Graceville had grown to be a modest Christian village inside of Chronos. It was in the middle of winter and snow had padded the entire landscape. Not overly built up, made up of modest settlers just looking to enjoy social lives, make some gold, learn the game at their own pace, maybe learn a crafting trade and earn enough to afford their first spell book, it attracted a lot of newer players that felt overwhelmed and were just trying to get their feet wet, not the most ambitious crowd, but the town certainly had potential down the road.
It was situated in a nice arena of Chronos where the players could feel the steady changing of seasons throughout the year, giving a nice variety and a way to feel time passing without having to look at calendars and watches as the Sun’s effect were extremely consistent.
People didn’t worry about time here like they did in the real world. People consistently said stuff like, I’ll meet you at the tavern at dawn was common, most of them woke up with the Sun, went to bed with the sun, stayed inside in the winter or enjoyed the hot springs, played different sports throughout the spring and fall, sun bathed and enjoyed pool time during the summer. It was a nice life for people just transitioning from the real world. Graceville instilled a nice first impression, it instilled optimism for the first time in a lot of these player’s lives.
It’s no wonder they feel the need to make a slow transition, because they fear what they think to be an inevitable boot drop, the boot always drops eventually, at least, in their experience. Why would this be any different? Coming from the outside world where they had felt the slow python squeeze of modern enslavement; it was easy to feel Chronos was too good to be true. They had been saved to a certain extent, but this was not an experience they were familiar with, they didn’t trust it, and they were smart not to trust it, that lack of trust is embedded through real world experience. They new at any point; the game could be shut down for any number of reasons.
The only thing that provided them with hope was the fact that they were experiencing Chronos’s reality through time dilation. Chronos, in the outside world, only had to be online for three months, for them to experience an entire life, or a “run”, more popularly called. And Vulcan did have a truly elite team of lawyers, lawyers thrived in corrupt societies and business was booming.
The reason Shoftiel had chosen Graceville as his main hub is that none of the big players had even a first thought about the place. Almost everything Shoftiel did, had to do with keeping a low profile, he only risked exposure when the payoff was massive, and also, Graceville was an exceedingly comfortable village and had a nice positive atmosphere generated from the new hopeful players, a lot of them had to save up money to afford their first run. It was expensive entering Chronos, they were happy to have made it in.
The story about how Shoftiel came across the spell book: Warp, will have to be told in more detail later but for now, just understand that this book is one of the most powerful spell books in Chronos. Once the book was read and the teachings were mastered, which took a lot of time and energy, the player with it in their inventory, could teleport anywhere throughout Chronos that the player could imagine accurately enough in their mind. It took Shoftiel many years during his second run to master this spell-book but since then, he has become one of the most influential players in Chronos. He has learned many things and has in his possession many spell books hidden throughout his homes and places of safe keeping, but Warp is by far, his most powerful possession; a lot of what his life has become, in the game, revolves around his ability to maintain ownership and use this tool to spread his influence.
On the bottom left corner on the first page of the book it reads: 1/3, which states how many of the specific spell books exist inside Chronos. He had never heard of a one of one, so it might be at least tied for the rarest book in the game. There’s no way for him to be sure unfortunately.
The book had appeared to him just after he had pulled off a successful assassination of an extremely dangerous player and saved a total of five lives at the same time. Did he find the book just after that event by coincidence? Was it related to his good deed? He couldn’t be sure.
Being killed or ending a life in Chronos is a significant thing because if you die, as per the terms of service, you are disconnected from NSS and forced out of your pod and ushered through the barracks, back into the real by agents of Chronos for an entire real week. A week passing in the outside world, due to the time dilation produced from NSS, results in being removed from Chronos for just over six years in game time. All your stuff will have been taken, your home occupied, everyone will most likely have forgotten your name and moved on, all social status slowly disintegrated, and meanwhile, everyone who is alive is progressing and you are not. And it’s really painful usually, the NSS system does not hold back, and has influence over all nerves throughout the player’s body, Vulcan is very clear about wanting significant consequences in the game, he believes without extreme consequences, such as pain, there is no satisfying progression, no reason to be careful, and no true immersion.
Shoftiel took Warp as a blessing and decided he would continue providing justice throughout Chronos. He still had to be extremely careful and calculated with his preparations toward each thing he wanted to accomplish; warp had drawbacks, he could not simply use the book as an escape method for every situation because it takes quite a bit of mental meditation before the teleportation can occur, and he didn’t want anyone knowing that he was in possession of it so that came with certain omissions and lies he had to maintain with anyone he interacted with, including his girlfriends. He often had to do what he needed to do, then go live elsewhere for a week or two, and then warp back to Graceville, just so they believed he had spent time traveling.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Shoftiel had many homes spread throughout Chronos but he liked the insignificance of Graceville and it didn’t hurt that his current girlfriends, who were newer players, really liked it as well, and they lived in his home, took care of his German Shepard Shadow when he was gone, and got along with each other. Shoftiel was enough for both of them, at least, for now. The girls liked that he would teach them things, he was extremely experienced in the game and in other things, and he’d give them different tools to use, and an early spell book for each of them; that would have been extremely hard for them to get this early themselves. Aurora had already learned and mastered the first few chapters of the spell book: Mend; she was becoming quite the healer and Shoftiel was in need of her services again.
