11. Best Start, part 4

  “Oh my god, that was brutal,” Sam said after falling thirty feet into the pool of water below for the eighth time. “Something like this would be illegal in real life. Too dangerous. People would die trying to complete it.”

  “Yup,” I agreed cheerfully. “But since this is a game, and the worst that can happen if you land awkwardly is that you lose a few [HP], they’re free to make obstacle courses as complex and difficult as they can.

  Paula’s friends had been drifting in and out as I pushed and encouraged them to work on completing the impossible course. Even a single completion on day one would be a huge achievement, one that I didn’t really expect of any of them. It was designed to be hard, to push you beyond your mortal limitations in the physical realm, after all. It was designed to be something that you could only complete with a digital avatar.

  It was designed to break the chains their mind put on their physical body to keep it safe. Which is why I was pushing them so hard to work on it. The sooner they could complete it, the better.

  “I don’t get why it’s so hard,” Lewis complained. He was reclining next to us, resting between attempts after having taken my advice seriously once he’d realized who I was. “I mean, the game standardizes our physical abilities for our selected race, right? And aside from Paula and Sophie, we all picked human. All of the records for this course were set by humans, so why is it so hard for us to complete?”

  “There’s a brain-body-barrier,” I explained. “Honestly, I don’t really understand it all myself. But, like, your brain only allows you to use a certain percentage of your actual strength. This carries over to your digital body. A lot of the training that goes into becoming a good player is about increasing the control you have over your body, which means reducing the brain’s self-defense mechanisms. Those documents you and your parents had to sign? A lot of them were specifying that you’d obey the medical guidelines and limit yourself to ‘normal activities,’ because a lot of the players who spend years playing start to feel like supermen in the real world. And the weird thing is that they’re almost right, until their back goes out, or they try to climb a cliff that they shouldn’t have, or something like that.”

  “So, wait,” Sam objected, “Isn’t that going to be a problem with sports? I mean, except for Lewis and Sophie, we all play something, but if this is going to trick our bodies into hurting themselves--”

  “No, sports are ‘normal activities’ for teenagers,” I interrupted her before she could scare herself too much. “And to reach the point where playing the game becomes dangerous, you’d have to both spend forty hours a week playing and be completely sedentary the rest of the time. For teenagers, at least. When you’re thirty years old this becomes a much bigger problem, as the difference between what you can do in-game and IRL becomes wider.”

  “Rick would quit if playing this game meant he couldn’t play football,” Kevin pointed out. Like the others, he had tried the course multiple times, although at the moment he was drilling with a practice spear, going through the motions he had been taught by the instructor. Because fatigue wasn’t an issue until he ran below twenty five percent of his [Stamina], he had been moving almost the entire time while the others rested between attempts. “That’s the entire reason he agreed to join; to get the discount so that he could play skirmishes online in the sports version.”

  “And doing so will make him a better player, probably,” I said. “It will reinforce his brain’s control over his body. That’s why professional athletes play. But they also work out like five hours a day too. So it’s like, they actually play on television one game a week, spend twenty hours a week working out, spend another twenty playing ER, and then do whatever their team does for practice, which lately has actually been a split between ER and IRL practice.”

  “I don’t really care if it helps me in football or not,” Kevin commented. “I like football, but it’s not my entire life, you know? Lewis still can’t believe it that I read Tolkein before he did.”

  “Oh? Hobbit or the trilogy?” I asked.

  “Just the Hobbit,” he admitted. “My grandpa gave it to me for like my seventh birthday. Lewis is the one who told me that there was more, I didn’t know until after that. Then we watched the old movies together. So that’s why we’re friends. We’re both nerds, I’m just a nerd who’s also a jock. And being a freaking spearman is going to be awesome!”

  I grinned, pleased that my suggestion had been a home run. “You should all practice in the real world, too. Not something like this,” I said, motioning towards the unrealistically complex obstacle course, “but a normal obstacle course would be good for you, as would practicing with, I don’t know, a broom or something? Yeah, that or a mop.”

  “My little sister is going to give me so much shit when she sees me doing that,” Kevin commented. “But it’ll be totally worth it. When do we start killing stuff?”

  “I don’t know. We could head out into the fields outside of town and find some rabbits or something, but they wouldn’t be much of a challenge. Coldbeach and Bluewyn have [Slimes], but those are a protected species here, weirdly enough.”

  “A rabbit doesn’t sound very dangerous,” Sophie said.

  “Oh, these are pretty big rabbits,” I said with a grin. “But honestly they’re a waste of time. Their corpses are only worth like fifty copper a piece. More if you actually process them yourself, especially the meat because it’s actually an ingredient in a lot of valuable buff foods. But there’s alternative dishes out there, and in my opinion your group is too good to waste your time on such a weak opponent. I would rather have you practice your skills for a few days in town and take on something worthwhile.”

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  “Yeah?” Kevin asked, practicing a thrust against an invisible target. “Got anything in mind?”

  “That depends on Paula,” I admitted. I turned to my sister, who was pretending to be my cousin. “Have you decided what kind of healer you want to be, yet?”

