“Dakkon,” Corbin said firmly. It was a comfortable name which he had been using for years as an alias online. “D-a-k-k-o-n.”
“Dakkon. Is this correct?” The name appeared in large floating gray letters.
“Yes. Confirm. Affirmative—let’s get this show on the road,” Corbin said from his disembodied state.
“Close your eyes and be reborn,” a new, powerful male voice thundered. Corbin thought he had heard the voice before, but from where he did not know.
As the world around him faded to black, Corbin closed his eyes.
C
HAPTER 2:
H
UMBLE
B
EGINNINGS
Corbin opened his eyes as Dakkon, standing in bright light, next to a grandiose fountain of a griffin—a creature with the body of a lion combined with the head, wings, and talons of an eagle—rearing back on its hind legs and spouting water majestically from its open beak. Dakkon found himself surrounded by the bustle of people buying and selling goods in a busy plaza.
“All humans,” Dakkon noticed aloud. He was under the impression, based on his experience with other games, that he’d be swimming in elves, if not the other staple fantasy races.
“You new here?” asked a tall, blond-haired fellow with the name ‘Cline’ floating, translucent and blue above his head. “Humans start in their own area. I take it you didn’t look at the starting zones and just clicked on the most densely populated one?”
Dakkon paused for a moment. Had choosing a starting location been a part of the character customization he had skipped in favor of free stat points? Well, at least he had wound up in a city instead of an area with no starting quests save for farm work. There was no reason to be upset about that.
“Yes,” said Dakkon. “You too, then?”
“I’ve only been here about an hour in game time. I guess that’s, what? About eight minutes in true time?” Clines dark green eyes glazed over slightly as he appeared to look through Dakkon. After a second he exclaimed, “Yup! About eight minutes.”
Dakkon tilted his head back, somewhat perplexed by the odd display.
“Oh. If you’ve just logged in then you probably haven’t seen the user interface yet,” Cline suggested. “Took me about fifteen minutes of gawking before I even knew to think about it.”
“User interface?” asked Dakkon. Just then, he noticed three bars appear towards the bottom of his vision. One red, one yellow, and one blue.
“Yeah. Looks like you’ve caught a glimpse of it now, though. Since you’ve just shown up here, I’d recommend you customize a few settings for yourself—although I’d also recommend doing so while not standing there, staring blankly in the middle of the street. People might talk.”
“Oh. Right,” Dakkon agreed. “Then I guess I’ll spend a few minutes on that bench.”
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a plan,” remarked Cline. “To be honest with you I haven’t fiddled with my own settings all that much, but there are too many options. I’m a little anxious to get started.”
Dakkon could relate to the sentiment of the tall interjector. He, too, really wanted to get started after missing so much time. Still, though, a quick look at some settings could prove fruitful. “All right. Thanks for the tip,” Dakkon nodded slightly in Cline’s direction, turned, and set off towards a bench on the side of the road.
“Hey!” Cline exclaimed. “You open up the menu by giving it a hard thinking about. Or yell out the word if you have to.”
Dakkon continued to walk towards the bench but extended his right arm out and offered a lazily upturned thumb, indicating he’d received Cline’s message loud and clear.
After seating himself on the empty bench, Dakkon thought about opening the main menu with no results. Reflecting upon Cline’s words, he decided to make an effort focusing on the word ‘menu’ instead of yelling it out loud. Dakkon shouted, in his mind, “Menu!” A translucent screen opened and Dakkon thanked the developers that he wouldn’t always have to resort to the other option.
The first thing Dakkon noticed was the prominently displayed ‘Game Time’ and ‘True Time’ clocks. In game, it was an early 8:10 whereas in the real world, or true time, it was already 10:22. Next to the two clocks there were tabs which allowed players to set up messages designed to alert them when a condition had been met, such as reaching a certain time or after an amount of time had passed.
“That’ll be useful,” Dakkon thought to himself. He supposed that option was a necessity. He doubted that anyone would be particularly comfortable transitioning between multiple clock speeds.
Dakkon found the menu to be superbly crafted. He could manipulate tabs, scroll through options, and modify settings with relative ease—all without requiring hands or verbal cues. A mere willingness to navigate into a different page or make a change was all that the system required.
While Dakkon browsed his translucent menu windows, seated on the public bench, a few other characters dressed in shoddy cloth garments appeared rather unceremoniously from almost exactly the spot where he had entered Chronicle for the first time. Though the spectacle was odd enough to him, passing denizens of the city didn’t seem to pay the newcomers any attention. Perhaps it was simply business as usual for them. Before getting back to his menus, Dakkon overheard a bit of conversation which caught his attention between a new arrival and someone who had been waiting to greet him.
After having been properly teased for his threadbare appearance, the newest arrival asked, “What’s with the luck stat? Why can’t I put any points into it?” He stood a full head shorter and seemed even younger than the well-armored teenager who greeted him.
“Mercy of the devs if you ask me,” replied the armored man. They both had blue names floating over their heads, but trying to make them out through Dakkon’s opened, translucent windows was difficult and Dakkon didn’t care enough to completely stop what he was doing.
“Huh? The devs?” asked the recent arrival.
“Christ, Terry, the devs. You know, the people who made Chronicle,” replied the older boy, chastising as he exaggerated the motion of rubbing his palm against his forehead. “Luck’s trash. What we really need is a healer. You should be dumping your points into INT.”
The younger boy looked like he didn’t understand. “But isn’t it better to be lucky than smart?” he asked, using the old adage.
“Terry, this is a game world. Trust me here. Luck is bad. If you put points into strength, you get stronger. You can hit harder and lift heavy objects. With agility, you can feel yourself moving faster. With INT, I assume you must get a lot smarter as well. It’s a really popular stat. But with luck…” he trailed off, trying to evoke a sense of anticipation from the younger boy. “It doesn’t do anything. You don’t get stronger, faster, or smarter. You get nothing-er. It’s garbage in basically every game.” The older, armored boy turned and waved the new arrival along. “Now come on, we’ve got to go meet up with Dad.”
As the two walked away, the last thing Dakkon heard of the conversation was a new question from the younger boy. “If luck’s so bad then why is it even in the game?”
Dakkon could relate to the boy’s sentiment at least. If it was so bad, why, indeed, have it listed as a major statistic? Still though, he’d have to cede the point to the older brother. Luck was generally useless in the other games he had played, so it wasn’t too farfetched for that to hold true in this game, too. Dakkon tweaked a few settings, allowing him to see the game time when he looked at his health, endurance, and mana bars, and then exited the menu to take in what was around him.