Shoftiel had taken more damage than he was comfortable in this last mission, blood wouldn’t stop seeping from a gash in his thigh stretching all the way to his knee, he didn’t know about his enemy’s proficiency in the spell book: Barrier, this had caught him off-guard. Messy as it was, it was a successful mission, the barrier spell-book was also now in his possession as a plus, and he had just found an empty bedroom In the well build castle.
Shoftiel, fully dressed in tattered robes, a large leather satchel and a walking stick, sat down on a finely crafted maroon rug with golden accents in front of a queen sized bed, laid his walking stick across his thighs, ignoring as much pain as he could, the pain was deep in his thigh and knee. He quickly tried to cross his legs out of habit and grimaced in more pain. He had to adjust and leave his left leg stretched out while pulling out his sketchbook from his satchel under his robes. He could usually manage without the sketchbook but he found that it did speed up the process and he knew it was going to be hard to concentrate though the pain and this awkward position he was forced into and then there was the blood loss of his wound, he was getting dizzier and dizzier and was still in enemy territory so he needed to get the fuck out of here right fucking now.
He flipped to his sketch of Graceville and began continuously scanning his art, focusing on the details of the village, the cabins, the paths, the people, the taverns, everything. He then began to imagine what it was like currently: painted white with snow, the frosty laced mountains sprawled out in the background, and the people in the warm winter clothes, and their charismatic and positive hopeful moods. He thought of the smell of the local bakery looming throughout the village, he thought of everything he could possibly think of until his surrounding began to crack loose.
Tiny bits of blue and white lightning occasionally began flashing around Shoftiel as he went deeper and deeper into his visualization. The room around him began to bend slightly, flashes of Graceville began erratically pulsating in and out with each spark of lightning. The castle bedroom and Graceville began to flash back and forth trading places over and over again more and more rapidly. The lightning began to crack loudly throughout the castle and a final thunderous boom sounded just as Shoftiel vanished, an extremely concentrated line about 10x10x feet in diameter appeared shimmering a clear disturbance in the woods of Graceville, the shimmer began rippling like water from a large single drop landing in the center until it became less and less see-through and more and more of a milky white pool of energy began to colapse into itself slowly forming the shape of a robed man with his leg sprawled out and his belongings.
The warp was a success, Shoftiel had escaped even through his significant injury, he immediately managed to get up and out of his awkward meditation stance, storing his sketch book and shifting his walking stick to his left side for his wounded leg and set off limping out of the woods leaving a trail of blood in the snow, toward the path that led to his home.
He needed Aurora, he needed her bad. The loss of blood almost made it too difficult for him to warp to his survival, and he was getting noticeably dizzier and dizzier as time went on, so close to feinting, he felt it, he did not want to die, not one bit. He hated himself for how sloppy this mission was, but he couldn’t afford to beat himself up at the moment; this was critical.
Shoftiel made his way as fast as he could not wanting to be seen or to be asked questions, he knew he was going to stir up people’s interest, there was no way around it, he could see the blood trail behind him and it was thick, and he was sweating even through the cold, and the limp was impossible to contain. One of the local blacksmiths Anders immediately saw him limping and saw the trail of blood, and his concern was obvious.
Mark was the name he gave out in this village. Screen names in Chronos didn’t exist, you simply were who you told people you were, just like in real life. Very few people in Chronos know the name Shoftiel; only his closest allies, and maybe a few enemies. One less now.
“Mark! You okay? What happened?”
“Direwolf out there, I was stupid, wasn’t prepared, don’t go out there! Tell everyone to say in town, I need to address my wounds, I’ll be okay, don’t worry about me.” Shoftiel said as he pressed on as fast as he could past Anders not wanting to say anything more than he had to and not wanting to waste any time and draw in as little attention as possible. He would much rather be seen as Mark, the poor direwolf victim, than as Shoftiel, the powerful and rich assassin with many game changing valuable tools that one could easily murder and loot right now.
“A fucking direwolf?!? In Graceville?!? Never heard of that before. How the fuck did you survive?”
“Pure luck, I’ll tell you later, I can’t talk now.” Shoftiel said yelling backward as he pressed forward.
“I’ll go warn everyone.” Anders said.
“You’re a good man.” He yelled in response.
His cabin was in sight now, the lights were off though, he was just praying Aurora was home. Please be home baby.
