“Thank you for your assistance.” The Midshipman said to the two of us who sat before him as he passed a token to us. “The Wayfarer’s Sergeant at Arms is a Weapon Master. The Lieutenant suggested that it would be a good use of your time here to pick up a defensive skill or two if you can.”
My fellow player and I stepped out of the boat after the midshipman and were welcomed aboard the Wayfarer by the First Officer. The pair saluted each other. The ship’s officer then received the dispatches from the teenager. He confirmed the wording in one and then passed the satchel to a nearby Midshipman.
“Let’s get you unloaded. We have need for these supplies. Someone sold us a shipment of sand, not flour!” As we turned to help unload, he stopped us. “Not you two. Appreciate the offer, but you are here for weapons training. Able Seaman!” He called out to a nearby sailor. “Escort these two to the Weapon Master.”
We were led into the ship and taken down to the Orlop deck, where, onboard our vessel, it seemed to have been partitioned off; aboard this one, it ran the full length and width of the ship. One side of it was dominated by players. Some were sparring with each other. Others stood around watching or cheering.
“Paying out on Greg Garious!” someone clearly running a book called out.
The sailor leading us manoeuvred us around the various clumps of players to bring us to someone whose very presence was dominating the room. Leaning against one of the pillars was a wizened old man. His face was dominated by a scar that ran down from his hairline, over his closed right eye, and down his cheek. His open eye was focused intently upon the two players who were fighting in a rope circle before him. One had a wooden shield and a longsword-shaped wooden blade. The other carried a two-handed mace.
The shield bearer redirected the mace to the side before striking with his sword. His opponent changed his grip on the mace to parry the sword before striking out with his foot. The kick collided with the shield, pushing them apart. When the mace user spun to try to bring the mace down in a wide arc, his opponent ducked under the blow, angling the shield to clip it upwards and advanced. The mace user took a step back to keep distance between them and brought his heavy weapon around for another swing. Instead of blocking, the shield user jumped, twisting his body over in a flip so the mace passed beneath him and swung his shield around to bash his opponent in the face.
“Stop!” the old man commanded. “What did I tell you about jumping around like that?”
“Err,” a sheepish sword and board player started.
“I said DON’T DO IT!. Strength comes from the legs. Against anyone who is skilled, you would have found yourself unable to defend yourself! If your opponent was strong enough for that weapon, he insists on yielding, he would have redirected it into your upside-down head and thrown you across the room when you left yourself so open! If you want to show off and do fancy nonsense, go and find those useless prima donna Gladiators and their all-flash, no-substance show fighting. Here! In this hall, we do things properly. Go and train your basic strikes against a dummy or leave. I don’t care which. But don’t let me see any of that frou-frou nonsense again.” He turned to the mace wielder next.
“If you want to wield a large weapon, you need to be strong enough to be able to redirect it midswing. Weights or more practice against a dummy. There is no benefit from giving you more advanced training until you master the basics.” He lets out a sigh before turning towards us.
“What have you brought me, Conway?” he growls at the sailor.
“Two Citizens, Sir. Sent over by the Indefatigable. Sir. For training. Sir.”
“Can either of you fight?”
“A little.” Storm acknowledged.
“Never really tried,” I admitted.
The Weapon Master gives Storm an appraising eye for a moment, “Which weapons?”
“Fist and Rapier mostly, some longsword. A few others I’d rate myself as a beginner on.”
The old man nods, his lips pursing for a moment in thought before nodding. A moment later, a wooden sword is thrown at my companion, who catches it.
They step into the rope circle, and the two start to move in a clockwise direction around each other. I didn’t see the first exchange, but I heard the loud crack. Then another. The old man grins and speeds up. His opponent matches.
With the exception of the grunts of the two men in the circle and the sound of their training weapons colliding, the room had gone silent. The spar had gone on for around 10 minutes before the old man opened up his scarred eye. Two strikes later, Samuel Storm stood there disarmed.
“A little, you say!” barked the old man, stepping back with a laugh. “What are you all doing lollygagging, back to training!” he commands the room before turning to me. “Grab that Blade, Red. Let’s see what you can do.” He turns back to Storm. “Better with a rapier?” he asks, nodding to himself, “Competition fighting mostly right? You have a habit of fighting like you are in a stall, but I can see you consciously trying to break it. You already see the flaw; practice will help you overcome it instinctively. No help from me in that, at least nothing I can give you without taking you as my disciple. Something we could discuss once we arrive in Landing, if you desire to spend the next ten years mastering different weapons and learning how to teach them. My advice to you would be to do some practice against my training dummies here, mostly about getting used to your body post-integration. Feel free to spar against the others. You probably won’t get much from it, and I doubt the System will grant you any skills awards until you fight more challenging opponents. However, I’m not going to make you jump through any hoops. You pass the combat proficiency assessment.” He holds out a small silver token, which Samuel stored into his [Inventory], “You also pushed me hard enough I had to open my second eye.” A simple sheathed longsword with a round pommel appeared in his hand. “A swordsman of your calibre should have a weapon.”