  “I don’t care what we do, so I’m going to try again,” Sam announced, and she moved to the start of the obstacle course.

  Paula fumbled a little bit, watching as she watched her best friend begin to make a fool of herself. “What are the options again?”

  “Life, Holy, Light, Nature, Water, Arcane, and, weirdly enough, Fire,” I said, listing the healing elements by memory.

  “Aren’t holy and light the same thing?” Lewis asked, surprised.

  “Not in this game. Light spells are usually flashier, and while Holy spells share some similar visuals, that’s not always the case. Part of the issue is that Holy and Unholy are often [aspects] of another element or [secondary attunements]. There are pure holy spells, like [Turn Undead] or [Blessing], but more of them are things like [Greater Heal Wound] which is Holy and Life, or [Holy Smite], which can be Holy and either Light or Fire, depending on which god you worship.”

  “I don’t think I want to be a healer with a religion,” Paula objected.

  “So, that eliminates being a [Cleric]. That’s actually a good thing, I don’t think you’d enjoy that route anyway,” I said. “Some types of [Druids] emphasize the religious aspect, others are more just Nature Mages. The rest of the healing classes are basically mages who specialize in healing instead of damage.”

  “Once you take out religion, what’s the best remaining option?” she insisted.

  “For pure healing? Nature combined with Life. It leaves you vulnerable because you don’t have much for offense, but you won’t have any trouble finding a group even if your school friends here stop playing or go separate ways,” I explained. “And you can always add a third element. Water or Wind would be good. It will reduce your healing options a little while making you more independent, which will increase your overall effectiveness. But that’s a long term plan. First we have to attune your avatar to Nature or Life. Fortunately, there’s a place nearby where we can do both.”

  “Okay, confused again,” Lewis complained. “What’s the difference between Nature and Life? Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “No. Nature is opposed to Arcane, while Life is opposed to Death,” I explained. “It’s … look, magic in this game is meant to be complicated. Now that you’re in game and have time dilation to research it, buy a magical theory book from the marketplace and do a bit of research on your own. A lot of spells have two to four [Elemental Aspects]. So, a Nature plus Life spell might be [Regrowth], which is a healing spell, but also could be used to, say, make a plant grow faster. But there is also [Wither], which is a Nature plus Death spell. It does what it sounds like; it’s a debuff that weakens the target and does damage over time, and it also causes plants to whither. At the same time, Life can be combined with Arcane and a third element like Earth or Water for a [Summon Golem] spell. Does any of that make sense?”

  “I guess,” Lewis said. “It’s just not in line with the systems I’m used to.”

  “They made EternalRealms magic complicated on purpose,” I explained. “There’s a lot of standard spells, but there’s also a lot of customization. You’ll all start out with standard abilities, and then customize them after you’ve had them for a while. But the first step is to get your starting gear, learn and practice some actual abilities, and then begin to attune your elements. Customizing your abilities doesn’t really start until after that.”

  “So, the next step is shopping?” Sophie asked, growing excited.

  “No,” I said, motioning to where Sam was crawling out of the water again. “The training facility is free for the first subjective twenty-four hours. After that, it’s fifty copper per subjective hour. So you’re going to spend every minute you can training, until you’ve burned through all the free time you can,” I explained. “All of you need to practice the obstacle course, but you also need to spend some time with the combat instructors, learning to duck, roll, tumble, and generally avoid tripping as you’re moving around in combat. Because this isn’t a game where you can move perfectly just by pressing on the WASD keys. It’s not real life, but it will feel real . And you’ll be able to trip over your own ankles, just like you would in real life too. That’s the biggest hurdle noobs face, and that’s why the training facility is so important. Even to mages, archers, healers and bards.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Kevin said, still swinging his practice spear around. “Being a spearman is awesome!”

  “So, we’re stuck here for the entire weekend then?” Paula asked. “I mean, it’s Friday, and we have four hours left on this dive, right? We’re signed up for twelve hours Saturday and Sunday, and then three hours after school Monday through Friday. So it’ll be next weekend before we’re really able to do anything, and we’ll have our helmets by then.”

  “You’re forgetting about time dilation,” I reminded her, grinning. “So, right now, you’re all synced up with each other. That’s so that you can all experience time at the same rate, but it’s actually a significant limitation on how much time you experience subjectively versus how much time passes in real life. If you were all to un-sync with each other, turn yourselves up to the maximum time dilation that your safety settings will allow, you can probably burn through your training time by noon tomorrow. But right now, we should probably meet up with BrickFace at GreenMeadows, because the RealTimer for that just clicked down, and I passed an invite to the other players who joined at the same time to meet us there as well.”

  “What about training?” Kevin inquired, swinging his spear.

  “Fifty copper isn’t that much, Goku,” I teased.

  “Who?” he asked, and I realized that not everyone had near infinite subjective time to watch old cartoons with.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s go. And we need to find BrickFace and figure out what he’s been up to. If he’s the tank, he’s the one who needs the training hall the most of all of you.”