He Said There'd Be a Castle...

Alesha looked around, taking in her surroundings. She stood in a forest, its trees so thick that she couldn't see the sky. Luckily, the canopy wasn't quite thick enough to obscure the time of day. The light filtering through the branches was distinctly yellowish in hue, which meant it was daytime. Dead leaves crackled underfoot as she stepped to the left, turning counterclockwise to get a better feel for where she was. All she could see in every direction was foliage. Gnarly, thorned vines crawled up several of the trees, the vines sporting hardly any leaves at all, instead being thickly covered by their thorns. They must have been parasitic, for all the trees they climbed up looked sickly. Looking closer at some of those trees, she could see deep gauges where the giant thorns had dragged across the bark as the vines grew. Just how strong were the vines in order to do that to the trees?! 

She took several steps back in alarm, tripping over a tree root that had been hiding in a pile of leaves. Her hands shot backwards instinctively to catch her. "This is clearly not where he said I'd spawn if I joined his game… he said there'd be a castle. Did it not work?"

She performed the standard command to summon the game's Heads-Up Display (HUD). This was done by forming a short interlocking "chain" with the user's hands; each link was formed by touching the tip of the middle finger to the thumb. Then, the two hands would be pulled apart, hinging at the elbows to open just wider than the Player's body. Performing this action was the standard command toggle between "Full Virtual Reality" and a Player's HUD. Of course, a game would usually start with the HUD on, but for some reason, UGW 2000 had started up with the HUD off. Was that due to her father's settings? She hadn't checked them.

That hypothesis died when the command failed to do anything. Panicked, and not wanting to end up trapped in the game as had been the premise of many a webcomic, Alesha didn't know what to do. If the HUD didn't work, what else didn't?!

[Stop panicking, you're fine. I simply took over the HUD for you. All you need to do is pull up your Status the same way you would in reality: with a thought. It'll be much easier this way, no?]

Still on the ground, Alesha placed her left hand over her heart and leaned her head back in relief. Then she righted herself and willed the HUD to appear. It did. 

In the top left corner of her vision, she saw a circular icon containing her avatar's face, like in a picture frame. Coming from the right edge of the frame were two bars, one on top of the other; the top bar was green and the bottom one was blue. Those represented her HP and Mana. In the bottom right corner of her vision was a little compass containing a clouded-over map. Along the middle bottom of her vision was a row of mostly empty dark squares, of which only the leftmost two were filled. The one on the far left sported a red background with white, sharp teeth in front. The other was a simple black background with a silver dagger pointing from the right top corner towards the bottom left corner. 

"Are those my skills?" She asked, tapping on the row. A rectangular display came up, its textured charcoal background rimmed with exquisite silver vines, describing the two skills. 

****

Bite (beginner): Player's teeth sharpen and elongate, enabling a bite attack that deals notable damage. Teeth return to normal when the skill is deactivated. Player does not have to actually bite anything in order for teeth to change.

Dagger Skills (beginner): Racial skill. Player is proficient with daggers and dagger-like weapons. Player will be shown lines along recommended paths of attack and the Player's avatar will enjoy beginner-level Motion Assist when using daggers.

****

"...Hey System, that first one sounds suspiciously familiar," Alesha noted.

[... I'm definitely not responsible for that, nope, not at all. Hehe.]

That was clearly untrue. Now the System was even sarcastically playing innocent! "Well, I guess I won't complain about having another weapon just in case I run into trouble," she grumbled, "Though I really would rather it was something else. I don't fancy discovering what zombies taste like. Wait, does this game have zombies? I hope not. Haaaaa, System, you've gotten me entirely too used to talking out loud when I'm alone."

[...But you're never alone]

"Don't call me out on a technicality. Anywho, where are we? And where is that little rascal?" She looked for a chat function on the HUD, and finding none, opened up the settings to see if she'd even joined the right game to begin with. She had. In the server settings, the game was listed as belonging to "xXxBlackDark666xXx." 

"Okaaaaaay," she said, drawing out the word in confusion. "I joined the right game. Did I mess up the Relationship portion of character creation? Is that why I spawned in the middle of nowhere?" Maybe the relationship would be displayed along with her character information.

Suddenly, she wondered what would happen if she pulled up her Status Screen. What would appear in front of her? The avatar's status? Her own? Maybe both? She was curious.

It turned out to be her avatar's, though surprisingly, a lot of the information more or less mirrored hers in the real world. 

****

Lady Aveena Darkwater (Alesha Williams)

Younger sister of Lord Evon Darkwater

Player Username: "Phosphorescent_Feline"

Age: 16 (22)

Species: Dark Elf (Human)

Racial traits: (2)

Level: 0

XP: 60/100 

HP: 11/11

Strength: 3 

Agility: 2 

Vitality: 3

Intelligence: 9

Psychic: 1 

Chaos Energy: 3/10 

****

"... Wait, why does my avatar have Chaos Energy?!"