Chapter 3: Breakfast with an unfamiliar friend

The creature at the elf woman’s side was fascinating and looked the most advanced of the pair. The creature stood on two legs and looked reptilian for the most part. It had a vividly coloured scaled underbelly in a riot of purples and yellows that had an almost hypnotic shifting patterning to them. The scales everywhere apart from the creature’s stomach were thick and plate-like and had the beginnings of a nose horn forming on its short, powerful-looking snout. As it stood, its tail flicked side to side like a cat’s, presumably to maintain balance. The smaller creature was a vaguely round bundle of fur with large ears. It had six eyes and a wide toothy mouth. It stood on stubby legs and had a tail that seemed too long for its fat little purple-grey tiger-striped body. It stood closer to the human player with the bow. If the two noticed me, they paid me no mind walking past me without so much as a backward glance. The creature whose name appeared as Ruin, (tragically edgy, I know) dropped to all fours and followed its mistress. A facultative biped like some ape species still found on Earth. I watched them go, admiring the creatures. The big lizard’s back was more heavily plated than its front, two bone-like protrusions jutted from just above its powerful shoulder blades. What’s more, it moved with a sinuous, deadly grace. Claws scraping audibly against the fitted flagstone tiles that made up the main road, the large heavy tails stirring up the days accumulated dust and detritus. The unidentifiable fuzzy creature moved with a startling speed that I had never expected would be possible with such stubby little legs, probably some sort of game thing at work; and as such, I missed my chance to learn its name. The creatures had left an impression and I was excited to see what sort of monster I would help shape.

It was late when I made it back to the tavern and settled into my room preparing to log out when a repeating chime began in my head. I paused, confused at the familiar sound indicating an incoming voice call. I thought about the sound which brought up a window informing me that my friend Alber was calling me.

Alber was perhaps one of my oldest friends and the one who had finally convinced me to give Concordat Online a try. He was a hardcore player from what he and a few others had told me when I had expressed my growing interest in the game. Alber had played from the game’s launch and my day amongst the denizens of CO had given me many questions. Questions I couldn’t figure out how to word to the NPCs, still not terribly certain about how much they understood the nature of their reality. I mentally clicked accept.

“Hey, hey buddy. Enjoying the game?” He asked without pausing to allow me to answer and launched into his habitual partially distracted rambling “Oh, shit compactor, hold on dude, one second.” I heard a sound very similar to a roar and another sound I could only assume was crumbling stone.

“Are you in CO just now?” I asked, scowling. He did this a lot, called me mid-whatever he was doing, usually something siege-related or something that his massive monster, a beast called a Magebane Hydra, had done to an enemy, building or town. He was always half distractedly chattering about what he was doing or half answering long since abandoned questions that I had forgotten I’d even asked.

“Yeah, just stomping an outpost of a rival guild with Lord Snorg.” There was the sound of an explosion, he chuckled as if in response. “Anyway, I’ve seen you’ve been playing for a couple of hours, how are you finding it?”

“That can’t be right dude, it’s night-time now, I’ve been playing for at least eight hours, I should probably get up and stretch,” I told him, scowling at his forgetfulness. “Maybe call it a night, dude, there’s definitely something wrong if you consider eight hours a ‘couple’.”

“Nah man, the game does some cool stuff with the perception of time. It’s roughly ten minutes real-time to an hour in-game time, It’s like nineteen hundred hours or something. One sec.” More sounds of destruction and combat, there was a gleeful giggle and a muffled string of obscenities.

“Oh, then yeah it’s been good so far. I did the starter quest with the local militia. Got some skill-ups, exp and some gear.”

“You bothered with that stuff?” He asked, sounding dumbfounded. “Most people just bugger off through the south gate and catch their slimes.

“Slimes?” I asked, feeling annoyed with Alber for dismissing my experience so far as a waste of time.

“Don’t get me wrong, dude,” Alber continued, ignoring my obvious question. “It’s cool that you did that, best get used to some of the shit the games going to put you and whatever your slime becomes through. You have caught a slime, right?”

“Would I ask about them if I had?” I pointed out, flopping into the bed I had back at the inn in the Travellers’ district. The linens and crappy mattress that I had disdained earlier now felt a great deal comfier to my sore body. I decided to repeat myself to ensure that he had definitely heard me. “So, what is the deal with slimes, Alber?”