“Err…thank you…” The clearly surprised player responded.
“No, thank you. It’s been a while since I got to cross blades with someone whose style I didn’t already intimately know. Now let’s see if your friend can also impress me.”
I didn’t…I don’t think I embarrassed myself…I lasted 4 hits…I’m also pretty sure he let me have the first three before he did more than just match his blade to mine…
Thirty minutes later, I found myself attacking one of the training dummies with a quarter staff. After he knocked the wooden blade from my hand, the Weapon Master and I spent a few minutes discussing where I saw myself going, and the minute I talked about wanting to learn magic, he almost sighed with relief.
“From what we have seen and from what the Pathfinders told us, the system will help you overcome a lot of disadvantages. Skill and natural instincts are also force multipliers. With training and effort, you could become a formidable warrior. But I don’t think it would make you happy. Not to say I haven’t been wrong in the past, but you don’t strike me as the fighter type. What do you expect out of this?” he waved his hand around the room.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I thought for a moment.
“Options,” I replied. “From everything I have heard, the New World is a dangerous place. I need to be able to defend myself.”
“The correct attitude. If magic is truly your desire, I suggest you learn how to fight with a quarterstaff. If you gain mastery of a Magic Staff, the chosen weapon of the Mages in Landing, then the skills of the quarterstaff should be applicable. It is also a relatively cheap, simple weapon which will let you fight both close and with some range. And if all else fails, you can grab a big stick as a last resort. Come, let’s get you started.”
“We will start with a simple strike.” He had me stand at one dummy while he stood at the one next to it. “No…we’ll start with how to hold a quarterstaff…” I looked over to see how he was holding his, unlike me, I had my hands in the middle third, like it was Darth Maul’s lightsaber, he had one hand near one end and the other about a third of the way along. “Better. The First strike is like this.” He thrust it forward like it was a spear, straight into the head of the dummy. There was a ding from the dummy.
He watched me attack the head a few times. Adjusted my stance and grip a couple of times. This was repeated until something came together; my attack hit the head smoothly, and I heard a bell ring.
“Good. Keep that up until you can consistently ring that bell.” I nodded and tried again, no ring this time, but I had a goal. The next strike did ring.
At some point, he had walked away, I hadn’t noticed. I was too busy thrusting my quarterstaff at the head. Sometimes it would ring. Sometimes it wouldn’t. It certainly felt like it was happening more often than not, though.
“Good progress.” A voice said from behind. “The 2nd strike I will show you is a basic chop.” The weapon master demonstrated a swinging attack. So the length of the quarterstaff hit the temple of the Dummy instead of the end. I copied him.
“Good, but our ending position should look more like this,” he repositioned my quarterstaff so my arms were holding the stick above my head. “In this position, we are more able to parry or block an attack.”
I tried a few more attacks, he made minor corrections, and then the bell rang.
“Good. Attack the left temple…The right temple… thrust to the face.” Only the last strike had the bell ring. “I’m going to activate the dummy's target mode.” The dummy's face seemed to light up. “You have a few different attacks now. I want you to pick the one you think will be best to hit the spot that lights up. Keep the stick up, though, between attacks, imagine the dummy might be looking to attack back, so don’t leave yourself open.”
I looked at the dummy, a face hit… well, thrust obviously. I did. The bell rang, and the light faded from the dummy’s face and appeared on its right temple. I did the swing attack he had just shown me. It flashed green briefly, but didn’t ring.
“If you get no response, wrong attack. If it flashes like that, you did the right thing, but it wasn’t strong enough, or it wasn’t good enough in execution. Keep practising.” I got to work wailing on the dummy. After five hits, I finally managed to ring the bell, and the target spot moved to the dummy chest, about where the heart would be. I used a thrust attack.
I think I got lost in the exercise; I certainly lost track of the time. The thing which brought me out of it was a system message popping up.
‘You keep pushing yourself, even while exhausted, endurance point gained’
It was accompanied by something new. Something called a Trait, which had its own screen.
