I furrowed my brow.
How is the screen showing things despite there being no power?
I looked outside the window to double-check and saw that… the text moved along with my vision, appearing exactly where my sight focused.
‘What the fuck?’ I muttered.
I never heard of Internet withdrawal causing hallucinations. Like… it has been what a minute too?
The text disappeared and was replaced with another message.
TRANSFERRING SYSTEM NOTIFICATIONS TO THE COMM DEVICE
A beeping sound came from the direction of my computer. I looked towards it and saw that something had started to materialise there. It looked like my smartphone… just larger and with three buttons below the screen. I picked it up with a shaking hand, and immediately, an electric current ran through my body. Messages started to appear on the screen.
Eschadrion Earth System Version 1.0 initialised.
Synchronising with user: Mana Schmidt
Open Beta account detected: TheDarkSorceress34
Analysing account progression…
AS A REWARD FOR PLAYING DURING THE BETA AND REACHING THE LEVEL CAP YOU RECEIVE:
<ul style="text-align: justify">
<li>FOR LAUNCHING THE GAME AT LEAST ONCE: 100 EXP</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify">
<li>FOR REACHING LEVEL 30: EXTRA PERK POINT UPON REACHING LEVELS 1, 5 AND 10</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify">
<li>FOR ACHIEVING AT LEAST 100 SOLO KILLS IN PVP: A STARTER WEAPON VOUCHER</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify">
<li>FOR CLEARING AT LEAST ONE DUNGEON: 3 HEALING POTIONS</li>
</ul>
The screen briefly went dark before being replaced with the standard Android interface. All of my apps were still there, just shuffled off to a different page, leaving only three ones I hadn’t seen before on the screen.
Character Sheet
Store
Notifications
I checked the first one.
<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><colgroup><col width="100"><col width="100"><col width="100"><col width="100"></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="4" rowspan="1">Basic Details</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Name</td>
<td>Mana Schmidt</td>
<td>Nickname</td>
<td>TheDarkSorceress34</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Gender</td>
<td>Woman</td>
<td>Age</td>
<td>34</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Level</td>
<td>0 (100/500 exp)</td>
<td>Perk Points</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Class</td>
<td>-</td>
<td>Advanced Class</td>
<td>-</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><colgroup><col width="100"><col width="100"></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" rowspan="1">Skills</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Name</td>
<td>Level</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>None</td>
<td>N/A</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
No surprises there.
I was shocked at how quickly I was accepting this, but what could you do? I wasn’t the one to deny the evidence of my eyes.
A white four in a red circle appeared on the store icon. I tapped it and was greeted by a neat and colourful online store screen with multiple item categories of items to choose from. Two of them were marked with numbers - “Weapons” and “Redeem”.
Before looking into those, out of curiosity I opened the armour section and checked whether my sexy witch’s clothes were there, but the magic robes subsection only contained basic levelled items, while my set was dungeon loot.
That''s a shame. I liked it. Though, strutting around the real world in an equivalent of a "Slutty Witch" Halloween costume...If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Additionally, even the basic level thirty robes cost over five-hundred thousand credits and I had zero. At least in the open beta getting this much was like pulling teeth. That fancy dropship we had cost over seven million and it took the whole corp a month to grind that much. The devs said those would be craftable in the full version, which right made A LOT of sense now. I browsed through the vehicle section and saw that you could still buy those. So… probably at one point money would rule the world again.
Assuming there will be a world to rule over.
I was starting to suspect that the setting was post-apocalyptic for a reason. Eschadrion was a brutal game with a massive learning cliff. Making it to the level cap took serious skill and effort. To progress past level five, you needed to develop a class.
Classes in Eschadrion were based on the weapon you wielded. As all skills had to be levelled manually, it was best to focus on one weapon which determined what abilities and spells you could use. There were multiple sub-trees for each weapon too. Like, my eventual in-game choice were the magic staves. Using them, I could develop offensive, defensive, healing and “utility” spells. I focused on offense and utility during the beta which made me a Witch. Apparently, the full version would have advanced classes too. One previewed that interested me was the Mesmer, which you would unlock if you had sufficiently developed the Illusion branch of the utility spells.