“Slimes, yeah so you know in the cut scene before character creation how the god person mooshes the thing with the rock? Well when she did that, slimes rained down and they basically… you feed them stones which gives them like elemental powers or like body shapes or features and stuff. So yeah, people catch slimes and feed them these stones…” he continued like this for another ten minutes, I just lay there looking at my various stat and character windows. One seemed to be my base stats which then, depending on their value, added additional modifiers to my attacks, or mana, stamina, Ki, and health pools respectively. Given that I had no idea I whether my stats were any good I interrupted Alber’s rambling explanation that slimes were baby monsters that players fed various types of magical stones and things to shape their appearance and abilities.

“So, I’m looking at my stats here Alber.” I told him “Are these any good?”

“Alright, rattle ‘em off dude.”

“My strength is twelve, my stamina is eleven and everything else is ten.”

“That sounds about average, most NPCs tend to have stats like that.” He explained, “Is there any part of the window that says available points? It should be somewhere at the bottom of the window.”

I sat up and inspected my window more carefully, swiping through them until I returned to my stats page. Sure, enough at the bottom of the window it read: Unassigned Attribute points, ten. I told Alber as much. He groaned at me.

“You let the AI make your character didn’t you,” He accused, almost sounding hurt. “Man, come on you should have asked me about this! From the sounds of it you’re an orc. AI characters just have their stats set to ten then racial bonuses are applied. Orcs are basically designed to take damage and deal it back. I’ve fought some of the NPC variety once when some players started a war. Anyway, you don’t want to be spending points in your physical attributes, it’s all about the magic and your monster. You want to be putting points into charisma, wisdom, and intellect. That’s the CHA, WIS and INT attributes. Charisma seems lame but it helps build a rapport with your beast, when you’ve got one, but you’ve spent most of your time playing with the militia.”

“Don’t worry I’ll be heading out the eastern gate tomorrow, or later, I guess. I’ll assign my stats then log off so I’m hanging up now.”

“What for real? Wait!” He shouted at me over the communication. “Look, I’m basically finished with what I’m doing on this character, what start zone did you spawn into?”

“Meadows Edge,” I told him before ending the call. If I was going to begin assigning stat points, I had to give it my full attention. Alber had told me in no uncertain terms that players, as Torsgulf and the other militia members had mentioned, relied on magic and their monsters. I understood that it was probably a more comfortable experience, having your monster engage in the combat while the player hung back and hurled spells at the foe; but I had enjoyed doing the fighting myself. I began assigning points.

When I logged back into CO an hour or so later, I found that the time dilation Alber had told me about was correct. While I had been offline the passage of time had continued and a new day had begun. As I came down the stairs from the spot that served as my spawn in point the tavern below was already bustling with the morning trade. Watchmen of the militia were coming in for their dinners as tradesmen and merchants grabbed a quick breakfast. The bar at the back of the room wasn’t crowded so I headed there, the crowd parting to allow for my massive orcish stature.

“What’ll it be, mister Opensky?” The barkeep, the same dwarf as yesterday, asked.

“Eggs.” I said, humouring the NPC, I didn’t need to eat but it didn’t hurt to take part. “And bacon.”

He nodded and bustled away to the kitchen leaving me alone at the bar, or so I thought.

“Ahem.” Someone coughed to my left, I turned, surprised. I hadn’t seen anyone as I approached and even now there was no one in the next stool along. There was a tug at my pant leg. “Down here, dude.”

I looked down. At my side was the tiniest person I had ever seen. He was about three feet tall and had large pink eyes, which he used to stare up at me from under long, shaped eyebrows. He scowled at me, small mouth tightening into a thin line. He had a round child-like face topped with a pile of bright green curls coupled with a long pointed, well-groomed, overly long goatee. As I focused in on him blue lettering appeared above him. ‘Fizzlewiz Brightbang Level 1.’

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Oh uh, hey.” I said, scratching my bald head awkwardly. I had been warned that sometimes new players or returning players would beg people for gold and items. I had been assured they were insistent and ‘not above catfishing you’. Whatever that is. “You a new player too?”

“No, you idiot. It’s me!” He gestured frantically; it was adorable.

“I’m sorry I don’t think you have the right person.” I said. “It’s a big game, you’ve likely spawned in at a random start zone like me.”

He facepalmed with enough force to result in a meaty slap. It was familiar somehow.

“It’s me, Alber.” He sighed, massaging at his temples. “I decided to join you now that my guilds involvement in the current conflict is pretty much over, I thought I’d join you in the noob zones. Show you the ropes.”

“And you picked to play a gnome?” I asked, kneeling down to be at Alber’s height while trying not to laugh at my friend. In the real world he was close to my avatar’s height but not so heavily muscled. I liked being taller than him for once.

“This is your fault you know.” He pointed out shoving at me ineffectually. “I decided to give the random character creation a go and this was the result.” He sighed, turning to climb atop the adjacent stool. “At least gnomes have all right racial bonuses for magic users.”