‘Hyper Focus’
‘Sometimes, where you focus hard upon a task, the world and even your own body can disappear into the background.’
‘Bonuses to concentration while in a hyper focus state, but to the extent nothing but the task matters.’
I was also feeling absolutely exhausted, and I felt my legs start to collapse.
“Whoa there, that was an impressive session, but you need to watch your stamina more.” A man’s voice said as he caught me before I could fall.
“Huh?” I intelligently asked.
“Didn’t you get the warnings about your stamina falling?” He led me over to the benches where some of the players were resting. “It’s why we keep taking breaks. Let it fall too much, you get exhausted, and you then need to wait for that debuff to wear off before your stamina will regen.”
“You at least earned a point in Endurance, though, right?” One of the other bench sitters asked. “See!” he exclaimed when I nodded. “It’ll be totally worth waiting on the debuff if I can double my endurance!”
“Is not being able to train for an hour worth it though? When can you earn stat points other ways?” commented another.
“One of my mates skipped this part of the tutorial, said he’d done combat training in the beta, and wanted to get to the pvp zone. Apparently, in the next zone, there are lots of activities and people are seriously ranking up the stats…I’m gambling on there being something good if you complete the tutorial ships though…”
“How long does this debuff last?” I asked, it felt like even standing would be a struggle right now.
“About an hour, typically. You don’t need to be in-game for it, though. Most people take a break and come back later,” the one who had carried me to the benches confirmed.
“Did you not see the warning messages?” the bench sitter asked.
I shook my head. “Seems I have a trait called ‘Hyper focus,’ which gives bonuses, but I lose track of everything else.”
“I saw a stream talking about those when I logged out to eat. Supposedly strong bonuses to things, now that you have unlocked it, you should be able to activate and deactivate it, unless it is a passive bonus. TN is being cagey about how you earn them.”
“TN is being cagey about a lot of things. It’s almost like they want people to actually play and explore the game and not just follow someone’s optimal, perfect build path.” A female player said as she collapsed onto the bench. “So are you a real girl or a fake girl?” She asked me directly.
“I planned to play mage and then realised it was the gender select and couldn’t go back,” I responded.
“Yeah, you and about 50% of the other female PCs.” She laughed. “It’s the big complaint all over the forums. Two of the biggest streamers fell for it. Novalord played it up for the laughs. If you see an avatar with the biggest.” She indicated her chest area. “It might be him. He’s setting personal records for his viewer count and really hamming it up on his stream.”
“The funniest, though, is OhSoCuteKitty. Notorious TittyStreamer has a male character.”
“I saw a thread about that.” Another confirmed. “She lost 90% of her viewers, and what’s left are all laughing about how upset she is that no one will help her.”
“Ahh, yep, TN apologised on the updates feed.” The tall player who had carried me over confirmed, his eyes seemed to be focused on something just in front of him. “Gender select on the avatar editing screen is now with QA and should be released with the next patch on Monday. Existing avatars can’t be changed; you will need to delete your character and create a new one.”
“That sucks.”
“You going to?” the girl asked.
“See how I feel come Monday. I’m having fun, and it’s not been a hardship.” I replied. “Though thinking about it…I don’t actually feel any different…”
“TN talked about this in one of their interviews.” The tall one commented. “They had to implement some body interpretation algorithm in one of the early alpha tests, to counter body dysmorphia. Apparently, humans aren’t so different, but the Elves and especially the Felge were causing disassociation by the testers.”
“Big words, dude, what are you, a Psych Major?” the female asked.
“Err…yeah, I am. Doctorate student. My thesis is on the impacts of Virtual Realities on the social interactions…”
“And you are here playing a game?” she asked.
“Hey, I’m being paid to. I have to understand the subject matter after all.” He said with a grin.
“Now is probably a good time. I’m going to log out for some dinner. Thanks for the help. I’ll be back in an hour if you are all still around. I’m Aenara by the way.”
“Diane Darkfall. DD for short,” the girl my own height confirmed. “You may be fake, but you seem alright.”
“I’m Henry Jekyll.” Confirmed the PhD student with a grin.
“I’m SuperEliteBackStabMan,” said the one who brought up OhSoCuteKitty
“Thanks again. See ya!” I brought up the game menu and chose the ‘return to host environment’ button.
The colours and shapes faded from the world, and I found myself in a dark room, just me and the bench I had been sitting on. A trail of lights appeared and led to an open door leading out into the corridor. I walked out of the room I was in and into the entrance chamber, lying down in the pod I had gotten up from. Closing my eyes, I felt the falling sensation as I returned to my body.