon. Everyday meetings were organized to discuss the future strategy, but no use even after mapping 70% of the dungeon we were no close to find the Stage Master’s chamber.

Liza and I got another invitation for strategic meeting; I was avoiding all sorts of these meetings till now. However, it was written that the meeting was crucial in order to complete the stage. Reluctantly, I agreed to join. The meeting was held in a large open air auditorium like structure. The central figure in the meeting was a knight-like player. I saw around and the whole auditorium was brimming with all sorts of players, a total of 52 including us. Just as he was about to start…

“Heeeey!” a voice roared from within the auditorium. A guy with a short stature and blue hair stood up from the audience and marched towards the make-shift stage. “Before we continue, I think there are a few people who owe us an apology.” “Are you referring to the former beta testers, David?” The knight asked without a change of expression.

The guy named David twitched his brow and continued, “Yeah! Those guys ran away just as the game of began leaving all others behind. They quickly got through profitable quests and hunting grounds, leveled up heavily and didn’t care about the lads left behind. I do know that in this crowd there must 3 – 5 testers here, we ought to take them out in the open and strip them of their dor and equipment and distribute it amongst the ones fighting the master.”

Everyone was whispering amongst themselves, it seemed like the whole meeting is going to turn against the beta testers. I wasn’t a beta tester myself, but I did share one thing common with them; the knowledge of events during beta tests. The friend of mine who was a tester (Honestly, I don’t know if he played the retail version or not) used to give me videos of the day’s game play which I used to watch. The reason I asked him to give me a copy of this game is because I was really fascinated by the game play.

“If you’d like it then I would like to say something.” A guy sitting in the front row got up and said, “The guy’s name is Neetto. You are proposing that all former beta testers are the reason that four thousand players have died. Am I clear about that?” That guy’s built was no doubt Strength-Agility based. Neetto’s character really outmatched David’s, who could only nod in affirmative. “Then who would be considered responsible for the deaths of nearly a thousand beta testers? The only thing that differentiates former testers from us is their knowledge, but some former testers are distributing their knowledge through the Arcadian Guide. So there is nothing really, that makes you inferior to the testers; only if you want to consider yourself.”

The knight stepped forward and said, “The information regarding the farms, their dangers etc. were already out in the open. If someone failed to analyze the depth and seriousness of the situation, it’s their fault not of former testers. I hope David’s concerns were addressed to the fullest, I invite anyone who has any concerns or issues please come forth now.” No one came out and the two moved to their respective places.

“My name is Arthur and I welcome you all to this strategic meeting. Last day, a group has declared that they found the entrance to the Stage Master’s room. So, let’s see what the guide has to say –

The first stage master is a goblin. Its name is Gribble the Goblin Giant. He has no armor protection and uses a hammer along with a shield. When its HP turns red, it regains 50% again and changes the weapon to an estoc. The giant is surrounded by other little goblins that spawn at every two minutes. The giant has 4 full HP bars, which can regenerate if attack is paused for more than 2 mins.

So basically, the strategy is to attack hard and fast and simultaneously take out all the supporting goblins. Let’s defeat the Stage Master and tell everyone here that this game is beatable.”

The assault on the Stage master was decided after 2 days. The days were basically to scout and learn about the Master and buy the necessary equipment. However, I and Liza already had strong enough equipment for this stage. So, we decided to take up some quests. To our surprise, the area behind the dungeon was unexplored; so we decided to explore the unmapped area and found a hidden quest giving NPC. As we interacted with the NPC, we found out that it was a quest series called ‘The Master Quest’. I wondered, “Guess no one bothered to take it up” and hit the accept button.

The quest series though time consuming was not a tough one. The last quest asked us to save an old goblin from the minions of the Stage Master. As we did it, killing 6 goblin minions who were trying to kill the old goblin; the old one gave us crucial information regarding the Stage Master. The Stage Master used to be the most powerful goblin ever and once challenged that anyone in group or one-on-one could never defeat him, and if someone was close to he would change the weapon to a Shamshir (a Persian One-Handed Curved Sword) and slash him with the sword and more powerful minions.

I didn’t know what to do with the information, I considered telling everyone but dropped the idea as others might see the guide as fake and the friction between former testers and the players may increase further. I kept the information to myself and we took all the rewards, leveling up. I grew to Level 13 and Liza to Level 12; we later noticed the date being Dram 27, 0001 4:45 PM.

We raced to the southern outskirts of Alwen, where we were renting an NPC’s house for 100 dor a week. It was a little expensive than the inns, which charged 70 dor a week but it was okay for the facilities they provided. We went in with our dinner, cheap brown bread with some fresh milk cream. We ate it; its taste was like eating bread made of oats along with milk cream. Anyways it made us feel full, though the food eaten here has got nothing to do with our real bodies.

The next day, the raid at the Master Chamber was initiated. The raid group of 52 members had five full sized groups and a small group of 2. Out of the 5 full teams, 2 were tanks wearing heavy metal armor with shields and mostly hammer–class weapons; 1 was attackers wearing light armors and equipped with spears, swords and staffs; 1 was supporter unit having variety of weapons and the last ones were ranged support mostly archers along with 2 tanks to prevent enemies from lurking near them.

The strategy was simple, the tanks soaked up the damage while the attackers and ranged support units hit the Master from close and long ranges respectively. The supporter unit killed the spawned goblins around the master. We weren’t given any particular duty though, but we already decided our roles. Liza would attack the Master from long range but another direction while I would attack it on its supposed weak point, i.e. the heart and kidney locations in a body.

The Stage Master’s room was right in front of us. The big hall room had strange orange tint in the atmosphere, Arthur shouted, “Everyone take your positions and keep all necessary healing items handy.” As the raiders took formations, a green giant began taking shape in front of us. Finally, the identification cursor appeared on top of it its name was Gribble the Goblin Giant. “It is just like what was told in the guide. Everyone watch out for area attacks, and charge!!!”

The whole raid team plunged upon the Stage Master; everything was going according to plan. 30 minutes passed and the third HP bar was 0. The fourth bar, due to some reason was already red; the SM threw away its hammer and shield towards us, the forwards evaded the attacks but some archers were hit by it, sending their HP bar to red.