I sat back on my own seat as the barkeep returned with a plate of food. As it was set in front of me Alber, or Fizzlewiz, smirked at me as I inspected my food. I cocked an eyebrow at him, raising the bacon to my monstrous lips.

“Is this your first time eating in the game?” He asked, large expressive eyes sparkling with anticipation.

“Uh, yeah, an NPC called Katrina took me to see someone in the military quarter,” I explained putting the bacon back down, turning to face my friend and his unfamiliar appearance. “Wasn’t too much time to sample the food.”

“Oh her?” He chuckled “Yeah man, I sent her away. No way I’m wasting time just to go through a different gate when I can just head south and through the farmlands to get a monster. I’ve even sent some stones over in the account storage that I won from a drop. I have an idea for something interesting while you pansy about with a shield and an axe.”

I made a grim face at him, making sure to show off my impressive tusks before shovelling a handful of bacon into my mouth. My face went slack as flavour exploded into being, the grease and the saltiness went hand and hand with the rich umami of meat; something that wasn’t readily available back home. I wasn’t sure if the pork had been salted or smoked but I didn’t much care, contently chewing on the meat as a cow might cud. Fizzlewiz shot me a knowing look as my hand reached for more of the delicious foodstuff.

“Now be careful with that,” he warned, “it tricks your brain into thinking you’ve eaten when you haven’t. Few of the boys I played with were hospitalized until their weight went back up and even now, they have restrictions on their playtime. Anyway, we should talk now before we get on with the business of monster catching.”

“Oheuh?” I grunted through a mouth full of egg and some sort of fried bread that had come with the meal. I swallowed, choked, and was slapping my chest as Fizzlewiz continued.

“Yes, so anyway we’ve got to go to where-ever the temple is in this start zone. There we can receive a stone that guarantees us a slime capture, sometimes they even have elemental affinities or are close to taking on a form,” he explained. “But for the most part they’ll have a handful of random skills and an elemental typing. Anyway, from there I’ll head with you to the eastern gate. The account storage place is near there according to the map. Then I’ll head south while you head off to do your thing in the east.”

“Oh, I thought we would be playing together?” I commented, having finally moved the ball of egg and bacon further down my throat.

“Oh, we will. We can party up and send text-based messages to one another, it’ll also fill in the island map faster for both of us as the terrain information is shared as well. Eventually we can pinpoint whatever McGuffin the NPCs will send us after to gain passage and head to the mainland. But we need to be at least Level five, might be worth staying longer for you to get the swing of things.”

I nodded as Fizzlewiz continued with a detailed plan and explanation of the combination of items and stones he was going to use to shape his creature. We left the inn after paying our separate bills as Fizzlewiz or ‘Fizzle’, which Alber was insisting he be called, had ordered food and I took the opportunity to get a second plate.

The Temple District, like most of Meadows Edge was arrayed in an orderly manner. Once you left the main roads to go down cobbled side-roads heading through the urban ‘Garden District’ in the west of the town. It was empty at this time of day; the members of each respective household we passed were already at work or remained behind closed doors. So, we made quick progress, eventually ascending a well-worn series of rises to the temple district above.

The temples within the complex were grander than anything I had ever seen. Based on a variety of ancient Earth cultures from early in our shared past. It seemed to me as we moved amongst the sprawling spiritual site each were seemingly trying to dwarf the other, or perhaps built in a way to best appease the gods they served. Fizzle ignored all of it as he moved at a jog towards the temple.

“Come on dude.” He beckoned me to hurry, jogging on the spot though I was only a few strides behind him with my longer, normal-sized legs. He was short, I loved it as much as he clearly hated it. “And don’t you offer to carry me again…once was enough.”

I shrugged at him, then gestured at all the palatial buildings around us. Fizzle looked unimpressed, he turned and pointed at one particularly impressive building made of shaped stone blocks with six white marble pillars in two matching lines of three leading to the entrance of the peak roofed building. The entranceway within was carved with fantastical representations of pale, nude elf women that couldn’t help but draw my eye.

“These,” he gestured once more at the building, “are basically mud huts compared to the buildings I’m used to seeing and destroying.” He sniffed.

“Well, it’s my first time seeing them.” I explained sounding a little wounded. “You know I’ve not played stuff like this before. Which God does this represent?”

He looked at the temple for a moment stroking his ridiculous goatee as if it were a beloved pet. I expected that he loved it, he had never really had much in the way of facial hair offline. He pointed at it again and said with certainty.