In general, getting a class requires you to jump through some hoops, but the bonuses were worth it. For one, Witch-associated stuff cost less mana to use and had increasingly better results.
You had to work for that too, as each level up after getting a class would require you to develop your class skills higher, eventually throwing in some off-class skills for good measure. Level thirty of Witch required me to have ten fully developed “Witch” spells, five further on level eighty, as well as ten non-Witch spells on level 50 and at least three general skills at max level. It was well worth it power-wise, but took forever, which is why… what… third of a per cent of players made it? I hit it a week before, myself.
Just the fact I knew all of this gave me a massive advantage over… pretty much the entire humanity.
So with that in mind, I opened the Weapons menu. A message popped up:
Congratulations
You have an active “Free Weapon Voucher”
You can select any item of which you meet the level and skill requirements
Right now, that meant the most basic stuff. I quickly scrolled to the magic staves and found what I was looking for.
Item: Basic Magic Staff
Category: Weapon
Rarity: Normal
Quality: Normal
Durability: 50/50
Effects:
<ul style="text-align: justify">
<li>Can cast [Flame Arrow] spell</li>
<li>Can cast [Lesser Heal]</li>
</ul>
Yeah! It is still a “Training Wheel” item.
That was a very informal name for the equipment category that lets you get into a particular weapon tree without having to invest the precious Perk Points to unlock them. If I used this staff for each five proficiency points I got, I would earn a single perk point to spend on abilities from the tree. Each level up granted general ones you could allocate anywhere. Perk Point vouchers were also rare dungeon loot and occasional quest rewards. Though given how I haven''t seen a “Quest” app maybe that avenue was closed.
The staff normally cost fifty credits, which kinda made spending a voucher on it a waste, but on the other hand, I’d rather have it than a kitchen knife for defence.
Alas, it is rather hard to level up when you are dead.
I wasn’t quite sure whether you could respawn now and I had no intention of testing it. I had a suspicion that the equipment permaloss was the game teaching you that dying = bad. So with a very heavy heart, I bought the weapon and it materialised on my desk. It was a simple two-metre-long wooden staff with a green gem on one of the ends.
Shit just coming into existence is going to take a while to get used to.
Then I went to the Redeem menu and grabbed the three health potions which soon joined my new weapon on the desk. I gave the store another quick gander and saw you could get more potions from there. Basic Lessers only, but that matched what was possible in the game. Better ones, including higher-quality Lessers, had to be crafted.
Hey… weren''t those brewed from some plants not found on Earth? I hope this doesn''t mean what I think it means.
I looked for alchemical recipes in the store and found, to my eternal annoyance, that I couldn''t check the ingredients, which didn''t bode well for our poor ecosystem. I couldn''t buy those either because the shop lacked the “pay with debit card” option.
Just as I was about to turn the store off my phone began to vibrate and I saw an incoming call from Lydia. However, caller ID has shown her in-game nick rather than what I had her saved under.
‘Talk to me, El,’ I said, with a shakiness in my voice that surprised me upon picking up. ‘Or should I say HellSynth666?’
‘So it is not just me?’ she asked in a similarly terrified voice. ‘I am not imagining it?’
‘The magic staff on my desk says “no”.’
‘So the vouchers really work? I thought…’
‘They do.’
‘Will need to go through the available options then. Especially since… have you checked the notifications?’
‘Not yet. I have been dicking around the store.’
‘Then do and call me back, please. I need to know if you‘ve come to the same conclusions.’
She disconnected. This was a common thing for Lydia. She rarely gave people preconceptions about things she wanted their honest input on, so I opened the notifications app and after scrolling past the item redemption stuff I got to one that told me we were all fucked.
Zone security status downgrades from GREEN to YELLOW in: 1 HOUR 58 MINUTES 21 SECONDS