“That, my friend, is a temple to Aphros, the God of love and thought to be the creator of the sun elves.” He pointed to another, this one looked like a crypt entrance straight out of some b-rate horror, before it a black monolith of some sort of reflective black stone hovered a foot above the ground; it was way at the end of the road we had been walking down. “That is where we are going. That is the Temple of Lil and that is where we will get the stones we need to get monsters.”

His tone had gained a pleading quality. No doubt while he was happy to indulge my questions about the meta of the game but any time I had expressed interest in lore he had been dismissive or rambled. I knew that he didn’t pay very much attention to the storyline or lore. No, he was in it for the violence and the loot. I had watched him play once. It was an action-packed affair, full ofmayhem, fire, and the raucous song of battle. This must have been mind-numbing to the little guy.

“All right, let’s get the stones.” I sighed. I’d ask Katrina about the pantheon if I saw her again back at the tavern.

As we passed by the monolith before the entrance to Lil’s temple I paused and extended a hand to touch the stone. The stone was cold to the touch, and incredibly smooth. I got the impression that the stone was both ancient and natural, it had never known the bite of a chisel. My hand flat against the great edifice, I could feel a hum building within the stone and something within me responded. For the briefest of moments, it was just me and the surreal stone. Then Fizzlewiz pulled my hand away, yet it tingled for a few moments after contact was broken. He looked up at me and let go of my wrist. Shaking his head, he planted his hands on his hips and heaved an exaggerated sigh before leading the way down into the temple’s depths.

Inside, down a flight of black marble steps, a long narrow corridor of rough-cut stone walls, halls branching off at various intervals, the sound of trickling water carried along the hall from an unseen source. At the hall’s end, a fractured stone statue of a woman stood above an altar, wrapped in black and grey rags of different lengths and fabrics. ‘Lil,’ I thought; and as with the cinematics, her unsettling beauty captivated me. I thought it was strange when I noticed Fizzle just as enthralled with the effigy of our patron as I.

With a mental shrug I attributed it to the game. We moved closer to the statue; Fizzle was reaching for something beneath the water pooling at the statue’s feet. There was the gentle sound of rustling fabric and two women clad in grey robes and black veils of diaphanous fabric appeared. Their faces were covered, and the matching pair emerged from crudely carved halls that led deeper into the complex beyond. They bowed to us both then one raised her arms and began to speak in a sonorous voice.

“Blessing of Lil upon ye, her Chosen.” She seemed to bail out the words. “Masters of monsters, shapers of kingdoms…”

“Now hold on there, dude.” Fizzle squeaked at the taller figure, turning to roll his eyes at me. “We’ve heard all of this before. We are here to receive our fragments of the first stone so we may form our concord with our fated creatures.”

“Then allow us to begin the ritual to bequeath upon you, her most loved of her siblings creations, her blessings.” She intoned raising her arm, her counterpart quiet until now raising her arms in unison.

“No, no, that’s okay. I am favoured in the eyes of Divine Lil, wherever she may watch from.” He replied in a poor show of theatrics, parroting her intonations as he began rolling up the sleeves of his tan shirt that was part of the starting attire. “Behold!”

Fizzle reached forward and plucked a small pebble from the pool at Lil’s feet. The second of the priests, gestured for me to the same. An annoyed growl escaping my throat and a snort, some sort of orc emotes to show displeasure or mild annoyance on my new features. Unwilling to go through the ordeal of unlacing the vambraces that were part of the padded jerkin I was wearing, I reached into the water. I met more resistance than I would have expected. It was warm as-well, and as it engulfed my hand I swear I felt it move. Before it could transition from weird into unpleasant my fingers brushed against the edge of a smooth, round pebble. I snatched it, jerking my hand out of what I was unsure was water anymore. It barely rippled before falling still. I had expected something more. It was, at first glance, just a regular, dark grey pebble worn smooth by water or some other innately natural phenomena. I focused in on it, prompting an item description to pop up as I inspected the smooth stone with more intent.

Sacred Slime Stone

Item quality: common

A stone obtained from a Temple of Lil.

It guarantees the capture of a slime.

Qty. 1

Followed swiftly by a follow-up tutorial message, but as Fizzle was already clambering his way up the stairs, I moved it aside for later inspection and followed my friend towards the stairs and out into the early afternoon sun.

“Behold sister,” The first priest observed, “the zeal of the Chosen of Lil. So eager to fulfil their divine purpose they dare not tarry. Fare thee well noble adventurers, may she watch over you and keep you from death.” With that the two parted. re-entering their perspective hallways. When I looked back as I made to follow Fizzle they had gone, as had the passages they had exited through.